There's so much more to say.  So here are some more impressions of India.

One of the first things a person notices is the complete lack of automation.  I haven't seen a coke machine here, for example.  (And even if there were any, they would be called "cold drink" machines; no one says "soda".)  The one incident of automation I've seen was a machine that lights your cigarette for you.  You put in 50 paise and an element glows orange as long as you press a button. (Bet the Bic wallahs are up in arms about that one... did I use that joke before?)

I've only seen a single ununsed payphone.  Instead, you go to the STD-ISD.  You'll make your call, get a little slip of paper, and the man charges you accordingly.

All this non-automation is, of course, an excellent way to combat employment problems.  It gives lots of lower-caste people really crappy jobs, like the guy who cleans out your ears on the street corner, or the man who sells denture partials spread out on a dirty blanket by the bus station.

Another fun thing: In Bombay, there are the Towers of Silence.  This is where the Parsis lay out their dead for the vultures to eat.  The Parsis--god bless 'em, because they live in India!--fervently believe in avoiding any pollution of the earth, air or water.  So they lay out their dead to be picked clean rather than burn them on a pyre as the Hindus do.  I wanted to get a glimpse of the Towers of Silence, but they're well landscaped to keep out onlookers.  The Parsis, although they number only about 80,000 and largely in Bombay, are nonetheless a very rich and powerful Indian group.  There were some rumors a few years ago that the vultures were dropping human meat into the nearby reservoirs--but as any credible orinthologist can tell you, vultures eat what they want while they are on the ground, and don't carry carrion.

Along with the dearth of automation comes a lack of computer- or machine-generated signage.  Everything seems hand-lettered, with the exception of the many illuminated overhead signs.

Vehicles tend to be: bicycles, auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, and basic white Ambassadors, which have that gleaming, bulbous look of a 1953 luxury vehicle.  The overall effect, between the signs and the round white cars trawling around, is that you've been transported back to the 1950s.

It functions like a society, but India is not your own world.  On the surface, it seems familiar, albeit crowded and dirty.  But what you think you know, you don't know.  Want a bottle of cold Thums Up or Campa Cola?  You must drink it on the spot, and return the bottle to the vendor.  Want stamps?  You have to calmly explain to the postal worker that you can't fit eight Rs1 stamps on a postcard.  Want a train ticket?  There's a special line for tourists, but it's usually closed.

The reason I'm finding it so hard to describe India as I'm seeing it is because there's so much flying at me.  It's like going to Times Square--which sign do you talk about?  Which hooker?  Which honking cab or pretzel man?  Being in India is inundation.  It's not a narrative.  Look anywhere, and you'll see a segment of a curious tale being enacted for your observation.  An old beggar at a candy stand worshiping a calendar with Shiva on it because she can't afford her own shrine.  A goat blithely nuzzling a stack of newly severed goats heads at the meat market.  An old man squatting in an open field as your train passes him.  As a writer, I'm being driven mad by India, because I don't understand what makes these people tick and so I can't construct their stories for them.

I spent a long time walking around Delhi yesterday.  The number of vehicles here has tripled since 1990; when I blew my nose, it came out black.  I coughed all night.  But it was great!  The further you wander from the tourist centers, the more people leave you alone.  The familiar and grating cries of "Hello, yes, you want rickshaw?" fade into unhappy memory, and you can wander unobstructed through thousands of lives teeming together.

I'd also forgotten the extent to which the Muslims affected India.  The Taj Mahal, for example, is Muslim--not Hindu.  On Tuesday morning, I got up before dawn and went to it; the orange full moon was just setting over the mosque to its left.  At 6 a.m., I went barefoot into the Taj.  Only an old man, a guard in a turban, was there.

"One piece," he said, pointing to the marble latticework. "One piece.  Shah Jahan."

The morning air rushed through the dome like moaning spirits in an echo of mourning, and the lone brass lamp cast shards of dim light across the marble floor.  All was silence, dark and cool in the pre-dawn darkness.

How much thankfulness can a person have before he runs out?

By the time I left the tomb, the light was spreading, and I sat in front of the pedestal in the garden and watched the Taj toy with the orange dawn's light as it climbed over the trees.

I have been traveling for so long that I keep forgetting all it took to get where I am.  I'm at a single point, somewhere on a string of experiences.

Tuesday was the festival of Holi.  Leave it to Indians to develop the most annoying holiday ever.  During Holi, people run around town with jugs of dyed water and throw them on each other.  As a tourist, you're special game for ambushes.  By lunchtime, Agra was full of purple people.  Even the dogs were green and blue.  The children were are black as spectres, screaming and dancing in the streets.  We tourists wisely remained on the rooftops. Even today, Thursday, lots of people still have pink hair and stained clothes.  I guess they're the ones who can only afford one set.  But, I must say, there was such JOY in the streets as everyone ran around splashing each other!  There was great fun in being stained--people gleefully offered themselves to children with water bottles full of the stuff.

Sometimes my cycle-wallah doesn't have shoes.  I feel bad for bargaining.  (Although I'm good at it, except when all the wallahs collude to drive prices up.  Then I'm powerless and grumbling how they're acting like jerks.  Don't let anyone tell you Americans care more about money than anyone else.  These tourist parasites see my skin and lose all dignity.)

Also went to Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, where Akbar capriciously decided to relocate the seat of government after his wife finally bore a son.  He built an entire palace there--which in those days were more like enclosed cities--before up and leaving 15 years later.  The result is very well preserved.

Now, in the name of utter offensiveness, I offer:

India's Top Ten Rejected Tourist Slogans.

10. India--Cattle Vacationland
9. Come for the poverty. Stay for the pestilence.
8. Hello, yes, you come India!
7. Amoeba fixa India
6. Free colonic with every glass of tap water!
5. India: You'll have no beef with us!
4. Holy smokes...it's India
3. Every daughter costs a buck--take home two!
2. You'll love our misery
and
1. We love to breed--and it shows!

Yes, yes, it shows a complete lack of understanding or compassion.  But if you don't laugh, you cry.

And there is no one India.  Somewhere, there's an India of cordless phones, blue jeans, and girls who show cleavage.  I know it exists because I keep seeing it on the TV here.  But I can't find it.

There is an Indian MTV by the way.  Complete with hip VJs.  Except they show Hindi videos, too, and don't get too sexy.

Went to the Gandhi museum.  I was the only one there.  They have one of the bullets that killed him, plus lots of photos and books.  I bought one on (of course) his time in South Africa.  You did know he spent some 15 years there, and that's where he got all his ideas.  Back when he wore suits.

Today, I hit the Indira Gandhi museum, which is in her old house.  Really good, really creepy, because of course, she was assassinated there.  Details are many, but basically she sent the army into the holy Sikh temple in Amritsar, which angered them to no end.  In 1984, as she strolled from one end of her yard to the other, two of her body guards gave the signal and turned on her, shooting her dead.  The spot is now guarded by two soldiers, and crowded with Indian tourists.

A particularly creepy portion of the museum is where her son Rajiv, who was prime minister after her death, eulogizes her.  For several rooms, his comments accompany the exhibits.  How saddened he was by the violence of her death, how powerful she was, what she meant as a woman leader and a mother.  And, of course, Rajiv himself was assassinated in 1991.  At the end of the exhibit he created when he was alive, there's a glass case with the brutally bloodied and tattered clothing he was wearing when the bomb blast ripped him apart.

To lead so many countries is to end in death.  Meanwhile, Monica's feeling sorry for herself on TV.

Must fly today.  Tomorrow I go to Varanasi, where the Hindus go to die because to die there is to be liberated from the cycle.  They also burn their dead on the holy Ganges river there.

11.  India--That's not bacon!

I'm a horrible person.  But I admit it.  And I'm willing to learn.

Right now I'm in: New (cough) Delhi, India

Days: 283  Countries: 25