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.
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