5th Installment

Hell first, then Heaven.

Throughout the centuries religious ideologues have dispensed the wisdom that discipline and self mastery are necessary to walk the arduous path to Nirvana. "Repress your desire, deny the pleasures of the flesh, self flagellate and you too can enter the Kingdom of God," or so my primary school teachers would instruct me. The journey was long, minutes seemed like hours, stomaches heaved and arseholes quivered, but here I am, broken and fatigued on the shores of Paradise. This is the story of the torments I endured on the path to Shangri La.

Canto I - Ear Wax Mountain.

It is now clear to me dear reader, that the might of the British Empire in India was not crushed as some 'historians' would have it, by the will of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian people or due to its exhaustion after two world wars but by poor sanitation. After a month of Indian cuisine my health had deteriorated to the point where my lower intestine would cough up its brown nectar regardless of whatever social situation the rest of my corpus was engaged in. Woe betide the traveler caught off guard without loo roll or a pot to plunder. With this confession it will come as no surprise that the prospect of a city break in Kuala Lumpur would be of great relief even to the seasoned traveler.
By the grace of God we landed in KL and we made merry. With the guidance of St Christopher's fair hand we landed in Bangkok and we sang and we drank and we made merry. But just as Shiva ushered in merriment and abandon so to did he connive against me, not content with my loose stools he turned his attention to my aural cavities. For the past year or so before this trip my ears had failed to produce the usual measure of protective wax. This did not concern me but only compounded my belief that I was somehow genetically superior or somewhere further along the evolutionary tract than the base human being. Be warned friends, such hubris can never go unpunished.
Having flown with such frequency over the past month the congealed ear wax upon my person had compacted due to the variegated air pressure, leaving me partially deaf. For days I roamed the streets of KL and Bangkok forlorn, segregated from the rest of the hearing world.Constructing my own internal muted world I raged upon the gods who had forsaken me. Dumbed down and delirious I mumbled my way to a doctor's couch where examination fell upon me. No man knows dread until he is approached by a Thai nurse holding a fist full of six inch singular tipped wooden ear buds. She began to dig, each shovel load more gruesome than the last. Black stagnant twists of ear candy were heaped in a steel surgical bowel. After what seemed like hours later I came to gazing at an ear wax mountain brightly lit under florescent lamps. Relief washed over me like the warm waters which would greet me one day. Finally I realized my body was fallible, I was mortal, ready to join the rest of humanity and relinquish ubermenschian delusion. No longer was I condemned to walk the planet for eternity.

Canto II - For the Love of Terra Firma

One hundred and eighty souls arrived at the Gulf of Thailand at 4.00am waiting for the ferryman. As dawn broke the bay lay flat and still, its meridian shimmer allowing no incline of its secret depths or tempestuous virulence. Sunrise marked the sky with hope, illuminating towering cushions of cloud, each one a different dream scape shifting with the flow of morning colour. There is perhaps a mystical promise of hope that one day human incongruence would be laid to rest , lumpen and without pulse on the morticians table. Clutching violently to this hope 180 wretched souls thrust themselves upon the water all too eager to take flight from the horrors of whence they came.
Irrespective of class or caste the souls were herded beneath deck. Each with their adornments, trinkets and self image they boarded the vessel not knowing the fate that awaited them. There is dear reader, an unalterable natural law that bears upon all men. Known to the Egyptians, to Plato and the Theosophical Society, handed down from time immemorial The Great Law of Equalization would pronounce its name once more. Sires and seers spoke of this law and the systems by which it might be recognized. First there is death, the dark lord for whom all men must one day cower. Then there is excretion, the humiliating excess that even the most refined dignitary must produce and stand aghast. Finally there is sea sickness which one day all men must face.
So the boat proceeded out of the bay and into the high waters. The more vain amongst us refused the sick bags that were circulating presuming that The Great Law of Equalization did not pertain to them. There we were, some more distinguished than others with their designer handbags, branded rucksacks, fashionable hairstyles and well applied makeup, all so very different, one better than the next. Then began The Great Equalization. Stricken with panic some ran to the toilet but to avail as it was already awash with vomit. Like rats they ran on deck projecting their breakfast overboard. A tepid salty mist caked the air stifling any attempts at curative deep breaths. Torrent after torrent of partially processed food , bile and stomach lining cascaded off the windows, crawled and dribbled along the deck. Hunched double, divested of their adornments and pretensions the 180 souls docked on the paradise island of Koh Toa.

4th Installement

A foreward warning

Dear Reader,

For those of you who read this account of our travels for the ever diminishing shred of relevance it has to our holiday please heed this warning, Michael’s sun bent mind has entered a state of psychosis, when he is not emailing innocent young Swedish ladies to try and form relationships with them in an attempt get closer to  their uncle Yngwie J Malmsteen (to whom they have no relation at all) he is wandering the streets of Pondicherry firmly believing he is in Paris in 1939 and meeting with Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. The following installment may be an enjoyable read, but be aware that by reading it you are feeding his psychosis.

enjoy

Parisienne Walkways (RIP Gary Moore)

I remember Paris in 39

The Champs Ellysee

Saint Michelle and old Beaujolais wine

oh I recall those Parisienne days   Phil Lynott.

Mercurial rivulets of time pass through a young man's fingers more quickly than I care to remember. Indeed it was more than three score years and ten to where my mind drifted as I cycled through the remnants of French colonial rule in Pondicherry. Street names and signs hung as latent reminders of what once was, adorning the grid of boulevards running north to south and east to west. The French Quarter was constructed as an asphalt tableau to the height of rational enlightenment thinking.

The humidity of my surrounds lent an almost dreamlike quality to that day, collapsing the usual dichotomy between warm interiority and cool exteriority. Perfume and cigarette smoke stagnantly draped the air. My heart hastened as my mind took flight catching glimpses of lovers no more. Graciously I traversed the Indian traffic which seemed so out of sorts in this all too Gallic mise en scene. Then, amidsts the fumes and fractured images of coital embrace, the boulangerie erupted emitting sweet essences of French loaves and croissant. Francophiles amongst you will recognize the potency of this scent and its ability to transpose the inhaler to times gone by. There I was in Pondicherry, there I was in gay Paris. There I was in Pondicherry, there I was hurtling down the cobbled streets of the Parisienne embankment snagging my sky blue woolen slacks in the bicycle chain. Out of breath having just extinguished my pipe, sweat jarred from my brow. The Seine flashed and danced in the sunlight as its turgid, sepia breadth stretched out ahead of me. My bell sounded as I struck the cobbles with gusto sending my French loaf and copy of Being and Nothingness asunder in the front mounted basket. For it was he whom I was here to meet.

I shall never forget that warm summer of 1939 when Hitler's goose stepping jackboots marched across the Maginot Line pressing ever closer to our beloved Paris. In the days before their arrival the wind ceased and the suns glare intensified. It was my old friend Albert Camus who had arranged the meeting shortly before the German occupation. A sense of urgency charged with anxiety rattled through a population all to aware that the ruts which they had furrowed and made comfortable would soon be ruled over by the iron will of fascism. Society became uneasy with itself as we wondered how our futures would be carved up. Who would collaborate, who would resist? History reveals that Satre himself struggled between his loyalty to his ailing mother and his commitment to fight fascism. Relationships were strained. Satre intent on promiscuity, Simone de Beauvoir ever loyal. 

As I arrived at the Cafe Saint Germain already unnerved by the monumental philosophical monolith I was to meet, I immediately sensed the awkward toing and froing of biting conversation. de Beauvoir shot a glance straight over to me as she tapped a gold lighter against the marble coffee table. My friend Albert seethed as Satre berated him for having never read Hegel. And then it happened. Police sirens wailed as the commissar came over the tannoy requesting that people continue about their daily business as the first German collumns had entered our city. 

Then I came to, crashing into the present, an old man in Pondicherry. Although that memory marks the beginning of the catastrophic events in French, indeed world history, it was a serene vista of three people who I would never see again. A memory I had forgotten forgetting about all those years ago. For surely I am a different man today, almost all of me corrupted by time and yet a fragment of me remains in that warm summer of 1939. For reminding me of that shard of myself submerged in the sediment of time I shall always love you Pondicherry.      

3rd Installment

Chapter 4 - Beware all ye who enter here

With barely a perceptible wink Kerala had abandoned us, or we her. The night of the world was upon us dear reader and its name was Tamil Nadu. The extremities of our consciousness has been wrested from warm embrace. This is India friends.

Mamallapuram is a haven for New Agers. Immediately upon entering this wretched village the air became thick with cordiality and suspicion. It's a paranoia akin to drifting through the Trafford Center and wondering if one fits in. Contrary to a jaunt through a shopping center however the eyes that spy you here are happy to extinguish their desire and replace it with a blank piety. I would be lying if I wrote that the psychic dynamic had not changed, it had and i was glad of it, for a time. But to be embroiled with people for whom you care little can be tiresome. Lost in a half world between a traveling community and the home-stay staff who seem intent on making you feel neither at home nor making you want to stay. The boisterous hospitality of Kerala now seems a lot more than a 16 hour bus journey away. The perimeter is not secure, repeat not secure. Gaseous toxins have permeated the ego.

At a meeting of the high council (with the exception of the Honorary Member for Dudley South) it was decided that we must plunder Pondicherry in search of our sanity, tomorrow we ride. The plan had been decided upon. An early morning evac was the only option. Leaving the rat in alcoholic slumber we hit the road jumping the bus South. I slipped in and out of consciousness as the vast expanse of paddy fields and palm trees merged into a tangerine blur punctuated only by the crimson and black flag of Tamil Nadu. The flag stood still in the breeze. Staring back at us with ghostly silence, a single black strip of the Tamil flag presided over a portal to a void of space and time. In our Universe the question remained, why is there something rather than nothing? Through that gateway neither something nor nothing could be heard, spoken, written or thought. A non space and time before the universe was torn open with the tears of man.

Chapter 5 - The events surrounding the absence of The Honorary Member for Dudley South in the Mamallapuram evacuation

As we decided on the early morning evac, news filtered through from the young Tamil men that worked in the home-stay that the young Dutch lady staying two doors down was, and I'm paraphrasing here, "A cockicidal maniac".  As Mick and myself laughed this off and packed our bags for a smooth exit Craig's hangover mysteriously became worse and he decided to remain an extra day. As i write this somewhere in the Tamil wastelands between Mamallapuram and Pondicherry we do not know what fate has befallen our Dudley compatriot or perhaps of more concern is the fate of the young Dutch lady.

2nd Installment

Chapter 3 - Burning, Looting, Raping, Shooting

Three boys had gone in search of something, themselves perhaps or gold.... fools gold. Nothing twinkles so brightly as the empty object of desire constantly reminding us of who we are. Oh how we seek. Search no more friends i have grasped something tangible.... the meaning of life.
 

For 6 short years before this trip i meditated daily trying to lay my  desire to rest, giving up on my desire as it were. Bequeathed of all that was once myself I wandered without investment of any kind, a pilgrimage to the grave in a barren universe. Happening upon a brightly decorated home-stay in the provincial town of Kumily (Kerala) we decided to down our sacks and don our slippers, for it was here that the magic would occur. After my initial repulsion for the agglomeration of shops, traffic and dirt that often grips the pampered western tourist, I became somewhat acquainted with the place. 

On arrival on a new town it is possible to revert from a traveler to a tourist in the sense that "A traveler doesn't know where he is going and a tourist doesn't know where he is" - (David Lee Roth circa 1984).  It was amidst this fluctuation of spirit and the celebration of Mohamed's birthday that the holy grail made herself known. When a boy grasps the doughy grip of a Suzuki 100 Max for the first time something incredible happens. A rite of passage. A boys root Chakra can be opened more in 30 seconds on a Suzuki 100 Max than in 6 years of contemplation. From that moment forth life had regained meaning and momentum. We were born to ride. "Burning, Looting, Raping Shooting duh na na na na, duh na na na na" - (Bad News - Warriors of Genghis Khan).

All hail the 3 boys who became men under the banner of a new biker clan - The Kumily Demon Seeds.

1st Installment

Dear Reader, this installment will proceed towards the events to which many of you will respond with cold indifference, or more likely with disgust. Due to the nature of this trip, it seemed inappropriate to give a dispassionate account of the infinite beauty and variety that India has thus far produced. Instead I shall plot a course through the oddities of Kerala and allow the reader access to the dark catacombs of our sun bent minds.

Chapter 1 - First they come with Bayonets, then they come with backpacks

I could not help but find it amusing how the second colonization of these shores was lead by the overfed narcissistic hordes from Europe armed only with backpacks and wedges of cash. The Indian shopkeeper smiles graciously as the grasping pig white fist is all to eager to ply an Indian palm with what would no doubt be an obscene amount of money in local terms; smiles graciously that is, as he remembers that it was the ancestors of these heathens who drove the might of the British empire across the land, brutalizing the population whilst lining their own coffers. Perhaps it is the guilt of the European hordes which motivates their sanctimonious endeavor to attain 'peace'.

Varkala, the 2nd stop so far was filled to the rafters with westerners attempting to outdo one another with the fascistic dictates of a holistic spiritual life. Never have i seen so many solemn, pious gaits adorned in tie-dye and white flannel trousers. It was against this background, and with the aid of the local Indian brew that we began military maneuvers under the cover of darkness. New Age philosophies and the like preach the virtues of balance and harmonious being but Varkala was far too hippy-dippy and so we corrected this imbalance by playing armies at night through the palm groves. We have since added a Swedish and Australian militia and have begun urban combat operations in the back streets of Allepey.

Chapter 2 - Jerk 'n Spice

Kolam bus station at first glance seemed no different than any other provincial Indian terminus. A writhing mass of commuters hounded officials as buses departed in no particular order. Amidst the melee two of our party Martin (Swedish) and Craig (Dudley) made their way to the inconspicuous toilet at the far side of the station. To their bemusement the Indian gentleman's toilet etiquette is somewhat different to that of the European gentleman's. First Craig stepped up to the urinal, uncoiling his length. With gusto he issued an amber flow of suitably dehydrated urine into the pot. Some have said that this is a man's greatest pleasure, a pleasure however until micturition is interrupted. Suddenly a nervous rush caused Craig's urethra to snap shut, choking the dynamic flow across the porcelain. To his horror he spied the gentleman in the next urinal gazing at his baby's arm. Although inappropriate it would not be unimaginable for the sub-continental gentleman to catch a glimpse and compare the Dudley rolling pin as it has become known. However on a second inspection of the man in question Craig realized that a more odious game was afoot: Onanism.

The Indian gentleman pounded his meat with complete disregard for the object of his desire, and indeed the other people using the pissoir. Having suitably remonstrated the gentleman for his "lack of manners", Craig returned to the group where a gravely silence fell upon him. By this time even if Craig could have warned Martin of his impending doom, it would have been too late as the Swede was already skipping across the bus station towards the toilets..........

An Introduction

A long goodbye to Elliot's Wastelands

England is ill dear reader. Stained and embittered, Britiannia has set about herself. A people so immeresed in human affairs they have squeezed the irridescent joy from the night sky. Winter groans on and on. The earth hardens and cracks as the heart stiffens and beats... barely. Blood creeps slow, viscose.
A weary misty morning eye surveys the Englishman's demand to do something, feel something, but no, nothing. Empty hours waiting for the end. Pour something in, striate this vacuity. Another meaningless job? A pointless checklist? A birthday celebration? And so it rolls on and on.
There must be something worth fighting for? A child's smile perhaps or redemption from the claws of capital, but where to find this sweet release?
Trafford Centre? Arndale Centre? Sun blessed shores of Kerala?
Trafford Centre? Arndale Centre? Sun blessed shores of Kerala?.........