agra

...

A hole

Been here before

And it was a hole then

But coming from the south

Where everything is easier

Where there’s far less touting and tourist bollocks

It seems even more of a right pain

… we will adjust to North India

But still, this is a hole

…

Despite the fact that as I write a mullah is declaiming from his minaret and it sounds gorgeous , wafting stridently ... if you can waft stridently… in through the window

… what a random difference the mullah could make in a muslim’s life

Some have gorgeous voices

Deep and sonorous and powerful

Some have a depth to their high wail which goes nicely through you

While some are thin and reedy, nasal… and downright unpleasant to listen to

You wouldn’t want them singing

And you wouldn’t want them as the mullah calling you to prayer for your whole life

…

Its like in Old Italy, where many people would only ever see one painting in their whole life

The one in the church

Which would certainly focus the efforts of the artist

But also makes you ask

What if the painting was crap?

… it would make a fair difference to your religious life

If the painting was good

If the vicar gave good sermon

If the mullah calling you to prayer for decades had a great or lousy voice

It would, wouldn’t it?

…

Like the amazing English teacher who makes you fall in love with literature

Which certainly didn’t happen to me in my hard comprehensive on the wrong side of the A30

…

But still, a hole

At least there’s no mosquitoes

They died of cold…

…

Speaking of which, we both caught a mild chill on the overnight train from Aurangabad

20 hours surrounded by friendly sikhs

…

Next stop Allahabad

So that some serious distance we’re suddenly covering

But maybe we’ll find somewhere to sop a while

Chitrakut or Varanasi

…

But, speaking of “one” thing

Agra has one thing going for it

One big thing

One thing you have to come for no matter how much you know it’s a hole

One thing you have to come back for no matter how much you remember it as a hole

…

The Taj

The gobsmacking Taj

The so beautiful its difficult to describe Taj

The most beauteous of greys

The most perfectly formed

The most good-looking building either of us have ever seen

The Taj

Its over ten quid to get in but if it was 30 you’d probably still pay it

Cos it’s the Taj

the filth

...
Filth
One thing I haven’t mentioned
Which should be shot through every blog
Filth
The everywhere
Unstoppable
More than anywhere else ever
More than Vietnam Cambodia
For you to understand i must repeat
Filth
Garbage
Crap
Shit
Everywhere
Beached tides of garbage
Binless towns where no-one has any choice but to
Chuck it
Bung it
Dumb it
Drop it
Throw it
Anywhere it into the scatter
The pile
The tide
The sprawl
Of garbage
Filth
Muck
Shit
Crap
Rubbish
Detrital
A billion binless humans chucking throwing dumping dropping
Filth
Everywhere
Garbage
Everywhere
Except the temples and the petrol stations
How many times can I say it before I’ve said it enough?
Never enough
Not for this
Not for the
Filth
Garbage
Scatter
Sprawl
Piles of
Tipped
Dropped
Dumped
Rubbish
I’ll increase the font-size
Bit it still won’t do
filth
Garbage
Rubbish
Everywhere
Garbage
The impossibility of quick change in its everywhereness
The annual rainy season
Tiding
Sprawling
Seeping
Sullying
Muddying
Rubbishing
Impossibling
So many people
So much
Filth
Garbage
Rubbish
Corners
Gutters
Kerbs
Roads
Rivers
Sewers
Banks
Hedges
Gardens
Fences
Fields
Wastegrounds
Rubbish
Filth
Garbage

next stop agra

so we don't quite get to the taj mahal on valentine's day

which would have been very neat

but we do get there the day after

close but no cigar

you would, wouldn't you

the caves at ellora
profound wow
buddhist hindu and jain caves
carved into the basalt
the largest monolithic temple in the world... the most striking one of all, hindu,
something Egyptian about it

we took a tour, MTDC coach and guide,

because its easy and it takes less time

it turned out less painful than the other tours this 12 month

vietnam etc

yet tourism has a lot of the conveyor belt about it

and tours even more so

but we managed to jump ship when we'd had enough

but still

the kind of thing to provoke an existential crisis

...

aurangabad

a bit of a hole really

and the worst food yet

so bad that if it had a mcdonalds i'd probably go there

and on the way up we went to Dalautabad...

a fort carved out of a mountain

the fort is inside and on top of the mountain

the deep moat was carved out of the mountain

and filled with snakes and crocodiles

...and after you've gone in a number of gates,

and got over the moat's lack of leather drawbridge

there's the labyrinth

carved within the rock

never seen anything like it

or not seen, since it was dark

where there's tunnels leading nowhere, leading somewhere,

leading up leading down

leading off a cliff into the crocodiles

where the defenders would pour boiling oil and water down on the attackers

and come out of nowhere

and

...

no-one ever got through

except by bribing the guards

...

you would wouldn't you

you would

...

nature poem

i reckon its time for the nature poem I threatened with you

earlier even though the monkey evolution piece was of course a nature poem

But I have to say I’ve always struggled with nature poems

And I reckon my progression, my evolution and my development

as a nature poet

stalled on lift off at the age of nine, when,

first poem I ever wrote,

we were told to write a poem for the harvest festival

And within thirty seconds I wrote

The golden glow of the harvest moon

The burning of the stubble…

Which is not bad

but the thing I failed to come up with a decent couplet for it

Something that rhymes with stubble

And thirty five years later I’m still trying to complete my sentence

and this has rather inhibited, debilitated and generally incapacitated

my progression evolution and development as a nature poet

so is this actually a nature poem?

well it has got some birds and some big beasties in it

...

So this is a poem

IN WHICH THE POET BOLDLY CLAIMS TO TRANSLATE BIRDSONG

...

this is called

I Know What The Birds Are Singing And I Understand That Look In Their Eye

...

I know

I’ve looked into their eyes

and I've watched how they move

they’re thinking,

we used to be dinosaurs

we used to be huge

unignorably vast

yet look at our small scrawny bodies

once we were ruled like kings and now,

worms and seed, worms and seed worms and seed,

for yes, I can see them in their million-year cringe,

they’re thinking

yes we can fly,

but then we were dinosaurs

and that,

was something else,

and now, what,

worms and seed, worms and seed

god it’s embarrassing

I’m depressed

my parents were depressed

my children will be depressed

that sparrow? depressed

that eagle? almightily depressed

that paradise bird in that photo?

inconsolable

Once, we roved like lions and now what?

worms and seed, seed and worms worms and seed, seed and worms …

but beware humans

be aware of our fate

now you rule like the lions once ruled

from Spain to China from England to Zululand

but be aware

your age will pass

one day you will be

some shrunken wizened species

one day you will have been

for millions of years

some vole or shrew

and have no future except as some

vole or shrew

so, humans,

you may laugh at us now

but cut down our trees

and poison our air

destroy our earth

as you're destroying it now

and its voles and shrews, voles and shrews

for you forever

for yes,

I can translate the birdsong

I know what the tits are twittering

The crows are cawing

The owls are hooting

The hawks are shrieking

They’re calling

Voles and shrews Voles and shrews Voles and shrews ...

and well,

After that

Do you think you want more evolution?

Which, ahem,

some people might take that as an insult

Go round saying “You want more evolution” in some places and they might just

take it personally

You think we haven’t evolved enough mister?

Whooah, ouch,

But, to be honest,

I’m saving that insult for Mississippi

and personally i could do with more

evolution I’d like an eye in the back of my head

and a brain I can switch off my six months at a time

An extra arm would be good

But where would you put it?

[mime arm from forehead from collar from crotch… with distasteful wiping of fingers]

But seeing I’ve done one poem on evolution

I suppose I might as well do another

I wrote this in a place called khajuraho in north central India

The temples there are very probably the world’s greatest erotic temple art

A thousand pornographic statues of a quality Michelangelo would have been pretty pleased with

But, being British, I didn’t write about that

I wrote about the goldfish in the hotel pool

So this is called

STARBUCKS ON THE MOON

in the hotel pond in khajuraho

the largest goldfish sucks at air at the pool's edge

and tries to lift itself with its fins

as if trying to climb out

as if trying to evolve

but if it succeeds i hope its not too disappointed

it might be like climbing Everest to discover there's a

McDonalds on top...

mothering techniques

if a baby is cying on the bus
the train
the platform
the bus station
the mothers hold them up so they can see priscilla
and say
hush now, look its a princess
which usually works

but if it doesn't

and the tots start getting crabby

the mums hold them up so they can see me

and say

hush now, or the big man will get you

...

a nowhere so nowhere it has no middle

so, after an overnight gruel to Aurangabad, and because the caves at Ellora are shut on a Tuesday, we're planning to head back east for Lonar meteorite crater
third biggest meteorite crater in the world, apparently
and only 50,000 years old
?

?

?

so there's a hotel, a lake with a pH of 10, and what else we have no idea

so this trail may go cold a while

but i doubt it

...

yeehah

...

grudging evolution

THE MONKEY CHURLS ARE NOT IMPRRESSED

...

at sunset i go up

to the north fort above Badami

and stand in the high bastion

surrounded by monkeys

cos Badami

the very ex-capital of the

very ex-Chalyuka Empire

has a zillion monkeys…

a plague a plethora a lot...

tugging at your water-bottle in

cheeky-monkey thieving-monkey style ...

some monkeys are like nimble one-year olds

and hilarious to watch

well these are like grumpy old men

they look at you from the side of their eye

they look away but you know they're aware of you

its a bit like being a stranger in a country pub

but a lot more like that scene from

Lawrence Of Arabia

where he's in full Arab dress

in the very British Officers Club in Cairo

and they're all very British proper

and looking at him

thinking

what does he think he looks like?

well, the monkeys

studiously unsmiling

that's what they're like with me

they're thinking

he used to be one of us,

now what does he think he looks like?

...