Goodbye to the circus (for now)

I'm sitting in a hotel bar in Delhi, watching England get themselves out with inevitable regularity, and making 330ml of Leffe last about two hours. I've a 2.30am flight back to Blighty, which I think constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment, and hence a lot of time to kill.

And frankly, in spite of the genuine lure of seeing lots of friends and loved ones, the thought of nearly four weeks away from India - mostly for work - isn't filling me with palpitations. It's not about the clubs and the theatres and the country walks: the contrivances that constitute 'life' in the West. No, it's everyday existence that's addictive.

Today I got in an auto-rickshaw from the office to an event I was attending. On the way, with the hot Delhi air blowing in our faces and that unique only-slightly-irrational fear of imminent sudden death that you get in every auto journey, we overtook an enormous elephant. Not some tourist trap either: this was a working elephant, with a man and a big load of what looked like reeds on his back. I then cheered as we got to a red light, which was great as it meant the elephant could catch us up and waddle past us, its vast backside about a foot away from me. Nobody other than me seemed remotely flustered.

Perhaps, when I'm in Edinburgh or Manchester or Birmingham or London over the next few weeks, I'll see an elephant meandering down the road nonchalantly going about its business. Until I do, that and the thousand other daily hilarities of life mean that I'll be counting the days till I get back to India.