Oncoming traffic

Here's a quick update, as I sit in my friend G's apartment and use her internet when really I should be reading the Venisamhara of Bhatta Narayana -- with commentary -- and translating for my tutorial class on Monday.

Pune is absolutely nuts. Since I got here I have been both hitting the ground and running. The traffic is unbelievable; crossing the street takes 20 minutes and it's a matter of life and death. Completely polluted: everyone walks around with these huge scarves tied over their faces. I have gone from hotel to G's apartment and (fingers crossed) on Monday I will move into my flat. I rent a bright room on a busy street from a kind, round landlady who rents out the rooms in a three-bedroom apartment to ayurveda students and, apparently, me. Finding this place was an epic journey. I had no idea how hard it could be to find a flat here; the fog of BS (if you'll excuse my language) that I had to navigate my way through was, and still is, thick. Since I've been 5 places since arriving in India 10 days ago, I have a gigantic pile of laundry to do. I've been sick twice. I cried three times yesterday, all for different reasons and in front of different people. I think I've talked to more strangers in the past week than I have in the past sixth months. I filled up four notebook pages with vocabulary words learned in a single hour of Sanskrit class yesterday. It has taken me the past hour to deconstruct one verse of poetry -- and I *still* have no idea what it means.

If it were not for my incredible friends here, who immediately took me in, hugged me, protected me from oncoming traffic, and cooked for me, I don't know what I would have done. Can't believe I've only known them for two days.

I have to get back to the Venisamhara, but there is more to come. I am sure I will need many hours in the internet cafes that line Pune's congested F.C. Road before I can explain everything that's happened to me here so far. Be forewarned.

Jaipur, continued

I woke up in Jaipur on Saturday absolutely starving. So S, her roommate L, her friend A, and I all sat on the balcony and ate an omelet while looking out over the quiet, sunny morning. Here is a picture of the view down the street (look at all of the green! I felt like Moe the Dog in Tropical Paradise), and a picture of the vegetable seller who comes around every morning.















Then S took me sightseeing. We started at the Hawa Mahal, a huge palace with a gorgeous facade where some Raja had kept all of his gazillions of wives locked up. The thing is, he built thousands of little windows into the facade so that the women could look out over the busy, pink-hued streets of Jaipur's Old City.

We continued on to the King Jai Singh II's unbelievable astronomical observatory (constructed c. 1727-1734), where the compound of massive sundials and other instruments "for measuring the positions of the heavenly bodies" looks more like an installation in a modern art museum than a scientist's utopia. The gigantic sundial at the center of the compound can still tell the time in Jaipur to an accuracy within 4 seconds. There are twelve mini-sundials, each for a particular sign of the zodiac. There are two crater-like instruments for measuring the positions of the stars. There are countless other structures, none of them properly labeled, but all of them very cool-looking. Finally, there is a little shrine on the edge of the compound.

We then headed to the stylish Anokhi cafe for a tea-and-study break. I had a salad (yes, yes, another salad!!) with bitter arugula (!!!) and stinky bleu cheese (!!!). This was topped with the most delicious slice of carrot cake I have ever had and some organic French press coffee. Why I ever left Jaipur is a mystery to me.

That evening, S and L threw a party in their apartment. We all sat on the balcony under the stars, this diverse bunch of American kids who all happened to share the same interests. I don't think I've ever been to a party where every single guest understood my little obsession with India/Sanskrit/literature/everything. It was fantastic. Even when the group broke into Hindi for minutes at a time, it was fine. We ended the night salsa dancing. Salsa dancing! I learned some slick moves, none of which I remember.

We went back to Anokhi the following day for some recovery food. I had falafel and pita, for which I have been harboring a bizarre craving for the past two weeks. (I think it was that 2AM falafel on the grass of the Wesleyan campus that set it off.)

Later in the evening, S and I went temple-hopping to some of the local temples. We arrived in time for the evening aarti at the gigantic, white Birla Mandir, where we were positively crushed by devotees and tourists alike -- all pushing their way up to the front to receive prasad from the saffron-clad brahmin pundits. There's a lot to notice about the Birla Mandir, starting with the crowds of Japanese tourists who were all praying to Lakshmi-Narayana in the main prayer hall. The place is white and spotless, having been built only in the late eighties. There are two large statues in the front; these depict the main donors, presumably Mr. and Mrs. Birla. The artwork inside the temple reveals an effort to create, as S put it, "textbook Hinduism." The "trinity" of Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva appears often; scenes from the Bhagavad Gita are prominent. I particularly noticed the presence of the epics within the temple. Behind the main shrine was a huge carving of Sita's svayamvara (husband-choosing ceremony, literally "self-choice", but of course she doesn't really do the choosing) from the Ramayana. There were stained-glass windows depicting the sage Valmiki writing the Ramayana, and Vyasa writing the Mahabharata.

But the real treasures were the engraved figures on the pillars which supported the temple from the outside. Here one could find the poet-saints Kabir and Surdas, as well as Guru Nanak and Sankaraachaarya. Things got even better on the other side of the temple, where one could see "JESUSCHRIST", "Moses and the Ten Commandments", and Zarathustra. Hinduism is the best.

We finished the night with visits to three more temples in the area -- seriously, this neighborhood is like a Hindu strip mall -- one Ganesh temple where the elephant-headed god was eating delicious laddoos, one Hanuman-Durga temple where we found an entire shrine to the Ramayana, and one little Shiva temple where anyone (anyone at all!) can come up to the Shiva murtis, give flowers, and pray. Another treasure at the Shiva temple was a shrine to Sai Baba where both the picture of Sai Baba and the statue of Sai Baba had chunks of bread glued to their mouths. Hey -- I hope I'm eating when I'm dead, too.

I'm afraid the journey home wasn't as wonderful as the weekend itself. I woke up at 4:30AM on Monday morning to catch a train at 8:15AM (okay, so I'm jet lagged and woke up 2 hours before I had to), but the train was delayed three hours. I spent two of these hours sitting in the Upper Class Waiting Room, watching Punjabi families eat breakfast and old, fat men change clothes. There was a pidgeon flying around the ladies' room. The last hour I spent on the platform talking to one of the only women there, a principal at a school in Haryana who studied English at university and very much wanted me to join the Self-Realization Fellowship. I finally got on my train--I had been waiting at the wrong end of the platform the whole time, despite directions to the contrary, so I had to run--and I sat there for four hours just looking out the window. The rest of the time I alternated between reading my novel and looking out the window. In other countries I love to walk around and see life; in India it's hard to walk, but I've found that just *sitting* is the equivalent. You can see a lot of India just by sitting in a waiting room for two hours. You can see even more by looking out the window of a train ride across Rajasthan and into Haryana and Delhi. Slum after slum, village after village, town after town: India is breathtaking. With a perfect cup of chai from the chaiwallah who goes up and down the length of the train selling tea, I was very happy indeed.

And so today -- in one hour, in fact -- I move to Pune. I start Sanskrit again. I get an apartment. Oh my goodness.

Evening interlude

Some things are too good not to be blogged about, so at the risk of overestimating my readers' interest to hear about my life here, I'm going to write about all the awesome things that happened in the last couple of hours. More on Jaipur to follow, I promise.

1. I walked to Khan Market. This is another thing that may not seem like a big deal -- and it probably isn't -- but for me, it's quite something. First of all, Delhi is not a walking city. There are either no sidewalks at all, or they're crowded with triple-parked cars, or they're just ridiculously busy. In my neighborhood, the first two definitely apply. As for the third: in several past experiences, there have been small crowds of young men who seem to be waiting around solely for the purpose of staring at foreign ladies. Still, since it was the early evening and the sun was still up but the heat was well under control, I decided to walk to Khan Market. (The embarrassment of taking an autorickshaw just two blocks -- really long blocks! -- down the street was also a deciding factor. I've already done that more than I would like, and at this point I just feel silly.) And so I actually did walk down the street to Khan Market. Not once was I bothered, or even stared at for longer than a few seconds. I don't know to what to attribute this wonderful change: perhaps it was because I was wearing a really long, black kurta and had my hair in a braid -- and thus could pass off, at least from the back or at a distance, for an Indian woman; perhaps it was because I just noticed the stares less, or cared less about them; perhaps it was because I was a woman walking alone, and couldn't possibly have been a tourist, what kind of weirdo tourist would do that? In any case, a walk in the cool evening felt wonderful.

2. I had an early dinner at the adorable (and overpriced, and touristy) Turtle Cafe above the Full Circle bookstore. I had (gasp!) a salad. Yes, at the Turtle Cafe they wash their lettuce and vegetables with purified water. Hey, tourism has done some great things for salad lovers in this country. I finished it off with a kiwi-cucumber smoothie. Fantastic.

3. Since I can't do laundry before I leave (one day is definitely not enough dhobi turnover time), I was forced -- forced -- to buy some more kurtas at the branch of FabIndia in Khan Market. But at less than ten dollars apiece, who's complaining? Ladies, listen good: if you want an outfit that is comfortable, flattering, and cheap, look no further than the kurta tops at FabIndia. They fit all shapes and sizes, hit at the not-too-conservative, not-too-flashy mid-thigh, come in three sleeve lengths, have a cute little dip in the neckline, and can make a pair of jeans look elegant. Best of all -- especially for the girl who likes to wear a single outfit in multiple colors (come on, repetition is reputation) -- they come in zillions of hues and patterns. Yes, FabIndia is probably the one place in the world (yes, yes, other than H&M, obviously) where I can feed my rather unfortunate but hopeless obsession with clothes.

4. As I was walking around the inside circle of Khan Market, I heard a loud, obnoxious autorickshaw-wallah yell "Hello! Hello! Hello! Madam! Hello! Hello! Madam! Hello!" and just as I was about to dismiss it as just another over-eager driver, I looked at his face. It was the same guy who drove me to the Old Delhi railway station and ripped me off so egregiously. I hope he was expecting me to smile and wave, because I mustered up the most contemptous facial expression I could imagine and shoved it in his direction. Perhaps I shouldn't have done that -- thankfully it was dark, so he couldn't see the details -- but he got the picture and drove the opposite way. I guess I had an opportunity to run after him and yell at him for cheating me, and (again, thankfully) I was too surprised to do anything beyond grimace. How strange.

5. Something stranger, also involving an autorickshaw. I was doing some friendly haggling (in my little Hindi) with a driver outside Khan Market for the short journey back, and just as I had given up and turned to find another rickshaw, this man stepped out of the first one. He was wearing cargo pants and a white tank top -- an older-ish man, muscled and fair, his gray hair buzzed close to his head. I assumed he was a tourist, but he spoke with an Indian accent. Or perhaps it was some other foreign accent, and I just didn't recognize it.

"Here," he smiles, "these are for you." And he held out a small bouquet of roses, the kind street kids try to sell you at intersections. They throw the roses in your lap, run away for a second, and then come back, hoping you'll pay them for the bouquet. Then they refuse to take the flowers back until the (usually long) light is about to turn green, and if you haven't paid up by then, they snatch the roses from your hands and run back to the curb. Anyway, this guy hands me flowers. And I look at him incredulously, like, are you serious?

"What, you don't like them?" He asks, with that smile. (Well, sir, they're quite pretty, but honestly this is like one of those moments at the airport when the security lady asks you if you've taken any packages from any unknown persons, and you really don't want to have to say yes. )

"They're beautiful but it's not necessary, really," I answer.

"No, please," he holds them out, "they're for you."

On the assumption that this is just a normal guy who didn't know what he was going to do with his Connaught Place intersection flowers, I take them. "Stay happy," he says. "Keep smiling."

Sure enough, he put a smile on my face. It's not every day a stranger gives you a bouquet of roses, just because he heard you haggling with a rickshaw driver in bad Hindi. I just hope they don't blow up any minute now-- but I performed a thorough investigation, and it seems like they're as harmless as they look.

That's right, folks: it's just another night here in Delhi.

Jaipur: Just getting there

Few journeys feel more victorious than the autorickshaw ride from the Old Delhi railway station to one's hotel, having returned from a solo trip to Jaipur. Sitting in the back seat, bouncing around on the half-paved roads, gazing out at the clogged and sunset-golden city in rush hour, let me tell you: the Red Fort has never looked redder, the sari-clad ladies on the backs of motorcycles have never looked more beautiful, the age-lined faces of shoe shiners on the street have never looked more delicate. It was kind of a miracle that I got to Jaipur and back, given that I've never travelled in this country alone and don't speak a lick of Hindi. (Okay, that's an exaggeration: it wasn't *really* a miracle, and I do speak five words of Hindi.)

I wish I had had the courage to take a picture of the scene at the Old Delhi railway station, where I arrived on Friday afternoon scathing from the insulting, but all too understandable, experience of being wildly ripped off by an autorickshaw driver. The double fare that he charged me and the lies about the "closed roads" I wouldn't have minded so much if he hadn't snapped a few pictures of me with his cell phone as I got out of the back seat. He was so young and eager, and I hate to look permanently pissed off (as I have on so many trips here) -- not to mention that five dollars is nothing to pay, even when it should be two -- so I tried to smile and be nice. I only wish there were a kind, respectful way to let the driver know that while I don't mind paying a little bit more because I'm a foreigner, lying to me and taking pictures of me makes me feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Suggestions are welcome.

Anyway, it all kind of melted away when I walked into the railway station. It's this amazing place. "Tons of people" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's more like tons of everything, everywhere: whole families sleeping on the floor of the main hall and on the platforms, people pushing and shoving in ticket lines a mile long, chaos in the parking lot with taxis and rickshaws driving every which way, animals scrounging for food, vast piles of luggage (all calmly balanced on the heads of coolies), fuzzy announcements over the loudspeaker in an indecipherable mix of English and Hindi, chai-wallahs and samosa-wallahs and cutlet-wallahs and special-coffee-wallahs and Mountain-Dew-wallahs hawking their goods, bright saris and jeweled salwar kameez and tight jeans (faded in all the wrong places) abundant, and one old woman inadvertently exposing a breast as she stuggled to balance a load of vegetables on her head while descending the staircase on the wrong side. The best part of all is that no one -- not a single person -- harrassed, bothered, or even noticed the little white girl who was totally lost and confused looking for her train to Jaipur.

Finally I found the giant board that listed all of the departing trains and their platforms. Thank goodness I can read Devanagiri script (thank you, Sanskrit!) because the electronic chart kept on switching from English to Hindi. Platform 16, however, turned out to be more elusive than expected. I scoured the station for a sign to Platform 16, but all the signs and overpasses only led to Platforms 1-15. I felt like Harry Potter in King's Cross, looking for Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

"Bhai sahib," I said to one chai seller, "ek question hain. Platform sixteen kahan hain?" (Brother-sir, there is one question. Platform 16 where is?)

"Aage, aage, beti," (Over there, over there, little girl) he said, and pointed to an entirely different branch of the railway station -- one I hadn't even noticed before. So I walked down the street and into Old Delhi railway station, Part II.

Finally I saw a sign for my beloved Platform 16. The train, the Delhi-Ahmedabad Ashram Express, was waiting right there. The next challenge was finding my coach, A1, before the train left the station. This I did, after walking the length of the train and growing progressively more worried that my coach didn't exist. Thankfully it was at the very end of the train. I grabbed a three-rupee cup of tea from the chai man on the platform, boarded the train, and found my berth. Since the Ashram Express is a sleeper train, each berth has two levels of cushioned lengths on which to lie. Until people actually go to bed, though, all four people in the berth just sit on the two lower "beds". It's really comfortable. They give you pillows and blankets.

I shared my compartment with an older couple -- he a Muslim in traditional garb, she a Hindu reading a biography of the popular guru-saint Sai Baba. (One of those "only in India" sights.) There was also a younger, rounder man who alternately read film gossip magazines and yelled in English at coworkers over his cell phone for calling meetings without his permission. I fell asleep as soon as the train started to move. A little while later, the young guy poked me and used his good English to tell me that the old man had bad knees, and would I agree to take the upper bed so that he could use the bottom one? Of course. So I climbed up there and fell asleep again. First, however, I set the alarm on my cell phone so that my worst India nightmare wouldn't come true: missing my stop on the train. I shouldn't have worried -- it was so freezing in there with the air conditioning blasting right in my face that I woke up every twenty minutes on the dot.

When I got to Jaipur, my friend S was there to meet me at the station. Bless her, this tiny American woman wearing a traditional salwar kameez with gigantic purple patiala pants (otherwise known as Aladdin pants). She spewed Hindi at the autorickshaw drivers until they agreed to charge us the regular, non-foreigner-inflated price. And then we rode through the streets of Jaipur in the night until we arrived at her apartment, a spacious place with high ceilings in a quiet, upper-middle class neighborhood. We ate her delicious home-cooked Indian food, watched an episode of "Friends" on her laptop screen, and passed out, exhausted.

I know this isn't really much of an accomplishment, this whole thing, but it sure felt like one to me. More to follow soon, complete with photos this time, about the rest of the weekend.

Travels and travails

This is the picture on the wall of my room at the India International Centre in Delhi -- auspicious, no? That crow looks a little pudgy to me. Perhaps it's been fed by all of the walkers, picnickers, and "laughers" (people who laugh for therapy; it's kind of cultish, really) in the Lodhi Gardens.

And indeed, the journey across the earth has been eventful. It started with my spending the night in a hotel in Newark, New Jersey, because my flight was at 8AM and my parents would have had to drive me from the city at 4AM to get there. Well, I got up at 4:30AM and took the hotel shuttle--along with a huge, raucous Lebanese family--to the airport. I stood in line to check in, handed in my passport, and --

"Ma'am, have you changed your name?"

"No."

"Have you bought your ticket yet?"

"Yes. Two months ago."

"We don't have you listed."

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I frantically handed the nice lady a copy of my itinerary from Orbitz.com, whereupon she raised her eyebrows, smirked, and pointed to some small print on the bottom.

"Ma'am, your flight leaves from JFK."

Note: thank goodness it was so early in the morning, because if I had had my wits about me and realized the gravity of the situation -- namely that I am completely incapable of traveling alone and should be locked up in a prison for unbelievably absent-minded individuals -- I would have broken down and cried right there. However, having had zero cups of coffee that morning, I calmly informed her that I was "freaking out," and could she help me?

Of course, the mess-up deserves some explanation. For those of you who were not with me during the two hours one early morning in July when I went to Orbitz.com and booked a ticket to India, just know that there are lots of flights to India that look very, very alarmingly similar. Most leave at 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning, arrive in London later that evening, and connect to flights that leave from Heathrow at 10PM to go to New Delhi. In my total indecision about which flight to pick -- and general confusion about this whole trip -- I chose a flight that left from JFK, but somehow thought I had picked a flight from Newark. Given the multiple confirmation e-mails that Orbitz.com sent me over the past two months, there is absolutely no excuse for doing what I did. But at least there is an explanation.

And, realizing how I made this mistake in the first place, I was relieved. Everything was going to be okay. There was, clearly, a 7:30AM flight leaving from Newark: it was the one I intended to book in the first place. I could get on it, or at least get on standby. It was even the same airline. So I paid a minimal fee, got an aisle seat, and flew to London on a virtually empty plane. Shaken by my apparently wild incompetence, I watched two movies that took my mind off of it: "The Kite Runner" and "Happy-Go-Lucky." I recommend both, should you be on a transatlantic flight with nothing to think about but your own utter incapability to do anything properly. Really, though, after everything, the flight was pretty idyllic.

Things continued to go well at Heathrow, where my beloved Terminal 3 was unnaturally empty. I went through connecting flight security with absolutely no waiting in line. When I got in the queue at Starbucks to enjoy my last cup of non-Nescafe coffee, the man in line before me had a voucher from his airline (he was delayed five hours) and bought me a cup of coffee. People are fantastic.

Unfortunately, that was when my troubles started again, and I'll keep this one short. I spilled coffee on my white shirt, got up to run to the nearest duty free and get a souvenir tee shirt to wear on the plane, realized once I had circled the duty free unsuccessfully that I had left my yoga mat at Starbucks, ran back to Starbucks where they were calling security because of an abandoned package, convinced the men at Starbucks that I wasn't a terrorist, got my yoga mat, went back to the "Glorious Britain" souvenir shop, and found a very ugly, ill-fitting long-sleeved tee shirt that says "City of London, England." I went to change in the ladies' room and shortly found myself sitting in the waiting area wearing a horrendously ugly tee shirt and feeling, yet again, rather silly.

Yet again, my flight was blissful. The plane was empty (people, fly Virgin Atlantic!!) and the people on it were far more interesting. Lots of large Indian men who, when asked whether they wanted chicken or vegetarian, answered "both, and some juice and coffee and tea, too." I had a whole row to myself, and slept like a baby. We arrived in Delhi at the sane hour of 11AM. The airport had been renovated since my last visit, there was no line to go through customs, and the place was deserted -- very, very few international flights land during the day. I took a taxi to "Lodhi Road" (technically Max Mueller Marg, after the nineteenth century "Orientalist" German scholar), and my driver only tried once -- and rather halfheartedly, at that -- to take me to a hotel run by his "cousin".

Successes of the first two days: finding the picture of the crow in my room, picking up my train tickets to go to Jaipur (today!), taking several autorickshaws without accident, miraculously escaping the monsoon downpours, finding out I actually have an apartment to live in when I get to Pune, sorting through beautiful clothes at FabIndia (actually located next to the market which was bombed only a few days ago), and having idly-sambar-chutney for breakfast.

Amazing. Jai Hind!

Occidental pastries

A. and I completed our Goodbye New York Pilgrimage with some faithful prayer at the shrine of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. (Have you noticed that most of my blog thus far has been devoted to food? I should really get a life. And show some consideration for those who are fasting Ramadan.) Barnard girls, Columbia students, residents of Morningside Heights, and certain well-travelled individuals may well be informed about the glorious Hungarian Pastry Shop. For all the rest of you, just know that one doesn't really go there for the pastries. Aside from the excellent pumpkin pie (thanks for the tip, K.!), the goods have been sitting around for a while -- and even if they weren't, I'm afraid they still wouldn't be a rave party on the tongue.

Eddie Said might have something to say (and perhaps did say something) about the arrangement of the pastries under the glass counter of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. On the right side of the counter are the cheesecakes, pumpkin pies, chocolate ganaches, and tiramisus. On the left side of the counter -- separated by a metal barrier -- are the baklava, poppyseed rolls, hamentaschen, and other "exotic" (hee hee) Eastern European/Middle Eastern sweets. Last year, as A. and I were making our pilgrimage to the Hungarian Pastry Shop before I departed for a summer program in Jordan, we ordered a tiramisu. At that moment, I had the unfortunate lack of discretion to say something along the lines of "You always choose the western ones." To this day, I have had no peace from A. for making such a hoity-toity (and probably intellectually misguided) comment. Oh dear.

All this to say: here are some pictures of the orientalist pastry cases. These, as you can see, picture "the western ones."













But as I said, you don't really go there for the pastries. You go there because it's right across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (the world's largest Gothic cathedral, I think). You go there to sit outside at the sidewalk tables and drink Moroccan tea while either freezing to death or suffocating of the heat, depending on the season. You go there to relish the warmth (if winter) or cool (if summer) of the indoors, because the place insulates like no other. You go there to sit at one of the tables that are crowded so close together that there's no way it isn't a fire hazard. You go there to watch tons -- I mean, *tons* -- of intellectual types read books in lots of different languages and chug down black coffee. You go there to eavesdrop of the conversations of said intellectual types. You go there to see what said intellectual types are wearing.

I go there for the bathroom. To be precise, I go there for the bathroom walls (and ceiling and floor), upon which are scrawled feminist/communist/capitalist manifestos, declarations of freedom/gender/being, extended debates about Israel and Palestine, and rather juicy gossip. To anyone who's ever had the joy of reading what's written in the middle stall of the girls' bathroom in Adams House: darling, the Hungarian Pastry Shop is your Paradise.

Here are some treasures.

NYC, I will miss you.

Today, A. and I embarked on the same pilgrimage we undertake every time one of us is leaving New York City for an extended period of time. We eat at the overpriced, not-so-good Popover Cafe and convince the (alternately surly/flamboyant) waiter to take a picture of us.

Then we walk and walk. This time we made it as far as H&H bagels (see photo of A. with a pack of lox), where we loitered for a while because of the air conditioning and amazing bagel smell.

We hopped on the subway -- also, thankfully, air conditioned, but not nearly as sweet-smelling -- and got off at 14th Street. We wandered around Greenwich Village, where we found some statues (see picture) and some well-dressed junkies (too embarrassed to take a picture).

We also found a bar with a special name: The Stoned Crow. I will not speculate on the meaning of this particular name, except that it must have been incredibly auspicious for us to have found it on this particular venture downtown.

We continued on to a massive street fair in Little Italy--I have never seen so much meat and pastry in one place--and then to the inevitable Babycakes for the inevitable frosting shot. For those of you who don't know what a Babycakes frosting shot is:

1. It is a crying shame that you are so unenlightened.
2. Babycakes is a vegan, gluten-free, spelt-tastic bakery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where the pastries actually taste like real food. It is incredible. You can ask anyone who has been there. The website is www.babycakesnyc.com.
3. Babycakes, while famous for its beautiful cupcakes / muffins / brownies / cookies, is especially famous for its secret-recipe frosting. The only thing we know about the frosting is that it's sweetened with agave nectar (??) and that it's *amazing*. And because it's vegan, well, it must be good for you.
4. Erin McKenna, the genius behind the Babycakes empire, knew her fan base. So she decided to make it possible for customers to purchase tablespoon-sized portions of the unbelievable Babycakes frosting. They squirt it right out of the funnel and into tiny paper cups. Today, the frosting was purple.
5. These frosting shots, by the way, cost $1.50 each. This would be utter highway robbery for regular frosting, but trust me, at Babycakes it's totally worth it.
6. Also, Erin McKenna was in Babycakes while we were there today. I was so high on frosting that I didn't see her, but A. was smart enough to snap a picture of "my frosting shot" that caught the estimable Ms. McKenna in the background. Unfortunately, it's really blurry. My one brush with celebrity: blurry. Thanks.

And so it is with the taste of agave nectar on my tongue that I must get down to sorting out what I need to take with me for the next seven months in India, and -- more importantly -- what I don't. Wish me luck!

And 14 hours later...

Two days at the Indian consulate, and this is what I have to show for it. Isn't it beautiful?

Here is another morsel from www.sanskritquoteoftheday.com--yes, I should be purchasing industrial-strength insect repellant and starting to pack instead of perusing Sanskrit quotes of the day from the past three years--but this one is actually relevant to this post, if sappy.

वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्।

"[My] household is indeed the world."
-- Maha Upanishad 6.71

"U goin out 2nite?"

This weekend I exchanged many parting words, celebrating my last hurrahs by going to see "Hair" in Central Park (a friend and I woke up at 5 in the morning to wait for tickets), travelling to Cambridge to bid farewell to my wonderful friends and teachers, and "going out" at Wesleyan with my best friend A.

Each event of the weekend struck a chord that resonated with a particular part of my life. "Hair," for example, was the first real musical in which I was ever cast -- at the tender age of twelve. (I don't see why parents don't give their teenagers a copy of the libretto to "Hair" instead of "Our Bodies, Ourselves.") Seeing it in the Park, remembering every single lyric (and there are many of them), I felt some of the same blithe freedom that "Hair" brought to me eight years ago. What's more, I saw the play with a friend whom I've actually known since I was seven: we danced together for a long time in the City and, years later, found each other at Harvard. The whole 24-hour event took me back to the years when I was on the verge of teenager-dom, and in many ways, I feel the same anticipation -- both excitement and fear -- about the coming year that I felt about adulthood when I was at that age.



And Cambridge, of course, had its own Cambridge feel. There's not much to say on this score. For me, at least now, it's a total clash of extremes: the people there inspire me to improve *and* make me happy with where I am; just looking at red brick, on the other hand, makes me feel as if I'm trapped in Lamont Library at four in the morning with a giant cup of coffee and half a response paper to write. Aside pictures the view from (what would have been!) my room this year.

By far the most wonderful part of the weekend was visiting A. at Wesleyan. While it was quite the adventure to get there and back (Middletown-New Haven taxi drivers are fascinating!), the trip was well worth the added effort. On Friday night we "went out"--as they say--to various parties attended by girls in strappy black dresses and bearded men in flannel. Where the gigantic lawn gatherings and balcony soirees are hiding at Harvard is a mystery to me. It was an excellent time, truly topped only by the 2AM falafel sandwich that A. and I shared from the falafel cart perched at the edge of the main quad. "Do you want hot sauce?" asked the nice veiled lady making our sandwich. "Bring it on!" we enthused: such a bad choice. But flaming mouths aside, really, it was a fantastic falafel.

The party continued the following morning, when A. and I dined on massive breakfasts at O'Rourke's diner in "bustling downtown Middletown". This was followed by a personal (though rainy) tour of the gorgeous Wes campus, where it is indeed possible to buy 12-year aged balsamic vinegar and homemade pizza dough at the student grocery store.





As A. so aptly noted: "They know their audience." Excuse me while I transfer.

Happy Ramadan!

That's just it: wishing all our Muslim friends a blessed month of Ramadan. (Actually it started yesterday, but still.)

Cool fact: this evening, sitting with a friend by the Hudson River, I saw the crescent moon rise over scenic New Jersey.

Crow pose

Today in yoga class I was able to hold crow pose -- the pose that I want to reach more than anything else in the world, even more than, say, headstand or a full caturanga -- for a whole two seconds. It was fantastic. Crows have figured into my life a great deal recently. I once read that the Sanskrit student should strive to become like the crow in her alertness, attention to detail, and readiness to pounce. I saw many, *many* crows while I was in Michigan, just out riding my bike. They scared me. (Think the universe was telling me to study those noun declensions? Yup.) There is, of course, the fat crow. And now there is crow pose, which doesn't make me act (or look) like a crow, but which I have been working on for a long time. As much as I wish I were Nell Gwynn --the first actress on the English stage--in a past life, I'm starting to think I might have been a crow. Not the coolest of animals, but at least it can fly.

Many, many other small special things happened to me this weekend. People that I had been thinking about completely randomly (like my eighth grade math teacher) showed up on the street the same day; I saw a magic trick; I found myself in Times Square twice; old friends from Michigan slept over; I walked to Brooklyn and back; I saw a friend whom I haven't seen in a long time; I learned that another friend is engaged to be married. I even saw the hilarious 'Hamlet 2.'

It doesn't sound like much, but for me, this weekend--jammed with all kinds of small and wonderful and bizarre things--has lasted forever.