Perma Culture Vultures

To really appreciate a life of living in hotels and eating all your meals in restaurants, perhaps you have to give it all up for a bit. And so we did. Having met a couple in a restaurant in Koh Tao who had a boy who was: a) 2 ½ , b) English, and c) obsessed with Hotwheels cars (Hotwheels^TM is a brand of replica toys, made in a factory in Malaysia, and is presumably what Max dreams of when he smiles in his sleep. We have been rerouting approximately a quarter of all our spending money to this subsidiary of Mattel). It turned out that the family was on a holiday away from a perma culture farm north of Chiang Mai. If you know as much about perma culture farms as we did, then you can imagine it was a steep learning curve.

“Isn’t perma culture something to do with fish poo?” Kate asked earnestly. The couple, to their great credit didn’t dismiss us as idiots, and said we should come and find out for ourselves.

So, apart from impressing everyone with our fish poo knowledge, the flow of information on the farm was entirely in our direction. As it turns out, perma culture is a holistic agricultural way of living that is as sustainable as is humanly possible.

We were welcomed into the friendly community, and Max soon made his presence felt. We were lodged in an open adobe mud hut, with a high bed, territorial spiders and a mosquito net which we came to depend on with our very lives. The days would begin with some sort of wholesome activity before Max awoke, followed by communal breakfast, morning meeting, 3 hours of work (hacking weeds , building bamboo bridges, composting, hacking weeds, planting, hacking weeds etc.), communal lunch, afternoon languor, communal dinner, communal chilli ginger wine drinking, followed by the early non-communal bed. By nine o’clock, the common spaces would be long-deserted. We figured this reflected wholesome early-rising, living off the land in the rhythms of nature. As it turns out, everyone skedaddled to bed in the evening partly to avoid being mugged by the mosquitoes, but mostly to watch episodes of Game of Thrones on laptops.

In keeping with our travels thus far, the perma culture environment was littered with infant hazards. By the second day, we had encountered 4 scorpions, two of which were in our room. They say the small ones are deadlier, but why take chances? Our kill-on-sight tactic was met with gasping horror at the breakfast table, by some of the more compassionate members of the community. By week two, Max was well trained in spotting and announcing scorpions.

The toilets were either a dry compost long-drop loo, or a worm-based ‘rocket toilet’ that was brimful of writhing maggots. Max, who is very much in the throes of a strong toilet fixation, thought them the most exciting environment he’d ever set foot in. I mean that literally, since at one point he lost his footing and plunged into the cavern of humanure, his toes inches away from faecal contact). The maggots in the rocket toilet, which were enough to keep even the hardy Kate Clark away, held Max in thrall. Anyone nearby would overhear Max from the toilet: “Worms like my poo? They love it? They LOVE it?? They want some more? OK, there you go, wormies. What might they say? They might say YUMMY!? HMMM!” and so on.

For a resoundingly healthful environment, the farm was host to a legion of ailments. The volunteers looked like they’d been shipped in from the triages of the Crimea. The axiom in this sort of tropical, non-chemical-soap environment is that a paper cut can kill you in days. The medical corner was relabelled the ‘amputation station’, complete with red-painted axe. Kate and Max would perch on stools everyday and apply tinctures and dressings, cooing excitedly as the peroxide or surgical alcohol did its work.

Max and his 2 ½ year old buddy brought havoc to the place, careering about, beefing over Hotwheels all day. At one point a suspicious calm descended, and Max was found to have a scorching temperature. When he was clocking a consistent 39.5° all day, and all the advice featuring turmeric and camomile was falling on fallow ground, we borrowed a truck to take him to a slick hospital instead. Predictably, the doctor filled our arms with as much hardcore non-EU regulated antibiotics as we could carry/pay for. Max recovered his normal body temperature, appetite, feistiness and vehicular obsession in under an hour.

The end of our stay deserved a break from the general abstemiousness, and we drank beer around the campfire on our last night. The next morning, all but one of the long-term workers had left for another project in town, leaving the place to a handful of newcomers. As we shuffled about, trying to pack up and to tidy the unwholesome chaos, I heard a familiar yet unexpected sound drawing near. What sounded like fifty Thai school children approaching unannounced turned out to be, in fact, fifty Thai school children approaching unannounced. The cultural differences between east and west can be hard to anticipate; nevertheless, I suspected that the sight of a bunch of groggy hippies mooching about, half-dressed, in a beery mess would confirm only the lowest of expectations. Nick, the only experienced worker on site, dashed off to find a shirt in the lost property. Moments later, haphazardly dressed, we stood in front of the assembled children and teachers, grimacing. I noticed sweat beading on Nick’s face.

“Holy shit Ben, I think they want a fucking English lesson. Don’t leave me here.”

“No way, Nick. I’ve got you.”

I wondered whether I could contribute something about fish poo, but just then, as luck would have it, I heard a shrill and familiar cry from Kate from the direction of the adobe huts. “There’s a poisonous snake under the bed!” I exited sweatily and found Max and Kate in a flurry of excitement, pointing at the stripey, angry-looking, Z-shaped snake in the corner of our room. Max, showing his usual lack of natural concern towards deadly creatures, asked if he could eat it.

I rejoined Nick, who was fielding questions from the group. There were some pauses big enough to drive a truck into. At this suitable moment, to universal relief, Max propelled himself into the situation, which provoked every man woman and child to start filming on their phones. After a quick and appalled tour of the toilets, the school party left, showering us in what were seemingly heartfelt offers to take Max home on a long-term basis.

Nick looked a little harried, “What a cluster fuck!”

Living close to the earth, doing some work, cooking and cleaning for the first time since leaving Goa was a great experience. In almost a month, we bought virtually nothing, used hardly anything, threw hardly anything away and very rarely travelled anywhere. For a change, our ecological footprint was scarcely visible. It was a fine, hearty feeling, and will be a handy juxtaposition to going to Bangkok, and then back to London. We had an inspiring and educational time spent with some amazing people, and we left with honest dirt under our fingernails and lists of resolutions for our life back home.

Danger zone

The east coast of Sri Lanka was badly ravaged by 3 decades of civil war, and as recently as four years ago it was not an easy place to visit. Perhaps a little crassly, the guide book describes it as ‘Baghdad-on-sea'.

Whilst Kate was doing a meditation course in Kandy, I took Max to Trincomolee with our friends Libby and Rosie. After 6 weeks in Sri Lanka, we had found the beach we had been looking for. Beautiful, golden sand, tranquil water, and ramshackle accommodation amongst the palms- perfect.

Having endured 7 hours of hot and dusty travel, with Max rampaging throughout the trains, we sat, begrimed, clasping cold beers, toasting our good luck. What could be better?

Rosie went to order some lunch and came back, menu in hand, looking a little hesitant. We voiced our worst fears: no food?

“Um, all the guys working here are watching the TV. There’s been an earthquake 5 minutes ago in Indonesia. There might be a tsunami coming.”

We clustered round the TV, watching 3 men in a news studio speak in Sinhalese. By way of graphics, one man would tilt his ipad to the camera.

“…something something something 8.9 Richter scale something something tsunami something something Sri Lanka tsunami something something…”

We laughed nervously, keenly eyeing the staff for signs of concern. The manager assured us that if the wave came we’d be okay: “We have a big rock.” We were quick to seize any positive indicators.

The news reporters looked grave, the mobile phone signal was intermittent, people started hurrying a bit. We ordered rice. Then the manager calmly told us to pack our bags.

We gulped our beers, gathered the bags we hadn’t actually unpacked yet anyway, and minutes later a 16-seater van barrelled onto the sand, the tubby driver awash with sweat. All the westerners in the area crammed themselves into the van with all our cumbersome luggage. Some were looking a bit edgy, others traded a little gallows humour.

I asked the manager why he wasn’t getting in, and he explained that the last time there had been a tsunami alert, they’d been looted once they left. He said they would follow on as soon as they had packed up the valuables. We watched this act of guest-house martyrdom grimly from the van window.

In the style of a TV drama with too few actors, the van driver turned out to be Sonju, the TukTuk driver who had driven us from the train station 30 minutes previously. He careered wildly through lanes and alleys, blasting the horn, bellowing on his mobile. Max, in the front seat, was chuffed to bits with all this excitement. We passed groups of people scuttling hurriedly away from the coast with a selection of their belongings. Two men were carrying a fridge. Incongruously, some people were continuing with construction work, chatting, some even walking back to the beach.

It reminded me of my last visit to Sri Lanka, in 2004, when the last tsunami struck our beach and we were evacuated. I thought I wouldn’t share these thoughts just yet.

Sonju ground to a halt in an alley that was so narrow that the doors could only open on one side. “This is my house. This is safe here.” The mostly British van contingent glanced anxiously around. We weren’t really very far from the beach, and at no particular elevation. All the buildings had the hallmarks of recent construction, conceivably less than 8 years old. In amongst the Sinhalese writing on the walls, the numerals 2004 were the only ones I could make out.

We wondered if there wasn’t somewhere a little further away. Sonju mopped his face. “Yes, Okay, we go to my other house.” How lucky we were to be evacuated by a man with a huge van and several inland properties. Libby immediately promoted him to the position of ‘Chief Evacuation Officer’.

Sonju’s other house turned out, to everyone’s relief, to be on a hill. For some reason this seemed already to be a general mustering point for evacuated non-locals, and more arrived in due course, lending the place the look of an affluent refugee camp. Ergonomic backpacks and iphones everywhere. 

Sri Lankan hospitality is such that, even though a repeat of the natural disaster that destroyed a massive part of their county seemed imminent, drinks, food and shelter were provided to the gathering of wealthy westerners.

Max, meanwhile was entertained by a squad of children and a limitless heap of toy vehicles. I could see him chalking this day up as one of the best of his young life.

Just then, a lorry appeared, the back doors opened, and the staff from the guesthouse tumbled out, holding crates of beer, music playing. A carnival atmosphere settled upon the scene. An emergency bakery van pulled up, and before long everyone was brandishing a pastry in one hand and a drink in the other.

Anxiety has a way of diminishing with time, beer and inactivity, and so once the locals announced the all-clear, people headed back the guesthouses. I decided to stay the night in a place in town with Max. I reckoned the threat of tsunami was minimal, but felt sure that Kate would shrug off her meditative calm and give me a sound thrashing for taking her firstborn child back to sleep in a room 30metres from the sea, hours after a tsunami scare.

The next morning, paradise resumed. The locals were joking about the evacuation, Max was chuckling about ‘the salami’, and asking when we were going back to the house with all the toys. We were eating fruit salad under the coconut trees. Again, what could be better? Just then, the scene was shattered by an enormous cracking sound. We sprung up to see a huge coconut tree break in the middle, for no apparent reason, and fall onto a set of sun-loungers, where the local dive instructor was lying, half asleep. Miraculously, the man rolled out of way a fraction of a second before he was to be crushed under the weight of falling timber. To his credit, the chap was particularly sanguine: gamely posing for photos a few minutes later, drinking from the same coconuts that might have brained him. We noted that he had lost a few fingers in a previous accident and decided he might be worth keeping a safe distance from. Local women were quick on the scene, grinning and gathering the coconuts. “Bounty hunters,” Rosie observed dryly.

Max capered about on the fallen tree, reporting the events loudly. One of the staff casually suggested we keep Max away from the tree top, as there was a ‘giant centipede’ in there. ‘What next?’ we asked ourselves. That was answered when a petulant dog bit Max in the leg and drew a little blood.

Kate arrived later that day, fresh from a few days’ meditation. I courageously played down the many hazards of single-parenthood I’d withstood over the previous 48 hours. We had survived, and we were on the beach, altogether. So...What could be better? Rosie went to get some cold beer, but came back empty-handed, once again looking apprehensive. Not another tsunami, surely? Worse, in fact. To our horror, since it was the Tamil and Sinhalese new year, there was no alcohol to buy, anywhere. We were reeling, trying to comprehend the concept of a ‘dry new year’. We mooched about a bit, in dismay, muttering gloomily, until we noticed two huge speakers had been set up in front of our huts. How odd. Minutes later, we were slinging back local liquor, dancing to an impromptu rave. Nothing accentuates a celebration better than boozy pyrotechnics, of course. ‘Look, Max, this man’s lighting some fireworks…’ this was the last thing I said before a cluster of bangers exploded in our faces, and I ran, panicked and deaf, with Max in my arms, to hose off what I assumed was smouldering shrapnel on his tender skin. Retrospectively, perhaps a tad dramatic, but, given the recent run of events, nothing seemed out of the question. Not for the first time, I thought to myself that we’ll be lucky to get out of this trip alive.

The Shipping News

 A couple of months back we were assaulted in our garden by the sort of noxious vapours that you usually only experience when crossing a city bridge in India. Wafts of this sulphurous odour would come with a sudden change of wind, and have us reaching for the incense. In due course, it turned out to be a bedraggled length of mango timber, older than Methuselah, lying next to the garden. I asked our landlord, Sandeep, who at once denied being able to smell anything untoward, and explained that it was his new boat. I could only grimace at the rank black log, unable to imagine how it could ever be sea worthy.

The boat remained dormant for a few weeks until a wild-looking man appeared at the house. If India had an adult film industry in the 70’s, this man could well have been a relic of that scene: skanky polyester tracksuit bottoms, bouffant mullet, strong moustache, and a wifebeater vest which had stretched until the straps were thin as vermicelli, tracing a line several inches shy of his nipples.

‘Car painter’ Sandeep announced. ‘Not many many here, Agonda, Parvem, Chaudi.Hard to find one.’

Odd, I thought, since Sandeep doesn’t own a car.

This marked the beginning of a ten day period of unprecedented household tension. In order to build the rest of the smelly boat, the untamed car-penter had insisted on a day rate. This was a decisive factor in the resultant glacial work rate and the consequent stress on Sandeep’s part. Every day the carpenter would be loafing in the yard next to the incomplete boat, in various stages of repose (reclining, burping, farting, scratching his belly, fully sleeping), whilst Sandeep and his friends would labour away with planes and drills.

The man’s ample quiff seemed to act as a deflector shield, rendering him impervious to every insult, persuasion, imploration and threat. At the rare times when the carpenter would be actively involved, it would require Sandeep to be poised over him, staring at the back of his skull.

Through the whole process, the carpenter remained blithely stoic, whereas Sandeep, by contrast, was visibly falling apart. Having to keep a constant vigil over a man who remained resolutely indolent had driven Sandeep to pre-noon drinking. Even a passing ‘How’s it going?’ would be enough to trigger a red-eyed deluge of scathing recrimination about the man’s constant skiving.

Any available means were employed to coax the carpenter to work. A belly as proud and fulsome as his is seldom unearned, and so it was that all day he would devour whole plates of fish, quaff warm beers in seconds and virtually eat cigarettes whole. As anyone would pass innocently by, the carpenter would flag them down with hand-to-mouth or swigging gestures, whilst making Chewbacka sounds. The ground around the half-boat was littered equally with woodchippings, Kingfisher bottles, fag butts and tali plates.

The entire boat and boat-making process betrayed not a single traceof modernity. Planks of wood were heated over a coconut fire and bowed, then sewn onto the dugout hull with string. Nothing more hi-tech than an adze was used. A crude outrigger was lashed to the bow with more string. It would be hard to imagine that the technology has changed in the last couple of millennia.

On day seven, Sandeep looked up and saw me watching him watching the carpenter. The carpenter immediately asked for a beer. Sandeep winced, and stared gloomily at the unfinished sidings of the boat. For something to say, I asked where the carpenter came from. Sandeep gestured dismissively into the bushes with his chin. The jungle? It seemed likely enough. “No, Salari. Village name: Salari.” Perhaps the perfect hometown for a man so focused on his own payscale.

Days dragged on and the determined inertia of the Salari man had, if anything, hardened. Sandeep wore a haunted look, but, to our communal surprise, suddenly announced the blessing of the boat. The boat puja, it seemed, did not require a finished boat, but would benefit greatly from an audience and an aged guest of honour.

Luckily for everyone involved, my father, notoriously, will dress up in ethnic garb at the drop of a Nehru hat. Off he went to get ready to play the role of Brahmin, coming back shortly after, announcing that his chalwar chemise was in the wash. Before anyone’s disappointment could take hold, Sandeep emerged from his house with a bright orange synthetic two-piece outfit as a replacement. A sense of general glee pervaded the scene.

A plastic garden chair was arranged for the high-caste, Tango-themed VIP, whilst the rest of us clustered around the incomplete craft. A few Konkani words of blessing were uttered by Sandeep, as he smeared red and yellow powder on the boat and everyone’s forheads. My dad was enjoying the sartorial absurdity of his position almost as much as the rest of us.

“Hang on. Why am I dressed up like this, when Sandeep’s stood here in a grubby towel?”

The carpenter looked on with the pride of a new father, smoking a pilfered cigarette. Some sugary prasad was passed round. Sandeep announced that the boat would be named jointly after his daughter and Max. There was a pause, into which my father gamely leapt with a shimmer of polyester.

“May we hereby confer onto this fine vessel all the good fortune in the world, and may it henceforth bring the utmost prosperity to all who set foot upon her!”

“Good words, Daddy. Superb.” Murmured Sandeep in appreciation.

My dad, adjusting his costume, ventured, “Sandeep, in England, the launching of a new ship involves smashing a bottle of wine against the side...”

“Not my boat.”

In this celebratory atmosphere, it was easy to forget that the boat wasn’t actually yet ready to sail. We disperse, and the working/loafing/supervision routine resumed in earnest.

Days later, just when we expect to find Sandeep dancing over the adze-hacked body of the carpenter, there he is, paddling the boat, pootling about proudly in the river, beckoning one and all to come for an inaugural cruise. Sandeep’s smile covered three quarters of his whole face, free at last of the slothful carpainter, captain of his brand new vessel.

The Natural World pt 2

We allowed ourselves a quick holiday-within-a-holiday to Gokarna and arrived back to find that nature had reclaimed the house. Frogs in the mugs, ants nest in the door jamb and a new style of punk lizard which perches at head height looking at once mid-80’s and prehistoric. It’s always the same when you return to your empty house after a period away- things look different, the place smells a little stale, and it often seems, judging by the predeparture detritus, as if burglars might have been. As we potter about, sweeping and unpacking, we both individually pause between rooms to cock our heads at an angle and scowl suspiciously: undoubtedly a very wrong smell haunting the place. From childhood the protocol is always: ignore the smell indefinitely until someone else buckles and deals with it. Kate pretends to be busy, I light five sticks of incense at once, Max creates some masking smells of his own.

“Good to be back!” I declare with what I intend to be a carefree air of domestic satisfaction. “Hmmm, lovely.”

Minutes pass, then… “Can you sm-?” “Yes!”

We stalk into the bedroom and eye the tell-tale bulge in the tarpaulin that is pinned above our bed. I balance twitchily on a cane chair, using one hand to untie one corner of the tarp, the other holding a torch.

The heat at the top of the room is insane, and the unmistakeable morbid stench prompts a little gastric roly-poly. Vigorous and sticky-feeling black flies swarm around my eyes and nostrils as I cast the torch beam about. I consider at this moment whether it’s better to find a huge live rat in the sheeting above your bed, or a dead one.

It’s clear which one smells more offensive, and as I emit an involuntary cough-and-shudder combo, I inadvertently let the tarp drop a little. The cat-sized rat corpse squelches as it slides to the edge. I feel a little trapped: my position on the chair is precarious and requires a handhold to get down without flipping the chair over; I need to keep the tarp level so that the rat and its putrid fluid doesn’t cascade onto our bed; I have to keep the torchlight on the rat so I know that it’s not about to slip off (or pounce at my face, perhaps). My arms are aching and I’m breathing in rapid shallow breaths, covered in sweat. We clearly haven’t thought this through. I bark inarticulate orders through plosive exhalations. “Get-the-thing-! Quick!”

Kate and Max swirl below. Max is bereft of a truck or something and is pulling at the chairleg. Kate asks “What thing?”

“Fuck- euchhh- Just get the thing!!”

The rat is right on the lip of the tarp, and I’m blinking fast to keep flies from resting in my watery eyes. I think I wanted a dustpan, but in the end Kate wisely reappears with a plastic bag. The trikanasana yoga series comes in handy since I have to reach another few inches to grasp the thick tail. There is, sadly, a wet clicking noise as I notice that whilst the tail is moving, the bulky torso remains.

“Hey Ben, Kate!”

To our great surprise, there in the doorway is Sandeep, our landlord, and his son, dressed in what appear to be Elvis impersonator outfits. Sandeep’s suit is white with broad silver stripes. There is audacious crimson filigree about the lapels, and perhaps even sequins. They are iridescent in the afternoon light. The tension and absurdity of the moment are overwhelming. My mind shifts into a fugue state, presumably in self-preservation.

With a lurching effort, I finally bag the rat, hose the place with poison, tumble down from the chair and we spend a moment wondering what to do with the body. Compost? Burial? Bin? Surely not the bin. Too large for the toilet. Sandeep, who as it turns out has just come back from a wedding, says something to his son, who takes the bag and lobs it into the river at the end of the garden. We are too traumatised to object, and merely look on in silence as the bright blue WHSmith bag bobs and drifts out of view.

Manufactioning qality

“I can’t believe it broke already!”

There are times when the wrapper will still be on the product, and yet already it has disintegrated into its constituent parts, so that it resembles a mechano set, or a pre-assembly Ikea purchase. Max will be given a brand new toy (usually in desperate mollification whilst in a hot, public place), and mere picoseconds will elapse before he’s holding the various dissembled pieces, his face a mask of dismay.

It boggles us constantly that anyone would actually manufacture anything so ephemeral. Notwithstanding the cheapness, surely the market demands products that last and perform their stated function. Our house is littered with melted electrical switches, miniature car axles, and can openers that look like they belong in Uri Geller’s house. There are fixers and menders for every conceivable thing in India, so perhaps they’re in cahoots with the factories. The western mantra of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, has its Indian counterpart: Purchase cheaply-Break-Fix-Break-Fix-Break-Litter.

Invariably, after a fork has bent double like a paperclip, or new cellotape has curled dryly backwards in the style of a fortune-telling fish, the packaging resembles a cruel taunt: Number1 Product! First Class Standard! Export Quality! It is impossible to imagine whence it could be exported -to the Neolithic era maybe, where a flimsy pair of blunt, unhinged scissors would be cherished and put to good use.

Maybe it’s the environment itself. We’ve already had problems with our laptop and DVD player, and Kate’s Leatherman is now only useful as a tin opener or paperweight. The heat, humidity, salty air, downpours, legions of insects- all of these conspire to age everything at a rate that makes it look like a time-lapse film of rapid deterioration. Hopefully it’s not affecting the humans, especially since Max is freshly out of his two-year warrantee.

Entrepreneurialism

‘Season’ is a mythical time in Goa, when a king’s ransom can be made in just a few months. It would seem that a tsunami of cash will wash into town and everyone is getting their buckets ready. When we arrived, there was a choice of two places to stay (and really, one of those wasn’t habitable yet). Now, you could stay in a different guest house every night until April. Often, when travelling, you ask yourself whether there is enough local infrastructure to support the tourism. Here, however, we were wondering if there will be enough tourism to support the local infrastructure. It’s now mid-Novemember, and the promised hoards of foreigners are mostly just German pensioners ambling along the main street in beige shorts.

An English family we befriended came round and were asked by our landlord, Sandeep, if they needed laundry doing some time. They assented vaguely. On the basis of this concrete commitment, Sandeep bought a brand new Whirlpool washer-dryer. Our friends then happening to find another house elsewhere and aren’t even coming to Agonda. We now do covert buckets of washing, very quietly, and commit to nothing.

Sandeep seemed a little less present last week, so I asked where he’d been. “Busy, you know. At the restaurant.” What? Eating?

“No, my new restaurant.” There had been no previous mention of starting up a restaurant, but he was confident that it would be up and running in a day or two. “We will call it…Paki Tree!”

“What??”

“No? You don’t like? …Paki House?”

He runs through a few variations- Paki Hut, Paki Place- as Kate and I issue frantic ‘halt’ gestures. It turns out that ‘parki’ is Konkani for ‘bat’, and there is a large tree of bats behind the restaurant site. He has gone for ‘Akansh’. I don’t know what that means, but hopefully nothing too racist.

Getting a bargain here is a bit like trying to get a good price in a ski resort, or in Leicester Square, or on a space station. Everyone shakes their head and agrees that prices have gone up drastically. Our former selves would have been run out of town for having insufficient funds before the words ‘organic latte’ had left our lips. I hope the German silver foxes can shoulder the burden of keeping the Goan economy afloat.

Baba

There is a very nearby ashram on a hill, inhabited by a quite extraordinary ‘baba’ or ascetic holyman. The place is a little rough around the edges, and is frequented by a curious range of visitors, devotees, yogis and westerners. The discourse is wide and esoteric, and often hilarious.

The man is 73 going on 25. At the sight of Max, he immediately sprang into a crouch and rolled out a series of pitch-perfect animal impressions, much to Max’s delight. The baba sits in the middle on a sort of dais, ringed by a thick rope. Max capers about on these ropes, and seems already to be fulfilling the baba’s prediction that, “he will be a famous wrestler, for sure!”

At one point, Kate, whilst pretending to follow Max on some pretext, gleefully sets me up: “Baba, Ben wants you to read his palm!”

I grimace inwardly, and maybe outwardly too. The old man breaks off half a matchstick and traces lines across my palm. All the hallmarks of close scrutiny are there: nods of affirmation, sudden furrowing of the brows, exhalations, and muttered calculations. He would pinch the flesh together, or adjust the hand’s position occasionally, abruptly grab my left hand to examine the two side by side. All in all, it was not an unpleasant experience, and a little ticklish. All the while, I can see Kate in the periphery, sniggering impishly at my awkward captivity.

“Kate says you do not believe in these ideas: palm reading, astrology.”

“Well, not really.” Feeling a little unkind even saying so.

“Yes, I can see. Here it is:” Indicating a small, sickle-shaped line arching down from my ring finger. “…disbelief.”

Checkmate. No arguing against that, then. The neat paradox, and the tickly sensation together made me laugh, and the Baba chuckled in a sparkly sort of way.

“You will write a book!”

“Yes?”

Leaning closer. “Here is the title…” We waited together for a minute or so; me for him, he for divine instruction. “A drop of sand.”

I mulled it over for a bit, thinking perhaps ‘A grain’ is a better modicum of sand, when suddenly:

“Alternative title: Alexander was victorious.” Perhaps I was physically baulking at the specificity, and necessarily historical bent of the project, because next came, “India under the English and under Hindi”

“… um… was that India under the English and under the Hindus?”

The Baba shook his head dismissively, released my hand with a sigh, snatched some remaining crackers from the floor and scattered them to the birds.

“No! India under English and under Hindi.”

Right then.

On the gate outside there are various arcane regulations: no talking; no women or children except on Saturday; ten minutes maximum stay, etc. We ask the baba about these strictures and he laughs heartily. “Rubbish! Now Ben you will do one thing for me next time: bring paint. You will paint over this nonsense writing next time you come!” More laughter.

The visits are predictable only in their unpredictability. Ad hoc lectures take in the gamut of human experience- Queen Victoria, chakras, internet forums, quantum mechanics, Lord Mountbatten.

“Come- you know about this computer business?” He then puts on a pair of reading glasses, whips out a laptop and tries in vain to get the broadband to work.

Last week he declared that the first step in his new plan to spread enlightenment is to take up jogging. At the age of 73. “Where can I find these running shoes? I think I should have muscles- you know: ripped.”

Most of the time, we are lost for words. We nod mutely or employ the ambiguous, noncommittal head wobble.

His diet is fascinating. Last month he announced that we would join him there and then for his final meal before his fasting whereby he would eat only pumpkin until March. The mystery of the decision is impregnable. Why pumpkin? Why March? At any rate, we eat curry and watch in horror as he dabs raw onion into a heap of salt before eating it, chasing it with two whole green chillies. Next time we see him, he’s enjoying a bag of Indian snacks, and then has a few of our crackers. We have tea with him. I ask him how much sugar. “Not much, just two of those spoons.” He’s talking about tablespoons. I gawp as he adds another two tablespoons afterwards.

When we last visited, the Baba announced that we had come just when he was breaking his fast. A bright yellow, spongy cous cous type of stuff is produced, which we eat with mango pickle. It is, clearly, nowhere near March.

I am on the beach one morning when we encounter the baba on brisk stroll. Max and I invite him back for chai, and moments later, there he is, on our porch reading Where the wild things are. Periodically, he lobs fistfuls of Indian snacks for the crows, until there’s a Hitchcockian density of birds in the garden. Then he announces- “I am happy-”. We wait a few seconds for the end of the sentence, but that is it. It’s not clear why, but this sets us off laughing until all four of us and the crows are guffawing loudly.

Local gods

When we moved in, Sandeep, the landlord, ushered me into one of the rooms and pointed to a corner and implored me not to put anything there. The room was quite dark, and, from what I could see, there was a plastic cup with sand in it, studded with small sticks. “Ah. Is it unsafe?” “No, this is our God.” I nodded solemnly, peering a little closer. Behind the cup (used to hold the incense sticks, I now realised) was an elegantly simple square ceramic tile, set into the floor. This was going to be a task: keeping Max from desecrating the household-god-tile. “Don’t worry, Sandeep. It will be respected.” I assured him in what I hoped was a tone suited to a discussion of domestic deities. It was only a matter of minutes before Max had dashed in, grabbed the cup, scattered the floor with its contents and more or less danced on the holy tile. I could only imagine the ill-fated blowback. If Max were to be struck by a falling coconut, we’d all know why. It was several days later, sitting in the toilet, that I happened to notice that the whole bathroom has the same tiling.

We came back from the beach the other evening to find a large group of locals gathering. I always think it best to approach a communal gathering cautiously, just in case it turns out to be a funeral or a lynch mob. Happily, this was a puja centring on launching a wooden Ganesh effigy into the surf. The men banged drums more or less a random, the teenagers were in charge of lighting bangers and lobbing them about whilst affecting a nonchalant air, and everyone else seemed busy mixing prasad and clapping. Max was in heaven, and the prasad of cucumber, coconut and jaggery sugar turned out to be an unexpectedly great combination. The colour of this sort of ceremony couldn’t be more at odds with the local Catholic events. We ran into a procession coming out of the church, and it was all I could do to bind and gag Max, as the austere rows of penitents looked on disapprovingly. From behind my hand, I could almost hear Max's muffled voice asking where the drums, fireworks and cucumber were at.

It’s hard to tell what Max’s theological conception is. He seems to accept that gods can be various animals, and that he will incur the hissing wrath of his parents if he grabs things from temple shrines. We suspect his perspective might be getting confused: last week he saw a statuette of the Virgin Mary and made himself popular by shrieking ‘Monkey God! Monkey God!’

Imperfection

On almost every hotel wall in India, you will find a rather artificial picture of an Austrian- or Swiss-looking building, probably a house or hotel, in a strangely sterile alpine setting. There are never any people in the shot, or animals. Everything is pristine. I’ve often asked where these anodyne mountain scenes are from, and usually I’m told it’s Switzerland, a land held in the Indian collective subconscious as an earthly Eden. Possibly the reason for this lies in the constant juxtaposition in India of the beautiful and the ugly. You’ll be watching a sunset on the beach, when you realise the timeless silhouette of a fisherman at the water’s edge is a man shitting. You’ll see a vivid rainbow arc across the sky, then be distracted by two bulls raping a cow. You’ll chance upon a picturesque riverbank, but have to pick your way through swathes of beer cans and crisp wrappers. You’ll rise in time to see the dawn light, but be assaulted by wafts of burning plastic (possibly smouldering Pampers). And so on. Hence the yearning for the unattainable Swiss chalet vista. No matter where you go in India, the perfect is always inherently imperfect. Who knows, behind the Swiss chalet, two scrawny dogs are probably tearing apart a plastic bag of rotting food, surrounded by a smattering of discarded Kingfisher cans.

Edward Said wrote that what you also never count on, when booking and travelling to a dream destination, is that you will have inevitably brought your own flawed self to the paradisiacal scene. So, whilst the coconut trees and golden sand look just like the postcard, your own neuroses creep in unbidden. Kate spent a whole night kvetching about tsunamis, I passed a good half hour on the beach being anxious about the cost of keeping a helicopter in the air, and Max is, as ever, hyper-vigilant about the whereabouts of his toy car collection. I can almost see us in the Swiss scene, scratching at some fresh insect bites, grousing about the cost of a cup of tea and wondering whether the chalet manager was being unfriendly to us.

A load of rubbish

The refuse system in our house consisted of us handing our rubbish over to the family who we rent off. They would then spirit it away somewhere, possibly burning it in some unseen place. This routine was going perfectly well until we were chasing Max round the corner, behind our adjoining wall, and came across a Emin-style depiction of our recent life, through the medium of rubbish. Horrified, I spotted several familiar Kingfisher cans, a few ear-cleaners, contact lens packets, and, most conspicuously, the tell-tale peppermint green and baby blue colours of Max’s Pampers. Considering that the plastic and metal would probably take another hundred years or so to break down, we decided that our consciences couldn’t bear the weight. As it turns out, with no municipal waste disposal scheme, the nearest ‘bin’ is about 20km away. Starting with the purchase of several pedal bins for the purpose, we have embarked on a meticulous separation plan. What becomes massively obvious when you have to wash, sift and transport your own stinking waste for half an hour, clutching it between your knees on a scooter, is that a family of three produces, literally, shitloads of rubbish. The hardest part is the nappies. I can just see them gagging a dolphin or smothering a rare turtle. They resist compaction, and veritably grow in size and weight when in contact with water. What’s in them? Some sort of weird gel crystals that have a half-life akin to plutonium. Alternatives are a little hard to decide on. Bare-ass is the obvious choice (for Max, that is), and certainly the approach favoured by 300million Indian children. Alas, the potty remains unsullied, but Max has been told there is a rich bounty on offer for every potty-based emission. Max now wears a brand of Huggies that are a denim effect fabric. They seem a comfy fit, but have a disconcerting way of making Max look like he’s sporting DaisyDukes. The other thing is that throwing away four or five of these everyday, with their stretchy seams and realistic beltbuckle, feels even more wasteful. Our other great idea is to insert a sanitary pad into a nappy. Luckily, in Indian shops nappies and maxipads are mixed up together. We’ll see how this plan goes. Otherwise the nappies will continue to be a putrid albatross round my feet.

Morning times

Max will wake us up, without fail, between 6 and 7 a.m. He clambers out of the web-like shroud of the mosquito net, totters into our room and starts banging on about vehicles. There is a heavy price to pay for ignoring his implorations. Last week he tried to get us up, and failing to do so, came back spraying a bag of milk all over the kitchen and living rooms. The tension of the morning was heightened when we gave him the remaining milk in a bottle and sat him on a cushion- next to a scorpion. It was 6.05am and Kate and I were bathed in sweat and aging by the minute.

The only other thing to get us leaping out of bed is the clown’s horn siren song that signals the arrival nearby of the bread man. ‘Bled man!’ Max with holler and I’ll bolt for the door, clutching him in one hand and ten rupees in the other. Many is the time that I’ve lurched forth into the dawn, lungi coming undone, wild of eye and breath, only to hear the comedy claxon disappearing around a corner. There is a ventriloquist’s trickiness to the noise, and Max and I have spent many minutes clambering vainly through people’s backyards, only to have to return dusty and bleeding, unable to put bread on the table.

War without end

On arrival, our approach towards the kitchen sink was greeted with a welcoming cloud of fruit flies. Or perhaps they’re not fruit flies, since they aren’t discerning and delight in absolutely anything that isn’t bone dry. So small are they that you can’t catch or swat them, since the air displaced by your hand’s movement wafts them away. When I bought one of those electrified racquets, I declared it the best money I ever spent. Kate will often come into the kitchen, drawn by the static crackle of the demise of creatures with about four chromosomes, to find me sweating and wild-eyed, thrashing about like McEnroe. I suspect that their life cycle is measured in hours rather than days, and that if I didn’t kill them, they’d be dead by morning anyway.

The mosquitoes are quite low-key when you consider that we are living next to a tidal river. What is odd though is that they are totally silent. I once heard that mosquitoes whine near your ears so that you will become stressed and the blood will throb, thus making their job easier. Not these ones.

Then there are the ants. At first there were only one or two innocent looking ants, strolling around in an unassuming manner, whistling, and asking directions. By now, constant streams of ants meander through the kitchen, putting up fliers and selling ant souvenirs. Indian Tupperware appears not to be airtight, and so now everything we own lives in the fridge. We have put a bell around Max’s ankle in case they try to carry him off.

As each new plague visits us, we look back fondly on the previous ones for being so benign. As we encounter huge jumping spiders, various scorpions and poisonous centipedes, I increasing regard the potentially malarial mossies as rather quaint.

Safeguarding

Keeping one’s first born child alive and well is of course any travelling parent’s primary concern. At every turn, though, our best efforts appear the very height of futility. We carefully wash and rinse Max’s milk bottles in mineral water, and then find that he’s snuck off to drink with gusto from the tap for minutes at a time. We painstakingly enforce helmet wearing on the scooter, and then we’ll find that a friendly Indian man has borrowed Max and is driving around with him rodeo style on a motorbike. We encourage Max to hold our hand in the road, but the next minute he’s chasing a chicken or a piglet into a broken down building site, through a checklist of tropical hazards: snakes, centipedes, rusty nails, broken glass, fetid puddles, men with puppies, mosquitoes, rabid dogs, and high-sugar beverages. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Or make you ill.

Lifestyle

What is funny is that, having removed ourselves from our domestic existence in London, and travelled to a completely disparate environment, we have hurried into a parallel routine. The key distinction is everything is recreated in a setting that is absurdly tropical.

We still do laundry, but now we hang it between palm trees. We still go jogging and swimming, but now do it on the beach with the sun either rising or setting, dodging the cows and crabs, as fishermen haul in their catch. We still watch boxsets, but do it under a mosquito net with the sound of waves breaking in the background. We still do the dishes, but they are mostly steel plates and have to be done instantly so the insects don’t get too involved. We still take Max out to run around, but here it’s in waterpools where he forages for sea creatures and careers about chasing after a gaggle of Indian kids.

What is also odd, is how little fills a day. We are up from 6am til 10 or 10.30 at a push. It is a bit like retirement, except with constant childcare requirements. We plot and plan mealtimes all day. Everything is more manual- cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc and we are amazed at how two small events can consume our waking hours and leave us slumped in the cane chairs, breathing heavily.

Weather

When we arrived the weather oscillated between ‘hot, humid and sunny’ and ‘hot, humid and rainy’. 'Rainy' doesn’t really encompass the style of rain that the ‘rainy season’ brings. It rained so hard that we couldn’t think. It took our breath away and made us pause to marvel at how this much water could have ever been suspended in the sky at all.

We went on a day trip on the scooter and had to shelter six or seven times from rain so furious that it would sting your skin and make the puddles erupt like they were being pelted with machine gun fire. The uniform in this weather is full body waterproofs with the drawstrings tied up at the chin. We haven’t discovered where everyone buys these, and so we just scuttle and hide.

The sort of downpour that would bring Britain to its soggy knees, clears up and clears off so quickly that you’d be forgiven for wondering if you’d imagined the whole thing. It’s been a whole week since the last daytime rain (and maybe that long since it rained a night), yet no local will commit to the idea that the monsoon is over. ‘Maybe it will come back and stay until November’ mused one guy, whilst generally people just laugh and shake their heads at the very idea. The prospect of it now returning to being rainy seems completely implausible to us.

Something that still catches us off guard is how short the day is. Being used to the hot days being the longest days in England, it’s odd to have the dusk descend like a curtain at just after 6pm. Likewise it’s still more or less dark when Max gets us up at 6.am. With just twelve hours of daylight, it’s no wonder we’re getting nothing done here.

Childcare

We have taken as laid back an approach to Childcare as is possible in a country absolutely brim-full with lethal hazards. One or twice everyday, Kate or I will sound the call: He’s gone. We then scuttle around looking for Max until we locate him caught in some fishing netting on the beachfront or investigating the back of derelict toilet. He has never had such a nice garden, or any garden for that matter, but still he leaves the thousands of toys, hammock, sand pit and parental supervision of the back yard, wriggles through the locked gate, past the psychotic dog and out into the wider world. Over and over again. The other day the scene was one of complete serenity: Max was having a nap in his room, we had finished lunch, and Kate and I sat reading in the garden, until Kate leaps up, exclaiming, ‘Is that MAX??’. Of course it was: in just a nappy, he was making his way through the mud and detritus on the other side of the fence, down to the riverbank.

Luckily, everyone in a square mile radius knows him by now, so as long as he doesn’t find the keys to the scooter we are ok.

Health and Safety

Driving an unregistered, unreliable scooter, heads uncovered, with a not-yet-2-yr-old sandwiched, wriggling, between the two of you, often whilst negotiating a blind turn into the face of a variety of mechanical and animal road-users, would seem in the UK to be the very last word in recklessness. Here, though, I feel that we cut an authentic Indian family model. When texting, or better yet, whilst transporting an unwieldy item (like a shelving unit, or 30litre water container, say) I feel that the look is complete.

The key factor in road safety, notwithstanding the innumerable hazards and road condition, is speed. Cruising at a stately 40kph, all the obstacles are apprehensible; at 60kph, you end up swerving wildly and your spinal column crashes painfully like a falling accordion, usually whilst insects the size and weight of sparrows pelt you in the face.

Kate recalls staying in the Andaman’s and becoming so paranoid of being hit by a falling coconut that she and Chloe took to wearing helmets when walking under the trees. We haven’t yet reached this level of hysteria, but gazing out on our garden as Max capers about, with his soft skull offering something of a perfect target for any of the several weighty coconuts above, does give us pause for thought. We approached Sandeep, the landlord, to ask about the danger. He brushed the risk aside, pointing out that never had anyone been struck by a coconut on his property. We smiled. He then mimed the falling of heavy objects and added ‘Landing this side, that side, very close, but not hit anyone’. We stopped smiling at this, even when Sandeep reassured us, ‘This Ok. Because you know, we have Shiva.’

Belief in Richard Dawkins seems to offer less protection, so we have an agreement that Sandeep will put some netting up for us.