Sometimes I write my thoughts down.

And so to my last point of call. Pune is a large, spacious, relatively modern city about 3 hours drive away from Mumbai (I’m not sure of the distance, but it’s not actually that far by crow – the time is due to heavy traffic and mountainous roads). It has an opera house, a multiplex cinema, shopping malls, 2 universities (well, a uni and a poly), a well-equipped teaching hospital (where I’m working) – yet remains very much Indian.

Caroline has pretty deep roots in India – her father was posted here with the army, and he became lifelong friends with an Indian comrade. It was largely down to these sorts of contacts that Southampton’s Indian research connections began in the first place. Anyway, on the evening of our arrival (last night) Caroline took me to have dinner with her father’s army friend, Col. Mohite. He is a fantastic character. He has just the manner of an old English gent – stubbornly old-fashioned and selectively deaf, but with a twinkle in the eye, a glass of scotch in the hand and many a story to tell. He even has the accent – kinda like the Major in Fawlty Towers – but he is Indian, and so also has a light-hearted disrespect for the British and their gardens and churches. His living room is decorated with all sorts of memorabilia, old books, photos, tiger skins and heads (I never realised how skilled an art taxidermy was – apparently they build wooden frames and sculpt incredibly accurate models around them to dress with the skin). When I happened to mention that I was from Malvern, and asked if he had heard of it ("they make water, you know..."), he replied "Well, it’s funny you should mention that..." and launched into a convoluted shaggy-dog tale about how he once ended up in Malvern staying with a friend-of-a-friend who worked at the College, ("but the day before I was due to leave, I met his daughters, so I ended up staying a little longer..."), and someone else from there (or possibly the same person) who later became a director of Rolls-Royce, or something… anyway, you get the picture.

Just as many of my Southampton colleagues and predecessors had visited India at one time or another and met all the people that I’ve been meeting, many of them also got taken to meet Col. Mohite too. I don’t think I’d fully appreciated what a long-standing tradition I’m following in by being sent over here. It’s like a big international family.