Zen and the art of Cricket madness

One of the greatest things about India is book-post. India as the 3rd largest printer of English language books in the world is trying to encourage people to buy and send books abroad. So they subsidise books being posted via India post. Basically you rock up to a post office with up to 5KG's of books which you can post home via sea mail. Now admitedly this might not be the fastest way to send something but the cost in insanely cheap. For 5 KG's the cost is a mere $3! Yes that is not a miss print its $3.

Now the only problem is trying to post them. Taking my treasure trove of books I headed for a packer. Seeing the man at work was impressive as he cut the books and beautifully wrapped the package in silk and neatly sealed the box for a mere 10 pence cost. However, as I headed to the main GPO aware that it may shut early as it was a Saturday I was confronted by what I can only describe as a fire breathing Indian female dragon. I arrived just 2 minutes late, yes 2 minutes, and she promptly told me 'go away we are shut, come back Monday' even though the rest of the post office would be open until 5pm. My tuk-tuk driver informed me there was another post office which may have later opening times so we raced through the densely packed streets of Udaipur expecting to find it also shut. However, what I found was a room full of men who were unable to help me until 4pm when the 'bookman' returned. So as the thought of sitting there for 2 hours waiting went through my mind I asked the manager who was busy writing 'where's the nearest TV show I can watch the cricket?'

'You like cricket?' 'Of course I am English' I responded and we proceeded to chat about cricket for the next 5 minutes until he said 'ah I can do your book-post for you' as he happily filled in the forms and processed it. It was interesting as everyone in the office had refused to help me. You see in India EVERYONE is passionate about cricket, absolutely mad about it, so if you chat about cricket, be it team selection, form etc you will make friends very quickly. In this case it turned out most useful saving me two hours of sitting and waiting!