Yesterday had been a school day (though none of the Lucknow Eight had been in attendance. And now we were treated to three days of holiday; not sure why, but this time the dominant colours are a mixture of red and orange. The holiday is very welcome. Apart from the physical recovery _ I think that my age is beginning to catch up with me, at least in terms of energy levels – I was also able to start catching up with the blog. I didn’t take my laptop with me to Lucknow, and so now have six days of this blog to catch up on.
I did venture out for lunch, or rather to assemble lunch’s various components to bring back to the room to eat, and a splendid job I made of it. Cold beer from the supermarket, two samosas from a small café ( and absolutely fresh – I had to wait “Five, ten minutes,” for them to be fished from the pan), and a lassi from our (me, Val, Eva) favourite dairy.
I took a tuk tuk (hmm) to Aparna’s for dinner. I hail it, call Aparna, and hand the phone over to the driver so that Aparna can give instructions as to where to drop me. She has tried to teach me the name of the place, but first I find it difficult to remember any names, or words, in Nepali; and second, even if I could remember it, I know I would be met with blank incomprehension, and then what would I do? Even when I try to say “thank you”, the only phrase apart from Namaste that I know in Nepali, I get not a flicker of understanding. No English, they say.
As ever, really pleasant at Aparna’s. While I was there, she was visited by her cousin (another Deepak – phew) who had brought a dish of chicken. At first, he was taciturn in the extreme, but after a while a combination of the whiskey he was drinking and my own clowning around seemed to melt him. He had never met anyone like me, Aparna told me. Like me? An Englishman? An idiot?
They were both convinced the chicken would be too spicy for me, offered to boil it to knock the spice out. I refused to allow that, and of course it was absolutely fine. A bit lip-tingly, but that is to be welcomed.
Anu had told us before that when Nepalese men get drunk, they talk in English (I wish it worked like that in reverse.) But Deepak certainly proved the point. He had spoken virtually no English at first, but now was expressing himself quite well. He video-called his family (don’t drunken men always do that!) and introduced me. I got his children to say a few words of English (to be clear, they weren’t drunk.
When I left, they both walked me out to the main road. On the way, Deepak told me he was no Shakespeare, but could write five words of English: “I love you very much!” We hugged.
On the ride home, I was just observing how pleasant it was, the warm breeze wafting through, reminding me of an incident from my youth, driven by my friend Dennis in an open sports car in New Hampshire. At which point the heavens opened, bringing me back to Nepal. It was an incredible thunderstorm, as violent as I had ever seen. I happened to be in one of the more open tuk tuks; they’re all pretty open, but this one didn’t even have a windscreen, and he had to stop, pull out a sheet of plastic from under one of the seats, and peg it around the handle bars, so he could peer over the top. As for me, the roof kept the worst pf the violence off, but the rain swept in through the open sides, so I was still soaked. I didn’t mind, it was exhilarating, made me glad to be alive.
