Another crazy day in India
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 03:02AM Well today is definitely one of those days that we wish we were
back home in the comfort of our own surroundings. India is making us very tired and somewhat irritable today. We are trying as much as possible to escape the streets. Lunch was cucumber sandwiches, cashews and a chocolate milkshake...anything that is without curry!
The anti-India feeling all started yesterday with our
busride to Madurai. It didn't help that we left a really cute little
place where we were staying and had met some great people....had spent our days eating amazing fruit salads, lounging in our grass hut and sitting in the watch tower watching wildlife.
So we get to the bus stand and this guy comes up and asks the typical
question that is starting to drive us mad and is making me a liar
because now I answer something different everytime someone asks 'what
your country'. My newest response is to start speaking Spanish...that usually throws them for a bit of a loop. They can't sell me anything or ask me for money when I speak spanish.
After we tell this guy Canada (I told him the truth in a moment of weakness)he starts to tell us that his nephew is missing and he is going to Madurai to the police. He opens
up his bag and takes out pictures, the police report, his drivers
license and shows it to us. Very sad. We are not sure why he is telling us all this, but he seems intent on us knowing. Then he tells me that he likes my sunglasses. When I just say thank you, he then tells me that he wants my
sunglasses and stands there and stares at me in disbelief when I
refuse. Huh?
Finally the bus comes and before it even stops people are running at
it and jumping on it. By the time Deb and I push our way on with our
bags on out back..the bus is pretty much full. A nice woman and her
husband call us over, grab our bags, ram us into the seats, shoves my
backpack in the overhead compartment (took me nearly 30 minutes to get
it out when we arrived at our destination), Deb's wouldn't fit, so she
had to put it on her lap. The seats are rock hard, there are now 4 of
us in 3 seats, Deb has her back pack on her lap, I have both our days
bags on mine. We have a 4 hour journey like this. Thankfully a bunch of people clear out at a small town that is having a festival and there are only 3 of us in the seat and we get Deb's bag off her lap.
The family is very sweet, spend 30 minutes trying to convinve us to
get off with them and go to their sister's house with them...spend the
night and continue on our journey the next day. You know me...up for
any adventure, I was ready to say yes until I found out that when we
got off the bus with them, we would have to get another bus and
journey an hour out of the way and off our path. So we parted ways when
they got off at their stop. Not without promising to write our new
Indian family.
Then we arrive in Madurai, get swarmed by rickshaw drivers, get to our
hotel/hostel and it is dismal..squat toilet, shower with a bucket.
Poor Deb is not very happy. Neither am I to be honest. We slept tghere last night and it was friggin' hot. At one point the electricity went off and there wasn't even a ceiling fan to make the Africa hot air move around.
This morning we could not find anywhere that served a normal breakfast
that was not curry, every 2 feet people are pulling on us begging for
money, there are deformities and injured people everywhere.
Today is a day where India is not our friend. We are trying to get on
the overnight train out of here, but it is sold out for days. We are
trying the 'emergency tourist' route..apparently there are seats
reserved for us whiteys...so we will see if that works. Otherwise it
is a 10 hour busride, which could nearly kill us.
The only redeeming thing about today is that we have a tv in our room
with the movie channel and we are going to go hide away in there for a
few hours before we go back to the train station to see if we can get
the hell out of here. Before we went to see the temple this morning Mrs Doubtfire was on and you should have seen the smiles on our pathetic little faces.
Reader Comments (2)
oh sweetie....
I read your post and I know how difficult the constant bombardment of people in a state of lack can be. Constantly asking, begging, despirately hoping for just a peice of what you as a westerner can give them.
When we were travelling though India, we had to sort of make a decision about how to go about the constant tugging at the heart that occurred at every corner, every stop, every moment.... We decided for the most part to only give ( small change) to older women begging. - They really have no options for a life once alone and on the street. The girl children are also in a pretty horrible state, and I don't know if it was my way of handling it, but I thought that many of the children may be have been used by men, sending them out begging,... and I opted to not give much to them - sometimes food.
we did decided to give a larger sum of monies to organizations and schools etc. but not nescessarily to individuals exept as noted above.
There is a way that I became both physical and CLEAR with the touts trying to sell us something (very aggressively), Alice had a harder time saying no with assertion. I was much less polite than she was and found that to be nescessary. To be clear without a doubt that I was not interested. - Often, my most useful practice was (this sounds rotten) but to assume they were invisible. - Not showing any intrerest or giving into discussion of any sort - and just walking through them, without even moving out of their way, just using my arms to push them aside. Now of course, this was not the only way that I dealt with the constant suffering, but it was one way that I learned to deal with it.
Alice and I also had a code - Sometime, there were touts that actually had something that may have been of interest to Alice for instance and my first reaction was to protect her and keep the guys away from her, casue she was so polite saying, no thank you.... no thank you.... no thank you.... ( get it, ... it wasn't working)... so.... If she liked something and wanted to consider it or bargain or look at stuff, she would say Likezo ( a friends name that they would'nt understand ) and that meant she was okay, and I shouldn't worry and try and get her out of the situation. If she was stuggling and feeling trapped she would say JULIA - and I would take on guard dog duty and move in!!!!
Travellingn through India was if nothing else ( and there was so much more,) EMOTIONALLY draining every day. That you have each other to process the days with is so fortunate, sometimes saying nothing but going through it all and the understanding of it is certainly difficult.
Christine and Deb, I know you were aware there would be challenges like this but maybe it wasn't possible to know the depths of despair people live in there until you are in the thick of it. I can tell this will only increase your appreciation of where we live and how fortunate we are.