Mr. Ninety Percent

Mike and his bike shop buddy

“It wouldn’t kill you to put the seat down, you know.”  This from Rebecca.  Apparently I’m slipping in my toilet duties—the cause of which she can’t quite put her finger on.  However—and this is important-- she has a razor-like sense of when this malady took root.

                “Since we’ve started this trip, you’ve been leaving the toilet seat up.  It’s rude and thoughtless.”  Oh, that it were so simple.  And here’s the thing:  I don’t disagree with the girl.  I have in fact been a bit slack in terms of getting the job done (beyond, of course, the obligatory shake and zip.)  But I can’t quite find it in me to lay the blame on something so base (and clearly off base) as mere rudeness.  That my behavior has shifted with the onset of this trip is, for me at least, the sticking point.  The bit of dal, as it were, stuck between my back molars, which my tongue returns to in the hope of setting it free.  Fortunately, I think I’ve come to a reasonable cause.

                I’m turning Indian.  That, and this: it feels right.  I know what you’re thinking.  In three weeks?  But you’re a white guy.  You drink bottled water and often make the mistake of eating your Thali with your left hand.  You’re essentially mono-theist and you don’t like the feel of flip flops between your toes.  All true, but all very superficial.  And it’s not like the Biblical story of creation…in which it all happens in seven days (or six, really, if you figure he kicked back on day seven.)  God started with nothing.  Day one brought about light, for Chrissakes.  I’m thinking I was probably three-quarters of the way there before I even stepped foot on the plane back at the McNamara terminal in Detroit.  I’ll explain, but first, a little background.

                The other night Rebecca and I were working our way back from dinner along a fairly busy street.  I prefer to walk facing traffic, single file, with Rebecca in front so I can snatch her from the jaws of death should a city bus driver be checking his e-mail and wander off course.  My real preference is to take the sidewalk, but that’s often just not an option, being as how it often…ummm…isn’t.  A sidewalk, that is. But on this particular stretch, there was a sidewalk.  There were no gaping hell holes rimmed with shards of re-bar, no smoking piles of cinder and ash from trash fires, not even any sleeping dogs.  There were, however, electrical wires which drooped down to about waist level, running along roughly parallel to our path, and often meandering into the realm of the sidewalk.  And not just that, but the occasional wire simply hanging loose, its silvery innards glistening like saliva on a snake’s fang. I thought it best to stick to the road, contenting myself with musings of a not very flattering nature.  To wit:  I have to admit that were I to sort of build up a country from scratch (not design it, mind you, but to just plow in and put the thing together…roads, businesses, sewer pipes, electrical…the works) it would undoubtedly look a great deal like the India I find myself in today. (Minus, say, the Taj Majal.  And probably Mysore Palace.)

                As I take this place in, I can’t help but feel a kinship with the various souls who got it not-quite-done.  The electrical worker who got juice going through his wires, and decided, Job done!, before bothering to tuck said wires up at something like pole level, or the house painter who splashes paint up over the window trim—maybe even hitting the glass-- while slathering it on the wall.  There!  All covered!  It all feels a bit hurried and unplanned.  Messy.  Trash litters the road side.  The roads themselves are a veritable carnival ride on steroids.  Drainage ditches awash with the stink of humanity.  Of course, given the sheer number of souls inhabiting this land, I get the overflow.   To some extent, I even find it energizing. There’s a buzz in jumping in…a kind of shared understanding.  The cause of which I’m bound to place at the feet of logic and reason.  The bottom line is, given its volume, diversity, struggles, and hardships, this place shouldn’t work.  Yet it does. 

                As I write, I’m sitting on the porch of a sweet little place just north of Fort Cochin.  To get here was, as usual, an adventure.  Starting with the mad jockeying for a ticket to board the ferry off Fort Cochin.  I was one of maybe sixty or seventy vying for the ticket-seller’s attention.  Some dude came up next to me and started leaning in to my shoulder…seeking a spot at the teat, as it were.  I looked him straight in the ear (we were that closely packed) and said, “You’re trying to shift in ahead of me, aren’t you?”  To which he gave me a face-splitting grin and bobbled his head—the universal sign of, yes!  Then the bus.  Rebecca up front with the women, me in the back with the men.  Every seat, of course, full.  Every standing space packed.  The cockroaches were fighting for air.  And yet, no one was left behind, and what’s more, the conductor kept an eye on everyone, reminding various souls (like me) of when they needed to get off.  It shouldn’t, but it does.  Work, that is. 

                We share some close quarters, Rebecca and I.  Things like toilet seats can fester.  Lead to larger things.  Like poisoning.  Or knife wounds.  But I’d like to think, even so, that there is a larger force at play.  A logic beyond reason.  Something we Indians understand.