MTV is but THE Bible of American Pop Culture

Wierd weekend... crazy even.I loved it. I don't really want to go work for the next few days.

Saturday was rather uneventful. I just kind of went home and ended up going to bed at like 9 PM. I tried to stay up later but it was just too darn hard and rather pointless. Anyway, Sunday, the first day of the new year, I woke up at 5 AM with the belief I was going to "play picnic" with my daaju at 5:30 AM but we weren't leaving until 7, so I stayed outside, in front of the house, lookig out onto the himalayan foothills and watched the sunrise. It was really nice, listening to music and watching the first sunrise of the new year over such beautiful scenery.
You can't help but feel God. The more I live each day the more beautiful God seems and the more utterly utilitarian religion becomes. I love religion in all its rituals, colors, sounds and words. I love its communion with the divine and its community with the living. I hate the totalitarianism that creates chasms in human relationships but paradoxically it cannot exist without. One day maybe, everyone can be what they want and simultaneously acknowledge how everyone is slightly right and slightly wrong, how if there is only ONE kingdom of heaven, then it is logical that ALL passports are the same, and all gian entry in similar ways, just having to make different queues at the check-in post. Maybe that is too idealistic of me. But I would rather believe in an all loving God that give his children many paths and suffer in eternity for putting love above all things, than live in eternal bliss happily ignorant of my own self-righteousness and mass exculsivity. But I will not defend "god", as if Ultimate Truth and Love Beyond Human Comprehension needed defending, any battle to defend good is mine own, with others I can only defend the here and now, the things in this world that need defending, I cannot defend what is more powerful than myself, nor feign to think I can.

Then we went on a long but really easy hike down to the Relli River and we killed a chicken, and swam, and drank alot of rum, and ate good food, and made jaar and drank some of that, and then sobered up and lost our way back. We finally realized it was along a road we had walked a few times, and the bridge to cross the Tista River was wahed out in the monsoon and never rebuilt. So we had to cross on a pulley like ropeway. You sit, it allows gravity to get you 3/4 of the way across and then you pull on a rope until you can hook into the other side. Amazingly fun and utterly terrifying. We had lost 2 of our party to drunkenness, but the pulley children assured us they had gone across before us. This made sense since we had lost our way for so long. We winded up to the road at "27th Mile" and ot a car back. My daaju was freking out since we said we would return at 4PM and it was now close to 6. Then about 10 minutes into the journey we get hit by a car. Smacked in the back, but one of the party new the offending driver so we rushed into that car and after they fought out a fee for 20 minuted or so we were on our way again.

It was pretty amazingly fun. I am definatly happy I am not a woman (no offense) because I am more of an adventurous fun type than a little picnic on the lawn type, and this culture allows that much more of men. Scaling around on hillsides and falling down trenches is much more my style. I sure did scale and fall and slide and slip and get wet and it was great!

Unfortuantely it turned out the lost 2 were not in front of us, and when they hadn't turned up yesterday morning, we were in for a questioning. Gladly they did soon turn up, having gotten to the ropeway too late, they slept out in the jungle and made it back in the morning.

Yesterday was also generally uneventful. I hung out and had fun. I gave Andy's letter to his family and they made me read it. Mainly, I think, to watch me suffer over the Devanagari as I slowly tried to remember what all the characters meant. Oy!

My baba had to be sent to Siliguri this morning, because his back has been hurting wildly and has terrible insomnia and no one can tell him what is wrong. The KPG doctor just sent him off and if they say the same in Siliguri then its off to Bangalore. According to them they suck just about as much in Calcutta so its worth skipping over. I can't say I have a high opinion of American medical systems at all. In fact I think they are elitist and generally inaccecible to anyone that really needs it, also greedy, money seeking, misleading, and you have just as ad a chance of getting misdiagnosed, over medicated, and aimlessly put into surgery as anywhere else in the world, if not more for monetary gain on a corporate level. BUT, at least there, generally, they can tell you you the name of what you have so you can run off to the internet and self medicate and malpratice on yourself. Here you just have to sit around for hours to let others malpractice on you.

I hope that turns out all right.