Tigers in India

On Christmas Eve we got up way too early, not to see if we could see Santa Gupta, but rather so we could catch a 5:45 am flight from Pune to Nagpur. We had tigers in mind, and the best choice for us seemed to be Kanha National Park, a 5 hour drive northeast of Nagpur in the state of Madhya Pradesh. After nearly three months of cavalierly eating almost anything put in front of us, Peggy had finally succumbed to Maharajah’s Revenge, so her enthusiasm for the upcoming jungle forays was at a low ebb.

Our Nagpur-based driver was in a hurry and even the sight of one of the dangerous commission-based buses smashed into the railing of a bridge with a huge gash opened on its right hand side did very little to dim his ardor.

We reached the Wild Chalet Resort just in time for lunch, met Clifford the manager (and one of the few Christian Indians we’ve met on our entire trip) and Pramod, the naturalist who would act as our guide’s guide for the next three days.

The resort was not the world’s most up-to-date nor well-kept establishment. No TV, no Internet, no phones, intermittent power and no heat! If you’ve been following, you know that we’ve found India to be hot pretty much non-stop. But in a surprising development, Kanha was downright cold and the lack of any type of heater to keep our suite warm was a bit disconcerting. When I asked Clifford about the possibility of getting some heat in the place, he said “I’ll send hot water bottles”. And so that night we slept with localized heat sources tucked under our blankets while the temperature outside nose-dived to less than 40F.

Morning safaris leave the resort at 5:15 am, so we were not completely surprised when someone pounded on our door on Christmas morning at 4:30 am (remember, no phones). Cups of coffee and tea tried to warm us up, but by the time we took our seats in the open air jeep (actually a Suzuki brand mini-jeep), we were beginning to realize that we were in for a cold morning. We put on all the warm clothing we had, wrapped ourselves in the wool blankets draped on the jeep seats and took off for the first assembly point just outside the park.

The system at Kanha is not completely clear, and certainly not adhered to with any type of rigidity, but the scheme works something like this. You drive up to a gate that is actually 4 km outside the official entry gate to the park. Here you get in line, or try to butt in line, or hang around just outside the line hoping to improve on the lousy position you find yourself in because you were too lazy to get there early. Clients by and large stay wrapped in their blankets in the jeeps while the drivers go chew the fat around one of the many open fires burning alongside the road.

At 5:55 the drivers all sprint to their vehicles, making the area look like the starting paddock for a race at LeMans. The gate opens and the jostling starts as the jeep jockeys try to improve on their position or at the very least don’t regress too much. Even though honking is the national sport in India, and there was much of it going on even at 5:45 am, once inside the first gate, there is a strict no-honking rule which is surprisingly adhered to by every driver, each of whom has to be licensed and certified by some official agency.

Once actually through that first gate, not only does honking cease, but racing does as well…until you get to the second, official gate into the park proper. When you get to this second gate, you once again either get into one of the two official lines (which have different functions – prominently displayed on signage - but for all practical purposes are treated as though not a single driver can read) or you do whatever you want for no evident reason. Drivers once again congregate until 6:25 am when another LeMans start appears in the offing. As you approach the gate, rather than alternating with the other official lane, you rev your engine a lot and try to convince the other guy that you should be allowed to gain a few places for reasons not discernible to me. There are also jeeps approaching from the exit-only lane, once again apparently with perfectly legitimate reasons for violating all the rules.

After fighting for position yet again, the jeeps once more become more respectful of each other once inside the park. The ride to your first stop takes 30-50 very cold minutes, but the park is beautiful as it lightens with the rising sun.

On Christmas morning we were about the 40th vehicle into the park, early enough to risk a shot at that day’s tiger show. And just what is a tiger show you might be asking? Early every morning the mahouts drive their elephants into the forest trying to locate tigers that might be lolling about after a recent kill or sleeping after a recent tryst with a tiger of the opposite sex. The mahouts are usually successful, and when they do find a lazing tiger, they signal a bunch of other elephants to come and join the “show”. Then park visitors sign up for the show, get a priority number and when it’s your turn you climb aboard one of the elephants, bash into the jungle and view the tiger in a very up close and personal way for a few minutes. Then the elephant tramples back out to the road and boards another party to be ferried to the “tiger show”.

We got a low enough priority number to be able to witness a sleepy tigress lying on the ground after gorging on a kill from the previous day. The tiger show is a bit contrived, but the feeling of awe at being so close to my all-time favorite wild animal, in a truly natural state, was enough to make it one of my best Christmases ever.

The rest of the safari could have consisted of having my toenails pulled out with a dull pair of pliers and I still would have been in the most sublime state. But we actually got to see many more animals that morning, including gaur (Indian bison), a variety of deer and some very colorful birds.

I was walking on clouds through lunch, but that afternoon our main man, Pramod, showed us what a gem he is. Pramod is a naturalist who works for the “adventure” company that provides dedicated safari services to the Wild Chalet. Pramod is highly educated, well trained and an incredible talent, but due to the rules of Kanha National Park, every vehicle that passes through the front gate must hire an official, certified Kanha guide. There is an elaborate queuing system in play at the main gate (unfortunately sans computers) that is meant to give every registered guide an equal shot at a safari gig.

So we always had an official guide in our jeep, but his presence was mainly symbolic. Pramod, and our driver, Hira, a 20 year veteran driver in Kanha, pretty much decided where to go and always spotted wildlife and birds well before any of us tourists had any notion there were breathing varmints about.

But the most amazing talent exhibited by Pramod and Hira was their uncanny ability to listen to the jungle and figure out if a tiger was any where in the vicinity and, if so, where the heck s/he was. After stopping a number of times and listening intently, Hira and Pramod were sure there was a tiger nearby. Then, in an instant, they both simultaneously yelled “Alarm call!” and Hira gunned the jeep down the road a couple of hundred yards. We stopped and waited and Pramod said more than once “the tiger is coming.” The alarm call had been a sambar deer voicing a very throaty “awwk” sound that was meant to warn other sambars in the region that danger lurked. But the tigers in this case were not so much interested in eating as they were in mating. We heard a series of “ouwm” roars followed by perky “ouw” responses that Pramod assured us were perfect indicators of a male and female tiger essentially asking each other what their sign was.

15 minutes later, Pramod pointed vaguely into the jungle and said “there he is.” I looked and looked, sure that my only glimpse of this magnificent beast would be but a bit of yellow smudge hidden in the thicket. No matter how carefully Pramod tried to describe exactly where to look to find the beast, I really could not see him.

By this time the jungle vibes had permeated a good part of the park and there were probably 30 or more jeeps parked in close proximity, all clients straining to catch a glimpse of the lord of this jungle. Due to the incredible efforts of Pramod and Hira, we were in a better position than almost all of the other vehicles.

And so when the tiger rose up on his haunches, a shudder and expression of collective awe rose from the closest viewers. As nonchalant as a stoned hippy, the male tiger sauntered out from under cover and slowly strolled through the brush, mainly parallel to the road that was by now lined with gawkers. He stretched a few times, emitted a few muffled roars, then strode directly across the road, passing within 10 meters of the closest jeeps. He glanced begrudgingly at us a few times, then headed back into the woods. I assume he immediately tweeted to all his tiger buddies something like this: “Tourists in the palm of my paw! lol”

What a cool experience! Peggy and I had front row seats to this whole spectacle and it was one of the more memorable moments of my life. Sitting in front of a wood fire sipping wine later that evening made me realize that Christmas 2009 had been one for the record books.

Naturally, with such good luck on the first two safaris, I assumed that tiger viewing was guaranteed. A long day-after-Christmas with nary a trace of a tiger disabused this notion and made me realize just how fortunate we had been the day before.

Peggy’s internal distress had intensified over night, so I went on the cold morning safari with just a couple from Stuttgart, Germany to keep me company. If possible, the day after Christmas was even busier than Christmas itself. Even so, we had scored a pretty good position that morning at the first gate. That lucky break was totally undone at the second gate when our guide was nowhere to be seen when it was our turn to pass through the gate. It is strictly forbidden to enter the park without a certified guide, so Hira waited patiently, as we watched vehicle after vehicle leapfrog us into the park.

The morning was a bust. Not just for us, but for nearly everyone looking for tigers. Even the elephant mahouts had failed to locate any tigers that morning, and by the time we exited the park at noon, word was out that no one had seen tigers that morning.

When we struck out again on the afternoon safari, I began to realize just how fortunate we had been the day before when we had two exceptional tiger sightings. But the afternoon was not completely devoid of interest. At one point we spotted a large herd of spotted deer and I had an amusing exchange with Hira. Me: “Look, spotted deer.” Hira: “No, no, no! They’re spotted deer!” OK, so English is not as universal here as most Indians would have us believe.

On the way home I innocently asked how dangerous the big cats in the park really were. Pramod immediately shot back with this fact: in 2007 an assistant mahout, out wrangling elephants in the early morning hours, had been killed by a tiger. Furthermore, within just the last few weeks, a puppy at our very own resort had been nabbed, killed and eaten by a leopard. OK – I’m willing to believe these big, beautiful felines are as dangerous as legend has proscribed them to be.

The next morning Peggy was still under the weather, so I joined Lana and Kylie, two exuberant Kiwis who have traveled to more third world countries than even Mother Theresa, on the morning safari. Luck was with us. Pramod found us a great tiger sighting almost immediately. Then he directed us to a spot quite a ways down the road where he predicted the same tiger would appear again. When that happenstance was not forthcoming, he took us to another location that had no obvious connection to where we had seen the tiger almost an hour earlier, but I’ll be darned if the big boy didn’t show up right in front of us within 3 minutes.

I reveled in yet another close encounter with the coolest animal on the planet. I understand the economic pressures that cajole poor local hunters to poach these magnificent beasts, but I believe the tiger will prove to be the true test of humanity. If we can’t figure out a way to insure the viability of a creature as regal and precious as the tiger then I fear there is no future for mankind.

That night I got to try out the thesis of the book titled “The Wisdom of Crowds”. One of the English tourists was from Weymouth, but when I asked him how big the city was, he professed no knowledge whatsoever. So I proceeded to query all 7 English folks present, asking each to guess the population of Weymouth. After throwing out the guess by one of the English ladies who clearly was not willing to humor me, I got an average of 60,000, not that far off from the most official tally of 53,000.

On Monday morning we woke up to a s**t storm. I mean that pretty literally. A clan of langur monkeys had taken over the roof of our bungalow, and for some reason had decided to deposit a magnificent amount of monkey poop on our veranda.

We had to get back to Nagpur for our flight home, but we were able to eat lunch before heading out. The morning safari had been unsuccessful in tiger sightings, but I showed Pramod the tiger tattoo on my right shoulder and he got a considerable kick out of seeing it. I’ve always wanted to do something to help the tigers’ plight, so I asked Pramod what I should do. He said “Join the World Wildlife Fund. They are doing the most to try to help the tiger survive.” Being a longstanding member of WWF, I was heartened to hear his advice. In my only obvious plea to your sensibilities, I would ask that you consider supporting WWF and their tiger protection efforts as well. Please see http://www.worldwildlife.org/ for more information.

Our trip back to Nagpur was exciting. We were driven by a young, bold driver. I kept thinking of the old saying: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” I was afraid our young, bold driver would prove that adage at our expense, but the fact that I am writing these words would seem to indicate that we made it back to Nagpur.

We did have a few humorous Indian standoff moments on the way back, though. Twice we had to stop at railroad crossing. Both times, on both sides of the tracks, vehicles filled all lanes, even the ones that purportedly were meant for those coming in the other direction. And so when the crossing barriers raised, there was full on pandemonium as all the smarties who thought they would make great time by driving in the wrong lane faced a huge wave of traffic heading directly at them. The fact that almost nobody benefited from this approach was obviously lost on the average Indian, as the same behavior was repeated at each rail crossing.

Our stay in India is rapidly drawing to a close. As you can imagine, we are crying our eyes out, so sad are we that we will be leaving this wonderful country. NOT!!!! Our thrall with being here is definitely on the wane. USA, here we come!

photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157623100904562/

tiger strolling through the jungle video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M_qRkD9itE

The Killer Elephant

For a really interesting blog about India, that is more pithy and less boring than this one, try

http://labeladhesiveremover.blogspot.com/2009/12/indian-connection.html

One of the cool things here in India is the way the common man packs his lunch for work. Most laborers use a system called tiffin boxes for this purpose. Tiffin boxes are small ( 4.5” diameter by 2” tall ), round, aluminum containers that latch on the sides and can be stacked and snapped together to make a cylindrical lunch box with a handle at the top. Each small container is packed with one course for the day’s lunch. These stacks can be as small as two layers and as tall as 5 or 6.

In Pune you see workers carrying these tins, or you’ll see them dangling from handlebars or rear racks on two wheelers. In Mumbai, however, there is an incredible Just-In-Time lunch service that can deliver home made meals in tiffin boxes to downtown workers. The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust (NMTSCT), whose workers are called dabbawallahs, collects tiffin boxes full of home made goodies from all over the greater Mumbai area in the morning, then takes them to the nearest train station where they are sorted and put in charge of another dabbawallah who delivers them to the “last mile” dabbawallahs in Mumbai who then run them to the appropriate office buildings for delivery. The system of collecting, sorting, bundling, transporting and resorting is similar to what UPS and Fedex do every day, but the dabbawallahs don’t use computers or bar codes, but rather rely on colored stickers, experience, intuition and a “neither rain nor sleet…” attitude to make sure Mumbai workers do not go hungry. Almost all of the dabbawallahs come from a small village near Pune and most are related. For more information about this system, which delivers in the neighborhood of 200,000 lunches every day with almost no errors, go to http://www.dabbawalla.com/ .

Tuesday was Ashraf’s 34th birthday! Which he claims came as a surprise to him. He showed up with a tiffin box of sweet mush his wife had prepared for his birthday and he wanted to share it with us. It was pretty good, but compared to the Enstrom’s toffee that Kim had sent us a few days before it just did not have a chance. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Ashraf and gave him an extra birthday bonus so he could take his wife to his favorite restaurant, “Blue Nile”, where they gorged on mutton curry.

Startling news on Thursday from the Pune newspaper. A man had been killed when he was pushed into the path of an oncoming bus by an elephant in the old section of Pune. This report hit home because the pictures they showed of the elephant involved made it clear it was the same one who had nuzzled my foot with her trunk the very first week of our stay in Pune. And the same one that Jody posed beside for pictures just a few weeks ago. There is some dispute about what happened, but the mahout (elephant jockey) claims the man tried to pass under the elephant who in turn became distressed and bumped the man, causing him to fall in front of the oncoming bus. Having witnessed first hand how out of control most busses in India are, it’s not hard to believe the Mahout’s claims that the bus driver was speeding and driving recklessly. Having experienced the seeming gentleness of this animal up close a few times, it’s hard to believe she is a rogue or anything more or less than a domesticated animal who was startled by an unexpected interaction and who reacted instinctively without any serious intent to harm. It will come as no surprise to learn that elephants, camels, and all forms of “wild” animals are banned from the streets of Pune, but are often found there anyway. Whoever said “laws were meant to be broken” had probably just recently visited India.

Peggy arranged a wonderful treat Saturday night – a “continental cuisine” dining experience at Exotica, on the 7th floor of the IBM building. I knew it was going to be a great evening when they ushered us to a table with a CLEAN tablecloth! The terrace of the restaurant is completely exposed to the open air, but it seemed totally removed from India, like an oasis, really, in the midst of a place that has become almost unbearable to us. Our Nepalese waiter took great care of us and the margaritas tasted great – just like the ones back home. Even so, despite the incredible hankering I had for a steak, my memories of how awful the only beef we’d had on this trip was made me very wary of taking a chance on the tenderloin steak listed on the menu. I gently asked the waiter if he ate meat, and he assured me he did. So I asked his recommendation of steak vs. duck breast. Although the duck breast was more expensive, he suggested I try the steak, promising to whisk it away and bring me another entrée if I didn’t like it.

The steak was great, as were all of the dishes we tried. I was very impressed with the chef, because his creations were original, but stayed true to continental tastes rather than trying to meld in Indian spices to pander to the Indian palate.

We spent nearly three hours luxuriating in the calm and disciplined confines of our little sanctuary. When I mentioned my continuing fascination with the formerly living god known as Sai Baba, an ascetic to whom is ascribed many miracles, another one took place right in front of us. Without any prompting, coaxing or signal from me, just as the words “Sai Baba” fell out of my mouth, our Nepalese waiter appeared with a plateful of complimentary chocolates, as powerful a sign of spiritual wonder as I could have imagined at that point.

As soon as we descended back to the real India at ground level, the pandemonium of a Saturday night was in full cry. We were treated to a Chinese fire drill on a moving motorcycle – the passenger and driver on the bike just in front of us traded places without slowing down or wobbling in the least. Ashraf thought they must have been drunk, but drunk or sober it was an impressive feat.

On Sunday night I did a double-take when we saw an elephant lumbering up Hadapsar Road. Ashraf had been arguing ever since Thursday that the killer elephant was not “our” elephant, but when looking at the photos of the bad jumbo (as they call them here) in the paper, the Om markings on its forehead convinced me it was the same one we had played with over the past weeks. But the mahout on the elephant we saw Sunday looked an awful lot like the guy we always see on “our” elephant, so I took a harder look at the photos in the paper, and when comparing them to our own photos, I was finally able to see that there were subtle differences in the chalk drawn Om symbols on the foreheads of the two beasts, and I breathed a sigh of relief to conclude that “our” elephant was not implicated after all. Still, it was shocking to see this beast on city streets. I assumed that with the recent bad publicity and what I thought would be a new emphasis on enforcing the “no big animals” city ordinance, we would not be seeing elephants in Pune again.

So it was even more surprising when a few days later the paper showed a picture of the real “killer” elephant, also back on Pune’s streets! In the article, the forestry department, the animal welfare board, the police and the courts were all pointing fingers at everyone else, claiming there is nothing they can do to actually enforce the law. India.

On Monday I went into the “we would really rather not have you shop here, and we sure as heck hope you don’t actually want to buy something from us” store in the local Destination Center. The store’s name was written only in Hindi and I’m guessing that was not the official name of the store, but I bet I’m not too far off. The young male attendant immediately positioned himself about two feet from me, stared at my every action, said something in Hindi every time I moved closer to an object to look at it and succeeded in creating such negative vibes that I left shaking my head. I’m trying to not be too paranoid, but maybe after nearly decimating the entire downtown area by dropping a bottle of tonic in Dorabjee’s a few weeks ago, I’m starting to think there really might be an alert out about me.

We’re off to try to see tigers in the wild. There are only a few left and they are being poached mercilessly so Chinese men don’t have to resort to Viagra. It would give me great comfort if this world we live in could somehow come up with a plan to keep the tigers from becoming yet another victim of insatiable human demand.

Winter in Pune

On Tuesday I finally got to try the “Olympic size” pool at the gym. When I first joined the gym, I was told that the pool was only open between 6:00 am and 11:00 am and then again from 4:00 pm until 9:00 pm. My gym schedule was dictated by the apartment cleaning crews’ scheduling whims, which never started before 11:00 am but was always over by 4:00 pm. Given the regimentation which the gym seemed to thrive on, I assumed I would never get to try out the pool.

So it was quite surprising the day before when I was changing in the locker room and an Indian guy almost as tall as me said “The pool is open for you!” Taken somewhat aback and thinking maybe he was just joking I replied that the pool was only open from x to y. He said “No, now it’s open all day just for you.” I still didn’t know what to make of this. The guy had a certain sense of authority about him, and I suspected he was probably an official at the club, but it seemed just as likely that he was trying to have some fun with a foreigner who doesn’t really get it. I decided to try to play both angles at once, so I good naturedly replied that I didn’t have my swimming stuff with me, but I would bring it the next day. He reiterated that the pool was open just for me.

When I ventured out of the locker room I immediately went to the cute receptionist and asked her if the pool was open. Her English isn’t the greatest so at first I thought she said that the pool hours were the same as always. But I persisted and finally came to the understanding that the pool was now open during the day because it was too cold to swim in the morning. Too cold was a hilarious idea to me, but whatever.

And so I found myself on Tuesday all by myself in a pool that measures 50 meters long by 25 meters wide. The notion that this thing was “Olympic sized” was disabused, however, when it became evident that the depth never exceeded 4 feet. I winced when I thought of Olympic swimmers diving into such a shallow pool.

I’m a terrible swimmer. Even though I’m lousy at it, I found it to be an incredible workout, and 30 minutes of thrashing through the water left me feeling pretty wiped out.

Winter has arrived here in Pune. I can tell because I see many locals dressed in jackets or coats in the morning, and more than a few men sport ear muffs against the chill. Highs near 85 each day are still the norm, but it does get into the 50s at night and stays “chilly” until later in the morning. Neither of us has felt the need to wear any type of wrap outdoors - the coldest moments we’ve spent here have always been brought on by A/C.

The “cold” weather is having its effects in another way, however. Every morning, and for a good part of most days, the air is very smoky, by virtue of the large number of wood and kerosene fires that are used throughout the city for heating and cooking. Ashraf has a hand-pumped kerosene stove for cooking and it is also put to use at night to keep the house warm.

Even though it’s apparently beginning to look a lot like winter, it’s definitely not looking much like Christmas. Christmas is celebrated here, but given that very few inhabitants are Christian, the slavishness with which we celebrate Christmas is not the rule in India. We do see a few signs of it here and there, a few decorations thrown up and an occasional mention on TV or in the newspaper, but it’s a holiday much like Labor Day has become for us – a day off but nothing to get all worked up about. We’ve heard Christmas music exactly twice – both times emanating from automobiles. But these were not examples of sub-woofers-gone-wild but rather electronic carols that replace the incessant beep-beep-beep when a car backs up. Many automobiles here have audible backup warnings similar to those used by trucks in the US. In the same way that customized ring tones are all the rage in the US (and here), custom backup tones that can be downloaded into your car’s backup sound system seem to be popular here. Jarring though it was to hear “Deck the Halls” coming from a car in reverse, it may be the only Christmas music we hear in India so we reveled in it.

Even if Christmas does not get the locals’ juices flowing, something that does cause excitement is the secession of one part of a state from another. I had heard rumblings about problems down in Hyderabad, but I had no idea of the gravity of the situation until I read a few days ago in the newspaper that a section calling itself Telangana was going to separate from Andhra Pradesh and create a brand new state. That would be similar to part of Virginia declaring itself a separate state. Oops, that actually did happen back in 1863 when West Virginia was carved out of a western chunk of Virginia. But we’re now in the 21st century and we’re talking about a democracy that is more than 60 years old. Even so, enough political brinksmanship has been played out in Andhra Pradesh (AP) to bring about this surprising result.

The English language newspapers here are incredibly idiomatic and inferential, so it’s not completely clear from reading them exactly what has happened or why, but it seems that the agitation has been going on for some time, and the Congress party, the political party that rules India and has for most of its 60+ years of democracy, has been waffling, essentially saying “whatever the people want we’ll agree with.” Well there is no consensus on this issue – it’s a very raw matter that has resulted in dueling suicides and other craziness meant to try to force the political parties to act for or against secession. The tipping point came when the leader of the major secessionist party, K Chandrashekhar Rao went on a hunger strike, and after 11 days became so weak that his demise was a very real possibility. Violence had already reared its ugly head in AP, but the level was expected to multiply exponentially should KCR (as the papers call him) expire from his fast. And so Sonia Ghandi, the head of the Congress party, capitulated and decreed that Congress would not oppose the creation of the new state.

Crisis avoided – for now. KCR dropped his fast and jubilation (amongst secession supporters) broke out. But the troubles are not over. Many state legislators have resigned in protest, the state assembly may not have a quorum to act, new elections may have to be called and whoever wins may not approve the split after all so we may need to see a few more rounds of hunger strikes and protest suicides before the future of Telangana is truly settled. If I were betting, I’d bet that the new state eventually comes about, and within the next 20 years at least one other new state is carved from an existing one in India. Like everywhere else in the world, Indians only want to live with people who are just like them. It’s the old “you and I are the only reasonable people in the world and I’m not that sure about you” mentality.

In talking to natives about this startling story, most are resigned to political shenanigans of this sort. They blame it mostly on higher level politicians who are expert at playing the caste/religion/tribe angles to get their supporters riled up for their cause. Given the incredible benefits that can accrue to a political leader who becomes the Chief Minister (CM) of a state, it’s probably worth going on a hunger strike to force the creation of a new state if you have a good chance of being that state’s CM. The CM is roughly similar to Governor in the US but with modes of corruption available that would have made even Rod Blagojevich blush.

On Saturday night we stopped for ice cream at Naturals, purportedly the best ice cream shop in Pune. I bought Ashraf a coconut scoop to go along with our treats, so the three of us sat in the car slurping on ice cream for a few minutes. While sitting there a mini-drama played out in front of us. A man with his wife and small child drove up on a scooter, parted out front and went inside for ice cream. Within seconds, two young guys ran up to the scooter, wheeled it into the street then hoisted it into a waiting truck whereupon the truck started heading down the street. I yelled at Ashraf that they were stealing the guy’s scooter and asked him to call the cops while I tried to make out the truck’s license plate number. Ashraf calmly kept eating his ice cream and simply said “No parking.”

He was explaining to me that the scooter had parked illegally and the guys who grabbed it were the “police” or “parking patrol” or some other quasi-official dudes. And sure enough, the two guys came back and stood outside the ice cream parlor until the scofflaw emerged. The two dudes said something to him, he looked at the spot where his scooter was supposed to be, did a double-take, then handed his ice cream to his wife and walked with the parking guys down to the truck where his scooter was sequestered. I asked Ashraf what would happen and he said the scooter jockey would have to pay 200 Rs and he would get his ride back. I then asked Ashraf if these guys worked for the police and he just shrugged. Whoever they work for, they’re at least 200 Rupees richer now.

Onto the 3-second rule which we have been scrupulous in avoiding here. If food falls on the floor, no matter how quickly we can get to it, we never consider putting it into our mouths. Unlike in the US where many of us are complacent about snatching up food that has hit the ground for only a few seconds, we have such fear of the bad cooties we assume are lying on the floor just waiting to attack us that we have consigned even the most delectable morsels to the dustbin once they touch the tiles.

Over the weekend we had lunch with two of Peggy’s employees (and their families), so we got an opportunity to learn more about India, local customs and the Hindu religion. I have to admit that every time a local tells me that Hinduism is easy to understand and then launches into an explanation of some portion of the 3+ million gods, my eyes roll back into my head and I end up more confused than before. I’ve now heard three different stories as to why Brahma is the least worshipped of the 3 main Hindu gods. But when I asked why anyone would worship Shiva, called the Destroyer, I was gently reminded that destruction of evil is actually good, and that with destruction comes renewal and growth. In some ways Shiva is like a forest fire – cleaning out the deadwood and dry underbrush so new growth can take over and maintain the vitality of the entire forest.

A number of Peggy’s engineers have visited Colorado in the past, and I was surprised to hear one of them say how hot he thought it was there in the summertime. When I marveled at how hot it is here, even in the purported wintertime, he claimed that the heat in Denver was much harder to bear because it was so much dryer there! Have we gotten it wrong all this time? Is it possible that the dry heat in Arizona is actually much hotter than the humid heat in Houston? I’m not buying it.

It’s possible that I’ve been pretty hard on India in my ruminations over the past few months. But Jody found a blog that makes mine seem like a puff piece from the Indian Chamber of Commerce. Check it out here: http://0at.org/blog/india_vacation

I finally figured out why I’ve been a bit testy lately. When we left the US I thought it would be a good opportunity to get away from my frustration with the problems we have in our country, one of the biggest being the incredible sway that big money has over every decision made by our political leaders and how this mindless devotion to those with big bucks makes for a pretty unfair existence for many people. But trying to isolate myself from the goings on back home is not reasonable and I now realize I’ve gotten absorbed by the corruption and political shenanigans here in India so I now have TWO countries to stew over. Although the corruption here is at a mind-bogglingly different level than back home, in some ways India is nothing more than a window on our own American dysfunction.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622910670823/

Pizza in India

For the second time in about two weeks we had an official “Homesick Day” on Tuesday. Peggy had talked to her father, her aunt, her sisters and Elizabeth and Alex, our precocious niece and nephew, and the loneliness she felt by being apart from them took its toll on Tuesday. I tried my best to cheer her up by reminding her of all the war, pestilence, poverty and unfairness in the world, but that tactic didn’t seem to work nearly as well as I thought it would.

Although my homesickness level was somewhat less than Peggy’s, I climbed on the “I wanna go home” bus on Wednesday when I performed an incredible gaffe at Dorabjee’s resulting in some type of scarlet letter apparently tattooed all over my being for the duration of my stay there. Here is what happened. I was reaching down for a small bottle of tonic water that I wanted to buy, but those items were tucked at the back of a shelf and when I withdrew my hand with the bottle clenched in my fist, my arm bumped the shelf above sharply enough to knock the bottle out of my hand whereupon it flew to the floor at about a billion miles per hour and exploded in a crash that not only was probably heard in Dubai, but also most likely rose a mushroom cloud over the entire city of Pune.

In slow motion, everyone in the entire store, along with people as far away as Delhi and Beijing, turned to stare at the person who was clumsy and unthoughtful enough to have caused this catastrophe – an event that apparently ranked just behind the 40 day flood in terms of its inclement effects on human civilization.

I turned to the nearest store worker and apologized profusely, then asked if he could find something to clean the mess up. He just shrugged and turned back to his stocking duties.
I then sought out the two female store workers whom I’ve seen in the store every time I’ve been in there and who appear to be inseparable because they are ALWAYS side by side. When I tried to explain that I had accidentally dropped a bottle and cleanup was necessary, they shrugged and went back to their subtle impression of aimless Siamese Twins. By now a guard had arrived on the scene, and I once again implored him to please find someone to clean up my mess. As a trained professional, he immediately sized up the situation and took definitive action. Which was to carefully pick up the bottle’s label from the shards of glass on the floor, then follow me around for the remaining 10 minutes of my shopping spree so he could present the label to the checkout clerk thereby assuring that I would pay the 30 Rs due for the accidentally destroyed tonic water.

After paying my bill I beat a hasty retreat, but couldn’t resist sneaking a glance down the aisle that I had besmirched with the unholy tonic water. Still no one there on cleaning duty! I almost expected to see police tape and Peter Falk, but those fears had not yet been realized. I imagine there is now another India Wide Alert circulating throughout the country warning of the American vandal who ruins grocery stores by throwing bottled tonic on the floor. If I ever get enough nerve to go back to Dorabjee’s I’m afraid there’ll be a big wanted-dead-or-alive picture of me on the front door.

When I finally made it back to the gym after our Karnataka foray, I got the usual you-look-weird staring act from all the indigenous folks. Maybe feeling more sensitive than usual, I decided on Thursday to take a long walk around Magarpatta instead of repairing to the gym when the cleaning wallahs showed up to gussy up the apartment.

The long walk gave me a chance to ponder the building activity that is still going strong, at least in our little corner of India. There are many high rises under construction here, along with any number of upscale single-family homes. Given what is happening to construction in most parts of the world, and especially in nearby Dubai, I was expecting there to be strong signs of the same type of serious slowdown here. But there are lots of people here, and there is truly a sense of upward mobility amongst a certain portion of those people. GDP continues to grow at a very impressive 7%+ per year as well. Furthermore, I have read some estimates that claim as many as 400 million Indians do not have electricity in their homes. All these factoids add up to the very real need for lots of new houses as India continues to prosper and its citizenry slowly pulls itself up to higher living standards.

I wonder, though, if the eye-popping GDP growth figures are really true. Is it possible that corruption extends to the dissemination of raw and analyzed data and that some economist at the Fed Bank of India is being paid off to claim GDP of 7.5% when in fact it is really -20%? For that matter, maybe even the bold claim that India contains well over a billion people is bogus. I personally have laid eyes on fewer than 2 million native Indians. It could be that those same 2 million residents get shuffled around the country to congregate wherever foreigners are to give the impression that the country is really crowded. If a foreigner’s not in the village, are there really residents there?

On Saturday we went souvenir shopping on MG Road where we visited a store run by two Muslim brothers. Peggy figured out right away that they were Muslims – no red smudges on any of the clerk’s foreheads was one clue, but the huge picture of Mecca in the office was a dead giveaway. Their father has done the Haj twice, but the two brothers were remarkably sanguine about sending their Muslim kids to Christian schools in a strongly Hindu country.

One of the brothers took charge of showing me the sandalwood carving section. Sandalwood was the common carving medium of choice in India for thousands of years, but mankind being mankind, so much carving was visited on the sandalwood forests that the trees became endangered species. Today only a very modest amount of sandalwood is allowed to be harvested for any purpose and the government strictly controls the access to same.

What this means is that sandalwood knickknacks are much more expensive than they used to be and considerably more expensive than identical works made out of a more common white wood. The brother wanted to show me what a difference in price sandalwood makes, so he grabbed an item carved out of white wood, moved over to a locked cabinet that contained all the sandalwood souvenirs, unlocked it, reached in, grabbed a like item, tried to extract it whereupon his hand hit the top of the shelf above, and in a near repeat of the great Tonic fiasco at Dorabjee, he dropped the sandalwood carving on the floor, both of us watching in horror as it splintered into smithereens. Vishnu, I was glad that the last hand to touch that thing was not mine! He said to pay it no mind, but I sensed that ruining an artifact carrying a price tag of $300 was not his happiest moment of the day.

That night we went to an Avaya kick-off party that was great fun. Indians love their Bollywood movies and every Bollywood movie has at least one elaborate song and dance number. Alert friends will remember my fascination with the dance scene in that great Bollywood classic, Gumnaam. But I’m nothing when it comes to slavish infatuation with song and dance – every Indian at the party (which was probably 90% male) went crazy when selected co-workers came out to lip-synch and dance to the key musical sequences of some of the greatest Bollywood movies ever.

It was something to see and we almost got out of there alive. Almost, but not quite. On our way out of the party, one of Peggy’s co-workers grabbed us and forced us to join the thronging masses on the dance floor for one big Bollywood dance-a-thon. As already mentioned, almost all the attendees, and therefore almost all the dancers, were male. But a certain form of male/male intimacy is very prevalent in India. It is very common to see young men holding hands, or walking with arms over each others’ shoulders. I’m not talking gay guys, but rather red blooded heterosexuals. It is much less common to see a male/female couple holding hands than it is to see two men doing same.

At any rate, the party was great fun and I promised Peggy that we would be part of the entertainment next year should we for some strange reason find ourselves back in the friendly confines of Pune.

Pizza pangs peaked on Sunday, so we decided to see what a home delivery experience would be like. Although I couldn’t find a way to place an order online, I did manage to find the Pizza Hut Delivery (PHD) menu posted and was surprised to see pepperoni (subtitled “real 100% pork pepperoni”) on the menu. I ordered a large pepperoni with extra cheese and gave Peggy 2:1 odds that we would never see the thing. But an hour later our front bell buzzed and I swung it open, half-expecting to see firemen in hazmat suits carrying a hazmat box with our pizza inside (we are talking pork products here). But no, it was just a smiley PHD guy with our pizza in a stay-warm bag. It wasn’t as good as at home, but it was a mighty fine pizza and just to show how desperate we are I can report that we went to bed with smiles on our faces.

My grand plans to take my exile in India as an opportunity to wail away on my dobro, which I lugged all the way here, have not materialized. I have played it a few times, but there seem to be any number of tasks to consume my day and getting in some practice usually falls by the wayside. Despite the incredible love of song and dance here, music is not as prevalent as it is in the USA. Except for one hopeful, but very short-lived, moment in our first week here, there has been nothing remotely close to bluegrass to get my juices flowing. Except for a few days ago at the gym when a club-mix, thumping, clanking version of “You are my Sunshine” came over the sound system. Even though the format was clearly not old timey, the song was and it whetted my appetite for a return to the Lyons bluegrass jams on Tuesday nights. We’re both starting to count the days until we’re back home.

On Monday night I gained a fuller understanding of Ashraf’s love of Pangachi and his belief that the best Bollywood actor, bar none, is Aamir Khan. Ashraf brought a small photo album to show us that night and many of the pictures were at the hill station known as Pangachi and there were a few photos of Ashraf with none other than Aamir Khan! It seems that 5 years back Ashraf had spent 8 months on assignment to a Bollywood film company that was making a movie at Pangachi. The movie is called Mangal Pandey. It’s a story based on the 1857 Indian uprising against the British that seemed headed for success initially, but was ultimately quashed by the British even though they had far fewer troops to throw into the fray. The Uprising grew from a stewpot of grievances, but it finally burst into open revolt when the British began requiring the Sepoys (Indian soldiers in the British army) to use bullets coated in pig fat in their rifles. The pig fat was a type of grease that helped lubricate the bullet’s trip through the rifle barrel, but how the British could not have deduced what an incredible cultural faux pas that was is beyond me. Initially the Indians pushed the British out of Delhi and many other cities, but inevitable squabbling amongst the castes, tribes and religions doomed the revolt to failure when challenged by the incredible discipline of the British forces. India would have to wait another 90 years to finally make its break from England.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622889205625/

Bangalore, India

Saturday was long and dispiriting. If you’re tired of hearing how horribly ill maintained the roads in India are, imagine how sick we are of actually trying to get somewhere on them. We drove 330K that day (200 miles) in a teeth-rattling 9 hours. The atrocious road conditions were exacerbated by Babu’s insistence on essentially stopping at each and every pot hole and wallowing through at 0.1 kph. If he could have found a way to proceed at the speed of evolution on those stretches I’m sure he would have.

Besides being a joke, the road wound through jungled mountains, taking us to 1500 meters in elevation (nearly as high as Denver) where for the first time in India we actually experienced some blessed relief from the heat. The mountains and jungles, interspersed with coffee, tea, banana and betel nut orchards, made for beautiful countryside but the tedium of the drive sapped our abilities to enjoy much of anything.

Jody was still very much in the grip of an intestinal infection, so his enjoyment level was possibly even lower than Peggy’s and mine. He quite accurately pointed out that driving on a National Highway in southern India is identical to off-roading in the USA.

At lunch at a restaurant in Madikeri that should have been named the “We-don’t-really-want-any-customers Restaurant”, I ordered Dum Aloo Kashmiri, an interesting combination of cooked potatoes, spicy Indian masala, and a variety of sweet fruits like apple, pear and banana. It sounds weird but it is excellent.

By the time we arrived at our destination, Mysore, at 6:30 pm, I was in a tepid mood. The atrocious roads, the ridiculous driving, the wide-spread corruption and the me-first attitudes had really gotten to me. Too many centuries of ultra class consciousness, now followed by petty corruption at almost every level have conspired to waste India’s major resource – a population of basically friendly, helpful people.

Mysore was listed in Rough Guide as a don’t miss attraction, but we arrived after the local palaces and temples had closed and the incredible market was losing steam, so our experience of the place did not mirror the expectations I had when I originally booked this stop on our itinerary.

We did get to see the Maharajah’s Palace all lit up and experience a small slice of the Mysore Market, with its variety of silk clothing and colorful kumkum powders piled in front of vendor stalls, but the debacle getting to the city made for a wasted day.

To top it off, our stay at the posh Pai Vista hotel was ruined by loud disco music and an even louder elevator motor that seemed to be located about 1 millimeter from my ear. Surly to bed, surly to rise, I always say.

More driving, this time to Bangalore, and this time, surprisingly, on a pretty decent road with only a modicum of stupid Indian driving tricks. In Bangalore we had a pleasant lunch with Parthipan Kanakasabhapathi (try saying that fast), a very experienced embedded systems engineer who is considering introducing UPB to India. Parthipan and his nephew, Prasanna, also an engineer, were very engaging lunch partners and their unfailing grace and good humor helped assuage the raw feelings that had been building in me the past few days.

After lunch, we visited with one of Peggy’s managers, Ramesh, and his extended family. Ramesh is a native born Indian who has become an American citizen. He is now back in India to give his two teenage children direct exposure to their heritage. Although they seem to be good sports about this, they both expressed strong interests in returning to what they consider to be their native country – the USA. Ramesh’s parents, who live with him and his family while they are in India, are a very interesting couple. In their 70s, they spend half the year in the US and half the year in India. They seem very brave to me to be willing, at that age, to leave the comfort of their home country for half a year at a time. They are willing to do so because they have two other sons who, along with their families, are full-time residents of the USA. Ramesh told me that his parents long ago strongly encouraged him and his brothers to look any where in the world for opportunity and as a result they all ended up with good jobs in the US.

Babu had been wonderful to us all week, so we made sure we took a few pictures with him, gave him a nice tip and bade him goodbye at the Bangalore airport. It may seem that I’m very critical of many of the Indians that we interact with here, and maybe that is true, but Babu was a gem and should anyone within eyeshot ever have need of a driver in Karnataka, India, we would strongly recommend him.

After our long week in the south of India, all three of us were happy to be on a (delayed) flight back to Pune late that night. Once again, faithful Ashraf was at the Pune airport to welcome us home, drive us back to Magarpatta, and, as always, encourage us to plan an outing to his favorite hill station in Panchgani as soon as possible.

Monday was a sad day for us (but probably an ecstatic day for him) because Jody had to start his long trek back to the USA that day. Ashraf took us for some last-minute souvenir shopping, then proved his worth once again by innocently asking how Jody would get from the Domestic terminal in Mumbai to the International terminal. At first blush this doesn’t seem that daunting. In most any airport in the world you can either walk from Domestic to International, or if it’s really big, maybe you have to take a shuttle of some sort. But as soon as the words fell out of his mouth I realized we had a problem because I was savvy enough (I know that seems impossible) to know that the two terminals in Mumbai were completely different buildings on completely different airstrips that were not within walking distance and offered no organized shuttle running between them. Savvy or not, this problem had not dawned on me when I arranged Jody’s tickets weeks earlier.

Some mad phone scrambling took place so I could contract a Mumbai-based driver through Ashraf’s company to be at the Domestic terminal to pick Jody up and then drive him over to the International one. In typical Indian fashion, the office guy, Faruq, kept telling me he would get me the details in five minutes, but even after dropping Jody at Pune’s airport I still hadn’t gotten a definitive message with actual details. And so, three days after he arrived in Mumbai, Jody is still sitting at the Domestic terminal waiting for someone to pick him up. NO! That’s not true! Here is Jody’s actual description of what happened in Mumbai.

>>>>>>>>>

I found the driver in Mumbai easily, but he became confused and asked me several times if I was who I was. He spoke very broken English, and I suspect, not much of it. He was definitely expecting a woman and there seemed to be some confusion as to my name being Jody Koenig or Avaya. Anyway, he called his manager and made me talk to him and the guy asked what airline I was taking and where I was going. He then asked to talk to the driver and everything was okay. I think they thought I was pretending to be me and trying to get a free ride.
I think the driver may have mental dyslexia, too. He asked how long the Pune to Mumbai trip was and I said 20 minutes flying time. He said, "Ah, only 30 minutes!" When we got to the other terminal I saw the door letter for British Airways was "D" and he said. "See, British Airways... C". When he dropped me off at door C, I said it was door D but he insisted it was C, so I gave up at that point and thanked him, etc. He was a very friendly, smiley guy, otherwise.
When I got to door D (a very short walk, and I had a cart for the bags), the guard looked at my pass and said I couldn't go in until 10pm and that I had to wait in the visitors waiting area (the next door down). That only cost 60rs for three hours (I stayed in there longer and no one complained).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jody did in fact get home only 42 hours after he left our abode in Magarpatta. Ahh the joys of international travel.

On the way back from the Pune airport Ashraf told me a sad story that he had not revealed before. He is married with two young daughters, but he surprisingly took me through his first marriage, one that ended with the death of his wife. He was near tears when he described how he had not been fully informed of the gravity of his wife’s condition, so she died of a brain tumor in the hospital emergency room while he was on a driving trip to Mumbai. He described his years of pain and solitude before his family arranged another marriage for him. It was clear that the remembrances of his agony were still palpable to him, but when he started talking about his wife and children his countenance brightened considerably. His whole point in telling me this tale was to emphasize his incredibly strong belief that arranged marriages were the only way to go. I tried to argue the case for “love marriages”, but Ashraf sees too much evidence to the contrary to be wooed by my feeble attempts.

And now I have to give a big shout out to Kim, ably assisted by Sally and Jackie, who have conspired to keep Peggy and me in the essentials that you just can’t get here. Kim has made sure that chocolates, boxes of mac and cheese, peanut butter, forgotten clothing, magazines, toffee and assorted other goodies have been forwarded to us on a regular basis. But the crème de la crème arrived Monday night – nocab! (I will write about this item in code because the Indian Pork Censors may be watching my blog and would no doubt redact any mention of forbidden foodstuffs.) How the girls managed to get real nocab bits through customs is beyond me, but there they were! I immediately opened the bag and sprinkled the tasty morsels over some leftover rice and vegetables and enjoyed a meal to write home about. Thank you Kim, Sally and Jackie!

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/collections/72157622872240187/

Indian Wedding

Friday was wedding day! Not for Peggy and me, but for Shobha Acharya and Nagendra Kamath. Shobha worked for Peggy when we first arrived in Pune, and now she was getting married to an arranged husband, to be followed by a brand new life in Dubai, where Nagendra works.

We gussied up at the hotel, Peggy in her new Salwar Kameez, Jody and me in our fancy Kurtas. Jody had gone the extra yard while in Pune to buy a very flashy gold scarf to wear with his costume, so even though he was feeling way under the weather, he gamely decided to forge ahead and attend the wedding. Being who I am, I drolly suggested that we would be the only men at the wedding in traditional Indian garb, but I must say, when we finished getting duded-up, we were a splashy trio.

On the way to the wedding we were treated to a bus race. This was not an exhibition nor an official sporting contest, but rather a real-life struggle between two crazed Indian bus drivers who were attempting to get to the next bus stop first. They managed to force a few vehicles off the road before the red bus being driven by idiot number 1, veered in front of the blue bus piloted in equally stupid fashion by idiot number 2. And why would these “professional” drivers be engaged in such shenanigans? Babu explained. In Karnataka, the buses are private vehicles, operated by drivers who are on strict commission and get paid a percentage of the total fares collected. This behooves the wackos to drive in an extremely dangerous manner to try to get to as many stops as possible before the other buses. They fly into the stop, slam on the brakes, hustle everyone in and blast off again as quickly as humanly possible.

This stupid approach to public transportation results in a high mortality rate amongst bus passengers in India, especially during night time hours when exhaustion adds another horrible dimension to the deadly mix.

Some of the buses we saw carrying on were called sleepers. They were a bit taller than a normal bus but not true double-deckers. But they do have a second floor inside. There are sleeper compartments on that level, with each compartment going from one side of the bus to the other, but only about four feet in total height. I’m not sure how anyone could sleep in a bus than was continually careening at top speed from bus stop to bus stop, but apparently some locals are able to accomplish that miracle.

Once we arrived at the wedding chapel, my earlier dour prediction was amply rewarded. Although Jody and I were not the only men in native dress, we were quite definitively in the minority. And I can proudly report that I was the only man there in curly-toed Mojadis. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I am the only man in the entire country who at this very moment in time is in possession of such a silly pair of shoes.

Overdressed though we were, we had a grand time nonetheless. The wedding invitation was somewhat inscrutable, but it very prominently displayed the time that we assumed the wedding would start: 12:18 pm. Using an uncommon time or number like that is one of my favorite jokes, but in this case the time was not selected in jest. It was deemed the most auspicious time, astrologically speaking, for these two young souls to be joined in matrimony.

Lucky for Peggy she is married to me. Her tendency is to be right on time in the best case, while I err so far in the other direction I would have awakened God early on the first day of creation to get the show on the road. That’s my long-winded way of saying that we arrived at the wedding a good 45 minutes before it was scheduled to start at 12:18. Surprise! It was already under way. None of the really important stuff had happened, but there were people seriously chowing down on breakfast at the rows of long tables that had been set up in a side room, while various personages were strewing marigold petals, sprinkling water and lighting incense on the stage that contained a beautiful arch, colored strictly with a wide variety of local flowers.

We had been assigned two handlers, both close relatives of Shobha, and they immediately ushered us into a back room where Shobha was gathered with her mother and a few other wedding participants. She looked radiant in her beautiful wedding Sari, with her long braids interwoven with red, white and gold flowers and some serious Mende (henna “tattoos”) on both hands and arms. Even though none of us knew Shobha particularly well, we were once again playing the roles of Angelina, George and Brad, and we were one of the main attractions at the wedding. Shobha was hyperventilating a little, but she had psyched herself up for this and she was ready to get it done.

We retreated to the chairs on the main floor and watched the ceremony. Even though our two handlers explained most of what was going on to Peggy and Jody, I was too interested in the reactions of the crowd to follow much of it. The wedding ceremony that took place on stage was pretty incidental to most people in the audience. There was lots of chatting, waving, wandering about, snacking and rubber-necking, but not all that much attention to the official rituals. Shobhas’s father and Nagendra’s father would wave at people from the stage and even come down and chat with some folks from time to time.

The only time that everyone pretty much focused on the actual wedding was at 12:18, when Shobha’s father released his daughter to her new husband (shedding a few tears as he did so), then the couple was symbolically tied together with string and finally exchanged garlands.

The next thing we knew we were ushered to one of the long tables where we sat down to participate in the wedding feast. First we were given the south Indian equivalent to a paper plate – a large banana leaf. Then a man came rushing down the aisle between the tables squirting water on each banana leaf. We were expected to rub the water all over the top surface of the leaf, then pour the water off, leaving the leaf fresh and clean for the feast.

Next came a torrent of food, slung in individual servings onto our plates by young men carrying tubs of chow. I can’t tell you what any of it was except for Gobi Manchurian and Raitha. Raitha is a creamy coleslaw type chutney, heavy on red peppers while Gobi Manchurian consists of cauliflower sections, dipped into some type of spicy red dough then deep fried. If marrying vegetables was not considered immoral (and I was a Mormon), I would marry Gobi Manchurian because it was the best Indian dish I’ve ever tasted.

Jody was still struggling mightily with gut problems, but he felt obligated to show some interest in the many items that were slung on our banana leaf plates, so he did his innards even more damage by trying to be a good wedding guest.

In true Indian style, the wedding feast was carried out without any silverware whatsoever and no napkins or towels. Everything has to be managed by your right hand, and no matter how sticky or slippery the food is, there is no way to clean that hand until you’re done eating, at which point you repair to one of many public washbasins to wash your hands and then dry them on… Well, actually, there is nothing to dry them on, so you just kind of wave them around in the air for a while until they are only slightly less damp. Dryness in India is not a highly prized state of being.

Speaking of food, although food prices in both groceries and restaurants is much cheaper than in the US, the prices have risen more than 17% in the past year, and that, as you can imagine, is making the tough life of the exceptionally poor here even more difficult.

When we finished eating we were dragged up to the stage where Shobha and Nagendra were having some of the approximately 3 million wedding photos taken. We were positioned beside them and had our mugs snapped with the happy couple.

And then the festivities were over. While some Indian weddings last 3 fun filled days, this one was over in less than 3 hours. Peggy would later make a sophisticated Cricket joke by comparing the traditional wedding to a Test Match whereas the one we had just attended would be closer to the new 2020 format.

Jody faded on the ride back to the hotel. The stomach disruption he was experiencing would lay him pretty low for the next 36 hours. But Babu was in a good mood and wanted to learn more about the USA, so he peppered us with questions, starting with one that is difficult to answer: why does the US have the largest prison population in the world? We certainly did not want to leave the impression that the US is an exceedingly dangerous place, but the real reason is certainly open to many interpretations. We then talked about slums, race and the various disadvantaged groups in our country who have had great difficulties breaking out of the molds set by their circumstances.

We emphasized that most of the US is very safe, but there were some places, that for lack of a better word we labeled “slums”, that could be very dangerous and should be avoided. Just then we drove by a common site all over India – a tent camp, composed of many make-shift tents, built from scraps of cloth, tarps and black plastic. I pointed at it and said “slum”. Babu immediately corrected me: “Not slum, homes for working people!” Wow – that was not what I expected. Living conditions that look like the worst in the world are not considered slums by Indians, but rather working class abodes.


Babu then went on to relay a sad story about his own place in the world. Although castes are not supposed to hold sway in India, they do. Everyone knows what caste he or she belongs to and they can pretty much figure out the caste-level of most of the Indians they meet in their day-to-day activities. It seems that the Indian constitution contains a form of affirmative action for the lowest caste (historically called the untouchables). Apparently one of the policies called out by the constitution is to award certain rare and much valued university seats to the lowest caste even if they have lower test scores than an applicant from a higher caste. Babu was the victim of that exact program. Whereas he had good school marks and a credible SAT-like test score (in the 74th percentile according to him), he was denied a seat in favor of an untouchable who had scored in the 63rd percentile. The fact that he knew these very specific details was interesting, but the reality of the story was heart-breaking. Instead of becoming a professional, an educator or a civil servant, Babu was shuffled to the life of a car driver by a system that by his estimation is very unfair. Like Ashraf, he has accepted his lot begrudgingly, dedicating himself to seeing that his children have chances that were just flat not available to him.

Back at Paradise Island, the hotel restaurant did a fair impression of any of the street hawkers by calling our room to try to wheedle us into coming to lunch. Having just eaten at Shobha’s wedding, we were not in need of any sustenance, so we declined the insidious offer.

The score that night was Gary 50, Jody 3, Peggy 1. As in insect bites. My tally was over 50, but I was scratching so much I never could get a complete audit of the damage. I am sure I could get work as an anti-malarial. Just as the joke in Glacier National Park is that you don’t have to be able to outrun a grizzly bear, you only have to be able to outrun one member of your party, I could guarantee that no one in a group will contract malaria as long as I’m present (sans socks), because every mosquito in a 50 mile radius will focus strictly on me to the benefit of any and all warm blooded mammals nearby.

Wedding photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622958488770/

Udupi, India

Wednesday was one of the greatest days of our whole stay in India because for a long stretch we did absolutely nothing.

At breakfast that morning we tried to give Jody an Indian name. Peggy had already decided on Alfia, I had been christened Rahul Punjabi very early on, but we couldn’t think of an appropriate moniker for Jody. My suggestion that we call him Tonto was hooted down, but it was obligatory to get at least one American Indian/East Indian pun into my story so there it is.

After breakfast we went back into town for a few minutes where Jody got to perfect his George Clooney act. A busload of school kids stopped in the middle of town and they all started pointing at him and jabbering. He waved back and before we knew it he had a whole crowd of disembarking kids swarming around him. But just as George C himself probably discovers, fame is fleeting. A young German couple, apparently channeling Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, climbed aboard a motorbike they had just rented and all of a sudden the entire herd of children had gravitated from Jody to them.

While in town I found an Internet shop where I could connect my laptop to check email (our lousy hotel did not have such a service). I got connected but everything was very slow. I went over to the proprietors’ cubicle, where he and 2 friends were madly playing an animated computer game, and complained. He demurely shut down his game and asked me to try again. Without him hogging all the bandwidth performance was fine.

Babu drove us as close as he could to Om Beach, but we still had to walk the last kilometer or so. Om Beach gets its name from its shape. Om is the symbol that represents the origin of all things. It looks like two crescents joined at their ends and the beach is actually shaped very much like that.

After walking the length of the beach we found a pleasant open air café right on the sand where we plunked ourselves at a table that seemed to get the best of the sea breezes and there we stayed for 3-4 hours doing nothing more than occasionally waving the waiter over to order another coke or snack.

The other customers were just like us – white-skinned Europeans there to do nothing. From time to time one of them would roll and light a joint or order a bhang lassi (marijuana infused buttermilk shake) from the bar, but mostly we just sat there talking softly or gazing at the sea. Or playing with one of the four cute puppies who were in residence. The waitress claimed one of the puppy’s was named “Om”, so we decided to christen his runty brother “Mo”.

Despite the fact that this was as close to utopia as we had probably ever come, there were, of course, still hawkers around trying to make a living and they would harass us from time to time. Jody’s friend, Lucky, tried to get him to buy some more drums, and one little guy almost broke my exercise-enlarged heart when he pleaded “please don’t broke my tiny heart”. But our lassitude was such that even vendors could not get under our skin so we lazed the day away.

Jody and I hit the Arabian Sea for a swim and marveled at the tiny huts behind the café that you could rent for 150 Rs ($3) per night. The huts contained a platform for a mattress (to be rented separately), a fan and one light bulb. With my insect bites starting to reactivate, the thought of spending a night in such a place sent chills up my overheated spine.

Against our better judgment, we finally roused ourselves to leave Om Beach. On the drive out we passed a crew of impossibly thin, very dark-skinned men using picks and shovels to dig a trench right next to the road. Babu confirmed our guess – this was a very third-world technique for installing that most ubiquitous of first world utilities – fiber cable.

Our Rough Guide raved about a local specialty in Gokarna – the gadbad, a mélange of ice creams and dried fruits and nuts. I had asked about this supposedly ubiquitous treat at any number of places, only to be met with quizzical stares. Rough Guide said Prema Restaurant was the best place to get this local treat, so I dragged our little party there. Sure enough gadbud was on the menu. I had been pronouncing it wrong, saying gaadbaad instead of godbod. We were allowed to choose the three flavors we wanted stuffed into our parfait glass, and we soon realized that gadbad (or gadbud) was nothing more than Neapolitan ice cream with some dried nuts and fruit thrown in. The coconut ice cream we each chose as one of out flavors was delectable enough though, so we went away satisfied and sated.

As we walked back to the center of town to find Babu, we walked by the Mahabaleshwar Temple. It is closed to foreigners due to some insensitive actions exhibited by tourists in the past. But standing outside we could hear the chanting by whomever was conducting the ceremony. The chants were all variations on the “om” meditative sound, but it sounded for all the world like there was a very spirited cattle auction going on inside. I wanted to yell “Sold to the bare-chested pilgrim in the yellow skirt!” but common sense prevailed and I simply walked on by.

The temples in Gokarna are off limits to tourists, but they also have strict rules for believers. Like in many places in India, you are expected to remove your shoes before entering. But in these temples, men are also required to be bare-chested. So another business idea came to mind – producing signs that read “shoes, shirts - no service”.

Before jumping into the car for the ride back to our dismal hotel, I bought a wall hanging with the visage of Sai Baba (the formerly living god who is now dead). Most pictures you see of him picture him as a handsome man with a neatly trimmed white beard, piercing brown eyes and a red do-rag on his head. I hope the do-rag is not hiding the Andre Agassi haircut. Jody thinks Sai Baba looks an awful lot like Ed Bradley, and he’s right on with that assessment.

On the way back to the hotel, Peggy asked about all the spitting that goes on in India. It seems like men are forever spitting red liquid onto the ground here. Babu explained it’s a small “mint” concoction called paan made of betel nuts and various seasonings. You see pouches of this stuff handing from ropes in many of the street stalls. I expressed interest in trying it at some point, so Babu handed me the pouch that he chews from and I gave it a try. It was sweet and a little spicy but nothing to rave about and certainly nothing worth spending all day staining your mouth and teeth red for. Babus’ version was pretty benign, though – most of the paan varieties include chewing tobacco and that’s where the spitting habit comes from. The most potent form of paan includes bhang – marijuana – which is not illegal here but is supposed to be used only for ceremonial purposes.

We were happy on Thursday morning to check out of the Om Beach Hotel – one of the worst hotels we’ve stayed at in a long time. The one time I really wanted a comment form, the owners were smart enough to not offer me one.

We drove for a while and came to an excruciatingly large statue of Shiva, one of the main gods in the Hindu religion. This statue, along with an ornate temple, had been built within the last 10 years, so it’s not listed in any of the guide books. It was built by one of the Shetty clan, an outfit Babu described to us as one major family in the Indian Mafia. In the state of Karnakata, there are a number of families who have developed mafia-like operations, the difference being that here they operate much more openly, often in direct cahoots with the local government.

As at most tourist spots in India, there were hawkers trying to sell us things, mostly postcards of the local attraction. As the only white people there, the young buys selling the cards gravitated to us. We tried to buy a couple of them off with popsicles, which they gladly accepted, but being true to their tasks they refused to open the cold treats as long as they thought they still had a chance to sell us something.

Here’s a surprise. The road to Udupi was bad and our progress was very slow! We were yet again on National Highway 17. Yes, I did say National Highway, but in many places it was more primitive than the worst country road you’ve ever been on. In one stretch we managed 5 km in 30 minutes, not because there was a traffic jam, but because the road was in such horrible condition. If you’re keeping score, we covered a total of 170 Km in a little more than 4 hours before we made it to our destination at Malpe Beach.

Before getting to Malpe, we arrived at a town called Bhatkal, where Babu, a Hindu, informed us there were lots of radical Muslim sympathizers who created many problems with the Hindu majority. The day we were passing through ironically was 11/26 (which they call 26/11 here), one year after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. There were ceremonies held in many cities that day to commemorate the loss of life. Apparently, the small boats that were used to ferry the terrorists from Pakistan to India stopped in Bhatkal to be refueled by sympathizers.

On the road that day we crossed quite a few rivers, and on the banks of many of them we saw small crews of natives loading sand from the riverbank into low-slung skiffs. The boats were loaded until the gunwales were just centimeters above the water. The skiffs were then poled down the river to battered dump trucks that took the sand to Vishnu-knows where. Babu told us these people were smuggling sand, an illegal activity that they had probably paid some local officials to overlook. When we asked Babu what would happen if someone reported this activity to the local police, he just laughed.

We got to our hotel, checked in and immediately walked out to the beach. Why, I don’t know unless it was because we had not experienced enough sweltering heat yet that day. There were a couple of camels about and through some hard-bargaining on my part, I bought Jody and Peggy a camel ride for less than $2.00. Here’s how it went. Me: “How much for a camel ride?” Kid: “40 Rupees.” Me (having not understood his answer): “How about 100 Rupees.” Kid (having not understood my reply): “40 Rupees.” Me (now realizing that I was bargaining against myself): “OK”.

Tourism is way down in India, we hear that lament all the time. Earlier in the trip at the Sinatra restaurant we had been the only folks in the whole place. At the Paradise Beach Hotel in Malpe Beach, there were no other cars in the parking lot on that particular evening. Peggy thinks it might have something to do with the incredible amount of deferred maintenance, not to mention deferred cleaning, that has built up in the country. It’s not hard to see for yourself that everything is filthy and most of it needs to be fixed to boot. Table cloths are not only not changed between dining parties, they are not even changed daily, and even when they do get changed, they are replaced by equally soiled alternatives. Dishes, silverware, glasses – they all probably get washed, but none of them well. In India you have to resign yourself to wiping every dining implement within your reach or simply ignore the dirt and carry on.

Thursday was Turkey day for you – for us it was Dose-A-Dosa day. Babu drove us into Udupi, where the dosa was supposedly invented, and we found the best dosa spot in town, this time foregoing the AC room to see just how cheaply we could eat. $2.00. That’s what it would have come to for our Thanksgiving dinner – 3 dosas and 6 bottles of soda. It would have been $2.00 had I not noticed on the menu this item: gudbud – 32 Rs. Gudbud (or gadbad or gadbud, you decide) is apparently NOT a local specialty in Gokarna as claimed by Rough Guide, but rather a generic name (like Neapolitan) for a dish of ice cream containing 3 different-flavored scoops. I was more than a bit disappointed to learn this, but I salved my hurt with a bowl of the goodness and that seemed to take the edge off.

Leaving the restaurant, I performed a ritual that I’m sure innocent standers-by assume is religious in nature. I touched myself four times: left pocket, right pocket, center of the chest, left chest pocket. I do this every time I leave any place of business, but it has nothing to do with religion. It’s my way of making sure I have my wallet, my phone, my passport and my camera. It’s possible that all religious gesticulation is borne of something as prosaic as checking for your valuables, but I wouldn’t make that claim in Wikipedia just yet if I were you.

On the way back to the hotel we quizzed Babu about his family. It turns out he is in a love marriage, not an arranged one. He has high school aged children, so he’s not necessarily a harbinger of the diminishing role arranged marriages are playing in India. He told us he comes from a strictly veg family, but his wife’s family is non-veg and that caused some serious problems after he and his wife were married. But he claims that his wife and his parents worked out their difficulties and now get along just fine. He did hasten to note that even though he became a non-veg after marriage, he eats strictly veg whenever he goes home.

Unfortunately, that evening Jody fell victim to Maharaja’s Revenge, the ailment that sent me to the hospital during my first week in India. We could only hope that Jody would weather this better than did I.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622958488770/

Gokarna, India

By Monday morning Peggy had decided that riding motor scooters in India was the most important thing in her life, so Babu schlepped us up to Benaulim, a tiny seaside village that reputedly had the best deals on rental scooters. The guys at the beach had apparently not heard that there was a recession on and tourist visits were about half normal because they didn’t really want to bargain with us. We drove back inland a ways and found a scooter renter who was willing to part with his rides for $4 each for 2 hours. We got aboard and blasted off.

And blast was the operative word for the entire two hours that we cruised the back roads of Goa. The whole expedition was fun, but the opportunity to bleat out a lifetime’s worth of horn honks was the best part of the deal. I was honking at things that weren’t even on the road, and some things that weren’t even in the same county just because it was so much fun to do. Neither Jody nor I had any troubles keeping to the left as we tried to emulate the smooth ebb and flow of motor bike traffic that we’d been observing over the past few days.

We rode for nearly an hour, turned around, then stopped at an outdoor café called Sinatra for some cold sodas. We were the only customers in the whole place, emphasizing yet again what a terrible tourist season this was shaping up to be. The in-house music system was playing American country of a vintage old enough to actually be enjoyable, so we sat through some Willie Nelson, Jim Brown, Crystal Gayle, and one of our all time favorites “Forever and Ever, Amen” by Randy Travis. When I asked if they had any tunes by an unknown feller named Frank Sinatra, they just shrugged. How and why they took his name was a mystery to the young lads working the floor.

Finding our way back to Benaulim was much trickier than just going wherever the heck we wanted, so we had to resort to the Indian GPS system – stop and ask at every intersection. We still managed a few wrong turns, but got the bikes back within a reasonable grace period.

Jody proved an able bargainer at the souvenir shack that doubled as scooter rental headquarters. When I suggested that the way to get the best deal was to walk out of the store and have them come running after you with their final offer, he correctly reminded me that spending many minutes of your life to save 50 cents or a dollar was probably not a real good trade-off.

Next we ventured into Margao, a good size town that is grimy and industrial and not normally on the tourist trail. We had been told there was a market there where we could find Goa Dry Fruit. Having worked up an appetite on the motor bikes, we stopped first at Tato’s, a recommendation of Rough Guides. We were seated in a very warm room and given menus that read “Non A/C” on the front. Aha! Having already deduced that some restaurants have AC and non AC rooms, I asked for the A/C room, whereupon our menus were taken away to be replaced with the “A/C” menus. I never did get to look at the price difference, but when our total bill for 3 mains and 6 sodas came to 165 Rs (less than $3.50), I decided that whatever the savings would have been to swelter in the non-A/C room would not have been worth the discomfort.

And so began the great Goa Dry Fruit chase. We made our way to the outdoor market, then into the covered section, which was just boiling in the heat and humidity. I was drenched from head to toe within minutes. We asked at many shops that looked like good suspects, but nobody could tell us what Goa Dry Fruit was or where it could be had.

Back out on the street, where the 90/90 day seemed so much cooler, we were hustled by a very pretty, very petite young girl who claimed to be 17 years old. She wanted us to follow her to her shop, but we just wanted to get back to the A/C comfort in Babu’s car. Since she was herding us anyway, I asked her if she could tell us what Goa Dry Fruit was. She replied that she would take us to the right stall to get some.

Whereupon we re-entered the sweltering covered market again. She asked shopkeeper after shopkeeper where to find Goa Dry Fruit and each kept pointing further down the long aisle, further into the roasting bowels of the market. But we finally got to a shop where the clerk pointed back in the direction from which we had just come. So at that point I had a heart-to-heart with the young girl and said “You don’t know what Goa Dry Fruit is, do you?” To which she admitted she did not. And the shopkeeper shrugged at the same question. So it finally dawned on us that there was no such thing, that probably some time in the past one of Ashraf’s customers had brought him some dried dates or raisins from Goa and said “This is Goa Dry Fruit” causing Ashraf to think it was some special concoction.

I went to the closest stall, pointed at a bag of gorp-like stuff that seemed to contain a healthy dose of dried fruits and dried nuts and said “I’ll take that”, and marked Goa Dry Fruit off my to do list.

On the way back to Varca, Babu told us about a local type of moonshine liquor called “Penny” (according to him). He said it was strong and awful, but a lot of it was consumed in Goa. He also claimed that 60-70% of Hindus in India drink, a number that seemed shocking to us. But it did remind us of how many Mormons we’ve met who give lip service to both the stricture against alcohol and the distilled product itself.

Back at the hotel just before sunset, we rushed down to the beach to watch the sunset and have a glass of Feni (which is what the Goa moonshine was called there). Feni is basically Grappa made of either raw cashews or palm leaves. I’m a big fan of Grappa, but if you never get a chance to drink cashew-based Feni in your life you can die a happy soul. It’s nasty.

Our Russian friends were at the beach and greeted us glumly. It seems they had been waiting for us pretty much all day. We apologized, I offered Valery (masc) a taste of my Feni, which he wisely declined, then Valery (Fem) said they would meet us for dinner in half an hour. Peggy explained that we had eaten a very late lunch and would not be having dinner, so we agreed to meet later that night for a drink. I felt a little sorry for Valery (fem) because she seemed very sad and maybe a little hurt that we were not going to join them for dinner. Perhaps Peggy’s theory was correct and they were planning a massive, fully-paid feast for us, but the truth was that we were just plain not hungry.

When 8:00 pm came, we sought the Valerys out, but Valery (fem) told us they were very tired and sunburned from their long wait at the beach, so she just offered us a bottle of Russian Vodka and we exchanged email addresses, promising to stay in touch.

It had become clear that our resort was Russian-heavy. Not only did it appear that almost every paying guest was Russian, but we started noticing that many of the staff spoke enough Russian to communicate and many of the signs on the property were written in English and Cyrillic.

On Sunday afternoon I had been exuberant about our first few hours at the beach. The sand was beautiful, the water warm and clean. But during that afternoon I had proven good to my reputation as the number one goal of every stinging insect in the free world. Biting ants, followed by sand fleas, then later that night mosquitoes and more biting gnats, left my feet and ankles looking like the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France. Whereas I had earlier exclaimed that if I ever adopted a regular beach community it would be Goa, I began to revisit that thinking. Heat, humidity, drenching sweat, and the unbearable itch from multitudes of insect bites put me in a pretty cranky mood by the time I went to sleep Monday night.

Hope springs eternal and with a slight reduction in itching Tuesday morning I regained some hope that I would spend a day without increasing the welts on my body. We left Goa at the vacationly hour of 11:00 am and headed for Gokarna, somewhat further south on the coast

After an hour or so, we reached the border between the states of Goa and Karnataka and there was a police checkpoint there. Babu argued mildly with the uniformed officer standing outside before being invited into the guard hut. He reappeared a few minutes later with a wan smile on his face. He had been shaken down for 50Rs even though he had already paid his Goa tax (and had the receipt to prove it) when he arrived in Goa a few days earlier. Such is the nature of corruption in India, Should Babu decide to complain about this officer’s shake-down, he would have to talk to the guy’s superior who is getting some baksheesh from the officer so that would have no beneficial effect. Every step up the chain he would be faced with yet another official who was collecting graft from everyone below him so the prospects of any satisfaction whatsoever are very dim. And that is why Babu and every other Indian we’ve ever talked to about this issue complains mildly about the situation but expresses no belief that anything will ever change so resigned acceptance is the common response.

We made it through the Goa checkpoint and sped merrily on our way for a good 2 or 3 seconds before we got to another checkpoint. This one was the entry to Karnataka. And once again Babu had to fork over a small bribe, this time only 20 Rs because his car was obviously registered in the state of Karnataka. The bribery business is alive and well in India.

The day was mostly tedious. Even though the total distance between Goa and Gokarna is less than 170 K, we drove for 4 hours. Whereas in Rajasthan a month earlier we had participated in a small convoy that commandeered the wrong lane away from the rightful owners, on this segment we were the victims of the same type of activity. At one point we drove by a long line of stopped trucks in the approaching lane. The line of stopped vehicles was at least 2 kms long. A few oncoming trucks could not stand the gridlock and simply commandeered our lane, forcing us onto the shoulder or into the ditch in order to let them by.

We finally arrived at Gokarna and found our hotel, the Om Beach Resort, elevation at least 500 feet. You’re probably thinking the beach was on a hillside lake, but no, the beach was actually at sea level. Our strangely named hotel was a good 5 Km from Om Beach, with no view of it and no apologies for lying through their teeth when it came to naming the hotel.

The Om Beach Hotel is the second nicest hotel in town, but our room was grim, made even more so when a pounding rain started shortly after we arrived. The power went out, meaning the AC shut down and the stifling heat and humidity were not to be tolerated in the room, so we hopped in the car and Babu took us into the village of Gokarna where we were immediately transported to a dream world made up of equal parts “Midnight Express” and Leonardo Di Caprio’s “The Beach”. The rain stopped just as we arrived in the village, but the downpour had created a small stream down the middle of the street carrying all variety of trash and cow poop as it made its way to the beach.

The first thing we saw sitting smack in the middle of town was a parade float in the form of a Hindu temple. It was on a cart with wooden wheels and at least 30 feet high, decorated with flowers and colored cloth. As the rain was replaced with stifling humidity, the village came to life, and we were treated to the spectacle of many pujaris (Hindu pilgrims) bustling about town. Most were men, many had shaved heads with just a pug of hair remaining on the upper back side, and most were bare-chested, wearing saffron colored dhotis (skirts) with a like-colored sash thrown over one shoulder.

Gokarna has two temples dedicated to Rudra, who, as you know, is a reincarnation of Shiva, and because of its history (which is too boring to describe here) it attracts many pilgrims. Surprisingly, a fair number of the saffron-skirted men were light-skinned Europeans. Gokarna is still one of the go-to places for hippies looking for spiritual sustenance combined with a laid-back attitude and a relaxed perspective toward drugs.

The shops were reopening so we browsed a bit. Jody was drawn to a shop that sold very bad Indian-made guitars. They had a sitar for sale for $500 that did not look well made either. But Jody and the store clerk, who called himself Lucky, bonded due to their mutual interest in music and Jody ended up bargaining for a pair of small tabla drums.

We meandered down to the beach, the humidity now joined by even more stifling heat causing us to sweat like Niagara Falls. At the beach we watched local fishermen picking fish out of their gill nets and rerolling the same for the next day’s aquatic foray.

Despite our attempts to raise the sea level another foot by sweating, we were having fun strolling around town so we continued to do so until dark. Jody would later admit that he finally felt the culture shock of India by spending time in Gokarna town. As day turned into night, it became obvious that the power was still off, because many shops were open but dark. Occasionally we’d see one that was still lit and realize that said shop owner had been smart enough to invest in batteries and an inverter. Doing so seemed like a huge business advantage to me, but so many of the places were dark that it was obvious most local business men did not agree with me.

On the drive back to the hotel Babu lamented the fact that government entities in India had plenty of money (by his estimation), but they could not build adequate roads nor keep the electrical grid running. I sympathized with him completely while thanking my lucky stars that I did not have to put up with it for the rest of my life. There are a billion Indians who have no real choice in the matter.

Despite my sanguine feelings about my eventual ability to get away from the insanity of India, I was in a foul mood that evening because I was in a depressing hotel room, hot, sweaty and itchy to the max. The ant/mosquito/gnat bites on my feet, legs, arms and neck had really flared up and I wanted more than anything to be able to dive into a clear, crisp mountain stream to dowse the burning sensations. The closest I could get was a luke-warm shower and bucket of only slightly cool water that I stuck my most afflicted foot into. I set the AC at 17 (63F) and tried to think cool thoughts.

My meditation was interrupted shortly by a ringing telephone. The hotel restaurant was on the line, and in a page taken from the persistent street vendors, asked when we would be coming to dinner. We all agreed that our late lunch would see us through the night, so we begged off and went to bed, hoping against hope that at some point India would cool off.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622821019857/