Essay - I probably shouldn't have eaten that....

I started to sweat during a conversation at work. It was not the nature of the conversation, nor was it a case of difficult nerves.

It was something I had eaten.

One of the thresholds that one must cross during the initiation into life in India is acclimating your body to the water and food. Some avoid ice cubes for years on end, and do things like use only bottled water when they brush their teeth. I made the choice not to live that way before arriving in India. Right from the beginning, I drank and ate in an open, if not careless, manner. I knew that sickness was inevitable, so I more or less invited it. I didn’t recommend that the family do the same, it was a personal decision for me. And it came quickly. I had guessed that toxic microbes were pretty abundant in India.

I was proven right.

That day when it struck for the first time, I didn’t know exactly what it was that I had ingested that had brought it on. It could have been just about anything.

The rebellion of my system started during a conversation with a junior resource at work from the Quality and Productivity team, Raja. He was a nervous guy by nature, and in the early days of our organization when we were all seeking some amount of personal and organizational direction, he was absolutely frantic, yet in a poised sort of way. As we spoke, he sat in front of me when waves of nausea started to come over me.

“So, Raja, are you guys making progress in helping to get some of the teams up and running with good metrics that depict their effectiveness?” I asked. Innocent question, and a timely one. Raja and his group had a big job and needed to know it.

His eyes opened wide and he seemed to be looking right through me as he launched into an answer that I think he felt was an accusation.

“We are looking into what the execution parameters are for the different teams, but we are finding that we cannot see the cycles…” He continued to talk on in circular ways for several minutes. I stopped hearing his words, and fixated on his eyes. They cried out in angst. It was turning out to be one of those conversations where an innocent question on my part was interpreted in the wrong way. There was never a good way out of these conversations. I just let him talk.

“….so many things here are new…”

All at once, my stomach moved as if it were an independent organism shifting in its burrow, which happened to be my body. It was a frightening feeling. I pictured that movie Aliens where the guy had something pop out of his chest. I was pretty sure my stomach had never shifted in that way before, and I was a bit alarmed that maybe something nefarious had hatched inside of me.

Raja continued to talk ravenously, his eyes still wide with nervousness. I felt he needed a reprieve from the conversation that he was having with himself. He did not seem to be enjoying it, anyway.

I interrupted him.

“That’s great, I know you guys will do a great job. If there are any issues in the focus you get from the delivery leaders, I’d be glad to try to help out, I have some good experience with metrics gathering,” I said.

I quickly changed the subject, intending to end on a high note and develop a personal relationship with this guy.

“So, you’ve probably got an interesting background, you really seem to know this stuff,” I stated, injecting a compliment into the conversation. He was authentically a nice guy having a visibly tough time in this new group.

He smiled.

“Yes, I have been many places, although I have never lived in the US…” he told me, launching into a new set of personal tangents.

As he continued on, I started to sweat. It started on my forehead, and then it seemed that every pore in my body opened up like a million yawning little mouths. I looked down and saw that my shirt was getting wet.

Oh no.

As Raja continued talking, mentioning that he had lived in Mozambique during part of his career, I felt a sensation pass over my entire body. It was like a cool wind was coming out of my mid-section and produced heat all over my body. Each inch of my skin started to pump out more sweat.

Then my stomach started to get a mind of its own. Its idea seemed to be to purge everything I had eaten recently. I knew what was coming.

Raja continued to talk.

“….and in those companies, we always had a good sense of how execution could be measured…”

The saliva glands underneath my tongue spurt saliva into my mouth. That was a recognized precursor to vomiting. I was getting close. Have to get out of here, I thought.

“….you know, Africa is a very interesting place…”

Something started to crawl up from my stomach. I took a deep breath to control it. My stomach did another flip and churn. I decided that I needed to think about other things as a distraction from the mounting illness. He had mentioned Mozambique. What did I know about Mozambique..... the Portuguese used to administer that country. Here in India they had Goa. They ran the show in Angola, too. And Macau, off the coast of China. I have heard Macau is just one big casino these days. Casinos - I have visited Las Vegas twice. Good food there in Las Vegas.

Oh!

Don’t think about food.

Gurgle.

My stomach made a sound that was the kind of sound that might have convinced medieval physicians that most stomach illnesses were caused by a gnome living in our mid-sections. I had a screamer of a gnome at that moment.

Ow. A shooting pain shot up into my rib cage.

“…and that was when the internet was young…”

“Raja, I am really sorry. I don’t feel well,” I told him.

“Yes, you do look a bit of the color green. It’s not very nice for you,” he said, matter of factly.

Then he smiled as if he knew what was happening to me and he said, “I think you are still getting accustomed to our Indian food.”

At hearing the words “Indian food”, I gagged a little bit. I did not want to hear about food. For that matter, I was pretty sure I never wanted to eat again.

I muttered something about how it was nice talking to him and that I had to go. I stood up and started to walk away. I noticed that he still had something like a knowing smile, as if he had seen this before.

“Our food is maybe too spicy for you,” he said as I walked away. He was sporting a huge smile, knowingly.

There it was again – “food”. I gagged again. I really needed to get away from this guy. At the word “spicy”, something jumped up into my mouth, a pioneering piece of partially-digested food.

Oh no, I thought.

I had one imperative at this point – to get to the bathroom before I vomited on the floor of my new Indian workplace. It would be hard to live down the impression that would be created by vomiting in front of the new employees in India. I would be forever remembered as the retching expat. I couldn’t let that happen.

I started to walk more quickly. I did not run, but I walked briskly. I started to vomit. I could see the door of the bathroom. I broke into a full run and pushed the door open without regard to the possibility someone may be on the other side. My mouth was full of the stuff. My cheeks were puffed out. A stark acidic burn shot into my nasal cavity. My sinuses were on fire.

As I pushed open the door, I quickly took note of the fact that the bathroom was empty. Then a scent of Odonil, a chemical air freshener used in India, wafted my way. This would usually have been just sweetly odious in a regular sort of way, but in this situation the Odonil was something beyond odious – it was the final straw that my stomach needed. My mouth opened and a flume of partially digested food shot all over the door to the toilet stall that I was headed into.

I stumbled into the small stall, and a new smell hit me. I threw open the lid to the toilet and vomited with such a force that I was yelling into the act.

Woooollhh! Aaaaahhh!! Huuaaaaaaaaaaagh!!

I threw up until my stomach was convulsing on its own, and only bile was leaving my body. First few heaves of bile were yellow. The last one was green. I had seen a friend in college vomit until it was black bile. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen.

It didn’t. The green bile was the last thing my body purged. At least I had that going for me.

Thankfully the bathroom had been empty. I stood there with my hand on the wall of the stall, just trying to stay in a standing position. I hacked and spit up some remaining materials. My stomach continued to convulse, apparently unaware that there was nothing left in it. I walked out of the stall. Two of the cleaning boys were standing there, wide eyed and nervous. They had come in after hearing my vomiting. They were so thin and short, I noticed. One held a bucket, the other held a dirty mop. They looked unclear as to what was next, who should make the first move.

In those early days, I did not quite know how things worked in India, so I looked at these two guys and said, “I’m sorry.” They continued to stare at me, betraying no emotion other than surprise and a healthy dose of confusion about what to do next.

I walked over to the paper towel dispenser and weakly pulled out three towels. I wet them. I walked over to the door of the stall and started to wipe the vomit from the door, weakly.

Immediately, the elder of the two boys drew a breath in quickly and smacked the younger boy on the shoulder and yelled something in Telugu. The young boy ran up and inserted himself in front of me, edging me away from the door and the vomit. The elder of the two continued to raise his voice, chastising the younger one for some unknown reason. I had not yet learned that touching bodily fluids was something that was reserved for the most humble people in India, and it was a scandal that I had tried to do it myself. The younger guy edged me away from the door even more, and the elder one smiled at me and then pointed at the younger one with a scowl. I didn’t get it.

Between the two of them, there was a clear pecking order wherein one got closer to the material, and one stood at a distance giving orders. It was one of the first times I saw the obsession with hierarchy that exists in India. This would color our experience time and again during our stay.

I shuffled away from the younger one and went over to the sink, and ran some warm water. I pumped the soap from the dispenser into my hand. The illness had rendered me sensitive to smells, so the smell of the soap attacked my stomach again. I felt a strong gag reflex come on. My body heaved over the sink, but nothing came out. The black bile stayed in me, the only thing left in my body. I started to breathe out of my mouth, and washed my hands. It felt good. I rinsed them and then put some water in my mouth, swooshed it around and spit it out. That felt good, too.

What in the world had I eaten? Or was it something I had had to drink? Or both?

I felt like garbage, and it was time to go home. As I shuffled out of the bathroom, I looked back over my shoulder, seeing the younger of the two sanitation engineers continuing to purge my gastric juices from the door while the elder manager pointed and gave directions.

I walked back to my office, feeling a good bit lighter. A cold sweat had broken out all over my body again. Little did I know, it was a sign of things to come.

I got back to my desk, and dialed Wajid, our driver. He picked up – “hello.”

“Wajid – I am ready. Please come pick me up,” I said.

“OK, sir,” he replied. “Twenty minutes.”

That seemed an interminable time, but I said, “OK, but hurry.”

I sat at my desk, slumped back into my chair. A new phase of the illness started to brew. I had purged every ounce of material that had been in my stomach, but my body now seemed to be making a decision that anything which had already moved below my stomach also needed to be eradicated. Everything below my navel started to stir. The evil gnome was a bit lower now, stirring and doing flips in some new terrain – my intestinal tract. I had never felt anything like this before. Twenty minutes passed as I leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, taking deep breathes in an effort to subside the waves of nausea that I continued to feel.

In. Exhaaaaale. In. Exhaaaaale.

My mobile rang, and I didn’t accept it. It was Wajid. I knew the call meant he was there. I left my desk and walked out of the front entrance of the floor. They checked my ID. Apparently, word of my illness had spread, as the three security guards all said versions of, “Feel better, sir.” I thanked them and went to the elevators. I went down, and walked weakly out the front of the build to where Wajid was waiting. He got out of the car and opened the door for me. He didn't often do that, so I took that as an indication that I looked terrible.

As I passed him while getting into the car he said, “Sir, you are green.”

“Thank you,” I said, my thinking foggy from the illness. “Please take me home.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied gently. He clicked his teeth, the universal Indian sign of disapproval. He felt bad for me.

As we drove out of the exit to HITEC City, I called Tara. When she picked up I told her what had happened.

“I have Delhi belly,” I told her, my voice a bit raspy from the corrosive digestive juices that filled my throat.

“Oh, no,” she said sympathetically, if not musically. In these situations, I really depended on her to take good care of me. I was excited to see her. “It was only a matter of time, I guess,” she stated.

“Agreed,” I croaked. “But, what do you think it was?”

“No idea. Since you’re the only one, must have been something at work,” she told me. It made sense. It would have been more than just me if the source was something at home.

“Or, the rest of us will soon get it, if it was something here,” she said.

I hoped not, this was terrible to experience. It would be hard to see everyone else go through it.

“See you soon,” I said.

“OK,” Tara said. “Sorry about this.”

“Comes with territory,” I told her. She laughed.

As we drove down Road Number 36, I sat in the back seat as we performed the obligatory swerves and sudden stops that come with Indian driving. We also hit a variety of speed bumps and pot holes. Overall, it was precisely the kind of drive I did not want to be experiencing at this time. My intestines were on fire. The gnome was now poking at me with some sort of hot poker. I felt horrible. The sweat continued to bead on my forehead, and I wiped it off with my hand and then wiped my hand on my pants.

My stomach yelled out in a way that was audible to even Wajid. It was a squealing sound akin to a pig being slaughtered. I was shocked at how loud it was. Wajid adjusted the rear-view mirror, usually askew, so that he could see me.

“Are you OK, sir?” he asked. I could not feign that I was not in pain.

“No,” I stated, simply.

“Was it food only, sir?” he asked me. Once again, upon hearing that word, I had a gag reflex.

Food.

I put my head back on the seat, closed my eyes and said, “Probably.”

Breathe In. Exhaaale. Breathe In. Exhaaale.

As we pulled into the property, Mohli opened the gate. I usually exchanged smiles with him, but did not have the energy this time. I walked by. He looked concerned. I must have looked terrible, his eyes betraying that I looked like death had seized my body and I was in for a long fight.

I walked up the steps to the house, and the flowers which cascaded over the wall of the stairs released a sweet smell. Smelling those flowers was always a welcome to me when I walked up those stairs to our house. This time it was especially sweet. It was the first smell I had been able to stand since the illness had gripped me. It was almost a healing smell, as the sweet perfume of the flowers filled my head and lungs. Delightful, earthy, sweet. These eight steps were the only place in India that I could guarantee that I would experience a khushboo, a sweet smell. The entirety of the rest of the Indian nation was a gamble between the delightful and the rancid. But this spot was always delightful.

Tara walked out quickly, having seen my head peaking up from the marble stairway.

“Come on,” she said. She grabbed my hand and lead me into our house. She walked me into the kitchen. There was Leena, our cook. She had apparently been apprised of my situation. She pulled out a small bottle of green powder and put some water in it. It fizzed and bubbled, spilling over the edge of the small plastic cup in which she was concocting her witches brew.

“Drink this, sir,” she said, in a matter of fact way. “You should not eat on the streets, sir.”

Confused, I started to say, “I didn’t eat on the…”

She interrupted, “There are flies all over the sugar cane. It’s dirty!” I looked over at Tara and she just shrugged and smiled at me. Leena grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me into the dining room.

“Sit,” she stated in a draconian manner. It seemed to me that she had declared war on my illness.

I sat down on one of the gaudy chairs that came with our furnished home. It was covered with purple faux silk and Asian motifs. It had a faint stink of mold from sitting in the ill-sealed house through countless monsoons. It did not help the nausea.

I could tell something horrible was working its way out of my body, again.

Leena walked back into the kitchen and came back out with her right hand full of something. She walked up in front of me and looked me straight in the eyes.

“We have to get it out of you,” she stated. As soon as she stated that, a glimmer in her eye made me feel a bit unsettled. I wondered what was in her right hand. I looked down at it, and it shot up in front of my face. It was filled with white dust of some sort. Somehow, I knew it to be salt. She started to make small circles around my face in a clockwise circle. Her eyes betrayed an ethereal glow. As I sat there, stunned, I looked over her shoulder to Tara.

She was laughing. It lightened my mood.

Once Leena had finished making about twenty circles around my face and head, she stood upright and looked at the salt in her right hand. She said something to it in Hindi, and then spit on her hand three times. Then she did a quick about-face and headed to the door out onto the small lawn next to our house. She flung the door open and threw the salt outside onto the lawn.

I considered that she had probably accomplished little more than ensuring that part oif our lawn would die after the next watering.

“That is enough, you will be well now,” she said, simply.

Right then, my stomach screamed, this time like a banshee of Celtic mythology. It screamed with a vengeance against whatever I had ingested. It reminded me that I had issues to deal with, and that some primeval salt ritual would make no difference in the arena of microbial war. As she walked away I said, “Leena?”

She turned to me again.

“What was the green stuff, the bubbly stuff, that you gave me?” I asked.

“I think you call it ‘antacid’,” she told me. I looked on in amazement. She had preceded the use of medicine, albeit a mild one, along with her salt ritual. India, the unique dance between the secular and the transcendent, the new and the old.

My stomach changed into shooting pains at this point. Looked like neither remedy was going to work.

No surprise there.

I stood up and whispered to Tara, “I have to go upstairs.”

She stuck her bottom lip out in sympathy, then she broke into a smile. The smile comforted me, but I also knew that she relished seeing me reduced in stature a bit. Seeing me sick was like seeing me return to the level of a child, I had to admit it.

I turned and walked in a strange waddle up the stairs and onto the boulder that existed in our house. I walked up the boulder and onto another set of stairs. My pace started to quicken, as I felt a knife-like pain in my lower intestines. I ran through our bedroom, and got to the toilet. I fumbled with the zipper on my pants. They wouldn't disattach!

Hurry...

My stomach screamed one final shriek of victory, declaring that it had won.

Victory.

I sat down on the toilet and things left my body in a consistency not intended for such an act. I let out mild sigh of relief, and slumped forward a little bit.

I thought, Good God, what have I ingested?

Whatever it was, it had won. Victory went to the bacteria in one body that day in India.

It seemed I was not done, but nothing else was happening. It was an uncomfortable state of limbo, where I could not read the signs from my body. Should I get up or staying sitting?

The smart money was on sitting.

About twenty minutes later, I achieved full conciousness while lying down on my bed and taking deep breathes. I had wandered in there is a state of illness and dehydration. My body was utterly purged and I was weak. I didn’t have anything left.

Anita and her visiting sister, Sucelia, knocked gently on the door to the bedroom and came into the room. I looked at them and smiled weakly. They both stood at the end of the bed and clicked their teeth. Disapproval, once again expressing that something was not good. It appeared that the pallor of my skin was not good. The claims from earlier in the day that I was green had stayed a constant, but I imagined that at this point I was probably a bluish grey. I fancied that my eyes and my skin were probably the same color.

Tara stuck her head in the room.

“You OK?” she said, quietly. She looked over at Sucelia and Anita, smiling.

“Not really,” I croaked. I was pretty dehydrated.

Anita and Sucelia continued their consultation with each other in Telugu.

“Can I get you anything?” Tara asked in a hushed tone.

“A new digestive tract,” I stated, smiling feebly.

She chuckled.

“Poor thing, I’ll get you water,” she whispered.

"Not from the tap," I said, barely audible. No one within ear shot could understand, and my voice wasn't loud enough to be heard. But she knew, I hadn't needed to say that.

She had heard something and came back into the room.

"What?"

I asked her what color I was. She walked into the room and looked at me for a few seconds.

“A little bit blue, almost grey,” Tara stated.

As suspected.

Anita and Sucelia continued to talk at the foot of the bed and discuss the best approach to making me better.

It was hard to determine if my current pallor was better than the earlier shade of green. Probably. Or maybe I had cholera.

As I sat there, Anita and Sucelia seemed to have made a decision on the best thing to do for me. They disappeared out of the room quickly, their saris flowing behind them.

Tara came back with water and another green packet. She sat down on the edge of the bed and put the back of her hand on my forehead.

“You’re not hot. You’re pretty clammy now,” she told me. It sounded like she had a tone of hope in those words. To the clammy, it never feels like a step in the right direction.

I didn’t say anything.

Tara ripped the green packet open and poured it into the water. It fizzed and bubbled and some of the potion spilled over the rim of the plastic cup. Tara told me to drink it. I smelled it this time and it had a sweet smell, not medicinal. I decided to chug it. When it hit my stomach, I felt a comforting coolness.

My stomach, previously empty, seemed to enjoy being filled with something, anything.

I thanked Tara.

Right then, Anita and Sucelia came back into the room. They carried a large metal pan and some items. They put everything down on our dresser. Tara and I sat there is silence, watching them. They chatted back and forth between themselves, intent upon something, the exact nature of which we could not determine. But they had a pile of items. I noticed that they had chili powder, salt, and a few dried chilies. And the large metal pan.

I thought they might try to feed it to me, and I started to protest, weakly.

Tara sushed me.

Sucelia walked over to me, her old face smiling. She gestured for me to stand up. I just sat there.

“No,” I said. Then I remembered the word for No in Telugu.

“Kaddu.”

She laughed and turned to Anita, repeating the word “kaddu”. Anita was smiling and said, “Sir, Telugu speaking. Good!” They both chuckled. Anita clapped her hand a few times.

After they had their laugh, Sucelia again gestured for me to stand up. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be left alone with my empty insides and let the newly-ingested green foam do its work, whatever that was going to be.

“Kaddu,” I said, with a bit more force, yet smilingly.

They couldn’t take it seriously and laughed again. Sucelia took my hand and lifted me from the bed. I gave in, and looked at Tara as I stood up. She had a big smile that said declared something hilarious lay ahead. I was less amused, but I did feel the uniqueness of the moment – yet another moment where we were freed of the normality of our lives in the US.

But, I had been freed of many things that day, and none of it was a pleasant process.

I gave in. Whatever they wanted to do was going to ensure they felt they did their part in healing me. So be it.

They started to sing a song of some sort.

As they sang, Sucelia pulled out a few strands of her hair and placed them in the middle of the metal pan that she had brought into the room. Then, she took a few dried chilies and wrapped the strands of hair around them. She placed this in the middle of the metal pan, and then sprinkled chili powder around the perimeter of the pan in small circles. All the while, they continued to sing gently. I was engrossed in what they were doing, and in the back of my mind I had a mixture of impulses. The main impulse was to consider this to be a bad addition to the events of the day, but I decided to let it proceed with only a gentle smile on my face.

As I stood there, one of the strangest things I have experienced unfolded. Sucelia and Anita stood in front of me and waved the metal pan in huge circles around my body. I had a furrowed brow and just watched, waiting for this strange ritual to be over. I think the mixture of chilies and hair was intended to remove the illness out of me, although I was not sure what the underlying rationale was – it was probably about taking away the “evil eye”, scaring demons out of me, or changing the direction of the energy coursing through my body. It could have been any of these, or something else. India was a place of varied and complex beliefs, so it was hard to say. I sat and watched.

Suddenly, they were finished. I was still sick. Nothing had changed, as I had expected. Now maybe they would leave me alone. I turned and got back in bed. They rushed to the kitchen to burn the material, I later learned.

No improvement.

I slid off into a deep, dark and jagged fit of sleep and rolling from side to side.

A few hours later, I awoke and stared at the ceiling. I just stared. A few minutes later, I heard a masjid do the call to prayer. It was dark out, so I knew it was the fifth one. It meant it was about 7:45 or so. These calls were mostly something I had learned not to hear, except for the first one that happened around 5:30 in the morning, and the final one around this time. It was funny to be notice this change in myself, one that so many millions of people knew around the globe - knowledge about what time it was based upom the mosques beckoning to its followers five times a day.

I got out of bed. My mouth was parched into a hideous state, my tongue like sand paper. I walked out of the room, down the stairs, across the boulder and down the stairs again. Tara saw me approaching.

"Hi, sweetie, how do you feel?" she asked.

"Like over-cooked hog," I said, randomly. That must have jumped out from some deep part of my psyche that was formed only in North Carolina.

She was watching the tv. The kids were off somewhere else, probably in for an early night of sleep.

I went into the kitchen. I noticed the metal pan from earlier. It had charred remains of hair, chilies, and dust. It was ash. A little creepy.

I rushed a glass of mango nectar down my gullet. It hit my mouth and stomach. Everything cried out in delight. A wave of coolness rushed through my body. I felt a surge of energy as the fruit was metabolized almost immediately.

Nice.

I wandered out to where Tara was sitting. She was watching a show we enjoyed - "Just for Laughs". A French Canadian comedy program where the comedians did the improbably and unexpected on the streets of Montreal, all set to music. No words.

This skit involved an ice machine outside of a store. Inside of it was a young comedienne whose skin was painted blue. When the customer came to pick their bag of ice up, they saw a young woman sitting inside the large ice dispenser. She shook and jumped at the customers. This of course caused hysteria and panic to follow. Laughs. A bit of a morbid and mean joke.

I noticed the clean streets, the orderly movement of life back in North America. I chuckled gently. Brilliant stuff.

"You feel ok," Tara asked again.

"Getting there," I smiled. "Which thing worked, in your opinion? Was it the salt, the green stuff, or the pagan hair and chilies ritual?"

Tara laughed.

"It was the purge, I think," I said.

"Probably," she replied.

I sat back and watched more tv, still drained and weak.

I had been initiated a bit deeper into India. Although I would again get sick from some unknown food or water, it never hit me like that again. India had reached out with one of Her many arms and smacked me that day. It was a form of welcome, albeit an unpleasant one. She was telling me that if I was to live here, I had to manage both the pleasant and the painful. In India, one did not come without the other. And there was very little in between.

I watched tv until I fell asleep. That night I dreamt about a blue woman with eight arms watching over me with a savage look of both sympathy and anger.

So it was and so it would remain. I was in India, after all....