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Published: September 2nd 2009
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I have to admit to you all, I was nervous to come back to western soil. I feared feeling like a duck out of water; I feared not knowing how to function in the reality that I once knew. Though it may sound like an exaggeration, travelling in India is less like travelling in another country and more like another universe. I feared being that returned, estranged daughter that locks herself in a self-made Indian sanctuary in her house where incense seeps from the cracks of the doors, Hindi music plays endlessly and I sit meditating in a yoga pose until it is time to have my morning chai.
While India will always be in my heart, how was I to shake the urge to steal toilet paper from every bathroom in town??
The whole thing played out in my head. I would arrive in Germany in flashy Ali Babas, or to exaggerate the story further, in a silky, flowing Sari smelling of Jasmine and incense. After unsuccessfully trying to bargain for a taxi fare, I would sit down at a fancy downtown restaurant and forget how to use utensils, diving my fingers into my rice while trying to
order something other than meat (near impossible on a German menu!!). I would leave shoving napkins in my pockets for 'business' later and stumble into the streets of where cow poo and garbage have no place, and neither do I.
Terrified by this vision, we needed a plan:
It all started with the symbolic striping of the Ali Baba pants. When passing through Delhi after roaming around Kashmir Valley and the beautiful and breath-taking Himalayas, Alex and I made a drastic move - a purchase that would effect our psyche much more than our wallets. We decided that the first step to our 'Westernization process' was to purchase jeans. Sounds simple, no? We took the subway to a few chic malls in Delhi and went in search of our denim transformation. We soon found a few pairs that we hoped would be passable on the next leg of our adventure: Berlin. We liberally threw our Ali Babas away and pulled on our new pants to strut around in style and quickly realized the challenge of jeans in India. The heat makes you feel like you are wearing leather, or some other horribly hot fabric.
(System for wearing
jeans in India).
Have an ice cold shower then sit under the fan for 10 mins to avoid sweating immediately. Slowly reach for your jeans, without getting too hot and insert one leg. Now, sit for another 5 mins before inserting both legs. After both legs are in, wipe the sweat that will inevitably be on your forehead. Now, stand up, and pull your jeans on. This will be hard, especially if you purchased tight ones!!! Zip and button. Final step: lay down again. *Make sure the fan is on high.
After our jeans were in toe, a few other habits had to be rid of in our westernizing process including relearning how to use a laundry machine after months of hand washing clothes, weaning ourselves back onto alcohol (easy peasy!), off chapati bread (also equally easy peasy), and basically kicking our own asses to get in the foreign rhythm of walking and acting like a mobile human being rather than laying around all day doing nothing and being so exhausted that you need a nap every afternoon (no so easy peasy)!
Luckily arriving to Berlin wasn't as shocking as expected. Turns out Western life is like riding
a bicycle - you never forget how to use utensils, eat cheese, and drink wine, or get over seeing cows enclosed in farms and not shitting all over the road!! Once we sat in a car driving in an organized fashion down the Autobahn and felt cleaner than we have been in months, it felt like home. Berlin is a city I could live in: just gritty enough to be interesting and clean enough to be comfortable. I loved every moment of it (from the days that I was actually able to wander around the streets after taking a little gift of another round of tummy sickness back from India!). In a room of 10 other budget travellers, I was bed-bound for two days and soon became labelled the 'Sleeping Girl' after proving to people that it is possible to sleep for 48 hours straight! After getting better Alex and I walked the streets, stuffing our faces with familiar foods along the way and all the while wishing that everything in Europe was in Rupees! The Euro is torture. When leaving India we took our leftover 5,500 Rupees (we're rich bitch!) to the exchange counter to receive a ball breaking
$70 Euro. So basically a week and a half in India is a dinner and few drinks in Europe. Mahder Chod !!!! (Hindi Trans: Motherfucker!).
Now, sadly, Alex and I have divorced and while she is roaming the lands of the Ukraine, and I am soaking my days in Oldenburg trying to organize my trip into various scenes for a short comedy series.
I call this scene the Lulu Monologue
Set Up
A movie is being made of the trip. Alex and Kiki are sitting in a dark and dingy Hollywood screening room behind a wobbly Ikea table sipping on Perrier water, scripts in hand looking for the perfect actress to play a scene in the movie entitled: Alex Loses her LuluLemon Tank Top. The audition has been over a few hours long and everyone is tired.....
The next actress stands up to play the scene (she is terrible).
Audition, Scene 1: Alex is on a Hotel floor in Fort Cohin rummaging her bag for her LuluLemon Tank Top.
Actress #87 reads her lines: 'Really, really, REALLY God??????? Do you hate me THAT much. I mean, really. Out of all this Junk (a shirt flies
into the air) you take my favourite shirt. Really?? Why not this (another hits the air) or this one (clothes are now flying). I don't even LIKE this..........
The real Alex stands up exhausted of a battered vision of the script.
Alex: 'Honey, HONEY. I said this was your FAVOURITE shirt. Fuck it, I just don't like the look of you................NEXT!!!!!!!!!!!'
And so on and so forth. You know it may not make me rich, but at least it might keep my butt travelling for a little while longer, no? Over and out for now. My last leg of this adventure should end in London (unless I mange to sneak a little Spain trip in-between to warm up), and with my new best friend in hand (my blow dryer- sorry Alex but your just don't make my hair as silky) will hopefully report back of pubs and further chaos in England. I will close this entry with a list of books read, some of you have asked and I choose to deliver.
Hugs, kisses and misses.
Books read
1. Sex, drugs and Coco Puffs
2. God is not Great
3. The Audacity
of Hope
4. Shantram
5. This book will change your life
6. The Road
7. The Brief and Wonderous life of Oscar Wao
8. The curious case of the dog in the night
9. The monk who sold his Farrari
10. The magic of thinking BIG
11. Freedom in Exile (Dahli Lama)
12. My Experiments with truth - Gandhi
13. Breaking the Rules
14. 3 Cups of Tea
15. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
16. Emotional Intelligence
17. 1984
18. Lajja
19. The Unlimited Dream Company
20. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
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