Note: this journal was written over a period of several months. With a lot of leisure time on my hands, I was able to describe more things in more detail that anyone (including me!) would likely want to read. Yes, the journal is rather “noisy,” with long stretches of news and other mundane items … interspersed with an occasional passage that I’m proud to share. I suggest you attempt to find the nuggets, and try not get discouraged or bogged down on the mundane. (Good advice, that, in my opinion, for a lot of the situations we find ourselves in…)

 

 

July 23, 1997

 

Dear Bobbie and Bob, Chuck Dink, Charles Golder, ESP, Meg, K, JLB Enterprises, Kat, Starfire, Kelly, Hakim, JimC, Daryl, Matish, Mr Shanti, SEE, DickB, Sandra, Kim & QuickPen, Aris, Joe and Corona Street, Ananda, David M.,     

 

AND friends, family, co-workers of the above:

 

Greetings from India!

 

---------------------

 

[Afternote: I started as a short letter to my friend Jim, in Seattle. As the letter grew, I realized that it be of interest to many of you there in the US. Accordingly, I've asked that it be passed on to you. By writing one letter to so many of you, I was able to include many of the details that otherwise I would not have been able to. I hope you'll understand. Please forgive me for not sending this directly to you and for not writing a personal letter and also for the references in places to people who you may not know]

 

Please don't respond to Hakim, who suggested he would be best to forward it. :-) And my India e-mail address is for me to send-only; I can not receive e-mail at it.

 

The letter contains a lot (actually, an over-abundance) of descriptions of visual details, as requested by Jim.

 

I challenged a bright kid here to find me an Internet connection by which I can send this. 36 hours later he came by during the evening oil and reported he found one. I've continued to add to this letter over the last several days (make that "last week or more ... things happen slow here!) while waiting for us to get the time to go visit the business (some one hour away) with the connection. Since it is unlikely that I will make this trip frequently, please do not respond to the Indian Internet E-mail address from where this originated!

 

I'll keep adding to this until we take the trip to the Internet connection.

 

                ---------Start of letter proper ------------

 

Your admonition, Jim, that I send visual descriptions (for you to make your usual meager attempt at drawing) is on my mind frequently. Actually, in it's own way, my attempts describe are forcing me to observe more. Since this letter was written over a period of several days, there were times when I'd try to describe something and wonder, "Just what does it look like?" and go back the next day and REALLY look.

 

What a wild wonderful place! How can I possibly do this justice?

 

Carla wrote that Jim said that I'll never come back from India, that I'd stay. I'm very happy here, but will also be happy to return. India is like a beautiful beach on which you stretch out, and awake to find yourself covered with stinging ants!, place of contradictions and opposites. The people are stunningly open, personable, and anxious to communicate. The physical setup at times is dismal. And, as is often the case in developing countries, things move at their own rate, which most frequently, is not as fast as you'd like!

 

I don't know where to even begin. I'm staying alone in a nice house, with banana trees surrounding, down a 100 yd driveway (read: off the main noisy street). I'm doing all my own cooking: cracked wheat in milk with raisin (all pressure cooked for safety sake) for breakfast. Rice and some legume/lentil/bean with veggies with hand made chappattis for lunch with home grown yogurt, and light dinner. I love to see how milk changes to yogurt overnight and how chapattis puff up like balloons when cooked! A few jars of peanut butter were secured by the ashram (some 4 hours away) and sent to me; they're like manna from heaven!

 

A five minute walk up a sleepy narrow paved road (with occasional large bus or motor scooter... or a goat sleeping in the middle of the road, around which vehicles swerve) takes me to a very busy intersection where there is are shops. My every other day shopping consists of getting three 1/2 liter plastic bags of pasteurized milk, some cookies, and veggies at a small beat-up stand. Items there include familiar cauliflower, cabbage, okra and mangoes, a million varieties of bananas, potatoes, onions, and okra and string beans. There are some very weird looking squash that hasn't killed me yet!. Everything but peelable fruit gets pressure cooked.

 

Simple pleasures keep me occupied: for example, routine floor cleaning. The floors are all painted smooth cement. Pour water a ton of water in a corner and then push the water around the room and out the door using a mop. (Even the mop is unique (and natural, recyclable material here) - take 30 or so 3' long coconut (?) straws in a bundle and wrap one end with some wire or twine so you have a, say, two inch diameter bundle...)

 

When I go out shopping, sometimes I'll wear dhoti, other times I'll wear shorts. In either case, I stand out and people stare at me, and teen aged boys snicker, in spite of recent training by patients on how to tie it. I've learned to keep my eyes averted, just so I feel invisible and don't have to deal with it. I suppose this is what woman are often subjected to in America?

 

Last week, at the clinic (quite a bit different from what we'd think of as a clinic) I stood in the pouring rain waiting the one faucet in a cement, double outhouse-sized with a single-step up to get to the doors building (second door is the john) so I could wash off the oil and I should of been impatient. I looked up and realized that I had spent the last few minutes staring at the puddle, watching the patterns the raindrops were making as so many hit the same puddle almost simultaneously as they dripped off the corrugated tin roof. Hmmm, maybe I am slowing down a bit. (The patterns reminded me of x-ray cystralography photographs that I've seen)

 

Therapeutic oil used in treatments: at 4000 rupees per liter ($130) it's EXPENSIVE by Indian standards. Veg oil they describe as "potentiated" with lottsa herbs. The doctor goes out to the farm to see the conditions they're grown in. (He knows Sanskrit and is the only one of the six students his guru taught ayurveda who didn't become a sanyassi (medical monk). Go figure!) Two different treatments: First one, I sit in a wooden folding chair, dhotti "down" (meaning, like an ankle length skirt), feet on a folded newspaper because the bare concrete is uncomfortably cool. I have a dhotti top or towel wrapped around my shoulders. They take a piece of leather 2'x1' and make it into a tube that fits on my head (looks like a top hat without the brim) They use flour paste and torn up sheets around my forehead to tie it tight to my head, and to tie the tube 1/2 way up so it doesn't unravel. Then they pour oil in from a stainless steel metal 6" brimmed pot. I sit for an hour. Washing it off is in the one faucet at 2' shower mentioned above.

 

The last two times I've sprung "leaks" around the back and had oil cascading down my neck and back and chest while they wildly mop it up with rags and return it to the top. What a zoo.

 

The first time I got the oil, we went to the ritual room and he chanted Veda for a while. (I had already given him a plate of fruits and stuff, sort of a traditional honorarium out of genuine respect) Then as he started to pour the oil a bit later while we sat on the patio (everything's outside), he said, "Guru Smara" (Think of your guru) and poured. The group of onlooking patients and visitors (there's no privacy here, the "clinic" has five bedrooms) started a long Ommmm chant and I thought, "How nice, they're all going to chant some nice Sanskrit verse..." and then the Ommm dissolved into (what it really was??)the whistle of the train as it crossed the river in the distance. Very much like waking from a dream and finding that something in waking was incorporated into the dream. Hmmm...?

 

I've had treatments now for exactly three weeks. I was told not to expect to notice much for a month. While I carefully scrutinize my symptoms regularly, my minor symptoms are very erratic. I'm guardedly optimistic, and believe that certain symptoms may have diminished already. I'm doing everything I can lifestyle-wise (inner and outer) to facilitate healing. I've been long overdue for a tune-up like this and being here is helping me unwind. My appetite is way up, which when I reported to the doctors they said something "...digestive fires ... good sign ... expected ... healing... etc" I'm not paraphrasing, that's all I heard. It's quite difficult for me to understand their accents. I'm reminded of something attributed to Winston Churchill: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language."

 

The clinic sits up about 10' on a high bank by a river that is 500 feet or so wide. The other side, like this side, has a 10 or 15' retaining wall of stone running along the shore. The ground level is at the top of the wall. On the other side are palm, coconut, Banyan trees and a temple and one eight story apartment building with a satellite dish. Last night I could see the light of a TV set (probably using the satellite dish) and realized that CNN was probably coming through. Such a far way off is the world of CNN from most India. For me, four weeks without a newspaper or radio is a very nice fast from the urgent (sic) news of the day. (Actually, there is a newspaper everyday at the clinic, but it's in Malayalam, the script of which looks like, well, is unintelligible.)

 

The chanting and singing and drums of the temple across the way accompany the slapping sound as people wash dhottis on the temple steps that go into the river. (I'm still working on two different methods of accurate width measurements of the river width using the speed of sound as well as a ruler held at arm's length. Either will do... Ahhhhh, left hemisphere alert... danger, danger ... submerge ... or is it dissolve? ... immediately.)

 

Up the river bank about 400' on our side there's no wall, just a large flat area where the river has deposited dirt on the outside of a large bend (away), just beyond which is the train bridge. Visible from the clinic, is a tiny Shiva temple, actually, simply a 12" high platform about 10' on a side with one step around the perimeter and a small wrought iron picket fence and a small lump in the middle (I dunno exactly its form, but it's the deity!) covered with flowers. Buses come from all over, people pile out, chattering away, slip off shoes, circumambulate, namaste, take some ashes for their forehead, clamber back into the buses and go... "It's a very powerful temple," they say. This morning it's submerged completely by the river! From it, a long canoe-like wood boat is "poled" across the river, by an old guy standing up on the back, regularly carrying people. Cost of trip: 1 rupee. Cost of airfare to India: $1500 or 75,000 passengers' fares on the canoe ride... Kinda makes ya think...

 

On the same flat banks in front of temple on our side of the river, upstream a bit, a beautiful working elephant is brought daily and washed for about an hour. They command it and it lies down, stands up, or raises a rear foot to the back so they can get to it to wash it. Two guys (with the ever fashionable tied up dhotis) scrub with a rag every square inch. It's wonderful to see. Beautiful relatively short tusks. It's gray, but from the third eye down to just above the mouth, where the trunk attaches is a Caucasian tan with large freckles.

 

The elephant takes its trunk and loops it once or twice over a tusk to get it out of the way instead of hanging in the water. When laying in the foot or two of water, one eye showing, it's trunk tip pokes up out of the about two inches water as a snorkel. I want to bond with this elephant. (Laughing out loud at this last sentence as I wrote it) (I said "working elephant" to differentiate from a "temple elephant" that is a temple mascot and is not trained to work.)

 

Note: more than a week later, I've walked down and watched them wash the elephant a few times and walked with it as it walked up the lane. No one gives it a second look. I keep trying to get into discussions with people at the clinic about the NEAT elephant, but they're totally uninterested. Elephants are just part of the regular landscape here. I must make quite a sight, though, going up to people and carrying on about the elephant and let's go see it, and where does it work, and on and on ... and they just don't get it! (Or maybe I don't!)

 

Yesterday the landlord, whose house is adjacent to mine here, had a man go up the banana trees here in our quiet compound and do some trimming. A little later I heard some commotion outside. It's my elephant. Here! Ten feet from my window! It's just doing its elephant thing at the direction of its handler. It picks up the stack of banana tree branches with its trunk and places them on it's tusks, and off they go. I'm thrilled to watch this and go outside to gawk. It leaves and I'm standing there now in awe of what I've seen. What an incredible animal. (It also left 15" diameter footprints in the soft soil of the driveway)

 

In other words, this place is straight out of National Geographic!

 

I've often heard from the Swami regarding the fact that in India, there is no separation between the sacred and the secular. Living here I see this everyday. Indians seemed steeped their entire lives in an attitude of reverence. It's 's an attitude best appreciated, perhaps, by comparing it to the one we have on Thanksgiving. On that night, well-fed, with family, we take the opportunity to remind ourselves of how fortunate we are. In the Indian society, as an outsider looking in, I observe this joyful, reverent thankfulness is part of their daily lives. So much so that I doubt they give it a second thought, it's natural. And with that attitude, I believe the edges that come along with everyday living, whether in India or America, are softened. I think that Indians who come to America must be stunned as they slowly discover what must be unimaginable to many of them: the fabric of many of our lives doesn't have this thread.

 

It rains frequently, after all, this is monsoon season. Can you spell "mildew?" Dhotis drag on the ground (or street, which is frequented by excrement from goats, cows, and chickens), so they almost always fold them up to knee level, crisscrossing in the front with a fan fold out made of one edge (the one with a color strip on it ) down the front where the zipper would be.

 

Walking home last week in the rain, in the dark, umbrella in one hand, flashlight in the other, the dhoti began to fall off. Talk about contortions. I don't need no stinkin' yoga, I've got the huddled position, all elbows, knees, and arms applied, that I assumed. Walking was a little slow, though! (They turn off the power for 30 minutes every night, as they did while I was struggling home: no street lights, no nothing.)

 

Mornings I arise at 5 am, meditate, and go to the clinic.  Sunrise at the clinic:

 

There, I lie down on a one-piece wooden board, 2" thick, 3' wide, 10' long. It is set on four rocks on the patio, about 8" off the floor, the foot-end a little lower (for drainage) It is sculpted an inch deep (1" raised edge around the perimeter) to hold the oil runoff from the gallon of oil they smear over me as I lie there for an hour or more in my birthday suit, bearded with short hair. Actually, they pour the heated oil from the stainless pot to an 8" clay pot with a 1/4" hole in the bottom and he dribbles it from the pot, controlling the flow with his finger, standing there in his ochre dhoti, tied up in a skirt. The end where my feet are has a little exit nozzle (still the one monolithic piece of wood) under which they put the same stainless pot to collect the runoff. I glisten with greenish oil, drops of which collect and sparkle on my body. I listen to birds, chanting, conversations from the other side of the upright piece of corrugated 3'x6' tin they have stood up in a frame for privacy, my heart beat, sometimes I even glow with joy. Sometimes I sit up cross-legged, slip-sliding around, so I can see over the solid cement wall (which has 2" drainage holes every 6" in a diamond pattern all over. See, the river can rise TWENTY vertical feet and flood the porch!)

 

Then I retire to the back room where the doctor pours "medicated" (yeah, with what, buddy?") water over me. Starting cross-legged (on another wood platform similar to the first), with shower curtains on either side, 3x8" stones cemented as floor, he pours cold water over my head from beach ball sized clay pots lined up on the wall (it's always 80 degrees here, less than 5 hours sun in three weeks. But you know what? It doesn't matter. The houses are built to take the rain with large overhangs and it's very calming to hear the torrents. Because of their construction, there's no need to run around closing windows during a downpour) and then I lie down and he pours warm-hot water from a small yet again stainless pot slowly over my entire body. During this time we're talking Vedanta (as he and I respectively understand it it's a little different, but, hey, I ain't complainin'), with him quoting verses from Gita or an Upanishad or two. This is very nice.

 

Then, to the shower where rather than soap, we use this finely powdered root ("We used to wash our hair with this when we were children," a friend said) that is like muddy very coarse sandy water. It uses friction to clean. I'm beginning to look forward to it (and standing in front a of large bucket with a quart plastic container into which I scoop and from which then pour gallons of water over me...)

 

Sounds here are amazing. Right now the crows are having a Woodstock in the woods behind the house. The portable computer is on the bed, me in a common plastic chair to the side. Dripping of gutters.

 

The other night one of the sons was chanting some Sanskrit verses from the Veda at dusk while I had the oil hat on. It started raining (seeing that rain is considered auspicious, this place has gotta be the most auspicious place I've ever been! It rains, HARD, with instantaneous start and stop...) On the corrugated roof over the patio, on which we were sitting, it drowned out all other sound including his chanting. Then, as time went on, occasionally the rain would gradually let up a little bit and I could hear the chant coming up out of the noise, just barely, and then it would disappear back into the rumble of the roof. This reminded me of how in music sometimes the theme disappears into sound and then resurfaces. (Take, for example, Bach Brandenburg Concerto #5 where the harpsichord solos: the theme disappears, at least to my novice ears, into seeming chaos with no structure. I wonder if it will return ... and then the theme pokes, first a few notes, then more, up through the accompaniment. )

 

The doctor (short, big bellied, ochre dhoti on bottom, no top, bearded with short hair, swami-like (or Jim-like) in demeanor, always seemingly happy, high energy, with small rudraksha (small pea-sized) beads on gold wire) says all stick incense is "Chemicals" and has a 8" across, 2" high clay pot into which he puts some powdered herbs and pure sandalwood and then they just light it and let it smolder on the floor.

 

I brought 50 hours of classic CDs (okay, okay, with two Bonnie Raite CDs included, just so I could be PC; I won't acknowledge the two Yanni CDs because I haven't listened to them because I just can't stand the thought of hearing him in my head for the rest of the day) but haven't had much time to listen. "No Time? No Time? My Man, How Can You Have No Time?" I dunno. Cooking takes time, oil takes time, sitting in the evening on the covered patio at the clinic with all the patients and doctor and sons ("I didn't know that. You say America had to fight for independence?" "Yes, from the British." "Ohhhh, that's from the same race. That's nothing".) chatting takes time, and, hey, listening and watching the rain from my porch as it cascades down the huge banana leaves hanging to the ground is taking an increasing amount of time.

 

I also brought the complete scores to Beethoven's middle and late string quartets. I listen and read along... helps me hear what is happening. ("Oh, they handed off to the cello, he's running with it, passed it back to the 2nd violin, uh, oh, here's a double-stopped first violin, they're hitting Crescendo but don't worry, it's alright: I can see a pianissimo coming right up) Anyway, back to Ludwig, I'm slowly working my way up to the late quartets. I dare say none of them has ever been heard between the Arabian Sea and Madras.

 

Incidentally, I'm in the state of Kerela 20 miles inland from the West Coast from a town named Cochin. Some Jews settled there centuries ago. (The story goes that the king granted them the right to carry umbrellas, which at that time was a sign of royalty) Today, I go nowhere without my little collapsible umbrella and my rucksack with keys, towel, and money.)

 

Here's an example of India that I hit everyday: technology, they have, yes ... but with perplexing inconsistency. Each room in my house has a bank of light switches (like in the US) right next to the doorway of each room. The switches control lights, ceiling fans, outlets, etc. Why is it that the switches in each room are laid out differently? For example, my in bedroom the switch closest to the door is the fan and the next one is the light. But in another room of the house it might be just the reverse. Or, even more difficult to understand: the bedroom has two switches by the bed, one for fan and one for the overhead light. The fan switch is a "three-way switch" -- wired in conjunction with the wall's fan switch so that throwing either of them changes the fan from off to on or on to off, from whichever state it's currently in. BUT, the light switch is wired in series, which mean BOTH the wall and the bed switch have to be on, meaning that you have to remember to leave the bed switch on so that the wall switch will work and vice versa. They did the fan right. Why Didn't They Do The Light Switch Properly???

 

One of the sons (all three are about 30 years old) told me he and I would go up Everest before I left India (I had brought up the subject of where to tour in India). I explained to him that this wouldn't be possible. I have a very good book with me about a specific Everest expedition that includes some stunningly good color photos of fixed ropes at 25,000 feet on 70 degree slopes being followed by Michelin-tie-looking guys with all their down clothing and face masks and ox. bottles. I took the book and he looked the photos over in silence: "No, we won't go," he commented, laughing. (He also laughed when I explained how we have to scoop our dogs' poop ...)

 

What I find interesting is the incongruity that people so obviously extremely bright, disciplined and well educated in their (one or more) fields of expertise should have such gaps in their knowledge of the world. (And then I wonder what huge gaps I have that they are amazed at.)

 

The is the same son (with a degree in Western medicine and Ayurveda ) who, noting that I was coming along fine in tying my dhoti so it doesn't fall off, suggested to me, "We'll get Tom some dhotti's to take back to America." I explained to him that we don't wear dhotis in America and that if I were to wear one there is would be taken as very, very strange, that they'd think I was wearing a skirt. He responded as if this was the funniest thing he'd heard in ages (a not uncommon response from them when I interact with them) and laughed long and hard.

 

Hey, you know what, if you look up for a second from the grindstone, there's nice stuff "out there" ... I mean, like food to eat, roses to smell.

 

More sounds: locusts all day long, heterodyning their tones. Oh, here's a good one: cows. Friggin' cows. Everywhere. I mean everywhere. Just standing. Doing nothin'. Fearless. In the middle of the road. At night certain streets look like corrals. You can just touch them as you walk by. And goats with a few babies just lying by the side of the road, all huddled up in a bunch, chins on each others' backs...

 

There is a narrow path below the clinic deck on the banks. The dry area between the clinic's patio (and the stone wall down to the river level) and the actual water is anywhere from non-existent to 30 or 40 feet wide, depending on how high the river is which in turn depends on how much rain fell in the mountains the night before. (Imagine, a 500' wide river that you can actually watch rise.) I figure every sewer and toilet in the region must drain into the river, otherwise you'd be reading about this white boy who drowned trying to swim across a river in India's boonies).

 

Soooo, I was reflecting the other day that I had never seen an Indian run... anywhere. A few minutes later, one of the sons (they're all the same age and all have been through classical Western medical training here in India) came running through the patio (which IS the clinic, filthy floor, piles of herbs, fluorescent lights, misquotes at dusk and dawn, and filled cloths lines running parallel to the shore) with an anxious look on his face AND with an arm full of long branches from a banana tree. You know a banana leaf? They're 3' long and 2' wide and there were a dozen or so on each of these two branches. He ran to the edge of the patio, looked over expectantly, and tossed the lot to a few cows that were wandering by. Hmmm. Running to the sacred, huh. Point me in the right direction, puleez. Or, rather, I guess I should start running everywhere!

 

So there I was an hour later, oiled up. The original cows had moved on before the banana leaves were thrown. Two calves came up and began ripping the leaves off one by one and eating. Side by side. No animosity displayed, cheek to cheek. And this I watched for at least 15 or 20 minutes. My two little calves, just down there en route to grazing, teaching me how to sit still for a second...

 

More about sounds: there's an animal at night (frog?) that sounds like the creaking of a door being opened slowly: about 15 separate raspy sound in a few seconds in ascending pitch, shorter and shorter near the end. And (the same?) one that sounds like the music instrument that is a foot long and a few inches in diameter and corrugated and you run a stick down it for rhythm. And, as I mentioned, cows. What a lovely rich sound the moo. (That should be the title for my upcoming book, subtitled, "Mooing the Monsoon") [No, Kelly, I did not drop an "n"] The other night I heard some rhythmic noise just outside the window by my head. I couldn't figure out what it was. I finally got up (from my single bed with ropes overhead supporting a misquote net pup tent) and checked. A cow was standing there munching away. And, there is a bird here that sounds exactly like the barking of a trained seal!

 

(Somehow, I hear Kelly saying acidly, "He had to go all the way to India for THIS? He could have become a barefoot hippie on the farm right HERE in the US.)

 

Goats: yesterday while listing to a CD a goat starting really bleating nearby. I stopped to listen. It was being answered by another goat. I went outside to look. The two goats were separated and trying to find one another. What an amazingly sad bleating (sp.?) they make. Roosters: frequently in the vacant yard next door. Some here also have a beautiful range of colors, almost florescent.

 

Car horns are used differently here: here they don't have the urgent or angry sense. They're used almost non-stop. In ten minutes literally, you'll hear more horns than in your whole life thus far in the US. Since people and animals and other cars coming the other direction frequently impede progress, a driver will honk a lot just to say, "I'm here." It takes some getting used to. For the first several weeks every car horn caused me to turn and look, adrenaline pumping. Pretty soon, like the smells and dirt, you just tune it out.

 

Yesterday I was back here typing this and I heard someone come up to the house. They rang the bell. it turns out some neighbors who have been spying me walk down the driveway past their house came by to "welcome" me (and no doubt a close second reason was to satisfy their curiosity. I've as yet to seen a Westerner here other than myself.) They had two young daughters, all dressed up in their Sunday (which it was) best. I greeted them, put down a straw mat (the roll-up kind you get at Pier One Import ... in fact, the ones here look like they were imported from the US!), offered the obligatory food and sat down and talked. The wife did most of the talking because her English was best. Also, Kerela is stuck in the dark ages: it's a matriarchal society. (Clearly that will have to change if they're to get anywhere...) I showed them some photos in the Everest book. "From where did you get this book? ... We don't get books of this quality her." The girls had a sketch pad that they'd been drawing in so we went through all their (and Mom's) drawings. Me: "Le'see, whad Jim say, 'Make a big deal out of them ... no, the kids will stop improving ... tell them they're junk ... yeah, that's what my hero Jim would do... okay." They have 25 acres somewhere with cashew trees on the land by the river (this fact came up since I offered them cashews) and want to take me there.

 

Here's how international incidents get started. The father, with his poor English asked in a sing songy accent, "Do you know your father?" and sat there with a wonderful smile on his face. I sat there, wondering if he really had just asked if I'm a bastard. Then he asked if I know my mother. At this point I'm wondering if he thinks I'm adopted from an orphanage or something. Actually, in a moment of stunned silence I figured out (accurately, it turns out) that he probably asking if they were alive...

 

A few days later: walking up the drive, the two girls call hello and I talk to them over the 5' wall. They're dressed in conventional girls school uniform, blue skirts, white shirt, one with a crooked tie. They smile shyly, answer questions (when I ask them in the VERY SLOW English I use so they can understand my American accent), and eventually sing a song in the local language, Malayalam. Meanwhile, the young girl on the other side of the driveway (who told me her name a few days ago) is standing at her window bars (all the houses have wrought iron window bars), so I cross the driveway and talk with her. She too shyly nods answers to my questions and sings me a song. The other two join in. I make a big pantomimed slapstick scene trying to listen to both sides of the driveway and they giggle. I thank them and walk the rest of the way to my house.

 

A few minutes later, a knock at the door. The single girl is standing there, having changed into a white dress, with a small tin that she struggles to open. (She says nothing) I bend down and take it from her and open it and hand it back and she offers me a hard candy. I take one and insist she takes one, and she does, but has trouble getting the wrapper off, so I get a knife and peel off the stuck wrapper. By this point she's shyly answering questions. Their English is better than their shy behavior would lead me to believe. Then we say goodbye and she returns home.

 

This morning, walking up the driveway, her father is in the yard and we exchange a few words over the 3' wall. Standard stock conversation: He: Where am I from? Why did I come? Are the treatments working. Me: This is such a beautiful place. Your daughter was so nice to come with candy. etc. etc.

 

Their mother, when I left India, gave me some poetry that in part read:  “Our faces get brighter as we see you. And our mind gets to the sky when you call us by name.”

 

It is weird here to consider that to their ears, my English has a very strange accent and they all speak perfectly good English.

 

Since I was unable to make the Iron Springs (Washington) trip this July, my sister diverted to the Captain Whidbey Inn, at my suggestion. I got a note from her: they absolutely loved it. This reminds me of St Exubery's (The Little Prince) non-fiction book "Wind, Sand, Stars" in which he recounts early mail airplanes he flew and the initial contacts with the Arab nomads. Being in the midst of meeting another very different culture, the following story from the book came to mind. It's constantly a wonder to observe things we take so for granted so very different here.

 

In the book, he describes how they flew an Arab chief to France and there showed him a large waterfall. The Arab stood dumbstruck. There, he thought, in the space a second flowed enough water to slake the thirst of countless lost caravans that had galloped towards a mirage on the horizon in one last gasp effort. They turned to leave the waterfall lookout. The chief turned back and looked at the waterfall as they walked away. He said, "Ok, you can turn it off now; we're done looking..." Anyway, I can image my sister and her husband looking at Whidbey, Penn Cove, the wonderful camp site at which I used to meet Jim and Barbara back when they were still young. My sister would likely have had similar thoughts to the Arab: "People actually live in beautiful places like this, not just visit them for a few days..." (Exactly what this story is doing in a letter that will travel 12 zones half way by e-mail around the world in less time than it took Vasco DeGama to clear his bowels during his first attack of dysentery, I don't know. I do know that dysentery, a topic rarely crossing YOUR mind, is constantly on mine. I'm like the guy in The Odd Couple, compulsive cleaner. "Which unboiled drop of water sitting on the just-washed plate has an ameba with my name on it?")

 

Anyway, this letter has become more of a personal journal. In the inside, all travel log banter aside, I'm happy. I'm far from being uncomfortably busy. I have no phone The first thought I had the first night I returned to the house was, "Better check the phone machine." In the absence of some of the conveniences, so necessary in our lives in the West, some of the ways they can hook our attention and habits become apparent. (Maybe that's one of the reasons I enjoy coming to India: some differences lead me to appreciate the things we have in the US. Some differences highlight parts of the US (my life or attitudes there) with which I could do without. And, some of the similarities I see highlight some of humanness we have in common.

 

So, I'm here in India once again. I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to be live for a while as part of a culture that is so deep. India has an extremely rich heritage of art, sciences, philosophy. And the same values that are at the core of our society (integrity, ethics, hard work, belief in the sacred...) are at the heart of this one. Although fading as the West's economic values creep in, India is more in touch with their classical past: values that began for us in the West in the Greeks and Romans, but are often not expressed in our living and not explicitly referenced anymore.

 

Here's an example of how Western values come in and might subtly and unintentionally alter a culture. Tommy from Denver asks for screens on his windows rather than the misquote net tent he brought. You can't get'em in this town. (They must have leather skin here!) So the ashram sends their carpenter on a four-hour bus ride to measure the windows. Then he comes back a few days later and puts them up on another trip. (They are plastic with a sew on Velcro strip on the perimeter so you can peel them back to close the windows) All is well and good, and in fact the doctor, during the carpenter's first visit, decides to get some for his clinic sleeping rooms. Yesterday morning I related to the doctor as we walked to the clinic my fear: now the casual open-door feeling of the clinic (where you can walk down the hall and look into rooms and be invited into all of them) will be replaced by closed doors and urgent exclamations to close the door, don't let the misquotes in. Have I sowed the seeds, with my modern comfort of screen windows, of less community? I ask this only partially in jest.

 

This morning on the way to the clinic at 5:30am (no traffic, 2 minute ride) on the back of Shaum's (the son) motorcycle, I tried to explain to him who Evil Kinevil is. Very hard concept for him, but he laughed as I told him the story of this man who has broken hundreds of bones doing stupid things.

 

Daily I see things that stun me with their simplicity and beauty. I meet scholars, grandmothers, families... all of them reflecting the greatness and beauty that a classical culture can bestow on its inhabitants. Inter-mixed are all of the cultural differences, which can be confounding, frustrating, and invoking of a silent "who-needs-these-idiots" when I'm tired or just fed up with it all. But looking beneath the surface, I see so much promise of what a human society might be, what India's heritage offers its citizens. What was once a river of heritage and culture has become a rivulet... But still I see how the very principles upon which a society is built can nurture the greatness in each of us. This aspect of India seems to already have begun to disappear and is endangered as the country modernizes. (Satellite TV is just one source of destabilization. Imagine throwing MTV at a culture that for millennia has had matched marriages.)

 

I meet little children who sing to me, teenaged boys who don't know what to make of the first non-Indian they've seen in their lives and as their motor scooter passes, the boy in the back turns with a big smile and yells "Hello", scholars who demonstrate not only absolutely astonishing capability of memory, but tremendous depth of analysis, scholarship, and discipline. I meet parents and children at the clinic who speak no English at all, and yet communication occurs. This morning, during my oil, a young (3 year old?) child was singing what I thought was a nursery rhyme song in some unintelligible language. When I came out, goofily sang it to her, making up nonsense syllables but carrying the tune. Her eyes got a big a saucers. We coaxed her to sing it for me and we're now friends. (It turns out it was a nonsense song, in any language!)

 

(Note: the following night while I was getting head oil, she kept pointing to me and gesturing to her third eye. (I'm thinking: wha? third eye? three year old? maybe she sees things others don't and I've got this radiant third eye (would've been news to me!), and other such BS) Then the mom pantomimes to me: the daughter wants to see the backpacking headlamp-flashlight I have. I adjust the straps and put it on her head and off she goes, showing everyone.)

 

I have discovered a trick to being in India that can help get you what you want. I think that it reveals something very deep and very beautiful about the culture. If someone is doing something that you wish they weren't, or proposing something (for you, especially!) that you don't wish, the simple words, "It's not right," will immediately cause them to stop, reassess, and often, defer. I wondered, as I noticed this, why it should be. The words actually mean, "it is not traditional." and invoke the deep respect Indians have for tradition. And so too, they have tremendous respect for guests. So if a guest (like me!) says, "It's not right," they pause. They may not know the tradition to which I refer, but they by deferring, they show their respect to me, a guest, and to my tradition. This is an very beautiful thing. I'm so happy to have stumbled across this expression (it's useful!) and even more so to understand why it works.

 

In Sanskrit "Atithi-Devo Bhava", "May you be one for whom a guest is like a god." And my hosts, other patients, a doctor of 55, his sons, my neighbors, the shop keepers, the taxi drivers, the bless`ed cows for god's sake, all have made me feel they have honored this traditional saying. And the existence of traditional sayings like this in the common parlance is what I imagine (until K corrects me!) European culture had until this century but with Greek and Roman quotes: a way of referring to values of the past which had stood the test of time...

 

(The Sanskrit saying above is a good example of how terse the language can be. Look at that, 7 syllables in Sanskrit to 12 in English)

 

Last night, when he showed up to sleep here (they want someone sleeping here, clinic rules, it seems), Shaum brought the supplies I had requested (they want me to relax and not go out on expeditions around town) Included was cinnamon (sp?) for me to make apple sauce (gotta boil those apples...). It's bark ... Real honest to god bark! Chipped off the tree, clean ... I guess... Not the processed then rolled into fake bark that we have in the US. Who knows if it tastes better or is better in any way, but the naturalness of it was neat. Isn't spice what Marco Polo came to India for? The great spices of the east? (Walking to the clinic last week, the doctor pointed to a tree along the road in someone's yard and said, "there's your cinnamon tree."

 

(Note: the day after I wrote the above paragraph, I got out the apples I had purchased, washed them, and began to cut the up. The first one was very difficult to cut... it fact ... it had a large PITT. It wasn't an apple. I don't know what I bought, but they sure ain't apples. I wonder if I can find apples here now that I've got the cinnamon!)

 

(Note: and two days later I finally had my apples. I cut them up and found they're some sort of Chinese crispy pear... no pit this time though! Gee, the guy at the stand (who speaks no English) nodded "Yes" when I asked, "Apples?" pointing to the bushel basket.)

 

[One week later: I went shopping with an Indian man who is staying with me for a few weeks. He's got a double MS from Stanford in Engineering, but returned to India after getting them 30 years ago. Unlike me, he had no trouble communicating with the shopkeepers ... IN ENGLISH, Indian English! I was amazed! I had long concluded that they just didn't speak English. They don't speak AMERICAN English, which explains my inability to communicate with them.

 

Riding recently alone in an auto-rickshaw (3 wheel taxi with two cylinder engine) the driver kept trying to tell me something in the local language Malalyam... at least I think it wasn't English! I kept saying, "English. English only." He kept repeating one word. I think he just couldn't figure out why I wouldn't know this word, it being so familiar to him in Malalyam. Finally, I said, "Sorry" and he repeated the word back to be, exactly as I had said it, with a resigned tone. Did he understand the word? (I think so) Did any communication take place?]

 

While getting washed down this morning ("this day" for this letter covers more than a week over which I've been adding to it, anticipating sending it by person or e-mail any moment...), having thought about Marco Polo, I recalled a story that is fun. I didn't have it quite right (surprised?) but the doctor straightened me out as he poured the water over me. It seems (the story goes) that when Alexander the Great came to India, he met a monk sitting beside the road... perhaps a scholar, but living a simple life pursuing the sacred. Alexander said, "I have conquered all between here and the Mediterranean." The monk simply stated to him, "You're lower than my slave. In fact, you're a slave to my slave." Alexander drew his sword to slay the monk. The monk said, "See, you're a slave to your anger. I have mastered my anger; it is my slave." Alexander the Great sheathed his sword, bowed to him and humbly asked what he could do for the man. The man said, "Could you please move a little to the side so I'm not in the shade; you're between me and the sun..."

 

Final notes, days later: I have visited the computer service that has e-mail access. They are a new business and were to open their doors the next morning. While I'm to be their first source of revenue, I don't think we'll find a framed rupee on the wall ever there! More likely, like most of the businesses, there will be a framed image of something they consider sacred, Ganesha, or a temple, or parents, or teacher or something like that hanging prominently over the door.

 

Rereading this letter, I want to avoid giving to rosy a picture and being taken as having lost my senses, although many of you may have concluded this ages ago and need no further evidence. There are times here when it is so absolutely infuriating and frustrating that, well, I have no recourse but to take it in stride (if it doesn't kill you maybe it makes you stronger?). Several days ago, with a 4-hour bout with food poisoning (my only in almost six weeks, but eating an overripe pineapple for breakfast 'cause there's no milk ain't wise I learnt!), I lay, bathed in sweat and fever, lonely, aghast that I would have come this far, wishing, praying, scheming to find someone, ANYONE, who spoke AMERICAN English and thinking: I wanna go home!  :-)

 

India's got to be a pretty spectacularly wonderful place to balance out the bad parts. And it is!

 

So on lazy afternoons, I sit clad in shorts, relaxing in my wicker chair, no other furniture in the living room, perhaps reading Indian philosophy, perhaps listening to a CD. I can get this silly smile on my face, feel radiantly happy, and, I dunno, things seem very ok. And then it starts pouring rain again (ah, the soothing roar of the downpour) and I get up to check my dhotis, hanging on clothes lines strung all over the living room under the ceiling fan, wondering if they're EVER going to dry...

 

 Tom

 

Once again, thanks for understanding the need for this to be an impersonal group letter. And I appreciate all the letters I'm getting from Dad, Carla, Barbara, Nadine, and Bobbie.

 

PS And ,please forgive the undoubtedly large number of typos. Any Freudian slips I hope you'll find amusing and not too revealing!

 

To all: Please feel free to share this letter with whomever you think might enjoy it (including, Kim, posting work or forwarding it at work).

 

My address is below; please write. It takes ten to twelve days to reach me. Envelopes are often wet, so if you're writing or drawing in water soluble materials, best send in a Tyvec/waterproof envelope.

 

Second letter, later in the summer:

 

Some day in late August ... say, Thursday ... lemme get the watch/calendar ... oh, the 28th

 

Okay, folks, I've done it again. Having received a request from a friend named Donald for me to quickly forward him my timetable so he could make travel plans to visit me in Denver this fall, I sat down to write him a brief note. It grew and grew and became this.

 

Even more so than in the previous note, this note has references to items that are specific to the originally intended recipient. Rather than go through and make the note generic ("one size fits all") I've left it pretty much as is. I again apologize for this not being a note personally to you.

 

After having sent the original bulk e-mail that you received, I have not been back to the e-mail facility in town ... it's a problem getting there. So, as previously, please don't respond to the originating address. Thanks.

 

I haven't been back to the e-mail facility in weeks ... it's just a pain in the ass to walk up to the main road, get an auto-rickshaw, and schlep into town, etc. I need to go and clear up my account there, so I thought I'd write you a note with my timetable. I don't expect to send other correspondence via e-mail. (Note of amusement: I typed "via" as "wia" as a Freudian slip in the preceding sentence. Even my fingers are picking up the accent!) Please don't respond by e-mail, it'll be weeks if ever before I return there.

 

Is "schlep" translatable or not? Certainly it's not a word that they'd know here, even given their frequently excellent (if tremendously accented) English. But to translate "schlep" they have to know what? What a (caricature of a) Jewish mother is? How to speak in a touch of sing-songy accent, implying Yiddish? Who the Jews are, etc. My point? I'm stunned, amazed, depressed, exhilarated (sp?), frustrated, excited, by ... and constantly trying to bridge ... the culture gap. This makes the visit wonderful.

 

I was reading something recently that asked, rhetorically, how to explain the term "fuckface" to someone not from America?  I still laugh out loud thinking about that!

 

My plans: I plan to back in Denver around October 26. We have canceled plans for Jana to visit here, because the doctor extended my discharge date from Sept 25 to Oct 20. I don't think I'll be de-jetlagged an re-acclimated to our US lifestyle for at least a week. And Jana and I will some time, too, to reacquaint ourselves with our relationship in-person. She's been tremendously supportive (both emotionally as well as taking care of many thankless details needing attention in my Denver life. Given her busy schedule, these items have taken a big chunk of her time. She had just moved to Denver when I departed. So don't plan on visiting, if you can help it, until late November.

 

I'm scheduled to return to QuickPen on November 3. In what capacity, I'm uncertain what I want. Almost definitely not full-time. I'll want to self-impose strict limits. (Your support on this has been and will be appreciated) I'm not fretting over the decision, just giving it a nibble in my mind now and then so that when it comes time to decide and act, I've spent some time at it. It's easy to change a lifestyle when I'm 12 time zones away. The challenge will be to integrate this during the transition period back in the US.

 

Speaking of lifestyle, what is really amazing to me is how easy it is to eat well when you're not in a hurry. I described my diet in the bulk e-mail, but basically, cooked grains and vegetables, daily homemade chaptis, and lots of fresh fruit with some milk or yogurt. What could be easier?

 

You know what? NO ONE has cavities here! They eat right! I feel like running back to the US and standing on a soapbox: "Hey, forget fluoridation! No more cavities! Eat right!"

 

My body feels GREAT! I'm itching to get on a bike, but a little afraid that the heat will cause the any  symptoms to express themselves. Fortunately, the doctor has asked for no exercise ... biking here would be courting suicide anyway given the roads and the traffic both...

 

Treatment status I came here with a minor health annoyance which has a way of ebbing and flowing. It's quite common for them to disappear literally for years and then resurface. Keeping that in mind, my symptoms had steadily gotten worse during the month or two before coming to India. Now, symptoms are significantly reduced. Leg weakness that was causing my knees to buckle is GONE! Aching in both thighs in gone 95% of the time. The only other symptoms I had are tingling in a variety of limbs, and mild sun-burn sensation on both forearms. Left limb is free of tingling; the other symptoms are reduced. I use the words "guardedly optimistic." Watching the symptoms and subjectively judging their severity is like trying to watch the minute hand on your watch move: "I think it moved, yeh, uh, well, maybe..."

 

Of course I'm here for holistic treatment which goes far beyond just symptoms. (I like that they drop the "w" on "wholistic", making it "holy" rather than "whole"...) You, as well as so many others) know that I was long overdue for this. Whether having health problems is a consequence of that delinquency will forever remain a haunting unknown. "Head-wise" I'm in the best shape ever. Time for myself was MUCH needed.

 

I'd forgotten (how) to relax! I'm spending a lot of time sitting, watching, enjoying. I'm also reading some hard core astrophysics from the Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy... and taking notes, no less!

 

The years' of study and spiritual pursuit are also bearing fruit and allowing me some inner leisure and relaxation ... or is it simply the sagacity of passing years tempered by a diagnosis of a serious disease? J

 

I'm SO relieved that I can be happy here without the distractions and business of everyday life. I've always had a value for solitude. Why? Because in solitude is where one can't run from oneself. I find I have an inner leisure and relaxation that is wonderful. The fact that I find almost nothing to run from is comforting! Meanwhile, I'm happy to be quietly here, not really itching for any of the comforts of home. (Just how I'll cook whole grains and steamed veggies for lunch in the corporate lunchroom or over an expense account lunch remains to be seen!)

 

So, I'm doing what I can. Should, god forbid, this disease continue, I won't be feeling like I hadn't given it a good effort. Heck, maybe I'll go on the talk show circuit: "I dropped out and got well."

 

I thought this would amuse you. You see, I'm not much into self-affirmations, and even less so if they're aimed at psychological changes ... better a person should know they're great rather than just trying to beat it into their head. Self-esteem (and spiritual stuff, too, I believe) aren't places to build castles on belief systems) After all, you don't go around having to remind yourself, "I'm a human being; I'm a human being." There's no reason a person shouldn't know themselves to be full, free, complete (whatever) with the same clarity as they know they're a human.

 

Anyway, the thing that might amuse you is the thinking that I gave to affirmations. I figured it wouldn't do any harm and might do some good. It seems from my reading that some people use aggressive affirmations (like PacMan-like white blood cells eating baddies). Other people use the opposite: loving icons. I couldn't decide. Andrew Weil says (in Spontaneous Healing)

 

Over the years that I have been interviewing men and women who have experienced healing, I have come to feel that "fighting this thing" may not be the best way to obtain the desired result. Although there is no one state of mind that correlates exactly with activation of the healing system, a consistent theme in the interviews is the acceptance of the illness rather than a struggle. Acceptance of illness is often part of a larger acceptance of self that represents a significant mental shift, a shift that can initiate transformation of personality and with it the healing of disease (Page 88)

 

Anyway, (still headed towards the amusing thing...) I wanted to do some sort of affirmation during the relatively quiet moments when meditating. Somehow this image came and I've used it on occasion: me riding on a motorcycle, casually tossing (actually, lobbing) over my back (past my ear, over my shoulder.) beercan-like objects containing "good" (or "whatever's needed") Can you picture it, me, a tough, bad guy [well, dressed that way, but still the 90-pound weakling underneath, just bad lookin'] in leathers on a BIG Harley chopped bike, a steady stream of these "cans" casually flying out behind me, all over the road?! I get a chuckle out of that. Casual, no aim needed, looking to the future, nothing specific, just all-purpose nurturing, slightly irreverent and litterbug-at-heart. I tried picturing a overhead crane opening its jaws and tons of these things pouring out and it was okay, but not personal enough. I tried using a B-52 littering the air below it with these things, but it seemed a little too aggressive, mais non? It's me with an attitude that I like the most! :-)

 

So I tell my body, "Ok, look, so you got your long getaway in India. Now craw back in your cave and let me live my life." J

 

How to open a bank account in India:

 

1. Go to Kerala State Bank. Be told that they seldom handle foreign exchange and I'd be better served at the Bank of India.

 

2. Go to the Bank of India Ask "Would it be possible for this US citizen to open an account so he can receive wire transfers of funds from the US?" Straight faced answer from bank manager sitting across desk: "Yes, it is possible," followed by silence. I sat there thinking "Now, does 'it is possible' mean "It's possible, but not likely, buster" or does it really mean, "Sure".

 

Actually, I don't think he was sure what the answer was. He disappears for a good 20 minutes ... seems to actually leave the building and returns with a thick 3-ring binder and an assistant. "We haven't handled this before," he apologized. They read for a bit, hand me a form and insist I have to register with the police before we continue.

 

3. Go to police. They insist that since I'm use a tourist visa I don't have to register, and in fact, can't. We explain the bank requires proof I appeared there. They dictate a letter to their boss which I write on the spot explaining who I am, visa number, passport number, what I need, etc.

 

4. We wait some days for an "inspector" to come to the clinic, meet the doctor (they know one another), and examine my passport to see if the information in the letter is accurate. (Even though I wrote the letter in their office, and they examined it there.)

 

5. Appear at the police station again to pick up letter. After a two hour wait, superintendent tells me I don't need to register. (I resist jumping across the desk, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him.) He says that he needs a letter containing passport numbers, etc. (deja vue) on clinic letter head. Since he's Mr. Policeman, I resist sarcastically asking, "Oh, you mean rewrite the letter that your assistant here dictated to me and regarding which you sent an inspector to confirm?" (This is all a case of CYA, I'm told. No one wants to risk loosing their job over a screw-up. I, however, am reminded something RamDass (Richard Alpert) once said. He was traveling in Russia and they translated the word "bureaucrat" as "someone who makes sure nothing happens.")

 

6. Get the letter written on clinic letterhead.

 

The two steps will be:

 

7. Deliver letter.

 

8. Wait for document from police.

 

9. Go to bank and see what additional hoops have been erected.

 

This morning, one of the 30 or so year old sons of the doctor was pouring water over me and having a laughing conversation in the local language with a man nearby. I asked, "Hey, no fair talking about me behind my back. What's being said?" He told me that another brother told a story about me that has them all amused: Step 4 above was wait for the inspector to come to the clinic. One morning one of the doctor's sons said to me, "We just heard from the police. The inspector is coming." I asked, "When?" He responded "He will come now." From hard experience with India's sense of time, I couldn't resist making a joke and asking, "Which 'now' do you mean? This minute, this morning, this week, or this century? After-all, we're now in the 20th century!" He laughed and accurately predicted that "now" would mean "this morning"...

 

Iyer's book "Video Night in Kathmandu", and I imagine Dick Birnbaum's mind, are full of stories like this. It's part of the magic of going to a new culture: you see clearly the contrast (both good & bad) between yours and the new culture.

 

Hmmm... my hands sometimes get a minor tingling (sorta feels like I've got a very thin pair of gloves on, not numb, but dulled) after this much typing. Maybe I'll have to take up singing or something for a profession! :-) Something where I don't use my hands. Wow! What a great symbolic way for my body to be telling me to get out of my left-hemisphere! "Tom, no more writing words for you; you can sing, dance, sparkle, speak, hug, but don't write'm down, that's all...."

 

As usual, you've zoomed in on our shared guy-ness with your reading the Krakaur books. I brought to India the cassettes of his reading "Into Thin Air" (his account of this year's Everest expedition on which many climbers perished) and listened to the first tape (or two?) on the way here several months ago. It's neat to hear him read it. I'm holding off listening to the other tapes, keeping them as a special treat should I need it. (Did you know I spent a few hours with Willy Unsolt 1972? (Do you know who he is?))

 

I also enjoyed recently reading (in Denver) Krakaur's "Into the Wild" (re: the young man who set out to live alone in the Alaska back country and starved to death). After you've read it, it'd be fun to hear what kind of person you think the kid would have been to meet! A wet-behind-the-ears jerk with a burr in his butt (somewhat like all of us were back then) or a fascinating Jack Kerourac (sp?) fellow, or are they the same?

 

You say you're thinking of vacationing in South India? What in god's name would you do here I wondered. I'm living in India as opposed to traveling here. Traveling is a pain the ass, and dangerous from a hygienic standpoint. But, here's an amazing quote regarding the ancient Fertile Crescent:

 

Quoted In SnowCrash: (thanks Chuck and Aaron for the book. You both sent it in the same week last March as a result of my ravings about www.thepalace.com; you're both right, it is similar And chapter one had me laughing out loud. It was even more fun because the cyber-punk futuristic stuff is such a caricature of present US culture that NO ONE here in India would be able to make the slightest sense of it!) But of more interest to me,
from pg. 211:

 

From: Kramer, Samuel Noah and Maier, John R., Myths on Enki, the Crafty God, New York, Oxford: Oxford University press, 1989:

 

Religion, magic and medicine are so completely intertwined in Mesopotamia that separating them is frustrating and perhaps futile work... [Sumerian incantations] demonstrate an intimate connection between the religions, the magical and the esthetic so complete that any attempt to pull one away from the other will distort the whole.

 

This describes so well my experience of modern-day India. It is this that I tried to describe in my first bulk e-mail. Of course, I've been steeped in this culture in a variety of ways for 15 years, so I can read between the lines and perhaps enjoy things in a way that otherwise would be difficult.

 

My first impulse here was to tell the educated affluent Indians I've met that they've got to come to America someday. (To see the clean and well-stocked supermarkets and efficient highways and noise & air pollution laws, I think to my self, "we'll show them what good living is!". But as I've considered it further, I'm not so proud of what I'd be showing them. Without question, America's lifestyle is easier, cleaner, richer in diversity of products (food and other goods). But ... but ... with one BILLION citizens (one in six Earthlings lives in India) I believe that there's no way that India would be able to rise to the standard of living we have in the US. There's just not enough oil, air, or enough other countries from which to import inexpensive goods. (I doubt even the we in the US will be able to sustain today's high level of affluence in the future.) So... what sense is there in bragging to my Indian hosts? I might as well be saying, "Come to America and see a lifestyle that will never be the mainstream in India, and, incidentally, one that is obscenely consumptive and probably unsustainable."

 

Anyway, just some idle thoughts about the differences in lifestyle. That an Indian coming to America unknowingly sells his soul in exchange for some trinkets of convenience is a while 'nother story. I suppose I might be legitimately accused of being overly romantic about India's soul. It seems travelers to "developing countries" (the politically correct term for 3rd World, I'm told) can fall prey to this...

 

Anyway, this e-mail is being written some 4 weeks after the first one. As you can see, I have a lot of time on my hands! I've gotten a massive amount of mail from some (ahem) of you and I've appreciated it. Today is the approximate half-way point of my stay here in India.

 

I'm full of hope. Not hope for anything specific, just hope that my life will continue to unfold in the new direction this trip reminds me is available.

 

Thanks to ALL of you for your support. Feel free to forward this to anyone.

 

Love,

 

Tom

 

The Invasion of the YEECH!-Bugs

 

Earlier in the evening, the doctor here had gotten one of the boatmen to give seven of us patients a ride in the pole boat. The boat is teak, shallow, wide-bodied, (sits three across in the middle) with wood seats. I took the sole seat. up in the very bow (as I have since my youngest days, right, Bobbie?!)

 

The trip was wonderfully peaceful. Instead of the Indian chaos we greet everyday, we found (just around the bend in the river) forest-lined shoreline. Darkness came, the moon rose...

 

We returned to the clinic where a ritual was done for my housemate whose birthday it is. They chanted Sanskrit and lit oil lamps and nice drew patterns on the concrete floor. Nice, but I was bored. We went home to sleep.

 

In the middle of the night, I was awoken by something brushing across my face. I thought it was a one of the harmless geckos (little lizard) that one often finds on the walls here, although they never have gotten near me before. So, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

 

A bit later, I heard a curious and LOUD buzzing on the wall behind me. "That's no gecko!" On went the light. It was a cockroach that was TWO inches long, with two inch antennae wiggling all over the place!!! Oooouuuuuu! Yeeeecchh! This is larger than the largest fake rubber cockroach from Archie McFee, the kind I've given to untold numbers as gag gifts. Maybe this payback time? (I wish it was a scarab; some cultures consider them sacred.

 

"Now how'd that get in here?"

 

I got a one quart jar from the kitchen and stalked it. When it flew, it's body hung vertically below it. Gross me out. I was afraid when I tried to capture it in the jar against the wall that I'd miss and cut it in half with the jar! Double gross me out. It flew, I followed, jumping back when it came my way, almost tripping over the furniture in the room, sometimes suppressing a totally disgusted squeal of yeech-ness. Fairly easily, I caught it, and went to the kitchen and released it into the backyard.

 

Now, back to sleep.

 

Later: "What's that noise? ANOTHER ONE?" Yup. I did the whole drill again.

 

It's after midnight and I can't figure how they're getting in. The floor is concrete, joined to the concrete walls. I have my neato misquito net screens on the windows. The one thing the room has are long-thin open ventilation (sp?) holes (3'x 3") at the very top of the wall above each window. I fashioned plugs for these out of paper and duct tape when the screens were installed. Now, as if inspecting the ramparts, checking if the moat is full, I reexamine them. They seem secure enough.

 

But, now I'm totally wired awake. I get a book and start reading. I glance at some point up to the window screen to my left. THERE'S ANOTHER ONE! This time it's high on the wall and won't come down so I'm building castles with chairs on desks and such to reach it. But reach it I do.

 

And, yes, a forth and final one appeared shortly thereafter. If two's company, and three's a crowd, what's four, a gross-out convention?

 

The last one landed on the inside of the one (closed) swinging window that doesn't have a screen. Now I have a decision to make: do I open the window and hope it flies out? This is akin to letting down the drawbridge to let the enemy out! I try it, and the bug drops to the floor. Oh well, I catch it and while I'm letting it out I wonder, facetiously, if they're being attracted to ME! Maybe, in fact, it's the SAME cockroach ("They all look the same to me") that keeps coming back for more?

 

"Imagine," I muse, "we'll collect my smell, do a little genetic engineering so it attracts people, and sell it. I'll get RICH!" Knowing however, my tendency for minor slip-ups, I imagine further my going to market with it but accidentally picking up the wrong test-tube in the lab and ending up marketing perfume that attracts cockroaches as big as your thumb! This would make for an interesting Alfred Hitchcock movie, or maybe the FarSide?

 

Finally, I lay down to go to sleep. It's now two am. I glance at my large rucksack hanging on the hook and am ABSOLUTELY SURE that if I open it, it will, to my horror, disgorge hundreds if not thousands of cockroaches... So much for a tranquil life in the tropics!

 

Afternote: I've had no further trouble. I believe problem was that the preceding night, to block a neighbor's porch light, I had pulled in the Velcro-attached screen in two places and stuffed in a blanket. The gaps in the Velcro attachment remained after I removed the blanket the next morning and fairly well funneled the bugs into the room.

 

India, a year later: October 1998

 

I didn’t do any bulk letters this year during my 6 week stay.  I did take down the story below:

 

A close friend of mine,  Indian woman MD who practiced medicine in a rural town in India told this story to me.

 

"For many years I was the only doctor for 75 miles. I gave several cobra anti-venom shots each month since people were out in the fields daily. I calculate that during the 20 years I worked in the field, I delivered 15,000 to 20,000 babies, 2 or 3 each day!

 

One of my patients was a woman with an Rh-negative blood type.  Her husband was Rh positive.  Had the child been Rh positive, I would have had to give the mother an injection without which she and her child’s lives would have been endangered.  We determined that the child was Rh negative so no shot was necessary.

 

But, I was confronted by a challenging problem.  Were this woman to have another child in the future, if proper attention wasn't given to the Rh factor, she or her child could die. It was crucial that her future doctors know about the Rh issue.  But, how was I to assure that her future caregivers would be made aware of this?

 

I saw hundreds of patients a week and would be leaving the area in the near future. It was entirely possible that my patient would seek treatment from a different clinic in the future. The clinic might not even exist a few years hence.

 

She was a "tribal," meaning that she was Hindu but was totally illiterate and lived in extremely primitive conditions. Her lack of education and the literally absolute lack of paperwork in her life meant that even if I were to write out a note for her to present to her doctors in the years to come, it was likely that it would be soon accidentally lost or forgotten ... or inadvertently destroyed by exposure to the elements.

 

I racked my brain for a way to assure that in the future her doctors would know of her Rh history.  Finally, I did the only thing I could, hoping it would work.  I told her we had a very serious topic to discuss with her.  We sat down to talk.

 

I asked her, "Do you trust me? Will you consider seriously what I'm about to tell you?"  She nodded yes.  I told her that if she were ever pregnant again, she and her child's life would be in jeopardy unless the doctors knew a few simple facts.  She listened attentively.  I continued, "You need to tell them three things:

 

1.      My husband’s blood and mine are different.

2.      But my baby's blood was similar to mine.

3.      Therefore my doctor did not give an injection.

This was the last time I expected to see the woman. I had fully expected to have long departed from this town, but five years later I was still working there when this woman came to me pregnant again with her second child.  She came the day before her delivery, never having had any pre-natal care.  She didn't recognize me. I didn't recognize her.

 

As a presumably new patient to me,  after learning that she already had a child, I asked her, "Where was your previous delivery?" She knew it had been in a hospital, but didn't know which. I tested her and she was Rh-negative. I needed to know if she had previously received the Rh antibodies in her previous pregnancy. I was frustrated we had no written records on hand for the patient and so asked, "Did your doctor last time tell you anything about your, your baby's and your husbands blood.  Immediately, she sat up straight and presented me verbatim with the three statements I had taught her five years earlier:

 

1.      My husband’s blood and mine are different.

2.      But my baby's blood was similar to mine.

3.      Therefore my doctor did not give an injection.

 

I was thrilled that my efforts five years previous at education had worked. It proved my point that you can educate anybody.  If you take the right approach, you can educate anybody, even those whose understanding is little. This touched me so much that I got tears in my eyes.  I used to feel very bad that I couldn't speak the language of many of my patients.  But this proved that you could teach anything, even the facts of the Rh incompatibility, if you did so properly.  From this point on, I explained everything to my patients, even the tribals... fertility, nutrition, etc.  Every human being has the capacity to understand. You can't just dismiss people because of their background. It's my duty as a professional to make them understand what they need to know.”