Clive Limpkin

Any Particular Table?

clive — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:09:17 +0000

Fifteen months after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, security remains very… well, Indian. Sort of ho-hum karma. Hotels check beneath cars with mirrors on rollerskates; some look in the glovebox, some glance at the luggage, few do both. It gets more perfunctory as the queue and hooting grows but with Mumbai traffic it’s hard to know what’s queue and what isn’t, what’s road rage and what’s habit.
At the Leopold Café you’re frisked by a man with a rifle over his shoulder that would take down a chorus line of rhino with one shot. It was early morning and just a few Europeans inside so when waved to any of the tables, I chose one a little too close to the serving counter but with the best overall view.
A waiter took our order and without prompting pointed out the bullet holes in the walls they’ve kept after renovation and then lifted the tablecloth a little in front of Alex and pointed to a saucer-shaped hole in the marble floor between her feet. “That’s where the bomb went off,” he said, clicking his ballpoint. ”You want snack too?”. Suddenly the ho-hum’s replaced with a little chill that I’ve chosen that table out of thirty and Alex has picked that particular chair out of four. We skipped the snacks, just had coffee. And didn’t linger.

Cats and Carats

clive — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:05:00 +0000

After two fruitless days last week criss-crossing the Gir National Park’s dusty hinterland for the elusive Asian lion – smaller than their African cousins and lacking their natural sense of rhythm – we were on the verge of asking Alex to volunteer as tethered bait when our guide Desraj got a radio call from rangers who’d spotted three cubs resting up in the 95 degrees after a morning kill. Reversing our Jeep through the teak forest for better close-ups, (and a faster getaway should the kill have merely whetted their appetite), Desraj would have qualified for a hefty tip till we spotted his diamond-studded ear lobes.
By the time we reached the dirt track again, (and this being red-tape India), a Camera Permit Inspector with waxed moustache had monitored the call and was waiting to check our paperwork, (500 rupees for each camera over seven megapixels), while the guide and driver surreptitiously slid theirs under our seat. It’s a jungle out there.

Carry on up the Khyber

clive — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:52:44 +0000

Land of Contrasts? Tell me about it. Yesterday we trained from Cochin, a local second class stopper laughably called the Parasuram Express, which hugs the Keralan coast for eight hours of swaying hell as an army of shouting hawkers march the aisle with chai, coffee, curries, fried bananas, dodgy torches, Hindu fiction and religious tracts, all of which could be optimistically described as colourful – but not the toilets. These squatting hole-in-the-floors offer nothing but nothing to grip for support and though I was able to brace my head against a wall Alex had no such luxury, so a real toilet in our beach cottage last night proved heaven – until pressing the flush button revealed too late I was sitting on a state-of-the-art Toto Eco-Washer and my scream, as a freezing burst of water intruded off the Richter, had Alex rushing in lest I’d discovered non-brochure wildlife.

While accepting the maker’s claim the saving of paper contributes to preserving the rainforests, I’d sooner be lashed to the top of a mahogany tree as Brazilian loggers circle with buzzsaws than experience that again.

Low margins in Backwaters

clive — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:29:41 +0000

In the absence of roads in the Keralan Backwaters all haulage is by lake or canal and with profit margins thinner than the locals, overloading is the norm. These two are shifting sand for construction with a freeboard that would have Samuel Plimsoll turning in his grave. Nifty bailing with a handy saucepan is the only way to prevent sinking from the wake of passing rice barges which is maybe why the skipper’s taken up smoking.

Pondicherry

clive — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:23:43 +0000

After shooting a feature at Calcutta’s Future Hope School which rescues street children from Hell-on-Earth slums, we felt ready for R&R in Pondicherry, staying at a colonial gem in the French Quarter described in its brochure as ‘a hotel that never ceases to surprise,’ a claim born out as we entered Room 15 when a rat ran past our feet, under the bed and into the bathroom, causing Alex to immediately down her remaining Gynergene tablet, preciously reserved for severe migraines or rodent sightings, while I had to settle for a stiff lime and soda to aid recovery – being dry for nearly a year now, this proved the greatest test of resolve to date.
Once Alex’s eyeballs re-aligned and a new room was found free of wildlife we dined alfresco and, mindful of the Basil Fawlty episode, I suggested we skip the Cheese Platter lest opening the savoury biscuit tin produced a second sighting.

Greenest of the Green

clive — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:13:36 +0000

In a semi-lunar landscape of parched scrub near Jaisalmer, a brushwood fence rings six mud and dung thatched cottages in an area smaller than a tennis court which an extended family of twenty eight Bishnoi farmers call home, standing shyly on the spotless mud floor that shines with constant sweeping.
Rajasthan’s last three monsoons have been poor enough to threaten the very life of these nature worshippers whose ecological, vegetarian, pacifist and non-pollution credentials make Greenpeace look like a vandals, who bring out a little wooden stool as you try to get your head around a lifestyle that for hundreds of years was deemed backward, but now seems the only way forward.
For here is a sect of eco-warriors that may kill no animal nor even fell a tree, (unlike other Hindus, their dead are buried as to cremate would involve the use of wood). This family are millet farmers – when it rains. When it doesn’t, they survive selling milk and cream from their cows and wait and wait for the rains to save them.
Beyond their scrub fence, black buck graze on the fruit of the Khejri tree – these are animals that would provide nutrition to the Bishnois’ meagre grain diet and trees that would provide fuel and heat, but both remain sacred and untouched to these, the greenest humans on Earth.
They nod politely as you leave and after a half hour of rutted desert, the guide mentions in passing, “ Did you notice that Bishnoi in the last hut on the right who waved as we left? In his forties? He’s got an an M.A. in English at Jaipur University.”
You stop the Jeep so he can run that past again, which he does.
“So what will he do for a career?”
He shugs and looks puzzled. “Nothing,” he says.
“Then why do it – is it like some sort of intellectual exercise?”
The guide nods slowly. “Yes, you could say that, just an intellectual exercise. He calls it his hobby.”
So the Bishnoi with the M.A. sits in his mud hut with the rest of his family, waiting for the rains so he can sow his millet. And waits, and waits…..

Woolly Thinking

clive — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:15:27 +0000

India’s Thar Desert isn’t Peter O’Toole desert, too scrubby for that, but still desolate enough for a bend in the road to be viewed as a major feature. You can pass a hundred miles of nothing and then something. Like this – a perfect circle of a dozen sheep, their bowed heads facing inwards and touching as they doze, matched by another circle a quarter mile ahead. No one knows why. Maybe they’ve learnt how to shade their heads from the heat which can top 48 degrees; maybe they’re just attention seekers, and who could blame them?

Pukka Chukkas

clive — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:41:00 +0000

If tired of our tabloid’s sleazy Premiership reporting, you might savour The Times of India’s Woosterish account of Sunday’s match, (above), at the Rajasthan Polo Club….

‘The very thought of a Cavalry versus Piramal clash can give you goose bumps. There will be adrenaline rush, some nasty tackles, a push here, a shove there. The rival players are close friends off the field but on the field, no one will give up an inch without a fight.
The Sunday clash assumed extra importance since the two are meeting for the Mount Shivalik Polo Challenge Cup. As expected, the fireworks were there and Cavalry pipped Piramal 5-4 in a thriller; much to the relief of talismanic Tarun Sirohi, Cavalry’s main sniper:
“I was so excited that I had my blood pressure measured immediately after the match,” said Sirohi in a post-match chat.’

Future Sales

clive — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:40:12 +0000

Pushing ‘India Exposed’ at the Jaipur Literature Festival yesterday, I was unable to quote early sales figures which are not out for a month. Our driver, overhearing my frustration, suggested Alex asked the local palm-reader he had recommended to her.
This proved to be a Mr. D.D. Sharma, resident astro-palmist and face-reader at the Glitz Hotel who sat cross-legged on a stool in their car park, revealing her lucky day, lucky jewel, lucky precious metal, lucky colour, even her lucky point on the compass. Yes, yes, but what about book sales? He checked her lifeline again and revealed it would prove a successful year for me. That’s it? No more detail for our 500 rupees, no year-on-year projections for US/European sales? He gave the enigmatic head rock suggesting the consultation was at an end, and then confirmed it by donning the motorcycle helmet from under his stool and riding off into the Jaipur rush hour.

Diaries of Nobodies

clive — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:10:46 +0000

Dear Dr. Irving Finkel,

I read this week you’d like to save as many private diaries as you can for the Wellcome Foundation’s Identity Project. I would have passed on mine, all fifty eight years and two and a half million words of them, but they’re promised to the children. Neither racy nor revealing, more mundane and nerdish in fact, but as I point out to them they include all the details of their lives from Day One.
Practically, they’ve proved of value when catching up with expenses, and a boon with my autobiography of Fleet Street days, ‘Lost in the Reptile House,’ with dates, places, and people triggering the memory. If, after reading these extracts from the five decades they cover you really fancy them, feel free to pop round and Xerox the lot.
Regards, Clive.

January 15th, 1951, (the year the diaries start), I’m at Beckenham Grammar School, aged fourteen and worried about imminent arrest on my bike in the dark.

‘Nothing much happened except Mr. Rule put me in detention for Wednesday. So I must get a back lamp before then. I made an effort tonight to get one, I unscrewed Auntie Con’s but found the interior was smashed. I looked for my one but couldn’t find it.’

Hello, Dr. Finkel? You still there? It gets better. Well, sort of… Ten years later, on January 15th, 1961, I’m a fledgling photojournalist on the sports page of the Eagle comic shooting a British Olympic gold medallist.

‘Drove to Alperton Sports track where we met Don Thompson who we’d passed earlier who told us he had walked from his home 17 miles away. With two boys from his club he showed us the do’s and don’ts of walking and we finished four rolls of HP3 in cold wind.’

By January 15th., 1971, I’ve reached The Sun, (with diary entries growing shorter as lunches grew longer), recording Action Girl, a reporter who performed death-defying stunts dreamt up by readers.

‘I joined Tricia at Fairfield Hall where we did her on the trapeze.’

Tricia survived, moving on to a career on television; I survived, along with my liver, and moved to the Daily Mail as a photographer. By January 15th.,1981, I was seeking an office car, but as I tried to sell my first written feature, got an early warning from my accountant about the freelance writing world.

‘I found a Honda Accord 4 door available in W3 in beige but Alex didn’t like the colour. Sent Features Editor of The Times the Dunchideock Fete piece. Henry Bach sent his tax papers settling them at nil profit, but a £70 bill.’

Another decade and the entry for January 15th., 1981 could, spookily, have been written today…

‘To Bow Streeet for an MP on a rail fares fiddle charge, but he didn’t turn up. Switched to a vox pop in Regents Park mosque where they said to me yes, Saddam is a monster but you and the US made him one with your aid.

By January 15th., 1991, we finally got the Battersea flat we’d been after – and the bed.

‘We went to our solicitor and signed for No. 92, then to Lillie Road where we ordered a 5’ bed for around £300.

And today, January 15th., 2010? A New Year’s Resolution that the diaries will be less embarrassingly mundane and nerdy – and more embarrassingly racy and revealing.