27 March 08 Bus Trip

Who would have thought? This hotel in Bharatpur has internet access – all the foreigners probably demand it. Seems like all of them are world famous intrepid travelers. There is a bunch of them down in the lounge, their faces lit blue from their screens, managing to hold some distracted  conversations while they upload their latest photos and blog away. 

On the van trip here, I was sitting at the window in the front passenger seat, so I could keep track of where we were going. I've got a backache from sitting and twisting around since I kept pointing things out to the tour group in the back and giving them those tour-guide ones. I was wedged between Susan and the window and Arvind was sitting in the aisle. He and I had a conversation about physics, philosophy and religion; and I am proud to report that I stayed away from Eye-rock, Afghanistan, Packistan and POTUS. Susan wasn't participating much, she had her sunsglasses on and seemed bored so we were kind of talking around her. These yanks really take up a lot of space.  She's slimmish, but she was leaning away from me and her bare thigh (shorts of course, they all had these loose pants, pyjama cut but kacchha material that my bhaiyya school mates used to wear for underwear, but at the first opportunity half of them would revert to shorts.) was pressing against my jeans. I was uncomfortable so I squeezed away but then she settled her head on Arvind's shoulder and pressed even more into me. You know, a few years ago a moment such as this would have led to minimum two days of bliss (you remember Shaw's story about the Koli woman who was squeezed against his knees in the crowded BEST bus - he was in love for a week at least!) but today I felt uncomfortable if not intimidated. Its not that the attention was unwanted, she is quite attractive, but was it even attention? Plus, I don't think this is the kind of "liaison" you had in mind and I remember your "no mingling too much" rule. I still have this ache in my side from sitting twisted trying to avoid any wrong ideas.

We are playing South Africa (Chennai, 26-30 march, SA 540, In 627 etc to draw, no rest days since 1995) and Brian has been devouring the Test match against South Africa in Chennai and getting his cricket fundas cleared by whoever he's following with, yesterday the receptionists watching it on the TV behind the hotel desk and today with the bus driver on his radio. Someone wanted to know what a test match is, they have been subjected to snippets of it on all the TVs around. So I explained cricket a bit starting from "it is 2/9 of baseball action but spread over 5 days". At some point I mentioned that Tests used to have rest days, which brought out a laugh, “What do they need a rest from, standing around and having tea brought out to the field doesn't seem so tiring?”. They also can't get their minds around the three outcomes, Win/lose, tie if both teams get both complete innings and score the same, or a draw if there are unfinished innings. That, and the fact that  you can play for 5 days and have a draw. I tried explaining that a draw is not an inconclusive result but it went nowhere. Looks like it is going to be a really high scoring draw on the supersoft Chennai wicket.