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Eat

I really like Indian food. Who knew? I didn’t. No one told me ahead of time. My only warnings were to protect myself with probiotics and take some Immodium and medication should I become sick. “Everybody gets sick when they go to India,” I was warned. I followed a few simple rules: don’t drink the water, don’t eat raw vegetables without skins as they may have been washed, and don’t eat any of the dairy-based products including yogurt. Everything else I ate including street food.

I felt ok eating street food fried in oil as the vendor cooked it thoroughly over his outdoor stove. Another vendor cooked dosa spreading the batter out to make the thinnest of crepes. He spread the stuffing with his hands but the sizzling water on the grill and the cooking time gave me confidence that the food was heated sufficiently to be safe. We sampled many types of bread including naan and other flatbreads, the names of which tend to elude me. I ventured into the kitchen to assist in the making of the flatbread, which looked suspiciously like the burrito shells I eat at home. I’m sure I annoyed the cook with my rolling efforts using the slender black rolling pin to create something more akin to lobed tree leaves than her perfect circles.

I liked every potato dish and sauce I sampled, as long as the spice level didn’t singe my tongue. I enjoyed a version of lentil soup, something I’ve never liked. I have to admit, I wasn’t too crazy about the crunchy eyeball thing, an edible liquid filled eyeball-sized sphere of fried dough, but it was one of the few exceptions. I enjoyed a sauce of mint and cilantro, something that might actually be useful to me since I have a garden full of mint and no time to drink mint juleps.

On the subject of alcohol, it takes an expert to maintain a steady supply in India. Fortunately, our guide is just such a person. She knowingly stocked up on the hard stuff at the airport upon arrival. I only drink the hard stuff in the absence of beer or wine or of good sense. I thought I would be happy with beer. But some states are actually dry and the states that aren’t dry have strange rules about consuming alcohol in public places. The public places include the inside of restaurants. But with Stoli’s masquerading as a plastic bottle of lemonade and other subterfuges, we managed just fine.

Pray

A cold virus thwarted our efforts to engage in meditative practices at the Ashram in Rishikesh. Perhaps, it is fitting and appropriately humbling that a simple virus dictated our spiritual destiny on that day by subduing many on our team. We settled for a walk through the Ashram yard and a stroll along the ersatz boardwalk of Rishikesh on the Ganges river. I floated a paper boat full of flowers, a burning candle and a burning incense stick down the river. I saw several guru types in orange robes, orange turbans, sandals, and long grey beards begging for money. Apparently, the yogi business isn’t doing so well.

India offers many opportunities for exposure to spiritual and religious practices. In Haridwar, we climbed the three-kilometer route along with masses of pilgrims to the Hindu Mansa Devi temple. Having deposited my purchased offerings at the base of a tree, we decided not to fight the smush to view the shrine. Just as we were about to leave, we caught the attention of someone who granted us foreigner privilege to bypass the packed mass of pilgrims to kneel before the actual shrine. I offered the appropriate cash supplications to the goddess in return for a piece of candy. As I was kneeling at the shrine, the hordes of pilgrims streamed by in a scrunch of humanity throwing their supplications over the waist-high wall behind me that separated them from me and the shrine. It seems totally wrong to me that it should be so. I shouldn’t have taken the place of someone who believed just for the experience of going through the motions.

At night time, we attended the festival of the first full moon after the Indian New Year on the Ganges. Only as I write do I know the festival name is Kartik Purnima and that any form of violence (hinsa or himsa) is prohibited on this day. At the time, all I could think while sitting on a thin cloth to protect me from Ganges -soaked cement surrounded by tens of thousands of festival attendees is that there are only four white guys in this whole crowd and I’m one of them. I didn’t know the purpose of the gathering, the pyres, or the chanting. For all I knew, the chanting was a call to appease their god with a sacrifice, whose culinary predilections might very well lean towards white meat. I sat through the festival with a sharp sense of unease due to feeling out of place culturally, religiously, and racially.

Back in Delhi, we visited the impressive Lotus temple created by Bahá’í practitioners who preach unity of religions and people. If I had to choose a religion, I think this one would be a good one to select. The preaching of religion is always to unify, but somehow the end result is always to separate. Is Bahá’í call to religious and human unification achievable, or yet just another religion to choose from? In the Lotus temple, each is allowed to pray according to their own preferences and predilections. Once again I went through the motions, I sat briefly with a blank mind. I had no supplications to offer. After a few seconds, I up and left.

So now that you fear for my soul-less existence, I will move on to the things that did move me in a positive way. On the visit to the Gandhi museum, I saw Gandhi’s glasses in the display of all of his earthly possessions at the time of his death. Those glasses defined him. I had a visceral wow moment when I saw them. 

To me, Gandhi was the real deal: a man that lived up to his own lofty words to be the change he wanted to see in the world. He is the man that set India free. What would he think of his legacy? And why was one of his few earthly possessions a rock?

I was moved by our stop at a rural school to hand out food and school supplies to needy children. Not my inspiration nor even financial contribution, I just happened to be there when it happened. One of our team creates a care package for needy people in the countries he visits.

It was really satisfying to give the kids their treats and school supplies. I hope it was actually useful. I think every little bit helps. I was happy to be a part of the effort.

And finally, I was moved by the Himalayas from the moment they revealed themselves near the end of a three thousand foot, two thousand stair, nine-mile climb through a rainforest; through the fourteen mile hike with a 180 degrees of Himalaya as a constant backdrop through the second leg of our Nepal hike; and on the plane ride out of which we had an excellent view of the Himalayan peaks. Another Nepal trek literally into the shadows of the mountains would be the one thing that would take me back to that region of the world.

Love

Love in India comes with too high of a price tag as far as I’m concerned. I concede that this is the biased point of view of a happily single man. The whole culture of love seems to revolve around the wedding. The women parade around the streets in nothing but their colorful, silken wedding attire at all times, at least that’s my interpretation. We saw several wedding parties spilling out into the streets. A man gets a few goats and some furniture and he is stuck for life. The stigma of divorce keeps the divorce rates extremely low by American standards but its hard to gauge the corresponding happiness index on either side of the gender divide. If men have to stick around to raise their children, I would concede the stigma of divorce serves a useful purpose.

I met only one woman on the trip I would consider marriage material – a lawyer working for the Indian Navy named Amica. She is attractive, personable, and smart – the only person to beat me at scrabble in a couple of years clinching her victory with the seven letter word viagras on triple word score. Now, in my mind, Viagra is a mass noun that doesn’t get pluralized and a trade name for a drug. But she won her case saying her app approved of the word. I suspect she is cunning too. I swallowed my pride and beer and congratulated her on her brilliance. She met three of my four criteria. The fourth criteria is that the woman has at least some remote interest in me, though if she meets the first three criteria, the last criterion is negotiable.