Face Off

It's impossible to get lost in Gibraltar. Unless you miss the Rock, which can happen only in one case.

It's pelting rain and screaming gale when the cabbie stops in front of the hotel. Come on in, darling. The eastern prude in me flinches, and then I flush on realizing that it was a harmless greeting. I climb in, and the banshee howls in protest at my escape from her clutches.

Thank goodness for taxis on little islands with wind velocities that pitilessly pound a 48 kg frame. It's all very well to stroll through daffodils in the springtime, but I get my dose of romance in a bus driven by a man with an uppity Oxford accent who lapses into impassioned Spanish at the slightest provocation. Welcome to Gibraltar, potpourri of cultures.

The lighthouse at Europa Point is craftily designed to arouse wistfulness. Standing on the rocky shore, I look across continents and imagine the ships sailing in from Spain and Africa in the days before visas were invented and travel depended upon an itinerary. The UK visa in my passport feels terribly limiting. I doubt any other building would have done the trick.

I hop onto another bus which takes me to the main street. Tax free shops! Delightfully distracting. I count the number of women in thigh-high boots. Nearly all. What a clown I'd look like strutting about in those on sultry Indian roads.

There's a blown glass exhibition and workshop at the plaza. Hmm. White men at work are hardly arresting, lacking the earthiness of their darker counterparts. But the vases are. They stand regally in icy aloofness, already so different from the younger ones sizzling with desire to be moulded in the workshop. I trace the swirls and whorls of colour on the smoothly fashioned surfaces, and the lightness of my pockets weighs me down.

The next bus never shows, so I walk. White limestone looms large at every turn. The locals probably stopped seeing it long ago. It's part of the sky now, ''constant as the Northern Star''. It is lit up at intervals, by massive floodlights from below. But every now and then, the Rock presents a dark face, whether by artistic intent or error of omission.

It's impossible to get lost in Gibraltar. Unless you miss the Rock, which happens when you look up at a dark face. The wind whips tears out of me as I stare into the blackness and lose my bearings.

Then a monkey calls, and I know there is something behind. Thank goodness for life on little islands with pitiless wind velocities and towering black patches.