india

i have never been to india. mental index-->search-->india-->go: it's a place that is hot, overwhelming, crowded, and magical. there are elephants, spices, rugs, snakes, men who wriggle up telephone poles either for work or for tourists' entertainment -- also work. i imagine myself on the back of a mo-ped, marinating in filthy exhaust, putting through congested highways, my hair three shades lighter from the soot. i imagine myself wearing a white linen shirt, because it's the most romantic and the least practical in a country where clothes are washed in the same river that entombs the dead. i imagine true green saris, with gold and magenta accents. i imagine necklaces, lengthy strands, entire dance halls adorned in bright orange marigolds. i see nose rings, brown lace henna designs on hands and feet, and i hear thick women shouting down dusty alleys -- lovers quarrels, arranged marriage quarrels, what do you want for dinner? it doesn't matter we're having X.

i smell curry. i see black mustaches, stiff as push brooms, shit-eating grins and interesting dentistry. i see food stalls, street vendors, reptiles in hats, scarlet bindis. i'm wandering, walking through revolving pockets of stench and journeying scents, reminders of being not in kansas anymore. i see tragedy, wonder, nothing i can relate to, everything that i am. it's hot, water is...bottled? water is precarious. water is warm. water is cheap, or expensive. cups are copper, lightweight, made in china.

i wear a money belt, also an indigo woven purse that i bought in morocco. looks unassuming. i can be canadian. would it matter, would i be convincing as something i know little about? why pretend.

i consult my flashcards, lint on india -- yoga, hindu gods, lamb curry combo from curry in a hurry, vishnu, ramayana, diwali, chakras, all seen with my third eye from lonely planets, know-before-you-go's, juju beads and crystal balls. it's imagination. it's probably ignorant, politically incorrect, racist, stereotypical, prejudiced and all of the above. but what draws a traveler to a new chunk of the earth's crust, one where her parents have never set foot, nor their parents or their great greats? it's that innocent wonder, the kind you're not supposed to talk about if you are educated. but it doesnt matter how much you study before embarking on an exotic tour of the silk road, of macchu picchu, or the great wall. it's the fairytale aspect that stirs the heart in anticipation -- and into a billowing boil when imagination meets reality. it makes the hard parts bearable -- the fairytales have teeth, it turns out, claws and a black magic built right into the dirt. we have it too, but we're less familiar with it because it's not our own. feeling at home in a new place comes with understanding its black magic rooted deep in the soil, the trees, the hearts -- and approaching it like a riptide: beautiful from the shore, so picturesque and powerful...but up close, inside the barrels, it is deadly and disorienting. that razor within the cupcake is what gives a place its full-bodied flavor, even if it makes you bleed. bite down hard, to really get the full effect of frosting on an open wound.

i imagine "place" before i go, whether it's wichita, vancouver, santiago or mumbai. and i let myself revel in the orientalist romanticist -isticisms of each. when i arrive, i find the maps helpful but no amount of frommer's can teach you how to navigate the black magic as it intertwines with the friendly teas, curious "third world" inventiveness, kodak moments...the oddity of people as spectacle, as facebook fodder, as photo ops to rival nat geo classics. humanity, staggering, adjusting to a turbulence of its own making, can be felt like a ripple across the ancient lake of time and space.

whether it's tipped berets in paris, cohibas in havana, or flying carpets in riyadh, cliche has its place in rough drafting adventure.