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.

Goa, Goa, Gone

Wednesday 15th June 2005, 8:07am

Ok, so now...I'm in The City Formerly Known as Bombay, home of The Bombay Bad-Boy Pot Noodle, Bombay Mix, Bombay Sapphire Gin and I think they make a few films here too. Incidentally, out here those pot noodles are just called Bad Boys, and Bombay Mix is just "mix". It’s totally CRAZY! Oh, and also Bombay is called Mumbai…apparently they didn’t like our name much, so they changed it very, very slightly.

“Yeah! How d’you like dem apples England? You imperialist bastards! And we’ll call India…er…Mindier? Yeah! Mumbai, capital of Mindier! YEAH!”

We left Goa on Monday after a pretty crappy week and a half if I’m honest. Ben is a really boring old man sometimes and was far happier to go to bed early so that he could get up early to go and watch a special showing of the bloody Lion King (this ACTUALLY happened) rather than going out and finding a bar, or a club, or even a dog eating a dead crow...anything would have been better than an early night. So anyway, that's pretty much sets the mood of my travels with Grandpa Ben these days. Goa was a little lame at best, but with him, it was like a SAGA holiday, except with really boring old people who'd rather go to bed early so they can watch a special showing of Singing In The Rain, than stay up 'till 10 to play bingo. Eugh.

so Goa was a bit of a loss, but the beaches were alright, and I even managed to escape Ben for a day and go to one on my own. I spent a whole day drinking ice cold Kingfisher and catching crabs (no not that kind...) on the beach like some kind of feral cave-child. Oh and there was the one good day when I played football with some real feral children (although someone said they were just local school kids, they were just too dirty to be proper people). I got a little drunk before hand though and ended up chopping one of the kids down in the surf in what would have been a straight red card and a three match ban if we hadn’t been playing on beach in a third world country. Even through my alcohol induced haze I felt pretty guilty, especially as he was too weak to struggle against the rip tide and was just sort of…carried off. Apart from that, it was the cinema and hotel cable that kept me sane. Don't go to Goa in June, especially not with someone who likes his rest and 90s Disney films.

And now?

We arrived in "Mumbai" in the early hours of Tuesday morning and checked into our hotel which is right at the top of a four floor building with three other hotels in it on each of the other stories. It's a very strange set up...like a dream or something. Very surreal. Plus there was no lift, which made it very difficult to lug our bags all the way up. I think. I don’t know…the bell boy did it. It certainly wasn’t pleasant to watch, especially when he got a nose bleed. Some of it got on my bag when he passed out, so no tip for him. Honestly, you just can’t get good service.

Yesterday we went to Elephanta Island (I thought it was a new soft drink) where some clown with too much time on his hands had carved a massive warren of caves into the mountain with some impressive statues and wall carvings. It was all carved straight into the rock face and was pretty cool. no one really knows who did it (apparently it was like years ago...like 25 or something. long before I was born, and no one thought that maybe they should keep a record, or ask the guy carving chunks out the mountain who the hell he was). Unfortunately the Portuguese came in and they damaged it pretty badly, probably by missing their piñatas and hitting the cave walls and statues instead. Bloody South Americans...

So the caves were, all joking aside, pretty impressive, but costly to get in and sadly in a pretty bad state. There were sections where reinforced steel concrete had been used to repair damage, but had eroded leaving ugly steel girders and cable visible, which is a real pity.

After that we headed back to the strange hotel and then went out to dinner and off to search out a bar or a club or something to do in the evening (I was keeping an eye out for a dog and a dead crow still). We went to one sports bar, had one drink and then Ben announced he was too tired to do anything else and went back to the hotel and to bed. Probably to…I don’t know…fulfill some old person stereotype. Wet the bed? Break a hip? Be slightly racist? Whatever. What a dufus. So I wandered around Mumbai on my own for a while (which was really cool) because it was only nine o'clock and I didn’t come all the way to India so that I could get a good night’s sleep.

I was on the lookout for some cheapo sunglasses, but was offered instead just about every drug you can imagine with people shouting "brother d'you wan' some Cokaaaaine??!" at me. Needless to say I was totally coked off my tits by the time I got back, and had brought a hooker with me to liven things up. A super night was had by all!

Or really: I just walked round the stalls, bought some sunglasses, politely declined the various drugs in my incredibly English way (“gee, er…no thank you sir, but thank you for the lovely offer. Next time I want to snort some mystery white powder I’ve bought from a decidedly unhygienic Mumbai street dealer, I’ll come straight to you”) then went back to find Ben still awake and watching…wait, you might want to sit down for this. I don’t know why you’re standing to read this e-mail, but sit down. I got back and he was watching…Sex and The god-damn City...for real. The real reason for his "tiredness" turned out to be that he was just so fatigued to find out what was happening in that Horsey Faced bitches love life. He didn’t even pretend to be flipping through the channels. He was just lying there, in bed, watching Sex and The City. He was a scented candle and some massage oils away from really scaring the shit out of me.

so that's about all that's happened recently. Not much to tell really. I look forward to getting back to Durham where people are a little bit more up for fun and games and I’m not constantly being offered drugs. Only 14 more days with Ben, and only just over two weeks left before I make my triumphant return.

see you spoon (oh lol)