Then I Got Sick

I’m going to try and work hard to get this blog up to date since we’re currently doing English teaching and some of our experiences are interesting. But there’s just so much to talk about!

That pilgrimage temple, Tirupati, has been in the news in the last couple days. It seems the temple is nestled in among 7 sacred hills and if you hike all 7 hills, it’s good or something. Well, anyway, we just had 7/7/07 and lots of people decided that was a particularly auspicious date to visit the temple. Man, we thought we had it bad. Now the queue stretches 4 kilometers before you even get to the entrance of the queue facility. Keep in mind we walked straight into the queue facility, where there were metal detectors and giant auditorium rooms for sitting. They’re saying it takes 4 or 5 hours to get to the line place where we started from now! And on top of that there is nowhere, literally, nowhere, for people to stay now. All the cottages are booked up. People are sleeping in the open air. And worst of all, the receptionist people at the pilgrim amenities place have fled their post because they’re so scared to face the mob of angry pilgrims. So there’s no place to sleep and no one to help. Finally, on top of all that, all public transportation is completely booked until next Monday! The only way to escape is to hire a private driver and he can charge whatever he likes. Man, glad we went when we did!

Anyway, let’s pick up on the story. Grace left off when we were entering the train to go back to Vijaywada. That train was a sleeper car so everyone sat on benches until the bunk beds were folded down. As usual there was no air conditioning but dozens of fans on the ceiling and open windows. And, as usual, I was gawked at the whole time. I’ve since realized that the trouble is two-fold: 1) very few non-Hindus come to Tirupathi in a year and 2) almost all Westerners are probably willing to spring the extra 10 bucks to take the air conditioned train cars. So people were definitely not used to seeing me.

So lots of people wanted to talk to me and ask me who I was, where I came from, what I was doing in India. It’s kind of a sticky situation since Grace is Indian and, the truth is, the conservative don’t really think it’s acceptable for us to be married. And, as Grace said, people don’t have a lot of problem interrogating you. So one guy was grilling me and everyone else was staring at me while I answered. It was lucky that I go to Cambridge because, since it’s British and the British have a history of sorts with India, people know what it is and lay off me a bit.

Well, the train started moving and this one guy suddenly fell over and started having a seizure right there on the train car floor. Next to me a man leapt to his fit and started trying to help the man. Everyone was on their feet and saying things in Telugu. I didn’t get up but I was simultaneously thinking what to do and keeping an eye on my bags during the confusion. Eventually the seizure guy seemed to get better and he stood up and walked away. All discussion was in Telugu so I missed out.

All this Telugu was frustrating and Grace’s mom had bought Bernice a book called “Learn Telugu in 30 days.” I borrowed it and started memorizing vocabulary and getting Cousin N to quiz me on it. I figured I had another 6 or 7 weeks in India and it couldn’t hurt to know some rudimentary Telugu.

The man who had leapt to his feet to help the seizure victim overheard me and interrupted.

“No, don’t learn Telugu. Know telugu.”

This was pretty cryptic and I as worried he was going to get all mystical on me but it turned out he was a great guy, one of the famous Indian software engineers that is supposedly stealing everyone’s job. He worked for an international corporation and he had recently got back from Florida on a job. He spoke excellent English and was listening to an iPod shuffle.

So it turns out this guy was really just trying to say it was a bad idea to learn Telugu by memorizing random vocabulary. He believed I needed to understand the structure of it and to do that I had to start with the alphabet. Telugu doesn’t use the roman alphabet and there are 54 letters. He said that was how he learned English – first with the ABC’s and then understanding how words are written and pronounced and up from there.

I thought it was good advice but since I didn’t really want to put that much effort into a language spoken nowhere else in the world I figured I would probably just try to get by in English. I didn’t tell the guy this though.

By now Grace had come to sit with me, kicked out of her illegal seat (see the end of last post for Grace’s angry account of the great seating fiasco). Anyway we talked to this guy some more and he asked about our trip to Tirupati. His parents lived in the city, so that was his reason for being there. He wasn’t a pilgrim. He asked if we had eaten some traditional Tirupati food (I can’t remember the exact name) and when he found out we hadn’t he opened his duffle bag and pulled out some food. His mother had made it. He insisted we have some and explained that it was rude in India to refuse an offer of food. He also gave food to everyone else sitting nearby.

This is one really good thing about India. Strangers on a train very often start up conversations with each other to pass the time. It’s very easy for them and not a problem at all. Everywhere you look people who have never met before are sharing food and speaking to each other in Telugu. It’s very sociable and very different from the Brits.

As you know, I got sick the next day. Perhaps it was this nice man’s food that did the trick. Grace sometimes jokes that he poisoned me.

But, over food, I asked about the seizure guy, since all the conversation about him had taken place in Telugu. He replied that the man didn’t really have a seizure and was actually a thief trying to sneak on the train! He said he was faking a seizure to cause a distraction or maybe because someone had seen him sneak on the train and he wanted to avoid certain questions. Anyway, I was suddenly glad that I kept an eye on my bags during the confusion.

Well, talk wound down and Grace and I started to get the feeling that people were secretly unhappy with us sitting where we weren’t supposed to be. The two of us piled into my bunk bed, which was on top. I won’t lie it was pretty cramped. We both sat up and I listened to my iPod while Grace read. But I’m too tall to sit up properly in the top bunk of a second class train car and it wasn’t a long term solution. Fortunately the nice software engineer saw our discomfort and told me to take his empty bunk because he wouldn’t be able to sleep till 11 at least and our train pulled into Vijaywada around 11:15. I thanked the guy a lot and sank into an iPod stupor. It drowned out the noise of babies crying and people talking and the train rolling over the tracks. Grace went to sleep to escape the noise.

It was really hot up there and at the end of the hour I was a grimy mess. I also didn’t want to sleep because I was worried about thieves now. Down below Cousin N was sharing a bunk bed with a stranger women who was very obliging. But, being a kid, he was a bit oblivious and tried to lie down and, in doing so, took up more than his fair share of the bed, preventing the woman from lying down. If only we had all sat in our assigned seats we wouldn’t feel like unwanted vagabonds! Since I had a full bed to myself I offered it to Cousin N, so he would stop bothering the obliging woman. I spent the next hour walking around or perched at the very end of her bunk bed, so she could lie down.

By now it was dark and the car was quiet. We arrived in Vijaywada after 6 or 7 hours – it was a direct train. Upon departing the train we had more problems with trip organization. Since we had shown up in the middle of the night there were no taxi cabs around and we settled for riding the 1 hour journey to Uncle K’s house in Autorickshaws. Those are the three wheeled yellow vehicles I mentioned a long time ago.

I actually prefer to travel by Auto since I’m so tall and they have a high canvas top. I can usually sit up straight, which is almost never the case in a taxi. They’re a bit frightening to ride in though because they’re so small that if a bus hit them (which is not at all unlikely) it would be like a semi hitting a smart car. Still, they’re open to the air and it was a nice enough ride home.

When we got home Grace and I took Dettol bucket showers and emerged into Uncle K’s AC room feeling wonderfully scrubbed free of 6 hours accumulated grime. Fortuitously Bernice decided to sleep in Yesu’s old room tonight, trading AC for privacy. This allowed me to throw up in peace later that night.

So yes, I woke up at 3 in the morning and was sick. The first time it happened I drank some water. When I threw up the water 2 hours later I didn’t repeat that mistake.

So I woke up the next day sick. My body was working hard to get everything out of my system. I was lying in bed, sick, when the power cut out and the AC died. Fortunately it was morning and not too hot yet. Still, it was a bad way to start the day.

I contemplated eating a mango for breakfast but I was warned off the plan by somebody, I don’t know who. It was decided that I should let my system clear out until the afternoon and then maybe I could have a light lunch.

So, with a plan, I went to sleep and the power came back on. Grace was my nurse, staying with me and keeping an eye on me. I had terrible fever dreams that were made 10 times worse by my choice of iPod music the previous night on the train. My friend Austin had recommended a new CD called “Spiderman of the Rings” and I listened to it in full for the second time on the train. Normally I really like the CD but it’s really crazy music and really trippy. The next day its weird and wild melodies were floating in and out of my dreams and it was really unpleasant. I didn’t touch that CD for another 2 weeks afterwards.

When I awoke I tried to take some tea but could only manage two tiny bird sips. I was still making frequent trips to the rest room at this point. And Grace’s cousins were completely unhelpful harassing me and generally bothering me while I was sick. You see, everyone likes to hang out in the AC room during the hottest part of the day. And these kids had no sympathy.

Whatever. I felt better mid afternoon and ventured a lunch of plain white rice. This course of action sent me back to bed for another few hours but by dinnertime I felt strong enough to get up again and eat a light dinner.

By then, whatever I had was on the way out. The next day Grace’s sister and mom were leaving for the USA and we were leaving for Visakhapatnam to stay with Grace’s father’s relatives, so there was frantic packing that night. We weren’t coming back to Uncle K’s, since he had to go to work far away for the rest of the summer. We couldn’t pack everything since half our clothes were being washed but we did what we could.

Laundry in India. Some people have a washing machine. Most don’t. Here’s roughly how they do it.
1) Wet all your clothes
2) Beat the wet clothes against a rock or concrete step – whatever’s convenient.
3) Soap all your clothes
4) Beat the soapy clothes against a rock or concrete step again.
5) Rinse
6) Hang to dry!

The wet SLAP sound of a woman hitting clothes against stone is heard all over India. I hear it right now. In my free time I’m reading “A Suitable Boy,” a book about a bunch of families in India in the 1950s. They wash their clothes the same way in the book.

My 24 hour sickness passed and we went to bed.

I woke up healthy the next day and managed to eat a normal breakfast. Our clothes were still wet (it’s difficult for things to dry overnight) so we laid them out on hot concrete. When the sun came out it baked them dry in the space of an hour.

We didn’t have to leave until noon or so and most of the packing was done. Grace’s mom and sister went one last time to Vijaywada for shopping and they bought Grace some jewelry, which you now know is very important. We stayed behind, finished packing and had lunch.

Finally it was time to say our goodbyes. The taxi was here. And we had something like 10 pieces of luggage to put in it. And some of the luggage was massive. And there was no way, literally no way it would all fit with us. I think the volume of the luggage was more than the volume of the car.

Everyone refused to accept this until it was getting dangerously close that Grace and I would miss our train. Then a new course of action was decided on and a second taxi called. Grace and I hurriedly put all our luggage (two suitcases, two small backpacks and a shopping back full of toilet paper) in the car and climbed in. We had a little over an hour and it takes a little over an hour to get to the train station. Grace’s mom explained the situation to the driver and warned him “I will hold you responsible if they miss their train!”

Well, he drove fast and furiously and we made it with ten minutes to spare. That was good because we had a lot of trouble figuring out what platform we were on. Eventually we found someone who knew and we boarded our train. It ended up arriving late so we had plenty of time.

Once again we were traveling second class and once again I got shocked stares from everyone. I was determined not to face this again. I dislike riding second class mostly for the stares and attention, but the grime and dirt in the air certainly doesn’t sweeten the deal.

This was a famous train journey because you go across the longest bridge in India. It’s over a massive river. I think it’s three or four kilometers across, but I can’t be sure (on the banks people do laundry, beating their clothes against stones – like I said, you hear the wet SLAP everywhere). One of Grace’s cousins had earlier asked what the longest bridge I had ever been on was. When me and my friends drove down to the Florida Keys we went across the 7 mile bridge which goes over the ocean and out to the keys. I told Grace’s cousin about this and he was not happy. I think he wanted to impress me with the size of the bridge that lay enroute to Visakhapatnam. He declared that the 7 mile bridge didn’t count as a bridge because bridges only count when they go over rivers. He said the 7 mile bridge was just a road over the ocean. I didn’t argue, but really, c’mon. It was a nice bridge though.

This train was completely packed. People were standing everywhere because all the seats were taken. Grace and I basically sat rigid for six hours. I heard later that there was some kind of religious thing going on which accounted for the crowd.

It was a fairly dull ride, but Grace says I had a captive audience the whole way. The worst was when I guy came around selling “Mango Frooty” which is just Mango juice. Grace wanted one so I flagged him down and – gasp! – pulled out my wallet. All eyes shot over to me. The Mango Frooty was 12 rupees but I didn’t understand so I gave him a ten. He said he needed two more. Naturally the only thing I had was a 50. With every eye in the car on me I looked through my wallet and tried to explain that all I had was a 50. Eventually the guy grumbled and made change. But all eyes were on me again. Grace says they saw how much money I had in my wallet and that was what drew their attention. It was a lot by Indian standards.

Also on the train people asked me questions. I feel a little bad because I was pretty rude to one of them, answering his questions in monosyllables, but then again I felt he was being rude to me. In England and America no one, no one, would say, “What are you doing here?” “Where are you staying?” “Who are you staying with?” “Why are you here?” “Do you work for HSBC?” “What are you studying?” All in a harsh, abrupt, accusatory style. Later I read not to take it personally in a guidebook, but it’s pretty off putting.

Night approached and Grace and I were worried about missing our stop. We had no relatives to be our Shepard this time, so we had to find our stop on our own. Luckily Visakhapatnam is the second biggest city in Andhra Pradesh so we knew it when we saw it. Upon arrival we immediately saw our Uncle’s face waiting for us outside the train door. We passed out our suitcases, strapped on our backpacks and arrived in Visakhapatnam, or Vizag for short.