Broadly speaking, there are two types of people in the world.

On May 1, 2003, Aaron Ralstein showed himself as belonging to the first type. He embarked on a canyoneering adventure in the Blue Johnson Mountains of Utah. For the novices out there, canyoneering is very similar to mountaineering- the only difference being you use rock-climbing devices to scale canyons horizontally rather than vertically. Even though it is every bit as difficult as mountaineering, I believe canyoneering appeals to people that are essentially of a humble disposition. For at the end of the quest there are no photographs to be taken in sunglasses next to waving flags with a grand demeanor that speaks of the greatness inherent in a conquest. When you are done canyoneering, you pack all your equipment and go home to sip a beer (or beverage of choice), while petting your dog on the neck.

Aaron Ralstein was canyoneering in the majestic, red-faced mountains of Utah, when a giant boulder chose that moment to place itself upon his hand. Mr. Ralstein tried every means at his disposal to get himself free. He tried to move the boulder, first with his free hand and then with an intricate system of pulleys. He tried to chip away at the boulder with a pocketknife. This was all to no avail. In the freezing cold, Aaron Ralstein tried persistently for five days to separate his physical self from the -till this point lonely- boulder. When Mr. Ralstein wasn’t involved in the noble pursuit of freedom, he ate two burritos and meditated on his life. After a hundred and twenty odd long hours, he knew that the moment of reckoning was at hand.

After all, he liked breathing.

If he were to be able to continue this pursuit, he had to separate himself from the boulder faster than the vainest pair of Siamese twins. He took his pocketknife, sawed away at his bone and when his hand was completely severed, climbed down the canyon and presented himself to a pair of shell-shocked Swedish tourists. Later, at the much publicized press conference, Aaron said that the lesson he learnt from his five day sojourn was to give his friends his planned itinerary before embarking on such quests the next time around. The next time around? There was not one mention made of giving up canyoneering. It is enough to boggle the mind.
I belong to the group of the second type of person that completes the rest of the world.

If I were to lose my hand while scaling across a canyon, I would spend the rest of my life looking at mountains through the most powerful of Hubble telescopes. Else, I would not look at them at all. Give mountains a miss would be my general disposition in life.
However, there were fifteen minutes in my life when I thought myself as belonging to the first type of person. A man of adventure. A man whose nostrils put up a red flag, when not outdoors. A man like Aaron Ralstein.
I was visiting the city of Portland in Oregon. Rivers run sinuously through its heart. You cannot throw a stone without hitting a mountain. The air is so clear that if it were a bit more photogenic, its agent would have it featuring in all bottled water advertisements.

With this sinister scenario providing the backdrop, a group of people planned to spend most of Sunday tubing down the Sandy River. Ignoring the black cats crossing my path, mirrors that were shattering wildly in the closed confines of my rooms and droves of circling crows I agreed to join.

River tubing is not a sport for the idle-minded. It requires planning. You have to first procure a tube, without actually snatching it from the wheels of a speeding truck. At this point in my narrative, I shall share a survival trick for those staying in America. If you are looking for spiritual healing, a photo of a Yeti or the cure for AIDS you shop around intensely. If you are looking for anything else, you visit Wal-Mart.
Within a short span of time I had obtained for myself a tube, filled with air and aching to be caressed by the currents of the Sandy River. The tube looked like a large donut. If you are a person with polished social graces such as myself, you exercise a great degree of self-control and attempt not to take a bite of it. The next step in this whole tubing process is to find a spot with easy access to the river. You walk along a road looking keenly for a convenient ramp or escalator. Don’t fool yourself. There exists none. There remains no choice but to risk life and limb and you slide down a treacherous path with your tube till you reach a very cold expanse of water. As you seat yourself inside the tube, feelings colder than the touch of the Grim Reaper submerge the very depths of your soul. At this point in time, a rapid sequence of misgivings arose within my heart. I ignored them and paddled along bravely like an overgrown duck with a slow learning curve.

To my surprise, I found myself actually floating down the river. I felt free. I looked around and waved to every ripple that bore me along its crest and egged me on. I saw tall mountains dotted along the horizon. I breathed atoms of fresh air deeply. They danced madly within my lungs.

What had I done with my life, I wondered to myself. There were so many rivers in the world. All one needed was a tube to be one with them. And while I was at it, why did I have to confine myself to rivers? There were so many mountains that I could have climbed. In the United States alone, there were at the very least three mountains in every state. By these estimates, I should have scaled a minimum of four mountains. Bridge under the water, I consoled myself. With a steely glint in my eyes, I resolved that the next Friday when the clock struck five, I would get into my car, and leaving behind a city chockfull of alcoholics and losers, I would break all speed limits and race down to the nearest mountain. I came out of my reverie and looked at the rest of the group. I was at the very head of the large array of tubes and looking back I could see my friend struggling to get started. I chuckled with pity and suggested to my friend that he get out of the river, and with tube in hand race along the bank till he could join us. Not for one second did I feel impatience. I recognized that this outdoor life is not for everybody and the best of us have to be magnanimous.

While I was speeding along the rapid currents, a genial soul floated down to my side. She was an expert by all accounts and was tubing effortlessly with a cooler full of beer by her. She offered me a can. A lifetime of diligent practice compelled me to accept her offer. I took a couple of deep gulps. Time passed on to the beat of the murmurings of the river.

When I came out of my reverie, I noticed that I had come to a complete standstill. My friends no longer looked like people. The resembled what they really were – distant specks on the horizon. Even my once pathetically slow friend was way ahead. His raucous and mocking laughter had to travel a long distance before it reached my now hurting ears. Why was the same river that carried my friends along so merrily chosen to treat me in this cavalier manner? It had nothing to do with the much-documented ill effects of drinking while driving. The other people were guzzling Budweisers so rapidly, that it became evident to the meanest intelligence that they were planning to attend a Liverpool football game later that evening. The injustice of it all stung me deeply. I gestured wildly to the heavens, raising my arms in silent protest.

This in hindsight was a mistake. My tube toppled over faster than an African government. My rubber slippers floated away. They seemed oblivious to the fact that good manners demanded they float with the current, not against it. As I saw the last of them, I realized that I was now tubeless, wet, cold and barefooted. This barefooted state of being would prove to be one of the key factors that would go a long way towards accentuating my misery. You must have heard of the man who spoke of the river and its hidden depths. What he was really referring to was the fact that rivers are not always deep. Sometimes, they are so shallow that pointy stones are never more than a hair’s breadth away from scraping the skin of your behind or your feet, depending on whether you were or were not in a tubeless state of being. I had given up on the slippers in the fatalistic manner of an Indian farmer and now gazed at the tube, which was now being salvaged by two entrepreneurial members of my group. By the time I had uttered my fifteen hundredth, embarrassed thank you, I had managed to seat myself on the tube again. The fickle river accommodated me in its general scheme of things and I floated on.

In this manner, life passed by before my eyes. The river had humbled me and I no longer felt like a fish. The resulting state of dissociation with the bodily mass of water made me notice a rope hanging of the branch of a tree on the bank of the river. There were people who stood on a rock, held on to this rope, took off like a pendulum, and in the upward arc of the swing, let go and jumped into the river. It was just like Archie and his gang of friends. I had consumed a vast number of Archie comics in my childhood, and at one time in my life, if there were any differences between Delhi and Riverdale, I didn’t know of them.

All I saw before me was a rope. And a river. This was the moment that I had been waiting for all my life. America, the land of opportunity, had delivered once again. Not for a second did I think that I was quite unlike Archie and his friends. Looking back, it should not have been very difficult to tell the differences in the two worlds. For one thing, how many blond girls named Betty had ever chased me down Indian streets?

But I wasn’t thinking. Like a mad dog which has just spotted a person to bite, I was focused on the rope. This was the moment where I forgot the river’s misdemeanors and become the man of adventure again.

I confidently stepped over a girl suffering from rope burn and made the perilous ascent up the slippery rock. Experts will speak of the power of positive visualization. If you are speaking before a large audience, imagine you are Churchill. If you are an Indian football player, imagine you are Brazilian. I too thought of myself as Archie, a bird, a dolphin and a long jump athlete. The experts could not blame me for not trying hard enough.

I held the rope and soared off the rock. Well maybe soared is the wrong word. The reason I didn’t soar apparently had something to do with the fact that I didn’t move the hand that was under the other hand over that hand in order to give extra leverage. Or something like that. The point I am trying to make is that the word “soared” has nothing to do with my descent from the rock. It is totally out of place. I “left” the surface of the rock is a better way to describe it. I dangled in mid air from the rope. There was no upward arc to my swing. There were two options: to jump or not to jump. If I chose the latter, I would continue hanging, or if God felt kindly and gave me a gentle push, I would return back to the rock. A pretty silly ass I would appear.

I jumped.

But due to the lack of momentum, I didn’t go very far from the river bank. A journalist wanting to chronicle my flight would not have to look further than an anchor for an apt simile or metaphor. I hit the water, where the population of stones was the most and dashed my hand against a rock with a still, stony heart. If there was ever a perfect recipe for a multiple fracture, this was it. My bones were pulverized; today my doctors in their poetic moments speak of hammers and my finger that juts out now makes me an ideal candidate to drive in New York.

To get on to the tale of the remainder of the journey, it was nothing more that one long series of looks, sighs and words of pity. Well, that’s not entirely true. A girl from the South tied her tube to mine. As we floated down the river we spoke of racism and how tough the blacks had it down in the South. I asked her whether I would be running across fields away from burning crosses and I think she said “Probably”. Honesty held its place on the podium while political correctness swam away to some forgotten realm where my slippers now are.

We spoke of the stars and all that lay beneath them. I might have even said “Einstein” once or twice. It was all very interesting and I forgot about my finger. Suddenly we came to a portion of the river where the current became very strong and fast. I was looking at her clapping her hands with glee with feelings of admiration and gratitude.

My tube toppled over.

I am an extremely good swimmer. But I spent the next two minutes thinking dark thoughts about this unforgiving river that had accounted for my slippers, pride, fingers and now ethnic pride. Consider the facts. I was the second Indian man this noble girl was meeting. She wasn’t shallow by any means, but she was human. And in this age of surplus information, you cannot deny that stereotyping does not have its merits.

I pictured her showing showpieces on her shelf to visiting guests. Here is a Russian doll, she would say. You can place one person, inside another person and then so on and so forth. Here is my African doll. You press this button and it plays really good music. And here is a model of an Indian man. Be careful. It is very fragile. It comes with this free can of superglue.

I, once the man of action, decision and quite possibly danger, who listened to hip-hop songs with a knowing look, was now this shriveled mass of jelly. The injustice of it all stung me to the quick. Give me a straw, I thought, and I will drink up this foul river.

As I was thinking these thoughts, I forgot to swim. So deep was my resentment that it had blocked out my survival instincts. I drowned. This angel of a woman who had retrieved my tube on more than one occasion and also towed me along the entire length of the river had to now save my life.

I was very embarrassed and wanted to drown myself in the river. But by this point I had remembered to swim again and was unsuccessful in yet another venture. As we neared the bridge, where our car was parked I realized that I wasn’t a man of adventure. The outdoors weren’t for me. Walking down dark streets, riding F trains and watching bar fights, I could easily handle. Tubing down rivers and scratching rocks with pickaxes was another story. Aaron Ralstein will always have my respect. But then so does Michael Jackson and I wouldn’t want to ever be like either of them.

However, you cannot just remove rivers from your life. All you have to do is realize that rivers and dancing are similar in the sense that timing is everything. One cannot go down to a river on a whim. It is a scared mission and calls for a life fulfilling agenda.
When I am older, I will come to the banks of the Mekong and meet an old boatman. He will show me the river and its ever changing states. I shall see the transient currents. I will forget all that I ever wanted to understand. That will still happen someday. I firmly believe that this life giving river leading into the open sea holds the answer to my salvation.

Yes, I will come to see the river man someday. I will remember my fifteen minutes where I was an outdoor person. A man of adventure. Being older and wiser, I will laugh nostalgically.

However, you can be sure I shall not come to see this Vietnamese boatman in a tube.

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© COPYRIGHT 2002-2012 Arun Krishnan