In India any action leads to a disproportionate reaction. Just as a pebble dropped into a calm pool of water produces increasingly large ripples of water at the edge, so any request here – no matter how simple – can generate an inordinate amount of fuss.

I’m Western, I was brought up in a family where if you wanted a cup of tea you hauled your lazy arse off wherever it was planted and went to boil some water. If you were hungry, you went to the fridge and made a sandwich. And if your aforementioned arse was on fire, its contents turning to mush amid blinding and searing pain, you suffered in silence in the bathroom alone and in private.

Not in India.

Getting a cup of tea in an Indian household is no simple matter – you can’t just make it yourself. First you have to take on the maid, whose job you’re undermining by doing her work for her. If it’s just the two of you involved in the matter you’re okay, you can merely relent and let her get on with it. The real battle comes when there’s family about.

Once you’ve indicated that you want a cup of tea, a flurry of activity ensues with everyone involved. There are calls to the maid to get some tea, simultaneous questions from each family member about how you like your tea, if you’d prefer coffee and what you’d like to eat (someone always asks you what you want to eat). At this stage no-one is actually listening to you, only the questions of the other family members, which they then answer themselves: “No, he said he likes it with milk”; “He wants sugar? But last night he wouldn’t eat dessert?”; “Coffee, he usually drinks coffee”; “Where are the biscuits?”

While this multiple inquisition is under way, the maid is busy making the tea as she listens to the string of instructions being shouted at her from the table: milk/no milk; sugar/no sugar; bring some biscuits/don’t bring . . .

This is why I usually go without tea.

The group dynamics of Indian households are easy to deal with – fun in fact – when it’s just a case of boiling some dead leaves and water together. It’s a different case when your insides are dissolving amid pain that you never thought possible and the fear that you’re going to die is fast being replaced by the fear that you’re not going to die.

In those circumstances, a little privacy is what you’re after.

Tough luck.

The first wave of pain struck during lunch. After realising that I was fighting a losing battle against the forces of evil below, I made a discreet, tactical retreat to the bathroom. In what should have been my own “Fortress of Solitude” I could hear the conversation outside. “Why is he taking so long?” “What is he doing in there?” “If you need to wash your hands, just go upstairs why don’t you?” Clearly, my absence was being noted.

It was noted again later that day while out for a walk in the local park. With a second attack under way, I made another discreet exit back to the house – this time blissfully empty of inquisitors – and relaxed in the loo. But I was only delaying the real pain, which arrived along with my wife and the rest of her extended family.

“Now, how are you feeling?” she asked as she came into the bedroom where I had my feet up and a good book on the go, enjoying the solitude and my now pain-free digestive tract. “Because your absence was noted, and is being discussed, along with your overextended bathroom visit earlier. They know what’s going on.”

I was mortified; my insides were being discussed outside. What could I do? Going downstairs was simply not an option; how could I face anyone knowing that they had been discussing my intimate movements? I considered escape but the windows in the guest bedroom were barred. I decided to saunter in and act as though nothing was up. Sauntering was difficult as my backside was on fire, but I did my best and I like to think no-one noticed.

“How are you feeling?” was the first question.

Not bad, I thought to myself. That’s pretty innocuous and could apply to any number of ailments. I might just get away with it.

“Did you have a loose bowel movement?”

And that was it. A family discussion about my bowel movements broke out around the dinner table. A thousand questions (with answers provided) about my insides, the cause of the problem, the possible remedies and what should be done in the short term. One uncle intoned gravely of Westerners’ inability to deal with Indian microbes. The words “hospital” and “life support” were mentioned.

I made the most of the chaos and slipped into the kitchen to ask the maid for a cup of tea.