briSite

Though it's in its rough stages (I set it up during breaks from writing final papers), I've finally managed to kick the blogger habit and set up my own site, brisite. It has all the former MWT entries, all my kind of miscellaneous stuff, and the stuff I'm writing about now. Notably not travel related, though I'm working on fixing that. There's always another adventure...

To Hell With Tom Wolfe

You can go home again. And it can be beautiful. Merry Christmas, everybody. It feels great to be home.

Done

Oh, and it feels so good. Off to party my last real night here.

A Walking Duality

Such a weird place to be in right now. I am a walking duality. One part of me is just done, has had enough of India and its madness and its aggravation. This part of me is oh-so-ready for Paris and home, beyond that. Yet, at the same time, there is another part of me that is breaking up inside at the thought of leaving these people I've become so close to in the past 6+ months. Luckily I've had quite a bit of work to focus on these last few days, so the shock of it really hasn't totally set in, but I can feel it coming on as these papers get whittled down to fine points. These people, Rob, Mike, Noel, Cat, Anusha, Mira, Marla and Jenn, are absolutely members of my family. Though I'm a few hypothetically blissful days away from my real family, it's testimony to how tight we've become here that the last time I felt something like this was when I was in the car on the way to Logan on June 14th. It's different, but it's the closest approximation. I feel the impending loss as much as I did then. Maybe this is just the way things happen. Maybe loss is balanced by expectation. Maybe the end really is the beginning is the end. I'll be sure to tell you about it. In Other News Since now three seperate people have emailed me about this, and only one in jest, I didn't actually meet a hot art history student on the internet who I'm going to visit in Paris, though so much of our communication is done online of late that it almost qualifies as an apt description. I know her quite well actually. I've even met her once or twice, so have no fear. ;) Has to Be Said The Taj Mahal is the single most beautiful building in the world. It's more than the hype. It's more than my words, but I'm really gonna try. I'm going to write the update on the plane and who knows when I'll find time to type and upload it. It'll get here eventually, though. How else could I finish this up?

Taj Tomorrow and Beyond

I'm off to Agra all day tomorrow to see the most beautiful building in the world. Check back soon to hear about it. In other news, I love you all and miss you desperately. Some more than others. ;) I'm counting down the days. For those not in the know, I'm going to Paris for a week on the 17th to see this hot art history student I met on the internet. She sure looked pretty in her photo, so we'll see what happens. :) On December 23rd, I'm back on an Air France flight to Boston, then a car ride home with the family. I cannot tell possibly explain to you in words how much I miss them and how much I'm looking forward to spending Christmas with them. And you all, my extended family and friends, I miss you guys, too. I've learned here is that life really is too short and there isn't enough love in the world, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to say that you all make my life worth it and I don't know what I'd do without you, even the people that drive me crazy. I love you all and am doing my best to be deserving of your love and support. I know it's still a bit early, but have a Merry Christmas season. You deserve it. Trust me.

Tik ta?

I think I just passed my Hindi exam. I'll know by Monday, but I felt pretty good. The last page was just incomprehensible. It was a dialogue between two girls speaking lots and lots of slang and I probably got 2 out of the 4 questions right. It was only maybe 5 percent of the grade, so I'm not that worried about it. I got the big stuff ok. I'm reticent to even post this, because any mention of grades and my mom freaks out, good or bad, so no news is usually the best policy. But I'm done with a semester of an extremely alien language and I can say that I do, actually, understand quite a bit of it. My vocabulary isn't as good as I'd want, but I can communicate pretty effectively most of the time. My listening skills aren't remotely close to what they are in French, but I have crossed the b.s. threshold, where even if I don't totally know what's going on, I can convincingly come across like I do. This, I don't need to tell you, is an important threshold to have crossed, especially for me. I'm undecided as to whether or not I'm going to continue to study Hindi. Part of me thinks I could be better served either by taking more advanced French or starting a new language, either Spanish or Arabic. We shall see. On verra. Hum dekhengue. UPDATE: Officially passed. Got a B overall.

Pushkar - Thoughts from the Mela

"I don't remember anything. I only remember ideas and emotions," said Buck Mulligan. That's a bit like what my experience in Pushkar was like, though not exclusively. I can't help but wonder, though, when I look back at all this travel if that won't become my summary statement on it all. On verra. Nocturnal I hadn't been sleeping. For two weeks it was the cough. I'd sleep for 40 minutes or so at a time, then rouse myself with a nasty coughing fit. Rob was losing his mind as much as I was: he's a rather light sleeper. Things like the power light from our speakers can keep him awake, so a high-decibel, constant, raw-sounding hack was enough to drive him into the living room. After the cough had mostly passed, there was a succession of birthdays that kept us up till early morning, never in bed till 5 or so. Great times, all around: people had fantastic birthdays, but I was damned annoyed to be functionally nocturnal again. It paid off on the day we left for Pushkar, though, because I just stayed up till 4, called the taxi-wallah to wake him up, then made tea and got everyone else up to get going. Heartland It was still dark as night as we pulled out of the station. I spent most of the journey with my iPod and sunglasses on, occasionally waking up to read Catch 22.

Side note: Catch-22 is brilliant. It's beautiful and dark and raw and poignant and funny. If I ever write something half as powerful, I will consider my life a success.

I dozed off and on, never for more than 10 minutes at a time, the whole way to Pushkar. That Saturday was Grandpa's birthday and he was very much on my mind (see entry). What a guy, my Grandpa. Everybody in my family is thankful that we've somehow got a bit of his genetic code. The dude is 90, now, and still is out there everyday, farming. FARMING! He's got two fake hips, but the last time I asked him about them he reported that "They feel about as well as they ever did. Darned fantastic things they can do these days." I hope I can get out there next summer to help with harvest. Ajmer The train stops rattled off, more exotic names and more arid land the farther from Delhi we got. It was early afternoon by the time we pulled in to Ajmer, where we got off for the ride to Pushkar. The first thing we noticed was the heat. We figured the desert would be cooling off to something akin to the gorgeously mild weather Delhi's experiencing right now: 70's and 80's during the day, dropping to a brisk sweater-weather at night. We were wrong. It was 85� in Pushkar when we got there at 11AM, and only increased as the day wore on.

Side note: Dilliwallas are wimps. The weather in Delhi right now is just gorgeous. Perfect, basically, except for the dust. Yet you talk to a Dilliwalla at night, just after you reluctantly put on a light sweater, and you don't hear anything because their parka is muffling their voices. They open up for just long enough to say "Aren't you freezing?" When you respond that you love this weather, especially in December, they say something about "crazy Americans" as they button back up their complicated coverings.

It's... clean. We took two big jeeps from Ajmer to Pushkar. To get there, we had to go up and over a sizable little desert mountain. The views, even in rattling jeep, were beautiful. Rolling plains extended to the horizon, slices of rocky mountains dividing the expanse into valleys. Coming down the other side, we caught a glimpse of the holy lake at Pushkar and a dust cloud off to the Northwest. I really do like the desert. I said this the whole weekend at Pushkar, and eventually someone said "You know, just because you like Lawrence of Arabia doesn't mean you need to act the part." Well, touch�, but the point holds: Rajasthan is just unrelentingly beautiful. T.E. Lawrence was right, in the movie, anyway, when Bentley asks him "What attracts you personally to the desert?" and Lawrence replies "It's... clean." Amen. The lines are rugged but close inspection shows them smooth and mobile. It's gorgeous. I can't wait to get out, someday, into the proper Thar Desert and then the Arabian. I heard a story, I think from Rob, about a German woman who comes to Egypt every summer and just takes 4 camels and supplies and heads out into the Sahara alone. I can totally see doing that, though I'd prefer horses. More on the horses v. camels debate later, but the solitude, the beauty, the stars at night, the silence, like you brushed up against eternity and it stared back at you... it'd be well worth it. Labor Replacement Everything in Rajasthan is camels. That's the most noticeable difference between Delhi and Rajasthan is the camels. In Delhi, bulls, donkeys and small horses are the mainstay small-freight delivery methods. In Rajasthan, camels of varying sizes and numbers take the place of all three. Just on the road into Pushkar, we saw much variety in camel usage. Pulling carts of varying sizes, serving as personal transportation, serving as shade generators. Interesting, really. The Zoo/Hotel Our hotel was called the Sunset Hotel and Caf�. The first thing I noticed was all the white people. It's still such a shock for me to see white people in India. I'm so used to billions of brown faces and brown eyes, that it's sort of weird to see white (or red, actually, as was the case with many of them) faces, blue and green eyes, and wildly varying accents. It was like being in a zoo. A Caucasian zoo. We were all pointing and staring, as if there were glass between the strange creatures and us. Throughout the next four days, the shock never totally went away, but we did find that the Caucasian Zoo only had two real species in it: young, faux-spiritual, unwashed, tan, hash-smoking hippies, and aging, tour-group-led, matching-hat-wearing, huge-camera-toting, sunburned, rich, hash-smoking retirees. The Holy Lake at Pushkar It's almost perfectly round. It's eerie, really, but certainly calming. It's the calm shared by all holy places, even crowded touristy ones: it's brain-quieting, like when Mom closed the door after kissing me goodnight when I was a kid, leaving just a crack of light to filter into the room. It's that kind of Pavlovian response, triggering some systems in me and shutting others down. Our hotel looked out on the lake from one of the Ghats (platforms for visiting the lake and performing a Pooja or holy dip) straight to the west. The result was a perfect look at, of course, the sunset, thus the hotel's name. Just sitting there on the terrace of the restaurant, looking out at the lake and the mountain and the sunset was just good for the soul, even if some of the actual "religious" activity surrounding the holy lake was less than savory. I was a stupid tourist when it came to actually visiting the lake, somehow forgetting in that beautiful, heavy, holy atmosphere, all the good instincts I've picked up traveling. Fleeced The temples at Pushkar have an ingenious method of acquiring pilgrims. At the start of one stretch of tourist heaven/hell half a block away from the lake, a peaceful-looking holy man in all white, wrinkles befitting sand dunes, hands tourists marigolds without saying a word. The charmed tourists take the marigolds and walk on. Another holy crony, this one in plain clothes, posing as a helpful passerby, says "You must hold it in your right hand!" The charmed tourists dutifully switch hands, the marigolds dampening from the residue of perspiring Pepsi bottles. A little further on, the tourists pass an opening between overpriced Rajasthani camel wear. Another man in white is standing there and picks out the smitten tourists from a mile away, looking for their clenched right fists. As they approach, he walks out into the foot traffic and says "I see you have an offering. Come this way to throw it in the lake and receive your blessing." Most charmed tourists march, lemming-like and giggling, down the alley, into the ghat. When the tourists are isolated, the pitch/ceremony begins. Impressive, and probably sincere, Sanskrit recitations start, which tourist-lemmings are supposed to repeat in small chunks, phonetically. This is followed by an English translation: "For mother," splash of water toward the lake, "for father," splash, "for sister", splash, "for brother"--"I don't have a brother," the lemming perks up. "Not in this life, of course, but in your previous life. Pray for his soul." "Oh, right, of course." "For myself," splash, "for success," splash, "for love." Rinse (literally) and repeat. In front of the tourist is the plate with water, the afore-mentioned marigold, and red dyes. The pitch starts in earnest:

"Some people come here, they give $50, $100, $200--wait, you're American?" "Yes." "$10,000, $15,000." "They just throw it in the lake?" "They give it to the temple." "Oh. What for?" "We are a holy charity." "Oh, well, I give--" "It will give you very good karma." "You can buy???" "You do not buy anything. Lord Brahma gives it to you." "In exchange for money." "In exchange for charity," the holy man says, and the pitch moves on. "How much do you have on you?" "Not much." "I think you can give... $200." "How bout 100 rupees?" "Oh, sir, you have many blessings in your life," he says, nailing a kernel of truth, "and your kindness shall be repaid to you in the future."

Searching through a drawn-out wallet, the lemming sees 70 rupees. Looking around at the other tourists, with large wads of cash being broken out, the lemming feels unnaturally guilty and borderline disrespectful, against all instincts. He grabs 270, all his better parts rebelling in a losing battle to unspoken, quasi-religious peer pressure. As soon as it is out, a miracle happens: the money has passed through some alternate quantum dimension, out of his hand and into the quickly buttoned pocket of the holy man in front of him. "Now, finally, I would like you to pray for me and my family." The tourist's eyes are itching to roll and forget the whole thing, yet enough of his mind is still taken with the peace within chaos that the lake itself provides. 100 rupees later, the tourist is standing alone, finally, at the edge of the lake with the silver dish in his hands, the prayerful debris of previous pilgrims and suckers floating idly towards the southern end of the lake. Thoughts flash through his head of the 1st Commandment, whether he is committing a serious act of blasphemy, about whether he was actually being disrespectful to Hinduism by doing this. He thinks about the words of the prayer he had just spoken, ostensibly to another God. For family, for friends, for me... In the end, he decides, in a simple and not entirely un-childish manner, that there must really be just one God, but he goes by different names and does different things depending on what culture he's seen in. This thought does what true religious experiences have always done: made him feel more connected to everyone around him, more entitled to be at this holy place, more at peace, more centered. It's the same feeling he got, intensely, at Mt. St. Michel, the same feeling he got standing, alone, outside the Jamma Masjid at evening prayers. He stands, barefoot, at the lowest step of the ghat, silver plate still in hand. In a smooth, under-handed motion, he swings the plate down, then up in a long arc. The flowers and powder leap from the plate and swing high towards the sun before bowing to earthly gravity. They make a long red and gold trail in the air that stays for a second before dissipating in a surprising gust of warm air that makes him shuffle his feet for balance. The universe had answered. Leaving the ghat, his guide on this fleecing yet still spiritual expedition stops him and puts a red theeka in the middle of his forehead, just above the separation of his eyebrows, then ties a red and gold string around his right wrist. This last step is what the locals call the "tourist passport," indicating that the tourist has already paid and paid his respects to Brahma. Out on the street again, the reunited groups of lemmings discuss the ritual:

"He was like, 'People come here, they give $200, $500, $10,000.' I was like, 'You can have 10 rupees and that's it.' Who the hell gives anything more than that to this place?" There is a chorus of "Not me"'s, then a lone voice that says, "Uh, I gave a bit more than that." Laughing, laughing, they ask, "How much?" "A lot." Laughing, laughing, they ask, "How much is a lot?" "270." Laughing, laughing, gasping for air. "Plus 100 for the guy," the voice says, trying to slip it into the cacophony. One recovers her breath long enough to say, "I thought you were Mr. Experienced Traveler over here, that you didn't fall for this crap?!" "Yea, usually," the voice grumbles.

Reports Vary... There are three circulating stories about why the Pushkar lake is holy:

1. My version that I read in two different places is that the lake is the tears of Brahma himself. They represent his compassion for the world, that's why when you do the Pooja (ceremony involving a dip in the water), your sins are cleansed.
2. That the lake is a remnant of a lotus petal dropped from heaven by Brahma as he was flying across the sky. Details vary wildly in this version, occasionally getting mixed up with story #3.
3. That Brahma was smiting a demon from the sky. He threw three fireballs, one somewhere I don't know, one at Ajmer, and the one that killed the demon which fell at Pushkar.

Who's to say? Even Hindus aren't totally straight on this score, so I don't think I'm just an ignorant tourist for not having figured it out. I was an ignorant tourist for having given up Rs 370, but this isn't that bad... The Mela We walked through the main market in Pushkar, took a right, and found 150,000 camels. The noise that 150,000 camels make is beyond description. No really, I'm just going to leave it at that. We walked through the dusty mela (Hindi for "gathering") just taking it all in. The camel traders stared us at, universally,, even while they were doing deals. (Perhaps they thought themselves at the Zoo, as well.) Over here a deal went awry and two old men started beating each other with big sticks. This was the first time I ever saw someone knock someone else's turban off, which I understand is a really serious thing to do. Moving on, a prospective buyer was conducting a dental exam on a sizable camel with the help of ten men with ropes and sticks. The camel was not such a big fan of this (I don't blame him) and was making that ragged sound that camels make when they're annoyed, which is always, though this was continuous and only interrupted when a particularly sharp swing of the stick struck. Walking further out, the compression of camels loosened a bit, enough to fit in a horse or 2000. With numbers so comparatively small, the horses were hardly noticeable or worth mentioning. The variation in size is enormous in the camel world. You think of camels as some sort of boring, monolithic species, though with their two famous branches: the Bactrian and the Dromedary. All the camels in Rajasthan are Dromedary, yet some camels are as tall as Clydesdales, and some were full-grown and only had humps up to the top of my head. Our first trip into the mela ended with us at the top of one of the hills in some VIP-looking joint, sipping cold Cokes (at a really good price!) to beat off the heat. We stayed there a long time, the view was so nice and surreal. Manu and Kaluram After walking through the camel mela two days in a row and generally soaking it in, Rob and I decided that we really wanted to go horseback riding. Brinda, who knows everyone in India, knew the owner of our hotel, of course, and knew that he also owned horses that he occasionally rented out to tourists. For Rs250 a piece ("Almost as much as your karma cost!"-Rob), we got 2 hours on the back of real horses doing, functionally, whatever we wanted. The stable was east of the lake, and we got there via two scooters that came for us. Almost unbelievably, it was the first time I'd been on a scooter in India, and it was rather a strange experience. It felt so unstable, and so perilous, as we drove through crowded Pushkar tourist heaven/hell. Our horses were beautiful. My girl's name was Manu, and neither Rob nor I remember his horse's name, though she was Manu's mother. She was light brown and white and her flanks shimmered like they'd been spun from gold in the afternoon light. Our guide was Kaluram, an old, old horseman who was dissatisfied with his job and boss, yet very much in love with the horses he took care of. With basically every camel and elephant-walla I'd yet met, the relationship between man and animal was of a vicious master-slave dynamic. Kaluram and his horses seemed to be genuinely affectionate for each other, and it showed to be a more effective relationship. Where elephant and camel-wallas beat and stab their charges to do what they want, Kaluram whistled and called and his horses obeyed. It was quite impressive. It took us a while to get out of Pushkar proper, and into more open territory. I was dying to see what Manu could do, and as soon as we were out of sight of the highway and I felt like I was properly riding out, Kaluram told me how to break into a fast trot. That initial burst of power is just an electric thing. Manu had strong legs and strong shoulders, unlike so many common horses that you see pulling carts everywhere but Rajasthan. Those horses have been kept a gallop from death their whole lives; Manu had been obviously well fed and well exercised and I felt that the second she went from a walk to a trot. She made this smooth forward motion with her legs and the world got blurry. It was exhilarating to fly through rough desert on horseback. We didn't have any particular destination in mind, so we three wandered into this valley and took some pictures, including one selfie that I love but everyone tells me looks "scary" or "intense." Bah. After a while, we decided to stop and take a break, just chill out and watch the stars fade in. We sat on a sandy hill with Kaluram and just talked for a while. Big K was a cool guy and his English was effective if a bit hard to decipher. While we were hanging out, Manu and the other horse happily grazed near us. I asked Kaluram why they didn't run away or even stray very far. He just pointed at himself and proudly said, "Never without me." It got dark really fast out there, as it is wont to do at this time of year. The desert is jaw-droppingly beautiful at night, but the highway we had to follow to get back was not. All the tourist buses and jeeps and guys on motorcycles passed us at high speed. Every time, Manu would shudder and move more off the road. I could never move her back. From Manu to Babu Oh, Babu. Babu was a bastard. I knew this immediately upon meeting him and was reticent to give him any of my business, but circumstances forced me to employ his services for an afternoon. It took nearly that whole time to get him under proper control, but it ended up all right. Babu was a camel. A bastard camel with even more attitude than your normal, prickly, Rajasthani camels. Babu was the biggest of the 9 camels we took on our afternoon trek, and acted like he had been the biggest bully in his camel schoolyard. He responded to every command with an angry, grunting roar. When descending and ascending, the most precarious of all positions with which to be on a camel in peacetime, he added a totally fragrant and uncalled-for lateral shaking movement. Bastard. Whenever we passed any kind of shrubbery, he would lean his long, square-bottomed neck down to try and grab a bite. A yank of his chain back up would result in that trademark, belched roar. The one time I had to walk in front of him while he was sitting on the ground, the bastard tried to bite me. The one time I went behind him while he was standing up, he nearly pissed on me. Bastard. Headware The first thing they said to us about the whole camel ride expedition was that we would absolutely need head coverings, "or you will die in the heat." Alrighty then. So all the guys fixed up turbans out of long-sleeved shirts, the girls put their shawls to good use, and we were off. We set off west in the early afternoon. It was difficult, at first, to get used to the lumbering, side-to-side motion of the camel. Not nearly as smooth as horse riding had been. We took it slow for an hour or so, passing around fields and small villages as the land became more open and more arid.

Side note: I'm convinced that this region is on top of some kind of auspicious aquifer. That's the only way you could get the lake and enough moisture to farm with.)

About an hour out, we took the opportunity to stop and stretch our legs in the middle of one nice, wide, open expanse. (This is when Babu tried to bite me. Bastard.) We soon continued on after some turban readjustment and some choice photographs. We stopped for chai in the village of one of the camel-wallas. His brother was the chai-wallah. As soon as we came into town, we were swarmed with small children there just to look at us. We made some rudimentary conversation, but mostly it was them looking at us and whispering in each other's ears and us doing the same. They were particularly fascinated by 1) Mira, and 2) digital cameras. I understand both fascinations. Mira's a very pretty Indian girl ("from Canada!" she would be quick to note) and is sort of the dream girl for most men on the sub-continent. The kids were totally taken. And when Jenn took their pictures and they could see themselves, they had precisely the same "gee-wiz" look that I got the first time I played with a digital camera. (Still such a cool thing. Thank God for digital cameras!) It was more so, of course, because it's more than likely that these kids had never had their picture taken before. They were ecstatic and jumpy to see themselves on the small screen. The Run From the village, we turned back towards Pushkar. The camel-wallahs were apparently worried about getting us back on time, or just wanted to screw with us, so we ran the whole way back. Interesting experience. The first thing you notice is how surprisingly smooth it is, compared to walking. The frequency is so much higher that you can barely feel the difference from crest to crest of each wave. Brian of Rajasthan About 2 miles out from Pushkar, at the edge of the Mela grounds, my camel-wallah helper guy left and said "You will be fine. Just follow them." My camel-wallah, of course, had been so distracted for the last 5 minutes that "them" were my friends as tiny specks way off in the distance. Now I was alone and had to catch up with them. Babu, the bastard, sensed that this was his moment to try and battle for supremacy and finally get his own way. He took off to the right, leaving the path. I kept going, but continued on to the right until we were facing back the way we should have been. He let out his angry, ugly roar in discontent. He tried again, but I dragged him back the right way, holding the reins tight in my hand. We passed by a tree with some low-hanging branches. I reached up to try and drag one off to make a stick for Babu-motivation, and got one just as Babu took off for the side of the road again, this time to start munching on plants. I gave him the 30 seconds I needed to strip the flexible branch of leaves and twigs, then laid into him like I'd seen the camel-wallahs do and yelled "TUT TUT TUT!!" Babu, perhaps out of shock, took off at an actual gallop. We were flying. We were going even faster than I'd gone the previous day with Manu. There I was, a white boy in a turban, alone, riding on a speeding camel across the desert. It must have looked cool (it certainly felt cool), because as I got closer to Pushkar and back in the orbit of normal tourists, they all started pointing and taking my picture. One Germanic-looking lot blinded me so bad with all their flashes that I nearly ran Babu into a hay cart. I eventually slowed him down to a nice trot ("TUT!") when I could see my friends again in the distance. I felt a bit like a conquering hero riding back into Pushkar. People were still taking my picture, Babu was listening to my every command, and I knew where I was going.

"What are you looking for? "Some way to annnounce myself." "Be patient with him God."

I had heard the two-part command to give to get the camels to kneel, then sit down so you can dismount. So, while the other camel-wallahs were taking care of my friends' camels, I said to Babu, "Jay!" He instantly took to his front knees, forcing me to lean back. I yelled the second part, "Jay!" And he sat down all the way with another nasty groan. I hopped off as the other camel-wallahs came over and patted me on the back, smiling. Babu craned his long neck around as we just looked at each other. "You're a bastard, Babu." He roared and turned away, putting his head on the ground. The Tears of Brahma India is good for humility. It's easy to be overwhelmed. It excels at challenging preconceptions. It's capable of making you so depressed, but in those darkest of moments, when your faith in humanity is shaken to the core, something will pop up that's subtly beautiful and inspirational. The holy lake in Pushkar, "the tears of Brahma," as it's called by my version, at night is black and shimmering with ambient light. On our last night there, these pilgrims lit candles in bowls of flowers and leaves and floated them out into the tears. I just thought it was so pretty at the time, but it now seems perfectly emblematic of the Indian experience. Bright lights, floating intrepidly in a lake of darkness, hoping against hope. Inspiration in black shine. I think that's a lesson I've learned here: when I think all hope is lost, it never really is. There's always another candle to light against the darkness. Note: There are tons of pictures up on Flickr. I'm eventually going to do the thumbnail thing with this entry, but not now. Feel free to check all of them out on flickr, comment on them there, etc. Second note: The original posting of this somehow forgot to include my conclusion. Sorry. There it is. Enjoy.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa

I felt surprisingly close to my Grandpa yesterday, his 90th birthday, despite being well more than 7000 miles away. We left Delhi at 6am for Pushkar, in Rajasthan, to go to the Camel Fair. There were the preliminary signs, like the Indian man with the striking light blue eyes holding a baby. (My first memory of Grandpa is sitting in his lap on his chair next to the radio, just staring up into his famously blue eyes.) There was the couple on the train with the noticeable Midwest Drawl (tm). It was only when we pulled out of New Delhi, out of the suburbs, that I really started to feel close to Grandpa. The huge wheat fields that support the sizable population of the northern swath of Hindustan start at the tip of the suburbs and continue on till well past the tip of the desert. Defiant farms shake their fist in the face of the dusty winds that roll in from the west. It's unshakable, though. My first and only thought when I see golden fields in low-angle morning radiance is Grandpa on his tractor in Clay County, Kansas. The tractors of Hindustan are few and far between. The farming implements are mostly unchanged since the Middle Ages, with a few modern amenities thrown in. Grandpa is probably real thankful for the CASE (perhaps the defining image of all my Kansas memories), but, at the same time, I think if he had to deal with the rough conditions of Hindustani agriculture, he'd be just fine. Because, really, after 90 years, the highest compliment I can pay to my grandfather is the highest compliment I can pay any man: that he looks after his farm, he looks after his ever-burgeoning family, and he does those things with the best of them. The farmers here would understand him, I think, and wish him a very happy birthday. As do I.

Goodbye Kiddies

Well, then. Just when I thought adults were reading this blog, a little microcosm of our political system erupted in the comments section of that last post. That's just great. So, as much as it pains me, I'm going to refrain from posting any of my political views atleast until I'm back home, because apparently you kids just can't keep it civil. I'm also disabling the comments for a few days so the kiddies in question find new sandboxes in which to play. To my actual friends and family: I stand by what I said, but hope it didn't offend anyone. It's interesting that even my extended family can be a microcosm of the contemporary political divide, and it's worthy of remembrance that we are all, in fact, in this together. I'll just close this off, for the time being, with a quote from Barack Obama, who I think really gets it:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Amen to that.

A Patriotic Admission

Until today, I had never once been embarrassed to be an American. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Scene From Delhi - 7

I sometimes take a cycle-rickshaw from St. Stephen's to Kumla Nagar to get on extremely high-speed internet at a cafe there, or go to McDonalds, or to buy books. It's 7 rupees door to door, maybe $.14. The cycle-rickshaws, like anyone, will haggle with you over 1 rupee and some occasionally refuse to go for less than 8. I refuse to go for more than 7. Today I took a cycle-rickshaw to KN from college. Again, I haggled with the old cyclewallah. He asked for 10 and I said "Har din ye rasta 7 rupiya hai." "Every day this route is 7 rupees." He came down to 8. I said "7. Bas." "7. That's it." He assented and we went off. At the first turn, we got bumped into by an SUV behind us, which is no laughing matter when you're in something as unsturdy as a cycle-rickshaw. The jerkoffs in the car were laughing and faux-apologetic. Cycle-wallah and I were annoyed. We turned back around. There soon came an opportunity for the cycle-rickshaw to move, while we were waiting at the light, and the cycle-rickshaw didn't take it. The SUV behind us turned down whatever Americana pop drivel they were playing and the driver leaned on his horn to get us to move out of the way. Cycle-wallah looked like he didn't like being pressured so much, and wasn't doing well with it, so he shook his fist at the SUV and didn't budge. The SUV kids revved their engine and yelled out the window. No dice. The light turned green and cycle-wallah moved forward. The SUV screamed out of line and went around us, someone in the backseat throwing a still-lit half-cigarette out the window as they passed. My guy shook his fist again. About halfway to KN, the cycle started shaking every time cycle-wallah pedalled. I had flashbacks to riding my red banana-seat bicycle back at Arbor Drive, the same lurching feeling when the chain came off. He kept trying, but he knew it was fruitless. He pulled over, amid yet more screams of horns all around. He got off the cycle and looked down at the chain. I got out and looked as well. The chain had stripped a few spokes of the gear down to nubs, just in the few wrenching revolutions the cycle-wallah had applied. He looked at it and just started crying. I hadn't yet seen a man really cry in India. He started playing with the chain and rapidly speaking to himself in Hindi between deep, hard breaths. It was plain to see that he was going to have to get his gear replaced, he didn't know how he was going to pay for it. I gave him the 9 rupees I had in my pocket and walked the rest of the way.

Scene From Delhi - 6

At a small, 4-way intersection at the tip of Old Delhi, two cows block a small intersection. During a lull in traffic, they strategically wander into a staggered position that effectively cuts off traffic from all but one direction. Soon traffic piles up on all sides. The cows, one stark white and one jet black, both with long horns, don't budge. They don't seem to have any purpose doing what they're doing, as always. These cows, though, are particularly stubborn in their purposelessness. They just don't move. Traffic continues to pile up on all sides. Horns are blaring, in all the myriad symphonic tones of Delhi transportation. Walkers and bikes skirt around the margins and continue on, but scooters, autos, cars, and one truck are stuck. Usually, cows in this position will lazily move on as the beeping tempo increases, feigning annoyance at the effort. In my experience, Hindus rarely will force a cow out of the way. They accomodate and suggest that it move. To wit, a Sadhu, a Hindu holy man, wearing the battered orange frock of his station and a rag around his head, a long ruffled beard hanging down to his breastbone, walks up to one of the cows and seems to plead with it to move. He gestures, shaking his hands repeatedly but slowly, totally non-threatening. The cows look at each other and continue to stand there, occasionally lifting and dropping their hooves, but not changing their orientation or position. The black cow looks better fed and in better health. He has strong shoulders and a respectable layer of fat around him. The white cow is in less enviable shape. Though nothing could hide the inherent bulk of something bovine, this one's wide arcing ribs are visible just beneath its skin. Though its color is pure and unadulterated, its legs are covered in filth, impugning its purity. The Sadhu's voice rises to a hoarse plea, but still, amazingly, no movement. Two Muslim men presumably (given the dying pinkish light) on their way to evening prayers walk past and smile at the jam. One smartly smacks the white cow on its rear and the cow makes a muffled moo and moves on down a street. The other man yells at the black cow and grabs a small rock and throws it at its backside. The black cow moves on in the opposite direction of the white one. Passing autowallahs thank the men for taking care of the problem. As traffic starts to flow again, horns still blaring in echoing annoyance, the Sadhu shakes his head, lights a beedie, grabs his shabby bag of few possessions, and walks down the street perpendicular to the listless animals. He wishes he had had more time.

Today is the Best Day of My Life

My kids and grandkids will be out of the family unless they memorize the entire roster of the 2004 Red Sox. Victory. History. Sweet.

Scene From Delhi - 5

At five, the bats still feast freely in the black blue night. They hunt in impossibly complex aerial maneuvers, swooping in at high speed just above the dreaded light of orange yellow streetlights to eradicate flies and mosquitoes who slam repeatedly into the faux suns like junkies needing their electromagnetic hit. At five fifteen, there is a precise and orderly changing of the aerial guard, as navy replaces black as the dominant hue on God's arcing palette and the bats disappear. Huge air wings of eagles taxi and take off from the park down the street and fly northeast over our house still in formation, their huge wingspans stark against the lightening sky. Once out over the highway, they break formation and go off to pursue solo bombing runs on rodents, small birds and, horrifyingly, puppies around the city. At six, the sun is risen over the east and the nuisance brigade fully alights. Pigeons disorganizedly flop around the skies, an embarassment to the grace of their hunter cousins. In huge numbers they testify to their insanity: trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different response. They squabble over non-existent food (predictably just outside on my bedroom balcony). They sit, purposeless, for minutes at a time, until some whim of wind or humming low-level instinct move them to move. By six thirty, the city is full alive and aloud. The last to join the sky revel in the ignorance of their own inferiority for the remainder of the day.

Donaldson and the Red Sox

I can't believe it. Even the biggest goddam defeatist in all New England is now jumping on the bandwagon. I thought he would write lots of contrite, don't-count-your-chickens pieces as he eased his way back into our collective good graces. But no. All he gives is one line two columns after his pithy little screed:

I don't hesitate to say that I thought they were all done after that 19-8 embarrassment at Fenway last Saturday night that put them down, 3-0, to the 26-time World Series champions. But the Sox came back, and so they were back at Fenway last night for Game 1 of the 2004 World Series, against St. Louis, another old rival.

What, that's it? They still let this guy into the clubhouse? Sure, he says in his article that he's publicly rooting for the Red Sox to win now, but that's a little like Italy rooting for the Allies after Mussolini fell. It rings a bit hollow, wouldn't you say? For me, I'm not excited yet. I'm not elated. The Cardinals are too good for us to say that this is in the bag. They are not a team that will go down easily. They are a punishing team with which we cannot make mistakes. We count them down and out at our own peril. The Red Sox have been brilliant at caging the bird of prey, so to speak, thus far, but I'm keeping a gun trained on the cage until the very end. I'm going to be calm and supportive when something doesn't go as planned, and happy as hell when things go our way, but I'm not "tasting" anything yet, to use Donaldson's vernacular. I do, though, have full confidence that we can win tomorrow. This is the best Red Sox team of my lifetime, arguably anybody's lifetime. They really do have it all. Their best asset, though, is that they're thinking the same way: they're just going to go out and win the ballgame. They're not seeing any ghosts. They're not daunted by history or numbers or any kind of voodoo. They're calm. I really think tomorrow's game will be one for the history books, and not just because it holds the potential to be one of the greatest sporting moments in the history of the world. It's going to be a fight worthy of the greats. The Thrilla in Missoura, perhaps, or is that a bit much? The day we signed Keith Foulke I told Toby, I think it was, that we were going to win the World Series. I've never wavered. I got jarringly nervous when we traded Nomar, but Theo Epstein has more than allayed all my fears about that. (I hold to what I said: I do miss Nomar. I still love that guy.) And Schilling has become arguably my favorite member of the Red Sox. I'm honestly going to be telling my grandkids about what he's done in his last two starts. I've tried to explain how momentous and amazing he's been to people at St. Stephen's, and I've been marginally successful, though I have to put it in a cricket parallel for them to really understand it: "Ok, imagine India is playing Pakistan for the ICC Cup (big prize) and India's best bowler basically rips a hole in his ankle. He doesn't want to quit, so he has a doctor stitch him up. He runs out there and bowls a bunch of maiden overs, hobbling back to start every time. India wins, Pakistan is permanently demoralized." They get it when you put it this way, for some reason. Donaldson, to his defeatist credit, is right about one thing, though: we are one game away, a mere 54 outs, from the moment most of the people reading this blog have been waiting all their natural lives to see. It's a great time to be alive. Necessary post-script: I know quite well and rather like Jim Donaldson, the long-time columnist for the Providence Journal. I know him well enough to know that if he ever read this he wouldn't take it personally. People in bars around Rhode Island are giving him the same crap I am right now, including my dad, probably, but I can't do that so this is my substitute. Donaldson is a damn nice guy, and an addiction-forming New England sports commentator, if a chronically terrible putter. But really, he should stick to his excellent Patriots commentary until after the Series is over and the dust has settled.

Scene From Delhi - 4

An old Tibetan man, in part of a monk's costume and blue jeans, wears, of all things, a Boston Red Sox hat as he walks down the street. I just have to ask him: "Are you a Red Sox fan?" "Sorry, sir, I am a Buddhist," he says in a heavy accent, not understanding my question. "Oh," I laugh. "So you know the suffering of the world." "Oh yes." "Yea, you're a Red Sox fan."

Scene From Delhi - 3

A small child, maybe three years old, chases after me as I come out of a restaurant at Connaught Place. He tugs at my jeans as I reach for my cell phone. I stop and look down at him. He puts his open hand out, touches his mouth, touches his stomach: the holy trinity of Indian beggardom. His feet are bare and filthy, and one toenail looks mightily infected. His shorts are shoddily cut off at the thigh, revealing legs not nearly as thick as my lower arm. He has a button down shirt that used to belong to someone maybe ten times his size: only two buttons exist on this abbreviated piece of cloth. The bottom of the shirt is more cleanly cut than the shorts, but still obviously an ad-hoc construction. The pattern is alternating light blue and white. He stares at me intently, making his holy pattern. His eyes are huge and dark with a kind of sad depth. I am uncharacteristically swayed towards giving him some money or something, when I see that his "father" is intently watching our paused interaction from the parking lot. His father looks like he's nearly salivating at the thought of the ten rupees I might give this kid. I'm disgusted by this economic whoring of children, and I move on, the boy still clutching the seams of my jeans. I round a corner and look back, the "father" still staring, optimistic that I'll cave and hand his kid some pittance to get rid of him. A block later, despite my repeated Hindi admonitions for him to go and ask someone else, the boy is still hanging on, as if for dear life. I stop again and he looks up at me, still pleading, wordlessly, in his holy beggar sign language. I tell him, firmly, "Nahi." No. I'm not going to give him 5 rupees just so he can give it to his "father," who, more likely than not, will just go off and booze with it. "Nahi." He tugs my jeans in something like the motion of a wide punch, turns and runs back. As he runs away, he turns back over his shoulder, stops for a second, looks at me, looks back in the direction he came, then runs back to find some other sucker for his father. I just wonder what he was thinking about in that one second pause as he looked at me. "How heartless?" "Can I run away?" "What a waste of time," perhaps? Or, maybe, "You'll just never understand."

Scene From Delhi - 2

An old man with one leg hobbles up to an auto at rest on his one crutch while I stand on a streetcorner. He begs in a low rasp for money and is denied. As traffic starts to move, he hobbles back to the sidewalk. His black t-shirt says, in a loopy white script, "Definitely sexy." The next traffic set stops, and he hobbles back out. Some cruel high school girls make fun of him, and he moves on to another vehicle, the same low begging rasp just barely audible above the internal combustion din. These passengers put on radiation-grade urban shields and act like they don't see him. As he hobbles back, dodging all manner of traffic, he sits down on the curb, his skinny leg and quarter splayed out in front of him. A tear forms in his eye and stutteringly makes its way down his weathered cheek. It could just be the dust, we all tell ourselves.

Scene From Delhi - 1

As I pull up to a light in the back of an auto, I hear the familiar St. Loo-loop of Nelly's "Hot in Here." I look out the opening in the auto and turn around to see where it's coming from. The auto just behind us is bumping. The women passengers are clad in black, pre-2001, Kabul-chic burkkas, totally unmoving while the auto-wallah bounces his head to the beat. "So take off all your clothes..."

President Bush has a Point

Decisive can be a good thing. Real update soon, I promise.

Into the Desert

My friends dragged me, kicking and screaming, out of Delhi this weekend. Mike: "Brian, you need to <>-ing leave this city. You're coming with us." So I went to Jaipur. We took the bus at 2:30 on Saturday from Rajasthan House in New Delhi, right near India gate. We could have taken the 1:45, but Nisha admitted to me that she just wanted the nice AC Volvo bus. By the time Mike and Chrissy arrived, around 2:00, she had thought of a better excuse: "We didn't know if you guys would have made the 1:45." Clever girl. It's hard to describe the difference between Delhi and its surrounding regions. Perhaps it's like what I imagine leaving the dirtiest possible version of Phoenix, Arizona, to head out into the wilds of the Southwestern Desert would be like. The lush greenery for which Dilliwallas are so rightfully proud gives way to desert, where rough, low shrubbery dominates the ever more hilly, rocky terrain. The exception to this comparison, of course, is that no one has the audacity to try and really farm anything in the middle of the Southwestern desert. Here, on all sides of the highway, and for as far as the eye can see, intrepid Indians have small plots of land, most growing wheat of some kind. Their fierce attacks on the shrubbery landscape are admirable.

Sidenote: Up in the mountains, we visited this place called SIDH: The Society for the Integrated Development of the Himalayas. It's an NGO that does much for education and social progress in the most hard-pressed areas of the lower Himalayas. There were many interesting things discussed up there, but one that stayed with me was about food. The woman who is co-director of SIDH with her husband talked about a woman in one of the villages in which SIDH works who laid bare her problem with the modern world. She said, "You call yourself educated. You call yourself advanced, elite. I know every aspect of every ingredient that goes into the food I feed my family. I have taken care of and grown every single thing. There is a direct relationship between me and that which sustains me. What price, this education, this advancement, if I lose that?" Now, I my capitalist, progressive instincts immediately jump to concepts like increased urbanization and the human benefits thereof, the specialization of the workforce and the higher yield of the contemporary agrarian economy, etc. in defense against this onslaught. These are all good and defensible concepts. But none strike home like that simple woman's argument because I hide a simple shame: I have no idea how to take a wheat crop and make bread out of it. It's a total mystery to me. I consider myself relatively educated, relatively advanced, and I have a ludicrously indirect and tenuous connection to that which sustains me. So when we were passing mile after mile of rugged, defiant wheat fields, I could help but think that, for all their visible hardships and disadvantages, I was looking out on people who, on perhaps a central existential question, were more advanced than I.

The farms gave way after a while, wholly giving up the battle against the harsh looking shrubbery and sandy soil. It was near this point that the sun started to set in the west. (How odd that the sun sets at about 6:30 or 7 now, where it was plenty light till 9:30 when we first got to India!) You all know how much I love it when God paints in pastels. Lazy light blues and hazy oranges, a rainbow sherbet sunset. When we arrived into the Jaipur bus station, a group of 30 or so men ran alongside our bus, vying to be the first to exploit the newly arrived tourists. We waited on the bus for our ride to the hotel. Maybe 20 or so guys asked us, in unison and some querying in German, French and Spanish, whether we needed a ride. When we got to the hotel, we had a stupid argument over a price difference of Rs60 between hotels. Keerthi, Chrissy and I had a nice dinner together at a place called the Copper Chimney, while Mike, Nancy, Nisha and Cat food from a roadside dhaba. Back at the hotel, we met and chilled with some other backpackers slowly making their way through India: Jesse, from Toronto, and two charming Aussie girls from Melbourne, Prudence and Sienna. Then we went to bed. We got up at 6ish the next morning, showered, had breakfast, and just messed around for a while, waiting for our tour guide to arrive at 9. Our guide, Jawan, was just this side of shady. Nice guy, but with just too much of a penchant to try and fleece money out of foreigners to be a truly standup guy. Jaipur is called the Pink City. Despite all the San Francisco jokes you might be formulating in your head (Dad, I'm looking at you), there's quite a good reason for this: the whole of the Old City is painted pink. The Maharaja first painted it sometime in the 18th Century to honor the visit of the Prince of Wales to Rajasthan. Pink is historically considered the most welcoming color to people in this region (do what you like with your feminist theories). We started off at the base of one of the Maharaja's many hillside palaces. The palace wasn't all that notable, and wasn't even open to the public, but the massive Lakshmi temple at the base of the hill certainly was. About the size of a mid-range cathedral, and in a shimmering pure white marble in the early sun, it was particularly striking. What I noted here was that, unlike at cathedrals, all the figures of notables and holy men and the generally honored around the periphery of the temple and coming off its walls were bowing inwards towards the temple. Even the holy men face in to God, here. If I knew more about Hinduism, and more about symbology in Christian architecture, perhaps I could make some brilliant synthetic argument here about how representative this was, or unrepresentative, of the two religions, but sadly those are some missing arrows in the quiver. We left the temple after doing the whole tourist thing and made our way to Amber Fort through the labor-intensive cleanup process that followed some festival they had at the temple the night before. Amber Fort, our memorization-heavy guide told us, was built by the founder of Jaipur, the Maharaja Jai Singh I. It is located at the top of one of the mountains that surround Jaipur, this one to the Northwest. We stopped at the base where there's a rather impressive man-made lake. There were elephants bathing and playing around, and down the beach a bit there were people dunking statues in the water in a religious rite with which I'm totally unfamiliar. (This is Hinduism, after all, the best result yet of the Acme Make Your Own Religion Kit.) There was also an honest to god snake charmer. I couldn't believe it, and in fact I thought the snakes were fake, until one tried to kill his "charmer" a few times.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about military brilliance and Jaipur. You have to imagine it in its medieval (or mediaeval, as the British say) state, where the city was entirely contained within its walls, not anything like its contemporary, expansive, 2.3 million strong sprawl. There were no cruise missiles, no bunker-busters, no daisy-cutters, no satellite battle feeds, just what you normally imagine to be the classic weapons of medieval armies. The walls start on the plains in the old city, to the south of the fort and the northern mountains. They spread out on the plains and arch back until they hit the mountains. These they rise up, and spread north along their respective ridges, meeting again in the one small gap between the northern mountains, forming a nice loop. They're interrupted only by the two northwestern ridge forts, Taigur (like the animal) and Jaigur, and on the eastern side by the damn/fort across the main lake to the north of the old city. So, as a prospective commander of even the most formidable medieval army, your options are: A) go up the side of a mountain and try and get over one of the huge, easily re-inforcable, Great Wall of China-like walls, B) Attack the big, northern front gates in the narrow pass from the plains, where there's no place to assemble and less to maneuver, C) Go to the east... it's only 50 kilometers or so, and see if you can attack the dam cum fort which can release a river at you at will, D) Go west and try the wall/mountain thing again, if you can even get up the steep mountainsides, E) Go ALL the way west, around the mountains, and attack from the south. Historically, most people chose option E. All right, so you attack from the south. Say you take one of the 7 impressive gates to the Old City. Say you even take the Old City. You still need to take the retreating army, now feeling to the northern hills along with, in all likelihood, the highly charismatic maharaja. Now you need to take the hills. No problem, you think, you're the man. You just overran Jaipur, this'll be no sweat. You just have to take both the Amber Fort and Jaigar Fort above it. Good luck, mate. The Amber Fort, the Maharaja's mountainside enclave, is nigh impregnable, to my eye. There's nowhere to assemble, as there's that popular-with-the-elephants artificial lake down at the base of the mountain. There's only one road up, and it's rather steep, very narrow, very exposed, and has a series of well-defended checkpoints with excellent sniping positions. All right, Alexander Grant, you're brilliant. You're tough. You don't miss. Somehow, under withering fire from above, you're inspired your (now definitely much depleted) army and somehow manage get up the hill and break the thick main gate to the fort. You're in! Or so you think. That Maharaja's army is toast and so is he, you say to yourself... but where are they? Wouldn't you know it, they've all gone out, up the hill, through underground, now fully sealed tunnels, to Jaigur Fort. As you idle about, admiring the gorgeous inlaid carving on nearly every surface of every public and private space of the fort, perhaps strolling through the Maharaja's wives' apartments, then the separate ones for his concubines, you take a deep breath and look up. Jaigur fort runs a good way across the higher ridge to the northwest of your most recent conquest. It is long and low and thickly built, arrow slits and other insidious devices to exterminate your men adorn every side of the fortress. The side facing you is nearly vertical sandstone for parts, and others very loose gravel and boulders. The one small path that lazily circles up the mountain on the way up is easily protectable with a small number of men. That's gonna hurt more than taking Amber, you realize, as you look around at your weary, arrow-punctured men. The walls are too high to hit with anything but epithets. Even if you managed another miracle and made a start on the pass, you'd lose the rest of your men in the process. You, the logical commander, decide to turn the forces of attrition to your advantage. You'll just starve them out. Brilliant! Well, in a word, no, commander. You won't. Jaigur fort was built on top of water tanks calculated to be able to sustain a healthy army for 4 years. It has stores of what enough to feed a city for nearly as long. Furthermore, only the maharaja himself truly knows all the different ways out of it, so skillful were his architects, so who knows who might slip out of the fort and send you off in the middle of the night. Normally a calm, reasonable man, you presently throw a tantrum, then recover your composure and site back in awe. Four years, you say to yourself. Do I really want to waste that much of my brilliant young career to take one fort, however potentially potent it could become? No, you decide, it's just not worth it. You go back down the mountain, and you ride off into the beautiful Rajasthani sunset, a more docile, less clever conquest on your mind.

So it's an impressive place. Even more impressive when you think about how naturally beautiful and elegant the whole defense plan is. Essentially, it's a small-scale Switzerland model: "Enough mountains already! You can have your damned funky, cheese-mongering neutral republic!" Anyway... This Maharaja character apparently wasn't just a great ruler and an insatiable super-pimp. He was also a man of art and science. After a touristy, expensive lunch (for which Nisha tore our tour guide a new one), we went back to the Old City to see this part of the Maharaja's accomplishments. At lunch, we were sitting in our little air-conditioned tourist haven, and I was the only one facing the window. It struck me that the hillsides off in the distance over the lake weren't all that different from many other places in the world, but nearly everything beneath them was. As if pre-ordained to illustrate the point, here's what traffic passed by my narrow viewpoint outside in the seconds that followed: :: The tops of two cars. Quite normal. :: A big truck. Entirely normal, except that it was carrying 15+ people in the back of it. :: Then a train of camels, 6 or so strong, ungainly lumbering under the strain of the carts they were hauling. Not normal. :: Another truck. Normal. :: Going the opposite direction, I could see just up to the shoulders of two huge elephants slowly passing into and out of view, the feet of their masters just visible near the top of my view. Welcome to India. The elephant-wallas are really rather unkind to their elephants. The conditions are really sad. The elephants are just so nice-seeming, though, despite it all. They're obviously quite smart, despite their lethargic gate and motion. They also seem to have a sense of humor. One huge bull elephant in the courtyard at Amber Fort kept messing with his driver's turban. The driver would turn around and yell, and the elephant would stop, his trunk drooping like a scolded child's hands, as his huge body swayed with idle boredom. A few minutes would pass and then he'd go smacking the red turban again. His driver was much nicer to him than most of the drivers at Amber Fort. While he was waiting around, the driver would pat his elephant's trunk affectionately and lean against his huge legs, appreciating the considerable shade the elephant offered. Most of the drivers were just cruel, using these little metal hooks to cajole the big animals to do their bidding. Perhaps this one driver had come to internalize and respect the fact that this massive animal could destroy him if he wanted to, but never had. Who knows. The way the elephant drivers mount their elephants is quite cool. At a command, the elephant lowers its head and ears. The driver grabs the big, leathery ears and put his foot at the base of the elephant's trunk. Then the elephant raises his head again and literally throws the driver onto his back. It's a cool little maneuver. The city palace and its museum were rather unimpressive. We saw some beautiful fabrics, and some impressive weaponry, but it was overall a bit boring. (Not to mention HOT. I got dehydrated like crazy.) There were two notable exceptions: :: The Maharaja's clothes were beyond gigantic. He was apparently well over 7 feet tall, and this is clearly not legend because I saw his clothes. Later in life he also became enormously fat, weighing in at a truly impressive 255kg (which my computer tells me works out to 562.1788650000001 pounds). They had a progression of his stature from early to late, and his later pant size had to have been maybe 300 or something. They were so big that I couldn't figure out what I was looking at for a while. :: The weapons of war museum (weapons & war? I don't remember the title, exactly) was sort of blah, but there was one set of items in particular that caught my interest. There were whole racks of these particular kinds of blades that I'd never seen before. The actual blades themselves were maybe 10-inch long isosceles triangles, with a base that was just a little bigger than fist width. From the base, down the sides of the wearers arm, ran two support beams. Between the beams were two horizontal bars, meant to fit into the palm of the wearer of this blade. The blade itself, I realized after a while, was bifurcated. It took me a bit longer to realize the function of all these parts. The blade was meant to be punched with, once it had penetrated the victim, the two horizontal bars squeezed together to active a spring-loaded mechanism that split the blade apart inside the victim. This thing was made first to skewer someone, then slice his or her internal organs to shreds. Truly nothing motivates the creative juices of humanity like a little warfare, eh? Some of these weapons (I have no idea what they were called, by the way, due to a notable lack of labeling in any part of this museum) were of truly gorgeous designs, though. Inlaid gold wire patterns, handles of etched steel frame and lapis lazuli core. Artfully designed, brilliantly imagined... bringers of extraordinarily painful death... So it goes. After the mostly underwhelming city palace, where I did not get to meet the current Maharaja, though I saw his current house, we went to the Jantar Mantar Observatory to see some of the first Maharaja Jai Singh's accomplishments. I should note that Indian tourist places in general give everyone an inordinate amount of crap about bringing your camera into them. At the observatory, you had to pay an extra Rs75 for each camera. We were at the "minimize expenses/annoyances" stage of the day, so we didn't bother with it. We just locked our stuff up in these lockers that weren't exactly faith inspiring. Mike, the brilliant artist overall, was our dedicated photographer both at the observatory and at Amber fort. Mike also had his gorgeous Canon Digital Camera with a new 512MB CF card. He could take a crapload of very well constructed, high-resolution pictures, and did. Remember that. The observatory was one of my favorite parts of the day. As I said, the Maharajas weren't just libidinous warmongers, they were also gentlemen of education and culture. The Maharaja Jai Singh was totally enamored of astronomy, and, after reading all east and west had to say about it, dispensed with small-scale brass and glass instruments in favor of precisely built, massive stone structures, designed and calibrated for to capture different measurements. One was for computing local time (accuracy of down to about 5 seconds), a whole set for knowing peculiarities of the different sun signs, and the world's biggest sundial. The sundial was maybe 60 feet high (there wasn't any literature at this place and our guide didn't know), with stairs going up to the top of the "dial." Sweeping out from either side in nice gentle curves were the measures that calculated the time down to within 2 seconds. When the sun stopped flirting with us from behind the clouds, it made a clear line that fell right on the exact time marked on the stone. I prefer my Tag Heuer, but if you're a Maharaja I guess you have to be a bit more large-scale in everything. After the observatory, we went back up the high western mountains at Taigur fort (again, pronounced like the big cat). The guards at the fort gave us more crap about our cameras, but we all individually decided just to pay the ludicrous entrance fee for cameras and move on. Taigur fort is the highest point above Jaipur. One tower inside the fort was so high that, back in the days before air pollution, apparently if you lit a fire at the top the small flame could be seen from the Red Fort in Delhi. That is cool. Who else is thinking Return of the King right now? Good. The views from the ramparts of Taigur Fort were amazing. Even with the pollution, you can see forever. There would be quite a warning if an intrepid army was shaking itself out of the desert and coming over the plains. It's truly a shame that we had to leave at 5 when the fort closed. I could have sat up on those high ramparts for hours, just watching the sun go down, listening to the city below. The sky was a strong blue, tapped by a pointillist with high white clouds, fading to the pre-pink of a desert sunset. The city roared below, as I floated my legs over the cliff. The drum band and explosions of a big wedding fought with the stunted chorus of honking cars and dogs barking, all laid over the raspy throated roar of Old and New Jaipur. It was India, aurally defined. On the way out, I followed Mike to a semi-restricted part of the roof to take pictures. On the way back to the public part, a bunch of broadly smiling Indian kids were waiting for us. When they saw us they broke out in a yell. I have no idea why they thought we were so cool. They started yelling "Picture! Photo! Photo!" Mike looked at me and motioned for me to go over with them. I ran over to get in the photo with them. So there's this brilliant picture of me being swarmed by smiling Indian kids, all holding on to my arms and hands and squeezing my shoulders. "Blue eyes! Yeah! Yeah!" I was dying laughing. I thought the whole thing was so cool. When Mike showed them each their faces on his digital display, they made tons of noise again. They wanted a copy of the photo "for memory!" so I gave one kid my notebook and he scrawled his name and address. Remember how good this picture must be, the sun starting to set behind us, me a white (though tanned) face in a sea of brown skin and extremely white smiling teeth. Remember that. After the fort we were nearly at the end of our day. We decided to go back to the Old City so the girls could do some shopping. I got more some chai nearby and called home. It was amazingly good for the soul just to talk to Mom and Amy. I wrote in my journal for a while, occasionally looking up to watch part of the India v. Pakistan cricket match. India ended up losing, later, 201-200. We had dinner before our bus and waded out through a sea of handicraft wallahs, who really were waiting just for us, as they dispersed after we left. I said to Cat, in our code language, French, that we should really go. One of the handicraft-wallahs exploded in arms and crappy puppets and French. He was badassly fluent. we talked to him for a bit in French. Apparently he has friends in Marseille, Bordeaux, and Paris. Cat made the astute observation that he was probably friends with those guys that try to sell you the crap plastic key chains in front of the Eiffel Tour: "Mr., I think I've met your friends." She talked to him more than she should have after I went off to find an auto and I think ended up buying a puppet from him. She's a sucker like that. We took a supremely ghetto, rickety, non-AC bus back to Delhi simply because it was the first one. Non-AC buses mean seating like steerage, and open windows spitting dust and god knows what else at you all night as you drive through the desert. It leaves you feeling dirty in literally every part of your body. I tried to write as much as possible in my journal, but they turned off the lights about 15 minutes into the ride, and my overhead light didn't work, of course. Alas. I finished my last thoughts on one subject via the flashlight on the end of my cell phone. I talked to the guy next to me for a long while. I forgot the guy's name just as soon as he said it, but he worked for the McKenzie consulting group and was an IIT Grad. IIT grads are like Princeton grads: they can't go five goddam minutes without telling you where they went to school. People from Harvard are much cooler. They're almost embarrassed about having gone to Harvard: "Hey, where'd you go to school?" "Boston." "Boston College? Boston University?" "No." "Well, where then?" "Harvard." With Princeton/IIT people, the progression is: "Hey, did I tell you that I went to Princeton/IIT?" "No." "Oh, well I did." [silence as the expected adoration and kissing doesn't happen.] "Right." The bus stopped all the time. First it was police, for some unknown reason. Then we had our scheduled 15-minute break in the middle of the trip that got extended to around a half-hour. Then we switched drivers (shady bastard driver slept on the dirty floor in the aisle, right near Keerthi and Chrissy's feet). At about 2:45 (we left at 9 for a supposed 5 hour drive, mind you) there was a loud crack and the front windshield shattered. It didn't come apart and fall off and fly all over us, thank God, but it was cracked like hell. I have no idea what the hell hit us, but there was a big, roughly rectangular shaped hole in the middle of the window with all the cracks spreading out like vessels in a bloodshot eye. We stopped for another half hour to examine and try to explain this. Then we stopped for another 15 minutes just down the road, apparently to tell a cop what had happened. I'm sure that was extremely effective, what with Indian police being the most diligent in the world and all... We finally got in around 4am at the InterState Bus Terminal (ISBT), which is right near our house. Being so late, we just wanted to get home. We thought it'd be cheap, given the distance. During the day, there's no chance I'd pay more than Rs20 for a ride there. When we got off the bus and tried to get an auto in front of the station the auto-wallah mafia told us, assuming we were new tourists to Delhi, that Civil Lines was very far away and we'd need to pay at least Rs120 to get there! Keep in mind the fact that we're literally looking at the south side of Civil Lines while he's saying this. So we laughed at this jerkoff and asked some other people: "80!" "90!" They were all in this cartel together and wouldn't budge to anything approaching a reasonable rate. We flagged a guy down who was passing by. We said "20" and he said "Ok." We were trying to work out one more auto for the rest of our group, when the lead auto-wallah mafia guy came out with this big bamboo stick and started whacking the crap out of our reasonable auto-wallah's auto. He was seriously denting the side panels and the metal roofing. Our autowallah freaked out and sped off. After literally having driven away the competition, the autowallah mafioso had this big smirk on his face: "70. Best offer." We were so pissed that we just started walking. Two autos followed and agreed to Rs40, and we were all too tired to bother with it anymore. I fell into bed at 4:25, totally exhausted. I woke up the next morning to what I thought was an odd sight. All my clothes and things from my bag were on the floor. Rob came in and saw me waking up and told me I should talk to Mike. Mike came in as if on cue a second later and apologized for strewing my stuff on the ground. He said someone had stolen his camera and he was really upset and had wanted to make sure it didn't get packed in someone else's bag. So Mike's US$600 camera, with his new US$80 512 MB CF card, as well as all those fantastic pictures I was telling you to remember, are all gone. Poor bastard. I felt and still do feel terrible. we still have no idea where it got snagged. Mike thinks it might have been while he was dozing on the bus. So that was the trip, all in all. Sort of an exhaustive concordance of my weekend, really. It was a damn good time. And I finally got the hell out of Delhi.

Victory

I should preface all this by saying that I have a massive update/story to tell you all about my trip last weekend to Jaipur, a place about 5 hours southwest of Delhi. It's in Rajasthan, the desert state of India. It was quite cool, and I wrote a lot, which I'm transcribing from my journal right after I post this. So what's this? Well, I debated today in my first big debate tournament with my partner, the soon-to-be Rhodes Scholar Rakesh Ankit. The debate was at, of all places, the American Center in Delhi. It was sponsored by a college within Delhi University and the U.S. Embassy. So it was a point of Indo-American pride that Rakesh and I were on the same time for such a debate. The motion for the debate was the following: "Parliamentary democracy is more relevant than the Presidential system in the emerging global order." Being a proud believer in the Presidential system, I spoke against the motion. Rakesh, a proud believer in parliamentary democracy, spoke for. I think the fact that Rakesh plans on being Prime Minister and I plan on being President aided both of our cases. Rakesh is probably the most brilliant speaker I've heard, anywhere in the world. I have no doubt that he will get one of India's 6 Rhodes Scholarships when they're handed out later in the year. While most of the debators prior to our team made the simplistic jump to frame the debate as an explicit India v. America debate and the relative merits of the two systems, Rakesh brilliantly pointed out that what the motion really about was the notion of "emerging global order." He just totally shifted the debate, and made every argument heard before him look childish and beside the point. He talked passionately about how people around the world yearn for representation, and how the challenge for this emerging global order was to successfully integrate diverse interest groups, and how the parliamentary system was tailor made to suit these challenges. The kid is unbelievable. He spoke with no notes, no real preparation, he just got up and delivered this address (that's really what it was). Public speaking is something that I feel like I usually have a pretty good handle on. I feel like I can speak on most topics in the world with little preparation and give something coherent and, if I'm lucky, pretty memorable. It's not often that I'm truly humbled. Rakesh humbles me, and I said as much when I got up. After thanking the "ladies of the chair," our two nice old lady chairwomen, and the judges, I also thanked Rakesh "for being a nearly impossible act to follow. But I'll try my best." I started off with something like a joke, when I said, "Winston Churchill said something once that might be the only thing everyone in this room can agree on. He said 'Democracy is positively the worst form of government, except for all the rest.' If nothing else, we should come away with that truism firmly etched in our minds." Then I said this whole thing about how if people were serious about democracy in the emerging world order, they deserved the best possible system to represent them. That system was clearly the Presidential system because people in the changing world order want three things: "Stability. Long-term planning for the betterment of all. And professional execution of the people's will." I said these were clearly the strengths of the presidential system, or "to use a baseball term, these are all in the wheelhouse of the presidential system." (The Americans knew what I was talking about.) On the first point, I said the very existence of a no-confidence vote was a destabilizing factor in a parliamentary democracy, "a Damocles sword over the heads of visionary politicians." A President must commit "high crimes and misdemeanors, in the words of the U.S. Constitution," but a Prime Minister need only annoy one more Member of Parliament than he or she can afford. This lead me to my second point which is that the Presidential system was better set-up for long-term planning. Because the President can make plans with the long view in mind, the incentive is for him to do so. The nature of coalition politics in a parliamentary form being what it is, the incentive in the system is for the Prime Minister to make decisions for the short-term political gain and hold on to power. This also bespeaks another problem with the parliamentary system, in that the people don't vote for a person whose character they find suitable enough to have make tough decisions for them in their stead. They vote for a party, "and parties are notably characterless." Oddly this line got quite a bit of a laugh and some applause. Thus my third point is that Parliamentary democracy leads to an over-politicization of what should be the professional execution of the people's will. Cabinet members in the presidential system are not necessarily politicians, they're professionals who do their job and their job alone. Having them first have to represent a home district plus handle a cabinet portfolio, as they do in the parliamentary system, does damage in two ways: 1) It forces cabinet members to split their time between tending to their home district and other affairs of parliament and their duty as a cabinet minister. "I don't know about you, but when it comes down to it I want my cabinet members to be focused solely on their area, not pulling double duty as a regular member of parliament as well." 2) It restricts the applicant pool to only those who have been elected to parliament, rather than those who might be best suited for the job. "I don't know about you, but when it comes down to it, I want the BEST people running the day to day functions of my government, not merely the most politically convenient. I want cabinets posts distributed with some element of meritocracy, not handed down as candy to the coalition." I like the assonance of that, by the way, "candy to the coalition." Does that qualify as assonance? I think so... Anyway, further on this point I said that, in the emerging global order, complex economic reforms and their resultant social reforms were going to be necessary. As a result, I said, governments around the world, in adapting to this change, need to have professionals running things, people who really know what's going on and how to move forward. Anyone without this setup was destined to be left behind. I closed by saying that democracy required activism, education and intelligence on the part of the electorate. If those things were present, "if the people, in good faith, want to throw in their lot with their fellow man, then they deserve the best system to do their will and improve their lives. The system of choice, in this changing world, is clearly the Presidential system." Thank you. Applause. After the two speeches, the format of the debate was to take one question per debator from teh audience. Rakesh got some convoluted softball that he knocked out of the park. I got a question about how minority views can still be heard in a presidential system. I answered that I was glad someone had asked that question, and my answer was simply that around the world, parliamentary democracies exacerbated ethnic, religious, etc. tensions, because these things were commonly allowed to be exploited for short-term political gain. I noted that the number one predictor of electoral success in India was the caste make-up of an electoral region as compared to that of the candidates running. The candidate with the closest match to that of his/her electorate nearly always won, which was terrible and against the ideas of a pluralist democracy, an essential part of the emerging global order. Parliamentary democracy inculcated a culture of minority exploitation. In a presidential system, an honorable president will protect the rights of a minority, perhaps even going against his own party, in order to faithfully execute the duties of his office. Basically it was a terrible, rambling response and was the worst part of my whole presentation. Ugh. Anyway, so we sat back down. Jenn and Marla came from LSR, but too late to see me speak. They listened to the last few speakers, one of whom, from IIT, was nearly at a Rakesh level of brilliance and wisdom, but in my opinion still quite inferior. He ended up getting best speaker, though, which I can understand, but disagree with. We broke for about ten minutes to wolf down some brownies (I didn't have any), potato chips (of course I had some), and Coke (you know it). Rakesh and I felt ok about our chances. Rakesh narrowed it down to three teams that were contending. The IIT kids, the two girls from Lady Shri Ram College (where Jenn, Marla and Mira attend), and us. I thought there was one other team from Jesus and Mary College that spoke quite well. So maybe four. When we came back in, a representative from the Embassy spoke for a bit and noted that Manmohan Singh and President Bush had had breakfast this morning in New York, and would be quite proud to see the caliber of debating that went on at this tournament. He was quite good-natured about the level of Bush-bashing that went on, some particularly nasty. Dude was Irish, though, a Mr. McDaniel, and maybe he was just a good Irish democrat like some other people I know. ;) After a few more speeches thanking every one, this nice professor of history at Janka Devi (sp?) College spoke for a minute, then got to the awards. One girl from Jesus and Mary College won for "Best Interjection." They thought some question she asked was right on, and gave her an award for it. The award for Best Speaker went to the tall kid from IIT. Rakesh was surprisingly neutral about that. I think he has ludicrously high standards for himself, and didn't probably think he deserved it. The award for "2nd Best Team" went to the team from Lady Shri Ram. At this point, I thought we'd lost it all. I felt ashamed and a little disappointed. I just looked down at the rug and tightened my face so I didn't make any spastic facial expressions when the team from IIT was called for the big "Best Team" award. "And the award for Best Team goes to the St. Stephen's Team of Rakesh Ankit and Brian J. McGuirk." Big applause. More than mild shock from me and Rakesh. Huge smiles from Jenn and Marla. We walked up and received our prize, and posed for photos with the American Embassy Irish Guy &c. I was told that the photographer/journalist was from the big-time Hindustan Times, but I don't really think that was correct. Ba, lots of applause again. I got this big heavy mother of a prize that I was totally mystified by. Rakesh nearly dropped his. Applause, applause. Big smiles. After one more speech, the thing was over and we had to stay behind to do more photos for the Embassy and stuff. The American Embassy Irish Guy &c told all the winners that we were invited to a function next friday, I think at the embassy itself, to watch the first Kerry/Bush Presidential debate with the embassy staff. That should be a damn nice time. After more thanks and talking all around with other debators, Jenn, Marla and I went to my favorite restaurant, Q'BA, to celebrate. We just chilled and got appetizers, and I opened my big prize. Rather than giving money like most competitions, we got these big heavy boxes. I was totally mystified by what could have been inside. I opened it to reveal a big white book, and a bunch of awesome books underneath it. The big white book is the enormous, gorgeous, expensive (US$70 list) LIFE: Our Century in Pictures. It's one of those books you always want to buy but can never convince yourself that it'd be worth the money. So it's nice that someone just gave it to me. The books underneath were also rather awesome: Faith and the Good Thing, a novel by Charles Johnson. On Democracy, the opus of Robert A. Dahl. Educational Leadership, a compilation edited by Bruce Anthony Jones. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, the earth-shatteringly gorgeous book by the recently departed demi-god John Rawls. I actually needed Rawls' book for some of the tentative political science research I'm thinking of doing here, so that's a nifty little book to pick up. I personally would have prefered a check for US$200 AND the books, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. :) All in all, this was a damn good day. I really know what Bob Marley was talking about when he sang "Sun is Shining / Weather is sweet, yea..." It was gorgeous here in Delhi today, and it's nigh on perfect right now at night. Perhaps Louis Armstrong encompassed it better: "I see skies of blue, and clouds of white The bright blessed days, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world." The sky is dark, thankfully, and there's a half moon floating down to the west amid pinpricks of stars. The wind is slow and easy and cools all, gently rattling the trees and vines. Things are good in India. What a wonderful world, indeed. This took me a while to type, so maybe I'll hold off on typing my enormous entry on Jaipur till tomorrow. This should hold you over, right? Good. Miss you all like hell. Take care of yourselves. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Delhi at Noon and Midnight

At noon, Delhi is scorching. The BBC, a growing addiction of mine, reports that it's hit 42 degrees Celcius (107.6F) the last few days. Even seasoned Dilliwallas complain about it. The heat is always something you can commiserate over with the most hijacking of Autowallas: B: "Aj garum hai, nahi?" Hot today, no? A: "Haji, bahut garum." Yes sir, very hot. B: "Engine tik, garum-mai hai?" Is the engine ok in the heat? A: "Haji, toh kuch problems hain." Yes sir, but there are some problems. This is usually followed by what I assume is a detailed description of what specific problems the engine has when it's hot, or maybe a funny story about where the autowallah has broken down before. I honestly don't know. I've had this little interchange maybe 5 times in the last week or so, and each time it's pretty much followed this pattern, and always it's followed by a light-speed Hindi retelling of some gripe or another. I smile when the autowallah smiles, I laugh when he laughs. When he finishes, I say, "but it's ok now?" And the answer is always "Haji." I need to learn the word for "oppressive," so I can add that to my heat conversation repertoire. God knows there has to be a word for oppressive in India. Yet, like many things in this country, it balances out in the end. Delhi at midnight is such a different creature. One of my favorite things here is to go out on our southern balcony at around midnight or so, and just sit. By midnight it's somehow, but unquestionably, hotter in our living room than it is outside on the balcony. A cool breeze runs through the gap between the apartment buildings, and the black blue outline of the trees in our neighbor's yard erupts in thousands of miniature explosions of dark color. Everything is different at midnight, not just the temperature. Ring Road traffic has died down, for the most part. During the day it's a roar of chaotic, constantly honking traffic. At night you just hear the deep but distant sounding rumble of big delivery trucks trudging on towards their destination. You still get the occasional screechs, thuds, honks, etc. but mostly it's just an easily ignorable rumble, no different from any other big city. At noon, birds rule the skies. Green parakeets with sharp, forked tails dash from tree to tree, camouflage to camouflage. Stupid pigeons disorganizedly congregate and fly with no real sense of purpose, except to leave little presents for us on the balcony bannister. Huge eagles and hawks and small numbers of other beautiful birds of prey, all with 5 foot plus wingspans, soar with what can only be described as majesty for hours, then swoop and help some pest shuffle on to its next life. At night, bats assume the throne. They fly silently from and to every possible direction. Insects must realize this, because they all but disappear as well. Delhi at noon has uniformly clear skies, now that the rains have all passed. There's so little moisture in the air that to see a cloud in the sky is almost a little surprising. Delhi at midnight is clear as well, but much more rewarding. From the limits to the horizon to maybe a third of the way to the apex, the sky takes on that all-too-familiar, sickening orange glow, common to every industrialized area in the world. (Why do they have to install streetlights of that color? Why?!) As this fades though, a deep dark blue takes over and, believe it or not, a fair number of stars can be seen. We've been here long enough that all of us off-handedly track the progress of the moon through its stages. It's currently about halfway back from a full moon. I'd like to thank you all for the concerned emails, but I'm really doing fine here in India. Last week was particularly stressful, but it passed. I feel better. Delhi hasn't changed, and it certainly won't while I'm here. So since leaving just is an option that neither my pride nor bank account can stomach, the only thing to do is to turn around and figure it out. Not accept the often maddening realities, but understand them and work with them. Reminding myself of my balcony at midnight is a good way to start. Talk to you soon.

Reasons India is Driving Me Crazy

NOTE: There are tons of exceptions to all these generalizations, but all of these hold in the general. Sorry this is such a generally negative entry, but I've just been fed up with this stuff lately. You want to know how I'm feeling in India? This is a pretty accurate assessment. St. Stephen's I go to St. Stephen's College, arguably the most elite liberal arts institution in this India. You would therefore expect a high degree of social and intellectual sophistication. It feels like middle school. At parties, on either side of the dance floor are same-sex cliques that look at each other and "eye-flirt" across the floor. In class, it's recitation, recitation, memorization. The lack of independent thinking and analysis and synthesis is maddening, coming from a place like Brown, where the theme is hybridization, and people actually like being intellectuals. People here are here to get a degree and then get an MBA and then get a job that lets them live like their parents. I also expected there'd be a strong progressive viewpoint, people would have creative ideas for dealing with India's staggering problems. Alas, none. I've heard and been in many more discussions about drinking, smoking, sex and music than anything substantive. It's not like there's not that segment of conversation everyplace in the world, but the proportion here is so unbalanced. There's also the disturbing, rather unbelievable lack of taste, politeness, and/or political correctness. Since my friend Shimrit, who goes to Middlebury and is on the Rutgers program, mentioned it the other day, weirdly enough I've heard more than a few people drop the n-word (the n-bomb, as Nate calls it) to describe black people or anyone in Africa. In America, if you told someone that some people would find it offensive to be called that, odds are good that many people would react with a "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone," sort of thing. Here it's like "Why not? I don't know any, and if I did I don't know if I'd talk to them." Lastly, the St. Stephen's kids in general are righteously spoiled. A huge number have cars and DRIVERS that wait for them to finish classes to take them home. These guys, and there are tons of them, wait in the parking lot at St. Stephen's and read the newspaper and try to stay out of the heat while they wait for their charges. They go to 5-star clubs most nights and throw decadent parties. It's very comparable to a lot of my least favorite people at Brown (and the Agawam, for that matter), in that there's this arrogant feeling of entitlement, like somehow they deserve what they have. As we all know, I have a thousand thoughts flying around in my head at any given time, but arguably the one that inflects more of my actions and beliefs and thoughts and plans is this: To whom much is given, much is expected. I have been given unbelievable opportunities in life, just read some of the archives of this rag for examples. But I don't forget that I've been given them, and I plan to do something with them. I want nothing less than to alter the course of human history, and for the better. I want to move us toward a new plane of existence. Done. That's it. All these experiences, all these things I'm learning and reading and synthesizing, they're all in some way, either directly or indirectly, in order to move closer to that goal. Much can be expected from me. I'm prepared for it. These kids, and I do mean kids, there's just no recognition there... Misogyny and Lack of Liberty It infuriates me to no end that my female friends here literally cannot go out on their own after dark here. Delhi is the rape capital of the subcontinent (243 since the New Year, and those are just the reported ones), and no one seems to care. Even Anusha, one of the most badass and independent people I've ever met, does not walk to her gym after dark, and that's less than a 10 minute walk through our very suburban-feeling neighborhood. My friend Rudy doesn't let his girl friends go home alone, no matter how far they have to go or how inconvenient it would be for someone to escort them home. This is not an unfounded fear. Pick a street in Delhi and odds are excellent that, after dark, stationed at various points along it are groups of shady, leering guys from age maybe 16 on up. These guys check out literally every vehicle that passes their station. If there happens to only be males in the car, they don't give a second glance. If there are females in the vehicle, all eyes are locked on her, giving her not just a once-over but occasionally making gestures that would make Madonna blush. If there are only girls in the car, I have seen it happen that said shady guys will hop in a car and follow whatever vehicle they were looking at. Who knows what their real intent is, or how long they keep that crap up, but the point is that it's intentionally threatening. Related story Keerthi and Chrissy, two Rutgers girls, and two of the sweetest people I've ever met, took an auto to go out to a club a few weeks ago. They were dressed to kill, which admittedly was not good strategy. (Not that there should have to be strategy!) They got their auto from out on the Ring Road, and wanted to go to this place called Shalom, some swank club where a bunch of our friends had gone out. About halfway to their destination, their auto broke down. On a dark street. On this street was the required gaggle of shady guys, growing by the minute, and three drunk cops. The cops immediately started giving them a hard time. Who are you? Where are you going? What are you doing out? After the belligerent one ripped their St. Stephen's ID's out of their hands, Keerthi called her program director and him to speak to the cop. The cop took the phone and started screaming, literally screaming into it. While this was happening, the gaggle of guys around them was still growing. One cop told them to come over to where he was, in the shadows near some bushes or something. The gaggle chanted that they should go over to him, "get it over and done with," to "do their duty," they said, laughing. It was clear to Chrissy and Keerthi that "their duty" was to get raped by the side of the road. Confronted with this terrible and rapidly destabilizing situation, they did what any reasonable person would do: they jetted. They caught an auto, didn't ask the price, didn't tell him the destination, just told him to go and go quickly. The auto guy didn't know what was going on, but he saw a siren in his rear-view mirror. Instead of pulling over, he turned onto sidestreets and tried to blend in with the rest of the rickshaw traffic. Apparently the guy knew he was doing the right thing, but was obviously freaked out. After they told him that they needed to get to Civil Lines, he stopped and pulled over. (This is not an irregular occurence when taking autorickshaws: one guy picked up a woman I assume to be his wife on a detour home from colleg one day.) Already panicking, Chrissy and Keerthi went into overdrive and tried to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. When the autowallah came back, he was smoking one from a pack of cigarettes he had just bought. Chrissy and Keerthi relate that he took backroads, roads they'd never seen before, to get home, and was constantly checking his rearview mirror and muttering to himself in Hindi. They got home alright, but were shaken up for a week after. They didn't go out with us, even with escort, for quite a while. I wish I could say that this was an uncommon occurence, especially the part about the drunken, abusive cops, but apparently it's a part of daily life here. That, my friends, is maddening. Economy Ok, this is a poor country. I understand this. But when every single economic interaction has to become a confrontation, even when prices are LISTED on the item I want to buy, it totally saps my energy. It's such a bloody hassle to get anywhere, to get back from there, to make sure no extra items are added to whatever total bill you accrue there. This faux, "Oh, hey, sorry, those are the prices" B.S. is taxing on mental and physical reserves. Don't tell me just to "deal with it" and move on. It's an onslaught. It takes an enormous amount of strength of will and willingness to just walk away from a transaction in order to get something akin to a market price. More coming, I think, but I have work to do.