Tasha's Travels

This time last year, I was living on a beach in Goa, India. Twice I have spent January in India, a world away from the dull greyness of a cold London, recovering from the costs of the festive period. A place full of colour, music and smells, and where people live side by side with nature. Ever since I was a child I have had an obsession with the exotic nation, my grandmother who lived in Madras (Chennai) briefly as a child, used to tell me stories of tigers and cobras and describe the delicacy of the spices. She wasn’t wrong. Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book also teased me with tales of the unknown. Unlike the concrete jungle I played in, I dreamed of beaches, palm-huts and snacking on fresh fruit in the sunshine. Then one day our flight was booked, my parents and brother were to spend 3 months travelling in India from January-March 1999. This month for me marks the experience that made me who I am.
India taught me many things about life, death and the harsh reality of the wicked world.
Arriving in Mumbai was a very memorable moment for me, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before, miles upon miles of shanty town is visible in the air, a huge community living in real poverty and stench. Makeshift homes constructed by anything from corrugated iron to bin liners. I’ve never felt so lucky in my life.
Throughout my time in India I befriended street children, who the police often used to shoo away from me. I had the luxury of receiving 10 rupees a day as pocket-money, (about 14 pence) with which I could treat my friends to samosas and macaroons. In return they taught me how to pick mangoes, chase monkeys and remove head lice by hand. It’s a the haunting fact that my best friend from India 1999 (a young girl the same age as me) just messaged me on Facebook to say she has just given birth to her third child, who she raises on lentils and rice ; bought with the miniscule profits she gets from harassing wealthy tourists to buy her sarongs.