28: The Most Indian Day Ever
Far too many days on this journey have blurred into each other with little to no fanfare. Like anywhere in the world, some days have a regular monotony that make me scratch my head at the haziness of each day, curiously thinking, “What did I do today? How am I spending my time? Where have the days gone?”
Most of the time I can’t recall what day of the week it is. And in all honestly, most days I have no idea how I spend the day. I wish I could say that I’m using this gift of time off as the most precious and wisest gift but that would be a lie. I fill my days with meaningful nothingness the same way I filled them at home. The difference being I don’t have a TV or a couch to sit on and do nothing (and because of that my Netflix knowledge is severely lacking).
The walls of Goa are filled with posters for activities and events.
This is the main way I figured out how to do anything of interest in the town.
My daily nothingness routine has created blocks of time that include most day’s major activity - reading and internet time. I typically find myself in 1-4 hour stints of time where I sit in a coffee shop or cafe writing, looking at social media, reading a book or emailing any number of you all.
Sunset. Not bad.
The main attraction in Goa is the beach and there are tons of different beach towns each with a distinct personality and clientele. This is Arambol Beach known for hippies, Russians and Israelis.
And then there are days like today. These days bring me back to where I am, what world I’m living in and how far this fish is out of water. Today felt like the stereotypical Indian day, chock-a-block with chaos.
Totally normal. Totally India. I need some sort of “Why did the cow wait at the grocery store joke”, open to suggestions.
One random night there was a festival happening across the street from my guest house. The entire street was filled with gambling stalls like this of card and dice games. It all took place at a temple and was somehow religious in nature. My landlord told me that the party would last until at least 3AM and because it was happening at a temple they could be as loud as they wanted, no one can complain. That night I used ear plugs.
My morning started off as it has pretty standard for the last 9 days here in Arambol, Goa. I wake up around 9AM, take a quick shower and head out to a favorite cafe for a breakfast bite. Today was no exception to this routine, other than tossing and turning until 4AM, I greeted the day in the same manner. Tomorrow however is my last day at the beach and I needed to go to the post office to ship a box of souvenirs and goodies home.
I have previously shipped one other box home from India so I had a decent sense of what it was like to navigate the India postal system. In a word, it’s tiresome. A simple task like going to the post office is side splittlingly complicated. It requires a small dose of humor and a large volume of patience. If India didn’t have such wonderful things to buy, I wouldn’t be in this mess! I try only to buy things that I cannot find anywhere in the US and/or have some sort of sentimental value in their acquisition. Even still, it’s far too easy to fill and pack boxes to be shipped home and used in a future life.
The Indian Post Office, aka what a version of hell looks like.
HAHAHAH! It’s a joke because NO ONE queues up in India.
I was informed by a German couple that people often steal stamps off of postcards. Hopefully all of mine made it.
My tracking receipts. You could say India is behind the times a little.
In preparation for this organized chaos I had visited the post office a few days prior to get a sense of timing and process. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this, an intel scouting trip that has saved my ass so many times. India is no different. Don’t expect to just show up somewhere and things will run smoothly, expect the unexpected.
I had found out that this particular post office had a small office across the street that would package your goods. Upon arriving, I waited 10 minutes for the business owner to come back to the office. Then the fun began. There was one other man in line in front of me, the frustration of watching the Indian man try to help me and the other person was a spectacle in and of itself. He was no multitasker. I was then informed that I couldn’t just tape a piece of paper onto a box and ship that, they had to be wrapped in muslin and then shipped. Whether or not this is true or a brilliant marketing scheme to make clientele purchase this perhaps unnecessary step in the process I don’t know. I quickly reminded him that in Mumbai I shipped a box and they did not require any of these complexities. His response was, “The Post Office in Mumbai is different than here”. It is the same post office name. It’s the same company. And I’m pretty sure the same government run entity but of course, with entirely different rules. Well, ooooooohkay then. The cost for his services was around 550 Rs, or $7.75. Not insignificant but also not cheap considering I still doubt the requirement for this step.
My friend sewing my parcels up.
As I tried my best to patiently wait while the main event of the day transpired. A couple walked up to the small office I was sitting in front of and they began to distract my dude and ask for help. If you ever thought that standing in a queue in the US was frustrating well let me remind you folks, at least there is one! Completely sidetracked he stopped what he was doing and helped them. Another 10 minute delay. During that wait, the Australian woman he was helping, perhaps in her 50’s or 60’s started to light up a cigarette.
Let me go off script for a moment and say that everyone, literally EVERYONE in India smokes including a vast majority of the tourists. There is no avoiding it and it makes me forever grateful that the US has banned smoking in public.
It’s not news to me that everyone in India smokes, I’d just obviously rather avoid it at all costs. So as I sat there waiting for my packages to be wrapped, I asked the woman kindly, “Do you mind smoking over there?” She bitterly snapped at me and said back, “Yes, yes I do mind. It’s India and we’re standing outside so no. I will not move.”
Honestly, this broke my soul.
I’ve been in India too long. My painting course I was so looking forward to got cancelled. I’ve started to get sick, a dull stomach pain and diarrhea. I’ve been isolated from friends and the internet is terrible. It was a perfect storm of this rude woman that brought me to tears. I desperately wanted to give her a word lashing and snide rebuke to her shitty attitude. I fantasized what my response could have been but instead, it just brought tears to my eyes that people could be this rude given a small request. This example has summed up some of my experiences with tourists in India. There’s a lot of entitlement that I wonder if they have the same entitlement when they are in their home country.
I wasn’t even an hour into this adventure and I already felt like it was a drain on all of my faculties. I was exhausted.
This is my laundry drying on the neighbor’s roof. I think I paid $4 for it to be machine washed (which is very important to have a machine do it unless you want your clothes to fall apart).
Nothing to see here but some Indian men “running” their bull…?
Trash is way, way, way too normal in India. It’s everywhere. This isn’t even a lot of trash in comparison to how much is often piled everywhere.
By the time that the couple left it took another 45 minutes for the guy to hand sew up my parcels for shipping. I thought I had gotten an early start to the day but the first 1.5 hours had passed with a snails pace.
The next step was to take my boxes across the street to wait in yet another line at the actual post office where I could pay. That was close to another 1.5 hour wait. Why? I honestly have no idea. There were 4 people working in the post office yet only 1 person was actually dealing with customers, the other 3 looked like they were just hanging out. There was probably only 8 people in line ahead of me but getting through that group of people took over an hour! And that doesn’t include the other 2 people who cut in line because again, lines do not exist in India.
And that’s just how it is. Everything feels painful and hard and tiresome. And it feels like it never ends. There is a constant stream of worries. The beaches and streets are filled with trash. Does anyone care? The black and putrid “stream” that flows through town makes your eyes water it smells so bad and then a few hundred feet later it dumps into the ocean. Should I be swimming here? The day before the post office I needed to pay for something I had made. The shop keepers graciously offered to drive me to the ATM so I could get cash. We went to 8 ATMs that were all empty before we drove 25 minutes outside of town to find one that has money. What happens to tourists that need money? Don’t even get me started on how cows are treated. Their primary pastime is to eat street garbage which also includes eating plastic to get to whatever is rotting and has been thrown into the trash. How can we treat an animal like this if they are so culturally revered?
While days like these aren’t really noteworthy (there’s plenty of headache inducing moments that happen in the US) it’s the culmination of these events in India that have me in awe of how anything gets done and also in gratitude for my place of origin. It makes waiting at the DMV look like Disneyland. And that seems almost an impossible fete.
- M
