I’ve always viewed life as a series of movies, in which I play the hero. The saviour. The martyr, the lead singer, the quarterback, centre forward, the hand of God, Zorro, Christ the Redeemer, Florence Nightingale, Douglas Bader, The Cheerleader, Luke Skywalker and Kermit the Frog. Bruce Lee, obviously. But this morning we entered the set of…

Apocalypse Now!!!

You see, it’s about the tropics. Though obviously ‘that’ tropic was the Vietnam one and we’re living an Indian tropic down here in southest of south India. And yet… does it matter? Tropics is tropics, right? Because they are defined by: outrageous heat and stupid levels of humidity. Tick. A jungle view out of every window. Tick. If you mowed your lawn here on a Sunday, by next Thursday everything would be 70 feet up in the air with leaves the size of buses. And noises. Animal noises which tell you you’re in the tropics. Mainly insects and birds and, quite frankly, you wouldn’t want to be hearing anything else too close by. Or anything else bigger than parrots and grasshoppers. Or slitherier.

And so, as we took a boat ride into this fantastic mangrove forest on yet another wetlandy type nature reserve right by the coast, I could hear the Flight of the Valkyries playing in my internal soundtrack. I was lovin’ the smell of napalm in the morning, and I was looking for some ‘cong’ to shoot. Because that’s the soundtrack of the tropics. Forever ruined for me by a meaningless proxy war which killed thousands of American kids, then glorified by Francis Ford Coppola in between his Godfather years and immortalised by Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando (blessed be he).

I get that view, that ‘feeling’ of moisturised heat on my body, those noises, and I’m just waiting for the ‘dmp-dmp-dmp-‘ throbbing of the helicopters, with me manning the machine gun, Mel feeding the ammunition belt and making the coffee, with a Rambo knife between her teeth, and for the battle to start.

Happy Tropical Thursday

A xxxx