Golden corn spread out on the road; women washing in rivers; pots and baskets and sugar cane balanced on heads; a dead man in his best clothes being carried to his pyre; goats, bullocks, monkeys everywhere; baby elephants ambling through traffic…
After a week of it, I turn to my guide Rajai and announce somewhat dramatically, but meaning every word, ‘I think I have lived more in the past seven days than ever before.’
‘That’s India,’ says Rajai matter-of-factly, as if I’m just one more Westerner having an epiphany. Rajai, a multilingual expert on art history and architecture, is a little frustrated by my emotional approach to sightseeing and is, I suspect, not convinced that I’m up to scratch as a tourist.
I look left when I ought to look right. ‘Right! Right!’ he shouts as we drive past the fort in Chennai. But I’m looking the other way at a line of boys queuing for employment registration, jammed tight together, all with their hands on the shoulders of the boy in front.
That was on the first day of my tour when I was able to concentrate slightly.
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