It's just not cricket

At first I thought the weird high-pitched squeaking was coming from the slightly ill-fitting back door of the kitchen. Every time I went in there the last couple of days, it seemed to stop once I closed the door tight. Bit of WD40 should do the trick, I said to myself, not being an expert on hinges (or anything, for that matter). Then it started again every time I turned my back. Grrrr.

This evening is different: it’s clearly coming from somewhere different. Under the microwave-cum-normal all-in-one oven thingummyjig. I get near – and then it stops. It’s toying with me. So I start removing all the crap from the cupboard, the stuff that came with the microwave that I never use. And there he is, a lovely Indian house cricket about an inch long, squeezed in between two bits of polystyrene. And his mate as well, hopping around merrily in a very dark cupboard without a care in the world, suddenly chatting away nineteen to the dozen.

Now I would just take out a big book and squish them, only I’m not that kind of guy, particularly not when I’m only a couple of miles away from Mani Bhavan, the great house of Gandhiji and his politics. I’m not sure he would approve.

So I spend the next fifteen minutes armed with a cup and a Microwave User Guide, chasing these two little buggers around the kitchen on all fours as they hop about the place. Frankly, they are winning. My patience runs dry. Thank goodness for big tupperware boxes. I trap one, and punch the air weedily, Tim Henman-style. But there’s a flaw in my plan: this big box strategy is fine for the trapping stage, but the trusty microwave user guide is no longer big enough. Fiddlesticks.

So I scout around this mostly empty flat, wishing I lived in one of my old hovels with magazines and unopened letters all over the place. Redemption finally arrives, courtesy of Time Out Mumbai. I knew it had to serve some purpose.

Soon, both of these little chaps are out enjoying the night air, far happier I’m sure than with the measly pickings on offer in my kitchen. And I have some random skewers and bits of oven paraphernalia that are covered in miniscule cricket droppings: but I’m also free from the tyranny of the squeak – for the time being. Dona nobis pacem, domine, dona nobis pacem.

Cattle class

I woke at seven a.m. yesterday morning, somewhere in northern Maharashtra (or possibly southern Gujarat – it’s difficult to tell), 14½ hours into my 16 hour journey on the Rajdhani Express from Delhi to Mumbai. It’s one of India’s fastest trains, shooting across the country at an average speed of over fifty miles an hour. (FIFTY! Eat my shorts, TGV).

Before the sun went down the previous evening, we had a lovely view of the countryside south of Delhi: it’s mostly flat, farming country, with straw huts dotting the landscape and the odd bored-looking cow to keep us on our toes. Occasionally we’d pass slowly through a small town, where at least half the buildings look unfinished, the bicycle rickshaws skilfully avoid the piles of rubbish, and a handsome temple rises above the throng. And there’s still a cow, only this time it’s wandering along the track, right next to my window, giving me a quizzical, slightly disdainful look like I’ve committed some dreadful faux pas at a cocktail party.

All in all, it’s a much more civilised way to get around than all these ghastly aeroplanes. Where else can you get an 800-mile journey, a comfortable bed for the night, a good supper (mateer paneer, cumin dal, cardamom rice and chapathi, with chutney to spice it up and dahi to cool it down), a well-meaning if slightly mysterious breakfast (a sort of fillet-o-veg with peas and tomato ketchup), lashings of tea and biscuits and a morning newspaper delivered to your bedside… and still get change from forty quid?

Human pyrex

They told me that Delhi in mid-May would be “really rather hot”. Turns out they understated that one, by a couple of reallies and at least one unpleasantly rude word (take your pick). I’ve never been anywhere this hot: it’s about 43 degrees, I’m told.

It feels like a giant, who’s really into ceramics (as a lot of giants are), decided to construct a colossal kiln about ten miles wide. The old cliché about walking into an oven is spot on: occasionally a strong breeze gets up, right in your eyes, which is like a fan-assisted oven I suppose. When I’m accidentally outside for more than about five minutes I start to feel like a cheap, slowly browning chicken. And 15 million people live here?

Luckily I’m staying somewhere that’s posh enough to have air conditioning. It’s also posh enough to have a grand piano in the lobby, although not quite posh enough to have someone actually playing it. Instead, they have a computer programme that somehow knows how to press all the piano keys to Chopin’s greatest hits and bingo! – you’ve got yourself some cheesy hotel lobby music. You can wander right up to the piano and the keys are going up and down but there’s nobody there, like the bastard child of Knight Rider and Liberace.

(PS I was just thinking: there’s a great children’s story waiting to be written about this. Imagine – a magic piano! What fun! I’ll get right on to it and make my fortune! Then I remembered Sparky. Gah!)

Election update - news just in...

Ok, I do love the Indian elections after all. Sounds like English Country Walks have some competition...

Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather

I'm normally a cheerfully grubby shoes kinda guy. But earlier this evening I passed a shoe-shine maestro on the street, looked down at my feet and said 'aw, go on then, you've talked me into it'. In fluent Marathi, obviously.

So for the next ten minutes I get to watch a real professional at work. I can't help thinking that he's far better as his job than I am at mine, but then he's not alone in that... When he's nearly done, a little kid wanders along from nowhere, grabs my shoes and the man's brush, throws on a little more polish, and attacks them with gusto. Gives them some real humpty, too, no messing about. Two shoe-shiners for the price of one! Bargain. (Although in size terms, it was really only one and a half shoe shiners.)

Any allegations that my newfound interest in shiny shoes is prompted by a desire to use them as a mirror to look up girls' skirts will be firmly denied.

Smalltown boy

Whistling In The Dark is a new book assembling a series of interviews with Indian gay people outside the big cities, whose lives are not just illegal (albeit with a law that’s almost never enforced) but almost entirely invisible.

At the launch at the Oxford bookstore, we meet a middle-aged, working-class man talking freely of his secret double-life, completely unknown to his wife and kids. Ok, so people still live like that in the UK too, forty years after legalisation.

But what doesn’t happen in the UK is those men appearing at Time Out-listed book events in the nearest big city to their home. It’s a sign of how massively stratified this society is: the chances of news of his appearance filtering back home are basically nil. The world of book launches and the world of ordinary life in small-town India are, well, worlds apart.

The gaping chasm between the lives of India’s classes is in most ways a vile phenomenon; but perhaps one of the benefits of gaping chasms is that you can shine a little light in.


No milk today

I pop into a big shop to buy a little milk. But they don't have the one that I know is ok. This is a tragedy worse than anything devised by Sophocles. So I spend ten minutes comparing the small print on eighteen different cartons of milk looking for the sacred text: "No Boiling Required".

Eventually, I track one down, to the sound of a choir of angels singing in my head. Joy unconfined. It's amazing that when you know next to sod all about how to live in a country, and you know full well that you know next to sod all, the shrapnels you do know take on an importance of epic proportions.

Flaccid election

Bombay voted yesterday. The first election since 26/11, part of the biggest democratic exercise the world’s ever seen, etc etc. You know the drill: rallies, placards, long lines of voters, intimidation, maybe the odd bombing, all good developing-world election fun. Except that none of it happened.

You wouldn’t have actually known there was an election in South Bombay yesterday, but for the fact that most companies gave their staff a day off so the city was really quiet. I plumped for the train home after work and had almost a carriage to myself, when normally at rush hour you get less than a square foot.

But it seems most people just took it as an extra holiday and cleared off.