Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

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‘Congratulations,’ grinned Dr Chawla as he handed me my blood test result. ‘You are having the malaria.’

‘Malaria?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He smiled again as he slouched back in his chair and scratched his crotch. ‘Wonderful.’

‘Tell me, Doctor,’ I said, wiping sweat from my eye, ‘is this the kind of malaria that goes to your brain… and then kills you?’

‘No, no, no, no,’ he said and, just before I could breathe a sigh of relief, ‘not yet.’

I tried to relax as my head slowly slid off my shoulders. Here I was in the middle of rural India, miles from anywhere while some deadly malaria strain coursed through my veins.

‘Do many people die from this around here?’

‘Yes, many!’ He smiled brightly, then flipped me over a squeaky hospital bed and whacked a needle in my bum.

It was at this moment, with my face jammed against a stained pillowcase and a prick rammed in my rear, that I wondered how I got here, why I came here and why I wasn’t at home stuffing my face with chocolate biscuits and watching erotic Spanish movies on SBS: ‘¡Me golpearon con un burro, Victor!’[i]

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