Ridiculousness, what else?

Cricket is a ridiculous sport. Absolutely ridiculous. People who've played the thing for years still can't figure out exactly how test matches are won, or the strategy involved in pushing for a draw after five days of play. Nevertheless, to witness the match between India and Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad was interesting, to say the least.

Interesting, that is, not necessarily because of small lessons like that the ice cream is not allowed into the stands and thus must be consumed out of view of the game, but because of the absurd circumstance leading us to said stands. Ashesh Thaker, the Brahman of Brahmans, with whom I attended the fine PLC institution in college, happened to be on break from Med School and visiting the family in Ahmedabad - the city that you have never heard of despite the fact that at 4.5 million people it is larger than Los Angeles Proper (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html). So after a morning spent in a street vendor's home after he accompanied me to get a shave, we met the college classmate at his home.

The day filled with marvels at coincindence and throwing back a few ice cold conversations about Indian-ness and Western-ness and the mixing therein as ice cold brews are outlawed in this conservative dry state of Gujarat and the intellectual substitutes hit the mark perfectly. In fact, the only people cabable of legally imbibing intoxicating elixirs in this state of 50 some million are those tourists willing to brave the bureaucracy to attain a temporary alchohol permit. The wonder of a homecooked meal (although the curry still doesn't quite resemble the, say, meatloaf I'm used to having homecooked) is something to behold. Not to mention the overall opportunity to mix the views of a bleached tourists with a Gujarati-speaking NRI (Non-Resident Indian). The revelations on both sides were ample.

Today we wandered Gandhi's Ashram, which is unsurprisingly simple and surprisingly lacks too much detail on his life, which seems to be okay with most visitors as we were the only ones I saw actually reading the exibits. Onwards, then to the next big event: bus ride number 8 zillion. Except that this time we pop out of big Bad Amed and hit the Expressway. The recently constructed "Golden Triangle" turns dusty potholed cattle-infested stray dog-covered children playing rickshaw cluttered Indian Highways into four-lane interstates where drivers actually seemed to follow rules. Of course, the rules were drilled into their heads by the infinite sea of signs demanding a civilized entrance to orderly transit. "DO NOT STOP ON THE EXPRESSWAY" "NO U TURN ON THE EXPRESSWAY" "BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELT" "BETTER TO ARRIVE LATE THAN NEVER" "DO NOT STOP ON THE EXPRESSWAY" "DO NOT STOP ON THE EXPRESSWAY" To the western onlooker the humor in these commands may be elusive, but a week in Asia will teach that every one of the common rules of the road in the West is erased or reveresed here. To tell people not to stop in the middle of the road is paramount to revoking a God-given right. It's practically the tea tax (which 200 years later became the salt tax in India) all over again.

To expand on the marvelously wide, medianed pavement a little more, I implore you to understand that in a land where truckers often write "SLOW DRIVE LONG LIFE 40 KM/HR" on bumbers, speed limits of 100 km drop a man involuntarily to his knees. An hour and a half bus ride that would have taken 5 hours two years ago through all the obstacles to dodge and extra stops along the way - this time without a single stop in between towns. Not a horn was heard in the journey which can only be described as bliss (the alternate option for the bumpers is "HORN PLEASE" and an Indian saying describes "you can get by fine without brakes, but not without a horn).

Bliss, that is, until you jump back into the reality that you are not in Eastern Colorado on I-70, but rather still in the South Asian dreamworld. Ask yourself this question: What happens when you have a country with a billion people used to living life in the street, and whose middle class becomes wealthy enough to own cars? Ah yes, traffic jam. Apparently Eisenhower didn't send the memo that expressways should be above and beyond the average boulevard, lest they cease to be express in any way. Thus, the highway comes to a screeching halt at the gates of Baroda due to the multiple pedestrian wedding processions (partiers surrounded by people with flourescent lamps propped up on their heads and the occasional camel/horsecart/elephant) occupying the lanes. In the traditional continental manner, cars attempt to simply drive around the traffic in front of them, thus blocking traffic in both directions until random citizens emerge from the night with whistles to get things moving again. We use the extra down time to marvel at the physical and mental aspects of transportation system development (like, to add another dimension, the rs 61 toll to drive the particular stretch we'd covered - a cost 3 times the daily wage of some of the women who receive help from the NGO we'd visited earlier in the day. How do you make traffic orderly? Step one: make roads exclusive to the rich.)

Finally, we enjoy another fantastic array of food in Thali (all you can eat rice chapati curry etc) form and hit the cheapest, dingiest hotel we can find. Luckily, the guy in the restaurant next door befriended us in literally 2 seconds and nearly demanded a discount from the hotel on our behalf.

You may be asking yourself - Did the highway really have more impact on the man than his encounter with Ashesh? Absolutely not. Yesterday was the kind of day that makes a trip like this worthwhile - all six months of it (so far), but right now the words to describe seem elusive. So...highways.


As for the next few days, another bizarrely ridiculous coincidence promises that I'll be dancing through the streets with flourescent lights and elephants of my own so the updates won't come until after that oh so big day that will breeze by this land without a flinch.

Thus, I wish a happy holiday to all! Please drink a glass of your preferred Christmas Cheer - be it glug or egg nog - in my honor. I will be forever indebted.

Merry Christmas!