OK, I didn’t achieve anything I wanted today, apart from collecting my laundry but I don’t feel bad about most of it. Here’s today’s tortuous prose:

Saturday April 8th
I was in the bathroom when I heard the smash of breaking glass – the hotel lads who had been playing cricket in the yard had hit a six against my window, shattering it. Some of the glass had landed on my bed – which was right underneath the window – but most had been held inside the window-aperture by a metal framework.

I used the bath-mat to protect my feet and shuffled across the room to where my clothes and sandals were, made myself vaguely decent and then opened the door to give the appropriate bollocking and take the sheet off my bed. The lads apologised, swept (not totally efficiently) my room, brought new bedding and then tried to patch the window.

I had originally brought with me some spare screws for glasses hinges and had noticed yesterday that Suriya’s glasses appeared to need a replacement screw (they were held together with wire) and offered to try to fix them. The screws have disappeared, so I took the glasses to a nearby optician to see if she had some spares. She pointed out that a part of the hinge is missing too, so that it would take more than just a screw to fix them. Wasn’t sure what to do next, so went on my way.

On my way to the bus-stop, I was haild by a shop owner who said he wanted just to talk and invited me into his shop. Of course, once I was in there, the sales patter began. I could see I was going to have a hard time getting out of there without buying anything. (OK, I could have just said “you lied”, upped and left but I’m not that hardened yet.) He asked me what I was interested in by way of souvineers and I pointed to my head and camera and said “the souvineers I want are memories and experiences”, then to my chest “and above all friendships. I have about 800 rupees a day to spend and will spend around 600 of that on food and accommodation, so there is nothing in here that interests me.” (This is pretty near true: I could spend a bit more but I’d be cutting into contingency funds.)

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing – well, I’m curious to see what my birthstone looks like but I don’t want to buy any. The best thing I can do for you is walk away so that you can spend your time on someone who might buy something.”

So he showed me a piece, which was small but nicely cut and said “it’s only 2100 rupees”. I told “no chance” so he then asked me “what would you pay?” “100 rupees, this is what I can afford for anything like this” (He appeared insulted by this so I explained again that I didn’t have money to throw away.) He suggested I could economise later (Now I think about it, I’m very annoyed with his cheek.) and asked me again how much I would pay for it. I stuck to 100 rupees as he brought the price down and down, then eventually said “here take it”. I dug out 100 rupees to show I didn’t take anything for free, picked up the stone and left. So I have a piece of stone which is pretty, which cost about the price I think it’s worth, wasn’t inveigled into spending huge amounts but still have bought something I didn’t want. However I do see it as a minor victory because I could have walked away laden with overpriced stuff I really didn’t want. My new aim is to be able to walk away with some of the shop-keeper’s money.

I’ve been wanting to see the Dudhsagar waterfalls since I got here. In fact my train to Margao passed by them, but at 4pm so I couldn’t have seen anything then. So I got a bus to Margao, to try to find my way to Dudhsagar by bus, becuase the trains are few and far between. I was told I needed bus first to what sounded like ‘Savaday’ (but is in fact Sanvordem, AKA Churchorem), then get a bus to Colem/Kullam/Collem (spelling varies according to whether you’re India Rail, the local bus company or a map I’ve bough – and of course these are all transcriptions of Konkani or Hindi anyway), then share a jeep to the falls.

The total bus journey to Colem cost 31 rupees and took about 2 hours. It seemed a lot less because on the Sanvordem-Colem leg, I was talking with a science student and trying not to embarrass his classmates who were also on the back seat of the bus (I was sat between him and them): even asking them if they needed a bit more space gave them fits of the giggles. I think they were slightly impressed that I could read the some of the Hindi/Devanagari signs ont he bus and so be sure the bus was going to Colem. (Come to think of it, I’m pretty pleased with this too.)

At Colem, the student (Rajesh?) pointed out where I could get a jeep to the falls. It turned out that a jeep costs 1800 rupees and that by now no-one else would arrive to share it with me. I was told about a hotel in nearby Molem where I could stay and then be in time to share a jeep. I was offered a lift there by one of the jeep drivers but since I’d already paid to stay in Colva tonight and didn’t have my stuff with me, I asked if he could take me to Sanvordem. Upon hearing he’d want 500 rupees for this (the bus would have cost 16), I demured and then walked toward where the bus had orignally dropped me in Colem.

There, a local shop keeper told me that a train would arrive before the bus and get me to Margao in 30 minutes. This sounded much more like it! I like Indian trains, especially the cool breezes and views from the open doors. Even better, my ticket cost 8 rupees. The train was all second-class (wooden slatted seats) but for 30 minutes, who cares? At one station, theree women who had been carrying huge bundles of wood on their heads got on and stood at the end of the carriage, next to the toilets. A passenger moaned at them a lot – I couldn’t see what they were doing wrong but I think it may have been a caste thing. Also, a police-git just hissed at them to get out of his way so he could use the toilet. Cowardice got the better part of me telling him that he could be civil, even if he did wear a uniform.

The one pain I know about Margao is that the bus station and train station are about 6km apart. I thought I had momories the journey between them in the morning (my bus passed the station) but by the time I got back to Margao, even I realised this was just wishful thinking. I didn’t see any buses and no-one would tell me how to get to the bus station but I was buggered if I was going to spend 180 rupees for a 7km journey to Colva when 30 km had just cost 8 rupees. Can you see a pattern here?

In the end, by playing the “I know what I’m doing – I’m going that way mate!”, “this mode of travel scares me shitless” and “your price sucks” cards, I got a ride on the back of a motorbike to my hotel for 50 rupees.
Again, I didn’t achieve my aim of getting back there by bus but I’m back in one piece and my wallet’s not groaning.

Just in case you think I’m mean, I don’t agree. I do to give money away, so long as I have it and it goes to people who need it. Otherwise, I’ll pay the going rate, whatever that may be, for stuff I want or need, so that I have a chance of having money to give to those who need it.

You may have read how on Wednesday I met Raj, Suriya (his sister) and Priya (Suriya’s youngest daughter). They had told me that today was Suriya’s birthday but that Raj and Priya would be in Tamil Nadu, preparing for his wedding. So today, partly because I was a bit concerned that Suriya might not have anyone visiting on her birthday*, I dropped round with a card to wish her happy birthday, intending to stay for just a short while and then go sight-seeing.
*this was groundless – friends from her church were in and out all afternoon. I’ve even been treated to some hymns in Kannada and Konkani.

9 hours later, full of delicious home-cooked food* and having heard a lot of Suriya’s life story, some of which makes me angry and almost ashamed to be male, I almost had to take a wheel-chair to the cyber cafe! Suriya’s friends, mostly from her church (I may have stumbled on the only protestants in this town) popped in and out all afternoon. I’m very happy I missed out on the sight-seeing because I went because I’m sure Suriya’s enjoyed today and I know I have.
* wada (spicy, deepfried ‘doughnuts’ made of urid-dahl flour and fresh herbs and spices), piperoncini-stregth chilli pakora and channa masala (chick-pea curry)

The following is purely theoretical for now but assuming I eventually have surplus income, I would be very interested in your comments and/or advice. Is it better to

• invest in a scheme whose stated ethical policy matches many of my stances and pays 3% interest
• invest the same sum in a scheme which may well make its profits from sources I detest but which pays 4.5% interest, then give the extra interest to causes I definitely support
• forget about investing and give the original sum to causes I definitely support?

I had a couple of overnight guests last night. However their (and my) honour is untarnished by this because they were small (but perfectly formed) lizards. Pix of my platonic, poikilothermic playmates may be uploaded to my iDisk if I can ever get a PC to even acknowledge such things exist.

The following blog entry is meant as a snapshot of yesterday, not an on-going state of affairs. I wrote it last night (6th April) by hand and am this morning keying it into my blog mostly for completeness (but didn’t make it public until the evening of Saturday 8th).

I’ve been in a fairly foul mood on and off since I bathed my cellphone last night. Here’s most of the reasons:

Zeroth law of computing
I’ve lost all the numbers on that phone, including those of people I’ve met here and not recorded elsewhere. I can only recall five of the UK numbers on the phone so please email me your numbers if you want to risk me calling you.

Platform prostration
Oh yes, on the subject of backups: trying to upload my pix so far to my iDisk from a cybercafe PC has been, er, unsuccessful so far… I don’t really want to keep on buring to CD-R so will look into getting a couple of decent-sized memory sticks.

It’s in the trees, it’s coming
The non-arrival of a parcel I posted from Pune’s main post office to my parents on 24th March has been gnawing at me for over a week. So I checked with the local post office on how to chase it up. Apparently I had to write to the Postmaster at Pune and pray he’d take action, then email me (because I don’t have a postal address he can reply to in India). I spent a while writing a suitably grovelling letter, buying envelopes, etc.

However, when I phoned home just now, I was told that this parcel had arrived, along with one of the three I’d posted to the UK from Mahabaleshwar on the 31st March. So there’s hope for the other two and for the Indian postal system yet.

Ashes to Ashes
England lost yesterday – again and now have no chance of winning the ODI series. While I always want Australia to beat England and I’m happy for my host country to defeat the poms too, I’d like it to be a close thing, not a whitewash. Here’s hoping more of the first-choice English players recover from injury soon. However, I still applaud those who have played: playing to even a fraction of your temperate-climate ability here is impressive. It’s hot and humid enough just now for sweat to be constantly trickling down my back and abdomen, even well past midnight.

Clunk-click
Until a few hours ago, I thought one copy of my padlock key might have been stolen. So I was worried by this apparent loss/theft and am now annoyed with myself for not checking thoroughly before starting to worry. (All the hotels I’ve stayed in have locally-produced padlocks on their doors. To prevent theft by staff or previous inmates, I use my own [Indian made] padlock, then padlock my rucsac shut and to the furniture with a combination lock and chain I brought from the UK. I can’t help feeling that I’m being over-cautious.)

Sunshine on Leith?
One disadvantage of not wearing socks under my sandals is that they’ve chafed my feet. I bought a pair of-flip-flops last night but I just couldn’t live with the hard vertical plastic violating my tender parts (between my first and second toes) so I’ve given them to a local charity store and started wearing socks again.

People are strange, when you’re a stranger
There’s bugger-all to do in Colva except eat, drink and read, unless you have company. Probably because the locals have already met loads of foreigners, until 10pm this evening I’d not even had a snippet of a meaningful or enjoyable conversation all day. (As if prove how silly this worry is, I’ve today [Friday 7th], met a Slovakian architecture student and we’ve been nattering away in French with the occasional lapse into English or German where there are lapses in our vocabularies.)

I hate the white man?
However the main reasons I’ve been a foul mood this evening is meeting a very unsavoury character (my first entirely dislikable Indian) last night. I’m not going to say any more about this in this forum apart from that the only tangible cost (and all that really happened) was drinking a beer I didn’t really want and buying him a brandy-and-coke (after steering him to a bar so that there were other people around and so it was less likely that he could do anything to me). The intangible cost? Probably almost nothing apart from yet another smidgeon of my self-respect and that’s now returning.

Le mot juste?
Mr Cash’s words seemed to be relevant – well they were going round my head all day:
I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that’s real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything
what have I become?
[snip]
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar’s chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
[snip]
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

In this case both the ‘you’ and ‘I’ are (mostly) me. I’ve deliberately omitted lines which might appear to be intended to hurt or implicate people who might read this blog because they’re NOT so intended. If you look up the missing lyrics, please please please don’t take them personally. If anyone has ‘gone away’, then this is at least partly my fault for pissing them off or not (yet) responding to their attempts to contact me.

Remergence
This evening, I met acousin of the cyber-cafe owner outside the cafe and found that the overlap between her languages (Sao Paulo-accented Portuguese and some Konkani) and mine (English, French, a little German and the very little Latin I can remember) wasn’t enough to express much more than our common humanity and how cute the antics of her 10-month-old sister were. However, this human contact, along with the nocturnal visitation I’ve already blogged about, did much to alleviate the mood.

I forgot my cellphone was in my pocket and so it got a bath in the Arabian Sea and is hence comprehensively buggered. If you need to contact me just now, phone 0091-832-2788584 and asked for the pommie git in room 7 of Vailankanni Cottages.

My first task tomorrow is to buy a new one, then chase India post for non-delivery so far of a parcel to my parents, then head to somewhere selling memory so I can re-RAM my brain…

Palm trees, hot enough to fry eggs on my forehead, cement buildings, in-yer-face catholicism, I’m wearing shorts and sandals without socks: yep, I’m finally in Goa. I’m at a village called Colva, near Margao/Madgaon and already the wierdness has started. But before I get into that, how did I get here? (Can you hear Chris Franz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison on backing vocals?)

Sunday 2nd
Last time I blogged, I was in Satara, the nearest big town to Mahabaleshwar, so I could get a train south. I seem to have spent most of Sunday 2nd blogging and trying to get the Indian Railways website to obey me. It didn’t, mainly because while the major town near here is known as Margao, officially it’s called Madgaon. I gave up in disgust and near tears and crawled back to my hotel. (On the way, I met a couple of lads I’ll blog about later.) At the hotel, I started chatting with a guy who asked where I’m from (the usual first question). At some part in the conversation, he did a very fast piece of mental arithmetic and so I asked if he was an engineer or scientist. He laughed and said that he owned the hotel. He mentioned that his cousin was getting married the next day in the hotel’s reception/function room and pointed out the happy couple (Vaishakh and Latika). I asked him to pass on my congratulations and he said I should speak to them myself, so I did and they invited me to the ceremony. Thank goodness I’d just had some reasonably new clothes washed.

Monday 3rd
I spent the morning wresting with Indian Railways website again – this time their server crapped out. The cyber-cafe owner told me that this is a regular occurence. ABout 11.30, I gave up again and decided to go to the station later (it’s about 11km from the town) and book my ticket there. So I got as smart as I could and headed into the nuptials.

I found out later this was the 4th day of the wedding – the previous 3 days being mostly prayer for a good wedding and a happy marriage. This part was an unusual (to me) event – about 200 guests, all dressed in sumptuous but unique variants on sarees, shalwar kameezes, lunghis and ‘Indian male uniform’, people wondering onto the stage, apparently at random, as a piece of cloth was held between the fiance(e)s and happy(?) songs were played and prayers(?) were spoken. At several times during the proceedings, the guests threw coloured dry rice at the couple (this had been handed around earlier) but because there were so many guests, hardly any actually hit them. In all, it was a lovely, spontaneous/casually-formal occasion and I enjoyed it very much, even though I felt rather out of place because I wasn’t part of either family, nor a friend of either the bride or groom and because I didn’t really understand what was happening.

I was also invited to eat – in another part of the hall, people sat where the liked or could find a space at one of three long trestle tables while waiters walked up and down, offering two types of rice, pakora, curries, puris, other vegetables, fruit-custard deserts, soft drinks and water. I was sat next to a man who described all the food to me and reassured me it was vegetarian and asked me about UK wedding customs.

By 3pm, it seemed to be winding down, so after speaking again to Vaishakh and Latika, I collected my clobber and headed for the bus station to try to get out to the train station. Yet again, Indian folk were wonderful, showing me to the right bus and ensuring that someone would point out the station from the right bus-stop. The only snag was at the station where I was told that all sleepers to Goa the following night were booked and that I should simply turn up the next night, buy my ticket then and live with it.

I also met Marc, a French painter, who was getting similar unhelpfulness – although I think his way of speaking English may have come over as a bit curt (I don’t for a moment believe he intended this) and his accent may also have been an impediment. He’d just arrived from Pune and was on his way to Kolhapur but had had enough travelling for one day. (If he’d been traveliing third-class then I can see why.) We shared a rickshaw back to town and I showed him the hotels I’d seen: he ended up staying at mine but got one of the now vacant, not-en-suite partition-rooms for 80 rupees (I’d paid Rs275 for mine). I also took him to a restaurant that I’d been eating at where something totally unique occurred – two Indian women started conversations with us. It turned out that they were an English teacher and her pupil and so wanted a bit of practice and to hear about Europe but even so, it was pleasant to talk with women and not feel rejected by half of Indian society. (Again, I know ‘logically’ this is a ‘cultural’ difference but it still feels very strange to me!) By a further amazing coincidence, the teacher is a good friend of Wahid, a great bloke I met in Mahabaleshwar.

After dinner, Marc and I walked through Satara. He keenly felt the pollution and longed to see the mountains around the town. He’d had a rough time in Pune because the pollution was worse there. Even so, he kept an essential-oil enhanced Vicks nasal doo-dah up his nostrils and a cloth over his mouth. We found a brand new Ganesh mandir which was absolutely beuatiful but nothing else of note and repaired to the hotel. I didn’t sleep well: insects, traffic noise and random Bruce-paranoias kept me tossing and turning until at least 3am.

Tuesday 4th
After eventually surfacing well after mid-day, I went out to try to get my latest photos backed up to CD. Eventually I found a camera shop which would do this because none of the cybercafes here had card readers. While I was waiting for this, I sat watching a real (Adobe) Photoshop artist at work, retouching photos, arranging family portraits and generally doing professionally and well many of the things I do (now) badly and slowly. I was a bit narked when the artist made strenuous attempts to buy my camera, a bit more narked when he removed my photos from my card after burning the CD (however, he copied them back to the card from the CD when I told him that it was a back-up, not trying to create room on the card) and very narked when it was time to pay: I asked him the cost of this service and he said “up to you”, then appeared unhappy with what I thought was a resonable price for a blank CD and 10 minute’s PC time.

This prompted me to buy a card-reader of my own (it cost Rs 350 [about 5 pounds) because I’m sure I’ll be backing up more as I go along and don’t want any more such hassles. I got a bit of grief from the owner of the shop where I bought the reader because he wanted me to pay in dollars and/or give him UK currency. Er, if I’m going to give anything to anyone here, it’ll be to folk who are down on their luck or who have become special to me in some way or other, not to flashily dressed PC-sellers!

By now it was 5pm and I was very conscious that

• it was time to leave Satara
• but first I wanted to fulfil a promise to meet up with two lads I’d met a couple of nights ago. Mahesh and Hrumesh are two first-year law students here. We’d met the night before the wedding and they’d invited me into a cafe for chai and insisted on paying because I was their/India’s guest. We’d talked a lot about the different customs and social mores in our contries and they’d wanted to meet up again to continue this.

So I phonedthem, wondering if they would have time to meet before I had to go to the station or whether I’d spend another night in Satara.

By luck they were taking a break just then from revision and so we headed to a nearby cheap restaurant for chai and masala dosa* (and a lesson in how to eat them properly: apparently the thing to do is use cutlery or right hand to dunk some in the ‘oxtail soup’, then spoon a bit of what I’d taken to be coconut dip into my mouth.
*of course, I was happy to pay this time, even though they again tried to insist I didn’t

Mahesh and I shared an autorickshaw with a young couple to the station while Hrumesh followed on his motorbike. I bought my ticket, not realising it was a third-class passport to pain and then chatted a bit more with the lads before they left me in the hands of Munaa, a very young bloke who was heading back to Goa to work after spending a long weekend with his girlfriend in Satara. He was keen to say goodbye to his lady but his phone was out of credit so I offered him use of mine. He couldn’t get through, probably because mine is a UK phone but this still kicked off at least a ‘single-serving’ friendship (obviously I hope for more) and he found us seats and we guarded each others’ luggage as the other tried to sleep or visit the toilet.

A word about travelling third class on India trains: DON’T! The seats are made of wooden slats with no padding, there are about 10% more passengers than there are seats and the **squat** toilets stink. (There was no sign of unpleasant matter on the toilet floor but all the same I’m very glad I didn’t have to use them.) I also found I can’t sleep on a wooden seat and was too slow to grab a luggage rack, not that I would have slept on that either. So I sat up most of the night, sustained by chai and matchsticks propping my eyelids open. I also got to try some of the chewing-tobacco and chalk mix that’s so popular here: once was enough.

Wednesday 5th
The train finally completed its 425 km/11 hour journey (I’m not kidding – at times I could have walked faster) and Munaa led me out of the station and showed me where I could get a taxi to a hotel. For tonight and tomorrow night, I’m staying at Vailankanni, 4th Ward, Colva – Beach (2788584) but I think I’ll move on after that: there are other places in Goa that interest me more, and 400 rupees a night for a room without hot water seems a bit over the top.

I slept for a few hours, changed into shorts and then went out to explore. As I was walking along the main drag, noting escape routes to Benaulim, Palolem and Anjuna, a bloke hailed me and asked me to come to his house. At first I was, er,somewhat hesitant but having checked that I was ready to flee at the first sign of trouble and havving got a vaguely good vibe from him, I agreed. At the house, he introduced me to his sister and niece (aged 11 and wearing girl-scout uniform, complete with left-hand shake). It turned out the house was Suriya (the sister) and Priya (her daughter)’s home but that Raj visited often because Suriya was widowed, so he worked here in Goa* to support them. He and Priya were returning this evening to their native Tamil for his wedding (Suriya would follow later, just in time for the actual ceremony) but for now, apparently because I reminded him of a German friend and because he’d somehow seen something good in me just as I was walking along the road, he wanted to be my friend and offer hospitality in the form of food, chai and conversation.
*as a social worker[? – his english was very emphatic but also idiosyncratic and a little difficult to follow and I don’t yet speak any Tamil]

Again, much chat, punctuated by communication difficulties but accompanied by jeera rice, lime pickle and ginger chai. Raj extolled the virtues of Tamil Nadu and his brother/cousin’s orphanage and school there, along with the tea estate in the Nilgiri hills which pays for all of this. He insisted that once I’d seen it, I’d never want to return to England. (I did demur, saying that I’d need to return to the UK to be near my parents which apparently endeared me to him a bit more but he kept on repeating that I’d still not want to return to the UK.) SUch over-enthusiasm does make me a bit nervous but just guess who wants to visit Nilgiri anyway! If I’m being offered an expense-free place, apparently without strings, well it’s worth a look at least.

Raj then took me back to the main road, I found this cybercafe and that’s us up to date.It’s now about 5pm, so I’m heading to the beach now it’s less madly hot.

to be edited later…

Thursday 30th part 2
Decide to buy sarees for two friends to whom I’m due birthday presents so I start checking prices in the shops on the main street. Most places sell kurtas (long, loose, typically ‘islamic style’) blouses but I’m noting prices in my diary when a young bloke (Wahid) approaches me to ask me to come and talk with his uncle. Mr Shah has seen me writing in my diary several times and is curious about what I’m writing. So I tell him it’s my diary and we talk about what I’m doing here and what he does. He runs a small shop called the Kashmiri Arts Palace, selling clothing and other textiles he buys in his native area (near Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital) and sells here.

Wahid’s interested in setting up his own business, ideally wholesaling into the export market (so that he can work on smaller margins but make more money overall). He’s not aiming to get rich but simply to make a living and raise money to benefit his home area. He also tells me about a charity which helps street-children in Goa (see http://www.childrescue.net) that he’s trying to help and of a local multi-faith inititative/conference in nearby Panchgani (see http://www.mraindia.org/) he’d like to attend. His stated dedication and philanthropy put my dilletantism to shame. I’ve agreed to look for places he might use as outlets in the UK – anyone got any ideas? I suppose it’s possible that I could order a job lot of Mr Shah and Wahid’s produce, so is anyone interested in hand-made Kashmiri shawls, sarees, pashminas, wood-carvings and carpets? Kashmiri sarees differ from ‘standard’ Indian sarees by being made of slightly heavier white cloth which is embroidered. Sometimes there’s cutwork, reminiscent of some my grandmother made in Vienna and it all looks quite special and beautiful.

Wahid and Mr Shah tell me that, contrary to my guidebook’s recommendation to avoid Kashmir, over 300,000 tourists visited last year and more are expected this year. There’s a popular ski-ing resort at Gulmarg (Ian and Jenni – want to check it out?) Wahid also begs me to understand that hardly any muslims are terrorists, contrary to the impression he fears I might have from western media. I tell him that I don’t have this attitude at all, citing the example of a couple I knew who were South African but of muslim/north Indian origin and were two of the most caring and intelligent people I’ve ever met. Wahid reckoned (and I tend to agree) that there’s just a few idiots in any faith (or other) group who spoil it for the rest of the group. Incidentally, I read in today’s Times of India that Iran now claims it doesn’t want nuclear weapons but only its ‘rightful’ civil nuclear power.

Back to saree-buying: I realize that if I’m buying sarees, I’ll also need to buy the accompanying short ‘saree-blouses’ and that these are made to measure and so I need my friends’ bust and chest measurements. Cue two immensely-silly, giggle-ridden calls to Scotland, during which one well-known joker achieves his longest-distance ever ‘mess-with-someone-elses-head’ mind-f***.

Much hilarity later, and in possession of one set of highly-classified vital statistics and basic colour/style preferences, I now know I’m shopping for one Kashmiri set and one ‘Indian’ set. I decide upon the exact Kashmiri saree, while amusing Wahid with my decision process, then hand over the measurements for the blouse and am told it will be ready in the morning.

I then go to an Indian-style saree shop and find three I like that match the intended recipients’ colour preferences. However, I don’t yet know her measurements so can’t yet buy. Later, by when the shop has closed and I’m in bed, she texts me her measurements. (I promise I’ve deleted this text!).

I recall meeting the magician again while I was having a very late meal – a gurjurati thali which contained the most delicious sauce I’ve yet tasted in India and getting upset with him when he asked to see my cellphone (I had no problem with him comparing it with his own Nokia) but then appearing to change some of my settings. I realized he wasn’t actually trying to do so and so calmed down and apologized. (I think I was more fractious than usual because of lack of sleep, clothes-buying and the occasional communication breakdown.

Friday 31st: either a lesson on India or a classic Bruce-style farce

1. I check out of my hotel but ask to leave my rucsac there for a few hours. For this I’m charged 100 rupees. I’m inclined to argue but eventually realized how little this is for keeping my stuff safe.
2. I return to the Indian saree shop with the measurements and am told it will take until 5pm to make up the blouse. So it looks like I’m staying here tonight because I don’t want another arrival after dark.
3. An assistant takes me to a local tailor and we talk in broken English and pulverized Marathi. I watch in horror as the tailor cuts off about 1 metre of the saree material. (I realize later that this is the part that’s used to make the blouse and that the other material, whose colour we’d discussed, is used to make the petticoat that is used to hold the saree on.)
4. I agree to return at 5pm and pay for the petticoat and blouse tailoring and wonder off for breakfast (Idli sambar, khala chai and pani) and of course leave an almost full 2-litre bottle of drinking water at the restaurant.
5. Back at Kashmiri Arts Palace, I pick up the completed Kashmiri set. I give Wahid a wee donation towards the Goa street-children organization and ask him to recommend someone who can sew some parcels ready for posting back to the UK because there isn’t a sewer/packager at the post-office.
6. Wahid takes me to the lady tailors who made the ‘Kashmiri’ saree-blouse – they run their business in their home. I’m offered chai and gurjurati bread (a deep-fried chapatti) that are very welcome as I sit on the bed in their bedroom/lounge/workshop and gurn at the wee child while the younger woman sews up my parcels and then tells me how the blouse has several rows of stitches so it can be loosened if it’s too tight. So much friendliness, I feel like Polyanna and this work cost 20 rupees (the cost of 2 litres of bottled water).
7. Wahid takes me to the post office. They weigh my parcels and tell me the price to post them but that I need to get Mr Podhar, back at the main bazaar, to seal them with wax.
8. So we trudge back to Mr Podhar’s stall but he’s away for lunch.
9. I then ask Mr Shah about getting a room for tonight because he tells me that I’ve been paying over the odds for an off-season room. His other colleague takes me to a hotel on Mesjid Road who charge 150 rupees a night for a nicer room.
10. I pay for it with a 500 rupee note but they don’t have change so, once I’ve received my receipt, I tell the receptionist that I’ll collect my rucsac and then get my change from him.
11. I collect my rucsac, dump it in my room and use the blessed sit-down, flush toilet and pick up my change.
12. Back to Kashmiri Arts Palace to collect the parcels I left there while hotel-swapping and then to Mr Podhar’s to get the parcels sealed.
13. Back to the post-office but now I am 25 rupees short of the postage cost so leave the parcels there while I visit the ATM.
14. Back to the post-office to pay the 25 rupees I owe them, then sit on the post office’s steps and write this drivel.

1. It’s 42 degrees centigrade here. That’s 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. The nice man at the street stall yesterday showed me many newspaper stories in yesterday’s Times of India. One was that medical students here are now regulalry cheating in exams by texting the questions to colleagues who then text back answers. This is despite them being searched for cellphones before they go into the exams.

Old Mahabaleshwar: Mukund Rajendra Zade, Old Mahabaleshwar, District Satara, Maharashtra, 411002.

Phonebooth: He’s Peshant Jadhow of 20 Cowasji Road, Mahabaleshwar, District Satara, 412806, India.