Saturday 27^th October

Royal Hobart Show- last Thursday …

The weather ranged between ghastly and dismal…Last year both Katy and Eva got heatstroke and had to be revived with big iced slushy drinks.  This year we were all damp and chilly. 

Never mind; we are true Tasmanians and we had FUN nevertheless.  I was very amused, however, to find that two of our darling children would have been more than happy to stay in the art exhibition pavilion, happily painting on large easels provided by kindly volunteers, notwithstanding the fact that they had spent quite a few hours that very morning painting, at home…

India #3

 

It was probably about 8.30pm when we arrived in Mumbai, but in Australia it was well after midnight, and we resembled hollow-eyed ghouls after 14 hours on the plane (to quote Bill Bryson) as we made our way through all of the formalities.  Pete had warned us that this might take many hours but in fact we were in and out and looking for a taxi before any time at all had elapsed.  So there we were, in a pre-paid taxi, whizzing through the streets of Mumbai, with Vish sitting in the front.  He was SO excited, SO exhilarated, we all laughed in delight to see him so happy.  WOW!  He cried.  This is MAGIC!  (Magic in fact was ever his mot du jour.  Traffic was magic, sights and smells, the Taj Mahal, camels elephants donkeys monkeys – all magic.  When we were on the plane coming home, QANTAS gave us little comfort packs, with collapsible toothbrushes.  Gollygosh!  Vish’s eyes lit up!  “MAGIC!” he shouted.  “Well yes, said Pete, patiently.  “One minute it’s a cylinder, the next it is a little toothbrush, magic indeed.”  I’m afraid to say this started our row of four supposedly mature and responsible travellers to have fits of hysterical giggling; I actually thought the staff might come and offer to throw us off the plane…or at least to separate us and make us sit in naughty corners.)

 

I don’t suppose I should even try to describe the traffic in India.  It is SO chaotic, and you have probably either experienced it or seen it on TV.  For a start, there is LOTS of traffic.  There are ONE BILLION people in India and most of them are on the move.  In taxis, on bikes, motor-rickshaws, motor-scooters.  There are also great big heavily laden wooden handcarts being pushed along the main roads at high speed by thin wiry men in amongst the traffic.  Lanes mean nothing, zebra crossings are only a decoration on the road, and traffic lights, seen only in the bigger cities, are an indication and not compulsory.  And everything is COMING RIGHT AT YOU.  Literally.  I only accepted my friends’ kind offers to have the front seat in taxis twice, and I think they were glad to have me back in the backseat where I wouldn’t scream so much.  Our first trip, from the airport into Colaba at the other end of Mumbai, was extraordinary.  It was like being in an out-of-control dodgem car, or in a whizzbang computer game. 

 

Vish, as I have said, was alight with joy.  He is a radiant, happy sort of man, so it was dreadful to see the blood drain from his face when we pulled up briefly, but not briefly enough, at a set of traffic lights.  The most pathetic and awful beggar you could imagine came and pressed his face right up to Vish’s window.  He had only stumps for arms, and his teeth all grew straight outwards; the rest of his face was distorted and riddled with pain.  “Daddy Daddy help me!” he cried, waving his stumps at Vish.  What could we do??  Nothing at all!  We had no Indian money, had not yet called in at an ATM to extract rupees.  We all just sat, frozen, in our seats until the taxi lurched off again.  Mary describes our time in India as extreme highs and lows; this was one of the latter…