Ok another reason for loving India. This a really big, really profound one, transcending the normal, the cultural, even the spiritual. This is a big one.

Since we’ve been here Spurs have played two matches. And won them both. By the same score. 4-1. Big wins. Dominating performances. Great results against at very least ‘stubborn’ teams (and please, find me a team that isn’t ‘stubborn’, other perhaps poorly Swansea). In the same period Arsenal have played bottom 4 teams and just about managed dull wins. Have you noticed that Arsenal seem to play all the bottom 6 teams 3 times each and the top teams hardly ever? That’s surely not fair.

Anyway, I think this is some form of Karma. That great Indian way of looking at life. That the Gods will redress imbalances, punish past evils, reward all good deeds. In which case, really, Arsenal should have lost at least one of those matches. But heh, even Gods fuck up.

So now we need to extend that vibe until Wednesday. When we play Chelsea at the Lane. I’ll still be in India, continuing my good work here for the good of my team (? I never said I understood karma, just don’t knock things when they seem to be working). When we played them at the end of last season it was more karate, more kung fu, other eastern things. But karma is stronger. In its own quiet way.

When you venture out into ‘real’ India, which even hardened western tourists like us are forced to do on occasions, the first thing you notice is: ‘the world is your toilet’. I think there are less rules about where you can take a pee than there are about traffic control. And there are absolutely no rules for that. And despite Hindu protestations of the value of women (3 goats and a pashmina) and egalitarianism, in terms of pissing its always a patriarchal world. Men are just better at it. Far more versatile. We don’t need a flat patch of land behind a bush. We just need… well, anywhere. But there is one social protocol that’s quite rigidly adhered to: when you need a pee; FIND A WALL. Anywhere there are walls there are men, stopping their cars, getting off their bikes, leaving their donkeys, to piss against them. Maybe its a religious thing. Its rude to pass a wall and not piss against it; I don’t know. Just makes it a bit more ‘third world’, a bit more ‘like they writ on the tin’.

Next time we’ll venture into the world of spitting. India are in the Premiership of all forms of expelling fluids from the body. But next time. Getting a big gross.

Happy Monday

A xxxx