I felt initiated into India the day I went to the police commissioner’s office. I spent all day there from something like 10:30 to 2pm waiting for my number to be called, only to be crapped on…literally. The waiting area was outside with a sort of covering that looked like a nice place for pigeons to hang out in. So I was standing under this covering chatting with my friends, when I feel a warm drop of whitish-green liquid appear on my leg… bird crap. HA HA totally laughable right? Except this isn’t the first time this has happened to me.
Last year in Costa Rica it happened. One of the always-sunny Costa Rican mornings I go for a run around the futbol field in my neighborhood and all of a sudden from the sky falls the crap and it lands, this is the best part, on my face. My host family didn’t hesitate to laugh at me (they never would) when I returned home. In India I was told its good luck to be pooped on (no, you perv not like that!) but I feel like wherever I am in the world, whatever situation it might be it will always suck to be shit on for poopsake!
When I first got here I saw India but I didn’t actually believe what I saw. (kind of like looking at this picture from my favorite websites http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100920.html) I would be looking out a bus window or feel something as real as the wind inside the rickshaw but still didn’t really believe where I was until tonight I think. I was walking home from dinner with the girls, looking up at the palm trees trying to imagine what it would have looked like before cement streets and corner stores, it must have been a jungle I thought, totally wild. But the houses that are apartment type buildings on top of each other made up of old painted looking stone or cement almost swallow up the sky. Or maybe I just don’t care to go that far because the balconies of colored laundry, steaming dinners and curious kids are so distracting. There is too much I want to learn.
What would my blog post be without a list!
- At 2 chai’s a day and sometimes more I have had around 57 cups of chai so far in India
- Quote from my roommate Roo about Indian men “its only a toilet if there’s foreign ladies around”
- Purchasing wine at a corner store ironically named “not just wine and cheese” that only carries alcohol
- Its not ‘karma’ but ‘karm’, its not ‘Yoga’ but ‘Yog’
- Sign for body whitening cream
- Dog licking a dirty baby diaper
- “Your breasts are like water balloons”
- got to drive a rickshaw
I miss my bike (the smooth clean pavement with fresh air, my thunder thighs propelling the wheels under and up liberal MLK street with all the freedom the distance of my existence allows me to make)
