Back in Blighty

I often wonder if I will ever feel settled. I quite fancy staying in London for a good three years now (my idea of ‘settled’) but I do catch myself thinking about living in Manhattan or in Italy again or somewhere new altogether – like Australia or Japan. No, I take that back, not Japan -- too foreign.

Even though I’m a little tired of being on an airplane every weekend, I’m already thinking of travel alternatives – I haven’t seen much of the English countryside. It’s lovely and accessible by train – and not flea-infested smelly ones (but the tea on board won’t be quite the same).

Now that I am back in blighty (a term derived funnily enough from the Hindi word vilayati, meaning ‘foreign’), I thought I’d wrap up with a couple anecdotes, ‘after mint’ to my time in India, if you will:

When I have a cold in the US, my friends make sure to keep their distance. In fact, I have a number of friends who won’t share a water bottle with me even when I’m perfectly healthy. Right after Jaipur, I was running a fever but work was hectic, so I worked through it, even fitting in a work dinner despite being close to delirium. At dinner, we were all served an unidentifiable thick green beverage (think wheatgrass shot but a little larger and reportedly made of mango). I took a tentative sip – it had a tart, acquired taste that I wasn’t up to acquiring that evening. Bani eyed my glass, and I warned her – don’t even think about it – I’m really sick. Two minutes later I noticed the glass had been drained of its offensive liquid. “Bani! Did you drink that? You’re mad. You’re going to get sick. In the US, I wouldn’t have even been invited to dinner in this state!”
“Well, in India,” Bani responds, “we believe that you need your friends to get even closer when you’re sick.” That made me smile. I’d found the silver lining on the cloud of a country that’s not the most hygiene-conscious.

In India, toilets tend to have a little tap, a bucket full of water sitting directly beneath the tap and a smaller receptacle with a handle (sort of like the one you’d use for netilat yada’im) bobbing in the bucket of water. In Cochin, Andrew and Eimer led me to believe that Indians use their bare hands to wipe, after which they wash their hands off in the bucket. Convenient explanation for [a] lack of toilet paper in all public loos and [b] Indians seeming never to wash their hands when they exit a toilet stall. A little hard to believe, but I shrugged my shoulders, thinking 'This is India’ and took their explanation for truth. I wanted to ask someone Indian about it but was too wary/embarrassed at the prospect of a confirmation – until I finally asked Bani when we went to Mussoorie. The real story: they scoop up some water in the smaller receptacle and chuck it at the sullied areas. If there’s toilet paper, they’ll wipe dry; if there isn’t, they won’t. They think it’s terribly unhygienic that Westerners don’t use water to clean their bums after they shit. I’m really pleased I got that story straight before leaving India. Check out this link for pics & useful explanatory diagrams: http://www.pbase.com/jtodhunter/indian_toilet

That’s it. Five months, two little anecdotes and no grand epiphanies. Although I have JUST left. The epiphanies may still be on their way. I do think, though, that I could have done much better in India than I did. Knowing what I know now, I could have achieved more at work, experienced more of what the country has to offer, made more friends and, through them, learned a lot more about India’s culture & people. Of course, when I first came out, I didn’t know what I know now. Such is life. The next time I go to India on a 6-month assignment, I’ll do much better. Promise.