The Christmas Special. Part 1: Little Miss Sunshine

About a week before Christmas I agreed to spend the festivities with Joel, the school administrator who is doubling as my host, somewhere near to his hometown. As Joel had left a few days earlier to attend to some shady meetings somewhere in the massive Tamil Nadu region, his cousin Jeeva picked me up on the 22nd December before being handed over to some other family i'd never met at the ungodly hour of 3am on the 23rd.

Jeeva, a hulking 21 year old competition weightlifter and personal trainer was an interesting character with a below average grasp of English. He kept asking me to call him something that sounded like 'machamp' (which I think just means 'mate') and would repeatedly go through his repertoire of about 6 handshakes with me, which included one of those fist-taps as well as that casual one with the thumbs that is normally only reserved for tennis players and dickheads. Having said that, he was a lovely chap and he took me to a terrific tandoori chicken place which he was fascinated to see that I was enjoying. Little did he know that, being English, I was virtually born with tandoori chicken stains around my mouth.

After just an hours sleep, I was dropped off at another cousin's place; the Pastor John Lee's house. John Lee then drove me the 11 hours to our destination, Dharapuram, in a little Ritz brand car with the company of his wife, mother and two small children. Of course, this didn't matter because as the guest, I managed to secure the front passenger seat without having to resort to shotgun rules or crying. The journey was mammoth and I passed much of the time by indulging in my new favourite game of listening to music completely inappropriate to my surroundings. Stuff like Art Brut in the middle of a palm tree forest never fails to completely confuse the brain.

We were staying slap-bang in the middle of nowhere at their recently finished holiday home which was obviously nice and peaceful, but it didn't leave me with much to do. Also, everyday at 6 o' clock, night falls within about 5 minutes.

So, I found myself a bit bored and by 6.30pm on the first day I was having a sensationally Emo moment on the roof terrace of the house listening to 'Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying' by Belle and Sebastian in pitch black. Little did I know that my disappearance had caused a bit of a frenzy downstairs as I was listening to my music at level 14 (why on earth the volume on my phone is out of 14 is anyone's guess). When I eventually took my headphones out about half an hour later, there was a whole gaggle of Indians shouting 'Andrew' at the top of their voices with torches in their hands. Oops.