So yesterday morning my very good friend Vick picks me up from Mumbai airport and we head downtown. We take the train, which, like in many other places I’ve been – Tokyo, London, Melbourne on Grand Final day – is as much a game of rugby as it is a daily commute. The entire compartment stares at me with bemusement: such a tall white fat bastard … a sure winner in this game of push-me-pull-you-trainy-survivey.

An old man, whose glare I couldn’t take anymore and attempt to break with a smile and polite greeting, asks me if I’m from the UK. This is what ensues…

Old man: Are you from the UK?

Me: No, I’m from Australia.

Old man: Ah, so do you like our pretty country?

Me: Ah, yes Australia is pineapple country. And banana country.

Vick: (cheerful grin) Dude, he said do you like our country.

Me: Ah so sorry. Yes I love it. It’s the most beautiful place.

Old man: What part of Australia are you from.

Me: Oh yes, everyone I’ve met has been so lovely.

Vick: (chuckling) Hang on, he asked you what part of Australia are you from.

Me: Oh I’m so sorry. I thought you asked if I have found people here compatible, like simpatico. I am having so much trouble. Sorry. I’m from Melbourne.

Vick: (snorting) Open up man.

Another passenger: (with an accusatory glare) Well many of us are in a lot of danger in Melbourne.

Me: Well I know for sure it ain’t me what did that. ‘Cause, hey, I’m all the way over here, ain’t I? (with a half-jovial, half-scared-shitless-why-do-I-have-to-be-such-clown-all-the-time grin)

Half the compartment: (gasp!)

Vick: (laughing uncontrollably, in Hindi) I don’t know this foreigner!

Me:(to the passenger) I’m sorry. Actually you can rest assured that nearly all Australians are appalled by what’s happening in Melbourne. We love Indians. And we hate what’s happening as much as you do.

A third passenger: Yes that’s true you know. My cousin lives there and has made many Australian friends.

Me: No I don’t have any cousins here, but I do have one living in Scotland.

Vick: You should really stop talking right now.

So I’m in Kerala, and here are a few things what I’ve learned and that:

1. Driving around this place, though it feels so much like being a charcter in Grand Theft Auto, is not Grand Theft Auto. So that woman who approached my car when stalled in traffic, was not some ho wanting a ride, but just someone wanting to sell spices and shit. So I shouldn’t have ducked, thinking her pimps bullet would go through the dash.
2. When you’re having tea with the Bishop of Trichu, and he asks if I know George Pell and how is he doing, you do not answer, “Oh that guy, no never see him, he’s up in Rome. And that’s where we kinda like him, ’cause he comes back down under, says a whole lot of stupid things that makes all the catholics angry, and leaves again.” just in case he might tell you that he is one of George’s best friends, and shows pictures of the two of them in seminary in Italy together when they were both young.
3. If you see two men walking down the road together holding hands, chances are they are not gay, that they just love each other. But if you’re in a clothing shop and the attendant asks where you’re from, and you say Australia, and he says “Ooh I love Australia, especially Australian boys”, chances are he is gay. And if he hands you a pair of trousers and says that he’d like you to try them on in front of him, and then pinches you on the arse, you can pretty much assume he’s gay.
4. Don’t bother learning Malayalm. The average word has about 26 syllables and the language itself sounds like a lawnmower starting up. I asked someone how to say “thank you” in Malyalam, and then forgot it in about five seconds, which meant I basically listed known Japanese cars to a waiter when she served me tea.
5. If you give a lecture in a seminary to about a hundred theology students, no matter how much you try to tell them you’re just a PhD student, they call you professor anyway, and apparently if you give a good lecture, they call you Eminent Professor. Just ride with it.
6. Elephants are cute and that, right? But don’t tease them, because when they spit on you your skin and clothes change colour.
7. If you’re aged fifty-plus and are on a guided tour to get that “Indian experience” that your lives seem to lack so much in France or Germany, get the fuck back home you selfish fucks! I saw you merge on to some poor beggar in Fort Kochi today, all six of you. Sure, he was worth your flashes and photographs, and his image would be an all-so-important addition to your slideshows back home, but still he wasn’t worth your loose change, your ears or even a thank you. All he wanted was some attention, and all you gave him was a mass of camera lights and ridicule.