DRINKING CHILLED FOSTERS

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
Drinking chilled Fosters in Noel's one-bed thatch-roof bungalow is immensely pleasurable. Noel was one of a gang of bright kids from St Edmunds who made it to Delhi, India's premier University. Now he reads omnivorously. A friend from Delhi days, a leading literary critic, passes on books sent to him for review. Books pack shelves, form piles on every table, overflow into unlikely corners. Add sculpture, paintings, even a David Bailey portrait of Noel's sister, and the sitting room should feel overcrowded. It doesn't. It feels comfortable. And it is a reminder of my early 20s in Kenya and visiting British District Commissioners in the Northern Frontier District or the hills, men who are routinely mocked today as buffoons or twits but ruled over vast areas not by force but through wisdom and a desire to benefit the people. They were cultured men with First Class Honours degrees from good Universities in a day when a First was hard to come by and demanded original thought. Above all, they were incorruptible and believed a career of service was more rewarding than accruing wealth. So there I am, revealed in my true colours: an old fashioned Brit Blimp! The Colonel in Rajen Bali would be proud of me. So would the writer...