(PICTURE: The animals here imitate the humans.)
Think for a second: When was the last time you saw two grown up men in a fist fight. Okay, now think harder, when was the last time you saw two grown up SOBER men in a fist fight? Personally, I don't think I've ever seen that (I'm assuming at a sporting event the combatants were drunk), or at least not in the last decade.
Well, today I saw my THIRD and FOURTH fist fight between two Indian men. Okay, technically they all weren't fist fights but they did all at least have one person grabbing the other and shoving them with a finger in the face and voices raised to a threatening level. Here's the four situations as best as I could interpret them:
FIGHT 1: This occurred on a bus between two passengers. I believe they were vying for some standing space. They started to yell at each other and grabbed one another on a crowded bus. Finally the bus ticket collector threw them both off...except one then jumped back on and I think said, "I'm cool" in Hindi.
FIGHT 2: This was the scariest one. Huyen and I were at the train station when a huge crowd started to form around two men. One guy was jacked (mom, that's slang for very strong) and had the other guy by the belt buckle and was basically dragging him with his other finger in the guy's face. The other guy looked petrified and was waving his hands as if to say, "Sooo sorry for trying to pick pocket you. I don't know what I was thinking." Well, who knows what he was saying but the imaginary conversation went something like that. Huyen and I jetted before the crowd turned more raucous.
FIGHT 3: This morning two guys on the street were wrestling with each other. They weirdly had both their hands clasped like they were doing a WWF test of strength. I'm pretty sure one of them had bumped his rickshaw into the other.
FIGHT 4: Just now two other guys on the street were in each other's face. One guy was holding the other guy's undershirt and jabbing his finger at him. There were no context clues to this fight so I can only imagine they are ex-lovers who bumped into each other and still aren't over one cheating with Bengali sweet shop owner.
One time on a bus, I saw a guy reading a book called "The Argumentative Indian." I have no idea what that book is about but I plan on checking it out of the library when I get home. Just from the title though, I can only hope it explains why Indian men are so confrontational.
As far as the picture above, one day while we were walking in Agra we had to jump back about twenty feet because two holy bulls started to tussle in the street. At first it was sort of amusing as they locked horns, but it turned pretty ugly when one bull kicked the crap out of the other one. I'm no vet but I'm fairly sure the bull broke the other bull's leg because the other bull limped away, gushing blood. It was pretty nasty. Huyen and I stood sort of in shock as about a dozen Indian guys laughed their asses off next to us.
Oh, India.
