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.