( continues...) cool; we went on a motorcycle ride. They have a five-year-old son Shivam, who is now my favorite nephew (I think he's my only one, but shh). The day I met him, we instantly got along, as I picked him up and turned him upside-down, and he began to cling to me. He acted like a little puppy, so I started calling him Puppy, and the name stuck. He picked it up too, as he now responds with "Yes Puppy yes Puppy yes Puppy!" (Vibutibhabi always thinks I'm calling "Bhabi!") Just now, I watched my puppy write the whole alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, and the numbers up to 100. He's a smart puppy.
Everyone in this damn village seems to know us, even though we can never remember who they are. I walk down the road, and someone will call to me, ask me how I am, invite me in for some water or lemonade. I can barely remember all their names and how they know us, though the faces look familiar.
There's this cow next door. Every now and then, it will moo like the dickens. And it never stops being funny.
My little sister has a stash of little fun-size Snickers she shares with me. She also brought my brother and me crackers and cookies one time. She labelled a bunch of Dasani water bottles for us that she keeps refilling so we have our own water to drink. One time she replaced mine with Limca, and I burst out laughing because it was so unexpected and so nice. Another time, she filled it with lemonade. She's a good kid, fourteen now, but I don't think she's matured yet. She still feels like my baby sister.
I'm getting new glasses. They're half-frames. They're pretty sweet. My brother's getting emo glasses. No one else in that place knew what we were talking about, but if you saw them on him, you'd have to agree that we had a winner.
Besides Limca, another good Indian thing is Krackjack, the "world's first sweet and salty cracker." There's nothing exceptional about it, but it's just so good for some reason. It's kind of a glucose biscuit, but not as hard.
In a bizarre turn of events, we were walking in Navsari one day when we ran into Mitesh, a friend of mine from my dancing days whom I hadn't seen in at least three or four years. He was here to get married (he introduced me to his fiancée, who said nothing, which led me to believe they had found her here). Just walking down the road in Navsari. Man.
Up until a couple days ago when we finished them, my brother and I were reading Crime and Punishment (for school) and The Stand (for Lost), respectively. We read every chance we got, taking the books with us when we went out, to read on the way. People kept commenting on it. Some of the older men were supportive, gently encouraging and allowing us to read, telling us where there was better light. They saw it as a good thing, a sign of intelligence and learning. Others kept criticizing us, telling us we were reading too much, that we'd strain our eyes, blah blah blah. I'm on bloody vacation. Let me fucking read.
Our days, for the most part, have been unexceptional. Shopping trips to Navsari and Surat, visiting the houses of people we don't know, attending the weddings of people we don't know, getting diarrhea, getting a sore throat, still having a cold. I've surely been getting enough rest, though. We usually conk out between eight and ten, and after a night of sleep in a rock-hard bed getting bitten by mosquitoes, we're woken between six and eight for the day's activities. It's hard to stay in bed anyway when the whole village is up and ready, singing the morning prayers.
India is a dirty place. I'm not married to its charms and grace, but it's nice in its own way. Everyone's Indian. Just like me.