Karma

©  2007  Rose George

What does one do on one’s last day of a two and a half month trip to wonderful places, all of which was accomplished in pretty much perfect health? One gets the runs.

I blame Sonu. The adorable smiley-faced Sonu who is the cook at the beach camp I was staying in. He took a shine to me. We played beachball. Then he served me dodgy paneer cheese and on the day on which I had to set off for 36 hours of planes and airports, I found myself getting better acquainted than I would have liked with the toilet. For lunch, before I left, I had a bowl of yogurt and a banana. The coterie of beautiful boys who work at the camp – Ravi, Mahesh, Vijay, Deepak, Raj – came over and laughed at what passed for my lunch. “You are a poor girl!”

I am a poorly girl. Except now I am Immodium Girl.

I chose, somewhat oddly but for reasons that make sense to me, not to spend a day in Mumbai, but instead to wait for eight hours in a place that is closely related to Dante’s Limbo. Mumbai airport. I don’t really know where the eight hours went, beyond eating probably dodgy pasta in Celebrations Restaurant, listening to the 130 songs on my iPod nano, which I bought in India to replace the 1500 songs on my lost/stolen iPod, and disliking half of them; reading the end of a John Le Carre novel and marvelling once again at how he manages to sustain interest and narrative when actually I haven’t a clue what he’s on about most of the time; watching a bunch of loud and enormous Africans (stereotypes are based on types) have a punch-up in the departure area amongst their mountains of luggage (one woman had six trolleys with four huge bags on each, that she was valiantly pushing single-handed. I’m still not sure how), while the airport security men looked on and the luggage screening staff gathered in a gaggle to ogle.

Swatting mosquitos passed the time, too.

I found myself wide awake still at 4.30 which was handy, as that was when my flight left. All those nights of sitting at the bar until 3am have been good practice. But the lumbering-ness of the Air India jumbo bothered me. All planes bother me but this one looked old. I am daftly superstitious in the air. For example, I always put down my book when the plane starts to take off and don’t pick it up again until the seatbelt sign is switched off. Same goes for turbulence. So far it has worked. But this time even after the do-nothing-while-ascending ritual I was anxious. Not rhodri- level anxious, but fearful enough to resort to my diazepam stock (which says on the label: “or flying”), which knocked me out for two hours. Now in Bangkok airport, I have wandered around in a bit of a diazepam daze, bought toothpaste and toothbrush from Boots the Chemist and had a blissful 45 minute Thai massage at the Chang massage spa on Level 4. It beats swatting mosquitos.

I could sum up my travels, I suppose. Many, many adventures, much shit, many toilets, some surprises, no diseases (as yet known). A big, big trip, in all senses except hallucinogenic.