Drowning in the Ganges Read online

  PRAISE FOR NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER VINCENT ZANDRI

  The Shroud Key

  “Sensational…masterful…brilliant.”

  —New York Post

  “My fear level rose with this Zandri novel like it hasn't done before!”

  —Reviews by Molly

  “I very highly recommend this book…full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists..Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”

  —Life in Review

  "If you put Zandri and Dan Brown in a dark Cairo back alley, I'd put money on Zandri. He went to Cairo in the middle of the Arab Spring (against the explicit wishes of the U.S. State Department), gathered materials for the book while Tahrir Square rioted…The Shroud Key is page-turning fun for popcorn munchers."

  —Ben Sobieck, CrimeFictionBook Blog

  "Zandri has brought back that wonderful ‘quest’ story…The Shroud Key is well worth every minute."

  —Suspense Magazine

  Lost Grace

  “Lost Grace is a gripping psychological thriller that will keep you riveted on the edge of your seat as you turn the pages.”

  —Jersey Girl Book Reviews

  “This book is truly haunting and will stay with you long after you have closed the covers.”

  —Beth C., Amazon 5-star review

  The Innocent

  "The action never wanes." —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal

  "Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting." —Harlan Coben, bestselling author of Six Years

  "Tough, stylish, heartbreaking." —Don Winslow, bestselling author of Savages

  ALSO BY VINCENT ZANDRI

  The Dick Moonlight Mystery Series

  Moonlight Falls

  Moonlight Mafia

  Moonlight Rises

  Blue Moonlight

  Full Moonlight

  Murder by Moonlight

  Moonlight Sonata

  The Jack Marconi Mystery Series

  The Innocent

  Godchild

  The Guilty

  The Chase Baker Action/Adventure Series

  The Shroud Key

  Chase Baker and the Golden Condor

  The Stand-Alones

  Everything Burns

  The Remains

  Scream Catcher

  Lost Grace

  The Concrete Pearl

  Permanence

  The Shorts

  Pathological

  Banal

  True Stories

  Journalism Singles

  Breakdown

  DROWNING IN

  THE GANGES

  For devout Hindus, the Ganges River is the beating heart and soul of India, if not the world. But it is also severely polluted. In the center of the ancient holy northern city of Varanasi, you can find a large culvert that drains directly into the river. The water emerging from the culvert is black with raw sewage. Only a few meters downriver from the culvert, the dead are cremated over big wood fires, and while some of the remains are carefully collected for the surviving family members, many people choose to spread the ashes (and charred bones) into the river as a symbol of returning the body to the same sacred source that once gave it life. Water buffalo cool and relieve themselves in the river, and so do dogs, goats, and cows. Tanneries dump industrial waste into the waterway while people toss piles of stinking garbage into it as thoughtlessly and naturally as they place sacred offerings like burning incense and flower petals upon its never still surface.

  Still, people come from miles around to bathe in this sacred waterway (some with soap and shampoo), and still others dare to dip a pan or a cup into the river and drink the water, pollution and the threat of cholera be damned. If I, as a Westerner, were to consume even a mouthful of the water, I would become violently sick for days.

  Yet there is something very special and alluring about the Ganges (pronounced “Gunga”). So, when my fixer, Pradeep, a tall, athletic Indian of thirty six, announces he’s arranged for a two day, one night boating trip on the river, I know that as enticing and adventurous as it sounds, it won’t be complete without a swim in the sacred body of water. But what about all that nasty pollution? It’s impossible for me to contemplate coming into contact with the infested water, much less soaking my entire body in it. But what I’m banking on is this: if we travel far enough upstream, the water will be cleaner, clearer, and okay for swimming. After all, swimming in a river as sacredly renowned as the Ganges would be one hell of an item to check off the bucket list.

  The boat drivers.

  We set out early morning in a 4X4 that takes us upriver to a rural farming area that’s interspersed with tiny villages of straw and clay huts. After a couple of hours (with me dozing off in the back seat), we arrive at a prearranged spot on the river where two boats are anchored up against the riverbank. Both boats are old and wooden, and can’t be more than twenty feet from bow to aft. They are also narrow which tells me there won’t be a whole lot of moving around while sailing.

  The first boat is outfitted with a plank subfloor covered over with pillows and blankets. There’s also a canvas tarp that can block out the relentless June sun, even if it is littered with holes and tears. The second boat is the kitchen boat. One cursory look tells me it contains everything a cook might need to create three meals a day. A small gas-fired stove, boxes of fresh vegetables, tins filled with colorful spices, bottled water, some cutting boards, pots, pans, and stacks of stainless steel dinner plates.

  Storing our belongings in the bow, my fixer and I, along with two women who are also joining us, remove our shoes and board the first boat. Sitting myself cross-legged on the floor, I prepare myself for what promises to be a spiritual but cramped journey. The two boatmen who work the vessel greet us not with a smile and a hello, but instead by bowing their heads and making praying gestures with their two hands pressed together at the palms and fingers.

  “Namaste,” they both say, which generally translates into “I am honored to occupy the same piece of earth that you presently occupy.”

  One boatman is older, maybe forty years old. He’s short. Five-feet-four at most, with thick black hair and a wiry build that tells me he’s no stranger to hard, physical labor. The second man is much younger, and while the first man doesn’t bear even an ounce of fat, this young man sports a small beer belly. While Wiry Man takes his place in the bow, grabbing hold of oars crafted from bamboo shafts to which a one foot square wood plank is attached, Beer Belly takes his place in the aft, wrapping his arm around the rudder handle. We haven’t pulled out a few feet from the bank when Beer Belly immediately falls to sleep, resting his head against the rudder stick like it’s a pillow.

  Sailing the Ganges is nothing like navigating a river such as the Hudson, for instance, which is utilized primarily as a means of transport for merchant ships and all types of boats, both pleasure and commercial. During the early summer monsoon season, this particular stretch of river Ganges seems to be devoid of any and all motorized craft, making it a quiet, almost eerily silent, brightly sun-baked place for boating. As the four of us sit on the blankets and pillows, we speak not a word while the sound of the oars gently slicing the river provides an almost transcendent ambient soundtrack.

  On the boat’s port side, a fresh water dolphin emerges from the clear depths, its black, sharp dorsal-finned back bursting out of the water in a graceful arc before immediately diving back in. On the starboard side, large white birds fly overhead, one of them nose-diving into the water head-first, re-emerging with a small fish clamped in its bony beak, and then taking to the clear skies once more.

  After a time, the kitchen boat pulls up to us. The boatmen it carries tie bo
th boat hulls together with sections of rope twine. They set out a spread of dahl, naan, potatoes, green beans, and other vegetarian fare soaking in spicy, colorful curries. When we’ve finished with a lunch topped off with cups of masala chai (strong tea mixed with milk and spices), the kitchen boat is detached. Its ragged sail raised, the cloth becomes pregnant with wind, and the vessel begins heading downstream far faster than our slow drift.

  Pradeep offers us a smile and suggests we all take a nice long nap, since the boat will now slowly float on the river in the hot afternoon sun for about four hours, after which we’ll make camp on a sandy island.

  Four hours is a long time. More time than I care to while away on a small boat occupied by two women I hardly know, and a fixer who’s content not to fix anything but instead to lie back as if on his Serta Sleeper.

  I get restless easily.

  I’m the type who has to get up every half hour on long haul flights annoying the hell out of the passengers sitting beside me. I almost never take beach vacations because I get bored sitting in the sun. I don’t own a TV or a couch because I’m not wasting time watching the former, and I’m not about to get fat like an overgrown potato on the latter. I need to be moving. Always moving.

  It’s then, as the women lay themselves out on their backs in imitation of our slumbering fixer, that I speak up.

  “Who wants to go for a swim?”

  One of the women, an attractive blonde Australian in her mid-forties, perks up.

  “The thought never occurred to me,” she says. “It is the Ganges after all, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t swim in the Ganges,” says the second woman. A tall, university age, young English lady from Surrey. “It’s like, not very clean.”

  Turns out Pradeep isn’t exactly asleep. He raises himself up onto his elbow.

  “Actually,” says the Rajasthan native in his perfect but Indian-accented English, “the water is very clean up here. I would not drink it. But it is safe for swimming.”

  I turn back to the Australian.

  “Last year I swam in the Nile,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m bragging, even if I am. “It was a bucket list item.”

  Australian Woman perks up even more. “The bucket list. I have a bucket list and surely swimming the Ganges should be on it. Now we must go swimming.”

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” says English Lady, smiling nervously.

  “I guess we’ll have to go in our knickers,” Australian Woman quickly points out. “Or our clothes, anyway. In this heat, they’ll dry right away.”

  Before I can insert another word, Pradeep, in a remarkable display of spontaneous energy, is removing his pants and his shirt. When he’s down to nothing but his gray shorts, he hangs his long legs off the side of the boat, jumps feet first into the Ganges.

  Human Skull, Ganges riverbank

  The three of us follow.

  Like my fixer, I’ve stripped down to my boxer shorts (black cotton jobs imprinted with white skulls and bones). I expect cold, if not frigid, water considering the source of the long winding river is the Himalayan glaciers. But instead, the water is warm. Shallow too. So shallow it comes up only to my knees.

  “Do like this,” Pradeep offers as he maneuvers himself onto all fours and starts performing a sort of half-swim, half-crab movement in the water, only his head and shoulders visible above the river surface. Taking his advice, I immediately drop down onto all fours, the palms of my hands pressed flat on the smooth sandy bottom, my feet floating just below the shallow water. We move downstream, propelled by both the crabbing movement of our hands, along with the kicking of our bare feet, and the propulsion of the current which is surprisingly strong. Now I understand why the boatmen don’t require all that much human rowing strength or powerful wind gusts for moving the boat downriver.

  I’d been in India for three days now after spending a week in the jungle territory of Nepal, and this is the first time I’ve felt remotely cool in the unrelenting, pre-Monsoon, mid-June heat. Unlike the sewage ravaged river water around Varanasi, this water is clean and clear. I’m able to see through it to the bottom. Dare I say it, it looks almost good enough to drink. But I discount the urge immediately. Who knows what dangerous microbes infect it?

  When we came upon a sudden and severe dip in the sandy bottom, the crabbing turns into all out swimming. I straggle behind while the two women and Pradeep surge ahead. I grew up with a swimming pool in my upstate New York backyard and because of it, I’m a proficient enough swimmer. But when it comes to long distance swimming, I’m pretty much a drowner.

  Lord Shiva be praised, the deep section is short-lived and the shallow bottom quickly returns. Once more we find ourselves crawling along nicely. But soon we come upon an area of river that is noticeably darker than the water-over-light-brown-sand color we’ve become used to. This section of river water has taken on a dark blue tint. This isn’t an indication of pollution. Far from it. This is an indication of something else entirely, but something just as dangerous.

  The fixer turns to us.

  “Are you all strong swimmers?”

  “Sure,” belts out Australian Woman. “I grew up on the Reef.”

  “Of course,” assures English Lady. “I swam competitive in school.”

  I’m just about to confess that a single, suburban, in-ground pool length is just about my limit, when the three of them start across the seemingly endless blue stretch of Ganges water.

  Oh crap…

  Mother Ganges is the giver of life. But she is also the receiver of death. Death here is not like it is in the U.S. where you’re hooked up to a life-support system and pumped up with as many drugs and pain killers as possible until your heart stops beating and brain turns to mush. Over here, death is celebrated because those who have lived a life in the pursuit of nirvana will very quickly find themselves roaming the earth again with a brand new body. In fact, people aren’t even dead yet before close relatives cart them to the edges of the Ganges riverbanks where they can see for themselves what awaits them: a towering pile of burning logs upon which their body will be placed only moments after death has been declared. Imagine still being very much alive when your family carts you out to the cemetery of your choice.

  As I swim across the deep blue pool, I find my arms growing tired. Within a few seconds, the tiredness turns to soreness. I find that I’m not moving as swiftly through the water as I did when I first started. My new friends are way ahead of me, so that all I see is their kicking feet, their arms skillfully slapping the river’s surface like all three are somehow related to Michael Phelps.

  Meanwhile, I’m sinking. I mean, really sinking. Doesn’t matter how hard or swiftly I try and kick my legs and pump my arms. My body is going down.

  I’ve got a choice here. I can either turn back for the other side, or I can continue on in the hope that the river becomes once more shallow very, very soon. If I choose to go back, chances are I won’t have the strength to make it. If I choose to go on and even another one hundred feet of deep water separates me from shallow water, I’m also doomed. As my mouth submerges, I find myself panicking for a breath. I see the faces of my kids, and I see the beautiful face of my significant other, and I see my entire life flash before my eyes. All forty something years of it.

  Varanasi

  Something strange happens then. My mind somehow fills with clarity. Maybe my karma is taking over. Maybe this is the reason I’ve come to India in the first place. The true out-of-this-world spiritual reason. Maybe I so desperately wanted to come here not to see the scenery, or to research a new book project, or to write some travel articles. Maybe I came here to die. But in the dying, I would somehow be reborn. A cosmic Mulligan as it were. As I sink even further into the river, it all begins to make perfect sense to me, and because it makes perfect sense, I’m no longer afraid of drowning in the Ganges.

  I close my eyes and wait for God and nature to perform the final act in the drama that has been my life: my body sinki
ng to the sandy bottom of the most sacred river on the planet. But rather than the onset of death, I make out the words: “It’s okay. Standing is possible now.”

  I manage to pull my head out of the water. I see Pradeep standing straight up, his water-soaked brown-skinned body glistening in the bright afternoon sun. Then, I see the women standing beside him in their water-logged clothing. They’re all giggling like Pradeep is their dashing hero. Meanwhile, I’m not out of danger yet. I still have about twenty feet to go until I make it to the shallow floor. Twenty impossible, grueling feet. But at least now I have reason to believe I can survive this calamity. I pump and I kick. I kick and I pump, and even though I seem to be getting nowhere, I edge ever closer to safety. Lungs burning, muscles screaming, head about to explode, I probe with my feet and feel the wonderful sandy bottom. I attempt to stand up straight, but it takes me a long moment to catch my breath, to douse the fire in my lungs.

  Why the hell do I spend an hour in the gym everyday if I can’t even manage a seven minute swim? The answer to that question is as unanswerable as the ultimate mystical question itself: Why life? All I know is this: as I stare into the smiling faces of my boat mates, I want to die from embarrassment, even after struggling to stay alive.

  “But you are not a strong swimmer?” queries Pradeep. “I have seen you jogging each morning in the hot sun.”

  I spit out some water, nod.

  “I suck...real bad...at swimming.”

  The girls laugh out loud.

  “Silly bloke. Why didn’t you say something?” poses Australian Woman.

  “You should have spoken up,” smiles English Lady. “I would have come to your rescue.”

  I want to kick them for being so kind. Kick them both. But then, that wouldn’t be very chivalrous of me, and besides, it’s really my own behind I want to kick.

  We continue with our crabbing for another few minutes. All the time I’m praying we don’t have to cross another section of river that might as well be as long as the Indian Ocean. When the boat pulls up beside us, I happily climb back up inside and collapse onto my back. The women and Pradeep climb in beside me. Everyone seems as happy as clams. I suppose I’m happy too, now that my embarrassment has worn off.