Yesterday I watched a 50 foot sandstorm sweep across the brightly painted blue city of Jodhpur from atop a towering Mogul fort. The desert is hot!
I’ve now been in India for nearly three weeks, traveling across the crowded North from Kolkata to Delhi, stopping in both Bodhgaya (where the Budda attained the ethereal state of enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree) and Varanasi (where the faithful are cremated and scattered in the sacred water of the Ganga). I’m currently sitting in an excellent cyber café in Jodhpur (in the far Northwest near Pakistan), drinking a chilled 65 rupee beer (about 1.50 US – but 650 mls), dumping my many pictures of the Taj Mahal, etcetera on to a dvd, and charging up my iPod (essential equipment for the extreme noise pollution of the Indian metropoli).
Standing out among the innumerable impressions that one is assaulted with in the populous nation of India is the simple yet devastating fact that it actually exists. Nothing, I believe, can soften the sensual shock that befalls each Westerner who deigns to pay their ticket and lose their illusions amongst one billion (and counting) Indian nationals. Despite coming from the second most densely populated city in the world (lovely Seoul, Korea), the impact of India is nearly enough to bring one to their knees painless awe.
I have become almost Tantric in my subcontinental consumption – the Westerner is afforded certain leniencies in regard to prohibitive religious laws – and even at my current guest house, run by a refreshingly straightforward Muslim family with an adorable 3 year old girl (Ashma), who unfailingly greets guests with an enthusiastic, ‘Hello! How are you?’, I have no trouble procuring for myself the essential fare (last night, motivated by the lack of refrigerated beer, I was compelled to invent a new drink – local vodka mixed with soda water and sweet strawberry jam). Upon failing to obtain a bhang lassi (kind of milk curd-shake with the marijuana derivative bhang mixed in), we ate delicious omelets beneath a dusty clock tower while feeding stale toast to cows as they passed us by. I will try for the ‘special lassi’ again tonight.
It’s difficult to choose a topic from the experiences, as infinitely unique as they are numerous, that I have underwent in the past seven weeks (4 of which were spent in the excellently hospitable Nepal – where I will seriously consider volunteering in the future). A night in the hills with two formerly militant Maoists (the only noteworthy possession in their concrete hovel being a monumental ball of cheraz), a hazerdous proposal to a Bhramanic mountain girl whilst trekking in the Anapurna Range, accidentally dipping my shoe in the septic waters of the Ganges whilst attempting to avoid an ad hoc cricket match on the ghats of Varanasi and collecting fallen leaves from the alleged ancestor of the tree under which Gautama formulated his austere fourfold path are among the noteworthy. Temples, stupas, shrines, mosques, cenotaphs, crematoriums and gardens of all descriptions dominate the days, while a mixture of seedy licensed watering holes make up my nights. Breakfast, lunch and supper I eat at restaurants and I retire nightly to my 2.50$ ineffectually fan cooled room.
Again, I feel guilty for giving nothing concrete to you who read this… On a phenomenological level, it strikes me that pure difference and variety have become the norm, and to witness a wandering boar stop to devour a shoelace from a pile of sweltering garbage before casually fraternizing, kama sutra style, with its mates does not have the intellectual impact that it once would have. Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Jains, Atheists and the occasional naked ascetic (as an aside, never would I have imagined publicly naked men walking with the single-mindedness of ones late for an important business meeting) are now the company I keep.
So here – I’ve broken the silence of my blog (undoubtedly all that I needed to write was a cyber café that serves chilled Kingfisher along with a decent connection). To all my friends who read this (in Canada and Korea), I miss you sincerely, and to those of you who I do not know, I hope that your travels are satisfying and inspired. Take care and remember that the art of living and the art of dying are one.
Verkhovensky
