Golap Golightly

News of the Indian world

2009-02-10T20:03:00.002-05:00

In scanning Indian newspapers for health-related items, I often come across strange news. As an amendment to my last post, I must say the Baltimore Sun has never reported on girls forced to marry frogs.

2-yr-old falls into pit: A two- year old girl reportedly fell in an open deep pit in Samaipur Badli in outer Delhi on Sunday afternoon. According to the police, Payal was playing with her friends near the pit when she went missing..."A two-year-old girl is suspected to be inside a pit which is around 4 ft. deep. The rescue operation is still on. But chances of her survival are unlikely," said police. [Times of India, February 3

Man Assaults Wife Over Jeans: A man kicked and stamped his wife because she was dressed "as a man"... The police promptly dispatched the women, who suffered the battery in full public glare [in Dabwali market], to her in-laws, terming it as a "family matter." No case was filed.. [Hindustan Times]

Seven-year-old Indian girls 'marry frogs'
Two seven-year-old girls from a remote village in India have married frogs in a bizarre wedding ritual. The young ‘brides’, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, hail from the village of Pallipudupet in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district. The wedding ceremony, a highlight of the annual Pongal (harvest) festival, was conducted to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village. The girls wore traditional gilded saris and gold jewellery and married their amphibian grooms in front of hundreds of villagers. The frogs were tied to long sticks decorated with garlands for the lavish marriage ceremonies. The subsequent celebrations had all the usual elements of a traditional marriage including a sumptuous feast. [Times of India, January 29]

First World Wake Up

2009-02-10T19:15:00.002-05:00

I've been back in Baltimore for four days yet my body insists I am still in India. It's a hybrid existence that leaves me nodding out in 4pm meetings and waking up amidst 4am darkness. Although the east coast is unseasonably warm, a brief encounter with 15 degree winter the night of my bedraggled return has me still sneezing and sniffly.

To add to my body's confusion, the usual experience of returning into the smooth, safe First World wasn't there this time. The first time I returned from India I worried that I had gone deaf, it was so quiet over here. No wild multi-tunal honking, no shops blaring Bollywood, no puja prayer broadcasts from crackling loudspeakers. Either I'm used to India or the US gets more like what our parents called the Third World each day.

JFK airport, where I landed from shiny Doha-via-Delhi was crowded, littered and bird poo-ed--a small flock of birds were squawking above the Delta ticket counters. Baggage took eons to arrive--I nearly gave up to go nap. On benches, people squashed in from all sides. I fell asleep on my armrest, and awoke with my head on somebody's lap--do Americans not have space issues anymore?

At BWI, a tout spotted me with luggage and offered an overpriced ride home. The taxi descended from the I-95 flyover--oops, overpass--to meet crippled men clunking across abandoned streets to tap at the window. At Charles Street, desperate hands arrived with rags to wash our windshield. Our frozen lumps covered in tattered blankets could have used the fires people light on Delhi roadsides to keep warm on winter nights. The radio issued dire warnings about the collapsing banks and huddled masses of unemployed, 600,000 turned out in January alone (our government promises to put them to work building roads--like Rajasthan's famine relief projects). The taxi passed McDonald's, not Bangalore and Jaipur's shining-new restaurants proffering spicy, upmarket veggie burgers, but sagging with sallow, dirty arches: eateries hawking cheap food that would sicken one more insidiously than the pani puri snack stalls in the Indian markets.

The newspapers said, America's health system abandons the poor to impossible decisions between sickness or bankruptsy. Luckily, I had pills from India to mend my ailing stomach and help me sleep. I woke up in the moonlight, confused. A helicopter shuttled across the sky looking for a murderer.

Life in the Express Lane

2009-02-04T06:44:00.000-05:00

Work took me yesterday to Chandigarh, a planned city of about a million forming the capital two states, Punjab and Haryana. The 56 year-old urban dream of idealist prime minister Nehru, Chandigarh is now one of the wealthiest places in India--highest per capita income, one of the best standards of living, etc. The city that Le Courbusier laid out is determined to live up to its progressive founders. Well-ordered streets meet roundabouts, traffic lights are obeyed and seatbelts worn religiously. Chandigarh was the first Indian city to ban smoking in public places, and it has one of the best health systems of the country--especially of the northern states which tends to lag behind the wealthier and better run southern states. Modernist architecture crops up in the oddest places, almost as frequently as a Gaudi structure in Barcelona -- a boxy red-lit cube of a lighthouse on Sukhna Lake , a statuesque wind turbine, and cement egg-shaped rubbish bin. With the tiny cars jammed chaotically together in lots, it could be Italy (however like everywhere in India, signaling while driving requires heavy use of horn). Even students drive cars--only a few rural chaps, riding in from the Punjabi countryside to sell corn on blankets in the European-style plazas, travel by bicycle.

Struggling with lingering stomach malaise, I couldn't fully appreciate the Chinese-Thai fushion food at Noodle Bar, in Sector 26--the city is neatly divided into 4-block districts--but the Biggie and Mos Def playing perked me up (10 years later, "Miss Fat Booty" has still got its kick). With the flat screen TVs embedded into the blond wood wall and casual-chic crowd of young modern Desis this could have been London.

One of highlights of my 18 hours in Chandigarh was the journey. How much Amtrak has to learn from the Indian railways! Let's put aside Amtrak's obsene pricing structure or limited routes (the poorest villager can get a seat on an Indian train to cart potatoes across the state--any city, any state). Rich people, too, travel better by train in India. Accustomed to riding trains here in 2nd class (a car with rows of 3 sleeping bunks, stacked to the ceiling with teaming families), my eyes were opened wide by the famous Shatabi Express, where I rode in an "executive" class that is available on few other routes. Guests on this Acela-caliber class do not have to uproot themselves to purchase overpriced pre-packaged food at a cafe car. On the Shatabi, uniformed servers offer several courses on trays with real silverware--included in the $17 rail ticket. There was tea, cornflakes, hot rolls, and then the main course, veg cutlets or omlette. Tea time arrived again. The Times of India, Hindustan Times, or Hindi language papers were offered. Fresh pinnapple or orange juice was served in glasses before passengers disembarked at their destination, a comfortable 3 or 4 hours later.

As the train leaves before 7, the green Haryana fields were veiled in thick mist. Blue and maroon turbans--Punjabis is home to many Sikhs--peeked above the plush recliner seats as passengers snooze. Closer to Delhi, mobile phones began sounding and expensive suits were smoothed out. Meetings were scheduled in a masala mix of Punjabi, English and Hindi. Briefcases were located, drivers met.

Civilization ended as everyone joined the conjested Delhi streets once again. Children and crippled old people paste faces to the car windows of the wealthy, staring and staring and staring. Perhaps the disembarked Sikhs, like me, were missing Chandigarh's wide, orderly streets with the feeling of possibility and progress.

Postcards from the Edge

2009-02-01T12:19:00.000-05:00

Today I left Jodhpur on a jet plane, bearing an extra suitcase. Since I don't know when I'll be back to this "handicrafts" capital I loaded up on shimmery shawls and ganesha statues, prayer beads and shiny silver thali plates. This morning we made an emergency rickshaw run to a guy in the market prooffering the best of Taiwanese luggage, selecting a "Classic" blue and grey nylon suitcase for 700Rs. to cart this stuff to the airport.

Below, one of 5 floors at Maharani Arts Emporium, a wholesale depot stocking paisley pashminas, embroidered wall hangings, silk bedding and other textiles stacked from floor to ceiling and spilling out from mysterious back rooms. The ultra-charming salesman, a metrosexual who wrapped himself in each scarf before offering it, purred out the story of each piece: "This one is divine--so soft"; "kashmiri wool, very warm"; "Her-mees is buying this from us"; "Moskino likes this design" and the typical celebrity-shopper photo op, circa 1994, "Billy Corgen was just here, see photo?" One generally buys based on the look not the stories, which cannot be verified but are generally known to be false.

Goodbye, neighborhood cows. This informal herd hung out by Sun City Guest House waiting for their morning chapattis to be set out by Mr. Pushpendre.

Movie Making in Jodhpur

2009-01-31T03:10:00.000-05:00

After the rush of big cities--Jaipur, Bangalore and Delhi-Jodhpur, a city of 1.2 million (give or take few thousand migrant families camped in front of the palace) seems positively provincial. Camel carts still stop traffic and roads in the poshest neighborhoods are cratered and chaotic with goats, donkeys and rickshaws. The majestic 16th century Mehrangarh fort sits unmolested at the serene summit of the city.

Time moves even in the parched heart of Marwar, the historic center of an ancient kingdom known as "land of death" in the local language. The middle class in Jodhpur gets their Pizza Hut fix and soon McDonald's will open (there are 3 in Jaipur). The kids in my local host family watch Indian version of So You Think You Can Dance, Indian Idol and music videos where movie legend Shah Rukh Khan shimmies with women in sequined bikini tops who are skinny even by international standards (plump heroines are longer in vogue). The family's 15 year old--like so many image-conscious American girls--is painfully underweight, refusing anything but toast and Pepsi, while their youngest has become a poster boy for childhood obesity.

The food is terrifically familiar. Chapattis, leaden and tasteless down south, are featherweight, slightly charred and plentiful, the better to mop up chili-speckled paneer (cheese) vegetable curry and spicy dahl (lentil soup) without the heavy cream base one gets in the states.

After months of searching in years past-Rajasthan is to yoga as Mississippi is to pilates--I've discovered a pair of yogis proffering sun salutations and advice about color therapy and other homeopathic remedies. Ravi Kant and his stunning wife Ruby work with a local ex-patriot couple who've built a palace of their own in the city's outskirts where they hold court with visiting furniture buyers and the filmmakers and photographers who love Jodhpur. The Darjeeling Express, I've learned, was filmed here at the desert heart of Rajasthan, instead of in the eastern Himalayas, as the title would imply. Liz Hurley's wedding was choreographed here for HELLO! at various palaces including pink topped Umaid Bhavan, where the local maharajah puts up. Most recently, Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra has touched down to shoot a commercial for a local bank, exciting a flurry of front page news coverage.

Climbing up to the fort in the morning, before the sun gets too heavy, I feel like I'm in a movie. This is the view from the red turrets in the photo above, the lowest point on this multi-tiered monument

Old is New Again

2009-01-27T12:05:00.001-05:00

Bangalore's M.G. Road -- a namesake to make doti-clad Mr. Gandhi roll over in his grave--is the Oxford Circus of India. Lined with Tommy Hillfiger, Levis, Puma, and Ruby Tuesdays, the buzzy strip's watering hole du jour is the Hard Rock Cafe, predictably if mystifying bedecked with "SAVE THE PLANET" banners on its faux-castle-like exterior. Inside, waif-like girls in tank tops sipped cocktails, their bony elbows brushing boys in sunglasses. Phones trilled and evening plans were made.

My plans? To crash early and fly to Jaipur the next day on Kingfisher air, also The Hard Rock Cafe beer of choice. Kingfisher is India's answer to Virgin, the airline glamorized by daredevil businessman Richard Branson. Kingfisher CEO Vijay Mallya sports Branson-style rocker-rumpled hair and sunglasses and tells passengers in an on-air announcement how he carefully selects his flight crew. Indeed, they are immaculately turned out. Kingfisher stewardesses wear cheery cherry-red figure-hugging skirt suits and carry boxy 1960s-style totes in matching crimson--an enviable accessory that is unfortunately not for sale to dowdy passengers.

Even up in Jaipur, Rajasthan's dusky "pink city" of palaces, I noticed several new loudly-colored malls. The biggest emporium, fronting a busy traffic circle, featured a kind of amusement park with children bouncing up and down on a giant harness, like New York's trapeze school on the West Side Highway.

However, much of Jaipur still seems to operate around familiar North Indian landmarks: markets with oranges, cucumbers and limes piled high; women sitting sideways on the back of scooters their husbands pilot to pani poori snack stalls; tank-like Ambassadors hurling across roundabouts.

Fish were piled on wooden carts. For obvious reasons, one avoids fish in Rajasthan.

In Search of India

2009-01-23T13:24:00.000-05:00

Losing patience with security checks, I entered a [hotel] on foot this evening, fumbling through a cloud of mosquito spraying. Guests sat to the right of the entrance inhaling chemicals with their expensive chicken tikka. Hotel had 5 power cuts during dinner, which guests ignored, persisting to follow their points as the room fell into oblivion-darkness. At one point we standing, were conversing near the buffet line, when the light went away. I panicked that I might not be able to finish my paratha, until the generator roared back to life.

For all its giant Levis stores and Land Rovers, Bangalore finds itself back in the subcontinent at the end of the day. The city's yuppie elite might celebrate birthdays at lavish terrace restaurants but they still wrangle auto-rickshaws for 30 Rs ($.50) at the corner.

Tomorrow, I'll visit some local NGOs to see the truly Incredible India behind this glossy international business centre.

Obama-ji Storms Indian Media

2009-01-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

I watched the news of America's $170 million dollar inauguration preparations stream in from Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi, en route to Bangalore. My taxi driver had quoted me the figure in rupees when I told him it was a very important day for my country. "This very expensive day!" he pointed out, adding that he liked Obama and thinks he will work hard to make the world a better place. In clear agreement were the Kenyans dancing on IBN7 Hindi language news, which the producers cut to in between shots of Obama grinning in front of the YES WE CAN mantra.
Though losing ground to the news coverage of Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar nods (best picture, director and score), American inauguration coverage here has been nonstop.

Shri Obama, as he is likely called in a temple nearby, has a lot of expectations to answer to. CAN OBAMA CHANGE THE WORLD? screamed the Time Now network, and apparently, 63% here think he can (he looks a bit skeptical in the freeze frame). Times of India's front page announced his MISSION AMERICA. To watch the Big Speech on January 20, I begged the bar keeper to tune the flat screen at Amnesia club to CNN. The only patron I cheered the television and showed off my Obama t-shirt to the Nepali waiters, who were not impressed. Finally, one bored French IT consultant wandered in to keep me company at the bar for a glass of Maharastran wine. As the CNN anchors roared with excitment, he looked puzzled at the fuss, finally reflecting that it is a big step for America [to elect a black man president].

Aside from gawking at the glamorous new first American couple, what do Indians want from Mr. Obama's new post? The papers say Indians want a stronger economy, action on climate change, a better relationship with India. Mainly they want an end to terrorism. The frenzy of excitement over Slumdog Millionaire, filmed in Mumbai, must be rooted in India's post "26/11" pride--like New York became a proxy for the unflappably optimistic American spirit after 9/11, Mumbai is now a touchstone for India's strong nationalism.

As a visitor, the security here in airports, hotels and upscale restaurants is unnerving. To enter the Windsor, a Sheraton hotel, our car was stopped on the main road, before we turned into the winding driveway. The vehicle's underside was inspected with mirrors. We drove to the front of the Regency-era white colloladed structure and inspector #2 peeked under the car. Entering the hotel, our bags were thoroughly searched. At some hotels our bags have been scanned as in the airport. Finally admitted, we were forbidden to access wireless internet as an additional security measure. It all kind of put a damper on the gracious welcome the man in Raj-era suit gives as he opens the door, on the other end of the metal detector.

Life on the planet of South Delhi

2009-01-18T12:06:00.000-05:00

At left is Shish-Gumbad, or Dome of Glass, a stone-faced 15th century backdrop to the pastoral Sunday picnics in Lodhi Gardens, a 90-acre oasis named for the Lodhi dynasty whose rulers are buried in the stone tombs. Families batted cricket balls, played charades, ate and laughed. Small groups dotted the neat green lawns, while in the nearby woods, couples canoodled under the shade of tall trees.

Am I in India? Certainly not the same India where I taught English to child brides who borrowed shoes to wear to school. Then again, there were no villagers partaking in the multicourse lunch at the Garden Restaurant at Lodhi, with a bonaza buffet that--banish thoughts of chana masala and papadum--featured raw-tuna salad, grilled prawns and a juice bar stocked with beets, carrots, orange and coconuts. The adult bar advertised bloody mary shots and mulled wine (it is winter here, albeit 70 degrees). While a DJ played Moby and Frank Sinatra, a fat-cheeked caucasion toddler stumbled past the table of an academic type in black rimmed glasses drank red wine with his bejewelled companion.

The security guard below Looks Salon in Khan Market, where I took an autorickshaw to from Lodi, looked skeptical at anyone sans designer handbag, aside from raggedy foreigners like me. I left a lot less raggedy, thanks to an hour-long scalp massage, threading, a mani-pedi and a blow dry. The total? Dollars-speaking, pretty cheap for Maryland's Towson Town Center. In rupees? More than a week's salary for an office worker in Delhi--or, months and months and months of carrying stones on one's head to a road in Rajasthan.

Feeling more respectable, I strolled on to inspect the shops of Khan Market. By day, it's the ex-patriot's shopping center of choice, so you have a Citibank, handmade stationary shop, and an excellent book store. On the market's other side, there is Etam lingerie, the Body Shop, and the meticulously-tailored dresses, shimmery salwar kameze and sophisticated jewelry of Ritika Bhasin by Rahul Popli. Nearby, an 8500 Rs. ($175) leather handbag caught my attention at Rana Gill, but I think I'll stick to H&M. South Delhi is too posh for me.

Dhaka, you rocked me all week long

2009-01-17T08:49:00.000-05:00

The Amarya Haveli guest house, where I am staying in New Delhi, has 6 rooms. None of them are scented with urinal cakes, which I've decided is what was behind the cloying odor of my guest house room in Dhaka. I identified the small white objects as moth balls when I saw them in the closet of my room, but upon seeing them (quite logically in a urinal) today in Delhi I made the slow connection. My mentally retarded logic is a likely result of consuming, say, 1/4 of a cracker on Thursday, but this delay in processing time meant I left my clothes in that god-forsaken closet the entire week. Upon leaving for Delhi yesterday, I sluggishly managed to wrap them, as they came out of the closet in nearly toxic condition, in three plastic bags to avoid contaiminating my suitcase contents, including gifts (now, that wouldn't be a very nice present).

Earlier this week, the urinal cakes made an appearence in the sink of a bathroom where I stood retching outside a hotshot government press conference. The saltine I had forced down earlier didn't sit well during a hair-raising one-hour drive over unevenly paved roads spent playing chicken with cement trucks.

The scenery, on the otherhand, was lovely. Lush palm trees lined the road and we passed canals, ponds and green flooded fields--Bangladesh is below sea level and about a third of the country is flooded every monsoon.

Men with long white beards rode bicycles and small boys peered out of madrassas at the traffic going by. Women in purple purdah hijabs pulled goats on leashes. Compared to Rajasthani road traffic (you won't get far with the camels, donkeys and goat herds), it was all pretty ordinary.

Dhaka Belly

2009-01-13T11:43:00.001-05:00

Delhi Belly is a notoriously persistant part of many traveller's visit to India. It's kind of a hazing to weed out the pansies who retreat to the international hotel cafes when the going gets tough. Today, I was initiated in the phenomena of Dhaka Belly as my breakfast, lunch and dinner went out of me first thing this morning. Wobbly and cranky, I made my way to a sprawling health complex with some 20 buildings all identical in cement and blue signs in Bengali. After 45 minutes--a confused round of visits up many flights of stairs to a medical training centre, nutrition building and population centre--I finally stumbled upon the right building, an hour late. After some more meetings I retreated to the leafy Dutch Club. Ex-patriots honed their backhand on clay courts a few feet from where I snored in the moth ball/insecticide scented room (a 2 foot tall can of bug repellent adorns the bedroom sidetable).

With difficulty I roused myself to meet some NGO workers for dinner. The ex-pats--American, British, and Pakistani--drove to comparatively glamourous Banani, which, as one Fulbrighter said, is the Meat Packing district of Dhaka. We ate (or they did, I picked at 1 piece of butter naan before stopping, just. in. time). A bottle of Smirnoff they'd brought sat beside the kebabs and chaat--only foriegners are allowed to drink, so restaurants don't sell booze but permit byob.

According to Wiki Travel: "There really is nothing to do in the city. In all due seriousness, all outdoor recreation for the locals exist in the form of various fast-food joints and shopping for clothing. The locals pass time by eating out, shopping for new clothes and mostly chit-chatting with one another"

Between a discussion of sex workers and microcredit schemes, the ex-pats chit-chatted about the week's fetes at the American Club and Raddison. "We go out every night."

Dhaka Duty

2009-01-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

The capital of Bangladesh is not a vacation spot. I am in Dhaka on business and the city is too. Apart from the odd roundabout sculpture, its cement apartment buildings, plastic-fronted shops and treeless roads are no nonsense, madam. The predictable South Asian snarl of telephone wires, wildly honking cars, and roadside snack shops remind me of India, as do the pleading children at the car window, but this place seems to be missing it’s mother country’s eccentric charm. Perhaps the crumbling old buildings are south of here in Old Dhaka. I’m staying in comparatively posh Gulshan, where international agencies, embassies, media and newly-armored American hotels are. Luckily, there’s some eccentricity on order at the Dutch Club, a guest house in the shadow of the Italian embassy. Directly outside my sliding doors is a hazy expanse of tennis courts (eccentric? yeah, think of a grassy croquet course on New York’s Lower East Side), safari-style tents and a climbing wall. Beyond the climbing wall is a giant trampoline covered in skinny stray cats. One was screaming during one hour this afternoon—probably in heat. Like the manic dog fights I remember in India, these wailing cats remind me that our pampered pets live better than many people here.

Baltimore to Dhaka

2009-01-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

In 2006, the last time I posted on this blog, I had recently returned from Jodhpur, India to roost on 25th street in New York City. These days, home is a carriage house apartment in historic Mt Vernon, Baltimore. Albeit infrequently, I chronicle neighborhood goings on here. In place of Italian leather and destination spas, my beat in the Big Apple, I'm writing about an icky bacteria that causes childhood pneumonia and meningitis. Shortly, I will travel to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and on to India to attempt to further this cause. I'm hoping to get time to write here about the things we'll see on the street on the way to meetings. As Mr. Pushpender Singh Rathore always said, on the road in India anything is possible.

2006-10-25T00:03:00.000-04:00

separating out cotton seeds, which buffalo eat

2006-10-25T00:02:00.000-04:00

2006-10-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

2006-10-24T23:52:00.000-04:00

That's a sharp sickle, slung around this lady's neck. They're giggling at my shocked expression.

2006-10-21T02:42:00.000-04:00

2006-10-21T02:37:00.000-04:00

They Reminisce Over You

2006-10-21T02:16:00.000-04:00

Shree India, they do reminisce, they do. By "they" I mean I reminisce, to whomever will listen for five minutes or really just make eye contact over the water cooler at work. The food is a common subject of rhapsody, the-- Oh god the chapatti and the red chile cabbage!!, I stammer, and they nod, yes, chapatti...?

Yes, New York is cool as cool can be, I mean stylish as all hell--you do forget about the skinny jeans posses--and even the dinky places (pink and orange plastic coated Dunkin' Donuts, sprouting up on either end of my block) make a decent latte. It's nice to be able to sleep without sweating all over malarial mosquitos. It's nice to walk, fast, without sucking in dust or getting run over by motorbikes (cross fingers) or rickshaws, or cows. But I find myself hunching over in the cold, walking-cum-sprinting through crowded sidewalks, honing tunnel vision against the homeless pissing on the side, becoming the coffee slurping, impatient New Yorker again.

Whatever, more photos...

Chori to the Max

2006-10-21T01:57:00.000-04:00

Bibijee is Jodhpur's famous chori wallah, selling these glass, plastic and lacquer bangles that are de rigeur on Rajasthani ladies' wrists to the Maharaja and other regal Rajputs. But he give you good price...

Rickity Rickshaws

2006-10-21T01:55:00.000-04:00

Jodhpur rickshaws ... Can't get enough yellow tuck tuck three wheel motion.

With a Little Help from My Friends

2006-10-14T12:44:00.000-04:00

I get to Cafe Coffee Day on motorbike, and I get by.

What Am I Doing Here?

2006-10-14T12:19:00.000-04:00

The answer is in these kids' faces. There are so many, so so many.

2006-10-14T12:09:00.000-04:00

2006-10-14T11:50:00.000-04:00

My feeding by Manu, a Veerni nurse, on Friday--followed by feedings by Santosh, Vimlesh and Jaspal. I need to go for an ashram-slimming but instead I'm holed up at the ITC Hotel & Towers outside Mumbai international airport. My flight to New York via Heathrow, London, takes off at 2:15am so I'm spending my time wandering around the super-santicized environs here--this hideously tacky hotel is under the Sheraton management. It's doing my head in. Purely to kill time--one workout is not going to make a dent in my chipatti flab--I did a stint on the fitness center's Eliptical trainer, reading Indian "Cosmopolitan" (a series of Bollywood fashion spreads but mostly imported copy from Cosmo UK, including features on the dangers of drinking games and friends-with-benefits hookups). The plastic machines and flat screen TVs made me wanted to cry so I ducked into a yoga class which made me cough a lot. Jodhpur crud coming out? To prevent my lungs from adjusting to filtered air--too soon, too soon!--I ran outside gasping for some life. Luckily, it was on offer outside the Sheraton's 15-foot white and gold gates. Just on the other side was a sewage canal running into a slum fronted by merry little shops proffering fried bread, barbering, moterbike tuneups, live chickens, dead chickens, and phone calls. Inside the latter shop, shouting onto the phone to block out the firecrackers, horns and street banter. I was saying, I don't want to leave.

Having a Bumpin' Time [Insert pun here]

2006-10-11T13:24:00.000-04:00

--So freaking bumpy! My arms, legs, toes, neck even face--under one eye!--is swollen with mosquito spit deposits. There are also some small rashy bumps on right thumb and forearm. No dengue yet on the staff, cross fingers, though two are down with malaria. Mahendra is one -- the English-fluent, computer-savvy 25 year old who saves my life daily...

On the "bump" subject -- I am reaching with this blog title-- I am done with village roads, thank god, for at least a year. For my last field visit, I rattled out to Barwala and Aktali to see some old students of mine. Both girls want to keep studying but their grandfather won't let them attend the hostel Veerni runs in Jodhpur, so they keep, er, busy selling Parle-C biscuits at their dad's corner shop (it's not that they don't have the money--his grossly distended belly is downright bizarre in rural Rajasthan, where most people are thin-to-emaciated). Having taken sweet gingery chai and biscuits with Goury and Kalpna (who tried to take me hostage) I almost vomited in the car ride home on the one-lane gravelly road with the typically hair-raising games of chicken with gigantic Tata trucks.

Going to sleep -- last night the dog fights outside and sticky heat/mosquitos kept me up... Due to power cuts the fan(s) were off.

News of the World

2006-10-10T12:49:00.000-04:00

I got my international news from a single line of Hindi scrawled on a village chalkboard: as somebody translated, North Korea of Testing Atomic Doing. A Veerni-schooled girl in Kakelaw, now teaching a fourth grade class of her own, presented this news flash to her kids, and it was the first I'd heard. I'm in a dusty news vacuum here in Jodhpur. The news we do hear? Next to a photo of Bradgelina riding in a Puna rickshaw, the Times of India announced that dengue cases reached 1000 in Delhi (3000 nation wide yesterday, could be 6000 now). It's killed five so far in Jodhpur so Sun City's Neeta is advising me to stay out of the old walled city because there's lots of standing water (not to mention sewage running down the sides of the narrow streets). Chikinguyna is on the rise. Boils are spotting up on village kids' ankles. Monsoon giveth, monsoon taketh away.

I feel fine, actually, especially after a rare glass of Italian red at the spotlit Art Deco extravaganza known as Umaid Bhavan Palace, on Chittar Hill just up from migrants' tents and their smoldering trash heaps. There was just a fat orange moon rise over this scene.

Just hoping with dengue's incubation period of 4-7 days I'll be back in New York when the hemorrhaging begins. Ha! A joke. There are 1.4 million people in this city so chances are the red-color lady mosquitoes will pass me over...

Field Research

2006-10-09T10:23:00.000-04:00

... And back at Sun City, 8pm, Monday evening, getting measured for salwar suits (tunic and pants combo) in signature Jodhpur "banda" print, or "tie and dye" as Indians translate it. I wore out my last tie-and-dye tunic getting grubby on the train circuit last year--but won't have an opportunity this time around for 29 hour train rides in three-bunk non-ac class. I can't believe I only have five days left.

Today I tracked down an old student from a village called Khatawas. She passed her class 10 exams, a great feat for village girls, but still got shipped off to her in laws (she was married at 10). She's knocked up now, 3 months, at 15. We found her by off-roading in our white Jeep across dry fields, then walking for three miles in the hot midday sun across some prickles-choked bean fields. Her little brother navigated. A sweet skinny as a reed kid in a neat yellow government school top, he'd tried to visit, with another sister, a few weeks back and was turned away by Nirmla's rabid mother in law. Practically foaming at the mouth, this woman is every newlywed Indian girl's worst nightmare: critical, rough talking, and physically abusive. She beats Nirmla because her dowry was inadequate. Even at 5', in a bright yellow langa suit (long skirt and top), she was scary as hell, and I didn't understand a word she said. Veerni's would-be translator called in with a motorbike "accident" (someone joked that I scared her away) so the situation is still a bit fuzzy, but basically this girl is miserable. To make matters worse, her husband is a homely, five-foot-two (max) 23 year old, with a distracting, inappropriate grin over his large moustache. He was working as a carpenter in Mumbai--all I could think was AIDS, a common plight of migrant workers--but now is back in his village. Not sure why but will get the story when the interview is translated.

2006-10-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Monday morning, 9am: I am slurring good morning to Neeta and Push, clumsily bumping my knee on coffee tables, putting tea in the pitcher of milk instead of the other way around. I slept until 8:10, you see, which means I am on JOdhpur time. Yes!

Maybe Yes, Maybe No

2006-10-06T12:59:00.000-04:00

Are they mistranslations or is truth-fudging an art perfected, like red-hot lime pickle, in India?

Naturally, shops in poor countries lie to white people shopping there. In fact, I was forewarned that Maharani, the 100 year-old four-floor emporium of textiles embedded in Jodhpur's old city market, is prone to exaggeration. "Our factory is 90 kilometers away from Jodhpur, and we have the women working in their homes, hand-sewing and all," said the rep at Maharani Art Emporium. "But I heard you don't have a factory," I countered, "that you buy from wholesalers." The rep flat-out denied this and threw in a few more details about the whereabouts of the factor(ies), then told us about their "exclusive" contract with Hermes selling the same peacock-emblazoned cashmere shawls that Joan, my shopping buddy, had seen at another market in town earlier (the rep there also mentioned Hermes).

Then there is the fun of conducting interviews in villages where birthdays are described as being "the Diwali festival before the good monsoon". But I thought I could trust the Veerni Project's doctor at least to prod a bit harder for the real story. "This girl is engaged, she has completed 16 years and won't go to live with her husband until she reaches 18" she told me in Sewala yesterday, nodding approvingly (the girl's classmates had just happily shouted in unison that "18 is the age for marriage" and that they further more wouldn't observe purdah, wear veils, after they wed). How empowered were these girls!, I thought, nodding, thinking to tell the project's founder how much success we'd found already in this "very backward" village we'd taken on a few years back. Ten minutes later, the girl relates the details of her marriage at the age of six, and the doctor nods, showing no sign of surprise as the story completely reversed itself...

"My brother is in hospital, he is having malaria, bleeding from the nose and all," said my guest house host Neeta. But it turns out that her brother actually has dengue, the fever that is sweeping India like the latest Priyanka Chopra song. The diagnosis is much more alarming given that as recently as Wednesday there were "60 cases" on a campus in Delhi and now there are upwards of 700. Following our doctor's briefing yesterday, Veerni's social and medical team lectured at villages and at the girls' hostel on the peril that red mosquitos pose in full daylight: Internal bleeding, following fever, body ache and vomiting. "Cover water," they advised, "look out for the red ones". Neeta's brother, who lives in nearby Jaipur, was bleeding out everything they were transfusing him through the nostrils, but seems to be ok today.

These are random incidents of miscommunication, or white lies, in the first case. But they lead me to wonder: should I toss my notes in the trash heap on the roadside?

Up All Night, sort of

2006-10-04T09:03:00.000-04:00

Sun City, day 2. No, is it 3? I am losing track. Still jet lagged, 8pm seems like 6am sunrise after pulling an all nighter. Last night at dinner with darling Govind Rathore, owner of a nearby guest house and man-about-town, I was slumping under the table like a 5 year old. I put my head down at one point. So today, it's 6:30pm and my head is swimming. Actually it'd be nice if I had the old 6am post-party clarity but -- not a chance after a day in Jodhpur's boring-hot sun.

After a frustrating morning of half-meetings--half-understood, since the social worker I was trying to interview only pretends to speak English, and half-finished, since we were interrupted--I headed out to the fields, which are surprisingly green after a decent monsoon. After dodging herds of goats, and their red-turbaned shepherds (will post photo shortly), we arrived in Binewas, a village of about 4000. The pink saree-clad promoter, or project rep, jumped into the car and we trucked out over a bumpy path-road to an enclave of Malis, a farming tribe. Technically it was a one-family home but this family numbers 60. There are 21 grandkids living here, and in fact, the scattering of stone buildings surrounded by cows and bed frames was overrun with children. Three were naked and had lazy eyes. As we sat and chatted (well, I just sat) with their parents, the children, one by one, found articles of clothing. One would hoist a long shirt over his shoulder, like he didn't know what to do with it, until his mother put it on him after an hour or so (at the end of our two hour stint there the kids had an outfit on between four of them). A gangly gang of pre-teens turned up later in dusty blue government school uniforms. The nurse, Vimlesh, a bright, quick-moving 29 year old with an 8 year old at home, examined pregnant woman--in this family there are currently five, all about to pop--while a cow gave birth outside. Then the social worker gave a lecture on family planning: "Small family, happy family!" is the typical theme. The woman sat on the floor under their pink and orange scarves in front of the patriarch, a yellow-tooth man perched on a bed frame under a large tree. For a while the social worker bantered on uninterrupted and then the old guy started chiming in, gesturing, yelling at times, then randomly laughing. I understood about three words intersperced in the seemingly-heated debate, like "char" (four) "bacha" (baby) and "acha" (good). The nurses began chiming in, yelling back, while the women bobbeled their heads on the ground (this could mean "absolutely yes" or "absolutely no" depending on the bobble-style, so I have no idea). Just as I was about to conclude, in my notes, that this family will continue to abstain from birth control, the social worker looked at me and concluded, "he is very much in favor of small families".

After a stop in one more village we drove back and had more meetings, with lots of finger pointing and yet more chai (was that the fifth cup?). Now I want to read my a novel and zone out but we have a dinner meeting.

Durga

2006-10-02T06:51:00.000-04:00

The site of the Mumbai Durga puja I attended. A bit blurry, but can you spot the demon under Durga's tiger? His name is Mahishasura and he was created when his dad, a king, fell in love with a water buffalo. Not to be underestimated, he drove all the gods out of heaven until the chief three, Brahma, Shivaji and Vishnu, created Durga, aka Shakti, aka Parvati. She's got a lot of arms. Below is another image of her at a Delhi temple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:S344_durga-idol-golden.png

Dahl and Durga

2006-10-02T06:44:00.000-04:00

Yummmmmm

Colaba gets wet

2006-10-02T06:41:00.000-04:00

Gates of India in a post-monsoon downpour

2006-10-02T06:37:00.000-04:00

Passage to India, Part 2

2006-09-29T09:06:00.000-04:00

Friday, 8am: I awoke to the gorgeous sounds of New York City: trash compacting, trucks squealing breaks, ect. Muted due to rain. Peeled self off 400tc sheets (granted, from Target). Made breakfast, looked forward to waking up to, chai! chai!---breeeeeakfast madam! Of course I hear from Jessica that Sourage aka Shortu, the adorable Nepali boy who worked at Sun City Guest House, may have gone home.

Off to work...

Now: Sunday, Mumbai, more rain, more furiously. Tomorrow I return to Rajasthan to work with the Veerni Project again. I won't be teaching, just shadowing the staff (nurses, teachers, social workers) and writing reports (reports! I rub my hands together gleefully). I am looking forward to getting settled at Sun City, at least for the two short weeks I have for this trip. Of course I was lucky to get the vacation time but it seems inadequate after coming all this way. It's really, really far. If you're not sleeping it's hard to fill the time. As the sun set and rose again crossing the Atlantic I read the New Delhi segment of Somini Sengupta's series in the New York Times on India's growing water crisis (resulting from a mix of overpopulation, corruption and inefficiency-crippled bureaucracy): middle class women are fighting for buckets, quitting their jobs to wait for the few and far between city water deliveries. Then Bill Buford on the Food Network in The New Yorker and finally US Weekly on Jessica Simpson's fling with Bam whats-his-name. After disembarking to go through London's excruciating security checkpoint which took almost an hour and cost me my toothpaste and Purell (no liquids, gels or pastes are allowed on board) I slept while the sun set again on the 9 hour leg to Mumbai, while we raced across the mideast and Himalayas. All of the sudden it was two days later.

It's a festival day (when is it not?)--the end of Durga Puja week. The goddess was created by Hinduism's three principal gods to defeat a furious demon who was taking over the world, whose butt she proceeded to kick. So sitting on a lion or tiger, clutching a trident lent from Shiva and other miscellaneous weapons (perhaps a lightning bolt) she is the embodiment of female power. My Mumbai family took me to a puja (prayer ceremony) with a giant sparkling effigy of Durga. Then we went to the puja feast, which consisted mainly of kachori (Sp?) a mix of dahl and rice. It was dished out of giant vats stirred by what looked like 11 year old boys into buckets and poured over wooden plates--a huge serving that I could barely touch what with the whibbly-whobbly beginnings of Dehli belly.

Yessss, I'm back! Lugging my clumsy bags out of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport last night Sunday morning at 1:30 am--22.5 hours after setting off in New York on Friday afternoon--I was struck first by the warm, hugging humidity and secondly by the rotten egg smell. But I was grinning out the window of the midget cab--my head brushed the ceiling--at the sorta-familiar landscape of lush green trees, STD (phone!) booths, stray dogs, shabby "heritage" housing. You know you're in Bombay when you see the odd sparkling glassy mall and giant fashion billboard (Indian lines, lots of men in tight shirts and jeans, no swimsuit-clad Heidi Klums, not this year at least). My hotel is rather glum: about $30/night for a tiny room that you'd pay no more than $2.50 for in any other city apart from Dehli. But it's a couple blocks from the fabulous Taj Mahal Palce & Hotel, a 1903 British construction that is one of the city's landmarks (with the Arch of India, which it overlooks). I'm going to swing by to scope it out--hopefully stave off sickness with some expensive chai tea for a few more hours.

Gawking in the City

2005-05-11T00:12:00.001-04:00

Back in New York, I've been so busy I haven't posted. I'm well, off the meds, still happily unemployed. I'm sleeping late, lunching with friends and old co-workers, leaving them as they rejoin their desks and emails to stroll the city streets.

I'm trying not to stare up at tall buildings and people, but they're so shiny and well-put together here. The women are amazing: they sprint down the sidewalk in three and a half inch heels, hailing a cab and putting on lip gloss while having a heated debate on their cell about where to have tapas tonight. The men are staring at them and not at me, which is great for a change.

I think I've stopped hyperventilating in grocery stores. It happened a few times when I was in the Maryland 'burbs: standing in the soy sauce aisle, the rows of bottles, all shapes and sizes and Szechuans, started to blur and whirl. My heart pounded and my mouth went dry. The silence was deafening. It happened in the drugstore, too, in the toothpaste aisle. Yesterday, a week and a half later, I tackled Zabar's. Inside I met with no heart palpitations, just mixed olives and tasty Swiss Peasant Bread.

I'm keeping bits of India in my life. The Ustad Zakir Hussain tabla CD I picked up in Pushkar is perpetually on my stereo, and I'm almost through Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar, a narrative of train journey through Asia. The section where he travels through India is fascinating. It's apparent that almost nothing he saw has changed in thirty years--scratch that, in a century: he quotes Mark Twain on Bombay's sidewalk sleepers, writing in 1896 of the "city of the dead" who lay "everywhere on the ground sleeping."

The last night in Mumbai I drove past these "hundreds and hundreds" -- now probably a hundred thousand--on the way to the international airport. I saw them sleeping on cardboard, mats, carpet, in twos and threes. Taxi drivers sprawled out on their car's hoods, probably still warm from the day. I stared and stared, trying to burn the image in my memory, not knowing the next time I'd see anything like it.

Tea for (Almost) Free

2005-04-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

A pot-bellied chai wallah in Varanasi. He boiled the loose tea in a pot with milk, sugar, ginger and cardamon, then strained it into the tea pot on the left. One tea, served in the wee clay pots stacked upside down on the far left, cost Rs. 4.

Horse Patrol

2005-04-25T11:15:00.000-04:00

A random image from Jaipur, Rajasthan, of a horse standing in the middle of a strangely empty road.

Seeing the Light

2005-04-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

Another moment of grace: seeing New York City at sunset from Air India flight 101. Due to the wicked rash we all got in Anjuna, I had not been able to sleep before leaving Mumbai at 6:30am. After 20 hours of travel I was nearly home, and nearly dead from itching and exhaustion. I'd popped at least 15 pills of all shapes and color but was itching like a maniac, guzzling water to combat my dry finger tips, puffy red eyes and ghost like complexion.

Colonial Clout

2005-04-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

Inside Old Goa's Se Cathedral, a 17th century Portugese-built church that's one of the largest in Asia. On a mid April Goan aftenoon it truly was a godsend. In the cool darkness under the alter we sat, panting, chugging warm water and wiping away sweat. My rash was kicking in so I scratched, and scratched...

Trouble in Paradise

2005-04-25T10:57:00.000-04:00

What's left of Anjuna Beach, the famous party town in north Goa. The beach has been worn away by rough tides in recent months, and the sand blackened, according to locals, from an oil spill off the coast of nearby Calangute Beach.

2005-04-25T10:53:00.000-04:00

The view from my hut in Palolem Beach in South Goa.

Shiva Shimmies

2005-04-25T10:48:00.000-04:00

On Elephanta Island, a one hour boat ride from Mumbai's landmark Gates of India, there are rock carvings of Lord Shiva in caves dating back from the 5th-8th century. If he still had legs you could see he's dancing in this sculpture.

Godly Attire

2005-04-25T10:45:00.000-04:00

Only in India do gods sell clothing. The guy in the middle is supposed to be like flute-playing, lady-loving Krishna, the blue skinned incarnation of Vishnu.

The Mighty Mosque

2005-04-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

Outside Haji Ali Mosque, which floats in the sea opposite Mahalakshmi racecourse. It's only accessible during low tide, when the water shrinks down around it to reveal trash and sewage strewn rocks.

2005-04-25T10:39:00.000-04:00

According to Subhra, my Mumbai mama, as women we were only allowed inside the mosque because the saint's followers are from a liberal sector of Islam. Resting under a silver frame supported by marble pillars, the tomb is hot and crowded with worshippers--women on one side, men on the other--straining to get near it.

2005-04-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

The 500 yard walk out to Haji Ali mosque during low tide is crowded with people--worshippers, Hindu tourists, and a ton of beggers, mostly maimed and/or crippled. Three ambutees lying together pumped their severed limbs up and down, chanting Allah, Allah, Allah...

2005-04-25T10:14:00.000-04:00

A ladies compartment on the local trains in Mumbai, one guaranteed "eve-teasing"-free zone. Luckily as a white woman I was mostly spared sexual harrasment young Indian women have to deal with daily on the city streets. They're a bit scared of me--I've heard it called the Memsahib effect.

2005-04-25T10:10:00.000-04:00

Couples cuddle off Marine Drive in Mumbai. After North India, this was a shocking sight.

2005-04-25T10:06:00.000-04:00

From the my Mumbai family's east Wadala flat, you can see the Harbour Line train tracks and, below, the everpresent slum dwellings.

2005-04-25T10:01:00.000-04:00

Unlike Hindu temples, Buddhist temples are covered in bright intricate paintings telling the stories of gods, saints and worshippers. I couldn't figure out what was going on in this one but the multi-armed goddess looks strangly like the Hindu deity Kali, in one of her destructive rampages.

2005-04-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

Ghoom Monastery is just a Rs. 10 shared jeep from Darjeeling.

2005-04-25T09:44:00.000-04:00

Darjeeling is composed of Nepali Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists, but it seems like they often mix and match Observatory hill is crowded with small shrines to an amalgum of deities. Around a central Hindu shrine to Shiva are murals like this one depicting guru Sai Baba, Jesus, and Buddha.

2005-04-25T09:39:00.000-04:00

Darjeeling is nearly verticle.

2005-04-25T09:38:00.000-04:00

I beat a retreat up to Darjeeling after the intense Kolkata heat. The drive up in a shared jeep past a million tea planatations like this. It would have been lovely had the driver not been a maniac, taking 90 degree blind turns on the one lane, cliff hugging roads with no hesitation (just constant honking).

2005-04-25T09:35:00.000-04:00

The white marble Birla Mandir on Asutosh Chowdhury Avenue, a temple to Laxmi and Krishna, is immaculately clean because they don't let you bring rottable offerings like fresh flowers and food.

2005-04-25T09:32:00.000-04:00

Pao Bhaji special chaat, a Bengali snack served from thoughtfully decorated stalls by the Hooghly River ghats. This is a spicy chick pea, potato and onion mixture with a small roll in a banana leaf bowl. It was tasty but didn't sit so well in my stomach. D'oh.

2005-04-25T09:04:00.000-04:00

Bengali posters at the famous Coffee House on college street.

2005-04-25T08:50:00.000-04:00

In Kolkata, my friend's cousin took us to the most happening 'disc, Dublin, in the basement of the Sheraton Hotel in Salt Lake district. Here are Rhina's parents--by day an engineer and a banker--breaking it down till the breaka breaka dawn.

2005-04-25T08:47:00.000-04:00

My Bengali family told me Rhina, the pigtailed pixie I'm preventing from climbing over the balcony here, learned a third English phrase after I left: "where is Rose?" I almost abducted her.

2005-04-25T08:43:00.000-04:00

In Kolkata on Holi, March 25, the bhanged mad hatter of the gang at the roof top party.

2005-04-25T08:40:00.000-04:00

Typical street crossing in Varanasi. Objects are moving faster than they appear, in any and all directions.

Don't Look Back in Anger

2005-04-25T07:16:00.000-04:00

Now that my rash is nearly gone, I'm sleeping (almost) through the night. Though overcast and chilly, days are looking much brighter as a result. I think I'll have a few scars on my legs but hey, it could have been a lot worse.

Jessica and Jaime, who broke out in the same rash two days after me, are still suffering. God (Shiva, Kali, Jesus, anyone?) willing they will break through to the other side too. Still no one (we've consulted two Indian, one Tibetan, and one American doctor) can tell us what caused this violent allergic reaction, though I suspect it might have something to do with sand polluted by the oil spill off Goa's coast just before we arrived.

So I'm starting to miss India.

I went over to visit my best friend's family last night, the Bengalis who hooked me up with their family in Kolkata and Mumbai. We sat cross legged on the floor speaking Indian English (you use a lot of the present continuous tense).

"Calcutta is having very bad conjestion," I said, "we were getting [inflection up on last syllable] late because the traffic was just stopped."

"Yes, and very bad pollution is there," they agreed.

Their giant flat screen TV, which has been upgraded at least three times in as many years, was showing a drawn-out crocodile wrestling match on the Discovery Channel. This was a jarring reminder of the material carrots the USA holds over visa-coveting Indians back home.

I'd brought them my digi camera to show pics of their family, but the battery was dead, so I promised to post some of my favorites online.

The order is mixed up but I don't know how to fix that.

Marudhar [Not-so] Express

2005-04-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

I took this train from Jaipur, through Uttar Pradash to Varanasi, a supposedly 18 hour trip that took almost 24 hours. Seeing the sun rise over green fields after being in the Thar desert for two and a half months made it so worth it.

Savvy Sahdu

2005-04-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

This sadhu, a one of the denizens of orange-draped holy man who seem to live on the ghats here in Varanasi, charged me 10 rupees for this photo.

Varanasi, From a Distance

2005-04-23T16:15:00.000-04:00

Standing on the roof of my guest house, removed from the olfactory elements, it's a nice vista to behold. At 6am, even from up here, you could hear the puja music broadcast from the ghats: Om Nama Shiva Om Nama Shiva Om Nama Shiva... Over and over, for hours. It's a prayer to Lord Shiva, the god of creation and destruction.

2005-04-23T16:08:00.000-04:00

Early morning light hits Varanasi, India's holiest city, on the Ganges river. People go to do puja (pray) and swim in the river, as its believed one dip will wash away your past sins and make good karma. Devout Hindus come to have their relatives cremated, at a hefty sum. Meanwhile next to the burning ghats, from which the ashes are scattered in the river, locals brush their teeth, take a piss, wash their buffalo, do the laundry...

The Venice of India

2005-04-23T16:02:00.000-04:00

Bleary-eyed hiding behind sunglasses on a 6:30 am boat ride in Varanasi. This is almost manditory, as the early morning activities are not to be missed (pujas, dhobis flogging clothes, old men doing yoga stretches in underwear). This early in the morning, it's easier to take it in from a boat.Actually it's quite romatic.

It's Oh So Quiet

2005-04-22T07:31:00.000-04:00

I'm at my parent's home in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's so quiet here in the suburbs I feel like I've gone deaf. It's also cold--52 degree, or 11 C--and raining.

It was 28 hours of remarkably smooth travel. I flew from Mumbai to New York, then took a connecting shuttle to DC. I had scheduled the connecting flight four hours later than my arrival time, but I was through customs and had my bag within minutes of disembarking. Another American I met on the flight marveled at how clean JFK airport was. "You could eat off this floor!" we exclaimed.

On the shuttle bus to La Guardia, I stared, bleary-eyed, out the window at near empty streets and shining new cars. The other passengers had proper luggage, designer bags, big silver watches, leather brief cases. Queens looked glamourous. This is a rich country.

Bombay Dreams

2005-04-20T00:36:00.000-04:00

After beating a retreat from the giant spiders in Goa, I've been taking it easy here in east Dadar, central Mumbai. The allergic reaction to the spider bites is made worse by prickly heat, a rash that the city newspapers warn is especially common this year from the sun and pollution.

I've ventured into south Mumbai a few times on the city's surprisingly user-friendly local rail system. It ain't the NYC subway, but there are three parallel lines running up and down the city, so you can get at least close to anywhere you're going. I pay Rs. 5 (10 cents) to get from Dadar to Victoria Terminus, the main railstation, a cab-able distance to almost everything in south Mumbai. At my host family's advice, I sat in the ladies-only compartments. They've reserved two on each train to prevent "eve-teasing," the blatent sexual harassment Indian women come to expect even here in progressive Mumbai. Sitting sari to sari with the ladies, I still heard hisses from the next car over.

Yesterday I boated out to Elephanta Island to see ancient rock-cut sculptures of the god Shiva tucked away inside caves, mercifully out of the scorching sun. The big attraction is the giant triple-headed Shiva statue, where the god is depicted as a destroyer, creator and protector.

I never got to realize my Bombay dreams of being an extra on a movie set or mingling with the stars at the Taj Hotel's ultra posh Insomenia.

But my main aspiration now is to... get the heck out of here.

I leave tomorrow. I am going home. I will miss Suman, the sweet gap toothed live in maid/cook, who brought me fresh papaya, toast and tea this morning. I'll miss having an air conditioned car take me places in a city that makes New York look tame. I will miss temple hopping with Shubra, my host mom here, and the regular calls to prayer outside the apartment from the three surrounding mosques.

I'm too tired and heat stroked and drugged (on prescription meds!! antihistimines and such) to list everything I"ll miss about India. Maybe tomorrow or whenever I'm coherent. In the states.

I can't wait.

The Itchy and Scratchy Show

2005-04-14T09:09:00.000-04:00

My first night in Anjuna was interrupted when I woke up furiously scratching my legs. I washed off with cold water and passed out, but woke up early to... the itch.

Apparently there was an angry spider trapped in my bed sheets, because he's bitten me all across my legs. Which would be merely annoying, except that I'm having an allergic reaction. I've got the worst rash of my life all across my legs, back and arms. It itches so badly it hurts. And I look like a leper, strolling the Goan beaches for alms.

The sticky, close heat definitely isn't helping. So I'm doing my best to distract myself during my last two days in Goa, before I head back up to Mumbai to see a doctor. Yesterday I distracted myself at a club until the wee hours of the morning--ok, till the sun came up. Since the real deal beach parties have stopped since the season ended, we were told that Club Cubano is where the party was at.

We weren't about to argue--on Wednesdays, ladies get in free and drink for free all night. No really. The tri-level, mostly outdoor club is like the Senior Frogs of Goa, for all ye who've spring breaked in Cancun. Like Cancun or Negril, folks come to Goa to party in a bubble. In a country where women practice purdah, girls in Goa trot around in miniskirts, or worse, Daisy Dukes and wedge heels. For guys in Anjuna, there seems to be a strict No Shirt No Shoes rule, which encourages us to gawk at the big, ugly tattoos fanning out on their backs.

The crowd in Cabana was 70% sunburned package tourers, primarily English, and 20% sunglass-sporting Indian guys (three of whom latched onto us to get in, since they don't allow them to go in alone). The remaining 10% watched their antics from cushioned bed loungers on the lower terrace by the pool. The routine went a little something like this: guzzle 5 Bacardi Breezers, grab the nearest member of the opposite sex, and dramatically jump into the pool with your clothes on.

After all this excitement, I passed out with my eyemask on, prepared to sleep away the day. I woke up itching two hours later. I got up and ran outside into the ocean. The salt water did soothe the burning--oh god I sound like such a freak show--but the waves kept knocking me down.

After giving up on rest, I tried to stay moving all day. Jess, Jaime and I went into see Old Goa's striking 16th century churches. Standing under the high barrel vaulted ceiling of Se Cathedral, we read that it's among the largest church in Asia.

For a moment, I thought, we're in Asia? Stay in Goa for too long and you forget.

Paradise (Lost) City

2005-04-12T09:42:00.000-04:00

Goa is hot and deserted. For a famous party coast, there's not a whole lot going on down here, since high season (December-March) is over. But that's... lovely.

I met Jessica and her sister Jaime in Palolem, a supposedly ideallic beach town in the south. Palolem postcards show a wide, white beach, deserted apart from a thick crop of drooping coconut palms. Actually Palolem is as "unspoiled" as Negril, Jamaica. It looks a lot like it, too. The bamboo huts and straw-roofed bars jutting onto the sand would be sweet if they weren't jam packed into every square inch of beach.

Actually, the huts on stilts were pretty sweet, and at Rs. 150 (just over $3) a night, damn cheap. They're more than double during high season, triple over New Year's. We swam and sunned and sipped cold beers on the beach. There was some spicy malsala fried kingfish to be had, and some fresh pineapple juice to be sipped (at a whopping Rs. 40, I might add--nearly $1!). Some body surfing to be done, in the waning hours of the day.

After a few too many beach side beverages last night, we rallied and jeeped up to Anjuna Beach, a town in northern Goa famous for all night raves. But from the looks of it, the party's over. The shops are shut, mostly, and there are sad rows of unrented mopeds in parking lots at the main town crossing. The surf is rough, and since a girl nearly died the other day no one's swimming.

Maybe folks will come out of the woodwork for the famous Wednesday market tomorrow: the taut, tan-tummied kids who fly by on mopeds now and then, and the pot-bellied, wrinkly elders--those who started the party down here in the sixties--you see chain smoking hand rolled cigarettes at beachside bars.

Game on?

Silence in the City

2005-04-12T08:55:00.000-04:00

My flight to Mumbai, apart from an absurdly complicated transfer in Dehli, was wonderful. On the second leg, they served Subway sandwiches and Lays potato chips. Instead of the chai wallahs that walk up and down the railway cars bellowing "CHAAAAI CHAAAAI CHAAAI" every two seconds, the Sahara air stewards with bright white teeth asked, "Madam, would you prefer tea or coffee?" I preferred everything since it was for free.

We descended into the city formerly known as Bombay just after sunset. The orangey red stripe on the horizon melted away and the city lights turned on. It looked like a Lite Brite set. I was grinning from ear to ear to be back in civilization, even before I saw the white-suited chaffeur waiting for me at the arrival gate. The Mitres, my Mumbai host family, are good to me. They phoned on the driver's mobile the instant I sat down in the cool, cushioned backseat, to apologize for not meeting me. They were at a party, it being Friday night and all.

A/c cranking, we zoomed across flyovers--overpasses that divert traffic over train tracks or poor slum areas--past bigger-than-life billboards for mobile phone plans and DNA, short for Daily News Anaysis, a new paper. One ad featured a well-groomed young women saying, "I think George Bush should be sent back to school."

Back at the Mitres' spacious Dadar flat, the maid had prepared me dal, rice and curd. I ate a third dinner and crashed, ecstatic to be sleeping somewhere clean, quiet and safe.

My last night in Varanasi had been interrupted by a viscious dog fight happening under my second story window at Reva Guest House, where I paid Rs. 100 a night (just over $2). There were snarls, barks and high pitched screams that only stopped briefly when I dumped water on the pack. Reva's owners say the dogs see ghosts. Maybe Varanasi is haunted, but I'd wager it's rabies, or at least starvation, that makes them crazy.

The Mitres' flat is on the tenth floor, and air conditioned, so if there were dog fights below I didn't hear a thing.

The End of the Affair

2005-04-06T08:14:00.000-04:00

I'm back in Varanasi, dazed because I haven't really slept since I left Darjeeling, I think it was Tuesday? After 30 hours of nerve-wracking travel, I'm declaring my romance with train travel finished.

Ahh, Tuesday started so well, despite my reluctance to "ship" (Indian English) from the queen of hill stations, and end my affair with its fresh, cold mountain air. The three hour drive down to Siliguri was gorgeous, especially since I wasn't green faced and gagging the entire time--I opted to sit in the front seat, facing forwards instead of sideways, key when you're changing altitude so quickly. Plus I got to check out the dashboard decor--a neon-flashing Ganesh statue, a faded photo of a Shiva alter, a snapshot of Bollywood goddess Aishwarya Rai--and jam out to Hindi techno with the No-Fear driver and his pals. The cliff-hugging, one lane road spiraled down through velvety green tea plantations, such as organic Makaibari Estates, which produce some of the best brew in the world--though I hear Assam teas are creeping on that title.

I wish I could have taken the toy train down instead, but it takes its sweet time on the silly little tracks, six hours or so for the same jouney. I had a train to catch in New Jalpaiguri, just next to Siliguri. It was the Capital Express, and it actually lived up to its name. We pulled into Patna Junction at 4:40 am, just 10 minutes late (super early by Indian Standard Time). I wish I could say the trip was short and sweet. It was not short--we started out at 2:50 in the afternoon, so it was about 14 hours--and I was freaking out.

You could say Patna, the capital of Bihar, is India's Compton, except that the notorious lawlessness extends well beyond city borders. Actually the entire state, which lies between Uttar Pradash and West Bengal, is a fixture in newspaper headlines for its horrific murders, comically common kidnappings, and political corruption (in a country where corruption is the status quo, it makes news). There were 34 deaths nationwide on Holi; 27 were in Bihar, compared to 2 in Uttar Pradash. The cover story on today's Times of India? "PATNA: Three extortionists lynched by mob."

Having said this, there were some lovely people on my train. Mr. Roy, a friendly government employee in NJP, spoke fluent English. He bought me milk coffee and asked all his burning questions, like, "tell me, what is your opinion of the Indian citizen?" There was a sweet 14 year old girl in a yellow tie dye salwar suit sitting nearby who also spoke English. Her dad bought me spicy Samosas from the roadside. I refused four dinner offers (curry and dal sitting on a hot train for 12 hours, yum). It was an all-Indian train, after all (usually there's a sprinkling of westerner backpackers, but not on the Patna Capital Express). It's like, hey, I'm a celebrity--get me out of here!

I kept thinking, what's the worst that can happen? The padlock on my bags is cut (Mr. Roy said mine was way too small) and somebody takes all my dirty, ripped clothing (I sleep with my camera and wallet right under my head, up on my bunk, the top one of three).

Then I nearly got left at on a station platform in the middle of Bihar. Everyone said we were stopping for half an hour, and I needed to walk--I was getting claustraphobic and had been sitting for twelve hours--so I kind of speed walked down the platform past the chai, chips and fel (fruit)-wallahs, and the stares. Standing mesmorized by the dahi (yogurt) wallah, who was scooping smooth white curd into tiny red clay pots, I heard (even more) shouting. The train was moving. I ran over in my slippery plastic flip flops (which I was advised to keep up with me in the night, left they'd be stolen), pushed past a mob of men hanging from the door and jumped on just in time (cue laughter from the platform groundlings). My heart pounding, I wandered through the cabins, elbowing my way past families of villagers sprawled between cars with baskets of vegetables, crippled beggers, and more gawking men, reassuring myself that it must be the right train. Five packed cars down I found Mr. Roy and company, who scolded me for worrying them. I was sat down and promptly fed milk biscuits.

I slept for a few hours, waking up at 3:30 when the conductor slammed on the brakes and pulled hard on the whistle. When we didn't die, I thought of going back to sleep, but the door to the outside kept slamming--the one I'd been directed never to open, located just next to our compartment. Olive-suited men with shotguns strapped onto their backs were getting on and off. I think they were army men, but remembering my train trip to Varanasi, on which an American girl and her boyfriend were nearly ordered off if they didn't fork over Rs. 10,000 for an imaginary crime, I was not reassured. Then somebody said "Patna." We were on schedule. My head started pounding.

It was pitch black when we pulled into Patna Junction, at 4:40am, but there was a mini city of sleeping villagers covering on the floor, possessions rolled up in cloth, lying on top of newspaper. I found a "May I Help You" desk, shockingly staffed, and discovered that in addition to the 10am train to Varanasi, there was one arriving in 10 minutes. Hallaluyah, and holy shit.

It being 5 in the morning they were "cleaning" the platform--aka, dumping water everywhere. So I slipped and I slid with my ungainly pack, pushing my way to the front of 4 or 5 queues (everyone does this, but I don't always manage to be so aggressive) and got a ticket within minutes. I found Platform 4, where there was a train was pulling in, which many people did say went to Varanasi. I got on.

Of my 12 seat mates, sitting tight on two small benches, there was a warm Patna family with two hyper little girls. We traded Hinglish and giggled over chais and biscuits they force fed me, and soon my heart stopped pounding. I forgot that I was drenched in sweat and caked in dirt, that my formerly white trousers (I know, I know) under my salwar suit that I travel in is now decked out with dried urine at the cuffs, a mysterious rip, and a slimy line of drool (from the guy sleeping over me on the top bunk). My nails as always had become black--though still pinkish at the edges from Holi--and my teeth were aching from eating only chai and biscuits, aside from the samosa, for the past 30 hours.

I watched the sun rise over flat fields of wheat.

India's like this: Individually, people are almost invariably welcoming, generous, curious, and helpful. If not, most are harmless, even the ones staring (hey, they're so skinny I could probably beat them up). Yet together in the magnitude of chaos the faces and encroching body parts become threatening.

So I've decided not to do the 30 hour overnight train to Mumbai. I'm forking over $200 and taking a flight from Varanasi, this Friday. Then it's off to the non-Indian paradise called Goa.

Take Tea and See

2005-03-31T06:42:00.000-05:00

I had my magic Darljeeling moment this morning, sipping strong black tea on the balcony of the Tower View Guest House, overlooking the nearly vertical city and... clouds. I have yet to see the crisp white peaks of the Himalayas which postcards here boast of, but I'm happy as a clam just to be here. And to have survived the hair-raising, stomach-churning 3 hour drive up here in a shared jeep.

At 7000 feet above sea level, the weather is... cold. During the day it's about 10-15 C, in the low 50s F. I'm wearing a fleece and still had to buy a wool wrap to walk around in yesterday. But I'm thrilled to be from Kolkata's oppressive, sticky heat. I have a bounce in my step, even when I'm walking up a 45 degree incline, which is often.

It really doesn't feel like India, especially because the people here are either Nepali (the country is, like, five feet away) or weathy Bengalis on holiday. They're just as eager for fresh air as I am, and more importantly, they're not selling anything. The Nepalis are more mellow than Indians. They still do the head bobble, and listen to Bollywood tracks at a high volume, just not speaker-breaking. They hang pastal-colored posters of Lord Ganeshji, but only one or two per room. Best of all, the working class Nepali men actually carry their own weight--literally, they strap loads of bricks and boxes onto their backs, instead of making their women balance everything on their heads.

Yahooo....

Meanwhile, in Kolkata

2005-03-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

So there are ironic t-shirt wearing Bengalis who call themselves global citizens and visit malls fetishizing "ethnic" Indian culture. But naturally there is a flip side.

It's Monday and Kolkata is bustling again. Today we saw the city's namesake temple, Kalighat, and our personal mecca, the railway station. The approach to Kalighat was predictably intense, even at 7:30am, with all the vendors hawking red flowers, glittery red handkerchefs, and tiny photos of the awesome Kali, who is Shiva's wife, the goddess of destruction. Every morning goats are sacrificed to appease her; I guess offering red trickets is better than nothing.

The rotting flower-draped statue inside the temple was crawling with cockroaches, so we left quickly, heading down the lane a bit to Kalighat, the holy stairs leading into a shit-clogged, stagnant sewage canal that is what remains of the Ganges River when it reaches Kolkata. People hold their nose and come to worship by the river. I only saw one man swimming, or rather sifting through the sludge with a metal sieve (did he lose something? his sanity?). But they were selling the holy water, yellowish in the morning sun, for just Rs. 10.

Across from the revered ghats there was a shanty town. We walked across the river on a three old row boats placed in a row as a makeshift bridge, praying that they wouldn't break. On the other side there were no touts here, just tiny homes, shops and a one room temple to Shiva, the god of creation.

The Last Days of Disco

2005-03-27T04:59:00.000-05:00

I'm still in Kolkata, hanging with Bengali's, the so-called French of India. Politics are progressive-- actually I'm fairly sure the Marxist party rules West Bengal--and nearly all the (admittedly upper class) couples I've met have married for love. But it's all relative. I still haven't seen a single cow in the city, but a herd of goats crossed the (residential) street as we trotted down to find this iWay cyber cafe.

We've made a stab at seeing the sights, despite the thick, intensifying heat. Today we strolled through the oh-so-British Victoria Memorial gardens, under parasols; yesterday we browsed book stands on College Street, then had strong coffees in the no-frills but evidently popular Worker's Cooperative Coffee Shop. A crowd of cerebral-looking Bengali chatted and smoked cigarettes under the high ceiling.

But aside from this, we've met with a lot of closed signs, and the vague half explanations so typical to this country. The lovely Eden Gardens are shut indefinitely due to some military dispute over ticket price (according to the sign, shockingly printed in English). North Kolkata's Marble Palace is closed all weekend because of Holi, according to the guard, who did let us walk into the marvelously overgrown grounds after we slipped him a 100 note. The marble mansion is falling apart, in a glamorous, "very Mrs. Havisham" way, in the words of our friend Sita. Sita is an ex-Veerni volunteer visiting Kolkata in the name of research. She's writing a detective novel set partly here and partly in London, where she lives.

After this dead end, we gave up on chugging through the smoggy evening in our Ambassador taxi. Sita retired to the deliciously kitschy Fairlawn Hotel, where the lobby is surrounded by cascading Christmas lights, plastic leaves and faux fruit. Jess and I headed to a party at a friend's flat and then... to the "Disc"! The boite de nuit, inexplicably called Dublin, was tucked in the basement of the Sheraton, near the airport. The interior was swank, the dance floor was packed, the beats were thumping--bhangra, classic Bollywood, and ohmygod, at the end, Usher and Biggy. Our Bengali pals showed off their stuff, too; even the bespectacled engineers were working it. We closed the place at 3am, dripping in sweat.

Good times, good times... But unfortunately, I have to do some writing of my own. I'm headed to sequester myself in Darjeeling in a couple days, a cool hill station where I'm hoping to bang out text for an article due in a few weeks.

2005-03-26T02:09:00.000-05:00

Holi festivities. Jess and I are second and third from left in the back, gripping our bhang milk pot.

Holi Culture Shock

2005-03-26T01:06:00.000-05:00

There are no cows on the street in Kolkata. This city feels like home, or at least Eastern Europe, it's so modern. Billboards are in English, because everyone actually speaks this language. There are no puttering, inefficient autorickshaws, only yellow Ambassador taxis.

Our entrance into this city was all the more surreal yesterday because it was Holi, the festival of color: the streets were almost deserted, in a notoriously chaotic city (I feel like I've described each Indian city this way, but really, Kolkata traffic is supposed to be nutty).

In Varanasi, they've been "playing Holi" all week. I was an unwilling participant, strolling on the ghats the other day. A fuschia-colored boy pelted me with a pink water balloon, staining the new linen trousers I had tailor-made in Jaipur. We (Jessica met me here the other day) half wanted to stay on, to see how crazy things would get--plus, we were exhausted--but we'd booked tickets on. So we hauled ourselves to the train station for the 17 hour ride to Kolkata.

No one plays Holi in the streets here--you get fined--so most people get messy behind closed doors. Yesterday we plunked our stuff down, put on our worst clothes and got really, really pink. The family we're staying with took us to a neighbor's roof party, and we were immediately smeared in orange, yellow, green, and pink powders. They dowsed us in water to make the powder take hold and handed us small clay pots with a "herb" cocktail. Everyone from the stern Reiki Grand Master to his teenage daughter had a cup of this drink, a blend of almond milk, ground nuts, and bhang. We sipped ours gingerly, looking out of the balcony onto coconut trees, giant black crows, and high rise apartments ringed by slums.

Later, hair and hands still bright pink, we were taken out for vodka tonics at a kind of lounge restaurant. The band was awful, spouting badly covered Backstreet Boys and George Michael sung by a fake blond Indian women. Conversation revolved around parties, low-carb dieting, and bargaining tactics to get time off work to travel abroad.

I'm reminded of something an English man told me in Jodhpur during my first week in India. I was still in shock, way overstimulated by, er, everything. He laughed and said don't worry, you'll start to love it. The chaos is addicting.

So Kolkata hasn't delivered, yet, but I'm sure my addiction can be sated with a visit to the markets today. If not, I'm going to need another hit of Varanasi.

From Dawn till Dusk

2005-03-22T05:38:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up at 6:30 to Hindu prayers broadcast over loudspeakers from down by Pandhey Ghat. Dhobis (clothes washers) were flubbing garments against the rocks in the Ganges, next to Varanasi's bathing denizens. Already, sharp sunlight cut through the fog--aka pollution--resting over the old city. Boats ferried wide-eyed (and wide lens-toting) tourists back and forth down the river to gawk at the puja-making, and body burning.

Right, the bodies. Varanasi, an ancient city built along the west bank of the revered Ganges River, is the holiest city in Hinduism. Devout Hindus go to this city to die. Families bring bodies to be cremated. Cow owners bring their well-kept herd (these are the best fed bunch I've seen) to swim.

But I didn't head to the ghats right away. Upon arrival in Varanasi I was feeling way, way over stimulated. The Mahrudhar Express, which runs all the way from Jodhpur to Varanasi, pulled into the last station at 12:33pm, just over 3 hours late.

Actually, though, for a 23 hour and 30 minute train ride, it was downright relaxing. I napped on my top bunk (of three), under three whirling fans, and later sat on the steps leaning outside to watch the sunset over the desert--for the last time, dammit!--chatting with some Israeli hippies from the next car over. All six of them, like many of their fellow dreadlocked, drum-toting countrymen have been shanti-shantiying abroad for over a year.

I waved goodbye to them at the train station, expecting to run into them on the ghats in town. But as always I met others a few minutes later. It's funny how the backpacker scene works like this. It's like hey, where're you from, wanna come with us to the market? How about dinner?

Actually, the market was too much, much too much. So I broke away with one Israeli guy, a laid back but tragically dust-allergic teacher, to explore the ghats. Sadhus give neck rubs at the nearby Dasawamedh Ghat (named for the 10 horse sacrifice done by Brahma, the creator), wiley children hawk postcards, boat men vie for business, offering us rides first for Rs 200 then going down to Rs 25 per person. But it was too hot.

It wasn't until late evening that we passed by Harishchandra, one of two ghats where bodies are cremated after an elaborate, if rapidly carried-out (there're always more bodies in the queue) ceremony, their ashes then scattered in the Ganges. First I saw the massive stack of firewood, and a small crowd of tourists gawking from a platform. We walked closer. No one's really paying attention to you, it's just business as usual: kids run around, goats blessed with red powder (tika) eat flowers already used in the ceremony, fat black cows swim nearby. There was a charred torso in the fire, and another corpse nearby on a bamboo stretcher, covered with a gold cloth and flower necklace. A man in flip flops pushed more wood on the fire, which was smoking a lot. I felt uneasy standing so close, and the smoke was quite thick, so we walked away, up the stairs past a rushing small river of sewage.

Later, at night, we walked by the ghat again. The drumming hadn't ceased, the bells still rang out, the fires still burned. Death stops for no man.

Do the Locomotion

2005-03-20T05:19:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to be on a bus to see one of the seven wonders of the world today. Instead, I'm still in Jaipur fending off heat stroke with cold showers every few hours.

Saturday morning was spent at Jaipur's train station having a crash course in Indian bureaucracy. I was trying to secure a ride between Agra, the city where the Taj Mahal stands, and Varanasi.

After waiting in the designated queue for Senior Citizens, Handicapped Persons, and
Foreign Visitors, a disgruntled, balding man sent me to check routes around the corner, at Reservations Inquires.

At the front of the line, finally, elbowing out all the men trying to cut, we--I and about 6 other tourists trying for this route--were told that the Agra-Varanasi train was booked. The whole week. Skeptical--everything in India is possible, right?--I asked about 2nd tier a/c sleeper, 3rd tier a/c sleeper, 2nd class, 1st class, 10th class, I don't know, everything. "Not possible."

Refusing to go home empty-handed, I thought to buy a ticket for the next leg of the trip, Varanasi-Kolkata. I set out to break the India Railway Atlas code, that ingeniously encripted listing of every route with all its major stops. Realizing Kolkata was alternatively spelled Calcutta, or Haora, one of about 15 subsidiary stations, I deciphered the route to that West Bengal city from Varanasi. Crowing with pride, I promptly purchased two tickets for a whopping Rs 800 each--it is a 16 hour journey--for the wrong date, the 25th. This means Jessica and I will arrive in Kolkata, a notoriously chaotic city--Indians are saying this, you must understand--at 11am on March 26: in the midst of the notoriously chaotic annual festival of Holi.

Brooding about the likelyhood of Jess and I emerging unscathed from the street mobs that rally on the festival of color, I bumped smack into Bhati outside the railway station. He was looking after his fleet of Ambassadors from the shade of the motercycle parking shelter. He motioned for me to have a seat on one of the bikes' wide leather seats. Over salty lassis, fetched in plastic bags by one of his lackies, he dismissed the idea that a train ticket to Varanasi on Monday would be impossible. "Anything is possible, you just have to ask me," he reminded me.

In a moment my driver Jagat Singh had scurryed over to the station to see about this ticket. I tried to picture him walking in and ... then what? He obviously wasn't going to the same window I was. Where, where did he go?

In seven minutes I was told the ticket would be forthcoming. Another buzz on Bhati's cell and it was confirmed. "Monday morning ticket will come," he said. But Monday is when I'm supposed to leave, I pointed out. "Well then Sunday you will have the ticket." Sunday the station is closed. Nevermind, Bhati knows the guy in charge. Undoubtedly, there were some rupees enchanged.

Such is the way of India. The bureaucracy is intolerably inefficient, so those with money don't tolerate it. If you need a phone line put in, you'll be filling out papers and pleading with officials to stamp this and that for 6, 9 months. Obviously, you skip those unbecoming steps and fork over the expected bribe.

I'll just go on a tangent now and note that the justice system is no different. From what I hear, if you get convicted of a crime, a speeding ticket or a triple murder, there is an amount of money that will extracate you from the situation. It might be whatever you've got in your pocket when if the officer's poor, Rs 50 or 100. Or your aunty's cousin's brother finds the right man and pays him the correct sum.

Is it Rajasthan that is this backwards? I have one day left in this 'land of kings' and then I'll see. If I ask the right person.

Seeing Pink

2005-03-18T06:30:00.000-05:00

A day in India is not complete without a meltdown. Ok, maybe in Jodhpur there were a few days when we'd stay in the realm of friends and co-workers, and thus out of the maddenly aggressive/unpredictable outside world. Today was not one of those days.

The day and my temper started out cool. I was picked up by my driver, whose name I asked and promptly forgot, at 8:30. We drove out past the normal motley roadside crew--photos to be posted later--to Amber Fort, where I sprinted up the stairs past crews of tourist-laden elephants to the top. It felt good as hell to get some exercise. I tagged along with an American tour group for laughs, and some explanation of the labyrinth-like structure. Obviously the Rs 75 entry fee did not cover the printing of signs. There were however tour leaders yelling over each other in English, French, German, and Hindi. The American tour guide was visibly condescending to his fat, pale, and well-winded herd. I saw why when one of the fanny-packed women asked if the hooks in the ceiling were for "for the slaves." He politely but firmly explained that neither Mughals nor Hindus historically held slaves; "unlike you Americans" was unspoken and probably unappreciated by the larger audience. One of the younger men sported a too-tight t-shirt boasting of his Crawford heritage: "The home of George W. Bush."

Moving on, I checked out some awesome vistas of the 9km stone wall snaking up and over the surrounding hills, the separate quarters for the Maharaja's 300 concubines, and admired the forward-thinking engineering of an air conditioning system rigged up with piped-in water and narrow, textured stone canals.

My driver suggested the next couple stops, but even knowing the so-obvious commission to expect to be tacked onto the price, I agreed. I don't think I'm paying for this driver, I should note, and I wanted to make sure my Indian pal Bhati who's arranged it gets a cut.

So we went to a textiles emporium called Areweli. I picked out two pairs of trousers and three tops, and balked at the price: Rs 2040, a fortune. He threw in a yellow scarf, so I said ok.

I said I didn't want jewelry but I was taken to Monto Bello gems "just for look." They brought out the chai. I mentioned my palm reader's prescription to wear moonstone or diamonds for protection and was soon showed about 1500 specimens of both. The diamonds were beautiful, but I decided against spending $200 on a microscopic nose ring. Right, I hadn't meant to buy anything, but here we were at least 45 minutes into my browsing session. I got a ring for $6, probably what I'd pay in the states, so I hope Mr. Bhati got a cut.

Then somebody's sweaty, balding uncle decides to read my palm. "In 15 seconds I know everything about your forecast," he promised. I was already feeling annoyed that I'd wasted an hour inside this joint but didn't move away. He told me--shocking--that I like to travel. "Your education is not much, it was bumpy," he continued, "you will not have success in teaching or journalism"--the two work stints I'd mentioned to his cousins--"and you think too much." Yeah, I wasted a freaking hour in this shop deciding between white and whiter moonstones; he was right. I shook his hand and exited.

Ok, that's not exactly true. There was that afore mentioned meltdown. I mentioned my English literature degree as proof that I wasn't an illiterate schmuck, and he shook his head: "this is not educated; this is your native tongue." Oh really? "No, chemistry degree, engineering, this is education." He was telling me to write about Hinduism, that it was an all-knowing science which could foretell the future. I responded with a lot of silly words, like relativism, faith, rationality. Soon this became "and you're WRONG about EVERYTHING."

A fruit seller charging double at the next corner was on the receiving end of another tantrum: "it's because I'm WHITE isn't it?"

Then I went home and dunked in the pool. Hey, it could be a lot worse.

There's a French girl I met recently who can't go anywhere without attracting hoards of men staring, or worse, grabbing. Every day she returns to her guest house in furious tears. I just heard she had Rs 5000 stolen in Jaiselmer.

An Australian girl I met on the train got a kidney infection her first week in India. She was doubled over in pain, peeing blood, before she finally went to the hospital. The doctors said it was something in the water.

In India there is harassment, there are exorbitant foreigner prices. But with a little anger management comes perspective. I'm not Indian. My lungs will recuperate after a month of coughing up black sludge. Back home, dirty children are playing in the sandboxes, not begging at stoplights. No one looks twice at me in New York, unless I'm walking too slowly. Even at the ripe old age of 25, I'm not having my marriage arranged. In Soho, fixed price really does mean fixed, whether you're white, brown or green. And it will be a hell of a lot more expensive.

In the Pink

2005-03-17T00:27:00.000-05:00

Yipes, I'm in Jaipur. Traffic in the pink city--so dubbed for the the old city walls' dusky shade of pink is much more hectic than Jodhpur, what with Jaipur's 3.5 million inhabitants. On the upside, non diesel-spewing rickshaw bicycles make up a good proportion of the road mayham. I have yet to try one but hear you can get a lift for only 5 rupees (like 10 cents).

I'm sure it's nothing compared to Dehli, which I'm skipping. Everyone says it's expensive, horrendously crowded, polluted, and so sprawled in every direction it's impossible to get anywhere in under an hour.

Here in Jaipur I'm staying at Sajjan Niwas, a cute Martha's Vinyard-meets-Arabian Nights style guest house next to an even more outrageous piece of gingerbread Decor de l'Este called Umaid Bhawan. Both are owned by members of my Sun City mama Neeta's family, so I'm well looked after. Good thing, too, because it's my first step out into India on my own. I have no itinary, just the pressure of the skyrocketing temperature to urge me east to meet friends in Kolkata. My non-plan is basically to arrive before there Holi, the Hindu festival on March 27 that sounds like a chaoticly Indian version of paint gun play. It's a raucous event in which crowds in the streets pelt each other with colors in the form of powder, liquid and colored water balloons. It's a day you should be somewhere with friends, I'm told, as the throngs in cities can get aggressive.

Speaking of aggressive, yesterday I ventured into the old city bazaars, which even with its shockingly perpendicular street grid were disorienting. As usual the shop signs are in Hindi and though the shops are numbered all the streets look identical. I miss having Jodhpur's looming fort to orient myself. I browsed in Johari gate, the jewelry district, then bought some leather thongs and a delicious papaya lassi for 10 rupees. But the traffic, heat and smog was exhausting, so I dialed my Jaipur guru Bhati for help. According to his own account, Bhati is a driver boss/textiles exporter/ex-journalist/party person whom I've met through Jessica. When she was FOP (the shell-shocked state one enters into upon deplaning in India) he showed her around Jaipur. Actually it's probably due to him that she didn't get right back on the plane.

Yesterday I could relate. Luckily, just when my energy was flagging Bhati zipped over in his silver painted Ambassador taxi. We chugged through the conjested streets, past the Floating Palace, which unlike Udaipur's is still sitting in water, albeit a much-depleted, stinky lake. We tooled up the hills and drove through a narrow entryway into the old Tiger Fort, another of the Maharaja's old roosts. Sitting atop a watchtower, we had cold Kingfishers and watched the day wane. As the sun got dim and orange the unworldly dine of prayers rose up the cliff from countless incanters in mosques below. This is an unofficially segregated Muslim neighborhood (could you call anything in India official?). 30% of Jaipur is Muslim but they're mostly poor laborers (and their women, who sit sideways on the back of motorcycles in long black burkas). From the watchtower, I looked down at hundreds of their thin tin roofs anchored on with piles of rocks.

Bhati wants to take me to the Taj Mahal, but I think I'll decline. It seems to me he's looking to relive his last visit to this great monument to love. He went 8 years ago with his English girlfriend, who subsequently dumped him and married someone in her own country. He was heartbroken and tells the story to anyone who'll listen.

So I'm at a crossroads. Either I venture on to this Wonder of the World alone--in notoriously aggressive Agra--or skip it and head to Varanasi.

2005-03-13T05:52:00.000-05:00

One of the circus posters around Jodhpur. We are still trying to snag one but they're pasted on pretty well.

2005-03-13T02:39:00.000-05:00

Sushila Suthar stands up straight. She's the 11 year old sister of one of Jessica's students. This is her family's one room home.

It's Getting Hot in Herre

2005-03-08T05:26:00.000-05:00

Oh my goodness, get me out of the desert now. It's been two months since I touched down in India and aside from one frantic Mumbai day I've spent the entire time staring at a flat beige landscape. I'm accustomed to the same five scrawny dogs fight over bones all night every night, though I still harbor hope of shooing them away by throwing things at them from our balcony. The same garishly painted rickshaws putter back and forth, honking at bumps in the road. The dust and diesel particles in the air have settled down inside my lungs, now uncomplaining. I stopped coughing ages ago. It's no longer alarming that my nose is coated in black grime.

Enough complaining. I'm working on a project that's keeping me here in Jodhpur past my teaching stint with the Veerni Project. It's a study of child marriage, an archaic practice that's still thrieving here in backwards Rajasthani villages. Actually I saw one my first day teaching in Khatawas, though they told me at the time the brides were 18. Yeah right, they were barely 4 feet tall. I thought they were hunched over, swaddled in veils, but I've discovered since they actually were 12 years old at most. I'm going to the village tomorrow to find out more.

A Piece of Cake

2005-03-01T07:07:00.000-05:00

Neeta Rathore and the Sun City Guest House staff threw Jessica the best cake-and-streamers birthday she'd had since she was 10. As usual this little rascal stole the show (at least until 12 year old Sourage, a live-in servant, came out in drag). Samdeen wiggled and jiggled up a storm at the impromptu dance party, to the ultra-popular Dhoom soundtrack, that followed cake. And sure enough, vomiting ensued in the courtyard.

Smell You Later

2005-03-01T07:06:00.000-05:00

Speaking of vomit, please read no further if you've just eaten. Uh, and don't look at the picture. One of these elephants was having a stomach disaster, judging from the yellow/brown rivelets oozing down his back legs. The smell got worse after the stuff sat under the hot lights, especially for those close to the ring in the expensive "Raj Circle" seats. This was the last circus act I stayed for.

Sit Up Straight

2005-03-01T07:05:00.000-05:00

Elephants stacking themselves. Later they walked over a strong man.

Bunkiss Reincarnated as a Circus Act

2005-03-01T07:04:00.000-05:00

Lulled near to sleep with the oppresive heat under the tent, I woke up when three white dogs trooped in to do tricks. They look just like 'ol Bunkiss Reis, and are equally skittish, it seems, for circus acts at least. Right after this photo was taken two of them made a break for it and escaped out the back. One was left to jump through burning hoops alone that were barely bigger than himself.

Remember to Use Flouride, Kids

2005-03-01T07:03:00.000-05:00

These girls were each gripping the line with their teeth, spinning rapidly as they were yanked up and down in the air by a pulley. On the other end of the pulley was a rope held by 5 skinny teenage boys. The girls, apparently, are the reason most people come. They're dressed like dancers in a 50 Cent video--ok not that hoed-out--but pretty racy by Jodhpur standards. Also, they're like 13.

All Together Now

2005-03-01T07:01:00.000-05:00

During the circus overture, the whole cast trooped out to half-wave hello. The midgets were actually the best trampoliners, doing crazy spins and flips.

A Colorful Crowd

2005-03-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Spectators at the Rajkamal Circus in Jodhpur. Though entertaining, it was typically cruel to its participants, and for a change also to the audience. Halfway through the 3.5 hour show it was at least 95 degrees under the not-so-Big Top, which was also effective in trapping every the scent of every beast--wet rhinos, donkeys, moterbikes, ect--that entered the ring.

2005-03-01T06:59:00.000-05:00

On the sand dune.

2005-03-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

Me and Tee Tee.

Camel's Eye View

2005-03-01T06:55:00.000-05:00

Fellow Veerni volunteer Nisha and I rented camels for an afternoon in Osian, a small town an hour north of Jodhpur. You have to mount the camel when he's lying on the ground, they're so massive. Then you hang on while he straightens first his forelegs--whoa!--then his back legs. These babies are racing camels so their legs alone are about five feet high.

Livin' on a Prayer

2005-02-25T13:38:00.000-05:00

India is miles away from the west in so many ways, but in spirituality it's off the map entirely. My first morning in Bombay I woke up, jet-lagged, to a Muslim call to prayer at 4am. Actually it was three calls to prayer, broadcast at top volume almost simultaneously around this rather posh apartment building where I was staying, over three sets of loudspeakers from surrounding mosques.

All Hindus do puja (pray) at least twice daily. They burn incense and ring bells to wake up the gods, represented by small statues in mini alters tucked away in the most unlikely places (cupboards, bookshelves, laundry rooms): the locals' popular choices among the 33 million-strong amalgam of Hindu deities seem to be Ganesh, the cute, plump god with an elephant's head, the monkey god Hanuman, and any incarnation of the plucky blue-skinned Krishna. They also chant mantras to photos or paintings of local gurus and martyrs. The Sun City Guest House family has taped up headshots of a beatific older women in the dining area and by the steering wheel in their old white Ambassador. I thought at first it was somebody's grandma, but when I asked Pushapender Rathore he informed me in his usual booming lecture voice that she is a sati. This women, from a village 30 km away, starved herself for 30 years after her husband died, to show her boundless devotion to his memory. Then when this apparently did not work she burned herself to death. The Rathores have made pilgrimages to this village to worship her.

Our Hindi teacher, Dayal, spends most of his days with his guru. Dayal is a well-educated man (he specialized in theology, philosophy and economics, which he normally lectures on at a university nearby). He's told us that we must come see his guru--who by the way is a married women with kids--sometime soon, that he feels happy always like a small child near his mother with her.

The other day he read our palms. He marked up the lines on our right palms in red ink at significant points where big life events will occur. The lines, mounds and cracks on this hand are supposed to be where your accumulated karma from past lives shows up. These dictates your fate.

And what did he see on mine? I have a profitable future in academics, possibly teaching, and will tap into my spiritual side late in life: write a lot of poetry. Alright, that's cool. But he also said I'll be truly fulfilled when I have kids, 3-4, starting at 27. Uh-huh.

He advised me to wear a diamond on my right ring finger for protection and strength, which exactly what the quack star chart lady had suggested.

Jessica was advised to wear moon stone. Telling her to travel east, he stopped, saying "oh, I shouldn't tell you this..." She yelped, "do I die?" He said, "no, but you will murder someone." Dayal continued, "don't worry, it could be self-defense, when your enemies come for you..."

We're going to get some bling on, quick.

Ah...Eee... I... Oh... Ung

2005-02-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm taking Hindi lessons. I'm fed up with speaking in broken English to make myself understood, and quite excited to butcher a whole new language.

I realized something had to change last Friday night, when I was sitting around a campfire in the desert after dinner. We were watching gypsies dance and I was speaking like one.

I turned to my friend Sarah, pointed over to a silver urn and asked, "hot water, hands, for clean, yah?" She looked at me for a minute, then said "did you just hear yourself?" She and Jessica were in hysterics for five minutes.

We were in Jaiselemer, an ancient fort town in the middle of the Thar Desert, for less than 48 hours. Unhappily, we just missed the start of their much-touted Desert Festival--camel racing, mustache twirling, fire breathing, oh my! Sarah stayed on to see the festivities. She returned to Jodhpur with sunstroke, babbling about all the midgets, Eunichs and men in peacoat feathers she met hanging with the gypsies.

I returned to attend Veerni's monthly meeting, in which a staffer gave lectures and demonstrations on infertility. This was mainly to prove that it's not necessarily the ladies' fault if no baby's coming in 9 months. All 30 of us at the meeting threw rocks in a bucket to show the odds of getting pregnant. The staffer declared that only 5 of our "worms" (the Hindi word) had made it. The no-nonsense Major interrupted and corrected her, "that would be sperm." Luckily, the meeting was translated for me by Veerni's new medical volunteer, Nisha, a doctor who is an NRI (Non Resident Indian) from Wales.

But all the funny bits lose something in retelling. And I'm always missing out on the raunchy jokes the female staffers tell in the van on the way to the villages. So Jess and I have hired a meditation yogi/Economics professor/English tutor to give us Hindi 101 in our guest house. Today was our first session. He told us, finally, how to tell these crazy rickshaw drivers that we know the correct fare and it's not 50 rupees and NO, GO STRAIGHT!

Mera sida challow... To sleep...