India's Gift

WARNING: If you have problems with images or talk of diarrhea, this post is not for you. Also if were constantly concerned with my safety before all this occured or may date me at any time in the future, please do not continue reading.

So, I managed to get dysentery.

It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, except maybe the girl who teased me incessantly in 4^th grade and any boy who breaks my sister’s heart. Or maybe not even them, because it’s that awful. Although when I woke up this morning, I was thinking that it would be a fantastic way to stop rebel armies. Trust me, with dysentery they’re going nowhere fast.

The fever hit in the middle of the night of Friday. I was freezing, shivering, despite my Tibetan yak wool blanket and the 100-degree night heat. Then the diarrhea hit on Saturday afternoon. At first this comforted me, because I figured it ruled out malaria and typhoid fever and Japanese encephalitis and any of those other dangerously diseases you can contract in the developing world. It was just very severe food poisoning from that moment of insanity when I ate some Indian street food.

I ate it because my friend bought it for me. I didn’t want to be rude. Momma taught me not to be rude. But for the record, Momma didn’t mean for you to be polite if it was a choice between rudeness and admission to an Indian hospital. Choose rudeness. Because it wasn’t just food poisoning. And dysentery, hear you me, is not really not worth the pleasantries.

I spent the next day running, or rather slowly walking, to the bathroom with what little energy I had. Because dysentery is a do or die bathroom situation. (After the events of the past two and a half days, I have no shame, sorry). I will not describe it in detail (okay, maybe I have a smidgen of shame left) but imagine diarrhea that is past your wildest dreams. And that might be getting close.

It would have been manageable, but I just could not keep my fever under control. Despite handfuls of medicine and two days of sponging by my roommate, my fever was still fluctuating between 100 and 103. When it spiked at 104, I began to get significantly more worried. Sure, a fever and wrenching bathroom trips are awful anywhere. But when the power is out (which means no fan) and it’s the middle of the Indian afternoon and the fridge won’t cool the water to sponge your body, and your fever spikes dangerously high, you really do like you’ve been thrown into physical hell. It’s time to take your chances with the cleanest hospital you can find.

I now understand how millions of people die from dysentery every year. After two days of fever, eating nothing but a cup of oatmeal, and a day of loosing all the fluids within my body, I was too weak to do anything but sit. As soon as I lay down my fever spiked so I sat, utterly exhausted, my roommate sponging me, people fetching me water because I was no strength to get it myself, just white and ghost-like. After just a week someone with dysentery would simply waste away, falling into a dehydrated pile of skin and bones.

There’s nothing like dysentery to make you wish you had your mom next to you to stroke your forehead.

Again, I am incredibly thankful for my situation in life, because unlike millions of other people, I can get to a doctor. The hospital sheets aren’t clean but the needles are, and that is a trade I am happy to make. A male nurse inserts my IV with gruff ogre-like movements, as if he if trying to stick a bear’s thigh and not a human hand. The only English word he understands is “OW,” which unfortunately leads him to further wiggle my IV. I decide to keep him as far from my bed as much as possible, and grit my teeth and bear it. Then another nurse comes along and sticks a needle in my other arm for a blood test. For those of you know me well, you realize that a needle in each arm, concurrently, is Kristen hell.

I make frequent trips to the bathroom, quickly sitting up and saying “bathroom” as my roommate rushes to grab the IV and accompany me (because the IV holder does not roll). This means that the bathroom door is propped open, her hand stuck into the bathroom holding the fluid while I am sick and trying to keep my hand low enough that my blood doesn’t pour back into the IV. She can hear everything. But when you’re that sick, you don’t give a damn. My roommate knows all too well everything pouring from my dysentery-ravaged body, I’m describing my bowl movements in detail in front of four people (including my boss), and my boss keeps asking if I’ve been passing urine regularly and how many bowl movements I have had since we arrived (apparently they’re concerned about my kidneys and urinary tract). I left my dignity somewhere in the Punjabi countryside many hours ago.

After three hours and three very fast IV drips (accompanied by whatever medicine I was given), I start to feel a little more alive. The doctor returns to ask how many times I’ve been to the bathroom. When I respond, he laughs. (And let me tell you, the answer was no laughing matter). There’s a very different sense of “bedside manner” here.

I’m still sick but fluids, man, they do wonders. God bless electrolytes. I can sit up, and hold a conversation, and I finally have some hunger again. After one more IV drip I’m ready to go home. Because, while I am thankful for the life-saving drips and medication, I really do not want to spend the night alone in an Indian hospital where only two doctors speak some English.

Really, there are some experience that are just no good. Just all, all bad.

The doctor laughs again and tells me that it’s India’s gift to me.

My thought? India can take her gift back, thank you very much.

I Can't Believe This Is My Life

I have seen His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

And, just as all the best things in my life have been, it was completely and utterly by accident.

This story begins with a planned trip all the way to the Kashmir region, over the second highest motor-able pass in the world and into the capital of Ladakh, which I personally envision as one of the most beautiful places on earth. What to be close to the spirit world? Journey through the Himalayas.

Alas, it was not meant to be. We arrive in Manali at 4 am. It's so (insert expletive of your choice here)-ing cold I decide that hell is not hot. It's freezing. We look outside of the bus (it should be noted that after a 10 hour ride on curvy mountain cliff-sides) and it's pitch black except for a couple of lights in the "bus station" and Tibetan-looking men in huge winter parkas with enormous blankets wrapped around their bodies, breath steaming from their lips as they huddle around the egg man.

This does not bode well. There's not even snow here. Manali was just the first leg of the journey. Leh is at least another 24 hours of driving (plus a night sleep) away.

We disembark and, seeing our current surroundings and taking note of the freezing Himalayan air, we decide to walk. A superior option to sitting and freezing to death. Better to die while at least attempting to live.

There's a main street, and the only signs of life are the two mules standing in the middle. I see a 24 hour ATM and for the first time in my life I am grateful for neocolonialism and globalization and the West's spread across the world. Because there a 24 hour ATM. And it is open. And it has a door, that closes. Hello WARMTH.

So at 4 am my friend and I huddled in this ATM, wearing all of the clothes we had packed and sitting on our backpacks to try and avoid the ice-cold floor. An hour later we braved the cold again, traipsing back to the bus station only to stand outside for another 2 hours along with a French couple waiting for someone to actually open the ticket window (and I am, all the while, doing the "I have to pee" leg dance in an effort to retain some heat within my skin).

At 7 am a man appears at the window. "Are there buses going to Leh?"

"No, snow, roads closed."

As my boss very clearly stated when we began our journey, "The people in Ladakh won't kill you. The weather will." This is enough of a warning for me. Of course we could just PAY someone to drive us up this treacherous pass and hope that there's not another avalanche and that we don't die of exposure. But really, I want to be warm again, and maybe have breakfast, and eventually get married and raise beautiful babies and lie topless on the beach in Italy at 65 without a care about what my wrinkling body looks like. Also I need to dance with my oburonis in Africa again.

And I just kept thinking about how pissed my Dad would be if I died.

So, no Leh.

Instead we spent two and a half glorious days relaxing in Manali, the hippy nirvana of North India, a town hidden in the bosom of the Himalayas. And then, when the mood struck us, we headed back to Dharamshala.

I'd like to think that my "accidental" happenings are actually somewhat orchestrated by fate. Because after another 10 hour ride along mountain cliffs we arrive at 4 am in Dharamshala. We are able to get a taxi up to McLeod Ganj (for an atrocious price) and, again, everything is closed. There is not a hotel room to be had.

Shocking.

I suggest that we try the Buddhist temple (also known as the Dalai Lama's temple). The Sikhs started praying in the Golden Temple at 2:30 am. So, I figure if the Buddhists aren't up at praying at 4 am then, well, they can't claim devotion and should just return to ordinary living.

They ARE awake. And they are praying. I love the monks.

We sleep on mats laid out on the temple's main floor. Odd, because last time I was here there were not mats. It takes about a half hour (thanks to my Dramamine-induced groggy state) to realize that perhaps this is because something special is happening. Such as, say, the DALAI LAMA?!

Yes. His Holiness is here. He is giving a series of lectures. You can attend. Find a hotel, leave your bags, your cameras, your cells, and bring yourselves and a radio and OF COURSE you will be able to see his Holiness (as if it was a strange question to ask if I would be able to see the most important living spiritual leader. Silly me).

I spent two hours waiting, sitting on cement with legs folded. Ecstasy does not begin to describe my state of mind. "I can't believe this is my life. I can't believe this is my life. I am going to see the dalai lama. I can't believe this is my life."

And it happened just as you would imagine. I was surrounded almost entirely by Buddhist monks, old Tibetan women interspersed between them and wide-eyed children waiting (almost) quietly. And eventually the Dalai Lama emerges through gates, following monks and the rising smoke of incense. His shoulders are hunched over, glasses perched on his nose, face smiling with hands positioned as for bow and prayer. He is peaceful but burdened, a man with the wisdom of lifetimes who has been exiled from his home and his land.

People bring milk as an offering, in boxes and bags, as their contribution to the massive amounts of tea served in ogre-sized metal tea pots. I'm lactose intolerant and ill-prepared, so I have no such contribution.

I have just my ears to offer, my ears still ringing with the sound of the Dalai Lama's laugh and his flowing Tibetan words.

Midnight Terrace Dancing

I have found my solace.

I love to dance, love it like I love floating, swirling words. Perhaps more so. Words spin my head, dance moves my heart. It is when I am most honest, most free. There is no thought that directs the movement of my limbs. Their stirring is called by feeling, and flows unreserved.

And although my swirling hips, popping chest, and stepping feet may suggest otherwise to a spectator, these are the moments when I have no guard. I move honestly, without any concern for how I appear. I move simply as I am.

Around 11:30 last night I got an itch. It's been 3 plus weeks since I moved without reservation, without thought, within freedom. So I snuck my ipod out of my pack, plugged in bright read headphones, slipped out of my crowded living room, and slyly made my way onto the terrace.

It was a full moon, so bright that, despite the midnight hour, I was not completely hidden from my surrounding world. The hanging sheets and shirts on the other terraces were still visible, peaking out as spectators of the sky. I had to smile out loud to myself, realizing what someone on the next terrace would see: white skin appearing out of black leggings and an oversized purple shirt, something shining in her hand, stepping with vigor to sounds silent to their ears.

And slowly I feel into it, beginning with swaying hips and emphatic hands. As music swirled and the flip-flops slipped from my feet the sensation from their constriction was replaced by the rising smell of mold from the terrace's damp floor, awakened by my movement. My feet blackened as their passion rose, swirling on this terrace at midnight under the full moon's glow.

For me, this is happiness: creating my own home from dancing feet on the molded rooftop terrace, accompanied only by night sky and Punjab's sweet September air.