February 14, 2019 -
“You take pooping for granted, until you can’t.” - The Collected Wit and Wisdom of
Dr Michael Boothe (Vol. 2)
When you travel for extended periods of time, you often run out of basic necessities and you need to go shopping. Most of the time this is an immensely pleasing experience. You venture out with the locals shopping where they go and you get the opportunity for a more immersive travel experience.
That would be the case today, but for the fact that Imodium is an excellent drug. It works a little too well. So I now needed it to stop working and some basic pharmaceutical assistance. The first task was to find a pharmacy here. In India, they are not called pharmacies, the same is true in a lot of the world. Rather they are called Medicine stores or Chemists. And here in Jaipur they are clustered around hospitals as little shops.
My wonderfully blue turbaned Tuk tuk driver with a majestic Punjabi beard told me he knew where to go and off we went. To be discreet I told him I needed some aspirin or Tylenol figuring I would get what I wanted at the store quietly. What you and I might think of a “store” is not the case here in India.
We arrived to a series of shabby shops that spilled out onto the broken sidewalk. The morning traffic was just feet away in all it’s honking insanity. I was immediately hustled into a dark store that was little more than a single car garage filled with shelves of dirty boxes behind glass doors. There is no pharmacist. At the doorway there was a counter with a man looking at a paper not interested in me at all. On the floor sitting cross legged was an elderly man all in white with a large grey beard. He partially blocked the narrow floor and his purpose like many things in India was a complete mystery to me. He also didn’t move. It was the young teenager who greeted me at the door that would be my guide.
It was then things didn’t go as planned. So the young man who brought me in off the street asked in his limited English what I wanted.
“ A laxative”, I said quietly.
He looked quizzically at me then tried pronouncing the name a few times. Then in rapid fire Hindi he fired off questions at the bored man at the front.
“Laxi !? (Insert a lot of rapid fire Hindu) Laxi,...”, he yelled.
The bored man never looking up simply pointed at a top shelf to my right. I tried to make it easier. “Ducolax”, I said hopefully.
His yes lit up, “Yes, yes !!”, he exclaimed way too loudly. “Ducolax!”. And with that he proceeded to climb to shelves straddling the entire narrow store. He started pawing through the boxes looking for his prize until at last he jumped down in triumph and pushed a large mildly dirty white box and declared, “Ducolax!”
It wasn’t Ducolax. But by this time I had attracted the attention of several bystanders who had wandered into the store off the street. They were not customers just curious at what all the fuss was about.
The young man, Tarzan like, proceeded to climb the shelves again. More rapid fire Hindi followed as he searched for Ducolax. Now the men, who again were not customers and did not work there, all wanted to get in on the action. They all stepped over the man in white who remained in serene repose on the floor and fired off advice to the teenager. I didn’t know what to do. All of them appeared to want to help including my wonderfully attired Tuk Tuk driver who had also wandered in to lend a hand with the hapless westerner. He was the one guy I wanted to keep this from because I had to ride back with him.
More rapid fire Hindi followed mixed in with the occasional “Laxi!” Finally, with the group’s help, the young man found a box called “Ducofast”. I checked the ingredients and it was the right one. He charged me 28 cents for it.
I turned to leave through the small crowd that had developed now who were all filled with pride that they had rescued me. It was if they had performed CPR on me and I lived. They were very satisfied with themselves.
The man in white, who never said a word while sitting on the floor, patted his belly at me and smiled reassuringly. I thanked everyone sheepishly as I received several congratulatory pats on the back, stepped over the man in white, and climbed into the Tuk Tuk where my driver with a knowing smile waited.
The medicine did work though.
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