Deathwish 3 - the musical

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The conductor kindly made sure I got off the train at Nawalgarh Station at 6:30AM, in the morning desert chill. I got an auto to the hotel, which turned out to actually be a guest house - there are no staff except the owner and his wife, and guests are expected to fit in to the daily life of the family (there are 3 children too). Rajesh and his wife had woken especially early just to greet me, which was the first sign that there was a level of personal service available here. I had some chai in the outside, covered family area and later chatted with a Canadian couple who run a business importing Indian goods to Vancouver.

It seemed as though trade was light, as the 3 of us were the only guests, whereas Rajesh said that normally they would be full at this time of year. Maybe the bombings put people off. I was able to have the pick of the rooms, all of which were airy, clean, and with Rajasthani decor. Mine has a Western loo, though with no seat. The whole guest house is actually like a haveli, and more and more of it is being painted accordingly. I quickly fell asleep, as I'd only grabbed an hour or two on the train.

On waking at lunchtime and grabbing a shower, I felt considerably refreshed and went down to the common area, where Mrs Rajesh cooked up some parathas. I then wandered into town to find an Internet cafe. Attention from the inhabitants was quite different to Delhi. I got a lot of "Hello"s, the first appearances of the infamous "One pen", a "Hello nigger" (I don't know where to start in critiquing that attempted insult), and a "Hello monkey" (fair enough). The Internet cafe set a new low standard - twice the price of Delhi, the connection effected via a mobile phone with speed to match, and a power cut mid-afternoon. I decided that further Internet action in this town would be too frustrating, so swore off e-mail/blogging for a couple of days.

The town is small, with only about 70,000 people. The infrastructure is fairly basic, with the roads barely tarmaced and scheduled powercuts taking place every morning for 2 or 3 hours. Its claim to fame is the presence of a number of havelis, old merchant houses covered in paintings inside and out, some of which are in the process of being restored to their original (100 year old) glory.

After returning to the guest house for a siesta, I handed in my trousers for a much-needed wash. After dinner, the whole family plus me sat and watched a Bollywood extravaganza. The sound effects were straight out of Batman - no punch could be thrown without an accompanying loud thud, no baddie could die without a "Game Over" jingle. Random set-pieces of singing and dancing punctuated the action. And in one of the commercial breaks it said that the movie was based on "Deathwish 3". I only saw the first one in the series, so I'm loth to comment on that.

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