Mykel's India Blog Entry 8
I write this while lying on a hard thin mattress on the floor of an apartment in a south Delhi apartment. It’s the night of Diweli-- a Hindu holiday celebrated like the mutant offspring of a Christmas/July 4th mating.
Locals stay home for the day. They give each other presents. Houses, stores and streets are strung with colored lights… there are some lasers. Click on the link below to see some of the decorations… but you cannot HEAR the fireworks.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CXbZhQnqPjSCmFxi6
Fireworks.. crackers, sparklers, those twirly things that give off sparks, the whole kit and caboodle… a lot more big ones… my fading brain forgets the name of them… ashcans maybe... Huge explosives… like gunfire.
I remember my father once telling me… on Independence Day…. “Hear that Mickey?” he says (That was years before I became Mykel). “That’s what it’s like to be at war. It never stops though. And there are no kids laughing.”
In parts of India-- as in parts of America-- fireworks are illegal. Some places restrict them to non-rockets… Exploding is okay… flying is not. The laws don’t matter.
A conservative pal reported that some capitalist think tank said India’s low standard of living was due to “government over-regulation.” And there are rules and bureaucracy up the wazoo. But the reality is, though there’s are thousands of petty regulations… most are routinely ignored.
Alcohol sale is prohibited during Diweli. My host is sleeping on the couch right now… boozed out. I myself am on shaky ground. Last week, my hotel didn’t have a liquor lenience… they went out... brown bagged it and served me from the kitchen.
Flash to more generalities:
I don’t think I’ve had as many young men run their hands up and down my legs since my days in the backroom of The Stud in the 70s. Every shrine, every museum, every movie theater has an airport style baggage x-ray, a metal detector and a guard who feels you up.
There are women guards too, but you don’t get your choice.
Security, security, security…. check into a hotel, they ask for your passport number, your home state, your cellphone number, where you’re coming from and where you’re going. Then they make a copy of your passport.
All this information is studiously written down, double checked, and kept forever. Yet a terrorist could run a tuk tuk full of fertilizer explosives into the parliament building on Diwali eve, and people would think it was just part of the celebration. No one ever looks at the books. Few police are on the street… and they are so crippled by diesel exhaust fumes, that they couldn’t catch an errant puppy.
Flash to now:
I am feeling a bit forted/palaced/templed/mosqued out. It’s my last week in India, and I have the feeling I’ll be spending most of it making up for lost sleep. I like museums… and they’re in-doors. A necessity in this most polluted (in the world?) city I’ve ever been in. Maybe I’ll go to the Gandhi museums (musea?) One for Mahatma, one for Indira… both assassinated… did you know that?
I arrived in Delhi (which I consistently misspell as Dehli) via a 5 hour bus trip from Jaipur. In Jaipur, I developed a bad cough, which turned into bronchitis by the time I arrived here.
I’d planned to splurge on my first few nights (stayed in a hotel!) but I was too sick… feverish… chills… fuzzy brain… to do anything other than cough… I felt sorry for the people in the next hotel room.
I was back texting THE DOCTOR (aka Anant’s mom). She recommended some stuff. I went to a pharmacy and got one of her recommendations and something else the druggist promised me “is just as good.”
The cough remains, but I don’t feel sick any more. There are daily smog reports… always in the red zone. The local paper shared a list of air-cleaning houseplants a must for every resident. It’s like smoking ten packs of cigarettes a day… worse.
Speaking of which, my host has a cough worse than mine. A near-death sounding hack. And he may be the heaviest smoker I’ve ever seen. Except when he fell asleep from our beer-prohibited beer party (yes! I did beer… and pizza (but NOT Dominoes) in Delhi). He had something smokeable in his mouth from the time we said hello until the time he kicked me off the floor last night… and gave me the bed. Then again, until he passed out for a second time.
Then, this morning, the first thing in his mouth (no, not that… he’s not my type)… is another self-rolled something or other. As far a I can tell, he’s the most hardcore chain smoker I’ve ever seen. But, it makes sense, if you’re living in Delhi. Why not CHOOSE what makes you spit green in the morning.. instead of being a helpless victim?
DAX is his nickname, and he’s a sound engineer. We trade CDs… even though we have completely different musical tastes.
He introduces me to this African Reggae guy who can sing in 4 languages… (Africans are amazing for a lot of reasons… one of them is language ability). One of those languages is HEBREW!!
Holy shalom batman.
Check out JERUSALEM… I need India to find this stuff. By the way, ANI in Hindi means AND. In Hebrew it’s I, as if you didn’t know that:
DAX is also a fan of The Beats. He’s a painter... and a writer. I hooked him up on facebook with my Moroccan pal El Habib… the first guy to translate beat poetry into Arabic They should “meet” each other. They need to talk in a quiet place together.
FLASH TO A TIDBIT:
Dehli is the only city in India with an extensive Metro (subway) system. It’s crowded, but not as crowded as the express trains in Mumbai. I’ve taken it several times. The patrons are like New Yorkers, forcing themselves into the cars before other people have a chance to leave. In a double dose of sadness-- TWICE in a Mumbai subway-- young men have stood up to give me their seats. Oy vey.
By now, I think I have more Indian friends than Tonto. That New Years Card list keeps growing.
Mata, Mykel
And don’t forget my regular blog…
https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com
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