Wow. India. Yeah. It's so...um...Indian here. Where to begin, where to begin...So I've been dreading writing this entry. I've felt like a duck in a dishwasher over the entire issue. These last ten days have seemed like a month or more, there's been so much new information to assimilate and interpret. I could start with a standby, tell you about the weather: it's fucking hot. Like India hot. Hot and wet. And writing about the weather might lead me to relate how two Americans travelling on a shoestring are smelling these days, how stewing in the heat and sweating out the local cuisine have let us incorporate into our personal aromas the cardomom, the curry, the cumin, the what-have-you that define the food here. And writing about how we smell, I could tell you how everything else we've smelled thus far has been tinged with exhaust fumes. A guy can't write about a billion people without writing about the resultant traffic, the ancient Premier taxis and autorickshaws and motorbikes moving in orchestral anarchy, a postmodern symphony in CO major for millions of two-stroke engines. Or that, trying to beat the crush of vehicular traffic on the crazyhouse streets, you can get crushed (literally, as people do every year) trying to board Mumbai's suburban rail (official motto: "There's always room for one more!").
Hell, maybe I'll just write a full paragraph about what it's like to discover your own asshole at the age of 29. Such are the joys of a land without toilet paper, after all. Until two weeks ago, my anus was kind of like Uranus: the evidence said it's out there, but I ain't had to think about it on the day-to-day. But when it comes to brass tacks, a real man dives in and does what's necessary. And uses hand sanitizer afterward. After all, you'll never see anything in this world if you're not prepared to deal with a little shit. Better your own than anyone else's.
So yeah. Boundaries have been pushed, horizons broadened. I'm writing this entry from Pune, our first stop after Mumbai, and in a few hours we board a bus for the sunny beaches of Goa. The festival honoring Ganesh, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, ended last night (or this morning, depending upon your vantage point), and with it goes the incessant banging of drums and cymbals over endless shouts of "Ganapati bappa...morya!" For the unititiated, that loosely translates as "Elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati bappa...morya!" No matter what you've heard, enlightenment is thin on the ground over here. I'm as in the dark about the Hindu traditions we've wandered into as I am about the game of cricket. Put the two together, as happened Monday night when India beat Pakistan to win the Twenty20 tournament in South Africa (thanks to Ganesh's intervention, they say), and I'm utterly fucking clueless.
Luckily, though, I got some good advice on our third day here. Invited to a friend's family's place for lunch, we were lucky enough to participate in a prayer chant honoring Ganesh. It was an honor and a privilege, not to mention a complete surprise. It turns out Big G loves the sound of clanging metal, so while all the (Hindu) adults chant, the kids (and us godless white folk) get to bang on handchimes and ring bells. So that we weren't bashing them aimlessly, A's cousin N shared these sage words, words that I decided will be my personal mantra while on this journey:
"Catch the rhythm, then play accordingly."
Indeed. Here's to that.
