Update

Thanks All for your lovely comments on my last post. I'll go back there and respond to them properly soon.

We had an email from Em yesterday - the following is a taste of why I miss her so much:

She is writing "in the dodgyest internet cafe in the whole world, not just Uttaranchal", which apparently smells of pee and is run by a guy in a cheap suit and with slicked back hair. She says "this is hard, not because I miss you, or cos I can't think of what to write, but because the keyboard only has half the letters".

She says she is thrilled to bits with India, and has seen "so much that is "radtastic, unusual and unreal", and speaks of "the enormity of everything that's happened", none of which apparently we would believe without the benefit of visual aids (which she is arranging).

Then there's a short break for an announcement:
"****proprietor is smoking up the ganga in the phone booth. Not uncommon here****"

As for any lurking extremists: "btw - I'm not dead. My people will call your people if we get whisked into any international terrorist shenanigans ...."

She's obviously been hoeing into the local cuisine; so much so that I have been banned from cooking anything with curry, paprika, masala or pepper for the next three months at least. ("I could so go a lamb casserole right now"). And apparently she has just realised that I have a special smell that she misses. What is that I wonder? Possibly a strange cocktail of sauteed onions, fruit cake, anti-ageing moisturiser, Balenciaga's Le Dix, tea and claret. ("mmm smell mummy-ish. lol giggle!"). I shall get her to analyse it properly when she comes home. Funny how smell seems to be the most evocative of the senses. Perhaps she passed a street stall where someone was frying garlic and it reminded her of me in the kitchen. Or maybe I just pong.

There's more of course; all the lovely personal stuff and special comments for each of us. I think I've read the email fourteen or fifteen times already.

Two weeks down, two weeks to go ...