There's no place like home!

I am fairly certain that this is my last entry on this blog.  After all, I have been living back in the USA for nearly two months, and can no longer live up to the title! 

To back up and start where Pocahontas syndrome left off (mid-July), my husband very sweetly decided to accompany me back to America after I left the hospital with my undiagnosed sickness.  Truth be told, I’m fairly certain he thought I wouldn’t make it on my own.  And he would have been right.  He even insisted that I use a wheelchair, correctly believing that I couldn’t walk the long distances between airport terminals. Considering how long it took me to pack (it required frequent breaks where I just collapsed onto the nearest surface), it was a wise decision, no matter how mortifying the wheelchair had been at the time.

We arrived quite early at the airport, which was wise because it took them nearly an hour to find us seats together on our flight.  I sat back, out of the way, head down, ignoring everyone who stared curiously at the young woman in a wheelchair and let my husband deal with the ticketing agents. 

Our flight route was Mumbai-Delhi-Chicago, and the first leg was delayed.  It was delayed long enough that we arrived at our gate in Delhi only a half hour before the flight was scheduled to take off.  The transfer process had been quite unusual; at one point, I was required to sign the back of what was obviously a piece of scrap paper.  We chalked it up to the wheelchair, but as we went through the ‘board the plane’ security line, I was pulled away and told I had to visit a security room on account of my suspicious baggage.  Suddenly the odd behavior made sense; they were checking my identity.

A few months before, while at Elephanta Island, I had purchased a pair of lighters in the shape of guns.  They were a gift for my dad.  Fortunately, a friend had already warned me that they would set off the baggage security, and I thus knew immediately why I was being called to the security room.  I was wheeled to an obscure elevator that led to a small room.  My blue suitcase sitting front and center on a desk. Interesting that the Delhi airport caught wind of the guns but Mumbai let them through….

I fumbled around for the suitcase key, and then spent a panicked minute trying to figure out where the guns had been packed.  Eventually I produced them, they checked them (oops, one had a TINY bit of lighter fluid still in it), we all had a good laugh, and my suitcase was zipped back up and I was wheeled back to the gate. 

By this point, there were only a few minutes before the flight was scheduled to take-off and I was worried both that we wouldn’t be allowed to board and that there was no way on earth my suitcase would make the flight.   But we were allowed on the plane, and, to my great surprise, my suitcase was ready to greet us in Chicago!

The flight itself wasn’t too bad because I actually managed to sleep.  Usually I stay awake the entire flight, restless, thirsty, and twitchy.  But I guess the weariness of my sickness was enough to help me sleep and the flight quickly ended.

We landed (early) and were told that customs/immigrations (whatever you have to go through to get back into the country) was closed and we’d have to wait for a few minutes/hour.  Eventually we were able to deplane, and the line for the people in wheelchairs was much, much slower than the normal line.  It was probably a full hour before I was wheeled to my poor worried mom.  

We took a shuttle to her airport hotel (it was still only 6 am or so), napped, breakfasted, watched TV (I think my husband even worked out if I remember correctly) and then headed downtown for my doctor’s appointment.

The doctor visit was fun because my brother-in-law is a doctor, too, so he showed up to the appointment.  It was just like how I should have arrived to the hospital in India- loaded down with family.  Everyone else in the waiting room was alone, like I had been at my Mumbai check-in.  So much better to be with people who care about you!  

The appointment went fine; he drew more blood, looked over my paperwork, and told me I could stop taking the extremely strong antibiotics I had been on (they gave me horrible stomach and nausea issues).  Of course, he didn’t know what was wrong with me, either, but hazarded a guess of viral meningitis.  So that is what I am sticking with.  The symptoms fit, and though I’ll never know exactly what I had, it is good to have at least a best guess.

The downside of meningitis, the doctor told me, is that it can take up to a full year to regain my energy levels.  Think of it as a temporary chronic fatigue syndrome.  So that isn’t fun.  It has now been nearly two months since my sickness, and though I am not as pathetically weak as before, I still require about ten hours of sleep a day and cannot walk a mile without heavy panting and exhaustion.

As for the blood work, it is mostly fine.  My white blood cell count is oddly elevated (but not to a scary cancer level or anything). Apparently it is the ‘total count’ that is high, not one individual type of blood cell (there are five types).   And it is only elevated by 10%.  Nonetheless, I am being sent to a special infectious disease doctor to make sure everything really is okay. 

Anyhow, we had flown in early on the 12^th, and my husband had to return to India on the afternoon of the 13^th.  Mom and I would drive him to the airport, and then head back home to Michigan.  The morning of the 13^th was awkward.  I was awaken by my husband, who told me that Mumbai, the city we had been living in for the past six months, had just been bombed in three different places. 

It was an odd feeling; I do believe my first feeling was sadness, but then very closely followed by relief for us and our friends and family that we weren’t there at the time.  Imagine that.  The ONE day my husband wasn’t in India was the day it was bombed.   Of course, today, the day I am writing this entry (well, the first draft of it, at least), the Delhi High Court was bombed, too.  So I guess it is just becoming a normal part of living in India. 

We were all slightly incredulous that my husband decided to get back on that plane a few hours later, but he did.  Mom and I, on the other hand, headed back to a wonderful home surrounded by lush green trees.    

I’ve spent the past two months in America, living at home with my parents, and I am so incredibly happy.  It is like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  I think, after all those months in India, I had completely forgotten how it feels to just be normal and happy without being so darn irascible! 

Sure, India had some benefits- my skin was never dry and my fingernails were nice and strong, but it also requires two showers a day, permanent greasy hair, and acne that sprouts up everywhere.  As I’ve never been one to enjoy painting my nails and showers, Michigan and Chicago definitely win on the weather-changing-your-skin category! 

I can drive my own car, thank goodness.  No more driver in terrifying (or stopped) traffic. 

I came home and bought short skirts.  I bought tops that showed a bit of cleavage.  It is amazing how much happier a person can be, simply by wearing clothes they deem as ‘normal for summer’.  No more jeans in 90°F weather for me!

I’ve learned to smile again, and look people in the eyes.  I spent so much time hiding from the freaky creepy men who stare at you that I forgot to just be my normal, smiley self.   No one has followed me since I’ve been back home in America!  It used to be a normal part of life in India. 

So what did I learn in India? 

As a child, my favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz.  After all of her adventures, Dorothy still just wants to go home.  Yes, she made great new friends, gets to hang out in Technicolor rather than black and white, and have fun in the city of Oz, but still, at the end, she knows that “if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

I can’t change who I am.  I am an American and Michigander and I learned that no matter where you take me, I will always have America and Michigan nearest and dearest in my heart.

There’s no place like home.  

Pocahontas Syndrome

It has been over a month since my last entry.  I’m rather ashamed to have only one entry for the entire month of July!  So much has happened in that time, including hospitalization for me, Mumbai being bombed, and my husband and I finally coming home, if only for a few weeks in his case.   

I never completed my stories of visiting Korea. Hopefully I will do that at some point, but let me summarize by saying I had a wonderful time with a wonderful family, although I am still singing this ‘ah, ah, ah’ line from a song that they sang constantly.  Well, I only heard it two or three times the entire week I was there, but that line is particularly catchy.  I’m afraid it is setting a longevity record for songs stuck in my head.  

I guess I should also do a bit of hospital foreshadowing by mentioning that in Korea I went to a lovely doctor’s home (seriously, I don’t think doctors are that pretty and young looking in America) and she stuck an IV in my arm and even managed to keep me from fainting.  Of course, once the IV was out and we were headed home, I immediately puked in their landscaped apartment building driveway.   But at least I wasn’t dehydrated since my blood was still full of saline.   I don’t know exactly what had happened to me; I only know I was sick, couldn’t eat, and had the general issues a traveler gets when headed to Asia.   It only lasted for a day or two.

When I returned from Korea my husband had his back and shoulder pains that I’ve already chronicled in the last entry.  When he was well (well, not well, but knew he couldn’t take any more time off to blissfully sleep under the influence of strong painkillers and muscle-relaxants) he headed back to Delhi and I was back to being alone in Mumbai.

That very night I started tossing and turning with a slight fever and head cold.  My armpits, a few days before, had grown large lumps in each side, and by that night they hurt so much I couldn’t keep my arms flat.  I stayed home and continued the tossing and turning, lying in front of the TV for another day until my maid, on the third day, ordered me to the hospital.   By that point, not only was I feverish, dehydrated, lumpy, weak, and had a sore throat, I also was nearly delusional from a lack of sleep.

My mom has told me, many times, that when I’m sick, everyone suffers.  I truly don’t MEAN to be that way.   But for some reason, the sicker I become, the less likely I am to sleep.  At least in this particular case.  You’ll have to ask her why I was so difficult in the past.  So if I’m not sleeping, like a good sick person, I’m whining and complaining.    This case was particularly difficult because I was alone; my husband was in Delhi.  Also my cell phone wasn’t working and kept dying.   I guess the phone was having sympathy pains for me.

My driver came and dropped me off at the hospital.  After being shuffled around for about two hours I was so weak and tired and lonely (NO one would go to the hospital alone in India- for one thing, women apparently get raped there, and for another, you need to bring at least four family members anywhere you go in this country) that I was about ready to scream or cry.  I couldn’t stand; the hospital makes you stand, stand, stand in this line and in that line to pay for appointments or tests in advance.  I would squat in the line and only stand when I reached the front of the line.  I would be so dizzy when I stood I had to close my eyes and listen instead of look at the employees.

I hated everyone there.  Wasn’t it obvious they should just shove me in a bed immediately and take care of me?  I couldn’t even stand, darn it!  Well, there was one guy I didn’t hate.  He was seated next to me and let me go in front of him for the doctor.  I think my inability to sit up straight was slightly worrisome to him.  That and the tears that kept annoyingly creeping out of the corners of my eyes. 

The doctor ordered some tests and I begged him to admit me to the hospital.  What an idiot that he didn’t do it straight away.  He sort of said, “If you want to be” and let me decide.  He didn’t event take my temperature!  (If he had, he would have discovered that I was FIVE degrees above my normal body temperature).  I totally understand how people just die in a hospital waiting room now.  

I had to go stand/squat in another few lines, and I held back my tears the best I could in the line to pay for my admittance.  I only had a debit card with a daily limit on it and I didn’t even have enough money to pay the admittance fee. At that point I was panicking, my phone still wasn’t working, and I couldn’t reach my husband to help me think.   

Only the fanciest, most expensive room in the entire hospital was available, and it wouldn’t be available for a few hours….  Eventually I reached my husband and discovered he was on his way to the airport.  He spoke with the woman in charge of rooms and she agreed that he could pay when he arrived.  Thank goodness.   I managed to relax a bit. 

In the meantime I dragged myself to another corner of the hospital for blood work and peed in a cup.  I hadn’t eaten as far as I can remember, nor had much water.

Interesting fact about me:  when I am sick I HATE drinking water (or anything), despite the fact that I normally consume about two gallons of water each day.   It is as though my body wants me to be sick and weak.  Drink water?  I’ll throw up or get a bellyache. So at any hint of a sickness I have to force myself to remember to drink water to keep from being dehydrated.  Or my husband forces me.   I guess that is why everyone suffers when I’m sick.  Someone has to stand over me and force me to even drink water.  

Anyhow, the consequence of this is NOT that I couldn’t pee in the cup.  I am always good at that! Sometimes I have to go to the bathroom twice in one movie.  No, the consequence was that I was even weaker than usual and I am quite the fainter even when I’m strong.  So I insisted on laying flat for the blood draw and had to stay down for at least a solid half hour before I finally decided I could get up without fainting.   I don’t know WHY I faint when my blood is removed from my body with a creepy tiny needle.  I just know that I do.   Anyhow, I was okay and made my way back to the admittance lady in hopes that my room was ready.   

Now, I know it is odd, but back in the day I’d be so proud of a huge bruise during softball season.  Or if I got scraped up and was missing a big chunk of skin from my leg.   I’m not sure why; it most likely means I missed a ball if I had a huge bruise, or had a terrible slide at second base if the skin was missing from my thigh.  But it was cool.  It showed I was tough, right?   So what happened next (at the hospital) is similar.  Really, I shouldn’t be proud of it at all.  It is rather pathetic, in fact.  But it makes a good story and thus I really enjoy this part of the tale.

I imagine most of you have seen an episode or two of the TV show House.  It takes place in a hospital, and the opening sequence always shows a person collapsing in a dramatic and often confusing fashion.   Well, my next few minutes were very nearly House-worthy.

My room was finally available, and a pantsuited woman arrived to show me up to my room.  Of course, she asked, as I was asked constantly throughout the day, why I was alone.  I kept assuring her and everyone else my husband was on his way.   She next offered me a wheelchair, which I declined.  I felt lousy, but I’ve managed to make it this far on my own.   All I had to do was get to an elevator.   I stood from the stool I’d claimed and followed her to my room.  After a few steps my head became dizzy; disoriented; was she now heading in another direction?  As a frequent fainter, I recognized the impending signs and quickly plopped myself onto the ground. Better I put myself there than pass out and wind up there anyway, right?  

There I was, practically in PJs, the single white woman in a puddle on the Indian hospital floor.  I ignored the people converging around me and focused on breathing and keeping my head down. Raising your head is just inviting your body to pass out.  I sort of looked around for the woman I was supposed to be following, but I couldn’t find her.  I decided I had better get up and get into my hospital bed.

The next thing I know, I’m taking a deep, gasping breath.  I can’t breathe!  Complete and utter panic takes over. I gasp for air but nothing comes.  And then someone is holding my arm and my purse and I’m staring at everyone, confused, and seeing nothing.   I’m sort of half-kneeling on the floor; did I go all the way down?  I have no idea, to be honest.  But I definitely just fainted for the umpteenth time in my life. 

This one was way better than the last time I fainted, actually.  Last time I couldn’t wake up, but knew I had to wake up.  I thought I would just die trying to wake up.   Here I was awake again before I even knew I had fainted. This fainting spell didn’t even top the most embarrassing list (that still has to be my 5^th grade Sex Ed class; I fainted when they showed us how much blood you lose while on your period.  It was just a spoonful…. And the spoon was, of course, actually a prop and empty).   So all in all, it was an easy fainting spell.

Tears were streaming down my face, and some woman, just a hospital guest, not a nurse, was holding my hand and taking care of me and being sweet.  Thank goodness she was there for me.  Everyone fluttered about, confused that I was alone.  I was put in a wheelchair, I think. Or maybe a flat rolling bed thing.  I was transferred to the casualty ward, where I should have gone three hours ago when I first arrived at the hospital.  The woman stayed with me, offering to call my husband.  The nurses bristled at her and said they could take care of me just fine, and tried to verbally shove her away.  

They took my blood pressure; still no one took my temperature.  I kept clutching the woman’s hand, but still remember trying to assure everyone I wouldn’t be alone soon.   Just four or five more hours.  Weren’t they supposed to be reassuring me, not the other way around?  Eventually the nice woman left, and I wished I had some way to contact her and thank her. 

I guess my blood pressure was okay.   Shortly (at least I think it was shortly, but to be honest this part of the story is quite fuzzy) they put me in a wheelchair and took me up to the 11^th floor.  I felt so weak, but I was determined to not faint while in the chair.  I couldn’t stop the tears from squeaking out of my scrunched up eyes, so keeping my head down was two-fold; it protected against fainting and kept the tears hidden from the orderlies.

Nurses aren’t actually called nurses.  As far as I can tell, everyone female is called ‘Sister’.  I’m not sure if all women are, since I was taken care of by many different women in different jobs, but whenever a woman was called, she was called ‘Sister’.  I was treated by our American equivalents of doctors and nurses and then people like nurses but who couldn’t put the IV in me and then also people who seemed to only have cleaning responsibilities.  But I THINK they were all called Sister.  Anyhow, the doctors (male and female) wore a white coat that is apparently the global universal sign for doctor.  The highest level of nurse wore pink (I only saw women in this role, although I did see a man in pink when my husband and I had gone to the emergency room a week earlier), the lower level of nurse wore yellow (I only saw women in this role), and the cleaning people (who were male and female) wore brown.      The people from dining had on something red.   And hair net-like caps. 

The pantsuited woman who was showing me up to my room stopped in front of a pair of double doors.  A key was produced and I sucked in my breath.  My rooms were fantastic!   I had two rooms, actually.  The first room had a couch and chairs and flat screen TV.  A bowl of fruit sat out for my many (haha) visitors.   The coffee table had newspapers scattered about.   Everything was well decorated.  A second set of double doors opened and I saw my portion of the suite.  It was also large.  So large, in fact, the twin-sized hospital bed just looked ridiculous.  You’d truly expect a double or queen sized bed in this room.  It had a blue-green couch under the window, with a view of Bandra, the sea, and plenty of goats skipping about in mud. 

Okay, more of why India really makes me confused at times.  Before I was even hooked up for an IV, or had anything done, pantsuit lady asked me to read and sign a bunch of paperwork.  Really?  I just fainted in your lobby and you want me to look at this stuff? That is your top priority?  Nice bedside manner. 

Eventually people decided to actually treat me and my temperature was taken for the first time.  Now, I’m definitely used to that nice little machine thing that my doctor at home puts in my ear.  It takes your temperature immediately, the nurse disposes of the little plastic cap, and you are done.  How nice and quick and easy.  But no, nothing is nice and quick and easy in India unless it involves a big bribe.  The Sister instead produced a regular thermometer.  I eyed it wearily, hoping she wasn’t sticking in my backside.  But she didn’t even put it in my mouth.  She went super old school and stuck it in my lump-filled armpit.   That darn think took well over a minute to read.  They took my temperature every few hours and every few hours the Sister and I would just stay still and stare at my armpit, willing it to speed up.   The temperature would be read out in degrees Celsius.  Usually I’m up for the challenge of doing math, but I wasn’t really in the mood and eventually one Sister took pity on me and changed the setting to Fahrenheit.  

My dentist in America takes my blood pressure.   It looks like a thick bracelet you wear on your wrist.  Quick, fast, no arm cuff and stethoscope.  Nope, definitely not present here.  Some of the sisters were smart, and put the thermometer in my armpit and then walked to the other arm to take my blood pressure, old-school method, while waiting for the thermometer to beep.  Other sisters did them one after the other, which seemed like an immense waste of time to me. 

The bed was definitely circa 1990, but at least it rose up and down.  

A few hours after being placed in my room they finally decided to hook me up to an IV and give me some fluids.  A few hours after that, my husband arrived and I nearly cried again, so happy to no longer be alone.  Poor guy only managed one full day of work before I called him back to Mumbai.   

I stayed at the hospital for the next five days, and he slept on that blue-green couch under the window.  I am fairly certain I drove him nuts.  

The IV was just plain painful; it was located right at the wrist so I couldn’t really bend my arm.  They had to switch it to the opposite arm every 24 hours or so because it would clog up and my wrists would swell to such proportions I was afraid they would burst and I had great big bruises on my hands.   I had track marks up and down my forearms like a drug addict.  They withdrew blood from my elbows frequently; I had great bruises, the same color as that darn musty couch, in the crook of both arms.  I still couldn’t sleep.  I was utterly miserable.

The days have since blended together, but I know that it took days before I could fully sleep.  I was having the oddest vision; everything was too crisp and too clear.  Maybe like Bella’s vision after she became a vampire in Breaking Dawn.   But I didn’t enjoy it; it scared me. 

I tested negative for malaria, negative for mono, negative for dengue fever.  No one knew what I had.   I went off the IV and got sick again.  I told my husband I was like Pocahontas; I fell in love, got dragged off to a strange country, wanted to go home, got sick, and was going to die far, far away from my family and loved ones.   Fortunately that last bit didn’t come true. 

I was basically pumped full of strong antibiotics, despite not knowing what was wrong with me.  Some hours were good, there was a mini-library and we rented a lot of movies.  Of course, my husband stole the remote control and picked our TV viewings for the week, but that was just to be expected.  

Most of the hospital food was awful; it was vegetarian only, and we were ordering the ‘continental’ food, rather than Indian food, but they frequently messed up and brought us Indian food instead.  I was sick, refused to eat it, and we’d ask for the continental instead.  I know idli doesn’t taste like anything, but I didn’t care.  I am sick and I want my darn toast and butter, even if it is toasted all wrong in India.  And I’m not dealing with those spices for the other meals.  Besides, even when I was semi-healthy (at least not in the hospital) I had given up eating Indian food and was surviving on bananas, cereal, and chocolate protein powder.   I had already discovered my body was rejecting the Indian food (something I had previously liked) much like I was rejecting the Indian culture. 

 Three times a day tea was delivered, twice a day soup was delivered, and then on top of that, three meals.  Eventually we learned we could also order food from the dining hall.  My husband and I ate a lot of cheese sandwiches after that point.  

The nurses were all very nice when in the room, but slow as anything answering that darn bell.  They didn’t hook me up to a moveable IV, and instead turned it off each time I had to go to the bathroom.  So each time it was off, they’d be slow at coming back to put it on, and my blood would clot (I guess it is good to know I am a fast clotter) and they’d have to flush the darn line.   And it HURTS to have the line flushed.  It reminded me of when I had my laser eye surgery and they washed my eyes with cold water.  It hurts like mad and there was nothing I could do.   Plus I had to urinate in this oddly shaped plastic container and let them know each time I did it.   What a lousy job, to be the Sister that had to dump that out every couple of hours.  Remember, I go to the bathroom a lot!

My other complaint was the treatment by the male doctors.   There was one female doctor, who was nice and sweet and smoothed my forehead with her hand and told the nurses they were being stupid and to give me a moveable IV.  She also talked directly to me, like I was a human being worthy of knowing what was wrong with my body.  But the male doctors?  They’d call my husband out to the other room, talk to him, and leave when it came time to actually discuss my test results!  They didn’t tell me the specifics of what was occurring!  The younger resident would talk to me, but talked to me like I was an idiot rather than someone who could clearly understand some basic science.   It was so degrading to not even be told what was wrong with me. I mean, sure, I trust my husband to tell me, but he isn’t exactly known for being verbose.  Lord knows what he skipped telling me that he thought was unimportant.  I, of course, want to know every single detail!  

It just so happens that I was admitted to the hospital a week before I was scheduled to go home for a mid-year vacation.   As my days in the hospital increased, the twitchier I became.  No way was I missing my flight for a mere undiagnosed disease that was slightly improving.  At least, I no longer had a fever.   And those armpit lumps were basically gone.   I could successfully walk down the hall for a few minutes.  I was ready to go! 

We checked out after five days and my driver came to pick us up.  He was strangely quiet, and I realized, about halfway home, that he was crying, apparently out of relief that I was okay and out of the hospital.   With movie-perfect timing, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ came on the radio and I laughed and told him to obey the song.

 We drove home, and I spent the next day haphazardly packing so I’d be ready to head back to the US of A.  

The hospital souvenirs were a big bag of receipts, some x-rays of my lungs and sinuses, test reports, a stack of drugs, cream for my armpits, and this terrible awful gurgle stuff that I haven’t used but once.

Casualty, Cousin, and Clubbing

This week (which immediately, in real time, follows my Korea trip, which I haven’t posted in blog-time yet) has been very long and boring and tedious with very brief hours of fun activity.  Multiple hospital trips describe the former and two visitors comprise the latter. 

On Saturday (a week ago) my husband woke with intense pain in his left shoulder and his arm, and especially hand, felt completely numb.   Needless to say, he was worried.   But I wasn’t.  I had the same experience back in 2008. 

In 2008 I woke in the middle of the night with the oddest feeling; my left arm was asleep and about to wake up (that intense tingling feeling you get when your foot wakes up) but it didn’t wake up.   Being me; I panicked, thinking I was having a stroke. I’m pretty sure arm pain is a sign of a heart attack, not a stroke, and a sign, moreover, for men, not women.  But I was terrified and not thinking about anything except Claudia’s grandma who had a stroke in the Baby-Sitters Club.  I vaguely feel like half her body was paralyzed.  Maybe it was the left half and it left vestigial memories deep in my brain that were only awoken with middle-of-the night arm panic.  

Anyhow, I was wide-awake and afraid to go to sleep.  More medical confusion, I suppose. It is the concussion where you can’t sleep… I decided to write instead.  I grabbed a notebook and wrote stuff like, “3:27 am.  I think I am having a stroke” and “3:30 am. I wonder if I only think these sentences are coherent”.  Eventually daylight rolled around and I got up, showered (practically one-armed) and hopped on a plane to Cleveland.  I was going to watch my mother-in-law’s comedy show.   I arrived in the Rock and Roll City and went to the hospital.  Doctor Auntie gave me muscle relaxants and rolled a towel up to make me a neck collar.  I slept in it that night and, low and behold, my arm was feeling fine the next day.

Fast forward to India 2011 and I wasn’t too worried about my husband’s arm.  After all, I had been fine.  I tried showing him my various back tricks on the foam roller, and offered to make a neck brace, which he refused.  So he mostly slept for the weekend, although we did go out for dinner at a restaurant, which served nearly as nice pumpkin ravioli as the place in Delhi.  But the Bandra restaurant wins because you get to rub elbows with all the Bollywood stars.  Not that I recognize any of them.  But I can pretend. 

By Sunday, he was starting to worry when the pain didn’t subside (actually, I started to worry, I think he was consistently worried throughout the weekend).   Thus comes the first word of the title, “Casualty”.   You see, my husband decided it was time to go to the hospital.  I was actually a bit excited about a hospital visit.  Friend E had told me a lot about her various trips there in the past year, and we wanted to see the supposed cleanness ourselves.  

We called up our driver, who was probably thrilled, because it was a Sunday and thus he earned an extra $10 for driving us on his day off.  We pulled up the Casualty door and walked inside.   I know it is just a bit of nomenclature, but somehow walking into a door that says ‘Emergency’ sounds a lot safer than walking through a door that says ‘Casualty’. 

Now, I don’t know what Friend E was looking at, but the casualty center was disgusting.  The curtains to our little bed were thick with dust, the ceiling swirled with black and gray streaks of dust, and the vents were solid black with grime.  The light switch covers, originally white, were shaded a light gray as well, except for a small round patch that centered over the actual switch. That small patch was clearly the only part that had ever been cleaned and was a bit whiter in color.   I now understand why absolutely no photography is allowed. 

Nurses wearing hot pink scrubs placed us in the room.  Men, I mean.  The only woman I saw was in yellow scrubs.  So I thought that was a bit interesting.  My mind was quickly distracted from the color of the scrubs, however, to the sound of a woman throwing up, a lot, in the bed/space next to our little cubical.  We only had to wait fifteen minutes or so before a doctor came to help us.  

That doctor was so calm.  I really admired his demeanor.  He had people running from here to there and he still sat and listened to us and did what seemed like to me a very thorough check-up.  He spoke clearly, too, but the only treatment he gave my husband was a painkiller and the advice to come back the next day during normal hours. 

Cost?   Free

A few hours later, after midnight, started the second part of the title, ‘Cousin’.   Cousin A was flying in, for one day, to visit before he flew off to see family in the Bangalore area.  I traveled to the airport to pick him up.  It took forever for his plane to land, or go through customs, or something.  The TV monitor showing his flight (‘now landed’, ‘now at baggage claim’) had completely wiped off the board, and the flight behind it was gone, too.  I had just began to wonder when I could leave if he had missed his flight when he showed up.  We drove back home and chatted a bit with my husband, who was wide-awake after sleeping for practically two days straight.  

The next morning, Monday, my husband and I woke, left Cousin A asleep, and went back to the hospital.  I don’t want to bore you, but suffice to say, his arm did not improve over the night and we went to the hospital for trips on Sunday night, Monday morning, Thursday morning, Friday morning, Saturday morning, and again on Monday afternoon.  

On Monday (the first Monday) we were eventually ushered (well we were told to wait outside but went into the empty office anyway) into an office that had me laughing.  Inside was a giant silkscreen wall hanging of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.  But, much like ancient Popes and Victorian era prudes editing away at ancient Greek statues, a bright red fig leaf (fake) had been pinned to cover him up as though the poor Vitruvian Man had eaten forbidden fruit and become ashamed.  

The doctor, I do have to describe a bit.  He was visibly burned.  His left hand still had spidery scars decorating the surface and his right side of the face was melted like smooth plastic. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone with such burns up close; I felt awful, but it was hard not to stare.  He wore sunglasses; either to protect his left eye or cover up his right, which I think might have been missing.  I wonder what had happened to him to cause such disfigurement. It must have been horrifyingly painful.  His attire, however, had me laughing.  We ended up seeing him both Monday and Friday.  He wore the same pinkish-orange tie on both days (I really liked the color of it), but on Monday he wore a gold safety pin beneath the tie, at the neck.  I guess connecting the collar together.  I am fairly certain it was a purposeful decoration, not a button replacement, which is why I found it intriguing.  But it was missing on Friday.  

Anyhow, he gave us a list of drugs to take and yoga to learn and we headed back home.   

Cost?  About $15 for the appointment and $10 for the three different drugs

Cousin A had just woken and we treated him to a big bowl of imported breakfast cereals.  Yum!  My husband took some of his drugs and promptly fell into a deep delirious sleep.  I went to check on him occasionally; once, fully asleep, he pulled me down, gave me a huge kiss, and then ordered me to do a bunch of consultant-type things that I didn’t even understand the meaning of, much less know how to do them.   He was out for the entire day except for when I forced him awake to drink water or eat dinner.  He was pretty much like that for the entire week although his brain was less fried as the week went on. 

Back in the living room the two awake occupants, Cousin A and myself, were entertained by playing cribbage and chatting about evolution and books.  We were waiting for a repair guy, whom my maid assured me would arrive at 12:30 but didn’t show up until 2:00.   I guess I could have had a fourth title, ‘Crappy appliances’, but it sounds sort of crass.  Besides the washing machine, the air-conditioner and landline phone also broke this week.   The handle of a pan broke, too, now that I think about it.   Not a good week for appliances.  

Eventually the repairman arrived, gave us a new washing machine door, and simultaneously my husband woke long enough to move from the bed to a chair in the living room before basically zonking out again.   Cousin A and I took the opportunity to drive downtown while my husband ‘watched’ the repairman.  

My driver was operating on zero hours of sleep.  Sure, we didn’t get in from the airport until maybe 3:00 am, and sure, my husband and I went to the hospital at 9:00 am the next day, but what happened during those extra six hours?  It turns out his friend, Driver A, lost his mother.  Or, as my driver described it, “she is out” and waved his hands like an umpire indicating the player is safe at home plate, which I found rather confusing and didn’t realize she had died until hours later when he broached the subject again.  Muslims here have to wake up super early and bury/carry (not sure which) the dead at 5:00 am.  I don’t understand if there is a certain rule about it or not but my driver always tells me it happens early in the morning, 4:00 am or so.  The rules in India are weird; my driver, being a driver, was allowed to drive the ambulance to carry the body somewhere or other….

Driver A is a nice guy, so I felt bad for him.  I’ve seen him around town; he has an awesome yellow motorbike and his face is round and cheerful, sort of like how you’d imagine an Indian Santa Claus.

So there we were, after 2:00 pm, heading downtown.  Cousin A is the easiest person (as opposed to my sister and husband, who are the most difficult people) on earth to shop with.  He wanted funny t-shirts, cheap sunglasses, and new flip-flops (his breaking at the airport the moment he checked his bag and no longer had spare shoes in his possession).  We went to the Colaba Causeway and Bata, an Indian shoe store.   He got his t-shirt at the very first t-shirt vendor and his sunglasses at the first sunglass vendor.  But he was pickier about the shoes.  We went to a few stores for those.  

We grabbed a quick cup of coffee (mine had ice cream in it!) and headed back to Bandra to beat the traffic rush.  My husband was still sound asleep so we walked along the Arabian Sea for a bit before heading home to wake him for dinner.  

We went to the Hard Rock Café.  Sure, it was Cousin A’s first day in India, but he knew he’d be eating all veg in Bangalore for the rest of the week and was game for some solid foods.  My husband hadn’t been to the HRC yet, so it was a good trip for all of us, though the drive was awful for my poor husband’s back and his brain was still foggy from the drugs. 

We all ordered various chicken dishes and Cousin A declared that his Kingfisher Ultra tasted like domestic American beer.  Probably not a good sign.  I had a fruity rum concoction that was terrible.  My husband had water, of course.  And more drugs.   The music was canned and made me miss America even more than usual.  

We headed home.  The next morning Cousin A was scheduled to leave and his jet lag caught up with him and he was asleep, sitting up, on our couch by 10:00 pm. 

On Tuesday my husband woke up, took his painkillers, and went back to his creepy sleep that scared me and I continued throughout the day to check and make sure he was still breathing.  I took Cousin A to the airport, and en route, we learned, again, that my driver had yet another sleepless night.

Driver A’s wife, only 28, died the day before.  His mother one day, his wife the next.  Can you imagine how awful that would be?  She died of typhoid.  I vaguely remember laughing about that vaccine. Who gets typhoid today?  I am not laughing now. 

Bad things happen in threes.   So my driver lost two friends to death.  His third problem?   On Saturday (the second Saturday) he told me his son had ‘fever in the legs’.  I didn’t at all understand what that meant, but he eventually told me the doctors think he might have malaria.  But by Monday it turns out it was a false alarm and his son was fine.  Thank goodness.    

After dropping Cousin A off the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday blurred together.  I have a vague recollection of watching a lot of The X-Files while playing solitary (I never won) and waking my husband up frequently to drink water.  I also gave him massages twice a day with some prescribed ointment.  For anyone else, massages twice a day would be a godsend, but my husband actually hates massages so it is roughly equivalent to torture for him. 

By Thursday the sleepy feeling in my husband’s hand was still exactly the same and he decided he wanted to go back to the hospital and get more help.  We planned to leave that morning, but his drug-induced sleep made it impossible to get him out of bed, coupled with a work phone call that never happen had us arriving at the hospital much later; around 2:00 pm or so.  

We were told no one was available.   The hospital is weird.  We had to go to a certain clinic (ODP or OPD or something like that) and ask for an appointment.  They said no one was available, and that we can only schedule an appointment by calling our doctor and personally scheduling one with him.  Of course, the doctor doesn’t answer his cell phone. I had tried calling him on Tuesday, in fact, and he never answered.  So how the heck can you make an appointment?

Eventually we went back down to the Casualty ward and the doctors sitting there (who clearly had no desire to treat my husband) got on the phone to the secretary of our previous doctor.  We got an appointment for Friday, the next day.  But the two doctors also told us that more OPD doctors would arrive at the hospital by 4:00 pm.  So why couldn’t the secretaries in the OPD clinic tell us that?  Just worthless, I tell you.  It was so frustrating.  So we returned home for an hour and a half and came back to the hospital at 4:00 pm.

The first doctor we saw was focused on drugs and yoga.  The second doctor had us get an X-ray, focused on even more drugs, but also ordered some physical therapy and a collar for my husband.  We went back across the hospital lobby, down a flight of stairs, through a parking garage that smelled like a dumpster and into the basement PT area.   We got him into an appointment right away.  It was nothing more than an ultrasound heating pad.  No exercises or stretches. 

I do have to say the restrooms at the hospital were awful.  There was no hand dryer, no paper towel, nothing.   So I had to (1) dry my hands on my pants and (2) touch the bare doorknob.  Gross.  Who knows what germs are all over that doorknob?  

Cost?  About $15 for the appointment, $3 for the PT, and $10 for the x-ray.   More drugs (including the collar) for about $20

We returned home on Thursday frustrated.   My husband was still no better, and why on earth wasn’t an x-ray ordered days ago?  He slept that night in the collar.  It reminded me so much of my 2008 neck issues!  

The next morning we arose early and went to his second PT session.  This time he learned a few exercises to strengthen his neck and align his posture as well have the ultrasound heating pad.  

After the PT we settled down for a long wait. We had an appointment scheduled with our first doctor (the burn victim), but not for an hour and a half, which really meant well over two hours before we saw him.  He of course said the exact opposite as the Thursday doctor, told us to ignore the medicines the Thursday doctor told us to use, said the collar was useless, and said the x-rays were fine (when the Thursday doctor said they showed irregular curvature in his neck).  

So as frustrating as Thursday was, Friday was worse.  Just as long, and now completely conflicting advice as for what to do for his hand. 

Cost?  The longer PT session was now up to about $8, and the doctor’s appointment we never paid for…. payment is weird here.  We just handed the second doctor a wad of cash….

Friday did have one fun moment, the third and final title, ‘clubbing’.   Can you believe that we have not even once just gone out for fun?  Sure, we have gone out for dinner, and we went to a company party once or twice.  But never just gone out to dance or drink.   A mutual friend was in town and after a nice dinner (and exchange of granola bars, thanks!) in Bandra we headed over to a third friend’s house (they all went to business school together) and then we checked out the club Trilogy. 

I have to say I was disappointed with the crowd, hours, and cost, but the actual club itself was super cool.  The crowd was on the dance floor, but no one was dancing, just standing.   The hours?  It was supposed to close at 1:30 (anyone who claims Mumbai is the New York of India is an idiot) but they gave us the boot by 1:15 am.   And the cost was over $20 to get in (1000 rupees), despite the fact we were there for less than an hour.  

Less than an hour was good for my husband; he was still on a water-only diet and preferred laying to sitting, as his back was still bad.   So it was good, for him, to get out of there quickly.   Lucky for him, however, he happened, at the bar, to randomly (how on earth does this happen?!) run into some guys he had already known back in Boston.  So he stayed occupied.  

The club was very clean, thank goodness.  In fact, it was really cool.  You enter on the first level, which was basically empty.  I tried raspberry vodka for the first time and I have to say it was absolutely delightful.   There are a lot of couches to sit on, and little stands with pop in them.  Employees stood around with laser pointers.  That part was weird.  As far as I can tell, they’d just turn them on occasionally to make long green lights in the air.  Anyhow, you take a flight of red glitter stairs up to the dance floor.  It was a good size, and had a great ceiling.  Hundreds of cubes were hanging from the ceiling and flashing in different colors.  The walls were silver with a cubic texture.   It is hard to describe, but trust me, it was quite cool looking.  The music was a bit odd; they played some American songs that have no right in a club because you clearly couldn’t dance to them and left our party scratching our head but some of the music was okay.  

Half the Indian women were wearing 4-inch heels, but they looked ridiculous and slouchy because they obviously had no idea how to walk in them.  I am the same way; no way could I walk in big heels.  SO I DON’T WEAR THEM.  So that was a bit amusing.   Because it was only the filthy rich who could attend someplace like this ($20 is 12% of my maid’s monthly wages, and she is way overpaid) everyone was healthy and not shrunken in height from malnourishment and for once I didn’t tower over the general population.   With money (in India) must also come manners because the males in the bar (despite probably being drunk) were just normal human beings, not creepy guys with staring problems.  

All in all, maybe if we’d been going out to fun places with fun people more often and I spent less time on the streets with the creepy guys trying to cheat us, maybe I’d have liked living in India a bit more. Maybe. 

Anyhow, the next day was Saturday and July 4^th weekend.  My husband continued to sleep a lot; we went back to watching way too much TV.  I made a fabulous apple pie and we spent the rest of the weekend eating it.  

Monday morning my husband woke, decided he wasn’t going back to work, and promptly asked me to make him another PT appointment before falling back into his drug-induced near coma.  They gave him shock therapy.  It scared me and I almost fainted.  I think it scared him, too, because he was really jumpy with all those electrodes attached to him.   It reminded me of the shock treatment therapy from the turn of the century.  But I hope it worked. 

After the PT we had massages.  We went to a Thai massage place as I have exhausted the Indian places for massages and they are all awful.  A Thai massage is a lot of stretching and acupuncture and this tiny little woman literally crawls all over your body and uses her weight for the pressure points.  I loved mine (my knee pain always goes away completely!).  Sandeep declined a Thai massage and went for a back massage.  He wasn’t too impressed with his.  Standard behavior and responses from the pair of us.  He decided to fly back to work and I’m excited to start packing for my trip home!

As soon as my husband and his various ailments left, I had new ones appear.  It had been about two days of feeling healthy for me, so I was overdue to feel sick again.   I have a sore throat (probably due to the near constant drainage of my sinuses since arriving in India) and weird lymph nodes in my armpits.  They are so swollen (both sides!) that it hurts to put my arms down.  Maybe I should go to the casualty section myself!

Mosquito Bites

I sincerely hope that every child in America (well, the English-speaking world) has read Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar.  For those of you who grew up under a rock, or in a foreign country, they are short stories about school children in a crazy 30-floor school. It is sideways because it was supposed to be one floor with thirty classrooms, not thirty floors with one classroom each.  Builder’s mistake.  Of course, there was no 19^th floor. Mrs. Zarves teaches the class on the 19^th floor.  There is no Mrs. Zarves.   I still find myself thinking about the various stories now, even years later.  I’m fairly certain I can still quote (or misquote as it may be) significant portions of the books.  It was that good. 

One of my favorite chapters, of course, included a story about ice cream.  Each character had their own ice cream flavor.  By that, I mean, if I gave you a scoop of Emily ice cream, you would look at it, and say, ‘this tastes like Emily’ and know exactly why. I always wondered what flavor I would be….  The mean kids tasted bad, so I always hoped I could prove I was a good kid by the flavor that tastes like me.  But of course, you can’t taste your own flavor.  It tastes like nothing.  Another chapter consisted of a kid who could count every single hair on his head!  I would always try and quit.  I don’t see how you could even do it to yourself.   Someone else would have to do it for you. 

Anyhow, this morning (and this entry takes place, time wise, within the entry Back in Delhi),and so many other mornings before, as I was brushing my hair and wondering how many strands were on the brush, another story was stuck in my mind.  The students were learning math, and one of the students couldn’t do it.  She was too busy scratching at her itchy mosquito bites. 

The story progresses such that the teacher magically knows how many bites are on each limb of the itchy kid.  So they do math to add up the number of mosquito bites and the bites are turned into numbers.    At the end, she was so busy having fun doing math, none of them itched anymore. 

One of the best book lines comes at the end of that chapter (paraphrasing and probably slightly misquoting) “I’m glad we were doing math; I could never spell mosquito.”  I definitely remember mosquito being in italics, and being confused as to the reasoning of the italics.  Maybe it was the first time I saw italics.  The funny part, besides the line itself, was that I still couldn’t spell mosquito, and I thought that it just looked like a funny word.  Like moustache.  I always thought that was pronounced ‘mouse tach E’ and confused people, I am sure, whenever we played that awesome board game “Guess Who?” and actually used the little game cards rather than making up our own questions. 

Anyhow, back to the massive amounts of mosquitoes bites.   I’m sitting in a hotel in Delhi (a different one, this one is much better than the last one), and after my shower, I realized I look like I have the chicken pox.

Honestly, I don’t actually remember what I looked like when I had the pox.  I was too busy scratching myself.  But I currently have so many bites and bite scars that I am covered in little tiny red and brown circles.  Between the bites and moles (thanks for that bit of genetics, dad), I looked just like an infected kid.  Spotty (in the American sense, not in the British acne sense) all over. 

 I was at a hotel near the airport, well over a month ago, and was attacked by massive mutant (well, probably not really mutants, but who knows) mosquitoes. I was wearing a dress, and they covered my legs.   They were incredibly itchy, and I still have slightly purple welts covering my legs as a result.  They are about the size of a dime.   Late last week I suddenly noticed new bites covering my torso.  Not my arms, or any exposed part of my body.  But they must have actually been flying around in my shirt.    I even have one smack in the middle of my armpit, which is really something when that one starts to itch.   Maybe I have fleas.  Who knows?

Anyhow, I’m either becoming immune, or the later bites are from babies, because I’m doing a better job of not scratching them until they bleed.  Especially the ones that I can’t see.   Still, I look like a seven-year old kid with the chicken pox.  Yeah for me.  

Censorship and Movie Theatres OR The Hangover, Parts I & II

I like giving the blog entries Rocky and Bullwinkle-like titles.  As a child, I was always so confused that the episodes would have two titles.   Was I supposed to pick one?  Would there be a quiz after the episode, and I would have to figure out which title was ‘real’?  How was I supposed to know?  Both seemed to fit to me!  Or, more likely, I didn’t understand the titles at all and neither title made sense…. These were the things I worried about as a child.  Life was way easier then.  No worries about Pakistan knocking at your door.  

My husband and I decided to go to the movies a few weeks back.  It was our second time going, and we like to go to a massive movie theatre that puts every single theater in America to shame.   We were going to see The Hangover Part II, and to prep myself I rented The Hangover on the night before.

I’m glad I had the movie, because the massive storm would have kept the satellite down, anyway (for those of you confused with my lateness in blog writing, that puts this entry, time-wise, right after those “It is raining” entries). 

So I started to watch the movie, ready to sit back and laugh.  Except it wasn’t the movie!  It was CENSORED.   Such a dirty, bad word to Americans.  I was so upset.  Why do they even let people watch the movie here if they cut sections out?  I guess that I’ve heard of such things, but I think of censorship in the modern day as something that happens in China when people do Google searches.  I didn’t know it would happen with a movie rental in India.  Two scenes that I definitely noticed missing were the scenes where Heather Graham is feeding her baby, and the fight scene when Ken Jeong jumps out of the car trunk.  Maybe there were more that I didn’t explicitly notice were missing. 

Now, I only recall a few cases of censorships  (to use that term very loosely) that I distinctly remember being angry about in America.  That masterpiece set of books, His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman, is censored in America.  The first book, The Northern Lights (edited to The Golden Compass in the US) has some scenes, deemed too ‘adult’ cut out in the American version.   I think this really angers me because I haven’t read the real version.  

Just like I still haven’t read all of the real Nancy Drew books.  Did you know that the earlier books were all rewritten, starting in 1959? It is a pain in the butt to find the originals.  There is a publisher, selling them for about $30 a pop, but check your book- if it has 20 chapters, it is a re-write.  The originals had 25. I keep a detailed list of those books, so that each time I go to a garage sale I find the real ones.   Not exactly censorship, but annoying. 

Plus all the ‘Americanizing’ of the Harry Potter books really frustrates me, but I think it is common knowledge that it is done and easy enough to get the British copies.   But it wasn’t exactly censorship; the majority of it was just changing ‘telly’ to ‘television’ and so on.  As if part of the fun of reading Roald Dahl wasn’t the use of (to Americans) funny words.  Apparently the American book industry thinks we’ve gotten dumber since Dahl and can’t handle the British English. 

Oh, yeah.  America also censors all of the Degrassi TV shows (A Canadian show), and won’t even show the episode where Manny gets an abortion.

Anyhow, censorship is annoying and controlling and upsets me.    It should have, at the very least, made some statement how this is an incomplete version of the movie; parts deemed inappropriate for the Indian audience were removed.  That way the public knows they are being cheated, at least.  But it seems wrong and backhanded to not inform the public that they are getting a watered-down version of the movie.  

The country is lately obsessed with editing the contents of the television.  Now, at the bottom of TV episodes (which are already edited), a running marquee bar gives a number to call/email if you find the contents of the program inappropriate. 

So after my anger watching the edited version of The Hangover, my husband and I went to watch The Hangover Part II at the fancy pants movie theatre. 

The theatre is spectacular.   The squashy purple chairs are exactly how Dumbledore would design movie chairs. They are big and comfy and even recline.  The stadium seating is very good; no one ever blocks your vision.   You can buy your seat in advance, so there is no reason to get there early to pick out the perfect seat before someone else takes it. 

It was cheap, too. We bought the ‘normal’ seats, and it was only $5/person.  The ‘special’ seats are just oversized versions of the ‘normal’ seats.  They are located in the back two rows.  But they were sold out, anyway. 

Now, the only bad part of about watching a movie here is the soundtrack.  It is stuck on super-duper, extra loud.  I think next time I’ll bring earplugs and listen to it. I’m sure I could still hear just fine.  After the movie my husband and I had to shout (no joke) just to hear each other.  

Interestingly enough, before the movie, everyone is asked to stand and they put an image of the Indian flag on the screen and play the national anthem, just like we do at sporting events.  I wonder why we don’t do that in the US?   Everyone is very respectful during the anthem, too, not like the annoying Americans who no longer deem it necessary to remove their cap and shut up.

Anyhow, after the anthem and previews, the movie started.  I immediately notice that Zach Galifianakis’s character has a copy of Jurassic Park in his room (my all time favorite). It is subtle, but my eyes are trained to recognize that font.   Later, at the wedding, his character uses a Jurassic Park quote, “We spared no expense.”  I’m fairly certain I was the only person in the room to catch that tiny tribute to Jurassic Park, but it made me quite happy to notice it.

What about censorship?  Well, it is hard for me to tell, since I haven’t seen the real version.   There was no nudity; the scenes where all of the male body parts are shown were all blurred.  I’m guessing they weren’t blurred in the US.  But how am I to tell?   It isn’t as though that is exactly something I want to see, but it is how the movie creators want us to see it, so it just seems so wrong to chop it up and blur their movie vision.

Anyhow, another unique thing about movies in India is that they all have intermissions.  Now, the only movie I had known to have an intermission was the Sound of Music, because all of the VHS copies I’ve ever owned still include it in the re-sale.  But that movie is long, over three hours, right?  It makes sense.   But really, it made no sense to put an intermission in a movie that was significantly less than two hours long.   Just disruptive and annoying.    At the first movie we saw, I actually started giggling out loud when the intermission started.   I really, really wonder if they do it with those 90 minute Disney movies.  

The point of the intermission is, as far as I can tell, because of the vendors. Like a baseball game in the US, vendors come into the theatre and try to convince you to buy even more junk food than the food you bought already before the movie.  Again, might make sense when the movie is over three hours long, but seems silly now.   I didn’t see a single person use the vendors; although I did see a couple of people leave during intermission and come back with popcorn. 

Anyhow, overall, we enjoy the movie-going experience, although after the movie you aren’t let back into the lobby (you have to exit the building directly) so maybe the intermission is good for bathroom breaks, at least. The movie theatre bathroom is a heck of a lot nicer than the bathroom outside of the theatre.  

Was it censored? I guess I have to go back to the US to find out….

 

Making Friends

I’m fairly certain that I am bad at making friends on my own. That isn’t to say I don’t have friends.  I just have never gone out with the purpose of making friends.  There was no need before.    

Think about it.

As a kid growing up in our small hometown, our parents had already been friends.  Some of them had even gone to school together.  So we just continue that legacy.   We were friends before kindergarten had even started (or in my case, young fives).  In college, my best friends were the people in the same residence hallway as myself.   It was hot outside and one guy had by far the best fan.  Seriously, that fan was amazingly.  It was the only room in the hallway that wasn’t 90 degrees.  Instant friendship between a hallway that lasted for all four years.  In graduate school, your friends are the other students.  You have to be friends with your softball team and officemates, right?  So truly, it wasn’t until I moved to India that I had to learn how to make friends from scratch.   I’m terrible at it.

My first friend (Friend E) that I made was actually arranged by our parents, back in Michigan.  So again, not my work at all.   My second friend, Friend N, began our friendship via an e-mail inquiring in to the history of my last name.   So I’m still a big fat zero on making friends by my own initiative.  I have friends; I just didn’t make them on my own. I tried, a bit.  I invited a teacher friend to dinner; she refused.  I joined an expat group; I didn’t find anything in common.  I tried to do coffee with a girl a couple of times, it never happened.   Am I just bad at making friends? 

My first friend has since moved; I mentioned her in a few blogs: Coincidences, The Hamburger Hangover, and briefly in Back in Delhi.  She, her husband, and her housemates were a lot of fun but are now back in the good old US of A. 

Our very last adventure together was great.  She finally got me on a train.  I cheated a bit, and had my driver drop us off at the train station.  It was a Friday and so we had to dodged our way around praying Muslims (Friday is their holy day) and pushed ourselves to the ticket line.  I asked if we were riding 1^st class; it was only a dollar or so.  She scoffed and told me I could handle the 5 rupee 2^nd class train car. 

Now, I’ve been on plenty of trains before; I commuted to school on the Metra Electric line for many years, and always take Amtrak or NICTD home to Michigan.  Of course, when visiting friends in Chicago I’d use all aspects of the CTA, including the L lines.  So I figured I could handle this train.  But what I didn’t expect was how nice it was!

Now, Friend E picked a good, mid-day, no rush hour time to ride the train.  In India, there are also female only cars, so we didn’t have to interact with the creepy eyes of the male portion of the population.  We climbed aboard our car.  It wasn’t too full.  Maybe there wasn’t a seat available, but there was still (in Indian terms) plenty of space. 

The car had open windows that generated a great breeze while the train moved.  The blue seats were bench style and occupied by women clad in saris and salwar kameezes.  The women in jeans were standing.  Just like riding the Red Line at night in Chicago, vendors walk through the train selling items such has barrettes.  One woman had a basket of rags/scarves plopped on the floor to buy. 

I didn’t see any trash, which was shocking given that trash is everywhere in India, but even more shocking was the lack of smell.  I’ve been on an awful lot of trains and I’d say the usual odor of a full train is a nice mixture of urine and body odor.  But neither was present, so we just leaned back, made fish faces at a cute little kid, and enjoyed the breeze. 

We got off a half hour or less later.  We wandered around downtown, window-shopping our way to the Colaba Causeway.  We were shopping for gifts for Friend E to take home.  We looked at beautiful old signs and photos of Mumbai back when it was Bombay and before the invention of such newfangled things as cars.  Eventually we reached the crowded Causeway and began bargaining for deals.  She is much, much better at it than me.   

In the end, I got a beautiful multi-colored scarf, which began unraveling immediately upon wearing; a wrap skirt decorated with rhinos and elephants that had ties that were too small to wear it properly; and a long dress/shirt that bled upon hand-washing for the first time.  I think I’m going to stick to clothing items that cost more than $2 next time I go shopping…  Despite the later troubles with my items (no word on whether her gifts were appreciated) we had a great time and eventually stopped at McDonald’s for a snack. 

It was my first time in McDonald’s India, so I was eager to try it out.  We walked up to the restaurant, which was on the second floor of a building, found ourselves some paper crowns, and ordered from employees clad in McDonald’s backpacks.  We ordered the potato wedges; her because she liked them and me because I’d never had potato wedges from McDonald’s before.  They were pretty good. 

I, of course, am constantly desirous of ice cream and chocolately things, so we went back down the stairs to the ground level to order ice cream.   I got a sundae with brownie and chocolate sauce.  Yum!  Friend E is only the second person in the history of human beings to not like chocolate, the first person being, oddly enough, the guy with the amazing fan from the second paragraph above.  She went to the same college, lived in the same dorm, and also liked the chicken broccoli bake in the cafeteria…. coincidence?  Needless to say, she didn’t get a sundae. 

We continued on our merry way; my driver came down to pick us up and take us to each adventure; we went to exchange some of her books and exchange a baby shower gift our friend K had been given.   We were stuck squarely in rush hour traffic on the return ride home (I guess we should have taken the train both ways, but it was monsoon season so it seems like a good idea to have a car) but chatted happily until we reached Bandra.

That weekend we did one more couple’s dinner, complete with homemade chapatti making, before they left.  But not before Friend J, Friend E’s husband, showed me how to remove the fuel from the awesome gun lighter I had bought my dad as a father’s day gift.  Thanks, Friend J!  Now I can finally get those home safely. 

Friend E and I had only met in March or so and she was gone in a couple of months.  But a month or so before she left I had made my second friend, Friend N.   Friend N is fascinating.  Originally born in Iran she is now an American citizen who met her Indian-soon-to-be husband in the US.  The first time we went out we met for coffee.  We both ordered desserts instead of coffee.  Match made in heaven.  We ended up talking for hours and even have matching cell phones (somehow that seems important). 

Friend N and I next had a massage date. We went to Aroma Thai, which gives the most amazing massages.  It focuses on your feet, but our 90 minutes massage was from head-to-toe and definitely included the best back massage I have had since arriving in India. 

Friend N and I kept up a constant stream of chatter throughout the 90 minutes.  We are both good talkers and it was great to just chat about life with her.  She is going through the process of marrying an India, much like I went through the process of marrying an American with Indian-born parents, so we can really relate, although it was much, much easier for me.  I just had to deal with relatives in two countries (USA & India) and she has family around the globe. 

After our massages we went for the longest lunch break in the history of my life, chatting for hours over mango salads and dim sum.  For how long did we enjoy ourselves?  I drank two liters of water during that lunch.  Eventually we realized we had to go, but our next lunch date is tomorrow. 

Maybe I haven’t done a good job of making friends, as my mom started friendship one and Friend N completely initiated friendship two, but I really have enjoyed both friendships and I hope that I am better at keeping friends than making them!