slow nod club

Trying India again.

As I've said many times, I'd always wanted to visit India. Always. In my mind it was a magical place full of spices and color and meditation. India was like Narnia or Atlantis. Could a place like that actually exist? So the first question I always asked people who'd been there was "Did you like it???" And the answer I always received was "Ummmm...yeaaaaaah (slowly star nodding his/her head)...I did." That answer always kind of irked me. Why the hesitation? Yes or no? It's a simple question. People who were so wishy washy didn't deserve to go to India! 

Call me wishy washy. In the two weeks since I've been back, whenever I'm asked if I liked India, my answer is "Ummmm...yeah...I did" while I slowly nod my head. I get it now. I get it, but I can't explain it. 

When leaving India, I arrived at the airport nearly 5 hours early. Anya's flight was a few hours before mine, and while two extra hours of sleep in a soft bed in an air conditioned room was tempting, after our grand 5 week adventure, the idea of separate cabs to the airport and a goodbye said at a hotel rather than an airport (airports are meant for hellos and goodbyes) seemed anticlimactic and wrong. We were on different flights, but I at least wanted to see her off. Plus, I was scared to be alone with a taxi driver. Hahahaha...but really. 

So after sleeping from about 9 PM-midnight, we left for the airport around 1 AM. We had some mediocre chai, and I sadly bid farewell to Anya. For the first time in 5 weeks, I found myself for real alone. It was a strange feeling, mostly sadness and loneliness. Plus, between having "slept" the night before on a sleeper train with no pillow or bed sheets, while an old guy sharing our compartment was a one man symphony of bodily noises, and then this night, running on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep, getting up at midnight, I was so tired I had no idea what time it was. Coffee. I needed coffee.  I walked back to the airport food court and went to McDonald's. This was the only McDonald's I went to in India, so I don't know if they're all like this. But this one served no pork or beef products. They had some menu items I was curious about. But it was the middle of the night, a mystery sandwich didn't sound good. Big time regret now, will I EVER know what a McSpicy Paneer tastes like?? Anyway, I got my coffee and sat down. While finishing my coffee, I also finished the book I was reading, Brave New World. The week before, I'd read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I was tired. I was lonely. I was blue. I'd just read two slightly depressing books.  I didn't want to start the other book I had in my bag,  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I wanted something less serious. So I went to the airport bookstore, and found Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure. I'd first heard of this book weeks before, from a fellow volunteer at Elephant Nature Park. Then, while in India I came across it a few more times on blogs and from other travelers. I had a 500 Rupee note burning a hole in my pocket, and the book cost 450 Rupees. Perfect.

I was about 100 pages into it by the time the beverage cart made its first trip down the aisle on my flight to Istanbul. This book was exactly what I was looking for. There were no women being tortured in a secret chamber in a psychopath's basement. No one whipped themselves or went on soma vacations. It was perfect. And Sarah Macdonald describes India much more eloquently than I've been able to. For the rest of the 7 hour flight to Istanbul, and the 12 hour flight to Chicago, I was that creepy person smiling to herself as I read the book. There's one on every flight. But I couldn't help it. She so right on described much of what I'd just experienced in India, from the bombardment by taxi and rickshaw drivers at train stations, to food, to the spraying of pesticides on the airplane before landing in Delhi. But my favorite had to be how she described traffic. "Pedestrians are on the bottom and run out of the way of everything, bicycles make way to cycle-rickshaws, which give way to auto-rickshaws, which stop for cars, which are subservient to trucks. Buses stop for one thing and one thing only. Not customers - they jump on while the buses are still moving. The only thing that can stop a bus is the king of the road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog. The holy cow."

And on India in general: India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It's rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It's all the extremes.

Word. 

I'd planned on actually writing about Delhi today. And this is what it ended up as. Hahaha. And since I want to run before work in a few hours, Delhi will have to wait until next time. 

But in the meantime, here is my take on traffic in India. Since I'm not as good with words as Ms. Mcdonald, my description will be in the form of a video I took while riding in a cycle-rickshaw. I was fairly certain we were going to die, or be in an accident, or be plucked from our rickshaw by kidnappers...or at least I was sure I was going to drop my camera. Thankfully none of those things happened. To give you a better sense of what it was like, while you're watching this video, imagine a pee smell stronger than a well used porta potty brewing under a hot sun (detasseling, anyone??), or a dive bar on a Friday night.