Surrender your hands to hers…
She will embrace them with grace..
She will take you to new places..
and teach you new ways..
Cheers to her hands..
and to her..
Day Wedding+1: The sickness
Today I wanted to rest. Having immersed myself in the wedding days and interacting with the group, my body started to loose its strength and integrity. The group is planning to visit Amritsar where the Golden Temple is and follow that by visiting the Indian Pakistani borders where a special ceremony takes place everyday. I knew I would miss these events but I also knew that going there would be an extra load for my strengths.
I spent the day reading, writing and sleeping. My companion book is “The House of God” which is a diary of a medical intern during his internship year. Full of irony and beautifully written, this book attracted me since the first page. I found myself writing down quotes from every page. I borrowed it from Morad, my brother, after he told me many times: “You should read this book” and he is right.
I almost recovered, had I not had lunch in a restaurant beside the hotel. In addition to my sore throat (resulting from a mixture of shouting and screaming during the wedding dances and the dust in the air), I acquired also some stomachache which grew stronger with time. Well, I don’t really think it was stomachache. My theory is that it is intestinal pain and it could be probably due to intolerance of some of the spices or the ingredients used in my meal. The pain was completely gone in the next day with no traces. Hmm, maybe some psychological caution of eating traditional or local food.
Meanwhile, my friends in Amritsar had a great time at the temple and the Paki border 🙂 Here are some of their photos:
In the evening, Diljit and Alvi picked me up to go and meet the group in a cultural complex in Jalandhar. The complex, Haveli is a mini-village that shows the history and culture of Punjab using real-sized statues and constructed rooms. Here are some images from google image if you are too lazy to google it yourself:
There was also a band performing some traditional dance on an elevated stage. Under the stage there was a sign stating that dancing is forbidden for visitors and that it is only for the band. This tells you how much Punjabis like to dance 😀
We had then a very traditional dinner inside where various dishes were served in metal plates and brass jars. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really eat much due to the instability of my inner organs!
I felt a bit worse.. going back to the hotel, I found myself with my clothes undercover and shivering! I was sick! My mind was getting alternating between lucid and hazy at times. This brought me the attention my other group members who rushed to provide me with several medicines and wishes of getting better soon. This helped me.. This also touched me since I felt their real and genuine care and love. We are nobodies without the people we love.
I slept and slept deep. This was enough to make me fresh in the next morning.. I felt liberated from my stomach/intestine/whatever it is problem and only having the throat problem.. Today, we go to Delhi!
Day Wedding+2: Transgender experience
We checked out, had a small breakfast and split into two groups. Daniel, Lena, Justus, Heike and Filip will drive back to Delhi while Christina, Merve and I will fly later in the day. Sibylle flies back tomorrow. The 2nd group + Sibylle went to Diljit’s house for a bye-bye time before heading to the airport. There we found a lot of beggars at the front door playing music and waiting for alms from the new wedded couple.
Particularly interesting is a tradition that transgender/hermaphrodites come to the newly married couples and ask for a big sum of money! This was a bit of an experience for us. He/She walked around the house yard in an exaggerated feminine steps and coarse manly facial features that were smoothed by some makeup work. She danced to the music of the accompanying group and every now and then sat on Diljit’s lab and gave a kiss on his cheek. I was discussing with Merve in the background how much she would accept to kiss her/him and we were discussing various prices for various levels of kiss qualities. Merve was not willing to kiss her/him a real kiss for any price. Later during the dance, the transgender came to me and asked me to dance with her/him. To my surprise, I didn’t feel very strange. She/he is just a person after all. This whole tradition is to compensate them for the social rejection and negligence which they consistently receive everyday. At some point, he/she asked me to kiss him/her on the cheek! Oh.. I didn’t see that coming.. I remembered immediately my conversation with Merve and asked kiss-seeker for 1000 rupees.. (S)he/ didn’t seem to mind, so I raised the price to 10,000 rupees (around 150 euros). (S)he also seemed ok with it. So I said to myself, “fuck it, let’s do it”. As soon as I leaned towards her/him, (S)he backed off and seemed to shy out.. I was not sure if (S)he was even afraid! ohh my..
The rest of the day was driving to the airport, flying to Delhi and then renting a car to drive to Agra where we spent the night. However insignificant this sounds, in India, you are constantly surprised. Here and there you find things like a man on a bicycle with a monkey behind him. An elephant walking down the street.
We needed to rest a bit, tomorrow will be our visit to Taj Mahal, a guide will accompany us for the morning and in the afternoon we will go back to Delhi.
Day Wedding+3: Taj Mahal
Our driver picked us up from the hotel. Merve and Christina looked a bit fresher than I did. We drove together through agra where cows on the streets were in a similar count to cars. We picked up Mohammed Wassim, our guide. He was nice, wise and confident and accompanied us during the morning.
At Taj Mahal, Mohammed and we skipped all the lines directly to the ticket window. Sometimes, he waved local indians to empty the way as if they were flies. Which seemed verrry wrong. We had conflicting feelings; this was good for us since it will cut all the unnecessary waiting times but on the other hand it was just wrong. Disrespectful. The locals, however, didn’t seem the tiniest annoyed by this. They took it very normally and casually and made some space. This is not very novel here. You can often see people treated really badly and they seem to accept it or to expect it.
Taj Mahal is a beauty. It is my 2nd visit and I still enjoy looking at it. Being a Muslim heritage piece dedicated for love, it had some romantic connections. Mohammed explained a lot about the history, the construction and other details about the palace which I won’t write here since I wrote most of them in my last trip (you can read here). Mohammed sounded very authoritative some times: “Stand here”. “Leave the water here”. He was also very specific about where to stand and wait for him and sometimes he asked us to move a meter or so. I found this somehow entertaining.
We had our trip around the place where Mohammed took many photos of us. Some of them are very touristy:
We had some chats with Mohamed about his life and his family. He comes from Kashmir and wants to get married to a beautiful woman called Zaira. We then had lunch, did some shopping and then hit the road to our hotel in Delhi to spend our last night.
It was almost the end of our group travel. Merve, Christina, and I! We had a bye-bye dinner together in one of the malls where above-average class indians were hanging out to some DJ music. It was a pleasure to travel with these beautiful ladies. It was enriching, simple and easy going. I would like to express my happiness and honour to get to know them and establish a long-lasting friendship among the three of us.
Everything comes to an end.. but ends mark new beginnings.. and the end of this trip is the beginning to another chapter of my travel solo. Tomorrow I fly to Nepal after the girls fly back to Germany. Tomorrow I will be praying for new adventures, life-lessons and some time of reflection..