Sandstorm In A Teacup

In two weeks, I had supposedly lost 10 kilos, had almost forgotten what it was like to enjoy a nice, quiet pooh, had been chased and almost driven to homicide by auto-rickshaw drivers and ended up with a sore arse thanks to India’s dodgy roads (and drivers). I even ended up looking like this
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Yet when pressed, I still couldn’t say I disliked India.

“Oh go on, you hate it. I can tell.”

But no – seriously – I don’t hate it. I’ll admit that it took me at least a full week to acclimatise, not just to the searing heat but to the noise and the crowds, the flies and the smells, and the sheer madness of it all. In the end, I was growing quite fond of India - something I had not expected after the bellyaches and the headaches of the first week.

And yes, you expect the unexpected. For example, on the first day in Delhi, I noticed two men on a motorbike. Not an unusual occurrence, except that it would usually have been three or four men – but exceptional in that the second man was carrying a huge 6-foot mirror that was wedged in between them. At any moment, he could slip off the motorbike and be sliced in half by the mirror, and it must have taken amazing balance just to stay on. I asked Shanaz if this is the Indian concept of rear-view mirrors, but to her – and everyone else in the car at the time – this was nothing extraordinary.

Women in saris rode side-saddle on the back of motorbikes, demonstrating even more exceptional balance, while men rode bikes with upwards of 5 gas bottles strapped to the sides. Myself, I would have gone careering into a ditch – but over in India, they do this in crowded traffic without so much as a second thought.

On my first day there, I was gleefully pointing out the cows on the street – “hey look, another one!” and “bloody hell, there were three there!” until a week later when the cows started to blend into the general street scene, along with the camels in Rajasthan and the monkeys, who, I was informed, would nick off with my camera. All I wanted from the monkeys was a hot towel, but it seemed they were trained in horrible thievery.

I could never blank out the images of over twenty people sat in tractors – often women - and often people coming back from construction sites. India is building on a huge scale. In the years since Shanaz's family moved into Dwarka, apartment blocks have sprung up like mushrooms. Some of it is very good. Some of it is pretty shoddy, too, with newspaper headlines of buildings collapsing and unscrupulous builders trying to make a quick buck. Sounds very familiar.

I also had problems blanking out the slums. On the train ride back into Delhi, we passed through mile upon mile of slum housing. They even have their own shops built into the slums, and, I am informed, a slum hierarchy, from the poorest to the less poor. Delhi, it seems, is nothing compared to Bombay, where the authorities are destroying slums for railway lines and new builds, but are only making a tiny dent in what is a huge, huge problem.

So what of India’s new-found wealth? After all, we hear of nothing but success stories in the UK - "India is the place to invest in" and "It will be bigger than China soon". As always, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer - while some people are unable to eat more than one meal a day due to rising wheat and rice prices, the likes of the omnipresent Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan can flaunt their chiselled features all over cities, advertising almost everything that is made in India, and many things that are not. Cricketers are paid millions to go over for a couple of (very hot) months and play in what is essentially a knockabout tournament supported by Bollywood stars.

There is a whole generation of people growing up in "middle class" India with the latest mobile phones, laptops and coffee fixations. And yet the poverty continues – and worsens. It's little wonder that communism clings on in the east of the country.

You can go to India and you can stay in a Taj hotel and only ever see it fleetingly from the tinted windows of your tourist coach. And perhaps, just perhaps, that is the way to do India. Perhaps that is why some people see India as a relaxing place for meditation and yoga?

You can also do it the hard way, as many backpackers do. You can sleep in youth hostels and eat roti and dhal with your hands, and basically muck in. You can ride the rickshaws through oncoming traffic and push your way through the crowds at the bazaars. And once you’re over the shock, that is ultimately more rewarding.

The English visitors who spent the entire day lounging by the pool at the Rajputana Resort in Udaipur could have been lounging around in Spain or Italy, but outside those heavily protected gates was a village literally falling apart. As we walked through it to find a pharmacy, small children were waving at us from the rubble.

And here’s the difference – and maybe one of the main reasons people come back from India waxing lyrical and proclaiming there are “two kinds of people”. Walk through a poor area in England and you will most likely get shot, stabbed, mugged or if you’re lucky, just intimidated. Walk through a poor area in India, and people will wave at you. They’ll even say hello sometimes. At no point during my two and a bit weeks in India did I ever feel threatened or intimidated - not even by the auto-rickshaw drivers, who I could have picked off with my eyes closed, honest. At no point did anyone look even remotely aggressive. No gangs roaming the streets - no gangs of drunken tarts exposing their cellulite - and no fat chavs in pink tracksuits. Sure, I was stared at, but only because I was the slightly strange looking white bloke in a funny hat.

I have only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as India is concerned. Next time, I’ll go to Assam (with the extra-strong malaria pills), and my list of “things to do” is growing by the day. I want to play golf in Leh, where they have the world's highest golf course, 11,000m above sea level (with an oxygen mask, perhaps). I want to brave the crowds at Varanasi and see the ghats. I want to drink coffee in Kerala, go mad in Goa and experience the snarling, posturing and seemingly hilarious ceremony that takes place every day as they close the India / Pakistan border.

So, I may not have come out of India sitting cross-legged on the floor proclaiming that there are two kinds of people before insisting everyone chant “ommmm” before dinner… but I've come through the bellyaches and the headaches thinking that all the hassle of the first week - it was nothing, really - in fact, it was nothing more than a sandstorm in a teacup.