Narrow your eyes!

And furrow your brows! Concentrate!! This will be very important.

The direct consequence of yet again shutting down Facebook (generally known as "FB", though not to be confused with erstwhile expansion of FuckBuddy) is that you are left with Linkedin as your only social networking option.

You might think that this would enrich my life and stanch the flow of countless links that people *think* are interesting. Actually, no - just as kings and queens have to take a dump too, even professional networks have people who simply can't stop "sharing".

Today's article to highlight was on Unitasking.

First, the irony: I came across this link on Linkedin's "Influencer posts" while I was Alt-Tab-bing through applications on my computer, and I am not quite sure what I was going to do before I found this wonderful article.

Which is written by a "A.J. J." Apparently after unitasking on conceiving the author, his (based on there being a male face shot) parents apparently forgot to give him an appealing name, or possibly any name. Note however the period after each letter (good punctuation - it means the letter is the first of a shortened word or name). Also note the space between "J." and "J." (No, I have no idea what the fuck that means).

(His name is at the bottom)

(Yay, so much fodder and I have not even read the article yet)

(No more parentheses)

The article itself is rather excellent, I must say. I really like the idea of tying myself to my chair to avoid unnecessary walking around and consequent distraction. Too bad it won't be that easy to tie up those who walk around and annoy *me* at work. He does point to other not-so-literal ways to limit oneself from straying past the task at hand, to be fair. The "Tonya Harding" strategy of "storing your worry" in one spot and picking it up after your task is about as dumb and impractical as the Tonya Harding strategy of breaking her competitor's legs. I mean, for one thing, why would you pick it back up? The third method of literally walking while working, e.g., typing a report on a treadmill is interesting, and supposedly works by releasing serotonins. So the annoying-people-who-walk-around may be on to something, but it is useless to me unless I can somehow suck the serotonin and other goodies right out of them. I do not think I will get a patent or FDA approval for that device, which only *looks* like a heavy mallet and a large syringe, but is so much more...The final method of talking to oneself, even just about what one is doing, to calm down and focus is a bit batty, but who knows!

All of this fails to answer the question - why would anyone want to Unitask in this Multitasking world? I don't know, but all men are good at Unitasking, although it is only in the area of thinking about sex. Which leads me to think, why not combine the multiple elements of AJJ's brilliant idea as follows:

Find a pliant subject of any gender or species of your liking. Tie him / her / it up to a chair or coat hanger or frankly any appliance with wheels and set up on a treadmill. Talk to yourself, chanting "I am having sex" to relax and focus. And at the same time, do that which needs Unitasking - such as your monthly audit report or math homework or that letter to the editor.

Epilogue: I tried this, chanting "This is going to be great sex" while doing the deed and typing this blog out on my portable electronic device. I decided to forgo locomotion and bondage, taking one small step for mankind. The results were not  pretty. The upshot is, I did Unitask by whimpering in the doghouse.

PS: "Narrow Your Eyes" is of course yet another quirky track from the ever popular They Might Be Giants.

More absurd than miserable

A number of you threw brickbats at me for sullying the high-art of ballet. To all of you, I virtually moon you.

Speaking of absurdities that pass for art, I also watched some time earlier a movie - nay, a musical - by the name of Les Miserables, whose pronunciation remains a mystery to me to this day.

No doubt this was a masterpiece by Victor Hugo, and I am certain it makes for gripping prose. But the minute it transcended into the musical genre, it went Twilight Zone.

Sure the acting was great, and the gaunt Hugh Jackman laid the male audience's insecurities to rest - at least initially, when he was gaunt. Russell Crowe played himself, i.e. a douchebag asshole. Anne Hathaway did some convincing numbers. 

But why must they carry to absurd lengths the setting of everything to a tune? Yes, there are some nice songs - reasonable lyrics set to good music. But why, oh why, must even the quotidian banalities be sung? Can't Cosette simply call Jean "papa" instead of singing even those two syllables? I'm sure even Beethoven took breaks from composing.

But wait, anticipating the next round of brickbats, I do grant that I am being too harsh here. On second thought, I do realize the potential for immense daily pleasure this approach to life can offer.

Scene one: a ho-hum dinner in a middle-class 4-room HDB apartment. Imagine the following exchange, both lines sung to "So long, farewell" from the Sound of Music:

Ah Boy: Mama! Mama! I want to go and play-ay!

Mother: Sit down, shut up and eat your bah kut teh-eh!!

Father: ***** (fits nicely into "Cuckoo")

Scene two: flight from Singapore to India (any city)

Drunk passenger: AIR-hostess! AIR-hostess! (sung to the opening bars of Bicycle Race by the Queen)

(entire flight thumps on its collective tray)

Drunk passenger again: I want to have vis-KEE-so-da, I want to have it when I like! (sung to the mellow second line of the same song)

And when you see me next, please call me "Caustic Yoda" (sung to the tune of "Call me maybe"). Don't be shy, numbers welcome.

Much ballet-hoo about nothing

Some time ago, I happened to go to the New York City Ballet Theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. What's worse, I actually paid for it.

It all started while, on a visit to NYC, I discovered the TKTS stand on Times Square. Now the square itself is a never-ending parade of entertaining sights and sounds (in season: a naked *black* cowboy). The best strategy to buy tickets is to go late, when the tourist flotsam has been turned away disappointed at not getting a cheap ticket to Spiderman or some Disney crapola, and try your luck with the less popular shows. Not because you are cheap, but because your tastes are eclectic and oh-so-not-mainstream. 

Bullshit. You get good discounts this way, but it teaches you that you shouldn't buy something just because it's cheap.

Anyway, managing to snag a pair of tickets to the Ballet (motto: "Early Onset Arthritis") the Company - which insisted on being called the Date - and I set off in our flip flops and jeans. 

The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts is always a wonderful thing to walk by. And there is your lesson of the day - walk by, especially if it is showing men in tights. Like lamb to the slaughter, the Date led me into a subterranean labyrinth of overdressed young yuppies and barely-ambulatory seniors, dressed as if to a debutante ball. Complete with pants that started at their chests, bow ties and other such fashion items no doubt prevalent when they actually had things like debutante balls.

Shortly, the show started. Various people scurried about on stage on their tiptoes, and that was just as well because when half the audience was asleep - either because ballet was boring, or because they were out past their bed time in their adult diapers

We were sitting way back in the first level, which I believe may have been an "orchestra pit" or something. Just as well again, because the last thing I wanted to see was men in tights up close. Seriously, that should be a public offense.

But I did get the gist of Romeo and Juliet, which much to my grandfather's consternation, I failed to finish unabridged by the time I was 9, as he and his forefathers before him all had. What can I say, the book stopped with me. 

Now Romeo is your garden variety dog, flirting about town gayly - and the way he was cavorting with his mates-in-tights, rather very gayly - when he falls in love with a girl. Fast forward: they both die, after other people die. The end. 

But not before a number of people do unnatural things on stage - walking on their toes, jumping on their toes, leaping and pirouetting on their toes and wearing tights (only applies to the men). I really do appreciate the skill here, but it is sort of like synchronized swimming - very demanding, no doubt, and hard to do, but so is being able to touch one's nose with one's tongue or armpit-farting the national anthem. So what? Art must move the uninitiated, not just allow the technically expert to snigger smugly in their exclusive club of appreciating technicalities. And let's face it, ballet is a statement - "my child learns the ballet". Not getai, that would be too gauche.

Now two things to note about Romeo & Juliet:

1. Anyone waxing eloquent about "The Bard" while also complaining of the mindless triviality behind every romance in every Indian movie can shut up. 

2. Statutory rape - it seemed from the screening that the girl was still being nannied by a... well nanny.

I really liked the villain, Tybalt - he had a little skirt which thankfully covered his crotch. Thus arrived the day when I appreciated a man in a skirt. The woman playing Juliet (who looked like a little child) was also very entertaining, with great facial expressions that lent a lot to her performance, past the no-doubt-sublime tip-toeing. 

We streamed out, the Date and I, into the open and down onto the subway stop after the show. The characters there were far more entertaining than the ballet.

Hide Nothing Park

On an alternatingly cloudy and sunny day I set out from my boutique hotel - motto: "Low ceiling" - for a walk to the park. Immediately spurning the directions offered by the lady with a thick (French?) accent at the door, I walked out and shortly reached Hyde Park Corner. The arch and all of that, always rather splendid to see.

I entered the park, got my bearings and did the usual triangle, veering left to head to the large body of water, taking a right a bit further on toward the Speaker's Corner and then back to Hyde Park Corner.

Crowds were out in full force - teenagers holding hands for supported roller blading, even as experts whizzed past them; cyclists; families playing frisbee, football and what not in the lawns; one dad running excitedly, yet apprehensively, alongside his little kid on a tiny bicycle; a sister (one assumes) gamely kicking a ball to her two brothers and a mustachioed, swarthy father with a pot belly; here and there people lying in pairs or groups, and occasionally solo, on the grass; a white labrador gamboling along behind a smaller dog of some other breed; couples cowering in the thickets.

The sun played hide and seek. The temperature was in the mid-teens but very pleasant, especially when the sun was out.

The highlight of any trip to Hyde Park is the Speaker's Corner. Whereas on previous trips it was thoroughly empty and disappointing, this day was fertile.

First up was a well dressed, middle-aged-to-senior looking white bloke going on about whatever it is England has (or had) that the rest of Europe did not: God. To his left were posters strung on the side of the pathway with the usual rubbish from the Bible. Diagonally across the path to the right was a tiny woman (presumably she was standing on a bucket or something) with snowy-white hair frizzing about her shouting herself red in the face about "England for the 'English race' (whatever that is, the woefully ignorant c**t obviously does not know the history of how the Angles and the Saxons disappeared the Celts and other natives)". She was getting a fair bit of heckling but gave as good as she got, telling everyone - the gainfully employed, the tourists - they were turncoats for having left their (respective) native countries and shamefully parading about Hyde Park; a *black* man in black robes, a pointy black hat, a long pole stuck with several small English (not British) flags, a swastika in front, a graded-color chart of various races and shouting "White Power!" walking up and down, sticking his flag like a lance or an exaggerated "Heil!" at other speakers; the very articulate black man defending the black church against accusations of child abuse, even as he admitted there was corruption and various other ills in the system. A table with the usual pamphlets on Islam chaperoned by the dearly bearded who looked at me longingly.

....And then there was the piece de resistance. Well he really was some kind of a "resistance" guy - a large, stocky (not fat) white guy in an olive-green t-shirt with "Cuba" emblazoned on it, one of those fur caps with flaps over the ears and the one over the forehead turned up, standing on the second step of an aluminum step ladder with some flag behind him. He had a good crowd ahead of him, and to his left were a trio of supporters-cum-hecklers, who would probe, provoke or support him. Especially one dude in black sun shades. The rest of the crowd ahead of him came and went. He railed against everything - he was an equal opportunity ranter. He was also relatively well spoken, and well read. Excerpts:

Resistance Guy (RG for short here on): ... Europe is the name of a god of the Greeks, who though they were polytheists, gave us democracy... (struggles, as if grasping through a fog (alcohol perhaps?) to find a fact)... some 100... hnnhhn... 700-800 years before Islam

Arab-looking guy: But you are drinking tea! (Turns to *his* sidekick) And they call it "Yingilish tea" (cackle, cackle)! It is from India (said in the way only South Asians or maybe Middle-Easterners can say it - In-dddi-yaA).

RG: loses his audience, turns to his supporter/heckler and tries to explain that the British brought tea from China to India. Boy, he was well read for a raving boor. Goes on about why the French will never do anything because their food is too good, while the British conquered the world fueled by tea.

RG: (somehow the topic comes back to Islam and he goes on) At least Islam does not have the concept of Sin.

Heckler: sin spelt backward spells "nice."

RG: I was in the tube yesterday and I saw two pretty women. I was looking at them and I was giving them my business (I think he meant he was mentally fucking them - but in a rather tasteful way). Many including me, chuckle.

(A little later)

RG: So you Arab people (something something). 

Black-nazi: comes toward RG and standing a few feet and a few lawyers of people away, narrows his eyes and gives a salute with his crazy lance-flag saying something about white power.

RG: flips him the bird and chuckles.

Plaintive young fat woman: Can't you accept that people are different?

RG: Oh but I do. 

(A little later still)

RG: ...so that is how everyone is subjugated by the capitalists. The queen, the Church of England, they are all in the take. Oh yeah, they are a business, that's what they are. Sainsbury is eating up every corner shop. In 1912 Sainsbury's was just a corner shop, just one shop run by a Jew!

Indian man in baggy pants and baggy windbreaker: No, no, I sold my corner shop to Tesco.

RG: (Astutely figures out his heckler is a Hindu, combined with his capitalist tendencies selling out to Tesco - I guess it really set him off) DO YOU BELIEVE IN BLUE PEOPLE??!! Krishna is blue. What rubbish is that, yadda yadda. (Flogs Hinduism and Hindus.)

Heckler: Oh look, you've now brought it back to religion. Just 20 seconds. (Congratulatory chuckle).

Indian man: tries to explain away saying it is just a religion, just a belief. (I am not sure of blue people, but the Indian man was certainly turning unusual shades)

RG: (tears the Indian man apart) I suggest sir, you counsel with your Muslims friends up north, who have done better than the Hindus, or your Sikh friends from Amritsar! What has Hinduism done for India? It is miserable, a shitty place.

Indian man: Have you been to India?

RG: No. But I have Indian friends and they tell me about it.

Indian man: further protests

RG: Blah blah blah, so you are just a sell-out sir, just like everyone. You are a capitalist pig!! YOU ARE A CAPITALIST PIG!! We gave you tea! We gave you cricket!! 

(Indian man disappears)

Heckler to RG: oh look now, now you've made him upset. Chuckle, chuckle.

RG: ...and so it is that we the British, the Chinese and the Russians will win in the end.

Heckler: Did you say the Russians (raises an eyebrow, not sure what to make of this).

It was thoroughly entertaining. Also educational. On having a civil, if heated discussion in public. How many of us can stand in front of a crowd and say these things, no matter how offensive? How many of us can then stand on the other side and try to talk back, rather than resort to bluster, or worse, violence? Can you imagine what would happen if people had free speech like this in other parts of the world:

India: Riots, buses burned, public property destroyed. Temple to actress of yesteryear razed. New temple to current starlet raised.

Pakistan: Same as India, but starts even before anyone has spoken. 

Saudi Arabia: Speaker bundled into a hijab and never seen again.

China: "Suicide."

Japan: Speaker things long and hard, bows deeply to apologize and preemptively commits hara-kiri.

South Korea: Like India, but with redder faces because of alcohol abuse combined with alcohol intolerance.

France: Who gives a fuck, everyone's eating great food.

Singapore: Caned.

I'm just saying... it could go a lot worse in a lot of other places. I think every school, city and country should have its Hyde Parks if only to engender the courage to speak up and equally the courage to talk back.

Bagan, Pagan

It was a sweltering afternoon, and the Burmese summer had barely even begun. My friend - let's call him P - and I had made the amateur mistake of misjudging one's capabilities in a foreign country and decided to explore Bagan (formerly Pagan) on bicycles. We'd only later realize that this part of Myanmar is called "The Dry Zone". Too late for my skin, which is now passable for reptilian, and my butt, which is in secret discussions with North Korea on how to rebel against its oppressor (pun intended, haha).

After having grossly misunderestimated the distances on the map and having pedaled halfway to the Nagaland, we doubled back and began our exploration of the Old Bagan area at Htilominlo, with the effervescent and ever-so-cute Thida: souvenir seller, tour guide and class-A sweetheart. But that is a whole different story.

We'd bicycled for hours and after lunch we hit upon an old temple. It was a goodly hike up stairs open on either side, and on top was a sanctum sanctorum with the requisite Buddha statues. In the patio in front were two men: one had a spread of paintings on the floor which he was trying to sell us, and the other, with ominously red eyes, was trying to sell us rubies and other gems. P could not resist the impulse to examine this and also to source other contraband. 

There was a wide expanse, a terrace of sorts, that ran on all three sides and I saw on the right a gaggle of tiny little rag-tag princesses, sheltering in the shade at the base of a small zedi (stupa or as the Thais call it, chedi). I was walking around and as I walked past, they all chortled delightedly, giving me sidelong shy glances. Here they were in multi-colored hand-me-downs (one assumes) darkened by the blazing sun, probably from the village nearby. No one seemed to be supervising them, which only poignantly reminded how innocent this country was still. They were just sorta chatting and keeping themselves occupied in the manner of little girls without Barbies, or god forbid, Wii and text messaging. They looked at me with eyes that weren't jaded, like their counterparts in most "developed" countries; rather they had the simple, unabashed curious gaze that you occasionally find among the peoples of an India or a China or a Mexico if you venture far enough from the big cities into places which still can be called innocent, where humanity is not about dog-eat-dog or rat-races, where people have not built veneer upon veneer of faux social graces and pseudio-intellectual faces.

I said hi and probably pinched the cheek of one. Suddenly, they were all very curious, and lost their natural reserve. They became excited, perhaps fascinated by this potential plaything in the form of a stranger in a comical sun-hat. Hands were shaken; tag was played, with me being "it"; and every time grabbed for one of these little ones, peals of high pitched laughter erupted. I grabbed one of them and lifted her high, and immediately all of them, even the shyest one, wanted the royal treatment as well, and they were clambering all over me. Literally clambering - two hung by my arms, one tried to cling to my leg I think. We took some pictures. They crowded around the camera - they were sophisticated enough to know digital cameras show instant replays - and giggled and chortled as they saw themselves on the tiny LCD screen, straining against a incandescently bright sun reflecting off a bare white terrace.

Then P and I started descending toward our parked bicycles. He was still interested in contraband so I went on first, with the fearless foursome following me. Frankly, my butt was resisting getting back on the bicycle, but unfortunately it had no choice but to go with me. 

At ground level, the kids watched as I splashed cold water onto my face from a tap with flies decorating its mouth. Then they came up to my bicycle, grabbing hold of my keychain and passing it around in utter fascination and curiosity - it was pink and looked like Hello Kitty or something. I should have just removed it and given it away, but it was a rented bicycle belonging to our hotel. When P came down, the same exercise was repeated on his keychain, a green version of mine. They only had those innocent eyes and faces that stared down at the keychain and up at us with no hint of the desire or courage to actually ask for it. P remarked we should bring a box of candy to pass around to kids, because they were everywhere, and unlike in some other parts of the world, absolutely innocent, non-pushy and full of curiosity. Only one of the four put out her hands and I think wanted money, but overall, they were just happy being kids and not interested in taking advantage of their cutesy.

We mounted our bicycles after some more scrutiny - and the saddest, longing looks one ever could have seen in a child's eyes - as they saw the keys slip into the locks and us mount. But as was the case from my own once-innocent childhood in a place so far away it doesn't exist except in my memory, the four of them peeled off giggling and chattering toward a wide, low building on the other side - perhaps a school - with us and our Hello Kitties probably immediately banished to a fleeting memory and no doubt in search of the next simple thing to twitter about.

We began pedaling away. The sun still shone relentlessly.

Aunty-social

Our esteemed colleagues in the news industry have, yet again, showed us they are not only retards, but are really serving us "olds". They have revealed what we always knew - people with lots of friends on Facebook, constantly posting pictures, tagging themselves, etc are more likely to be anti-social narcissists. The article is here, and if you google, you get more such views. 

Wake up, news people! We already hated our friends for posting endless barrages of often self-congratulatory crap and in the process making their friends miserable. This article from some time ago noted that such "friends" accomplished this - though as a person with a decent level of self-esteem I do not buy that - by always prattling (only) about all the great things they do, places they visit, just how wonderful life is etc. 

But as I "researched" this topic I realized there are some among us (ahem!) who are way cooler and bucking all these trends. 

First, let us talk about the antisocial networker, which I was for a considerable period of time. In the early days of FB, it was hard to say no to friend requests and many of us took on too many "friends" and over time getting tired and disillusioned, did not bother to actually "network". Eventually, many, including me started pruning friends like they were overgrown poison ivy. (The actual plant, not Uma Thurman, who can grow over me as much as she wants).

The irony is that, if prolific Facebook users are anti-social, then the parsimonious are anti-anti-social. Ergo by anti-social networking, I must have become "social". Bingo!

Despite practicing anti-social networking for a while, I still was spending too much time checking status messages etc.  The main personality disorder this showed in me is that I had no life.  I was so bored that anytime I was free - say between breaths - I would whip out the smartphone and look at what was happening, only to be immediately and throughly disgusted - at myself. 

So eventually I deactivated my account. Life, unsurprisingly, goes on.

Speaking of bad networking and aunties:

One evening, during the cricket world cup in 2011, I was at a bar drinking orange juice and spending time with fellow middle-aged men. I stepped out with one to a balcony where a number of young women were sitting around. I would not say that we were inveigling ourselves into conversation with them, but we were just enjoying being near nubile youth. At one point, a girl said something funny (possibly insulting) to one of her friends and we could not help but laugh. She then turned to her friend and said "see, even the uncle is laughing". My poor friend, all the blood drained off his face. (If you don't get the reference - it was an Indian restaurant and almost all present were Subcontinentals, whose default honorific for anyone older than 21 is uncle or aunty.)

That is when I realized that at my age, the only women I am allowed to fraternize with in a lascivious manner are my counterparts. 

You've been warned.

The Buffalo and The Mozzarella

Once upon a time, when my joints did not creak, I was on a long expedition to visit the spiritual capital of the world and discover my Inner Lama. So after schlepping through Sikkim and Bhutan, I flew into New Delhi (Motto: "Sharp Elbows") and made my way into the western recesses of Rajasthan, ending up in Jaisalmer.

Even before the train stopped, we were swarmed by hotel touts and I signed up for one, along with an Italian - let's call him Paolo. We were to find out much, much later that what we saved on the cheap hotel fare we more than lost in the inflated "camel safari" fare, but that is another story to be archived under "stupidity".

Anyway, Paolo was a voluble, highly emotional person who I am sure had animated conversations with his hands behind the closed doors of his room. We did end up signing for that safari. It gave many memorable...er, memories.

The camel driver was a tall, dark and wiry Muslim in some kind of a feudal subjugation to the hotel owner / operator, also a Muslim, embodied in the form of a handsome young 20-something who boasted of how many women he'd done, including the wife of a guest whom he'd banged on the roof as her husband slept in their room below. Charming. The driver had a 13-year old kid, who looked about 9 - small, frail, but cheerful and conversationally competent in about a dozen European languages. They made INR 1,500 a month working for this ratty hotel; the kid was not in school and I doubt my entreaties to the father to send him to one had any effect; and they literally lived in a different place and time - the driver's question to me was not where I came from or whatever, but whether I was Muslim or Rajput - not even "Muslim or Hindu". That was how narrow his world view was, warm and friendly as he was, and why I referred to his and the hotel owners' religion - those identities and allegiances clearly still mattered a lot in these parts and ages.

But things were improving. The kid watched our cell phones the whole journey and eventually asked us for one - "I don't have to wait all day at the hotel to know if we get customers, I can call in or be called", he said - and Paolo, tears brimming, took out his SIM card and gave his Nokia to him at the end of the trip. Nevertheless, when the hotel owner got wind of this as we were all chatting in the room that passed for reception, the kid rather cowered as he hung about the doorway, as was his place no doubt.  I was not comfortable how he would survive this turn of events, a simple attempt to becoming more empowered, no doubt a huge transgression in the eyes of a typical feudal bastard. I only then got a sense for what people bemoan as the "feudalism" of Pakistan, just a 100 kilometers or so to the west. The hotel guy even asked for the phone, and turning it over and examining the battered, crappy Nokia closely - to him it might as well have been a hammer and sickle rolled into one.

Anyway, we did get on the camel and trudged for random periods of time for 2-3 days, settling down for meals - invariably, roti and some veggies, as we had wisely chosen not to request any meat - random naps, and slept on stacks of twigs or branches in the desert. I don't recall how or where we secured shade during the days. The driver and son constantly tried to entice us into getting a chicken for the next meal and at one point did successfully entice us to get beer, brought lukewarm in a gunny sack with ice and straw. Now you may ask how did they manage that - the fact is, I suspect we were hardly ever very far from the roads and it was unlikely that I'd ever have been lost and rescued like a story from the "Drama in real life" sections from Reader's Digest (Motto: "They still read us in India"). In fact I suspect we were always within earshot, figuratively speaking, of villages ready to supply overpriced meat and beer to idiot tourists. Cleaning up after meals consisted of rubbing everything down with sand. But his hand-flattened dry rotis were some of the best I'd ever had, as were the simple veggies he prepared.

The kid delighted me with what I thought was a folk song passed down over the centuries, only to realize after returning to the real world that it was a movie song: "Kajra re".

On one of these days we experienced a first-class sandstorm - the sort of event that one read about as a child in a magazine like "Tinkle". The skies darkened (actually I don't recall, but it is fun to make up memories) and the dust picked up. As expected, we dismounted and found some bushes, and the camels were made to sit, with the humans sheltering behind a double protective layer: camel, then bush. It wasn't too bad actually, but visibility did drop to a foot at best. It lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we could see the sky, each other, the camel etc. 

One fine afternoon, we chanced upon a mini-oasis of sort - a pond, really - with some tropical trees nearby - and I discovered the skull of some antler-bearing animal. I used my swiss knife to saw off the single, 10-inch long, curved horn, helped by the kid. I still have it on my mantle. Halfway through this process a very gruff, mustachioed, turbaned figure turned up and tried to grab the Swiss knife. I think only the fact that it was with the kid, who stubbornly refused to hand it in, saved it from appropriation. The people here were gruff, not in the sharp-elbowed Punjabi ways of Delhi, but a different, hardier, earthier, simpler way of a different time and age from a terrain wracked by war since time immemorial - the races that have crisscrossed this part of India may include the Scythians, the Sveta Hunas (Abdalis / Hephthalites), Kushanas, and down to the Arabs, Persians, Turco-Mongols all the way to the Ghaznavids, Ghourids and finally the cretins we celebrate as the great Mughals. 

It was either in that spot or at another one that we came across what looked like a large patch of mud. The driver let the camels in, I think, and cheerily told us we should have a dip too - carefully not taking one himself. The excitable Paolo jumped in and immediately sank in waist-level mud. He seemed not in the least put off, and like a clever buffalo that knows something you don't on a scorching day, wallowed about for a long while and emerged in his skivvies covered in brown mud. He looked like something from a bad science fiction movie - by which I mean Lord of the Rings, with those evil creatures created from the slime of the earth by the head of the evil people, whatever he is called. Sauron or something. If they let me, I would slay the annoying Hobbits in one fell swoop, is what I say.

Sidekick: Mr Frodo (glug)! I can't leave your side, I don't care if I drown (glug, glug)!!

Frodo: (silent, with his retarded, stoned, glassy-eyed look with those hideously large and scary eyeballs surrounded by an even larger expanse of white, which for some reason chicks dig)

Me: Bang! Bang! Die motherfuckers!! 

Gaandu the Wizard: Thank god you did it: that bastard Peter Jackson wouldn't let me. Fucking annoying midget cretins, constantly klutzing around and getting us into trouble. 

But I digress. Paolo the Italian, professional bouncer at the trendiest London clubs, enjoyed his wallow. I am not sure how I stood being around him for the rest of that day, or journey. Possibly by staying upwind. But he had a good heart, god bless him.

He was charitable to random strangers, apart from the cellphone donating act that I already mentioned. Every little street urchin would make him want to stop, talk, give money. Like most hippie-types, he worse grungy linen, slapped a tikka on his forehead every chance he could and spoke with awe of India and her spirituality - it sounds cliche, I know, but he was a genuine soul. Walking the fort of Jaisalmer together, we ended up at some lady's home based on her advertising palmistry services. She began reading him and his eyes almost popped out. 

Palmist: You wanted to adopt a child

Paolo: Oh my god-a, yes!!!! How did-a you know? (turns to me) She is right-a!!! How did-a she know?!!

Palmist (to me): You don't want to get read? You're too afraid to find out the future aren't you?

Me: (silent)

Palmist: Here, see this book of seemingly random alphabets? This is my code to write down my take for the day, so that no one else can find out. 

No doubt the Indian tax service was quivering.

I walked many a time past the Rajasthan government-run bhang stall.

For the record, I never imbibed. But I think Mr Frodo did.

Paolo was to later find me on Facebook, but sadly I do not patronize that site any longer.