The Terror of Nightmares

The sleeper bus from Mangalore to Kochi was a completely new travel experience for me. Unlike on the sleeper trains, where it is one person per berth, this bus was a two people per berth set-up. I’m not sure what happens when you are travelling alone, or in a group but with an odd number of people – perhaps you have to pay double but get a berth to yourself, or perhaps you get ‘coupled’ with a complete stranger. I would have been a small child the last time the last time I had shared a bed with another male, and now here Daniel and I were climbing onto the top bunk together. At least we did not share a blanket or anything – with the warm conditions not requiring one – and so I can say that I still have “an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality” as George Costanza once professed. We lay on our backs so that our feet faced the front of the bus. I used a small travel bag as a pillow. Just like on the sleeper train, I could never manage to avoid getting my little shesh-besh board in by bag from sticking into the back of head.

I had the window position; Daniel had the aisle. Normally, on an aeroplane, I prefer the aisle. However, with no toilet onboard the bus, the aisle had little value. On both the window and aisle side of the bunk was a draw curtain. With both curtains closed, it was almost like we were sharing a coffin. You wouldn’t want to have been overly claustrophobic. Despite the bizarre conditions, not to mention the movements of the bus, I managed to fall asleep.

As I mentioned in my entry on Mind-Altering Experiences, I was using the drug Larium (mefloquine) as preventative against malaria, and one of the side effects I had experienced were extremely vivid dreams. The dreams had a tendency to start out as fairly non-disturbing (as far as dreams go) until right before the end, where there was a terrifying twist, often leaving you waking up feeling like you are in the Twilight Zone.
There might be something about sleeper trains and buses, because up until this night, the worst dream I had experienced had been on the train from Mumbai to Goa (see my entry titled Journey to Goa).

It isn’t easy to write about dreams and portray them as they seemed. This is because some of the most bizarre things can appear completely ordinary to the dreamer (at least while they are dreaming). Not to mention the plots frequently make absolutely no sense to the reader. So bear with me as I make this clumsy attempt to let you into another of my bizarre nightmares.

I’m not sure why, but this dream I had aboard the bus, like then one I had aboard the train, also started with a religious backdrop. While the changes I describe in the dream seem abrupt, to me while I was dreaming, they were seemless – as if each stage of the present was how it had always been. The first thing I can recall from the dream is that I was walking down the street in B’nei B’rak, Israel, where my Grandfather’s Sister lives. As you’d expect, a lot of Chasidic people were walking down this street. It was a Saturday around noon or 1pm, and they were presumably walking home for lunch after Shul. Then the streets were no longer the streets of B’nei B’rak, but the streets of the Perth suburb of Yokine, where I live, however, it was still B’nei B’rak – that is it was physically Yokine, but cognitively B’nei B’rak (I hope this makes sense). Pretty soon after that, it was no longer just physically Yokine, but cognitively Yokine also. However, there were still plenty of religious Jews walking on the streets. And just as seamlessly as the place had changed, so had my means of transport. I was no longer travelling by foot, but by car. I was thinking to myself as I passed by so many religious people strolling on the footpath: “ Since when did Perth have so many Chasidic people? It’s almost like B’nei B’rak here! And I hardly recognise any of them either! So many new people!”


Heading down Flinders street now, near Dog Swamp shopping centre, and must have turned right onto Wanneroo road (As I write this, I now realise that you can’t turn right at that intersection, but it was dream). At some point, if I had been the driver of the car (with no passengers), I was no longer. I was now a passenger in the back of a car, although somehow I was still essentially alone. Up to this point, as bizarre as the dream may seem, to me, in the dream, it felt quite normal and not really that disturbing. It was at this point though that the dream took a terrifying turn.

From the back of the car, I noticed a young girl of primary school age, perhaps 10 or 11 years old, standing in the middle of a busy intersection, not too much further up the road than the string of shops with the Marco’s Pizza and the Ezy Plus convenience store. Her head was facing down and she was holding her hands, in the way one might hold their hand up if ordered to do so by a person with a gun. There was a look of helplessness and despair about the girl. She had fair hair and skin, and was dressed in drab shorts and a singlet. I should add that she was not even Jewish, and thus I have no idea how the B’nei B’rak thing earlier in the dream was relevant to this latter part of the dream.

When my persona saw the girl, I recognised her from being in the news a week or two ago as having been standing in an intersection like this due to some psychopath(s) having her in the site of a sniper rifle, as well having taken her family hostage, and threatening to kill them and her. If she moved from this position, she would be shot dead, and her family would also be killed. My persona had not paid much attention to the news story at the time, but was now freaked out by the realisation that she was STILL standing there as this hostage of psychopaths, a week or two later after first casually reading about her in a newspaper. I had a sudden understanding that this situation with the girl was somehow of enormous importance, perhaps even to the fate of the whole world.

Now came the final phase of the dream. I suddenly became aware that the driver of the vehicle that I was in was involved in this psychopathic cult. I was now sitting in the back seat of his supercharged hot-rod, but it was if I was only now aware that he had stealthily hijacked me from my normal car or driver). He was accelerating the car, faster and faster (thinking about it now as I write this, I wonder if the real-life bus driver was accelerating the bus as such while I was experiencing this part of the dream). For some reason, I knew that I was the only the only person in the world who could save this poor little girl, and if I was going to do this, the first step was going to be to overcome this villainous driver. I could not see the driver’s face, just the back of his head – he had a short slick black ponytail, tied up in a way that it barely hung down from his head, if at all. Here was the most subjectively horrifying thing: even though I could not see his face, I was aware that when I did see his face, it was going to frighten the absolute hell out of me. I realised that his face was going to be not-quite human, but rather some kind of satanic face, straight out of the Polanski film, Rosemary’s Baby. It was with petrified anticipation, that I waited for him to turn around to reveal his face, and I knew it would happen within the next five seconds….


And then I woke up from my dream. Being a mefloquine-induced nightmare, it wasn’t as simple as sighing, “Ah, it was all a dream” and then moving on. I lay there in this coffin, with a few odd tears coming even out of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks, feeling both freaked out, but also guilty that I had not managed to save the girl. I knew it had been a dream, but I nonetheless felt that the girl and her family had been horribly murdered, and with the responsibility of saving them been thrust on to me, I had failed. I also then thought about why I had failed. I never had a chance of saving her, because I allowed my fear to virtually paralyse me. I should have reached over and applied a choke or strangulation technique to the satanic driver, but I had been afraid of him, afraid of seeing his face, his inhuman face. I was a coward.

I felt like I really needed to talk to someone about how I felt, to tell them what had ‘happened.’. I looked over to my left, and there was Daniel, who was sharing this coffin with me. Was he awake? I didn’t think so, but even if he was, I then I thought to myself: “Hang on, I can’t just tell him about this now. It will seem very strange. After all, we are just two guys travelling together – we are not a gay couple. Furthermore, I have tears on my face, so not only will it seem gay, but much worse than this, it will be like I am the woman of the couple!”

I know this seems ridiculous to you as the reader, that I should have been so upset about from a dream, but if you’ve ever had a drug induced dream like this, then may be only then will you understand how real it can all seem. Unlike regular dreams, the emotions and the events of these mefloquine dreams do not immediately fade away once awake. Rather, they linger with you for a little while. I didn’t really have a concept of time, but I am estimating that for the first 15 minutes I was awake, I was lying there feeling quite disturbed, with tears in my eyes.

Don’t want to be a Fryer.

The next morning Daniel and myself met Aaron and Sandra for breakfast. Our goal for the morning was a simple one: to obtain train tickets to get out of Mangalore and get to Kochi (Cochin) as soon as possible. The first step in this process was to get to the train station. Auto-rickshaws were in abundance, but taxis were far and few between. It wasn’t easy to fit four of us into the back of a rickshaw but we managed. We got to the train station and found the section for reserved tickets. After surviving the general unreserved section the previous evening on the train from Goa to Mangalore, I wasn’t yet ready to take that option again so soon, especially all the way to Kochi, which was an overnight train. Ideally we would get reserved sleeper class, but I was certainly prepared to pay more for a superior class if that was all that was available.

The queue at the reservation counter in Mangalore had a luxury that I did not see anywhere else in India. Instead of having to stand in the queue, they had a series of numbered seats. The seats are arranged in horizontal rows and the numbers snake their way to the front. As one progresses in the queue, one keeps having to get up and move to the next seat; so it’s a lineball decision whether it is more of a luxury or an inconvenience. Unfortunately, after queuing up for sometime in the seated queue, and finally making it to the ticket counter, we discovered that there were no reserved tickets still available for the train that evening, not even in first class. This probably should not have been so unexpected, as it was the Christmas/New Year holiday period, the busiest time of the year for the railways.

Mangalore is a transport hub, and as a tourist, you really don’t want to have to spend more than one night, as there’s not much to do there. We were all determined to get out of Mangalore that evening at the latest. Our next option was to find the appropriate bus station and see if there were any long distance buses we could take. Finding the bus station proved more difficult than we thought it would. My map in the Lonely Planet book showed a number of different bus depots scattered around Mangalore, and we had no idea which one was the one we needed to get to. These bus depots are far more chaotic than the train stations. There are no inquiry desks and no apparent central authority. Rather, they are just a parking lot full of buses either coming, going, or waiting. It was highly frustrating to ask various people around the lot about a bus to Kochi, and get various answers, all of these answers while probably well intended, were nonetheless unhelpful, succeeding only in sending us on a goose-chase. We rickshawed around to the other depots, asking the same question, but getting no closer to finding out what we needed to know. When it became obvious we were not making any progress, I suggested we go to a travel agent and inquire there. “It might cost a bit more, but it’s worth it if we can get out of here sooner rather than later.” Someone remembered seeing a travel agent around the corner from our hotel, so we all squeezed into yet another rickshaw and headed back to the hotel.

For Aaron and Sandra, seeing an Israeli in negotiations with an Indian was a new experience. Aaron tended to have the attitude that whatever things such as a rickshaw ride costed, it was almost nothing in terms of Euros. My own attitudes and behaviour on the matter now lay somewhere in between Daniel’s and Aaron’s. There were certainly many times when I felt like it was worth fighting for the best price, and many other times when I thought: “Who cares in the whole scheme of things – we aren’t exactly dealing with large sums of money here.” I would often see Aaron shake his head and roll his eyes in bewilderment as Daniel, for example, expertly negotiated a rickshaw driver down from 70Rs (US$1.70) to 50 Rs, and then down to a final price of 30Rs (US$0.70).

For me, the main cost of travelling through India (after the airfare to get there) was not the cost of living, which was minimal, but the cost of not working and earning back home. From Daniel’s point of view, he was on a very long trip, taking a year away from work to go around the world. While on each instance it might not be a significant amount of money, eventually it all adds up, especially over a long period of time. For someone just travelling through India for a month or two, it adds up to a less consequential sum than for someone travelling for a year or more.

There was also one other reason for Daniel driving such a hard bargain. On one occasion, Daniel tried to explain to Aaron that it wasn’t just about the money, but it was about one’s esteem in knowing one was not getting totally ripped off. This was part of the national psyche in Israel.

“For Israelis,” Daniel told Aaron “no one likes to be thought of as a …”
“A fryer” I contributed as a third party listening in.
“Yes, in Hebrew we call it a fryer” Daniel continued, “Israelis hate to feel like a fryer, a sucker. This is why Israelis are the best hagglers out of all the foreign travellers in India.”

We got to the travel agent and told him we wanted to get to Kochi as soon as possible. One of the guys working at the travel agent suggested we hire a car, but none of the others seemed to take any notice of that suggestion. We asked the main guy if there were any private-run buses going to Kochi. He made some phone calls, and seemed to be on hold, telling us that he had two tickets available. Aaron and Sandra suggested that Daniel and I take them, but I wasn’t comfortable with that. “No, we all go, or none of us. We’ll find a way.” I told the travel agent that two tickets wasn’t satisfactory, essentially telling him that we needed four tickets or it was no sale. He spoke again to someone on the phone, was on hold for a little bit longer, and then eventually came through with an affirmative for four tickets. It was a great relief, and there were smiles and back slaps all round. We now all had tickets for on an overnight sleeper bus leaving that evening.

With the tickets secured, it was now time to find a place for lunch. Daniel had in his possession some flyer that was adverting a restaurant in a shopping mall and he suggested we all go to check out this great big shopping mall. I humorously ridiculed the idea that there would be a large modern shopping mall anywhere near here.

“A shopping mall? I doubt it? In Colaba, I saw a shop calling itself a supermarket, and it was the size of little corner store. And this was in Colaba, which is far more upmarket and has far more tourists than here.” Sandra laughed also, and was expressing agreement with my opinion, but Daniel insisted that it would be a real shopping mall. I continued with the ridicule.
“What do you think it’s going to be like? The Dizengoff Centre??” I asked sarcastically, enjoying my own humour, and then taking a moment explain to Sandra and Aaron “That’s the biggest shopping centre in Tel Aviv” so they could fully share in my amusement.
“Actually, we have one now that is bigger than that” said Daniel a little curtly, who was not finding the conversation as humorous as the rest of us.

With nothing to really lose, I agreed to go. “It will be worth it just to get there and then see the look on your face when this so called mall turns out to be non-existent…” We got a rickshaw, and showed the driver the advertisement on the flyer, so he’d know where to take us. We had little idea of how far it was, so there wasn’t much negotiation for the price. The journey took us to a totally different part of Mangalore from where we’d been before. To my utter amazement, it turned out that there really was a five storey air-conditioned building that resembled a shopping mall.
“Ah, you see?” said Daniel as we approached.
“I can’t believe there really is a modern shopping complex here! I’m glad to say that on this occasion you were right, and I was wrong!” I offered. Sandra was also shaking her head in amazement and offered a little mea culpa of her own.

As we got out of the rickshaw, we could see that there was a Pizza Hut joint at the front of the mall, one storey up. Daniel and I were keen to check it out. I would never have any reason to go into a Pizza Hut joint in Australia, but I was rather curious to see how this American franchise would manifest itself in India. It was the first time on the trip that I had seen this type of franchise in India. Aaron, however, had a different attitude and plainly refused to even set foot in there. “It’s a terrible company and they cause a lot of harm all over the world.”

“We don’t have to eat there, but I’d like to just check it out, as I am curious to see if or how it is modified for Indian tastes.” I replied.

“No, I don’t mind if you guys eat there, but I personally will never enter a Pizza Hut store.” He didn’t fully elaborate on why he hated the company behind Pizza Hut so much, and I preferred not to ask. I gathered it was probably some anti-imperialist thing. I was too hungry to discuss politics, and it was a non-issue to me.
“Nah, don’t be silly,” I said. “There are plenty of places to eat here. We’ll find a place where we can all eat together”

I soon gathered that the Indians who frequented the mall (and I still saw no other foreigners there) must have been rather well off. The prices in most stores were closer to the prices of things back in Australia than they were to the typically inexpensive Indian market prices I had become accustomed to.

After lunch we decided to split up for the rest of the day, with Daniel and I arranging to meet Aaron and Sandra outside the travel agent that evening, as that was where the bus would be departing from. Daniel and I checked out the mall a bit more, and then we took in a film at the adjoining modern cinema. I would have preferred to see the Indian film “Kabul Express” that was advertised on posters outside the cinema; however, it had not been released yet. Daniel preferred to see the Bollywood film “Dhoom2,” starring the gorgeous Ashiwarya Rai, but I was secretly glad to see that it wasn’t showing at a time for us – I can’t stand musicals. With a limited choice of films, we ended up seeing “The Guardian” with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher, which was about the US Coastguard rescue swimmers. From what I could tell, most of the audience was made up of middle class Indian students. I thought it was a mediocre film, and I was amazed by how the parts of the movie that seemed so predictable or corny to me were met by expressions of surprise or general positive reaction by the rest of the audience.

After the film, Daniel and I went to a small (but large by Indian standards) supermarket under the mall and stocked up on snacks for the long bus trip that lay ahead of us. We got a rickshaw back to the hotel, had some dinner, fetched our bags from the hotel locker, and then walked up the road to meet Aaron and Sandra outside the travel agent where the bus was to pick us up. When the time came, the bus had still not arrived. The travel agent assured us it was just running late. In India you can never be certain about these things, and it was a relief when it finally did arrive. Kochi, here we come!

Solving the World’s Conflicts

Daniel and I sat down with Aaron and Sandra. It seemed like at least a month since I had lunched with Aaron and Sandra at the famous Leopold’s restaurant in Mumbai. However, it had only been a little over a week. Time goes so much slower in India than back home.

Remembering that Aaron was also a vegetarian, I asked him what the food was like that he had ordered. He was having, amongst other things, the spring rolls from the Chinese section of the menu. Many restaurants in India often have an Indian section and also a Chinese section. I ordered some and indeed they were excellent. They were the best ever spring rolls and chill sauce I could recall having, with the notable exception of the Katong Singaporean restaurant, which my family unfortunately became unofficially blacklisted from. No, we didn’t name names. Rather my sister and Mother tried to improvise on an order. I could see that the unfortunate waiter who didn’t speak English (“Please, just point to a number and leave it at that” I had begged them) clearly had no idea what they were talking about, but they nonetheless persevered, and then somehow assumed they were going to receive the dish they desired. They then had the chutzpah to complain and refuse to pay for the resultant unrecognisable and unappealing dish that was served to them; hence the blacklisting. But I digress…

I did the catch up thing with Aaron and Sandra, filling each other in on where we had been since we had last seen each other in Mumbai. Daniel was meeting Sandra and Aaron for the first time, so they did the “where are you from?” thing. When Sandra told Daniel that she was from Peru, he decided to exercise his conversational Spanish. Aaron, despite being from Austria (although, in my mind at least, he didn’t really come across as your stereotypical Austrian – more like a citizen of the world – either that or Danish) could also speak Spanish. While I can vaguely understand a little bit of Spanish, I can’t string a sentence together. Such is the disadvantage of growing up and living in an isolated place like Perth, Australia. In addition, think it highlights the disadvantage (and yes, there are advantages too) of being a native English speaker. Due to English being such a wide spoken language, one is rarely given the incentive nor opportunity to develop their skills in other languages.

Finally, the conversation switched back to English. Aaron and Sandra had explained to Daniel that they were “Peace Studies” students, and as part of their masters’ project, they were travelling to somewhere near the southern tip of India to attempt to facilitate some sort of conflict resolution. Daniel then said “Do you mind if ask you something: What is your opinion on a solution to the problem in my country?” I winced a little bit. In parts of the world we have that rule about not discussing religion or politics. Israel is not one of those parts, and politics are often discussed freely. In fact, when I thought about it, it was rather odd that Daniel and I had never discussed politics before, and I didn’t really know where his political attitudes lay. Remarkably, I couldn’t recall a single political conversation with any Israelis since I had been in India. Perhaps in India travellers like to leave the home world behind. Furthermore, I certainly had never really discussed politics with Aaron and Sandra. While I was a tad concerned about where this conversation was going to go, this concern was outweighed by my curiosity.

“Actually,” started Aaron “we have studied your conflict in our course in quite some detail…” He went on to describe how they did some workshop on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the framework he described involved bringing in all these other countries to facilitate peace talks and draw up land boundaries acceptable to both sides. This internationalisation of the conflict seemed not much different to the existing and failed strategies of The Quartet or the United Nations. I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to interject. “Ah, you Europeans, you love to internationalise everything.”
“What about you?” Sandra asked Daniel, “What do you think is the solution?”
“Well, I think what is needed is for both sides to have strong leaders. When both of our sides have leaders strong enough to make the necessary compromises…” offered Daniel.

“I hope we can all still be friends after this” I said with a little jokingly to Aaron, as I was about get myself labelled as a hawk “but I have to disagree with all of you. Firstly the conflict is not about land. In 1947, do you know what percentage of land Israel was out of the total Arab land? Well?” I paused for an answer, but none came, so I answered it myself “Not 10%, Not 1 %, not even ½ of 1%, but approximately 0.16%. And the Arab countries still rejected the UN Partition Plan, so clearly the conflict isn’t going to be resolved through the exchange of land. It is about the acceptance of existence.”

“Furthermore” I continued “and most importantly, there are some conflicts I don’t feel can be resolved simply through negotiations. For example, how would you have combated the rise of 20th century fascism in Europe through peaceful negotiations? Or how would you have resolved WWII simply through negotiations?” Again I paused for an answer, but I only got forfeiting looks from my peace studies friends, so continued “The fact is it took armies and war to defeat fascism. Some conflicts will unfortunately only be resolved when one side uses enough overwhelming force so that the other side stops believing they can win and thus surrenders. War is a terrible thing, don’t get me wrong, but I think there are times when it is the best of some very bad alternatives. ”

I realised I had taken them by surprise with my von Clausewitz attitude toward global conflict resolution. Thankfully the conversation changed to something else. Sandra wanted to know whether we found Indian women to be good looking. Aaron said that he was yet to see any very beautiful Indian women since arriving a week ago. I said that I felt that some Indian women were very beautiful. I also brought up the scientifically interesting point that lighter skinned Caucasians generally prefer a suntan, but the Indians have a mate-selection preference to lighter skinned Indians over darker skinned Indians. May be we all naturally have a preference for a skin colour that represents the middle of the global human skin colour spectrum? With the conversation having shifted to a safer place, I knew the next morning we would all wake up friends.

Journey to Mangalore

Daniel had drafted a travel plan for us. I didn’t really ask him too much about the details of this plan. I trusted him enough in this department. He had a tremendous amount of travel experience, both in Latin America, and now India. Plus, he had the type of personality that was highly organised and paid enough attention to detail. At this stage, he knew far more about negotiating the Indian transport system than myself. That’s what he brought to the SuperFriends table, along with his natural skill for languages. What did I bring to the table? Well, I possessed the most up-to-date version of the Lonely Planet guide to India – and it was the English version, which Benyamin (back in Mumbai) had informed me was, if anything, slightly more comprehensive than the Hebrew version. I also was able to befriend almost any Indian with my ability to have in depth discussions on cricket related topics.

With regard to the itinerary, I told him I didn’t have any specific places on a ‘must-see’ list, apart from Kochi in Kerala. I also had to get ‘back’ up to Ratnagiri (north of Goa) by December 31^st to reunite with my penpal Sarita, and experience a stay with her family. Other than that, I was cool with whatever he planned.

For Daniel’s part, when he initially suggested that we perhaps travel south together, and this was back when we first arranged to share a room in Palolem, he had asked about my linguistic competency.

“If we are to travel together, I need to know how good is your Hebrew.”

“What do you mean?” I queried.

“Well, if we are to travel together, we need to be able to discuss things with each other in Hebrew while we are negotiating prices with the locals.”

“Oh, sure, for this I’m ok.” And then added in a deliberately overly emphatic tone,. “I know all the numbers!”

Daniel continued the joke. “Well, of course you do, you’re Jewish. Knowing the numbers is the most important thing for us!”

To get to Kochi, we needed to travel through Mangalore, the next major transport hub. Daniel had found out when the train to Mangalore would be stopping at the local train station. We took an auto-rickshaw to the station, and it cost next to nothing between the two of us. Auto-rickshaws are these three-wheeler taxis that have motorbike style controls for the driver. In Thailand, they call these vehicles tuk-tuks (took-tooks). Outside of the really big Indian cities, they are far more prevalent than regular taxis, and they are generally cheaper. However, like many things in India, the price is almost always a negotiation.

The local station Canacona, which is the closest one to Palolem, seemed almost deserted when we got dropped off that afternoon. I thought to myself “Is this the right place?” Evidently, Daniel thought similarly, and he checked with the driver that this was really the place. The driver nodded and pointed upwards. You had to walk up several flights of stairs up the cliff-face to get to the train platform. This was just the vehicle drop off point. At this time, a large dirt-bike approached from the road we had just travelled up in the rickshaw, and then pulled up next to us. The passenger on the back hopped off the bike, and then paid the driver, who took off again back down the road. The dropped off passenger was wearing a bright yellow shirt and big oversized cap. He had a thick beard, even thicker than Shauli’s. He looked like he had been ‘in country’ a long time – a real hard core traveller. Indeed, he reminded me a bit of Shauli in his appearance – he had the “turned-native” look about him.

Both Daniel and I needed to relieve our bladders, so we took turns watching our bags while the other urinated in the bushes. After this we walked up to the platform, which seemed out 10m higher in elevation than the drop-off point. When we got up the top we bought two tickets and then set our packs down to wait for the train that was due in about 20 minutes. At this stage, the platform was sparsely populated. I started up a conversation with the guy who had been dropped off on the motorbike. He told me he was trying to get away from the crowds of people who would be arriving for the Christmas-New Year period. He was going to try Gokarana, which was not too far south from where we were – just over the border in Karnataka. He was hoping the devout atmosphere of Gokarna would mean less party-going tourists.

My assumptions of his hardcore travel experiences were not wrong. He had travelled to India overland from his home in Germany. First through the Balkans, then through Turkey, then Iran. He was denied an entry visa into Pakistan, so had then been forced to resort to air travel, getting to India via flight through Dubai. Despite that, I was extremely impressed by his efforts to travel to India overland from Germany, and I wished that I could undertake such an adventure. I was curious to hear about Iran in particular. He said almost all the people he encountered had been very nice and helpful, and some of the women would even subtly flirt with him, in their own way, which was surprising. I asked if had any trouble with the authorities there, but it sounded like he hadn’t noticed any problems, although he added something about the majority of the people in Iran not wanting all the Islamic restrictions that the government enforced upon them.

When I asked him about what he did back in Germany, he told me he was a farmer, and this was the year to leave his fields fallow, so he was taking that opportunity to travel while his fields rested. He farmed plums and other crops like that, producing schnapps. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties perhaps, but it was hard to tell with the beard. I asked him if his parents were also farmers, and in what was an awkward moment, his face became very sad, like he was remembering something very heartbreaking, and he told me his parents had died. I didn’t know how to respond, except to give an empathic look and say, “I’m very sorry [to hear that].” I wanted to know how his parents died and when, but I did not feel it was my place to ask. After all, ten minutes ago we had never even met before. However, I now got a profound sense of how lonely his life was. His parents had died, leaving him a farm that he now runs by himself. And presently, while his field were in their sabbatical year, he had taken off on an enormous adventure, but still alone.

The conversation was interrupted by a PA announcement – the train would be delayed approximately one hour. By now, the small crowd on the platform was starting the build up. There was a group of three Israelis (two girls and guy) who Daniel spoke to for a bit. There was also a couple that were smoking, but seemed to be having some kind of relationship trouble. He was from England, and I think she was from somewhere else, but I couldn’t quite tell from where. The girl looked upset, and the guy had a look of resignation on his face. There were also now many Indians. There were some Indian high-school kids and they had some sort of hand-held electronic game they were preoccupied with. I think they went to boarding school, and were travelling home for the holidays. One of the Indian guys on the platform started a conversation with me. Like most such conversations, it started with a “Where are you from?”

“Guess!” I replied.

“Israel?”

“Well, in a round about way you are correct – you could say that my ancestors are from there, but I’m born and raised in Australia.”

With that, we got into a huge and animated conversation about cricket. He was very knowledgeable about international cricket, but was keen to hear my opinion on various players, and how I thought various teams would go in the upcoming Cricket World Cup. He told me he was travelling back to his hometown where his family lived. He would spend the holidays with them. It turned out that the barbershop on the main tourist strip of Palolem was his. He wanted to know if I had seen it before.

“Yes, I’ve seen that barbershop. You’ve got all your services and prices advertised on a chalkboard out the front, in Hebrew. How did you manage that? Do you speak Hebrew?”

“Oh, I got someone Israeli to do that for me.”

Finally came sight of the train. All the foreign travellers strapped on our backpacks in readiness to board. As this extremely long train came to a stop, we were confronted with carriage doors that were open, but far too congested with people to board. It wasn’t possible to buy a reserved ticket from Canacona – we all had only tickets that allowed us into the general unreserved sections – which were incredibly crowded at this time of year, being the peak holiday season for locals and foreigners alike. We kept walking down the platform, passing carriage after carriage, but all seemed to full to board, with the space near the door packed with people, almost hanging out of the doorways.

And then it happened. I was still walking down the platform, hoping to find a carriage that I would be able to enter. And all of a sudden, with no real warning, the train started to move again. There I was, standing on the platform wearing my backpack and carrying by smaller bag in one hand, when I looked back and saw Daniel standing on the step of the now moving train, holding onto the hand rails, wearing his enormous backpack. He was not IN the train, but he was nonetheless attached to the train, which was more than I could say for myself. He called out for me to jump onto the train. Now normally I would probably be able to board a slow moving train. However, wearing by heavy pack, it simple wasn’t possible to exercise that kind of agility. I couldn’t run fast, and AI couldn’t jump with my large pack on my back. I was now really panicked, running (well, lumbering) alongside the train, and shouting back at Daniel to “Get off the train, I can’t get on!” He shouted back again for me to try, and I continued to shout back “I can’t! You have to get off!” The train was now getting a bit quicker, and Daniel was now getting further and further from me. It was like some crazy scene from a movie or something. I must have taken my eyes off Daniel and rather been looking at a passing train door, because I didn’t see what happened next, but the next thing I knew Daniel was lying on his back, with his pack sandwiched between himself and the platform. He was like Ninja Turtle in shell-shock. The good news was that the train was once again coming to a stop. It seems Daniel had tried to step off from the train, but with the weight of his attached pack, and the inertia from the train’s motion, he had taken a tumble. Someone had helped Daniel to his feet, perhaps a train marshal. The marshals from the train were now walking up and down the platform shouting at the Indians to move further into the carriage and stop blocking doors. They appeared to have cane-like objects with which to hit people who refused to move down, but I’m not certain about this – the scene was kind of a blur, and perhaps I was just imagining this bit as I now scrambled to board the train, busting through the congestion of passengers, in what felt exaggeratingly like a fight for survival. With great difficulty I was now aboard a carriage, with Daniel in front of me. I was exhausted from running alongside the train with my pack, and fighting through the crowd, and I heard from behind me the English guy who had been near us on the platform telling me in a hostile tone “C’mon, you have to keep moving [toward the centre of the carriage], we need to get on too!”
I replied back, matching his tone “I’m doing my best here! It’s not easy!” as Indians blocked by path, and I did my best to squeeze between them.

“Yeah, I know.” he replied in a far more conciliatory fashion.

When we got on board, Daniel told me about his fall. It seemed his pack had fortunately spared him from the main impact. “Shit, you are lucky you didn’t crack your head open.”

His palms were cut and bleeding from the tumble. With no available seats, and feeling exhausted, we sat down on our packs. I took out some Betadine, tissues, and cotton swabs from my medical kit in my smaller bag. “Trust me, this is good stuff, it doesn’t sting – not like the clear stuff does” I assured him. On application to Daniel’s palms he said, “Yeah, Bullshit it doesn’t sting!”

“Well, it might sting a little, but trust me, way less than the clear stuff.”

The train was incredibly hot and sweaty. After an hour or so of sitting on our bags, some space on a bench seat became available for us. Once we sat down, and it did not take long for the Indians sitting on the bench facing us, who were initially just staring in amusement, to make conversation. They asked us where we were from. When I said I was from Australia, the conversation once again turned to cricket, and when I mentioned the great Indian spinner Anil Kumble, they took great pride in telling me that where we were now (Karnataka) was his home state. Likewise for any other Indian cricketers from Karnataka. This was the advantage of being Australian and following cricket. It was a natural way to get a conversation going in India. For Daniel, being form Israel and knowing absolutely nothing about cricket, this possibility did not exist. For the next few hours until we arrived at Mangalore I had various conversations with many friendly Indians. One young girl named about eighteen years old (but looking much younger), named Preeti, was travelling with her younger brother to some kind of art or drawing competition. Quite suddenly, she asked for my email address, and then also asked Daniel for his (although perhaps she just asked for his out of politeness, since she was mostly talking to me). He displayed a bit of dismay at the request (while I did my utmost to hide my own dismay) but we both gave her our email addresses, although perhaps he gave her a rarely used address – I didn’t ask. Anyway, now she writes to me occasionally.

When we got to Mangalore, we had missed any chance of a connecting train to Kerala. This didn’t bother me, as I felt too exhausted to travel any further that night, and thought it was best we crash in a hotel, and resume the journey the following day. I looked up the Lonely Planet (which Daniel and I had nicknamed the Chumash) for the best budget hotels in Mangalore. It was a choice between the Hotel Manorama and the Hotel Surya. I decided upon the Manorama, but by accident I initially told the auto-rickshaw driver Surya. Within ten seconds I corrected myself, but the driver must have had a commission deal with the Surya, as he was not happy about the Manorama, and wanted to charge us extra to take us there. I knew they were essentially the same distance, and I got into an argument with the driver. Daniel resolved the argument by saying “Let’s just go to the Surya,” which he was happy with, since it’s room rates were a bit less expensive than the Manorama.

Our energy levels were way down after the tryingness of the journey. After inspecting the room, I agreed to stay there. I’m glad I did, for when we walked into the hotel’s restaurant for a late dinner, I got the most excellent surprise. The only other couple sitting in the restaurant were none other than Aaron and Sandra, who I had becomes friends with all the way back in Mumbai. I greeted them both heartily, and introduced them to Daniel. We joined them at their table.

The more I thought about it, the odds of randomly bumping into Aaron and Sandra like this was amazing. Keep in mind that India is such a massive country, but we happened to both end up in Mangalore at the same time. Mangalore is not a tourist place, just a transport hub, where most travellers try to remain for as little time as possible if they can’t get a connecting train. Outside of the train station, you hardly see a single foreigner in Mangalore – most of the hotel guests are Indians. Furthermore it was only by fluke that Daniel and I ended up at the Hotel Surya. And finally, there was still the timing of bumping into each other in the restaurant. I usually don’t eat in hotel restaurants as I like to get out and explore the town – it was just that on this occasion we were too tired after the trip to go anywhere else.

My spirits were lifted on reuniting with Aaron and Sandra, both because they were such nice people, and because of the whole cosmic improbability of it all. They were also working their way south, to get to the village where their volunteer work was located. It was quickly settled that we would all go tomorrow together and look for a way of getting to Kochi together.

The Confines of Your Clique

One of the things I had noticed about the traveller’s life in India (and I don’t at all suggest that this is specific to India) is that people are both a lot less self-conscious, and lot less cliquish than in Australia. For example, if you are out in Australia, most young people are preoccupied with how they look and appearing fashionable. Furthermore, people rarely socialise outside of their own group. This true at the pubs and clubs, and it is even true at many of the beaches. However in India, few travellers are too concerned about how they appear to others, and socialising outside of the group is totally natural. To illustrate, if you go hang out Palolem Beach in Goa, there is almost zero hesitation to go up to a group of people playing Frisbee, volleyball, or whatever, and just ask to join in. I doubt any Perth locals would say the same of Cottesloe Beach. Likewise, those same Perthites could tell you that down at the Brisbane St Hotel, you’re not likely to join nor are you likely to be invited to join a group of people unknown to you. However, such an experience is far from uncommon while travelling.

The importance is perhaps not so much the location, but rather the situation. European travellers I’ve met in Perth have told me they find it a great place to make new friends, and how back home strangers are much less sociable. I think it is just that when you are travelling abroad, you have a type of social license that you don’t have in your hometown or home country. A foreign accent is great ice breaker.

Having said all that, it doesn’t mean cliques don’t operate in travelling circles; it is just that they are less rigid and serve different purposes. Travellers still hang around in certain crowds, but those attachments don’t serve to exclude others. At times while travelling, group structures can feel like they serve to compulsorily include people rather than exclude people. As I experienced numerous times in my travels, once a group structure forms, even if that group simply formed from being on the same bus or train and starting up a conversation, it can sometimes feel rather awkward to put yourself outside that group. This can be just as true for trivial issues as it is for less trivial. Where you stay, what method transport you take, and where you eat dinner all implicitly become somewhat subject to the group consensus. Departing from the consensus creates UNKNOWN risks to the integrity of the group structure. I emphasise unknown risks because back home you know your friends well, and thus not only are your groups structures more robust to individual deviations, but given you’ve known your friends for a longer time period, in most cases you will be instinctively aware of what deviations the a relationship can and cannot be tolerate. For example, sometimes through unfortunate coincidence, you are forced to decline consecutive invitations to a social arrangement from a friend. You will instinctively know how many times you can decline a social arrangement with an old friend or group of friends (even if you always have a genuine situational reason to decline) before they get pissed off and decide to cut you off for a while. I am aware all this sounds a bit reductionist or clinical, but nevertheless I think most of us operate like that at times.

In Palolem, I was now in an entrenched group. Every breakfast, every dinner, every evening was a given. Shauli, Shoham, Daniel, and I would always eat together, play cards (Yaniv) together, explore remote beaches together, and go out to bars together. Partly this was great, but there was a downside to this. Since Shauli and Shoham were a couple, and while I greatly enjoyed their company, I felt that hanging out with them so much hindered both mine and Daniel’s chances with meeting more single girls. I had been meaning to say something to Daniel about this, but I never did get around to it.

On Friday night we went to have Shabbat at the Beyt Yehudi. Every single person there except for me was Israeli – I was the lone diasporite. After Maariv, it was time to find a seat for dinner. There were a bunch of low oblong-shaped tables, with people sitting on cushions. I was looking around for suitable table (i.e. one with plenty of girls), when I heard Daniel call out “Hey Aantoni, we’re over here!”
Daniel, Shauli, and Shoham were seated, along with a few others. I had also just noticed a spare seat at a section of a long table that was composed entirely of girls.
“Umm, that’s ok, but I think I’m going to sit over there…” I mouthed from a distance.

And with that bold move, so began the most disappointing and in some ways distressing evening of my trip so far. These girls simply would not talk to me. Later on I would discover that at least two of these girls I was sitting with were man-hating lesbians (how I discovered this if for another time). By the way, I have nothing against lesbians, but lesbians who hate men are no better than men who are misogynistic or homophobic. Apart from not talking to me, they did not talk to each other all that much. They were not only rude, but they were also boring.

The only interesting thing to happen was that on one on occasion I seemed to draw their utter contempt for the most curious reason. Let me explain. The Yiddish that I know comes not from learning the language formally in school, but simply from exposure. As a result, I sometimes am not sure whether a Yiddish word I know has a Hebrew root or a Germanic root. Under normal circumstances, there is often no need to know this. However, I have discovered that most young Israeli travellers (and I’m only talking about the Ashkenazim here, I’m not even counting the Mizrahim/Sephardim) do not recognise a single word of Yiddish unless it comes from the Hebrew root – and even then, if you do use a Yiddish word with a Hebrew root, they will more often than not simply assume that you mispronounced the corresponding Hebrew word. Anyway, there was a dish of cooked carrot slices on the table, and I politely asked for them to pass them to me. I used the Yiddish word for this dish (tsimmes), failing to realise that it was not a word in the Hebrew vernacular. Upon uttering this request, they looked at me in a way that clearly indicated that they did not understand what I asked for.
“You want what?” someone asked.
So I just pointed with an open hand at the dish of tsimmes saying “Bevakesha.” Someone passed the dish of carrot slices, but the girls asked, in a strangely uncalled for hostile manner
“What did you say? What word was that?”
It might seem to you that they were just being curious, even friendly, engaging in conversation and showing interest. Well, I promise you, their tone was anything but friendly. I know it made no sense for them to be hostile, but that’s what makes this worth writing about.
“Sorry, I used a Yiddish word – Tsimmes – I didn’t realise it wasn’t the same word in Hebrew. What do you call this in Hebrew again? I’ve forgotten.”
They didn’t answer my question, but rather mumbled some disdainful comments to each other like “Yiddish!” And while they may not have said, they also exuded the following derisive sentiment about me: Galuti! Above all, they acted as if I was the weirdest geek they hadever met; as if I were someone who had just told them that my favourite hobby is translating Danish trigonometry textbooks into Finnish. Looking back, it’s little more than like a punch line of a not very funny joke, but at the time it was the most disconcerting experience I had endured since those giggling drunks I passed in the alley while walking to the hotel on my first night in India. In a way, it was worse than that, as then I was just a bit spooked out with the intial culture shock of India. But here there were no mitigating factors. Here at the Shabbos table, this was the last place or situation where I had expected to feel so uncomfortable. If truth be told, it was beyond uncomfortable. Their rudeness was, to use a word I hardly ever use, hurtful!

About the time dessert was being served, I abandoned my table and went over to sit next to Daniel at his table.
“Well, that was a failed experiment” I remarked. “They were the rudest and most boring people I have ever sat with. They didn’t talk to me at all.”
“May be they’re just shy.”
“No, trust me, it’s not about shyness; they’re just rude!”

Walking back from the Beyt Yehudi to the room, I told Daniel in more detail about what had happened, and asked him how common he thought these attitudes were among Israelis. However, he downplayed the whole thing, and I’m not sure he really understood what I had told him, saying that I had probably just misconstrued the whole incident. Either way, he was fairly indifferent and uninterested by the issue, giving it little more than a 15 second reply before moving on to an unrelated topic, like asking me my opinion of some girl who had been at his table.

Despite Daniel’s nonchalance, the lessons from this were clear. If you are in a social group and it concerns you that may be it is all getting a little too cliquish, don’t let it bother you. Also, do not try to extend yourself from the comfort zone that your clique provides you. Stay within the safe confines of your clique, and you’ll never suffer the contempt of a group of rude, boring, man-hating, galuti-hating lesbians! Stay within the confines of your clique and you to be assured that you’ll be protected from such a fate. Finally, the next time you hear any amateur social commentator such as myself making any disparaging comments concerning the existence of clique culture, you best remind ‘Joe Sociology Minor’ where we’d all be without our cliques!

The Profoundness of Silence: Memoirs of a Temporary Mute.

An interesting thing happened to me in Palolem. A combination of a throat infection, too much passive smoking (Shoham mostly – she’s practically a chain smoker), and possibly too much shouting in some boisterous games of beach volleyball and football resulted in the loss of my voice. Now, I’ll grant you that a lost voice in itself is not that interesting. I’ve lost my voice many times in my life, but this was quite different. Firstly, those other incidences were before adulthood, generally occurring mostly at the latter stage of a youth camp. Secondly, at those other times I had lost my voice, it was really just that my voice became quite weak and it was difficult to talk. However, in Palolem, I lost my voice in a totality that I cannot recall previously. Finally, and most importantly, I do not recollect learning anything interesting from those previous occasions.

Losing my voice was initially a very frustrating thing for me, for I’m not shy when it comes to giving my oral input, and it pains me to not contribute a remark or witticism when the situation calls for it. However, if I consider it from the perspectives of my friends, it probably sounds like pleasant relief from my interruption. Someone else could finally finish a sentence.

I first noticed my voice getting weaker while Daniel, Shauli, Shoham, and I (we had become something of a regular social foursome) were dining one evening. It became harder and harder to talk, but luckily we had moved from conversation to playing Yaniv, an activity that doesn’t require too much from one’s voice. I won’t go into the details of what Yaniv is, except to say that it is probably the most fun type of card game I have ever played, and there are few things cooler than giving someone an Asaf (ok, I understand that very few readers will know what the hell as Asaf is, but for the very few that do, I had to write that!). And by the way, all this is coming from someone who is not normally into card games.

As was typical, we started the game while waiting for dinner to be served (the service can be very slow, so it works as a nice distraction), After dinner was the perfect time to finish a Yaniv game, as it gives time for the food to digest a little bit before moving on. When the Yaniv was over, it was naturally time to find a pub. I indicated that I wasn’t that keen to go along, as there was no way I would be able to speak to people (i.e. girls) in a loud pub given the state my voice was in. Shoham countered that it was a good challenge to see if I could pick up a girl under those conditions. My voice was almost totally gone at this stage, and I was often resorting to writing things down on the disposable napkins that they had on the table. I took the pen we had been using to keep score during the Yaniv game, and I wrote on a bar napkin:

Hello, I’m not able to speak. However, I’m the strong silent type.

I showed it to Shoham who then recited it to the others, who were all keen to know what I had written. Shoham and Shauli were more amused than I expected. Shoham especially liked it, and she said she thought it had a good chance of working on a girl, as it was something very different, and apparently it was also wittier (to Israeli perceptions) than I had thought it was when I wrote it.

So off we went to a pub, and I was determined to use my napkin on an unsuspecting girl. However, and I promise it was not a case of chickening-out, but I simply did not see one suitable girl (i.e. single and attractive and in a remotely approachable situation) at the pub that night, which was rather unusual to say the least. I guess it was just had bad luck in pub selection that night. It was especially disappointing, as I had already decided in my mind that the napkin move was a no-lose situation. Embraced or rejected, it would have made for a very funny story. Not seeing any suitable candidates to try my mute act on, I decided that all that passive smoking in the pub wasn’t helping my throat condition, and I headed back to the room to get some sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I had expected my voice to have at least partially returned, but it hadn’t. I really could not talk at all. My voice was so bad that I made Whisper, the sidekick of the chief antagonist in the Bond film Live and Let Die sound like Frank Costanza by comparison.

Daniel and I met Shauli and Shoham for breakfast, and after I ordered through pointing at the menu and giving a nod to the waiter, I was only able to contribute to the morning conversation through writing comments on napkins. As this is a somewhat slow and cumbersome task compared to normal talking, I had to be select about my contributions. What I discovered from this was that it made everything that I did contribute seem more profound than I think it would have otherwise. For example, they were discussing relationships, and Daniel (who at around 25 was the youngest of our group, and who on an earlier occasion had revealed to us that he did not believe he had ever been truly in love with any of his previous girlfriends or any one else for that matter) was adamant that he could never stay in a relationship with a girl if he didn’t completely trust her. Up to this point, I had not made one contribution on the topic in the five minutes or so that they had been discussing it. I wrote on a napkin “Yes, but you have never really loved anyone before, so you can’t be sure. If you will be in love with someone but don’t trust them, only then can you know.”

Peculiar grammar not withstanding, I passed the napkin to Daniel. He read it to himself, and in his typical way, was not impacted greatly by it, offering up a shrug. However, Shauli and Shoham naturally wished to know what I had written, so Daniel then showed it to them, and their responses were along the lines of “Yes, that’s very true.” In retrospect, it was not simply that I was making so few contributions, although that probably was a factor, but it was what went along with each of these offerings. It was the anticipation, the waiting, them knowing a comment had been made, but not yet knowing what the content of that comment was. That was the key to the apparent profoundness to be found in a disposable napkin.

Also at that breakfast, Shauli told us about a strange and disturbing dream he had experienced overnight. It was impressive how he was able to recall such vivid detail, and he wasn’t even on Mefloquine! As he recounted the events of the dream, I took notes on a napkin. To my mind, almost all the incidents in his dream, disjointed as they so often are in dreams, seemed to involve having to protect someone of something. When he finally finished his dream story, and it was an impressively long recounting, I presented to him this napkin, feeling that I had quite possibly interpreted his dream, although I wrote at the top of the napkin the word efshar (possibly). I made a point of double underlining the word in an attempt to lessen the weight of my interpretation. Below that I had written in the second person narrative, that he had been travelling a long time now, and had been away from his home in Israel for many months. His dream reflected a feeling of either guilt or at least worry that he isn’t in Israel to protect some entity. I then drew an idea-tree suggesting three possible alternatives for what that entity might be.

-Mishpacha?

-Chaverim?

-Medinat Yisrael?*

i.e. Either his family, a friend(s), or the State of Israel? (after all, he was a fighter-pilot back home I reminded him, via my a footnote on my napkin notation). He read it, and then showed it to the others, who were eager to see what I had written. It felt like it was as if Freud himself had written it.

After we had finished eating breakfast, Shauli and Daniel had some business to attend to, having to negotiate with a motorcycle hire guy. Shoham and I stayed behind at the breakfast café, and waited for them to return. Shoham started telling me a little about her personal history. I didn’t mind at all, and it was not in anyway uncomfortable, but given that I was unable to speak, I have neither recollection nor idea of how such a ‘conversation’ developed. Shoham would talk, and in my mute phase, I would just nod. She told me about her first serious boyfriend that lasted four years. She also spoke of some uncertainties she had about her current relationship with Shauli (she was 34, and he was 27 – she was going back home soon, but he was staying for several more months). She spoke about how she felt she was living the life typical of someone more than ten years her junior, and the uncertainties she had about what was going to happen in her life once she returned to Israel. All I could do was nod along, look empathetic (which I sincerely was) and on rare occasions write a brief comment or question for her on a napkin. I guess I came across as a very good listener! It was so unusual for me, as I am normally a compulsive interrupter, but on this occasion, I was forced to be the best listener I had ever been.

One story Shoham told me was unreservedly intriguing. A female cousin of hers in Israel once went away to a summer camp, where the kids on the camp came from all around Israel. While on summer camp, her cousin became friends with another girl of the same age. The two new friends discovered their fathers had many things in common. Both of their fathers had the same first name; both of their fathers were from the same place in Latin America; neither of their fathers were Jewish; both of their fathers were the same age and had the same birthday; both of their fathers had the same physical description. As the similarities mounted, they realized that both their fathers were the same person. That’s right, a whole second-family, with each family unknown to the other. As a result, both their mother's eventually terminated their marriage to him. However, it turned out they weren’t the only families he had. There were others still. Eventually, it all came out, and all of them (at least it was assumed “all of them”) terminated their marriage with him. From their experience, the ex-wives and their families later became friends with each other, and have frequently attended each other’s simchot – such as when one of the ex-wives has gotten remarried.

***

If the perception of profoundness amongst my friends was not enough to make me fantasize about life as a mute, the added bonus of the reaction I would receive from local Indians trying to sell me things certainly was. I would walk down the street, and when the street-side merchants would try to sell me something, I would use an improvised sign language to indicate that I was not able to speak. They might at that stage think I was pretending. However, once they saw me use my improvised sign language to communicate with Daniel, they would then just assume that I was a permanent mute. From that point, their fascination with encountering a mute would make them forget about their focus on trying to sell me something. In turn, I enjoyed their reaction immensely. In fact, I was enjoying being a mute so much now, that I was not at all missing having a voice, and was even a little bit disappointed when it returned, as it marked the end of this most novel and interesting experience. Perhaps in the future I could on occasions go around the place pretending to be a mute. Or is that like when Cosmo Kramer started wearing an eye patch because he thought it looked cool. I can hear George Costanza now “What? That’s like me getting a wheel chair to just cruise around in!” Thus I think I better give that idea a miss.

Not Everyone Loves Chanukah.

It was Wednesday night in Palolem, the sixth night of Chanukah. My new roommate Daniel and I went to the Beyt Yehudi for the candle lighting. After staying for a little while to enjoy the singing and jam session, Daniel prompted us to leave.
“Leave? Why? I think they’re about to serve a meal.”
“But we want to go to this restaurant where you can order steak.”
There are not that many places in India where you can get beef, given the Hindu reverence for the cow. However, the state of Goa, being an ex-Portuguese colony, is largely Christian, and thus beef is often available at restaurants.
“I don’t eat steak– I’m a pescetarian, remember?”
“Come on, we will have steak, and you can order fish.”
I didn’t know who “we” was at this stage. To my surprise, and in what seemed like another recurring coincidence, Daniel had somehow become friends with the couple who Marios and I had seen on the train on the way to Goa, and then had also sat at a table with in the pub the night before.

Just before leaving for the restaurant, Daniel said quietly to me that he had forgotten their names, and wanted me to ask them. I in turn told him that I had also met them before, and having also forgotten their names, I didn’t feel comfortable asking them. When we got to the restaurant, I suggested, without providing much of a reason, that we all exchange email addresses. That allowed us to rediscover their names. Shauli and Shoham. They had been in India at least six months already, mostly in the North. Shoham spoke English with a slight London accent, rather than a regular Israeli accent. I asked her about this, and she explained that she had spent a few years there as a child. Shauli was moderately tall, and was quite thin, a typical characteristic of a guy who has been travelling in India for a while. He also had a thick (but not long) beard, another characteristic fitting that profile. Later on, Shauli would show us a picture of himself not long before he left Israel. He was unrecognisable. His pre-India appearance was clean-shaven, reasonably solid build, and a buzz cut on top. In Israel he had been a combat pilot in the air force, flying F-16s. Now, far removed from that, he looked like a total hippy, carrying around his flute, which he played intermittently.


Daniel, Shauli, and Shoham all had good spoken English, and when in my company, they more often than not conversed in English for my benefit, although I never requested them too. In fact, I didn’t mind when they spoke in Hebrew, as it was good practice for me, and when possible, I would make an effort to use Hebrew too. Otherwise, I was quite good at speaking English with people who speak it as a second language.

At one stage, Shauli and Shoham were discussing in Hebrew something about the beauty of the Chanukah Menorah lighting ceremony as done by the Breslover shaliach at the Beyt Yehudi. I made some unmemorable comment, and then Shauli said something surprising to me, in English..

“But you know, in a way, I don’t like Chanukah that much” he opined.
“You don’t like Chanukah? What’s not too like? There’s no fasting, the food is delicious, mmmm latkes, sufganiot, and there’s no prohibitions against anything…”
“Yes, but it is about the Maccabees…I don’t like the Maccabees.”
“Oh, I think I know where you are going with this. I’ve thought about this before, although I don’t think I’ve ever discussed it with anyone. I can see how, from a certain point of view, not mine by the way, but some people who are some kind of post-modern revisionists might twist it this way…they might frame the Maccabees as the Al Qaeda of their time. You see the Greeks, they were occupiers, but they weren’t occupiers like the Romans were. The Romans occupied through brute force - they weren’t interested in the cultures of the lands they occupied. However, the Greeks were very interested in Judaism, from an academic point of view, not a religious one. But at the same time, they were trying to get the Jewish people to fuse their own culture with Greek culture. Thus the Greek occupation was as much intellectual and cultural as it was physical. And this was not always forced, but many Jews at the time embraced the Greek culture, which they saw as more modern and liberated – Greek culture and thinking was the most ‘modern’ of its time. The Maccabees took a stand against this cultural fusion or assimilation, “Ah, they were sort of anti-globalisation?”
Shauli commented
“Yes, in a way, they could have been seen as an early version of it” I continued, “And they didn’t just fight the Greeks, but also other Jews they saw as cultural collaborators….And while I don’t believe they were terrorists, I can imagine some revisionist moral relativists framing it that way.”
“That’s very interesting, but this isn’t why I don’t like the Maccabees” Shauli stated.
“Then what is it you don’t like?”
“In Israel, I support Hapoel. I hate Maccabi. They are our rivals” he laughed. In Israel, the most dominant sporting association is Maccabi, which is named after the Maccabees. Hapoel (which translates as ‘the worker’) is the next most dominanat. Both organization have professional teams in various sports in a number of cities throughout Israel.
“Do you support Hapoel in football or basketball?”
“Both…. You name it, if they are playing it, I support it. In any sport, I support Hapoel, and hate Maccabi”
“Ok, that’s the strangest reason I’ve ever heard for not liking something.”
“Yes, I know,” conceded Shauli, who was smiling broadly.