Interacting with the almost dead on a regular basis...it makes the gears turn a little differently. I got a little shook today and as a side effect started a conversation with a bible thumper about one of the thousands of things you just don't start a conversation with a bible thumper about... fatal flaw... Next time I see him I plan on singing the praises of masturbation and random anonymous sex. Drop your jessus shit on me will ya?
I'd love to get this moment of clarity that some people claim when they see something that shakes them or is on some level meaningful. This old guy who looks like an Indian version of a severely spinach-less Popeye fell asleep while I was holding his hand and feeding him. I thought it was the big goodbye. This did a job on my mind state and I staggered strait out of Mother T's, followed my nose down an alley and ended up in this half out-door lunch spot where I ate a small pile of Samosas and retired from the game of blinking for a half hour or so. It was pretty surreal. The world got distant and I got deep into the old noggin.
Calcutta is full of life. Struggling, painful life. I see the people at Mother T's, this one armed begger who lies face down on the side walk flopping his nub around for rps and all sorts of other people just struggling to get a bite and I wonder if being dead isn't a better option. Its not a lack of compassion or ill will, its just the only way I can imagine there suffering coming to an end. Its like in the Departed. Leo finally gets shot and its almost a relief. Because of his humanity and the will to live that comes with that, of course it is a tragedy, but on another level you kinda go "well shit, at least we don't need to worry and suffer through that any longer." There is peace there.
So the storage device I have had for my photos decided it wasn't going to charge any more. It was causing a lot of stress. Jeff sent me off to go find some electronics market on my own. I'm lucky to find my arss to wipe it, never mind some electronics market. The quote was "It'll be good for you." That's right up there with, "It adds charecter." The only other time he dropped that on me was when I was thinking about quitting wrestleing senior year. Looks like the old bugger is two for two. I had a great time finding the place. I asked one person and followed their directions until they stopped making sense and then asked the next person. I found the place, bought a converter that did not do the trick and got back.
Next day I was wondering around and couldn't figure out for the life of me why I was walking into this mall. Not even ten minutes later I walked past a store that was half stocked and sort of painted. In the window there were a couple dozen random electronic devices mp3 players and one red box...ah yes...India provided.
Well the city still feels safe but seems stranger and stranger. Every taxi looks like it is from the 1940s. The company that makes the car kept the same body design until I think, the 80s. There are Rickshaws... I mean that one really doesn't need any qualifying...rickshaws... along the river people are bathing in water I wouldn't wash my feet in.
Just a few days and I'm off to Benares. I'm looking forward to a little change of scenery.
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you sound a little overwhelmed.
one day i couldn't take it anymore-the staring, the begging, all the movement. so i bought some cadburry chocolates (hurl) and stayed in watching MTV asia all day. Going to Mother T's seems dreamy after that. But the day off was good.
i mention the overwhelm just to say, take a deep breath and try to love it because you will look back on it so fondly, it would be nice to muster that fondness while you are there.
when MT's freaked me out, I would take the job of drying laundrey- its MUCH better than dishes. You climb around on the roof hanging sheets to dry. And you can look out over the city: the shops, the traffic, the additions built on additions built on additions built on shacks, and somehow up there you can see the way life manages to triumph despite all the things we've been taught to find intolerable. one day a major veteran filthy backpacker crashing the place for the day came up to me as I was watching all of it and said, it's like a kaleidescope, isn't it? and that let me fall in love with it. It is. Its so colorful and so much! It's familiar- you sort of recognize it as your world, but then it's so over the top it's just not the same world...
its so great to hear your voice - so YOU, doing things I did so differently and so the same and with so much shared experience with me. I am so enjoying all the memories it is bringing up.
Blue Sky. Are you having breakfast there? Those weird "pancakes" with honey on them? PLEASE enjoy them. They seem gross now, but when you've been back from India a few months, you will miss them! You will sort of be sad that you can't find anything quite as white and gelatinous and you will miss the honey for maple syrup substitute.
Have you had a drink on the rooftop around the corner? Do you go for the lunch buffet at the fancy white hotel off the maidan? pineapple with chocolate sauce makes a lot of stress just slide away...
And the cemetery! Its like the secret garden. And there was a man crouched there cutting the grass with tiny sheers...so peaceful.
Benares...it's so lovely on the ghat and such a total drag getting there....wear clsed shoes...and careful not to slip. cow shit on the type of stone they paved with is slicker than socks on a bowling alley.
I LOVE your posts and want to read a new one every hour! please write more! and start planning to come visit so we can go through every single picture when you get back and talk talk talk about it ALL!
Mom says to tell you hugs and hi!
LOVE you!
PRAY FOR OBAMA!!!
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