So these three m’s are abundant here. I feel like I have never seen so many men, monkeys and mosquitoes at one time and in one place.
Men… us women, we love them and we hate them, we take care of them and we want them to appreciate us, we would like to be independent and happy without them, but we always find ourselves seeking and falling for them… Some of them hurt us when we get involved too deeply with the ones, who don’t deserve it, but others make us feel so loved and beautiful, that even if the passion is short-lived it justifies the seeking and helps to heal old wounds... At least, it did for me…
Well, men in India are much luckier than many men in the West. Indian women are beautiful, caring, devoted for life and much more submissive than most of us western girls. Whenever a guy is ready to settle and marry, his parents or the agency will easily help him out, and that woman will do her best to keep that man happy to the end of her days. It still amazes me that it works as well as it does here, although, of course it’s not always perfect. And now it’s slowly changing especially among educated and working women. I am realizing that these arranged relationships mostly work due to the strength of marriage institution, very strong family values and housewife mentality. But men rarely show in public love for these women.
Public display of affection (PDA) among men and women is almost inexistent here, which is so different from Brazil J. Indian men who are so cuddly and touchy inside the house will keep distance from their wife/girlfriend in public. On the other hand, PDA between two men is very common, more common than I have ever seen anywhere else (doesn’t help that I’ve mostly lived in very macho cultures). You can frequently see two men with mustache holding hands, fondling each other, sitting in each other lap and being so cozily affectionate with one another that sometimes I feel I am back in Castro district in SF. It also doesn’t help that pink (various shades of it) is a very common and popular shirt color among men here. Homosexuality, of course, “does not exist” in India… Yeh, right… But these men whom I am writing about are usually not gay couples (at least not openly), but just good friends, many of them married or hoping to marry one day. I am saying this with confidence, because many of them are my friends. Enough about men, lets talk about monkeys.
Monkeys… For years I’ve been traveling around Latin America always searching for them, hiking for many miles to be able to spot them in Brazil and traveling to the distant lands to get a glimpse of them in Costa Rica. Guess what, India is just as packed with monkeys, as its streets are abundant with men (women are inside the houses), and cows. But I do love monkeys! They are so entertaining to watch and they remind me of us, humans, very much. Honestly, I have seen more street monkeys here than cats (there are still quite a few dogs roaming around the streets). And they stick close to temples, train stations and roads, knowing that that’s the easiest way to get food. Traveling on a miniature train from Ooty on my way to Kerala, I saw a monkey finishing a cup of tea (that was tossed by one of the passengers on the train stop) and another one looking very sad when it realized that there are no more potato chips in the Lay’s bag handed to it by a passenger.
Although, they are so cute and entertaining when they look for flees on each other, drink tea or beg for food, they are more dangerous than malaria mosquitoes. Each year 30,000 people die in this country from rabies transmitted through monkey bites (stats taken from Lonely Planet). So even though, I would love to pet one of them I am resisting the temptation and limiting my PDA to monkeys with photography. Fine, enough about primates, lets talk about insects.
So mosquitoes… These vicious and annoying bugs are everywhere, India, Ukraine, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica… I still remember the sleepless night in Brazil after we finished two-day track in Chapada Diamantina, swollen and bloody legs of a Canadian volunteer at Costa de Oro in Costa Rica and my poor x-boyfriend and my mom always fighting with mosquitoes in Ukraine. These creatures have never particularly bothered me, and I would have hardly even noticed them if they didn’t make any noise. But here, in India, I fear them as much as I fear auto-rickshaws and motorcycles hitting me when I am crossing the street. After seeing my roommate in bed for two weeks with dengue and reading all the scary stories about malaria, I cannot just watch them suck my blood and be ok with it. I joined the paranoid mosquito haters and now spend 10 minutes every night killing those damn things before I go to bed, caring repellant with me everywhere I go and even succumbed to taking anti-malaria meds, which, regretfully, contrary to my expectations, did not make me hallucinate.
Well, those three m’s… India has definitely changed my perception on all them…
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