sweet dee rupee: June 2011

Let’s cut to the chase: lately I’ve been feeling like a cog in a machine. In a really awesome machine, but a cog no less. I’ve been struggling with the whole work/life/home balance, since all of these things are the same physical location for me. As a result, the past week or so I’ve felt sooooo boring. Not even bored, just boring. Like not capable of intelligent conversation, or having any motivation to have an intelligent, or even unintelligent, conversation. Or having anything to write about. Duh.

I was expressing this out loud to Jaspreet yesterday while we enjoyed some hammock time. I’m all like “Blah blah blah, my life is so boring and unexciting” then all of a sudden, not five seconds later, something dropped on my head, really really hard, from above. As it squirmed away, I noticed a long tail and I thought “Eww, a nasty giant rat was not only in my hut, but it landed on my ear!” Yet, this smarmy creature stopped a few feet away, and it was a lizard. A huge lizard, as I’m used to seeing little geckos running around; this one was large enough to be heard rustling in the bushes!

So much for nothing exciting happening! Life just kept getting more interesting, with each hour that went by, no joke. A few hours later, I was cycling (that’s right, riding a bike, I finally got one after three months of solely commuting on a moped) along, when all of a sudden there was a small snake crossing my path, at quite a clip, and I ran it over! Oops. I don’t think I did it any real damage, it kept slithering right along like 80kg of awesomeness didn’t just roll over its body.

But that’s not it. Our friend James (who recently fell out of a mango tree and dislocated his shoulder, ow) called and invited us over for an Indiana Jones/Pizza Party. Now, he has a refrigerator, and we like to buy mangoes to freeze and eat (I swear I’ve never eaten so many mangoes in my life, they’re so amazing, especially frozen). So we stopped at the fruit stand on the way to pick some up. There I am, minding my business (I swear!) when I notice a cow moseying on by. It is very common around dusk and dawn to see groups of cows on the move, and very common throughout the day to see them randomly, individually or in smaller groups, on the side of the road.

Thus, there was no reason to be alarmed. Apparently, I should have been. The fruit-stand owner started making noises at it (I assumed he owned it and knew how to communicate with it), and I was still ignoring it at this point (I had mangoes on the mind!) when all of a sudden, I realize I’m in trouble. It’s heading towards me, so I’m like “Oh, Daisy, you want some lovin’?” as I thought she was getting close to have me pet her or something. Hell frickin’ no. She wanted blood. She got about 2 feet away from me, then pointed her horns at me and started walking towards me!

That’s right, I was almost gouged in the stomach by a wild animal. Shit. Luckily, the fruit-stand guy managed to shoo her away as I only had about a foot to back up (my moped was right behind me, limiting my escape route), and surely would have been a goner without his intervention.

Luckily, I managed to laugh about it. I mean, it didn’t actually happen, it just ended up being added to my repertoire of stories including myself and beasts from the wild. It’s still not the end of my most-exciting-boring-day-ever.

So we made it safely James’ with mangoes in tow, only to call the pizza place to be informed “It’s a holiday; no pizza.” What the heck! Jaspreet and myself had been craving pizza for about three weeks (as our usual place has been closed for renovations) and were mildly frustrated, mostly hungry, and ready to munch on something or somebody, so James suggested “veg noodles.” We didn’t know where the good, cheap veg noodle place was, so James, sling and all, rode with our other friend, Vikram, to pick up the noodles. They were gone for oh, I don’t know, about five minutes, when I decide to do a few dishes, knowing our dear friend cannot use one of his arms. As I’m turning off the water, I might have used a little extra force (what can I say, I’m a hoss) to ensure the water wouldn’t drip, when I find myself holding the faucet in my hand while water sprays from the wall at my chest and all over the kitchen.

“JASPREEEEEET!!!!! GET IN HERE AND HELP ME PLEASE!!!!” were the next eight words out of my mouth. Apparently this had happened before and the faucet was affixed with India’s alternative to Bond-o, but I had no prior knowledge of this. I’m just thinking “What the shit, I just broke James’ sink and he’s housesitting and it’s not really his sink and he’s only been gone six minutes.” Though we managed to wrestle the faucet back on, the kitchen might have been mildly flooded and we might have looked like we just rolled out of the ocean, fully clothed. When the guys came back from picking up the noodles, James casually mentioned “Oh yeah, that happened to me the other day, I forgot to tell you.”

Ha. It just keeps getting better. And when I woke up this morning, no shit, I sensed something going on upon the roof of my hut, as it sounded like something about the size of a golden retriever leaped onto it. I was kind of scared, really. I’d only been awake a few minutes, so lucid thoughts weren’t quite happening yet. In my mind I was thinking, “Oh, it must be the squirrels playing around” even though it was a mighty heavy sound for the light-weight chipmunk-half-breed squirrels we have around here. By the time I walked down my stairs, I had kind of forgotten about the noise until I looked up at the hut next to mine and noticed an GIANT peacock standing on top.

Honestly, I didn’t realize they could fly, I thought they were like ostriches and penguins, hahahahahahah. I looked up at my own hut just in time to see it flutter-jump onto it to join his other two friends who were already partying on my roof. I couldn’t believe it. And of course I didn’t have my camera on me, that doesn’t even make sense. It was one of those moments that will forever live in my mind and in words, never to be captured on film, which probably would have ruined the moment anyway.

So yeah, who’s boring now? Sometimes I forget that I live in a forest in the middle of (kinda) nowhere in India. The past 24 hours have been a lesson in not taking this experience for granted, that’s for sure. Some other exciting events that I had previously forgotten about from the past few weeks include:

A fleet of four wild, French foxes (men, actually, but very good looking ones) rocked up to stay here, wreak havoc and crack us up. And serve as eye-candy, lol.
I almost lost all of my big toe-nail while making a whirlpool with the aforementioned foxes in the tiny swimming pool we have here. One of them lost part of a toe-nail as well, we were moving so fast, and any limb not totally attached was apparently susceptible to involuntary detachment. My toe is fine now, promise.
I had a fish pedicure. There is a peaceful, man-made pond in one of the communities here that has fish in it that come to the surface and nip at any dead skin on your feet when you put them in. It tickles a bit and leaves your feet looking real nice :).
Harvey Dangerfield got 86’ed. I loaned him out twice in one week, to two different parties, the first of which was half of the four French foxtrot, who slipped and fell and broke off the rear-view mirror. No big deal. The bike mechanic fixed it, handed back the keys, which I promptly handed over to another set of friends who got rear-ended by a car on their way back to the forest, sending muffins flying all over the road (we do free muffins on Friday for the weekly tour), amongst pieces of Harvey and my friends. The friends are okay now, but were pretty shaken up and had some bumps, scratches and tears. Harvey Dangerfield, R. I. P.; long live the Barracuda (she’s blue and sexy, for a TVS).

As always, I hope that I get the time and motivation to write more in the next week rather than next month, but I’m running on India time: you never know what’s going to happen next. In the meantime, enjoy some random photos I’ve taken out and about that follow no actual pattern.

An egg & cheese sandwich at Ganesh Bakery: my favorite, meow! (PS ketchup is called 'tomato sauce' here and doesn't quite taste like ketchup, lol)

My busted ass vans. Note the tear on the left-side: a dog attacked my shoe and held it hostage. This is what it looked like when I discovered it in the laundry area after a week. I'm just happy to have the shoe back.