killin' time in the "Seattle of India"

Luckily my train arrived here a hour and a half late, so I only had fifteen hours to spend before hopin' on my flight. So far, I've had a conversation with a homeless teenager at the train station, who hit me up for a hundred rupees. The kid is doing not so bad for himself, conversational English, some body fat, and a bracelet. All he got was two pieces of candy and someone to chat with for an hour, but he seemed fairly pleased. The auto-rickshaw fella who took me into a touristy part of town was a cool guy who seemed to take a shinning to me. I've heard that Bangalore is real expensive (especially compared to Kolkata) but so far I've scrapped by just fine. Internet and food seem to be about twice the Kolkata average, and the rickshaw-valla was perfectly reasonable.

Train ride was uneventful, except for a Christmas day clarinet concert performed by some wierd foreigner for his fellow passengers. I slept solidily for a good twenty-six hours out of the thirty-seven hour journey.

Bangalore is pretty laid back. Lots of folks in Western clothing, streets particularly clean. Even the slums adjacent to the train tracks looked relatively well-maintained.

Well now is as good of a time as any to list some changes/realizations/skills that I have experienced in this magical country.

1) Now I am not afraid to talk to anyone. From rich European businessmen speaking flawless English to shoeless heroin addicts conversant in Bengali, I've talked to them all, and most important, I can make them laugh.

2) Kolkata has the best street food in the world. I don't even need to go anywhere else to know this.

3) If I was sleeping rough, I could survive (eat sufficiently) for a dollar a day in India.

4) Music and laughter are the universal human languages.

5) I am really quite handsome, especially in a lungi.

6) I should be more modest.

7) The reason that Indians are such good dancers is that they must duck and weave their way around city streets in a beautiful combination of elegance and survival.

8) If you speak someone's language, you pay less money for whatever they are selling. Perhaps a different part of the brain/different associations are triggered when one hears his native tounge during a monetary negotiation. After all, most folks talked to in his language are family/friends/peers whereas most folks speaking English to someone are (relatively or absolutely) rich, stupid foreingers.

9) Intense air pollution has the benefit of blocking the sun's harmful rays.

10) There is much underutilized space in Western cities.

11) If I am honest and unselfconscious around people, they will either like me, or dislike me. If they like me, cool, and if they don't like who I am, there are billions upon billions of other human beings in this world who I can spend my precious time with.

12) It's easier to get up in the morning if I have something meaninful to do.

13) Karma is real, and can be near-instantaneous.

14) God is real, and God has a sense of humor that can seem ironic or cruel to us mere mortals.

15) Spicy food makes one feel gastronomically satisfied for longer periods than non-spicy food.

16) I can pass off as a Bengali to Tibetan gangsters. Therefore, traditional concepts of "race" are completely irrelevant.

17) Friends of mine will pay me the fifty rupees I would need to survive in the Kolkata streets merely for drinking a cup of tap-water! (Probably a one-time thing, and no I did not get remotely sick, this was a typical male braggin-and-"pissing content" that took place after monsoon).

18) Human beings can endure terrible conditions, and still smile.

19) The ones who smile live longer.

20) If you look directly into someone's eyes, you can tell when they are being dishonest.

21) This is the future, and it's going to be OK.

---

---