I have never been to India, although I have always wanted to go. I imagine India in a romantic nineteenth-century fever as a sort of damp paradise where the smell of ginger and cloves perfumes dark jungles. Tigers prowl between the branches; parrots shimmer in the foliage and cobras rear up from the brown-grey moss that litters the forest floor.

When my mind wanders to India in an opium fever, I smell the wet cement of Calcutta streets during the monsoon. I feel hot brown skin under red and purple silk. Everything seems ethereal. The sun sets in hues of crimson and saffron and violet. The moon hangs in velvet skies over lush rainforest – the smell of sweat and spice permeates everything and when I wake, I have yellow leopard eyes.

Take me to India, my love. Come with me to stalk lions in the forests of Gir. Drink rich buffalo-buttered tea with me in the foothills of the Himalaya. When the sun sets over the murky ocean, take me to hunt crocodiles in the Ganges. Before the sun rises in yellow and pink chiffon, dance with me in the sun-scotched plains.