The Mosquito Trap

I’ve named the cockroach Ravi and adopted him as a pet. It turned out I hadn’t shaken him out of the suitcase and found him in my underwear when I opened my suitcase this morning. He scuttled under the bed.

“Listen Ravi, I’m going away for a couple of days. There’s bread sitting on the counter in the kitchen. It will spoil before I get back in this heat. Help yourself and enjoy the place until I get back”.

We drove to Ludhiana for some meetings. Driving in India is nowhere near as bad as I expected, people are pretty good at avoiding accidents. Contrast that with South America where I heard two cabs blaring their horns at each other for what seemed like ages, basically playing chicken and ended up in a really good smash up. Indians gently nudge each other aside.

I’m really living India like an Indian instead of a tourist. I haven’t seen any non-Indians since I left the airport. But as well I haven’t seen the beggars as I haven’t gone to the tourist sites. That finally changed as we stood in a parking lot. A seven year old girl, dirty and dressed in rags came up to me with her hand out. I pulled out a 100 rupee note (approx $2) and gave it to her. Everybody reacted with shock and alarm.

“What are you doing! Don’t do that! In five minutes we will have five hundred people around us begging for money!”

I was a little smug as I knew it would upset them, but I watched the girl walk over to a vacant lot and tell everyone else what happened. Like a sleeping pride of lions at a waterhole they began to stir. A big fat water buffalo with only three legs had arrived to drink. Sure it’s hot and a lot of work, but it’s an easy kill. We quickly got back in the car and beat a hasty retreat.

That night we drove to Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, the holiest site for Sikhs. For those who don’t know, the Sikhs are the guys who wear the turbans. They are not Moslems however and hate to be confused with them (i.e. just because Al-Quaida and the Taliban dress similarly doesn’t mean they are in any way similar). Their religion does not allow them to cut their hair, thus the turban.

They’re kind of a warrior class and despite all my reading and Sikhs explaining their religion to me, I still don’t quite understand it. There are some beautiful aspects of Sikhism but to me it is a paradox with being a warrior. I was raised Christian with that whole, “The meek shall inherit the Earth” nonsense, so being a fighter and holy doesn’t register with me.

I’ll never forget the first Sikh I had explain her religion to me about 20 years ago. She was so beautiful and had this sing-song voice that captivated me. But as she explained how you had to fight and be prepared to kill for your religion, and they carry daggers, I couldn’t come to terms with the contrast of her gentleness and her fierce desire to defend her religion with violence.

I still don’t quite get it. The vast majority of Sikhs I meet look mean and tough, but are pussycats. I’ll never forget walking down the hall at work the first time I saw two coming my way. Sikhs tend to be big anyway and to this day one of them is still the biggest Sikh I’d ever seen. With the turban on top of his head he was easily seven feet tall and 250 pounds. I was terrified that my last breath was seconds away, but they smiled and let me pass. I would live another day, but only because they allowed it. They turned out to be the nicest guys.

Ironically, one of my best high school buddies was a Sikh. Vikramjit Sidhu was his name. He came to America when he was two years old, his father was a doctor, and his mother died when he was young. He was basically raised by a couple of Americans while his father worked. He was as American as apple pie as far as I was concerned.

But when I first saw him right around the October War (1973) in the middle east, I thought he was Egyptian and I was scared to ask him where he was from for fear he’d cut off our oil again. When we became friends I asked him if he was Hindu. He said he didn’t know what he was, he just knew it had something to do with ten guys. There are ten gurus in the Sikh religion. We put two and two together after a few years.

Rajeev Singh (the vast majority of people named Singh are Sikhs, it means ‘lion’) drove us to his cousin’s house which was a government house. We drove at night and hit a massive dust storm followed by a downpour. The downpour was easier to drive through than the dust storm, at least you could use your windshield wipers. Somewhere along the way we took a left turn off of the main highway and drove into the night. We were getting worried after a while that we might accidentally cross the Pakistan border. Gopi and his brother joked that Rajeev and I would be in trouble because he is Sikh and I’m obviously American, while they could just pretend to be Moslems.

It turns out his cousin is the Assistant Director to the Commisioner of Punjab and thus like a Governor of a county in Punjab. He welcomed us and brought out some red wine especially for me because he knew an American was coming. In the Punjab it’s really difficult to get red wine, let alone good red wine. This was some French rot gut that I could tell was made especially for export to areas of the world which aren’t familiar with wine.

Sikhs generally don’t drink alcohol either so there was no wine bottle opener. Somebody pulled out this four inch small steel implement they use to adjust their turbans and was able to poke a hole in the cork. This then allowed us to push the cork into the bottle and get the wine, but not without spilling some all over the table.

I drank a small glass along with one of the guards. I tried to be as pleasant as possible, but I don’t like to drink late at night as it keeps me up and I was already having trouble with jet lag, so I had very little. I don’t think I was as polite as I should have been with the Governor. They fed us well and gave us our room.

Unfortunately there was a power cut and we were running on batteries. Everybody in India has a back up battery or generator. For a nuclear nation they have trouble keeping the lights on, kind of reminds me of Britain.

I woke up at two A.M. in a large puddle of my own sweat and mosquitoes buzzing in my ear. The battery had run out and our only relief from the oppressive heat was an overhead fan that had stopped. There was no electricity for light either. Gopi and his brother Kovi also woke up as we tried to figure out what to do in the darkness.

It was obvious that the mosquitoes had lulled me into complacency. They had hidden themselves until I had taken my shirt off to sleep in the heat, then pounced like tigers.

“It’s so hot! I can’t sleep. The mosquitoes are terrible”, Gopi whined.

“Dude, I’m a weak American but I haven’t complained once about the heat since I got here. You never stop complaining about it”, I said.

“Oh, I love America. The electricity rarely stops. I love the efficiency of America”, he remarked wistfully. He pulled out his iPhone and used it as a flashlight to lead us outside.

“Look at this”, he said, “This brilliant American invention is the only thing that works in this house. What do I mean this house, this entire village!”

Outside it was much cooler. Some of the staff had also woken up and stood outside with us. One guy said, “This never happens. You are so unlucky. It’s too bad you have run across this”. I was told later this is a common refrain in India. Bad things never happen here, it’s just bad luck you happen to be here when it did.

We hatched a plot to steal Rajeev’s keys and drive the car back to Chandrigarh with the air conditioning on, we’d make the four hour journey back in the morning. Rajeev was still sleeping soundly and we were resentful.

We ended up sleeping on the roof with the staff. Gopi was complaining the whole time and crying out for his beloved America. I had to dig the knife in.

“You know Gopi you have left your home in Palo Alto to build your dream of owning your own company. You suffer the heat, indignities, and inefficiencies of India to live your dream. Yet years ago somebody here in Punjab left for America, and is presently living illegally in Sacramento, collecting welfare, and is sleeping soundly in an air conditioned room. You’re an idiot.”

“You’re right”, he responded, and we laughed until we cried.