Deneument

Bangalore has become home to me. Its avenues radiate with recognition, its street signs, though in mysterious alphabets, seem to make sense in my mind now. Things that once made me uncomfortable no longer do so. I hardly sweat anymore.

And it's almost time to go home. From the presents I've purchased, I now have about my own weight's worth of cargo to schlep home on the four aircraft and five airports that will take me home. A few weeks ago I needed to buy a bag that would get all these things home. So I went into a luggage store, and in the bassiest American voice I had said, "I need the biggest cheapest bag you got." The two guys looked at each other and almost said simultaneously, "the Sony". The Sony, which will one day be my nemisis, sits for now collecting dust in a neat corner of my room. It is big and blue with the Sony logo on its side. It looks like a camera bag for some sort of celestial imagery device meant to peer into quazars lying in the furthest reaches of the universe. But hey, it's a Sony.

Things are wrapping up here. I'm going to get one more $2 haircut before hitting the road in a few days, a few last knick knacks for people who never knew they needed them. Mostly it's an exercise in killing time. I took a ten hour trip to Jog Falls, the "Niagra of Karnataka" as I call it. When I got there, it was mostly misted over, but majestic through the plumes of clouds. It was nearly sunset, and I could find one place to eat, which was serving one mushy meal only. Soon after, I found the one place to stay in town, a government-run fleabag hotel that wanted a deposit in advance. The room had no exterior windows, and was covered in mold. It was an asthmatic's worst nightmare. The mattress was damp, so I slept in my clothes, on top of an itchy blanket. The bathroom was covered in insects like I hadn't seen since summer camp. I closed the door and left the light on in there to keep them away from me. The room had one dark red lightbulb that couldn't be turned off. When I switched off the overhead light to go to bed, my surroundings resembled a submarine. The dim red light, the damp, and the mold smell to top it off. I went to sleep and dreamed of Red October. The next day, I caught the next bus out of there and made the 10 hour trip back to Bangalore, mosquito-bitten and ornery.

So today, I'm just trying to find ways to spend the next 3 or 4 days. I've read so much that the books I've bought here are only adding weight to the Sony. I'm hoping that the latest 900-page tome I recently cracked will be enough to pass the time till departure. Buying another book just seems crazy, but I have to do something.

In all, I don't think I'll miss India. The more I think about it, I've never really missed a place as much as the people and the good times that took place in that place. It's more like missing a time and a place, rather than just a place. India is interesting. If I ever make it back here, I'll come better prepared, with more to do, and better company than me alone can make. There is so much to see and do here, but it is so difficult to do it on your own. Going to the bathroom on a train means leaving your bag in the company with strangers. Having a conversation means pacing back and forth and talking to yourself. Eating alone means that they'll always throw out half the rice. People aren't meant to be alone, especially in such an essentially social place as India. Nobody is ever alone here. I've heard Indian ex-pats in the states say that the hardest thing about being there is having to get used to being just an individual, not a family, or a group. Just a lone particle. There is something here that makes lonliness almost abominable. Maybe it's just the number of people here.

Goa: Whoa

I left Pune two days ago on an overnight bus for Mapusa, Goa. Goa is one of the smallest states in India, sandwiched on the coast between Maharastra to the north, and Karnataka to the south. It was a Portuguese colony almost since Vasco Da Gama made it around the Cape of Good Hope in search of saffron that came in packets bigger than your thumbnail. Goa received its independence from Portugal in the early 60's (I think '62), but in many ways remains independent in identity from the rest of India. In so many ways it's strikingly like Brazil; from the geography to the attitude of the people. Interestingly, nobody here speaks Portuguese, even though they have names like Angelo Da Silva. I think Indians learn and forget languages like we do with combination locks for clothes at the gym.

It's the low season, and most places are shuttered with blue tarp and palm leaves. I found a place on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea for 6 dollars a day, and am renting a scooter for about 2 dollars a day. Goa is the first resort place I've been to in my life where I felt I could really stay for a while. I'm not the only one. You see Western hippies with big white beards and white Jerry Garcia hair walking lazily down the lanes of the small towns here.

Speeding down the roads on my scooter, I've blown through rice patties, past soccer fields, and through dusty little hamlets, half closed. On one side is hilly forest insulating the inland from the coast, and on the other are rolling green mountains accented with red rocks jutting out like wounds in the smooth landscape. It's been relatively cool, humid and cloudy since I got here. It's the monsoon, which, barring freakish occurences, means that it's cloudy and rains for about an hour each day. All this makes for a relaxed, uncrowded, and cheap getaway.

I met a French couple and have been having dinner with them. The guy has lived in Shanghai for the past 8 years, and is in India to make business contacts to work between the two places. In the old debate over who will take over the world (India or China), he thinks that China will be the winner. This is the first time I've heard that here, which is sensible enough given where I am. About the Indians, he says, "They are lay-zee. You go to a rest-au-rant here and it takes an houaire for service. Thees would nehver happen in China." He does concede that Indians seem to have a spiritual sense, whereas the Chinese seem to have supplanted that with a work ethic. I've never heard anyone since the English call Indians lay-zee. My impression has been that Indians are very hard workers. among the business-types here, all they do is "talk shop", conversation about which degree they'll seek next, which company they want to join.

If the Chinese are really better workers, and that is the sole qualifier for "who will win", then this seems like a race to the bottom. I don't want a future where we all have to work 7 days a week to compete with one another, or just to get by. That seems like the peasant life that our modern societies have struggled to shirk off for the past 400-odd years. While a leisure society, complete with housecleaning, and tax-assessing robots seems out of the question, so does a future of endless work, endless struggle for small scraps of arbitrage opportunities. What is the mechanism for mitigating that future? Maybe it's the places like Goa. Places where people really seem to live a good life.

I left Bangalore on the night of the 1st of July, and took an overnight train up to Hospet. I'd made the resevations at the train station a few days before, thinking I was in the super-posh 2-tier A\C sleepers. No wonder those tickets were so cheap. After a near miss with a team of drunk adolescent pickpockets in the corridor of the stopped first class car, I learned that my ticket had me back in "sleeper class". It wasn't that bad really. It was more the moment that was tough. I entered the feverish blue vinyl car. People were stacked three-high, fans wirring, coffee and tea vendors moving down the aisle, announcing themselves in a deep, empty baritone. "Coffee-Chai-Coffee-Chai"..."Coffee-Chai-Coffee-Chai"... Everyone was looking at me. It's sort of the same feeling you get walking into a diner in West Virginia, just looking for a slice of pie or something. Everyone looks. I found berth 51, about 7 feet off the ground, above a friendly family of about 6 beneath me. After some arranging of the space, I was able to make enough room for my pack, shoulders, legs, even my head. Ignoring everything I read my Robert Ludlum spy novel I'd picked up at the station, and dozed off.

I woke up on my own at about 6:30 that morning. We were due in Hospet at 8. The car had emptied out considerably on the intermediate stops through the night. I climbed down, got a coffee almost immediately, and found an open window, watching the early morning countryside go by. That was one of the comfortable, peaceful moments of travel that make it worth the hassle. It lasted for a good hour, just like that.

Hospet is the nearest town to the village of Hampi, which is a World Heritage site and tourist trap. Hampi is the center of a dynasty of Raj's lasting from the 13th century to the 16th. Sort of an Indian version of Maccu Piccu. The whole complex is spread out over about 30 km, and really requires hiring a driver for a day to see any appreciable percentage of the place. It's really an amazing array of ruins; some bare foundations, some whole temples with intricate carvings, and bats circling in their darker reaches. Very Indiana Jones.

This connection just lost my post to the blog, so I'll have to play catch-up later.