MANGOL PANDEY

Everywhere you go in India, there is incredible beauty living side by side with incredible ugliness. I snapped this shot from the window of the bus to Mapusa (I actually got a seat). It is a very colorful Hindu shrine right in the middle of a filthy car park.

Now, anyone who has been to India will tell you that the experience can be overwhelming. Often what they refer to are the abject poverty and the begging and the lepers and polio victims. Last time I was here, I was seriously overwhelmed by the people's response to my mustache. They love mustaches. Everyone has his own interpretation of what I looked like. Punjabi gangster seemed to be a favorite.

So in preparation for this trip, I grew my mustache longer and began training it into a handlebar configuration. The effort has paid off. I am a big hit. Now, as anyone who has seen me going to the Breakwater in Provincetown's West End will know, I enjoy wearing Indian garments. My favorite is the dhoti (ten meters of homespun white cotton, wrapped in a complicated manner around the waist and legs. Now while I may look odd dressed this way on Cape Cod, apparently I look even odder dressed this way here. Everyone comments. Now when they see me coming from a distance with the white dhoti and my little round gold-framed glasses, they automatically yell out "Gandhi!" or "Gandhiji!!"

But once they see my mustache, there is only one response I hear: Mangol Pandey.

Mangol Pandey was an Indian freedom fighter, reportedly responsible for initiating the uprising of 1857. Mangol Pandey was a soldier in the All Indian Brigade, until he got fed up with the way he and the others were being treated by the British officers. He woke up one morning and decided he would shoot the first British officer he saw.

More importantly, Mangol Pandey had a handlebar mustache. In the 1970s or 1980s, there was a Bollywood film made, celebrating the exploits of Mangol Pandey and his famous mustache. So now, every time I step out, I hear the taxi drivers and the fruit sellers and the trinket hawkers yelling, "Mangol Pandey!! Mangol Pandey!!" When I walk along the main road, I hear the motorbike riders and bus passengers and bicycle riders yelling, "Mangol Pandey!! Mangol Pandey!!" Often, people will rush up to me to shake my hand. "Mangol Pandey!! Mangol Pandey!!" I always raise my hands and put them together, saying "namaste", which they seem to love. Trust me, it's never boring.

So yesterday was my tenth day here and I was trying to muster up the courage to ask my landlord for a fresh sheet and pillowcase for my bed. (yes, they do have a fitted sheet to fit the yoga-mat-like-mattress). I don't want to be demanding. After all, I have already insisted that he fix the kitchen sink and the electric ceiling fan outside on my veranda (of course it only works when there is electricity, about half the time lately). But yesterday, when my cleaning girl was finished, I noticed that she had provided me with a fresh sheet and pillowcase without my having asked. What a blessing! And, as if my luck was not already a wonder, I saw that she had also left a top sheet. Can you imagine? A top sheet. I nearly had to sit down, so overwhelmed with joy was I.

I was little prepared however, last night, when I climbed into bed, to discover that this was no ordinary sheet, but actually a duvet cover (two sheets stitched together). So I turned on the ceiling fans and climbed under my luxurious top sheet(s). After some deliberation, I chose to put the opening in the two sheets at my feet.

I then woke in the middle of the night to the sting of something biting me between two of my toes. I had three immediate thoughts:

1- I rued the day that I put the opening at my vulnerable feet, since who knew how many more venomous spiders were living inside this evil duvet cover

2- On second thought, imagine if the opening were up near my handsome Mangol Pandey face

3- No wonder they gave me this duvet cover!!! They didn't want the spider-infested thing in their house.

Anyhow, I went back to sleep. Such are the adventures of living in the jungle.

It really is the jungle here. Very lush but also very beautiful and a bit dangerous. The roads and pathways are all dirt, sort of a red clay-type dirt, which floats into the air and into your lungs at every opportunity. One must carry a torch at night to make certain that one's path is clear of snakes.

It is both very primitive here and grossly over developed. The jungle surrounding my house is quite untouched and full of pythons and cobras and other cute critters, yet also at the edge of the jungle, on the path through it, from my house to the beach, are piles of rubbish, where it is dumped and often set aflame, since there is no rubbish collection here. Also, on the beach, there are now way too many shacks, preparing food and selling beer and snacks to tourists using their sun beds. Seemingly twice as many shacks as there were six years ago when I was here.

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