The true, full-time staff tells me that almost all of the cleanup and initial rebuilding are done. They are now focusing on trying to get long-term community centers/schools/trade shops built to serve as many of the effected villages as possible. But these buildings are still in the early planning phase, and there won't be any hammers being lifted any time soon.

Retish - I'm certain I just massacred the spelling of that - says what the villages really need pronto are boats. Without boats the villagers can't fish and subsist. Costing roughly $2000 U.S. each, the villagers, who have nothing now, can't afford them, and their fishing method needs at least seven boats to be successful. This means they need to scrounge up roughly $14,000 to re-establish their fleet. In turn, many of them are already abandoning the coast and their traditional way of life for inland territories. There are whispers that this will open the way for a resort-building boom.

AID India has been able to give one boat, but because boats are such a precious commodity, boats have become a political hot potato that status and publicity-seeking NGO (aid organizations) are battling each other to provide. The scenario goes something like this: give a boat, get a picture, post in on your website, say, "Hey, look what we did!", gather donations and then disappear. NGOs scratching and fighting for contributions is dog-eating-off-its-own-leg ugly. Plus, the battle only serves to delay the immediate help these areas need, and AID India is hesitant to get involved any further.

I'm disappointed that I won't be jumping immediately into tsunami-effected areas to help, although Retish assures my help is still needed despite what the heads of any organization say. But there is plenty of non-tsunami related help needed right here in Chennai.

Last night, Retish and I went to what he terms a "nice" slum to help a group of children with their English - call it after-school tutoring. They ranged in age from seven to fifteen, and, regardless of their age, their English was already surprisingly good considering the dirt and dank circumstances surrounding them. Holding class on a roof top that would later serve as the altar for an evening mass, we reviewed proper pronunciation and word meanings, clauses and tenses. Despite being a writer, this was more difficult than it sounds. For example, their textbook would ask to conjugate the word X as a present past imperfect perfect participle without using "by," or something like that. With apologizes to my 8th-grade, drill instructor of an English teacher, hell if I remembered the answer to that one! I wanted to say, "Look, knowing the name of the tenses is about as useful as having a can opener on a deserted island without any cans of food. Just say it like this..." However, they have to take tests using these terms, and whatever slim chance they have to escape the slums depends, in part, on aceing these tests and being able to speak and read English. So we practiced them as best we could in all their ridiculous and confusing glory.

I plan to return there tonight to give another lesson and entertain them with not only my guitar, but with my amazing ability to massacre the pronunciation of their names. They find this endlessly amusing. It's almost as amusing to them as having a white-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed near alien telling them the past participle of "try" is "have tried," not "did tried."

On the way back to my hotel, I learn that the biggest and best Christian in the world drives a motorized rickshaw in Chennai. He told me so himself just before he almost impaled us on the back of a construction truck. In between singing Christian tunes that are barely audible over the cacophony of cars, trucks, horns, bikes, people, and other rickshaws that buzz us less than a half-foot away, he tells me he is certain Jesus is going to return at any moment. By the time we reached my hotel, my own rather weak faith in Jesus had strengthened considerably, because it was a miracle we'd made it back to the hotel alive.

To contribute to AID India, who are definitely involved in the recovery effort for the long haul, go to www.aidindia.org.

March 19, 2005 - Mamallapuram

The past five days in India have felt like months. I am dirty and tired, but, unfortunately, this is not from doing any substantial work helping the tsunami recovery effort.

A common component of Indian culture is to tell you what they think you want to hear instead of what might be the truth. It appears that my initial AID India contact, Vivek, whom I apparently will never meet, did just that when he told me that, “Yes! We need your help!”

After spending most of two days hanging around the AID India offices in Chennai while they tried to figure out what to do with me, I was pawned off on Mano, who coordinates an AID India office just south of Chennai in Kelumbakkam. He is the point man for getting aid to the many tsunami-effected villages that dot the coastline. “Excellent,” I thought, when they decided I would go with him. “I should be able to get down and dirty helping there.” Dirty, I got. Down, I did not.

The main problem is that I have arrived during a lull in the recovery effort. The initial cleanup and building of temporary shelters has been completed, but the long-term rebuilding has yet to start. Instead, AID India is accessing long-term needs and coordinating the best way to address those needs. In other words, there’s a lot of talking being done – talking in the Tamil language, a language that even most Indians don’t understand.

In turn, my time has been spent tagging along, sitting attentively, smiling when it seems appropriate, and feeling guilty about eating the food the villagers foist on us as our gracious hosts – food that they could certainly use more. My biggest accomplishments are causing distractions, raising questions, arising suspicions, and wasting Mano’s time as they discuss what I’m doing there instead of how to get the aid they need. On the plus side, once again the children find me very entertaining.

I do learn that there are intriguing politics at play in a recovery effort. The villages that we have visited, while still needing help, are doing OK and many have the boats and nets they need to get their lives going again. Yet, they don’t want to use the boats and nets. Or at least they don't want to be seen using them. They fear that their flow of aid from the government and NGOs will stop. In addition, there is no documentation or coordination of what one NGO is doing versus another NGO. The villages give a list of what they need to each one in hopes that they will receive duplicate supplies.  I understand their desire to get what they can while they can in light of their meager incomes, but this is still disheartening when you consider that villages further down the coastline have just received their first emergency supply of rice.

As much as I would like to get to one of those villages much further down the coast to help, the language barrier and difficulty of coordinating with a different NGO makes this a daunting task. Still, I plan to dig around and see what I might be able to do.

In the meantime, I have said goodbye to AID India and Mano. I was simply too much of a distraction and extra burden.

For now, I have decided to travel immediately south to Mamallapuram. I plan to spend a day here, and see if I can hook up with another organization. If not, I’ll head south again to Pondicherry. If nothing fruitful evolves there I will head back to Chennai and home.

March 20, 2005 – Mamallapuram
Getting Naked

Confession. There is another reason I left Mano and AID India. Compared to being a distraction, burden and getting in the way of Mano and his work, it is very minor, but it did play a role in my decision. The reason: I NEEDED to sleep naked. I didn’t think Mano, sleeping mere feet from me, would have enjoy a close encounter with my red, itching, fiery bum, much less my whole red, itching, fiery torso/groin area. It's been this way for almost a week.

Now, before your mind slides down into the gutter and thinks that I’ve been up to some unhygienic hanky-panky or anything of that sort, the culprit is an insecticide called Permethrin that I sprayed on my clothes  The travel doctor I went to before the trip recommended it.

You spray this gunk on your clothes and for up to a month it will stun or kill any bugs – especially malaria-loving mosquitoes – that land on your wardrobe. I, of course, diligently sprayed all my clothes with this toxic cocktail only to find shortly after I arrived in India that the stuff wants to kill me too. All of the truly close contacts points between my skin and my clothes erupted in a variety of lovely shades spanning deep pink to blood red. This means specifically my neck, my armpits, and the WHOLE butt/torso/groin area. Without a doctor or pharmacy, the past week has been a trial of self-control in resisting the itch, one that I have failed miserably.

Thankfully, here in Mamallapuram the street-side pharmacist gave me some sort of topical cream. He also gave me some pills called Cetrimaxx. He said they were antihistamines. A quick, post-purchase Google search informed me that, instead, they are some sort of diet pills. Excellent. Just what I need to do, lose weight. At least the cream seems to be helping and both the itch and color of rash has lessened.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to ditch all the Permethrin-coated clothes I bought for the trip and buy all new garb. In addition, another Google search told me that Permethrin  has been declared a carcinogenic for causing liver and lung tumors in mice. And the hits just keep on coming.

As for Mamallapuram, it has amazing ancient temples carved straight into the rock hillsides, and enormous rocks that have been transformed into life-size elephants and other monuments. Also, new opportunities to help are revealing themselves. A random meeting with an Italian named Paolo in a sculptor’s studio has turned into visiting the local orphanage he has been involved with for the past year.

Till next time, thanks for reading.

March 22, 2005 - Pondicherry

Bare feet and broken glass don't mix, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

I spent a recent afternoon at the orphanage with which Paolo works.

Mariammas Childrens Home has thirty-three kids ages 3 to 15, one big mama in charge, and two assistants/teachers, one of whom is an orphan herself. On the upside, the kids are able to attend the local schools. On one of the many downsides, they come home to bare concrete floors. On these bare floors they have more lessons, they pray and they sleep. Out back there is a play area comprised of dirt, rubble, glass, and a large trash pit in the back corner. Most of their parents have either abandoned them or were so poor that they knew their children would have a better life, more food in their bellies, and an education if they were given up to the orphanage.

Still, each child would each erupt with a sunburst's amount of joy when I picked him or her up and spun around helicopter style. I kept spinning as long as I could, which was until I almost lost my lunch.

A half hour's play was followed by their evening lessons. Wrangling a group of five, I worked on their English as much as my inability to speak in Tamil and their determined desire to play with the day glow light on my watch would allow. It helped that I had brought AID India brochures that explained how a tsunami happens in English and Tamil. Some of the kids were attentive and quick to learn. Others fell asleep sitting up against the concrete walls.

It hurt to leave. I can't help question if my short time there was at all useful to them, or if I was yet another person who briefly appeared in their lives only vanish like so many others have before. Or, maybe traveling solo is causing me to spend too much time inside my own head.

With this to ponder, I then lost almost an entire day trying to extract myself from Mamallapuram. The town has that certain type of vibe that sucks people in for longer than they intend, which explains the numerous shaggy and tan ex-pats sipping chai and playing chess in the restaurants.

The vibe, however, wasn't to blame for keeping me in Mamallapuram though. It was money. There was an intricate sculpture I wanted. I was short on rupees and, in this case, Visa was not everywhere I wanted it to be. Visa was not at fault this time however. The problem: to use a credit card in a small town like this you have to draw against it at a money exchange. That works wonderfully fine except when the phone company decides to go on a random strike for two days so the credit card information can't be transmitted.

When the phones didn’t come back up on day two, the sculptor suggested I traipse over to the closest ATM—15 kilometers away. This sounded like a fine plan until the sculptor sent along one of his employees to make sure I made it back alive. Eerk!

After a 25-minute jaunt through the green and brown countryside our rickshaw sputtered into the Town of the ATM. The nearly vacant town appeared to be comprised entirely of chemical plants and the ATM, which had its own little house and an ancient security guard sleeping in a chair outside, was located deep in its heart. Weird. Eerie. Twilight Zone. Call it what you will, my gut was calling to can the whole thing and get the hell out of there.  

Instead, I walked into the little house. The security guard, the rickshaw driver and the sculptor’s employee followed. I slid my card into the slot. My three amigos stood well within my personal space bubble watching. I punched in the maximum amount the ATM allowed for a single withdraw, which was only a quarter of what I needed. A wad of rupees came stampeding out, and I slid the card back in to make a second withdraw. The rickshaw driver flinched.  Third withdraw. The sculptor’s employee whispered to the security guard. Fourth withdraw. Something metal on the security guard went clang! My gut clenched as I turned around. They were all smiling like flight attendants and appeared perfectly at ease. My gut released as we climbed back into the rickshaw. I was going to live! The security guard bobbled his head goodbye as we puttered away.

The sculptor's bill paid, I caught the bus to Pondicherry. It cost about 75 cents to go fifty miles, which sounds like an incredible bargain until you factor in the Bollywood epic blaring from the TV screen at volume 11 the entire trip.

Pondicherry was once a French colony town and its architecture is a strange mix of French meets communist concrete meets lack of upkeep. It's also the home to a famous ashram founded, in part, by someone referred to as The Mother. Its neighboring town is called Auroville, an experiment of unique social structure and "forward" thinking created, in part, by The Mother.

If you hear I've shaved my head and joined a cult, you may want to look for me here.

Over and out.

March 24, 2005 – Pondicherry/Auroville

“Why do you need to build a huge, artificial structure all covered with gold to meditate in,” the Indian man to my right asks our guide. “I can go under a tree or by the sea or on top of a mountain to meditate, and I think that is the much better way.”

Internally I agree with him as our guide, who sounds as if he’s French and has a stick rammed high up his butt, gives an evasive answer: "Yes. Yes. OK. That is your opinion and it is your right to think that. I am not going to argue with you. Next question."

I’m the lone white guy sitting among a group of Indian tourists staring at the four-story high Matrimandir. To picture the Matrimandir – Mother’s Temple – think a squat Epcot Center covered in gold disks. It is the central meditation sight and spiritual hub of Auroville, and it contains a large, round, glass crystal inside that a single ray of the sun’s light hits throughout the day. At least that’s what we’re told. We can’t go inside because it’s closed for renovation.
Auroville, roughly translated, means, “place of rich, idealistic foreigners.” The town sits on the outskirts of Pondicherry and was founded in 1968 by a French ex-pat referred to only as The Mother. The goal of Auroville is to put humankind’s progress before all individual desires and passions, to put individual worth before dollar worth, to recognize the divine in all creatures, and, ultimately, achieve human unity through spirituality.

It sounds great and commendable, and I was even hoping to find a little spirituality and nuggets of truth here myself. I had also considered seeing if Auroville needed any help with tsunami relief work. I’d heard the town’s residents were involved in assisting the local villages in their recovery. Instead, I don’t ask anyone anything because something about the place makes my skin itch. And this itch isn’t from the rash that plagued me the first week of my trip. Thankfully, that has all but disappeared.

This itch comes from the feeling that something isn’t quite right here; that underneath all this peace and love and progress, something is seriously off-kilter. Most of the residents I see have a pensive, burnt-out nailed into their faces. It’s disconcerting. Then again, maybe it’s all just because most of them are French.

A fellow, lone traveler I meet at Auroville, Simar, agrees with my assessment and thinks my frank, American opinion is cool. She says, “Europeans, even if they thought it was all rubbish, would still say they thought it was nice.”

Simar is an Indian anomaly – a female in her early twenties traveling around India alone. She says other Indians are constantly shocked about her solo adventures, and she doesn’t dare to tell her parents. “First, they would have heart attacks,” she says. “And if that didn’t kill them, next they’d disown me.”

We have dinner that night back in Pondicherry and I am grateful our paths have crossed. It’s a relief to talk to be able to talk to someone who isn’t trying to sell me something.

She leaves Pondicherry after dinner on a seven-hour, all-night bus ride to Bangalore. Seven hours on a crowded bus that makes Greyhound look like a motorized Four Seasons Hotel. Ouch.

My next stop is inland – Tiruvannamalai. There is an ashram there I’ve been told I should check out.

March 24, 2005, 8:30 PM - Tiruvannamalai

This just in...

I arrived in Tiruvannamalai by train to discover there is a festival tonight. It is in honor of the Hindu god Shiva. Shiva means many different things, but here he most specifically represents fire—it's intense light illuminating and destroying the darkness of evil and ignorance. The festival starts at 3 AM and involves a 14K walk around the mountain towering over the town. This mountain also happens to mark the site where Shiva appeared as a column of fire, creating the original symbol of lingam. (For those who don't know what is I'll explain in my next post. Not enough time now.)

I’m not to psyched about the other 50,000 people who will be joining me on the walk tonight, but I can't even imagine what this experience is going to be like.

Be sure to tune back in tomorrow to find out.

March 25, 2005 – Tiruvannamalai

Question: What do you do when you see an elderly man dragging himself across the street by his hands?

Answer: You feel your heart crumble and walk on by.

The number of homeless and handicap in Tiruvannamalai is overwhelming. They are in every town of course, but I think the monthly, full-moon festival I took part in last night provides extra incentive to reside here. The Hindu festival and the mass of people who participate in it each month provide the destitute with a chance to collect a few extra rupees every thirty days.

I’ve read that Hinduism, which is the overwhelming religion of choice here, helps put believers’ mind and hearts at ease when it comes to the homeless and the poor. The Hindu concept of reincarnation – to put it in very simple terms – means that the destitute are either paying for past wrongs or have to survive in this state before reaching the next, higher level. For a white, non-Hindu guy like me it feels cold and wrong to turn a blind eye. Yet, it would be impossible to help all of them. I give a rupee here and there or a pen to a child whenever I can, and, even though the idea of reincarnation and I don’t mix, I wish for them to return one or two or ten steps up on the livelihood ladder their next time around.

“Festival” is something of a misnomer for what went down last night. Starting at 3 AM, 50,000 of my closest friends and I walked around the 14-kilometer base of the mountain towering over Tiruvannamalai. Every hundred yards or so there was a shrine or small temple that people would pray at and circle around. I circled a few to get a feel for their devotion, but after that I stayed out of the way.

In addition to the poor asking for alms and the shrines, there were also people selling an array of goods:  fresh lemon soda, coffee, tea, popcorn, watermelon, devotional tapes and CDs, sweets, potato chips, hand-carved rolling pins, cheap handbags, phallic-shaped balloons, potatoes, white cubes of ignitable ghee for adding to the fires that marked each shrine, sugar cane juice and more. There was also one section of fortune-tellers – their cards and caged birds set out before them. I was tempted to sit with one, but I was certain they would not know English. I kept on walking.

Across the face of one small, rocky hillside people were placing lit wicks floating inside little, clay vases full of liquefied ghee. The flames made the hillside appear to be dotted with stars. Lighting one, I wished on the flame to carry love and grace back to everyone in the States.

Almost three-and-a-half hours later, I finished the circuit, reaching my hotel as dawn broke. My legs were wobbly and my flip flops—the flip flops that had made me feel like a wuss from the first step, like the lame American with soft feet—were about to blow out No one else had this problem because everyone else – the kids and the elderly, the chunky and the thin – walked it barefoot.

Still, with the exception of the trucks that buzzed through the crowd at 25 mph with their air-horns blaring, it was a meditative experience. And the 50,000 others who walked it? Far from being an annoyance, they made the experience richer.

[I said I would explain the lingum in my previous post. It is a phallic symbol representing the male. It is usually paired with the yoni, which symbolizes the vulva, to – I think – represent the balance of male and female within all of us.]

March 28, 2005 – Tiruvannamalai

There really are gurus who spend years meditating on top of mountains. I know because yesterday one farted in my general direction. They call him Baba. He’s been chilling at the top of the mountain that rises above Tiruvannamalai for the past sixteen years. He spent the first eight years sitting cross-legged. Then, just to spice things up, he switched to a squatting. Imagine squatting for eight years. I can barely squat for eight seconds.

Each morning Baba takes his one meal for the day – a cup of milk, a cup of water, a cup of herbal tea, a pinch of sugar and a small ball of brown chili. Maybe it’s the milk. Maybe it’s the chili. Who knows, but something in that mix gives him the toots.

I hadn’t even planned on being in 73-year-old presence. My only intention in making the 2,000-foot climb to the summit was I thought it’d be a good place to meditate; someplace with a great view where I wouldn’t be able to hear the constant blare of car horns.

Instead, as I began the climb at 5:30 AM to beat the heat, I ran into Sankar. Sankar, after showing me a shortcut, immediately introduced himself as one of Baba’s servants. Baba has a cadre of help to keep him and the people who climb the mountain to get his blessings feed and hydrated.

As I shook Sankar’s hand I realized he had a side gig too, and that was helping people up the mountain. There was no escape. I had just “hired” a guide, and I was pretty sure he would be expecting some rupees in the pocket when we parted ways later.

Sankar turned out to be an affable climbing partner though, and he sincerely cared about the safety of myself and the other pilgrims we came across —“Careful, careful…No, no. This way, not that way,” he said with almost metronomic constancy. He filled me in on all things Baba, and described what being Baba’s servant for the past 13 years has entailed. Now 54, Sankar has spent those years hauling supplies up the mountain; his barrel chest and iron-solid calves standing testament to his efforts. Three days a week he makes two trips that start at 3 AM – one with milk, one with water. Three other days he makes only one trip with only water. Baba gives him Tuesday off.

When we reached the top, there was a hut of plastic tarps and palm leaves being whipped around by the wind. Baba was somewhere inside and about twelve people were lined up outside to see him. Sankar instructed me to get in line. Um…O.K., sure. Why not?

“Where are you from,” asked an Indian squatting next to me.

“America,” I said.

“Amirica! You are very lucky to be here. I am Indian and this is the first time I am fortunate enough to be blessed by Baba.” His eyes were wide with enchantment and excitement.

I returned a weak smile, growing increasingly unsure about what I was getting myself into, and looked toward the Tent of Tarps as the ceremony commenced with a round of prayers. We were then ushered through the plastic tarps. It was musty and cramped. Following the lead of those taking turns before me, I got down on my knees at the same spot each of them did, bent forward until my forehead was just above the dirt floor, got back up and walked out the exit, one of Baba’s other servants marking my forehead with white powder as I left. It was over in seconds. There was no sign of Baba.

Back outside more prayers were said and we were served Baba-blessed beverages – multiple cups of tea and herbal water. The tea included the tea grounds piled at the bottom of the cup. “Yes, yes. Eat the grounds. Very powerful,” said Sankar. Eating tea grounds is like eating pebble-sized, brown-gunk sponges. Edible, but I won’t be making it a habit.

Following the drinks there was a procession around the enormous outline of Shiva’s feet that were painted on to the very top the mountain. There were more prayers and then we snaked back through Baba’s tent. And that’s when I saw him. He’d been there the first time, of course, but the whole enter, kneel, leave, forehead dab thing had happened in such a flurry that I’d missed him.

Baba was tucked inside a 3x2-foot rectangle of plastic. With a short gray beard and, not too surprisingly, rail thin, he was squatting on top a small dirt ledge. If it hadn’t been for the slight movement of his eyes he could have been mistaken for a mysterious icon in a cathedral alcove.

Again, following the others’ lead I knelt and bowed, and that’s when Baba honked his own horn. I hesitated for a moment standing up. Did that really just happen? I glanced at Baba as quickly and inconspicuously as I could. It definitely happened, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t crack a smile. He did not acknowledge it what so ever. And why should he? He’s Baba. If I’d put in that much time in on top of a mountain, I’d fart whenever and on whomever I wanted as well. Although, as a courtesy, I might at least say, “Pilgrim, take this—phooot. It is my special and sacred blessing for you.”

(All jokes aside, I mean no disrespect to Baba, Sankar and the rest of the mountain crew. Their devotion and commitment is inspiring.)

Following the ceremony, I did manage to find a quite spot to meditate, a true gift considering the chaos of India down below me. I gave my goodbyes and rupees of thanks to Sankar with a handshake and descended back into Tiruvannamalia.

Back down in town, just when I thought it was safe to go back into the orphanage, it turned around and bit me in the ass. After the climb I went to an “orphanage” that I saw advertised at an Internet café. The last line of the advertisement said, “Ask here what you can do to help.” So I did. They pointed me down a dirt road to the children’s home.

The “orphanage” has 24 kids that ranged in age from four to twelve. After the initial introductions of smiles and headshakes, I spent an hour working on English and playing songs on my guitar. They particularly loved singing along with the “ABC” song. They like it so much they requested it again and again and would only feign polite interest if I began playing any other children’s song. I had a hit on my hands.

The man who ran the orphanage, Raja, told me how all the children were abandoned or gypsy children. He had gathered most of them from mountain villages, which had no schools or medical services. I immediately began thinking of how many rupees I had and how much it would take to buy them rice for a week.

Only after I left did discover Raja’s story wasn’t quite accurate. A few questions here and there turned up that he’s basically a businessman, using the “orphanage” to make money. Before he got into the “orphanage” racket, he sold used rickshaws or something like that. With few exceptions, most of the children belong to relatives. And, despite his claim of never having enough money, word on the street quoted him recently saying, “I can’t go to sleep at night if I have less than 50,000 rupees in my pocket.” Currently, he’s bankrolled by some Swiss lady.

It pretty much doesn’t get any uglier. And, on reflection, I realized he did maintain an unnatural distance from these children that he said he cared so much about, sticking mostly to a back room that was child free.

I was torn about whether to go back. The children should not be punished for Raja’s lies. Yet, I took the Swiss bankroll into consideration and have decided to see if I can be of more use somewhere else during the my remaining days in India.

There are so many people here who are just out to make a rupee anyway they can. Seeing the poverty, I certainly understand why. Yet, it is discouraging too and exposes how base and manipulative humans can be. There are good people with good hearts here though. I have found a few—Mano, his fishermen friends, Simar, the owners of hotel and guest house I’ve stayed at here in Tiruvannamalai. They are diamonds hidden in the dirt.

March 31, 2005 – Tiruvannamalai

Foreigners, the cliche goes, come to India to hit the ashram circuit, to focus on meditating and gathering spiritual nuggets while learning to stay relaxed and centered and how to live in the moment and to let go. I’m here to tell you that sitting cross-legged on the floor for hours, days and years is for sissies. If you want to master these techniques, but you don’t want it spend the rest of your life doing it, take an Indian cab ride at night. You will master them immediately. If you don’t, if you can’t stay relaxed and centered and live in the moment and let go of the notion that you have any control over whether you are about to live or die in the back of that taxi, then you will probably go insane.

Two lane roads are used as if there are four lanes, sometimes six. Cars and trucks have no taillights, or brakelights. Shadowy pedestrians run in between the speeding traffic. People on bikes materialize out of the darkness like apparitions. Over-sized buses bear down on sub-compact taxis at 120 kilometers per hour. Random cows and oxen-pulled wagons loaded with towering stacks of hay mosey along with no lights whatsoever. Traffic comes at you with their brights blasting and horns blaring. And, to cap it all off, your taxi driver is dozing off at the wheel.

Your only choice is to mediate and live in the moment and realize you have no control over if you are about to live or die. And, if you make it to your destination alive, tumbling out onto the sidewalk with relief and joy, you will be certain there must be some larger purpose for which you are still alive.

Then, as you get lost within the chaotic airport only to have your taxi driver track you down and give you back your digital camera – the one that contained all the photos from your trip, the one that had slipped out of your pocket while “meditating” during the drive – you’ll be able leave India thankful for having found one more diamond-in-the-dirt soul.

April 1, 2005 – Boulder, Colorado

Home. Clean. Orderly. Quiet. Hot Shower. Soft Towel. Cozy bed. Pizza! Ahh.

Sidenotes:

People have been asking about the food. It’s all about the rice. All true South Indian food seemed to be rice-based. This might be straight rice, rice stamped into a pancake or some sort of doughy-rice form. Mix in various curries and spices and – shazaam! – that’s your meal. Very good and in Tamil Nadu, the Indian state I was in, the authentic way to eat it is with your hands. Messy but fun.

Others have asked about the lodging. The nicest place I stayed was a hotel in Chennai the first two nights that cost about $30 a night. It was Westernized in that it had a shower and a bathtub, occasional hot water and toilet paper. After that, with the exception of staying in the

AID India guy’s house, I stayed in mid-priced hotels and low-priced guest houses. Mid-priced meant the place cost about $8-12 a night. Low-priced meant the cost was $2-4 a night. And I found that the extra

money for the mid-priced wasn’t justified. I could find a leaky toilet or a hole-in-the-ground toilet, as well as the locally preferred bucket-bathing setup – take bucket, fill with water, pour over head – in a low-priced place that was just as nice the mid-priced establishments.