Along with giant cut-outs of El Torro (the bull, Spain's national symbol), reminders of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza line the highways from Madrid to Andalusia (Spain's southernmost province).
"You know about Don Quixote in India?" asks an Argentinian farm-owner, sitting next to me in the bus. "But how?"
"Er...in India, you see, er...," I falter. "I don't believe you," my Argentinian friend says firmly. "All I see of India on TV is poor people, disease, dirt and filth. Whenever I tell my friends I'd like to go to India, they say, no, no don't ever go there. It's a horrible place. Horrible. I don't believe you know about Don Quixote." I struggle with quick tears. I wish I could tell him how many old men with ragged minds we have here, all tilting at windmills and pretending they're kings. Hallucination might be our national pastime.
