In India

05/06/06
My friend told me that back state-side the administration has announcedit's plan for dealing with bird flu, which sounds alot like it's 'duck and cover' strategy for dealing with nuclear attacks ( yeschildren it'll be just fine under you desks)..So for your benefit let me tell you a little about how it is over here.

The bird flu scare has pretty much crippled India's farming sector,which makes alot of money selling poultry. The government is considering giving subsidies to poultry farmers due to the massive losses sustained. The poultry farmers themselves have taken to an advertising campaign.

There are large billboards with celebrities and large quotes like

• "Mein Khanna Chicken!" ( I eat Chicken)
• "Know the facts! Then decide"
  ( The 'Know the Facts' ones remind me of Aids awareness posters in thesubway)
  

There are little placards in the restaurants from the "Egg association" giving you the facts about bird flu and chicken consumption.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3495523.stm

All this and a quick visit to the World Health Organizations website reveals.....

You can't get bird flu from eating cooked chicken!

It's debatable if you can get it from eating raw chicken.

Halehlujiah...you sold me!

Now if you're in you spend all day walking through poultry feces, or if you're in a sexual realtionship with a chicken, you might wantto get checked.
(Oh and if the virus becomes transmissible person to person...it'sall over anyway...)

My veg buddies are quick to point out there are a number of other things you can get from poultry (salmanelia...cooties...etc.).

I appreciate the thought gentlemen, but you've never had a decent cheeseburger, have you?

Screw this diet of lentils and vegetables...I'm eating chicken and any other animal that's on the menu. I'll take my chances.

05/1/06

So I went to Juhu for the long weekend. Juhu is the north end of Mumbai, and on the beach. So I booked a nice hotel and though (for all the money) I'd be isolated from all the Inida of it. Well, the hotel is built like a fort. And indide it's like Vegas, 4 restaurants anda pool with a garden , real nice.

But why go to Juhu ? You could be in Vegas. The hotel is on the beach, so I went down the back stairs. The hotel has a big ol' gate where you sign out, get a pass, and there's a bell outside to ring when you want to get back in. So you get out of your very expensive hotel and you're on the beach, You step out take a breath of the sea air...oh...

• there's the the one legged beggar just to the right of the door showing you his wounds
• ...oh you got distracted and the ten dudes now trying to sell you crap again have surronded you.
• ...oh and the beggars
• ....oh here's the guys trying to sell you hash again

You can stand on the bastions of the hotel in Juhu, and pretend you're a 16th century Mughal looking down on the commoners on the beach. This is what most of the business tourists did, I wanted to be mad at them, but then again...that's where I'm sleeping. For a bit I practiced some self loathing about the lot of the poor, then I went to the pool and practiced self loathing with drinks.

I did not want this level of soul searching, I wanted a quite walkon the beach...

Inside the castle

Inside there's a club and a lounge. The club was basically fun. Although all the curiosity about the foriegner seems to be limited to the beggars and touts of Mumbai, and not the hot ladies in the club...who kept talking about music and places I had no concept of.

Buying them a drink also proved to be less than smooth as it involved a series of tickets that had to be purchased from another counter...what's this about? you don't want people passing cash at the bar?

The music was bizzare

• The Will Smith 'Jiggy with it' song, with some bangra remix and the DJ saying 'yah...who is jiggy?'
• A dance remix of U2's 'With or Without you'....? Wha?
  

Italian food

I did enjoy the restaurants though, they had Italian and they actually got it right. Remeber the end of 'Goodfellas'? Where Ray Liotta is in witness protection

'I asked for linguine marinara and I got egg noodles and ketchup'

Some places here do Italian but they usually make it a sauce that is one step down from a curry paste, it's quite awful. The regular italian food seemed bland, but that's because my pallateis now used to being assaulted by sweet and spicy.

The Lounge

or

Where I finally lost it

The second night I went to the lounge, which had an awful set of singers. Three Asians ( well they're all asian....but chinese or something. Two girl in sequined dresses who seemed to be doing more aerobics than dancing and a guy on the Casio Keyboard. I was left to ponder why it's called 'Bombay Saphire Gin' when no one here drinks.

And then the singing of the asian casio band...oh lord....make it stop...

• Bon Jovi?
• Pink Floyd 'another brick in the wall' ( the casio keybaord version)
• Madonna 'Like a Virgin'
• and again there it was....UB40's..Red Red Wine.....

I broke out hysterically laughing...couln't help it...I wasn't even that drunk, but I could'nt stop....

That's it....I've lost my damn mind.
UB40 should be banned as should the casio keyboard....

Summary
'Alone in a crowd' begins to capture the whole thing.

If you're here you will never be alone.

If it's a big street there's 1000 people moving around you

If you go 10 feet off the beaten tourist path there's 1000 people begging from you.

If you stop for a minute there's 1000 people trying to sell you crap.

And in all of it, not one of them has any idea what you mean...when you look at them and say:

'Isn't this all so surreal? Isn't this all just crazy?'.

Well , that took a few hours (see here ), went down to check on the whole exterminator thing.
What's that? he's busy today?
Dude I'm living with a colony of bees, call another one, I'll pay extra!
What you tried another one and they're closed for the weekend?
Exterminator on Monday? I work on Monday.
When? The whole day I work...Sigh...okay I'll talk to the manager on monday...

Goddammit...I'm going out to get some bug repellant and maybe some mosquito netting.
Meanwhile I'll tell you all about Juhu...

04/14/06
So I'm back from Delhi, my parents are safe with their tour group and I'll be checking in on them.
They're going to see the Taj, Jaipur andVaransi.
What? You didn't see the Taj?
Oh dear reader, I'm in india another 4 month, Delhi and Agra are two hours away and I have many weekends to kill. I'll get back to the Taj.

If you're coming halfway around the planet for 2 weeks you should definitley see the Taj, but I have time to exploe all part of india...the ones tourists usually don't get to , like Paan!

Paan

I had read that Paan was some pretty awful stuff, for those who don't know , paan is an Indian kind of chewing ...er...thing.

They take a betel nut, chop it into little pieces, then pick from an alchemist's rack of spices, pastes and syrups and smear this all in a leaf, which is then wrapped up.

You take this pandora's box of bacteria (the leaves are usually 'washed' in a bucket on the counter by the side of the road,by the paan-wallah who's been doing this all day).

Also there's supposed to be all this red juice that you be spitting out ( like chewing tobacco), and it would stain your teeth for a few days, but I was half drunk and ready to try.

I got a sweet pann, and that's a little different. There's no red juice...just the betel nut, some sugary goo and what I think was coconut, topped with a cocktail cherry.

I popped it in my mouth, and motioned if I swallow this or not. The paan-wallah then looked at me wide eyed, and almost tried to grab it back out of my mouth. This scared me, so I spit it out into my hand. then he pointed to another one in his hand..oh there'sa toothpick in there....

Ok, but yes after removing that, you swallow it.

By now this had become a full comedy. And there was a crowd of about 10 rickshaw drivers watching me for a reaction.

Honestly it does'nt taste like much at all, the sweet one is just a fistful of sugar. This woke me up pretty quickly in my half drunk state, and I though for a bit it might be cocaine, but it was far too cheap (rs 5) and I could sleep afterwards, so it wasn't that. What it is is that the betel nut has some caffine in it , plus all the sugar,l plus I was half awake...fun stuff.

4/11- Delhi:

The second day we tried to go to the Red Fort or Lal Qila (Lal means Red, like Marlboro Lal ). The driver said it wasclosed. I told him to go anyway ( my Man Friday had once been told theTaj Mahal was closed, he's from India)...it actually was closed...this is it from the outside. My parents got to see it later on their guidedtour, I'll make it back.

We went to see Humayun's tomb an ancestor of the Taj, most of the Mughal stuff shows far more Muslim influence than the other stuff in india. Humayun's tomb also has lots of grounds you can walk around on, this is good, because they're grounds where you have to pay all the hawkers stay away :)

There's a ton of history to these things that I'm just not writing. Mostly because I don't know it.

I'm not a fan of the tour guides in general, and the ones over here in particular. They usually have a speech in english that they memorized , and two or three curious facts. It's about as good as my practiced routine in Hindi.

I'd rather look at the stuff while I'm there, I can pick up a book later and read all the history.

This is the the Qutab Minar, where again an Indian family asked if theycould take a picture of me, this amuzed my parents and I told them it happens all the time (rockstar....).

It's a large tower, inscribed with Muslim phrase all the way up. The pillars alternate between perfect square right angles and cylinders, it's kind of neat.

There's also a ton of detailed architecture around it.

I've always liked the idea of tesselating shapes (like in those Escher paintings), and muslim architecture is full of it.

Oh and just so you get a grasp on history. The stuff around the qutab minar, built out of smashed up hindu temples. So you'll ocassionallycatch a Ganesh face or a dancing Shiva in the rocks that the muslim stuff is built on. This is probably intentional by the original designers, who after all, were conquerers.

Sidenote: I'm typing this in the mall internet cafe, and if this fat bastard next to me leans over me one more time to tell his buddy about how much ass his Dragon Mage kicks.... I swear I'm going to hit him.

4/10/06 - Delhi

My parents, despite all my warnings about this place, were set on visiting me in India. I advised them, as I will advise anyone else to geta packaged tour of some kind. Navigating on your own if you if don't speak the languge is awfully difficult. And taxi/rickshaw drivers will tell you things are closed when they're not, charge you triple...etc. So I went to see them and help them out for a few days.These stories are truly thiers and not mine, but I'll tell my part.

Upon ariving ther was much rejoicing by my mother for seeing me alive. We sat around the hotel for a bit and talked. Then we went exploring.
We walked out to the RajPath.

Lutyen's City
Delhi is basically divided into two sections. Old Delhi in the Noth is where the Mughals had their capitals. New Delhi in the south was architected entirely by the british as a show of thier power.Sir Edwin Lutyen was extremely racist and hated the local architecture. Just look at the map and you see the Lutyen sat at his desk, cursingthe heat and the locals, and used a ruler and a compass to draw out the roads of New Delhi. The Rajpath is probably the striaghtestroad in all India, and as the seat of the parliment also the cleanest.


On one end is the Gateway Of India ( Not to be confused with Mumbai's Gateway To India). On the other end is the Parliment building. Due to the size of the population the Parliment is collosal

The smaller thing behind it once contained a statue of George V. But afterindependace it was removed. Now it's empty.

These are my parents at the gate, hey mom and dad, so glad you survived!

They were offered ( as all tourists in India are) all kinds of stuff. Including one lady who wanted to give my mom henna..I gave them my few phrases

• "Nahi" (No!)
• "Ruko" (Stop)
• "Nahi Chahiye" ( don't want that)

This does'nt actually stop people from trying to sell you crap. It does however slow them down.

Delhi is rough on tourists...probably because it gets more of them. I didn't get hustled in Mumbai once I told them I'd been in Pune for 2 months, and used my few hindi phrases. In Delhi my parents and I got in a rickshaw and told him 'Connaught Place' ( a bigcentral shopping area), despite my hindi and even asking ( in hindi!) if we should'nt be going straigh (janna sidhe, nahi?) he took us somewhere else entirely. I paid him and we got another dirver.

The drivers in Delhi also have this habit of telling tourists

"Pay what you like!"

They don't do this in Mumbai, there, they'll quote you a ridiculous number but none of this passive agressive bullshit.

What people ususally do is figure out what a cab back home would costand do the conversion. Here's the metric, for 500 Rs. you can get a car for a day!

I advise all of you to give them 10 Rs. When they protest make it 20.That usually teaches them.

Once again I have to break the chronology to explain to you why I have a full day to catch up on the blog.
I know what you think,
he's bored
he makes up stories
he wants attention

Oh dear reader you have no idea how incredibly wierd things are here. Insane stuff is hapening every day
It's a phantasmagoria, and I have been swallowed, this time on the most improbable aspect of the story ...
I have picutres.....

This blog will someday be studied as a profile of my descent into insanity. Read on and thank god for your monotonous, mundane existence.



Saturday
1-Mildy anoying

10 A.M. No one here respects my right to sleep in.
Doorbell rings. A small man holding up a screwdriver like he jost won it as a prize
"You Call?"
>> (half awake ) " No? for What?"
He scurries across the hall I witness the same conversation with my neighbor in Hindi...

Now I'm awake, so I lay in bed and read for a bit. Salman Rushdie's 'Middights Childres', it's a good book.
And it's peppered with places from Bombay and Delhi I now know.

2- Very Confusing

11:00 AM So now I'm reading and I swear I hear a voice coming from the bathroom. The one behind my bedroom, this is of course impossible it's just a wierd echo or someone shouting.
But no there it is, the voice is almost certainly in the bathroom. I get up and open the door.
Oustide the window there is a 2 foot crawlspace betwen the bathroom and external wall, the
pipes run in here. There is a man weged in there on a cell phone.
>>"Hello?"
(Pausing from cell phone conversation) "Hallo"
>>"What are you doing in there? Are you stuck? Is something broken"

He waves me off and continues with his cellphone conversation. Five minutes later he ambles up the pipes to lord knows where. The roof I guess, I have ceased to care.

I get out of bed and make breakfast. Thank you Betty Crocker for just add water pancakes ( you know you have to boil the milf over here?). I'm in my rythm coffee on, pancakes going...fuse blows. Right, reset fuse coffee first then hotplate...Viola, my subcontinental breakfast is ready.

I go to sit out on the balcony and see this,.....which caused me to spill hot coffe on my foot.

3- What the Hell?

Bees! holy sweet Jesus...Bees!
It's about the size of a cinder block and just hanging there on the balcony.
Those were not there last night.


It's Fawlty Towers and I'm John Cleese
I take the picture downstairs, and show the guard

"Oh...where take that?"

>>"In my flat, they're on the balcony"
"Oh ....being cautious sir, they are stinging bugs!"
>>"Yes, mein malum hei ( i know), How do we get rid of them?"
Blank stare.
>>"Bees go away ( making pistol symbols with my hands), bang bang bees dead , nahi bees!"
"Oh....be talking to manager"

I've learned that this means I should talk to the manager, not that he will.
So I went to see him and the exterminator is on the way, but I'm the only one with keys (apparently the concept of a super is unkonwn), so I have to hang out here with the bees. It's not so bad as they just seem intent on huddling up ( not very busy at all). So I'll catch up on blog stories, enjoy.