let’s see, one, two, three..........seven. There we have it .One for each.
The faces of Pintu and Ravi said it all.
Our children are very lucky. Thank you very much. We hope one day that you will return to Kolkata and our children can be lucky to meet you. Well we must be going now Mr Eliot, we must be making more rupees to take home to our wives.
They both gave giant smiles from their larger and smaller head and both of them shook Eliot’s hand in their two hands and in a moment they were in their taxi and they drove away without looking back and he felt a strange feeling of being alone because the only people that he really knew in the whole of India, well except Jalal, had disappeared probably for ever. Well that’s the way it is, he was lucky. There were, he guessed, thousands of taxi drivers in Kolkata and he had come in the middle of the night and he had come across Pintu and Ravi.
15.
He had only been in Kolkata for just over twelve hours. How could that be? It seemed so long since he had arrived in the middle of the night and luckily found Pintu and Ravi and their dented and scratched taxi and they had driven around in a seemingly aimless fashion that had at the time seriously disconcerted him. And the police, the drunken police with their laathi sticks did happen. Finally the hotel in Salt Lake City was found and he was safe in his nice secure room.
And if he had walked out of the airport doors into the darkness fifteen minutes later, what would have happened? Maybe he wouldn’t have met Pintu and Ravi who were only happy when he was happy and he wouldn’t have drunk a Kingfisher longneck at eleven o’clock in the morning and he wouldn’t have given away half of his fluffy kangaroo key rings. So as Special would say, everything was down to luck and so far his luck had been good. Except for his toe. For some reason it had started to throb and it was attracting the flies.
In the departure lounge he had an idea to fill in some time so he put away Pickwick Papers and took out his new diary, inside the cover, good luck Eliot, Eleanor x. Maybe she was praying for him to be lucky right at this moment. He took his pen and thought about what to write for his first diary entry.
18/7/14
I arrived in Kolkata, maybe a bit below par and tired of course. and arriving at midnight didn’t help either because you find it hard to gain your equilibrium. The strangeness of the city and then the hotel that wasn’t near the airport at all, in fact it didn’t seem to be anywhere for a while and I was beginning to wonder if I could trust Pintu and Ravi. I needn’t have worried. Then there were the police, the drunken police in fact and their laathi sticks so that when I sat on the end of my bed at the Emperor residency I was not sure whether I had bitten off more than I could chew and home seemed like a good place to be. So I read Marion’s letter and then in the light of the day things seemed different and I remembered of course that travelling is not mostly about places, more about the people and I’ve been lucky already. I’ve met Carol and Ragini and Pintu and Ravi. People make the difference.
This is not a great first diary entry. I don’t feel like writing anymore but I will try to make a new start and continue to try and write every day. In just over three hours hours I should be in Varanasi shaking Jalal’s hand.
The tiny boarding area was starting to fill up now so Eliot sat and surveyed the other twenty or so passengers on this flight to Varanasi. They were all Indian. Mostly business types he guessed. Busy with laptops or I pads, some with their wives in their brilliant colours, and there was one very attractive young Indian woman in western dress who a man could not fail to notice. But the standout for being noticed was the floor sitting monk of some persuasion in his saffron coloured costume.
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