Sarah MacDonald - Holy Cow!: An Indian Adventure

AN INDIAN ADVENTURE

SARAH MACDONALD

BANTAM BOOKS
LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781407084398

www.randomhouse.co.uk

HOLY COW!
A BANTAM BOOK 9780553816013

Originally published in Australia and New Zealand in 2002 by
Bantam, a division of The Random House Australia Pty Ltd
First publication in Great Britain

PRINTING HISTORY
Bantam edition published 2004

15 17 19 20 18 16

Copyright Sarah Macdonald 2002

The right of Sarah Macdonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material; should there be any omissions in this respect we apologize and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

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Preface
A Good Hand Job

Chapter One
Through the Looking Glass

Chapter Two
Death, Rebirth and Sputum

Chapter Three
Sex, Lies and Saving Face

Chapter Four
Three Weddings and a Funeral

Chapter Five
Insane in the Membrane

Chapter Six
Sikhing the Holy Hair

Chapter Seven
Indian Summer in Suburbia

Chapter Eight
Heaven in Hell

Intermission
My Wedding Season

Chapter Nine
The Big Pot Festival

Chapter Ten
Suffering My Way to Happiness

Chapter Eleven
Trading Places in the Promised Lands

Chapter Twelve
Birds of a Feather Become Extinct Together

Chapter Thirteen
Come to Mummy

Chapter Fourteen
Guru Girlfriend

Chapter Fifteen
Face to Face with God

Chapter Sixteen
Hail Mary and Goodbye God

Chapter Seventeen
War and Inner Peace

Chapter Eighteen
Land of the Gods

To my mum and dad for having me
To Jonathan for taking me
and
To India for making me.

Sarah Macdonald grew up in Sydney and studied psychology at university. Rejecting the idea of ever practising as a shrink, she travelled for a year hoping that a few months in India at the end of the journey would give her a vision of her destiny. It didnt, although a soothsayer predicted that she would return.

After completing a traineeship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sarah worked for Triple J, Australias most influential music and youth affairs radio station, as their political correspondent in Canberra. Along with some work on television productions such as Recovery, Race Around the World and Two Shot, Sarah presented Triple Js Art Show and was the voice of the Morning Show until the end of the century when she left to join her partner Jonathan Harley in India. And then the true adventure began. Sarah is now a presenter on Radio National and lives in Sydney.

Acclaim forHoly Cow!

Kathy Lette meets Tom Robbins on a slow train to Varanasi with Bill Bryson supplying the onion bhajis... Very, very funny. Sarah Macdonald captures everything that is frustrating, infuriating and exhilarating about India and presents it in an irresistible package
Peter Moore, author of Swahili for the Broken-Hearted

An extraordinary journey of self-discovery... a unique insight into the transcendental charms of India
Sunday Telegraph (Australia)

An entertaining romp through India... highly readable Isobel Losada, author of The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment

Heres A-Class redemption, pick your fix: big hair or no hair, saffron robes, hugely hung or celibate, human cacophony or silence, Koran, Torah, Gita, Granth Sahib, Zend Avesta, Bible or shopping. Macdonald pays up in the spiritual mega-market that is India. She touches on it all, and it wraps itself around her inextricably as she weaves her way, and her tale, North to South, from confusion to confession. Raunchy religion with redemption on the side
Justine Hardy, author of Bollywood Boy

Hilarious and incredible
B magazine

Click here to visit a minisite of Sarah Macdonalds photographs

www.booksattransworld.co.uk

New Delhi airport 1988

Madam, pleazzzzzzzzzze.

A high-pitched wheezy whine in my ear.

For the final time, fuuuuuuuck off.

My low growl through clenched teeth is a shamefully unoriginal, pathetic response, but its all Im capable of at two on Christmas morning. For three days my friend Nic and I have been sitting on plastic airport chairs waiting for the stifling, stinky smog to lift. For three nights Ive lain on a bed in an airport hotel listening to Nic bounce the sounds of violent double-ender projectile vomits and diarrhoea explosions off the bathroom walls.

India is Hotel California: you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Tonight, in such a lovely place, the voices down my ear corridor belong to the airport toilet cleaner. He has abandoned his post at the urinal to pursue his part-time job as a professional beggar. Shuffling in a stooped circle, he hovers around us as patient and persistent as a vulture waiting for death. He can smell our exhaustion and weakness, and we can smell him his blue overalls are stained with urine and stink of mothballs; his breath reeks of