dogster

This shouldn’t be read as a review, more reportage. It’s as factual or as fictional as you care to make it. This is a partial record of what happened on one disastrous cruise to a blithely unsuspecting group of perfectly nice people. For the bits I missed I’ll refer to a blog written on the company website by the Operations Manager for the parent company, also traveling on the ship.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that I manage to get from beginning to end without mentioning the name of the ship or the company. This isn’t revenge writing. This was a once-in-a-lifetime set of circumstances that, please God, will never happen again, to you or anybody else – and most certainly not to me. I’ll not do this cruise again.

There were multiple lessons for the old mongrel on this cruise; the first and most important of which was: never take a freebie. It was offered, he took it - no strings attached. The how and the why doesn’t matter right now. For the purposes of book-keeping, while on the boat he was ‘a journalist’. He wasn’t of course, but everybody could understand that concept.

The freebie only covered the cruise: Dogster paid for everything <i>off</i> the boat; pre and post-cruise accommodation, shore excursions, meals and internal flights. By the time it all panned out, the trip ended up costing him about 50% of what it cost the full-fare paying punters.

So here’s 50% of a trip report.

My fellow passengers were wonderful, cultured, charming human beings. The clients I describe are pure fiction - any resemblance in this report to anybody who has ever sailed up the Ganges, alive or nearly dead, is purely accidental, co-incidental and the by-product of a diseased mind.

dogster

THE NOBLE CALEDONIANS


<i>Caledonia</i> is the Latin name given by the Romans to the land above the Antonine Wall, north of their troublesome province of Britannia - some pedants call it Scotland. These days the word has fallen into disuse, living on only though a brand name - <i>‘Noble Caledonia’</i> - a U.K. based travel group specializing in river cruises.

It’s a very reputable company, which is why sixteen of the twenty-five passengers sailing the Ganges in November 2009 booked through them. These Noble Caledonians were a pretty elderly bunch; two in their mid-eighties, most in their seventies; the youngest a well-preserved sixty-five; six men and ten women with a total age of around one thousand, two hundred and fifty years. By now these people were an endangered species - there’s something about river-cruising that brings them out en masse.

The trip was a beautiful no-brainer: get on the plane at Heathrow, get off in Kolkata; be met and fussed over, transferred to the ship and check-in. All they had to do was unpack then sit on the upper deck, drinking gin and tonic while cruising along the Ganges - fourteen stress-free days later pack up, disembark in Varanasi, fly to Delhi then home.

It’s a shame it didn’t quite turn out that way.

Six couples, a mother, daughter and three singles arrived at Heathrow and checked in separately. By Delhi they were on nodding acquaintance - by Kolkata the group had welded into an exhausted cluster.

dogster

At a Kolkata restaurant called <i>Aaheli</i> the gourmets queue for hours, hoping for a table and a glimpse of the food - it’s that good. Lucky Caledonians – it was the scene for tonight’s first group dinner. Along one wall the top table was set for sixteen.

Six husbands sat mute, broad British backs to the room, staring intently at the wall. Six wives chatted away, daintily ordering their Special Thali. All of them were trying to pretend they knew what a thali was.

‘Not too spicy, whatever it is!’

‘No peppers!’

‘Not hot!’

One sweet old dear pulled the waiter aside.

‘My husband and I can’t eat any spices at all.’

<i>Aaheli’s</i> were way ahead of the game. They served their bestest, blandest Bengali; curries for Caledonia with no curry; a tasteless tourist Thali with all the papp and none of the dum.

‘Lovely!’ everybody chorused when asked, ‘very nice.’

Of course, they didn’t like it at all.

‘Rabbit food,’ one husband sniffed in a rare display of raw emotion.

dogster

The men were almost entirely mute in public, only speaking when spoken to. They’d settled into docile acquiescence, borne of long experience. Not one of them wanted to be here. Most of their wives were silent too; good, kind people but quiet, restrained - Dogster found it all a little bit dull. Secretly, I think they found themselves a little bit dull, too.

These were the meek waiting for their inheritance. I have it on good authority they are due some considerable real estate, but in this floating world the mild become heir to nothing but the crappy end of the cruise stick. They were all in the grip of forces greater than themselves: the women were bonding.

Run for cover.

Each one of them was vying for the Alpha-Gorgon spot.

kuranosuke

aloha dogster, was wondering where you were. glad to see your tales again.

dogster

Nine other clients arrived separately in dribs and drabs during the day; two couples, two singles from Australia, a German duo and a solitary American. Dinner at <i>Aaheli</i> was the first time they had seen the other passengers. More to the point, it was the first time the other passengers had seen <i>them</i>.

The Noble Caledonians firmly believed that everybody else on board was crashing their exclusive party; the arrival of every non-C cruiser was cause for animated discussion, instant irritation. With each new face the whispering chorus of disapproval grew - and the more the Caledonians criticized, they more they bonded.

After all, if they were going to have an <i>‘us’</i>, they needed to create a <i>‘them’</i>. Fortunately, when you’re a Brit of this ilk nearly everybody on earth is a <i>‘them’</i> so there are lots of options to choose from.

The Germans sat on their own at a table for two. A youthful, bright-eyed psychologist and his intelligent, cultured wife looked around at the group, wondering what they’d done to deserve this. Of course, they’d been instantly ex-communicated. Don’t even mention the war.

dogster

‘L-l-l-lesbians,’ one sniffed.

Two kind ladies from Melbourne were unaware the blow-torch was upon them.

‘Alien l-l-l-lesbians’ she repeated.

‘Sh-h-h-h! Mother!’

The oldest woman at the table couldn’t give a monkey’s toss whether the alien lesbians heard her. Perhaps she said <i>‘Austr - alien’</i> - it’s impossible to know, her vocal pyrotechnics were so belabored. It was rather like having Lady Bracknell to dinner.

Lesbians, as we know, don’t really exist. Women? Can’t be possible. How? This old dame was smarter than that – she’d been around. It was only a pity the girls weren’t black as well – they could’ve scored the pariah trifecta.

dogster

Neil and Sue ran a restaurant. They were genuine, good people, salt of the earth from Oz. She was grumpy at dinner, kept rubbing her eye.

‘I’m getting a stye, look.’

She proffered her eye for inspection. Yes, she was. It started when she wiped her eye in the street yesterday – by today it was infected.

‘It’s throbbing, now. It’s getting worse.’

She put her sunglasses back on.

‘You know what it’s like with these things, you think everybody is looking at you...’

It wasn’t just paranoia, she was right. Tsk tsk tsk.

The Australian couples dined together. They had sensibly pre-ex-communicated themselves to save time.

dogster

It was time for Dogster’s fall from grace. Six gimlet-eyed matrons looked up as he made his grand entrance. M’lady squinted and reached for her glasses.

‘Who is <i>that</i> man?’

That man was scanned for defects; hit with a full body ultrasound as he walked in the door. His teeth rattled. This was better than surgery.

‘Is this <i>another</i> one?’ someone hissed.

‘He’s the journalist.’

‘Oh dear…’

‘Is he one of us?’

Dog sincerely hoped he wasn’t.

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ tsk’d one.

‘Oh-h-h-h…’ oh-h-h-h’d another.

A third just sighed and rolled her eyes.

The mongrel failed muster. He was scanned, judged and found wanting in less time than it took to kill a cat. Damned and ex-communicated before he’d even sat down, the poor mutt was herded off to sit with the other single men – both, alarmingly, called Joe.

One was American, but despite the war, he’d been ex-communicated too. It didn’t take long to work out why. The other Joe was not just ex-communicated; he was already in the running for cruise pariah.

dogster

Pariah Joe was sixty-eight but looked a great deal older; he was a man who’d lived on his own for far too long. A mountain with unkempt white hair and a crumpled shirt stared at me, little-boy eyes swimming in thick-rimmed spectacles, a child peering cheerfully from an old man’s face. He was so completely without guile, so utterly naïve I rather liked him.

‘Bought these for twenty bucks in China,’ he said proudly, peering through the bottle-top lenses, ‘I’ve been a-a-all around the world. I got these in Bei-i-i-jing!’

Joe was an innocent abroad – but he was traveling with a different agenda.

He coughed, a lava-filled death hack that cut through the restaurant like a chain saw. I looked over his shoulder at the table full of Caledonians behind him. Tsk tsk tsk. They really didn’t like that cough.

‘Where are you from, Joe?’

<i>‘Straya-a-a-a!’</i> he cried, ‘greatest country in the world.’

Aussie Joe told me everything in that single nasal bray. He had a very moist mouth and big lips. He liked to talk but tended to spray.

dogster

Yankee Joe barely talked at all. He was a short, nuggetty man’s man with a broad Noo Yoick accent, a no-crap kinda guy with too much dough and no friends. His wife was two years dead. He looked much younger but was seventy, an ex-surgeon who, like many of his breed, had developed the ego of a diva. Like all sawbone superstars, he had the compassion of Stalin.

Even getting these few details was a struggle. He sat at the table, resisting any effort at small talk. He resisted big talk as well. As a matter of fact, he resisted any kind of communication. It was very, very odd. Most people make an effort when sitting round a table with strangers. Not Joe. He just sat and drank and when the food came, ate. He appeared to have no social skills. Of course, he did – Joe just couldn’t be arsed using them. He’d ex-communicated everybody long ago.

He only blossomed when he saw a beautiful woman. Then his face softened, he smiled and laughed, suddenly witty and magnetic, the very soul of masculine charm. Joe was an unabashed admirer of the female form - some might say a bit of a lecher. His period of mourning appeared to be over.

dogster

<i>Brru-u-u-urppp.</i>

Aussie Joe belched.

Gorgon eyes flashed at the Top Table.

I could sense a ‘tsk tsk tsk’ coming up very soon.

The German couple looked over and smiled.

‘Ooops, ‘scuse my French,’ he said, ‘all this Indian tucker, I’m getting bloated…’

Joe ate everything. Food was food. He just ate it. <i>Brru-u-u-urp.</i> Like those terrible glasses in their thick black frame - he just wore them, prescription or not. His complete lack of sophistication was quite startling to anybody but a fellow Australian, his world view that of a curious, elderly child. Behind those rims and the blather was a kind, good-hearted man from the outer suburbs of Canberra.

Poor Joe. He was too easy a target. He’s already been ex-communicated once, just for being Australian. He was doubly damned because he was eccentric, triply condemned because of that terrible cough - now the belch! In public! Truly, he was going to hell.

dogster

Across the way, the Ganga Gorgons appraised the Pariah Table.

<i>‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’</i> tsk’d one.

I knew it’d come, sooner or later. These women were like a cage of rabbits.

She was a stylishly dressed widow from somewhere small in Surrey, asplash with bright colors and cash. Her arms and neck were weighed down with tastefully chunky jewellery framing a perfect mane of swept-back grey hair. In her village, I’m sure she opened the fete. Good grooming masked her black, vacant heart. She was Lady of the Dead Squire’s Manor.

M’lady had brought her best friends on the cruise with her, a small plump woman with an elderly husband. The two girlfriends were thick as thieves; both married for the money. M’lady already had it - her husband got the message and dropped dead early. Maybe she’d killed him. For women like this murder was nothing.

The girlfriend was an effusive, buxom gossip; star of the amateur theatre group. <i>‘Oh-h-h-h…’</i> she gasped theatrically. She was an actress, she claimed, but I rather had my doubts - once a luvvie, always a luvvie, I guess.

A third woman just sighed and rolled her eyes. Not a word needed to be said.

The eye-roller was a silent assassin, a simpering killer in a pastel cardigan. She has no face, just a pixilated blur. From the moment she clapped eyes on Dogster she said not one word to him nor ever looked in his direction again - she knew Dog-Satan when she saw him.

‘Oh, dear…’ said the fourth.

Another well-dressed woman looked him up and down. She was the youngest of the old; black silk and cerulean blue, more chunky jewellery but no husband, just a drinking problem instead. Her face was drawn, as if failure had gathered at the nape of her neck and squeezed. Judging by the expression on her face, one of us had farted.

The pause lengthened as they all stared at the servant’s tables, mutely disapproving, bonding as they located their prey. Every group has to have a whipping boy; everybody needs a pariah dog.

dogster

From the silence a single word cut through the air.

<i>‘Augh-stra-a-alians…’</i>

This was failure’s mother. She sat there like a cane toad at the top table, blinking her lack of concern. The old dame was eighty-six with a face like an inflated spaniel; dangle jowls, tiny eyes lost in a meringue of soft flesh bubbling out from her cheek-bones, layering down her face like drapes in a box at the theatre. In her time she’d been a formidable woman but form had long since settled into function - something had shrunk, leaving her spaniel folds exposed.

After that crowning contribution, nothing else was needed. The Queen Mother had managed to conjure up a whole sub-species just from the name of their country.

Aughful. Stra-a-ange. Alien.

Aussie Joe’s pariah status seemed sealed.

Ahhh, but they hadn’t yet met Dogster.

dogster

<i>to be continued</i>

moremiles

So happy you're back! Love the "black, vacant hearts."

Craig

<I>Good start, Dogster - lots of colorful characters - setting the tone for what I am sure will be a great tale...<I>

dogster

Thanks guys. I see we're all having a rash of italics. lol. Hi Ken, you got in super fast. Did you give hawaiiantraveler my special secret message? It's O.K. to use the tongue.

Yup Craig, all scene setting, that's why I stuck it in as a big wodge. Damn hard to keep 25 characters on the go, I might say. This is going to be a bit of a challenge; I'm trying to see if I can technically hold all the pieces together. If I fail, there'll be nobody left at the end, so I'll know.

moremiles: glad you're in for the ride. I love it when people tell me lines that resonate - otherwise I have no idea of knowing what you pick up on. I just cross my fingers and hope...

Marija

Yes! (And a mystery unfolds already. Which one of the 17 Caledonians who boarded at Heathrow didn't make it on to the boat?)

Kathie

Ah, I've been waiting for this for a long time. I'm sure it will live up to my anticipation!