I get a chuckle when AskOksena refers to the "HK Lawyer".

I know who he means (I won't spoil it yet).

MINI CONTEST: Who else does?

Cicerone, of course. Now, if you are really clever, you'll know why she chose her particular screen name...

Craig Wins! (prize TBD)

I will guess she chose it because it means a person who is a guide.

Am I right??? :D

Dogster-I feel honored by your kind words. Thank you.

Your narrative gift combined with your contemplative musings put you at the top of us humble Fodors posters. I can assure you that your audience is huge. There are many more lurkers than posters. Fret not, your adoring public awaits.

Not to mention that your lack of self-consciousness is an essential element of your stories. Dogster rushes in where wise men fear to tred.

When I'm posting in real time on a trip, I just report what springs quickly to mind. After I return, I add whatever passes for thought to the thread.

Dogster says: "Yup, I want more than ten readers thursday; of course - just like all of us. In my previous life the phrase 'total world domination' was not an unreasonable goal."

Ah! Perhaps dogster's real agenda with this report is to have the thread with the most responses. He's competing against Eks and her 364 responses to her year-long trip report (the report is a year-long, not the trip) and the mythical Lynn and her Thailand trip report that chalked up over 600 responses, most of which said "send me a copy of your trip report" and gave no email address!

Keep it coming!

Mr. Dogster has left us enough clues to feed to Mr. Google to understand what he means...

Yes, he often leaves bread crumbs that lead to Google - Ms./Mr. Google, perhaps.

Spiritual adviser? Ha! ...Hardly (I wish)

Sounds like you got it sorted.....knew you would.
We've got everything floating around inside - just got to get it to come to the surface. When your feelings pour out through your words like they just did, just can't get the smile off my face.

A little somethin' for your road trip.....

"Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been"

"Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It's the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here's a happy one for you."

Happy trails my friend.

And as I lay on the divan last night watching a repeat on SBS of a travel show on Delhi , which I might add was very good , and wished I was back there in a trishaw up popped this to keep me happy .

I lurk , I post ( occasionally ) therefore I am .

Thankyou Dogster - from Melbourne . And as for the clues to past lives and the state of your head , crotch and stomach - please bait me a little more .

Well, I'm a lucky Dog.

Here's some 'Thank You.'

I only have time to post then run out to my eunuchs.

I’m a slut for shaving. – but things can very easily get out of hand.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Plastic surgery,’ I said, running my fingers down the stubble on my cheek.

‘Ahhh, come with me.’

Just a few yards away from the new concrete public urinals in New Market is a pod of hairdressers. Each lives in a cupboard. I chose the oldest and ugliest on the assumption that he might know what he was doing. He did. The shave was good – well, kinda. New blade, all the Jillet Fome [sic] I needed, he was an expert. Trouble is, he wouldn’t stop.

As part of Indian shaving, whenever you get too frisky, you get a blast in the face from a water spray. Blinded. Before I knew it Dog was slapped with a face full of cream. Face bleaching cream. I was dutifully bleached. Sprayed and blinded again. The bleaching cream crept into each eye. He did an eye massage. Round and round the eye-bulbs went those gnarled fingers, round and round and round – then they crept up to my eyebrows.

With no warning he cut them off. Snip, snip – no eyebrows.

While he had the scissors out he cut my hair. Did want a haircut? No – but he blind-sided me. I was squirted into submission. I kept my knees crossed – I could tell he was on a mission. Dog’s scraggy pubes were under threat. He was going to remove every hair from my body.

Now I look a bit like a bleached parrot.

‘Massage?’ he said brightly.

‘Sure,’ I said stupidly.

‘Full-body massage?’

I won’t bother you with the next thirty minutes. Dick the Snip vanished in a flash, leaving me alone in the chair.

‘Wha…?’

‘He’s gone off to find a room.’

By now most of New Market is staring at the bleached blind parrot in the barber’s chair. All of this is happening in front of a passing parade of shoppers. Time goes by. Dick Snip returns, flushed but happy.

‘Come, come…’

So off we go, threading out way through flooding from a burst water main, past Biblical scenes of urban poverty. There’s a greasy fat man with eyebrow piercings; a red T shirt with diamante stars and a leer bigger than Kolkata.

‘MMMMMasssage, eh?’

‘Yup,’ I said blithely and looked over at Dick Snip, ‘just a massage.’

Dick Snip was not the kind of man one would willingly want to prod in a guest-house deep down an alley in Kolkata. He was sixty and fat, smelled faintly of lard. All I cared about was his magic fingers and the pain in my leg I’d been putting up with for days. There is no subtext, I can assure you – we haven’t reached that point of desperation just yet. Kill me when I do.

The diamante queen believed me. One look at Dick Snip and he knew.

He climbed the stairs ahead of me, swaying his fat arse luridly as he talked over his shoulder. Now I know what the Black Hole of Kolkata looks like.

‘You give me bakshish, later,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, staring at the ascending bum. Dick Snip was bringing up the rear.
It was a Dogster sandwich on the stairs.

Another lengthy drama as the room was acquired. I stayed sanguine as a battle in Hindi roared around me. You don’t need to know. Luckily my masseur was so ugly, prurient alarm was soon dismissed. With a flounce and a final glint of his diamante T-shirt the pierced poove closed the door. But not before he ran over and kissed me.

‘You – me,’ he simpered. ‘Bakshe-e-e-esh.’

‘You’re so beautiful,’ I lied, ‘but I’m old. My dick has fallen off.’

He pulled a face.

‘We’ll see-e-e-e-e-e,’ he said.

He didn’t.

Mr. Snip and I were alone in the room. Eight dollars a day gets you a perfectly clean, acceptable backpacker room. I didn’t notice any rats, cockroaches or stains on the sheets. It was Dick Snip, me and television set.

I don’t think Dick had ever seen a television before. He knelt on the bed, half-heartedly squeezing me into custard while he watched the cricket. His massage skills were zero. In fact, it was such a terrible massage, in such strange conditions, that I let it continue, entirely so I could tell this story. I’d come this far, I thought – why not just submit. Not that I had much choice.

‘He’s out!’

Who know who was playing who – but every wicket that fell was agony. Snip’s fingers would freeze, then dig in to what was left of my leg with a passion that only an Indian cricket fanatic could understand.

Then he discovered the miracle of the remote control. One skinny arm was massaged for at least a hundred years as with one hand he explored all 400 cable television channels and with the other squeezed my arm. There was no oil, of course. He rubbed the skin off.

Yes, I could have said, ‘hey, pal…’ but I didn’t, only stopping the show when blood started to drip out of my eyes. He may have looked at me a couple of times during the two hours but I doubt it. I understand. Dog splayed out in his Calvin Kleins is not a pretty sight.

It was hot, he was sweating. He scratched his soggy arm pit enthusiastically then put his hand back on my leg. Mmmm – a sweat massage. Mmmmm - juicy.

Drip, drip goes Dick Snip, drip, drip – on Dog.

He rolled me over and did something lethal to my back.

‘Argh-h-h-h! Stop!’

‘O.K.’ he said, then did it again.

Massage, for Dick Snip, was squeezing. He squeezed me.

He squeezed me up and he squeezed me down, then he squeezed my head. I could feel my eyes popping out. He poked them back in their sockets.

Then he tried to tear off my toes.

Click, click, click went my toes.

‘Ow, ow, ow,’ went their owner.

They stayed attached – but they’re much longer now. Like my fingers.

‘Clean-bowled!’ cried the announcer on the television.

‘Yeee-owch!’ cried the Dog on the bed.

Two fists crunched into my back. He was trying to snap my spinal chord.

All this time he’s staring at the television, savagely squeezing me sideways. Eventually there was only one thing left to squeeze.

‘Mmm?’ he grunted, pointing at the empty space where my willy used to be.

Horrible.

‘Finish now,’ I said brightly and leapt to my feet, ‘finish now, very good! I paid him and left.

I passed a diamente stomach, poking up in the air like a vast red balloon. Its owner was fast asleep on the couch, snorting and heaving in his dreams like the mud pools of Rotorua. Dick Snip skipped gaily off through the Market, the richest man in Kolkata. I hobbled a few hundred yards then sat, squeezed out, on a step.

In three or four days I’ll be able to walk again. I’ve been admiring my new toes.

A long- toe bleached parrot indeed - don't see many of them around here.

I feel privileged - after MaryW - to be the second person in the world to read the latest missive .

Just wait til the sun rises in the USA and the regulars get to read this over their coffee and waffles !Luckily it is late in Melbourne and I ate some hours ago .

And how was the Victoria monument ?

The image I got reading Dogsters last post was hysterical. A canine version of a bleached blind parrot. Sort of a mangled Griffin. Of course, he's leaning slightly to one side as he stumbles forward, ever forward.

On another note, Dogster's past incarnations are his to keep or share. It's the current iteration that delights.

Yup, JohnF, we get first bite of the cherry!

And oh, it was good. A slightly over-ripe but exceptionally juicy morsel, we can but implore for more.

Whoever heard of eating just one cherry?

Sounds like a masochistic parrot.

I should warn anyone wanting a massage in India: a) most, if not all of the street masseuses, have no professional training (I'm not including the upscale spas here), and b) they believe pain = good quality service.

You have to set the ground rules before they begin the massage that they have to go easy on you otherwise you will leave and not pay them.