India Just Doesn't Love You..

 

“India just doesn’t love you man. And that’s why it hurts so much cause you love India, but no matter what you do you can’t change the fact that India just doesn’t love you. Thailand on the other hand, Thailand doesn’t care who you are, Thailand just wants to give you a hug.”

This was it. This right here was the quote of the night, the perfect summation of how I was feelings, the nugget of truth which seemed to make everything else clear. You see I was spitballing with a good friend who has also spent a number of years living in India but now lives in Thailand and it was becoming abundantly clear that he too was privy to India's dirty little secret. You see India (and Banaras especially) has this nasty little habit of not letting you go quietly, instead, it drives the boot in deep and kicks you out. I don't know why, perhaps she's upset you're leaving and so lashes out like a child who doesn't quite yet understand the depths of her own emotions or how to control them, or perhaps she wants you to carry a scar with you throughout the rest of your days so as to always remember her by. But you can ask any number of the folks who’ve gone before me and sure enough they'll have their story of woe to tell from the time they finally decided to pack up stumps and leave India. With this knowledge in mind I went into our final month with my eyes wide open and heart braced for impact. I did my best to be prepared and so I emailed friends and asked their advice on what best to do and what to avoid, I made plans with Wild Flower that allowed plenty of time to accommodate for unforeseen set backs, I even had 3 Aussie friends who came along with us just to help us with the pack up and move. But somewhere in amongst all the busyness and preparations I allowed a tiny crack in my armour to appear from which the belief that I might just get out unscathed began to leak in. Needless to say..

I was wrong.

The new Termite mound in the bedroom cupboard & the Caveman giving it hell..

When we first walked into our home that had laid empty for six months while we were back in Australia we were hit with an immediate sense of dread. We had paid someone to come in and do a some cleaning from time to time but as with many things in Banaras it turned out to not be money well spent. The place looked like it hadn't been lived in in centuries. Mold, dirt and an inch of dust lay across the surface of everything, and I do mean everything. And then there was the termites, oooooh the termites! I went to unpack some clothes and put them away in my draw but as soon as I began to pull on the handle I knew something was amiss. Usually the wooden draws would slide out somewhat gracefully on their metal runners, but this time it didn't budge, not even a little. I tried tugging again; nothing. I tired putting my back into it; nothing. I put one foot on either side of the draw and reefed back on it with all my might; nothing. My good friend the Caveman and I ended up going at it with saws, hammers, chisels & screwdrivers for almost an hour before we got it open and then roughly another hour per draw before finally having unfettered access to our wardrobe and clothes draws (9 draws in total!!). The swelling of the wood during the monsoon coupled with the colossal infestation of termites (check out the football sized mound that was in our cupboard in the above image) had made the draws harder to get into than Fort Knox and set us way back in our packing. There it was - Kapow; right in the nuts. I figured this was it, this was Banaras' goodbye..

I was wrong.

Little Feather Deliveries..

I've been riding motorbikes in Varanasi for a number of years now and rarely, if ever, do I encourage other people to do it. My old man's been riding bikes most of his life and skill wise he may very well be a superior rider, but when he was visiting us here last year I asked him not to ride, not because I doubt his skill, but because I know he didn't understand the Indian road mentality. And if you haven't paid your dues and spent sufficient time on the roads here then how could you?

I equate the roads here to the ultimate game of Tetris except instead of the pieces only coming one at a time and only from the top - they come from every direction all at once and move in every direction with regular changes and with no notice; sounds challenging right? And in my last week of living in Banaras as I was peacefully riding through a roundabout a young kid on a bike pulled across in front of me and stopped dead in his tracks and I found myself coming off my bike for the first time. I managed to avoid the kid altogether - at the expense of hammering the brakes and fish tailing into a heap on the ground – but the kid rode away alive and I rode away with a grazed leg, bruised ego and busted rib. Surely this was it! My first and only accident! Just enough to make me grimace in pain every time I lifted anything heavy - and considering the amount of heavy lifting I was about to undertake while moving most of our worldly possession from Banaras and Pai that amounted to quite a bit of grimacing! Kapow; right in the nuts. Surely this was it, this must have been Banaras' goodbye..

Again, I was wrong.

Can always rely on Wild Flower to capture me at my best..

Within days of being back in town the first indicators of sickness were becoming apparent throughout my whole tribe. Wild flower was complaining of a nasty throat pain, little feather and wild foot both began to have a constant stream of fun pouring out of their noses and my asthma was going haywire. By the end of our first week the entire family was struck down with the flu. Needless to say, with only a short amount of time to pack up and sell the majority of our worldly possessions coupled with getting in decent time with all our friends, we had no time to lay about in bed and ride it out, there was work to be done and we had no choice but to push through it. But on our very last night in Banaras things jumped up a notch. The kids were in bed asleep and I went for one last walk along the ghats to pray for this great city and drink in the atmosphere one last time. I came across one of my favourite spots and sat upon the stairs that used to frequent and I began to experience a terrible pain in my sinus. For days the pain had been growing in intensity but as long a I didn't exert myself to hard or throw my head around to fast the pain was minimal, but tonight I was in agony! I tried to push the pain out of my mind, knowing that this was my last chance to enjoy the ghats, but a fter an hour it became unbearable...and I was forced to retreat home. I spent my final night in Banaras not with my friends, not at my favourite spot, but with my head between a towel and a pot of steaming water whilst regular blasts of pain rocketed throughout my cranium. In terms of ways to spend your final night in Banaras, this one was not on my list. Exhausted, in pain, still with plenty to do, finally this was it, this must have been Banaras' goodbye.. But as by now I'm sure you're learning, again...

I was wrong.

 

Almost everything we own in nine bags..

It was midday when we arrived at the airport with tear stains down our cheeks, mountains of baggage loaded on our trolleys and heavy hearts. I was feeling pretty wired considering the previous night and the three flights and three days of transit that lay a head (not to mention that our taxi driver had fallen asleep at the wheel half way to the airport!! Aye aye aye!!). But we were there, we had made it over our first hurdle, our flight was in a little less than 3 hours and that would give us plenty of time to process and get any last farewells out of our system. But why then was the guy at the check in counter being so evasive with me? Why was he telling me I had to go to the Spice Jet office in the back of the airport? Why wouldn't he give me any boarding passes or any straight answers?

Wild Flower stayed with the kids and our friends while I walked into the Spice Jet office and handed over my ticket. The first guy looked at it and told me to go to the guy at the desk, the guy at the desk looked at it and told me to go to the guy I'd just spoken to, the first guy then told me to go to the check in counter.. I stared at him and demanded to know what was up. And that's when it happened. That's when I felt the warm embrace of Banaras' bootstraps as they plowed straight into the family jewels.

"I'm sorry sir. Your flight is cancelled."

Kapow.

 

The waiting game..

The adrenaline burst was instant, my mind catching up with everything that was going on might have taken just a tad longer. "When's your next flight?" I asked. "None today," was the reply, which of course is of no use to me when I have another flight out of a different city tomorrow morning. "When was it cancelled?" I sputtered. "Three days ago," came the reply. "Then why wasn't I told?!?!?" Turns out that because I had booked our flights months in advance (while we were still in Australia) they had therefore sent a text to my number in Australian to notify me that my flight from Varanasi to New Delhi had been axed.. gee, thanks! And part of booking so far in advance was so I could get this great deal they had going on excess baggage (which of course we had lots) which was now redundant. 

I burst out of the office and let Wild Flower know what had just happened. I then snuck in through the back door of the Indigo airlines office and began showing photos of my daughter to the guy at the desk (listen, if you have white daughter with blondish hair and you're traveling in Asia then do yourself a favour and have her photos handy as they can and do move mountains!!). This managed to get him to stop serving the line of about 20 people waiting in front of him and thankfully secured us some seats for a flight later that night, however it did nothing to bring down the monstrously high excess baggage fees which might mean that we'll now be eating Ramen noodles three times a day for the next five to ten years! But thankfully forty-five minutes and a whole lot of sweating bullets later I returned to my little tribe with boarding passes in hand and together we began our painfully long wait.

The waaaaaaiting game..

Two flights and twenty-four hours later and we dump our bags on the hotel floor in Bangkok. It has been a long, looooong day and the kids pass out immediately in their beds yet Wild Flower and I are still wired, still on India time and still starving. She disappears into the night looking for food for us and returns 30minutes later with a two white plastic bags and a startled expression on her face and tells me I need to sit down because "I'm not going to believe this." I sit down on the bed and feel the familiar wave of anxiety wash over me as I cover my crotch and brace myself for what I anticipate to be India's final swing. What will it be? Did we loose a bag in India? Did I leave my wallet on the plane? Has our credit card have been hacked (again!)? Wild Flower's eyes go wide in amazement and she begins saying;

"We found a little roadside place that had noodles but the people there didn't understand a word of English. We were trying to get some without any pork in it but literally nothing was getting through. Then this Thai guy who was probably in his 40's just walks in out of nowhere, starts talking to us in decent English and helps us order our food! Then we had a nice little chat with him while they were making our dinner and I told him that we were moving here from India and then when our food comes out we asked him how much it costs and get this! He says 'Don't worry about it, I've already paid for your food. Consider this a welcome to Thailand gift from me to you and your family.' Then he just turned and walked away!

Finally enjoying our back porch with friends..

So if it didn't hit home the first time let me close by repeating it again;

“Thailand doesn’t care who you are, Thailand just wants to give you a hug.”

I Saw Your Nipples On The Balcony..

Our Rootop

Our first home in Banaras was the ultimate hippy pad! It was once the servant's quarters for a rich family (the landlord would swear black and blue that it was previously owned by the King of Nepal) and was just two small rooms that were built on the rooftop of a 3 story building. It was hot, dark, cramped, had no privacy, no hot water, no silence, no shower, no way to keep the dirt out, a squat toilet, you had to walk through the landlord's house to get to the front door, it was infested with rats.. ok, so essentially it was a hovel, but it was our hovel, in the city we'd spent years dreaming about living in, and we loved it. It was close to everything, overlooked an ancient religious site that was potentially thousands of years old and had one of the most amazing views of the city! And out of all the mixture of memories we have from our time living in that most wonderful of homes, one most definitely stands out above the rest; our landlord.

His name is Tiwari Ji, but we affectionately just called him "Tooza." He would love to tell you just how important he was and would remind me on an almost weekly basis that Brahmin was not just the top caste, but a Super Caste! I'd find myself half expecting him to finish that sentence by busting out a cape that he'd been hiding under his Lungi! But he and his family were a truly wonderful way to introduce us into Banarsi life and culture and the following three episodes are some of my favourite memories from those early days in Banaras that will give you a taste of the learning curve that lay before me!

Bucket Bath Bliss

 

Episode 1 - Mawiage Is Wot Bwings Us Togever

One day I was walking up the stairs to the rooftop from where we could access our house. As I reached the top I saw our landlord and his twenty-five year old son crouched down in the middle of the balcony busily working away at something that I couldn't quiet see. As I crossed the floor I saw that they were huddled over a pot plant, some scissors, a few rolls of sparkling tinsel and some tape and were busily cutting up everything into smaller bits and pieces. I awkwardly Namaste'd them and proceeded to ask what they were up to and the Son replied that it was a special day because Tulsi was getting married and they were helping her to prepare. 

In my mind, I knew that Tooza only had two sons and that one of them was already married, and also knowing that in Banaras it's not really the done thing for men to have interaction with women who aren't direct relatives, so as far as I could see there was really only one explanation.

"Oh, how exciting! Is Tulsi your cousin?" I asked.

Both men immediately stopped what they were doing. The son's jaw gaped open and he looked sideways at me with that kind of expression that makes you feel like you've just said the stupidest thing in the history of mankind. Tooza rolled his eyes and turned his back on me. The son just began to shake his head.

After standing there for what felt like an eternity with the overwhelming feeling that I had unanimously been voted the biggest fool in the country, I tried again.

"So Tulsi's not your cousin?" I asked.

"No," the son replied. "Tulsi is the pot plant."  



(If like me you needed an explanation, try here)

...Home...

Episode 2 - The Illusion Of Privacy

It was very early one morning when Wild Flower asked me if I'd pop out to a local dukan ('shop') to pick up some milk as we had run dry and our fledgling Chai addiction was demanding to be placated. The sun had crossed the horizon yet still the grey tinged darkness refused to flee and so from out of our windows the world appear glum, wet and hazy. I grabbed a bag and made my way to our front door where I sat down and leaned back against it to put my boots on.

But the very moment my back touched the door something caught my ear! In an instant I was reefed out of the illusion of privacy, and sat motionless with the knowledge that I was not alone.. and I listened. The sound was close, very close, too close. And it was repetitive; just a soft sloshing, slapping, moist sound, right near my ears. On all fours I silently turned and faced the door, my nose just inches from the wood, and knew that someone, or something, was on the other side.

Out the window above I could see the awning which overhung the front of our house by a couple of feet but nothing else, and so slowly, very slowly, I raised myself up higher and set a trajectory for the window. 

As the crown of my head reached the lower limits of the window I held my breath. I was still new to this country, still confounded daily by almost everything I saw, still aware that I had no idea what that sound was and therefore absolutely anything could have been waiting for me on the other side. 

As my eyes finally crested the window sill I peered down into the chasm below, and there he was, in all his glory; dear ole Tooza! Our elderly, bald, bushy eared landlord, sitting in the only stream of sunlight that just so happened to be falling upon our front door step, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and rubbing cooking oil all over his body. 

The soft sloshing, slapping, moist sound proceeded to eminate from our doorstep for further 25minutes.. Suffice to say our stomachs went Chai free that morning.

...Sweet Home...

Episode 3 - I Saw Your Nipples On The Balcony

It had been a busy morning in the Thundersong household as we had a big day planned at the River Ashram and Wild Flower and I had spent most of the morning hurriedly going about getting everything prepared. Some things were coming together well (ie; the pots of amazing food Wild Flower was whipping up to dish out over lunch), other things however.. not so well (ie; the sterilizing of the rubber tops of Little Feather's drink bottles which were accidently forgotten about and left in a pot of boiling water, which when the water evaporated away left the rubber to simply melt in the pot, thus filling the house with the charming and toxic aroma of charred rubber. We literally had to put the melted remains on the other side of the building just to get away from the smell!).

At some point during the flurry we put the last touches on our preparations and were finally ready to go. I put on my backpack and grabbed the large pot of food, Wild Flower hoisted Little Feather up into her sling and together we began our decent into our landlord's house which we always had to walk through whenever we wanted to enter or exit our home. Now that might sound a strange set up, and it was, but after a while you do get a tad more used to having to always walk through someone's home and when you're in a rush instead focus on how to get away with the least amount of small talk possible. But there is glaring problem here; Tooza loves small talk!

Every morning he would race to greet us and the first words out of his mouth every.single.day. would be "I heard your babu crying X number of times last night" *head wobble.* Now if you're a parent I'm sure you can imagine how joyful it makes you feel when someone says such things to you. I would occasionally find myself replying quiet sarcastically that because our daughter was in the same bed as us that we heard her crying X+1 times, but mostly I would refrain and simply return the *head wobble* and ask how his day was going.

But something different happened on this morning. As I stepped off at the bottom of the stairs he raced to greet us in his usual way but this time he did not greet us with his usual story, this time he began with a question, a question which will forever be seared in recessess of my mind! He looked past me to Wild Flower who was only a couple stairs behind and said "No milk for Babu this morning? I saw your nipples on the balcony."

My jaw hit the floor. 

My eyes grew twice their normal size.

My brain exploded. 

As I stood there too dumbstruck to say anything Wild Flower reached the base of the stairs and stood beside me. Without missing a beat she calmly and matter-of-factly replied "Oh yes, I tried to clean them in boiling water... but I burnt them."

I grabbed at the handrail to steady myself from falling.

I tried to force out words; "Did you just..?! But he said..?! How can it..?! What the..?!?!" And for a moment it seemed most plausible that I'd fallen into an alternate universe in which this scenario was so common place that people could discuss it freely whilst being completely nonchalant about it.

But then it dawned on me; Little Feather's drink bottles! The rubber tops (or 'nipples' if you will) that we'd burnt and put outside to get away from the smell..


This moment still haunts me!



We may have moved a number of times since those days back in 2011, but our first home/hovel in India and our dearest Tooza, have captured a place in our hearts and left an indelible mark on our lives which we'll never forget! ...No matter how hard I might try!

A Word About Poo..

I've had a bunch of comments now from lovely folk saying that they've expected/wanted/surprised I haven't already done a post about Poo.. Yes, I'm serious. And it's true that when you live in India it doesn't take long before the quality of your bowel movements becomes a fairly acceptable topic of conversation around the dinner table. Someone you know always has diarrhea or is blocked up and it's a safe bet that how someone's poo was, is also a good indication of how they're doing in general.

So I thought I'd quench those thirsts and offer a Poo Blog (but it's probably not quite what you're thinking).

A bag of human faeces caught in our Guava Tree

I've written on more than one occasion about how much rubbish finds its way over our fence and into our gardens and the process I go through in coming to terms with it. It's something that doesn't have a foreseeable solution so I just keep up my daily routine of picking up my neighbour's rubbish from my garden and tossing it into our bin.

But look, it's one thing to be picking up your neighbour's chip packets, broken plastic bangles or even used up batteries; of course it's a waste of my time and a pain to my heart, but it becomes a different ball game all together when you find yourself picking up bags full of crap!

3 in 1 day..  rough night..

Only recently I wandered up to the Resurrection Garden with Little Feather and Wild Foot and was greeted by the sight of a plastic bag, full of human poo, that had been launched over our fence and had come to rest on what was now a crushed tomato seedling (that I had planted only days earlier!). My wife and both kids had been sick and so it'd been an exhausting week and so to be honest, I wasn't in my finest form, but the sight of my dying tomato seedling underneath a poo filled plastic bag proved to be the straw that broke this camels back.

I began hurling out my tirade of frustration to the world in the best Hindi that I could manage under such circumstances. Many of my neighbours were on their balconies and roofs and the shouting of a hairy foreigner in his Pajamas quickly attracted the attention of all within ear shot. I felt a surge of conviction that this was the moment to let my neighbours know exactly what I thought of them! And so in a strong and ridiculous accent of an Australian trying to sound North Indian, I conjured up the best Hindi I could and managed to sputter out "I'm not happy!"

Look, it wasn't quite as profound as a Jed Bartlett speech.. In fact, I'm sure it was rather humorous for my neighbours to see me flustered and thus completely unable to string a simple sentence together, but I did manage to ham it up a bit and get across the frustration of my vegetable garden being used as their toilet. 

I proceeded to ask who was creator of my latest inheritance, and it was like a scene from a movie with every finger confidentially pointing towards every other house but their own, and so this offender remains at large (though I suspect all my neighbours have been guilty of this at some point). 

Wild Flower often tells me that I should just return it via airmail (ie; straight in through the lounge room windows) but we're all to aware that in any war involving flying bags of faeces, well, no one really comes out victorious do they (especially when they command all the high ground!).

But it does underscore a more serious issue that's wide spread here in India, and that is that 2.5 billion people on our planet currently lack access to a toilet or basic sanitation. Only the other day a friends whose lived here for many years told me that Germany had given Varanasi a 100 million dollar grant to provide adequate sewage infrastructure to the city, yet where has this money gone? Primarily into the back pockets of high ranking city officials, who I guess are kind of like the contents of a sewage pipe when you consider that their greed and corruption continues to deny meeting the basic needs of those living in extreme poverty.

So now I'm trying to reorient my mind. To see that inherent within each plastic bag of poo that's crushing a new seedling in my garden is the out workings of the corruption and evil that results in basic human needs not being met. And look, I'm happy to admit that I'm not there yet. It's not easy, in fact it's still soul crushing to see so much hard work being shat on (literally) by the very people I'm eager to share my harvests with, especially when they can clearly see where it's going and knowing that there are other disposal options, but trying to see the bigger picture and is helping me reconcile some of the heart ache I go through each and every time I discover a fresh deposit. 

While doing some reading about this issue of sanitation, I came across the above clip which encouraged me (and gave me a good laugh) that work is being done to address the issue of inadequate sanitation, and even if I can't imagine the process being even close to completed in my lifetime, it's good to know that bringing an end to the war of flying bags of poo is on the agenda!

The Elephant Man (Not For The Faint Hearted)..

That quick pinprick pain on your foot. You know the one. When a small critter sinks his teeth/stinger/dagger right into you and for a split second the only thing in the world that matters is slapping the hell out of the affected area. Well I had that today, and after it happened my sweet Winnie Wild Flower said "Well, lets hope it doesn't get infected like last time." What she was referring to took place almost exactly 12 months ago when I woke up one morning and felt a slight pain on the corner of my lip.

I spoke to Oodbilav about it as he was a Triage Nurse before moving to India but he couldn't see anything wrong with it and so he sent me on my slightly less than merry way.

A day later the very corner of my lower left lip swollen and was painful to the touch.

A day later it was half of the left side of my bottom lip, it was hard as a rock and my 2nd back molar was giving off quite a bit of pain. I googled it and the verdict was pretty much unanimous; an abscess under my tooth. Now this is bad news regardless of what country you live in, but in Varanasi this news means having to see a dentist, and that is almost as bad as it gets.

We rang around and found the best dentist we could and went in to see them right away. Her office was clean and so was her equipment so that felt like a good start. I told her what the issue was and she took her scraper thing and poked around for a bit. But then it got all India. She took her little mirror, the one that's attached to the end of a little metal rod and turned it upside down so that she was holding the mirror in her hand with the metal rod sticking out from her fingers. Using this metal rod, she then gave a strong and decisive WHACK, right on the sore tooth. I gave off a shocked and slightly pained shout but by that point she was already taking off her gloves and walking away, totally satisfied with her work. She said "You need a skin doctor, not a dentist. If that was an abscess you would be crying on the floor right now, and you're not, so it can't be an abscess." 100 bucks says they don't teach you that in any Dental school in Australia! So off we went to find a skin doctor.

I'll skip past some boring bits like plenty of searching around and sitting in waiting rooms and go to when things began to pick up when we finally got in to see a really great skin doctor. She told me that what I had was an insect bite of some sort and most likely from a spider, and that it had turned into Cellulitis and thus she prescribed a ridiculous lot of tablets. It was a Friday afternoon and she told me to come back after the weekend if there wasn't any signs of improvements.

To be taken 2 or 3 times daily

Saturday morning the growth was so bad I could hardly speak.

Sunday morning turned out to be worse. I woke up early but found that I was unable to speak a word. The skin on the left side of my face had stretched as far as it could outwards and so had began to stretch the only other direction possible, inwards. I couldn't put the teeth on the left side of my face together as my cheek had swelled about an inch into my mouth in a giant painful bulge. On this morning for the first time you could actually see a small white headed pimple right at the spot where I first felt the pain and so I began to do what one does when they have a pimple, I squeezed it.

What came out is almost too distasteful for me to describe.. but I will, cause hey, that's the kinda guy I am! Wave after wave of thick, off white, semi solid puss oozed out from deep within my face with each squeeze. The process was intensely painful but with each squeeze I could feel the bulge inside my mouth lessening and the ability to open and close my mouth was improving and so I'd give myself a few moments to get psyched up to get through the pain and then would just keep on squeezing. On a couple of occasions the tiny hole became blocked and so I sterilized some tweezers and literally pushed them into the hole in my face and pulled out semi-solid masses of puss. After about 40 minutes I had filled up a small glass cup about a third of the way.. I offered to show it to Wild Flower but surprisingly she was not even slightly impressed with me.

Hellooo Ladies!

Oodbilav made a call and took my to see the Doctor again that morning as I was in too much pain to wait another day. She saw me sitting in the waiting room and called me straight in and I must have looked quite a sad sight as she didn't bother with any examinations but instead told me that she was going to have me admitted to the hospital immediately.

Going to hospital in Banaras is never good and in general I will avoid it at all costs, however today I really felt that I had run out of options. The hospital she wanted to sent me to was not a good one, in fact it has a terrible reputation and Oodbilav voiced this concern with the Doctor. She replied "in all Ponds there are good fish and bad fish. The hospital I am sending you to is filled with mostly very bad fish, however the specific fish you want to see is the best fish there is!" She had proved herself to be a very capable and trustworthy Doctor up to this point and so I took the gamble and trusted her.

Getting checked into the hospital was a typical Varanasi bureaucratic nightmare. A forty-something minute wait at the front counter to pay your first pointless "welcome" fee. Another long cue to pointlessly hand over your receipt at another counter in a different part of the hospital and pay another fee. Another long wait with the thousands of other sick patients on concrete benches in a cavernous underground room that apparently disdains natural sunlight in order to see our specific Doctor. Finally seeing the Doctor and being assessed by him at the same time as he assessed two other patients with horrible (and smelly) skin infections and then offending the Doctor by asking him to please use new gloves before he put his fingers into my mouth after he had just been poking an open wound on another man's leg. The list goes on.

Angelina Jolie Sold Me Her Lips

I was finally admitted to a private and quite decent (decent by Banaras standards of course) room with the help of Oodbilav who really was my hard working hero throughout all this. They brought in an IV drip with some cocktail of antibiotics and after a couple of failed (and painful) attempts managed to get it into a vain, and slowly things started settling down. Or so I thought.

I had fallen asleep around 11pm and at midnight the nurse came in, woke me up and asked what every single other person who had entered my room that day had asked; "Where is your family?" This question was fine, it was the second question that was really the kicker; "Where is your medicine?" I did my best to wake my mind up and managed to grumble out "huh?" She asked again. I naively responded through swollen lips "My family is sleeping at home, and aren't you the nurse? Aren't you suppose to bring me the medicine?" And here came my introduction to the Indian medical system!

You see, in Banaras when someone is sick or injured and is admitted to a hospital this turns out to be a whole family affair. And for good reason! You see, the sick person lays in bed while the family members do all the running around as Indian hospitals don't provide you with food, or water, or medicine, or medical tests! This is all to be done by your family members! And as I didn't have any family members with me and it was too dangerous and unthinkable to call Wild Flower and get her to wake up Little Feather and make the trip this late at night, I had to go for a walk, with the IV still attached to my arm out of the Hospital and up the street to the nearest store that sold medicines. I didn't get to sleep for another couple of hours.

The next day was pretty uneventful. The swelling seemed to have stopped and maybe even come down a little and so I watched a couple of movies on the computer and read for a bit. At one point the nurse forgot that she had turned on my IV and so about an hour after it had finished I went wandering through the halls looking for someone to take the tube out. At one point blood from my arm started flowing out and down into the tube so I squeezed the tube to prevent further flow. When I found the nurse and she came back to my room and took the tube out, I asked her if she would get me a new tube to which she rolled her eyes, said she would clean it, then walked to the corner of he room then held one end of the tube up in the air to let the blood splash out onto the floor in the corner. When Wild Flower and Little Feather visited I made them keep their shoes on and sit on my bed.

That day I made sure I had all my medicine in advance so as to avoid the post-midnight stroll into town to buy some and was settling in for a quiet evening. I ate some dinner (sweetly brought in earlier by my dear wife and daughter), watched a movie and curled up and fell asleep. But sure enough, jut after midnight, in walked a young student doctors who wanted to take some blood samples. His first question "Where is your family?" His second question "So who will take your blood to get tested?" Yep, at 12:30am I was told I would have to walk out onto the street, hop in an auto rickshaw, traveled to the next suburb (still with my IV in) and drop off my blood samples to get tested. Oh India!

The next day was Wednesday and it was a pretty drastic improvement. It was my third day of being routinely treated with IV antibiotics and by midday the swelling had come down to the point where if you didn't know me you might not have noticed any swelling at all. The little hole in the corner of my lip (from where the puss had made it's grand exit) had now opened up a little and if I pushed it from behind with my tongue the skin would open up just enough that you could actually see into a cavity inside my face! Very bizarre. They gave me an extensive list of medicines to continue using for the next couple of weeks and to my great joy discharged me sometime later that afternoon. Getting out of there and arriving home was a huge relief and thankfully within a couple of days all swelling was completely gone and I was the Elephant Man no longer. 

So tonight, as I'm sitting typing this up and looking at the little bite mark on my foot I'm rather thankful that I'm not sitting and thinking "hummm, so which hospital would I like to stay in this time!?"

Rough Days & Silver Linens..

I'll be honest. Today was a pretty shitty day.

The electricity supply from the city yesterday was hopeless and we ended up having about a 6.5 hour power outage in the afternoon. This is pretty common for Varanasi and you do your best to get used to it and get on with life even though it's in the mid-high 30's (that's Celsius) with 75-100% humidity. We've been fortunate enough to have an inverter which means that when the city power is on it charges up our battery and then when the city shuts the power off, we have enough charge to run small items like fans and lights, whilst big ticket items like fridges and A/C's have to just sit and wait. But there is one sound which strikes fear into my heart like no other sound can. The high pitch squeal of the inverter running dry. When I hear this sound, it's the starting pistol signalling that my life is about to get infinitely more difficult. 

Often no power means no water, and not knowing how long you’ll be without power and water is a major headache. About 3 weeks ago a big transformer in our suburb blew up and we didn’t hear about this till it was too late. We ended up having to move into a hotel in a different part of town until the power could be restored 3 days later. A week prior to that our Landlord’s stabilizer which powers the water pump blew up and we were without water for 3 days. In the last 12 months, the Bundar (monkeys) which terrorise our part of the world chewed through the main power cable to our house on 3 different occasions and each time it took 24+ hours to repair. A squealing inverter signals that these wonderful things are happening.

Wild Flower and I heard it last night at about 10pm. The kids had been asleep since 7:30 but once the fan are off it's generally only about 10minutes in this sort of heat and humidity before they'll wake up in a pool of their own sweat and not go back to sleep for sometime. And sadly that's pretty much what happened. We're fortunate enough to have our Ashram just up the path from our house and the inverter there still had a decent amount of charge and so we packed up our stuff (and two very sweaty little kids) and relocated in search of a functioning fan. 

It was not until a couple of hours later that both kids finally fell asleep and lets just say the rest of the night was hard. Lots of waking up from the heat, lots of weird noises outside, lots of little people tears. 

The next morning we were all up before 6am and thankfully found that the city power was back on and charging the inverter in the Ashram. Excitedly we moved back home but were dismayed to to discover that there was no power coming to our house.. cue more little people tears.

The electricity cable to our house comes via a Kali Temple (you remember Kali, she’s the goddess in Indian Jones & the Temple Of Doom, yeah, that one!) that's on the property, then via another house, then finally to ours. None of these had power and as has happened other times in the past, yesterday something blew up in the Kali Temple yet they didn't feel compelled to do anything about fixing it.

I went and spoke with the Landlords who said they had already contacted an Electrician and that he was on his way but left that conversation not feeling convinced. Lets just say that 8 text messages, 5 phone calls, 4 increasingly aggravating visits to the landlords and 11 hours later, the Electrician arrived. Taking a total of 3 minutes he pulled out 3 fuses, cut one piece of wire then twisted it back together again, stuck the same 3 fuses back in where they came from and cha-ching, we once again had power!

We did our best to keep the kids happy throughout the day (which in this heat was hard work) and are praising God right now that the A/C in our bedroom is working as we all slip into bed, but all in all it was a pretty lousy day. I'm dreading the next time we'll have an extended stretch without power (which will happen soon enough), and I'm dreading the sleepless nights with crying kids which accompanies it, and I'm dreading the ridiculously long day trying to get our power lines repaired, so you might be wondering where the Silver Lining is in this story? And it's these.

In amongst the pain of today we were able to witness this amazing procession of gorgeous coloured Saris after gorgeous coloured Saris blowing about in the breeze from the Sari dying building that borders our property. Sure it doesn't quite make up for the accompanying sleep deprivation and heat exhaustion, but it certainly broke up an otherwise terribly lousy day with splashes of beauty and glimpses of something transcendent, and for this, I am truly grateful.