The morning greeted us in similar fashion: a breakfast with too much food and a leisurely trip back to the dock. Relaxed, refreshed, and ready for adventure, we arrived at the dock and noted with approval that Abin, our driver, was actually there and waiting for us. Our next destinations were Thekkady and Munnar, “hill stations” high in the tropical hills of Kerala and home to the plantations that made India famous for tea. The area would become famous in our minds for other reasons.
Following our banana “breakfast” and scare, we attempted to head toward the houseboat that was ready to take us through the Kerala backwaters. We snaked back along our detour to return to the main road. We drove on. Endless palm trees and ferns turned the windows into green blurs, interrupted only by small, filthy villages all nearly identical to the one we’d nearly been stranded in.Occasionally we were afforded brief glimpses of a vast body of water. It was dotted with long brown boats, each of which looked a bit like someone had felled a redwood tree, dumped it horizontally in the water, carved windows out, and piled thatch hut roofing on top.
“Tres, wake up! Dude, let’s go!” Confused, I opened my eyes and saw a dark bus full of sleeping people. The bus had apparently stopped just for us and we had only seconds to scramble and gather our belongings before disembarking, minus a few of them. We got down onto a dark major street and the bus roared off. Only a few people milled about, staring at us with our loaded up backpacks. I was nervous. “What the fuck are we doing? Where are we?” I snapped, with more irritation in my voice than I’d wanted to convey.
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This was written by Cassie, and it’s a bit out of order, but it’s so powerful that I want to include it. Here goes:
Red dirt, boulders that rise from nowhere, jungle. Rivers. A wild land of palms and flowers. The temples and lives of so many abandoned to the monkeys and vines. Eucalyptus groves and banana trees. Monkeys house in ancient temples that rise from the jungle; it is like a dream of India. Mysterious, like an ancient story that is its own history.
The food here, the sweets of almond, cashew, dates, tamarind, and honey. It is beautiful and sweet, and full of the flavors of India. We drink coconut water, and masala chai, badam milk, and thick coffee. Slowly, by all we consume, we are becoming part of India.
The streets are fast and dangerous. Cattle, donkeys, and goats go as they please. People pulling carts of produce and wares keep to the lefts, along with pedestrians, bikes, rickshaws, and more livestock. The right is for the overtaking of cars, trucks and buses decorated with marigolds and bells and bright paint. All in a hapless chaos. It is loud and aggressive and sometimes just plain terrifying. Something I’ve never seen, something that keeps you glued to the window in complete openness, because anything could and most often does happen.
Bharath has taken on the task of navigating us through the maze of chaos. High speeds and quick maneuvers speak to the calm that only a native could have.
The women really do walk around with huge jugs of water or bundles of laundry or produce. Or huge bundles of wood, sometimes twice their size on their heads, perfectly balanced. It is beautiful, foreign. Their dark bodies glisten with sweat as they go about their lives, and I am left in wonder.
Nothing to be said about India cannot be contradicted in the same sentence. With all the beauty, the flavors, and colors, it is also disgustingly filthy. Piles of garbage for the children to play on, and the pigs to piss on. Piles of corn for sale, with dogs rolling around in them. Trucks hose down, and a man shits in the same part of a river where the men are bathing and the women are doing laundry and people are throwing their house trash and urinating. No one seems bothered; this is just how it’s done.
Filthy children beg, and sometimes threaten for the prospect of a few rupees. Bright and outlandishly dressed beggars and horribly disfigured men and women walk, crawl, scootch, or drag themselves to each of us. So much poverty, so much filth, so much corruption and heartbreak. But then, in the midst of all of this, the air suddenly smells sweet with cardamom and orange blossoms and you see the beauty of the women gathered on the porch or in the shade of a tree. They are laughing, and playing with each other and their children. They have found happiness in the face of such poverty and the days of backbreaking work.
It is so EVERYTHING that I feel moved, almost to tears sometimes. I feel humbled and thankful, and mostly love, for human nature. I feel sadness for everything I can’t do, the people I can’t help. Sometimes I feel embarrassed for traveling with money that could pay for the meals and education for some of these children.
India makes you evaluate your own values: the meaning of goodness, and of change. It places responsibility on you; there are life lessons to have every day. Your humanity is put in your face to define and accept, and to change as you will. It is the human condition, the human experience, in the face of the unknown.
Raucous children running down the hall and the loud clang of metal on metal woke us. We jumped in the car and headed to a Tibetan monastery a couple hours outside Mysore. We stopped the car at a roadside tender coconut stand and happily sipped their delicious contents. Bharath and Vishnu chatted in the front while Cassie and I talked in the back and the trip went quickly.
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Mysore Palace was simply spectacular. We gawked outside for a while before heading in, gasping at the color schemes, intricate detail, and a breathtaking domed chamber. Cassie, who has lived in Paris for seven months, remarked that Mysore Palace rivaled or outshone any of the much-hyped buildings there, but we had never even heard of the place before our trip. We lingered a bit, admiring the building and laughing about the security guard who told us to put our camera away and informed us of an anachronistic rule: only cell phone cameras were allowed.
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The confusion, chaos, and smell of the Bangalore railway station was made infinitely more bearable by having Bharath with us. His familiarity with the system and ability to natively speak Kannada also effortlessly resolved the fact that we were assigned seats that weren’t next to each other.
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Cassie proudly strutted out in a bright orange sari, followed by Bharath’s smiling mother, Shantha. She looked stunning. Bharath and I tried on kurtas while Cassie changed into a different sari, and we turned the living room into a private American-Indian (har har) fashion show. Afterwards, our plan for the day was to go finish up our vaccinations and then make our gorgonzola mushroom sherry soup.
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WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK. I felt my brain rattling inside of my skull. The overpowering smell of incense filled the dark parlor, and the man with the mullet hit me in the head a few more times before transitioning into a more relaxing head massage. I had come to get my hair cut, and apparently that also includes a rough head massage. Cassie laughed and snapped photos until we finished up. I inspected my new hairdo with trepidation and breathed a sigh of relief: the man had done a good job and I was happy to be rid of the excess, untamable hair.
A pleasant breeze and soft singing drifted through the window and gently began to wake Cassie and me. Our eyes fluttered open and squinted as we listened to the hypnotic singing. We made eye contact and grinned. We’d made it. We were really in India.
