Some impressions

Feb 11

- Cows are everywhere. Instead of squirrels or the odd raccoon running around on the lawns, it’s cows. Grazing. And in the streets, more cows - fighting, walking, crapping, standing, getting in the way of traffic and threatening to become rather large road-kill… Except cows are so sacred here even the most impatient driver wouldn’t dare touch one. (On the topic of cow sacredness, I made the very rude mistake of mentioning I eat beef in Canada. Everyone’s always so interested in what I eat, asking, “What are you taking for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? You take rice? You take meat? What kind of meat?”… and so it just kind of slipped out. In a town where tourists - and westerners in general - are pretty much non-existent, the idea that people eat cows was a shock, I think.) So yes, there are many cows here. It was part of the reason I knew I had landed in the right country.

- It’s still really dusty everywhere. Town is even dustier than the villages!

- I saw my first cloud yesterday. The rest of the time it’s been pure blue sky – although white near the horizon due to lighting or something in the atmosphere. Temperature: 15 at night, 25 during the day. 30 in the sun. Dry. Perfect.

- Garbage is everywhere. Even the hospital staff throw bandages and wrappers on the floor when they miss the wastebasket and don’t bother to get up. At rural eye camps, they ditch the used medical supplies out the window. At first I was shocked, but when I looked out the window and saw a pile of garbage already there, I figured the antibiotic-soaked cotton balls are probably the cleanest thing around.

- There is no privacy. In the morning the girls or the cook bang on my door to bring me tea, or shove a mirror in my face to say “good morning, here’s your smiling face!” In the evening my room is also fair game if I haven’t bolted it. And during the day, especially when I’m the office computer, I usually have 1-5 people standing around watching what I write or type. I never want to send them away so I just keep writing and hope they don't notice I'm writing about them. Although once at an eye camp, the presiding doctor asked to read my notes – which contained one part about how “Dr. Parida has a nicer tone with his patients than I would have expected.” I don’t know whether he actually read that part, or if he did, if he took it as an insult or a compliment. I didn’t ask.

- Everyone here has a large affinity for the colour pink. For guys’ shirts, pink is the new blue. And we’re talking bright pink. Most of the girls also say pink is their favourite colour. “But not dark pink,” they say, “light pink!” and they point to my skin. As in, PALE.


- In India you don’t nod your head to indicate ‘yes’. Instead, it’s a funny tilt of the head and a nod sideways instead. At first I thought people were trying to scratch their ear with their shoulder. Now I quite like it and think I will continue using it in Canada.