"Mother India is bottomless"

I mutter to myself now, staring at the aftermath of the apocalypse now in the fractured mirror of the YMCA bathroom, wiping vomit from my lips with my green arm. Suddenly the knife in my stomach twists another notch, shooting pain down into my intestines. One hand clutching my stomach, the other steadying myself on the bathroom wall, I shuffle along to the toilet. It's a western sit down model, not the usual Asian squat over a porcelain-hole variety, which normally I would prefer. But right now I am grateful for the seat as my legs start to buckle from under me. I feel weak. I exhale slowly, cautiously releasing my sphincter muscles. What feels like my liquefied internal organs and all my bodily fluids, fall out my ass. I feel my stomach turning again. I look over to bucket next to the toilet, grabbing it just in the nick of time for the next round of vomit. Sitting here, periodically expelling vile fluids from both ends of my digestive tract I have time to contemplate, as one often does on the porcelain throne. I consider the ramifications of the previous day's events that have lead to my current condition. I suspect it has as much to do with the drugs and beer as with consumption of dodgy pizza and chips in a little establishment called, 'Super Bar' at the opposite end of Sudder Street. I have developed a saying in India, when someone asks me if my food is good or not, I always reply;

"Good meal, ha, ask me tomorrow!"

This had obviously not been a good meal despite it tasting nice. Last night hunger had started to creep into our bellies when the acid had receded enough for us to remember we were in fact human. Not just closely associated atoms, but machines that required fuel and since we hadn't eaten all day our stomachs were rumbling. So we finished our alley chai and joints then headed to the Super Bar, complete with its flashing neon sign, like some provincial amusement park ride. Instead of 'Ghost Train', we entered 'West World'. It even had a maroon clad doorman, waiters, cold beer, western food, and TVs blearing out a game of cricket; Australia verses South Africa. We considered it a haven at the time. A home away from home. A temporary escape from the insanity of India. We entered the dimly lit restaurant come bar and were escorted by a waiter to a Formica covered table. He dished out complementary bowls of peanuts and other spicy masala-flavored nibbles; everything is masala-flavored in India.

The waiter passed us plastic coated menus. Dave instinctively ordered a round of Kingfishers, the popular Indian beer. The place was full of both western travelers and rich Bengali Indians who were dripping with cheap gold bling bling and were all over weight, double chins and paunches overhanging belts. They feasted on the dubious cheesy pizzas and greasy chips. To be overweight or at least of generous proportions was considered a sign of high social status and is not shunned as in the anorexic, waif thin, oppressed west. No, a belly was a sign of wealth, health and prosperity. Bollywood movie starlets always are on the chunky side by our diet addicted perspective. A round belly and some thunder on the thighs were considered positively sexy in India. So by Indian standards, the bar was full of very attractive sweaty men, all drinking heavily, still in Holi party mode. However it was the cricket that had their attention.

It was the closing overs of a legendary one day game. Australia, whom had already scored the highest ever amount of runs in a one day match, were vainly trying to quash the South Africans, whom in the closing overs were bridging the gap on Australia's earlier considered impossible lead. I could see the South Africans had fire in there eyes, as did the excited Indians watching the game. We were soon enveloped into the group and when it was discovered I was Australian, I was automatically considered to be the ambassador of Australian cricket. As if I was personally responsible for the outcome of the game. Each time the South Africans smacked the ball around the field, closing the gap even more, our party of Indians would turn to me with bated breath to gauge my reaction. This, and the fuzzy edges of the acid, drove me to drink beer at a faster pace. A large, drunk, Indian hugged me with his ample arm, his sweaty damp, armpit pressed against my shoulder, he jeered;

"Yes, yes, Australia is most definitely in trouble. Do you think you can possibly vin? You are the vorld champions, vhat must your captain be feeling?"

"Yes, yes Ricky Ponting, Australia's captain"

Another excited Indian proclaimed, no doubt intending to show off his knowledge of cricket. He was excitedly jumping up and down, spilling half the contents of his pitcher of beer on the floor in the process. Hitting a boundary on the second last ball, South Africa stole victory from Australia, the highest scoring game in one day international cricket history.

As plates of pizza and chips and more beer arrived at our table, I noticed Ian was still quiet and not enjoying the frivolities of the festivities. Looking acutely disturbed he looked at me with a furrowed brow.

"Can I speak to you, in private, outside?"

I escorted Ian outside with a piece of steaming hot pizza in one hand and a half full pitcher of beer in the in the other.

"Step into my office"

As I gestured to the street outside, the smiling doorman held the door open. It was my vain attempt to lighten Ian's obviously somber mood. Standing there in the street as a rickshaw rattled past behind him, Ian was limp shouldered, stooping, green and looking like a sad clown. He stared at the ground and shuffled his feet, he stammered,

"Look this may sound a little strange, but I keep having déjà vu's and their frequency is accelerating."

This was left of field. I wasn't expecting this. I attempted to put on my sincerely listening face of council, whilst munching on my sagging slice of pizza and slurping on my lukewarm Kingfisher. He continued, looking more perplexed;

"The taxi ride, the yellow goat, the naked crazy man, the cricket game on TV and even that rickshaw that just passed; I knew it would all happen. At first it only happened every now and again, so I thought nothing of it. But it's happening every few minutes and now every few seconds. What is next? What will happen when the points of time unite, when the moment before joins with the moment later?"

Ok, this was potentially a dicey situation. We may have been having a possible acid freak-out casualty. Was Ian about to become part of the flotsam and jetsam in the gutters of India, left by the receding tide of his own mind? He certainly wouldn't be the first or the last victim of such a process in India. He also fit the profile. An escapee from a high stress job from the west. A string of failed relationships and in need of spiritual growth. Something to fill the void inside him. Like myself and many other earnest travellers to the subcontinent, drawn here like moths to a light or fly's to shit. We were all seekers in search of something; more than the sum total our empty little lives of little meaning and of little significance. We were in search of something, anything. It was a battle to conquer hypocrisy, the mirages and the temptations of the west. We were soldiers in search of the truth, armed only with our Lonely Planet guide books and backpacks of rags. The jet-set poor, nothing to our names but a wealth of travel and an airline ticket, Gypsies, nomads with visa cards and travel insurance, mercenaries, soldiers of misfortune.

Every battle had its casualties and Ian was edging dangerously close to the precipice of the abyss of no return. He was already more than halfway there, painted green, sweating profusely, with his T-Shirt still tied around his head, his Buddha belly hanging over his tattered Thai fisherman pants and on the wrong end of an acid trip. On this back street of Calcutta, he was about to slip the black hole of this country. He was about to be consumed. I had to act fast. In an attempt to look both casual and sagely thoughtful, I washed the last of my pizza down with my flat beer, I passed the glass to the doorman, put my arm around Ian's shoulders and gently started to walk him down Sudder Street back towards the Salvation Army YMCA, I said;

"Munty, my good man, do you know what a déjà vu actually is; in scientific terms?"

He looks at me. His bottom lip was quivering;

"No not really."

"Ok"

I say, trying to sound like a respected authority of psycho-analysis,

"It is to do with the two hemispheres of the brain. The right and left. The creative and the analytical. Memory is stored in the left, analytical half, whilst new experience is dealt with by the creative right side."

I look at Ian, he is hanging on my every word, I continue, trying not to slur my words.

"Now within normal experience, information from our senses first goes to the right side of the brain, sounds, sights, smells, taste and touch. The right side of the brain then sends this data to the left side where it is stored as memory."

I stop walking and turn to face Ian for extra impact.

"Are you following me so far Munty?"

Looking at me like a scared child, he replies,

"I think so."

I continued,

"Alright then, now what happens when a déjà vu occurs is that this incoming information goes to the left, memory side of the brain, a millisecond before the right side sends the information across. So, when the left side receives the data from the right side, it goes 'hey we all ready have a recorded memory of this.' So therefore our mind is tricked into believing it happened before, so that's all it is, just a trick of the mind."

Ian paused as he tried to gain his composure, his voice was wavering,

"Thing is see, I am positive that when the two points of time finally meet, the near past with the near future, I will die. This is my death. I am witnessing my own end."

I sigh, he obviously hadn't heard a single word I said, he continued,

"It's like what you keep talking about being about being in the now, that there is only the now and all that, well this is my now and I fear I am only moments away from my death. This is the last day of my life!"

This was the aftermath of me reading too many self help, philosophy and metaphysical books that are big on being present in the moment. I had been fervently digesting this material to ebb the feelings of self destruction, fears of being alone, fear of growing old and never having a chance to propagate a family of my own. This was one of the thorns that helped kill my marriage. I wanted kids, Stella didn't. She thought it would impede on her musical career, she was obsessed about becoming the next Madonna. So in order to subdue my suicidal feelings and lift my self from my pit of depression, I had been pontificating a lot about 'the now' over our all night poker games. Now obviously this had become all too much for Ian to take. So, I decided to try a different approach, smiling at him,

"Ian, you are just tripping mate OK? Your mind has temporarily been re-wired. The chemical synapses in your brain have been re-aligned. As your doctor and as your friend, I recommend you go home, smoke a joint, take two Valiums and go to bed. I personally guarantee you won't die today and that you will feel fine in the morning."

For the first time since the episode with the naked dancing man, Ian smiled back at me, inhaling, straighten up and as he plucked up courage, he said confidently,

"Right, yes. OK, will do, thanks for that little prep talk. Look sorry. Um can we keep this under wraps, wouldn't want the lads getting the wrong impression and all. I haven't taken acid for ten years. I just needed to touch base so to speak."

"No worries Munty."

Relieved with outstretched arms I gave Ian a big brotherly hug. I felt him freeze up rigid, obviously uncomfortable with my physical contact. Maybe because of the episode with the naked dancing man or maybe just because of his stiff upper lip, anal, British-ness. Stepping backwards away from me, he mumbled,

"Really, I am fine now, honestly. Think I will go and sleep it off. Right then, I'm off, see you in the morning then."

With that he was gone.

Still sitting on the toilet in the YMCA bathroom staring into the plastic bucket I see pieces of what looks like carrot, but I haven't eaten carrot for months. Spitting out the last of the bile; feeling a temporary relief again. I feel weak but stable. I reflect on why I get myself into these situations. Behaving like this, some would say, it's my karma affecting me now. Others would probably just say it serves me right, the price for my over indulgence. This is actually the first time I have been ill in India after travelling around for a couple of months. I was starting to feel like I have an iron stomach whilst my fellow travellers fell by the wayside. Ian especially had been complaining of stomach upsets for the whole time that I knew him over the past month or so.

It's amazing, only somewhere like India are you able to meet a fellow traveller, whom you have never known previously and within minutes be talking, in detail, of your bowel movements: its consistency, colour and looseness. In fact in a country where it is considered lascivious for a woman to show an ankle or a belly button, for couples to hold hands, let alone any other forms of public affection. It is, however, completely OK to defecate and urinate in public. Where some Indian men never actually see their own wives completely naked, where Indian couples going steady for five years haven't even kissed, where foreigners have been extradited or even jailed for showing affection in public, and it was India that invented Tantric sex. But, people don't bat an eyelid at someone dropping their draws and defecating on the footpath, on the beach, or anywhere the urge takes them. That is completely fine. India is definitely a country of paradox and obsessed with expelling all wastes from the body at every available minute.

Indians see the body as a temple for the soul and there is no place for feces, urine and even phlegm in this shrine. It's all part of the nirvanic purification every Indian is encouraged to aspire to. As a consequence it's common to see brown skinned, bright eyed children beaming with big proud smiles at you whilst they make Mr. Whippy soft serve like poos directly in the street. Quite a sight; especially before breakfast. Seeing mothers hold naked babies in outstretched arms as it urinates all over the ground becomes commonplace. Let alone on the beaches in Southern India in the morning, or the rice paddies along railway lines in the evenings, where the whole village bear asses and strain to towards purification. It is a social act that many Indians seem to revel in. I, on the other hand, call me a bit of a prude, but I like to strain towards my nirvana in private and without an audience.

Cradling my head with hands, which aches from dehydration, the question why trip yesterday enters my head again and in Calcutta of all places. Psychedelics are usually something that I would only indulge in, in a natural setting, like a forest or a beach. Tripping in the slums of Calcutta was the complete antithesis of this. However, I did not seek the drug. It found me, delivered by the gods of random fortuity the day before Holi by a strange Lithuanian chemist at a chai stall. We had struck up a conversation, deliberately avoiding the usual, 'where do you come from' 'where are you going' 'how long have you been travelling etc. Conversations I have had ad nauseam. No we started our conversation on the subject of the modern shaman and the use of drugs and other methods as rights of passage. Sipping on our chai tea from disposable clay cups, the Lithuanian finished his chai, smashed the cup on the ground on a pile of other broken receptacles. He lit a cigarette, looked at me and said,

"I need to get out of this fucking city, the pollution, the crowds; it's to fucking too much man. I need somewhere fucking ‘shanti shanti' (Hindi expression meaning peaceful, relaxed; chilled). I'm thinking of going to the Andaman Islands."

My eyes light up, having only arrived from the Andaman Islands the day before with Ian, Dave, Redman and a few other newly made travel friends. Beaming I replied,

"My man, get your little black book out and start taking notes, I am about to give you a wealth of information that will make your trip easy."

The Andaman Islands, once a British Raj penal colony, is some thousand kilometres from the coast of India and only a couple of hundred kilometres from Thailand. Today many of the Islands were uninhabited, with six different indigenous tribes, some of whom had never seen white people. Its remote, it's clean and very much underdeveloped. Paradise and in many ways was the beginning of my salvation. Diving every day, poker every night, I had at last been able to make friends and socialize and enjoy my trip, and many of the people I had befriended were in Calcutta too. We had a real little cliquey scene going.

I proceeded to tell him about the best guesthouses and the best beaches as he fervently took notes. Once I had finished, the Lithuanian rummaged through a leather pouch and produced a small package wrapped in silver foil and handed it to me,

"Energy for energy man, this is a special fucking recipe, very fucking strong, I make myself. Hope you enjoy your flight."

Grinning I accepted the package. I knew exactly what was inside without it being said. It was obviously a sign: a delivery from the universe. The timing was right, especially considering the fact that my very old friend Frankie was due to turn up in Calcutta for Holi. In fact he was late and was meant to already be here. This little package would be perfect for our little re-union. I had originally met Frankie when we were both eighteen. We were both working on an orchard in rural Victoria, Australia. He was a real gypsy then, having grown up in an old school bus, travelling around Australia with his mum, ex biker step father and brother and sister. We had both been working in the packing shed, where the fruit was sorted, graded and boxed ready for transport to supermarkets around the country. When Frankie got sacked because he had a falling out with the foreman, I got sacked because I was his friend. So we brought a clapped out 1970 Holden sedan with our meager wages and set off to drive around Australia with nothing but a dole check, a bag of weed and a guitar. It was a real coming of age journey; both of us eighteen years old. The trip was full of adventures and misadventures. Now eighteen years later we had planned to meet in India and do it all again.

Now Frankie, to say the least, is an eccentric character, same height as me, 6'2', but a very light, wiry build, short black hair and a moustache-less beard that often gets him mistaken for a Muslim and occasionally even Osama Bin Laden. He was an artist, a painter and musician. He was also convinced he was not from this planet, but in fact from the Orion Belt or one of its sister-star systems. He also believed, when he was eighteen, that he wasn't going to live past the age of thirty; convinced life wouldn't be worth living then. Now at thirty six he didn't appreciate my ribbing him on the subject. I think he has reconsidered the 'if you haven't made it by thirty life isn't worth living' scenario. Our relationship has at times been a bit contentious, sometimes not seeing eye to eye but always managing to stay friends. We were even, at times, black market business partners. I sometimes outsourced him as a drug courier for my occasional employers, pizza shop mafia dons and biker gangs moving their 'product' around the country. Frankie would often return with not all the cash I needed to pay my employers, but with an array of 'bargains' that were too good to resist. Many were akin to Jack and the Beanstalk's magic beans. One time he returned with and I quote,

"A classic vintage 1970 Hang Glider"

Other times there was a dune buggy that only needed a bit of work, a variety of obscure musical instruments or extremely rare and exotic breeds of cats. At least I can say there was never a dull moment. But in more recent years we had evolved from petty crime and drug trafficking to working soulless demeaning jobs or just rotting on the dole, but our philosophical conversations were always stimulating and developed into content that would have given Jung or Descartes a run for their money, well on one of their bad day's maybe.

But Frankie never showed up. He was meant to have arrived a day or so to Calcutta before me, but there was no sign of him. Every day he sent emails saying he would be there the day before Holi or in the morning of Holi at the very latest for sure, but he never appeared. So I got the back up entourage Andaman crew together, the Fabulous Four, Munty, Dave and Redman and the rest was history.

My stomach has finally stopped convulsing and I actually feel like I have expelled whatever it is my body took a disliking to. Weak and drained I have a shower, watching as green dye ran down the plug hole. Now only a lighter shade of green I crawl back up the spiral stairs and into my bed. I turn on my MP3 player put on my headphones and listen to the Doors. As the opening bars of Break on Through came on I drift off to sleep...

"You know the day destroys the night,

Night divides the day,

Tried to run,

Tried to hide,

Break on through to the other side,

Break on through to the other side,

Break on through to the other side, yeah..."

 

 

Chapter 2

FINDING INDIA BY LOSING MYSELF, A RECENT HISTORY GETTING TO WHERE I AM NO AND WHERE I WAS THEN

For the past couple of years I had been feeling like my life was a spiritual vacuum. A failed marriage that was apparently not going to end in suburban bliss, with 2.4 kids and a white picket fence. Creatively stifled, not becoming the rock star I had hoped in my heady teenage days, just a grimy pub rocker. Then in my late twenties early thirties, dreams of becoming an edgy, well reputed actor faded into a reality of a couple of commercials, a bit part on an Australian TV cop show and a string of independent theatre productions that nobody saw. I moved from one dead end job to the next. All unskilled. Labouring, dishwashing, delivery driving, real bottom of the barrel material despite my apparently high IQ if you believed the website I did the test off. A website, incidentally, that has tried to sell me Viagra and porn ever since, flooding my email account daily with spam mail. Was I experiencing a premature midlife crisis? I'm not sure. My whole life had seemed to be a series of midlife crises.

Conceived in the summer of love and born in the winter of discontent, my crisis's stem back to some of my earliest memories. It started in primary school with the fear of not being accepted. Especially when I was blacklisted from the lunch break, playground game of ‘cops and robbers', by the most popular kid in school, Simon Prescott. To compensate I picked on Herman Eberstein relentlessly, just because he was German, even though I secretly liked him. All to gain favour with the school pecking order. I figured that by teasing a German kid I could draw attention away from the fact that I was the son of an Englishman. A ten pound P.O.M, who immigrated to Australia in 1970 with a young wife, that he met at art school and a baby me. Being referred to as P.O.M.s (prisoner of her majesty, or prisoner of mother England) was a dig at the fact that the English originally sent their convicts to the Penal Colony that is now Australia. This ironically is now seen as paradise to many present day British still stuck under the grey skies of the mother country. More derogatory versions were Pommy bastard or Whining Pom.

"You stole a loaf of bread, so its orf to Australia for you sonny and don't come back till your great grand kids can surf'"

I can recall coming back from primary school one day, full of innocent enthusiasm as I went up to mum and proudly announced,

"You're a Pommy Bastard mum!"

Oblivious to the meaning behind the slur I was called at school, I was beaming with pride that I had learnt something new. Mum's back stiffened as she turned slowly around with a clenched teeth smile painted across her face,

"And so are you dear"

I smiled proudly.

This was followed by crises of the agony of adolescence and the pain of puberty. The guilt that consumed me the first time I masturbated. I even contemplated suicide for my mortal sin, dangling off the ladder of my childhood tree house, daring myself to let go and fall to what I thought would be my certain death. I became so full of remorse that Mum eventually pulled me aside for the big talk.

"Look son it's Ok if you're gay."

She was relieved when I finally summoned up the courage to confess to her I had committed the terrible crime of spanking the monkey. She assured me that it was completely normal, just as long as I didn't do it to much. She even tried to make me feel better by telling me that even she and Dad wanked. That kind of disturbed me at that tender age, visualizing my parents masturbating.

After that there was the life threatening crisis of the possibility of dying a virgin. Then was the fear of never having a girlfriend. Then after getting a girlfriend and she leaves me a couple of years later, dealing with crisis of the first heart break, feeling like the sky has fallen on my head. And all this before I was even twenty one and embarked on the tortures of adult life. After finishing University, like all good conforming middle class kids, a degree in environmental science, I planned to save the world. But after embracing the crisis of realizing the world was the verge of environmental collapse, it all felt too much. So the day I graduated I joined a punk rock band. I thought fuck the world its all ready buggered.

I did not reach the rock star status I presumed was my birthright, having been indoctrinated that everybody can be famous by the great homogenous socializer, the TV and media machine, I consequently fell from grace into an underworld of hard drugs and crime. This path of hedonistic debauchery finally transformed into a runaway train with no brake. I was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. This was the most life threatening crisis of my life at the time, but not that all the other crises up until then didn't feel as mortifying. Realizing that I could overdose, or worse still end up some disease ridden, pock and track marked, skanky, junkie on the street, I cleaned up my act. I went cold turkey off the mother of all addictions, heroin.

I did this by firstly tattooing the ace of spades on the inside of my wrist. This card is the symbol of the grave digger. It was to remind myself that if I ever used that hand to stick a needle in the other arm again, I was as good as I dead man. Every time I reached for anything, paid for groceries, whatever, I would see this symbol and be reminded. It was also homage to my favourite band Motorhead and their anthem song ‘The Ace of Spades'. I then sat in a casino for three days straight playing Black Jack. Riding out the aches and pains, sweats and flushes till I eventually walked out sober. Never looked back, never put a needle in my arm since.

So I emerged from my late twenties sober and on the straight and narrow. Then met Stella in a nightclub and was married soon after. A whole new series of weekly crisis's subsequently emerged, married life. Being married to a night club diva saw me dragged back into a new party scene. Not the squalid world grunge rock but the pretentious world of the beautiful creatures of the night. However I kept it at arms length and only occasionally and usually reluctantly indulging in the party drugs that I slowly came to despise. Don't get me wrong I was no monk and as my, drug taking, whiskey drinking, Srı Lankan, Buddhist poker buddy would always say, with a ciggie hanging out has mouth,

‘As us Buddhists say mate, everything in moderation, including moderation.'

Which he took to meaning getting wasted is ok as long as it is not all the time.

But I would always survive and re-emerge from each new round of crisis. The common denominator of this life path was that it seems I was seeking. Seeking what I didn't know. Seeking a greater truth, something of significance, dare I say, raised a strict atheist, dare I say I was seeking god? Having explored the abyss of my subconscious and finding nothing, I decided to look outward and upward. Didn't find it at university, in music or acting and didn't find it in marriage. I thought I found something in drugs, but upon greater inspection and focus it turned out to be nothing more than my navel. After series of flaky new age workshops I still didn't find it and I felt more confused and cynical than before. Then I finally discovered yoga. Yoga was the first thing in my life that gave me grounding. I loved it. It wasn't like I was fanatical about it. Started off every now and then, working up to a couple of times a week. I realized that each time I did it, I felt not just physically better afterwards but mentally clearer and my spirits lifted. Yoga wasn't the answer to everything, no, but it was the first thing that gave me a little peace from my incessantly chattering, seeking mind. The yoga and my philosophical conversations with Frankie were the only things keeping me sane when my marriage collapsed, the most recent midlife crisis just before leaving for India. I was reaching a breaking point. I needed to do something drastic.

Both I and Frankie were thoroughly sick of Australia, but it wasn't a jaded heart or a failed acting career that inspired Frankie to leave as it did me. No, he genuinely felt that nobody understood him there. Frankie felt like a fish out of water, sick of the narrow minded conservatives, which constantly misunderstood his take on the world. So he thought the sketchy bail would also be a good idea. We both shared a vision of searching for something with some spiritual integrity. Both on a quest for greater meaning to life, and, as I also wanted to work deeper on my yoga, we vowed to go to India together. It was going to be a re birth, an exploration into the self and beyond. So we pledged to leave the country together. Soon after, he sold his only worldly possession, his pride and joy, the only real love of his life. An early 70's racing red VW kombi van, sold to his younger gang bangin' bad boy brother, for a monthly pension fund to cover his living in India for the next year or so.

But then something unexpected happened. I met a girl. No it was more like the universe delivered me a ray of light from the heavens above. Amber, a half Caribbean, half Ghanaian African princess. Twenty two, drop dead gorgeous, intelligent, witty and great fun. I met her at an old friend's party. She was a mistress of a cocaine dealer. A coke dealer, incidentally, I stole my ex wife Stella from several years earlier. We hit it off instantly. The chemistry was electric and we were both swept up in a whirlwind of passion spending days in bed and living on nothing but amazing sex and home delivered pizza. I was becoming totally consumed with love, just when I thought there was no more love left in my heart. I felt myself falling deeper and deeper than ever.