Phew! India was behind us – and so we got legless on Kingfisher beer and Old Monk rum, dad and mum and I, and periodically projected our half-digested masala dosas over the rails and re-enacted the entire song repertoire from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (mum’s favourite). The Patels were On Tour, for the first time since the wet Himalayan pilgrimage in the summer of ’74 (where there was that incident with the snow leopard and the Shiva trident, which dad still likes to bring up over chai breaks). But perhaps you’d care for a little context, and perhaps some religious allegory and animal metaphors to layer on some artistic resonance and secure lucrative literary prizes. Alright then.
We had sold all our exotic pets and hotfooted it onto that liner soon after my dad read of the ramping up of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in the Kanian Tamil News – daddy was not to be sterilised by that woman – and were treading over the waves to Canada, or some such New World dump, when the ship crapped out on us. Suddenly there was all this cracking and splintering and feminine wailing. The next thing I knew – the Kingfisher hangover blurred things somewhat – I was squatting on a rubber dinghy in the middle of the Pacific, with nothing for ballast but a pair of handcuffs, a box of flavoured condoms (hint of lemon), a bottle of scented lubricant (essence of elderflower), an over-ripe cucumber, and a trussed-up Barbra Streisand in a low-cut crimson dress.
Karma could not have dealt me a crueller hand, and I looked wistfully back to my prelapsarian days among the animals in the Pondicherry zoo, who always accepted me for who I was and never questioned my motives. How was I to survive for days, possibly weeks, possibly months, aboard an inflatable vessel with a cluster of useless implements and a hostile, possibly dangerous animal onboard? After a determined bite of the cucumber, I pondered my options, and thought about Krishna and Mohammed and Jesus. Still not sure why. Maybe this all means something?
Piscine Molitor ‘Pi’ Patel, the Pacific Ocean, 1977.
We had sold all our exotic pets and hotfooted it onto that liner soon after my dad read of the ramping up of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in the Kanian Tamil News – daddy was not to be sterilised by that woman – and were treading over the waves to Canada, or some such New World dump, when the ship crapped out on us. Suddenly there was all this cracking and splintering and feminine wailing. The next thing I knew – the Kingfisher hangover blurred things somewhat – I was squatting on a rubber dinghy in the middle of the Pacific, with nothing for ballast but a pair of handcuffs, a box of flavoured condoms (hint of lemon), a bottle of scented lubricant (essence of elderflower), an over-ripe cucumber, and a trussed-up Barbra Streisand in a low-cut crimson dress.
Karma could not have dealt me a crueller hand, and I looked wistfully back to my prelapsarian days among the animals in the Pondicherry zoo, who always accepted me for who I was and never questioned my motives. How was I to survive for days, possibly weeks, possibly months, aboard an inflatable vessel with a cluster of useless implements and a hostile, possibly dangerous animal onboard? After a determined bite of the cucumber, I pondered my options, and thought about Krishna and Mohammed and Jesus. Still not sure why. Maybe this all means something?
Piscine Molitor ‘Pi’ Patel, the Pacific Ocean, 1977.
