I am so f***ing lost right now! India: the confusing list.

EDIT: censored the title. I'm okay with irritating my parents, but I remembered my grandma reads this too, and I think being a rebellious foul-mouthed young blogger is only funny about one generation up. Not that I think my grandma would shake her head in disapproval or anything. I guess it's just, the more you think about swear words, the more it's like a big deal to use them, and thanks to my parents, I think about them a lot now. It's like watching a Bruce Willis movie or something, and then after he shoots a dude, stopping the movie and sobbing because oh my god he's dead and his wife and kids will have to go on without him. My position on the issue of "swear words" (they're silly) still stands, but if people I care about are going to stop reading and wag their fingers at me, I mean, it's not worth fighting over.

ANYWAY, the sentence in question comes from a (super american) kid we saw in an alley in Varanasi. We had been wandering around a bit, vaguely trying to find our hotel, and apparently he had too. We made eye contact and it's like the whole charade just dropped, like he finally found someone who would understand not only his language but also his predicament, and the exasperation came tumbling out. Hope we pointed him in the right direction.

India was super confusing! Mostly in a fun way. Occasionally intriguing, or just plain old noteworthy. Here's a sampling:

- Addresses. You might think a hotel would have an address that you could tell a cab driver, who would then take you directly to that address. Wrongo! My hotel was at A27/1 Road No.1, Mahipalpur Extn, New Delhi. "Road No. 1"? It took us about five tries.
- Taximen let you share a taxi. Like it's Rs900 for the two of us to get from Guwahati to Shillong with one other passenger, but only Rs600 if there are two other passengers. (and even then, Indianmen sure don't pay the same price as whitemen.)
- All around Shillong, you can buy tickets for the daily sweepstakes. Here's how it works: twice a day, a whole bunch of guys shoot a whole bunch of arrows at a target. You bet on the last two digits of the number of arrows that stick in the target. Sadly, never saw this happen.
- At one point it got all muddy when we were walking on the road where some kids were working. So they built a rock bridge for us. Really, we can walk through the mud, it's okay! But, um, thanks anyway!
- Handwriting is held in higher esteem in India. And by that broad generalization, I mean I saw one guy with really great handwriting.
- We got white-person gawked a lot! Kids would say stuff to us. My conversations were decidedly one-sided; I'd just sorta go "khublei!" (which means hello, goodbye, have a good one, peace be with you, uh, a penny saved is a penny earned, red sky at morning sailors take warning, etc.) a lot.
- At the orphanage, we played games with the kids. I ended up playing pick-up sticks a lot. You can imagine it's difficult to agree on the rules when most of the players don't speak your language. And by that I mean they all speak Kid.
- If you have three pots, what would they be? Would one of them be a pressure cooker? In India, yes.
- Milk comes in a little pouch. That just kinda sits out. I mean, no fridge. So you boil it. Then it has a skin.
- In Kolkata, we went to the Kali temple. I explained how cool this was. But we were trying to put our shoes in the shoesplace (in every temple there is a shoesplace so you don't wear your shoes in the temple) and we got bamboozled by a fake shoeman. He asked us to put our shoes under a little corner of a store, so we did, and then he proceeded to take us for a tour. Hey, there's a Shiva lingam. Hey, there's a tree that's good for your family or whatever. Here's a flower, throw it at Kali. Here's a string that I'll tie around your wrist, more good luck. Now come over here and make a donation. Of course I "didn't have any money," so after some badgering, I was sent to set on a step and "meditate." But first I was asked to write my name, country, and the number 2100 in a book. Whatever, I'm not giving you money, I'll write whatever number you want. I soon found out they tried to use this "fact" to persuade Catie to "donate" because "look, Dan donated 2100 rupees." (of course she is too shrewd for this nonsense.)
- EDIT: As if our evening wasn't bewildering enough, we proceeded to wander around the darkened grounds of the Victoria Memorial, ignoring a groundskeeper who tried to tell us it was closed. We had heard tales of a "sound and light show", you see, and if there's anything better than viewing an old vainglorious British colonial-era monument in the middle of India, it's viewing the same* with bright lights and music. I guess. Er, we were bored? Anyway, we found our way in, sat in the rs20 "front" section (about 10 feet in front of the rs10 "back" section) among a bunch of oldmen, and were immediately blown away by a rollicking Caribbean-inspired tune called "I am Calcutta". Not only were the pictures of the accompanying slideshow taken in approximately 1970, the lyrics were inane. I mean, "I am the memory of years/ I am the laughter and tears/ I am Calcutta!" sort of inane. Then we snoozed through 45 minutes of a terribly Anglocentric history of Calcutta (with some bright lights) and got bitten by mosquitoes. All in all, well worth the price of admission.
* Like my use of "the same" there? We saw that all over India.
- Taking a domestic flight from Kolkata to Gaya, we had to fill out a "declaration of goods" form where we said we weren't carrying certain things. You know, money, guns, etc. And also cameras and "zipper pulls".
- Being white (and therefore, apparently just puking money all over the place) is weird. We wanted to take an autorickshaw somewhere in Bodh Gaya, I think it was. We saw one filling up with people and we figured we could share the ride, you know, because we could save 40 cents or something, but the point is, it'd be fun or authentic or something. So everyone started talking in Hindi and then the other passengers started to get out. Apparently he was going to boot them out and take us. We hastily explained, no, it's okay, please continue, you know, taking these people who were already in the car. Sheesh.
- And then in Varanasi, the aforementioned white dude who was soooo lost. He had started out looking for an internet cafe. We tried to point him to a shop owned by this guy who had an excellent marketing pitch: he stood outside, and as we passed, called out "Yes, madam, we do have internet here!"
- At one point we hit a dead end. Kids laughed at us.
- At a few other points, our way was blocked by a bull. I think the bull was laughing at us.
- Did I mention the kids playing Holi? So Holi is this holiday where you throw color at each other. It was on Wednesday. Starting about the Friday before, there were kids with colored water balloons out on the streets. I mean, these were super stainful- we each lost a pair of pants. Could be worse- we saw one dude just get pasted with a big green splotch on his back. Some had plain water balloons (and in fact Catie got walloped with one in a rickshaw), but still. For about four days, we were pretty frightened of kids.
- Train ride to Agra was fun. At one point, this friendly Muslim student joked that we couldn't speak English. "You're in India, you have to speak Hindi." We could not even say that we could not even say anything.
- Also, we got booted from our seats a couple times. We thought we were in the right place, but these Muslim students had our bunks, so we just took theirs (or so we thought), but then someone else arrived to claim them, and blah. Around 2AM a couple guys asked us some questions and then everyone started getting involved and duking it out in Hindi (this is a common occurrence)*. Eventually they got it figured out.
* At this point, Catie noticed the station we were in. "We're in Lucknow", she said. "Yeah," I said, "these guys seem like they can help us." SUPER PUN!
- When I got to Hemant and Gaurav's house, I went to take a shower. I had been out of shampoo for a while, but I thought, no problem, they'll have some. They did; it was called "Black Shine" and looked smooth, silky, and pitch black. I debated whether to use it, read up on how it would make your hair so beautifully black, and decided against it. Le sigh.
- According to everyone we talked to, there are two kinds of Holi colors: dry colors (in a powder) and "water colors", which are universally evil. Okay.
- Also, sometimes they call shorts "half-pants"!
- Things that are okay in India, or at least okay with Hemant and Gaurav, part 1: commenting on people's bodies. They've outright called Catie fat (ludicrous) and she was pretty excited to see if they would do the same to me. Nope: instead they told me I needed to work on my figure. You know, buff up a little bit. I'm too skinny. (to be fair, I'm pretty skinny. However, I absolutely don't mind.)
- Things that are okay in India, or at least okay with Hemant and Gaurav, part 2: the word "chink". As in, "the people up in the Northeast are kind of, what would you say, chinky, right? They look a little bit Chinese?" Even better: Saturday nights at the "disc" (disco) are "Chinky Night."
- Even better sales pitch than the Internet guy: "Hello. Beard?" (from a sidewalk beard salesman.)
- Finally, on our last day in Delhi, everywhere we end up it's all fancy and posh. We just wanted some food! Eventually we asked a guy where was good to eat and he sent us to Pandara Rd. At Pandara Rd. there are about 4 buildings, each of which has a restaurant. We see some Indian guys going into one, so we follow them. It turns out it's called "Havemore restaurant", it's super fancy (like white tablecloths), it's super expensive (like $5 each!), and the stereo features a Celine Dion soundalike singing "Run" by Snow Patrol.
- Have I mentioned what a mess Indian pop music is? I mean, the Indian pop music that is actually Indian is cool. But the American pop they get is abysmal. It's like the post-grunge of 5 years ago (hello, Nickelback and Three Doors Down) with the occasional odd bootleg mashup (like that mix of "Wonderwall" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", or "In the end" by Linkin Park plus some crummy Garage-Band drum beat).
- Going to a coffeeshop in the fully middle-class Defense Colony Market: I order an Americano. The response is "With Irish flavoring?" as if that is the most natural thing in the world. "Of course!"
- And then, some 30 muddled hours later, I board a bus from Sea-tac airport to my home, only to hear some lady talking loudly on the phone, dropping not only an "I'm gonna whoop your ass", but also a "You're gonna get a Whopper shoved up your butt." It's great to be home.