My Triumphant Return From The Colonies

Monday 27th June 2005, 12.03 pm

Dear all,

this is the last of Benji's fantastic e-mails (unless I get bored in Mumbai) so enjoy, savor and cherish it. You could print it off if you like...maybe frame it, sleep with it under your pillow, or use it to dry your tears during the long lonely nights? The nights are the hardest for you aren’t they? I understand…Benji always understands…come in for a hug…there, much better right?

So here I am at the end of my travels, the end of my gap year and on the brink of the start of real life again. From dusty and almost entirely rubbish Karaikudi, through laid back and empty Portuguese Goa, through Victorian Mumbai and into sweltering Delhi, India has been an amazing experience. There’ve been highs, there've been lows, there's been diarrhea and there's been constipation, there’ve been dry days and wet days and India has seemed like a hundred different countries all at the same time, with different foods, clothes, languages and varying ranges of appalling service and undercooked poultry. At times I’ve hated it, at times I’ve loved it, but I’ve rarely been bored. Except for that week in Goa when all I seemed to do was go to the cinema and help Ben look for his pipe and slippers or read to him from Reader’s Digest (he has problems with the small print, and since he left his magnifying glass at the Bingo, I had to read it for him). Seriously, fuck that guy.

Someone asked me the other day on MSN if India had changed me and this got me thinking; what a stupid fucking new age piece of bullshit to say to someone. The answer was a definite no. No wait…er, I mean a definite yes…like, I appreciate spirituality and eastern mysticism and shit now. Also, I’ve developed a deep mistrust of foreigners that drives me to whole new levels of sarcasm and cynicism (“oh gee, I’m so glad you’ve brought me this plate of undercooked and almost certainly diseased bones and skin!”).

On an average day I will doubt someone’s intentions at least 5 or 9 times which has turned me into a John Nash style paranoid delusionist (like a magician, except I’m convinced other people are constantly pulling ticks); in Mumbai I was crapped on by a bird outside the Library, and a passing Indian business man stopped, opened his briefcase and used a piece of what looked like his paper work to clean the shit off my shoulder. I tried to stop him, because I thought he was going to ask for money, but when my shirt was clean, he just closed his briefcase and walked away. That is what traveling has done to me; I assume everyone is out to fleece me, trying to get my money by hook or by crook. It’s a shame really, and there’s an obvious lesson to be learned there- don’t stand directly under a bird, or you will get shit all over you. Oh, and something about people…er, intentions…er…judging? Whatever.

Secondly, I’ve started to really appreciate some of the things we take for granted in the west. Here is a list, in no order:

Cornflakes

Solid shits

Decent TV

Beer on tap

Nice crisps

Readily available internet pornography

Boring weather.

Normal chocolate (I don’t know what they’ve done to their chocolate here, but it is just all wrong)

Pavements

Cooked meat

Oh and all that being rich and not dying at 40 of TB...that’s pretty cool as well I s’pose.

India has also taught me the value of friends. Oh actually I mean the value of the pound, which is kind of like my main friend anyways. It's really cool how rich I am out here! These silly people, their money’s not worth the paper I wipe my arse with (though sometimes, the two have been one in the same). I’ve also learnt, as you might remember, to suppress my gag reflex and eat anything that's put in front of me, and since traveling with Ben for a month and sharing a room with him, I’ve become adept at taking every opportunity for a little...ahem..."Benji time", that I can get. He also tried to teach me how to knit and how to organise his various tablets so that he knows when to take them. These are just some of the very important life skills I’ve developed. That’s several new points on my CV, and at just several hundred pounds each, cheap at twice the price! At least, that’s what I’m telling my mother.

So what's changed since my last e-mail? Well firstly, and as only some of you remembered this may come as news to you, I had my first sub-continental birthday. That right, I am now a whole year older. Well Indian birthdays suck anyway, so I suppose you're all forgiven, plus I’ve never really enjoyed birthdays but I do feel it’s my prerogative to moan at you for not remembering, so hang you heads in shame. I also went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It was pretty good, no Durham cathedral (but then what is?) but still good for something a nation who produced Bollywood Cinema could come up with. No to be honest, it was the single most impressive thing I’ve ever seen (except this girl on the bus I used to get to school, who could fart on demand...now that's a life skill) (sorry, I just can’t stay serious for that long). I doubt if any of the photos i took of it could ever do it justice, it was just far too amazing. I really was very impressed. The rest of Agra was a real hole though...you'd think they'd sort that out maybe?

Anyway, that's about all. I leave Delhi on Wednesday and get a train journey almost as long as the flight Nathan and Joe are getting back from Ozz...TWENTY THREE HOURS, on my own too, so that'll be a whole lotta fun. Then I spend the rest of Thursday, and Friday in Mumbai on my own, before flying back to the waiting arms of my beloved England...with its infrastructure and clean running water (I think I may cream myself). Hope you're all ok, and don't worry it won’t be long until I’m back.

keep the home fires burning or something poetic.

Pambam, Placenta and Pachyderm Poverty

Monday, April 11 2005, 10:47am

So, after last week's vomiting all over the hospital and having to learn to suppress my gag reflex(something I hoped I’d never have to do…) my time in India has continued to throw up strange experiences and weird characters. This weekend was, of course, no exception and so we went down to Rameswaram which is a tiny town on the island of Pamban between India and Sri lanker. The island has no cash points. Not one, and I have no idea how this works on day to day basis. They must just use checks or something, right? I don’t know…maybe they just promise to pay later? Gift certificates? Pay-pal? It doesn’t make any sense.

Anyway, Pamban Island is famous as a pilgrimage destination and little else. There’s a temple, a couple of shabby hotels and more goats and cows than I felt was entirely necessary. It’s by no means famous for its beaches though and yet we easily found plentiful white sands, blue oceans, and palm trees. Plus, not a person in sight for miles and miles, which if I’m honest, made a nice change. The island was really beautiful and had a fair bustle (despite the lack of cash machines…seriously…what is with that? ). It was also predictably filthy.

It took us five hours by rickety old bus (a local commute by Indian standards) which cost about 30 Rp. That isn’t even 50p in real money. One of the volunteers Ben arrived on Thursday had some trouble because he's 6ft 4 and his legs don't fit in the seats, plus all the locals think he’s an escaped circus freak and I’m pretty sure I saw some villagers forming a pitchfork wielding mob at one of the towns we stopped in.

Anyway, the busses were "DVD Busses" which means they blast out Tamil films at ear-splitting-hallucination-inducing volumes. Tamil films by the way, are like Bollywood films except they’re lower budget and more annoying. And they play these films everywhere you go. I think I was actually close to death by the time we stopped off at this place called Rhamad about an hour from the island. At Rhamad, we planned to meet up with a German guy called Norman who the girls we were with had met on a TPA organized weekend a couple of weeks before. He wasn't there though so we gave up hope. The three girls with us are all volunteers in local clinics in Karaikudi two called Emma, and one called Natalie. So with two Emma’s, two Bens (as everyone calls me ) there are only three names between the five of us. It’s like being in a bloody Christian pop band.

Any way, we went on to Ramaswaram, and amazingly just happened to bump into Norman in the temple. I soon wished we hadn't though. The girls mainly just wanted to "show" him to us because, as I quickly noted, Norman was a total freak and a bit of a pecker. He was wearing a traditional Indian dhoti (like a sarong...I’m going to get one later today...a silk one costs about 2 pounds) and he had ash on his forehead like the men do down here and was also topless and without shoes. This brought out a very British sense of distaste in me. There was nothing particularly freaky in his attire I suppose, except that he fully thought he was an Indian peasant and was obviously trying to have a “real” experience, or to “find himself” or some other new age bullshit. I was already wondering when would be the best time to tell him that I’d recently wiped my arse on Ghandi’s face.
Norman (The Gorman) was quick to greet the girls but didn't even acknowledge my or Ben’s existence until he said “I didn’t know there were going to be…boys…with you”. Ben and I both agreed that he was more of a ladies’ man than a man’s man…or even a group of people’s man.

He was also full of crap. He regaled us (again, mainly the girls) with tails of the elephant at the palace and how it had killed two people the “other day” (that wonderfully non-specific period of time when all fantastic yarns seam to take place). This worried Norman because he was “in his last reincarnation” and wasn’t going to come back again or some other pseudo-spiritual crap. I was already looking forward to it, and was wondering how one goes about hiring an elephant assassin. He also preyed at all the alters, which I think annoyed some of the locals who must see hundreds of misty eyed foreigners pretending to be Indian every day. He used the Tamil head wobble instead of nodding, but he used it in the wrong way, and too often, and of course when we went swimming he had to be last out the ocean, the only one who didn’t admit that the sand was way too hot to walk on (I actually burnt my feet so that they were painful the rest of the day), the only one who didn’t sit in the shade, bragged about how he ran 17 miles to the next town the other day in 40 degree heat just to see if he could etc. etc. I think you can see the type of guy he was. He also gave this huge profound and moving spiel about the Tsunami in 2004 and how it had emotionally affected the people and how he saw the pain in their eyes. I wanted to ask if this was because he’d been telling them any of his stories. It was all very moving, but one of the Emma’s told me later she’d heard the exact same speech the weekend they met him, almost word for word and she reconed it was rehearsed. Oh…and he was reading Mien Kampf…and he didn’t bring any money and ordered the most expensive things for dinner. God I hated him…fuck.

Anywho, later on the way home we stopped off at the palace that TPA had placed the lucky fucker in. Norm worked as a volunteer at the school of the local “king’s” son (Note: not a real king. Don’t get excited). We were mainly enticed there with promise of seeing the kings elephant, as supposedly every palace has one, and I was excited by the idea of a huge towering beast covered in jewels and maybe golden armor stamping Norman’s face into the dirt whilst I rode on its back (also covered in jewels and golden armour). In the end I wished I hadn’t bothered. The king was incredibly ostentatious, despite the relatively diminished extent of his wealth. He had recently bought 80 rabbits. Why? Well so that he could say “did I mention I have 80 rabbits? No, well I keep them in appaling conditions. Maybe you would like to come poke them with wire one day?”. Maybe large numbers of vermin kept in wire cages is the Indian version of spinning rims and blinged out goblets full of Hennessey…

“Yo yo yo, check it out- I got 50 hunnies and 100 bunnies, I keep those things in
cages. I keep my bitches happy though, by paying living wages”

(I really should be a rapper. My talents are going to waste)

The rabbits were in lines of wire hutches, some 2 to a cage, raised off the ground so they had to walk on the wire and left with no water and little shade. I saw some with mange, others with lumps or bleeding sores. It was awful. There were emaciated dogs tied to trees and exotic birds in filthy overcrowded cages. It was so sad, I almost expected to see a man skinning a unicorn in the corner. When we finally got to the elephant I didn’t know what to expect…they’re supposedly sacred, so I was hoping the elephant would at least be better housed. Well, they’re not that sacred as it turns out and I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. It had a bad skin infection that was causing it to go pink in places, and had both left legs chained to concrete blocks so it just had to stand all day in the same position with nothing to do, except listen to the high-pitched screams of caged bunny rabbits. I regret that that was my first experience of an Indian elephant, and I regret that I thought it was still pretty cool when it tried to hit me with its trunk.

“Did you see!? Did you see!? It tried to lash out in anger and frustration! Awesome!”

So…after the weekend of annoying Krauts and mistreated animals, we’ve returned to Karaikudi and the John Medical Centre. This morning Ben and I were woken at 4:45am to go and see some more operations. First there was a non malignant breast lump, which was fairly interesting because the doctor cut it open and explained the differences between malignant and Benign tumours. Also, tits…so you know…bonus. Then, and probably most amazingly, we were invited to see a caesarian section which was incredible. It was awe inspiring. It was beautiful. It was incredibly gruesome. The mother had already had 4 previous C-Sections, which made me wonder why they didn’t just sow a zip into her, as I’ve never seen as much blood. Dr John removed the placenta and it was as if he’d just gutted her.…it was horrific. Seriously…it splattered out of the gash (no not “her gash”, I mean the actual incision) in her stomach and all over the floor and the doctors feet. I should add that they only wear flip-flops in surgery so I it was pretty sick. There was also a lot of tearing and pulling and all in all it kind of ruined my romantic notions of peaceful childbirth. Apparently they have to be very brutal because as soon as the placenta is broken the baby is in danger of suffocating so they tear it out as fast as they can. I was fine with all the blood today though, and I think the loosing of my breakfast last week was more to do with illness. Ben was next to me and I think he was a little shocked by the amount of fluid and had to hold his head between his legs for a while. What a pussy!

We’ve been seeing a lot of patients with diabetic complications as well recently. It’s mainly the less educated rural people, who do apparently understand that they can’t have sugar but do anyway because they think that if they eat something bitter at the same time it cancels it out. It’s so adorably naive! Add to that the stigma of insulin injections, the difficulty of getting hold of human insulin, and that they only have their blood sugars taken once a week in the clinic and you soon start to see why so many of them have these problems. Huge leg ulcers, neuropathy and retinopathy are apparently very common, and with type two diabetes on the rise it’s becoming a serious problem in India.

The social aspects of medicine in here are incredibly interesting and of course totally different to those in the UK. It’s especially pronounced in cases of infertility and diet related illnesses, where so much social status is attached and the culture can be quite alien from a western view point. There was one woman who was being held prisoner by her in-laws because she hadn’t conceived after two years of marriage. They wouldn’t let her see her family and were blaming her for all their financial problems. As it turned out, the husband has been living in Dubai the last two years and has only been coming back every few months for a couple of weeks at a time. It was so interesting to see the way that this affected both sides of the family, and the couple’s marriage. And that’s just the beginning of that kind of thing. We’ve seen people in clinic who keep trying to have babies because they have to have a boy, and they end up with more children that they can possibly afford. Some have been to see gurus who have told them that if they don’t conceive a son it would be bad luck, so they just keep popping the sprogs. Our doctor jokingly said the other day that the most commonly presented complaint in Southern India is pregnancy. It goes on and on but I think I better cut this short or you won’t bother reading any more.

Oh, I haven’t had a shit in almost a week by the way...thought I’d share that. This really is a land of extremes.

The one in which I Dirty Sanchez Gandhi...

Tuesday 7th April 2005, 11:38AM

So here I am in “India” as the locals call it…and what a very queer place it is. No not queer like Brighton, though there are a lot of men holding hands (it’s a cultural thing according to my guide book). So, apparently India’s like this whole other country now and we don’t own any of it! We don’t even get a cut of the profit. Jeez, we invented the place! Who’d have thunk it? Shit, if I had known it wasn’t even ours anymore, I would never have agreed to come out here and fix their health service. Why didn’t any of you tell me? They don’t even speak our language very well.

The flight was fairly uneventful. The guy next to me decided the spare chare between us was to put his feet on whilst he slept. How rude! The chair was clearly for me to put my feet on whilst I slept, but I suppose some people just don’t give a crap about others. He also thought it was hilarious when I ate a chili that some smart arse had hidden in my salad disguised as a green pepper. He was lucky the flight was only 91/2 hours because I swear, if it had been like, 6 or 9 more hours I almost certainly, probably would have at least given him a really dirty look. Like, while he was sleeping though because jeez…I don’t want to be a victim of air rage y’know? Needless to say he was pretty lucky we landed when we did.

So straight away one problem with India became clear; it’s full of for’ners. Although, I’m sure there are some liberals out there who would remind me that they’re not for’ners because this is their country…yadda yadda yadda! Bloody Lefties! I think I know a for’ner when I see one, and these people are not like you and me. They wear different clothes and some of them don’t even speak English as their first language. In fact, on the way from the airport, the taxi driver turned to me and said “I’m practicing my English, and would very much appreciate this opportunity to converse with you, with a view to improve my vocabulary and syntax. I must apologise to you though, as I feel my grasp of the English lexicon is perhaps slighty substandard, so you may struggle at times to grasp exactly what I am saying”. Ha! What an idiot. I was all “Juuust-Taaaake-Meee-Tooo-Theee-Puuuub-Saaanje-Yeah? Beeeer?”. He said his name was Victor and that he thought I might have had a small stroke caused by something called “Deep Vain From Bosis” or something. I was like, “ha, what are you...a doctor?!” and he was all “no, just a medical student”.

“Whatever… just drive the taxi yeah?”.

It’s not all overly articulate taxi drivers though. One of the best things about this “place” is everything is cheap as hell! I can’t understand why everyone is so hungry looking and shabbily dressed when you can get a full meal for like 40p! There really is no excuse. Another example; I’ve already been in this internet café today, and I wrote a huge long e-mail that took about an hour. Then there was a power cut and I lost it all. I should note though that it was quite worrying how calmly everyone else in the café took this; I fear it may not be an unusual occurrence. I, on the other hand, was annoyed. Very very annoyed. In the UK I wouldn’t have paid and probably would have written to my MP...maybe even done some nose punching and crotch stomping if it was a Monday. Out here though, an hour of dial-up internet sets you back about 10p! Granted, it’ll take that long to load anything that’s even remotely wankable (some pixilated nipples, maybe a hint of a ball-gag), but it’d still be cheap even at twice the price. TEN PENCE! I usually inhale that much whilst I sleep (did I mention I sleep on a huge pile of money? Ok, so it’s mainly small denomination copper coins and it is incredibly uncomfortable, but still; A PILE OF MONEY!)

And poorly rendered pornography isn’t the only thing that’s cheap in India. Money has virtually no value . Well, not to me anyway…did I mention I’m pretty rich? Well I am…compared to people here anyway. For example, during my first day in the ridiculously named town I’m in (Karikudi…honestly, do they just throw Scrabble sets out of windows and go with what lands?) I found myself hammering for a dump. Sorry, I should say hammering to “drop the kids off at the pool”, although really I’d be dropping them off at the ceramic hole in the floor, as there isn’t really much of a pool there…or any kind of seat. Or any flushing mechanism. Or in fact anything except a prickling sense of shame and a mirror at eye level to remind you how low you’ve stooped, both socially and literally. Alas I hadn’t yet had the guts to ask for toilet paper at the local shop and I really didn’t want to “go Indian” and introduce my left hand to real manual labor.

The only thing I had was some 10 Rp notes. That’s about 8p. You can see where this is going, yeah? Well I’m going to tell you anyway. I had no choice you see? Don’t judge me…you weren’t there man…you weren’t there! NONE OF YOU KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE!?

So anyways, just me and old Gandhi’s and his smug peace loving mustachioed little face, and no one would ever know. Well, not unless later I found it hilarious in hindsight and decided to e-mail everyone about it. Ha, I wonder if Ghandi enjoyed the “hindsight”. Get it? Hindsight? Like, because he was looking at my arse? Well, probably not. He wasn’t really renowned for his sense of humor, and even the best sport isn’t going to enjoy being the victim of a gap year student’s very symbolic and scatological disregard for local culture and customs.

So there you have it. Barely in the country for 24 hours and already I’ve committed an act I fear will stay with me for the rest of my days; I am a terrible terrible human being. Though, having said that I can now at least claim to have wiped my arse on a national treasure and I’ll never have to admit to my grandchildren that I once scraped shit off my anus with my bare hand.

One of the other things I’ve found hardest about this “country” aside from the ablutions is the diet. I came here with all the best intentions of trying everything, plus I’m already quite the curry lover, so I wasn’t expecting it to be such a challenge. However, curry for breakfast is more than anyone can be expected to take, and after a week I’m racking my brains for information I can surrender to stop the torture. I’m sure it’s a human rights violation (Didn’t Hitler give people in concentration camps curry for breakfast? God he was a shit wasn’t he?).

And it’s not just for breakfast that they like to dabble in culinary psychological warfare. They munch copious amounts of this stuff called idli for most evening meals and sometimes at lunch. I’m told it’s like a savory cake made from steamed lentil and rice dough but to me it seems like bread that’s been thrown to the ducks and has gone soggy in the pond water. Seriously, fuck this stuff. They seem to be in a constant cycle of either eating it or making it. Eating it or making it. Eating it or making it, for all eternity. It’s like some Orwellian culinary nightmare. I think if I only learn one thing while I’m here (and let’s face it, if I manage to learn that much it’ll blow my cultural horizons wide open) it’ll be how to politely control my gag reflex and eat anything placed in front of me.

There’s so much more to tell but I’m worried about another power cut (they’re like Indian busses…you don’t see one all day, and then one comes along and ruins everything). The first day I was here I think was the most action packed. I think it must have been an end of season episode in the soap opera of my life. The main thing which made me really want to get straight back in the first taxi, train, taxi, plane, plane, tube, train and bus back home was that I was passing brown liquid where once there had been only solids. This was solely my own fault as I stupidly drank something with ice made from tap water without realising it. The water in India is more of a thick broth of bacteria, which whilst fine if you’re local, will cause rapid evacuation of your abdomen if you’re only packing a weakling Western immune system. I could have shat through a sieve seriously. And I probably wouldn’t even had to rinse the bits out.

To make things worse though, it was also my first day of work in the hospital and I was feeling really nauseous when I went into “theater” (that’s what they call the operating room here…the crazy bastards! Don’t they know that theaters are where you go for plays and the likes…they’ve got their attitude all wrong). We were scheduled to see a little kid get his appendix removed; a fairly straightforward cut and shut even in a rural clinic in India. I felt pretty rotten anyway, but then with all the heat, the smell of the theater’s disinfectant, the mask and the standing up, I wasn’t feeling great.

Finally, after waiting for the kid to get his ass unconscious, the doctor made the tiniest slice I could possibly have hoped for. Unfortunately this veritable paper cut sent me running out like a big girl, white and clammy and ready to chunder. I ran straight out into the courtyard to where the family were waiting and projectile vomited everywhere. Everywhere God damn it! I think they were a little worried about the strange white guy running out of their son’s appendectomy looking like he’d seen someone turned inside out. I managed to find the strength to curl myself up into the fetal position and hold in my tears, before finally having to crawl delicately upstairs when the janitor came to hose down that mornings curried breakfast. We really are indispensable to the hospital you know.

Anyway that’s about all I can be arsed to write now. This key board is shit (it doesn’t even have a “pound” sign…how rude!) and this internet café is about 400 degrees, has sporadic internet and little or northing in the way of refreshments. They’re really stretching the term “internet café” beyond what is traditionally deemed acceptable.

Lots of love to you all (except those of you I don’t like…you know who you are. No don’t look at him…YES! YOU! At the back!! Don’t think I can’t see you!!!)