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INDIA I’m stirred shaken, submerged. I’m not sure if I’ll remember every morning, I trust my words to flower into the following evening of forget-me-nots. I dream of blue tarps over your slums, Mumbai, your brown hands hold silver pots, I ignite alongside your garbage fires that burn infinite orange; I wonder why your boys often hold the hands, I discover the friendship between their fingers; I hear an everlasting honk symphony of bumblebee rickshaws in stereo; I marvel at all the cows on vacation from beef. Soon I stop for saccharine sugar cane juice before unsweetened eyes: the teenagers who grind the cane into juice stare my throat down as I drink. Wouldn’t You? Why do I get to have my life as I have it? I’m stoned back to life by their egg white eyes. I know how actors feel: the only other white people I’ve seen have been mannequins for saris. Later I’m in the backseat of an able, geriatric motorcycle in Udaipur, with traces of food poisoning, after seventeen hours aboard my second class train car, crammed with body parts that fit into every wrinkle of space. It’s nothing personal, only toes to your face; that weekend I dance for schoolchildren, all dressed in white and navy uniforms. I contort the Russian Standard, bellowing an old folk song. Never have I ever been attended to by so many curious cats: Where are you from? What is your name? Rassha. Rushya. Russia, I say. I’m BO-RIS. I trade my penmanship technique for smiles. I’m left-handed. I show them the crooked tweezer-claw style of holding my pen, paper angled, yours truly hunched over like candy cane. I show them my blue notebook cover of glued coins, ones from earlier entries: Turkey, Bulgaria Macedonia, UAE, USA; The Euro, The Kuna, The Grosz, but they want to see THE RUBLE. I hear rubble. Their teacher writes his name on a two-rupee coin and gives it to me for my currency collection. I can’t make out his name. It washes out, but by his email, I’ll call him Songara1994. He’s probably twenty, just about older than Alex, my dear brother. Alex1995. There are grad students here too. I tell them before we part that I have no girlfriend, no job, and no family. They laugh and shake my hand. I don’t get their names or how their hands write them. I sit with yet another Thumbs Up Cola by Lake Pichola. I look at the children splash and dump their palms into pools of afternoon felicity; the palace on the other side of the water appears to be an appropriate chaperone and the mountain range behind reminds me of gums that turtleneck our teeth. I like her, Kolkata, city of proper sidewalks; her yellow soap-dish taxis remind me of Travis Bickle from Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." Maybe he's got another gig here, after fender-bending in Times Square. Maybe he drives the rickshaw. Some sequel that would be. “Rickshaw Driver.” I imagine DeNiro complaining once more: “. . . all the animals come out at night: goats, cows . . . unsanitary,” and, of course, Daisy works for President Modi. Will someone say Masala Oscar? I'm a mess of the scent of split sugar cane, the Pani! (water), the chants of train platform vendors (their Chai-Chai-Chai!), men relieving themselves in utter darkness, me dangling my feet out of #13148 (The Uttar Banga Express) as it expresses its locomotion, standing and sleeping, watching men bathe in underwear on the rails between the platforms, with hoses and soap, and maybe even shampoo. These dreams I'll never mind re-dreaming, so long as I'm awake.