Chapter 6: Findira Declares Emergency

Dearest All-

Indira Ghandi is possibly India's most revered leader (besides the
real Ghandi of course, to whom she is no relation), possibly for the
right reasons, most likely for the wrong. She was a strong leader in
a fractious country during a turbulent period of time: inflation was
choking India, there was an energy crisis and there were riots
constantly. So Indira did what any Indian mother would do: she put
her foot down and sent everyone to their rooms. OK, so she actually
suspended civil liberties and sent all the opposition to jail, but
let's not split hairs. It was called "The Emergency" and lasted for
almost six years. Strangely enough, where this type of activity would
cause a lynch mob to arise in most countries, she became more popular
than ever. Well, at least until Indira was murdered by her own body
guards who had decided that the national 'time out' had gone on long
enough.

Fingermouse was the star of a British children's' show that was
popular in the 80's. As with most things British, it's a bit
difficult to see the immediate appeal, but with repeated exposure one
comes around. Fingermouse was a paper mouse that rode around on the
finger of his buddy, The Music Man. That's right. You can explore
the wonder of Fingermouse here:
http://www.cjetech.co.uk/watched_it/fingermouse.html. One day when
Guy, Amber, Josh and myself were sitting around waiting for things, we
began to make fingermice for our selves. Then we made Finger Pandas
(Fanda) and Finger Wombat (Fombat), and finally, Finger Indira. And
Findira was born.

If you were a psychologist, and possibly that's who I should really be
telling this story to, you might say that Findira begin to express the
desires of the wearer that might not be acceptable to everyone. For
example, Findira might want to scream "Don't touch me you scabby gross
old man!", but Amber would not want to scream that. Findira might
want to scream "GET OUT OF MY GD WAY!!" but I would not want to scream
that. See? Findira spoke our unspeakable desires.

Josh and I had left Guy and Amber to go south, and we were going to go
up to Bombay and try to score parts in a movie or commercial because:
why not? When we arrived in Chennai to take the train, we found that
ALL Bombay bound trains had been cancelled due to the 3.5 feet of rain
they had received. That's right: FEET of rain had fallen, and all in
24 hours. As Bombay was going to be in no shape to serve as the
backdrop to our movie careers, we headed up to Delhi. In Delhi it was
not raining, it was HOT. Findira screamed for air conditioning. The
next day our friends Jeb and Rachel had arrived and we had a great day
shopping for ethnic clothes (which I once promised myself I would
never buy- but it was too hot for t-shirts) and going out for massive
meals (eating with Jeb and Rachel is a pleasure: they are never afraid
to go ahead and order double the amount of food we might need, just in
case. Awesome.).

With Jeb and Rach, we headed out into the desert of Rajasthan.
Rajasthan is like the Arabian nights- castles, forts, palaces all rise
out of scrub land. The strangest place we visited was the rat temple,
where hundreds of rats run all over the place. It's considered lucky
if one runs over your foot. Findira called for rat poision. At first
it was fascinating, but the longer you spent with rats everywhere, the
creepier it got, as they were literally EVERYWHERE- coming out of
pipes, running around in the gutter, climbing on the walls, sleeping
all over the place. Jaisalmer was the best place in Rajasthan. It is
a small town, the last stop in the desert as you travel towards
southern Pakistan (and since the border is closed it is literally the
last stop). Out of the desert a huge honey-coloured fort rises,
dominating the flat landscape. The stone changes color as the sun
rises and sets, and when a sand storm blows in it is usually the only
thing visible, making me want to get one of those Yasar Arafat things
for my head and start a camel herd.

But Rajasthan was trying, for in addition to the heat, which was
amazing and unrelenting, the Rajathanis are used to free wheelin', big
spendin' tourists who come to India on an eight day trip and travel
around in their AC taxi throwing money out the window in a rain of
Euro notes. It makes budget travel a bit hard when people start
quoting you auto rickshaw fares in dollars, and charging sometimes
MORE than a similar fare would be in say, London. It spoils the
experience a little bit to be treated like a walking ATM machine.
Just come up, punch me in the stomach and I'll give you a wad of cash.
Findira screamed for a plague upon their houses, maybe smallpox. Or
dropsy.

Josh and I said our goodbyes to Jeb and Rachel and headed up north.
First stop was Amritsar, where we spent three days using the toilet
every five minutes. Thanks food poisoning! Findira called for the
heads of who ever didn't wash their hands.... Then we went to see the
Golden Temple, a temple made of gold. Inventive naming, no? The best
thing we did in Amritsar, besides not die of food poisoning I mean,
was go to see the Border Closing Ceremony on Indian Independence Day.
Amritsar, India and Lahore, Pakistan are maybe 25 kilometers apart, and
before partition they were important centers of commerce in the Punjab
area. Now the border runs between the two. The border closes for
commerce and transit at 4 pm, but the border officially closes at
sundown. Since Pakistan and India have been rivals since they were
formed, they decided to blow off a little bit of steam by turning the
border closing into a huge show. And show business this is: fanfare,
an MC, screaming crowds, little girls singing, banners and bunting,
marching soldiers and lots of audience participation. They need to
fire the costume designer though: the Indians look like they have a
Chinese fan glued to the side of their hat, and they are wearing some
sort of strange pantaloon and white boots with spats. Why not just
wear bathrobes and throw cats at the Pakistanis? It's the same
message people. But the closing ceremony itself is fantastic. After
the MC warmed the crowd up a bit with some chanting about how great
"Hindustan" is, the soldiers from each side started marching around
the gate area, puffing up their chests. Then, one by one, the
soldiers would run up to the gate and YELL through the bars at the
Pakistani soldiers on the other side. Keep throwing those cats boys-
if crazy wins wars, you're gonna be a superpower soon. Then, as the
sun was setting, the flags are lowered simultaneously, the captains of
each border guard force exchange the briefest of hand shakes and the
gate is swung shut and padlocked. It was awesome.

We continued on to Himachal Pradesh. Our first stop was Dalhousie, a
vacant, crumbling hill station originally built for the British
governors of Punjab. I don't know what it is, but I love that
crumbling British empire feel. Dalhousie was a fantastic surprise:
first, it was empty, something that very very few places in India are.
Second, it was cool, mist crept through the trees and the Himalayas
burst into view from time to time when the clouds broke. We spent
four days eating and enjoying the novel feeling of not sweating. At
night, we used BLANKETS. It was amazing. After Dalhousie we moved
onto to Israel. No wait, I mean Daramshala/McLeod Ganj, where the
Dali Lama lead the exile Tibetans community to in the 50s. But
unwittingly he also seems to be leading the Israelis into the
mountains to commune. We met two Israelis we really liked: Dan and
Tamar. We spent the next week in the sthetl, eating lots of hummus
and felafel and walking around in the mountains, marvelling that so
many Israelis could come to one place (there were literally thousands
of them, and one village where we stayed had almost all of its signage
in Hebrew). Why here?

It was interesting to see Tibetans here in India verses on the Tibetan
Plateau. No offence to the plateau, but I would prefer to stay in
Daramshala- it's green, cool and moist, compared with frozen, dry and
brown. The Dali Lama does seem to be doing a good job helping the
Tibetan community redefine itself and its religion. The interesting
thing to me was to see all of the westerners in town, dressed in
kaftans and loose shirts, talking about the joyous love and energy the
Dali Lama brings to the town, doing yoga and meditating on happiness.
I like the DL, but the joyous happiness might be generated by the
Tibetans being overjoyed to take the money of crazy westerners looking
for happiness. It's an odd place, but I'd like to go back some day.
Possibly in a caftan so I can sit in a circle and experience loving
happiness while I play tunes on a pan pipe and douse myself with
patchouli oil. Findira however, was judgmental and thought they
might find happiness if they went home and spent some of that money on
helping others less fortunate, who might not be able to afford to
travel overseas to sit in a circle.

I also got to take some cooking courses from the unstoppable Rita, who
showed us the path to bigger belt sizes through delicious curries and
chapati. But for all the loving holiness and the making curry
everyday, something was amiss. There was something wrong. We had
been experiencing frequent FTB (fly-to-Bangkok) moments, when
something that used to delight now annoyed. India is great, but even
frequent injections of Findia (Fake India) were no longer solving the
problem. That's when Findira called Emergency and made us buy tickets
to Thailand. Good job, Findira.

With tickets in hand, we travelled to Calcutta via Agra. Let me tell
you about the Taj Mahal: its a big building that looks just like it
does in pictures. The best thing I saw there was an oxen-powered LAWN
MOWER! It was the coolest. I want one of those bad. OK, so the Taj
was really quite impressive, and it is an amazing feat of symmetry,
with every single thing being mirrored on each side of the central
crypt. They call it the biggest monument ever built to love, but if
some one wanted to build me a monument to love it should be a water
park. Or the Ben and Jerry's factory. It was built by a king for his
wife, who he must have liked a bit. His tomb was supposed to be
identical to hers except on the other side of the river and built in
black marble, but after he died his son decided to wedge his dad in
with his mom and forget the black taj idea, so the king's body lays to
the left of his wife's, the only unsymmetrical thing in the complex.

Calcutta was not the black hell hole I was expecting. It was pretty
much like other Indian cities, except it has more parks. And a huge
statue of Queen Victoria looking strikingly like Jaba the Hut. And
the Indian Museum! It was like walking back in time in there- the
museum itself hasn't really been updated since the fifties, so it is
full of awesome displays like "PLANTS IN THE SERVICE OF MAN!" and
"Fossils: Stone Books". The rest of the city is quite pretty, with
the colonial buildings and the huge parks, but the suburban slums are
expectedly grim.

The night before we left for Thailand, we found Guy randomly walking
down the road! It was an amazing coincidence- and so we ran to the
Indian airlines office and got him a ticket for the next morning.
Whoohooo third world airline rules! No advance purchase required.
The next morning, the jet thrust us down the runway and into the clear
air over the Bay of Bengal. It didn't stop to pick up more
passengers, no one rode in the aisle or in the luggage compartments,
and we didn't even have to fight with the pilot about the price- we
were truly on our way out of India. There, over Burma, we toasted the
next phase of our trip: Operation Dumbass. Findira smiled, turned and
screamed at the good for nothing, lazy flight attendants to bring
another beverage.

Love,

Brock

PS. I swear, I'm not insane.

Chapter 5: Focus Your Mind to Natural Breasts

Dear Everybody-

India can be challenging to travel in, but it is made easier when you
simply invent a new language in which to describe your trials and
delights. We are lazy travellers, so we just adopted Amber, the
language of our travelling companion Amber Hammill. It is a
combination of Australian English and Amber's own inventions. A few
examples:
Bendy Camp- Yoga Class
Getting Bendy- doing yoga for a period of time
Balcotrex- a balcony
Carking it/Kaking it- one means to die, one to crap yourself, I can
never remember which is which.
Split Pants- having diaroeah. Comes from the Chinese pants little
kids wear that are split, allowing the wearer to just squat down
anywhere. I have never, ever discussed my bowels as much as I have
since entering this country. It is a constant marvel to me how an
entire part of the world wants my gastrointestinal tract to die.

Finally, when speaking Amber, you must remember this one grammatical
rule: all adjective noun combinations must be combined into one word.
Morning Yoga = Moga; Morning Beach Yoga = Mboga. You get the idea.

Why on earth am I explaining this to you? Becasue of the importance
of one concept: the division between Rindia and Findia.

Rindia is where we all think we want to go when we travel to India.
It's real India. We want to squat down in the dust with toothless old
men in turbans and try out some Hindi. We want to eat the people's
food: big plates of rice and dal (curried lentils), do yoga by the
side of the road and bathe in the Ganges. No, we won't mind if a dead
body floats by, it's part of being an open minded traveller. We don't
need hot water or sheets. Not here in Rindia we don't.

Findia is where we go when all that dirt-sitting and Hindi-talking and
bathing-with-dead-bodies becomes too much. Findia is where middle
class India hangs out: The Mall. The Pizza Hut. In Air conditioned
movie theaters. It's fake India. It sounds terrible, but it would be
dishonest to act like I made it all the way though Rindia. Oh no-
there were several stops in Findia, because with out it, one simply
might go insane. Plus, India is the combined efforts of both Rindia
and Findia. And if Indians eat at Pizza Hut, then judge away cruel
travelling world, because after a months of road side stands and fly
blown food stalls, I deserve a big fat deep dish pizza served by a man
in a uniform. Plus, it was tandori chicken flavor: mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Josh, Amber and I entered India at Sunauli, a dusty border post in the
middle of no where. Guy was waiting for his visa in Kathmandu and
would be joining us in a few days. Security was what one could call
lax. We accidentally walked by the immigration check, not recognizing
it for what it was since it was composed of three desks sitting under
an overhang. But after getting our passports duly stamped by three
guys who's job description seemed to include interrupting each other
so that sentences could not be finished, we were officially in India.
Buses in this part of the world are complete crap. Normally there
are about 800 people on a bus designed for 80, sitting on the roof, in
the aisle, on me. So we wanted to go to Goraktapur where there was a
rail line that would convey us in reserved seat comfort on smooth
steel tracks to Varanasi, our destination. We crammed in a jeep
designed to hold six that had 13 people in it and made a push for the
train station. We arrived and succeeded it getting tickets for a
train. Indian Rail is the worlds largest rail network, and also the
world's largest employer with something like 3.5 million employees.
It's literally what holds this huge country together. However, while
at times it is amazing, sometimes it is amazing for the wrong reasons.
Our journey to Varanasi took not five hours, nor six, nor even eight,
but ELEVEN hours to traverse 180 kilometers. I can bicycle faster
than that. But we did enjoy the many snacks we were able to buy en
route, since the train stopped every 5 feet, including samosas, pakora,
some sort of dried salted lentil snack and cup after cup of super
sweet chai.

We arrived in Varanasi in the wee hours, and went a looking for a
guesthouse. Planning ahead is not our thing. Varanasi is a
warren of tiny alleyways and streets that all crisscross each other
and run in a muddled hoard towards the Ganges River. It was hopeless
to attempt this ourself. And just when we were getting desperate, out
of the night appeared the Guesthouse Guru. Missing a front tooth,
dressed in an orange skirt and a brown cotton shirt, with beads and
flowers dangling from our neck and carrying a walking stick, he was a
vision to behold. He marched us to our guesthouse, talking the entire
way, sometimes in Hindi, sometimes in English, sometimes chanting. He
told be I was a bad person and my karma was all wrong. Amber shouted
from the back that I was not, but he had already closed his eyes and
was humming what sounded like the theme song to "I Dream of Jeannie".
We passed dogs and holy cows sleeping in the streets, and went down
long dark alleys and past candle lit shrines, and then all the sudden,
we arrived at our guesthouse. I think even the guru was surprised.
And maybe he was right. Maybe my karma is bad, because when we got to
the guest house I forgot to give him any money for helping us.

We spent two weeks in Varanasi, taking a Hindi class and going to
bendy camp. Hindi was great to learn, and the best things we got out
of class were handy phrases for use on the street, such as 'Don't eat
my brain', which means shut up and leave me alone already, and also
'Don't sit on my head" which means quit crowding me. Both are in
heavy rotation in my limited Hindi vocabulary. Yoga was the best
though- I have never been so flexible in my life. A lot of it seems
like mumbo jumbo (such as "this posture cures asthma and
diabetes"...riiiiiight), but our Yogi was great. Ram lead us down the
path of bendiness with humor and good grace, and a hilarious command
of English which made concentrating in class difficult. A typical
class command (with translation):

"OK now, more more more, and enough, but more, and remember take it
easy make it easy. Now, dead body pose, focus your mind to natural
breasts (breaths). Focusing your mind to natural breasts, slowly
slowly, come on your side (roll over), now come slowly slowly on your
feet (stand up) and now it's no problem (good job). Let's do the sun
salutation, why not?"

It's hard to concentrate on natural breasts when someone asks you to
come on your feet. Why not? is Ram's response to all questions or
queries, and it is infectious. Ram invited us to his home twice while
we were staying in Varanasi, where we met his beautiful wife and
little daughters, and even took us to a parade honoring their local
deity.

Staying in one place so long in India really let's you get to know
some of the people, including my friend Rajish, with who I helped pick
out his brother's new wife, and Dep, who was very interested in the
concept of "night wife, morning friend" and wanted to know all about
how to woo western women. My advice was to start brushing his teeth
more.

After two weeks in Varanasi it was time to move on, so after a 40 hour
train ride, we arrived in Chennai (also called Madras- this is all
very confusing). The first afternoon we were there we walked down to
the beach and put our feet in the ocean for the first time since this
same ocean tried to kill us in December. Take that ocean! Madras is
really cool in a "crumbling-empire-in-the-tropics" kind of way. The
food was good, and this is where we saw our first Indian movie. It
was a story about unrequited love among college friends, or something.
Since it was in Tamil, one of the 18 official languages of India, it was incomprehensible
After spending a considerable amount of time studying Hindi, we went
directly to a place where no one speaks Hindi at all. Nice work us.
The subtlety of the plot might have been lost, but the four dance
scenes and the awesome use of English were not, including such
quotable quotes such as "Don't be crazy Sharm! Buuumba blas thsed
niunsd ....." and "humko sdnat sintalsd it's all her fault and any
humkororbasda can see it!". From Madras we made a move for the beach
at Mamalapurnam (also called Mahabalipurnam- sigh.), where we spent
several days being astonished to find the place where all the French
go in India. Mahabalipurnam is only two hours from Pondicherry, a
former French colony.

After beaching, we went to Pondicherry, a strange anomaly by the sea:
French India. Everynight was a feast of all things French, at Indian
prices, while walking around the preserved French quarter during the
day. You know you have entered the twilight zone when taxi drivers
stop calling out "Hello! Sir! You go in my taxi!" and start singing
"Bonjour Monseur! Mon voiture blah blah!". All the hotels in Pondy
fall into two categories: dilapidated, or ashram. Ashram= religious
living. We chose dilapidated, and regretted the choice. So, the next
day we chose ashram, and gritted our teeth for some clean living. The
list of rules at check in included no drinking, smoking, chewing gum
or talking loudly after 9pm, No visitors, the front gates close at 10
pm, if you're not inside well then: you'll rue the day you decided to
flaunt the rules. But it was clean and quiet and right on the ocean
and cheap. So I enjoyed three nights at hotel d'crazy, part of the
Sri Aurobindo ashram. The ashram was founded by two people, an
Indian guy name Sri Aurobindo, and a French woman who called herself
"The Mother". There are quotes all over the place from "the mother"
and we all started pondering as we went though our daily lives "What
would The Mother say about this?". Hung in our room was a huge
portrait of the two, looking stern and industrious. I was going to
make them some party hats and stick them to the picture but thought
getting kicked out was a definite possibility.

We needed to head up north to meet some some friends, and Guy and
Amber would be going further south, so we had to say good bye. Which
was hard after spending so much time with two people, inventing a
language, crossing from China to India, riding flatulent horses etc.
So we decided to have our good bye feast at Pizza Hut, which because
it is such a novelty in India, looks like some sort of EuroBistro with
paintings on the walls and proper glassware and good service. Yes,
shut up people, I don't want to hear complaining and grumbling about
being in India and eating at pizza hut. And the next morning, after
weeping and some gnashing of teeth, we separated. Breaking up is hard
to do.

And this is where we must separate as well: I think I own the Internet
cafe now I have spent so much time here, and you have lost precious
minutes from your life that you can never retrieve. Whhhahahhahaaaa...
next time: touristhan, theatrical aggression on the Indo-Pak border,
and calling emergency with Findira. I know you just cant wait....
Hope all is well with you: email me! It's getting lonely out here.

Yours in the mountains of north India, hanging out with all of Israel
which seems to be here on holiday,

Brock