13 Indians in Rio

To truly understand what it felt like for Neil Armstrong and his ilk to actually travel to the moon, i.e. to actually familiarise yourself with such a monumental journey, you must first travel from Mumbai to Rio de Janeiro. Granted. I take your point that Mumbai to Rio is far longer than America to the moon, but there’s a strong similarity between the two journeys and the gestation period for the birth of a human being.

The travel time between Mumbai and Rio is 42 hours. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in less time than that, and he was travelling by a ship piloted by Somalians. At the Rio airport you can spot the Mumbai passengers from the rest.
This is because in most cases he is dead. The few that still have a pulse looked like petrified zombies with their bodies at 70 degree angles, completely crestfallen and devoid of energy. The only parallel one can draw here is obviously with the Brazilian football team who, it must be said in their defence, are actually zombies.
After the 42 hour ordeal, I and my colleagues (who I can’t name, especially Rahul Bose and Dino Morea, because of a confidential agreement I may or may not have signed) were bundled onto a large bus. How could you tell we were a group of Indians in a bus in Rio? Simple. Because Indians are the only people who, after being given the privilege of an air-conditioned bus, promptly shut off the air-conditioning.
As I lay there in the bus, perspiring, I saw the light. After a few seconds I realised it was our Brazilian tour guide with a torch attached to his hat. Both the man and the torch weighed exactly the same. The man gave us a quick opening ceremony. And since 15 per cent of what he said was in English some of us almost understood. We were given three key words. Obligado, means thank you. We were told to use this word liberally, and it could mean anything. For e.g. you could say “I’d like to have the chicken please” and you’d get no response. Instead you could point at the chicken and just say “obligado” with splendid results. Of course one of us took this a little further by pointing to a pretty girl and saying “obligado”. It elicited a mixed response. To tell you who actually did this would be to render a great disservice to Milind Soman, and I for one won’t do that. No obligado...
The second important word was “eeeh yeah”. This is not to be confused with “eeee youv” which is more of a donkey’s thing. “Eeeh yeah” is said in a sing-song voice, with the eeeh always being the higher note.
I’m told that Brazilian children in order to get the right intonation are made to stretch on two slabs, the first higher than the other in order to gain the right rhythmic ability. Our group perfected it by saying the words with one foot off the floor. Of course, five-time squash national champion Ritwik Bhattacharya tried to raise both feet off the floor with disastrous consequences.
The final word to come to memory was perhaps the easiest, “llao” — of course in Portuguese you say it even slower than the Italians and that’s because Brazilians as a people have plenty of time, except of course the Brazilian football team, which keeps running out of time.
The Brazilian torch man whose name was Ryan or Iron or more likely Vyan (it’s hard to tell because the “R” is actually “H”, hence Rio is really Hio, which means here is really near, so Ryan could be Hyan or Iron could really be Vyan), told us in no unclear terms but mostly in Portuguese that in Rio these three words will keep us out of harm’s way and help us build bridges between the people of Brazil and India. At this Shabbir Ahluwalia could not help pointing out that judging by the length of the journey, it would have to be a mighty long bridge.
Our bus landed on the Cop Cabaña beach. We were all mortally afraid that we’d now be told to complete the last leg of our journey by swimming across the sea. Obligado God, our hotel was right on the beach and it was called Hotel Rio Othori or, to give its English translation, Another Thorn in The Hotel.
As we entered the hotel, a white glove moved towards me...
(To catch the concluding part of the story Boys from Brazil, please read the column dated September 19 which captures the agony and the ecstasy of 13 grown-up, sexually frustrated Indian men in Rio de Janeiro).