INDIA IS ONLY A NOVEL AWAY

Remember the old adage: you always want what you can't have. Maybe that's why some of us are dreaming more of exotic travel now while the COVID pandemic has made unnecessary travel foolish.

I think India is one of the most exotic countries in the world. (I've visited about forty for work and for fun.) That does not mean India is my favorite travel destination. However, I suspect everyone reading this blog would be fascinated by aspects of India. For example, the Taj Mahal is breathtaking as it appears among the mists rising from the Yamuna River at sunrise. The folk dances of Hindu nomads of Rajasthan are mesmerizing. Please note their snake dances are much more artful than the Hollywood renditions of the snake dance.

However, there are many revolting aspects to India. The pollution of the holy rivers of India, the Ganges and the Yamuna, is staggering. The overcrowding and filth in markets can make a tourists happy to retreat to the safety of their hotel rooms.

I tried to capture the disparities in India in my novel DIRTY HOLY WATER and demonstrate that it's easy to dissect another culture and not notice inconsistencies in our own culture. For example, while "families" are an almost sacred concept in the U.S., some American families have a negative impact on their members

Blurb for DIRTY HOLY WATER: Sara Almquist is about to become engaged and leave for a vacation in India when she becomes the chief suspect in the murder of a friend. Only the friend and her family, well to put it politely, have a couple of dark secrets. Sara soon realizes the difference between a villain and a victim can be small - alarmingly small, especially in a dysfunctional family. Paperback and ebook at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960028587

Since my introduction teased you with comments about India, I thought you might like to see India as Sara saw it on the first morning of her vacation with her boyfriend Sanders. I bet you'll be surprised.

EXCERPT from Dirty Holy Water (Chapter 18)

Delhi was an assault on the senses. Although Sanders wanted to hire a driver and travel in India without a guide, Sara had convinced him that neither of them had time to plot a trip to India beforehand and a small group tour with an experienced guide would be more relaxing. As she looked out the windows of the bus at the clothing market, she was glad she was safely enveloped in a large vehicle.

It was early morning but a dense crowd surged around a heap of clothing nine feet tall and almost thirty feet long. From the bus, the clothing looked like discards, but men were crawling up the sides of the pile and selecting pants, shoes, and shirts. Occasionally, the men squabbled over a piece of clothing. Women in brightly colored saris stood several yards from the pile holding clothes retrieved by the men.

Sara had been told that India lived in several different centuries all at once. She thought the clothes market was an example of this. All the young men wore modern Western wear—slacks and short sleeved shirts, usually ill matched. They looked a part of the twenty-first century. All the women wore saris. Sara imagined their saris didn’t look much different than those worn by Indian women in the nineteenth century or earlier. A few older men wore only a long white cloth wrapped around their loins, which she guessed had been traditional wear for rural men for thousands of years.

In a nearby food market women were the predominant shoppers. Sara was glad the bus didn’t stop. The aroma emanating from the market wasn’t pleasant, but the noise level wasn’t as painful as it had been in the clothing market. She had noted similar odors in open markets of many tropical countries. The smell was an intermingled mix of rancid fats, the pungent aroma of spices, the sickening sweet scent of overripe fruit, and the odor of human sweat and urine.

The stench wasn’t actually as bad as she had expected...

Mainly, Sara felt ashamed as she sat on the bus. She prided herself on seldom letting “unpleasantries” stop her from doing what needed to be done and thought most Americans missed many great opportunities because of their squeamish behavior. Yet, here she was behaving like a nervous, pampered tourist. This trip would not be relaxing—and certainly not romantic—if she couldn’t overcome her negative attitudes about India. Any location, foreign or local, was as interesting as you allowed it to be. At the very least, Sara needed to be honest with Sanders.

Sanders nudged her. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

Sara didn’t think this was the time to start being more honest.

Do you think Sara's trip to India might be less romantic than expected? Read DIRTY HOLY WATER to find out.

Bio: J.L. Greger is a biology professor and research administrator from the University of Wisconsin-Madison turned novelist. She has consulted on scientific issues worldwide and loves to travel. Thus, she likes to include both science and her travel experiences in her thriller/mystery novels in the Science Traveler series. Award-winning books in the series include: Murder: The Flu Is Coming, A Way to Lose Weight, Malignancy, Riddled with Clues, and A Pound of Flesh, Sorta.

Learn more at: http://www.jlgreger.com