Edd's Travels: Solapur, India

"Y'all act like you never seen a white person before

Jaws all on the floor

Like Pam and Tommy just burst in the door..."

These are the opening lyrics to "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem, and they have been on my mind in Solapur. I've never been stared at so much in my life. Children go wide-eyed and point me out excitedly to their parents. Before too long I'll have learned how to say 'look mummy, an unclean paleface' in colloquial Marathi. Quite often the bolder teenage boys will yell out to me across the street. But in fairness nobody has said anything rude yet. At least not in English.

I had never heard of Solapur before coming here. It's a fairly nondescript place. I just wanted to get off the train somewhere a bit less crowded and less polluted. Mumbai and Pune are big cities but Solapur barely registers, its population only about that of Liverpool and Sheffield combined.

It's ironic that being in non-touristy places actually makes it harder to get a nice curry. Curry is what the locals eat at home: when they go out to treat themselves, they want Thai or tacos or whatever. Me coming here and looking for a nice curry is a bit like an Indian flying to London and hitting the town for a gourmet plate of beans on toast. But persistence pays off in the end.

The curries I've had so far in India have been creamier than I was expecting. Probably I'll have eaten my own body weight in ghee by the time I get home. Spice-wise everything's been OK, comparable to what you'd get in a UK curry house if you ordered something moderately adventurous. Though for all I know the waiters here have been telling their chefs to tone it down for the white guy.

And on the gastronomic / gastric theme...no, I don't have Delhi belly. I've been in India a fortnight and everything's fine, including the street food. I was prepared for the worst, of course, and so I came out here with my own stash of TP and vitamin pills and rehydration tablets. Not to mention enough Immodium to bung up a buffalo. Perhaps my digestive system has been so battle-hardened over the past two decades that it treats India like just another country. I suspect the same is true of my immune system, hence me never having had Covid. Or at least if I've had Covid then it had no effect on me.

When it comes to home cooking (ie when I'm in an apartment rather than a hotel) the food tends to be vegetarian because butcher's shops and supermarkets aren't really a thing in India. From the convenience stores I get rice, and tins of kidney beans or chickpeas; from the street vendors I get tomatoes and onions and fruit. It probably does me good to cut meat down to once a day, just like it probably does me good to cut down on drinking. Alcohol is taxed and controlled almost out of existence in India and liquor stores are thin on the ground. Indeed, Republic Day (January 26th) was a 'dry day' on which alcohol sales were banned completely! I'm surprised we let them stay in the Commonwealth. There's no danger of me emigrating here. But I'm definitely not in a hurry to leave.