August 26, 2006 (place)

Back in Bombay! We have checked into the Astoria only to discover that our last Bombay hotel was ripping us off. Our room was so good (for the same price) that the rest of the day went brilliantly. We literally did cartwheels and jumped on the beds when we saw it. It has hot water, air conditioning you can control, a little light in the closet, a fridge and a balcony overlooking the centre of Bombay.
Bliss!

The Prince of Wales Museum is a great way to use two hours. The statues are better at Agenta but the weapons and Chinese and Japanese collection are really interesting. The architecture is worth a look on its own.

I’ve been getting this double take from westerners. They look at you and seem very pleased but then look away embarrassed to have been momentarily 'racist'.
Visiting a foreign country is a stretch of your empathy. You have to think and feel into the people in order to understand their culture and their motivations. It is very tiring. This is probably why we feel so good when we come back from holiday. It isn't the holiday that relaxes us, but it's the return to an easy and recognisable way of life that makes us happy. I am, like most people, very lazy in this respect. I have said this many times now: 'racism is caused by laziness, not hatred'. Is it racist to want to be with someone like yourself, to not have to try quite as hard to understand someone or explain yourself or en-un-ci-ate everything correctly? Is it racist to feel fully understood when you talk? No it isn't. (I was wrong.) However the feeling is so close, this rejection of 'where you are' over 'where you come from', that people are embarrassed when they express this desire for normalcy.
Sanket is the complete opposite. I'm still working out what that means.

I have had the opportunity to speak about my religious beliefs on two occasions in India and they have always been accepted well. I normally start of with an explanation of Bruce Lee's theories on martial arts: "I do not belive that there is such thing as like chinese way of fighting or japanese way of fighting ... because unless human being have three arms and four legs we will have a different form of fighting". (this goes down particularly well in a county with hindu as the main religion, I once counted 18 arms 18 legs and 10 heads on a statue of Ganesh, I think that even Bruce Lee would have difficulty fighting him!)
And so I explain how with all the different styles of martial arts from tai chi to boxing the objective is to overcome your opponent. I then move on to say how in every religion on earth is dominated by the same essential messages that repeat themselves over and over again.
For example the Native Americans have a phrase that when translated says: 'behave with your neighbour like you want them to behave with you'. It is messages like this, the genuinely good goals that religions pursue (there are some aspects of Satanism that are admirable too), that makes me an omni-theist.
Whether or not you believe in God, it is undeniable that if you cut faith out of your life you miss out on something that is essential to the human experience. (Whether or not humans have been made by God or vice versa)

Religious zealots strike me as a group of people who have decided to buy a car. They have all agreed on the make, the model, and the extras but they can’t decide on the colour.
So they kill each other.
It is for this reason that I stay away from any form of organisation in religion.

I had a very strange experience last night. Halfway through the night I came to some sort of realisation concerning the ideas I had just expressed above. I had turned over because I was going to wake Sanket up and tell him.
Sanket woke up, grabbed my hand and in a Highest British accent I'’ve ever heard said:
'Yes; yes of course she could just, come in here and, steal anything!'
His eyes were staring straight at me and he was wide awake. He then said two sentences in Hindu (as if he was in conversation) to the end of the bed and fell back to sleep in an instant.
I remember seeing white robes at the end of the bed.
Even though I had spent most of the last three days travelling I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night.
I think that I had been 'told' something that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone else. I have believed for the last four years that you have to have a very poor memory to understand the meaning of life. I will, given time, explain on this website why I believe that this is true.

It turns out that Sanket, the consummate atheist, thought he had seen a burglar.

Nothing was missing.

Forward to August 27, 2006