Affour/Patna recap
I arrived back in rainy, rainy Delhi alone this morning on the Sampurn Kranti. The train ride was pleasant and I had a side-upper berth (which is my favorite). I slept almost the entire train ride bc I am majorly sleep deprived and feverish. The following is how I got in that state:
So Thursday evening santosh and i left for chhapra, which is a dinky little station (the size of the richmond amtrak station) in bihar. before going i lost my appetite and had nothing for dinner nor for breakfast except chai. this pattern continued throughout the weekend. we got to chhapra, and as usually, were met by guddu's elder brother, munna bhaiya. we took a 30 minute ride in an ambassador (the classiest car ever) to the house in affour. reaching there, we met guriya (guddu's little sister), bhabhi (munna bhaiya's wife), her three children (including the newborn girl), guddu's mom, siroj and ashok-- cousins, and a distantly-related "niece." The newborn girl is so big! i wonder if it is because she was 3 weeks late. she has a rash from the heat, but otherwise is quite healthy. i spent a lot of time holding her, which was good because it freed up the hands of everyone else to do other work or to relax. the baby won't sleep on the bed, so she constantly needs to be held. despite all the holding I did, the baby peed on me only once and pooped only once as well.
carrie-- this is for you, let's put an end to the exoticism: Saturday was super-hot and muggy in the village. i really wanted to take a nap, but it was too hot to sleep and there were so many flies everywhere. plus, the "clean" bedsheet smelled like pee (cleanliness, you quickly learn, is relative). my bag also smells like pee (i think from mice). saturday night was so hot that i barely slept. we were on the roof and the mosquitoes were bad and there was no breeze. to make matters worse, there were scary noises coming from the bamboo trees (rats?). oh, and everynight these ladies sing until 2am on a megaphone. and then there are the jackals whose howling sounds like men gone mad. and it is impossible to sleep past 5 or 6am on the roof.
saturday night was pretty rough, which i think set me up for falling sick. sunday was cloudy and cooler, luckily, and i was able to nap. i ate my breakfast, which tasted funny, and started getting a headache. in the afternoon i started getting very thirsty, so i drank a lot of water, and then felt very ill. that night the smell of eggplant frying almost made me vomit. so i went up to the roof when it got dark and talked to my bhabhi and slept on the cot with my niece and nephew.
monday morning i was still feeling sick so i only had tea. we (me guriya and santosh) left the house at 6:30am to catch a bus to patna. we missed the local bus so we went on motorcycle for 30 minutes to chhapra. there we found a bus to patna, but had to wait 30 minutes for it to fill up (meaning on the inside and with people on the roof). while we waited, we watched Hero No. 1 which is an awful movie with my least-favorite actor Govinda. after 3-hours of bumping and diesel fumes and the yelling of the bus-conductor ("Patna! Patna! Patna!") we got to Patna. i like the bus ride to patna for 3 reasons-- you get to watch a movie, the scene over the bridge near Hazipur of the banana trees, and the special, small bananas that are available. In patna (the capital of bihar), the sun was blazing and no rickshaw was available bc the drivers were on strike. i got very sunburned-- even a "bangle tan"-- a 2-in white ring around my arm from where my bangles had been.
In patna we went to a relative's flat (narad bhaiya's for all who may know-- across from the professor). it was my "nephew" chandan's 22?nd birthday. i showered and then santosh and i set out to do our two works-- we had to visit with 2 people, one being sadhna (chullu's wife). the meetings went well, but at the end i was further sunburned from all the motorcycle-riding and feeling quite ill bc i had only eaten junk from all the visits-- samosas, sweets and chai. geting on the train was a relief, but only temporary bc i quickly felt alone after all the excitement of the weekend.
So Thursday evening santosh and i left for chhapra, which is a dinky little station (the size of the richmond amtrak station) in bihar. before going i lost my appetite and had nothing for dinner nor for breakfast except chai. this pattern continued throughout the weekend. we got to chhapra, and as usually, were met by guddu's elder brother, munna bhaiya. we took a 30 minute ride in an ambassador (the classiest car ever) to the house in affour. reaching there, we met guriya (guddu's little sister), bhabhi (munna bhaiya's wife), her three children (including the newborn girl), guddu's mom, siroj and ashok-- cousins, and a distantly-related "niece." The newborn girl is so big! i wonder if it is because she was 3 weeks late. she has a rash from the heat, but otherwise is quite healthy. i spent a lot of time holding her, which was good because it freed up the hands of everyone else to do other work or to relax. the baby won't sleep on the bed, so she constantly needs to be held. despite all the holding I did, the baby peed on me only once and pooped only once as well.
carrie-- this is for you, let's put an end to the exoticism: Saturday was super-hot and muggy in the village. i really wanted to take a nap, but it was too hot to sleep and there were so many flies everywhere. plus, the "clean" bedsheet smelled like pee (cleanliness, you quickly learn, is relative). my bag also smells like pee (i think from mice). saturday night was so hot that i barely slept. we were on the roof and the mosquitoes were bad and there was no breeze. to make matters worse, there were scary noises coming from the bamboo trees (rats?). oh, and everynight these ladies sing until 2am on a megaphone. and then there are the jackals whose howling sounds like men gone mad. and it is impossible to sleep past 5 or 6am on the roof.
saturday night was pretty rough, which i think set me up for falling sick. sunday was cloudy and cooler, luckily, and i was able to nap. i ate my breakfast, which tasted funny, and started getting a headache. in the afternoon i started getting very thirsty, so i drank a lot of water, and then felt very ill. that night the smell of eggplant frying almost made me vomit. so i went up to the roof when it got dark and talked to my bhabhi and slept on the cot with my niece and nephew.
monday morning i was still feeling sick so i only had tea. we (me guriya and santosh) left the house at 6:30am to catch a bus to patna. we missed the local bus so we went on motorcycle for 30 minutes to chhapra. there we found a bus to patna, but had to wait 30 minutes for it to fill up (meaning on the inside and with people on the roof). while we waited, we watched Hero No. 1 which is an awful movie with my least-favorite actor Govinda. after 3-hours of bumping and diesel fumes and the yelling of the bus-conductor ("Patna! Patna! Patna!") we got to Patna. i like the bus ride to patna for 3 reasons-- you get to watch a movie, the scene over the bridge near Hazipur of the banana trees, and the special, small bananas that are available. In patna (the capital of bihar), the sun was blazing and no rickshaw was available bc the drivers were on strike. i got very sunburned-- even a "bangle tan"-- a 2-in white ring around my arm from where my bangles had been.
In patna we went to a relative's flat (narad bhaiya's for all who may know-- across from the professor). it was my "nephew" chandan's 22?nd birthday. i showered and then santosh and i set out to do our two works-- we had to visit with 2 people, one being sadhna (chullu's wife). the meetings went well, but at the end i was further sunburned from all the motorcycle-riding and feeling quite ill bc i had only eaten junk from all the visits-- samosas, sweets and chai. geting on the train was a relief, but only temporary bc i quickly felt alone after all the excitement of the weekend.
posted by skibak8 at 5:36 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home