Chapter 41: Diseased

Ok, the time has finally come to get off my butt and write this all down. Only problem is I can no longer remember where I left off or what exactly happened anyway. So I will now proceed to set it all down to the best of my ability, but I cannot guarantee that it will be in civilized chronological order. In fact, I am almost willing to promise that it won’t be. Whatever I write will almost certainly be taking the most convoluted and thickly wooded route possible to reach its point. And with that disclaimer having now been set straight, I begin.

Actually, the lights just went out and I am severely averse to the idea of moving into a more well-lighted area from this appallingly comfortable bed, so I’m actually just killing time instead of beginning and waiting for the light to find me. Alright, we compromised, I now have a reading light, and I can begin.

Sheesh, I just checked back to see where I left off, and it’s been so long that I don’t even feel like writing it anymore. Ah, sigh. Grit teeth. Here goes.

So my camera (which had gone missing) just turned out to have been locked away by the maid for safekeeping. A nice relief, though all my cash is gone. Not exactly sure where along the road that happened, but I’m almost too tired to care, so I just try to avoid thinking about how many teapots I burned my fingers on in order to pay for some random Indian to win themself a guilty conscience. Luckily this is not too difficult as I’m generally too tired to do much thinking at all, and in fact that’s actually the first time that the thought even occurred to me. If you’re not getting the hint, I’ve been feeling unwell and horrifically tired ALL the time. I’ve had a headache for the past two days and a sort throat for the past three. But, as promised, that’s all totally out of order, so let’s go back in time a bit to the last time I was feeling like this, back in Anandpur Sahib. Ugh, just thinking about it makes me want to puke all over again—just like I did a couple days ago for the first time since third grade, but again I digress. We’re trying to get to the part where we clambered aboard a sickening bus, drove to the spot where Guru Gobind Singh wrote Benti Chaupaee, and recited eleven of them there. I honestly had a bit of a hard time experiencing the power of it that everyone later described, for a few reasons.

1. I was still too tired sick to have much of an easy time focusing on the task at hand.
2. I was distracted by monkeys.

We don’t often get monkeys back in good ol’ Santa Fe, so it’s hard not to want to watch them when they do show up. Plus they had red butts. And were fighting. One was perched on a hill overlooking the river, hand on knee as though he were a meditating little hermit monkey. Nevertheless eleven Benti Chaupaees was still a very neat thing to do despite my decrepit physical state and abundance of primates.

Then at some point the sickness miraculously disappeared and was replaced by energy and a burning desire to do gatka, so my mother and sister and I set ourselves to the task of building an obstacle course with gusto. Then we had a fabulously muddy training day in the rain (makes it feel authentic) and I did nothing but my left hand the whole time because my mom is very good at breeding a sturdy little army of right-hand addicts—dominant-hand addicts, I should say—a phenomenon which I am stalwartly trying to thwart and am obviously still bitter about.

One morning we had the first ever all-women Amrit ceremony in history. Now I know that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to lead up to, but I really don’t have the energy just now. I was on the panj, which was quite interesting, having myself only taken Amrit less than a year ago. It was really nice, though. A great ceremony, and for me it felt like taking Amrit all over again.

Then we came back to Amritsar and I don’t really remember what happened. Oh yeah. Shopping. Plenty of it. Show me ONE more Fabindia suit and I just might pass out or throttle you or both, and in that order. Not a very at peace way to go about things, but I’m sorry, I’m not feeling very at peace. I’m feeling like I just want ONE breath of fresh European air, not filled with trash and cow dung and acrid sweat and who knows what else. Actually I’d like several, but even just one would be nice. India has worn out its welcome. Mmm… Austrian bread and decent brie…. Actually that all sounds gross right now because food in general all sounds gross right now, but I keep eating it anyway because I can’t tell what makes me feel worse: eating it or avoiding eat.

Oh yeah, that’s what happened. Went to Parents’ Day at MPA and ate a food which I cannot write down because looking at it on the page will make me want to barf again, which is exactly what I did with it the next morning upon arriving back at the school, and all over the flowerbeds too. Ok, too much information, I know. This is the censored version, be glad. What’s actually written in my little black book is quite graphic. Anyway. I then watched a bunch of cool performances while feeling horrible, then I felt awful, then I continued to feel dreadful, then I took some antibiotics, and by the evening I was feeling fine, fine meaning that I could reasonably stand up without fear of imminent vomit, fine also meaning I was unable to accompany the crew to pizza hut.

After all that I thought I was finally better, but obviously I wasn’t because here I am moaning, not feeling terribly bad, but just not feeling in any way good and feeling like everything is an enormous effort. Raising my eyes to look at the air conditioner is an effort. Remembering the sentence I was originally planning to put here is an effort, and one that I’m not willing to make, though I know there was a better one than this in mind. I’m only able to continue writing this because now it’s the momentum I’m going with, and to stop would be an effort. Plus, I figure its taken me so long to get myself here to these blank pages that I better have something to show for it.

Well I think I’ve showed it. Anything else that’s worth mentioning will probably be brought up when the cross-references refer back anyway, and if I don’t end up with any cross-references to refer back, then I figure it wasn’t worth mentioning. That’s my feeling on India at the moment. Just take it and go. The empty hole in space where I will inevitably be if you voip out India—that empty space is find with me. At least with space asphyxiation you don’t have to worry about the smell.