'BOMBS' IN THE PINK CITY
 
The detonations are so penetrating I feel they have reset my heartbeat. One particularly boisterous explosion set car alarms howling down the street. Throughout the night the people of Jaipur, the Pink City, scream and shriek as we westerners sleep.

Relax - we are not in a warzone! It has been Diwali this week across India. Houses are heaving with a plaque of spectacular lights, and the revellers in the street celebrate with fireworks; or, as our young host Shashwat Sharma calls them, 'bombs'.

It is a joyous occasion (not least of all for Patrick, who has become the first human being with two eardrums in one ear after igniting a dud firework. The 'bomb' flared up immediately, jettisoning a large part of Patrick's right ear canal through the boggy quagmire of his brain). The government in Jaipur pay the city's electricity bill for Diwali, and all seems jolly, gorgeous and magical.

However, as a newcomer I am finding it hard to reconcile this extravagance to a country where almost half of -

Pardon me. I was about to pepper you with statistics, but this blog is about my experience, not facts and figures gathered from the intestinal bulk of the Internet. On the topic of child poverty, Wikipedia cannot tell you that I can still feel miniature hands clutching at my skirts as little girls implored me for money outside the cinema.

Google 'disability in India' and you will find nothing about my almost tripping on a beggar lying in the market with a deformed leg twisted around his neck.

You can Ask Jeeves until you are maroon in the face about abuse of alcohol and women, but he will not relate that my four-year-old pupil Sangam is the son of an alcoholic and regularly has to watch his father beat his mother.

Happy Diwali to you all.