Melvin Burgess Stuff

The snow is melting in my garden. Each day a few more things, plants or steps or stones emerge.

Humps and bumps reveal themselves as benign secrets – flowerbeds, a log, a bag of compost not yet emptied.

Today, though something special.

A little girl.

She's aged about four years old, with long browny yellow hair, a blob of a nose, slightly upturned and a pretty smile.

As soon as I see her I run out to say hello. She’s pleased to see me. I'm pleased to see her.

I bend down in the mud to kiss her.

“You look beautiful,” I tell her.

“You look old,” she says, and laughs.

We sit and talk a while until she gets bored and wants to run around and play. But of course shecan’t.

Only her head and shoulders are clear of thedrift.

"Perhaps tomorrow," I say, and she looks at me reprochfully.

Instead, I build a snowman for her right next to her, so she can help smooth down his sides. As a finishing touch, she fluffs up his woolly hat before I place it on his head

"He's got a big head," she says.

"Yes, but he's still stupid," I repl;y, and we both laugh like anything.

Now her hands are too cold. I take them in mine and rub them and blow on them untill they sting.

She cries a little bit.

I run inside and make her cocoa, anxious in case she too melts away But she's til there when I get back.

She wipes her eyes and sips.

Soon the cocoa is gone and she is tired. She rubs her eyes. But it can’t be bedtime already.

“Try and stay awake,” I tell her.

“Silly Melvin,” she says.

She wants me to tell her a story. What sort?

“Mr and Mrs Bottom smacker,” she says.

So I do. As I talk, her head begins to droop.

"Do you suppose,” I say, “That if snow carries on melting, you’ll be able to come into the house?”

“That would be nice,” she says. “What would we do?”

“Oh, we’ll bake a cake,. Or find some more stories, or playgames.”

“Will Oliver be there?”

“He’s grown up now. But we could get the little boy from next door to play.”

She grows quiet and thoughtful. Then she says this:

“When I die, can we hold hands?”

That’s the last thing I want.

“When you die,” I say. “I won’t be there. I’ll have died myself a long time before that.”

She wails and holds out her arms. “Want to hold hands!” she wails.

I bend and hug her and promise. Yes,. We’ll hold hands. I promise.

After that I have to sing her a song. Then she leans her head against me and goes to sleep.

It’s dark now. I’m cold, I’m stiff and I’m wet, from sitting in that icy garden for so long. I go inside, where my wife clearly thinks I’m mad.

I hope that all the snow will melt and that I’ll be able to go out in the morning and bring her in. Or perhaps she’ll come into the bedroom to wake me up …

And yes, the snow melts. But in the morning she’s not there any more.

It’s always the same.

Whenever the earth seems about to give up it’s dead, it takes them back before they can walk free.

As if death wants to trick me into thinking he has a sense of humour.

I have a sad day. I spend most of it in bed.

Tomorrow, though, something happy. My daughter's comes to stay for a few days.

Her air is darker now. Her nose is still a bit of a blob,but she still has her pretty smile and that slight upturn.

She can stay a week. Loads of time.

But – I can’t ever have the years I missed with a little girl aged four, and five and six and seven and eight

That little girl is gone forever. Children don’t grow up. They don’t die. They simply disappear.

Ends

The journey from Delhi to Vilnius is absurd. I leave at 3am on an 8 hour flight to Frankfurt, then a five hour stopover, and then two more hours to Vilnius.
The first leg is aboard one of those vast flying monsters, ten seats and two aisles wide and wings like football pitches. I've got a window seat, which is nice – it means I'll be able to look out over India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and eastern Europe as we hurtle through the air. Very nice – except that it's night all the way. We catch up with the dawn and then fly alongside her in the air the whole way; an eight hour dawn, a red band gathering in the eastern sky. It's very beautiful, and I keep sneaking peeps at it as we go … but for eight hours? Hi ho. Still – on these long haul flights I'm always reminded of a friend of mine, who once flew from South Africa to India and claimed that he kept looking down on the lands beneath him for hour after hour after hour, and thinking of the millions and millions of people trapped in unbearable poverty down there. How long would that flight take – eight hours? Eight flying hours of over crowded poverty at 600 mph. How much misery does that add up to, do you think?
Talking of misery, I'm reminded of some misery of my own. This model of plane lacks air blowers above each seat. Instead, they refresh the air by blowing a continuous, icy blast on the floor close to the skin of the fuselage. Right where I'm sitting. As a result, I spend eight hours with cold feet. I've been here before,somewhere – possibly a flight to the USA a few years ago. I wrap my feet up in a blanket, put a pillow on them, under them, round them. All to no available. Nothing goes numb, but I'm uncomfortable the whole way. Attempts at sleep are interrupted by my complaining feet
I find myself wondering about this journey in times gone by, on a little wooden boat sailing across the oceans, hugging the coast much of the time, I'd imagine. I wonder how much space they had? Quite a bit more, I'd think. The food wouldn't be any worse, either – food on planes has become increasingly inedible. Of course,t he journey would be more like eight weeks rather than eight hours. And you stood a much higher chance of being drowned. Progress is a wonderful thing.
At Frankfurt, I'm so tired I'm beginning to hallucinate mildly. Whenever I see a sign with a word beginning with m and ending in n, I hear someone calling my name. By the time I reach Vilnius airport, I am a zombie The airport is small, clean and efficient – so efficient there is no passport control. Odd, after India and Britain where they're practicably going up your nose in search of incendiary devices. I get my luggage off the carousel, take out my passport just in case they spring it on me as I go through customs .. but no … and there is Rasa, my contact here, with a car to carry me off to a nice, comfortable hotel.
This is the second time I;ve been asked to Lithuania. It's such a small country, but they love my books. Last time at the book fair, there was a real crowd waiting for me. Not only that, I get so many emails of Lithuanians – more than from any other European country, although more books are sold in larger countries. The thing they seem to like here, is the radical element. The books are written to stir thing s up and make people think – they seem to like that here. Maybe it'sd a legacy of Soviet occupation – freedom of though is valued.
This is als the country – the only one in the world – that has a monument to the late, great Frank Zappa. Now, that says something, surely? Frank was popular in eastern Europe, too – he was Cultural Advisor to Vaclav Havel, for a while. So – Vilnius; it's me and Frankie. The company I keep!

Vilnius is a complete contrast to Delhi. Delhi was vast, sprawling, over crowded, smelly and mainly ugly. Vilnius is small, pretty and cold, under at least a foot of snow. We drive back over crunchy roads, each house with a layer of white on it. The houses here are in the German style – rendered and painted so that even buildings hundreds of years old look smooth and new with a coat of fresh bright pastel paint. The town is heavily sprinkled with churches in the Russian Orthodox style, very tall and square, painted in pastel colours as well, decorated with domes and towers and arches and double arches and treble arches and seraphim, topped off with baubles and ornate crosses hung with chains - looking to me very much like enormous, over ambitious wedding cakes. All very lovely.
The hotel is gorgeous, quiet, comfortable. Rasa checks me in and leaves me to recover. I have a bath, go out for a walk, crunching up the snowy streets, find an ATM, peer in the souvenir shop windows selling Russian dolls, amber jewelery and linen clothes. Pass a vast cathedral, and up a busy street full of the usual chain stores. On the way back I stop off at a cafe and have a cup of lovely coffee and a slice of truly gorgeous chocolate cake.
Lovely place. Feel like a cross between Austria and Russia. Very nice. I got back to the hotel, have a beer and pass out.

Friday 19th February

A day of interviews – four today, for various magazines, internet portals and newspapers. Before I go down I have a quick run through my stuff, thinking of locking my valuables in the safe, and can't find my passport. Worrying – but no doubt it'll turn up in a bit, I expect. I go down to meet Rasa who talks me through the day, and then, onto the first interview, for Lithuanian news.
The interview finishes early, so I take the chance to sneak upstairs and have a proper look for the elusive passport, and guess what? It's not there. But it must be! I can't have lost it in between the baggage hall and the hotel, can I? I haven't done anything! But I am a man who can loose things like a … well, like a looser. I have made it a life principle not to own anything valuable that I carry round with me. I was a zombie when I arrived here. Even so, I remember taking it out as I left the luggage hall – I haven't been anywhere but in a car and here at the hotel. How is such a thing possible?
I go through everything. No doubt about it – it's gone.
I go to the hotel reception to see if they asked me to leave it with them; no. So now, the humiliation of telling Rasa what a twat I am.
She rings around to the airport and to the car that brought us here while I carry on with the interviews. Nothing. But she also works out that we can,if necessary, go to the police and then to the British embassy on Monday and get some papers for me. Sounds a rush – but she swears it can be done.
I try to forget about the worrying passport. At lunch I go to look at some shops – while I've been away I've missed both Valentine's day and the birthday of someone very special, so I have amends to make, big time.
The shops are full of amber. I'm not sure about amber, which is beautiful but feels like plastic and is sort of ... lumpy, for jewelery. But there are some rare kinds here - white amber,which is actually yellowish; blue amber, which is purple, as well as black and brown amber and usual golden sort. It seems the white is the oldest. I Wonder …
More interviews, then in the evening, out to dinner with Rasa and one of her colleges from work. I eat a vast saddle of rabbit with a pruney sauce and tiny pickled onions, no bigger than large peas. Very nice. French, though. I'm looping forward to trying something Lithuanian.

Saturday 20th February.

Today's the big day – an event at the Vilnius book fair and then a book signing. First though, more interviews. Rasa asks if I've found my passport yet. She clearly doesn't believe that it's possible for me to have lost it in between the luggage hall and the hotel. She has no idea how extremely gifted I am in this respect.
The interviews – another four this morning – are with people who's English is not so good so we have an interpreter today; Dalius Norkunas, who translated Nicholas Dane over here. I meet him in the lobby – nice man, rather lugubrious, very friendly, helpful – I like him. The interviews are the usual things, by and large. One paper did me six years ago, the last time I was here and want to do something different – the ups and downs of me as a writer. I don't have the heart to tell her that someone else is doing just that, but I mention it to Rasa, who will maybe give her a ring and warn her. A couple of interesting things though; one, Nick Dane is going down like hot cakes here – really interesting. It's a book that's had a bit of rough ride in England. I have to admit, I did make a few mistakes with it, with hindsight, in particular with the use of apostrophes to indicate colloquial speech, instead of my usual technique, which is speech rhythms. I tried this as a nod to Dickens, whose book Oliver Twist I used as a model. But it didn't work and now I wish I'd changed it. I think it makes the book hard to read, especially early on. But of course, in translation, that won't be an issue. In other words – could the book be better written in translation?. Ouch.
One lady asks me about teenagers and stress – do they play too many computer games? I answer truthfully that we should be looking at school rather than play for stress. School gets more and more stressful as we try to create an increasingly competitive workforce. It's hardly fit for humans now. Also, having everyone the same age in a class removes the natural hierarchy of age among young people, resulting in a furious competition among peers. Longer hours, more homework – it's a mess. If you want teenagers to be happy, make schools much smaller – no more than 600 to a school, each one all the way from nursery to A level; allow students to study no more than four hours a day and provide loads of other activities. In addition, exams should be taken at any period between 16 and 22. Have you ever noticed how much easier study is after, say 18? You're brain is better equipped for it, than at 15 or 16, when you're in the grip of a massive hormonal and structural change in the brain. I mean – make it as bad as you can, won't you?

Pop out with Dalius for lunch, to try something Lithuanian. We end up in a restaurant I went in yesterday evening, where he often takes guests to eat. I opt for something I nearly tried yesterday, if I hadn't been feeling too full – Zeppelins! These are – obviously - Zeppelin shaped beasts, made of potato stuffed with meat. The crust is, according to Dalius, a mixture of grated raw potato and cooked potato, which is filled and boiled. The resulting potato exterior is very dense and sticky. It's served with sour cream – let's face it, sour cream makes anything taste nice – and crackling sauce. I'm expecting something like space dust which will crackle in the mouth, but no – it's made from grated pork rinds and ...something. The result? Actually, really rather nice. But you gotta be open minded, mind. It's that dense, slimy crust. People in Britain have trouble with slimy. But I like it.
On the way out Dalius points to a sign with a vast number on it.
“That's how many Zeppelins they cooked here in the past ten years or so, he says. It's nearly two million. Wow. And two million Lithuanians can't be wrong.

The book fair. Vilnius book fair isn't anything like the size of Frankfurt or Bologna, but still the biggest in the Baltics, I'm told. It's not about selling rights here – it's open for the public to come in an buy their books cheap. Dalius tells me of a friend who bought the books for her child for an entire year here, for half the price. I wonder what the book shops think about it?
My event takes place in a hall on site. I'm being interviewed by a rapper/ice hockey player, Svaras. He's dressed in the gear – wide jeans, hoddie – cool guy. Holds his hand over his heart when he means it. Evidently books are way, way more cool here than they are in the UK.
All of which means, I'm way cooler as well. The hall turns out to be enormous – and it's packed. There must be five or six hundred, maybe more. The kids cheer and clap when something they agree with is said – it's great. Afterwards, the book signing goes on for hours – well, one and a half of them anyway. I've never had so many – it's great! Earlier one of the journos asked me what it was like being famous, and I said that book fame is really quite comfortable – you're a star for a day and then you can get back on with your quiet life. Well, I'm a star today. The queue is so long, Rasa gets agitated and wants me to leave out the names, just sign. I try – but I can't. I'm only here once in a blue moon, this is the only time they can come and I turn them away without naming them? Nah. I send a few away, but in the end I can't bear it. I think of Jackie Wilson, who sits for hours on end patiently signing away, chatting to everyone. What can you do? I'm so flattered they came in the first place.

The next day we travel out to the second city of Lithuania, Kaunas. It's a chance to look out the window at the countryside, which is covered in snow, snow and more snow. Very few birds to be seen, I've noticed,in start contrast to warm India. A few crows sitting in a trees, pigeons in the towns. On a strip of clear grass by the roadside I see some thrushes – Fieldfares or redwings, flown down from further north, perhaps? But they are tree feeders and these are on the ground, so maybe they're song thrushes or similar, getting to the worms where the snow has been taken off for them.
That evening, I go tout to eat alone and find myself sitting next to two Fulbright students from the US. They were talking so loudly I couldn't help but eavesdrop.
The conversation went something like this.

Fulbright 1 (After describing Sarah Palin dangling a child in it's underwear in mid winter among a warmly dressed crowd.) She didn't care about that child at all. She's scum.

Fullbright2 More than scum. No! Less than scum.

Fullbright1 That's right.

FB2 You're really bringing scum down comparing her with scum.

FB! I've just decided I'm that when I open my restaurant, all the chairs are going to have arms on them.

FB2 I love chairs with arms on them.

FB! I tried to rest my arms just now and there are no armrests. That's why I decided this very minute to have chairs with arms in my restaurant.

FB2 What's the point in sitting down if you have tired arms. Hey. You know that guy we were talking with earlier? His nose is so big, he could pick it with his thumb.

FB! I hope you're not talking Jewish here.

FB2 I never mentioned Bagels.

FB1 I'm a journalist, I'm taking all this down.

FB2 You want meatballs with that?

FB1 Some vletsy? A little Schmaltz?

FB2 A horse walks into a bar and the barman says, “Hey! Why the long face?”

I was annoyed at first. One of the pleasures of eating out on your own in foreign places is, you don't know the language,nothing intrudes on your own little world. But, the edge of racism apart – they were just chatting between themselves, but they were talking really loudly – they were kinda sweet.
I've made it look as if there was a funny one and a not so funny one, but the not so funny one was also interesting – very political. Once instance – his theory of how political opponents end up the same. “They work together. They might be apart on some issues, but they have to see one another every day so some issues, they decide to look the other way to give the other guy a bit of space. That's how when people are in politics a long time, they all end up the same. They ought to be limited to so many years.”

Very true. A genuine discovery of youth. I wonder if he'll remember it in years to come?

Monday morning – the day of passport truth. I have to visit the police and report thing missing, and then the British Embassy. bureaucracy – It could take days. But in fact it all happens quickly, with Rasa to help. We're in and out of the Police in under an hour, and the Brits too, are very good. While the papers are going prepared, Rasa takes me to visit the monument to Frank Zappa. Hey, Frankie – me and you, eh? Pictures are taken. I take a walk around Vilnius and buy some of that white amber and a print of a pretty blue horse, that reminds me of the someone very special. The passport is paid for by the publishers, which is very nice of them, since it's not their fault I'm a twat and turns out to be for a single trip only – the first time they've issued this new type of passport in Vilnius apparently. So there may be some problems. As it happens, there aren't.

There have been two bomb blasts in India since I've been here – 3 days, kinda explains why the cricket team are reluctant to come here - and much hair tearing about relations with “Pak,”, which is popularly held to blame for the whole thing. I'm told I have to arrive two hours before my internal flight to Delhi, which is turned into over three by my hosts wanting to make sure everything is all right. As in the UK, this leaves me hanging around for hours and hours with nothing to do I finally get into Delhi at ten, and off to the Shangri la Hotel and a bed as big as a swimming pool. But no one to go diving in it with..

Next morning, Arnab's little yellow pills have worked and I've finally had a good night's sleep, but I'm still tired. I lounge around all morning before setting out on a day of tourism. I have three free days here, according to my schedule - free all day Tuesday (today), one event in the evening on Wednesday and then I leave on Thursday at 3am for Vilnius. From sun to snow. As you can imagine, my packing my was murder.

I walk out of the hotel into the sunshine on busy road. At once, I'm approached by a man who wants me to go for a helicopter. Helicopter? Are we sure about this? Really? I suppose there must be some seriously rich people staying at this hotel, but do I really look like one of them? Of course, the fact is, they don;t know how to read the cues for what sort of European I am, any more than I can read there's.
I refuse politely and walk on …
“Give me a chance, sir, give me a chance,” the man asks. But I really truly don't want a helicopter flight and I pass on. Someone else tries to get me into a three wheel automatic rickshaw, but I'm a walker today. Actually, I'm already beginning to suspect that this part of Delhi is laid out like a new world town – huge long, wide roads, enormous roundabouts, city blocks that take five minutes to walk past … but hell, it's the only exercise I ever get.
Another fifty yards and another chap, walking along the same way, greets me cordially.
“Walking, eh?” he says. “Good for the health, eh? You from in there? I work in the hotel,” he boasts. A chief apparently. Very nice
He asks what I'm doing today.
“The Khan market,” I tell him. I have no idea what the Khan market is like, except that there is a bookshop there – I want to visit.
“Oh, that's closed today,” he points out. Rats. I get out the map and we have a look. I point out the temple I also wants to see.
“Oh, it's too far to walk,” he says. My suspicions are confirme3d – maybe I'll save the walking for the old town. The man points out another market nearby– he doesn't know if it has a bookshop but it's not bad.
Ah well, it sounds about right, so I take his advise and jump on the automatic rickshaw – basically a motor bike with a tin can round it. We set off for the Shiva temple.
My friend at the hotel has told me that it will be too crowded inside the temple, so to just look at it from outside, but when I get there I find this to be untrue. Suspiciously untrue, in fact, the place is a haven of clam. I go in and wander around while the driver waits outside. And now I start remembering this place. No, not in a previous life – only on a previous trip. I have friends who run small holidays to India and Nepal, and I've been in Delhi before – inside this very temple. But it's nice to wander round, see the idols and read some of the exhortations towards wisdom, most of which, as last time, sound deeply unappealing and anti-life, in that odd way that religions tend towards. Hinduism is almost the last pantheistic religion to survive, and it's done so by incorporating monotheism. All the deities are manifestations of the one godhead and as usual, the road to Heaven is paved with aestheticism,detachment and, prayer – all things that I fully intend to do, Lord, but only when I'm dead and. Like, you know – I've got a life, thanks.

Outside, back in the rickshaw, of to the shopping. I walk in and – Oh dear. It's a carpet shop. I'd already worked out that the rickshaw driver and my friend at the hotel were .. well, friends. I thought one was just touting business for the other. But a carpet shop. There's something about a carpet shop that tells it's own story. Not been advised – I've been delivered.
I turn round and come straight back out.
“Not going to find a bookshop there, am I?” I point out.
The driver,who was a chatty, friendly soul on the way out is curiously quiet on the way back. VI ask about eh Khan market; is it open? “Not sure sir, some may open, some no.” He's not sure, some of it maybe open, some not. We get back to the hotel, where he hands the rickshaw over to another, lesser driver, who takes me to the Khan market, which is, if course, totally, completely and utterly … open.
So I've been had – not in a terribly nasty way, but still had. The dishonesty was the lie about working in the hotel, to gain my trust, and the lie Khan market being shut – just enough to get me off my track and into the craft emporium, from which there are many, many slices to be shared out of a sale is made - and maybe something for a rickshaw driver merely for delivering a punter. My friend had a clever mix of lies and truths to get his way. Work's at the hotel? – forget it. Works at delivering Westerners to carpet shops, more like. And very good at it he was too.
It was in Morocco that I first had these kind of hits. Wave after wave of friendly faces turn out to be on the make, and it's easy to get confused and upset, and to feel that you can't tell the good from the bad – or even that it's all bad. You just have to bear in mind that your not being robbed, and to take it with a sense of humour. And anyway, I got a look at the temple and here I am, at the Khan market, where I wanted to go anyway. No harm done.
The market is great – loads of little shops, some tacky, some fantastic. I find the bookstore, buy a book – The Japanese Wife, by Kunal Basu. I get a battery for my watch, and find a nice little eatery, very green and salady, much frequented by Germans and Brits on holiday. Makes a change. Then, a couple of arts galleries, once again riding the automatic rickshaw. It's alarming, but fun – they can cut corners so sharply, and squeeze into gaps that you'd have thought a bicycle would have problems with. There's a saying here - “No one gets hit unless they want it.” hm. That's one that has the ring of untruth about it. Even I can spot that.
The drawing in the exhibition – an all-India exhibition, were just fabulous. I'd have brought one if I could, but nothing was for sale. Typical.

A final note on the process of negotiating your way around the efforts of Indians to encourage you to let them have a fair share of your spending money … That evening, I caught a taxi from the hotel to go to Connaught Place, three huge concentric circles of roads that contain a multitude of shops, restaurants and so on in the center of town. My driver is a Sheik, who, inevitably, asks me if I want to go to a craft shop.
“No, I was here last year, I've done all that,” I tell him.
“That's a pity,” he says. The thing is, he points out, he gets given coupons if he takes someone to a shop like that. “Times are hard business is bad,” he says
I have a think about this. I don't mind helping someone out.
“If I go in, I don't have to actually buy anything?” I ask.
“No, sir, not at all.”
“Maybe ....
“We could visit two or three, if you like sir.”
Well, yes, we could, but maybe not tonight. I rather like this driver, whose name is Karmial – he's pretty up front. I guess what I'm planning on perpetrating on the owners of the craft store is not much different from what various people have been perpetrating on me. Yeah – and know what? It feels gooooood.
I arrange with Karmial to meet tomorrow – he can drive me around and I can go into some carpet shops for him as a good turn. I give him 50 rupees - about 70p.On the way back I give him 100 – more than an Indian would pay but less than he might have expected from a tourist. He can do well off me tomorrow, I think. But tomorrow never comes. I wake up at nine to the telephone ringing. Apparently I have another event, something my schedule has remained silent about. I'm off all that day and it turns out, my 3am flight is this very night. So I never see Karmial again and I feel rather bad. Hoards of taxi drivers are waiting around the back of the hotel, missing good Indian business for the pleasure of picking someone rich and foolish, or just rich and generous. He never made out of me what he should, and under charged on the grounds he'd see me tomorrow. There you go – never believe anything a rich person tells you, it never comes true.

My talk at Delhi university that morning follows the pattern already established. It takes us hours to get there – partly because of the horrendous traffic and partly because no one knows where the university is, exactly. Indian streets are usually very far from being named, and you have to make your way around by getting in the vicinity, asking a local and then j=jumping nearer and nearer (hopefully) in this way, until eventually someone points to a building over the road and says, “There.”
I'm not sure I'm on top form – this is the fifth time I've =delivered a similar talk in eight days, I', beginning to be haunted by a sense of ...”Did I just tell you that?” But the students love it. They ask once again to be read the “controversial” bits from Doing It. I comply, although I still feel awkward abo9ut talking about knob cancer and fannies, albeit it humorously, in public in a room full of brown faces, sari-clad girls and their professors. But once again I'm shown to be a bigot – it goes tremendously well. I get asked more questions here than anywhere, and in the end, we have to be stopped when they run out of time.

Back at the hotel I discover Rob Lewis, writer of Welsh noir crime fiction. We go off together in the afternoon to see some sights, and very good company he is, too. Our first port of call is the Mogul Red Fort. This reveals itself to be a series of buildings, with fortification sin front, and then layers behind leading up to where the Khan himself lived and held audience. These inner buildings, built of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, are typically charismatic of Mogul architecture.
Rob seems very taken with the idea of Moguling, as he puts it, and at which he seems to think he would be rather good. What is it that attracts him? The architecture? The practice of medieval politics and military strategy, perhaps?
“Maybe, but I like to think it's more the lovely woman I assume to be involved.
Ah, yes – the harem. Remember the old song?

It was Christmas in the harem,
The eunuch stood around,
And hoards of lovely women,
Were stretched out on the ground.
In strode the big bad sultan,
As he gazed on his marble halls,
He said, “What do you want for Christmas lads?”
And the eunuchs answered …
“Tiding of comfort and joy, comfort and joy ...”

I think Rob has a point. I'd like to take Moguling up myself as a hobby. I wonder if there are any book s you can buy on the subject? Rob and I consider writing down a few notes of our own and presenting them to our partners … “Just distribute this among your friends, and we'll all meet round here on Saturday night for a trial run.” It might work. It's worth a try, anyway.

We finish off with a stroll down one of the packed market streets of old Delhi – can't remember the name, but it goes on for miles. Dense, claustrophobic, teeming .. but it feels very safe, and in the end, its oddly exhilarating. People trying to sell you everything, but it's all just the oldest of human activities - trade, what all people in all places do in some way or other.
Getting hungry, I look out for something safe – and there it is! Bananas! All wrapped up in their own germ prof skin. Indian street food looks amazing, but there's stuff there, once you eat, you never stop shitting ever again. The bananas cost nothing – 25 rupees, about 30p for a big bunch of little ones. I eat a few, and on the way back, the rest are begged off me – one boy takes them and runs off to ear them like a monkey – he must be starving. Another girl begs some for her baby brother, held in her arms, and then follows us and stands smiling while he eats and smiles. Very pretty engaging, the pair of them. Both Rob and I give her some money before our car turns up. Well. But what of the unengaging and the ugly? What of the middle aged and bad tempered, who gives to them? I'm glad I'm not on the streets here, that's all I'll say about that.
On the way back, out of the window I see two black kites fly at each other and seize one another by the talons. The spiral down towards the ground together, but break apart and fly off before they hit the ground. Not a fight – a mating ritual. They're holding hands, or dancing in the air, perhaps. All raptors do it, but I've never seen it before now. Fantastic. It is spring here, after all. All the birds are collecting nesting material, I've noticed the crows at it all week. Spring in Delhi. We stop in the traffic and another girl holds up her child, with an opened sore on his spine. I ignore her. We pull away. The sun's going down. Back to the hotel and a couple of beers, and then I have a plane to catch. Next stop, Vilnius.

Up at 10, very civilized if Lady Gripe hadn't been standing with her stilettos on my stomach on and off during the night. Result – knackered again. I'm off with Arnab from the BC to Kalyani University to talk to some post grads.

Arnab very nicely stops off to buy me some medicine. I'm being kept awake with indigestion, as well as gripe – I don't know which one to go for, medicine-wise, but we settle on ant-acids. He buys some teeny weenie little yellow pills,quite unlike the great chalky monsters you get at home. We'll see.

A little bit of a game occurs int eh hotel at check out, starting with no less than three calls from various staff asking me various, rather odd questions. It all seems somewhat over attentive, but all is revealed when I get downstairs to wait for Arnab. Things start to become clear when I get down stairs to wait for Arnab. A large man in a large and magnificent uniform, topped by a large and equally magnificent moustache is touching his cap and beaming at me before I get out of the corridor. The slight and rather shy girl who has been opening the hotel door for me for the past couple of days has been demoted to a lesser door to one side of the main entrance. I see; it's Time for Tips. This is confirmed as my bag is smoothly removed from my grasp as I head for the reception desk – I can only guess at how many hands it's going to pass through before being safely deposited in the car.

The moustache disappears while I sit and wait for my lift, but reappears as soon as I get up, beaming, preening and waving at me familiarly. We obviously were best friends until very recently, but for the life of me I can't remember where. I resolve to ignore it and go through the door with the girl I do actually know, but when it comes to it I'm somehow guided to my natural place in the hands of the moustache. I ignore him and double back, and give the girl a tip. Not much – the advice is 10 rupees is enough for this sort of thing, I give her twenty. The doorman and luggage staff are hoping for some sort of largesse, but while I'm quite happy to be overcharged, of to just give, I'd rather be generous to someone who's done more than open the door once, and then bullied the person who usually does it out of the way. I tip the guy who takes my luggage out; he disappears like smoke and someone else takes his place to carry the luggage to the car. It's a well coordinated ballet – almost worth paying out to wittiness everyone stepping into their places like clockwork. These guys should be ins how biz. But, you know what? They already are.

That was fun.

We pick up a professor from the uni we're visiting before we leave Kalkota, and he talks enthusiastically about his college and what he hopes I will talk about. University in India, he tells me, is very staid. The professor stands up at the front and pours forth his wisdom. Questions are actively discouraged – it's rude to question the Wise One, it seems. But his college has been trying a different approach – getting them to question, getting them to think for themselves. They have been getting the students to study cartoon's, comics, stuff in one of the local languages – all sorts. In other words, semiotics
“How does it go down?” I asked him.
The answer seems to be, it's a bit of a shock. Some of the lecturers hate it – being pushed out of their comfort zones. Some of the students find it challenging too. But it s reaping big rewadrs and some of the students are really getting excited about it..
I ask him about the pitfalls – in particular, the common criticism that this approach leads to degrees in all sorts of useless stuff. “What if you end up with degrees in Desperate Dan studies?” I ask him. He laughs. Yes, it's one of the dangers. But better than the old ways; and there's no doubt about that.
It's a reminder of how education used to be run in the UK not all that long ago. No questions, just receive the wisdom. I guess a few odd courses springing up are well worth the move to open thinking, and it illustrates how those who complain loudly about such things are, in reality, conservative and protectionist – they just want you to think like them.
Having said that, the claim that the students are used to sitting takes down the words of the wise is a bit at odds with my experience so far. My talks are challenging, inviting people to think for themselves., when I'm on form and the students here have reacted very enthusiastically so far. But maybe it's exactly because it's an approach they rarely see that has made them so delighted.

The ride out to Kalyani is beautiful. After several days in the teeming helter skelter of Indian cities, the Bengali countryside is very green, very beautiful and very welcome. It looks amazingly fertile. Let's face it, it needs to be. I'm perfectly happy when we get lost to sit in the car and watch. Storks – hundreds of them. Kingfishers – big pied ones, I think. And drongos, which I remember so well from Nepal last year. There are wide, beautiful plains of endless paddy fields, and palms, and fields of sugar cane and other crops. Bananas plants everywhere – people seem to plant them by where ever there's a bit of spare land. The roads are quite clear of cars and lorries, but every time we go past a village, the road fill sup with people, walking, talking or peddling along on three wheel bikes carrying loads of of everything, from bottled gas to polystyrene blocks to bundles of herbs. Very nice …

The university is set on a vast campus – the professor we picked route doesn't even now how far it goes, he's never been to the ends. “Very big and badly kept,” Inside, I'm given lunch with the English department. They eat vegetarian out of take-away boxes, but I have a plate, with a rice pilau and a few pieces of mutton curry – guest status for me – and I feel bad that I can't make much oif a dent in it. Then in to give my lecture; or my barking and wearing as someone once put it. Everyone is polite nad it's difficult to tell if it's rude not to eat all the meat; but I don't think so.

My talks are going well, I think, even though I say so myself. It's partly because anyone who writes for young people get a lot of practice, and with a very demanding audience. This gives us an edge over the adult writer's who often think all they have to do is stand there and read, and not always very well either. Also, I don't think they've come across anything quite like me before, especially the students, who are presumably used to being lectured at. The young people here have this in common with those in England, though – they're delighted to be spoken to in a way that engages with them, as opposed to being expected to engage witht eh speaker. Today I feel I'm on form – they're all rolling around laughing one minute and then staring and nodding intensely the next. Afterwards, the head of department thanks me for my “Anti-lecture,” which is one of the best compliments I've ever had,

Mumbai, Thursday 11th February.

Landed at 1.30am, which is 8pm yesterday UK time. In bed by four and up at ten for breakfast with Cardiff crime writer, Rob Lewis, also part of the British Council Lit Sutra programme. We are driven to the Kala Ghoda festival site and shown around – it's an hour in the car. Then back for half an hour's rest, then back to the festival. The traffic is like a river of cars, except it's not much like a river because it doesn't go anywhere.

In the evening, I'm doing a session for the festival with some new Indian writers and an Italian lady who had what must be a great job – roving editor and translator. She's spent the last twenty winters in India, traveling round villages, towns and cities, and translating her finds into Italian. She was at the session with one of the writers she'd translated, Annie Zaide.

It was a lovely session, in the garden of the library in Kala Ghoda, at dusk,with the crows settling down to roost in the tree tops disturbing huge fruit bats, who were just starting their night. Woodsmoke coming in across the lights – I thought for a moment the gels were catching fire.

It so happened that Annie Zaide, had written a piece called, “The Politics of the Unprotected Child.” Since I was talking about my last book, Nicholas Dane, set in an abusive care home in Manchester in the 1980's, we had a theme in common straight away.

I was talking about hundreds, maybe thousands of children and teenagers abused between the 60's and the 80's. She was talking about 45,000 children disappearing in India every year. I was talking about cruelty and buggery; she was talking about skeletons of children stuffed into sewers. Well, India is a continent, the UK is a little island – but it still puts it into perspective. Something like 3 rupees – 5p, round about – is spent per vulnerable child a year in India. I have no idea what the figure is at home. When I consider the kind of violence and broken lives that abuse can lead to, it makes me shudder. There's so much here. You have to shut your mind to the miles of poverty in every town – you'd not be able to function. Beggars showing children with sores at the traffic lights, men with withered arms asking for coins. And then the diamond shop opposite ...

Indian writing, like everything else Indian, is as varied as any in the world. Wherever I travel, nothing ever adds up to the scope and range of e cultural experience in Europe, whether it's cinema cheese, writing, languages, you name it. But I reckon India is just as good. Why anyone would want to live in the impoverished New World with all this at your fingertips is beyond me.

The anthology shows me another side to Indian writing. I'm used to reading the big India novelists – they have a tradition of novels here that comes right out of the 19C – big, detailed novels about lifge in all its aspects. (My personal favorite, by the way, is Rownington Mistry; try A Fine Balance or Family Matters.) The anthology shows another, unfamiliar side to writing over here. Other pieces in the same anthology are about mother and daughter relationships, there's a section from a graphic novel, a piece on the hijra's of Mumbai – transvestites. The book is called, “India Shining, India Changing”. I have no idea if you can buy it in the UK n- I doubt it. I've not finished it yet,, but even when I have, don't ask. It's not for lends. Just wonderful.

Friday 13th February – Kolkata.
I had a day of it today. Up at 5.15am, car to the wrong airport, taxi to the right airport, two hour flight from Mumbai to Kolkata, which I was stupid enough to not realise was Calcutta in disguise. Then, two sessions back to back with some A level students at The Calcutta International School, and under grads at Presidency College.

Here in Kolkata, it feels like a very different city – not so busy, more laid back. So far, I'm thinking of a kind of cross between Manchester and Paris, but that maybe just because I was taken to the coffee house in the university quarter - a million books for sale and a huge cofee hall, where artists and intellectuals mix up with shoppers, students and anyone else who cares to drop by.
“You can buy a coffee and sit here all day. You can tell how long the conversations have been gong on by how intense there are,” I was told. Very fine.

My sessions at Calcutta International School and at Presidency College were completely not what I'd expected. Very open-minded, to the point where I could talk more frankly than I can in most British schools – extraordinary. Fabulous young people, enthusiastic – as Dickens said, I'll go a long way for a bit of enthoosimoosy. Was made so welcome, treated to little snacks and tea, and encouraged to be as open as I cared. At Presidency, they even asked me to read the rude bits from Doing It – which I did, although I found it a bit difficult. Now that doesn't happen at home every often. Astonished!

After each session I had a group of girls come up wanting to talk. Here as in England, education is so much about preparation for employment and later life, students are astonished when someone comes into their school or college and actually wants to talk about the thing that affect their lives. How did education of teenagers come to be all about the future and not at all about now, when now is the time they are becoming the person they will be for the rest of their lives? I guess everyone wants a slice of youth, don't they? So no one like sit when they start to think for themselves ...
The girls here had a slightly different preoccupation to girls at home. I think they felt not so much controlled, as over-looked - in the sense that a garden might be over-looked by a building. Very watched. “You can't even hug a guy here!” complained one girl – although,, as I pointed out to her, I don;t know how much hugging I see in schools in the UK.
“What do you think about infatuation?” asked another girl. I replied that it was a good thing, a sign of a passionate nature. Not to be mistaken for love, but something that might be along that road. I don't think it's just for the young, either. That first part of an affiair, the intense sexual part – that's infatuation. I'm reminded of the staying – It's easy to fall in love. It's staying there that's hard.”
They really wanted to talk about emotional development, how you went from the giggly stage to the holding hands stage, to “infatuation” to love. Girl's in the UK are allowed to go through this with less interference,I guess. But I suppose they had this in common with responsible girls back home of the same age – they wanted to be trusted. And this in common; they were aware that their developmental needs, emotional, and intellectual perhaps, were not really being met.

Kolkate, Saturday 13th February

Today, I'm a zombie. Last night should have been the night I got a good night's sleep, but instead, about an hour after passing out on my pillow, I wake up with stomach cramps. Oh no -not already. I start belatedly to remember the advice I had from last time I was out this way – in Nepal, spring of last year. Don't eat the street food. Don't drink the tap water. Remember this when you do your teeth and when they give you ice in your drinks, and when you eat salad, which will have been washe din tap water. Hidden traps all around ....
What was it, I wonder, as the gripe bites? The salad I had in the cafe in the art gallery in Kala Ghoda? The mutton sandwich I foolishly agreed to in the coffee house? The glass of water with ice in? The ten rupee note I idly chewed yesterday, or the windows I licked in the taxi? Who knows? Either way, it keeps me up all night. Bacteria are blossoming in my gut. I wait for the eruption, but oddly, it never comes.

I've now had about six hours sleep in three days. I spent all morning lounging around in a moronic catatonia, unable to do anything, but I'm rescued in the afternoon by Sujata from the British Council, offering to take me to the Calcutta races. It's a big day – The Queen Elizabeth Cup. So we go along – right in the posh end. It's my first day at the races. We are invited to share the box of a fine old Indian gentleman, who seems to know Sujata well. He talks of people making boo-boos, and worries about a relative of his who wants to get into Oxford and can't. He feels so helpless out here in India and wonders if it would do any good if he flew orf to his old college and asked them?
“Probably not,” says Sujata kindly. Times have changed a bit, I reckon. But it sounds as if I didn't like him – in fact, he was kindness itself and very entertaining, as he bet ten rupees on the big race, chatting away about everything under the sun. I had a beer which made me break out in a cold sweat. I bet 600 rupees and won 140 rupees – a loss of 460. Not bad, since I picked my horses like a blonde choosing a car by colour – if I liked the names.

Went to bed feeling scared that I might never get to sleep again.

Kolkata, Sunday 14th

Finally got a good night's sleep, so I'm setting off to have a look around. Walking – always the best way to see a city ..

First stop is the Victoria Memorial, about twenty minutes from my hotel. Billed as a cross between St Paul's and the Taj Mahal in my guide, and as a museum to “house the treasure's of the raj,” by an informant, it is in fact a gigantic cathedral to Imperial Power. Everywhere there's statues of Victoria the Queen Empress, exhortations in stone for her subjects to enjoy the peace and prosperity on offer under her rule. It's certainly no museum – there's hardly any gallery space, although there is a long, straggling exhibition of paintings of India by Europeans, mainly Brits, from the days of the Empire. It's huge, vast - an example of that building-as-scenery architecture, so beloved of all Empires, both corporeal and spiritual. The domes grow misty with distance.

Having said that, it is a lovely thing, especially as an ornament to the gardens,which are truly lovely, set in the heart of the teaming life and noise of the sprawling city. Rather formally laid out, but broken up by lawns, trees and wide waterways, and the Memorial itself tower hazily behind, it's a wonderful place to get your breath. Wonderful wildlife, too. I saw kingfishers take pretty little silver fish in the waterways, the inevitable Indian black kites soaring everywhere over head, and a few vultures, too – an unexpected treat, since India has lost up to 90% of her vultures in the past decade or so, due to the the foolish use of pesticides. And little striped squirrels in the trees, and cormorants in the water and wagtails, and at least two species I didn't know. Some sort of rail, perhaps …

And some crows committing murder. One on the ground, wings spread out, head up, while the others pecking it it's head. Two of them got it good in the end, bang bang bang one on one side, one on the other, taking turns to get it from the back as it turned it';s head ot defend itself. It's skull started to give way. Then they flew off and left it dying in the dust. Now, what was that all about?

But the nicest thing - couples. Under every bush and by every tree and on every bench, there was a young couple ... holding hands, heads on laps ... maybe even abit of a snog, although it might just have been a face to face hug. Charming, sweet, lovely in every way.

On the way back to the main road I passed the peace gardens. So peaceful, no one was allowed in them.

Then off to my real destination – the Temple to Kali, a few miles away.
Kali is one of my favorite deities. I love the whole a pantheon of India – perhaps the only pantheon of gods still intact in the world, despite the ravages of Christianity and Islam. Kali is one of my favorite deities. There difference between her and the monotheistic gods is, they seem to steadfastly ignore you big time, up until the point where you start to pray. Then, if you pray real hard, maybe, if you're lucky, they'll intervene on your behalf. Whereas with Kali if you start praying to her, she may, just may, refrain from fucking you up big time.
If Jesus is Mutt, Kali is definitely Jeff. You know where you are with Kali. It's a bit ike the difference between the Social services as opposed to the police back in the UK.

It was a good, long, foot-bruising walk, including getting lost in some narrow lanes and by some truly stinking rivers. I can't believe anything lives in those rivers, and I can't believe people drink from them either. But they do. Eventually,I arrived at the Temple, hidden in a thronging maze of tiny streets packed with stalls selling garlands, incense, and little images of the goddess.
Inside, though a security gate – I guess Hindu temples aren't m from terrorism either – a sudden mass of people milling about. I was picked up by a guide almost immediately, who rushed me through. Over here to keep your sandals safe, sir, now over here, here's some flowers, here's some bangles, now over here, sir … and I'm thinking, do I want this? And then, well, let's go along with it …
And over here sir, into the temple, sir, watch your bag sir, be careful sir. Now here, throw your flower at the shrine sir, and then out, sir, and down here sir, and along here sir, and you can take a picture here sir. And now to here, and this is Shiva, sir, and we touch her and here sir, and you touch your forehead like this sir, and then you touch your hands in front of you like this sir, and this is for your family and this is for your wife and this is for your home, and then you write your name and county in the book sir and you donate money to the poor sir. As you can see, sir, what previous visitors have given sir.
Yes. 2 - 3,000 rupees. I see.
The fist time I was had with that one was Paris, where I was asked to donate money to the victims of an famine in Sudan. I fell for it that time. It was only when I saw the Sudanese tricksters smirking at each other that I realised. That, and when they fled at the sight of a policeman ...
I wrote down, 2010.
“Oh, very good sir, very generous, the poor will be very very happy. That is one sack of rice. You give him the money ...”
“Money? Oh, no. That's the year.”
“What sir?”
The year. 2010. Last year was 2009. Remember?”
“But sir what about the poor? Money for the poor??”
I gave him a pat on his big tummy. “You don't look that poor to me. I'll give you two hundred.”
I wrote down 200 in the book, handed it over to his accomplice and was led back by a sulky guide to get my shoes.
“Nothing for you? Very generous of you,” I said as I put my sandals on.
“No sir, no sir, that's up to you sir. 10 rupees for him to look after your sandals if you like, sir.”
I gave the old man ten rupees and patted my guide's tummy again for him. “Good try,” I said, and they all snorted happily into their moustaches..

That was fun. And quite good too – it was far too quick for a tour, but I did get into the inner temple., which is forbidden to non Hindus.. Explains why it was so quick, I guess …

After that, I wandered around and looked for an image of Kali to buy. Found a couple – a tiny photo of her in the temple, bedecked with flowers instead of her usual skulls and her black hair hanging down and her tongue hanging out. And another a bit further along, painted plaster, very bright. Just hope I can get it home safe.

And then a taxi back to the hotel to eat lunch. A buffet, and serenaded by a band with two girls dressed in pussy-tight red mini dresses, while I ate a buffet for which I was hopelessly over charged. Should have given more money to the Fat Rascal at the Temple and eaten out, really. Great day, though, eh?