L’Shanah Tovah

Greetings from a new, new year. I’m sitting in my Hyderabadi apartment with my two flat-mates, Myla and Shlayma. We celebrated Rosh Hashanah with full group of fellows up in the mountains… and Yom Kippur as a trio in our new home: an as-yet-undecorated, marble-floored, pink-walled flat in an unknown, monsoon-soaked city of six million. It’s been quite a transition. My thoughts for the Jewish near year have been lost and found in various corners, but my overall meditation on life as it is beginning in ‘Incredible India’ (as the tourist slogans go) comes from Trudy (that philosophical bag-lady standing on the corner of walk-don’t-walk):

“On the way to the play, we stopped to look at the stars. And as usual, I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something. Then I became even more awestruck at the thought that I was, in some small way, a part of that which I was in awe about. And this feeling went on and on and on… My space chums got a word for it: 'awe infinitum.'

Because at the point you can comprehend how incomprehensible it all is, you’re about as smart as you need to be. Suddenly I burst into song: 'Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee.' And I felt so good inside, and my heart felt so full, I decided I would set aside time each day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life you don’t understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.”

– The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, by Jane Wagner, performed by Lily Tomlin

Note: yes, this is the same play I played with in my thesis. And yes, I’ll be working hard on my awe-robics this year. ‘Nuf said.

To Review (chronology is overrated)

“The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air… the next thing I noticed was the heat.”

– From the opening of Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts

“To understand India at all, you must be able to hold on to completely contradictory images, and realize that both represent the true India.”

– From the introduction to Culture Shock! India, by Gitanjali Kolanad

To review: we landed in Delhi, to the smells and the thick air (and the airport parrots). To go even further back: I found some young, vaguely Jewish looking folks at the London Heathrow airport, and we gathered into a small crowd. Name, school, NGO assignment for the year. Memorize, forget, repeat. The words couldn’t come fast enough, and were followed by distinctive pauses, stating ‘I know almost nothing about you.’ Hello stranger, thank god for Cadbury’s chocolates on British Air. I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the flight (yes, the new animated one – we can discuss this later).

So customs was easy and our luggage arrived and, sweating profusely and gulping bottled water, we climbed into two taxis. We knew to expect cows in the road. We did not know we would see them grazing on the jersey barrier in the middle of ten lanes of traffic moving through a space designed for four. Traffic lines, in India, are more like suggestions – very general, subtle suggestions which may be easily ignored.

We arrived at a sprawling pink hostel in the embassy district of Delhi (not exactly a neighborly area) with more young, vaguely Jewish looking folks (aka white, in our new context) who had arrived the day before. With a few quick introductions by Anna (our in-country AJWS program coordinator), we were released into the teaming, steaming streets. I jumped into my first auto-rickshaw (think a motorcycle with a small open-air European-sized car loaded on the back) with two other girls, Myla and Becca, and headed for Conaught Place. Conaught place, a fairly central and fairly upper-curst area of New Delhi, is made up of a series of concentric circular roads surrounding an underground market topped by a park. The buildings in the area are tall, dirty white, curlicued images of aging colonial architecture. The shopping there can be high-class – United Colors of Benetton sits on the inner circle – but we wandered up and down the spoke streets, and I found a loose sequined cotton blouse for a few dollars. The question of whether or not to wear Indian-style clothing here isn’t just one of tourism, voyeurism, whiteness, etc., but one of comfort and commodity; that “India fab” (not to be confused with FabIndia, a clothing chain) garment has saved me from unbelievably gritty hot weather (but back to such complicated questions of assimilation/appropriation later).

After learning to dodge traffic (again, traffic lights are more suggestions than anything else), and landing safely back at our Pink Palace, the fellows (two still in the air somewhere) were loaded in a bus and shipped out to a suburb to visit Sunita, AJWS’s Volunteer Coordinator for India. She had a feast for us, but the comfort of spending a few hours in someone’s home was almost as filling as the fifteen varieties of sweet and savory. With an early evening and an even earlier morning, we met our last two fellows, plus the NY program director… and twenty of us (17 fellows, 3 staff, along with many boxes AJWS papers) boarded a bus out of Delhi and up into the mountains.

The beginning of the trip was beautiful, but uneventful. It was difficult to tell when we left Delhi, as a mix of suburbs, road-side vendors, and small towns seemed to stretch continuously for hours out of the city. Eventually we emerged into miles of rice and sugar fields, taking the long way around certain towns; Independence Day was imminent, and celebrations were blocking many major roads. But the real excitement came when we reached the bottom of the foothills of the Himalayas, and began a seemingly endless climb up into the clouds. The road we were on was not precisely a one-lane road, but it barely fit two cars passing one another, let alone two buses. All of the curves were blind, and none of the fencing along the edge (short concrete buttresses – if there was anything at all) looked as if it would stop a fall. Our bus’ horn was blaring constantly (except at the cows, who clearly deserve more respect than that) as we tried not to look down the sheer green drop a few inches from the wheels of the vehicle.

It was dark when we arrived at our destination – an education-focused NGO* with its own campus past Mussoorie, past Kempte Falls, and past Kempte Falls Villiage. They had recently expanded their programs to include a gap-year residential college, and we stayed in gender-segregated open dormitories. That night we climbed blindly up their hand-made steps (reconstructed after the recent rains)… but in the morning we were greeted with a stunning view of the surrounding mountain-hills. At our little retreat, we learned crucial skills: how to use squat toilets, how to eat dal and rice using a chapatti that can be torn and handled only with your right hand, how to deal with upset stomachs, and how to focus a camera on distant hilltops. Our days were filled with AJWS sessions on development, Indian history, and NGO politics. We climbed up and down the NGO campus, ventured out to nearby town-outposts, got up at 6:30 am for yoga with the gap-year students, and watched Planet Earth on DVD (the mountain episode was especially educational in our setting).
*(an NGO which Barb Crook worked with in the mid-90’s!)

After a little more than a week of sitting in circles and talking alternated with walking up hills and staring, it was time to pack once again, time to wind back down the slithering roads to Delhi. The plan was: a few days in Delhi, a few more educational sessions and some time to explore. Next, those fellows with placements in the north (Maharastra, Gujarat, Uttar Pardesh) would return to Mussoorie for Hindi classes, while those fellows with placements in Andra Pradesh would head to Hyderabad for Telugu classes. Instead, after a few days of adventures and conversations, after a lovely closing dinner, the Southerners were gathered and told that two bomb blasts had been set off in Hyderabad just a few hours before. Our train tickets had already been canceled, and Sunita would meet us at the hostel the next morning to discuss our options.

(the story, from here, picks up at the "... and then I woke up in a bad reality tv show" post. chronology is overrated.)

P.S. Coming attractions: the adventures in Delhi, Old and New, deserve their own meandering post, to be written some day soon.

Where the Ganga flows out of the Himalayas

(Haridwar: a weekend getaway adventure)

When we stepped out of the taxi in Deridun, the first thing we noticed was the warmer air. The second was the large brick bus station in the distance. It was surprisingly empty – less than a third of the thirty-plus bays had dilapidated metal buses parked and waiting for the scattered passengers to enter. Vendors selling every form of snack food lined the interior of the building, but business was slow. When the bus to Haridwar pulled out of the station, the three of us traveling together – Rachel, Myla, and I – constituted over half the passengers. But when the bus pulled out of the station, the driver stalled at the entrance to the major road, and the bus quickly filled up – not just the seats and the luggage racks, but every inch of the isles were packed with bodies. As the bus rumbled along, young men or middle-aged couples would flag us down and attach themselves to the doorway, squeezing up the steps or simply hanging off the side.

Haridwar is a small, holy, tourist-ridden (Indian tourists, mostly) city that marks the spot where the great Ganges river flows out of the Himalayas. From the highway, it looks like a long cluster of pink buildings above long, smooth steps that line the rushing, brownish Ganga. Thousands of figures can be seen along the banks, bathing, drinking, and collecting the holy water. A massive statue of Shiva, wrapped in a leopard skin, his trident resting on the bank, overlooks the scene. From its main causeway, Haridwar looks like many other Indian cities we’ve passed through. It is full of rickshaws – pulled by horses, men on bicycles, and small motors – full of mobile fruit stands, chemist stalls, ‘hotel’ restaurants, women in beautiful colors, men in sweaty blue work-shirts, and children selling and begging. The bara bazaar, just an ally away from our accommodation at the Hotel Om, seemed to specialize in prayer beads, red powder for ceremonies, and a saffron cloth printed with variations of “om” mixed with images of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha, or Krishna.

As we meandered through the stalls, and slowly sweated out the bottles of water we had consumed that morning, we began to wonder if we might be ‘lost,’ and whether we had any idea which way was ‘out.’ So we turned left, past a tall yellow brick façade, under a dirty archway, found ourselves on the bank of the Ganga. Crippled beggars – one pushing himself along on a small wooden board with three wheels – mixed with holy men and everyday bathers. I walked towards the steps, hoping to rest and watch the astonishingly polluted but beloved water flow by, but the stares we got as we walked closer were far more reproachful than the usual wondering looks, and we decided to keep moving. Soon, we came to a bridge overlooking a famous ghat – at this spot, Krishna supposedly left a footprint on the bank, and dropped some sweet nectar. Every night, thousands of people gather at the sound of chiming bells for a ceremony in praise of the river. As we pressed in to take photos of the gathering masses, we were blocked in by a police barricade, apparently put up to keep worshipers from storming the river during the ceremony.

The sun was settling when prayers began to blast out of loudspeakers rigged to the bridge and nearby temples. Small leaf baskets, filled with flowers and the flicker of candles, which had been floating slowly down the river, began to be released in greater numbers. Most of the bathers climbed back up the steps, and official representatives spread out through the crowds to solicit donations (receipt provided). As the light from the sky faded, bright torch-like balls of flame appeared in white-robed priests’ hands, flames leaping and falling to the ground as their bearers swayed, burning oil splashing on the river bank. We made friends with our neighbors on the packed steps, who explained some of the prayers, and invited us to visit them at their flat in Delhi. As the ceremony ended, and the police barricade was lifted, worshippers flowed in and out, young girls marking our foreheads with yellow and red for a donation of a few rupees. After watching the crowds, thousands passing up and down from the water, we wandered away from the Ganga with an Israeli friend we met on the banks, and drifted off to dinner. Electricity (and therefore fans, as well as lights) flickering on and off, disco-style, we fell asleep.

The next morning, we got up early to see a few sights before returning to our scenic but chilly language school. Just around the corner from our hotel, and up a short alley past red and gold wedding attire, we found the base of a cable car running up the side of a foothill to Mansi Devi, a temple to a goddess who will grant all your mind’s desires. Jockeying with the Indian tourists, we boarded small Disneyland-esque open-air cable cars, and rose up above the city (there was even an old Mickey Mouse statue in the atrium). The ride was surprisingly relaxing, and we stepped off the swaying cartoon-yellow car onto the crest of the hill. From the cable-car, we were swept into the small bazaar that has grown up around the temple, selling offerings, jewelry, and the like. Through the vendors and past the shoe deposit stall (key: bring a bag for your own shoes), we elbowed, shouldered, and pushed our way into a single-file line between shoulder-high red metal fences leading into the actual temple. Inside, there was no open space, but a series of shrines, with different offerings to be given at each. At one, people dropped incense into a fire, and marked their foreheads with ash, at another a man patted my back and head; above an amorphous orange figure, worshippers tied red strings around a tree, and at the central shrine people threw baskets of offerings to priests who looked like dock-workers, catching and passing the gifts towards a statue of the goddess.

On the way out, as Rachel and Myla combed the stalls, a couple asked if I would take a photo with them. This seems to happen a lot – even more to me because of the blonde – but I was still surprised when they handed me their infant to take a photo of the two of us. Indian babies are used to being passed around, and the tiny one quickly fell asleep in my arms. Since I had been in many people’s photos, I decided it might be alright to ask for a photo on my camera as well, but the whole experience was as strange as always. As we left the temple, I saw the young couple in the crowd, and we smiled and waved. The swinging cable cars brought us back down the mountain, and Myla and Rachel and I boarded a series of crowded buses back to Mussoorie.

Of course… we stepped off the bus and right up to the head of a parade in honor of Krishna’s birthday. Children extravagantly dressed up as various gods, and perched on the back of open trucks, with music blasting, chugged past. Frequently, the parade stopped and some of the older god-actors descended to the concrete to act out a story as they lip-synced and danced to the music. The crowds were heavy in the narrow mountain streets, but the sights were worth every moment of being pressed from every side. As we walked towards the taxi stand, wondering if we would ever make it up to our guest house through the winding traffic, I stopped for some jalebi (dough deep-fried in clarified butter), and we rode happily up toward our welcoming mountain home.

Living Vertically

A little over a week ago, we were given 5,000 Rps and a train ticket for six (2^nd class AC, with veg meals, very high snazz) to leave the land of limbo*. The tales we had heard about Indian train stations and cars were fantastic, but whether due to the early hour (there is something distinctly unnerving about sweating so much at 5:30 am in the Delhi morning heat) or a state of over-anticipation, the trip was happily uneventful. Carnival-color-flashing scales for weighing bags, English/Hindi mutt signs, beggars sleeping in the middle of trampling feet, porters carrying suitcases twice their weight on skinny necks, teal-blue faded train cars pulling in, filling up, pulling away. We carried our own bags, stuffed them above our own seats, and settled down to catch up on the sleep we had missed the night before.

*(Anna’s – our in-country program director – apartment in Delhi, with the daily question of whether we would be traveling north or south, learning Hindi first or getting started on Telugu, and whether that uncertain beginning would happen this afternoon, sometime tomorrow, or in two weeks)

This being India, of course, the notion of sleeping because there might be nothing better to do was quickly debunked. A constant stream of food – water, tea and crackers, hot breakfast, more tea, mango juice – and adorable twin Sikh boys running between our seats and theirs to shake hands and say “hello, hello” kept me awake and wondering. Five hours and endless sugar (?) fields later, we stepped off our rocking metal transport and into the distinctly cooler air of Deridun. Anna met us at the station, fed us, and packed us into taxis to climb back up the switchbacks to a little nook of the Himalayan foothills just a town or two away from our first orientation destination. And so The Southerners rejoined rest of the fellows at the Dev Dar Woods guest house and the Landor Language school, about 4 km or a half hour walk above Mussoorie.

The trees here are dripping with green. Green climbs sideways up the short stone walls that hold in the hills, green slicks the soles of our shoes. The color swings from branches with grey-white languor monkeys and insinuates itself through the cracks in the bedroom floor.

Our Hindi classes are alternately speeding and crawling along. When clouds drift in through the door – I mean marshmallow puff passing over the threshold, visible and prickly and soft – I smile slightly and turn back to the next new letter. When the electricity goes off in the middle of a lesson, the teacher continues without a pause, and the light inevitably flicks back on a few minutes later.

The views off the sheer sides of the foothills are cottony white. When the curtains part, they reveal a sea-green coral carpet of trees covering folding mountainsides. And if we’re very lucky, if enough layers have been lifted, if six of the seven seas have parted, we may glimpse the white-gold tips of the real mountains. The Himalayas laugh. They would laugh at our pathetic gasping lungs, out of air from climbing these little precursor mounds, but we’re far too small to merit such grand attention.

Four of us took a seven-hour meander on Saturday. Although we began with a dirt-trail descent past guest-houses and forested homes, we soon stretched along a major paved road. With our cross-strapped backpacks and sweaty American t-shirts we must have cast a strange image to the small boy who carries water up and down this slope every day, to the girls giggling in flocks on their way home from school. When we finally left the road, escaping context, we pranced under power lines and scrambled along goat trails that provide barely half a foot of horizontality in this world of vertical living.

Here, everything is either up or down. The sidewalks and roads are not smooth concrete, but are scored to keep cars that are climbing up from sliding back down, and to keep the pack mules that are sliding down from catching too much speed. Unfortunately, there is not a parallel wet/dry dichotomy. Instead, there is a steady continuum from damp to soaking. Damp is preferable, and even somewhat precious. Plain old ‘wet’ is more common. When I don’t want to connect my body to one more soggy-cool surface, I remember the absolute smog-heat of Delhi and try to appreciate my cold bones absorbing one more ounce of chill.

After sixteen hours of Hindi classes, two weekends, one sweet new years, and an untold number of paperback novels and bollywood music videos, the seventeen World Partners fellows will be scattering in the (thankfully hot) winds. Maybe the Southerners will actually get on a train to Hyderabad. I hear the ticket has been bought, and our placements are still set. My apartment is waiting (two rooms, three young women, no air conditioner)… and since we finished the Deva Nagri alphabet today, it’s clearly high time to start in on another…