Are we connecting?

WARNING TO THE LADIES: This blog contains badassness. You may require a rest afterward.

Imagine a beach. This beach is in the middle of nowhere. And it art glorious.

Let's back up. I'd been traveling with a German woman called Lislott. She was awesome; the closest I've ever come to a female version of me. And for those of you that know me that's probably a damn scary proposition.

We were in Kanyakamari in India. Look at a map; see the pointy bit? You go there, you put your foot in the ocean and you're in three oceans at the same time. Somehow. I've never quite worked it out personally. We were there for 2 days and on the second day wanted to go the beach but the beach, as is the case with most beaches outside of Goa, was covered in dead fish so we took a tuk-tuk about 5km down the beach.

We'd bought some sheets from the hotel, made a little tent for shade, been in the sea...

There was nobody around. We couldn't see a single man-made structure. Enter stage right two Indian guys....

They were aged about 17. Take that figure with a pinch of salt as it's really hard to tell ages with Indians as they live such hard b,oody lives. Most look 70 when they're barely 30. These cow,DVD been anywhere from 12 to 25. They were immaculately dressed.

And they start talking to us as Indians do. What's your name? Where are you from? Question after question....

All the time the main dude is looking at me. Straight at me. Not even glancing at Lislott.

Eventually after asking if we were married, and we were as far as every guy in India is concerned as it made her life so much easier, still looking at me he asks:

"Do you connect?"

Eh? I looks at Lislott.

"He can't mean what I think he means, surely?" I looks back at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"You know: do you connect?"

OAnd with that he does the age old sign for sex: forefinger in-between thumb and forefinger of the other hand.

OMG!

"Dude! Where do you come from that you think you can talk like that? Go away"

He doesn't. He remains. We ignore him and rresume reading. He's asking questions. We're ignoring him. More questions. Grr. Tapping my foot. Question. Eentually, inevitably, we start talking again.

Question.

Question.

Still not so much as looked Lislott's way. I swear this next bit is true.

He takes his finger, points at Lislott and moving it up and down, says TO ME:

" Can I see?"

"NO!"

"Just once?"

"No! Not just once"

I looks at Lislott.

"Shall we go?"

We has an awesome view from our balcony. S o we starts packing our stuff away. In the meantime four of his mates have come along. Making six. As we're walking off they start playing shoving games as young kids do.

BADASS MOVE COMING UP

Out of the corner of my eye I see one of them come flying toward m. I manage to grab him, pull him around and he goes flying into to sand. It's then that it strikes me about our situation: middle of nowhere, me, a tiny German woman and six Indians. Now I'm not the hardest of blokes but I reckon I could take at least two of these guys, they're made of wet toilet roll, but six?

Luckily they just run off laughing but it could've turned out a little bit different. I always tell this story to women thinking of traveling to India by themselves cuz personal boundaries just don't exist. Unless you're an Indian woman and then they can't be respectful enough.