Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Cult of Horn: Honking Through India
The Cult of Horn: Honking Through India
The Cult of Horn: Honking Through India
Ebook325 pages1 hour

The Cult of Horn: Honking Through India

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

As the hair thins and the body sags, the old adage about travel 'broadening the mind' gets flipped on its head, the excitements of a quarter century ago transitioning to frustrations and groin pulls. Which brings me to India, a litmus test for travellers both seasoned and green. I have met many who loved the country, many who hated it. I understand completely, having run that gamut and back again within minutes. India is that kind of place. The colours are vibrant (it is not a land of beige); the history is compelling, the architectural feats extraordinary. And yet, it can be a difficult country to like, a paradox where people can be so welcoming in cities so oppressive, where the heat, crowds and incessant honking are at odds with sublime cuisine and acts of kindness. This can be especially vexing of course, but I have tried to capture at least a hint of the subcontinent's fascinations, and for every sour note I strike in the journal from time to time, there are a dozen images that should serve as counterpoint.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 12, 2017
ISBN9781773029665
The Cult of Horn: Honking Through India
Author

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is an experienced and popular watercolourist, who regularly teaches and lectures on all aspects of painting. He is the successful author of several books, including The Watercolourist’s Year, Learn to Paint Buildings in Watercolour and Painting Houses and Gardens in Watercolour and was the Consultant and Contributor to The Art Course partwork. He writes for The Artist, Leisure Painter and Artists & Illustrators magazines and has also made several instructional painting videos.

Read more from Richard Taylor

Related to The Cult of Horn

Related ebooks

Photography For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Cult of Horn

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    The Cult of Horn - Richard Taylor

    Cover-Front.jpg

    CONTENTS

    FOREWORD

    RESIGNED TO IT

    BUTTERING MY TOAST

    LIONS OF GIR

    THE GUINNESS FACTOR

    HONK FOR INDIA

    AGE & DIGNITY

    GOING DOTTY

    CATEGORIES & KUMKUM

    BOBBLE HEADS

    LAUNDRY & OTHER MARVELS

    CHRISTMAS IN PONDI

    RODENTIA & SHYAMA

    THEN WHAT?

    COPYRIGHT

    FOREWORD

    I tell people that I’m a terrible traveler and they laugh. They know I speak of temperament, in my case mean, rigid and paranoid.

    This is a travel journal, a diary abroad. The unpleasant tends to fade with time, while the glories remain vivid. In my Asian travels particularly, I’m wrung through a personal spin cycle, spattering praise and invective with abandon. It would be comforting but far too easy to assign the nastier funks to fatigue or polar malfunctions (paranoid I employ in the layman’s sense) and I considered softening or excising my nastier reactions. This could make for a more appealing read, but in the end I decided it would be better not to kid myself, better to leave the chips as they fell. Even so, I’ve managed to hedge a bit, supplementing the narrative with notations and reflections. Some are brief editorials, some rambling lamentations (these have been italicized), written en route during slow bus rides and slower hotel nights. Others were added in the interest of clarity and context. The final record should, as in past years, prove a corrective during my scattered periods of smug. It may also serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who wishes, at least in part, to retrace these steps.

    RESIGNED TO IT

    THURSDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2014

    Pearson Airport: 5:25 PM: There’s a long snaking queue at JET Airways for flights to Mumbai via London: a caravan of Indians travelers, great stained boxes and shapeless bags of canvas and string. It moved in big chunks – each family with its half dozen – and forty-five minutes later I reached the front tape, a triumph that fizzled when the JET attendant announced that this was the line for Mumbai via Brussels. Mumbai via London was checked through Air Canada, the ‘sister airline.’

    Where’s that? I asked.

    The other end of the terminal, sir.

    I grumbled over to the distant sister, got cleared away, took a seat by the Departures sign, finished the cheese and salami bagel I’d brought in lieu of airport food and quaffed the last of the grape juice from Susan’s moby bottle.

    Susan does the dusting and sale-signing for Major Home Fashions and returned from her annual Trinidad Christmas reunion with a gift of moby – she knew I was partial to this refreshing drink, with its peculiar licorice aftertaste.

    There was a third line, for security issues. I was classified harmless and jogged to gate 74. A lady stopped me, entreating me to fill out a form for a new CIBC credit card, a promotion offering a four hundred dollar rebate off my next flight (and an annual fee of ‘only’ a hundred and twenty bucks). I looked at her. This was the same JET lady who shooed me off to Air Canada.

    Some crust, I thought. But I scribbled out the application, fearing she’d shoo me off again.

    If you are visiting India, you must see Kerala State, she said. "It’s God’s Own Country."

    I’d heard this from the ladies at Scotiabank, where the subcontinent is well represented – two Indian tellers, one of them from Mumbai, and a third girl from Bangladesh. They’d been beaming and bubbling over this trip. I told them I’d been there before, in the big Asia run of ’98: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, Tibet, Nepal and northern India.

    I hadn’t cared for India – as crowded as China but far more in-your-face. My great strategic error was leaving India until the end. After three months of travel, the batteries were low. I’d been very sick twice. My patience, a resource extremely limited in the first place, was tapped out.

    This time however, I’m heading south, batteries fully charged.

    It’s totally different, said the girl from Mumbai. The people are much nicer.

    I’d heard that before too, crossing the border from Thailand to Laos back in ‘98, sharing a minivan with an elderly German couple who’d seen India.

    In the south they are alright, the man said, but in the north they are too aggressive. They are too greedy. They know all the tricks. They stick something in your ear and they want fifty dollars to get it out.

    WEATHER STATUS: Winter hit Toronto early again. That’s three years running. In the old days, my parents would drive me to the airport and I could dump the winter parka on them. Today I rushed to the Lawrence Bus in my wispy spring jacket. Today it’s only minus three. The other day it was minus nine, with flurries. Small mercies. Anyway, we’re not as bad as Buffalo. They’re really catching it – the snow’s piling up in metres, not centimetres. Always worse in Buffalo.

    HEALTH STATUS: Neck has been stiff for days. I’m sniffling and congested and have a headache. The digestion is already shot – that could be the malaria pills; side effects like diarrhea, headaches and fatigue were indicated. Maybe that’s why I can’t shake this cold. The knee is still wonky – two months after the (latest) bike crack-up and it’s no better….Well it’s a little better. But I’m weaving a tale of woe.

    Nothing like going to India with batteries fully charged.

    ROACHES AND THE GREAT RELEASE

    It has been said by survivors of failed suicides that there’s a strange feeling of liberation after they’ve quaffed the sleeping pills or arsenic or whatever their poison happens to be. So it was in October after tendering my resignation to Human Resources. The Great Release. The HR lady was astonished.

    But Richard, why? You’ve been here forever.

    By my own bigmouth standards, I’d kept quiet about it. Didn’t want muss or fuss or goodbye parties. I just wanted to get out. Hadn’t been a bad job these thirty years, despite a few rough patches. It hadn’t weighed on me. It hadn’t followed me home. It hadn’t been an effort to get out of bed.

    Until the last two years. For the last two years, I’d been miserable.

    Part of that was ego. A huge part. My department was gone. Electronics was no more. That was my turf. I ran it, or so I told myself. I had free rein. I had latitude.

    But the Hudson Bay Company had become a fashion store. The other departments vanished in succession. One-stop shopping was out. The top brass didn’t give twopence for TVs and stereos, hadn’t for years. The Executive Tours never got past the fourth floor. That was Fashions End.

    Above that was limbo.

    Electronics didn’t pay for itself. That’s what they told me. It was kept at sufferance because we were the flagship, because downtown was a ‘designated tourist area.’ Lingerie, ladies shoes, that’s where the money was. So Electronics had to go - and that hit me harder than expected. My office, with its nice big desk, was gone. I was lodged in the auxiliary sign room. I was just another schmuck.

    I’m not a kid any more. I’m not twenty-five or thirty-five or forty-five. I’ll be fifty-five in February. That’s not too old for most jobs but I’m getting long in the tooth for chucking sofas and fridges and washing machines. My back hurt full time. My knee hurt full time. For all intents and purposes I worked full time. Except I was part-time. So when they trimmed the Spring budget and cut the hours, I’d huff indignantly. Sure, when there’s dirty work afoot you can’t get enough of me. Wait until Richard arrives. Such a valuable man. Until budget time that is.

    But I didn’t really mind, despite my indignant huffing. Cut my hours? Fine. The place bores me. My lower back thanks you. Lumbar four and five have been acting up again.

    All of this may have proven tolerable but for the Great Invasion. My apartment is now full of roaches. They’re not strangers to me – when I’d snap on the kitchen light for a midnight slice of cheese, I’d see the scurry of a lone intruder. But in twenty-seven years, it’s never been like this: they’re all over the microwave; all over the counter; inside, INSIDE the refrigerator. In July, the apartment people came to spray. Had to rip my place apart in preparation. The spraying did the trick – for one week. Then they were back, and in force.

    When the job is dispiriting, home should be a refuge. But in the evening the roaches come out. I’m afraid to enter the kitchen. Sounds so third world, so lower east side tenement. So pathetic.

    That’s why I resigned. If I’m honest, that’s why. I could have muddled through the boredom, the bad back, the budget cuts, even the auxiliary sign room.

    But the roaches……The roaches.

    They are there still. I’ve done the usual pre-trip cleaning, except it wasn’t the usual. It was half-assed and sloppy. I have left sticky boxes

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1