Hampi was my second to last stop in India. The city is an archeologist’s paradise. Everywhere in Hampi there are temple ruins, interspersed with bright green rice paddies. And on the horizon, there are rock formations similar to what you might find in Arizona or New Mexico.
With my India portion of the trip almost over, I had some time in Hampi to reflect back on India. One thing I’ve not done a good job with on this blog is describing some of the sensory overload. The sights, sounds, and smells of India are very much in-your-face, and not all of it is pleasant. I’ve seen, heard and smelled some nasty stuff, to be honest.
Riding a sleeper train in India produces many examples of this nastiness. For instance, as I’m trying to fall asleep, a bug is crawling on the wall next to my triple-stacked bunk bed. I try to smash the bug repeatedly with my sandal (I’ve got 200 mosquito bites and my histamines are in overdrive, making me feel anxiety over this bug) but it keeps on evading me and crawling all over the wall by my face. Bugs don’t usually bother me, but this one is giving me the creeps.
Multiple times at night, I’m awaken by people getting on and off the train at various stops. The curtain in front of my bunk is repeatedly thrown back as people peer inside, talking loudly in Hindi (I suppose they’re trying to figure out if I’m sleeping in my assigned seats). The train stops and starts abruptly. Sometimes the train goes around sharp curves and I literally feel like I’m on a rollercoaster.
When I awake a few hours later, the men in the same cabin as me are airing their cracked and callused feet. Many feet in India could use a pedicure and I admit that mine, too, have become filthy beyond belief.
One man in my cabin is adjusting his ball sack. Two men hold hands as though they are lovers (they’re just brothers, and this is socially acceptable). Vendors pass loudly through our cabin trying to sell me chai, meals, books, you name it. I go to the bathroom, and squat over the Asian toilet, watching my pee spiral downward to the train tracks visible below.
Returning to the cabin after going wee, it’s me and other passengers squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder. My sweat intermingles with theirs. One of them takes a nap and rests her head on my hot shoulder. In the cabin next to mine, there is a couple holding a baby that has four fingers. At one point, the toddler stands up with the help of his father and proceeds to pee all over the floor of the train. His parents don’t try to mop it up, and his urine trickles across the floor and into my cabin.
In the cabin on the other side, a fat, retarded man is sloppily eating some type of curry with his fingers (it is common to eat meals in India without utensils). Some of the food falls on his white t-shirt which is stretched tight over his potbelly. Some of it stays on his face. For some reason, the sight of this retarded man makes me so sad that I cry for the first time in maybe six months, tears falling silently behind my sunglasses. A passenger in my cabin offers me popcorn she’s purchased from a train vendor, and I pretend to be sleeping because I don’t want her to know that I’m crying over the sight of a man eating curry in the adjoining cabin.
The train finally reaches my stop and I disembark into a human sea. People packed so close that I wonder how it’s physically possible. I walk out of the train station and through a tunnel under the road where it’s dark and another western girl gets “petted” by a transvestite in a sari who loves her blond, curly hair and just wants to feel it.
I could continue detailing all of the nastiness for quite some time but hopefully I’ve given you a little better of idea of what you should expect if you visit India.
So much of what I saw here reminds me of the Army. And I’m grateful for the Army for introducing me to “hard living.” In India, I almost felt like I could anticipate the nastiness and nothing particularly shocked me after what I’d seen, heard and smelled during my nine years in the military.
I want to reiterate, however, that I love this country. I love it more than any other country I’ve ever visited. I love it because of its sensory overload. Because it’s nasty and shocking. Because it’s everything. It’s joy and sorrow. It’s love and hate. It’s beauty and ugliness.
It’s the entire spectrum of human emotions encapsulated in one place. And it never once tries to apologize for that fact.