Hey All!

Alright, so first is first. We met my dad in Kolkata, I'm gladder than rain he's here. It's already a little easier to move through the markets. After having one last crazy hectic meal with the family, we pushed off for Varanasi. WOO! What a trip, I guess Zaman already said it all. In Varanasi, we took some pictures with the new camera my dad brought, so I can finally show you what all this is like. Well, not all, because there's some sensitive information that Zaman and Kian want to hide, so there you go.

I tell you, monkeys are the best people in India. Me and Ryan ended up bringing tons of peanuts down to Tulsi Ghat, where the monkeys hang, and feeding them. You generally have to be careful because they will go into your pockets if they see where you keep the peanuts. When I brought some biscuits, they even jumped onto my legs and hung off my pants.

We tried all sorts of tricks with them- Ryan found a clay chai cup, which are thrown away like plastic wrappers in India, and showed a monkey a peanut, put it on the ground and put the chai cup over it. After a few tries, a monkey went over to it, lifted it up and stuffed the peanut in his mouth. But that wasn't enough for Ryan, he had to get two more cups and shuffle them around and try and get them to find out which cup had the peanut in it, step right up and try your luck. I'm not kidding you, this guy plays the shell game with monkeys. Of course as soon as he started moving around the cups they figured it was just another of those crazy things humans do and ran off to fight each other.




Ryan also put peanuts on the end of his guitar and held it out to them, why I don't know.


We did have one promising moment, where Ryan showed two monkeys and their kid a pencil and paper, made marks on the paper, and then gave it to the little monkey. He held it for a moment, squinted at it, went "ee" and started nibbling on it. Eventually Ryan managed to get it back, by distracting him with peanuts. He's probably going to frame it or something.

Anyways, I could probably write about monkeys forever but I wouldn't get to the point, which is... hmm. Well, never mind anyways. I can't talk more about what we did in Varanasi because some of the stuff we did was secret, although all will be made clear when we come back.

Although I can tell you about this great art-student named Sanjoy we met on the 26th. He was 12 years old and talked like the stereotype cute kid out of a cartoon, although probably not deliberately. But his painting.. man, it was great. We met him doing the usual thing Varanasi art-students do, which is sit on the ghats and sketch everything, which let me tell you doesn't get boring fast. You've got to be there to appreciate the variety of people you can find sitting on the steps. Anyways, his stuff was really amazing. Watercolour, pencils, collages, anything, and we watched him doing it too.



Eventually a bunch of flower-sellers came along, to do whatever flower-sellers do when they're not shoving baskets of flowers in your face and urging you to buy one so you can put in the river with a candle in a little leaf boat and make a prayer. They're usually around 10 or younger. They saw Ryan's guitar and made a big old clamouring, so he dragged it out and let them all strum. After that we decided to go, and Sanjoy asked us to take one of his drawings, so we chose a watercolour, and Ryan chose one, and we promised that if he emailed us we'd email him. So it goes.

The next morning we all piled our stuff into a big jeep and rode off to find Isis, or to go to Khajuraho, a town west of Varanasi and east of Delhi, famed for its.. wait for it.. Erotic Temples. The shop sellers won't let you forget this fact, going to the point of shoving obscene little metal mechanical toys in your face and showing you how it works and saying "see, see, want to buy?" Makes ya sick.

Mind you you can't really say that the temples are not "obscene" either. All you could say is that the carvings are incredible. Really incredible, we're talking dragons fighting warriors in deep relief carved out of a single piece of stone. Strangely, the carvings reminded me of Celtic designs more than anything else. There's a four-pointed flower that's a common theme, and a sort of swirling vines pattern that could be straight out of illustrations for "The Faerie Queen".

On the other hand, Khajuraho is very much a tourist town. There's oodles of souvenir emporiums, bicycle rentals, tours, kids trying to invite you to just look at their shop, they don't want you to BUY things goodness no, just have a little cup of tea and look around, etcetera.

We rented a couple of bicycles and biked a little ways out of town to see a "stone castle" which my dad saw from a rooftop restaurant. Turned out to be an elevated plaza surrounded by shrines, of which we counted 64. Later found out that this was the Chausathi Yogini temple, believed to be used by a cult in the sixteenth century, and devoted to the 64 Yoginis or female servants of Kali.

Nearby on a little elevation we found blackened granite blocks lying around, not very many. Looked closer and they were carved with the same patterns as in the still-standing tall temples. There's nothing left of the ruined ones except blocks, not even foundations. Really blows your mind.

Returning the bikes to the rental place, I was called over by two Indian guys leaning up against the railing looking over the lake. Usually if somebody calls you over they say something like "come look at my shop" or "hey pretty man, you want to come here?" or anything that they think will get your attention. This guy said "Hey, can I talk to you for a little?" and I thought I might as well give them a chance. They talked to me for about an hour, but for the life of me I can't remember anything except little snippets of philosophy and staring into the setting sun behind their heads and nodding. Parts I remember:

"Indian Guy 1: My name is Kumar, okay?
Indian Guy 2: My name is Baba.
Bashu: Really? But.. er.. what is your good name?
Baba: Well, nobody says my good name but my family, everyone says Baba. Okay?
Bashu: Yes, okay, but what's your real name?
Baba: Haha everyone calls me Baba, okay?
Bashu: Okay."

"Kumar: Yes, I have a Canadian girlfriend actually, she's from Montreal, you know, French. She's in France now, in Par-ee. I'm flying to see her soon, but haha you know I also go to.. well, I have three-four girlfriends in Europe, you know, Czech Republic?

Baba: Haha, you know I have no girlfriend, so I am not near. Near, you know? When I have a girl, I am near, but when I have no girlfriend I am far. Haha?"

"Baba: What does your father do?
Bashu: He's a psychologist.
Baba: Ah, you know I am a psychologist too but I don't read psychology, I know people's feelings, I look at them and see them and...
Bashu: *stares into the sun
(a little later)
Baba: Trees.
Bashu: Huh? What?
Kumar: You came to India to see trees, right?
Bashu: Yes, sure.
Baba: No, no, people are like trees. They have branches, and maybe they have a lot of birds in them. That is how you can tell feelings. You look at the tree and say, it is good, it is bad, and you move on, you know?
Bashu: Yes. *stares into the sun again*"

Crazy guys, extremely babbleful. All I remember besides that is them talking about yoga, and the bike guy seeing me talking and taking the bike from my hands and saying "thank you, bye", then I guess eventually I managed to tear myself free, promising I'd try to come back with my brothers and friend if I could.

I guess I should mention at this point we're staying in Khajuraho courtesy of Mr. Gautam, who knew my mother last time she came to Khajuraho 23 years ago. He used to be one of the kids hawking on the street with his three brothers, and eventually started up a store called the Chandela Emporium which grew huge. After that he started the Holiday Inn in Khajuraho, and etc etc now everybody in Khajuraho knows his name. A crazy story, to be sure, and probably would be better told by my mother.. http://www.journey-to-india.blogspot.com

I have to say, living in India is somehow much more intense than living in Canada. In Canada you can buy things online, without having to deal with anyone in person, and even buying something from the supermarket is a quiet, uneventful task. Ridiculous! In India you would have nine people offering to take you to their shop and give you the best prices you'd ever heard, and then letting you battle your way through pricing, picking through, and dealing with five kinds of bull.

Anyways, we went to the Eastern Temples today and lounged around in the sun. I did, at least. I get the idea that the others were hard at work sketching the carvings, etc. I just laid in the bright-hot sunny lawn and played with the puppies that were staggering around the place, bought some chapatis soaked in milk for them, read a thick old fantasy book and shut down my mind. I said "I feel sort of like Jesse Easter must feel all the time", but no-one was listening. That's okay.

Fwoof. Well, until next time (possibly next year) I'm Bashu signing out.

-Bashu

So, finally, here we are with my dad in Kolkata.

To start with, rewind two days to a train in Andal, a small town three hours railride away from Kolkata. The train is stopped.

Generally people are just sitting around talking or taking advantage of the quiet to get some sleep. Some have gotten off and walked around the town, to no particular purpose as all the shops are closed, owing to the 24-hour state-wide strike. This is also the reason the train has stopped, and by all accounts it won't be moving until about six that night. So, me and Ryan go to get some food at the railway canteen.

It's crowded and mostly people are eating quietly, only since these are Bengalis we're talking about "quietly" means "talking when you're not eating and eating when you're not talking". So we order two plates, hoping that whatever the man in the kitchen decides to put on them is good. It's the usual dry rice, watery dal and thick sabzi (vegetable curry) on tin trays. And then we order coffees, and two of the best espressoes we've had on this trip come out in little brown ceramic cups with subtle designs. It boggles the mind. I had to go back for more later. This is a railway canteen we're talking about. It's supposed to have metal mugs of dark brown water for five rupees each.

So anyways, we go back to the train and sit around for a while longer. We were talking with Sandeep in the next compartment, a guy with a high laugh and a genuine twinkly eye. He tells us that there's being a free meal served at the club. Woo. We figure, why not, and so me and Zaman march off with a band of men to see what's cooking. Out of the station, down tree-lined roads, and to a dirt field, fenced-off all around, with a volleyball net and some men standing over huge vats of sabzi and rice and dal cooked together, which is called kichuri. About a hundred more men are standing around in a sort of rectangle thing. So we figure, excellent, a free feed, I wonder why, oh well.

Little did we know.

No, really, we didn't know much at all.

Anyways, we sat down with Sandeep's father on these benches around the field and cups were handed out. Sandeep's father smiles and says "liquor tea!". What are we supposed to say? I say, "Liquor tea?". Sandeep's dad says, "Yes, liquor tea!".

It was just lemon tea.

So they start handing out banana-leaf plates and just before they get to us, a man comes along and talks to Sandeep's dad in Bengali, then asks us "You are from Canada?". Well, yes, I suppose we are. "Have you taken food?" No, we haven't. "Then come with me, please." Well, why not.

So we walk back across the field into this little hut with about a dozen Indians and a grinning South Korean guy sitting on this bench who greets us and says "Hello, you are like me, eh? Come from the train looking for food?". Well, actually, that pretty much catches it all.

So eventually a lost-looking Israeli guy in the same boat wanders in -Later he claimed they had been walking down the road and was shaghaied in-, and we're all sitting on benches in this dark hut, and hoping like hell that somebody's going to start handing out the food so we can get back to the train, and then a tall Bengali guy who looks like he owns the place lights up a cigarette and states: "YOU, Are Canadian. WE, Are Bengali."

Oo-er.

"YOU.. have a problem.."

Ooo-er.

"Then WE... will help you. Just tell your heart if you have problem, okay? We are very friendly people and we will help."

Ooo-kay.

He quizzes us on all the general stuff. What grade, do we like India, how come my name's Basu, etc. We're pretty much used to this so we breeze through and evidently pass. Next he starts on Hwan, the South Korean guy.

"From which country you are from?"

"Uh, South Korea"

"Ah, South Korea. WE are jealous of you. You know why?"

Hwan says, er.... no.

"Because INDIA! was number ONE!"

Oo-er.

"AT HOCKEY!"

Hwan says, Oh.

"And then South Korea took away that place. So we are jealous. Do you watch hockey?"
Hwan says, no, he doesn't get much ch-
"Ah, do you follow Asian Games?"
Hwan says, No, I can't read the Hindi newspaper-
"Ah, do you know who is number one in cricket?"
Hwan says, No, he doesn't like much cri-
"What? You are telling me, you are student and you don't know ANYTHING, about sports?
Hwan says, No, in South Korea he doesn't have a TV so he -

The tall Bengali guy waves a finger at him and says "You are living a mechanical life." Well, why not.

So, this enemy dispatched, he starts in on the representative from Israel, Chem. "You are from Israel? What do you know about Fidel Castro?"

Chem says, No, well, he smokes cigars, yes, but I don't kno-
"You're from Israel and you don't know anything about Fidel Castro??"
Chem says, No well, I know of him and uhm just the cigars he smokes, they don't really connect, Israel and Fidel Ca-
"Fidel Castro is a great HERO to us."

Zaman asks, why?

The Bengali guy who is now sitting down stares at his feet for a bit, letting his cigarette burn and thinking about this. Then he perks up. "Because he FOUGHT... for his freedom and the freedom of his people."

It's about this time we realise, holy cow, he's a Communist.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but West Bengal and Kerala are the two states with a Communist government. You don't really notice much difference besides a touch of red around the place.

Then he goes on to completely lambast Chem about how "we" hate capitalism, the British and how economics follows politics and you cannot have politics without economics. At one point he says "You are friends with America. Isn't it?" He says "Isn't it?" every time he wants to mean "Right?"

"You are friends with America. Isn't it?"

Chem says, No, that's oversimplifying it, they give us four billion dollars a year and tell us who to elect. Personally, I'm not friends with America, but if you mean political relations-

"No, no, I am not asking personal friend, I am asking political relations. You are friends with America. Isn't it?"

Chem says, Well, alright.

And then he turns to us, I guess to educate us.

"If you know anything about history, anything, you know that the British occupied us for two hundred years, isn't it? And the British invaded everybody and now it is America's turn. Isn't it? So that is why we hate capitalism. We don't like America!"

Chem says, Ah, but you're mixing up capitalism and colonialism.

"NO! They are capitalists and colonialists and so that is why we are not friends with them, isn't it? India, is great friends, with ehhh, Russia, China... what's it, Vietnam, North Amer- no, South-America, South Kor- no wait, North-Korea, Pakistan," I really don't know what he was talking about with that last one. But no one argues with that. "Canada, is very close to America isn't it?" Well yeah they're right next doo- "They are friends" Politically. He goes on and talks about how "you have two arms and two legs, and I do too, why should you rule me? We are equal" .
There's a sign on the outside wall of this shack that says "Members Only".

When we try and bring up that you could say India is friends with America he just shakes his head and completely denies it. I don't think he know about the U.S. selling them nuclear technology or how many Pakistanis really don't like them. By now he's pretty much declared himself as king of the chain-smoking mafioso types who are about to fly off their handle. So Chem stops pushing him.

So it goes like this. After a while, thank god, Sandeep's dad comes back in and cuts him off in mid-monologue and conveys that it's time to eat. Woof.

We come back outside, and realise that everyone we were sitting with before has already eaten and left and this is the second batch. Oh well what can you do. We sit down on these blankets that have been folded and placed on the field, and the banana-leaf plates get handed out. I should explain the idea of the banana-leaf plates.

Indian Feature: Banana-Leaf Plates.

You take some banana leafs, which are wide and strong, and pin them together with toothpicks, thread or whatever, in the shape of a plate, and then let them dry in the sun. Then you pack as much messy food as you can onto it, eat it, and toss it out onto the compost pile for the cows to eat. It's refreshing after seeing pounds of styrofoam and plastic in the gutters of Kolkata.

--

So we're sitting there in lines with our banana-leaf plates. Talking with Huan and Chem. Waiting for this prophecised masala. Chem leaves. At first nobody tells us anything, and we just sit there boredly. After a while a guy comes along and says, five minutes. Then we sit there satisfied that we'll get it in twenty minutes. After thirty-five minutes they come along with pots of really soupy kichuri (rice and dahl mix) and ladle it into our plates, slap on some sabzi (curry) and salt on the side and leave us to figure it out. Most people tried it with their hands and burnt them. I saw somebody tearing off a piece of banana-leaf and using it as a spoon, so I tried that until it cooled. The heat and liquid seemed to be making the leaves curled up and I had this awful feeling that I was going to get to the bottom of the food and find out that I'd been eating off the ground, but it was fine.

We still had an audience sitting across from us. One guy was staring at us with alot of determination. I tried smiling at him, but he didn't blink an eye.

So it turns out the strike was called by an opposing party of the ruling communist party we think about some farmland that the corporation "TATA" had unfairly paid farmers for to build a car factory. And the communist party was just trying to smooth things out by feeding everyone for free.

Anyhoo our dad's here so we're just touring around and he's meeting the family.

Tata.

- Zaman & Bashu

I forgot to say

Last night we walked into Old Varanasi, which is all tight alleys stuffed with wallshops and trees squeezing up through four tight stories to get to the sun, plus monkeys and people and somehow motorcycles. The Shops were nice, yes, but what was really nice was the temples. Small shrines everywhere but also a main temple called Vishwanatha, the Golden Temple on account of how its spire is covered in gold.

It's in the same plaza as a huge mosque, which is a bit of a problem.

We visited on December sixth, which although we didn't know it until that day is the anniversary of the Babri Masjid being torn down. The Babri Masjid is a mosque that was torn down by Hindu fundamentalists in 1993. Muslims and Hindus have alternately tolerated and hated each other in India since the Muslim Moghuls invaded North India hundreds of years ago. The Muslims decided on this day to spend the day in prayers in their mosques, which is uncommon as usually there's fights. The Hindus, on the other hand, decided on this day to spend the day in celebration, lighting lamps in their temples and setting off fireworks, which just goes to show something disgusting.

Anyways, on this day there were about ten armed soldiers scanning and searching everybody entering the plaza, as well as more checkpoints in the entrance to each place of worship. To make things happier, you couldn't enter the mosque unless you were Muslim and coming to the regular prayer, and we didn't even try with the temple - a plaque outside said "Gentlemen not belonging to the Hindu religion are requested not to enter the temple".

I was okay with that, though. I sat between the mosque and the temple, watching the monkeys. I told my mother that and she reckoned I should write it down, so here I am writing it down.

Monkeys. I really do love monkeys. They're so pure and simple. Yes, they fight at the snap of two fingers, but at least they're honest and don't muck about, badmouthing other monkeys behind their back or throwing insults at each other, and if you give them a date they're fine with you.

A jolly Brahmin guy called Santosh came along and started talking to me. I thought he might be trying to sell something but he was just curious about why I was sitting there, and if my mother was Hindu. A Sikh soldier in a pillbox said something to him in Hindi and Santosh asked if he was bothering me. I told him no, and Santosh told the soldier "Tig-hey", which basically means it's okay and it's alright. After that the Sikh guy came down from the pillbox and talked to me as well. He asked me what my mother state was. I asked him, in Canada? He said no, in India. I said West Bengal. Good as any, and I do sort of have an attachment to it.

A colonel or something came along and asked me "What are you doing sitting here!?"
The Sikh guy laughed and said "Uskaa ma Hindu hey", or "his mother is Hindu".
I guess that was all okay, then.

Peace is a rarity here, but when you get it, nothing I've had in Canada can compare to it.

Indian Feature: Bandhs.

Bandhs are Indian strikes. The way people strike here is quite interesting. They can't really afford to actually stop working, so whatever they think about politics they usually express in less drastic ways, until a bandh happens. It's amazingly simple. Take a current issue. Mamata Banerjee's party is angry that Tata, a company that makes EVERYTHING, from salt to cars, is buying land for factories from farmers and apparently not paying them enough. So, they announce a bandh, maybe a day in advance. Then when the day comes, they roam the streets in gangs, carrying big sticks, and if they see someone whose store is open and operating, they smash the windows and beat up the shopkeepers. Simple as mud.

Well, that's the way it works in Kolkata anyways. It's a really simple way to drum up support for your cause - "if you don't strike we'll strike you".

-Bashu

Last night after dinner watching the sunset we walked into a stone carving store. Tiny handmade marble elephants the size of your pinkie, hollowed out into a cage, with another tinier rougher elephant carved inside, for fifty cents. I feel like a criminal.

We bought material for suits- Zaman a white corduroy, me a brown polyester, for a few dollars each. The tailoring will probably bring it up to ten dollars each. I feel like a criminal.

This morning we got up to catch the sunrise, walking along the river-ghats till we reached Dashaswamedh (Ten-Horse Sacrifice) Ghat, and then had breakfast: curry and four pieces of Indian bread with chutney and sweets. For both of us, with drinks, 75 cents. I feel like a criminal.

Ryan felt sick and couldn't finish his. We paid a rickshaw-wallah to bike us home for 75 cents, which is actually a fair price here. Nevertheless, I feel like a criminal.

The sunrise, however, was priceless.


-Bashu

Varanasi is very India. That's about the size of it.

Let me see,

Cow dung in the streets, rickshawsautorickshawsbicyclestrucksholymenandofcoursecows jockeying to get ahead, two chai shops a sweet shop and a general store on every corner, close alleys and dusty roads, monkeys gambolling around on top of walls and through trees, too much yelling, people you've never seen before constantly striking up short-lived conversations with you involving rickshaws, fine clothes and a very good shop they know, people working hard everywhere you look, kites flying from every building-roof, everybody spitting paan as if their tobaccojuice glands are overworking, dogs running everywhere, and a partridge in a pear tree for fifty rupees only.

I could go on but I would end up spitting all over the screen.

The academy we're staying in is still being worked on although it should have been finished in September, because time moves slower in India, presumptively because it gets stuck in traffic like everybody else. We still go over to the house of the Mishras and teach young Indian kids English and also draw with them. They love the drawing. They go crazy for the drawing. You give them crayons and paper and they might as well be eating them for the speed they go through.

We also go down to the river and, well, it's the Ganges. Dirty, mighty, flows through every city worth its dirt, loved and polluted, holy rolling. The city bends to its curve, and as such feeds off of its sanctity. If you walk to Varanasi, you redeem yourself. If you shave your head in Varanasi, you gain favour with the gods. If you die in Varanasi, enlightenment is yours. As you might imagine, this makes for an interesting populace.

There are kites everywhere. Kiting in India is different from the sissified, passive standing-around-and-forgetting-about-it kiting of Canada. In India most people tie their strings to a length of wire coated with ground glass, and then tie that to their kite, then go out on their roof (people in India would be amazed at people in Canada who have never been on their roof or indeed don't go up there on a daily basis), get it flying and then try as hard as possible to cut down other people's kites. Kites are everywhere, yes, flying from rooftops, but also in trees, powerlines and in the street, fallen from the sky. We had about four or five kites cut down by our neighbours. Luckily they're about two rupees each. Harmless fun. The trick is to get your kite to loop around their string, I think.

We have also been privileged to hear some really excellent tabla and sitar playing at the Mishras'. If you want to know what the tabla sounds like without actually bothering to download any Indian music, you could imagine five men tapdancing on a hollow stage. A good tabla player can get this effect with ten fingers and keep at it for hours. The sitar is like a delicate guitar with more notes. Indian music is richer in tones than ours, having not only half-tones but also quarter-tones. It's a bit of a blindspot in our music system. I can't figure out why.

I am richer by one watercolour in this trip. We stopped at Dashaswamedh Ghat - the ghats are platforms clustered on the banks of the river where people pray, live, wash and work. Sitting there we noticed several art students sketching everything around them, and one of them was doing a watercolour sketch. I asked him if he would sell it, and he said he wouldn't, no, but if I liked it he'd give it to me. In return I gave him a haiku, which didn't quite seem fair but was all I could come up with. The strangest transaction I've had on this trip.

The haiku:

Varanasi is
always there; Varanasi
can never be here

Anyways

I am

-Bashu

Woo.. what a wedding.

Alright, well, I'm not exactly sure how long the vows took, but they seemed to last about an hour or two. I was sort of walking in and out for most of it, along with about one or two hundred other people. I think my uncle was exaggerating at 400, unless that's how many are arriving for the eating reception foofraw thing, which would not surprise me. It was sort of almost informal, actually.. people sat down to watch the vows, and then wandered upstairs to eat, and then stood around and smoked, walked back in to watch the vows.. I don't think anybody actually stayed for the entire thing, except maybe immediate family, and even they floated upstairs for a quick bite come the middle.

Speaking of informal, woo.. my uncle (the one whose daughter was getting married) told us to get sarvanis, which is a special sort of four-piece suit with long kurta, loose pants that come up to your bellybutton, coat and long dupatta scarf, all of silk, so we did. And also leather chappals, which are sort of a nice looking sandal, only Ryan decided that he shouldn't mess about and went for the black red and gold ones that curled up at the toes into a point, and he says he's going to use them for house shoes when he comes back. So suffice it to say we were pretty decked out... and then we arrived there and my suspicions that we were totally overdressed came true, because everyone else was just wearing kurtas and pants, or sometimes even just shirts and pants. Well, the guys, anyways. The women were of course splendid, because if they weren't, well, the world would stop existing if Bengali women were not splendidly dressed. So we were sort of the snazziest there, I guess.

Everyone was shouting, but that's not really anything special because that's how Bengali people talk. I think it helps if you think of them as Italian.. they love shouting, eating good food and all sorts of art stuff. You can never really tell if it's an argument or a conversation or a fight.

The vows... now they were something. Essentially the bride, Dola, had an amazingly painted and jewelleried face, hands and feet, and also a magnificent suit, and had to hold a sort of cylinder thing which I can't describe, and the groom, that's Goldie, had a very tall but magnificent hat and a worried expression, and had to hold a sort of spoon, and the priest did a lot of the talking, and at one point they lit a fire in a tray of sand right in front of them, despite it being a hot night with no fans because that would blow around the jillions of insects that were attracted to the light and flew in through the windows which were open because it was a hot night, etc. So they lit the fire, and then they put a lot of holy water and oils in it, which made it start smoking and carrying on, and everyone had to squint, and Goldie, who was sitting right in front of the fire, looked like he wanted to cry, but they carried on for half an hour for the fire and the room got kind of dim through the smoke, then I went to eat.

Then they had to do several things like roll a stone over paan leaves with their feet, and throw some grains into the fire and also a banana, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what any of it symbolised. Probably fertility, I imagine. I think most wedding rites could be condensed to "Alright, here you go, this is you and this is you, you're married, I hope you have a good time and a couple of babies", but everybody wants to add their own flair.

Also note that for the duration of this trip, I've become "Basu Roy", because that's what Indian people seem to hear my name as. It's a good Bengali name, although Basu is usually a last name I gather.

Weekly Indian Feature: Stray Dogs

Stray dogs are everywhere. And I mean, with the same frequency that you'd see garbage cans in Canada, only since they don't have garbage cans in India they settle for stray dogs, which actually do the same job, sort of. I don't know how they survive. Sometimes people put out old rice for them, but I guess generally they eat garbage. I always feel like petting them, only they always turn out to have some skin disease or are more interested in humping, fighting or playing with one another, so it's really all immaterial. Canadian streets are going to feel very empty.

-Basu

So we arrived in Delhi, only to find out that...

That Delhi was actually a lot nicer than Kolkata. It partly owes this to being the capital, so the government works harder at making it nicer. There's not as much diesel, since all the auto-rickshaws and taxis are running on Compressed Natural Gas, burning a lot greener and cheaper. There's also a lot more parks, so I guess that's good. The first night, we stayed in a place called Majnu Ka Tilla, a Tibetan refugee colony. They keep it pretty clean, and the hotel we stayed in was phenomenally so, for a pretty good price too (7.50 for a double room, if you want to talk dollars.) After that, we ended up moving to Sanskriti Kendra, which I really can't fit into my idea of Indian cities. It's a park, with avenues leading through it to houses and gardens and orchards, with craftsmen's workshops everywhere. Woodcarvers, painters, sculptors.. basically a lot of artists. In the middle is a meeting hall, and off to the side is a museum, and apartments for people who stay there. Everything's so green, and it's right smack in the middle of Delhi and you can barely hear the horns. It's an anomaly.

We went there for a retreat, although it wasn't so much relaxing as interesting. A bunch of activists went there to talk about things like activism and education and India, and I stayed there for half of it and walked around whittling (I whittled a spoon that sort of looks like a not-spoon) and whistling outside for half of it, and came round at mealtimes to be stuffed, because that's how they feed you in India. Anyways,

After the retreat was done we ambled around Delhi for a couple of days, stayed in a couple of bad hotels, visited a huge mosque and a slightly smaller Sikh gurdvara and then jumped on board the train for Kolkata, which I can't really pass over because it's a doozie. Woo.

26 hours of, let's see, beggars with awful, terrible burns all over their bodies, with their chins fused to their necks, either accident or because someone wanted to increase their profitability, just standing there and looking at you, not bothering to even ask, beggars with arms bent the wrong way, beggars busking by hitting their staff on your bed for percussion and singing at you, beggars telling other beggars who gave money, so they know who to hit again.

26 hours of hawkers, and I mean hawkers, walking up and down the train yelling out their wares, despite the fact that you're two feet from them. How they yell! Everyone's got their own hook.. IdLI.. IdLI.. Chai-COFFee.. Chai-COFFee.. Chat Patta! Chat Patta! Pani jol water bottel! And of course the two main food groups, VEG AND NONVEG! It all runs into one after a while.

26 hours of being sick, taking a "veg cutlet" for breakfast and regretting it. I tell you, an Indian train toilet is the worst possible place to be sick, especially if the train's moving. You finish throwing up, and then you remember where you are, and see the ground whipping past through the bottom of the toilet, and it just makes you throw up again. The best I can say is that they give you a bar to hold on to, and the disinfectant they use shuts down your nose with eucalyptus.

It was wonderful to arrive in Kolkata, clutching two small plants in plastic bags from Delhi. We aim to travel all over India with them, or maybe not.

I'm planning to include, with every post, a little feature that India has that might help you understand what it's like. Today's feature is:

Spitting and nose-clearing: This happens all the time. Spit, spit spit. If you're lucky it's just spit. If you're not, it's yellowy muck. If you're really into this sort of thing, you can see someone spit red, which is not blood but paan, which is a thing they chew that stains your lips and teeth red. They don't really seem to feel embarrassed about it unless you stare right at them, although they probably just think "I wonder what he's staring at me for" more than anything.
Snorrrkht, khaaaak! Patu.

The nose clearing is a rarer occurrence, but every so often you'll get to see someone sticking their finger in one side of their nose, and blowing out a long string of muck. It's quite normal. I saw one guy do it while walking.

Here's hoping I'll see you guys sooner rather than later,

Bashu

P.S. I've been having dreams about being at home. Not especially spectacular woop, here's a dinosaur dreams, just dreams about lolling around at home, watching some deer in the back yard.

So I guess we're luckier than most India-goers, because we stayed in a Rajah's house.

It was pretty story-book like. He's the Rajah of Kalakankar, a small village on the Ganges, and owns half the town. However, he doesn't really live there so much as actually he lives in Seattle, leaving Kalakankar to get by on its own. He's got a huge house on the banks of the river, with ten people jumbling around keeping it whole, and he let us stay there on account of how our mom knows him, and we're in India and he's not in India, on account of being in Seattle. So, for three days we bumbled around, being served three wonderful Indian meals a day by the staff, and reading books and walking around, and taking a riverboat ride, and walking through the village, orchards and farms.

Funny thing is, another person who stayed there was Svetlana Stalin, who is in fact Joseph Stalin's daughter. She came here to put the ashes of her Indian husband in the river, in the sixties. She also built a hospital in his memory, and it's still standing there in Kalakankar today, unused and abandoned. We went to look at it. It's a strange experience. You should try it some time.

Anyways, after that we took off for Delhi. This trip has been nice because to get anywhere that's anywhere in India, you need to take a train, which I haven't ever done much of before. Indian trains are a special experience, because they actually work well.

I'll tell you what happened in Delhi soon as I can find more time for Internet. See ya!

-Bashu

Olright so you know what's hilarious?

Dachshunds!

Hot dogs!

You know what's hilariouser?

Dachshunds crossed with other breeds!

I never knew it before but you gotta see it to believe it. Apparently there's a dachshund in this town that's got a lot of kids waddling around with heads too big for their bodies. We've seen about five so far.

Okay, getting down to brass tacks, we're in Dhulikel, a town an hour's bus ride from Kathmandu. The hotel we're staying at is really wonderful, with an amazing view of the Himalayas. Our mom got us up at sunrise today to see the light hit the mountains- if you listen close it actually makes a sound.

Yesterday, me, Zaman and Ryan ate an enormous breakfast (who doesn't have a weak spot for buffets?) walked about half a kilometer out of town to climb a hill with a hackysack and some biscuits and mango juice. We weren't really sure how to get to the top, so we just sort of scrambled, only it was a big hill so we sort of scrambled in slow motion, through farms and forest to the top where, although there's no-one living, there's still (of course) trash on the ground, some of which we took back. Like Zaman said, you can really see how Tolkien got his inspiration for Lord of the Rings- you can only say the landscape is epic.

Ryan took out his MP3 player, which I should mention he's hooked up to some speakers and kept in his backpack and which, although it only half-works, has been a great source of comfort and sanity throughout this trip, and put on the Beatles. Zaman says now if anyone asks him if he's ever hacked on top of a mountain in Nepal while listening to the Beatles (the quintessential hippie experience), he can say yes he has, so you should probably ask him when he gets back home or else he'll be disappointed. Then Dream Weaver came on and they started fighting about it, so there goes the British Columbian dream.

Anyways, I have to say I didn't really know how much I missed Sean Connery until I saw Dr. No again. Cable is a blessing.

-Bashu

Woke up this morning and had a sudden attack of laziness lasting into the afternoon. I honestly think that I ever went travelling by myself, I'd never get anything done with nobody to wake me up and get me moving in any particular direction. Eventually they did, and we took a tight (All our taxi rides have been tight with four people in the back seat) taxi ride to the Hindu temple of Pashupatinath.

Pashupatinath Temple is built with the river going through it, with an outer temple that anybody can walk around and an inner temple for Hindus only. Our mother was let in, and she said it was beautiful inside.

The outer temple had a series of long steps going down to the river, with platforms on one side of the river, with fires burning on some of them. These were cremation pyres, although nothing was visibly burning except wood and ash. A guy came up to me and Ryan as we were sitting there and struck up a conversation, which in Kathmandu inevitably turns into a sales pitch, and this one ended with offering to take us around the temple and tell us about it. We accepted, and after telling us some things, most of which we already knew, he took us to the sadhu's homes.

The sadhu babas are men who have renounced all that life can offer them by way of pleasure, except cannabis, which they smoke once each day in devotion to their lord Shiva. They're both respected and pitied by Indians. Most of them have knee-length dreadlocked hair, having never cut it, and have painted faces which really make them look, well, terrifying.

However like everyone else they're not perfect and as soon as we walked into the courtyard, several sprung to life offering to do yoga and pose for pictures for some money. One took the initiative, spread out his mat, sat down and put his foot behind his head. He held out a hand as if to say "Alright? See this?". His expression was really strange- I can't describe it, besides something like expectant, bored and put-upon. Not one you would think to see on the face of a holy man. Our guide tried to explain it by telling us "Well, even yogababas and sadhu babas need money to live, eh?", although how they'd survived before this wasn't touched on.

Across the courtyard from the sadhus was an energetic soccer game being carried on by the kids living in the apartments next to them- maybe the family of caretakers of the temple. Across from that were some teenagers staring out at it all from behind barred windows and locked doors. Our guide, I should mention at this point his name was Progress, no I don't know why, told us these were priests-in-training. "They must be kept apart from the world, or they will be playing, running, they will not be priests". Apparently they could go out any time they wanted by another door, although you'd doubt it to see their faces. But if you were shocked every time you saw something shocking, you wouldn't survive India for long.

Zaman's annoyed because I keep saying "in India!" although we're in Nepal. There's not a lot of difference besides dress, people, temperature, mountains, and more tourists, so you can see how I get confused.

When we made our way back to the river steps, there was a body wrapped completely in orange, the colour of God, on the opposite side, waiting to be burned. As we set our prayer lamps alight in the river, I felt strangely unsettled, but I was soon reassured by the the sight of a boy downstream going through the floating offering-plates for coins.

-Bashu

I have a scrap of black plastic that I'm going to take back with me to Canada as a trophy. It marks my triumph over a monkey.

We went to the Swayambha Mandir today, popularly known as the "Monkey Temple", because there's a bunch of monkeys all over it. Whatever you've heard about monkeys it's best to forget until you're actually close to one. Walking up you don't notice them until about halfway up the 365 stairs, and then they're by the side of the stairways and in the bushes besides. They're pretty much the best animals to just sit and watch.

I noticed two sitting on a step and scratching each other's backs, and decided to toss a couple of flower petals at them, I don't know why. I guess they're used to people throwing pretty bad things at them because they both scrambled backwards and stared at me. One of them couldn't let this insult go by, jumped back up and bared his teeth, getting ready to jump. I was panicking for a second that I'd have to have a punch-up with a monkey on the temple steps, then remembered "Hey, wait, this guy is actually pretty titchy" and just, I don't know, did that gesture that humans and monkeys both do when they want to fight, sort of throwing the shoulders forward. The monkey all but backflipped back into the bushes and retired to stare at me. I guess a lot of fights are resolved like that. That's not how I got the black plastic, though.

We made it up to the temple and walked around. It seems like it's half a temple, half a small town up there - there's accomodations for the monks, plus places for tourists to stay, plus restaurants and houses for the people working there, etc. The centerpiece is a huge dome stupa (look it up) with the eyes of Buddha painted on the top staring out over all of Kathmandu, which you can see from the viewpoint there. Besides that there's small stalls and shops, and an old monastery, and tons of smaller stupas, and crawling over it all are brown-furred monkeys. There are several types of monkey:

Grasshoppers: Little monkeys about the length of your forearm with wrinkly faces, hanging off their parents or getting whacked around by the bigger monkeys. No matter how much you want to give them a date or some seeds, they'll always lose out to:

Vicious Little Swearwords: These are guys who know what they want, which is whatever you're giving them and more, if you please. If you hold out a handful of grains they'll pick some out like they're going to take them peacefully, then smack your hand so that you drop them all over. If you flip or jump back, they'll immediately flip and jump back and start snarling at you. Come to think of it, a lot of the monkeys fall into this category. They'll start fights with anybody, including:

Old Farts: These are more wrinkly-faced, whiter-haired monkeys, who generally watch everything and don't crawl about as much. They're either protecting the smaller monkeys or picking things out of each other's fur. Old Farts are also often:

Bears: These guys are big and furry. That's all. Nobody messes with them and you generally try to not attract their attention. The shopkeepers and monks try to drive away the monkeys when they scrabble through garbage or climb over Buddha, but somehow you can't imagine them trying it with the bears.

--

Now, the black piece of plastic. We were having a time of it with some terrible dates that I had bought in Gangtok and never eaten. I was worried at first about the monkeys choking on the pits, but I stopped worrying after the first monkey popped the whole dealie into his month, chewed for a while, then spat out a smooth pit about three feet away. It's really neat holding it out to the monkey and having him take it from you with a warm little hand, although the VLSes can make you feel sort of wary of teeth and nails.

After a while I ran out of dates, and a guy gave me a handful of corn that you could either scatter on the ground for them to pick up one at a time, or hold out in your hand and have them grab as many as they could swallow. We figured that we wanted to stay up there a little longer (it's incredibly peaceful) and bought ten rupees worth of seeds from a vendor. We poured them into a black plastic bag (here it comes) and walked off to the railing to hand some to the monkeys.

Kian, since he paid for it, decided to hold the bag and we were all happily sprinkling and giving seeds, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed an Old Fart sidling closer to Kian. Just as he reached out a hand for the bag I yelled "Kian!" and waved a foot at him(the monkey, not the brother). Kian spins around just in time to see the guy jumping away (they can really jump), and in a motion that makes perfect sense, holds the bag away from him while shaking a fist at the monkey. Holding the bag, in fact, behind him. Where the VLS sitting there on the rail is only too happy to do the job that the Old Fart has fumbled. Kian, I guess, feels a tug on the bag too late and pulls away from him, scattering the seeds onto the ground all over.

Well, it's not any skin off my back, and we were going to give it all to the monkeys anyhow, but I still feel sort of cheated, and as we walk away I can't help but notice that the VLS still has most of the bag and is going through it, looking for seeds. In fact he's got his back to me, and so... I grab the bag, and he shrieks like a dog who's had someone step on his tail, and does the exact same thing as Kian, leaving me with a shred of black plastic which I will cherish forever, because I stole it from a monkey. It's the thought that counts.

Anyways, whatever you think about monkeys, let me tell you - they're nothing so much as just simpler human beings. They want to do the exact same things, they're just not so subtle about it all. I love them.

-Bashu

A note on riding cars, jeeps and buses in the mountains:

Don't ever do it. It sounds romantick and rustick and all sorts of other interestingk things, but it's a bloody nightmare. They take the approach of "living cargo" here. First off, going from Rumtek to Gangtok was a bit amusing to all of us, because there were fourteen people onboard the one jeep, not counting the three kids and one guy hanging off the back (literally just holding one with his hands and feet), because they didn't count as people and thus everything was perfectly legal if uncomfortable. Later on, when we got up at 4 am in the craphole Kakarbitta inn to take a (count 'em) fourteen hour bus ride through the mountains over a road that was long stretches of pothole with occasional bits of road, I appreciated the irony.

It didn't keep us all from swearing like sailors at every turn that threw all my internal organs into one side of my ribcage, though.

Anyways, we arrived in Katmandu, took the first hotel the taxi guy showed us to, and dropped our bags. We decided that we'd earnt a nice meal, so we went out to this Thai restaurant where everybody ordered chicken and noodles and all that but I decided to put my foot down (but gently) and order "Fettuchini Carbonera". Was worth it. Kathmandu is also a shopper's dream. Tailors, embroiderers, jewellers, wood-carvers, whatever handicrafts you want, bookstores, everything. None of them are very modern, but they're all good value. I think I'll pick up some rings and bracelets for you undeserving picklesmugglers.

Also, there's hippies everywhere! It almost feels like Victoria.

-Bashu

So!

Rumtek, the town and monastery, are really nice and peaceful. You can generally walk down to the cafe and see a couple of Buddhist monks or locals playing caramboc, a sort of shuffleboard/pool thing. Some of them were really good at it- I remember one who, if he got to break, could sink two simultaneously into opposite corners. It doesn't really feel like you're in India, partly because of the cold and partly because nobody looks Indian, but rather Tibetan or Nepali.

Buddhist monks, at least the ones we met, are really not the serious solemn type they're made out to be. We ended up playing soccer with them on a plateau on the side of a mountain, which was fun but not as smooth as it sounds, because the thing about being on top of a mountain is that everywhere you go is down. They tried as best they could to make it sort of like a skateboard park, with a quarter-pipe all around, but two of the corners open onto a downwards slope that goes quite a ways down and can stop the game for a couple of minutes if someone kicks the ball down there by mistake.

Apart from that the game was great. Apparently they keep playing all day because all week they study and meditate, and that was the day their exams ended.

Now we're back in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and about to head off to Kathmandu in Nepal. It's going to be cold, which is a nice change from the rest of India.

-Bashu

P.S. For some reason most of the girls here are realtors.

So I guess we're in the Himalayas now.

The train from Kolkata was unique. They have these pretty neat sleeper bunks, which fold out and all, and cha-wallas (tea sellers) and such coming by all the time. We arrived in Siliguri eight in the morning, and took a rumbly bump jeep to Gangtok, in Sikkim Province. It's sort of the place. Cold, but welcomely so.

Left our camera in the jeep, but we'll get it back soon I think, knock on wood. So....

I'm going to Nepal, see you guys later.

Oh, and Zaman has something to tell you.

So! Schedule!

First off, we're heading North. Darjeeling maybe, Sikkim perhaps. They're both a good sight cooler than West Bengal which is where we are, so that'll be welcome. We're almost definitely heading into mountain-ranged Nepal, to Kathmandu, because as long as you're up here it's worth going. You need a visa, however, and they only take U.S. dollars, so that was a bit tricky. However it looks like things are looking up for us, as apparently Kolkata is actually the worst of the cities, and everything else will be nice by comparison. Four weeks it will be, with us going northwest as well, and then returning for the 23rd of November to Kolkata for my cousin Dola's wedding which promises to be a big happy affair.

After that, we're going all around, but staying in the north. Varanasi, New Delhi and Rajasthan are all on the schedule, with my dad joining us in New Delhi. Originally we were planning to go to Iran, but it seems he's only allowed to go once a year and the Persian new year starts in March. You can never plan for everything.

Kian's got his bass, and it's really nice. We've been printing out tons of tabs and I've even been learning a bit of guitar, although generally I sing. My fingers are itching for a piano, but for now I'll settle for my harmonica although you can't accompany yourself singing or anyone else for that matter.

Anyhow, this all just so you know where we'll be and perhaps why we don't have any Internet connection, although you never know where you can find an Internet cafe.

-Bashu.

I've noticed something funny about the scene in India, and indeed Dubai and Switzerland too. Pretty much the only way to be cool is to be Western. All the ads show people in leather jackets, buttoned shirts, jeans, whatever, and most everyone under thirty tries to dress the same way. We were at a club to watch a blues band on Saturday night, and I wore my kurti, which is a loose Indian shirt. I'm positive I was the only person wearing any Indian clothes there. It takes all types to make a world, the saying goes, but soon it's only going to need one - the generic American cool dude.

Anything with English words on it is also in. Pointy case, the shirt I got in Dubai, which I promised to tell you about. It's half black, half white, split down the middle, and is covered with badly translated ranting about how teenagers aren't respected and how revolution is imminent. Along the sides are printed newspaper clippings about gangsters or revolution or something, and it's completed with spots of blood across the front. I figure it's stylish just for the kitsch factor.

I have to say, I'm kind of homesick. Friendsick, too. I keep thinking: "If *friend* was here, he'd probably say something like *friend's generic phrase* right now. Oh well. I think I can make it through three more months, easy.

-
Bashu

Well, I suppose today is supposed to be unlucky.

It's been pretty good so far.

Zaman and Ryan ordered a guitar each in a little shop in Howrah, but when we came back to pick them up yesterday they were acoustic electrics with round holes, and one was blank grey and the other was pinkish red. They weren't terrible guitars, but they'd both ordered natural wood colour, acoustic guitars with f-holes. So after a certain amount of wombling around, he told us to meet him in College Street in the morning to see his supplier.

We went there this morning, in rain you could cut with a knife, and after some wombling with them they brought out two great-looking guitars, just like the ones ordered. (One was made by "Givson" and the other by "Hovner", but apparently they're pretty big brands so Gibson and Hohner probably already know). Zaman and Ryan also ordered hard shell cases, so they'll probably be brought home, and Kian ordered an acoustic bass. After that, we went off to the planetarium in another bout of rain, and sat through a decent light show with terrible commentary by a lady with an thick accent and a sore throat. You might think all the rain is bad luck, but believe me in Kolkata you're willing to overlook the soaked hair and flooded streets for the cool air and clean city afterwards.

I'm just sitting in the slow-as-dried-up-mustard internet cafe, printing out some guitar tabs - Decemberists, Marcy Playground and Radiohead. It might be raining again outside, but it's hard to tell through the tinted windows. YIPPEE!

Also, now is the time for you start emailing me and telling me what to bring home. Jewelry, linen, strange Oriental fragrances and curiosities. I'm thinking of getting a xylophone. Someone talk me out of it.

-Bashu

P.S. Happy Friday the 13th

Finally in India

So we landed at the airport, which deserves a paragraph in itself. It's the crummiest airport I've ever seen - looks like it hasn't had new paint since the eighties, let alone decoration. Plus, it's tiny- the building itself is about four times the size of the SOS or something like that.

We went outside, met our uncle and got a taxi. Most taxis are big steady yellow clunkers called Ambassadors, but we got a sort of SUV dealy. Not that it was new, because it seems nothing is here. Then we set off on an hour-and-a-half of traffic to Howrah, a city just over the Ganges from Kolkata, which is what they call Calcutta nowadays.

Traffic is not anything like back home. Most Canadians, if they were going around a corner and saw a bicycler pedalling into their path, would stand on the brakes and maybe honk the horn. Here they're more inclined to stand on the horn and maybe tap the brakes. You rely on sheer force of volume and annoyance to get yourself through the streets, and you swerve a lot. Lanes are sort of whatever, and I get the feeling that if there weren't strong medians people would feel free to swerve into oncoming traffic just to pass. On two-lane streets, this turns traffic into not so much traffic as one long game of chicken. It's actually pretty fun if you're not driving.

The sound is amazing. First come the pedestrians, who will yell if someone almost hits them (depressingly often) but otherwise can't be heard. Then the bikes, which go 'tingly-tingly-ting". The rickshaws, which sound like your average squeezetoy for some reason. Squeaky, squeak, squeak. Then the autorickshaws, cars and motorcycles, which range from a crazymaking 'hee-haw-hee-haw' to the usual wail. Then the buses and trucks, which drive everyone else crazy and which bellow deep and loud.

The residential streets are scarier. On average they're two Sasha-heights wide. They're filled with walking people, but that doesn't bother the cars, rickshaws, bikes or motorbikes which push their way through, keeping the horn blaring so people know they're about to get run over. Passing is crazy.

We got to the fifth-floor flat which had been rented for us, and it was really not so good. No beds, hard-pack mattresses on the floor only. Lizards on the walls, but that's normal. Cockroaches, also normal. The bathroom was, to put it mildly, dingy. You would not wish to know about the toilet paper situation.

The heat is really something. After about five minutes, your skin just lets go and you don't even feel yourself sweating any more, unless you reach a hand behind your back and feel your soaked shirt. We set the AC for twenty-five and we practically freeze (bliss!). Between sweating, walking and climbing stairs, we'd all be losing a lot of weight if it weren't for the generous amounts of good Indian food our family stuffs us with.

Anyway, we eventually made excuses and moved to another flat, this one in actual Kolkata, which our friend Rana owns, and which we're staying at now. Comparative luxury. Throughout all of this, Durga-puja is going, which is a festival for the goddess Durga. People are generally happy, and everywhere buildings called Pandels are going up, which house magnificent handmade larger-than--life statues of the gods,with Durga being featured. Last night was the last day, and all the Durgas from all over the cities were sent into the Ganga to float away. To say it was crazy would be a criminal understatement. People are dancing, drumming and singing all along the banks of the river, and thousands of Durgas keep arriving.

The main problem that I can see with Kolkata is no trashcans, which means people throw their garbage wherever. In a city of 20 million, this is a pretty big problem. I still feel guilty about doing it. When I drink a cup of chai or something, I keep my plastic cup and look for a trash can, then I always remember that there is none and drop it on the ground like everyone else.

India is a pretty good place to spend your hard-earned money. A decent meal in a sit-down place will cost about fifty to a hundred rupees, and a street meal where you sit on chairs outside costs a lot less. Bottle of Sprite, twenty rupees. A guitar, 1500-3000 rupees. Now you're probably wondering about the exchange rate. Fourty rupees to the dollar.

Which means that you can get an good meal for $2.50, a bottle of pop for fifty cents (although you won't want to, because they have something called Slice which is delicious cold, made with mangoes and costs 25 cents), and a guitar for 40-80 dollars. Things are cheap here, if you have money. Of course if you work here, you'd get paid considerably less, so there you are. Tourist destination, what what.

Anyways, bye for now. I'm not sure when I'll get Internet next.

P.S. If anyone's mad about us being in India and them being in school, work, etc- we're mad that you are back home with balmy breezes and silent streets.

We were just in the Dubai "souk", which is a market. I don't think I can really compare it to anything back home. Well, imagine this - you're walking through Woodgrove, and this guy comes out of his shop and starts rattling off a list of his wares at you. Tell him you don't want anything. You walk on, with him still rattling his pitch at you, and start looking at some sunglasses out by

the front door of another shop. The shop guy tells you, 25! Then you start to walk away, and he says "Nonono, 20!" As you're leaving, he shouts "Come back! 15, sir!"

They take selling pretty seriously here, you see.

There's no pricetags, people just use calculators to punch in their starting offer.  
Then you say no, no, I think I will look down the street in another shop, this price is not impressive (take your pick).  They take back the calculator, punch in another price, etc, etc.

I saw this shirt outside a shop, which I'll talk about later, and I poked my head in to check how much it was. The guy says "Thirty-murmur-which-I-couldn't-make-out". I said "Thirty?", because I wasn't sure. He said "Thirty-murmur." 
I said "Thirty?" He said "Okay, okay, thirty." Then I realised he'd been saying "Thirty-five". I said I'd come back, and later haggled down to 25.  This is all in durhams, by the by. 3.3 dirhams to the dollar. Stuff is pretty good here.

The most original hawker: This guy who just stood out on the sidewalk and made eye contact with people, and then flickered his eyes towards the direction of the shop. It almost made me want to look, only he'd start his pitch and we'd never hear the end of it.

Scariest hawker: This midget with a tray of bottled water who walked up to Ryan and started shrieking up at him "ONEREAYNOEOREYMAONEREY" We figured out after we scooted that he was saying "One dirham, one dirham" but jesus.

Besides that, we ran into about 5-10 people wanting to sell us watches. They don't say anything to you, just face the air and say "Rolex Swatch you are wanting 
good fake watch, come with me, Gucci all good watch." I told one that I had a watch already, and showed him the ten-dollar blue leather one I got in Montreal. He smirked and pointed to a fake Rolex on his wrist.

Just as we were getting a taxi, another one tried to sell us a watch, and I asked him
"Do you want to buy my watch?"
"No, sir thank you."
"I didn't think so."
It might actually work again.

Yes, sir, shopping is a lot more exhilarating than back home. Also a bit harder - 
if you step into a shop, you're sort of expected to get your buy on, right away, and 
if you ask the price you're really asking him "What do you want to start selling 
this to me at?"

Anyways, I'll tell you about Switzerland soon.

-Bashu