26/01/2018 – A Visit to South Asia
There was no blog last week as I was in India. I arrived back in the UK to fall straight into a long weekend of assorted experiences – more on that later.
For anyone who has not been to India, it is an experience that you don’t forget. The minute you believe that you understand it, you realise that you are mistaken. I’ve not been to China and therefore India is the most populous place I have visited. This becomes obvious the second you step off the plane and into the terminal. There are people everywhere.
As you wander out of the terminal and into a taxi, you are treated to a sensory smorgasbord.
More often than not, the temperature is warmer than you expect having been in air conditioning for some time. This is followed by strange beguiling music, the fantastic smell of cooking and sights that you don’t quite comprehend. As you travel into the nearest city, this explodes into a carnival of colour and traffic that is quite unlike anywhere else in the world.
I have been to India many times, but one cannot take your eyes off your surroundings to take in all that is going on. The variety is incredible.
The moped that drives past you with 5 people on it, two parents and three children standing on the seat or in the panniers – no helmets between them but big smiles on their faces.
The small vehicle with no tyre tread that is transporting large gas canisters or glass panels through a crowd of other vehicles that don’t stop, but just glide by unfazed by the seeming chaos that is laid out before them.
The lady sweeping the ground with a brush made of twigs, moving dust and soil off the pile of objects stacked by the road and into a pile to be collected by an invisible helper. Someone whose work is never complete and makes you wonder why she does it day after day.
The army / policemen whistling at the vehicles as they race by seemingly having no impact, but every now and then someone stops to be chastised by the uniform clad official.
The bamboo scaffolding holding up multi-storey buildings that race towards the sky, ready to hold more people in a city that is already overcrowded and short of the basic utilities.
The roads that have huge holes in, large enough for someone to fall into and avoid getting run over.
The pavements that don’t provide sufficient coverage for people to actually walk on them. Every few feet there is a drain to fall into or a pile of something in the way.
The drinks sellers that appear to have few customers but manage to offload all of their produce every day.
It is fascinating, shocking, enlightening and a lesson in human struggle, all in one and somewhere everyone should go at least once in their life. If you think for a second that chaos can’t work, think again, because here it does just fine thank you.
I went there this time with two colleagues neither of whom had been before and both were transfixed by the sheer quantum of it all.
A Weekend of Fun and Frolicking
Then I landed in London late on Thursday night.
Before me stood a weekend with twelve visitors, who I was expecting to feed and entertain. What could I do with them when the rain would fall eliminating the best laid plans for exploring a nearby village or two?
The answer was – Ride-on Lawnmower Racing and Rifle Shooting.
For those people who have read this blog for any length of time, you will be aware that I am the proud owner of a ride-on mower. It lets me cover the grass in half a day and take any branches and rubbish around in a little trailer. Secretly, I am a farmer with my own tractor. But in reality it is just big enough not to be completely laughed at by the real farmers that surround our property.
But last weekend it went up in my estimation. For twelve of us it became our race vehicle of choice to travel one lap of the course in between two and four minutes depending on your ability to steer and willingness to take risks.
It was very interesting to see how competitive people became when given the same tool but a measured outcome.
Once the racing had started, we then started another activity in parallel – air rifle shooting with targets. The sight was a bit crap but people soon started learning from each other and the accuracy became better and better. In the end it felt like the auditions for the film Enemy at the Gates. Lots of keen snipers all determined to hit the target.
Sadly, unlike the film our silencer had a habit of falling off between shots as one of the screws fell out. No longer were we crack shots, but more crack pots.
But the fun didn’t end there.
A serious darts competition and space invaders fest ensured that everyone was good at something – relatively.
We had good fun and everyone quickly forgot that the weather was s**t. I also turned one of our rooms into a pub, with double sized, fully stocked, drinks fridge, beer barrels and a bar quiz machine. I'm looking to get a drinks fridge permanently now.
What did the cats think of this?
When I set-up the pub, they spent every waking hour that they could get into the room, skating on the bar mats and knocking them all onto the floor.
They sat in between the standing people in the middle of the floor in protest that they were not consulted about the new use for that room.
Where has my favourite bed gone?
Who has put that fridge in the way of my favourite radiator?
I’m wearing my invisible cloak, so those darts can’t hurt me!
They didn’t really approve overall, except for the number of new things that needed a special amount of sniffing, and generally to get their individual seal of approval.
The Big Five Zero
Just when I thought the weekend had been a success I remembered the reason we were all here was to recognise that I had actually moved into a new decade.
My marketing sample age bracket had changed.
My grey beard now had a genuine age attached to it.
I was no longer able to appear as a mere adult to children, I was now a “grandad” or similar, but without the family for them to confirm it.
I had passed the age that I had been able to comprehend as a child, the point where one is surely “counting the days”.
These days, I think people have had to learn to count much higher than previously. For a start you have to count at least 17 years until you are allowed to think of retiring.
But as my family and friends that stood around me were all already “counting”, and had been for much longer than I, I suddenly felt a whole lot better. I may have reached a new milestone, but I now have the excuse of age with the energy to enjoy myself. I’m not sure quite when the energy runs out, but I am determined to enjoy myself while it lasts. And looking at my close family it seems to go on for a while yet.
The Sleeping Garden Awakes
I have not been in the house long enough to take any decent pictures but what you do become aware of quickly is the slow awakening of the garden.
Buds burst through the top soil. Some of the winter plants are starting to look past their best.
Suddenly before you know it, the race will be on to tidy everything up, cut back all the frost bitten dead branches and dead head all the winter flowers.
January is almost over and it is only 8 weeks until Spring. Now that is worth counting down!
Something for the Weekend
Firstly, let me wish one of our collective a happy birthday for next week – Happy Birthday Kathy!
In doing the research for last weekend and looking at each decade that I have grown up through, there are a few songs that immediately spring to mind this week.
For a start this song was played rather a lot when the space invaders machine took a heavy bashing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs
This song reminds me of being back in the 80’s surrounded by fellow six formers, in an age when tolerance was pretty much still zero.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-yXAXz4DI
Finally, a song that played on my birthday. My sister’s birthday was four days before mine and she died four days after my birthday, so I always remember her most at this time of year. This was the last song we danced to together at a strangers wedding party and strangely it was playing in the cinema foyer when I went there this year on my birthday. Life has some funny old coincidences!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4sPkS8b62Q
Have a great weekend!
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Rosemary
Great for the memories, and another fifty years to make more is expected. Get a glass fronted drinks fridge, makes more drinking time if you don’t have to open the door to see what is in there 😂🤣
Mum
Lovely memories of a birthday which deserved celebration. Threw a whole new light on the joys of the garden. More in my message.
Wendy
Thanks for a great weekend.