Indian Belly by Michael Castle (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

On The Road Again
Another day brought about yet another train trip, unplanned as usual. A good thing to do in India, unplanned train trips. In the rickshaw to the train station we pulled out the Lonely Planet and inspected the map for India. We soon realised that the only way to go was north and the first destination north: tiger watching.
Upon arrival at the train station we looked at the confusion and chaos around us and spotted the crowd piled up around the counter. We wandered over and stood patiently at the back. More people seemed to join the throng while others left but it was hard to say because they all looked like the same moustached Indian to me. Our patience didn’t seem to be getting us any closer to the counter and we spotted a man laughing at us. I looked at him and he told us that in India you don’t wait in lines, it’s the survival of the fittest. Get your elbows in and push your way up to the front.
By this stage Hannah was looking a little ill but I decided to put it down to her drama queen antics. We had a little chat before deciding that she should try and get into the throng of moustached men and get the tickets. I mean the last time I checked the book of etiquette it said something about ladies first so I was only too happy to oblige. Hannah tapped the first man on the shoulder and flashed him a million dollar smile.
“Hello” she said.
“Hello, are you wanting to get tickets?” he asked.
“Oh yes please, it is so hard to get tickets isn’t it.” She graced them with another smile.
“Well, why don’t I get you to the front.” He pushed a few people out of the way, mumbled in Indian and pointed at the woman. This miraculously parted the sea of moustache before them. This wasn’t the way I planned it going but I could handle that.
“Did you see that Mika? They just let me right to the front!”
“See I told you, you should go and get the tickets. I knew they would let you through.”
“Mika you said that if someone had to wait ages in the line it should be me, because you had to go to the toilet.”
“Rubbish.”
Girls sometimes get things all so confused. It was about then that I made her the boss of getting tickets at train stations.
So we waited 2 hours for the train which had been due any minute. The time was well spent getting frustrated and hassled by beggar kids wanting our attention and most probably our money. We were at the first station on the train line so managed to score a seat next to each other. It was a regular train, not an overnighter sleeper, so it didn’t have facilities such as a kitchen. It did however contain a toilet. I decided not to visit that right about the time I walked onto the train and past the doorway and the putrid smell.
The first hour or so of our journey was pleasantly spent watching Kerelan jungles slowly morph into moderate urban sprawl and endless rice paddy fields. This little state of affairs didn’t last long and after about an hour the train started to fill up steadily. Things got hot and I started sweating with all the bodies piling up on top of us.
The gay couple sitting opposite weren’t really helping me feel much better. They were getting quite friendly with each other and I was tempted to tell them to ‘get a room.’ Things got worse, starting with the sweating. In order to feel better I tried to get some fresh air by moving the man’s legs off mine and then the bag which was on top of that, whilst keeping the gay couple from getting any more friendly with my ribs. This meant that I could get the guy who was sitting on the floor to move a bit, so I didn’t have to hold him up, giving me a spare arm to finally open the window. This more or less didn’t go to plan and only made me feel worse.
A few hours later, I came to the realisation that it wasn’t the sweating moustached men sitting on me which was making me feel sick but rather the sweating, feverish, shivering feeling I was experiencing. I nudged Hannah and explained to her that I felt sick. She wasn’t looking too crash hot herself. An hour later when the people had started to get off the train and I had room to wiggle, I pulled out the lonely planet and attempted to diagnose the diseases it had become apparent we were both experiencing.
I flipped open the book.
“So Hannah, how are you feeling?” I said after I shifted the bags from between us and moved the guy out of the way. All I got for reply was a wave of the hand and profuse sweating.
I decided to start with the first disease in the book. List of symptoms: Insomnia, fatigue, malaise and nausea. I was pretty sure I was feeling all of those. I didn’t know what malaise was but I was still sure that I was suffering it because I couldn’t really explain half the pains I was griped with.
“Hannah I think we have jetlag.”
She started clapping her hands and the sweat dripping off them made me glad that I was only sitting near her and not on her lap like we had almost had to do when the train was fuller.
“But I am convinced that we also have a few other diseases because that sweating isn’t listed as a symptom.” She nodded in agreement, causing the sweat from her nose to splash.
Next on the list of diseases were coughs, colds and chest infections. I looked around us and realised that the train had not in fact become less crowded but the hacking, barking, cough I was intermittently producing had given me a buffer and produced some space for the sick, white, fool tourists. I put a tick next to that one. Even though it could have been 3 different diseases, I was sure I had all 3.
Dengue fever was next on the list: a mosquito borne disease. I thought back to the day I went to the doctor in London and had £35.56 to vaccinate myself against such things as mosquito bites. I certainly didn’t remember getting any shots for this so called dengue fever. In fact I didn’t remember getting any shots of anything, seeing as the cheapest came to roughly £36.00. I had figured my mosquito repellent being 98% DEET would cure all mosquito-related problems at a fraction of the price. Yet here was dengue fever which induced high fever, severe headaches and body aches. Tick, tick and tick.
“Hannah we also have dengue fever.” She started to pay attention then.
“You haven’t taken any aspirin have you?” I continued.
She croaked out something about having had a couple.
“Well then I am quite sure you have hemorrhaging as well. It says here that aspirin will do that to you.”
I was glad that I hadn’t taken anything for the pain. Hannah at least had hemorrhaging, something I was quite sure wasn’t happening to me, although I couldn’t rule it out entirely.
Next was Hepatitis A: yellow skin and eyes, nausea and lethargy; infects the liver. Over the last year my liver had taken quite a beating and was still doing whatever it was supposed to be doing so I assumed it could take a little thing like Hepatitis A. Although in certain light, our skin was looking a little yellow.
Hepatitis B: it said you got it from sex. All the symptoms were there so I assumed I got it some other way.
Hepatitis E: transmitted through contaminated food and water. I thought back to Hannah and I sitting down in Indian restaurants and looking at the menu.
“Ok Hannah you get the one with the scribble that looks like the ocean and I will get the one which looks like grass.”
We had then pretended to read the menu carefully before explaining to the Indian, who didn’t speak English and was picking his nose, what we wanted. To avoid confusion we pointed confidently to the menu, vainly hoping we didn’t get fried duck feet or any other foods which you shouldn’t eat in India.
On receiving the food, I wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t duck feet. I was however quite certain that it was part of an animal and with my knowledge of animals, I guessed a diseased liver. I did have nausea and lethargy so I was sure that I had Hep E, and coming to think of it I probably had Hep C as well. Hep C wasn’t listed in the book but I was confident that I had it. To feel this bad it had to be something serious.
HIV: I was quite certain that I didn’t have it but to be safe I checked my ribs to see if the gay guys hadn’t given it to me. There was a rash but it wasn’t bleeding, yet. I didn’t recollect any transference of blood or fluids between us, but to be honest I couldn’t recollect much of anything by this stage. I crossed HIV off the list, for now anyway. You can’t just add diseases wily nily as that kind of behavior would most likely result in a heart attack. This brought me to the painful realisation that I was probably experiencing a heart attack. My arm was getting quite numb and I knew that was a number 1 symptom. I tossed up the idea of bringing this to Hannah’s attention but as I looked over I realised the reason my arm was numb was due to a lack of blood. Lack of blood to an arm will make it numb and right now there was a crazy girl gripping my forearm with all the feverish fervor she could muster. I crossed off heart attack and instead added to my list the vice like grip of a boa cnstrictor.

We continued down the list and I confidently came to the conclusion that we also had Influenza, Japanese B Encephalitis, Malaria, TB and Typhoid. I didn’t have diarrhea but it was such a touch and go situation. I had been living on a staple diet of anti diarrhea tablets in the vain hope that prevention was better than a cure. So I assumed I did have it but didn’t know it yet, so added Amoebic Dysentery, Giardiasis and travelers diarrhea.
Hannah seemed to be suffering all the same diseases as me. She started speaking in Spanish to the man opposite her: I assumed it was Spanish because it was hard to understand. In fact a lot of things were getting hard to understand.
The man opposite that she spoke to smelt a lot like alcohol, but I couldn’t be sure with this blocked nose. He had started giving Hannah the eye so I gave him the old red/yellow bung eye back which not only seemed to inflame my eye more from staring so hard, but inflame the whole situation. Our stop was coming up soon, I wasn’t sure how I knew that but I did, so I got up