The Shedding Of The Skin:
A small boat made its way across the lake. It was a craft with a covered section, two cushions for comfortable seating, steered by a local man, who paddled from the more pointed end.
Doctor Peter Russell sat, breathing in the warm air, watching the view slowly passing by, the soft breathing of his companion, Kate Winchester-Stephens, a woman from an aristocratic family, at the edge of his awareness. There was a comfort in the feel of her soft skin against his as they sat close, but they were not lovers. They had been friends for years now, encounters that began at childhood. What linked them closer now was that they were both strangers in a strange land, and each other was the only remnant of home they had to cling to.
Other boats moved on the lake, fishermen’s boats, one end tilted so far, that as the Kashmiri men rowed, their shoeless feet were almost in the water. Others, having already reached their destination, set traps to attract fish, loading packages with rice then anchoring them with stones; then they would lay in wait with a net, until the fish came.
It was a world away from wet, rainy England, from the misery of the recent stock market crash, which Kate’s father had mercifully avoided, and from the other hallmarks of home, the west end shows, the touring magicians, of whom Houdini had not been the least, before his recent, tragic and premature demise.
But all was not completely strange, for although independent India was different from the days of colonial rule, there remained many signs from the former empire: government organisation, bureaucracy, improved sanitation (although only slightly), china tea cups ...
They were not the first to come to the country, but here in remote Kashmir, among the first to this region. The journey by sea to India had been hard, and the land journey by way of dusty, ill-formed roads, first to Delhi, then here, had been trying in its own way. Now, finally they had some time to relax.
This place had air so fresh, Peter felt as though he had never tasted its like. He recalled with grim distaste polluted Delhi, just days before this place, this idle lake. Delhi was just as polluted as London had once been, back in the days of the industrial revolution. The city streets were dusty, the air choked with grit and petrol fumes. The car was among Britain’s best and worst legacies to the inhabitants of India. Locals on bicycles, mingled with cars, rickshaws and horse-drawn carts, in a chaotic jumble, that seemed to Peter to have no rules or safety code; no-one indicated, instead ‘beeping’ their horns to tell slower drivers to move aside, and the roundabouts were an insanity he would not have dared attempt himself.
The nights they stayed in that city were a mixed memory too; pleasure at warm nights mingled with the unpleasance of that lingering choked air. One night they had realised why the air was no cleaner in their room: windows left open to ventilate inside, merely drew in the smog from the streets below. They were better off with the window shut and the fan on, if only to stir around the mixture of gases already present.
Now, on this lake, things were much different. The only fog he could see was that draped over the mountain tops. Parallel to the direction they sailed rose the mighty Himalayas, and somewhere beyond them, the East - Tibet and China.
Their oarsman was also their guide, slowing the motion of the boat while he pointed out things he thought relevant, insisting they write down the Kashmiri names, so they might not be forgotten.
A mat of algae was present in large quantity amid the out of season Lotus flowers, dead stalks twisting at random angles to the sky, only absent where they travelled at the lake’s centre. The lake’s bottom (or perhaps a canopy of weed) lay two or three feet below the waters’ surface. He noted the presence and absence of algae here and there, hypothesising it might be an indicator of where the pollution from the inefficient sanitation might have reached.
His companion leaned sideways out of the boat, holding her hat upon her head with one hand, gazing with wonder at a black and white kingfisher, perched on a projecting reed. He turned his attention to her, interested in her reaction to their surroundings, and how it compared to his. She was a tall, stout woman, unusual build for her sex; it was rare that he encountered a woman he had to look up to. The expression of her face and the wrinkling of her brown eyes at wonder betrayed her as an educated woman, used to seeking for answers in science, as he was, although to any casual observer, the tiny metal cross around her neck might have seemed in conflict with this image. Her blonde hair was tied neatly back behind her head.
“Floating gardens.” Their guide was gesturing to the shore now, where a line of mud stretched out into the lake, enclosing a body of water on three sides, the fourth bounded by the shore. Their guide, named Farouk, was a tall Kashmiri, wearing a western suit top and trousers, and contrary to their custom, shoes.
An aside on biological theory: when Charles Darwin first postulated the theory of evolution in his work ‘The origin of the species’, he achieved a great leap forward in the way biologists understand our world. Across generations, mutations would occur. Then through the pressures of each organism’s environment, those variations on a theme which stood most chance of survival would prosper - evolution by natural selection.
Certain areas of Britain once held two species of butterflies. One was white, the other, a lesser strain possessed a grey patterning. These two stayed in equilibrium, the white butterflies of the breed dominant, the grey subordinate. Then one day, factories began to open in these areas, and pollution began to colour the white bark of local trees grey. At once the species which possessed the best camouflage switched and through this process of natural selection, the grey mottled butterflies became dominant, demonstration of selection in effect.
But what Darwin hadn’t predicted was the way in which evolution would be misconceived by the media and the masses. Popular evolution has it that mankind will evolve ‘forward’, to become a super-intelligent brain with psychic powers, just as we evolved ‘forward’ from ape to man. But evolution is not a linear process, it does not possess the inherent understanding of quality. Sometimes it goes in what we would describe as ‘forwards’, sometimes a species evolves a feature that causes it to go ‘backward’, sometimes a meaningless feature is evolved, that might be conceived as going ‘sideways’. In this sense, any change can be described as an evolution, either in a species or in an individual. That being so, a biologist knows that when things begin to change it is not always for the best.
Peter listened to the oars’ regular splashing behind them as the boat conducted its leisurely movement through the water. Ahead the channel narrowed and passed under a leaky aqueduct, beyond which, they emerged into a new lake, this one dotted with patches of reed.
A few more fishermen sat here, lazily waiting for their catch, one or two passing the time by smoking tobacco and charcoal through their long tubed ‘Hubbly Bubbly’ pipes.
Not far ahead a family of geese passed briefly into view then disappeared once more into the reed jungle. Two naked saplings clung to what was either an island in the middle of the lake, or else a moored log. Russell wasn’t sure if they were alive or dead.
“You see here,” gestured Farouk, gaining their attention. “Soon we turn here, go this way.”
Sure enough, after they had gone another twenty or thirty feet, they came upon a channel to their left, leading to another lake, this time festooned with small islands.
“This old city,” he explained. “All over one hundred years old.”
As they cleared the small trees that had lined the banks of this new channel and obscured their view, a town of brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs began to emerge.
The quality of craftsmanship in no way approached that which they were used to at home, seemingly more improvised based on an imitation of superior western structures.
As they passed under an old wooden bridge, beside a ramshackle wooden keyway, which rippled up and down along its length, like the keys of a wind-up piano caught mid-motion, Peter noticed his companion had embarked on a series of quick-fire sketches, wh
ich she would later complete from memory.
They passed further in and Kate raised a handkerchief to her nose; a smell of manure blossomed and began to grow stronger. Peter suspected this channel was little more than an open sewer. His suspicions were confirmed by conspicuous growth of the water weed he had thought associated with that particular human pollution.
They passed a number of houses, of varying degrees of squalor, crude steps littered with rubbish leading down to the waterway. Their own residence for this part of the trip was passable by western standards, if not luxurious, but this degradation was such that Peter found himself appalled, and he longed to get clear of this city.
Their boat was not alone on the water; other travellers made their way along the waterways in smaller boats, as the fishermen used. They passed also sunken boats, doomed wrecks, only lingering half submerged in the water through some miracle, garnished with water weed.
Though he expected rats, he saw none, but this city was not without its animal inhabitants: eagles, apparently used to the presence of humans, squatted nearby the river, lingering with impunity, careless of the progress of the water taxi’s passage. More frequent still, a species of grey throated crows was