Thank You Very Much Please

Place: The Thar Desert

Stepping off yet another Indian bus in the city of Jaisalmer I felt for the first time that I was in India. Seeing the ornately carved sandstone buildings, shadowed by the massive fort encircling Trikuta Hill, the dusty, tan landscape decorated by crunchy green shrubberies, I felt like I had woken up in an Arabian dream. Thanks to the help of a smooth talking 19-year-old who loved his beer, we checked into his family's luxurious (at least for us) hotel with marble floors, Arabian style lamps, and a rooftop restaurant with a view of the fort. The whole atmosphere made be feel like an Indian princess, drinking chi tea while lounging on mirrored cushions, strolling the textile markets with the fort walls, and sailing around the golden archways and temple ruins surrounding Jaisalmer lake.
The city of Jaisalmer is on the far west side of the state of Rajathan, along the border to Pakistan and at the edge of the Thar Desert. One of the main activities for tourists is to mount a camel and trek out into the wilderness. Our hotel, an extensive family run operation similar to the Italian mafia, also owned a camel farm and had cousins who led treks. Go figure. Keeping our money within the family, we signed up for a two day, one night trek into the dunes of the Thar Desert.
It was the most memorable experience thus far on our miniretirment adventures, no so much because of the scenery, but the company. Yes, the natural beauty of the desert is breathtaking, the milky white sand dunes rippling for miles into the horizon, their tips smoking from the constant sand being blown of their crests, but the memorabilia of our trek can be summed up in the eccentric style and hilarious broken English of our three guides.

Our trek included a total of nine people, three girls from China, three guides, and the three of us, or as our guide put it,
"3 American girls, 3 China girls, and 9 Indian mans - 3 man, 6 camels."
Still unable to pronounce the names of our guides, we remember them fondly by their appearances and phrases. The one guiding Megan's camel had a cataracts in one eye, making it milking and bluer than the other. My guide was tan and tall and loved to sing in an extremely high-pitched voice, and Jen's guide wore a white turban over is hideously died orange hair. All three had weather worn skin, black from the sun, rotting brown teeth, and infectious laughs and personalities.
Some of the phrases they loved to say included, "Good camel, very strong" (as if to imply we would need that), "Thank you very much please" (as a way of being totally polite all at once, I guess) Yea sure, why not? (even when it was not an appropriate response) and tacking "You know?" at the end of most statements. Or, my absolute favorite, when they took credit for God's own handiwork in creation. For example:
Guide: You like sand dunes?
Us: Oh yes, they are beautiful.
Guide: Thank you very much please. Stars? You like stars?
Us: Yes, yes, amazing!
Guide: Thank you

or:

Guide: I use flashlight, ok?
Me: Oh yea, that's fine
Guide: Thank you very much please

or:

Us: You are such a good cook! The food is delicious!
Guide: Thank you very much please
Us: How did you make it?
Guide: I make many many times, you know?
Us: Is that a cucumber inside?
Guide: Yea sure, why not

As the sun sank over the sands, we huddle closer and closer to the fire for heat and light. The Chinese girls started a game of guessing a number within a given range until one person got the exact one, then they would have to sing a popular song from their country as punishment. Although he didn't quite grasp the concept, one of our guides attempted to play along.
Us: Ok, say a number between 2 and 20
Guide: 45
Us: No, 2 and 20, like 10, 15
Guide: 200
Us: Er, yes! You win!
And before we finished congratulating him on his guess he burst into a long, high-pitched song in Hindi. When he finished we all burst into applause and cheers.
"Thank you very much please. It's Indian song, you know?" or "It's love song, you know?"
We continued playing for a while, our guide so excited that he would suddenly burst into songs without winning the game, and being the polite tourist that we were, we waited, clapped and applauded as usual until the fire died and the guides came over to prepare our beds and tuck us in.
They layered us with blankets, congratulating us for opting out of a tent, unlike the Chinese girls, because they "Never ever see stars!" (Plus it was less work for them.) Little did we know we would see no stars either, as the entire night would be spend with our entire bodies under the covers to bar against the freezing night desert air.
Once the blanket were set, the guides said goodnight and clicked off the flashlight.

Total darkness.

We heard a crunching sound and gasped and clicked the flashlight on and started shining it one by one at the herd of camels who were residing too close to where we were sleeping. The first camel was sitting, munching loudly on his cud. The next was doing the same, and the one after that, until...BOOM! One was standing and looking right at us. We yelped and hid the light from view. We were right in his pathway should he decided to venture out for a midnight snack.
"Uh, hello?" I called to the guides, "will the camel step on us in the dark?"
"No!" he yelled back, "never ever! Never ever step on tourist."
"Ok, thank you"
"Yes, yes, please."
We flashed the light on the mischievous camel again and he was closer now, the light making his eyes silver. We yelped and hid the light again. We did this for an hour of so, watching the camel inch closer, and closer and wondering if we should sleep in shifts to protect ourselves. We all dosed off eventually, awakened occasionally by the camels munching and farting.
I was grateful when morning came and the guides woke us up with their call of "Chi! CHI!" which indicated a meal was ready.
Still sore from the days ride before ,Megan and I opted to walk alongside the camels for a while, since even at a run they were easy to keep pace with. The guides were very impressed.
"You are very strong. Like camel."
We had our last meal with our beloved guides and there even more beloved chapati before a jeep came to pick us up. We said our goodbyes, left them a tip and our flashlight as a gift, and praised them on what good cooks, guides, and company they were.
They responded, "Thank you very much please."

Diarrhea Diaries

Place: My rotting insides

India has a way of getting under your skin. Literally. I've never had a problem with traveler's diarrhea, despite the wide range of disgusting dishes and appalling hygiene of some of the places I've eaten around the world. Fried germs with a side of parasites. Roasted bacteria smothered in salmonella. Yum! Somehow, my stomach of iron and intestines of steel perform mob justice on any riot-causing food I ingest. However, as of recently, I'm not sure if my immune system is weakening with age, or if India's bugs are just that hard core, but India has definitely gotten under the skin, and gone straight to the gut.
I was perfectly fine for about a month. Only a few small fires that my ever present antacid quickly exterminated. Except of course, that one incident in Sri Lanka induced by some fish curry, where I came back from a walk in the fetal position only to find Jen in the shower. Unable to wait a minute more, I ran down the hall and burst into an empty room to rescue myself. I finished just in time to greet the owner and two new guests who would have the pleasure of smelling my flagellants for the rest of the evening.
But after that slightly embarrassing incident, I kept the pains at bay through Southern India until I hit the beach resort state of Goa.
Up to that point, India had not been able to penetrate my rock iron stomach wall. Not with food anyway. So, determined to break me, she took another method. The sea. I didn't start feeling seasick until the boat ride back from our snorkeling trip. I managed to hold on to my insides and pride for the ride back and not embarrass myself by puking like the snorkeler I was in front of all the scuba divers. The taxi driver was not so lucky. About 100 meters from our hotel I started screaming "STOP STOP STOP!!" before vomit projected our of my mouth all over the backseat of the car. The driver hardly seemed phased, just sat patiently and waited as I finished, looking passively out the front window. All he said was "Ok?" after I had cleaned off the window and ceiling of his car.
Unfortunately, the seasickness hadn't worn off by dinner that evening, where holed myself up in the restaurant bathroom. Now bathrooms in India are all inclusive, sink, toilet, a shower head attached somewhere randomly in the wall, and a drain (or hole) in the floor: there is no shower curtain or door. I used to find this quite irritating, that the entire bathroom is wet after I shower, but, in that particular moment, when my insides decided to escape from both exits, I found it very convenient. I squatted on their flat toilet seat and heaved out what was left of me right onto the floor. Run the shower for a minute or two and no one's the wiser. Ha! Perhaps that's why they are built that way.
But it wasn't until Delhi that I discovered the full range of talent that my bowels were capable of. After two days of munching on eggs fried on street carts and Chi tea prepared in front of the open urinals, my internal system shut down and had me woozy and nauseous for ten full hours before it had the courtesy of releasing my pain and stomach lining.
The next day we returned to Jaipur to attend a three-day Indian wedding and eating fest that our new Indian friends had invited us back for. And my body, so starved of food, decided to hang on to every meal I ate for dear life and never let go. Ever. At first, this was a welcomed change, thankful to not have my meals running like an express train through me (or in reverse). But after 3 days, my stomach gurgling and burning like fresh volcanic lava, my intestines filled with more black tar and filth than the Ganga river, I decided I envied Jen and Megan's current diarrhea situation. By day five they convinced me to go to the doctor.
Now the pharmacies in India can top any adrenaline pumping activity in the world. Walking up to the streetside stand, distinguished from the convenience stores only by the red cross painted on the front, and playing a kind of "guess what's wrong with the white person's body" game with the clerk and his broken English. Afterwards, he hands you some ten-cent pills wrapped in foil and you cross your fingers and wait and see what they do to you. Will the parachute release? Maybe, maybe not.
Now I had performed this medical melodrama several times by this point, for allergies, sore throat, acid, and the like, but none have been quite so challenging or interesting (for the audience) as acting out constipation. I will leave my hand gestures and charade movements to your own wild imagination.
Even thought my new Indian friend Dilshad had accompanied me to the local pharmacy in his Muslim neighborhood to help translate, I still wasn't sure if even he understood exactly the bad behaviour of my greedy innards. After finishing the performance of my symptoms, Dilshad and the doctor both stared blankly at me for several minutes before conversing in Hindi for many minutes more. Finally DIlshad turned to me and said, "You lose the motions, yes?"
I hung my head in shame. Yes, I had lost the motions. How careless of me. The doctor game me six colorful pills, told me to take three at once, and sent me and my lack of motions away.

I am convinced that naughty bowel movements are the perverted brother of menstrual cycles: coming at the most inconvenient time is in their genes. At the time I was trying to find my motions I was staying with my friends as guests of Dilshad's very friendly, and very large, Muslim family in their four story house. There was one bathroom on the roof shared by anywhere from 11 - 15 people. We were in a guestroom on the third floor, so I only had to run up two flights of stairs in case of an emergency and hope and pray the bathroom wasn't occupied. I had a 1 in 16th chance. I took the colored pills and sat as my friends watched me like a ticking time bomb.
Finding my motions was not an easy feat. There were several false alarms, miraculously coinciding with the Muslim calls to prayer being pumped thorough the speakers in spires throughout the neighborhood. My host family probably thought they had converted me.
Luckily, in Indian culture, burping, gas, and the like are common enough that they don't provoke looks of shame or disgust. In fact, as I lay in my bed of pain with my stomach gurgling and bubbling away, my host family hardly flinched. Jen and Megan, on the other hand, went running from the room and we all burst into fits of laughter as I squirted the air with scented talc powder. They looked like someone who didn't understand a joke. "Why laughing??!!" they asked, confused.
But, as usual, by the grace of my Christian God who makes all things right in their time, my motions found their way home. And I was even invited back to live with my new Muslim family for a year.

I am happiness that you meet me....Reflections of India

About to board my final Indian bus toward the Nepalis border, my heart gives a little twinge of sadness to leave this large country where I've spent the past eight weeks of my life. I am also so relieved I could do a mini-Bollywood dance.

A well traveled man once told me that you either love India, or you hate it, there is no in between. Truthfully, there is too much variety and chaos in India to completely love, or completely hate anything in total. I love the sound of my hotel owner singing in the next room, but hate the million bugs buzzing into my face and arms as I'm trying to write. I love the food, but hate it's aftermath effects. I love the ginger tea, but hate that an 8-year-old boy was it's maker. I love the crowds and large sense of community, but hate when they are all in one bus with myself. There are pros and cons to everything. And therefore, looking back, I have compiled a list of my personal loves and hates of India.

1. The Wandering Pinkies and Man Love


In general, I like the conservative practices of the predominant Muslim and Hindu religions. While the arranged marriages and sex-segregated schools are extreme, I prefer it to the pregnant 13-year-old girls that I saw everywhere in Central America. Many consider the Indian man sexually suppressed by his culture, which is why he leers,stares, and cat-calls at the white women walking down the street. But very few actually are brave enough to go beyond that. But the few who actually venture out to touch another women have created a very stealth and sneaky method, which is so bizarre it is almost comical.

I had my first experience with this on a crowded bus in Rajasthan. After taking a seat next to a teenage boy, I felt, every few seconds, a brush on my upper arm. Thinking it was just an accident at first, since bumping and touching are common on the bouncy bus rides, I ignored it. But when I happened to look down, the boy had is arms folded across his chest and was stretching his fingers out discretely from his armpit. When I looked at them, he immediately pulled them back in like a frightened turtle, all the while looking casually straight ahead. Annoyed (and a bit confused on why he would want to touch my jiggly upper arm) I jabbed him with my elbow and put my purse down in between. Almost immediately his hand was on my purse. Not comfortable with that either I snatched my purse back and put it in my lap. He put his hand on the bench in between us and, ever so slowly, stretched out his pinky finger and brushed my thigh.

I grabbed both his wrists and threw them in his lap. It didn't seem to phase him and his hand went right back to the same spot and his pinky began wandering again. He even started playing "If You Think I'm Sexy" from his cell phone to set the mood. I finally yelled at him loud enough for the entire bus to hear, "Hey! No TOUCHING!" and he casually got up and changed seats. Talking to a girl from Switzerland the next day who had the EXACT same tactics used on her, I realized this is a common move in India, which I dubbed - the wandering pinky. Hate it.

But Indians, as a compromise to not touching women, have resorted to being very publicly affectionate with their male friends and family, and it is not uncommon to see boys with linked pinkies strolling down the street, arms around each other, and holding hands with interlocked fingers. I've even witnessed thigh-stroking in front of a textile shop. The man love: I love it!

2. Mob Justice

One positive thing in India, despite the wandering pinkies, is that I never once felt unsafe. For the past eight weeks, I'm pretty sure we were the most dangerous thing in India. While Indian men can be gawky and just plain annoying, I can credit them in never making me fear for the safety of my body or possessions. In Latin America, I clung to my purse and backpack as if they were life itself, and avoided late night walks home alone. In India, I've hiked mountains solo at 2 am, and passed my large pack that contains all my belongings off to the first Indian man who claims to work for the bus. He grabs the backpack and rushes off into a bustling crowd of people and I never think twice that it won't be there at the end of my journey. Why this is, I have no idea. Perhaps it's the Hindu sense of spirituality or superstition. Or perhaps it's the interesting way that Indian's take the law into their own hands.

Like most developing countries, the police are highly ineffective when it comes to administering justice. Because of this, when a small crime, such as traffic accidents and petty thefts, occur, the victim instead of notifying police, sounds an alarm to the surrounding crowd. The general public within earshot, assess the situation and determine who is the guilty party, and let out all their pent up Hindu rage in an angry group beating, which can often be very severe and sometimes even deadly. Afterwards, the bloody and broken defendant is dragged to a nearby police station.

While I never experienced mob justice to an extreme (Thank God), I did see it on a scale so minor it could only be comical. The first experience was in the Rajasthani capital of Jaipur. Jen, Megan, and I were shopping in the bustling old city when a rickshaw driver (a human beast of burden who transports fat locals around in a carriage attached to a bicycle) turned and craned his neck to look at the three white girls walking down the street. While his head was facing the wrong direction for driving, his carriage ran into Jen and a parked motorcycle, knocking it over.
"Ouch!" Jen screamed, "watch where you're going!"
The motorcycle owner also came out and yelled something nasty (I'm sure) in Hindi. The rickshaw's passenger in the carriage noticed the commotion, and as a completely uninterested party, reached out and gave the rickshaw driver a hard smack on the back. The driver looked at the bike and Jen, received the whack, and merely faced forward and continued to drive. The passenger sat back and began chatting with him like nothing had happened.

My second experience was in the backpacker ghetto of Delhi. Megan and I, hungry for a late night snack, were buying eggs from a street vendor, who was frying them up in a pan on a kerosene stove. While we were waiting for our tasty treat, a group of naughty teenage boys walk by and one of them gives Megan a lingering and hard butt squeeze. She whips around and immediately starts yelling, "HEY!! NO NO, NO TOUCH ME!! VERY BAD!! I ANGRY! NO NO" (Our English dumbs down for the non-native speakers). Our egg-cooker, looking from Megan to the boys, deduces what happened, sets down his frying pan, and walks out from behind the cart. He goes over to the guilty looking group of boys, and without saying anything, shoves one with both hands in the chest. Another shove. And one more for good measure.

Then he walks back behind the cart, flips the frying egg, and nods at us with a grunt, as if to indicate that justice has been served. Megan and I left a tip.

3. Mammals and Filth

A quote from Paul Theroux's book describes it accurately when he says "Indians value all life except for that which is human." You can see that all over India with the thriving population of animal life. Cows hog the roads and block traffic, stray dogs run in packs and howl all night, large hogs with hairy back bristles rummage through the trash, monkeys hop from rooftop to rooftop, and rats scurry along the floors of trains. The Indians merely swerve around them in traffic, shoo them away from their porches, and live in their filth. While I do agree with the ethical treatment of animals, to allow them to reduce the quality of human life creates an appears of life being backwards. Plus, having been attached by three dogs, a baby cow, and a monkey, my tolerance of animals (which was never very high) has dropped considerably.

The animals, however, can't take all the blame for the high quantities of filth in India. There are no garbage trucks or dumps, and trash is just thrown from people's rooftops and bus windows into the streets. Open sewers run through many cities, and people will stop on the side of the road, squat and relieve themselves. I don't often blame them, as the side of the road is often more clean than some of the hideous public restrooms, where even I've peed on the floor to avoid actually using the toilet. But, like so much in India, amid the feces and trash, there is always something beautiful. Even the majestically white Taj Mahal is surrounded by meandering alleyways filled with sludge and crumbling homes.

Indians are just more acclimated than westerners. Or they revere it as holy. In the pilgrimage city of Varanasi, people bath and drink the holy water of the Ganga River, while dead bloated bodies float a few feet away and hundreds of thousands of pounds of human ashes are thrown in from the cremation ghat (which is located next to the laundry ghat, by the way)

4. Happiness to meet me

But the crazy spirituality and superstitions of the Indian population is probably what gives them the ability to tolerate western tourists like ourselves, who smother people in buses with our huge backpacks and clog their sewers with our toilet paper. Even with all my bad behavior, I was told after a broken conversation with a young Indian girl on a long hot bus ride, "I am happiness that you meet me." I don't think I've ever heard it put so eloquently.

Despite our cultural differences and language barrier, I've been welcomed with open arms into a large Muslim family, inherited a new protective and hilarious Indian brother, and was invited to a large Hindu wedding without knowing a soul, where we received more attention (and photographs) than the bride herself. The sense of community and family is something very beautiful in India, and the generosity of the poorest of people is gloriously convicting. Both virtues I see lacking very much in America and within myself: the sense of family and sharing. In the Muslim community where I spent several days, the house was shared by 11-15 people, which extended to the neighboring houses. Women talked over the rooftops while doing laundry, and called to each other from windows. 3 or 4 girls shared one bed, and they ate in big groups on the floor. "When with the family," my Indian brother Dilshad said, "You are a little bit more happy. When alone, feeling more sad."

5. DOODA LOO....pause...DO DOOT

And while I love the sense of community, I still haven't figured out if it is genuinely part of the culture, of if it is forced on them by India's massive population. People are everywhere. Literally. It is almost impossible to ever be alone. And there are many after effects because of India's massive amount of bodies. One that you will notice right away is all the noise, Noise, NOISE!!! You fall asleep each night to dogs howling, people yelling at each other, then singing to one another. Ever bus ride I've been on has had at least one person who nobly decides to add a musical soundtrack to the ride by blasting music from his cell phone.
Even if there aren't several people serenading the bus crowd, bus trips tend to be the loudest human experience on earth. Actually, any motor experience, or being within 100 mile radius of any road means that you will have the pleasure of hearing India's constant backdrop noise of honking. I think honking might have been invented in India. There is no purpose or reason behind 95% of most honks, but from the toot-toot of the car to the dooda dooda dooda loos of the bus, India's roads are screaming out 24 hours a day. I don't think Indian's even notice it, like the sound of the wind or breathing. There have been more than a few times that a motorbike has whizzed up behind me, laying on his horn, causing me to turn, with my fingers in my ears and scream "OK!! SHUT-UP ALREADY!!, only to have the driver look at me like a crazy person. My personal favorite, and one most likely to drive you clinically insane, have been the musical bus horns. All the driver has to do is tap a button on the dash and the long winded toots come out: DOODA LOO DOODA LOO DOODA LOO DOODA LOO DOODA LOO DOODA LOO....pause...DO DOOT.
The doodaloos and hoots of the street life: hate it.

Conclusion:
Despite it all, both the things that I love, as well as hate, have had positive effects on me. I am leaving India with the determination to develop a greater sense of community in my own life, within my family as well as my friendship, and to be at least half as generous as the population here. The conclusion, in the words of my female bus companion, is: India, I am happiness that you meet me!