FOLLOW THE DEAD RABBIT

Let me tell you what happened to me 2 days ago ...

(Actually more than a week ago now, I'm a slow writer - but that's not the point)

Sit down with a cupa - it's a long one..and everything is true, true..

I woke up and got knocked off a scooter. I was looking for a new hotel cos the one I'd just booked into blurry eyed straight off the night bus was pony. I'm in jaipur ragistan (INDIA) and a guy was driving me around on his scootay - he didn't look when he pulled out and someone mowed through us. Good start to the day.

I shook it off, told him to fuck off and walked back to the hotel. Bloody knack'd I was chillin mi tits out on the roof when this Muslim tuktuk driver I'd met the day before made a seemingly nice offer, for me to come out with his friend to a village an hour away to see a ragistani tradition where a sister will present her brotha with a gay wristband , happens once a year. 

I applied my usual logic "who knows what will happen?", I accepted and went with them on my first full day in ragistan. The guy who picked us up was chubby and chirpy and looked trustworthy. Ok..off we go!

They were drinking vodka like it was chai - it was a celebration time after all and they told me:

"It's fine, we do it all the time".

'Joy' the chubby guy ran over a rabbit. He did try to dodge it but it wasn't so lucky. We swung round to pick it up and I ended up skinning it right there in the back seat - it's easier when it's still warm he told me. He was right, it was like taking a glove off. A warm furry bloody glove with little innocent eyes.

We then almost ploughed down a maaahussive Hindu cow who was chilling in the middle of a dark main road, headlights in the eyes but didn't move an inch and we snaked down the road to avoid him. Shame - I've basically been a veggie for the last 6months and I could have murdered a slab of meat.

Looked a bit like this..

We stopped off at some ragistani village and the Muslim  tuktuk guy 'Khan' he was called - a small 27yr old guy picked up a small block of charas (I don't drink no more believe it or not so I think they felt guilty that wasn't in on the vodka action) and gave it to me free. Actually quite nice of him, although I knew there'd be a catch somewhere.

The rain started and the landscapes were really, really dramatic:

I stared rolling continuous splifs in the back while he blasted out some Indian classics - my wife is a goat etc.

It was already quite a good adventure, lets the good time roll I thought..

FOUR hours later - which they claimed was due to a detour caused by the flooding, we arrived to a small village in the middle of fucking nowhere - monsoon blasting down, power out everywhere and shuffled into this barn. No sign of any sisters around, just blackness - not in a racist way.

They said we'd missed the ceremony and they proceeded to get pissed on arak. I doubted whether there every was a ceremony but though fuck it,  make the most of the situation. I sat with them and started playing with with photo booth. This is a picture of Joy:

5dudes turned up wearing track suit bottoms and shirts. I jokinging though to myself ahhha, they look a bit like mafia guys. Indian versions of the sopranos. Their children turned up too from their home above which gave me something to do and brought me some food while the men pretty much ignored me and just got sloshed. I gave em the rabbit to go and cook but never saw it again. Bastards.

Then the penny dropped..'Joy' the driver and his sidekick Khan started asking me if I wanted to make some eeasy money....eeeeeaasy money?? It smelt of a scam and sure enough they started laying it on, JEWLS, JEWLS, PRECIOUS GEMS blah blah... I  played along a little bit knowing I was in the middle of nowhere and I had no real idea who these guys were. I politely declined about 20times telling them I didn't want to talk shop lets just enjoy the 'festival' but they persisted until I lost my cool and exclaimed:

"IM A CAR DESIGNER WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT JEWELS?!!!! " 

I said something along the lines of:

IF YOU ASKED A DOCTOR: WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A RACECAR DRIVER? HE'D REPLY - NO, IM A DOCTOR!

okaaaay. Well I knew what I meant. 

Realising that they weren't going to be profiting from me the mood changed - the trustworthy chirpy face of Joy was now contorted and evil looking, plus he was quite battered and started looking dangerous. A argument started between him and Khan and suddenly open palms were flying (punches dont exists here, just swinging sticks or palms). A full on fight broke out, glass and dal flying everywhere. The The kids rushed out and the 5ragistanis tried to break it up, all the time being super nice to me...  japattttiii???? Panni??? (Water)

It was very odd indeed. Khan was crying and swollen faced and started shouting to me IT'S A SCAM!! 

Yeah I know mate.

[He explained later that there was a bit more history involved - he'd complained to them because he was keeping his side of the bargain - bringing tourists to them to get scammed right up, but he'd never received any of the profits. Aparently I was the last straw and he'd complained to them and his 'boss' Joy just gave him a beating].

Khan took me aside when it had calmed down a little and said he though his life was in danger, that he had to get out of there, that they were ragistani mafia. It seemed true but I wasn't sure of anything at that point - this could have been part of the scam too, the old good cop bad cop. I slighly transferred my knife from my bag in my pocket just in case i had to errr, stab someone.

Joy refused to drive back, i don't think he ever intended on doing so. It was 1am and he was blind drunk and they were telling me I had to stay there with them. It didn't sit well. Khan looked terrified and I realised we had to get out of there. We banded together and said we both wanted to head back to the city and with them saying no I played the kidnap card. For some reason I said:

"I HAVE A STRONG SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE"

"HUH?"

He didn't get my point. neither did i.

"THIS IS KIDNAPPING!" I said.

They spoke in hindi for a while and he strangely handed his car keys over to Khan but not before a useless effort at trying to rob all of my camera equipment to which I replied in ridiculous British politeness 

"Excuse me, please can you take your hands off of my camera" and he did. 

Then they took the keys back. Eventually, we got them again, jumped in the car and i told Khan to just fucking drive, we backed out of the rocky courtyard and got out of there..

Joy's Hyundai Gets was about to get trashed.

This was one of the wives looking down on the commotion from the roof:

I was navigating in the dark in a place I didn't know. He was asking me which way? I was choosing lanes at random. I found out that he couldn't read or write. He was actually a bit of a retard, but I think his heart was sort of in the right place. He was thanking me for saving his life. No problemo, I said. I was secretly loving all the action, it was surreal and felt a lot like a film, I thought back to reading Shantaram. As long as I didn't die it was fine.

We seemed to be out of the village and heading down a bigger road when we hit a massive pothole. My head twatted the roof and the cars power cut out. 

Not really knowing what to do, we faffed around for a while then in the darkness we heard some music approaching. It was a lone tuktuk driver. He agreed to ride us to the nearest village to find a mechanic:

It took 2 hours to sort but by 3.30am we were off again.

Khan was emptying packet after packet of beetlenut into his mouth.

This is him buying some earlier in the night:

He took the vodka and took a big swig. I grabbed the bottle off him threw it out of the window and told him off, he didn't say anything. Half and hour later he too a wing mirror off passing a bus, and not long after that he curbed the car and we got about 2 feet of air.

"RIGHT THAT'S IT, I'M FUCKING DRIVING" 

"No you're not, just calm down it's you that's making me nervous this is how we drive in India" he replied 

But then the worst one, I couldn't believe it - he tried to fit through a gap between two lorries that obviously wasn't wide enough and crashed into the corner of one of them at about 80kmph crunching the front fender like a can of coke. He pulled over after I'd given him a few elbows to the chest from the passenger seat to teach him a lesson and we ripped off what was remaining and threw it into a ditch.

Just as he said we were almost back I saw a road sign that said JAIPUR 100km. 

Then i got angry. OOOoo you should have seen me. It took us another 2hours after that because I made him drive slower and we finally rocked into the city looking a state around 7am. He started driving like a joy rider again, his eye's completely bloodshot from all the beetlenut, racing through blockades which leads us upto the grand finale...

Just as I was thinking we've fucking made it, he lost concentration and started driving diagonally down pass-over. I saw a cyclist ahead and shouted - he realised slamming on the brakes but it was too late..we hit the cyclist straight on from his back at around 60. The bike crunched went flying forwards as he slammed backwards onto the bonnet, hit the windscreen caving it in and flew through the air like a rag doll. The car skidded to a stop right beside him just in time for me to peer down and see an old man heaped on the ground, a look of shock and fright haunting his face.. I don't know if I imagined it but there seemed to be steam rising up from the wet ground around him, I don't know if it was he last moment of life or if he was just full of broken bones but before I had time to comprehend everything Khan floored it and fled the scene like a madman..dodging traffic and running red lights - I was screaming for him to stop but he was possessed knowing that he was going down if he got caught..he slowed down to weave through some traffic and opened the door and jumped out of the moving car managing to stay on my feet.

I walked back to the hotel thinking what I was going to do. If felt right to report it to the police but I wanted some advice first, I wasn't thinking straight and didn't know how laws worked in India. After a couple hours sleep if found myself wandering the streets and ended up in a temple, somewhere quiet. A priest approached me and we ended up chatting, he saw I was distressed and I explained everything to him. I was amazed that even a priest couldn't empathise with some justice for the cyclist. He told me straight not to go to the police and move on, dealing with the police is a nightmare and I'd be dragged into months of court appearances and hearing. Traffic laws are so lax in India that worst case scenario, the driver if found guilty of negligence would only lose his license for a couple of months. If the man had died, the mafia who were involved usually pay 5000rupess to the police to forget the case and then most likely they would try and create a world of pain for me, maybe even try and frame me saying I was the driver, knowing who i was through the passport photocopy in the hotel.

It's hard to accept the injustice coming from a western perspective, I've had to move on not knowing anything on what happened to the parties involved. I'm still trying to find out what happened to the old man, if he didn;t die it's a lot easier to accept moving on.

If he did die I think I'll send an anonymous letter to the police and hope for the best, with the story and photos. 

Any advice welcome chaps..

Since then my visa ran out so I came to Nepal. I seem to have got back into the normal flow of things…