The Angst of Post Industrial Modern India

I have not updated in a while, so it’s probably about that time. The last week has been especially stressful for me. Rohit, my roommate, and one of my good friends left a week ago. I have been writing my term papers and have a Hindi final coming up. The most stressful thing however occurred two days after Rohit left. I had a pain in my chest. It hurt to breathe so I thought there was something wrong with my lungs. I was short of breath because of the pain when I took deep breathes. I felt light headed, and then I had an anxiety attack because I was all alone \and I didn’t know any numbers for doctors. Luckily, down four blocks down the street is a hospital. So, feeling light headed like I was going to faint I walked down there. The doctor told me I had a sore throat, the one symptom I didn’t have, and gave me a prescription for like twenty different pills, which I promptly put in the rubbish bin. At this point, of all the people in America I was missing Dr. Morgan the most.

Then I walked to Tara’s house because she lives closer to the hospital then I do. She called her sister whose husband is a doctor in American and he tried to couch me over the phone. He suggested going back to the hospital so I went back. The same doctor took care of me. This time Tara was with me. They put me on a machine to see how my breathing was and then took an x-ray of my lungs. He told me I was fine and prescribed more pills, this time for anxiety.

So, I didn’t sleep at all as you can imagine. I stayed awake the whole time wondering if I was going to die or not. The doctor from America (Tara’s sisters husband) told me that it could be a virus that infects the lungs and to go back to the doctor if I got a fever. So, I spent the whole night waiting for a fever, reminded of pain in my chest with every breath.

The next day I spoke with my roommates about it. They suggested calling our landlord. We called her and she referred me to a doctor at the same hospital. I called him and made an appointment for that same day. He was much more helpful. He told me something in doctor terms, which basically means I had acid reflex. It is quite common in India because of the spicy food. He gave me medicine and told me to lay off spicy food. I was relieved to know what was wrong at least and satisfied with his diagnoses. A week later, I am not fully better, but I am doing ok and glad to know what is wrong with me.

The day I came home from the doctor I was happy to receive a care package from my mom full of dove and Cadbury chocolates, and other lovely items. I wasn’t eating too much of the chocolates this week because of the heart thing (trying to eat healthy), but sometimes a treat is nice.

However, I noticed that the chocolates were disappearing quicker than they should have been. So, I slowed way down and on Thursday there was only one left and so I saved it. Only to find the rapper in my trash can later that day. Being the naturally detective that I am I figured out what had happened. Prakash, our servant, had been munching them day by day. I was really angry.

I take chocolate pretty seriously. Once I almost kicked my dog, Bentley, because he ate all of my Valentine’s Day chocolate when I wasn’t looking. Luckily, David caught me in time. This is just a side note to show how I was angry I can be when my chocolate is messed with.

After a few days it blew over, I never said anything to Prakash (because my Hindi isn’t that good yet), but I told my roommates. What annoyed me most is that I would have given him chocolates if he would have asked me.

Anyways, the next day, the day after Thanksgiving, I received a rushed delivery from Grandma Snowme. It was a package full of brownies, cookies, and candied pecans, a brilliant surprise and reminder of home after eating Indian food for Thanksgiving, not to mention delicious. I couldn’t help but eat one or two brownies before I went to sleep. The next day I was gone all day. I locked my door because I didn’t want anyone to go in and take the goodies this time. Only to find out that when I got home a plumber had been called so they had to go into my room to fix something. I came home to a half-eaten bag of brownies, pecans lying open on the table, and cookie crumbs on the floor. As you can imagine I hit the roof as I had locked the door literally for the first time since I moved in, and for the soul purpose of guarding my baked goods. After yelling at Prakash and scaring him half to death, I called the landlord because I felt like she needed to know that things were being taken from our room without permission (This wasn’t the first time. Rohit’s 70 dollar Swiss army knife went missing as well. Peanut butter is taken from the fridge. Change kept in a draw was also taken from us.). She was embarrassed and she is coming out to straiten things out. She happens to be a very scary woman and I wouldn’t be surprised to see four people (our servant, the servant next door, and the two plumbers) lose their jobs all over Grandma Snowme’s brownies.

The moral of this story seems to be don’t mess with my sweet tooth, but I find myself more and more going against the person who I want to be. I came to India thinking I would detest those who made the social inequality so bad and here I am justifying the same sorts of actions. Why do I, the one with unhealthy stomach, need all twenty brownies? I don’t want to be angry that someone took my food. I especially don’t want to make them lose their job over chocolates and such, when these people are supporting their family by sending their miserly checks and hardly taking much out of them for themselves. Indeed, it’s a pretty admirable lifestyle, and whenever will they get a chance to eat these sorts of luxuries again? But at the same time, I would have gladly given if it were asked for. I was planning on sharing them anyways.

This brings me to a broader less related topic, which I feel it is necessary to talk about as this will probably be my last journal entry. I am going to deal with the question of why I came to India.

I came to India with the terribly misconceived idea that it would be full of selfless people like Gandhi and Buddha (if not full there would be a lot). Slightly disturbed by the dog eat dog capitalism in America; I hoped to escape that in India. Boy was I wrong about India. I now see why India has had more famous selfless individuals than any other country. It’s because the dog eat dog capitalism, the materialism, in India is so extreme that with so many people someone is bound to just get fed up with it. People try to rip you off at any turn. Rohit and I found an easy way to sum up India with an example of everyday life. We sometimes ordered pizza when we were tired of Indian food or homesick, and he only ever wanted mushrooms on his pizza. Every time he called he had to fight for mushrooms instead of all the other toppings. Each time they tried to charge him a different price for the mushrooms. Each time it was twenty minutes of arguing on the phone. In India, you have to fight for one topping instead of three here. You have to fight for everything. It drains you and turns you into a monster because you are constantly on your guard. For this reason, it has been truly a good learning experience; however, with regards to my expectations it has been an utter failure.

The light at the end of the tunnel for me was my Gandhi class. I will post my paper online (hopefully if I can figure it out). If you want to read it and need help because you’re not use to philosophy papers (or I am a poor writer) let me know. The bottom of line of it though was that it is nice to know that it’s possible for people to care about ethics first and foremost, and that there have been movements in this direction in the past. Incidentally, because of this class and the direction I was headed in life previously, I feel myself becoming more of a do-it-yourself kind of guy, so if anyone has any hidden talents (cooking, knitting, making anything from scratch) that they want to share with me I would greatly appreciate it.

There was one more main reason why I came to India. It was to be productive. There are too many distractions at home, family, friends, job, etc. I wanted to be more focused and get what I finish all that I wanted to get done. I have been successful in this, almost to an extreme. I have made a rigorous budget which I adhere to at all times noting every cost in my notebook. At night, I categorize these expenses and log them into my journal to see which are unnecessary and what I can do to improve. Each day I plot out what I want to do, and most days I finish it all. I am doing all the things that I wanted to do but never got around to. For example, I read the entire New Testament, and am starting on Isaiah. I’ve read 6 or 7 novels. I have been trying to improve my writing by studying Greek and Latin roots. I also have started my New Year’s resolution made with Aunty Nancy, which was to write a novel. So, far I have written 32 pages. I have had suits made for me. I have improved my Hindi. I have become an ardent advocate against global warming. In practice more than speech (That’s right, I haven’t been taking long showers anymore!). This list is not exhaustive only the beginning, but hopefully you get the idea and will see a noticeable difference in me, as I aim to be a better person.

The next three weeks will be study, study, study, and then relax so I probably won’t write anymore. I look forward to seeing you all soon!

A Week with Camels

I just came back from a trip to Rajasthan with Taylor, Nikhil, Tara, and Snahil. We went on a camel safari in the desert of Jaisalmere. The desert we were at was called Sahara (no relation to the one in Africa). We signed up for two days of riding by camel and one night of camping in the desert. We rode camels for seven hours to the sand dunes only stopping once to eat wild watermelon. At the sand dunes, there was no vegetation in sight just hills of the softest sand. The only animals we saw in the dunes were huge black beetles which crawled all over us while we were sleeping and white scorpions, which luckily didn’t crawl over us while we were sleeping, but scared us nonetheless. As you can imagine we didn’t get much sleep.  In retrospect it was a beautiful and interesting experience. (Loads of Pictures were taken and will be posted soon!)

HOWEVER, at the time it was the most miserable of all miserable experiences. The food was dull and ordinary (except for the watermelon). The whole time we were ridding there were flies all over us. The weather was scorching hot during the day and freezing cold at night. We were only given two blankets, which smelt like camel and had prickly things all over them, and the desert ground was hard and cold. This combined with the fact that we had bugs on us all night made sleep impossible. This wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that camels are terribly painful to ride. When they run the rider gets bumped around so much that by the time we reached the sand dunes my butt was bruised and bleeding (I don’t think I was alone either). Five days later it still hurts to sit.

I spent most of the camel ride scared. I had the most aggressive camel. He wouldn’t obey orders, such as sit, so it made getting off and on very difficult. I wasn’t scared of that though. I was scared because one hour into the journey my saddle came off. I had to grab onto the camel’s neck, flip my leg over his head and then jump down. So, for the rest of the journey I wondered when my saddle would fall off again (nobody else had this problem).

After the camel safari, we took a train to Pushkar. There was a camel festival there. There were thousands of camels being traded here. Average price for a camel was between 15 to 30 hazar rupees, (a hazar is a thousand rupees). This comes out to about five hundred U.S. dollars, so naturally I bought seven of them (look for them under the Christmas tree).  The rest of the festival was pretty cool it was really set up for tourists so it was entertaining, but at a price.

Unfortunately, the elation, which one gets upon coming home after an exhausting journey, was quickly eradicated. One of the forty-six EAP people studying here in Delhi died. His name was Nick. He overdosed on heroin. I didn’t know him to well, and had only hung out with him five or six times while we were doing our intensive language course. Whilst I probably should feel sad, I am more so angry with him for making such a stupid decision. I feel worst for the people that loved him. One of the times I did hang out with him, we were eating lunch, and he told me about how his father was really restricting and sheltering, how his dad had barely let him go to India and in the end he managed to convince his father. His father is an emergency room surgeon and probably sees overdoses all the time, but when he received the call that his son overdosed, he was so naive. His words were, “No, my son doesn’t do drugs.” I feel sad for people like this who will be blaming themselves for Nick’s death, when in actuality the choice to smoke weed in school at Santa Cruz, to do Acid in Massourie, and then Heroin in Delhi was Nick’s alone.

A little bit of Irony

I just finished reading one of the books for my class. It was Camus's The Plague, which is about a town that gets hit by an epidemic, and an epidemic hit Delhi, right smack in the middle of where I live. You may have read about it in the newspaper. The New York Times did a big article about it. Dengue fever, a mosquito born virus, was hitting like a 100 people a day. In the book I read, the town's people went on with their normal daily routine and that allowed the epidemic to spread quicker. In Delhi, people also went on with their normal lives, and there normal lives killed the epidemic. Today is officially the first day of Diwali, the festival of lights, so there have been a million fireworks light. There is a cloud of smoke over the whole city. There is so much smoke in the air from the fireworks that the mosquitoes can't survive.

I added photos

I added photos of my trip, but as I was adding them I realised I only took silly photos on this trip.

Two Week Diwali Break

Bombay

This trip started off with a bang to say the least. Mumbai, the city formally known as Bombay, home to India’s infamous Bollywood, full of movie stars and such, was the first stop on our trip, or at least the first stop on my trip. I came to Mumbai by train, arriving at 10 am Oct 2. I was to meet Snehal and Tara in Mumbai. They were supposedly coming in at 4 pm Oct 2. They had traveled to Gujarat, in which Snehal had family, but I thought it would be weird if I went with Snehal and Tara to visit Snehal’s family so I stayed at home agreeing to meet them in Mumbai. Things didn’t go to as planned.

First off, my train ride was miserable. It was an overnight train and I tried to read, but I couldn’t because there was an Indian girl across from me who got a phone call every two minutes, answered it, and then immediately burst into tears. This, however, was surprisingly not the worst part of the ride. There was a husband and wife who sat on either side of me. I, twice, offered to move so that they could sit next to each other but they didn’t want to. Instead, they spent the whole trip talking as loudly as possible over me, around me, and in any other possible way they could speak to each other.

Then when I arrived in Mumbai my phone didn’t work. I didn’t know why. I had no way of contacting Tara or Snehal, so I decided to call them on a pay phone. It didn’t connect. I decided to get a hotel room for everyone for the night, so I could have somewhere to put my luggage while I tried to get a call to connect. I got a sea side double hotel room for two thousand five hundred rupees. I put my bag down went out walked along the beach to the next pay phone station got a call through to Tara.

Tara and Snehal had been trying to call me non-stop. They thought I had died or been kidnapped or something. They had reached Mumbai on the first of October, and thought that I was supposed to be there already. They were freaking out, about to file a police report, and call all the important EAP (Education Abroad) people. Tara had a cousin in Mumbai who was very nice and invited everyone to stay at her place. So, I tried to get my money back for the hotel that I had only just booked, and put my bags in for five minutes. They wouldn’t do it! I was furious! I lost out on two thousand rupees (only 40 bucks but it sounds terrible in rupees)!

As you can imagine, I had a rather glum out look on Mumbai for the reminder of my stay there, but in retrospect it wasn’t so bad. I went to the beach, to a famous modern art gallery, and the hanging garden. One more mildly amusing thing happened to me on this portion of the trip. We went to visit some caves on an island, and on the boat over a red ant got into my armpit, and bit me over and over again. I thought I was having muscle convulsions or that there were was something wrong with my armpit. To make a long story short I ended up being the spectacle of the whole boat ride; everyone was looking at me as I half-way removed my shirt and dug through my armpit viciously in search of the cause of the pain.

We almost missed our train to Goa, because Tara’s cousin forgot that there are two stations called central, so we had to catch a cab and jet to the next place our train stopped and meet up with it there. The cab ride was remarkably similar to chase scenes seen on TV. It was too scary for my taste, but we made it alright.

Polellum and Baga, Goa

Goa a small state in India and it is close to paradise. It’s famous for its beaches. The beaches looked exactly like the ones portrayed in beer commercials. We were in a cove with palm trees surrounding us. The best part was that we went right before tourist season so we had the whole beach to ourselves. We met up with Rohit and Pooran while in Goa, some more of our friends from EAP, who couldn’t go to Mumbai because they had to visit family. We had candle lit dinner on the beach and it was absolutely amazing. Not a negative word could be said about Goa (other than my sunscreen washed off and I got sunburned).

Not much to say about what we did here. We played Frisbee on the beach and buried Tara, the usually beach stuff.

Side Note: I had the most delicious seafood in Goa. I never used to be a big fan of seafood, but now I am starting to like it. I think before I was just scared of swallowing the bones.

Kerala

I think I should preface this by confessing my long-held desire to see Kerala. The interesting thing about the state of Kerala is that it has, for the past decade or two, voted consistently for the Communist Party. Hammer and sickle flags can be seen waving proudly on almost every street corner. When I went to India’s congress I learned a little about Kerala and what the Communist Party has been doing there. They have been focusing mainly on improving the living conditions of farmers and villagers, and leaving the big cities to fend for themselves. This tactic seems to be doing well. Compared to the rest of India Kerala has an extraordinarily low amount of beggars. In fact, I only saw two the whole time I was there, which is remarkable because I am use to having at least ten beggars approach me a day. I was glad to see a creative form of government in operation and only wished I knew more about what they were doing.

Kochi/ Ernakulum, Kerala

The European influence in this town was very evident. The houses were Dutch and English style. They reminded me of England so I enjoyed it. The setting was weird though, because it was like a small fishing town in England with palm trees and swamp like climate.

Rohit and Pooran wanted to stay in Goa, and so they whined this whole part of the trip making it much less fun. We should have left them in Goa.            

Periyar, Kerala

After Kochi, we went inland to see India’s jungles. We went to Periyar’s wildlife reserve. There are tigers, leopards, and elephants there, but we didn’t see anything of the sort. The highlight of our tour through the wildlife reserve was seeing wild bore. Rohit and Pooran continued whining through this part of the trip.

We also went to a tea factory (fitting for an English tourist) and spice garden. I took extensive notes on how to grow tea. The spice garden was super interesting because we got to taste some of the spices. Cinnamon leaves are delicious! I also decided that I want to see if I can grow a pepper vine at my house when we get back because I learned how to make black pepper.

Alipuza, Kerala

Rohit and Pooran’s whining stopped in Alipuza. We rented a houseboat and did a back water tour. It was very luxurious. To prove the luxury, oddly enough, the boat had the best bathrooms of our trip. The ride was the highlight of the trip for me. It is typically what couples do for their honeymoons, but it was only ten dollars a person for us, so we did it. It was one of the most beautiful settings that I have ever seen. We took thousands of pictures so I will post them for you to get a glimpse of it as soon as possible.

Ernakulem, Kerala

We went back to Ernakulem because our train left from there and we had an extra day, so we saw a movie. It was X-Men 3.

*Appreciating Cultural Differences*

Typically in a movie theater people silence their phones or turn them off. Not so in India, even though they get the same commercials telling them to turn off their phones. They feel inclined to raise the volume of their ringer during a movie. Why you ask? Who knows!

This caused a problem for our friend Pooran during X-Men. Someone behind us got a phone call and was talking for about twenty-minutes as loud as he possibly could. Pooran got mad turned around and yelled at him and then it was awkward the rest of the movie. The guy, however, turned off his cell phone for a little bit, but after intermission he picked up his phone and continued to annoy everyone in the theater.

Train Ride