We woke up early and went around to many villages trying to visit relatives and friends. We spent an average of 20 minutes at each home. We spent a few hours in Navsari at my dad's school buddy's house. It was fun. It was interesting to see how city people live compared to those of us from small villages. They have a two story townhome behind their welding shop. They had some furniture. The place was very open and had sunlight. We went onto so many villages. I met so much family. I was avoiding having to drink water. I sometimes pretended to sip to be polite. (Foreigners cannot drink tap water. Sometimes filtered water is not really filtered. Most Americans boil water before drinking it. ) I had about a dozen conversations about getting married... We even stopped by at a 21 priest Vishnu yagna in the village of Dhamroad. Here we ran into more relatives. We carried into the night stopping through village after village. It is dangerous to travel at night in rural Gujarat. The roads are unsafe. The trails are unmarked. The only light you can see is the sugarcane fields burning at a distance. Also, there are animals out, and often times pedestrians walking on the roads. It was great to meet extended family. I have so much history in a place that I have only visited twice. It reminded me of the importance of learning the family tree and trying to pass on that message to other Gujaratis. Who would want their family legacy to disappear or be lost from one generation to the next. And today, it is especially important to try to understand genetics and disease prevention.
So in my grandparents’ house, there is a rat. It scours through the house at night. There is no possible way to trap this thing. So we live it. That’s right; we have a rat living in the house. All of us sleep on furniture that is elevated on legs. I was sleeping the bedroom until I could not breathe. There was very poor air circulation. I moved out into the living space, where my gran slept on a hard sofa on one side, and my dad slept on another piece of furniture similar to that one. My grandfather had a ‘bed’ like mine. All four of fell asleep there in the darkness. I would normally turn my iphone on and play some tunes to fall asleep, and so I would not hear the rat crawling around. After the first few nights, I was over the rat. I was onto new bugs. I was trying to avoid mosquitos in the night. Until one morning I woke up, and I had a giant bite on my cheek. I wrote it off as acne. Until I noticed how hard it was, and others began to notice how red it was. The first thing I thought of was that ‘Tales from the Crypt’ story we all used to read when we were young. You know that famous story about the lady who goes to sleep, wakes up with a bite on her face, and it turns out a spider laid eggs in her face. Yep, that’s exactly what I started thinking… Good times! The bump grew bigger, redder, and eventually started to hurt. I counted the days until I could make it to a dermo. The pain subsided, and the bump went down. Today, it’s still red… and several people including my gran, and Kritika, just to name a few have tried to rub it off my face thinking it was a smudge or trying to understand what it was. Thanks! Lol regardless of the bugs, rats, etc, I love India… I love the simple life.