Dan's Story Part One

Dan and I met in a coffee shop in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday, March 14th of 2006. I overheard him talking to one of his advisors about India, and since I thought he was handsome and saying interesting things about India, I spoke to him as soon as his advisor left. He was seated slightly behind me, so I turned to him and said “So, I hear you’re going to Delhi, I’ve been through there a few times myself.”
“Really?” he replied a bit startled, “any recommendations for things to do?”
“Stay in your hotel,” I told him firmly. “Find a good hotel and hunker down. Then leave as soon as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I love India, I just don’t love Delhi,” I explained. Dan told me later that he was afraid at first that I was going to be some sort of starry-eyed privileged traveler of India, maybe spending most of my time retreating at a modern ashram with carefully constructed lotus ponds. In the following five hour conversation he quickly realized that was pretty far from the case. I gave him my number and told him to call before Thursday since I was going in for six night twelve’s on Thursday night at my job as a nurse in the local women’s prison. He called on Thursday and we went out to lunch at an Ethiopian place for our first real date. On our first date Dan told me a long story about his most recent trip to Sri Lanka, but it was tough for me to pay attention. I was too nervous to even eat. He was telling me the story as we were wrapping up our date and walking to Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. I was more concerned with if we were going to kiss or not. I figured I could always ask for the story again later.

After a few weeks I asked him to tell the story again and he refused. “You’ve got to get me drunk first, it’s a really draining story to tell,” he explained. Dan and I did not drink much, especially when it is just the two of us, so I knew it would be awhile before I got my next chance at the story. By the time we arrived at the Mango Tree Dan had already drank a pint of Lion Lager at the Galle Face Hotel. When he ordered the gin and tonic before dinner on an empty stomach I knew I had my chance. I could not drink anyway since a bathroom break on the three hour ride home was totally out of the question. “So, can I hear the story about you and Thilak staying in the brothels again?” I asked after his gin and tonic.
“One more gin and tonic, then I’ll tell the story,” Dan told me, smiling. He knew that I had been waiting to hear the story again. I immediately signaled to the waiter and the next gin and tonic was in front of him in minutes.
“Ok, so you and Thilak were doing research at some Army base around here, where was it again?” I prompted him.
“Panagoda. That’s just outside of Colombo on the Kandy side. First we started off driving the three hours each way to the base every day,” he started.
“That’s crazy!” I exclaimed. “Why couldn’t you stay on base, like at Mihintale? There must be some extra bunks around somewhere.” I asked.
“We just couldn’t,” he stated simply. “That is an on-base hotel where we stay at Mihintale. It’s for the soldiers’ families to come and visit since Mihintale is sort of a recovery base. Panagoda doesn’t have anything like that. At this point we were way, way off the tourist map. It wasn’t like we could’ve just looked in the Lonely Planet and called a few places. We were way off the map period. One day we were driving home and we saw a sign for a place called the Nippon Rest. It was back off the road quite a ways. When we finally got there the exterior was Pepto-Bismol pink. The interior looked like someone had drunk Pepto and immediately thrown it up, a sort of Pepto-vomit interior. When we asked for a room they asked how many hours we wanted it for. So we knew we were in brothel,”
“I guess it makes sense, I mean, who else would be staying out there right?” I commented as the naan arrived. “I know that the Lonely Planets do run out,” I admitted. “I think the worst place I ever stayed was in Turkey right at the Syrian border, way out east, in a little town off the Lonely Planet. The bed smelled like a greasy man and there were cigarette buts on the floor. I remember it was called the Hotel Paris. I don’t think it was a brothel though since it was right in town.”
“Probably not then,” Dan commented. He had a sip of his gin and tonic and a few bites of naan before continuing. “So we got out of the Nippon rest pretty quick. We’d just gotten back out to the main road and we saw another sign in Sinhala, for the Ranmal Rest House. We could just see it across a rice paddy from the road. This place was painted green and it was pretty run down, but it had one nicer room with an attached bath. The bed didn’t stink or anything. There was sort of a nice breeze across the paddy rustling the palm trees. They had a day rate, 500 Rupees, and a night rate, 600 Rupees, so I figured it must be some sort of love hotel. I mean, where else are you going to sleep with your girlfriend? Or with so many families sharing one room and one bed, maybe even your wife. Thilak’s fourteen year old daughter sleeps with him and his wife. They’ve one bedroom and one bed. That’s not uncommon in Asia.”
“The family bed,” I mused as Dan worked on finishing the naan. “I’ve heard about that. No wonder there’s no concept of personal space over here. My mom had to share a room with her sister growing up. These days in the US even that would be a total hardship. But sharing your room with your parents? Man. And with so few people owning cars, that’s another venue eliminated.”
Dan nodded in agreement and continued, “So we could get the room at night, but we had to pack our stuff out during the day so that the room could be used by couples. During the day the place was packed and at night we were the only people there. We’d drive the 20 or so minutes to the base, do interviews all day, and then come back to the Ranmal to work on our notes and translations. The manager guy was pretty nice, as a part of the charade that the place was a real hotel he’d even cook dinner for us. I don’t think they normally offered food; we’d also send him out with money and he’d go get us beers. I figured it probably was a pretty decent deal for him, an extra 600 Rupees each night he wouldn’t normally have. So we were there for like three nights. Then the owner, a total thug, came by. He basically threatened us because we were scaring away business.”
“What do you mean, what did he say to you?” I furthered, taking a sip of the gin and tonic myself.
“He just told us it wasn’t safe for us there anymore,” Dan replied. “So then the Lt. Colonel at the Panagoda base told us about another place, the Bon Bon, also off the same road. We found it only with his directions. There was no sign. This place was yellow. They had separate day and night rates, about the same. We had to leave during the day so people could use the room. The room was hot. It smelled like cigarettes and mold. It had been a long day at the base so we decided to take it. The mattress was split open like someone had tried to shove a body in there or something. It was terrible. There were Sinhala guys staying up all night drinking downstairs. The weird thing was that it was right next to the area police station.”
“So much for enforcement,” I commented. “So at these places people were basically getting it on in your room during the day, and you slept there at night?” I asked. “I’m guessing the staff didn’t rush in and change the sheets or anything,” I clarified with revulsion.
“I mean yeah, it was pretty gross, but as you now know, the drive to and from Kandy is pretty bad.”
“Why couldn’t you just sleep in the car, sure it’s hot and moldy, but at least it doesn’t smell like cigarettes and it’s not a brothel?” I asked.
“You’ve been in my car. Common now. How well am I going to fit in the back seat? And Thilak? What, would I put him in the trunk?” Dan replied. I could tell he had seriously considered this option.
“Ok, what about camping, or sleeping rough?” I asked.
“That’s just not safe, all of these hotels, even the shitty ones, are behind locked gates. Plus we’d be eaten alive my mosquitoes. The hotels all had netting or at least a fan. There was no other option. That was it except for this woman, Binari.”
“Binari?” I asked, “Who was she again?”
“Binari is a local woman who first contacted me when we were in Trinco a few weeks before. I guess Major Cakravarti, from the base, gave her my number or something. She’s a friend of his. She called every day for a while and I got suspicious. When we met Binari a few weeks later at the temple with the major, I felt even more suspicious. She was in her late thirties. She had a wandering eye and was very ugly for starters. Second of all, while we were talking, she kept staring at me. It was creepy. She talked of her business selling expensive cars, but it looked as if she was traveling by bus.”
“She must’ve been pretty creepy if you were willing to stay in the Bon Bon on the split mattress rather than stay at her place,” I commented.
“She was!” Dan exclaimed, nodding his head emphatically. After draining the gin and tonic he continued, “So we stayed at the Bon Bon for a few nights. This hotel had a restaurant-bar sort of thing, we tried the food there and it was really expensive and terrible. We could get terrible food for next to nothing on the road, so we just lived off of those fried short eats. I felt like I was turning into a ball of lard. I got to show Thilak his first condom wrapper there though; he’d never seen one before.”
“What a special experience that must have been,” I interjected sarcastically. “Where was it?”
“In the hall outside our room,” Dan replied. “So then we had to leave early one morning for a special memorial ceremony at the base,” he continued. “When we got downstairs at 7 AM we were locked in. The whole downstairs, the lobby, the lounge, everything was full of empty bottles and half-eaten food on plates. There were flies everywhere, it was disgusting. There was nobody around. The doors were all locked; we had to try several windows before we could find one that was left unlocked and climb out with our stuff. Once outside, the gate of the compound was locked so we had to climb over the wall. Luckily the Lancer was parked outside of the compound walls. I knew that was it. It was time to take Binari, up on her offer.