Pushkar Postmaster

On my last day in Pushkar, I ran to the post office to send home everything I couldn't carry on my back - a ridiculous amount of new journals, some clothes, everything I could declare as an unsolicited gift.

There was an enormous sewing machine in the side office where I sat in filling out my paperwork. Initially I thought, "Wow, even the post office doubles as a tailoring shop. Everyone multi-tasks here!" Then, of course, I saw them wrap my package in fabric, and sew parts of it by machine and stitch the rest by hand.

The young American woman sitting nearby said "I hope you have an hour to spare." Well, I didn't, because I had left it till my last day so I just took a breath and started filling out the paperwork - which was pretty clear and straightforward. Official documents in India sometimes contain space for things like "Father's name" and "Marriage status" - and it seems to take up unnecessary room to me, space that could be used for "Date of Birth" and "Shoe size".

In the room next to the room I was in filling out my paperwork, lay a man, sleeping. Sprawled out on the 'official' Post Office bed, having a nap. I thought perhaps he was sick like me, but no, he was sleeping. I'm not sure if he was a supervisor but I don't think you get to nap in the middle of the day if you're just a cog in the postal wheel, y'know?

At some point, I started to cry. The fellow helping me, sewing up my package and calculating the various costs (Air, Sea and Sal Mail, the last being a combination of Sea and Air Mail) on his cell phone calculator asked me "Why you like this?"

I said "I'm leaving Pushkar. I'm leaving my teacher." We had already made enough chit chat that he knew I had been there for 2 months, studying yoga.

The Postmaster walks by and this fellow says to him "Blah blah yoga blah Swamiji blah bye," and points to teary-eyed me. The postmaster pulls up a chair and orders another chai for me. I had arrived just before 2 p.m. so I had already been given one cup of chai. Everyone in the post office gets one at that time, workers and folks doing their business. Everyone everywhere in India, I think.

"So? You will come back," says the postmaster.

"I don't know," I tell him "My father...." And you all know the rest. Perhaps you've noticed this horrifying quality I have of deflecting responsibility? Hmmmm. Perhaps what I mean is this quality of not owning my choices and my decisions. I'm aware, step one. I accept, step two. Adjust, well I'll get back to you on how I do, s'okay? My poor da, like he didn't have enough on his shoulders without me weeping around the subcontinent and saying "My dad, my father..." Like I said before, this country bharat really makes me think alot about my family. Like all day and all night.

"Yes," Postmaster says, "Mother and father always thinking this way. Later, okay."

They ask where I'm from. I always feel like shouting "Canada!" with glee, to be honest. Sure, Harper's in charge for now, and I'm not forgetting there were those awful infested blankets from the Hudson's Bay Company, attempted genocide and much bloodshed but still, I always want to sing it out loud: "Canada, Canada!" Canada means settlement in the language of the Huron. We are all products of our conditioning, hey? And mine includes years of listening to my father saying "Canada best country, no country like Canada." And he's a smart guy.

So the postmaster shows me a postcard from Vancouver. Then a letter from Italy. Then more letters from around the world. People thanking him for making them dinner - at the Post Office? "Yes. You should have come early," he reprimanded me. "This is not just a Post Office." To be sure, the letter from the Italians insists the best meal they had in India was at this particular Postal Office.

The address is simply his name and Pushkar Post Office. That's it. "There is only one Pushkar in India," he explains when I ask. It's an address that is even less complicated than Santa Claus, North Pole, CANADA, H0H 0H0. (I'd just like to say here, to set the record straight, that's right, he lives in Canada, not Finland, CANADA)

I go into the back room and sit for a chai, and pick out a skirt. Yeah, you heard me. Of course I remember this happened to Sarah weeks earlier: a 'short trip' to the post office is, 2 hours later, a bit of chai, a bit of chat, and the Postmaster telling you to choose a skirt from his pile of women's clothes on the floor of the backroom from the business he no longer runs because he's too busy with being the Postmaster.

There we chat, and they offer to ship me home, Sea and Air mail, except the first friendly fellow says to me "How many KG?" I tell him I have no idea, that I measure by pounds in Canada and I can't figure anything out in grams or Kilograms. "But I have a feeling it would be bahut KG," I tell him, alot of KG's.

"Yes," he agrees, looking me over. "Maybe sixty KG - at least."

"Really?" I ask, "because I've been doing Yoga a lot. Bahut Yoga!"

The question no one wants to ask hangs in the air: Well if she hasn't been eating at the Post Office, where has she been eating?

Damn those chocolate croissants.
Double damn Hello to the Queen.
Every item of clothing I've purchased here has ties or elastic waste bands.
So, when you see me, and you will - please be kind.