Birthday
Originally published at Tres' travel journal. You can comment here or there.
Cycling through backwoods Malaysia, buying fresh seafood at a chaotic Hokkien fish market, sitting on the floor eating Indian food with my hands, elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of traditionally dressed Indians, watching a bizarre devil-purging fire-walking ceremony, drinking Toddy and rice wine over a traditional Chinese steamboat dinner, singing songs with people from eight different countries as thunder crashed overhead, Cassie making me blush and encouraging others to make me drink too much by announcing it was my birthday. All these things ran through my mind as I finally drifted off to sleep at the end of the day that marked the end of my 27th year on this planet. I tried to write about it all, but it was too much. I stirred a bit and wrote in my journal:
“My eyes momentarily dart toward the street, away from the spectacle of the blood-drenched mouth of a woman zombie-walking in front of me. My eyes search for the source of loud drum beats, and they meet a portable shrine wobbling from side-to-side above a sea of people jumping and dancing in the street. For the moment, my eyes return to the woman. A slowly moving ring of people in varying states of incapacitation, supported by sober-faced friends and family members, circles a 15 foot long rectangle of red-hot coals. I adjust my feet. They sink a few more inches into the ankle-deep opaque muck surrounding the ‘arena.’
“On one end of the hot coal runway sits a Hindu god, or at least a likeness of him, covered in flowers. A worker carries a bucket of milk and pours it into a trough dug between the coals and the god; another stirs up the coals to make sure they’re much, much hotter than the already sweltering day outside. On the other side, a cry erupts from the crowd. It sounds like ‘live the day!’ to our ears, but it most certainly means something else. A man starts sprinting barefoot down the runway, goes airborne for the last step, and crashes into the milk trough at the other end. At the moment his feet hit the milk, he tightens his fists and, as if inviting the sky to come have a piece of his might, lets out a guttural yell before being escorted away by his comrades.
“The woman makes another lap. Her hair is tangled and wild. Her eyes roll freely around inside their sockets. I look at her mouth, and it’s hard to distinguish what’s been painted from what’s real blood. A miniature triton runs straight through her extended tongue. Cassie and I lean over to Shanti, the daughter of our host here, and ask her why so many of the people look intoxicated, including this woman. ‘Maybe the… maybe the God is inside them.’ She points at her torso and shrugs. I leave Cassie’s side and slosh through the muddy water toward the street.
“Drum beats orchestrate the writhing mass of dark-skinned humanity on the street, and as I wriggle my way through the street, I become an anomalous part of it. A small clearing reveals a life-size puppet show: a man leans backwards, holding over a dozen ropes, each of which extends a few feet before its terminus: a thick metal hook skewered through the fleshy back of another human being. I crane my head around to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. It looks like he’s hypnotized, and he rhythmically shifts his weight from foot to foot. Each movement tilts the three foot long metal triton that runs through his face. One hole in each cheek and a tunnel through his tongue hold it in place.
“Young Indian men with popped collars wearing Playboy shirts and big sunglasses dance like they’re at Bombay’s hippest nightclub, in stark contrast to the throngs of women wearing brilliantly colored traditional saris. ‘I’m… I’m back in India,’ says our companion from Germany who has spent the last months of his life bicycling around Asia. His voice is loaded with hints of every emotion that statement invokes: inspiration, awe, revulsion, disbelief, nostalgia.
“I start bobbing to the music a bit, unable to keep myself from smiling and dancing. This triggers an avalanche of peer pressure: ‘Why are you over here!? Go! Go dance over there!’ So I go, I go dance over there, and the crowd of dancing men erupt with joy and I find myself in a dance-off with an Indian man. He wins, but the moment is immortalized in my memory.”
I finished writing in my journal, aware of everything I was leaving out, and opened my e-mail to find floods of messages from the people I love most. Embarrassed, I felt a few tears well up in my eyes. I was acutely aware of how beautiful these people in my life are, of how much I miss home, of how lucky I am to be having such an adventure. Also, so aware of how many bugs were scurrying around on the floor. Thank you friends, family, universe. Thank you for making this a birthday I will never forget.