The Great State

Epilogue: Signs and Wonders

2007-05-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

As most of you know by now, I've been back since April 4th. I spent a few weeks acclimatizing at my mother’s middle-class home on Virginia’s Atlantic coast, which seemed fit for a maharaja with its clean walls, hot water, mange-free dogs, soft, broad beds, and steady, ample servings of familiar food. After nearly 2 years continuously away from a neighborhood that I never called home in the first place, those evenly spaced houses, well maintained roads and wide-isled shops were as hard to believe as the rickety chaos I had just left behind.

My jet-lag was pretty bad. I couldn't stop talking long enough to sleep for the first two days, and then I couldn't move for the second two. Also, it snowed on the day of my arrival, and I was constantly shivering for a week.

But I finally adjusted to the time and temperature.

During the 7 weeks since my return, I have often been asked how it feels to be back, and the thing that I try to express is something I’ve found delightful and unexpected: even though I'm back in my country of origin, I still have the momentum of travel. The adventure continues, and this just happens to be a different episode. Since my 2 weeks in suburbia, I’ve been to Charlottesville, Staunton, and Blacksburg, Virgina, as well as DeKalb, Illinois and Port Washington, Wisconsin, and I've finally landed in Brooklyn, dog in tow. I spent 2 weeks camping on a friend’s floor before Talia and I found an apartment, and I’m still pretty much sans furniture.

Anyhow, to wrap up this blog (this really is the LAST post EVER), I wanted to publish a file of photos that I kept along the way of things I found arrestingly funny, bizarre, or informative. There are quite a lot of odd things in NYC, too; but the ones below happen to be from south Asia.

ANIMAL TRASH CANS
Throughout southern India fiberglass monkeys, rabbits, and penguins patiently await (in the most irregular spots) deposits from the public.

This one disturbs me,

as does this one.

THE GRAPHIC ARTS:
South Asia is rich in unemployed hands, so most advertisements and instructional signs are hand-painted. On top of that, people have the time to paint all over the place, with greater or lesser degrees of skill, which makes for a colorful country.

Decorative

Persuasive
Each day as I walked by, I marveled at the man sitting patiently on a bench in front of this ad, feathering in details and gluing on actual pebbles. The following two pictures bring the writings of Ayn Rand to mind.

I don't know what this is about, which may be the reason I find it interesting.

I just like this one.

Does the mayor of London know he has a coffee shop in Kerala?

Puppy 2000 soda?

Classy!

Even classier!

Instructional
I'm going to let most of these speak for themselves, as they did to me.

This sign should be posted on every corner.

THE HIGH
In India, they cover all the bases. God knows, gods must be preventing collisions constantly.

Of course, gods prefer the well-mannered.

Weird angels.

Don't ask me...

AND THE LOW
It always interests me to see how the practicalities of life are accomplished.

According to this classified ad, a teacher can expect to be paid a little over a dollar an hour.

And in India, it's not immigrants who threaten to take all those highly desirable manual labor jobs, it's animals.

This is cooking fuel, dung flattened into patties and dried in the sun.

This is how temples get painted,

and fortunes are told,

and clothing is pressed.

Who would have thought that teddy bears would make such great cricket bases.

I was flossing my teeth one night in Sri Lanka, and out popped a filling, so I found a dentist the next day.

It was a little frightening, the cluttered, improvised character of the place,

but the filling was only 5$, and it's still holding!

Sending a package from India is a long process. First you have to box your stuff, then find someone with a sewing machine.

He cuts a coarse, off-white fabric to fit your box and sews a covering, then he stitches it closed by hand,

and seals the package with wax. Finally, you can write the address and stand in line for a long time at the post office.

Coke is served in re-used, sterilized (I hope) bottles.

I'll leave you with this, a grouping that I'll never understand or forget.

Five Hops, Four Skips, And A Jump

2007-04-26T14:59:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Delhi around 10am after a three-hour flight from Chennai and proceeded from the airport to Paharganj, the backpacker area near the central train station. With only 30 hours left in my least favorite city ever, it didn’t seem so bad. I spent a few hours resting in a tiny, windowless room at the top of three flights of dark, vertiginously steep stairs. There was just enough room beside the bed for my bag and a tiny TV stand with peeling lacquer. After my 3am departure from Auroville and all the hours that came between it and the hotel room, TV seemed about the right speed. When I attempted to turn it on, all I got was static, so I took a nap instead.

In the late-afternoon, I ventured out for some last minute shopping, and stopped at a restaurant where I had eaten on my last visit to Delhi. It’s long and narrow, barely accommodating a row of tiny, two-tops. The cashier is at the front, which opens directly into Paharganj Main Bazaar, and the kitchen is on top of a tiny set of improvised stairs at the back. At the stairs, the hall branches right to accommodate two more small tables, claustrophobically closed off from the street and below the opening in the floor above the stairs. That’s where I found myself, seated next to a handsome, young Basque named Paulo. It turned out that he was leaving for Europe the next morning after several months, so we were in the same situation, living out our final hours India. Paulo asked me what I thought of the place. Not content with my answer, which didn’t include anything metaphysical, he asked if I thought it was true, what so many people seem to think, that India is an especially spiritual land.

My initial answer was no, I don’t think spirituality is place-contingent, but as I kept talking, it came out that I did think there was something unique going on. Of all the places I have been, India challenges your boundaries most. If you’re afraid of dirt, unimaginably disgusting events will ensue. If you have personal space requirements, they will be constantly violated. If you’re stingy, people will try their best to part you and your money, and if you hate noise, you’ll be drowned in the cacophony. I know, sounds extremely un-magical, but I learned a lot by having to constantly readjust my own requirements, and on the positive side, when you really need something, a friend, a laugh, a plan, India delivers. It’s probably not magic; rather it’s the fact that there are so many people and so few enforced rules that anything can, and does, happen.

When I returned to the hotel, I mentioned that my TV had no reception, and the manager said he’d send a boy up to check on it. Thirty minutes later, he jiggled the cable cord barely connected to the wall by one wire, and pointed and clicked the remote to confirm that no channels were coming in. Satisfied that it really did not work, he informed me that the problem was my 350 Rupee room. The rooms for 400 had working TVs, while the others, apparently, featured broken ones. Without a TV or a book, and having had enough of the street for one day, I went through my bag, discarding all the things that were too tattered and dirty for America.

I spent the next day hanging around: I didn’t have to leave for the airport until 7pm, I didn’t have any shopping to do, and I didn’t feel like making any last minute excursions, so I sat at a street-side table and marveled at the goings on. Bloated cows and mangy dogs scavenged the narrow street amidst multi-direction, laneless traffic, tourists, locals, auto-rickshaws, bicycle-rickshaws, cars and carts, all managing, eventually, to make progress in their chosen direction. Across the street from me a vagrant boy sat down in a gap between a motorcycle and a makeshift stall on the edge of traffic, spent 15 minutes constructing an ingenious house out of trash, and then went around trying to sell it. It was election season, so local campaigners in rickshaws plastered with oily smiles and slogans drove slowly up and down the street, playing music and shouting from bullhorns at volumes that obscured their messages in feedback.

Three stories up, atop a sign suspended from a window by a rusted cable, two pigeons pecked at each other and retreated to opposite ends of their narrow platform. One flew at the other and landed atop its back then hopped back into its own corner, where the other returned the attack. There wasn’t any food up there to fight over, so I was curious about their point of contention. Watching this go on for several minutes, these two birds with open air on either side into which they could easily fly away rather than continue their pointless pecking, it struck me that this was India’s gift to me: I now understood that if something bothers you, it's absurd to stand there and fight it, because pecking at something is just a waste of time when the possibilities are endless.

Eventually, the pigeons figured it out too, and I went to my room to shower in preparation for the big journey: after liftoff from Delhi, I would be 42 hours in transit. An hour later, bag in tow, I went back to the same café, where I had arranged for a taxi to the airport. While I waited, a skinny man emerged from an alley carrying a political banner about one storey tall and three quarters the width of the street. He held onto the canvas sign by the cross-supports on the back as he made his way, amazingly, across the street to a bicycle rickshaw. Once he and the sign mounted into the passenger seat, the driver began to pedal slowly, and they somehow made progress: apparently, anything is possible. I was late to the airport due to my tardy taxi, and there was a line 30 minutes long just to enter, but eventually I was seated in a jet, full of anticipation. I took five different airplanes, meeting an old friend during my Seoul layover and having dinner with an uncle and aunt at LAX. Two days after I left the ground in Delhi, I was greeted in Virgina by a little brother, a gentle mother, and an adorable dog.

LAX

The City Of Dawn

2007-04-26T13:34:00.000-05:00

Although Talia and I had planned to meet up in India, she notified me of her conclusions about the place shortly after she arrived in Chennai, the capital city of India's most impoverished state, Tamil Nadu, via email: “I fucking hate India!” was how she put it, and off she flew to Nepal. I arrived there around 10pm a week later, and as I scanned the city map next to the baggage claim, I had to admit that I wished I carried a Lonely Planet: I didn't have the energy reserves to put everything together myself, and I couldn’t decide what to do with the last few weeks of my trip. The Theosophical Society has a branch in Chennai that I was vaguely interested in seeing, there is a place two hours south that I had heard was worth a visit, there is a place four hours south called Auroville, and there is a bird sanctuary a few hours inland. I was torn between two routes: I could spend ten days in the south, making a triangle ending up back in Chennai to catch a plane to Delhi for my departure, or spend a few days in Chennai, then take the two day train ride to Calcutta, stop there for a few days, and then travel two more days by train to Delhi. Not having crucial information like seat availability on northward trains, I decided to get a room near the train station and go there the morning.

I was watching the baggage emerge onto the conveyor belt when a tall, intent man with a thick French accent struck up a conversation. It turned out that he was familiar with Chennai from previous visits: the hotels near the train station were usually full, and he recommended another neighborhood, so we agreed to share a cab into the city. I was reflecting on the strange way that things and people come along when you really need them as we walked out of the grimy, glass doors and into the loose-limbed entanglement of people waiting for relatives, friends, customers, or victims. As we drove into the hot, many-colored-night, I was happy to be back: I realized then that I loved stinking, chaotic, incomprehensible, miraculous India.

Jean was a student of Buddhism on a break from his studies near Kandy. After taking rooms in his usual hotel, we went out in search of food. Once we found it, we discussed Auroville, where he had recently spent three months. He told me exactly how to get there and recommended a place to stay. Auroville had been lodged in my mind for eight years, ever since an Indian exchange student in college told me about her stay with a community of potters there; and from my Jean's description, it sounded like an ideal place to hunker down and reflect before launching into the next episode of my life. So there it was, my plan in a tidy, self-evident package, almost as if it hadn’t been my decision at all. The next morning, we went to buy plane tickets, I from Chennai to Delhi on April 1st, and he for Sri Lanka around the same time. Then, we shared a rickshaw to the bus station. Jean pointed out my stop, shook my hand, and disappeared into the crowd.

Four hours later, I stepped down onto a tar road glossy with heat, spotted an arrow shaped sign reading “Auroville 8km,” and was immediately approached by a rickshaw driver asking what I assumed was ten times the fair price. I told him "maybe," and asked a western woman passing by if she was an Aurovillian. She turned out to be a long-term guest, and she confirmed my suspicions, so I offered the rickshaw driver 50 Rupees instead of 500. He replied, “you walk,” and to his surprise, I followed his advice. Not more than three minutes after I’d started down the road, a delicate, tanned man wearing a red bandanna and red, silk shirt open to reveal the hollow beneath his sternum, slowed his black motorcycle beside me and asked where I was going. I answered “Auroville. Do you want to give me a ride?” He agreed, and I hopped on.

As we drove along I told him the general outlines of my situation; I didn’t know anything about the layout of Auroville, but I had a recommendation for a place to stay, although I didn’t know where it was, and I couldn’t remember the name, which was written on a piece of paper buried in my bag. I strained to hear the Frenchman, as we drove along, his accent often competing with the wind in obscuring his meaning. I asked him to repeat his name at least three times, and I finally made it out to be Rajananda, obviously an adopted Indian name. He decided to take me to the visitor center, and on our way there he pointed out places of utility and told me about himself. He had come to Auroville ten years ago, married a local Tamil woman, and now had three children and a home in a community just outside the official borders of the township.

The visitor center is a grouping of clean, modern buildings that house a café, several boutiques featuring Aurovillian handicrafts, two rooms providing an introduction to the Matrimandir (a golden globe that is “the soul of Auroville”), an information desk, and an exhibition on the township’s past and present. Rajananda and I went to the information desk where a well-spoken, friendly Tamil Nadu native recommended the same guesthouse as Jean had. We browsed photos of Aurovillians working, playing and meditating arrayed on the glossy, white walls, and then we followed a brick walkway across to the café where I bought apple juice for Rajananda and coffee myself.

Refreshed, Rajananda offered to take me to the guesthouse recommended at the visitor center, and 5 minutes later we dismounted in front of a long, three-story brick building surrounded by a dusty clearing demarcated with bicycle racks. The available beds were about 85 Rupees a night and included two meals a day, but they were in a large, concrete room with mattresses lined up on the floor. I told my new friend that I didn’t mind sharing a bathroom, but I needed some private space; he thought for a minute, and then we drove off. Several haphazardly connected roads later, we made a left at a small, wooden sign reading, "Pony Farm," continued along a rutted lane bordered with trees and then parked. On the right horses and ponies snorted and shuffled in a paddock, and on the left squatted an open stone structure with bridles and combs lining the walls and a blackboard listing work to be done. Three dogs barking around our knees, we entered an open stone courtyard through a narrow gap in a low, plank fence. To the left of a black, iron table sat a one-story building with a thatched roof, and on the right was a decrepit, two-story wooden building with a crowded, covered porch.

The Matrimandir

Nobody appeared, so Rajananda called out the name Lea several times. Eventually, a skinny teenager with purple crescents beneath her eyes wandered out of the door hidden at the back of the covered porch. The Frenchman asked her if any rooms were empty and she motioned toward the peaked, thatch roof above the building across from her. She mumbled that her mother, Lea, was sick, so she couldn’t ask her, but she thought the rate was 250 or 300 Rupees. I followed her up concrete stairs spiraling around a water tank to a triangular rooftop space crowded with a bed in the center, a shelf on the right, and a chair on the left. She showed me the bathroom next to the base of the water tank and told me that I could use the kitchen beneath my room. The room had thatched doors that swung open towards the interior where they could be tied up for a view into the bramble-choked woods behind. The place had its charm, so despite the uncomfortable introduction (it was if I’d jarred Pony Farm from a long, enchanted sleep) I unloaded my bag and Rajananda showed me the nearby bakery and store. We had some chai and when I thanked him for all his help he explained that he’d just been looking for something to do with his day when he happened across me. I promised to pay him a visit at the café next to the sleek Town Hall, where he works a few days a week from noon until two, and he sped off.

Seconds after finishing the parotta I’d ordered when he’d left, Rajananda returned. It was about 5pm. He’d just been to the Matrimandir, and “the feeling was so amazing,” that he had returned to get me. What I really wanted was to shower and recover from riding a motorcycle over bumpy roads with 28 lbs strapped to my back, but he was so intent and excited that I agreed to go. The Matrimandir is a golden sphere with golden disks attached to the exterior. Around its base are twelve skate-ramp shaped brick structures called petals, each housing a different colored room: the petals and the golden ball together are meant to symbolize both the lotus flower and the Universal Mother. The structure was envisioned by Auroville's founder, The Mother, a French woman who was a "spiritual collaborator" with Sri Aurobindo, the father of Integral Yoga, who founded an ashram in nearby Pondicherry. Pictures of her, an old woman with a large, solemn face, hang on walls all over Auroville: she died in 1973, and she is thought to have been an embodiment of the Divine Mother. Next to the Matrimandir lives a huge, old banyan tree, which is the geographical center of Auroville. The story goes that The Mother, who conceived Auroville as an articulation of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings, was at his ashram when she was asked where the township should be built. She closed her eyes and put her finger on the spot where the banyan tree stands. A ways off from the ball and the tree lies a large, red stone amphitheatre, steps on the inside spiraling down to the center. There, a white urn, its form derived from the lotus bud, holds handfuls of soil from each of the Indian states as well as 121 countries, placed inside by their representatives at Auroville’s founding ceremony in 1968.

A Tamil guard swung the iron gate open for Rajananda without question, and when we got nearer to the lawn surrounding the Matrimandir, he told two women standing beneath a tree that I was a visitor who hadn’t had time to get a pass yet, asking their permission to bring me in. They agreed, and we proceeded to the banyan tree where a sign requested silence beneath its limbs. It’s a venerable tree, and banyans are a symbol of immortality in the east, but even becalmed by the hush beneath its shelter, I couldn’t refrain from inward eye rolling when several women wrapped their arms around the trunk, solemnly resting their faces against the bark for several minutes at a stretch. After a while disconnected tones floated from the speakers of the amphitheatre, and Rajananda signaled me to follow him to the steps. We sat there for a while and then turned to go. As we walked toward the exit, I saw a group of four people, probably in their late 60’s, scrutinizing the grounds. The man they gathered around poked and pointed fiercely with his cane, and as we approached, my friend informed me excitedly that they were VIPs. He introduced me to the man with the cane, the architect of the Matrimandir, and the others in the party. They were polite but not friendly: the architect generated an air of irritation, and the group took up their argument as soon as we walked away. The finishing touches will be put on the Matrimandir this year, and the grounds, which will one day be surrounded by a lake and sectioned into gardens, are still mostly grass and dust. These people being leaders in the community, I was struck by the conflict between their agitation and the stated aim that Auroville be a place where “men and women from all counties will be able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.” Oh well, I’d be irritated too if a project I’d designed 40 years ago was still incomplete.

Back at Pony Farm, there is no symbolic architecture, only charmingly mismatched structures in various states of disrepair. On my first night, I sat at the table in the courtyard filling out the required visitor form with Mahi, a 27 year old Brazilian-Aurovillian who teaches riding at the farm and arts and crafts at the primary school. Her parents moved to Auroville when she was a young child, and she lived there until she went to The American University in Washington D.C. Somewhere during that time, her parents split up and left Auroville, but she returned. Rita, a petite Finnish guest, the lower half of her bob black and the upper half grown out grey during the time she’d been traveling, joined us at the table. It was Tuesday, the night Mimi, the teenager who’d shown me around, made pizza, so the voices of Friends issued from her portable DVD player as she worked in the kitchen. The next morning, delighted to have a place to make the organic, Aurovillian coffee I’d bought, I was trying to stay out of the way of the Tamil cleaning woman while I waited for my water to boil when a heavy, grey-blond woman entered the kitchen. I assumed she was another guest until she remarked pointedly, “Oh, someone in my kitchen! I haven’t had that for a long time.” I introduced myself as a new guest and asked if she was the woman who’d been sick yesterday. She softened, introduced herself as Lea, and informed me that she had allowed guests to use her kitchen in the past, but they were often couples that cooked all the time and left a large mess, so she couldn’t use the place herself.

She reconciled herself to my presence, and over the next few days, our interactions became comfortable, even amicable as she tried to apologize indirectly for her initial crabbiness. She’s been an Aurovillian for 13 years, and she has two sons in her native country, fathered by her first husband, also a Belgian. Her oldest daughter, who was 8 months pregnant and stopped by Pony Farm with her husband for several hours each evening, has a father in Switzerland, and her youngest, Mimi, has a Punjabi father who’s been in and out of rehab and jail for heroin use and trafficking. Children from the township, eager to talk to any adult with the inclination to listen, flitted around Pony Farm all day long, and I gathered from them that Aurovillian parents are often single mothers with very complicated personal lives. One dark eyed ten-year-old girl with an American mother and a Tamil father, neither of whom I ever saw, said resolutely that she wasn’t speaking to her father because he was leaving to start a resort in Kerala somewhere. As soon as she made this declaration her two friends started up a giggling fit about the compost toilet in her house and her mother’s “weird, old” boyfriend. One of the giggling girls had a German mother, Ambalika, who had moved to Auroville a few years back after her communal house in Berlin burned to the ground. The little girls laughed hysterically as she recounted all her mother’s cash being incinerated. One Sunday Ambalika came for a visit. After a long discussion about her entanglement with a man whose wife had just spent three weeks in Italy with a married man, Lea remarked that Auroville is like a soap opera, as if I hadn’t noticed yet.

Auroville was established on a desiccated plateau, but settlers have planted over three million trees, maintaining them through soil and water conservation technologies. The city was envisaged to hold 50,000 inhabitants within four zones radiating from the Matrimandir, or the Peace Area. Those four zones would be the Residential Zone, the Cultural Zone, the Industrial Zone, and the International Zone, and they would be surrounded by a green belt for food production and biodiversity. The International Zone would be something like a permanent World Fair, housing pavilions for each nation grouped by continent. Now, there is an Indian pavilion that isn’t finished yet, an American pavilion that was just completed, a Tibetan pavilion, and a few others underway. There are about 1,500 people drawn from 30 countries who are officially Aurovillians and 10,000 local people interspersed throughout the area. So, the soap opera unfolds in small communities with names like Fertility, Aspiration, Existence, and Invocation scattered throughout the woods and connected by sun-baked, narrow roads.

Innovation Unlimited

and their product

Despite its stated objective “to realize Human Unity,” Auroville is not a particularly friendly place. Communities are placed far from each other, and even relatively near neighbors are separated by a dense screen of brambles and foliage. Because the area is large, most people get around by motorbike, and there is no central gathering place. Lea claimed that her first year in Auroville, with two young girls in tow, was the loneliest of her whole life. I wasn’t lonely, but I didn’t meet many people besides the denizens of Pony Farm. Rita left at the beginning of my second week there, so I took over her cottage, which was away from the central courtyard and had its own kitchen. I was happy with this arrangement: I had plenty to think about, and an Asian Paradise Flycatcher, some Drongos and a cacophony of Brain fever Birds in the woods kept me entertained. The only thing I really wanted to do was see the inside of the Matrimandir. Although the place had roused my sarcasm with its awkward, dated attempt at symbolism and the aimless music piped out over the lawn, I was intrigued by it, too. After all, how many visions ever become reality. But visiting the Matrimandir again, or even its grounds, turned out to be difficult. Guests who want to visit the grounds are required to watch a 10-minute introductory video at the visitor center before being issued a guest pass. The woman who issued my pass told me to go that evening after 4:30, but when I turned up at 5:30, the guard told me I was too late. Frustrated, I didn’t make another attempt until the day before I left. I watched the video again, obtained another pass, and showed up at 4:31. Once I was in, I found out that I could sign up to enter the Matrimandir, after another introduction, the next day at 5:30. I wasn't leaving until 3am the next night, so I put down my name.

I arrived on time the next day, and a radiant Indian woman with close-cropped grey hair and loose linen garments greeted a group of about 15 visitors from around the world. After a brief introductory speech about the concept of the Universal Mother and the founding of Auroville, she asked us to wait beneath the banyan tree. We all walked over and sat silently. A few people stopped by to caress the tree, and then our guide came and led us down the ramp to the entrance at the bottom of the sphere, where we surrendered our bags, lining them up in a long, forlorn row. There is a meditation chamber at the top of the sphere, supported by four pillars which face the cardinal directions, and the main interior of the Matrimandir is gleaming white and salmon pink with a smooth ramp winding up to the sanctum. The glass of the railings and some of the shiny white surfaces were covered with newspaper, but other than those details, the structure was finished. I was the last in line, so by the time I was on the bottom of the ramp, the first of the group were halfway up. As I saw this solemn line of people rising up the sci-fi interior, a kind of joyful laughter spread through me. Any noise would have been irreverent, but I couldn’t suppress a broad smile: what a thing to see, this odd vision in physical form.

We had been asked to leave our shoes at the entrance, and before entering the meditation chamber we were given white socks. The chamber is entirely white marble, supported by twelve pillars guarding a central crystal that captures a solid, cylindrical beam of light electronically guided toward it through an oculus at the top of the Matrimandir. We ranged ourselves out on the white cushions around the room and were left to meditate for about 10 minutes. Concentration came naturally there, and I didn't want to move when a light was turned off and on as a signal to leave, but I deposited my socks in a bin and filed back down the ramp. My bag waited outside to return me to the clutter and complexity of life.

This is Auroville's charter:
1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realizations.
4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

Auroville has so many problems, just like the rest of the world, that it's tempting to scoff at these lofty aims. It was conceived as a cash free, self-sufficient society, but at this date, most revenue is generated through tourism and outside donation. Aside from some impressive central buildings, much of the rest looks ramshackle and half-assed, and there are "innovations" scattered around that look like ridiculous hippie attempts abandoned at a crucial stage in favor of a new impulse. Personal relations also appear confused and bereft of commitment, and the fulfillment of human unity is really questionable. Locals perform the lowest of the manual labor, in the kitchens and on the farms, while the western transplants pursue their interests. But as our guide said at the beginning of the Matrimandir tour, "Auroville is a vision. Obviously we are far from it. Auroville is an attempt." In the end, no matter how absurd attempts may sometimes seem, I'm glad folks are still trying.

Enough At Last

2007-04-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

Ella is between Colombo and Mirissa, the beach we planned to visit next, so Talia went on in the obvious direction while I backtracked to pick up my new passport and submit my visa application at the Indian High Commission. I hoped to get everything done and be on a train headed south by 5pm, and I was worried about what to do with my bag. We had left our things in the baggage room of Fort Railway Station, Colombo’s main interchange, during our last visit, but it had ended badly; when we claimed our bags five hours after we’d left them, the storage fee had quadrupled from the one posted on the wall. The attendant insisted that it had gone up at the beginning of 2007, but I was in a foul mood. We had been required to fill out a form with our names, passport numbers, and port of embarkation when we deposited our bags. There was also a space on the form for the amount paid, so I demanded one of the three carbon copies of the form as a receipt. I didn’t really want a copy, I just thought this might induce the guy to give us the fair price. He refused, and I insisted; apparently, the triplicates get filed somewhere important, because the attendant finally sent someone out the door and into the city to make a photocopy. Our train was waiting, so we left without the receipt, and the attendant never yielded on the price. But after we’d squeezed ourselves into second class, the baggage room attendant stormed on, pushed through the crowd, thrust the receipt at Talia, who was closer to the door than I, and told her to tell me to “fuck off.” She did, with pleasure.

Obviously, I didn’t want to leave my bag in the care of someone with a grudge, so that meant I might be carrying it around all day as I traipsed around Colombo. I had spent my whole trip trying to make my bag lighter, so when I went through it again before I left Ella, it was hard to find anything I considered non-essential, but I finally parted with two things, my copy of Light On Yoga, and my set of 15 colored pens. As far as the yoga book went, I hadn’t felt like practicing for several months, and I figured if I was so moved one day, I’d just do the postures that I felt like doing, which wouldn’t be the ones I had to look up in a book.

Despite the mangled beggars bringing their hands to their mouths in supplication and the begrimed children singing out for “onepen,” or “schoolpen,” I had never given a rupee or a pen to anyone during the entire time I’d spent in this part of the world; such a small amount seemed an insult to the magnitude of the problem, like throwing a pinch of talcum powder on a burning baby, and besides, it was easier to ignore the need than try to choose where to bestow charity in such an on overwhelming sea of poverty. But I had been carrying my set of colored markers for months, and I had used them twice, at most. They were in my day-pack during my last walk in Ella, and when a pair of children waved at me from a field beside the tracks, I beckoned to them. When they arrived, I opened my pencil box, took out all 15 colors, and placed them in their open hands. The kids ran towards their hut, beaming; their parents smiled gratefully as I passed. What remained, three graphite pencils of varying hardness, a gummed eraser and a hard one, and one pen, rattled inside their plastic pencil box as I walked on.

It was a pleasure to give what must have been a windfall to those children, and my load was a little bit lighter when I shouldered it for my return to Colombo. The sleeper ticket I bought for the journey turned out to be a seat in a hard, slightly reclining chair in a car with a fluorescent light that never went off, so I was surprised when someone woke me up at 5am because the train had arrived at Fort Railway Station. I sat on a bench beside the track for a while, staring bleary-eyed ahead and considering how to go about my day, and then I went to the baggage room. Luckily, a different attendant manned the desk, so I went to Galle Face unburdened. Nothing, not even the Barista, opened until 9am, which was when the U.S. Consulate was scheduled to open, so I wandered around looking for a pleasant place to sit. I never found one, but I did get my new passport, finally. Then I walked down to the Indian High Commission and stood in line for four hours to submit my visa application. That done, I went back to the railway station, picked up my bag (paying the same quadrupled price as the last time) and boarded the five o’clock train.

The beach at Mirissa is a long, straight, unsheltered stretch of pounding waves and pristine sand with a jungle covered headland rising on the west end and a cluster of enormous rocks marking the east. Although there are a fair number of resorts and restaurant just above the high-tide line, none of them were full, and the beach was too long and wild to feel busy or crowded. Clumps of people playing in the waves sometimes dotted the water, and a few people emerged for a stroll around sunrise and sunset, but the surf was so loud that you couldn't hear anyone until they were very near. For the first five days Talia and I shared a front row bungalow with a view straight on to the water, but Talia was restless, and on the sixth day, she flew back to India, where we planned to meet up in about a week.

remains of a restaurant

Time is different by the sea; I wondered why the passing seconds, rolling up on the beach in audible increments, didn't resound as an exhortation to hurry up and accomplish something, why they did the opposite, lulling me with their eternal retreat and return. My days alone passed uneventfully, marked only by breakfast and dinner coupled with a morning and evening stroll between the ends of the beach. I took a few hikes, and caught the bus to a nearby town once or twice. It also dawned on me, finally, that I didn’t actually need a computer to write, so I spent a lot of time at the table on my porch, staring alternately at a piece of paper and the waves. Now that I had abandoned the book, I began practicing yoga again, and I made some drawings, using my pencils more than I had during my entire trip. It's funny how we'd rather do things when we're not expected to, by ourselves or anyone else.

A few days before my departure, during my usual early morning stroll, I walked down to the rocky end of the beach to search the high-tide line for sea-glass before turning toward the west end. Glancing to my right, I saw a Sri Lankan male doing something with his pants. Assuming he was going to pee against the tumble-down wall he was standing in front of, which is common, I looked toward the ocean. When I turned my head again, the man was looking straight at me, and had an organ large enough to be visible at that distance in his hand; he wasn’t using it to urinate, either. I looked quickly away and kept walking, flushing first with embarrassment, then with anger. Then I stopped, turned around, and shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” The man just smiled wider and waved, with his other hand, of course. He obviously had no shame to be appealed to, so I kept on walking, willing myself not to hurry. At that moment, I wished I had a sheet to wrap myself in despite being modestly dressed already; when the incident sunk in a little further, I wished I had had a stick to poke out that guy’s eyes.

It took me several hours to cool down, but by late afternoon, I had put it aside. The rocks at the east end of the beach harbor several connected tidal pools, and as Mirissa’s waves are violent, that was the only place I felt safe snorkeling. So, I walked down there, put on my mask, and floated face down in a pool, holding onto a rock for stability as the water was drawn out and replenished in time with the waves breaking on the other side of the rocks. The pools were no more, and sometimes less, than a meter deep, and I felt like the god of a goldfish bowl; my body cast a swaying, continent-sized shadow on the sandy terrain beneath me as small, bright fish flitted through the dark patch in search of sustenance, unaware of my enormous, hovering presence. After a while, I brought my head up and knelt in the water to clear my mask, which has a small leak. It also has prescription lenses, so I could make out clearly the two Sri Lankan men standing on the top of a nearby rock watching me. Used to being stared at by this point, I stretched back into floating position and made my way through a gap to another small pool. Soon enough, I had water in my mask again, so up came my head. Glancing where the men had been standing, I saw there was now only one, and although he was slightly more furtive about it than the man from the morning, he looking down at me, masturbating. This time, my reaction was different; I resolved to continue what I was doing, undisturbed. The thought that went through my mind was, “you can masturbate all you want; I’m snorkeling.” The next time I came up to clear my mask, the man on the rock had put his equipment away; his friend had returned and was calling him. Although I couldn’t understand their Sinhalese, from their tones it sounded something like, “hey, what’s taking you so long?”
“Just watching this girl.”
“Well, hurry up, you jackass.”

Maybe it would have been more appropriate to get out of the water, hide under my sarong, and walk away, but that would have been a defeat. Why should I have to hide indoors because of another person’s behavioral problems? Both those men were at least four meters away from me; since the threat wasn’t physical, wasn’t the only power they really had over me the power I gave them? That was all I had, choosing how, or if, I'd react; if I didn’t let their behavior affect me, then they didn’t exist, right?

Wrong. Although I really did enjoy the rest of my afternoon snorkel, and I climbed up the very same rock to watch the sunset, those two incidents brought a mood that had been growing for a while to fullness. Sure, I’d managed to remain detached, but there comes a limit; there are situations you just don’t feel you should have to be faced with. All at once, I knew I was bone-tired of the difficulties of being a white woman in South Asia (where 99% of their pornography features busty, b-movie blonds), I was tired of being a walking dollar sign, and I was tired of the million little things that are so much harder to accomplish in a foreign land. I was tired of it all, and I was ready, finally, to go home.

But it was March 17th, and I still had 16 days until my flight departed from Delhi. I figured that it would be more trouble than it was worth to change my ticket again, and I had already applied for my new Indian visa, so I enjoyed my last days in Mirissa as best I could, picked up my visa in Colombo, and landed in Chennai, India, with two weeks to go.

Wolfgang And The Four Macaques

2007-04-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

Suneth had informed me that my new passport would arrive at the consulate in five to seven working days, so early in the morning on the eighth working day Talia and I left Unawatuna for Colombo. She went in search of a new backpack, and I went back to Galle Face. I presented myself at the U.S. Consulate security desk at 9 am, and the same staunch receptionists gave me the same discouraging looks. I explained what I wanted, and one of them called back to Citizen Services where somebody told her they'd look around for my passport and call back. There being no chairs, I sat down on the concrete floor to wait for the call. 20 minutes later, Suneth, in his cheerful, efficient manner, told me to come back next week. I was annoyed. I wanted to take my new, Indian visa-eligible passport to Kandy, the second largest city in the country, the location of the other, reputedly more efficient, less crowded Indian High Commission, and our next stop; but no, I'd have to come back to Colombo, again.

procession, Kandy

I had a few hours until my rendezvous with Talia, so I went to Barista for several cups of the best Americano in town, where I happened across a shocking article in the Daily News, Sri Lanka's national paper. Apparently, Australia is leading an energy conservation trend by aiming to eradicate the use of incandescent light bulbs by 2010. I associate their cold output not with the charming Victorian houses around Bondi Beach, but with 24-hour convenience stores and developing countries; in the former, I try to get in and out as quickly as possible, and in the latter I try to ignore it. Unfortunately, Wal Mart plans to increase its sales of compact fluorescent bulbs from 40 million, the number for 2005, to 100 million by 2008, and Phillips will stop producing incandescent bulbs by 2016. Compact fluorescent bulbs use 20% less energy to produce the same amount of light as incandescents, and they last five to ten times longer, but zombie light is zombie light, no matter how efficient it is. The photo that went along with the article, an Australian woman installing fluorescent bulbs in a chandelier hanging from an ornate, pressed-tin ceiling illustrated the aesthetic disaster of it all.

That sea turtle I saw in Unawatuna impressed me, and after our encounter, I read a little bit about its kind. They have a lifespan exceeding a hundred years; females lay their eggs in the same place they themselves hatched, navigating huge distances (the Atlantic for example) using the Earth's magnetic field to locate their natal beaches; and each of the seven existing species are endangered. It's difficult to draw direct lines between specific human behaviors and their environmental consequences, which makes it hard to create clear solutions with measurable results that everybody can contribute to; and I felt the futility of individual conservation efforts when I considered my own relationship to the disappearing marine turtles. I can try to create less trash, walk more often, and use things that are made locally, but even if I go live in a cave, species will continue to decline around me as the world whizzes on past. I keep doing what I'm doing, trying to remember to switch off the light when I leave a room, going without air-con, getting out the quilts in the winter, knowing all the while that none of it is enough. I could trot out the fact that I can't even remember what a hot shower or a soft, tumble-dried t-shirt feels like, but then I have been on a whole lot of planes lately, and everybody has those things that they don’t want to live without. I'd gladly support a program to eradicate the use of private cars to save sea turtles, but lighting is where I dig in my heels.

Talia and I finally ended up in Kandy around 10 pm on the same day we’d left Unawatuna. It’s a relatively calm city and it has quite a few sights, even a temple that houses a tooth alleged to have belonged to the Buddha, but the difficult thing about following your attractions around is that they change, so you have to be alert. Somewhere along the line I became over-saturated with architecture. I should have noticed what was going on when I bought that bird book back in Ooty, but I kept looking in the wrong direction for a while, until I spent all that time underwater in Unawatuna, and it dawned on me just how much nature (and here I'm talking about the green stuff) offers to the watchful. Perhaps I ignored the shift because it’s so difficult to write about. I’m intimidated by it; supplying scale or context for a thing that is basic, saying anything specific about a thing so primary, is beyond my abilities. Anyhow, by the time I reached Kandy my new leanings couldn't be ignored, and the only things I really wanted to do were take advantage of city-speed internet connections, and visit the Peridiniya Botanical Gardens.

Kandy lake

That's exactly what I did, and on our third and last day in town, underestimating the distance and walk time from the town center, I arrived later in the afternoon than I'd planned, but I still had over four hours to spend in the 150 acre park. At first I treated it as a visit to the library, browsing a living field guide, acquiring names for trees and plants I'd been seeing in the wild. But after a while I left the greenhouses and structured gardens behind for a walk through a shady, enchanted area inhabited by a variety of grand, twisted, old, trees. I found a massive trunk among whose gnarled roots to nestle, and opened Gulliver's Travels, but soon it began to sprinkle. The slant of my tree offered adequate shelter, so I sat and enjoyed the fragrant, cooling air, but when the volume increased, I stood up and flattened myself against the trunk, which was enough until the deluge began, at which point I resigned myself to being soaked through and formed a lean-to with my back against the trunk in order to shelter the electronics in my backpack.

Soon, I had a wet t-shirt, so you can guess what happened next. Two respectable looking young men had sought refuge against the trunk of a nearby tree, and now, as the rain came so fast it was hard to hear, one of them ran over to me and shouted, "do you have an umbrella?" I really didn't think such an idiotic question merited an answer, so I just turned the other way. He kept shouting things, trying to get a conversation going, or maybe just trying to get me to turn around, and I eyed a far off pavilion sheltering a crowd. There came a point of decision, and I pushed off from the trunk. As I sprinted away, the man shouted, "Why don't you talk? We are not the aliens, Madame."

scorpion in the grass

Once under the pavilion, the occupants, clumped together to avoid leaks in the roof, stared at me as I stared at the rain. When it stopped, some minutes later, I stood for a while watching droves of fruit bats reestablishing their perches on limbs silhouetted against the clearing sky. The pavilion emptied, and only a few boys remained, chattering about something on the ground. I joined them to observe a blue-green scorpion moving slowly through the grass. One of them held it up on the end of a stick and asked me to take a photograph. After that, I walked around until sunset, taking a break on a long, low limb of a 100 year old Giant Java Willow, its canopy sprawled wide on the support of secondary trunks dropped from its branches, and by the time I left the gardens, I was mostly dry.

Giant Java Willow

Kandy is a picturesque, blue-toned town with pleasant weather. There is even a small lake at its center hosting Cormorants, Egrets, and Kingfishers, but there are still rickshaws and hassling to be contended with. What it came down to was that neither Talia nor I wanted anything to do with cities at the moment, and so, not so many days after we got off the train from Colombo, we got on another one to Ella. This time, we bought first-class tickets for a glassed viewing car. It was the most beautiful train ride I've ever taken, and that's coming from someone who has difficulty with superlatives. We rose up through the range of greens, from the yellow tinged, tropical lowlands to the blue and violet heights, over tightly curved tracks. The first class car is at the end of the train, and we were at the back of the car, the very last passengers; we entered fairy-tale tunnels with egg-shaped mouths and birds often followed, silhouetted against the receding spoon of light until they were swallowed in the darkness of a curve. Occasionally, one kept speed with us all the way through, bursting out of the brick mouth and into the light of our wake, like a diver coming up for air.

Ella itself is as lovely as the route there, and due to my preference for solitary walks, I had no intention of looking up a man I’d met on the previous train ride, from Colombo to Kandy. Talia and I had taken second-class tickets on a train so crowded that I stood for the first hour, sat on the floor for the second, and finally took as conventional seat for the third and fourth. That seat was next to Wolfgang, a deeply creased German expat. I'm guessing he was east German, based on the heaviness of his accent (east Germans of his age would have studied Russian, not English as their second language), and the heaviness of his disposition, but I sensed that questions about his origins would not be appreciated. He had been living abroad for at least 20 years, from what I could put together, and didn't seem to identify himself with Germany, Europe, or even mankind really. He mentioned that he was going to Ella to take care of his babies, and there was something about him and the way he said, "my babies" that made me ask what species they were; it turned out they are monkeys, macaques to be exact. Before Talia and I disembarked in Colombo, Wolfgang gave me his phone number and invited me to look up him and the monkeys when we arrived in Ella.

On my first morning there, I set out for a walk down the only road through town. The village dissolved into a pine forest within minutes, and after a while I turned off the road and wound up through hillside tea plantations. Later, resting on a rock at the summit of Little Adam’s Peak, watching the blue hills level out to in the distance, and closer, the waterfall I planned to walk to the next day, something hummingbird-sized wobbled across my peripheral vision and landed in a nearby patch of tall grass. I tiptoed over to find an insect so colorful it seemed to be a parody of itself, a child’s Halloween costume of a bug: black and yellow-spotted wings, black and yellow-striped head, and black and red-striped torso clinging to a swaying green stalk. When it flew, it went short distances with a laborious whirring. Shortly after it had disappeared in a series of clumsy flights, I ambled down through the tea plantations, skirting a dense forest with a stream running through it in an uncultivated bowl between hills, searching for a sunny patch to nap.

The Great State mascot

When I finally got back to Ella’s main street it was nearly dark and I was hungry. I stopped at a little place near the train station and ordered a full course, traditional Sri Lankan meal, so I was feasting on an assortment of curries, shredded coconut, chutney, and rice when two Australian ladies came along, fresh off the evening train. They stepped onto the porch where I was eating and asked me if the food was good. I said, “it’s delicious.” Then they asked me if the service was good, and I said “yes.” Then they asked if there were mosquitoes. Again I responded in the affirmative, but added that there are mosquitoes everywhere. The owner had been standing there the whole time, and I saw his expression fluctuate during my last answer to the ladies; he gave me a grateful smile as they took a table.

They ordered whiskey, which wasn’t on the menu, and the proprietor disappeared. He came back about 10 minutes later, red-faced and panting, with a bottle. After he served their drinks, took their dinner order, and went back to the kitchen to whip up a feast, the ladies laughed, and one of them said, “Oh, that cute little man must have run to get a bottle!” There was something repulsive about the pair, the way they laughed too loud, with an edge of cruelty, talked too much, dragged too hard on their cigarettes. They were at that age where women sometimes get discarded, and I imagined they were recent divorcees, on a bitter vacation, creating enough noise to smother their betrayal. Soon, I finished my meal and as I was turning off the paved road and down the dirt one running to my lodgings, Wolfgang waved at me from the platform of a restaurant. He invited me to join him and the monkeys for an outing to Rawana Ella Falls (the ones I had seen from afar earlier) the next day. I was reluctant; I wanted to walk there, not ride on the back of a motorcycle, but Wolfgang said it was a long walk and the purpose of the trip was to expose his monkeys to wild ones; I thought this could be an interesting meeting, so I agreed.

Around noon, I went to Wolfgang’s home at The Highest Inn, a guesthouse run by an Australian couple who are collaborating with Wolfgang on Eco Project Sri Lanka, an effort to use eco-tourism to fund the protection of untouched habitats in Sri Lanka. Charlie, Bimbo, Coco, and Baby, Wolfgang’s macaques, are the first wards of one aspect of the project, an orphanage for wildlife left parentless through human encroachment. Two of the four macaques clambered around a large cage at the end of the porch while the other two, on long chains looped attached to a harness around their waists, sat on branches of a nearby shrub. We had some tea, and then, because Wolfgang hopes to repatriate them into the wild some day, we set off for Rawana Ella Falls. Rather, we began the process of setting off for the falls, because those monkeys are, well, a barrel full of monkeys. After getting them together, we mounted the motorcycle; I wrapped the chains around my left hand while one of the macaques wrapped its arms around Wolfgang’s waist from the front, the second clung to his left arm, the third sat on his right shoulder, and the fourth grabbed bunches of his shirt in her dark, wrinkled fists, seating herself between him and I.

macaques at the falls

As we wound our way along the road, the curious macaques shifted positions effortlessly, vying for a better view, and when Wolfgang unfastened their chains at the base of the falls they shot into the trees, flinging themselves along, tumbling through air and limbs until something stable appeared. Strangely, we didn’t encounter any wild macaques while we took in the sunshine near a bowl of pooling water on a shelf halfway up or as we hiked back down, but at the base, near the road, we crossed a band of five. They were all about the same size as Bimbo, Coco, Baby, and Charlie, so Wolfgang held their chains as they tentatively approached the wild bunch. Everything went fine and the wild ones made room for the newcomers among themselves until all the chattering attracted more monkeys, among them a big, fierce male. This hissing, crouched creature was not at all cute; frankly, I was scared of the thing. The tame macaques retreated, clinging to Wolfgang, and we left.

Wolfgang and his babies

When we got back to The Highest Inn Wolfgang had some trouble getting all the macaques untangled and back into the cage. They were running helter-skelter all over the porch when one of the cackling Australian women from dinner the night before showed up. Apparently, she was a guest, and Bimbo promptly climbed up her, clung to her arm, and peed. “It just piddled on my arm,” she said, bristling with indignation. “Zat happen to me tousand time every day,” Wolfgang, his back to her, replied. I stood off to the side, trying not to laugh while she held her arm in front of her like some repulsive foreign object.
“What do I do,” she demanded.
“Wash it.”
“Where?”
“Any water source,” Wolfgang said as we exchanged a smirking glance. She stood there helplessly for a few more seconds and then protested that she didn’t want to take her dirty arm in the kitchen. Nobody responded, and she finally stomped in to find a faucet. Over the course of the day, while running over me as if I were a rock formation or picking through my hair and my pockets, the macaques had done their share of piddling on me too, so I went back to my room to shower off their stink.

I decided to catch a 9 pm train back to Colombo on the evening of my third day in Ella, so that morning I packed my bag, stored it at the reception of my guest house, and went for a walk along the railroad tracks in search of a small waterfall. I don’t know if the tracks attract a lot of birds because of the nutshells, fruit peels, and sugar coated paper cups flung from windows of passing trains or if whole forests are so densely populated and the tracks just offered me a clear swath into the busy bird world. Eagles and Kites turned and turned overhead; dark, glossy Drongos, with long, cleft tail-feathers hanging in the air like musical notes, sharp-beaked, electric-blue Kingfishers, and modest, buff-toned creatures perched along the power lines; and tiny, quick birds of the underbrush shot from the tracks to the tangled shrubs and grasses in bright blurs where they twittered and rustled unseen.

At a slow, graceful bend in the tracks a tiny creature hopped into the tangled vines covering a slick, mossy rock wall on my left. I stood still, hoping it would reemerge, but after a minute of silence I gave up and lifted my foot to walk on. At that moment, a round, rollicking call issued from the vines, so I stopped and waited again. Still nothing. After this happened several times, standing there riveted by a rock wall, I realized there must be a group of birds in the nearby bushes, amused by their power over such a big animal; the trouble with the damn things is that they’re tricksters; they can fly and they can throw their voices. This was when the backwardness of my approach occurred to me; a pair of binoculars would have been a lot more useful than a bird identification book.

As I walked on, I wondered how the birding community came to agree on a Romanization system for birdsong. When I lived in Japan and Korea, the first thing I did was learn their alphabets. So, although I never made it past the basics, I knew enough to recognize the absurd results of transcribing foreign words into English characters. Birdsong is as diverse as human language, and it contains the same difficulties for me; first of all, it’s hard to remember something if you don’t have an alphabet, or at least some kind of suitable marker, and second of all, I even if I managed to remember it, I’d never be able to match what I’d heard with a string of vowels punctuated by consonants.

In the Ramayana, a seminal Indian epic, Sita was whisked away against her will to the isle of Lanka by the demon lord Ravana. While wars were waged over her, Sita remained faithfull to her husband Rama, but it must have been difficult; Sri Lanka, in its fertility, is seductive, and it’s hard to imagine staying commited to any idea while being courted in this perpetually blossoming land. I like to think Ravana took Sita to the hill country, to a place like Ella. I can only imagine the parade of luxuriant creatures and luscious fruits marshaled in the temptation of a goddess; as a mere tourist, I was wooed; I found myself thinking that maybe I should bear children, just because I can.

Returning from the tracks just after sunset, fireflies decked the foliage surrounding the unlit lane to my guesthouse. I recovered my bag with enough time left to have a quick meal and use the restroom at the restaurant to wash-up and change clothes in preparation for the night on the train. That done, I walked down the paved road toward the train station. Once I left the town center, the way before me was pitch-black; briefly, a dark moth was illuminated in headlight beams, each of its soft wings the size of a woman’s hand, lilting along the embankment ahead.

Things On The Floor

2007-03-21T02:00:00.000-05:00

In the afternoon, my business at the U.S. Consulate concluded, for then at least, I met Talia back at the hotel and we headed for Unawatuna, a beach on the southwestern coast. After three and a half hours on the train, we settled into a large room on the second floor of an old house with a generous, semi-circular balcony overhanging a porch and overlooking a yard, a small road, the sand, and then a calm and regular ocean. As you remember from the news coverage several years back, that very same ocean suddenly reared up and took around 25,000 people, as well as homes, trees, and trains as it receded. There was a piece of paper taped to the wall below the window of the room where we slept, about level with my knees. It marked the height to which the water had risen and listed the names of those guests and residents who'd survived along with the name of a 19 year old Sri Lankan who hadn't.

elephant in the yard

A local man told me that the water did not come in a wave at Unawatuna: the ocean swelled and the level rose; it rose four meters. He recalled it coming up and in, and then receding about a kilometer from the shoreline, out past a distant set of rocks, strewing the ocean floor with people and things before advancing and receding one more time. In the other room opening onto our balcony was a queer, old Dutch lady named Elizabeth. Her peculiar roundness coupled with a stiffness of limb combined to make her look as if she were holding her breath, a confusing impression because she chattered almost constantly. Elizabeth had been a guest on another beach, further south, the one I'm writing from now, when the ocean produced a wave seven meters high. She was going back to Holland the next day, so she was paying her bill in the office of her guest house, which was on a hill. She said that when the water rose to her ankles she thought, "oh, these sandals are ruined," but was shortly clinging to a column in the center of the room, holding her money belt, her only possession which survived, over her head.

Fascinated by the idea of the ocean floor exposed, I put on my mask and snorkel and got in the water, hoping to get a better idea of the terrain and what the scene would have looked like. The beach at Unawatuna is C-shaped with a gently sloping floor, and I entered in the center of the curve, aiming southwest, toward the rocks. I figured I could swim the kilometer if I took it at leisure, so I inevitably got sidetracked. Near the beach, waves roll slowly in, turning and cleaning sand and dead coral, but past that the floor and the things resting on it are furred with a dull colored sediment. There are some familiar objects; a pillar standing up on its wide base, the plaster of the upper half gone, exposing re-bar pointing jauntily skyward, a shoe, 50 Rupees, a pitcher on its side with a fish living in it, and a stainless steel sink. I followed the meanderings of a few bright fish, but after a while bent my energies toward the rocks.

Not long after the the mucky middle depths; the floor receded, the light turned from green to blue, and I was soon submerged in an apprehension as dark as the water that buoyed me. I swam faster towards the still distant rocks, and asked myself why water should be a more frightening medium than air. I can't see what's coming towards me past a certain distance when I'm walking on land, and who knows what waits around corners, so why should a shortened sight line scare me? I wondered if I was more afraid of creatures lurking unseen in the water than thugs in an alleyway because water is more tangible than air, and that somehow linked me more directly with anticipated monsters. None of these diversionary tactics were effective, because I quickly came up with some good reasons why large volumes of water really are more dangerous than large volumes of air, particularly for human beings. None of those reasons explain my panic, seeing as I was in no immediate danger, but I turned around and swam as fast as I could towards the beach.

Soon, I was hovering over visible ground again; I was at the west end of the beach, and there was a reef, a barrier of rocks which all kinds of creatures call home. That's usually what a snorkeler is looking for, but at that moment, it only seemed dangerous. The waves were breaking just above it, which was still a good distance from shore, and I imagined being picked up and scraped against the hard corals growing on the rocks. To make matters worse, I'd been in the water so long that the area between my lip and nostrils was numb from the pressure of my mask; so I was afraid of being skinned alive on the reef, and I had a strong urge to rip my mask off my face. I made it over the reef unscratched, but as soon as I did I gave in to the idea of giving my face a break. I righted myself in the water, and put my foot down on something sharp. I didn't know what it was, but I left my mask on until I was finally spit out upon the shore, right in front of a diving shop.

From the two circles of purple-black dots on the bottom of my right foot, I guessed that I'd stepped on one of the spiny orbs I'd seen on the reef, a sea urchin. I decided to see if ignoring the injury would make it disappear, so I walked tenderly up to the dive shop to look at the fish identification chart on the outside wall. One of the locals lazing outside the shop, who turned out to be the dive-master, began a conversation that eventually led to the topic of my foot. He informed me that if I didn't do anything or tried to remove the spines as if they were slivers, they would work their way further in, like the quills of a porcupine, and if I went to a doctor, he would cut my foot open and dig them out. He recommended the local remedy, and dispatched a boy into the jungle. 30 minutes later, the boy returned with a thick, waxy, branching plant, a candle, and matches. The dive-master told me to sit on the top of a set of four steps, knelt down, broke off a branch of the jungle plant, applied the milk that issued to the black circles, and then held the candle flame to them until I cursed and jerked my foot away. He did this several times, and then told me to repeat the process in the evening, and then twice a day for the next two days. I thanked him, limped away, followed his instructions, and eventually noted the disappearance of the ominous black points.

Despite my disastrous first attempt, I spent a lot of time in that water, and it turned out to have all the advantages of repeated walks along the same route. On one visit a darting fish caused me to look more closely at the grey-green furred floor, and I noticed neon-green brain corals glowing beneath the silty layer. The relative lack of activity in that area caused me to observe the few fish that were there more carefully; to my surprise, there is a type of fish that flaps its fins on a vertical line, like a bird. Even on a windy, rough watered day, I couldn't resist. I went for the exercise, not because I thought I would see anything; the bottom layer would be churned up and impede visibility. That was the case, but as a result the fish were out in force. Instead of hiding under rocks, flitting up to nip at passing food, they were in the open, navigating with fins and tails in their particular ways, fighting the current to stand still or moving with it, feeding on the suspended particles. The limited visibility caused a fascinating ghost-fish phenomenon involving a particular type spotted with iridescent blue around their edges; as they swam away everything but their spots disappeared, until they were only outlines of blue light, and then after-images, and then gone. I let the waves bring me in, mesmerized by their rocking. Near the beach, where they broke, suspended among them, thrown forward and pulled back, watching coral skeletons picked up and ground down ceaselessly, I noticed the sound of it all, like rain, but harder, more minute and complex, a constant, gentle clattering of broken branch upon broken branch, clean, and somehow dry, maybe like a steady falling of gems through fingers.

Dutch Reform Church

There are other things to do in the area. The Matara road, which runs from Colombo along the whole southwestern coast of the island, was 10 minutes from our guest house. One day, walking along it to find a computer, I saw buses, rickety, old bicycles, a huge monitor lizard, motorcycles, a covered wagon pulled by oxen, and a racing cyclist, all in the space of 20 minutes. A bit further down that road, in Galle, a 17th century Dutch colonial fort, looms a Dutch Reformed Church, its floor paved with the gravestones of settlers, and an Anglican Church that was once a courthouse features an altar in place of the old gallows. Despite the terrestrial world's interesting features, I had become attached to my small patch of sea, so before we left Unawatuna I went for an early morning swim. At 6 am I was engrossed with some small thing on the floor when a change in light startled me. I looked up and the shape first impressed me as another person; but it was a magnificent sea turtle, about my size. I followed the hovering, gliding thing, spotted with barnacles and trailing moss, until it sped away into the brightening water, and then I swam slowly in, put my feet on solid ground, picked up my bag, and went to catch the train, regretting my dependence on oxygen.

I Love You, America

2007-03-14T05:10:00.000-05:00

These days, I've been amused by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. After describing the difficulties of dealing with local rodents and "discharg(ing) the necessities of nature," in Brobdingnag, Gulliver takes a moment to justify the details he dwells on in order to defend himself against "being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused." It takes a very dull mind indeed to find the particulars of life for a little man in a land of giants boring, but being weary of entanglements with airlines and consulates is understandable. So bear with me, patient reader, and remember that I am an amateur, writing these lines in their first draft in a notebook with unlined paper at a table not far from the white petticoats of a turquoise sea, and all that follows is the path to this paradise. You are definitely reading on a computer that probably sits on a desk, and you may be escaping momentarily whatever keeps you there. In which case, I apologize for the method of delivery; if I could put these pages in a bottle, release it into the sea, and be sure they'd find their way directly to your hands, where you would unroll them and inhale the scent of a palm fringed Sri Lankan shore, I would. But I can't, and so I'll bend my meager talents towards the tale at hand.

As I mentioned before, on February 21 Talia and I took a rickshaw to the Thiruvananthapuram airport. We arrived at 8:30am to catch a 10:30am flight, which would have us landing just before noon. I needed to be in the city by 3pm, because I had to apply for a renewal of my passport at the United States Consulate between 2 and 4pm, the only hours, on Mondays and Wednesdays, that the Citizen Services section is open. If I missed the Wednesday hours, that would mean hanging around Colombo for 4 days, or leaving and making a special trip back. All this to point out the magnitude of my agitation when, after arriving 2 hours early for my flight, the woman at the check-in counter stated cooly that it had been pushed back to 1:30pm due to technical difficulties.

There was nothing we could do, and I still entertained the hope that I could be at the consulate by 3:30, so we wandered around the airport (which passengers aren't allowed to leave after receiving a boarding pass), ate a greasy breakfast courtesy of Sri Lankan Airlines, played a game of Scrabble, wandered around more, and waited. During the course of all this nothing, we found out, from a witless security guard, that our flight had not been moved due to technical difficulties, merely consolidated with a later one due to passenger numbers insufficient for a profitable flight.

I ended up missing the consular hours on Wednesday, and it was in a state of utter frustration with ways of doing (or not doing) things in South Asia that I made my way there on Thursday morning, by now well versed in trying all possibilities. Sri Lanka has been at civil war since 1983, so Galle Face, which would be (and has been), a posh, leisurely seafront promenade in other political circumstances, is a heavily guarded, strip of cement and tar hosting foreign embassies, Sri Lankan government offices, a few shops, and a few luxury hotels. After 20 minutes of trudging down the empty sidewalk past soldiers behind sandbag barricades, gladness pierced my my mood of urgent, absent irritation at the sight of the American flag dividing the air behind a tall, concrete wall.

My plan was to beg someone in Emergency Services, which has much longer hours and is for stolen passports and the like, to help me out. But the sturdy Sri Lankan receptionists who run the visitor register and bag x-ray looked at me dubiously as I explained my problem, so I just stood there looking bewildered and eventually one of them called the main building. After a brief conversation with someone in an office, somewhere behind the wall of security, the woman hung up and waved me through; I was in. I walked through a parking lot, beneath the flag, and into an office building, several stories high, with a certain squareness and overuse of dark faux-wood panelling that made me feel sure it was designed in 1981. After one more bag inspection, I put my shoulder to a dark-tinted, bullet-proof glass door that was so heavy I needed the whole weight of my body to open it. I was brimming with satisfaction at American efficiency, rationality, and work ethic (no it's not a holiday, yes, someone can help you), but when I glanced up at the wall behind the gold-lettered wooden arrow proclaiming "Citizen Services" to see the blankly self-satisfied smiles of Condi, George, and Dick falling upon me from frames simultaneously serious and cheap looking, their heads in front of that same flag that had nearly brought tears to my eyes a few minutes before, my patriotism swung back into a more balanced position. I followed the arrow and entered a waiting room with short, dark wall-to-wall carpet, empty plastic chairs lined up neatly in rows, a window looking into a work area, a rack on the wall full of travel warnings, and beneath it, a large shelf with about 15 square compartments housing American magazines.

To reach a consulate employee, you have to open a door into a small room containing a small window, and ring a bell to get the attention of someone inside the workspace the window reveals. I guess that small room is for the purpose of that highly prized commodity which I've suffered so much without during my travels in Asia, privacy. When I rang the bell, a petite, bright eyed Sri Lankan man, probably about the same age as me, came to the window immediately. I explained my situation humbly, apologizing with "I know this isn't an emergency service, and these are not official Citizen Services hours, but...." Miraculously, the man, who's name I later discovered to be Suneth, handed me two forms to fill out, gave me clear directions to the passport photo shop across the street, and said, "Let's get this underway."

When I returned the completed forms, he asked me to wait in the lobby while he ran everything through the computer. I took a seat in the empty room, and as I sat, thinking up negative and positive aspects of being from a country where it's generally agreed that a question deserves an answer and time is precious, my eye was drawn to the magazines. These must have been old issues of subscriptions of Americans working in the consulate, because the selection ranged from Time to the New Yorker, to Sports Illustrated to Madamoiselle. My day just kept getting better; the flag, efficient bureaucrats, and now magazines.

As my adoration of my native land reached its peak, I unearthed from the pile what must have been a July issue of GQ. And there on the cover, peppily alluring I suppose, her outfit combining army camo and the American flag, was Jessica Simpson, famous for her talent for being famous. The most prominent lettering on the cover combined to read something like "Jessica Simpson and 45 Other Reasons To Love America." For me, bone white teeth revealed by vacuously wide smiles, single-mindedly tended muscles, and costumes calculatedly casual and accidentally revealing down to the last detail, are high on my list of 45 reasons to be disappointed with what we do with our freedom. And what is this conflation of sex with bloodshed and patriotism? I know it's nothing new, but have we learned nothing, ever.

Shortly, Suneth called me from the window next to the shelf, gave me my papers, and explained the steps of the process to me. I would need to pass under the portraits again and enter the room on the left side, pay a cashier, and wait for an official to ask me some questions. Then, my request would be sent via DHL to Washington D.C., where a new passport would be issued and sent to Sri Lanka, again via DHL. It would take four to seven working days; it was then Thursday, so I should call the next Wednesday to see if it had arrived. When I picked up the new one, the old one would be cancelled. I was surprised that I'd be allowed to keep my current one with me, because I'd read that a citizen's current passport must be included with an application for a new one. I asked Suneth about this and he replied, "we have deemed it imprudent to deprive American citizens of their passports."

The constructions of non-native English speakers all over the world are often charming, and it's always a treat to hear someone actually speak an antiquated word like "deem," but I sometimes crave my language fast and loose, all flung together and tossed up in Tupperware. After I paid the cashier 67 USD, a large, fit, middle-aged man with thinning red-blond hair and disconcertingly pale blue eyes interviewed me through a pane of glass. I forget his name and his title, but he was clearly high in the chain of command.

Shuffling the two pieces of paper that comprised my application, he asked general questions about my presence in Sri Lanka, mixing in some relaxed "umms," and "ahhs," not out of hesitation, but out of confidence and leisure as his voice boomed out through the microphone behind the bullet-proof glass and into the ears of waiting visa applicants. As I was leaving the window he called me back, remorselessly mispronouncing my name. "Oh and, Ms. Brecker, you weren't planning on going east were you?" "No, just Kandy and the southwest," I answered, nearing the window in order to be heard. "Good, there's a war on you know." "Yeah, I read about that, thanks." He suggested I go back to Suneth's window and register my presence in the country with the consulate in order to receive travel warnings, and I did.

I left the consulate that day glad to be registered with my government as a citizen abroad, and as I passed back under the flag and onto the hot Colombo sidewalk I thought something like, "that's why we're a super-power, because we get things done!" But, even as national pride swelled into gross generalization, experiences at the DMV and my encounter with GQ's sex, blood, and power soup kept me from wallowing in it too wholeheartedly. The consulate seemed to contain the whole country, with its wall-to-wall carpeting (which it takes the coffers of a prince to maintain), its foreigners, its natives, and its mix of trivial and serious magazines. Even GQ, which lost my respect with its cover, called me back with some of the reasons to love America listed in its pages. My favorite was, "#36 Kris Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down." It's the Willie Nelson rendition that I've felt deliciously sorry for myself to the tune of over the years, and seeing the lyrics there in print summoned up Willie's voice, and that called up that particular American something that I won't even attempt to put my finger on.

While Suneth and the computer were confirming that I'm not a terrorist, I got the idea of borrowing a few magazines. I chose an old issue of The Atlantic Monthly with a forecast of the consequences of the reversal of Roe V. Wade as the cover story and a copy of The New York Review of Books containing a consideration of Joan Didion's latest, The Year of Magical Thinking. I returned them when I picked up my new passport not seven, but eleven working days later.

P.S. I was not allowed to take pictures of the United States Consulate or The United States flag.

Thirty Dollars And Three Years

2007-03-14T03:22:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed I've picked up the pace, covered more miles, since that marinade in Goa. There are two reasons: Talia, and my Indian tourist visa. The first reason arrived straight from New York City fresh and frenetic, ready to move, and with a limited amount of time, just as the second reason was due to expire. So, travelling with Talia meant I'd have to get a new tourist visa; in early February, when I decided to stay until April, I knew I'd have to be in another country by Feb. 22, since India requires visitors to exit to get a new visa. The upshot is, when I received that email in Bangalore saying my ticket to the United States had been changed, we pointed our steps towards Thiruvananthapuram, the closest major major port to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, where I could visit the Indian High Commission.

selling gramophones on the street

There were a few places along the way that we'd had enough of before the time we'd allotted to them had elapsed, so we found ourselves in Thiruvananthapuram (a city which didn't seem worth the trouble it takes to say its name) five days before February 21, which was a Wednesday, one of the two weekdays the United States Consulate's Citizen Services is open, from 2-4 pm, and before I could apply for an Indian visa, I needed to renew my passport, which was due to expire in late April. This business of documents, aside from imposing a time-frame, was causing me various irritations. First of all, I had hoped for a cheap, picturesque sail from the southernmost tip of India to the seaside city of Colombo, but after quite a bit of searching around, even unearthing a slew of newspaper articles from 2003 about a new port complete with immigration offices, and shipping companies ready to begin passenger services, whose phone numbers I went so far as to acquire, I resigned myself to the fact that Sri Lanka is only reachable by plane.

Then, when I checked into plane tickets during my stay in Fort Cochin, I found that Sri Lankan airlines has a monopoly on flights from India, so they charge ridiculous prices. I decided to wait and see if the price came down or something else turned up. Meanwhile, Talia, of a markedly more optimistic bent of mind than I, became convinced that it must be possible to extend or renew a tourist visa without leaving India. Her openness to possibility has usually been refreshing and instructive for me, but in this case, it led me to a protracted wander through the labyrinth (if it can be assumed to have so much structure and intent) of Indian bureaucracy. I won't bore you with a play by play of the amazing difficulty of tracking down a valid phone number, calling closed offices, and visiting offices where the person believed to have information was on a mysterious "central government holiday." It's enough to say that at the end of a long process, the answer, issuing from a small, dim room piled with dusty files presided over by the Foreigner Regional Registration Office(or as I'd come to refer to him over my days of tracking him down, the Fro) was, "no," and the fact that it had taken so much effort just to get to a human being who could verify my initial understanding of the absurd regulations was maddening.

supplicant and The Fro

Seated on a rickety wooden chair across from The Fro, who occupied a school desk of the type we used to hide beneath during nuclear attack drills in the 1980s, I felt, after all that time spent finding him, I deserved some explanation. I asked him, "So, what happens if I overstay my visa?" Throughout our brief exchange he had been referring to a dirty photocopy affixed to the inside of a folder that he'd dug out of a pile. The paper he looked to for guidance was the same list of vagueries I'd found on several websites, and before answering me, he checked it again. I already knew there was no information about penalties there, but he looked up and pronounced, "30 dollars."
"Really, that's all? So, when I go through immigration at the airport, I just pay them 30 dollars?" "Yes, 30 dollars."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'll just stay then. It's cheaper than a new visa."
"Madame, for your safety, you must leave," he stated angrily.
And then said, "People are waiting," gesturing toward the line that I had just spent an hour in.
"I really don't care. I've been trying to get information about this for a week, and I finally get to you, and you don't know anything. What is the penalty for overstaying my visa?"
"Arrest."
"Arrest and...for how long?"
"Three years."
"So, the penalty is 30 dollars and three years in jail?"
"Yes."

"What?," you say. Now you know how I feel.

So, there you have it, India in a nutshell; a place that makes you say, "what?" and then refuses to answer. Utterly defeated by absurdity, I left the F.R.R.O. in a huff and went to deliver the verdict to Talia, who was far more shocked than I at the inevitability of Sri Lanka. I booked a ticket for the next morning, one day before my visa was expiring, but she needed some time to consider her options. On that particular evening, she was at a peak of frustration with India; she had been having stomach problems for some time, was a frequent victim of the ass/boob grab, her leg had been dented by a motorcycle carrying three men a few hours earlier, and I dare say she was experiencing some intense boyfriend-missing. As I packed, she lay on the bed, considering the idea of considering where to go. Despite her momentary listlessness, when her decision came, it came with force. She sat upright and declared, "Of course I'm coming to Sri Lanka! Where'd you get your ticket, mybesttripinindiawaswhenileftinida.com?"

view from an Indian Coffee House

Well satisfied that I'd exhausted all possibilities, we went to the Thiruvananthapuram airport on February 21, and eventually, flew away, ending the trail that had led through Mysore, Ooty, Fort Cochin, Allepey, and Thiruvananthapuram in the space of 19 days. It's only fair here to give credit to Talia and the Lonely Planet she arrived with. I wouldn't have been able to hack the frequent transits without a team-mate to share the work of travel, and although the Lonely Planet is often inaccurate and always heavy, it decreased my relocation anxieties and made the places we stopped digestible in short periods of time. The nice maps in the pages never tidied up the chaotic realities of the streets, but they did help to alleviate some pre-arrival tension by giving me a place to start and the illusion that I knew where I was going.

Don't ask me what that is.

On the other hand, I never became engaged by Kerala, and I don't know if that's because of the predigested nature of travelling with a guide book, moving too quickly to pay close attention to any particular thing, or just a low point in my own interest. In all, I spent 11 days there, and as far as I'm concerned, its saving grace, its most interesting institution, is the Indian Coffee House, a Keralan restaurant chain abandoned by its colonial founders and re-opened by its newly unemployed staff as a worker owned co-operative in 1958. The Allepey beach location features the only cheap, Indian menu on the beachfront, and when you order coffee, you acutally get a substantial amount of black liquid in your cup, rather than the typical thimble-full of powders (cream, sugar, and nescafe) and hot water, and if you order the coffee set, you get a whole pot, almost unheard of outside of tourist encampments; I was hooked from the get-go.

Even though the Allepey location was aesthetically uninspiring, a comfortably crumbling cement patio set far back from the beach, I regretted leaving behind my reliably delicious breakfasts, hot, flaky flat-breads and spicy vegetable mixtures. Imagine my delight when, exiting the Thiruvananthapuram railway station, a round structure with an upward spiraling pattern of gaps in its red brickwork bore the quaint Indian Coffee House sign; cheap, delicious food, architectural appeal, and a convenient location! Maybe because it's worker owned and volume means profit, the waiters take your order, serve your food, and bring your check quickly. And maybe for the same reason, they don't seem embarrassed about their uniforms, which consist of white shirt and pants, a cumber bund-like thing, and a head wrap that winds its way up to crowning fan-fold.

On a beach near Thiruvananthapuram looms a decaying, yellow hulk, its paint peeling against a temperamental sky, that must have been a warehouse or a customs center in its day. Now, 10 or 12 tables beneath an awning on a platform extending from beneath the eaves comprise an Indian Coffee House. There, I happened to have a waiter who was both friendly and functional in English, which gave me an opportunity to feel out the uniform situation; I had been wondering if they seemed as silly to the people who wore them as they did to me. For fear of offending, I didn't want to ask directly how he liked his costume, instead I asked him if he wraps his flamboyant turban himself every day. Judging by his face, he was aware that it's a silly hat, but he explained smilingly that he wraps it himself about once every two weeks, fan-fold and all, and the process takes about two minutes.

Rajendra Prasad, I.C.H. co-owner

Before I came to India, I was planning to do a month long yoga course near Thiruvananthapuram, and maybe I would have appreciated Kerala more if I hadn't abandoned that plan. The further I travel, exposing myself to constant strangeness, stimulus and change, the more I realize the necessity of having a point of focus, some detail with which to square the rest, and being a bit weary of churches, I never really settled on one there; if the time had been right, I would have done an Indian Coffee house tour.

another I.C.H.

Gently Down The Stream

2007-03-03T00:41:00.000-05:00

Both the tourism boards of Fort Cochin and Alleppey distribute more than usually abstract maps. While the one for Fort Cochin stubbornly refuses to reveal its geographical context, the Alleppey map is useless for navigation; it looks the way I imagine a schematic drawing of a micro-chip would, a series of unmarked paths, squares, and dots, magic to the uninitiated. On the map, Alleppey (or Alappuzha for long) orients around two large, straight, canals running west to east, beach to backwaters;but I swear, those canals are not central or straight. To add to my confusion, the streets and bridges are obscurely, or not at all, labeled on both the map and the actual terrain.

crossing the street after school

Alleppey lighthouse

One day, Talia and I booked a boat ride from an office on one of the main canals. After we had made arrangements (for the following day) we parted ways. Frazzled by the town's indecipherable code and deafening honking, I followed one of the main canals as far as I could, to the point where the flat stone walls shoring up the land ended and the bank became slick and muddy. From there I could see a wide lake with boats of various sizes coming and going across it. Since I couldn't go any further away from the town and towards the lake, I picked my way back through the overgrown branches at the water's edge in the direction I had come, and took a right onto the first small road I crossed. It carried me into a grouping of huts and tumble-down shacks, smothered in abundant foliage from the trees as well as the moist ground, that ended on the shores of the lake I'd seen earlier. Turning on the bank, not so far from the shacks, a long, sparkling white resort lay along the shore, its docks reaching into the water, mooring Kettuvallam, traditional Keralan houseboats with intentionally tan, or carefully pale, healthily fattened, or artfully slimmed people sitting on their decks.

Kettuvallam

swimmer

A few minutes down the bank, thin men sat beneath the coverings they were weaving for new boats next to a small muddy canal. Past this, a small church jutted crookedly from the side of the lake, miraculously anchored in the saturated soil. Mary stood inside, atop an altar of plaster sculpted and painted to look like wood. I turned away from the lake here and soon came upon beds of water rooted plants appearing as solid and dense as the ground that supported me and the church, maybe choking out unmaintained canals; I had to be careful where I put my feet while walking through another cluster of slantwise shacks, but soon enough my steps were intersected by a road running next to a small but solid canal. After some time, I found myself in a more organized settlement. The streets ran roughly parallel, and within the gates of walled yards, children played at washing, digging, blowing bubbles or transferring liquids between bottles. Occasionally, a child ran out to call hello, ask my name, or giggle, or a mother gave me a wave or a shy, delighted smile. The houses were fancifully colored, green with black pillars, pink with art-deco stylings in the brick of the wall, and blue and pink with a black, iron fence in a 1950's motel pattern of smaller and larger circles. The homes, long-sprawling, artfully juxtaposed rectangles or two-storied square, plane and column affairs in tiki-lounge hues, were downright stylish, and as they grew larger, the streets grew emptier.

lake church

laundry

At least 90 minutes into the walk, I noticed that I was in a state of calm of the type I used to enjoy on walks with my dog, aimlessly looping the Namsan Botanical Gardens, continuing up the mountain to Seoul Tower, walking back down, looping the park again, moving without aim or disturbance. Just as I noticed this, just as it crossed my mind, "this is the best walk I've had in India," two teenage boys rode by on a bicycle. Radiating the usual idiotic glee, as if they had just dared one another to speak to me, one or both of them said, "Hello, where from?" They passed so quickly that I didn't have time to get annoyed, or even to shake myself aware enough to answer. A minute later, they returned from the other direction. As they passed, I felt a quick contraction of a hand on my left buttock, and then I saw their backs cruising away. Again, before I could react, they were gone. I stood there, on the side of the road, nothing to do with my anger but throw curses into the empty air where they had been moments before.

Jesus in a cage

Contrary to my usual stubborn insistence upon my right to be angry, I regained my equilibrium after a few minutes, and I found myself in the market area of the suburb. I needed to burn a photo CD so I could clear my camera, and there was an Internet cafe. While I was waiting, the owner of the shop engaged me in conversation. After finding out that I'm American, he told me that when he was young America was his "dream country," but he never managed to get a visa.

dragonfly and lace

angel on altar

I liked him, and wished his dream had come true. When I asked for the bathroom, he took me to his home a few doors down. As we walked back to his shop, I remarked about the loveliness of the neighborhood I had passed through. Asking him who lives there, he replied, "No one. They're all working in Europe or America." I thanked him and left with my CD. A few minutes later, rounding a corner I noted with delight that I was back almost where I had started; that was the first and last time I wasn't lost in Alleppey, and that's only because I wasn't going anywhere.

The Bishop's Garden

2007-03-02T06:10:00.000-05:00

Talia and I (just like the Brits) enjoyed cooling off in Ooty, but four days of cold showers in a cold room were enough. Early one morning we got on a bus. A four hour ride brought us down from the heights and deposited us at a train station; after three lazy hours of daydreaming next to the window of an unlit, uncrowded sleeper car, we reached Ernakulam, a little city with a distracting name. I tried those syllables several ways during my stay in the area, and it never sat right. Ernakulam: it refused to signify a place, instead it suggested others words (eureka, vernacular, irk, immaculate) or other meanings (a growth on the foot, an accumulation of interest on an obscure type of investment, a decorative motif on the base of an ancient column). But it is, in reality, a place, a place that has a dock that hosts a ferry that goes to Fort Cochin; after disembarking from the train, we hired a rickshaw to the ferry terminal. The driver's first offer was 200 Rupees. We argued him down to 80. On the way he told us that the last boat for Fort Cochin had sailed, but he could take us over the bridge for another 100 Rupees. We tried our luck with the boat instead; 20 minutes and 5 Rupees later, we disembarked at the ferry terminal on the other side. When we left the fort a few days later we went back to the Ernakulam train station, where I finally heard a local say the name; all my renderings were wrong.

Fort Cochin residences and resident

Fort Cochin is situated on the northern end of a peninsula, but I had to go all the way to Wikipedia to find that out. On the tourist maps it looks like a little toe, stranded out there in the ocean without its foot, because the rest of the peninsula is not included on the map. It's a quaint little setting, but the price of its picturesque appeal, and the shelter it offers from the realities of India, is artificiality. A setting in the sense of a table lain for a dinner party with prospective investors, only polished and un-chipped dinnerware is included, and all the dirt is swept out into the backyard. The pedicured peninsular tip, including Fort Cochin on the north, some unnamed stuff in between, and Mattancherry, slightly south, is an impressive collection of Portuguese, Dutch, British, Chinese, and Jewish influences, not to mention the usual Hindu and Muslim presence. Many of the buildings of the two settlements have been carefully preserved, refurbished, and turned into shops, restaurants, and hotels, while the thirty minute walk from one to the other leads past buildings of the same age still in everyday use, a bustling rice and spice market decaying at the usual rate.

I have forgotten the name of this church

Paradesi Synagogue, Mattancherry

Although I know nothing about Portuguese riffs on Christianity, it was immediately apparent that a more demonstrative power than in Ooty or even Goa held sway in these parts. The curving facades of churches that I learned were typically Portuguese insistently called to mind the undulations of Venus' hair and hips in Botticelli's depiction of her birth, and the wood-carven, painted saints at the Indo-Portuguese Museum display a sensuality and mythical scale that's new in my experience of Christian artifacts. This variability of adoration interests me; how can all these ways of worship have the same root. All claim the same savior and assign him different attributes, like a group of siblings arguing over their memories of a deceased parent, each having individual experiences and all missing the essence through inevitable self-reflective emphasis.

Indo-Portuguese Museum

Holy Water Vessel, Indo-Portuguese Museum

The history of St. Francis, said to be India's oldest church, bears witness to the expansion of the western world. It was Roman Catholic from 1503 to 1663, during the Portuguese era, then Dutch Reform from 1664 to 1804, then Anglican from 1804 to 1947. Now, as that story peters out and we flounder around for another one, it is a landmark, a tourist attraction, and less and less frequently, a sanctuary. The old place was locked every time I walked by, but Santa Cruz Basilica, right down the street from our guest house, was full of life. Songs with familiar tunes in an unfamiliar language regularly tumbled out of the open doors of the sanctuary. I strolled through one day during hours of visiting rather than worship, but there were plenty of parishioners kneeling in pews. The sanctuary, a long, deep rectangle, is attended on the sides by columns painted in pastel hues, saints in glass-fronted cases, circled with blinking lights, placed on wooden tables covered with candles, at their bases. Worshipers kneel toward the main altar, with its own sublimely elevated, lusciously colored statues, or approach the glass encased figures on the sides, crossing themselves and muttering, while huge forms from instructional scenes along the walls and ceiling look on, rendered in a solid style that's a cross between Adam in the Sistine Chapel and Socialist propaganda paintings.

Santa Cruz Basilica

Walking across the broad yard between the sanctuary of Santa Cruz Basilica and the road, I saw two gold vinyl thrones outside an ancillary building. A man sat in one, chatting on his cell phone. The scene was so incongruous that I went over to inspect it. The man in the chair told me that the building was for social functions and the chairs had just been used for a bride and groom at their wedding reception. As I left the church grounds, the details of the overall impression left by my visit reminded me of something, but I didn't know just what. A while later, it came; the color and character of the whole place, the frilly, blue pavilion to the side of the church, an area dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the gold chairs with backs recalling an Aztec sun, the saints strung with Christmas lights, reminded me of nothing more than the decorated dashboards and tattoos of Los Angeles Latino culture.

In the literature produced by the Fort Cochin tourist desk it says that Santa Cruz Basilica was built by the Portuguese and "elevated to the Cathedral by the Pope Paul IV in 1558." Some other things happened to it, like destruction and reconstruction and then "consecrated in 1905, Santa Cruz was proclaimed a Basilica by the Pope John Paul II in 1894." Aside from those quotes being totally confusing in linear terms, I always thought the distinction between a cathedral and a basilica was a matter of architecture, not proclamation. I checked it out, and it turns out the word "basilica" has both senses; it's a type of Roman architecture and an important church given special rites by the pope. I guess I really do need a church field guide.

Mother Theresa on the side of the road

another sidewalk saint with scary spikes

If the Bishop of the Diocese of Cochin had been receiving when I stopped by his house, I'm sure he could have helped me out. As it was, the residence and attached sanctuary behind the row of Gothic arches sheltering the porch were both locked, but the Bishop's gardener had plenty of time. Rightly proud of the fruits of his labors, he gave me the name of the trees around the circular driveway, a decadent tongue of fragrance rolling from each white petal of the fleshy, yellow-centered flowers on their branches. He beamed at my appreciation of the delicate, white and violet spotted orchids embracing the frangipani trunks with their papery roots, pointed out the breadfruits, jack fruits, and bougainvilleas, and took in the whole circle in the middle of the drive, a of multitude of blooms and a statue of St. Joseph, with a proprietary gesture.

St. Joseph

Kerela is a fecund state, and it's also the richest and the most literate in India; in Fort Cochin, this manifested in the sophisticated marketing and resulting expense of the place, and after 3 days, both Talia and I were ready to leave. The walks were charming once or twice, but the best of the buildings had already been converted into hotels or restaurants far out of my price range, and overly preserved facades, the cost of care putting them out of the sphere of use for most people, are often lifeless , one-dimensional, as if the historical board had somehow vaccinated the past, with an application of plaster and paint, from infection by the present. I left feeling much the way I do about the "historical" sections of American towns; they're nice for a few hours, but there's only so much shopping, plaque reading, and eating I can take.

A Bird Is A Bird Is A Bird

2007-02-27T03:11:00.000-05:00

Why does bad behaviour make for a better story than good? Is it worthy of narration because it’s unusual or defies expectation? If so, why do we assume people will behave well in the first place. Do most people go about minding their manners, making the ones who don't notable? As difficult as it is to make accurate generalizations about "most people," they probably do go about their business in a reasonably civil manner, but even if incivility is statistically unusual it's not necessarily uncommon in everyday experience; after all, there are 6.5 billion people out there, and even a tiny percentage of that number certainly constitutes enough individuals to yield frequent annoyance. Well, whatever makes violations of etiquette and decency interesting, I probably write about them too much, and I write about them as a stranger, not understanding what is considered polite behaviour by the people around me.

In fairness to India, most people don’t harass me on the street. The place is overflowing with people doing what they can in the best way they know how; and sometimes they even take time away from their business just to be kind and hospitable. Walking around Mysore one day, Talia and I came upon an imposing old mansion set back from the hustle in a barren expanse interrupted by a few well-groomed bushes and flanked by trees casting a shade that didn't manage to allay the overall impression of dessication. Upon closer approach, the exterior was neglected and peeling, too shabby for the space it commanded, but potted plants and climbing vines formed a narrow moat of fertility lending the house a cool appeal.

Hypnotized by a blend of curiosity and the promise of shade, we poked our heads over the threshold through the tall doors into the gloom of a high-ceilinged sitting room, its only illumination a few rays slicing in between heavy curtains. Unsure whether this was a public or private place, we ventured in and found a security guard sitting listlessly on a deep, velvet couch. He didn’t speak enough English to give us any information, but he didn’t stop us from going further either, so we headed for the far-off promise of the central atrium, surrounded by white, Roman pillars and filled with greenery, the brightest area of the whole hushed place. Out of a wood-panelled shadow, a short man with a fabulous, grey handlebar mustache, red powder running in a line the width of a fingerprint down his forehead, and a white uniform appeared.

Although he spoke even less of our language than the security gaurd, the man's whole face crinkled with a gleeful smile as he waved us toward his kitchen, the floor an expanse of clean slate, counters on either end stocked with fine, white china; he proudly turned over plates to display the fading British brand stamp. Next, we followed him up a balustraded staircase, through an attic, and out onto the roof, where we had a wide view of the mansion's once proud grounds and the city beyond. Last, he unlocked a grand wooden door with a brass plaque over top proclaiming "Governors Suite." It featured an anteroom with an intimate grouping of settees in white dust-covers, a large, new, Samsung high-resolution television, a bedroom with two single, four-posters set a modest distance apart and covered with frothy, white mosquito netting, and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub resting amid a glittering expanse of tile. Back in the driveway, saying goodbye as best we could, our proud host swept back a group of branches with his arm and revealed an inscription on the cornerstone from which we learned that we had visited the Mysore Government House, a lodge for state officials.

For every thing known to man, there are people who have it and want to keep it and people who don't have it and want to get it; while I was in Mysore, the camps were pitched over water. The Kaveri river runs through the state of Karnata, and from its dams, water is released to three other states: Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, and Kerala. The river is the main source of drinking water for Mysore, and India's first hydroelectric plant was utilized its falls, making Bangalore, Karnataka's capital, the first fully electrified city in Asia in 1906. In the late 19th century, back when royalty rather than tourists appreciated the excesses of Mysore Palace, agreements were signed resulting in a larger share of the Kaveri's water going to Tamil Nadu, which is south of Karnataka, than to Karnataka; as a result, Tamil Nadu has a lot of cultivated land.

tea crops, outside Ooty

Although Karnatakans have historically seen the old water agreements as an injustice, the argument now runs, from the Tamil Nadu side, that to rectify the injustice at this late stage would disrupt the lives of many farmers and the economy of the entire state; an economy that, from the Karnataka side of the argument, flourishes because of the initial unjust water distribution. In 1990, the government of India set up a tribunal to settle the dispute, and they finally reached a water allotment plan on February 5 of this year; 419 thousand million cubic feet of water per year to Tamil Nadu, 270 tmc ft to Karnataka, 30 tmc ft to Kerala, and 7 tmc ft to Pondicherry.

Nobody was really happy with the decision, least of all Karnatakans, and Talia and I happened to be leaving Mysore for Udhagamandalam (referred to from here on as Ooty), a hill station in Tamil Nadu, the day after it was announced. State agencies were striking in protest, and that included buses, so we over payed a private company for transport into Tamil Nadu. At the border, we switched from a bus with Karnataka plates to a bus with Tamil Nadu plates, and soon enough vibrant rice paddies bordered by palms divided the landscape. As the bus left the planes and rose up narrow, curving roads, the unrestrained green of the paddies was replaced with the careful hues of tea farming, and by the time we reached Ooty, 2,200 meters up in the sky, the reds and yellows of Karnataka had been washed away by the greens and blues of the Nilgiri Hills.

In comparison to the constant sweatiness, dust, heat exhaustion and chaos of Bangalore and Mysore, Ooty is the Garden of Eden. The comparison extends not only to the weather, but also to the people; hawking and harassment were nearly non-existent, so during my three days there, I indulged in one of my favorite activities, walking. The main agricultural product of the area is tea (which will only grow on land with a particular slope), and the dwarfed plants, glossy green and flat-topped, blanket the hills in a patchwork without reference to symmetry. Contrasting with the curving paths where harvesters wend their ways, precisely spaced, straight rows of small, sturdy silver oaks provide just the right amount of light and shade for the crop.

In the same landscape, non-indigenous Eucalyptus trees with gangly, bare trunks bearing energetic bursts of sharp, silvery leaves at their height stand cliquishly apart from soft-leaved, rounder, natives species which, in the bluish distances of the area, often reminded me of the trees, so ornate in their softness as to engender impossible desires, painted by Fragonard. The tender, new leaves shooting from the tops of the tea plants in the countryside surrounding Ooty have to be covered with bracken to prevent death by early morning frosts; they are harvested every twelve days. Most of the meticulous care and rotation necessary can be done by machine these days, but in the places I walked, it was done by residents of the countryside, where strange symbols and shrines mutely intimate the past, the indigenous tribes supplanted by the British.

Is this a shrine to the Easter Bunny, Poseidon, and the K-Mart home deco line, or what?

In the mid 19th century, Ooty developed as a cool retreat from the scorched plains. Today, many of the churches, homes, government offices, warehouses, and a botanical garden remain. The fact that most of them are not particularly well maintained adds to their charm; the churches still have congregations and people laze about or play games on the lawn of the botanical garden while school kids cut across on their way home.

shoe game at the garden

Since the place was developed by the British, I had expected Anglican churches; but I came upon a group of Catholic children being educated by hooded nuns, squirming impatiently while repeating obediently in front of the wooden, painted saints encased in glass next to the doors of their church, boys in their frayed but immaculate uniforms and girls in their skirts and braids. The next day, on a walk in the tea plantations, our guide told me his given name; it was (to my surprise) Thomas Sebastian, and it turned out that he was from a Catholic family. He informed me that yes, there are Anglicans in Ooty, but there are just as many Catholics, due to the efforts of European missionaries. In short, I saw a lot of old churches, and the Catholic ones housed some cheerfully painted statuary, but my favorite place, perhaps because of the way I came upon it, was the Nilgiris Library.

St. Joseph Pray For Us

After spending a few minutes in St. Stephens trying to decide which sect had built it, and finally deciding upon Anglican because of the preference for stained glass over wooden saints, an architectural seriousness that made the ceiling (supported by a center beam hauled 120 km from the palace of a sultan by elephant) feel close and pressing despite the height, and a plaque proclaiming the church's close association with local British administrators and dignitaries. In the end, I don't know why I care which version of Christianity the stones of old churches were lain to represent. Maybe its just something to hold on to, a toe-tagging system for the relics of bygone days.

St. Stephens

Leaving the church and walking down the first street I saw, enjoying the cool air and the wander more than anything else, a squat building hove into view. Its sign proclaimed "Higginbothams Pvt. Ltd.," and it was lined with glossy, dark-stained wooden shelves full of shiny new books. Even though I didn't intend to buy anything, I grazed for a while, and just as I was about to leave, I came across Pocket Guide to Birds Of the Indian Subcontinent. Now, if there was anything I was going to buy, it was a bird guide; the creatures fill the skies, forests, mountains, waterways, plains and streets of India, hunting, flitting, tweeting, foraging, swooping, diving, gliding, cawing, scavenging and flashing their hues, brilliant and dull, in a dizzying variety. It bothers me each time I see one and don't know its name. The question, "was that an eagle, a hawk, a kite or a falcon," has niggled me regularly for months, and although a bird often passes too quickly or too distantly for identification, I hoped that by studying a field guide I could at least enter the world each morning knowing the difference between a crow and a raven.

HIGGINBOTHAMS PVT. LTD.

Is the desire to know the exact name of a bird the same as the desire to know the denomination of a church? In the case of churches, their representations or lack thereof are dictated by the beliefs of the sect. Their form is dictated by historical circumstances and philosophical underpinnings; in the case of birds, their forms are dictated by another law, and it is not for us to dream up the law, but to observe it, and mark out our observations with names. The language and logic of theology is far more familiar to me than that of ornithology, but I bet I would learn a lot from a field guide to churches, too. Whatever the reason for my conviction that I should know things by their given names, I stood there and considered the purchase of the bird identification guide carefully. First of all, it was 795 Rupees, or around 17 USD, slightly over my budget for an entire day, and second, if I bought it, I'd have to carry it, and it's not actually pocket sized. I justified the cost by telling myself two things; it's a reference book, so I'll keep it forever, and it has thousands of glossy illustrations, which explains the price. The extra weight in my bag was justified by the value of the book's contents.

Just as I settled the debate, the need for a bathroom came upon me; although I didn't see one in the shop, I reasoned, "surely, he'll let me use the private one, since I'll be spending a princely sum." When I began my browse, the only clerk in the store, a round, mustachioed, bespectacled, Hindu, followed me closely, picking titles from the shelves and holding them in front of my eyes. After a while, by means of complete unresponsiveness, I managed to get rid of him. Now, I placed my selection on the small wooden desk, covered with bills and receipts, newspapers and leaflets, which he stood behind as he ponderously wrote out the bill, complete with title, author, publisher, price, and date of sale. I asked if I could use the toilet. He said no, and I pointed out that I needed to go now, before any further transaction could take place. Then he claimed that the store didn't even have a bathroom. I absolutely did not believe him, so I asked, "well, where do you go to the bathroom?" His head wove from side to side evasively, "I'm sorry madame. What can I do." My need getting more urgent by the argument, I said, "so, when you use the toilet you lock up the whole store and go somewhere? Where do you go?" Several customers stood watching and giggling, and I expected my latest thrust to win admittance to a hole somewhere in the back of the building, or even outside. Instead, the shopkeeper said something about the police station and gestured widely, indicating any of several possible directions. I'm sure Abel Joshua Higginbothams, who founded the chain in 1844, would have been appalled at this treatment; at any rate, I was, and I turned away from the book, the clerk, and the shop, in a flurry of irritation.

another strange shrine

My need subsided as my indignance surged, but I headed in a direction I guessed might yield a public bathroom. Soon, I came across a small painted sign near a white, brick wall bordering a ramshackle lawn encircled by a driveway leading to a red, brick, two storey building; the plaque read "Nilgiris Library." A library is an even greater pleasure than a bookstore, and this one had a charming decrepitude about it. Also, libraries usually have the necessary public facilities. So, I entered the gate and rounded the drive, and at the entrance presided a stooped and wizened little man, looking fixedly at the ground. I sat down on a bench beside the drive in order to look at the building and the man. After a few minutes, he looked up, looked around, and shuffled inside.

Nilgiris Library

Above the doors on either side of the dim entrance hall hang handsome sets of antlers mounted on wood and velvet, and underneath, on a delicate old table, tall and narrow legged as a crane, sits a large, greying register. It turns out that the Nilgiris Library is membership only; through a series of gestures and words the old man excavated from his mind with a great amount of effort, doubt, and hesitation, I was informed that the woman who collects fees and enrolls members was absent that day. Having seen past him to the point where sun shone out from arched windows set in long doors, I was determined to have a look around, membership or no; after moments of tense uncertainty on both sides, I simply walked around him and towards the bright, vaulted reading room.

It must have been the sanctuary of a church, and now where the altar must have stood, sits a long table of "new arrivals," covered with a locked wire cage. On the wall, where I imagine there was once a tablet, shaped like the ones Moses got at his meeting with god, for listing texts to be read and hymns to be sung, hangs a portrait of Gandhi, and along the length of the room, solid tables covered with periodicals are ranged about like pews. I took in the titles on the tables with a certain hurried unease because the old man stayed loyally at my shoulder. I wanted to sit with a 10 year old National Geographic on one of the worn, leather chairs next to the table; but I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy the silence of the place with my guard standing at my shoulder, out of duty and curiosity, on his rickety old knees, perhaps pondering some other day, when another white lady had visited the reading room.

I developed the idea that this man was ruining my experience of the library to such an extent that it became reality; then with an uncharacteristic ease, I accepted him as a part of the place, a necessary furnishing. Giving him a smile, I finished my counter-clockwise perambulation of the reading room, and when I reached my point of entrance, he opened the door with courtly style. Having resigned myself to this limited entry into the building, I turned toward the bright outside, but the old man beckoned, insisting I see something else. I followed his rounded back, covered in a suit jacket, and his cracked feet, brushed by the bottom of the white, cotton fabric wrapped in a skirt around his lower body, up a flight of creaking stairs to a landing, where we turned up another narrow flight and slowly ascended into a narrow hall overlooking the sanctuary. Proudly, the man made a sweeping gesture and insisted I take a photo from this vantage. The end of the dusty corridor is separated by a fence of the same wire used to guard the new arrivals. Behind it several shelves beside a leather chair are filled with ancient books, and the whole area is coated in a thick tissue of dust. After my visit, I read that the library has a rare books collection; I hope that wasn't it.

the reading room

Caught up in the surprise of the place, I forgot all about the need that had led me there, but when my guide showed me to the exit and offered me a warm, if tooth-deficient, smile, I remembered. In India, the word that is most readily understood (in terms of facilities) is toilet. So I asked, "Is there a toilet?" When this was met with incomprehension I switched vocabulary. "Is there a ladies room?" This time, he understood; he walked me all the way back through the reading room, pointed me down a hall, at the end of which waited a clean bathroom complete with a ladies lounge featuring benches and a mirror, and went away. Mission accomplished at last, I was severely tempted to dart off up a set of stairs and see what occupied the rest of the old church, but the picture of the old man, alarmed and straining himself to find me, led me back down the hall, past the periodicals and chairs, and once again to the foyer.

The old man offered me the register; but just in time to prevent my signature, I suppose recalling that I wasn't a member, he withdrew it. Out on the drive, in the crisp Nilgiri air once again, he put together the words to ask me where I'm from, and for once, I answered gladly, without the suspicion that the question was a prelude to attempted fleecing or stalking. Then, I asked him for the name of a certain tree growing alongside the drive. He answered, "eucalyptus." I bade him farewell, walked back to Higginbothams, and purchased that book.

It Takes A Village

2007-02-14T00:16:00.001-05:00

communal carrot washing near Ooty, Tamil Nadu

Stupid Contemplates India

2007-02-13T12:24:00.000-05:00

Mysore is one of the three or four locations I had heard about before coming to India, so when I got there and found it to be not much more than a large, navigable town with maybe three official "sights" within city limits, I was perplexed. There are, I hear, some ashrams, some Ayurveda teachers, and some yoga schools in the vicinity, which may be what has people talking about the place. Whether or not that's it, within hours of my arrival it became clear that the lingo and tools of "spiritual" and "holistic" practices are a signigicant part of the city's commercial sphere.

sidewalk fortune tellers

Talia is a feisty young lady with her fingers in numerous pies, one of which is international real-estate. While in Bangalore, she got wind of some prospective investors for the area, and she wanted to check out some property. I was ready to get out of town, so I took the bus to Mysore in the afternoon, and she took another bus early in the evening; on parting, we agreed that I'd call her mobile phone after finding a hotel. In India, public phones are not coin operated. They are usually attached to a small shop, and after a customer places a call, the shopkeeper prints out a receipt with a price based on duration and location. Public land lines are labeled ISD or STD, and even though I learned that the abbreviations stand for International Subscribers Dialing and Subscribers Trunk Dialing, the 13 year old in me will never stop being amused by walking into a shop and saying, "do you have an STD?"

So, after settling into a large, cheap hotel room with plaster peeling off the walls, a support column in the center, and years of film on the bathroom mirror, I located an STD, called Talia, and went into the shop to pay. Worn out by the morning in Bangalore and afternoon on the bus, and expecting paying to be a long process since the shop also had computers and a travel agency, I sat down at the shop owner's desk and waited for the bill. At that moment a skinny little man with brown teeth rotting down to stumps entered carrying four small glasses of chai in a basket with circles of wire to hold the cups in place. He offered me a glass, and I accepted. I payed the phone bill and while I was finishing my drink the skinny man (of course) asked me that sickeningly familiar question. When I said America he replied, with a conspiratorial smile and a bit of a melody, "oh, born in the USA." During the next few minutes, he worked several song lyrics into the conversation. For example, I told him I'm from San Francisco. OK, I lied, but I was born near San Francisco, so I certainly didn't deserve to hear him say tunefully, "Welcome to the hotel California." It was difficult to fake a smile instead of rolling my eyes, but for the sake of civility, I did. It was around 7:30, and my patience has usually been exhausted by that time of day; I wanted to eat, shower, do laundry, and most of all, enjoy some privacy, so I headed for the door.

Mysore suburb

During my first few hours in Mysore, I was told by at least three different idle young men that there was a special, once-yearly event going on at the Saturday market, an incense rolling competition and essential oil extraction demonstration. At another time, I might have given all that a look, but like I said, I was tired. The skinny guy with the chai, aka Bruce Springsteen, also told me about the market, and I nodded my head in a polite show of interest. As I walked out, he followed me, spouting streams of other information that I wasn't in a state to absorb. The phone shop was on the second floor, and he cornered me even before I made it across the balcony to the stairs. He was going on about an ashram somewhere out of town, then a yogi, then a high-speed internet cafe, all the sights of Mysore, and a general layout of the place. I managed to break away and get halfway down the stairs. He was still following me, so I turned around and politely said, "OK, thank you. I'm very tired and I'm going to my hotel now." He continued to talk, and I tried to exit politely again. His posture stiffened, his lips tightened and he said something to the effect of, "I'm not a tout. I'm not selling anything or taking you anywhere." I felt a little guilty, on the off chance that he might just be proud of his town, and replied, "I know you're just being friendly, but I don't feel like talking right now." That having no effect, he told me about an "Amsterdam cafe," and that marijuana, charis, and hash are legal in Mysore. This time I said, abruptly, "I'm leaving. Good night," and walked the rest of the way down the stairs while he kept talking. He followed me into the street saying loudly, "You have too big ego. That's your problem. Someone give you respect and you have ego. I don't like ego." I was still walking, but his assumption that I owed him attention offended me; I turned my head, and said, "I don't care. Leave me alone." He began walking quickly, complaining about my ego while overtaking and then passing me. Now that I was completely ignoring him, he stomped off talking to himself in a local language punctuated with the words "ego" and "America." He soon disappeared around a corner, but I was offered an escort to the market three more times, marijuana products twice, and an ayurvedic hot-oil massage by a man in the hallway outside my room, in the four minutes it took me to reach privacy.

In Bangalore there were men with books ranged out along the sidewalk, and one night, while I scanned for something that would strike me as relevant, Talia recommended a title, Rich Dad Poor Dad , by Robert T. Kiyosaki, a Japanese-American from Hawaii. She warned that the book is abominably written, but she also said it teaches sound financial prinicipals. Well, I thought, "Money, that's on my mind in a few different ways." So, I bought it, read it (although it was painful), and pronounced Talia correct on both counts. Kiyosaki structures the book around the lessons he learned from his two "fathers." Poor Dad, his biological father, was highly educated, but he had to work his whole life because he didn't understand money, and Rich Dad, a friend's father who taught Kiyosaki about money, was academically unsophisticated but clever with finance. Poor Dad told the author to study hard and find a secure job, while Rich Dad told him to "make money work" for him. Robert went with Rich Dad's advice in the end, and now he's a multimillionaire who writes books, has patented a board game, and gives seminars, about how to make money, manage money, and have the money you've made and manage make more money. I have to admit, his principles are sensible (if mostly obvious), but the fact that he could have made his point in ten concise sentences rather than 100 gratingly repetitive pages, made me think he should have paid a bit more attention to Poor Dad, at least in terms of education.

oxen don't like backing up

Sidewalk books in India are usually pirated; they have smudged print, and unevenly cut, repeated or omitted pages. I had assumed that the pirating process involved photocopying from the original, but the grammatical errors, strange constructions, and typos in Rich Dad Poor Dad had me wondering whether this book hadn't been retyped by an incompetent or distracted forger. OK, enough criticism; I got some useful ideas about personal finance by skimming the avalanche of illustrations for the point, and Kiyosaki prefaced his ideas with a thought provoking statement about the condition of the world. He wrote that our education system is outdated because it doesn't teach kids about finance, or how to invest, instead it trains them to get a safe job which they will be dependent on for life. I'm not sure about the logic here, but he thinks this system is bringing about the fall of modern civilization by causing an increase in the gap between the haves and have-nots.

coke, tree, and god at the Mysore Zoo

On our first full day in town, Talia and I wandered over to Mysore Palace. The plot of land that the city radiates from has hosted three different palaces since the 14th century; the first was damaged by lightening and then demolished, the second was burned to the ground in a fire ignited during the wedding ceremony of a princess, and its replacement was commissioned of British architect Henry Irwin by the Queen-Regent of Mysore in 1897. Completed in 1912, the Mysore Palace that I visited is described in its brochure as a synthesis of Hindu and Islamic architecture. More thorough sources say it's "Indo-Saracenic" architecture, or a combination of Hindu, Muslim, Rajput, and Gothic styles. Although I found the myriad objects and architectural features pleasing when considered individually, the riot of curving archways, crowding columns, marble staircases, stained-glass, ivory inlay, chandeliers, cast-iron cherub lamps, carven balconies, and pointed domes looked garish, imbalanced, and laughably Victorian (because of the scholarly emphasis on eastern styles) to my non-expert eye. When I passed out of the marriage hall, its light filtered through stained glass peacocks prancing in glass gardens above its massive pillars, and into the royal portrait gallery, lined with serious, well-groomed, opulently dressed nobles of yore, I wondered if the gap between the rich and the poor has really changed much; and if so, how.

Eyesore palace

I'm not sure whether Kiyosaki intended to say that the number of poor people is increasing, or that the distance between the conditions of wealth and poverty is getting larger, but it isn't obvious to me that either of those statements are accurate. Although I don't have any statistics, or even a clear definition of "rich," and "poor," I'd bet that the number of poor people and rich people has increased right along with the world's population. I'd be curious to see how the ratio has changed, and I wonder if it wouldn't reflect that there are more well-appointed people in terms of total population than there used to be. This is, of course, difficult to measure, although I'm sure people on both sides of the question have tried and come up with answers appropriate to the way the initial question was framed. All I can do at the moment is conclude something on the basis of the tiny corner of existence that is my own experience, or what I've seen; and I'd say that the kind of opulence embodied in Mysore Palace is probably available to about the same amount of people (proportionally) as it used to be, while a more modest form of luxury and stability (read Mc Mansions and health care) is available to a greater segment of the total population.

Mysore home

It's frightening to make such a general assertion in public, but if Robert T. Kiyosaki can do it, then so can I. I have to admit that I can't even comprehend numbers like 50 million, especially when they're applied to people, so I dropped the topic, and went to the Mysore Zoo the next day. Established by the inhabitants of Mysore Palace in 1892, it's one of the oldest zoos in the world, housing over 100 species, most of which have ample, unfenced amounts of space allotted for their habitats; my favorite were the impossibly lanky, hilariously constructed, miraculously gracefull giraffes.

Why didn't anybody tell me giraffes have tongues like this?

The world is such a weird and improbable place; the conclusions you arrive at are dependent on where you start, and the starting points are infinite. Mysore Zoo hosts gorillas, baboons, and chimpanzees; and while they all have separate habitats and signs, indigenous monkeys scamper across sidewalks and raid trash cans all over the zoo. To me, all tree-swinging, man-handed creatures are exotic, so I wondered what the captives thought of their free cousins. I guess it's all a matter of context; the trash-raiding monkeys would be on display in an American zoo.

free zoo monkey

On my last day in town, I was walking quickly to meet up with Talia, and a young man greeted me as I passed him loitering on the street. If my huge ego makes me rude because it demands to do what it wants when it wants, it also makes me polite when I'd rather not be. For instance, when a total stranger greets me from somewhere in my peripheral vision, I really don't want to answer, but I also don't want to be disliked, and I don't want to think of myself as someone who thinks she's too good to say hello, so I usually reply. On this particular afternoon, I took the bait, and although I didn't even turn my head towards him, he was suddenly speed-walking right along with me, asking questions, and trying to hold a conversation that I obviously didn't want to participate in. I didn't see it coming, but I hit my limit; I stopped walking, turned to face him, and said in a markedly unfriendly tone, "Can I help you?" Apparently, tourists don't often use the direct approach, because he looked shocked for a second and then shouted, "You are not a god. You cannot help me!" As I walked away he called after me, "You are stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

I was less disturbed about being called stupid than I was about being told I have a big ego, maybe because I have a big enough ego to feel sure I'm not stupid, but I was surprised at the violence of the young man's reaction and at the presumption implied by his behaviour. It's a marvel to me that he thought I owed him my attention. I'm confronted with and perplexed by instances of this attitude innumerable times each day I spend in India. When he approached me, it was my 1st world guilt that caused me to respond to him past the initial greeting, and every day it's the same; I get involved in tiresome conversations with people because I don't want to assume that they're trying to sell me something, and because I feel guilty for leaping to judgements. The problem is, those judgements are usually right.

I'm not saying that every Indian wants something from me, but the ones that make an aggressive effort to get to know me in the middle of the street under a hot sun amid honking and hustling usually do. Worse yet, it seems that the clever young men of Mysore may recognize this particular form of hypocritical politeness and exploit it, especially if there is a large pool of earnest yoga practitioners around seeking enlightenment in India; ego is a dirty word in yoga circles. Another possibility is that they haven't considered the implications and strategic benefits of their behaviour, mine, or anyone else's; these predators could be reacting instinctively, trying to get enough bread for the day out of whatever comes in front of them, and if I am stupid, it's for even attempting to make some sense out of the whole situation.

Mystic

2007-02-01T02:07:00.000-05:00

Some travelers say Goa is not really India, and in a way it's true; that's why it's a haven for weary, long-termers. In my case, now that I'm back in the midst of "the real India" it looks very different. More often than not, the nature and process of inexplicable actions and delays is amusing or downright mystifying rather than irritating, and the ambiguous sideways head bobble that's the usual response to direct questions requiring yes or no answers, obscuring the clarity of even the least ambiguous replies, now seems friendly rather than evasive. Even though Bangalore was difficult to navigate, and so polluted that I ended each day covered in grime and one evening had a spontaneous nose-bleed, the merry, tolerant mood that I arrived in held.

We stayed four nights, and most of my days were spent either drinking the delicious Americanos served at Barista or typing and uploading at the fastest internet cafe in town, which took 24 hours to locate. Talia and I checked into a hotel in a market area named Mystic. It is near the central train station, and the manifold liquids, solids and clumps of trash covering the street are churned from 9 am to 11 pm by a constant stream of tires and feet. After a sleepless 8 hours on an overnight bus, we weren't so concerned about aesthetics, and when we had the chance to be horizontal at 8 am, we both took if for quite a while. That afternoon, showered and refreshed, I began the hunt, up and down the street, for a computer that would load my page, while Talia began the long process of activating her mobile phone. I didn't find a computer made after 1992, and I ended the day frustrated. When I saw a man on the street with a typewriter perched on an old lectern selling his services, carbon paper and all, I began to have serious doubts about Bangalore's billing as "The Silicon Valley" of India.

A center of power in southern India during British rule, it's now the capital of the state of Karnataka and the IT capital of India. As such, it's a charming city, in certain spots, its center sporting well cared for colonial architecture set apart by spacious (though mostly dust and dead grass) lawns, and clean modern buildings selling all the luxuries new money can buy. Unfortunately, I didn't know all that on my first day. Talia and I sat down for dinner around 8 pm just across the street from our hotel. That's the magic hour when all women disappear into their houses, so we were the only females in a restaurant with at least 15 tables. As a duo, we managed to ignore most stares and advances, but when Talia went to the bathroom, a short, big-bellied, man, well-dressed in a cotton button-down shirt, with terribly rotting teeth and friendly eyes behind gold rimmed glasses planted himself directly in front of me. Taking a gulp of his beer and looking directly at me he said, "From ver have you come?" I said, "the USA," and he answered excitedly, as if he'd just discovered that we have a relative in common, "Oh, I work for AOL!" I wasn't sure my being an American and his working for AOL formed a bond between us, but I thought, "If anybody knows where I can find the tech in this city, it's this guy," so I asked him. He confided snobbishly that he never "goes surfing" in Mystic; he uses the computers on MG Road.

Mystic movie billboards

Mahatma Gandhi Road is between 15 and 30 minutes away from Mystic by rickshaw, depending on traffic, and we went there the very next morning. On one side of the long road was the ritzy section of town, with cafes, foreign chain restaurants, bars, internet cafe's and imported clothing; on the other side lay a spacious but parched park leading, a 20 minute walk away, to several government offices housed in colonial buildings. It was a twice daily battle to get a fair price for the ride, and coming back in the evening, when most of the roads of Bangalore mysteriously become one-way, causing traffic quagmires, or maybe averting even worse jams, black smoke from the unfiltered exhausts of rickshaws hovered in the headlights, engulfing everything. After some coffee and exploration, I found an internet cafe that suited my needs just fine, technology wise, that is; the problem was the lack of privacy, the flux of people, and the noise of online gaming. I knew I wasn't going to do any better, so I settled down to work things up in a distracting atmosphere.

On my last visit to the Reliance internet shop, around 3 pm, a band of khaki uniformed middle school boys poured in and, after standing around talking enthusiastically in English for a while, took seats at available computers around the shop. Judging by the comments they called to each other, "Come on ladies!," or "Help, need backup!," the boys were all playing the same game on different computers, and between levels they'd stop for a break, challenging and boasting next to one computer or another. Eventually, their break coincided with that of a grown man playing a game on his computer, and they began to talk shop. The man wore a black and white pinstriped suit, obviously of a very high quality; he was meticulously groomed and good-looking with gleaming white teeth and oiled black hair. I couldn't stop watching the sudden, easy friendship between the rich man and the boys. Even while he gave the boys animated instructions on how to "defeat a hydra," he radiated wealth and status.

Hundreds of local languages have been identified in India, and there are 23 official languages. This may be why (although it's more common in the south than the north) people often speak English in public. Whatever the reason for using English as the medium of exchange, it makes things interesting for me; I get the chance to hear what people are talking about. In Bangalore, I made a trip to the post office to send a package home. It was an amazingly circuitous process, a practical lesson in patience and good humor that took over an hour by the end of it all. The central post office is an old, stone building with a columned facade looming behind a fountain surrounded by roses. Natural light seeps into the interior through a central skylight and evenly spaced, wire covered, dusty windows, but the ubiquitous fluorescent bulbs give the place a sickly overtone. Clerk's windows form a half-moon, dividing the cavernous interior into public and official space, and supervisory officials' tables are strewn about behind the narrow domain of languid clerks.

In India, if you want to send a package, it must first be sewn up in white fabric, so when I entered the post office and saw a man at a table sewing something up with needle and thread, I asked him how much he'd charge to close up my bundle. He replied that he wasn't in the sewing business; he was making his own package, but he pointed me over to a counter not far away. Slightly embarrassed, I thanked him and went to a glass counter, its shelves full of stamps and cards, manned by a wrinkled little woman in a bright sari. I handed her my bundle of clothes and collapsible paper lampshades and asked her to sew it up. She took them, and then, as if trying to recall a message someone had given her to pass on to me several years ago, she informed me that I needed to have the contents approved. Handing my bundle back to me, she motioned all the way to the other side of the building with a large, vague, half-circular hand gesture. Walking to the other end of the clerk's counters, I eventually found a door that looked like it was probably meant to keep the public out, but having no other idea of where to go, I entered. I offered my bundle to a man at a table, but he pointed me to another door, and I went through it. There I found several more desks, and again I offered my bundle. This man, instead of giving me a yes, a no, or directions, asked me where I'm from. I said America, and he enthusiastically reported that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president and is definitely going to win. He was very excited by the prospect of the first "presidential couple," and said it would be "a great honor" for America and for Hillary. Amused and touched as I was by his excitement, I really did want to get my package mailed that day, and he finally pointed me onward to the desk of his supervisor, a long table located smack-dab (but a little bit askew) in the center of the high-ceilinged space behind the postal clerks' barricade.

As I approached the magnificently rotund woman seated behind the table, her eyes looking placidly out of skin as baggy as an elephant's, someone else was walking away, and when I sat down across from her and held out my bundle, she signaled me, with a languid, bangle bedecked wrist, to wait. She was swathed in a conservative sari, its light beige foundation sprinkled with floral details in maroon and forest green and bordered in gold thread. Three gold rings set with gems twinkled on her fingers as she leafed through the pages of a worn, leather bound, rectangular log. I like to remember her as the postmistress general, and as I sat across from her, it seemed that all the ramshackle tables and desks, covered with papers and packages, as well as the clerks at their counters typing away on dusty machines, and then the rose garden, the parched parks, the mad, honking rickshaws and changing signals mixing with the squalid splendor of the streets of Bangalore, were organized in some infinitely complex pattern around that point where the weak light filtering through the dusty skylight shone on the calm, slow moving woman. As I waited, a married couple sat down with several parcels.

roadside motorcyle maintenency guy's toolbox

Eventually, the postmistress looked up at me and reached out for my little bundle, but after she ran her hand over it, she just asked me about the contents, and I told her. She gave me two forms to fill out, and as I was doing so, she turned her attention to the couple. They were sending some perishable items, four tidy rows of neat, round, golden treats laid out in a brightly wrapped box, and the old postmistress suspected that the sweets had been baked with ghee. She wasn't sure if ghee items were permissible, and they discussed it for a while. Finally, she warned them that the items could be stopped by an unspecified authority, but to go ahead and try it. When I finished my forms, I went back to square two, the packaging lady at the stamp stand, where a young man was asking to see various collector stamps. Of course, I couldn't get my package sewn up until he was done, so I joined in the browsing. The most interesting was a collection of "3D" stamps from Butan featuring Gandhi, J.F.K., and Churchill. Eventually, my parcel was sewn up, and the last step was the postal clerk's window. After 10 minutes of jockeying for position in a line that only existed in my mind, my package was finally taken off my hands and launched into the great stream of objects moving around the world.

"3D" stamps

On my last day in Bangalore, I finally got in touch with the travel agency in Korea where I bought my plane tickets. It was indeed possible to delay my departure further, so I postponed it until the beginning of April. The moment I got confirmation, I had dual sensations, strong on both counts; I was happy to prolong this experiment in anchorlessness, and at the same time longed for the people, animals, and objects that anchor me.

Well, I only bought myself five more weeks, which isn't much when I think about how time goes: Bangalore, five days later, already seems a lifetime away. So, I'll see you guys in about ten lifetimes.

Rock And Ruin

2007-02-01T01:24:00.000-05:00

A few hours before Talia and I planned to take a rickshaw from Agonda to the bus stop in Palolem, I ran into Daniel, who I hadn't had the chance to bid farewell, so I asked him, and the guy who happened to be standing next to him, to have dinner with us. After a day at the beach, Talia and I needed to shower and pack, so we met up with them an hour later. Both Daniel and the new guy in town, Vincent from Holland, had motorcycles, so we decided to drive down the street to a restaurant at the other end of the village, Talia behind Vincent and I behind Daniel. Halfway there, some rickshaw drivers stepped into the road (which isn't that unusual) and as Daniel stopped, I saw a hand go to his tank. His Royal Enfield sputtered off, and when he looked down, the key was gone. After 15 minutes of searching, Daniel found his key in the possession of a restaurant owner. When we were finally eating dinner, the theory that this was part of a feud between Daniel and the town rickshaw drivers evolved; earlier that day, when a driver tried to grossly overcharge an unseasoned tourist for a ride within earshot of Daniel, he had jumped into the conversation and revealed the correct price. Now he was engaged, and as revenge upon the drivers, he wanted to be seen driving Talia and I out of town, depriving them of their fares. That was more than OK by us, and 25 minutes later, Daniel and Vincent left us at the bus stand.

Hampi kids

temple elephant

In India, they have this thing called a "sleeper bus." It's a great idea, beds in the bus, and we had booked 2 berths. Unfortunately, our beds were in the back, and although we had an enclosed platform to lay on, we were above the wheels and the exhaust system, so rather than sleep, we bounced, tossed, turned, and inhaled fumes all night long. We finally reached Hospet around 7:30 am, January 24, and from there we took a rickshaw to Hampi, then a boat across the river that divides the town, and then found the guest house where Elad and family had checked in a few days earlier.

Hampi roadside shrine

monkey temple

stairs to monkey temple

Hampi is a village of rocks and rice paddies situated within the ruins of an ancient empire; more intriguing than the ruins themselves is the baffling landscape, enormous piles of huge boulders, strewn here and there, perched upon each other at impossible angles, a ruin of another kind. A few days after we arrived, Talia developed mysterious symptoms like headaches, dizziness, general exhaustion, and stomach pain. It may have been a consequence of taking typhoid and malaria vaccines at the same time, and it took her nearly 5 days to fully recover. In the meantime, I took some walks, saw some temples, swam in a lake and a river, climbed some rocks, had some great food, and hung around in my hammock.

rocks

ruins

rice

There seems to be a higher than usual concentration of hippies in Hampi, and our guest house featured spontaneous singing, guitar playing, and drumming every night. Luckily, we moved after a few nights to a quieter place. You meet so many people travelling in India who are looking for some form of enlightenment, and it's not too hard to understand why; it's such a crazy place that it doesn't matter what you do, and it's cheap enough to do it. What I don't quite get is the concentration of hippies and new-agers. Are they the only people who want the space to "be themselves?" Surely there are a lot of other kinds of people who'd like to have the time to wander around and see what happens.

washing water buffaloes

Well, Hampi was nice, and at another time in my journey I could have spent weeks there. Elad and family left midway through our stay, and when Talia began to mend, we were both in the mood to move. Hampi had the worst internet connections I've seen in India; after a few times waiting 15 minutes for my email to load, getting frustrated, and realizing that I was ruining my day, I gave up. We decided to make a stop in Bangalore, India's "City of Technology," to get caught up on our connections with the rest of the world, and that's where I am now.

(Gokarna)

2007-02-01T01:10:00.000-05:00

On Christmas Eve day, I met Lisa, one of the 4 Americans I've encountered during my stay in India. She spoke fluent Hindi, because she spent her childhood in Kashmir, and now she's teaching at a university in Los Angles. She had a group of students with her, and she invited me to have dinner with them. Unfortunately, by the time 7 pm rolled around, I'd forgotten what restaurant they were eating in. I checked a few places, but didn't find them, so I settled down for dinner alone at a table near the waves. Shortly, an Indian-looking man sat down at the table next to me, but he ordered in German accented English, so I asked him where he was from. He turned out to be a software engineer from Kerala who has been living in Berlin for 5 years. He was on short holiday, and was paying his first visit to Goa. He was disappointed with the development of Palolem, and he spent a large part of the conversation regretting that he hadn't gone to Gokarna instead. He spent the other part of the conversation trying to convince me to drink whiskey shots.

sleeping shopkeeper, Gokarna

Gokarna is a town of quiet lanes housing head-priest offices, temples, indecipherable Hindu shrines, and a busy marketplace. There are four distinct, uncrowded beaches nearby. It's about an hour south of Goa by train, and when Elad and family decided to make a 2 day visit there, I kept my room in Agonda, packed a small bag, and went with them. For 4 people, the train ticket was 73 Rupees, that's a bit less than 2 dollars.

headstones?

Gokarna is a charming little place, and 3 of the beaches are accessible only by boat-taxi or a long trek. The accommodations available are very basic. Our first night, on Kudle Beach, we couldn't even find rooms with an attached bathroom (which Irit was none too happy about), and my hut had a sand floor. The next day we moved to Om Beach, so named because it's imagined to be shaped like the symbol for Om.

Gokarna cat

I wish I would have spent some of the time I spent in Palolem in Gokarna instead, but then things wouldn't be what they are now, either. I would have liked to stay longer, but Talia was arriving in Goa, and the family was ready to go. We left Gokarna at 10 am, 2 days after we had arrived; back in Agonda, I rented a bike and made the 1 hour 30 minute drive to the airport (stopping for a few sights and a chai along the way) where Talia's plane was 3 hours late.

holy parade float?

Five years ago, in a northern Thailand town called Pai, Talia and I met on a dark road and decided to share a room. We stayed for a week, getting along exceptionally well, and then I went back to Korea. We kept in touch, and 2 years ago, I stayed at her place in New York for a week. Again, we got along well, which was a relief because you never really know how it's going to be with people when the context changes, and a pleasant surprise because it's always good to find a friend.

Gokarna wall

A few months ago, Talia emailed me, saying she was between jobs and thinking of going to Bali. I replied, "How about southern India?" She wrote, "Anything that's warm and doesn't involve cubicles sounds good to me," and so, there she was, at the airport in Goa. By this time, the room next to mine was empty, and so she took it. She's working for a non-profit affiliated with the excellent NPR show Science Friday. She's keeping a blog about India related science issues while travelling, so we have similar interneting needs, convenient.

Gokarna kids

A few days later, being at the beginning of her travels, she was ready to go; I being at the end of a solid 6 week travel break, was ready to go too, and so one night we put our bags on our backs, caught a ride to the bus stop on the backs of 2 motorcycles, and boarded the overnight bus to Hampi, 10 hours inland.

At The Beach, Still

2007-01-31T06:51:00.000-05:00

When I stopped in Seoul last September, between Mongolia and India, a friend asked me if I was “ready to be hot.” “I am,” I said, “and I plan to put in ample time on the beach.” Arriving in Mongolia at the end of August, I had expected Montana weather, days with a warm, bright sun balanced by cool air, and fresh, chilly nights. I packed accordingly but I ended up buying a puffy, military-green jacket with a Fubu label on the zipper pull and a Tommy Hilfiger label on the breast pocket for a few dollars at the black market in Ulaan Bataar, then woolen long-johns to wear beneath my jeans at another market up north, and then yak wool socks at Khovsgol Nuhr. A month and a half later, in tropical Singapore, I ditched the cold weather clothing, certain I wouldn’t need it in steamy India. I arrived in Delhi and spent a month under the relentless sun of Rajasthan, but when I veered northward, all the way up to Kashmir, I was forced to replace the things I’d abandoned along the way. So, out of 3 months that I’d expected to be warm, I spent 2 cold. I’m not complaining, but by the time I got to south India, I was more than ready for weather conforming to my initial expectations.

Cabo de Rama fortress wall

Reaching Goa, mixing sand and water with warmth, you’d think my days would have been full of savored contentments. The weather was perfect; during the daytime it was hot in the sun, but not so hot that you couldn’t cool down in the sea or spend comfortable hours with a book in the shade of a palm, and in the evening, after showering off the saltwater day, it was just cool enough to be comfortable in linen pants, a t-shirt, and my white pashmina, a fifty-fifty blend of finely spun wool and silk. On the first beach I inhabited, Palolem, I prepared for sleep in my ocean-front, plywood hut by folding my large Rajasthani sheet of leafing blue paisleys block-printed by hand on white cotton in half on my single bed and then overlapping the white pashmina with a heavier, pure wool, black one. They were each a bit longer than the bed and three-quarters the width, so together they formed a covering just heavy enough to keep out the 4am chill. I lay down with the sound of the waves grasping regularly at the sand about 10 yards from my porch, and as I meandered off to sleep I often asked myself why, in the midst of this idyllic place, I felt so anxious.

ah...a dog's life

Aside from the unwanted attentions and unanswerable questions raised by my economic position in the community, I was tormented by (or tormented myself with) a discouragingly familiar problem. For as long as I can remember, a part of my mind has been constantly churning with the question of well-used time, and the churning itself has destroyed the capacity to use time well. Every activity is left undone or inattentively undertaken in the presence of my demand that it reveal its value instantly. Hoping to escape this self-defeating habit, I set myself only one rule before undertaking these months of travel; thou shalt have no other motivation for action than attraction. I hoped that by denying other motivations, like obligation, perfection, market value, or necessity, and acknowledging impulse as the only legitimate cause for action, I could escape the feeling that there is always something more valuable to do with my time than what I’m doing at any given moment. After all, if the only justification for an action is my wish to undertake it, then the only time that can truly be wasted is the time I spend on things that I don't want to do. There is still the problem of wanting to do more than one thing, but you have to start somewhere. Kooky, right, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

Cabo de Rama

It was easier to follow my commandment when I was moving frequently, because the rigours of getting from one place to another were accomplishments in themselves, and there were a variety of things to attract my eye and mind. But at a beach, where there isn’t much to “do” except relax and enjoy, I was again prey to the anxiety that whatever I do is slipping away nearly unnoticed because of my preoccupation with "doing something." After a few days on the beach, I was unable to enjoy anything because I couldn’t shake the thought that while I did one thing so many others waited. "If I lay in the sun too long I'll miss swimming. If I go swimming I won't have time to take a walk. If I eat now I may not be hungry at dinner time. This is a great book, but I'm missing a lovely day. If I swim now, then I'll have to take a shower, and I'll miss the sunset. If I take a nap now, then I won't be tired tonight, and then I'll stay up too late and oversleep in the morning." I know, tough decisions; the absurdity of spending any time at all agitated over how to best spend days set aside for nothing but leisure irritated me even more, and my frustration with myself only made the whole problem worse; my preoccupation colored my perception of the community I was living in, leaving me a double source of annoyance, myself and the people around me.

Welcome

Soon enough, I was thoroughly paralyzed and apprehensive, so I asked myself, or rather the parishioners ranged in the pews of my imagination, what the hell was wrong with me. Somebody, perhaps a grumpy uncle, or grandparent, delivered the stern admonition that I was simply doing too much “navel gazing.” Whoever this character is, he’s never suggested a positive remedy for any condition, but I sometimes tend towards agreement. By this point in my acquaintance with myself I've accepted the fact that there are multiple characters living in my head, so I directed the question to a kindlier member, instead of putting it to the mass, where the least considerate are always the quickest and the loudest. She responded in a white-haired, widow’s way, “but my dear, Christmas has come and gone; the New Year is approaching, and you are all alone,” her protective instincts guiding me away from my own trove of half-formed fears and toward a good, solid story, allowing me once again to mine nature and its signs for an explanation.

Margao church

Well, you can tell from my last post how inconclusive that line of thought turned out to be; after chasing my own tail for three weeks and failing to scold myself into a better mood, I finally gave up on thinking myself out of my hole and remembered the approach that has always worked best, action. One morning I packed my bag, hired a boat-taxi, and travelled 20 minutes northward to the next habitable beach. Agonda's shoreline is longer and straighter than Palolem's small-lobed-ear shaped beach, and the waves are less gentle. It may be because of Agonda's austerity that it is far less populated. There are only two resident hawkers (both selling sarongs) on the whole great, long stretch of sand, and the beach huts are spread out among palms and some sort of native evergreen thickly populated with large crows. Slightly further back from the beachfront lodgings are brick and plaster bungalows, and behind those is the main (and only) street of the small village. The village is populated by generally friendly, healthy locals and long-term foreign residents who are both models of and/or cautionary tales against relaxation.

Fatima

When I got off the boat, I spent a few hours walking the length of the beach checking out the various forms of lodging. Finally, resolved to have my own shower and stable quarters after weeks of living in a shifty hut without a bathroom, I settled in a room slightly back from the beach facing a dirt lot full of coconut palms. All 4 of the rooms in the lime-green rectangular building were occupied; I was on the end, Elad, the young Israeli man of banana lassi fame was in the next room, and 2 older Israeli men occupied the last 2 rooms. On the other side of the coconut grove sat a few other buildings. One of them housed Elad's sister and her friend, and another housed Daniel, a writer from Denver. Within a few days of settling in Agonda, I had more conversations than I had in 3 weeks in Palolem; I was living in a neighborhood, make-shift and temporary though it was, and I started to feel better.

pig and bird in the coconuts

Still, when my 32nd birthday came, 3 days after my arrival in Agonda, I left my room in the middle of the night, went to the beach, sat down, and wept in an excess of self-pity. I had heard through the grapevine that Daniel travelled with a library, so the next day I went to his room. I asked him to lend me something (at a loss for a better word) "uplifting." Pulling a suitcase from underneath his bed and unpacking its contents, it turned out that "happy" books are not Daniel's specialty; but I simply, at that time, could not read any Kafka or Camus. After long deliberation, I chose a handsomely bound collection of the works of John Steinbeck, from which Daniel recommended his second novel, To A God Unknown. Now, this book wouldn't be my recommendation to someone who wanted to exit a serious mood, but I wasn't looking for the paper version of a Hollywood movie either. I didn't know what I was looking for, and I figured that Steinbeck would at least provide the refuge of a familiar voice. I was right; although the novel itself is violent and disturbing, the narrator's voice has a solid, calm (if ominous) rhythm, and I found, as I often do when I read, unexpected parallels with my present context. Printed at the beginning of the book is a hymn from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text, and the novel's title is taken from these lines. The story is set among homesteaders in California where a priest, Father Angelo, observes the incorporation of the native religion into Christianity in much the same style attested to by the strange Jesus shrines here in southern India.

Cabo de Rama Jesus, or saint, or something

During this trip I've been intentionally selective about my literature, only undertaking things that demand my attention through one coincidence or another, in order to avoid reading simply for the sake of distraction, and the approach has paid off; every time I've opened something, I've found some serendipitous connection. The other thing I picked up in Agonda was an outdated, abandoned copy of Vanity Fair, a glossy I always enjoy, which happened to have (in the wake of Mel Gibson's bad behaviour) an article (which I probably would have skipped a week earlier) about American anti-semitism. There are tons of Israelis travelling in India, usually in large, boisterous, cliquish and impenetrable groups. Elad was a rare free-agent; he had come to India for 6 weeks to join his sister, Shiri, who is midway through a much longer stay. On my first day in Agonda, he and I happened to be entering our rooms at the same time, and we exchanged courtesies.

While travelling, I've gotten in the habit of lying about where I'm from; when someone asks, I just pick someplace in America, because I'm not from anywhere at the moment, and I never have had a hometown. It's just a form of polite greeting among travelers, and a form of wealth assesment from many Indians (in which case I don't pick someplace in America). I figure most people don't want to hear the 10 minute list of places I've lived, so I often say I'm from New York, both because I plan to live there next and because everyone, everywhere, knows where it is (with the exception of my waiter last night, who asked me if New York is part of Europe). New York was the answer I gave Elad, but instead of letting it go at that he asked "where in New York?" "Uh, Brooklyn" I replied. "Oh, where in Brooklyn?" Not prepared for his alertness, it took me a second to come up with, "Ummm...Park Slope." That satisfied him for the moment, but we had lunch together the next day. About an hour in, he asked me a question about New York. At that point, I had to admit that I've never actually lived there. To my amazement, he was slightly pissed off about the lie; and to my further surprise, I was revived by the evidence that he actually cared.

Fatima's shrine at Cabo de Rama

Maybe what I had been needing to bring me out of my month-long malaise was some companionship. I had a few long and interesting conversations with Daniel, from whom I learned that people can get even more ridiculously, needlessly paralyzed than me, and spent nearly 2 weeks in the company of Elad, Shiri, and their mother Irit, who arrived in Agonda shortly after me; it was nice to have a mom around, even if she wasn't mine. I don't know if my lifted spirits came about just because a person can only go around like that for so long, because of the relaxed atmosphere in Agonda, or because of the people I lucked across, but by the end of my first week there I was happy to accomplish absolutely nothing for days on end.

Goa rice paddies

During all that contented sitting around I learned a lot about the habits of pigs, which thouroughly tainted my enjoyment of pepperoni and bratwurst, and far too much about the mating activities of dogs, which I will never think of in quite the same way. I rented a bike for a few days and saw some of the inland towns of Goa, and visited the coastal Portuguese fort,Cabo de Rama twice, once with Elad and family and once with Talia. Near the end of my stay, Talia and I rented a kayak, learning to navigate waves for an hour, and then stopping to watch the sunset, laying on the kayak, legs trailing in the warm water. Before Agonda, I had tried a hammock maybe 3 times in my entire life, and each time I'd found it irritating and uncomfortable, because it's hard to do anything sitting in one; so when Elad bought a hammock and suggested I buy one too, I declined. After he tied it up on his porch I tried it out, and a few days later I bought one of my own. Now, I'm carrying it in my backpack and I tie it up wherever I can. I consider my hours swinging in a hammock without thinking I should be doing something else my chief accomplishment for the month of January; I'm grateful to Elad for the suggestion, and for caring where I'm from on a day when I didn't even care that much myself.

So This Is Christmas...

2007-01-31T02:48:00.000-05:00

In search of sun, sand, and a break from the rigours of travel, I spent the holidays on a beach in Goa, a small state on the southwest coast of India. Portugal held Goa as a colony from 1510 until 1961 when the Indian army forced them out, 14 years after the British relinquished their claims in India. Thinking of Christianity as the native religion of my own country and as a foriegn one in India, I was startled to realize that Catholicism reached Goa very shortly after Columbus reached America. In Old Goa sits the Basilica of the Bom Jesus (Good Jesus) where the incorruptible remains (although they looked quite withered to me) of St. Francis Xavier are entombed. Xavier, who died in 1552, wrote a letter to King John III of Portugul detailing the corruption of doctrine by the natives and the need for an Inquisition in Goa; although the office was not installed until after his death, the Inquisition remained for nearly 300 years. Today, a third of the population is Catholic but the marigold wreathed crucifixes placed here and there are suspiciously like Hindu altars to Ganesha or Laxmi.

the incorruptible remains light box display

Apparently, the Inquisition failed, because the symbols and practices of the old, familiar story appear as a natural element in India's miraculous chaos of textures, colors, and sounds. The charmingly piecemeal Nativities around town (so variously crafted and painted that even matched sets appear mismatched, placed on sand and bits of false greenery under roofs thatched of coconut fronds) proved no stand-in for distant loved ones, but I did see some amusingly bizarre observations of Christmas. On December 23rd as I sat on a step on the main road to Palolem Beach I heard a loud rendition of Jingle Bell Rock irregularly punctuated with feedback. A large truck that could have been a cattle hauler with its broad, fenced in, flat bed rolled toward me along the dusty lane. As it passed, three dark, shriveled men, all wearing Santa hats, bobbed their heads lazily in the cab. In the bed of the truck 6 Indians sat on cushions, some reclining against the slats of the fence. One young woman was flanked by 2 men, and 3 other men sat facing them on the other side; the young woman was singing into a microphone while the men tended the electronics and kept the speakers from tipping over. This group occupied about two-thirds of the truck-bed while the last third was set apart by a red curtain. So, as the truck passed by onlookers, the crowning glory of the pageant on wheels was revealed, a living Nativity (Indian Mary and Joseph with a 10 year old Jesus wrapped in white and sitting placidly on a pile of hay in front of the curtain) plus an emaciated Santa wearing a frighteningly immobile plastic mask and (last but certainly not least) a skinny boy of the same age as Jesus wearing a dirty t-shirt and shorts, just along for the ride.

These motley exhibitions, cobbled together out of available bits and baubles, simultaneously tender and careless, embody the haphazard nature of Goa itself. While the old traditions remain and the native population endures, the state’s beaches, tourist infrastructure, and familiar cultural elements, make it a popular place for foreign travelers during the holiday season. Tourism provides 25% of the state’s income, and locals roam the beaches selling bananas, papayas, coconuts, jewelry, massages, boat rides, books, magnets (for what purpose I have no idea), sarongs, and ear cleaning services. It is the cheapest place in India to buy alcohol, and restaurants grill up the day's catch every evening at sundown, often organizing "parties" where tourists engage in what must look like frivolous leisure at best and total debauchery at worst to the modest locals.

soldiers patroling against a Christmas terrorism threat (Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men)

The mixture of midnight mass and holiday indulgence, tradition and a mad amble to make as much money as possible at whatever cost during the short tourist season is, as far as I can see, Christmas in Goa. In the past few years I have heard globalization referred to as “the new colonization” several times, and although I'm not sure what that means in terms of hard facts, the comparison suggested itself often during the peak of the season; the high concentration of foreigners painfully sharpening the contrast between the rich and the poor. Indians from all over the country, as well as Nepalese and Tibetans, come to Goa to work in and around resorts for a pittance, while we westerners lounge on sun beds or towels oiling our skins, ordering food and drink, reading, swimming, sporting, and listening to digital devices worth the amount that our waiters make in a year.

While my guilt over my position in the world pecking order was exacerbated by Dickensian ideas about the meaning of Christmas, I was unable to stem my growing imperiousness, and I found myself in a most uncharitable mood as the holy day approached. The service on Palolem beach, often sullen and disorganized, grated on my nerves, and so did the constant approach of hawkers. I often noted similarities between my expectations (time-efficiency, rationality, objective truth, precision) and the colonial tensions examined in A Passage to India. Like any American well indoctrinated with the idea of human equality regardless of economic position, I corrected myself, thinking that I’d be none too fast either if I were working for nearly nothing, but in the end, that truth didn't soothe me, and I wondered if the amazingly irritating manners of the waiters and hawkers of Goa was a form of passive resistance to economic dominance.

My anxieties are always tied up, in one way or another, with time, and I came to resent the amount of my day spent in fending off demands on my attention and my wallet. Walking from one end of the beach to the other, a 15-minute stroll, I was sure to be approached at least 10 times, if not more. “Madame, dolphin trip?” “Just you come look my shop.” “Drums?” “Coconut, banana, pineapple.” “You need room?” Every day, again and again and again. Well scrubbed, respectable-looking children between 7 and 12 sometimes approached and forced first a handshake and then a certificate on their target. The certificate proclaimed that the child really is deaf, dumb, or disabled in some way and has official sanction, granted by their school, to beg. The first time I saw one of these official beggars I was sad, the second I was indignant (that begging was the skill being taught to them), and finally I became resolutely oblivious. By the end of my second week on the beach I generally declined to make eye-contact with anyone; if someone stepped in my path I walked around without looking, and I sometimes made a dismissive hand gesture, as if I were brushing away an annoying insect, to more persistent pursuers.

Honestly, I had developed a thick callous over my compassion by my third week in India, but this single-minded determination not to be bothered seemed so much worse with Christmas approaching, as if I were inviting the tribulations (and only slightly hoping for the transformation) of Ebenezer Scrooge; but in the end, all my 1st world guilt got me is a clearer understanding of what I am, a person who enjoys the things that money can buy and doesn’t plan to give up her own comfort for the sake of others. In fact, the poverty of India allows me (whose means are limited in my native country) to spend 6 months free of responsibility, living as if I had been born to a life of ease; I am free because others are not.

You can probably tell by now that my Christmas was unusually disheartening. Poverty and inequality is so vast and systematic in this world that I wasn’t (and still am not) able to form useful questions about it, much less answers. I spent 22 nights on Palolem Beach, wanting to move but strangely paralyzed. A few days after a typically anticlimactic New Year's Eve, I relocated to a nearly empty beach, sparing myself the constant reminder of the disproportionate amounts of money in pockets, shedding any lingering illusions about the brotherhood of man, giving up on trying to justify my luck, and getting down to relaxing and enjoying it.

Ok, I'm Back

2007-01-31T02:11:00.000-05:00

The beach, the holiday season, travel weariness, all sorts of personal and public events and dilemas, and various technical difficulties have conspired to keep me from writing anything coherent for some time. By now, the scenes of the following posts are far behind me; I'm in Bangalore where, after a day of searching, I've finally located a computer that can load this page, so I'm going to spend today, and maybe tommorow, bringing you (and me) up to date. My departure for the far off fairyland of the USA is scheduled for February 19th, but I'm trying to extend my stay. An old travel friend, Talia Winch, joined me in Goa about a week ago, which puts a new spin on the travel experience. Extending my stay involves a trip to Sri Lanka to renew my passport, which is about to expire, and to obtain a new Indian visa. If I can get all that together in time, I'll be heading home at the begining of April, or so I tell myself. A few nights ago I chased a frog around our room, and I was pretty excited when I finally caught it.

Talia got caught up in the fun and took this picture.

In Lieu Of Words

2007-01-12T07:41:00.000-05:00

And as evidence that I'm not being held hostage:

I ordered a banana lassi and I received something like rancid Gerber. Of course, like sour milk, it took two to make sure it was really bad.

With all the fun to be had, breakfast took over 2 hours to accomplish, as it nearly always does these days. I'm not complaining.

Just A Note

2007-01-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I received an email from my gentle mother today asking if I'm being held hostage, so maybe a few other readers are wondering where I've gone as well. The sad and happy fact is, I'm on a beach. The spotty local electricity supply has its benefits and drawbacks. Electricity or no, I've never managed to do anything structured on a beach, and this stay is no exception; I have made it through several worthwhile books, acquired a tan, lazed in a hammock looking at Orion, held a few sparkling and many dull conversations, started and abandoned several posts, consumed a lot of fruit, and witnessed the variety of light on the Arabian Sea.

I'm hoping I will find some words soon.

The Caves

2006-12-19T03:52:00.000-05:00

Back in Dharamshala I met a dark, round, friendly, Sri Lankan-American who has a name too foreign to catch in my mind. He was in his mid-twenties, overflowing with energy and California slang. We had one conversation at an internet café, and one at a table over lunch the next day. As we sat on a terrace, waiting for food, drinking lemon-ginger tea, and warming our skins in a sun that never could completely vanquish the cold stored up from the previous night, he mentioned his plan to visit the caves of Ajanta and Ellora; it was much more a conversation about the going than the stopping, so I got no details about the caves, but we had enough in common that I guessed a place that interested him would also hold something for me. I never saw him again after that lunch. We didn’t even exchange addresses, knowing instinctively that we would never write, but taking character as a cue, I added the caves to my list of possibilities, their being roughly along my intended trail, that trail seeking warmth, and hence southward.

When I hear the word cave, I think of a place black and damp, completely without access to light and full of echoes, something like the cave of Plato’s prisoners, chained to a wall, naming shades and shadows as seriously as if they were solid objects, taking echoes to be speech. I gave a cursory glance to the Ajanta and Ellora caves on the internet; I read there were some carvings and paintings, and I think I imagined them the way I imagine the caves at Lascaux, cold, inaccessible places with impressively ancient pigments adhering miraculously to rough walls, suggesting but never fully revealing another man, from another time.

I went from Dharamshala to Delhi to Mumbai, and from Mumbai, I caught a train to Aurangabad, which is a very small city inland from Mumbai and a good base camp for exploring the caves. On the train, I sat across from a young Indian named Samson and an aging lecturer on botany at a local college. (Samson, once in the navy, is now a competitive bodybuilder. I know, it's too good to be true. I'm really not making it up.) Near the end of the journey, the botanist pointed to a white man several benches away, near a window. I hadn’t even noticed him before, but the professor asked me if he was my husband. When I answered with a laugh in the negative, the botanist then inquired whether the man was my brother.

When the train reached Aurangabad the other white person in the car and I exited, and as we left the platform, I approached him and told him we’d been taken for siblings. We laughed, we bantered, we left the station together, and like any good brother and sister, we joined forces in fighting off the inevitable post-transportation tout attack. Eventually, we checked into the same shabbilly comfortable hotel, and later that night, we had dinner together. We found that we both wanted to visit the Ellora caves, and so the next morning we hired a rickshaw together and set of on the bumpy one-hour journey.

The caves of Ellora are indeed dark, cool, and made entirely of rock, but that is where their meeting with my vague expectations ends. Rather than a series of holes separated from light and air by a long tunnel, they are a series of 34 magnificent temples and monasteries, their entrances, interiors, and fine carvings wrested from a vertical face of rock over a period of 700 years. The first 12 structures are Buddhist, dating from 400-700 A.D., the next 17 are Hindu, dating from 600-700 A.D, roughly, and the last 5 are Jain temples, dating from 800-1100 A.D.

Between the parking lot and the site entrance there are countless hawkers selling jewelry, geodes, antique coins, guide services, and guidebooks. I bought the slimmest volume and sat down for a pre-sightseeing Nescafe with Glen (my husband from the train). The book contained a map from which I gathered the construction timetable and layout of the site; the first caves in temporal terms were the last caves in physical relation to the entrance of the complex, so we walked past all the Hindu caves before entering the first of the Buddhist. Except for the entrance, open and admitting light, the first of the Buddhist excavations is cave-like indeed, small and unadorned, with eight cells, presumably quarters for monks, ranged about its sides. The next is deep, and wide, supported by row upon row of solid pillars, centering on an enormous Buddha seated on a lion throne, somehow reminiscent of a Pharaoh, and decorated all around its square walls by Bodhisattvas and lotuses.

The caves are all mixed up in my mind by now, leaving one dimly lit, collected impression. I could pull widths and heights from that slender guidebook, which I still have, but that book bores me, so why should I bore myself by boring you with what bores me. There is no use in trying to reconstruct the caves here through locations and dimensions, so I'll try to use impressions in the place of numbers.

lotus on the ceiling

It may have been the second, or the fourth cave. Anyhow, it was one of many with columns leading to a giant Buddha radiating both peace and power from a recessed throne; but this one was slightly different. The sitting place of the central Buddha in this particular cave (as with many of them) is a room all its own. As I exited this central recess I turned right, intending to take the wide, square route to the exit, but I saw a patch of darker darkness, so far back in shadow as to be easily missed. I took a long step up a stone stair, worn smooth and warped in the center by centuries of feet. Stepping over a similarly worn threshold I found myself in a spot of nearly complete darkness, or rather, highly filtered light, light tasting as diluted as a cup of tea brewed from a bag already used 5 times. The room is rectangular, and it must have been about 7 feet high, 12 feet long, and 7 feet wide. I stood appreciating the way the perpendicular rectangle of light from the doorway, already so weakened by its journey from the far away front of the temple, cast a moonlight rectangle on the floor. That light stopped completely at its outline, not a drop seeping into the surrounding darkness. After a while, it occurred to me to try sound. I uttered a syllable, “Ah,” and listened to its reverberations spend several seconds crawling about the chamber. Then, wanting to experiment more with the phenomenon, I sang two verses, and one line from another verse, of My Favorite Things.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I'm feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel so bad

Silver white winters that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things

For some reason completely hidden to me, these are the musical lines that offer themselves whenever I am in need of a song to sing, and on my first attempt I sung them all the way through, at the usual rhythm. As I sung one line, the previous one remained in the room, and by the middle of my song, a ringing of overlapping tones formed a kind of mattress, almost smothering my voice. I wanted to hear the reverberations distinctly, so during my next attempt I took long pauses between each word, letting the cave's reaction to the previous word end before beginning the next. The chamber did not exactly echo my words, or even my tones, rather it rolled them over its hard, glossy surface and returned them transformed, into what I can’t say.

The words of my song were inappropriate to the cavern’s acoustics. Possibly, any word in a language I understand, anything that could lead to meaning, finitude, comprehensibility, separation of one thing from another, would have been strange there, deep in the belly of the world. In the end, I paced through the lines sound by sound, letting each syllable issue, transform, and exhaust its energy before producing another, till their only meaning was their existence. The symbolism of the caves, the meanings intended by their makers, will never be a part of my experience; but the rock itself remains, and I knew for a few moments being without thought or intent, just action and reaction according to nature, giving and taking sounds.

By the time I emerged from the chamber Glen had gone on to another cave, which is probably for the better as he might have found the sounds issuing from within a little strange. Some time later, walking from one cave to the next, he mentioned that this must have been where the crucial scene of A Passage to India (an English woman is raped by an Indian boy, according to him) was set. It was a passing comment, but I sometimes approach reading in the same way I approach travel: I wait for something interesting and somehow relevant to put itself in my path. So, a few weeks later, when I ran across the book here in Goa, I bought it and began to read, expecting some further insight into the caves of Ellora. I noticed almost immediately, by the description of the landscape, that the place couldn’t be the same, and upon further research, I found that the location, Chandrapore and the Marabar hills, are fictional places representing another region of India.

Nonetheless, it was a good lead. There’s no way I could read anything but a novel here on a beach in Goa. E.M. Forster is a carefull weaver of character and nature, and although the caves of his imagination are really caves, not pillared halls but holes in hills, they have given me a point of reference. The impetus of the novel does indeed take place in the caves of Marabar (although not at all in the way Glen thought), and the particular echo of the caves have effects on certain characters which resonate throughout the novel. An old woman, Mrs. Moore, hears the echo, and not too long afterward, she dies. The narrator says of its affect on her:

“the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur: ‘Pathos, piety, courage- they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.’ If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the comment would have been the same- ‘ou-boum’. If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and pleaded for all the unhappiness and misunderstanding in the world, past, present, and to come, for all the misery men must undergo whatever their opinion and position, and however much they dodge or bluff- it would amount to the same, the serpent would descend and return to the ceiling.”

Nature (and by nature I mean anything that isn't me), in life and in fiction, offers us concrete objects to illustrate, or externalize our interior lives. My own internal life being, well, let's call it involving, there's only so much sightseeing I can do in a day. It takes an effort to connect to an object in a way that is more than superficial or acquisitive, and so, by the end of the Buddhist caves and the middle of the Hindu caves, I had done all I could for a time. Glen had also had enough, so we headed back to Aurangabad, and I resolved to come back to Ellora in a few days to give the remaining structures their due. We had dinner again that night, and then we had drinks and talked for a few hours in the hotel courtyard.

Glen is in his early 40’s and single. He’s reasonably fit and attractive. He has spent the last 10 years doing import/export inspections contracting (no, I don’t really know what that is either) in North Africa and the Middle East. He spent 2 years in Iraq and left at the start of the war. He’s from New Zealand. He owns a nice little home in Auckland, where he plans to return and settle after 6 months of travel. The strange thing about our meeting, and probably the only reason I remember his name, is that he never asked mine, and I never asked his. Early on in our acquaintance, I thought to ask, but some imp put it in my mind to wait; I was curious to see just how long it would take him to wonder about this detail. So, dinner, breakfast, a day of sightseeing, more dinner, drinking, and the question never came. After dinner and before drinking, he showed me pictures of his India travels on his laptop. This is how I came to know his name, from his computer screen. Maybe that isn’t even it.

Stranger still, I’m not at all bothered that he never asked (although I am a bit amazed), that we never exchanged addresses, and that we will never meet again. It’s strange how you just know with people, the size of the role they're going to play in your story. Most people I meet I pass the time, ask questions particular to my interests, exhaust that vein, and then let the respective currents of our lives carry us away; not in a resentful way, just with the understanding that we have given all that we have for each other. In this case, I got an interesting perspective on pre-war Iraq, Muslim culture, and an idea of where to go in Goa. In fact, I saw pictures of the beach I’m now inhabiting on Glen’s laptop.

I spent the day after I visited Ellora in Aurangabad, catching up on The Great State. The day after that, I took a bus to visit Ajanta. Famous for its well-preserved, pre-Christian paintings, it is the older of the two cave complexes in the area. On a break in the ride there, Csaba, a good-looking, gregarious, 29 year old Hungarian, approached me for a light, and we made a pair for the rest of the day. Although I didn’t realize it then, I was coming down with bronchitis. The Ajanta caves were crowded, ringing with the voices of inattentive tour groups and their guides, and the beating of the sun during the intervals between caves was more than I could take, so I didn’t get much from the place.

The Ajanta temples, like those of Ellora, are treated as archeological sites rather than holy places. Shoes are removed, but for purposes of preservation rather than veneration, and this set me to wondering about the expiration date on holiness: when and why does an object cease to be a focus of adoration and become a source of curiosity? It must depend on the place, or the object, but in the case of Ajanta and Ellora, the religions they embody are still living, the gods they glorify still worshiped. A god may not die, but a temple loses its holiness when it loses its suppliants; a place of worship is only a room, more or less interesting, when no human songs ring forth. The Ajanta and Ellora complexes were abandoned long ago with a shift in civilization and rediscovered by wandering British, giving rise to archeological curiosity.

The next day I went back to Ellora, this time with Csaba in one of the charmingly curved, white, Ambassadors cabs common in India. We spent most of our time in the 16th cave, the Kailasanatha temple, a large, free standing structure carved from a single rock. The monolith is modeled on Mount Kailash of Tibet, where several rivers of Asia originate; it is the mythical abode of Lord Shiva. Kailasanatha is the principle attraction of Ellora; it is the only temple with an admission fee, 5$ for foreigners and less than 1$ for Indians, and as such it was crowded with Indian tourists and large groups of Indian schoolchildren. Still, Csaba and I spent several pleasant hours admiring the elaborate carvings, discussing the human desire for symmetry, and finding cool, quiet, stone-benched nooks in which to escape the sun.

It took 100 years to quarry the 200,000 tons of rock and fashion Kailasanatha. In those days, this must have meant at least 5 generations of able bodied men chipping away in the sun, loading rocks into baskets on backs of mules. The architect would have made his calculations and drawn up the plan knowing all the while that the glory of his project was reserved for a future he wouldn't see, at least not in his present form. What are the Twin Towers, or the Bilbao Guggenheim in comparison to Kailasanatha? Could modern technology create such an elaborate structure, saturated with the toil and care of human hands? Would any modern individual or institution commit itself to a project that would not show profit for 100 years?

fragments of an elephant

Csaba and I had hired the car until 6pm, and we left Ellora around 2pm, wilting from the sun. We wanted a cool and quiet place for lunch and figured that would cost money. So, we asked the driver to take us to the most expensive hotel in town, again called the Taj. There, at a shaded white table overlooking an expansive, sprinkler-greened lawn (rare and soothing indeed in India), we continued to mine the central vein of our conversations, materialism vs. idealism, or determinism vs. free will, or “how it is determines how it will be vs. how it is is not how it could be.”

note the spectre of death

Not that we sat for hours discussing things in these terms, but we did talk quite a bit, or rather he talked quite a bit and I responded, and it became clear to me that we stand as opposites. For example, when we talked about the recurrence of symmetry in human works at Kailasanatha he held that humans imitate symmetry in nature; I held that very few things in nature are symmetrical and those that appear so are not upon close observation, so humans are trying to give body to an idea with the works of their hands. In life, this boiled down to opposing principles of action; he feels that human appetites should be gratified because appetite is the prime characteristic of human life and desire, while I feel that appetite only perpetuates more appetite, so we should discipline ourselves in order to escape being ruled by our lower aspects.

On an even more mundane level, our differences were reflected in our attitudes to Wikipedia. Both he and I frequently reference Wikipedia and agree that it's a brilliant and significant development. I feel compelled to credit Wikipedia as an invaluable resource in my writings here; I cannot carry an encyclopedia on my travels, but I often need to check my facts and supplement locally gathered details. For me, it is a source of information, but information is not an end in itself. The idea is to make something out of the information. For Csaba, seeing material life as an end, information is enough. When he emails his friends, he simply tells them where he went and includes a Wikipedia link to the place.

In either case, materialism or idealism, indulging appetites or denying them causes one to be aware of what they are, and so results in people with developed tastes. For a few days we shared our mutual regard for quality, beauty, thought and conversation; for me, it’s more important that a person has thoughts and can discuss them than the conclusions of the thoughts themselves. Or at least that holds to a certain point, to the point where their basis becomes clear and further conversation can only be a repetition on the theme. Then, you have to remain respectful but separate, because two people who are in fundamental dischord can only take each other so far. This is a strange obstacle that I often encounter, and is also the idea that lets me bid final goodbyes to so many people without desire or regret; I find I can only speak about the things that I hold most true, most important, to people who already know them.

Csaba and I left Aurangabad together on a night train, and we spent the following day in Mumbai, waiting for the night train south to Goa. When we reached Goa, we parted amicably and exchanged addresses. The very most I can say with absolute certainty, we are what we are. He sits now on another beach, indulging his appetites I’m sure; and I sit here, in Palolem, considering mine.

Can't Buy Me Love

2006-12-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

I left Dharamshala on a 12 hour overnight bus to Delhi. I splurged on a sleeping berth, hoping to arrive relatively fresh. Unfortunately, the hairpin curves winding down and out of the mountains, coupled with constant joggling on the cratered roads, had me up all night, willing myself not to vomit. I made it all the way to my hotel in Paharganj, where I finally let go, and I spent the rest of the day in bed. It could have been mild food poisoning (although I didn't eat anything unusual) because I didn't feel quite well for a few days. I seem to have a miserable time during each of my visits to the multi-species feces experiment that is the capital city, and this was no exception. So, wanting to make the fastest exit possible, I booked a plane ticket to Bombay.

night street, Delhi

I didn't expect to like Bombay (also known as Mumbai) either, but I was pleasantly suprised. Located on the southwestern coast of India, it is an island city, and as far as I'm concerned, water always helps. Plentifull banyan trees complement British colonial buildings, and I even found a well kept park right in the center of everything. Feeling ragged and soiled, and suffering from very dry hair, I decided to try my luck with a haircut, which is always a big gamble in Asia.

Behind India Gate, a basalt arch standing at the southern Mubai waterfront, is the best hotel in town. The Taj, besides having an oppulent lobby, has 600 rooms and a shopping gallery housing diamond dealers, a Fendi store, and several other luxury brands. I figured this might be a good place to find a salon, and it was. I stepped off the hot, crowded, beggar riddled streets into the cool lobby and was suddenly treated with respect, even gentleness. The approach and manner of the concierge, when I enquired about the salon, was in shocking contrast to the behaviour of desk minders at the cheap hotels where I habitually stay. So I spent four times the amount I was spending for a nights accomodation on a some pampering. While I was having my haircut, I noticed another beautician doing something mysterious with a string to a woman's face. I asked my hairdresser about it, and it turns out this process is called "threading," a hair removal technique. My own eyebrows out of control, I decided to try it. It's a wonderful technique, much less painfull, and more precise, than waxing.

pigeons, Mumbai

Fully Fendified, I left the salon feeling bouncy and beautiful, refreshed by the civilized air of the place as much as the haircut. But when I stepped out of the air-con shopping arcade and crossed the street, intending to watch the boats for a while, I was abruptly confronted with the reality of India- a constant stream of beggars, unwanted advances from men with nothing better to do, and relentless hawking.

My train for Aurangabad, an 8 hour journey, departed at 6am the next morning, and I'd booked a seat in the lowest class of car. On my previous journey I had travelled middle class, which meant padded seats large enough so that the person in the next seat doesn't touch you, a meal, and air conditioning. It turns out that the poor people have the better deal. In the second class car the windows open, so you get a breeze. The seats are hard and packed close, but in all it feels less like being transported in a sealed can. Men walk up and down the aisles selling various foods, fruits, and chai. The only problem with the poor car is all the poor people- on the floor, in the aisles, standing next to the open door, nursing crying babies, and just looking generally downtrodden as the train rattles along. Aside from the crowding, staring, and very hard seats, it was a good journey, and across from me sat two very nice men, one a botanist and one a body-builder, who protected me along the way. When beggars came to me, they shooed them away. When people tried to take my seat, they shooed them a way too.

At the begining of the journey, a gang of transvestite beggars boarded the train. Yes, I said transvestite beggars- young Indian men dressed in saris, wearing lipstick, carrying purses, and harassing people (who seemed alarmed and embarrased by them) for money. I saw one of these menacing ladies approach a young Indian woman and poke her on the head with a 10 rupee note. I doubt I will ever know what to make of this.

The train often stopped for 10, 20, or even 30 minutes at a station without any kind of announcement: the train stops and goes when it pleases. A few hours in, I risked getting off for a cigarette. No sooner had I lit up than someone from the train (I think he worked on the train, but nobody had any kind of uniform) said, "Madame, no smoke." I said, "Well, where can I smoke? I've been smelling smoke on the train all the time." This was true, I had been. The attendant, or whatever he was, pointed me to the toilet. The toilet is the smoking section on an Indian train. One more thing; the toilets empty directly onto the tracks.

If there's anything at all India has forced me to appreciate, it's money. I've always been one to hold it in low esteem, but in terms of comfort, cleanliness, and aesthetics, there's nothing like it.

I've been lonely more often than not since I came to India. Reading (as always) has been both a great solace and a great escape. I was finishing up H.H. Dalia Lama's autobiography on the train, and my eyes filled with water when an old friend of mine walked unexpectedly into the story. His Holines relates:

"I was fortunate enough to receive a visit from Father Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk. He came to Dharamshala in November 1968, just a few weeks before his tragic death in Thailand. We met on three consecutive days, for two hours at a time. Merton was a well-built man of medium height, with even less hair than me, though that was not because his head was shaved as mine is. He had big boots and wore a thick leather belt round the middle of his heavy white cassock. But more striking than his outward appearance, which was memorable in itself, was the inner life that he manifested. I could see he was a truly humble and deeply spiritual man. This was the first time that I had been struck by such a feeling of spirituality in anyone who professed Christianity. Since then, I have come across others with similar qualities, but it was Merton who introduced me to the real meaning of the word 'Christian'."

I read Merton's autobiography about 10 years ago. The Seven Storey Mountain was one of the things that got me started thinking about joining a convent. I hadn't thought about Merton for a long time, but I was glad to meet him again, and I still remember who I lent that book to. Matt, I hope you're finished with it; it's been 5 years now! I'm not a big autobiography reader. Between Merton and the Dalia Lama, the only one I read was As I Am, by Patricia Neel, the wife of Roald Dahl, and I don't really recomend it. Still, it's wonderful to see the lives of people I've never met weaving into my own.

I raised some doubts about the conversion of Westerners to Buddhism in an earlier post, and the Dalai Lama eventually addressed them too. He says of his own ministry:

"I have felt no reservations, no hesitation in speaking about Buddhism to a Chinese audience. This I put down to the fact that traditionally many Chinese are Buddhists. By contrast, whenever lecturing on the subject to Westerners whose culture and background are essentially Judaeo-Christian, I always feel a slight reluctance. This is because I believe that, in general, it is much better for individuals to remain within their own traditions rather than change to one whose culture is basically foreign to them and not part of their daily experience. After all, I have always felt that the aims of all religions are essentially the same: namely to make us better, less selfish and ultimately happier human beings. That is the key, the point to the religious life. It is therefore better, in my opinion, for people to retain their traditional values, including their religion."

Tonight, I say a fond goodbye to His Holines the Dalai Lama. His book will shortly be abandoned in this internet cafe, as I'm finished and there's no use carrying extra weight. It has felt incongruous reading of a man from the chill northern mountains here in the hot, tropical south; it's as if my journey were following me. But I hope to meet him again somewhere, unexpectedly, someday. I say goodbye to Aurangabad, too. This town has been my jumping off point for the Ellora and Ajanta caves. I spent 4 nights here, but more about that later. Now, it's off to the train.

A Place To Remember

2006-12-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

The buildings of Dharamshala sprawl haphazardly around and up the sides of a roughly east-west running valley. They are a combination of brick, concrete and plaster, which means it is often colder inside than outside. McLeodganj, the main tourist area, is at a higher altitude than Dharamshala proper. By my third day there, I knew I'd be staying at least a week, so I found some lodging where I could spread out. My first room was small and sunless, adequate, but something like a cell. I upgraded from 2$ a night to 5$; for the 3$ increase I got three times the space, a large, low table, two chairs, a balcony which gets a triangle of sun from 9:30 to 11 am, a slightly better view in a quieter section of the valley and, although I didn't even notice it until after I had unpacked, a television. This meant I could rejoin Bond. I was surprised to find that I hadn’t missed a single beat. It turned out that the films were being shown Monday through Thursday, and I had spent Friday through Sunday without a t.v.

The first night in my new room I watched Octopussy, again. This gave me a chance to catch more of the silly innuendo than I had when I watched it the first time, on a restaurant rooftop in Udaipur. An example, aside from the title itself, is James' comment as he hands a snake-charming flute to his Indian under-spy Vijay, who almost forgets it in the back of a vehicle, "You may need this to play with your asp." Only Roger Moore, with his guileless delivery, could say this with out sounding like a total ass. Imagine if someone really said that to you! I know I'd roll my eyes, and then laugh in spite of myself, but I’d expect the person who had said it to be laughing too; James drops lines like while this saving the world, and he doesn’t get a bit distracted. It was lucky for me that I found something to do in bed, because my second room wasn’t any warmer than my first, and the temperature dropped daily. I never came across a place in town that had indoor heating, and so I took refuge, fully dressed, under three heavy blankets, every night at 8:55.

"I'm SO tired of being cold!"

The last of the Roger Moore films, the 14th in the whole series, was the first Bond film to feature pop-culture elements familiar from my own lifetime. A View To A Kill oozes 80's with an intensity that only the 80's can ooze; the opening credit sequence is decorated with undulating women wearing neon, burning, melting and ski-dancing to Duran Duran. Grace Jones and a young (but just as creepy) Christopher Walken play the villains, and feathered hair decorates Bond's beautiful women. The changing fashions of Bond films contribute a lot to their overall visual fabulousness; but the developments with the most impact, both in the real world and on the films, are technological. A View To A Kill featured animal doping, microchips, a desktop computer, and a plot to blow up Silicon Valley. Microchip technology allowed Q to deliver my favorite hysterically bad line for the movie; it went something like, "We'll use this micro-comparator to compare the microchips."

naughty monkey

Watching a Bond movie that invoked personal associations was new and timely. Maybe I was homesick (although that may require having a home), but I did a lot of remembering in my early days in McLeodganj. The place is familiar enough (with its excellent coffee, western food, cosmopolitan mix of people, and general college towny atmosphere) that, undistracted by relentless strangeness and able to establish habitual activities in the present world, I had the excess mental calories to make forays into the past. Not having met with a certain type of conversation along the road, I was missing a few people in particular. I was also missing (as usual), Sir Good, and having only one pair of shoes with me, my wardrobe. This got me thinking about my life in Seoul.

I found these doodles from Seoul way back in the begining of my notebook.

I get up, and Sir follows. Although I lived in Seoul for over 4 years, I never bought a proper bed. I always thought I'd be leaving within a year, and it seemed like such a big commitment. Instead, a pile of folded blankets on the floor served as a matress. A female friend once suggested to me that the reason I didn't have a boyfriend was because I didn't have a real bed.

Sir anticipates my departure. I had a 3 bedroom apartment on the top floor of an old house. Although Sir spent a lot of time alone there, he had plenty of room to frolic.

Sir watches me drive off to work. I never bought a bed, but about a year before I left I bought a couch. 3 years is a long time to go without anywhere to sit but the floor. I also had a lovely view of Seoul from my window.

I notice a German in the elevator. Samsung Art & Design Institute is housed in an office building. BMW Korea is on the top floor, so I occasionally saw visiting Germans. They invariably stood out, big blonde giants in the elevator.

I teach a class. I often found myself worrying that something had happened to Sir in my absence. You can guess from this picture how engaging I found teaching English as a second language.

The Dalai Lama, humble as usual, devoted some space in his autobiography to his pets. After relating each of their ends, he remarks that he decided against having more, noting that his tutor once said "Pets are in the end only an extra source of anxiety for their owners." The Dalai Lama concludes, "Besides, from the Buddhist point of view, it is not enough to be thinking and caring about only one or two animals when all sentient beings are in need of your thoughts and prayers." His tutor's observation plays out in my own doodles, and the Dalai Lama's conclusion is true enough, but damnit, I still miss Sir to pieces, and I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, loving a specific dog has increased my appreciation of all the animals that I meet.

my temporary dog

In India, there are countless dogs, in full relaxation wherever they please. The pity is, they are so dirty, foraging in the shit-spattered streets the way they do, that it is inadvisable to touch them, even though some of them are clearly friendly and in need of affection. In Dharamshala I gave in and began to pet the cleaner looking dogs that approached me. One of them became a special friend. He lay in the sun, at my feet, every morning as I had my breakfast, and I elected him my temporary dog. So far I have no dread diseases, but now I miss him too. The Dalai Lama was eventually overcome by his own tenderness and took in another cat.

relaxation, anytime, anywhere (no, she's not dead)

perfect

For those readers out there who love him, my mother tells me Sir Good (who has recently earned wittily appropriate title "Sir(cles)" is getting on very well in Virginia, and judging by her detailed descriptions of his behaviour, he's charmed his way into the heart of yet another household.

Of course, my life in Seoul was much more complicated and busy than my doodles suggest, but as I look back, it is taking on a sort of flatness; events and places now have verbal labels, rather than complex realities. For instance, I remember that I had a nice view, but I have to think harder, past (or behind) those words, to remember that I often took a smog reading from my window before leaving; my house was placed high enough that I could see the fumes that I would soon be driving through pooling in the bowl of the city.

the building housing the ex-political prisoners union makes room for a tree

There are advantages to this loss of detail; life is often incomprehensible while I'm in the midst of it. It's only at a distance that my experiences become lessons. Across the valley from the balcony of my room in McLeodganj, there is a set of hills, and behind it, a mountain. On an overcast day, I chanced to look across the distance, and I saw a fog creeping over the mountain, and then rolling down into the valley, slowly obscuring everything: the phenomenon was much like the process I had been noticing in my own mind. The next day, seeing the mountain bright as a diamond, the details of its crags and crevaces made clear by a covering of snow, I realized it had not been fog after all.

Next in the Bond series is The Living Daylights, made in 1987, and the first of only two (luckily) films featuring Timothy Dalton as 007. Dalton is too slick and self-regarding to play Bond, the British agent who, almost unwittingly, saves the world over and over again. Nearly 20 years ago, Bond was in Afghanistan, where he was aided by the Mujahideen (back in the days when they were called freedom fighters) in taking over a Soviet air base. On November 21 of this year, my fifth day in Dharamshala, my little brother returned from an army base near Baghdad on a jumbo jet and alit in Tennessee, after a year of service.

home at last

When he was deployed, not long after his first son (and my first nephew) Ethan Jon, was born, I listened to the news more often than usual. For a while, I was alarmed every time the phone rang, but as the months passed, I made an effort not to think about it at all. When his return was announced, I found myself disturbingly distanced from the situation. I have been away for a long time and I find myself distant from my entire family, so in an effort to re-forge some connection for myself I started thinking about my early childhood and my younger brothers in particular.

my handsome brother and his beautiful wife

I was six years old when Ian and Wade (still known in family parlance as "the boys") were born. Digging around in my head, I have been disturbed to find that images and details are long gone, that what I have left is more myth than memory. When they were infants, if the boys were in another room and one was crying, I knew, by the sound of his voice, which one it was. And, although Wade and Ian are identical twins, it has never been difficult for me to tell them apart by the way that their difference of character shows on their faces and in their bearings. This is the basis of the idea that I hold about them, that they have been two parts of the same whole from the dawn of creation. They are opposed and interdependent at the same time, like darkness and light, cold and heat; you need one of them to measure the other. This being so, they seem to be bound to each other in the very bottom of their natures. When they fight, which is often, they fight like no accidental enemies. Watching them parry over the years, seeing the common root of all their arguments and irritations, it appears they are playing out some ancient and elemental drama. Perhaps they see in each other what they are afraid they might find in themselves, recognition being the beginning of reaction.

Although I could no longer find the everyday facts of our lives together, I found their fruits. Growing up with them has been an education all its own. Now, I have the good fortune of watching them find their own distinct ways to manhood. Hopefully, one day we will be old together, each a storehouse of memory for the other. Wade, welcome home! Boys, your big sister is proud of you.

Rochelle, Wade, Ethan

I spent as much time on my balcony in McLeodganj as I could tolerate. At night, before tuning in for the 9 o'clock movie, I put on all my layers and looked at the playful arrangement of the lights climbing up the end of the valley; if Paul Klee had designed a tiara of gold, diamonds, auquamarines, and bottle glass for Daisy Buchanan to wear to a midsummer party by Gatsby's pool, this is how it would have looked. In the end, I lingered a few days too long; at some point, I started to feel angry at the relentless chill, and so I caught a bus to Delhi, where I spent a few days planning foreward, and now I'm well south, and well warm.

Tibetan prayer wheels

I keep forgetting to mention that I changed my departure to the states from December 23 to January 31. So, now I find myself in mid-trip, stuck fast in the gift of the ever present present, between a long past past and a far away future.

His Holiness, Second-Hand

2006-11-23T03:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I bought some books about Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and I’m slogging my way through the first, The Tibetan Conundrum by V.P. Malhotra, an Indian defense specialist, just so I can move on to the second, Freedom in Exile, the autobiography of the 14th, and current, Dalai Lama. I’m sorting through the facts Malhotra has to offer in order to answer three questions; what is the origin of the Tibetan state, what has been (generally) its relation to other nations in the region, and what the heck is the Dalai Lama? Tibetan history, according to Malhotra, starts 127 years before the birth of Christ, when the people of the region where warriors, but it turns out that the title, Dalia Lama, was created, and bestowed upon Sonam Gyatso, by the politically embattled Altan Khan of Mongolia around 1570. The title gave support to Sonam Gyatso, a Tibetan monk involved in Buddhist factionalism in his own country. Lama simply means monk, but the word Dalai, means “ocean of wisdom.” The title was posthumously bestowed on two previous lamas, and so the first Dalai Lama was actually the third. When Altan Khan named Sonam Gyatso Dalai Lama, he also declared himself the reincarnation of Kublai Khan, who had ruled Mongolia successfully about 300 years earlier. So, Gyatso gained spiritual authority in Mongolia, and what amounts to kingship in Tibet, where he is called Gyalpo Rimpoche, meaning “precious king.” Altan Khan gained political legitimacy through the support of the religious leader. After Gyatso died, the 4th Dalai Lama (Gyatso’s reincarnation) was found in Mongolia, the great grandson of Altan Khan.

monklets, taking over the internet cafe

It’s a typically convoluted cultural evolution; holy mingles with human until the two become indistinguishable. The effort to separate religion and politics, god and king, is relatively recent anyhow, and the state of Tibet, led by its precious king, remained sovereign until 1950, when Chairman Mao’s army came to “liberate” them from “imperialist forces.” After nearly a decade of negotiation and passive resistance, the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet and established a “government in exile,” in Dharamshala, India.

November 20 Free Tibet hunger strike

As it turns out, the precious king is here (not literally in this internet café) as I type, preparing to give a teaching. I heard of his arrival in another internet café, several days back. A German girl was Skyping (internet telephoning) with her boyfriend, who sounded like an Italian. They were speaking English. It’s amazing what people will say in public. For instance, I now know all about the power issues in their relationship. I try not to listen, but I’m easily distracted, so I got one piece of information that I actually wanted; the Dalai Lama would be giving teachings at the Dharamshala temple from November 23rd to November 27th, and all you had to do was go to the social welfare office and register. The next day, I hunted down the office, and read the notices on the wall. One said:

“Unlike other teachings, this is only meant for those strict practitioners who have strong inclination towards the practice of Bodhicitta (altruistic intention to achieve Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings) and the practice of the wisdom of Emptiness. The minimum commitment is to do the daily recital meditation of the “Six-Sessions Guru Yoga.”

Well, I don’t even know what “Six-Session Guru Yoga” is, but I do know that sitting there for 4 hours listening to a bad English translation in headphones would leave me closer to irritation than enlightenment, so I opted out. That was November 22nd.

Later that evening, I was having dinner alone, which is always a great opportunity for overhearing, and again, talk was of His Holiness. So, I set myself a mission; each day, for the duration of the teachings, I’ll see if I can hear something.

Day -1; November 22

Characters
Israeli male; dreadlocked, studying Reike, smoker currently on a 21 day physical purification, between 22-25

3 Irish females and 1 Irish male; post-university, ambiguously employed, between 23-26

The four Irish people met the Israeli guy by chance in a vegetarian cafe. After some chat about the dangers of travel in India, the Dalai Lama comes up.

Irish male: Do you think he’s really enlightened?
Israeli: Yes, definitely.
Irish female: Well, what is happiness anyways?
Irish male: Ya.
Israeli: Happiness must be the opposite of suffering.

Silence, and then the conversation shifted to the best bag locks for train travel.

I have three questions. 1. Are enlightenment and happiness the same state? 2. What is suffering? 3. What are we that we are aware of happiness and suffering?

Day 1; November 23

Although Jogiwara Road overflowed with students of the Dalai Lama at 4pm, when the teaching finished, participants carrying some sort of reed, I didn't hear much talk.

I went to a restaurant later, and there was a table full of Americans making the "things I'm thankfull for" round. They were drowning out the rest of the voices in the room, but I looked down at the table and this was written there:

"How lucky you are to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

This seems to address at least questions 2 and 3, and maybe even help you get at 1, if you look at it from far enough away.

Day 2; November 24

I've been a little disappointed that I'm not overhearing much about the Dalai Lama's teachings; so many people are attending, but nobody is saying anything. Maybe that's an appropriate response. I know that when I hear something profound, my first impulse is silence rather than speech.

And maybe I haven't been positioning myself correctly; I've just been going about my business, and expecting something to come my way. Yesterday, my business was Norbulingka, a center for the preservation of Tibetan culture about an hour and thirty minutes down the mountain by jeep and bus and foot. During the ride, Ben (a guy from Bainbridge Island, near Seattle) and I were talking, and he had a slip of tongue. I chose it as my teaching for the day.

“I heard some people overtalking.”

Everybody knows what is happiness and what is suffering when it is happening; it’s when we try to define them generally and out loud that things get messy. I myself am definitely guilty of overtalking.

Norbulingka is the Dalai Lama’s summer palace in Lhasa, Tibet; a student there told us that the Dharamshala Norbulingka is exactly the same as the one in Lhasa, but I’m not sure of that. Anyways, it’s a serene place. There is a temple and a lovely garden, as well as a school for sewing and a school for thangka making. Thangkas are complex, ritual wall hangings, sometimes enormous and sometimes small, depicting deities, buddhas and related stories, sometimes painted, and sometimes sewn with fabrics. I saw one yesterday depicting the wheel of life (also known as the wheel of suffering); it reminded me of an Hieronymous Bosch painting with its graphic illustration of both gory and mundane details.

sewing a garment for traditional dance

thangka school

thangka school

In Malhotra’s book, I came across a list of names which Tibetans use for the Dalai Lama:
Kyam-gon Rimpoche: Precious Protector
Gye-wa Rimpoche: Precious Sovereign
Buk: The Inner One
Kyam-gon Buk: Innermost Protector
Lama Pon-po: Priest Officer
Kun-dun: The Presence

Whatever you believe about the holy or reincarnate status of the Dalai Lama, it’s clear that he’s revered, even worshiped, by Tibetans. This raises questions about freedom, which seems to be defined as democracy these days. What if a people want to be ruled by a king; are they free to be undemocratic? Are they free to worship their gods in whatever way they choose, even if this means regarding church as state?

Apparently, the Dalai Lama doesn’t think political power is necessary for Tibetan Buddhism to survive. His government in exile has done an admirable job of sustaining Tibetan religion, language, and arts over the past 46 years, but he has publicly declared that he will not hold political office in the advent of the independent and democratized Tibet that he hopes to return to.

Day 3; November 25

Eating lunch yesterday, I overheard two Italian women and a Canadian man discussing the teachings of their lama. They have been studying at the same ashram, but were at the end of their retreat. As such, it was a goodbye and recap sort of conversation. The Canadian guy, a charismatic Aryan Jesus-looking type, and one of the Italian women, were quite the talkers. The other Italian woman performed the function of audience. They talked a lot about Dharma (teaching or way), and it was all mixed up with interpersonal innuendo. The thrust of the conversation seemed to lay in the subtext (the particulars of the attraction that had been developing between the two talkers), rather than the topic itself; it was rather unclear, at least to me. I thought I was the only confused one, but then the Italian woman said:

“If you don’t define the things, then there is big confusion, yah?”

They happened to have been talking about the New Age movement, and the Canadian made the point that New Agers face the peril of gaining breadth while losing depth. I wonder if this also applies to people raised on Christian symbols who turn, in midstream, to an entirely new tradition. For me, although I’m attracted to Buddhist teachings, taking it up as a religion would be as problematic as deciding that in my true nature I’m a Japanese man rather than an American woman, and then undertaking a gender change, pigment adjustment, and relocation to Tokyo. I would have to relearn everything, from the ground up; language, culture, attitude, religion, everything. Maybe the comparison is odd, but you get my meaning.

I’m aware that not every western person has (like me), had the good fortune of a religious upbringing, but this doesn’t change the context, or tradition (in the broadest sense), from which we come. It is a nutrient in the soil of our language and literature, and a source of our fears and expectations. Conversion must be possible, but it surely requires a great deal of study and seriousness.

I’m wondering if this assignment I’ve set myself (trying to overhear something relevant to his Holiness’ teachings) isn’t turning me into a bit of a weirdo. I had the opportunity to sit with the Canadian/Italian group, which I would have enjoyed, and join their conversation, but I opted to sit at another table and pretend to be reading instead. I didn’t want to have any influence on what I heard.

And speaking of reading, I didn’t actually finish The Tibetan Conundrum (half of the book is copies of official documents), but I got what I wanted, and so I’ve happily moved on to Freedom in Exile, the 14^th Dalai Lama’s autobiography; he’s humble and humorous, which makes for a pleasant read.

I found his answer to my question, “What the heck is the Dalai Lama?,” in the foreward.

“Dalai Lama means different things to different people. To some it means that I am a living Buddha, the earthly manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion. To others it means that I am a ‘god-king’. During the late 1950’s it meant that I was a Vice-President of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. Then when I escaped into exile, I was called a counter-revolutionary and a parasite. But none of these are my ideas. To me ‘Dalai Lama’ is a title that signifies the office I hold. I myself am just a human being, and incidentally a Tibetan, who chooses to be a Buddhist monk.”

Day 4; November 26

I continue to be disappointed on the Dalia Lama teachings chit-chat front, so yesterday I changed my position, physically and mentally. Around 4pm, I walked down to the temple and stood outside listening to the pause-punctuated rhythm of His Holiness' voice for a while; everything he says sounds like a question. I came across this description of his education in Freedom in Exile.

“Fundamental to the Tibetan system of monastic education is dialectics, or the art of debating. Two disputants take turns in asking questions, which they pose to the accompaniment of stylized gestures. As the question is put, the interrogator brings his right hand up over his head and slaps it down on to his extended left hand and stamps his left foot on the ground. He then slides his right hand away from his left, close to the head of his opponent. The person who is being asked questions remains passive and concentrates on trying not only to answer, but also to turn the tables on his opponent, who is all the time pacing around him.”

This may explain his intonation, and seems like a great preparation for life; conversation is never comprised solely of words, there are always cues, other ways of communicating, going on, and they can lead a person away from the point of the matter.

Around 4:20pm I found a shop positioned on the main road leading from the temple to the town, and I sat myself down inconspicuously on the porch, ready to see who came from the teachings. I put my camera on my knee, and took some video, which is too large to upload to this page. The pictures here are stills from the videos. The white and yellow building in the background is the teaching venue.

I had changed my position physically in hopes of finding something closer to what I was looking for, to no avail; yesterday was the most wordless day yet. So, I expanded the perimeters of what I could consider a teaching, and the most noteworthy thing seemed to me the fact that there are people, in the modern world, alive right now in the midst of this indecipherable mess of possibility and information, who have enough faith in a particular story of being to dedicate their lives to the institutions springing from the story.

I’m sure that for some of the monks it is just a matter of circumstance, a way of life and a situation that they were born into; but there are just as surely many who consciously choose to believe what they believe, and live accordingly, in spite of other options, or other evidence.

In a foreign land, watching shaven-headed strangers robed in red meandering up a road after a 3 hour religious ceremony, I’m moved in a way that I’m not by a Sunday morning church service in my own country. I have plenty of faithful Christians in my own family, and I was even one myself for a time, but now I view taking a story of a virgin birth and a resurection literally with more incredulity than admiration. Is this because I’m better acquainted with hypocrisy and the consequences of literalism in a familiar land than in a foreign one? Of course literalism and faith are two different matters too.

I think I need to work on asking questions more clearly before I posit any answers. In order to avoid overtalking I’ll close with the Dalai Lama’s explanation of Buddhism.

“The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or The Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that everything which an individual being experiences is derived through action from motivation. Motivation is thus the root of both action and experience. From this understanding are derived the Buddhist theories of consciousness and rebirth.”

His Holiness of the best coffee in town

Chew on that for a lifetime or two.

Day 5; November 27

I did some more thinking about my attraction to foreign religions and my indifference to familiar ones, and the primary distinction that I make between the faithful coming from a Buddhist service and those coming from a Christian one is (I’m ashamed to say) superficial. It’s all in the clothes; aside from the aesthetic pleasure I take from robed figures in exotic climes, monks appear to have given over their whole life to their faith, taking vows and divesting themselves of most of the trappings and errands of secular life, while Sunday morning churchgoers, in their everyday, modern clothes, appear only to be performing one more duty in a week full of worldly cares.

My attraction to monastic life has always been strong, in accordance with the extremes of my nature. When I was in college, I spent several weekends at nunneries, and even considered joining one. By that point, I wasn’t even a practicing Christian, and I had never been a Catholic, but I was attracted to the discipline, the ritual, and the resulting peace of the place. Of course, I also thought about joining the military a few times.

It occurs to me now that perhaps it is more difficult to lead a religious life while being a part of the secular world. Maybe it is easier to be a faithful monk than a faithful shopkeeper. Maybe there are some admirable people coming out of church on Sunday morning. Of course there are; there are faithful, steadfast people everywhere, keeping the world from falling apart, while people like me wander around staring.

My find for the 5^th and last day of the Dalai Lama’s teachings is something that I overheard myself saying. At 9pm last night I tuned in to see GoldenEye, the first of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films. Before the movie began, the channel was advertising its December film series, the complete Star Wars. And it came into my mind:

"If the Dalai Lama is Yoda, then who is Darth Vadar?”

This in an attempt to avoid formulating answers to the questions I've posed. And, the last lines of The Wasteland, to close the Dalai Lama game, which has ended rather strangely.

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon-O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

Epilogue

After finishing my entry for day 5 I went for a walk in the woods surrounding the temple complex. On my way back to the center of town I saw a man wearing a t-shirt. It said:

Omne Ignatum Pro Magnifico

Everything unknown is taken as formidable

Dharamshala

2006-11-18T23:13:00.000-05:00

The Dalai Lama came to Dharamshala ("rest house" in Tibetan) in 1959, setting up a Tibetan "government-in-exile." Now, there are several thousand Tibetan exiles living here, mingling with Indians and tourists of all kinds. I came to Dharamshala two days ago, and this morning, I finally awoke free of anxiety. I simply opened my eyes, located myself, and then noticed that I didn't feel nervous at all, for the first time in at least a week.

One thing that I don't write about is anxiety, although I'm often kicking violently upstream against it. Transit between destinations can be nerve-wracking and is often uncomfortable. I took a plane from Srinagar to Jammu, and then I had to stay in Jammu for the night in order to catch the bus the next morning. That meant I had to lug my bag around town looking for a place to stay, and then I had to negotiate with touts and ticket sellers. I left Jammu at 8:30 am, and took a bus to Paranthkot (or something like that) where I wandered around the "bus station" (read parking lot/ trash heap) looking for another bus to Dharamshala. I finally found it and got on. When we arrived three hours later, I changed to another bus to upper Dharamshala. Finally there, at 3 pm, I found a room, and then I found a restaurant, and then I unpacked, and then, the next day, I proceded to find my way around.

Finding my way around is difficult, especially in India, where I'm rarely allowed to walk without being approached; I don't like this part of travel. I like the part where I am comfortable; my things unpacked, my days free for doing something, or nothing. In my transit between Srinagar and Dharamashala, I ate almost nothing. I ate almost nothing because I couldn't bring myself to face the added difficulty of figuring out what and where food was, and then standing there with everyone staring at me while waiting to be served. I did buy some fried fish from a street stall at one point, not really knowing what it was, and I was rewarded with a mouth full of bones.

Anyways, the anxiety about dealing with a new place, and getting there, begins to build as soon as I start to know it's time to leave and doesn't let up until I feel comfortable in the new place. Luckily, Dharamshala is a very comfortable town; there is coffee, there is fast interenet connection, there is pizza, there are very friendly people, and there is a kind of peace here that I haven't seen in India so far.

Dharamshala street

Despite all my Yoda remarks, I'm becoming attracted to the Dalai Lama, and I think I'll do some research, as well as try to hear him speak, while I'm here.

view from my room

Dharamshala is at an average altitude of 4780 feet, and there is a magnificent view from the porch outside my room. At night, there are three lights visible on a bend in a ridge; they are at the right point on the horizon to appear as a rising belt of shining stars, fit to announce the birth of a new saviour.

It is sunny today, and this is a place where a person can take a walk. That's the plan.

I'll Fly Away

2006-11-14T03:02:00.000-05:00

During my last 2 years in South Korea I had a large cell phone charm hanging from the document holder attached to the side of the computer in my office. It was produced by Millimeter/Milligram, a small, hip Korean shop selling items like cards, wallets, and t-shirts. I find large baubles hanging from my mobile phone irritating, but I liked this blue, rubber, gingerbread shaped man enough to buy him. Printed across his front are the words "I'll Fly Away."

sinking boat

He flew away in a box destined for my mother's garage, and I flew away too; but travel, like everything else in life, has its peaks, plateaus, and valleys. I flew from Srinagar to Jammu on November 16, and I'm now in Dharamshala, the place where the Dalai Lama set up shop after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. I left Srinagar not a moment too soon, but possibly a few days too late. In some way, I'm not exactly sure how yet, the place has changed me. The solemnity, a hush in spite of, or perhaps because of, the open acceptance of lurking violence, has stolen into me, and I find myself older now, in both the negative and the positive sense of the phenomenon.

eagle and tree

The effect of Srinagar on me has something to do with its particular and subtle beauty. Buildings and boats, initially painted in cheery colors, are muted by their exposure to weather, and the clothing of the people, especially the men, who make up the majority of figures to be seen in public, is also earthy and mellow, retaining the character of natural wool even when dyed. The lake reflects the palate of the city, and the outlines of things are somehow sharper in their images than in their actual existence. A variety of birds, from small black and white hummingbird-like dive bombers to brown eagles gliding down from the mountains, grace the skies and hunt the waters, and 5 times a day, beginning around 5:30 am, prayers roll out from the mosques of the lake and the city, staggered, one starting after another, until the air is ringing with rounds of indecipherable, but obviously dedicated, chanting. And it is as if the early morning fog on the lake had mingled with the prayers, slipped between the gaps in the walnut window frames, and crept in gentle tendrils into my ears, hanging veils of silence over my heart.

Dal Lake and mountains

The character of Srinagar is restrained; it sometimes yeilds a surface drabness. And so I find myself carrying a cloud with me, unable to break the spell, and thinking about the ways in which the most significant moments of life on the road, just as those of life in an office, are inevitably painted on a canvas of mundane facts. We returned from Pahalgam to find two things; oncoming winter is swaddling Srinagar in clouds and rain, and the electricity was out in the houseboat. I stayed there, transfixed by the lake, for 3 more nights, shivering in my borrowed feather jacket when I left my bed, 2 feet deep in blankets. No electricity meant no hot water, and so I went without that too, but finally, I followed Yasir (who left before me, sick from the distinctively wet cold on the boat) and left the lake, moving to the welcoming home/hotel of Yasir's extended family for my last few days.

Niyaz, Shabir, and Tariq

Suddenly, I had light, and a television, and people to bring me food, and visitors, and noise in the hallways, but this further immersion into the culture of the place (meeting family, being constantly surrounded by people speaking a foreign language, eating only Kashmiri food, never knowing when someone would be knocking on my door to check that I had everything I needed) drove me to recede further from outward circumstances. My stay in Srinagar had reached a point where the strangeness of place and culture weren't going to yield anymore; I had seen as much of the surface as I could, and the depths were going to keep their secrets.

moving, on a rainy day

So, experiencing an increase in anxiety and upping my cigarettes per day to the point that I was sleeping (and often not sleeping) with a pack next to my pillow, I turned away from the foreign and embraced the familiar. In the same way I indulge in McDonald's cheeseburgers, which I never eat in America but sometimes eat in a frenzy of desire while traveling, I turned on the t.v. and crawled under the covers. Building up to the release of the new 007 movie, Casino Royale in Asia, India's movie channel, Star TV has been running Bond flicks, chronologically, every night at 9 pm; a few weeks ago, back when the houseboat still had electricity, I saw bits of Goldfinger, made in 1964 starring Sean Connery, but it failed to capture my attention. By now, I believe I have seen nearly every Bond film featuring Roger Moore: The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974, The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977, Moonraker, 1979, For Your Eyes Only, 1981, and Octopussy, 1983, which I saw more than a month ago in Udaipur, where the movie was filmed; it is shown every night at restaurants all over town.

"Octopussy" palace, Udaipur

lake palaces at night, Udaipur

And you know, I really enjoyed these movies; the first one I watched just because it was on and it was in English, but by the second night I was involved, and when I found out that Moonraker would feature Bond in space I was amused to find myself excited. The movies are downright entertaining, and it was fascinating watching the fashions and political settings of my early childhood (I was 8 in 1983 and -1 in 1974) develop and change over the span of these movies, but I have to admit I also sat through some total crap. One was an American college kids on a European summer trip film. The best lines were, "Dude, you made out with your sister!" and "Let the European sex odyssey begin!" I really can't believe I watched that or a sappy, talking animal movie called, Racing Stripes (I think). It was about a zebra who wins the Kentucky Derby.

houseboat crow

And from there we progress further down the chain of concerns that comprise a life. Shortly after I arrived in Srinagar, I sent most of the clothes I have with me to be laundered. This meant that I had 6 pairs of clean underwear and 3 pairs of clean socks. Somehow, I never managed to do laundry again, and by my second week it was too cold to consider changing clothes anyways. I soon expanded my ideas of what I consider clean, and I changed my clothes for the first time in at least 10 days this morning, in Dharamshala. Last night, settling into my new room, I spent a few delightful hours indulging in an activity I've found comforting ever since I can remember, organizing. With my bag fully mastered and its contents placed around the room, I washed my underwear in the most gratifying hot shower I've ever had, and as I left the hotel this morning I dropped some things at the laundry. Strangely, in Srinagar I had a record run of great hair days, which has abruptly ended here. Also, I think I lost about 5 lbs as my anxiety increased and my ability to eat any more rice and mutton (no matter how delicious) decreased.

Srinagar bird

I know, "Yuck, details about underwear!" But it's the details that make things interesting, right? A thoughtful reader recently emailed me, raising questions about the distinction between me in reality and me creating myself as a character on this blog. She is right, there is are differences between the me who is living my life and the processed me who shows up on the screen; but then the stories I tell, and the way I tell them, turn right back around and change me. There are a lot of things I don't write about, and some things I can't write about. I often have the suspicion that the things I don't write about are as important, and maybe more so, than the things I do, and that the things I can't write are the truest things of all.

eagle, flying away

Another friend remarked to me, shortly before I left, "Wow, so you're going on vacation for one third of the year!" Just to set the record straight, I'm less "on vacation" than I've ever been; I'm performing a series of demented experiments on myself.

Guns & Ammo

2006-11-12T07:19:00.000-05:00

I remember well the first time I left North America; I was 21, and I went to Oxford to do a summer study program. It was the summer after my father died, and before I boarded the plane my mother gave me her wedding ring; I've worn it whenever I've travelled, superstitiously, and I'm wearing it now, as I type.

When I dismbarked at Heathrow, I was shocked to see armed police, big, black guns gleaming, patrolling the airport. I had never seen serious weapons out in the open like that. By now, I'm sure this is not an unusual sight in America, or anywhere else. Here in Srinagar evidence of danger is common, as Indian forces form road checks and patrols all over the city. Soldiers and guns still unnerve me, but they go almost unnoticed by the locals.

crow's nest

A few days ago, I took my first long, unchaparonned walk in Srinagar. It was unplanned: I left the houseboat saying I'd be at the internet cafe, but I decided to get a Nescafe first, and then I wanted to sit by the lake and enjoy it, and then I was having such a nice time that I decided to have an amble. I was planning to walk for a few minutes and then return to my stated destination, but as I was walking, I saw a sign for a temple, and I followed it. Soon, I had to pass through a security checkpoint and record my passport. The soldiers there were friendly and curious, wanting me to stay and talk, but I set out on the 5.5 kilometer road up a mountain overlooking the lake.

After about 15 minutes, just as the oppression of being constantly accompanied was begining to lift and my legs were hitting their stride after their long sleep, a truck pulled up behind me and 6 soldiers climbed out. They caught up to me, and I slowed down to let them pass. Noticing my lagging, they said, in the typical Indian overuse of the imperative, "Come," and "Follow me, Madame." Annoyed at the sudden military escort, I followed as slowly as possible. Soon, they came to a path and said , "shortcut," beckoning me to follow. Thinking that I didn't want to shorten my walk or follow unknown men (uniform or no) into the woods, I replied, "No thanks, I'll stick to the road." So, they disappeared into the trees.

my military escort

I was supposed to leave my matches and cigarettes at the checkpoint, but nobody inspected my bag, so I didn't hand them over. About an hour up the road, I stopped at a bluff overlooking the city, and then I went further into the woods to violate the law. I was sitting there enjoying the view when I heard a rustling in the bushes below and a camo helmet came into view. I said, "Shit," and began to put out my cigarette. "Carry on Madame," was his reply. So I offered him a smoke, and he took it with pleasure. He was a long way from home, Mumbai, a Hindu, and not enjoying what he called his "jungle patrol."

Although I'm frightened by guns, I'm also fascinated by them. I had been wondering since I arrived in Srinagar what kind of guns the soldiers were carrying, so I asked this one. It turned out to be a rifle, and I told him a story from my childhood: I must have been about 9, and my uncles took me for target practice behind the barn. They gave me the rifle, and when I shot it, it knocked me flat on my ass. The soldier laughed, and then he offered to let me shoot his gun. I slightly regret that I declined.

gaurding the lake

I finally saw the temple after 2 more security points where I had pretty much everything in my bag except paper confiscated, and I came down from the mountain 4 hours after I began. Yasir found me at the internet cafe a bit later, and he said at least three people had been looking all over the city for me. I apologized, but I sure did enjoy that walk.

Valley Of The Shepherds

2006-11-08T03:39:00.000-05:00

As usual, plans changed at the last second. Instead of heading northeast to Sonamarg we went southeast to Pahalgam. We were 5: Yasir, who I met in Kajuraho, his charming uncle Niyaz, a friend of theirs named Shabir, and Chihiro, a Japanese woman staying in the houseboat next to mine. Chihiro speaks very little English, and nobody has the patience to explain what's going on to her, so I doubt she has any idea that plans ever changed at all. She seems happy to be led around, taken care of, and to sit silently as indecipherable noises issue from the lips of those around her and eventually result in decisions. I, in contrast, am often driven to the peak of frustration and paranoia by the constant surrender of will and consciousness required in my current situation, so I ask a lot of questions.

When I asked why we had changed directions, I received two different answers from two different people. Yasir said, "It's winter so they are coming down." And Niyaz said, "No, there is snow." Either of those reasons, militants or snow descending from the mountains, is good enough for me, so off we went to Pahalgam, Valley of the Shepherds.

Typical of a camping trip, our gear-gathering took longer than anticipated, and we didn’t get on the road until early afternoon. We had a two and a half hour drive, and then we stopped at a local market for provisions. By the time we pulled into the valley, it was already dark, so we took rooms at a guest-house. All was quiet except for the river, and the air was damp and cold. I had two choices to keep from shivering, take a brisk walk, or get into bed. I was told it was not safe to go outside alone; so after dinner,having already pushed the limits of my sociability for the day, I went to bed.

the river in the morining

The next morning, Yasir found a cook/caretaker for our campsite. Niyaz and Shabir took us to the site, and as we were setting up tents, they left for Srinagar, promising to come back for us in a few days. I was enjoying some yoga on a sunny patch of grass overlooking the river when, three horses arrived, led by a rosy-brown faced man with merry eyes wearing a bark colored feran (the traditional Kashmiri woolen cloak).

horses appear

I thought I had given up on horse-riding in Mongolia, but when I saw them, I again felt the desire to ride a fast and well-trained horse. And now, having some experience with horse groups and their guides, I was going to have my way. It always goes like this: there is one hearty horse who wants to run and that one always leads. The others are docile and only follow the lead horse halfheartedly and with much prodding. So, I identified the spirited horse (a tall black one as opposed to the shorter brown ones) and demanded to ride it. As predicted, I was told that the horse was too powerfull for me and that it would cause problems, leading me here and there.

I gave in and Yasir (being the man of the trio) mounted the black horse. We had a 12 kilometer ride ahead of us, and as soon as we left the campsite, the black horse shot down the road. My horse followed, refusing to go any faster than a bone-jarring trot, and Chihiro’s horse walked slowly along, led by the horse guide, because she was terrified of falling off. Yasir waited for us about a kilometer down the road.

By the time we caught up with the man and the black horse, I was irate; for me, there are few things more frustrating than riding a horse that refuses to gallop. To make things worse, Yasir was laughing and gloating about having a faster horse. That did it; I started yelling at him. In short, I said, “Every fucking time I pay for a horse I get the a fucking slow lazy old one just because I’m a woman! I’m so fucking sick of it!” More smirking from Yasir prompted, “You think it’s funny? I’m a better rider than you, so why are you on the fast horse!” He just kept laughing, and I rode off, nearly in tears. A few minutes later, he relented, and I mounted the black horse and left him in the dust. And what a fine horse it was, feet barely touching the ground as the road wound up the mountain.

After a bit of a ride, I stopped and waited for Yasir and Chihiro. When Yasir arrived, he was so mad about the horse that I told him we could trade off. So I took the black until we reached our destination, a lovely, high altitude meadow, and he mounted it for the way back, several hours later. Near the begining of our return ride, with the horse in motion, Yasir fell off. It’s frightening to see someone fall off a horse, so my initial reaction was concern, but when it became clear that he wasn’t seriously injured, I went ahead and indulged myself in the last laugh. Obviously, I had the lead horse for the duration of our stay in Pahalgam.

Is that a smirk I'm wearing?

That day, our destination was Baisran, a huge, rolling meadow surrounded by pine trees. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to ride our horses into the meadow, so we took a walk instead and eventually settled against a rock to take in the sun and scenery. This was the perfect place and time for some yoga, so I found a private spot under a tree, and Chihiro wandered over for a lesson. Relaxed and invigorated, we ambled back to the rock where Yasir and the horse guide were chatting. A boy came from one of the huts in the forest and watched us. Later, he took me to a spring to fill my water bottle. Coming from the hillside in a tiny stream, the water was clear and sweet.

the meadow

pensive boy

That night in the tent was the coldest I have spent in a very long time. My neck was warm, because I had a pashmina, but the parts of me that touched the ground were freezing. It was a restless night for all of us. Somewhere in between tosses and turns I thought I might be able to sleep if I emptied my bladder. It wasn't any colder outside than it was inside, so I lit a cigarette outside the tent and stood, stamping my feet and looking alternately at the ground and the sky. Out of nowhere, a large, dark bird flew across my field of vision and then disappeared, leaving a fierce, double cry behind. I'm guessing it was a hunting hawk, but if there's anything I've learned in the past few months it is that I know nothing about plants and creatures.

campsite at dusk

The next morning, stiff and sleep deprived, we broke camp and took another 13 kilometer ride further along the valley but gianing altitude, to Aru. Along the way I tried to teach Chihiro something about reins and riding, but I eventually gave up and went for a gallop.

At Aru, wanting to sleep that night, we took a room at another guest house. We had some tea and sandwiches, and then took a nap. We had planned to take a hike that day, but nobody could move, and by the time we arose, the evening chill was already settling in. So, we had dinner in the clapboard room of the cook, next to the kitchen. He fed the wood stove with kerosene; frightening.

from the road to Aru

All three of slept in the same bed, for warmth, and we woke up well-rested. We took a van back to our starting point and waited for Niyaz to show up. Eventually, he did, and in the meantime I took one last ride.

We arrived back in Srinagar in the evening, and I was reinstalled in the Gulrose, which has no electricity at the moment. By now I've lost track of the number of days I've been back. 3, 4, 5, 2? I do know that it's Saturday, that it's raining, that I've become enchanted by the ever-changing mirror that I'm living on, and that I'm in love with Kashmiri carpets.

Nonetheless, I'll be heading south sometime in the next few days. Sometimes I try to remeber what I expected from life when I was 16. It certainly wasn't this.

Life On The Lake

2006-11-03T02:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I took a 3 minute shikara ride from my porch to the bank of the lake. I crossed the street and had a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of Nescafe. Although the native food is tastier, I need something approximately familiar for breakfast.

houseboats

Then, I walked back to the bank and boarded another boat for a 3 hour ride around Dal Lake. The nicer boats have a long velvet cushion where one can lay back to enjoy the quiet lapping of the oar while watching life on the lake drift past.

in a shikara

And there is a lot of life to see. There are lotus gardens, and gardens supporting greens I've never seen. Dense turf floats on the surface, sinking and pooling with water around a footstep, and then springing up again. There are enough islands, moored together houseboats, platforms, and floating huts to call the place a town. There is a market, mosques, and a school.

public school

Young boys horse around on plank sized boats.

chasing ducks

Women row about busy with their chores.

And men ply the water selling every kind of ware.

flower boat

I'm suprised to find, with its houseboat lined lakes, that Srinagar has a kinship with Amsterdam. The impression of the sky is similar too; even on the sunniest day, there is something of water in it.

island house

Tommorow morning I'm leaving for Sonmarg, in the direction of Ladakh and the Indian Himalayas for a 4 night, 5 day horse and foot trek. It is cold here, at night and in the morning, and it will be even colder where I'm going. Yesterday evening I gave in and bought a pashmina, a shawl spun from the underfur of Himalayan goats. With its light, lovely magical warmth around my neck, I sat on the bank of the Dal watching the lights shimmer and eating skewered, roasted lamb with chutney and flatbread.

I can't believe I've been in India for a month now; time goes strangely, and every single thing is different. India is a place that demands you either bend or be broken. As inflexible as I am, I'm bending, and it's hard to keep track of things by familiar lights.

Finish

2006-11-03T02:46:00.000-05:00

Some Kind of Demon

2006-10-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

I had my final confrontation with the travel agency today; I got a refund of 340$, in cash. That's not too bad, considering that one can live tolerably well here for 20 days on that much money. This still leaves them with a rather ridiculous profit, but I have the satisfaction of letting them know what I think of their tactics.

I'll be leaving Delhi tommorow morning for Srinagar, Kashmir, where I hear there are lakes, mountains, and relatively few people. I'm in good spirits, and at the same time exhausted from the tension of all this. So, I'm going to get reasonably drunk.

Rajasthan has a highly developed and amusing puppeteering tradition, and I have some videos which seem appropriate.

A horse and his ass...

Some kind of demon...

Two-Part Chew

2006-10-29T08:51:00.000-05:00

I took the train back to Delhi last night: it's a long story. The short version; I'm trying to get some of my money back from that scheming travel agency. The more people I talk to about how this racket works, the less willing I am to be a victim. So, today I had a round of shouting match phone calls with Tariq (the breast obsessed driver of my first day in town) from Incredible India Voyages.

I feel uncomfortable talking about money, and I dislike confrontation, so I was afraid to make the initial call. But I dislike being taken advantage of even more, and in the heat of argument I found myself enjoying it. It's nice to talk rather than listen. And it's liberating to drop your manners once in a while and try to out-yell and out-curse the person on the other end of the line. I'm going to store this knowledge for the next time I need it.

This matter should be resolved by 3pm tommorow, or I'll be heading for my embassy to complain.

And on an unrelated note; Troy, this two-part chew is for you.

Khajuraho

2006-10-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post every day for at least five days now, but the time just slips through my fingers. There is so much to do and nothing to do at the same time. I have been in the small town of Khajuraho for several days enjoying the feeling of having escaped my travel agency. I cancelled and got a refund on all of my train tickets, so now all I have to do is decide where to go next. I have two ideas; west by train to Varanasi then Kolkota and then further west by boat to the Andaman Islands, or north by train and plain to Kashmere. I'll decide within the next few days.

At the moment I am enjoying the 22 surviving 10th century temples of Khajuraho, the filter coffee, and the thousands of green parrots who flock to the trees at sunset. The internet, on the other hand, is not so great. The upload speed is painfully slow, and they charge you a dollar per uploaded photo. So, no pictures for now, but there are plenty to come.

31 Seconds

2006-10-18T04:43:00.000-05:00

31 seconds in Udaipur.

The Problem of Pain

2006-10-14T09:10:00.000-05:00

I use some screwy, modern combination of my upbringing, haunted by the formidable ghost of John Calvin, and recent years of yogic study, to tolerate suffering. I take it two ways at the same time. The first way; not only do you deserve this, it's good for you. You're a sinner and whatever the problem is, it will only purify your pustulent soul. The second way; life is the game of games, so play it well. If you don't learn your lesson now, you'll just lose again and again, in the same way, until you do. Metaphysical end results aside, both yield the same practical application: keep your wits about you, because complaining doesn't help.

So when, a few hours after my vaccinations, all the energy in my body joined forces to create a throbbing in my arms, hepatitis on bass and typhoid playing the snares, I tried my best to ignore it and go to sleep, hoping for a brighter tomorrow. We had a long drive that day, about 6 hours, and didn't get out ot Delhi until around 5 pm. I sat for a few hours, and then slept for a few hours, but when the driver, Mr. Sharma, tired himself by 10 pm, pulled into a petrol station for a nap, mosquitoes immediately attacked my ankles, and I could no longer sleep. So I sat, and I waited, jerking my arms and legs spastically each time I felt a sting. When we finally reached my hotel, there was nobody to answer the gate. We rang the bell and waited, we honked and waited, and finally we went to another hotel on the other side of town and awoke the owner, who accompanied us back. It was a charming place, with a garden courtyard. But by the time I got there it was all I could do to get into bed.

The next morning I felt better, and I was physically, although not emotionally, sound, for a few days. But in Jaisalmer, on the third night of my trip, I accepted food against my better instincts, out of courtesy rather than hunger, even though I had accidentally seen the kitchen, a few burners on a dirt floor. By the middle of the next day, driving through the desert on a motor bike, I started to have stomach cramps. They were tolerable, and they came and went infrequently, leaving me feeling that I needed to empty my stomach, but actually unable to do so. I kept on enjoying myself, hoping it would pass. At 5 pm Damien and I were on our way back to Jaisalmer, and we stopped at the only restaurant between the abandoned village and the city.

I was having excruciating cramps by this point, and so as we entered the courtyard, I headed directly for the restroom, to no avail. When I came out Damien was at a table with the restaurant's owner, who sat like a lord in his wicker chair. I said hello, took a seat, leaned back, and then took another seat for my feet. Over the next 15 minutes I didn't join the conversation at all. I listened, when I could, as a distraction, but I spent most of the time wincing and waiting for a cramp to complete its path from my pelvis to my ribcage.

gas station fire precautions

When things reach their worst, they can only get better, and I, at that moment, had reached several lows. This was the most intense and continuous pain that I have ever experienced, as far as I can remember; and I was at the absolute end of my tolerance of Indian people. During my 6 days in India, I hadn't met a single Indian who was not aggressively, annoyingly, or sneakily, trying to sell me something. But the owner of this restaurant had been talking intelligently and enjoyably about Indian architecture and history for some time now, and when noticed me going white and breaking into goose-pimple sweats, he told me about isabgol. This is something that grows with anise, possibly the husk, that Indians take regularly for intestinal health. He told me to eat it with yogurt for diarrhea, milk for the opposite problem, and water for everyday maintenance. Then, the waiter offered me opium. At first I flatly refused, but the intelligent owner told me it is a common remedy for stomach problems; if you drink it, your cramps disappear for the entire day. I really considered it, and I asked the owner the price, but he told me that the opium in those parts is impure and advised against it.

When we left the restaurant, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to drive back. But, with a massive exertion of will, or maybe only an acquiescence to necessity, I held it together, or held it in. We returned our bikes, and as I walked through the gates of the fort, I knew that I had better find a toilet, now. I walked into the first restaurant I saw. I asked the waiter for the toilet, which turned out to be full. Walking somewhere else was not an option, so I positioned myself by the sink outside of the bathroom door. Of course, there were three waiters there to stare at me, and after standing for 5 seconds, feeling my skin tighten as if I had just stepped outside in winter, I turned to the sink, bent over, and vomited loudly, several times, mainly from pain. I hope you enjoyed that, watchy waiters.

take your time, lady

I went back to my room and asked someone at the hotel to bring me some isabgol, and then I laid down, rolling over each time a new cramp set in, and shivering under the mess of the woolen blanket that I didn't even have the wherewithal to spread. After three of thrashing around amongst the contents of my backpack, which I had emptied on my bed in the morning and couldn't even push out of the way by the time I returned in the evening, somebody finally showed up with my yogurt and fiber. I ate it, and the boiling in my stomach became a mild simmer. I finally slept, and I woke up at 1 am. I went to the rooftop to watch the dogs of the town on their nocturnal rounds. I went back to bed, and I was ok, although shaky, in the morning, although I didn't eat anything but yogurt and fiber for the next 2 days. When I read the box of isabgol, I realized that it is what we call psyllium, a homeopathic remedy that can run you 30$ a bottle in capsule form. Here, it cost me about a dollar.

You'd better like this picture, because I paid these kids a dollar for it!

During the last year, I realized that, due to a faith held together by spit and masticated bones, I am not afraid of death; what I am afraid of is pain. And I have soothed that fear by telling myself that physical pain is really not so bad, because once it is over I cannot recreate its feeling. You feel it, and then it's over, and life goes on. That is still true; I cannot recall the actual sensation, all I can think is, in a general way, "Man, that hurt!" Still, I may have been taking the reality of pain, and the blessing of health, a bit too lightly.

Up A Creek, Without A Paddle

2006-10-13T06:41:00.000-05:00

In Singapore, during my second load-lightening, I abandoned my travel guides, India, Goa, and Sri Lanka, for two reasons; they were weighing on my back (about 7 pounds) and on my mind.
During my trip around Mongolia, I had my Lonely Planet, and ridiculously, everyone else in the truck, including our guide, did too. So, like a load of pilgrims with our holy books always at hand, we bounced through the countryside, faithfully checking facts and figures as we went. I've had guide books on most of my journeys, and they have often overwhelmed me; here is this book detailing every "point of interest," custom, accommodation, "off the beaten path" destination, food, and merchandise available for purchase, in the land, and suddenly the wide open possibility of travel is narrowed, and the planet is no longer lonely, because someone is in your head telling you what is interesting and what you will be missing if you take too much time to reflect on what you've just seen.

sheep and herder

A sense of busyness was to be avoided at all costs. So, I figured that through a combination of internet access and other travelers I would get any information that I needed, and I left the books on a shelf next to a couch in the common area of a Singapore hostel on my way out the door at 5:45 am.

India, from the second I stepped off the plane, has been more of a shock than I ever imagined anything could be. I had heard about the staring, but there it was, in the flesh, making me want to disappear, forced by the pressure to keep my head down and eyes averted, making it even harder to find my way around. I had heard about the cows, but there they were, in reality, serenely munching on trash, drinking from puddles, and pissing and shitting in the street as people and cars jostled and honked around them. There I was, in reality, in Delhi, a city of over 15 million souls, without a map, without a friend, and without any idea how to get out of there.

as common as a cockroach

That's how I got syphoned into the elaborate system of connections and graft that is the tourism industry in India. I was told by "Mickey," the agent at the "tourist information" office, that these offices had been set up a few years ago after an Australian woman was raped and killed outside the Delhi International airport.

This, according to him, had been the last in a series of incidents that prompted the government to set up a better system for tourists. At the moment, that sounded plausible, but now after the string of lies and exaggerations included in his pitch that have been uncovered along the road, I'm not even really sure that was a government office. He pushed Rajasthan, where I am now, hard, as the place to see and buy all things traditionally Indian; it is, for him, the place you must see if you are to say you have seen India. It is an incredible place, but I'm sure his appreciation of it has to do more with the greater possibility of graft due to extended contacts in the area.

the rat temple of Bikaner

For 1,200 USD I have a car and driver for 17 days, 26 nights accommodation, and 3 train tickets. As I realize how much things really cost here, I wonder exactly where all that money is going. I got it out of my driver that he is paid 2000 Rupees a month from the company. This breaks down to 66 R a day, or $1.45, and my accommodations are usually listed between $9 and $20 per night.

There are also hidden expenses, like everyone who would like to be tipped. When I asked my driver, shocked by his salary, how he can possibly live on 66 Rupees a day, he said that he depends on tips and commissions. He explained that there are two kinds of shops he can take me to, commission (only for tourists), and government. If he takes me to commission shop he will get 100 Rupees, whether or not I buy anything. If I do purchase something he gets 5%. At government shops the prices are fixed at a fair value (he tells me) and there is no bargaining. From those he takes a 2% commission on my purchases. If he actually told me this, there must be more layers that he didn't expose. In any case, his prospects for this trip are low; I haven't been in a single shop so far, and shortly after he gave me this information he proceeded to first offer, and then beg to bestow, his sexual services. That's a story for another chapter, but the incident has completely doused my generousity.

After hours in the tourist office experiencing what I guess were mild symptoms of typhoid, I agreed to a 17 day circuit of Rajasthan, a land of fortresses, deserts, camels, and castles, 1 night in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, 2 nights in Khujoraho, home of the famous Kama Sutra temples, and then 8 nights in Varanasi, a holy spot on the river Ganges. After that, I travel by train to Mumbai, and then again by train to Goa. At Goa, I will have used my last train ticket and will be, once again, sans plan.

backside of a temple

Money has not been my main problem with the package I bought; the problem is predictability. I wanted to travel without any pressure of moving on and without any limitations on what could happen or where I might end up. This trip was intended to be a practice of reacting to things as they present themselves, rather than attempting to exert control over the future, so I spent the first few days of my trip feeling pissed off with myself (on top of everything else I was pissed off about) for caving in to Mickey's tactics. What I should have done was buy one train ticket out of Delhi and make onward plans as I went. I was so preoccupied with the subversion of my goals for the trip that I'm sure I missed a lot. But, something finally penetrated my mood.

On our second night, and second stop, in Bikaner, I checked into a tolerably comfortable room. At dinner, in the courtyard, I was told by the greasy waiter, who stood there and talked to me for the duration of my meal, that there was a Heritage Hotel very nearby. Heritage Hotels are fantastic places: fairytale forts and palaces that have been meticulously preserved, restored and retrofitted with all the modern conveniences. I've been checking them out along the way, and they're affordable. I've decided that if I have a honeymoon, me and my king will travel by the "palace on wheels" train, resplendent in polished teak and brass, and sleep like royalty every night in Heritage Hotels.

carven screens through carven screen

My waiter insisted on accompanying me to the nearby palace, but I managed to escape him. I entered the marble corridors and looked around: portraits of Maharajas and Maharanis, a pool in the atrium, a deep-cushioned bar with ancient weapons on the wall. Somehow, I was interested only in a clinical, detached sort of way. Finally, I went to the center of the enormous, darkened central courtyard and sat on a marble bench surrounded by palms. I stopped my notation of objects and their connections to my own store of information and I listened to the night birds singing, and saw the palace spires silhouetted against the stars. Then the feeling enveloped me: I have never seen, I have never understood, I have never even really imagined, anything like this before.

I have read Rudyard Kipling and plenty of other British colonial literature, and I'm sure I've seen many images of this kind of place; I must have internalized so many pictures and stories that I believed these magnificent structures were familiar, but I was suddenly, fortunately, bursting with wonder at the opulence, the delicacy that has endured for ages, the collective genius, the work of thousands of hands.

Architectural appreciation aside, it wasn't until Jaisalmer, in the Thar desert, the last stop on the Indian railway, and the closest city to the border with Pakistan, when I had reached a peak of frustration and irritation, that the current began to change.

Jaisalmer fort from the ramparts

We reached Jaisalmer on the evening of the third day out of Dehli, and I stayed my first night in Sona Hotel, a slovenly place with a distant view of the fortress which is the city's principal attraction. That night I was harassed (I'm sure he would say regaled) by the hotel owner, and both the company and the meal caused an illness that dawned mentally the next morning, and physically that evening. That morning, putting on my hat and sunglasses like a shield, I began to cry. When I left my room, I could barely even speak to my driver.

Jaisalmer fort dates back to 1156 A.D., and I am told that it is the only structure of its kind in the world that still has people living out their lives within it. As charmed as I was by the place, the only word that I could muster for the hawkers was, "no!" It's a remarkably effective word when conveyed in the right tone. I spent the morning wishing I could stay the night in one of the many hotels within the walls. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to take a camel ride into the desert that night. Around 11 am, an hour before my scheduled rendezvous with my driver, I stopped for refreshment in a hotel with a shaded, quiet, rooftop restaurant.

life within the walls

more signs of life

In that restaurant I met Damien, a poet from Dublin who has been working on an epic for 6 years; he plans to finish the work during his next 5 weeks in India. We talked for a while, and he helped me to see that I could indeed change my itinerary, and I did just that. After the requisite pain in my ass involved in changing a travel plan that I was told had "total flexibility," when I bought it, I met my driver, two hours late, and told him I'd be staying in the fort. Then, Damien and I rented motorbikes and drove to an abandoned village in the desert.

village temple

As I sailed along the hot, open road, I thought about the scooter accident I had this Spring; I remember so clearly hearing a thunk, and then flying through the air, in one of those moments that seem as long as your whole life, thinking, "Wow, neato!" That was the thought I had before I hit the ground, and is the opposite of the rattled feeling that followed the impact and stayed with me for a week. Half the reason I was rattled (the other quarter being my aching bones and the last quarter being my damaged scooter and broken phone) was that I couldn't comprehend that inital thought. I was injured; why would I find that thrilling. Isn't that a dangerous, even stupid, attitude? I like life; why would I enjoy having it threatened? Then, unsuccessfully pickpocketed in Mongolia, I had the same reaction, and the same questions arose.

empty temple

Finally free of my ever-waiting driver, and in control of the wheel again, I realized that those moments were so lucid because they were completely unexpected. That car hit me from my left while I was looking right; that bandit stepped into a path that I thought was clear. As long as I can remember, I've been running mental laps about something or another. You might not know it to look at me, but I've always had at least the next minute of my life under control. When I was a teenager I drove myself nearly mad planning routes around our house. For some reason, maybe laziness, I was concerned with space; I always wanted to take the fewest possible steps to accomplish the list of tasks I had in my mind. God forbid I should have to go upstairs twice or forget my jacket in the kitchen and have to go back for it. After my father died, in my early twenties,the obsession, unnoticed by me then, became time. I spent years being so concerned that everything was a waste of time that I couldn't concentrate on anything at all, absurdly wasting a lot of time.

strange god

Happily, I have finally broken the loop, but I still spend a lot of energy trying to exert control over whatever is around me. I take note of what's at the next corner and know which way I'll turn long before I arrive. When I enter a restaurant I choose a seat based on the possible consequences of the restaurant's layout and the situation of other patrons. When I wake up in the morning I make a mental plan of my day, and it costs me considerable energy deciding in which order to do errands. What I mean is, every day is full of expectations, assumptions, and preoccupations. This way of being takes the immediacy out of living; nothing can be just as it is.

Jain temple in the fort

Taking refuge from the sun in the village's abandoned temple, I was reminded of an art history class, during my undergraduate days, when my teacher showed some slides of Pompeii; I'd always had vague dreams about travel, stemming from discontent, but that was the first time I saw something that I knew I had to see during my lifetime. One year later I left North America for the first time, and on a trip around Europe, I went to Pompeii. I was dissapointed. There were tourists everywhere, and all the people drained the place of the mystery it had in those empty photos. Still, I dutifully looked around, and after about 2 hours, it started to rain, at first in drops, then in torrents. Everyone left, except for me. I was wet through and through as I walked the sunken streets that had become canals, but the sudden rain returned to me that empty ruin in my imagination. Still, I couldn't quite hear the place, because I couldn't stop listening to the spinning of my own mind.

Jain temple in the fort

Likewise, the palace in Bikaner couldn't impress me because I brought too much me to it. Palaces are already a part of my fiction, something I have noted and filed away. And how many other things do I fail to fathom in a day, because I am not listening while I automatically overlay them with what I think I already know. When something hits you out of the dark night, whether it's a car or a birdsong, you, being taken completely unaware, have no choice but to know, if only for a moment, that there is a world outside of your mind. When someone, at high noon, steps into a path you thought you had already plotted, your body is suddenly seperated from your mind, thrown into a world you did not create, and you know, briefly, brightly, that you are existing in it, that you are alive.

Thank god I wasn't on that camel safari, because by the time I returned the rented scooter and entered the fort, I was having intense stomach cramps and cold sweats. I suffered through the night and left Jaisalmer the following afternoon, after one last stroll around the fort. I have come to terms with, and even appreciate some aspects of, the absurd luxury of having a car and driver. And I've met several travelers along the way who, having studied the Lonely Planet extensively before their arrival in India, are on the same kind of tour at the same kind of price, so I don't feel like such a sucker. I'm sure that there is plenty of inconvenient travel in store for me, so for now, I am content being whisked around this legendary land in my magic car(pet).

Shouldn't You Be Paying Me?

2006-10-10T10:21:00.000-05:00

I arrived at Delhi International Airport late in the evening on October 4. As soon as I cleared immigration (surprisingly quickly considering the surging"line," at no spot thinner than four abreast) and collected my bag, I walked outside for my customary post-flight decompression, situation-evaluation cigarette. I like to steal a few moments, after being jammed in a container full of screaming babies and anonymous intestinal problems, by myself, before making any decisions; nobody bothers me because I am clearly occupied, smoking. A person just standing, looking around, attracts attention. People ask if they can help, or they look at you as if you were crazy, or they ask if they can sell you something; but if you are smoking, it's clear that you are doing something and not in need of assistance.

No such luck in India. I wandered around for about 5 minutes, picking my way through the cotton shrouded men laying on the ground, lounging on rails, and squatting on curbs. I eventually settled for a curb myself, but was not allowed the usual privacy and lack of curiosity afforded to the smoker. Instead, the three turbaned men next to me visibly leaned forward and craned their necks to stare, not to steal a glance, but to stare. Turning my head to avoid their eyes, I noticed that every other lounger was staring too. I scrapped the cigarette plan and lined up for a cab.

There is an official taxi system at Delhi International, meant to spare tourists and yokels from getting ripped of. You line up at a window, name your destination, pay the price, and get a ticket. Having done this, I was shown my driver, and he showed me to his cab. So far so good; and then not 30 meters from the ticket window, my driver stopped and hollered in Hindi into a crowd of men lounging on a median. Somebody emerged and got into the cab. I wasn't feeling menaced, I was exhausted, there was a neon snow globe featuring Ganesha on the dash, I didn't have any other option at the moment, and I thought maybe he was along as a translator, so I didn't protest.

Indeed, the second Indian's English was much better than the first's; it was so good that halfway to the hotel he was offering to secure some "special cigarettes" (wink, wink, slimy smile) for me. Thanks, but no thanks. They didn't know exactly where my hotel was, so we stopped at the tourist information office in the area. There, the agent called my hotel only to find that it was full. I was rerouted to another one, and the agent told me to come back the next day for information. He said there was free transport from all hotels to the tourist info office.

Finally at the hotel, my driver and his friend waited while I approved my room, and then waited while I carried my bag up, and then crowded me and peered over my shoulder as I filled out the forms, and then lingered around waiting for who knows what: maybe a tip, maybe a drug transaction?

a bill; whoever deciphers this correctly first gets a postcard

They got neither, and this was the first time I had a thought which has become thematic: "What do these people want from me?" India has a population of over one billion and a lot of this population seems to be standing around waiting to sell something or provide a service. Since everyone (male) is standing around, there aren't many people to use their services. This leaves a lot of time for staring and lurking; and I have come down with agoraphobia. In each hotel I've stayed there has been someone following me immediately, or a few seconds after, I manage to lock my room. If I'm carrying my bag, that person insists on taking it, and sometimes sulks around waiting for a tip for their unsolicited service. I walk past reception, where there are likely three men leaning on the desk, all eyes. I step into the street where there are tuk-tuks, hawkers, gawkers, cars, cows, and a merciless sun. "Madame, Madame, excuse me Madame, excuse me. Just you come look, no buy look only. Madame, excuse me. Where you from? Excuse me. Honk, honk, honk, honk. Excuse me, excuse me." And on and on it goes. I enter a restaurant; again, there are at least four unoccupied people ready to watch me eat.

The stare of the Indian man is like nothing I've ever experienced. They look directly at you, at once devouring you and behaving as if you, that is the human, rather than animal you, did not exist at all.

"Anantas Play School;" Do these children look like they're having fun?

My first morning in Dehli, the hotel clerk called someone, and someone else picked me up and whisked me to the Amazing India office. There, I hired a driver for the day. On my agenda; a hospital, and a few sights. Tariq, the driver, and I went to the hospital first. That being complicated and crowded, he took me to his doctor. His doctor being unavailable, we made an appointment for 10 am the next day and went to see Qutub Minar, a complex centered around the world's tallest brick minaret. Finished in 1368, it took 175 years to complete, and from the complexity of the carvings, I can imagine why.

detail from the complex

the minaret

For 13$ a day, in a city unbelievably crowded, chaotic, and complex, when you have to negotiate a hospital, it's nice to have a driver, but when I pay someone to do something, I expect them to respect the service-provider/ service receiver-relationship. What I mean is, I'm in a car with you because I need to go somewhere, not because we're friends. We may become friends, but don't assume the liberties of that relationship. I know, it sounds colonial, but I've recently lost the warm, fuzzy, let's share our culture sensibilities I once had.

Delhi suburb

My forecast about the driver, a man with an India father and an Iranian mother, named Tariq was, tolerable with a chance of interesting. When we met, I saw his eyes go instinctively to my breasts, but he ripped them away with an obvious effort of will. As the day went on, we talked about his life, lived in Germany for a few years, Iran for a while, and finally India, where he came to care for his grandfather who died 3 years ago at 125. I, in turn, told him something about my family, my life, and my way of thinking about it all.

Delhi suburb

Our initial conversation was interesting, but when we got to Qutub Minar, he did not leave my side. Next, we went to a garden, where he also followed me, now more closely than before. Apparently I'd hired a walker, talker, and driver. I began to think, "What does this person want from me?" To make things worse, his staring restraint had worn off, and I constantly felt his avaricious eyes on me. I was dressed very modestly, and I began to wonder if this was making the situation worse; maybe if he could get a better idea of what was there, his curiousity would be sated. But I doubt it.

We went for dinner around 8 pm, and while I was eating some deliciously tender lamb, he stared at me. To make it worse, his fingers and mouth were now smeared with meat juices, and I began to be physically repulsed by this little demon, eating lamb flesh with his mouth, and mine with his eyes. I tried several tactics. I tried looking away, which only meant he let his gaze have even more free rein. I tried staring at him; this, only caused deep eye gazing, which by that point made me naseous.

By the time he dropped me off at my hotel I was boiling mad, and the next morning, I was even angrier, but Tariq was my ride to the doctor, and I was planning to leave Dehli later that day. I was so ready to get out of Dehli. So I got in his car, again, and soon after we began, he asked me if I was upset about something. I said no and continued to look out the window, and he continued to press it. This is where I felt the greatest violation of the economic relationship; "I am paying you to drive. I do not want to talk to you, so drop it and drive." But I didn't actually say this, I just side stepped the issue. We went to the doctor, and I got a typhoid and an hepatitus A vaccination for about 50$.

Next, we went to the tourist office, where I spent hours arranging my onward journey. Much of that time was spent waiting and napping, as I was feeling tired and befuddled from the shots. When I finally signed my documents and paid my bill, Tariq and the agent hovered over me. I finally snapped and shouted, "Why are you both staring at me? You're making me very uncomfortable!" That seemed to work, but then I left moments after, so who knows if it would have held.

Another driver picked me up and I am currently with him on a 20 day circuit of Rajasthan, the land of kings. When they took me to meet my driver, I was ready to demand another one on the basis of the tone of the first glance he gave me, but this driver is, blessedly, a non-starer. Nonetheless, things got worse, or better, depending on your cosmology.

May I Enjoy Myself, Please!

2006-10-04T01:04:00.001-05:00

Singapore is a remarkably clean, well organized city, and the people are generally polite, even friendly. The instinctive reaction, upon making eye contact here, is to smile, and people say, "sorry," for almost bumping into you, or blocking your way. This is refreshing after Korea, where public manners fall on the opposite end of the scale.

the new backpack, poor kids

school's out

The public transportation system is efficient, clean, and easy to use, and the lush tropical foliage runs riot amidst a well-balanced combination or modern and colonial architecture. Malls and shops offer an endless array of international brands at fair prices, and a diverse population, both racially and religiously, co-exist peacefully. A part of me admires the order and harmony of Singapore, and another part finds it a little bit sterile.

wrought iron fountain and war memorial

building and jungle in battle

lit up for Ramadan

When I arrived, I bought a pack of cigarettes. After paying 90 cents a pack in Mongolia, and 2$ in Korea, the 8$ price tag was a shock. What was worse, I spent hard-earned money to look at a picture of a bloody baby.

I don't know if that baby is dead outside of the womb, photographed inside the womb, or maybe just a sci-fi movie leftover. I wish it wasn't presented for me to consider, but if it's really a miscarried baby, what almost mother was guilted into volunteering for the photo? And if it's a sci-fi extra, isn't that a bit deceitful?

Anyways, I started down the street with that pack, and I couldn't even stand to take it out of my bag to get one. I would shut my eyes tight, reach in, and fish around, hoping to be spared a glance at the thing. I'm living proof that people can get used to anything, because by the end of the pack, the guilt inducing photo was right out there on the table as I had my coffee and wrote in my notebook, as if it were the most usual thing.

I stumbled upon the Singapore biennial that day, held at the old City Hall. It was all new media work, some of it more, and some of it less interesting.

glad I missed that

hmmm

In Malaysia, thankfully, lecture free cigarettes are the norm. I meant to stock up while I was there, but I forgot. So, this morning I rolled the dice, and out of an array including foot pustulence and neck cancer, I got the mouth-rot pack, a whole new horror to get used to. Can I at least enjoy killing myself, please!

and who volunteered for this photo?

After I got off the bus from Malaysia, found my room, and dumped my bag, I proceeded to treat myself as if I were and eight year old on her birthday, with coffee and cigarettes standing in for cake and ice cream. First, I went to Pizza Hut and had a Veggie Lover's plus pepperoni. By the way, when did pineapple become a vegetable? Then, I went next door to Starbuck's and had a giant coffee. And then, as an ultimate birthday extravaganza, I took a ride on the world's largest tethered balloon.

The DHL balloon's top altitude is 150 meters, or about 40 stories. The ascent took 2 minutes, we stayed and swayed in the wind above the city for 4, and the descent took 4 minutes. It was dusk, so I didn't get any pictures of the city, but they wouldn't capture the sensation anyways. Once again, dear readers, you will have to try this for yourself.

I leave this internet cafe to pick up my bag, then board the subway to the airport, then board a plane to Delhi, India, in about 30 minutes. Amazingly, I have offloaded and repacked my bag twice, once in Seoul, and once here, and it is still full. I can't understand it; I have only the most minimal necessities:

2 pairs pants
1 skirt
9 underwear items
3 t-shirts
1 turtleneck
1 pashmina
4 pairs socks
1 pair hiking boots
1 pair sandals
1 diving mask
1 snorkel
1 swimming suit
1 travel Scrabble board
1 Collected R.W. Emerson
1 Light on Yoga
2 thin notebooks
1 small bags assorted electronics doodads
1 sleeping bag
3 pencils
2 pens
1 hand towel
1 bag assorted toiletries (no makeup)
1 first aid kit
1 wind breaker
1 warm (but light and small) jacket
2 New Yorker magazines
2 pairs glasses (1 sun, 1 regular)

And that's all. Why in hell is my bag still full? Maybe my idea of necessity will change.

I arrive in Dehli at 11 pm, where I already have a reservation. Tommorow I have to find a hospital and get some vaccinations, one part of being an unplanner that's not so great.

Wish me luck.

Putra

2006-10-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

For all your putrification needs!

Thanks, Malaysia

2006-10-03T09:51:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Singapore around 2 am and took a taxi directly to the Summer Tavern hostel, where I collapsed, after making the necessary friendly with the manager. By the way, that is the most disorganized accommodation I've ever had, and although the people are friendly, I loudly don't recommend this place, unless you want to chase people down in order to pay your bill.

I shopped like mad the next day, and I made my boat and bus reservations to Tioman Island, of the southeastern coast of Malaysia. My bus departed at 6 am the next morning, so the exhaustion from Seoul continued.

"coffee," to go

It didn't begin to lift until I heaved my bag onto my bed in a bungalow by the beach at Ayer Batang. My bag has grown a foot since my shopping spree, and I'll be making a visit to the post office tomorrow before my flight.

little trees

Malaysia has a large Muslim population, and the monsoon season is beginning, so the island was quiet. It's Ramadan at the moment, so most restaurants were closed. Luckily, all I wanted was my own room, some peace and quiet, some water, and some sun; I got them all.

The first day I made a "snorkel-trek." By this I mean that I had to do some serious boulder hopping before getting to the place I wanted to snorkel. It probably would have been easier to swim all the way, but when I finally got in the water, it was well worth the slimy, barnacled rock climbing. The whole island is a marine park, and in certain spots the coral and fish are profuse; most common were clown fish, parrot fish, brain coral, and branch corals.

The next day, I made a two hour hike to the other side of the island through the tropical hills. I have my own mask and snorkel, but I rented some fins there. It was a windy, so the waves were high, which made snorkeling a bit stressful. When I got out of the water it was beginning to rain, so I caught a ride back to the other side of the island.

dreaming of ships, 20 feet from the shore

You can measure the health of a people by the health of their domestic animals. I saw a lot of happy, friendly, relaxed cats.

I saw a lot of roosters.

And, a scary looking snake-lizard thing.

I also saw plants, and buildings, and plants taking over buildings.

The trip was blessedly uneventful. I had a bungalow all to myself right on the beach, so I spread my stuff out all over the place, smoked in bed, and slept and woke to the sound of the waves.

view from my room

Two years ago, I had a layover in Kuala Lumpur airport, on my way to Australia. I changed 50$ so I could get something to eat. I had a lot of Ringit (Malaysian currency) left over, so I kept it, and I brought it with me on this trip. Aside from that money, I only changed 20$ (more justification for the Singapore spree).

I put on my damn bag again this morning and made the trip back to Singapore. I found my accommodation around 6 pm, another dorm room (groan, as penance for shopping), put down my damn bag, and left immediately.