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India is noisy. Sometimes because of horn, often because of horn honking actually, people yell, mini fireworks on the street to celebrate something or other even if it’s not a holiday, banging and clanging of construction everywhere, it’s hard to find a space and time where you can just go aaaah. One of those times should be in the wee hours of the morning when you’re waking up at 6:30 -7:30. That’s not really the case though. This morning, after breakfast, I had to ask myself why I was up so early, I didn’t have to be anywhere until much later so I decided to nap. There must have been at least 8 different bird calls sounding every few milliseconds or so. On a side note, sometimes these birds perch themselves on our balcony and you can see such pretty and strange looking birds. It’s pretty cool. The watchdog Boscar barks a lot! This I knew already, but between that and the bird and the drums, yes, drums, it gets a bit intense. Sometimes there are gypsy looking folks who walk around with a kind of handheld drum, well, it actually goes around your neck, and a shirtless man walks around with a long whip. He cracks that whip sometimes. They walk around asking for money. Yesterday I made the mistake of looking down from the balcony and he saw me. I think they were waiting for me to come back or come down. Sometimes instead of a shirtless man, there’s a shirtless boy. Both wear makeup and have some red lines on their faces. It’s interesting to look at but then you have to pay. Plus, I’m not going to lie, they scare me a little bit.
I managed to sleep somehow this morning amidst all of the ruckus. I had to go to a center far off and one of my bike fears came true, although it was a really pleasant experience. There was a clothesline near the road with a saree hanging off of it. The wind blew and the saree ended up entangled in my wheels. It was scary for a half a second until I realized I could break; I wasn’t going that fast. As soon as I stopped, the saree owner walked towards me, without seeming too concerned, and three men walked up from in front of me to help me out. I got off without removing my helmet or scarf. The men diligently told me not worry, one of them yelled at the woman for keeping her saree there and the other unraveled what was left of her cloth. They were really nice. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting it at all. Last week in Mumbai a friend of mine and I were joking that if you fell into the puddle in the train station because people were pushing to walk on a drier spot, no one would stop to help you up; “it’s like that only,” he said. But this morning, I felt desperate for only .5 seconds. People were there and they were nice. It was a good feeling.