There’s a line in “Darjeeling Limited” spoken by one of the main characters that I have realized is meant as an inside joke for people who have been to India. “I love the smell of this place!” I’ve heard that India has a particular smell before so when I heard that line it didn’t mean much to me. Now that I’ve been here its a different story.
There are actually four distinct smells of India. Usually they’re mixed in various ratios. The base note is the smell of smoke and its common to most of the mixed aromas here. It smells mostly like a campfire but not exactly. Actually sometimes the fires are from burning garbage and those smell toxic, like burning plastic mixed with rotting meat. Oh also there are no catalytic converters here. Most trucks and busses spew thick black exhaust and the cars aren’t much better.
The next smell is curry. There are of course variations in the curry but by and large all curries have commonality in their smell. Most of Delhi was about 75% smoke and 25% curry. It was quite an interesting smell. Here in Dharamsala the smell is usually much subdued because of the winds coming off the Himalayas but there is a hint of fire mixed with the next ingredient in the Indian aroma, flowers. The flowers change depending on when each variety blooms. When there’s a new bloom the smell in the air is amazing.
The final smell is sewage. Rotten stinking sewage from animals and people. Its all over the place here. There is no source of water in India that is not contaminated by sewage. Even the Indians cant drink the water unless its been filtered. Many do but they also do get sick. There’s a river that runs nearby that is filled with garbage. Mostly everyone in the village dumps their garbage in it. The lower caste locals who can’t afford a bathroom use the river for an outhouse. Needless to say, it smells. This is very common all over India. Every smell has at least of hint of sewage in it. There are intense pockets of sewage smell in many places and they come upon you really quick. For the first week or so I would walk along and begin to smell flowers or curry and take a deep breath only to stumble upon a pocket of sewage. I’ve learned to stop walking when I want to smell the flowers and to take shallow breaths when I am walking. There are places where a constant smell of sewage lingers, some actually are very near food stands. I really don’t know how the people can buy food with that smell.
Anyway...
I’m alone. Jodi, Pam and Chelsea left. They were the last people from my original group. Pam left early mostly because she had some problems with the director and didn’t want to be around any more. Most of this is related to an abused child who was in a daycare where one of the volunteers from our group, Deb worked. The boy, who’s around three, has bad burns all over his arms. To punish him his father pours scalding water on his arms. He wears long sleeve shirts to cover it up. Deb tried to do something about it but ran into brick walls and wasn’t here long enough. She talked to the director about it and he said he would do something. She then asked Pam to follow up. When Pam did she found that nothing had been done. The director told her to forget it, its not her place to intervene and its a different culture here and she needs to accept that. Well she didn’t, had it out with the director then went ahead and pursued it. She went to the police station where no one wanted to talk to her except for a civilian who happened to overhear. He suggested the Red Cross. A doctor at the Red Cross said he would help if Pam brought the family to him. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. So yeah, more brick walls. So afterwards the relationship between Pam and the director became untenable and she left. I’m now taking up the cause. There’s a children’s welfare center nearby that we learned about and I’m going there early next week.
Pam was supposed to stay with me throughout the entire time. She’s going to be replaced by a new volunteer coming in on Monday. He is a fifty eight year old retired police officer. That’s going to be interesting. My wisdom to him will be “Maintain control while letting chaos flourish” We’ll see if he understands...
So yeah, I’m alone. There are other volunteers here, two of which I hung around with a lot over the last three weeks, Renu and Alexandria and one who I’m now starting to get to know, Rachel. I think I’m going to spend more time in introversion over my last two weeks here. The past six have been mostly hanging around with people or teaching. There was only one day when I was by myself. There’s only two weeks left and a lot of stuff to sort out in my head. So right after I post this I’m going to a place called Forsythe Ganj and then to Bhagsu. They’re both good places to sit and think while being in the woods with other peaceful people also looking for something in themselves.
I posted some pictures from last week. The first three are of a cluster fuck that came about because the driver of the white bus was older than the driver of the public bus and so the white bus didn’t wait for the public bus to get though a narrow passage making it go around. It ended up almost tipping over into the other bus. This is a common thing they tell me. I think its bullshit. Whatever. Then there’s some cows hanging out outside the Hope Center (where I teach English to Tibetans). Then there’s pictures of my last trip. We went to Manali. Its basically a resort town like Aspen. They have skiing into July because its high up in the mountains a few hundred feet from the permanent snow line. There’s also white water rafting. We did that. There’s one picture of a poker hand that pissed me off. Guess which one was mine... Finally there’s pictures of a service at the Buddhist temple.
Click here for this week’s pictures
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