My dream job...

Llama-measurer...as illustrated by this delightful picture I came across in an FAO report:

Why?
Because:
1 there'll be no grumpy foul-mouthed demented horn-blowing motorists on the pampas,
2 I will be honestly and justifiably underpaid,
3 and my gently whiffling co-workers will be soft and furry.

Cudgels to canvas

If you're inured to the stream of gushy, gee-whiz type of wondrously eulogic writing that art-reportage in India usually involves, the Guardian's searing Mr Searle has a sobering corrective for you.

Take for example, his slapdown of Husain, with a delicate swipe of the wrist:

If Husain were a western artist, it would be unlikely that his work would excite the kind of protest it has. His is an insipid sort of figurative modernism that doesn't appear to have developed much since the 1950s. [...] The paintings abound with a cavalcade of indeterminate gods, humans and animals. Mother Teresa and Gandhi are in there somewhere, as well as a moustachioed officer of the Raj, posing with a cuddly blue elephant and a dead tiger. This is as pointed as things get, so far as I can tell.

Puss moth

1995 - 2008

When I'm back home in Madras, like a feline myself, I spend a lot of time prowling my friend's backyard garden. Much of this time is spent communing with her many cats, each of whom has a distinctly unique personality. There's Kali, with her lustrous black coat and flashing malachite eyes, who's as pliant and affectionate as a dog, and makes a regal descent from her favourite tree when she hears her name being called. There's biscuit-coloured Muffin, with fur as soft as felt, and a kinky bent ear, who revvs up his welcoming purr as soon as you're in earshot.

And then, there's stately, gracious Puss moth, with his whitened ruff and exuberant bottlebrush tail, who exudes warmth and well-being as naturally as a toasty little fireplace. Jean Cocteau said his cats gradually became the "visible soul" of his home. Puss moth was the animating spirit of the backyard, presiding over it from his cushioned throne. But today, he had kidney failure, and was put to sleep. RIP, dear Puss moth. My backyard jaunts will never be the same without you.

Snapshot flashback

September

October

November

The leopard who changed his spot

And finally got himself a little flat.

Benares

I'd been looking forward to going to Benares for the longest time, and all the while, I imagined it would be all sonorous, echoing chants wafting over the intense burning ghats, with devotees dipping and bobbing into its murky riverbanks while corpses flickered and sputtered behind them. Sure, it was all this, but what I didn't count on was its other, less holy avatar: a giant big seething tourist trap with the generic yoga-massage-falafel infectation of all Indian tourist traps, and shops hawking cheap, limitless stocks of the hippie-on-holiday tourist uniform: om t-shirts and tatty fishermen's pants.

As an Indian non-Ganges banks-bobber, camera-wielder, and worse, accompanied by two white women, I presented rather a bewildering spectacle to the local populace. Was I a sophisticated high-class tout? A tourist guide? A masseuse? Or all 3? They made their own bold assumptions, which they shared with me in many an insulting greeting. The top 3 merry accostations I was hailed with: "Are you Indian!" "I think your parents are Indian!" And, said with hearty self-congratulation at their miraculous perspicacity: "I think you are Indian!" By the 543rd time I heard this one, I yelped back: "And I think you are an ass!" Another obvious disadvantage: my companions were irresistible tout-magnets. I'm now an expert on touts...their arsenal of overfamiliar pick-up lines, and the charming ways in which they try to appear coy and innocuous right before persuading you into visiting yet another scurrilous astrologer/ daylightrobbing silk counterpane seller who just happens to be around the corner.

All the same, I did manage to stray out into some non-tout-magnetic spots. I painted a mirthful mini-Gabbar Singh, was butted by a churlish cow, and assaulted by a monkey, who riffled through my bag, and, displeased with its contents, indignantly bit my trousers. Such fun! Some photos:

Obligatory sadhu-related opening photo

Buffalo Baywatch at Shivala Ghat

Clearly, the snarling roughneck villain of this episode

Snip+snip+snip = Grrr!

I wrote a book review for Outlook Traveller this month, that leaked over the word limit just a teensy bit. Which might've still worked out fine, except in came a hideous selection of coffee table books that sprawled smugly and pastelly over my spot, nudging my defenceless gags out into oblivion. So here it is, intacto.


White woman, Dark Continent
Red tape and white knuckles: one woman’s motorcycle adventure through Africa
By Lois Pryce

A redhead with a self-deprecating sense of humour, Lois Pryce is a sort of bike-borne Bridget Jones; nearly intrepid despite herself. Why, oh why, she asks herself, does she choose to traverse the perilous African continent, “where the only news is bad news and the bad news never ends”? Why is she undertaking this exhausting 10,000 mile ride through 11 countries – from Tunisia to Cape Town – when she could happily swoon in the arms of Austin, her “wonderful companion and favourite person in the world”? And isn’t she woefully unprepared for the African sun, being as she is, white as a “Romanian vampire”? While she leaves the first two questions unanswered, she bravely tackles the third by taking a trip to a sun-bed.

Armed with her sparkly crash helmet, 225 cc trail bike and newly basted complexion, Pryce begins her journey in Tunis. She slogs across the Sahara with a troop of rally racers and across Algeria, Niger and Nigeria with a Belgian couple and their “gap-year philosopher” cousin. With quite remarkable courage, she then takes on the rest by herself. As she feared, her conspicuous status as “La Blanche” leads to her being preyed on by Africans with big dreams and meagre means, and assaulted by an assortment of unsavoury men, including a drunk fisherman, an albino tramp with open sores, and a one-legged Congolese custom officer who, upon luring her into a darkened hangar, dispenses her a leery invitation to sit on his stump.

Pryce’s narrative reads like an interminable dinnertime anecdote, recounted with an eager sense of humour and peppered with entertaining pop culture references. Lit up sheep carcasses in Tunisia resemble a Damien Hirst installation, predatory Cameroonian girls sport skimpy outfits that’d embarrass Jodie Marsh (a pneumatic British tabloid fixture known to regard strategically-positioned belts as adequate clothing), and the fetid exhalations of “ma chérie” by her amorous hobo suitor make him “less Charles Aznavour, more Silas, the mad monk from the Da Vinci Code.”

Based on a meticulously maintained journal, the book pays close attention to the tiniest, most exhaustive details: elaborate descriptions of the upholstery and churlish staff of numerous embassies, encounters with helpful, intrusive and amusing locals, an extended description of the frightening fare of God TV that she subjected herself to in a lonely hotel room and – a consistent refrain – her “painful longing to be wrapped in Austin’s arms”.
Some passages – such as how she was forced to surrender her prized packet of chocolate biscuits to a stoned, Kalashnikov-waving Congolese soldier on a rickety train – fairly thrum with fear and adrenaline. But much of the rest, alas, echoes her appraisal of a Niger truck driver, who was “more than happy to have a good moan in the ear of a stranger”.