The Re-entry, Part II

The “real” world.  Except that it isn’t.  Well, no more real than where I just left anyway.

For the better part of the first week back, I felt like an alien life form in some parallel universe where everything was at once comfortable and familiar and yet still feeling hideously out of place.

I woke up the morning after my first State-side sleep wanting an Indian breakfast.  Like the sweet breakfast chapattis I had in Rajasthan or one of my favorite South Indian morning meals: uppam with potato and carrot stew.

Having arisen at 4 or 5 something, I fried myself an egg instead, and put it on butter jam toast.  That’s kind of Indian.  I mean, I had it a lot while I was there!

But the adaptation wasn’t just with the food.  The adjustment in general was hard, and truth be told, it’s not done yet though I don’t imagine the conclusion is too far away.  The time-pressure of Western civilization is so obvious when you are confronted with it abruptly.  There, there was chaos.  Nearly constant chaos.  But there was no pressure in the chaos; only the chaos.  Here, however, it’s all orderly.  There’s precious little room for the vivid unique expressions I saw throughout the subcontinent, let alone for deviation.  Everything so neat and tidy and organized and planned.  And the pressure to keep inside the lines.

I didn’t expect the re-entry to be as difficult as it was, but I was honestly torn.  I was excited to see my family and friends, to sleep in my own bed, to not have to worry about where I would find my next electrical outlet or my next liter of water.  But I missed India, the activity, the sounds, the people.  And the feeling that I wasn’t doing anything; that I was just being.  I didn’t feel like I had to “handle” much of anything once the trip got rolling.  Problems arose and I responded to them naturally.  It didn’t feel like I was doing anything at all, as if I were a clear glass cube without panes, things just passing through me.

But here.  Here there was effort.  Effort to get through the 1300-odd emails.  Effort to get through the latent voicemails, literally left weeks ago.  Effort to get a blog post finished.

I was eating more and more.  I would 3 times what I would normally have eaten at a meal two weeks before.  And then eat again a few hours later.

I realized that I was eating to fill myself up.  But it wasn’t food that I was trying to collect inside me.  That’s just how my body interpreted my “grabbing.”

I felt like I was going to lose whatever I had found there.  And so I resisted, which then made the re-entry harder.  What was I going to lose?  The things that made me sing on the inside.  The ability to notice details like I was seeing through human eyes and hearing through human ears for the first time.  The simple naturalness of action.  I was lamenting these things, mourning their loss, and digging in to keep a hold of them.  Or of their memory.

But then I realized, not just in my mind as a simple platitude, but in the center of my chest, something that I knew I already knew on some level.  That whatever is Real is never lost.  That Truth is impossible to lose.  It simply cannot be lost.  Even if it fades into the darkest recesses of our minds, the very DNA on which the memories were stored, disintergrated, never to be consciously recognized again, even then, these things are not lost.  Impossible to contain or hold, because they were never our possessions, they belong to no man.  The Truth is not fragile in that way.

And as I absorbed that realization, I started to feel like I was regaining my equilibrium.  I stopped stuffing food into my body.  The clouds began receding.  I started noticing things again.  Like the rich man whistling to himself with his windows down at the stop light.  The meaty smell of hamburger joints.  The visual perfection of the identically space street lamps.  I listened to the birds in my own backyard like I had never heard the chattering of the robins or the squirrels, or the shriek of the Blue Jay.  I watched the little dew drops in the grass sparkle like tiny diamonds when the sun came up.

I realized that I hadn’t lost anything, despite it being quite cloudy there for a few days.

I’m glad to be back.  In the land of Opportunity.  Where with a touch of adjustment in perception, anything really is still possible.

Where to next?

The Re-Entry, Part I

(I include this last bit of travelogue, even though it seems out of place, because I think it is worth it).

My flight from Chennai to Delhi was late, and I was feeling the pinch.  That meant I had about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get from the Delhi domestic terminal to the Delhi international terminal, change my rupees back into dollars, get through immigration and security, get my bag checked, find the gate and board.  Oh yeah, and about 4 or 5 more security checks thrown in there.

When I landed in Delhi (from Chennai flying on the IndiGo airline, which was very nice), you deplane right on the tarmac and then board a bus.  About 5 minutes later they drop you at the domestic terminal, which is 5 miles away from the international terminal (all at the same airport).  They don’t have a tram or any other other automatic service to move people between the terminals, but I’d heard they had a shuttle bus.

I’m waiting and waiting for my backpack to come around on the baggage carousel.  Nearly everybody else’s bags have come in, gone around, and been picked up by their rightful owners.  Mine however was curiously MIA.  I’m watching where the bags come in on the belt from the bag processing room on the other side of the wall.  Well, I’m watching that, while simultaneously also watching the minutes on my phone tick by, and getting more anxious with every flipping digit.

I see something that looks like my bag enter the belt (no other bags had been put on for several minutes).  And almost as soon as it got on the belt it disappeared.  I walk over to that area of the belt, and sure enough, it was my bag.  The strap had caught in the belt, and the now captive bag had been snatched off the belt and down on the other side, hanging by the strap.  If I had not been watching at that very moment, I would have never seen it happen.

I straddle the moving belt with my feet on the stainless steel edges and lean over the far side near the wall without getting caught in the belt.  I manage to get my hand on one of the shoulder straps and dead lift it straight up and sling it on my back.

At least I had my bag now.  Delhi hadn’t eaten it twice.

I saw a lady who had a name tag and I asked her if she worked at the airport.  She said yes.  I asked her if there was a shuttle bus to get to the international terminal.  She said yes, out by post number 1, there will be a red bus.  It is free.  “Free?”  I ask in surprise.  Yes, sir.  Free.

Great.  It will probably be the first time I’ve gone somewhere free in the last six weeks.

Out the double automatic doors and to the right.  I find post number 1, but there is not a bus stand there.  I ask around and am pointed under the nearby overpass (they call them flyovers), where there are two people sitting in chairs.  I ask them if this is the shuttle bus to the international terminal.  Yes.  I ask how long it will take and get the reply it comes every 10 minutes.  I was thinking if it was going to be much longer, I’d have a rickshaw cart me over there instead.

Well, 10 minutes turns out closer to 25, but I still make it on the bus, though “free” turns out to be “25 rupees” from a “conductor” that doesn’t have a name tag or a uniform.  He ends up being legit, but I have a long conversation with him that he only partly understands.

For some reason, I want to tell somebody that I’m sick of getting ripped off.  I tell him, “Everyday, everyday.  Every day.  Somebody rips me off.  Every day.”  “It’s ridiculous.”  He doesn’t understand.  I tell him, “cheaters” which he does.  I tell him cheaters come everyday.  “Rickshaw, you - 20rs.  Rickshaw, me - 400rs.”  “Free bus, no.  Now 25rs.”  He gets it, but he is quiet for a while on the ride.  Then he says he’s sorry that Indians have cheated me everyday.  And that he is honest.  And not all Indians are like the cheaters.

Then I feel bad.  The guy is just doing his job.  I don’t know why I decided to tell him, but on some level, I wanted someone in India to know that I was unhappy about being overcharged all the time.

We pull around to the international terminal and we both get off.  He wants to show me the booth there, to verify that he is the conductor, and that the 25rs charge was legitimate, and mostly that he wasn’t a cheater.  I had paid long ago on the bus ride, so the money was not at issue.  I tell him graciously that I believed him now, and that he wasn’t trying to cheat me, and that I didn’t think all Indians were cheaters, and it was just unfortunate that the lady that informed me that the tram was free had done so inaccurately.  I namasted him and put my hands up in the traditional greeting/departing signal where the palms are pressed together in front of the chest, like you are praying.  He did the same and we walked away.  Him, off to I don’t know where, and me, towards the terminal.

There are doors everywhere and people standing in long lines to get into the building.  I’m thinking that I will never make it.  A man comes up to me and tells me to go to “M.”  I don’t know how he knew, but that was the right door for me, and it had no wait whatsoever.  I have no idea what was going on with all the other people outside.

Now inside, I find a couple of money changers, and one has a longer line.  I go to the other one.  There are two Japanese women in front of me, but they are speaking English, and there’s a man in front of them.  After about 10 minutes of waiting, one of the ladies says to the other one, we don’t have time for this, we’re going to miss our flight.  They leave.

Another man steps up to the side in an effort to ditch me in line, but it’s not going to happen today.  The original guy in front of the two ladies finishes his business, and before he is even out of the way, I am talking to the man inside and ask him if I can change rupees into dollars here.  He says yes, and he hands me a piece of paper, which I complete and return to him along with my passport.  He photocopies it and counts out $124 in American greenbacks, hands them to me, and I am on my way.

Next stop is where I get my boarding passes after standing in line for a while.  After I have them, the clerk points me toward immigration and security.  I check my phone for the umpteenth time.  The flight will begin boarding in 10 minutes and there’s a decent line in immigration.  The man doing the stamping is moving twice as slow as the stamper in any other line, but it’s too late to change lanes; I’m committed.  Finally I reach the front, and after a brief conversation, the man puts something in my passport on the page opposite my Indian visa.  Good to go, I’m off to the next station.

All these stations seem to be eating up valuable time, and it feels like there is a security scan/wand/x-ray about every 10 minutes.  I will probably be glowing after this is done.

Somehow, against all odds, I get to my gate (which is the closet one to where I enter [what luck!]), and go through two more security screens as the sign on the gate says “final boarding.”

I walk down about 30 yards of ramps and I’m in the little movable hallways that you walk through to get on the plane.  There is a huge line, but they won’t leave without me now.  People are still coming into the line behind me.  This is a big plane and it’s totally full, not one empty seat is what I find out later.  The plane has 9 seats per row, divided into sets of 3.  I have requested the window seat in my set of three.

I walk down the aisle to find it.  I pass a 7 year old girl sitting in the huge first class seats; the ones that recline all the way back and have their own little privacy pod.  The airlines want an additional $1200 for the privilege to upgrade from economy, but I’m thinking, I will bribe this girl with a hundred dollars worth of candy for that seat.  Only I didn’t have any candy. 

I get to the back and find my row and it’s empty, which I think is awesome.  Until a young lady and her 22 month old hellion arrive to occupy the seats next to me.

The kid takes the middle seat and almost immediately starts to bounce up and down on the seat.  The three seats in my part of the row are all connected, mind you, so when he bounces his seat, my seat bounces too.  Pretty soon he sits down.  Good, I think.  Then he puts his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him and starts kicking it.  Well, maybe kicking it a bad descriptor for what he’s actually doing.  He has both of his feet planted flatly on the back of the chair, and is straightening out his legs really quickly, like he is doing jerky leg presses.  This is not a tap tap tap kicking, this is a move the whole seat up and back 4 inches kind of motion.

After 5 minutes of this, I expect the large Sikh man in the targeted seat to stand up, turn around and grab the kid by the hair, but it doesn’t happen.  In fact, he doesn’t even appear to notice.  The boy is a Sikh and the mother is too, so maybe it had something to do with that, but more than likely, it was just because he was Indian.

The way that children are guided in India is much more laid back than in America.  I remember seeing a young child, walking but not quite steadily, and he was next to the train platform.  A train comes into the station, and the mother isn’t concerned, even though the distance between the child and edge of the platform is measured in inches.

This mother, here on the plane, is similarly unenthusiastic about giving the child some boundaries.  She tells him to stop in a most non-assertive way, which the kid completely disregards.  She tells him again a couple of minutes later.  And then again a couple of minutes after that.  A few minutes after that, she gently places her hands on his bouncing feet up against the seat back, and says again, to “please stop” in a tone reminiscent of a sleepy whisper.

But there’s simply no bite coming, no greater punishment, so the kid ignores it.

I put my earphones in and start up a movie.  I calculate that I’ll need to watch 3 movies or so before I go to sleep, in order to get close to Columbus time.  20 minutes into the French (but subtitled) movie the system turns off.  I don’t think a lot about it because the crew is passing out the customs declarations forms.  I figure they will turn it back on when they are done. 

But they don’t turn it back on.  Because they didn’t turn it off.  It failed.  And it won’t be coming back on.

I rationalize this in my mind.  That’s ok, I think, I can read a book that I’ve got or go through some pictures on my laptop.

But no joy on them either.  The power has been lost to this section of the plane (probably about 25 people).  The electrical outlets don’t work and the overhead lights won’t come on either.  My laptop has 10% power left from working on it at the Chennai airport.  So, my options for distraction have largely evaporated.

My phone does have a charge, and my music is on there, so I figure I’ll listen to music for as long as I can until I doze off, now that my careful plan has been obliterated.  I put my earbuds in and my sunglasses on so that I can block some light, but also so I can stare at the kid without him (or his mom) knowing.

Now with tuneage, I watch the boy.  For the better part of 4 hours his act continues, though he takes a break when they serve dinner.  He sits down, kicks and bounces the man in front, then he stands up and jumps in his seat, then he stands (either on the floor or on the seat) and grabs the top corners of this same man’s seat, and starts heaving it with all his might, to and fro.

The man in front doesn’t say a single solitary thing during the entire flight to this boy or his mother, even though he is visibly tossed around with every joust.  No sideward glances, no sighs, no throat clearing, and despite my own thoughts, no standing, screaming and grabbing the kid by the hair.

This guy must be a saint.

I don’t even register the amount of motion that the kid is responsible for in my own seat.  Because even though we too are jerking around with the kids movements, there’s no way I’m going to say something if the guy in front isn’t.  I simply don’t have the right!

At one point the mom is turned the other way, and I swing my sunglassed face around hard and quick with a scowl he can see in my angry brow line.  That gets his attention and we all get some peace for about 90 seconds.  Then he forgets and he’s back to his routine.

We are served food at some point in there also, maybe after an hour or an hour and half.  During this time, I take out my earphones and pull up my shades and rest them on the top of my head.

The mother and I have a conversation (not about the boy), and in the middle of it, the kid starts acting up, standing on the seat and jumping.  The mother tells me, “Tell him to sit down.  Tell him.  Tell him to sit down right now.”  I relish the opportunity.  I tell him sternly and add a pointed wagging finger for emphasis.  The scolded boy looks plaintively at the mother.  She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head a bit, as if to say, you better listen to the man.

I found it odd that she would say that.  Maybe it’s the man’s job to discipline the child, and as she didn’t have a husband, maybe it was up to the men around them to fill in.  I’m not sure.  It wasn’t too long after that that the kid was largely back into his groove, but a bit slower due to him getting tired.

When he feel asleep, I slept too, thinking it was probably my only opportunity.

We both slept pretty soundly, and when he woke up he was better behaved, though not great.

At some point, I ask the rude stewardess if there was a spare outlet somewhere I could plug my laptop in, and get a full charge so I had something to do.  She comes back a few minutes later and tells me she’ll put it in first class and she’ll bring it back when it’s topped off.  Apparently what she meant was, she would take the laptop, bring it back after 45 minutes, and make sure the 10% battery it had was completely gone.  When I got it back it wouldn’t even power on.

Whatever.  My experience with United was horrendous.  From two separate mechanical delays and a lost day of the trip at the beginning, to losing my bag for 4 days without any idea of where it was, telling me incorrect things on the telephone when I called them, and then failure of the entire “passenger pacification” system on the way back, it was a losing situation from the start.  There were a couple of nice stewards on each flight, a bunch of disgruntled ones, and at least one really surly one.  The planes were old and tired just like most of the crews.  My advice is to only take United if you want your Adventure to start early.

After the kid and I begin to stir (in that order) they come around serving breakfast which was worlds better than the trash they handed me 10 hours before and called dinner.

We have at this point, out run the sun, and it’s now dark again outside.  It was dark when we left, and then it was light, now it’s dark again.  In an hour or two, it will be dawn once more.  You could have dawn and dusk both, multiple times per day if you flew in certain directions for long enough, but you wouldn’t know which was which.  I think that’s amazing.

We land in Newark, and I go through customs.  I answer some questions about my trip and whether I’m carrying any contraband.  Do the people carrying contraband actually admit it when queried?  Like, well, since you asked, yes I am.  If you hadn’t of said anything, I’d have just walked on through…

I get my bag off the conveyor and walk it a half a room away and put it on another one.  I go through a couple security checks, one where they rub my camera case down with a white square of fabric and test it for bomb residue, and another where I walk off without my shoes that they had to x-ray.  She calls out, “Who forgot their shoes??”  I can’t believe how natural it now feels to walk barefoot.  It didn’t even register.  I look back to see her looking at me.  Oops.  Yep, they’re mine.

I get to my much smaller plane for the hop from Newark to Columbus, the final hour and a half.  The flight was uneventful and comparatively brief.

I land in C-bus and head to my waiting family.  They have a sign.  It’s big and it’s green.  It says “Welcome Home Daddy” but I don’t know that that’s what it says until we’re putting it in the trunk as we’re leaving the airport.  When I’m walking down the corridor and first spot the big green square, I can tell it says something, but can’t read it, because there’s too much water in my eyes.

I see my daughter first, she’s up near security, I hug her and she says something, but I can’t say much with the lump in my throat.  My wife comes over next and we all hug like we haven’t seen each other in six weeks.  Next come the moms.  One big happy family.

They have brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts (bless them) and we sit on the first bench we come to, and eat doughnuts and talk and hug a lot.  Then I realize I need to get my bag which is probably on its 900th spin around the baggage carousel.  When we get down to baggage claim, it’s waiting in the little room off to the side, and after showing my matching stub for the bag, the serious man lets me have it.  By this time the bag and I look like we belong together.  Nobody else is coming for that bag, buddy.  Look at me.  Don’t we look like a pair?  A bit haggard with some scratches, scrapes, and bruises?

We head with the bag out to the car where there’s a very large trash bag waiting in the trunk.  My backpack and my carryon sack go into the bag which is then knotted to contain any unwanted creatures from moving in.  We have breakfast (my second of the stretch, third if you count the doughnuts) at one of my favorite places and my I start my new Journey.  Back into the “real” world.

The End of the Journey (in India)

The final day has arrived.  My departure from India, my temporary home for the last six weeks.  This experience has been something remarkable.  The “cloudy days and dark nights” that my wife prophesied in the letter she hid in my bag, came to pass.  Sometimes it was hard, and sometimes it was damn hard.  But not all the time, heck, not even most of the time.  Most of the time, I just enjoyed my experience. 

I enjoyed being conscious of things for the first time:  the song of the “kularu,” the call of the peacock, the chattering of the monkeys.  I enjoyed seeing the mountains and the desert and the plains and the coastline. I enjoyed hearing the myriad languages and seeing the print that went with them.  I enjoyed eating all the Indian foods, so many different regional differences, and eating them with my hands like the native people.  I enjoyed the train experience.  I enjoyed the tuk-tuk experience.  I enjoyed my domestic Indian flights.  I did not enjoy the bus experience :).

I enjoyed meeting all the friendly people I found along the way, and I enjoyed getting my fingers on the “pulse” of India - those things that you can’t really analyze or put into cogent sentences.  There’s a “suchness” or an “is-ness” (stealing those terms from somewhere) of India that can’t be described in print, or in the pictures and videos I shot, trying to record what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling.

This “is-ness,” this “such-ness” is what I came for, and I got it.  A full dose to be sure.

And now, it’s time to go back.

Back to Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts (that’s my current salivating obsession) and good pizza and hot showers and places without bugs.  Back to “Western” AC and comfortable mattresses and familiar words and downtime.  Back to reliable electricity, great and fast cell coverage, and haggle-less transactions.  And of course, back to my loving wife and child, who were with me every step of the way, in my heart and in my mind.  The support I have received from my family and friends and all the others that have chimed in, as comments on blog posts, in private emails, and as silent unmentioned prayers for encouragement and for protection, this support was not taken for granted.  My gracious thanks go to all who have lifted me up in whatever way they saw fit.

A mentor and friend wrote me this:

Being a kind of educational nut, I think that life is our best teacher and it is always trying to teach us something. I hope that you will take some time to ask yourself, "What have I learned?” from my travels, about myself, about the people I have met, about the life styles of others?  And "Did my trip meet or exceed my expectations?”  Most travelers can't answer these questions.  About all one can ask in most travel was “Did I see what I wanted to see or do what I wanted to do?," since most travel is just that, with almost no interaction with the people native to the country.  You did what I call the Nitty-Gritty in travel.  I would be interested also in knowing what were your greatest surprises?

His questions were meant to be answered in my own head, but as I’ve shared so much via the blog already, and you all have been my silent co-pilots, it was fitting to answer some of them here.

I agree that life is our best teacher and that it is always trying to teach us something.  Some people call it life with a small “L” and some people call it Life with a big “L.”  Some people call it God and some people call it the Universe.  Some people call it their conscience or their intuition or the still small voice, like the Quakers.  While we can debate all the intricacies of connotation and denotations, and psychology and religion and spiritual mysticism, I am sure that they all end up in the same place.  We are born to develop into our true nature.  And this Journey of mine to India was what was right and necessary in my own development.  “I hope you find everything that you’re looking for,” I got in that same letter from my wife.  “Especially the things you have yet to identify specifically, but that you know are waiting for you.”

And so, what have I learned…  I have learned that as many unique and fascinating differences as there are across peoples and cultures, there is so much the same.  We are the same people, just born into different places.  Places where haggling or not haggling is the way to do business.  Places where we guide our children tightly or guide them loosely.  Places where we call God “Jesus” or call God “Ram.”  Places where we grow up speaking English, or grow up speaking Malayalam.  But we are still doing business, we are still raising children, we are still calling God, and we’re doing it in our own tongues.

The people I have met have run the gamut from trying to take advantage of me to taking care of me like old family, even if we were literally strangers on a plane.  The lifestyles I encountered were as varied as the regions, all of them just right for the time and the place, and most importantly the people.

My trip exceeded my expectations, but to be fair, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, so technically it wasn’t hard, but practically it was.  Because though I wasn’t really conscious of it, I did have a way I thought things should go; some standard that should be met in order for the trip to be “successful.”  I wanted the “real” India.  And I got the most genuine look I can imagine.  I was a foreign transplant into that “real” India for a month and half, and I know that I am better for it.

I don’t know what my greatest surprises were.  Maybe that the trip actually came together, and I actually got here, and I actually did the “close to the ground” kind of travel I wanted to do.  I was surprised at how quickly I was able to hear that inner voice guiding me, despite how loud and chaotic this country is.  I was surprised by how social the average Indian is, and how close those social ties bind the family and wider social groups together.  I was surprised at how many people were tuning in to the blog and were sending me notes of support.

The blog itself was an exercise.  I didn’t even consider it for the longest time.  I figured I would write down my thoughts and impressions, privately.  I would, of course, take photos and video.  But all those things would be for my own recollections, my own future consumption.  Because I am not an extrovert at all, and I am certainly not public about much that I do.  I am a rather private person.  But at some point and for some reason, the needle pointed to my doing a public blog, and so I did.  I hope that it’s being publicly available helps people escape the cubicle grind for a few minutes here and there, reading about someplace exotic, thinking about their own Adventure that they (up til now) have never gotten around to having.

I am glad I did the blog though.  I’m glad for several reasons. 

The first is that the Adventure can happen, for all of us.  Just pack your sense of humor and your flexibility and you will be fine.  And you don’t have to spend a fortune.  In fact, the less you spend the more Adventure you get, lol.  My budget was $1500 total for the entire 6 weeks not including transportation to and from India.  I will arrive in the States with a little bit of money left in that account (for the next Adventure??!! :)).

The second reason I am glad I blogged (as I think I mentioned in a post), is that it helped me to slow down and actually process what I was taking in.  India is a smorgasbord of stimuli and it was helpful to use the blog to sort it all out.  Without it, many of the smaller moments would be lost to time, and their significance passed over.  The memories would probably revisit me when I was old, and I wouldn’t have known if I was remembering it or making it up. 

Third, is as a record for my own utility; if I’m ever feeling like a lack of motivation, I can remember the challenges I faced here and get the power to move through it.  Or as a humor read if I could use a laugh, because some of the things that happened were just hilarious (in hindsight of course).  Or if I’m feeling like my life is difficult, thinking back to how hard daily life really was for some of the people I met.

For posterity’s sake and the curious, I have included a map of the main destinations in India I travelled to.  The link is here, if you want to zoom.  I didn’t mark specific hotels or landmarks, just the city as it was shown on Google Maps.

I may or may not have additional posts coming after this, dealing with the “re-entry” into modern American life, and also answering frequently asked questions (FAQs).  If I do, and I’m thinking I will, it will be here on the blog, in the same place all the others have been.  Should I decide to blog on my next Adventure, whenever or wherever that may be, I will put a post here indicating as much, and include a link to it.

I respect the time and energy you have investing in reading my experiences, and I hope that somehow you’ve found something in them that you could appreciate.

I thank you one and all for coming.  I hope you have enjoyed the show.

Chennai

The drivers name was Money (really, he made the finger motion we do when something is expensive, when I asked him to re-say it).  Money says he’s getting married in a few days.  He is 30 and his soon to be wife is 25.  He says they’ll have a small wedding.

We talk, and he doesn’t understand a whole lot.  In fact, when he doesn’t understand something, he honks.  It takes me a few minutes to realize what’s going on.  I ask him if he wants children he says yes.  No honk.  When I say, are you hoping for a girl or a boy, he says yes again, and then honks.  Aha.  I get it.

So now I ask him a few other questions, just to test out my observation.  When I ask him something a bit more difficult or more complicated, he honks.  When I ask him the same question again (which he does not understand, but does not say so), he will honk twice.  Just for show, one time I asked it a third time just to see what would happen.  That’s right.  Three honks.

He pulls off about halfway through for a covert cigarette, a bathroom break, and the ubiquitous chai.  He doesn’t ask, like most drivers don’t.  When he’s wants a chai, we pull over.

He turns off the car (and AC) and goes into the open-air restaurant.  I say restaurant, but it’s more like a covered picnic area you find in some larger suburban parks in America.

Chai over with, we head on.  We come to a toll booth, he wants me to pay, the Accommodations manager was specific about the cost: 2500rs, and that I should only pay 60 extra, if I was going to the airport, because the driver would have to pay that money if we took more than 5 minutes.  If he didn’t have to pay it, I was not to reimburse him.  So here we are at the toll-both, and I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to pay this, that it comes out of the 2500, but he doesn’t.  I pay the 40rs.

We drive another hour or two and boom, another toll booth, and again he wants me to pay. 

Finally we get to Chennai, at the hotel I have booked for the night, and on the ride, I am thinking about giving him a little something for his upcoming wedding (hopefully he really is getting married).  Before I can offer though, he says “something for my wedding?” with his hand out, and because I was already considering it,  I gave it to him anyway.  But I didn’t feel good about it at all.  When you give a gift, something because you want to, it feels differently than if it’s expected.  I mean, it’s the same money, but not the same feeling.

I give him 500rs, which is pretty decent amount of money for this guy.  He doesn’t thank me.  He tells me the chai was 10rs.

I had read before that the person who pays for the car, also pays for the drivers food, but it struck as me as so odd.  It would be like giving someone who makes about 30k a year in America $50 or $100 dollars, and having them ask for another $.20.  And not thanking you for the gift.

I give him the 10rs because it’s my duty, and walk away without saying goodbye.  Such a shame.  We had a good time on the drive in.  But maybe it was because he thought he’d get something out of me.  I sure hope he was getting married.  And if he isn’t, and for all the other people that have done that to me while I’ve been here, I hope karma gives a touching payback.

I get in the hotel, which is so expensive, I actually talked with my wife about it, even though it was my own personal travel fund that would pay for it.

All the hotels in Chennai are so far beyond the pale it’s crazy.  All of them that I could find at least, with availability for that day and someone near the airport.

This hotel, The Trident, was one-hundred-and-eighty-dollars in United States money.  Meals on the grounds were about par for room service in the US, though there was no surcharge for having it in your room as opposed to one of the restaurants downstairs.

But boy was it nice.  I took 3 showers in the day I was there.  Cleaned and repacked and threw out the stuff I didn’t need to bring home (or at least the stuff that I would throw out once I got home).  I soaked my clothes in the piping hot bath water for 30 minutes to kill any hitchhikers I might bring home.  I wiped down my pack too, but it didn’t do much good.

Last night I had a “Minute Steak Sandwich” which was like a Philly Cheesesteak, and it came with actual French fries, and they were great.  They were served with the awesome Indian ketchup, which I wish I could have in America.  I ordered a homemade Ginger Ale also, and it was made with real ginger, sections of real limes, sections of real lemons and mint leaves.  It was good, but not quite sweet enough for me.  The sandwich was excellent however.  I couldn’t finish it.

Incidentally, I weighed myself here, because they had a scale.  Similar to the way I used the hair dryer in Goa, just because I could.

The scale says I weight 173 pounds.  When I left I was closer to 195.  And I’m “up” from my lowest Indian weight, because I have felt like I’m gaining weight once my appetite settled in.  My guess is that I was probably nearer 165 at my lowest, and I recovered the extra 10 to get me to my Chennai weight.

I slept like a baby as they had actual doors that slid across the windows instead of black out shades.  As a result I ended up missing the included breakfast, but the Club Lounge on my floor, the one with complimentary foods had stuff, and no one was there the whole time I was ransacking the place.  Figuratively of course.

I had a banana pastry.  Then a cake doughnut with sugar on the outside.  Then I had some crackers with some expensive looking cheese and some dates.  Then I had a bowl of the ever-present Indian cornflakes with warm milk.  What would I give to show an Indian the cereal aisle in America.  There apparently is only one cereal available in India, and it’s plain cornflakes.  Not even the sugar coated ones!  I am dead serious.  I have never seen another cereal offered for sale in a shop or a booth or a stand or any restaurant of any kind.

Anyway, I was still hungry.  So I ate an orange.  And then the strawberry pastry.  And then the chocolate doughnut.  And then a large mango.  I figured I’d better stop there.  I think my pride was the only think preventing me from eating anything else.  I mean all the serving plates were now empty because I had eaten everything on them.  There were still cornflakes in the dispenser, and some fruit and crackers remaining, but I cleaned out the rest of it.

I came back to the room, made some tea and did the final pack.  Added some newspaper (after I had read it) to the souvenirs I had gotten, managed to break the gift I thought my wife would like best, and generally finished up my Indian business.  I printed off my etickets for the trip home, synced my phone with my laptop for my Evernotes, topped off the phone’s battery, and checked out.

The hotel staff was awesome.  The best and most genuine appearing service I’ve had yet, but I paid for it too.

They got a car for me (he wanted a tip, but didn’t get one for the 2 minute ride), and I write (and post!) this as I am sitting in the waiting room for my flight from Chennai to Delhi, where I will catch my US bound winged chariot.

The battery on the laptop is dying quickly, so I’m wrapping it up.  There’s not much that I’ve left unsaid anyway.  I’ve enjoyed my time in India, but I’ll save a more formal wrap-up for my next post.

Tiru, Part III

Having thought about it for a while, I decided to see if I could move my car up a day.  If I left Ramanashramam a day early, I would hope to alleviate future troubles, including the several possible times that the trip home could get delayed.  Trains don’t always run on time.  Indian airlines don’t always run on time.  And traffic most certainly doesn’t not always run on time.  I don’t think anything, anywhere in India always runs on time.  Well, except for the meals at the ashram.

In checking with the Accommodations manager, the move-up on the car was a go, no problem at all.  I asked him how long it took to get to the caves that Ramana meditated in.  He said half an hour.  It was about 8, and the car was due at 10a.  He says I have time.

I get back to my room, largely packed by this point in anticipation, and head up with my camera along the trail that goes up the mountain.

I had read from some other people that the climb was not bad at all, even for non-hikers.  They are full of it.  Though I’m no athlete, I’m in decent shape, and it was an effort for me.  “Not bad at all, even for non-hikers,” give me a break.  Everest isn’t bad either, so long as you can walk, easy, probably takes a couple hours tops.  This was like walking a treadmill inclined to about 30 degrees, or maybe a stairmaster.  That leads me to another thing. 

If an Indian tells you the bus will come in 10 minutes, it will at least double that time.  If they say it’s 2km up the road, it will be at least three or maybe 10.  And if they say you can get to the two caves in 30 minutes, they will mean if there was an escalator.  I actually had the thought while in my heat induced, exertion stupor (it was about 105* at this point), that maybe I was missing a conversion factor.  You know, kilometers to miles, Celsius to Fahrenheit, Dollars to Rupees, minutes to..  wait.  :) I had to smile at that brief thought; that I must be missing some conversion rate for time.

Though the path was mostly a significant incline, there were some places where it wasn’t too bad.

Before I went up, I was thinking.  If this is my last day in Tiru, it was also my last chance to get some souvenirs, which I had mostly avoided getting until the end so I didn’t have to lug them around.  Knowing that I had limited time, I had a choice.  Either go to the caves OR go find some souvenirs.  I didn’t have time for both.

Or at least I didn’t think so.

I come around a twist in the trail and there off the right is a guy selling trinkets that he is carving right there.  I take a look, a couple of things look interesting, but I’m not buying now anyway, not on the way up!  I start some negotiation which I will figure I will finish on my way back down.  Kind of like walking away, only to return, tends to help on the negotiation.

A little further up is another guy, selling more interesting stuff.  And further on, after I visit the first cave, where the Maharshi meditated only 6 or 7 years, there’s another seller.  This time a kid.  His English is good, but we don’t end up agreeing on price.  Besides, I like the second guy’s stuff better.

The first cave, Skandashram, is a tiny little building right up against the mountain.  I go into the room and immediately feel a strong presence.  There is a small ghee lamp burning and some photos around.  Especially of his mother.  If I understand correctly, she died here and achieved liberation at that time with some assistance from Ramana.

The caretaker wants some money for a donation, but there’s a sign down at the ashram that says don’t give anybody any money at any of the caves, so I decline.  He looks hurt, like they all do, offended, but it’s a show and if it’s not, he’ll get over it.

I follow the path steeply down the side of the mountain to the next cave.  It is called Virupaksha cave, and Ramana meditated here for 16 years, starting in 1899.  There is only one man working there and several people meditating, but none inside.  With his hand, the caretaker offers me entrance.  I go into the first little room, more pictures and such, and then there’s an inner room.  It really is essentially a cave; the walls and floor meet right up to the up to the protruding rock face, the ceiling is probably 4 and a half feet tall.  It is dark in here and not much light coming from the doorway (which then goes into the other room).  Once my vision settles, I see that there are two ghee lamps in here and a large shallow mound which is a very short Shiva lingam; it is adorned with marigold garlands.

If I thought the presence in the first cave was big.  This one was enormous.  I don’t know how else to describe it but a heavy feeling in the heart area of the chest, like some type of resonance, like a sympathetic vibration.  There was another sage, named Virupaksha, who meditated here for years and years before Ramana.  He had devotees and followers, and one day he asked them to give him a bit of alone time, which they did, and when they returned all that remained were his ashes.

Ramana pushed them into a large pile, named the cave after its previous tenant, and took up residence and meditation here.

I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that that shallow lingam in the center of the small room was the pile of his ashes.

It was one of the most powerful experiences that I’ve had while in India, and indeed in my life so far.  I was only in the inner cave for about 5 minutes, but what a profound few minutes.

I would have stayed longer, but I had to get going.  I still had to negotiate some trinkets down and get to my room before the driver got there.

I successfully got it all accomplished.  The driver appeared about 10 minutes early, but I was ready.  We got to the car, and headed on the way to Chennai.

  

  

Tiru, Part II

On my third day here, having napped a little too much the day before, I woke up around 5:30a.  The morning light was just starting to come up in Tiru.

I knew that if I wanted to climb Arunachala, or circumambulate it (go around it, common for temples and sacred sites; Arunachala is considered an aspect of Shiva), I was going to need to do it early, before the Indian sun started gathering steam.  Being up early, it was the perfect opportunity, so I grabbed my daypack, put my one 1 liter bottle of water in it, a mango I got at a meal the day before, and my camera.  I also took my Crocs and my socks, just in case.  The traditional austere way of doing the circumambulation or climbing, is to do it barefoot.  I knew this would be a challenge, but I didn’t quite realize how much of one it would turn out.

I get out of my room, lock it up and start walking in the dim light of morning.  Then I hear rain, well, and feel rain.  I stop.  It wasn’t raining a second ago, but it is now, directly on my head, and on my neck and my left shoulder.  It is raining urine.  A playful monkey is playing target practice with his penis and he is dead on.  They are playful little suckers.

I try to decide whether or not to go back and shower and get a late start, or press onward.  I press onward instead, hoping that by smelling like a monkey, I will avoid the aggressive ones on the mountain. 

I got up to the Inner Path, a small trail that goes around the mountain, but inside of the roads that also circle it.  Immediately, I am met with hard going.  Lots of rocks, large and small, most of them sharp.  There were twigs and thorns nearly everywhere.  I would go about 100 yards before something would stop me.  A sharp pebble that had dug in to the bottom of my foot far enough to not fall off when I lifted it for the next step.  If the pebble was still there after about three steps with it in my foot, I would stop and flick it out.  If I stopped on the first step, I never would have moved anywhere.  Another 100 yards of careful planning, and then bang, some thorns.  It was never just one thorn, it was always a little stick of them.  Often times I couldn’t tell the thorns from the sharp rocks until about the second step.  The rocks wouldn’t go any deeper, but the thorns would dig in.

I would stop and bend over to get a look at the thorns I was trying to remove, balancing on the one leg, trying not to fall over.  I would try to pull on the stick in such a manner as to remove the several thorns that were embedded simultaneously.  Usually the stick would break, being so brittle and dry, and I would have to get at least one thorn out separately.  But never once did a thorn break off inside my flesh, they always came out whole.

I’ll be more careful, I thought.  But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter how careful I was or how slowly I proceeded, I would always get the jagged rocks stuck in the thickest part of my sole, or another little inch-and-a-half twig of organic barbed wire.  I’d pull them out and a drop of blood would fill the hole.

What am I doing.

I was probably around three quarters of a mile in (which had taken quite a while to cover) when two Westerners whiz by me in shoes and bring my hard-headed-ness into sharp focus.

I find the nearest rock, cop a squat, and don my socks and my crocs (I use the super-thin, double-layer, runner’s socks to avoid the blisters that the crocs give me).

The difference is, of course, amazing.  There are still thorn bushes near the side of the trail in areas, so they still get my lower legs a little, and the pathway itself is mostly strewn with large and small rocks, and they need a little special navigation so as not to turn an ankle, but overall, I am moving at a brisk walk, and I continue at that brisk walking pace until I get all the way around the mountain.  Some 10 miles later.

Wow.  I didn’t know it was going to be that long!  The guy told me 3 hours and it was a little over four after factoring in my “breaks,” and I was trucking it.  I stopped for water a few times for a quick drink, once to eat the mango, and at a couple of roadside vendors to buy some biscuits (cookies), an apple and an orange all for later, but all totaled they didn’t take more than 30 minutes tops.

Somewhere near the two-thirds point, the path starts going next to people’s houses, well, in between the houses and their storage shacks and bathrooms, really.  Just a few moments before, and for the whole time previous, the trail was something that I would imagine seeing in the American desert southwest.  Scrub and cactus, splintered rock and sand.  But here, the path and its environs are littered with all manner of refuse, as if you had torn open your last 3 months of trash bags and emptied them on your lawn and sidewalk.

The trail comes to an out-of-the-way temple, and then the signage stops.

The trail markers have been haphazard and poorly spaced throughout.  On the Appalachian Trail, for instance, when my daughter and I did a short section in Virginia a couple of years back, the markings were all uniform, the same white blazes marked the trail, and from one marker, you should be able to see at least the next one, if not more.  Here though, one section would have so many that from one point, you could literally see 15 or 20.  In another section, you wouldn’t see any for 200 yards, and that is where the trail is bending and twisting and side trails are cutting in; in other words, where you really need them.  There was just no rhyme or reason to their placements.  They also weren’t in the same position.  Some were kind of sideways or tilted at an angle, and it didn’t represent what the trail was getting ready to do, it wasn’t notifying you of a direction change like the larger marked trails back home do.

So, there’s no makers anywhere around this temple, and the last markers clearly indicate this pathway.  What to do, what to do.  I ask 3 different groups of people, and they all tell me the same thing.  The Inner Path becomes this large roadway.  This can’t be right.  And I’m still not sure that it is.  But I saw no other markers at any point diverting me away from the last known direction.

I follow the large roadway until it looks like it’s going to hit major traffic and head off in the direction I know the ashram to be.  I am walking down a typical urban lane of homes and small local shops.  Everyone here looks at me like I’m the first foreigner they’ve seen.  Maybe I am.  Maybe the rest of the Inner Path people go down to the main road and hit a tuk-tuk back to homebase.  I guess I’m a little too principled for that :).

Dogs are barking at me the way dogs raised in white homes bark at black people or people with turbans.  They are alerting the people.  “One of these things is not like the other things.”  You remember that Sesame Street song?  Cookie Monster is sorting his plates of cookies?  :)

Most all of the doorways have chalk mandalas on the ground in front.  I think they’re pretty cool, but it doesn’t feel right to stop and take a snap (I find some houses later where its less conspicuous to take a photo).

A few people smile, a couple say hello, and two of the kids I pass say hi.  The rest of the children want something.  Some say “two pens!” Some say “two chocolates!” Some say “two rupees!”  They all want something.  Well, except for one kid.  He wanted to give me something.  And he did.  He side-armed a piece of ice at me after I passed him, and it hit me just behind my left ear.  It was the first act of aggression visited upon me in my nearly 6 weeks on the subcontinent.  Not bad.  It didn’t hurt very much, just stung a little.  I was wondering where the kid got ice from in Tamil Nadu!  Anyway, most of the people are not especially friendly, definitely not up to Indian standards anyway, but that’s ok, I’m not looking to make friends, I’m looking to finish this circle.

The little urban lane meets another large roadway which I take to get out of the slightly uncomfortable situation.  That large roadway becomes a larger roadway, and pretty soon I am on a busy city street.  It would be about 4 lanes of traffic if people stayed in position the way the dotted lines indicate.  However, in typical Indian fashion, there are about 5 lanes going each way instead.  The traffic is kicking up dust something serious and I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who notices.  The swarms of motorcycle (or “pilot”) and scooter drivers are all blinking long and hard, trying to accommodate for the dust that has just soaked up all the lubricating fluid on the front of their eyeballs.  They are driving with their mouths pursed closed.  The dust and dirt are blowing everywhere.

I start asking directions.  They all keep pointing me in the same direction that I think I should be going in, but I never seem to make it.  Beggars are coming up to me now wanting food and money.  I decline them all because I know that if they just follow me, they will eat a large nutritious meal for free.  Every single day.  In fact they are served at Ramana’s ashram before the guests are served, which I think is cool too.

I keep walking and see the north entrance for the huge temple in town.  It’s somewhere between 1300 and 3000 years old.  No one really knows.  It’s massive though both in size and height.  It’s several hundred feet tall and takes up 25 acres; it is the second largest temple in India, I am told.  The festivals here are legendary.  I take a few snaps and move on.  Temples are interesting but I don’t have much draw to go inside.

Finally, finally, I see the gates for Ramanashramam and I go in.  I am officially finished with the circumambulation.  I’m glad I did it.  I had a peaceful time for at least two thirds of it, and I ran into several groups of friendly monkeys.  I check my phone for the time as I pass the gates, and sit down to remove my shoes.  I determine that lunch is yet to be served, which is a relief, because I am seriously hungry.

The food every meal since the first two (and I wrote my initial blog post) have been really good.  The South Indians are fond of their okra, and that’s ok with me, because I like it.  I’ve had lentils and squash soup and some kind of sweet peanut mash, and some fresh fruit three times now.  Twice I’ve had a little scoop of mango, apple, pomegranate, and banana.  The other was a whole small mango; the one I ate on the trip around the “hill.”  It was delicious.  I would have never known how to eat it had I not watched some of the local people eating them during their meal.  They bite into the skin and with their teeth, they peel back large sheets of the tough skin.  Then they eat any fruit meat that has clung to the skin, and so on, until it is completely peeled.  Then they eat it like an apple until only the huge seed in the middle remains.

There’s another correction on the food front too.  I found out that the water pitchers that they use to put water in the metal cups is filled with the purified water.  I’ve watched the servers fill them.  And it’s the same place the water sprinkled on the leaf plates come from.  So, I’ve been drinking out of the cup (hoping it’s clean, and I think it is), and washing my leaf, and all that.  And then filling my 1 liter bottle after the meal (I was slightly chastised for trying to fill it before the meal once).

Also in the way of updates, I am also doing better with the heat.  Once I’m in the temps and used to it for a couple of days, my body seems to adjust, I’m not as miserable, my headaches go away, and my appetite starts to recover.  Good to know about my body for the future.

The last thing I did today was to go to the office to find out about transportation back to Vellore (and the Katpadi railway station that I came from).  I have an AC Chair Car ticket from Katpadi to Chennai on the morning of the 4th.  Once in Chennai, I will make my way to the domestic airport for my flight to Delhi (and from there, home).  Now, I’m not going on another bus.  I know that for sure.  I have enough money to get whatever kind of transportation is necessary to avoid another bus.  So I ask the man in the accommodations office about a car to the Katpadi station.  Then I ask him about a car from here, direct to the Chennai domestic airport instead.  The difference is less than 20 dollars, and I avoid several opportunities for delays.  And I’ll get a refund on the train ticket as I’m cancelling more than 24hrs in advance.  He tells me he can get an AC car for an extra 5 dollars.  The trip is 4 hours long.  5 bucks for AC, definitely brother.  Sign me up.

He says my driver will knock on my door at 11:15a, and I can give my room key to him for checkout, and he’ll know what to do with it.  This sounds like it’s wrapping up nicely.  Two days from now, and I’m homeward bound.

  

  

Tiru, Part I

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

I’m sitting on the steps in the main entry area of Sri Ramanashramam, the ashram of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Marharshi, and a guy in renunciate robes comes over.  His English is good.  He says are you staying here?  I say yes.  He says, good, good, then come with me.  I don’t know whether to follow him or not, but he seems very congenial, and as we are walking he is getting Namaste’d by several people with whom he seems pretty familiar, so my wariness decreases.

He walks me around and shows me the areas of the ashram, but there are too many places and I’m not remembering them.  Here’s the well for puja water (water for worship/offering), here’s the mahasamadhi shrine (where the person “left the body” - maha means “great” and samadhi is the deepest layer of meditation you can get to).  Here’s the mediation room, come in here and sit for a bit.  He gets me a couple of pillows and I prop my bag up near me and I meditate for a while.  I get a message, something like “this is a business, but I am still here.”  Up til this point, I’m not noticing anything strange.

A few stops later, and he shows me to this sadhu who lives on the mountain and he blesses some rock from Mt. Arunachala and gives them to me for my family.  He blesses me and puts a tikka mark on my forehead with powder.  He has me light two incense sticks.  Pretty soon, though he starts asking for money and things get uncomfortable.  He also wants a flashlight.  I’m not giving him my flashlight, but I do give him some money.

I leave, and the original renunciate is waiting there and I tell him I’d like to go to the office and get my room settled.  I’m a bit frustrated by his leading me to this guy, and it feels like just another case of take advantage of the (comparatively) rich foreigner.  I now understand the “this is a business” line from earlier.

By the time I get to the office and get my key, the man there says something to me about there will be people trying to lead you to the well and so forth, and “do not give any person money.”  I said, I just did!  He was shocked, I guess, at the speed with which they got me.

When I come out of the office, the man comes with me, and sees the renunciate and they have a terse conversation in Tamil.  The renunciate is saying something to the effect of “he didn’t give me any money” which I have to agree with, but I offer up the part about giving it to the man he led me to; they probably split the money, half for finding the mark, half for successful extortion.  A few more terse words, and I am guided by an actual employee (though unmarked) to my room, which is on the end of the row of rooms, all in a straight line, like an outside entry motel.

The accommodation is basic.  It is a simple 10x10 room (best guess) with a bathroom that has a spigot and a bucket.  There is a sink in there and a toilet which I am grateful for.  The main room has a single bed with a thick-ish mat for a mattress which lays on a piece of wood instead of springs.  There is a tiny desk in the opposite corner.  The windows and door have bars and screens to keep the monkeys out. 

There is a well-worn and simple tile floor throughout, and there is a fan in the center of the room overhead.  There is a single electrical outlet and there is a bare incandescent bulb and a bare florescent tube light, both in the room.  There are two large eye screws on either side of the room, and a heavy yellow length of polypropylene rope is fastened between the two to dry the laundry that you do.  Does it even need mentioning that there is no AC here?

I really don’t mind this type of accommodation, however, as it is an austere place for serious minded people who intend to get on with it.  I’m glad I’m not here for longer than 4 days/nights though, and as it proves out, I have very little energy to do anything at all my first day because of the Tamil Nadu heat.  I have two meals, one at 11:30a sharp, and one at 7:30p sharp.  There is a breakfast offered at 7:00a sharp also.  There is really no wiggle room here on the scheduling.  Everything is timed and you are expected to be somewhere in advance of whatever-it-is is starting.  The discipline helps set the tone for the inquiry.

Shoes are not to be worn really anywhere inside the ashram, and my normally socked-and-shoed Western feet are taking one for the team.  Most of the areas I’ve been have been more or less shaded, so the surface temps where I was walking have yet to burn my soles, but the sand is coarse with tiny jagged rocks tossed in, along with sticks and/or thorny things.  I have to dodge the bugs too, because accidentally stepping on a bug wearing shoes and accidentally stepping on a bug barefoot, are two completely different things.

The food here is fresh and nutritious and does not agree with my palate in the least.  This is the least appetizing food I have eaten anywhere in India, but I can tell it is prepared well and of good quality.  I guess I don’t like Tamil cuisine.

The dining hall has a stone floor and that is where everyone eats.  There are no tables or chairs.  When you walk in (they only open the doors at the exact time and people proceed in single file), there are banana leafs set about 3 feet apart on the floor.  There is a silver metal cup next to each leaf.  Everyone is guided to a row and a place setting like getting “directed” when you’re trying to park at the State Fair.

We sit down cross-legged, and the Indian people start washing their respective banana leaf plates with the water.  I’m not doing that though because I’m assuming it’s just local water, which while fine for many native digestive tracts, is not fine with people who grew up on clean water.

Within about a minute of people sitting down on the floor, men with large pots and buckets start coming around, each carrying a type of food.  Everybody gets the same stuff, all of it, unless you put your hand over your leaf and then they will pass you up.  They put a bunch of stuff I’m unfamiliar with on the plate each meal time, but always the rice, and always something extremely runny they put on top of the rice.

This confounds me.  I mean, we do not have any silverware.  The entire place setting is a leaf and a metal cup.  No napkin, no cutlery, no nothing.  This is a no-pretense kind of place.  How are we supposed to eat rice soup?

The Indian’s dig in with their hands (their right hands, to be precise), and unlike anywhere else I’ve seen, these people are using the entire hand as a utensil.  In other parts of India, it is customary to eat with your fingers, usually up to about the first knuckle or a little past.  As I’ve been in places where it was appropriate to eat with my fingers, I have done so.  But here, there’s no knuckle rule, it’s a flat out free for all.  Maybe if you got in past the wrist you’d be seen as sloppy or something, but they are using the entire hand.

And actually, it makes sense to do it that way, especially when it comes to something with the equivalent consistency of thick water.  They are sweeping all five fingers quickly through the liquid like a makeshift squeegee, and then at the last second giving the hand a half twist.  With the forward moving inertia that the liquid now has from the fast squeegee motion, when they flip the hand, the liquid just rolls up into the fingers which they then holding tightly together in a cupped fashion.

They bring the hand up, fingers to the mouth, and tip the hand like it were a pitcher of water and the liquid goes down the hatch.

Ingenious!  And difficult to do, especially with a non-indigenous dexterity, and an overgrown moustache.

The Indians are eating so fast and so slouched over (remember, the plate is also on the floor), that I have no idea how their bodies are actually digesting what they are inhaling.  The rice man comes around a few different times, and even 15 minutes into the meal, men are still coming around with buckets of something new.  The Indians are devouring the food.  Most of the ones I can see (we sit in rows facing each other) have virtually clean leaves.  Where they are putting it I don’t know.  I haven’t eaten half of what they put in front of me, and I’ve refused seconds every time, and firsts on some things too.

When you’re done eating, you get up and leave, usually folding your leaf in half to cover any remnants on your plate from the flies.  You exit the same door you came in and right outside on the left is a bank of tiny spigots that the Indians are using to clean their right hands. 

As I’m walking out from dinner, I see a lady getting water from some type of dispenser spigot, still inside the dining hall.  I see a couple of filters, and I realize that this is purification machine for the water.  I’m running low on water, and rather than go out to the tough world outside and find a shop selling it (which wouldn’t be that big of a deal in all reality), I’d like to fill one of my empties here.  I hustle back to my room, grab my bottle and head back.  But by this time they have already shut and locked the doors of the dining hall.  No entry.  It’ll have to wait til morning if I’m up in time, or lunch if I’m not.

The majority of today (my first day) has been spent lying on top of the bed mat with a huge headache.  I’m not sure if it’s the adjustment to the heat or what, but I don’t feel well overall and getting up just makes me queasy.  I just laid there, letting the ants crawl over me, and so long as they didn’t bite I didn’t interfere with their transit.  I watched some geckos around the room.  I listening and watched the monkeys playing on the other side of my screen door.  I heard the calls of the peacocks that roam around the ashram and the dogs barking greetings to each other from across the courtyard.  Oh, and I moved the bed a couple inches away from the wall on each side, and I think I have solved much of my ant problem.

While I’m here, I’m hoping to circumambulate the mountain and climb to the top.  I want to visit the the cave that Ramana Maharshi meditated in for 17 years and the temple that he sat in the basement of while he was still a boy, having left home at 16 or so after having a direct experience of the Self.  His story is an interesting one, with him starving and being bitten by rats, beaten and taunted by his peers, until finally someone saw what he was doing and set him up in a hut and provided him daily meals.

Soon he had devotees and in time, an ashram was built around him, even though he taught mostly through silence for most of his life, preferring that to language which was limited.  Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist said of the Marharshi, “In India, he is the  whitest spot in a white space.”  Ramana died in 1950, and a star shown above the mountain at the moment of his passing.

Anyway, I hope to do those things I mentioned here, but at the same time I need to temper my goals with the reality of the heat and the toll it is taking.  Really Just being here is enough.  The rest would be icing.

We’ll see how tomorrow goes and the headache.  Assuming I can get the video of the monkeys uploaded in the next day or so, enjoy it until my next post.

 

To Tiruvannamalai

The train trip from Alleppey, Kerala to Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu was as interesting as every previous train ride.

I originally had a confirmed Sleeper class ticket for this leg, but early in the Journey overall I started rebooking my Sleeper class tickets with AC class tickets because of the extreme heat.  For this specific leg, my AC replacement ticket was a high Wait List and I didn’t know if it would confirm or not.  As it turns out, I ended up moving from the Wait List into the RACs, which means I could get on but I needed to sit and not lie down.  The reason being, there were going to be two people sharing the berth, which means neither of us could recline.  That was good enough for me and I cancelled the Sleeper Class ticket for a partial refund (too late to get a full refund), and went the AC route even though it was an RAC.

I got on the train about 3:30p, and the we pulled out pretty much on time which was 4p.  It took a while for the air-conditioners to cool the place down (again, to an Indian level of AC, which is far different and hotter than a Western level of AC).

Immediately there was some conversation between me and a guy from Ponducherry (near Chennai and within 100 miles of Tiru).  He works for the Australian division of Kmart in QA.  Before that he worked for Pier 1.  It’s interesting to see how all these names we know have their toes in the foreign waters.  Economically, the world is more connected than we think.

We have a good conversation, and then a protective dad and mom get on (at some subsequent stop) with their daughter who is probably around 18.  They give me and the Indian a few once-overs before leaving the train as it’s pulling out of the station.  A few stations later and a separate whole family shows up and the boyfriend of the teenage girl keeps peering in the windows from outside the train, giving the equivalent of “I Love You” signals and whatnot.

Another brief conversation, this time with the other RAC guy sharing my berth.  I ask him where he’s “getting down” which is Indian-English speak for getting off the train.  He says Chennai, which is the last stop.  Mine is about 3 hours prior.  I tell him at least he’ll be able lay down after Katpadi, where I’m due to de-board.  He says, we’ll get confirmed long before then.  I’m thinking, what??

I thought once the train was moving, you were pretty much set, but alas this is not so.  As passengers who are due to get on the train at later stations fail to board, their berths open up and any RAC’ers will move into a full-on confirmed berth.  Sweet!

Dude’s prediction comes true about 4 hours into the trip, so he goes to a different section where he has his own space.  Which means mine is now all mine.  He leaves and tells me to “stretch it” with a smile.  I think he means fold down the seats into the berth (I’m again in a side berth, this time the lower).

Befpre I can get it converted though, a guy from a nearby section plops into the seat opposite me and wants to have a conversation about spirituality and the differences between East and West.  He’s a financial advisor and is very bright with excellent English.  He says he spent 5-6 years in Ontario, but came back because he felt like the West didn’t give enough credence to something it couldn’t prove with science or math.  I have a similar sentiment and we talked for about 30 minutes until somebody came by, I think it was the dinner man (he comes by and you order, then at another station he magically re-appears with your food, you only have like 2 choices each for veg/non-veg, though). 

Anyway, the financial advisor leaves, and after a little bit of jostling around, I get situated and start listening to some tunes on my phone with my earbuds and generally winding down.  Then I feel something on my feet.  Quick and light, but kinda on the soft side.  I think it’s either a mouse or a really big roach.  Instinctively, my legs jerk in the air, and then I’m trying to look like I didn’t overreact, because whatever it is is now invisible and the other people in the section are looking at me and smiling like I’m a bit loose up top.

I pull out my little flashlight and shine it under the seat to see if I can see anything, and also in doing give a statement like I wasn’t imagining it, but I don’t see a thing under there.

I’m doing this rail leg in 3AC, and my previous leg was in 2AC.  On that coach there were huge cockroaches on the floor and coming out of the windows casings every so often.  I felt them go over my feet, but it wasn’t dark out, so I didn’t jump like I did this time around.  I was trying to determine whether or not what I felt tonight was the same.

Half hour later, we hit some loud tracks and two furballs go screaming across the aisle into the section where the skeptics were.  I started laughing and pointing.  Then they were looking under the seats and whatnot.  At least I know it wasn’t a huge roach that had laid eggs in my bag; a little present for later.  The most I figure mice will do is chew a hole in my bag or put some turds in it, both of which would not faze me at this point in the trip.

I laid down probably around 11p or so as I wasn’t really very tired before that and set my alarm for 3:20a as my stop was at 3:33a.  I go through the whole ritual when I get up.  Taking the phone out of “airplane” mode (I usually keep it there on the train to conserve battery and turning off all the wireless/bluetooth/cell connections really helps), I pull up an Evernote note that I have with all the stops and the timings on each specific train that I’ve been on.  Then I cross-reference with the actual time, and pull up Google Maps, which with the cell tower info now live, it will give me an approximate location within a half mile or so (the GPS component is really spotty at best in India).  I then get a rough idea of where we are, and how late (if any) we are running.

In this case, we were about 20 minutes late or so, and end up pulling into the Katpadi station in Vellore just before 4a.

I get off and see some older men and ask them which way to the bus stand to Tiruvannamalai.  He tells me I want to go to the New Bus Stand and when asked, he says a tuk will get me there for about 10rs (or “bucks” as the natives tend to refer to the Indian Rupee).  I try to get an auto and two drivers walk away because they won’t come off of 100rs.  Another driver, however, will get me there for 70rs and I go with him.

I get to the New Bus Stand and there are buses everywhere, none of them labeled, and people standing around most of them.  One of them is pulling out and I stand just to the side of it and give a wave.  The driver stops.  I say “Tiruvannamalai?” He points me to a man on the ground who then points me to another bus a little further down.  In America, the bus driver would have acted like he didn’t see me.

I go over to the proper bus, confirm it, and they put me in the back seat.  It’s not very full at all, which I was expecting, because at this point, it’s about 4:15 in the morning.  I mean who is going anywhere at 4:15a?

About 20 minutes later, the bus starts to pull out, and the man in the back, who is in charge of bossing people around, keeps yelling Tiruvannamalai.  Nobody is coming.  We are now moving very slowly.  Some people start to get on.  The bus stops.  We start creeping a little further, more people are getting on.  What the hell, people.  Didn’t you hear the man yelling Tiru for the last 5 minutes?  Why after the bus is already moving do you now want to get on?  Give me a break.

This bus ends up more packed than the one from Khuri to Jaisalmer where my knees buckled twice.  On this one, people are actually hanging out of the doorways into the road.  At least I am not standing.  There are women getting on right and left and I am starting to resent them, because this is a two hour bus ride, and I figure I’m going to be displaced because they decided to stop the bus to get on.  However, the same rules don’t apply here as they did in Rajasthan, and it is egalitarian.  Whoever is sitting can sit, and the slackers who jump on after we’re trying to get underway, get to stand.  At least there was a bit of justice.

The bus ride was miserable.  I don’t ever want to travel on a bus in India again.  It sucks.  I’ve been on rickshaws, in Vikrams, in cars, in cabs and on the metro.  I’ve travelled in 1AC, 2AC, 3AC, and Sleeper class on the trains, and I’ve travelled by “Deluxe AC” overnight buses as well as State and local buses.  The buses have sucked the hardest.  It is really without comparison.  I mean Sleeper class gets crowded, and it’s dirty and loud and oh-so-hot in the summertime.  But at least you can recline and you don’t have people pushed up on top of you.

A man had his arm holding on to the side of the bus not 3 inches in front of my face.  It was so close, I could feel my own breath hitting his arm and returning.  The guy next to me is leaning into me and fell asleep at one point with his head on my shoulder.  I had a lady’s bag between my legs, and I’m smashed into the side window.  This time it wasn’t the window casing that was jamming my shoulder with every bump, it was the windows’ slide handle.

The guy who is snuggling me speaks some English, but so quietly, I’m not even sure he knows he’s speaking aloud.  We’re in a crowded bus with the horn and all that, and add in the road noise and the open windows and I can’t hear anything this guy is saying.  Every single time this guy talks I have to ask him to repeat it like three times before I can hear him.  Most of the time, I get part of what he’s saying, and just nod and say “ohhh” or “yeah” or “ok”…  Please God, get me off this bus.

The Snuggler says its especially crowded today, because it is an auspicious day to get married.  That’s what all the women are doing on here.  After he says that, I see that many of them have flowers adorning them, and their hair is kind of slicked back a bit probably with some kind of scented oil.  I feel a little selfish about what I was thinking before when they were all loading up.  I hope they have happy marriages.

After about 20 stops (no kidding), the “direct” “express” bus (also not kidding) finally reached Tiru.  I get raped on the ride to the Ashram and I go to check in.  Not open yet for another 45 minutes.  I can’t fault them, I’m here quite early.  They open at 7:30a which is fantastically early for any Indian administrative work, so I have a seat on the steps and wait for the office to open up, hoping things are about to get a bit easier.

Kerala, Part III

**post complete, thankfully no video**

The massage was an interesting experience.

Jimmy guided me back to a small hut-like building on the back of the property where there was a small (maybe 5 feet tall if he had shoes on) but muscular looking man with a smile a mile wide.  He was darkly complected and his teeth were the most amazing white.  Like he used 14 packs of the Crest White Strips or something.  Huge, sincere smile.  And spoke very little English.

He motions me into the room and shuts the door most of the way and stops it with a part of a brick.  He points to my shirt and I say, take it off, and he smiles his big smile and nods his head.  Next comes a point at my shorts, no problem.  Then comes the point the my underwear.  Ummm…  ok???

A few seconds of hesitation, but a few more later and I’m standing buck naked in front of Little Man and he reaches around my middle with his small arms and ties this piece of fabric around my waist.  It’s basically a 3 inch wide piece of lightweight white cotton cloth, and it’s about 18 inches long. 

There are fabric ties around the top of it, which is how he’s fastened it around my waist.  He moves around back of me, and reached through my legs to grab the dangling cotton and then pulls it up in the back, and tucks it under the ties.  It looks like the most rudimentary diaper you have ever seen, but it gives me a bit of my modesty back, for now at least.

He has me sit on a stool and he opens a dark bottle of something and he pours about a quarter cup of whatever it is, in to my hair on the top of my head.  And he starts massaging my head.  Pretty soon, he is working the oil (I think it was coconut oil infused with Ayurvedic herbs) into my face, around my eyes, into my moustache.  Everywhere.  I’m not even worried about it.

At some point he indicates that I should get on the table.  The table is hard.  It has no cushion whatsoever, like a piece of three quarter inch plywood with a waterproof tablecloth on top.  Like you’d see on a picnic table somewhere, but it wasn’t red and white plaid.

I get on the table and Little Man starts massaging my legs, and there’s no safe boundary area between where my leg stops and my other parts begin, if you know what I mean.  This is pretty much a no-fly zone in a normal American massage, but that’s not the way it works here, apparently.  There are muscles there, and they need to get their kinks worked out, you see.

The little diaper is doing precious little to keep my bits in check, so with every lunging movement (Little Man is going up and down the length of my leg, which is a stretch for him, he kind of looks like he is rowing a boat) I’m falling out of my cotton restraint.

This does not bother Little Man in the least.  He acts like he doesn’t notice, and maybe he doesn’t for all I know.  But I am noticing as it is quite a peculiar and strange feeling, and even more peculiar and strange for it to be happening in front of another man.

He gets up to my chest and belly and arms, and does the whole thing.  Sometimes knocking or hitting me in a synchronized fashion, other times working long, long strides down the length of whatever part he’s working on.

Pretty soon its time for me to flip, and at this point, the diaper is in his way, so he just undoes it.  A full-moon has risen in the middle of the day, in Alleppey, Kerala.  The whole process is repeated, just as it was on my front side.  Utter disregard for the more private of parts or the proximity to them.
This went on for apparently an hour, because that’s what I paid for, though I wasn’t watching a clock, because there was no clock for one thing, and I was just trying to not start laughing like a school girl for another.  When Little Man was done, I was pointed into the shower room, and he gave me a trial bar of soap and a trial sized shampoo which he cut the top off of for me with some tiny scissors he produced.  I asked him for a towel as there was none around, and he must of known that word, because he brought one over.  It looked like a big version of the diaper, nearly gossamer thin cotton, but without the straps.

I get into the shower room, but there is no shower head.  There is a bucket and a scoop (more like an open spouted cup).  I picked up the scoop and poured one over my head to get wet.  At this point I realized how viscous the oil was.  I felt like I was covered in motor oil.

I take another scoop of the water (Little Man is watching all this, by the way), and start shampooing my hair.  Little Man, at this point, comes into the shower-less shower room and takes a scoop of the water and puts it over my head, so I can rinse it better.  He says something about soap in a questioning kind of way, and I hand him the package and he opens the soap.

He then proceeds to wash me.

My modesty had left some time ago, and my pride was MIA as well at this point.  It’s helpful anyway, to have someone bathe you in this situation, because my arms can’t reach to the Crisco on my back anyway.  Little Man does my arms, legs, back, chest, and every other place as well, except for my face.  Apparently my face is off-limits.  There was no other place that was true.

He rinses me a half dozen cups worth, and then hands me the cup to finish up.  A few more dousings and I grab the threadbare towel and soak it nearly immediately.  I wonder if I should pull my clothes into the shower room, but decide to present my naked self into the room, as there was nothing that needed hiding anymore between us.  I get my underwear and shorts and finally my shirt back on, and I thank him (I actually am really relaxed from the massage), and we smile broadly at one another for a half a second.

That was interesting was all I could think at the time.

In retrospect, I think I prefer my massages to still have the no-fly zone.  I’m also pretty sure I still prefer to be washed by my own two hands and to be the only one in the shower for that matter.  But he never did anything untoward or inappropriate, it was just a total disregard for private space (literally) and a completely different worldview on modesty.

What can you expect from a country whose “strangers” are so intimate with one another.
The rest of my day paled in comparison to the massage.  I went for a walk along both sides of the river, I bought a package of pineapple cream cookies for $.20 (think vanilla/pineapple Oreos), and I hopped a ride back on the ferry which was free.  I found an ATM which didn’t like my card, but I had another debit card it did like, so I got some money out to pay the piper in the morning when I check out.  I took my camera out and got some good pictures of the many species of flowers in the garden (again, and better), and then I ate.

Dadu, the cook here, made me some chicken curry which was excellent, along with dal fry, chapattis, some vegetable dish which had a mostly dry mixture of tomatoes, green peas, onions, and fried paneer cheese cubes in it, and some fresh papaya from the tree outside.  I’m not sure why every Indian dish gets translated into English as some kind of curry.  You would think from the name that I have been eating the same thing over and over again, just with a different main ingredient.  This is not so.  Though many of the dishes make use of the standby Indian spices, they are in different combinations and strengths, and it doesn’t feel (or taste) as though they are all the same at all.

Earlier I had made mention to Rema and Jimmy, how delicious the ice cream and julab gamun was from yesterday, and it appeared on the table towards the end of the meal as well.  With this amount of food and the variety, I can’t fault the price.  There is enough to feed 4 people here, and it’s all spread out before me.  A couple of glasses of the pink water to wash it all down, and I was full and satisfied.
Here at the house, there is usually somebody near you while you’re eating.  They try to be available at all times.  I told the manager (her name is Rema) that I really appreciated the repeat on the desert and pointed to the table.  She was somewhat aghast.  I repeated it, and her surprise just increased and she’s now looking at the table where I’m pointing.  I then pointed directly to the (now empty) ice cream dish and said desert slowly once more.  Then she got it, and the relief melted her worry.  She thought I had been saying “lizard.” 

We had had a conversation a few days back about the geckos I’d found.  She said the last guest found an adult gecko in the room and had Jimmy come and catch it.  I don’t know how one would catch a gecko.  When they get the inkling to move, they do it quick.  I bet it would be about like trying to catch a puff of smoke.  Even if you could, why would you want to.  They eat mosquitoes!  Anyway, I had told her that I liked the geckos and she told me that people there call them “house lizards.”  She thought I was telling her there was a lizard on the table :).

After dinner, I sorted out a problem with the AirTel sim card which AirTel had disconnected.  I had to use Rema’s phone because all outbound and inbound calls were stopped.  The first guy I talked to told me I needed to go to an AirTel store and get a duplicate sim card made up, because mine had failed.  He kept speaking in Hindi though, and I kept asking him to speak in English.  Finally he put me on hold and about 10 minutes later a man who spoke English well came on the line. 

Miraculously, my sim was now not the problem.  He said they disconnected it because of address verification issues.  I had heard about this and it is why I purchased the sim at the airport because that booth wasn’t supposed to have the same problems, as it had some higher grade of acceptance coming from the International Airport for travellers without permanent Indian addresses.  However, when my entire balance suddenly ran out in Varanasi (remember that?) and I had to re-buy my voice and data credits, I think it switched to a different store, and that’s why they terminated it.

The second guy tells me that I need to go to an AirTel store in Delhi.  I tell him I’m in Kerala and that’s not going to happen.  He magically fixes the problem, and tells me that within 15 days, I’ll need to verify my passport with an AirTel store.  No problem.  In 15 days I’ll be in the United States of America and it won’t be an issue for me.

After the AirTel calls, Rema and I talk for about an hour about all kinds of things that are different and/or interesting, differences between America and India.  She answers some questions for me about the chairs outside (that have legs rests which are extensions of the arm rests), and I order breakfast for the morning at 9.  I tell her I’d like to try the boiled bananas that she told me about, so she makes a couple of calls and instructs someone to bring some bananas with them to work in the morning.
Now, I’m getting ready to take another shower.  The latest wave of oil has crept to the surface and I need de-glistened.  My hair still looks like I’m a pubescent 14 year boy who hasn’t showered in a week.

Tomorrow, I will hit the train from Alleppey, Kerala to Vellore, Tamil Nadu in order to reach Tiruvannamalai by bus.  The train gets into Vellore at 3:30a, so I’m sure I’ll have some waiting to do once I arrive.  Well, that’s assuming I make it off the train at the right station.  It will be the dead of night and the train only stops at my station for 2 minutes.  That’s not a lot of margin for error!
Hopefully the connection and signal will be better in Tiru than it has been here, where it takes up to 10 minutes to refresh my email inbox.  Maybe there I’ll be able to at least upload some pics from the last week.  We’ll see.  Til next time.