Vacation Part 1

Well its been a long long time. A freaking long time in fact, more like 2 months. Been really busy. Vacationing of cos ;-)

So first, India - a mess. No offence to anyone out there but its smelly and disorganised and hot and dusty and there’s poverty everywhere, children with babies are begging on the streets for food and everyone is peeing everywhere, animals are underfed but worked to the bone, it was just incredible. Not necessarily positive. Everything is so manual, like no one has heard of machines and labour is so extensive. There’s only one word to describe it – a mess.

Beautiful but unkempt. It was a damn good experience tho, but not something I wanna repeat. Shopping was good tho but the prices were ridiculous and at the end of the day, you feel like you are ripping off people who are already dirt poor. I don’t know, just kinda sad.

What was really nice about the place was tht I saw a lot of tolerance. Tolerance for the heat, for the preposterous driving, for the animals sharing the road, for the incessant honking!.. goodness.. tht took some getting used to. Thing is religion is big here, so everyone (well, most of) believes in karma, its like “if I get knocked, I did something in my past life to deserve it” kinda thing.

But everyone was tolerant of the animals, it was incredible to see goats, chickens, cows, elephants, asses (donkeys ;-), camels, dogs, rats, monkeys and goodness knows what other creature sharing the public roads with carts, people, children, trucks, bicycles, buses, cars.. just amazing.. tht was what struck me most actually ;-)

There was at some point where we saw an elephant and 3 camels along the road, and we stopped (who wouldn’t be fascinated when the only elephant you’d seen was in the zoo)? So we stopped by the roadside and we had some fruits with us and we didn’t want them so I started feeding it to the elephant and some to the camel and boy comes up (the keeper I think), and says he should feed the camel cos it may bite. So I give him the orange and before he could put it in the camel’s mouth, man comes up and tries to pull it out of his hands. And I get pissed cos I’m giving it to the animal and the man and the boy hv some argument in hindi and after a while the boy feeds the orange to the camel. The realization only hit when I was back in the car on the way tht the man actually wanted the orange for himself. I just didn’t realize it cos I’m so used to feeding stray animals (ask my friends ;-)!! I just didn’t realize tht even PEOPLE go hungry in this country. In fact I think you can judge a country by the way the people treat the animals. Its like they are worked to the bone but when its feeding time, you just see them rooting rooting around in the litter. Sad la.

Kinda makes me think about how elephants are treated in Thailand; we see Nat Geo and we think tht the elephant is so strong and why cant it just break free and stop carrying logs which are 3 fucking times its weight and why cant it stop itself being abused (and believe me its an intelligent creature). And the reason is tht the mahouts break its spirit as soon as its captured to be forced into slave labour. Like prodding it with electricity and starving it and abusing it and stuff. The things man does just cos another beast doesn’t speak his language. Bastards. Really sad. Thts why I stopped watching Nat Geo and prefer Animal Planet, cos they don’t really show animals suffering, they hv stuff like animals in their natural setting, or animal precinct or planets funniest (which is absolutely hilarious compared to america’s funniest home videos) and emergency vets and stuff.

I wouldn’t call it being ignorant, I just would prefer not to watch animals suffer. And NO, I am NOT vegetarian and don’t plan to be. Am I contradicting myself? So sue me ;-)

Well, getting back to India after a looooooong detour..
So yeah, shopping was good. Taj Mahal was good. Touring was good. Food was good, until I got back to MAL, landed on Sat and had diarrhea on Sun and it was the bloody worst diarrhea I had in my life! Was on MC for a freaking week. God, I am never going back to that place! I hope. Cant speak to soon right?