“So where would a thirsty fellow find a bottle of Kingfisher Strong Premium Beer to wash down some bad art?” I asked Vilasrao.

“That’s even more hypocritical than usual, even for you,” he scoffed. “I’ve heard your stuff described as much worse than mere crap.”

“Exactly my point,” I replied. “Now that I’ve taken crap to a new plane, going back is even boringer than before.”

Vilasrao rolled his eyes, a gesture I usually interpret as surrender. After Vilasrao and I agreed to disagree about art and agree on Kingfisher Strong Premium Beer, we had a very pleasant afternoon.

Mirza was working as a unit in a human conveyer belt on a construction site next to one of Mumbai’s largest art galleries. (From what I’ve seen in passing, women at Indian construction sites are apparently relegated to carrying improbably large loads of bricks or debris balanced on their heads.)

According to the story Priyanka told me, a western man in a suit approached the construction site foreman and asked who had left a bag and a half of rubbish and a pile of other detritus beside the gallery. The foreman apologized profusely, and pointed out Mirza as the culprit.

Well, it turns out that the man in the suit was a Very Important Curator from a Very Important Museum. (Priyanka couldn’t remember whether it was the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim, or maybe the Whitney.)

The curator approached Mirza and asked her a number of esoteric questions about the debris, which he thought was an art installation addressing inequities in contemporary Indian society.

Mirza, who spoke little English, replied to most of his remarks with, “I cannot use words to answer.” Mirza’s silence—always a good policy for an artist—lead the curator to conclude that “her work speaks for itself.”

Mirza ended up accepting a lucrative commission to install a site-specific piece in New York. She more or less repeated what she’d done before—always a good commercial policy for an artist—and hauled the contents of seventeen of the museum’s waste baskets into an empty gallery.

Chance smiled on Mirza’s decision.

It turned out that the trash contained a number of disposable diapers (?!) as well as a tray of sashimi that was rejected by a visiting vegan. In lay terms, the gallery stank like a Calcutta slum on a hot day. In the critical artspeak of the reviewer from the Times, “Mirza’s attention to the olfactory senses reminded western viewers that there’s more to ‘multimedia’ than just sight and sound.”

The trash also contained a Glock pistol, which the New York Police Department tried to confiscate as evidence in the unsolved murder of a petty drug dealer. The museum refused, citing the artist’s freedom of speech rights. The ensuing court battle turned out to be a publicity windfall for Mirza.

Mirza’s first “installation” is protected under a glass canopy outside Mumbai’s Terrace Art Gallery. No one is quite sure about the whereabouts of the artist herself; rumor has it that she’s avoiding the commercial art world—always a good policy for an artist.

As a result of my culinary excesses—or perhaps an unrecognized allergy—my nose has been running a lot since I got here. That’s why I’m not surprised by all the stashes of toilet paper I’m finding among my things: I never learned to blow my nose without the use of some sort of processed cellulose pulp.

It’s a dependence most Indians don’t seem to share. Every morning, I listen in amazement as the natives make an incredibly wide range of guttural gasping and honking sounds as they collect and expel all the mucous that’s accumulated overnight. I think the Indians have the right idea. It seems silly to rely on paper for the most basic biological functions.

Toilet paper here is something of a luxury—which I suppose it is—and is marketed accordingly. The packaging on the roll of Lovett Toilet Tissues I bought features a creepy photograph of a man standing outside the toilet stall in use by a little girl. This is the first label I’ve seen that extolls the virtues of a roll of toilet paper at such length:

• Made from Ultra Soft VIRGIN PULP TISSUES, Imported from APP Ltd., Singapore
  
• Gentle to skin
  
• Super absorbent
  
• Environment friendly
  
• Untouched by hand
  
• Internationally acclaimed quality
  
• Hygienic Economical, Disposable

Imported, disposable toilet paper seems like the right idea in the wrong place, or possibly the reverse.

To celebrate over some cheap but cheerful miniature bottles of acidic French Merlot, I’ve composed a new song.

Drinking, on a jet plane,
Don’t know when I will drink again,
Oh surly flight attendant,
Please don’t go.

“Monsieur!” she reprimanded, “We do not joke about drinking.”

“Ah, but we who are not French drink about joking,” I explained. “And are we not the paying passenger, and are you not—how do you say—la grande vin femme de chambre du avion?”

And with that, she stalked off. She returned a couple minutes later with four wee bottles of Merlot, slammed them on my tray—whacka! whacka! whacka! whacka!—then huffed off down the aisle.

Oh well.

Drinking, on a jet plane,
Don’t know when I will drink again,
Oh surly flight attendant,
Please don’t go.

I know this is a tautology, but I was looking forward to my first trip to India as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see that country for the first time. I ended up only taking a dozen photographs or so, and most of those were illustrations of one sort or another for my notebook.

Although I did see lots of interesting sights, I thought that most of the photographs I could have made would have just been clichés. These include “land of many contrasts” images, (cattle sleeping in front of office towers, Indians in fashionable Western clothes talking on mobile phones as they walk past beggars—with and without leprosy), misspelled English signs (Beware of Hoodlumps, Kentacky Chicken Shack), religious imagery and/or people in apparel I didn’t understand, poverty, filth, et cetera.

There’s a lot more to India than the obvious clichés. I’m not sure what that is, perhaps I’ll find it later. Or perhaps not. In any case, who wants to see—let alone create—more clichés?

By contrast, I quite enjoyed all the Hindu festivities in India. I heard amazing drummers on the streets, and saw some really great television shows. (I’ve never used the phrase “really great television” before, and shall probably never use it again.)

I only heard a Christmas jingle once. An Indian cab driver had wired his car to play a tinny version of Jingle Bells when he reversed. Another cab driver had configured his cab to play Happy Birthday when backing up, both tunes made a nice counterpoint to all the horns that blared out the first couple of bars to the theme from The Twilight Zone.

Where’s Shiva when you need him? He’d look even better with Santa’s cranium added to his necklace of skulls.

“Let’s see,” said Aaron, “There’s Jesus; there’s Mary; there are the three wise men. But tell me about the poodles, these I haven’t heard about.”

“Poodles are a traditional Christian symbol of humanity’s folly in attempting to dominate the animal kingdom,” I explained. “The deformed dogs represent the presence of Satan, the repulsive triumph of evil over good.”

Aaron and Sadie nodded, then suggested we head back to the lab.

I still haven’t told them that the critters they thought were poodles were supposed to be sheep.