Lalit

My body sweated relentlessly while I lived in India. It started at my hairline and pooled its way down my face and beneath my eyes. By mid-day, I could scratch the layers of sweat and dust off of my skin with the tips of my fingernails.

I would start at my forehead and move in a sweeping motion down my temples, along my cheeks bones, and in between the oily cracks of my nose and face.

My nails were permanently dirty with pomegranate juice and city dirt at this point so it felt only fitting to move the filth and store it beneath them.

To top it all off, the boiler in my bathroom did not get hot enough to get my face clean. Small zits rooted their way into my temples and stayed there for six months.

The film on my face matched the filth in my clothes. No laundry service could remove the stale feeling from my socks. My leggings became dirty and stretched out but even washing and drying them did not return them to their original shape.

Most of this became the new usual. I was dirty everywhere but so were the other Westerners I saw on the street. I even met some Israeli people who walked around barefoot and smoked enough Indian hash to sedate a small elephant.

What never become usual was the constant and permeating sweat.

When I would return to the hotel I was living at from a steamy walk across town or a day working in the slum I was drawn to the hotel's office like a moth to fire. The room's temperatures were that of an icebox. When I penetrated its temporary plastic walls coolness would hit me like a wave.

I would sit across from Lalit, the man who managed the property, at the desk he was permanently located behind. While the window unity roared with coolness we would passionately discuss the inconvenient contract I had found myself in with him that committed me to a six-month stay at his hotel.

My first days in India were filled with terror. I was awakened in my sleep by street sounds and would bolt upright in bed assuming someone was breaking my door down. After quite a few nights of sleep that stopped and the hotel became my safe space. I hoped to live out my six months there and then head back to the safety of the States.

When Lalit approached me with a contract committing me to a six-month stay at his hotel with an overly inflated rate, I of course signed.

Take my money and give me the refuge of the Sri Ganga Hotel, I thought as my pen met paper.

To my surprise, the overwhelming sense of horror I experienced was eventually replaced with curiosity that turned to bravery. I had decided that when my colleague I was working with left for the States I too would leave, not for the states though.

I planned to travel throughout India and Sri Lanka and not have to experience the winter months in Uttarakhand. This plan would eventually become my reality.

I worried a lot about the contract between Lalit and me. It seemed that I switched the commitment of a 9-5 job for one of a different variety. Yes, my contract with Lalit allowed me to live in India but the thought of being tied down gave me flashbacks to cold office spaces.

I wanted out. I would not let my habit of making half-hearted commitments seep into my life in India.

A few months passed and the arguing with Lalit continued. During that time I learned a few things about him. His father was blind and Lalit was his primary caregiver. He never married which I thought was odd. He had a habit of screaming at his help. And, he had been in a motorcycle accident that led to his constant limp.

Apart from his arriving and leaving the hotel he rarely left the cool of his office. But when he did leave I would notice his limp and then I began to notice it growing increasingly worse.

The thing I didn’t realize until living in a developing country was that the most ordinary things can kill people. Women die regularly in childbirth, diarrhea and infections kill children, and entire families can be killed in one scooter accident.

Remember how I told you that my plan to travel became a reality? It was not because Lalit let me out of the contract or because I paid off my commitment, it was because he died.

His limp was due to a loosening implant that was placed in his hip after his motorcycle accident. The loosens led to infection and the infection led to his death.

My doctor friend told me that the only to get rid of the infection was to get rid of the implant. In the States, this was no big deal. The person would go into surgery and have the implant removed and then they would start to get better.

Unfortunately, Lalit didn’t have access to this kind of medical care and his situation would turn into a life-ending deal.

After a while, it wasn’t the sweating that kept waking me up in the night but Lalit’s painful cries that echoed down the empty hallway.

No one could offer him relief from a perfectly run-of-the-mill medical complication and it killed him.