Kindly admit to Med unit III

It has been about 6 weeks since our Air France flight landed in Bangalore. I remember peering out my window at 4 am IST, city lights aglow, making this city, this Country indistinguishable from any other. "It's deceiving," I told Dave, who was still half-asleep. "You think it's just like any other, but you don't know..."

I can safely say, that 6 weeks later, he now KNOWS. Like any other pardesi desi, he understands the congestion, the openness, the immensity, the smallness of it all. Madness.

We spent three weeks in Kerala, God's Own Country. And if you looked from above you would understand that it is true. First the hilly mountaintops lined with palm trees. Then miles and miles of flats, lined with palm trees. Then iridescent waters rushing the coastline, also lined with palm trees.

But the land and the people are changing. And with it my vision. We spent two weeks listening to the stories of sex workers in Kerala. Yes my friends, there are sex workers in Kerala and they come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, creeds. Fiscally liberal, socially conservative Kerala has a growing HIV infected population. And the women are mobilizing, forming unions, pukka communist Kerala style. They are determined. They will not become victims.

I am so proud.

It is hard not to be religious in God's Own Country. All the Hindu sex workers go to temple every morning, after "taking bath." When I see them, their wet black hair is neatly pinned back, one long braid falling straight along their spines. A red line of kum kum dons her forehead. She is a pukka Kerala beauty.

The Christian ammas don't look terribly different. In fact, most of the time I can't tell, unless they tell me their names. Perhaps they are without kum kum. Instead a beautiful 22kt gold cross falls elegantly around their necks.

The Muslim chechis wear hijab, only covering their heads, not faces. They wear saris or salwars.

It is hard not to be religious here, because there are temples, churches and mosques at every corner on every street.

But even God's Own Country is changing. Five years ago we would hear about the riots up North. But the violence is infiltrating our land and fundamentalism is making its way. Now the "Riots up North" doesn't refer to violence in Gujarat or Delhi. It refers to violence in Calicut and Kasargod.
~.~.~.~

"Bangalore has changed alot," she said as she watched her chubby 10 year-old girl unhappily complete another lap around the tennis court. "They used to call it 'The Garden City.' Pensionner's paradise.

I watched this perfectly coiffed, manicured Bangalorean mother in amazement. She had grown up here, spent her whole life in this city, watched it evolve into the congested smog-filled IT capital of the world it is today.

I saw her a couple of mornings later at the gym. I was sweating it out in my green Champion men's basketball shorts and blue High Sierra Cubs shirt which spent one too many washes in hard water. My legs had a not so flattering coating of coarse 3 week old hair.

And she was elegantly dressed in stretch pants, a tank top and coffee coloured lipstick. I was jealous because she could do a pull up, one more than my challaballa Ningileri arms could ever attempt.

I had this strange feeling that I wasn't in India anymore Toto. I think I somehow found myself over the rainbow and in Marin County, California.

Yikes.
~.~.~.~

Every admission note I see on the floors have the following (polite) instruction: "Kindly admit to med, unit III."
And in the days before match day, I find this hauntingly prophetic.