My high school friends – Hepzibah and two previously umentioned ones, Rachel and Sarah – went to India the year after we graduated and lived there for a while, working at an orphanage and sending me hilarious e-mails. One of my favorite e-mails I ever received was from Rachel, right after she got to India. It said, basically, “People keep trying to sell me whips. Why do they think I want whips? That are seven feet long? Do I look like that kind of girl? The kind of girl who wants to do kinky things to people seven feet away from me?”
It was great. (It was especially great because the next year, when she was in college, she one day walked into her dorm room and discovered a whip she had never seen before leaning against her wall. BECAUSE IT WAS HER DESTINY.)
So I went to India thinking that people would also try to sell me whips. Which didn’t happen. (I apparently do not look like that kind of girl.) Whips were, however, still a presence, because of the Whip Guys. (Not to be confused with the Blanket Guys.) The Whip Guys would wander the streets, carrying seven-foot-long whips that looked like they were made out of live snakes, and periodically whipping themselves. And then, after they whipped themselves, they would ask for money.
I wouldn’t give them money – I very rarely pay to see people whip themselves (unless it’s a holiday) – but apparently, this was a bad call. I heard later – although I can’t confirm; I’ve spent some sad, unsuccessful time on Wikipedia researching this phenomenon – that these dudes are eunuchs, and have huge religious significance. If you don’t give them money, it makes you cursed to five years of celibacy. So that… is hopefully not true.
But yeah! Eunuchs! Whips! Curses! What a party. I would end this better but I’m going to go make cookies instead.
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