Monday 30 June 2008
Now that's... that's, chaos theory...
Mumbai Station was pretty depressing. The knuckle-bitingly atrocious reality of the poverty in India hit me like a cheap whore asking for his money back. That makes little to no sense, but the delete key's broken on this keyboard, so, erm, yeah.
It was heartbreaking to have women begging for money and food carrying babies that were only a few months old. I was expecting it, but nothing was really going to prepare me enough to be as hard-nosed as was necessary.
It's hard to say no, but 99% of the time you have to, as unfortunately - and obviously - once the ladies know that you will give anything at all it is no longer a case of accepting it, but either asking for more or fetching their mates to come after you too.
It's all rather distressing for my poor English brain. Although saying that, what has struck me most, and what worries me greatly, is a feeling of resentment that has started to creep into my mind when people start begging to me and Helen. It's the strangest feeling I have ever felt. And I've had a doctor put his finger up my bum.
Once on the train (3rd tier air conditioned coach), we met Ajit, a young bloke who spoke English well good like and was going down to Kerala to see some extended family before shooting off to Oklahoma in the US of States to go to uni. He was very interested in us and asked lots of questions, and it was interesting to speak to him and get ideas of what to do down in Kerala. Plus he was the first of many Arsenal supporters that we've met. Lad.
After 26 hours we got to Kochi and got a rickshaw to our homestay in the trees, which seemed as though it was in the middle of the rainforest. If a rainforest had cats having what sounded like the most painful intercourse ever for eight hours outside our window. Which I'm not sure that they do. I certainly didn't see any in Congo (which is my fourth favourite film about apes).
None of this sounds very much like chaos theory yet, but just fucking hold on a minute will you?
I'm now going to turn to an (abridged, edited and commented upon in italics) email that Hel had sent to her mother MrsMaryMum and sister Emma and also other members of the Dagley clan that care about this sort of thing.
But instead we ended up making plans with these two and two days later we were in Munnar - in one of Tetley's biggest tea plantations! Munnar was really good, and it was crazy shit to go from 35 degree heat to 4000 metres above sea level and be freezing literally in the clouds. Photos will follow as soon as I work out how to do it.
[Two months, as it turns out.]
So, in true Goldblum style, if we hadn't have sat errrr next to the Kiwis we wouldn't have heard about the Brit couple, if I had played football we would have missed the errrrr, the errr kitten, if we had of missed the kitten we probably wouldn't have seen GG and Mia, wouldn't have moved to their homestay, gone to Munnar and changed all our plans, errrr and Helen... Helen wouldn't have had a story about a kitten that she tells to literally everyone we meet, whether they want to hear it or not.
Now that's, that's chaos theory.
Eventually we did leave Kochi though, and got on a 52 hour train journey back to Mumbai. Then a 20 hour train to Jaipur. Where I write this now. (On another island, that doesn't have fences...)
It's hard to say no, but 99% of the time you have to, as unfortunately - and obviously - once the ladies know that you will give anything at all it is no longer a case of accepting it, but either asking for more or fetching their mates to come after you too.
It's all rather distressing for my poor English brain. Although saying that, what has struck me most, and what worries me greatly, is a feeling of resentment that has started to creep into my mind when people start begging to me and Helen. It's the strangest feeling I have ever felt. And I've had a doctor put his finger up my bum.
Once on the train (3rd tier air conditioned coach), we met Ajit, a young bloke who spoke English well good like and was going down to Kerala to see some extended family before shooting off to Oklahoma in the US of States to go to uni. He was very interested in us and asked lots of questions, and it was interesting to speak to him and get ideas of what to do down in Kerala. Plus he was the first of many Arsenal supporters that we've met. Lad.
After 26 hours we got to Kochi and got a rickshaw to our homestay in the trees, which seemed as though it was in the middle of the rainforest. If a rainforest had cats having what sounded like the most painful intercourse ever for eight hours outside our window. Which I'm not sure that they do. I certainly didn't see any in Congo (which is my fourth favourite film about apes).
None of this sounds very much like chaos theory yet, but just fucking hold on a minute will you?
I'm now going to turn to an (abridged, edited and commented upon in italics) email that Hel had sent to her mother MrsMaryMum and sister Emma and also other members of the Dagley clan that care about this sort of thing.
"Me and the boy went out for some curry chow last night and we stumbled upon two LOUD mouth Kiwis in a restaurant who shouted us over as 'the only other white people in town'. They've been around a bit and were using Kochin as a base so had a few interesting stories, one in particular about a British couple who lived in Kochin and took in stray animals, resulting in a menagerie of critters infesting their house.
We told them about our plans to do a backwater trip the next day. When they hopped back on the mopeds in the direction of the wine shop, and left us with a map to their homestay, we were all smiles and enthusiasm but as soon as they were out of sight, I said to Chris that we should just do our own thing (because I'm a xenophobe). End of, or so we thought.
Anyway, we faffed around for a bit and then decided to head back to our house which is down a long residential road. It was dark by that time and as we neared a particularly dark part of the road we saw a dog up ahead, sniffing around, and consequently nearly being run over by a moped.
When we got closer we realised that he's been sniffing around a frog, so we ran over to put it in the grass and shoo the doggy away. Not a frog. A kitten, no more than 7 days old, eyes just open, covered in shit, and with little cuts on its paws and tail. (About ten minutes earlier I'd been asked to play football with some lads, but I'd declined as it was getting dark and Hel would've just been sat there. This was a life altering decisions not dissimilar similar to Paul Merson sharing a room with Tony Adams.)
Cue emotional turmoil and panic from me, and (dignified) resignation from Christopher (I actually tried to convince Helen that the dog was probably raising it like one of those kids they find every so often that gets raised by wolves, so it'd be as disloyal as a cat and stink to fuck like a dog).
SO, I scooped her up and took her back to my room. (I must say at this point I thought about tapping Helen on one shoulder grabbing the cat and hurling it, but I didn't have the balls, that's when I realised I'd been bumping too much Biggie Smalls.)
SO, anyway I tried to clean her up as best as I could with some cotton wool and water and put her in a box, after unsuccessfully trying to feed her with the syringe.
But by this time I'm verging on hysterical (this is not an exaggeration) as I knew we were supposed to be leaving the next morning, and of course I was worrying that we may have stolen her away from her mummy. I decided on a POA."So essentially we went back and found this homestay where the Kiwi feller 'GG' (what, really?) and the little Oz lady Mia were having a few beers in their tiny homestay. Hel and Mia went round and woke up the crazy British couple that take in stray animals and I sat there talking shit with Greg. It was pretty late and we were meant to be up at six to get a bus to the backwater place.
But instead we ended up making plans with these two and two days later we were in Munnar - in one of Tetley's biggest tea plantations! Munnar was really good, and it was crazy shit to go from 35 degree heat to 4000 metres above sea level and be freezing literally in the clouds. Photos will follow as soon as I work out how to do it.
[Two months, as it turns out.]
So, in true Goldblum style, if we hadn't have sat errrr next to the Kiwis we wouldn't have heard about the Brit couple, if I had played football we would have missed the errrrr, the errr kitten, if we had of missed the kitten we probably wouldn't have seen GG and Mia, wouldn't have moved to their homestay, gone to Munnar and changed all our plans, errrr and Helen... Helen wouldn't have had a story about a kitten that she tells to literally everyone we meet, whether they want to hear it or not.
Now that's, that's chaos theory.
Eventually we did leave Kochi though, and got on a 52 hour train journey back to Mumbai. Then a 20 hour train to Jaipur. Where I write this now. (On another island, that doesn't have fences...)
Kissing someone else's mother goodbye, I suddenly got very excited.
'Helen, one day we'll look back on this and think: 'I wish I hadn't bought that big bottle of water in Boots, I can't take the bastard past this gate' I said, tightening my surprisingly light (16.2 kgs) backpack around my taut, muscular frame.
The flight to Mumbai was pretty much a success as no one died and I also quickly realised that every time I asked for red wine a woman with orange hands would bring me some, gratis. (French for free.)
The ending of the flight was especially exciting, as we had to circle around for an hour in various pockets of high and low pressured monsoon air. The atmosphere rapidly changed from 'Ooh, that was a big jolt, teehee!' to 'Is this sort of thing normal?' and finally 'Fuck me we're all going to die'. Those being Helen's last words before curling into a sobbing ball of flesh.
It's at moments like these that I really take the situation onto my broad shoulders, so I did just that. 'Another two red wines please. Oh, and a small Sprite for the lady.'
This may seem as though I was being a little unfair and perhaps a tad insensitive about Helen's very real fear of flying. However, dear e-reader, let me enlighten you to the first nine hours of the ten hour flight. Here's the black-box recording:
21:00 Helen (H) 'Do you want to sit in the window seat Chris?
Chris (C) 'YES PLEASE DAGLEY!'
21:08 After approximately eight minutes of looking at a man bang the wing of our plane with what can only be described as a sledgehammer - our fellow patron of the air finally joined us and sat down in the aisle seat. She was a pretty Indianish looking girl of about 20 or so years.
21:11 (H) 'Do you still have a bunged up nose Chris?'
(C) 'Not many Hel, it'll be okay though as the prospective view out of the window will no doubt clear all of my senses like optical olbas oil, leaving me invigorated and full of the spruce of joyous life!'
(H) 'I want to sit next to the window and look out of it.'
(C) 'Okay my love!'
21:12 I discover that Helen has no intention of looking out of the window, but has tactically positioned herself as far away from this new girl as British Airways would legally allow her. She was probably the single smelliest person I have ever had the misfortune of being nasally competent near. And at this point as you will recall, dear blog-glancer, I couldn't smell my elbow from my arsehole.
I could taste her armpits on the air. It was actually ridiculous how bad the smell was. Its potency was frankly impressive. I had been sacrificed to the BO goddess. And Dagley was the priest tearing out my well deodorised heart. Thus when the she-beast started to cry about crashing and dying, I was half-thinking that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad turn of events.
So, the next morning we got down to Mumbai station, where it was clear that a lot of people probably had died. But that's for another fruity bloghurt that you can lick the lid of. (Clare this is a metaphor, please don't get upset.)
The flight to Mumbai was pretty much a success as no one died and I also quickly realised that every time I asked for red wine a woman with orange hands would bring me some, gratis. (French for free.)
The ending of the flight was especially exciting, as we had to circle around for an hour in various pockets of high and low pressured monsoon air. The atmosphere rapidly changed from 'Ooh, that was a big jolt, teehee!' to 'Is this sort of thing normal?' and finally 'Fuck me we're all going to die'. Those being Helen's last words before curling into a sobbing ball of flesh.
It's at moments like these that I really take the situation onto my broad shoulders, so I did just that. 'Another two red wines please. Oh, and a small Sprite for the lady.'
This may seem as though I was being a little unfair and perhaps a tad insensitive about Helen's very real fear of flying. However, dear e-reader, let me enlighten you to the first nine hours of the ten hour flight. Here's the black-box recording:
21:00 Helen (H) 'Do you want to sit in the window seat Chris?
Chris (C) 'YES PLEASE DAGLEY!'
21:08 After approximately eight minutes of looking at a man bang the wing of our plane with what can only be described as a sledgehammer - our fellow patron of the air finally joined us and sat down in the aisle seat. She was a pretty Indianish looking girl of about 20 or so years.
21:11 (H) 'Do you still have a bunged up nose Chris?'
(C) 'Not many Hel, it'll be okay though as the prospective view out of the window will no doubt clear all of my senses like optical olbas oil, leaving me invigorated and full of the spruce of joyous life!'
(H) 'I want to sit next to the window and look out of it.'
(C) 'Okay my love!'
21:12 I discover that Helen has no intention of looking out of the window, but has tactically positioned herself as far away from this new girl as British Airways would legally allow her. She was probably the single smelliest person I have ever had the misfortune of being nasally competent near. And at this point as you will recall, dear blog-glancer, I couldn't smell my elbow from my arsehole.
I could taste her armpits on the air. It was actually ridiculous how bad the smell was. Its potency was frankly impressive. I had been sacrificed to the BO goddess. And Dagley was the priest tearing out my well deodorised heart. Thus when the she-beast started to cry about crashing and dying, I was half-thinking that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad turn of events.
In retrospect, survival was probably the logical answer. If only Lynx did an Africa for women.
After the iron bird we entered the iron vole, my first Mumbai rickshaw. A baptism of fire to say the least. Whilst 'driving' along at forty miles an hour on a road that had the topography of Ray Liotta's cheeks, our cabbie was trying to ask directions from the driver of a moped that was carrying at least four generations of a family.
But, again, we didn't die, and eventually we reached the catering college that we were to bed down in.
That night we met Girish, an Indian feller that Helen had contacted through work, who had booked our train tickets for the next day, down to Kochi in Kerala. We took our first (and at the time of writing, only) public bus to downtown Mumbai, had a mooch around, had a good curry and went down to see the 'Gateway to India', a place that means nothing to anyone - least of all Indian people.
After the iron bird we entered the iron vole, my first Mumbai rickshaw. A baptism of fire to say the least. Whilst 'driving' along at forty miles an hour on a road that had the topography of Ray Liotta's cheeks, our cabbie was trying to ask directions from the driver of a moped that was carrying at least four generations of a family.
But, again, we didn't die, and eventually we reached the catering college that we were to bed down in.
That night we met Girish, an Indian feller that Helen had contacted through work, who had booked our train tickets for the next day, down to Kochi in Kerala. We took our first (and at the time of writing, only) public bus to downtown Mumbai, had a mooch around, had a good curry and went down to see the 'Gateway to India', a place that means nothing to anyone - least of all Indian people.
But, again, we didn't die.
Not even an incident with a pigeon.
Not even an incident with a pigeon.
So, the next morning we got down to Mumbai station, where it was clear that a lot of people probably had died. But that's for another fruity bloghurt that you can lick the lid of. (Clare this is a metaphor, please don't get upset.)
Problogue
After months of telling everyone, including myself, that I would be a fountain of blogmanship while I was away with my heterosex partner Dagley, it has actually taken me over two weeks to put pen to paper. This can be put down to one, or rather a combination of three things, thusly;
- I have been totally overwhelmed by the plethora of mentalness that is India, leaving my pen impotent in a sea of vast anecdotal vaginas
- I have already adopted the lackadaisical approach to travelling the globe, what may happen will and it's none of my pen's business
- I lost my pen
Anyway, the point is I've been in India for two weeks with Helen, and we've got the blogs. So strap yourself in and prepare to get your brain-porcelain pebbledashed.
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