So You Know The Full Story

I thought I should give you some updates on characters you've met on the blog. May I just say here, reader's discretion is advised. I'm not sure what you'll think of me afterwards, but let's just say, I've handled many moments in India with much less grace and patience than I ever imagined possible. I mean, these are strangers, not family fer gosh sakes, where you have a built-up history of emotional bloodletting.

Annu of the excruciating massage, and her husband, were fired. I asked about them after not seeing them around for several days. Rakesh told me, "She not good, she corrupted." Then, after blissfully not seeing them for a week, Mr. Armpit returned. He really, really bugs me. Just seeing his face annoys me, I can't tell you how much, because then I would just seem petty. And he constantly says "Namaste Ji" and "Ap Kaise Hai?" to me. Ji is only used as a term of respect. And who does he think he's kidding? He's not exactly pulling the turban over my eyes. I always worry that with him I'll use the bad language I learned. In case of an emergency, just break class. Go vulgar.

The little kid I wanted to kill, the one who 'went vulgar' in English and who I still think about, I've seen him again and again. When I think about him, I think about how someone had to teach him that phrase in our language, understand? Run in # 2 was him cutting me off as I was walking to Yoga class, pointing to biscuits at the store on the corner and starting up his whole spiel again. I decided not to let it affect me, so I said "Oh, it's you. Imagine running into you here, what a surprise." I got as far as saying "What a sur-" when the shopkeeper came out of nowhere, I mean he was faster than the Flash, and wacked the kid several times across his head with his shoe. The look on my face, and the kid's face, not that different, even though it was fear on the kid and horror on mine. The kid ran off. I kept walking and five feet from where it happened, I burst out laughing. I felt as though I had a case of mild hysteria. Look, you and I both know it wasn't funny, it was shock.

The next day I was walking with Jessie when the kid approached us. I pointed him out, and she recognised him from her encounters with him. He started in towards me and Jessie said "No" to him, so he demonstrated for her the Yoga Mudra known as "flipping the bird".

Two days after that, I was at the sweetstall when he approached me. He tugged on my sleeve and kept saying "Me hungry, no money, just giving food, good for you feed me. Me hungry." I said "No, jallo" (Go away)

"Why jallo? Me hungry"

"Because of what you said to me"

"I no remember you"

"Don't worry, I remember you."

"Where?"

"Near Vishnu Temple"

"I no remember. I hungry"

"I'm not buying you anything."

I almost said 'Ask me if I care'. I have these moments where I'm not sure who I am here, at all.

I'm bent on avoiding eye contact, not just with the beggars, or the gypsies who try and grab your hands, or with the shop clerks with their annoying "Excuse me! Excuse me, please!" and the priests/saddhus in orange, shaking their tin cans at me as I walk past, saying "Hell-oh! Hell-oh! Money! Money!" very agressively. The times that I did give something, or buy food, it wasn't enough. I still find it embarrassing, to be one of these people sitting at a sidewalk cafe (okay, sitting on the road, every cafe, juice bar, Naan stand, it's all on the road) who ignores the beggar children. Or the gyspy women asking you to buy them chapatis. I think embarrassing is the word I was searching for, I'm not sure.

It's extremely exhausting, and that's with me not even telling you about the run ins with shopkeepers and tailors and the way that while Pushkar is a shopper's paradise, it's not really set up for you to try clothes on, no, just pull a flimsy curtain across and yet, you're not really protected from someone's prying eyes.

Here's something else I think about: last week, Jessie and I went to the one ATM machine here, which sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. (50% of the time seems to be the average) On our way there, I saw this small monkey lying on the ground in front of a temple, and I said:

"Oh, look at that monkey sleeping," I thought it was so cute, it wasn't a baby, but it wasn't a full grown monkey.

"Where?" says Jessie.

As I point out the monkey to her, a woman sitting nearby in a group of women says, "Dead."

"Dead?" I asked, but I had already realised it myself. It wasn't moving, and while I know nothing about monkeys, they wouldn't be lying on the ground like that. And, as Jessie noted, there were quite a few flies on it.

"Electricity" continued the woman, and she pointed to the wires above us. Everywhere I've been in India, I think the wires hang dangerously low, and then monkeys use them, run along them and jump off them, flying through the air with the greatest of ease, those daring young monkeys don't need no trapeze.

Then the woman pointed up to the rooftop corner of the temple, where the monkey's mother was sitting, looking around as if she was lost and didn't know what to do.

Two weeks before this as I sat at Baba's Restaurant, I watched for an hour as mother monkeys grabbed their baby monkeys, clutched them to their chest and jumped across the road. I was totally thrilled, and it's easy to admire primates from afar. Okay they weren't that far away, and let's remember rabies shots have to be adminstered in your belly button, Argh! Argh! but still, I felt safe. Apparently, you should never smile at a monkey because you think it's cute. Showing teeth to a monkey is like saying "Your sister's an ape" and the monkey will react by baring it's teeth and saying "Bring it on, homo sapien"

I never know when it's enough, and I should really quit while I'm behind. It's just that I felt so saddened by the scene of the mother monkey keeping watch from afar over the still, lifeless body of her offspring, and I couldn't shake the feeling for the rest of the day.

I'm surrounded by grand scale human suffering but I couldn't stop thinking about the monkey. What does that tell me about me?

So now you know the full story. Sort of.