Still on the train, but there are other people in my car now (they boarded late last night) which means that there are two Indian men sitting across from me, three feet away, staring at me. It’s awkward—the staring. I don’t know what it is with staring in this country, like it’s their national past time or something, cricket and staring. I think one of them is listening to Carli Simon on his headphones.

This morning I woke up to the man shouting out breakfast. There is no meal car, they just have people running sup and down the aisles shouting out the food they’re selling. This is a problem when at three in the morning somebody walks by whouting “CHAAAACOFFEEEEE!”

I accidentally bought two breakfasts—there were two packages to each breakfast and he asked me if I wanted two, I said yes and he handed me another two—it’s hard to explain. They were made up of some pieces of spongy something or other, cold and soggy. The bags were metallic, so I’m guessing they were heated at one point, but that may have been hours, days ago.

After a couple of bites I gave up (I’m going to starve to death on this train ride) and went down the hall to throw away my two breakfasts.

I’m reminded of the parents all over America ordering their children to finish their breakfasts by reason of starving children in India, and here I am, actually able to hand my uneaten food to one of those starving children. But I’m throwing it away.

I walk down the hall and only when I’ve stepped in something wet do I realize that I have forgotten that I’m not on an American train, and walking around in socked feet is absolutely a bad idea. There is a good chance that I’ve stepped in somebody’s tobacco chew.

Well I gather myself and move on, only to find the trash overflowing (it’s a one gallon size trash can t5hat I am sure won’t be emptied until this train reaches its final destination in two days) so I turn around and head for the trash can at the other end of the train. By the time I get there the bottoms of my socks are soaked.

I elbow my way past a couple of bathroom line people (line is most definitely not the right word, but it’ll do) to reach for the trash can. It looks like if I can cram it, my two breakfasts will fit!

But a man stops me when I’m only a foot away from accomplishing my goal. He yells “Na na na!” and opens the door of the fast moving train and motions out. He doesn’t want me to jump out does he? Is he really that angry abut my wasteful American tendancies?

“Trash out!” he cries.

“Ohhh!!” and with just a moment’s hesitation I fling my two breakfasts out to the wind which fly, like so many birds, and flutter out of sight. “Damn this litter happy country,” I think, having now joined their ranks. And when I get back to my seat I can see out my window that there is nothing less than a moat of garbage, three feet high and five feet wide, lining the tracks.

14/01/2011

I’m on the train now, on my way to Rishikesh, and I’m the only person in my sleeper car of 4 beds! What luck.

I havent been writing the last couple of days so I’m way begind lots of stories to tell and lots of thoughts to elaborate—

Two nights ago Amelie (a nice German girl staying at the hostel) and I went to the dakshineswar temple, then took the ferry over to Belur Math where we saw a beautiful sunset puja service with two or three-hundred people all singing along. The temple was full, it was gorgeous.

Last night I tagged along to a musician’s party. There were probably twenty people, all prolific classical Indian musicians, and there was music non-stop. Amazing music. It was really a beautiful night and a beautiful experience.

A lot of the people there were westerners. The kind of people that spend four months out of the year in India. I wondered if I wanted to be one of those people—a ceaseless wanderer—and I found that I didn’t. I miss home too much. I need a place to call home with a family. I don’t know what on earth that family would look like, but I can feel how lonely life would be without that. I’ve lived alone, I’ve traveled alone, and now I know: I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.

Bought a train ticket for Friday, it’s waitlisted, so I hope that works out. But I’m super duper stoked! Some change! at last—I was starting to get too comfortable wasting my days here in Kolkata.

Going to college street now to buy some books.

Okay, I am in Rishikesh and back up and running, so here are some journal entries.

09/01/2011

I went to yoga today and it was bizzare—not at all what I was expecting. I thought I was going to some group class where we would all be led through a sequence of asanas, but this is not at all what happened.

Maybe it was because I went to a “Shivananda yoga hospital,” which is more of a homeopathic healing deal. I don’t know, maybe yoga just means something different over here…it was somewhat discouraging.

I showed up and sat through another puja, just me and the practitioner this time. Afterwards I was called downstairs where a man was lying on a bunk with a leg in the air and two men were standing over him speaking in the usual raucous Bengali. They ushered me into a room where Isat at adesk with a man dressed in pink robes and had me sign a shiit of paper. I’m not sure what it was for, but they were calling it my “perscription.” A woman came in and asked me what my ailment was, I told her I had no ailment, and she asked, “Then why are you here?”

“I was told I could practice yoga here,” I said.

“Yes but why are you here?” There was obviously some sort of misunderstanding.

Eventually we compromised and wrote “physical fittness” next to the “ailment” section of the form. I was gathering that instead of a yoga studio like I am used to, I had walked into something nearer to a physical therapy hospital/spiritual center (the two sort of fit into the same category, as physical health is tied to spiritual health here).

The next hour was all unfamiliar territory, with me on a mat and three older men shouting commands (only one of them shouting in English mind you). The postures were mostly seated and most of them very gentle. laying on the back and lifting a leg for example.

The man in pink handed me a book called “Yogic Method of Healing,” written by Swami Shivananda himself. It reads a little like a manual for the daily practices of a yoga cult, which is, I guess, what the Shivananda yogis are if you can remove the usual derogatory connotation from cult. The book has a good long section devoted to the importance of chastity (unless married) and refraining from “self-abuse,” and we all know what that means—not the cult for me!

Well, either way, it was snot what I was hoping for, but mayfbe it is the best experience to have had, as I am now aware of how foreign the terrain is. I definitely need to go to Rishikesh to find the westernized exercise yoga that I am looking for.

Just like the browser on this internet cafe-sans-cafe computer, my blogging skills seem to need an update. I will be back at it in full force soon.

I am getting on a 26 hour train ride through the beautiful (if not somewhat smoggy) Indian countryside tomorrow where I will have plenty of time to read the nine-hundred page collection of scifi short stories that my afficionado of a sister gave me for christmas, as well as ample time to write in my little notebook. So there should me more stories up soon for your reading pleasure.

until then.

The hostel manager directed me to a yoga ashram nearby that I thought I might try to study at for the next couple of weeks. Just while Iam still in Kolkata. So I walked over there, it toiok about twenty minutes.

A man in the entry way spotted me and waved me in, pointing up the stairs to the left. He seemed to know why I was there. I wandered up to the third or fourth flook, past some bunks, and came across a boy, maybe my age, squatting in front of a bowl full of incense and shourting at me in Bengali. A little taken aback and feeling like a stupid tourist I interrupted him, “Bengali na, sori.” He kept going.

After a few seconds he was asking “Hindi?”

“Hindi na, sori.” Still feeling stupid “English?”

“Na na na.” He turned around to face his statue and continued his puja. I was still standing in the middle of the room.

After a minute or so a man came along followed by a couple of women, “Please take a seat.” He seems to know why I am there. “Will you stay for lunch?”

“No, I must have lunch at my youth hostel,” I say.

“You will stay for lunch,” he demands.

“I’m sorry, I told them I would eat there.” I plead.

“I request that you stay for lunch!” He is very convincing. I nod my head and thank him. “Okay sit down here,” he points to the middle of the room. By the time I am seated the boy is singing at top volume, ringing a bell, the woman next to him is bangin a gong, and they are both waving various objects in the direction of the statue. The room fills with smoke, the noise is loud, transe like.

After this was over I was directed upstairs where for a half an hour I sat with fifteen other people, all Indian, some living at the ashram and some visiting. Dish after dish was brought out and spooned onto my banana leaf mat. I picked up bite after bite with my hands, some of it was almost too spicy, it was all amazing. Rich, flavorful, colorful, sweet, salty, spicy. A delicious home cooked feast.

The dinner conversation was a ruckus. I am learning that people live here at a higher decible. Every now and then one of the three english speakers in the room would shout something at me, like “How do you like this food?” “Where are you from?” “It is not too spicy for you?” The woman next to me, holding a child, pointed out each dish to me and told me the names and what they were made of. It was really a beautiful experience.

I made arangements to go back tomorrow morning at nine (“with empty stomach!” I was told), so I am excited to take my first yoga class in India! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday Ed and Serena (an amazing Italian+American couple that I met here at the hostel) and I went to Santeniketan: the home of Rabindranath Tangore, nobel prize winning poet, activist, artist, philosopher, all around polymath) to see the place, a day trip. I have been reading up on Tagore the last few days, so I have been really stoked.

We took a taxi there, hired him for the day as it is a long drive. We thought it was going to take two hours, but no, it toiok three. And three hours of Indian driving is almost more than one American can handle. Driving in India is one ot the most nerve wracking experiences known to man, no joke. It’s a guaranteed near death experience at least every thirty seconds. I don’t if I will be able to put the absurdity of it into words.

Cars will cross into oncoming traffic, play a game of high speed chicken, and (horns honking, always always) swerve out of the way at the last minute. This happens every time a car needs to pass a slow moving truck or a water buffalo drawn cart, which is about etwice a minute. Lanes don’t exist. Driving down the middle of the road seems to be preffered. And horns, I figured out, are not an expression of anger, they are not even optional, rather they are quite like sonar. Drivers in India don’t use rear view mirrors, they just go. And if someone honks, which they do, then they swerve. In fact almost every truck says “please honk” on the back.

But enough about the driving. Near death experience every thirty seconds is all you need to know.

Santeniketan. It was wonderful. It was gorgeous (This is, of course, by Indian standards, so you have to ignore the trash piled on the side of the road and the peeling paint, but once you do, it’s gorgeous). We walked and talked and saw some monkeys, ate some awesome, buttery-delicious food with our finger, saw the sights.

You should know that everybody in India is obsessed with my height. I get the feeling that I am the only 6’6” person that anybody here has seen, so they tend to stare. And oh do they stare, and worse, they take pictures. It’s as if trafficstops when I walk by so that everybody can stop, point, and stare.

One group of teenagers, they looked like a school group, actually stopped us to take our picture with them. Twenty kids crowded around us, three rows of kids framing the three of us white people in the center and a couple of adults holding about twenty different cameras trying to get us to hold still long enough to take a picture with each one. We said “Thank you” after a while and tried to walk away, but the little buggars followed us! They circled around us and followed us for a bit all yelling and snapping pictures. It was out of control! We had to walk fast to get away.

In our escape we happened upon a Baul singer (a type of folk singer from Bengal, Rabindranath adored them), sitting under a stone archway in the shade of a tree with a lute-like instrument under his arm, a tabla in his lap, and some bells on his foot which was tapping a cross rhythm to the already odd metred song he was singing and playing. It was the strangest little song with a funny lopsided gait. It sounded ancient.

This was an absolutely beautiful moment, but it was shortlived, as the mob of camera wielding students had found us! One sat down with us in front of the performer and struck a pose for his friends. We got up and left.

We took pictures in front of a gigantic tree, the tropical kind with the branches that hang down and turn into columns which eventually get swallowed up by the growing trunk.

We spent a couple of hours looking for the “Terracotta Temple” that Ed’s friend had told him about. I’m not entirely convinced that it exists. It was a good day, a real bit of vacation.

The sun set, I bought a bag (my old one fell apart), and we got in the car to go home. Waiting until night, it turned out, was a mistake. If driving in India during the day is bad, driving in India during the night is hell, absolutely. Not only was it dark outside, but we were in the midst of what our driver called “Big Traffic.” These were his only two words, and they were an understatement.

There are no street lamps on the highways in India, so people don’t turn off their high beams. This makes the game of chicken much more difficult, painful in fact, but that is no deterrant to the Indian driver. He passes cars, trucks, wagons, and motorcycles at every opportunity. At one point (this may have happened more than once) we were in a row of four cars lined up laterally, all trying to pass each other at 60 mph, and facing us were three cars doing the same. Now were were on a two lane highway, side-mirror to side-mirror, so this was somewhat frightening. In fact, it looked like a quick and bitter end, but through some horn honking (this almost doesn’t need to be said), some acceleration, and some swerving (not to mention some cussing) we came out alive.

I can now say that I have driven the roads of India during Big Traffic, but in all honesty I don’t think I need to do it again.

Baul singer at Santeniketan

Monkeys at Santeniketan

Santeniketan was wonderful, peaceful.