The Magic Of India

The sights, sounds and smells were so exciting and exotic – and the daredevil girl on the bike simply riveting

- Douglas Mcpherson

INDIA had always wanted to visit the land she was named after, the subcontinent where she was conceived on her parents’ hippie trek 23 summers before.

Some said she had the temperament of her namesake – torrid, wild, confusing and unknowable. She’d always wanted to make the comparison for herself.

And now here she was, melting beneath the 32°C sun that gleamed off her brightly patterned headscarf and caused her shirt to stick damply to her back.

The mela – the fair – was in town and everywhere she looked was noise and colour. Lorries decorated like temples with wooden carvings, gold paint, beads and tapestries threw up clouds of orange dust from the rutted road. Elephants, donkey carts and chickens mingled with the traffic and pedestrians.

Wizened men with grey beards squinted from shadowed doorways. Women in richly coloured saris shouted from steaming food stalls. The aroma of chilli, coriander and ginger called for attention even more forcefully. Girls in loose and elegant shalwar walked like princesses among m en in th e traditional sarong-style lungi and others in Western-style short-sleeved shirts in a rainbow of colours from lemon to lime.

A throaty roar spun India’s head around. A man with a long black beard and flowing robes was dragging a lion on a lead through a doorway. He scooped his hand under the beast’s rump and forced it over the threshold like a reluctant dog.

India felt as if she was drowning in sensory overload. She knew her parents feared for her safety. But if she didn’t come now, then when?

Flies and mosquitoes buzzed past her ears like helicopters. Then something buzzed louder. She jumped aside as a motorbike ploughed through the dust. At the handlebars was a boy with a big white-toothed grin, long hair and a leather waistcoat over his leanly-muscled torso. Riding pillion, a girl in a silky fuchsia tracksuit shouted through a megaphone.