The Bad and the Ugly

If only India was made exclusively of soft-trunked elephants, limey
green parrots, and sweet faced children...alas, it has its dark
moments, too. I'd be lying if I left everyone with the image of India
as pure beauty. What follows are the elements about which it is not
so easy to wax poetic.

1. Excrement. Sometimes, as much as one wants to look up at Dutch
colonial houses, finely carved cupolas and monkeys leaping from roof
to roof, it's best to look down. Low-flying meteors of every
consistency smash into the ground, and remain there until a sweeper
decides to remove them. Therefore, obstacles to avoid include poo
from every creature roaming about, including but not limited to, big
humans, small humans, birds, monkeys, pigs, camels, elephants, horses,
water buffalos, dogs, cats, donkeys, and of course, cows. Often,
dirt, mud and dung are indistinguishable and combine in a nutella
layer on the entire walkway, forcing one to pick and choose as best
one can, the lesser of all evils. Excrement.

2. Smells. The above listing contributes to a marvelous array of
tremendous odors that it is best not to breathe. Smells.

3. Dogs. There are so many people and cows to take care of in India
that dogs tend to be overlooked. You have never seen dirtier, more
flea-bitten creatures. They live on the scraps left out in the
streets, and they inevitable sleep in piles of trash, because it
smells nice to their wet noses and seems cozy. Due to their poor
diets and exposure to unimaginably sordid elements, they often have
nasty skin diseases which leave scabby welts and rob them of their
fur. Many are just bags of bones, and sometimes those bones have been
battered by moving objects or bruised by cruel children. The ones
that survive brutal collisions usually wear their injury for life. One
leg may curve completely under the body—after breaking into three
pieces there was no one to set it straight. The spine may twist
grotesquely. The jaw may be misaligned. Where is the Mother Theresa
of the dog world to help these poor brutes? Dogs.

4. Barking dogs. Where there is one dog, there are many others. When
one dog finds occasion to bark, the others follow suit in a symphony
fit for no one. The most opportune time of the day to hear a dog
symphony is when you are asleep. Anytime from midnight to 4 AM seems
to be fair game in the dog world…and completely unavoidable in the
human world. Barking dogs.

5. You pay for what you get. Hotels in India are cheap. Decent
establishments cost anywhere from $2 to $20 a night. I have never
spent more than $16 a night, and I have stayed in some nice places.
That said, a $4 hotel room can be expected to come with the following:
a bed. Consider yourself lucky if there are sheets, a ceiling fan, a
telephone, a Western-style toilet, and hot water. You've won the
lottery if the room includes a television, toilet paper, soap, and a
window. Most often, the bed is hard enough to make you turn yourself
like a rotisserie chicken during the night to avoid bedsores, and the
room is lit with oppressive florescent light bulbs. You pay for what
you get.

6. Laundry. Indian washing machines are called dhobi-wallahs. A
dhobi, more often than not, is a small bony man who sees to it that
the dirt your clothes have ingested is expectorated. To do this, he
beats the dirt out of your cloths in the closest large body of
water—if it's a nice establishment, then he'll use water from the tap.
If the Ganges is available, he'll use that. If standing green pond
water fitted with a layer of protective moss is nearby, he'll use
that. To be fair, the dhobis do a tremendous job of removing dirt
from clothes. However, the drying process tends to undo this newfound
purity. Clothes are dried on shrubs, in dirt, on highway medians, and
rooftops—anywhere the sun has decided to cast its rays. It's not
unusual for a shirt to come back with new smells from sketchy water or
new stains from the drying process. Laundry.

7. Kitchens. It's best to avoid them. Better to imagine that your
food has been created by a genie in the backroom, untouched by no one
and nothing. Upon entering a cooking establishment, one realizes that
conditions are never sanitary, and sometimes quite putrid. Kitchens
develop an earthly, rotten smell over time, and the walls are usually
covered in black soot from the cooking fires. Space is at a premium,
so it is not uncommon for a plate to be set on the floor before
something is ladled onto it. Water is also at a premium, so dirt or
sand is used to scrub dishes instead. The good news is that the raw
materials (the fruits, vegetables, rice, lentils) are always fresh;
the bad news is that the oil used is sometimes rancid. Ugh.
Kitchens.

8. Beaches. Are beautiful to look at, but hazardous to go near. Many
Indian males and children have adopted the ocean as a personal bidet.
Best to look and not touch—from afar. Beaches.

9. Bugs. Are everywhere. They particularly enjoy mouths and eyes,
and love to bury themselves in food. If one finds a fly in one's
soup, protocol entails removing the offending critter, and continuing.
It's not that unusual and therefore, not something to draw attention
to. Bugs.

10. Sketchy Indian Men. Like bugs, they are everywhere. Like
beaches, its best to stay away. Like dogs, they feed off each other
and can be offensive and noisy. Like excrement, they are unavoidable.
Sketchy Indian Men.

Everyday I wake up and marvel at the beauty of India. And, there are
so many things to love about this place that it is easy to look past
the less wonderful aspects and find magic. But, it wouldn't be right
to speak only of the lovely winding walkways, and the sonorous voices
of children. India is everything, the good and the bad: from the dung
to the flowers, the dogs' barks to the children's voices, the
mosquitoes to the electric birds. Perhaps flowers wouldn't be so
bright and narrow lanes not so magical if these extreme contrasts
didn't exist. To find the beauty, one must accept it all.