After 23 hours on a train from Delhi, I arrive in hectic Mumbai in a state of irritation. I am hot, sticky, and smelly, and have picked up an Israeli tramp-like man who decided he would tag along. Once he realises that I the hotel I’m staying in is relatively pricey, he makes a swift exit, much to the relief of the staff who have been peering at him much in the same way they might a rabies infested dog. In fairness to them, he had been living in a remote village in northern India for a year, and smelt as if he hadn't opted for washing particularly regularly in that time.
My brothers Dan and Josh, and their friend Sam, arrive in the middle of the night, which is a little surreal after ten days or so on my own and we make ourselves at home in our strange, overpriced, somewhat unfriendly lodgings. The following morning we brave the streets and wander around the local area. It isn’t central Mumbai, but is absolutely mobbed, things going on everywhere and people all over the streets battling to get places. The station is chaos with hundreds upon hundreds of people scrambling to get tickets and clamber on trains, which thoroughly puts me off actually venturing into the city itself. The experience of being inside one of the carriages does not look far off from that of cattle being relocated in boiling hot overcrowded trucks.
We find a decent enough restaurant where the food is surprisingly delightful (except Sam's, which appears to be a white cheese flavoured disaster) and head back to the hotel. We order some tea, “chai”, up on a balcony, and I sit on a low wall ready to digest our feast and enjoy the tea. It is stiflingly hot. Move to the shade, I tell myself, and cool down a bit. Once shaded, I lean against the balcony wall, and think to myself how hot it still is.
Christ, I think I might faint... but I don't faint! I'm not a fainter. Stay standing… there we go, I'm still conscious. But something's wrong, very wrong.
It takes a second or two to register.Everything is black. The blackness is so all encompassing it's as if it’s a noise. I can't see.
Panic. I can't see!
Then aloud, quite calmly: “I think I'd better go back to the room. I can't see.”
Dan helps me walk slowly back inside and puts me to bed. No doubt he is quite shocked to hear of the sudden onset of my new disability, but manages to maintain a very composed manner. Gradually my vision returns and the cloud of blackness dissipates. After a little sleep, I feel a whole lot better and my normal colouring replaces a previously (apparently) sheet white appearance. It must have been the dehydration and the severe heat, and I played fainting as a game of mind over body. An odd result by any account, but I categorically did not faint.I went blind for, well, at least a minute. Something dramatic has happened to me and now I've shown off about it.
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