Abstinence is easier when you don’t know what you’re abstaining from.

From The Hippie Uncle

We are on the highway.

One more hour of bumpy jeep drive is to be covered.
The hot wind dries up the wet towel I have put on my face.

It is plain land with gentle undulation as far as the eyes could see. To break the monotony few trees, far from each other, dot the landscape. Its shade can barely protect a person from the scorching sun. Resilient trees. Not a soul in sight.

Somewhere in North Karnataka on a hot summer day. (40 C is cool)

We reach our destination, a cluster of thatched huts, big and small. Regional command centre for the social service organization.

Padmini is going to help them with their accounts and I escort her as this is her first trip. After the exchange of pleasantries with the top guy we are shown our respective huts.

Basics.
Below this level you will be in misery. There is a cot with a thin mattress to sleep on; a net saves you from the mosquitoes; between the sunny sky and you there is protection by coconut thatch; three feet high asbestos sheets act as a wall and prevents the occasional rain water from entering your abode; since you are a nobody there is no need for a door! Water trickles and drips down from the tap in the open-to-sky bathroom. I am comfortable.

Glasses of water just evaporate through the millions of pores on my skin in no time.
The stifling heat and the spicy dinner deprive me of sleep till the early hours of the next morning.

At this centre there is good amount of human traffic. A lot of activities go on at this place. Health, educational, cultural and economical aspects of the populace are taken care of.

Mid day.

There is a lull in the human activities after the lunch. A full stomach and a cloudless summer sky have sent most of the staff to siesta indoor. A couple of guys sitting under an open hut are browsing the news paper.

You could see him coming.
A dot on the horizon becoming larger and larger.

He enters the camp with his son perched on his shoulders. The boy about five years old is polio affected. The man talks with the health worker who was reading the news paper. From the body language and facial expressions of the staff you understand that he is asked to come back on some other day. Without a murmur he turns and heads back on the same path to trek back to his village. As he goes past, you catch a glimpse.

He may be in his early thirties. Browbeaten by fate. Poverty, extreme suffering, helplessness have made the face calm; no sign of sadness; no disappointment. Not even a flinch. Total acceptance and dignity .He just turns and walks off towards the horizon; clad in a worn-out shirt and a pale, knee length dhoti he carries the burden of his life back home. Searing sun, blistering tar road, parched earth and the heat wave dries up the moisture deep inside the nostrils. No head gear, no dark glasses, no sun cream, no water bottle; and he walks into the wavy cauldren.. ….barefoot.

***
the same Himalayan monk?

-KLK aka Sakshi

co huong

Co Huong, my maid, talks to me more than anybody else these days. The first day I met her, when she came to the interview dressed in a suit, I understood one in 20 words she said. now im up to 3 in 10. the pride she takes in her work easily puts me to shame. I’m not that passionate about anything, least of all work. She cares more about cleanliness and the house than I do… so im asking her to go home and sleep but she insists on cleaning something.

When im sick she offers some leaves plucked from her garden, or a piece of wood, some white paste… so I’m nature boy now. She feeds me vegetables and leaves that I’ve never seen, some plucked from my garden, experiments generously with Indian cooking and keeps me well fed.

When I come home drunk she’ll scold me and put some salt in my coconut water, which she knows I dislike. But the next morning she’ll bring green tea and watermelon juice to wake me up and threaten to pour chillis (plucked from my garden) in the next meal. Sometimes she really pours chillis, like a wicked joke. She once said that nobody in her place drinks… when we had a little beer party at my place, her sister was the beer dealer who delivered, and co huong took a splash. She later said she drinks only on occasions and 3 pints.

Co huong tells me she was born in 1960 (though she once claimed to be 55), in Hanoi. When you go from Saigon to Hanoi, ‘r’ becomes ‘z’ and ‘y’ becomes ‘z’, so there is quite a buzz as you go north, and co huong is very proud of it. She likes the 4 distinct seasons in Hanoi, for which she holds it higher than Saigon. In 1971, when she was 11, her dad was killed in the war and he wasn’t found until November of 2008. co huong grew up working in the rice fields and moved to pleiku where she now has three kids my age. The kids speak a mix of Hanoi and Saigon Vietnamese, and they help translate to English things she buys in the book of accounts.

doan thanh

thanh is the man of charm.. people do what he influences them to do.. he also buys all our coffee.. other middlemen adore him like a teenage crush.. thanh is like a postman who brings news from around the village.. phu linh nam bought 3 trucks of coffee at a high price.. ha son is nearly bankrupt.. this quality chick is pregnant.. like that. people like talking to him.. they say when an agent goes bankrupt she'll first sell everything and pay back thanh and then declare bankruptcy.

the other day we were discussing tribal lifestyle in vietnam, and like some tribes in meghalaya, the boy lives with the girl in her village. she is also the hunter gatherer while the husband sits at home taking care of home. infants are strapped behind the mums after a week as they return to active work.. when the kid is 3 days old, they give a cold bath in the river... some die, and they say if the baby dies it would've grown up to be a bad person so it's a good thing.. thanh said "...and they continue... no problem! but now some some the government... talking..."

when i was a kid, i used to wonder how my parents went to work everyday. i couldn't understand how they didn't run out to play sports everyday. how did they accept summers without holidays?

i want to roam around, but who will roam with me? many years back i stood in front of my engineering class and asked the same question. i've been lucky, i hope i haven't run out.

chicken fucking pox

Following last month’s flu, Vietnam gifted me with chicken pox this time. I’ve been in a little room in a little hospital in this little town called Buon Muot Thot for 8 days. The nurses are pretty and don’t speak English. I get good food delivered through a kind friend everyday. All day I eat, sleep, drink coconut water, watch movies, follow basketball, read some shit and sleep some more. It’s slightly worse than the hostel in Indore in that I’m sober all the time. The day seems endless.

When I tell them that I’ve had chicken pox as a little kid, they insist that I have a poor memory of some other disease. Thankfully the pox was mild, and I’m good now. But my friend refuses to believe that I can be good so soon. Since I have no home yet in my little town, I’m sitting here like an unwanted dirty (10 days unwashed) bag nobody wants to touch.

I remember the last time the chicken fucked me. I was pampered with attention and care. They ran neem leaves gently over my itching body, somebody fed me and there was someone to talk to all the time… thank you for everything! My friend tells me that I should forget that good life and I nod unwillingly. Now I have human interaction for 30 minutes a day, mostly involving Vietnamese that I don’t grasp. Being alone sucks sometimes, but it’s selfish to think of home when hungry and sick… I try not to.

singapore

i'm in singapore for a few days. I see tall brightly lit and excessively cooled buildings, neat, organised greenery, more rules than you can remember, clockwork and boredom... its safe and free of asian faults, a cab driver tells me... but vietnam and india with all the faults looks more human, more lively. the indian part of this city is the most impolite, crowded and messy... i see a serpentine queue outside the western union money transfer shop... india must be thrilled about all the dollars being sent home. on the streets i see indian workers stacked on little pick-up truck-carts, sipping on the clean wind on their face, gazing at a cross between madras and the west. its a good example of the greater good over individual freedom. if i were an indian girl, i probably wouldn't be saying all this. safety is something men value less, even take for granted. vietnam is exceptional because it has both chaos and safety. most of mankind's indulgences are free and everywhere in vietnam... there is more sex and alcohol and everything else on the streets than the men could want. frustration and desperation are killed when the fruits are not forbidden. its a good case for a liberal society.

in singapore, i have a friend - like-minded, speaking the same language, with similar reference points... familiarity feels strange after a break.

I miss my little town – pleiku. I miss the look in their eyes when I speak in Vietnamese. I’m truly learning something for the first time since high school. Something to wake up to.

Joy

This blog began a few years back with an intro to Joy. Joy the photographer now covers the party scene for his new-age newspaper. He roams around the streets of Madras, looking for any life at night which can be fit into captions like “DJ Sunny and two pretty faces”. I've always wondered if the pretty faces were happy or pissed to be called thus. He used to ride a ‘readied’ Yamaha RX100, with a quick throttle and no head lamp. Joy can write a book titled Priorities and make a lot of money. But he’s the closest any postgrad has come to illiteracy. Books are Joy’s preferred sleeping pills.

When Joy was a kid, he had a teacher come home to drill hindi through his resistant skull. Joy and his brothers had enough love to dig a trap-pit meant for baby elephants outside their home and wait for the teacher. Much to their disappointment, the teacher didn't turn up that day. Before we admire how fate saved the teacher, Joy heard news that the Hindi teacher, just before she left to drill Joy's head, slipped and fell in her bathroom and died.

Joy has been to Thailand once last year, for 4 days, after tricking the clicking community in madras into one of Joy's patented deals, where the other person gets screwed and feels thrilled about it. When gopal and gang planned a trip to Singapore and Cambodia, they put in a couple of days at Thailand. Joy would have none of it. He stubbornly refuses to believe that there exists anything left unseen in that country. He feels that he's seen every foot of Bangkok and Pataya. So he plans to visit me in Vietnam and sells it like it’s made of love.

In Saigon, he doesn't want to waste time... brushing aside night life as what he covers for the next morning's bread and butter. He wants to go to a conflict zone - or create one if none exists nearby - preferably ethnic in nature, where you can get one mongoloid and one of something else in the same frame. He also makes me feel bad, like it’s my mistake that he's coming here on the first three days of a working week. Like I made the week start on Monday. Besides his Pulitzer-driven interest in ethnic conflicts, he also wants to meet tribal people, see the countryside and study rural life in all of 3 days.

Joy eventually decided not to drop by! Presently he’s in Singapore (for the first and last time), admiring the internet speed at home, while the other boys are out for the night.

taxi

i think, on an average, indians believe that if somebody is paid lesser than them, then their time becomes automatically less valuable. in singapore, chintu called a taxi early in the morning and like india, expected him to fall asleep and wait. perhaps he called him a little early (just to be safe, like in India), but the taxi driver kept calling every 2 minutes from below, and chintu was getting agitated, at his lack of respect and impatience. not once did it occur to chintu that maybe it's a professional transaction, like any other. it's eye-opening to see what it is like to be reminded every day that your time is worth lesser than mine.

while we're on taxis, sometimes i call one of the vietnamese taxi companies to send one home.

"can you give me your address?"

"188 Bee-Dee 7... B for Boy, D for Doctor"

"B for baby?"

selling game

17 Sep 2008

tomorrow, i shall play a selling game. for a change, i won't be selling myself, but a thought. how i sell will affect the next two years.

there are so many arguments floating in front of my eyes. also floating are thin narrow-eyed women with lovely hair and black women from the movies.