Note!

Hi everyone --

I've recently learned that it may not be the best idea, security-wise, to be writing in such a public forum. So if you'd like to receive e-mail updates from me (or otherwise correspond) just send me an e-mail, or post a comment on this blog, and let me know.

Thanks!
- Your local Fat Crow.

Twelve hours in Afghanistan

I’ve been sitting, at once patient and nervous, in the plane for two hours. We’re flying over Pakistan, mountain range after snowy mountain range. I’m wearing the soft black headscarf that I’ve carefully wrapped around my head in the Delhi airport. Finally the pilot announces that we’re to begin our descent into Kabul. (“Good morning. Air traffic control was temporarily shut down, but they should be up and running by now.”) Finally we land, taxi, and as I step out onto the tarmac and into the hot, dusty wind of Afghanistan, I catch sight of two planes – one belonging to the UN, and the other belonging to the ICRC – and it’s pretty much the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.

So I walk into customs, and as soon as I get there, people start talking to me in Dari – including an officer who opens a new booth and invites me to be the first person in line. After learning that it’s a small miracle the conveyor belt worked in the first place, I grab my bags and head out of the airport where Z. is waiting for me, complete with his friend E. (and E.’s fast car). Apparently the road running from the airport into the city – a short one, and one that leads almost directly to the place where I’ll be living – is the nicest in Kabul. It’s wide and smooth. It’s also, I learn, one of the more dangerous ones. But that’s okay: soon we turn off onto a dirt road and we’re home. It’s wide and clean, but incredibly bumpy – the car jostles and knocks around as it tries to navigate a terrain that’s more like those mountain ranges I flew over than a nice residential area, which is what it is.

The house is large and, like all the other Afghan houses on our street, lives comfortably behind a tall wall, a strong gate, two friendly guard dogs, and a garden. We have a roof and a barbeque and 10 housemates, though several were there just on business (filming a documentary on an NGO started by one of the men who lives in our house) and have since left. As in many social situations thus far, I’m the only woman there. Talk about a new experience.

Later that night, I go to two parties. The first is held in a restaurant on Chicken Street called Haji Baba’s: the food, terrible (though unbelievably fancy and expensive by Afghan standards); the company, wonderful. It’s a party honoring the teachers at the circus where Z works, and it involves 50 or 60 Afghan men sitting around two tables laughing raucously for hours. At some point there’s a buffet, and everyone gets up to load his plate 8 inches high (not kidding) with oily rice, bland soup with what looked like Kix cereal in it, chicken that’s mostly fat and has been sitting in an ocean of gravy for a while, and some greasy substance that might once have been a vegetable. Then there are soft drinks and electric neon-colored desserts. To return to the company: everyone rough-houses each other laughs and jokes around in Dari (no one really bothering to notice me, even though I’m the only woman there) and finally, after the meal is over, they all get up to tell jokes. The jokes turn into real stories. Then one of the eminent teachers leans over to me and starts to translate, and I find myself learning a whole lot more Afghan potty humor than I ever thought I would.

After we’ve escaped the circus party, we head to another party. This is an expat party, held behind the seriously-guarded walls of a compound, and which allows me to at last remove my head gear. Here I bond with various brave, cool, good-hearted expat women, learn about some journalists’ adventures with the Army in the dangerous southern belt of the country (“but Darfur was much more interesting, really”), and listen to a couple of beefy security-guy types complain about Afghanistan.

So perhaps there are two parties. There is one party in restaurants like Haji Baba, or maybe also at weddings, bumping around in taxis, or just out on the street. This is a party of long jokes and innocent dirty humor, oft-recited litanies of greetings (“How are you? How is your health? Your family? Your house is well? Your business? Your third cousin twice removed in-law?”), oil and rice, mouths wide with laughter, and mostly men. There is another party behind layers of security guards – in ritzy restaurants, basement bars, air-conditioned offices, Western-style supermarkets, and armored cars – to which flock the strangest mix of foreigners. There are adventurers, do-gooders, businesspeople, journalists, photojournalists, videographers, private contractors and private consultants, and security men who look like they just walked out of a gas station on the Jersey turnpike. To all of this, add one shameless tourist: me.

I'm back home.

And that's all for now. The fat crow will be back in about a month's time, peppy and ready for the summer. See you then!

Little gifts

Today brings an appraisal of some of the brightly colored, (non-edible) bite-size morsels that make India so delicious. These are the habits and norms that I’ve seen in action every single day here: some of them have grown in charm over time; some have become so regular to my eyes that I hardly see them anymore; some struck me on my very first day in India, and have never lost their spark. In no particular order –

1. Affection between men. Co-ed friendship is a novel phenomenon in India. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of friendships here are same-sex ones, and perhaps that’s why these friendships are particularly close and openly affectionate. On the streets of India, one of the most touching sights to see is a pair of men holding hands: it happens all the time, and it’s completely normal. American-style bear hugs, back-slaps, and shoulder-punches are far less common – holding hands, I think, just isn’t considered emasculating, or even particularly effeminate. (And little do Indian men know that if they walked, fingers intertwined, down an American street, passerby would see them as a couple. Shocker!)

2. The natural body. Ornaments, clothes, and grooming seem to hold great importance in this country – more on that later – but underneath those concerns lies a general love of the human body as it is naturally. My guess is that many people associate physical exercise with the poorer classes: historically, a thin, toned body has been the product of hours engaged in manual labor. Gyms, where one would do this kind of labor voluntarily, are very new here. From what I’ve observed, it’s not that the ideal is gross obesity – it’s that like one’s family, caste, and community, one’s body is given at birth and so is not meant to be altered drastically. Whatever the class-ist implications of Indians’ willingness to let the human body take its course – not to mention the health risks facing many exercise-averse Indians today – I often pause to appreciate the body-acceptance that flows from this attitude. (I have more of a problem with longstanding physical ideals like fairness of skin.) You only need to watch a small collection of Bollywood movies to see that women of all shapes and sizes are considered beautiful. America’s obsession with thinness hasn’t completely hit India, and I’ll take refuge here until it does.

3. Dairies. I love being able to buy fresh cow’s milk, paneer (simple cheese with the consistency of firm tofu), ghee, dahi (slightly sour, watery natural yogurt), and even buffalo milk from the small dairies that pop up all over Indian cities. It’s great to skip all the processing and packaging that plagues American dairy production: here, you can get your dairy products almost directly from the cows themselves. Thank you, small dairies, for bringing city girls like me one scrumptious step closer to the countryside.

4. Meal timings. Trains are late, and so are meals. The only one that isn’t is chhota-breakfast (small breakfast), which takes place almost as soon as you get up. That’s just tea and biscuits. Then there’s real breakfast, taken at around ten or eleven. There’s a tea break (again, with biscuits) a couple of hours after that. Then there’s lunch between two and three o’clock – and none of this soup-salad junk, either. We’re talking about a full meal. A couple of hours later calls for more tea and biscuits. Then there’s a larger snack around six or seven, when workers and students have finished for the day. That’s when hordes of people crowd chaat stands and snack joints, all clamoring for spicy fried delicacies. Several hours later is the biggest production of the day: dinner. Most restaurants crowd at nine or ten, with entire families pushing to get in. Once, a friend and I ate at a popular Punjabi restaurant late at night – we must have started dinner shortly before midnight. Joining us were two huge Punjabi families, complete with babies and toddlers, staying up into the wee hours in pursuit of sunset-hued tandoori chicken and glistening skewers of paneer tikka. But the fun doesn’t stop, because after dinner, there’s dessert…

5. Lovers’ lanes. In Delhi, I’ve noticed that any clean, public space is a haven for young couples seeking some precious time alone. Boys play with the edges of their girlfriends’ dupattas on the steps of the Metro; couples sit with their heads together on the benches of the Lodi Gardens. They linger for hours at tables in Café Coffee Day – not working on their laptops, as is often the case in Cambridge, but gazing into each other’s eyes and saying nothing in particular.

6. There’s room for everybody, even when there isn’t. In Mumbai, I’ve seen a lot of commuter trains come and go. Each car is packed with people, including those riding perilously in open doorways and on the roof of the train itself. Women’s scarves flap in the wind as the train hurtles toward Mumbai Central or Victoria Terminus. On the Delhi Metro, it’s the same story: people will push and push and push until every last person is squeezed inside. Three passengers cram onto two seats, and seven onto five seats. When people have places to go and jobs to attend, personal space becomes an unnecessary luxury.

7. Total grooming. Unless they live in extreme poverty, Indians are rarely unkempt. Hair is always combed, oiled, and braided. Jewels are donned. Shirts are hardly ever ripped, and most often collared. Pants are tailored. Salwar kameez are washed and pressed. Shoes are shined. (None of America’s messy ponytails, baggy pants, and ripped sweatshirts! Amazing!) I admire India’s love of physical presentability: it seems, somehow, more respectful of oneself and one’s community to look clean and neat. Only occasionally do these efforts come across as vain; most of the time, they simply show that people care about being seen as responsible and respectable.

Anything I missed? The fat crow is always open to comments and suggestions --

Delhi, edible

There are little more than a handful of places where I go to eat in Delhi. This might seem tragic in a city where food is cheap, abundant, and yummy – but the truth is that I keep coming back to the same restaurants because they’re just so gosh darn *good*. If you plan on visiting Delhi, eat at one of these places. Trust me: I’ve visited them enough times to know that they’re always, always delicious.

1. Sagar: the cheapest, best, and most popular restaurant in Defence Colony. The dosas, idlies, uttapams, and dahi wada are tasty, of course, but it’s the full-scale thali that takes the vegetarian cake. (A thali is a pile of food neatly organized on a platter: bread and rice in the middle; multiple vegetable preparations, soupy lentil daals, yogurts, and sweets around the perimeter. The thali is perfect for the person who can’t decide what to order.)

2. Haldiram’s: I know, I know. I’ve often written about how much I adore this multi-level food paradise nestled in the heart of the old city, but Haldiram’s is such an essential stop on Delhi’s food trail that I believe it deserves one more mention. The ground floor is lined by glass counters filled with goodies to take away. The left wall is devoted to endless variations of traditional Indian sweets: three kids of jalebis, ten kinds of laddoos, seventeen kinds of barfi, and on and on. The back wall presents a funny combination – on the left side are the Bengali sweets, and on the right side are the chocolate eclairs and upside-down pineapple cakes. In the back-right corner is the kulfi seller: he offers ten flavors of pure milk-made Indian ice cream, sold on sticks like popsicles. On the right wall are the savories and snack foods, best among them the Gujarati dhokla and the freshly fried samosas. (There’s much more than that at the snack counters, yet somehow I never seem to make it past the sweets on the opposite wall.)

But, as you know from previous raves on this topic, the fun starts one flight up. By now, I’ve tried almost every single type of chaat that Haldiram’s has to offer – and they’re all delicious. After all, all chaat dishes are prepared from the same basic ingredients: some doughy fried bread, crispy crackers, or puffed grains as a base, sweetened yogurt to drench them in, green chutney to spice them, tamarind sauce to make it all sweet and tangy, and baked potato cubes, chickpeas, or lentils to fill it out. The miracle is this: though the dishes are made out of these same ingredients, each one tastes completely different from all the others. Further miracles await: there’s much more than chaat at Haldiram’s, and it’s worth your while to extend your tastebuds farther. The North Indian thali, served like a T.V. dinner on a compartmentalized white tray, is a good place to start. It includes rich daal makhani, spicy vegetables, cool raita yogurt, rice, and roti bread freshly smoked in a tandoor oven. Beyond that, I’m a fan of the crowdpleasing paneer tikka – generous cubes of firm cottage cheese, rubbed with spices and baked just enough to make the edges crunchy and the inside soft. It goes well with the two kinds of paranthas (one plain, one laced with mint and coriander) available; each is a flakier, more buttery version of this heavy flatbread popular in the North. Finally, the chole bhature – two giant puffs of fried dough served with spiced chickpeas – is a particular joy, especially if you have the nerve to join the local breakfast crowd in consuming all that fatty goodness before noon.

3. The samosa and chai stand behind Khan Market: a favorite of my dad’s, and for good reason. Five rupees will buy you a hot, fresh mini-cup of chai; a little bit more will buy you a spicy samosa served in a banana leaf bowl. You eat standing, along with all the taxi drivers and shopkeepers, and if you’re a woman, you’ll definitely be the only one there. This corner is also a great spot for people-watching – it looks right onto Khan Market and all of its well-dressed inhabitants. The samosa man also serves something he calls “bread pakoras”: fried slices of white bread. Let me know if you’ve ever had one of these, or plan to.

4. The Turtle Café, also in Khan Martket: only for consumption after you’ve assuaged your upper class guilt by dining “with the people” at the five-rupee chai stand above. This one occupies the top floor of an English book store, and does not feature Indian food at all. (I knew I’d been in the country long enough when I started enjoying the overpriced Western goods at the Turtle Café a little too often.) In any case, if you have a yen for carrot walnut cake, safe salads, or pesto pasta, race to an outdoor table at the Turtle and let your tastebuds forget you’re in Delhi. And hey, don’t beat yourself up about it – as soon as you get there, you’ll see you’re not the only firangi dying for a slice of lemon cheesecake or a plate of baked ziti.

5. The HaveMore, in Pandara Market: it’s time to head back to India, and to the gravy-rich North in particular. Join the massive Punjabi families (and all their cute kids!) in enjoying the hot kebabs, creamy vegetable dishes, and crispy-yet-chewy breads on offer at the quasi-luxurious HaveMore. If it’s winter, get the sarson-ka-saag (spiced and pureed mustard greens) with makki-ki-roti (buttery, firm flatbread made of cornflour). Yes, you will want to have more, though your arteries will protest.

A few others:
a. Gulati, an upscale place next to the HaveMore, where the kebabs – and the tourist-watching – are even better.
b. Saravana Bhavan, which is a chain of South Indian restaurants similar to Sagar. They originated in Chennai, and they have two outlets in Connaught Place – one on Janpath, and one near the Regal Cinemas building. Here, again, a thali is a great way to go: Saravana Bhavan crams even more dishes onto their thali trays than Sagar does. It’s a little overwhelming.
c. If you’re staying in Paharganj (which I sincerely hope you’re not), try the restaurant on the roof of the Hotel Rak International, just off Main Bazaar. Word to the wise: don’t order off the menu. Instead, poke your head into the kitchen and ask the chef what he’s making fresh that day. A big bowl of masala mixed vegetables or palak paneer and a plate hot, fresh rotis is cheap and filling – plus, you get to bond with the European backpackers and watch the commotion on Tooti Chowk three stories below. If you show up around seven thirty in the evening, you’ll also get a concert of bhajans floating up from the temple next door.

Bon appetit!

Patience: India's greatest virtue?

A lot of people don’t like waiting – especially people from cities (like New York) and countries (like America) where everything is served up *fast*. But in India, time moves slowly: people don’t walk, but amble; traffic doesn’t speed, but sputters; plumbers don’t arrive, but call to say they’ll arrive tomorrow; public works projects never finish (if they start at all); shows start two hours after they’re supposed to; court cases lag for years; trains depart fourteen hours late. The amazing part is that, from what I’ve seen, many Indians don’t seem to mind waiting. They linger over cups of chai and amuse themselves with card games and conversation. They live one more day without hot water. They don’t protest when the government doesn’t deliver on promises of better sanitation or building public parks.

(Here’s a side note. Those last couple of examples show how the great Indian capacity for waiting – while it may be the product of some fantastical inner peace – doesn’t always work in Indians’ favor. Perhaps if ordinary people demanded more immediate action from their elected officials, and were less contented to wait behind endless rows of red tape, the government would learn to be more efficient. Perhaps if consumers refused to employ lagging plumbers, those plumbers would realize the importance of showing up on time – and of actually fixing the plumbing, instead of solving the problem partway in an effort to guarantee themselves future business.)

(And here’s a second side note. There are a few situations in which most Indians are scramblingly impatient. Lines have this effect: people will wait on line at the train station or the bank, but they’ll cram themselves against each other as if physical proximity to the service counter will speed up their waiting time. This makes most lines in India highly, highly uncomfortable for the person who values a few inches between herself and the people behind and in front of her in line. Sadly for India, I haven’t yet learned to bid adieu to such worldly attachments as personal space. Indians are also incredibly impatient when it comes to public transportation: they’ll push and scramble to board trains, leave planes, and find seats on the Metro. This leads to a lot of crushing and some minor, good-natured violence.)

In any case, I have started to love waiting. My reasons are simple, really, and I’m sure you could read about them in any old self-help book: we all lead busy lives, so every now and then it’s important to *just do nothing*. In that respect, then, a wait is a blessing. It’s an opportunity for a person to lift her eyes and look at everything going on around her – to observe people, places, interactions, and signs that perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. It’s an opportunity for her to think, imagine, dream. It’s an opportunity for her to reflect on just how much she really wants (or needs) whatever it is she’s waiting for. She waits, she breathes, the world turns just fine.

The glorious autorickshaw

On this blog, I’ve often written about autorickshaws – little three-wheelers that, though present in other countries (such as Thailand, where they masquerade as “tuk-tuks”), I will always consider uniquely Indian. Since September, I’ve taken approximately 500 rides in autorickshaws. (That’s seven months in India, thirty days in each month, 2.5 rickshaw journeys per day, and rounding down from there.) If each ride is an all-inclusive, pocket-size vacation to the vibrant streets of this country, that’s a lot of *India* that I’ve seen through the grubby front windows of her three-wheeled chariots.

Perhaps it’s only because I’ve spent so much time in them that I believe autorickshaws offer the most, and the best, of urban India to the curious traveller. There are other ways to get around, surely: taxis (as they do in Mumbai, where I’m sitting right now), public buses (not for the faint of heart or, for that matter, the female), the Metro (recently built, and only in Delhi). Yet only the autorickshaw can capture, in the midst of city traffic and urban congestion, the freewheeling spirit of the open road. Only the autorickshaw serves as a sightseeing vehicle of wonders large and small. Only the autorickshaw offers opportunities for conversation and interaction without forcing them upon the passenger. For me, these are the foundations of living in India: base-level connections without which I’d be cloistered and closeted.

First, the open road. Anyone who grows up in New York City doesn’t really know much about the open road (whatever that is), but maybe it’s precisely because of this ignorance that careening around in open-air vehicles – even through oodles of urban traffic – never stops feeling special. That rush you get when the driver revs up the engine or takes a curve at a precarious angle: it doesn’t go away. It’s like riding on the back of a motorcycle, but you can fool yourself into thinking it’s safer. Those frequent, minor brushes with danger breed sighs of relief at the end of autorickshaw journeys: you feel as though you’ve accomplished something monumental simply by sitting in a backseat and letting someone drive you to your destination. An autorickshaw ride is at once functional, personally satisfying, and entertaining.

It’s also the best way to see the city. Sightseeing tours cart visitors from monument to monument, each journey placated by the glass windows that separate the passengers from the outside world. In a rickshaw, those barriers vanish. A rickshaw can take you to the Jama Masjid: better yet, it can wheel you slowly through the marketplaces that surround Delhi’s gorgeous mosque, exposing you to the sounds of Quranic recitation and screaming children, the smells of freshly slaughtered chickens and fried vegetables, the sights of coarse gray beards and bright young heads topped with knitted white skullcaps. To me, it’s the most interesting sort of sightseeing; in a rickshaw, you can experience it only inches away, for free. (And all this, without having to navigate the streets on foot: a nearly impossible task. A rickshaw may have fewer barriers than a taxi or bus, but there are still some barriers in place – and that can be a good thing.)

Rickshaws throw their passengers into close contact both with their physical surroundings and with other people. The first interaction a rider experiences is with her driver: will he take her where she wants to go? Does he know how to get where she wants to go? Will he charge her the local price, the foreigner price, or the outrageous foreigner price? After these matters have been settled, it’s possible that there might be no further conversation: this is a situation that I have long since come to appreciate. I take it as a huge compliment when a driver doesn’t wish to find out my native country or whether I’ve been to the Taj – I may be paying the foreigner fare, but to him, I’m no tourist. Of course, the driver may want to talk to his passenger (or the passenger may wish to converse with the driver), but I’ve found that these conversations can be controlled in subject and in length. Because rickshaws are so exposed to the outside world – and because the driver has to swivel around almost entirely in order to face the passenger – conversations cannot run too deep, or too long. If a passenger is unresponsive, the driver will generally take the hint, and focus on the road. Yet important questions can be asked and answered, too: the semi-dangerous nature of the ride (not to mention the language barrier) simply necessitates that those exchanges be kept succinct.

There are a number of other human interactions that are wonderful – and sometimes painful – to experience in an autorickshaw. I like to witness the cameraderie between drivers: if two are stopped next to each other at a traffic light, they’ll probably have a short conversation. Perhaps they already know each other; perhaps they don’t. Then there are exchanges mediated by the passenger herself: with its lack of walls and windows, the autorickshaw lends itself particularly well to beggars and hawkers. This can be a frustrating drawback, but it can also be an opportunity to give a smile or a handshake – even if all the beggar wants is a ten rupee note. Rickshaw travel means that humanity is all over the place, in your face, until you speed away: in the end, that’s probably more valuable than the relative peace that a taxi would afford.

So next time you find yourself in an Indian city, don’t hire a taxi for the day. Hop in an autorickshaw: smell the country; talk to her people; learn something; have fun.

*This is the first in a short series of posts about why I love India. It’s a simple theme, but a meaningful one: this is my last week here, and I’m eager to leave on a high note. Among other topics, I’ll be writing about the joys of Indian newspapers, same-sex friendship, waiting for things, grooming habits, riding the Metro, the use of public space, and some great places to eat.

Sick crow

The fat crow would like to apologize for her lengthy silence.

Last Sunday I woke up with some serious chills, and on Monday I was admitted into a hospital here. Lots of things happened -- diagnoses, injections, breakthroughs, tablets, improvements, discouragements -- lots. It was not very fun. (Not to mention that I had to put my students' long-planned final project on hold, which was a big disappointment.) Thankfully my dad was in the hospital with me, every second.

But a couple of days ago I was released from the strange sterile jail, and I'm recovering with Z in a hotel next to the Lodi Gardens. I'm feeling a lot better.

Just to say: with a few more days of rest, I will be back and blogging.

Dosage of poetry for a hectic week

A wonderful friend from college, N., sent me this poem the other day. It seems to speak to the highs and lows of the urban landscape of faces in India --

Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,
And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!
I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of foresight and of memory,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;
Oh weary impatient patience of my lot!
Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?

Christina Rossetti.

Study date

On Thursday at the Bangalore airport, I was so busy perusing the glorious Duty Free that I nearly missed my flight back to Delhi. The excitement did not stop there. I arrived, left the airport, and arranged for a pre-paid taxi to take me back to Civil Lines – only to find, upon sliding into the cab, that there was another person in the back seat: Z., who had flown in from Kabul that morning. Quelle surprise!

We spent an excellent three-day weekend together, appreciating the precious spring weather and sitting for hours at my favorite café in Khan Market, furiously typing away at our laptops. There were long dinners and long discussions – the best of which we shared with my friends L. and A., who invited us over for homemade spaghetti and meticulously-washed salad. We visited Haldiram’s twice, once for Sunday brunch (a fantastic New York diner substitute, it turns out, especially given the superior food) with C., who’s back in Delhi on business.

Haldiram’s. I wish I had a picture. I’ve written about how, to me, the Old City—and Chandni Chowk in particular – represents everything I love about Delhi. It was where I looked bleary-eyed upon the gray and the poor on that first memorable morning in India, and since then, it’s always where I go to remind myself why I’m here. Haldiram’s, which is a three-story restaurant, take-away, cafeteria, and dhaba all in one, is, for me, the taste of that memory. Everyone has his or her palate triggers: Proust had his madeleine, and I have the food at Haldiram’s. If you can make it past the lobby and its glass-enclosed displays of permutations upon permutations of snacks and candies, the second floor is where you’ll find the real masala of the Old City. There, you can order 15 different kinds of chaat, fresh dosas and uttapams, full-on North Indian meals, and the puffiest bhature in the world. The best part of the cafeteria is that it’s made for sharing: the only way to go is to order everything you possibly can (especially foods you’ve never had before, with the Haldiram’s guarantee that they’ll be delicious) and try to beat your dining companions in scooping up large, dripping spoonfuls of each gorgeous dish. There’s nothing like it.

That morning on Chandni Chowk, highly satiated by hours at Haldiram’s, I looked around me and saw India’s great beauty once more. It was laced into the sight of a golden-domed gurudwara standing next to a minareted mosque, the hordes of eager cycle-rickshaw drivers, the clang of temple bells, the endless arrays of sweets and snacks in the lobby of Haldiram’s, and people’s honest expressions (smiles, frowns, grunts, smirks, boredom, desperation, annoyance!) all bared for the world to see. I saw them, and I was again convinced – as I believe I have to be convinced every day, in order to survive – that this is the country for me.

Bangalore: IT and Idlies

After witnessing the beginning of Holi celebrations in Delhi -- a full *week* before the holiday (no pun intended) itself -- I hesitated to believe my father's claim that "in the south, Holi is nothing more than an afterthought." But he was right: today we've only seen a couple of color-drenched people. I guess we'll have to see about tomorrow, which some say is the real festival day. Today, in any case, it turns out that Eid Milad-un-Nabi (the Prophet's birthday!), with its loudspeaker lectures broadcasted from the mosque down the street, is a far bigger deal.

Bangalore. I haven't had too much time to get out and see the city -- mostly I've been taking advantage of the Super Unbelievably Fast High Speed Internet Access (hello, IT city!) at our hotel to get work done on the ol' laptop. The last time I was in this city was five years ago, accompanied by my best friend A., her dad, and a whole bunch of food fanatics, some of whom I'm proud to call my relatives. Five years ago, my best friend and I walked the city alone: that's how safe it was, and still is. Even now it's a mixture of Honolulu, Queens, and India.

Back to the food. The incredible safety of this "modern" city made its mark five years ago: the meals, even more so. Bangalore is the center of South Indian Vegetarian Everything, served up specially for hardworking IT-types on snappy lunch hours. Above are some visual aids for two distinctly South Indian edibles: sweet milk coffee presented in two metal tumblers, and fluffy rice flour idlies with sambar, coconut chutney, and ghee. The pictures are from the famous Mavalli Tiffin Room on Lal Bagh Road, courtesy of Wikipedia.

And speaking of the best of both worlds (fast-paced, high-tech Internet; fast-paced, low-tech food), tonight my dad and I are going to one of Bangalore's massive malls to finally see the movie "Slumdog Millionaire." I know I'm a little behind the curve on this one, but perhaps it's not too late to ask the Fat Crow audience: what did you think of the movie? Realistic, or "poverty pornography"? How's the acting, and the now-famous A.R. Rahman score? Does it stand up to all the hype?

A note before Holi

Hi, everyone. I apologize for the long silence. It’s been a bit of a crazy week.

Still, we all know the perils of neglecting to perform “atithisatkaaram” (hospitality to guests) in Sanskrit literature – curses, spells, wrath, more curses – so I’d rather not risk ignoring my virtual guests for too long. Here’s a quick update.

I’ve taken the past few days off work for medical reasons, and am planning to spend next week in Bangalore with my father. Both of us are hiding from the danger that is Holi in North India. (Wikipedia it!) I can only compare this holiday to Mardi Gras, but it’s far crazier, and in a different sort of way.

Next weekend, Z is visiting from Kabul, and it’s back to work for the week after that. This is to be followed by more travels with Z (to Mumbai? to Dar-es-Salaam??), then a final fortnight with my students in Delhi, and then – unbelievably – home in April.

In a certain sense, looking back on them, these many months in India seem like tossed colors on Holi. But now is not the time for sentimental (albeit colorful) reflections. It's time to prepare for Bangalore.

Heaven in Civil Lines

This week, I uttered a welcome "hello, you!" to the nicest commute known to Delhi's 9-to-5-ers.

I moved into a gorgeous room on the roof of a tiny hotel in Civil Lines, a neighborhood in the northern part of the city that is home to Delhi University. The room is spacious and clean. There's plenty of furniture -- all wood, nicely polished -- plus a T.V., a fridge, and a gigantic sofa. I get more than one minute of hot water. There's hardly anybody staying at the hotel, so the owners let me stay at a very reduced rate. It's still four times the amount I was paying in Paharganj, but oh boy, is it *ever* worth it. There are two large windows that look out on to green trees and through which you can hear the birds chirping. It basically feels like a resort -- except I LIVE here!

The best part of my new digs is the neighborhood (or lack thereof). In this new incarnation of my life in Delhi, I walk out from the hotel and onto Flag Staff Road: a wide, clean, traffic-free street whose sidewalks are lined with....flowerbeds. My neighbors are a string of gated palaces, the homes of Delhi's rich and famous. There's absolutely nothing and nobody here. It's fantastic.

I'm a short walk away from the neighborhood Metro stop, so I get to ride the amazing "subway" to Connaught Place every morning. It's so clean, cheap, and efficient that it puts even European subways to shame. (Nothing, of course, will ever compare to the glorious grub of the New York City subway, but obviously I'm biased.) The Metro must be the subject of a longer blog post in the future -- it's the strangest mix of everything you ever suspected and never suspected about India.

Of course, once I leave the Metro stop at Connaught Place (er, Rajiv Chowk, sorry) I have to take an auto back to my old stomping grounds in Paharganj. Now that I spend a manageable amount of time there, it's far less bothersome. Circumventing the walk through Main Bazaar is the best thing in my life since sliced bread. Or the Monier-Williams English-Sanskrit dictionary. Whatever.

And in other good news, my friend and co-worker L. is back from her trip to Canada, and I'm going over to her place tonight for dinner -- or, since it's Friday, make that Shabbat dinner. Things are looking up.

Weekend of surprises

"This is my brother-cousin," I told the over-protective man who works the reception desk at the hotel where I live. "He's passing through Delhi on his way to Gwalior." My friend M. looked pleasantly surprised at my introduction, but he played along -- and though I suspect the receptionist was less than convinced, I'm sure he appreciated my effort to look as though I was not, in fact, operating a brothel out of his hotel.

M. came to stay the night -- he had an early train to catch in the morning, and my hotel is a 3-minute walk away from the railway station -- and to introduce me to some friends of his. They're on a study abroad program in Hyderabad, and were playing hooky from school so that they could take themselves on a 10-day trip to the northern part of the country. We were planning to meet them at a concert at the Purana Qila. Just as we were heading out the door, M. got a call from his friend N., who informed us that the concert was quickly becoming more annoying than amusing. We decided to meet for a late dinner at Saravana Bhavan in Connaught Place instead.

As we all gathered, I thought I recognized a familiar face. Was that J., from high school? Could it be? J., whom I remember has having no interest whatsoever in India, now studying in *Hyderabad*?

J. and I had the great, if surreal, opportunity to catch up on more than two years of each other's lives (and, err, indulge in a little gossip about the lives of the people with whom we went to high school). We never really talked much when we went to school together -- we knew each other, and were in a few of the same classes -- but it turns out we have far more in common than I had thought. She's a Religion major at Bates, and wants to focus on Buddhism. She's even studying Sanskrit! All this made for a truly pleasant discovery. It was certainly surprising to discover her in Delhi, of all places: a city where I came to be alone, to escape, to start new projects. At the moment we recognized each other, the cosmos winked.

Following a lively dinner, we piled in rickshaws and drove to the N-block of GK-1 in pursuit of a dance club. (For a second I thought guiltily, strangely, about my students.) Our rickshaw driver decided to drop us off in M-block instead. By the time we finally found N-block, we had walked in a huge circle and decided that all of our futures would really be better spent living in the palatial homes of Greater Kailash, W-block.

Up on the roof in the tropical night air, we sat on luxurious low couches, sipped wine, experimented with the signature Masala Martini. (No comment.) We watched the young and the beautiful (but most of all, the rich) of Delhi sit on *their* couches and drink *their* wine. It was great company, and a gorgeous night. Conversation flitted about like excited parakeets in a cage. By the time M. and I left, I would have been ready for anything: I think a Proper Night Out was just what the doctor (or ayurvedacarya, or astrologer, or guru, whatever) ordered. M. and I collapsed in our beds; I didn't envy him for having to catch a train at 6AM the following morning.

This morning I got a call from N., both of us still in bed, and we planned to meet up in Paharganj and spend a while in the old city today. Last night he had invited me to come along with the Hyderabad group to Chandni Chowk; I countered with an offer to help them navigate the chaat counters at the (original!) Haldiram's there. We chatted for a few good hours -- bombarding each other with tales of travel, India, rickshaw-wallahs, policemen, literary theory (??) -- before accumulating all the members of our group and readying ourselves for a trip to the most famous street in Delhi. I realized how long it had been since I had spent any real amount of time with lots of people my age: were it not for the streets of Paharganj, I could have been back in college, spewing stories and laughter with my roommates. Amazing!

I will, however, add this: that no matter how hard it is to travel by myself around Paharganj, it is even harder to be in a group of seven Americans. Shopkeepers, random people on the street, and (of course) rickshaw-wallahs were EVEN MORE aggressive than usual. I found myself in the strange position of taking visitors around "my" city -- bargaining, giving directions, making plans, ordering food. It was wonderful to play tour guide, and it was wonderful to be with these interesting, intellectually astute, fun-loving, somewhat goofy, often sarcastic, and (quite frankly) good-looking people. I loved it.

It's impossible not to have a blast at Haldiram's, and today was no exception. First there was the rickshaw ride over there: four of us in the back, one on the laps of the other three. Another rickshaw driver really took a liking to the girl who was sitting on our laps, and basically followed us all the way to Old Delhi in his rickshaw making comments to our driver and casting not-so-sly glances back at our fair companion. At one point he was so interested in her that he nearly drove his rickshaw into a public bus. Then *we* almost collided with a public bus. Then we bumped the back of another rickshaw.

"You're all crazy!" Said N. in Hindi to the driver.

He turned around, nodded vigorously, and smiled so widely that we could see his betel-stained molars.

"What a country!" Exclaimed N., "You tell people they're crazy, and they're, like, 'YES! WE ARE!'" N. stuck his thumb in the air and mimicked the driver's expression perfectly.

At Haldiram's, we hawked tables, stuck two together, and piled them with as much chaat as we possibly could: raj katchori, paapri chaat, bhel puri, a double dose of pani puri. To this we added two north Indian thalis, two orders of paneer tikka, two kinds of parantha, and a chole bhature. We were sweating and exhausted by the time the meal finished. It was...unbelievable. There's no real way to describe Haldiram's -- you just have to go there and see, smell, and (best of all) taste for yourself.

Afterwards, we nibbled on sweets downstairs and went our separate ways: me, back to Paharganj (with a positively evil rickshaw driver); everyone else, to the Lal Qila.

I'm incredibly full right now: on chaat, on chat, on this crazy, crazy country.

Friday, fun, yes

After a challenging beginning, this week has turned out to be quite the success -- and not just for me.

One of my best friends from college, I., landed two lead roles in productions at Harvard. At the end of March, he's going to be playing Hector in "The History Boys" (my favorite play!) and then he'll be playing Claudius in "Hamlet" (you know, also good). The news about this absolutely brightened my week.

Another highlight of the week has been hearing about the admissions process for the pilot program of Tajiran-e-Jawan ("Young Entrepreneurs") -- a project put together by my boyfriend, Z., and his friend, M., in Kabul. It was an astounding success, and the real program hasn't even started yet!

As for me, I'm looking forward to going to a contemporary Indian music concert tonight at the Purana Qila with my friend M and some of his buddies from an SIT program in Delhi.

And school has been great this week, but more on that later. I've got to run off and give my older students their first quiz!

The day I stepped in cow dung

Until today, I had actually managed to avoid the large piles of cow poop that lie, goopy and stinky, on the streets of my neighborhood. I was innocently walking into Main Bazaar earlier this evening, reflecting on the unsettling events of the day and trying to put them in the past, when all of a sudden my flip flop slipped and slided in green mush. None of the aforementioned mush reached my feet, and I have the cosmos to thank for that one. So I traipsed cow dung down the remainder of Main Bazaar all the way down to Tooti Chowk, and thought "this is nothing less than what you deserve, Paharganj."

Before I stepped in holy cow feces, this is what I was thinking about:

I'm grateful to have found a slightly less bothersome -- and, for that matter, quicker -- way of walking to my older students' dorm in the mornings. Come time for the return trip, however, the new route is just as bad as the old one. I'm afraid I was harassed, pursued, and entreatied one too many times this morning. When yet another group of three men leered "hi beautiful, how are you today?" (and there *is* a significant difference between when these words are spoken aggressively, and when they are spoken pleasantly), I spat a rather strong expletive back at them. For several precious moments, they were too stunned to react. (I, too, was a little shocked at my behavior.) This bought me some time to walk away, but I hadn't gone very far when the ringleader began to walk beside me. "Why you talk shit," he accused, "why you talk shit to Indian people. You not liking Indian people. This is India. You are in India. No talking shit. No talking shit in India."

Good thing I was too terrified to do anything other than ignore him and speed up my walking as if I hadn't said a thing in the first place: he quickly tired of trying to shame me, and retreated to his pack of adoring followers. I'm just worried about the next time I run into him -- I hope he doesn't remember me.

I wish I had the grace to let these things pass, but sadly, I'm still smarting on two counts. The first involves victimhood -- though I'm not sure if I'm really much of a victim in this situation. The second lies in the particular words that my assailant chose to throw at me. It's not hard to see why.

But something scarier happened when I was on my way home from school in the afternoon. I was walking down the wide street that links Connaught Place with the railway station and saw, ambling toward me, a man who gave me that mythical "uh-oh" feeling. He was dark, dirty, and disheveled, but his walk wasn't like that of a street sweeper or ragpicker: those men and women walk with a great deal of humility; this man swayed and swaggered. His shirt was open all the way down the front, baring his chest. There weren't many people around us as he veered in my direction, and I knew not to even look his way. He still tried to touch me, however, sticking out his foot and making a slow grab for my body. He must have been drunk, and perhaps mentally or emotionally unstable. I sidestepped his reach with as much nonchalance as I could muster, and (for the second time today) quickened my pace and moved into a slow stream of other people walking down the street. Any larger reaction only would have made it worse.

It made me see the morning's incident in a different light. At least the men who leered and jeered at me earlier today knew the consequences of their actions: they understood that no matter how much I provoked them, they couldn't get away with anything more than the most basic of verbal abuses -- not in crowded Paharganj at noontime, anyhow. But the man in the street this afternoon was a different story. In his mind, there was nothing to stop him from physically reaching for me, following me, or doing who-knows-what else. I'm thankful that both his mental and bodily reflexes were too slow to allow him those courses of action.

Ten minutes after that was when I stepped in the cow dung.

I seem to be playing a woeful ballad on this blog lately, and I dislike that. Here's the other side of my one-rupee coin: I love my students. I love them, love them, love them. I love them when they have no idea what I'm talking about, and I love them when they don't have even the slightest intention of paying attention in class. Those daily moments of joy and laughter are worth all the unwelcome advances in the world: I promise you that for every story of yet another bothersome walk in my 'hood, there's a story of a kid's smile, sometimes missing a front tooth or two.

Back in Pune

I'm sitting in the waiting area of Pune's mini-airport, where I am one of two foreigners among a crowd of middle-class Indian businessmen. To me, that's Pune in a nutshell: a small, but perfectly pleasant waiting area frequented by middle-aged men with slight paunches and briefcases, college students sporting tee shirts and dupattas, and the odd whitey. Outside, the sun is shining through the smog. My internet works. There's nothing to complain about.

I was back in Pune this weekend to visit friends, bid my respects to my Sanskrit teachers, and remove a whole bunch of things from my room in my old flat here. When I left Pune two months ago, I took a single black suitcase with me: all my Sanskrit dictionaries and notebooks, some clothes, a yoga mat, a bag of ayurvedic party favors, two pairs of shoes, two shelves of novels, a once-worn sari, and various other items (nail polish remover? empty picture frames?) I had resigned to the dust of my old room, until now.

On Friday, I went out for a gorgeous, fancy lunch with my old roomies, M., G., and S., and their new roommate, D., from France. Unable to part with them so quickly afterward, I returned to our flat later in the evening and spent the rest of the night chatting and gossiping away, sitting around the kitchen table and laughing. I remembered how much of the joy I experienced while living in Pune was born and sustained around that kitchen table. Saturday was a day out with S.: more lunching, more shopping, more sitting around tables and laughing our heads off. On Saturday night, I had a fantastic (and fantastically long) dinner with my father, my Sanskrit teachers, and my Sanskrit classmates. Sunday brought more long lunches, this time Brahmin thalis at the Hotel Shreyas, with the teachers and students. This was followed by more sitting around tables and laughing with M. and S. at a dive on Law College Road. As weekends go, this one was pretty perfect. My dad even got me a bunch of roses for Valentine's Day.

My father and I stayed at a perfectly nice (but characterless) hotel on clogged, popular F.C. Road, but I spent almost all weekend out with the few buddies I picked up during my few months in the city. I never hands-down loved Pune when I was living there, and I still don't: it's the people I knew there who really make the city worth returning to. Over breakfast one morning in the garden of the Vaishali restaurant, also clogged and popular, my dad commented on how nice and pleasant Pune is. It's true: aside from the pollution and traffic, Pune really is an easy place to live. It's incredibly safe, even at night. The rickshaw-wallahs use the meter. The weather is bearable. There are good places to eat, and good apartments to rent. The women wear brightly colored saris and salwar kameez sets.

I tried to explain to my dad what, exactly, I didn't (and don't) like about Pune. The heartless traffic and the crushing pollution are easy offenders -- but Delhi is polluted and smoggy, too, and somehow I don't mind it so much there. Perhaps the very thing I dislike about Pune is something that enchanted me so much when I first started living there: it's just a regular city. The place is filled with students on the one hand, and middle-class Indian families on the other. Both groups, at least in the areas that I frequented, tended to be Hindu. There are flyovers and sweet shops and public buses and shopping malls. The giant banyan trees growing through the concrete are the only clue that Pune has a wild side. It's just a regular city.

I know the place has history and diversity: you'd be hard-pressed to find anyplace in India that doesn't. But to have both of those elements in public space is important to me, and that's one of the reasons I chose to spend the rest of the winter and spring not in Pune, but in Delhi.

Delhi is a Difficult Place, no doubt -- last week's blog rant (see the post "100 and 0") can attest to that -- but it is unbelievably exciting, multifaceted, challenging, mysterious, layered, old. And Delhi is a special place for travelers in a way that Pune isn't: goodness knows I'm an elitist when it comes to tourism (or just an idiot who thinks she can blend in when she's in Delhi, Amman, Paris, whatever), but I've come to appreciate the fact that Delhi has a built-in propensity for foreignness. The city has died and been reborn many, many times at the hands of both "native" and "foreign" rulers. I like living in a place where it might be interesting, but it certainly won't be unusual, to be different. I like living in a city that embraces those differences, throwing them all into the mash and jamble of Delhi's winding alleys and broad boulevards so that they can live together. In that respect, in fact, it's a lot like New York.

Experiencing Delhi's capacity for travelers has become one of the reasons I enjoy Paharganj. Last week I wrote about the clouds in that sky: the large presence of foreign backpackers draws the absolute worst of touts, whistles, peeps, shouts, and all manners of treating normal humans as if they were machines dispensing money, sex, or both. But there is something comforting, too, about living and walking the streets with fellow travelers. I smile when I see *yet another* dreadlocked European backpacker being subjected to the entreaties of *yet another* young Indian man with oiled hair and skin-tight, acid-wash denim bell-bottoms, one hand enthusiastically gesturing at his uncle's bangle store, and one hand (just as enthusiastically) scratching his crotch. I smile, feeling sorry for them both: I'm grateful that I'm not silly enough to wear dreadlocks in a country where they're reserved for paupers and yogis, and I'm grateful that I've been spared the attentions of this particular man in the acid-wash jeans. Those scenes remind me I'm not the only one dealing with cultural misfires every day. They remind me I'm a guest in this country, and that there's no way I could ever blend in. They remind me that sometimes--but just sometimes!--it's okay to be a stupid tourist. They remind me that it's okay to be different.

My plane is about to take off: better shut down my laptop and get on board!

100 and 0

Since the Shatabdi Express rolled into the New Delhi Railway Station from Jaipur on Sunday night, I've been ricocheting from one extreme to another like a volleyed ping-pong ball.

On one side of the table lie a series of quasi-successful classes, both with the older boys (unforgotten homeworks! extra compositions! parts of speech!) and with the younger set ("what is your name?"! "how many ____?"! the days of the week! singulars and plurals!). English is a breathtaking -- and breathtakingly difficult -- language, both to learn and to teach. My students seem to be on board for the scenic (if bumpy) ride, and that's a joy to see.

We have an unusual relationship. I've written about how I'm a big sister as well as a teacher: so much of their growth seems to depend upon adults (or slightly older children, like me) paying attention to them for decent stretches of time. They have several adults already taking care of them, of course -- the dorm supervisor (for the older kids), and a couple of other teachers. Whenever I show up, there are precious few of these grown-ups around. In the mornings I might see a supervisor in the dorm office, or another teacher in the giant hall that serves as a classroom. In the afternoons, I see the kids' head teacher sitting around reading the newspaper, and the (overworked, sweet-tempered) assistant teacher taking a much-needed break. Add boredom into the mix: my three 18-year-olds have nothing to do in the mornings, an early afternoon computer class three days a week, and nothing to do in the late afternoons or on the weekends; the contact point kids, most (if not all) of whom are not living in SBT dorms, have nothing to do after 2PM every single day. Someone smiling and laughing with them makes a huge difference, even if it's at the expense of a "productive" English class.

Which is a good thing, because I really have no idea how to teach English anyway. Readers, please: I welcome suggestions, tips, and book/Website recommendations!

The students' (understandable) need for positive attention often ends up in total clamor, with many little bodies vying for the affections of my eyes, ears, and hands. This is just as true of the older kids as it is of the younger ones, though it manifests itself in a different way. The Three Musketeers fight to hold and read from whatever book we're studying together, while the Connaught Place kids just shout and grab: their antics are distracting, but I can't deny how flattering they are, too. After playing and laughing at the beginning of each class, it's hard for me to draw back and become a Teacher again. I'm still working on how to fuse the two personae.

On the other end of the table lie several memories, big and small, from the past few days. One haunts me in particular: a seven-year-old student in my afternoon group whose face showed the horrific signs of being blinded as a younger child. Although there is a sprawling, blood-red scar where his left eye used to be, R.'s right eye (engorged to twice its size and covered with a heavy gray film) still functiona a little. Unable to learn with the rest of the group because of his disability, R. crawled around my feet and clung to my ankles all afternoon, shouting for my attention. At the end of the class, I gave him 'Goodnight Moon' -- a kids' book I had been reading with the other students -- to look at. He held it up close to his right eye and a sort of peace came over him. I won't forget R.'s confusion (minor desperation, even) about who I was, and what I was doing with his friends in our makeshift classroom. I won't forget his infatuation with 'Goodnight Moon'. I certainly won't forget his face.

Something of a more daily shock (can I even say that? Is it still a "shock" if it happens daily?) is the experience of walking down the street in my neighborhood. For almost my entire life, I have nothing less than * relished * my daily commute. Going to high school in New York City, that meant a love affair with the Subway and the M-86 crosstown bus. In Cambridge, it meant taking twenty minutes to get to a classroom five minutes away. (The town’s ridiculous layout makes this relatively easy to do, often unintentionally.) In Pune, my favorite parts of the day were the bumpy rickshaw rides to and from the Deccan College campus. Paharganj is a different story.

Logistically, walking is not easy to do in this neighborhood: there are no sidewalks. You either cram yourself into the tiny space between the jumble of parked cars and the storefronts, or you walk in traffic. The entire Main Bazaar of Paharganj, for that matter, is under construction -- its ground surface is often nothing more than rocks and mud-sewage-sludge. But what really bothers me are the men.

The journalist Anita Jain writes that there are “around 930 women to every 1,000 men according to recent census data, the vast discrepancy a disturbing result of infanticide and sex-segregated abordion.” (2003, p.50) On the streets of Paharganj, this figure might as well be 50 women for every 1,000 men. It’s entirely possible that I will walk the thirty minutes to work every morning and see no more than ten – TEN – women. Ten. Perhaps I’m more aware of these things than I need to be, but let me tell you anyway: it’s scary. I may be in absolutely no physical danger, but still I feel vulnerable and preyed upon. These men’s stares, low whistles, and whispered comments pick and grate at my dignity, not to mention my sanity. Throughout my entire walk to school, I can’t afford to look up * even once *: meeting a man’s gaze is considered a sexual come-on, and only a prostitute would be so bold as to stare back.

“So-called ‘eve-teasing’ is a common phenomenon in India,” says Jain, “perhaps due to the disconnect created by the realtive visibility of women in the public sphere – as opposed to in certain parts of the Islamic world – even as gender relations are still largely circumscribed. Men see, but they are not allowed to touch, leading to pent-up frustration.” (86) I’m nowhere near as sympathetic to these men. (And, for the record, men on the streets of Syria and Jordan practically ignored me when I was there last summer.) Staring, I more than understand: I’m a foreigner, after all, and white skin is unusual here. Staring is fine. But I’ve witnessed enough Indian men being perfectly polite to me that I cannot tolerate leering and commenting from the others. Media be damned: these young men have no excuse for treating me like a low, dirty, sex object.

Excuse my rant.

And so it’s been a week of highs and lows. A few short hours can take me from the grunge of Paharganj to the luxuries of dinner at the Taj Hotel with a family friend, and from the chaos of the classroom to the peace of curling up in bed with a novel. It’s all part of what makes India so exciting, I guess. It’s part of what makes India, India.

Spa weekend

They don't really bill Jaipur as a calm weekend getaway (and given the hyperactivity of the city's rickshaw-wallahs, it's easy to see why), but that's exactly what the Pink City was for me this weekend. My father is currently living in a gorgeous, quiet hotel with a pool and lounge chairs; I parked there for a three-day weekend and got up only twice. My cold dried up, I slept more than ten hours every night, I fed myself silly. Thank you, Jaipur, spa locale of the future.

On Saturday afternoon I went to meet my friend S. at the Anokhi Cafe. She's studying Hindi in Jaipur and was reading the Hindi version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when I arrived. While we caught up on several months of life and gossip, I slurped Assam tea and gobbled down what might be the world's most delicious carrot cake. (Okay, maybe the carrot cake at Magnolia Bakery is better. Maybe.) We then went to meet her roommate, L., at the Shree Radha-Govinda Dev Temple in the Old City. We were just in time for the evening aarti; as we arrived, the pundit drew back the stage curtain (yes, this is a celebrity performance) to reveal Krishna and Radha. Bells clanged. Light was offered. Water was sprinkled. The scene on the ground, however, was surprisingly quiet -- at least by comparison to those I've seen at other temples. I found myself able to look Krishna and Radha in their big eyes for minutes at a time: a real darshan.

Then we queued up to get prasaad (sweets that have been offered to the deities, blessed by their presence, and returned to the public) at a little counter next to the main shrine. You donate a few rupees and get a bag of laddoos in return: the more you pay, the more you get. There, two interesting things happened. One was that an old woman begged me to cut the line in front of her. In a country that rarely forms line-shaped queues (preferring, I think, to crowd and mob) this was very unusual indeed. "MERE AAGE", she pleaded over and over, "IN FRONT OF ME!"

Yet in total contrast with the old woman's generous sentiments, we actually *were* mobbed as we stepped away from the counter. Fifteen pairs of male hands -- mostly boys, but quite a few grown men as well -- appeared in our faces, begging for the sweets we had just been given. They didn't look like poor men; in fact, some of them were very well-dressed. I had no idea what to do. I saw S and L giving out pieces of their sweets, so I began to distribute mine. This was a bad idea. Fifteen pairs of hands became twenty-five, and the crowd swelled with neediness. It's disturbing to pause, look around, and find yourself surrounded by outstretched palms and dark, staring eyes. I've been coming to India for a long time, and it's never happened to me in *any* context. People can get aggressive in the temple -- usually when pushing forward to have a glimpse of the deity -- but this, I have never seen before. Has anyone ever had a similar experience? Thoughts?

After having darshan of Radha and Krishna, I hopped in an autorickshaw and headed back to the hotel to meet my dad for a late dinner. We joined lots of Indian families (children and babies most certainly included!) eating thalis and dosas at a popular south Indian restaurant at the prime dinner hour of 10PM. The food was delicious, but the real attractions were at the ice cream store next door. At this unusual ice cream store, a hungry customer could have her choice of fantastically named (and dressed) ice cream sundaes: "Pink Strawberry Pina Colada", "Tropical Sailboat", "Virgin Brownie Hot Fudge" and, my personal favorite, "Lemon Kookie Crumb Pizza".

As I sat on the train going back to Delhi late last night, I looked out the window and saw a few dim lights in the distance. It was a graciously familiar sight: I was on Amtrak for a moment there, traveling from Boston and primed to arrive late at night in grimy, glorious Penn Station, bag of textbooks and empty Diet Coke bottle in tow. I would stumble off the train and look around at the fluorescently lit, golden walls of the huge cavern station below 34th Street. I would follow the signs to the One and Nine Subway lines, even though the Nine has long since been discontinued. I would get on the local and rumble uptown to 110th Street, where I would get off, stick my head above ground, and breathe in the smell of darkened Broadway. I'd cross the street, ignore the loud pleas of our corner's resident homeless man ("Can ya help me get a warm meal please?"), and walk to Riverside Drive. Then I'd turn toward my bright lobby, greet F., the doorman, and walk past the spitting mini-fountain to get in the elevator and get out again on the third floor.

That might have been the first real pang of homesickness I've felt so far.

Sniffles and other small woes

I have a cold -- a dripping, sniffling, shivering, sniveling cold -- and I'm out of tissue paper. More accurately, I'm out of toilet paper, which is what I've been using to mop up the liquids pouring out of my nose.

Sorry. Too graphic?

It's almost 5 in the morning, and soon I have to walk down the street to the railway station and catch a train to Jaipur. I'm going to spend the weekend with my dad and some friends there, nursing my cold and recovering from a long week.

Classes have been all over the place for the first several days, mostly because I've been trying to assess my students' existing English capabilities. Every passing hour reveals just how much of the language they lack, and--far more importantly--just how much I lack the skills to teach it. To make myself feel better, I stick with the mantra that the whole gig is ultimately more about friendship and mentorship than about formal education; I wouldn't yet consider delving into "The Cat in the Hat" with my 18-year-olds a wasted morning. (Besides, vocabulary is always more fun to learn when it rhymes -- and when your dignified, Harvard-educated tutor wildly bounces up and down on one leg while reading aloud, all in a poor imitation of the Cat in the Hat.)

As for the younger kids, it's hard enough just to get fifty percent of them to pay attention at once. Their afternoons have almost no structure, so I'll end up with anywhere from five to twelve students actually participating in class, and the rest rotating between praticing "How are you?", playing marbles on the side, or bashing each other over the head. The older boys at the contact point, whose job is to keep the kids in line and generally amuse them while their teachers are reading newspapers on the side of the classroom, love to interfere with the class: they interject their own few sentences of English whenever they can and translate everything I say into Hindi, both of which I find pretty disruptive. (Would you? Or am I reacting too strongly?) In any case, a lot of my energy goes either toward ignoring them, or toward trying to persuade them to be quiet for two minutes at a time. It's a big distraction, especially when I mostly want to spend time with the smiling, enthusiastic, crazy younger set.

And I am realizing more and more just how sketchy my neighborhood is. It's really not the most fun place to live. Oh well -- at least I have my sunny room, not to mention all the kind people who work at the hotel and who have been taking such good care of me.

Off to the railway station, to Jaipur, to cough drops, and -- finally! -- to the weekend.

Day One

Today was my first day at work. I am already exhausted, incredulous at the months ahead and, perhaps most of all, inspired.

I spent the morning chatting with the three older boys who requested an English teacher. At 18, they're not really boys anymore, but they have a marked innocence about them: it could be the product of their broken English, but I think it springs more from the nervous excitement in their faces than anything else. Also, they're all shorter than I am. (This country is great for the self-esteem of the average white girl: she feels beautiful just because she's pale, and statuesque at the mediocre height of 5 feet and 6 inches.) Two of the boys are studying computers as part of a B.A. correspondence course -- video and sound editing in particular. The other has finished twelfth grade, but for some reason (and it's not hard to see the obstacles in his way) has not yet entered a university-level course for further study.

We sat in a circle on the second floor of their dorm building, which does quadruple-duty as a study room, sleeping area, dining hall, and computer lab. Tomorrow, when things get more formal, I suppose we'll migrate to a long desk. We talked about where they were in school, how much English they had studied, why they wanted to learn English ("very important for high society gatherings," said R., the oldest, at which point S., the second-oldest, fervently nodded his head in agreement), and what they wanted to practice. It will take many more days to assess where they really are with the language -- and goodness knows I'm the least experienced tutor they've ever had -- but my heart leaps around a little when I think about working with such dedicated students. They've had far more than their fair share of difficulties in life; their commitment to education and optimism about the future feels disarming.

In the early afternoon, I headed over to the Handuman mandir contact point to meet the kids there. There are up to twenty kids (aged 9-15) who come every day, but their afternoons are pretty unstructured: a class was just finishing as I arrived, and the rest of the afternoon was to be spent playing marbles, cuffing other kids on the head, or in self-study. "Who wants to learn English?" one of the teachers asked after I had walked in. Four hands flew up in the air. Great, I thought, another small group -- this will be a breeze. Boy, was I wrong about that: when the others saw their friends practicing "what is your name?" and "how old are you?" in English, the group instantly grew ten kids larger. Almost all of them knew no English at all. Communication is such an amazing thing, though, because the gigantic language barrier didn't seem to matter. Things moved slowly, and sometimes frustratingly, but everyone had some fun in the end.

Then there were two tenth grade boys studying by themselves off to the side; the staff told me that they had wanted help with English, so I went over to introduce myself. I was greeted with almost total silence. As it turns out, they've been studying English for two years -- but they can hardly speak a word. I took at look at their textbooks, issued by the National Institute of Open Schooling: are first-year English textbooks supposed to use technical grammar terms on page five? Perhaps -- but it certainly explained how all of their energy has been directed on simply learning how to read. As R. said, "I can read, but there is no meaning." Their faces lacked the enthusiasm and smiles of all the other kids I met today. I'm still thinking about why.

I've vowed to come more prepared for everything tomorrow, and so it's time to flip through the coloring books, newspapers, magazines, and comic books that I bought this evening from overpriced stationery stores in Defence Colony Market. For some reason I also bought a stuffed elephant. It didn't seem out of place for the younger group at Hanuman mandir. Perhaps we can name it together (Nellephant?), give it a life story, sew sisters and brothers for it, all in English of course.

So I'm currently accepting any tips and tools of the trade that my readership has to offer! Anyone taught English as a foreign language before? Had experience with kids of these age groups? Worked with "underprivileged" students? Thoughts and comments are welcome.

Sunset reflections

My second post today! -- trying, and failing, to make up for a month of very poor blogging. The events of this afternoon were too lovely not to write about, though, so here I am again.

Early in the afternoon I stepped out on to the hectic Main Bazaar of Paharganj, which leads straight from Tooti Chowk to the New Delhi Railway Station. A huge pile of sewage-smelling mud is the first sight greeting someone who might be exiting Tooti Chowk and entering the Main Bazaar by the tiny alleyway that connects the two. A sewer runs directly under the poorly-laid concrete of the Main Bazaar (hey, it explains a lot about the way Main Bazaar functions), and there's been serious construction on it all winter. When I came to visit for a few days in December, the huge pile of mud and exposed sewage pipes was located closer to the railway station end of the bazaar. Now it's directly outside Tooti Chowk, and in its wake is a huge bump that runs the length of the bazaar as if it were a fault line.

I suppose that's not particularly lovely, but to me, it was a relief to walk out into the Main Bazaar in the afternoon sunlight and know *for sure* that I was in India. There's nothing like it. The harsh bazaar feels safe to me: there's comfort in the bejewelled middle class Indian tourists and the countless men hawking their goods (sleeping bags! underwear! fake anything! incense! God!), not to mention the healthy dose of foreign faces that crowd Paharganj. It's a sight to behold, and it's one that sucks my energy right out of me, spraying it on to the big wide world outside. Imagine how much I would hear, see, touch, and learn if walking down the streets of Boston required that much mental effort.

So I walked down Main Bazaar and swung a right at the New Delhi Railway Station. Then I followed a long, wide street down south to Connaught Place, a huge complex of shops and buildings that--despite having spent so much time in them--I can never manage to navigate. I met my co-worker and friend, L., in the parking lot in between H-block and G-block; we commenced a long search for a Cafe Coffee Day that would have a table for us. This proved to be next to impossible on a Saturday afternoon: every single table at the four places we tried was occupied by young Indian couples holding hands and looking into each others' eyes. Finally (finally!) a table opened up just as we were about to leave, and we sipped frothy cappucinos with the lingering canoodlers.

L. took me to visit the outlet of Salaam Baalak where I'll start work on Monday morning. It's right behind a row of bangle shops next to the Hanuman Mandir (which, for some reason, is called the Ganesh Mandir) just outside of Connaught Place. There were a couple of kids there when we showed up, so we played and read with them for a while before catching a rickshaw to Khan Market and to the errands that lay waiting there.

I'm not surprised by it anymore, that there would just be three unsupervised children hanging out at a SBT contact point with no supervision and no activities in sight. "You can see why these kids get into drugs at the age of eight or nine," L. said, "when there's nothing to do and no one to look after them." One of the girls' names was Madhu ("sweet" or "honey"), so I sang her a Sanskrit verse about sweetness. It held her attention for about a minute, before she was back to singing me some Hindi songs she had learned. Completely adorable.

I can tell that a lot of the work ahead will be babysitting: being a "didi" (older sister) to a whole bunch of kids. I don't mind that at all. It sounds like a cliche to say so, but I think it will be a real learning experience for me. And for a teaching and tutoring fix, I'll be working with a couple of older boys who have requested an English teacher. One, A., really wants to work on grammar. (Now *that* is a blessing.) The other wants to learn more English so that he can be a tour guide for SBT. And then there is the work of finding teachers for myself: one for Sanskrit, and one for Hindi.

Right now, though, I want to stop and listen to the sounds of Tooti Chowk at sunset. On one side of my hotel are the rhythmic clanging of drums and bells as a hub of women crouch in the tiny little temple next door, singing hymns at the tops of their voices. On the other side is the call to maghreb prayer from the madrasa/mosque below, ringing out in the clear voice of a young man training to be a muezzin. Last, there's the bubble and quiver of my new electric kettle -- which I'm very much not allowed to keep in my hotel room -- calling me to a cup of tea. I'm going to go answer it.

The view from Tooti Chowk

It’s amazing how much light streams in through the window of my new room – my new home, if I could call it that – here at this run-down, somehow functioning, hotel in Paharganj. I stayed in this very room when I was in Delhi a month ago, and its window really did make an impression: I can look through one of the many panes down on Tooti Chowk, where loaded carts, loaded people, cows, dogs, and cycle-rickshaws form a constant hustle and bustle. From where I stand on the second floor up, it almost looks like no one leaves the little street, and that they just shift places constantly: a perfectly conserved ecosystem of people and animals going about their lives. The other selling point of this window is that I can not only watch everyone and everything two stories below, but that I can watch people watching them. Chowk-spying seems to be the favorite pastime of the residents of Tooti’s second stories: we lean our bodies into the railings, or press our noses against the windows, and gaze at the organized chaos below. Housewives come out on their balconies to collect the laundry and stay there mesmerized by the moving picture on the street, still cradling bundles of clothes in their arms, until the spell is broken and they return inside.

My favorite sight is this. Forgive me if I’ve mentioned it before. From my perch on the second floor, I can see straight down not only to the street below, but directly into the courtyard of (what appears to be) a school for Muslim boys. These boys of all ages, in their white skullcaps and white cotton salwar kameez, are the greatest reality T.V. show I could have imagined. In the morning they line up to wash their faces at a line of basins. Then they assemble into an elaborate formation in which they make large, fresh chapatis: one boy mixes the dough, another two knead it, another forms it into little balls, another rolls them out, one has the special job of tossing the rolled dough in between his palms, another two or three take care of the stove, and another organizes the cooked bread into tall, neat piles on sheets of newsprint. Throughout the day they pray there, study there, eat there, and, of course, play there. It’s utterly fascinating. “I wonder what the boys are doing right now,” I think when I come back from shopping on the street; “What are they doing this morning?” I muse when I wake up. (Does this make me some sort of stalker, "Rear Window"-style? Oh dear.)

So I do love this room, and all of the sights to which it has already opened my eyes. Delhi, especially in the sunshine of that sweet time in between winter and the hot season (you can’t really call it spring), is starting to welcome me. Or perhaps I’m crazy for feeling that – but somewhere in myself, I still insist on believing that this city has always spoken to me, ever since that first evening walk in the Lodi Gardens nine years ago and that first morning being pulled down Chandni Chowk in a cycle-rickshaw. I’m keen to listen to her murmurs again.

Now it’s off to drive in the nuts and bolts for my job, which starts on Monday, and to run a million errands before the sun sets and it’s time to come back to this already-beloved little room of mine.

The good life

Today we have to leave all this and return to colder, bleaker Delhi. Z and I never went to Gokarna, and never went to Kerala: we stayed here, sped around the backroads on rented motorbikes, and watched the sun set into an ocean so shiny it looked like it was covered with a satin bedsheet.

One day a while back, we were attacked and harrassed by a crazy taxi driver. That was the only blotch on the otherwise sparkling-clean slate of our trip.

We visited the glorified remains of Francis Xavier. One can't see the actual remains, of course -- they're kept in a gilded casket far out of one's line of vision -- but there are some fantastic photographs hanging up next to the display.

I let in my parents on the Kwality Walls ice cream carts' best-kept secret: Butterscotch Cornetto ice cream cones. I started a wonderful novel, "The White Tiger," by Aravind Adiga. I learned how to play backgammon.

I am a happy girl.

Balconies and motorbikes in Goa

These are the colors I can see: bright green, shining yellow, whitewash white, dusty red, and spotless blue. That's what Goa looks like -- or at least it's the view from the balcony of my room here. Z and I are staying on the top floor of a small house just a pathway's walk from the beach. Once we walk down that path, we come to the beachside restaurant (specialties: freshly caught fish, fruit juice and, strangely enough, noodles) and to the small collection of beach chairs that look out on the white sand and the perfect blue-green ocean.

If we don't want to look at the ocean, we can enjoy the fantastic collection of tourists. They come in all shapes, sizes, languages, and swimming suit preferences. And if even the tourist-watching fails to entertain, there's always the possibility that Z may take me for a joyride on the back of his rented motorbike. Yesterday we drove out through the fields and small towns, all the way to the backwaters and the villages of our part of Goa. We flew past pristine Portuguese churches and rows of shops selling elaborately-designed fabrics to foreigners, and in the evening, we drove to the almost-deserted beach just north of Colva to watch the sunset. Every night, we sit with my parents for hours at some beachside restaurant or other, consuming long dinners of fresh fish and vegetables, talking and laughing late into the dark when the stars have come out and already proceeded across the sky in arcs.

So that's Goa. The next few days may bring a trip to Gokarna (literally, "cow's ear") to soak up a very different beach scene, this one populated by Israelis and Hindu pilgrims. After that, it's down to Kerala for the boat rides and spice markets, and all of the restaurants there that make my mother so happy: it wouldn't be a family vacation if we didn't return to Kerala at least for a day or two.

A little magic

It's been too long since my last update. There is a reason.

Almost as soon as I flew back to Delhi from Kolkata -- happy as a cow, and frankly so stuffed I felt like one, too -- I had to dash back to the airport to pick up my boyfriend, Z. He's taking a much-deserved vacation from his job(s) in Kabul, Afghanistan, and had actually been in India for a while already, relaxing in the South with a friend. We dropped his things off at our quirky, surprisingly luxurious hotel in Old Delhi, and went to stretch our legs on a long walk in the Lodi Gardens.

Our stroll reminded me of the first time I had ever been to the Lodi Gardens. It was the first time (well, the second, if you count the time when I was a baby) I traveled to India, and I was eleven years old. It was exactly this time of year, and the air was smoky and polluted and mysterious. That’s the particular Winter Delhi smell that settles upon the city in the evenings. My parents led me around the Lodi Gardens on that first night in Delhi; I still remember how its dark, murky, hulking, and eerily (yet undeniably) beautiful tombs mirrored the novel mix of fear, awe, and excitement churning inside me.

We’ve had some fantastic meals in the past few days, and that first afternoon and evening in Delhi brought two of them. One was a dahi wada (perhaps my favorite food in the whole world) and a masala dosa at Sagar, an understandably popular vegetarian joint in Defence Colony. The second consisted of a midnight sarson-ka-saag and makki-ki-roti at the Have More on Pandara Road – one of the only markets that’s still open for dining into the early hours of the morning, because apparently, entire Punjabi families (kids included) enjoy dinner at about 12:15AM. We arrived just in time for the rush.

Over the following few days, Z performed magic, juggled, and balanced large objects on his nose for groups of delighted kids at Salaam Baalak. In between shows, we explored Chandni Chowk, ate massive amounts of chaat at Haldiram’s, and climbed the tallest minaret of the Jama Masjid.

One night we visited the ornate – yet tranquil – Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, where Sikhs fell over themselves to help us find head coverings and give prashaad. It was the first gurudwara either of us had ever been inside, and it was nothing short of exquisite. The outside, with its immaculate reflecting pool, was perhaps even more so. The whole place shone with the well-wishes of the millions of Sikhs who pray there: just incredible.

And now we’re in Mumbai with my parents, just for a day before heading to Goa. Must be off! – Now that Mummy is here, there are about nine restaurants and food stalls on the agenda for today, and we’re already a meal behind.

Quickly in Calcutta

Here's a short update from gorgeous, curious Kolkata, where I've spent the past week with A., one of my best friends from college, and the 15 some-odd members of her immediate family.

I get the sense that my trip to Calcutta was *not* that of the average tourist. In the past seven days, maybe one full day (split between two half-days) was devoted to traditional sightseeing. The other six days went to two noble pursuits: visiting family, and eating.

I really can't emphasize those enough. I've met so many Bengalis and eaten so much Bengali food that I feel as if I've been here a month. I've witnessed so much good-natured shouting and gesturing that I might even be starting to understand the Bengali language itself. All of A.'s family thinks of me as a sister, daughter, cousin, niece, grand-daughter. In the great Bengali naming tradition, I even have my own family nickname -- "Nelli". I've received presents and compliments and slaps and reprimands. A.'s little cousins sit on my lap and call me "Didi" (elder sister), and A.'s aunt Maima (so-called because she's the wife of A.'s mother's younger brother) literally pops sweets into my mouth with her right hand, feeding me like a baby. This is the biggest, kindest, craziest family into which I have ever been welcomed. Every day there's so much morning bustling and fussing that it takes hours for everyone to shower and leave the house; every evening there are so many relatives to visit that it's midnight, or later, before we return home again. In between, there have been endless traffic jams, nights at the disco (and don't think we left the family behind!), mall-hopping, a Hindi pop-rock concert, the nicest hotel in Calcutta, washing our feet in the Ganges, darshan of Kali Ma, and a magic show.

And everywhere -- *everywhere* -- there's food. I've been stuffed to the brim with elaborate home-cooked meals, spicy Indian-Chinese fusion food, dainty French pastries, rich and flavorful snacks, and mountains of Calcutta's famous sweets. I've probably gained about 10 pounds, each one a token of the way A.'s family has deeply cared for me over the past week.