Sati’s Father

Back to Nashville to Memphis by Greyhound. This time, we're prepared. We expect the worse. We should stock up on sandwiches! We need supplies! We head into the Peabody Hotel. There's a deli in there, that's where we'll get them, our supplies. We talk wine with the shop assistant. He wants to come to England for the wine, he says as he puts our sandwiches together.

There are long, snaking queues at the bus station, one after another. What's going on? Our bus is delayed. It's always late, says the woman standing in front of us. She's heading to a funeral, several states away. Won't make it now. And then she asks us why we're on the Greyhound. No one she knows would want to travel by Greyhound. It's for the poor, she says.

We're the only white people in the bus station. Why is that?, we wonder. Where are the students? Have they all got cars? Where are the white poor? A security guard watches on resignedly, a holstered gun pulled up round his shoulder.

On the big TV screen, there's a documentary on airplane crashes. There's footage of one crash after another. Screeching brakes. Metal crunching. Screams. And still no one tells us anything. There's no information.

Sal gets out a bag of Gummi bears, and offers them to people in the queue. She makes friends, as she always does. She goes out to smoke with them, and I sit down with W., who's becoming increasingly hysterical. Why is no one telling us anything?, he cries. Are we cattle?

It's time for Hindu stories, which always soothe W. Sometimes I sing to him when he gets hysterical. – 'Hey, little W. …' and he joins in, adding his voice to mine. But Hindu stories are another option, especially in a public space.

Tell me the one about the elephant god, W. says. What was his name? Ganesha, I tell him. And that guy who ended up with the head of a goat, who was he? Sati's father, I tell him.