I originally intended to stay in India only 5 weeks as part
of my Wandergliding trip around the world.
Here I am, over 3½ years later so you may be wondering why I’m still
here. Perhaps you have thought that I
just fell in love with India but in fact it seems she had her own plans for me. I haven’t been divulging my whole story on my
blog as I was hesitant whether I wanted this information to be published into
the public domain. Now that the whole
affair I’m about to recount is over, I feel that it is worth telling the world
in hopes that perhaps other travellers to India will learn from my mistakes and
not fall into the same traps that I have.
I also want to shed light on some of the injustices, inefficiencies and incompetencies
of the Indian judicial system. Thirdly,
I think that sharing my story will be cathartic for me and allow me to close
one of the crazier chapters of my life.
It all started back in December 2010. I had only been in India for 3 weeks by this
point when the following occurred:
-----------------------
December 7th, 2010
It was past 2 am as the iron barred door clanged shut and
the officer locked the archaic looking horseshoe shaped padlock, sending a
chill up my spine. I gazed up at the ominous
silhouette of the bars on the back wall of the cell illuminated by the solitary
naked bulb hanging outside from the ceiling of the covered walkway. What have you gotten yourself into Dave? The gravity of the situation was still
setting in. Here I was, halfway around
the world in a foreign country, spending my first night ever in jail.
I surveyed my new surroundings. It was a fairly large room, about six meters
square with a cold dusty concrete floor and no furniture. There were two doors on the back wall, one of
which I knew contained a filthy Indian style squat toilet as I had visited it
earlier in the evening before I knew that this would be my room for the
night. I squinted at the pale coloured
walls. What are those black markings? Please don’t be smeared feces...
While I was being led to the cell I saw an old thin tattered
gray mattress draped across a small wall that separated the covered L shaped
walkway from a small patch of dead grass strewn with partially burnt garbage. “Do you want?” the officer asked in broken
English. I instinctively grabbed it and
as I dragged it into the cell chunks of the blue stuffing fell out of many of
the gaping holes.
As I lay on my back attempting to smooth out the lumps and
bumps of the disgusting fetid mattress, I contemplated the events of the last
seven hours. How did I go from sitting
at a restaurant on a Goan beach enjoying a beautiful sunset to this?
Okay, don’t worry too much Dave. You can get through this. The sub-inspector said that it wasn’t a big
deal as it happens to foreigners all the time and that I should be out tomorrow
or worst case scenario the following day.
I pulled part of the flimsy mattress over me as the temperature was
starting to drop and I was only wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Not just any shirt either, it happened to be
my recently deceased father’s and I had worn it to his “Celebration of Life”
ceremony just six months earlier. “I’m
sure glad he can’t see me now” I thought.
I tried to close my eyes and sleep but my mind was racing. It’s going to be a long night...
