Message #31: That's all folks...

(Message sent Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:59:55 -0700)

Hello everyone. Well, my little adventure is almost over. Tomorrow I get on that big ol' jet plane and head home to Nelson for Christmas with the folks. Can't wait.

What a bewildering place India is. I've seen some of the most amazing things that human beings have ever created, but I've also seen people living unimaginably awful lives.

Desperation is evident everywhere, in the pleading of the beggars and the pestering of the trinket sellers, and yet I haven't at any point felt unsafe. I get outrageously overcharged at every turn, but I've never detected any attempt to cheat me or steal from me. (That isn't to say that the threat doesn't exist of course. A Japanese tourist has disappeared since I've been here. He arrived at Delhi airport, changed US$100 into rupees, and then... no-one knows.)

As everywhere in the world, the majority of people are friendly and inquisitive, even if the conversation always comes around somehow to their brother's shop.

As for the future, it's frankly hard to see how things can ever improve for the people. The problem as I see it is that there are just so many of them, and the societal pressures to get married early and have as many children as possible won't go away any time soon.

I haven't really been doing the tourist thing in Calcutta. Instead I've been doing a bit of shopping, hanging around in cafes, and going to see strange Hindi action musicals. (The one I've just seen featured an array of extraordinarily good-looking men and women who, whenever they weren't singing and dancing, would spend most of their time strutting about in slow motion wearing very little. Regularly the chorus would burst into song, the main refrain sounding something like, "dom m'charlay." I've asked everybody I've met since what this means, and have gotten different answers each time, including one guy who assured me that I could buy some dom m'charlay at his brother's shop just around the corner.)

Well, that's it from me. Thanks very much, you've been a great audience.

And dom m'charlay to you all.