beyond madness

3/13/08
Day 8…
We’ve lost our sense of humor. In India this is as good as a death sentence for the experience. Living here is much like living in a beautiful prison, a prison with friendly but unintelligible prison guards. Sarah has been reading excerpts of the prisoner of war camp experience at Dreden in world war two, as Kurt Vonnegut detailed it in Slaughter House Five. We are drawing similarities between the conditions, our behavior and emotional degradation to that of the soldiers. The same frustration, the dissatisfaction and ill-health from the same few foods at every meal (here it is roti, cabbage, potato, and dal), the same torpor. Inactivity, you see, leads to indolence. We sleep more and more, eat and bathe less. We laze about and half-heartedly attempt to brush off the flies. And this only after eight days! Inactivity combined with no purpose is deadly.
We called Rimaji today asking for out. Our goal: a move to the GRAVIS office within the bustle of the city of Jodhpur. Perhaps a place with proper resources will at least allow us to do research, have some project while allowing movement about a city and food diversity. Cross you fingers!

Jodhpur, India