Better Yet, Kiss My Diseased Holi Ass, You Punks

9:20 PM Monday, March 20, 2000

Back from the edge of death. My life almost drained out of my ass last night. One second I'm writing journal entries and watchin "The Big Lebowski" and the next, roving packs of insane terrorists are banging on the guest house door, screaming for blood and...me? I'm too sick to get up out of bed. So sick that I'd decided that when they come through the door I'm going to dive on my journal and curl into a ball. I'm not even going to move my 2000-dollar video camera out of plain view. I'm much more than 2000 dollars sick. It only got worse.

I shoulda got some help from Mahesh but I stupidly decided to sleep and wait till morning. You make some bad decisions when you're sleepy and sick and you've smoked too much hash. I went to the bathroom about 20 times last night. I still don't see how that's possible.

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I should clarify the ruckus at the door last night. Some pitchfork and torch wielding political thugs made their rounds. Pure intimidation. They couch their activities in the Festival of Holi, going out when everyone knows the police are taking the day off. The phones and power had been knocked out, (as we predicted) because people make huge ritual bonfires right underneath the big snarls of power lines at every intersection. I heard them coming from a long ways off and while I laid there in the dark they were throwing huge amounts of shit all over our door and walls, screaming the equivalent of "You better watch it Mahesh! Don't fuck with us!" etc. The big sheet metal door sounds like a thundercrack when a turd hits it. I really got scared when I heard them scream Mahesh's name and then sweet Mahesh goes and opens the door when they were still out in the street! I find out today that they were neighborhood boys. All in good fun and they weren't coming to take Klaus and me away to their headquarters for vivisection.

The cops show up as the house boy is cleaning the shit off the door and they tell Mahesh not to let any foreigners out under any circumstances. The police here suck big, fat, sacred cow dicks. (Excuse my French.) Mahesh, the benevolent Brahmin proprietor, has had to make pacts with the police. They've told him that he must try to kick squatters off the public land in front of his guesthouse or be held responsible for their actions. God, the cops are lazy assholes. Indians usually defend them by saying they don't make enough money so corruption is the only alternative. Bullshit of course. Indians tolerate corruption. It's quite simple. Cops are always underpaid for Christ's sake.

By noon I finally got a hold of Mahesh. It was hard because I felt like I wanted to puke if I just sat up in bed. He gave me some medicine and I slept all day. Today was Holi. I'm up now and writing. I'm eating rice and moong dal. I don't need to mention it but good ol' SitaRam is droning on out my window.

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Pink powder is falling off my forehead onto the page. Everybody carries around a bag of it and blesses each other with a swipe down the forehead. Mahesh is having a little party tonight. A family affair. It's Holi. I wish we had this kind of holiday in the US. Everybody hugs, the kids are red from head to toe. The adults are stoned and I'm spooning life back into my carcass.


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