Enter Stage Right: India

Mysore, India, perhaps, is the last place I thought I’d end up during my collegiate years. It’s a bit surreal even now, especially when I open the door of my dorm room and am instantly faced with the waggling branches of a coconut tree. It’s September, and although I hear it’s getting rather frigid in that beloved winter wonderland known as Syracuse, temperatures in southern India remain in a delicious stage of early fall with no end in sight. The only thing not so delicious about Mysore’s consistent climate is that mosquitoes are left to enjoy their own form of manifest destiny on a year-round basis; I believe I have consistently had more mosquito bites than skin since I arrived.

Not that life in South Asia is so different from Syracuse living. Festivals abound, after all, and Indians, like college students, have perfected the art of partying. During the weeks surrounding the Ganesha holidays, for example, the neighbors were kind enough to treat us to a nightly play list, which included the always prolific masterpieces of 50 Cent and Sean Paul (it’s always reassuring to know that America’s musical tastes are being represented worldwide by such true classics). Cows, of course, are regular roadside sights (granted India’s cows are generally not in pastures and are even less often found in herds). And what could make college more collegiate than a resident swarm of unpredictable squirrels on patrol? Yes, believe it or not, India’s got squirrels. Five-striped ones at that. Squirrels know no borders.

Okay, so the crazed goat that serenades me every morning with its tortured bleating and the equally crazed man whom it took me three weeks to realize actually was a man and not just continued vocalizations of the aforementioned tortured goat are a little strange, even to a girl who hails from the backwoods of western Pennsylvania. I can handle this strange new breed of goat/man, however. I mean, I’m sure it has evolutionary advantages to be able to commune with one’s farm animals. I can also handle the weather (although I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult and strenuous and utterly depressing it is to exist in a constant state of sunny, humidity-free springtime). What is perchance the most shocking about my new address is the fact that Indian people are not into toilet paper. Feel free to take a minute to process. No TP—just a faucet and a plastic bucket. As the custom goes, the right hand takes care of the mouth and the left hand takes care of… well, the other end. I have seen exactly one roll of toilet paper in all of the public restrooms that I have paid visits to in the past month, and even though that roll of toilet paper was practically used up, grimy, and soaking wet with suspiciously brown liquid, I have to admit that I was, at the time, incredibly impressed by the progressiveness of that restaurant’s facilities. Shocking, I know. I once thought the lack of paper towels to dry my hands with in Syracuse restrooms was annoying; try as I might, I just can’t wrap my Western head around cleaning up with a pitcher of water instead of some quilted two-ply.

If the United States could provide the developing and industrializing India with a model to emulate, however, I’m afraid that I would not wish it to involve the hygiene product I had taken for granted my entire life. I will undoubtedly be ecstatic to return to the States and resume my dependence on Quilted Northern, Charmin, and Angel Soft, but I suppose credit ought to be given to India’s environmentally-friendly abstinence. I’m sure the crazy goat appreciates that his trees don’t get flushed down any toilets, at any rate. India has a bit of improving to do when it comes to toilets and sanitation; still, I think what this country is truly lacking is a revolution of the South Asian broom. Every morning, the staff of the Dhvanyaloka Centre for Indian Studies (our little oasis retreat in Mysore) transforms into an army of bent-over, hunchbacked Igors and Quasimodos as they swish around what appears to be stiffened horse tails. Their broom is the equivalent of a grandiose paintbrush that was used, improperly cleaned, and left to harden. It’s thin and pokey, and would ruin any Western janitor’s sleep with nightmares of arthritis and spinal deformations. Sweeping in India is like some subtle new form of domestic oppression.

Weather, scenery, sanitation, and background noise notwithstanding, I can still sometimes forget that I’ve flown some seventeen hours across the Atlantic and thrown myself into a radically new world. Sure, it only takes a trip to the local squat toilet to send me crashing back into reality, but studying abroad has definitely been the learning experience I expected. Thanks to India, for instance, I now realize that while the quality of our government may be in disputable favor, America definitely did something right with its broom. That, my friends, is something.