three months

So, I have passed the three-month mark over here in India and I am taking a little bit of inventory. Considering the numerous risks I have taken, I feel very lucky to still be here and to be in almost perfect health (I have diarrhea right now). Many of the people I have come to know have returned West after much shorter times here with whole disease packages that include hepatitis, malaria, and various protozoan fiestas. I wouldn't be surprised if I tested positive for tuberculosis, but that would take months or years to catch up with me, anyway, so no worries right now. Health is a very interesting thing. No one really understands what it is. We know exactly what all kinds of diseases are and how they work, and we certainly understand when we are sick, but health is more elusive. It is so much more than a sum of one's systems -- it is a confluence of so many things, all playing together like a jazz orchestra, never stopping to think -- it just is. When you have it, it's almost like a protective force field. And it is intimately linked to one's state of mind. So, I am trying to stay within its fold.

Paranoia threatens, still. So difficult to tell what is paranoid and what is reasonable when you are in a place like this and circumstances are so damn strange and unusual. I do end up laughing at myself a lot, though, when I catch myself startled by something ridiculous like a shadow in the mirror or my kurta waving around under the fan. Tonight I was sitting at a South Indian place and was just beginning part of the thali I had ordered when the waiter came and told me "the police are coming." What? I looked at him questioningly. "Sir, the puri are coming." Ha ha. Good.

Things are a little jumpy around here now because of the bombings yesterday in the next neighborhood, at the Jama Masjid. There were also bombings a block away from here back in Nov/Dec, I forget when that was... So now the internet places are taking everyone's names down when we use the computers. Completely stupid and futile, Homeland Security style. No ID necessary - just tell us your name and where you are from. Oh, Okay! Is there something about the word 'terrorism' that when you say it on the news it just automatically makes whole populations really stupid?