The Sati's Revenge

DAY INFINITY+INFINITY: DISINDIA

2010-01-20T01:13:00.011-05:00

The Sati’s Revenge commits suicide in this, its last entry, by nobly leaping into the death of travel.

Sad readers … do not fear … Pariah Pipher has begun his own blog—The Secular Sadoo—describing in salacious detail his experience of exile in Canada. Become a follower of The Secular Sadoo and you’ll be eligible to win 381 free tickets to Disindia.

http://thesecularsadoo.blogspot.com/

After surviving a wild jeep ride up the Himalayan foothills, 30 of us packed in a space designed for 8, I said to Claire, “You know, that was a way better ride than anything at Canada’s Wonderland.”

“And it only cost us 25 cents.”

“And it lasted almost an hour.”

We knew we were on to something.

Since we travel to acquire new sights, smells, tastes, sounds, feelings, thoughts, and experiences—and yet since this travelling spews endless jet fuel into the atmosphere, ensuring we take far more from the earth than we give to it—The Sati’s Revenge recommends that a vast Indian Theme Park—Disindia—be opened north of Toronto, giving Canadians and northeastern Americans the opportunity to experience India without the typical extensive ecological damage.

Specifically, we recommend the following.

1. Disney Corporation should, without delay, team up with the Government of India and build Disindia on the present Algonquin Provincial Park site. The Ontario and Canadian governments can donate Algonquin as an international goodwill gesture; everyone knows Algonquin’s getting overcrowded and polluted anyway.

2. People with brown skin (nationals) get in for 500 rupees and forever; others (foreigners) enter for an unspecified fee (but not less than 5000 rupees), require a Visa prior to entry, and may stay for a minimum of a week, a maximum of 5 years.

3. Prices within the park will shift based on random and mysterious criteria.

4. The same menu will be at every restaurant; alcohol will never be listed but be occasionally available through unmarked portals.

5. The risk of death to nationals and foreigners will be real and constant. Death will most frequently occur from elephant, camel, car, auto-rickshaw, dog, motorcycle, or poop-slippage and trampling. Dead bodies will be burned at the site of death.

6. Specially themed areas will include Scamville, Noiseville, Godsville, HitYourChildrenville, BurningBodyville, Garbageville, and Poopville. Notwithstanding, there will be garbage, noise, and poop everywhere.

7. Poopville will include a special children’s Pooppark, where children can shoot poop at each other, ride down poopslides, make poopcakes, and generally have a good time.

8. All rides will be long (sometimes days), inexpensive (compared to DisneyWorld), dangerous, and smelly.

9. Since Disindia will be over 7,500 square kilometers in size, transport between various areas can be negotiated with various elephant and camel drivers, all of whom will try to rip everyone off.

The benefits of proceeding with Disindia as soon as possible are tremendous, and include—

1. Eliminates many trans-Atlantic flights and their associated evil emissions.

2. Provides an authentic Indian experience for millions, many of whom wouldn’t be able to experience it otherwise, expanding consciousness, tolerance, and photos.

3. As the Indian government will maintain majority control of Disindia, it can begin moving unemployed Indians from the original India to the authentic Disindia copy of India. Soon, people won’t be able to tell the difference between the original and the copy (indeed, global warming will make the copy the only inhabitable India), the Indian government will move to the copy, and the old India will simply disappear into history (which, with globalization, it's beginning to do anyway).

4. Metaphysically and spiritually, the migration of India to its copy is perfectly aligned with our present phase of evolution: the whole world’s crawling into a screen, one geek at a time; why not a country, to speed things up? Ecological responsibility has a price tag … and if no one really notices, it’s a pretty minor cost.

5. The Disindia model can be used for all other countries--beginning with the Third and Second worlds of course--gradually expanding to even include such monoliths as France and the United States. Eventually, everyone will not only live in but be born into a theme park and heaven will have (finally!) arrived on earth.

DAY INFINITY+3: CANADA EXISTS

2010-01-19T02:57:00.008-05:00

Despite the reductionism in a recent blog about movement being the sole reason for travel, we know—as numerous bloggy commentators advised us—there are plausible other motivations. One is perspective: to see—and re-see—one’s homeland as somehow foreign. To see Canada—with all its familiarities—as a strange player on the world's crooked and shifting stage. Certainly if one wishes to be exiled in a context where exile is impossible, this re-seeing is necessary, enabling one to be deported to one’s birthplace … a virtual, purgatorial, and dubious existence that seems appropriately and really unreal.

Naturally, by Canada I mean Toronto; the rest simply doesn’t or shouldn’t exist. (Montreal exists, of course, but Quebec has always wanted to get out of the marriage yet fears the financial implications. Vancouver is basically a recreational ski, boating, and drug resort for disillusioned Torontonians to waste away in; Newfoundland’s a real-life Black Creek Pioneer Village; and the Prairies—along with that alien embarrassment, Stephen Crapper—should join Texas, where they belong. 40% of English Canada lives within an hour’s drive of Toronto and feeds off its inner hip. Toronto is the only livable city in English Canada for the true cosmopolitan; the world knows this—so does every Canadian in their gut.)

So, after visiting Planet India and successfully returning to Planet Canada, exiled here by the gods I tell myself I have constructed (the modern dogma of freedom runs deep) yet cannot escape because of my indelible attachment to them, I make the following observations about my land.

1. Canada is the opposite of India. Whereas India is a great place to visit and a ridiculous place to live, Canada is a great place to live but a tedious place to visit.

2. Unlike almost every other place on earth, the world already lives here, giving one no legitimate reason to travel.

3. Despite its sophistication and wealth, Canada remains a largely provincial and insecure nation. This is true not simply in its politics—irrelevant to everybody but politicians and their sticky hordes of wannabes—but in its culture, which is so desperate to be taken seriously on the world stage it never finds its way out of the washroom cubicle.

4. Unable to commit itself to greatness, it—in true democratic fashion—puts mediocrity in greatness’ clothes, calls mediocrity great due to the fashion, and sometimes gets away with it. This deception is a little bit great.

5. Canadians are the nicest people on the planet. This is wonderful, boring, and horrifying.

6. Perhaps as a result of the combination of the above characteristics, Canada is the world’s first post-modern nation. The fact that nobody knows what post-modernity is is simply a proof of this, as an educated not-knowing is a key attribute of any respectable post-modernity. Unsure that it exists—that it deserves to exist; unmoored from anything that has historically anchored any nation; sentimentally united only by a business that sells donuts and bad coffee, it wobbles along, easily self-satisfied and equally and unconsciously anxious that its self-satisfaction is unjustified.

How do I feel about Canada? I feel about it the way I feel about money or love. It exists.

DAY INFINITY: EVERY TRIP'S A TRIP TO ALICE

2010-01-16T22:10:00.003-05:00

A trip never really ends. Not only do you never truly finish unpacking, but people keep demanding stories (a mandatory acquisition of travel these days) until you get so bored telling the slightly embellished ones that only falsehood spouts from your lips; if it's a trip of note, you end up thinking about it until the grave forces you to stop; and a trip's bacteria sufficiently infiltrates your physiology that even your smile changes. Your synapses fire differently. Cats lecture you in calculus.

One does walk in the door, I suppose. But home has become psychically tilted, like a fun house. One might sleep in one's own bed again, with its dubious stains and accustomed smells, but bed has become anywhere and the same one for longer than a few nights seems wrong.

Yeah--it's Toronto, with its familiar sleepy sophistication and competent makeup covering a provincial insecurity. And--migod--it's still Canada and the West. No goats to maneuver around on Yonge Street, no horny horde of beggars, poop, and gods chasing you to the store.

Of course the trip's over.

But come on ... when does anything end (or begin) exactly?

Does love end when she doesn't moan with the same seeming authenticity, when the volume of bile is more than half the cosine of the volume of tenderness, when he walks out the door? When was the light bulb really invented and by whom? By Edison in 1879, as a textbook might say? Ah--check again.

So here I am at the Bain Co-op, where there are cats. In Toronto, where the crap is hidden. In the New World, where polished metal, loud amusements, and quietly desperate therapy suppress the primitive tsunami of life.

I must have returned. I think I've returned. I may have returned. But did Alice ever really wake up?

DAY THIRTY-SIX: THE ANIMAL IS THE MASSAGE

2010-01-15T08:44:00.009-05:00

Due to synaptic misfirings--unconscious or otherwise--Claire and I find ourselves stranded in Istanbul and do what one naturally does in Istanbul ... find a Turkish bath and get pummelled. There are the big tourist baths--which charge a 100 liras and are full of the polished and shoed. But there's one we found for 40 where there are no white people and an extended Turkish family just lurks, waitıng for bodies.

The men who massage me are oxen--17 of me could fit in one of their earlobes. They cover me with foam and toss me like a fluffy pancake, holding my ribcage between their thumb and forefinger, slamming me down on the hard marble and laughing theır deep Ottoman laughs. I slink back to my safe hot corner to recover.

Meanwhile Claire is being serviced by closet lesbians who prance heavily around in lace panties, shooting foam at each other, and going places no respectable masseuse would go.

For different reasons, neither of us are quite the same afterwards ... but that's what an Istanbulite bath's all about.

DAY THE IDES OF JOPLIN: IT'S ALL THE SAME FUCKING DAY, MAN

2010-01-13T08:27:00.005-05:00

We--glorious comrades of the homo homo sapiens tribe--now live in one city ... the one city we have and are construcitng on this wilting planet. I'm unsure what the city's name is--call it Hope, call it Dream, call it Money, call it Garbage ... it's all okay.

Our city has many neighborhoods: slums; fashion-chic; techno-business-politics; factory-industrial; fortressed wealth; the great family sprawl; SRECS (sex, religion, entertainment, culture, sports--the bread and circuses); and things like infrastructure or lack of it.

We say we go to Manhattan or Bombay, Jakarta or Rio ... but all we really do is walk around in the same neighborhood--our neighborhood. Our familiar neighborhood. If we live in a 4-star suburb, then we travel in 4-star class, stay in 4-star hotels, and gab with 4-star people. If fortressed wealth, then fortressed wealth. If chicy-chic, then chicy-chic.

That's why there's no correlation between the quantity of travel and the quality of consciousness. Bruce Smith-Doofball may have visited every country in the world 40 times but be entirely commonplace, tedious, and narrow-minded. George Eliot can have largely stayed in England her whole life but seen the world. Seen it. (Despite what Nietzsche says about her.)

Why then do we travel, considering the expense, hassles, scatological surprises, and fear of falling into the Atlantic and becoming dental floss for sharks?

Well, there's the envy of course. But this only begs the question--what are people envious of? I mean--don't wash your hands after crapping and you can have diarrhea too.

It can't be the bad photos. Or the jetlag, weird mattresses, weirder toilets, or cancerous tans. And as two great globe-hopping friends told me before I left: people are the same everywhere and (maybe worse) you never escape yourself.

We travel--the origin of envy--for one reason: to feel movement. To participate in the great circulation of molecules we call life. This is what the slum people miss--it's not the new sights (after all, one pile of garbage is much like another)--it's the lack of movement, the sad blank pages in their passports, the very absence of passports ... all lonely reminders of their incarceration in stillness: the modern spiritual horror of horrors.

Ah ... but for the rest of us ... the rush, the rush of energy, the unfurling singing twirling scenes as if you're constantly at the movies--oh yes! in them!--the warp and woof of time in global air travel, the shuffling and being shuffled between queues and throngs like prosthetized bovine. The feeling that you're on a new street in the same neighborhood in the same city. The one city we're madly building together. The city in our minds.

DAY THIRTY-TWO: YOU CAN'T LIVE WITH THEM, PASS THE POTATOES

2010-01-11T04:58:00.009-05:00

Despite my best and worst efforts, I've never successfully found my tribe. I've tried the business tribe, the Christian tribe, the techno tribe, the political tribe, the art tribe, the academic tribe, the we-were-naughty-when-we-were-young-but-now-we're-mature-with-jobs-and-relationships tribe, the love tribe, the eco tribe, the social justice tribe, the family tribe ... blaablaa ... finally realizing in my 40s (I'm a slow learner) that I'm atribal--not settling anywhere, exiled without the stigma, status, or physicality of traditional exile. The rootless cosmopolitan who's denied the certainties and self-righteousness of exile by cheap tolerance and air travel, restlessly at home everywhere.

Travelling like this, one bumps into the travelling tribe--a largely under-30 group (Generation A, perhaps), its members merging and separating like plankton, tenously bound on Facebook, trading Lonely Planet secrets, its males sensitive and modest, its females gabbily inoffensive. They have conversations like--

Blue's my favorite color.
No way - blue's my favorite color too.
{high-five's exchanged}
I love blue.
Blue's great.
Blue's the best.
I love blue.

... and ...

I regret having spent so much time in Goa.
I took the 50 hour train to Goa.
I--how do you say it--flewed, but--how do you say it--it was not good decision.
You can bargain the Goa autorickshaws down to 70 rupees from the train station.
Or--how do you say it--69.
{general giggles}

Claire and I have conversations like--

Listen to that Froggie--he's so pompous.
His accent is an instant panty remover.
Panty-schmanty.
There's a blog for you.
The Panty-Schmanty Blog?
Forget that--let's adopt a puppy.
You mean, exploring the relationship between nationality, sexuality, and movement.
You know, amphibians. Froggies are so cute.
What?

(There's also the over-30 crowd, of course: mainly couples more interested in safety than eros, glancing at their watches, with cameras bigger than their fortressed egos.)

Still vastly ignorant and curious about this copulating sub-continent, I look at the Indian tribe looking at me, pawing my whiteness--a symbol of remnant otherness which may very well crumble as India claws its way to globalization and the iPod replaces Ganesh and the crucifix. (I politely exclude the international middle classes--education and money provide us with at least a superficial bond.)

No tribe for me here ... other than what's available at home; the main attraction being voyeurism: peering at a tribe I haven't peered at before, knowing we have almost nothing to say to each other, preparing to return to a pampered land of cold and cloud in a mood of uneasy homelessness ... an attribute, I suppose, of the atribal tribe.

DAY THIRTY: MOMOMOMENTS

2010-01-09T09:27:00.003-05:00

Momotastic. Momolicious. Momorrific. Momomazing. Momopendous. Momovely. Momoxcellent. Momovine. Momotific. Transmomo. Momoabulous. Momoubbly. Momolegant. Momoabulous. Momoesque. Momoperlative. Momoanicle. Momoetic. Momoepsi. Momoest. Urmomo. Momooroscope. Momoiphany. Momoepburn. Momoighteous. Momoakespeare. Momoorpse. Momoicked. Momoexy. E-momo. Momoilly. Momoolkien. Momoetty. Momolique. Momotiful. Momoicular. Metamomo. Momomomo momomo momo mo momo moma mama mamo nano momo mo mmmmmmmmm

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: I SCAM YOU SCAM WE ALL SCAM FOR BUDDHA BAM

2010-01-07T08:29:00.007-05:00

Our prepaid cab driver to the Varanasi airport tried to get us to pay an extra 40 rupees because Varanasi "has underground airport." This was after we were scammed on the prepaid fare, scammed on the airfare, scammed on exchange rates, scammed by the nice and the mean, the young and the old, people of all classes, shapes, castes and smells. By humans and monkeys and human-monkeys and monkey-humans.

It's easy to get pissed off at the constant attempts to rip you off. Until you acknowledge that scamming is fully entrenched in Canada also--it's just that First World scamming is more institutionalized and thus distanced and invisible to us (like our war, garbage, crap, and cruelty). Paying $6 for that no-fat mocha shiva latte, $30K for that undergrad degree ... yeah, you get something for it but the price is non-negotiable and profit, randomness, fat, and greed are simply built into the fixed price.

Here, you can pay 25, 50, 400, or 1000 rupees for the same thing depending on your ignorance, tenacity, and luck. The low price--you feel good about the universe ... the high price--you feel bad about it. That's why many opt for the packaged deals--where the prices don't mysteriously shift, there are no surprise costs, and all the negotiations and madnesses are hidden far behind the tourist stage.

That's fine as far as it goes. But what those tourists are paying for is the comfort of the familiar scamming. They pay more than those of us who opt for the exoticism and annoyance of foreign scamming methods ... but, hell, everything has its price. And comfort's manufactured list price has always been high.

DAY TWENTY-WHATEVER: THE FACTOID FACTOIDS

2010-01-05T22:01:00.005-05:00

Here they are, Kathmandu Kids: the facts:

1. T
2. F ... JD is very impressed.
3. T ... Duh.
4. T ... The Bristol Stool Chart Modification Committee has been contacted.
5. T ... In a camera, sure, but that's where reality is these days.
6. T ... but she took her vows first.
7. T
8. T
9. T
10. Sadly F ... but they've put their order in for next year.
11. F ... He had to refuse for other reasons.
12. F ... but everybody else was doing it.
13. T
14. T ... but it's OK because they're going to Hindu Heaven.
15. T or F
16. F ... sort of ...
17. F ... Shri Baba didn't call; JD and Claire knew about Judas already.
18. F ... JD just took off his clothes.
19. F ... as if ...
20. T
21. F ... there were no goats.

Scoring Chart: Are You The Factoid You Were Meant To Be?

0 You have mother issues

1-5 You're sherptastic

6-10 Dump him and move on

11-15 You get to listen to JD recite the Tao Te Ching in the bathtub

16-20 Your application will be given priority consideration for entry into a draw for possible inclusion in the preferred list of candidates to be interviewed for statistically feasible placement on the short list for being Jesus' and Judas' sitter and victim when next necessary, subject to the statutes and governances defining such activities, including but not limited to the following conditions: love me slowly, sex on the ruff top, jungle surprise, kathmandoodling, tiger tootsies, sloth bean bitch slap, monkey ate my muffin.

21 Free rhino massage

Yesterday: the tallest mountains on earth
Today: the most populated desert on earth

DAY TWENTY-FOUR: THE FACTOID BLOG

2010-01-03T09:00:00.015-05:00

We know that some of you are People of the Factoid: "Cut the mythopoeic shit, we don't want the ooze and values ... just give us the facts. The raw, pure, truth-heavy facts. Journalism, along with science and acquisitiveness, after all, are the last objective things we have to cling to. Are Claire and JD having a good time? Did they see the Taj Mahal? How many pictures were taken of it? What's the timezone in Kathmandu? Does the Big Dipper look different in Asia? Can you even see the sky in Asia? Is there a sky in Asia? Does Asia exist other than in the mind?"

We have joyful news for you, People of the Factoid. Today's blog is a True and False questionnaire, designed to give you the truth, the falsehood, and nothing but the truthhood. Take the quiz, consider it carefully, and record your responses on a piece of dried elephant dung. Answers will be released in Nepalese time.

Factoid Quiz

1. JD alienates over 60 Turkish Airlines passengers by repeating "no contractual right-of-way; easement has not been established" for 6 hours from Istanbul to Bombay.

2. A largish monkey masturbates on a Buddhist temple in front of JD; JD is moderately impressed.

3. Claire realizes she misses her breakdowns and decides to return to India, anticipating more psychic mayhem.

4. Claire scats white poo in Kathmandoo.

5. JD fits the entire rear end of an elephant in his mouth.

6. Claire ditches JD for a night to sleep with monks in Bodnath.

7. Our hotel in Sauraha has its own elephant, Pinky, which sleeps outside our window.

8. In Varanasi, JD decides to become a secular sadhu and Claire decides to adopt a Saint Bernard named Kwarque.

9. In rural Nepal, goats joyride on the top of trucks to celebrate their imminent sacrifice on Manakamana.

10. JD and Claire eat the Southern Neapelese festive dish: spit-roasted fresh local guinea pig.

11. JD is invited to play elephant polo with the Nepalese female Olympic team, but has to refuse due to a hemorrhoid attack.

12. Using Nepalese herbal medicine, JD smokes rhino dung to cure his cold.

13. JD enjoys a rhino attack after going for an afternoon jaunt on an elephant.

14. A bus of 30 Westerners travels from our hotel in Kathmandu to Varanasi; it returns, but with only 28, as 2 drank the Varanasi tap water and died.

15. There is no gum like bubble gum.

16. A gharial crocodile appears to Claire in a dream and warns her not to go to Agra but instead to wrap herself in swaddling clothes and lay in an elephant manger, futilely preaching tenant housing rights to the wildlife.

17. Shri Baba Bonobo calls from Canada, reporting that he has discovered that Judas Loungechair is a Maoist and is the mastermind behind 90% of the illegal arms trade in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Malta. His furriness, felineness, and stupidity are perfect covers; he will never be caught.

18. Claire and JD get invited to a local Indian home, only to get kicked out when JD misunderstands "tandoori" as "Take off your clothes."

19. Based on the ethical urging of a blogger comment, Claire and JD send their CDVs (Christmas Day Vitamins) to rural India.

20. Claire pays a boy 15 rupees to high-five Ganesh.

21. On the narrow road to the mountain village, Bandipur, Claire and JD ride an 8-person jeep with 30 other people, a few hundred kilograms of maize, and 2 goats. It's so crowded their terror is more focused on suffocating than the 1000 meter drop on both sides, the jeeps playing chicken at every curve, and the 8000 meter mountains scorning the human race.

day omigod-get-me-out-of-here: claire has a nervous breakdown in varanasi

2009-12-26T22:29:00.007-05:00

Perhaps it was watching an old woman changing her husband's diaper in the middle of the Varanasi train station. Or maybe it was the back alley grope attack on my way to my yoga class taught by a teacher more interested in emptying my wallet than aligning my chakras. Or it could have been the incessant InYourFace blarring chorus of rupee rupee rupee rickshawrickshawrickshaw comecomecome boat boat boat yes madam yes madam yes madam. Yes.

Okay, okay, I get it ... this is India. This is travel. You expect to have your boundaries stretched. And sure, I read the guide book--I knew what I was in for. But I guess that's the funny thing about the psyche ... you never really know when it's going to snap.

27 hours in, my aura raped and lying in a urine-soaked gutter, I crawled out of the city's intestines and found myself on the steps of the Manikarnik Ghat. Slumped over my backpack, wrapped in woe, I let three cherubic ruffians scam me out of my last 100 rupees. Without an ABM or toilet in sight, I slipped into a precognitive stupor.

Just as the Ganges was about to be slurped up by Ganesha's mighty trunk, Hanuman, the monkey god, clamored down from a temple rooftop, adorned in velvets and silks, silvers, bright fushia, saffron, teal-green felt bobbles bobbling from his neck.

"Hey kid, this town gottya beat?" he said, in a thick South African accent.

I crinkled my nose, taken aback by Hanu's strong B.O.

"Well, for a stick of Juicy Fruit, I can show you Enlightenment. With a capital E, kid, with a capital E."

"All I got's a fruit rollup."

His eyes burned, he snatched my fruit rollup with his quick monkey hands and, in one giant leap, crossed the Ganges singing "Only bad karma for you, Prissy Pussy Cat." Then Shiva snuggled up next to me, massaged my thigh and told me he'd take me home.

Next thing I know, I'm waking up in Kathmandu with a bad case of the runs.

DAY SIXTEEN: DEMITASSE PLATONISM

2009-12-25T23:51:00.005-05:00

If I'm on a quest for anything in life, it's for the perfect cafe. Toronto fails miserably. Sure, it has improved. Sure, there's the Italian funk at b Espresso Bar. Sure, there's Dark Horse with its neighborly chitchat. Sure, there's the backyard at JetFuel, where ganja is freely smoked and nipples of all genders blissfully display themselves. These aren't bad things.

But compare Toronto's best to Chez Jose in Montreal. Then compare Chez Jose to Jazz in Antwerp. Then compare Jazz to the German Brown Bread Bakery in Varanasi. The name makes one think of hairy sausagy women throwing strudel at you. But it's more like a Middle Eastern brothel. Customers lounge on cushions and futons amid brightly colored tapestries of the gods doing naughty things. Beautiful young Indian boys prance up to you and offer their services. When I dribble milk down my geriatric cheek, they wipe it off with their curly long black hair and gently weep in stupid empathy. No music plays ... for who needs music when there's music in your blood?

And should I want to remind myself of what I escaped, I can crawl through the secluded rooms, over the multitude of splayed bodies sipping various brews, into the balconies overlooking a reeking alley where 37 humans, 41 cows, 29 dogs, 99 decibels, 5 motorcycles, 12 bicycles, 7000 pieces of plastic, an elephant, and 12000 plops compete for each square meter. Nauseous, I crawl back to my sweet boudoir, spill a little milk, and wait to be serviced.

Toronto ... you have a long way to go.

DAY FIFTEEN: THE GODS ARE WAITING FOR YOU

2009-12-25T01:25:00.008-05:00

Varanasi... shit capital of the Milky Way. Everywhere little children pull down their pants, everywhere one walks through cow plops, human plops, goat plops, elephant plops, monkey plops, camel plops, pig plops, dog plops, cat plops, rat plops, mouse plops, Shiva plops. Which one expects from Hinduism's holiest city--not because Hinduism is any more excremental than its competitors but because the centres of spirituality and religion--whether housed in individual, institution, or city--unite the opposites more extremely than the periphery: divine architecture and rapacious commercialism; oneiric literature and charred flesh; calm detachment and unbound lechery; scenes that stab memory with beauty's knife and enough shit to fill the Taj Mahal.

When we arrive, our hotel proprietor enters our room, sits on our bed, asks for one of my cigars, talks about truth and generosity for an hour, says we're all one, asks for another of my cigars, says he's never sad and never would be even if one of his children died, talks of being a brahmin, a guru, follows us into a restaurant, orders, and lets us pay. Scams us salaciously while blabbing of love.

To think the world is full of such holy men, whom tens, hundreds, even millions follow. The priest, the sage, the spiritual teacher--from Dr. Phil to Osho, from Ken Wilber to Krishnamurti to the local Baptist freak down your street. No. Give me Chaucer, Donne, or Shakespeare--those who saw and didn't know. Give me subversion, contradiction, and caprice. Give me doubt.

Yeah ... but it's enlightenment Indian style and everyone's enlightened and flying toilets fall from heaven.

Of course, anyone remotely acquainted with the gods knows they aren't pretty. They don't care about soap or truth or kindness or toilets. They beat you up for breakfast and kill you for a laugh. If you look at the abyss between how Varanasi behaves and what it says, you might glimpse divinity. And what you glimpse in that abyss might reinforce the knowledge that if there's any hope for humanity, it rests with us. Which, if you've seen the human soul in the way you've seen the gods, isn't particularly encouraging. And if there's someone who needs to be born today, maybe it's you.

Bodies burn on the Ganges' edge. Wood is weighed on giant scales ... just enough to incinerate your exact weight. Varanasi waits for you to burn--another holy corpse in the indifferent river that obliterates all thought and names.

DAY ELEVEN: POOING IN INDIA

2009-12-21T03:47:00.019-05:00

I pop 3 dollars of pills a day (wild oil of oregano; probiotics and homeostatic soil organisms; multivitamins with fruits, veggies, green foods, antioxidants, enzymes, and more; allicinized garlic; vitamin C supreme with quercetin; and zinc), attempting to avoid diarrhea or worse (the zinc, though, is simply to keep my testicles happy). About 132 rupees worth--enough to feed a rural Indian family for a week, enough to make 26 beggars go away, enough to dine modestly but well in Delhi for 6 meals.

The relationship with one's intestines change when travelling in dubious alvine conditions. As many of you know (I am no shy scatologist)--in The New World, I routinely, daily deposit 3 generous scats to the commode's account ... and this before breakfast. Here, armed with my wealth of advanced science in a capsule, I bank more trepidatiously. No joyous morning routine, no vast singing coils rising expectedly from the ceramic bowl. Every day--duodenum doubt. Every hour--where on the Bristol Stool Chart?

Too much routine--whether in the upper mouth or one of the lower ones--and we begin to beg for the unknown. This is surely the real reason we travel--not for the videos and postcards, not for the envy and debt ... but for the variety and the doubt.

So far, though--the $3 is holding up. The sphincter sings at different times, it's true, but its melody remains solid, its harmonies pure.

I thank Merdia, sweet goddess of all things brown and squishy.

DAY NINE: TO MUNCH OR NOT TO MUNCH ... THAT IS THE DELHI

2009-12-19T07:40:00.011-05:00

Paharganj, Delhi. Here, even the dogs are meaner, their eyes yellow pits of bile. Cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, cripples, goats, touts, cows, shitting hordes, and merchants merge and separate like apathetic lovers in dusty tiny alleys. Two groups stand out: the children, who surround and stare, but without threats or demands--an almost eerie display of innocence and eyes. And the tourists, naked but for their privilege, trying not to gawk or swear in this vaudevillian competition for space. Standing still for a second results in being swarmed with a thousand hands--some living Shiva of the streets.

If nothing else, the spectacle bludgeons you with the hyper-coddled nature of the West: our privacy seems prissy, our clambering for ever-thicker systems of security seems infantile, our rights and freedoms seem like squawks from The Princess and The Pea. Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Nietzsche's concept of decadence. The excesses of culture have all been explored in theory but have only increased in practise. Who lurches more? First or Third World, East or West? Ah, we lurch differently, rocking the global boat in perverse unity.

Whatever.

It's Saturday. I'm 18 months from turning 50. Bludgeoned by my coddledness, I step into the clutching bulging aggression of the streets, wrap my privilege tightly around me, and scream.

DAY SEVEN: DOGBITE DADBITE YOUBITE MUMBITE

2009-12-17T03:52:00.014-05:00

Bombay Mumbai. Cacophonous miasma of flesh and metal, where 10 people die a day on the commuter trains and raw humanity drips and claws and crawls on whatever surfaces present themselves, stuck to Maslow's lowest level like flies on sticky paper. Driving makes Manhattan feel like North Bay--horns screech with religious fervor, cars morph into half their size to gain three meters by squeezing between belching buses, humans risk their lives crossing the street. The only rules are chaos and aggression. It smells, but Paris frequently is smellier ... perhaps it's all the cheese in French piss.

Three entertainers whirl us through Bombaby's sarcous circus: Glynnis--great defender of love; Joseph--trickster and shape-shifter; Siddharth--he who sails with whales and does not sink. We are introduced to the Mumbaikar chic-money set in an art opening--the world grows small, we could be in London; we are processed through a Lakshmi temple, where religion is no creed, but a pulse.

Walking the streets means navigating a medley of malnutritioned furtive cats, whole squadrons of drowsy dogs, arrogant rats bigger than the cats, spires of living garbage, and countless grasping humans--vertical, horizontal, diagonal, mad.

It has almost as many people as Canada. It jolts and lurches like a marionette on crack, perpetually poised to lead humanity's march to the apocalypse. It's rabidly unsustainable. It's Bombay.

PS Shivas and Shaktis -- Here's your chance to direct the fate of two crumply travellers who love abundant chaos and loathe all semblances of order. We now find ourselves in the dusty delicious city of Delhi with no agenda. Where should we go next--Jaipur, Agra, Varanesi, Kathmandu, or Udaipur? Vote in the comment section and we'll go where you tell us. Promise.

DAY TWO: THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE KEBAB

2009-12-12T14:48:00.006-05:00

Neither of us have fallen in love wıth Istanbul yet. Maybe it's the 19€ corn-on-the-cob. Maybe it's the dippy-drippy 5 degree weather. Maybe it's all the nubile men who want to practice their English on JD. Maybe it's the tear gas attack in the bohemian district.

But we did have fun taking the boat we thought might be the European-Istanbul-to-Asian-Istanbul ferry and, armed wıth our doubt, asking every Istanbulite we met, "Are we in Asia?" or simply "Asia? Asia?" pointing to the ground. (After all, there was no "Welcome to Asia" sign.) But everyone uniformly answered "Harem, Harem" pointıng to the surrounding air. Since we found out later that the neighborhood we were in was Harem, this is like your living in Cabbagetown and a Turk coming to Toronto and saying to you in Turkish "Americas? Americas?" and your replying "Cabbagetown, Cabbagetown."

Communication, it ain't what it used to be.

Tomorrow ... Mumbai.

DAY ZERO: HELP!

2009-12-10T18:55:00.002-05:00

DAY NEGATIVE TWO: WILL I DIE?

2009-12-08T15:40:00.007-05:00

Unless you stay on the move constantly—a kind of Don Juan of travel—departures are unsettling. They’re analogous to the little deaths the French speak of—exhilarating, primal, vertiginous, sometimes sad.

Will I die? Will Claire die? Will she kill me? Will I kill her? Will I be voted Best Dressed Faggy Straight Caucasian Foreigner in Mumbai? Will Claire run off with a guru on an elephant and a credit card? Will Rev. Bonobo turn into a radioactive pineapple? Will Jesus and Judas start a religion? Will India join the EU? These are the questions that leap across my synapses as I think about crossing the Atlantic.

These days, of course, travel’s all the rage. The traveler I joyfully despise incarcerates himself behind a camera (chained to disembodied experience); never really leaves his spiritual suburb (through purchased safety in western hotels and guided tours); and increases his false superiority (through cheap pity and vapid judgments). The traveler I joyfully love expands herself through dialogue, awe, listening, watching … by leaping into the river of raw experience.

(Of course, all of us travelers are consumers—gobbling up sights, sounds, tastes, surfaces, and smells … and rabid polluters—spewing jet fuel and rickshaw poop wherever we go. This is the horrible democracy that unites us.)

If love, art, and travel don’t involve risk, they’re shadows of what they claim to be. Love without risk is tepid, art without risk is forgettable, travel without risk is a photo album. To fully give oneself to life is to also give oneself to doubt, unsettlement, contingency, conflict, plurality. The ecstasy of a departure—whether in love, art, or travel—is that it casts the traveler into vertigo … that heady sense of falling into the eye (or other orifice) of the universe. Apocalyptically, we hope to die. Fantastically, we hope to be apotheosized. Far more likely and mundanely, we will simply continue living and moving among our confused, ambitious, and hapless race.

Together, alone, we walk the tightrope between freedom and bondage, community and solitude, adventure and security … trying not to fall into the chasms on either side. Travel gives us the potential equivocal gift of making the chasms more apparent, of making the particular tightrope we walk more visible.

DAY NEGATIVE FOUR: THE CAT SITTER, THE SOUND STUDIO, AND THE SAUNA

2009-12-06T18:41:00.012-05:00

JD and I are what you would call cat people. I was born that way, JD recently converted. Either way, it’s the closest we get to religion. The primary avatars we worship are Judas P. Loungechair—a delightfully chatty white and grey tom—and Jesus B. Panoramica, a strikingly attractive and gleefully sadistic tabby. Even though they are far more resourceful, intelligent, cunning, wise, and beautiful than we, they still require basic care like any divine incarnation: food, water, belly rubs, and help updating their Facebook accounts. So, lengthy vigorous discussions were had about how we should appropriately handle our five week absence ...

Yesterday, our Cat Sitter—Sri Baba Devi Devi Das Bonobo—moved in. His parents call him Matthew. His lovers call him God. We call him Sri Baba. Or Rev. Bonobo. Or Devi Devi Das. He’s a sound magician, sonic frequency adjuster, and cosmologist. He tells me he likes to bite his father.

Rev. Bonobo is the kind of person that makes me happy. He brought us Italian Grandmother Buns and let us play with his chachambas and banana leaf drums and manipulate sonic waves on his Sonic Wave Frequency Machine. Then he played his electric piano and it was so beautiful I wept the tears of stars. In short, everything was great until JD decided to convert our downstairs office into a sauna.

JD gathered up dirty rocks from our courtyard, put them in the oven, turned the heat on high, and took all the furniture out of the room. He then took off his clothes and invited us into his “sauna”. Devi Devi Das and I looked at each other. I said, “JD—this is no sauna … it’s just a really hot room that smells like cabbage. Please put on some clothes.” Naturally, he refused and sat there, naked, with a spray bottle in his hand, spritzing the smelly cabbage rocks.

Afterwards, we ate grapes and Sri Baba told me more stories about biting his father.

Jesus and Judas … they’re in good hands.

DAY NEGATIVE SIX: BEST FRIENDS FOREVER … WITH BENEFITS

2009-12-04T20:19:00.011-05:00

All trips—whether on land or drug, whether in love or art—begin before the official departure. It’s that glimpse of upper leg, the twist of finely tuned buttock—days before words grope, weeks before hands begin the dark descent—that mark the obscure origins of love’s strange and bumpy ride. But it’s vaccinations and impossibly lengthy online train bookings that mark the origins of trips to diarrhetic lands. Yet such early steps are prosaic—any travel blog might contain them—and woe are we should the birth of our trip be anything but Olympian in stature, mock-tragic exuberance, and verve.

Thus we begin our Indian sojourn on Day Negative Six by restructuring—for the 27th time (mind you: neither of us can count)—the words we use to define how we relate to each other. Two Shivas whirling through the dark night of the soul—so ravenously consuming ourselves and each other that each day requires countless new births—our first blissful demonic year defined by besotted relational chaos, our second by cloyed relational chaos … and then we said, “Here we are, hovering on the void of ourselves, weary of this word relationship … weary of its ecstatic known games, the gerunds and conjunctions of its established combat. We need new words, new games, new wars … to sustain us through five clickety-clackety weeks in Asiatic mayhem and scatological doubt.”

So it is we said this very morning, “Cursed be marriage and partnership and relationship and structure and certainty and commitment and the old words and pajamas.” (Pajamas? When have there ever been pajamas?) “Blessed be BFFs and comprehensive benefits and new words and vast vast nudity.”

And love letters were written and creation began again, as it always seems to do.

Everyone knows the best way to stop fighting is to break up. But when you have so much fun together, the best thing to do is break up and not part, redefining everything. Has anything changed other than the words? Oh … but words are all.

And everyone knows that the best way to start a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the myriad gods is to destroy everything you love, freefall into the well of nothingness, and in that vertigo and darkness see light and laughter and the world made new.

So we begin our blog and our journey in routine chaos, Pandorian hope, and dubious battle … preparing our bodies and spirits for the onslaught of an old great land.

We want you to join us, in misadventure and love, across the eternal chasm between us.