JASMINE SIX PACK ::: ATTAR FULL by AHSAN PERFUMES

We are in Singapore. We are supposed to be in India. I was really looking forward to regaling you with scent takes from Chennai and Puducherry, the South Indian destinations of choice where we had booked dreamy looking hotels and spent at least a thousand pounds on vaccinations at the Yokohama Travel Clinic : rabies x 3, typhoid, tetanus cholera,, hepatitis A, Japanese encephalitis) but now we find ourselves in a place where you can drink the tap water and eat anything you like. Still, perhaps I should go around looking for a rabid dog mouthfoaming in eagerness to bite — just to test out our money’s worth.

‘’What happened?!!!’ I hear you cry.

We were denied entry. Our visa application rejected. After a week of dread and anguish, fearing a negative result after days of anally retentive administrative tedium ( the questions you have to answer are quite invasive – what is your boss’s telephone number ? how about your previous job – I had wanted not to tell work about the trip as in J eyes, taking an exotic vacation when you are slated for a year of absence for surgery next year would be deemed decadent). But boy do I need it: sometimes I walk for miles no problem through the exquisite architecture of Singapore’s 1920’s ‘shophouses’ ; earlier my leg gave way on the pavement and I went crashing down headfirst to the dismay of onlookers; just now a maid knocked on the door to bring towels – as it was already 11am after a few too many Kingfisher Strongs last night. I blearily ‘stood up’ in my underwear and simply cracked and buckled on to the floor like one of those plastic giraffes you had in childhood; you pressed the base beneath and the limbs collapsed.)

I didn’t want to answer all these questions. Way too fucking fernickety ‘(What was the name of your second pet? Where did you first have sex ? – no I am joking – but in seriousness, who knew you already had to know someone in the country to be able to go there? You have to already have friends in India who can vouch for your moral character —- Burning Bush naturally knows so such individuals —even though you have never before set foot in the place ? It is bizarre.

D did in fact know an art and media professor in Chennai, back from the days he was writing for an international magazine on youth trends but no: first they couldn’t contact him and became suspectful (a mutual sensation: all felt like a scam to us as well: was this even the legitimate procedure? Having being tricked by a fake visa to Honolulu last year and not being able to get on the plane has scarred us for life. There is now a permanent deep unease about traveling).

Because The Authorities couldn’t contact this man (they actually call these contacts up to check up on you. What are these people so paranoid about ?) we were then told that he couldn’t be a referee because he worked for the government. And so on and so forth.

(the Singapore entry took literally five minutes).

After wearily, receiving the email, finally, after three or four days of rapidly burgeoning stress and wondering if we would be able to go or not I suddenly heard d gasp out loud in the kitchen ‘What ?!DENIED?! and we had to mourn our Indian Fantasy and come up with an immediate change of plan to at least salvage the Singapore leg of the journey ( I was specifically coming back here for one night to buy a particular jasmine perfume I bought and loved last year).

After a cyclonic scramble to arrive sufficiently early at the travel agent’s after the great Raj Rejection of the previous day, and a three hour torturous procedure of transferring the invalidated flight tickets, we had a new holiday. Disappointed: but not really ( if we are really considered so undesirable as spies and international terrorists we don’t really want to go there either).And so we find ourselves, now, ensconced, quite happily, in our noisy if well located less luxurious hotel located, ironically, near Little India.

It is not quite what we were hoping for. But the budget has changed : everything is 1.5 times more expensive in Singapore than in Japan, and four to six times more costly than the Indus would have been, so the splurgability of the holiday has decreased somewhat: we were supposed to be allegedly staying in gorgeous looking hotels painted in beautiful colors with plant filled courtyards teeming with dengue-loaded mosquitoes in a corner of old Madras, but now instead have merrily serviceable urban digs near Lavender station and Jelan Besar – quickly accommodating ourselves to our little roadside nest in the fascinating whirl of cultures that is Singapore.

Yesterday evening, before randomly being bought dinner by a very nice group of Indians who happened, obviously, to be from Chennai, and who wanted us to try the famous dhosas we would now be unable to eat in proper situ,