The burning boy and a 'hot' Sim

As I dumped my bags in the hotel reception at 4am, time to check out and take a taxi, I realised that the night boy was sitting behind the desk with a scarf wrapped around his head, just over his eyes. Novel way to get some sleep, I thought, approaching the desk silently. “Good morning,” he said. I chuckled and asked him what the scarf was for and he told me that he was sick.

Because his English is so weak and I am too lazy to construct a sentence in Hindi, I decided from what he said that he had trouble with his eyes. “Touch this,” he said to me, pointing to his arm. I was a bit confused - why would an eye problem affect his arm? “No problem,” he said. “Touch this,” again pointing to his arm. I gently touched his arm only to find that the poor lad was burning. “Tomorrow hospital,” he told me. From our broken conversation it became clear that he thought he had malaria.

Although last time I went to my local travel clinic I was told that anti-malarials are not so strictly recommended for India, malaria is a real problem. My cousins in Hyderabad told me that they have all had it, but with the kind of irritation that we in England speak of the ‘flu. I was amazed that this boy was waiting to finish his night duties before taking himself to hospital. If the situation were reversed I would stick a blue flashing light on my head if I thought it would get me faster treatment.

And then my mind turned to the collection of bites on my arms and legs. Because there were no mosquitoes in McLeod Ganj I was less organised than usual and had not been eating B vitamins (in the form of Marmite) nor covering myself in Deet once we got to Delhi. As a result my arms and fingers were covered; and my ankles, which were by now unattractively fat because of the heat, were also itching like mad. I looked at my bites and wondered if one of them could be nasty.

But my taxi turned up and I had to say goodbye to the lad. Wongden House will book reasonably-priced taxis for the airport, but you have to give up any thoughts of luxury. Even on the new Delhi roads, because suspension and shock absorbers were a dim, distant memory for this car, I seriously wished that I had been wearing a sports bra, and was quite worried that my curves might have dropped by an inch or so by the end of the journey. But I was glad to get to the airport alive. My driver clearly thought that all of these new traffic lights that are springing up around Delhi are purely to make the roads look pretty, and as he swerved between lanes I did wonder if he had been on the toddy.

And so it was goodbye to India again, leaving Simita fast asleep in the hotel. We’d had a farewell glass of wine from a tiny bottle of Shiraz she’d managed to find during her last foray into Connaught Place - during which time she had brought much joy to the men of New Delhi by going out in jeans and a vest top (that showed her b-r-a straps! Chi, chi, chi!). Having lost weight while in McLeod Ganj (how come it never happens to me??) she also realised far too late that the top was now baggier than she recalled and so offered quite a few clear views of her bosoms. Apparently she had sat on the Delhi metro with her bag in front of her chest but, she said, that only made it worse because people then realised that she knew they could see her boobs. Either way, she got a lot of smiles yesterday… heheh…