“Bags, bags – open” they demanded.  Immediately adrenalin coursed through my veins as I stumbled to cooperate.  They had had taken just one quick look at the entire bus and come directly to us.  All I could think of was the story of the 21-year-old Israeli woman nursing her newborn child as she started her 10-year sentence for possession of 3kg of hash.   Now truly paranoid I expected them to pull out large resinous blocks that had “slipped” into my daypack.

Needless to say (they don’t allow Internet access in Indian prison), they found nothing and as I calmed down it all started to make sense.  We were the only foreigners on the bus and the random check was almost certainly a measure to reassure nationals that the government was taking all possible steps to prevent “Pakistani terrorism”.  It is not pleasant to be picked out of a crowd and searched, purely on the basis of colour.  It has given me some insight into what it is like to be a person of colour passing through Irish immigration.

No sooner had the officers had left and the bus continued on its way, than the Indian seated beside me sparked up a joint.  After he finished his first joint he offered me one.  “No thanks, I don’t smoke” I refused.  He tried to push a lump the size of a Euro coin into my palm signalling that I should eat it.  That’s just what I needed, my own personal paranoia amplified by a drug-induced haze, no thanks.  I closed my eyes trying to shut out the bus, the journey, the pungent smell of coconut oil from the man in front of me and the two bloody great lumps of headrest pushing into my back.