Scenes From My Roof

These are some recent pictures taken from my roof at my favorite time of day, right after sunset. You have to watch out for mosquitoes, but the views are lovely, the wind blows, and the friendly crows are out and about.

Back From the Mountains

Last week was a pleasant respite from the heat of the plains, as I made my way up from the heat and dust of Uttar Pradesh to Mussoorie, a cool and misty hill station about 40 minutes outside of Dehra Dun in Uttarkhand. I desperately needed the break, and even though my wallet was stolen (in Dehra Dun), I felt remarkably unburdened up in the hills. There's something oppressive about the heat of the pre-monsoon summer that makes it hard to exist. Cooling off, needing the geyser (ie, hot water tank), using blankets (Blankets! Who remembered that they even existed?) and getting a nice new shawl (thank you, Dan) all seemed very novel. I was definitely feeling like I was on vacation. Even though I did a lot of Urdu work, it was leisurely, over coffee, and I had the time to look up every word, which felt like a real indulgence. Our last morning, we had apple pie or breakfast, which was doubly indulgent because of the number of places where I've had good apple pie in India, ever (2, including this place and Vaatika pizza in Banaras).

The whole trip was wet -- this is not Mussoorie's high season, partially because panoramic mountain views are completely obscured by heavy fog and cloud cover in the monsoon season. This was especially nice, and we had no problem wandering through the clouds along damp wooded paths for hours. The picture isn't super, but I hope it gives a sense of the foresty shade, the coolness, the mist, and the moist mossy smell of the trails. The hydrangeas were in full bloom everywhere, accompanying the incredible greenness that the monsoon brings. Even the light rains on our wanderings were pleasant.

On the morning of our last full day in the hills, Dan and I agreed that we weren't up for any hiking or, really, anything other than laziness. We were spared the guilt of wasting a beautiful day when it proceeded to pour down rain for the next twelve hours. Water ran down the steep streets in sheets several inches thick. Everyone took refuge in coffee shops and video arcades. I spent most of the day in Barista, one of India's classy espresso-bar chains that are so popular. I cannot explain the degree of pleasure I took from that day of reading, drinking coffee, and doing homework.

I also can't resist noting my bird sightings: from a blurry bad photograph, I have been able to deduce that one of them was a Himalayan woodpecker (Dendrocopos himalayensis). I have no idea where this slight obsession with identifying birds has come from; obviously the complete pocket guide to every South Asian bird species (nearly 1300, the back cover proclaims) is a huge enabler in this pursuit/problem. I'll spare you the rest of my conjectures and sure sightings.

Luckily, I've come back to Lucknow rejuvenated, and Lucknow has indulged me with proper later-monsoon weather: almost cool and windy enough to make me feel like I never left Mussoorie. At the very least, I've been using my sheet at night. It't not a blanket, but it's reminiscent.

Qawwalis

Since this is supposed to be showcasing for my beleaguered faraway family what exactly it is that I'm doing, here is an actual event that I actually attended, albeit unwillingly at first, as I would have much rather gone home after class and taken my customary two- or even three-hour nap. When the days are so hot that you can't work, you sleep instead, and use up your night doing the work you might have been doing had it not been so incredibly hot in the first place. Today it rained beautifully -- steadily and lightly for several hours, instead of the twenty-minute downpours that we've been getting, which, ten minutes after they stop, turn roads into churned up and muddy puddles, give trash heaps the strength to be festering and fetid with renewed vigour, and transform the air from merely blazing to sauna-like. Not tonight. Tonight is breezy and cool, and the slow rain actually washed away much of the dust on the streets instead of creating impassable mud puddles. It smells like the plumeria tree outside my window.

At any rate, the event in question was a qawwali majlis at school. After classes were over last Wednesday, we were all enjoined to get out of the main room where we usually eat lunch, as men from some Tent House or another laid mattresses covered in white sheets end to end, side to side, until the whole floor was one big white pillow. In ideal conditions, almost all Indian music is performed seated on the floor. Sometimes the performers are seated on a kind of raised platform, but for our informal performance, the qawwals (that is, the guys who perform qawwali) simply sat facing us, just a few feet away. The floor-sitting is much more accomodating of scooting around, changing positions, or even laying down and going to sleep. All of these are very useful attributes for concerts that often start at 8 or 9 in the evening and go on until dawn, with the best and most famous musicians having later slots.

Our own majlis -- basically meaning 'get-together,' yet somehow more formal -- was not of the ten-hour variety. Nevertheless, the white-cushioned floor was comforting and soft enough to sleep on. With everyone sitting on the floor, suddenly the available seats mushroomed from an anti-social fifteen to a much more crammed together, yet somehow happier, 45 or so.

The qawwals themselves arrived soon after the pillows and mattresses and sheets. I adored them. From the feisty and passionate main singer to the quiet-looking fellow playing the harmonium and singing, well, backup, they all pleased me immensely. The main singer's throaty voice was ideal: strained-sounding but deft runs down and then impossibly up the scale are part of qawwali's fabulousness. Listen to even Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who's considered to have an amazing voice, and you'll know what I mean. Even he sings as though he's pulling at his vocal cords with his hands.

Qawwali is a type of Sufi devotional music, and as such hits all the best double-entendres that address God as a lover, refer to devotional ecstasy as drunkenness, and make many references to wine and very, very beautiful people (women? men? it's almost always ambiguous). These guys performed several qawwals (including the fabulous "Mast Qalandar," which, literally translated, means "drunk wandering religious guy"), in addition to a few ghazals, and told a number of actually funny jokes in Urdu. Most of these last were simple enough for most of us to follow, but funny enough for some of our teachers to be giggling helplessly too. At one point, Ahtesham Sahib, our director, got up to attend to something or another, and the qawwal immediately quoted several lines of famous, embarrassing poetry: why does the beautiful one run away, or some such...his beetlike face was brilliant.

The moral of this particular story is that I indeed like events, even when they are school-sponsered. I took my nap later that day, and all was well.

Poison Eggs

I'm supposed to be recounting our Fourth of July party, held at our house on Mall Avenue, but I'd like to wait until I can steal some photographs from people who actually took them.

Meanwhile, since I am newly (diagnosed as) ill, and I continue to trace this illness back to a poison omelette I ate in Joshimath, I would like to share this poster from Badrinath with you. Roughly translated, it reads "The egg is a living thing, not a mango or potato; all are beautiful breathing things, what's the use in eating them?" Basically, it's pro-pure-vegetarian propaganda. In India, the egg is indeed considered meat, and the 'non-veg' option on many breakfast journeys (Lucknow Shatabdi Express, for instance) is an omlette. However, considering my recent confrontation with the incredible egg, I am more inclined to agree with the disgruntled housewife in the poster, who is yelling at the hapless sabzi-walla (vegetable seller) who's expanded into the egg business:

"The egg is not a vegetable! Understand the difference!"

Warning: Poop

A warning: if you don't like reading about poop, please skip the following few paragraphs. I'll alert you to when it's over.

So starting this past week, I slowly came to the conclusion that my assorted symptoms were not likely due to after-effects of my previous antibiotics. Rather, I had either a) a new illness or b) a continuation of my previous illness. To this day, I am not sure which one is the right choice. However, I am absolutely certain of several things.

a) I do indeed have an illness and
b) it has been clinically shown to be amoebeosis.

Yes, this time I bypassed the know-it-all doctor and his condescending (and rather innovative) system for dianosis and treatment. This seems to be endemic in Indian doctors: they are completely and unshakably confident in their diagnoses (for instance, "viral fever") which they have come to after a cursory examination of the patient (this always includes poking the stomach and examining the tongue, and usually includes taking the blood pressure). This last doctor in Lucknow had the gall to tell me that I was not all that sick in the first place (of course, after I had gotten mostly better) and reminded me that most Indians knew how to live with daily diarrhea. He also mocked me for even insinuating that I might have diagnostic tests run.

For all of the reasons above, I decided to go straight to the pathologist. What sweet relief! After the minor indignity of having to poop into a ridiculously tiny cup, I was rewarded with a distinctly modern printout detailing its color and other specifics, most preciously, the part where it announced "Positive -- Amoebic cysts." I was almost joyful to find this out. Scientific diagnosis, specific treatment. I felt good enough to go to dance class that night simply on this knowledge alone. I didn't even have to show anyone my tongue.

Perhaps I should be more understanding about cultural variations in medical practices. However, I really, really like my printout.

Up and About

It's doubtless a good sign that I've been unable to get back to writing this for the past few weeks. I have been fairly well (though one is never at one's best in the extreme pre-monsoon heat) and have been studying somewhat diligently. More importantly, I have done a lot more exploring in the last two weeks. Three girls from a Johns Hopkins research program live in my house, and since they have no homework, they are apt to want to go out with a Hindi (Urdu?) speaker for shopping adventures when they're off work. By some interesting twist of early-Eighties naming practices, the three of us who went on the latest adventure were Katy (by which I mean myself), Kate, and Katie. Hilarity ensued for the shopkeepers who asked us about ourselves.

We headed up to Aminabad in the old part of the city in the worst of the day's heat -- it always takes a while to get moving on Sundays. We spent most of the next five hours in a clothing store, not one of these hyper-modern "showrooms" but a proper Indian clothing store, where the clothes are only available unstitched. You can either take them to your tailor or have them made by the house tailor. Furthermore, when you come into one of these stores, there are only a few pieces on display. The remainder is packed away tightly in rows and rows of shelves and cupboards, and usually more is to be found in a mysterious "upstairs" which is really not up stairs at all, but rather up a ladder. The shop boy -- because there is always a shop boy -- scrambles up and throws things down to his superiors who are busy shouting out orders for him to bring cotton things, blue things, fancy things and so forth. In between doing this, the shop boy is to be found frantically refolding all the cloth that has been lovingly spread out in front of the seated customers, and then rejected: too fancy, too blue, wrong kind of cotton. The main salesperson meanwhile keeps up the banter about the reasonable prices and fabulous work, attempts to discern what everyone wants, orders chai for everyone, and if (like we were) the customers are special, snacks or soda are also summoned. We just sit there are piles and piles of cloth are thrown in front of us. If someone makes a slight inclination towards any piece, it is immediately and elaborately unfurled. I love shopping with other people, because the joy of that pile lies partially in selecting those special pieces of cloth that will be transformed from 'kapda' to 'kapde' -- from cloth to clothes. With all those other people, I was able to restrain myself from purchasing yet another suit, and even then, just barely. Shopping vicariously is healthy for my overstuffed wardrobe and understuffed wallet.

Also of note is my recently added extracurricular activity: along with three other girls, I joined a Bollywood dance class, put together by the famous choreographer Shiamak (of 'Taal' and 'Dhoom' fame). It met for the first time tonight, and was completely fun and exhausting without being as humiliating as I thought it would be. I went shopping for dance clothes (loose pants, t-shirt) as I had not exactly planned this beforehand. Thankfully, there are different class sections for kids and adults, although one woman was slightly distressed that she was not in what she had been told would be an exclusively over-40 class. I admired her pluck: she wore a full salwaar kameez and didn't even take off her dupatta -- and she stilll managed to jump around quite a lot. The other girls and I had to practice our moves on the roof when we got home, so that they will be perfect for our next class on Wednesday. I also have to figure out what to do about my singular pair of loose pants, which are yellow, and which I was already wearing when I got caught in a huge downpour today. Needless to say, not only did I show up looking half-drowned, my pants are rather muddy from the deluge. This simply will not do for my extremely fashionable cohort, especially the dance teacher, who is small, springy, and has a small goatee. His name is Dijendra or something, but he made it quite clear that he is to be called exclusively DJ.

Everything else chugs along. Dan came and went, sadly, and I now know where to take all of you to get the best meat in the city. I know a few more words now than I did a month ago, I think. I haven't thought to take pictures, so today's is from my mountain trip. The mangoes are almost gone. They are still around, but nearing the end of the season, most are overripe and not worth eating. The monsoon is starting fitfully. It will rain one day, then we'll have two or three completely dry, hot days. Thus mosquitoes are hardly a problem yet, and I can still easily down five or six litres of water during a day. In the monsoon's soddenness, often it's hard to drink enough water.

I'm now reading Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy," famous for its literal (though not literary) heft. It may be one of the largest novels in the English language, at almost 1500 pages. It kind of reminds of novels like Anna Karenina that are weighty and well-regarded, but still turn out as multi-starring soap operas of gigantic proportions. I'm withholding complete judgement on this book as of yet, except to say that my mother would probably like it. (By that I mean, go read this book, Mama. At least it's long enough to keep you going for more than a couple of days!) So far it's worth reading, but not perfect or even astonishingly good. A point in its favor is that it isn't crushingly depressing, which many other of these astonishingly good Indian English novels are (Fine Balance, Midnight's Children, Inheritance of Loss). It's relegated to pre-bed reading, so I've only gotten about a third of the way through in the past two weeks.

I still have about a page of Urdu to crank through before bed, and then a bit of my wrist-spraining book to read, so it's off to study with me. I'll attempt to keep a more regular writing schedule in the coming weeks, even when I am well (and therefore busy).

Continuous Convalescing

There's not much to report when you've been ill.

Apparently the pounding headache discussed the other day may have had some cause other than the annoyance of the Big Bazaar departmental store (they're actually called that here), as it turned out to be the portent of something (slightly) more serious. I, however, choose to blame everything that follows on the Big Bazaar, and no amount of convincing will ever get me to set foot in that place again. But I digress.

Yesterday, I woke up with a worse headache, which deteriorated throughout the day into an eye-splitting, feverish, nausea-inducing debacle. Worry not: I went to the doctor in the evening (my host family is extremely solicitous) and got antibiotics and more. I feel much better now, and a pathologist should be by in the afternoon tomorrow to check for all the more serious things (ameobas, typhoid etc) so I can, hopefully, rule them out.

Nonetheless, I wanted to start properly telling about the vast and rich heritage of Lucknow, about my family, or my housemates at the very least. This all has to wait because I have been convalescing in my invalid room for one and a half days, and have seen nothing more than the stairs as I shakily go down for meals. Luckily my room has at least one feature of interest.

In almost every Indian room, there live a few or more small geckos called 'chipkali' in Hindi. 'Chipna' means 'to stick,' and they were so named because of their extremely useful footpads, which enable them to stick to almost any surface, even upside down. Many Indian women are afraid of them for some reason -- it seems to be an expected feminine fear, something like American women's supposed fear of mice.

Anyways, I think they are charming and helpful. They earn their keep by eating an enormous number of bugs. They almost never fall off of the surface they're on, unless they get into fights with other chipkalis. And this, too, is a fascinating affair: they stomp their little feet and make a very strange noise that would scare you if you weren't used to it, a kind of growly clicking sound.

I was able to capture one of my resident chipkali's photos, above. There is also a very tiny baby one, but it was too demure to sit still for the camera, and attempts to get its portrait were in vain.

Barsaat

I've finally settled down a bit in my new Lucknavi home. I live on the top floor -- the roof, really -- of a popular paying-guest house in the Mall Avenue area. My room is spacious, clean, and cool. This last quality is thanks to a giant, whirring machine that sits in my window: the cooler. For those of you who have not lived in India, you may not have experienced the cooler. It's basically a giant box with open sides, which are covered in thin grassy reeds. In the front of the box blows a big fan, and a motor propels a constant stream of water through to the top of the box. The water then trickles down the reeds, and is evaporated by the blowing fan. The effect is amazing, although you have to be careful about mosquitoes becoming friendly with the pool of water in the bottom of the cooler.

Right outside my room is the rooftop garden, through which I walk to get to the bathroom, on the other side of the roof. It's dozens of hot-weather plants, from plumeria to various strange knobby succulents, all in terra cotta pots. Most people have at least a few of these plants, but my family has a veritable forest of them. It was a key factor in choosing where to live.

Today actually cooled off quite a bit, so cooler or no cooler, I wasn't too hot to sleep. Despite this, I woke up with a start this morning, far too early. The sky was so dark that it seemed even earlier than it was. Sure enough, the heavy clouds that had been thratening for some time finally broke into a huge storm. The Hindi word "toofaan" describes the thick, sudden rain and gusty wind that swept through the town this morning. It's where we get the English "typhoon."

Classes started today with a thud, as well, because all four of us from my program who live in this house were flooded in for some time. When the river outside of us slowed to a trickle and allowed us to exit, none of the cycle-ricksha drivers were interested in taking us on a 20-plus minute ride to our institute. We therefore arrived, sodden and somewhat dispirited, about an hour late, missing our very first class.

Nonetheless, I managed to have an acceptable day. Going to the 'mall' -- it shouldn't even have quotation marks, it's a bona fide mall -- that was miserable. The Big Bazaar (it's really called that) is the star attraction, and I thought it would kill me. Even now I have pounding headache from frustration (it may be big, but it didn't have most of what I needed) and elbowing my way through hordes of consumption-crazed Indian families. But after that, I had a suprising and lovely trip to a new tailor, which hopefully will become my tailor in Lucknow. One has to be careful with tailors, but the Fashion House comes highly recommended. This first suit I gave over for stitching has a very complicated design. If it turns out well, I'll be thrilled and stick with her.

By 'suit,' by the way, I mean 'Punjabi suit,' aka salwaar kameez. Mostly you buy them in matching pieces of fabric, one long enough for pants, the other intended for the top. They almost always come with a long, wide scarf. It's what I almost always wear in India.

At any rate, I should get going. I leave you with the image (hopefully) of me, dressed in what is commonly, irritatingly called Typical Indian Dress. This is near the Valley of the Flowers, in Garwal, on the monster trek from last week.

Not much to see here

Well, as a completely down-and-out traveler, all I want to do is read my book (this 900 page tourist tome called Shantaram), wash my feet of the Delhi dust, and take a nap. Somewhere in there figures in the cool, safe filtered water available from my program-paid hotel. It's much nicer than those I stay in on my own dime.

The train pulled into Delhi last night around 11:30. Everyone was horrified to learn that I would be traveling from the train station alone, in that much night. The man seated next to me in our posh AC chair class car wanted me, in fact, to stay at his own home. Earlier, he had engaged me in a zesty discussion of whether I thought God existed or not. My fat, unread book sat open in my lap, desperate to be read, to overcome this most irritating existential question. As though I hadn't heard him ask the first time, he asked again, in English,

"Madam, do you believe in God?"

I replied to him quietly, in Hindi, trying to mask irritation with smug piety.

"There are some things that you feel in your heart, that when you say them through your mouth, they only come out confused."

He was delighted with this answer, told me that because of this profundity, I would surely pass on my PhD.

And that, sir, is why I am perfectly happy to travel alone -- no unwanted conversation, just cool dusty night Delhi air that feels heavy and thick, and smells of the burning of rubber and cow manure.

Not Yet in Lucknow

On the advice of my father, this blog has been created. I feel a little silly writing it, so all of you friends and relations better not make too much fun of me for it.

Yes, I did indeed get horribly sick on my third day in India. This is a personal record. Since touching down in Delhi, I have had wretched food poisoning, altitude sickness, and (according to the doctor) "viral diarrhea" -- which is of course treated with antibiotics. I sliced off a good chunk of my heel on a sharp piece of car and banged my shin something awful on a sticking-out rock when I was riding a mule. I am a total mess.

Nonetheless, it has been an adventure. Dan and I took a rickety bus up the mountains from Dehradun to Joshimath. Joshimath is noteworthy because it's where the great Hindu thinker and religious figure Shankaracharya attained enlightenment under a mulberry tree. It's up in the Himalayas, and you can see snow on some of the higher peaks surrounding it. Nanda Devi is the only one which has a name I remember. Joshimath is also noteworthy because it's where I was fed a poison omelet, which made us lose a whole day to convalescing.

For a restful segue back to some level of activity, we took the ropeway -- India's highest and longest, they loudly proclaim -- up past this "ski resort," Auli, up to lay in the grass and gaze at Natural Beauty. Dan makes the good point that until half the 12-hour road from Dehradun isn't washed out gravel and vomitous hairpin turns, he's not sure how well this ski resort is going to get off the ground. It does seem a little questionable, but so much literature has AULI followed by a picture of a cartoon happy skier that they can scarcely turn back now. All the Indians we talked to seemed to think that it was foreigners who skied there, mutatis mutandis for foreigners...

At any rate, we follwed that with a trip over to Govindghat, from where we took the most harrowing hike of my life -- nine hours straight up the mountain to a village called Ghangaria. We should have put our things on mules, but of course didn't think of that until I had already determined stubbornly that I was going to carry my own things, darn it. It left me gasping, altitude sick and exhausted. The trek is supposed to take 4 to 5 hours.

More will have to come later -- I have to be off frm this Internet cafe.

It's my last full day in Dehradun, the captial of the recently-renamed Uttarakhand. Tomorrow it's back to Delhi for a boring orientation with various officials -- ambassadors, ministers of who-knows, etc. Lots of hands to shake. After that, I will be finally arriving in Lucknow to begin my coursework. I am excited about starting my proper schooling, especially since my vacation-type time has been a constant adventure. Reading and writing will be easy compared to the last few days.