Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006-Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006

Christmas Eve starts out well.

I head out with Prashant at about 8am. We are going to photograph female laborers. We get to their homes, where they are preparing for the day. The light is perfect.

We go to one site where a young widow is clearing bricks from a field. This is her job for the day, and she has had to bring her child with her. I situate myself on a wall overlooking the field and shoot down. Click.

Then we head back to the school, where a doctor has come to examine the children. There are 700 children and 100 parents waiting to be examined. Before examinations begin, the children sing, and I see one little girl balancing her younger brother on her lap. When their mothers go out to work, girls are often put in charge of their younger siblings. Click.

Prashant gets tied up, so I head back to MVT. En route, I see another little girl. This one is comforting her crying little brother. The light, again, is perfect. She is sitting near her home, which is one concrete room in a large complex. Click.

I upload my photos and head out for dinner later. So far, I have taken circa 9,800 photos.

****

Something I learned the hard way: Watch what you eat in India.

I spent the past 3 days in the hospital because of something bad that I ate.

It starts out innocently enough on Christmas Eve: Some spicy rice, some lentils, some chapattis and some vegetables. And some Indian peanut brittle for dessert.

Then the stomach pains start at about 2am Christmas morning. Vomit. And what the people here called “loose motion.”

I am not able to keep anything down for the next 12 hours.

Prashant later gives me some homeopathic things: a lemon with salt, two different types of anti-nausea pills, then something that tastes like Pepto Bismol. All come back up within 10 minutes.

I am extremely dehydrated at this point. I can barely walk. I finally tell Prashant just to take me to a reputable doctor. I need water but can’t drink any. I need to get fluids in my body.

We enter a little clinic along the road to Matura. There is a doctor’s office, and then a hospital with several rooms attached to the back. Prashant says this is the best doctor in Vrindavan. I am number 25 to be seen. Then Prashant bribes one of the nurses, and suddenly I am number 4 in line.

I sit on a cold metal stool while the doctor speaks to me in broken English and takes my blood pressure. 90/60. Very low.

I am admitted to the hospital.

A very nice Christmas present indeed.

****

I sit in a cold metal chair. Prashant has asked for a private room for me, but there is an old woman in the room who refuses to leave. So I wait.

I need treatment, though, so they take me to a back room where several other patients lie on beds. I wince as they jam an IV in my right hand. Then there is an intense burning as they inject me with an antibiotic. Then there is cold as they inject me with glucose. I will end up having 6 bottles of glucose over the next couple of days.

They roll me over on my side and inject me with some anti-nausea medicine. Then I am out of it. I let my hand flop to the side of the bed. Flies buzz around me and other patients stare at me quizzically.

I am the only white person in the entire hospital. Where is she from, and why is she so pale?

****
I am taken to another room.

Next to me is a little boy in a bed, and behind me is an old man who sounds like he is about to cough up a lung.

The little boy’s mother coos over him. His father arrives and does the same.

I can’t help but wonder: Would a little girl receive the same treatment? I recall the horror story Rupa told me about the sick little girl whose mother was angry she was cured in the hospital: “You fixed her, now you pay the dowry,” she told Rupa.

Prashant sits at the foot of my bed and plays games on his cell phone. We chat occasionally. I doze on and off.

****

I am finally transferred to the private room. There is a little bathroom that has an actual toilet, not just a hole in the ground.

I am to spend the night. I can probably be released the following afternoon.

Prashant leaves to run errands, but he will be back. In the meantime, I doze and listen to music.

Then the pain starts. My lower back. My kidneys? An intense, throbbing pain that leaves me unable to walk and makes me shiver. I stumble out into the hallway carrying my IV bag and signal for a nurse. “English,” I say, pointing to myself.

Someone comes in and gives me a shot, and I sleep until Prashant gets back.

At around 6pm, a woman in a beige sari bursts into the room with a bucket of burning incense. “Hare Bol! Hare Krishna!” she says, spreading the scent about the room. We open the window shortly after she leaves.

Prashant sleeps on a narrow second bed that is also in the room. He tosses and turns, hitting his elbows and knees on the tile wall.

****
The doctor bangs on the door at about 7am. “How are you?” he asks.

If all goes well, I will be released later in the afternoon. The nurses bring in more IV fluids and pills.

The day passes in the same manner, one hour blending into the next from sunup to sundown. The time is only punctured by two doctor’s visits and nurses bringing me more IV fluids.

Prashant steps out again to run errands, and I have the lower back pain and chills once again. “Kidneys!” I say to the nurses, pointing vainly to my lower back. They don’t understand. They give me another injection, and again I sleep, crying. “Bas,” a nurse says, stroking my oily hair. “Enough.”

Prashant returns. He can’t stand to see tears. It’s going to be all right, he says.

Nirguna Mataji arrives later and orders food for me from MVT, some salted pasta, soup and a roll. I am lucky I have only food poisoning. There was a Swiss woman visiting Food For Life. She left two days before I got here because she contracted malaria and pneumonia, and both of her lungs collapsed.

They come to give me more IV fluids. It is also time to change my IV tube to my other hands. My right hand is becoming inflamed. They rip it out of my right hand and stick a new one in my left. My right hand is so inflamed I can’t move it.

A thought crosses my mind: I have four days left in Vrindavan. If I can’t use my right hand, how am I going to hold my camera and finish my photo project?

I am to stay another night. The doctor will return in the morning to discharge me.


****

Halfway through the second night, I vomit again. Twice. Into the dirty red trashcan they keep under my bed.

I think it is because of the strong antibiotic they gave me the night before. I had problems with it when I was younger, my dad tells me.

I am feeling better later in the morning, and by noon, I am discharged. They finally take a urine sample, upon my insistence, to check for a kidney infection. Then I am in the back of the FFLV truck, bouncing down the narrow streets of Vrindavan back to MVT

****

Even now I can barely move my right hand. I can hardly type. The doctor did prescribe me some anti-inflammation cream, though.

I hope I can finish this photo project. I need to be able to use my right hand to do it, though. Nothing I can do about it at the moment.

I’ll wait and see what happens.