flickering pictures

I’ve been posting my notes from India, scribbled and scrawled all around the country last summer, while I get things up and running around here. Now that things are humming nicely, I’m spending less time fixing things, leaving me more time to post tasty content. But although I’m not quite so desperate for filler anymore, I’m honoured to see that some of you actually seem to like these, so I’ll keep posting them sporadically until they’re all up. If you like, you can keep track of them on a brand spanking new dispatches page.

Thanks for reading!

-mark

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7:30am Friday, Jul 20

It’s been a couple of days, and I’m feeling muuuch better. I’m still a little woozy, but Dr. Sumi has got me on oral rehydration salts just in case, and I no longer have a flaming inferno in my pants - maybe just simmering.

For about the fifth time in India, a couple of tourists walked up to me and asked me something in Hebrew, mistaking me for an Israeli. Even though I’m half-Italian, a quarter Dutch and a quarter Chinese, everybody here seems to think I look Israeli - and with a lot of the tourists being scruffy IDF vets who really do look kind of like me, I’m starting to take notice. I definitely have to shave if I ever head anywhere near the Middle East. At least my mountain man beard is red for some reason.

Yesterday Sumi took me out to Udupi to the temple of Krishna, which is a staggering - wait for it - 3000 years old. When they started work on this place, Greece was just starting its dark ages. The Roman Republic was founded about 500 years later, and Alexander the Great started his reign 800 years after that. Wow. From what I understand of Krishna (somebody help me with this one) he’s a very powerful god with many, many lovers who really loves butter, and he’s blue because of a poison he absorbed when he was in the belly of a serpent. The temple is gorgeous inside (no pics - photography isn’t allowed) with insanely ancient wooden pillars and stone walls surrounding the main point of interest: the statue of Krishna. To see the statue you have to stand in line to peer into a barred window for a second or two, before you’re jostled ahead by the guy behind you. Apparently a long time ago, when a low-caste man tried to see the statue in the inner sanctum of Krishna’s temple, he was kicked out by the priests and told in no uncertain terms to bugger off. He sat outside all night, and the legend goes that the statue turned of its own accord to face a window, so that the man could see it.

Manipal is a quiet college town, small, and super clean by Indian standards. This means that you only have a moderate chance of getting sick at a restaurant, and probably that it’s a bit more expensive to bribe the city’s food inspectors. Just to be safe, while my stomach is healing up I’ve been living mostly on Domino’s and Subway - vegetarian only of course. These are actually the first American fast food places I’ve seen since coming to India. I’ve been pretty low-key these last few days, mostly napping off my stomach bug in a comfortable room with cable TV. I get CNN, HBO and about 15 Bollywood music video channels. If you’ve never seen a Bollywood movie or music video, it’s something not to be missed - not because it’s good, just because it’s unforgettable. There’s a lot insane speed-zooming and crazy panning, and everything is overblown, overdone and overacted in a way that makes Captain Kirk look like Alec Baldwin. And yet somehow it’s wonderful. Here’s a good place to start.

Also I was struck by how in the ads, papers, magazines, movies, television shows, etc. all the main characters are almost as white as I am. Similarly, whenever I pass someone picking up trash, washing a window, cutting grass or doing some other physical work, they’re almost always very, very dark. I knew there were still class differences in India, but it’s really something to see them so prominent. I was reading the Mumbai Mirror on the plane to Mangalore, and there was an article that really stuck with me; a group of residents in a middle-class neighbourhood were demonstrating in the streets to have a slum demolished, and they were enlisting well-known Indian celebrities to get behind the cause and push the impoverished out of town. Or at least into someone else’s part of town. The article highlighted the practical pros and cons of bulldozing their homes, but entirely neglected the ethical question of whether or not it’s okay to destroy someone’s house just because it happens to be made of corrugated iron and plastic sheeting.

The issue was made all the more volatile because the monsoon waters are rising and drainage systems are completely inadequate, leaving some parts of Mumbai deep under water. The kind of thing that in the U.S. would have the National Guard and a top-notch Arabian horse expert called in, but that in India is just par for the course. People are dying in droves of leptospirosis, a disease caused by animal and human urine that leaks into the water supply during the monsoon. All the waste that’s in the streets is now in the drinking water. I’m glad I didn’t spend much time there - Manipal is cloudy but mostly dry, and the medical facilities here are apparently among the best in the country, thanks to a medical school that attracts students from around the world.

I kept meaning to write about the toilets but always forgot. While the more touristy restaurants and hotels have toilets, most places have what’s sometimes misleadingly called an “Indian-style toilet,” which is essentially a hole in the ground that you squat over to do your business. There’s no way to do this without taking off your pants entirely. No toilet paper either - you use your left hand instead, and usually there’s a strategically-placed tap around knee-level and a little cup for you to clean yourself up. This takes some getting used to, but when you gotta go, you’re not going to run across town to the Hilton.

Alright, enough for one day - no sooner do I type that Manipal is dry than the sky opens up and reminds us that it is still, after all, monsoon season. I’m off to meet Sumi for coffee and a bite to eat. Oh, and she brought me some Oreos today from her personal stash, shipped by her dad from the US, and let me tell you, I’ve never enjoyed an Oreo so much in my life.

Take care!
Mark

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