On the Raz

I’ll never forget the day when I ended up on the televised Ms India awards broadcast from India’s very own silicon valley, Bangalore. Now if I was an Indian girl you might just think this a lucky break but as I am in fact Scottish and a man, it was more like the universe flatulating.

I had flown in to the city of Chennai for the start of my first ever far flung backpack trip on a multi-stop ticket (which ended up not so multi when I ran out of money in Australia, the second stop).

Thank heaven for India then. Though in all honesty, that wasn’t my first impression. I arrived in the night (doh!) and emerged from Chennai Airport into a frankly terrifying yet completely stimulating balmy indian night, swollen with sweet odours alien to the typical Scottish nose, not to mention a temperature which I had barely experienced at high noon in summer’s peak back home. It smelled a bit like those overly fauna’d planets they would often visit in the 60’s Star Trek must have smelled, I thought.

My initial few days in India were miserable - I was isolated and having serious culture shock. That all changed though when a friendly Ozzy traveller showed me his digs, an ex-maharajah’s ex-sex palace, complete with courtyards and a palm tree decked roof terrace.

I digress. Before I left the U.K., I had contacted an agent to let her know I would be in India whereupon she promised all sorts of gig for circus performers like me. I was skeptical until lo and behold when she found that I had arrived, she cajoled somebody with the purse-strings to fly me and a few mates who were scattered round India to Bangalore to do a trapeze act for Ms India. They said yes. We said definitely !

Bangalore was a big contrast to the poverty I had seen in Chennai. We were put up in a 7-star hotel. Yep. Never come across one before or since. Sadly though, the outdoor bamboo structure above the stage where we were supposed to hang was classified unsafe. By us.

We were announced as the big international circus act. However, instead of a spectacular aerial routine, we had to shamelessly podge together a fire swinging act that very afternoon ideally more suited to a music festy or thai beach party I imagine.

However, we did do it on Ms India live telecast and survived to tell the tale which was an achievement as there were electrical sparks and fires in the bamboo lighting grid throughout pretty much the entire show. But hey, nobody minds a bit of razzle dazzle in India.