humans are funny

Author: laurenne

  • Day 8: Boy scouts try to light my fire.

    Due to the pile of hate mail at my desk, I see that many of you are offended by my quoting of an Indian calling black people ‘blacks.’ Let me offer you solace by sharing that Indians are racist against everyone, including their own dark members. So stop sending letters (Just kidding. Nobody sends letters anymore, and I don’t have a desk.).

    Of course I would be racist by classifying an entire race as racist, so I shan’t do it. Even though I just did. I will just comment that it is much easier for parents to find a suitor for their fair-skinned daughters here in India. And as I write, I am also leafing through a magazine and finding ad after ad for Garnier Skin Lightener for men. One even comes with a skin spectrum that you hold against your face to chart the progress of your Michael Jackson-ifying. (Just kidding. How could I be leafing through a magazine and typing at the same time? But the skin spectrum chart and print ads do exist.)

    Despite the quest to be lighter, there is a lot of racism towards white people too, especially me, a woman traveling alone. Teenagers make jerking off motions when they pass me by. Men slow on their motorbikes to tell me about their balls. Kids have even thrown rocks at me. And hit me! Hard! It’s all because Western women are thought to be loose and devoid of morals (the same reason the Taliban wants us all to die.).

    My first overt experience occurred on Day 8:

    I meet some boy scout leaders. They take me to my first Hindu temple. They love singing and are super enthusiastic about showing me how they sing their favorite song. They offer me wonderful Indian hospitality and buy me an amazing lunch of samosas in sauce. Then, before we part, they buy me little gifts from the gift store. One is a Hindu swastika that wards off evils. Another is a keychain that says, “Love me less but love me long.” It puzzles me every time I think of it.

    I have a wonderful day, thrilled that I’ve eschewed my fear of talking to Indians. I am in India, and it is sort of necessary. Finally! The paranoia from Day 1 is forgotten like the art of chivalry. Just before we part ways, they giddily ask me one last question:
    “Before we go, Madame. Um… we were wondering if you could, um, give us sexual relations.”
    “Ummm…No. Not today.”
    “Well, isn’t sex free in your culture?”
    “Yes, but you still have to be attracted to the other person during sex.”
    “You don’t like us?”
    “What do you mean, us? You think I am just going to lay in a bed and have you come in one at a time? Are you serious?”
    “Ma’am, can you speak slower? My English is very bad.”
    “Forget it. NO SEXUAL RELATIONS!”

    I found it in my heart to still love those men. I mean, perhaps racism is just an innocent ignorance. They honestly think that Western women really have nothing to do in their countries but fuck all day long. Since they’ve only got porn to go by, I sort of see where they’re coming from. I let them off the hook and had sex with both of them. One at a time just like they suggested (Just kidding! Both at once.).

    Riiiiiiiight.

    How do you not love men who aren’t afraid to unbuckle their vocal chords?

  • Day 7: I accidentally buy drugs.

    I leave hippie town for the Himalayas. At the bus stop, a man begins the normal questioning.

    “From which country are you?”
    “USA”
    “Which place?”
    “Chicago.”
    “Oh. Lots of blacks there.”
    “Yes, there are lots of blacks, Indians, whites, Asians…”
    “Black people love cock.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Yes, In Mumbai, it’s only the blacks with cock. Lot’s of cock.”
    “Well, that is the stereotype, I guess.”
    “Yes, I know all about cock. Used to be in that business.”
    “Oh. Are you maybe talking about caulk? Like for construction?”
    “You know, caulk?”
    “Yeah. It‘s white, right?”
    “I got out of that business fast.”
    “You were in construction?”
    “600 ruppees a gram. How much is it in US?”
    “Oh! Are you talking about coke? Like, cocaine?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh.”


    THOUGHTS: I love India.

  • Day 6: Who really needs the whole 500ml?

    I decide to upgrade hotels and give myself more comfort. I really need to sleep, so I splurge for a room with a TV in hopes that the BBC will lull me to slumber. 2 hours after check-in:

    “Sir, this TV isn’t working.”
    “Oh I know.”
    “Ok, well can you fix it?”
    “No, ma’am. That TV is only in your room for storage. We didn’t have anywhere else to put it.”


    A few hours later, I order a soda water to my room.
    A boy brings me a bottle half-full (that’s right, I’m a positive girl.)

    “But it’s half full?”
    “Oh, did you want a full one?”


    THOUGHTS: I’m starting to like India. I mean, where else would this stuff happen?

  • Day 5: I develop new passion to teach Indians how to aim.

    I sweat through the sheets all night convinced I have Swine flu.

    At 8am, I get a frantic knock on my door. For a second I think it’s my fiance from day 1 coming to apologize and whisk me to his village which doesn’t have water but is surprisingly stocked with popsicles, antibiotics, and air conditioning.

    From my bed, I open the door.

    It’s an older Indian woman with a gray braid and an elaborate saree.

    “Bashal ladofjh ahdfkewp lkjp TOILET aslkjfd aoiuerh ndhfve,” she says.

    I figure she’s going to fix the toilet. Maybe I clogged it when I puked up the banana pancake.

    I wave her in and she locks herself in my bathroom.

    I hear a splushering of water.

    She nods on her way out. I fade back to delirious sleep.

    When I finally awake later, I enter the bathroom to find a smattering of poo. On the toilet seat. Dripping down the front of the bowl. And in the sink. Yes, in the sink, thanks to the old Asian I-don’t-need-toilet-paper-because-I-use-clean-water-and-my-hand technique.

    SICK!

    No, I am sick. I should be leaving poo trails, not some old lady who thinks she can hike up her saree and plop one out wherever she feels regardless of the positioning of the toilet.

    I thought to call the manager. But what would he do?

    “Hello, I swear this poo is not mine even though I am staying alone in this room and have been really sick and had to run away from your restaurant yesterday when my bodily fluids erupted from my mouth. It belongs to this old lady who has now disappeared. Anyway, can you clean it?”

    I clean up the old lady’s poo.

    I don’t sleep a wink that night because I catch a big roach under a cup, and I feel dirty because it saw me change clothes.

    THOUGHTS: Not only do I have to worry about sly swindlers, I have to worry about pesky pooers.

  • Day 4: That alien guy from Spaceballs is in my stomach.

    I become the sickest I have ever been in my whole life. Since it’s a hippie town, the only medicines in any pharmacy are herbal. Luckily I have a few days of emergency antibiotic.

    It pains me to imagine what could have made me sick.

    It might have been the fresh-squeezed street juice I drank anxiously before reading the warning about fresh-squeezed street juice in the guidebook.

    Or it could have been the Nescafe made with milk from any one of the cows I saw on the street eating matchbooks and condom wrappers.

    Whatever it was, it did me in good.

    THOUGHTS: Vomit, vomit. So, this is the India everyone warned me about. Vomit.