Djinns in Delhi, Gaiety in Goa

I find myself on a Southern Goan beach guiltily glutting on soft dark green avacados: the most un-Indian of edibles. They cannot be baked in a tandoor; deep fried in a batter of gram flour and cumin seeds; mixed with curry leaves and stuffed in a crispy dosa; or scooped up with an acidic, seedy, lime pickle. And yet they are here, along with every other possible wish or whim, in the shacks of sleepy, lovely, Benaulim where I am spending Christmas and new year with the others of my clan, celebrated vividly by the abundance of Goan Christians (the Portuguese were a touch better at imprinting Christianity on their colonial subjects than the British ever managed to be).

First things first, I have many stories to tell which I will have to suffuse to a fine potion of startlingly wonderful temples, monuments, and mausoleums, built by Chandelas, Bundelas, Mughals, Rajputs, etc etc etc.


I won't be a bore and relate it all, as fascinating as it was. Just know that the palace forts of Orchha are looming and graceful, the temple carvings of Kajuraho alarmingly rude and intricate, and the perfection of the Taj Mahal still manages to make up for the rest of Agra - a place which suffers from a vacuum of the soul, where tourism has rotten it to the core, where the atmosphere is distinctly 'us and them' (ok, I got rocks thrown and me by teenagers so I'm biased). Still, I met up with a bit of a travel writer on India and his words could have been my own: it's a shithole.


With boundless optimism we rode onwards and upwards to Delhi, the pair of us radiant with excitement about the capital city that we had read so much about. Delhi holds the secret of at least six fallen cities and has been the seat of empire time and time again. We strode happily down the European boulevards of New Delhi, cowering under the austere and visionary British architecture, poking around the ruins of Tughlaqabad and Siri in the south and then, before I knew it, we were struck down with an illness so grim we were bedridden for a week. Lamentably, I missed most of Delhi, and all of Jaipur, as I rolled around in a stupor in grotty hotel rooms. Anyway, here's a Jaipur sunset for the hell of it.


Just before Goa, we spent a few days in dorms in Mumbai: a fabulous, cosmopolitan, buzzing city which I will remember for its higgledy-piggledy colonial architecture, parks packed with cricket matches, bhel puri on Chowpatty Beach, the beautiful view of the city from the rock cut caves of Elephanta Island, and the sight of the Gateway to India as you sail away from the Mumbai coast, just as the British did for the very last time in 1947.