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My vacation to Mumbai and Bangalore became a study in weight loss. The day after arriving in Mumbai, I fell sick with nausea and a fever and had to stay in bed while Kiki’s friends offered me food that I couldn’t swallow and medical advice that worked until I got to Bangalore, when I spent the entire night in the bathroom expelling every once of body water in every possible way. The next morning, I  implored Kiki to take me to the hospital. She swept me into an auto-rickshaw, haggled with the driver, and later haggled with the nurse to ensure my position in the queue. She waited while I received shots and antibiotics and stool tests, then walked me to Jaaga, her Bangalore work base, and put me to bed.

The good news: I don’t have giardia or tapeworms or any other excrete-able parasite and/or bacteria. The bad news: what do I have? Who knows. When I asked the doctor, she wagged her head (none of her curls moved) and announced that I had “an Infection.” Where? I asked, and she vaguely pointed at my torso: “Stomach…bowel…intestines…antibiotics…dehydration…electrolytes…” She dismissed me with another head wag (was she wearing a wig?).

So that’s my diagnosis. How to treat it? Eat two horse pills of heavy-duty antibiotics morning and evening, drink a lot, sleep a lot, and eat sparingly. No caffeine, no alcohol, no chillies, no milk, no raw food, no street food, no high-acid food, no food at all except yogurt, rice, chips and wafers. Last night, I broke out of my lethargy and joined Kiki’s friends for a good-bye dinner on Mosque Road in Bangalore. The menu featured “chicken clear soup,” and I almost cried when I tasted it. I’m thinking about setting up a shrine to my Aunt Awesome in California, who makes the best chicken soup in God’s good world.

Although I spent most of my time in the beds and bathrooms of Kiki’s family and friends, I do have a few impressions of Mumbai and Bangalore: I went on two twenty-four hour train rides (once alone and once with Kiki), hung out with Kiki’s gay activist friends, explored the Bandra suburb of Mumbai, saw the latest Bollywood chic flick, haggled in a street market, had coffee with some cool French backpackers, and learned a bit about Hindustani and Carnatic music. I will write about all of these experiences in my next few posts. For now, I will leave you with my strongest impression: relief. Relief  from the strict dress code and male/female etiquette of Chennai. Relief from the day-to-day battles of haggling and avoiding eye contact with passers-by.

Mumbai and Bangalore are more liberal and—in my experience walking through well-to-do neighborhoods—more Western than Chennai. Middle class girls wear jeans instead of kurthas. Families shop at opulent malls and drive SUVs. Trendy young things lounge in bars and coffee shops where Rihanna hits alternate with the latest Bollywood special. I have to admit: I enjoyed it. I enjoyed international brand-names, spoken English, tidy streets and gated communities—even as beggars held out their hands and Kiki’s never-ending chant against capitalism and gentrification rang in my head. I enjoyed displays of wealth because they represented a freedom that I missed in Chennai: the freedom to be young and a woman and all alone. The freedom of knowing the rules (Western rules) and being able to follow them. The freedom of not feeling guilty.

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