DELHI BELLY
Something I ate yesterday didn’t agree with me. It could have been the 4 puries and curry that I ate from my favorite street vendor who invited me to eat and wouldn’t let me pay. I took his photograph and then forgot to send it to the photographer to be printed.
Or it could have been the plain lassi that had all kinds of fruit mixed in with it that I ate soon after at Keshari when I was too full to eat anything else. Or it could have been something that I ate at the Vaatika Cafe for supper when the waiter, whom Todd and Susie had befriended four years ago, kept bringing us extra food at no charge: ginger lemon tea, extra bread, apple pie and ice cream.
In any case I had only walked 100 feet from the Vaatika Cafe when in a dark alley I heaved up a stream of my Vaatika drinks and meal. And then, for the rest of the night, every hour, at least eight times, my stomach violently rejected anything in it from 8 to 5 in the morning. And then for the rest of the day I slept most of the time and when I was awake wondered why I had ever come to India. Nothing that had stimulated me the day before touched me. And now, at 3 in the morning, after sleeping another 7 hours I can’t sleep any more and am up and feel like writing again and am guessing that by the time I get on the overnight train to Delhi tomorrow night I will have recovered completely.
I have just read a tribute by David Brooks in the New York Times to a friend of his, who was full of energy and had a wonderful life who dropped into a deep depression that he couldn’t shake, that none of the experts he visited could heal, and that his friends could only recognize and affirm their love for him but could do nothing about. Finally he could take it no longer and killed himself.
All I had was one day of being unable to respond to anything, but this guy had three years of a depression so profound that ha couldn’t bear it.
And then I think of people with one slow numbing and painful illness of one kind or another, who soldier on, feeling like I did yesterday, day after day.
I’ve almost never gotten sick in India and in twenty trips this has been only the second time I have gotten food poisoning. I knew I was running a slight risk with the street vendor curry, even though it was hot, and a slight risk with the delicious lassi (sweet buttermilk) with fruit in it. Getting stomach problems in India is an acceptable risk for the fun I have and I knew that all I had to do was to keep throwing up until I got it out of my system.
But it is just a reminder to me that our bodies are fragile and that anything can go wrong at any time, particularly at 85, and good health is plain good luck and that I should enjoy it while I have it.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 