Editor’s note: Been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been hunkered down in my apartment doing freelance animation work. Got any animation you need done? While good for the bank account, it’s not typically the best for stories. …That said:

I was in the city of Pune this weekend. (pronounced poo-nay) It’s about 75 miles east-southeast from Mumbai. While I ended up being mobbed and given fresh fruit by a group of friendly young guys with porn on their cellphones who wanted me to go drinking with them (pictured below), I started off visiting an (in)famous sex commune.

Osho Ashram: Sex Commune? Cult?

Note to those here from a Google search about the Osho International Mediation Resort in Pune: I have done very nominal research about this whole thing. I’ve never attended. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I am blatantly spreading rumors that I have not personally confirmed. I am biased against things that I perceive to be culty. If you’re inclined to get pissed off by someone talking trash that hasn’t taken the time to really do their homework, you may as well move on. I’m not here to argue with you.

I had heard about the Osho Ashram before. It’s one of those things people mention when you talk about traveling to India. I’d heard it was a sex commune under the guise of a meditation resort. Free love, tantra gurus, boink your meditation partner while the teacher watches, the like. …Which one might initially feel skeptical about until one hears that an HIV/AIDS test is required to enter the commune and take part in the various groups offered. Right. Apparently it’s trying to get past this reputation and has changed it’s name to “Osho International Meditation Resort”

I was in Pune where Osho International is located and was aware of the ashram’s reputation, but I hadn’t yet connected that it was the very same place that I was sitting near at a coffee shop.

Evidence of proximity to an ashram was abundant and of the “foreigners wandering in maroon robes” variety. I felt immediate disdain for the people walking around in their stupid maroon robes. They walked around looking culty and calm and meditative and pissing me off just by being there. In fact, there seemed to be a general concentration of spacey tourists where I was and I didn’t like it. I’m not used to seeing tourists where I live in Bombay in the first place. Occasional Germans with shorts and high socks and sandals are one thing, but these guys are a farce.

“Oh, come on. Look at this guy with his bald head and his damned maroon robe,” I say as he commits the sin of crossing the street. “He looks ridiculous.”

What’s up with the hate, Nathan?

Why the hating, you ask, dear reader? Am I being very un-dude right now? Is there a point to my unprovoked animosity for people that just came to a meditation resort? “Live and let live, man.”

I’d typically agree with you, but it’s how I felt. At the time I was annoyed. After reading more about the place and it’s now-deceased leader online as I write this, I feel hostility towards the whole thing. I hate cults.

Though mostly non-judgmental, I’m at least weary of spirituality and gurus and religion and wisdom traditions. (And bears! Oh my!) I’m also initially weary of other tourists even though I am one, too. Especially tourists wearing culty maroon sex commune robes and purporting spiritual self-exploration and revelation through fornication whilst paying lots of money for a perfectly packaged, use-it-on-your-one-week-of-vacation-time week at the meditation resort. Why you gotta pay big bucks to meditate? I don’t buy it.

I don’t know. Perhaps their inherent awkwardness upsets me because I subconsciously see them as a possible reflection of how I look as I travel around the world. Maybe I’m worried my reaction to them is the same way locals react to me? I don’t really think so, but I can’t be sure. At least I try not to crank the silly attire up to eleven, for, ahem, God’s sake. Either way; take these characters and throw them in phony meditative get-ups and I start thinking and talking shit.

Throw a bunch of “it’s a cult!” accusations found on the internet while writing a blog entry and I get actively pissed off. These things can mess with people’s lives in a very destructive and alienating way. To put it eloquently: fuck ‘em.

Quit rambling, Shipley. What happened?

I digress. So I was there. I had an afternoon to explore Pune. I figured why not go see the commune?

I did and the campus is beautiful. A very relaxing place on a very relaxing street, surrounded by trees and grass and water and Buddhas that are all very relaxing. I managed to get into the twice-daily tour which consisted of watching a 30 minute video and a single file, in-total-silence walk around a small part of the campus.

Before the tour started, I was leafing through a three-ring binder of frequently asked questions about the resort. Somewhere near the end was the question, “Why do I need to take an HIV/AIDS test to enter the resort?”

“Aha!” went my mind, “This is the place people were talking about! The sex ashram! I’m in the lion’s oh-so-sexy den right now!”

I was excited. I called a friend. “This is the sex ashram! The one!” I took a new interest in my observation. They sat us down for the video in a group of about thirty people. Osho Representative Man who was speaking with us gave a 2 minute intro before the video. He listed Tao, Sufi, and Tantra as some of the meditation techniques we could learn. I was the only one of the tour group hungrily scribbling down notes in my vertical flip-open Moleskine.

The Promotional Video

Awash with skepticism and excitement, I jotted away. The video is entitled The Silent Explosion, which inevitably caused chuckles in the Beavis & Butthead portion of my brain.

A bored-sounding voiceover gave me an overview of India explaining that it is more than a country; it is full of invisible vibrating energy fields. Specifically:

[India] is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more. It is a metaphor. A poetry. Something invisible, but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields which no other country can claim. It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search: the search for the truth. India is the only land in the whole world which has devoted all of it’s talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth.

You don’t say.

At Osho Ashram, all of the wisdom traditions are made accessible. One-hour meditations “silence the mind.” Also at Osho Ashram, every transition between clips in the video is a soothing dissolve. Aaaand star wipe! Star wipe! Why have hamburger when have filet mignon?

Shots of huge rooms of people spinning and shaking fade by. They show the 90-foot tall black pyramid on the compound. The show the “multiversity” and a board with some class names. “The Fragrance of the Master” and “The Art of Touch” are my chosen favorites.

A lawyer lady gives a passionate testimonial. So does Darin Judkins and Leeroy from London. Leeroy explains the rush of energy he had that precluded him from talking for an hour. The woman sitting next to me in the tour group smiles knowingly and nods her head in silent approval showing her understanding of and camaraderie with Leeroy.

I can’t remember exactly who gave the last testimonial, but I was promised that I, too, might see the jewel at the bottom of the pond. I could change myself, my quality of life, and open new dimensions. Testimonial person “didn’t know the meaning of joy” before Osho. That’s open-your-wallets cult talk, people.

A strong start, Osho.

A walk through the brain-washing fields.

Next we were divided up into two groups. I got the old Indian guy as my tour group leader. People didn’t pay much attention to him as he explained that we would walk in a single-file line and were to remain completely silent during the trip.

In we went. It was remarkably peaceful — especially compared to the aural and visual onslaught that is Mumbai. The maroon robers moved about the campus. Some sat. Some chatted. I found them less annoying when they were confined to their compound. We moved at a snail-pace which was only slowed more by one of the many times the old Indian guy had to turn around to hush the group.

Because almost no one was listening when he told the group we were to walk in a single-file line, we moved more like a shuffle-stepping amoeba. In vain, old Indian guy tried to rectify this. He would silently hold his arms outstretched at his sides and then bring them together in front of him repeatedly. He looked kind of like a bird flapping the wrong way. People weren’t sure what to make of it.

The campus was spotless and beautiful. We didn’t really get to see much, though. No class observation or anything like that. The coup de grâce was the big black pyramid with shallow pools in front of it. It was big, it was black, and it was a pyramid.

I would have liked to watch a class or talk to some people, but that wasn’t in the cards. Probably need an AIDS test first anyway before I go that far.

All in all…

Osho Ashram was interesting to see but it’s actually more interesting to read about online. Understandably, they’re not going to put the juicy or controversial stuff in front of the potential clients, save a couple mentions that we could study tantra.

Obviously not my speed or style. I’m sure there are plenty of innocent people there just enjoying their vacation. Fair enough, but I still don’t trust it. Try not to drink the Kool-Aid, people.

The rest of them can go chill with Rev’ Moon and L. Ron. Fuckers.

My New Friends, The Fruit Sellers

Giving cigarettes away seems to be a decent enough way to make friends with randoms the world over. Or at least break the ice. Smoker’s camaraderie or some such Band of (Cancer) Brothers crap.

After a couple hours of walking around in Pune post-Osho and eliciting the usual stares, I’d sat down on a side street near a bunch of motorcycles in the shade in relative obscurity from the street, hoisted the Marlboro flag, and was passing time.

It started with a little kid coming over curiously. Upon me saying hello, he skedaddled back to the two young guys selling fruit and reported a white guy sighting. They all looked and I smiled and waved. Eventually curiosity took over and a couple of the fruit seller guys came over to me. I gave one a cigarette. Then, over the course of 30 minutes, a small crowd formed.

They kept offering me fruit and I kept offering them cigarettes. (Way to be healthy, America. Wah.) Their English was minimal and my Hindi is limited to “hello,” “no problem,” “okay,” “cool,” and “stop.” However, as things tend to go in these situations, communication happened anyway. There were a thousand questions. It was great.

All of the typical “getting to know you” questions ensued. Then they pointed at the two darkest-skinned guys of the group and yelled/asked out “Negro? Negro?” One guy threw in an “Obama” for good measure. I think I was being asked if the two Indian dudes looked like black guys. They didn’t. I said no.

They began prompting me to repeat things they said, which were undoubtedly swear words based on the howls of delight they elicited. Fun.

The Porn Comes Out

The guy they referred to as “The Agent” (pictured right) got his cellphone out and started trying to direct my attention to his porn clips. The first one featured a black guy and a white girl. “American?” he asked.

“I — uh — maybe?” came my reply, “It doesn’t seem like they’re really talking very much.”

Seeing my attention quickly waning, he switched to the next dirty clip — which, despite some creative angles, had decidedly lower production value. All things considered, of course.

“Indian.” This time he wasn’t asking, he was saying. This was apparently Indian porn, though it was hard to tell on the cell phone-sized screen.

“Are you sure?” I ask pensively, “How do you know?”

He pauses the clip and expertly fast-forwards to a close-up of the woman’s face as she’s demonstrating the intricacies of the Kama Sutra. Sure enough, there’s the bindi on her forehead. “You see?”

“Yup. Indian,” I confirm.

Conclusion? Young guys are pretty much the same everywhere.

Eat the grapes, thank the people.

They asked if I wanted to go have a drink with them, but unfortunately I had a bus to catch. Sorry, guys.

Chai was brought as were the little Indian cigarettes called bidis, which they wanted me to try. There’s one in my hand in this picture. Then came the grapes. The grapes didn’t look very good. They were dirty and a lot of them were bruised, soft, or partially bug-eaten. At home I’d toss them, but I’d be damned if I was going to get uppity over more potential stomach bugs and not graciously eat the grapes I’d been given. The hell with being hoity-toity — these guys were damned nice.

That’s the thing about India. People tend to share and gift a lot more generously here than they do at home. It’s a very “what’s mine is yours” attitude. An Indian friend told me, “Europeans have money but they aren’t rich.” While I’m pretty sure this was prompted during a conversation about food, I think it applies here, too.

There is no story to this entry. I did not impersonate a doctor, speak to classrooms of children, get my life threatened by a crazy man, bribe a police officer, get taken to a gay bar by transsexuals, go looking for a legendary stripper with expats, buy $12 pistachios and fight with a whore over them, see an exciting new style of toilet, get wrapped up in red tape, ride a train, or even make any new friends.

But I did have the best meal I’ve eaten in India for lunch today at a place called A. Rama Nayak’s Udipi in Mumbai. I left feeling like I could die happy. It was 85 rupees, which is $1.67. It’s all you can eat. Best part other than the killer food? The plate is a banana leaf.

This one goes out to the people that like food entries. Big ups Dru Down, Jumpin’ Jim Crow at Harvard, and E. J. Wiaky.

It went like this:

Go past the cows near Matunga station. Not Matunga Road, but plain Matunga. Give a nod; they made your curd.

You go to the end of this alley. You’re not going to find it, so have a local with you. The stairs up to the restaurant are past the guy in the blue shirt at the end of the alley:

(Side note: Does anyone else thing the guy at the bottom right of the above picture looks like an Indian Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters?)

Up the stairs:

Squeeze through the big line of people waiting to get in:

Your plate and place mat in one will be this banana leaf:

Food guy comes and brings food. He’ll be back as many times as you need.

It’s like this once he’s done. From left to right, that’s a spicy fresh pickle curry, bean curry with coconut, something called “aviyal,” and potato & peas curry. Curd guy also brought curd.

Then bread guy comes and brings bread. There’s papadom on the left and chapati on the right. Papadom is a crunchy, fried, rice-based South Indian wafer and chapati is your standard Indian wheat bread.

Then you get a desert. Shirkhand on the left, which is an awesome sweet dish made of strained yogurt, and sweet mysore pudding on the right. You can get mango juice, too, which is in the middle and basically the best thing ever.

Rice guy will also come if you’d like. You’re eating all this with your hands, so go for the glory:

And here it is all laid out and labeled. Click the image to see the easier to read full-sized version.

Indian Buffet near Lafayette Square Mall in Indianapolis, you know I love you, but you just got served.

The executive producer, Raj, and I leave the air-conditioned CEO’s office and go get in a rickshaw for the quick trip to the production bungalow. On the way there I ask him, “So what is this show exactly?”

“I don’t know,” says Raj. The CEO hadn’t known either.

We arrive at the small production bungalow and I sit for an hour talking with a director and some Indian voice actors. Raj eventually comes back and gestures to a door saying, “Hey Nathan, can you come sit in here?”

“Okay.”

I walk in to the small room. It’s a recording booth. There’s a chair, a microphone, a video monitor, and a small leaf-shaped window into the engineering booth. Apparently this is go time, Shipley.

Raj hands me a script. “Okay, you read this part here. The part for ‘Sonic.’”

“Okay. Um. What is this? What does Sonic look like?”

Raj moves to the door and shrugs, “I don’t know. You’ll see it on this screen here.”

I look at the top of script he has handed me. Its a script for an episode of the cartoon version of Sonic the Hedgehog.

It suddenly strikes me that I’m trying out to be the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in India. Yeah. The voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in India.

After reading through the script once, the director comes on to the headphones. “Okay, Natan [sic], are you ready?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Likely sensing that I have no idea what I’m doing, he explains further, “You just read what it says in the script and make it so it matches the character’s mouth, okay? We’ll play it for you on that screen. I don’t have a copy of the script here, so you just do it, okay?”

“Okay.” I pause. “What do you want the voice to sound like?”

“Just make it sound like the one that’s already on there. Your are the little blue guy.”

Sure, fuck it. ‘Like the one that’s on there.’ I am the ‘little blue guy.’ No problem. Just like every other time when I audition to be the voice of a cartoon character for foreign television, I think to myself. What the hell am I doing? I have had no preparation, I don’t know how to do this, and I have little clue what Sonic the Hedgehog’s voice should sound like. I’ve done some reads for voice over stuff before, but this is beyond the norm.

Laughing to myself, I put on my improvised Sonic the Hedgehog voice and start reading with fervor. No sense being embarrassed, I guess. I end up making what I think is this psuedo cool-guy voice with a little bit of California surfer mixed in. Match the lips. Don’t move the paper while they’re recording. Try making the voice a little thinner. Can you read this part for the evil guy, also? Standard stuff.

So how did I get here?

Craigslist, of course: the jump-off point for various awesome ventures on this trip.

Upon updating my trip finance spreadsheet the previous week, I realized I should deal with the fact that my cash situation was getting precariously low. I started sending some emails and looking for work online. For the hell of it, I checked the jobs section on Craigslist Mumbai. This is what I found:

American accent? Check. Freshers welcome? Check. Willing to work as a professional dubber? …Sure? I sent an email explaining that I had a neutral Midwestern accent, was in Mumbai, and was available for dubbing work. I got a reply with a phone number for Chandan.

I called Chandan. Chandan explained that he is an Indian guy from Boston and works for a television station. Could I come to his office on Monday at 1:00 to discuss things further?

Yup.

I asked some Indian friends about the station he said he worked for. Apparently it’s a big station which is part of an even bigger Indian financial conglomerate. Monday rolled around and I left with plenty of time to allow for the molasses traffic and inevitable difficulties finding the office, which were both present.

Upon arrival at the office, I told the guard I had an appointment with Chandan. He took me up to a big open room full of 100 people on computers. Someone explained that Chandan was in a different part of the building, which we went to.

I had to actually go through an elevator and three more different guards to get to Chandan’s office.

Upon finally entering, I immediately wished I had some better clothes to wear, even though I was wearing the nicest clothes I have. “Nicest” means baggy khaki outdoors pants that convert to shorts (with various stains), an untucked white button-down shirt, and my battered pair of grey Chucks. Chandan was wearing a suit and tie. He’s a big, imposing man.

I sat down opposite him at his huge desk in the large, spartan office. He quickly got down to brass tacks and I quickly realize that this isn’t just some producer I’m meeting with. This guy is a heavy. He’s talking about the media empire and future plans for expansion with new channels in other countries. He hands me his card.

The front of the nice card stock has only the company logo, his name, and the three letters “CEO” written below it.

Ohhhhh boy. He doesn’t just “work for a televison station.” This guy is the CEO of the entire media and entertainment division of a corporate empire with almost a million employees. …And I’m wearing pants that convert to shorts.

It was like Costanza going to see Mr. Steinbrenner. Calzone, sir? That’s eggplant in there.

“So I assume you have experience doing this?” he asks.

“Well, I worked at a TV production company for 4 years. I’ve done some voice over reads. Couple of acting classes in college. You know.”

“Sure, sure. So what are your salary expectations?”

“I, uh, am not really familiar with the market here, sir.”

It went on for a while. He talked big. It was impressive. He got lots of important phone calls and visits while I was in his office. He seemed to like me, though. Eventually he called executive producer Raj to come pick me up.

After my session reading Sonic at the production bungalow, both Raj and the director told me I did good work. They’d get back to me in a week or so. I haven’t heard anything yet, but this is India.

Vodafone: “Yes, we have no Vaseline!”

Remember that whole post about the saga of getting a SIM card for my phone here? How I was delighted because I had finally gotten everything arranged after spending days running around the city? How it all finally just worked?

Yeah.

That lasted about 5 days. I knew Step 14 seemed too good to be true. I got a text message 3 days ago with the dreaded, “The documents submitted by you are not as per TRAI ruling. Pl re-submit your application form, identity, and address proof within 48 hrs to avoid suspension.” I took yet another trip back to the main Vodafone gallery to find Ashwini and ask her why she saw it fit to lie to me. Ashwini was not working that day.

The gentleman that was working, however, was no help. He couldn’t tell me why my documents were “improper” because he didn’t know where the documents were (they apparently write the rejection reason on the documents themselves) and was helpless to find them.

I asked to speak with Rohan, the manager.

Rohan assured me that the documents were in transit from another department and he would re-filed properly once they arrived at the main gallery and that I had nothing to worry about. He asked me to fill out the form that Ashwini said I didn’t need to fill out. He would personally attend to the issue and made it clear I would have absolutely no reason to return to the store. “Please don’t worry, sir. I promise to personally take care of everything.”

…My phone stopped working yesterday morning.

Air Arabia Taking Off: Insha’Allah!

Maybe my SIM card needs a prayer. Much like this recording that is played before every Air Arabia flight. I assume it’s a prayer? Ominous reverb has been left in from the original recording:

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Photos from the UAE to Mumbai

For the people that like pictures, here’s an overdue Flickr set with photos from my trip from Istanbul into Dubai on a long layover (to see the insane Dubai Mall) and a some from the first few days in Mumbai.

Here are a few highlights, or you can just go through the whole set on Flickr.

Landing in Dubai:

Dubai Mall Aquarium walk-through Tunnel

Waterfall Inside the Dubai Mall

Inside the Dubai Mall

Pizza Hut in Arabic!

Stinky Fish Market in Bombay

Tightrope walking girl walks the tightrope.

Delicious, delicious Indian food.

Finally, India did not let me down. Two cows were in a busy intersection just as I’d always hoped.

We were somewhere around Barstow Bombay when the drugs began to take hold…

Today, March 12th, I have been on the road for exactly 9 months. Yesterday was a hell of a way to celebrate the quadrannual travel anniversary.

In my apartment last night at about 9:15 after an amazing day, an hour and a half after drinking a traditional Indian drink called “bhang,” I called my friend Andrew. This was apparently quite funny to me. The bhang was working. I heard his message and lost control while leaving him a voicemail. Then I found him on instant messenger:

me: you should probably listen to my voicemail right now
Andrew: ok
Andrew: LOL
Andrew: you are totally fucked up

He was right. I most certainly was. I had drunk bhang.

Then I called him again. Upon hearing Andrew’s actual voice, my giggle box didn’t just get tipped over — it was turned completely upside down, shaken, and fell crashing all over the apartment floor. I couldn’t form sentences, but I could quite effectively laugh with my entire body like an insane hyena. I laughed so hard that I cried uncontrollably and gasped for air between fits of gleeful madness.

I left a reckless, senseless trail of voicemail, instant message, and garbled email destruction to the three friends I randomly picked to communicate with. I laughed at Brian as he walked to class. Steve replied to my emails with the subject, “DUDE YOU ARE WASTED!” Andrew, at his office, continued on to say, “Wow. We’re all really enjoying this.”

I initially wasn’t going to try drinking bhang because I’d already had a great day, I don’t like being high, and had read that there was weed in the drink. However, a friend suggested I should go for it. The Indians I’ve met all said I should at least try it. “Okay. When in Rome,” I thought. It was the Holi festival, after all. An hour and a half into the experience, Google told Andrew that that there might have also be opium in my drink. This was news to me, but at that point, it seemed completely feasible.

This is the man (and his incredible beard) that sold me the feel-good beverage from a tarp-covered table on the side of the street:

Let’s go back a bit first, though:

The day had already been gloriously incredible and insane. Earlier:

• Countless Indians smeared colored powder and various muck on me.
• Water balloons were launched at me from rooftops.
• A mob on the beach picked me up and threw me into the ocean.
• CNBC India interviewed me.
• A little girl started crying when she saw my black face as I walked back to my apartment.

Running the Gauntlet to the Beach

I left the apartment at around ten in the morning with the intention of walking to Juhu beach. It’s about two miles from my apartment. I thought it might take until I got to the beach to get colored. Instead, it took about 1 minute and 60 yards from my front door before the below-pictured group of guys attacked me.

Their eyes gleamed and their mouths grinned as they saw the fresh, clean, white meat walking down the street. With a yell, they all ran over to me and I closed my eyes as some dude thoroughly smeared thick black goop all over my face, while others put brightly colored powder on my neck and hair. I expected to get some orange or pink colored powder on my face, but my first run-in turned me in to a black faced monster. Then we all hugged and shook hands. This was the first of hundreds of times the same exchange would happen over the next few hours. This is a different group:

“What for,” you ask? We were playing Holi.

Holi?

Holi kind of snuck up on me. I didn’t know it would be happening when I was here. In fact, I didn’t even know what it was before I got here.

Holi (pronounced like the word “holy”) is a Hindu festival which is also rightly referred to as the Festival of Colors. Holi is also crazy. The streets are full of music. Parties and gatherings are everywhere. Everybody smiles and dances. Everybody loves it. People celebrate by smearing and throwing colored powder and water on each other. Especially on out-of-place blackfaced white guys ambling down the street with stupid grins on their faces.

Ostensibly, it’s a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, a time when old relationships are renewed and refreshed, and when spring is officially ushered in. As one not well-versed in discerning the finer points and intricacies of a Holi celebration, it just seemed like crazy, awesome, free-wheeling, ass-grabbing, color-smearing fun.

Various other groups of five to twenty people hung out on the roadside during the walk to the beach. Everyone saw me, smiled, waved, and we yelled, “Happy Holi!” to each other. Then they’d beckon me over and we’d put color on each other and laugh. I usually got hit by a water balloon from an unseen assailant each time I stopped walking.

I loved it. Everyone else did, too.

Not exactly sure where I was going and with the walk taking a long time, I eventually got in an autorickshaw for the rest of the trip to the beach. We zoomed past brightly colored groups of Indians and eventually arrived. Full of revelers, Juhu Beach was an amazing spectacle. Little poofs of color exploded into the air above groups of people dancing to fast drum beats. Families hung out. Vendors walked by selling snacks and drinks. People swam and wrestled in the water. More color exchanging happened. You can see it in the video below.

The Mob Throws me in the Ocean

Eventually, I met an Aussie expat couple, pictured right. We stopped and exchanged laughs, grins, and repeated utterances of “Can you believe this place?” Matt had decided to damn the torpedoes and get in the ocean despite having heard that it was dirty and far from fit for swimming.

The group of young Indian guys forming around us was glad to facilitate this venture for him. They huddled around him, halfway picked him up, and carry-dragged him to the ocean. Splashing and wrestling in the water ensued.

I was the next victim. The guys grinned and eyed me. “Give this woman your camera. It’s your turn,” said one of them.

“Oh, well, I’ve got my cell phone and my wallet and stuff, too, it’s okay,” I replied.

He would hear none of it. “Come on! Put them in the bag!”

In the bag they went. The moment my shoes were off, I was scooped up and run to the water. We all went crashing and splashing down. We laughed and fought. I picked up Indian kids and chucked then into the surf. I went underwater numerous times. It got in my mouth. (We’ll see how clean the water really is, I suppose.) After a couple minutes, everyone started to settle down and the tempo eased. Then I suddenly yelled out, “CHELOOOO!” which is Hindi for “Let’s go!” and did a flying leap at an unsuspecting Indian kid.

Awesome:

CNBC likes the foreigners. The foreigners don’t like their asses grabbed.

The CNBC news crew on the beach took notice of the commotion and the reporter did a segment in the middle of the our group. The first attempt was cut short when an overzealous reveler threw a handful of purple powder in the air that went all over the camera.

While the reporter was resetting and giving the crowd a talking-to, the Aussie mom yelped. “One more person grabs my ass and you’ve had it!” she yelled out to the crowd. This is a fairly common occurrence for foreign women in groups of Indian men; anonymous hands reach through the crowd and cop anonymous feels. I moved behind her and tried to block her apparently-too-enticing ass from the crowd. Chivalry isn’t dead.

Attempt number two at the news bit was a success. The reporter got through his intro and then got gleeful sound bites from the three foreigners. Everybody cheered at at the top of their lungs when Matt declared he was taking Holi back to Australia.

I’ll try to get the footage. In case I don’t, though, just imagine something along the lines of MTV sending a crew to shoot spring break soundbites at Daytona Beach.

In the mean time, here’s a video I’ve cut together of the morning’s events (featuring a Holi-themed soundtrack!):

Holi at Juhu Beach in Mumbai, 2009 from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.

When Little Girls Cry: The Before & After

I hitched a ride back to my apartment with the Aussies. They said they were worried their kids, who are scared by masks, were going to get freaked out by their dyed faces. In that same vein, one of the little girls who lives in my apartment building saw me coming and immediately backed up against the wall and started crying. I can see why:

A 30-minute shower and the most scrubbing I’ve done in my life wouldn’t get all of the color off of me. Exhausted and elated, I threw in the towel and took a nap while the sounds of parties carried on outside my windows.

If there was ever something that would make me love a whole country in a single morning, it’s Holi.

Later in the evening, though, I tried the bhang.

“We can’t stop here. This is bat country.”

“Strong or light?” asks the ornately-bearded bhang server standing behind a table in his make-shift booth covered in a green tarp on the side of the road. It’s 8:00 in the evening on the same day. The requisite autorickshaws zip by behind us honking. Throngs of people amble along the street. Like I said, I wasn’t even going to drink the bhang initially, but a small push from Brian The Enabler was what I needed.

I paused. Shit, I don’t know, I think to myself. I’ve never had this stuff. I’m not used to ganja in the first place, but I guess if I’m going to try this, I want it to do something, right? This is India, after all. It’s Holi! It’s a tradition! Who am I to get in the way of tradition? Just say no? Bah! Don’t take candy from strangers? Double bah!

“Umm… a little bit strong, I guess?” comes my meek reply.

He nods. This translates to three scoops of the green juice. He had already put in a scoop of white mystery powder from a plastic container. The picture of him shows my drink at the green juice and white powder stage of preparation. Next came the milk mixture. He takes the lid off the large stainless steel vat and dips a ladle into it. My drink is topped off with creamy milkiness and presented to me.

It swirls with earthy particulate matter and bits of fat from the milk. It is warm and, well, distinctly potable, as J & B would say. It looks like this:

I drink up, thank the man, watch him clean my glass (which consists of dunking it in one plastic container of dirty water and then into a second before returning it to the glass caddy on the table for the next customer), hand him his 20 Rupees (which is 39 cents), and wander back to sit around and watch the people go by. I plop down on the corner of a busy intersection near my apartment. The little girl seated next to me with her family has to go to the bathroom. Mom takes her to the curb where the one year-old takes care of business in front of the KFC and the rest of the walkers by.

The people watching in India is consistently good. Holi night is certainly no exception. The only difference today is that people have leftover color on their faces from playing Holi earlier in the day. Who thought you could make the world’s most colorful country even more colorful?

Twenty minutes passed and I decided to return home.

Reviewing my notes from last night (Yes. I did write notes about how I felt. Because I’m cool like that. This if for science!), I see that at T+ 52 minutes, I started feeling the effects of the bhang. It quickly became evident that the old man most definitely had the goods. I probably would have been fine with a “light” bhang drink.

Reviewing the chat log with Andrew, which also indicates the time I called him and laughed like a hyena, I see that I had devolved into a hopeless, silly, laughing nincompoop at T+ 1 hour, 32 minutes. Motor control was sub-par. Andrew tells me he read that there might have been opium in my drink instead of just marijuana. This part of the (explicit) conversation is in an image here, if you care to read it.

From this point, I went back and forth between attempting to talk to people, watching television, and listening to music.

At T+ two hours, thirty minutes, I sent this (equally explicit) email to friends Andrew and Steve. Brian got a stupid phone call at some point in there as well.

This went on for a while. I felt mostly good, though I don’t think I’ll be drinking the bhang again any time soon. I eventually fell asleep with my headphones on and a mix of Boards of Canada and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic blasting in my ears. Without feeling like the Good Lord gyped me.

What exactly was in the bhang? I’m not sure. Was the white powder actually opium? I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. Go ask Alice.

All in all, hell of a Holi. Thanks, India! You’re awesome.

The train keeps getting better. It’s still thrilling to hang out the side of it and feel the wind on my face. Here’s a short video that doesn’t do the feeling justice, but does show what it looks like. The sound at the beginning is of a band I recorded that was playing on the train, which is then replaced by the title track from the Bollywood film Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

Mumbai Train Ride at Night from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.

It was nighttime - around 10:00 - when I was headed north from Churchgate to Bandra on Mumbai’s city train. It was one of the new ones - shiny and nice compared to the rattling old trains. The train was almost empty heading south, but the trip back north was much more full.

A group of guys got in my car, took over a section of seats, put up a cloth banner on side of the train, busted out tambourines and started to sing and play. This is what it sounded like, if you want more than you heard in the video above:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Upon taking out my camera to record the audio of the makeshift band, the guys sitting on the floor in front of me asked me to take their picture:

Upon taking a picture of these guys, Mr. Crazy Teeth, who had been standing next to me and staring at me most of the time, requested a picture of him and I. Gladly, sir. Stick of gum? Toothbrush?

They started asking me questions which were translated to Hindi for the non-English speakers. The standard stuff. At the same moment, a friend called my phone. It was impossible to hear anything over the band and the ten guys all talking to me. I just yelled in to the phone, “I’m on the train! What? What?? Almost to Bandra! I can’t hear you! There’s some band playing and a bunch of dudes asking me questions! I’ll call you back!”

The mess of guys heard me say “Bandra” and immediately went in to helpful mode which consisted of lots of yelling and pointing. I eventually understood that I was on the wrong side of the train. I needed to be on the right side to get off at Bandra, which would take some doing. I mashed my way through the humanity to get over there, flashing smiles and thumbs up to my helpful co-passengers.

As the train pulled in to the station before Bandra, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket with a text message from my friend. “Get off at Dadar,” it said.

Shit. I was pretty sure that was where the train was stopping right at that moment.

I yelled out to the guys, “Dadar?”

This elicited an immediate reaction: action mode. They all started yelling again and pointing at the platform outside the train. Which, unlike me, was on the left side. “Dadar! Dadar!” sang the chorus of Indian dudes.

They all started grabbing me; pushing and pulling me through the sardine can of people. I felt like a Play-Doh noodle getting squeezed out of the Fun Factory.

The train began to roll away from the station but I had not yet been propelled all the way to the door. With a final thrust, I squirted out of the moving train into an unexpecting group of people standing on the platform.

Managing not to fall, I looked back at the door, smiled, and waved to the guys hanging out and smiling back. The tambourine sound was replaced by sounds of the station.

I brushed myself off and wandered off out of the station in to a yet-to-be-seen part of the city.