Real life | 15 January 2011

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. When we meet again as my journey snakes back towards the city after six days driving through the lush delta of Tamil Nadu I am virtually a basket case. I have drunk in so much of the beauty of southern India that I’m legless on it. I drift about emitting ‘ah!’s at the least provocation like a daft old hippie.

At Mamallapuram I am tired and emotional. I can feel tears welling in my eyes as Rajai diligently tries to shoo a little boy out of the way of my camera and line up a better shot with the temple wall unblemished by people.