Kicked to the Curb

Rejected, thrown away,
Affected, I don't know what to say,
Ejected, cast out to the sea,
Disconnected, they didn't want me.

Unprotected, like a baby in the snow,
Dejected, like a clown without a show,
I objected, pretended I was unaffected,
But still ended up rejected.

Like a cake shop without any cakes,
Like a cornflakes box without any flakes,
Left all alone in the world
Like a little laughing girl

Who's been neglected, feel like I'm cut into two
Or bisected, slung, flung, tossed, threw
Or trajected, treated as though I was infected,
Disconnected

And rejected

--Flight of the Conchords

I feel the poem above accurately illustrates my feelings at this moment.  Josh and I just sat down, agreed to pay twenty rupees an hour so that we might check our email, reconnect with the western world, allay our parents' worries, tell everybody we are still having a good time, tell everybody we are alive, tell everybody we have each had four glasses ofchai today at a total cost of less than a dollar each, and may still have more...  It has been three days since we have contacted anybody-- three days!-- and we thought, of course, there might be some general anxiety going on as to our safety, or health, or the fit of our trousers-- you know, parents, worrying, always something...  So we sat down, moments ago, opened up yeolde email, and...  What's this?  Nothing?  Not a scrap?  Not even the electronic shadow of an email?  Not even any trash mail?  [check the trash]  Oh, no, there was some trash...  But that only makes things worse.  DoesWSU admissions care about me more than my parents?  Does Amazon.com care about me more than my brothers?  Does

Vote_now_for_a_$50_VISA_Gift_Card!

care about me more than my friends?  Apparently. 

Ok.  Whatever.  You are all forgiven.  Mind over immaterial.  Maybe the email failed to go through somehow-- possible-- and maybe I overestimate my importance to you people-- likely.  More to the point, you didn't really need to email back at all.  It would have just left me with a bunch of responding to do.  No.  I keep joking.  I am sorry.  Here is the deal; we are fine, happy, bodily sore, and correctly living in an ashram inRishikesh.

Rishikesh. 


This place...  Coming here was a moving experience.  Delhi was mayhem.  Delhi was-- I think I compared it, in my long email that garnered zero responses, to Medusa, and I don't think that illustration does Delhi an injustice.  Delhi had a lot going on.  Too much for two simple, rich, white, pampered Americans, no matter how adventurous they thought they were.  And it wasn't bad, it wasn't bad...  It was a bit hectic, a bit this, a bit that...  At the bottom of it all, it was a bit much, and we left.  We paidrp200, roughly four or five dollars, for bus tickets for the 8 hour night ride to Rishikesh , starting around 9 o'clock.  We bought the tickets through a small travel agency, and I am glad we did, because I am not sure how we would have managed it without them.  They had a man walk us the ten minutes from the guest house out of thepaharganj and down the street to the random, dark, crowded spot where the bus would stop.  He then waited with us for 30 minutes or so as different buses came and left, allindecipherably marked in Hindi script.  When the correct bus came, he talked to the driver and got us on through a crowd of Indian travelers.  He had us put bring our packson board with us, rather than putting them under the bus as the driver was trying to get us to do.  I realized afterwards that, of course-- somebody would have just walked away with our packs in an instant.  But our man was looking out for us.  And once on the bus, he helped us store the packs safely, one under our seats and the other on our laps.  He then argued with the bus driver for a while, because apparently some sort ofmis -booking had occurred, and we were causing a problem by being there, or something...  Our man argued for a while, then simply said to us, "do not leave your seats," and then left.  I really don't know what was going on, and they still tried to make us move, and we almost did-- but we decided to trust our man.  He had got us there.  He seemed to have our interests at heart.  We stayed.  It worked out.

The bus filled, and began to move.  We had planned on buying more expensive tickets that would put us on a sleeper bus, or at least something with reclining seats, but none had been available for that night, so we went with the cheap, albeit uncomfortable option.  It ended up being impossible for me to sleep on that bus, jostling along through the Indian countryside with Josh's backpack on my lap, but once had reconciled myself with this fact, I didn't mind.  India was passing by outside that window, and India was amazing.  We passed thatched grass huts, no more than six feet in diameter, shaped like roundedtepees , with nothing but a small hole near the bottom for entry.  We passed mysterious hovels billowing with steam or smoke, lit by fluorescent lights and fire, fire, dark, silhouetted bodies laboring at something, something, and the fires, and the bright, bright smoke, and the surrounding darkness, all seemed demonic, necromantic, somehow.  We passed many a small fire in the darkness, lone, guttering candles in the black, casting that ephemeral glare on a dark form,unmoving , hunched, huddled against the chill of the cold, dark India behind them.  And we passed so many towns, villages, cities, men sitting together drinkingchai near their bicycle rickshaws, men living the nightly India on the edge of our thin strip of dirt and pavement, on the edge of a thousand passingbusses, cars, trucks. 

When we got off of the bus, around five in the morning, we were not in Rishikesh.  We were 15-20 km away, in Haridwar.  We took an autorickshaw and a bus to downtown Rishikesh, and then another autorickshaw to Ram Jula, a footbridge crossing the Ganga river.   The other side of Rishikesh was, is, the religious side, where no cars are aloud, and somewhere over there, we had been told, we would find our ashram.

The autorickshaw let us off several hundred meters from the bridge, so we began walking.  The wind was blowing.  It was not cold, but it was cool, and it was crisp, and it smelled, it tasted, so clean.  The wind felt soft, somehow, almost liquid, rippling around my clothes, flowing along my skin.  We walked along the holyGanga river, toward the bridge, and the world was silent except for the sound of the Ganga alongside us, wide yet swift, a whispering rush, a caress as welcome as the cool wind.  And the mountains.  Visible, past the buildings and dwellings on the other side of the river, was the sharp rise of the Himalayas-- just the beginnings, just the foothills, but already high, sharp, and imposing, harbingers of the greatest mountain range in the world.   The world was so smooth, just then, so very smooth, and you could reach out and lay your hand on it, and feel it's smoothness...  And if your breathing was very steady, and your heart calm, you could feel it, could feel the slightest vibration, a hum, somewhere deep, so deep it felt like it was a part of you, in your chest, maybe in your heart itself.  We walked this smooth world, meandered through wandering cows and sleeping bodies, until we reached the bridge.  And mounted it.

Upon the bridge, the wind blew harder.  The bridge was long, over a hundred meters, and we began to walk out upon it.  The morning had begun.  We walked out upon that span into a brightening,re-lightening world; the Holy Ganga below us, grey-green in the early light, spoke with a resounding hush, like a long sigh...  The dark green of the great Himalaya towered above us, as if the pastel pinks and blues of the morning sky itself had been chiseled away to reveal its presence...  To our left, theGanga wound its way up between those hillsides, to some faraway destination...  And the wind...  The fluid wind enveloped, it enfolded, it embraced...  and its embrace was cathartic.  We stopped on that bridge, we stood right in the middle, and we breathed.  There were tears in my eyes, and I am not sure if they were from the wind, or if they were from something else...  We looked, we listened, and we breathed.  And then we continued walking. 

We walked to the other side, and we talked to somebody for directions, and, eventually, we found our way to the ashram.  We got a room  We went to sleep.  It had been a long night.  I was very happy to be inRishikesh.

Since then, we have been doing yoga (which I think may be literally tearing me apart) at the ashram and exploring Rishikesh.  And not exploring Rishikesh.  When it costs rp10 for good chai, and you can just sit in the shade and drink it all day on the top floor of a small restaurant, overlooking the Ganga, it is hard to convince yourself that there is anything else in this world worth experiencing.  So we did that today for five hours or so.  But we have been walking around, and talking around, and we are enjoying ourselves.

Ok-- time is up.  That is the post.  Be well.

Chance

Oh, and the correct answer to the poll was Fideo.