Check-in #9: ‘leaky ear’ edition

Oh boy.

I have no idea what happened because I was pretty much in bed the entire time, trying to recover from an ear infection.

So I’ll pretty much say ‘Oy, what a week!’ …and leave it at that.

No, I’m sure if I sit here and stare at the screen long enough, I’m sure to come up with something.

the hard stuff.

Whiny! Irritable! Fed up with Calcutta!

There was an unfair share of difficult and personal stuck tossed my way this week. Scratch that, there’s been far too much hairy-ness since my arrival. If it is always darkest before the dawn, my clock’s battery must have died a little before 4am.

This place is the pits.

Sure, I could name my feelings and air the long list of grievances since moving here, but no thank you. I’ve got family for that.

I’ve determined that Calcutta is a particularly extra-determined piece of stuck. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a genius bottle of Healthy Boundaries spray. That way, if the spray itself—yes, a real thing, ya’ll—doesn’t work, it could at least be a reminder of this big thing I’m working on. If you see it, or you sell it, please share.

And in the meantime, I have plenty of other fabulous Calcutta breakthroughs to continue processing…

Cal is an opportunity to question my own values and ways of being and (hopefully!) come out on the other end with some new declarations for the future as well as some sense of what I need to keep doing while planted here.

If I can surrender to getting it totally wrong and not really knowing or caring what’s next during the journey, then I can probably do that in my life as well. Down with perfectionism! Down with uber-planning! Up with whatever!

Thinking about awareness. About choice. And about noticing things. And constantly being noticed. And about bringing some of me into the things around me.

Temptation to compare experiences only serve to distract. Find the one thread that keeps you engaged and ignore all the others.

Don’t feel out of the loop if these hardly make sense to you. They are purely time markers.

Stress!

Despite the fact that I practically moved here because of the super deluxe Human Rights course at Cal University, with the postponement of examinations and the three extra weeks of playtime, the first day has completely snuck up on me!

So I’m starting my MA program at 11:30am on Monday and basically only just realized it now.

Eeeeeeeeeeegh. So much to do. Ugh.

Seriously? I’m broken out like a teenager.

It’s charming.

Already feels like a lifetime…

Today marks the twenty second day since my arrival in Calcutta. By US labor standards, I have blasted through a fully used-up annual vacation. And I’m starting to feel like I’ve settled in one place for too long.

When you’re the traveler, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation–and then, just when you’ve ticked off every recommended ‘must-do’ in the guide book—it always happens. You pack up and head out for the newest frontier.

(I do just the same. There’s no taking the moral high ground here.)

My blasted ear!

There’s a big mess of story to share in this story. And Denise claims it’s just coincidental that I landed an ear infection after I left this series of post-it notes around the flat. She also flatly denies contributing to an environment in which I was more likely than not to get an ear infection. Something about Johnson buds and the meticulous cleaning of my ears. And it was the rickshaw man who pedaled me to the hospital in the middle of the night. So if anyone, he’s the hero.

Dear Denise: This bath towel was wet and you left it on the floor and it was the last clean one in the flat.  I’m pretty sure this is how tuberculosis is spread. I’m noting this in case I die because of your carelessness.

Dear Denise: Why is retrieving the newspaper always my job? Was I not here when we picked from the job jar? Is there a job jar at all? Because, I’d like to re-draw.

Dear Denise: Why in God’s name wouldn’t you just put up the empty pizza box when you were done with it?  Are your arms broken?  Do you have some sort of disease I don’t know about that makes you blind to empty pizza boxes?

Dear Denise:  Okay, I just remembered I was the last one to make pizza so I guess I left this box out.  Still, I’m leaving out the note anyway so you can learn from it.

Dear Denise:  I do not appreciate you leaving passive aggressive addendum’s to my helpful post-it notes. In fact, they are the opposite of helpful.  They are just bitter.

Dear Denise:  If you leave wet towels on the ground again I’ll poison something in the fridge.

Dear Denise: I am so sorry you aren’t feeling well today.  I swear I was just kidding about poisoning things in the fridge.  I mean, I did leave the yogurt out for like a half a day but that was really more by accident because I was so distracted by the wet towel on the floor.

Dear Denise:  You’re the absolute best, but I’m getting kind of weak from hunger and I know you said you didn’t poison anything but every time I take a bite of something you leer and laugh suspiciously and I have to spit it out.

Dear Denise:  Great. Now we’re out of post-it’s.  I’m writing this on the towel you left on the ground this morning since we obviously have no respect for towels anymore.

And then I just happened to wake up with an ear infection the next day.

And all I could manage to do with consistent precision was sleep. But only during the day because of the mounting pressure in the left half of my face and the stiff pillow at night = Ow.Pain.Ow.

So in one week, I consulted with two doctors for a total of four office visits. As it was nearly 10pm before I could arrange an appointment, the first doctor I saw requested that I come to his residence for my examination. Unsure of the patient-doctor relationship in India, I made sure that I came dressed for the part, looking like absolute hell replete with kitty cat house shoes. (Of course I packed them.)

He led me up to his very cramped, non air-conditioned room and with him he lugged one of those old American Tourister hard shelled briefcases. Two clicks of the buckle and it sprung open to reveal disheveled pages, empty prescription bottles, and to my delight, the most antiquated instruments for all infections ENT. We’re talking bloodletting fleems and ear horns here. If I remember the sequence of inspection correctly, he untangled from the stethoscope his blood pressure wrap and advanced towards me to track my vitals. As he rounded the corner of his desk, he queried- ‘Ever had problems with blood pressure?’- And with a slight shake of my head, he crinkled the wrap to its original state and said ‘Alright then. I’ll just put it away.’

I must have already been self-medicating or just been plain confused because I continued to hang about. Weirdly, my internal monologue was something along the lines of ‘awesome, I must not have swine flu’. Why the conflation, I have no clue.

He asked to have a look in my ear. Unable to definitively assess what the inner ear actually looked like with his naked eye, he rummaged through the briefcase and appeared with an old plastic flashlight. I was sure he must have other instruments—you know, like a proper ear scope, light source included—and I was just about to inquire…when I remembered there was an insurance form I needed him to fill out regarding what was seeing, how he intended to treat it, etc. I pulled the page out of my bag and brought it to his attention. Juggling flashlight and form, he took a long hard look at its contents and with meaning and heart-felt sympathy for the inconvenience he was about to cause me, said ‘You’re going to need a real doctor to fill in this form’.

Hold the phone. A what?!

But aren’t you…?!

Apparently the framed certificate on the wall from the Royal College of Surgeons  in Child Health must have been presented to him when he finished the workshop course hours. Not his diploma.

And so when it came time for me to describe what I was feeling, I was so stunned, I actually had a single tear drop run down my face. And it was mostly allergies, but some of it was pain.

I left. And after three loooooong sleep-filled days, when the prescriptions were not reducing the pain and nearly 95% of my hearing was blocked in my left ear, I decided that it might be time for a second opinion. From oh I don’t know… a licensed professional.

So I went to the Apollo. I’ll spare you the leaky ear stuff. But it is here I learn that not only do I have an ear infection, but also both walls of my ear have swollen so closely together because of something about research now proving that over usage of Q-Tips can lead to ingrown hairs in the ear canal.  Yeah riiiiiight. Who doesn’t prefer the feeling of clean canals?

After much probing and stuffing of stuff in my stuffed up ears, I was healed and made whole.

Moving

Bleargh. Landlords.

They can be such pains in the arse sometimes.

Or, all the time, as the case may be.

And money. We’ve got to find another way. I hate money.

Because of some huge-ish skirmishes regarding negotiated rent and a lack of transparency regarding the market, I have decided it would suit me better to find alternate accommodation.

Moving is never easy. Or desired. Especially when you leave a phenomenal roommate behind to hash things out alone.

Perhaps we can locate two bottles of Healthy Boundaries spray—one for each of us!

the good stuff.

Amartya Sen

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (1998 Nobel Prize-Economics) decided to hang out in Kolkata this past week in preparation for the release of his latest book, An Idea of Justice. Born and raised in Kolkata, but presently living and teaching in the United States, he hails from an Indian state (West Bengal) that has major problems—and remains one of the most open critics of these problems.

Every year for the last three years, Penguin Press has sponsored a lecture series in India with the intent of bringing the world’s greatest minds to various locales in the nation to speak on the most pressing issues of our time. Formerly held in Delhi, this year’s lecture was moved to Sen’s hometown as a testament to his ‘roots’ and his deep engagement to injustices affecting the entire strata of Calcutta.

The lecture, entitled Justice—and India, had great potential to become an exciting and appealing topic for me. His finest moments arrived when he condemned the quiet tolerance of sprawling hunger and the appalling levels of child malnourishment, illiteracy, educational exclusion, gender inequity, bonded employment and medical deprivation that occur without a murmur. However, it was identifiable early on that Dr. Sen’s approach and ‘ideas of justice’ were vastly out of sync with modern-day India. Calling for radical improvements to these injustices to be made through an extension of public discussion and through consultation with others, he offers no rubric for how this constructive partnership can be implemented.  So much of what Indians believe to be settled is remarkably unsettled (caste, gender inequality, religious discrimination). And for Dr. Sen to submit more inclusive public agitation and reasoning as a catalyst for justice in India, he must first no longer ignore the reality that there has yet to be an invitation for everyone to sit at the table. And if we are to believe that all people are, in fact, reasonable beings (only unreasonable because we cannot understand their reasoning) the claim should be made to better facilitate these discussions (with representatives from all strata) rather than make demands for a communal conversation in which things will inevitably remain as they are—top/down, elected few making policy that effects the displaced many—because that is how it has always been.

Best quotation of the evening: You are not doing your duty if you are not thinking about the consequences.—Lord Krishna

The White Tiger

I’m reading the book The White Tiger by Aravida Adiga for…I don’t know, the eighth time.

That’s if you don’t count all the times that I just pick it up and read a page or two.

Remember my personal ad asking for suggestions on reading material? On a whim, my friend Niko recommended the title and even offered to let me borrow the book before she returns to Paris. Yessss! It is the most recent Booker Prize winner.

It’s become one of those ‘lives by my bed’ books—Just seeing the cover gets me excited.

Mr. Jiabao.

Sir.

When you get here, you’ll be told we Indians invented everything from the Internet to hard-boiled eggs to spaceships before the British stole it all from us.

Nonsense. The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop.

Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench….On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken…The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.

The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.

It is pretty spectacular. It’s incredibly insightful and incredibly seductive. A thoughtful account about present-day Indian society that you infrequently hear about, The White Tiger, is written through seven ‘truth-telling’ letters from Balram Halwai—the son of a destitute rickshaw puller who works his way up to become an (unconventional) entrepreneur  in Bangalore—to  the Premier of China in anticipation for his first trip to India .(Yay run-ons!) It is through these letters that the underbelly of India is exposed and the reader learns about the treatment of servants, bribery of government officials by the elite, how national elections are rigged and plenty more. There is quite a price to emerge as a “new India” and the brutality of becoming a global power is a thrilling ride that is evidenced through Balram’s ‘miracle’ of breaking free from the Rooster Coop.

So borrow it from a friend or check it out from the library! I would love to compare notes with you.

Performances Galore!

It’s no secret that I’m madly in love with performance and my soul melts into candy and puppies every time I am fortunate enough to attend. The arts and literature hub of India, Calcutta has an abundance of cultural events and fine arts exhibitions.

My latest discoveries, Weaver’s Studio and Theatrician Residential Acting Company, are two phenomenal organizations committed to bringing nothing but full-on badass artistry from abroad into the halls of Calcutta.

This week: Musicology and Folk Songs of Ukraine and Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I like it!

That’s it from this side of the world.

Hooray for happy endings to complex weeks! Have a glorrrrrrrrious weekend and a happy week to come. Remember to fill me in on what’s going on in your lives. Anything good or hard happen this week?

Oh hey, remember when I promised to write about the rotary stuff because-that’s-how-I-even-ended-up-in-Calcutta and then got distracted and I never posted anything about rotary ever again since? That was awesome.