'What?' I cried. 'No, you can't be serious. Are you pulling my leg? I got a wedding to attend here.'

He shook his head. 'There's nothing I can do.'

'Please don't say that. I've come all the way from Waco just to meet my fiancée. I am sure you can pull some strings for me,' I pleaded.

'Well…' He looked around to see if anyone else was listening. 'I might be able to help you, if you can help me.'

'I'll do anything you say.'

'I collect foreign-currency notes,' he whispered. 'I have all the notes from America except the hundred-dollar bill. Can you give me a hundred-dollar note? Just put it inside your passport and slide it over.'

I thanked the Lord that he didn't have a thousand-dollar bill missing from his collection, coz I hadn't seen one either, and immediately peeled off a hundred-dollar note from my wallet. I put it inside my passport and handed it to the officer, who quickly stamped the passport and returned it to me. 'Have a nice stay, Mr Page,' he smiled at me. I opened the passport. The greenback had disappeared.

It took me twenty minutes to get my Delsey from the baggage merry-go-round and another ten to convert some dollars into Indian rupees. Then, nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, I walked out of the terminal building. India welcomed me with a blast of warm air. It was hotter than a well-digger's ass in August. There was a whole bunch of people shouting and waving; car horns were blaring, uniformed chauffeurs were running around with placards, and brown-shirted men were asking everyone, 'Taxi? Taxi?'

I began hunting for Sapna in the crowd. Although there were plenty of girls at the airport, no one looked like her.

I waited for three hours at the kerb, but my bride-to-be didn't arrive. All the other passengers left. The airport became halfempty. I wandered out towards the taxi stand, wondering if she was waiting outside, and that's when I saw her. She stood in a red sari, her hands folded in namaste, her neck loaded with jewellery, a big smile plastered on her face. Next to her picture, the huge billboard said in big blue letters, 'WELCOME TO INDIA.'

I'm not a weepy sort of guy. The last time I really cried was way back in 1998 when Mankind (a.k.a. Mick Foley) lost to the Undertaker in the famous Hell in a Cell match on WWF. But at that moment I felt all choked up. I just wanted to rush into Mom's lap and cry my heart out. I wished the officer had sent me back on that plane. I wished I had never come to India. But when you make your bed, you got to lie in it. It was getting dark now and I needed a place to stay. Slowly, I walked towards a yellow-andblack taxi.

The taxi-driver was a turbaned fellow with a thick black moustache and beard. 'Can you take me to some cheap hotel?' I asked the gentleman.

'Of course, Sir. I am knowing just the right place for you. Which country are you coming from?'

' America,' I said.

'I like Americans.' He nodded his head. 'Half my village is living in New Jersey. First time in New Delhi?'

'Very first time in India,' I replied.

'Then get in, Sir.' He opened the rear door for me and put my suitcase and bag in the trunk.

The taxi had torn seats and a strange, greasy kind of smell. The dashboard was decorated with pictures of old people with long white beards. The driver pushed down the meter and started the car.

New Delhi seemed bigger than Waco and the traffic was quite amazing. Apart from cars, there were buses, cycles, motorcycles, scooters, and strange contraptions which the driver said were called auto-rickshaws, all moving together side by side without crashing into each other or killing the people walking on the road. Suddenly I saw a huge grey elephant lumbering towards us from the opposite direction.

'Hey, has this fellow escaped from the zoo?' I asked in astonishment.

'No, Sir,' the driver laughed. 'Here we don't need zoos. You can see all the animals you are wanting in the city itself. There,' he pointed in the distance, 'you can see some nice buffaloes and cows, too.'

We drove like crazy for almost two hours. At one point it seemed to me that we had returned to the airport. I started getting worried, but the driver laughed. 'The city is being very far from the airport, almost one hundred miles, Sir. But not to be worrying, we will get there. In India you must be learning to be patient.'

Eventually, he took me into a market lit up with yellow light bulbs and white tube lights. I saw narrow lanes teeming with people and cows. Dusty men pulled wooden carts loaded to the brim with sacks of stuff. Fat ladies rode in rickety rickshaws. Autorickshaws zipped around like toy cars. Cyclists weaved in and out, tinkling their tinny bells. The market was full of small shops selling fruit, groceries, televisions and books. Signboards were plastered on every space – advertising everything from ceiling fans to perfume oils. Tilted at various angles, they seemed like any minute they would crash down on the people below.

The driver stopped in front of a crumbling yellow building which bore the sign 'Ruby Guest House, Paharganj'. Below that it said, 'Decent Laxury Higenic backpaker accomodation.'

'This is your hotel, Sir. Very good and very reasonable,' the driver said, and charged me a thousand rupees.

As I was about to step into the hotel, a big fat cow stopped right in front of me.

'Shoo,' I told the animal, but it shook its head at me. I pushed my bag at her and the next thing I knew I was flying in the air. I landed with a thud, crashing headlong into a parked cycle. The cow was on me again, snorting and digging its heels into the ground. I looked around for help, but the people around me simply laughed. I got up slowly, dusting my pants, and made another attempt to enter the hotel, but the cow refused to let me pass. It had taken to me like a buzzard takes to guts.

I was saved by a hawker selling bananas in a cart. The cow mooed and made a beeline for him. I quickly stepped into the building.

The guesthouse reception had a tattered green sofa, a dusty red carpet and dying plants. The manager was an oily young man with slick black hair. 'Welcome, Sir, to our five-star guesthouse,' he greeted me. He asked me to pay two thousand rupees as a week's rent deposit and allotted me room number 411 on the second floor without any fuss. A young boy in dirty underpants picked up my suitcase and took me to the room up a creaky staircase.

My room was nothing to write home about. Only a little bigger than a cubby-hole, it had a single bed, a cupboard and a small desk and chair. The walls were painted grey and the floor was covered with a cheap carpet. There was an attached john with a smelly WC, a tap, a bucket and a mug.

'Breakfast from seven to seven thirty in TV lounge,' the boy announced as he placed my suitcase on top of the desk. 'Can I get you anything? Food? Girl? Coke? Smoke?'

I thought about the choices. 'I wouldn't mind a Coke,' I said.

'Five hundred rupees, please,' he demanded. That was more than ten dollars for a can of Coke! I couldn't cotton on to these Indian price tags. Reluctantly, I parted with the money.

After the boy left, I opened the dark-green curtains at the window to check out the view. A tangled mass of cables greeted my eye, stretching from one building to another like a roof above the street. There was enough dodgy wiring here to electrocute the whole of Texas. Some kind of black smog hung in the air. Two people were arguing loudly on a roof below me. A radio was playing a Hindi song. I wondered how I would sleep with this racket going on.

The bell boy returned in ten minutes and handed me a little plastic packet containing some white powder.

'What the hell's this?' I said. 'I asked for a Coke.'

'This is coke. High grade. Top class,' he said and scampered out of the room.