Agra 23rd March

I woke up late this morning, as I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 02:30 as I stayed up to watch the Chelski v Newcastle F.A Cup game. I didn’t watch the whole game though as it was pretty boring.

I went to see the doc at 11:00 to get my dressing changed, and once again my hand was a volcano of pus, it’s getting better though and the swelling has reduced a lot. At 12:00 I went with the doc and two of his friends to an Enfield show room as one of them was buying a new motorcycle. He’s buying a brand new 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet, and it’s costing him just over 90,000 rupees, which is £1168 GBP.

We then went to his other clinic (I think it was knife wound day) where I met a man who chopped the top of his finger off (from top knuckle) and a woman who had nearly chopped the top of her thumb off. I also had the pleasure of meeting my first hermaphrodite. If you’re not sure what a hermaphrodite is, the dictionary says that a hermaphrodite is: a person or animal having both male and female sex organs or other sexual characteristics, either abnormally or (in the case of some organisms) as the natural condition.

He / she was dressed as a woman, but had a solid frame, he / she was heavily made up and had her fingers painted a dark purple from the middle knuckle up and she also had purple circles painted on the palms and wrists of her hands. There was four men in the clinic when he / she walked in and as soon as he / she left, one of them turned to me and asked me if I liked the woman. I told them that she looked interesting! It was at this point that they told me that the person was a hermaphrodite. We finished up at the clinic and the doc invited me back to his house for lunch. I forgot to mention that the doc won’t let me pay for anything. I asked him if he wanted a Pepsi today and he said yes so I went to go get it, but he sent one of his assistants. I went to give the assistant some money, but the doc wouldn’t let me give it to him. He then refused to let me pay for the tablets he gave me today, I feel really bad about this, but he says that, “you are my friend, you are my guest, it is my honour”. I’ve decided to show him some of my photo’s from the trip and get some printed for his family as a present.

We had a lovely lunch back at his house. It’s a big old house and it has a central enclosed courtyard with rooms off it and more rooms upstairs. Whilst we were having lunch downstairs in one of the rooms, a cow walked in off the street! I was sitting beside the open door and I nearly died of a heart attack when the cow stuck its head through the door right beside me. Being a sacred animal, he was welcomed into the household and the little 18-month-old kid started feeding him Indian flat bread. They let him stay for a couple of minutes and shooed him out of the courtyard. I was then introduced to doc’s older sister and husband and then had a game of ludo with one of his kids. I took some photos of the kids for them and the doc then headed back to the clinic leaving me with his family. His wife speaks good English so I talked to her for about twenty minutes and then went back to my guesthouse to download the photographs. I headed back to the clinic to get my dressing changed and puss squeezed and the hand is definitely on the mend. The doc was going to the cinema with his family and he invited me to go with them, I declined his offer though as if I hang out with them any longer they’ll probably ask me to move in.