Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [98]
The flight attendant wouldn’t let me reboard until everybody deplaned, so I waited as the passengers streamed by. It was a big aircraft and I was getting bored, so I glanced at the guy waiting in a wheelchair beside me. He was a portly fellow with dyed black balding hair and dyed black eyebrows to match. He glanced back and gave me a nod.
“Wow,” I thought to myself, “that’s Luciano Pavarotti.”
I was standing next to the greatest opera singer in the world.
Now that we were aware of each other’s existence after making eye contact, I felt obligated to say something. I decided to open conversation with my best line.
“How’s it going eh?”
“Good, good, good,” he said in a thick Italian accent, sighing as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
“Where are you going?”
“Milan. You?”
“India.”
“Oh, India. Nice weather this time of year.”
We both nodded and I rocked back and forth on my heels uncomfortably as people flowed by.
“Would you like a piece of gum?” I offered, praying that I’d get back on the plane soon so I could end this awkward conversation with one of the most famous people in the world.
“Oh, no thank you. Sticks to my dental work,” he said matter-of-factly.
The last few dregs drifted past and finally I was allowed back on the plane.
“Okay, sir, gotta go get my uh … Discman … so I’ll see you later,” I stammered, not wanting to be rude.
“Go, go. Safe travels,” he remarked as I walked back on the plane.
I went to my seat and quickly grabbed the Discman, hoping that I could get my new close personal friend Luciano Pavarotti to sign it, but when I got back to the jetway he was gone forever. It was one of the stupidest random meetings of my life.
But it was froot to think that I’d just had a conversation with one of the Three Tenors. Now all I have to do to complete the set is meet Placido Domingo and … the other guy.
I flew from Frankfurt to New Delhi, and when we finally landed I was knackered. After ninety minutes of going through customs and getting our bags, the extra rib was a two-hour drive from the airport to the hotel. It was pitch black outside and the steady rumble of the bus helped me to doze off quickly, but I woke up when I felt the bus stop in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Kane was sitting beside me, and when I asked him what was going on, he said, “There’s a cow in the road blocking us and we can’t go anywhere until it walks away.” The first thing I learned about India is that cows are sacred animals that can pretty much do whatever they want and are not to be disturbed. So we sat in the middle of the road for half an hour until Clarabelle decided to move on.
We reached the outer limits of the city and I saw a conurbation of cardboard-box houses stretching as far as the eye could see. Even stranger was that most of the hovels had satellite dishes beside them. I found out that people could afford satellite TV, but couldn’t afford actual homes. It was a way of life to have electricity fed into your cardboard-box abode.
As we continued driving, things got more bizarre.
Four men rode in the back of a pickup truck on the top of a huge pile of manure without a care in the world. A baby dressed in a diaper and nothing else stood by himself on the median in the middle of a busy road. A teenager pulled his sitar out of his pants and took a piss right in front of a grocery store.
The city was in absolute squalor, with people pushing carts of rotten vegetables, scrawny dogs running through the streets, and smelly garbage stacked everywhere. Yet right in the middle of the filth surrounded by a massive chain-link fence was our hotel—a beautiful five-star mansion that looked more like a palace. The difference between the two worlds was astonishing.
I’d decided not to eat any of the food that was provided for us in India, as I’d heard too many horror stories of people getting sick there. For the entire tour, my diet consisted strictly of peanut butter