assam namaste
I went to the wettest place on earth, and it didn’t rain. I went with some other fellows in the program and the 38 hours train ride gave us a chance for cultural exchange: I had never heard a single Brittany Spears song; they had never heard of Built to Spill. Six years of music is a generational divide… almost impossible to bridge, but we tried. I still don’t like Brittany Spears, except for maybe that song I’m not a girl, not yet a woman. That one is pretty good. In the last five hours of the trip, we became acquainted with the group of Punjabi musicians in the next berth over, who brought out their huge drum and turned our berth into a crowded party. In a moment of incredible good sportedness, Brian responded to their request for a song with his version of one from the movie Aashiq Banaya Aapne, where Amitabh and his son dance with what’s her name.
While I was on the train, Colin and Dot got married. I’m looking at their photos now, because we finally got internet at home, and it is taking me as long to go through them as it would have taken to be there, so I am consoled. There is even a picture of John talking to me on the phone, at the next day’s barbecue, after I had arrived in Guwahati. There are 85 pages, and each page has between 40 and 60 photos. Sooo many photos.
There were other adventures in Assam and Meghalaya, besides the lack of rain. And other ones on the train, too, besides listening to Brittany Spears. There were the Hijras who pinched the Punjabi musicians’ penises at 7 am somewhere in Bihar, there was the snake charmer who shoved his snake basket in my face to get his ten rupees, there was the family of three who all slept on one narrow sleeper. It was enough to get us to change our ticket class for the trip back. The adventures in Meghalaya happened all in one day of trekking, and are due mostly to my inclination to hide from people after I’ve been in the woods for a while. Lost on a wide plateau, after climbing 4,000 feet up the gorge of the 4th largest waterfall in the world, I didn’t want to ask for help until after the sun had set and there was no trace of people for miles. Finally we spotted cows and shapes of humans and made our way toward them, only to meet two young men with big knives. But they were nice, and helped us, and we only had to walk 3 more kilometers in the dark, but there was a full moon. The man’s name was Freddy, he was a Christian Khasi, and his younger friend was Spencer. He was incredulous at our gall for walking into the middle of nowhere “without knowing anything about anything.” We showed him our map, and got defensive and repentent, especially when he told us about the Bangladeshi terrorists wielding AK47s; the reason he was wielding his knife/sword.
Now I am safely back in Lucknow. I’ve been fasting for God, but really for truth and love. Which Sadaf says are two of the names for Allah, among the 99. Even my brother is fasting, back in California. No one even blinked when I announced that I was observing Roza too, halfway through Ramzan.
More later, and photos soon.
