Paging Dr. Bakra

Hello all.

Well, I landed back in Jaipur last weekend after a successful week or so of solo touring via train, foot, and bus. April and I met back up in Delhi last Saturday, and after a morning spent sipping coffee and listening to doo-wop in a faux American 50's Diner in the middle of New Delhi, we hopped a bus back here to Rajasthan, which has been surprisingly mild in weather all week. I've been getting status reports from home, and it's true: Texas in the summertime is as hot as if not hotter than North India. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

So I managed to get some sort of funky sinus infection this week, which has had me feeling pretty janky on and off. Normally, I'm all about rest, liquids, and daytime television in these scenarios, and prefer to let my body handle itself without the additional application of modern pharmaceutical technology. However, here it's kind of imperative that I'm on my toes at all points what with homework and monkey dodging and whatnot, so I decided what the hell, I'll go to the doctor. It will be worth the experience in the long-haul anyhow.

We walked down to the little hospital by my house, and I checked in. The doctor's fees (paid up front) were roughly equivalent to $3.50. Nice. We sat in the waiting room for about 30 minutes, until Dr. Bakra called us into a cramped side-room that was momentarily devoid of patients. He asked me what the deal was, I told him, he nodded as if he knew all along what all my symptoms were, and then got to the prescribing of medicines. A long list, indeed! For a simple cold, basically, he prescribed something like 6 different medicines ranging from antibiotics to mentho-rub to vitamins. I got the feeling that the hospital stood to make a little money off my momentary lapse of vitality, so when we got down to the pharmacy (a brick room, outside of the hospital, with a tiny window that had about 10 guys sticking their heads and hands into it at once), I opted for the antibiotics and the mentho-rub exclusively. The pharmacist gave me a puzzled look; I was turning down modern medicine and all of it's miraculous healing power? No, I explained, I'm just a little too strapped for cash to be quite that ill, plus my bag wasn't quite big enough to take home all the medicines I didn't really need. Funny, same situation in every country, apparently.

Anyhow, I'm better now. And we have had a really delightful weekend, just doing some shopping around the old city, sipping coffee and eating weird sweets for Teej this week. April and I had our picture put into the paper again this week because we happened to be out in public and white at the same time (the third time for both of us, in different papers). I'll post pics when I get them scanned. So, hmm, that's about it for the time being. More soon.