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Here we are again...

"Here" meaning Hotel Ishan in Rishikesh, the "Yoga Capital of the World", or so some claim. I arrived here around 5:30 AM today, after another 10-hour train trip, and I don't really have the strength to go touring or walking around, or anything else other than just sit here. I have just one really meaningful thing to say about train rides in this country, and I really cannot stress it enough: DON'T DO IT, or at least, try to do it as little as possible. Then again, I haven't yet tried the bus system, so I might have been enjoying a luxury ride without knowing it...

Actually, this trip has worked out rather well, from the point of view of "easing into India" - starting with the sheltered ashram life, continuing with a hired driver, and now, finally, completely on my own. You could say I'm building my Indian resistance up gradually...

And resistance you need indeed, as any of you who have been here know. It is a completely different world, and I am quite glad that I had my driving tour the way I did. Most of that trip was through the Indian countryside, and I got an eyeful of people living in straw or mud huts, side by side with their cows, taking their morning baths by the local well, or water pump (well, NOW I finally understand why cold showers seem so natural, and you have to specifically ask for hot water), and brushing their teeth with twigs. I got the toothbrush thing explained to me by a group of Indian boys who were delighted to meet a white woman at 6 AM by one of the Buddhist shrines - it seems that there are only four or five types of tree that may qualify as toothbrush suppliers, and they obligingly cut off a twig for me and showed me how to use it.

At some point it occurred to me that we westerners, as I may have mentioned before, are so talented at hiding away those things which are not too pleasant to think about, such as hunger and sickness and death; and we do such a good job of emphasizing the things we want to see, to the point of expecting every woman to look like a model and every man to be super-cool. And we spend so much time in office-buildings talking about virtual business... and then we have the nerve to say that we are living in the real world... I think I already wrote something about reality once, and here I am again, on one of my favorite subjects. The whole point being that we create our own reality, no matter how weird or desirable or disgusting or ridiculous that reality may seem to someone living outside of it - it is still real, as long as we can sustain it. (The next natural question, of course, being - "and what happens when we can no longer sustain it?", but that's a whole other kettle of fish.)

Anyway, I got to sit in dirty little wooden stalls that I normally wouldn't have even looked at, with people whom I normally wouldn't have noticed (and even tried to talk to them, although most of them don't know any English) - because that is where my driver stopped for tea once in a while. He taught me how to say "ginger lemon water" in Hindi (yes, believe it or not, I've hardly had any coffee or tea since I got here), and to those stall-keepers that didn't know, he explained how to make it for "madam". Let me tell you, it is weird, constantly being called "madam" (but, just like anything else, you do get used to it). And then, they would find a bit of ginger-root (or send a boy to the next stall to get one), and pound it to smithereens with a rock or one of their iron weights, and toss it into an encrusted sauce-pan full of boiling water (no added charge for the extra minerals), which was sitting on a pile of smoldering coals.

And then, he found me that little pilgrims' guest-house in Kushinagar. You can't call Kushinagar a one-horse town, but you can definitely call it a one-street town, if you want to call it a town at all. That street is lined with temples, guest-houses, and of course, all the accompanying vendors' carts, selling the usual snacks and Buddhist and Hindu souvenirs. I did want to see all the traditional Buddhist sites, but now that I've seen them, I would say that you have to be much more devout than I am to appreciate most of them. (The big exception being Bodhgaya, of course, which I still have more to say about, just ask me...)

Kushinagar has a famous statue of Buddha lying down, because that is where he died, but as far as I am concerned, Kushinagar is where I met the Kumar family. ("Kumar" is about as common in India as "Cohen" is in Israel, or "Smith" in the US.) The guest-house manager told me that I would have to wait for my room, because they were busy at the moment with a "puja" (which is what they evidently call every and any celebration). A few minutes later, someone told me that the puja was actually a "marriage", (it turned out to be something like an engagement party, but who knows how to say that in English?) and invited me in. A bunch of people sitting on the floor, surrounding a huge pile of goodies, with a holy man in the center, mumbling whatever blessings. The confused-looking young guy in the over-sized suit next to the holy man was the groom, but nobody understood my question of "where is the bride?" All the men sitting on one side, and all the women on the other side, but nothing stopped them from throwing candy and rice at each other. At some point, the photographer stopped filming the procedures, and turned his camera on me. (Which reminds me of the guy who tapped my shoulder at the museum, while I was looking at a sign on the wall, and asked me to stand next to him to have his picture taken.) Afterwards, the bride was led in by her mother, more pictures were taken, the whole group retired for refreshments, and I went for a walk and dinner.

When I came back, only the bride's family (nine brothers and sisters) remained, and they insisted on feeding me, even though we couldn't understand a word of what each other was saying. I think we spent a couple of hours together, not understanding each other, and having a really good time doing it. After the obligatory photographs (evidently, shaking a foreigner's hand is a memorable occasion), we actually exchanged addresses, and they are expecting copies of our photos. I don't really know if I should be expecting a letter, and even if I got one - who would translate from Hindi? I thanked them when they left, for allowing me to be part of their occasion, but I have no idea what they were thanking me for.

After they left, the group of Sri Lankan pilgrims wanted to give me dinner. We agreed on breakfast instead, and spent another couple of hours drinking herbal tea and talking. At six AM, their cook was pounding on my door with a kettle of hot tea.

In short, it is really easy to make friends in India, even for a social misfit such as myself. I don't know if people are so friendly because I am so obviously a foreigner, but when we were sitting in the tea-stalls, conversations pretty much started themselves between my driver and the locals (in Hindi). On the other hand, when I was walking to the train-station in Lucknow, there was a man lying on his back in the street, looking half-dead, either very sick or very drunk, and people just walked around him without a glance. Big cities aren't any nicer in India than anywhere else, I suppose.

I don't have much to say about Lumbini (Buddha's birthplace), except for the fact that the Nepalese stare at foreigners even more than Indians, and they don't smile as much. I did manage to have a conversation with the manager of one of the (seven or more) Internet cafes (very ambitious, considering there is rarely any connection) - but to even that out - one of the cows in the street tried to stick it's horn into my behind.

So goes my story for now.