My Triumphant Return From The Colonies

Monday 27th June 2005, 12.03 pm

Dear all,

this is the last of Benji's fantastic e-mails (unless I get bored in Mumbai) so enjoy, savor and cherish it. You could print it off if you like...maybe frame it, sleep with it under your pillow, or use it to dry your tears during the long lonely nights? The nights are the hardest for you aren’t they? I understand…Benji always understands…come in for a hug…there, much better right?

So here I am at the end of my travels, the end of my gap year and on the brink of the start of real life again. From dusty and almost entirely rubbish Karaikudi, through laid back and empty Portuguese Goa, through Victorian Mumbai and into sweltering Delhi, India has been an amazing experience. There’ve been highs, there've been lows, there's been diarrhea and there's been constipation, there’ve been dry days and wet days and India has seemed like a hundred different countries all at the same time, with different foods, clothes, languages and varying ranges of appalling service and undercooked poultry. At times I’ve hated it, at times I’ve loved it, but I’ve rarely been bored. Except for that week in Goa when all I seemed to do was go to the cinema and help Ben look for his pipe and slippers or read to him from Reader’s Digest (he has problems with the small print, and since he left his magnifying glass at the Bingo, I had to read it for him). Seriously, fuck that guy.

Someone asked me the other day on MSN if India had changed me and this got me thinking; what a stupid fucking new age piece of bullshit to say to someone. The answer was a definite no. No wait…er, I mean a definite yes…like, I appreciate spirituality and eastern mysticism and shit now. Also, I’ve developed a deep mistrust of foreigners that drives me to whole new levels of sarcasm and cynicism (“oh gee, I’m so glad you’ve brought me this plate of undercooked and almost certainly diseased bones and skin!”).

On an average day I will doubt someone’s intentions at least 5 or 9 times which has turned me into a John Nash style paranoid delusionist (like a magician, except I’m convinced other people are constantly pulling ticks); in Mumbai I was crapped on by a bird outside the Library, and a passing Indian business man stopped, opened his briefcase and used a piece of what looked like his paper work to clean the shit off my shoulder. I tried to stop him, because I thought he was going to ask for money, but when my shirt was clean, he just closed his briefcase and walked away. That is what traveling has done to me; I assume everyone is out to fleece me, trying to get my money by hook or by crook. It’s a shame really, and there’s an obvious lesson to be learned there- don’t stand directly under a bird, or you will get shit all over you. Oh, and something about people…er, intentions…er…judging? Whatever.

Secondly, I’ve started to really appreciate some of the things we take for granted in the west. Here is a list, in no order:

Cornflakes

Solid shits

Decent TV

Beer on tap

Nice crisps

Readily available internet pornography

Boring weather.

Normal chocolate (I don’t know what they’ve done to their chocolate here, but it is just all wrong)

Pavements

Cooked meat

Oh and all that being rich and not dying at 40 of TB...that’s pretty cool as well I s’pose.

India has also taught me the value of friends. Oh actually I mean the value of the pound, which is kind of like my main friend anyways. It's really cool how rich I am out here! These silly people, their money’s not worth the paper I wipe my arse with (though sometimes, the two have been one in the same). I’ve also learnt, as you might remember, to suppress my gag reflex and eat anything that's put in front of me, and since traveling with Ben for a month and sharing a room with him, I’ve become adept at taking every opportunity for a little...ahem..."Benji time", that I can get. He also tried to teach me how to knit and how to organise his various tablets so that he knows when to take them. These are just some of the very important life skills I’ve developed. That’s several new points on my CV, and at just several hundred pounds each, cheap at twice the price! At least, that’s what I’m telling my mother.

So what's changed since my last e-mail? Well firstly, and as only some of you remembered this may come as news to you, I had my first sub-continental birthday. That right, I am now a whole year older. Well Indian birthdays suck anyway, so I suppose you're all forgiven, plus I’ve never really enjoyed birthdays but I do feel it’s my prerogative to moan at you for not remembering, so hang you heads in shame. I also went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It was pretty good, no Durham cathedral (but then what is?) but still good for something a nation who produced Bollywood Cinema could come up with. No to be honest, it was the single most impressive thing I’ve ever seen (except this girl on the bus I used to get to school, who could fart on demand...now that's a life skill) (sorry, I just can’t stay serious for that long). I doubt if any of the photos i took of it could ever do it justice, it was just far too amazing. I really was very impressed. The rest of Agra was a real hole though...you'd think they'd sort that out maybe?

Anyway, that's about all. I leave Delhi on Wednesday and get a train journey almost as long as the flight Nathan and Joe are getting back from Ozz...TWENTY THREE HOURS, on my own too, so that'll be a whole lotta fun. Then I spend the rest of Thursday, and Friday in Mumbai on my own, before flying back to the waiting arms of my beloved England...with its infrastructure and clean running water (I think I may cream myself). Hope you're all ok, and don't worry it won’t be long until I’m back.

keep the home fires burning or something poetic.

Happy Birthday What's Your Name!

Saturday 25 June 2005, 8:16am

Dear all

Thank you for those of you who remembered my birthday. I am shocked and appalled by how many people forgot. Of my friends, only the ones in Australia remembered (you know who you are)...the India Travel Forum website even remembered. I found a very touching electronically produced e-card from them in my junk mail (I was searching for everyone else’s e-mails...I thought maybe they'd gone astray. They had not, you shower of bastards).

Yesterday ranked very low on the birthday top 19. I would say it was better than 16 17 and 18 but only because i didn't have an exam (GCSE, AS and A2 respectively), and definitely better than my 7th when I shat my pants on the bouncy castle, but it still ranks low. I did manage to maintain a decent level of drunkenness from about four o'clock onwards, which was ok, but it wasn't unfortunately the usual type of birthday drunkenness where you're surrounded by friends and having a really good time. Instead it was the old “I’m in India, with someone I don't really like, drunkenly plotting to smother him in his sleep, and a lot of my friends obviously don't have a clue when my birthday is". I’m sure you've all had that exact drunkenness at one time or another. However it did make me feel better when I woke up this morning to find Henman had been knocked out of Wimbledon by a piece of soiled toilet paper that’d been blown onto the court...best birthday present a boy could hope for. He really is a massive dripping cunt, and I don’t like to write that word down if I can avoid it, so let it be noted how strongly I dislike the guy. Also I found some other e-mails (mainly from family) and that card you sent me Nathan. Thank you all. It wasn’t too low on the birthday charts because it was spent in India. I think that may have dragged it into the top 7 or 8 (which isn't that high, considering I can't remember any before my 6th).

In other news, we went to the Taj Mahal on Thursday which was definitely the best thing I’ve seen ever anywhere (apart from the time I used a mirror to watch myself poohing), never mind in India. It’s really one of those things that you can only ever appreciate once you've seen it firsthand, up close and personal (in that way it’s pretty similar to squatting above a mirror and watching yourself pooh actually). Staring up at the huge white dome, surrounded by screaming Indian children and Indian adults who want a picture of you (yes, that's right, even at the Taj Mahal they were still some more interested in the white men than the incredible building behind them, which made me start to think I might just be a grotesque freak and I’d just never realised it). We took Bens FHM and took some pictures of us reading it which we're going to send in when we get back (well he is). We also did a few Princes Di shots, although i don't think it was the right bench that we were sitting on looking forlorn. I think I had flu or something, so apart from that; I spent the day on pain killers, feeling a bit crappy.

Oh and I bought a 3/4 size sitar, and played a full size professional standard one. Which was very cool. I am the hippy god of luuuuurve mothafuckaz!

hope you're all well. see you next week those of you who are in the uk.

At The Zoo...all the animals are crying

Sunday 19th June 2005 3:09pm

Dear everyone,

First I’d like to I say how worried I am about you all. I heard via the internets that it's really, really hot in England and that the MET Office is worried for the well being of the average Joe Englishman. Isn’t it like, nearly 25 degrees or something there? How the hell are you all managing? Are old people dropping in the streets? Is the wide spread looting of air conditioner suppliers and ice cream vans being tipped in the streets by roaming gangs of ten year olds? How can a country cope in such sweltering heat???

Here in Delhi the summer is drawing to a close. So as you can imagine the real heat is over, and it's just...well I s'pose you could call it an "Indian Indian summer" yeah? It was "only" 44 degrees yesterday, but luckily the temperature dropped to a chilly 42 last night. The week before we arrived the temperature was as high as 47. I think that the meteorological term for that is "Shit Hot". It’s also really dry and dusty as well as we’re fairly close to a desert, and so for the first time in months I'm not wet with my own salty body juice all the time. We had a mouse in our room (which I'll come back to later) and the bread we used for bate dried up to a biscuit in about 15 minutes. It would amaze me but I’m incapable of complex thoughts since my brain is a shriveled bag of sun-dried proteins and what’s left of my electrolytes. My scrotum resembles a sun-dried apricot and my mouth is drier than a post-menopausal nun for most of the day and I’m drinking more than Judy Finnegan.

So we left moist-Mumbai on Friday, after a few days of weirdness. Basically, Mumbai is like London, but with more Indians (but it is a close run thing...), older busses and about 15 degrees warmer. Apart from that though it's uncanny. The buildings are all Victorian stile london-esque mansions, the busses are read and of the double decked variety. Even the post boxes are old red royal mail style ones and the ordered grid layout of Goa is but a memory of logic, a faint shadow of effective town planning. It’s like they want to be us or something; I’m like “hello, has anyone else noticed that they’ve totally ripped us off here? We demand royalties!”.

Mumbai was good, and fairly eventful considering we were only there four days. we went to the pet market (really disgustingly filthy. I was shocked...I thought only the people lived in shitty conditions), the zoo (like the pet market, except not for sale and with some very bored and confused looking African lions). I got all excited like a five year old about seeing some big animals; before I remembered how inconsiderate animals can be...they all just lay there doing nothing, even when I threw stones at them. That’s obviously a joke, but I was inspired to write that after seeing a kid on a school trip actually do this, right in front of his teacher, who did nothing. I was pretty angry so I told the little fuck that Tigers can read phone directories and a pretty good at Googling small boys’ addresses.

After the Zoo, and once I’d stopped crying about the depressing site of an emaciated and bored looking tiger, we went to the general market (rubbish...which is ironic because I think that's all they sold) and the Dhobie Ghats where all the washermen wash all of Mumbai’s skiddied underwear in 5000 basins. 10 000 (TEN THOUSAND!) people work there, which is more than the working population of Liverpool, washing a metric shit load of clothes. They start at 4:30 in the morning and work right through 'till sunset. We managed to arrange an illegal tour with the government foreman who ran the whole soapy operation. It was really interesting and I took a few cool pictures.

It's amazing how easy it is to bribe people out here. it only cost us 50 Rps to bribe an actual government dude. That’s 62.5 pence (that's quick math) to get this guy to risk his job and stick it to The Man, even though he kinda was The Man. it would only have been like 150 Rp fine if we were busted though so it doesn't matter really. Bling Bling!

We also managed to hit a few bars in Mumbai (well, three) which were quite good. Three litre pitchers are about 3 or 4 pounds, which is nice. The weird thing about Mumbai is that there are loads of men on the street who try to take you to see some guy called Charlie. They come up to you and say "do you wan' see Charlie? dye wan' Charlie brother". I tried to explain to one of them that I didn't know who Charlie was, but Ben recons the guy was selling Charlie. I wasn't sure if Charlie was a rent boy or some kind of man slave, but it seemed stupid to buy him as it’d just be another mouth to feed, so I said "Ben, lets run away" and that's what we did.

there was this other guy who was trying to sell us weed, which we didn't want either, having already shoveled the best part of a kilo of coke up our arses (it absorbs it better...) so we just pretended and we asked him how much. He said 500 RP, so we were like “er, 10 Rp?”. He countered with 400Rp, so we said “er, 10Rp?” (this is how you barter in India...or how we do any way). Eventually we got this guy down to 15 RP which we found really funny and totally ridiculous. Especially when he'd been jogging to keep up with us for about a km before we told him we didn't want anything, even if he was willing to pay us for it. That’s right, we’re so extreme that we get our kicks from winding drug dealers up.

It worries me how many drug related anecdotes I have from Mumbai. There’s a lot of everything knocking about there.

So we left Mumbai by train, first class, which was more than sweet. There were people waiting hand and foot on us, and they brought us free orange juice, chocolates, tea and coffee. They even helped me with my cross word, which was useful because the clues were in broken English and made no sense, as well as having little bearing on the actual answer. And no, it’s not because I’m just crap at crosswords.

So finally, the mouse...

There was a tiny (and I mean TINY) little baby mouse in our room at the hotel, and 6ft 5 Ben nearly shat the bed. I swear to god, I’ve never seen anyone so terrified of a mouse. I told him they like to climb into bed with people and bite their toes and that they like to lay their eggs in peoples urethras and for the rest of the night he was really paranoid. It nearly killed me. then when the mouse trap finally went off he wouldn't get out of bed to turn the light on or anything, and got really angry when I brought it over to show him and did the old "woops...nearly lost it there" gag. definitely a highlight of India.

hope you're all well