23 December
Why did I book this trip? Where was that confidence I’d gained over the summer in those few days in Paris that helped me conquer my fear of public solitude? Three weeks alone now? In India? What was I thinking?
My boyfriend woke at 5am to take me to the airport in New Jersey. We drove through the darkness making small talk until his car came to a stop at departures. I looked his way and my eyes were flooding with tears. I felt like I was walking a plank. I didn’t want to leave anymore.
“None of these, none of these,” he said, wiping my face with his hands. An unfailing source of encouragement for me, he launched into his spiel: “You’re about to have an adventure! I wish I was going with you! If you get there and hate it, you can come right back. But I have a feeling you’re going to love it.”
We said goodbye at the double sliding doors of the terminal. When he let his guard down I made an attempt to run past him wearing my bulky 22-pound backpack and get into his car. He squared my shoulders up with the entrance again. I said he’d have to leave before I could make myself go check in. He drove away.
Our plane left a full hour late and did not make up a single minute of the time on our way to London. 20 of us missed our connecting flights to India and Pakistan by just a few minutes. It was the night before Christmas Eve and Virgin Atlantic gave our seats to standby passengers stranded by the London fog.
Most of the people in my group needed emergency Visas at Heathrow Airport so we cut into a line that other travelers had been waiting in for hours. I was the only American in the group, but I had to go along with everyone else. We were put up at a hotel next to the airport and the airline representative left me in charge of 20 crazy Indians.
“Who wants to play mum?” she asked, thrusting the paperwork into my hands. I was the one stopping everyone from getting onto the wrong hotel shuttle. I was the one getting them checked into their rooms. I was the one asking the management to extend the restaurant hours so that they could feed their families at eleven o’clock at night. London was freezing cold and I stood outside waiting for a shuttle without a coat, steaming mad.
I slept from three in the morning to one in the afternoon. When I went downstairs I found the group waiting for me, as if they needed my permission to leave. I took a shuttle back to the airport with a young couple from Pakistan and spoke with them about their home life. The husband was 31 and the wife was 23. Theirs was an arranged marriage because, the husband said, with divorce rates so high, what was there to lose? Their families had known each other for generations but the couple met on their wedding day. They had a newborn baby girl.
I waited to get a boarding pass for my flight as people passing through recognized me from the night before. I felt an unexpected sense of camaraderie with this group to whom I’d never been introduced. They were all very kind to me, wanting me to know that when I made it through the process that they’d be waiting for me up front, holding a place for me in the security line ahead of hundreds of other travelers. I often saw groups of people staring at us while we talked, probably wondering why the American girl was in with all the Indians and Pakistanis.
I wasn’t allowed to check in since our pilot had called in sick and the backup pilot was flying another plane. I sat in line on the floor in front of the ticketing desk for two hours, waiting for word on our situation, tears stinging in my eyes at the thought of spending Christmas at Heathrow Airport. We were told it was highly unlikely we’d be leaving London that night.
“How on Earth is it possible that you cannot find one single pilot in all of London to fly us to New Delhi?” I asked a representative.
“Do you want a drunk pilot?” she shot back.
No one would ever say such a thing at an American airline.
Finally the announcement came that the airline had located a pilot and cheering erupted through the waiting crowd. I was forced to surrender my huge backpack at luggage check-in, which didn’t seem fair since I’d gotten that far with it already. In my own personal protest I told the ticket agent I’d just had a cast removed from my leg and would be needing a window bulk head seat for the journey—a request that caused much shuffling but was ultimately granted.
Mid-flight I asked an attendant how many hours were left before our arrival. For weeks I’d felt scared, searching for that feeling that had inspired me to plan this trip in the first place, but failing to remember why I was on my way. She checked her watch and replied, “Four.”
In four hours I’d be in India. In four hours someone in Delhi would be standing at the airport holding a piece of paper with “Ross” printed on it– I hoped. That lost feeling shot through me like electricity and I smiled. My adventure was only four hours away.
Christmas Day New Delhi
We landed in Delhi around noon and a skinny brown Santa Clause greeted us on the jet bridge.
Rajiv, the owner of the house I’d be staying at for my homestay was, in fact, standing at the airport with my name on a piece of paper. Driving to his house was like being in a movie. Lane dashes on the highway had no meaning to motorists. Motorcycles flew by carrying three people, none of them wearing helmets. Sometimes the third person in the middle of the bike was a toddler. Cows could wander wherever they pleased, stray dogs were everywhere, and all of the animals were starving.
Rajiv’s house had marble floors from one end to another. It was freezing cold. I wanted to take a hot shower and had to flip a switch on a water heater and wait ten minutes before turning it on. Starting out with a homestay was a nice way to ease into India but I made a note to try to feel braver when I got to Bombay, when I would have to face the world alone.
Most Indian mattresses are made of coir— fibers inside the shell of a coconut. Over time coir mattresses become compacted, so I took a 90-minute nap in a bed that felt like it was made of bricks. At 3:00 in the afternoon I made myself get up and wander the neighborhood, so Rajiv drew a map to a great restaurant so I could find my way back. I actually liked the food. I never had Indian food before. Most everyone in New Delhi speaks English. Even the affluent people are pretty poor, and the city is filthy with trash strewn in the streets.
I peeked into a park and took a photo of a young boy on a swing. A little girl saw me and stared, so I aimed at her and clicked, and showed her the picture on my camera screen. Another child appeared, then another and another, until there were 20 children in front of me, all wanting to see themselves in my camera. They were jumping, laughing, shrieking every time I turned my camera around to show them their faces the screen. They’d never seen such a thing in their lives.
A man looking on asked me how much the camera cost. I quickly calculated the value in local currency. “Just under 40,000 rupees,” I told him. He nodded thoughtfully, as if to say that the price was within the range he was expecting to hear. I later learned that the average monthly income for an Indian family is around 3,500 rupees, or 80 dollars American.
Eventually I tried to leave the group of children, but I’d become the Pied Piper to them, and they chased me down the street, pulling at my sweater with their grubby hands, shouting, “One photo, miss!” and “I am American!” Ten teenagers joined the group, shouting and laughing like a celebration was going on. The game was never going to get old to them.
I walked back to Rajiv’s and an old man with a bathrobe over his clothes approached me in the street. He asked what country I was from and I said “America.” He asked where in America and before I could answer he said, “My son works as an engineer for Microsoft in Dallas, Texas.” I smiled. “I am from Texas,” I said, feeling like he somehow already knew. Here I was, on the other side of the world, talking to a man whose son lives 200 miles away from my home, and I was struck, not for the last time, by what a small place our planet is.
26 December
There would be no sleeping past 5 am in South Delhi. Ever. There was an announcement over a loud speaker, followed by singing, then responsorial singing, and drumming. It was a Hindu festival and it would happen every single morning I was there. Plus, for some reason it was ok with Rajiv and Sonali that a family of stray cats come into their kitchen for breakfast and dinner everyday, and one of the cats meowed like a crazy animal in pain. “Owwwwww!” he’d scream at the door, every single morning before sunrise. “Owwwwwowwowww!” How can the family ignore all this noise? My body was killing me from sleeping on the brick mattress anyway, so I got up to flip on the hot water heater and waited to take a shower.
Rajiv’s father, a very distinguished man who had managed an Indian airline company, had recently become widowed and moved in with Rajiv and wife, Sonali, and their daughter, Ravina. Grandpa and I sat in the living room at sunrise, drinking spicy chai. He listened to remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, one of India’s most famous singers, on my ipod while I took his picture. The house girl whose name I wouldn’t know for three weeks made me an omelet (“Give your laundry to her,” Sonali would say, or, “She will make you breakfast” or, my favorite, “the girl who sweeps the floor broke the computer”) and I ate the best oranges I’ve tasted in my life. They were the tiny, sweet oranges that come in $15 salads in New York.
Rajiv and I set out for Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, a place I’d obsessed about seeing all year. We drove through the streets, dodging cows, busses that were “for the differently abled,” monkeys and their bananas, goats, camels, pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, bike rickshaws, motor rickshaws, mopeds, oxcarts, tractors and tucks, all hidden beneath a thick layer of fog. I had to shut my eyes in order to control my anxiety. Ten minutes into the journey, smoke started coming out from under the hood of Rajiv’s car.
The lanes painted on Delhi roads are taken as little more than suggestions by motorists. A two-lane road has three lanes of traffic and a four-lane road has seven, which shed a lot of light on the driving habits of Punjabi cab drivers in New York City for me.
People in front of us ran to jump on slow-moving busses that didn’t bother stopping in the rush hour traffic to pick anyone up. Signs reading, “Lane driving is good for everyone” flew by, ignored by all the drivers. One sign advertised a brand of milk, calling it the milkiest milk. I wanted to try that milk for sure while I was there.
My guidebook mentioned an authentic vegetarian dive restaurant that we called “Puri Walla” for short as a special place to stop for lunch for 70 cents. Rajiv takes trips to Agra all the time but he hadn’t heard of it, and since I was in charge, we needed to find out where the Puri Walla was.
“Walla,” by the way, means something like “owner.” There can be lots of different kinds of wallas since the word can be put behind any noun in the language. Puri walla, rickshaw walla, fruit cart walla.
We pulled over every kilometer or so and asked people along the roadside if they knew of Puri Walla, but no one could help us. Finally, a self-proclaimed Hindu priest (is there any other kind?) said he knew where the restaurant was. He said that he would come along with us, in our tiny Hyundai, and that he would point it out and we could drop him off at his temple. He ran back inside a building while Rajiv explained to me what was going on.
“He’s lying!” I shouted, as Rajiv shrugged.
The priest came out of the building, ushering his four grandchildren, ages 10 to 21, into the back seat of Hyundai, which can comfortably hold about two. Once they were in, he crammed himself into the mix, and slammed the door.
We drove for 20 minutes through the camels and chaos of Agra with five Indians in the back of our car while fending off the priest’s attempts to marry me to his grandson.
Before we said goodbye he tried to get Rajiv’s phone number though I didn’t understand why he needed it. The next day Rajiv was telling his wife Sonali about the incident and I asked Rajiv why the priest wanted his number. “So they can come to our house and disturb us!” he shouted, quite seriously. I nearly fell down laughing at his use of the word “disturb” but it turns out that “disturb” has a very specific and important meaning in their culture—almost used exclusively like the word “irritate.”
We set out to find Puri Walla and discovered that the priest’s directions were completely wrong since he’d been lying the whole time. We wound our way through the Agra marketplace so thick with spices that I was choking on the air. After asking a few more people for help, we found the restaurant and parked the car. The food that was being cooked downstairs was covered in flies, so I decided to pretend I hadn’t seen a thing, which was way out of character for me.
I didn’t ever find out what exactly the food was, but it didn’t matter since no one gets a choice about what to eat anyway. Huge amounts of various things were scooped into sectioned plates and eaten with puri—puffed bread flattened to make a scoop. Two young boy waiters were at our beck and call, and anytime the bottom of my plate showed in any section, one of them was there to refill it. I had to insist against their protests that they quit when I was full.
Lunch at the Puri Walla was one of my favorite experiences and I thought the food was delicious, though it surely helped that I was starving. I was delighted to pick up the check for Rajiv since it was only $2.80 for three Pepsis and non-stop food for two, and tipping for quality service doesn’t really exist in India. Of course, I tipped 100% since our waiters were just children.
We arrived at the Taj Mahal and I first experienced the VIP treatment earned by simply having white skin while in India. Hundreds and hundreds of Indians were in line to enter, but I was walked to the front by a guard and allowed to pass right through.
Shah Jahan, a Muslim king ruling in north eastern India, designed and built the Taj Mahal for his favorite wife, Mumtaz, his “jewel,” over 22 years. It was built not to be a home or a temple, but only as a symbol of his love for her.
Muslims would visit the Taj to pray, and writings from the Koran painted on the front entrance increase in size as they reach the top in order to create the illusion of being the same size from top to bottom. The Muhgal style was my favorite type of architecture in India. Upon completion, it’s said that Shah Jahan cut off the hands of his architect in order to be assured that the building would never be replicated. The legend says that he buried the hands in the lawn.
I may never in my life see a structure that comes close to the beauty of the Taj Mahal. It felt surreal to be standing before one of the most famous buildings in the world after seeing it only in pictures for so long. The perfect symmetry was breathtaking. Symmetry from the entrance of the gate, to the pool, to the sidewalks, to the landscaping, to the domes of the Taj itself, to the tombs flanking either side, to the queen’s tomb inside; you can stand at the queen’s tomb looking outward, and see it all perfectly perfect on either side.
The marble walls of the Taj are inlaid with semi-precious jewels, both inside and outside, cut so seamlessly that, to the touch, the jewels in the marble feel like paint. Unfortunately, over the years tourists pried out a lot of the stones, but most are still intact. The designs made from an orange stone glow like fire in the sunset, I was told, but we didn’t have time to stay to see it ourselves because of the fog that makes driving at night between Agra and New Delhi too dangerous.
My visit to the Taj Mahal was the beginning of tourists from more remote parts of India approaching me about taking pictures. The first time it happened I thought they wanted me to hold their camera and take a photo with them in it, but all they wanted was a photo of me, since they rarely saw people who looked like me. Of the thousands of people at the Taj Mahal that day, I was truly the only Caucasian in sight. It was amusing and flattering in the beginning, but by the end of three weeks the requests were a disruptive nuisance that I often refused, especially at the beach or while trying to eat dinner.
We left to see Agra Fort. When he ruled part of India, Shah Jahan lived at Agra Fort, and could look from his bedroom down onto the Taj Mahal. The king’s bathtub has been moved to the entrance of the fort, and is big enough to hold far more than the five children playing in it, most likely against the rules. For a long moment I stood motionless outside the king’s bedroom, which looked exactly like the décor of the Taj Mahal with its marble and jewels, consumed with thoughts of the luxury and romance of living there everyday as king and queen, protected in its surrounding walls. That is, until their son Aurangzeb killed all his brothers and sisters, and imprisoned the king at Agra Fort until his death.
Rajiv drove the three hours back to New Delhi while I slept the entire way, wiped out from jet lag.
27 December
The next morning, Rajiv, Sonali and their daughter Ravina and I left for Jaipur with a driver at the crack of dawn. The five hour drive was death-defying. Heaters in cars are optional in India, so there would be no “defogging” the windshield that morning. Punjabis are a fearless people; many of them ready to die on a moment’s notice, risking their lives everyday for no reason whatsoever. “Like dogs,” Rajiv noted one day when we were alone.
Once we arrived in Jaipur we went to a restaurant to have lunch even though I was the only one who was really hungry. The mutton curry, called laal maas, was absolutely phenomenal. That was the great thing about having my homestay owner take me on private tours: we only did whatever I wanted to do. Nobody outside ever hassled me since I was essentially traveling with a bodyguard, but Rajiv was also a personal assistant. He would go out of his way to find restaurants, stores, or particular items I wanted even if it took an hour. He was my translator, menu chooser, comedian, and frequent driver. He was constantly in a good mood. His wife Sonali was a former school teacher with a wealth of Indian history. She was my professional haggler in the bazaars, personal shopper, and was excellent at detecting fakes when we were shopping for authentic pieces.
At the hotel, Rajiv and Sonali would crack the whip when the labor class employees didn’t want to work. The employees were made to fetch clean sheets, blankets, water and toilet paper for me but I didn’t have to handle a thing. When calling downstairs brought nothing, I’d simply ask, “What would be effective, Rajiv? If I went downstairs to speak to them myself?” and Rajiv would be up and out the door to take care of the situation.
His homestay was cheap but his private tours very expensive, and I was flexing my muscle with him by day two. I had not yet paid up when I realized my power over him. Three days of private tours, hotels, homestays, car rental and a 16 hours of a personal driver was $400, which is a hell of a lot of money to an Indian family.
Jaipur was a cold, dusty desert. I had to cut off all my fingernails since they were constantly filthy, and I was blowing dirt out of my nose for days.
We saw elephants giving rides up the mountain to Amber Fort and they would stop in front of me and pose with their trunks raised so I could take a photo. I got low to the ground for a shot up an elephant’s leg and was nearly stepped on. It scares me to even write the words knowing I would have been instantly dead had it happened. I literally skedaddled out of there when I realized that what was happening was real life, not just in my camera. Poor Robyn Ross, my friends would say. She got smashed in India while taking pictures of an elephant.
We didn’t take an elephant ride up the mountain because, I realized on this trip, I am opposed to riding them around for fun. The elephants can each make five trips up the steep mountain per day, carrying as many as five people at a time. Up until last year each elephant used to make 30 trips per day, but one elephant got mad at being forced to work so hard and killed its handler and a tourist.
Amber Fort is built in a Hindi architectural style, nothing like the Muhgal style of the Taj. It was a massive, sprawling home to the Rajput warrior clan, a group of fighters who decided to rewrite their history as having descended from the sun. The surrounding mountain range is built up with check points as far as the eye can see.
The last fort of the trip (I was getting tired of seeing forts, especially since none came close to the beauty of Agra Fort) was Jaigarh Fort, home to the world’s largest cannon on wheels. It was fired only once, back in the 1700s. The cannon operator went deaf, the cannonball made a crater 35 kilometers away which formed a lake, and the Rajputs never fired it again since it basically scared the poo out of them.
An Indian woman at Jaigarh Fort asked me what country I was from, then what state. I asked her where she was from and she said she was Punjabi. I told her that I lived in New York City, that a lot of our cab drivers are Punjabi and started to tell her how crazy they are behind the wheel. I explained that in America we are not allowed to drive outside of the road lanes, but that at stoplights the Punjabis will pull up next to another car and try to outrun them when the light turns green, even when there is absolutely no room to pull this off. Her whole family was laughing hysterically and she threw her fist into the air and shouted the Punjabi cry of joy, “Balle, balle!”
The family and I sat in the chairs outside of Jaigarh Fort eating ice cream and talking about our day. A group of young Punjabi Sheiks, all in their mid-twenties, approached Rajiv. Sheiks are northern Indians from the state of Punjab; their religion is an off-shoot of Hinduism, but they are not vegetarians. They never cut their boys’ hair– they wear turbans from a young age grow their beards long. Their spokesman talked to Rajiv, staring at the ground, kicking dirt, and Rajiv started mimicking his behavior, also staring down, kicking dirt. I wouldn’t have guessed that they were talking about me. Rajiv walked over to me and said softly, “He is saying he wants one photo. Just one.”
I stopped my conversation with Sonali and Ravina and said that would be fine, thinking that the young man would walk over and take the chair next to me. Instead, all seven of the Sheiks surrounded me, and the spokesman held up a camera and took one photo. Each Sheik shook my hand and thanked me, and then one of them took the camera from the spokesman, who then sat in the chair next to me and posed for a picture alone. He said thank you, they left, and I tried to pick up my conversation with Sonali and Ravina like nothing happened.
The entire thing was absurd. It reminded me of the time my little brother saw a Chinese kid at the mall in Austin and dragged him over, shouting, “Dad! Look what I found!”
We went down the mountain to walk through Jahuri Bazaar, which was pure, unadulterated madness. It literally took 5 minutes of time just to cross the street in the bazaar because there were so many cars, people, and a million other things in my way. I looked like money to all the salesmen standing outside their stores, telling me any lie I’d listen to in order to get me inside. “Come in, come in, come in!” they yell, one after another, side by side by side. I bought sandals that I would wear every single day for the rest of my trip, long skirts, tunics, bracelets and silk scarves. Except for a few t-shirts and a pair of Diesel jeans, I had brought almost no clothing in my backpack from New York. I came to India with only a few pieces and one pair of Saucony trainers that I planned to toss out upon departure from New Delhi in three weeks.
I wanted more than anything to find a great pashmina on our shopping trip but had no idea of what to look for or how much to spend. On the recommendation of other stores, we went to a place called K.K. Arts. From the moment we walked in the door I knew it was going to be a different experience from where we’d been.
The salesmen didn’t try to sell me a single thing, though they were the most knowledgeable salesmen I would speak with in my entire visit. They wanted to educate me on the difference between real and fake pashmina, explaining that most super soft “pashminas” are actually viscose, and they pulled one of each out for me to feel. The real pashmina has a little grab to its texture and the fabric sticks to itself. The fake felt slippery in comparison. The fakes are all over the streets of New York for $10 each, and finally I understood why. But take it or leave it was their attitude. They couldn’t care less.
Because of the holidays the salesman said he was low on colors—only about 30 to choose from! The best quality scarves— or near-best anyway— were 140 dollars American each. I bought two; by far the most money I spent on a single item the entire time I was in India. Sonali helped choose what colors I would get, and we decided on a dusty sky blue and a bright turquoise. By paying cash I talked the salesman down to 130 dollars American each, even though it was not the type of store to entertain haggling. I doubt that the quality of pashmina I bought that night is even available for purchase in the United States. If I want to buy more scarves in the future, the owner will ship them from India for a $9 charge.
Sonali was helpful and happy with my choices, but I knew that in 20 minutes I had dropped over three times the monthly income of the average Indian family on two scarves that I would rarely wear once I moved home to the warmth of Texas. Calculate the gross monthly income of your family, multiply it by three, and imagine spending the entire amount, on a whim, on two scarves. I could see in her face how she could not fully process such extravagance, though she was thrilled to have had a part in it.
We checked into a hotel that, like Rajiv’s house, was made entirely of marble. It was so cold in my room that I slept in thick, cotton work out pants, cotton socks, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wool cardigan, with a pashmina wrapped around my head and neck. I was still freezing the entire night. I also put in earplugs and wore a slumber mask (just picture all of this, my friends) because the street noise was so loud, I was beyond jetlagged, and I was really not comfortable turning off the light while sleeping alone in a strange city on the other side of the world. Of course, the mattress was made of coir, so I woke up ever few hours aching to my bones.
In the morning I greeted the family and quietly told Sonali that I didn’t want to stay another night in the hotel. Indians are such agreeable people. As soon as you voice an opinion they adopt it as if it was the very thing they were about to say themselves. No, we’d definitely not be staying another night they said. I ran back to my room and reappeared with my huge backpack all packed up and on my shoulders. They looked up and started laughing when they realized I’d packed up a long time ago and couldn’t wait to get out of there.
A few random thoughts from this journal:
“Acha, acha” must mean something like, “I see, I see,” or “OK, OK.” Rajiv says it constantly when someone is talking too much on the phone and he’s just listening. I like it.
Having a driver in India is a very strange relationship. You almost never know where he is and you may or may not have a phone number for him, but as soon as you need to go somewhere he’ll appear within three minutes of you walking to the car. I don’t even know where our guy slept, though Sonali said that some hotels have rooms with cots where drivers can sleep for cheap. Every time we walked outside, the driver would come running from a random direction and open the car doors.
Is there a major shortage of toilet paper in this country? Absolutely nowhere I went had toilet paper in the bathroom, and some places had a guy whose one job it was to stand outside of the ladies room and hand out paper towels to be used as toilet paper.
I never got over the surprise of being in crushing traffic and looking up to see someone riding a camel, or a cow kicking back relaxing in front of a store.
Jaipur had piss stalls in the streets, so you might accidentally look out the car window and catch a glimpse of someone relieving himself.
Rajiv was obsessed with picking his nose in the car. With all the dust in the air, it was understandable, but why does he think I don’t have peripheral vision? Mental note to not eat anything he hands to me. I kept offering him tissues and hand sanitizer, but he wasn’t having any of it. He must think I’m neurotic about germs. If he knew that I once washed my dog’s tennis ball with antibacterial soap and gave it back to her he’d understand me better.
We checked out of the hotel and went to look at City Palace, which was full of beautiful dresses that were worn by kings, not queens. We got tickets to see the weapons collection, which had the most guns and knives I’ve seen in one place in my whole life. The people running the museum spelled out “WELCOME” in knives at the entrance, which I found to be a little unnerving.
The palace itself was quite gaudy, and the 80+ year old queen still lived in it, though she rents out portions for functions, like the wedding that was taking place there later that day.
I wasn’t finished shopping so we returned to the bazaars. Rajiv wasn’t in the mood to find a bazaar that was only around the corner from where we’d been the night before, so I told him I’d go alone if there was something else he’d rather be doing. I think my words struck fear in him: fear of losing me in India, fear of pissing me off, fear of never getting paid. “Oh no,” he said in his bouncy Indian accent. “There is nothing we’d rather be doing. Just walking with you, that is all. Right by your side.”
Sonali cracked me up when she didn’t like the tourist price that venders were giving me for their items. She would jump into the conversation, assuming the exact same tone and demeanor as the salesman. If you were to walk into the situation you would not know who was selling and who was buying, and whether someone was leaving or someone was being kicked out. If the salesman wouldn’t go below 500 rupees for me, Sonali would say, while aggressively collecting her bags, “Yes, yes, 350 very good price for you, no problem.” The salesmen always looked betrayed and I’d smile at them. “You don’t give me good price? Then talk to my Indian posse.”
Rajiv and Sonali met through the matrimonial column in their local newspaper 15 years ago. “She is fair and comes from a good family,” Rajiv said the ad had read. They met once, decided to marry, and a year later Ravina was born.
During the ride back to New Delhi, Rajiv explained how difficult it is for an Indian or Pakistani to get a US Visa. Because of terrorism, the US doesn’t want any young Middle Eastern men coming for a visit. “I give them application,” he said. ”They ask 100 questions, I answer 100 questions, they put a reject stamp on my passport and give it back to me.” It may not sound funny, but it was hilarious coming from his mouth. “My father? He is old man. No problem. They just look at his age and say, ‘Come on in!’ I get 100 questions and a reject stamp on my passport.” It had never before crossed my mind that residents of a country that welcomes Americans with open arms are not welcome in America.
28 December Bombay
I was ready to move on to Bombay. I’m glad I had this experience and would definitely revisit the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort if I return to India in the future with someone who wants to see them, but there isn’t a lot about the people and culture of the north that suits me. Plus, I was itching to test the waters on my own—to look out for myself and meet more locals.
I noticed that, perhaps for the first time ever, I was appreciating the value of money. It didn’t take too long to realize that just because I can easily afford ten times more than the price someone is asking doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t only pay my fair share, or ask for a discount.
On day 3 I still hadn’t become sick, although one would expect a stomach bug soon after arriving in India. The family was very protective of where I ate, what I ate, and what brand of bottled water I drank since there were brands of fake bottled water sold at tourist sites. I would be the only tourist to come to India and get fat off the phenomenal lamb curry.
Landing in Bombay was an eye-opening experience since the plane flew over slums built into small mountains; so many slums that it looked like slums built on top of slums. People lived along the main roads, under tents in the dirt. I had never seen such poverty.
I bought a pre-paid taxi at the airport and an employee took my backpack off my shoulders to carry it to the car. I noticed that he nearly fell to the ground when I let go of the weight, but I walked off anyway. He put my bag in the back of the taxi, I got inside, and he leaned in the window whispering, “Do you eat something special in America?” I didn’t know how to respond to such an odd question. “How can you carry that bag?” he asked. “I want to eat what you eat.”
We drove past a train packed with people the way we see on our news. Car after car of men hanging out of the open doors, filled so far beyond capacity, barely hanging on. Some men riding on the roof, some between the cars, wedged in the space with their feet on the car in front of them and their back up against the one behind. Then car after car of only women, the colors of their beautiful saris blowing in the wind.
I had splurged on four nights at the Taj President hotel, which was beautiful and has a level of personal service unheard of in America. I sat in the lobby waiting to check in, acutely how aware of how happy I was to be an adult, have some money of my own, have no responsibilities (except to my parents to keep myself alive), and to have to answer to absolutely no one.
A call back home from the hotel room cost $5 per minute, so I headed down to the street to use the phone like everyone else in town. It was so simple—you just pick up the receiver and call America for 22 cents per minute, and pay in cash when you’re finished. I called the boyfriend and we talked a mile a minute for half an hour, then I handed over 300 rupees. We were laughing at how absurd I must have looked sitting on a plastic stool under a shack just off the street, talking on an old phone that was sitting on another plastic stool with a hole in it, surrounded by Indians who were shouting into all the other phones. It was such a dirty scene that thought my ear would get a disease.
In the morning I walked two miles through the fisherman slums to the harbor. Nobody walked in Bombay and everyone who passed by offered me a ride. That distance would only have been one dollar American in a taxi. The air was grey and hazy, thick, hot and muggy. I was sweating like I hadn’t sweated in the past four months of cool New York City weather.
I wanted to get my nails done but wasn’t seeing a salon, so I walked into the Intercontinental Hotel and asked for help. An employee tried talking me into taking a cab, but eventually he just walked me two blocks to the upscale Mariese Marron “beauty parlor only for the ladies,” he called it. Teak wood floors, ceiling, and framed mirrors. The furniture cushions were turquoise and the walls were painted cantaloupe orange. The owner ended all of her sentences with “Dah-ling” and obviously trained her staff to do the same.
A young guy gave me a very low-tech manicure and pedicure for eleven dollars American, and the quality of his work was probably the best I’ve ever experienced. I asked a question he couldn’t answer so “No English talking” was his response. He stayed quiet the entire time he worked, until he began the foot massage. He stared intently into my eyes, commanding “Relax” in an oddly deep voice. “Re-laaaax,” he repeated, trying to be sexy. I was disolving into giggles and had to tell him, “No English talking.”
I walked past a Bollywood theater and checked the ticket booth to see the price of a movie. Baabul was playing, 44 cents American, starting in 45 minutes. I bought a ticket and walked around looking for a place to eat, but I was so scared of having to choose a restaurant on my own that I decided to not have lunch at all. I walked through Bombay wearing sunglasses and a silk scarf wrapped around my head, which instantly cut down on 90% of strangers talking to me. But still I’d sometimes pass by a group of people and hear someone whisper, “She’s so beautiful” and I’d smile.
I sat in the grass of the open fields of the university watching a cricket game to pass the time, where children caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my arm and tried to scratch it off. The women beggars in the streets aggressively tried to get my attention since I looked like I was made of money. They would touch my skin with their diseased sores to shock me into feeling sorry for them, but instead they got their hands smacked away.
I stopped by the upscale New India House for gifts for my mom and sister, and I found a pretty silver and gold “wedding” ring for $20. I wore it everyday as a quick way to silence the marriage proposals. On my way back to the movie theater I saw a convenience store and bought some juice and cookies.
The usher escorted me to my assigned seat in the front balcony. I settled in to watch the beautiful movie and dancing actors with my pineapple cream cookies, totally able to follow the story even in Hindi, blissfully happy to see my very first Bollywood film.
I took a taxi back to the hotel rather than walking back the way I came. Most taxis in Bombay are 1960s Fiats, which are extremely uncomfortable. I’d read in my guidebook that the law requires Bombay taxi drivers to use their meters and rate charts, but to expect the drivers to hustle foreigners for money by just quoting prices. Sure enough, whenever I said the name of my hotel, a driver would quote me a price. I insisted that they turn on the meter and then they refused to take me at all—it was as if they all had an agreement to back each other up and pretend that this was the way that business was done. Another driver pulled up, I got into his cab, and then insisted that he hand me the rate chart that converts the meter reading to rupees. A minute later I saw that the meter should have started at 1.0 km but that his was starting at 2.5. I made him pull over and start again and he got furious with me.
The Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay is the most famous of all the Taj hotels. The bottom floor was full of shops like Luis Vuitton, Burberry, and an upscale shoe store called Joy. I bought beautiful, hand-embroidered flats that had only a strap over the top and a ring for the big toe for $75, which is very, very expensive for Indian shoes.
Later that night I decided that I needed to meet some hip people my own age, so I headed out to dinner at Indigo, one of the top 60 restaurants in the world. Walking into Indigo was like being transported to Miami Beach. I was a fish in water! The design, décor, music, food, staff, and patrons were all delicious. I sat at the bar and Ajay (pronounced Ah-shay) the bartender chose all my food. Within ten minutes I met Nikhel, an Oxford-educated British Indian local, home in Bombay for the holiday. He convinced me to buy a ticket to the restaurant’s New Year’s Eve party the following night (American prices— $150!) and he asked me to join him and his friends at the club Privé later.
Before I finished dinner, another British Indian named Jay sent over a dessert wine through the restaurant manager with the message that he thought it would go well with the vanilla soufflé that Ajay had picked out. Jay got his Master of Law at Oxford and his MBA at Harvard, which I only know because he worked it into the conversation. Jay thought I was an ex-pat who lived in the neighborhood since, according to him, I looked so completely at home having dinner alone at the bar. That’s a huge leap for the girl who was afraid to spend 48 hours alone in Paris just a few months ago.
Tickets for the restaurant’s New Year’s Eve party were sold out, but Ajay thought I should be able to buy one from the manager anyway. He sent his boss to speak to me, and the man left saying he’d be right back with my ticket. Ajay whispered, “Welcome to India.”
By the end of the night, Jay’s overly-self-deprecating personality was wearing on me. For crying out loud—he had a Harvard MBA and his own driver, but kept referring to himself as an untouchable— a member of the lowest Indian caste. When we left Indigo to meet Nikhel at Privé, there was an old man in Jay’s SUV. I asked why he had his own driver and he said that the old man was a friend. “But he was sleeping in the driver’s seat of your car,” I said. “And he drove us here.” Still he denied having a personal driver.
The Taj President Hotel was fantastic. Roses in the bathroom, everyone knew my name, and whenever I approached the front door an employee would run past me to open it. It was the same with the elevator: if I wasn’t on the ground floor someone would try to get in front of me and push the button while guessing which direction I was headed, shouting, “Are you going up, Miss Ross?” as they flew past. A woman at the front desk asked what kind of shopping I wanted to do, and then wrote out the stores I should go to. Someone rang my doorbell just to wish me a happy new year. I couldn’t serve myself my own dinner, scoot my own chair to the table, or pour my own water. I became so conditioned to being helpless that I noticed that if I needed more water I’d look at the bottle on the table and wonder why someone wasn’t already pouring it for me.
The hotel had the biggest and best free breakfast I’d ever seen: apart from a full Indian breakfast that was way too greasy and spicy for me in the morning, there was an omelet bar, eggs to order, nine kinds of fruit, nine kinds of fruit juice that were different from the fruits, breads, croissants, muffins, cereal bar, assorted nuts, yogurts, lassies (a sweet yogurt drink), cold cuts, bacon, cheese plate, pancakes, waffles and lunch food that I couldn’t even begin to look at. With so many people literally starving right outside the door, the idea of wasting food by taking too much was an appalling thought. I only took a plate of fruit with yogurt and a cup of tea every morning; if there were a few extra grapes on my plate when I was finished, I snuck them out and ate them later.
31 December New Year’s Eve
Then next day I returned to the “beauty parlor only for the ladies” for a body scrub, polish, massage and mask, all for 39 dollars American. For the grand finale I was given a fully-nude sponge bath given by a woman not much older than myself. I was eaten alive by the awkwardness of it all, regardless of the fact that she was completely comfortable with all my glory.
Back out on the street, the sun had set, the city was buzzing with the energy of New Year’s Eve, and I understood for the first time why Bombay is called the New York City of India. The excitement of the evening was palpable and contagious; something poverty could not dampen. I stood still on the sidewalk while people swarmed around me, getting to where they needed to be for the night.
I had dinner with a French couple at a Thai restaurant and panicked when I realized the time was a half hour till midnight. I ran outside to call the boyfriend and wish him a happy new year 11 1/2 hours early (yes! A time zone on the half hour!) before heading to Indigo. I hopped into a taxi and was a little horrified to see that the driver was burning two sticks of incense on the dash of his car—they could end up in my eye without warning in all the crazy traffic.
At a quarter to twelve my driver confessed that he didn’t know where Indigo was, even though it was famous. He pulled over and left me in the car as he ran off shouting, “One minute! Inquiry!” Tick, tick, tick.
The street in front of Indigo was closed to cars and I ran to the entrance a few minutes before midnight; I used my VIP skin to bypass the last-minute line at the door. I instantly met three super-friendly siblings from northern California and joined their group. Ajay and the other bartenders passed out confetti poppers. When the string on the back was pulled, they shot as loud as bb guns, raining down, covering my shoulders and arms in gold confetti like a second skin. Hundreds of them were passed out but I never got to set one off because I was too busy keeping my champagne covered with my free hand and posing for pictures with the siblings in the middle of all the chaos.
Just after midnight the DJ played the most famous Panjabi MC song and the crowd went bananas. I think I was the only non-Indian in the room who could bhangra, and I knew every beat of that song from dancing to it in my New York Sports Club bhangra class for the past two years. A circle formed around me and I could hear men saying, “Oh, wow.” The bartenders cleared off the bar and the manager tried to order me onto it, but I refused, pretending I didn’t see him, pretending I couldn’t hear. As much as I’d been dying to bhangra in India, I definitely didn’t want all that attention and I ended up running from the room until it passed.
I was back at the hotel by 2am, after taking one of the inebriated siblings to her own hotel since her brother and sister were still having fun and thought it was safe to send a tall blonde American girl back to their hotel in a taxi alone. But I didn’t mind; I was ready for bed. A half hour later the phone rang and the operator announced, “Mr. Lane for you, Miss Ross.” When you travel and people ask what hotel you’re staying at, you might think they’re only making conversation and it may not occur to you that they can call that hotel and ask for you by only your first name, but in India they can. The siblings wanted me to leave my hotel and continue the party with them at theirs, but I had to turn them down. I didn’t have the time for recovery in this vacation.
New Years Day 2007, Bombay
Bakri Eid is a special festival in the Muslim religion at the first of the year. I stepped outside to run an errand and was taken to my destination by Akbar. He waited on me for the errand, then took me shopping and arranged to pick me up to take me to the airport the following day. He was fluent in English and his taxi had a working A/C, so we were immediate best friends.
When Akbar dropped me off for shopping, he turned around and explained, “The first day of the year is very important because it is a forecast for the entire year to come. I was hoping that my very first customer of the very first day of the year would be someone special.” He smiled. “It will be a good year for me,” he said.
It was one of the kindest things I’d ever been told.
I bought a t-shirt for my next-door neighbor, Runn, at a men’s clothing store. The owner rang me up and wished me a happy new year, and said that he was glad I was his very first customer.
I went to a CD store to buy some music—one of my favorite things to do when I travel. The owner wasn’t wanting to unwrap any CDs so that I could listen and choose what I wanted, but then realized I was planning to buy four CDs so he obliged. We sat at the counter listening together while he made suggestions about what I might be looking for. I bought two bhangra CDs and two lounge Hindi beat CDs. He rang me up— $24 for four!—and I asked him if I was his first customer.
“No,” he said, knowing full well I was fishing. “You are the second.”
Waa-waah.
I walked past a drug store window and saw a tiny box of “Booty Gel” behind the glass. It didn’t matter what it was for, I was going to buy it for my Brooklyn-via-Atlanta next-door neighbor, Runn.
“Well, you see,” the man behind the counter explained in a low whisper, “you apply the gel to the penis. Then you take the gauze,” we both looked into the box at the tiny roll of gauze, “and you wrap the penis up overnight. And then, not quickly, but eventually, the penis grows.”
“Acha,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
“Well I think it’s best that you buy two or three; you won’t see maximum results with just one box.”
“Oh, I think one box will do,” and I thanked him, “danyvad.”
Every once in a while I’d go online to check in with a Tiger Trail program in southern India, hoping to get accepted for a trek. They had a two days/one night program and three days/two night program. If I got accepted I would re-route the rest of my trip around it because I was so excited about the possibility of seeing a tiger that I couldn’t sleep at night. The group would go hiking in the forest, taken deeper into the tourist zone than any other group is allowed to go. The guides are former tiger poachers and they know all the signs to look for to find a tiger. They make all the meals over a fire and stand guard at night with shotguns so that the campers don’t get trampled on by elephants. Not at all a very Robyn thing to do, but this was a new Robyn. If the tiger trek didn’t work out, then it didn’t work out. God forbid I force my will and end up getting eaten by a tiger.
I had lunch at Ali Baba Klay Oven—Tandoori prawns with garlic naan. The food was so spicy that I felt drunk when I stood up to leave and I was worried that I might fall as I walked down the street. My inner ear was all out of whack and I was afraid to depend on the kindness of strangers if I hit the sidewalk.
Random thoughts from this journal:
Women ride side-saddle on motorcycles, even the Muslims in burquas.
I peeked into a Hindu temple; 100 people were lined up to ring a bell, a pile of their shoes at the door.
Indian men are physically affectionate with one another in the spirit of “brotherly love,” I was told. They hold hands, fingers laced, arms draped around another’s neck, head resting on a friend’s shoulder. They walked down the street looking like skinny gay boyfriends who were simultaneously checking me out from top to bottom. I always felt dirty and tricked.
Since I kept looking the wrong way when I crossed the street, I was nearly hit by a car many times. Even when I did get it right (look right first instead of left), I might still be in danger of getting hit by a car that was driving the wrong way, or going down the street backwards.
At stoplights there are timers counting down to when the light will turn green—sometimes counting down from 120 seconds. Everyone turns off their engines while they wait, and at 5 seconds you hear all the engines starting again.
I’ve seen the “Indian head bob” gesture mean so many responses to my questions. It’s meant yes, no, go ahead, the answer is so obvious I’m not going to speak it, you’re crazy and there’s no way that you’re right, I don’t really want to do what you’re asking me to but I guess I have to, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Walking and shopping my way through the Colaba Causeway, sellers would try to catch my eye by trying to guess my nationality, “Hello Germany! Hello Holland!”
One young guy on the street was bothering me, just wanting some attention that I was unwilling to give. He tried making conversation all sorts of ways and finally called me baby, which made me look over at him and laugh. “Baby,” he said again. “Do you know that sweet name?”
Why don’t Indian men wear shoes while doing heavy manual labor and operating machinery? All I ever see them wearing is flip-flops!
When I got back to my hotel, Ajay the bartender had called and left a message, asking if he could take me up to see Juhu Beach Chowpatty for the New Year festival. I was dying to see Juhu—it’s one of the most affluent neighborhoods in all of Bombay and is where the Bollywood stars live. Ajay took the train from one hour east to pick me up, and together we took a cab one hour north. Every 30 minutes for four hours he would produce another tiny rose from one of his pockets and present it to me like a little schoolboy.
A chowpatty (pronounced cho-potty) is like a big fair on the beach, packed with people at night. I was eating food I’ve never seen, egged on by Ajay to be adventurous. A food vendor would take tiny, thin, hollow fried balls and punch holes in them with his thumb (which was gross, but whatever—I was too busy being “adventurous”) and fill them with soup. Then I’d have to pop the whole ball into my mouth and crunch down while it explodes. I had to be fast or they would get soft and leak in my hands.
Ajay snuck off to have a surprise red/purple drink made for me from some kind of fruit and spices. He was sad when I told him I couldn’t drink it because it was made with local water, but then he took my bottle of water and had the vendor make it again. The boy would do anything to make me happy. The drink was delicious! Too bad I have no idea what it was.
Ajay asked me why I loved Bombay and I told him about the feeling I had at sunset—the city was buzzing like it had a pulse I could feel. Electricity was in the air. So much like New York when the weather is perfect, except without all the jaded residents. He loved my answer since he loved Bombay too—he’d moved there to become a movie star; something that can’t be done in any other city in the country.
Ajay, like many others, loved that I loved India. Loved that I was excited, open-minded, up-for-anything, well-read in the country’s history, architecture, culture, music, and dance. I ate food without knowing what it was, and I loved it all. Maybe it’s just me, maybe the timing was right in my life.
Sellers walked through the sand offering beach toys, crafts, homemade food. Some men were completely stripped down to their underwear, sitting on towels, receiving full-body massages from other men. Flabby bodies, hairy backs, all exposed. So painful to see. I asked Ajay why men in such a conservative country would practically be nude in public for everyone to look at.
“Oh, come on!” he yelled. “Americans do it too! I see it in the movies.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?”
“You know! That show—Bayvatch? They run all over the beach in their underwear.”
“Those are swimsuits!” I protested. “The material is thicker and stretchy and doesn’t turn see-through when it’s wet!”
“Svimsuits?! They’re half-pants!”
I didn’t know what half-pants were, but they sounded personal.
We walked through the crowd to an emptier part of the beach, sitting in the sand, facing the ocean. We listened to Nusrat on my ipod and Ajay translated the song, “My love, I cannot live without you, my love.” I laughed when he’d bhanga dance without getting up, raising his arms, doing the shoulder shake, a huge smile on his face knowing how happy I was. Then fireworks exploded over the ocean! Anyone who knows me knows that fireworks are my most favorite thing in the world. This was my best day in India so far.
Once again, there was not another white person in sight and slowly, a small crowd of men had half-encircled us from behind. They were literally wanting to do nothing more than sit in the sand and watch me watch the ocean. I was so disturbed when I discovered them that I had to leave immediately. “Indians are very lazy people,” Ajay explained. ”They don’t want to work at real jobs, but they see it was their job to harass people. They’re professionals at that job.”
We made our way back through the crowd and entire groups of people stopped talking and stared when they saw us. I started saying, “Hello! Happy New Year!” and they would be startled but say it back; Ajay walked beside me, keeping his head low and laughing while I waved like a parade queen.
We took an auto rickshaw from Juhu down to Bandra to catch a cab, which was so much fun even though I thought we might die. The night air was perfect but cars zoomed around us and everyone was yelling at the sight of the Indian boy and the American girl.
Ajay said this was a wonderful way to spend the first night of the first day of the New Year, and how lucky he was to spend it with me. I’m sure he spent an absurd amount of his salary on my taxis and food, but he thought I was worth it.
Akbar called at 9am to take me to the airport. I’d shopped so much I thought I wouldn’t be able to close up my backpack and I’d also packed up all the toiletries in a small Taj laundry bag to bring home to Ravina when I returned to Delhi in a few weeks. Literally, the back pack could not hold one more thing.
I was devastated to find out that the Wild Life Reserve in Thekkidy wasn’t going to work with my schedule so that I could go on the Tiger Trail at the end of my trip in the south. They were insisting that I do the 3 day/2 night program if I participated because they already had a group together. To go on the trek I would have to change my ticket back to America, and I simply didn’t have the money to do it. I cried about it for a little while, but it wasn’t the same no one to comfort me.
When I picked up the newspaper and saw the photos of Saddam Hussein’s execution, I felt like I’d woken up from a coma and years had gone by. How quick that whole process from trial to death had been. The fact that he was executed on Bakri Eid was terribly insensitive timing for Muslims, and was not something my friends in America were even aware of.
I was making my way south, again. I landed in Goa and was surprised at how I now hit the ground running. I didn’t feel the need to nap for an hour, or eat dinner alone in the hotel—all of which is just hiding out. Now, instead, I felt the clock ticking on the time I had left of my trip.
Sanjay my driver was waiting outside the airport and took me to the Panjim Inn, a 200-year old heritage hotel comprised of 3 buildings and only 25 rooms. It was pricey for Goa– $40 per night and filled with European backpackers.
Sanjay complimented me on my fingernails, which were painted a pale baby pink called “Sugar Daddy.” I thought that was odd, but whatever. I was so happy to be somewhere warm, clean, sunny, and full of palm trees that I ignored anything weird.
Goans speak English with a Portuguese accent, even though very few of them speak any Portuguese. They don’t have the bouncing Indian accent of Indians from the north.
Panjim is a darling city with balcony restaurants, Portuguese architecture, and big paper star lanterns hanging from roofs in celebration of Christmas. There are a lot of Catholics in the state—far more than anywhere else in India. I dropped off my bags, grabbed my swimsuit, and asked where the nearest beach for sunbathing was. I jumped into an auto-rickshaw for the 15 minute ride north.
We passed a bar called “Drinky’s Bar” and the name made me laugh. If I ever own a bar, that’s definitely going to be the name. My driver wanted to wait for me while I lounged around but I told him not to wait.
I was beyond disappointed with the beach. Surely there were better places to go than here. It was packed with fully-dressed Indian men who all wanted to stare at me just ten feet from my face. A few Europeans were there in their swimsuits, and the Indian men treated them like they were watching a peep show. I kept my clothes on.
I ate prawn curry rice—a Goan specialty—on the beach while the women who sold jewelry shoo’d off anyone trying to take my picture. Sometimes one would sneak up close and get near enough for a friend far away to snap a photo. I still caved when women asked for photos, though. The local Goans were not the problem– it was Indian tourists from interior India.
Everyone loved the sun tattoo on my arm. I stayed in my beach bed until the sun dipped into the ocean, and reluctantly started making my way back to the road. I wanted more sun and I couldn’t wait for tomorrow.
Three hours after I told him to get lost, my driver found me as soon as I reached the steps that lead to the road.
3 January, Anjuna, Goa
In the morning I woke up sad and I wrote about everything that was bothering me. I was disappointed that the nearest beach was slammed with gross tourists from rural India. I was tired of my appearance being such a spectacle and I was unexpectedly sick of people taking my picture. I was stressed out that my landlord back in Brooklyn is such a numbskull and was telling my boyfriend that I was supposed to have moved out of my apartment on New Years Eve. I was anxious that I wasn’t making any money and nervous that I’d spent way more on internal flights and high-end gifts than I budgeted for. I missed my boyfriend, somewhat. And Sarah and Roxy and my sister and Daisy dog and maybe 10 days alone really was all I could handle? “Alone.” Ha! I hadn’t been alone for an hour since I’d arrived.
I laid in bed and wondered, “How on Earth did I end up in India?” I couldn’t remember. But why did I stay? What am I doing?”
I’m understanding our world better, one country at a time. Seeing America from a different perspective and realizing that there is a view of the world that is not constricted by American filters. I’m learning about the human race—the similarities and the vast differences across cultures. Differences that help me understand the same people back home so that the phrase “It’s just a cultural difference” has real meaning to me. I understand where they’re coming from because I’ve been to their home and I’ve see how they live with my own eyes. I better understand their views on women, politics, marriage, work, money, family, America, food, and why the hell they drive like they do. I get it now.
And I want to get all of it: Germany, France, Prague, Israel, Moscow, Tibet, Costa Rica, Bali, China, Vietnam, Japan, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, Australia. More Paris, a lot more Italy. I want the whole world to be my home, wherever the doors are open to me.
I’m learning. Being more independent, forcing myself to rely on no one’s decision-making ability but my own. Gaining confidence in myself. Forcing myself to be more proactive because if I don’t make some forward motion, the whole day could be wasted. Get up, open the guide book, pick something, and go do it.
I walked out of the hotel and the same auto-rickshaw driver said he’d take me up to Anjuna, for the Wednesday “hippy market.” Sonjay, my driver from the hotel, hopped in beside me and said he was coming along “for enjoyment.” That was fine with me, but as soon as we got one block away he jumped out, waved goodbye, and ran off. So many of the men acted like schoolboys around me.
Anjuna was a wonderful hippy paradise. An enormous open, dirt-filled lot built up every Wednesday morning with shop after shop. I walked through the market for two hours and only saw half of it. There were beautiful skirts, dresses, jewelry, shoes, scarves, spices, Indian trance CDs. Then deeper inside I went, the less Indian and more European it became, and the trance beats pounded louder.
In the outer parts, tiny young Indian girls asked me to visit their shops. They introduced themselves in perfect English, shook my hand, lead me over. So precocious. “Just please, Robyn, darling. Come take a look. If you don’t buy anything, that’s OK too. It won’t break my heart.” I wanted to buy something from girls like this simply because I liked them so much and wanted to contribute to helping them and their families.
A second, smaller girl touched my skin and whispered, “You are so white.”
“Looking is free!” all the vendors would call from the front of their stalls.
Two hours later, I ended up two acres away from the entrance I came through, and yet my driver was right in front of me, waiting. And Sanjay was with him too! He took me to a Goan seafood restaurant for lunch where the food was so spicy it gave me a fever.
After lunch I went to the Anjuna beach alone, but the part I ended up at was rocky with black sand. Hardly anyone was on it except for a few Indian tourists, one of whom headed towards me immediately and asked for a photo. I was all alone and I told him no. His friends stayed at the water, but turned around staring at me so I made them face forward and look at the ocean until they gave up and left.
For the first time in India I was finally alone. I spread my skirt out on the sand and laid on it, listening to my ipod and keeping one eye open for sneaky Indians.
My ipod was on “shuffle” and Dido’s “Mary’s in India Now” came on. I smiled at the coincidence.
Even though I was initially disappointed that the beach I ended up at was rocky, I thought of Mary, one of my best friends in Texas, and how instantly she sees the good in every unexpected situation. I wanted solitude? If it were a more comfortable, sandy beach, it would be packed with people!
After an hour I headed back up to the road and my driver was waiting for me at the top of the steps. We drove back to Panjim in his auto-rickshaw—a tiny car built on a three-wheeler. I was starting to feel sick. My head was pounding and what if I got malaria from the two mosquito bites I got on the beach with Ajay in Bombay? Why do I always forget to put repellant on my feet?
Successive speed bumps just a few inches apart, I learned, are called rumblers. Taking rumblers in a rickshaw is not fun.
Back at the hotel I showered off, wrapped a scarf around my head hippy-style, grabbed my camera and left again. The sun was setting and Sanjay was up the block working on a motorcycle. He saw me, started it up and said, “Come.” Gladly.
To Indians, “come” doesn’t mean “come here” like an order. It’s a welcome. Sanjay took me through the hills to the next town. I was so happy on the back of his bike. It was 75 degrees, clean ocean air, the wind blowing my scarf behind me. We were going too fast for anyone to make much a fuss over seeing me. I was turning into such a diva.
Back in Panjim I went for dinner at a superb tiny upstairs restaurant called Hospedana Venite, highly recommended in my guidebook for its food and atmosphere. The walls were covered with the writings of tourists long gone; the philosophical yammerings of European hippies, written in nearly every language of the continent. I sat at the bar looking over the menu, talking to a young French hippy, wishing I could go back to Paris soon. I ordered the seafood pasta, which was absolutely heavenly, and Fanylon the bartender asked me to come back for breakfast.
But something was wrong. I could only eat a few bites of my food because I thought I might throw up. My head was still pounding from earlier in the day on the rickshaw. I wanted to get back to the hotel and lay down. Fanylon scolded me for wasting my food. I felt so guilty for not eating.
The owner of the restaurant stopped me on my way out and asked to see my India guidebook. I wondered if he was looking for the review of his restaurant and he said that he was. He said he’d heard it was written up in the book, but this was his first time to see it. How amazing for the owner of a tiny place in a tiny town in India to have his restaurant reviewed in a book sold all over the world. I was more than happy to be the first person to show it to him. “Are you from California?” he asked. “Almost,” I said.
I woke up several times in the night drenched in sweat, even though the A/C was blasting on high. I spent the first two hours of the morning never further than 20 feet from the toilet. I was exhausted and dehydrated. When I could finally venture into public, I went straight to the pharmacist to get some medicine. At first he wanted to give me something I didn’t need, then he wanted to give me another thing I didn’t need.
“I want to get this out of me!” I pleaded.
“OK,” he said, trying to understand. “Tell me exactly what your stool is like.”
“What?!”
“When you go to the toilet. What happens?”
I looked around the tiny pharmacy. There were six of us in it, five of them looking at me for my answer. Only two of them worked there.
I gave him a “Do I really have to answer you?” face, but it was lost in translation. He was waiting for my description.
“It won’t stop,” I told him, but he still wanted more. “It’s like water,” I whispered loudly, make ugly eyes at the strangers who were so interested in my troubles.
“Ah!” he shouted to someone in the back of the store. “Like water!”
He gave me a four-day course of antibiotics for $3 and I never went back again.
My stomach was uneasy for the rest of the day, so I stayed in town and walked for miles. I went to St. Sebastian Chapel but it was closed. I went to the Church of Immaculate Conception, but was disappointed to see a Catholic Church decorated like a gaudy Hindu temple. I went to Café Coffee Day and had a black currant smoothie, which was awesome. I wanted to see a particular Hindi film but it didn’t start for three weeks so I chose another. The ticket-takers kept warning me that the film was in Hindi, not understanding how over-acted their movies are and easy to follow. We all had to stand for the national anthem before the movie started.
No one could believe I’d walked to town from my hotel even though it was only thirty minutes. Nobody walks anywhere in Panjim because they all have motorcycles. Whenever someone warned me that something was 20 minutes away on foot, it was only 10.
After talking to Fanylon the crazy bartender about how I wanted peace and quiet and solitude, we decided that instead of Palolem, I should change my next destination and visit Majorda Beach. Would I have a bed waiting for me at the guest house he called in Majorda Beach tomorrow? Was I really going to visit a city on the word of a crazy bartender?
5 January
I went on a two-mile run through Panjim and everyone was smiling at me. I was for sure the only person running anywhere that day. I ran the 200 steps to the Monkey Temple, the most beautiful temple I’d seen, and stood at the top over looking Panjim.
Sanjay was supposed to take me up to the Arambol and Asvem beaches but he ditched me to make more money by waiting for someone at the airport. I had hotel reception call him on his cell phone and make him feel guilty, and he promised he’d be back in an hour. I went with another driver instead.
Santos drove me up to Arambol, which was a refreshing break from the Indian tourists. Everyone around me was speaking French, Italian, Spanish. Indian women were very aggressive about selling “their” jewelry, which, by now, I recognized as being mass-manufactured crap. But the worst thing about Arambol Beach was that there were way too many cows. A stray dog started barking at a stray cow and caused the cow to charge through some sunbathers, which looked crazy dangerous. Then right in front of me, two bulls starting fighting, horns locked.
I packed up my camera and passport into my skirt, tied it into a knot, left it on the beach, and made a run for the Arabian Sea wearing my bikini and loads of Indian jewelry. The water was crazy warm! Later that day, I’d learn that two Indians had drowned at Arambol because the current was so strong. I swam out to sea and caught a wave so powerful that I screamed at the top of my lungs riding it back in, nearly losing both parts of my swimsuit. I was beyond happy being such a fish. It was one of my favorite moments in India.
Then I went a few miles south and discovered Asvem Beach. This is where I belonged. At 4:30 in the afternoon there were only 50 people for as far as my eyes could see. I ran to the ocean, dumping my stuff off in the sand, and hit the water as fast as I could. The waves, the wind, the current were so strong that I was laughing at the water. For serious—I couldn’t hardly swim out from shore, and I’m pretty sure that I’m a really strong swimmer.
Santos dropped me off back at the hotel and I went across the street to look at the hotel art gallery. When I emerged, Sanjay was on his bike, waiting for me. “Did you go to Monkey Temple yet?” he asked, sheepishly. Accepting his apology for standing me up, I went inside, changed into jeans, and hopped onto the back of his bike. We winded our way up the road to Monkey Temple so I could take a few pictures in the setting sun.
“Santos. He good driver?” Sanjay asked, jealously.
For dinner I wanted to go to Simply Fish, a restaurant in the next town at the Marriot Hotel, but Sanjay was gone when I was ready to go. A taxi to the hotel was 250 rupees, or $5.60, but now that I was in an Indian state of mind, that was way too expensive. I hopped onto another motorcycle for 40 rupees, which made Sanjay jealous again when he heard about it. Besides, I prefer riding a motorcycle any day.
My driver, Babu, wanted to pick me up after dinner too, so we arranged for him to come back in 90 minutes. It was funny to me how all the drivers were so eager to lock down future business that they’d wait any amount of time to take me somewhere else.
Simply fish served four things: local snapper, sea bass, prawns, and lobster; they made four sauces and had potatoes and vegetables. That was it. The restaurant was poolside overlooking a bay of the Arabian Sea, and I wished for the first time that I wasn’t so alone. But the food was phenomenal, possibly the best fish I’d ever had.
The kitchen was open to view from the outside, and all the chefs were adorable. Alex, the supercute manager, started the conspiracy to not let me leave the restaurant. The waiter wouldn’t bring my bill, and ushered me to the bar. When I ordered a drink, Alex popped up and whispered to the bartender, “Make it a double on my tab.” When I was finally going to be late meeting Babu and insisted on leaving, each chef lined up outside and bowed his head as I passed by. A girl could get used to this.
I ran down the steps past all the cab drivers calling out to give me a ride. I was afraid of not recognizing Babu, but he kick-started his bike and drove away from the other motor-taxis to grab me off the driveway and we were gone. I knew how cool it made him look to do that and it made me smile.
6 January
The road outside of my hotel was lined with taxi drivers who had heard I’d be going for a jog in the morning.
“You take exercise?” they asked as I ran by.
I ran up the steps to Monkey Temple and stood at the top, a Catholic girl listening to a Hasidic Jew singing reggae on her ipod, standing at the top of a Hindu temple. Later that day I checked my e-mail and got a note from Sarah who was visiting Vietnam, saying she ran that morning listening to the very same mix I was running to.
I went for breakfast and asked Fanylon the bartender, “What color are the bananas today?” Pink bananas. I don’t want any pink bananas. “Acha nahee,” I’d say. No good.
Most people in India are willing to do anything for a small price; some for no price at all. A driver will pick up something at a market for me, my bartender will book a guesthouse in another city.
Fanylon was a tiny, skinny dark-skinned Indian with a huge grin who wore the same clothes everyday. He would say inappropriate things to me at every opportunity, pretending that he couldn’t help himself when I was around. I really liked the restaurant where he worked, but Fanylon irritated the poo out of me. When he confessed that the guest house he was sending me to actually belonged to his sister and her husband, I nearly backed out of going. What if they were just as irritating? A whole family of irritating Fanylons? “No, no,” he promised. “They’re nothing like me.”
Fanylon asked what I did for work back in America. I told him I was a lawyer and he nearly fell down laughing. “You’re not a lawyer! A lawyer who looks like a fashion model! Haha hahaha!” For days he’d tell anyone who would listen that I was a lawyer and asked if they believed it.
Fanylon worked at Hotel V from 8am to midnight, 6 days a week. He loved his job that much.
It was nice to stay somewhere long enough that people knew my name and expected to see me everyday. I liked figuring out people’s senses of humor, being around long enough to form inside jokes. They wondered how I was doing, said they would miss me when I was gone.
Sanjay was outside of my hotel and said that he’d be taking me when I was ready to go. As I walked away he asked, “You bring me no food?” I reached into my bag and produced an orange that Fanylon had just given to me. Sanjay ate it as I headed back inside.
I loved the ease of that exchange but it made me sad to think that this friendship was nearly over and I would have to start again somewhere new.
Sanjay, and everyone else I met in India after Bombay, thought I had a husband back home. Whenever people asked about my husband, I would quickly turn the question back and ask about their spouse. I asked Sanjay if he had any children. “In process,” was his curt reply.
“You take beer?” men would often ask. They love the Kingfisher Beer in India.
“I love the sea,” I told Sanjay one day, as we were lounging on a covered deck, overlooking the beach at Asvem, taking one beer. “I love watching the waves breaking, over and over and over.”
I glanced over at him with a peaceful look on his face, waiting for him to agree with me, but he was watching a fat man on the beach who was trying to get comfortable in a chair.
“I love watching the stomach,” Sanjay said, pointing to the Australian in the sand, patting his own belly with one hand and holding his Kingfisher in the other. “I like. So beautiful.”
Then he declared, “When I have that stomach I will lay in the sun reading my newspaper!”
Sanjay nearly did have that stomach, but his high body image kept him from realizing it.
Then Sanjay announced, “I will swim today, but only with you. I am not a strong swimmer.”
“But what will you swim in?” I asked, looking at his taxi driver uniform.
“Is OK,” he said. “I bring.”
Oh no. This made me nervous. “Is OK, I bring” is how I came to see my driver and his big belly in teeny tiny man bikini cotton underwear, clinging to all of his parts, wave after wave, as he nervously tugged at them.
And his hair! Only once did I see his hair even look wet, and that’s when I noticed that he was going bald. When I turned my head away, he quickly repaired his hairdo and was back to looking like his regular Hair Club For Men self within seconds. He didn’t let another wave touch his hair for the rest of the day.
I left him near the shore and swam out 100 yards, past the breaking waves and floated in total silence and total solitude, giddy with happiness from being in the water. Then I had a waking nightmare of a sea creature pulling me under by my ankle like something from Pirates of the Caribbean and I would disappear forever; no one would even have a clue about how I died. I quickly swam back to be within eyesight of all the other people in case a sea creature attacked.
We dried out, side by side in the sun beds under a thatch roof, and the only sound I could hear was the wind moving through the woven bamboo. The beach and all Australians were silent. Sanjay and I walked the beach looking for shells and pretty rocks for my little sister Rylee; tiny crabs burrowing in the sand looked like mini-volcanoes erupting. We drove back down to Panjim, talking about vegetarians.
“Do you eat beef?” I asked Sanjay.
“Yes! And fish curry rice! Fish curry rice! Everyday fish curry rice!” he was shouting. Then quietly added, “And sometimes chicken.”
I was laughing. He was so funny to me. He continued on, “I am vegetarian but I eat beef, and pork, and chicken and dog.” I was laughing so hard that he couldn’t stop talking. “I’m vegetarian except for buffalo, tiger, and dog. Small ones.”
“Tigers are protected animals! You do not eat them!”
“Yeah, we go into the park and shoot them and eat them.”
I told him that my face hurt from smiling too much. Then he got serious.
“Tomorrow my best friend is leaving. You smile but I am crying.”
Sanjay was obsessed with my baby pink Sugar Daddy nails. He mentioned them every time he saw me. I finally told him that I’d give him the polish and he could give it to his wife to wear, but he had to stop talking about it. I knew, though, that he really wanted the polish for himself. He dropped me off when we reached the hotel and waited outside, shouting, “Go get the polish!” as I walked away. I had a feeling that his nails would be Sugar Daddy pink when he picked me up in the morning, and they were.
Random thoughts:
“You have a good height,” people say, over and over.
We can fill up a car with Petrol in under a minute. Why is it so fast?
Everyone noticed how I hold my pen when I write. I guess there is one very specific way to hold a pen when you’re raised in India and I was holding it wrong.
To me, by this point, everything had a negotiated value in the neighborhood of two dollars American, or under 100 rupees. A skirt? Two bucks. Sandals? Two bucks. A nice meal? Two bucks. I wondered if this would curb my spending back in the U.S., land of the brand.
Sanjay is stuck on the word “hippy.” “Funny word,” he said. “Hippy. Hello, hee-pee. Hippy, hippy, Heee-peee.”
When Fanylon called the guest house, the cell phone he rang played Hindi ring-back tones.
Every little corner store sold Axe body spray, and all the bottles were covered in dust because nobody there used it, but it made me miss my boyfriend, who does.
The British word for cookie or cracker is biscuit, and the corner store sold a biscuit brand called Snacky. Snacky became my new favorite word.
This is the first place I’ve ever been where nobody has any idea what I’m saying if I speak a word in Spanish. I’m teaching Sanjay a few Spanish words, like “beer” and “shut up.”
I love that I can be late for everything and nobody here cares. Time means nothing to these people.
I used to be scared to death of being in public alone, and I thought that the only people who traveled alone did so because they didn’t have any friends. Now I realize that I was projecting my own fears of being perceived as friendless onto these lone travelers. I am not friendless; anyone who knows me knows this. But I only have one life and I’m no longer going to pass up a movie, a concert, or exciting adventures just because it would mean that I’d have to go alone.
Everyone I met—all of them are coming from one state and going onto another. My three weeks in India is nothing compared to the three months Europeans take. We were all heading north to south or east to west; been someplace the other person is heading to. It was so easy to find things in common with them. One girl was from a town in Canada that was very close to my brother’s wife’s home. One guy lived in San Diego, just a few hundred miles away from Pepperdine.
7 January
I had my last breakfast at Hotel V with Fanylon, who faked a heart attack every time I looked at him. “Your style makes me crazy,” he’d whisper in my ear, making me lose my appetite. I was wearing t-shirts backwards so that my chest was covered up to my collarbones, $2 necklaces bought on the beach, and a $4 skirt from the hippy market. Plus I was sunburned. “No one in Majorda will believe you are a lawyer.”
Sanjay and I departed for Majorda, about one hour south, with the only directions from Fanylon: “Before Majorda Beach, make a left.”
He drove fast and hardly spoke, blasting Christina Aguilera at full volume. Beautiful mansions lined the road along the way.
“Next time you come,” he finally said, “you bring family. I grow stomach and you grow baby.”
We arrived at a three-way intersection, so we decided to make a left. We were in a residential neighborhood without any street signs. After a few blocks Sanjay pulled over to look at the business card Fanylon had given me. Sanjay called a phone number on the card and was speaking to a woman when she walked out of the building right next to us! We had found the guesthouse completely on accident! “Write this in your book,” Sanjay said, laughing.
The owner carried my bags up three flights of stairs of the lovely house. I was about to walk into my room when Fanylon appeared on the stairs below, singing out the word, “Hell-o!”
“Nooooooo!” I howled, unable to disguise my horror. My knees buckled; I nearly succumbed to the urge to fall down and start crying.
Fanylon grabbed the keys and went to open my door for me. “How are you, Robyn? How was your trip?”
“Do you know I came here to be alone? No disturbances!” I pleaded, trying to take the key from him. The thought of Fanylon following me around for the next two days was more than I could bear. I was so looking forward to silence and sunny beaches in solitude. I was devastated by his presence.
“No, no,” he said. “I took the bus down from Panjim just to welcome you. Now I have to catch another bus back and go to work.” And then I felt like crap.
Fanylon had a sister named Violet and a brother named Victor. Violet was married to Rony (“Ronnie”) and Rony had a 17-year old sister named Lourdes (“Ludes”). Together they all lived with Ronnie and Lourdes’ parents in one house, and the guest house sat next door.
Fanylon introduced me to Lourdes. “Lourdes, this is Robyn. Do not disturb her.”
“Lourdes,” I interrupted, “you are not disturbing me. Fanylon, let me call Sanjay! He just left. He can’t be very far away. He can come right back and take you up to Panjim immediately.”
The guest house was by far the nicest home I stayed in while I was in India, and I paid $27 per night to be there at the end of high season.
I walked to the beach a half a mile away. Teenaged boys playing soccer at the water’s edge stopped to stare at me as I passed by, so I quickly conjured up my old soccer moves, stole their ball, and kicked it down the shore.
Only about 20 meters into the sea, the water was completely calm. I swam just beyond the breaking waves and floated in the super salty water with zero effort, barely moving. I was in heaven. Again. I walked about ¼ mile down the beach, past the Pepsi Cola corporate mansion, so that I was away from every other person. The sun was setting soon and for the distance of two football fields, I was all alone. No one was trying to sell me anything, no one was trying to take my picture, and there were no cows! I decided to try to meditate.
I closed my eyes. I could hear the ocean, the wind in my ears, and nothing else. I wonder what my boyfriend is doing? What do my thighs look like when I’m sitting cross-legged in a swim suit? Is that a fly touching me? ARRRRGH! Push the thoughts out! Maybe it would help if I made the sound. “Ommmm. Ommmm. Ommmm.” It did help. I lasted ten minutes and then went swimming again.
I soaked up the last bit of the sun, walking the beach listening to Sade on my ipod while I looked for shells for my littlest sister again. Such gorgeous shells on this beach and no one was looking for them but me. I was thinking again that this was my very best day in India. Everyday, every place is better than the last.
I grabbed my journal and wrote an entry: I learn about other people, but that is not all. I learn about myself—who I am, who I want to be. I learn how to adapt to other cultures, people, personalities. There are so many little moments not captured by camera or pen and paper, and those moments leave an impression on me; I am forever changed. It’s just in a tiny way, but it’s forever.
I slowly walked back to the guesthouse, along a road lined with beautiful homes, restaurants and shops. I felt like Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun. Had there been a $1,000 house for sale, I would have snapped it up. Such a small village feel to Majorda Beach, not very many taxis, very few tourists, only one high-end resort on the whole beach. I could walk everywhere, there were no backpackers (except me!) and most importantly, no rickshaws. I felt like the neighborhood existed for its residents, not for tourists.
I was developing a sinus infection so I stopped by an Ayruvedic doctor for a $5 treatment. He gave me an eye socket massage, I had to inhale steam mixed with oil that smelled like Ben Gay, and he put drops up my nose. Basically, nothing was accomplished except that I thought my eyes would burn out when they filled with oil because I opened them during the facial massage after he told me not to. Plus, I think he bruised my cheek bones when he fishhooked them.
The doctor and I sat at his desk and talked for a half hour afterwards, discussing sex in advertising in the U.S., marriage, and graduate-level education for Indian women. I didn’t want the conversation to end, but I had to get back to the house because the family had invited me to dinner.
I loved that family and could not believe I got to spend time with them all because of crazy Fanylon. Their energy was positive and loving, and they laughed at my jokes, right on time.
I arrived back at the house and Lourdes yelled at me like I was her very own sister, “We’re WAITING on you!” I showered off and met them downstairs where Rony picked us up in his brand new Hyundai, blasting country music cover songs on the stereo. Everyone sang along to the terrible covers, enjoying every word. “I’m a good bathroom singer,” Lourdes said.
Rony lived in Houston and Atlanta for the past three years. He worked for Carnival Cruises seven months out of the year, and came home for five months at a time. He sent his money home to his family, so they were living on an American salary with an Indian cost of living.
We sat at the restaurant with a live band performing. The lead singer wasn’t just singing, he was doing impressions of the original singers—Lionel Ritchie, Garth Brooks, Shaggy. It was hilarious, but only to me, since most of the family hadn’t heard the original songs.
Victor, who was a mild- mannered carbon copy of Fanylon, kept trying to get me to drink more beer, but he didn’t want Rony drinking any. “He has two beers,” Victor warned, “and he gets out of order.” They ordered more of the food that I liked; they wanted so much for me to be happy.
Victor worked as a steward for Celebrity Cruises and told me about a woman he just met on a trip to Brazil who brought three suitcases on board, just for herself. One was for make-up, one was for shoes, and one was for bikinis. Every five minutes she would change into a different bikini.
Lourdes studied my hands saying, “I love the foreigner nails.” I wished I had the nail polish to give to her.
I reached for my bag when the check came and Victor scolded me, “Hello! This is not America. You’re with the family. Put your purse away.”
North Indians were more money-oriented around me than the southerners. Even if they were family-like, I never forgot why the northerners were paying attention to me because they never stopped talking about money. Violet and Rony felt like instant friends, nearly family, who just happened to grab the bill, but next time would be my turn.
After dinner they asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I was stuffed and couldn’t wait to go on a walk. In New York, walking after dinner was a financial necessity and I’d grown to love it. How nice that I was with people who wanted to walk.
We walked together through the parking lot, telling stories about Fanylon. In about thirty seconds we reached the edge of the lot, someone announced, “OK, that’s it!” and we turned back.
“Let’s get some ice cream,” Victor said.
I was shocked at their feeble attempt at physical exertion. I acted out what I looked like in New York City, speed-walking through a crowded sidewalk while eating lunch and talking on my cell phone at the same time. They laughed hysterically, but couldn’t imagine living such a fast-paced life.
Both Victor and Rony had new motorcycles and every few hours I asked Victor to teach me to ride, but he always shut me down. “Only one lane of street, with two lanes of traffic. Absolutely not.” After a while I only asked him so that I could hear him say no.
8 January
I went for an early morning run—not because I didn’t want to sleep in, but because Majorda Beach had roosters that made sure I would not be sleeping in. The air was 70 degrees at sunrise and had perfect low humidity. Everyone along the road smiled and said good morning. I ran through new construction, bright houses of purple, yellow, turquoise blue, white churches, yards with puppies, piglets crossing the street. I ran past “The famous Martin’s Corner Restaurant,” as Lourdes called it, with pictures of cricket players, Bollywood stars, the Prime Minister and the owner of Kingfisher Beer on its walls.
There are two places in this world, so far, that I know I will return to when I have children of my own. Summers in Lucca, Tuscany, the tiny Italian town with cobblestone streets surrounded by high walls, and Majorda Beach, India, for Christmas.
Victor said that I was the first American he had ever met in Goa. Caucasians who visit the state are usually European or Australian; Americans don’t venture over this far, though Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made the newspapers when they were up in Panjim for a film festival in 2006.
One random note: Instead of cutting what little grass they had, the residents of Majorda set their yards on fire. Before I realized this was what was happening, I tried to get a shopkeeper to call the fire department for a huge blaze and he just stood there laughing at my concern.
When I was finished with my run, Rony made omelets and he and Violet and I had breakfast together. I told Rony that I was going to walk to the pharmacist to buy some decongestant and he became alarmed.
“But it’s far to walk!”
“I want to walk,” I said. “How far is it?”
“Twenty minutes!”
“That’s not bad. I’m used to walking.”
“In Atlanta I lived two blocks from the landromat and I would drive my car there,” Rony said.
Next door to the druggist where I bought nose drops and decongestants for less than $2 there was a little salon. I got a manicure and pedicure, both terrible, from the owner, Sona, and her two young employees. Sona asked that when I return to Majorda that I stay one night at her house, but I couldn’t really understand why she’d ask a stranger to do that. She loved my lipstick.
“What brand is it?” she asked.
“Christian Dior.”
“Oh. Do you know the number?”
“Sure,” I said as I dug in my bag. “Number 612.”
“OK, thank you.”
“Can you buy Christian Dior in Goa?” I asked.
“No. We have fake Christian Dior.”
The lipstick was brand new and cost about $17 or so at Bloomingdales. I buy them three at a time since 612 is my favorite color.
“Do you want it?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, and happily took it from my fingers and pocketed it. Two months later a letter from her arrived at my father’s house in Austin, thanking me again for the lipstick.
When I got back to the house, Lourdes and I took one of Rony’s Honda motor scooters to an Internet café so that I could show her how to get an e-mail account. Her college had a dial-up Internet connection, but the staff didn’t teach the students how to use it. We took the Honda out at sunset, with Lourdes driving and me on the back, making a visor over her eyes with my hands so she wouldn’t get hit by the mosquitoes.
With this family I forgot that I was half a world away from my home. They never acted like I was imposing, always welcoming me to join them.
Lourdes and I would be talking and she’d interrupt, grab my shoulders and say, “Don’t go. Stay here. Just a few more days.”
It broke my heart. I hadn’t factored falling in love with a family into my itinerary. She took my picture on her camera phone.
“Come back next year,” she ordered, very seriously.
“We’re going to be friends,” I said. “I promise you.”
Rony and Violet had a gorgeous four-year-old girl whose whole family used the phrase “so naughty” whenever they spoke about her. She had thick straight hair cut into an adorable bob, so black it was almost blue. The first second I met her, she handed me a little bag of potato chips to open and I felt like I belonged. She stomped everywhere she went.
Violet said that Marisha never remembered the names of any guests who came to visit. She just called them “hello” since that was what they said to her when they arrived. “Mama!” she’d yell. “New hello is here!” But with me it was Robyn this, Robyn that. “Robyn! Where you go? Robyn, you go sleep?” I left the main house because she kept trying to wipe chocolate cake on my Diesel jeans and she followed me next door shouting, “Mama! I go guest!”
Marisha was showing me all of her pretty dresses (“with matching headbands!” she screamed) when her mother held up one in particular.
“Who gave you this dress?” Violet asked.
“Foreigner!” Marisha squealed.
Blackouts happened in Majorda on a daily basis, but I hadn’t noticed since the lights went out during daylight hours. When the lights went out that night, Lourdes and Violet looked for flashlights and candles while Marisha flew around the dark house like she had night vision. Ten minutes later the lights came back on and I heard the baby exclaim from another room, “Thank you, Jesus!”
Twenty minutes later I heard her in the kitchen singing “Happy Birthday” to herself. Her fourth birthday was coming in a few days and I walked into the kitchen and froze. She had two huge pieces of chocolate cake on the floor and was standing in front of them, one bare foot poised in the air, ready to stomp. I looked back at her mother, who was on the phone and upset because the housekeeper had just quit with no notice. I turned back to the kitchen, screamed, “Marisha, noooooo!” and dove to the floor to rescue the cake just as she sweetly sang the last line, “Happy birthday to me.”
I took the family out for dinner at Martin’s corner. An acquaintance of Rony’s came to the table to say hello, then asked in Konkan, their local language, if Rony was married. Rony said yes, and the man asked which woman was his wife. Rony gestured towards me and the man looked my way, so I raised my hand to say hello, like a total dork. The family burst out laughing and of course, I couldn’t follow what was going on. Rony was lucky that his real wife had a sense of humor.
Indians in love marriages are very proud of them. When you ask if their marriage was arranged, they smile like they have a secret they like to whisper out loud.
Violet and Rony drove me to the airport and we said goodbye on the curb. I forgot for a moment that Indian women are not affectionate with men outside of their family, so my attempt to hug Rony was met with a laugh and a clumsy handshake. Violet took me by the shoulders and said, “You come back. You hear me?” She hugged me, pulled back, and hugged me again, tightly. I thought I was going to cry. Here I was in India, a place I was crying about not really wanting to come to, and I was completely torn up about leaving this family.
I got through security at the entrance and put my bags through the x-ray machine. When I looked back through the door, Violet and Rony were still standing on the curb, waiting to wave goodbye. I raised one hand, but then turned my back to them so they wouldn’t see my tears. Why did we all get so attached so quickly?
I flew all day with a sinus infection and each time the plane landed I felt like someone was kicking my teeth in.
The Indians at the airport in Thamil Nadu, tribesmen, I think, were the darkest Indians I’d ever seen. Their skin was blacker than that any black people I’ve ever known. After hearing how important fairness of the skin is to Indians in choosing a spouse, I laughed to myself thinking how refreshing it must be to these people to not have to even attempt to win at that game.
Rony and Violet were adamant that I’d hate the entire state of Kerala, but I wanted to visit the wildlife park. They said the water was sticky, people are backwards, men wear clothing that looks like diapers, the homeless sleep along side the roads, the food is weird, the weather colder, “Just stay here,” they suggested.
I bought a room at the Madurai GRT on hotels.com and had the best sleep on the best mattress in India. For $66 round-trip, the hotel provided a driver to take me to the park four hours away, plus stay overnight. Soresh the driver was 25 years old and planned to marry his girlfriend in exactly four years.
Madurai, hands down, had the most insane driving I’d seen in the entire country. On a wide, one-lane road, bicycles were passing pedestrians, rickshaws were passing bikes, cars were passing rickshaws, and motorcycles were passing cars. The one-way was five vehicles deep without even factoring in oncoming traffic. I saw forests growing in lakes at the bottom of mountains, oxen with their horns painted bright blue, 11 people crammed into one rickshaw, and a man carrying a severed goat head by its ear.
Showing up in Thekkidy without a hotel room was the bravest backpacker move I’d pulled. We walked inside The Wilderness Bed & Breakfast and talked to the manager about staying the night. The hotel was only three years old, had ten rooms, and, most importantly, vacancy. I’d called ahead to other hotels and knew I was arriving on the last day of high season, January 10, and that prices would be dropping on the day that I left.
The manager walked me back to take a look at a room and it was gorgeous! Light pine furniture, red tile floors, king-sized bed with bright white linens. If it were an apartment for rent in New York City it would easily go for $3,000 a month. I convinced him to give me the January 11th rate of $66 instead of that day’s rate of $90 and we had a deal.
When we got to the park gates, Soresh jumped out of the car and bought my foreigner entrance ticket before I knew what he was doing. It wasn’t a lot of money, but I felt like it was a lot of money for him, and I didn’t understand why he did it. Maybe he was going to add it to my hotel bill at the end? Maybe he was just being nice? His English was pretty terrible so I didn’t bother to ask what the procedure was going to be.
Soresh and I went for a boat ride around the park lake and saw two herds of elephants, deer and wild boar. I will never want to ride an elephant now that I’ve seen them in the wild.
I walked through town and got an Ayruvedic massage, which was such a bullshit waste of time that I don’t even want to talk about it.
I passed by a spice shop and went inside to get some spicy tea for myself and Roxy since I was addicted to chai again, and picked up a bag of cocoa for my mom. The men behind the counter could tell that I was sick with a sinus infection, so one of them rolled oil on my hand and told me to smell it. My eyes teared up and it burned my nose so badly! I felt like I had wasabi lodged in my head and they had a good laugh at my pain. Indians are sadistic people.
Then the other man took an old rag, doused it with eucalyptus oil, set it on fire, waved out the flames, grabbed me by the back of the head, held one side of my nose shut and shouted, “Hurry! Breathe!” I inhaled deeply and felt a sharp pain in my lungs. I was fighting him off, hacking, and he switched the side of my nose that he was holding, still shouting orders. Left side, right side, left side, right side, breathe, breathe! I almost fell to the floor, but it worked better than anything else I’d tried to open my sinuses.
“The medicine is free,” they said. “Come back tomorrow for some more.”
Oh hell no.
I took Soresh out to dinner at Falling Leaf, the restaurant at Shalimar Spice Garden Resort, that the writers of my guidebook raved about. He dropped me off at the entrance while he went to park the car.
A guard at the road rang a tiny bell to announce my arrival to the maitre d down below. I walked a planked bridge over a creek, lined with candles. The air was cooler and damp as the bridge hung low over a gorge. The front porch of Falling Leaf looked like a Moroccan paradise covered in pillows, with a swing hanging from the roof. Two men who sat cross-legged on a rug began to play classical Indian music on a violin and small drums as I sat down. The entire beautiful restaurant was empty. It was like a dream.
The restaurant served us enough food for six people.
“I am so very happy,” he said. “Your husband: he is very lucky to have you as a wife.”
The bill came for the 2,400 rupee dinner; probably the most extravagant meal of Soresh’s life. He asked how long it would take me to make that much money in America and I told him it was less than two hours of legal work. “It is more than one month salary for most Indians,” he said.
Soresh made an excellent living working for the GRT Hotel, plus he was going to school for business. I was happy to take him out for a special dinner and was especially grateful for his company, but I was feeling very western at the moment. I knew that if a dinner bill that was “only” $54 had arrived in New York that my friends and I would be fighting over who got the privilege of paying it.
I slept soundly in my comfortable bed, and Soresh slept in the car. I tried not to feel bad about it because it’s not something that would ever bother an Indian.
At sunrise I arrived at the lake for my six-hour hike with four other tourists and three armed guards. We saw baby monkeys jumping in the trees overhead, gigantic squirrels bigger than medium-sized dogs, and a three-foot snake crossed my path. The forest had trees made of rosewood and teak, fresh tiger paw prints in the mud, and mangled bark where the tigers sharpened their claws.
I didn’t harbor any hope of seeing a tiger, but I was dying to see some elephants. One hour into the hike we came across some tribesmen who lived in the park and they told our guides that elephants were just spotted around the bend. We tourists took off running in that direction and the guides did their best to get in front of us so we wouldn’t do something stupid and dangerous.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when we found the elephants; I almost wasn’t expecting to. There were two adults at the edge of the forest, tearing branches from the trees with their trunks. We got low in the tall grass along the water, creeping closer until the guards made us stop. We watched for five minutes, and the elephants began to move closer to the lake. Either we were going to have to backtrack the way we came and lose time in our hike, or we were all about to have to go for a swim. Another group of people were paddling bamboo rafts on the water, and our guides called to their guides and they came to us.
It was the Tiger Trail group that I was supposed to be with! From a distance it looked like two men and three women, and I was stung with envy when I saw that their sixth spot was empty because it was supposed to be me. Then they got closer and I saw that it was a group of five women, all quite masculine lesbians. I almost signed up for three days in the forest with five lesbians and three Indian men? Sometimes unanswered prayers really are for the best.
“Have you seen any tigers?” I asked when they reached our shore.
“Oh, tons,” one woman said while the others laughed.
Excellent. I wasn’t missing out on a thing.
The elephants were coming towards us and the guards had their rifles pointed at them, directing us to head for the water. We didn’t want to go! I was recording the elephants on my camera and was stupid and stubborn in my excitement. The guards started yelling so we finally hopped onto the rafts. The trekking group took us around the tip of land and the elephants made their way into the water. We reached the other side of the lake and said goodbye.
We hiked for hours, paddled bamboo rafts, and the guides made us lunch over a fire. Then we hiked some more, paddled some more, and I thought I was going to die of exhaustion. I’d had way too much sun and didn’t think it was possible for my skin to get darker, but I managed get a farmer’s tan from hiking and paddling that day.
The guides were remarkable at spotting elephants in the forest from three hundred yards away. As we made our way back to where we started, and I could hardly walk because my legs were like jelly, a herd of elephants was foraging in the trees ahead of us. A guide raised his hand to stop us, bent down and picked up a handful of dirt, and let it blow in the wind. The elephants could smell us because the wind was blowing our scent right to them. We would not be able to continue on our path back to the start without risking being charged.
We made a wide circle around the edge of the forest, having to cut through swampy mud, and muck. I was up to my ankles in wet elephant dung and I wanted to burn my shoes as soon as I got to the car.
Ten minutes later we arrived at a spot directly in front of the forest where the elephants hid, but at a safe distance away. We all sat in the tall grass and listened to the sounds of the enormous beasts cracking and ripping branches, practically moving the earth as they pushed their way through, looking for food. We couldn’t see the elephants, but we could see the trees swaying back and forth along the top of the forest. We stayed in the grass for nearly 20 minutes without saying a word, all of us knowing what a precious experience this was. It was one of my happiest moments in India.
Soresh took my shoes and threw them into the trunk of the car. Someone had told me he’d probably want to clean them up and give them away. I slept the entire trip back to Madurai, unfazed by the mayhem going on in traffic around me.
When we arrived at the hotel I gave Soresh 500 rupeess; 300 to cover the entrance ticket he paid for; 200 of it was tip. I went up to my room and the phone rang. Soresh was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t understand him so I went back downstairs. He wasn’t at the desk anymore, but the manager said there was an issue about Soresh paying for a ticket that I needed to reimburse him 300 rupees for.
“But I paid him 500 rupees just a minute ago,” I said, getting a little pissy. “Is there something more he needed?”
“Oh no, no, no,” the manager assured me. “Just a language misunderstanding. So sorry.”
I went behind the office to use the internet connection and Soresh found me. He apologized, holding both of my hands in his. I told him it was OK and he said he’d see me in the morning to take me to the airport.
But in the morning a different driver was waiting to take me to the airport. I thought that maybe Soresh had decided to go home to get some sleep, and didn’t think much more about it.
“Did you have any complaints about your driver yesterday?” my new driver asked.
It turned out that Soresh had been fired the night before, accused by the manager of “cheating the law.” My last ten minutes in Madurai, racing to the airport, were spent on the driver’s cell phone with the manager of the GRT, begging for Soresh’s job back.
I told him that it was my mistake, that I was confused about billing, receipts, and hotel charges. I told him that Soresh was an excellent driver and an asset to the hotel and can’t we please repair this situation? The driver took the phone and spoke a few minutes more, and when he dropped me off at the curb I asked what was going to happen.
“One hundred thanks to you,” he said. “Everything is already fixed.” I felt beat up and exhausted and it was only sunrise.
I landed in New Delhi and Rajiv and little Ravina met me at the airport. We drove back to the house and Rajiv sent the housekeeper, whose name I’d learned was Divya, to fetch my bags.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ll take them. I’m much stronger than an Indian girl.”
“You are much stronger than most Indian men,” he said.
That night Sonali came to my room to say how much she enjoyed my company and our trip to Jaipur, and how she hoped to see me again in the future. I wanted to believe her. I did believe her, but I also heard money in the conversation, especially compared to my experiences with my southern family.
We looked through my gigantic bag of Indian gifts and I remembered that I’d packed up several day’s worth of toiletries from the Taj President to give to Ravina. I tore apart my bags looking for them and it was thirty minutes before I accepted what had happened. They were stolen. Of all the things to steal, of all the things I kept on my person because they were so precious to me, airport security had stolen a collection of tiny bottles of soap and shampoo. I was crushed.
My flight from Delhi to London was so delayed that all four hours of my layover were eaten up. We landed in London and I hit the ground running, literally. I ran a steady ten-minute mile in my bare feet, with my huge bag of gifts over my shoulder, destroying the soles of my feet on the moving sidewalks. It was like survival of the fittest, another passenger said, and only one person beat me. I was not going to sleep in London again. I’d been prettied-up in anticipation of seeing the boyfriend for the first time in weeks, and I was destroying all of my work with sweat.
I finally reached the front desk and asked for my plane’s gate number.
“That plane is gone,” the employee said.
“I have a boarding pass,” I hissed, “and I want to know where the plane is.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“Try me.”
“It’s gate 54. We’re at gate 1.”
And I was off again. When I boarded the flight all heads turned to look at the very tan white girl whose shirt was now transparent with sweat. I did not care. Out of 20-something passengers, only three of us made the flight.
Ten hours later we landed in New Jersey and I made my way through immigration and customs. My boyfriend was standing on the other side. I walked towards him and felt my body temperature rise just from the sight of him. I dropped my bags and we started kissing and kissing and kissing. I momentarily lost all hearing and memory, but he said that people around us started whistling.
“Look how tan you are!” is the only thing I remember him saying.
Back in Brooklyn I realized how much my English had deteriorated. “What price?” I asked a cab driver when wanting to know a fare. I took my leftovers home from restaurants with no shame, no matter how posh the place was. Jet lag kicked my ass for weeks. I’d wake up in the middle of the night not knowing where I was, who was next to me, or sometimes not even knowing who I was. For weeks I was still in the habit of closing my mouth in the shower because in India the water would have made me sick.
One night I fell asleep in my boyfriend’s car after we’d been out for a few drinks. He drove me home and parked on the street, but I was dreaming that we were at a stoplight and he’d turned off the engine because he was waiting for the light to turn green. Then I woke up in a daze and told him what I thought was going on, which made no sense because I forgot to explain that that was what drivers did in India.
In the car on the way to the airport for the very last time, Rajiv and I were talking about love marriages and arranged marriages, and he had a story to illustrate his point about marrying well, and not getting into romantic relationships that are beneath you. I can only guess how much was lost in translation, but the story was so Rajiv:
“When your heart is on a donkey, it doesn’t matter if a fairy comes in front of you. You love the donkey only.”
