Life: Friends in Low Places

A couple of my good friends from England are now in India and, well, for the moment at least, I’m not jealous.

A report from the first, Allison (another MA Student in Buddhist Studies) contains the following (WARNING: GRAPHIC) description of a night near Delhi:

[first a nice part, at a bird sanctuary]

It was dusk and they [the birds] were coming back from feeding. It was absolutely amazing. I’ll show you the pictures when we get back. There were birds everywhere, all different types perched on these trees that were growing out of the lake.

[now the ‘middle-of-the-night’ GRAPHIC rude awakening]

…I managed to eventually find a lightswitch, but there was a powercut. No streetlamps, it being as rural as rural gets so it was literally pitch black. I’m feeling hotter than ever, and also dizzy… I collapse in front of the toilet, spray vomit everywhere, and piss myself as my muscles spasm to empty my stomach. I take off my pyjamas and try to wash my legs but the water hurts my skin.

[and in closing, (not graphic)]

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I eventually got better but I’ve lost a fair bit of weight as I didn’t eat for several days. Stuff is slipping off my waist and my bras keep trying to fall off!

WOW… ohh… poor girl, but ending in such good spirits is so truly wonderful and remarkable. Yea for Allison! 🙂 What a trooper. I love hearing her accounts of India, knowing the ups (good, cheap food and variety of cultures cohabitating mostly peacefully) and the downs (from strange illnesses to week-long 24-hour festivals keeping her up all night) will hopefully make my own eventual journeys there that much more wonderful.

And my other friend, Soorjya, is a native of Calcutta and returned there after earning a degree in Law in Bristol. NO projectile vomiting here:

… I’ve spent much of the past couple of months catching up with friends and relatives and catching up with a city I abandoned 3yrs back………things have changed drastically.

On the work front I’ve joined a barrister’s chamber to begin my career in law………..or at least pretend that I’m doing something constructive under the watchful eyes of my parents, much the way u keep propagating your quest with an “MA” in the form of trips to sun kissed beaches, lying next to naked women and giving them insights into “new age buddhism”

Will send you some of my family photos later and shall have the red carpet laid out for you should you decide to come down.

I’m not sure about the ‘naked women’ part, but I’ll be very much hoping to see that red carpet not too far down the road. Soorjya and I had fantasized about going to Japan together to teach English to ‘exotic women in kimonos’ as he put it. But, alas, I had to settle for more school in Montana and a trip to Hawai’i and he a job in Calcutta (after some vacation in ‘Pondicherry, an erstwhile French colony in the southern part of India‘) . However, I do hope very much to travel with him again.