Saturday, October 30, 2010

In At The Deep End.


Hello everyone. I am back on the blog trying to catch up a bit. A thousand stories to tell but the narrator is lazy so persevere with him if you can.

At present I am in Darjeeling on my 27th cup of tea of the day which is the habit here. We are three tours into the season already, god alone knows what has happened with the time. We have another group arriving this Friday in Calcutta so in between preparing for that and doing innumerable tasks in between (eating momo's, drinking a few beers) I will work on the recent history and let you decide if my time has been well spent. So dive in with me. (Excuse the pic and the pun.)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

1 hour in Kurseong

I am in Kurseong near Darjeeling waiting in the bank to make a deposit into an unknown account. It is nearing 2.pm the bank is eerily quiet. I stand at counter number 4 as instructed. The bank clerk taps his glasses as he sees me, he looks up then looks down, folds away his stationery and quietly shuffles out of his booth. He is the last one to go. It is lunch hour.

An hour to kill in Kurseong. Everything is either a vertical walk up or down here so decide on a steep climb in search of more food. I enter the 1st eating house I see in search of Momo's (kind of mini steamed steak puddings and healthy) its rice only in here though served with meat. I ask for Pork which is only served in India's mountainous areas. The lumps of pork fat arrive in a watery gravy. For reasons best known to India's pigs there is no such thing as meat in a subcontinental pig, just pure fat. The pigs I have seen look like most normal pigs but underneath there is nothing but a flimsy skeleton held together by 100% fat. I would like to have said that an India pig has the same fat content as , say, a famous English celebrity but I can't think of any famous fat knackers any more. In the past we had 1930's goalkeeper Fatty Foulkes then Cyril Smith and then Rick Waller, famous fat git celebrity folk, famous for being fat. Now we have nobody, no fat knacker that is seared into the nations consciousness as a fat blob to which we can compare things now we have only a infinite number of mediocre obese lumps of lard. If any inflated blimps are reading this there is vacancy somewhere in the nations psyche for you. Your country needs you or at least I do.

30 minutes later I have finished the meal and I head back down the slope to the bank I sight a barbers shop a shave would be perfect. I settle back into the barbers and scan the pictures on the wall as the tiny man sets to work with his soap and brush. The walls are adorned with unsettling pictures of modern day body builders along with a black and white montage of a considerably less bulked up individual. I enquire. It is the barber himself I am being shaved by a shrunken though still ramrod straight Mr Kurseong 1976. My eyes avert from the walls and look at my face being rapidly unveiled of soap suds in the mirror. Someone once said you get the face you deserve at 50, not sure what I will have done to deserve mine at 37 even. The light is harsh, the mirror no friend to the customer here, but my falling chops and vertically challenged face looks like it needs scaffolding to support itself. Grim times lie ahead.

I return to the bank. The staff are quietly returning to the booths. Queues form quickly. An hour has passed.