Bowling Through India Read online

  Wasim looked at us. We nodded eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wasim.

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Straya. ‘This is Mr John’s wallet. I need you to take it directly to him. Do not go anywhere else on the way. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Straya, passing the wallet to Wasim. ‘Cos if you don’t, I’ll fucking kill ya!’

  Wasim gulped like a trapped rabbit. ‘Kill me?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Mr Straya, as serious as a heart attack. ‘Kill you.’

  The contents of John’s wallet could have fed and clothed Wasim’s family for a year, but the risk to him wouldn’t be worth it. To become a tour guide in India is to win the lottery. Bribery, corruption and luck are needed. To throw that away would be suicide. Plus, the wallet was tightly bound, and although I’m probably naïve I think sometimes you’ve just got to trust someone.

  The wait was over. A new plane was about to arrive. Grumpiness and irritability ensued. Yet even when laughter is the last thing on your mind, India manages to pull one out of the bag:

  The following items are not to be carried in hand luggage:

  Any type of cosmetics

  Lipsticks and nail polish

  Liquid items, sprays

  Gels, perfumes, deos

  Toothpaste

  Pickles

  ‘Why pick on the pickles?’ I asked Reece once we were settled into our seats.

  ‘They’re not pickles as you and I know,’ he replied. ‘Indian pickles are salty, briny, spicy preserves of lime and mango. And they stink to high heaven.’

  ‘Poor pickles.’

  ‘Poor us, more like,’ said Reece. ‘We have nowhere to stay in Delhi and we miss out on Orchha. Honestly, you don’t know what you’re missing.’

  ‘And we never will,’ I replied, opening page 535 of Shantaram.

  Stew leaned over and closed his magazine. ‘Are you still reading that fucking thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Sadly, yes.’

  Before the pilot told us to turn off our phones, one of ours beeped.

  FROM JOHN BOUGEN:

  GOT IT, THANKS.

  Wasim would live to see another day.

  TOO BUSY FOR CRICKET

  The most memorable thing about Delhi for me is that their Chief Minister’s name is Sheila Dikshit. Another far more forgettable image is of yours truly saving his stomach woes for Asia’s stomach-woe capital.

  Delhi Belly in Delhi. It sounds like a joke, but it wasn’t. Clearly a hangover from a meal in Varanasi, an unknown force had convinced my innards to revolt, retreat and repel. Along with cramps came the uncomfortable thought that my sweatshirt was still covered in dead people’s ashes. The stirrings started as we landed in Delhi. A delicious five-star curry on the plane didn’t help. Those first uncomfortable rumblings, however, were much like when you hear a dodgy sound in your car’s engine: just keep driving and it’ll disappear.

  Eat the curry and you won’t feel like death. Wrong. Eat the curry and enhance your feeling of death.

  ‘Finally, I’ve got company,’ said Brendon, grinning upon hearing of my condition. ‘I was getting lonely there for a while.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I groaned. ‘Pleased to help.’

  The only problem was, Brendon had been fleecing supplies from my first-aid kit ever since his had run out in Darjeeling. Isn’t it funny how, before a journey, fifty dollars for a bunch of funny-named pills can seem a complete rip-off? You feel differently about it on the day you manage to make the inside of a toilet bowl look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  Arriving late at night with no accommodation booked, the Black Craps were fractious and weary. It had been a long few days. Knowing that Orchha was no longer on the cards didn’t help. Although it was nearly midnight, traffic in Delhi was still sluggish. In a healthier state of mind I might have smiled at the Hindus selling Santa hats at every set of traffic lights. As it was, I thought they looked ridiculous.

  ‘Hindus don’t even celebrate Christmas.’ I said.

  ‘Gee, you really have lost your sense of humour,’ said Reece.

  ‘Mmm,’ I moaned.

  ‘Where are we staying?’ Brendon asked as the Goldfish Bowl egged forward.

  ‘The Connaught,’ said Reece. ‘I have no idea where it is and what it’s like. We booked at the last minute, so let’s just hope it’s close to town.’

  ‘Does it have toilets?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh boy,’ said Brendon. ‘You are bad. Welcome to my world!’

  ‘Think we’ll find a nice hot vindaloo tonight,’ said Reece.

  ‘With lots of chilli!’ added Stew.

  ‘He’ll be shitting through the eye of a needle in no time.’

  ‘Hope there are some matches in the toilet.’

  ‘That’s if he makes it that far.’

  ‘I fell into a burning ring of fire.’

  It had begun.

  The Connaught was a perfectly respectable hotel, if a little drab and lifeless. We should have been thankful since we had secured such a late booking, but we couldn’t get past the fact that compared to other places we’d seen, this joint seemed to have been designed by Stevie Wonder. You can tell a lot about a hotel by the guests in its foyer, and these ones looked how I felt.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ said Reece.

  ‘Good idea, Blanket Boy,’ said Stew.

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ I said, heading for the men’s.

  ‘Oo!’ said Brendon, rubbing his hands together. ‘I shouldn’t laugh, but — ’

  ‘Yes you should,’ said Reece.

  The restaurant’s soundtrack was Cliff Richard songs performed on pan flute — on repeat. That in itself would be cause to throw up a thousand times over; coupled with whatever I had picked up in the City of Misery and Death, it tipped me over the edge. To our right sat a red-faced little man from Newcastle, with glasses so thick they made his eyes look like those of a giant squid. He nursed a huge glass of beer while his non-drinking wife eavesdropped and smiled. Normally I would say hello in such a situation, especially when travelling, but tonight I didn’t trust my arse or my mouth..

  The meals arrived and looked worse than what I used to cook in my flat. No one could tell where the garish tablecloth ended and Reece’s rainbow pasta began. Brendon’s spaghetti looked like something that came from the art corner of a kindergarten. Despite this, Stew dived into his like a starved pig at a trough. These were TV dinners minus the taste.

  I pushed my hot chips away; Reece pounced. ‘God, you must really be sick,’ he said, throwing a few in his gob.

  Next, my fears were realised: our British mate wanted to talk. ‘You Kiwis, are you?’ he asked, with a mouthful of food.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Stew.

  Judging by what he said next, I can only assume he’d heard us abuse the hotel’s décor, food, service and music.

  ‘You like a bit of sledging, don’t you, you Kiwis?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Stew. ‘We give as good as we get, especially when we play against the Poms.’

  He continued to stare at us, obviously bored with his wife, and keen to join the four idiots at the table opposite. ‘Your mate doesn’t look very well,’ he said.

  Just looking at this man made me want to be sick. Something about the way his food fell out of his mouth as he ate, the way his gut hung out of his tight T-shirt, the way his man-boobs put his wife’s to shame. But mostly because, what I really needed now was Keira Knightley and Alicia Keyes dressed as nurses, not Benny Hill’s fatter, sweatier, less funny brother.

  ‘He’s got a bit of Delhi Belly,’ said Reece, scraping the leftover sauce from his plate and licking his knife.

  ‘That’s irony for you!’ said the Pom. ‘Delhi Belly — in Delhi!’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said.

  ‘You going to be sick?’ pressed the Pom.

  ‘Eventually,’ I said, and left the table with exactly that intention.

  Seeing Delhi after dark
was postponed due to the late hour. Sometimes a bed beats pretty much anything. We shuffled into the hotel lift, where an Indian guest saw our scuffed cricket bat. (Why we had taken it to dinner was anyone’s guess — maybe we thought we could get a game in between mains and dessert.)

  ‘Cricket?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Brendon.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the streets, mainly,’ said Stew.

  The Indian man paused momentarily, seeming unsure what to say next. Then saw my Black Caps hat.

  ‘From New Zealand?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Reece.

  ‘You know Lou Vincent?’

  ‘Yes,’ we replied, thinking of the Auckland and New Zealand player known for his big-hitting, crowd-pleasing style.

  ‘Very ugly,’ said the Indian man, as if chewing on a wasp.

  Awkward silence as we watched the floor numbers change. Mr Honest said no more.

  ‘This is our stop,’ said Stew at last, and we headed for shut-eye.

  Reece, along with being New Slush Fund Boss, was also Stew’s new room mate. Brendon and I were quietly thankful that we had managed to evict our unrelenting sleep thief. Swapping one snorer for another ensured that Stew’s ear plugs were still the most-used item in his backpack. Our room was like a scene from The Odd Couple, with Brendon’s belching and gas-induced performances topped only by my multiple visits to a toilet three metres from his bed. The night was made complete for me when my big toenail — which had had a laptop fall on it a week before departure, remember? — finally fell off.

  ‘Should I keep it as a memento?’ I asked Brendon before turning out the light.

  ‘That is just disgusting!’ he replied, turning to face the wall.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

  ‘Very perceptive.’

  Typical that the hardened farmer should never get sick, but at least he had an extensive first-aid kit. The next morning, with my stomach cramps in full flight, I flogged some of Stew’s Buscapan pills as he devoured CNN. I stole his remote control too. Every other channel was cricket, which we hardly minded, but it was the Indian commercials that really made our morning. Funny how watching ads at home is a chore, yet when visiting foreign climes they become an event.

  First product: a mosquito repellent ridding your home of not only itchy bites but also dengue fever and malaria.

  Second product: Mass, a powdered drink which makes women, wait for it, get bigger. ‘Are you having trouble putting on weight — and keeping it on? Wait no longer. Mass will help you gain those pounds — and keep them on!’

  The Connaught’s business centre was no place to do business, but at least it had email. First, I had to get a password for the computer. The man who took my money was an Indian version of Professor Honey Dew from The Muppets. Sharpening his pencil, he glanced at my name on the hotel form, paused, then looked up at me with a pert grin. ‘But Mr Brown,’ he said. ‘You are white.’

  I was still laughing when I reached the others in reception, where a grimacing Stew, pacing in a circular motion, covered his ears. ‘Aargh!’ he said. ‘Make it stop! They’re still playing Cliff Richard!’

  The same CD, seemingly the only CD the Connaught owned, spewed through the overhead speakers, ensuring that Devil Woman and Summer Holiday polluted our heads until nightfall. The English bloke from last night approached with his wife. He took one look at me and remarked to the others, ‘I was thinking, your sick mate here needs some bike clips for his pants.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Stew.

  ‘To keep the shit in.’

  I would have laughed if I wasn’t busy trying not to vomit.

  As we hit the streets of Delhi, we discussed two things we hadn’t seen in India: parking wardens and children’s car seats. The former are something most civilised places could do without. The latter is a multi-million-dollar industry which somehow convinces every parent that their car will crash at some stage and their baby will be in it. Cars collide, sure, and any parent with half a brain wouldn’t hesitate to buckle their child in, but as we watched whole families ride past on mopeds, babies included, it made us wonder whether our Western heightened paranoia did anybody any good.

  Delhi is divided into the old and the new. New Delhi, built as the imperial capital by the British, is open and planned; vibrant Old Delhi served as the capital of Islamic India. As with any destination, however, one’s view is tarnished (or enhanced) by previous experiences. As Reece used to live here, it reminded him of work. I had been to Delhi once before, for forty-eight hours in similar temperatures, doing my best — as every know-it-all backpacker does — to ‘get off the beaten track and find the real India’. The result was a frustrating stay, most of which was spent at Delhi railway station, sweating and arguing with pushy women and freedom fighters. I also remember a two-star hotel’s toilet spewing its contents everywhere, after naively thinking that the flush button would do just that. Delhi also provided me with my first taste of terrorism. On a rickety bus outside the airport, hand-painted on my seat, was a sign: ‘Look under your seat. There could be a bomb. Raise alarm. Earn reward.’

  Delhi is hardly a reason to come to India. Like most major cities, it’s the stepping stone to something more memorable. With that in mind, two days in a city we weren’t enamoured with was going to be hard work. Then again, maybe it would surprise us. I guess Delhi just reminded us that we should have been in Orchha.

  ‘Reece,’ I said, ‘for the love of God, would you stop going on about Orchha.’

  ‘But we’d be there by now.’

  ‘Let it go, Blanket Boy,’ said Stew.

  Despite a swagger of emphysema-inducing taxis, today’s plan was to try out Delhi’s Metro system which has been operational since 2002, with sixty-two stations and three lines. The concept was dreamed up in 1960 and work finally began in 1995. Leaving India behind, we rode the escalators down underground to what could easily have been Ealing Broadway or Baker Street. (In fact, if you ever lose it above ground in Delhi, grab a Coke and go below — the Metro is quiet, spotless and relaxing.) At the entrances, a line of beggars was being whipped by a trigger-happy guard. It achieved nothing, of course: like a tide, the beggars returned as soon as the guard turned his back. Before embarking, we were searched — as was everyone — and took our place on an empty carriage underneath India’s capital, passing a billboard for one of the Metro’s newest cafés: Piccadelhi.

  As we left the Metro building, a rare sight greeted us: blue sky in an Indian city. One of the conditions of securing the 2010 Commonwealth Games was to clear Delhi’s skies. Consequently, every auto-rickshaw (and there are only a few million of them) had to be converted to CNG if they wanted to stay on the road. Trucks, too, were allowed to enter the city only between midnight and 6 am. It has made a difference — the Smurf-blue sky was as clear as anything we had seen in pollution-free Darjeeling.

  The beeping, however, seemed impossibly louder than Kolkata. On the roads there were no lanes, just a mass of bikes and rickshaws and taxi drivers. No order either, just fit in where you can. In the middle of this chaos, tireless workers transported flour, bamboo, bananas, peanuts, buckets and customers on antiquated transport. A mother, snotty-nosed toddlers by her side, stood in the middle of the road adjusting her sari while trucks carrying white goats with brown socks patiently steered around her.

  Nearby, a guide’s eyes lit up as he spotted the four remaining Black Craps. Convinced he was onto a winner, he ambled beside us, full of bravado. ‘You want to see Old Delhi?’ he inquired.

  ‘No thanks,’ Brendon replied, speeding up as to keep warm.

  ‘The Red Fort?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Great Mosque?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘Humayan’s Tomb?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Stew, swinging the bat. ‘We just want a game of cricket.’

  Finding such a game in Delhi was not going to be an issue given the enthusiasm shown by more than a dozen
local school kids in ties and blazers who ran over to us. Their excitement was fever-pitch. ‘Cricket! Cricket!’

  ‘I’ll bowl!’

  ‘Please, sir, give me bat!’

  ‘We play! We play!’

  Like it or not, it was game on with Jain Sanskrit Community School.

  ‘Please come,’ said the chubby ringleader, scurrying toward an inner-city park where businessmen sat on ramshackle benches eating their lunch amid long grass, rubbish and cow dung. The boys rolled their sleeves up and began building wickets from bricks, while others took turns at hurling Vicky towards Stew.

  ‘OK!’ he said. ‘Let’s get a proper game going.’ And we were back into it. The familiar crowd enveloped Blanket Boy and his scorebook. Brendon took his camera from his bag, and I prayed that the ‘blockers’ I had taken one hour earlier were going to work.

  But before that first ball was even bowled, a policeman in his late seventies drew a halt to proceedings. Whether Granddad was still in the force or whether he had scored his uniform from a fancy-dress shop was debatable, but the schoolboys seemed to take his demands seriously. Despite being kids, they were local and, by default, our only guide. Plus, Granddad had a baton. Then again, we had a cricket bat.

  It was time for a little negotiation. ‘Just a quick game, OK?’ I asked.

  ‘No cricket!’ said the policeman, shooing the boys away like seagulls from chips.

  ‘But we won’t be long,’ I persisted.

  Blank face. Don’t mess with me. I could go and hire an Indian Army outfit. ‘No cricket,’ he repeated.

  ‘But we’ve come all the way from New Zealand.’

  ‘No cricket.’

  ‘Please convince him,’ pleaded the Chubster, hands in the prayer position. ‘Please convince him!’

  But Granddad was in no mood for compromise. Not that he needed to be. Within seconds of calling off the match, the boys fled like robbers in the night. We could just make out their petrified faces as they hid behind a nearby bush. ‘Teacher’s coming!’ they hissed in unison.