Miscellany from India

A few forgotten stories and ramblings....



At our hotel in Varanasi, there was an elderly masseur who frequently pitched his services in the rooftop restaurant. One afternoon I decided to take advantage of his apparently magic hands and arranged to meet him in my room at a specified time. I put on the baggy t-shirt and boxer shorts that I wear to sleep in, and awaited his arrival. As he was preparing my bed for the massage, I asked him what I should be wearing and he motioned for me to take off my shirt. I complied and lay down on my stomach on the silk sheet he had placed on the bed. He proceeded to roll up the edges of my shorts until they were smaller than a g-string and then startled me by stripping himself down to a very small loincloth. The massage was great - he clambered all over the bed as he did his thing, at times straddling me in our near-naked states. Half way through he asked me to roll over and spread my arms out. There was I was in all my glory as he dribbled oil up and down my cleavage like something out of a porn film. It was a great massage and he maintained strict professionalism throughout, but somehow I just couldn't relax.

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During my visit to the Taj Mahal the maintenance guys were mowing the lawn. They use push mowers (no motors) which are operated by two guys. One guy pushes and the other guy steers the mower by pulling on a rope attached to the front of it. I was snapping their photo when they invited me to give it a go. I jumped right in and tried it from both ends while one of the guys took my picture for me. Needless to say, they had their hands out for baksheesh at the end of it all, but I had no qualms about paying them for the privilege of joining what I believe is a very select group of people who have mowed the lawn at the Taj Mahal.

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On the way into Delhi on the train, I caught my first glimpses of the really harsh, stark, poverty-stricken India that I was expecting here. There were small communities of "tent" camps set up in various places along the tracks. These were little more that tarps or sheets of cardboard draped over ropes to form fragile shelters. The people were living in total squalor with no possessions at all. As is the case everywhere in India, the train tracks are used as toilets and garbage dumps both in and outside the stations. The rats in the Agra train station could have swallowed one of my cats in a single gulp. I can't begin to imagine what life must be like for the inhabitants of these tent communities.

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I ate at McDonald's yesterday. There is a section called Connaught Place in the middle of Delhi which is like a hub with a park in the centre of it and shops all around on three concentric circular streets. It was a joy to find it as you can actually buy stuff from the west there, like books, electronics, clothing and lots of shoes. There are also a few western chain restaurants which are clean, air conditioned and in some cases, licensed. McDonald's doesn't serve any beef or pork for religious reasons, but I was able to have a McChicken burger - my first meat in India. It is really easy to become a vegetarian here, as the veggie options are varied and scrumptious and also because you can see how the animals are kept. Everything that is sacred, and therefore not eaten (e.g. cows and pigs) is treated like royalty. The chickens have a much harder time of it and given what I've seen, I wouldn't eat one under threat of death. The goats look pretty healthy but you never seen them on a menu. I think I'll eat exclusively at western restaurants for my last few days here, as I'm sure the food will be very limited and likely not to my taste in Tibet.

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I have been traveling with the same wardrobe for about a year now, and my unmentionables have become, well, unmentionable. I've been unable to replace them since it's very hard to find anything that might fit me, and also because lingerie is sold in market stalls and on the streets here. The clerks/vendors are exclusively male and usually a generation or so older than me. Call me a prude, but I just can't bring myself to buy skivvies under these circumstances. I found an underground bazaar yesterday - it's kind of like a cross between a mall and an outdoor market. There was a store that had western name-brand lingerie, so in I went. The 70-year old gentleman who served me maintained that he was a better judge of my size than I was (he turned out to be wrong), but I still insisted on trying things on before I bought them. After convincing him that trying underwear on over my clothing just wouldn't do, we ended up traipsing around the bazaar looking for a stall that had a private spot for me to change. Imagine my relief when he didn't follow me into the cubicle and check the fit for himself. I am very happy that I was able to pick up one item but unfortunately I'll be wearing tattered briefs for a while yet.

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This same bazaar was chock full of leather products, some of which were very enticing. I found it a bit weird that there is so much leather available in a country where it's illegal to kill cows. A closer look and a few sniffs confirmed that they were all made from vinyl cows - I guess it's legal to kill them. I had a similar experience with my perfume, which I was thrilled to find in a few shops here as I had just run out. The bottles had clearly been refilled with a knock-off and didn't even have the same colour much less the same scent. I could have got a good deal though....

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When I took the bus to Fatehpur Sikri from Agra, I was amused to find that the bus didn't actually start with the use of an ignition key. Several men got out and actually pushed the fully-loaded bus across the parking lot at the bus station until the driver could pop the clutch and get it running. Later when were stuck in traffic the bus stalled. Half a dozen or so passengers had to get out and push the bus down the crowded street to get it going again, with horns from other vehicles blaring all around us. TII.

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73 hours to lift-off.