1.
A trip to India begins in the plane: almost all Indians, turbaned men and tons of kids, my seat neighbors a mom with her young daughter who sleeps in the middle as mom keeps badgering the flight attendant for “raw milk that’s heated” and the little girl thrashes about, getting comfy, tiny feet and legs stretched out on my lap, nothing as comforting as toddler’s heft, I don’t even try to move her, and we all conk out until the girl startles awake and accidently ninja kicks me in the stomach.
But much later, after all the wailing subsides, we’re flying over Pakistan late at night and this same girl is drawing with perfect serenity, the bright moon framed in the window, covering her black hair and brown skin with a bluish lunar light that makes her look either angelic or radioactive.
Night highways of Delhi a flurry of high-speed swerving and non-stop honking, small sedans and scooters jostling for position around packed busses crammed full of swelting people, and a woman clings to her man as they zip through a crack of traffic on their motorbike, her sari billowing out behind roguishly, almost like a taunt.
2.
Human bodies everywhere in Delhi, filthy kids clutching my arm and begging with pitiful faces, severe-looking men jostling me out of the way, pungent armpit odors, and an alertness needed in the streets, no fucking around here, you will get run over.
A thick air pollution haze that never lifts, you can taste it on your tongue, slightly metallic, an ozone flavor.
Spicy curries and garlic butter naans unbeatable, and tiny cups of chai, creamy and milky, strong ginger spice, a little sweet. Or cold lime soda with salt as you catch your breath, wipe the sweat from your face, except the sweat never stops—it soaks all clothing and drips into the eyes, making them bloodshot.
Delhi is overly strained, a messy polluted city with a ripe fecundity to the air, fleshy chaos, high reproduction rates—new humans just keep coming even though the city seems sucked dry of resources, maxed out density-wise, on the verge of imploding.
3.
Industrial zones humming on the outskirts of Delhi towards Jaipur, all the major players—Google, Apple, 3M, massive factories pumping out glass and chemicals, but also sacred cows meandering in the medians, slack skinned, dusty tails flicking, nosing through the trash, utterly indifferent to the corporate productivity bustling nearby.
Dark brown women in colorful saris balancing goods on their heads in the heat and dust, a severe July sun blasting down, making their faces look tortured while small monkeys lounge on concrete walls, grooming in the shade, and outside of gas stations half naked men bathing by dousing themselves with plastic scoopfuls of precious water.
Walking with a group of white Australian girls and the Indian boys flip out, openly gawking and shouting out hellos, an electric sexuality crackles in the night, blonde hair casts a spell, lighting up urges in the Indian boy brain.
4.
In the past, whenever I’d read about thousands of people in India getting trampled to death at a religious event, it made zero sense. How does that happen? How do people become so unruly, so densely packed together, that mass scale death is even possible? Now I understand it—there’s a momentum to the way humans move in India that you can’t just sidestep and exit. When you’re in it you’re in it, locked inside the human swarm, moving fast, heart pumping, don’t stumble or lose your footing, you could get flattened out, smashed into the pavement.
Visited the ancient royal palace in Jaipur, and if you dissolve the tourists with your imagination, a wispy picture materializes: all the king’s wives in the opulent garden losing their minds, opium high, never allowed to leave, vying for status, jealousy so thick they poison each other’s tea.
Indian schoolchildren seem so much more driven than our Tic Tok anxiety-riddled youth—they ride the subways in preppy British uniforms, and I’ve seen a few with textbooks cracked during their commutes, tuning out distractions with impressive focus. But with a population of 1.4 billion that keeps booming, the numbers aren’t in their favor: so much rides on their raw exam scores to slide into stable careers that some have resorted to cheating, though too many perfect scores have raised alarms, triggering investigations, causing those hungry ambitious kids who get caught to be fucked for life unless dad can erase the stain with significant bribes.
5.
India is still a functioning democracy, backsliding like everyone else, and Modi has just won his third consecutive five-year term, his image omnipresent—cropped beard, Nehru jacket, avuncular smile, the Hindu father figure of this vast nation.
Nearing the village of Karauli, we pass a “Frozen Semen Bank” and when I ask the Australian man behind me if we should donate, he shrugs without missing a beat and replies, “I’m just here to help.” Australians are my favorite people, adventurous and funny, excellent travel companions, but shocking how many of them refuse to visit the U.S., citing it’s too dangerous, we have too many guns—it sounds like they’re describing equatorial Africa.
In the village, males lounge midday in shanty huts, a malnourished look to some, cow patty smoke acrid in the nose, an eager anticipation in the atmosphere, monsoon rains preparing to unleash.
6.
Islamic men who dye their hair with henna, a pumpkin orange color that makes them look less distinguished compared to the natural gray.
Little girls with short boy haircuts, almond paste under their eyes to ward off the evil eye, black racoon rings that diminish the cuteness, aging their baby faces with a haunted air I find disturbing.
Street boys and their dirt-streaked legs, shifty eyes, bone thin arms, selling magnets or begging for chocolate, urinating off train platforms, none of them look like they’ve ever had a warm bath or been held by a mother.
My train to Orchha stops midtrip, armed guards moving down the aisle, everyone buzzing, looking out windows, our train delayed indefinitely because we smashed into eight cows, all the carcasses stuck under the train until the police find a group of sweaty men who use metal hooks to pull the dead cows off the tracks and perform a proper burial for their sacred animals.
Almost zero trash sanitation-consciousness, garbage just accumulates in the streets, small fires of plastic and food wrappers smoldering, kids playing near noxious fumes that smell deadly.
Lunch at a café run by acid attack victims. Men can buy acid with ease, and if my wife doesn’t birth a son or upsets me in even the pettiest way, a splash of acid to her face that rapidly eats away the skin, dissolving her nose, but authorities rarely punish the husband, just a light slap on the wrist for destroying my wife’s life.
7.
Attended a Hindu ceremony in a packed temple full of devoted families chanting and clapping, men spinning in circles, heavy incense perfuming the air, and I feel so far from home, but on my way out, as everyone pushes towards the exit—wet bodies, loud Hindi—an older man asks in impeccable English where I’m from and when I say the U.S. he throws up his arms and shouts, “Assassination attempt!”
Stayed in a nicer hotel with a huge pool, tropical birds alighting and chirping on the barbed wire surrounding the premises, Indian children splashing in the pool, gathered for a massive Hindu wedding, and after easing into the hot sunbaked water, all attention lasers onto me until the phones come out and we do a whole session of selfies.
Arms fatigued from swatting flies, and the holy cows in Orchha are more numerous, bovine bulks plopped down in the middle of the night, so relaxed as if they’re aware of their sanctified status, daring the frenzied traffic to kill them.
Ate alone in the hotel’s cavernous dining hall, the only diner there, and three waiters descend upon me, spreading the napkin in my lap, filling my beer cup, spooning rice into my plate. They stand around the table, watching me chew, asking every few moments how my food tastes—an overly polite creepiness to it all that’s false, tip hungry, by far one of the strangest dinners of my life.
8.
Overnight train to Allahabad, another wailing baby, deep fatigue into a bus, drift to sleep, wake at a stop and a mother is tapping my window, holding her naked baby with one hand, making eating motions with the other. I have no food and the bus moves on, another scene from the rock bottom of human existence, but of course it can drop lower—I just don’t think my heart and nervous system could handle Bangladesh.
Hindus believe the Ganges River is a direct route to heaven, so corpses and cremated bodies dumped into the water constantly, making it turgid, coffee-colored, dead human beings thickening this river.
Today on the banks of Varanasi a dead person wrapped in orange cloth, skin rubbed with clarified butter, flames leaping from head to feet, burning hot, corpse transforming into ash.
9.
Border crossing into Nepal four separate checkpoints with camouflaged military men taking hand-written log notes in binders that will end up who knows where, but minutes after the disorganized crossing, gone is the boiling hot squalor of India, replaced with dew-soaked fields and creamy orange skies, mellow water buffalo, black hair plaited down the backs of teen girls with regal posture, an evening stroll through Buddha’s birthplace, smiling young monks bowing and I bow back, feeling relaxed and clean.
Homestay in a village on the Narayani River, women planting in the vibrant green rice paddies, bare feet submerged in water. I walk from one end of the village to the other, completely ignored or people saying “namaste,” and one man invites me to see his hotel, a handful of rooms in a cement structure he built by hand, such pride, major money maker during the non-monsoon season, but during covid, he had to fling his body to first Malaysia then Saudia Arabia and Dubai for hotel work, and he describes these disruptions with carefree ease, the only thing that bothered him being in Muslim countries with black people—everything else, no big deal.
Families that have homestays work harmoniously, moms cooking, dads restlessly expanding the structure of cement and bricks, sons and daughters bringing out food, showing me video games on their phones. The thin gorgeous daughter is pregnant and early this morning she vomits with real violence, but by sunrise she emerges with a fresh white Kurta top and pure face, unblemished, this powerful image of Nepalese female beauty in the morning quiet.
10.
Mt. Everest plays such a large role in Kathmandu’s marketing—Everest Beer, Everest Bank, Everest Coffee—but on the rooftop bar, when I ask the young waiters if they have any desire to visit basecamp, they shrug no like I’ve just asked if they want to see their local library.
Stores selling knockoff North Face products and Himalaya prints, aging white hippies meandering about with shaved heads and MC Hammer pants, dropped out of the western rat race energy, loose limbed, enjoying a rebirth of sorts.
Billboards everywhere advertising college hospitality programs in Australia and New Zealand, spiffy Nepalese youth in suits, smiling career success, promises of wealth and security, prospects, but all of it seems sad, kids flinging themselves across oceans, away from their families and culture, whitewashing themselves.
Another open-air death ceremony today, this time a teen boy wrapped in orange getting his feet washed in the river by male relatives while his mom and sister stare at his body, weeping, devasted gut wails when they lift him away, carrying their boy off to the flames. I miss my aunt so much, I’m going to miss my parents so much, but there’s no avoiding loss, and as the flames overtake the boy, another body gets carried down to the water, and I stop my tears, move on.
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