Diplomats and Physically Challenged Only
25 Dec
Four years ago about this time I was sitting in a hotel room in Darjeeling. Drinking Indian whisky with a friend, listening to him tell me his sob story. I’m a bit of a bloke that way — the only way I know how to comfort a man is to buy him more whisky, and drink more of that stuff with him. We got in to the hill station on Christmas morning, and I didn’t know it yet but that place was to become one of my favourite places in the world; and I didn’t know it yet either, but my first time in India would far from prove to be the last. I don’t know why everything about that trip still seems so fresh in my mind when I can hardly remember anything at all about the dozens of trips to dozens more exotic places before and after that. I remember stepping out on Indian ground for the first time, drawing my first breath of smoggy air outside Calcutta’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport; boarding a rickety bus bound for the little hamlet of Narendrapur, where I would ostensibly “learn” community service. I remember what I was wearing that night; what everyone was wearing; how everything looked and felt like what I’d been waiting all my life for —
Christmas morning of 2004. I was unsure, unsteady, unfocused and the only thing I knew was my god nobody told me Darjeeling was in the Himalayas, because I would have brought more to wear. I froze under a blanket, swigging from a bottle of Teachers Whisky, nodding as that boy sobbed even more, layered blankets on myself and walked to the teapot, the one that was always-on, always boiling endless pots of Darjeeling tea (but of course), and strolled to the horse stable with that boy. He bought me a plate of fried Nepali noodles, chowmein-style, and as we stood by the horses eating noodles out of a plate made of pressed leaves, I remember feeling my life coming back to me, feeling… renewed. I’m not original on that front since everyone since Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles, Alanis Morissette and Madonna have said the same thing, but that’s what this country does to you, maybe.
After a whole year away, the exasperation and frustration I experienced on the last trip (a mix of harassment, bureaucracy, too much vegetarian food and the mother of all floods) had more than faded. Temporary dalliances with various Asian, European and Middle Eastern countries pleased me and satiated bits of my wanderlust, but left me far from stimulated in the way only my India can.
Christmas morning of 2008: four years, double the number of trips, good friends and memories in every major Indian city (and town). And I don’t know how but no matter how disillusioned or cynical I get about travel and life at large, the older I get, every bit of this country inspires me; even makes me chuckle a little.
Whether it’s the signs at immigration that say DIPLOMATS AND PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED ONLY, or the large notice at my friend’s house that screams LIFT IS WORKING (because in India if the lift works even the signs are surprised), or navigating the streets in an auto trying to light a fag for myself and the rickshaw wallah; making sudden turns to find you’ve turned into “balloon street”, where, at 11.30 pm more than 20 people have decided balloons are the best things to sell, and have hung them on poles, on rickshaws, bicycles and erected a 25 metre long makeshift balloon shop. The horns. The music. The life.
The life. Coming from several months in Dubai, where things are orderly, neat, clean, and… nothing really happens outside in the streets, not that you can walk on them anyway, I’ve missed the street life of Asia (and all the food associated with such a culture). Above all, I’ve desperately missed the feeling of walking down an Indian road not needing to go anywhere or do anything at all, just being part of the horns and the music of the Indian city — any Indian city. This time, it’s Madras, and do the perfect idlis and filtered coffee have something to do with it or what. In addition to how parota with chicken curry reminds me of home, with prata for breakfast and after clubbing, and a dose of home is something I could do with right about now.
Merry Christmas everybody, I hope you’re all spending it with the people you love.
