The Backpacker Read Online Free PDF

to be poor. No Indian likes India you know John. It’s a toilet. Just one, big, toilet.’ She pulled the curtain to one side and looked out, sighing.
    â€˜I thought your parents were Indian?’
    â€˜So what? I’m not. I’d prefer to go on holiday to Spain like normal people.’
    I sat down on the bed with a huff and picked up her guidebook, idly flicking through the pages. ‘Why don’t you just give it a couple of days more and then decide? It’ll be different down south.’
    She was silent, and then, apparently ignoring my statement, looked back out of the window and said, ‘There was a guy looking for you earlier today.’
    I put the book down.
    â€˜Said he’d see you later, upstairs. Told me to tell you that he leaves tomorrow for Thailand and wants to have a drink with you before he goes.’ She let the curtains fall back. ‘Maybe we should have gone to Thailand instead of this dump.’
    Suddenly forgetting our differences, I stood up and said, ‘English? Upstairs? What did he look like?’
    She shrugged. ‘Same age as you, I guess. Maybe older. Mid to late twenties, long hair. I dunno,’ she crossed the room impatiently. ‘Pretty much like all the other foreigners, he–’
    â€˜What was he wearing?’
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜Was it a tie-dye shirt with an orange circle on it?’ I said urgently.
    â€˜Might have been. How the hell should I know? What’s so important about it anyway? You’ve got a train to catch, right?’
    If I were going to tell her about the life-saving incident at the train station it would have been right there and then. But I didn’t. And, I think, looking back, that it was a measure of how far apart we had grown. As my fiancée I should have been telling her everything, opening my heart. Now, not only wasn’t I going to go home on the same flight as her, but I was already trying to think up an excuse not to go on tonight’s train. It was as though the shock of the train station incident had somehow helped to focus my life. Like thumping a TV set that has a dodgy reception and suddenly the picture clearing.
    â€˜Haven’t you?’ she prompted, breaking my train of thought.
    â€˜Indian train tickets are re-routable,’ I lied. ‘In any case, I’d rather see you off first, San.’
    FIVE
    I scanned the quiet moonlit bar and noticed the man who’d saved my life sitting in the far corner at a karom table with two others. He immediately put up his hand when he saw us and we went over.
    â€˜Hello again,’ I said, pulling out a chair. ‘Didn’t really get a chance to speak to you before. I’m John, this is Sanita.’
    â€˜Rick,’ said Rick. ‘Nice to meet you, Sanita. This is Zed, and Dudley,’ he explained, pointing to the other two.
    We sat down and I ordered beer for us all. ‘D’you know how to play this?’ I asked, picking up one of the karom pieces from the table.
    â€˜Haven’t got a clue.’ He turned a plastic disc in his fingers. ‘Basically, I think it’s like poor man’s pool: you have to flick these discs into these other discs and try to knock them into the pockets.’
    We all looked at Sanita for help.
    â€˜Don’t look at me, I’m as clueless as you.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Rick, taking a bottle of Kingfisher from the waiter, ‘that’s what I’ve been doing anyway.’
    Hippies in India all look like down-and-outs. You see them everywhere: unkempt beards, cheap silver jewellery, and reams of beads around their necks. Rick looked different: easy manner, deliberate movements, nothing jerky or nervous; I liked him instantly. His accent was from northern England, and he proved me right by giving the name of a town on the north-east coast that I’d never heard of. With his long hair and big moustache he looked like a long-distance truck driver,