Not feeling so hot, but getting better

The river that leads to Nitya's place. Look closely, and you'll see a cow in yonder water.

Ah, the sick experience in India. I'm feeling it. Luckily the sickness is in my head and not in my bowels. You've done your job, Dukoral!

I have a head cold. I just had an orange so I feel lucid enough to type. Last night was awful. I was so full of mucous I let my nose drip drip drip onto my chin and shoulder. I brought toilet paper, yes, but that stuff quickly makes a nostril raw raw raw. When I pull all-nighters to finish sub-par papers my bones tend to feel like powder, or at the very least, a rusty machine in dire need of oiling. This morning I felt like both, plus leaky and dizzy. Can you feel my pain yet?

So far, being sick here has been relatively pleasant. The ladies of the house (Nitya's wife and Nitya's brother's wife) have been making me coffee spiked with ginger, black pepper, and cardamom, as I've indefinitely sworn off chai. I had five glasses yesterday! FIVE! That is so much milk. Milk = mucous. That much milk for a former-vegan is super (they love that word here - "soop-her!") dangerous.

A note about the chai here. It's not very fancy - basically black tea and a lot of milk. That's it! None of this cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, black pepper, clove STUFF. I thought it tasted like orange pekoe at first, particularly with a little Carnation Milk, like my gramma makes. Turns out it's not too far off.

Nitya just told me a little bit about drinking coffee here. It is a very helpful drink when a person is sick because it induces sweating - a very easy thing to do in India - and gets the ailment out. In Canada, because we don't sweat as much (unless we're physically exerting ourselves, like bun-burning at the gym), coffee makes us wired and energetic - our body is just looking for a way to sweat! He also said that drinking coffee will make a sick person tired. This was certainly the case for me this morning, as I drank a bit and fell into my bed immediately. Ah.

If my writing reads a little strangely, in a way that is not quite English, blame it on the Munglish, as Nitya calls it. The language on the TV is mostly Malayalam, but there are many English words and phrases sprinkled in. It's interesting, but Munglish is quicky becoming my internal narrative voice. I also find that I speak in sounds, and in faces.

Kanan hiding on the shelf

Kanan and I communicate with sneezes and general yelling. He is a very sweet boy, very warm and affectionate, but like Nitya is a verifiable trouble maker. I was sneezing like crazy last night, and from another room he began "Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, AHHH CHOO!" So I did the same, from the other room, but louder. Of course. You wanna play? BRING IT. So we did this for a while, and this morning too while he, Fanny and Nitya painted the hallway upstairs. I was mostly in my room, but I came out to watch them work - it's my stuffy-face holiday, okay - which resulted in further games between Kanan and I. He pretended to throw a rag at me, and I pretended (but failed) to throw water at him (because it ended up all over me).

They painted the room/hall bright green. Yesterday we painted a front bedroom pink. It looks surprisingly good! I had never sweat so much until yesterday afternoon, painting that room. The painters at work:



The batteries of my camera are donezo and apparently working batteries are hard to come by here. So, here are a couple photos from the past couple days since I can't take any new ones.

My first Punjabi Suit purchase, complete with a sessy after-shower pose (I have since splurged on many more):



And the ladies' excursion to the well down the road:





I feel better already!