Face The Sun: Let There Be Light.

To Stand on Jericho's Walls and Face the Sun.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Everyone who has ever come to India -- every single person in the long history of India who's paid a visit here -- has described it as "overwhelming" and "sensory-overload." They usually fail to adequately describe exactly what it is that makes the place so sensorily overwhelming. They don't mention:

Every waking second of every day is spent slogging through excrement-laced mud that's flecked with ancient garbage and the shiny packaging from betel-nut wrappers, and long open sewers are everywhere and almost unavoidable. As you walk, you're invariably dodging oncoming traffic (cars, three-wheel tuk-tuk rickshaws, bicycles, trucks and donkey carts), all of whom are honking at you with horns of different pitch but unvarying loudness, and in addition to vehicles of all sorts, you've got to dodge street dogs, street goats, and sacred cows that thoughtfully munch on garbage and don't move for anyone. Meanwhile, you're being tailed by minimum three hucksters who are looking to sell you something, take you to a guesthouse to snag a commission, or rip you off in some other way; those three people will, over the bleating of the goats and the honking of the horns and the crunchy-wet slorp of your boot crushing garbage while skidding through frothy mud, will be continuously shouting at you Hello! Where are you going? Friend, hello, where are you going? As background to the shouting and the bleating and the whatnot is religious music of some sort being blared from a massive speaker outside of a tiny booth selling 5-rupee cassettes, while simultaneously the stench from the open sewers is punctuated by massive clouds of incense smoke that billows from half-burnt sticks attached to every stand, stall and samosa cart in the city. In the mean time, at least two women holding children have seen you and are now begging for coins by waving their babies at you and there's also probably a dust-streaked crippled person, lovingly maimed by well-intentioned parents decades ago to ensure him a lifetime of income from begging, now dragging himself around on a cart of some sort and also begging for coins, and meanwhile you've got your hands stuffed in your pockets and clutching your wallet, because there's plenty of pickpockets and monkeys -- MONKEYS! -- both of whom have been known to steal things, albeit not usually for the same reasons.

If all of this sounds miserable, please let me assure you: it's fantastic beyond any speaking of it. This chaos --this absolutely out-of-control berserkness that accompanies every-day life -- is the fundamental reason that one comes to India.

I'm in Varanasi, which ranks amongst the coolest cities I've ever been to. Internet and electricity are unstable, so more likely than not, nothing will get said about any of this until I'm back to China. In the mean time, the best of days!

In full disclosure: I've only seen a couple of monkeys thus far, and none of them have tried to steal anything from me.

Labels: chaos, India, travel

Posted by Dakota on 7:36 AM link |

Current Location:
The People's Republic of China.

Stop by any time: everyone's welcome.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem to Be Born

Comments and requests for dates should be directed to email.

And here I am.

And for all you random folks out there whom I don't know, for the love of god, email me. I'm abroad, know no one, and look forward to hearing from you. I'm especially looking at YOU, whomever YOU are who's Facing The Sun all the way from Kenya. And Sweden. And Canada. And whatnot.

Books Tackled, 2006:

1. Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
2. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, Dennis Covington
3. A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
4. A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, Anonymous
5. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, Dawn Prince-Hughes

This year's movies, in chronological order:

1. Kung Fu Hustle
2. A Wrinkle in Time
3. Pi: Faith in Chaos
4. My Big Fat Independent Movie
5. The Winter Guest
6. Voices in Wartime
7. What Dreams May Come
8. Farewell My Concubine
9. The Ring
10. Like Water for Chocolate
11. Sahara

Orange Lifesaver.
In Passing.
Foxy Librarians.
Naked Translations.
Open Brackets.
The DC Bloggers Site.
Linguistics Blogs.
The DC BlogMap.

Foreign Service Officers by day, Bloggers by day as well.

The Diplodocus
(Islamabad, Pakistan).

The Permanent Mission of Joshie
(Zagreb; Libyaward).

Prince Roy
(Chennai; Taiwanward).

Sue and not You
(Tbilisi, Georgia).

Life on the Mekong
(Vientiane, Laos).

FSO Globe Trotter
(Lahore, Pakistan).

Vice Consul: Diplomatically Transformed
(New Delhi, India).

Adventures in Good Countries
(Japanward).

Our Man in Tirana
(Tirana, Albania).

Anne's Blog
(Kazakhstan; Greeceward).

Blogota
(Bogota, Colombia).

Furnish Worldwide
(Curacaoward).

Tasman's World
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

GlobeHoppers
(Lome, Togo).

World Adventurers
(Seoul, Korea).

Aaron Martz
(Switzerlandward).

A for Adventure
(Chennai, India).

The Excellent Adventures of Nickie P
(Paris, France).

Permanently Disco
(Dhaka, Bangladesh).

Consul At Arms
(Kingston, Jamaica).



Five Random DC bloggers. Asterix indicates recently updated.