Poop and Rally

In college there was a term for overindulging, extracting that overindulgence from your body, and recommencing overindulging. It was called the "boot and rally." On Sunday for the first time, I witnessed the food-based India equivalent, I shall call it the "poop and rally."

It was the last morning of my sister and brother-in-law's (also named John and referred to in this post as "Husband John") trip, and we awoke at a rain-soaked Neemrana Fort, which is typically a two hour drive from Gurgaon. The plan for the day was to wake up, eat a small breakfast, leave by around 10:00am, and head directly to The Leela in Gurgaon for a final day brunch celebration. I'm happy to say we met that objective, even if the journey to get there wasn't so simple.

Neemrana Fort Palace

We started out late, which wasn't a big deal. I knew this would happen and had built it into the schedule. After a slow drive through the town of Neemrana (for some reason, Lindsay can always be seen hanging out of the window trying to take photographs of this town; she's been there six times and yet still has this fascination about capturing village life through the blurred lens of a moving vehicle), Kailash steered the car onto NH8, which is the major highway between Delhi and Jaipur. NH8 is a work in progress and will one day be a beautiful highway. That day has not yet arrived. There is construction. A lot of construction. On Sunday, there were also trucks. If you've been to India, you know that most trucks are not road-worthy, most move quite slow, and most have no idea what "lane" to use. In other words, lots of trucks plus lots of construction equals lots of extra time on the road.

Pick a lane, any lane

About twenty minutes into the ride it struck. Something had not agreed with John at breakfast. His discomfort grew with each slowly passing kilometer. Finally, he requested a stop. Husband John is hygienically particular. He's not the type that would elect to stop at an Indian gas station or a roadside dhaba. Unfortunately, he had to stop at both. After each of those stops, his condition didn't improve. By the third stop, which happens to be the only McDonald's on that particular stretch of highway, he found a western style toilet. Let's just say we were there for a while. So long that my sister asked that I go check on him. When I asked if he needed anything (which seemed like the most unobtrusive question possible), his response was, "I could use a new body." Not good times. Twenty-five minutes after we arrived at McDonald's we were finally able to leave.

By this point, we had obviously decided to forego brunch so that he could just go home and rest until their midnight departure. Then something strange happened. As we passed the toll booth into Gurgaon, my sister looked at Husband John and said, "you know what, you actually look a little better; your color is back." Husband John's response, "You know what, I actually feel pretty good." That was the only trigger the three of us needed to say (in unison) to him, "So maybe we should go to brunch?"

Victory!

And we did. I've never seen Delhi Belly pass so quickly and easily. I've also never seen someone that just had major stomach issues attack a raw bar with such reckless abandon. Crab legs? Yep. Shrimp? Why not. Oysters? You betcha. I'm not sure he had a plate that hadn't been pulled from a serving station with fish on top of ice. And why should he have? How much worse was it going to get for him that day?

Utterly amazing. The poop and rally.