Leslie's list of "Why's"

---

Leslie's list of "Why's"

Why isn't there a better way to process the waste created by over one billion people (and cows)?

For a country that sees SO MANY Western tourists, why isn't there more of an interest in our sense of 1. cleanliness 2. sales techniques 3. noise levels 4. personal space?

Why do so many Indians make me so annoyed with them?

Why is this man giving me walking directions to the station when I'm asking if I can call?

Why doesn't anybody EVER have change?


I had a really interesting opportunity before dawn on the 24-hour train ride to Bhubaneswar. Turns out, I was sleeping under a woman who grew up here in Orissa but has lived in Albany, NY for the last 20 years. Well, of course I picked her brain about EVERYTHING like: how did she come to live in Albany (hubby's job), the process of getting married here (for her, a middle-class, well-educated young woman, the same process of an arranged marriage but she seemed to feel she had some choice in who to pick).


She also seemed to feel strongly that people here are becoming more contemporary in their thinking. That they are open to the possibility of divorce or a single life or a marriage without children. I say that some Indians may be on the cutting edge but I don't think these obviously traditional and poor people will be so easily led to abandon custom. How can you be part of the Pepsi generation when you can't even watch MTV for god's sake? And remember there are at least 600 million of her countrymen who never shared her affluence.


I asked her some of my "why" questions. And she had a very good answer: short-sightedness. "Ah," I said, "so people don't think about next week." "No," she said, "they don't even think about this afternoon." Do her friends think she's become Americanized? She laughed and asked her cousin the question in Telugu. Her cousin laughed and said, "No!" This was confirmed when I realized she was talking VERY LOUDLY for such tight quarters with a bunch of people sleeping around her. That's one Indian trait she hasn't lost.


Puri is so much nicer than the impersonal and dirty Bhubaneswar. It's always better in a more PERSONAL and dirty place. Actually, it's nice, there's traffic but it's mainly rickshaws, scooters and bicycles. The manager in the Xanadu Garden Cafe was so nice to bring me a bottle of whiskey. He snapped his fingers and a little kid materialized to escort me to the nearby bhang shop, I could've kissed him. The roughest part is always surviving arriving.

---