Paul in India

To The Kingdom of the Monkey Gods

This week has been pretty quiet, since I’ve been back in Manipal and mostly studying. I have had to make do with my walk to school to see India. Its all here though- the colours of the traditional dress, the muddy roads and the cows walking around freely. Women spit, men pee openly, builders walk to work with hard hats on and holding hands. There is a huge building site next to my flat. Men work there long after dark, with no light. They are often labouring in bare feet and a skirt. The conditions are scandalous, but it’s mesmerising to watch.

I have been busy this week for the first time. I mistakenly asked my supervisor for access to a computer, since I was having to use the internet cafe. I now spend my days about three feet away from him, in full view of his desk. I tap away at my keyboard, and every three or four minutes we make eye contact, and have a little laugh, or a grimace. Its really uncomfortable. Its bad timing too, because I have to leave early on Friday to go to meet Tags and Catherine in Goa, and I haven’t told him. I hope he’s ok about it - I promised myself I wouldn’t use my violence in India. I learned a choke hold in primary school- I’m pretty sure I can still do it. This weekend we’re planning to see Hampi, an ancient city of temples and fortresses. Once the capital of the largest Hindu empire in India, its name means ‘The Kingdom of the Monkey Gods’. Awesome! 

I was glad to get back from Bangalore; even though I had only been in Manipal a week, it still felt like home. I was also glad because the bus journey home had scared the bejesus out of me. It was an eight hour trip over the mountains, and was a barrel of laughs. The bus was comfortable, and I tried to sleep as soon as we left. The guy who was sitting beside me must have had the same idea, and dozed off with his arms behind his head. It was pretty cosy, until he had one of those spasms you have just before sleep, that sent his elbow crashing into my skull. He was horrified, and looked like he was going to burst into tears when he kept apologising. He couldn’t look me in the eye and had to change seats.

We reached the mountains after a few hours, and it was raining. We climbed through the wet jungle slowly. It was more than a little dodgy as we swung round bends, inches from slippery oblivion ( Good name for an band?). However, the way down was when it all kicked off. The driver was a maniac- he tore down the mountainside, literally skidding in places, taking wide arcs around soaking gravel hairpins, and driving on the wrong side of the road. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t tell if he was convulsing after a scratch from a rabid monkey, or, if he was a rabid monkey. He took over everything in sight, and at one stage we took a blind corner two buses across, my window flush with the mountain side. He was blaring his horn merrily, because this makes a head on crash impossible. We came to a massive landslide, where the heavy rain had washed rocks down the mountain, sweeping what little roadside there was down into the valley. Instead of slowing down, he just weaved around the rocks and forced a van off the road and nearly over the edge. When we got to Mangalore, I took another bus home in a thunderstorm. A hole in the roof filled the bus with about half an inch of water in the heavy rain, and the whole journey home was lit up by incredible lightening.

The weather is now wet, warm, and dull. I haven’t seen the sun for days, and my hopes of getting a tan are fading. My glasses steam up when I walk outside from the aircon, even at night. I don’t go anywhere without my umbrella (its more like a manbrella, its pretty butch), although, in the heaviest rain, you still get soaked somehow. Yesterday my professor gave me his PhD thesis to read, and it was in my bag as I walked home in the rain. I was in a good mood, and walked slowly, watching the rain water swell above my sandals, and grinning at people goofily, not realising pages one to twenty of my supervisors opus were abosorbing the pool of water in my schoolbag. Whoops!

A few of the guys in the flat have started to wobble their heads. Ever so slightly. This was inevitable, and I’m sure it will happen to me soon. Grant started to do it as a joke, but now, as he listens to you talk, his head wobbles a little. Indians wobble their head a lot. It is an expression of humility, but taken literally, can mean anything. It can mean please, thank you, or you’re welcome. It can mean, yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, really?, or extra cheese. It is difficult when asking for directions or help, as every answer is a frown, and an indiscriminate roll of the skull.

I was walking from college into town today, and a little child beggar came running up to me. I knew I had no change, so I tried to walk on. She made the sign for ‘food’, which is to place your fingers and thumb together, and point it to the lips. She followed me for a long way, and was pulling at my t-shirt and pulling at my arm. I recognise all of the child beggars now, and they recognise me, as Manipal is a small place. I knew I had given her some money the day before, so I didn’t feel too bad about not having anything to give to her today. However, I don’t know any Kannada, and I can’t communicate with them at all. Your instinct is to try to talk to them, or laugh with them, as you do with kids normally. However, they really aren’t there for fun, and don’t generally respond to this. I walked for a long way, and I started to wonder where she lived, or who she was with, or where she was ‘based’. Eventually, she relented and left me alone. I had to go into the shop in town, and as I knew I was going back the same way, I bought her a packet of biscuits. You are told not to give money to the child beggars as it encourages exploitation, and if you give anything to give food. She’d gone into the dental school, so I crossed the road to find her. I gave her the biscuits feeling pretty smug, and went to walk away, but she started to to follow me and pulling my arm again. Now she knew I had change. What is very haunting is that when you do give them something, they automatically start asking for more, albeit less enthusiastically; like they are programmed to beg. Here I was caught out, exhausted of charity and ideas, after my triumphant biscuits hadn’t worked. I just had to walk away, feeling pretty helpless and a bit shitty.

Even though I had got a haircut in Goa, my hair had begun this week to assume a strange shape that I didn’t recognise, or like. It had ‘volumised’. I looked like an extra from an 80s film about American high school soccer. Its the humidity, I have tried everything. I decided something had to be done, and I knew the place to do it. A few weeks ago, when in Udupi, the nearest town, I passed a sign saying ‘Famous Hair Dressers’.  I made a pact with myself there and then that I would have to treat myself to a hair cut in this place, the greatest named boutique of all time. I walked in with my buffon, sat down, and before I could say anything, the barber began famously cutting my dry hair with an oversized pair of mottled shearers. He seemed distracted by a Bollywood film, and possibly to so as not to ruin his view,  spent a lot of time cutting the front and back of my hair, without cutting any of the sides. The result being, he left me looking like a silly monk. As I’ve gotten older, I have learned the ability to deal with certain confrontations better, but I still don’t have the balls to tell a barber when I don’t like my haircut. Its like telling someone they can’t do their job and they are basically a worthless bastard with scissors. So after football tonight I spent an hour in the shower bollock naked trying to cut my own hair. My flat mates were probably wondering what I was doing, but I was too embarrassed to tell them. There was a power cut in the middle of this ritual, so I gave in. Shorn and muddy, I took a cold shower in the dark and wept softly. I will only find out tomorrow morning how it has worked out.