[Assam] My Experience of Assam

[Mridul Bhuyan]

Hi,
 
While browsing through internet for some travel blogs, I came across the following blog written by a foreigner about his experience of Assam. The notable thing is he is connected to 'Snehalaya'. The blog hurt me the most. The blog is very lengthy, go through it whenever you have spare time. The highlights are mine.
 
"………..My experience of Assam (India), in one short list… 

• awesome monsoon season storms 
• Terrible summer heat 
• Raging headaches 
• Mosquito bites the size of tumors 
• Pink sunsets 
• Coconut trees 
• Pesky street vendors 
• Never ONE SECOND in public without being stared at 
• Praying with all my heart 
• Study time: the bane of my sad existence 
• Emergency shoe-shopping expeditions w/ Tiffany (shoes breaking while I’m walking down the 
street, shoes hurting so bad that it’s impossible to continue walking, etc.) 
• Never, ever exposing my legs (God forbid) 
• Staring at white people in the same way that everyone stares at me (hey, it’s a weird sight) 
• Speaking English like a robot moron 
• Sidestepping dead rats on the way to school 
• Perfecting my “look of death” on any stupid driver who honks his horn in my presence 
• Every single day is a Hindu puja. )That’s what happens when you have like, 36 gods: every day 
is a holiday. Brilliant.) 
• Red Betel nut spit 
• Bright, gaudy colors 
• Reeking trash heaps 
• Nutella store 
• Green juice 
• Rice, dal, oily boiled vegetables, and drinking water 
• Sometimes looking forward to either an apple slice, a mango slice, or an orange after meals 
• TEA TIME (a.k.a. consuming six pounds of sugar plus a cup of caffeine just before study time) 
• Developing lung cancer every time I walk outside my house (pollution issues?) 
• Being squashed on the bus 
• Being “sweated on” by strangers 
• No personal space 
• Drinking five glasses of water at every meal 
• Shrill Hindi music 
• “From where do you come?” 
• “How do you like India?” 
• “How come you stay Guwahati?” 
• Afternoon naps ranging from fifteen minutes to three hours 
• My iPod is my only friend 
• Perverted men, indiscreet men, smelly men, ugly men, pushy men, nasty men 
• Pretending to understand when people speak to me in Assamese 




………………………..Well, that’s about all I can think of. But speaking of Assamese, I must mention that I noticed something significant this morning. What I noticed is that I hate Assamese. I never want to hear another word of Assamese spoken to me or near me again in my entire life. The revelation came to me while sitting at the breakfast table; Baby Baido was sitting across from me, and Binita was standing next to me. I quietly sipped my coffee while Binita, who has a forceful, pushy personality and a loud, annoying voice, fired off a stream of Assamese words that sounded like bullets being fired from a machine gun. Seriously, when she talks it is exactly like hearing a succession of hard pellets strike a hard surface at a high speed. It’s like some stupid teenager is flinging quarters at a refrigerator. It’s like someone just poured a box full of scrap metal down an elevator shaft. Her voice is the most annoying thing in the world.
 Furthermore, the language itself is not aesthetically pleasing. There are some languages that sound like rushing water when they are spoken, or some that sound kind of like a melodious, songlike sound. But this language sounds like bullets being fired from a gun. And when people talk, it’s not like they have back-and-forth conversations and discussions; pretty much every conversation sounds like an extended argument, where one person will fire off at the other person for about ten minutes and then the other person will inflict their rebuttal on my suffering ears. I’m sorry, I know I sound like a snob, but I just want to hear some nice, sociable people having a nice pleasant, normal conversation in English.
 
Well, lots has happened in the past week. First of all, I returned from Thailand feeling REFRESHED, which is pretty fantastic. I am experiencing an unexpected spurt of optimism, ability to deal with the obnoxiousness of India, and ability to handle living with thirty screaming children. And of course, i am realizing for the thousandth time that chaos and exhaustion are just more fun than easiness and luxury. 

Colin decided that one of the little boys at my home looks like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, and he's started calling this boy Scarecrow. This kid is one of the most extremely annoying kids out there --I think I've already written about him a few times in my blog. His hands are perpetually slimy with snot or saliva or God knows what else--which wouldn't be such a big deal if he hadn't made it his mission in life to grab hold of my wrists, pull on my fingers, and touch any part of me that gets near him. I mean, not to sound like I'm not a loving missionary or anything, but I don't want that kid touching me. Because wherever there's a warm, slimy, comfortable environment, bacteria and germs are gonna hang out there. I bet that the palms of his hands literally contain thousands of bacteria. I bet they're all just teeming over his skin, moshing with each other, barbequeing hamburgers and veggie burgers, going to concerts. Before mealtimes I go up to
 my room and wash my hands with antibacterial soap. Then I run downstairs, looking neither left nor right, and bolt past the kids full-speed with my hands up in the air. If anyone touches my hands before I make it to the table I have to go back upstairs and wash my hands again. Maybe it's obsessive compulsive, but maybe it's just good hygiene. Who knows. Colin said this kid touched his wrist the other day and he simultaneously felt his nostrils become congested. Now he has a cold. Okay maybe we're both paranoid. But anyway, I like the Scarecrow name. Colin talks to the kid in English, too. Sometimes he'll be playing with all the other kids, tossing them into the air and stuff, and the Scarecrow will run up to him and hold up his hands. Colin will just look at him and say in a loud, British sounding voice, "Oh no, you're a smelly Scarecrow, aren't you!" Or the Scarecrow will chase Colin around the yard and yell things at him in Assamese and Colin will
 yell back in English, "You shut your face Scarecrow!" Okay, now this wouldn't be funny if the kid understood him, because it would seem mean. But because he doesn't understand it is extremely funny and enjoyable. And Scarecrow actually seems to enjoy his Scarecrow name, or at least he did in the beginning. Colin would ask him in his loud British voice, "You're a Scarecrow, aren't you!??" And the Scarecrow would giggle and nod his head. But lately he has been protesting the name. Colin will tell him that he's a scarecrow and the kid will retort, although still giggling, "No Cackaros!" (He can't say scarecrow.) 

This week there have been a team of German cyclists in Guwahati--some guys who are apparently, in some vague and oscure way, connected to Father Lukose and Snehalaya. They are cyclilng around Northeast India for the sake of child welfare or something, and I don't exactly understand the connection, but it was fun to have them here because yesterday and today we got to attend special "programs" honoring these guys. I don't think they enjoyed all the hospitality too much because they were exhausted from cycling, and they each received about fifty of the Assamese welcome cloths that they drape around the shoulders of newcomers. Personally, nothing makes me want to vomit more than an Indian welcoming ceremony, because it's so fake and fussy and formal and everone has to sit in stupid uncomfortable plastic chairs and watch dances and listen to the unsmiling, confused-looking children sing songs that they don't even know the words to. But it's a necessity and
 you can't escape it. Yesterday we had a program at Fr. Lukose's house, where they had erected a giant temporary stage and invited about half the citizens of Guwahati. Then afterwards we went to the National Stadium for another program, and someone must have told them to try and make the program fun and "Western," because it was painfully obvious that everyone was trying to be those two things. First of all, all the girls were wearing jeans and matching tee-shirts, which literally never happens here. They looked like some sort of Normal Western Teenager Cult. Then they had a band playing live music, and they were encouraging everyone to dance, as if this was some sort of a nightclub. They had this stupid announcer girl with sunglasses and pencil-thin eyebrows, who was trying--and failing miserably--to emcee. At one point she enthusiastically ordered everyone "to get on your feet!" When no one moved, she ran out into the audience of empty plastic chairs
 and tried to drag some guy out of his seat, but he wouldn't budge. So, seeing Colin and me, she ran over to us, clamped her death-grip hand around our wrists, and tried to lug us out of our chairs. Colin was an eas sell because he loves attention, but I didn't want to go. Then again, that death grip was pretty convincing, and I found myself standing in line with a row of other girls, all wearing matching jeans and matching tee-shirts, dancing to a Hindi song. Now first of all it's one thing to dance when you're in a dark night club and no one can identify your face even if you're standing 2 inches away from them, where flashing strobe lights distort and obscure and stretch everything that IS visible, and music thunders in your ears so loudly that, even if you could see anything, you would be too disoriented to really understand what you were seeing. It's quite another to dance around in a formal straight line, for an audience of old Indian people
 sitting in plastic chairs (love those plastic chairs), the direct sunlight burning your eyes. And it would ALSO be another thing if this actually WERE a Western country, and it wasn't considered a sin to speak to men. But I don't care if they did do a creepily good (and Cultish) job of simulating America--this was actually India, not America. You don't shake your butt when you're in India. That's just not something you do here. Stepping from left to right and snapping your fingers is a pretty harmless move, but you can only do that for about 4 minutes before you start looking longingly at the plastic chair you used to be sitting in, wishing that you were still sitting in that very chair. Anyway, I felt sorry for the Germans, because they had been enduring this kind of treatment for a week, and they still have 2 more months of it to come."
 
 
Rgds
Mridul Bhuyan