Today I work up with hives! But I wasn’t sure that it was hives. I thought that it might be rabies. Or even Malaria. Or perhaps even Typhoid. What are the symptoms of Typhoid again? I was worried because I had spots all over me and I spent half the night scratching. I threw my blankets on the floor because I was convinced it was fleas. Or perhaps bed bugs. And it was cold. Rishikesh isn’t quite warm as yet.
And I looked at my bed and I blamed the 1960s. It was all the ‘dready’ people that had been in my scruffy little room before me. It was their fault! And the Beatles. It was their fault too. They didn’t wash enough. Where’s a Modernist when you need one? They wash two times a day, sometimes more. And they floss. The world according to a Modernist is divided into cleanliness, a hierarchy of cleaning products without a Brahman in sight.
In the morning I got out of bed and opened my door overlooking the Ganges and contemplated upgrading to the ten dollar rooms. No bed bugs in them. But what are bed bugs again? Perhaps it wasn’t bed bugs, perhaps it was hives as the scratching was moving and the bed was long gone.
So I look up ‘hives’ on the Internets and all the symptoms match. And it says it is caused by ‘environmental conditions’. I ponder environmental conditions for a moment. This could mean anything. This is India. It is all environmental conditions. It could have been the smokey Sardu I talked to last night, or the cheap thali I had for dinner, or the permanently oily massage, or all those sickly sweet teas I had in Agra that I got from Robbie the friendly chai walla. Or it could have been the cow that sniffed my crotch whilst hunting for decent coffee (still looking) or the sleeper bus/boat I took to get here that promised everything including sleep.
The article I read on hives said remove the underlying conditions and the hives will go away. But where do I start? Perhaps with the British. It is their fault. They took all the cleaning products and left Indian Modernity to fend by itself. Or Nehru, the architect of post colonial India and Pakistan. Diving India info Hindus and Muslims was bound to end in tears and distract people from cleaning my room.
And so I am still scratching (seriously). I have an Indian itch that just won’t go away and the more I scratch it the more it persists. Damn!
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