A Walk With Anil & Altriusm

Tonight, at 11:35pm, we board the Amritsar Express, thereby commencing a forty-two hour train oddessey along a circuitous and unfortunately indirect route that will span most of Northern India. But—as the name implies—it will get us to Amritsar, and from there Dharamsala is only a five hour bus ride away. 

For me, personally, this is something of a momentus occasion. Not that arriving in Dharamsala will somehow magically bestow upon me sensational powers of karmic transcendence (though I shamelessly admit that I continue to entertain such fantasies purely for dramatic flare). Rather, it's the getting there at all that matters. Just under two years ago I made a decision to do it, to get to Dharamsala. To be exact, I made up my mind to meet the Dalai Lama. And, like getting to Dharamsala, neither will achieving that task solve any particular crisis or decisively unlock any previously untapped potential. It's just that once you make up your mind to do a thing—and it can be an altogether arbitrary sort of task—it's the getting it done that matters. I could just as easily have chosen the task of building a model of the Eiffel Tower entirely out of toothpicks; it's correlating ambition with results that registers in memory and thus in identity.

For me, personally, it's part of breaking with a historical tradition of aiming for things that are definitively out of reach, or else aiming for things that are in reach and then setting about discreetly sabotaging the process of actually getting hold of them. Either way, the moral of the story is that I, card-carrying member of the human race that I am, have tended to exemplify that undignified and unfortunate habit of the species: disappointing ourselves. It's hard to believe in a future of possibilities if you're heading their from a past composed from almosts and could-have-beens. So, I am perched with a certain distant curiosity upon the edge of a moment that, in retrospect, I suspect I'll regard as having been a rather significant one. The sensation is strangely fearful; whether one dreams big or small or somewhere in between, seeing your dream come true and knowing that you were the central agent of its realization is an ironic juxtaposition of 'too good to be true' and perfectly real that's hard to trust. It's usually around this point that the carpet I didn't know I was standing gets yanked out from beneath me (as often as not by my own hand). Whether or not the sensation holds, and to what extent it evolves when I actually reach the place remains to be seen. So that's what's coming. As to what's been happening...

We've been back in Mumbai for a few days now, and I've had the opportunity to experience a tiny fraction of what I've realized must be a horrifying position to be in: being, in the broad sense, trapped. I mentioned last time that getting train tickets has been incredibly hard, lately, thanks to Diwali. If you've wanted to take a train any distance in less time than about a week's notice, you simply can't. Ninotchka and I have been increasingly desperate to get on with our trip; our ambitions here all revolve around long-term commitments to learning and volunteering, so our stalemate with transit has been both boring and disheartening. In a fit of ambitious resolve to get out of Mumbai, we decided to up our budget for travel significantly to see what other possibilities emerged. To tell the story in detail would be gruellingly boring, but in brief it goes something like this: Over a period of roughly six hours, wherein Ninotchka sat on the phone with travel agencies and bus companies, whilst I scoured the internet through dozens of airlines, travel agencies and automated travel-planning websites, we uncovered numerous alternatives to train travel, precisely none of which were actually viable. Between websites being entirely unable to process payments, my provoking spontaneous and inexplicable errors in forms, fields and information of all varieties, and navigating the impossible maze of Indian policy, we found ourselves stonewalled at every turn. All at once, it dawned on me that I could not leave the city I was in. I was stuck. I began to think about the enormous number of accounts I've heard about immigration attempts, being a refugee, or simply living in a less 'developed' nation, and what powerlessness must really feel like. And I'm not making any claim to having had an experience which in any way rivals those I've mentioned; it's just I've gained an appreciation of just how accustomed I am to freedom. It was not ok with me at all that I couldn't exit Mumbai exactly how and when I wanted to, and I was enormously frustrated by it. I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to introduce, say, military violence to the equation, knowing that the world around you is suddenly vastly more life-threatening than previously it was and that you can't just leave. I'm not sure I can properly convey the sensation, but it's just one of many small shifts in perception that have been penetrating the dense psychic blubber of a North American upbringing since I arrived.

Now, I have been quite irresponsible about properly blogging, and as such have more to tell than I ought to attempt to squeeze into the space of a single entry. So, I'll limit myself to one more anecdote, which is by all accounts a quintessential example of the Indian hospitality I have expounded upon before. Two days hence I decided to visit the local mall in pursuit of some serial fiction with which to dull the impending boredom of forty-two hours on a three-by-six bunk. The mall is some distance away, but it's also on the main traffic artery so I didn't anticipate having any trouble finding it. But, I failed to account for one tiny detail, which was whether I needed to turn right or to turn left upon reaching said highway. I asked for directions, and was promptly misinformed, a fact I was not to ascertain for some time to come. On foot, I set out.

About an hour and a half later I began to seriously suspect that something was awry, having long allowed to elapse what I believed was a reasonable amount of time in which to discover the mall. I asked, again, for directions and was, again, misinformed. I should note that I doubt very much anyone intentionally led me astray; it's far more likely that they thought they were telling the truth. Indeed, in reflection it occurs to me that in my narcissism I asked the advice of two people whose economic priorities probably seldom, if ever, involved megalithic shopping centers like the one I was seeking. Long story short, I found myself what I would later discover was eight kilometers from homein entirely the wrong direction. Of course at the time I still believed that I had travelled in the right direction and had simply walked past the mall, or been mistaken about which street it was on. So, one last time I sought direction. The fellow I asked—Anil, he would later turn out to be—spoke about as much English as I spoke Hindi, which is approximately none. He found someone who could answer my questions, and I was informed that it was impossible to walk to InOrbit (the mall) and that I would quite obviously be a fool to make the attempt. Attempting foolish things is familiar territory with me, you understand, and I was in the mood for a walk, so I insisted that I was happy to make the journey on foot. Two others had stopped to help, and some knowing grins accompanied by a modest respect passed between them. As an aside, I have come to believe that, after a certain age, watching younger people make what are clearly obvious but ultimately harmless mistakes becomes a source of enduring and private amusement to those who have bothered to learn from their own foibles, and I regard this as a perceptual line, drawn in the sands of maturity, that I am woefully anxious to cross. But, I digress.

Anil, understanding none of the exchange, contributed nothing either. In the end, the English-speaking man and Anil had a brief exchange, whereupon I was told that Anil was walking in the direction I needed to go and that he could put me on the right path.

For those concerned about how safe was my decision to follow him was, understand that it was broad daylight in a safe, up-scale neighbourhood and that at any moment I was free to get into a rickshaw and be taken immediately home. I wasn't properly lost; I was simply bent on walking.

The first twenty minutes with Anil were awkward, as we tried more or less fruitlessly to exchange conversation. The picture you should be having is of myself and an Indian businessman, roughly fortyish, walking side by side through Mumbai traffic with virtually no capacity whatsoever to communicate. It was, to be honest, weird. But by the end of the first hour, we'd grown comfortable with each other and begun to invent ways of communicating with hand gestures, finger pointing, snippets of Hinglesh and my iPod (pictures, it turns out, truly are worth their thousands of words). It is amazing to what extent laughter is a universal and surprisingly subtle language; we had, actually, quite a lot of fun. Yet, it occurred to me that it was a remarkable coincedence that Anil's path precisely overlapped my own, and it seemed odd that a man in a business suit, briefcase in tow, would be walking this distance. A battery of attempts to communicate as much finally succeeded, and Anil confessed that he was walking rather than bussing his usual route to make sure I didn't get lost again. Another half hour passed, and I began to wonder when we would reach his home. I asked him; he pointed over his shoulder, back the way we had come, and it became clear that Anil had no intention of parting my company until I was safely at my destination. I protested at length, trying to communicate that I wasn't lost any more, and that only my stubborn belligerence was keeping me from taking a rickshaw. I was immediately defeated by my inability to communicate any of this. Indeed, all that I could do to spare him travelling still further from home was simply to get in a rickshaw and drive away, but, as I woud be unable to explain why I was suddenly doing so, I was terribly afraid I would offend him. In short, there was nothing to do but keep walking and to allow this man to ensure I arrived safely. I insisted, at least, on him allowing me to buy us each a soda. He protested at length, but I insisted, and he conceded at last. He didn't open his drink, though, and I thought that I must have purchased a kind he didn't enjoy. Another thirty minutes elapsed, and I finished mine. The moment I did he immediately offered me the one he hadn't yet opened, as if he had simply been holding onto it for me, standing ready to quench my thirst. Only after I declined several times did he finally open it and have some for himself, a gesture that was small but incredibly selfless and which embarrassingly reminded me of how far I have yet to go in developing a proper consideration of others.

Just before our journey reached three hours, we reached a neighbourhood that I knew quite well, and I very suddenly realized that the mall had been in other direction all along; it was an enormously embarrassing moment, and I treated myself to a facepalm of appropriate magnitude. I explained with some effort that I was home, that I knew where I was, that Ninotchka's family were very close by (in fact, I just said 'Uncle, wife, uncle' and pointed a lot, but Anil pieced it together). He was worried that I was going to try to get to the mall on my own (I think), but at last I put his mind to rest, and we parted ways with a handshake and his staunch refusal to allow me to put him in a rickshaw.

When I got home, I Google-Earth'ed the journey; of my sixteen kilometer adventure, Anil had walked six of them out of his way just to make sure I would safely find my way to the mall on foot. To put this in perspective (for all the Haligonians reading), imagine bumping into a completely non-English speaking stranger at the rotary and having them ask for directions to Dartmouth.  To equal Anil's effort, you would have towalk them the entire length of Quinpool, then all of Cogswell, down Barrington and across the bridge, stopping at the bus station; and you'd have to do it on a whim. And what can I say about that? It's just not the sort of thing we do in Canada, period. We might get them on a bus, we might help out with cab fare—maybe. But walk? To actually put in the time and biological effort of helping a complete stranger on a whim, and to such an extent? It's given me a lot to think about, because there is no chance at all that I would have made the same decision, and I find myself faced with the question: why not? Or, more over, what do I think about that fact, and what ought I to do about it? It's not weighing on me heavily, but it's certainly worthy of some reflection.

Harrowing Failure to Catch a Train

Three weeks of silence! Explanations, please...

The simplest reason is that we've beed quite dreadfully bored for a great deal of it. Due to some poor scheduling and unfortunatey circumstances we found ourselves in Mumbai for two weeks longer than expected, and with very little to do (that wasn't shopping or otherwise financially depleting). But quite beyond having little to do, there's also the problem of free time, and what it's like to have altogether too much of it. When you've been pushed and pulled into every moment of your life by school, work and whatever other myriad committments and obligations you've had for years on end, suddenly having a vast expanse of time to do with whatever you wish leaves you strangely faced with the question of what, exactly, that is.

So, we're quickly discovering the value of discipline in organizing and structuring time. We became rather depressed and more than a little isolated at the end of our unplanned two weeks in Mumbai. We did fill that time with a few things, mind you; I've learned to cook a few Indian dishes (and have made a comfortable art of making my own marinara sauce!). We also took in a play, and it was hands-down one of the better bits of theater I've ever seen (not that I'm particularly travelled in the thespian circuit). It was a comedy, and in general a meditation on the infiltration of India by Western economics, 'culture' and lifestyle. The plot: an Indian business man convinces an American suicide-watch help line to outsource their call center to India. Sadly I cannot possibly do justice to the brilliance demonstrated in both the script and the acting, but it was truly funny, which Ninotchka and I both felt was a rare treat after so many years watching Western cinema's reductionist slapstick (a comedic mode equally popular here, I should note, just not on this occasion). We visited a few other people, collected a few more recipes, and then finally left Mumbai, a leave-taking which became significantly more dramatic than we'd intended. We had decided to make for Goa, to complete our visiting tour and to soak up some sun on its famed beaches. But to get to Goa one first needs to succesfully board to a train headed there as well.

I've written at length about Mumbai traffic, and yet the stories there to tell are endless; this one concerns traffic jams, and the hair-raising adventure of getting through them quickly, and on a deadline no less. We had about two hours to catch our train, but these were two hours as passed through the lens of Mumbai's rush-hour traffic; hours bent through such a prism emerge as minutes. What might have been a twenty minute journey at midnight—perhaps, thirty kilometers—fell in the late morning cacaphony just short of the two hours we'd budgeted. Babloo, our driver and a man who I'm certain could park an SUV in a mailbox, clearly recognized time and Mumbai traffic both as old foes in need of yet another vanquishing. Careering through back alleys, tangential highways, and between stagnant flows of competing traffic, there was a Darwinian quality to Babloo's tactical nagivation. Punctuality, here, is only for the fittest.

Yet despite his best efforts (which nearly killed at least a dozen people, but actually injured none), we arrived eight minutes after our train had left. Babloo took this quite grievously to heart, as though it had been a deep and unsettling character flaw of his that had cost us our train instead of an infrastructural chaos remiscent of twenty-million salmon, recently intent on spawning upstream, having quite suddenly and unamimously lost all sense of time and direction. We reassured him as much, and then went to see what could be done about getting another train. It's a maddening story and not one worth telling in detail, but suffice it to say that anything vaguely reminsicent of bureaucracy is to be avoided in India, at almost any cost, or else one should at least expect to pay a hefty toll in the currency of sanity beyond any other fees for services rendered. Not that alternatives abound, and not that these were much better; there were options available from either illicit or at least private-sector means, but neither of these fell within our price bracket, especially since we had just purchased a train to nowhere and were not being refunded for it. It is worth noting that Diwali, the Hindu New Year, and a holiday of a magnitude akin to Christmas, was at this time only a week away, significantly reducing one's impromptu travel options due to millions upon millions of people exercising their's well. We ended up with the lowest-fare, lowest-class seating one can get, which is, it turns out, not in fact even a guarantee of seating. "Non-AC, third-tier unconfirmed" is code for "stuffy metal compartment full of more people than can fit without assigned seats". It is incredibly economical (a ten hour train ride cost us, together, about $9), but very uncomfortable, and you are likely to share your seat (or rather, your bit of the bench) with four or five others. Ninotchka was small enough to sneak into the overhead luggage rack for a quick nap, but I had no such luck. Such trains are only possible in a country that is as civilized as India; in the West, these trains would be an intolerable failure. The sharing, hospitality and consideration given to each other occupants of this train was quite moving; a marvelous (if necessary) display of teamwork and cooperation, making the trip bearable. It was a beautiful way to see the Indian country side, but the next time we travel we will most certainly spring for guaranteed seating (especially since our next train is likely to be on the order of thirty hours, not ten!). 

We arrived, safe if weary, at 1:30am and were greeted by Ninotchka's Uncle Pierre and his partner Natasha, a Russian woman who moved to India five years ago. I'll write again in a couple of days and bring this thing up to date, so as not to gloss too quickly over the details of Goa, because aside from being the first bit of actual 'travelling' we've done since arriving, it's also been a pretty interesting experience. As promised, I have another round of pictures, which will be followed by a third round as soon as I can locate some bandwidth!

Brutality, the Teacher

I've been more than vocal about my intentions here in India; while voyeurism is an inescapable dimension of travel, and spectacle a perceptual failing that I haven't yet subdued, I'm nonetheless trying to learn from India, at least as much as I learn about it. I'm not confident it's the case that the most important lessons are the ones taught by the harms we undergo, but it seems to me that the most salient teacher, at least, is suffering. So let me warn you in advance; this particular entry has a more sombre tone than those which have preceded it, and it contains some graphic descriptions that not everyone will find valuable. I've debated whether or not to write this privately or publicly or a few days, and have decided that painting a picture of India through rose-colored glasses is unfair to both those who are witnessing India vicariously through my writing, and to India itself. Those of us who enjoy immense privilege ought to know how the rest of the world is living, and the rest of the world ought to have a chance to have its stories told, even if only to an audience of a half dozen or so. In  the Wes, our media has weened us on drama and the spectacle of tragedy; we have become adrenaline junkies, and we tend toward privately enjoying our vicarious access to disaster and woe. What I'm going to write about isn't 'big', it's just very sad; there's no adventure in this story, but there's a fair but of hurt. So, there's the disclaimer.

In the movie A Mighty Heart, Angelia Jolie's character is a woman who travels to Africa to aid the sick and starving. Upon arrival, she finds herself shocked with the magnitude of the harm around her, and seeing a child nearly dead from starvation, begins to berate a doctor who chooses not to give the child aid because the child isn't likely to survive. She thinks him a monster, unable to understand how he could turn his back on a child near death if there is even a chance it could live, and he in turn mocks her for her ignorance and condescension. It takes her a long time to overcome her privileged ideas about welfare to understand that in the part of Africa she's traveled to, not everyone can be saved. The resources just aren't there, and being frivolous with them kills more than it saves. Her ideas about right and wrong become shattered by a reality she hadn't really been able to conceive of until she was faced with it. The film reflects a lesson I have tried to learn in advance. Anthropology has taught me to think deeply about matching ethics to circumstances, to admit reality. In much more egocentric fashion, I am also loathe to be laughed at or to be found naive, and so try to consider how appropriate my perspective is to my environment to avoid embarrassment. Both of these elements of myself play out in the story below.

I knew that India would bring me face to face with things I had never seen, and to some extent had prepared myself for this. I've had to look children of four or five in the eye and tell them no, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to give you any money, because I know that the money would not go to themselves, but to an owner who exploits them. I've seen a woman whose eye-balls had been torn from their sockets and not put back in properly, so that they jutted red and ragged from her face, secured by thick coils of scar tissue that made stalks of the nerves that must once have carried the currents of vision. We are not wealthy; on this journey, our air cannot be philanthropic. Ninotchka and I do our best not to waste food, and when we have left-overs we don't care for, to give them away to such people. We extend kindness to some who might receive precious little of it. When we settle in the North, we will volunteer our time; but this is the extent of our power, for the time being. Facing this has challenged me; but at the same time, I've been able to cope with it, primarily by relying on the reflex of jaded apathy Western society has bred in me, barricading myself behind it long enough to escape their begging, and then releasing it, letting in the familiar, cloying shame that is only assuaged by the mass complicity of all the urban populations of Earth.

Though, to give this city its due, Mumbai is no stranger to adversity, and in far better form than Western cities, Mumbai copes, after a fashion, with its vicissitudes. There are eighteen-million people in this city (my previous figure of twenty-two was an incorrect statistic), and the truth is, most of them take care of each other in ways many of us at home wouldn't recognize. It's possible, though not incredibly nourishing, to eat here for perhaps fifty cents CAD a day, and the population here seems to have an implicit agreement not to take on too much in their roles, so that meagre jobs can be born of almost any deed. Which doesn't mean that the work might not be brutal; rather, by dividing labor into simple tasks, whether back-breaking or monotonous, more opportunities for work obtain. In this way, more people than could otherwise be find themselves enmeshed in the fabric of the city's economy. In general, starvation is less of an issue than is quality of life, and survival far less uncertain than is flourishing. Born to a nation of free health care, minimum wage and the McJob, it's all struck me rather viscerally, but I've done my very best to try and live by the old adage, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". I've tried to see India through Indian eyes, to avoid what anthropology has taught me think of as ethnocentrism. Yet, a few days ago I found myself in a situation that I could not reconcile with any ethos of cultural relativity, and which has therefore cut me rather deeply. This is a very long entry, but I'd like to feel that I did the experience, and not just the tale, justice.

To foreshadow, a moment of waxing introspective: the plight of animals is often harder for me than are those of people, a condition that I've confessed to and discovered I share with many others. Perhaps compassion simply surges stronger for the innocent, but I suspect there is more at play. I think that in the West we have learned to hide behind the fact of human agency, so that we can say to someone in destitution: this is your fault, you could leave this situation if you tried hard enough, I am not responsible for this. In short, we have diminished the extent to which we allow ourselves to emotionally contact the suffering of others, in self-defense rather than dispassion. But when it is animal pain we face—especially in a culture where the animals we eat are never seen alive, and the animals we keep are generally pets—we lose the safety and comfort of our rationalized disconnection. A wounded animal cannot seek medical attention; a starving puppy can't 'get a job'; the homeless creatures that line the roads here can't make the choice to stop breeding in order stay the swelling tide of new mouths to feed. A wounded animal can't cheat us or trick us or otherwise use our sympathy against us, and so the pain of an animal is the most honest thing in the world. It can pass, like light through a windowpane, by all of our defenses and egotisms to detonate in a vulnerable part of ourselves we tend not to offer up for exposure.

Ninotchka and I had gone to the train station to get tickets for the next leg of our visiting tour. At the station, there are a half dozen booths lining a wall from which to buy your tickets, and so far as I have seen, the lines descending from them never close to less than twenty or thirty bodies deep, even in mid-afternoon, when much of Mumbai naps away the worst of the heat. Waiting in line, I could see a dog beneath the booth we were approaching, lying pressed and motionless against the wall. I have had about a hundred momentary embraces with panic since arriving here, because the innumerable dogs that roam the city spend much of the day sleeping, and they do this anarchically, lounging literally anywhere. Whether in the middle of the road, across sidewalks, or beneath trucks (where the shade is plentiful), there are dozing canines everywhere, and until you see their chest rising and falling, you can never be completely sure that they're alive. I could see from some way off that the dog we were approaching was wounded; lying sprawled on its side, the underside of its chin facing toward me, the line of its brow was only a thin red and black horizon, obscuring the extent of the injury that must have existed atop its head. Its breath was shallow, its eyes were shut. Pressed up against the wall as it was, there was no vantage of it's other side except from straight above, a gaze I could't realize until we reached the booth. A heavy, sickening dread formed in my stomach; I knew, had known, for some time that there could not be so many animals fending for themselves in such a busy, jarring place without the occasional tragedy. I had been surprised, in fact, that in such traffic I hadn't yet witnessed any deaths from vehicles. So in my mind repeated my awful anticipation like a manic prophecy: this is it, this is it, this is it, I went. I was preparing psychologically for what I was going to witness, or at least trying to at any rate. I have seen the raw, bleeding legs who have chewed away their own flesh to fight the fleas, and I have seen the limping losers of back-street squabbles over food and the privelege of domination. I was anticipating something similar, if a more intense example for its being a head wound. It was nothing of the sort.

As our chance to purchase a ticket arrived, the dog chose that moment to spare a fraction of it's waning strength to look about at its surrounds. Its head rose for just a moment, and when it glanced behind it, it's ruined skull turned into full view, coming blatantly into my gaze in a disturbingly shameless fashion, like an adult with a child's mind exposing their genitals. A fist-sized tract of the top of its head was just absent, and in its place a ragged hole was left, out of which protruded its brain, framed by a gory cusp of serrated bone and coagulated blood. It is the way of animals to appear not to notice their wounds; it is because they are spared of hope and temporality, and thus do not worry about recourse. They simply endure, and this creature was no different; it completed its survey, and returned the remainder of its head to the pillow of its paws.

The pace of my internal monologue is sometimes a cruel gift, and on this occasion I would have stopped my thoughts if I'd been able; my talent for logic, for puzzle-solving, is mechanical and automatic. Sometimes, I reflexively interpret what I see before I can decide if I care to. Before I had access to the emotional levers that would shut the gates of thought, involuntary and computational curiosity uttered its conclusions in my head: how could that hole have been made? A skull is a very strong thing; this dog could not have fallen from a height because no other part of it is injured. Another dog could not have done it; the canine jaw cannot apply that much pressure, and wouldn't attack like this, besides. If it had been hit by a car with this much force, there, on the very top of its head like that, surely its neck would have broken, or its body would have been pulled under, and it would have some other damage. This is too local, too particular, too precise, too... human. This was he last knee-jerk inference I made before I managed to silence my thoughts. Although the deduction took less than a fraction of a second to complete, as is the way with the poly-semantic blossoming of reflexive logic, it was already too late to retract the conclusion. Someone had kicked or beaten the animal with enough violence to smash a piece of it's skull from its head, and had subsequently left it to die. Whether it had crawled up into the shade of the booth to find some margin oft solace, or if the abuse had been committed there and the dog had been unable to move, or uninterested in moving, was unclear. But in either case, the broken thing was sitting there, placidly baking in the afternoon heat while its brain mushroomed out of its shattered head, waiting quietly to die.

Immediately, I felt the vomit rising in me as though under the impetus of some violent inversion of grvity; I turned, I stepped out of line, I made for the nearest parody of privacy, the corner made by a vending machine and a stone wall. I hung my head over the floor, my weight heaved against my outstretched arm, and waited for the nausea to coalesce. A spared a moment's thought for all the eyes around me, and was suddenly horrified to discover that I couldn't complete the expulsion; the retching abandoned me in my throat, would not complete, and it backed away, retreating queasily to my gut. I was disappointed, and shocked to discover I wanted the release; television has told me that this is a proper way to unveil my disgust, and I wanted to play out that drama. I was ashamed that I could witness that and keep my breakfast, but I was also ashamed to be the only one so affected. Still, my composure waned; the vomit would not come, but my I could not stop my tears, and I dropped my sunglasses from my forehead, to hide them. It was an ironic move, juxtaposed against the psychological need to vomit—or be seen vomiting—I'd had just a moment earlier. It was at this moment, I have since reflected, that some deeply entrenched and extremely disturbing splinter of ego entered into my consciousness, from the part of me I pretend doesn't exist, and I have been working against the grain of habit and denial to better understand it since. But I get ahead of myself.

A thousand people had to have walked by that dog—not dozens, not a hundred, but easily a thousand. And there it sat, apparently undiscovered. It wasn't bleeding profusely, no arteries had been cut. Perversely, the size of the hole was providing an escape for the pressure that must have ensued from the swelling around the wound, which explained why it was still alive, and  worse, awake. The blood was black, and drying. The damn thing was not going to die from its wound; it was, in all likelihood, going to die very slowly, as its brain dehydrated, because it wasn't losing blood and the air temperature was over thirty degrees. The exposure was at the top of its brain; suddenly what little neuroscience I remembered from my introductory classes was haunting me, and I felt bullied by a relentless train of thoughts that just kept coming. This thing was going to lose functioning in all the wrong order; the base of its brain was still protected, it was going to survive the death of its brain from the outside in. It might lose sight, and memory, all the complex systems that make us perceive dogs as "mans best friend", but its lungs, its heart, its ability to feel pain and move by reflex would be in tact until the end.

I knew all of this within the space of a moment's thought, and I knew that the only choice was to kill it, a merciful death instead of a slow and wilting one. Most of the people passing by had to know that the only course of action was to kill it, but what I knew, and what they didn't know, or at least weren't considering, was that no one needed to shoot it or choke it or otherwise engage in violence. No one needed to risk being bitten, no one needed a weapon. The pen in my pocket would do; one good push  into its brain stem, through the fatty tissue leaking out its skull, would take its misery away. I could end its suffering in a moment. My nausea rose noncommittally at the thought. There were hundreds of people around. Mob mentality is a fact of life in Mumbai; I've heard stories of people being killed by mobs simply for causing a traffic accident in which no one was harmed. This many people can live together in relative harmony because no one rocks the boat. The status quo is a vital organ in a population so dense, especially when resources are so sparse. I was afraid to do anything; I was afraid people would be angry that I was interfering with their getting to work on time. I was afraid that I would be accused of having harmed the dog. I was afraid that people would not understand what I was doing, and that I would be in danger for trying to help; I was afraid they would be angry at me for doing what they had long ago buried, of necessity, the impulse to do themselves. Sadly, these are all legitimate worries, and in all likelihood the consequences of acting on my own would have spelled trouble or even danger for me. But it doesn't matter, because I didn't even try.

Deep, deep down inside me was a tiny voice I remember now, but which I refused, in the moment, to hear or acknowledge: you can't do it, you can't kill it, it's gross, it'll bite you, maybe you'll miss,  someone should but you can't, you can't, you can't. I could have faced that voice, I believe, if I'd been alone, if it had been my only adversary. But what for some time afterward made me sick with myself, what I couldn't admit at that moment but later recognized within me, was this thought: you're being a baby, this is just a dog, no one cares and you only care because you're an over-priveleged, sheltered little white kid who wouldn't know hardship from a paper-cut; if you try and help, people are going to gossip about the crazy, melodramatic foreigner for weeks, you're just going to embarass yourself. Some part of me that I should have left in highschool was here, on the station platform, whispering me away from the real problem, the dying dog a few meters behind me. I hid my tears because I was afraid that everyone around me would be laughing, or disgusted by my weakness, or resentful that I was letting their city hurt me when none of them seemed affected. I was afraid that I was getting India wrong, that I was wrong to feel this way, that I was projecting my culture onto theirs. And still, another voice persisted: it's dying, it's suffering, this is not about culture or ego, this is about life and suffering and cruelty. They can't afford to care, there's too much of this here for them to risk caring, the pain of a whole life of this would crush anyone who didn't learn to look the other way. You're not wrong, and neither are they, but you are the only one here who has the privilege of compassion. Do something, do something, do something. There was a war in me, and I went quite immediately into shock.

Ninotchka did not see the creature; she only saw me, and my hurt. She heard it from me, but she heard it in the context of my grief. Her concern was for me, for her partner's pain. She rightly told me not to get involved on my own. I listened to her, and I wanted to listen to her; I wanted to be absolved of responsibility. She suggested we talk to the train station police, who were sitting at a booth nearby. I presumed it was futile; they were sitting ten, maybe fifteen meters from this withering life that already innumerable people had witnessed and ignored; if this was supposed to be their problem, it would already have been. But it was an excuse; I didn't know that, nor could I have without speaking to them. I just assumed it as a fact, distributing my responsibility into the ether of rationale and probability and speculation. I'd heard a story in my introductory psychology class, about a woman who had been  stabbed death near her home. She had screamed for help for more than thirty minutes, and thirty-eight bystanders had heard her screams and done nothing; everyone assumed that someone would deal with it, that they shouldn't get involved. But one did get involved, and she died limping back to her apartment. I was stunned, shocked, and horrified by that story; not because people could be so callous, but because that fear could lead to such inaction. I have for a very long time believed that I would never do that, that I would be the one in those situations, because someone has got to be. I have generally led my life this way, even though I have never faced a situation even fractionally so dire. In general, I have seen that mentality go wrong too often, "someone else will do it" becomes "no one will do it" so very, very often, at home or school or work. So, a voice inside me went: if not you, then no one; you know better, you know better and if you won't do anything, that dog is without an ally, without hope of mercy.

I said as much to Ninotchka, who relented and suggested we call someone, ask if it would be viable to intervene. As a way of helping me to help myself, it was a good idea; her concern was for my pain. But for me, whose aim was to help the dog, it was a ridiculous notion; no one was going to tell me to intervene, least of all someone we knew, someone who was responsible for my well-being. I knew it, deep down. Beneath my conscious awareness I was already accepting that I wasn't going to do anything, that I was going to join the crowds in walking away. I agreed to call someone—it happened to be Cheryl—but it wouldn't have mattered who I called, everyone I know in India would have advised the same thing. In retrospect, I know now: I didn't want advice, I wanted an accomplice, I wanted to be forgiven, I wanted to be extricated from the situation. The moment I agreed to make the phone call, all my grief became nothing more than a self-righteous attempt to save my wounded ego, to explain away the terrible, terrible argument real life was presenting against my delusions of heroism. The dog ceased to exist the moment I began to dial; it was alone, again, in a crowd of humans whose lives had made it too hard to care about its plight. I went back to the station a day later, and there was no sign that the dog had ever been there. Someone, whether in time to end its suffering or merely to clean up an unsightly mess, had thankfully done more than I had.

I spent the next two hours in dialogue with my conscience, negotiating. I moved through successively more foolish ideas about what to do. The first was retributive; find the person who did it, scream at them, beat them, turn them in, something. It was immediately dismissed on grounds of impossibility, with a secondary nod to how little the dog would benefit from vindication. My anger began to cool, to wilt, to sink into a helpless apathy. I hated India, Indians, humanity. I was disgusted with this place that could ignore such hurt, that would walk, in scores, by an animal dying so grotesquely and do nothing. I projected my own shame and guilt onto the landscape and its people, assailing them in my head with blame and accusation, but that too faltered soon enough. I knew better, I knew that the burden of responsibility was mine. I didn't care what anyone else had done or failed to do, and it would be arrogant to pretend that I really understood the circumstances in which they'd made those choices. It was the inability to reconcile my idea of myself as the sort of person who would get involved with the fact of my impotence that was troubling me, and turning my eyes outward to spend my painful emotions on accusation and deflection was a waste of time and energy, a lie I couldn't swallow. Then my thoughts grew truly ridiculous; I decided to go without food or water for the rest of the day, to suffer with the dying dog. An incredulous, punitive voice spat contempt at me: and adding your suffering to the world will aid this creature how? I bargained better: I will rescue a street dog. I will find one, save it, take care of it; a life saved to replace the one I allowed to end in misery. I spent twenty minutes in this fantasy, imagining the grand life my rescued puppy would live. Though I may find that I'd like to do something like this before I leave India, it wouldn't undo my choice to walk away, and it wouldn't help the brutalized dog I'd left dying in a train station. It was at this point that a horrible, sinking feeling came over me, as I realized what I was really doing—self medicating.

My thoughts were all concerned for me, all concerned with how to rectify my shattered ego. That was the moment when I realized what I alluded to above; that in choosing to ask for permission to help, I had already abandoned the dog, and I realized with further shame that my bargaining with my conscience was only taking me further and further away from reality, and deeper into the safety of fantasy. I resolved in that moment to accept responsibility for my choice. The only thing left to do was to admit it all, to accept it all, and learn from it. I began to study the logical performance that had played itself out in the theatre of my mind, in order to recognize the rational mechanisms that had led to my choices, to know them with as much intimacy as I could, perhaps to recognize and refuse them when next they surfaced. The best thing I could do then was to learn how not to do it again. I was tempted to let myself believe that it was a way to honor the dog, but that too I dismissed as merely one last ploy for redemption. The dog had never wanted to teach me anything, it had no sense of self, no ego, to satisfy with the knowledge of its memory. It hadn't wanted to matter; if it could be said to have wanted anything, it was an intact skull.

The resolution unfolds: I have forgiven myself for my inaction, because it was the only apology I could make. To cling guilt would be to plant a seed that would germinate and grow into a larger creature, a sapling whose branches would carry fingers of doubt and self-loathing into other parts of me, ensuring that when next I faced a situation where action was the only answer I would only feel inept and incapable. In short, keeping the guilt to serve as punishment would only increase the chance that I would commit again the very harm about which I was so ashamed. And it was a hard thing to do; so long as we have guilt, we cling to the possibility of redemption. Guilt is an unacknowledged theory of innocence; if the forgiveness can come from some external source, then we can be absolved of responsibility, never guilty in the first place. Forgiving myself was really a way of accepting what I had done, of being able to both admit that I had done it and also agree to keep on living. It meant that the principles I had claimed to hold were worthy ones, yet also their co-existence was now in contradiction with the facts, and the harder choice, in the moment, was abandoning the latter. But, beyond that choice, I have found the beginnings of a certain freedom.

I have not had to abandon my values; I have not had to let go of the idea that I live in a world wherein the choice to act on another's behalf is the right one. I have not had to relinquish the idea that I do not live in a universe where cowardice or apathy are acceptable. Rather, though I have demonstrated cowardice and apathy born of selfishness, I've done this in a universe which can forgive those actions without needing to sanction them. It means that I am imperfect, but the universe is not, and I've discovered (to my surprise) I prefer this scenario to its inverse, because its not hopeless. In short, I am free to try again to be the person I have aimed at being.

I've shared this story because it happened, and it mattered, and it's really what goes on here. Horrible things happen all over the world, but they happen more often in some places than in others; Canada was in many ways easy to live in (perhaps too easy), India I can bare, but Somalia I wouldn't step foot in. While I think of this as a travel blog, the choice to travel into a place that doesn't have the resources to polish away all of its deeds, nor a closet to hide them in, means that my experiences won't always fit tidily into the space of culture and cuisine and curiosity. My intention isn't to create melodrama or to sensationalize what I see, but to do my best to explain through the microscopic lens of circumstance the macroscopic vista of India. I have always joked with my professors that the sociological or anthropological view can be likened to waking from the Matrix in that just as there is no blue pill after you wake, neither can you retrace your steps to a shrunken perspective.  So I can't really help but see this experience in terms of how a geography and a social climate shape a people, and how they  reshape those features in turn. The dog was a salient experience for me, the introspection that obtained was a true and personal account of what happened to me in response to it. But, though the entire encounter is a glimpse of how life unfolds here, I haven't written it as though it were definitional of India. Rather, it is an exemple of the circumstances that do define India, just as the privilege of coping with this event on a blog, to an audience of friends and family who care about me, poised in front of my MacBook thousands of miles from home depict some of the circumstances that define Canada. In summary, I just believe that juxtaposition—the zig that occurs in full view of the zag—shakes us loose from the habits of thought that keep us sleeping, a necessity if we ever want to move out of a world where stories like this are harder to tell.

Family, Friends and Foundations

It's been several days since I've had either the time or, frankly, the inclination to 'blog'; we've been very busy, and have subsequently missed a great deal of rest. So, today's report might end up being a tad more synoptic than I'd have liked, in an ideal universe. Yet, I'll do my best not to skimp on the good bits.

John, Ninotchka's godfather (also Cheryl's husband), had his birthday on the 20th, but we celebrated the occasion on the 19th (which, incidentally, happened also to be my sister's birthday--hope you had a happy one, Jen). This was my first opportunity to catch of a glimpse of celebration in India, though I should note that, as members of the Christian demographic, the whole affair had a decidedly familiar character. A veritable feast of snacks (an interesting blend of typically Western fare, such as potato chips, as well as Indian delictables) adorned the room, shortly to be consumed by a large number of family and friends, who filled the home nearly to capacity. Alcohol and conversation to follow, with dinner, cake (the consumption of which very nearly descended into a marital food fight between John and Cheryl—entertaining I assure you), and song soon after. While it doesn't make for much of a story, it was nonetheless a charming and wonderful experience to actually participate in, you understand, and I was treated like an old friend far more than a new-comer (aside from, of course, the unrelenting tide of advice that inevitably follows from explaining that I am new to India). However, one highlight in particular is worth noting.

One of the guests, Jean, had had to make an unfortunate decision between attending the party and attending a soiree of a different sort back at her society. This last week marked the beginning of Navarātrī, a nine-day Hindu festival. In the province of Gujarat, a dance called the garba is a traditional part of celebrating this festival, and Gujarati populations that have migrated throughout India have brought the dance with them. So, at Jean's society [the name given to the close-knit communities that develop in the apartment complexes which constitute the living arrangements of most home-owning Mumbaikers] a dance was being hed, and while Jean had resigned to miss it this year, she had nonetheless conceded to making an appearance, if only for a few minuets. We were lucky enough to tag along. Sadly, I have no photos from our visit, but suffice it to say that it was quickly made apparent that standing on the sidelines wasn't really an option, and we shortly found ourselves swept up in the dance. Awkwardly at first, we were tutored in the steps and general approach of the dance in a small circle, whereupon we joined the main show. Essentially, the dance moves in a large, flowing circle to an intense, thumping beat in a rhythym that my Western ear, trained to think and move in 4/4 time, couldn't conceptually understand. Being the only white person on the scene, and a stranger as well, many more eyes were on me than I would feel comfortable under normal circumstances, a condition of insecurity that was worsened as I tried, in buffoon fashion, to deliver an impromptu performance of an unknown and utterly foreign dance. But before long my feet, at least, adapted to the unfamiliar pattern and my degree of comfort (not to mention enjoyment) rose dramatically. It was a wonderful experience and I was very grateful to have been invited, and of course to have been graciously welcomed into their celebrations with hardly an introduction.

As an interesting social aside, this dance is traditionally one of the few times teenagers are openly allowed to meet and greet across gender, and the ensuing fraternization has, in the current era and social climate, produced a very salient statistical increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies that occur over these ten days; significantly more that at any other time of the year, in fact!

The days since then have been awash in unbelievable food, occasionally too much drink and an altogether inadequate amount of sleep, as we have been visiting the very large number of family members that I did not have a month before. The number of inlaws I have gained quite outnumbers the number of blood relatives I have, you see, and getting to know them all has been an adventure. Everyone has been unquestionably charming and hospitable, and its given me a lot to think about. I was, I confess, initially slightly resentful; we're by no means done visiting yet, and by the time we're finished it will have taken almost two weeks to have gone and seen everyone. Before this campaign of introductions had begun, I had been jealous of the time we were going to have to invest, and had, I believe, imagined that it would somehow be work, as though it was some duty I regretfully had to perform. Quite aside from how obviously self-centered this logic was, it was also just wrong. I've had a great time, with laughs, anecdotes, unbelievably good (and plentiful) food all culminating in new relationships with dozens of people; newly-formed relationships with family members who are, it has been made evident, utterly ready and willing to act in that capacity--as family, not acquaintances. How such a thing could ever seem to loom on the horizon, rather than rise with anticipatory delight, is something on which I have subsequently spent much time in reflection. Detailing the process of pruning the garden of identity, and rooting out the weeds therein is an activity for a more private journal, but in brief, trust, responsibility and openness are delicate flowers that require much care to bloom. In short, India is providing the for my introspective appetite rather nicely.

I confess that this doesn't quite account for all that's happened these last few days, but that's the long and skinny of it. I'm off again for a few more days of visiting, but I've been collecting quite a few photographs (some amazing ones from last night, where I had the good fortune to witness a spontaneous resurgence of the monsoon precisely at sunset from a gorgeous sixth-story apartment building), which I will try and post before the week is out.

Adventures at Bandra Fair

The only way to navigate a city as large and dense as Mumbai is to begin breaking it down into manageable chunks. The first of these divisions is at the level of what you might call a district, not unlike political ridings in cities back home (though the comparison is strictly a geographical one; I do not currently have even the slightest inlking of how politics are performed here). These then subdivide into neighbourhoods, and finally into societies, which are the apartment compounds I've mentioned before. While something similar certainly exists in most cities, by way of necessity Mumbai relies on this segmentary organization for everything from the postal service, to navigation, to the sustainance of religious, economic and cultural communities. Until yesterday, then, I had never left the district in which I am staying, which is named Malad. Bandra, another distrinct significantly to the south of Malad, is both Ninotchka's old haunt (she has lived in Mumbai on several other occasions, spanning durations as little as two months and as long as four years) and the site of the aptly named Bandra Fair. Having spent so much time in bed or at least trapped within twenty-seconds walking distance of a washroom, we were both very excited to get out of the house for a while. Thus, we took a train to Bandra Fair.

Taking a train in Mumbai is not quite like catching, say, a subway, or a bus. Like many things in India, the trains in Mumbai are much more likely to end your life than their Western counterparts, and like most things that can kill you in Mumbai, this is primarily attributable to population density. Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram quite accurately describes the trains of Mumbai as dichotic places of fierce and aggressive competition immediately succeeded by charming, polite socializing. As always, here, it's a question of space; if you would like to have any, you had better damn well ensure you get it, and elbows first is the strategy of choice in this particular affair. There are no doors on Mumbai's trains, only doorways, and so once the cars are full, the only way to catch the train is to hang from it's doorways or grapple onto some other part of its outside frame. Luckily, this was not part of our experience, but I did spend thirty minutes in each direction awash in the aromas of hundreds of armits, and damp with perspirations not my own. It's not the sort of place you want to take a date, but it gets you from place to place for about 25¢. In this case, the place it got us to was Bandra.

Bandra is a shopping district, indeed the shopping district, and the annual fair is an opportunity for the area's sidewalks to spontaneously inflate with bursting, colorful reams of what is, for the most part, a plethora of low-quality items of mass appeal. The name of the game is negotiation; the prices aren't posted, and they certainly aren't fixed. This doesn't for a minute, however, mean they aren't rigged; on the contrary, they most certainly are. The degree to which one succeeds in not paying exhoribitant prices is a measure, I gather, of how legitimate is one's right to refer to themselves as Mumbaiker (the official tital of a Mumbai native). Let me spare you the suspense: no one, anywhere, at any time even remotely mistook either myself nor my wallet for having originated in Mumbai. I was, to put it bluntly and succinctly (the latter condition I will shorty negate), altogether had. That said, most of the time I was more or less aware of the occurence, if usually not to the extent, of my 'donations'. But I get ahead of myself.

The process goes something like this: you must approach an item you are looking for cautiously, with a calm, cool disinterest. If you are seen to want something, you're done before you've even begun. Assuming you can succesfully browse without letting on that anything has caught your eye, you may then casually ask the price. Depending on how much of a mug you are assessed to be, the ensuing number that will you be quoted will fall somewhere on a spectrum between marginally inflated to a numerical hyperbole that is, frankly, comical. Thereupon, you touch blades, and the match begins. Most people, I gather, immediately trip and fall on their swords by either accepting the price they are offered (a mistake perpetrated only by foreigners without at least some meager tutelage in the ways of Indian shopping) or else parry with a thrust far to weak to ever penetrate the real value (the more common mistake by far, and the one to which I proved unfortunately--literally--prone). Obviously, whatever offer one makes in response to the proprieter's initial extortion is clearly the lowest number one can ever again counter with. Thus, if one is so obviously a mark as am I, the degree to which the offered price will be exaggerated is often so great that it's hard to overcome the fear of being foolish off the mark that one would require to actually offer a reasonable price. For example, the last encounter of my two-day escapade into Bandra Fair went something like this:

Jon: How much for these sunglasses?
Shopkeep: Rs. 550.
Jon: [A smirk, followed by a by-then knowing smile] No Sahib, this is too much. Rs. 200, I give.
Shopkeep: [Aghast, shock and dismay blatant on his face] No, no; these are excellent glasses. Very nice on you. 550.
Jon: Thankyou, have a good day. [A casual, dismissive wave ensues, and I turn to leave]
Shopkeep: Ok, ok! You bargain, you deal. I say 350.
Jon: [Pointing to the shoddy hinges, and the painted-on metallic finish obscuring the plastic beneath] No, I give 200.
Shopkeep: [Outrage, with a gesticulatory flourish that clearly indicates that he will have no choice but to starve should I continue on in this fashion]. I can go 300.
Jon: [Suddenly insecure, doubt forming behind my brow] Uhh. 250, no more, no more.
Shopkeep: [Exasperated and defeated] Ok, ok, 275 I can do for you, 2--7--5.
Jon: [Suspects something has gone wrong, turns to leave]
Shopkeep: Ok! I take. 250, 250 I take it.
Jon: [Victorious, pays]

Whereupon I thanked the man, feeling good about having paid less than half of the original asking price, donned my new shades that had cost me about $8 CAD, and hopped into a waiting vehicle which contained my host Cheryl, her driver Babloo, and Ninotchka.

Jon: Cheryl, what do you think I should have paid for these?
Cheryl: These? These are nice, I think maybe Rs. 80.
Jon: [Facepalm]

I had suspected I ought to have shot lower, you understand, but the risk of looking absolutely foolish prevented me from doing so. Did I really believe this man was trying to charge me 700% more than the item was worth? In retrospect, the answer is quite simple: I'm white, so, yes.

The game is fun, however, and while I've played it rather poorly so far, it is one in which learning from one's mistakes pays dividends (or rather, fails to lose them). Of course, all road-side shopping is like this, here (and most shopping, incidentally, is road-side), but Bandra Fair has a thrilling blend of megalomania and mercantilism that makes it something else. At least, this is how it was experienced from the vantage of one who has always seen a price tag as a placeholder for the stone tablets they were originally printed on.

But, the shopping misadventures weren't the only highlights of our tour of the Bandra beat. Along with meeting more of Ninotchka's extended family, all of whom continue to prove charming, friendly and endlessly hospitable people, we also succeeded (at last) in acquiring our wedding rings. That is, we got ink! Al's Tatoo Parlor is, I gather, a somewhat famous location in Mumbai, or at least in Bandra, and the amply pierced, tatood and smiling men inside were happy to place upon our fingers the three concentric circles we had long been hoping to get. This was a task Ninotchka and I had failed to convince any Haligonian artists to do, because the hanf and fingers are areas of the body that exfoliate very quickly, and thus tolerate very little disturbance if one's tatoo is to remain crisp, smooth and attractive. Being unwilling to risk the damage to their reputation that might ensure from irresponsible customers, we were unable to get them done by anyone at home in time for our wedding. Yet, I confess now that I am happy of the fact that at least a small part of our matrimonial activities could be completed here in India.

I do have some photographs of these sights (especially the waterfront, which is enormous and beautiful, though in Bandra uncontaminated by sand), as well as of our new rings, but I've sadly forgotten to bring them to the internet source I'm currently devouring. I'll be sure you avail you all of them as soon I am able.

Photos, at last!

The humidity this morning was visible; it wasn't a cloud, it wasn't fog, it was just a faint, grey mist that clung to everything, everywhere. The entire supply of the city's air was simply so thick with the exhalation of the monsoon that light simply couldn't hold on to its inertia. It's very beautiful, but it also means I've got to change my shirt about three times a day.

I've been getting requests for photographs, so this morning, in a fit of inspiration, I ran out and collected some. Thanks to Picasa's charmingly user friendly interface, a slideshow can be retrieved from the link below

http://picasaweb.google.com/this.impetus/MumbaiSet1#slideshow

Recovering from jet lag as I continue to be (not to mention far too many hours of lost sleep over the course of my escapades with Indian food), I'm afraid I've very little left in me to contribute by way of words, so there'll be no lengthy accounts of my Mumbai experience tonight, but if pictures are worth a thousand a words, then a small novel awaits at the link above. But, if you're hungry for a little more to read about our travels in India, Ninotchka too has taken up the blogging trail, to be found here:

http://kaleidoscope-n.blogspot.com

Food Fight

Insofar as this is, ostensibly, a 'travel blog', I've got little to report. This is because I've left our apartment only twice in the last three days; once to walk to the local medical clinic, which purported to open at 9:30am, and again to return the afore mentioned clinic, when it actually opened, at 10:30am. The explanation for this discrepancy, so far as I can tell, is "because the man behind the booth said so". From a Western perspective, where anything put into print immediately is understood to be irreversible gospel, this is a national modus operandi I am looking forward to learning to be at peace with. Currently, however, I am finding it marvellously infuriating. The Buddha is giggling on a plane I can't access.

The reason I made these trips to the local medical clinic lies in the intense discomfort I have been enduring for for three days. Allow me to both euphemize and hyperbolize at once: I have felt, in a nut shell, as though my enteric system has been trying to dispense with a can of shaving cream. Suffice it to say, my love of spicy food stops at my palette. Below this point, I have proved to be awash in antagonism. But a charming, sensitive, intelligent and curious doctor carefully, patiently discerned my condition, and with almost prophetic skill, predicted the problem, the solution and the corresponding time course to within hours, all for about $3.50 CAD. By experiences with Canadian doctors have seldom been so comforting. Thus, I am on the mend, and have in the process discovered that the peanut butter here is significantly better than at home. Samosa's, meanwhile, are currently a prohibited item.

I will post more when I'm able to cross a kilometre without diapers.