Kevin and I in India Read online

  January 14th

  I’d changed my mind. The nearest thing to purgatory for the tourist in this country was not waiting in an endless train reservation queue. It was lying endlessly in a tiny coffin-bunk in a so-called express train now running six hours late. I woke up feeling I had been on this train all my life. My whole world had shrunk to a cramped compartment six feet square. Apart from the occasional cigarette break on a station platform, the outside world might as well never have existed.

  Our Indian fellow-passengers livened things up for a while by teaching us how to eat thalis. They had caught Kevin trying to throw another thali out of the window, and forced him to try eating it the ‘Indian’ way. This involved Kevin mixing all the rice, curried vegetables, chillies and peppers together in a big steaming heap of yellow mush, and then stuffing it down his throat in large dripping handfuls, muttering the while that he couldn’t remember ever having eaten anything so tasty.

  We arrived in Madras forty-one claustrophobic hours after leaving Delhi. It was noon, and the heat was intense. We stumbled off the train feeling like two convicts unexpectedly reprieved from Alcatraz. Kevin’s face, I observed, was deathly pale. He looked like Lazarus recently recalled from the grave.

  Madras station was a nightmare of noise, heat and unpleasant smells. We struggled quickly out, and went in search of quiet, clean lodgings. All we managed to find – it being a festival day and most places being full or closed – was the AVC Hotel in JB Street. This place was cheap but was obviously not used to Western tourists. Our room-boy, a burn-black Indian wearing a lunghi (sarong) and a permanent grin, was so fascinated with us that he followed us into our quarters and stayed there. Kevin temporarily shifted him by ordering a cup of black coffee, without sugar. The room-boy presently returned with a cup of white tea, with sugar. He beamed happily at Kevin, and Kevin glared banefully back. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  The room-boy was particularly fascinated by my dirty laundry, which had just been unpacked. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it. I concluded that he must be the dhobi-wallah eager to wash it, so I stuffed the lot in his arms and said ‘Please do dhobi.’ His response was quite extraordinary. Giving a groan of emotion, he sank to his knees to kiss my feet, then retreated out of the room muttering ‘Presentation! Presentation!’ to himself. Kevin informed me that I just made a present of all my clothes to the room-boy. He was prepared to bet I would never see them again.

  I saw the room-boy again though, and only minutes later. After Kevin had retired to his room, I shut my door and collapsed on my bed, pleased to be quite alone for once. But then I looked up at the ceiling, and found that I wasn’t alone at all. There was a yellow lizard staring down at me. We gazed at each other for a while, and then I got bored of waiting for it to drop on my head, and called back the room-boy to get rid of it. He came in waving a broom and proceeded to chase the lizard all over the room. Then he opened the door to let it out, and instead let another one in. I now had two yellow lizards.

  Later, Kevin and I went out for some lunch, and found a good Chinese restaurant set back from Mount Road. On the entrance door, a curious sign announced:

  ‘We have been in this Business since long, and we have been pleasing and displeasing our customers ever since. We have been bawled out, bailed up, held up and held down, cussed and discussed, recommended and boycotted, talked to and about, burned up and burned out etc. The only reason we continue to stay in business is to see what in hell could possibly happen next!’

  Eating our meal on the pleasant upper-storey, open-air verandah, we noticed many large black rooks flying in and out to dine on leftovers off the dining tables. Kevin observed them hopping his way, and polished off every scrap of food on his plate. He wasn’t going to leave them anything.

  Back at the lodge, the companionable room-boy turned up again, this time to beg my best shirt off my back. I only got rid of him by taking him by the shoulders and steering him bodily out of my room. He sat outside the door and went to sleep. Except for the lizards, I was now alone. But I was feeling very hot, and decided to turn on the overhead air-fan. This was a serious error. It had only one speed – very fast indeed. Within seconds, it was whizzing round like an aeroplane propeller. A hurricane blast of air blew me off my feet and pinned me to the bed. The yellow lizard on the ceiling was plucked off its perch and sent flying across the room. Struggling up and turning the fan off again, I found the lizard lying stunned on the floor of the squat toilet. It remained in a state of concussion for the rest of the afternoon.

  This evening’s stroll produced a visit to a local Hindu temple, hidden down the end of a dark, narrow backstreet. An elderly priest wearing the marks of Vishnu (vertical lines of red and white paint) on his forehead showed us around. As he proudly opened up all the shrines for viewing, he told us that today was a big festival day, and this was why all the god-figures wore garlands of flowers around their necks.

  On the way out, the old man bowed to us and we bowed back. Then he felt compelled to bow again, and so we felt obliged to give another bow. This went on for some time, the three of us bobbing up and down on the temple steps, until the priest broke the monotony by suddenly darting off to get us a ‘present’. This turned out to be a bowlful of very bitter berries which we had to eat in front of him with every appearance of delight. Downing several cups of tea later on, we decided not to take any more ‘presents’ from anybody for the time being.

  January 15th

  A toothless old man in a dirty dhoti turned up at 8am, armed with a broom and a bucket. He wanted to clean out the squat toilet. First he removed the concussed lizard and then, when my back was turned, he removed a pack of my disposable razors.

  Another old man, this time a rickshaw driver cycling us up to Madras station, proved so feeble that we had to get out at every hill and give him a push up. By the time we creaked into the station, he looked so ruined that Kevin was all for calling out an ambulance.

  The whole population of Madras seemed to be out on the streets today, celebrating the Spring Harvest Festival called ‘Pongol’. Many people we saw were either waving bunches of bananas about in the air, or carefully painting the horns of sacred cows. They were painting them every colour of the rainbow – one poor beast we saw had one horn daubed bright purple, and the other green and red with blue polka-dots. As we watched, a crowd of noisy children stuck a large lemon and a bunch of lighted faggots on the painted horns, and began chasing the smouldering cow down the road shouting what sounded to us like “bugger! bugger!” after it as they gave gleeful pursuit.

  Later, we walked down to the coastline and went swimming off Elliot’s Beach. The sea here was warm, clear and refreshing, and the huge waves sweeping into land shocked us instantly out of our heat lethargy, and left our skin all a tingle. Back on the beach and drying off, we were surrounded by a crowd of curious locals. They appeared to be waiting for something. Moments later, the tide suddenly came in and we were deluged by a large wave. The waiting crowd erupted into loud laughter.

  Wandering damply back to town, we came across another decorated cow. This one wore garlands of yellow flowers on its horns and had little brass bells tied round its forelegs. It was contentedly eating a pile of refuse in the gutter. We stepped round it and a local cha-shop. It was occupied by a boisterous gang of Muslim youths who insisted on buying us endless cups of very sweet tea. Kevin tried to protest that he didn’t like sugar, but they didn’t believe him. Everybody in India liked sugar, they said, and lots of it.

  Our new friends wanted to hear everything we knew about English cricket and British motorbikes. But neither of us knew anything about either subject, so it was a very short conversation. Undeterred, the inquisitive party moved on to the subject of marriage. They couldn’t believe we were still unmarried. There was so much opportunity to get married in the West. Surely, they insisted, we could afford it?

  Madras, we concluded by the end of today’s tour, is a strange city. The
Indians here stop and stare at you all the time, and often follow you down the street. Tiny children pass by riding adult bicycles bigger than they are. Entire families of four or five people putter along on single 50cc mopeds. Herds of goats tied together with string wander aimlessly round in the middle of the traffic. Holy cows are allowed to graze and defecate on the lawns of plush banks and hotels. And groups of destitute women and children sleep in carts, on car bonnets, or simply in the gutters. The contrast between affluence and poverty, with lines of beggars sitting outside the best hotels, is in this city extremely marked.

  January 16th

  We decided to look for better lodgings today. But this was easier said than done. The room-boy, as expected, refused to return my laundry. So I had to refuse to pay the bill. The laundry promptly reappeared, minus a pair of red underpants. The room-boy had taken a particular shine to these. Nothing I said could persuade him to part with them.

  After a long search, we found good rooms at the YMCA hostel in Pycrofts Road. My quarters here were clean and comfortable, and there wasn’t a lizard in sight. I did have problems with the air-fan again, though. This one didn’t work at all.

  I went down to the rickshaw-rank to get a ride further down Pycrofts Road to the house of another Buddhist contact, Venkat Sai. None of the six rickshaw drivers I asked knew where Pycrofts Road was, even though they were sitting in it. Then a doddering old greybeard creaked up and faithfully promised he knew the way. He promptly swung off Pycrofts Road and got himself thoroughly lost. Then he took a lot of directions from passers-by, and got himself thoroughly confused. But all this didn’t deter him, just made him more resolute. He peddled off into the great unknown with such sense of clear purpose that I didn’t dare accuse him of not knowing where he was going. An hour later however, and having arrived right back where we’d started, I changed my mind. I got out of the rickshaw, thanked him for his guided tour of the city, and walked to my destination.

  In the afternoon, Kevin and I decided to change some money at the Indian Overseas Bank. We sat at a desk marked ‘travellers cheques’ and waited for ten minutes. Then someone came over to tell us that this desk didn’t deal with travellers’ cheques at all. He showed us to another desk. This one didn’t have a sign saying ‘travellers cheques’, so we guessed we must be in business. We handed our passports to the desk-clerk, and he stared down at them. That’s all he did, just stared at them. Five tense minutes ticked past. Then he stopped staring at them, and gave them to another official to stare at. Both men wore such looks of intense concentration that we wondered if they’d ever seen a British passport before. The second official, suddenly aware of Kevin’s teeth grinding with frustration, emerged from his trance and returned the passports to the first official, who gave a short grunt and pushed a large heap of forms over to us to fill out. All we got for wading through this lot was a small brass token each. Kevin’s bore the number 22, and mine 29. The indicator panel above the paydesk, we noted with dismay, had just clicked to the number 49. By the time it had worked its way up to 100, and then gone from zero to our numbers, the rest of the day would be gone.

  But then the indicator clicked again. It moved straight from 49 to Kevin’s number. Relieved, we collected our money, and asked for a receipt. But the paydesk didn’t issue receipts. It told us to go back to our friends with the fixation on passports, to get one. And surprise, surprise, both officials had just gone for lunch.

  January 18th

  Something will have to be done about these mosquitoes. Sleep was quite impossible last night. Persistent squadrons of these little bloodsuckers were diving down on me till 4 in the morning. In the end, I shut all doors and windows (ignoring the stifling heat) and lit up three ‘Tortoise’ mosquito-repellent coils. The packet promised they would drive the little monsters into a ‘deep swoon’. An hour later, with room enveloped in a dense blanket of smoke, it didn’t matter whether the mosquitoes swooned or not. They couldn’t even find me! Comforted by this thought, I finally swooned myself.

  Lack of sleep made this a difficult day. Apart from which, this was a Friday and all Madras’s sightseeing spots were closed. The only place open, we were informed, was Fort St George. But when we arrived there, this was closed too. We sat on an anthill and drank an insipid cup of coffee. Then we found one place not closed – the charming 18th century St Mary’s Church. This attractive structure had stone flooring tiled with gravestones, marvellous pillar-work and mosaic–patterned ceilings. The only thing that disturbed us was all the signs prophesying a nuclear war.

  The enervating heat diminished Kevin’s conversation to a minimum today. He restricted himself to two phrases only: ‘Why isn’t your meter working?’ (addressed to taxi-drivers), and ‘Has that water been boiled?’ (addressed to waiters fond of drawing table-water from next to open sewers). Otherwise, he was quite silent. Kevin had become tired of remonstrating with legions of beggars. Now he simply walked through them. Or, if necessary, over them. They seemed to respect that.

  This evening we saw a quack doctor selling health cures on the street. First he used a loud football klaxon to attract a crowd, then he seized a ‘volunteer’ from the audience and held him captive with a pair of prison manacles while he poured a bottle of health tonic down his throat.

  Moving on, we came across another crowd, this time piled into the entrance of a television shop. Everybody was pressed against the window watching a television set – something few of them would ever possess – being demonstrated to a customer. On the screen, a fat middle-aged Indian in incredibly tight trousers was rolling up a ski-slope backwards, singing a number one pop ballad. The massed crowds standing outside wore a uniform look of awed appreciation. They had never seen anything like it. Neither had we.

  January 19th

  We left the heat and chaos of Madras this morning, and travelled down to the peaceful coastal haven of Mahabilapuram. A rickshaw driver turned up at the bus depot, and offered us lodgings in his own house. We ended up with a small bare stone cell in an adjoining thatched hut. The cost was remarkably low – just three rupees (20 pence) each per night. Our ‘neighbours’ were a young couple called John and Suki, who had lived in India some years and who had gone quite ethnic in their dress. John, a dreamy loquacious individual, wore a small fez glistening with semi-precious stones, long flowing robes and a number of exotic beads and necklace. Suki was decked out in a bright ruby-red sari and had applied a thick layer of kohl to her eyes and cheekbones. As we arrived, she was playing a local folk song to her baby daughter, Kali, on an antique squeezebox.

  John’s milky blue eyes glistened with emotion as he learnt that Kevin was from Suffolk, only a few miles from his own home town in England. He squatted outside our hut like a mischievous pixie and plied Kevin with an endless stream of questions about life back home. Meanwhile, I had finally located the switch to our single light-bulb, and had noticed that our cell had no furniture in it. Not even a bed. But that was okay, said John, for everyone here slept on the porch outside. It was so much cooler.

  Kevin and I went up a winding dirt-track leading up to the beach. Across our path scurried a number of small, grunting pigs, while tiny green frogs leapt in and out of discarded coconut shells. Thirsty dogs lay in doorways, tongues lolling out with the heat. Naked children ran past, rolling old bicycle tyres and cheerfully laughing. Householders sat on their porches, giving us a lazy wave of welcome. The sun shone brightly, and a warm sea-breeze caressed our necks and shoulders. Yes, Mahabilapuram was going to suit us fine.

  Up this road, we discovered the Village Restaurant. Not only did it have a good selection of Western music, but both its waiters could speak good English. One of them produced a giant lobster on a plate, and offered it to Kevin. The lobster snapped hopefully at Kevin’s nose, but he didn’t want it. So the waiter stuck it by the entrance, hoping that some hungry passer-by might spot it. The lobster sat obediently on its plate and waved its powerful purple claws about in enthusiastic welcome to prosp
ective customers. But nobody accepted the invitation, and it presently sank into a dejected sulk. To wake it up again, the waiter came over and began plucking its eyeballs. The lobster promptly returned from the dead.

  Coming out onto Mahabilapuram’s glorious beach, we spotted its famous Shore Temple. The guide we hired told us that this was the last of seven original sea-temples built by the Dravidian architects of the 7th century AD. The other six had already been consumed by the hungry sea, and this one would soon experience the same fate. Its only protection was a buttress-wall of large boulders, already much weakened by the continuous battering of incoming breakers.

  Undeterred by the news that the previous occupant of our hut (a young American girl) had drowned here last week, we plunged into the sea and found it excellent for swimming. Even Kevin, not generally fond of the water, enjoyed romping around in these waves. They helped him forget about the thirty-six mosquito bites on his left arm.

  It was impossible to be alone for long on this beach, though. Kevin managed to lose a grinning fisherman trying to sell him a brace of snapping lobsters by claiming to be vegetarian, but he hit real problems with his next visitor. This was a gap-toothed, shifty-eyed pirate –wearing just a ragged bandana and a soiled lunghi – who sat behind us for a whole hour, banging two coconuts together. You can’t imagine what the sound of two coconuts being banged together does to your nerves after a while. The grinning rogue selling them did, though. And when Kevin at last gave in, he uttered a shrill cackle of triumph and began beheading the green coconuts with a razor-sharp machete. The milk within was unpalatably sweet, but the two rupees apiece we had paid was a small price to get rid of the noise.

  After an excellent supper at the Village Restaurant – which this evening was crowded with long-stay travellers and hippies dressed in colourful kaftans, baggy silk trousers and patterned waistcoats – we walked around the sleepy village’s only two main streets. All the local Indians here were either chipping away on stone sculptures for tourist sale, or coming up to ask us: ‘You have English coins for my collection?’