Souly Positive

So my time in India has come to a close. I’ve loved India but am excited because I will be moving on to Africa with good friends and of course…Robert! I have been sick…not deadly sick, just feeling low energy and coughing like crazy so I have laid low since my sisters left. I fled to Goa, a beautiful beach destination the same day my sisters left India. I stayed at two different beaches and hotels and basically was lazy and tried to get well. Yeah, it was awesome:)

So the first place I stayed was not ideal. The exterior was great. Located 2 minutes from the beach in a jungle of palm trees and the cutest outdoor restaurant ever, right on the river. Yes, beach and river…bonus! Unfortunately the room was as tiny as could be, it barely fit the bed. The bathroom was a horrible shower, toilet, sink combo in a room that was barely big enough for one person to stand in. The fan made a horrible racket, uh and no a/c. All this when I just wanted to lay in bed and get well…not a good place to stay indoors. Not only that, but as I was showering I noticed a weird sensation between my fingers…it took me a moment to realize I was being shocked…yep, I had my own electric shock therapy. I didn’t like it and I’m still as crazy as a loon:( Actually all that said, had I been well and been outdoors most of the time (and not showered) the place would have been fine…but I wasn’t well so I moved to a different beach, Patnem. The new room was huge, had a bathroom, separate shower, and separate sink area and best of all Air conditioning and 3 doors from restaurant and beach….all this for about a $12 increase per day…totally worth it!

In Goa there are all these little temporary beach shack type places. They are really cute and definitely not swanky. I learned that this is because they disassemble all the structures every year for the monsoon season. Can you imagine removing all these places for 3 – 6 months of the year? Moving buildings, furniture etc. Crazy!

I also experienced another hair appointment and my first massage since leaving home. The hair appointment was, as usual, scary. I had two choices of color….dark brown or light brown:) I went with light brown…it wasn’t great, but not horrible either, so that’s good. They asked me if my hair was graying because of stress. Evidently that is the only reason hair goes gray in India:) We also talked about how she used to do yoga but it made her cheeks sink in so she quit. I was trying to understand…basically she was telling me she got too thin and didn’t look like herself anymore and didn’t like that. She explained that Indian women aren’t shaped like western women. I thought, oh yes we are, we’re just obsessed with wanting to be thin and firm. How wonderful that she was 26 years old, getting married soon and just wanted to look like her natural self, rounded cheeks and shapelier figure. I loved that:) She also convinced me to get a massage from her 20 year old brother for a whopping $16 per hour. He and his father had a family massage business. Her dad was massaging someone else so I got the young brother. He was not much in the personality department but gave a good, albeit strange massage…I will leave out some of the details here, for fun, you can use your imagination:) The weirdest thing though, was at the end of the massage he made me sit on a little plastic chair and dumped a ton of oil in my hair…soooo weird.

I am now back in Mumbai getting ready to fly out tomorrow. Before I leave India I would like to share another thing I did and am still processing. The last few days I was with my sisters we were hanging out in Mumbai…still called Bombay by many. We went to the Art Museum and it happened to be some type of National women’s day and some Indian women asked us to come watch a special short film that had been produced. Of course we said yes. The documentary was called, “Toilet Torture.” Google it if you want…It stated that 70% of the population of Mumbai lives in the slums…on the internet I’ve seen 62%…either way out of a populace of nearly 13 million…that’s a lot of people! The film went on to talk about how in many slums there are very few toilets for the whole population. Many do not have running water, doors are broken and they are infested with bugs, snakes and rats…for these and other reasons it forces many of the women to use the outdoor areas to go to the bathroom. Sometimes they have to take a father, mother or brother because men lurk in the bushes to spy on them. They will often not drink water or certain foods so they don’t have to go to the bathroom as much. This causes urinary infections among other problems…Can you imagine?

The point I’m trying to make is, and please refer back to my whining over my accommodations in Goa, is wow, what a different world many of us live in. Solely because of where we were born. Our Birthright…”a right, privilege, or possession to which a person is entitled by birth.” We take so many things for granted, basic things that some people don’t even have. I hope I can learn to live up to the potential that my birthright as an American allows and that I remember to give back to those with different circumstances and different birthrights. Sorry didn’t mean to go on a tangent but that film will stay with me the rest of my life. Not that I won’t whine and complain….because as you’ve seen I’m already doing it:( I just hope I can remember to be grateful for what I have and always help wherever I can…after all, we’re all just humans trying to eek out a life on this planet…right?

Okay that is enough proselytizing from me…I’ve seen great beauty in India too:)

So from India… a humbled human on the planet saying…Namaste:)