If it’s January, it must be India…

You might think, after we’ve been making these January trips to India for a decade, that we would be better at it. Actually, only those who don’t know me might think that. The rest of you won’t be the least surprised to hear things didn’t quite go as planned.

It started just before Christmas. My adorable little neighbors came over to help make gingerbread houses while their parents took care of top-secret Santa stuff.

Their realistic snow statements gave my little dog an idea. Despite the fact that it was pouring down a mixture of rain and sleet, I headed outside with her. Two steps into the garden, she saw something that urgently needed investigating, and the next thing I knew one foot was sliding in front of me while the other attempted to go in the opposite direction.

Events of the next few seconds are a bit blurred, but when I took stock, I noticed my right knee was turned in a direction it had never willingly attempted before. I lay on my back in several inches of freezing mud and thought about life. On the one hand, if I never moved again, I might be okay (except for the whole freezing to death thing). On the other hand, I had two young children waiting inside, and I was pretty sure they would gleefully be adding little frosted corpses to their snowscapes in my honor.

I rolled over and attempted to get to my feet. One leg worked. The other… didn’t. I crawled inside, the dog solicitously hovering by my side to lick my face. Inside, my two young guests were in awe of the amount of mud that entered with me. I’m pretty sure next year’s gingerpersons will include a mud-caked old lady.

Although my knee was impersonating a soccer ball, nothing seemed to be broken. My doctor recommended at least three weeks of good rest. I told him about our upcoming India trip, for which my friend Jaya had spent the last few months planning every detail. My doctor then recommended drugs, the good ones. “No problem,” I said. My traveling companions have spent their working careers in the pharmaceutical and medical fields, and there is nothing they enjoy more than an excuse to shovel legal drugs into me.

I hobbled around the next day, glad at least that my India trip was several days off. That’s when I heard from the airline that my flight (which had been booked for months) was cancelled, and I would have to leave a few days early.

When you live on an island connected only via dodgy ferry service, you learn that you can’t count on timely deliveries. So we reluctantly said goodbye to our Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) plans at the Village Hall, and headed for the last boat out.

That just left two things for me to do.

1. Learn to walk with a cane.
2. Pack for India.

That’s when Jaya called to say she thought it would be a good idea to schedule some talks about our travel books. Only in places we’re already going anyway. “It will be easy,” she said. No big deal. Okay, sure. I just had to add a few things to my list.

3. Write a talk for each separate event. Write a generic talk we can use at all the events. Pick an old blog post and use that.

4. Bring books, buy new business cards, develop promos.

5. Tell Janine and Jaya to choose photos for each trip.

6. Tell Janine and Jaya that even though they have taken about 10,000 photos over the past decade we’ve been travelling India together, they are only allowed six photos for each trip.

7. Count to six for Janine and Jaya. Stay firm.

8. Tell Janine and Jaya to stop crying. When that doesn’t work, try bribes. (“Okay, okay. If you’re very good, you can each pick ONE more photo per trip.)

9. Buy a complete new trip wardrobe. Buy the essentials such as new underwear that doesn’t have holes and a new coat that doesn’t lose feathers through the rip from my Christmas Eve fall and make me look like I’m molting. Duck-tape the coat rips. Ditto for the underwear.

10. Set the alarm for the middle of the night and go to bed early so I get at least a couple hours sleep despite my revolting knee-blob.

So far so good. I had just fallen asleep, when the house exploded. At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. The dog was also very concerned. When the banging and cursing died down, I asked the Hub if he was okay. There was a short interval of panting, and then a reply. “No.”

As I pieced it together, he didn’t want to disturb my rest, so he was attempting to get ready for bed in the dark when the bathroom door viciously assaulted him. I got the light on, and wow. Heads really bleed a lot.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “If you hold the edges together, I can just superglue it together and drive you to the airport.”

I told him he was delirious and called the NHS. The very nice lady on the other end asked a lot of questions, and she and I agreed that he should go to the hospital and allow actual medical people to put his face back together. He should be prepared, she added, to spend the rest of the night there.

We looked at each other, and at my packed suitcase. There was no way he could go to a busy emergency room and make it back before I had to leave. And of course, there was the dog. He floated the superglue idea again, which both the nurse and I vetoed, while the dog looked concerned.

So yes, fellow bloggers. This is when I earned my title of the Worst Wife On The Planet. I sent a bleeding Hub in a taxi to the hospital. Alone. Then I waited a few hours, walked the dog, locked up the house, and went on an international trip.

Epilogue #1

It turned out that cane was incredibly useful.  I’ll probably never travel without it again, because every time I got in an airport line, from ticketing to security to flight boarding, a solicitous airline employee would immediately pick me out, bypass all the waiting passengers with normal-size knees, and insist I move to the front of whatever queue was going.

The Hub reported (eventually) that he had finally seen a doctor who — and I couldn’t make this up — superglued his forehead back together.

Epilogue #2

While the Hub went to bed with a three-day headache, I landed in India. Many adventures still wait to be shared, but for those who wonder why I do it, please take a look at the following comparison between upcoming forecasts for Scotland vs India.

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