London: Two years ago, roughly, for a travel piece, I flew to Delhi and took a southbound train to a dusty railway platform in Rajasthan. There I was met by a smiling man with a gold earring who introduced himself as my driver for the week. His name was Babu. I must be a VIP, he said, because he was the company’s top driver and he always was given the VIP work. From now on, he said, he would be treating me as his god. Then he said, just to make sure, because there was no telling these days, and I didn’t by any stretch of the imagination look the part: “Excuse me, sir, but in your country are you VIP?” I laughed and said certainly not. But he seemed to take my laugh and denial as a sign that perhaps I really might be a VIP. I was English, after all. And there is no telling with the English and their always saying one thing and meaning another.
For the next seven days, Babu drove me around Rajasthan, stopping each night at either a hill fort or a palace offering B&B, after which he withdrew to more humble accommodation. In the morning, whatever my own condition, I’d find him standing beside his washed car with a loving smile and a smart salute. Our itinerary was called “Unknown Rajasthan” and some of it was unknown even to Babu, who was Rajasthani. It took us away from the main roads and on to tracks that had been recently washed away by flash floods. “Unknown Rajasthan, sir!” Babu would laugh when he had to resort once again to his map.
A week previously, I’d foolishly talked myself into getting engaged to a woman who clearly didn’t like me. And I was jet-lagged. So I was numbed and preoccupied and I didn’t speak much. I just looked out of the rear window at passing rural Rajasthan — which can perhaps be best summed up as colourful feudalism with electricity pylons. And then I got tired of being thrown around in the back of Babu’s car on the rough roads, and I bought a sticky black opium ball to cheer myself up. I think Babu enjoyed my princely, opiated taciturnity, seeing it as an encouraging sign that I was well used to being driven, and was probably therefore a genuine VIP. He drove with a ramrod-straight back and his hands on the steering wheel at 10 to four, and he looked ahead with utmost vigilance and commitment to our cause. He spoke only when spoken to, or to offer refreshment. He also advised me about the right amount of opium to break off and swallow at a time. (“No, no, sir! Half, sir! Half!”)
After we’d been going for a couple of days, the amazing beauty of the Rajasthani women began to register on me enough for me to comment excitedly to Babu about it. This led to conversation breaking out between us. Even the women on the road-mending gangs were breathtaking. He was reluctant at first to bandy opinions with his god, but my enthusiasm stirred his local patriotism. “Very beautiful, very hard-working, sir. In Rajasthan, if you have strong penis you can get a lot of lady, sir.”
I told him about my insane engagement, concluding that I would much rather come and live in Rajasthan and marry a road mender. Babu thought this an excellent idea. “Not one, sir,” he admonished. “Two.” To ascertain whether in fact two would be best, or whether it would be better if I stuck with just the one, he said: “Sir, how many times a night do you do sex, sir?” I looked at his face from the side. His eyes were glued anxiously on the stony road ahead. He simply wanted to give the best advice that he could. “It all depends, Babu,” I hedged. “How about you?” “Three times, sir,” he said. He was most definite. “But I do sex with opium, sir. After three times I am sleeping.”
We lapsed into silence. But as we approached our destination, he decided to broach once more the question that had been niggling at his mind ever since he’d first clapped eyes on me standing on the platform with my suitcase. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Not joke. Are you VIP, sir?”
Again, I hotly denied it. Yet Babu still wasn’t convinced either way. And the trivial matter of my importance, or not, must have been troubling him ever since, because this week — two years, roughly, on from that day — he sent an email.
“Hello my dear sir,” it went. “I asking tourists from England and London about you. They are saying you are famouse and very rich VIP and have palace and many cars. So I am very happy. Have a nice life. Ok by by. babu.”
