Dichotomy

I both love and hate this time of year. I love the lights and the music and the excitement of the children as they boil over with the wonder of it all. I hate the vulgarity, the incessant need for more money to buy better presents. One of the great philosophers said, and I can't remember who, that if god didn't exist then we would have to invent  him. I think the same is true of Christmas. There is some innate part of us that longs to join in, to sing the carols to light the lights and to buy the presents.

Small baba Christmasses were all about the excitement and worry - no chimney so how Santa Claus come down it? Turns out he was pretty nifty through the air conditioner grille.

Christmas dinner was a heaving table with all those who needed to share in our Christmas, Desmond and all the boys, George Landau and Dorothy and any waif of stray picked up be any of us that needed not to be alone over the holiday. After the meal the Aussies and New Zealanders rolled up and the party went well into the small hours with laughter and dancing.

I think about those days of wonder as I write this - my Christmas this year will be spent with the blind neighbour - I am going to cook for both of us. We may not dance the night away but I hope it will be a happy day and one that I can put into my memory box to join all the other happy times.

Happy Holidays to all of you wherever you may be.

Shopping in the New Market

I have to confess that despite my hymn of praise to the dress buying experience the other day, I hate shopping and most particularly shopping malls. Poor Basingstoke really doesn't stand a chance.

It has to do with, like so much else in my life, Calcutta, and how the experience of shopping there formed my buying habits. To shop in Calcutta was to walk into an adventure. The New Market, a Victorian mall in fact, was laid out in such a way as to invite you to experience the world. Avenues of shoe shops, side alleys filled with flowers, curio shops that would have had Dickens frantically rewriting The Old Curiosity Shop.

To go with my mother as a small baba meant following her to Empire Stores where jealously guarded imported goods were produced like jewels for her inspection: tins of baked beans, canned smoked oysters and even Kool Aid were brandished and bought. Further on the meat market, best walked through with a fixed stare and holding one's breath. We went through and out the other side - the cook was sent to buy the meat. Just next door the fish market - again the smell was overwhelming but here we would stop and look for lobsters, bekti and hilsa. Huge prawns would be added to the growing pile of goods that Old Buddha balanced on his head.

I would always beg to go through the animal markets, birds, parrots and budgerigars, rabbiits, white and pied and monkeys - oh how I wanted a monkey. All it took however to make me quiet again was the repetition of how if bitten I would have to have ten injections - all in my stomach - to innoculate me against rabies. Even now, I hesitate to pat a strange dog such was the power of that particular moral tale.

All provision shopping done we would head into the main market with its lanes and alleys spiralling out from the centre where, at Christmas, the Chinese would sell paper chains and lanterns. A favourite stop was Chumbu Lama, a tiny shop owned by a Tibetan refugee - in a similar manner to Emipire Stores he would reach into the back of the shop and treasures would be brought out to be viewed. Exquisite bronze buddhas, ropes of turquoise and coral; the tresaures of a refugee race forced to sell their heritage to live in a strange land. Every piece had a story and most were heart breaking. I don't remember Mum buying much - simply listening and sometimes returning with Desmond or letting Chogyal know that soemthing rare was in the bazaar.

Shopping done it was off to Flurys for cake and coffee, or in my case coke.

As I grew older I would fo on my own or with my freinds and we would spend hours trying on shoes, buying thirty of forty of the beautifully coloured glass bangles that would match our dresses and leave us with myriad cuts on our arms when the bangles inevetably broke. At one point I was sent to see if anyone was selling tiger skins - of course they were and so much more beside. A moira (a whicker stool) could be ordered and hashish packed into the seat and then sent by freight to the UK or US. For a time I felt like Mata Hari.

You see with memories like these - a sterile mall filled with shops that are all identical is no place for real shopping. Sadly those paper Christmas decorations caused a fire that consumed Hogg's New Market and although it has been restored I believe much of its charm has been sanitised. Memories can't have that happen to them thank God.

A Long, Long Time Ago

When I was a small baba a big treat was to go on a picnic. We would go out towards Dum Dum, find a green spot and sit and eat from a dekshi warmed over a makeshift fire. No matter how lonely the place seemed within minutes we were surrounded by children curious to know who or what we were.

One of my enduring memories is of playing George Harrison's Within You Without You to them - they understood the sitar music but not the words - in fact the gramophone was in itself a thing of wonder. Desmond sat and sketched and we played rounders. I remember talking with Gail on one of these picnics about how we would have a horse farm out here one day and breed racehorses. They were magic days - as the Cornish would say 'given days' of beauty and charm.

There were other country days - some people owned houses out of the city and we would go en masse to spend the day - still rounders and sitting under trees listening to music.

I remember one day being allowed to drive a jeep by Kalden Dorji - shrieking with delight as we bounced over pot holes. I also rememebr being very miffed that Gail was a natural!

Why is it that we look back on these times as such golden times - ~I remember feeling hot and bothered and yet it still looks like a golden mindscape to me. It was on one of these days that Desmond found Clive's house and mess, another spent on the river watching old Calcutta pass us by and another at Diamond Harbour squelching merrily knee deep in mud. Children in England have their bike rides and days at Alton Towers - I was so lucky to have so much more.

The Up Side of being Down

There I was - steeped in misery after a not terribly jolly outing to Basingstoke with the blind neighbour. I had seen two dresses I wanted in Monsoon and then looked at the price tag and realised the only way I was going to get them was through the power of  imagination. Don't worry - the blind neighbour was doing his thing in the blessed pound shop.

So we got home and I lugged my massive bag of veggies - new food routine - fresh and healthy. Mmmm wonder what time Domino's start delivery? More to the point I was in right mump and the doorbell rang.

I trotted downstairs and there was one of my most beloved ex students holding a big brown envelope-  couldn't ask her in 'cos it is a tip at the moment and I have some pride left - not a lot but some.

The blessed girl (Tina) had bought me a copy of Desmond's An Artist's Impression and a news agency photograph of Desmond trying to explain to group of Sherpa that he was looking for the yeti. How kind was that? I really don't deserve the love that I keep being shown. Needless to say my mump turned into a jump for joy. Thank you darling Tina.

And then as I was thinking about her at school it came to  me - all the memories I have of her are happy one. The very first Rock Challenge where she saved our bacon by slotting in her solo dance with two of my little guys as sidekicks. They thought they'd died and gone to heaven. She choreographed part of the next year's dance and we made it to the final. She was in my top set English GCSE group and I loved every lesson I taught them. She got so carried away by Cider with Rosie she made her parents take her to Slad.

Here is something that we can all learn from - her random act of kindness stopped me in my tracks today and made me grateful to been here to see her and to be given such lovely gifts. We never know what affect we will have on others by our behaviour but to be kind can be lifeline. It was for me today - it gave me a reason to live.

Will You Dance With Me?

I must have been about 11. Mum said that we were going out for a special Sunday treat - we were going to Trincas for the jam session. I think I probably thought she meant we were going to get some jam - anyway I was underwhelmed. But - it was with Desmond and the Tibetan boys and I was promised a banana split so I acquiesced and at three o'clock we went.

How can I make you see that scene? It even now defies description. Several hundred young people on the dance floor - jammed on the dance floor. People on tables twisting - for yes, this was the time of the Twist. I think I knew in the first thirty seconds or arrival that I would never be one of the 'cool' people. This was on a whole new level. This was not my sheltered small baba life and I LOVED it!

My sister, meaning well, told everyone how good I was at doing the Twist. NO! Not here in this place. I was never going to dance in front of these people. I think buoyed up by love I ventured onto the dance floor and weakly twisted my hips in a parody of the real thing. I knew and they knew it but all oohed and aahed at my 'talent'. Then the band played Let's Twist Again and the real dancing started all over again. It was incredible, unbelievable and I lost my soul to Rock and Roll.

I had to wait nearly three years before I got back there. Going to a jam session in my own right as a person not an appendage. The same fevered atmosphere still existed although the Twist was long gone. We had to queue for an hour to get in and once in stake a claim to a table and guard it with our lives. The session ran from 3 'til 7 every Sunday afternoon. Always with live music and always the bands that we all wanted to follow. In those early days that was the Flintstones with 'my' Peter Yeti singing Mustang Sally. It was four hours of hedonistic pleasure - we danced, we talked, we cried and we laughed. For those four hours Trincas became a microcosm of the real world - all human life was there. Jealousy and anger and love all simmered and stirred in the melting pot.

I don't know when it stopped being fun - I just know that Trincas in the evening became a place to go to and Sunday afternoons belonged to off course betting on the Bombay races at the RCTC. We all needed a different stage for our dramas and, to an extent, needed to not play them out quite so publicly. We outgrew the jam session - bands like the Great Bear needed a bigger stage and being listened to not gyrated to. I still shiver when I hear Mustang Sally though.

Durzis and Dhobis

One of the great gifts of living in Calcutta was the clothes. You would go to the market or to Bombay Dying or Mayur and buy your material and then find a picture in a magazine, take it and the cloth to your durzi and a week later the dress, skirt or blouse was made.

The durzis had a hierarchy - Morsalem on the corner of  Harrington St was considered a burra memsahib's tailor. He made my sister 's wedding dress. He had the gift of being able to cut beautifully but he was expensive (by Calcutta standards) and so was only used for special occasions. Abdul tailor was our durzi from when I was very small and would make lovely towelling confections to be worn in Puri. Not so successful was the towelling bikini that became waterlogged and fell down but he was always generous in letting us see what the doyennes of fashion were having made and in making the same for us. Finally there was the verandah durzi who came and sat on the verandah for a week or ten days and ran shirts and nightgowns and all purpose clothing.

Naughty Desmond stole the verandah durzi away from all the memsahibs and kept him happily employed in Minto Park making ever bolder design in shirts from raw silk and brightly coloured cotton. I  don't think he ever returned to the verandahs of the memsahibs. He made my favourite dress - a black and white poplin halter neck that Desla designed when I said I was fed up of the good girl clothes I always wore. I thought I was the bees knees in the dress which was almost completely see through and was worn with Dorothy's black velvet and fur trimmed evening coat from the thirties.

The Heywood girls would arrive for Christmas with lovely, fashionable clothes that were copied several times over. Nothing was sacred - all designs were up for grabs even thought it must have been intensely irritating to arrive at the races in your new frock and to see at least three other people wearing the same thing. Abdul tailor managed to share the designs and not lose his customers - a rare talent in what was increasingly a game of one upmanship. He was also the recipient of my unwanted 'lost' animals - he would always take the goats that had been rescued from the Maidan and keep them out at Howrah where he lived. I suspect they made a lovely biriani at the end of Ramadan.

All these clothes needed washing and there were no washing machines - just the dhobi. Dubby's mother in law's verandah looked down on the the dhobi ghats - full of sheets and shirts being pounded against stone to loosen their dirt and increase the whiteness. I remember feeling glad that our dhobi did the washing in Mum's bath and hung it out to dry on the roof. He came three times a week - the tropics demand that clothes are only worn once and often changed two or three times a day. Everything was washed, dried and ironed ready to be put away by Abdul bearer. How spoilt we were  - I am sure that the reason I hate ironing so much now is because I never had to do it when I was younger - and as for handwashing - not a clue!

Such a privileged life - such fun. I would love to feel guilty for enjoying the privileges we had but I don't. I knew I was lucky and I enjoyed every minute of it.

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Fires

It is so weird how the mind works - you are just chatting to someone (in this instance, me to Peter) and suddenly a random remark evokes a rush of memories. As we chatted about gilets, red boots and Land's End Clothing he said something that reminded me of the mountains and Kalimpong. Fires in bedrooms. You see we always had a fire in the bedrooms in the mountains so one slept with the gentle glow of embers, the scent of pine resin and gentle crackling of the wood as the fire slowly burned through the night.

And then the memories came flooding back, whisky and brandy bottles filled with hot water, snuggled into a crocheted cosy and pushed down so the bed was warm. Kancha bringing up pails of boiling water to fill the tin bath so we bathed in the morning in a bath, that had probably been to Gyantse and back in its lifetime, in front of a newly rekindled fire.

This may sound as if I have confused my memories with those of someone older and from another time but I promise this is true. At 4500 feet Kalimpong got cold at night. As a small child I would be tucked into bed, kissed and left to drowse in the firelight as downstairs I could hear the chatter and laughter that now seem such a hallmark of my childhood. As it got later sometimes the sounds got louder, the laughter more manic and Auntie Annie could be heard singing some ditty from the music halls of her youth. If I judged it correctly I could then creep down, hide under a table and watch entranced as the dancing started.

If you have never seen Nepalese dancing it is hard to imagine, it is both graceful and life enhancing: the beat of the tabla and the sweet sound of a flute join the voices as they sing of the love of a boy for a girl, of how the girl invites and then repels. The dancer or dancers reenact the song with the gentlest of hand gestures, use of the eyes and a constant circling and twirling as the story reaches it end. Then suddenly the mood would change, the drum was beaten faster, handkerchiefs pulled out and the men using the drum and our clapping as rhythm performed fast and furious gymnastics to the song Nainitala - Desmond excelled at this and the boys who sang always made him dance this at least once. I would get too carried away and clap loudly from my hiding place, get caught and sent back to bed.

One night Auntie Annie called us all out to the porch - once a year a flower bloomed and it was this night. We looked in awe at the purple blossom and then out across the valley to the far away snows, the spirit lights and above a huge and pendulous moon hanging in a sky studded with stars so close you could touch them if you stretched.

All this from one comment about having a fire in one's bedroom. That Marcel Proust knew a thing or two.

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George and Dorothy.

Calcutta has always bred eccentrics and characters - going back in history to the earliest British arrivals, it was far more a city of individuals than of Empire builders. The Empire builders came, looked and moved the capital to Delhi. Calcutta settled down into her old idiosyncratic ways.

Between the wars was the belle epoque of Calcutta - she provided a melting pot for people from all over the world to settle, make money and enjoy life. There was horse racing, motor racing, gambling, some of the best brothels in the East and some outstanding hotels and restaurants. Calcutta was the place where the quote that the  "Colonel's lady and Rosie O'Grady/ were sisters under the skin", proved yet again  that Kipling knew his British India.

As I grew up all this was taken as normal - it is only now that I realise the rich tapestry that I was allowed to glimpse through the eyes of two friends of my mothers - George Landau and Dorothy Surita. Between them these two were witness to the glory days and would, with very little prompting, recall magical times of vulgar riches, beautiful people and a life lived fast and dangerously for the sheer delight it gave.

They were only brought together once - they took one look at each other and retreated into the sullen silence of offended children. Whether they recognised aspects in each other that they would prefer not to acknowledge or, simply they wanted to be the only centre of attention, the meeting did not go well and my mother kept them separate from each other from then on.

Dorothy had been a milliner in one of the big shops on Chowringhee. She never mentioned her father but her mother had come out from England, also a milliner, to make hats for the ladies of the city to wear to the races and for special occasions. Whilst still young and very innocent Dorothy met and fell in love with a lawyer, Jerry Surita. They were together from then on - firstly as lover and mistress and finally, husband and wife. Jerry already had wife and this was a time where divorce socially unacceptable.

Jerry was very much the man about town and there was no shame in their relationship - Dorothy went where he did, to the races, to Firpos, to dances at the Saturday Club. She used to make it sound so glamorous but it must have been so hard. Even with Jerry taking her everywhere, there would still have been closed doors, the member's enclosure at the RCTC, membership of the Saturday Club and she also had to contend with his two sons, Ivan and Pearson who never fully accepted her and ensured that for years she was kept at arms length.

We first met Dorothy when Desmond, always avid for stories of old Calcutta, arranged to go and interview Jerry about the reopening of the Globe Theatre - in its day one the best music halls and theatres in the Far East: now reopening as a cinema with Burton and Taylor's Cleopatra. We arrived and were met by the prettiest little woman in a delicate sundress with a large picture hat and the sweetest smile: Dorothy. She had just come in from shopping and begging our forgiveness took off her high heeled sandals and led us up the stairs to their flat. My mother nudged me and pointed with her eyes at Dorothy's feet - they were on tiptoe, she had worn the highest of high heels for so long that she could no longer place her feet flat to the ground. I think we both fell a little in love with her at that moment.

Not long after this Jerry died and Dorothy suddenly aged. She became part of the family, coming once a week for lunch - always on a Thursday, coming to races with us on a Saturday and spending all the family holiday times with like Christmas and Easter. She was always willing to sit and tell stories of her and Jerry's youth and when the fashion for vintage clothes came about, raided her wardrobe and found me lovely pieces that belong to the 1920s and 30s. I remember vividly a black velvet and white ermine collared evening coat that became my signature garment one winter - wearing it seemed to make me more glamorous, more a part of the past.

George Landau was that strange anachronism of the Far East, a Shanghai Jew. His father had been jeweller to the rajahs and maharajahs, travelling back and forth across India with priceless gems to sell or buy. George would tell tales of hard up rajahs sending for his father and asking him to find buyers for fabulous gemstones - only six months later to demand he find them and buy them back. It was George who told the story of the princely emeralds of one of the local maharajahs being reset as costume jewellery, taken to Paris, sold to Cartier and being shown to a daughter of the house, now married to one of the mosr famous of India's princely families, who instantly recognised her family's jewels and demanded they be returned forthwith. They weren't and have now vanished from sight.

When his father died George was left a sizable fortune that allowed him to indulge in his two passions, gambling and horse racing. Remarkably quickly he was broke and started to train for a living. Sadly, he couldn't stop the gambling and was caught fixing races and warned off. Not just Calcutta but pretty much every track in India. He made ends meet by selling tips, he could read a handicap better than anyone and would lurk, up at the Maidan side of the 1800 metre start with binoculars, his ever present cigar, a stop watch and a list of numbers and names that would be crossed off  or starred depending on how the horse had done.

We came to know him when he applied for, and was given a training licence for the Tolly Gymkhana races. As these were supposed to be strictly amateur the stewards obviously had a naive hope that George would not be able to get up to his old tricks. In fact, Tolly races were for some years some of the most overtly crooked race meetings in the history of the sport. So much so that one friend, riding simply for the pleasure of it raised the question to my mother, "Is that Sir Robert Fuckers going to pull his horse again?" It was was a mark of quality of the heir to oldest baronetcy in England, Sir Robert ffolkes, that this question only raised shrieks of laughter and the plaintive question , "Oh dear, Joy is my riding really that bad?"

George was not as keen as Dorothy to live on his memories. He always looked forward to the next day and the promise that held. Mum adored him and soaked up his vast knowledge of training and horses. He became a daily visitor, coming back with her from the morning's gallops, sitting drinking his tea while she changed and then, seated in prime position in the front of her little red car accompanying her to  her morning shopping. He had always been a ladies man and, I think that for him, she was his last love.

They were a remarkable pair: two stories from a city made up of stories - two genuine eccentrics.

Brief Break

The story will be continued tomorrow I promise but I felt the need for more immediate contact with you - silly I know but I was missing the one sided conversation.

Calcutta was and is a very small community - little goes on that is not public knowledge within a few hours. An example of this is when a friend of mine became pregnant - I went with her to a clinic off Elliot Rd. and waited in the waiting room while she saw the doctor then took her home.

I walked in to the sitting room at home to find my parents, white faced, clutching large whiskeys begging me to tell them the truth. The nurse at the clinic had worked for Dad once and phoned him as soon as she saw me. It took several hours to convince them it wasn't me having a baby but my friend. I never really stood a chance of being really bad - there were too may eyes watching - if they didn't have links to Mum or Dad they would almost certainly have links to Desla  or Dubs,

Despite this, or maybe because of  it I always felt entirely safe - the only bad experience I ever really had was one to be savoured for its tattered glamour.  I spotted a rather attractive young man in Trincas one night and was told that he was the young cousin the Tripura family. I wangled an introduction and was asked out to dinner.

You must understand  that we were in our own way very innocent. Jaideep, having just  returned from being educated in England was used to young women who has embraced the sexual revolution ans took their places as equals/ I still expected a car door to be held open for me.

After dinner he invited me back to the Tripura Palace in Ballygunge and showed me around an echoing ghost of a house with huge marble halls and neo classical nymphs draped coyly on plinths in alcoves. Unsurprisingly the tour ended in his rooms and the usual rough and tumble ensued. As it was getting close to midnight I asked  if he could arrange for a car to take me home.

The atmosphere changed - there were no cars - I hadn't slept with him yet - who did I think I was? We were locked in for the night. I took matters into my own hands hands ran out to the main hall and shouted for the Durwan to  go and find a taxi. The resultant noise woke the Maharani's bearer and he sat me down, made me tea and organised the taxi in what seemed like seconds. Jaideep was banished back to his room.

The old bearer saw me home and apologised for the shame of his mistress's nephew.

The postscript came when Jaideep turned up the next night and tried to bully his way past Abdul and the two dogs. Winnie, I am glad to say bit him!. I fell to Abdul to have the last word." Ek dum budmash baba!"

Strange Bewildering Time 2

Continued from Part One

Charles stood looking like a ruffled blond crane with his bare feet only inches from the rat's tail. "Kill it," shrieked Charlotte: Anne by this stage was in a foetal position on the bed rocking backwards and forwards sobbing and muttering, "There is a place called Surrey. I live there. I will wake up soon and I will be at home." She would open one eye occasionally and the shuddering and sobbing would increase still more.

Charles looked down at the rat and said," Big old chap isn't he? " He lent forward and clapped his hands loudly: perhaps the rat took this as approbation for it made determined jump towards his nose. Backing away hastily he said. "Stay calm girls - I'll get the wallah." and left.  Beautiful, fey, tranquil Charlotte whose never raised her voice or showed any real sign of irritation was beside herself with fear and indignation. Anne was now catatonic, whimpering,"Leatherhead," or "Guildford." It became fairly obvious that as the only one who was still showing some sign of sanity this was going to be my  problem.

I armed myself with my book and my remaining sandal stood up and brandishing them both while making wild howls and yelps I managed to force a retreat from the rat into the bathroom. I hastily shut and locked the door whereupon Charlotte, until now a total fiend, collapsed into peals of hysterical laughter - "Why did you lock the door? It can't turn the handle."
'You'll see," I muttered darkly, a little hurt that my heroics had not been appreciated for their valour.  Charles returned with the manager - not a happy man to be woken at three in the morning. Charlotte explained about the rat - unda. No he said smiling piteously at this memsahib and her little knowledge of Indian vermin - a chooha , a small mouse - no harm. "Show them," she said to me. I told her it would get out again and they were no help - let them look in the morning. We all agreed that this was best, lights were turned off and we tried to close our eyes and sleep.

"Ow, bloody hell, who locked the stupid sodding door," was all it needed for Charlotte to roll over and tell me I was a genius - Charles meanwhile limped down the passage way looking for another toilet. All to soon it was time to get up, wash, avoid the rat and the breakfast and head for the border. Raxaul on the Indian side was calm and sleep in the early morning: beyond the border guards we could see lines of buses and people hurrying about.

We hurried across and with a brief look at our passports and visas we were nodded through into Nepal. Charles volunteered to go and find our bus and we sank gratefully on to a bench at a tea shop and drank that reviver if all people and all ills , gurum chai. We also noticed they seemed to do a nifty line in alu parathas so polished off two each before Charles returned. He looked a little worried - apparently our bus tickets were for a bus that didn't exist and all the buses to Kathmandu were full. Cometh the hour cometh the woman, Charlotte with that eccentricity of spirit that only rare souls are given, took the tickets from Charles and walked to the nearest bus. There was no shouting, no arguing just a beautiful girl speaking classically beautiful Hindi and enchanting the man as she did so. I caught the words chooha and unda several times so I suspect she was appealing to his better side. At one point they both looked at Charles and laughed, a little unkindly I thought, after all he had a nasty bruise on his toe from the door.

She beckoned us to come quickly and by some miracle had got us seats on the last bus out of Bhirgunj that day. Anne was so relieved that we would soon be on the last leg of the journey that she walked quite perklily to the bus and hopped aboard. These were not tourist buses - oh they existed complete with air conditioning and upholstered seats - these were country buses; they took families home, goats to market, children to hospital and old grannies to see their families. All of these and their luggage needed to be loaded and then there was us. Charles refused point blank to ride on the roof - very foolishly I felt - he would have had plenty of leg room and lots of lovely fresh air. Charlotte had  commandeered three seats at the back of the bus and feeling Charles had missed his chance with the roof, we took them, A toothless, wrinkled Nepali lady offered him her bedroll to sit on and he, rather, ungraciously accepted it and settled into the middle of the aisle. The engine turned over and there in front of us was the road already climbing away from the heat of the terai towards the blue of the mountains and the promise of journey's end.

I t is theoretically  an eight and a half hour drive from the border to Kathmandu, in reality it is more like thirteen to fourteen hours, The road climbs from the sea level of Biharbaba, I looked out of the window, and gave my  grown up heart to another city.

The GAP year traveller had not really been invented yet so the travellers that were there were visiting for religion - like the Maharishi man - cool dude, or drugs - found some primo dope yesterday man - up at that monkey temple - I was like so stoned. Or those, like us seeking adventure and new experiences. There were place to go to find out where to go, like Aunt Jane's for breakfast. Aunt Jane had been in the Peace Corps and started her little breakfast shop when she realised no one was having a cooked breakfast. Her porridge was fabulous as were the pancakes and maple syrup. You got there at about 8.30 met up with people you vaguely knew and were told the good things to go and see that day. Having delivered us safely Charles was catching up on his sleep and trying to restore his somewhat battered ego. Anne was recovered from the journey and Charlotte and I were in our element. An old friend from Calcutta - Peace Corps again came in and told us we should go to Bhaktapur as there was a huge festival there and it was very special. Bhaktapur is the most beautiful of the three cities, steeped in history and culture and truly lovely to visit. I deferred because Desmond and Dubby were flying in that afternoon so Charlotte and Anne set off alone and I went to my friend Yeshe's restaurant for a game of backgammon and a discussion of the merits of Fulham making it to the FA cup final. An eclectic mix of clientele.

By the late afternoon Desmond and Dubby had arrived at the OM where we all sat drinking rum and hot lemon and after catching up with faraway Calcutta Dubby asked me where my friends were. I told him I had no idea where Charles was and that Charlotte and Anne had gone to a festival at Bhaktapur. There were intakes of breath around the table and just as they were about to explain Charlotte and Anne were escorted in by our Peace Corps friend of the morning. They looked grey and Anne had some sort of red dye on her white kurta and in her hair. I reached out to brush it away and she leaped to her feet. screamed and ran off to the hotel. The regulars in the bar drew closer - even though they knew what had happened this should provide some entertainment for a  few nights to come.

"It was a festival," Charlotte said weakly, " a festival of sacrifice. Hundreds and hundreds of buffalo having their throats slit, the blood sprayed round as a blessing and then decapitated and spread across the square. The blood didn't catch me but it did poor Anne and the crowd was so thick we could only move forward to that awful carpet of buffalo heads". Mr Peace Corps had realised his error and gone to look for us and by sheer fluke did find Charlotte and Anne and get them out. They left the next morning choosing the safer option of river rafting and a visit to Varanasi.

I stayed on - I was having way too much fun and besides I had met someone. After the girls left he moved into the hotel room with me and shared my bed and made me laugh and gave me nits. And then - he was a heroin addict - clean when I first met him - using by the time I left. I was told, truthfully or not, that he, along with several others, died at a beach party in Goa where the heroin had been so pure they had all overdosed. I would like to think he is a middle aged regenerated ex hippy somewhere but I think he probably lies in an unmarked grave in Goa. He came from Wimbledon. Drugs are wicked and evil and destructive and they take our dreams and flatter us for awhile and destroy.

So I flew back to Calcutta on a plane, with an itchy scalp and a sore heart for someone who laughed me into bed and let me rabbit on as much as I wanted to and listened to my silly theories and demanded like a sultan to be told a bedtime story and had no self control when he saw the needle. But the rest of my heart knew it would be back to these mountains and this city that I loved.

NB - Fulham did make to the cup and the gentleman in question chartered a plane and took  all his friends to Wembley to see them win.


My kind of Kathmandu: An artist's impression of the emerald valley