India Jones and the Temples of Goo .... by Adam (2000)

_________________________________________________________________

I flew Singapore Airlines to Bombay. It's the airline with personal TVs (with video games and movies),
gourmet cuisine and enough legroom for Bill Clinton to travel with an intern. One strange thing: "in
accordance with Indian law", the flight attendants sprayed the cabin with a "fragrant, non-toxic,
pest-killing mist" as we landed. After having traveled there, I wonder what could we possibly bring that they don't already have?

My travels began in Bombay. My first glimpses of India were not what I expected at all. Driving from the
airport, I didn't spot a single teepee or totem pole. I arrived in Bombay at night. I think the
adjustment at first encountering any large, Indian city can be wrenching. India lunges at you, the way
the world besieges the senses of a newborn infant. Actually, childbirth is perhaps the right analogy:
dizzying arrays of colours, sickening smells, multi-hued buffets of bodily fluids, unwanted ass-smackings.

And even Rudolph Giulliani would have to experience a Sally Struthers moment or two on the journey into town. Emaciated kids, lacquered in snot and mud, weave through the stopped cars, begging for change. The roadsides are encroached by never-ending rows of plastic bag shanty houses. And the smell of urine is almost edible.

After the initial "Omigod, plastic-bag houses - that is so cool", the staggering level of destitution hit
me. For every single person living in Canada, there are 10 Indians living in poverty. And poverty doesn't
just mean having problems with the rent or being unable to pay the water bill - relative tragedies in
North America. In the developing world, poverty means having absolutely nothing - no shoes, no home, no
drinking water. It's a life of filth, food shortages, ceaseless diarrhea and death.

Like Japan is renowned for its fragrant cherry blossom season, India is noted for its grotesque human
disfigurements. It was both heartbreaking and fascinating to encounter the myriad of physical
deformities. "Wow, a real leper, just like in City of Joy with Patrick Swayze!!" And there were, of course,
severed limbs and missing eyes and burns and wedged heads and goiters and rotting legs. I remember
thinking as one guy approached me in Bombay "Hey buddy, how much for the coconuts?... Oh, I see... they seem to be attached to your neck." And where else could you meet a woman with testicles swinging from her chin or a family sharing the use of a single head? Also, I would say roughly 60% of Indians do not have legs. But, to their credit, the government has a way to bypass the expense of financing wheelchair accessibility: don't give 'em wheelchairs, just teach 'em to walk on their hands. (If that's not a proverb yet, it should be)

India is a great place to make lots of new, really aggressive friends. If you are looking for uninvited
shoves and elbow grabbing, then a visit to India is for you. I've never been one who takes naturally to
friendly touching anyhow (as anyone who has ever tried to hold my elbow knows). But some guy peeling skin off his foot one minute and rubbing my forearm the next is not my thing. And I always thought I craved attention, but the incessant " hello...hello...where from?" and the constant, creepy leering grew irritating rather quickly. There are no women in India (at least, very few on the streets) and EVERY man you near lowers his head, locks his creepy gape onto your face and never looks away until you complete your pass.

And the sales pitches tend to be a little on the heavy and chronic side. As soon as your foot hits the
street, you are greeted with a "Yes, drums, my friend, drums... very cheap... special price, my friend...
Yes, drums... you want?... good price... cheap, cheap, my friend... drums, yes" And I heard
"taxi...rickshaw...taxi" all day no matter what I was doing. Even as I arrived somewhere and tried to get
out of one cab, the other drivers would clamour for me and I would think, "You know, I havent yet completed my exit from THIS taxi, I think it might be a few minutes before the I'm ready for the next one."

From Bombay, I moved on to Goa, a mix of hippie hangouts and developed beach resorts. The place tends to get infested with big British tour groups. I dined near a few. And man, I was stunned by some of their eating habits. I hadnt realized that a bowl of bacon fat with a dollop of lard is a suitable dip for bread.
And I swear I saw one husband hold open a butter patty as the wife leaned over and nibbled it off the foil.
All this while Indian kids, skinny enough to play a music on their ribs, looked on hungrily.

Most local Indian food was predictably delicious. I ate a lot of thalis - globs of curries, chutnies,
rice, curds etc. slopped on top of a metal dish or a banana leaf. I enjoyed eating with my hands, and
all-you-can-eat for a buck is a great value. Plus, there's nothing's more appetizing than watching the
world's ugliest men stuff their mouths with fists covered in fecal-colored glop.

After Goa, I made way to Hampi, a village set in a strange, dry, boulder-strewn landscape. I could best
liken Hampi to Bedrock: boulders perched atop dusty, red mountains, rockscapes stretching to the horizon, old men living in caves, pterodactyls circling overhead. Living amongst the boulders and mountains are numerous bearded men in saggy diapers. These skinny, old "Sahdus" are ascetic holy guys who spend their time collecting alms and scribbling on rocks.

The Hampi countryside is strewn with ruins of a long-ago fallen empire. I was impressed by the scale
and complexity of the ruins - until I did some simple math. The ruins are about 4 or 500 years old. In the
16th century, Europeans were erecting staggeringly huge and ornate cathedrals and castles. Meanwhile
Indians were chiseling crude rock chunks, plopping them onto a pile and calling it a temple. I think the
Egyptians perfected that trick about 4000 years earlier. 450 years old? I have things in my fridge
older than that. But on an aesthetic and spiritual level, Hampi's temples, landscapes and people make it
one of the most magically inspiring places I have visited.

After Hampi came swanky Bangalore: the most upscale city in India. While most Indians are developing
tumours, Bangaloreans are developing software for the world. "India's Silicone Valley" is full of
cyber-businesses which have boosted the economy, allowed for a moderate clean-up and employed scads of people. Even the lepers in Bangalore have their fingers in the internet pie, proving you don't
necessarily need a lap, to use a laptop.

I traveled around primarily by train. Indians can rarely afford to buy more than one bunk for the whole
family so you have to get accustomed to the lack of space. A typical ride had my head propped up against a basket of fish as an Indian family nestled between my legs, sharing a newspaper cone full of samosas. The rural sights from the train rides were spectacular with village life often huddling near the rail tracks. Although with a billion people, I guess it huddles everywhere. When you start to notice more and more villagers defecating on the tracks, you know you are nearing a city. In a single journey, you may pass dozens of villagers swinging their backsides over the tracks, taking poos. But the way I figure it, anything to improve the viscosity of those jerky train cars is a good idea. (Yeah, YOU try writing about India without mentioning poo. They serve it on the flight over, for gawd's sake. They smear it on your passport upon arrival at customs.)

Near Bangalore is Mysore, where my most salient experience was at the zoo. The words "Indian" and
"zoo" appearing in the same sentence probably do not conjure up many inspiring thoughts . But it is a
rather green respite from the city, containing a rag-tag assortment of animals staring out from behind
not-so-deep "safety ditches". It's the kind of place where they aren't real fussy about which animals share
cages. Animals are grouped together in categories like "things with spots" or "animals whose front legs bend sideways". But it's the place to go if you fancy seeing a trainer use a coat hanger to coax a roar out
of a tiger or watching a monkey drag a couple of flamingos around by the neck.

I thought that at the zoo, a place where I would no longer be the most exotic creature in view, I would
cease to be the centre of attention for once. But the stares followed me into the animal sanctuary the way
the smell of the last night's curry followed me out of the bathroom. People were staring at me, asking me to pose for photos, pointing.... They might as well have pulled out chunks of my hair, crammed me in a cage and poked at me with rolled-up popcorn bags. Nobody seemed to understand the irony of the situation. I wanted to say to them "Hey, look there's a rhino smoking a cigarette" or " Check out that boa wrapped around the trainers head" - anything to get them to realize that
the animals are on display, not me.

Perhaps I am unfairly comparing them to the mirthful Thais, but I generally found Indians to be a serious
people. They don't seem to laugh easily, preferring to argue or stare ominously. But one guy at the zoo knew how to make his family laugh. I was watching an ape lazily peel a stick when suddenly the guy beside me whipped his nearly-full water bottle and nailed the poor thing in the forehead. The family erupted in laughter as the ape fell back, inserted the bottle in his mouth and scrambled away. I had trouble sharing the humour and wondered how many laughs I could get if I tacked a baby bear up to a tree with a nail gun.

Perhaps their real replacement for laughter is hoarking. Any traveler in India learns to accept the
piercing, mucousy, throat-clearing and the subsequent discharge of fist-sized lumps of throat waste. It
really hit me in Goa (literally) when my daily alarm clock was my neighbour trying to dislodge his
breakfast for 20 minutes. It's a little hard to sleep when it sounds like there's a school of sea cows
trying to start a chainsaw under your balcony.

On my way home from India, I spent a day in Singapore. The contrast with India was staggering: scrubbed buildings, shiny new cars, humans without skinless patches. It's the kind of place where you feel like you should take off your shoes to walk on the sidewalk. Dogs scoop up after themselves, babies don't drool and old ladies wear Gucci dentures. Of course, this is also the country that takes a riding crop to your bare ass if you fart in public. Or arrests and beats your family if you fail to park alphabetically
by license plate. But hey, if a little trampling of human dignity and freedom can result in thrice-daily
garbage collection, maybe its worth it.

So I am back teaching, but only for another few weeks. Then I start my new job. I will be documenting human rights abuses in Burma for a small NGO near the Thai-Burmese border. I'm going to be preparing reports and evidence for the UN, journalists, governments etc. as well as maintaining the website, training field workers, blah blah blah.. Sounds like wackloads of goofy fun eh? I guess since I will be working in the
human rights field, I will have to tone down my insensitive ramblings. Does anyone know any good refugee jokes?