There's not much to report when you've been ill.
Apparently the pounding headache discussed the other day may have had some cause other than the annoyance of the Big Bazaar departmental store (they're actually called that here), as it turned out to be the portent of something (slightly) more serious. I, however, choose to blame everything that follows on the Big Bazaar, and no amount of convincing will ever get me to set foot in that place again. But I digress.
Yesterday, I woke up with a worse headache, which deteriorated throughout the day into an eye-splitting, feverish, nausea-inducing debacle. Worry not: I went to the doctor in the evening (my host family is extremely solicitous) and got antibiotics and more. I feel much better now, and a pathologist should be by in the afternoon tomorrow to check for all the more serious things (ameobas, typhoid etc) so I can, hopefully, rule them out.
Nonetheless, I wanted to start properly telling about the vast and rich heritage of Lucknow, about my family, or my housemates at the very least. This all has to wait because I have been convalescing in my invalid room for one and a half days, and have seen nothing more than the stairs as I shakily go down for meals. Luckily my room has at least one feature of interest.
In almost every Indian room, there live a few or more small geckos called 'chipkali' in Hindi. 'Chipna' means 'to stick,' and they were so named because of their extremely useful footpads, which enable them to stick to almost any surface, even upside down. Many Indian women are afraid of them for some reason -- it seems to be an expected feminine fear, something like American women's supposed fear of mice.
Anyways, I think they are charming and helpful. They earn their keep by eating an enormous number of bugs. They almost never fall off of the surface they're on, unless they get into fights with other chipkalis. And this, too, is a fascinating affair: they stomp their little feet and make a very strange noise that would scare you if you weren't used to it, a kind of growly clicking sound.
I was able to capture one of my resident chipkali's photos, above. There is also a very tiny baby one, but it was too demure to sit still for the camera, and attempts to get its portrait were in vain.
6 comments:
Hope you feel better soon. Where are you staying in Lucknow? I think I've narrowed it down to one or two possibilities.
Here's another hint: from my bedroom, I can see Mayawati's newly-cleared ground, with a side view of her enormous home compound. She just had everything uprooted several days before we arrived, and now the place is covered in mud and ridiculousness. They take down the brick wall, laboriously, they put up a new corrugated tin wall, the rain comes, it falls down, they put it up again, it falls down again...
I'm at Naheed Varma's.
Hi Katy: Howdy from your Flagler family types here in Wilmington, as well as your Mom and Dad. We send good wishes your way and hope you are feeling better soon. LOVED the post about your little lizard! Keep em coming. Rachel starts her new job today. Wish her luck.
Love, Dad & Mom
Also just remembered recently: chipna means 'to hide' and it's chipakna that means 'to stick.' Just for you Hindi types.
I hope that you are feeling better by now, Katy, and are not harboring any parasitical flora or fauna! I saw quite a few geckos in the southern part of Spain, but they were nocturnal and hung around the lights in the evening eating bugs. I think that the ones you have in your room are day geckos. How cool! And the cooler is cool too.
Can't wait to hear more about your amazing adventures!
Hi Unca Tom! Thanks for reading about my exploits!
About my scaly roommates: they are definitely around all the time, but I am pretty sure that their period of highest activity (and bug-eating) is at night. Do you have any idea what kind of geckos they might be? They make very distinctive noises, including squawks and a peculiar shlip-shlip-shlip as they walk along -- but only when they're about to fight with another gecko.
As you can see, I am fascinated by them. More keep showing up as they get over their initial terror of me: I think chasing them around with the camera scared them, because after I took that picture, they didn't show their faces for a week!
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