i predict a riot

So - Madurai is famous for its fantastically painted temples. Little was said of it's 50/50 racial mix - Hindu/Muslim and what happens if one side suffers an assasination the day that I arrive in town.

I'd arrived early in the morning and watched the sun rise over a station concourse that was littered with people, all wrapped up in grey cloths and blankets.

 

The temples are, indeed, spectacular. There's a great deal of prostrating oneself and walking around pillars numerous times.   I have one particular memory of a algae-infested water tank in one.  I might be wrong.

The Temple Market is also tremendously famous, lined, as it is, by tailors and other cloth-sellers.


I'm still profoundly deaf and think little of it when I find myself walking at the centre of a rather determined crowd, flying black flags and banners.  I quickly catch on when a police van flies through the centre of the crown and dispenses a large number of baton-wielding policemen.  Everyone runs in the opposite direction, including myself. 

 

Madurai goes into a degree of shutdown.  You can find yourself sitting in a bar/cafe, happily eating an onion dosa when the shutters rattle down to fend off a marrauding crowd of 'the other side'.

I'm also profoundly constipated, by the way.

What to do but checkout and head to Kerala.  A bus seems like a good idea.  If your idea of a good bus journey is a broken seat in front of you, a leaking roof and an endless array of indians wanting to sit next to you and make friends as you make your way over the Keralan mountains with the skies darkening and the temperature dropping.  Kumily (the famous hill station) passes in the torrential night and I arrive to a boxroom in Ernakulam, battered.

Am I enjoying myself?  From reading all of this, I'm really not quite sure.

MahabaliMamalapuram

Two things - the way I say the word Mahabalipuram always makes U laugh.  And this is, I think, the episode I tell people about the most.  Because it was the most horrific.

After J was gone there was a powercut. The perfect opportunity for me to contemplate the next 5-6 weeks entirely alone. 

My first step, in the morning, was to plan and execute my trip to Mahabalipuram, via Madras.  The famous shore temples were supposed to be the 'must see' sight of Tamil Nadu.  My account of getting there is full of heat, frustration and bangle-sellers.  My rhetoric is all about being 'confusedly hassled'.  First impressions of the town appear to be good but am immediately conned into staying at a homestay under false pretences.  Mr Neelankandan will remain, however, close to my heart for reeasons that will become apparent.

The most stereotypical array of travellers proceeded to career into view.  There was the yogic American called Brad.  There were the gaggle of Australian girls who particularly caught Brad's eye - "The ocean is my guru".  And there was Jim.  More on Jim no doubt later.

There seems to be an increasing impatience with Indian tourists and a need to find peace and quiet.  It's clearly very hot indeed and my cough is getting worse and worse.  The food, it seems, is good - apart from a head attached to a grilled fish. 

The 'tipping point' day was filled with unease, pain and inability to settle.  I go for a walk to clear my head and am picked up by "Mr Glastonbury" and put on the back of his bike and taken to the doctors.  50 Rps of drugs are dispensed, taken home and thrown up again.  An Australian Hippy administers a face massage.  And it gets worse.

Before I know it I'm in hospital being injected, blood tested and dripped.  My reflections are not of being at all alarmed - just deliriously going with the flow.  I had my own room with a lock and constant visitors and attention - notably from the Australian Girls, Jim and Mr N.  There's been a bubonic plague outbreak.  Incoming visitors to the country are being fumigated, outgoing tourists are being blood tested and television sets are being exchanged for 1,000 dead rats apiece. 

And there's a little boy called Hari Krishna who's Uncle is in the next room after a motorbike accident who brings me Tamil comics to read.

And I'm going profoundly deaf.

It seems my stoicism is being read in backpacker circles as great bravery.  It is, of course, nothing of the sort.  But the whole experience is nothing short of miserable.  I get out after five days - after x-rays and ear gouging and a 3,000 Rp bill.  Jim and Mr N walk me slowly home, stopping along the way to chat to people and look at stone carvings - mainly chillums for Jim.

A community art project is being undertaken in Jim's room - a mandala begun by Brad and radically improved by Jim who spends hours working on it wearing nothing but a small pair of blue shorts.

And I prepare to leave.  Mr N firmly believes that I should, in the least, send him a walkman when I return home.  Mrs N just thinks money will do.  And so, with sore tonsils and ongoing grumpiness at the people who continually hinder my (deaf) path with diversions to money-changers and dope dealers, I leave for Madurai.

Picking up a newspaper somewhere along the way I discover that there is now a moratorium on killing rats and that the best way to deal with delays on the railways is to set the train on fire.

Memories.  Dreams of having to return to India and finding myself back there already.  Mr N, appearing at my bedroom door each evening, bare chested with his face painted, giving puja.  Jim's shorts.

Hampi or bust

 

Hampi remains, many years later, one of the best experiences of my life. 

We stayed one night in Hospet - not the most inspiring of towns - mainly a stopping-off point for Hampi - as demonstrated by a couple who were daytripping to Hampi every day.

My diary refers to it, over and over, as 'Indiana Jones-like'.  The enormous boulders, strewn across the landscape.  The thirteenth century temples, Elephant Stables, Queen's Bath and singing stones.  The 'main drag' of a few shops and stalls with an enormous temple and town 'water tank' at the far end.  And Gopis - our hangout of choice.  And the cheapest room I've stayed in in my life - RajSingh's (or something).  A small cafe and a few bare rooms.  20 rps a night.  Monkeys everywhere.  But at least the place had hot water which you threw over yourself with a bucket.

J amused himself somewhat with some British Girls  that we'd met.  One, he maintained, was the spitting image of Patsy Kensit.  Lots of 'caram' in the cafe and bikerides out into the desert.

We both had 'daytrips' into Hospet for trouser-making, ticket booking and money-changing.  Mine was dominated by a chap called Vittl who insisted on escorting me everywhere, pissing in the street, ordering double for lunch and insisting that I came to his house for dinner.  J displayed his usual supportive charms by saying that he'd have happily let me go alone whilst he feigned illness.

 

I'd imagine that Hampi is a bit more touristified these days.  Then it was the last stop saloon.  Fights in the street between hammered indians and stoned hippy travellers.  Waves of dog barking in the streets, heralding the approach or departure of a visitor.  Monkeys coming into your room to steal things.  An ever-increasing entourage of visitors, every morning, from Shankar the massage and chillum guy through to the bread/pie/cake guy.  And every day marked with breakfast at RS's, chillin' in the room, climbing up to the temple and dinner at Gopis.



We'd spend hours, sitting on the side of a mountain, talking nonsense, writing postcards and poems, smoking and drinking 'bang lassis'. 

My diary shows signs of irritation on both sides.  J's womanising, 'go it alone' attitude and miserliness might have, in fact, caused problems further down the line - but it didn't because we were only together for 18 days. 

But all in all - a remarkable week - fondly remembered.

And indeed - after a quick trip to Mysore and the now-famous Bangalore, he was gone.  I was on my own.

PostScript.  I've just discovered, in looking for pictures online, that Hampi Bazaar is gone - bulldozed in 2011 as part of a government order to 'protect' the historic site.  The pictures online are truly sad and shocking.  All gone.  Never to return.

Back Packed

I kept closely-scribed diaries for the totality of my backpacking.  I never intended to transcribe them and I won't start now.  They remain intensely embarrassing reading but an interesting insight into Me Then.

I arrived in Bombay airport around, I think, seven hours early.  This was before the days of email and text messaging and my arrangement with J to meet was therefore seven hours out of date.


So there I was, mulling over a tricky and painful goodbye with U, an extraordinary Summer, a flight filled with paranoid dreams of spending the next five months on my own whilst everyone else paired off and had the most wonderful of times and doggedly refusing to drink any water - in Bombay airport.  Each fly that landed on me filled me with malarial dread and I moved from plastic seat to plastic seat, ploughing my way through Erica Jong's "How to Save your Own Life".

And then J turned up three hours early, announcing that he'd been here all night.....

And so the adventure began.  J had already been in the country for a few weeks and, seeing that this was his second visit, he was the expert.  Expert in haggling with an Indian accent, smoking weed and planning the next leg of the trip, three days in advance, at knock-down pricing.

Bombay was utterly ghastly.  The slums, the con-artists, the crowds, the drunks and dope-fiends.  Very little to see or do (apart from an art gallery dedicated, rather, to Rajiv Ghandi and a Dhobi Ghat not worth the hour's drive) and very little opportunity for escape as our first bus tickets out of town were double-booked. 

The eventual bus journey to Goa was doubly ghastly.  It took, my diary reminds me, three hours to get out of Bombay ('If making money is a sin, welcome to hell').  The roads were so bad that your head would hit the ceiling when you went over a bump.  I was starting to seriously regret my decision to come to India and to chose J as my travelling companion.

 

Things picked up a little in Goa.  J, it transpired, was something of a backpacker lethario.  And Goa was full of similar types and overly tanned women.  Excessive drinking and smoking was done at a place on the beach called 'Pasta Hut' and the recovery was one in a concrete hut on a street upon which fish dried in the sun.  The mosquito net would glower down on you during the night and the travellers tales were recounted, for good and bad, into the night.  The famous 'ear cleaners' prowled the beaches and I reminded myself that I didn't want to come back from my travels hating my travelling companion, like my brother did.  I started to relax a little and accept J's ways and India's many many ways.

Eight days in.

Interlude 2

I guess I have fewer regrets about the period since the last Interlude.  The mistakes I made resulted in learnings that I grew from.  I still had many discoveries to make but I had fewer regrets.  There are things that I would have done differently.  But knowing that made me stronger.

The smallest regret was my educational achivement.  I had excelled at school and achieved outstanding results.  At university I excelled in other ways.  I made friends where I expected to find none.  I stretched myself in trying new things and many gave me experience that I draw upon today.  I continued to develop my particular brand of loyalty and friendship and my own brand of me.

No regrets.

The final blow-out

So - that's it?  Over?  Well - not quite.

The final hurrah of University life was a trip to Edinburgh for the festival.  Those final few terms were spent in the company of budding theatricals, as we know.  This was the greatest of opportunities to not say goodbye.  We cajoled the Union into giving us some underwriting and a minibus and I cajoled a foundation into giving us some money and rehearsals commenced for 'Cuckoo'.



Casting was controversial.  Previous favourites were overlooked and newbies ended up in leading roles as Indians and Nurses (work it out).

I moved digs, continued a relentless programme of garlic cooking, smoking, drinking and rehearsing and we were off.  I was the first driver....

The extent of C's resistance to roadtravel was not fully apparent to me.  She had been in a serious car crash on her gap year and has remained a nervous traveller since.  She sat in the seat behind the driver's steadily drinking.  And singing.  I, in the meantime, couldn't find the fullbeam of the headlights and the night was closing in.

It's extraordinary to me that a bunch of students can work out how to book venues, marketing and accomodation in another city, let alone pack a roofrack on a minibus.  But we made it in one piece, driving through the night, and arriving for a tech rehearsal at a converted leisure centre, early in the morning.

The show itself was a triumph - uncharacteristically sold out for a student show in Edinburgh.  As memorable as all that was, the trip was memorable for so many other reasons.

Scampi and Chips after every show, with a lot of drinking.  Starting at about 230pm.

Everyone coming up to see the show from home.   Sleeping in the corridor, in cupboards and, of course, in other people's beds.

Nurse Ratched's endless shagging of her boyfriend.  Endless.

The teriffic reviews that decided to single out our Billy for sole criticism - resulting in a meltdown (and a pickup) that last through until 5 minutes before the next performance.

My brother and his girlfriend even came.  Cue a very nice dinner (and the discovery of warm brie salad) and a very raucous evening at the Fringe Club (lots of shouting down free mike standups - to the extent that we got told off by another patron).

Lots and lots of inhaling.

A trip to Roslyn Chapel long before Da Vinci Code.

Stubbing a cigarette out in C's eye.  A trip to hospital and a lifetime of recrimination ensued.

Getting slagged off by the show that was after us - for our pretentious warmups and our postshow rounds of self-congratulation.  Their criticism was justified.

The stars in the Gilded Balloon Bar.  Bill went one step too far and got lambasted by Mark Lamarr.

The ceiling falling in on our digs.

The constant harranging of the cast to 'do some flyering'.  They must have done because we sold out!

The discovery of Fecund Theatre, Ertha Kitt doing James Joyce and, more important than anything, "The Night that Larry Kramer Kissed Me".

And the long drive home.  Dropping people off as we went.  Overshooting my own home for a final night or two in my now ex University Town.  A final drink or two at the pub where I'd developed the most shocking of habits (pints, cockles and drunkenly telling the barmaid all my problems).  A round of words-lite goodbyes.  A taxi arrival.  And gone.

Over already?

It's strange to be writing about the 'final furlong' of University so quickly.  For what was, undoubtedly, a transformative time in my time, to not have laden the pages to which it pertains with more significance and drama seems wrong.  But, as you know, you don't know that these are times of significance and change at the time.   You just live it.

The final furlong, prior to a trip to Edinburgh, was significant for a number of reasons.  Firstly, was my forays into theatre.  Secondly, was the fact that I stayed, for the majority of the time, in my house in Southampton, under the guise of studying for finals.



I, in fact, spent the majority of the time watching movies (I was particularly keen on mid afternoon sessions with "Stand by Me", a bottle of red and a packet of fags, on the sofa), jerking off, and hosting three-day long parties.

The parties were mainly lunches that turned into so much more.  Only once were particularly strong substances used to aid staying power.  You could do three dayers in those days with little assistance.  For some reason the smell of garlic always reminds me of this time.  All the cooking that I did, in that period, involved garlic - a new discovery for me, after years of suburban, 70s, overcooked, unseasoned teatimes.

 

My studies, of course, suffered.  One particular essay was turned out in under a day and the read-through and checking process involved pressing 'spellcheck', printing and submitting.  On reflection, a 'pass' for that particular essay was generous.  It makes me cringe now though.  A prior engagement in the pub with Ch seemed more pressing at the time.

The final night with U was one of particular carnage.  Vodka shots at the top of the evening.  Sitting in the bath, crying and saying 'what will I do now?' ended it.  That's not before I summonded up the energy, however, to shimmy along the neighbours wall, in search of a nearby party, only to end up in the pond.  I was meeting my parents the next morning - something I somehow managed to do after waking up on U's floor, fully clothed.

 

My substandard degree was, of course, a disappointment and my closing interview with my tutor was a non-event, softened by the pint(s) I'd had prior.  It was further softened by the fact that all my friends, whose essays I'd diligently proof-read for them, got 2.1s, but that my brother got a 2.2 too.  I'm sure he didn't have half as much fun as I did. 

It wasn't over yet.  Four weeks of rehearsing for and performing in Edinburgh awaited.  And, after that India.  The three years were kind of over but they provided a trajectory into the next five years without much of a pause for breath.....

Glee?

I knew, even when joining the University Orchestra (which involved lots of sitting at the back, falling asleep), the Film Club (which involved a bizarre ritual of throwing balled-up newspaper across the auditorium before 'curtain up'), Parachuting Club (multiple trips to goodness-knows-where, to get shouted at by an ex-military type, only to not jump out of a plan) and Light Opera Society (one evening of Gondoliers choruses, an excrutiating night at the bar and never again), I knew that what I really wanted to do was the Theatre Group. 

I'd unsuccessfully auditioned in the First Year (for some Ionesco-esque studenty nonsense) only to get knocked back, never to return.  The Theatre Group were inevitably, from thereon, a group of snooty, tie-dyed, purple hair-streaked morons, who's productions were not going to have their doors darkened by me.  My own theatre-going had already advanced from the early days of Starlight Express to Lettuce and Lovage in a relatively short amount of time.  My poor father remains scarred, to this day, by the memory of a trip to London, with me, to go and look at the fronts of West End Theatres, one-by-one.

But it was the part of Howard in 'Death of a Saleman' that was my breakthrough moment.  The PostGrad Willy Loman's views on interpretation often wildly diverted from that of the clueless Director (who's Happy was cast on his jock-like looks, only to be replaced a short distance down to the line) and the asethetic and technical vision was non-existent.  My only scene involved my playing recordings of my children to the soon to be fired Loman, the 'tape' being inconsistently shouted from the wings by an occasionally-present friend of the Directors.

But it was what I needed to break the clique. 

I'd already told a disgusted flatmate that my ambition was to direct 'Bent'.  He declared that 'he didn't agree with plays like that' and said that he was deeply unlikely to attend as a result.

I was single-minded in my focus.  Although casting was something of a catastrophe (all three of my leads had to be recast thanks to the competing production of 'Troilus and Cressida' that was being delivered, by the aforementioned Willy Loman, in the Main House) I managed to pull together a group who were as passionate about the piece, in the end, as I was.

I had a view on everything.  The poster, the set, the stripes in the concentration camp uniforms, the programme, the lighting, the music, the sound, the party.  I dived into some misery-making research and had numerous sleepless nights thanks to the oft-absence of my leading man (Ch... - still grieving from the death of his mother and flaky beyond belief - at one point falling asleep in the loo between scenes).  It was the third year of my degree but this was the important undertaking in my life.

It was 1993.  Gay plays were, indeed, being produced at the National Theatre these days.  Ian McKellen was long 'out' but not everyone was.  The pink-starred posters, around campus, caused something of a rumpus in some areas.  And ticket sales in the first instance were slow.

And on the first night, in the first scene, the three-quarters full audience laughed.  Granted there were jokes in the first scene.  I can't say I realised - it took me quite by surprise.  Some girls in the front row sighed at R's death as Wolf.  And at the end, with Ch's death.  There was silence.  Then applause.  Then total crazines.  People loved it.  I was utterly shell-shocked and shrugged off the plaudits in the Union Bar.  The second night saw one of the original Theatre Clique in tears.  And the third and last night was packed.  To the rafters.  I'd held the curtain so my family could come and I could only find a place to sit on the steps.

My brother shoved a massive bottle of Southern Comfort in my hand at the end. My mother said something awkward about it being OK as long as the boys weren't doing it for real.  And my flatmate was saying that it was the best thing that he'd seen in his life.  He was collecting autographs from the cast.  And from me.