In India...

...white men are treated like the the holy Vishnu himself, and white women are treated like prostitutes. Simone would like an edit; she says "white women are treated like they are invisible and contagious." Burping, she remarks, "the only disgusting thing I haven't done in the last hour is fart." Our bodies are not yet adjusted to the masala, at all.

We are not sure what to fill these pages with. We considered writing about a proper park avenue Victorian lady and how she handles slum life. We considered writing about how my job is having me sell houses to slum-dwellers, and then securitize the mortgages, and sell them off as bundles to outside investors. If this "housing charity project" blows up, I hope they don't blame it on the Jew from NY. These pages can be about our apartment hunt, rickshaw drivers, cows, almost anything. We hope it will develop some identity, but until then, we'll just write about our first weekend in India, spent in the wonderful town of Yelahanka, known affectionately to native Bangaloreans as "vahi wal se soca", which roughly translates to, "the bottom of the toilet".

We got off the plane 3 AM, hopped in a cab, drove 30 minutes, got a receipt that claimed we drove for 4 hours, paid 1300 rupees for our fare because arguing would save us 75 cents, and got out at a roadside dive motel in Yelahanka, a desolate suburb 45 minutes outside Bangalore. We tell the cab driver he must have come to the wrong address. Then I consider the possibility that this cab driver may kill us. Who would know? Our three bags of clothing and one bag of drugs and wacky mac must be worth something. What if they sell Simone into prostitution? That would be a tough phone call to Wendy. I decide that I will exit the cab and scope out the situation. But I don't want to leave Simone in the cab lest the driver steal her. And I don't want to have Simone come with me and leave all the bags in the car, lest he steal our wacky mac. I decide to leave Simone in the cab, but opened all the car doors. He would be crazy to drive like that.

3 barefoot uniformed men were sleeping on a queen size mattress on the ground of the lobby. With a simple nod, they welcome us to the illustrious Hoppers Stop Motel. None of them speak a word of English, except "Passport". We try to check in. They lack a computer. So we sign our name in a black and white notebook. After we write our names, he adds "USA". The three barefoot men carry our bags up a flight.

At 5 AM, I begin to have a nervous breakdown. I think we should check out, immediately. Our motel is in the middle of a slum. There is a tarp hut filled with squatters outside one window. Outside the other is a stone roofless shelter, and a huge pile of trash. By 7 am, I see a half naked man chopping up the bark of a tree with a Machete. I lock every one of the 5 different bolt locks on our front door, and the three bolts on the bedroom door. By 10 am we were still both awake, trying to figure out what we could use as a weapon. We have a pair of 4 inch Prada heels.

I decide to go the bodega next door, and lock Simone in the room, because I am not convinced she should go outside all year. There are tons of wild dogs, cows, people sleeping and bathing in piles of trash and shitting on the floor. We had four days of this. We must of spent 85 out of the 96 hours that weekend huddled in our room playing rummy.

We did make it into Bangalore proper though on Friday. We took our first auto rickshaw. There are 80,000 of these high powered 3-wheel golf carts in Bangalore, and every single one is driven by a barefoot union-issued uniformed man with a deathwish. On the highway we encountered traffic, because about 30 people were sitting in the middle of the highway, screaming, for no apparent reason. Simone would like an edit, she claims that this sit-in was inspired by Gandhi. Thank you Simone. Our driver gets out of the vehicle, physically moves one of them, screams a bit, and drives on.

We stayed in Yelahanka because that's where the spiritual leader is. He lives in a gated community which looks like its from the set of Stepford Wives. Its quite nice, but very sterile, and obviously filled with deviants. Our motel was very much on the wrong side of the tracks. We ventured over there for some of the meals, and even had a Minyan for Simchat Torah HaKafot. One of the Jews present was a member of the Bnei Yisroel, the lost tribe of Indian Jews. The rest were Israelis. Many had little kids. None of them stayed in Yelahanka for the holiday.