I've been out of town for three days. Ben and I went to Mathura and Vindraban, Krishna's home towns. He was born in Mathura and he gamboled with the gopis in Vindraban. (I am sure I have the spelling of Vindraban wrong, but Ben's napping and he has all the travel information in his bedroom--yes, we are back in Delhi at Veronica's and we have the luxury of sleeping in two separate rooms. We manage in the same room but our schedules are so different that it is hard.)
I have two drafts waiting to be finalized -- mostly about Christmas in India, and a lot of stuff in the journal that I haven't even started as a draft blog yet, but it's been six days so I thought it was time for an update.
Some of you know I lost my cell phone. I now have a new cell phone, a small Nokia, and the same phone number. I had to file a police report, but fortunately Veronica's downstairs neighbor had business with the police and the constable comes to visit her since she is a long-time resident, so the neighbor, a friend of hers who had also lost her phone, Veronica who had to register her new housekeeper and myself all had coffee with the constable and did our business. It was especially helpful that someone else had lost her phone and could help me write the English letter that was eventually turned into a Hindi police report.
So we are back from our first excursion in India. We arranged a car and driver through the driver, Amerjit, that Veronica uses. The driver we had is Amerjit's younger brother, Amkhan. His English was limited but he knew his way around Mathura and Vindriban. At first we tried to tell him where we wanted to go, but when we gave up and let him drive where he wanted, things turned out much better. The temples, mostly to Krishna and Radha, are pretty much a blur now, but the ghats, the steps down to the river along the Yamuna river in both Mathura and Vrindiban (I think I'm getting closer to the spelling) were great. There were colorful boats to take you to the sacred sites (we declined), people worshipping here and there and, in Vrindiban, a steady stream of pilgrims doing a prescribed pilgrimage around Vrindiban.
We were repeatedly warned about the monkeys stealing cameras and glasses, but Ben put his glasses on briefly because he had lost track of me and a speedy monkey grabbed his glasses and retreated to a rough. A boy said he would get the glasses back for 200 rupees and he offered the monkey food, and the monkey dropped the glasses down and took the food. Amazing little transaction.
I'm still not up to snuff. Now it's my lungs, so I didn't have a lot of energy, so I never knew exactly where we were, what temple we were in, or why we were there, but I had a great time. We stopped frequently for tea, and outside a major Krishna temple in Vrindiban Ben made me drink a sweetened hot milk drink for medicinal and restorative purposes. It was delicious and it came in this unfired clay cup which I had to throw down and break afterwards. It had something to do with Krishna. In Mathura, they wouldn't let me into the major Krishan temple because I had forgotten I had a travel clock in my pocket and no electronic devices were allowed so I went shopping again. (I could have gone back to the cloak room and deposited it, but shopping seemed more attractive. I went to a government shop run by the state of Utra Pradesh, and bought a pinkish-brown sleeveless wool jacket made from homespun cloth from the Gandhi Ashram. Our friend Gautham, the gay political activist I will write about later, has a tailor who redoes his clothes so they show off his figure better. I am going to take the jacket to his tailor. Gautham is 26 and I am 67, but I have some vanity left and the jacket can do with some taking-in here and there.
The jacket is part of my plan to dress (above the waist) like a lower-middle-class Indian man. I have already bought to men's shawls and I am going to buy two more and some scarves. Ben reminded me that I used to wear shawls around the house when we lived together 30 years ago. So I am finally coming out of the closet as a shawl-wearer. I have aready worn my red one to the movies and my brown one to dinner in the hotel in Mathura. Ben made a face when I did it, but he walked around Vrindiban today with these ostentatious forehead markings he got in a temple from a very chatty priest, so he got even. I have pictures of Ben but not of the shawls yet.
I just bought a round-trip ticket to Poland on the internet. That was fun. It made me feel very international.
Ben and I are ordering home delivery pizza. That should be interesting.
We have an invitation to a New Year's Party tomorrow evening and then on New Year's Day we are going to Allahabad for the Ardh Mela.
I hope to go to bed early tonight and get up early and catch up on blogging tomorrow.
Luke
,
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Sacred Space
The experiences are piling up and I am haven't been writing much since my friend, Ben Teller, arrived. I have been taking some pictures, but I haven't yet figured out how to transfer them from my computer to the blog. I'm still working on getting wi-fi, but it is not simple. I need a permanent address in India. Since this is India, there is a way around this but I haven't figured it out yet. Also, the data cards aren't available right now. They are due any minute, but so far they haven't arrived. I am still without my own wireless. We are traveling less than I thought we would, so I might do without a data card this trip. I need an official reason for being here. Perhaps by my next trip, I will have figured one out.
Sacred Space
Without getting too spooky about it, I think all India is sacred space. I also think Los Angeles is a sacred space. All space is sacred. In this context by "sacred," I mean a sense that one is in the presence of the invisible, unknowable other. On the one hand, I am an unrepentant materialist and do not believe in an unknowable other. On the other hand, I frequently feel as if I am in its presence. So there is the greater sacred space, and then there are the spaces that people have set aside and identified in one way or another as sacred.
So far I have visited a mosque, four Hindu temples, a Jain temple, a Sikh gurudwara and two Christian churches. I like visiting temples and other sacred spaces in India. I usually feel welcomed and at worst ignored. I have yet to have a hostile experience. Currently, my favorite Hindu temple is the Keralan temple dedicated to Ayappa. When Vishnu was churning the ocean (one of the many times he has saved the world), he took the form of an attractive woman. Shiva fell in love with him and they had a son called Ayappa. The temple is in a two-month festival during which they have cultural programs and pilgrims leave from the temple for the main temple in Kerala. Before they go they bore a hole in a coconut, empty out the milk, replace it with ghee (purified butter), and close it with a stopper carved from coconut. When they get to the temple in the south, they will pour the ghee over the image. During their pilgrimage period they are governed by a vow which restricts the food their eat, and their behavior, including vow to chastity. When they return home they break a coconut on the threshold of their home and they are released from their vow. So far we have been there twice. The first time we heard children singing religious songs, and the second time we heard drumming. At the drumming concert we were adopted by a teenage boy and his friends and after the concert, we followed them to the temple kitchen and had prasad (in this case, free food given to temple attendees). It was excellent, a potato curry and unleavened bread. They boys wanted to know who was the god of the United States. I told them we had many gods, even Hindu ones. He said there were 44,000 Hindu gods. I told the boys that all the Hindu gods hadn't immigrated yet, but they were on their way. They walked with us to the main road, very impressed that Ben lives in Hollywood, and bargained a three-wheeler for us, the best rate we have had so far.
All of the sacred spaces here share one thing in common, even the Christian churches. They are a gathering place where before, after or instead of worshiping one hangs out with family and friends. The main mosque as a very large courtyard and there are always people, strolling and sitting. In the temples, they will sit and eat prasad (in this case food which they have purchased at or outside the temple or brought from home and offered to the god). It is sort of like a sacred picnic.
I like the Sikh gurudwaras because there is always music. The tenth Sikh guru said that after him the sacred book would be the guru. Now, musicians sing verses from the book near the book all day long. Each hour, different musicians arrive. There is always a singer, but the accompaniment varies. At a gurudwara, one of the events of a visit is sitting near the book and listening to the chanting. As you leave, you are given a small round of sweet, semolina-based prasad in your hand. It is not exactly like Christian-communion but it is a communal eating of sacred food in a sacred space.
Snake Charmers.
Last Sunday, Ben and I went to the India Habitat Center for a concert of snake charmers. This was put on by a wildlife protection organization that is working with snake charmers, training them to do educational work about snakes with school children, wild life experts and others. This is to keep them from removing snakes from the wild and using them as a means to make money. Traditionally, the snake charmers play a reed instrument I think is called something like "pungi," but was called something else here in Delhi. The instrument has a gourd attached to the pipe about halfway down and then another pipe extends below the gourd. The gourd chamber enables to the player, with the help of circular breathing to create a sustained sound like a bagpipe. In fact, a pungi sounds very much like the melody pipe of a bagpipe and on some songs, some of the players played a single note drone, while the others played the melody in unison and it sounded very much like a bagpipe. The snake charmers dress in shades of yellow, orange and orange-red with one or two in black or white. They were very energetic performers accompanied by variable pitch drums (which sound something like African talking drums). The concert was outside and was very exciting.
33 Years of Traveling History.
Unfortunately, after the concert we had a taxi driver who did not take instruction very well and at the end of the ride he went left instead of going straight ahead. Ben and I had different ideas on how to handle this. I prevailed and after we stopped, I talked the driver out of the ten rupee tip he wanted. I thought I did well and my feelings were hurt when I found out Ben was angry with not only the driver but me as well. I quickly lost any semblance of rationality but had the good sense to tell Ben I had to get away and eat by myself. I didn't handle it very skillfully, but we did avoid screaming at each other on the street as we have in the past. We talked it over the next morning and I think we are going to be o.k. on this trip. Most of the time we have a great time together, but after knowing each other for 35 years and traveling together for 33, we can push each other's buttons. However, I am most impressed about how much we care for each other. I couldn't see this when I was younger, but I can now, and that trumps the times when I find Ben to be the most annoying person on the planet.
A Great Party
I arrived in India with an introduction to Veronica Magar from my upstairs neighbor and long-time friend, Tim Wright. Veronica is a public health consultant specializing in women's rights and other sexual rights issues, including issues associated with AIDS. She has just returned from Croatia and graciously agreed to meet her and accompany her to a party that afternoon. She lives in Nizamuddin West which is centrally located and right in the middle of a lot of tombs and other monuments. The party was near by and was attended by other people working in a variety of areas under the umbrella of sexual rights -- women's issues, gay issue's, AIDS, and so on. They were mostly young, very bright, very charming, very engaged and Ben and I had a great time. There were so many interesting people to talk to and they were so open, that it was overwhelming, and I didn't take the advantage of it that I would have liked but I talked to many people about many interesting things. I also met a woman visiting from Brighton who runs a bisexual group there and so I will attend her meeting when I am in the U.K. because I will be staying in Brighton for part of the time.
The party was outside on a balcony underneath trees. The sky was blue, cheeti -- a kind of small crow were flying overhead, the food was good, there were children underfoot and I felt very privileged to see a part of India I would never have seen except for my friend Tim and his old, my new, friend Veronica.
The Wild Goose Chase
Last Saturday night, Ben and I decided to find a gay discussion group. For a variety of reasons, we hadn't phoned the group but trusted the information from the Internet. Fortunately, we had my favorite three-wheeler driver driving us who has helped us before. He took us to the address we had in South Delhi for the NAZ office where the meeting was to be held, but unfortunately, the NAZ office had moved. After talking to the current resident of the space with the help of the three-wheeler driver, he gave us the number of the current office. We called that on my cell phone and headed over there. There a woman showed up and said that the meeting was not there but somewhere else and that it was over now. During the process, we called Veronica a couple of times, but the whole experience remained mysterious. There should be a meeting tonight, but it is cancelled because of Christmas. If we are still in Delhi next Saturday, we will go to the meeting then.
The Best Meal Yet
Chronology is failing me, but I have to write about our meal at Gulati restaurant. After the wild goose chase, we were very hungry. I found a restaurant close by in a market. When the three-wheeler driver learned we were hungry, he suggested we go to a place nearby which turned out to be where I wanted to go, and when I told him the name of the restaurant he smiled and said it was good. He was born in the area and knew it well. We had shrimp grilled in the tandoori oven that were sweet, succulent, and well-spiced. We also had a lamb biryani, basically a pilaf, that was delicious. It was the best rice I have had so far in India. Finally, we had a paneer dish that had green peppers in it -- an unusual ingredient in India -- that was the best of all. For dessert, Ben had more paneer, this time cooked in a sugar syrup that was terrific. Not nearly as sweet as it usually is. And I had firni, a pudding made from rice flour and flavored with a lot of saffron that was also great. We were very happy with the meal.
Street Cries
All the time I am writing this in Veronica's apartment, there are street vendors and handymen going up and down crying their wares or services. I cannot identify the various cries, but I saw the fruit seller from the window this morning and ran out and bought bananas. The cries are great background music, supplemented by the call to prayer from a nearby mosque several times a day. Now that we are staying in a neighborhood, I don't want to leave Delhi, but soon we must.
Sacred Space
Without getting too spooky about it, I think all India is sacred space. I also think Los Angeles is a sacred space. All space is sacred. In this context by "sacred," I mean a sense that one is in the presence of the invisible, unknowable other. On the one hand, I am an unrepentant materialist and do not believe in an unknowable other. On the other hand, I frequently feel as if I am in its presence. So there is the greater sacred space, and then there are the spaces that people have set aside and identified in one way or another as sacred.
So far I have visited a mosque, four Hindu temples, a Jain temple, a Sikh gurudwara and two Christian churches. I like visiting temples and other sacred spaces in India. I usually feel welcomed and at worst ignored. I have yet to have a hostile experience. Currently, my favorite Hindu temple is the Keralan temple dedicated to Ayappa. When Vishnu was churning the ocean (one of the many times he has saved the world), he took the form of an attractive woman. Shiva fell in love with him and they had a son called Ayappa. The temple is in a two-month festival during which they have cultural programs and pilgrims leave from the temple for the main temple in Kerala. Before they go they bore a hole in a coconut, empty out the milk, replace it with ghee (purified butter), and close it with a stopper carved from coconut. When they get to the temple in the south, they will pour the ghee over the image. During their pilgrimage period they are governed by a vow which restricts the food their eat, and their behavior, including vow to chastity. When they return home they break a coconut on the threshold of their home and they are released from their vow. So far we have been there twice. The first time we heard children singing religious songs, and the second time we heard drumming. At the drumming concert we were adopted by a teenage boy and his friends and after the concert, we followed them to the temple kitchen and had prasad (in this case, free food given to temple attendees). It was excellent, a potato curry and unleavened bread. They boys wanted to know who was the god of the United States. I told them we had many gods, even Hindu ones. He said there were 44,000 Hindu gods. I told the boys that all the Hindu gods hadn't immigrated yet, but they were on their way. They walked with us to the main road, very impressed that Ben lives in Hollywood, and bargained a three-wheeler for us, the best rate we have had so far.
All of the sacred spaces here share one thing in common, even the Christian churches. They are a gathering place where before, after or instead of worshiping one hangs out with family and friends. The main mosque as a very large courtyard and there are always people, strolling and sitting. In the temples, they will sit and eat prasad (in this case food which they have purchased at or outside the temple or brought from home and offered to the god). It is sort of like a sacred picnic.
I like the Sikh gurudwaras because there is always music. The tenth Sikh guru said that after him the sacred book would be the guru. Now, musicians sing verses from the book near the book all day long. Each hour, different musicians arrive. There is always a singer, but the accompaniment varies. At a gurudwara, one of the events of a visit is sitting near the book and listening to the chanting. As you leave, you are given a small round of sweet, semolina-based prasad in your hand. It is not exactly like Christian-communion but it is a communal eating of sacred food in a sacred space.
Snake Charmers.
Last Sunday, Ben and I went to the India Habitat Center for a concert of snake charmers. This was put on by a wildlife protection organization that is working with snake charmers, training them to do educational work about snakes with school children, wild life experts and others. This is to keep them from removing snakes from the wild and using them as a means to make money. Traditionally, the snake charmers play a reed instrument I think is called something like "pungi," but was called something else here in Delhi. The instrument has a gourd attached to the pipe about halfway down and then another pipe extends below the gourd. The gourd chamber enables to the player, with the help of circular breathing to create a sustained sound like a bagpipe. In fact, a pungi sounds very much like the melody pipe of a bagpipe and on some songs, some of the players played a single note drone, while the others played the melody in unison and it sounded very much like a bagpipe. The snake charmers dress in shades of yellow, orange and orange-red with one or two in black or white. They were very energetic performers accompanied by variable pitch drums (which sound something like African talking drums). The concert was outside and was very exciting.
33 Years of Traveling History.
Unfortunately, after the concert we had a taxi driver who did not take instruction very well and at the end of the ride he went left instead of going straight ahead. Ben and I had different ideas on how to handle this. I prevailed and after we stopped, I talked the driver out of the ten rupee tip he wanted. I thought I did well and my feelings were hurt when I found out Ben was angry with not only the driver but me as well. I quickly lost any semblance of rationality but had the good sense to tell Ben I had to get away and eat by myself. I didn't handle it very skillfully, but we did avoid screaming at each other on the street as we have in the past. We talked it over the next morning and I think we are going to be o.k. on this trip. Most of the time we have a great time together, but after knowing each other for 35 years and traveling together for 33, we can push each other's buttons. However, I am most impressed about how much we care for each other. I couldn't see this when I was younger, but I can now, and that trumps the times when I find Ben to be the most annoying person on the planet.
A Great Party
I arrived in India with an introduction to Veronica Magar from my upstairs neighbor and long-time friend, Tim Wright. Veronica is a public health consultant specializing in women's rights and other sexual rights issues, including issues associated with AIDS. She has just returned from Croatia and graciously agreed to meet her and accompany her to a party that afternoon. She lives in Nizamuddin West which is centrally located and right in the middle of a lot of tombs and other monuments. The party was near by and was attended by other people working in a variety of areas under the umbrella of sexual rights -- women's issues, gay issue's, AIDS, and so on. They were mostly young, very bright, very charming, very engaged and Ben and I had a great time. There were so many interesting people to talk to and they were so open, that it was overwhelming, and I didn't take the advantage of it that I would have liked but I talked to many people about many interesting things. I also met a woman visiting from Brighton who runs a bisexual group there and so I will attend her meeting when I am in the U.K. because I will be staying in Brighton for part of the time.
The party was outside on a balcony underneath trees. The sky was blue, cheeti -- a kind of small crow were flying overhead, the food was good, there were children underfoot and I felt very privileged to see a part of India I would never have seen except for my friend Tim and his old, my new, friend Veronica.
The Wild Goose Chase
Last Saturday night, Ben and I decided to find a gay discussion group. For a variety of reasons, we hadn't phoned the group but trusted the information from the Internet. Fortunately, we had my favorite three-wheeler driver driving us who has helped us before. He took us to the address we had in South Delhi for the NAZ office where the meeting was to be held, but unfortunately, the NAZ office had moved. After talking to the current resident of the space with the help of the three-wheeler driver, he gave us the number of the current office. We called that on my cell phone and headed over there. There a woman showed up and said that the meeting was not there but somewhere else and that it was over now. During the process, we called Veronica a couple of times, but the whole experience remained mysterious. There should be a meeting tonight, but it is cancelled because of Christmas. If we are still in Delhi next Saturday, we will go to the meeting then.
The Best Meal Yet
Chronology is failing me, but I have to write about our meal at Gulati restaurant. After the wild goose chase, we were very hungry. I found a restaurant close by in a market. When the three-wheeler driver learned we were hungry, he suggested we go to a place nearby which turned out to be where I wanted to go, and when I told him the name of the restaurant he smiled and said it was good. He was born in the area and knew it well. We had shrimp grilled in the tandoori oven that were sweet, succulent, and well-spiced. We also had a lamb biryani, basically a pilaf, that was delicious. It was the best rice I have had so far in India. Finally, we had a paneer dish that had green peppers in it -- an unusual ingredient in India -- that was the best of all. For dessert, Ben had more paneer, this time cooked in a sugar syrup that was terrific. Not nearly as sweet as it usually is. And I had firni, a pudding made from rice flour and flavored with a lot of saffron that was also great. We were very happy with the meal.
Street Cries
All the time I am writing this in Veronica's apartment, there are street vendors and handymen going up and down crying their wares or services. I cannot identify the various cries, but I saw the fruit seller from the window this morning and ran out and bought bananas. The cries are great background music, supplemented by the call to prayer from a nearby mosque several times a day. Now that we are staying in a neighborhood, I don't want to leave Delhi, but soon we must.
Happy Holidays
Today, Christmas Eve, Veronica's landlady had us downstairs for Christmas cake and then she came upstairs to see the small artificial tree that Ben and I bought and decorated with very Indian ornaments. I am skipping midnight mass because I have a small cold and the churches are very cold. Tomorrow I am baking Swedish Christmas bread and going to Khan Market to pick up my Indian business cards.
A very Happy Holiday Season to Everyone.
Luke
A very Happy Holiday Season to Everyone.
Luke
Friday, December 22, 2006
In the Interim
Tuesday we moved to our new friend Veronica's apartment. She is a good friend of my good friend Tim and she has graciously opened her place to us. It is very comfortable and centrally located. It is now Friday and it took me a while to get access to her wi-fi, but now I can go on the Internet without leaving the house and finding an Internet. I also have my new laptop working more or less. I have down loaded my pictures but I need to figure out how to get them from the computer to here. I'll work on that tomorrow. I also have the draft of a new blog almost ready to go and now I can write directly on the computer, there should be more soon. This is just to let you know I am well and happy. And we are having such a good time in Delhi, we might never leave.
P.S. The Poland trip is on again. I will be going to Poland for a week right after I arrive in England from India for a series of improvised performances with my friends Caroline and Raisa.It
P.S. The Poland trip is on again. I will be going to Poland for a week right after I arrive in England from India for a series of improvised performances with my friends Caroline and Raisa.It
Monday, December 18, 2006
Temples, Churches, Gurudwaras
The experiences are piling up and I am haven't been writing much since my friend, Ben Teller, arrived. I have been taking some pictures, but I haven't yet figured out how to transfer them from my computer to the blog. I'm still working on getting wi fi, but it is not simple. I need a permanent address in India. Since this is India, there is a way around this but I haven't figured it out yet. Also, the data cards aren't available right now. They are due any minute, but so far they haven't arrived. I am still without my own wireless. We are traveling less than I thought we would, so I might do without a data card this trip. I need an official reason for being here. Perhaps by my next trip, I will have figured one out.
Sacred Space
Without getting too spooky about it, I think all India is sacred space. I also think Los Angeles is a sacred space. All space is sacred. In this context by "sacred," I mean a sense that one is in the presence of the invisible, unknowable other. On the one hand, I am an unrepentant materialist and do not believe in an unknowable other. On the other hand, I frequently feel as if I am in its presence. So there is the greater sacred space, and then there are the spaces that people have set aside and identified in one way or another as sacred.
Before I get to the sacred space itinerary, I have a couple of reports to make. One is a great party Ben and I went to Sunday afternoon, and the other is about the difficulties of traveling with some one. Let's take the last one first.
So far I have visited a mosque, a Hindu temple, a Jain temple, a Sikh gurudwara and two Christian churches. Tonight Ben and I are probably going to add at least one Hindu temple to the list. There is a Hanuman temple near the hotel -- Hanuman is the monkey god who helped rescue Sita, Rama's wife, when she was kidnapped by the demon and carried to Sri Lanka. This is the story told in the Ramayana. We might also go to a Shiva temple that is a short metro ride away in Old Delhi. I like visiting temples and other sacred spaces in India. I usually feel welcomed and at worst ignored. I have yet to have a hostile experience. The Hindu temple we visited is dedicated to Ayappa. When Vishnu was churning the ocean (one of the many times he has saved the world), he took the form of an attractive woman. Shiva fell in love with him and they had a son called Ayappa.Thirty-three years of traveling together and we are still working it out.
After the party, Ben and I went to the India Habitat Center for a concert of snake charmers. This was put on by a wildlife protection organization that is working with snake charmers, training them to do educational work about snakes with school children, wild life experts and others. This is to keep them from removing snakes from the wild and using them as a means to make money. Traditionally, the snake charmers play a reed instrument I think is called something like "pungi," but was called something else here in Delhi. The instrument has a gourd attached to the pipe about halfway down and then another pipe extends below the gourd. The gourd chamber enables to the player, with the help of circular breathing to create a sustained sound like a bagpipe. In fact, a pungi sounds very much like the melody pipe of a bagpipe and on some songs, some of the players played a single note drone, while the others played the melody in unison and it sounded very much like a bagpipe. The snake charmers dress in shades of yellow, orange and orange-red with one or two in black or white. They were very energetic performers accompanied by variable pitch drums (which sound something like African talking drums). The concert was outside and was very exciting. Unfortunately, afterwards we had a taxi driver who did not take instruction very well and at the end of the ride he went left instead of going straight ahead. Ben and I different ideas on how to handle this. I prevailed and after we stopped, I talked the driver out of the ten rupee tip he wanted. I thought I did well and my feelings were hurt when I found out Ben was angry with not only the driver but me as well. I quickly lost any semblance of rationality but had the good sense to tell Ben I had to get away and eat by myself. I didn't handle it very skillfully, but we did avoid screaming at each other on the street as we have in the past. We talked it over the next morning and I think we are going to be o.k. on this trip. Most of the time we have a great time together, but after knowing each other for 35 years and travelling together for 33, we can push each other's buttons. However, I am most impressed about how much we care for each other. I couldn't see this when I was younger, but I can now, and that trumps the times when I find Ben to be the most annoying person on the planet.
A Great Party
I arrived in India with an introduction to Veronica Magar from my upstairs neighbor and long-time friend, Tim Wright. Veronica is a public health consultant specializing in women's rights and other sexual rights issues, including issues associated with AIDS. She has just returned from Croatia and graciously agreed to meet her and accompany her to a party that afternoon. She lives in Nizamuddin West which is centrally located and right in the middle of a lot of tombs and other monuments. The party was near by and was attended by other people working in a variety of areas under the umbrella of sexual rights -- women's issues, gay issue's, AIDS, and so on. They were mostly young, very bright, very charming, very engaged and Ben and I had a great time. There were so many interesting people to talk to and they were so open, that it was overwhelming, and I didn't take the advantage of it that I would have liked but I talked to many people about many interesting things. I also met a woman visiting from Brighton who runs a bisexual group there and so I will attend her meeting when I am in the U.K. because I will be staying in Brighton for part of the time. The party was outside on a balcony underneath trees. The sky was blue, cheeti -- a kind of small crow were flying overhead, the food was good, there were children underfoot and I felt very privileged to see a part of India I would never have seen except for my friend Tim and his old, my new, friend Veronica.
The Wild Goose Chase
Saturday night, Ben and I decided to find a gay discussion group. For a variety of reasons, we hadn't phoned the group but trusted the information from the Internet. Fortunately, we had my favorite three-wheeler driver driving us who has helped us before. He took us to the address we had in South Delhi for the NAZ office where the meeting was to be held, but unfortunately, the NAZ office had moved. After talking to the current resident of the space with the help of the three-wheeler driver, he gave us the number of the current office. We called that on my cell phone and headed over there. There a woman showed up and said that the meeting was not there but somewhere else and that it was over now. [Make all this sound as complicated as it really was -- phone calls to Veronica, etc.]
The Best Meal Yet
Chronology is failing me, but I have to write about our meal at . After the wild goose chase, we were very hungry. I found a restaurant close by in a market. When the three-wheeler driver learned we were hungry, he suggested we go to a place nearby which turned out to be where I wanted to go, and when I told him the name of the restaurant he smiled and said it was good. He was born in the area and knew it well. We had shrimp grilled in the tandoori oven that were sweet, succulent, and well-spiced. We also had a lamb birranyi, basically a pilaf, that was delicious. It was the best rice I have had so far in India. Finally, we had a paneer dish that had green peppers in it -- an unusual ingredient in India -- that was the best of all. For dessert, Ben had more paneer, this time cooked in a sugar syrup that was terrific. Not nearly as sweet as it usually is. And I had firni, a pudding made from rice flour and flavored with a lot of saffron that was also great. We were very happy with the meal.
Sacred Space
Without getting too spooky about it, I think all India is sacred space. I also think Los Angeles is a sacred space. All space is sacred. In this context by "sacred," I mean a sense that one is in the presence of the invisible, unknowable other. On the one hand, I am an unrepentant materialist and do not believe in an unknowable other. On the other hand, I frequently feel as if I am in its presence. So there is the greater sacred space, and then there are the spaces that people have set aside and identified in one way or another as sacred.
Before I get to the sacred space itinerary, I have a couple of reports to make. One is a great party Ben and I went to Sunday afternoon, and the other is about the difficulties of traveling with some one. Let's take the last one first.
So far I have visited a mosque, a Hindu temple, a Jain temple, a Sikh gurudwara and two Christian churches. Tonight Ben and I are probably going to add at least one Hindu temple to the list. There is a Hanuman temple near the hotel -- Hanuman is the monkey god who helped rescue Sita, Rama's wife, when she was kidnapped by the demon and carried to Sri Lanka. This is the story told in the Ramayana. We might also go to a Shiva temple that is a short metro ride away in Old Delhi. I like visiting temples and other sacred spaces in India. I usually feel welcomed and at worst ignored. I have yet to have a hostile experience. The Hindu temple we visited is dedicated to Ayappa. When Vishnu was churning the ocean (one of the many times he has saved the world), he took the form of an attractive woman. Shiva fell in love with him and they had a son called Ayappa.Thirty-three years of traveling together and we are still working it out.
After the party, Ben and I went to the India Habitat Center for a concert of snake charmers. This was put on by a wildlife protection organization that is working with snake charmers, training them to do educational work about snakes with school children, wild life experts and others. This is to keep them from removing snakes from the wild and using them as a means to make money. Traditionally, the snake charmers play a reed instrument I think is called something like "pungi," but was called something else here in Delhi. The instrument has a gourd attached to the pipe about halfway down and then another pipe extends below the gourd. The gourd chamber enables to the player, with the help of circular breathing to create a sustained sound like a bagpipe. In fact, a pungi sounds very much like the melody pipe of a bagpipe and on some songs, some of the players played a single note drone, while the others played the melody in unison and it sounded very much like a bagpipe. The snake charmers dress in shades of yellow, orange and orange-red with one or two in black or white. They were very energetic performers accompanied by variable pitch drums (which sound something like African talking drums). The concert was outside and was very exciting. Unfortunately, afterwards we had a taxi driver who did not take instruction very well and at the end of the ride he went left instead of going straight ahead. Ben and I different ideas on how to handle this. I prevailed and after we stopped, I talked the driver out of the ten rupee tip he wanted. I thought I did well and my feelings were hurt when I found out Ben was angry with not only the driver but me as well. I quickly lost any semblance of rationality but had the good sense to tell Ben I had to get away and eat by myself. I didn't handle it very skillfully, but we did avoid screaming at each other on the street as we have in the past. We talked it over the next morning and I think we are going to be o.k. on this trip. Most of the time we have a great time together, but after knowing each other for 35 years and travelling together for 33, we can push each other's buttons. However, I am most impressed about how much we care for each other. I couldn't see this when I was younger, but I can now, and that trumps the times when I find Ben to be the most annoying person on the planet.
A Great Party
I arrived in India with an introduction to Veronica Magar from my upstairs neighbor and long-time friend, Tim Wright. Veronica is a public health consultant specializing in women's rights and other sexual rights issues, including issues associated with AIDS. She has just returned from Croatia and graciously agreed to meet her and accompany her to a party that afternoon. She lives in Nizamuddin West which is centrally located and right in the middle of a lot of tombs and other monuments. The party was near by and was attended by other people working in a variety of areas under the umbrella of sexual rights -- women's issues, gay issue's, AIDS, and so on. They were mostly young, very bright, very charming, very engaged and Ben and I had a great time. There were so many interesting people to talk to and they were so open, that it was overwhelming, and I didn't take the advantage of it that I would have liked but I talked to many people about many interesting things. I also met a woman visiting from Brighton who runs a bisexual group there and so I will attend her meeting when I am in the U.K. because I will be staying in Brighton for part of the time. The party was outside on a balcony underneath trees. The sky was blue, cheeti -- a kind of small crow were flying overhead, the food was good, there were children underfoot and I felt very privileged to see a part of India I would never have seen except for my friend Tim and his old, my new, friend Veronica.
The Wild Goose Chase
Saturday night, Ben and I decided to find a gay discussion group. For a variety of reasons, we hadn't phoned the group but trusted the information from the Internet. Fortunately, we had my favorite three-wheeler driver driving us who has helped us before. He took us to the address we had in South Delhi for the NAZ office where the meeting was to be held, but unfortunately, the NAZ office had moved. After talking to the current resident of the space with the help of the three-wheeler driver, he gave us the number of the current office. We called that on my cell phone and headed over there. There a woman showed up and said that the meeting was not there but somewhere else and that it was over now. [Make all this sound as complicated as it really was -- phone calls to Veronica, etc.]
The Best Meal Yet
Chronology is failing me, but I have to write about our meal at . After the wild goose chase, we were very hungry. I found a restaurant close by in a market. When the three-wheeler driver learned we were hungry, he suggested we go to a place nearby which turned out to be where I wanted to go, and when I told him the name of the restaurant he smiled and said it was good. He was born in the area and knew it well. We had shrimp grilled in the tandoori oven that were sweet, succulent, and well-spiced. We also had a lamb birranyi, basically a pilaf, that was delicious. It was the best rice I have had so far in India. Finally, we had a paneer dish that had green peppers in it -- an unusual ingredient in India -- that was the best of all. For dessert, Ben had more paneer, this time cooked in a sugar syrup that was terrific. Not nearly as sweet as it usually is. And I had firni, a pudding made from rice flour and flavored with a lot of saffron that was also great. We were very happy with the meal.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Travel Companion
My friend Ben Teller and I have now had two full days of being together in Delhi. We have been travelling together since 1973, most notable in Indonesia (1973), Europe (1976) and China (2001). By and large we are good travel companions. We have a similar level of curiosity but are interests are somewhat different. Ben is very interested in language and is learning Hindi. I am more interested in high culture and monuments. We spend time apart and then take the other to see any treasures we have discovered. This afternoon we are exploring Old Delhi together. We had one exploratory walk through the stationery and sari markets on his first day here, but are going to spend more time up there today.
It has been interesting adjusting to Ben's presence. In the past, we have had spectacular fights -- a famous one in Hong Kong Bay where we shouted at each other from passing Star Ferries, and a particularly terrible one the day after 9/11 in a hotel lobby in Dali, China. However, growing old helps. We are more solicitous of each other now and are both fairly comfortable in India. I am hoping to get through the month without screaming at him in some crowded venue.
My writing has suffered a little bit since he arrived, but I hope to get back into the groove. I get up earlier than he does so I hope to do my writing in the morning, as I am doing now. We have had two full days. The first day there was some organizing, figuring out how to fit into a fairly small hotel room. A larger one was available but we chose quiet over space. Then we had to get Ben's cell phone operational in India. Cell phones have made traveling so much easier. In the past I have had to search for telephone booths which are not always easy to find and which don't always work well. Now I can call concert venues, etc., any time I want. I have made reservatinos for a hotel in Varanasi. Cell phones also eliminate those annoying moments when you are looking for each other and are very close, but still can't find each other. I am very fond of my cell phone. Indians are just getting use to them. They can't seem to understand the concept of turning them off during a concert even though there are repeated pleas at the beginning of every event. They not only ring, but people answer and talk. People tend to talk more during concerts here anyway. It takes some getting use to. They also will sing along from time to time.
After the organizing, we took the short walk I mentioned in Old Delhi, had a snack and went to an interesting lecture on the survival of Urdu in Delhi. Urdu and Hindi are basically the same language, but they use different scripts and Urdu has more Persian words and Hindi more Sanskrit. What is Urdu and what is Hindi is a highly charged question. The lecture had long examples in Urdu, some recorded, some filmed and some read by an actor whom I had seen before at the Urdu epic evening. He's very good and some sense of what he is saying comes across through his facial expressions and body language. At the end, a professor recited something from the 19th century which had the audience in stitches and was very entertaining to watch.
Yesterday, we went to a doctor in Khan Market in an upscale area of South Delhi. The doctor was about my age. I introduced Ben as Dr. Teller and they traded credentials (Ben is a retired psychiatrist). The doctor was very affable and reassuring. He thinks I am recovering but my chronic irritable bowel syndrome is slowing the process. I see him again tomorrow. The first visit cost $10.00 and the second will probably cost less. He has given my some probiotics to take to restore my stomach bacteria after the antibiotics and taken my off of my antimalaria pill for a while to make sure my stomach upset is not due to that pill. It is not malaria season in Delhi and I have not seen a mosquito yet so that's o.k. Then we had lunch in Khan market, not a successful meal, but I was getting hungry and cranky so we didn't have a lot of time to make a choice.
Then I took Ben to Lodi gardens, my favorite spot in Delhi. Then it was back to the hotel for a nap and a concert in the evening. It was a three-parter which is not my favorite. They outlast my attention span and they save the best until last, but it was interesting. The first part was supposed to be bhajans, Hindu devotional songs, but the singer was ill so she was replaced by an 11-year old girl who sang two short bhajans. She was nervous at first, but came around. It was her first public appearance and she was very charming. Then there was a sitar player who was a middle-aged man beginning his performing career. I think he has a ways to go, but the audience was very encouraging. (The evening was put on my an organization that encourages performers who are starting their careers.) Finally, there was a vocalist who was my favorite, but by then Ben was over it and I was fading fast. So we eventually beat a retreat and looked for a restaurant in Paharganj. The first restaurant we were looking for seems no longer to exist and it took us a while to find the second, but I retained my good humor and we had a good meal in different surroundings than the more upscale restaurants we have been eating in near our hotel.
This morning I walked up to Paharganj again. It was such a pleasure. I am part of India and, inpite of the intense vehicular traffic, India walks. A young Indian saw Ben and I turning down a taxi and he said to us "eleven," which took us awhile to understand, but it turns out that he meant that two legs look like an eleven, so "eleven" is a synonym for walking. I am at my new favorite Internet cafe which is in the basement of a hotel and has a pool room attached. The bathrooms aren't as good as the one at my old favorite, but the room is even more spacious even though I can't see the street. It is also cheaper by about 30 cents an hour.
So I have been rambling on. Where's the local color? Where's the incisive comment on contemporary Indian life? Today at some point I going to look at one thing very carefully and tell you about it. And now I am very sleepy. I think I am going to head back to the hotel and take a short nap before we head out for the day.
It has been interesting adjusting to Ben's presence. In the past, we have had spectacular fights -- a famous one in Hong Kong Bay where we shouted at each other from passing Star Ferries, and a particularly terrible one the day after 9/11 in a hotel lobby in Dali, China. However, growing old helps. We are more solicitous of each other now and are both fairly comfortable in India. I am hoping to get through the month without screaming at him in some crowded venue.
My writing has suffered a little bit since he arrived, but I hope to get back into the groove. I get up earlier than he does so I hope to do my writing in the morning, as I am doing now. We have had two full days. The first day there was some organizing, figuring out how to fit into a fairly small hotel room. A larger one was available but we chose quiet over space. Then we had to get Ben's cell phone operational in India. Cell phones have made traveling so much easier. In the past I have had to search for telephone booths which are not always easy to find and which don't always work well. Now I can call concert venues, etc., any time I want. I have made reservatinos for a hotel in Varanasi. Cell phones also eliminate those annoying moments when you are looking for each other and are very close, but still can't find each other. I am very fond of my cell phone. Indians are just getting use to them. They can't seem to understand the concept of turning them off during a concert even though there are repeated pleas at the beginning of every event. They not only ring, but people answer and talk. People tend to talk more during concerts here anyway. It takes some getting use to. They also will sing along from time to time.
After the organizing, we took the short walk I mentioned in Old Delhi, had a snack and went to an interesting lecture on the survival of Urdu in Delhi. Urdu and Hindi are basically the same language, but they use different scripts and Urdu has more Persian words and Hindi more Sanskrit. What is Urdu and what is Hindi is a highly charged question. The lecture had long examples in Urdu, some recorded, some filmed and some read by an actor whom I had seen before at the Urdu epic evening. He's very good and some sense of what he is saying comes across through his facial expressions and body language. At the end, a professor recited something from the 19th century which had the audience in stitches and was very entertaining to watch.
Yesterday, we went to a doctor in Khan Market in an upscale area of South Delhi. The doctor was about my age. I introduced Ben as Dr. Teller and they traded credentials (Ben is a retired psychiatrist). The doctor was very affable and reassuring. He thinks I am recovering but my chronic irritable bowel syndrome is slowing the process. I see him again tomorrow. The first visit cost $10.00 and the second will probably cost less. He has given my some probiotics to take to restore my stomach bacteria after the antibiotics and taken my off of my antimalaria pill for a while to make sure my stomach upset is not due to that pill. It is not malaria season in Delhi and I have not seen a mosquito yet so that's o.k. Then we had lunch in Khan market, not a successful meal, but I was getting hungry and cranky so we didn't have a lot of time to make a choice.
Then I took Ben to Lodi gardens, my favorite spot in Delhi. Then it was back to the hotel for a nap and a concert in the evening. It was a three-parter which is not my favorite. They outlast my attention span and they save the best until last, but it was interesting. The first part was supposed to be bhajans, Hindu devotional songs, but the singer was ill so she was replaced by an 11-year old girl who sang two short bhajans. She was nervous at first, but came around. It was her first public appearance and she was very charming. Then there was a sitar player who was a middle-aged man beginning his performing career. I think he has a ways to go, but the audience was very encouraging. (The evening was put on my an organization that encourages performers who are starting their careers.) Finally, there was a vocalist who was my favorite, but by then Ben was over it and I was fading fast. So we eventually beat a retreat and looked for a restaurant in Paharganj. The first restaurant we were looking for seems no longer to exist and it took us a while to find the second, but I retained my good humor and we had a good meal in different surroundings than the more upscale restaurants we have been eating in near our hotel.
This morning I walked up to Paharganj again. It was such a pleasure. I am part of India and, inpite of the intense vehicular traffic, India walks. A young Indian saw Ben and I turning down a taxi and he said to us "eleven," which took us awhile to understand, but it turns out that he meant that two legs look like an eleven, so "eleven" is a synonym for walking. I am at my new favorite Internet cafe which is in the basement of a hotel and has a pool room attached. The bathrooms aren't as good as the one at my old favorite, but the room is even more spacious even though I can't see the street. It is also cheaper by about 30 cents an hour.
So I have been rambling on. Where's the local color? Where's the incisive comment on contemporary Indian life? Today at some point I going to look at one thing very carefully and tell you about it. And now I am very sleepy. I think I am going to head back to the hotel and take a short nap before we head out for the day.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Evidence
There is a new dance zine in LA called "Itch" published by Meg Wolfe and Rae (I can't remember your last name Rae, sorry). For the next issue they soliciting contributions on the topic of "evidence." I hope to submit something from India, and in the meantime, I am using the concept of "evidence" as a way to filter my experiences here. For the moment, I am thinking of evidence as proof that something happened. Evidence can be documentary, but in a court, testimony to one's personal experiences is also accepted. My testimony, including this blog is evidence.
Joy
I continue to experience these brief moments of joy. This morning as I left my hotel, I started skipping, much to the astonishment of the Indian businessmen passing by. I toned down my external behavior, but I still get a thrill when I leave my hotel and there is India before me -- and it's a rather unprepossessing bit of India -- a busy road, a decaying colonnade, dirty pavement, cars and motorcycles parked willy-nilly about and it still makes me happy.
Company
I went to the airport last night in the middle of the night to pick up my friend Ben Teller. We will be travelling together for a month. Being the person that I am, I am ambivalent about this, but the account comes out in the black. It was such a pleasure last night to tuck myself in bed while someone else moved around the room, asking questions, getting organized, while I slowly went to sleep.
I resent that I can no longer poke around when and where I will, but I am looking forward to showing Ben my Delhi, as patchy as it still is. And to be fair, I get up about 7 a.m. and he gets up about noon, so I have five hours to myself everyday. Already, I've had breakfast, explored Paharganj a little, and found this large Internet place in the basement of a hotel. It has cockroaches and the walls are in terrible condition but there is space and the street cries come down the stairs.
I arrived at the airport early and the plane was a little late so I had a lot of time to watch people arriving in India -- the group tourists, the businessmen, the people meeting family, the people resolutely doing it on their own and then the waiters, the quarreling couples, the hotel staff with their name boards, people with astonishing amounts of luggage on trolleys waiting for the rest of their party. And as they slowly trickle out of immigration and customs, the people slowly reading each sign as if they had never seen their own name before and might not recognize it when they saw it, the lone woman walking back and forth, up and down the line, "Where is my name? I don't see my name." The relief when she finally does. The variety of greetings, hand shakes, hugs, touching heads, touching feet, and all this taking place in a very large, somewhat shabby room with the bright yellow official airport signs giving everyone a sickly yellow cast. And then, the bottle neck at the one narrow exit door, the battle to get through the taxi lines, and then we are at the pickup point, and I call our driver on my cell phone and he comes and we are speeding through the dark, smoky Delhi night.
Kathak
Kathak is one of the classical dance forms of India. Last night, the dancer said there is record of kathak being danced on the banks of the Ganges in the 3rd or 4th century B.C.E. I don't think it looked much like what I have seen in Delhi. For one thing, the kathak costume is basically Mughal, brought in by the Islamic invaders -- A long shirt jacket that flares at the bottom -- for women this can become a dress but for both men and women it usually ends below the knees, and for both men and women tight-fitting trousers. Ankle bells are worn -- these I think are Hindu. What seems to distinguish this dance -- and I am basing my observations on the evidence of two performances -- is a rhythmic interplay between the dancer and musicians. The dancer lays out the rhythmic pattern using syllables relating to drum strokes. The musicians then repeat this while the dancer dances. The first kathak concert I saw began with a lecture demonstration in which the guru laid out various rhythmic lines and then danced them. He was amazing. He looked somewhat like Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard," the same strong face, dramatic eyes and over-the-top gestures. But, although he was only a couple of years younger then me, he danced with vigor, clarity and grace. The second part of the evening presented his choreography danced by four of his students. They were all dancers with long biographies and much experience, but they didn't match his clarity and skill. Kathak emphasizes rhythmic clarity, expressed by the feet, precision of movement and ending in postures that are a small, dramatic tableau. Again, this is the evidence of two performances. On the second evening, the dancer was introduced as a prima donna, and indeed she is. She has been dancing for thirty years and the audience obviously knew and loved her. Her speciality was speed and clarity. I didn't like her as well as the man from the earlier performance and she had wonderful showwomanship and was a riveting performer.
In between, I saw a dance performance from Kerala in the south in a wonderful small performing space near my hotel. It was where I saw the Urdu epic poetry. The audience for the dance performance was very small so I got to talk to the people who organize the space. It is a non-profit group that survives by renting out their space when they are not using it. They put on about two dance or music performances a month and several lectures. They pay the dancers and musicians but not the lecturers. I will go back there and would like to perform there at some time in the future.
Now I am going to look at some more state emporia I discovered on the ride to the airport and then collect Ben for lunch.
Joy
I continue to experience these brief moments of joy. This morning as I left my hotel, I started skipping, much to the astonishment of the Indian businessmen passing by. I toned down my external behavior, but I still get a thrill when I leave my hotel and there is India before me -- and it's a rather unprepossessing bit of India -- a busy road, a decaying colonnade, dirty pavement, cars and motorcycles parked willy-nilly about and it still makes me happy.
Company
I went to the airport last night in the middle of the night to pick up my friend Ben Teller. We will be travelling together for a month. Being the person that I am, I am ambivalent about this, but the account comes out in the black. It was such a pleasure last night to tuck myself in bed while someone else moved around the room, asking questions, getting organized, while I slowly went to sleep.
I resent that I can no longer poke around when and where I will, but I am looking forward to showing Ben my Delhi, as patchy as it still is. And to be fair, I get up about 7 a.m. and he gets up about noon, so I have five hours to myself everyday. Already, I've had breakfast, explored Paharganj a little, and found this large Internet place in the basement of a hotel. It has cockroaches and the walls are in terrible condition but there is space and the street cries come down the stairs.
I arrived at the airport early and the plane was a little late so I had a lot of time to watch people arriving in India -- the group tourists, the businessmen, the people meeting family, the people resolutely doing it on their own and then the waiters, the quarreling couples, the hotel staff with their name boards, people with astonishing amounts of luggage on trolleys waiting for the rest of their party. And as they slowly trickle out of immigration and customs, the people slowly reading each sign as if they had never seen their own name before and might not recognize it when they saw it, the lone woman walking back and forth, up and down the line, "Where is my name? I don't see my name." The relief when she finally does. The variety of greetings, hand shakes, hugs, touching heads, touching feet, and all this taking place in a very large, somewhat shabby room with the bright yellow official airport signs giving everyone a sickly yellow cast. And then, the bottle neck at the one narrow exit door, the battle to get through the taxi lines, and then we are at the pickup point, and I call our driver on my cell phone and he comes and we are speeding through the dark, smoky Delhi night.
Kathak
Kathak is one of the classical dance forms of India. Last night, the dancer said there is record of kathak being danced on the banks of the Ganges in the 3rd or 4th century B.C.E. I don't think it looked much like what I have seen in Delhi. For one thing, the kathak costume is basically Mughal, brought in by the Islamic invaders -- A long shirt jacket that flares at the bottom -- for women this can become a dress but for both men and women it usually ends below the knees, and for both men and women tight-fitting trousers. Ankle bells are worn -- these I think are Hindu. What seems to distinguish this dance -- and I am basing my observations on the evidence of two performances -- is a rhythmic interplay between the dancer and musicians. The dancer lays out the rhythmic pattern using syllables relating to drum strokes. The musicians then repeat this while the dancer dances. The first kathak concert I saw began with a lecture demonstration in which the guru laid out various rhythmic lines and then danced them. He was amazing. He looked somewhat like Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard," the same strong face, dramatic eyes and over-the-top gestures. But, although he was only a couple of years younger then me, he danced with vigor, clarity and grace. The second part of the evening presented his choreography danced by four of his students. They were all dancers with long biographies and much experience, but they didn't match his clarity and skill. Kathak emphasizes rhythmic clarity, expressed by the feet, precision of movement and ending in postures that are a small, dramatic tableau. Again, this is the evidence of two performances. On the second evening, the dancer was introduced as a prima donna, and indeed she is. She has been dancing for thirty years and the audience obviously knew and loved her. Her speciality was speed and clarity. I didn't like her as well as the man from the earlier performance and she had wonderful showwomanship and was a riveting performer.
In between, I saw a dance performance from Kerala in the south in a wonderful small performing space near my hotel. It was where I saw the Urdu epic poetry. The audience for the dance performance was very small so I got to talk to the people who organize the space. It is a non-profit group that survives by renting out their space when they are not using it. They put on about two dance or music performances a month and several lectures. They pay the dancers and musicians but not the lecturers. I will go back there and would like to perform there at some time in the future.
Now I am going to look at some more state emporia I discovered on the ride to the airport and then collect Ben for lunch.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Local Color
Just before I left for India, I saw a listing in the UCLA Extension catalog for a travel writing course. Among other things, it promised to teach you how to introduce "local color" into your writing. I have a bit of a problem with "local color. Edward Said in "Orientalism" and all the writers who have followed him have taught us to be suspicious of exoticising the other, visiting countries and essentially seeing a series of postcards that our own culture has prepared us to see. On the other hand, I am in India and much of it is new and different to me like the two young men squatting down on their feet and washing the marble floor of the hotel lobby with damp cloths. In California, long-handled mops are used, or, if my mother were washing the floors, it would be on her hands and knees, not squatting down on two feet, with one hand for balance and one for the mop rag. And now one of them is throwing out the water into the alley from a green plastic pail.
I am in my favorite internet place. It's not my favorite because it is faster or more reliable than any place else, although it is faster than some, but because it's in a hotel lobby and not some small, cramped, noisy hot room with too many computers in it. Also there is a toilet right here. At the moment this is not a major consideration, but you never know. Mostly, I like the space and air and view out on to the alley. It's around the corner from my first hotel. I haven't been back here since I have been sick (in case I never said, it was food poisoning), and I am enjoying it. It is village life right in the middle of New Delhi. Connaught Circle, less than a mile away, is very urban. Here there are cows, goats, horse carts, street shrines, and as I wrote earlier, food being prepared everywhere. It is such a pleasure to be back here in spite of some misgivings. There are touts and beggars, and it is here where I had the unfortunate shoe shine incident. Another young boy addressed me to day for a shoe shine and I saw the "covers" ready in his hand. By the way, I now have my own shoe shine person around the corner from my new hotel. He charges 10 rupees and although the shoes look a little oily, they do shine. I also have a motor rickshaw dispatcher. I have his cell phone number. I have a favorite stand to buy water from. A barber shop. My favorite place for a South India breakfast -- I have shifted from idli to upma. I never ate upma in the South so I can compare it and it is cream of wheat with almonds and a few spices thrown in. I think sick people should eat a lot of cream of wheat. And the spices are mostly sweet spices like cardamom. And then I have a cup of South Indian coffee and I am ready for the day, practically a native.
I became distracted from my local color lecture. You get the idea. Approach the other with open eyes, and don't make it quaint, evil or exploitable. I just have to keep stretching the frame and including more and more.
Last night I thought I was going to a recital of songs from Hindi films, and then I thought it was Bengali films, and when I got there it was a recitiation of excerpts from Bengali plays. Since I had spent the previous evening at a theater event in Urdu, I passed on the Bengali. Inside I went to a play that promised to be bilingual, and it was but the English did not translate the Hindi or even refer to it. There were English bits and much longer Hindi bits. Nevertheless, it was engaged. The play was very earnest and I'm glad I didn't understand the Hindi if it was like the English. They had created the piece in a group process so I found the evening interesting watching an Indian theater company that was obviously using the same techniques I have been using in improvising all my adult life.
I have also created set pieces from improvisation using social issues as content. Their was very didatic and there were long sections where two actors looked like they were having a conversation, but in the English bits, they were more like interwoven monologues, although each actor eventually influenced the other. It was all about intolerance, communal violence and terrorism, so every once in a while everyone would pick up sticks, bang the sticks together and shout as loud as they could. Then every one would calm down and there would be another scene. People laughed from time to time so I think the Hindi was funnier than the English text.
The play was at the India Habitat Center which is an amazing place in South Delhi. It is three large office towers connected by bridges at the top with a theater and auditorium complex in the fourth corner. The towers seem to be principally occupied by NGO's so I am not sure where all the money comes from, but it is very well done. The architecture is some of the best contemporary architecture I have seen in New Delhi, although there are a couple of other new towers that I like a lot. The events are free, although the play had this Indian system where I had to go to one counter and pick up an invitation that I presented at another counter before they let me in. I have encountered this system before. Once in Calcutta there was a great fuss about finding someone with the correct keys and digging around in an office for an extra invitation before they let me in at the door. There were plenty of seats so crowd control wasn't the issue. It was protocol. I couldn't enter without an invitation in my hand.
I am well, but I still tire easily. My two things to do today are to buy "Trains at a Glance" at the railway station and go to a dance recital by a dancer from Kerala. I have done the first and the auditorium for the second is a five minutes walk from my hotel so that's no problem. I also decided that I would write for a long time this afternoon. So much has happened and I haven't been getting it down. I haven't written much in longhand. I have put off using my computer. I need to download some programs before I can use it and I have avoided finding a place with Internet access. Now I find I could have done it all along at my hotel. The computer expert is coming by tonight and he will set me up after the dance concert. I have suspected for a while that the hotel had Internet access but I was shy about finding out, and also, I think, self-protective. I needed some alone time to just vegetate while I healed. However, now I will be able to write on my laptop in my hotel room, download my pictures and with some luck, add pictures to the posts. I haven't taken a lot of pictures but I have a few illustrations I have taken along the way.
Yesterday, my two things to do were first having lunch at Karim's. Karim's is a restaurant near the big mosque that is in all the guide books. Karim's is better than I expected, i.e., not touristy at all. I actually like touristy places, but I have been eating in a lot of them in Connaught Place. Karim's is just local people eating local food. They were mostly men, but there were some women -- some with their heads covered, and some bare-headed. I have bought a new book of Old Delhi walks. I was thinking of trying it out after lunch, but I promptly got lost and decided I had my quota of things for the day, so I found a bicycle rickshaw and was bounced to the Metro station. Although I consider myself well, my stomach is a little tender and these bouncy rides aren't very comfortable. I didn't know stomachs could hurt when bounced before. I had ordering anxiety in Karim"s but did o.k. I thought I had wimped out by ordering my chicken in spinach puree (chicken saag) and naan, but the man across from had the same thing except it wasn't chicken saag, but some red-sauced chicken. And he ate about six naan to my two. The men next to me (it's family seating), had a whole fried fish with this very thin bread. When Ben gets here, I want to try that. And everyone (except my table mate and me) had ground meat kabobs. I want some of those too.
Last night for supper, it was spaghetti with meat sauce. The sauce was very heavily flavored with black pepper and tasted very Indian. It was another case where I thought I wimped out, but the choice was good. It was very tasty and I think not too hard on my poor stomach. I try to be careful, but I like fat. I like spices. I'm in India. Get used to it, stomach. The restaurant was in Connaught Circle, but although a lot of tourists eat there it is a hang-out for the Indian middle class. Actually, there aren't really any tourist restaurants in Connaught Place (which I sometimes call a circle). It's the menu I think I'm thinking of. All of these middle class places have a lot of Western food on them, but often, like the spaghetti, in India permutations.
I have a whole list of topics I haven't covered. When I was sick, I spent a day writing down my favorite movies. This turned into a little memoir of my movie going life. When I have my laptop up and running, I hope to post this on my other blog. When I created this one, I had some trouble and created a blog and then couldn't find it. It's now nestled up against this one so I am going to use it for short stories, poems, etc. I wrote a short story while I was sick and I hope this will find it's way to this other blog. I will let you know where it is once I start posting to it.
O.K. Let's do, the Crafts Museum, Anglican churches, and three-wheelers, and then call it quits for today.
The Crafts Musem. This is a great place. Free, I think this is because it is also a market of craft goods, but the collection is very good. There is tribal and folk art from around India, although principally from the north. There are styles and types of things that I haven't seen before. I intend to go back when Ben gets here and maybe again by myself. The best part is the fabric reference collection, which is case after case of saris and other types of cloth, extended full length, but laid over each other so only about a foot of the width of the cloth is exposed. It is a vast room filled with color. Among other things, it exposes the amazing variation of India. How can there possibly be so many different ways to make a sari? And they all fall into identifiable schools and they all look Indian. I want to buy some cloth, but the variety makes it perplexing. I am flirting with the idea of having some shirts made out of khadi silk. Khadi is the homespun, hand woven cloth that Gandhi made the center piece of his vision of an India that would turn its back on the modern world. I am not sure he had silk khadi in mind. When I think of Gandhi, I think of white or unbleached cotton cloth, but nowadays, khadi comes in wool and silk as well as cotton, and in a wide-variety of cotton. There were even synthetic blends in the kahdi store. Progress is hard to escape.
Anglican Churches. I have seen two, St. James Church which is in the old Civil Lines north of the Old Delhi, and the Anglican Cathedral which is in the center of New Delhi. St. James is the older of the two. It was built as the fulfillment of a vow by Colonel James Skinner, a swash-buckling, Anglo-Indian mercenary who eventually served the British. It's a large church in white and yellow, like a big version of one of the chuches Wren built in London after the Great Fire of 1666. It doesn't have the great louvres and other ventilation systems that churches farther south in India have, so it looks more European than India. It was beseiged during the Great Uprising of 1857 and suffered much damaged but that has long since been repaired. It is where I left my notebook, the loss of which added to my anxiety during my illness, but when I was well enough to return, the notebook was given back to me with many smiles on both sides. The cathredal, which is not to far from a metro station, I found very hard to find. I was very close but I kept just missing it, and it turned out when I was almost there, I would ask a question of someone and they would head me off in exactly the wrong direction. Eventually, three policemen took me under their wing and walked with me part of the way until they felt sure that even an ignorant foreigner wouldn't be able to miss it, and they were right. I was also the victim of some bad mapping and the early hour. The few motor rickshaws that were around were all full. And I saw only one bicycle rickshaw, and the driver was having his morning bath and I didn't feel like interrupting and they often have no English at all. The cathedral, when I found it is very large with a basilican floor plan. Very grand. The prayer book is in contemporary English, but is still very Victorian compared to the American prayer book. We called ourselves terrible things from time to time. They were polite to me but not friendly, except for the Bishop who happened to be officiating and who beamed at me and touched my hand when he gave me communion. We sang familiar English hymns with gusto and a couple of lugubrious ones which even the Indians couldn't work up much enthusiasm for.
A motorrickshaw driver last night gently chided me for not speaking Hindi. This after I had told him I had sat through a play in Hindi. He's write. I'm now wondering if I can find a Hindi tutor or class in Varanasi and spend my last two weeks there learning Hindi and then take a class at UCLA when I get back.
Motor rickshaws or three-wheelers. They are my basic means of transportation. In Delhi, they are green and yellow although other places they are other colors. They have a motorcycle engine. When I was here eight years ago, most of them were started by means of a long lever which the driver pulled up rapidly, usually several times. Now, most of them start with a key, but a few have the older system. They are very handy. Last night, on the way home from the play, a wedding had spilled out into a major street, leaving only a lane for cars to thread there way through -- that's one lane for both directions so the traffic was piling up fast. As soon as my driver saw it, he made a quick (terrifying) U-turn and we took another route. The taxis and other cars were not as adept and the rapidly building traffic jam was awesome. They will also use the opposing lanes when necessary. I am not a fan of this maneuver. They wait until the very last minute to slip back into the correct lane finding a chink in a wall of vehicles that looks impenetrable to me. Delhi traffic is not for the faint-hearted, neither as a passenger nor as a pedestrian. I choose not even to contemplate what it must be like for the driver. As I said above, I have my own motor rickshaw dispatcher. This is a mixed blessing. I thought we had a payment system worked out that was only a little above what the Lonely Planet charges are for similar distances. Then last night when I asked what the charges were to the new venue where I hadn't been before, it was "What you will, You are my guest." I hate that. So I paid him want I had paid for the other destination which was not that far away. In India, when I think I know what is going on, I know I am mistaken.
My friend Ben comes late tomorrow night. That marks the end of my first stretch in India and the beginning of the second.
I am in my favorite internet place. It's not my favorite because it is faster or more reliable than any place else, although it is faster than some, but because it's in a hotel lobby and not some small, cramped, noisy hot room with too many computers in it. Also there is a toilet right here. At the moment this is not a major consideration, but you never know. Mostly, I like the space and air and view out on to the alley. It's around the corner from my first hotel. I haven't been back here since I have been sick (in case I never said, it was food poisoning), and I am enjoying it. It is village life right in the middle of New Delhi. Connaught Circle, less than a mile away, is very urban. Here there are cows, goats, horse carts, street shrines, and as I wrote earlier, food being prepared everywhere. It is such a pleasure to be back here in spite of some misgivings. There are touts and beggars, and it is here where I had the unfortunate shoe shine incident. Another young boy addressed me to day for a shoe shine and I saw the "covers" ready in his hand. By the way, I now have my own shoe shine person around the corner from my new hotel. He charges 10 rupees and although the shoes look a little oily, they do shine. I also have a motor rickshaw dispatcher. I have his cell phone number. I have a favorite stand to buy water from. A barber shop. My favorite place for a South India breakfast -- I have shifted from idli to upma. I never ate upma in the South so I can compare it and it is cream of wheat with almonds and a few spices thrown in. I think sick people should eat a lot of cream of wheat. And the spices are mostly sweet spices like cardamom. And then I have a cup of South Indian coffee and I am ready for the day, practically a native.
I became distracted from my local color lecture. You get the idea. Approach the other with open eyes, and don't make it quaint, evil or exploitable. I just have to keep stretching the frame and including more and more.
Last night I thought I was going to a recital of songs from Hindi films, and then I thought it was Bengali films, and when I got there it was a recitiation of excerpts from Bengali plays. Since I had spent the previous evening at a theater event in Urdu, I passed on the Bengali. Inside I went to a play that promised to be bilingual, and it was but the English did not translate the Hindi or even refer to it. There were English bits and much longer Hindi bits. Nevertheless, it was engaged. The play was very earnest and I'm glad I didn't understand the Hindi if it was like the English. They had created the piece in a group process so I found the evening interesting watching an Indian theater company that was obviously using the same techniques I have been using in improvising all my adult life.
I have also created set pieces from improvisation using social issues as content. Their was very didatic and there were long sections where two actors looked like they were having a conversation, but in the English bits, they were more like interwoven monologues, although each actor eventually influenced the other. It was all about intolerance, communal violence and terrorism, so every once in a while everyone would pick up sticks, bang the sticks together and shout as loud as they could. Then every one would calm down and there would be another scene. People laughed from time to time so I think the Hindi was funnier than the English text.
The play was at the India Habitat Center which is an amazing place in South Delhi. It is three large office towers connected by bridges at the top with a theater and auditorium complex in the fourth corner. The towers seem to be principally occupied by NGO's so I am not sure where all the money comes from, but it is very well done. The architecture is some of the best contemporary architecture I have seen in New Delhi, although there are a couple of other new towers that I like a lot. The events are free, although the play had this Indian system where I had to go to one counter and pick up an invitation that I presented at another counter before they let me in. I have encountered this system before. Once in Calcutta there was a great fuss about finding someone with the correct keys and digging around in an office for an extra invitation before they let me in at the door. There were plenty of seats so crowd control wasn't the issue. It was protocol. I couldn't enter without an invitation in my hand.
I am well, but I still tire easily. My two things to do today are to buy "Trains at a Glance" at the railway station and go to a dance recital by a dancer from Kerala. I have done the first and the auditorium for the second is a five minutes walk from my hotel so that's no problem. I also decided that I would write for a long time this afternoon. So much has happened and I haven't been getting it down. I haven't written much in longhand. I have put off using my computer. I need to download some programs before I can use it and I have avoided finding a place with Internet access. Now I find I could have done it all along at my hotel. The computer expert is coming by tonight and he will set me up after the dance concert. I have suspected for a while that the hotel had Internet access but I was shy about finding out, and also, I think, self-protective. I needed some alone time to just vegetate while I healed. However, now I will be able to write on my laptop in my hotel room, download my pictures and with some luck, add pictures to the posts. I haven't taken a lot of pictures but I have a few illustrations I have taken along the way.
Yesterday, my two things to do were first having lunch at Karim's. Karim's is a restaurant near the big mosque that is in all the guide books. Karim's is better than I expected, i.e., not touristy at all. I actually like touristy places, but I have been eating in a lot of them in Connaught Place. Karim's is just local people eating local food. They were mostly men, but there were some women -- some with their heads covered, and some bare-headed. I have bought a new book of Old Delhi walks. I was thinking of trying it out after lunch, but I promptly got lost and decided I had my quota of things for the day, so I found a bicycle rickshaw and was bounced to the Metro station. Although I consider myself well, my stomach is a little tender and these bouncy rides aren't very comfortable. I didn't know stomachs could hurt when bounced before. I had ordering anxiety in Karim"s but did o.k. I thought I had wimped out by ordering my chicken in spinach puree (chicken saag) and naan, but the man across from had the same thing except it wasn't chicken saag, but some red-sauced chicken. And he ate about six naan to my two. The men next to me (it's family seating), had a whole fried fish with this very thin bread. When Ben gets here, I want to try that. And everyone (except my table mate and me) had ground meat kabobs. I want some of those too.
Last night for supper, it was spaghetti with meat sauce. The sauce was very heavily flavored with black pepper and tasted very Indian. It was another case where I thought I wimped out, but the choice was good. It was very tasty and I think not too hard on my poor stomach. I try to be careful, but I like fat. I like spices. I'm in India. Get used to it, stomach. The restaurant was in Connaught Circle, but although a lot of tourists eat there it is a hang-out for the Indian middle class. Actually, there aren't really any tourist restaurants in Connaught Place (which I sometimes call a circle). It's the menu I think I'm thinking of. All of these middle class places have a lot of Western food on them, but often, like the spaghetti, in India permutations.
I have a whole list of topics I haven't covered. When I was sick, I spent a day writing down my favorite movies. This turned into a little memoir of my movie going life. When I have my laptop up and running, I hope to post this on my other blog. When I created this one, I had some trouble and created a blog and then couldn't find it. It's now nestled up against this one so I am going to use it for short stories, poems, etc. I wrote a short story while I was sick and I hope this will find it's way to this other blog. I will let you know where it is once I start posting to it.
O.K. Let's do, the Crafts Museum, Anglican churches, and three-wheelers, and then call it quits for today.
The Crafts Musem. This is a great place. Free, I think this is because it is also a market of craft goods, but the collection is very good. There is tribal and folk art from around India, although principally from the north. There are styles and types of things that I haven't seen before. I intend to go back when Ben gets here and maybe again by myself. The best part is the fabric reference collection, which is case after case of saris and other types of cloth, extended full length, but laid over each other so only about a foot of the width of the cloth is exposed. It is a vast room filled with color. Among other things, it exposes the amazing variation of India. How can there possibly be so many different ways to make a sari? And they all fall into identifiable schools and they all look Indian. I want to buy some cloth, but the variety makes it perplexing. I am flirting with the idea of having some shirts made out of khadi silk. Khadi is the homespun, hand woven cloth that Gandhi made the center piece of his vision of an India that would turn its back on the modern world. I am not sure he had silk khadi in mind. When I think of Gandhi, I think of white or unbleached cotton cloth, but nowadays, khadi comes in wool and silk as well as cotton, and in a wide-variety of cotton. There were even synthetic blends in the kahdi store. Progress is hard to escape.
Anglican Churches. I have seen two, St. James Church which is in the old Civil Lines north of the Old Delhi, and the Anglican Cathedral which is in the center of New Delhi. St. James is the older of the two. It was built as the fulfillment of a vow by Colonel James Skinner, a swash-buckling, Anglo-Indian mercenary who eventually served the British. It's a large church in white and yellow, like a big version of one of the chuches Wren built in London after the Great Fire of 1666. It doesn't have the great louvres and other ventilation systems that churches farther south in India have, so it looks more European than India. It was beseiged during the Great Uprising of 1857 and suffered much damaged but that has long since been repaired. It is where I left my notebook, the loss of which added to my anxiety during my illness, but when I was well enough to return, the notebook was given back to me with many smiles on both sides. The cathredal, which is not to far from a metro station, I found very hard to find. I was very close but I kept just missing it, and it turned out when I was almost there, I would ask a question of someone and they would head me off in exactly the wrong direction. Eventually, three policemen took me under their wing and walked with me part of the way until they felt sure that even an ignorant foreigner wouldn't be able to miss it, and they were right. I was also the victim of some bad mapping and the early hour. The few motor rickshaws that were around were all full. And I saw only one bicycle rickshaw, and the driver was having his morning bath and I didn't feel like interrupting and they often have no English at all. The cathedral, when I found it is very large with a basilican floor plan. Very grand. The prayer book is in contemporary English, but is still very Victorian compared to the American prayer book. We called ourselves terrible things from time to time. They were polite to me but not friendly, except for the Bishop who happened to be officiating and who beamed at me and touched my hand when he gave me communion. We sang familiar English hymns with gusto and a couple of lugubrious ones which even the Indians couldn't work up much enthusiasm for.
A motorrickshaw driver last night gently chided me for not speaking Hindi. This after I had told him I had sat through a play in Hindi. He's write. I'm now wondering if I can find a Hindi tutor or class in Varanasi and spend my last two weeks there learning Hindi and then take a class at UCLA when I get back.
Motor rickshaws or three-wheelers. They are my basic means of transportation. In Delhi, they are green and yellow although other places they are other colors. They have a motorcycle engine. When I was here eight years ago, most of them were started by means of a long lever which the driver pulled up rapidly, usually several times. Now, most of them start with a key, but a few have the older system. They are very handy. Last night, on the way home from the play, a wedding had spilled out into a major street, leaving only a lane for cars to thread there way through -- that's one lane for both directions so the traffic was piling up fast. As soon as my driver saw it, he made a quick (terrifying) U-turn and we took another route. The taxis and other cars were not as adept and the rapidly building traffic jam was awesome. They will also use the opposing lanes when necessary. I am not a fan of this maneuver. They wait until the very last minute to slip back into the correct lane finding a chink in a wall of vehicles that looks impenetrable to me. Delhi traffic is not for the faint-hearted, neither as a passenger nor as a pedestrian. I choose not even to contemplate what it must be like for the driver. As I said above, I have my own motor rickshaw dispatcher. This is a mixed blessing. I thought we had a payment system worked out that was only a little above what the Lonely Planet charges are for similar distances. Then last night when I asked what the charges were to the new venue where I hadn't been before, it was "What you will, You are my guest." I hate that. So I paid him want I had paid for the other destination which was not that far away. In India, when I think I know what is going on, I know I am mistaken.
My friend Ben comes late tomorrow night. That marks the end of my first stretch in India and the beginning of the second.
Friday, December 8, 2006
I Did This. I Did That.
I've been in India two weeks. It seems as if I have accomplished little, but this is the trial run. I am preparing for future trips to India. On the other hand, I have a place where I buy bottled water, a shop that deals with my cell phone, a barber and a motor rickshaw driver, as well as a most helpful hotel. That's quite a list of accomplishments. I do not yet have a favorite bookstore nor a CD shop.
I'm hiding out from India right now in this Internet Cafe. The sign out front says it's a cafe, but aside from a Coca-Cola cooler and a very dubious looking water cooler, there is nothing to justify that title. "Cafe" is now apparently a necessary modifier of "Internet" in India.
The reason I'm hiding out is I overdid it yesterday. I walked too much and ate lunch too late. I had a plan for less walking, but I didn't follow it. So I'm am going to sit here and write for a while. Then I will eat lunch and take a nap and head out in the late afternoon. I might go to Safardung's tomb. I'm going to another concert tonight and that tomb (the last big Mughal tomb in Delhi) is near the concert hall.
So, my plan for this blog is to write on a variety of topics, all the stuff I've done and haven't written about yet.
THE GANDHI/NEHRU SITES
Yesterday, I visited Nehru's house, Indira Gandhi's house and Birla House, where Gandhi was assassinated. I did them in that order and enjoyed Nehru's house very much. It's a huge mansion set in an enormous garden. Several of the rooms are kept in their condition at Nehru's time. The entry hall is subdued art decco with cubist paintings on the wall. The rest of the house is devoted to a museum consisting of a lot of rooms with photographs, newspaper clippings and descriptive text. It's well done and then at the end there is a room made to look like the room in which Nehru declared the Independence of India. There is a figure of him that moves when he talks and figures of several other important figures sitting watching him. At the end of his speech. They applaud. It's old fashioned, sweet and moving. I brought my camera, but I had recharged it the night before and I forgot to reinsert the battery. There was one picture I regret missing. I was standing on the balcony and the large green lawn was dotted with school children wearing bright red sweaters. It was a great sight. It looked like one of those tourist pictures they publish in small features at the back of travel magazines. Human interest and lots of color. Well, I missed it.
Then I walked over to Indira Gandhi's house. It's in a typical New Delhi one story bungalow. The most interesting aspect to me was the three rooms that were maintained as they were when she lived there, a study, a dining room and a drawing room. 60's design, very tasteful. I know less about Indira Gandhi and the museum part was less interesting to me (and I was beginning to fade). Her son, Ravi Gandhi, lived in the back of the house. There was a gruesome exhibit of the clothes he was wearing when he was assassinated (by bomb). There was not much left. As you left the house, you passed the front walkway which is covered in waving glass except for a square of plain glass which marks the spot where she was gunned by by Sikh extremists.
At this point, I should have taken a three-wheeler over to Gandhi Smitri where Gandhi was assassinated, but I walked. It wasn't far, and the traffic wasn't bad but I should have let myself be driven. I was getting to tired, but I didn't like the Gandhi sight. The room where he lived at the end of his life is moving, as his the assassination sight, but the rest of the huge house is filled with a historical exhibit on the ground floor (and by this time I had seen all the photographs I could digest in one day) and a noisy art exhibit on the second floor. All of the sculptures made sound. I fled. Again, I should have taken a vehicle, but I walked because I was trying to find a bookstore I had been in eight years ago. I was directed to Khan Market which was not the right place, but I was glad to be there. I had lunch in a hip establishment surrounded by young, fashionable Delhi women and older, Sikh businessmen.
I poked around the market a little. It's in all the guidebooks. I has boutiques and restaurants fitted in between the usual Indian market chaos. Then I walked to Lodi Gardens, not far away, still trying without success to find the bookstore.
RECREATING LODI GARDENS
When I was in India for first time, eight years ago, Lodi Gardens was one of my favorite places. It is a large green area with several old tombs and mosques from the Lodi period in Delhi. My son and I were staying at the Taj Mahal hotel up the road and we discovered the gardens by ourselves. To get to it from the hotel, we passed this small shopping area with a bookstore and a tandoori chicken restaurant. We stood outside the restaurant for a long time before we were brave enough to go it. It was out first restaurant outside a hotel in India. The chicken was great and next door there was a great bookstore and then down the roads, the gardens. We were only in Delhi for two nights, and we were on a busy schedule but we went back to the gardens at least twice. It was a magical experience. Yesterday, I tried to rediscover the magic. The Gardens are still great. Middle-class Indian women go jogging there. The gardens are very well maintained. But something was missing. For one thing, I know know more about the tombs. The first time, they just loomed up out of the January mist. Except for the biggest, Sikander's tomb, you can walk in them, climb over them, get very close. But now I know history. History is good, but it can cramp the imagination. And, I am no longer seeing India for the first time. And I was overtired. I did have a good time watching some black and white birds with yellow beaks and legs who were on the ground nearby. They were very belligerent, always fighting. They were engage each other making a lot of noise, then one or both of them would rise up in the air about a foot and they would disengage, only to start all over again in different pairings.
So, Lodi Gardens is still my favorite place in Delhi, but I'm eight years older, my son's not with me and I had too much of the Nehru's earlier in the day (Indira Gandhi was Nehru's daughter -- Sonia is his granddaughter-in-law).
THE JAMA MASJID (THE FRIDAY MOSQUE, THE LARGEST MOSQUE IN DELHI)
Two days ago, I finally went to the Jama Masjid. It is the first mosque I have ever visited that was not attached to another sight and I was a little shy. I'm now over that. The mosque is basically a wall with a covered space in front of it, and then in front of that a very large open space where the people who cannot fit under the roof of the mosque prayer. I was not there at prayer time and everywhere in the open space and in the arcade around it, people were hanging out. Families, groups of men, groups of teenagers, and occasionally a solitary women. Most of the women and bare heads, some wore scarves, and a very few were in full, black burqahs. It was very relaxed. The same thing happens at Hindu temples. People worship, then they hang out. I didn't expect it at a mosque. It made me feel good about being there. Then I climbed the minaret. All the guidebooks warn single women about undue attention on the dark squares. They do not warn elderly gentlemen like me about the women in the dark. The men seemed to sidle past me without any problem, but the women's hands were all over me, and I me all over. I was trying to take up as little space as possible, but they insisted on turning me into a sex object or a handrail, I wasn't sure which. I suppose I'm flattering myself. It must have been a handrail.
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Last Tuesday night, I went to hear William Dalrymple. He has written the most accessible, enjoyable book about Delhi, The City of Djinns. He most recently wrote The Last Mughal, about the emperor who was deposed after the 1857 Uprising and who died in exile in Burma. (The deposed Burmese king was exiled to India by the British.) Dalrymple is an excellent speaker, very engaging. He has lived in Delhi part of the year for the last 20 years and is a Delhi institution. The room was packed to overflowing and they set up TV's in the lobby. I arrived early and had a good seat. The theme of his books about India seem to be in the loss of culture caused by Independence and Partition. I don't think it would state that baldly, but his works seem to me to be a long (and frequently very funny) lament for a lost age. His introducer objected at the end of the lecture and said that although things had changed all was not lost. And the lecture itself seemed an example of that. The evening set me to wondering if I have an overarching theme. I have begun to think that I do, that I am principally concerned with the process of being a tourist. What happens to me as I travel. What expectations do I bring with me? How do they color what I see? Can I avoid exoticizing India. What does it mean when I get irritated with one more tout on the street trying to get me to go to one more emporium? What is the point of it all?
I can now see after two weeks that I am entering a new phase. During the first week, I was by turns, excited and confused. Everything was very hard work. Now I am lest confused (although some of the work is still hard), but I am becoming homesick. I miss the familiar. I eat at only two or three restaurants because I want to feel as if I am at home. I take the same routes. This will change as I have been here longer and my friend Ben Teller arrives in a few days. Then I will definitely be more adventurous, at least about food.
THE END
For now.
I'm hiding out from India right now in this Internet Cafe. The sign out front says it's a cafe, but aside from a Coca-Cola cooler and a very dubious looking water cooler, there is nothing to justify that title. "Cafe" is now apparently a necessary modifier of "Internet" in India.
The reason I'm hiding out is I overdid it yesterday. I walked too much and ate lunch too late. I had a plan for less walking, but I didn't follow it. So I'm am going to sit here and write for a while. Then I will eat lunch and take a nap and head out in the late afternoon. I might go to Safardung's tomb. I'm going to another concert tonight and that tomb (the last big Mughal tomb in Delhi) is near the concert hall.
So, my plan for this blog is to write on a variety of topics, all the stuff I've done and haven't written about yet.
THE GANDHI/NEHRU SITES
Yesterday, I visited Nehru's house, Indira Gandhi's house and Birla House, where Gandhi was assassinated. I did them in that order and enjoyed Nehru's house very much. It's a huge mansion set in an enormous garden. Several of the rooms are kept in their condition at Nehru's time. The entry hall is subdued art decco with cubist paintings on the wall. The rest of the house is devoted to a museum consisting of a lot of rooms with photographs, newspaper clippings and descriptive text. It's well done and then at the end there is a room made to look like the room in which Nehru declared the Independence of India. There is a figure of him that moves when he talks and figures of several other important figures sitting watching him. At the end of his speech. They applaud. It's old fashioned, sweet and moving. I brought my camera, but I had recharged it the night before and I forgot to reinsert the battery. There was one picture I regret missing. I was standing on the balcony and the large green lawn was dotted with school children wearing bright red sweaters. It was a great sight. It looked like one of those tourist pictures they publish in small features at the back of travel magazines. Human interest and lots of color. Well, I missed it.
Then I walked over to Indira Gandhi's house. It's in a typical New Delhi one story bungalow. The most interesting aspect to me was the three rooms that were maintained as they were when she lived there, a study, a dining room and a drawing room. 60's design, very tasteful. I know less about Indira Gandhi and the museum part was less interesting to me (and I was beginning to fade). Her son, Ravi Gandhi, lived in the back of the house. There was a gruesome exhibit of the clothes he was wearing when he was assassinated (by bomb). There was not much left. As you left the house, you passed the front walkway which is covered in waving glass except for a square of plain glass which marks the spot where she was gunned by by Sikh extremists.
At this point, I should have taken a three-wheeler over to Gandhi Smitri where Gandhi was assassinated, but I walked. It wasn't far, and the traffic wasn't bad but I should have let myself be driven. I was getting to tired, but I didn't like the Gandhi sight. The room where he lived at the end of his life is moving, as his the assassination sight, but the rest of the huge house is filled with a historical exhibit on the ground floor (and by this time I had seen all the photographs I could digest in one day) and a noisy art exhibit on the second floor. All of the sculptures made sound. I fled. Again, I should have taken a vehicle, but I walked because I was trying to find a bookstore I had been in eight years ago. I was directed to Khan Market which was not the right place, but I was glad to be there. I had lunch in a hip establishment surrounded by young, fashionable Delhi women and older, Sikh businessmen.
I poked around the market a little. It's in all the guidebooks. I has boutiques and restaurants fitted in between the usual Indian market chaos. Then I walked to Lodi Gardens, not far away, still trying without success to find the bookstore.
RECREATING LODI GARDENS
When I was in India for first time, eight years ago, Lodi Gardens was one of my favorite places. It is a large green area with several old tombs and mosques from the Lodi period in Delhi. My son and I were staying at the Taj Mahal hotel up the road and we discovered the gardens by ourselves. To get to it from the hotel, we passed this small shopping area with a bookstore and a tandoori chicken restaurant. We stood outside the restaurant for a long time before we were brave enough to go it. It was out first restaurant outside a hotel in India. The chicken was great and next door there was a great bookstore and then down the roads, the gardens. We were only in Delhi for two nights, and we were on a busy schedule but we went back to the gardens at least twice. It was a magical experience. Yesterday, I tried to rediscover the magic. The Gardens are still great. Middle-class Indian women go jogging there. The gardens are very well maintained. But something was missing. For one thing, I know know more about the tombs. The first time, they just loomed up out of the January mist. Except for the biggest, Sikander's tomb, you can walk in them, climb over them, get very close. But now I know history. History is good, but it can cramp the imagination. And, I am no longer seeing India for the first time. And I was overtired. I did have a good time watching some black and white birds with yellow beaks and legs who were on the ground nearby. They were very belligerent, always fighting. They were engage each other making a lot of noise, then one or both of them would rise up in the air about a foot and they would disengage, only to start all over again in different pairings.
So, Lodi Gardens is still my favorite place in Delhi, but I'm eight years older, my son's not with me and I had too much of the Nehru's earlier in the day (Indira Gandhi was Nehru's daughter -- Sonia is his granddaughter-in-law).
THE JAMA MASJID (THE FRIDAY MOSQUE, THE LARGEST MOSQUE IN DELHI)
Two days ago, I finally went to the Jama Masjid. It is the first mosque I have ever visited that was not attached to another sight and I was a little shy. I'm now over that. The mosque is basically a wall with a covered space in front of it, and then in front of that a very large open space where the people who cannot fit under the roof of the mosque prayer. I was not there at prayer time and everywhere in the open space and in the arcade around it, people were hanging out. Families, groups of men, groups of teenagers, and occasionally a solitary women. Most of the women and bare heads, some wore scarves, and a very few were in full, black burqahs. It was very relaxed. The same thing happens at Hindu temples. People worship, then they hang out. I didn't expect it at a mosque. It made me feel good about being there. Then I climbed the minaret. All the guidebooks warn single women about undue attention on the dark squares. They do not warn elderly gentlemen like me about the women in the dark. The men seemed to sidle past me without any problem, but the women's hands were all over me, and I me all over. I was trying to take up as little space as possible, but they insisted on turning me into a sex object or a handrail, I wasn't sure which. I suppose I'm flattering myself. It must have been a handrail.
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Last Tuesday night, I went to hear William Dalrymple. He has written the most accessible, enjoyable book about Delhi, The City of Djinns. He most recently wrote The Last Mughal, about the emperor who was deposed after the 1857 Uprising and who died in exile in Burma. (The deposed Burmese king was exiled to India by the British.) Dalrymple is an excellent speaker, very engaging. He has lived in Delhi part of the year for the last 20 years and is a Delhi institution. The room was packed to overflowing and they set up TV's in the lobby. I arrived early and had a good seat. The theme of his books about India seem to be in the loss of culture caused by Independence and Partition. I don't think it would state that baldly, but his works seem to me to be a long (and frequently very funny) lament for a lost age. His introducer objected at the end of the lecture and said that although things had changed all was not lost. And the lecture itself seemed an example of that. The evening set me to wondering if I have an overarching theme. I have begun to think that I do, that I am principally concerned with the process of being a tourist. What happens to me as I travel. What expectations do I bring with me? How do they color what I see? Can I avoid exoticizing India. What does it mean when I get irritated with one more tout on the street trying to get me to go to one more emporium? What is the point of it all?
I can now see after two weeks that I am entering a new phase. During the first week, I was by turns, excited and confused. Everything was very hard work. Now I am lest confused (although some of the work is still hard), but I am becoming homesick. I miss the familiar. I eat at only two or three restaurants because I want to feel as if I am at home. I take the same routes. This will change as I have been here longer and my friend Ben Teller arrives in a few days. Then I will definitely be more adventurous, at least about food.
THE END
For now.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Ganesha Welcomes Me
I apologize for the delay between posts. Last Thursday I came down with a very unpleasant case of food poisoning. High fever, weakness, abdominal pain, and eventually water stools (I can't spell the D word). At first I thought it would pass, but after an unpleasant Friday night, I had a doctor come to the hotel. He diagnosed food poisoning. I am much better now, but not perfect. However, I can finally make it to the cybernet cafe which is two blocks from the hotel. The hotel has no internet access. I have a windowless room because when I moved in I couldn't sleep and wanted complete quiet. It is quiet and I sleep well but it is surreal to spend 48 hours alone in a foreign country without any contact with the outside world. However, I finally turned on the TV and began watching movies. My favorites: the first Seabiscuit movie, Moonstruck and Seven Years in Tibet. Seeing Brad Pitt suffer made me realize I wasn't too bad off.
Saturday night, I had a dream. I was in the secured area of an airport about to sit on a bench when an elderly Indian gentleman (about my age actually), brushed me aside, stood on the bench facing me, took off his clothes and did this wobbly, Indian dance beckoning me too him. I turned to a security guard and he said, "Oh him, we kick him out but he always finds a way back in."
As I was waking up, I decided the man was Ganesha welcoming me to India and I was being resistant. So I am trying to let go. In spite of everything, I still feel joy whenever I leave the hotel and step out on the street.
Now if my strength holds, I am going to go shopping. I am looking for a statue of Ganesha to place by doorway. Ganesha is the god of beginnings and commonly sits by doorways. I also want one of the beautiful shawls older men wear here. There is a string of state emporiums across the street from here, and I'm visiting them one at a time pricing things.
I had another blog almost ready to go when I got sick. I hope to send it out tomorrow.
Saturday night, I had a dream. I was in the secured area of an airport about to sit on a bench when an elderly Indian gentleman (about my age actually), brushed me aside, stood on the bench facing me, took off his clothes and did this wobbly, Indian dance beckoning me too him. I turned to a security guard and he said, "Oh him, we kick him out but he always finds a way back in."
As I was waking up, I decided the man was Ganesha welcoming me to India and I was being resistant. So I am trying to let go. In spite of everything, I still feel joy whenever I leave the hotel and step out on the street.
Now if my strength holds, I am going to go shopping. I am looking for a statue of Ganesha to place by doorway. Ganesha is the god of beginnings and commonly sits by doorways. I also want one of the beautiful shawls older men wear here. There is a string of state emporiums across the street from here, and I'm visiting them one at a time pricing things.
I had another blog almost ready to go when I got sick. I hope to send it out tomorrow.
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