Void of Inspiration

I wake up to check my email and before the computer starts up I hear a sizzle. Quickly I remove the battery and make sure the laptop isn’t plugged in. It is no use, the machine won’t turn on… with a butter knife I strip out the hard drive and put it in the netbook – it at least starts spinning so I know it’s the machine. After a bit of investigation I figure out the fan has blown, the computer is trash to me now.

Craig wakes up and sees what I was doing and I quickly inform him that we are on another journey. How in the world are we going to get another machine way out here when it’s World War III outside the door? But we decide there isn’t anything else we can do but try.

We call for a taxi service at the front desk knowing we are going to get robbed on the fare. We venture outside the gates and tell the driver we want to go to the mall, holding up the newspaper clipping with the only laptop store mentioned in all of Dew Delhi. On we drive to several sites before he realizes what “mall” we are talking about. No, not the building in downtown hell called “the mall” – it is the actual posh mall 45 minutes away.

When we arrive it is like we are actually back in a western atmosphere except for the guys with the guns and scanning machine at the entrance. Craig feels a little better but I never expect much and just want to regain the only income I have available to get out of the country. Without my computer I cannot work and without working I am for sure stuck in India. Luckily, we have found a store and paying prices of the USA is no objection. Craig whips out his credit card. He has saved me once again and I know I owe this man more than my life. I am determined at some point in the future to pay him back for all his kindness for he has not the understanding of what it means for me to find such a novel person by my side.

I have done and lived to give kindness and help to everyone but it seems throughout this journey no one gives me a break. After several hours of working on bringing my laptop to some standard as to get back online just in time for work, I realize the situation ahead of me that day. Not even today will anyone give me a break and work brings me to tears. I did not cry because of work alone and I shall say I had never intended to explain on Void that I have ever cried at all. But what I have been through in the nearly 8 months and the series of events in the past few days, only to be overlooked at work was just too much.

How cruel of a world we live in? To go out on the streets on India should bring anyone to tears. Everyone tries to rip you off because the country has been brought to act like animals. There is nothing easier said about it. At home people have jobs and houses or apartments, have food and clean water accessible, shop or have the ability for clean clothes, some paying insane amounts for them. For what exactly can anyone be depressed about?

The slums of America can not compare to a stretch of block in India. It is as if bombs have went off, walls crumble and people are stretched out upon them, sleeping or dead, thousands of homeless children just begging to cars passing for they haven’t eaten in days, people hardly clothed and making shelters – shantytowns of the clothes they do have just to escape the heat. What possessions they have they can carry in their pockets. I grasp the necklace my dear best friend had given me before I left because although it is hardly anything to anyone in America, it is another few days of life to those out here.

You may see the pictures coming in the next few days, you may have already seen pictures in books and on TV, but you cannot understand the totality of it. You go home to a comfortable, clean setting and turn on your electronics and never save the pictures in your head of what exists out in the world. You will never understand what living is like and you will pity yourself for absolutely no reason. I can only feel sorry for you, because you are as those I have seen, animals in their own right. You are an animal of your own world and still you feel like you deserve more when you have no idea why. Not a million excuses could warrant your self pity.

Do you have a job and a home to which you are safe and secure? You may even have a car or take a bus or train that you can ride in whenever you like. Do you have access to fresh water and food and even clothing? How many of you have a closet of clothes at home only to desire more? How much do your shoes cost you? When you see a homeless man on the street do you shake hands with them or simply throw them money without looking in their eyes? Can you call someone if you need help and have them give you anything you need? Can you call 20 of these someone’s? If you have said yes to any ONE of these questions, then you have nothing to be upset about in your life. You do not know depression other than your own self pity, your own ego. When you have lived without all that, for short or an extended period of time, you can only then realize how a good portion of the world currently lives.

Get out of your ivory towers and start helping, stop hurting or wanting of yourself. Start to be humble and stop thinking that everyone else has what you do. Not one person can save the world with this attitude but millions can. If anyone takes anything away from Void, which Void has set out to do, take this away with you. Remember just how lucky you are to be able to walk into a store and afford those shirts, afford that 20th purse or that 50th pair of shoes. Remember how lucky you are to be able to walk to the corner and pick up a bottle of water or a simple apple, that may not look like much to you, but millions are in great need of.

Remembering alone cannot save the mass from such human horrors but as you remember, so will you change. A great mind recently begged of me to start a project, to start a 30 day repetition of learning something new, to work on each day as to ingrain it into my being. What this person does not know is that I have already been on that 30 day journey for months on Void and years to develop for the world. That project is to bring forth the tools needed to make a great change in the world. If it is working, it is hard to tell. But anyone watching and reading must be sure to know that anything is possible. Anything can be done if you could just pick yourself up and do it. Why can’t we all strive to make a great change in the world, to be good and kind without expecting anything in return, not even to expect the satisfaction of doing it?

Craig looks at me in horror as I informed him that I accidentally, being in the exhausted state of mind I was in, booked the wrong hotel. I BOOKED THE WRONG HOTEL! Then I laugh and turn around and tell him I accidentally booked a 5 star hotel in the center of New Delhi. Craig almost passes out.

We wake up this morning, after a rather pleasant sleep from the exhaustion, only getting up occasionally to check the locks on the doors and feel around to make sure our stuff is still in the room. No time for a shower we just want to get the refund of our money and get out of there. We kept being held off on getting the refund and we knew that we were going to be ripped off of the 14,000 rupees we gave the clerk. Well, we managed to get 7,000 back. We were still ripped off but it was a small price to pay for saving our lives. Then we asked them to call a cab to get us to the center of town so we can “get to work.”

The cab arrives and asks us if we are going to the airport. Although we would love to, we are stuck in India. So we say near the India Gate and he probes us for the actual location. We tell him the hotel and ask him the price for the cab. He drops his jaw and gently puts a towel over the meter. He tells us 500 rupees which is 5x the price it should cost to get us there. It is still a small price to pay for a safe place. Then we are on our way again, into the crowed, cracked out, slummed out, dirty, dreadful, how-the-fuck-can-you-live, dead people on the side of the road streets of New Delhi. Now we are a bit more aware of the driving. There are lanes in the road but no one sees them, they just drive wherever and however they want honking away. It’s amazing that there are no collisions at all, simply amazing – and not a seatbelt to be found, only a rope that hangs inches from the car door that you don’t even want to lean against for fear someone will tear you out of the window and drag you down to their hell.

We eventually pull into the center of town and only a block from the hotel did the streets finally clear up into a semi-slum city. Before we pull through the gate we look and see all the ritzy cars in the driveway, and us, Craig and I in a beat down old cab, both looking like we crawled out of the gutter, which actually felt like we did. The three guards at the gate smile at us in the backseat and welcome us to India. It seems as though they are angels in white suits coming to take our hands but oh no, they are just looking for bombs. They ask to look in the car and then go around and demand to open the trunk. Craig jumps out to help them and when all is good we pass through the gates. We jump out of the car and don’t even tip the driver because we already gave him a hell of a tip with the charge he laid on us.

Walking up to the front door we are stopped and our luggage is sent through a scanning machine – the ones that are exactly like the airport security. Then we take everything out of our pockets because WE then have to go through a scanner, EXACTLY like the airport security! When all is clear, a bunch of beautiful Indian women come to escort us and everyone there is in shock by our disheveled look. We get to the front desk and I say that we have a reservation under my name. Craig thinks it’s hilarious because they keep calling him Mr.-my last name instead of his. We just go with it. They see that we are all paid and an Indian woman escorts us up to the room. This hotel is better than any hotel I have ever seen in my life.

Craig jokes that this country is crazy and the woman laughs as we take the elevator to the 3^rd floor. He then begs me not to look into the huge walled mirror behind me and I gladly comply. She starts giving us the rundown explaining how our butler service – OUR BUTLER SERVICE – can get us anything we want and they will be at our door within 2 minutes of ringing – which they do and we have tried several times since then. Although all we want is a shower and real food. The only food we had was some unnamed soda and crackers from the last hostel. So we had our showers and ordered a big combo sushi meal, which was fantastic as we stare out the window into the forest beyond.

Time to explore – we have absolutely no idea what to do with ourselves because we just walked out of hell into a heaven we don’t think is actually real. We can see the pool from our room and Craig looks over thanking me for the wonderful fuck-up I made booking this hotel. So we grab books and make our way down to the pool – we are better looking than when we arrived. When we get there we see a sign that points to the second pool. Second pool? Well alright then! We make our way to the second pool – through a nice little sculpture garden and wow, a second pool which is by far more grand than the first. I go to rest enjoying the beautiful walled in pool area with the luscious green grass and India inspired steps.

After an hour or so of relaxing I notice that there are actually peacocks roaming around the pool – I honestly can say that this is a dream, it has to be, how can this not be? Well, Craig goes to find a bathroom but comes back within a minute laughing and telling me I have to see something. Every time he says “you have to see this” I know to get nervous. We walk into the building by the second pool and what do you know – a third pool! This one being a lap pool and it is completely deserted! First to the bathroom however, where of course the saunas are located and completed deserted as well.

Seven more days of this – seven more days… I have a 7 day vacation from work starting on Wednesday which leaves me plenty of time to soak in this myth, this dream, this horror I walked out of to be in a palace of some god. Now this blog is getting too long and the bill here is soaring, but let’s just worry about that later. Much, much later!