Sobbing Frogs

On the third day on Diu, I met Grant in the caves. We talked for several hours - and was relieved when he wanted to meet up again that evening for supper. We got very very drunk. I woke up realizing I had left my door wide open sleeping naked, and my moped which I had driven home in the night had no more petrol.

I drove around the island to cool down in the wind. On the open jungle roads, I'd rest my feet on the floorboards, and when other scooters came toward me, I'd hold up a map with both hands and study it closely (still driving).

I saw a lone man stagger toward the foaming shoreline and I thought what a good image it made on the empty beach. He then threw all his plastic and paper litter into the waves, the litter flustering down onto the sand in front of his feet.

The island is ex Portugese. Dilapidated in places. The St Thomas' Church Museum had a creepy Jesus lying in a glass box. And the curators have gone through the effort of installing spotlights for all the pieces, but the pigeon shit has almost covered all the paintings.

In the evening we climbed onto the rounded roof to look out over the island. The day I left we met for lunch and stayed there under the shelter with the Monsoon around us till after dinner. He talked mostly. About ideas, architecture, environmentalism, multi-functional design, politics, concierges, and London.

I felt so totally refreshed that I talked for hours on the night sleeper bus (lying down) to two students from Ahmedabad - mostly about life in London. I realized that London might only ever be a memory and fell quiet and looked out at the stars, and the silhoetted palm trees and bushes, and the smell of mud, and listened to the wet crunch of the tyres and the sobbing frogs.