India Chronicles: The Hospital

November 5th, 2008--Pune

I wake up in the hotel bed and the sickness that has been plaguing me for two weeks--intermittent fevers, horrible cough, weakness, an eventual runny nose--has manifested into a visibly swollen right side lymph node. It is terribly sore and makes swallowing difficult, but I don't really care because this is the first day the sickness is not weighing as heavily on my mind--it is election day. We are about to get a new president, and I turn on Ioana's computer while she sleeps to check the progress. It is still early on, and Obama is slightly ahead but few of the votes have come in.

I leave the room in my sweatpants and begun wandering the hotel halls, looking for people who are up and watching the news. I run into Clara and we huddle in her room, transfixed by CNN and feeling the tension. We hear people awake down the hall, and several of us go down to the dining area for breakfast (chocolate flakes and masala chai) and run away with the plates; technically I don't think this was allowed, but the staff was hardly going to argue with us. We are buzzing and talking and hushed and shaking.

Eventually the mass of people awake ends up in one room, and the votes are coming in faster and faster, Obama is speeding ahead. California lies in the balance, states keep coming back blue, and suddenly California is in and CNN flashes a message across the screen: "Projected Winner: Barack Obama."

There is screaming and jumping and more screaming. No one can handle it. There is nothing to be said, all anyone can do is smile idiotically and jump and scream. The room can't contain our joy and we careen out of it and down the hotels hallways, Clara and I tear up to the third floor to Arvind's room where we knock on the door and jump up and down. He is on the phone--as per usual--but when he opens the door we hug him and scream more and jump. We run downstairs and run through the halls making noise, and the hotel staff looks both alarmed and avidly curious. It becomes surreal when we make our way into the dining room and the waiters are gathered around the tiny television watching the ubiquitous Bollywood music videos, calm and bored and oblivious to the way we feel our lives have changed. I feel scandalized and want to change the channel and show them, but instead I go back to the room with everyone else and wait for the speech. A bottle of champagne appears and makes its rounds, but I am too sick to partake. Tilly gives me a cough drop instead.

The speech comes on the TV and draws tears from many of us, as we pay homage to the wonder that is our new and novel president--and our neighbor. People mumble things about being proud of America through their weeping and we all hug, people that barely speak hug, everything is good. Our profs find their way into the room and there is further celebrating, and more champagne is consumed. Eventually things dissipate. It is only 10am, and the whole day lies before us to wonder.

***

I start to worry about my frighteningly swollen lymph node and the pain I have in eating and seek out Arvind, who has already taken me to the hospital twice. When he sees my neck his eyes widen and he agrees to take me back once more. I have to pick up my blood test results from earlier in the week anyway, to rule out malaria.

***

As we stand in line waiting for the blood test results, I am suddenly overwhelmed as I've been on occasion for the past two weeks and my eyes well up with tears and I burn red with fever and embarrassment. By the time Arvind (my TA extraordinaire) turns to look at me there are streams running down my face and I'm sputtering slightly and this is the first of several times that he will experience my crying. I laugh and sputter. "I'm just sick of being sick," I explain ridiculously, and he pats my arm and nods. People have been staring at the white girl as I walk down the halls, and the crying has attracted even more attention; I feel horribly self-conscious as the stereotypical foreign girl with the weak constitution who can't handle their country--I feel somehow insulting, and want no one to see me, but everyone sees me and I just stare downward.

After being directed from place to place in the hospital, I finally have a chance to see a doctor--someone high up, the head of some department. He is the typical middle-aged Indian doctor, with glasses and a furrowed brow and mouth set in a small semi-frown. He asks me some rudimentary questions and pokes around at my enlarged lymph node, saying things in rapid Marathi to the nurse at his side. Then he tells me he wants me to stay at the hospital until it goes away. "It might be an abscess and we don't want it to burst. We might have to do a minor--MINOR--surgery and remove it with a needle if it doesn't go away."

The words "abscess" and "burst" sound big and urgent to me, but I feel more relieved than anything. I want to be in the hospital, I want to be poked and prodded and stuck with IV's, if that means my sickness will go away. I have been avoiding the outside, missing the guys, sleeping and grumpy, while everyone around me has been enjoying every second of sunshine and practicing yoga and shopping on Laxmi Road. I want nothing more than to be admitted to the hospital.

***

My room is surpringly nice, for a room in an Indian hospital. It is private and even equipped with a television. I lay down on the bed and suddenly feel so much better; I have been given a place to get better, and there are no other demands placed upon me. I have a television. Barack Obama is the president. Also, I don't have malaria. It will be okay.

Arvind calls the profs to tell them the news and he sits down in a plastic chair and we talk politics. I don't know him very well at this point but I feel comfortable with him and enjoy his company. He has taken me to the doctor time and again, dealt with the bureaucracy, without acting even a little impatient about it; he has even been sympathetic. We are deep in elated Obama conversation when Mark shows up, and somehow I have become something like manic. I am making a million ironic jokes a minute, throwing self-deprecating remarks at my intidimating professor and actually making him laugh. I believe I will be better tomorrow. I imagine having lots of energy, running around, feeding an appetite on dosas, hanging out with the guys.

Eventually they leave and my burst of energy ebbs and my fever is back. I lay under my blankets with my head on my pillow and watch CNN as Obama is discussed endlessly from an Indian perspective. Will he stop outsourcing? Will he help improve relations with Pakistan? I watch the exist same 10-minute clip of his story play at least three times. At some point I turn off the TV and it is quiet and I feel somewhat less happy. The team of Keralan nurses come in and stick me numerous times until they get a vein and start me on saline fluid. The smiling and shy guy from the cafeteria brings me a pack of food--which looks horribly unappetizing--and some hot milk, which I actually partially drink.

Arvind and Clara eventually return to the hospital, and Clara--bless her soul--says she'll stay the night (there is a bed on the opposite side of the room.) I don't know how to thank her for being so wonderful. The three of us sit around and gossip for a while, about the program and the profs, until Arvo must return to the hotel and Clara and I stay.

I have a needle in me and am beginning to feel the discomfort of tomorrow but I sleep like a baby through the dark of the night.

I had made it one-sixth of the way through.

you can take the future, even if you fail.

ABBA said it best.

1:32am and I'm still awake. I have to wake up before 8am, but I'm sitting here. Awake. Contemplating.

The ways in which I am strong, rational, and calm with regards to matters of the heart have improved exponentially over the past few years. Even over the past year, I have become almost unassailable in the face of scary love thoughts. I am a beacon of strength, roots buried deep. Nothing can upset me in my little canoe.

Still I wonder where I will be in ten years. I wonder--at this point, even dispassionately--at the tenacity of strings that tie. Do I seal my own fate, the way I look on but refuse to get involved? Do you have to invent your passion, knit it up like a scarf to wrap around a relationship? Are the results of the past a passive ghost in the present, or are they inconsequential?

These questions will be answered or they won't. It's okay, either way. It won't cause a breakdown. Not now.

...just one girl awake in the neighborhood at 1:32am.

scenes from a frat party.

Me: "Which frat is it?"
C: "The Asian frat."
Me: "There's an Asian frat?"

It is an act of desperation that brings me to a frat party; the desperation not to be alone on Valentine's Day. Not to be by myself in any measure. I am 21 and this is, I think, the trajectory of bad Valentine's Days from the beginning of one's life to this point:

[1-11yrs old]--Fun. Involves cards and chocolate.
[12-15yrs old]--Vague hope. Anything is possible. Disappointment.
[16-19yrs old]--V-Day is stupid. Desire to burn things and listen to angry music.
[20-???rs old]--Ridiculous, at this point. Not worth it. But still; ridiculous.

I had forgotten what frat parties were like until I got here and realized why I rule them out immediately almost any time they're mentioned. Ninety percent of the people here are Asian. C. and Lucy and I work our way slowly through the crowd, pushed up against people we have no interest in knowing. It takes ten minutes to get through a hallway, and then C. delivers me two jello shots from heaven followed closely by two weak vodka drinks. They do nothing. We stand close together and watch people like it's the Westminster dog show. She points. "Blonde guy?" I say, and make a face. There's Clingy Guy, who is attached to some poor girl like he's five years old and she's his teddy bear. I feel an urge to hit him for her sake. There's Flannel Guy, who is vaguely attractive but involved with high jinks with someone else, and it's somewhat amusing to watch. There are ten thousand Asian couples. C. runs after Blonde Guy and I stand alone.

I am in sort of a corner now, watching people crowd in for more alcohol, an obvious necessity. Single people exchange rapid glances that will lead to nothing. I wish for an anybody from my past, and wonder how I'd name them as they filed in. Nice Boobs Guy, Tongue Guy, Lacrosse Party Guy, The Only Guy Who Ever Mattered, India Guy, Nice Guy, Four People Guy. And others. They'd all come in and act differently with me, if they saw me there. Tongue Guy would say it's a stupid atmosphere and we should just go chill somewhere, India Guy would want to dance for the rest of the night. They'd all be distracted and some would find a way out quickly. The others I would try to evade.

It isn't pity that I look for, exactly. I could have a relationship if I really wanted it. But I don't just want a relationship. I want a relationship with tea in the morning. And chemistry. And laughing. Or I don't want it. At all.

I get my coat, I leave alone. I didn't find anything but I didn't expect to, especially at a frat party. It is around 1AM anyhow; it is no longer Valentine's Day.

I can be alone.

everybody wants a piece o' pie, honey

Calm. Down.

If you're not. Just.. calm. Down.

That's what I've had to do after two weeks of highly frenetic and unmanageable stress and mysteriously plummeting levels of self-confidence. After papers and advisor meetings and writing articles and passive aggressive editorial scoldings and equally mysterious and plentiful tears. After implicitly surrendering all of my abilities to be accepted or shredded. After caring so much.

Just, calm, down.

You are not what you do. What you do is part of you, but you are a multi-faceted creature of public and private varieties. You are your beliefs and your happiness and your quietness and your choice of actions and what you see when you close your eyes, all alone. You are not a piece of paper or a list of accomplishments.

It's taken me a while to learn this and I'm still in the process. This week I briefly lost my grounding and stumbled around looking for my identity after perceiving that I'd failed at something. Failure should never instigate a loss of identity, momentary or otherwise. That's basing too much on the outcome and too little on the process.

So, breathe.

I'm not done with this week, I still have several hours to work and another paper and at least one internship app, and then a review, but now I'm calm. I hope I will maintain a modicum of calm.

As an end note, my feature is on the front (!) of the Weekly--I'm pretty happy with it. Take a look if you're around here.

action words

On my resume: "Use action words."

My weekend.

Wrote a feature, watched 300 (half), drank some vodka, made my bed, read about Middle East, missed a play, ate some dal, retrieved my phone, cried, ate some cookies, worried, stressed, stressed, read about the Middle East, edited my feature, worried.

putting the "Great" in Depression!

I am poor.

And by poor, I mean, in debt. In modest, not-terrifying debt, mind you (for now), but I've once more dipped into the loan function on my debit account and am therefore not just poor but a debtor. I could explain how this happened but it's a sad story involving tears and rent money and lying to my parents about how much of my tuition refund check remains because I am ashamed of the money disappearing, despite the fact that it all went to legitimate use (i.e. groceries, books for class when the library did not pull through, HEAT). I am ashamed and I feel guilty for asking for money, and so I exaggerated the amount of money I have and I'm back. In debt.

I need to start figuring out creative solutions to this problem. Chinese buns for $1 suffice for lunch (or samosas for $1.50) and are one way of reducing costs. But the truth is, I like to live in (modest but unsustainable) luxury. For example, today I bought an Honest Tea, which increases my happiness considerably but causes damages both monetarily and environmentality (and subsequently emotionally). This is how it starts: I tell myself I will buy an Honest Tea in order to use the bottle for water. But then it's a slippery slide, and slowly I'm buying illicit bottles of Honest Tea because I love the tea (and it uses cane sugar! no high fructose corn syrup!), and I already have plenty of bottles for water. Tea with my lunch is most decidedly a luxury I cannot afford as a meager debtor. And especially not Honest Tea, which might masquerade as Environmentally Friendly but is still born of a corporation and wants my tender, hard-earned dollars.

I already work the maximum hours an undergrad can put in at the library, and it may be draining but still, much like the world, it is not enough. I need other ways of making money or reducing costs. Here are some of my/the ideas thus far:

--Going to the Business School to be a guinea pig for their surveys, thereby making $1-$12 in the process every survey.

--Going to the Business School on Fridays for dinner, because apparently the cafe gives away free food.

--Tutoring high schoolers in something that isn't math or science, which might be difficult because the lab school kids are all smart little private school twerps who wouldn't make it past 5th grade without a strong foundation in any of things in which I would be prepared to tutor.

...and that's about all. Any creative advice appreciated.

hi, ancestors

I like to think about the fact that my ancestors were German farmers and pagans. I like that they lived near the forest and at some point there was a beginning Gunther, because my mother's maiden name is Guntermann.

I think I would like to be a pagan rather than a.. whatever I am. I would like to worship Thor.

I am feeling ridiculous.

I feel ridiculous because I cannot get my phone back fully one week after a man found it on a bus and gave it to his son. His son called my dad. His son and I arranged to meet the next day at a Starbucks at 5:30pm, I told him the intersection and waited. He did not come. I called from friends' phones several times to try to arrange a new time. Over the next several days, I left several messages, mostly kind but increasingly pleading. I left two numbers, neither of which he called. I finally got a hold of him again and he said he would bring it to me the next morning, and that he would call and let me know when and where to meet him. He did not call. I called and left several messages, none of which he responded to. Eventually I got a hold of him again, today, and we again arranged to meet at the Starbucks one hour from when I talked to him. I told him he could drop off the phone there if he was late. He did not come. I waited two hours, until the Starbucks closed.

I feel ridiculous because when I came home today there was a gas bill from the evil corporate "People's" Gas, indicating that I personally owe ~$75 and I have just over $75 in the bank and will not be paid for another week from Friday.

I feel ridiculous because I recently had a tuition refund check of $500 and all of it disappeared into loans on my debit card that I owed the bank for food and money spent over Christmas break and other expenditures for the first two weeks back at school, and into money I owed U. ($180) for the gas bill I was barely here to benefit from, groceries, and a heating device I have to use because our incredibly expensive heat barely works. This is a joke that the gas company is playing on us.

I feel ridiculous because I can't ask my parents for any more money because they sent me $300 and they will send me a monthly rent check and I am 21 and I should be able to manage money and pay for everything myself but instead I am still remarkably dependent despite the fact that I work the maximum number of hours a week possible as an undergrad (and am only making $150 a week).

I feel ridiculous because my parents are not rich and they are still sending me rent checks and helping me pay for things despite the fact that I am 21 and despite the fact that I still don't know what I want to do and am drowning in the options and refuse to shut any doors.

I feel ridiculous because after a week and a half I still have not been sent a project for my internship and my supervisor has not replied to my email.

I feel ridiculous because the teacher I need to talk to for my feature has not replied to the email I sent several days ago asking for a day to meet, even though I sent an email last week too--to which he responded. And because this is a time-sensitive issue, so I may not be able to talk to him and my feature will consequently be worse.

I feel ridiculous because I can't call any of these people because my phone is being withheld by someone who arranges to meet me repeatedly and then doesn't.

This is why I feel ridiculous, and this is why I came home today and cried.

(Bonus: I feel ridiculous because of anything to do with dating. That is all.)

Mysore Market, Part 1

I met with my advisor the other morning and it was, strangely, the most I've even gotten out of an advisor meeting. After I told her what I was doing and what I wanted to do and where I'd been, she seemed very interested in India.

Her: "Have you written about it?"
Me: "Uh, well, I had a blog about it, but I didn't get to write in it much. Internet was spotty, and you know..."
Her: "So you haven't written it all down?"
Me: "No."

--5 minutes later--

Her: "What are you doing over spring break?"
Me: "I'm thinking of maybe visiting my sister in Colorado... why?"
Her: "You really should write it down."

Needless to say, her insistence on my writing about what happened over there has made me feel a little guilty, and therefore, every time I don't have something imminent to write about, I am going to post about something that happened in India.

Like now.

Sometime in mid-November...

I am in Mysore, a city both extremely dry and paradoxically green. It is after a rather extravagant lunch with the group (extravagant in the name of saying goodbye to our Hindi teacher, Sudhir, who appreciates only the finest things in life and chooses such upon given the choice) that Arvind, Taylor, Clara and I are met by a car from the hotel (in the name of apparently continuing extravagance, but at a rate comparable to using auto-rickshaws for the rest of the day). Our first destination is the Mysore market, where we had been only earlier that day.

Immediately after leaving the car, of course, we are bombarded with the usual entrepreneurials, but we find a way into the market where they don't follow.

Everything about this market is a feast for the senses. It is in the old-style of open bazaars that have been in use for centuries--walking down the narrow lane that's been covered over through the middle, you absorb on either side of you brilliant colors and scents. A long pathway of only fruits (hundreds of pounds of bananas, apples, pomegranates, pineapples, coconuts) bleeds into a market for vegetables and herbs, but then you turn a corner and there are great piles of brightly-colored dye in bowls, and across the way are men selling scented oils. The sheer life in the Mysore bazaar is overwhelming, moreso because you can't just senerely peruse the displays or take a moment to pause without becoming the target of the man selling apples or incense; he begins yelling at you, not unkindly but with definite insistence. If you stand in one place a second too long, you become a goal, and there is no creature more persistant than the Indian seller.


We have split up and agreed to meet in twenty minutes, which is all the boys will allow. I dodge the individuals that rush by me and look as determined and focused as I can (which, I am proud to report, is a pretty well-acted look for me at this point). My mission is bangles. Not a hard mission to fulfill in India, but a mission nonetheless amid the bazaar chaos. Luckily I had spotted a place selling some bangles amongst other girly paraphanalia at an intersection meeting the fruit lane, and I had--earlier that day and in a moment of impulsive longing for self-improvement by way of glitz--purchased from the man behind the counter 1) a little bottle of red nail polish, 2) a little glass bottle of nail polish remover, and 3) a small set of glass bangles as a belated birthday gift for Clara. All at a very reasonable price.

I now wanted some glass bangles for myself. But here's the thing about being a big-handed American shopping for bangles in India--Indian women either have or are presumed to have tiny little hands and wrists. My hands are feminine enough but certainly not tiny, and I continually have to convince the bangle sellers of this phenomenon. My size is a 206 to a 208; most bangles max out at 208. My chosen seller doesn't have bangles small enough to fit me, and I end up on the other side of the intersection with a younger seller who is far less cooperative.

"I need a big size," I explain. He nods and selects a few bangles from the box, but I am skeptical. "The biggest. Big American Hands," I indicate my hand and wiggle my fingers. I am speaking in Hindi, which can sometimes piss off non-Hindi speaking South Indians. He takes my extended hand and folds it to prepare it for the bangle fitting. He then tries, with impressive patience, to force the selected bangles over my hand. When they eventually get down to my wrist, my hand is beat red and scratched up and the guy behind the counter seems exhausted. Embarrassed, I point at my hand again and announce that I will not buy these bangles; they are too small.

In his haste in pulling them back over my hand, one of the bangles breaks in one spot and the glass cuts into my hand. The seller is too distracted to notice this, and I walk away with blood noticeably welling up and draining down my hand. This has been unsuccessful and awkward.

For a minute or so I walk around the bazaar, hoping to find the others. I am preoccupied with how to treat my bleeding hand--there is nothing in the bursting market that seems the least bit helpful. And then a little boy runs up, maybe nine years old, holding something he wants to sell. But when he sees my hand, his eyes widen and he looks into my face. "Water!" he says and points at my hand. I nod and then I am following him through the gaps in people and the narrow paths between makeshift shops to a shop he is particularly acquainted with. He communicates rapidly with another boy--maybe fourteen--who seems to be holding down the fort. Then a plastic jug appears and water is poured over my hand. The older boy looks at me and suggests, "A bandage." I nod, and now I am following the older boy back through the jungle of the bazaar until we reach the outside and he somehow navigates across the busy street to a Chemist's at the opposite side. He emerges a moment later with Band-aid, opens it, and puts in over my cut.

I am not sure how to thank him but I must know in my heart that the inevitable is coming: "My brother owns a shop, he makes incense, you come and look."

I am taken to a new location and brought behind the counter and made to sit in a chair as the boy explains to a fellow (perhaps 25, this one) about my epic wound and its maintenance. The brother shows me a bag of powder and shows me the little workshop set up on the floor. "He makes incense," he says. "I will show you how to make it. First you take water, then you roll it in the powder,"--this he does, creating a small brownish paste--"then you roll around the stick. This one is sandalwood." He hands me the finished product.

At this point it is past the meeting time, but I feel bad leaving after getting a private lesson in incense-rolling. I explain my predicament, but the boy is already ahead of me. "I have seen them! One girl, two boys. I will bring them." He is gone.

Sure enough, the three others, all looking confused, are herded into place in front of me as I am in the process of buying a few boxes of 10-rupee Jasmine and White Rose insense.

"I'll explain it later," I tell them as we walk away.

lonely sentences.

This has inspired me to be more resourceful with my writing. It has also made me starkly self-conscious about writing this.

Today has been surprisingly productive, I've gone so far as to finish things that are due Tuesday. I haven't finished things that are due tomorrow, but I'm getting there.

I started this weekend overwhelmed with my workload, of both the academic and extracurricular variety, but between the baking of a cake and the pub-hopping... well, a soft sense of calm has settled over me.

We take steps forward. No need to worry.

a pitcher or two later.

Tonight was Kyle's birthday and I'm 21, so I got to experience two Hyde Park haunts I'd never seen before; the pub in the basement of Ida Noyes, and Jimmy's. Both have their regulars and their reputations, and it all felt very novel, as though I were in a completely different city, as though I were suddenly a quasi-adult with the right to be sitting in a worn wooden booth with a pitcher of foamy beer in front of me. Not that I feel too young for it, no--this is the perfect time for it, all things are running on schedule.

Sitting there, though, listening to a New Person talk about Antarctica (where he's been) and around-the-world plane tickets and all the rest, I just kept walking back to a main point, inside my head: dating. Those I should date, I do not want to; I want to date those I should not. It's a common theme. I am beginning to grow seriously skeptical of my own ability to decide who I should and should not date. I wrestle with myself for long and drawn-out periods, confusing certain people with my alternating warmth and distance. I decide I will catch certain others, who end up being otherwise engaged and responding coolly. And then there's a friend who seems inwardly terrified of the prospect of my re-falling in love, that's a fun dynamic. There's some really unbalanced stuff going on. I suppose my only hope is that this world balances itself out while I concentrate on different things.. and there's a lot to concentrate on.

Tomorrow I'm going somewhere else in the city, alone, with some homework and my self and I'll hit up some tea. Not coffee, tea. Not bad company.