Wednesday, 4th December

I learned two new songs today, We Three Kings and a prayer. I will be playing them for the choir at the Schwartz Matriculation school. They've also given me another song to learn for tomorrow! And it's all for Sunday! I forgot to go to the church choir practice yesterday and everyone thought I was ill again – that's usually my excuse – the Feeble Englishman card. I've asked the choirmaster to write out the Tamil songs in English letters for me so I can at least learn to sing them, or try to look as if I am anyway at least my musical involvement is looking up...

At four o'clock we went to the St. Andrew's Christmas day event, more dancing, speeches etc. they put on a nativity play which had more emphasis on talking into the microphones than doing any actual acting. Like a radio play or something. There was the token Dear Little Angel – always last and never doing anything special – just staring at the crowd! The prefects all wear white and stand in corners looking glum, watching the couple of thousand of small girls while a huge teacher beats supposedly bad people with sticks! She is a bit of an ogre, all butch and physical, probably a PE teacher or something. I wish I could intervene... It's funny because she is in the church choir and appears friendly and jovial, quite a different person. After this we had a meal of egg parrotta¹ at which all the teachers got presents of steel buckets and cooking pots, but we didn't.

Back home again, we played cards until the church choirmaster, Mr. Gnanaraj, came round to whisk us off to his pad, a flat down the Jewellery Quarter. We met his young wife, who cooked us some lovely chicken mank, fried some fish and watched our enjoyment closely. I refuse to eat fish! It's disgusting and when it's dried, tough and spicy I just don't have the stomach for it. Eventually we fed them the old line about English people not eating much (we don't – the food's so horrible!) and it seemed to work but I don't think they believed us!

...

C.'s been a bit of a knob today. (Warning: Rant Alert, if you don't want to hear it, please skip the following few paragraphs...) He is quite happy to remain shallow and narrow-minded for the rest of his life. He's been really arrogant, going on about My Girls and My Class and how he hasn't got any letters recently (he's had about fifteen, I've had two and two postcards – from my family!). He never stops complaining, but has at last apologised to me because Kumar's got to him now. That'll teach him to suck up to Kumar whenever I'm in a mood with him.

Kumar has got really attached to C. and keeps trying to hold his hand, clinging on to him because he's nice and I'm a bastard. But it does give him something new and uninteresting to complain about. I think that after six weeks I'd know that C. doesn't like Indian food. I know we spend too much time doing washing and cooking and I know that food is a constant headache so stop going on about it! Nothing miraculous is going to happen, we are doing all we can, so shut up! I'm sick of him being so petty and trying (and succeeding a lot of the time) to best me in things rather than doing the same, or doing whatever he wants to do. He always has to go one higher.

Crap example: showing off his vowels... now that I've learned a fair bit of Tamil C.'s got the books out. He says airily, oh yes, I've got all that written down, I must read it sometime. Stop it! It's not worth the breath! Maybe it's me. Maybe I don't get enough sleep these days. But I don't think I'm the one who needs to lighten up. His depressing sense of doom is a nightmare to live with, but it's great when he is actually happy. Racism is a big worry, we have indulged in quite a few Raj jokes but I'm worried it's becoming slightly too common. A lot of things that C. says are racist although purely in fun. There's culture shock, light relief and tasteless anti-Semitism. Stages of offensiveness, that sort of thing...

We got to the 'I really hated you in Madurai but you're alright now', stage in our relationship yesterday and I surprised myself by admitting to my tendency to talk down to people. I even managed to apologize! It's easy, you just say sorry and everything's all right, but I didn't think I'd manage it!² C. said that I am a complete bastard a lot of the time and people keep asking him why I'm so miserable. But, he also said that he wasn't used to living with a man (I'm so macho!) because all his friends are girls and girls are much more sensitive. So he is much more sensitive because of this and I don't realise how much it hurts. I found this quite insulting because my self-image has me as quite a decent understanding bloke.³

He seems to think that I'm some kind of animalistic rugby lad with more testosterone than sense. No capacity for love, that sort of thing. Ooh, I almost laughed. It's funny, because while he was going on about his femininity I just sat there thinking Oh stop being such a girl and have some backbone, man! Good job I didn't say it out loud really, then he really would have the power. I mentioned what I think is the fundamental difference between us – I have a scientific mind and he doesn't. Okay, so I nicked the idea off my Grandpa, but what better origin, and it fits! It explains why I've taken over the accounts... To be fair though, I didn't have to but C. wouldn't have dared.

I'm sick and tired of his constant referral to anything vaguely electronic I listen to as Drugs Music. It does have the stigma attached to it, but I listen to it because I like it, pure and simple. He doesn't like it because of drugs. I'll never understand what he's actually been through, but I hate the comments every time he walks in and I'm listening to it. I'm sick of bending to his every whim, knowing that he'll just go all moody and sulk if I don't. Maybe I'm a walkover like it seems everyone else is around him. He knows that if he asks for something I won't say no and it is exactly this sort of liberty with our friendship that drives me mad. He'll say Oh, but Dave likes it, don't you Dave? forcing me to say No C., it's alright, do whatever you want, please don't suffer on account of me. It's all very subtle, but I Have Noticed. He knows I can't do it back to him, because he'll just make an issue out of it.

...

But I don't want to go to bed feeling all cross, so *breathes* ...I love him really and accept him with all his imperfections just like he doesn't with me.⁴ I'm sure I'm going to change more than him, mainly because I'll have to otherwise he'll get more and more confrontational and destroy the remains of our friendship. I should never have told him that he was a good teacher...