Tuk-Tuk for Two

by Adam Fletcher

We’d also not discussed how much better—although stickier—the world would be if it were made of pineapple lassi.

she said, with the authority of a chimp in ER scrubs.

I was here. Not that other guy. I was everyone’s friend. Their ally. BUT NOT SOMEONE TO CROSS!

haggling is fun. And I’m good at it. I could sell Eskimos to snow.” “Do you mean snow to Eskimos?” “Too easy.”

I pointed in the direction a crow would fly—assuming it had a sense of direction as finely calibrated as mine—to

You freeze, one foot in the air.” “I know exactly what you mean.” “That moment. That specific moment. That’s how I feel at all times.”

It seemed odd to me that someone who hated dependence in one direction seemed to cultivate it in the other.

as if it were an award she didn’t feel she’d earned but would accept.

My girlfriend just passed her driver’s test, and to say it shows is like saying the Blue Man Group shows.”

Her unkempt thicket of shoulder-length hair gave Evelyn’s a run for its money. Only hers was as dark as a joke where everybody dies at the end.

they looked like flashmob rainbows.

I don’t need a man. I don’t need to get married. I don’t even like tea.” “Who doesn’t like tea?” “I like whisky. And driving.” “It doesn’t like you,” said Manish.

People living in slums next to brand-new-already-falling-down mansions.

a small, unimportant provincial town that went to sleep one night only to wake up conquered by the armies of the future. A war it had lost before it even knew it was fighting.

He didn’t inhabit space—he conquered it, dominated it, made it cower, lip trembling, until he left.

a face chiselled from Mount Masculinity, its edges so sharp and pronounced you could have used them to open your beer.

making that love-cloud rain reality.

two fellow Aussies wider than they were tall, all thick hunks of prime-cut man meat.

I tilted my head all the way back. Then across. Then back. Then across. I couldn’t fit all of him into my view; it was like being in the front of an IMAX cinema. And the movie was Rambo.

I think, if anything, the state should have more nannies in it. I’d love a nanny or two popping in, or Poppins in?

a few streets away, her friend was skipping a red light and crashing into the side of a taxi with enough force to knock Evelyn and me halfway across the world.

Life isn’t what happens while you make other plans—it’s what spites them.

detour to a (admittedly very scenic) dead end.

Pamir’s head sank forwards, ready for its date with the guillotine. He looked like I felt: certain, absolutely certain, that his long overdue demise had finally arrived. This was a terrible mistake, wasn’t it? Why could only Pamir and I see this?

In the distance, an asthmatic grey mutt chuckled sinisterly.

the tuk-tuk’s controls felt foreign and unfamiliar in my hands: like a second language I’d not used since school and in which the only sentence I could remember was big cow farts yoghurt fire.

I’ve already done about a football team’s worth of Hail Marys.” “Marychester United?”

If I’d hit him, it must have been more love tap than knock-out blow.

This would be a tough rule for a Brit to follow.

The point was that I was here. Where I needed to be. Going the right way. Righting wrongs.

“Mother… licker!” Evelyn shouted.

the phone still aloft like a trophy they were presenting to a cheering crowd.

It was like being pestered by a suicidal fly.

Anchuthengu Fort did its job well. That job was to scream FEAR ME at its surroundings.

There was a rare moment of shade as puffy, milky-white clouds billowed overhead.

How could so few people take over a whole country and hold it for so long?”

we passed a sign showing a dead body covered in a sheet: SLOW DOWN! 77 FATALITIES IN THREE YEARS. They might as well have hung skulls.

there are more cut-throat pirates in the seas than dignified nobles on the lands.

you can’t have everything, right? Wrong. You can have everything if you’re not hampered by morals.

running around like an angry child on a beach, knocking over other faith’s sacred sites as if they’re sandcastles.

has a secret weapon: swivel guns loaded on camels. That’s right: swivel camels.

Note: This chapter owed a large debt to two books—The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple and Inglorious Empire: what the British did to India by Shashi Tharoor. If you want a more comprehensive review of The East India Company and The British Raj, they’re the place to look.

a family of five squeezed past us on a single scooter: father in front, mother in back, surfing the exhaust, and three kids squashed between them like human jam. Helmets worn? None.

Being in the open air meant we had a breeze but were inhaling everything

It was easy to find romance in these roadside dreamscapes. To mistake poverty for innocence and confuse people who had little with those who wanted it.

Kerala is spice country: its fertile wetlands grow what its narrow canals transport. The Venice of India, they call it. It was easy to see why.

“STUCK. NOT WORKING.” “WHO’S TWERKING?”

if he weren’t so enormous and loud and shameless and muscular. He did to rooms what the East India did to empires.

“If you don’t know what you need, you need everything.”

“All fixed,” said the group’s lead magician. “Wow. Really?” It had taken the hive-mind less than five minutes. This country did both hospitality and roadside-breakdown service right.