September 11 happened without anyone noticing. Five schoolgirls died in Delhi, and no one noticed. There was a stampede in their school when the monsoon rain came last week—in one day over 50% of the necessary monsoon rain was delivered, like God woke up, said oops, and overcompensated for His tardiness. The rain flooded a floor in the school, and there were rumors—just rumors—of an electrical circuit, the girls thought they’d be electrocuted, the stairwell was too narrow. And five girls, probably in white and gray uniforms, probably having just eaten daal and naan, died because their sisters’ black shiny shoes crushed their internal organs, squished their faces, covered their mouths. They were crushed by people who weighed no more than a hundred pounds. There were just too many of them.

It’s definitely not the first time that stampedes have killed people in India. Too many people and much mob mentality, and too few regulations and building codes. It’s also very common for rumors to spread—that’s how all

The view from our balcony, below which are puppies

information is supplied here, by rumor. It’s also common for us to not hear about anything, because when so many people die in a country every day, the news starts to dull. Which is also why we missed September 11 this year.

Right now I’m sitting in my living room listening to puppies screaming outside. They’ve been screaming all morning. One of the many stray dogs in the neighborhood had her puppies a few days ago. I wonder if she had one too early, because a week ago I saw a dog carrying what I thought was a rat in its mouth; turned out to be a tiny premature puppy, limp and muddy in the street.

Well, I noticed this dog licking puppies under a car a few days ago. She moved them directly across from our apartment under a wooden table, in a patch of trash that is surrounded by a wall of scattered bricks. There are three puppies, and they—especially one of them—have been howling all morning.

It sounds like when you accidentally step on a dog’s tail, and it howls and seems to heave a little, or like when a small child gasps for breaths between sobs. But it won’t stop.

In America, we’d save them. But here, I just keep hoping the mom will return. Maybe if I deliver her food she’ll stick around more. Maybe she left for good, but probably not. Nature defies logic, and she’ll probably return, and they’ll hopefully stop screaming. And then they can grow up, learning not to stand in the street the hard way, and with their respective deformities they’ll enter the dog-eat-dog world and literally eat dead puppies if they find them in the park across the street.

So I want to save them. They’re cute, they’re crying, they’re only a few days old and fuzzy with closed eyes. They’re not happy to be alive. And I have the “Oh-I-Need-To-Save-Everyone-I’m-White-And-American-And-Have-Money-To-Save-The-World” thing still nagging a bit inside me.

And a tiny, new part of me, the recent Indian-souvenir part of my personality, hopes the mom won’t return and the pups will die. Because in India, life isn’t pretty—there are flowers and butterflies and puppies, but no rainbows, and very little hope.

The crying is quieter now and the mom still hasn’t arrived. My neighbors ignore it.

Reasons why India is making me patriotic, for the first time ever:
1.    Costco and grocery stores and Ikea and the mall—places where you can buy everything you need in one trip.
2.    Doctors who actually tell you what’s wrong with you and what pills they are prescribing, and pharmacists who know what they’re doing without pulling out a 20-year-old “Intro to Pharmaceuticals” book.
3.    Transportation that doesn’t require driving with a creepy stranger and bargaining until your face is blue.
4.    Easy-to-get internet in houses.
5.    Skanky summer clothes; no pressure to wear jeans and Indian sleeved shirts in 110-degree weather just to fit in with other students.
6.    No annoying landlord who doesn’t speak English, doesn’t speak normal body language, walks in on people half-naked (or fully naked, in Shawn’s case), goes through tenants’ things, delivers the apartment a week late, and has no sense of obligation to do anything on time.
7.    Sense of girlfriends/boyfriends—no need to hide couples and lie about being married.
8.    Batteries work.
9.    Hot water and steady electricity (P.S. non-steady electricity = sketchy fridge = curdled milk)
10.    English!
11.    Washing machines and dryers.
12.    Potable tap water.
13.    Strangers who don’t ask for your phone number for no reason except to call and text incessantly.
14.    Reading lists for classes, syllabi with grading components, paper topics and knowing when class is cancelled.
15.    Attempted social equality; not prohibiting the trash woman from entering the building because of she’s an Untouchable.
16.    Mirrors.
17.    Clean feet.
18.    Mexican food and fish.
19.    Reliable SIM cards.
20.    Men who know the difference between flirting and engagement.
21.    Victoria’s Secret.
22.    Cops who don’t take bribes.
23.    Homeless people who live on the beach, eat fast food, are able to read newspapers and have relatively decent lives.
24.    Toilet paper.
25.    Happy, fat pet dogs.

Ultimately the difference is that in the U.S., money will get you anything—a computer guy comes to your house to fix the computer, a doctor’s appointment can be arranged with a well-educated professional within a week, a car is sitting in the driveway ready to go. Here, it’s necessary to have connections and time and initiative and, most of all, patience.

But already I realize I’m becoming a more patient and low-maintenance person—when the internet doesn’t work, sometimes I’ll actually sit quietly and wait instead of slamming the mouse against the monitor (as I usually do). When I can’t get hot water, I get over it. I realize I can live a week without looking in the mirror and I can wear clothes that’s only partially clean from my crappy hand-washing abilities. I feel like singing when I find batteries that work or when the water delivery boy shows up on time. Everyone cheers when the power comes back on. I need to befriend classmates to get readings and befriend the man who owns the corner store so he doesn’t give me expired milk.

Our personalities aren’t changing, and the life-changing experiences haven’t been nearly as concrete as I expected, but there are subtle and profound challenges that are showing us what we always had in us. If I had studied abroad in Rome, I would still think that milk always comes pasteurized and food labels never lie and matches look the same everywhere in the world. I wouldn’t realize that most people in the world poop squatting in the wilderness and wipe with their left hands and sleep in little cots on the floor, much as Americans did two hundred years ago; that’s not sad or something worth going to the museum and gasping about, that’s just life. And I think it’s okay.

Still, I’ll be happy to come home.

Alexy and My Haiku (joke…it’s okay to laugh):
I am very white
Everyone else is brown
I am always watched

Before coming to India, I rarely thought about my skin color or anyone else’s. I remember having an argument with my Dad about how my generation didn’t notice skin color, and he was convinced that the world hadn’t changed so quickly.

People rip us off all the time because we’re white. They stare because we’re white. They take pictures with us because we’re white (ek snap please?). They laugh at our Hindi or respond rapidly when we say a stammered phrase, because we’re white. Kids point because we’re white. In the Metro, when there aren’t many people standing, you can see the entire long train of sitting people turned toward us, because we’re white. Some people are used to white people, and they like to follow us and “practice English” and be our best friends and get our numbers, because we’re white. Some people, especially in Old Delhi, aren’t used to white people, and they crowd around with slightly malicious energies, frowning and possibly thinking we’re ugly, because we’re white. I don’t know if it’s the same for Europeans; I don’t know if it’s the same for Non-Residential Indians. But I do know that I’d give anything, anything, to be able to explore India as an Indian.

I’m in the apartment of Skye, Jessica, Ronny, Jordan and Roxie right now, waiting for our landlord to finish the apartment that he promised us several days ago. I’m sitting on a kind-of mattress with a blanket on it (that the landlords also called a mattress, although it’s a quarter the thickness of my blanket back home). The more real of the two mattresses is from the Muslim quarter; Sean and Breeanna bought it today for our apartment. It’s a lucky day when you can sleep on something softer than a tile floor.

The past almost-week we’ve been on the floor, with a blanket or a scarf under us if we’re lucky. Fans whirring and ants biting and deep deep sleep that is probably a heat-induced coma. No dreams. Sweaty wake-ups and trickle showers.

Right now I’m listening to people talk about their great high school achievements (we’ll never forget how great we once were) as they stand in the kitchen drinking water. My coke is getting warm on a counter somewhere; my telephone minutes disappear quickly. There’s still a towel on my head (I’m a Sikh from 7/11). Breeanna is now standing in her grannie panties. Louis just walked in the door from his weekend trip to Agra with a girl from Princeton who represents to all of us the girl who is stealing him from Shaina. He seems happy. Sean is giving him water and showing him our new mattresses and the new fan that says “ManSoon” on it. Breeanna is admiring Sean and Louis, how cute they are, how excited Sean is to show everything to the happy sweating Louis. She likes Sean a lot; makes me want to barf. If only she could take lessons from me on how to be an independent woman, apart from the boyfriend cycle. Ha….Ha. Not funny.

Sweat is dripping along my right side under my arm and between my boobs (in the quest to stay cool and conscious, lately I forget that I have boobs, and only the sweat reminds me to wear a bra). I’m thinking of the tattoo I’ll get, the nose piercing I might get.

Phew, I could write forever about nothing. Tomorrow: bond a little with the book I’m writing. Meet up with Apple for lunch. Interview Malachi a bit. Maybe get sad. And read. Learn how to read palms. Read my beautiful Huxley. Perhaps a blog post. And a trip to our Tuesday morning apartment, I want to learn how to walk there from here (since I get lost all the time here; everything looks so busy and different that it all looks the same, like those “I Spy” books). I want (actually need) a litchi shake.

Otherwise I plan to be lazy and most importantly, to be happy despite the fact that I’m now realizing that one of the best months of my life has come to an end. Now I’ll have to learn to be happy without parties every night and naps all day. Now it’s about doing things—buying furniture, going to class, reading texts—in the day, and sleeping at night. Being calm. Being alone wandering through the streets. Being in small groups. No more 40-people birthday bashes in the middle of the Himalayan foothills. No more clubbing in Delhi every night. I’ll need to start learning about myself, about life. I’ll need to start writing more, and learning how to use my camera. I’ll need to remember that I came to India for myself, for learning, for spirituality, and for India. I didn’t come here for the EAP students, even though I feel like I’ve fallen in love with almost all of them (although I may hate some simultaneously); I feel like I’ve fallen in love and my love is neglecting me. My love is busy. I feel abandoned by fun.

This is real life now; where has the craziness gone? The craziness transferred from friends and me and the dancing and the silly young-ness to the rickshaws and shouting sellers and dirty streets and complicated mattress-buying. I know that I’m too young to make any real decisions in life because I’m too young to say goodbye to my one-month summer of wildness. Which is proof that I need India; I need to learn to be happy not only in the wilderness, in torture and out of the comfort zone but with friends and parties, but also to be happy in comfort, in a home, in a routine. On my own. “Like an elephant, tread on alone through the forest.” Thank you Buddha.

August first. Right now. Abhi.

I just took a cold shower and now I’m siting in the range of two fans (one two three all fans on me) sweating through a shirt that just so happens to belong to Kent. It’s light-blue in the spots I haven’t dark-blue-sweated through.

I wouldn’t have wanted a warm shower anyway, but if I had, I wouldn’t know how to get one. The right knob is for the city’s water supply and the left knob is for the building’s tank. There’s no warm knob. There’s also no knob to make the trickle into a stream after four other people have taken showers before me. I have to press myself against the wall, squeezing between the knobs, in order to catch the droplets.

And the toilet is a squat toilet. I’m an expert squatter now. It helps to do the Bree calls the “Chinaman squat”, lowering your butt as low as it goes instead of working the thighs. It also helps to not give a damn about getting pee splashed on your feet.

I don’t give a damn about getting pee splashed on my feet because (a) the bathroom floor is so dirty it turns my feet black, (b) the streets of Delhi have probably put dead rats’ tails and cow dung and human feces all over my toes anyway, and (c) they’re my feet. No one touches them. The toenails are longer and a dusty pink that used to be Barbie-pretty, now outlined in permanent grime. And one of them is falling off.

I have a new perspective on the Bible stories from all those years of yawn-worthy class with Shaw. Poor Jesus…washing feet would suck. It would fucking suck. But I would be more impressed if Jesus decided to be a bicycle rickshaw driver for a day, dragging our fat American asses up a hill for twenty cents, or a coolie with an entire refrigerator on his back, trudging up the steep hills of Mussoorie. But I suppose foot-washing is pretty hardcore too.

If Jesus were here in disguise, would he be the coolie or the bike rickshaw driver or the old woman beggar or the little girl beggar with a baby in her arms? Or the baby perhaps, with its big eyes? Or the dog with sagging tits and matted pups? Or the policeman with his khaki uniform and sub-machinegun lying maliciously across his lap? Or the random white kids wandering through the streets? Who would Jesus be?

It’s safer perhaps to take an autorickshaw, and certainly faster. Tuk tuk they’re called. But it’s more expensive, and more importantly, the drivers have “an attitude”. And they have pounds to pack under their nice uniforms. But the bike rickshaws are cheaper, and the men are small and dark and under their tattered and sweat-stained white tank tops they have compact detailed muscles that ripple with the steps they take in their flip flops, the steps on the bike peddles that bring us through the streets. We dodge the autos and the cars and the buses, playing with the big boys. Do they deserve the money more? Should we ride with them and pay them more than they ask? Are they better than beggars because they’re working their asses off? Or perhaps is everyone equally worthy and equally guilty? Perhaps they had the potential to be greater and this is all they do, perhaps they try to rip people off for a living.

Perhaps that beggar woman isn’t to blame; she can’t run a rickshaw with a big-eyed baby on her hip and a society’s-worth load of gender restrictions on her back. But it’s her fault she had the baby, right? Right? No one is to blame for the fact that condoms here probably break because they’ve been sitting on the counter for two years and are named “ManForce”. No one is to blame for the fact that Indian women think birth control pills cause cancer. No one is to blame for the fact that men rape. No, what it comes down to is that this woman is pathetic for letting a penis ejaculate in her vagina. She grew and grew with her sin and then popped with a painful baby and now she is standing on the side of the street with her leather hand outstretched, and pulling her scarves to make sure her shoulders are still modestly covered.

She looks across the road and sees another of the rare being-without-penis, but this one is thinner, thinner arms thinner face thinner ankles that wrap around each other. Gray hair and lost teeth. Same outstretched angry leather hand (dead cow is unholy, leather hand is the hand of sin). Same eyes but cloudier and angrier. Same vagina but perhaps more worn out. No more baby hanging on the hip, but the same heavy load on her back, and the same scarf wrapped carefully to maintain modesty.

Today I saw kindar (sp?), hermaphrodites of India who invite themselves to social events like weddings and baby-bring-home ceremonies. They are men dressed elaborately as women, and they try to speak like women as they sing songs. They ask for heaps of money to bless the child or marriage, and the money is negotiated to be around 5000 rupees for a baby boy, 3000 for a girl, etc. Even if the family doesn’t want them there, they somehow find out about the event and invite themselves, and most people are too afraid to get rid of them because they don’t want to be cursed. They are in groups that own certain turfs. Around 5 of them own this turf in the neighborhood in Mussoorie. If the newborn is a hermaphrodite, the visiting kindars take the baby with them. If you can’t marry in India, you might as well join the kindars and find a mate there. Apparently a partner is what it’s all about. Women tend to avoid them because, since they live outside of society, they indulge in drugs and flirt with the man who owns the internet café. Originally women weren’t allowed to dance and sing around here back in the day (probably last week), so the kindars were invited to take over. And they didn’t stop. The kindar I saw was very very manly looking and he had sad eyes and his lipstick made him look violent. The others looked happy enough.

I know this was written long ago and therefore should’ve been uploaded long ago. Oh well. Deal with it.

Here comes a flood of journal entries that I found from the past couple months….you’ll have a lot of reading to do! They’re journal entries–written without the intention of being read–so forgive the run-ons (I think in run-ons) and fragments (I think in fragments) and all that jazz.

————

We wake up too early and go to bed too late. After school I go to char dukar (“Four Stores”—cluster of four stores near our language school) to study but really to spend too much time on the internet skyping and checking emails but not replying and eating Cadbury bar after Cadbury bar. Sometimes I go back to Dev Dar hotel and eat the rice and daal and cooked mushy (but delicious) veggies with the pickled mango that tastes nothing like mango and disgusted me when I first got here. Mushed veggies with yogurt on top and strong strong face-puckering pickle on the side, and I like it. No beef; that’s illegal. Ate lamb the other day at the tavern and loved it even though I hate lamb; my body is crying for meat. The multivitamins that I take as often as I remember don’t seem to be helping much.

The hotel (but more like a house) where we stayed in Mussoorie

I have mosquito bites everywhere on my legs because they love me, and when I scratch them I bruise because I’m incredibly anemic, and I have bed bugs that leave red spots on my legs, and I have a bet going with David to see if his facial hair will grow faster than my leg hair will (and it’s obvious I’ll lose, but maybe the pickled mango will give me super leg-hair-growing powers). So my pale legs are bruises under mosquito bites under bed bug bites under hair.

But it doesn’t matter because it’s India and I can leave diarrhea in the broken toilet and grow out my leg hair and have dirty toes and still be normal.

I was brushing my teeth with the doors open—front door, bedroom door, bathroom door slightly ajar. I heard rustling in the bedroom, assumed it was Breeanna come in from the living room. I began to talk to her, heard a crash, opened the door, saw dresser-top-items fly onto the floor, saw a huge brown monkey run out of the room. I chased it, knowing I should get the thief out of the building, but it stopped in the hallway to growl at me and I got scared and hid in my room. It left without my cheese and dried fruit (dried fruit to fight the horrible anemia and cheese to make me fat); I ran out to tell everyone. Damn monkeys. Louis became angry with them again. They keep swinging down from the roof in through the kitchen windows to grab food off the table right in front of us. The boys are buying weapons (slingshots, cricket bats, beebee guns) and making it a game. So much for peace and love in India.

I rarely write because I’m rarely alone. I think I’m gaining weight. Even if I write or run I think I only do it hoping that I’ll somehow resemble my little productive self from back home, almost like I’m homesick for myself, but there’s no way to get close to reminding myself of myself right now…

...monkey, as seen from my bedroom window.

So someone pointed out to me that it’s been two months since my last blog post. Someone else pointed out that we’ve only been in India for two and a half months. Conclusion: I fail at blogging.

But wait! I still may have time to redeem myself! Because in India, everything comes late. Everything. Absolutely everything. Except maybe bowel movements; those you can rely on.

And I don’t mean a little late. I mean India late. As in, trains are delayed four or five hours. Teachers don’t come to classes the first two or three weeks. The landlord, who promised a finished apartment by August 3rd, still barges into our place to this day to install things and I still don’t have a mirror and therefore don’t know what I look like anymore. So don’t blame me; blame India. This is your little real-life-India experience shipped across seas, courtesy me. Feel the frustration, feel the pain. Ahhhh India time.

There are so many things to say that I can’t begin. I know that’s the cop-out thing to say. But honestly; it’s past midnight and I’m at my friend’s house stealing her internet and I have class tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. and I still need to do laundry and pack and do paperwork tonight. Yes, woe is me.

But I will tell you this: one of these days we will (might) get internet. Nevermind that it was supposed to be taken care of a month ago! And when we do, I will blog my little fingers off and catch you up on all the enlightening and mind-boggling trips I’ve made so far. If you’re lucky, I might even upload a picture or two.

Comfort yourself in knowing that the writing is being done and the photos are being taken. It’s just the internet that’s the issue. Blame the landlord; he is halting our internet process. He also barges in unannounced, doesn’t speak to us, pokes through our paperwork and today walked in on Shawn naked in his room. Blame the landlord. He is evil. But so goes it; no rules in India. No laws about privacy. No concept of time. Did I mention that the landlord is to blame for all my problems?

Deep breath, zen, om and all that good stuff. Tomorrow I have class from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. (yes, straight) and then immediately onto the train to Varanasi, where Kent and I will finally have some time alone to sail along the Ganges and see people cleansing themselves of their sins in water just downstream from where all the dead bodies are cremated. Should make for some good blog posts. Assuming the landlord gets his act together.

Rib cages. Big baby eyes. Balding dogs. Leering-around-corners. Antique rings. Nose rings. Giant ants carrying cranberries. Children carrying children. Used fingernails. Pretzel legs. Almost-car-accidents. Dusty floss. Crumbling Snickers. Dry faucets. Monkey-face-wrinkles. Eyes in rearview windows. Roadside gods shitting. Soggy foreheads. Plaque asking to be picked. Grandma’s hands on a granddaughter. Yellowbrown softfoods. Stubborn stopped toilets. Gandhi glasses. Greedy lies. Eager friends. Medicinal marijuana on an organic farm. Beedis. Red hair parts. Code molding itself into words. Faceless moths. Tarp roofs. Bare-feet on con-crete. Gold-speckled frog water. Larki squatting to poo in the gutter. Larka running to chase cricket ball. Two girls carrying a bucket. Speedy mist. Surprise pigs. Cloth and soda and cloth. Airtel. Government-official finger-painting. Gray-collared crows. Tablas and flute. Fat (nurse-pants) exclamation marks dotted with toe rings. Kohl and creases. Browns and oranges and mangoes. Easycomeasygo electricity. Emails and blog messages from faraway friends

When I got on the plane heading to Delhi a week and a half ago, I sat in a daze, watching Anchor Man and drinking wine to distract myself from the enormity of seven months away from home. When I got off the plane and surprisingly survived customs, despite my certainty that I’d be whisked off to torture in an Indian jail, I focused on the wild taxi ride and my groggy traveling partners to distract myself from thoughts of my family and friends. Even when I went to bed that first night, early and exhausted, I kept my mind on my paranoia about Delhi Belly and was careful to keep my mouth closed shut in the shower of stinky water.

It wasn’t until the next day that I had my first OMG moment. OMG moments in India are moments where I look at the EAP students around me, widen my eyes like a madwoman and say “Oh My God We’re In Fucking India”.

The first OMG moment was on autorickshaw ride number ek. Autorickshaws are the way to go in Delhi. They’re like New York’s cabs, except easier to catch and a fraction the price. And with only three wheels, and the meters are broken, and you have a constant nagging feeling that you’re going to die, and the  drivers are conniving schemesters. Otherwise, basically like New York cabs. Zooming between human-stuffed buses and joining in on the cacophony of ear-splitting honking with Hindi music blasting and beggar children flooding us at the infrequent red lights, I turned to my new best friends and said it for the first time: “Oh My God…”

From Delhi we went to Mussoorie, a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas. With the trees of Big Bear, the roads of Topanga Canyon, and the friendliness of a village, Mussoorie was a [polar opposite] relief from the bustle of Delhi. We spent the days visiting the small shops, enjoying chai with the fabric store owner and spicy popcorn with the internet cafe owner and beers with the hotel cook. We did capoeira and jogged. We played flutes and drums. We found stray dogs and the neighbor’s energetic four-year-old to play with. Cows wandered into the yard and pooped at the bottom of the stairs. Monkeys came growling and hissing, and we ran away screaming.

But even though every second was a WOW moment, it took a monsoon rain to give me my second OMG moment. The heat disappeared in a day, and a cloud came to hide our mountain from the world. The air swelled that day like a pimple, and then it popped. The rain beat our shoulders to the rhythm of our underwear rain dance and the Indian hotel staff looked at us like we were crazy when we rolled in the mud and screamed with laughter.

That night I woke with a jolt when I felt something warm and fuzzy on my shoulder. Our hotel was infested with moths and monstrous spiders, and I shuddered in the dark with a cold, disgusted feeling in my stomach, but there was nothing there and I decided I had been dreaming. An hour later, my roommate Breeanna was kneeling over me with a flashlight and saying, “There’s a rat in the bed!” With the water pounding the roof outside, Breeanna and I searched for what turned out to be a tiny mouse, while I tried to swallow down my moth phobia as the fat little devils fluttered around us excitedly. Standing on the bed in my p.j.s, with monsoon rain outside and Breeanna searching behind drawers and pillows with her flashlight and a wild hunter’s look in her eyes, I laughed and said once again, “Oh My God…”

My most recent OMG moment was yesterday, as I washed my underwear in a dirty bucket. I was thankful to be able to wash my underwear at all–getting a bucket of water was a novelty in a hotel that only had running water and electricity for a few random hours a day. I sat in the dark, scrubbing my clothes, looking at the dirt encrusted in my shower-deprived feet, and thought about how much had changed in a week and a half. I no longer needed warm water to shower, I no longer needed a flushing toilet to pee, and I no longer hyperventilated at the sight of moths.

Breeanna shouted from the bedroom, quizzing me with the day’s Hindi lesson, and her voice was drowned out by the monkeys. They apparently had gathered the entire city’s monkey tribe to do jumping jacks on our roof. “Jaiye, aiye” Breeanna hollered. “Oh My God…” I shouted back.