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February 4, 1999

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"Today Waldman drooled on himself as he tried to speak. "
(This is an inside joke understood by our travelers only. Jeff requested it not be removed as they all laugh when they read it - so - here it stays in all its glory.)
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We rolled into Faizabad after a four hour bus ride, during which I sat in a seat with legroom enough for a five foot Indian. Throughout the ride, the bus would occasionally hit ruts deep enough to bounce my tender flesh up into the sharp tin screws exposed in rapid succession across the top of the seat in front of me. My spirits were down; I was in a less then temperate mood and looking keenly forward to a rapid exit, though exits are never really "rapid" when toting a large backpack and fighting the competitive Indian throngs (and rarely will they go entirely smoothly when you're tired and frustrated). Case in point, on this particular disembarkation Mike painfully cracked his head on the top of the typically low bus doorframe. He was bummed out (and considering it was the second time that day, and the day wasn't half over, I could sympathize).

We gathered our senses, and then bicycle-rickshawed it to a nearby hotel. Upon dropping our bags in the room, we inquired at the front desk about the by-now-famed glass blowing factories. (At the beginning of the trip into India, and even as far back as Nepal, Jeff had been investigating the glass blowing scoop. He had found that Faizabad was the place to go to see the interesting art being practiced India-style. We had been unable to go to Faizabad at that time, but were determined to make the visit on the way back to Nepal - and here we were in Faizabad! Finally!) Upon inquiry, smiling big since this was what we'd been waiting for, we received the startling yet not entirely unexpected, "Not Possible! No glass blowing in Faizabad!" "What?!?!?" "No glass blowing in Faizabad!" Rather surprised by that answer, but still hopeful and determined, we headed into the streets to beat our own path to the doors of a factory. "What does he know? He's just a hotel manager" After three hours we still had no leads, but we did have a good cup of chai.

Something should be said at this point about Faizabad. There isn't much going on in Faizabad, nor is there anything worth seeing other than the basic madness of daily Indian life, which is, actually, always worth seeing, but can be found anywhere in India. Bearing this in mind, we figured we were more than likely the only westerners in the city, and judging by the stares we received from the townsfolk as we walked through the marketplace, we believed we had figured correctly. We were a spectacle - a spectacle rendered even more spectacular when the three of us climbed onto a bicycle rickshaw, seating for one and a half, for a ride back to our humble abode. I can assure you that sitting in between Waldman's straddling legs while cruising down an Indian street dodging cattle, goats, dogs, Indians, and piles of rock - signs of the latest construction projects - is an interesting sensation, and a sight many of the locals seemed to enjoy. When we arrived back at the hotel, we began to resign ourselves to the fact that glass blowing was truly "not possible." Mike and I couldn't help but laugh, which was a pretty insensitive thing to do in retrospect, since Jeff was really bummed out.

To ease the loss, we headed for dinner. Very inexpensive yet extremely tasty morsels served in surreal settings, such as, in this instance, blue rooms lit with green fluorescent bulbs that illuminate multitudinous Ganesh and Shiva posters which plaster the walls, had become the norm for us. The locals in these types of dives never ceased to be amazed when we would sit down on the bench next to them, and then chow down on thali using the fingers of our right hand as utensils. This evening's meal proved no less than stellar, and we were again our jovial selves as we ventured satiated into the Faizabad night.

We saw a bunch of moving lights, and heard loud music coming from down the street - so, what else but to investigate. As we closed in on the unusual scene, we observed a good number of young men roughly our age dancing wildly waving hands beneath the glare of spotlights in the center of a mass of people, men following on the outskirts of this packet of madness carrying large colored arrays of tube lights on their heads, people throwing rupee notes into the air, swarms of children dressed in their Sunday bests, even though it was a Thursday, chasing one another around the fray giggling, laughing and squealing with delight as they chased the rupee notes around the ground greedily snatching them up as quickly as possible, and this entire procession following slowly behind the fully illuminated truck, which carried the singers, musicians, and sound system. It was quite the scene (and that was quite the run-on sentence), and we grinned broadly while taking it all in.

I decided it would be prudent to snap off a couple, and so fumbled quickly for the camera. I wanted to get one of all the kids, and so I motioned to Waldman, who already had a mass of kids clinging to him, to turn to turn and look at me. As I looked for Jeff to beseech him to come hither for the pic, I noted amusedly that he had just been pulled into the churning crowd of dancing men. I fired one off of Mike and another of the whole scene, and noticed that Mike had just been coerced into participation. I was smiling at this fact and putting away the camera, when two men seized me by the arms, hauled me off through the thick, and tossed me into the mix. I caught glimpses of Jeff and Mike as these whirling dervishes traded me off to one another for various Indian versions of the rumba and meringue. It was my second "close-proximity-to-another-man" sensation of the day. After wondering how we might go about extricating ourselves from this harrowing yet exciting situation, a dude from the crowd launched a sortie from the sidelines, grabbed us, and led us out to safety. We thanked everyone profusely, and headed home in high spirits feeling very well rewarded for our efforts in coming to this small but very truly Indian town. Now we know what kind of a shindig is expected of us if we ever happened to get married in India.