I began teaching today. My students turned up at 2pm and require regular tea breaks, so this is probably the most comfortable job I ever had.

So I’m planning to spend a little recreation time while I’m here. “What shall I do? Ah! The internet. The internet will know!”, I thought (utilising the popular philosophical acronym, WWTID?). Imagine my surprise as I discovered that most tourist attractions, shops and services in an Indian old town do not have websites. Where do people get this sort of information from around here? The mouths of friends? Walking around and looking at things? Where!?.

I was about to abandon my bourgeoise western ways and try out one of these crazy suggestions, when I discovered reassuring proof that I should not leave the safety of computer screen (where I risk, at worst, exposure to pictures of naked people or accidentally joining a terrrrist cell). A final brief Google search (“Ahmedabad tailor”) to find a starting point for my street wandering reveals the following sage shopping advice:

…Last night, Abdul Razak, 60, a tailor in Ahmedabad, limped in to the musafirkhana. His legs suffered acid burns during a mob attack on the slum where he …

…A 35-year-old man, reportedly a tailor, was found with his throat slit near the …

I mean, I don’t really need step out into this beautiful and exotic city I travelled eight-thousand miles to visit. What I need is not to be limping into a hotel with acid burns. I need to stay away from tailors. Those guys are bad news.

Perhaps I can build a protective army of tea-saturated students. But I have go into town to buy my Authority-Beard! What a bind!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 15:06 and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.