Air, heavy with tobacco smoke, treacled about heads bowed in myriad conversations. Waiters dressed in ravaged white uniforms and faded red turbans scuttled about bearing trays of rich, steaming coffee. A traveller I had met only moments before was baring his soul to me as he told of his abused childhood and how he had eventually run away from home to live on the streets of London.

India is a colossally difficult country to travel in. It is almost like going to war, requiring a massive fortitude of spirit and resolve - all of life coalesces into a single searing moment. Fellow travellers greet each other like close family. Strangers, who will never know each other's names, swap reminiscences and life experiences. Some of the stories are so touched with sadness and despair that the listener can only weep in horror and, yet, the tales are told without a hint of rancour or self-pity. This is an openness that is at once refreshing and completely touching in its absolute sincerity.

It could be that this type of travel attracts a certain like-minded bunch of people. On the mountain, in Cape Town, people greet one another with warm smiles. No Capetonian would ever dare do that anywhere else.

What is the difference in circumstances? Why do people alienate each other in the place they should feel the most comfortable - the place they live in every day? How can a personality change so much with a mere change in location?

It could be that people trap themselves in a cage of their own device - scared to expose themselves lest any hint of weakness be exploited to bring about their humiliation. It is a kind of paranoia. We hem ourselves into a certain way of being and only when we are outside the familiar structures of our cages can we be truly free.

I have always been very open with people. I survive the emotional roller-coaster of being me by sharing whatever happens to be troubling me with whoever will listen. In the vast majority of cases the "never let them see you're real" brigade become agitated and intimidated by me and so, gradually, I have tried to hobble my natural impulses. But there are always a few people who respond by sharing parts of their lives with me. I am told stories so personal and private and sad that I would never be able to reveal them to anyone. It is a sacred trust.

Many people have told me of their border experiences. Of that amazing depth of feeling they have for their "brothers in arms" as the explosions tear the flesh from the sky and scatter bloody death across the harrowing landscape. Their closeness to Damocles Sword causes them to want to share every part of their lives - to try and leave some sort of mark behind. "Yes, I remember him. He was a really nice guy - he died so young."

Why is it that we will only expose our innermost thoughts when we are most at risk? What is it that blocks me saying "I love you and I care about you," to a girl I have just met and with whom I feel an instant rapport?

Maybe emotional intensity is too draining, too drastic. We numb ourselves to the world. Famine stricken children with hollow, hopeless eyes in desperately old faces peer vaguely out of our televisions, and we don't care. I must be a savage mutant because I burst into tears.

I have never felt that caring about things was a weakness. It has taken me a great deal of time to adjust to the fact that most people don't want life to touch them too deeply and so I will continue to shake its hoary old pelt in front of them.

Life isn't only about pain and suffering. It is also about moments of joy so pure and free that the heart aches to burst forth and soar up into the welcoming sky.

If there is one image of India that I will forever remember, it is this. No matter where I went or how pushy and obnoxious the people became or how polluted and dirty the environment, I had only to look up and see, perched or flying, a parakeet. Those bright, emerald green birds with the green to blue diamond fantail and bright orange beak - an expression of wonder and hope flaming across the sky.

We all treasure fragility and transience where we find it. A child's trusting smile and bubbling honesty draws out even the most tardy good nature in others. Where does the cynicism and fear come from that turns a child into an adult? When do our minds suddenly become so old, barren and grey?

To glory in a sparrow's heartbeat and revel in a summer's breeze. We are but painted shadows on a painted sky - fleeting images. It doesn't matter how we spend our too short lives. Whether we live our dreams or are too scared to let anything out - no-one else will care.

There was a line I came up with one night as a lay restless in the steaming darkness. "At the far end of the scale, where the shadows play, anything can happen - and sometimes, just sometimes, it does."

The world is only as hard as we make it. Take that into your soul and you will be free.

28 February 1998