Matilda woke up at 5am yesterday morning with an excruciating earache. We waited until it got light out to look for help, but discovered the hospital didn't open until 9am, and the doc doesn't usually grace patients with his presence until 10am. Somehow, someone got us an early appointment at a local doctor's house, and M and I hopped in a rickshaw to his place. The rickshaw driver knocked on his door for 5 minutes before his wife yelled down that he was coming. 5 more minutes later, a large old Indian man came out, with a stained white shirt on and a towel around his waist. He sat Matilda down in his stuffy waiting room, asked her what the problem was, and took a large red industrial flashlight and shone it into her ear, making grunting noises. He put it back on the table, it fell off, he watched it roll under the table, sighed, and wrote Matilda a perscription for 3 medications. When I asked him if she could possibly take the same antibiotics I'm on, he glanced at the bottle and said "No no, dat stuff is not fo head infection, it fo intestine worms." I thought about saying "Well then, apparently my Dad's 8 years in vet school make him a big idiot compared to you.." or "Funny that they seem to be working for me.." but decided he was in a bad enough mood already. Perhaps because his left thumb appeared to be simultaneously scabbing, peeling, and trying to fall off all at the same time, which I noticed as he awkwardly scribbled out the perscription. He charged Matilda 100 rupees ($2 us) for the 2-minute visit and told us to pick up the meds at the chemist's down the road.
Moral of this story: Never take for granted a doctor with an actual otoscope.
Tale 2.
While M took her drugs and tried to sleep off the infection, Nat and I went to read on the beach. 5 minutes later, I watch as 2 Indian men -- one in his swimsuit (we'll call him Sleazebag 1), the other in regular clothes, holding a camera phone (aka SB 2) -- walk casually down the beach. A European girl in a bikini strolls towards the water and SB 1 stands just in front of her, posing for SB 2. At the last minute, SB 1 moves to one side and SB 2 cops a very obvious shot of European girl in bikini. They continue their nonchalant walk down the beach, where they meet up with a few other camera-phone-armed men and compare pictures. Over the next 2 hours, we watched as countless men -- big groups of young ones, two or three old ones together, in business suits and boxers and casual clothes -- all armed with camera phones, roamed the beaches looking for the next cheap shot. Some walked right next to chairs of sunbathers, pretending to chat on the phone while taking multiple pictures. I was wearing a high cut tank top and a long skirt and STILL got circled by the vultures. Nat and I glared at them till our eyes got tired, to no avail. We quickly discovered that the sand may be white and the sea may be warm, but as long as their are shoulder and knees bared, Indian men make the beach a sleaze-fest. And we were not so sad that Nat forgot her swimsuit at home.
Moral of this story: Suddenly burkas seem a lot more appealing. Apparently the only known way to get an Indian male to stop gaping at you is to dress like a colourless, shapeless blob.
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