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essays | places
India
feel everything
Yes, you can see everything, taste everything, smell everything, and experience everything in India, but most importantly, you can feel everything there. The human condition, raw, in all its extremes and middles and aberrations cannot not touch you one way or the other. The colors cannot not dye you a little. The turmoil cannot not whirl you past dizziness. The cement, the jungle, the desert – everything is sweating life’s essence until it drips from the walls and cheeks and runs to the Ganges or the gutter. There is nothing before or after India; it is the moment zero in the flesh, a permanent reincarnation of the origin molecule, inflation and collapse happening at the same time and in the same direction.
Some things were old, some things were gold, some things weren’t things at all, but everything was noteworthy.
Poverty was not always as striking as its clichés. At times it was as subtle as toothbrushes pinned to a backdoor, hinting at the absence of a bathroom.
The Indian subcontinent was vast but no match for its population. Finding a place where you didn’t find a billion people was like trying to find a haystack in an ocean of needles. Social ties were musculous as tightropes, friendships well done. There was certainly a certain intimacy to them that was of a more innocent nurture rather than a brutally open nature.
Colors were cultural. People wore them like a second skin, a rainbow skin so far arched across the spectrum that all hues were feasible and fashionable.
Everybody raved about Goa’s raves, and it was clearer than the Arabian Sea that there wouldn’t be much India there. But throw a rock and you’ll hit a peaced-out expat on a scooter. No no, seriously, try it, go ahead and throw one – they’re so chill, they won’t even know what hit them. I'd taken a nightbus down from Mumbai. The night trains were great, but the night buses greater if you liked the added privacy of your own berth tucked away behind a curtain, and the potentially added intimacy of a stranger being booked into that bed with you.
places / stories
Delhi / Juggling Juxtapositions
My first distinct memory of India is a cliché cow, walking into a train station with human confidence and swagger to take a significant dump in the sultry waiting hall before lying down and calling it a holy day. Right the next memory is Delhi’s mega-modern metro that served the route between the capital and the future – bright, AC-chilled, progressive signs pointing out seats for differently abled people, not “The Disabled.” What more is there to say? India is big on juggling juxtapositions. You could throw it a ball, a burning knife, a cow, and a parallel universe, and it would just keep going.
Rajasthan / Fairy Functions
To reach Rajasthan, you had to take a night train, step off in the morning, trip, and fall into that tale. The desert state was pure fairy dust, or maybe just dust, but at least that’s real, and what’s the difference really? Was that an elephant at the traffic light just now? Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, the Rs rolling like purrs – those city names sounded exactly what the wave functions of their alleyways looked like.
Architectural time travel was easy and cheap. All you had to pack were your feet and eyes, and you were fully equipped for a trip through the centuries, no matter where you stepped or looked. They had built beautifully and significantly back then – so much so that those swimming places and whatnots stood the test of time and taste. Of course, none of them were built for the many, but none were ever anywhere. The many had their little things, like little flowerpots on little roofs of little houses in little alleyways. Fortunately and affordably, such cozy vibes have always been home to me. And while the appeal of grandeur is not fully lost on my eyes, my butt cringes at the idea of sitting in those palatial halls surrounded by little more than emptiness.
It was a place that wore the past like it never went out of style. And with all those riches shining across the centuries, the poor looked even poorer. Poorest really.
One night – I think it was in Pushkar or maybe in Udaipur – I almost died a silly death – death by cow – almost as silly, preposterous, and wrong as using four em-dashes in one sentence. There was a celebration and lots of people clogged the streets. Maybe there were lots of cows too, but I only remember the one with its horns all painted in a bloody red or maybe red blood, looking like the devil in his most ridiculous disguise, trotting towards us, and then, right next to me, yanking its head towards my chest and missing me by a split-hair's breadth. One word of advice, should you ever be in that situation: don't flinch and if the cow gets you, you'll be the life of the party in the afterlife with that story.
After I didn't die, I probably had another one of those Palak Paneers, threateningly green like deep sea algae. A few dahls and curries later we were off to Agra.
Agra / The Density of Love
White marble, the complexion of light, for her, for love. Taj Mahal. Makes you wonder about the density of love – if love is burying your third wife out of six after she died in childbirth with kid number 14. Taj Mahal. Not all that romantic maybe. But Agra had more than a marble heart. When you looked at its fabric from up close, you saw right down to the rumbling guts and a little past those you saw a crazed soul that was always busy.
Mumbai / The Melody, Louder
I’ve been to Mumbai, and I’ve been back to Mumbai, and I’ll be back again, but I need to stop brushing it and start running my fingers deep through that thick mane, because I know it’s a harp with many million strings, and I want to hear the melody, loud and louder, until well after I cut my fingers.
She picked me up at the train station with her neither-here-nor-there-neither-sari-nor-blouse long white top swaying in the wind like a cape, like it was causing the wind, and her dark mane fluttering just a little calmer. And then a few days later she cut it with the determination of change – a full donation worth of thick hair – leaving the salon like a walking thunderbolt that struck me down in the middle of the mall. At night, we would take strolls along the podium, the skyscraper patio of the upper middle class.
Kerala / Mountain Tea and Brackish Sea
Kerala
mountain tea
brackish sea
twister road
houseboat
a mix of tricks
a flavor a little different.
Our houseboat – and I assume every Keralan houseboat – had that moldy smell, like being inside a well. You wouldn’t quite notice it much after a few breaths. And either way, the only reason to ever set foot below decks was sleep, and when you sleep, well, you sleep.
That time we went for a swim, only two of us saw the sea snake wriggling by, and where our eyes met, there was little ambiguity: we wouldn’t weigh the others down with that unnecessary knowledge. You don’t wanna weigh people down in the water. Dinner that night wasn’t any less creepy. Our captain offered the catch of the day for those who wanted a little non-veg extra: an underwater dungeon creature that was so mutantly distant in resemblance to a langoustine that he might as well have fished it out of some gas ocean on Jupiter. And it tasted the part too. And it wasn't cheap either. The best way to eat it was to hold your breath and chase every bite with a gallon of juice, but even so I couldn't finish my portion, which puts this dish between the guinea pig brain I passed up on in Ecuador and the egg embryos I only tried indirectly as part of a Cambodian soup.
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elsewhere
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