On the way to Delhi domestic airport to catch a much-longed for flight back to Goa, my taxi for a while drove alongside an elephant.
An elephant. In Delhi traffic, along with horns and scooters and three-wheelers and taxis and trucks and beggars and cows.
About twenty minutes later, my taxi for a while drove alongside a camel battalion. The camels were being ridden/driven by Indian soldiers who had black bushy moustaches. I mean, the kind of moustaches that win competitions. The camels were moving at a steady sort of trot. I still don't know how useful they would be in battle, but I don't care.
I love India. Most of the time.
I am back at the beach. That means sun and sand and sea and probably very little of import to write about. My body clock has shifted to nocturnal, as I keep company with bar staff. In Delhi, I was getting somewhat tired of being woken early three days in a row, by a dogs' howled conversation (3am), by motorbikes with size issues (4am, 5am, 6am) and by Hindu prayer from the temple over the road (5-7am), which - because of the incessant bell clanging - makes a muezzin sound as soothing as whale music. Now I just stay awake instead.
The Shilpa Shetty scandal continues to get press coverage, though not so much in Goan papers, which are more interested in what the Catholic Church has to say today. The Delhi papers published letters from Indians who said, mostly, things like “why are we outraged about racism when we buy fairness creams by the truckload?”. Others pointed out that any matrimonial classified ads page was more racist than anything Jade Goody could think up. The words “fair” and “dusky” deserve whole race relations theses. For those who have not had the pleasure of reading Indian matrimonials ads; fair is good. Dusky means dark. Dark is bad. It partly explains, probably, why they like having an Italian woman leading the country, though Sonia Gandhi has somehow managed to make her face look Indian. But not dusky. Never dusky.