Writing about Brick Lane, in a hill station in the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu

James Joyce wrote Ulysses in Paris, Trieste and Zurich: that’s where he went wrong. Thus has relocated to Ooty, Tamil Nadu, 8500 feet up in the Western Ghats to write the definitive work on robot shops, the tribes of Bethnal Green and anything else that fills up the page. In the spirit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I briefly acquired a large yellow motorbike, but the combination of 270 degree hairpin bends, cows, goats, trucks, buses and the truly Zen nature of road etiquette out here led me to return the hog almost before I got the stabilisers off. Is this as a sign of wisdom finally asserting itself in my third age, a surrender to weakness and timidity or a little of both? Actually, neither. I certainly gave as good as I got, scattering tribesmen as I careered round the mountains only barely in control of my Apache and my bowels, but I decided that little old men on motorbikes evoke the image of Dennis Hopper from the Blue Velvet rather than Easy Rider period after an excited group of industrial tourists Utar Pradesh requested permission to take it in turns to be photographed with the ‘old... More