Musings...if you will

Some observations…
All Indian men have mustaches. All of them. It’s like there’s some sort of unwritten rule about it or something. Also, there are all of these signs – some of them as big as billboards – all over the place that have portraits of various mustachioed men on them. Some of these signs have one large picture and maybe five of six smaller ones, and some have many many small pictures dotting them like checker boards. We have no idea what they’re for and no one seems to be able to give us a straight answer about their significance. Are they advertisements for speaking engagements? Are they artists’ renderings of wanted criminals? Are they depictions of local gurus or the richest men in town? Are they platforms for these men to brag about their paramount abilities to grow facial hair? It remains one of India’s most elusive puzzles…

Indian people have an amazing ability to cram more people than anyone would think possible onto every vehicle available. Buses drive by with bodies smashed against windows and hanging out of doors. Auto-rickshaws speed along filled with ten small schoolgirls. (An aunto-rickshaw is basically a three wheeled electric scooter with one short bench seat behind the driver and a covered top… they’re not big). Families of five cling to each other for dear life, piled onto tiny motorcycles, weaving treacherously through oncoming traffic. Even little kids riding bicycles smush three or four deep behind rickety handle bars. No helmets, no saftey regulations, no fear.
Indian people – taxi drivers in particular – will tell you they know where something is, even if they have no idea. They will then proceed to stop every five minutes to ask someone else where it is. None of the people they ask will know either. It’s very efficient.

The stray dogs here (and there are thousands of them) are the saddest, cutest, most heartbreaking things for me to see. They have such woeful eyes and they don’t even beg, they just stand, looking hungry and alone, and it kills me. I know, there are millions of poor people and starving children, and of course those people affect me too, but this weekend I was especially touched by the dogs. There were these two beautiful little puppies in one of the temples we visitied and I couldn’t touch them in case they were sick or had bugs, but it was all I could do to not scoop them up and hug them. I got yelled at by my traveling companions for emptying most of one of our water bottles out to give the puppies drinks. You should have seen them though, it was so hot and they lapped up the water like they hadn’t had a drink for days. I'm a sap, I know...