So every year right its crazy right, they build all these fires, bonfires, in the street and some of them are tiny streets, with zillions of people living on top of each other and if the bonfires look like they’ve been built by idiot ten year olds that’s cos they have, and they don’t care about being under electrical wires, telephones wires, nothing, cos they’re all kids and all kids are idiots, we all know that, we were kids once, you’re indestructible and you’re gonna live forever, and like every year its so scary dangerous they have to bring in Health and Safety Inspectors from elsewhere and this time some bright spark got the brilliant idea of bringing some over from Britain who got off the plane all bright and shiny but, after just twenty-four unbelievable stuff-of-nightmare hours of confronting the realities rather than the rules of Indian H&S, are all going through an wholly incapacitating individual crisis with their brains overheating and their eyes showing white and their hands clutching clutching clutching at something, anything, while they’ve spent so much time groaning expostulating shouting that any veneer of decency and politeness and professional courtesy has collapsed within them, taking everything down a chasm with it, and also meaning no-one in this town cares at all about anything that happens to them as they all have a belligerently anti-social nervous breakdown except for one who hasn’t been known to react to anything ever, nor show any emotion, which is when someone realizes he’s actually a shop dummy and they’ve all been had and someone’s been pulling in the wages, while here the dummy’s been doing class for bribes which is another realm the Anglo-H&S boys have been deeply shocked by but the one who realizes the dummy’s a dummy only realizes this as he goes into his own mental breakdown and the sorry shocking realization just makes it all a whole bunch worse while it ain’t helped by the fact no-one cares about the obstreppoBrits, or lifts the slightest finger to help their shocked and sorry arses, so no-one tries to find a berth in a mental institution for any of them cos its, like, a weekend and it’s the full moon, in a city where a full moon still means a loony lot, so they park them in the Dying Rooms above the Ghats and have to throw out the dying which pisses off a few of them, while it means that others stage unexpected recoveries meaning their families are thrown into disarray while Granddad hops skips and bounces back to Lucknow or Kolkotha, while others are a bit pissed off at their own recovery cos they reckon they had it all square with the creator and were about to become as one with creation and not be reborn, just as planned, so getting disturbed by some dodgy government bureaucrat saying some bunch of can’t-take-it indiaphobes need their beds sharpish is kinda bloody annoying but being helpful sorts they shuffle off back home for a couple of years during which time they commit a lot of sin and, after they die, come back as diseased cockroaches, or somesuch affliction, whoops, but I’m getting ahead of myself cos the still-ill phalanx of Brit H&S officers are in the Dying Rooms which, even though they’re paranoid cos they’re having a breakdown, is understandably a cause for more raging paranoia but what it does mean is that in the future your average Varanasi temple is going to be a whole bunch safer than it is right now, excuse me, the house is on fire … meanwhile cos the Dying Rooms have been taken over by the obstreppoBrits this means less people are dying and in particular less people, or rather souls, are passing through the attractive silk-draped lilac-painted wooden door marked To Oneness With The Creator meaning the folks with the job of greeting you on the other side, the ones who have to explain what oneness with the Creator Really means, poker Thursday, reruns of Friends Friday, trip to the celestial clouds Saturday, happy clappy with the harmony of the Spheres Sunday, drug or drink of choice Monday, Tues Weds I forget, Thursday off… well they have no-one to deal with for the first time in like Millennia and don’t know what to do and wander off for a beer or a joint by the celestial Ganges and its good stuff up there, as you can imagine and have such a nice time relaxing they forget to go back, and that’s forget in ironic apostrophes, meaning the dead can’t die, or rather no-one’s getting oneness and the reverberations of bad karma start rippling out from the silk and lilac door till pretty soon it’s a shambles everywhere, arguments all the time, and simply everyone is noisily shouting and standing their shitty shirty ground and, before you know it, its turned into Varanasi and they’re all beeping horns and shouting and dodging the goats and … excuse me the house is still on fire
while back in the Dying Rooms the poor sods can't stop singing Boney M... its a ho, its a ho, its a holi holi day...
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