Spin, spin, spiiiiin… the central hub of our rusting green roundabout squealed for forgiveness as my kid sister and I span ourselves senseless before tumbling playfully onto the back garden. ‘Where are you, John?’, Natalie echoed aimlessly to my alter ego. I picked up my invisible SpeedTalker 8000 radio to get the message through to my sister (alter ego; Jane), ‘I’m in outeeeer spaaaaace’ I’d crackle, ensuring we didn’t ruin the imagination of the game with the reality of eye contact. I floated around in my spacesuit urgently fiddling with a failing antenna, ‘where arrrre yoooou, Jane?’. Just moments after I successfully avoided a Martian-occupied asteroid, Jane regained communication, ‘I’m in – yee haaa – the wild west! Giddy up cowboy! He-ya he-ya‘. The following hour-or-so was spent trying to find each other in the confines of the modest lawn, though to us it took on convenient swirling portals, terrifying totem poles and spontaneous transportation upon a cosmic twister. I believed the roundabout didn’t survived our playful youth, though the past week or more in India, has caused me to wonder. Continue reading ‘India’s Child’s Play’
Monthly Archive for December, 2007
A young sweaty rickshaw-wallah passed me down my backpack and insisted I follow him on foot through the narrow alleyways that buffer the Varanasi ghats (wide riverside steps). As respectfully as I could, I squeezed passed a convoy of the dead being carried to their flaming finale on the cremation ghats. As we arrived at my hotel the young wallah placed his hand on my shoulder and softly warned me, ‘don’t go out at night, you’ll be mugged, at gunpoint’. My eyes widened. I paid him his fare and silently turned away. He placed another hand on my shoulder, turned me around and looked at me once more, deeply in the eye. He looked away, taking a moment to compose himself before issuing his final statement, ‘tip, sir?’. I couldn’t possibly deny this morbid messenger, if he would of hugged me, I wouldn’t of let go. Where, I sobbed, was my mother when I needed her. I scurried into the hotel, and prepared for the evening lockdown. Continue reading ‘Mother India’
