TuchMyBlog

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

home-ish
So on my way home I learned a few more rules that I just want to note. Apologies of they seem repetitious, but as we know, westerners are silly and stupid (something I have learned from the Indians) and it takes them a while to catch on to the twisted way of life that is the "Indian Way."

1. If there is a wall with signs posted all along the wall for several city blocks, and the posted sign says, in ENglish, "No Urinating" it translates in Tamil into "Please piss here and only here, and bring some of your friends to join you as well. And also please do it often."

2. Always, always agree on a price upfront, before getting in a rickshaw or taxi. Do not rely on the meter even if they agree to use it. Although it is the law that the meters be used, most Indian drivers view the meter as a pinball game with a little bell that is fun to ring.

3. Never expect flight attendants on Air India to be courteous and helpful. They are not there to work, nor are they interested in passenger's frivolous needs. They are there strictly for the free hotels and the opportunity to meet world-travelling business men and hopefully marry them. This is what their parents paid for when they bought them the "job" at Air India.

4. Ferocious horking and spitting is the duty of every Indian man, every morning starting at about 5 am. Because no one has air conditioning, all windows are open, and not only can you hear everyone in the neighborhood snoring all night, the horking thing sounds like it is happening right there in your bedroom. All Indian men are required to hork and spit for ten to twenty minutes every morning. They are to consider themselves part of a well-tunes orchestra and play out this ritual without hesitation. During the day, women are encouraged to hork and spit in the street.

5. If you are an Indian tailor, make believe that you are intested in what the client wants and pretend the measurements you are taking actually mean anything. Also, let your hand linger around the clients breasts when taking the bust measurement. Then go ahead and sew whatever you want since silly westerners don't really know how it's done in India after all... Then look perplexed when the western client points out how the item does not even come close to fitting, nor did they make what was asked of them. Dont worry if the finished article bears little or no resemblance to what was ordered. Westerners bodies aren't the right shape anyway. It's all just a silly charade after all, just like westerners are. They are only good for their money anyway. Everyone in India knows that.

Being Back in the US... more on that later. There is too much to do to really evaluate this properly.
10:48 am edt

Sunday, August 7, 2005

countdown to the western re-entry
OK six days to go and I have a few things to get off my chest. A few questions, a few more rules I have picked up, and a list of stuff I am going to as soon as I get home on Sunday next. Yesterday I waled out of the new house I am staying in to be greeted by what seemed to be a "wandering Brahmin" dressed in puja clothes - white lunghi, shive stripes across his forehead, mala and his brahmin string, or course. He had a little cymbal that he dangled off one wrist and a little gong in the other and a satchel presumably for collecting "donations" to have a prayer said for you, since we all know Brahmins are much closer to God than the rest of us, or so it is in India. So he sees me and gives this sweet sweet smile and gives his little cymbal a dainty little "gong", then holds out his satchel for me to make my insurance payment for a pleasant afterlife. I mean come on! Dude! Is that all you got for me? I mean really, a little cymbal thingy and you can only play one note? Give me a break. Get a JOB dude. Hit your cymbal twice at least! This is the MODERN world and we don't subscribe to that old-fashioned Brahmins live off the charity of others because they are too "holy" to work. It looked like trick or treat because monkey boy was right behind him with his filthy little criminal sister behind them coming at me with their hands out. They steal from your pockets while one of them distracts you with his cobra. They are really great to have in the neighborhood. Extorsion by reptile. There w ere also several boys on the way down trying to sell used garlands for 50 rupees, which is hysterical considering they only cost 5 rupees new...

Then... during the break during my Thai Massage workshop, I listened to three people talk about how Guruji and Sharath are just all about taking the money now, and how they make over three million American dollars a year now, and how most of the hundreds of yoga students who come here are stoners and ravers ans such, and they are just doing Ashtanga for social reasons, and how other senior students come here and sell weed for hiked up prices and... well I know a bunch of yoga students here hit the bong for sure, and I have seen more than two senior Ashtangi's SMOKING beedi's over at Coffee Day, right in the open, on the veranda. You would think they would have the wear-with-all to at least HIDE it like I would, you know, smoke in the woods and in the toilets and stuff, not letting on to anyone that you have this revolting, nasty and ultimately unhealthy habit and at the same time going back to America and teaching yoga again? It's so feckin weird. I felt really sad after that conversation probably because on some level, I think it's true.

I am not going to go in to the sickening story of how my (now ex) landlord is SO GREEDY that he tried to sleeze a water bottle off my roommate so he could get the deposit back, or how they kept demanding my key and then pushed past me into my apartment when I was still packing turning off the electric mains until I kicked them out and gave them a piece of my mind. "I will give you the key when I am MOVED OUT, not now, while I am still packing, but tomorrow when my month is officially over. And turn the refigerator back on please, if you don't mind. I have ice cream in there."

NEW RULES

1. Right blinker signal means, "Pass me on the right"
Left blinker signal means "Pass me on the left"

2. When an American yoga student crashes her scooter in the dark on the way to the rail station at 5:30 in the morning so she can no longer drive it due to the fender being crunched in, and she gets minor scrapes but is slightly shaken up and worried about where to keep the scooter because she is going to Bangalore for the whole day till late that night, and her train leaves in 15 minutes, and you are a rickshaw driver who runs over to see if she is OK and help her up with the scooter along with the nice chai wallah from the other curb, you should then TRY TO RIP HER OFF by demanding 30 rupees for a 15 rupee ride when she needs a ride to the rail station. That is absolutely the right and ethical thing to do. It is always best to wait until people are at their most vulnerable when you want to steal from them. You get more shit for yourself that way.

3. Do not EVER expect to shop at a craft show without being assaulted by the vendors who will follow you at a 2" margin when you are trying to look at the stuff on the racks, even after you politely ask to be left to look around. "Thanks I'm all set" translates in Kannada to, "Please annoy the fuck out of me by attatching yourself to my hip and grabbing everything I touch and shoving it in my face. I really enjot this kind of shopping experience and it really allows me to choose something I really like."

4. In the yoga shala during any of the twice weekly led classes when it gets really crowded because everyone is there at once - if someone comes toward you to put their mat down in the space next to and you don't like that person, quickly throw your rug down on the space and say you are "saving it for your best friend." Keep the rug there until the despicable unpopular person secures thamselves in another space, then remove your rug from the spot only when someone acceptable comes along.

5. If you see a dog in the street, tease it and lunge at it and even throw rocks at it, just for fun and get it really scared and upset and laugh like you are so hysterical you can't stand it, even if the dog has a collar. It is absolutely ESSENTIAL that dogs be continually reminded of their low status in Indian society.

6. If there is a dog sleeping in the road as they often do, just drive over it rather than around it, driving around it makes you look weaker than the dog and it is absolutely ESSENTIAL that you continually remind yourself of the status you think you have by running over poor street dogs with your fifty-year old, fume-spewing rattle trap piece of shit car.

7. Never, ever accept a job selling socks on the streets in Mysore. No one will ever, ever buy socls from you, because if you look around, you will see that among the hundreds of people milling around the downtown area, you will be hard pressed to find someone wearing SHOES let alone a pair of socks. It is like selling down jackets at the equator, which also happens here, on the markets and by the side of the roads. For those chilly, chilly 80 degree days with a wind chill making it an honest 78.

THINGS I WILL DO AS SOON AS I GET HOME

1. Take a SHOWER.

2. Take a three hour bath with a seaweed bath bomb from Lush.

3. Wash all of my surviving clothes (the ones that were not ruined by having the shit beat out of them on a rock) in an actual washing machine and dryer so I don't have to crack them when I put them on.

4. Eat a HUGE SALAD from Whole Foods.

5. Make a smoothie and drink it.

6. Hug my kittie-cats.

7. Hug the doggies.

8. Ignore the huge pile of mail on the dining room table.

9. Sleep foor two days in an air-conditioned house, on a bed that is not on the floor, in a bed without a mosquito net and an anti-roach chalk line drawn on the floor around the mattress.

10. Get in the pool for a few days and be happy that I don't live in India, that it is an amazing, magical, funny, infuriating, ridiculous, funny, frustrating, filthy, beautiful and special place that I can go to whenever I want, stay for as long as I want, buy a lot of ridiculously cheap materials and sarees, as long as I have my nice place to come home to.
8:45 am edt