Bowling Through India Read online

Mozammil Hussen changed teams - 6

  Tofeek Kazza run out Mohammed Asif - 0

  Anser Riza not out - 1

  Nazim Pasha not out - 3

  Subahan Pasha caught Mohammed Asif - 4

  Taseen Nasar lbw Payaz - 0

  Extras - 17

  Total - 51

  Bowling: Stew 1-9, Justin 0-9, Pappu Singh 0-21!, Mohammed Asif 3-10, Payaz Alam 1-4

  BLACK CRAPS

  Stew bowled Alam - 3

  Justin caught Alam - 5

  Rajit Patel don’t know how out, too many quick wickets! - 0

  Pappu Singh bowled Taseem - 0

  Mohammed Asif run out Alam - 6

  Payaz Alam don’t know how out - 0

  Extras - 0

  Total - 14

  India wins by 37 runs.

  India wins series 6-5, with two matches abandoned.

  Wink was a funky upmarket bar on the ground floor of our hotel. It had come highly recommended in Time Out. This was where India’s elite drank cocktails, and where we spent our last few hours in India. Across the room, wealthy families kissed and laughed. One boy showed off his English girlfriend to his wary parents. We drank gin and toasted the town otherwise known as ‘London on acid’.

  In the lift afterwards, I admitted to stealing a brown leather coaster with the bar’s name on it. It came as little surprise to see the farmer confess the same, having smuggled one in his sock before departure. Reece nearly hit the roof upon rereading our bill for the evening. ‘Two hundred and eighty dollars for six gins!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘They were doubles,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s Brendon’s credit card, and he’s in bed,’ said Stew.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ I said.

  ‘What a close-knit team,’ Stew finished.

  A phone sounded just as we reached our floor.

  FROM JOHN BOUGEN:

  YEEHAH! GOT LAST SEAT ON ONLY FLIGHT OUT OF EGYPT. DON’T CARE THAT IT’S 3.40AM VIA ABU DHABI.

  The next morning Stew read the Times of India in the lobby, cramming as many stories as possible. I looked around the hotel, doing the same with images and smells. Brendon had just returned from the toilet. It was 23 December and at home our families were lighting up the barbie and the Christmas tree. Reece was the only one of us staying on, opting to jump on a thirty-hour economy train ride back to Very-Nasty. He had his accommodation booked, but sadly not his second cousin’s credit card pin number. We had no time for breakfast, not that our bill included it, settling for stolen buns from the smorgasbord. Once a backpacker . . .

  Outside, yellow Ambassadors came and went in Mumbai’s early-morning haze. So did people. The sound of sweeping filled the air. Cars honked. Dogs barked. The city of eighteen million took a deep breath and prepared for chaos. Reece often spoke of what he missed about India when he returned to New Zealand: the element of danger and the sense that anything could happen. An uninsured builder would never balance on a ten-storey-high scaffolding with a smile on his face in Tauranga. A family of five would be arrested for travelling on a moped in Wanganui. Our cotton-wool society protects us, but we do miss out on everyday adventure.

  The breakfasts, the lunches and dinners. The piss-taking. The smell of piss. All things we would miss. John was the only one I had known before the trip started, yet because of that horrendous day in Varanasi he’d had to leave within days. For those of us left, it was an arranged marriage that worked. Guys don’t gush and guys don’t compliment, but after time in a frenzied whirlpool like India, a quiet respect had developed between all of us. We lived in each other’s pockets, but no one flipped and no one grumbled. Maybe that was because each of us brought something to the table.

  Stew had a way with people; kids, posh waiters, pushy touts. He was one of those rarest of animals: a traveller with no baggage. It helped, too, that the Indians were wary of his size and bald head. He would later say that he was astounded that no matter how chaotic things got in India, with every sense abused individually or all at once, to the locals it was just another day. ‘A democratic society with room for obscene wealth and rejected lepers, all living together,’ he said. ‘But the best thing, I reckon, has been the kids. They didn’t know if they were poor, lucky, healthy or sick; they were just like their peers all around the world. The look on their faces when they bowled us out, or the cheek I was given when I took my hat off, would have been the same in Christchurch or Kolkata.’

  Reece, for all his urine-guzzling and blanket-wearing, was a revelation. Never has ‘don’t judge a book buy its cover’ been more appropriate. He was the King of India, and we were envious. Those of us who speak only one language don’t know how much we miss out on. For surely once you learn another, as Reece had, getting by on bastardised English in any multilingual nation must be like travelling with your ears, nose and eyes shut. His connection with Varanasi remained a mystery to us, but the love shown him by his adopted family on the Ganges was touching. ‘I am constantly surprised that among such pandemonium, things still happen,’ he’d said as we ground our way though Mumbai. ‘And that Indians continue to be pretty chilled-out about everything.’

  Brendon was the generous go-getter. It was he who, against all wishes, determined we play one more game despite soaring temperatures. He could easily have moaned the most, carrying that huge lens of his around town, but never did. While the rest of us bowled, argued and swore, he was more often than not perched on some nearby hilltop, doing his best to get the shot of the century. And he got more than a few. He should also be given points for tolerating would-be hackers when used to working with professional sportsmen. His transition from worry-free, scrounging tout to Dad was a smooth one, even if the rest of us abused the hell out of the privilege.

  Soon, the familiar sight of the Goldfish Bowl rumbled into the hotel’s forecourt. The big old tank would become home to another faceless group of shell-shocked travellers before we even reached Sahar International Airport. Encyclopaedic Farmer Guy continued to regurgitate facts from the paper. ‘Did you know,’ he said, incredulously, ‘that Chandagar, a city of only five million, has thirty-three thousand millionaires?’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘And England were bowled out for eighty-one against Sri Lanka?’

  ‘Is that right.’

  The only piece missing from reception was Obi-Wan himself. Blanket Boy. Wala. Gee. The Jedi Knight. As our driver prepared to load our bags, a lift bell chimed. The doors parted. Walking towards us was a man we knew well, but who somehow looked different. Almost naked, like a nun without her habit. Then we worked out why.

  No blanket. T-shirt. And half-pants.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ Stew said, looking up from his paper.

  ‘Only clean clothes I’ve got left.’

  ‘Where’s your respect, wala?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve corrupted me,’ he confessed. ‘I hope you’re proud.’

  ‘You may as well be nude,’ said Brendon.

  ‘Pretty unethical.’

  ‘Are they swimming trunks? They are, aren’t they!’

  ‘Oh, get fucked,’ said Reece. ‘I’ve had enough of you lot.’

  Man-hugs followed. Then Half-Pants Man went east to drink Old Monk by the Ganges while the rest of us went west, home for Christmas ham and backyard cricket.

  On 26 November, 2008 Mumbai was thrown into unprecedented chaos as militant gunmen took part of the city hostage. The attacks lasted three days and killed at least one hundred and seventy-three people, wounding nearly twice as many. I watched the horror unfold on CNN from our radio studio in Auckland as Indian reporters stood in front of plush hotels retelling indescribably cowardly acts perpetrated on their own people, as well as on innocent tourists.

  Five days earlier, ten men had left Karachi, hijacked an Indian trawler and killed its captain. Then, with India’s financial epicentre in sight, they stole three inflatable speedboats and prepared a deadly and terrifying assault. Armed with AK-47 rifles, two of the terrorists
entered the passenger hall of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, opened fire and threw grenades, killing at least thirty people. Four men also entered the Taj Mahal Hotel, two entered the Oberoi Trident, and two entered Nariman House. Leopold’s, the friendly expat hangout where we ate curry and drank beer, was raided and ten people were shot.

  India didn’t deserve this. It is not a violent part of the world. That a country with over a billion people should live in relative harmony most of the time says something about its inhabitants. I spoke to Stew during coverage of the attacks, and we reflected on what Reece had said about the Pakistan-loving Indians we’d played against in our last match in Mumbai: ‘They’ll be blowing shit up in twenty years.’

  Mumbai continued to burn for days, its wounded recovered in hospitals, and its dead mourned and celebrated through unusually quiet streets. TV coverage beamed images to the world. We had walked past those hotels. We had eaten in those restaurants. We had caught those trains. And when I asked each of the guys, each replied, just as I expected, ‘I’d go back tomorrow.’

  Brendon O’Hagan hasn’t put down his camera since returning home. Despite covering fashion and sports events, his experiences in India — watching an average team play averagely — haven’t renewed his love for cricket one iota. He favours sharing a room with his wife over an intercontinental sleepwalker and, although it took months of dogged determination and bland food, his arse is now fine.

  Reece Irving is currently finishing a Bachelor of Applied Science Major in environmental studies in Tauranga. He still keeps in touch with the Black Craps and still eats with his fingers. His home is a hundred steps from the bottle store, where he speaks Hindi and reminisces of his first love to the equally homesick Indian owner. He no longer drinks his own urine.

  John Bougen is now a farmer in the South Island high country. He didn’t just fall in love with the land: he tied the knot with author and farmer Christine Fernyhough, who had to forfeit the trip and give her ticket to Stew after she was charged by an angry calf three weeks before departure date. John continues to hate Varanasi and love adventure.

  Stew Gunn was the only Black Crap to have a stopover at the conclusion of the tour. He says that his two days in Singapore were, compared to the madness of India, ‘incredibly dull and uneventful’. He resumed life on his South Island farm where he honks his tractor horn every couple of minutes to remind himself of Kolkata. He continues to wonder where his next freebie will come from.

  As for me, I continue to fall out of bed at 4.45 am and tell bad jokes on the radio. I drink a lot of chai with sugar and walk past my local curry house with a feeling of longing. I miss the country and I miss breakfasts with four blokes who showed no respect or pity for a man who suffered from somnambulism. India gets in your blood.

  I bloody miss it.

  Author’s website and blog

  OTHER BOOKS BY JUSTIN BROWN

  Adult Non-fiction

  In Search Of Swingers

  What happens when a man who sucks at golf takes on the U.S at their own game? He bends the rules. Bestselling author Justin Brown has the crazy idea of touring the U.S and playing golf with whoever is on the front page of the newspaper in every town he visits. Amazingly, he's not arrested. With charm and wit, Justin blags his way into meeting clowns, Stevie Wonder impersonators, crocodile wranglers and drunken beauty queens. His journey is full of mayhem, self-discovery and as it turns out, very little golf. You'll laugh and cringe at the situations this New Zealander gets into in a book that will restore your faith in mad journeys and the kindness of strangers. (Print edition first published by Random House as Teed Off in the USA.)

  One Man, 23 Beers and a Crazy Bet

  It was the bet of a lifetime - and if Justin Brown lost, he'd be forced to go to the other side of the world and pay his way home as a door-to-door busker. Sure enough, wannabe musician Brown found himself penniless and freezing. Armed with a duffle coat and a guitar, he travels the country in mid-winter, knocking on doors and singing for his supper. He meets gypsies, drinks with Britain's most famous street singer, harasses carol singers, plucks turkeys, speaks to J.K.Rowling and gets told to beat it 357 times, all in his quest to get home to New Zealand. Brown delivers an hilarious account of his journey, showing why he's become an award-winning travel writer and bestselling author.

  UK on a G-String (UK version of above)

  Myth New Zealand

  Bestselling author Justin Brown sets out to discover whether modern New Zealand is the same place he was promised when growing up in the 1970s - the land of rugby, racing and beer, 80 million sheep and number 8 fencing wire. Brown performs a 21st century reality check, seeking to learn whether the land of his birth is still the best place to bring up kids and what the future might hold for its citizens.

  For children:

  Shot, Boom, Score!

  (Age - 8-12) A hilarious story about a boy who is promised a Gamebox V3 by his dad if he scores 20 wickets in cricket and 10 tries in rugby, but is foiled at every turn by the class bully.

  'Toby, if you get twenty wickets and ten tries before the end of the year, Mum and I'll buy you a new GameBox V3.'

  Can you believe it? One minute I'm in trouble for double-bouncing my sister and the next Dad is telling me I've got the new GameBox V3! And it's not even Christmas. Shot!

  The Dog That Ate The Bathroom (Picture ebook)

  Mr Nut is a naughty dog, but that doesn't mean you won't love him. Find out what happens when our canine hero pushes the boundaries even more than normal! THE DOG THAT ATE THE BATHROOM is a picture book for all ages, written by bestelling author Justin Brown, with illustrations by Guy Harkness. The story came about when author Justin Brown sat down to create a story with his (then) 6-year-old daughter, Sophie. The only rule being - write the first thing that comes into your head. Mr Nut and THE DOG THAT ATE THE BATHROOM was born.

  The Fire Boys Series

  Do you have a 6-9 year old in the house who spends too much time on Nintendo? The Fireboys could be the answer. It's an exciting, easy-to-read series starring three unlikely characters. There's Red (the competitive one) Leo (the serious one) and Spark (the loveable idiot). The stories have strong plots, quirky characters and are perfect for kids 6-9 years. This series has proved very popular in schools and is now available for general sale. In Fireboys - The Collection you get all of their adventures in one e-book.