The following have been written over the past several days, but they are in order.

Dwelling and dwelling……

I’m enjoying my chai this morning (as usual) while sitting in the open window of my room watching people start their days- men brushing their teeth, women sweeping their rooftops, and the same boy I watch every morning at the water pump. It is also the time of the day that I think most about my flight home in a few weeks, although I try not to dwell on those thoughts. My best option is to stay in the moments I have now and enjoy them graciously, but it is difficult to know I have to leave in only 19 short days. The idea of living on two continents is trying to work itself into a plan in my head. Even as the mosquitoes are buzzing around my ears and I am thinking about having to fill up the bucket in my bathroom to wash my feet, I know the inconveniences would be trivial compared to the experience of dwelling here.

Yesterday my friend Naresh took me on his motorcycle out of the city and into a few of the villages surrounding Udaipur. We rode for 25 kilometers uphill, past cinder-block homes with thatched roofs, past concrete walls the villagers topped with broken glass to keep the panthers out, to villages where I couldn’t even buy bottled water. The familiar sounds of Hindi were even replaced by a new language I had never heard. We hiked up a steep and winding path to the top where a temple has been carved into the earth and used our cell phones for light as we crouched down to find our way to the alter where Naresh offered incense and prayer, and I felt Shiva smiling.

The night before, my friends Robert and Alina and I joined Naresh and Asha with her family for the Shiva festival. We walked through town, visiting three Shiva temples and eating handfuls of sweets given to us by people as we left the temples. I find it fascinating to watch my Hindu friends worship. When entering a temple, each person rings the bell hanging over the doorway before praying with bowed heads and clasped hands in front of statues depicting Ganesh, Shiva, Krishna or others. I feel happy to be witness to yet more private moments- although when I asked Naresh what he says when he prays, he told me it’s private…. ☺)

Tonight I had dinner at Asha’s house again. Afterwards we walked to her parents home where I met several other family members. (Asha’s name means Hope in English by the way). When I mentioned around 11pm that I needed to get back to my guesthouse, her brother asked me why I was going to a hotel when my family is there in that house (their house), and told me I didn’t need to pay to stay in my home.

Yesterday a man I know named Raju stopped me on the street and asked to see my hands. He pressed on a few places and then told me I have a family history of lung problems and that my lungs are sick, that I am happy when in India but not the same in America, and that I have back problems (sadly, and frustratingly, yes) among other things. Everything he said was true.

I’ve watched the level of water in the lake go down every day since I arrived in Udaipur on the 4th of February. Naresh told me it drops by a foot each day.


Notes from India-

1- Never go shopping for fabric, or anything else, unless you go to the local market. This is where Indians shop for everything, and tourists don’t often venture. The prices are at least 70% less.
2- When you go to the local market, always go with an Indian. It’s more fun, and they will take 10% off the local price, which is already pretty cheap.
3- It’s easy to get caught up in looking around at the hustle in the streets, and even easier to step in cow poop when you’re looking around at everything in the streets. But don’t worry if you do, it is good luck.
4- The huge growths that look like bowling ball size tumors protruding from the sides and belly’s of cows aren’t tumors, or babies, but plastic. They forage in the trash for food and consume massive amounts of it (plastic), which they aren’t able to digest. Over time it slowly blocks their intestines, causing them to die slowly, and one would think painfully as well. But don’t worry, they aren’t getting fed massive amounts of antibiotics on factory farms and crowded onto trucks that drive down the freeway no matter the weather to drop them at a slaughter house where they are often still alive when their hide is being ripped off for you to eat a hamburger. Hamburger is not on the menu here unless you are in a 5-star hotel in a big city. Krishna loves cows. Shiva loves ox. They don’t eat them because the Gods have them as friends and you can’t eat a God’s friend. But you can eat a goat.
5- The bags that are often attached to and hanging under goats are not to catch milk as my friend Isabella and I thought, but to catch a baby when the goat is pregnant. They roam the streets by day to eat, so chances are, it will be born away from home. They are too valuable to the family that buys them to miss out on adding another to the herd. Eventually they might be eaten, but they have built their muscle by eating trash, so I wonder how that tastes…..perhaps like trash?
6- I have tried and liked everything I have been offered to eat or drink with two exceptions: lassi’s and fresh cow milk. Lassi’s are made with yogurt and fruit, unless you have a “special” lassi which promptly puts one to sleep. Fresh cow milk is boiled, allowed to cool, and served with “black” salt added. I’m not a fan of milk at home, let alone sour semi-warm milk with pepper added to it.
7- The best way to see the towns of India is from a motorcycle. Sitting sideways on the back with both your feet on the built in ledge is pretty easy too. I used to look at Indian women sitting like that in amazement. Now I find it practical and easy, especially when carrying bags home from the market.
8- Poverty here, though at times shocking and painful to see, is often handled with so much grace and dignity that it doesn’t always look like poverty. While I have seen children with matted hair and no shoes running from rickshaw to car to rickshaw at busy intersections begging for money, I have also seen power and beauty in groups of women sitting together on the sidewalk.
9- When an Indian says 1 pm, it means 2 pm, which means 3pm and so on, except for buses. If you are due to arrive at 6 am, you will arrive at 4 am.
10- If a rickshaw driver takes you to a guesthouse, don’t let him go in with you. You will pay an inflated price for your room to cover his commission for bringing you there.
11- For those that love it, India is like Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.


Warning: The following could be (will be) a bit negative, but it is a part of my experience, and my journey. I think it is also a way for the universe to guide me in understanding who I am, and to understand the things I want to change.
Today, 2/18/10
I am such a bloody American. Many of us think we are this way or that way, but this country will challenge what you think you know about yourself. As much as I consider myself to be open, friendly, and grateful, the part of me that expects certain things (by virtue of what I am used to) sometimes rears its head. For instance, my traveling companion is from a village. By village I mean a small community where houses are made of mud and have thatched roofs made from grasses. I mean a place where every drop of water during the rainy season is precious so people can grow food and eat. By village I mean a place where all the water for cooking, drinking, bathing, and washing clothes comes from the same green, putrefied lake. By village I mean a place where if there was/were no God(s), it would be necessary to invent them, him or her so that one can develop all the ideology and hope that comes from having a belief in something outside oneself.

By village I also mean that people don’t brush their teeth, bathe often, wash their clothes often, or have any idea about raising a toilet seat to pee. If I wipe pee off the toilet seat one more time I am going to scream.

This morning we walked to the local market to find bangles that match the salwar kameez I had made yesterday. Entering a shop, or stand, or piece of cardboard that delineates the space of ones shop requires that you remove your shoes. I am wearing my precious Rainbow flip-flops and trying to keep my feet clean as I walk through the water being used to rinse the cow poop from the streets. You remove your shoes here so that all the filth you have been walking through in the streets isn’t carried into the shop where people sit on the floor to conduct business. I find a place for my shoes that is reasonably free from shit-water, and step up into the shop. Naresh stands outside, on my flip-flops, transferring all the parasite larvae and who-knows what else onto my shoes where my barefeet will soon be again. The combination of all the gawking at the blond in Indian dress, sitting in fresh pee on the toilet seat, and countless bangles being thrust into my face along with the chorus of “Sister, please, Hello” and Naresh ignoring most of what I say finally got to me. I asked for the key to the room that was in his pocket and stormed off in a hurry to get back to my room. Now I am sitting in on the gorgeous marble patio of my guesthouse deciding whether I want to break another social norm here and order a beer while I write. (The first being that I was obviously mad in the street when I walked off.)

During the long walk home I asked for intervention, a sign, to help me get to the bottom of why I am finding the most normal parts of life in India to be so damn frustrating to me today and was suddenly embarrassed that I felt so upset by it all. I’m frustrated because I am an American who expects things to be a certain way because they are the way I expect at home.
(I just ordered a beer)
They actually close the curtains across the door here if you are sitting in view of it and have a beer on your table-

I miss Asha and Udaipur. I miss the safety and love so freely provided me when in the embrace of her entire family. I miss walking through the streets of Udaipur and hearing my name, pronounced more like N-G here than Angie. As I have written this I have thought about the people I have loved that died from emphysema and cancer. I have thought about people here that cook with dirty water from the lake. I have thought about the dogs in the street that I bought biscuits for last night, and the one that promptly lifted his leg and peed on my back after I fed him, as if to warn all the other starving-for-food-and-love dogs in the street that I was his human. Do I really care if I have to wipe pee off the toilet seat or if I get a little cow poop on my feet? Do I even need to answer that question?

Something else that taught me a lesson yesterday: we stayed our first night in Bundi at a guesthouse that is someone’s actual home. The owner is a completely kind Grandmother and all who work there are family members. The house was small and full of people. The bathroom reeked of urine and all the family members and the guests shared the shower. When flushing the toilet, it emptied into the street where one could watch all ones business move slowly downhill towards the lake. There was no privacy at all there, but it was only 150 rupees a night- about $3. I wanted a hot shower in the privacy of my own room (foreigner alert) so we moved to the guesthouse where I am writing this from after the first night. For about $27 I have a huge room, private bathroom, marble everywhere, and a green courtyard. I took off my dirty clothes, excited to finally have a shower and wash my hair, but there was no water! I sat in the bathroom thinking you’ve got to be kidding me and had to laugh. The monkeys had played on the water tank and messed up the lines that supplied it so I had to wait until they could fix it and refill the water tank.

So here’s to life in India and opportunities for growth that await my every turn. The lesson isn’t to expect more from people and situations here, but to expect more from myself. I don’t want to behave like an entitled American and you won’t learn that you do it unless you put yourself into a situation that changes the resolution of your own mind.
Naresh is truly a good guy. I care for him and brought him with me because after living in India for 22 years he had never been to Bundi- a town only 6 hours by bus from Udaipur. He’s never seen the Taj Mahal, a landmark in his own country, nor has he ever been inside a building like the one where we sleep. He is friendly and good, despite the fact that he pees on the toilet seat and doesn’t answer me half the time when I speak. I know it is because half the time, he doesn’t understand what I am saying. He has a strong faith in his God’s, Shiva in particular, and writes notes to them during the day. I asked him once about why he isn’t married when the children from his village are committed to their life partner by their parents by the time they are 9 or 10. He told me it is because he has to finish his studies and ‘make’ a job first. Besides he says, “God is making me a good person to marry and she will be perfect for me when I meet her.” When he says this, I wonder if I too have that kind of faith. Maybe it is my next lesson.

Namaste-