Bovis TYRANNIS

How many people fit on a blip on the map in India? In the case of Mathura,over 300,000. Today I was resolved to get somewhere even more "miniscule" so I hopped on a bus to tiny Vrindavan and its 60,000 inhabitants. I do mean that I hopped on the bus. There is no such thing as a bus stop here. The vehicle comes to a full halt only at the termini, leaving a steady stream of passengers jumping on and off at any moment. As we pulled into Vrindavam traffic was brought to a crawl by the digging of a massive ditch across which merchants still tried to peddle their wares, presumably offering to throw the goods across or to deliver them via a bag on a long stick. We saw here a typically Indian dilemma...four men attempting to maneauver a 45-foot lead pipe through heavy traffic by strapping it to a tricycle.

Vrindavan, an extremely popular pilgrimage site due to its association with the marriage of Krishna and Rama is somehow even more pious than Mathura. A majority of people on the street are half-naked pilgrim saddhus and the gall of the city's cows is the greatest I have seen yet. In addition to the many liberties taken by cows elsewhere, those in Vrindavan have adapted to outright confrontation with their human peons.

As I sat on a vacant stoop preparing to eat a lunch of rotis and dahl, I saw one of these bovine holier-than-thous making a beeline towards me. It stopped a foot or less from me, taking an extreme interest in my roti and then in my goodie-bag. I produced a dish of dahl, which drove the beast even closer to the verge of daylight robbery. The cow thrust its face withni inches of mine, staring me in the eyes with its snout at my lunch. I tried to resist but it loomed closer and closer until we touched brows. There was no way out...I was held prisoner by a docile but imposing behemoth five times my size, surrounded by religious zealots who considered it sacred and wielded heavy-looking sticks. In desperation I tossed my dahl away. It dribbled down the pavement as a rather bemused cow attempted to lick it up, granting me the precious inches needed to make my escape.

In a town of infirm beggars, veiled widows, and religious mendicants I was the most pathetic creature to be found. For the first time in my life I had succumbed to a mugging, and I had been mugged by a cow.

Resigned to eating plain rotis as I toured the various shrines, I made another discovery. Vrindavan, as everyone was eager to tell me, is the global headquarters of ISKCON. From this acronym I envisioned a cabal of smartly-dressed Indian government officials in a nuclear command bunker with Modernist-inspired elephants carved into a lead blast door, ready to bomb Pakistan into the stone age in a contest over silly mustaches. In fact ISKCON stands for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or as we call them, the Hare Krishnas. Sure enough, as one walks closer and closer to the Hare Krishna compound there is an increasing density of bizarrely multinational monks wandering aimlessly about with their hands clasped. They earned their common name for the frequency with which they say "Hare Krishna", their response to nearly all external stimuli, which they utter ceaselessly and inscutably like some sort of neo-Hindu Pokemon (attacks: New Age Orientalism, 15 culture damage; Praise Krishna, +25 social interaction resistance).

The guidebooks all concur that Vrindavan is dusty, giving me my first chance to make a radical mark on the travel guide world. Vrindavan is not dusty. It is muddy. Lonely Planet can suck a fat one.

I began to suspect that everyone in Vrindavan was either a nutjob or a fanatic (a purely philosophical distinction in my book anyways). Then things got really, really weird and confirmed this suspicion. A young devotee about my age approached me. We made the customary small talk until he said to me "You like poking? You want poking Indian?" The tone of his voice revealed he was not referring to a Facebook poke. I laughed. Repressed societies invariably create pervs, and in India one of the ways this expresses itself is by a prurient interest in how we foreigners get our thangs in action. "If you want poke Indian we can go." Oh great, I thought, it's hardly been a week and I've befriended my first Indian pimp. Why always with the pimps? I was very mistaken. My grin disappeared when when he leant over and whispered in my ear "We go to my room. Poke now. Please." Oh dear. Oh my.

Some two hours after being propositioned for anal sex by a monk I was back in Mathura. I hailed an auto-rickshaw to take me home in an increadingly fierce rain. The streets flooded and the entire city huddled in raised doorways looking at the rain in awe. Every other word I heard was "paani", water, followed by some incredulous-sounding remark. Even for Indians, this was some crazy shit. The waters surged down the streets until they were too deep for even the cycle-rickshaws to ply through, their pedals submerged by the torrent. My driver boldly pushed ahead until with great drama the auto-rickshaw stalled in its tracks and water flowed over into the cabin. As we bailed out the rickshaw tipped with our weight. It was afloat in the street. Not my rickshaw, not my problem, I figured as I forged on alone through the streets. Hundreds of Indians waved and shouted at me in English as I waded through the now knee-deep deluge. Their shouts were a mixture of admiration and ridicule. Aaaaaahhhhhhh, I thought, just like home.

note: it has been made known to me by persons with nothing better to do that the proper genus name for cows is bos not bovis and that they belong to the family bovinae. Blow me.

ACTUAL CORRECTION: I would like to correct the egregious error of writing that Krishna married Rama. This is quite impossible. First of all, Krishna and Rama are characters in different epic tale. Secondly, they are both incarnations of Vishnu. And finally, they are both male. Rama was married to Sita.