So Life Goes in India

This is one mighty intense country. I can't think of any place I've ever been that could so easily elicit such a wide range of strong emotions. Sometimes it seems as if life is just scraping by here, other moments things seem absolutely spectacular. Actually, quite often life doesn't even "scrape by" here, as I've seen just about every thing around here also lying dead. While Shannon and I never did make it to Varanasi, human's are the main corpses to be found, as it's the place Indians most prefer to die. If you're lucky (and rich) you get a nice cremation job with fancy robes and high quality wood. If you're poor, homeless or a criminal, it's straight into the river for you. In Kathmandu we saw a much more calm and civilized version of things, but in Varanasi, it's nearly out of control.

Yep, the good ol' river Ganges, the holiest and most revered chunk of water in India (as is my understanding). People bathe in it for religious purposes, die in it for spiritual cleansing, and basically thing it's the cat's pyjammas. So why the $&@# do they treat it so badly? I mean cripes, they put every nasty kind of waste they have in this country straight into the river, sweeping muck and rubbish and feces into it, then telling you what a sacred and spiritual place it is. Does no one in the country see the problem here?

Right now Shannon and I are in Rishikesh, a rather northern city where the Ganges is still clean-ish, the air only slightly opaque, and the people not quite as poor, pushy or crippled as other towns. The Beatles came here in the 60's to get spiritual with an Ashram (spiritual leader of sorts), and that's still the thing to do around here. We're sticking to yoga, since like with the case of the Beatles, most Ashram's are more for the moolah and prestige than the actual spiritualness. I dig the yoga, I'm really feeling my body parts, from my buttocks to my toes, though I again find it funny that one of the more common themes here is to bend into a difficult and strenuous position, pulling your muscles awkwardly, and then to "relax... relax..."

Despite the spiritual pushiness at times, Rishikesh is a pretty cool place. The poverty here though is quite in your face. In fact, it's really quite a challenge to describe just how over-the-top the poor and impoverished situation is here in India. There's a samosa shop I dig eating at in town about a 20 minute walk from our hotel, but going to and from it each day has become a huge drag and an emotionally draining ordeal. To get there I'll pass at least 2 dozen beggars, many facing savagely debilitating problems. Missing limbs, leprosy, blindness, wounded extremities, one guy even had his jaw rotted off. More mobile people will follow you for a step or two asking for money; quite often it's small children after you. The streets are filled with dogs and cows, and there's at least a few now that we're familiar with by the broken limbs they have to deal with. Everyone and everything is rooting through garbage, and one guy actually started whimpering on the verge of tears as everyone walking by refused to give him even a single rupee. Some of the Sadhu (hindu holy men) seem a little better off. but not much: These guys are wrapped in orange robes, have the big bushy beards and are supposed to be on some kind of spiritual journey that requires them to have nothing. So it seems they then beg for money to get food, which leads me to believe it's a choice they've made to be here, but while they do have a few trinkets like glasses and some beads, their scrawny bodies suggest they haven't eaten much in the last few decades at all.

Anyway, once I've finally made the walk to the samosa shop, had my tasty somosas, I then have to walk back again past everyone to get home. It makes for one tiring afternoon.

(As a brief aside, while cows are revered here in India, no one seems to treat them too well. They have however made a decent living around town, being the only animal seemingly willing and able to survive on a diet of cardboard and plastic wrapping paper.)

Our last day in Rishikesh was a pretty good one - I slept in, due to the extreme discomfort of the bed we have (missing yoga, oops!), but then Shan and I went and got a Indian cooking lesson. My expectations for what it would be like weren't that high, but the class itself was good, though I hope to never enter a kitchen so filthy again. I've yet to see such a dense layer of flies in the country, there was heaps of old stale food everywhere, and the toilet was only separated from the kitchen by a thin blanket. I was happy though that my count of cockroaches was much lower in this kitchen that it had been on the last train we caught.

We got a fairly in-depth lesson on how to cook Masala Chai Tea (soooo yummy), Malai Kofta, Muttar Panner, Chipati and Aloo Paratha. Basically that's tea, two types of soup/gravy dishes and two types of bread. Everything was pretty amazing, the breads especially. I'm also now a masala chai tea addict, and anyone who comes and visits me will be more than welcome to some homemade Indian recipe stuff.

Whew, long blog today. Tomorrow we're off to Calcutta/Kalkota. It's a 26 hour train ride, our longest yet, taking us to the place where Mamma Theresa did her charity work. Honestly though, I'm a little India-ed out right now, and don't think I'm ready to see much more in the way of slums and poverty. This country really gets me agitated, as there's no way it needs to be the way it is, yet people are either too stupid, ignorant or unwilling to do anything about it. Riding on the train itself is eye-opening enough for most people - thousands of people squatting by the tracks in horrible shanty towns, families huddled around burning piles of garbage to keep warm in the cold northern nights, trash and muck and pollution and disease piled onto each other and pushed aside to make room for more of itself - there's so much goodness wasted here, it's hard not to get angry/depressed/ill/etc. In 4 days I'll be in Cambodia, which I don't expect to be much better, though I've heard it's a different, unique kind of poverty and adversity to see. Till then, thanks for reading!