July 31, 2009

I got twigs in my hair.

I don’t care if I ever see a temple again. Or a cave. Or a palace, tomb, monument, famous street, museum, library, statue or obelisk. Even the charred car that was set aflame by the protesting monk while he was inside. DONE. Don’t care. Over it.

Maybe it’s the heat. Or the newly-acquired aversion to guidebook maps. Or maybe I’m stuck in the 7th-month stretch. My feet just refuse to carry me to another museum. Even if someone tells them there’s a bathroom with toilet paper and a Pinkberry inside.

What interests me most are the Indian people, their lives, their mentality. It’s all so different from mine, and it’s hard work to understand it. If I could sit on a corner and watch the shoeless taxi men chewing red tobacco and the cart-pushing men who hock everything from colored combs to bananas to spare bicycle parts, I would stay all day. Alas, it is not possible because the moment you step onto an Indian street, you are no longer an observer. Within two minutes you’re flanked by a teenager who wants to sell you on his family’s silk shop or a man who is dying to tell you about his daughter who lives in the UK, which he believes to be a part of California (This is actually one of my favorite parts of India, but I’ll get to that later).

In Jaipur I found the perfect observatory, a nest of sorts. The Explorer’s Nest, home to Arvind and Shoma, was the answer to my 7-month stretch blues. Arvind took me under his proverbial wing, gave me a comfy spot in his nest, brought me worms, tea, and my favorite: explanations. Spending at least 4 hours a day on his leafy veranda, I finally got to see Indian life go by.

In the very early part of the morning, after yoga and breathing exercises of course, India gets rolling, setting forth a series of visitors.

First, the scrap man comes and collects anything that can be reused. You’ll know he’s arrived by his low-pitched yell. Indians are quite resourceful and can easily re-purpose the metal of a refrigerator or an old bunch of cardboard. This man could make a fortune in my mother’s garage, but when I told him to go there he said something about the stupid government not giving him a passport. Whoops. I opened a can of worms. But at least I gave it back to him to reuse.

Then the garbage man wanders by, his trash bin a single wheelbarrow. Indians don’t waste so many things, and they have much less packaging. Either that’s why they have less trash or it is because it’s been strewn about in the streets.

Next, the milk man comes. Milk is ‘dude’ in hindi, so I thought I was hilarious by calling him the Dude Man. He arrives on his bicycle with milk straight from the cow. Fresh! Every morning. The homeowners themselves then boil the milk to take away the bacteria. Then, he or she adds an enzyme and leaves some of the milk at room temperature to make curd. Half of me thinks it’s amazing that such freshness exists and that people are not too lazy to make their own products. The other half of me doesn’t like the idea of growing lumps in your milk. But you gotta have curd with every meal to counteract the spicy and aid digestion, says Arvind.

Next the fruit man and vegetable man push their carts on by, at which time the women of the street emerge and participate in their own sort of Haggling Olympics. The Bread man rides up next on his bicycle, loaves and cookies and baguettes hanging in sacks off his seat. At some point, the neighbor lady will walk her 2-yr-old around the block as well. And if we stay in the nest long enough, we’ll catch the neighborhood cow who makes her rounds about 6pm every day, stopping at the usual houses. She knows who gives the best food. I found her quite underwhelmed by my offering of 2 slices of white bread.

In a country with a population of over a billion, the Indians really have their systems organized. This life of deliveries omits the need to wait for a slow cashier, makes money for the people and not the corporations, and allows commerce to unfold from a seat on the veranda. I call it genius.

The network is so complex, in fact, that if a man (an Indian one who won’t be hassled to buy a puppet or a postcard) stands on the street corner all day long, everything he needs will come his way. I’ve seen carts filled with underwear, mirrors, myriad food and water, smoothies, tea, even kitchen cabinet handles. While we Westerners are fussing with what we call, ‘running errands’, the Indians have tricked all the errands into coming to them. Some love the idea so much that they actually do decide to stay on the street all day. Some take it too far and sleep on the streets. Maybe they’re waiting for houses to come by on a cart.