.... India

India

- Madness; Imprisonment; Total and utter acceptance

Sam Mitchell is dead

After a ragged night of sleep on the Bangkok airport floor under the endless fluorescent lights, Tiffany and i blearily loaded onto our morning plane and within a few hours, our Chinese reality which had become our standard for several months melted away with the first sight of jagged palm leaves lining the airport runway, and the first inklings that our world was shifting into a great Indian unknown....

From the very first ATM transaction outside the Kolkata airport to the very first taxi ride into the middle of town, IT became clear that things were just.... a little different here.... Everything was a little dustier, a little dirtier, a little grittier; the cabs were all giant yellow rattletraps that looked straight out of the 1940's, and the cabbies were savvy and relentless in trying to squeeze every last rupee out of their helpless fares.... We discovered that the bus into the city center would cost 150 rupees, but where to catch the bus? No one seemed to be able to agree on the exact location, and the smiling cabbies were right there, with their yellow jalopies, crowding around us and demanding 400 rupees into town.... What could we do? Into the cab we went, and towards the mad, mad world of Kolkata we headed.... AT TOP SPEED! With little or no regard for lanes, traffic laws, speed limits, or general safety! Our eyes wide with fear and our mouths hanging open, all we could do was sit tight as we were flung about like stringless puppets in the backseat, praying to whatever little gods were on the driver's dashboard that we would exit the cab alive at the end of this insanity.... After a while, Tiffany began to laugh, even as we screamed past rickshaws and bicyclists with inches to spare on either side; "IT's just like Mario Cart!", she squealed! And after a while, IT did indeed dawn on me that the driver actually was doing a really good job, albeIT in a pirate-driving manner that put all the crack-headed drivers we had encountered in China to shame....

The buildings began to be spaced closer and closer together, and the streets began to look grimier and the people more harried, and IT was when we passed a dirty old building with a sign out front saying "Hospital", but looking like a dilapidated Harlem smack-house, that i realized that we were in for some seriously alternative lifestyle.... i felt somewhat familiar with poverty and ghetto life from living so many years of my life in my hometown of New York City; but everything we were seeing so far in Kolkata was serious, serious ghetto out the windows of this cab, with no end in sight, and the faces of many, many people who were etched with the strains of life in the sprawling ghetto called Kolkata....

Finally, the cabbie stopped amid a terrible chorus of car horns on all sides, and directed us to walk down a particular street, assuring us in broken english that Sudder Street (our destination, such as IT was) was down that way somewhere.... We left the cab all in one piece, amazingly, and wandered down the random street with no map, no info, our big tourist packs all but whooping out "Hey! Here's a couple of newbies fresh off the plane!".... After walking for a while, and asking a couple of random people for directions, we lumbered into the infamous Sudder Street area, where backpackers just like us were supposed to come to shack up all together like nervous fraternitous white folk tend to do.... We were immediately led by a little grizzly potbellied tout up some stairs into the Hotel Afraa, "The Right Place To Stay", where we haggled the dour man behind the counter down to a price of 400 rupees a night for a windowless box reminiscent of a jail cell, complete with cockroaches big as my finger and a cold water shower.... We had no small bills or coins for our tout's "bakshish", and so he vanished in a little disappointed pout....

~~~~~

Tiffany and i had been living in the squalor and clamor of Sudder Street for two days, trying to maneuver the overwhelming shock of poverty and scammerry we had thrust ourselves into by choosing to find quarters in the official tourist ghetto of greater Kolkata; the mad bustle never seemed to stop, with the horns blaring in our ears and the open empty hands thrust into our faces even past the midnight hour.... While taking a respite inside a ramshackle internet cafe, i received a welcome call from Ritodhi, our first genuine friendly contact since arriving in India, and before i could even launch into a string of stories and harangues about our many difficulties in adapting to our new environment, Ritodhi stopped me cold by saying, "Dude! Sam Mitchell is DEAD!"

He was allegedly found on the 16th of November in a Sudder Street hotel room here in Kolkata with a bunch of heroin, whiskey, pharmies, viagra, and cash still present in the room.... The cops "ruled out foul play".... The American Embassy seemed to feel that there was more to the story than the Indian press was describing, but no serious investigation took place.... Did he simply go on his last binge? Did the mild and talkative professor get mixed up with some people he shouldn't have? On Sudder Street, shady characters are a dime-a-dozen, and getting mixed up in their business is as easy as saying, "yes".... We may never know the true details of his last days in India, and all we have left is the shock of his passing, and the zest of his life....

i feel really fucked up about this

Ritodhi and i only knew him for a few days in the town of Shaxi, but our time together was very meaningful.... He seemed to have more stimulation and more fun talking about India with Ritodhi and doing music with me than he may have had in a long time before.... And i appreciated how much fun he was having, and was so very happy to be able to provide such fun and entertainment for him....

He went to Kolkata for a week on a random whim from his meeting with Ritodhi and becoming inspired to study and check out some stuff on which Ritodhi schooled him; he was also very interested in consulting with Ritodhi's historian grandmother about translating some ancient inscriptions that required the work of an expert.... And the truth is, if he hadn't met us in Shaxi, he wouldn't have come to India for that week.... He was so excited

i really loved him, through all his chain-talking and professorial tunnel-vision; he really and truly loved to share knowledge, and was equally as fascinated by listening to, and learning from, Ritodhi as he was interested in telling him scholarly things.... He was very fond of all the kids who came through his classes, and had a soft spot in his heart for the sweetness and sometimes-uptightness of our friend Ashley Oldacre, so much so that he offered her the position of caretaker/cultural liason for he and his wife Yuen's guesthouse and "cultural center" in Shaxi....

He was long-winded and sincere about his love of both India and China, and all the fascinating details which make up the histories of the two oldest living civilizations on Earth; his knowledge was encyclopedic in many areas, from 20th-century American pop music through the relatively short history of the Nanzhao Kingdom in southwestern China.... He could talk all day weaving seamlessly from topic to topic, like a true professor, and though i'm sure that some folks might have tired of his stream-of-consciousness company rather quickly, i found him both fascinating and informative, with a willingness to share a storehouse of information that most people could never imagine stashing away....

His generosity in sharing knowledge will not soon be lost on me; neither so his infectious love for life, and boundless curiosity for all things both academic and bizarre! But in the wake of my shock surrounding his passing, and the terrible manner in which he passed, the surroundings of Sudder Street became a little more somber.... a little dirtier.... a little more tragic....

When i met Sam for those few days in Shaxi, he was definitely shaky, and confided to us as he got to know us better that he had some serious health problems that had been greatly exacerbated by his indulgence in alcohol and other substances; he sad that he had cleaned up completely, and was now "98% sober", but that life just wouldn't be worth IT without a little 2% of fun now and again....

i only know my gut feelings; when we parted ways in China, Sam was very encouraging to me about my intended visit to India, and he was very inspired by his scholarly talks with Ritodhi about Indian history and philosophy, especially when he learned that Ritodhi's grandmother is a specialist in translating ancient Sanskrit-specific scripts, for he had long needed help with translating specialized inscriptions on stone tablets in the Dali area.... His inspiration was so high that he spontaneously decided to book a ticket for Kolkata right then, saying that he had a few weeks open right then when he had no prior engagements, he hadn't been back to India for several years, and IT was a great time for a ten-day trip to study more on all this new food-for-thought he had gotten from his time with Ritodhi! He was so happy, and i was so happy for him that he was going on a little adventure with a lot of new study material and work to be done! Educational journeying was clearly a huge love in his life, and i was super-psyched that we had helped inspire him to get out there and do some more of IT!

i actually asked him if, since i was considering going to India soon myself, if i could maybe go at the same time as him and tag along.... And he said yeah sure, but after a night of self-reflection, i decided that i needed to go into India by myself, as a journey of self-discovery, and said so to Sam the next morning; he was very happy that i had made that decision, saying that he was proud of me for taking that step of personal bravery.... In addition, i also discovered that the Indian visa process in China was longer than i thought IT would be (no visa office in Yunnan), and i would have to go to Guangzhou and spend another three weeks getting IT all done, during which time Sam was already in India.... So IT couldn't all have happened any other way, but IT's tough to think that if i COULD have made IT work, Sam might still be around.... One of those things....

The man i knew who was going to India for ten days was NOT a man who was trying to go there for some kind of bender-binge; he was very happy and serious, with clear goals and studying to do, and looking forward to the satisfaction of new knowledge to be learned.... That energy just doesn't match up with the "facts" surrounding his passing; i don't know how to reconcile all these things, but i have had to stop trying to do so, and try to let IT go, and love my time with Sam and appreciate the gifts that he has given me in the time that we knew each other....

Part of me wanted to go out and make my own private investigation into the matter, since i didn't know who else would (and IT's entirely possible no one ever will).... And part of me wanted to let IT all go and let the past be the past....

So with a slew of unanswered questions and a jarred and shaken psyche, back out into IT i went, to try and piece together the patchwork tatter of life on Sudder Street in Kolkata, to figure out how to be "white and privileged" in such a sea of destitution, and how Tiffany and i could learn to live with ourselves as we helplessly walked by the shuddering faces of humans in need....