The Road East to India by Devika A. Rosamund

Author:Devika A. Rosamund
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2016-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

Tuesday, 4th May 1976

Finally I got back to the hotel last night, longing for a good night’s sleep but it was not to be! In the Paragon Hotel there were many low beds with mattresses squashed together in one room. I looked at the mattress I had been allocated and saw that there were what looked like bed-bug eggs on the bed. (I have seen them before!) I decided to take another bed in the room and I lay down on it but it was really hot and I couldn’t sleep. The manager then came up to me and told me I was sleeping in somebody else’s bed, so I told him there were bed bugs in my bed and I refused to move. He made some excuse that they could not get new mattresses. Then he whispered, “You can come and sleep with me in my bed if you like – I have clean mattress.” Typical – he knew I was alone!

I slept on my bed in the Paragon for an hour and then I woke up and felt myself being bitten by bed-bugs, and I saw some live ones crawling on the bed − they are small, round, flat, red, beetle-like creatures – awful! I went and lay on the floor in between the beds although I was squashed like a sardine. I imagined that all the bugs were coming down at me from all the beds around about, and they probably were because they often live in the wood of the furniture and can smell you. In my frustration I got up and went outside in the courtyard – it was about one o’clock in the morning – where people were still sitting chatting. I found a high metal counter in the corridor where I lay my sleeping bag and climbed up. I had been going to sleep on the ground but somebody pointed out the ‘shrews’ as they called them. They looked more like rats scuttling about to me. I spent a more restful, but hot night on that counter.

Before I went to sleep I saw a little man moving about. In the morning I was told by somebody that he usually slept up on that counter – that was his bed! He was one of the workers or managers in the hotel – but he never told me to get down so I stayed up there.

I have heard that in Calcutta there are religious people who pay passers-by to sleep on mattresses in the open air for the night – mattresses full of bed-bugs! They do it to feed the bed-bugs as a religious act of charity! In Hinduism all living creatures have souls. (I also believe that – but I would not give my body to feed bed-bugs!) There are also temples in India where rats are fed, and other temples where monkeys are fed.

When I woke up this morning I met a girl called Harriet who is also staying at the same hotel, and we went to eat breakfast together at a cafe down the road – rice, chapattis and curry.

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