Thoughts On the Return

Party We had a going away party last Friday night. It was a nice event, all around, with some hilarious moments, of which I'll share an edited few: :: Me being the only sober person for 8 hours straight. :: Twenty University of California students showing up at the same time. None of them wanted to drink, and almost all of them looked at us like we were totally crazy. :: This exchange between me and an unidentified Columbia student: "Dude, where's the girl?" "What girl?" "The girl outside." ", we are outside." Pause. "Touche." :: The son of the Principal of the Landour Language School getting tipsy and proclaiming to us all that "I can destroy you all with my mind alone!" He's 17. :: Four hours of some unbelievably funny dancing. :: A 15-minute debate between and unidentified Brown student and an unidentified UC student about whether or not the fruits in question were in fact pickled lemons or pickled limes, culminating in this brilliant observation: "No, no. Trust me. I'm a music person. Lemon's have a kind of a decrescendo that limes do not. This is a decrescendo. This is a lemon. This is not a lime." :: Twenty UC students all leaving at once, without a word exchanged between them or us about it. Rather a psychic moment. :: "This whole not-drinking thing makes you creepy." - Maive, a UC student, regarding me. I have no idea what she was talking about. After the mass of UC students left I just became the general photographer/caretaker of my crazily dancing friends. The music continued till about 3 in the morning when I had the presence of mind to realize that we were probably keeping the whole valley awake. It took some convincing, but the music came down. It went back up again the first time I left the room, but came down permanently after that. There was much conversation and laughing till closing in on a lightening sky. Leaving We all got up early to a laughing Gambhir. Apparently, he came down several times to check on us through the windows and found us hilarious. So did his whole family. Apparently. Our last breakfast in Mussoorie was fantastic. It was mostly the same as we'd been having every day before school, but everything was just really well done. There was new jam, the eggs were seasoned a little bit but not too much. It was just nice. Lunch was the same way: still dal and rice, but with a new kind of fragrance and a more smooth taste. After lunch we all rushed to pack everything and get in the taxis by 3:00. I hadn't remembered bringing that much stuff, but jesus my pack was heavy. After my experience at the Delhi station the first time, I was highly distrustful of porters so I carried my own, heavy bag up the stairs to the taxis (160.5 stairs at 9000 feet - not an easy task), to the train, and loaded it in the luggage rack all by myself. Although everyone else blindly trusted their valuables and all their clothes for the next 5 months to people they didn't know, couldn't communicate with, and who were paid at a rate well below India's laughable poverty line, I thought it'd be prudent not to. Plus I didn't have to pay anything, which was good. But it seemed I was being overly cautious. No one lost their bags. Every single one made it to the train and up on the rack. The taxi ride down to Dehradun was one of the most beautiful I've ever taken. I've been reading My Life, by Bill Clinton, which is rather great, but I couldn't even touch it during the ride down. It had just rained that afternoon while we were packing, and it the rain was still a fading presence as we snaked around mountain hillsides and descended to the plains. This light, misty composition to the air made it explode in yellows and pinks and blues. As the clouds exhausted themselves, the whole of the valley was visible to us, literally hundreds of miles across to the horizon, where another, smaller, mountain range stuck up like tacks through the backside of a paper. Off to the northwest the sun reflected off the rivers that fell from the mountains and rolled toward their ocean destiny. The whole thing was golden and glittering and dramatic. I don't think the people of Dehradun will ever know how gorgeous their dirty, polluted, crowded, impolite little city looked that day. I don't think anyone could ever really relate it to them. In a sense it was India defined: massive, inexplicable, tear-inducing natural beauty laid over an intricate human problem. How blessed this country is, and how cursed. The train ride to Delhi was largely uneventful. I wrote letters to people and read Clinton's book. Brinda met us at the Delhi station (she actually knew, somehow, what car we were on and came on the car with porters to help us take our stuff away). Outside the train station, we realized that this, really, was it. Over the past month our Brown-in-India group has become very tight, very family-like. They've been invaluable in helping me tear me thoughts away from the western horizon and a particular star in the sky and placing me back in the here and now. I feel amazingly comfortable with every single member of the group and love them dearly. At Delhi Railway Station, though, we realized that our family was going to be broken and placed across a metropolis from itself. Myra, Marla, and Jenn are going to Lady Shri Ram College on Delhi's south side (Greater Kailaish - Part 1 if you're keeping score at home). I'm going to miss their everyday presence. The first-month family turned asunder. Alas. Delhi God this place is big. I haven't felt in the presence of such a mass of humanity since I flew into Los Angeles on the way back from Sydney. It just keeps going and going and going... It's so muddled and so buzzing, as well. On every road there are people walking, sitting, sleeping, driving. There are cows walking totally unmolested through the streets, looking for random grass to cut down. Skinny dogs nimbly pick dropped food off sidewalks, dodging the brooms and rocks hurtled at them from shopkeepers (dukhandars, in Hindi). There's tons of green and brown. Organic life just busts out of every crack and crevice, every median is a developed jungle, every sidewalk an impromptu garden. How blessed this country is... Dust swirls from air pushed by tires to the side of the road and back, occasionally lifting off the ground to pepper eyes, ears and noses (thank the lord for q-tips, or ear buds as they call them here). ...and how cursed. From all accounts, this is the weirdest monsoon season on record. The monsoon is over two weeks late. It usually arrives with mechanical precision on June 29, I believe (can't be positive on that quite yet) and, despite our impressions and the declarations of weathermen at the time, the downpour we got when we left for Mussoorie was not the start of the Monsoon. The government says that they're giving it a week more before they declare a crisis situation. India depends on the monsoon rains because it's the only rain they get the whole year, basically. It rains like hell between June and late September and then not again till late March if they're lucky. So it needs to happen soon or it might not happen at all, goes the logic. And if it doesn't happen at all, people will die on an epic scale and it's quite possible I'll have to leave India prematurely. So pray for some damn rain, please. Home Sweet Home The Raj Narain Road Apartment is just gorgeous. It's a little more sparse than I remember, but just as big and just as comfortable. Rob and I have the corner room with an extremely powerful air conditioner. Now that I've got all my stuff moved in and I'm quite settled, it's really starting to feel homey. It'll feel even more homey when we get our super-p1mped out cable modem in here at the end of the week and I can upload some pictures to you all. I'm rather psyched for that, I have to say. You'll not believe the stuff I've seen here and have to show for you all.