bon voy-india


july 6, 2006,
LaLa land, hollywood california


well, here i am, amigos,

straddling the fence between a hip replacement and a trip to india. 2 extreme choices. one, age and pain driven - too many forced turn-outs, balletic plies, and i-was-too-old-to start-dancing-at-21 grinded femurs. the other, opportunity knocking from the howling and holy monsoons and kiplings of the sub-continent. what to do? tennis is already history, bedtime gymnastics verboten, and now hiking uneven surfaces has even caught up with me. the wife sez, like nike, "just do it." but then crazy benny, formerly stefan from germany who lived here at lucretia for a year but then went to india for his last three months to live, calls from mumbai (formerly bombay), and sez "you should check out an ayurvedic cure, and while you're at it, see de magic and creativity of hindi feelmmaking."

i mean, what would you do?

of course!

here i go...........

hollywood to bollywood –

on sunday.

this being my traditional cold-footed e-cursor to total immersion in another culture.

but INDIA? the 1 place i've been avoiding my entire traveler's life? sure....... i was chicken shit to go to me-hee-co the first time (and yeah, i did get montezuma's revenge), and squeamish to go to southeast asia in 2000 (where i only ended up meeting my lovely indonesian wife), and even petrified to go to south america in 2003 (where i barely avoided being hijacked by the shining path for 2 months high in the andes), but INDIA! this is the most crowded and dirty place on the planet, isn't it? the place with the biggest HIV population in the world? the place where they outsource our phone calls to. the place with the flies and the cow pies. the raj and the haj. the hep A and the hep B. the typhoid and the jaundice. the continent where explosive and unavoidable digestive ailments rule. you know, INDIA!

this SUN-DAAAAAAAAY!

and now benny calls - today - and says "if you vant to make g-d laugh, tell him your plans", because he doesn't know whether he can meet me anymore or even where he'll be because he's flooded in goa, and half the hotels in mumbai are under water from the last few days of the holy and howling monsoons. and when i call a hotel for a reservation, i can hear someone on the other end but they can't hear me. and i arrive at 3:45 in the morning and i have no itinerary and no servas hosts have called me back except the couple with the jaundiced son.

and i'm going to INDIA on sunday for 3 and a half weeks while my indonesian wife studies english 4 days a week at LACC (los angeles city college) and works as a bartender 3 nights a week and doesn't really want me to go but when i loll around the house all day complaining she finally tells me to go except when i book the ticket she changes her mind but now it's too late because i already bought the non-refundable ticket and it's raining holy cats and dogs in mumbai formerly bombay and i don't know whether i should see hindu temples or IT phone banks or the river ganges or the river of shit that i'm sure to discover no matter how many anti-bacterial handi wipes i take or how many times i use them or how many vaccines or pills i take or how careful i am because i know i'm gonna die in the black hole of india so this is a farewll to all you fair and worthy friends - if you want anything here in LA just call my wife after i'm gone and come and pick it up because i won't have any more use for it; anything but money, that is, because she wants it all and god knows she's earned it having survived 5 years living with me can you imagine that, such a neurotic worrisome guy who hardly realizes how good he has it and how little he has to work and all the time he has on his hands where he can just write this self-indulgent obsessive and now unpunctuated tripe to all his "friends" who he doesn't even call all year long when he's living in safe and secure los angeles in the land of bush, justice, and no longer the american way.

nevertheless, i'm offfffffffffffffffffffffffffff........................

drop me a line.

say goodbye................

hasta (maybe),

e