All of these were written as Facebook status updates. They were ‘shared’ in succession, and were posted as rapidly as they could be finished and proofread. They are a skeleton sketch of what last Tuesday was like for me, and how I felt about it on Wednesday.
I woke up incredibly early and was dehydrated to such a degree that I wanted to cry. It was too early and no where was open except for a juice stand off the main market. I asked for paani. He poured me a glass of unfiltered water, and I just stared at it for 10 seconds before I said, '[omitted].' I finished it in one gulp and asked for another. I laid down on my mat and realized that it was so hot that I may not know if I have a fever.
I was in an auto driving to Gurgaon from Delhi. I understood that Delhi auto drivers won't cross the Haryana boarder, but he never fully explained his intentions. It's 13km to Gurgaon. He drives 10, and dropped me under a banyan tree. A police officer pointed to a speeding bus. He spoke as though I wanted that bus. He walked away after that. I walked along the side of the road, and stopped to admire a goat.
A stranger picked me up almost immediately after I parted company with the goat. It didn't take long for someone to spot me in full business attire 3km from anywhere. He dropped me off somewhere where I could catch a rickshaw. I rode behind a man on a bike for a mile. I reached my destination and had a meeting. Then another.
Then no one could help me find a cab so I walked the mile to where they all thought I could catch one. It was here, on semi deserted streets, in a city that I knew nothing about, going to meetings in which my entire modus is to duplicitously bully my way through to get information, that I found articulation for a question I had been meaning to ask: "How did I get lost in South Asia?"
I then got stuck in that city for another 10 hours. It cost me way too much to get home when I finally did. That said, I played pool with a Nepalese bar tender and ate the best chicken lollipops of my life. It made my night. That was all yesterday.
This is what I wrote when I was done.
“I'm outta here. I'm getting a milkshake.”
8/5/09
As annoying a breach in standard operating procedures as it might have been, I really enjoyed using Facebook in a way that it normally isn't. I don't recommend it for everyone and all occasions, but I say that having a hand in flexing the boundaries of one electronic medium with the information usually associated with another was fun for me. A small scale synthesis that got positive results. And this time it involved goats.
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