Waiting for Tigers

We made our way north up along the coast to Mumbai before turning inland for a long haul to Madhya Pradesh. After three days of travel by train, bus and taxi, we were finally in Tala, the access point to the Barharghvard National Park. Exhausted we collapsed and resolved to figure out our safari in the park later.
What we found out was that the most popular gate, Gate 1, was booked up for a week. It was popular for good reason: we were told that there was a 99% chance of seeing Tigers. The other gates only offered chances half of that. Reluctantly we agreed to wait a couple of days to see if any cancellations would open up a spot in Gate 1 and then if not, go take our chances with one of the other gates.

Tala is much as you would imagine an old frontier town might have been in the western United States. One road with not much there, this one, however, filled with Indians. Sophie and I had exhausted the towns possible amusements with one twenty minute walk up and down the strip. While waiting for tigers, we resolved our bored predicament by the same means than most people in Frontier towns probably passed the time: we got drunk.

We were awaken at 5:30 in the morning, completely unaware that our safari would be that morning. The air was cold and the sweater I had wasn’t enough, but I was on my way to see tigers, I didn’t care how cold it was. Like an idiot, I turned to Sophie and sang a song of one impromptu line: “It’s tiger time, in India!”. Mr. Rogers would have been proud of my melody and cadence, I’m sure.

Our open back safari jeep pulled up to a long line in front of Gate 1. From what I could see, all the jeeps in front of us were filled with Indian tourists. Sophie and I were the only westerners. After much waiting. And after Sophie had gone through several cycles of being amused and annoyed with my safari jingle, jeeps started to filter in through the gate. Our guide approached our jeep with a solemn expression. We weren’t going through Gate 1, I could tell. He told us that we weren’t going through Gate 1. I knew it. We drove off towards Gate 2 and I tried to cheer myself and Sophie up with my unstoppable jingle. I explained to Sophie that it was actually a secret mantra and that the tigers could hear me. I told her I knew that it sounded childish, but it was actually a highly sophisticated tiger call. Sophie, cold, with her hands hanging on the string of her hood, pulled down tight over her face, looked at me, she was not amused. Abruptly, our guide rapped his hand on the head of our driver as if he were beating a drum and trying to catch up with the rest of a band. He yelled in Hindi and our driver put the jeep in reverse for a moment or two. Our guide pointed down at the sand beside the road. Three huge ovate divots crowned a fourth diamond shape imprint, a tiger paw print. Our guide told us it was only a few hours old. Ever skeptical, my immediate notion upon seeing the print was that it was fake, it just looked too damn perfect. I pictured someone crouching down on the ground before we arrived, pressing a tiger paw print stamp into the sand, carefully and conscientiously. An animal couldn’t possibly leave such a mark. As the driver put the jeep back into gear and we sped off towards Gate 2, I wondered if my experience of tigers in India would be relegating to forever wondering if I’d seen a real paw print or just some damned scam to placate unlucky tourists. I sang my jingle to reassure my spirits. We arrived at Gate 2 ( it looked far less ‘official’ than Gate 1 which further depressed my already skeptical spirits. Surely tigers would be more drawn to dwell closer to more official looking infrastructure.). A large elephant with a wooden cockpit bound to its back and sawed off tusks stood near it, ravishing a tree of chlorophyll. A few jeeps (far less than Gate 1) were congregated and waiting to enter Gate 2 (waiting for what, we had no clue). Our guide, standing in the passenger seat was yelling a conversation in Hindi with one of the park rangers. After a few minutes, their language became hurried and almost frantic. Our guide seemed to have garnered the essential information first. He rapped the driver’s head frantically once again and turned around, grabbing the jeep’s crash bar and pointed behind us, yelling “Look!”. As Sophie and I turned around, the jeep shot into reverse and we grappled the edges for support. In reverse we hurried through the cold morning air, our eyes flitting back and forth across the visual geography. I saw it first. I pointed and Sophie saw it too.

From the dark brush on the park side of the road extended paws through the short space of air as they aimed a leap down from a small incline. In a moment another lept from the thicket and as we raced towards the crossing our guide excitedly directed our eyes into the brush rushing past us on the right. Another tiger sauntering in the same direction as we peered out at us, looking for an agreeable opening to pass through.

In one sense, they were just big cats, and ultimately all they did was cross the street and look at us occasionally while they did so.

And still, there was majesty. The powerful supple movements of their flesh and bone - the way the fur turned and shimmered around calculating muscles that pushed and carried the contours of their bodies, the calm full circles in their eyes. The black stripes like black gashes into a pretense sight arming intent behind the fur against alert and awareness of preyed animals. Faces of lithe expression, untroubled and relaxed as they strolled in their slow morning walk.

Their movements were gone as quick as they’d come, filtering into the adjoining brush at the road’s twin edges. What a wondrous flight of moments.

Later in the day, Sophie and I learned that the jeeps that had gone through Gate 1 had seen no tigers. We were the only ones to see the cats.

The Benefit of Mental Machinery

The good thing about Sasha’s disappearing mechanical failure is that given a little rest time I was almost guaranteed at least 20 k before it would happen again: perfect for a selling test drive. I took a good hit financially with the bike but sold it easily enough and considering that there really is a problem with it, I didn’t feel all that bad about getting back such a cut on the price: I’d rather Avihay’s bad karma ended with me. And I figure, you can’t buy a better seat in Heaven, but you can sure as Hell have better stories to tell the person next to you.

It goes without saying that I was relieved when the bike was sold. In celebration, I took Sophie, who had met up with me once again in Goa, sailing for a day on the Arabian sea. We have spent the time since on the beach, relaxing, reading, and me writing. Yesterday morning we watched dolphins breach a few hundred meters out in the water. They danced and played for about an hour in the Arabian sea before continuing north.

The motorcycle was by far way too stressful, but damn it was fun. To open up the throttle and feel the growl of the engine. The Indian wind in my face and the speckled ocean glistening not far from the road and the spinning rubber. By far, it was a fantastic mistake.

The Bribe That Never Happened

The next town, 18 kilometers away, also didn’t support the shipping of motorcycles, so I dished out the extra cash and went to Calicut with the motorcycle. Long after the sun had sunk and the stars had come out, my humble truck driver pulled the rig into the packing and loading area of the Calicut rail station. I was nervous, completely unaware of what documents might be required for the shipping of a motorcycle. Dan, the first Israeli I had approached about buying a motorcycle had apparently been able to take his Enfield on a train sans ownership papers. This line of thinking hadn’t worked in the insurance office and I heavily doubted it would work then.

Packers were working quickly wrapping Styrofoam boxes filled with fish and other items. The commotion seemed jovial but quickly I spotted a police officer sitting in a plastic lawn chair reading in the dark. I was weary of him and when communication between my driver, a packer and myself failed, they pointed at the police officer.

“Police. English. Police. English.”

I was led to the police officer and the uniformed man with a mustache looked up at me with a broad smile.

“I’m looking to go to Goa.”

“Goa?”

“Yes, Goa.”

“When?”

“Next train?”

“Next train, 12:24”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic, thank you”

<Indian head bobble>

I pocketed the money I had cautiously loaded into my palm and walked back to the bike. After paying the packer to wrap the bike, I was directed inside the station to speak with the parcel officer. My driver explained what it was I wanted to do. The parcel officer looked at me over his glasses, tilting his head forward and making it look as though his eyebrows had been pulled downward in suspicion.

“Do you have documents for this vehicle?”

 I took out the registration and handed it to him through the metal gated window. With the other hand I retrieved my unused bribe, hoping, if the need came that it would work in smoothing the situation over. The parcel officer looked at the registration for what seemed like a long time and then he looked up.

“You need a copy of this.” He handed the registration back to me.
“Where can I get one made?”

“Other side of the train station” He said, and motioned without looking up at me.

“Is that all I need?”

“Yes, only registration.” He said without looking up.

Twenty hours later, I was in Goa. Exhausted, I decided to find a tourist home and get a room before I’d deal with the bike. I showered off the grime and exhaustion of the train ride and with a clean set of clothes I went back to the train station and found the parcel office. It was busier than the one in Calicut and there were more Police around. They carried bigger guns than the ones in Kerala.

I found a subordinate worker and handed him my booking receipt for the motorcycle. He looked at it briefly and then said,

“Registration.” I handed him a copy of the registration, and as someone called his attention elsewhere, he looked back at me and said,

“You need license, too.”

 I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘license’ and so I stood among the bustle of the parcel office, looking around, wondering what exactly I should do. My eyes fell upon a sheet pinned to a notice board that was titled: Requirements for Booking of Motorcycle. I read it and after tracing my eyes along the second requirement, I stopped short. It read:

“2. License/Proof of Ownership of Motorcycle”

Shit. I should have expected that things might be different in Goa. I retreated to my hotel room, but not before stopping at a bar and nursing my options with whiskey and cigarettes. I sent a SPOT signal, as I drank and watched the smoke swirl in the still hot air. The whiskey didn’t do me any good. My thoughts turned worried and fatalistic and I tried to imagine how ashamed I’d feel to inconvenience my father enough to come halfway around the world to visit his son in prison.

I’m just being ridiculous, maybe.

But I don’t know this country.

That’s part of the point you moron, this is supposed to be a country where you can get away with inconsequential shit like this.

But you don’t know!

You’re right, I don’t know, that’s why we’re worrying.

I need to stop talking to myself.

I sent unfair text messages to Sophie and after some fatalistic talk, I got her worried about my situation as well. I went back to my hotel room to sober up and wait till it got dark, figuring a bribe, if need be, would be easier to swing with less people and less light. After watching a thoroughly idiotic western movie and drinking water from the showerhead (the faucet in the sink wasn’t connected to any piping) I made my way out into the night, my pockets loaded with bribe money. I took out a cigarette and lit it, remembering that Jack used to call it the ‘poison tit’. I had smoked three packs of cigarettes in three days. I’ve got to chill out and let this shit go, I told myself. There are people back home who would crucify me for hypocrisy if they knew.

“It might all just work out fine.” was Sophie’s last text message.

I walked into the parcel office and up to the gated window with two officers seated behind it. I handed one of them my receipt.

“Registration?” I handed him a copy of the registration.

“License?” I handed him a copy of my International Drivers’ Permit that I had prepared at the hotel reception just prior to coming.

He slid the copy of the permit behind the copy of the registration and the booking receipt and stapled the three together. He looked at the clock and then tabulated numbers in his head for a moment.

“40 Rupees. Holding charge.” I gave him the money.

“Sign here.” I signed there.

Bribe money still in my pocket, I wheeled the bike out into the free night air.

40 Rupees is roughly the equivalent of $1.20

The Only Man in Kuttipurum Who Can Speak Your Language: The Pimp‘s Nemesis

A tired monkey on a machine, that’s what I am, I thought as I rolled the stalled bike off of NH-17. The bike and I came to a stop next to a brightly colored bus. Like most vehicles on the road, it had “GANESH” painted in bright colors on the top of its windshield surrounded by designs that engulfed the whole truck. It had taken me a while to figure out that the western equivalent would be like seeing “JESUS CHRIST” painted on someone’s car. (I have also seen a few Indian trucks with this painted on them in place of Ganesh, or Shiva and the like). A boy of about 17 became very interested in me. Unfortunately he spoke no more than 5 or 6 words of English and when I tried my truly rudimentary Hindi on him, I discovered that he couldn’t speak Hindi either and actually spoke another language called Malabari. Go figure. After a bit of charade I just wanted to be left alone and contemplate my dwindling options while chain smoking. The boy would not give up, however. Then I hit upon two English words that he did know: Rail Station.

After a demonstration to convince him that the bike would not make it the 1 k to the rail station, he helped me wheel the useless beast the whole way. The town was Kuttipurum and the rail station there did not support the shipping of motorcycles via train. It would be possible at another town, 18 kilometers away. I needed a truck to get the bike there. Eventually, through the cracked English of the people who were helping me I was told of a man who spoke my language. I wasn’t sure talking to someone who knew English was entirely necessary, all I needed was a driver with a big enough truck. I had done it before and figured that since I was armed with the name of the town, I would be able to communicated what I needed to a driver, if only I could find one. The people helping me were convinced that I needed to see this man. The paranoid in me was suspicious.

“He know everyone in Kuttipurum, He help, he help.”

Whatever, I’m always up for meeting new people. I was led to an ‘English Speaking School’ and the gentleman who I was presented to, a healthy, smiling and handsome young Indian man in his late twenties offered me his hand. He was formally dressed and I could tell that he received a tremendous amount of respect in the community as I watched the children of the school and his subordinates observe the interaction. He seemed so pleased to meet a native English speaker, and I was a bit of a spectacle for everyone at the school. The man’s name was Musthafa and the first thing he asked me was whether I’d be willing to take a picture with the school children. I was afraid that I might be interrupting something - anything since it was the middle of the afternoon, but of course I agreed. Musthafa was delighted and then set out into the town with me to procure me a ride to the next train station. He asked me all the usual questions but with such graciousness and hospitality that I couldn’t help but be amazed. I felt like a faux badass who had snuck into a heaven where everyone was Indian and motorcycles acted like mental patients. All these people are so damn kind! I thought to myself. Where is this ‘corrupt India’? Where are all the bribes and thieves looking to take advantage of me? I seem to keep running into mid-western united states’ kindness, but I’m in India for Shiva’s sake.

Musthafa helped me negotiate a price for the truck ride and then after helping me, along with a few other men, get the motorcycle into the flat bed, he gave me his phone number and pleaded that I call him if anything goes awry. Poorly, I tried to communicate how grateful I was for his help and how utterly humbled I was by the generosity of the people of India.

Prayer in Tripyyar

Considering how much difficulty the bike had been thus far, I decided that Alappuzha was as far south as I would go. I decided to turn back north and get back to Goa as soon as possible. Goa, being, perhaps the state in India with the greatest laxity with regard to rules and regulations was the most probable place to sell the motorcycle, considering I lacked the proper ownership and insurance papers. As optimistic as I tried to be about the ride north, there was an ominous sensation framing my perspective.

130 kilometers north of Alappuzha the bike stalled out. I waited for some time and then tried to start the bike up again. No luck. I took out my phone, which I had purchased to keep in touch with Sophie and in the event of an emergency. My balance was depleted, and upon buying additional minutes at a local outlet, I discovered that it went into a balance reserved for use in the state I had purchased the phone. No luck. I started the bike up again and made it less than a kilometer before it stalled out again, luckily, once again it had stalled out in front of a mechanic. Once again, tired and worn out by my own charade, I tried to communicate the problem, certain that whatever problem hid in the bike would not be found, let alone fixed. The mechanic, who I was reassured by locals on pristine Enfields was an expert. Yea, yea, I’d heard that before. He fiddled with the fuel intake float (no clue if its actually called this, but there is a little float, that floats in fuel and its placed right before the fuel goes into the piston cylinder) and seemed to make it look as though he was fixing something. One of his assistants, Thapan, took the bike for a test drive, and I prayed for the damn thing to stall while he was on it. With all the problems the cursed bike had caused me, I had been unable to get the problem to consistently show itself while a mechanic was present. Of course Thapan returned, sure that the problem was fixed. He did, however, discover another problem. The attachment at the bottom of the steering fork where the forward axle threaded into was cracked. Replacement would take 24 hours and so he suggested I drive back to Goa slowly. I decided that I didn’t want to ride a motorcycle with a cracked axle fitting. Thapan drove me to the nearest Tourist home in Tripyyar, a nice one, by my increasingly learned eye and drove off, assuring me that the next day would procure a repaired bike. I wasn’t terrible reassured, knowing that the bike’s real problem was still nestled somewhere in its bowels.

That night, unsettled feelings that had been trailing me for hundreds of miles began to fester and crystallize. For some time I had been listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s “Little Fury Bugs” a song which the sound of encapsulated perfectly the way I was beginning to feel. There is a drained repeating series of guitar chords that introduce the song and they never stray far from the progression that comforted me, mimicking with sound and music the nervous and monotonous depression that was making a home in me. Lonely and unsure my thoughts became fatalistic and scared. I had been away from home for more than 10 weeks, and I wondered if it was a sort of threshold of time, almost three months without all of them, everyone that I had left in Boston. I opened up my journal and started writing letters to them all. The people and the family that I missed; those I wanted to talk to and tell how much I missed, those that I couldn’t talk to and still missed. Why wasn’t I there, back in Boston, I wondered, why was it, I had decided to leave and come to the other side of the world. I had decided so long ago that I would, almost immediately upon moving back to Boston, I had known that I would leave. And the months succeeding that decision had only made work to enforce it. It wasn’t until plans and dates were gaining certainty and finalizations were starting that I started to hit a stride there in Boston. The summer had grown into such a wonderful life, and laying in that hotel room somewhere in Kerela, watching repeating movies on the only western channel, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I did not know what awaited me on the road ahead. I imagined all of the contingencies, a tripled up chicken challenge on the road - people merely trying to pass and overtake, all of it going wrong, myself torn and lifeless. I imagined running into the wrong cop, a by the book do-gooder who was still imbued with a sense of force and cruelty. All of the ridiculous contingencies that feel more than plausible in that state flooded my head and made me certain only of how much I missed my home. I flipped through the blank pages of my journal and wondered if they would be filled, and what they might be filled with. Holding a random page, I wondered, where will I be when I get to this one? Perhaps the bike was stolen, perhaps I had bought a stolen bike - I had virtually no clue about Indian law and in that hole of a hotel room, drowning in the over active imagination of an anxiously depressed paranoia, I wondered if journals and pens were allowed in prison. I tried to laugh at myself. I’m being ridiculous, I tried to tell myself. I got myself into this mess, I’ll get myself out of it.

24 hours later I walked up to the mechanic’s shop to find Thapan working by the light of a tiny florescent bulb, hanging from a neighboring store. He was just beginning to dismantle the front fork of my bike. My anxiety reached a pitch, I paced back out into the darkness, shuffling my boots in the roadside dirt. I tried to breath, calmly pulling in the air and heavily it left me. My heart was crazed fool trying to run, chained to a dank colored cell.

One of my stipulations for getting the bike had been, if worse came to worst, I could walk away from the bike and financially I’d be ok. I wondered if I should just walk away from the bike. I tried to keep myself from hyperventilating while a circumspect train of thought tried to recall the last time I had felt similar. Was it a panic attack? Or some sort of nervous breakdown? Nah, it couldn’t be that bad. But still, some how things in me were moving far too fast, in directions that didn’t make sense. I needed to calm down, not take all this so seriously. I’ve always had that problem, occasionally rearing its head: taking things too seriously. It was part of the reason I got the bike, to say “To hell with it all, I’ll do as my starving sense of adventure wants!”.

Well, here’s your adventure, I bitterly told myself.

For a moment I was flooded with an ecstatic sense of joy. I was pacing the road, somewhere in India, waiting for my motorcycle to be repaired, how incredibly fantastic! How often does that happen? How many would take a sledge hammer to their cubical if only for one evening of my troubles? It was only a moment, and just as quick as if had filled me, it fled, and with a sense of dread, I wondered if I was going manic.

Don’t be ridiculous, I just need to calm down, I told myself.

I walked to a dimly lit open-aired corner store. Several men congregated around the shop owner seated behind a small counter. They spoke lowly and after a few moments, the poorest looking one of the group turned and noticed me. He exuberantly made a charade to help me, directing me to the store owner. I bought a pack of cigarettes and offered one to the sparsely toothed man who had helped me. He declined and I walked off into the darkness. I had never been a smoker and never wanted to be. And it was so far and against all of my sense of self to use something other than my own thoughts and will power to change my emotional state, terribly out of character, but at that moment, I truly didn’t care. I lit the poison tit and took in the rank ghost the way college had taught me of other wafting spirits. I sat at an empty out door restaurant and found myself calming as I waited for ordered food. Smoke sinuously rose, wavering back and forth like a dancer with an aim to seduce. Oh bloody hell. I laughed at myself.

Eventually I hunkered down next to Thapan and watched as he filed the threads off a very important looking screw. Great, I thought. I’m going to die. He placed the bolt at the end of the screw and tried to hammer it on. This guy is a moron, I thought further. Eventually he switched out the screw and the bolt for ones that worked. I rode the bike back to the hotel and tried to convince myself asleep, terribly unsure of the next day.

The bike went about 20 k and then kicked out. I rested at a mechanic’s shop and chained smoked, convinced beyond commandment that the young man who called himself the mechanic could fix the bike. He seemed to think it was an accomplishment that he got the bike started. My hopelessness turned into a resigned giddiness. After senselessly learning some Hindi and purposely becoming a source of amusement for the young men who were gathered around the neighboring chai stand, I eventually started up the bike and took off. I made it 5 k.

Indian Venice

Alappuzha is often referred to as the Venice of the East. The Rough Guide to India will addendum this by saying that its not really Venice, and anyone hoping to find Venice will be disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised with the canals of Alappuzha, but for the more urban part, I’d peg it as more of a tropical, less wealthy Amsterdam without all the drugs and sex.

From one of the main canals in Alappuzha we boarded an old ferry with an orange hull made from what looked like, hammered metal. We waited for some time and when we finally got under way I realized that aside from a few other foreigners, the array of passengers were mostly Indian. A few school children dressed in blue uniforms clustered in parts- one group of boys seated just in front of us.

The canal opened up to a large lake and as the old Indian Hannah Glover chugged across the water we got our first view of the famous house boats. Big bulbous floats with thatch walls woven beautifully. The best of the lot had ornate thatch roofs that resembled most closely the build and design of a tortoise’s shell. They powered along, all with an open front that doubled as a cockpit and main dinning area. The early morning gave us a quick glimpse of breakfast aboard the backwater yachts. Some - most had a flat screen TV, opposite the view and on the inside wall. I was amused with the people I saw enveloped in morning programs.

Our ferry started making frequent stops and I came to think that it was more like a waterbus than a ferry. Across the lake we entered a narrow canal and in the course of about a quarter mile, we passed perhaps 4 or 5 dozen houseboats. The pass felt more like a highway along with the wide river it led into. The stops became more frequent and the number of school children at each stop started to climb.

How fantastic, I thought, it would have been to get to school by a boat and how funny I thought that these kids must be just as inured with the experience as I am enthralled. The group of boys in front of us played a game that seemed to be a more complicated version of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’. Before they got off the ferry for school I got the chance to take each of their portraits in turn.

Soon, the old Indian who was to be our guide motioned to us that the next cement piling roofed with corrugated plastic was to be our stop. After a few minutes we started walking along a very narrow canal perpendicular to the main water drag. Palms arched out over the water, bulging in towards it as their bases began to tilt, enacting a slow fall into the water. Every variety of green, shape and shade crowded the banks.
Kunjachan, our guide, led us to his house, a darkly cluttered home of three rooms. His smile all pervaded as he showed us in and pointed out his children in a photo. The youngest, a daughter of my age, is a nun living in Kenya. He seated us and with what English he had, we were laughing within moments. It was truly wonderful how he got the French group of four (who joined us for the backwater tour) laughing considering how little English they all shared.

Kunjachan’s wife soon brought out breakfast for the lot of us - a meal I had yet to come across in India: Plain white noodles over a bed of sugared coconut. I had seconds.

Soon after, Kunjachan loaded us into a long canoe and our tour of the Kerelan backwaters began. We had opted for a smaller boat to tour the backwaters, not just out of cost but also for the chance to see life along some of the smaller quieter canals were a houseboat would never be able to go. Aside from the melodic racket of birds in the expanding and flowering greenery, the only other sound that filled us was the relaxing flutter of water as Kunjachan lowered his oar into the water.

For the first quarter of the tour he kept asking us if was liked the canal we were on, as if this were his first time being a tour guide and nervous at his performance. When it was clear that we were all generally happy, he seemed reassured and we all enjoyed the sights as they slowly lulled past.

At several points we passed vast stretches of rice paddies and I noticed with curiosity that the water level of the canal was higher than the whole of the paddy, almost as if we were riding in an elevated aqueduct. Women and men bathed at the canal side, and washed clothes, swinging the wet whips high above their heads and smacking them down on smooth rock.

When the sun had stretched to its highest point and began to relax, Kunjachan turned us back towards his home. There, his wife had lunch already prepared. That morning we had watched as a man in a canoe had pulled up just outside of Kunjachan’s wife had purchased fish from the man after he had weighed an amount on an old scale placed next to the bucket of fish in his boat. They had now been fried and accompanied a regional version of Thali. A rice dish that comes with several small dishes filled with different curries and masala mixes. Our plates proved to be banana leaves.

Shortly after taking off from Goa on the motorcycle, I had decided to do away with the tourist caution that had guarded my food decisions. I had spent much of my time in Nepal and Rajasthan sick and figured any caution I had really didn’t do me any good. I now ate whatever was placed in front of me (including the tap water), regardless of the scared rumors that visitors of India carry from home, and I ate my food with my hand, just as all the other Indians who I watched in restaurants eat. There is a wonderful sensation in being able to touch one’s food as one eats it. The experience has made me wonder if it is part of the reason why hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza are so popular in the United States - all foods that we eat with our hands.

For family reading this, let this be a warning that the next time I make dinner, utensils may not be allowed.

After our meal of rice and masala with fired fish, Kunjachan offered to go buy us coconut beer. Apparently certain palm trees produce a certain coconut that naturally ferments some of the sugars in its milk and creates a naturally alcoholic mix.

The alcoholic percentage is low, but I still managed to get pretty buzzed off the stuff, even though the taste was far counter to the spirited beverages I’m accustomed to. Coconut beer has a slightly fizzy texture as if it had almost been carbonated and the taste is a bit like the smell of warm, slightly stale milk, and altogether something that might taste like a partially rotten cashew. Needless to say, I was the only one who drank much of it and what remained of my share I offered to Kunjachan, who, after some customary protestations, accepted my proffered beer and downed the rest of it like a college kid. The old man, jovial and a true expression of hospitality, is a credit to the fact that wonderful people can be found anywhere and everywhere.

Schizophrenic Machine, Part: II

When I started up the bike two days later to make the 60 k jaunt south to Alappuzha, it sputtered and stalled 30 seconds later. After each start, the bike stalled in smaller and smaller increments of time. I checked back into the hotel and then wheeled the bike five blocks to the Ernakulum Royal Enfield Showroom.

Once again the Enfield mechanics started her up and she purred beautifully. I told them to wait, sure that this time the bike would not disappoint and would soon sputter out to a stop. The mechanics continued to look at me as though they’d missed the joke. I waited. The mechanics waited. I looked intently at the idling bike, as if staring at it hard enough might embarrass it into showing its problem. I looked back at the mechanics. They raised their eyebrows. I looked back at the bike. The bike idled perfectly. I put my face into my hands. I had an oil change done anyways.