Kevin and I in India Read online

  I disembarked at Hubli, and went off down the platform in search of food. Both of us were by now very much the worse for wear, and had not – apart from peanuts and bananas – eaten for a whole day. To my great relief, I came across an Indian on the platform cooking delicious fresh omelettes (in fruit-bread sandwiches!) on a gas stove. I waited patiently for a couple of these, and then turned to re-board the rain. But it wasn’t there. It appeared to have left without me. I stood there like a lemon, holding two dripping omelettes in one hand and two dripping ice-creams in the other, wondering how on earth I was going to get to Londa now, with just five rupees and no ticket in my pocket.

  Minutes later, the train returned. It had just gone away for a short while to dump some excess carriages. Curiously, I hadn’t been too bothered when it had vanished. After twenty-five claustrophobic hours on the train, it was something of a relief to be off it for a while, even in such worrying circumstances. Back on the train, Kevin surveyed the melted ice-cream with a marked lack of enthusiasm. His eyes were glazing over with the exhaustion of this marathon journey. I could see he had had enough of it also. Things must be bad if Kevin goes off his food.

  The train finally reached Londa at 5.30pm, two hours earlier than anticipated. This enabled us to catch the very last bus into Margao tonight. And it was a surprisingly pleasant trip. The advantages of travelling on Indian buses at night are numerous – it is cool, there are always lots of seats, it is much quieter than usual, and one is allowed to smoke.

  We booked into the Tourist Hostel in Margao at 10.30pm, just in time to get a beer and some food at the attached restaurant. After three hours on the night bus, we were again very hungry and very thirsty. The beer went straight to Kevin’s head, and he went to sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

  I was just preparing to go to sleep myself when I noticed the cockroach. It was a very big cockroach, quite the largest I had yet seen, and it was waving its antennae at me from the top of a chest of drawers. I was quite surprised to see it, because the rest of the room – including the normal source of cockroaches, the toilet – was immaculately clean. I was even more surprised when it moved from the chest of drawers, and scuttled up Kevin’s bed to take up position on his big toe. But what surprised me most of all was when it did a sudden dash right up the length of Kevin’s body, ending with a rapid circuit round his bald head. It came to rest on his right ear.

  I felt moved to comment. ‘Kevin! Kevin! Wake up!’ I shouted. ‘There’s a three-inch cockroach sitting on your right ear!’

  Kevin moaned, and opened one eye. ‘So what?’ he mumbled. And went straight back to sleep.

  February 27th

  We left Margao at 10am, boarding a bus on to Colva Beach – Goa’s most famous coastal resort. The bus was crowded with wiry Portuguese housewives carrying home large baskets of fish, rice, sugar, melons and other provisions, recently purchased from Margao’s bustling street markets.

  At Colva, we took a simple room at Sabfran Cottages, recommended to us by Tim and Jill. Apart from the rats darting in and out during their time there, they reckoned this an ideal place to stay at in Goa. We were welcomed by a stout, energetic, sunny-faced individual who turned out to be Mr Sabfran himself. We asked him where he kept his rats, and was there a pig farm under the toilet? He said he didn’t have any rats, and was fond of pigs, so didn’t keep these either. After all the disconcerting stories we had heard about Goan pigs, this news came as a blessed relief. We moved our bags in right away.

  In the cottage room next door lived a pale, thin and hesitant Frenchman called Francois. He had a good excuse for looking so pallid. He had just recovered from a severe bout of typhoid, contracted from drinking contaminated soda water on the beach. He had come to live with Mr Sabfran because there was a resident doctor next door. The doctor’ fees, however, were rapidly reducing Francois to penury. He had already gone through Rs2800 ((£200) and would shortly have so little left that he would have to return to France.

  Down the road, we once more bumped into our friend Andrew. This was the fifth, and final, time that our paths crossed. India has such a strange tendency for reuniting people time and again in the course of their travels. They all seem to be going in the same direction, like a flock of migratory birds. It was therefore little surprise to find Andrew in Goa. We had almost been expecting him.

  Andrew told us he was having problems with his accommodation here. The lodge he was staying at made him nervous. Its real name was The Tourist Nest, but the locals had nicknamed it ‘Death Cottage’. Alarmed, he wanted to know why. When he found out, he immediately started looking out new digs.

  Apparently, this lodge had been run by a young Portuguese couple up until last Christmas. At this time, the jealous husband, suspecting an illicit liaison between his young wife and one of the new waiters, had stuck a carving knife in the waiter’s chest. (The ‘murder room’ in which this occurred, by the way, was offered to Andrew on his arrival.) The poor waiter had crawled out of the lodge and bled to death on the garden veranda. News of his grisly demise spread fast. The local people, many of whom were friends or relatives, took an extremely dim view of his premature passage from this world. They began making midnight forays into the lodge’s grounds, cutting down palm trees in the front garden, painting its walls with “get out of town!” warnings to the landlord, and eventually (thought this was never quite proven) murdering his mother, who was discovered suffocated in her bed one morning. The distraught young wife, who had started most of the trouble, adopted a twenty-four year old Indian boy with delusions of grandeur (he thought he was Clint Eastwood) to compensate herself for all this tragedy. But he too was found dead one morning, in equally mysterious circumstances. The husband, meanwhile, had gone to jail for murdering the waiter. Shortly after the expiry of ‘Clint’, he too died. Somebody had managed to murder him in his cell. The local constabulary finally decided that ‘foul play’ was being perpetrated here, but they were far too late to do anything about it. The whole family, apart from the young wife, was dead.

  Later, we went down to Colva Beach. This is one of the longest beaches in India – just one continuous stretch of golden sand for an incredible distance of eighteen kilometres. Entering the sea here is like getting into a nice warm bath. The fierce pounding waves common in other parts of India’s coastline, say at Madras or Mahabilapuram, are little in evidence here. Colva Beach is the nearest thing to paradise that India can provide.

  Talking of which, the first place we came to on the beach was the Paradise Restaurant. This particularly interested Kevin because it served baked beans, something neither of us had seen since leaving England. It also offered FREED SHARK, SCAMBLED EGGS and LONG LIFE WITH TOMATO.

  While he waited for his beans, Kevin told me his experience back at Arsikere station, while on the train to Londa. He had been woken at 4 in the morning by a loud squeaking from somewhere out on the dark platform. Looking out of the window, he had seen the strangest thing – a cartload of giant pigs, taking turns at being picked up by their ears (and only their ears) and loaded onto the backs of porters. Kevin said that the sight of all these squeaking hundred-pound pigs being hoisted into the air by their ears was the weirdest thing he’d seen in India so far.

  February 28th

  While everybody else in Colva retired for a three-hour siesta, Kevin and I braved the intense heat in the open and travelled via Panjim to the small town of Old Goa.

  Here, in the massive Professed House and Basilica of Bom Jesus, reposes a small silver casket containing what remains of St Francis Xavier’s remains. On special holy days, the box makes a special tour round town in a big procession. These are popular times for fanatic worshippers to make off with yet more of the dead saint’s bones. One of them, we learnt, had already succeeded in absconding with his entrails!

  Moving on to the Convent and Church of St Francis of Assisi, we noted it badly in need of renovation but still possessed of stunning 16th century woodwork and murals.
It also had a museum full of portraits of ex-Viceroys from Portugal. Every one of them looked extremely depressed. They evidently had not relished their appointment to India at all.

  Our last stop, the Se Cathedral, was the largest church I had seen since St Peter’s in Rome. We spent hours exploring its endless dark corridors, its long, winding stone staircases, and its small, deserted study-rooms, often full of dusty old manuscripts and cobwebs. Eventually, however, the continuing eerie echo of our lonely footsteps up and down the gloomy corridors, together with the dead building’s musty odour of damp decay, filled us both with a heavy sense of unease and we hurried back into the warm light of day.

  Kevin suggested I might care to see the cathedral’s famous ‘Golden Bell’ before leaving. He politely indicated an open side-door which led the way up. Thanking him for his consideration, I began my ascent. Halfway up, however, I noticed stair-boards missing. And as I neared the top, the stair-boards that were left began to crumble beneath my feet. Having now nearly fallen down the high bell-tower to my death, I decided to check things out with Kevin. Was he sure, I shouted down, that this bell was open to the public? A moment later, his response floated up. Well no, it wasn’t, he hollered but he had felt so sure that I would want to see the Bell that he’d picked the locked entrance door just to let me in. I shouted down that if I made it back to the bottom alive, I should reward his thoughtfulness by wringing his neck.

  March 1st

  They say that on Colva Beach you can, if you walk far enough, find somewhere to be quite alone, somewhere where nobody and nothing will disturb you. Many travellers insist that this is the only place in India where this is possible.

  Walking down the silky sands in search of my private ‘place in the sun’, I came across Martin, a friend I had made back in Mysore. He too was trying to be alone. Martin looked rather glum, so I sat down to share a cigarette with him and asked him why. He told me a very odd story, about his bus journey up to Goa a few days back. He had been sitting on the bus, minding his own business, when a very beautiful Indian woman had settled next to him. This in itself was strange, for women in this country were brought up to eschew the company of men until properly introduced. But what happened next was even more of a surprise. The woman had started winking at him, and then moved her hand off her lap to massage his knees, then his private parts. It was dark and nobody else on the bus could see what was happening. Martin knew what was happening, and couldn’t believe it. He was even more astounded when the woman leant over to suggest they take a private room together that night in Goa. The rest of the journey passed with him in a positive lather of anticipation.

  Arriving at Goa, he quickly scooped his bags up and moved to follow the dusky beauty out of the bus. But then he reached the door and, looking down, received a nasty shock. His precious pearl of the East had just been set into a ring of waiting relatives! Somehow, they had got wind of her heading their way and had come to the bus-station to pick her up. Poor Martin, he still hadn’t got over it.

  About two miles down the beach, I finally found my quiet spot. My only companions, for as far as the eye could travel, were the gaunt skeletons of a few old fishing boats. Oh, and of course the seagulls. These light, graceful birds settled like butterflies along the water’s edge, pausing only moments at a time on the sands before soaring off into the air again in a sudden flurry of wings and feathers. Otherwise, apart from the scuttle of tiny sea-crabs running before the incoming surf, the whole scene was a poem of peace.

  My only activity today was a walk up to the charming village of Benaulim, set back from the beach. On the way, I stopped for a drink at Pedro’s Restaurant. The waiter here offered me something called ‘heaven flower’ which wasn’t on the menu at all. It turned out to be a popular local brand of hashish. I just told him I couldn’t afford it. But this only encouraged him. He offered me a job in the restaurant. That way, he suggested, I could make the money to afford it!

  March 2nd

  I walked down the beach this morning to see the sun rise. This time, as it was very early, I did not have to walk far to find a secluded spot. First I squatted down in some bushes behind a palm-tree alcove to complete my morning toilet, and then I sat down in the sand to begin my morning prayers.

  I had barely started when an odd snorting, snuffling sound behind me drew my attention. Whirling round in alarm, I saw a large wild pig rooting around in the bushes. It was eagerly devouring my exuded faeces. So the infamous Goan pigs had caught me up at last! And this wasn’t the end of it. Turning back to face the dawn, I noticed a small flea-ridden puppy-dog dragging itself up the beach toward me. It arrived, and lay panting at my feet, gazing up at me with a look of happy devotion. Then it began nibbling my toes. How I managed to keep my mind on the Mystic Law of life and finish my prayers, I’ll never know.

  There was a sprightly wind in the air today, and my last swim in Colva’s warm waters was enlivened by the arrival of a series of powerful, driving waves, which produced an invigorating strong current. The sun remained just the same, however – intense and very hot. I was most loath to leave.

  But the time had come to move on. Kevin and I packed our bags, and prepared to journey up to Poona. It would be the last time that we would be travelling together – at least for the time being. But it was not the thought of solo travel that concerned us most today. It was, rather, the prospect of yet another long train journey. We both boarded the 12.35pm train from Margao station with sinking hearts.

  I spent the first few hours of the journey in a state of depression, listening to Frank Sinatra on tape singing all about how alone he was without a friend in the world. Only when we reached Ghathbratha station did things finally liven up. It was here that the train began loading on a shipment of thali suppers for its passengers. Chapatis, idlis, cucumbers, curd and masala chips were flying about all over the place. Everyone in our carriage had just about settled down to their meals, when a pair of scabrous mongrels began having a fight under our wheels. Their thalis abandoned, all the Indian passengers craned out of the windows to place loud bets on the outcome of this canine carve-up.

  Kevin went up the platform for a cup of tea, and nearly got arrested over a two-rupee note. It was all he had, and the cha-boy had no change for it. The note passed back and forth rapidly between them, and then mysteriously disappeared. Kevin accused the cha-boy of having it and strode off with his cup of tea. The cha-boy accused Kevin of having it, and gave loud, hysterical pursuit. ‘Thief! Thief!’ he hollered, and the usual Indian crowd gathered to see what was going on. They quickly passed judgement against Kevin, and set the police on him. By the time he had talked his way out of this one, he was quivering with rage. I had never seen Kevin so overwrought. He sat back in his seat like a stone, and didn’t utter a word for hours afterwards.

  Despite all this fuss, and despite frequent delays, the train contrived to arrive in Poona an hour early. That was good. But it was now 3 in the morning, and we couldn’t see how we were going to find any beds to sleep in. That was bad. But then a helpful cabbie turned up and drove us to the Kamlesh Tourist Lodge, which had rooms. That was good. Except that our room had a bowl-type toilet you couldn’t sit on – there was nowhere for your legs to go. And that was bad. We had a comfortable bed each, which was very good, but they proved too comfortable and that was downright frustrating! After weeks of sleeping on hard planks, bruising bus seats, spartan train bunks, filthy thin mattresses or simply on the bare ground itself, a foam-filled luxury bed like this gave us real problems. I hardly slept a wink all night.

  March 3rd

  Preparing to set off alone tomorrow, I went down this morning to Poona station to book a train ticket to Aurangabad. It was here that I came up against one of those ghastly train reservation queues that tourists tell such chilling tales about. I had managed to avoid them so far, but the moment I entered the busy station I knew my number was up.

  Before I was allowed to join the massive queue for tickets, I had t
o get a ‘reservation slip’. But the clerk I approached for this had just run out of them. While awaiting the arrival of a fresh supply, he went off for a long tea break. I only got the reservation slip an hour later. And I still couldn’t join the ticket queue – I had to get the slip ‘number stamped’ by the platform ticket collector. This was a very elusive gentleman who, when I finally tracked him down, didn’t speak a word of English. But I got my slip stamped and at last joined the ticket queue. It stretched like a long, winding snake out of the large station concourse and into the street. The Indian in front of me at the rear of the queue turned round to look at the number on my ticket, and just laughed. He told me not to bother queuing up at all – I wouldn’t be getting my ticket until sometime in the middle of next week.

  Fortunately, I met Ram. Or rather – as is generally the case – Ram attached himself to me. He was a seedy, lank-haired, depressed individual who seemed to be carrying the whole weight of the world around on his hunched shoulders. He introduced himself to me with the faintest flicker of a grin and, taking a look at my reservation slip, told me that there was no problem – I should go away now and wander round town with him for a while. If I came back in three hours, he assured me, my number would certainly be called and I should be able to walk right to the front of the queue.