India Aboundeth (mass email 4.0)
To All Ye Whom I Love:
There is some unfinished business out there, and I mean for it to be finished! Namely: some ungrateful students out there have “neglected” their pirate duty, that is, to answer my three questions in due time so as to receive my favouuur, ARGHHH! Before I force those unidentified souls to walk the plank and feed the bloody nest of crocodiles that merrily await, I will give them (you?) a chance to redeem themselves! Since the homework is so late I’ll assume you have no interest in answering the more “difficult” questions for me. You need only do one thing (those of you who have already done this may ignore my grog-influenced message): WRITE ME YOUR MAILING ADDRESS. CLEARLY. SO IF I SO CHOOSE I MIGHT SEND SOMETHING OR ANOTHER TO YOU BY MAIL. AND I DON’T MEAN E-MAIL. Understand, me matey?
In other news … TRAVEL! In India we have the TRAINS, the beautifully complex rail system which manages to wind around more kilometers of laid track than even China, bless its soul. Operating hours are extravagantly flexible, as I’ve found the right number to roll into the station quite nonchalantly four hours behind schedule, the originally posted departure time 11:30 in the Post Meridian. The stations are mostly images of devastation, bodies piled chock-a-block among the semblance of debris, a morbid scene indeed! BUT! Upon closer inspection, one finds that these are indeed LIVING, BREATHING BEINGS lying on makeshift beds of cardboard, foam, proper bedding, and bags and suitcases of every flavor. They are alive and well, but not as well as they would be if their trains hadn’t been delayed for what appears to be years! If the railroad enterprise were to charge a fee for overnight stay in the station, they would make a fortune! Of course, they would also have a riot on their hands!
Finally on the train, snuggled comfortably in the layers of our sleeping bag feathers, we are beseiged by another fearsome racket: “Chai! Chai! Chai!” In my dreams they call for me by name, the endless banter, the interminable quack quack quack. But wait! Are they really summoning me? Ahoy, that is not the case, for what they offer is a hot mix of milk, tea, and sometimes masala, quaint little cups of “chai” that arrive steaming hot, and otherwise would be gulped down in two seconds flat. They wander like unsettled, bewildered, specters at all hours of day and night, always hopeful for the thirsty taker. But it is no easy job. I imagine I am in their place, the blur of faces to pass day after day, the dead weight of the tea dispenser drawing my heavy arm lower and lower into the moving floor, a moment only to relax before voicing what has become to me the equivalent of silence, the sound of my own voice repeating a word which defines me to everyone around me, yet actually says nothing about me. I saw it in his slightly bloodshot eyes as he smiled to me, sitting down for 30 seconds with a sigh, the half-occupied metal plate of room temperature samosas, pakoras, fried toast set aside onto the blue cushions. He was tired.
Who understands me? That’s a question I’d like to ask. But I already know the answer, maybe. I’ve been thinking that it isn’t easy to understand me, that it is a rare person indeed who even has the potential to grok the multifaceted me, the perfect me, the fatally flawed me, the creative me, the utterly ordinary me. My sister, the best candidate. Who out there is willing to try? Not just those who hail me “friend”.
Well, the package claimed “Extra MMR”, and that ain’t no computer acronym I’m aware of: Mosquito Mortality Rate. A little bulb of clear liquid attached to a plug contraption you stick into the wall. I’m sure that if there had been a commercial for it waves of death would visibly emanate from the plastic doodad accompanied by closeups of the beasties wilting mid-bite. But does it poison the air I am breathing at the same time it exorcises the bed-rage driving pests? We’ll never know the answer to that question, because of one thing: LOAD SHEDDING. Yes yes it sounds complicated, if not that then at least like a good thing. When one SHEDS a LOAD one removes a burden from one’s back, delivers oneself into fewer nagging responsibilities, the moksha of freedom, correct? Incorrect! “Load shedding” is simply a euphemism for “rolling blackouts, that means permanently”! It doesn’t matter whether we are in Bodhgaya, Varanasi, or Delhi, the power can never be trusted to stay on, though you can pray it does. In the Shanti Guest House an amazing array of perhaps ten our more car batteries linked to a sensor/inverter kept the juice flowing to low power fluorescent bulbs during the inevitable blackouts; the drinking water purifier pump took the hit though during every “MAINS FAIL”. No such UPS system was installed for our would-be mosquito assassin though, and we were left unprotected the whole night in Jhansi! Of course we were assailed by the blasted dive-bombers under cover of darkness. They were not sneak attacks because we knew they were coming, but dastardly, DASTARDLY nonetheless! Apply Repel!
Is it fate? Would it not have happened had I been bitten by one fewer mosquito? The unthinkable: my friend the Tibetan monk Luorong Pengcuo whom I first met in western Sichuan province perhaps five months ago had said at that time he would be going to India this year. “Will we meet there?” he asked. “It’s possible,” I answered doubtfully. Our plan was to skip Tibet, fly into Cambodia or Laos or Thailand and start in on our tour of Southeast Asia. But then we started hearing more stories about Nepal, how we would be fools to miss it. We ended up taking a route through Lhasa and the rest of Tibet to secure Nepalese visas. And guess who we ran into in Lhasa? Barely recognizable (not really), pimped out in a black down winter jacket, was Luorong Pengcuo, who starts every SMS message to me with the Chinese words for “friend”. I was freaking out; our paths hadn’t crossed for more than two months, and yet they managed to converge after all!
Now.
Haw-Wen and I have just eaten (or “taken”, as the Indians like to “take” their meals as opposed to “eating” them … is this yet another Britishism?) a mediocre meal in one of Bodhgaya’s numerous tent outfits serving everything under the Indian, Westernized Chinese, seafood-allergic Japanese, and Israeli sun. We come out of the tent talking to yet another friendly traveler. We part at a crossroad and are probably destined to return to the mosquito-infested Burmese Vihara. (Fortunately the mosquitos are very stupid; they neglect to hide themselves very well during the day and actually seem to sleep the daylight hours away, coming out only under cover of darkness, albeit in droves. Mozzie inquisitions are best done by day.) As we walk down the street filled with Tibetan monks and pilgrims who have descended from Dharamsala along with the Dalai Lama, a thought occurs to me. “Where’s Luorong Pengcuo?” I ask Haw-Wen, simply musing. “Yeah, where is he?” she echoes, and her eyes scan the mass of people around a bit more speculatively than usual. “Wait,” she says. She moves a little bit toward the stands selling buddhist trinkets like low resolution, high contrast pictures of the Mahabouddi temple and the Dalai Lama encased in cheap plastic keychains, bells, necklaces made of wood, bone, horn, or even ivory beads. “Is that him?” “No way,” I say. “Really, is that him?” “Where?” We move over and she approaches a monk sporting a shiny fake gold watch from behind. Trying not to be too obvious, she keeps moving around a little to get a view of his face without seeming intrusive. The line of that jaw is unmistakable. Guess what? IT’S YOU!!! WHAT YOU SAY??? SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB!!! More than another two months after our last meeting in Lhasa, we have again run into the infinitely amiable Luorong Pengcuo!!! I have never felt so speechless, so shocked/amazed/exhilarated/quaking in my disbelief. This kind of stuff makes one reconsider all previous empirical reflections of fate.
And what of the nature of trust? Is it scientific, statistical, or metaphysical? When innocent looking children clamber up to us after spying us out, their big eyes and cute getup, grubby unshod feet giving them free passes into our hearts greet us with cheery “hellos”, then extend outstreched palms and demand “10 rupees?” without batting an eye? When making the short kora in Bodhgaya we are assaulted by scores of disembodied arms waving tin alms bowls through the slitted holes in the pink fence, accompanied by sounds of groaning complaint? When out of hordes of Indians we are systematically singled out to target by the troups of ragamuffin kids, teenage mothers cradling babies, boys and men with sickly thin legs scrambling across the concrete like unbalanced crabs, piteous old women covered in dust who tug at our shirts when we pass? What of “trust” when we joke of dropping our shields to 20% in one place, like the Enterprise cruising in Federation territory, and raising them to 90% as if under Borg threat upon being asked by a local, “Do you need help?” They say that you can look into a person’s eyes to divine his or her intentions. It is a practice we are learning to perfect; for travelers like us an offer of help is just as likely as contract for payment, an innocuous slew of questions the precursor to a veiled business pitch. We have had to chase greedy brats out of temples. Tell people point blank: “I DON’T TRUST YOU.” The situation is at once grim and comical. We have learned to take a vagabond’s stance toward the abusers of reciprocal social propriety. “Room sir? Room madam?” they pipe up, always trying to insert, inject themselves into the continous stream of our thinking and observation. “NO.” We answer their annoying questions bluntly. This confuses them; we are carrying our tremendous backpacks; we have obviously just arrived on the train or on the bus; it is ridiculous to think that we don’t need a room! They try again. “Room sir? Come to my place, I give you good price. Come.” “NO. NO NO NO.” we reject them like Yao Ming would reject a midget’s layup. Walking off, I shake my booty and wave two index fingers in the air, jubilantly singing, “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m a tourist!” I don’t want to be turned into an object. I don’t want people to mistake me for a cash-stuffed wallet absently left on a park bench. When it comes down to it, my trust stays just where it should - in me.
But even my own body deceives me! One must carefully lay each foot in front of the next to avoid sloshing into an inferno of puddley shit which pave in between all the stones. This is Varanasi, and cows are everywhere. Their bodies are the tonsils of every alleyway; they turn or do not turn as they please, munch on scraps they somehow find in piles of refuse, and leave nasty brown postcards wherever they roam. Even on the Ghats, the steps leading down to the holy Ganga or Ganges, we never walk in straight lines, more like the centipede weaving its way among the mushroom obstacles, left, right, get around, circumvent that shit! I DO have to admit, however, that they are kind of cute in a very scraggly pastoral way, although I do not think the narrow streets of old Varanasi is the right place for them. Their owners should at least be required to pick up after them! I like petting the younger calves as I pass; their hair is scruffy and tangled like that of overused stuffed animals, and their flanks do not quiver and tremble as if to shake off flies when I touch them. Walking down a dimly lit underpass I doubled over a mysterious mass hiding in the dark, like hitting a brick wall lined with velvet. Sorry, ol’ chap! I don’t think I left any scars on the furry bloke though! All this said, saying the owners care nothing about the unseemly propagation of crap is a bit unfair and untruthful. Contrary evidence may be clearly viewed on the sloping, angled Ghats, where poop patties have been set out to dry; unmistakably they consist of 100% bovine dung. Ah, what to do about this symbol of India, this rotund, gentle, protected beast? They give more than they take, it seems, and after all, isn’t that godliness?
Or is godliness in the size of one’s paunch? The enormous, geometrically perfect bellies Indian men and women carry with them - immediately visible at any public bathing spot - are probably filled with ghee. They are zippered tubs. If only you ask, they would be happy to let you scoop out a modest portion for use in palak paneer or your favorite masala. I’m just waiting for a “ghee belly” to call my own so I will be entirely self sufficient, even a business! MORE SWEETS! MORE GULAB JAMON! EAT EAT EAT!
The only problem is, all this romping about, crazed dancing at marriage festivals, cheat-evasion episodes, encounters with beasts-that-go-moo, late trains, tobacco spittle, spicy feasting, mosquito biteatude and burnanation, gloating enjoyment of erotic yester-millenia sculptures, keep me from the regular company of my inbox. It’s the weather, must be. I know in dreary Queensbury the snow drifts will only get higher until April. In Hunan foreign teachers are cursing out the lack of adequate insulation anywhere, compounded by its own “load shedding”. In Beijing snot freezes mid-hack. Here, it’s mid spring in February, and I was banging away on my Jambay - newly acquired, very heavy - on the Delhi rooftop under the smiling sun at ten o’clock this morning. Sure, dust and grime get me down a little, but somehow, some way, we’ve denied the existence of a season called Winter this year. Simply stepped around it. And as the sun draws us outside, as experiences draw us in, 40 rupees (US $1) just seems WAY TOO MUCH to pay for a lousy hour in front of a agonizingly slow, buggy, virus-infected Windows 98 box. Just because I haven’t written so many individual emails to you these months, don’t get all in my face, like! I appreciate hearing from you every time, and will do better when I go home.
Where home is.
Overflowing affections and affectionation,
Bino / Haw-Bin / 柴皓斌