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On Inhabiting India
here's what my good friend, zach, wrote about the first few days (yes i'm stalling for my next entry). i'm getting sick, so i don't feel like thinking too much. here it is:
(How can I say it all?)
I've been in India for a week and two days, and the only way to describe it is to say that I'm trying to eat a stone wall. This is too big to wrap my mouth around, and there's kind of a dry, grainy texture in my mouth. But in all of the mismatched marbles and rocks constituting the Gestalt of the wall, there is a definite though hardly apparent pattern. No one thing jumps out at me and screams "YOU'RE IN INDIA!," except for the three million Indian people I see everyday. Most of it is subtle and some of it is frustrating. In lieu of inspiration, I'm serving up a condensed alphabet-soup bowl of steaming imagery, starting at the beginning and ending when I when my chai gets to my room. So please, sink deeper into your chair, clear your calendar, and have a bit of patience, as I try to chew up and spit out what I've seen, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, and dealt with in the last few days. If the finished product looks as unappetizing as the soupy sauces that Indians serve everything from cheese to goat in, I can only hope that it tastes as good.
The first thing I noticed when we landed in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) was the thick, hot, humid air rushing into the airplane's low-pressure, low-moisture, stale atmosphere. Though fresh air is always a simple pleasure after 9 hours in a plane with a smelly Australian, the only air I was treated to clearly had been breathed by a million people before it got to the airport. Inject some jet exhaust, B.O., and what I hope was rotting vegetation, and that's kind of like how India smells. On a good day.
Customs and baggage claim was a breeze (not unwelcome in the militant humidity), and before I could forget to tip the guy who sweeps up in the bathroom, I was swept outward by a mob of dark skinned, brightly-colored, sweaty people. (N.B. In every future reference of people, assume that they and I are sweating, unless I explicitly state that we are enjoying a period between sweats, in the comfort of the indoors under a non-stop ceiling fan, like right now). Being outside in India, even at 1:00 a.m. local time (2:30 p.m. the day before, Central Time) was very much like being at a wrestling meet; everyone pushes, yells and sweats, at various volumes.
Thank Shiva that our program guides were at the gates waiting to shepherds us to a bus, where we were whisked off to Pune (Poo-nuh, like skooner with a Bostonian accent), but not before one of the porters (coolies, I think they're called) standing outside my window demanded "money, any country money, large coins" from me. I awkwardly gave him 100 rupees ($2) one of the girls on my trip had thoughtfully brought along, and received instead of a "thank you" a look that said "what is this, a joke?" I shot back a look that said "I have no idea what's going on, if I'm supposed to pay you or call for help, so I'm going to stare at the bus seat in front of me until you go away." After a few minutes of his expectant looks and my sudden curiosity with upholstery, he left to pester someone at the back of the bus.
Unfortunately, ignoring people is something you have to get good at quickly here. I imagine it's similar in places like Hollywood or New York, where in a single glance a CEO can steal your money and your soul. But here you're ignoring people begging for money, who lack teeth, arms, legs, and in some cases eyes. You're ignoring people who carry their possessions on their heads, who sleep on the sidewalks covered in flies and who could pass for dead unless you stop and make sure that they're breathing. People who could be you or I, in another life.
Driving through Mumbai, I was treated to series of smells coming around on a Lazy Susan. One part of the city would smell like spice, then we'd leave that area for one that smelled like Mystery1, then Mystery2, then garbage, then the spice smell would come back, followed by smells Mystery1 and Mystery3, then more garbage. Eventually, we got into the mountains and to Pune, where everything smells like lawn-mower exhaust, thanks to the swarms of auto-rickshaws that buzz from street to street and fart out clouds of blue smoke everytime they change gears. The rickshaws must compete with schools of mopeds and flocks of motorcycles, interspersed with clouds of bicycles, pods of cars and streams of pedestrians. Though the term "concrete jungle" entered my mind to describe the chaos in the city, I think "ramshackle coral reef" is a better description, given the diversity of life and color, and the imperial humidity.
A moment on city streets. This is unlike anything in America. Sure the streets are black, and most of them have sidewalks, but the manner in which Indians drive resembles more of a colony of ants than anything. Like the British, the Indians drive on left side of the road (and walk on the left side of the sidewalk and stairs, making my inclination to pass people on the right a recipe for awkward collisions). Unlike the British, Indians have no sense of civility (while driving). It's as though England decided to take Order and Structure with them when they gave India her independence in 1947, as one last Feck Off to the largest piece of their crumbling empire. There are no lanes to drive in, there is only unoccupied and occupied space. There are no crosswalks or pedestrian signs, only breaks in the traffic. Turn signals, when the wires are connected and the lightbulbs functioning, are more for decoration than information. On the road, might makes right. Lifting a passage from the funny but repetitive book by Australian journalist Sarah Macdonald, there is a very specific pecking order on Indian streets.
[P]edestrians are on the bottom and run out of the way of everything, bicycles make way for cycle-rickshaws, which give way to auto-rickshaws, which stop for cars, which are subservient to trucks. Buses stop for one thing and one thing only. Not customers-they jump on while the buses are still moving. The only thing that can stop a bus in the king of road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog.
The holy cow. (11)
This is mostly true. While I have never seen a pedestrian get hit (there are strong social taboos against killing a pedestrian, including being dragged from your vehicle and beaten to death by passers-by) nobody stops for you. At best, they'll swerve. At worst, your Frogger skills will quickly sharpen, or it's GAME OVER. (The cows, by the way, don't seem to care which way traffic is mooving or if it mooves at all, so long as they're unhurried lives are uninterrupted. Get a job, cow).
Another thing on Indian roads is the noise. Horns must be thought to have medicinal properties, for all the honking going on (the more you toot, the better you'll feel). I just hung my head off the balcony and timed one minute on my watch: 30 honks I counted, and traffic is slow right now. Honking is, I suppose, homage to our evolutionary ancestors who had not mastered the complexities of polyphonic speech. Honk means Hello. It also means Watch Out, I See You, I'm Passing, You're Passing, Don't Pass, Keep Going, Stop, and Hey! I'm Driving Here! Unlike New York, where honks are accompanied by grief, anger, swears and rude gestures, I've never seen an angry Indian driver. Blessed is the land of infinite congestion and patience. After only a few days though, it's not so bad. You get used to the (dis)order.
We're living in a hotel for the first two weeks, until we get acclimated to Pune. The hotel staff is really nice. They speak enough English to understand how many coffees I want (lots) and how much chaha (Marathi for chai, which means tea) to bring (even more). As part of our orientation and the program curriculum, we're learning Marathi (Ma rah tea), the state language, so we can better understand rickshaw drivers and provide locals with an opportunity to mock Americans who butcher their language (but never their cows). (Brief history lesson: After her independence in 1947, India reconstituted its government in 1956, creating a federal parliamentary system with 25 states. Each state's boundaries were drawn based on common regional languages so that areas with similar cultures could share a state identity. Thus, in the Marathrastra state, Marathi is the state language; it is taught in schools and widely spoken on the streets. I think that's really cool way to deal with a massive countries cultural diversity, where different alphabets are used for very distinct cultures in the north and south. To foster a sense of national identity, Hindi, the language of Dehli, India's capital, and English, are taught alongside the state language in schools).
The food here is delicious, and offers an excellent metaphor for Indian society. No two dishes taste same, and when they serve you a spoonful of dahl, chutney, palak paneer, or Orange With Chunks (as I've taken to calling mystery dish no. 1) they all kind of run together at the edges. And yet, each dish manages to preserve its own distinct place on the plate and doesn't turn into a puddle of flavors as I bring them to my mouth wrapped in a blanket of warm chapatti bread. Pay no mind to the forces of globalization, represented by my spoon and fork, which stirs the plate, combining flavors, mixing lentils with rice, and beans with curry into a goulash that is both formless and repulsive. Everyone knows Coke and Wal-Mart invented cutlery to exploit the voiceless millions.
All of this food, but here to put it post-digestion. Toilets here are something from another country. Traditional Indian toilets are flat on the ground (some would say flush with the ground), consisting of a hole with two porcelain edges on the left and right. (Imagine a mouth with a Picassoian twist). After you've done your duty, there's no toilet paper within a hundred kilometers (s***ty metric). You're supposed to splash water on your dirty bits to clean then, and then go waddle along your merry way. Thankfully, my host mother's house and the hotel both have what are affectionately known as "Western toilets" that look like the things we have at home. And they have T.P. Oh, blessed T.P. For showers, though, I'm forced to resort to a bucket of hot water once I move into my host mother's house. For now though, I relish in what little familiarity there is.
Despite my best efforts at eating good food, and at drinking only Bisleri (bottled water), coffee, and chaha, three days ago I came down with a nasty case of Mahatma Ghandi's Revenge, the Indian equivalent of Montezuma's foul treat. I spent 12 hours bent over the toilet, reliving my college days as wave after wave of dinner, Pepto, and whatever's left erupted from my geiser like Old Faithful at a frat party, and the last two days of chutney and chaha packed up and left in a hurry through more traditional exits. Oh, India. What will you give me next?
In my spare time, I shop for clothes (haggling is the biggest b**** in the world) drink chaha, read books, and watch a lot of American TV. The only channels that really bring me home are HBO, National Geographic, Discovery, and History channels. They have something called AZN Star and Star Channel that are kind of like TNT, and occasionally play good movies (with very short commercial breaks). I've staked out the McDonalds (only chicken is served. Who ever heard of a McDonald's without a Big Mac. To borrow from Burger King, Where's the Beef?), the Pizza Hut and Dominoes, and eagerly await a cheese pizza as we speak. (The chai has come and gone). I'm not sleeping more than 5 or 6 hours a night and the mattresses here feel like gym mats. I'm homesick for familiar food, loud music, air conditioning and sleeping in. Oh yeah, and all of you, too.
Indian television is crazy. It doesn't make sense; everyone dances around a man and a woman, wearing beautiful clothes, but no one has sex or gets shot. What kind of crazy T.V. is this? I've also been watching a lot of cricket because India is playing Australia or something. Cricket in India is like soccer in Europe; it's nutz. I know many of you disagree, but I think baseball is a ridiculous game. I should have held my tongue until I'd seen a cricket match, or test as they're called. It's the most awkward combination of sports. A pitcher (called a bowler) takes a Happy Gilmore-running start to throw (in an overhanded, wind-meel fashion) a billiard ball at some croquet wickets, guarded by a batter with a hockey goalies' leg pads and a football player's facemask, wielding a cross between a baseball bat and a two by four, who bats the ball down a field perpendicular to the direction of swing. The batter and one teammate (the other batter), after hitting the ball, run back and forth between the pitching spot (which has an identical wicket) as many times as they can before the ball is caught or goes out of bounds. One game goes on for days, with scores in the four hundreds. Get it?
Inevitably, I've left things out. My group is good. 13 girls and 5 boys (one of whom is gay), so you do the math. The professors are funny and interesting, and classes seem very short. I've seen a lot of men holding hands with each other but absolutely no public displays of affection (it's a friendship thing, and also for safety when crossing the street. Men don't even kiss women on Indian television). I move in with my host family (a widow, who lives in a building full of Iranian exchange students) on Sunday, and will enjoy that. More craziness will occur as time increases. Until I'm able to call you, take care and enjoy your summers. Email back with gift requests and phone numbers and maybe I'll drop you a line from an S.T.D. (international phone booth. Yeah, I laugh at it too).
Ah-cha,
Zach
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