Main Hoon Na

Friday

When I get onto Skype with Scott he tells me that Barack Obama is getting ready to speak. I turn on the BBC World News. They’re going to show the speech live. Scott hangs up so he can go watch. I stay in my room a little longer than usual absorbed in the speech.

Downstairs at breakfast I tell Marie I’ve just watched Barack Obama accept the nomination. She asks me if I think he can win. “There are a lot of rednecks,” she says. I’m afraid, I tell her, that the general masses of individuals might be afraid to vote for a black man for president. There are still rumors abounding that he’s a Muslim. When this is the fear, John McCain doesn’t even have to campaign. He just has to be white and Christian. Still, the speech was rousing. It was a historic moment and I am excited to have been able to watch it live.

Pachu serves me the icky red mango for breakfast, although I’m getting used to it. It seems mango season is still on, at least for the red kind, at least for the time being.

At work, I want to talk to people about the speech. What did you think? What were your favorite parts? I liked the line about the ownership society. The Republicans tell you you’re on your own. That was good. I know if I were at home I could hash over all these points with my coworkers, but here it’s just another morning. No one else tuned into the speech. My excitement is mine alone.

I once again ask Shabnum if she’ll make a doctor’s appointment for me. My eyes have been red and stinging for the past five days, and today was the worst of all. I have a suspicion that the situation is connected to the bubonic flu I’m still getting over, since it seems to have arisen at around the same time. I recall writing an email to a friend about how I looked like a meth addict while I was at my sickest, with sunken, red eyes. Still, I figure it’s safer to get it checked out rather than let it go, especially since it doesn’t seem to be getting better on its own.

Shabnum asks if I have a doctor in South Delhi. She’s concerned that the doctors at this hospital aren’t always the best. But it’s so close to work and so convenient. I tell her not to worry. If I think the doctor is no good, I can always make another appointment in my neighborhood later.

The subject of the movie comes up. Amar doesn’t like the singing and dancing, he says, as he always does when the subject of movies comes up. “Our heroes are stronger than yours,” he tells me, then describes a few of the most ridiculous Bollywood moments he can muster. “One guy had to stop a bullet, so he held out his hand like this,” he illustrates. “And then another time there were two bad guys and only one bullet left, so the guy takes out his knife and cuts the bullet in half, then shoots them both.” There is a healthy sense of the absurd in Bollywood.

Three thirty rolls around and it’s time for me to run across the street to my appointment. This time there is no fear and no worry about being alone. This time the visit is totally routine. Palminder knows how to find the place, and, at the front desk, they find my name, Vicki Krajeuuski, in their system in seconds flat.

“I have a four o’clock appointment with Dr. Rakesh Gupta,” I tell the young woman at the front desk.

“Will you be paying by cash?” she asks me. I nod yes. “Two hundred rupees,” she says.

Two hundred rupees? This is half the price of the normal doctor. I’m seeing an ophthalmologist today. I expected the cost to be the same or possibly even double. Instead, I get a half price sale. My visit will be approximately four dollars.

She gives me the room number: 2228. This is right next door to the doctor I saw for my upper respiratory infection. He was in room 2229. I walk right past the security guards at the stairs and to the reception area on the second floor. As I wait, I notice that each office in the small area has a very different specialty. The guy I saw was internal medicine. The office next to his is the eye doctor’s, and, on the other side is a door labeled, “Dr. Arun Garg, consultant, neurology.” There are no such things as departments here. I’m used to the University of Iowa Hospital where neurology would be a ten minute walk or a half an hour drive from the internal medicine specialist. But this is a small place.

I think this must be something of the reason that Shabnum suggested I try a different doctor, but I figure, “How bad can it be?” If I don’t like what the guy tells me, I’m only out four dollars and a half hour of my time.

The doctor walks past me and into room 2228 carrying a black leather medicine bag. Shortly thereafter he pops his head out of the room and calls me in. He looks at my eyes, shining lights into them and pulling at the lids. He tells me what I thought was the case: that the irritation is due to the illness that I have, and it should clear up when my cough abates. The bad news is that he says I should keep wearing my glasses until this time. So between my bad haircut and and my glasses, I look like Ugly Betty. The only things I’m missing are the braces. Oh well. At least it’s a step up from my previous incarnation as a meth addict. Dr. Gupta wants to see me back at 4 p.m. on Monday. I tell him that’s no problem.

He gives me a prescription for eyedrops: one to keep my eyes moist and the other an antibiotic just in case there’s a bacterial infection going on. I get the prescription filled downstairs for sixty rupees (just over a dollar), and I’m out the door in less than half an hour.

On the way back to the office, I look at the box of eyedrops. It’s labeled: “FMLT – Tobramycin Sulfate.” Shit. I’m allergic to sulfa drugs. I think I have two options. I could just not use the drops and see if my eyes clear up by themselves, or I could go back and ask for a different prescription. I tell Palminder, “We have to go back.”

He turns the car around and has me back at the hospital in just a few minutes. I climb the stairs and knock at the door of 2228. Dr. Gupta tells me I don’t have anything to worry about, that lots of antibiotics have a sulfate in them. I press him. “Are you sure?”

He pauses. “Okay, I will just take the antibiotic out. This way, you can be sure. I will just write it for FML, no ‘T.’” He writes me a new prescription which I also get filled. I’m still back at the office in less than an hour from the time I left.

Back at my desk, I do a little research. I’m curious now as to whether the doctor is right and I can take the antibiotic drops. I’d rather use them if they’re safe, just to be sure I’m treating any possible infection in my eyes. I want to get back to wearing my contacts sooner rather than later because, although my glasses complete my Ugly Betty mystique, it really irritates me to have something sitting on my face. I’m very unused to them.

After some poking around, I find this on a message board:

Sulfa is short for sulfamethoxazole. Some people are allergic to sulfa
antibiotics such as sulfamethoxazole, which is found in the combination
antibiotics Bactrim and Septra. Sulfate, also spelled sulphate, is a chemical
term that identifies specific salts containing sulfur. Sulfur is a mineral
that's found naturally in animal protein (including meat, poultry, fish and
eggs), dried beans and other vegetables. Sulfa antibiotics don't contain
sulfates.

So it is safe. I feel kind of bad that I doubted the doctor, but, hey, I didn’t want blisters on my eyeballs on top of everything else I’ve had to deal with. I open up the container of drops only to find that they are completely sealed. I’ll need a needle or a pair of scissors to pierce the end of the dropper before I can take my first dose.

After work, I stop by Defence Colony to get my cell phone charger. We make a quick pit stop in the market to buy some two-liter bottles of soda, then Palminder drives me off to Julianne’s for movie night.

Palminder has a bit of a challenge finding the place, and when we finally pull up at what appears to be the address, it looks completely unfamiliar. There is a name plaque that says “Freedom Fighter” in black marble on the front of the gate. Was that always there, or have we found the wrong place entirely? I make Palminder wait in the car while I knock on the door.

After a few seconds, I hear Julianne’s perky voice. It is the right place. I guess I just didn’t notice the freedom fighter plaque before. I get my soda from the car and give Palminder his tip. I tell him I’ll call him tomorrow, and he says, “Goodnight madam.”

Inside, we look at Julianne’s movie collection. She has a bunch of Hindi films with English subtitles. It’s hard to pick which one to watch. Susie sends a text message. We shouldn’t wait for her to order food. She’ll be over with her friend Gloria in just a bit. We order two pizzas from Pizza Hut: one spicy veg, one chicken Hawaiian.

Julianne’s roommate just got back from Hong Kong. She has friends over, one of whom is just getting over something that sounds very familiar: she was shaking with cold when the air wasn’t even on. They eat Chinese noodles at the kitchen table and talk quietly.

Susie arrives before the pizza does. She is wearing the cutest skirt with big flower appliqués on it. She got it at Sarojini Market. I think I’ll have to go there sometime.

Her friend, Gloria, from Texas, is staying with her for the immediate future. She has small eyes and a tight ponytail and speaks so quietly she almost makes no sound at all. She has just been evacuated because of the flooding in Bihar, where she has been working as a nurse for a year and a half. We ask what kinds of cases she sees. “Mostly childbirth,” she says, then adds, “Snake bites. A lot of snake bites… tuberculosis…”

Childbirth, snake bites and tuberculosis. She says she can’t wait to get back. I am in wonderment.

We decide to watch Main Hoon Na. It means something like, “I am here.” It’s a complicated movie, but then, when you have three hours to develop your storyline and characters, you can get as complicated as you like.

There is going to be a prisoner exchange between India and Pakistan, but a rebel in India wants to put a stop to it. He threatens to harm the head of the military’s daughter, who is in school at Darjeeling (a film location that looks absolutely beautiful). “I have to go there!” Susie exclaims when she sees the white peaks in the background.

The hero of the film is sent to the school to go undercover and protect the military head’s daughter. While he is at the school, he also tries to make amends with his estranged mother and half brother, but they don’t know who he is. You see, he is a bastard child and his father left his mother and half brother to raise him. His father dies in the beginning of the movie and it’s his dying wish for the hero to unite the family. I told you it was complicated.

The best part of the whole film, hands down, is a high action chase sequence in which the hero chases an SUV full of bad guys while driving a bicycle rickshaw that starts on fire. There are a few shots reminiscent of ET when the rickshaw jumps through the sky in slow motion.

Runners up to this scene are the slow motion fights in which the hero flys and, yes, dodges bullets much like the Matrix; and, of course, the big dance numbers in which the hero falls in love with the sexy new chemistry teacher at the school. The way in which the heroine is lit and the fans blow her hair every time she appears on camera seems to show that the film makers are wise to the cheese they are purveying. There is a nice sense of comedy in the storyline, as well as action and drama.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its cheesiness, I am completely drawn into the movie. Like most things Indian, it is a project, an effort. You don’t just sit lightly down to a movie. You need to invest three hours of your time. Just like you don’t just take a little trip to the mountains. You need to be ready to sit on a bus for a day. A whole day, if need be.

Time here stretches on. You need a lot of it. But I have a lot of it right now, so it suits me.

I stay overnight at Julianne’s because it would be too late to go home by myself once the movie is through.

She is the sweetest host, digging out clean sheets and pajamas and even an alarm clock so I don’t miss my Skype date with Scott in the morning.

One more day in India done.

A Night On the Town

Thursday

This morning on Skype, Scott delivers the news. 44 more days. At the time this sounds great to me. I am chipper. It sounds like it will fly by. It sounds easy. I can do it.

George and Marie are at breakfast again. Marie describes an Italian restaurant over by D block in Defence Colony where a girl can get some wine. I still don’t think I can find it on my own, though. I wish I had better spatial orientation.

Marie reads the paper. George asks her what’s happening in the world. She’s concerned about a hostage situation in Pakistan. Who do they negotiate with? Musharaff, the former president, is ousted and there’s no one in his place yet. Pakistan is bad enough when there’s a stable government, she says. Now there’s an unstable situation, and a little thing like a hostage crisis could lead to war. They could get the military involved and it could flare up.

I walk outside to find the nice, white car back to drive me to work. Inside, Palminder sits unceremoniously, with no sign or mention of Sonu. Sonu, like I thought, is not coming back. And though that is probably good, I still miss him. It’s nice to have a personal tour guide to a strange city. And while I didn’t love him, I certainly did feel cared about while he was my driver. And who wouldn’t miss that, especially while 7,000 miles away from their friends and family?

At work, Amar stops by my desk. He tells me about a campus visit he made to discuss the Macroeconomics book. He asked a professor how his students would react to the book. The professor told him that his students don’t like it if he recommends Indian authors. They assume books by Indian authors are substandard. And here’s another problem with getting the book adopted. It’s organized in an alternative fashion. Instructors want to teach the subject in the way they learned it. They don’t want to do anything new. They don’t want to re-learn. So Amar is trying to write up responses to these objections for the salespeople to use in the field.

Trying to finish up my second chapter in the finance book, I break out my iPod. The Eagles sing about a peaceful and easy feelin’ and it is about as dissonant an experience as I’ve had here. It’s like putting peanut butter on filet mignon. The Eagles and India don’t mix. It’s been such a long time since I’ve heard those laid back guitar chords. Indian popular music is all complex angles, driving percussion and tortured sounding wailing. I listen to U2 and Bob Dylan and Jack Johnson and Stevie Nicks and get a little sick to my stomach. 44 days. It sounds like forever. Maybe I will go back to counting in weeks. It’s a smaller number. There are just six left after this one ends, and it’s already Thursday.

But where did my emptiness go? This is a perfect example of one fact that I’ve now reacted to with polar emotions: glee and dread. Still, the whole time, the fact of the 44 days remains. It’s just a fact. I may as well make the most of this time rather than belabor every moment in some kind of drawn out count down. I only have 44 days left to learn about India. 44 days left to learn about myself while I’m here. 44 more blog entries. 44 more breakfasts. They will go by one way or another. Why not remind myself that each of these is an opportunity that I will only have once? 44 more opportunities. Now that’s something I can deal with.

I run into Jonaki in the hallway and we talk about our plan to go to the Sue Townsend reading tonight. She’s a British novelist who writes in the voice of the fictional character Adrian Mole. He is a precocious thirteen-year-old with a comically epic crush on a girl at school and a dysfunctional family that complicates his tortured adolescence at home. The First City Theatre Foundation stages readings of different authors’ work every two weeks in this little space called The Attic in Connaught Place.

Connaught Place is the closest thing Delhi has to a downtown. It is made up of two large traffic circles filled with stacks of shops and restaurants and street vendors and offices.

We will have to take two separate vehicles to get there. But how will we each find the building? Then how will we find each other? And where will we park? Jonaki says we should be prepared to get caught in traffic both on the way there and on the way home. Six o’clock and eight o’clock are both rush hours with tons of people leaving the office. It would be so much easier not to go. “I hope this thing is worth it,” she says, as she walks back to her desk. I agree.

Outside with Jonaki and Shabnum after lunch, we talk about Bollywood. The whole office is getting ready to go out and see this movie that premiers tomorrow, Rock On, so there is an air of excitement buzzing about. Yajnaseni and Shinjini have collected 140 rupees from everyone going, and they’ve just set out to get the tickets and some ice cream while they’re at it. I was invited to the extravaganza, but had to turn it down because I’d already made plans with Julianne for the evening. I’m somewhat relieved I’m not going when I discover that the movie is three hours long, so it would have gotten over after ten o’clock at night, then I would have had to find my way home somehow. I probably could have shared a cab with someone, but still. One of the problems with India is it’s always easier not to go. It’s hard to get anywhere and do anything. You have to be up for a challenge.

Jonaki and Shabnum laugh at the kinds of dances they do in the movies. Jonaki describes this one particular scene and mimics it reservedly, worried about passersby thinking she’s “crazy.” I shudder to think what passersby might think of one of my arm-waving storytelling episodes. I have noticed that my general demeanor is what Indians would call “very dramatic” in comparison to that of my peers, as if I didn’t stick out enough.

We talk about how male Bollywood heroes appear feminine in comparison to their Hollywood counterparts. They have long hair and soft features. Then they mention Salman Khan. He’s an aging hero with an alcohol problem who, while drunk, ran over four sleeping street people. For his crime he had to pay something like a thousand rupees (twenty dollars) and spend six months in jail. Before coming here I read somewhere that life in India is cheap, but four deaths for twenty dollars puts a new perspective on that statement for me.

In the afternoon, I finally finish my 66-page finance chapter and transmit it to Shabnum for her review. We’ll have to go over the notes I took since I compared the changes the author made to the ones that the reviewers requested and they didn’t match up one-to-one.

At six o’clock, I walk over to Jonaki and Shabnum’s desks to find them and Soma wrapped up in their shawls, shivering. It is freezing by their workstations. I fold my arms and try to slough off my own goose bumps. Jonaki wants to organize a complaint. She wants everyone to send an email at the same time about how cold it is. But there are general mutterings that this will be of no use anyway. Of course there is the hope that if I put their complaint in my blog, something will magically happen. I tell them we can only hope.

Jonaki passes off her leftover sprouts from lunchtime to Preeta, and we pack up and go. Outside in the searing heat, Jonaki talks to Palminder in Hindi, explaining our plan and the location we need to find. Palminder knows how to get there. He will lead, and Jonaki will follow in her car. Jonaki gets his cell phone number just in case we get separated, and we take off.

We get separated immediately because he doesn’t wait for her to get into her car. She calls us just as we’re headed toward the gate. Palminder is busted. He pulls the car to the side of the road and waits for her to appear behind us. A family of monkeys strolls down the sidewalk on their knuckles. Jonaki appears behind us and we pull away, proceeding a little more slowly than usual. As we’re driving I pay attention to who’s behind the wheels of the cars around us. I’d say that maybe one in every thirty drivers is a woman. Jonaki is a brave soul and a pioneer of sorts.

Just past Akshardam World, Palminder pulls the car to the side of the highway. He looks at me in the rearview mirror and grins. “Very slow driver,” he drawls. We are waiting for Jonaki to catch up with us. She eventually does, and we pull into the flow of traffic again.

We have to do the same thing just past the radial road around India Gate, only Jonaki doesn’t appear. We’ve lost her. Palminder’s cell phone rings. He gives her directions and hangs up.

“Tikka hay?” I ask. Is it okay?

“Tikka,” he says, “No ma’am, no problem. Circle is round.”

Yes, most circles are round, I think, wondering what he means by this last comment. As long as he thinks Jonaki’s going to find us, I’m happy.

We wait for, maybe, five minutes and she appears behind us again, gripping the wheel and peering out from over it. Jonaki is about four feet, eleven inches tall, but she is behind us again and we are underway.

We get to Connaught Place at about ten minutes after seven and turn down a twisting, narrow alleyway behind the shops. There seem to be only men and barking, stray dogs back here. It doesn’t look to be a good place for two women to hang out. Palminder stops the car and gets out to talk to Jonaki. She gets out of her car and gives him the keys. He backs up and parks her car for her, then returns to the taxi.

I tell him we’ll meet him here in about an hour and a half, but he interrupts me and tells me to get back in the car. He’s going to drive us both to the front of the shops, and he’ll pick us up there too. This is a relief. I don’t like the alley.

We get out of the car in front of the Connaught Place McDonald’s. It’s a recognizable landmark we’ll be able to use as the place to get picked up as well. Now we just have to find the address: 36 Regal Building. There are no signs on the businesses. Men come up to us and shove packages of handkerchiefs our way. Jonaki approaches a table lit up by a gaslight where vendors are selling jeans. She asks them in Hindi for the place. They tell us it’s around the corner. We wander. “We are so late,” she says.

“Maybe they’ll start late, too,” I say hopefully.

“That’s Indian time,” she says.

We ask more people for the building. We find a bank labeled 30 Regal Building and a restaurant labeled 57. We think we’re going in the right direction when the buildings end altogether and the alleyway opens up. I forget that in India, the addresses don’t progress logically in a line. My building, for instance, C-83 Defence Colony, is down a block that is labeled “47-58.” We return to Jonaki’s method of asking strangers for directions.

Finally two gentlemen point us up a marble staircase. There are no numbers posted, but we do see the playbill for the event at the base of the stairs. This must be the right direction.

At the top of the stairs is a large, carved wooden door with a giant iron handle. It looks like the door was stolen from the Tower of London. Jonaki leans into it and it gives way. Inside it is dark. We hear a voice. This is the place, and the reading is well underway.

A series of wooden folding chairs are set into rows, with an area of cushions on the floor at the front. All the seats are taken except the cushions at the front, which we don’t want to crawl over to in the middle of the reading.

A young man sits with photocopied pages stapled at the corner in the middle of a white brick proscenium arched opening. A single stage light hangs behind him. He reads in the voice of thirteen-year-old Adrian Mole a series of diary entries about how his best friend stole his girl. The actors are Indian, but the audience is surprisingly white. I feel like I am entitled to make friends with everyone here by virtue of this fact, and by virtue of the fact that we are at a theatre event, and I am a bonafide “theatre person.”

The reading is funny. Adrian Mole is comically tortured by all the typical adolescent woes (e.g. bad skin, disappointed parents and a galloping sex drive), and he writes tortured poetry with bad rhyme to commemorate his struggles. The readers do a nice job of creating the character. They are sincere, not clowning, and so let you grow fond of the mislead A. Mole (as he signs all his poems). When they finish a brisk 40 minutes or so after we arrive, Jonaki asks if we should go up and congratulate them. Why not? We walk onto the big Persian rug in the stage area and shake Momo’s hand. He says to come back in two weeks. They’ll be doing another reading, this time of Italo Calvino’s work. I’ve read Calvino and found it beautiful. I hope I can return to hear them again.

Jonaki wants to know if I want some tea, but I’m concerned with getting home in time for my evening Skype call with Scott. I don’t think I’d mentioned going out tonight to him, and so wouldn’t want him to worry if I just suddenly wasn’t there for our daily date.

We walk back to the McDonald’s just a few doors away from where we saw the reading. Jonaki calls Palminder on his cell. While we wait, more men want to know if we want handkerchiefs. Vendors spread out on the sidewalk with leather belts and t-shirts and lemonade and food, illuminating their merchandise with naked bulbs affixed to red gas tanks. Palminder pulls up right where we’re standing and we hop into the taxi for the ride back to the alley to fetch Jonaki’s car.

Two geometric turns into the narrow alley, it appears that a truck is blocking the way. It is broken down and there is a tow truck in front of it. Palminder backs up and somehow squeaks our car around the obstruction, but when we get to the other side, we see that this scene is unfolding right in front of where Jonaki’s car was parked. She hops out of the car. Palminder follows her. There is a parking attendant who took her keys. Her car has been moved. It is actually free of the broken down truck, down another bend in the alley, by a food vendor set up on the ground. It strikes me as a small miracle that she finds her car and it is there, in tact.

Palminder gives her some directions so she can get home okay. She will be able to follow us out of the alleyway and through the confusing inner and outer circles of Connaught Place.

It isn’t easy, and I know it’s even harder for Jonaki than it is for me. All I have to do is sit in the back seat and gaze out at the night. Jonaki has to drive. Still, I hope she feels like it was worth it. It was a fun cultural event.

If we come back for the Calvino reading, I’ll make sure to tell Scott about it so I don’t have to worry about getting home early. It would have been fun to grab a bite to eat afterwards, or mingle a little more with the audience and the actors. They seemed like friendly people.

How's My Emptiness?

Wednesday

Wednesday breakfast, George is downstairs again. This time his colleague, Marie, joins us. Though she is obviously also British, she wears Indian dress and speaks to Mira in Hindi. Turns out she used to live in Defence Colony. She recommends Swagarth, a restaurant I haven’t been to yet, for their prawn curry. It’s owned by the same people as Sagar’s, my favorite place, so it’s probably equally good.

Palminder shows up in a silver car that looks like it’s driven to Mars and back and not done a good job of avoiding the meteor showers along the way. When I get in, the cab is full of exhaust fumes that get me feeling sick to my stomach. Once we get underway, I either get used to the fumes or they disperse. I wonder if I’m getting carbon monoxide poisoning but think since I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out or fall asleep that it’s probably fine.

At work, I start feeling antsy and hungry before lunchtime. Sucking exhaust must stimulate the appetite, so I decide to walk out to the nala vendor and buy some biscuits. When I get there, the little ledge that is usually filled with packages of biscuits is empty. I ask for biscuits anyway, hopefully, but the wallah holds out empty hands. No biscuits. I buy a package of salted peanuts instead. These will have to do.

I wait until almost one thirty and wander over to Amar’s office to have lunch. We usually eat between one and one thirty. I peak my head in and he says, “Come in. Come in.” But when I look to the bookshelves where our lunch buckets usually are, I see they are bare. Amar dials up the pantry. Where are our lunches? The daba wallah has set out late. He has just left. Lunch will be late today.

I’ll have to get by a little longer on my bag of peanuts. Amar goes out to smoke and I return to my financial management chapter that, even on a full stomach, takes all the effort and sometimes even more concentration than I can muster.

At two o’clock Amar calls my name. “Vicki! Come. Eat.” Our lunches have arrived. We spread out the sheet of newspaper and begin spooning out our subzi when the lights go off. I feel destined not to eat today. Usually the lights blink right back on, but now, because the darkness is standing between me and my late lunch, it seems to take a full minute for the power to come back.

Finally, the lights blink back on, the computers all begin to buzz and I can eat. Amar talks about places he’d like to travel: Greece, Turkey, Egypt, the Serengeti. He shows me pictures of the trip he took to Nanital over the Independence Day holiday. The landscape looks familiar because of the trip I took to Raju’s Cottage: many verdant green hills. The only difference is there are lakes in Amar’s pictures. There are also tons of pictures of Sukanya making faces. Sukanya is the young editor who started here as an intern. She went on the trip with Amar and his wife and her friend, iPod Girl (so named by Angshuman because she was one of the first people around to have an iPod).

Late in the afternoon, Shabnum and Jonaki call me. Jonaki holds up ten rupees, Shabnum waves her hand. “Vicki! Drain party! We are eating nala food.” A whole group of people walks out to the little tent where they make samosas and intermittently sell biscuits. Amar, Preeta and Jonaki get samosas on little silver plates. Shabnum gets a coke and passes it to Sukanya. They eat and share. Preeta offers me some samosa, but Jonaki says I shouldn’t eat it. It’s not clean. I don’t feel hungry at all anyway. I’m actually feeling weak and shaky and tired out by my virus. It doesn’t help that it feels to be about a hundred degrees and dusty outside. We stand in a circle and talk. I sweat and wonder how much longer the drain party will be. Amar wants chai. Does anyone else? Yes. Preeta does. They get little glasses of hot, milky tea and hold it delicately between their fingers. I watch a young boy crouching on the ground amidst the discarded plates and dirt peeling small potatoes with his fingernails. He puts the peeled potatoes into a metallic bowl where flies land, and passes them onto two older boys who mash them up for filling in the nala samosas. Amar and Preeta finish their tea and we all walk slowly back toward the office. “We don’t have coffee shops,” Amar says, “so we have to go here for a snack.” He says it’s probably not the cleanest, but he’s built up immunity, and laughs.

Back at my desk I feel the damp hair on the back of my neck and try, for the last half hour of the day, to get through as many pages as possible of my chapter. I thought I might have been able to finish, but looks like I’ll need more time. The air conditioning feels good, but I still feel shaky from the heat as I pack up my computer and head out for the evening.

In the car, Palminder rolls the window down instead of turning on the air. This isn’t necessarily an emergency, I think. I’ll give him some time before I ask him to turn on the air. Maybe he’s just trying to air the car out. Maybe he thinks it’s cool outside? I wait patiently for a long time. We travel almost three whole blocks before I lean forward and ask him to turn on the air. He turns the dial but nothing happens. He turns the dial again and again. “It’s broken?” I ask, feeling a momentary panic. To think about my hour commute through Delhi traffic and heat and smog with no air on a still day with a wheezing chest cold almost smothers me. But I tell myself I will be fine. I will not pass out.

“Is very old car,” Palminder says. Then he tries it one more time and the fan whirs weakly. He rolls up the window. The air is kind of working. Even for this, I am thankful. “Tomorrow, same car. New car. Same. White car.” For this, I am even more thankful. I also realize that tomorrow is August 28th, the day that Sonu told me he is coming back. I wonder if along with the old car, I will get my old driver back, though I have doubted this story from the start.

As we pass the Buddhist stupa in Indraprastha Park, I have this loud thought, “How’s my emptiness?” Kind of like “How’s my driving?” but more Buddhist.

Emptiness is the realization that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. It’s a useful concept when “bad” things happen because we can realize that it’s only our perception that makes them “bad,” then we can mitigate our reaction. Everything doesn’t have to be such a tragedy.

So I should have this bumper sticker on my posterior today. “How’s my emptiness?”

There are no biscuits. How’s my emptiness?

Lunch is late. How’s my emptiness?

I feel sick and sweaty at the nala party. How’s my emptiness?

The air in the car is broken. How’s my emptiness?

And I’m happy to report, my emptiness is making some good progress. So much so that when I get home and flip on my air conditioner, only to find the Ahuja Residency has lost power, I still do not have a panic attack from thinking that the oppressive heat will smother me. I take a breath and walk downstairs where I ask Mira if the whole Defence Colony has lost its power, or just us. It’s just us. Perfect, I think. Then I’ll walk to one of the air conditioned restaurants in the market and eat slowly while someone comes out to work on the power at home.

The plan works out just fine. But even if it didn’t, I would have been okay.

I’m not saying I can handle major disasters and remain unruffled. I know the things that happened today were simply minor annoyances. But in the past I think I would have let them ruin my day or viewed them as some big accumulation of Bad Day, and today I did not. I just went about my business as best I could.

I had a perfectly fine day.

A McAmerican Day

Tuesday

Today a grey-haired British man chats me up at breakfast. His name is George. He is, of all things, in the assessment business. He’s consulting with one of Pearson’s competitors, ETS. He says I should have dinner with him and his colleagues sometime, but we shouldn’t talk about anything confidential. Then he hears me cough.

“Did you pick that up over here?” he asks, looking frightened. I tell him yes. “Well then I’m staying away.” Apparently, he would have welcomed a good old American virus aboard. On his way out, though, he offers his assistance. He’s staying in room five if I need anything. He knows a doctor in the area. Not that there are room numbers on any of the doors.

Today there’s a story in the paper about dengue fever. How timely, I think. It seems there’s an outbreak in Delhi, where 60 cases have been recorded. They think it’s particularly bad this year because of the early monsoon season which left a lot of standing water around. Dengue is transmitted by a particular kind of mosquito that feeds during the day. You’ll know if you have it because you’ll be bleeding out of your eyeballs. Okay, that’s only the dangerous strain III, but still, it had to be said. That and God bless DEET, of which I still have an ample supply.

On the way to work, Palminder sneezes at least three times, and coughs more than five. I wonder if this is the same virus I have or a different one. If Palminder gets me sick again… I figuratively wave my fist in the air at him. Of course, there’s the possibility that I got him sick. But I was never sneezing in the car. Chances are it’s a different virus. I need to start carrying my antibacterial gel with me. It’s such a big bottle, though. I should have brought a small bottle too. I should have brought a space suit with its own little sterile environment inside.

At work I have email from Susie. She wants to know how I’m doing, and she’s also excited that she finally got her rat problem fixed. They found a dead rat and several live ones in her ductwork and blocked off the hole that gave them access. So now it’s rat free living in Malviya Nagar: nothing but the finest.

At lunch I’m talking with Amar about different places in the city that I’ve yet to see. There’s Nizamuddin, the grounds of a famous Sufi saint. Amar got married there. I ask Amar how he met his wife and he pauses. “I told you this story, yes?” I didn’t think so. “She was walking and she got some paan spit on her.” They did tell me the story about Tehseen getting spit on in Delhi, but I didn’t realize this was also the story of how they met. The notion makes me laugh uncontrollably. I have to apologize. I think it is one of the best wife-meeting-husband stories I’ve heard.

All morning I’ve heard strange banging noises and kind of tuned them out. In the afternoon I figure out where the noises are coming from when I go upstairs to wash my hands after lunch. There are handwritten signs affixed to the bathroom door with packing tape: “Out of Order” “No Entry.” I fold my arms. Here it is. The fruit of my blog. The ladies’ restroom is getting repaired because the CEO read something I’d written about the state of it in an earlier entry. People are jokingly coming up to me like I’ve got Aladdin’s magic lamp. “Write in your blog that I get too much glare on my computer screen!” “How about a total revamp of the air conditioning system?”

I tell them I’ll see what I can do.

In the afternoon, Jonaki is excited to find a book rental service online. You have to pay to rent books. And the more books you rent per month, the more expensive it is. I just now realize that the public library system is an American thing.

What if we didn’t have libraries? I’ve never thought about life without them. I’ve never thought about people who don’t have them. How different my childhood would have been. All that summer reading. All that learning and discovering. Unlimited books. I remember taking them home by the armful. I remember Mrs. Senders the librarian asking me if I needed a bag. I was a book hog. The library was Mars and the ocean and the 1800s and a science lab and whatever else I was interested in that week.

After work, I step out of the office and it’s hard to breathe. The air is thick and my chest is congested. I think for a second I’ll have to run back inside. It feels like I’m breathing dust through a straw. I seriously wonder if I’ll pass out on my way to the car (which is about fifteen total steps from the air conditioned front lobby).

As we drive home, I can see that it is one of those ozone warning days—only here there is no warning. People are walking about in the thick haze that blurs buildings in the near distance. I was planning on walking to the market today for dinner, but now I’ll need another plan. Even if I were feeling well, I wouldn’t want to spend any time outdoors in these conditions.

I remember seeing a commercial for McDonald’s delivery service. I call Julianne to see if she might have the number. Coincidentally, Julianne is at McDonald’s when I call. She walks home while we talk, then digs out the number from her collection of to go menus. She’s not sure they’ll deliver to my neighborhood, but I should give it a try.

I call the number and it is staffed by an entire call center operation. “What city are you calling from?” the operator wants to know. I tell him Delhi. “Where in Delhi?” Defence Colony. I kind of grit my teeth waiting for the news that they don’t deliver here, but he doesn’t even pause. He asks for my phone number, my address, then wants to know what I’d like to order. I’ll have the McVeggie combo meal with no mayonnaise. He repeats this back to me in perfect English and tells me the order will arrive in about thirty minutes. It will cost me 149 rupees.

Astonishingly, the order does arrive in about thirty minutes, and they even get the mayonnaise thing right.

I sit on my bed and flip on the tv. Seinfeld is on.

I watch Seinfeld and eat my McDonald’s suddenly feeling more American than I do when I’m in America. Comfort food and comfort tv: good ways to get me over the remaining ick of my bubonic flu.

On the floor of my bedroom, the ants are having a bad night. I think Pachu’s sweeping must have been a little too brisk today because there are dead ants. Two carcasses, specifically, that these other ants keep carrying around in circles. They look lost. I feel sorry for them. They just keep circling and circling. I wish I knew what they were looking for; I’d provide it for them. Do they need somewhere to bury the dead ants? Somewhere to hide them? I don’t understand. They are still circling when I turn out the lights and go to bed. Maybe they’ll go to bed too.

Do ants sleep? I think. And do they have libraries? What about McDonald’s deliveries? My roommates lead mysterious lives.

Pest Control & the Proverbial Woods

Monday

I wake up at 6:30 and turn on the hot water heater a/k/a geezer. Then I fall asleep until the phone rings at 7:38. It’s Scott. He tried to Skype me and I wasn’t there for our usual 7:30 call. Am I okay?

I’m fine. I just fell back asleep. But I’m okay. We hang up quickly and he calls me back on Skype. I tell him about the ant army marching across my floor. Are they regular size? They’re a little chunkier than normal, I say.

I’m trying to decide if I should go to work today. I think I’ll call Susie and get her opinion. She seemed so authoritative on the matter yesterday and what she’s told me so far has been spot on. The fever did come back, but not as bad, and I have had several smaller sweating episodes, and I do believe I am getting better instead of worse.

Susie tells me I should stay home today if I can. It’s easy with a fever to over do it, then it can come back. She’s right. I could have made this decision on my own, it just feels good to run it past somebody who’s seen some Indian viruses and the way they act in a westerner’s body.

I go downstairs for breakfast and the place is put back together. There are no piles of bananas on the table; there is no map blocking the clock; the chairs are all pushed in. The college kids left on a bus one day and it doesn’t look like they’re coming back. Studying abroad apparently involves a lot of travel. They all had a lot of stuff to lug around too. There were stacks of trunks. I guess when they said they’ll be here through December, they meant that figuratively. They meant they’ll be away from home through December, not that they’ll be here in the Ahuja Residency through December. Or maybe they’re coming back. Who knows? Either way, it’s nice to have a quiet breakfast again. And what’s even nicer is when Pachu brings me the juicy mango I love. I scarf it up even though I am challenged to taste it through my sinus mélange.

As the day wears on, I am so glad I didn’t go to work. I planned to work from home, to get a little blogging done, to do some reading, to shower. I do none of these things. I turn on the BBC World News and veg out in bed. I get up a few times and stand around, looking out at the balcony, but I don’t have a lot of energy for this and soon find myself on shaky limbs crawling back under the sheets. I think about breaking up some of the old loaf of bread I have in the fridge and putting it out on the ledge for the birds, but this task seems too strenuous and demanding. I decide: maybe later.

At about noon there is a knock at the door. I open it. Pachu and his helper are standing there with smiles and a stack of clean towels and sheets. “Madam, clean. Yesterday we no. Clean today.” It’s true my room hasn’t been cleaned since Friday, so I welcome them in, grabbing my What Religion Is book and sitting on the couch out of their way. It will feel good to have clean sheets after all the sweating and coughing I’ve done on the ones I have now. I feel bad for them, afraid they’re going to catch this horrible virus, but they seem happy in their work, which they carry out quickly. They probably have immunities developed that I don’t have. Even if they catch this, it probably won’t be this bad for them. People at work have little sniffles and coughs, but none of them have missed any work because of their symptoms. I’m thinking I have the white girl version of their sniffles, and an immune system that is too baffled to fight back.

Half way through the cleaning, Pachu picks up a hand made broom and begins sweeping the floor, carefully pushing the ants out into the hallway. So that’s why it seems like there are fewer ants here after they clean and why, if they don’t clean for a few days, I have an ant army to entertain me during my Skype calls with Scott. Organic pest control at its finest.

My tired brain only makes it through about four pages of the Vivekananda book, but they are an interesting four pages. He says that all pain is due to attachment. This is a concept I’m familiar with from Buddhism, but, as I’ve learned, Buddhism grew out of Hinduism and so shares many of its tenets. I understand this concept when it comes to psychological pain. For instance, I understand that my attachment to the stray dogs and my attachment to the idea of having a friendly neighbor is what made me tear up the other day in the taxi. Where my understanding stops, however, is at the concept of physical pain. The discomfort I am feeling in my own body. How is that pain due to attachment?

The end of section one in the book is a reiteration of Vivekananda’s answer to the title’s question. What is religion? He says religion is “not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming…” Religion is realization. It hits me that this is the difference for me in hearing that prayer about acceptance and feeling slammed by it on my 24 hour bus ride. That was a becoming for me. That was a realization. Before then, I was just reading the words or seeing them or hearing them. I like this distinction. It strikes me as truth.

But Pachu and his helper are done cleaning my room, and that’s about all the energy I have for intellectual pursuit today. I close the door behind them and sniff out my clean room. It smells slightly of cinnamon, which is strange because I didn’t see them use any actual cleaners, just some dirty rags. It’s also strange because I didn’t think I could smell anything. The Tylenol Cold must really be working.

The clean sheets feel so good. I spend the rest of the day napping and watching tv. At one point, I do a puzzle that Scott created and sent to me, but I get all sweated up in the process and have to rest afterwards. I watch BBC World News until I’ve seen every story and they start to rerun, then I find four episodes of Friends on Star World, a station that has random American tv shows on it that Julianne just told me about.

Shabnum, my friend from work, calls at about seven o’clock. She heard I wasn’t feeling well, and they were feeling sorry for me at the office because I’m all alone. Am I doing okay? Do I need anything? Am I getting enough food?

I am fine. Still under the weather, but fine. I’ll see her tomorrow at work.

In the evening I do manage to blog a little, and to put some bread out for the birds. So what if birds don’t eat in the evening? The bread will still be there in the morning when they show up hungry.

A day that I thought would feel interminable has passed quickly and without my accomplishing anything except, perhaps, for getting better by undetectable degrees. I’m glad to be out of the proverbial woods.

The Bubonic Flu

Saturday and Sunday

I am finally able to get a little sleep in the morning, but I feel miserable. Scott Skypes me around eight o’clock and I have no voice to talk to him. He tells me I need to eat and drink a lot of fluids. We hang up just four minutes into our call. I intend to go downstairs to eat, but fall asleep instead.

I have to call Julianne and cancel our plans for the day, but I can barely keep my head up to manage dialing. I can’t get through to her number and I can’t keep trying. I figure she’ll see the missed calls and call me back.

I have to call Palminder and tell him not to come. It feels like I use the only energy I have to find my purse and get his card from it. He answers the phone, “Yes madam.” I tell him I’m sick. He shouldn’t come today. “Okay madam,” he says.

At eleven thirty I get a call from the guard, “Madam, your driver. Car for you.”

I guess Palminder didn’t understand. I tell the guard, “Tell him he can go. I don’t need a driver today. I’m sick.”

“Okay madam.”

Five minutes later, the phone rings again. “Madam, your driver. Car for you.”

“No. No car today. I’m sick,” I squeak, then hang up the phone.

Five minutes later, the phone rings again. This time it’s Ms. Sonu. She wants to tell me my driver is waiting for me. What the heck, I think. Does anybody understand the word no?

I tell Ms. Sonu that I called Palminder and told him I’m sick. I won’t be needing a car today. She asks if I need to see a doctor. I told her I’ve already seen one, thanks.

I’m relieved I won’t be getting any more phone calls on that matter. I sleep a while longer, then Julianne calls. I tell her I’m sick and I have to cancel our plans for the day. She asks if I’ll be going to church tomorrow. We decide she’ll call in the morning to see if I’m up for it.

The fever today feels severe—worse than I can ever remember having a fever, except maybe when I had chicken pox in fourth grade. I curl into the fetal position trying to get warm but fail. I wonder if the doctor’s diagnosis was totally wrong and I do have the plague after all. I have developed a bronchial cough and this, to me, seems to complete my cornucopia of symptoms of the pneumonic plague I read about on the web. Fever, chills, cough. I certainly feel more like I have the plague than a cold today.

I spend the day in bed, waking and sleeping. I don’t turn on the tv. I don’t read a book. I don’t have the energy. I sleep and wake with a metallic taste in my mouth. I drool on my pillow because I can’t breathe through my nose. I tremble from cold and somehow wind up sweaty. I manage to shakily walk to the bathroom and take some more Ibuprofen, almost overturning the bottle with my trembling hand.

The Ibuprofen makes the shivering stop so I can at least rest. Just as with the necrosis, I wonder how much worse it is going to get before it starts getting better. “Will there be a rotting hole in my leg?” I wondered with the necrosis, which is now reduced to a large pink scar. “Will this kill me?” I now wonder about my new predicament. I envision myself having to fly home to the States for medical treatment in a space suit that keeps me quarantined on the plane, air marshals all around me. Then I envision myself in an Indian hospital freaking out about needing new needles. Neither of these visions are appealing. Why do I bother putting myself through these scenarios? For the sport of it?

At dinnertime, I microwave a packet of pasta that Scott sent to me in a care package. Then I Skype with Scott. This time my voice has come back a little and I have enough energy to carry on a conversation. I still don’t feel like I’m out of the woods, though. I feel like this disease could slam me back on the ground any second and I wouldn’t have a word to say about it.

I’m too sick to spend too much time worrying, though, and I roll back into bed after hanging up with Scott. I highly doubt that I’ll feel well enough to go to Mister Kundari’s temple with him and Diljesh tomorrow morning, but I still have to wake up and give them my regrets. I can’t just ditch an invitation to feed the hungry.

Rather than fool with my incontinent alarm clock by resetting my wake up time, I decide to rely on my internal alarm clock. I have this strange ability to name a time in my head, then wake myself up at exactly the time I’ve named. No alarm: just this weird internal alarm clock. I can’t think of a time when it’s failed me.

I just tell myself as I’m falling asleep, “Wake up at 5 a.m. Wake up at 5 a.m.” I have to keep repeating it and focusing on it, otherwise it might not work. I can’t let other thoughts intrude. I have to concentrate.

And when I open my eyes, it’s dark outside. Something tells me I should look at the clock. When I do, I notice it reads 5:06. Six minutes off, but still not bad for an internal alarm clock. No battery required.

As I suspected, I still feel horrible. I lay around for a few minutes then put on a pair of pants with the t-shirt I slept in and walk outside my gate where Diljesh told me he’d meet me. The guard at the gate greets me, “Good morning, madam. Madam, walk?”

He thinks I’m going on a morning walk, which is apparently a popular thing for the ladies to do here, but I am in no condition for such sport. I stand in the street for maybe two minutes waiting for Diljesh and my legs begin to wobble under me. My arms feel heavy. I am considering going back inside when I see Diljesh in an orange turban. He walks brisky, “Come, let’s go!” I tell him I can’t go. I’m sick. He says Mister Kundari is sick too. He has stomach problems. Maybe I’ll come and feel better later?

I tell him I have a fever. “Oh, well, then you can’t go. Maybe some time. Maybe next Sunday you come,” he says, and springs off into the dark dawn.

I drag myself back up the marble staircase, put my pajamas back on and land in bed again where I sleep until it’s time for Scott’s Skype call. What little voice I have I’m making work this time. As I’m talking to him, I notice I’m drenched. My shirt is wet. My undershirt is wetter. There are drops of perspiration running down my arms. My hair is wet.

“That’s good. Your fever is breaking,” Scott tells me.

“How do you know?” I ask skeptically, interpreting this as just one more horrible symptom to add to my tally, wondering if I should go to an emergency room.

“I don’t know. My mother told me?”

He tells me I should see if my friends from church can bring me anything I might need. Do I need food? How about some antibiotics? Why don’t I take some antibiotics? The guesthouse phone rings. It’s Julianne calling to see if I’m going to church. I tell her I’m still sick. She asks if there’s anything I need. I ask if they would be willing to get me some antibiotics. I remember the name of the one they prescribe for plague and tell her that one. The report on plague said that people who are treated early have a mortality rate of fifteen percent, as opposed to people who are treated after the disease has progressed—who have a mortality rate of sixty percent. Why do I ever read health information online? When will I learn?

Julianne says she and Susie will come over after church with antibiotics of some sort for me. I thank her profusely.

Scott wants me to drink more fluids and eat breakfast today. Eat eggs, he tells me, even if they’re gross. I should go eat breakfast and take a shower and he’ll call me back at 1 a.m. his time to check on me. I tell him not to be silly, but he doesn’t listen. He’s calling me back at one in the morning to see if I’m okay. He might be cranky and tired, but he’s calling.

I stop to think. I must be better today. I am standing up instead of lying down. I can think about getting breakfast, whereas yesterday, this wasn’t even a near possibility. Though I’m shaky, I walk downstairs and ask for my naash taa with egg this time, but no onion.

They bring me a red mango, a banana, toast and the omelet. I can’t find the morning paper, so I pick up a magazine with a cover article about terrorism in India. The editor’s note at the front says that India isn’t doing enough to fight terrorism and that since 2003, it is second in body count only to Iraq. I wish I’d chosen another article. How about that friendly issue of Expat? It will tell me all about the Indian handicrafts of some random southern state here.

A friendly man all dressed in white sits down at the table and starts asking questions. He has the voice of Morgan Freeman. Am I here on business? Oh, so I wanted to have the Asian experience, did I? How am I finding it?

I want to tell him I’m finding it hard to keep my head from falling into my plate of eggs right now, but I manage a smile and some friendly banter until he excuses himself. “Sorry I have to rush off,” he says. He leaves his room keys on the table and is gone.

Upstairs, the salty eggs execute a similar quick exit. So much for my protein. I take a hot shower, thankful for the hot water, as I am every time it comes out now. It’s just an hour or so before Scott said he’d Skype me back, so I take a nap.

Scott wants to know if I ate. I did, but it didn’t go very well. Did I drink? Yes, I’m drinking right now. I’ve almost had a whole liter today. Okay. That’s good. Keep drinking. When are my friends from church coming? Soon. After church.

He starts to hang up but hears me choke up when I say goodbye. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel okay as long as I’m talking to him, but when he hangs up, I’ll be alone again. He lets me cry and stays on the line until I’m reassured. It’s okay. I’m okay. I finally let him go to bed.

A short while later there is a knock at the door. It’s Julianne and Susie. They look so happy. I am so glad to see them. They thought they would stop over here and see if there was anything else I needed before they went to the chemists for me. Also, they don’t think I should just take some random antibiotics. They also talked to Ruth at church who has some nursing experience and, like, eight kids who have all gotten weird Indian diseases. Ruth says that if the fever doesn’t break in three or four days, then you should go to a doctor, but otherwise, you should be okay.

I tell them about sweating this morning. Susie, whose mom is a nurse, says she can tell I’m better by looking at my eyes and just from seeing that I’m up and walking around. If I had something like dengue fever or malaria or something, she says, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish even this. She tells me with a sense of authority that I’m on the mend. The fever might come back and break again, but it shouldn’t come back as bad as it was, as high as it was.

She says when you travel thousands of miles, your immunity system can’t combat the viruses around you, so this sort of thing happens. Her roommate just had a temperature of 104. They were getting ready to take her to the hospital. Then she was better the next day.

Julianne announces that she’s come bearing gifts. She takes out a Ziploc bag of Tylenol Cold, Tylenol, “And I gave you some band aids, just in case,” she smiles. The gesture is so thoughtful and caring it almost makes me tear up.

“And, I got this for you,” she hands me gold-leafed Bible. “I thought since you’ve been coming to church every week with us, you might want one.”

Susie and Julianne tell me they know it must have been scary being that sick and being alone. They tell me I can call them anytime, day or night. Julianne can come over here and do her studying to keep me company, she says. And Susie knows a good doctor. If I still have the fever or it comes back really bad, I should call her tomorrow. She can make an appointment and go with me. She’s taken many people to the doctor here, she says. And I should call them just to check in. They might hesitate to call me because I’ll be sleeping, but I should call them. I tell them I would love some phone calls from them. I’ve been doing nothing but sleeping, and a little interruption by a friendly ring would be welcome.

We talk a little while longer, then they leave to meet some friends in the Defence Colony for lunch. I feel so relieved to have had someone look at me, size me up, and tell me I’m definitely getting better. I’m definitely going to be okay. I’m so happy to have band aids and Tylenol and a Bible and friends I know I can call on if I need them.

I’m so happy I think I’ll take another nap.

The Kitty Party

This morning I awaken and feel sick. I only talk to Scott for about four minutes, then flop back into bed where I stay until 9:30. The guard calls down to tell me my driver has arrived. “Tell him to wait until ten o’clock,” I say, hoping he understands. I don’t want to miss the whole day of work, but I do need a little extra sleep.

Downstairs I miss the morning rush and the table is already cleared from breakfast. Pachu brings me a banana, an apple and toast. The mango season must be over. I’m sad.

A woman about my age in a pink sari walks up to me. “Hello, I’m Ms. Sonu.”

Ms Sonu!

She’s not as evil as I pictured her. I had this vision of Ms. Sonu in a severe, black business suit with dyed black hair and a giant fake smile. This Ms. Sonu is just a friendly Indian lady. She sits down. She’d like me to look over the invoices before she sends them to finance and make sure all the charges appear correct. There is a charge for parking that I don’t understand.

“So this is because your driver paid for parking these two times for whatever reason, and he needs to be reimbursed.”

Parking mystery solved. Sonu wasn’t ripping me off when he had me pay for parking. Palminder billed me for the two times he paid.

At work, I Google “diseases fleas carry,” and find that fleas convey three types of plague. The symptoms are headache, fever, chills. It doesn’t say anything about a sore throat, but it does talk about swollen glands, and I figure that could be causing my sore throat.

I see Debamitra in the bathroom. She asks how I’m feeling. I tell her I might go to the doctor and get some drugs.

“Do you take drugs so easily?” she asks me. I don’t know. Do I? “Don’t take drugs. You should just rest and see if you get better.”

She is the first person I tell about the flea bites.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s different. You should get that looked at.”

As always, I take Debamitra’s advice and have Shabnum make an appointment for me. She calls the hospital and gets an appointment for 4:30. Is this okay? Can I go by myself this time, or should she come with? I can go by myself, I tell her.

I have to tell Palminder how to get to the hospital and am somewhat proud that I succeed in giving him directions. As we pull up, I feel a bit of dread. Should I tell the doctor about the fleas? What if they quarantine me, lock me up? It mentioned quarantining online.

At the front desk, the clerk can’t find my name in her records. I have to fill out another intake form. I spell my name “Krajewski,” and she enters it in the system, “Krajeuuski.” It seems the “w” is not a concept in this hospital.

She points me upstairs to room 2229. There are guards every few feet that help me find my way. I feel a little lonesome here by myself, but I also feel good that I made it this far on my own.

As I sit outside the room, I run through a few scenarios in my head. What if they want to draw blood? I’ll make them show me that the needles are new. I’ll have to see them come out of some kind of packaging. That’s what the Travel Clinic recommended. I don’t want to get HIV while I’m trying to discover whether or not I have the plague. HIV is rampant in India. In fact, some of the Google searches I did on plague turned up articles on AIDS. I don’t care if it’s rude or ridiculous to freak out about the needle. It’s my life and I need to defend it.

The doctor calls me in and asks what the problem is. I tell him about the flea bites and getting sick. I tell him my symptoms.

“You don’t need to worry about these bites,” he tells me. “You have an upper respiratory infection. They’re endemic this time of year in Delhi. It’s partially due to the population density, partially due to this wet weather.”

He seems pretty sure it isn’t Bubonic Plague.

He writes me a prescription for some cold medicine and a fever-reducer/pain reliever that I get filled downstairs for two dollars. Outside I wander around looking for Palminder. He finds me and waves.

I was lucky this time. I didn’t get any strange disease from the dogs. But I know my relationship with them should end. I know there’s a reason I’m the only one petting them. The locals know better. Poor Acha and Baloo and Baby. They won’t understand why I just walk past them now instead of stopping to give them attention.

In the taxi, I tear up. My friends are dangerous. I just want to pet dogs. I just want to meet my neighbors. But these things are not so simple here. Why can’t they be simple? Why can’t they be safe?

Back at home, I pop open the daytime medicine the doctor prescribed and get a new bottle of water out of the fridge. I take two of my limited supply of Ibuprofen to help with the fever. I know I’m sick because the air conditioning has been off all day in my little room and I’m still freezing, full of goose bumps. I have to climb under the covers to stop from shivering.

I sleep until eight thirty. I wake up feeling better with enough time to get ready and go to the kitty party at Mister Kundari’s house. Julianne was going to go with me, but she called and said she has a Skype date that she can’t miss. Still, I figure it’s safe to go because there will be plenty of people around—and plenty of women.

A servant lets me in and points me toward the living room that has a marble floor and lavish décor. There are embroidered draperies, colonial-looking chairs, and tables with intricate inlaid marble patterns. The walls are lined with family photos and a large Chinese watercolor.

Two little girls in matching dresses and pink sweaters act shy and mill about.

Mister Kundari stands up and shakes my hand. “Vicki! Hello!” He shows me where I should sit. There are two circles forming: one of men, one of women. As people arrive, they press their hands together and bow their heads in greeting, then they take their seats on their respective sides of the room. The men drink bourbon and water and laugh jovially. The women drink lemon water and speak seriously. Servants in black bowties bring out food on gold and silver trays: paneer tikka, chicken, fish, corn, breaded vegetables. The food keeps coming. The ladies are surprised when I tell them I’m a vegetarian. Two ladies have a conversation about it in Hindi. I only make out the repeated word “vegetarian.”

Mister Kundari wants to know, would I drink some red wine if he has it? Certainly. His servant finds a bottle, uncorks it and pours me a glass.

The ladies are mostly older, in muted-colored saris, though there are two younger women who talk with each other as the evening wears on. Much of the conversation is in Hindi, except when someone wants to talk to me. They ask where I’m from. They ask if I’m a buyer. I guess these are the sorts of white people they’re used to having around because of Mister Kundari’s garment business. They are somewhat puzzled when I tell them I work with textbooks. Why am I at Mister Kundari’s party, then? Because I live in the neighborhood, at least for the next few months.

I am prepared for an onslaught of questions about why I don’t have children, but this never comes. These ladies are polite and reserved. They don’t pry into my personal life. One grey haired woman asks half way through the evening if I have children, then tells me she has a daughter married since 2002 who also has no children. “I tell her she should adopt,” she tells me, then says that Achla, sitting across the table from me with the nose ring and the jeweled bindi, is a social worker and does adoptions. Her husband is a lawyer who also specializes in adoption.

Several of the ladies get up and come back with plates full of food. Dinner is served, buffet style, on the glass table in the adjacent room. I’ve eaten so many appetizers I don’t think I can eat much more. I get up to get some food and Mister Kundari asks how I’m doing. He’s sorry he can’t look after me.

“I’m great. I thought we were done eating!”

“Oh no. Have some dinner,” he says.

The table is full of food: dal and two different vegetable dishes and mattar paneer and more chicken and more fish and a few dishes that I can’t identify and avoid because they might have meat in them. I eat with my plate on my lap next to the grey haired woman on the couch. She tells me about the times she’s been to America. They were in New York on 9/11, she says. Her husband went out for a walk and they thought he was a Muslim. They were screaming at him. They were supposed to go to California but instead they cut their trip short and came back to India.

As we finish eating, the bowtie men take our plates from us. Dinner is cleared from the table, and now it is full of dessert: gulab jamun, apple strudel, banana chocolate pudding and ice cream. The woman wearing a western-type shirt who arrived late and looks like an Indian version of Meryl Streep wants to know if I take eggs. Yes, I tell her. Then the desserts will be okay for me, she assures me.

We eat and the bowtie men clear our plates. It seems less than five minutes after we finish that a man walks over and says to his wife, “You feel like you want to move?” She gets up. They are leaving. Then everybody stands up. Everybody is leaving. I hate to eat and run, but it seems that is the way it’s done—at least at this party, it is. It’s probably because we started so late. The party didn’t begin until nine, then it was at least ten o’clock before we ate dinner.

On my way out the door, I thank Mister Kundari. “Happy?” he asks. Yes. It was a very nice party. I'm glad I went. “What about Sunday?” He wants to know if I’ll go to the temple with him and his sister and Diljesh. I tell him okay.

Outside, Diljesh tells me to wait, he’ll drive me home, even though it’s just about a block away. I am surprised that Diljesh and his wife drove to the party. They are my next door neighbors, so also live little more than a block from Mister Kundari’s house. It seems that pedestrianism is not a concept here, and I understand why. The roads are very difficult to walk on. There are piles of dirt and broken up building materials everywhere.

Back at home I lay in bed, unable to sleep. My stomach is so full that it’s uncomfortable. I’m not used to eating so late at night. And I think my fever is coming back. I’m shivering again. I take some more of my limited supply of Ibuprofen and try to sleep but have little luck. I finally give up and turn on the BBC World News.

Food Turns Into Energy

Breakfast is its new usual frantic scene. It seems like there are 20 students here today instead of 13. I try to find the morning paper; they’ve taken it. I try to get some mango; they’ve eaten it. I try to glance at the time on the only clock in the whole place; they’ve hung a large map of India over it. They are not so adorable this morning.

Again, I receive no call telling me my ride is here. I think the Ahuja staff must be busy and overwhelmed with their new guests. Even my bedspread has been removed, probably to make one of the cots they’ve set up more comfortable.

I’m not feeling so great. Maybe it wasn’t the spices that had me feeling woozy last night. My head hurts, I feel in a fog, and I’m getting a sore throat. I hope I’ll shake it off during the day, but it just seems to be getting worse.

At lunch, I ask Amar about the kitty party. Was it a lady that invited me? No. It was Mister Kundari. He thinks it’s a ladies’ thing. I should ask Jonaki and Shabnum about it.

Shabnum knows what it is. It’s a party for domestic ladies when they get bored with themselves. They play cards and other games. Sometimes they go out for food, sometimes they have a potluck. They’re boring. Shabnum wrinkles her nose. She’s a bit surprised when I tell her I’m invited to one. These are for traditional people, usually older people too, wives who are subservient to their husbands. I will likely stick out like a sore thumb, and not just because I’m white.

After lunch, my vision blurs as I try to edit my new chapter on financial management. My throat gets worse. Is it closing up on me? I have to go home and lay down. I tell Amar. He is concerned. Do I need to go to a doctor? If I do, I can ask at the guesthouse and they should be able to help me. If I’m not feeling better, I shouldn’t come in tomorrow. I can call him if I need anything.

I find Palminder and he asks if I’m okay. I tell him I’m sick, but I don’t think he understands. He turns up his Punjabi music and we speed off. It is not a restful ride home as we bump along the broken up roads and weave in and out of traffic.

Back at the Ahuja Residency I find my door wide open, and the door to my balcony wide open as well. Pachu and another staff member are out there folding laundry. I tell Pachu I’m sick. He looks at me perplexed. I tell him I don’t feel good. He is even more puzzled. I tell him I need to sleep, so I need to close the doors. “Oh, a sleeping. A sleeping!” he says, glad to finally understand something. Then, “Close. Close,” he tells me, and motions that I can close my balcony door. I wonder how many bugs have made their way in while the door was wide open. I draw the curtains and hit the bedspread-free sack.

I’m so uncomfortable that I can’t exactly sleep. I toss and turn and feel my head. It feels hot. I think back to the bite I got the other night while I was petting Acha. It was a flea bite. Fleas transmit plague. Did I get a vaccination for plague? I don’t remember one. I scratch my ankles and turn on the ever-distracting BBC World News. It seems that Olympic competitors are not only drugging themselves; they are drugging their horses too. Or maybe they’re taking their horses’ drugs? I’m not really paying that close of attention.

I wonder if I should cancel my evening with Mister Kundari, but I don’t have his phone number so I can’t call him. I’ll just make it a short night, I figure.

By the time eight o’clock rolls around, I am a little stir crazy in my room, so it feels good to get out. I freshen up my makeup, retrieve the cake from the fridge and wait for my little digital clock to say something like 7:57. I don’t want to be early.

It feels a little strange to be venturing out in the darkness. I am usually on my way home at this time of the evening. Still, it’s only a block away and the hired guard from C-83 can see me almost the whole way to Mister Kundari’s house.

When I get there, the gate is open and there’s a servant in the courtyard. He nods and motions for me to take a seat. Mister Kundari wobbles out. I wonder if he remembers about the invitation he extended. I wonder if he was serious or if I wasn’t supposed to actually show up.

“I was waiting for you!” he exclaims. “I just went inside for minute!”

I give him the cake and he passes it off to his silent wife who makes no eye contact with me but seems to shoot me a sideways glance as she walks away. I assumed she’d be coming with us, but Mister Kundari retrieves his car keys from his pocket and says, “Come! Come!” as she makes her way inside with my gift.

We get in his car, and a slightly more mellow version of Palminder’s music is playing; there’s more melody, less backbeat. “Next time you come, you no bring anything. It is ok this time, but we are neighbors. You will be coming a lot. It is not practical to bring gift every time. You come tomorrow, you no bring.”

Tomorrow is the kitty party?

Yes. Nine o’clock.

And I can bring somebody?

Yes. One friend, he says, holding up an index finger.

He drives me past Diljesh’s house and tells me he is his best friend. “We share. If I have extra dal, I call him for dinner. He is good friend. Best friend. We do this park. He does money; I do plants.”

A few short blocks later, we are pulling up in front of the Defence Colony club. “It hard to find good friend. Good people. Most people selfish. Want money. You understand me?” He is emphatic about this point.

Yes.

A parking attendant opens my car door and we walk toward the building’s entrance. “This is called Defence Colony because retired military people live. You understand me? Colonels, military. You understand me?”

I think of the illuminated address sign across the street from me that announces that Colonel such and such lives there. Duh. Yes, I understand. Don’t know why I didn’t figure that one out on my own.

The building we walk into, then, is just like a VFW hall. It’s got a reception area with people milling around, a bar and a restaurant area, all modestly decorated, modestly priced.

We approach a conversation nook. Mister Kundari sits on a brown pleather couch in front of a coffee table; I take the adjacent chair. He motions for me to sit on the couch with him. I oblige, sitting at the far end.

He tells me he doesn’t come here as much as his wife does. The people here get offended too easily, and he is very honest, very straightforward.

A man approaches us and wants to know what we want to drink. “They have everything,” Mister Kundari says. “Whiskey, beer…” I’m waiting for him to say wine. I shouldn’t drink, feeling as icky as I do, but my opportunities to enjoy a nice glass of wine are so few and far between that I figure I’ll take advantage. “Whisky, beer, wine..” he says. Jackpot!

“I’d love some wine,” I say.

The waiter has laminated plastic menus for us. Mister Kundari asks what I like. Chicken? I tell him I’m “veg,” as they say here. “Veg?” he says, surprised. He has a confusing conversation with the waiter. I pick up the words crispy and Chinese. He asks me if that’s okay. Sounds good to me. He asks me if it’s okay that we have wine. He doesn’t want to force me. He never forces anybody. “It’s not good to force, especially alcohol,” he says. He tells me he never drinks very much. He has so much liquor at his house, but he only drinks it maybe once a week. He has no bad habits, he announces.

“Everybody has bad habits,” I challenge this notion, then regret it for the rest of the evening.

“You see,” he says, “Let’s leave sex out.” Then he proceeds to go on and on about the topic. I can’t believe he’s talking so loudly in the middle of the Indian Moose Club to a young white woman about sex. I expect someone to shoot a shocked glance our way, but no one does.

Sex is man’s one fault, he says. Men were made that way by God. If they didn’t have this fault, they would be perfect, then they would be a god too, but it’s not the case. Every man has the problem of wanting sex, even the Prime Minister who was caught in an affair. Even Jawaharlal Nehru. Do I know Jawaharlal Nehru?

I do. He was India’s first prime minister. There’s a poster of him above the phones on the second floor of the Ahuja Residency.

It doesn’t matter who you are. God gave you this fault. And it’s natural, and you can’t control it. You eat, and the food turns into energy and the energy turns into sex. It’s natural. You can’t control it. You understand me?

I don’t understand you at all. Are you saying you’re going to rape me tonight after we eat? I begin to calculate ways in which I can extricate myself from this situation. I don’t know that I could find my way home by myself. Defence Colony is a bunch of angled roads and circles that make me dizzy if I get more than a block away without leaving a breadcrumb trail.

“Me,” he says, “I no just have sex with any person. I need to get to know a person. To love them. To make relationship. I need love to sex. You understand me?” he says with his legs crossed and his arm propped along the top side of the couch.

I wonder how long his getting-to-know-you period lasts for Mister Kundari. Will crispy Chinese vegetables and a bottle of wine do the trick? I wonder if he is expecting payment for his generosity tonight. He is waiting for a reply. Do I argue with him? Do I tell him I don’t understand? Do I excuse myself to the bathroom and hide in there until he leaves?

“Yes,” I say, and shove a piece of cauliflower into my mouth, staring squarely at my metal plate full of vegetables.

“Okay,” he is satisfied. “Now you tell me about you. I told you about me. You tell me about you.”

“Oh, well…” I don’t have much to say after this. I consider telling him that in my culture we believe that men can control themselves, and men do control themselves, and when men don’t control themselves, it’s a crime and they get in big trouble. I consider telling him that I only have sex with my husband, but I can’t even bring myself to say the word out loud in public. It’s none of his business anyway.

Perhaps he senses my discomfort, because he finally changes the subject. How long will I be in India? What do I do with my evenings? I should come sit in his garden sometime. It’s very nice.

He is full of invitations. He will drive me and a friend to the Taj Mahal. I should come over for breakfast sometime. He will give me some garments before I go home. He has so many extras from his factory. I should go see it. I should also go with him to his temple on Sunday morning. He used to go every morning at 5 a.m., but now he only goes on Sundays. They feed the poor. He wants to show me what kind of man he is. This is an important thing I will remember for my whole life. Anybody can invite me for drinks. It’s nothing great. But I should come with him to his temple.

I go to church on Sundays, I politely decline his invitation.

“You will be back by seven thirty,” he says. “So you’ll go?”

“We’ll see,” I equivocate.

I ask about his children. He has two girls, and he registers no disappointment at that fact. They have done very well for themselves in business. They are scattered, he says: one in Estonia, the other in New York. He has travelled so much. He has been to Norway a hundred times. Very soon he will give me his mobile number so I can call him if I ever need anything.

I ask about the women from Iceland with whom he does business. I’m perplexed by his relationship with them. They must think he’s okay, if they exist, that is. He says they tell him, “Mister Kundari, you have to take us to the mountains!” He says they stayed over at his house one time because his whole second story is vacant and they hated the hotel they were at. They are coming the first week of September, he says. I can meet them.

I so want Mister Kundari to be a harmless, jolly old man who wants to make a foreigner feel welcome in his neighborhood and not a sexual predator. Why did he have to say those things? Why can’t I just make friends with men here? It seems this is a foreign concept. Or is it? Am I making too much of his explanation of man’s essential flaw? This is probably an everyday fact of life for him. It’s probably no big deal. It’s part of his religion, the way he grew up. That still doesn’t mean he regards me as out-of-bounds. That still doesn’t mean I’m safe with him. That still doesn’t mean his intentions toward me are platonic and not sexual, regardless of how badly I wish that were the case.

We walk out to his car and the attendant opens the door and closes it once I’m inside. Mister Kundari fumbles with some cassette tapes. “Tell me if you like this music,” he says. “You no understand the words, yes, but you may like music.”

I tell him it’s nice. I like a lot of Indian music that I’ve heard while I’ve been here.

“This is a love song,” he says, and begins to translate for me. “When we are in a room full of people, you don’t need to say anything to me. You tell me with your eyes. You tell me with your eyes. You understand me?”

Is he addressing this song to me, or is he just making sure I understand his English?

“We take a little drive,” he tells me, and I tell him I really have to get home. He has to get home, too, he says. He goes to bed at 9:30. It will just be five minutes. He will go to the end of the highway and make a u-turn.

I should tell him if I’m uncomfortable. He doesn’t want me to be uncomfortable. He is very straightforward, very honest. If I never want to see him again, I should just say so and he will never talk to me again. I’m not uncomfortable, am I?

I could just say I’m fine and then never talk to him again. That way there’d be no confrontation. But I still want Mister Kundari to be my friend. I want to have someone in the neighborhood who looks out for me.

I am uncomfortable, I say. We don’t talk about sex where I come from, and we certainly don’t have sex with people other than our spouses. There. I’ve spit it out.

“This was nothing,” he says. “I was just explaining to you, food turns into energy, energy turns into sex. This is how we believe. We were talking about bad habits and you said everybody has some.”

I’m not satisfied by his explanation. I’m not settled with the situation. I wish he’d brought his wife with us. I wish we could just be friends, but I’m not sure that’s a concept here.

We turn a corner and Mister Kundari asks me if I know where I am yet. I don’t. “Oh,” he laughs. “We are right here!” We are less than a block from the guest house. I recognize it only after we are almost pulling up beside it.

I thank him and tell him goodnight. He will see me tomorrow at the kitty party? I tell him yes, though I’m torn. I can bring a friend, so I wouldn’t be alone. Plus there will be other people around for the party. I would like to meet his wife and give him another chance.

Maybe everything will seem normal when there are other people around. Maybe I am making too big a deal out of what he said. Maybe I’m reading into everything too much. Maybe he has no idea how creepy he’s coming off. Maybe he is a nice man, the neighborhood horticulturalist, who just wants to be hospitable to the foreign girl.

Maybe?

We Don't Need No Biscuits

At breakfast the whole place is taken apart again. All the chairs are pulled away from the dining room table, and it’s filled with piles of bananas and bowls full of chopped mangoes—the red kind, again, the kind I don’t like. I hope the season isn’t ending for the juicy ones I love, but I fear it is.

Milling around the coffee tables are thirteen college students here for a study abroad semester. They will be staying at the Ahuja Residency until December. So this is the new way I will eat breakfast. Pachu seems a little concerned about me. He comes to the table to explain I should help myself, “Banana. Cornflake,” he says and smiles somewhat apologetically. This is fine. There’s everything I need right at my fingertips, and if I don’t feel like mango one morning, I can eat cornflake now instead. In fact, I do. The milk tastes strange, almost like it’s malted milk, but at least it’s not the icky red mango.

I overhear a few students ask the others what they’re doing today. One girl says she’s going to “explore.” I ask her if she’s been to a market yet. No. They just got here. They’re just going to walk around the Defence Colony today. They have wide eyes that say, “I can’t deal with much more than I’m already dealing with.” The hot water switch, the strange locks on the doors, the lack of clocks, the giant slugs and house lizards: all these things are still very new.

I tell them once they get settled, there’s a really great market nearby, Lajput Nagar, and they can take one of the autos to get there. “Are those those little green things?” they ask.

No, those are lizards, I think.

“Yes, the auto-rickshaws are those little green and yellow things.” I tell them the drivers know where to take them if they know the name of the place, and they’ll try to get more out of you, but the ride to Lajput is really cheap, so you have to bargain.

“How much should it cost?” they lean in with raised eyebrows.

“About 20 or 30 rupees,” I say. They are amazed. They gasp. They are adorable with their books and their trunks strewn about the balcony. They’ve pretty much taken over. There aren’t that many rooms in the Ahuja Residency. They’ve got to be pretty cramped.

I offer to take them to the market sometime if they want. I offer to show them how to deal with the auto-wallahs. And I say if they have any questions, I’m just upstairs. They can knock on my door any time. I get up to leave and about four of the girls ask my name at the same time.

“It’s Vicki,” I say. Vicki the house frau.

At lunch Amar and I discuss India’s Olympic coverage. Amar doesn’t like the Hindi commentators. They just describe what you’re seeing. “Here is a gymnast and now he’s slipped and fallen… I can see that,” Amar says.

It was like that at the monuments, I say too. The Hadimba Temple just said, “Here is a four-tiered structure with four roofs.”

Amar asks if I’ve heard of the story of the police accusing a man of murder and an affair and being wrong about it. This man’s daughter and servant were both killed. They came out and accused the man and arrested him the next day. They had no evidence. The man didn’t even get to participate in the funeral rites for his daughter. Then the equivalent of the FBI stepped in and exonerated the man, but it was too late. The press had already convicted him, Amar says.

They will print your name and the victims’ names with no hesitation.

I recall an article I saw in the paper a few weeks ago about a university president. The students at his college requested a co-educational dormitory and his response was to say that if they put in a co-ed dorm, they’ll need to build a maternity ward next to it.

The article had his picture in it and was on the front page of the Times of India. It was presented as a huge scandal, with quote after quote from disgruntled student saying how objectionable his reaction was. There was no voice given to the side of the university president. The article was pretty much an editorial on the front page, as was the photo and caption I saw two days ago. It showed a broken up street and was captioned in huge block letters, “You call this a road?” Underneath was a sentence about where the road was and how horrible it is. There is no line between editorial and news content here, not that there is much of a line in the United States, but we are much more subtle about presenting opinion as fact. Here, in India, there is no pretense.

I take a walk after lunch and avoid eye contact with everyone except the dogs. It is easier than I thought. I still can feel people stare at me, and see some strange looks out of the corners of my eyes, but it’s not as bad. Very near the office I see a little skin and bones dog who’s obviously just given birth. Her nipples are swollen. I wish I had some extra lunch to share with her. She looks so malnourished. I see a man sleeping in the back of his auto-rickshaw. He is resting his head on a metal pole. It looks so uncomfortable. Not to mention that it’s near 100 degrees today. These sleeping wallahs are a common sight, though. It seems people can sleep anywhere in India. Yesterday as we were turning into the Defence Colony, I saw a man on the side of the road, pavement all busted up around him, just lying there, resting.

At home, the college kids are congregating inside the front gate. There is an Indian man looking like he’s in charge. They are all going somewhere as a group. They are being taken care of. They don’t need a house frau. Their experience will be organized, guided, administered. I am jealous of the guidance they are receiving, of the company and companionship they have, but I have other things. Freedom, for one. A sense of accomplishment at managing on my own, for another. And time to think and write about my experiences. It’s a trade off.

In the market I buy a cake for Mister Kundari at the Defence Colony Bakery where I get my rum balls and lemon tarts. I figure it will be polite to present him with something tomorrow in exchange for his invitation to the club.

I walk over to Moets where Amar likes to eat. In front of the restaurant there is a sign, “Have your kitty party here.” Kitty party? As in cats? Now I am even more confused by my invitation. Moets’ prices are even more expensive than Liquid Kitchen, so I decide to try the North Indian version of my favorite place: Sagar. There are two Sagars within a few doors of each other in this market. The one I always eat at is South Indian. I’ve never tried the North Indian until now.

At Sagar, I order malai kofta. It is nothing like the malai kofta I know from the restaurant in Iowa City. Troublingly, it has the appearance of dog vomit: partially digested and reconstituted dog food. It is a tribute to its taste that I eat every bite of it despite its appearance.

There are two couples dining together next to me. They talk about their driver listening to Punjabi music and bopping his head around while they were driving over a landslide. “Just drive the car, buddy,” the Asian man with the American accent says. It seems I’ve had a quintessentially Indian experience with my 24-hour road trip.

After dinner, they present a hot bowl of water with a lemon in it to me. It takes a second, but then I figure out this is to rinse my hands in. I wish this happened to me after every Indian dinner because when you eat with your hands, they get gloppy.

I’m still hungry, so I order the only dessert I haven’t yet tried at Sagar. I try to ask the waiter what it is, but I know I have to try it to understand. “Like Jello?” he says.

When it comes, it is not much like Jello at all, and I’m glad. It’s more like a very dense cake, filled with aromatic, sweet spices like clove and bits of fruit. Even though I’m quite full about half way through, I eat the whole thing. Another hungry day complete.

I walk out of the restaurant into the warm evening woozy from all the spices, carrying Mister Kundari’s cake with me.

As I near his house, I start looking for Acha, Baby and Baloo, then I spot them. They are lined up outside his garden wall eating on three large piles of something that smells like corned beef hash. I smile knowing they’re not going hungry tonight.

No wonder they don’t like my biscuits.

Stealer of Hearts

Pictures: The "very dangerous animal" from the zoo and the garden that Mr. Kundari and his friend Diljesh tend by my guesthouse.

Tuesday at breakfast there is a crowd. The chairs are all pulled out from the dining room table, and breakfast is piled up on it. Pachu tells me, “Breakfast. Take.” Today is buffet style help yourself.

I wonder how long these people will be staying. Most people, it seems, are just here for a day or two—except for the sulky Japanese guy. He’s still here, I think; though most days, he’s late for breakfast.

After breakfast I go upstairs to my room. I have about a half hour until the driver’s due, so I do a little blogging. At 9:04, I pack up and walk downstairs. Palminder should be here by now, but there has been no knock on my door and no call to let me know he’s arrived.

Downstairs I find that Palminder is waiting but no one told me. I get in the backseat and we’re off to work.

On the corner of the block the office is on, there is a tent set up and a bunch of painted plywood. “Caution,” it says, “Deep sewer rehabilitation in progress.” I wonder what this means. It sounds scary. I hope the toilets work. Later, when I’m using one, I glance into the bowl hoping the deep rehabilitation didn’t scare up one of those “very dangerous animals” that Sonu pointed out to me in the sewer at the zoo. All is clear.

The most remarkable thing that happens at work is that I learn about spinach. Just like the Eskimos supposedly have a hundred words for snow, the Indians have over a hundred varieties of spinach. They are shocked when I tell them we just have spinach. We don’t have this kind or that kind? Soma wants to know. Not as far as I’m aware. We just have spinach. There are also all kinds of edible gourds used frequently in dishes here that I’ve never heard of.

At lunch, Amar tells me that the Defence Colony is not as posh as it used to be. The streets are broken up and it’s more crowded. “The shops are still expensive,” he says, and he’s right. “But it’s not as posh as, say, Greater Kailesh.” Ah ha! So Greater Kailesh is posh. That’s where Julianne lives, and also Susie’s boss with the cockroach problem. Cockroaches must not respect poshness.

After work I decide to walk to the market again. I think I’ll eat at Liquid Kitchen again today. I’ll splurge and spend a whole ten dollars on dinner.

I meet up with my dog pals on the way. As I’m squatting and petting Acha, I notice a shadow cast over me. “Is there something wrong with this dog?”

I look up and see an older man in a maroon turban and short-sleeved, blue collared shirt.

“No,” I say. “I just like dogs.”

“This is my house. I live here,” he says, referring to the pink square building behind the stucco wall I am squatting in front of.

“Well I hope I’m not bothering you. I hope you don’t mind,” I say.

“No,” he chuckles. “You really love doggie.”

“Yes, I really love dogs,” I affirm.

“Come,” he says. “I show you garden. Come!” And he teeters off through his iron gate, making sure I am close behind.

“I’ve walked past here many times and admired your garden,” I tell him. It’s true. In fact, his garden and all the discarded, shattered clay pots in front of his wall were the landmarks I first seized upon to help me find my way to and from the market.

“Here, look,” he says, and points to an ornately crafted bonsai composition with rocks and miniature trees all mounted to a curvy flat rock base. His garden wall is lined with dozens of these. “All rocks from mountains. I find all rocks. Look! Looks like animal,” he says and points to a rock that does resemble a hawk or some other bird of prey. “Look! Look like bird.” He points to another one. “Look like leopard.”

“Beautiful,” I tell him. His garden is so manicured. There are red clay statues of dragons and closely trimmed bushes. It is a work of art.

“You come, you sit. Nice to sit in evening in garden,” he tells me. “Gopi! Gopi!” he tilts back his head and yells. A young woman in a flowing yellow sari appears. He speaks to her in Hindi, then tells me to follow him through the open door of his house. We walk into his bedroom, where he retrieves a book on bonsai gardening and opens to a particular page.

“This page here, this man, most famous bonsai gardener. This picture not clear. Come.” He takes me back out to his garden and shows me his bonsai sculpture resembling the bird one more time. “This picture not so clear. This,” he points to his creation, “very clear.”

“Yes,” I say. His rock does more clearly resemble a bird. He is correct.

“Gopi! Gopi!” he yells again, and the beautiful young woman appears wordlessly with a tray of beverages. “You like lemon water?” he says, then hands me a glass. I take it and drink. It’s very tasty.

He’s been to the United States, he tells me. He went to New York then took a week long cruise to the Bahamas. “One week on boat, fourteen stories high,” he tells me. Big boat, I say.

“I am Mister Kundari,” he says, putting one hand proudly on his chest and extending the other to me.

I shake, my hand still dirty from petting the dogs. “I’m Vicki.” I don’t want to try to have him say Krajewski. I think I might be kicked out of the garden for such a puzzlement.

We sit down and talk a bit laboriously in English. He asks what I’m doing in India and has a hard time understanding that I’m working on school books. He is in the garment business. He does trade with people all over the world. He is very excited to tell me he has two international buyer women friends from Iceland who are “just like you.” By “just like you,” I think he means white. They are coming here in September to stay for a month or two. He will introduce me to them, he says.

He also invites me to a kiddie party he’s having at his house on the 24th. “You come. You come. Is food. Is chicken. Is paneer.” I don’t know if the etiquette is to refuse this invitation or accept it, so I’m kind of vague in my reaction. I wonder what a kiddie party is in India. Will there be small children? Can I come without one? This man is too old to have small children of his own. Where will the kiddies come from?

His friend drops by and joins us in the garden. Diljesh, it turns out, is my next door neighbor. He lives in C-82 right behind the Ahuja Residency. He has a blue turban, a fluffy salt and pepper beard, and a rounded, jolly face. He is the president of the horticultural society in Defence Colony. The park that is adjacent to the Ahuja Residency is maintained by these two gentleman. It’s a lovely, very manicured park.

Diljesh tells me his name means “heart” (dil) and “one who steals it” (jesh). He is in marketing and his son shares the business with him. I ask if his son lives nearby. His son, and his son’s family, lives with him. When he was in the United States, he says, a woman was shocked to hear this news. “One kitchen, one house,” he repeats. “One kitchen, one house.” I know it’s common for families in India to share a household—only because Angshuman explained this to me at the Macroeconomics book launch (right after I threw a tampon on the floor).

During my conversation with Diljesh, Mister Kundari’s cell phone has rung. He stands up apologizing. He must go. He has to leave now or else the store will be closed. I can go with them if I like.

That’s okay, I say. I was just on my way to the market.

Then I should come, “day after tomorrow” at eight o’clock. Mister Kundari will show me the club in Defence Colony. “Eight o’clock? Day after tomorrow?”

It’s a date, Mister Kundari. Actually, it’s not a date and I feel, this time, that this is clear. Mister Kundari is fatherly. His wife has been milling around the whole time we’ve talked. He’s used to doing business with women from different countries. I think Mister Kundari is all right.

I walk out the gate and towards the market. Mister Kundari thinks I’m lost. He points the way back to the Ahuja Residency. I remind him I’m going to dinner.

“Okay,” he smiles. “Day after tomorrow.”

I walk to Liquid Kitchen repeating the names of my two new friends. I need to start taking my notebook with me so I can have it for occasions like this. The palace guard opens the door and they seat me at a table set for six. I am the only customer. It’s still early by Indian standards: just approaching eight o’clock.

Sweet incense is burning, scenting the air. A chic Buddha head watches over my table. I go upstairs to wash my hands and the large circle of wait staff again parts like the red sea.

Downstairs I eat my delicately spiced Chinese pickle and kimchee with the chopsticks set at the table, then order a mushroom ravioli dish with eggplant sauce. It comes with grated parmesan over the top. I am sensing a theme.

They bring me little wedges of bread with my main course, and I find myself using the bread to pick up the eggplant pieces. I am eating my pasta like an Indian: with my hands. Your fork! Your fork! I think. Remember how to use a fork? I pick it up and it feels foreign, clumsy. Indians eat everything with their hands, and I guess I’ve gotten used to it. Thanks to Liquid Kitchen, I have not completely lost my western table manners.

I notice crème brulee on the dessert menu. I want to make these guys use a blow torch, I think, and order it. “Madam, we don’t have,” my waiter tells me. He recommends a Chinese tapioca dish instead. I take his recommendation. A few minutes later, he brings me a martini glass full of dessert. The top layer is a coconut sauce with hot rice noodles. Underneath is a layer of chopped cashews and a light strawberry sauce. It is like no dessert I’ve had before, and I’m glad the place was out of crème brulee. This dessert is amnesia inducing. I think I’ve even forgotten Mister Kundari’s friend’s name. I know it means stealer of hearts, but my heart belongs to the Chinese tapioca in front of me.

Maybe I can look up his name in my Hindi dictionary when I get home.

Dead Kites and Live Lizards

Monday morning my temporarily functioning alarm clock goes off. I close my eyes for five more minutes, then open them an hour later. Somehow I’ve overslept. It’s a good thing I allow myself an extra hour in the mornings. I get up and Skype with Scott and my mom. We’re talking about a possible vacation to Disney World when I get back. Disney World, so clean, with all the trash picked up regularly and the sidewalks free from rubble. This is the part of Disney World that I look forward to the most right now.

At breakfast I eat my mango and toast with tea. It’s the good kind of mango today and I am so pleased to have it again. It’s the kind that turns to a quenching, sweet juice before you even get it into your mouth. They bring a small metal container of sugar for the tea and tiny bugs crawl in and around it. This challenges my appetite. I’m glad I finished the mango before the tea arrived.

There’s an article in paper today about how common counterfeit money is in Delhi, and if you get it out of an ATM machine, not only are you short on the cash you should have received, but you can get in trouble with the law. In other words, it’s your fault, not the bank’s fault for stocking their machine with bad bills, or the criminal’s fault for creating them. All I can do is hope this doesn’t happen to me.

Palminder arrives right on time. He skips the song on his CD that Sonu used to play over and over. I wonder if this CD is one of the discs I bought when Sonu took me to the store at Khan Market. I haven’t felt like hearing Punjabi music yet in my guesthouse room, so I haven’t played it. By the time I get to my room at the end of my day, I’m usually all Indian-ed out. I usually just want my BBC News and Hallmark Channel horribleness. I’m considering hoarding the CDs and letting them be a surprise when I get home—not listening to them until I’m back in the United States.

On the way into the office, I can see the leftovers from Independence Day. In the crumbling brick village across the street from Akshardam Temple, the power and utility lines are strewn with defeated kites. The people in this village build their homes from discarded bricks. There are no roofs, no plumbing, no electricity. The homes are simply leaning stacks of bricks.

I’m glad to be back in the office, back to my Indian routine. Everyone I see on the way in asks how the trip was; they all know about the twenty-four hour bus ride. Word travels fast here. Jonaki says this was courtesy of ABC: the Amar Broadcasting Channel. I tell my coworkers, and I mean it, that the trip was beautiful and I’m glad I went. I just saw a little more of the mountains than I bargained for.

As I’m typing, I notice the little battery icon in the bottom right tray of my computer screen. It shouldn’t be there. I’m plugged in. I climb under my desk and rattle the plug. The adapter seems okay, but who knows. Everything’s been a little out of whack since my trip. Maybe it got slammed around and broke somewhere between here and Manali and Simla and Chandigarrh.

I interrupt Amar in his office to tell him about my laptop. I’m a little panicked. If I can’t figure out the power issue, my computer will be dead in forty minutes. He gives me his power source. If it works, then we can assume that my problem is my adapter or my power source. I plug in my machine with Amar’s power source, but it doesn’t work. Then I try a different outlet across the office. That doesn’t work either. All the while, my computer is running out of battery. I try to keep my cool. I return to Amar with my dire prognosis. He says to check the Dell website to see if my machine is still under warranty. He’ll come out and look at it in five minutes.

I find the website and enter my service tag number. My computer’s warranty expired in March of this year. I consider what my life will be like without a computer for the foreseeable future. No Skype. No blogging. No work? This isn’t good. I’m going to be bored out of my mind.

30 minutes left until my machine is dead forever. I save a bunch of stuff onto the flash drive I bought at Nehru place yesterday. I think, I can blog on the machine in the common area, then backup the files on my flash drive. At least I can do that.

Amar walks out and asks if I’ve restarted my machine. Yes. I’ve tried that. He plugs and unplugs it, then he stands back and studies the situation. Without doing a thing he announces, “You don’t have to worry. I’ve fixed it.”

“You have?” I ask, doubtful.

He hits a switch on the wall behind my computer. The battery icon disappears. My computer is running on power from the outlet again. The battery is charging.

You have to turn the outlet on.

I had worked this long without realizing that you could turn the outlet off because it’s just been left on the whole time I’ve been here. Someone apparently thought to switch it off while I was on vacation.

We laugh long and hard. “You’re not going to let me live this one down, are you, Amar?”

“No,” he laughs.

It’s still an hour to our 1:30 lunchtime and my stomach rumbles. I walk over to Shabnum’s desk. “Are there any vending machines in this building?”

No. That was one of the items on the wish list for Vivek. We can walk to one of the vendors in the estate, though, she tells me. They sell potato chips and biscuits. They sell samosas, too, but those usually give even Shabnum a tummy ache and she doesn’t recommend them.

At lunch, he tells me that he was a little bit worried about me on my trip. He tried to call Jonaki but her cell phone wasn’t working. “We can go anywhere,” he tells me, “we don’t have to worry, but you have to be a little careful.” I tell him I know. I think of the car in the Defence Colony last night. Where can I go without stirring ire? The office seems to be the only place. And maybe the American Embassy.

After lunch, Jonaki, Shabnum and Soma are standing around the outside door. I join them so as to defrost a bit. The air conditioner seems to be working overtime today. A grey-haired man with a gold watch steps outside with a smoke between his fingers. This is Suproto, the former CEO, who is now working in London. He just moved there in March. His poor dog is still in quarantine and will have to remain there for a full six months. I’m glad I didn’t bring any of my pets with me to India. They’d have ended up in a similar clink back in the States, I am sure. It doesn’t make any sense. Why quarantine the animals when you don’t quarantine the people? We apparently get all the same worms and parasites, at least according to Susie we do.

Suproto talks about the quality of the production of recent books, then looks at me soberly and says, “I’ve heard about your blog.”

Who hasn’t?

The afternoon passes quickly and I finally finish editing my chapter on international finance—only to get another, longer chapter on international finance.

I’m having a hungry day. I was hungry before lunch and now I find myself starving again. Since it’s almost seven o’clock when I get home, I decide to walk to the market and try out the thali at Sagar once again: this is the meal that comes with the balloon-looking UFO bread. If there’s anything that can stifle hunger around here, it’s the thali at Sagar.

On my out the door to the market, I grab some cookies to share with Baloo and Acha and Baby (the newest dog who likes my pets). Only Baby is interested in the treats. Baloo and Acha just want love.

The thali is as good as I remember it being; it wasn’t just the shock of the UFO bread that bewitched me. So many flavors. I wish I was a food writer so I could say what half the spices were that I tasted in those dishes.

On the walk home I see something out of the corner of my eye. Is it a bird? It’s a very dark colored bird if it is. No, wait. It’s a bat. And there’s another. And another. And, oh. There are a gaggle or a murder or a flock or whatever you call a whole herd of bats. Can it be that they’re always around and I never noticed them before?

Don’t make eye contact, I think; then I think, no, wait, that’s for the men. Bats are blind. You can look at them all you want. Just hope their sonar is functional and they don’t crash into your head. They’re really flying all around me. I’d like to stay and watch them because I like bats, but I can’t find a place that seems at a safe distance from them, so I keep walking slowly ahead, not making any sudden movements.

Back at my room, I turn on my outside light and wander onto my balcony. On the far wall I see my little lizard. I haven’t seen him out here for weeks. Then I think I see why. He has a very stubby little tail. He has had a close encounter with a bird, I think; a near death experience, but he lives to tell about it, a little more skittish than before, but alive nevertheless.

On Hoarding and Hate

Sunday I skip breakfast in favor of sleeping in and talking with Scott. At 9:15, Julianne and Susie knock at my door. The auto is waiting outside to take us to the Delhi Bible Fellowship service. Susie checks out my room. She hasn’t been here before. It’s nice, she says. It’s cool. It feels like I have central a/c. Pretty posh, I say.

Susie slept over at Julianne’s last night because she wound up there too late at night to take an auto home. It really makes me think I should have stayed at Susie’s the other night when I had my necrosis-catching late night auto-rickshaw ride in which I almost got dropped off in the middle of nowhere. There are things you can do in the United States with no problem that no woman should attempt by herself here. There are places where women should never go by themselves, day or night. It’s a strange concept to me. If I were a man, I’d be able to travel a lot more freely around the city. But because I’m a woman, and a white woman at that, I need to be careful. There are things I can’t do and places I can’t go. I’ve never felt this limitation before, and it takes some getting used to.

At church, the regular pastor is still ill. The good story-telling Indian man is back. His sermon is hard to summarize. He starts out talking about how God is the only constant, the only authority we should rely on, then gives us some extended analysis of a story in the book of Samuel, which I never knew existed.

After the service, I talk a lot to Ruth. Ruth has, like, eight daughters. Two of them just went back to the United States to start college. Needless to say, she’s very motherly. I think Ruth can see that I’m still feeling a little homesick. She asks how long I’ll be here for. I tell her three months. She says three months can go quickly or it can seem like a long time. The compassion in her eyes almost makes me weep. Right now, to me, three months seems like forever.

Susie, Julianne and I leave church. We’re going to Julianne’s for lunch today, but before we go, Susie has to run some errands for work. She has to get some certificates printed off and then has to have her boss stamp them. We take an auto to the Nehru Place Market. I know this market only because I pass the front side of it on my way to the Lotus Temple. There’s a big movie theatre there. The auto drops us off on the back side of the market. This is the place to come for anything related to computers, Julianne tells me. Women should never come here by themselves, Susie says. That’s why she wanted to come here with us today. Most of the stalls are shuttered closed. Refuse blows through the square. A man tries to sell us bootleg DVDs. Susie says she’s looking for an ink cartridge. He says all he has are movies. The market is largely empty. Up a staircase, we find two shops selling CDs and flash drives and other computer peripherals. The vendors have a little price war while we’re shopping. My flash drive is suddenly 50 rupees cheaper from the vendor next door. So are Susie’s headphones.

We walk back down the staircase past a sleeping dog. Here Susie finds a print shop. They take over an hour to print and cut out her certificates. Her and Julianne worked on these last night. They’re for the trainees Susie works with in her “accent neutralization” and cultural sensitivity practice.

By the time the printing is done, it’s almost two o’clock. We are all starving. We still have to go to Susie’s boss’ house and have him put the company stamp on the certificates. Steve’s house is in Greater Kailesh, the same colony that Julianne lives in. We find his apartment and his wife, Cindy, invites us in and offers us water. They just moved in, so it’s kind of empty looking. They still need some furniture. As Cindy shows us around, a giant cockroach scrambles across the floor and she smashes it. Its legs continue kicking. Susie is signing the certificates along with Steve, who then stamps them. As Julianne and I wait, I see another even larger cockroach scurry right over Susie’s bare foot. Julianne points it out and Cindy smashes this one too. She says it’s a problem because they live on the first floor. The bugs come in through the drain, especially when it’s rainy. I’m glad I don’t live on the first floor. I’m glad I don’t have a drain in my apartment. I’m glad I just have friendly ants to keep me company at the Ahuja Residency.

At Julianne’s, we order pizza from Pizza Hut. Julianne has a hard time ordering because they keep trying to get her to buy things she doesn’t want. Then they ask for two different phone numbers to confirm the order. Finally, she is able to get the two medium pizzas we want. While we wait for lunch to arrive, Julianne offers cookies she made last night. Then she pours me a glass of juice. Then she wants to know if I like Good ‘n’ Plenty licorice. Her mother sent a package. I think at first that she doesn’t like licorice and she’s trying to get rid of it, but this is not the case. She is just so generous that she’d share a rare treat sent from home. This totally flies in the face of my hoarding instinct. What sweet friends I have in India, I think.

The pizza actually approximates pizza. I’m very excited when Julianne even brings out a container of parmesan cheese. As we eat, we talk about dental care in India. Susie knows a good dentist. We talk about my driver situation. I say I don’t think I know the truth of the situation. Sonu tells me he’s coming back on August 28th, but Ms. Sonu says nothing about this. Someone must be wrong. Julianne says that lying is completely acceptable in India if it helps somebody save face. She also says that Ms. Sonu might have made up the whole stealing thing completely. You have to have a good enough reason to fire someone here. You can’t just let your domestic help go because they’re not doing a good enough job. The problem has to be severe. Further, if you move or leave, you’re responsible for finding them another job, for making sure they’re okay. Susie says she’ll have to do this for her “house helper” when she moves back to the States.

So was Ms. Sonu trying to save my face by telling me that Sonu was stealing? Did she know how inappropriate our relationship was? She could have. Sonu called her and asked if it would be okay if I emailed pictures of us to her so he could print them out. It would certainly have been awkward were she to have told me that she was firing Sonu because he loves me.

There is, as there always is these days, another downpour. Still, Susie and I need to get going. Julianne gives me a piece of pizza to take home, loans us both umbrellas. We walk out to the road, dodging deep puddles, to catch our little green autos. Just when it seems that none will pass, a wallah pulls over. He doesn’t want to drive to Malviya Nagar where Susie lives, but he’ll take me home for 40 rupees. It should cost 20, but the wallahs double their prices when it’s raining. I’m getting wetter by the minute, and there are so few autos around, that I decide to pay the extra 20 rupees. I give Julianne her umbrella back and jump in. The back seat is wet and getting wetter. I resign myself to having to completely change my outfit and dry off when I get home. I accept the wetness.

Back at home, it’s a little after five. My guesthouse room feels a little lonely. I dry off and see that the laundry I set out for Mira and Pachu this morning is strung along the fence adjacent to my balcony. There are my underpants and my jeans, in the pouring rain. I guess they’ll be extra clean when I get them back this time.

The rain finally stops and birds land on my clothing to puff the water from their feathers. I watch them and hope they don’t poop. After a while, I decide to walk to the market.

Acha is wagging her tail in her usual spot on the side of the road. I pet her until she tires of the attention and crawls under a nearby car for a nap.

In the market, I try to find milk but have to ask for it. It is unrefrigerated, in a box. I also go to the Defence Colony Bakery and get my favorites: a rum ball and a lemon tart.

As I walk home, cars honk and swerve past me. A man rolls down his window and drawls ominously, “Leave my country.” He doesn’t pause for a response. Thankfully, he just drives on into the dusk.

After my initial shock, my first instinct is to say “Gladly!” I think of the cockroaches at Steve and Cindy’s house and the bugs in my sugar. I think of my necrosis. I think of the hole-in-the-ground toilets and the crumbling roadways and the crowded markets and the rude wallahs and the white tax I have to pay everywhere I go. “Just get me out of here, please!” I want to tell this man. Perhaps he’ll give me a ride to the airport, but he is long gone.

I know the stares I get from people when I walk around are unfriendly, and maybe I’m naïve, but I didn’t imagine this kind of antagonistic sentiment behind them. I wonder how many people I’ve passed who thought this but haven’t said it. Do the people at my guesthouse resent me too, I wonder? Is this what all the men in the industrial estate by my office are thinking when they scowl at me? The people at Sagar are never very friendly to me, no matter how many times I eat there. Do they also wish I weren’t here? How many people want me gone, want me out of their country?

All I want to do is understand this culture; I’m not here to destroy anything or change anything or dominate anything. All I want to do is appreciate the gulf of difference between what I know and where I am, but history and politics proceed me in my visit. There are people who hate me because I’m white, because of what I represent to them. I can’t change this fact. I guess I just have to accept this too.

Just as I’ve received a drive-by “I love you,” I have now also received a drive-by “I hate you.” I guess it’s only appropriate, but it still leaves me feeling a bit unsettled.

Back at the Ahuja Residency, I eat my lemon tart right after my leftover pizza for dinner. The rum ball, I save for later. I still haven’t overcome my hoarding instincts.

Acceptance

Today is Rakhi, a traditional Indian festival wherein girls tie bracelets around their brothers’ wrists and the boys promise to protect the girls in return for the gesture.

I told Palminder to pick me up at 11 today. I’m not sure why, or where I’ll go. I just thought it would be good to get out of the house for a bit. I consider calling him up and cancelling, though, just staying in and chaining myself to my computer. Although, wouldn’t a little break at the Lotus Temple be restorative?

I roll out of bed and Skype with Scott. His microphone keeps going out. We bemoan the inconstancy of our technology. How is it that a machine can work one second, then not the next, then suddenly repair itself and work again? It’s a machine. It’s not supposed to have mood swings. It’s supposed to either work or be broken.

Downstairs I am served the icky red mango once again. Once again, I don’t have much of an appetite, but force it down just for the calories’ sake. I should’ve packed some multivitamins with me for occasions like this. Actually, I think I’ve been eating healthier in India than at home. There are so many vegetables. I told Jonaki my nails have been growing faster since I’ve been here. She said, “Of course they are. You’re full of beans.”

I’m full of beans.

An article in the paper features a Bollywood sweetheart and a giant quote, “I won’t tie a rakhi bracelet.” It’s an interview with her where she roundly rejects the tradition. She doesn’t need the protection of any man, she says. She’ll never tie a rakhi.

Back in my room, the computer is ringing again. It’s Scott calling back. He didn’t want me to think he was crabby with me. He was crabby with the computer. I tell him I knew that. Then I tell him I’ve got a big blister on the back of my ankle. Sitting on my knees I can see that it’s bleeding and raw. In addition to not packing multivitamins, I also neglected to bring band-aids. I never need band aids. But now, suddenly, I do. I’ll have to tell Palminder to take me to the chemists, I tell Scott. I can’t just wash the wound in tap water, I learned from Susie’s Qut’b Minar toe incident. I’ll have to get betadyne. If Sonu was my driver, I tell Scott, he’d go the chemists with me and make sure I got everything I needed. He’d probably even bandage my foot for me.

Yeah, because he loves you.

Point. Counterpoint. Forget I mentioned it. I can manage my own bandage.

When I’m done discussing my wound, I tell Scott that my time here is almost half over. I’m half way home. He says I can’t think like that. I have to enjoy myself while I’m here or it’ll end up feeling like torture. Time will drag on. I’ll be miserable. I know this is objectively true, but I still cry when he says goodbye. Then I feel like kicking myself in the ass. Buck up already. It’s getting old.

When we hang up, it’s 11 o’clock, but there is no call from downstairs to let me know that Palminder is here. I wait until about twenty after, then call Palminder’s cell phone. “Madam, I am at guest house waiting for you!” he tells me.

“Nobody told me, Palminder,” I tell him.

“Sorry madam,” he says. I didn’t want to make him apologize. I walk downstairs to find him patiently waiting, parked by the white metal gate of C-83.

“Palminder, I’d like to go to the Lotus Temple, but we have to go to the chemists first,” I tell him. We take the short drive from the Ahuja Residency to the Defence Colony Market and Palminder stops in front of a chemists, parking the car just a few spots away.

Inside the cramped little store, I walk to the back counter and ask for band-aids. There is a pause. The two men look a bit confused until I whip out my bloody ankle. Then they know what to do. The first man fishes out gauze. I ask for something to clean the wound with. He produces a tube of betadyne. Then I ask for something with which to stick the gauze to my leg. He produces a roll of Johnson and Johnson’s medical tape. He writes up the prices of these items on a small paper bag and sends me to the front counter to pay. Notice I do not say register. There are no cash registers in India: only drawers with dubious amounts of change strewn and folded haphazardly in them. Thankfully, this time, I have the exact amount: 107 rupees.

On my way out of the store, there is a woman with a little girl, all dressed up with bows in her hair and a little ruffled dress. Another woman tells her now nice she looks. “Thank you,” the mother says. “She’s all dressed up for Rahki.” I want to tell the little girl, “You don’t have to tie a rakhi! You don’t need a man to protect you! I just read it in The Times of India.” Instead I just walk past.

I find Palminder’s car outside. He tells me, “Ten rupees.” There is a man standing there, waiting for payment. “Ten rupees. Park.”

I am now thoroughly confused. I thought Palminder was paying for my parking. I consider asking him about this, but I don’t want to make a big deal in front of the insistent man waiting for his ten rupees. I guess Palminder only pays for parking sometimes, like my clock only works sometimes and my Internet only works sometimes and my hot water only works sometimes. I wonder if he’s just gotten wise to the scam of having his fare pay for the parking and keeping the reimbursed cash. I wonder if Sonu wasn’t ripping me off after all and the times that Palminder paid for parking were some strange case. Then I think: the times Palminder paid, I had an Indian friend in the car with me. Shabnum was with me. The one time that Sonu paid was when Palminder was in the car with us. I think this scam must be reserved for when the white girl is alone and doesn’t know any better than to protest. I think: next time, I will ask Palminder to pay. And if he doesn’t, I’ll call Ms. Sonu and ask her what the case should be, not that she’ll tell me the truth.

As we pull out of the market, it starts to rain. I tell Palminder we have to go back to Ahuja and get my umbrella. I’ve left it at home. He tells me, “Madam, this car, umbrella.” I can use the umbrella in the trunk of the cab.

“Okay,” I say, and we proceed in the direction of the Lotus Temple. On the way, I puncture the tube of betadyne and dop the orange glop onto my ankle. I tear off some gauze, quite unevenly, then I try to tear off a piece of tape. It won’t come apart. I have to gnaw at it with my teeth. In addition to not packing multivitamins or band-aids, I didn’t bring scissors with me. The list of missing essentials seems long today.

Eventually, I tear the tape and plaster it to my foot. Had I been raised by Frankenstein or wolves, this would resemble a proper band-aid to me. As such is not the case, it doesn’t look so good to me, but it is functional. It keeps the back of my shoe from further irritating the blister.

At the Lotus Temple, Palminder starts to pull up to the side of the road where the man charges for parking. There’s free parking behind it, I tell him. “Free parking?” he asks, then pulls the car into the free parking lot. Did he know it was there? He didn’t need my directions once I told him about it. These games are so tiresome.

He pops out of the car and fetches the large umbrella with the wooden handle from the trunk. It’s not raining, but it might start again, and the temple is a long walk from the free parking lot. As I swing the umbrella and walk between the small, manicured bushes, I realize this is my first time at the Lotus Temple alone. I take off my shoes and give them to the shoe check guy alone. I get the token that will allow me to get my shoes back and, this time, I have to keep track of it. Sonu has done this for me each time I’ve been here.

At the entrance, a long line of people forms and the attendants give their speech in Hindi, then English, even though I am the only white person there. I want to tell them, it’s okay, I know the drill. You can’t talk at all once you are inside. You can’t take any pictures. You have to turn your cell phone off.

This time I get to pick my seat instead of following Sonu to where he thinks is best. I sit where I sat the first time I came and heard that bird that I thought was a recording and felt that cool breeze. Today, there is a breeze as well. It comes from between the marble steps and hits the benches on the far side of the temple.

I fold my bare feet into the lotus position and close my eyes. I am relieved to be here. Relieved to feel the sense of well being I’ve felt each time I’ve visited. I’ve been so frayed and unraveled from the experience of my trip, and now I can let all of that go.

I halfheartedly form the question about my soul that I thought of while I was at Raju’s. What is my soul? Where is it? What does it look like? But I am too tired. I don’t want an answer right now. I just want to sit and feel the Lotus Temple around me. I just want to sit and feel… good. I feel embraced, peaceful, filled up instead of empty and searching. There is more time for bigger questions. Today all I need and all I get is one word: acceptance.

More than the issue of control or non-control of events, acceptance is necessary for happiness. Acceptance is what the lady from Mumbai was smiling about, not a lack of control. We can make the best possible choices for ourselves with the limited information we have, we can control what we can, but whatever the outcome, wherever we find ourselves, we need acceptance. Without it, life is struggle. Life is only longing. Life is painful.

I accept that I just spent 24 hours on a bus. I accept landslides. I accept rain. I accept that it is mid-August and I won’t be going home until October. I accept that I won’t see my husband or my family or my pets for many more weeks. I accept my situation. I accept my life, and suddenly there is peace. No struggle. No fight. Just peace.

This is that mantra they make alcoholics repeat, isn’t it? “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It’s not just about rolling over and accepting everything, but it is about not causing yourself undue grief in the face of unchanging circumstances. It’s about not wasting time and effort on worrying. It’s about being deliberate and rational and working to change things you don’t like instead of fretting about them.

I’ve seen it a million times. I think they even put it on coffee mugs at the Hallmark store. So why does it make sense to me only now? Why did I need my head squeezed like a depressurized saline bottle for this to have real meaning for me? Because words are only words until they’re lived and felt.

I hate when I feel the limitations of writing. I felt it when I was at Raju’s and Jonaki started painting the hillside. I felt it when I looked at the pictures I was taking and couldn’t come close to describing them in any detail. Rocks and sky and water. My words were so clunky compared to what I saw and breathed and heard and smelled while I was there. It’s okay, though. If one mode of expression were sufficient, we’d have a boring world. It’s the shortcomings of every art form that lead to the creation of others. There was a letter at the Roerich museum reflecting upon this phenomenon, and now I feel it’s truth as well.

On my way out of the temple, I notice that they’re in the middle of changing the brass plaques that hold the quotes. I’m so glad I copied down the quotes I saw on my earlier visits. I had no idea they changed them out. It seems that the way those quotes spoke to me on past visits is even more fortuitous than I thought.

The only plaque installed on this visit seems also to speak directly to the homesickness I’ve been dealing with as a result of my trip to the mountains and disrupted routine. It says, “Oh son of man, Sorrow not save that thou art far from us. Rejoice not save that thou art drawing near and returning to us.”

I think about this for a while. It’s hard not to think that the “us” are some little green aliens of someone else’s very different belief system. But if I can get past that, the question of distance is one that I’ve been tripping on. What if I think about distance from God instead of distance from my family? If I think about this, I realize that there is no distance at all. Distance is moot. God is with me and in me, as he is with and in my family as well. We are all “drawing near” in this way. And if it’s not God the guy in white robes on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel, it’s surely some common human experience that rises above the level of the mundane. It’s spirit. It’s soul. The unity that Vivekananda was talking about, perhaps? This is the question that I have remaining; the question that was too big to ask this time. This is bigger than I was ready to think about today. This is one more reason to return to the Lotus Temple.

Outside the temple I swing my borrowed umbrella and fish the metal token from the back pocket of my jeans. I’m dressed like a real westerner today, wearing a t-shirt from a band of some former students of mine. I think they’d get a kick knowing their band name made it all the way to India. I haven’t gone out for quite some time in western clothing. It’s somewhat relieving, comfortable. I retrieve my shoes and walk back down the manicured pathway.

I find Palminder waiting with the car doors open and give him back his umbrella. “C-83?” he asks.

I think, wait a minute, I have you for eight hours on Saturdays. Why are you so anxious to get me home? When I had Sonu on Saturdays, if I didn’t use the whole eight hours, he’d get anxious and tell me I didn’t use up all my time. Wasn’t there somewhere else I needed to go?

I consider attempting to slog through one of the markets I haven’t visited yet, but I feel so nice and tranquil and the markets are so crowded and dirty that I don’t think it would be a positive contrast. “Yes, C-83,” I tell Palminder.

Back at home, I blog and watch BBC World. At about five o’clock I decide to walk to the market. Pachu is downstairs in his signature blue cotton shirt making a bed in another room. When he sees me, he springs to his feet. “Madam, madam! Your BBC? Your BBC?”

“Yes, BBC is back. Thank you,” I tell him. I feel like such a whitey having freaked out at the momentary loss of my BBC. It’s nice that he asked, though. It’s nice that even Pachu cares a little bit about my comfort here.

In the market I eat at Sagar’s again. I consider going someplace else, but this is the place my Indian friend in the United States recommended, and I love it here. I order an uttapum: a pancake, really, with vegetables cooked inside. They bring their chutneys and coconut dipping sauces. I dip and dip until there is nothing left to dip. Then I order a dessert by pointing to something I’ve never heard of before. It comes wrapped in paper. I unwrap it. It is a rectangular yellow piece of dough or paste. It’s very sweet, maybe almond flavored. I eat the whole thing, whatever it is, and pay my three dollars for the whole meal when it is done.

After dinner, I walk to the grocery store where I thought I remembered seeing scissors for sale. I’m tired of chewing medical tape to make band-aids. I can’t find the scissors where I thought they were. A man asks me, “Madam?”

“Scissors,” I say, and make the international sign for scissors with my fingers.

“Here,” he says. I think he would have understood without my lame sign language. He shows me pinking shears, suitable for cutting hair. I wish I would have made this purchase before having my tangle with Verma’s High Quality Beauty Salon, but I accept my bad haircut.

As I walk out the front door of the grocers, my purse strap snaps. It did this once before and I repaired it, apparently, not good enough. I accept my broken purse, but think I might just buy a new one rather than try to have the tailor repair this one a second time. This purse has seen better days.

I decide that tonight is the night to see if they have real coffee at the Barista’s coffee shop across the way. I walk in, hopeful. I order a latte. They seem to know what I want. They even have a to-go cup, contrary to what Susie and Julianne said. They prepare my order and refrain from filling the cup with sugar. It is not the best coffee I’ve ever had. In fact, it’s pretty flavorless. But it is real, not made from dehydrated crystals. It’s made from beans. It’s wonderful.

I walk with my coffee to the shop where I tried to buy a suit the night before the history book launch. I think they might have some purses. They do. They have one that is a near Indian cousin of the purse I have that just broke. I buy it. It’s way more expensive than I would pay in the daily markets, but there’s also no hassle, no crowd, and it’s here right now. I can use it tonight. Instant gratification, unlike instant coffee, pleases me.

I walk home past Acha’s hang out. She scrambles out from under a car and greets me. I pet her and talk to her a bit, telling her she’s acha. It’s dusk, though, and the bugs are coming out. I notice a bite on my ankle and head home, where I take the last Allegra I had leftover from my necrosis diagnosis.

I turn on the BBC and prop up some pillows to lean on while I write. The rest of the evening passes quickly.

Tonight, I talk to Scott over his lunchtime and say goodbye without crying.

Back at C-83

Today is India’s 62nd Independence Day. I awaken in a cold sweat, still recovering, I think, from the body and mind-bending experience of Wednesday and Thursday’s travels. I think I’m just sick, but then I step onto my tile floor and notice it’s cold, as is the marble countertop in the bathroom. It’s actually cold in my room. I step out onto the balcony and discover that it’s not hot outside. In fact, it’s so mild that my air conditioners are doing too good of a job cooling off the place. I consider turning one of them off, but just can’t do it on the principle of the thing. I go downstairs to eat breakfast and sit outside on the veranda.

Pachu brings a red mango—the fleshy kind I’m not very fond of—and bland tea. The sugar he sets in front of me is crawling with tiny bugs. I miss the sweet, ginger, milky tea at Raju’s. I miss the fresh, fluffy omelet with tomatoes from his garden. I miss the doggies under the table to share my food with. It’s partially the fact that I’m feeling a bit under the weather, but this food is hard to eat this morning. It is literally hard to swallow.

There’s a poll in the Times of India: Do you think India’s democracy is an illusion? 79% of the respondents said yes. 19% said no, and 2% didn’t know. I wonder how many people they asked.

After breakfast, I go upstairs to take a shower. There is hot water for more than two minutes (unlike at Raju's) and it goes a long way towards making me feel better. I start up my computer and turn on the BBC World News for background noise. The channel comes and goes, then finally just goes. All the other channels come in just fine, but the BBC World News is black. There’s nothing there. I consider letting it go, but then think of the time when Ms. Sonu found out about my Internet not working. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she wanted to know. Well, I’m going to tell somebody this time. I find Pachu downstairs and bring him upstairs to show him what’s happening. He looks at the blank channel and the other channels all working fine.

“Satellite,” he says. “It come back,” he diagnoses. This seems satisfactory to me. I just hope it does come back. It’s the only news channel that covers world events, including those of the western hemisphere. There’s a CNN IBN channel, but half the time their reports are in Hindi and the focus is strictly on India.

After much blogging and editing, I need to get out of my little room. I grab some cookies for my dog friends and take a walk around the Defence Colony. The streets are surprisingly quiet and almost empty. No frantic honking. No crowds. This is quite the opposite of what I expected on Independence Day. I thought there would be drunken revelers and people blowing things up, but it seems that’s the American way. Jonaki told me that Independence Day is a dry day: there is no alcohol for sale. It seems that everyone’s either left town or is staying in. Before the satellite went out on my news broadcast, there was footage of the Prime Minister at the Red Fort addressing a large assemblage. He was talking about how the country has to unite against terrorist threats. It was very somber.

All of this means my walk around the Colony is lovely and relaxing. I even venture off in the opposite direction of the market, to see if I can get my bearings on how to find C-83 if an auto-wallah drives me in the back way. I find some landmarks that I think might help me: a triangular patch of grass, a gate at the end of the street.

Not even my dogs are at home. They’ve gone someplace else for the holiday. I hope they haven’t relocated completely in my one week absence. I would be sad if Baloo and Acha were gone. I have no one to give my biscuits to, but then I find a little brown and white dog at the end of the street. He is not so interested in my treats, but very interested in getting petted. He smashes his head into my legs as I scratch him, and when I stop, he paws me gently for more attention.

Back at the Ahuja Residency, I work some more on my blog and my textbook chapter. The BBC, I find, is back. I leave it on in the background to fill up the space around me with its news of Russia invading Georgia. I duck downstairs and ask Mira if they can make me dinner tonight.

“Veg or non-veg,” she asks.

“Veg,” I say. She smiles. She probably thinks it’s funny that the white girl wants veg food. I’ve found that some people here are amused by my vegetarianism. I get this feeling like they regard me as not a “real” vegetarian. “Are you a vegetarian by birth or by choice,” someone asked. By choice, I guess. But I’ve always hated meat, so I’m kind of a vegetarian by birth.

Before it gets dark outside, I decide to take another walk. This time I find my Delhi dogs. They wag their tails and look happy to see me. I pet them and scratch them and they soak in the affection. I want so badly to take them home with me. I want to put ointment on their sores and feed them antibiotics and stop the mites from eating their ears. But their lives are the lives of Delhi dogs with no veterinary care—no care of any kind. They will get along for as long as they can here on the streets. All I can do is brighten their days with a few little scratches and pets and some unappealing biscuits every now and then.

This walk finds a few more people out on the streets. People are in the parks, a few kids are flying kites as Tehseen, Amar’s wife, described they would be on Independence Day.

I return to the Ahuja Residency in the gathering dusk and walk downstairs around 8:30 for dinner. A boy brings it to me on a silver tray. As he’s setting it down, he smashes an ant scrambling underneath one of the metal dishes.

Dinner is a potato and green pepper subzi, a lentil dal, a wonderfully spiced paneer (homemade cheese) dish, chapattis (fresh flat bread) and rice. I still miss Raju’s food and the canine pals with whom I got to share it. I wish Acha and Baloo were sitting under my table.

I eat alone and go back up to my room alone, a bit bored. Then I think, “How can I be upset at being bored today?” Instead, I give thanks for having a boring day wherein nothing exciting happened or even threatened to happen. One boring day is a good thing every now and then.

Time Trials

There is a bright white light beyond the windows of the bus. Is this heaven, I think? No. It’s the mountains. We are in a cloud.

It is morning and we’re still in the mountains.

We were supposed to be home at 6 a.m. That’s what I told my driver when I called him yesterday on Jonaki’s cell phone. Pick me up at the Chandralok Building at 6 a.m. There’s no way we’ll be there by then. It might already be 6 a.m. for all I know.

Jonaki’s awake. I ask her what happened.

There were landslides. Roads were closed. We had to re-route. I hear a woman in the aisle say it will be another nine hours before we’re home. We had to drive all the way to Simla, the hill station to the west of the state. We have taken a twelve hour detour on a bus ride that started out being twelve hours long.

I dig the business card that Balminder wrote his number on out of my purse, then I notice it says Palminder. “Did he spell his name wrong?” I think. Or have I been calling him Balminder in error all this time? I ring him up.

“Hi Balminder, Palminder,” I say.

“Yes, hello madam. Chandralok Building, 6 a.m.,” he tells me.

I wonder how much of this he’ll understand, but I launch into an explanation of landslides and diverted bus routes. I tell him I’ll call him when we’re nearer to Delhi, but I certainly will not be there by six a.m.—more like 5 p.m.

“Five p.m.?” he questions me.

“I think so,” I tell him. “I’ll call you back and let you know when we get closer.”

This means I’ll have to take another vacation day instead of going into the office as I planned. This means I have to call Amar and let him know I won’t be there, but I’ll have to wait for a decent hour to do that. This means I have to sit here for the whole day. Nine more hours. In this one seat. Trapped behind the necking couple.

We stop at another roadside stand with horrible bathrooms and inedible food in giant metal pots. It’s raining. It’s foggy. We are still in the mountains, still unsafe.

We stay at the roadside stand for what feels like an hour, all the while I am hoping there is not another landslide in front of us that traps us on this alternate route and seals us off from Delhi. Women and men squat and go to the bathroom behind the juice stand. I don’t blame them this time. I used the bathroom at this stop and it smelled like an unkempt pachyderm house at the zoo. Jonaki gets some toast and a bottle of juice that looks suspect to me. It’s not sealed. I buy a bag of chili spice chips because they’re packaged. They taste something like vomit, but I eat them anyway. I have one more package of granola bars in my backpack, but I’m saving them in case things get more desperate: my hoarding instinct. We’ll be trapped in the mountains for weeks. All the people on the bus will resort to eating the weakest among them, but not me. I’ll have that last package of Nature Valley peanut butter granola bars to tide me over until we reach civilization.

The Japanese tourists pick grass and feed it to some cows who have wondered near the bus. They smile and take pictures to commemorate the event.

Two other busses pull up to share the facilities. I’m glad I got to the bathrooms when I did.

The necking couple gets a big plateful of questionable food from the filthy metal pots stewing over the outdoor gas burners. The rain falls and I climb back aboard our goldenrod chariot.

Am I the only one who just wants this bus to move? Am I the only one who cares that we’re stuck in the mountains? I sit in my seat, alone, willing the bus driver to climb back aboard and honk his horn so everyone else takes his or her seat. Though I think this thought as hard as I can, I find it doesn’t work. I cannot control the bus driver with my brain waves. I’m stuck at this god-forsaken bus stop for god knows how long. If I’d have only used Hamnum’s dandruff shampoo, I could have increased my brain power as the advertisement claims, and I would have us underway.

After a seemingly interminable break, the driver climbs back aboard and the bus fills back up. We begin to back up, but I notice the necking people aren’t in their seats. Not that I want to stare at the guy’s frizzy hair as he pounces on his young betrothed any further, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving them in the mountains either. Before I can say anything about our missing persons, the bus stops and they join us once again. They were probably too busy necking and eating to notice the bus pulling away at first.

“I guess all the roads are closed because of the landslides,” Jonaki says.

“What roads? The roads ahead of us?” I prepare to panic. The situation can still get worse.

“No, the roads we were on last night. These busses are the only ones that made it out. The rest of them got stopped by Mundi.” Jonaki gets a lot more news than I do about our situation because she speaks Hindi, and all I can make out are the words “good” and “okay.” These words are not much in use in our current situation.

There is nothing to do but sit on the bus. I sit on the bus and sit on the bus and sit on the bus. We wind around precipitous drop-offs, through clouds, up switch-backs and down steep inclines. I think of a bus I saw the day before as we were driving in our cab through Kullu. It said, “God Save Us,” across the front. I thought at the time, “Who would want to board a bus that says ‘God Save Us’ on it?” Now, I have this very same thought. God save us.

Busses, even city busses, regularly sport religious messages here. I saw one speeding past India Gate that simply said in big block letters above where the driver sits, “Lord Jesus.” I’m beginning to understand the need for messages of this sort.

In my head I have a quick flash of the bus driving off the side of a cliff. I can’t stop the thought before it occurs, and I feel like I’ve jinxed us. Think the bus back onto the road, I tell myself. Pray that we’ll be safe. But my thinking or not thinking isn’t controlling the bus. I am not controlling my life at this moment. My life is in the hands of the bus driver who has been driving since 5:30 p.m. the night before with possibly some little naps in between. “You can’t control your life,” I see the smiling face of the woman from Mumbai. In this case, she is correct, only I’m not smiling about it. In fact, a few times on this ride I have to stare at the window as tears run down my face—and not just because my contacts have been drying in my eyes all day and all night, sucking onto my eyeballs.

Jonaki says we’re about four hours from Chandigarrh, and once we hit there, we’ll be fine. It’s all flat. When I call Amar, he says the same thing. We’ll be fine once we hit Chandigarrh. All we have to do is get to Chandigarrh.

Actually, the road flattens out even before then, and the threat of being trapped again abates. Now it’s just the discomfort to deal with after I put it together that we will be on this bus for a full 24 hours by the time we get to Delhi. 24 hours.

I creep up to the front of the bus and ask the driver’s assistant what time he thinks we’ll get to Delhi. He tells me three o’clock. This is better than the earlier estimate of five o’clock. I call Balminder Palminder and mess up his name again and tell him to be ready at three. He says, “Okay madam.”

Jonaki says there’s a rabbit on the bus and points to a couple sitting across the aisle, one row behind us. Sure enough, a woman has a white rabbit on her lap, covered by the maroon fleece blanket passed out by the assistant. I feel sorry for the rabbit, but the rabbit probably doesn’t know the difference.

We pass a brick compound with a large sign outside it, “School for Geniuses,” it proclaims, then underneath, it says, “fully air-conditioned.” There is an airbrushed picture of a smiling man in a turban on the sign. It’s important to keep those genius brains from overheating, I figure. That dandruff shampoo must really be doing its job if there’s a whole school full of geniuses here, I think. A few buildings down from the school for geniuses, we pass Springfield Elementary School. There are no claims of air conditioning here. This is where the less clever kids are consigned to sweating away their days.

At about one o’clock, the bus pulls off the highway again. I think we’re stopping to refuel since we’re at a gas station, but we’ve simply stopped again to eat at the adjacent vendors. The necking couple gets another plateful of food to split: bean slop and flat bread. I get a package of biscuits and eat the whole thing. The Japanese tourists even get food from the vendors. Jonaki asks one of them what it is. “I don’t know. It’s some Indian food,” the man tells her as he shoves it into his face.

This is, thankfully, a shorter stop. But less than an hour after this stop, we are once again on the side of the highway. People get off the bus. I think at first that it’s a stop for the men to pee, but Jonaki says people are buying fruit from the side of the road. Do we really have to do our fruit shopping now? Who can possibly need an apple at this moment? Can’t we just get home?

We hit the outskirts of Delhi, and Jonaki hears the man next to us discussing catching a train after the bus drops us off at the metro station. The bus picked us up at the Chandralok Building. Isn’t the bus dropping us off at the same place?

No, the man tells her. We are getting dropped off at the Ramakrishna Marg Metro Station.

Where is that?

It’s now quarter to three and I have to call Balminder Palminder again and tell him that I’ve told him the wrong location to pick me up. I have to hope he understands this, and hope he knows where the Ramakrishna Marg Metro Station is, and hope that I can find his car somehow if he happens to find the station.

I thought that at least this last part of the journey would be smooth, but now it is turning into another stressful event. My arms are shaky and I can hardly keep from crying as I dial the phone and get Balmimnder Palminder. I explain the new situation to him.

“Yes madam, three o’clock, Chandralok Building,” he tells me.

“No, Balminder Palminder,” I tell him. “It’s different. I had the wrong place. You need to go to the Ramakrishna Marg Metro Station.” I hope he understands.

We get into a giant traffic jamb occasioned by the downpour and probably the impending Independence Day holiday, and I come close to loosing it. I think, what would happen if I just jumped off the bus and tried to tell Balminder Palminder where I am on the highway? What would happen if I stood up and screamed and tore my hair out? Would the people in front of my finally stop necking?

We are trapped on this bus and not even moving. It feels like I’ll never get out. And even if I do get out, I won’t find my driver, so I won’t get home. I’ll just be marooned somewhere in the middle of Delhi in the middle of a rain storm with my luggage and no way to get home. But that won’t happen because we’re never going to get out of this traffic.

The people in front of us neck.

How can they kiss each other after eating all that disgusting food and not brushing their teeth for over 24 hours?

The traffic finally lets up and we are moving again. I’m okay as long as we’re moving, as long as I feel like we’re making some progress towards getting home. I still don’t recognize any surroundings. We are not coming into Delhi the same way we drove out of it, past the Red Fort and the Ghandi Memorial gardens.
We turn and drive into another sea of stopped traffic. Just before the bus grinds to another halt, I ask Jonaki how far we are from the station.

“Twenty minutes?” she says. But this twenty minutes can stretch into eternity sitting in the same place.

I decide to stop thinking about time. I decide to stop thinking that I am three hours or twenty minutes away from getting home. I decide to stop thinking about Balminder Palminder waiting for me since six o’clock in the morning, then going to the wrong place, then finding the right place at three o’clock, but having to wait there until five o’clock or later. I put the maroon fleece blanket over my head and recline my seat. I can’t look at the necking people anymore. I can’t look at the stopped traffic. I can’t look at this bus or the never-ending rain on its windows. I’ll close my eyes and try to sleep. When they wake me up, we’ll be at our location—wherever that is. Then I can worry about trying to find Balminder Palminder.

This technique works. I feel like a stinking, wheezing mummy under the blanket and I don’t sleep, but it’s like a cocoon. It’s at least a change of setting. And I’ve taken my eyes off of the coveted moment of arrival. I’m just on the bus, not waiting for anything. I’m just on the bus, until which moment I will find myself off the bus. We inch forward, but I don’t care. We could just stay parked until such time as I have to get off to go to the bathroom, when I will just squat in the road, a truly assimilated Indian visitor. I’ve got my camping toilet paper with me. I’ve got my granola bar. I’m fine.

At about five o’clock, we pull in front of the Ramakrishna Marg Metro Station and get off the bus into the pouring rain and puddles. Jonaki is on the phone to her cab driver again. He can’t find the place. She’s had him speak to the bus driver’s assistant to get directions at least twice and he’s still lost. There’s a parking lot and a circular drive. I don’t see Balminder Palminder anywhere. I creep over a puddle near the bus and grab our luggage out of the hold underneath. Thankfully it was near the front. Thankfully, Jonaki’s glass bottle of apple juice from Raju’s hasn’t broken and leaked onto all our stuff.

I hand Jonaki her backpack and hold my suitcase above the puddles while holding my umbrella with my other hand. I have to set my suitcase down when I borrow Jonaki’s phone to call Balminder Palminder who says, “Madam, I am driving. Ramakrishna Marg. I am driving. I am here.” I don’t understand. I pass the phone to Jonaki who speaks to him in Hindi, but then tells me she doesn’t understand either. My suitcase and everything in it is getting wet. We stand, without rides, in the rain. I look into the parking lot but see nothing. I wonder if I should start walking up the street, or into the parking lot towards the Metro station. Maybe there is another, different parking lot on the far side of it where Balminder Palminder is waiting for me. Just when I’m about to tell Jonaki I’m going to wander off, I see my driver standing in front of me. How did he find me? It feels like a miracle.

“Balminder Palminder!” I exclaim. “I’m so happy to see you!” He picks up my suitcase and puts it in the trunk of the cab. Jonaki wants him to talk to her driver and help give him directions. He stands patiently by as Jonaki talks on her cell phone. I close the trunk to keep my suitcase from getting any wetter than it already is.

“Sorry,” Balminder Palminder says and smiles.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. I am so relieved he’s here. Now if we could just get Jonaki’s ride to show up, I could be on my way home.

A car pulls up and honks three times. A man leans out of the window and motions towards us. It’s Jonaki’s cab. Finally. She says goodbye and follows him up the road to get in. As I’m arranging my wet accoutrements in the backseat, Jonaki appears at my window.

“Is that your driver?” I ask, feeling like I’m somewhat in a state of shock.

She just wants to say goodbye.

“Is that your driver?” I ask again, still in disaster mode, ready for a plan B or C or D.

Yes, it’s her driver. She walks off into the rain under her large, black umbrella as my familiar cab pulls away from the curb. We are on Ashoka Road. I read the signs and try to get my bearings. I see a large international yoga center that I decide I’ll check out someday if I can figure out how to get back to it. Then I start to see familiar landmarks, advertisements and buildings: the Old Fort and the paddle boating lake where I sweated out my morning mango with Sonu, the Golf Links colony. I am almost home.

My cell phone works. I call Scott. It’s about seven o’clock in the morning by him. I catch him before he leaves for work. He tells me he’ll Skype me at lunchtime and I start to cry. He asks what’s wrong. I’m home safe and sound. Why am I upset? It’s just that it was dicey for quite some time. It’s just that I’m tired. It’s just that it’s been a week since I’ve been able to talk to my husband and I love the sound of his warm, sweet voice.

Back at the Ahuja Residency, my driver hands me the receipt to sign. I notice that here his name is also printed with a “P.” His name is not Balminder at all. I thank Palminder again for finding me at the metro station, give him double his usual tip. The door guard takes my luggage from the trunk and carries it upstairs, setting it on the luggage rack in my bedroom. I thank him and he bows his head.

I close the door behind him and throw my wet backpack onto the counter. I change out of my wet shirt and pants into some dry pajamas and make myself a bowl of macaroni and cheese that Scott sent me in a care package. Even with my hoarding instincts, this seems like an appropriate time to eat one of the remaining three packages of macaroni and cheese I have left. I might pass out in the road were I to try to walk to the market for dinner.

I unpack my suitcase, sorting the dirty laundry from the large pile of clean clothes that were a result of my over-packing. When I find my bottle of saline solution, it’s all caved in from the pressure change. I uncork it and the air whooshes back in. I wish I could also uncork my head, because I feel much like my saline solution: all caved in. I find the bottle of Ibuprofen I’ve also been saving for dire situations only and take two pills.

Back in the kitchen, I fish my digital clock out of the front pocket of my backpack. It’s all fogged up and wet. The display is totally messed up. Halves of numbers appear willy nilly, flashing. I set it on the counter. I wonder if the man at Khan Market will replace it for free, or if I’ll just have to eat the cost and buy a new clock that hopefully works better than this one did.

After a shower, I plug in my laptop and fire it up. When I try to get to the Internet, I instead get an error message that says “Cannot display page.” Cannot display page? What do you mean you cannot display the page?

I am not connected to the Internet. I will not be able to talk to Scott over lunch at all. If I could cry, I would, but I am too exhausted. I sit, alone, in my room. I decide to call my mother from my cell phone and let her know I’ve arrived safely home. She doesn’t know anything of the saga I’ve just undergone, and it’s probably better that way. I tell her a little bit of what’s gone on, but she doesn’t want to talk long; she doesn’t want me to have a big phone bill. She hangs up quickly.

With the Independence Day holiday coming up tomorrow, I decide not to waste any time in complaining about my Internet not working. No one will be around tomorrow. I call Ms. Sonu and tell her the problem. She says she’ll have her associate contact me. It’s Alok, the slight little student who tried to help me and failed the last time I was having this very same issue during the first weeks I arrived here. I don’t have the energy to go through this again, I think. I just want to be able to talk to my family over the Internet.

Alok says he’ll come over and see if he can fix it. It’s nearing lunchtime in America (the less popular Ronald Regan campaign commercial). I hold out a faint hope that I may still be able to talk to Scott today.

Alok arrives and asks me how I’ve been. Fine, fine. The computer’s doing the same thing it was doing before when the Internet wasn’t working. He looks at my machine and restarts it. Then he goes downstairs and, I think, restarts the router. He comes back up and says it’s working. “What did you do?” I ask him.

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s working. Now I’ll have to drive home and it will take me nearly two hours,” he says with a strange smile. I apologize but he tells me it’s no problem. He shakes my hand and gives me a weird distant hug. Then he puts a handkerchief on his head to prepare himself to slog back out into the still rainy night.

I’m afraid to touch my computer lest I break my precious Internet connection again. I check my office email and several times while I’m doing this, I lose the connection. Then I see a Skype message pop up from Scott: “I tried to call you but I guess you weren’t there.”

I Skype him back as quickly as I can. It’s him. It’s him. I can finally talk to him. He has to go back to work way too soon, but it’s okay. I need to sleep. We hang up and I walk out into the kitchen to turn off the light. I notice my clock’s numbers are back on the display. I pick it up and press the setting button. It flashes dutifully, waiting for me to input the proper time and date. How can it be working again? Why was it broken the whole time I was on vacation? If I want to read the symbolism of this event, I’d say my clock was trying to teach me a lesson about the relativity of time itself. So what if I was 24 hours on a bus? Aren’t I back in Delhi now? What’s the difference? So what if Raju served dinner at eight o’clock or eight thirty? Weren’t the meals gorgeous and wonderful no matter what time they arrived? Can my little digital clock be so wily as to be purposefully illustrating this point for me? If I were anywhere but India, I’d say categorically not. But here… one never knows.

Regardless, I am back in Delhi. I know what time it is. I’ve talked to my husband. My Internet connection is somewhat restored. I am on flat, solid ground. I am dry.

I can finally rest.

Adventurers Past and Present

Wednesday I awaken with a healed belly. It must be Raju’s wife’s food, I think. It’s magical.

Phoebe and Tommy join us for breakfast and, as usual, I share my paranta with them. They politely wait under the table for me to dispense their treat.

I grab the leftover liter of Manali mineral water and stow it in my backpack. We’ll need it for the bus ride.

Jonaki goes looking for the bottle a few minutes later, unaware that I’ve packed it, and witnesses a scene in the kitchen. The kittens have flipped over the leftover plate of toast and each one has a slice. Tommy bullies them all away and gobbles up the bread. Raju’s wife sees this whole thing go down and has a fit. She emerges from the kitchen with a branch full of leaves she is using to swat at the kittens. Tommy is kicked out. She tells Jonaki that Tommy isn’t even their dog. They haven’t been feeding him but the guests keep giving him biscuits so he won’t leave. She raises an eyebrow at Jonaki, who remains silent on the subject.

Poor unwanted Tommy. He is such an affectionate boy. He just wants a home.

Back at our porch, Raju wanders over. I’ve been wondering when he was going to ask for payment. Now is the moment, and it’s good, because the cab is ready and waiting to drive us to Manali where we’ll catch the bus.

We decided on this plan after all when we saw what Aut was like: just a tiny town crammed with a jumble of shops. No bus station. No bus stop. If we wanted to catch the bus there, we’d have to stand in the dark at 8 p.m. on Wednesday night and hope it stopped for us. The safe route is to go to Manali and get the bus from the station. It’s about three hours north, so we have to leave right after breakfast.

Raju makes some calculation in his head and tells us we owe him 8,000 rupees. I quickly count out the four thousand that is my half of this payment. Jonaki does the same, but when Raju walks away, she wonders how he came to that tally. It was supposed to be 1,250 a night. It should have cost 5,000 rupees. I knew she’d quoted me the price, but didn’t even realize the inflation until it was too late and I’d already paid.

“Oh well, white tax,” I tell Jonaki.

“White tax, city tax, woman tax,” she adds. These could all be factors. Still, it seems dishonest to quote us one price, then almost double it when our stay is over. Even though my stay and all the food ended up costing under a hundred U.S. dollars, I still feel robbed. I’m glad, though, that Raju didn’t come up with a higher number, one that we didn’t have enough money to pay him. We could have become hostages for all I know.

Still, it was a beautiful place and peaceful, and worth the money. I kiss my new girlfriends goodbye and they bow their heads. Goodbye Bulbul, goodbye Phoebe. Tommy is nowhere to be found, but I give Yeti a pat on the head.

Raju helps us into the cable car and shoots us across the river, following closely behind with my large, heavy suitcase, now a bit heavier for having a few rocks added to its weight. At the far side of the Tirthan, we meet our driver who helps us get our luggage into his trunk.

I say goodbye to Raju. He folds his hands and bows his head; I extend my hand for an American handshake before I can think to return his gesture.

We climb into the backseat of the little silver car and go bumping off down the rocky road. A few hundred yards from the cottage, I see a man in camouflage, walking with a giant rifle. He looks scary to me. He doesn’t look like he’s planning on scaring any crows with his gun. I am glad we didn’t run into him on our walks; glad we didn’t venture off too far from Raju’s property.

The car passes several areas that appear to have had landslides. Men with shovels crouch on the sides of the street. Men with stretchers full of rocks lug them out of the roadway.

“You’re holding on for dear life,” Jonaki tells me when she sees me gripping the handle on the car’s ceiling. I look at my hand. I’ve made fingernail indentations in it. I loosen my grip a little and find my fingers almost locked.

We rattle by tiny towns set into the hills and I think again about the emergency medical evacuation warning in my guidebook. What do these people do when they have an emergency? They probably do nothing. They probably accept their fate. The same thing will probably happen to Raju’s dogs. There is no emergency vet clinic out here. No vet clinic at all, probably.

We come upon a town with a guest house in it. Right after the town, a bulldozer is scooping mud and rock from the roadway. Our driver downshifts and, for a minute, I think we’re going to get stuck. But the little car powers through. I am surprised to see a bulldozer at all. I wonder where it came from, but I am glad it’s here.

After about an hour, we make it back to the main road. I can tell because I recognize the dam and the long tunnel we went through just before reaching Aut. This time I count the length of time it takes to get through the tunnel. Over three minutes.

We have the windows open and the air is stale, full of exhaust, lit only by amber lights. About three-quarters of the way through, we come upon a truck with the front smashed in. There must have been an accident.

The main road is better. I see no signs of landslides, no mud or rocks anywhere. I relax a little, but still hold on. There are no seat belts in the backseat of this little car and the ride is still a bit jarring.

We follow the Kullu River through it’s valley, coming upon a sprawling town by the same name. Would we like to see a shawl factory? The driver wants to know.

I decline. I’m a little anxious about getting to Manali in time, plus this may be another of those special arrangements wherein the driver gets kickback money for bringing in customers. I don’t feel like getting pressured into buying a shawl. I’m not really a shawl-wearing type of girl. Jonaki says the same.

Through town we pass about four shawl factories. Everything’s a shawl factory here; a shawl factory or an “English wine shop.” Why couldn’t the driver have offered to stop at one of those?

About two hours into our ride, we leave the main road and climb a series of narrow cutbacks up the top of one of the hills. This is the Roerich museum; a stop that Raju recommended we make on our way. Jonaki has heard of Nicolas Roerich before. She saw one of his paintings in a museum in Chennai and says it was beautiful. She wanted to come to this museum two years ago when the development group was in Manali for the National Sales Meeting, but it was too far out of the way. She’s excited to see it now.

The driver pulls over and points us up a walking path that goes straight up to the top of the mountain. We get out of the car and climb a stony staircase. I feel like I can’t breathe, like there’s no air, like I’m going to pass out and Jonaki will have to drag me by my hair back to the cab. We pause half way up, panting worse than the 17-year-old Phoebe in the thin mountain air.

At the top of the hill there are two smallish buildings. A barefoot man listening to a tiny radio takes fifteen rupees each from us. The building we enter has Tibetan folk art and traditional dress on the ground floor and a few paintings on the second floor (which in India is called the first floor). Most all of the Roerich pieces are reproductions, the “real” ones are in the big cities’ museums.

We exit this building and Jonaki sees the other one. She walks in. I follow. This second building is full of artifacts and displays from the life of Nicolas Roerich and his family. They, apparently, were Victorian explorers of the first rank and founded this institute to further their study of the civilization and flora and fauna of India. They conducted all kinds of grandiose research and expeditions in the Himalayas, cataloguing coins, rocks, feathers, whatever they could pick up and label. One of the rooms of this building still has a sign on the door from their occupancy. It reads, “Cancer Research.” George Roerich was convinced he could do it all. A modern psychiatrist might diagnose this as bipolar mania as evidenced by grandiose delusions. To the Victorians, it was strapping heroism.

We walk down the steep climb. Thankfully, this is easier than our ascent. At the bottom on the hill, there are more things to see: another gallery, the home of the Roerich’s, a memorial to them. I am about Roeriched out when Jonaki spends a seeming eternity considering which postcard or print to purchase. We walk out into the rain and toward the winding path that leads to the memorial. A honeymooning couple walks ahead of us. Jonaki is irritated by them. “Did you see her wearing sunglasses in the rain?” she asks.

I tell Jonaki I’d rather not walk down the slippery rocks to the memorial in the rain. It looks like it’s quite a ways away, and I saw a sign when we entered that said not to run because the path is crumbling and could fall. Instead, we walk upstairs where we can peep inside the Roerich’s home. Here, there is a sign that says only 20 people are allowed at a time. The house could fall down. It seems there is peril at every turn when you’re visiting the Roerichs.

Some young men have followed us up from the memorial pathway. They stare at me, kind of giggling, and take pictures with me in the distant background.

Finally, we have exhausted the perusing possibilities at the International Roerich Memorial Trust. We pop up our umbrellas and walk back towards the cab. Jonaki is hungry. There are restaurants here, but I thought she wanted to try to find the pizza place in Manali. Can she wait until we get there? Yes.

The driver wants to know if we want to see a castle. If we had more time and if I knew where this castle was, I might say yes. But as it is, it’s getting late in the afternoon and I want to get to Manali. I don’t want to miss that bus and end up god knows where looking at a castle. It is an intriguing and appealing offer, though. I do wonder what an Indian castle in the middle of the Himalayan foothills looks like, and why it’s there.

We get stopped on our way out of the Trust’s grounds because the road is only wide enough for one vehicle. Our driver has to back up several hundred yards to let the oncoming cars past.

We drive back down the narrow, winding road and take a route to Manali that is decidedly not the main highway. It is bumpy and narrow. On the way, we stop at a little roadside shack. Jonaki wants water. She buys biscuits too. They’re good; banana flavored. About an hour later, we arrive in Manali. Rows of buildings form tiers up the side of the valley. The driver asks for the name of the pizza place. Jonaki doesn’t know, but she’ll know it when she sees it. It’s on the way to the Hadimba temple where she went with the people from the office when they were here two years ago. Her office mates weren’t interested in pizza when they came; they all wanted to get to the temple before dark.

Jonaki sees a sign that says “Il Forno Italian Restaurant.” This is it! We pull off the steep road and find a little wooden cottage nestled into the side of the mountain. Inside, I spy a large espresso machine. I am elated. I know I shouldn’t have a coffee drink before I embark on a long bus ride on which I’m hoping to sleep soundly, but I can’t resist. I order an espresso. We sit outside under the awning at a table with a red checked tablecloth. A little black dog comes and sits beside me. It’s good because I’m already missing the trail guides from Raju’s Cottage. They each had such endearing personalities. It was too easy to fall in love with them, ticks and all.

We order our pizzas, mine vegetarian and Jonaki’s with chicken. We’ll have the leftovers packed for us so we have a snack later on the bus. The pizzas arrive quickly and look for all purposes like real pizzas. I dig in. Jonaki asks how it is. It’s okay, I tell her. There’s very little cheese, which is okay, but there’s also very little, very thin red sauce. It’s better if I don’t think of what I’m eating as pizza. The waiter brings a metal container with a spoon sticking out of it. I think it might be parmesan cheese and get excited for a second, only to open it and find it full of oil and hot pepper. The oil is spicy and gives the pizza more flavor at least—the flavor that is usually supplied by the red sauce. Once I put the oil on the pizza, it ceases even resembling anything I know, but it also tastes good in its own way. Kind of like the rocks at Raju’s. Once I stopped comparing them to the Rockies, they were beautiful in their own way. And so it is with my pizza.

Jonaki drops a piece of chicken from the top of her pizza and our new friend gobbles it up. 60s rock music drifts from inside the cottage. “Is this Eric Clapton?” Jonaki asks. I think it’s more like The Guess Who, but can’t be sure. A young British couple sits inside. The woman looks completely dressed in scarf after scarf. She raves about the salad they bring to their table. “This isn’t just any salad,” she tells her date. “This is graced with dollops of the finest Himalayan mayonnaise…”

For dessert, we each order tiramisu. Jonaki says she found a recipe for it once and was very confused when it called for “ladyfingers.” In India, they call okra ladyfingers. She remembers thinking, “Maybe there was some okra way down in there.” I laugh at the thought of the green furry vegetable concealed in my Italian dessert. Thankfully, this tiramisu uses European ladyfingers and is pretty good.

Jonaki says the temple is just five minutes up the road. I’m getting a little concerned about the time. She says it’s four thirty. We should have just enough time to check out the temple and get back to the bus.

At the entrance to the temple grounds women hold huge angora rabbits with one hand and umbrellas with the other. Ten rupees. Ten rupees. They want me to pay them ten rupees to take a picture of them and their rabbits. I take a pass.

The plaque near the temple says it was constructed in 1553. I don’t know whether to believe it or not. It is a four-tiered structure with ornate carvings lining the outer wall and bells at the front entrance. At either corner, animal skulls with big curling horns are hung. Sacrifices to this goddess, Jonaki explains. She won’t go inside, she tells me, but I can.

The inside is cave-like, lit by fire, with an uneven stone ground. Men sit in a circle. It appears that they’re playing a card game. On another level underneath them is a statue enshrined with wreaths of flowers, a large iron skillet with incense burning in it, and a smattering of rupees thrown into the same general area. I wish I could take a picture, but there is no photography inside the temple. I nod to the men who welcomed me in, and duck back out the way I came.

“You’re already done?” Jonaki asks. I wonder if I was supposed to do something when I got inside. Was I supposed to pray or meditate or play cards, I wonder?

“Yes,” I say, then I ask why she didn’t want to go inside. She’s tired of people in temples extorting money, she says. She had some experiences when she was younger and she just doesn’t like to go now. It’s always about money.

We pop open our umbrellas once again and walk back down the path, dodging the women with their huge rabbits who call out to us. At the gate there is a huge yak with a Tibetan blanket and saddle on its back. This yak I will pay money to photograph. They women want 25 rupees. It’s too much. I give them ten and snap away at the poor yak who looks a little stunned by the flashes of light. The woman still wants me to take a picture of her and her rabbit. “Five rupees,” she offers this time, but I don’t want to dig for more change in the rain. I thank her and climb into the cab where Jonaki is on the phone with the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Office, asking them where we’re supposed to find the bus. They put her on hold and never come back. Then the call drops. Then we finally get through and they describe the location to our driver, who finds the bus promptly and helps us load our luggage. He takes off before we can even thank him. He is worried about getting back home. Landslides, he tells Jonaki, and disappears.

The rain is continual and just keeps coming down harder and harder. It’s just past five o’clock and already the bus is almost full. The tourism office told Jonaki that the bus didn’t leave until six, but now that we’re here, we find it will actually depart at five thirty. It’s a good thing we didn’t look at the castle or the shawl shop, or linger in town to do some souvenir shopping.

We are both wet. I get the window seat this time and Jonaki takes the aisle. I feel a little claustrophobic trapped between Jonaki and the window with no access to the aisle, but it’s only fair. Jonaki was trapped like this on the way up.

The window fogs up from the inside and I don’t get a good view of the street. No matter. The bus is parked outside of main Manali, away from the interesting stores. The only thing across the street is some sort of medical campus.

The bus is rolling by five thirty. I am happy to be on it; happy to be on my way back to Delhi; and slightly annoyed by the young couple in the seats in front of us. They are sucking each other’s faces so loudly I can hear it. At one point it sounds like they choke on each other’s tongues. I can’t look out the window because it’s all fogged up, so I’m glad when they finally pop in the Bollywood movie. It’s about four guys hatching a plan to marry a rich girl. They dance on motorcyles; they dance on a beach; they dance in a flashback sequence. I’m sensing a pattern.

The bus follows the path of the Kullu River in the middle of the valley, so there are no twisting roads and no precipitous drop offs to worry about for the time being. Just the necking kids in the seat in front of me and the wet window to my right to avoid. These are hazards I can deal with.

We get to Aut and fly through the town without stopping. I am so glad we didn’t try to catch the bus there. We would have been in the dark, in the pouring rain, and who knows if the bus would have even stopped. Perhaps the people at the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Office were just trying to save the white girl from herself when they told me I’d have to go to Manali to catch the return bus.

Somewhere we stop at a fruit stand. The men call out. Jonaki says they’re being gross, but I can’t tell. They just sound like they’re hocking fruit to me. There is an Indian toilet here. The stall smells like the pachyderm house at the zoo. Jonaki goes first and asks if I’ll hold her bag. I wait outside while she goes.

There is another stall vacant next to the one Jonaki’s in, but instead of using that one, a woman comes up and tries to open the door of Jonaki’s bathroom. “My friend’s in there,” I say. I guess the woman was hoping that what was behind door number two would be a gleaming, clean throne. No such luck. It’s just another filthy, smelly hole in the ground.

After this experience, I try to eat my pizza but have a hard time choking any of it down. The necking couple, whom we decide are Israeli, get a big plate of food from the outside shop. I can’t believe they’re eating this stuff. The front of the bus is full of Japanese tourists. They pass out sushi rolls wrapped in foil to each other. I wonder how they’ve managed to get sushi in Manali.

As we’re boarding the bus, Jonaki hears the driver’s assistant talking to the driver. The roads are bad. There have been some landslides. She talks to the assistant. He tells her it’s okay. There’s another route we can take.

Back on the bus, the assistant passes out blankets and I try to sleep. I can’t get comfortable. When I lay this way, the armrest digs into my back. When I lay the other way, my neck hurts. Somehow, in between my rustling, I get a little rest.

I awaken when the bus stops. There are men in brown uniforms with guns outside. I think, “Please don’t take away my laptop.” But they are not here to search the bus. Jonaki hears the guy next to us say something about the roads again. The roads are closed. There’ve been landslides. It seems we’re stuck, but then the bus proceeds past the uniformed men.

I try to sleep some more and awaken three more times to find the bus stopped and shut completely down. No air. No lights. We are just parked on the side of the road.

Jonaki’s awake. I ask her what’s going on. She doesn’t know. The necking couple’s iPod earpieces has fallen out of their ears and is blasting music. The song ends and they awaken and shut it off.

There’s nothing to do but try to sleep. I was hoping we’d be out of the mountains by now so I wouldn’t have to worry about the bus falling off the side of a narrow road, but we are still ensconced in the hills.

I try to sleep, but keep jerking awake.

Finally, just as I’m growing convinced that I’m going to suffocate in the warm, stuffy air, the driver starts the bus back up. The air comes back on, and we are underway.

Finally, as I notice the sky becoming a few degrees lighter, I fall asleep.

Beautiful Rocks

Monday night is a bit sleepless. In addition to being a little shaken by the extended power outage, I find myself rolling around in bed with pains in my stomach: the Delhi belly kind of pains. I blame that suspicious cup of tea from the roadside stand outside of Aut. I had that tea on Saturday. It’s now Tuesday. Three days. Exactly how long Susie’s friend took to get sick from her adventuresome lemonade.

Bulbul is stirring. She hears Phoebe and Yeti barking outside and she’d like to join them. She pokes her nose at the half closed doors that lead out to the porch. All the doors here are too swollen to shut all the way, hence the animals’ ability to enter and exit as they please. I help my new roommate on her way out, then lay back down, staring at the unlit bulb above my bed. Still no power.

I’m suddenly overtaken by the thought that I’m glad I came, not because being here is any big deal Shangri-la promised land revelation. It’s just rocks and water and sky. It’s just life. I haven’t been missing out on anything spectacular all along. Big deal if I haven’t seen Clockwork Orange. It’s just a movie. Big deal if I’m not a professional actress. I’m still me. And if I were a professional actress, I’d still be simply me. There is no revelation except the lack of a revelation. Life is just life. I think of this book on Buddhism that I read called Nothing Special. It talks about not seeking for some great, earth-shaking, bone rattling transformation; that real wisdom is recognizing the value of the ordinary; that life is nothing special. I’m still just beginning to understand this, but my understanding is beginning to be more than intellectual. I have felt this lesson with my body—or maybe it’s my see-through soul that is learning something here.

As I’m pondering the ordinary and trying to twist into a position that makes my stomach hurt less, the lights flash on. The power is back. I am thankful and somewhat surprised. I thought we were in for two days of darkness. Aside from being concerned about not having email, I was grieving the banquet lunches and dinners I might have to give up. But all is good, and Kirin’s already on his way with morning tea and biscuits that Phoebe is patiently waiting to share with me.

Jonaki joins me for tea on the porch. I tell her I’ve noticed from talking to our neighbors that the Mumbai accent sounds different than the Delhi accent. She agrees. She says Mumbai is different in a lot of ways. The trains and busses are ungodly crowded, but you don’t get harassed like you do in Delhi.

Phoebe follows us to breakfast and shares my paranta. She then decides she’ll go on our morning walk with us. We take the path to the right and she scrambles up the steep hill right between Jonaki and me. This time I know she’s seventeen. This time I’m keeping an eye on her and making sure we don’t go too quickly for her. She keeps up, but I do notice her panting quite a bit.

We walk past the barn nestled into the hill with the cows flicking their tails, and, shortly after, we approach the stream. Today, though, it is easily passable. The water isn’t flowing up over the log. It must have just been overflowing yesterday because of the rain. We cross, led by the aged but spry Phoebe.

On the other side of the stream, the trail widens into a sandy road wide enough for one vehicle. There is a jeep parked at the place where the road forks off. This is the road Kirin described when we asked him how they get supplies to the cottage. One leg of this trail goes up the mountain, back in the direction of Gushaini; the other leg leads toward a few scattered buildings and a big red and white utility tower of some sort. Phoebe takes the low road toward the buildings and I think we should follow her, though Jonaki thinks the high road leads toward the temple the woman from Mumbai was talking about. With a shaky stomach and a strange, cold sweat coming on, I tell her I’m not up for a two hour walk anyway. I’m glad when she doesn’t seem too disappointed.

We walk for a bit toward the buildings and the tower, then I see people in the distance and threatening clouds coming over the ridge. “I’m all about turning around before we get to the buildings,” I tell Jonaki, and she agrees. We don’t want to get caught in the rain again anyway. The last time that happened, it took forever for our clothes to dry.

We turn around and begin hiking back up the hill we’ve just walked down. My stomach rumbles. Phoebe is suddenly gone. We trace our steps a few hundred feet back and see her sniffing at the side of the trail. We whistle and clap and she perks up her ears then meanders in our direction.

On the way past the barn, two children are playing on a giant blue plastic tarp, leaping off the side of the trail and landing on the tarp. Their clothes are brown with dirt as they laugh and play what looks to me like a dangerous game. Somewhere between the barn and Raju’s brother’s house, we lose Phoebe. We wait for a bit, retrace our steps a bit, but she is nowhere to be found. We figure she knows her way around and walk back to the cottage on our own. As we approach the porch, we see her sitting in front of it, smiling, as if to say, “What took you so long?” She must have taken a short cut home from the barn.

The rain is beginning to fall. I go into the cottage, get sick, and tell Jonaki I’m going to lay down for a hopefully health-restoring nap. Just then, a man comes with a hose. He says he’s going to clean the bathroom. He’s done in a few short minutes and I go inside, take some Tums, and lay down. Jonaki showers.

A while later, I get up and take some notes in my journal. We sit on the porch and talk. I tell Jonaki that Scott is planning a trip for when I get back to the states. He emailed me about it the night before. We might go to Florida. Did she get to see much of Florida when she went there on her road trip while she was a student at the University of Illinois?

No, she tells me. She just went to the Disney parks. She didn’t have much time, plus she’d heard about how Florida is full of alligators, how they’re all over down there, how they’re really dangerous. I think of my fear of snow leopards and militants, and how it’s hard to gauge the safety of a place when you’re a foreigner. I know that in Florida if I stay away from a swamp, I’m not going to get eaten by an alligator, but to Jonaki, this warning about alligators was a blanket statement, a ubiquitous danger. Be careful of the alligators. And that’s how it is when you don’t know a place. You hear “bad roads” and see a disaster movie looming. You hear “alligators” and think “Jurassic Park.”

Kirin comes nodding for lunch. I tell Jonaki I don’t know if I should eat anything. She says I should try. Phoebe and Tommy join us in the kitchen. I scoop a little rice, a little dal and some spicy peas onto my plate and take a chapatti from the basket. But even the thought of this food is upsetting to my stomach. I feed the chapatti to Phoebe who gobbles it down with her little stubs of teeth. Tommy looks hungry too. I hate to waste the food on my plate. I hold out a spoonful of peas to him to see how he’ll handle it. He eats very gently and delicately from the spoon, careful not to drop a morsel. I do this a few more times until my peas are gone.

There’s some yogurt on the table. I eat some of that and it goes down okay. It’s begun to pour outside and the kittens gather at the kitchen door, under the shelter of the awning.

We duck through the rain back to the porch where I finally finish Saturday’s blog entry. There’s been so much to write about and it’s been tricky because I have to charge my laptop in the kitchen because none of the outlets in our cabin work. So I’ve been taking notes in my journal, but I don’t write complete thoughts. It takes a while to fill in the details once I have a keyboard at my fingertips.

While I’m typing away, Jonaki draws a perfect little picture of Phoebe all curled up and sleeping at her feet. “Raju’s Cottage, Phoebe, 17 years!” she captions it and I think how precious this time with this aged little dog has been. I think she can’t have that much time left. I think this is the only time I will ever get to roam these hills with my American, chapatti-loving friend, Phoebe.

Jonaki’s drawing is impressive. Jonaki is impressive, too. She went to graduate school for chemistry but is equally at home in the humanities, drawing, painting and writing. In the Indian educational system, you must make a choice in 10th grade whether you will study the sciences or the humanities. All the good students study the sciences, so Jonaki’s parents pressured her to follow suit, even though she wanted to take humanities classes. Because all the good students take science, all the good teachers teach science, and a humanities education is a substandard one. I am glad I didn’t have to choose at such a young age. This is one more way I wouldn’t have made a very good Indian girl.

Somehow it’s four o’clock and Kirin has arrived with our tea, covered in Friday, August 8th’s newspaper to keep it from getting wet in the rain. Jonaki almost sends him away and tells him to bring the tea later. “But it’s four o’clock,” Kirin tells her.

The couple from Mumbai trudges past, soaken wet and muddy. They walked to the gate of the park with Tommy. Part of the road was covered knee-deep in mud from a landslide. The warden told them it’s better to come in October if you want to trek.

We talk about bad college roommates, another experience we both share. Then the rain finally lets up and I walk down to the riverbank to take a few pictures. The kittens are playing with a basketful of nuts near the kitchen door, pawing them gingerly across the walkway. I stoop down to pet one, but Tommy interferes. He wants the attention.

Down at the river, I look at the rocks. This time, they are beautiful; delicate pinks and gentle grays. Suddenly, I can’t take enough pictures. I will be leaving this place forever very soon: this landing, this place of discovery, this Lotus Temple.

I return to the porch with a smooth pink rock in hand and find Jonaki walking back from the orchard. “That pine tree is so beautiful,” she says. “Every needle has a drop of water on it. When you stand underneath it, it’s like you’re surrounded by diamonds.”

“Show me,” I tell her, and follow her off. All four dogs follow. We stand under the tree and I see what she’s talking about. “You probably can’t take a picture of this either,” I say.

Bulbul chews grass and Phoebe sits, looking pensive.

Nevertheless, I get my camera and try. The result is a cheap imitation showing one 100th of the beauty of the thing.

I feel sad that I’ll shortly be leaving all this behind, then I think of our neighbors from Mumbai—the roads can close if there’s a mudslide. We could be here an extra two days, or we could leave tomorrow morning as planned. You can’t worry about what’s to come. You can only enjoy what is. This is what the woman meant about not controlling your life. This is how she could smile at the thought of a landslide. I’m on the verge of tears again, but these tears will be like the diamonds on the pine tree I’m standing underneath: as precious as the present moment. It is all that is. And what the next moment brings can be just as precious, if not more, so there is no use in clinging. Just live.

It’s growing dark, so I check my email and Kirin sets the table upstairs for us. Yeti sits at the top of stairs as he does every evening and intermittently barks at things he sees and hears in the valley with his fluffy head stuck through the railing. Kirin tries to shoo the kittens out of the dining room, but they are wily, and I don’t mind if they stay.

For dinner on Tuesday, Raju’s wife creates a Chinese meal. We begin with a vegetable herb soup like nothing I’ve ever tasted. There are two large trout from the river. I share mine with Bulbul. There is vegetable fried rice, noodles with carrots and green pepper and a delicious dish Jonaki tells me is called Manchurian gobi. It’s little balls of cabbage and dough in a delicate, light, sweet and sour sauce. She says everyone makes this in Delhi but nobody makes it well. This is made well. For dessert, there is gulab jamun, Indian fried dough in sweet syrup, and one of my favorite dishes.

I am so glad my stomach is better so I can enjoy this last, wonderful dinner. I am so glad my stomach is better because tomorrow I have a twelve hour bus ride ahead of me. This was a minor case of the Delhi belly, either that or my system is getting stronger and better able to fight it off.

After dinner, we walk past the couple from Mumbai’s room. They are sitting outside. “Have you dried out yet?” No. They are still soaked, as are their clothes and shoes which they have strewn about their porch.

I hope in vain that my new roommate will join me again, but Bulbul is busy. She has other things to do tonight. Besides, the power’s on and there’s nothing to worry about. Phoebe curls up under the table outside our room, and Jonaki and I retire to bed.

Baloo, Bug Spray and the Blackout

Monday morning we are sitting on the porch having tea when the woman from Mumbai walks past. She is half Scottish, half Gujarati, she tells us. Jonaki says her face looks familiar. She gets that a lot.

She tells us about an eight hour trek she and her husband are planning on taking later in the week. She goes to her cabin and gets out a large map with trails and elevations on it. A bus is going to drop them off with a big bunch of people on one end of this red line, then they are going to get picked up by a taxi on the other end of the red line. There’s eight hours of walking in-between, trusting that you’ll find the taxi when you’re done. This is more faith than I have, I believe.

She tells us about a second path we can take where you come to a stream, cross it and take a road to a temple. It’s about a two hour walk.

We talk about the dogs as they mill about. Baloo was Raju’s favorite, the woman from Mumbai says. She visited Raju’s two years ago and remembers this dog. He was the best trail guide; would never leave you for a hot scent or a shortcut. Too bad about the snow leopard.

Baloo was eaten by a snow leopard.

I thank the woman for showing us the map and recommending some treks. Never mind that she pretty much guaranteed that I will not leave Raju’s orchard. If the creepy stares and the “fatal vacation” warnings about white people disappearing aren’t enough, now there’s anecdotal evidence that I may be eaten by a wild cat. But it was nice to look at the map anyway.

We have our omelets and toast and share our parantas with Phoebe. As Kirin is bringing us more toast I ask him about the gun shots. Are people hunting out there, I wonder? “To scare the crows,” he says, then he explains something about chemicals. I think they don’t use chemicals on their produce, so they shoot guns to scare away the crows instead. I hope the guns also scare away the snow leopards while they’re at it.

After breakfast, we walk the hills through Raju’s orchard, past what we’ve now figured out is his barn. On the floor inside we can see a store of potatoes. Downstairs we see the tails of a pair of cows flicking. Just past the barn, the trail bends and is overtaken by a rushing stream. Yeti hops right through it and disappears into the slope on the other side. Jonaki and I stop. There’s a log and a large rock we can step on, but the log is wet and it looks like we’ll have to step into the water to get to the log anyway. Slip, slip, slip, I think. My other pair of shoes is still wet from yesterday’s rainy walk to town, and I can’t get my only dry footwear wet. I say we could take our shoes off and try to cross barefoot, but Jonaki isn’t interested. We turn back, calling the disappointed Yeti from his hopeful hike. He eventually obliges.

Jonaki thinks this mustn’t be the path that the woman from Mumbai described. There must be some other stream that’s easier to cross. She asks the people picking apples about this in Hindi as I walk ahead and photograph some flowers. They tell her that’s the path to the town and the temple. That’s the stream the woman was talking about crossing.

Instead of going back to the cottage, we take the path to town, surprising Yeti a bit when we don’t turn toward home. It’s about a kilometer. We get to town pretty quickly. When we arrive, I ask Jonaki what she wants to do next. She wants to turn around instead of walking through the town again. It seems whatever happened there yesterday with the laughing men really spooked her. It kind of spooks me, too, to see that she was so perturbed by the incident. I feel like a kid whose parent has just told her that yes, there is a monster in your closet. Jonaki’s supposed to be assuring me that we are safe. On this count, in this village, she seems unsure.

Still, I’m glad to be with a cautious travelling companion and not with the lady from Mumbai. Even though it’s threatening rain again, this intrepid couple is heading on the nine kilometer walk to the entrance of the Great Himalayan National Park over the wet rocks that make you go slip, slip, slip.

We mill around the school and Jonaki takes a few pictures of the gate. There are quotes painted in Hindi on it about learning and philosophy. I lean up against the wall of a vacant concrete building so the people in town can’t gawk so much at me. I think, I wouldn’t want to be followed back by anyone. I prefer not to be spotted at all. I’ll be stealthy, like a snow leopard.

Back safely at the cottage, the couple from Mumbai is sitting outside. The woman asks where we’re from. “I thought you were working in Delhi,” she tells me. I must have a Delhi vibe.

She is a designer by trade but she’s made a shift a few years ago to planning music festivals. Right now she’s working on planning Peter Gabriel’s world music festival in Goa.

The subject of landslides comes up. She likes them, she says. They can shut down the roads for two days at a time. She smiles. “It reminds you that you can’t control your life.”

But you can control your life, I think. You can avoid coming to places where you know there will be landslides. People have choices. Two days! If there is a landslide, I’m controlling the rocks right off the road, I think. I’m getting out of the vehicle and digging. How hard can it be?

Back at the room, I take a quick shower. There’s enough hot water to shampoo but not quite enough to condition. I have to really scramble to rinse the conditioner out of my hair while the water’s still lukewarm. I’ve figured out that there’s not enough hot water in the geezer to take a shower after Jonaki, so I’ll wait until it has a chance to replenish after her ablutions: after breakfast but before lunch. When we’re talking about the hot water, she mentions something about only filling the bucket half way. I’m confused for a second. There’s a big bucket in the bathroom. There’s one in the bathroom of my guest house too. I think that Indian people might not shower at all, but fill a bucket with hot water and then take a kind of sponge bath with it. There’s a lot of advertisement about water conservation. This must be another means.

After my shower, I go out onto the porch and douse myself in Deet. I don’t want any more necrosis and I certainly don’t want any of the mountain ticks helping themselves to my hemoglobin. Jonaki scrunches her nose at the bug spray. Yeti gets up off the porch and lays in the grass instead. “I’d rather be sprayed than ticked,” I tell Jonaki. A moment passes, then she asks me if I’ll spray her. Gladly, I say.

“You’re influencing me,” she tells me. I’m glad to be the American ambassador of bug spray.

Kirin comes nodding and we follow him off to the dining room. Lunch is a stack of hot, fresh chapattis that Kirin keeps replenishing from upstairs, a casserole dish of steaming hot rice, a dal of kidney beans, okra, and a tomato-based paneer (cheese) dish. There’s also a proper raita, according to Jonaki. This is a yogurt-based dish with coriander and tomatoes in it. I finally resist the urge to eat until I’m bursting. Bulbul comes into the dining area and passes out by the table. Dogs and cats regularly open doors here and enter where they please. A door will open and I’ll be looking up for a person and see nobody. Then I look down and see a tiny cat or a meandering dog. I offer Bulbul a bit of chapatti but she just snores. If Phoebe were here, she’d gobble this up, but my American friend is sleeping under the table on the porch by our room. That’s her spot.
The afternoon passes with more reading, more talking and more petting the dogs. Kirin brings tea and biscuits about four o’clock, then I ask him when it starts getting dark if I can check my email.

I should feel relief at getting the chance to correspond, but I instead find myself shaking, my stomach upset while I read the little notes from my mother and my husband. Instead of feeling connected, it is this moment when I feel their distance, their remoteness, especially when Internet Explorer crashes and my message fails to send. This is my only spider web thin, vulnerable connection to my family and it can be revoked without notice, without reason, without recourse. I finally get my message to send to Scott, but the unsettled feeling stays with me through dinner, even when I discover that Raju’s wife has created an homage to American comfort food of sorts, with pasta and mashed potatoes (and dal and chapattis, of course).

We are standing out by the fire pit after dinner when the power blinks on and off, then stays off. It’s an overcast night with many clouds and few stars. There is little moonlight. The whole valley is dark. Power cuts in the city last for a few minutes unless they announce a planned outage. This one feels different. No one is standing by ready to fix it. On the way to the cottage, Jonaki asked Raju about power cuts. He said they’re rare because the valley is powered hydroelectrically. This tells me something out of the ordinary has happened. I wonder if we’ll have power back before we depart, or if it will be days. As if I knew this would happen, my fear from before dinner is confirmed: with no power I have no email; with no email, no connection to the outside world. I am in the middle of the Himalayas, plunged into blackness.

I feel my way into our cabin and find my purse where I keep my little pink mag flashlight. Jonaki uses her cell phone to light her way.

We sit on the front porch petting Bulbul and Phoebe until we’re sleepy. Jonaki walks into the back room by the river where she sleeps. Perhaps sensing my unease, Bulbul follows me into my room and lays down at the side of my bed. She will sleep with me tonight so I don’t feel so alone, so covered in darkness. The world is okay when there’s a sweet, peaceful dog at the foot of your bed.

I sleep with the light switch turned to on so I'll know when the power comes back on. I am not awakened by any illumination.

The Trail Guides

Here are Yeti, Bulbul, Phoebe and Tommy.

See-Through Vicki

Sunday morning I wake up and Jonaki is already awake, sitting on the porch with biscuits and wonderful, warm ginger tea, served to us in a yellow thermos with a blue dragon on it. Dogs are milling around: Tommy and Bulbul and Phoebe. Raju properly introduced us to his crew after dinner on Saturday night. Bulbul is the youngest, and she is a female. Phoebe is the oldest. Yeti, the fluffy white dog, loves to hike the most. He’s your trail guide. Tommy the lab wasn’t even Raju’s dog, but just showed up one day and didn’t leave. I think Tommy is a funny name for an Indian dog, but Jonaki says it’s actually pretty common. British soldiers were called Tommy and it just kind of stuck as something to call your dog when there were no more British soldiers around.

I share my biscuits with the dogs and enjoy more than one cup of tea as white clouds brush past the blue sky. I am so happy to see that the sky is still blue somewhere after seeing only the milky yellow haze of Delhi for over a month.

We’d read the paper, but we’ve already read it. Twice. It’s from Friday, August 9th: the last time Raju went to town.

We sit talking about Jonaki’s experiences living in the United States while she studied at the University of Illinois. We talk about being homesick and the things you miss, like food. We talk about how Indian sugar is different from what I’m used to. Here it comes in big crystals that you can crunch.

Men with baskets full of apples strapped to their backs come from the adjacent hill. Kirin shows up, asking what kind of eggs we want. Omelets are fine. I look forward to a reprise of yesterday’s breakfast. It made the food at the Ahuja Residency look pretty sad in comparison. All that homemade jelly and fresh, fluffy eggs can put a girl in a good mood.

After breakfast, we decide to take a walk to town, maybe hike a little past town towards the entrance to the adjacent national park. It looks cloudy, so I take my umbrella just in case. Yeti whimpers and runs ahead, and Bulbul tags along as well.

There is no goatherd this time, only the trees and rocks and river and our trusty trail guides. It starts to rain and I unfold my tiny polka-dotted umbrella. It doesn’t do a very thorough job of keeping me dry, but it tries.

We approach the school building and see a few villagers, children in dirty cotton sweaters and men with baskets coming down from the hills. Women’s clothing here is none of the fine, bright fabrics I see in the city. Here, at higher altitudes, they dress in layers of dark cotton and wool from yak and angora rabbits. The thin men wear collared shirts with woolen vests over them. Men, women and children glare at me even when I look back and smile. This far off the beaten path, I am sure they don’t see many white people—and, it seems, they like it that way.

We follow Yeti’s springing steps over the blue bridge which sways with the footfalls of the people crossing with us. Jonaki is a little nervous about it. I reassure her. I checked out the cables the bridge hangs on and they look good and strong. The rain falls as we climb the stone stairs up to street level where two dogs full of ticks await our arrival. Yeti runs ahead and Bulbul stays with us, cautious. This time we walk into the town instead of away from it. There are little stalls with tobacco and fruit. There’s a bank. There’s a run-down temple with an advertisement for some computer service on it and a dirt courtyard strewn with rubbish. There’s a sort of general store with some food stuffs. Jonaki stops and speaks to three men here in Hindi. She wants to know the way to the park. They laugh and point at me standing behind with my polka-dotted umbrella. “Slip, slip, slip,” they tell her. We shouldn’t go hiking in the rain. We’ll fall, they laugh and point.

The dogs that greeted us are now circling around Bulbul, sniffing her behind, dominantly pushing her with their shoulders. She tries to walk away but is stopped by another male dog. She puts her head down and submits. She’s a sweet little girl with sad eyes and she’s getting pushed around. I don’t want her to get full of the town dogs’ ticks. Worse, I don’t want them to hump her. I shoo them away with my foot before things can go any further.

Jonaki comes back from talking to the men. She doesn’t like the way they are acting at all. She doesn’t know why they keep laughing. I look up and see them making faces in my general direction. Further off, people in all directions are glaring. I feel the dogs circling around me and agree with Jonaki. Let’s take Bulbul and get out of here. We call to Yeti who has run off ahead. He comes bounding back, ears flopping, and beats us to the bridge.

Jonaki is more surprised than I am at the villagers’ reactions to us. I explain to her that it’s pretty common that I get this reaction: people, especially men, find me either titillating or hilarious. I think of the auto-wallah who laughed me all the way home after church last week. I think of Sonu who loves me. I tell her that even when I’m out walking around the office, I get lots of unfriendly glares. The men won’t smile even when I nod or smile.

She tells me to cut it out. Smiling at them only encourages them; I’m making it worse for myself. I shouldn’t make eye contact. This happens to even the Indian women around the office when they walk around the industrial estate. So it’s not just a white thing. It’s a woman thing.

She tells me that when she was younger she used to go outside and take walks and run all the time, until she hit puberty. Then she suddenly started feeling violated when she went outside. Men would brush her on purpose as they walked past. Men would pinch her when she rode the bus. And it makes no difference if you confront them and try to shame them. They just laugh.

Women here are still largely objects, possessions to be either protected or coveted. Gender roles are still rather starkly assigned and observed. I think of the Indian couple at church who was leaving for the United States and how only the husband got to speak to the congregation while the wife stood silently behind him. Jonaki says it’s rare to find an Indian man who will help with the housework. Theirs is the realm of commerce. Every shopkeeper is a man. Every auto-wallah is a man. There was one female auto-wallah in Mumbai, Jonaki said, and it was a huge news story. Out on the streets of Delhi, you wonder where all the women are. They are at home, doing women’s work.

People have told Jonaki she’ll have to compromise and settle in order to get married, but she’s having none of it. I don’t blame her.

I wonder how you change these conditions in a country as diverse and varied as India. I wonder if you can. It seems so huge, so insurmountable. I think it must have felt like that in the United States before suffrage, before women were even considered full citizens. I thank God that there were women who thought they could change these societal norms. What hope, what vision, what faith they must have had to look around at a world full of men and think that they, too, should own it. They, too, should be in control of their own destinies.

Sexism is alive and well in the United States, but the level of respect and equality enjoyed by women as a matter of course is just one more thing that is so easy to take for granted. Imagine not being able to take a walk without feeling like a piece of raw meat in a tiger’s den. I know I take all my jogs through Coralville for granted. I take it for granted that I can go grocery shopping after dark and feel safe. I take it for granted that I can use public transportation without being felt up. I take it for granted and I miss it.

Back at the cottage, Jonaki, Bulbul and I find Yeti waiting for us. He has apparently taken a short cut.

We spend the rest of the day eating, writing, eating, reading and talking. Workers return from the hills with more apples strapped to their backs. A group of women returns with bales of long grass to feed the cows. Tommy the black lab comes bounding after them, full of big mountain ticks. This is where he gets his ticks from: the long grass.

Since my clock is on the fritz, I tell time by what I’ve eaten and the angle of the sun. As it begins to drop down over the ridge, I think it’s almost time for dinner. Before I eat, I ask Kirin if I can check my email, and he fires up the computer for me.

After dinner, we stand around by the fire pit, looking up at thousands of stars. Jonaki remembers her parents telling her to count the stars one time when she was little—and she eagerly tried to do it.

A couple from Mumbai offers us some whiskey. The woman has an olive complexion and looks like she could belong to almost any nationality in the world. I can’t quite make out her accent, but she speaks good English. She’s quiet and looks at the stars with a smile on her clean face.

Raju joins us as well. He is bemoaning the fact that people throw their garbage all over in the cities. There is no garbage thrown at Raju’s cottage—and it is just about the only refuse-free place I’ve seen so far. Even the trails behind his house and the remote village of Gushaini are littered here and there.

I ask Raju if many Americans stay here. “Yes,” he says. The American ambassador was here. And then the police had to come. This is where his English gives out. He tells the rest of the story to the man from Mumbai, who says after speaking some Hindi, “That must’ve been many years ago.”

Eight years ago, or ten years ago, Raju confirms. I wonder if the police were the Indian police, or if they were just the security that the Ambassador would have warranted, or if there was some kind of incident. I think it’s best to keep a low profile and stay away from town. I think of my guidebook’s warning “fatal vacations.” I feel safe at the cottage. Raju and his workers are friendly and respectful. But straying too far away seems inadvisable. I’ve heard gunfire in the hills. Who knows what’s going on out there?

Phoebe is an American, Raju offers, finding his English again. She came from the meditation centre in Kullu, about two hours away. Lots of Americans go there to visit, and they also run an animal shelter. She was left there by some meditating Americans.

The little brown dog with the pensive eyes sits at my feet soaking in her story and the pets I am giving her. She is seventeen, Raju says. I can’t believe it. She’s been following us up the steep trail with no sign of arthritis. She doesn’t even have any gray hair. The only sign of her age are her little rotten front teeth. The hills have treated Phoebe well.

We say goodnight to our company and retire for the evening. I take out the book Vivek lent me, What Religion Is, by Swami Vivekananda. “He went to Chicago, you know,” Jonaki tells me. Just then it dawns on me that Swami Vivekananda was the man Lowden Singh was trying to tell me about when I visited Akshardam Temple, the man he was astounded I didn’t know.

Jonaki says every Indian knows the story, so it would make sense if someone was surprised that I didn’t know it. Lowden Singh, our paths converge again!

Swami Vivekananda went to Chicago in 1893 to speak at a world parliament of religions. He spent years afterwards traveling in the west, in the U.S. and Britain, speaking of the notion of a universal religion. The book I’m reading is a collection of his writings and lectures about this notion.

Near the beginning of the book, the Swami talks about religion as being a human’s search to draw close to God. He says that many people want to lie back and expect religion to find them, to inspire them, to come to them and are disappointed when they feel a lack of spirituality. But, he says, we wouldn’t try this with any other discipline. We wouldn’t, for instance, cry out, “Oh chemistry, come to me.” We’d go to the lab and study elements and conduct experiments. I like this analogy. I want to go to the lab with him and mess around with some test tubes and Bunsen burners.

There’s another passage that catches me and gives me pause; it’s a story about the Swami meeting his spiritual master, Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna effectively showed the Swami his soul by touching him one day. Swami describes the experience thusly:

With my eyes wide open, I saw that the walls and everything else in the room
were whirling around, vanishing into nothingness; the whole universe, together
with my own individuality, was about to be lost in an all-encompassing,
mysterious Void! I was terribly frightened and thought I must be facing
death—for the loss of my individuality meant nothing less than that to me.

In Hinduism, this is the vision of the soul, the divine, the “god” in each person who gets greeted by the “Namaste”. The divine in me recognizes the divine in you—because it is part of the same divinity. In Hinduism, the soul is part of a unity rather than something with a personal identity.

The idea makes me spin, too. I understand Swami’s description of feeling unglued by this notion because it is a disorienting one. I’ve always thought of my soul as a see-through version of myself. She wears the same clothes, has the same haircut, uses the same brand of deodorant, cracks the same sarcastic jokes I do. Does my sould have to change her underpants? I think.

I realize I don’t have a really solid notion of my soul. What is my soul? How can I not know it? Is it the see-though me or is it something more like Vivekananda describes?

I can’t allow myself to think too deeply about this notion. Not in the mountains. Not so far away from my family. I can’t face the whirling nothingness by myself, not when there’s no one to run home to and hug afterwards.

Maybe I will ask myself this question at the Lotus Temple, I think, where there is an overwhelming sense that everything is okay.

It’s a good question for the Lotus Temple where I know if I’m not ready for an answer, I won’t get one. And if I am ready, it will come.

Connectivity

Jonaki is able to get in touch with Raju using her cell phone at our morning stop. He will send someone into Aut to be there for us when the bus stops. We tell him the bus number so he can find it.

Back on the bus, I see what Jonaki was talking about. The roads are good, but we are twisting up and down the sides of mountains with precipitous drops just a few feet from the highway. Still, I don’t panic. I breath deeply and trust our bus driver. He is cautious, not passing or taking any turns too quickly.

Right after driving through India’s longest tunnel, which takes us square through an entire giant mountain, we approach Aut. We are the only ones getting off here, and Jonaki seems anxious that they don’t fly past without letting us disembark. We have our bags collected and are standing at the front of the bus before it even slows.

The bus driver’s assistant takes my suitcase out and another very skinny man grabs it before I can even take it. This is Raju himself, spiriting us away to his tiny car. He rolls down both windows. The air is sweet and cool and feels good as it hits my face. He takes us right through the tunnel again and I try not to feel claustrophobic. At least this second time, I know the tunnel has an end. The first time, I was wondering.

I brace myself for this leg of the journey. “Travelers to this area need to make sure their insurance covers emergency helicopter evacuations,” my guidebook’s words echo back to me. I am pleased to see that the roads are not made of mud, but are actual roads. I am further pleased when I realize what Anindo said was true; we are driving into a valley, not the peak of a mountain, so the precipitous drop offs we saw while we were on the bus are not present here.

But the road isn’t exactly smooth. It’s rocky and bumpy. Here, again, I am thankful to have a driver with good judgment. He doesn’t fly around any corners or whiz past any trucks we come upon the way a Delhi driver would.

“Are you okay?” Jonaki asks me. I must look a bit white—well, whiter than usual.

“I’m fine,” I say, and it comes out in a whisper. I realize this may not be very convincing. I try again. “I didn’t mean to whisper. It’s just so bumpy that I didn’t want to yell.” This is lame as well. Let’s face it, I’m a bit scared, but not so scared that my heart is in my throat, beating so it looks like it will leap forth from my kurta. Not so scared that I need medication to calm me down the way I have so many times in the past for no good reason. “I’m fine,” I say again. And I really am.

There are about three places in which the road is covered in mud. Raju downshifts and takes us right through with no problem. We run into a little traffic jam in one of the villages where some trucks have parked between the shops blocking the narrow roadway. Raju throws the car in reverse and takes a high road around the village instead. We reach his cottage in about an hour, but the adventure continues. He parks on the side of the highway and takes our bags down to the rocky bank of the Tirthan River for us. Stretched across the rapids is a cable with a small cart on it. This is how we must get to the cottage. A man waits on the far side of the river to help pull the cart along the pulley system. Jonaki goes first. She starts to climb in to the little cart, but Raju says, “Legs out.” She sits down, her backpack next to her, her short legs sticking up out of the cart. Raju gives her a push and she’s off. I take out my camera. I may as well enjoy this. Raju looks at me. He knows I’ve been frightened because Jonaki’s told him about her American friend who is worried about the roads. “Is very safe,” he tells me.

Before I can think to be polite about it, I laugh. “Very safe; I don’t know,” I say. But I stow my camera back in my purse and climb in once the cart is sent back, newspapers spread out under me to keep from getting wet. Raju gives me a push, and it does feel strangely safe, like a very tame amusement park ride. It’s actually fun, and once I reach the opposite river bank, I wish the ride would have lasted a little longer. I wish I’d gotten a picture from mid-river. It’s beautiful with clear water rushing over huge rocks.

Raju is the last to come over. He rides with my huge, heavy suitcase. I feel like such a lame, chicken American, but then I think, “Hey, how many lame, chicken Americans make it all the way out here? Not many.” I may be the only one, in fact. So even if I’m a little trepidacious, I’m here, and that’s saying something. Being such a rare species in these parts, I do have a feeling of being something of an ambassador. I feel like I will fix the picture of what an American is like for Raju and his family. It’s a little bit of pressure. Already he thinks I’m scared of everything—and he’s right.

On the other side of the river and safely onto the bank, I realize I did it. I got here. I survived, even without the help of medication. I was able to do this—not me and some pills for anxiety. Just me.

“You see these trees,” Jonaki asks me. “If you cut one of them down here, it’s like murder, and you go to prison for life. They believe each tree has a spirit in this state.” Mental note: do not chop down any trees while vacationing here. Hide my computer power cord on the way home, and do not chop down any trees. I wonder where all the wood came from that built the cottage. Jonaki says it’s not every tree; just a certain kind of tree that’s protected.

We climb from the river bank up to the wooden cottage and see a litter of kittens and several dogs. These are Raju’s dogs. He has four: Yeti, Bulbul, Phoebe and Tommy, who isn’t really his dog, but showed up here in September and didn’t leave. Bulbul, the blonde female dog with sad eyes, approaches him and he grabs her face and kisses her, talking to her affectionately in Hindi. Raju seems like an okay guy. A good driver, and an okay guy.

He shows us our room. It’s actually two rooms with three beds. He shows us how the hot water works. We have to turn on the “geezer” and let the water heat up. In America, geezers are old men, and you certainly don’t want to turn them on. I don’t mention this little cultural difference. I’ll leave that distinction to Raju’s next American visitor.

Raju walks us outside to where the trail leads away from the cottage. “You can walk to Gushaini from here,” he says. “Just up and take a left, then another left.” Jonaki told me Raju said he was going to test out his English on me. He’s doing pretty well. “The dogs will go with you,” he says.

We thank him and walk back to our room to settle in. Jonaki tries to plug in her camera to charge it, but the outlet isn’t working. We find a second outlet in the room, but the face of this one is screwed on crooked and the plug won’t even go in. The lights work in the room, so there is electricity. There is just no way to charge our electronics. I think of my blog and how it will really test me to have to write everything long hand. I am not so patient and my handwriting has really suffered since I’ve had a laptop. The only writing I usually do is to take notes in meetings and to sign my name when I have to. India has changed that a little. I’ve filled up more than half a notebook while I’ve been here for one reason or another. I figure in a pinch, my notebook will have to suffice.

We each try our cell phones. Jonaki first, then me. We each find that there are no bars. I wasn’t counting on my cell phone working, but I’m still disappointed when it doesn’t. I need a way of getting in touch with my family to let them know I’ve arrived safely, especially after scaring the crap out of them with my talk of landslides and soft roads and bridges going out. I feel a little sick.

Another skinny but young man gently knocks on our door. “Breakfast,” he says, then leads us off toward the other branch of the L-shaped cottage. This is Kirin, Raju’s son. Breakfast is an omelet with tomato, coriander and real onion in it. There is also toast with what appears to be an assortment of homemade jellies on the table. And parantas: a flat bread stuffed with potato and coriander. And yogurt. And two kinds of juice: plum and apple. And water bottled in the Himalayas about an hour from where we are staying. This is all brought to the table by the quiet Kirin. He runs up and down the stairs, dishes in hand, bowing his head with each new delivery. Raju walks through the kitchen and Jonaki asks him in Hindi about a small pitcher of milk sitting in front of her. After he replies back in Hindi, Jonaki explains, “It’s from his cow, right there.” She points out the window behind us. The normal worrying you have to do about sewage in the water is not applicable here. Here, there are other worries, like militants in the mountains that like to capture westerners to make examples of them. The guidebook said that has happened a few dozen times in the Kullu Valley since 1990. We are in the neighboring Tirthan Valley, but I figure the militants may not respect the boundaries of their criminality set forth by Lonely Planet.

I sneak a piece of my paranta under the table to a white dog with sad eyes. Raju winks at me. It’s okay to share.

Jonaki asks Raju if she can use his cell phone to call her father. She dials him up and lets him know she’s arrived here safely. I am jealous. I use the cell phone to call Julianne. I’d emailed her before I left and asked that if I couldn’t call America from Raju’s, would she be able to send an email for me? She emailed me back almost immediately and said she’d be happy to help. Julianne doesn’t pick up her phone, and there is no voice mail, so I still have no way of letting anyone know I’m here okay.

Jonaki says we could call her father back. He could send the email for me. We call her dad. He agrees to send the email, but not until later. His power is out. It should be back by two in the afternoon. That’s three thirty in the morning in Chicago and Iowa, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. We give him Scott’s work email address and hope for the best. I feel so unsettled not being able to talk to anyone.

After breakfast, there’s a litter of kittens and some mama cats outside the kitchen door. I pet them and Raju watches, smiling, standing back and talking to Jonaki in Hindu.

We walk back to our room and Jonaki decides to take a shower. I stay outside and watch the baby cats wrestle each other and attack their mama cats’ tails as they jump on and off of the benches around the fire pit. One mature cat comes down the walk howling with a mouthful of bug. A baby pounces up and carries it off to eat it under a bench. I think about an hour passes and Jonaki emerges from the cabin, refreshed. “It’s nice,” she says. I should take a shower too. There’s still hot water. She just used some when she was brushing her teeth.

A shower sounds like a good idea, especially after an all night bus ride—even if I was completely unconscious the whole time. The shower is interesting. There’s no shower stall or curtain: just a head that comes out of the wall and a drain in the stone floor underneath it. I turn on the water and it comes out cold, then warm. It seems there is still hot water. I stick my clothes up high on a shelf where I think they will stay dry, and get myself wet. Just as I begin to lather up my hair, the water goes cold. Ice cold. I put my head into the stream to try to get the shampoo suds out of it and accidentally inhale some of the water from the shock of the cold. I wonder if this will make me ill, and I spit it out as best I can.

With teeth chattering, I towel off and tears run down my face. I should not have come here. I can’t even get in touch with my family to let them know I’m not dead, and they are the reason I’m living. Life is meaningless without the people I love, and I just keep taking myself farther and farther away from them. What if they’re not there when I get back? What if something terrible has happened and I don’t know about it? I will never forgive myself. “Stupid fucking cold shower,” I curse and cry. How will I ever make it to Wednesday? Why did I come here?

I take some more deep breaths and get dressed. Outside, I dig into my backpack for my clock. It says 7:42. I know it’s not 7:42. It’s probably closer to ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. I punch buttons the way I did the last time when I reset it, but it seems to be stuck in some kind of stopwatch mode. I try to take the battery out, thinking that might reset it completely, but the battery cover is stuck on. Jonaki is sitting on the porch outside. She hears all the beeping.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

I tell her about my clock, but not about being lost without time, not about my deep grief at not being able to be in touch with my family. I feel like I’m at the wrong end of a telescope, everything is so small and far away and fish-eyed.

Jonaki pries off the battery cover and I take out the battery. Popping it back in, I see that this didn’t fix the problem anyway. I am once again without a clock, without time, without a point of reference, without a way to tell my family I am okay, in the middle of the Himalayas. And I knew this might happen. It’s my fault. I try to guess the hours until two o’clock when the email message will at least be sent, but then put it together that it’s Saturday. Scott won’t get an email sent to his work address until Monday. I hope that Raju shows up again with his phone so I can try Julianne. If I can get in touch with her, maybe I can even have her Skype Scott or my mom. At the very least, I can have her use my mom’s Yahoo email which she checks everyday. But Raju isn’t around. He’s gone to town. There is no phone.

We decide to check out the trail that Raju showed us. Yeti, the aptly-named white, hairy dog, perks up his ears, whimpers from excitement and runs ahead, showing us the way. We follow him up the steep hillside past apple trees, pear trees and aaru trees, all full of fruit. The view of the river below and the mountaintops dusted with clouds is stunning. I snap picture after picture. Suddenly, we come upon a goat, then three more, then a whole bunch of goats being tended by a dark-skinned boy who looks to be about thirteen. The goats block the path, and Yeti stops, telling us to wait. He sits patiently, ears pricked, watching the goatherd and his flock. The goatherd whistles and the goats jump down from the slope where they are grazing. They follow him down the path, except for two stragglers. One stays behind and stares down Yeti, who pounds his two front paws into the dirt trail as if to say, “Try me.” The goat, who has large horns, pounds his front feet in reprisal. Yeti, unassuaged, tries it again. I am suddenly afraid our trail guide will be gored by a goat. Do goats gore? This one certainly looks like it could. But Yeti has faced him down. He turns and trots off toward the flock, followed by the only other goat that had stayed behind. Yeti lets the group get a good distance ahead of us, then leads us along the path after them.

At one point, he veers off toward the river and pauses for a drink. We do not partake, but patiently await our guide, who quickly resumes our expedition. The trees clear and open onto a series of crumbling buildings with laundry hanging up in them on the opposite side of the stony river. We are standing next to a brick building with open spaces where doors and windows should be. It looks to me almost like it’s been bombed. “This is the school,” Jonaki says, having read a sign in Hindi that explains as much. A blue bridge sways on thick cables. Yeti gallops onto it and we follow him to the opposite side of the river, where the village of Gushaini sits. People carrying large baskets on their backs stare at me. We turn right and walk a few hundred feet away from town instead of into it, where there will be fewer intimidating gazes. I point at a pulley system like the one we rode across the river, only this one goes straight up the side of the mountain, thousands of feet. Jonaki sees a temple at the top of the pulley and asks a woman in rags about the metallic silver structure with twisting corners peeking out of the pine trees surrounding it. It’s a temple for Durga, goddess of strength, she tells me after a brief Hindi exchange.

We start to walk back toward the bridge when a pair of large dogs approaches us. One of them jumps up onto me. They’re friendly, but full of ticks. We yell to Yeti to lead us back home. Yeti runs back toward the blue cable bridge and we follow behind, trying to shake the town dogs. I mention again how I am confused by the contradiction of female worship and female objectification. Jonaki and I have talked a lot about gender roles in India over the past day and a half.

As we walk toward the cottage down the narrow path, I try to find a rock for my mother. I tell Jonaki I’ve brought back rocks from Versailles and from London and from the Rocky Mountains for my mother’s garden. The rocks here, I notice, aren’t very colorful. Jonaki, whose father is a geologist, says they’re mostly limestone and shale.

I tell Jonaki about the rocks in the Rockies. There’s quartz and granite. They’re pink and aqua and black and green and clear like crystal. They’re beautiful. I select a white rock for my mother and two small pieces of something that looks vaguely metallic. Mica, Jonaki says. The valley we’re in doesn’t have any mountains above the frost line, so it’s just all green, which is pretty, but I was also hoping for some snowy peaks, like I remember from my last trip to Colorado. I decide in my head that the Rockies are better than the Himalayas, but then I tell myself, no, the Rockies are just different than the Himalayas. I must find the beauty here too. A different kind of beauty.

We have lost Yeti in our pause to consider the geology of our surroundings. At least it’s a simple path back to the cottage.

When we arrive at the clearing, Yeti is sitting there panting, waiting for us. He must have taken some short cut back because the last time I remember seeing him, he was actually behind us on the trail. Jonaki goes inside for a nap and I sit, restless, on the front porch, taking notes in my journal. I don’t want to wear out the battery in my laptop. I don’t know why. In case of some kind of indeterminate emergency, I guess; a Himalayan emergency during which I’ll need swift access to Microsoft Word. I have this way of hording. I won’t eat the cookies I love because I’m saving them. Instead I’ll let them get stale and inedible. I won’t use the computer to write because I can’t recharge the battery. Instead I’ll drive myself crazy with my shaky handwriting.

It’s not long before Kirin comes by again, bowing his head, this time saying “Lunch.”

I wake Jonaki and we walk back to the kitchen followed by the odd dog and cat. Lunch is a banquet; bowl after bowl of food. There’s cauliflower subzi, a lentil dish, fresh chapattis, jasmine-smelling rice and a chicken curry. The brown dog loves the chapattis that I share with her, and I notice that she has little stubs for teeth, except for her fangs. Other than this, though, she is in good shape; a refreshing change from the poor, skinny dogs full of sores I see in the Delhi streets.

After lunch, we take a second, shorter walk, this time turning right, away from the village and following the trail to a dilapidated shack. Do people live here? Who does it belong to? Will they be unhappy to have visitors on the trail behind their house? This time, the black lab-looking dog and the brown dog come with us. These dogs are slower, taking lots of pauses to sniff and tinkle along the way. Jonaki doesn’t like the black dog. “Have you read ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’?” she asks me. “This dog is like that.”

I laugh. Poor black dog. He does seem a little rougher around the edges than the other dogs. And he does have a sore on his head. And I think I saw some ticks on him too. He is a brute, but his eyes are absolutely full of love.

These dogs stick with us on the way back to the cottage. We arrive back through the thick flowers and I suggest we walk down to the river bank where we rode the pulley cart. It was gorgeous down there. A blonde dog follows us down the irregular stone stepping path. I throw rocks into the river, trying to hit the cart suspended above it and missing every time. Jonaki wants to go back to the room. I’ll meet her back there. I’ll stay behind and sit here with the blonde dog for a while.

I throw a few more rocks and listen to the rushing sound of the water. I think again of my family and how if something happened, I wouldn’t know about it for a week because they have no way of getting in touch with me. Jonaki has told me about losing her mother about two years ago. This has been an abiding fear of mine since both my mother’s siblings died in quick succession of sudden heart problems a few years ago. I’ll cry again. That will help. I come close, but suddenly stop myself. “Look,” I tell myself, “You are here. This is the choice you made.”

“I know,” I reply. “It’s like a jail sentence.” I count the days and estimate the hours until I will be set free. I think of prisoners in their cells making hatch marks on the walls, anticipating their release. Then I grow angry.

“When will you learn to be where you are, instead of always wanting to be someplace else? Be where you are. Be where you are! You are in the Himalayas. You will never be here again. Look at these rocks, this sky, this clear water. Pet this sweet dog. Smell this perfumed air. See these swirling clouds lighting on the pine peaks that part the horizon.

Yes, you are right. There is no escape. You are here for the next several days. There is no radio, no newspaper, no tv, no Internet. You are alone with yourself. So you can hate yourself, or you can love yourself. You can be here, or you can spend the whole time wishing you were somewhere else, with someone else. You can be miserable or you can enjoy yourself.

You can enjoy yourself. Can’t you?

Can’t you?”

The question strikes me. If I can’t enjoy being with myself, why would anyone else ever enjoy being with me?

I answer defiantly, “Yes. Yes, I can enjoy myself. Of course I can.” And I’ll find some way of getting in touch with my family and getting them in touch with me. I know there’s an email already sent. That’s something.

I climb up the rock path and find Jonaki wandering around the grounds. She’s found a little veranda on the opposite side of the cottage. It overlooks the river. It’s a nice place to sit. We talk about how hard it is to get proper exercise in India. She says she joined a gym a while back but stopped going. I understand why, when you work until six o’clock p.m. on an early night and the traffic snarls take hours. There is no time.

Inside the room that this veranda sits beside, Jonaki spies a phone. A land line. Maybe I can use this phone to call my family, she suggests. I appreciate her thinking of my predicament. She is a considerate and agreeable travelling companion.

It grows dark and we return to the porch outside our room, where Kirin finds us to announce dinner. I ask him if there’s any way I can make an international phone call. “No,” he says, “but there’s Internet. Email.”

“There is?”

I feel like I’ve just learned that they’re keeping God inside a tiny jewelry box in a hidden room of the cottage.

“Can I use it? Can I check my email?” I think maybe I’ve heard him wrong. He nods for me to follow him up a wooden staircase into a room with a computer set up in it. He hits the power and the machine clunks to life.

“It will take some time,” Kirin tells me. And it does. But eventually, I am able to access my Yahoo email account and to tell my mother and husband that I have arrived safely and to let them know that they can get in touch with me by sending me Yahoo email which I’ll be able to check daily while I’m here. I also email Julianne and ask if it’s okay that I give her phone number to my family so that in the case of an emergency, they can call her and she can call me.

I am so thankful and still in disbelief that in the remote Himalayas I’m able to stay in touch with my family via email.

I'm just finishing up my love notes when Kirin comes nodding once again. "Dinner."

To The Peaks

Friday morning I wake up, shower and pack the rest of my toiletries. My suitcase is pretty full and pretty heavy. I’ve got two books, water colors that Scott sent me, clothes, my giant bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and every drug I could find in my room. No telling what you’ll need in the Himalayas.

I talk with Scott for the last time for a week. I don’t think I’ve gone a week without talking to Scott since the day I met him over a decade ago. The thought makes me crumble, and when he says goodbye, I lose it again.

Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I doing this to Scott? What am I trying to prove? Is it worth it?

I take a few deep breaths and pull myself together as I walk down the marble staircase to breakfast. I need to tell Pachu I’m leaving on a trip, but before I can begin, he smiles and says, “Madam, payment.” My office told me they wired payment last week Friday, over a week ago. I can check with them again, but when it’s daytime here, it’s nighttime there. If the payment hasn’t been received, then maybe there’s some problem. Anyway, I’m about to go on vacation for almost a week, so if Ms. Sonu has questions about the payment, she should speak directly with the people in the Iowa office.

I wonder what, if any, of this Pachu is taking in. “Madam, payment. Ms. Sonu,” he says again very pleasantly when I pause for air.

There’s another downpour on my way to work, and this makes me nervous. What is it doing to the roads north of here? I’ve heard it’s dangerous when it rains. Maybe I should cancel after all.

Near the office, I see a woman on a motorcycle who is striking for two reasons. Number one: she is driving the motorcycle. Most women on motorcycles sit demurely, side-saddle, holding onto their mates who, unlike them, wear helmets. The second reason the woman motorcyclist is striking is because she’s wearing this solid pink rain suit: pants and jacket. And across her back, in a loopy font, it reads: “Artificial!”

Now in the United States, this is nothing to brag about. We don’t want anything artificial in our people or our products. We pretend that we are always sincere and that everyone we know is also sincere. Even our politicians are sincere, right? We pretend that our food and our clothing isn’t made from plastic. We buy organic. Green is the new black. But this fad hasn’t hit India yet. Artificial is still cool—like in the 70s when America discovered polyester and the 80s when we discovered the synthesizer. Artificial!

But there’s something else about this boast that catches my eye. There is a certain sense of frankness in marketing here, as evidenced by the multiple stores I’ve seen whose signs simply read, “Cheap Store.” Then there’s the billboard I pass for a recruiting company that says, “Success is good fun,” and shows people drinking it up, partying. But the frankness isn’t necessarily honesty. Consider, for example, the ad for dandruff shampoo on the street in front of the Defence Colony market. It says Hanumn’s “increases brain power.” Wow. Strong shampoo.

At work, Debamitra wants to know why I’m so scared about this trip. I tell her about the rain and the roads. “This is nothing to be scared about,” she says. “What do you think a landslide will do? It will shut down the road for a while, at worst. Then they’ll have to clean it off.”

You mean the highway isn’t going to fall off the side of the mountain and take me with it?

“No! This is nothing to worry about.” Debamitra has a way of calming me down. She’s frank, just like the advertising.

Her advice about getting the purse and earrings for the history book launch worked so well, that I decide to trust her on this matter too. Now that we have that settled, she’s concerned that I don’t have a bottle of filtered water like everybody else in the office does. Why don’t I have one? I didn’t know I should. She calls the pantry and speaks to them in Hindi. They bring a bottle right down for me. Done deal.

The day passes quickly. At four o’clock, Jonaki is scrambling to get last minute work done before we depart. We find Balminder waiting outside for us at about four thirty. Traffic is pretty good, though, so we get to the bus station quickly. We still need to find out about our return tickets from the state tourism office.

They keep telling Jonaki that she can buy them here, at this office, and that we can catch the return bus in Aut. But when I tried to purchase the return tickets for us on Saturday, they told me I had to buy the tickets and catch the return bus in Manali, three hours north of the remote resort where we're staying. They want to make sure the white girl visits the tourist town and spends all her money in Himachal Pradesh before she leaves, it seems. There’s nothing to spend your money on in Aut, which is the small town on the main highway that Raju is meeting us on to take us to his cottage.

We’d both feel better having return tickets before we leave, so I tell Jonaki I’m giving her my money and hiding around the corner. I have a suspicion they’re playing some kind of mess-with-the-white-girl game with me.

Sure enough, Jonaki emerges from around the corner with two return tickets in hand. They tell her we can catch the return bus in Manali at 6, or Aut at 8 p.m. on Wednesday night. Either way is fine. She doesn’t understand why they gave me a different story. I try to tell her about the white girl tax. She’s never experienced it before. She’s never dragged a white girl around India with her before either.

We drag our luggage to the nearby Cottage Industries Emporium, the place where I shopped with Shabnum last Saturday. There’s a café on the top floor where we get some food before the long bus ride. We each order a sandwich, and ask to have a second sandwich packed to take with us. The bus ride seems like an eternity to me. I want to take food with me to eternity, just like the ancient Egyptians did.

We drag ourselves and our luggage back to the bus station and find a giant yellow tour bus waiting for us. The streets are muddy and full of dirty, smelly puddles, so I try to carry my suitcase aloft the whole time I’m waiting in a long line of people putting their luggage in the hold area under the bus. I scramble to pull all the pharmaceuticals I packed out of my suitcase and get them into my backpack, which is the only bag I’ll have access to on the bus. Along with Immodium and Tums and Ibuprofen, I have sleeping pills and pills for anxiety which I am feeling very good about not having needed the whole time on this trip. But if there is a time when I will need them, it is on this bus ride. I stand in line with handfuls of pill bottles as the man takes my suitcase and marks it with chalk: seat number 15, to Aut. The rest of the passengers, it seems, are going to Manali: a tourist destination that has whitewater rafting, trekking and the like. Jonaki spots me the ten rupees the man wants for taking my luggage. My hands are too full to dig out money without dropping things into puddles.

I climb onto the bus, sweaty, tired already. The seats are wide and they recline. There is plenty of leg room. Cool air circulates and dries my soggy hair. There’s a tv at the front of the bus and, even before we leave the Delhi city limits, there’s a Hindi movie playing: something about four college students chasing after the same girl. They dance together on the back of a motorcycle, they dance at the beach, they dance in a flashback sequence.

This part of the ride is flat and stress-free. We get caught in several traffic jambs and I wonder if we’ll ever get to our destination. I tell Jonaki I’m anxious to get out of the city and see what the surrounding countryside looks like. “What countryside?” she says. India is full of people. There is no countryside, except where we’re going. Even in Manali, in the hill stations, she says, it’s crowded. And, of course, Jonaki is right. The streets outside Delhi are lined with shops and shacks that light up at night like little ramshackle carnivals.

About three hours into our ride, we stop at one such carnival. There are red and yellow strings of lights draped over the front awning of an open air restaurant (that I’m glad I don’t have to eat at), and there are vendors selling candies, sodas and chips, calling out in Hindi about what they’d like you to buy from them. Jonaki and I decide that we should go to the bathroom while we’re here. There is no restroom on the bus, and this might be our last stop before Aut. A man says, “Ladies” and points off into the blackness behind the shack. We follow a path and see some lit up stalls. Tiny frogs jump across our shoes. Inside the stalls I can see there are no toilets. “It’s an Indian bathroom,” Jonaki says. It’s not just like a hole in the ground, though. There’s a porcelain bowl, there’s just no seat to sit on. It’s sunk flush with the earth around it.

Finally the camper’s toilet paper in my purse will be put to good use, I think. I’ll spare the details but tell you I feel pretty accomplished having successfully used the facilities. As I am putting myself back together, the lights go out. There is total darkness.

Finally the little pink mag flashlight inside my purse will be put to good use, I think, as I dig it out and light the path for Jonaki and me. I feel prepared. I feel assured. I feel fine.

I enjoy the lights and the sounds of the shopkeepers calling and the people milling around. There are a bunch of adventurous Brits and a few Americans on this trip with me. There are two families with small children. I take this as a good sign. Jonaki wants to check out a “factory outlet” stand. It’s a bunch of bottles shrink-wrapped, filled with tiny candies supposedly good for indigestion and other maladies. All the bottles have Hindi labels on them. A man offers a sample to me. It’s good. Sweet. Then he holds out a palm full of melting chocolate. No thank you, I say. But he insists. No thank you. Finally, Jonaki tells him no and he stops offering. I snap a few pictures of a makeshift Vishnu shrine and buy a bottle of coke, then it’s time to climb back onto the bus.

We get to Chandigarrh, the city that everyone says is so well-planned. “Look at the roads,” Jonaki tells me, in some wonderment. The roads do look almost like an American highway, without the crumbling piecemeal curbs, with green medians and well-maintained traffic signals. The bus stops and a Sikh man in a turban climbs aboard. We must show him every bag. “Every bag,” he repeats. When he gets to my backpack, he pulls out the power cord for my laptop and stares at it suspiciously and in silence for what seems like five minutes. I am so afraid it will be confiscated, just like my camera at the movies. I decide not to try an explain what it is for fear he'll want to take the whole laptop away. After close consideration, he decides it’s okay and hands it back to me. He missed the laptop completely. He searches the rest of the bus uneventfully, then we pull away. I eat my second sandwich, then curl up sideways in the seat. The bus driver turns off his flashing Sikh shrine/clock and the bus gets quiet.

When I wake up, it’s Saturday. It’s bright outside. And we are stopping in a village just about an hour outside of Aut, they tell us (though this hour was closer to two). I find a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the floor of the bus, right after finding where my right shoe had creeped off to while I slumbered. Outside, I find the owner of the glasses: a long-haired British gentleman who is downright sporting when he discovers that they're partially smashed.

I buy a chai from the dirty vendor because it’s boiled. Though there are other food options, the tea's probably about the only safe thing to eat here, aside from the biscuits Jonaki gets. They’re packaged and brought in from somewhere else. A man tries to get me to buy some naan. He is spreading butter on it with his dirty fingers, shoving it my way. “NihaN,” I say. No. I notice some drops of water on my chai glass and think of Susie’s warning, “If your plate is wet, send it back or dry it off.” It’s too late, though; I’ve already drunk from the glass. I decide to risk it and finish the tea. It’s sickeningly sweet, but that’s how they serve tea up in the hills, according to Jonaki. It feels good because it's hot while there is a mountain chill in the air, and I drink it up.

All I really want to do is crawl back on the bus and close my eyes. I'm still drowsy. I am so glad I was able to sleep. Jonaki told me she almost woke me up half way through the night so she could get out of her window seat. The bus was twisting and turning through the mountains and she left her motion sickness medicine in the cargo hold underneath. She almost made the bus stop and the copilot dig out her medicine for her. She probably got the idea from the men who kept making the bus stop so they could pee outside. This happened more than once.

Ironically, I, with my mountains of pills at arm's reach, was oblivious to it all. I hope I am so fortunate on the trip home.

A SHORT BREAK

While I take my break in the HimALayas, I will not have any access to the Internet. As such, I will not be able to post any writing until next week Thursday. I am taking my computer with me, though, and I do plan on writing. So prepare for an onslaught of postings and pictures when I return!

Thanks to everyone for keeping up on my adventures with me. Your comments and just knowing you're there reading really inspire me to keep exploring, keep learning and keep writing.

Namaste for now.

My New Direction

It’s raining again. Debamitra says she doesn’t want to come into the office on days like this. Did I feel like coming in? No. Good, she says.

She used to teach in Kolkatta and she’d get off work at 2:30, 3:00. It would be raining like this, but pleasant. Humid. She’d go down to the banks of the Ganges and cross the river in the rain. It was really lovely.

“When I first came here I thought the Jumna was something nice, then I find out it’s an overgrown nala,” Debamitra says.

Jonaki comes over to my desk. She wants to go over things to pack. We should take band-aids and medicine for motion sickness. She looks at my face and asks me if I’m okay. I’m trying not to tear up, but it’s not working very well. I’m chatting with my husband on Skype. Did I tell her yet? Did I say I’m not going? Grr, he growls. I tell him to hang on for a second.

I tell Jonaki I’m scared. People keep saying the roads are bad and, to me, this means the roads are sliding off the sides of the mountains. I don’t understand what “bad” roads are, just like I don’t understand what “formal” dress is, or “good” and “bad” food. I don’t understand anything. She wants to call her friend who recommended this trip to ask him what he thinks. She wants to call Raju, the owner of the place, so he can assure us that it’s safe. She wants to call the Himachal Pradesh tour company to make sure we can get the return tickets we need. I say okay.

Scott is curt on the chat. “Do you have anything new to tell me?” No. Jonaki is making some phone calls. He says, “I told you this would happen. Everybody would try to convince you it’s fine. Be true to yourself. Tell her ‘no.’”

She makes the calls and her friend even calls a third party, a man who makes the drive from Aut to Gushaini frequently. Everyone says the roads are okay. It’s safe. There hasn’t been that much rain. In my head there are still mountainous landslides sweeping away whole swaths of primitive, rocky roadways. But there is also the prospect that this is probably the only chance I will ever get to see the Himalayas, and the nagging feeling that I’m being too paranoid ,too worried about all this. I tell Jonaki I have to think about it. I don’t know if I’ll go. She says okay, she can wait. She doesn’t want to pressure me. She thought about it from my point of view and she understands how it would be scary. Indians are hearty, she says, curling her arms to show some muscle. I am not, I say.

Scott sends me an email with the subject line “This is maybe what I should have said.” He says:

It is okay with me if you go on a trip to the Himalayas. If something happens, I
will be sad, but I will not be mad or hold anything against you for your decision. If you decide not to go, that is okay with me too.

He is so selfless and supportive. I tear up.

I eat lunch with Amar and Jonaki. Jonaki lets me try some of her eggplant subzi. It’s good. Amar has a story. They have fooled Sukanya the intern into thinking they are replacing the copy editor with a piece of software. Amar took the joke too far, though, when he said now they’re looking into hardware: a machine where you put the author in one end, and a finished book comes out the other.

Now Shinjini has sent an email saying Amar accidentally shaved his moustache and is wearing a fake one. She attached a doctored photo showing Amar scowling with no moustache. Sukanya spread the email around and was staring at Amar earlier. “Is it that obvious?” he asked her. “No,” she says. “I can hardly tell.”

Amar asks if I will be here for Diwali. I tell him I don’t know exactly when it is. I expect him to speak fondly of it, but instead he matter-of-factly states, I hate Diwali. I think this is tantamount to someone saying “I hate Christmas.” Amar is a Diwali scrooge. Everyone I’ve ever heard talk about it says how beautiful the city is, full of lights, but not Amar.

It’s a filthy festival and loud, he says. They never stop with the firecrackers and the air gets so polluted. Another filthy festival is Holi where they throw dye on you. And because it’s religious, the police don’t want to interfere, because there’s so much religious conflict in the country. People build temples on government land, and the government won’t interfere. In this way, they get free land for their temples.

Amar says there’s a law in Delhi that says you’re not supposed to play loud music after eleven o’clock at night, but these temples, they can do whatever they want. They blare their religious music at all times of the day and night, through loudspeakers. And it’s not even beautiful music, Jonaki adds. It’s some screeching trash based off of the latest Bollywood movies. And if you complain, people say you should be at the temple. You’re a bad Hindu if you don’t like this screeching, loud music at two in the morning.

“So you know what I did the other day?” Amar asks. “I put on the Eagles as loud as it would go on my computer, then I put on this same song on my surround sound system, all the way up to ten. And I couldn’t hear the temple music. Then, after a while, I turned off my music and noticed the other music had stopped a long time ago.” He laughs.

I keep thinking, don’t ask me if I’m going on the trip yet, Jonaki. I can’t answer you. After lunch, we take a walk and she points out an office where a competitive publisher is building. She asks me when I’ll be able to let her know whether I’m going or not, because it will affect her plans. I know it will, and I feel bad. I’m so indecisive, I tell her. I have to call my husband when he wakes up, I say. About six o’clock p.m. our time? Is that okay? Or does she need me to just make a decision by myself? After all, it’s my decision and mine alone, ultimately. My husband can’t make it for me. I just have to go back to my desk and make a list of plusses and minuses. That’s what I’ll do, I decide.

Six o’clock is fine, Jonaki says. She is so patient with my waffling.

Back at my desk, I open a Word document and make two columns, one positive and one negative. There are all kinds of reasons to go. It’s a good chance to relax. It’s probably my only chance to see the Himalayas. There’s basically one repetitive theme in the negative column: it’s dangerous, it’s dangerous, it’s dangerous.

Then I get to a row where I type in the words “Lifelong regret?” I think of all the times I’ve been too cautious and what I’ve missed because of it. I didn’t go on the high school Spanish field trip to Pilsen because there might have been gang violence. Everyone came back fine. I didn’t see Clockwork Orange in English class because it was too disturbing. I still want to see it, just to see why everyone still talks about it. And then there are bigger things. I never tried to pursue a career in theatre even though, for a long time, it was the only thing in my life I was passionate about; even though, for a long time, my failure to try doing this sent me into a hopeless depression where nothing seemed worthwhile and I viewed myself as a failure. There were all these very sensible reasons not to pursue acting: it’s too competitive, the money is bad, you wind up doing silly things for money instead of the high art you’re thirsting for. But none of these reasons satisfied my soul. Still, I was too afraid to fail to even set out trying.

I think of the name of my blog “My New Direction.” The name of the program I’m participating in, “newdirections.” In the plus column I write, “I didn’t come to India to be safe. I came here to explore and to learn.” If I wanted to be safe, I wouldn’t have been here in the first place.

But then in the minus column I write, “I don’t want to be ‘that story’ on the news. Is going selfish? Is it stupid?”

Thomas comes to meet with me. He is the head of the commissioning editors in engineering, science and math. We walk to the Longman conference room, the same room in which Vivek gave his open house speech. This time I realize that the wooden paneling isn’t dirty. It’s moldy and there’s a damp smell. Thomas coughs. Everyone gets sick this time of year in the rainy season, he says. He flips the window air conditioner on and looks around for a marker for the whiteboard. There isn’t one in the room. He calls the front desk. She will have one sent over. While we wait, Thomas asks what I’ve seen in India so far. Qut’b Minar, the Old Fort, the Red Fort: I run through my list. I should travel, he says. I should see Agra and Jaipur, but wait until it’s not so hot.

One of the pantry workers in the blue collared shirts with a Pearson logo on them comes in. He has a marker. Thomas can begin. He scribbles out the four phases of production here: commissioning, development, production and manufacture. Then he goes to erase his scribbles. They don’t erase. He coughs and beads of sweat pepper his nose. He looks at the marker. It says “permanent.”

“ShiiT,” he says, and calls the front desk back. Can they send someone with spirit to clean it up?

A Hindi-speaking man in a blue shirt appears holding some paper towels and glass cleaner. They spray the board with the cleaner and rub the towels over the immovable scribbles. “Spirit,” Thomas says, then a bunch of Hindi. “Spirit. Spirit. Spirit is the best.”

Two more men show up. They take the board away. Thomas is silent. I ask him a few questions, which he answers. Finally, the men come back with the cleaned board and with some dry erase markers. Thomas can begin again. He explains how commissioning editors identify what books to pursue and find authors for these projects. He explains the paperwork that gets completed as a book goes from the idea phase through initial reviews. Then it’s time to go. He has a meeting. We’ll meet again to talk about finances sometime. He’s very busy these days. He wants to hire ten more people by January. But he’ll find me when he finds some time and we’ll talk.

Back at my desk I stare at my list. There is no clear answer. I have more negatives than positives, but the positives seem to weigh more. I send some emails to friends: one to Julianne to see if she knows anything about it, and one to Anindo who got me scared in the first place. Anindo emails back almost immediately. The road all the way up to Aut is a major highway, well maintained by the government. Between Aut and Gushaini, he doesn’t know as much about. We should ask the guy at the hotel. He’ll be honest with us, Anindo assures me. He says the Gushani road is in a valley; it’s not as mountainous. It should be fine.

At ten to six in the evening here, it’s a little after seven o’clock in the morning. I call Scott on my cell phone. I’m pacing around the courtyard in front of the office. “I’m still agonizing,” I tell him.

He can’t make this decision for me. I have to make it. He doesn’t know why I’m making this about more than whether or not I go on a trip to the mountains. It’s just a trip to the mountains. And this is just three months in India. But it feels like so much more.

I shouldn’t go to please my friend at work, or because I’m afraid to tell her no. I shouldn’t stay because I’m afraid to put stress on him or my mother. There is no right or wrong decision. There is just a decision and I have to make one. Now.

I tell him it’s not about being afraid to say no. I tell him about all the phone calls and emails I’ve had from people assuring me the trip is safe.

Then you have enough empirical evidence to tell you that the trip is okay, he says with his super lawyer logic.

I tell him, tearing up, about how I’m tired of making the easy decisions, the safe decisions, and missing out on life because of it. If I don’t start taking of advantage of my opportunities now, then when will I?

He tells me I’m overtired.

He’s probably right.

I tell him I’m going. I love him. And I’m going.

He tells me his love will go with me. I hang up and walk through the lobby to the downstairs, feeling light, feeling about three feet taller than usual.

Inside I walk over to Jonaki’s desk, but she’s not there. Two minutes later, she’s at my desk. Was I looking for her? Yes. I’m going, I tell her, then my eyes well up again.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “You’re crying. If you’re scared you don’t have to go.”

I tell her it’s okay. I’m not scared. I’m just…

“You had an emotional talk with your husband?” she asks.

Yes, I say. “It’s just that this is a pretty big deal for me.”

She tells me I’m going through all this and I’ll probably be bored out of my mind once we get there. We laugh. I thank her for being so patient.

At home (as I actually call the Ahuja Residency now), I pack. I do a word search puzzle that Scott made for me and sent to me. It’s so creative. It took so much time. He’s so wonderful that I cry again. Now I can’t bear the thought of not being in touch with him for five days. Now I’m not afraid for my life—I’ve been assured by too many people that this is a safe trip. Now I’m just homesick. I’m homesick for the comfort and the routine that I’ve established here in the Defence Colony. Wake up, talk to Scott, go to work, blog, talk to Scott. This disruption has me feeling Autistic. Don’t change a thing and I’ll be fine. I’m used to my life in India now. It’s working for me. And just when I get used to it…

But this trip is something I have to do—whether I’ve created this as an illusion for myself or not. It’s symbolic of something larger for me. It is my new direction.

Just then, the phone rings. “Hello madam. I am Sonu.”

He wants to know if I’m okay, three times. Three times I tell him, “Yes I am.” Then I tell him about my trip to the Himalayas.

“The HimALayas,” he corrects me. “Himachal Pradesh?”

Yes, that’s the state where I’m going.

“Verrry nice,” he assures me. He tells me goodbye, then he mumbles, “Okay, I love you madam.”

This time I’m ready. This time I confront him. “No no no, Sonu!” I tell him. “You can’t tell me that. We are friends. Friends only.”

“Okay madam,” he says, and hangs up.
I feel like I’ve accomplished something small, but significant. I’ve made a choice for myself, by myself, on my own. I’ve confronted Sonu again, as clearly as I could.

Now if I could just stop missing Scott so much. But this is a good—no, great—problem to have. I think of Diane Keaton’s lines in Marvin’s Room: I am so lucky to have had so much love. I am so lucky to have someone I love so much.

To Go or Not to Go

Wednesday I’m lying in bed after my Skype call with Scott and the phone rings. It’s eight o’clock. If Balminder is this early, I’m going to kill him, I think. This is getting ridiculous. I pick up the phone.

“Hello madam. I am Sonu,” I hear.

“Hello, Sonu,” I say, trying to wake up and get my bearings.

“You are okay?” he asks.

“I am okay,” I say.

“You are working?” he asks.

“I am working,” I say.

“You are okay?” he says.

“Yes, Sonu. I am okay.” This early in the morning, all I can think to do is passively answer his questions. I think: I shouldn’t get into a big conversation with him. I shouldn’t encourage this phone calling. I don’t ask how he is. I don’t ask about his babies. I tell him, “Okay, Sonu, goodbye,” before he can say he loves me again. But just the fact that I didn’t tell him not to call me anymore probably encouraged him. Just the fact that I politely answered his queries was probably enough for him. It all happens too quickly for me to reason through a course of action. I just react. And then there’s the fact that I’m averse to confrontation, even over the phone, which is probably what this situation calls for—or maybe it will just go away. I can always hope.

At breakfast, I’m reading the Times of India and I notice a familiar face in a picture off to the side of the main article on the front page. The caption reads, “Proud Papa,” and the picture shows the Prime Minister hugging his daughter at the book launch I attended last night. I stare at it for a while. I was there. I met Upinder. She’s cool, but I didn’t tell her that. This time I was eloquent. I told her when she was signing my copy of her book, “I’m a former teacher, so I really appreciated your remarks tonight.” Score. Points for Vicki.

At work, Jonaki wonders if I was freaked out by Anindo’s comments about the trip last night. Nah, I tell her. No big deal. But Anindo’s cautions do feel a little different after the glow of the book launch has waned. I go about my day, but grow a little more worried as time passes.

It’s six o’clock and Jonaki is at my desk again, running through a checklist of things we should do and get before our trip. We should get medicine for motion sickness. We should get cash from an ATM. Amar listens in, eating a samosa in a little silver paper tray. “Do you want some nala food?” he asks me, then laughs. He’s not really offering me his nala food. Nala means drain. It’s the food they cook in the streets over the drains (read sewers). Jonaki says if you can eat nala food and survive, then you have an iron stomach. I take a pass on the nala samosa.

At home, I eat one of the packages of macaroni and cheese that Scott sent to me and have to stop half way through because I’m crying too hard. I watch the end of Marvin’s Room because I was in the stage version and I think it will be fun to see Meryl Streep play “my” character. Diane Keaton’s character just learned that she doesn’t have a bone marrow match; she’s going to die. She tells her sister, played by Streep, I’ve been so lucky because I’ve had such love. Streep says, yes, Dad and Ruth really love you. Then Keaton says, “No. I love them. I’m so lucky to have had them to love.” I think of my husband and dissolve into tears which do not abate. I curl up on my bed and cry, hoping that giving in to this fit will take care of the matter and I’ll feel better afterwards.

Afterwards, I see an accidentally smashed ant on my hotel room floor and get upset at the other ants for not having a funeral for it. They just leave it there on the floor. Aren’t they supposed to carry it off and do something with it? Careless ants.

I turn on the news. Exhiled Tibetans are protesting and screaming and crying on the Indian border with China. You can see the veins in their faces. You can see the grief contorting their faces and bodies. They want their home back. I want my home back, too. I know I’m getting mine back in three months, but it feels so far away in time and distance and culture and memory. I feel contorted tonight too.

I Skype with Scott on his lunch hour. I don’t realize until I start talking to him how frightened I am about this trip, and how the trip is what’s making me so homesick tonight. The trip means I’ll be cut off from Skype and email and all communication for five days. Plus I’ve heard that the roads are bad. And my guidebook says that visitors to the Himalayan National Forest near where I’m staying have to make sure their insurance covers emergency helicopter evacuations. The guidebook also has a warning box with the header: Fatal Vacations. It seems that a few dozen foreign visitors to an area just north of where we’re going have never returned.

Scott says I shouldn’t go. He says I can’t be sure that anyone here is looking out for my best interests but me. Law in India is like the truth: subjective. You might or might not be held responsible for something and even if you are, the courts will take years fighting it out. So businesses like tour bus companies and resorts have no interest in being safe. They just have an interest in separating you from your money.

He says everybody will tell me it’s safe, but I should just not go if it’s making me this upset. I think of not going, and, suddenly, I feel lighter. I feel fine. I’ll tell Jonaki tomorrow. I can’t go.

The Little Purse That Could

Tuesday morning I sleep a little late. I’m usually showered and dressed by 7:30, when I make my Skype call to Scott, but this time, I’ve just rolled out of bed. We talk briefly, then he tells me to go, get ready for my day with the Prime Minister.

I jump in the shower which is warm for less than a minute, then cold again. It’s a struggle to stick my head into the ice water to get the conditioner out of my hair, but it must be done.

I decide to wear my Indian suit and take my western business suit to work with me as the alternate option. I don the aqua kurta and matching drawstring trousers. I put on my embellished, bedazzled golden slippers. I struggle with over a dozen bangles, jamming them over my right fist, then my left. Finally, I drape the chiffon dupatta over my shoulders. “Is it beautiful?” I think. Yes, it is.

At breakfast, Mira brings out my mango and smiles. She usually does not speak to me, but today she is gushing. “Nice matching,” she says. “Nice bangles,” she says, and examines them closely. “Nice shoes. Nice nice!”

I am heartened. I want to tell her I’m meeting the Prime Minister today, but I’d probably just confuse her with my three Hindi words.

At work, Shabnum tells me I look very nice. She even goes and tells Jonaki that she should come see me. Debamitra approves, but wants to see my other outfit just to be sure. I take out my taupe pinstripe suit, so boring in comparison. “This is okay,” she says, poking at it, “but it is too okay. You understand?” I totally do.

She definitely thinks I should wear what I have on, but, she suggests, I should go shopping. I should get some earrings and maybe a nice bag. I wonder if I’ll have time. She says I should leave early. When is the next chance I’ll have to hang out with the Prime Minister? I should do it right.

Shinjini sees my outfit: my aqua suit with red and golden ribbon trim. “Hm. It is okay.” I tell her I don’t have a good sense of what’s dressy and what’s formal. “This is not formal,” she says, “but it’s okay.” I’m a bit deflated, but I know what she’s saying. I think a sari is the only women’s clothing item that’s considered truly dressy here, and that wasn’t an option for me this time around. I didn’t plan well enough.

Angshuman spends the morning with Shinjini right behind me, writing and rewriting the introductions of the various speakers who will be at the event. They wonder how to introduce the Prime Minister, or if they should introduce him at all. He has made it clear that he is not to be featured at this event. He is coming strictly as an audience member to support his daughter. In the end, they decide to thank him personally and the “other distinguished guests” for their attendance.

I go upstairs and ask the receptionist if she could help me send a letter. I bought a card for my sister-in-law and needed some help sending it. She gives me a glue stick to seal the envelope (which I tried to lick to no avail). Stamps and envelopes don’t come with any kind of adhesive on them here. She tells me she’ll look into sending the card from the office.

I get a call from her just a few minutes later at my desk. If I want to send it courier, it will cost 800 rupees. Speed post, which isn’t track-able, is 500 rupees. Ten bucks! Is it reliable? Yes, she says. She sends things to her sister speed post all the time. I am astounded and will never complain about the U.S. Postal Service raising the price of stamps again—that is, unless they raise it to ten dollars.

If I was having any doubts about my outfit for the day, the women on my lunchtime walk pump up my ego again. Bless their hearts. They fuss over me and my bangles. I think it’s something of a novelty to see the white girl dressed up so “Indian.” Preeta wants to take some pictures of me with her camera phone. I smile and she shows me the snaps. I do look rather cute after all, if I say so myself.

As the day wears on, the office begins to buzz and people grow restless. Debamitra helps Daniel tie his tie. Shinjini gets ready to leave. She’s going home to change clothes. Debamitra takes off too, but not before encouraging me once more to go shopping. “Go to Janpath,” she leans forward and says, eyes widening. She describes the exact place that I should find my earrings—and I know where she’s talking about because I was just there on Saturday. She calculates that if I leave here at four o’clock, I’ll have plenty of time to shop and get to the Taj Mahal Hotel where the event is taking place.

Amar and Angshuman debate over what time to go. Amar wants to leave at four. Angshuman says five o’clock is plenty of time. Amar already shut down his computer. He needs to leave. He has to set up all the audio visual displays at the event. Angshuman says, “Bah.” They leave shortly after four. As do I.

We don’t get to Janpath until almost five. There were several traffic snarls on the way. It’s a good thing Debamitra told me to leave so early. I should still have plenty of time. Balminder parks the car and gives me a landmark to find him back at: The Maruti Suzuki dealer. I think he can tell I’m paranoid about not finding his car when he drops me off somewhere. I grab my purse and wade through the traffic, hopping a small fence on an island in the middle of the highway, and remembering the orange soda vendor as the place I cross the street to get back to the car. I only walk past a few shops when I see a huge pile of purses on the ground: little chic beaded affairs with mirrors and fringe. “Kitne? How much?” I ask in two languages just in case I get the Hindi all wrong.

Two twenty five, the man tells me.

I shake my head like this is no good and look down at the purse. I remember Angshuman telling me at the office, “Offer them one third, then bargain up from there.” He learned from his mother, he said. He used to be embarrassed that his mother would bargain at the markets until he had to buy things for himself. Now he bargains like no other. “Offer them one third.”

“One hundred,” I tell the man.

“Two hundred,” he says.

“No,” I say, slightly insulted. “One fifty?”

This is okay. Tikka. I get the purse for about three American dollars. This has only taken me about five minutes. I’m on a roll as I walk past the tapestries and scarves and shops full of Shiva statues and boys selling strands of beads, “Only a hundred rupees, madam.”

I find the place with the jewelry stands. I find a pair of earrings that I like. The man has me try them on in front of a mirror. I ask how much. “Expensive,” he says. “Two twenty five.”

“Ridiculous!” I say and walk away. He wants to bargain. This is how the charade goes. But he’s named a price too high to even bargain with and I’m walking away for real. I’m spoiled by my ten rupee earring guy in Lajput Nagar market. Granted, these earrings are a lot more elaborate, but this wallah’s still crazy. He’s charging white girl tax.

I go the next stand but don’t find anything.

The next stand has some cute stuff, including some brass bell-shaped, dangly earrings, but the guy’s asking two hundred rupees. I tell him I don’t want to spend more than fifty rupees on earrings. What does he have for fifty rupees? He points to a bunch of stuff I don’t like, hammered metal-looking things. I’m about to leave when he says, “Okay! Fifty rupees!” in a tone like he’s yellilng “Uncle!” Like I have his arm twisted up behind his back. I wonder if I’m hearing right. Yes, he’s going to give me the earrings for a quarter of his asking price. I’m sold.

I take my earrings and bag and head back to the car, the whole successful excursion having taken little more than ten minutes. I drive a hard bargain when I’m on my way to see the Prime Minister. Get out of my way; I’m coming through.

Back inside Balminder’s cab, I transfer the contents of my polka dotted dirty Target purse into the beaded bag I’ve just bought, pausing when I get to the emergency roll of camper’s toilet paper and the tampon. You are not even coming with me this time, I say spitefully and Velcro my old bag shut. You are not invited.

Balminder pays for the parking again. Either this is the way that Balminder shows his love for me, or Sonu was ripping me off. I suspect the latter.

The traffic has abated and Balminder finds the hotel with no problem. Outside there are vans with tv channel logos on them. I wonder what Balminder thinks when security stops our car on the way to the hotel lobby drive. We have to pop the hood and the trunk and wait while they search.

Balminder gives me his (new) cell phone number. I’ll call him when I’m done. I take my little beaded purse and set off in my golden shoes up a set of marble stairs. A hoard of men in fancy turbans and embellished suits stare straight ahead and open the wide glass doors. Inside there is a huge plush carpet and a grand staircase wrapped around a fountain with hyacinths floating in it. It’s all marble, including the railing which is carved in an intricate design.

Downstairs I find Amar smoking a cigarette out by the pool. Do I know what Diwan-i-kahs and Diwan-i-Aam are? I’ve been to the Red Fort. It takes me a second, then I remember. Yes. These are buildings inside the Fort’s grounds. One of them was where the Emperor took public audiences, the other was where private audiences met. The banquet rooms we are using at the hotel are named after these two structures, Amar explains. I always appreciate his explanations of Indian history and culture.

Outside we can see more security guards donning bulletproof vests. “If anything happens, they’ll encircle the Prime Minister and take the bullets,” Anindo explains. Like our Secret Service, I say.

“Let’s go inside,” Amar says, as he sucks down the last of his cigarette. We walk through a metal detector, then I’m shuffled off behind a tri-fold wall to get groped by the lady security guards.

At the front of the banquet hall is a stage with an elaborate set up. Two projector screens built into a white facade show the movie that Amar put together of images from the book; shards of ancient pottery, coins, carvings of Hindu gods and maps zoom in and out. On the center wall is a huge picture of the book cover, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India, lit with a focused yellow spot that makes the carving on the front of the book look almost three-dimensional. Equally impressive matted photos on tripod stands line the perimeter of the room.

I see Vivek and Srinivas. “Totally ethnic!” Vivek comments on my outfit.

“Yeah, I ditched my business suit,” I tell him. Then he introduces me to the photographer for the book. “Such a pleasure to meet you,” I tell him. “Beautiful work. Amar tells me you took some photos of sites that don’t exist anymore?”

The photographer is almost bashful. He tells me most of the pictures were taken in museums, but, yes, he did visit some sites that are now spoiled. He bows his head slightly.

“How long did it take you to do all this?” I ask. I know the book itself has been in development for five years.

He spent days and days on end with museum collections. They’d close down the museums for him and Upinder, the author, and they would spend the whole day inside, getting the lighting just right, photographing the objects.

A man in a white chef’s outfit comes by with drinks on a tray. I take a pineapple juice. Life at a party is so much better when you have something to do with your hands.

Another man comes by with a glass tray of tiny appetizers. “Heart of palm,” he says. I take a piece.

I see Anindita from the office. She wasn’t feeling well when I left. She didn’t know if she’d make it, but here she is. She went home and took some medicine and rested for a while, she tells me.

Then Shinjini arrives with a haircut and a beautiful sari that changes color depending on how the light catches it. I admire the fabric. Jonaki is also wrapped up in a tightly wound affair. “I like your sari,” I tell her. She says I should compliment Preeta who wrapped it for her. Preeta tells me I should wear a sari sometime. “I would love to!” I say, thinking how nice it is that an article of clothing should require teamwork, camaraderie, sisterhood to pull off properly.

There is much more milling around and chatting, but this time, I can participate by saying more than just “Cool.” I have things I can chat about: the fast bargains I got at Janpath, Amar’s slide show, the security, the music that is playing. It’s Indian classical music, Amar started telling me before he ran off to test the AV equipment. Anindita kindly explains more about it to me as we sit down and wait for the proceedings to begin and more men thrust more trays of goodies in front of our faces: wild mushroom this and salmon that.

Somewhere near seven o’clock, Angshuman taps the microphone at the front podium and asks everyone to be seated. There is a holy hush in the room. Is the Prime Minister coming? Slowly people begin to whisper again. Then a door at the front left of the room opens, everyone stands, cameras flash and I see the patented blue turban atop the man with the teddy bear face. The PM has arrived. He greets his daughter and sits down in the front row.

Angshuman, suave as ever, takes the floor and welcomes the guests. He says:

Five years in the making, this book is the crystallization of the
dreams of the author and publisher to create a new kind of text, one that
seamlessly combines archeological evidence, scholarly depth and scope,
scientifically developed learning tools, as well as unprecedented research for
the visuals. There is no doubt that this book will transform notions of the
academic study of history, and the manner in which learning can take place,
already evidence by the praise pouring in from across the world.

Vivek speaks, then a professor who has known Upinder for some years endorses the book. She talks about the Upinder’s expansion of the notion of history in India beyond dates and battles to the particulars of a love note written on a cave wall and an emperor’s beloved parrot who was eaten by the pet cat and given a royal burial. Upinder has brought life and narrative to the distant past.

The photographer with his slight build and gray, curly hair speaks passionately about the need to visually catalogue and document India’s museum collections before items are lost or destroyed. Thousands of years of history need to be preserved.

Then Upinder, Dr. Singh, takes the stage in her modest black sari with red ribbon trim. She speaks about wanting to write a different kind of book. She speaks about the snobbery encountered by people who choose to write textbooks rather than research books. She spent five years of her life on this project because she wanted to prove that a textbook can be scholarly and rigorous and worthwhile. She thinks her students, and all undergraduates, deserve to learn from books that do the subject of history its due justice—not just some low price edition second-hand photocopies. With this project, she wants to support and enhance the teaching of undergraduates, a profession that has a transformative power she can attest to, because she taught undergraduates for twenty years. She says she couldn’t have written this book without them. She also mentions her approach. It is data-driven, with no political or religious agenda, with the only agenda being faithful to the facts she can document from primary sources.

Her book breaks new ground in this country on many fronts.

Afterwards, her father hugs her and the cameras engulf them in a hale of flashes. I drift out to the table and buy a copy of the book since they mention she’ll be signing them in a bit. I am a little surprised to find out it costs 2500 rupees; roughly sixty dollars—and that’s with a discount. It will be an uphill climb to sell many copies of this book in India, where most books cost between three and ten dollars.

Oh no! Why did I buy the book here? Everyone wants to know. I could have gotten a bigger discount at the office. But I wanted Upinder to sign it, and the books have been so scarce around the office, I didn’t know when or if I could really get my hands on one. I didn’t want to go home without it. This way, I won’t.

I head to the bar in the neighboring room. I’ve heard there might even be some wine available. It has been a month since I’ve had any, and I’m quite looking forward to the prospect. The bartender tells me I have to wait. Something about the guests in the next room; perhaps they cannot serve alcohol in the Prime Minister’s presence? Or perhaps the first drink has to be his. I glance into the main hall and he is still there, surrounded by people. I consider trying to navigate the crowd with the hopes of shaking his hand, but find Jonaki and Anindo chatting and join them instead. Men circle past with hors d'oeuvres, and I try not to look like I’m gobbling too many up. Just then, Vivek approaches us. He’s got two glasses of white wine. He offers them to Jonaki and me. Do I want one? Yes! I shake my head. It’s a lovely, dry Riesling that makes me feel almost home, close to my Sunday night play reading parties where I share good wine and good theatre with my friends on an almost weekly basis.

Anindo is the guy who first replied to my post on the Pearson India blog by saying he just concluded spending close to five years in Indianapolis. He wanted to welcome me to his country because he felt so welcome in mine. He even brought home a dog and a daughter who were both born in America. He is easy to talk to and between the conversation and the libation, I completely forget about my quest to meet the dignitary in the next room.

He wants to know what I’ve seen of Delhi so far. I rattle off the sites: the Red Fort, the Old Fort, Humayun’s Tomb, Qut’b Minar. Have I been to Paranta Wali Gali, he wants to know. I make him repeat this three times then conclude I mustn’t have been there. No.

It’s the Alley of Bread in Old Delhi. I should go. Jonaki says she’ll take me sometime, maybe when we get back from our trip. She wants to go.

Where are we planning on travelling?

Gusani or Gushaini or Goshani, depending on the map you’re looking at. The place doesn’t even have a definite name. Anindo is excited. He’s been there before. It’s seriously beautiful, he says. This place is in the middle of the Himalayas. It’s God’s country. Or perhaps gods’ country, depending on your point of view.

“It’s not a hill station?” I ask. I thought we’d kind of be skimming the side of the mountains, not careening around perilous peaks.

No. It’s a serious adventure. It’s not a luxury vacation. How are we getting there?

By bus.

Anindo’s eyes pop. Oh. Well. The roads aren’t so good. It’s been raining a lot and the roads get soft. Raju’s Cottage is in a river valley and there are only two bridges into it. About a month and a half ago, someone drove a heavy truck onto one of these bridges and it snapped.

No bridge inspections in India, I think. A man comes by with another glass of wine for me, and another man has fresh mozzarella and a grape tomato on a tiny skewer. I help myself to both.

No matter, though. Going to the Thirtan Valley was the best vacation Anindo’s ever had in India. He’d go back in a heartbeat. There’s trout fishing and trekking. Or you can just sit around and be bored.

Are there poisonous bugs, I ask him, and tell him I’m not looking for any more necrosis.

No bugs to worry about, he says. This time of year in Delhi, in the heat and the damp, the worst bugs of all come out, he says. Up there, it’s cool. It’s, like, 65 degrees during the day.

Just the thought of this is a relief.

Cool.

The bugs are huge, he says, and makes a softball-sized circle with his ring fingers and thumbs, but they won’t hurt you. Spiders and moths. Big, but harmless. It’s the plants you have to worry about. Don’t touch the plants.

It’s always something in India, I think.

Around about nine o’clock, I ask if I can borrow someone’s cell phone to call Balminder. Anindo volunteers his. Balminder tries telling me something I don’t understand. “Pick me up? Ready to go. Hotel lobby,” I say, hoping this will work. I say goodbye to Anindo and a few other people from the office and follow Jonaki and Preeta up the grand marble staircase.

The turbaned guards are at the doors, standing at attention, ready to release us into the humid night air. Cars drive up one by one and pick up their fares. It takes a while but Balminder shows up too. “I’m sorry madam,” he says, “have fare hotel.” I don’t understand, but he’s here and that’s what counts.

He drops me off in less than a half hour at the gate of C-83 where the guard bows his head and says, “Good evening, madam.” On the way in, I see a brown slug creeping across the stone tiles, only this slug looks shrunken, only about an inch long. I recognize him, though, as the same kind of slug I saw out here upon my arrival. Instead of looking like a monster, though, this guy is kind of cute. And he is certainly not the size of a brick. Not what I remembered or hallucinated after my fifteen hour plane ride.

Back up in my room, I am a little tipsy. I read the inscription Upinder wrote in my book. I check myself out in the mirror, marveling at the difference a little bag and some earrings can make to an ensemble. I flop onto the bed congratulating myself for not throwing tampons or toilet paper or spilling or saying, “Cool.” I breathe deeply, thinking, “I had a great day.”

Then the lights and the fan and the tv and the air all turn off. Then the lights come back on, but the tv doesn’t. I unplug it and plug it in again, as is my way of fixing complicated electronics. This fails. I walk downstairs hoping to find a breaker box to see if a switch is tripped. I do find the box and even pry it open, but Mira and Pachu see me doing this and speak to me from the balcony.

“Hello. All your light and power gone. All Defence Colony,” they motion to the street which is completely black. “Just a one light. Just a one light,” they say. This is what Susie told me about inverters. They have enough power to run one light for about four hours.

Back upstairs, I realize that the air conditioners are also off, and my room quickly gets sticky and hot. It doesn’t help that I’m working with my hot laptop on my lap. I’m glad my alarm clock is battery operated because this blackout looks like it’s going to last a while. That means no hot water once again. I’m growing weary of cold showers. It’s not a nice concept to awaken to.

The one fan that is working is in the living room area. I take a cue from Susie and go out there to try and get some sleep on the tiny, one-person couch. This is what she did when her air conditioning was out for several days. My legs dangle over the arm rest and I try to get comfortable.

I lay there wide awake for about ten minutes, then the air conditioner hums back to life. I am almost disappointed. I was all ready to camp out and endure.

The tv blips back on, and I can watch the end of Judging Amy on the Hallmark Channel. I’ve missed the part, though, where she decided whether or not to run for Congress. Too bad. I bet there’ll be a re-run, though.

I’m too tired to watch anything else; and too tired to finish blogging about the long day. I’ll leave it ‘til tomorrow. Tonight I’ll enjoy the leftover effects of the Riesling and drift off to sleep under the cool air stirred by my electric ceiling fan.

There’s hope yet for a hot shower tomorrow.

Wardrobe Malfunctions and Truth

Monday at breakfast I have to sit outside on the balcony again because the inside table is rather full. It’s another deluge and I hope I don’t get wet. The rain means it’s a little cooler, though, and the balcony is, once again, a lovely place to eat and wake up.

Monday I’m a little sick of mango, but I eat it anyway. I wonder when mango season will end. I wonder what they’ll serve to me then.

Today, I flip to page three of the Times of India. There is a story about feticide. There has been a controversy in the country that raised a lot of questions about abortion and the right to life. A couple petitioned the court requesting a late-term abortion after finding out that their baby would be born with a severe heart defect. Their request was denied. The baby will have to be born.

This article isn’t directly about that issue. This article describes the situation in India wherein more baby boys than baby girls are regularly born. Further, instead of reversing, this trend has been growing more pronounced since 1998. Contrary to expectation, it’s not a rural problem either. The numbers are worse in Delhi than other parts of India, the paper says, with somewhere around 800 baby girls born for every 1000 boys. The article highlights the case of a woman whose family forced her to have an ultrasound then wanted her to have an abortion when they determined the sex of her twin girls. They shunned her for her refusal to cooperate. There’s a law that is intended to curb the abuse of ultrasounds, but it’s hard to enforce. The woman in question has been in court with her case for years. Some women’s organizations want to do away with ultrasounds altogether, but the article quotes doctors who say that the medical tool is too valuable for diagnosing problems with pregnancies to dispose of it. The doctors don’t offer an alternative solution to the problem.

I think of Sonu and his disappointment with his baby girls.

At the same time, femininity seems so celebrated here. The women dress up so elaborately and decorate themselves and each other with bindis, bangles, henna and all manner of gorgeous fabrics. Women are decidedly not hidden under heaps of oppressive sackcloth as they are in other countries in the region. There are female consorts to the Hindu gods: Lakshmi and Dakshayani embody the female energies of the main gods Vishnu and Shiva. These gods themselves are depicted as thin and curvy and delicate. In fact, until I began investing more about Hinduism, I thought Vishnu and Shiva were females themselves.

It’s one more contradiction to hold in my head about this culture. Women are simultaneously esteemed and devalued.

Monday at work my sleep deprivation catches up with me and I struggle to keep my eyes open, let alone make sense of the higher educational book on financial management I’m trying to tackle. Monday is a slog.

While eating lunch in Amar’s office, Angshuman pops in. He has to leave a bit early today. He has to go to customs. His sister-in-law sent him some poker chips because he likes to play, and they were seized. He has to go explain what they are; he thinks he’ll get them back with no problem, but he has to go to this office between two and five o’clock.

I pray for the welfare of the package my mother sent me. It’s just food. I hope they’ll leave it alone. I think I must have had tremendous good fortune to receive the two packages my husband sent me completely unopened and in tact. I hope my good fortune holds out.

Lunch today is gross. The rice is really dry and the dal is watery and bland, as is the subzi. There’s a hair in my roti. Amar and the others have been heretofore amused that I said the lunch box food from the dabba wallahs is good. They have raised their eyebrows and gasped. But I’m starting to see where everybody is coming from. I’m getting a sense of what actual good Indian food is. And when it’s good, Indian food is really good. This stuff, most of the time, is okay. But it’s certainly not good—not Sagar good, at least.

Monday after lunch I take another walk around the industrial estate, as it’s referred to on Google maps. A stray dog looks interested in me, but when I hold my hand out towards it, it looks panicked and backs off. I wonder why the dogs in Defence Colony aren’t like this. People must pet them and feed them, I think. As I walk around the park, when I make eye contact with the men, I am met with staid glares. They’ll get used to me before I leave, I resolve. Right now, I’m a big oddity hiking my way around these parts.

Tomorrow is the big day: the book launch with the Prime Minister. As I’m preparing to leave the office, Debamitra asks me what I’m going to wear. I don’t know, I tell her. What is she going to wear? She’s been debating about this, too. Everybody has, she says. She’s decided to wear a sari. Maybe I can borrow a sari from somebody? She looks at Shinjini. Shinjini says her sori top wouldn’t fit me, even though we look to me to be about the same size. Anyway, she says, I shouldn’t try a sari for the first time at an event like that. I could come unraveled or trip on it. “I don’t want to have a wardrobe malfunction,” I joke, and wonder if they heard about the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson story in India. Sometimes my humor doesn’t work here.

I tell Debamitra I have a matching suit that I bought my first week here, but I don’t know how dressy it is. It’s hard for me to tell. “Is it silk?” Shinjini asks. No, it’s cotton. Then it’s not very dressy, she says. “Is it beautiful?” Debamitra wants to know. If it’s beautiful enough, maybe, it doesn’t have to be silk. I love the notion that the degree of beauty is the measure of how formal something is here.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I also have a regular, western business suit,” I say. This prospect does not seem to thrill either of my wardrobe consultants. Maybe I’ll go shopping tonight, I say. I saw this one store in the Defence Colony market that had clothing. Maybe they have something silken and beautiful. Failing that, I’ll bring both outfits to work tomorrow and they can help me pick. They agree that this is a good plan.

After work I tell Balminder to drop me off at the market instead of at home. I find the store with the clothing and walk downstairs. Upstairs they sell t-shirts and collared shirts. Downstairs I’m hoping for something better. They have hundreds of different prints and fabrics folded into clear plastic bags. I can’t tell what they are: are they scarves? Sari fabrics? I hold up a square bag and ask a guy in a t-shirt what it is. He tells me it’s a suit. I might be in luck. “Dupatta, salwar and kurta?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

These fabrics are definitely beautiful, delicately embroidered silks. “Where are the sizes,” I ask him.

“Sizes?” he says. “No sizes. All sizes. Suits.”

I try again, “Yes, but are they organized into sizes? What size is this? Small, medium, large? Size.”

A woman folding clothes behind him sees what’s happening. She approaches me. “These suits aren’t stitched,” she says. I am out of luck. Suits are sold like this everywhere here. You get the fabric, then you take it to a tailor who measures you and sews it all up for you. I think of my tailor across from the park. Could I ask him to do a rush order? Could he finish something that quickly? Maybe if I knew the language better and could explain to him about the Prime Minister and everything, but even then, this would be a dodgy plan. I thank the woman and leave the store empty handed. The Prime Minister will have to accept me in my cotton kurta, or my cotton-poly blend business suit. Debamitra and Shinjini will help me decide tomorrow.

Let down, I decide to stop in for a treat at the Defence Colony Bakery, established in 1962. I get a lemon tart, a rum ball, some biscotti and some Indian-looking cookies. All this costs me approximately three dollars, which is probably a little pricy by Indian standards. As I try to check out, two French people block the way. Leave it to the Frenchies to hang out in the only business for miles around that bills itself as a boulangerie and choclatier. I wonder if a lot of French people come here. The other night on my walk to the market a guy trying to sell me baskets off his bicycle asked if I was French.

On the walk home, I see about five dogs sitting and laying on a little patio. I walk up to them to pet them. One of them is very interested in my bakery bag. He even paws at it gently, but expectantly. I try to open the Indian cookies but can’t get the package open and these dogs are looking impatient, excited for some treats. I open the bag of biscotti instead. Finally someone wants a treat from me. I hand over a half of a biscotti and my customer sniffs it, then looks back at the bag. What else do you have in there? But he’s not getting my rum ball or my tart. This is it, and he’s not interested. I should have known. I put the biscotti bits on the ground where they get a more thorough sniffing and walk on.

Back home I eat dessert while my leftovers from Bamboo Garden are warming up in the microwave. I’ve been anxious to eat the rest of the delicious coconut curry all day—especially after that watery, hairy lunch. I don’t plan on eating the whole thing, but I just take a tiny taste of the rum ball. It’s rich and chocolaty—and gone before I know it.

After the curry, I still have room for that lemon tart which is calling my name from its adorable little cardboard box. It tastes like a tiny slice of lemon meringue pie. Under normal circumstances, lemon meringue pie is okay, but no big thrill. But here, in India, this experience elevates me to a level of bliss that no pie has ever achieved. I savor every last crumb. These tarts cost about fifty cents. A girl could get herself into trouble this way.

I’m in bed, talking to my husband on the computer, when I notice an email from the CEO of Pearson in my inbox. He’s been reading my blog, I know, but he’s apparently been reading a lot of my blog. He tells me:

So here's another side benefit of your blog. Naturally I am an infrequent
visitor to the ladies wash rooms, and so had no idea how appalling the condition
of the ground floor loo is. I did an inspection of all the loo's in the office,
and fortunately that's the only one in such bad repair.

The smell has got nothing to do with the air in the estate, it is just a terribly maintained bathroom with water seepage, and I am amazed that everyone has just
accepted it the way it is.

I hope to have it fixed in the next week or so.

Vivek

I try not to be horrified. I didn’t mean to call Pearson out on a stinky bathroom. I was just trying to describe the office, and an incident that I found interesting, and the industrial estate in which I’m working.

At second glance, though, I am glad to have an Indian audience keeping me on my toes, letting me know when I get something wrong—like attributing the bad air in the bathroom to the neighboring businesses when that is not the case. I certainly don’t want to get anything wrong on the blog, but I don’t want to sugar coat my experiences or censor them either.

I’ve made a promise to myself to be truthful. I couldn’t write this blog any other way.

A Hate/Love Relationship

Sunday morning I wake up after only about three hours of sleep. There is no hot water again in the shower. The water isn’t even warm enough to wash away the blue dye from my clothing the day before. In fact, it’s turning me even more blue from the cold. I emerge from the shower shivering, Smurf-like. Delhi is a lot to deal with when you’ve only had three hours of sleep, I think. Today, I miss my husband terribly and it’s all India’s fault. Today, I hate India.

Thankfully, I don’t feel any new welts anywhere. Maybe the bugs I smashed last night were not the poisonous blister beetles after all—or maybe I luckily smashed the only two that were creeping around my bed. Hard to tell.

Julianne and Susanna arrive just a few minutes late. In addition to me, they have Roxanne and Alicia in the car: two more people who’ve recently arrived in Delhi.

We get to the Delhi Bible Fellowship while they are singing the second song—not too late. There is another guest speaker today; the pastor is still in England convalescing. They still don’t know what’s wrong.

The dark-skinned guest speaker in a crisp white shirt starts off with a story about how he went shopping for some cologne and got ripped off. Figures. The packaging looked the same, he said, but it was basically water inside. It’s so easy to get fooled by appearances in India, he says. I think of Julianne’s 100 rupee sari which was full of stains when she unfurled the fabric. I think of the stinky shoes I bought, and all the parking that I paid for and, apparently, shouldn’t have. It is easy to get ripped off here, especially when you’re a foreigner.

The speaker says we are fooled by appearances, but God isn’t. We need to see with God’s eyes to see past appearances. He says God is like the sun: you cannot look at it, but without it, you cannot look at anything else.

It sounds good and I love the poetic analogy, but I wonder what it really means. Was I looking at Sonu with the benefit of the sun? Or was I in the dark? He duped me into paying for parking. Ten rupees here, twenty-five rupees there, for a whole month. Does that matter? Did I see that he was a good person at heart, or was I only seeing the results of his attraction to me? Is he really a rotten guy who cheats on his wife, hates his daughters because they’re girls, and steals from his employer? I wonder how it’s ever possible to have the kind of wisdom of “seeing” that our speaker is talking about today. I feel very far from it.

Regardless, our guest is a good storyteller and church goes by quickly today. There is much milling about afterwards. Susie is supposed to meet these people from Hong Kong who just got here. They are friends of a friend from when Susie taught English in Hong Kong. Turns out the women are the ones I kept turning around to look at during the service. They talked the whole time. I kept wondering how anyone could have that much to say. They never stopped. And they are still talking incessantly. This must be a cultural thing, I figure. Maybe in Hong Kong they don’t go to church, or everyone talks during church, and then they keep talking without stopping after church. While the Hong Kong people talk, I mill about and talk to one of the daughters of a large family—like, they take up a whole row at church. They’re getting ready to return to the United States tomorrow. She is sanguine. I am jealous. We talk about receiving packages. The Indian post office, apparently, likes to open up packages, and the employees help themselves to whatever looks appealing—and this is given over to random tastes. The daughter tells me she once got a package from which the socks were extracted, but all the DVDs and CDs were left in tact. I guess this kind of tampering is not a federal crime like it is in the United States. Or maybe it is but people just don’t care because to enforce something, you’d have to go to court, and that could take an indefinite length of time. So just take the socks if they look good to you. Nothing will happen. I hope the Defence Colony post office is classier than this. I hope this is another meaning of the word “posh” that everyone uses to describe Defence Colony.

I ask Susie if her rat smell is cleared up. She sent me an email earlier in the week saying she couldn’t get together on Saturday because she was waiting for the rat guy to come and hopefully get rid of the fetid smell saturating her kitchen and bedroom. “It’s really bad in the kitchen,” she says. The rat guy didn’t show up. He was supposed to come Friday night, then Saturday, and now it’s Sunday and no rat guy. I wish her well getting the situation fixed and am grateful I’m staying in a place where I have a staff to turn to if something goes wrong. Otherwise I’d have to wait on rat guys and hot water guys and tv guys and who knows what else could possibly break.

Over an hour later, the Hong Kong guests are finally convinced that they can keep talking if we just pause for a few minutes to dismiss to our second location, Nirala’s, for lunch. It’s the same good Chinese restaurant we ate at two weeks ago after church. The Chinese restaurants here are far better than the Chinese restaurants I know in Chicago and Iowa. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the proximity, or the availability of ingredients. Either way, Nirala’s doesn’t disappoint.

After lunch, Julianne walks down with me to help me catch an auto. Her roommate is going to drive the Hong Kong people home instead of me, and I tell her that’s fine. The first wallah wants fifty rupees. She says it’s too much. We wait around for another auto, but there aren’t that many coming by. The second wallah, as if in conspiracy, wants fifty rupees. His meter is broken, just like the first auto-wallah’s meter was broken. Julianne says, “Tori dour hay.” It’s very close. It should only cost 30 or 40 rupees. The wallah laughs at her and repeats, “Tori dour hay.” I think he thinks it’s funny that a white girl is speaking Hindi to him.

Tired of fighting, I tell her it’s okay. I’ll pay the fifty rupees. I just want to get home. I’m supposed to give Amar a call about seeing a movie tonight and it’s getting late on in the afternoon. I climb into the rickshaw, wave goodbye to Julianne, and we take off.

The driver laughs. “Your friend?” he asks. “Your helper?” he laughs and laughs some more. He’s making fun of me. I am so sick of crazy drivers.

“Yes, my friend,” I say.

“You married?” he asks. Here we go.

“Yes, I’m married,” I say.

“Your friend married?”

“Yes,” I practice a little Indian deception.

“Babies? You babies?”

“Yes,” I lie again, hoping my driver cannot see with God’s eyes.

“How many?” he wants to know.

“One,” I say. Seems like a good number. “Do you have babies?” I ask, hoping to shift his focus.

“Yes,” he says. “One baby only have? One only?” This is occasion for a barrel of laughs. He is like some crazy Indiana Jones character. I wish I had a whip that I could do a trick with and shut him up.

The rest of the way home he laughs, occasionally peppering his laughter with short phrases, something about “two babies” and “enough” and “Indian babies every year, one, two, three, enough!” With this he chops the air and laughs so hard he can’t speak for a while, which is a relief. Then he begins again, “Two babies. All enough. Two, one, five, one in blanket hold. Fifteen year. Two babies.” He makes the okay sign and, of course, laughs.

I’m glad I could provide so much entertainment, and very relieved when we get to C-83.

Inside, I call Amar. He was able to get tickets for the 5:30 showing of Dark Knight, so they’ll come pick me up in the Defence Colony market at about 4:30. That should give us plenty of time to get there.

I have about an hour, so I decide to go pick up my pants at the tailor. I’d dropped them there the day before when I realized there was no drawstring in them. He said, “Small work,” and told me they’d be ready by the evening. I approach his booth and, this time, he is a little more alert. He sees me and smiles and begins digging through a bunch of clothes he has folded behind him. He pulls out my pants folded neatly in a bag and says nothing about payment. “Take,” he says. I think he’s done the work for free, but I give him twenty rupees just on principle. A dust-coated woman with a beautiful smile emerges from the alley behind his shop. The tailor says, “Ready for work,” and gestures to her. She looks at me hopefully. “I’m sorry; I don’t have any work,” I say. Everyone smiles and I walk home. On the way I pass a dog picking at an empty corn cob and a lemon rind in a sewer. I pass a second, golden lab-esque dog with a head like a lunchbox. This dog is wearing a collar and a smile, but he’s also full of bugs and lesions just like the strays are here. No Frontline and heartworm pills in India, at least not for this guy.

Before I know it, it’s about quarter after four, so I head out to the market to wait for Amar and his wife. Four thirty rolls around, then it’s quarter to five, then five o’clock. Finally, Amar pops out of a black jeep-type taxi. “The regular taxi did not show up.” He is so sorry. I climb into the black box of a vehicle and hit my head on the way in.

We get close to the theatre and there is a traffic jamb. Amar and his wife talk to the driver in Hindi. “We’re going to get out and walk,” they tell me. Otherwise, we’ll be late. We cut through a parking lot, then a vacant plot strewn with trash. There is a pile of trash as high as my head and several people sit picking though it. The dirt plot opens into a pedestrian mall where several white cows are loitering. The stores here and the architecture are rather western, and it’s funny to see the cows in front of the Reebok, Levi and Benetton shops. They’re just hanging out like kids at the mall waiting for their moms to come pick them up. I take a few snaps.

There is a long line for the movie and it seems that everything is conspiring against us getting to see it in time. Amar picks up our tickets and we pass through a metal detector at the outside door. A man has seen me snap a photo of the cows. “Do you have a camera, ma’am?”

“Yes,” I say, before I think to lie.

“You can’t bring a camera in here. You have to leave your camera.”

Amar snaps into action. “We will have to leave your camera somewhere,” he says, and takes it from my hands before I can really think about where my $300 camera will be for the next two and a half hours. I follow his wife through the next security checkpoint where women are rifling through purses. My purse doesn’t get rifled though. If I would have just not taken a picture of the cows, everything would have been fine. These damn snaps have gotten me into more trouble…

We walk into the theatre. It looks large enough for a rock concert and the seats are giant, plush, reclining affairs. Amar’s wife uses her cell phone to light the way as we scramble for our assigned seats. Amar isn’t far behind. He checked my camera and we’ve just missed the first few seconds of the movie. Not too bad for the odds we faced: missed cab, traffic jamb, camera incident.

Watching Christian Bale and Morgan Freeman and Heath Ledger in the dark theatre, I almost forget I’m in India—until the movie suddenly stops and big white letters come on the screen: “INTERMISSION.” A slide show starts: “Now is the time for Pepsi and popcorn!” Amar goes out to get some snacks. Another slide comes up: “If you see an unattended object, don’t touch it. It could be an explosive.” This message comes courtesy of the Delhi police. Security here is a bit higher than it is in other cities as Delhi is the capital. And even then, security here is higher than usual because of the recent bombings in other cities.

The movie ends and we walk out into the night. It’s relatively cool because it’s rained again. I ask Amar where my camera is with a slight feeling of dread. We walk to a cigarette stand outside the show. Amar speaks in Hindi to the man behind the counter. I think, my camera got hocked. It’s not there anymore. Amar hands over some bills to the guy and the guy motions to a second guy standing behind him. Hands wave and Hindi is spoken. Finally, the guy pulls out my camera. I am rather astounded. It could so easily have been stolen or sold. I really don’t understand why it wasn’t. It comes back with a number written on the front face in oil pencil, but otherwise completely in tact. Not even any questionable snaps have been taken. I resolve to be more careful about where I take my camera. For instance, I can’t take it into the event to see the Prime Minister, Amar cautions. I won’t even try, I promise.

We eat a wonderful meal at the Bamboo Garden, a Thai restaurant, and Amar insists on treating for this too. Afterwards we walk out to find a cab. There are stalls lit by naked bulbs: this one selling wallets; that one selling shoes. Amar’s wife, Tehseen, asks me if I’ve ever tried a paan. She said she gave it to some Japanese clients once and they made goofy faces. She demonstrates. She buys a piece for us to share. The vendor plies it with honey. “This is a good quality paan,” she says, and points out the silver leafing on it.

Amar thinks it must not be silver. That can’t be good for you. But Tehseen says yes, it is silver, and silver is good for your digestion. No, Amar thinks, this has to be wrong. No, Tehseen says, it’s silver.

Whatever its disputed toppings, the paan consists of a betel leaf, wrapped around a sweet mixture of spices, ground Areca nut and coconut served on a little square silver tray. Good paan wallahs are considered artists, and I believe we’ve just stumbled upon one.

Tehseen tells me how to eat it. “Just take a small bite at first, then, after a while, you will think of it again and you will want more.” The first bite is jarring. The leaf is bitter and woody. Then, sure enough, after some time, I want more. She takes a bite, then I do. It’s very aromatic, almost soapy, but calming, refreshing. That’s why it’s chewed after dinner as a breath freshener.

Some people chew betel that is stuffed with tobacco. That’s what you see people all over Delhi spitting. This is a Delhi thing, Amar and Tehseen explain in the cab on the way home, people in other places in India don’t spit like that.

I tell them about almost getting spit on the day before while I was walking home from the market, and Amar says he can tell me something even worse. When Tehseen first came to Delhi, she and her friend actually did get spit on, right in their faces. She says she hated it here for a while, but now she misses it when she leaves. In other places, they don’t pee on the streets or spit, but, she says, only in Delhi do they celebrate festivals with such enthusiasm. She says I’ll get a chance to see this coming up on August 15th for Independence Day. The skies will be full of kites, she says. Only in Delhi. And if a kid cuts another kid’s kite loose, he will scream “Independence!” as the kite takes flight. It sounds like fun.

As we pull up to C-83, I thank my generous hosts for a very fun evening. Tonight, I still miss my husband, but me and India, we’re okay. Hot water or not. Spit or no spit.

Am I Blue?

Saturday I set out later because I only have my driver for eight hours and the book launch tonight starts at 6 p.m. I’ll need him until at least 8 o’clock, so I tell Balminder to pick me up at 1:30. He arrives at 1:26, and I’m totally unprepared to leave. I can’t stress how unusual being early is in India.

I show Balminder the notes that Jonaki made in my notebook about where to go to get our bus tickets for the trip we’re taking next week. “We have to find the Himachal Pradesh tourism office on Janpath across from the Imperial Hotel. Balminder nods like he knows where this is. I am relieved. We set off in silence; there is no Punjabi music playing. It’s relaxing for a change.

We drive for a while then Balminder says, “Ma’am, Chandralock Building. Imperial Hotel.” He’s found it. We have to circle around to park.

“I will find you here?” I ask. I’m always a little nervous about leaving my car and not being able to find it when I need it again. Balminder nods.

The building is tall and made out of marble. The first floor is a foyer with offices on either side. I ask a guard sitting out front for the office I need and he points me the way.

This is the official state tourism office. I trust Jonaki to have sent me to a reputable place. I wouldn’t trust myself to find one. The guidebooks are full of admonishments about “touts” who run tourism scams. They’ll take your money then stop the bus halfway to the destination for an extra charge, a “toll”. Or they’ll just take your money and not get you where you want to go.

I buy one overnight bus ticket to Aut. It costs about twenty dollars. From Aut, we’ll have to take a taxi the rest of the way to Gusaini, where Raju’s Cottage is. I try to buy our return tickets, but the woman and man in the tiny office tell me I can’t purchase them. I’ll have to buy them in Manali. They get out a map and show me where Manali is. They say it’s two and a half hours by taxi from Gusani, which they can’t quite find on their map. Jonaki told me I could buy the return tickets. She even gave me money to purchase hers when I came. I press the people, but they are firm. No. We’ll have to go to Manali. The bus will leave from there on the 13th of August at 5:30. I hate to leave without tickets back, but the couple assures me it will be find. They are the official state tourism representatives. They seem very sure of the plan they’re advising me of. I think I’ll have Jonaki call back or come back later. She seemed to have a different result in talking with them. Maybe I’m getting the white girl run-around.

Outside the tourism office I take a few photos then I notice Balminder in his aqua blue shirt, standing right beside me. No worries about finding the car this time.

He walks me back to our dented silver chariot and I explain to him I’m meeting a friend at McDonald’s. He only understands McDonalds and tries to take me to the one in Connaught Place. Shabnum told me this might happen. “No. Janpath. McDonald’s at Janpath,” I tell him.

“No parking, madam,” he says.

“I have to go there,” I say. “Meeting a friend.”

He pulls up to the correct McDonald’s (the one next to the Cottage Industries Emporium that Shabnum mentioned). I ask him how I’ll find him when I’m done. Does he have a cell phone? No. I tell him to park the car where he’s going to be so I can find him when I’m done in a few hours. He thankfully understands and obliges.

I’m almost a full hour early to meet Shabnum because getting the bus tickets didn’t take nearly as long as I’d expected, and also because Balminder was early. So I decide to get some food.

At two o’clock in the afternoon there must be a lunch rush, because the McDonalds is packed. I stand in line shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd of people for thirty minutes before I order my Big Cheese combo without mayo. When I finally get my food, there is nowhere to sit. I stand, holding my tray and picking at my fries for a bit, then two women invite me to sit at their table with them.

Without the metric ton of mayonnaise, the big cheese veggie burger is almost good. I dip my fries in the chili sauce and try not to feel too weird sitting so close to two other people. They go merrily about their animated Hindi conversation.

Shabnum finds me sitting inside. She, too, is a few minutes early. She decides she’ll eat a little something while we’re here. She gets a chicken sandwich and fries but doesn’t touch the fries. I have an idea how Shabnum keeps her thin. We talk a bit. She’s from Assam but she’s lived in Delhi for nine years. She’s getting married pretty soon. March, I think.

We start our shopping at the Cottage Industries Emporium, a great, gleaming concrete building across the street from the McDonalds. This is a government-run establishment, Shabnum explains. The government runs a lot of stuff here, I think. I understand the concept of socialized healthcare, but the government-run souvenir store concept eludes me a little. I guess such stores help keep the craftspeople employed gainfully. I’ll have to inquire about this.

The Emporium has all the standard Indian fare: beautiful wood carvings, inlaid marble carvings and boxes, fabrics, furniture, handbags and jewelry. I buy a bunch of little elephants that will make great souvenirs.

The somewhat laborious checkout procedure is a clue to the fact that we are in a government establishment. There is one counter where the items are inventoried and a receipt drawn up. There is a second counter where you pay and get your receipt stamped. Then there is a third counter where, magically, all your merchandise is wrapped and bagged and handed over to you. Finally, a man at the door checks your receipt, and you are free to go.

The shops at Janpath are a little more spread out than those in the regular markets. The shopkeepers are a little more laid back as well. Shabnum helps me bargain a bag down from 585 to 300 rupees and talks about how much shopping her sister and her family like to do when they come here from Canada. I don’t blame them. The shopping is a sport with a technique all its own.

There is a downpour and we find ourselves dodging puddles, trying to find the car. Shabnum wants to show me Fab India, a shop down by Connaught Place just a few blocks away, but it’s still better if we take the car. It’s a big parking lot and just when I start to fear we’ll never find Balminder, he faithfully pops out from the sea of Marutis and Indigos. As we pull out of the lot, he gives the attendant 20 rupees.

“Are the drivers supposed to pay for parking?” I think. Sonu always made me pay for parking, save the one time we were with Balminder. Was Sonu letting me pay and getting reimbursed from the taxi service when he gave them the parking receipts which he always kept? Maybe he was stealing gas.

We get to Fab India, which everyone at work talks about. It’s vaguely reminiscent of The Gap, but Indian. It’s a little loft store with hundreds of folded up shirts and kurtas and dupatas. Some of the clothing is more western in its style (e.g. many of the shirts have collars on them). I find one or two cute pieces, but they are very pricy compared to the clothing I’ve been finding in the markets. Shabnum agrees. She says everything here is at least 200 rupees more than it was just a short time ago. Inflation has hit India hard.

We walk around a few more shops in Connaught Place, a great circle of commerce in the city, then find the car. Balminder one again pays for the parking and keeps the ticket. So my boyfriend was ripping me off.

Shabnum speaks to Balminder in Hindi and they determine the best route to get to the Macroeconomics book launch, which is being held in one of the large buildings in central Delhi not far off Lodhi road. I try not to be too sweaty and gross from the shopping we just did, but I mostly fail. It was hot outside and I’m sure I look the worse for the wear.

We pull into the parking lot of the building and I tell Balminder I’ll meet him outside in a few hours. The lobby is pretty nondescript save a three foot statue of Shiva. Our event is down a winding staircase in the basement. We are early and things are running a bit behind schedule. Amar is waiting for the people in our meeting room to clear out. Angshuman says there was a meeting about the Ramayan’s relevance in India today.

“Cool,” I say. I am suddenly stricken with ineloquence. Cool?

The dupatta I am clumsily wearing makes me feel like a fraud. Who is this white girl trying to dress up like an Indian? I pull at it and rearrange it, but it persists in looking goofy--chiefly because I have my stupid polka-dotted purse slung over my body like I’m a crossing guard. With nothing else to do and nothing to say, I reach into my purse. “Ooo, I better turn my cell phone off!” I say, as if someone from the United States is going to call me during this event even though it’s the middle of the night there. As I grab for my phone, a tampon falls out of my purse onto the floor. Cool, I think, as I bend over and try to nonchalantly stick it back from whence it came. I am a goon amongst gazelles.

Besides my classy coworkers, the gazelles include the economic adviser to the Prime Minister and the advisor to the Finance Minister. There is also Professor Partha Sen from the Delhi School of Economics.

It is an understated, decidedly intellectual affair in which well-deserved praise is heaped on the book in question, and the author in question and the publisher in question. This is the first book on macroeconomics with Indian case studies in it; the first book that doesn’t ask Indian students to learn about its subject matter by studying the United States social security system, for instance. This book is a big deal.

Once we are seated and the guest speakers begin, a photographer and a videographer. Am I imagining that the photographer is taking more snaps of me than the other audience members? Probably. But you’d understand if I were a bit paranoid about this matter.

Afterwards, copies of the book are for sale at a table in the lobby and there is tea, coffee, pakoras and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Once I have something to do with my hands and something easy to talk about (i.e. how well the event went), I’m a little more at ease.

Angshuman and Amar want to know if I want to go out after this and get some dinner and drinks. I would, but I am like Cinderella, I explain. My car is going to turn into a pumpkin at eight o’clock. I only get my driver for eight hours on Saturday, and I am coming to the end of that stretch.

I come home anxious to try on the new “sleeping suit” I bought at Connaught Place. It’s a hand block painted pajama set made out of fine, lightweight cotton. It’s beautiful and you would have thought I paid a hundred dollars for it from the looks of the store and the expensive, chic bag they packed it in. It cost me about twelve bucks.

As I’m changing, I notice that the kurta I wore bled and turned my whole torso blue. I look like something you might see on an autopsy table in an episode of CSI, but I’m way too tired to shower.

I’m supposed to talk to Scott at 10 p.m. my time. I get on the computer and see he’s left me a note: “I ran to the store to get some Frontline for Gilda.” I start to cry. To distract myself, I soak my feet and put lotion on them. Then I blog a bit.

Soon, Scott is back and I try not to pout about being temporarily stood up. I should be happy I get to talk to him at all; happy my Internet connection is working; happy he’s home in time to catch me before I go to sleep.

As we’re chatting, I notice a small beetle on the wall in front of me. I smash it then look it up in Wikipedia. Does it look like any of the blister beetles they show? Kind of, but there are too many varieties of this bug to be sure. I turn around and find another one in my bed. Are these the bugs that gave me the huge welt on the back of my leg? How many more of them are crawling in my room?

I say goodnight to my husband and take my Smurf self to bed, trying to shake off the feeling of being so socially awkward at tonight’s event, trying to believe the bugs in my room are not poisonous, and trying not to feel too blue… literally.

Of Poori and Professionalism

Friday morning there is a crowd of people around the breakfast table. I have to sit on the veranda to have my toast, tea and mango. Thankfully, yesterday’s rains have a lingering cooling effect. There is even a little breeze, and breakfast on the balcony is lovely.

At work I get a little bogged down in chapter three. The author seems to state and restate himself in slightly different ways so that trying to remove redundancy is a dizzying effort. I feel like I’m editing a house of mirrors. Didn’t I just see this sentence over there? Where is the real fact in the jumble of reflections all around it?

Vivek, the Pearson India CEO, drops a book at my desk. He’s been reading my blog and he thinks this might help me learn more about the religious traditions I’m so interested in here. “It helped me to understand my own religion,” he says. The book is yellowed and worn, and it’s missing both the front and back covers. The title page reads, What Religion Is: In the Words of Swami Vivekananda. It’s clear the book is well loved. “I’ll be very careful with it,” I tell him. This is the perfect reading for the vacation I’ll be taking with Jonaki to that hill station in a couple weeks.

I have a short lunch with Amar today. He’s very busy getting ready for the history book launch with the Prime Minister. The police have to have the names of everyone on the guest list. They want pictures of everyone who will be in the first two rows. There are other preparations to be made.

After lunch, I take a walk with Jonaki and Shabnum and a few other women. We are nearing the corner when a five-inch long lizard clumsily scrambles right over Shabnum’s toes. She laughs from the surprise of it, then everyone wants to know: did it lick her? Did it bite her? No. She’s fine.

The lizard is standing by the side of the road. I go touch its tail. It lets me pet it. “Vicki!” my companions exclaim. They have told me how surprised they are that I “just have no hang ups.” I eat the food; I wear the clothes. “You’d make a good Indian girl,” Jonaki tells me one day at lunch.

I think twice about petting the lizard, but only after I’ve already done it. “This is probably how I got the necrosis, huh?” I laugh. No one else does.

I need to remember I’m in India. There’s some dangerous stuff over here. I remember the lizard Sonu pointed out to me at the zoo: “Very danger. Very danger.” I know this isn’t the same kind of lizard, but still, I didn’t need to commune with it in such an intimate fashion. I’m not the freaking Crocodile Hunter. It sure was cute, though. Green and black: different from the little pink guys who hang out in my apartment.

Shabnum tells a story about a monkey who grabbed her shawl and pulled on it with both hands, staring her right in the face. She screamed. The monkey screamed back, then ran off. Jonaki tells a story about sitting outside her house and feeling watched. She saw a set of eyes in her periphery vision. She looked and saw it was a snake. She went one way, the snake went the other. “Thank goodness,” I say. I really wouldn’t want to run into a snake in India. At the zoo it said there are over a hundred different kinds of snakes here and over 70% of them are poisonous. No snake petting for me.

After work, Balminder is waiting for me. I get in the car and tell him it’s not too hot today. It’s nice outside.

“Thank you,” he says.

I wonder what he thinks I said.

I hope he doesn’t think I was flirting with him, especially after the photo shoot with Sonu yesterday. No more snaps with drivers, I think. At least he hasn’t asked for any yet. He looks too scared. Maybe it’s good that he’s not great with English. I just hope he knows enough to get me where I need to go. That’s all I need my driver to do for me: just be a staff person, an employee. It was fun having a friend, but it was also too messy, too confusing for poor Sonu.

We drive on, a little slower than Sonu would be going, but with plenty of horn blaring. I’m trying not to feel like Balminder is sub-par.

The car comes to a stop at the overpass where the kids sell magazines and bum copies of bestsellers. They see I’m a white girl and run to my window, tapping on it, smiling for me, nodding their heads. Yes, they know I want what they’re selling. It’s so hard not to hand over my wallet to these people and everyone I see on the streets. I feel depleted by the energy it takes to look away.

I think about the Sonu situation: how it went wrong and how it was mostly my fault. I think of a comment a friend left on my blog: “You are such a kind, warm, wonderful person. Who wouldn’t fall for you?”

Mine is a legacy of being too nice, too eager to please, even compromising my own well-being sometimes to make sure people like me—not out of any altruism, but more from a lack of confidence, from a disbelief that people will like me otherwise. Where did this come from? I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember, I think.

At the next intersection, a man with no arms stands in the median. I remember my Uncle Joe telling me to be thankful that I had a roof over my head and all four limbs. I was little. I was throwing a tantrum about not getting something, I don’t remember what. I do remember thinking it was the strangest thing to say. Strange, old Uncle Joe. Why would I not have all four limbs?

A high percentage of the beggars on the streets here have some kind of deformity: misshapen or amputated limbs. I think: these are the people who have to go to the free government hospitals when they need some kind of care. I think: amputation must be a common “treatment” in these hospitals.

I am thankful now, Uncle Joe. I am thankful.

The car feels quiet and empty. I realize Sonu had been with me from the moment I arrived at the Delhi airport until today. He made me feel safe in a country and a city where so many things seem so unsafe for a solitary white girl. I suddenly feel alone. I miss Sonu. Tears start to well up in my eyes.

We pass the stuppa where we took our last snaps. What was I supposed to learn there? You can’t go inside because it’s empty (and the guard will laugh at you to boot). But seriously, the Buddhists say that the ultimate nature of all phenomenon is emptiness. Or maybe it’s simpler to understand the way Shakespeare said it, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

My tears abate. Anyway, in Sonu’s religion, we are all one, so we are never really absent from one another. I realize that all of these thoughts are jumbles of first impressions and Wikipedia glances at world religions, but somehow, for a moment, it makes sense. It comforts me. God is one, said the graffiti on the sun visor in the car that broke down. We are all one in God. What does that mean to me in Balminder’s cab on Friday afternoon in the Delhi traffic by Indraprasthra Park? It means I feel a palpable connection with and a simultaneous presence of everyone I know. They are with me, part of me, in me. My husband, my mother, my Uncle Joe, Sonu, Balminder, my brother, my sister-in-law, my father, my aunt, my niece. Everyone.

I tell myself I am just as safe with Balminder as I was with Sonu, and we finish our journey back to Defence Colony.

“Same time, ma’am,” Balminder asks.

“No, tomorrow different,” I tell him using as little and as simple language as possible. “Tomorrow 1:30.” I plan on buying my bus tickets for the trip Jonaki invited me to take, then meeting Shabnum for a little shopping before the Macroeconomics book launch at 6:00.

At home I decide to walk to the market. I need to get some cash for Saturday’s shopping, and I might get myself a proper dinner while I’m at it.

This time at the ATM, I don’t freak out. I use the right card, and I request the money in an amount that the machine accepts. There’s a moment where the machine asks me to put my card in a second time. “Here we go again,” I think, but before I have reason to dread being cut off from my cash once again, money is spitting out the bottom of the machine.

I decide to go to Sagar’s and check out their full dinner. Dosas and uttapum are kind of like snacks. They serve something called thali, which comes with all kinds of vegetable dishes and even a sweet. I order the thali.

The food that comes out surprises me. There is a pile of bread surrounded by little metal cups of assorted vegetable dishes. The bread, though, looks like balloons or UFOs. This is poori, I guess. The troubling thing is that I don’t know what to do with it. Do you pour the stuff from the cups onto it? Or do I remember Susie saying something about smashing poori and putting the stuff inside of it? Do you break it up and dip it? Do you use it like roti and scoop up the food with it?

Should I ask? I can’t ask. I ordered this. Ordering something implies you know what to do with it. This will be funny for the five staff people standing two feet away from me, I think. It will be like someone asking for a spoon at a restaurant and then sticking it in her ear. It might be the steroids I’m on, but I work up a good deal of anxiety over the situation.

Suddenly I know what to do. I take a picture of it. The flash goes off and now I really have the attention of the staff. I look over at them and laugh. They laugh back. Wait ‘til they see me eat.

Eventually, I decide to break up the bread and use it to scoop up the vegetable dishes, like I would with the other food I’ve been served here, the same way I eat lunch every day. It seems to work. No one’s staring.

I’m glad I got over myself even if it took a minute because this food is so good. And there are so many different flavors: coconut and cucumber and spices that I can’t even name. As I shovel the delicious vegetables into my mouth with the delicate fried bread, I suddenly realize why that woman at the office cautioned me to “keep my thin.” This stuff is good. Really good. And it costs about two dollars for all of it. And I eat almost all of it.

On the way home from Sagar’s, I decide to check out a little store that looks to have some bracelets in the window. Once I get inside, I realize it’s kind of like a Hallmark store. There are cheap bracelets up front, pencil boxes, oodles of tiny statues of Ganesh, religious medallions including a few featuring Jesus, and greeting cards. I try to find a sympathy card for my sister-in-law who just lost a dear uncle, but there is no sympathy card section. There is, however, a giant section of Rakhi cards. I consider choosing one with a swastika on it, but decide against it. Have I mentioned that swastikas are everywhere here? Painted onto trucks, onto building facades. The symbol has some religious significance, though I haven’t figured out exactly what it means yet.

I select a card and a little bracelet that I can mail with it, and check out. On my way out, I notice a staircase leading down. I follow it. Is there another level to the Hallmark-esque store? No. There’s a hip little English language bookstore down there. Why don’t these people put up signs? I would have been at this place ten times by now if I would have just known it was here. There are piles of books on religion and philosophy. I find a Penguin reader that is the collected writings of some swami that looks interesting. I wonder if it is the same author as the book that Vivek lent me. I’ll have to check when I get home. I leave the book at the store for the time-being, but I will be back.

It’s dark outside when I emerge. I start walking home but remember Debamitra’s admonishment. “You shouldn’t walk about in Delhi by yourself. Take a rickshaw.” I try to find a bicycle rickshaw driver, but they are scarce. This is the way it is here. When you don’t want a ride, the rickshaw wallahs practically run into you trying to pick you up for a fare. When you need one, they’re all coy and hard to get. I find a wallah at the entrance to the market. “C-83,” I say, but he doesn’t even look me in the eye or stop. He just shakes his head.

I start walking home. A man in a minivan rolls down his window and issues forth a great burst of chew and spit. It almost hits me. I decide to try harder to find a rickshaw. Just as I’m stepping around the chew puddle, a prospect approaches.

“C-83 Defence Colony?” I say. “Ten rupees?”
He nods. I crawl in and he begins pedaling. I think he mutters “twenty.” We’re really only two blocks away from where I live. Twenty rupees for so short a ride would be ridiculous.

He drives right past the turn he was supposed to take. At the last second I stop him and point. “NihaN!” I say. “Here, here.” I wish I knew the words for right and left. I’ll have to look those up.

For the rest of the ride, I have to point out each turn he should take.

“Tori dour hay,” this time I remember how to say “it’s close.” And when he turns the right way, I remember how to say yes. “Ha gee,” I tell him.

As we’re approaching the guest house, I hear a loud pop. I think way too late afterwards, “Hey, that kind of sounded like a gunshot. Maybe I should duck or something.” His tire blew out. He pushes the carriage to the front gate. I give him ten rupees. He says, “Madam, twenty.” He gestures to the popped tire. I say, “No, very close. Ten.” I hand him the bill and back away. He gestures to the popped wheel again. I feel terrible, but I also know this is their “racket” so-to-speak. I know that twenty rupees can get me all the way to Lajput Nagar market in an auto-rickshaw and it’s not a fair price for two blocks on a bicycle. “Ma’am, twenty,” now he is sounding angry. Pachu is sitting at the gate with a few of the other staff. He stares straight ahead staying out of the debate. I walk away while the rickshaw driver goes on. “Twenty, madam. Twenty!”

My heart is pounding. I wonder if Pachu thinks I’m a jerk. I wonder if ten was an unfair price. I wonder if he’s following me up the stairs; if he’ll be waiting outside to conk me in the head and get his other ten rupees the next time I’m out here by myself. I wonder if I have bad karma now. I had ten more rupees. I could have given it to him. I should have given it to him, I think. But I stuck to the deal I made with him. I told him ten when I climbed in.

I’m in bed blogging when my hotel phone rings. There is a brief moment of static, then I hear, “Madam, this is Sonu. I am on my way Punjab.” Horns honk in the background.

I feel vaguely alarmed.

“How you?” Sonu asks.

“Good,” I tell him, disbelieving I’m actually having a phone conversation with him.

“You okay?” he wants to know.

“I’m okay,” I tell him.

“How driver? Driver okay?”

“My driver is good,” I assure him.

“Okay. I miss you,” he says.

“I miss you too, Sonu,” I say against my better judgment.

“Okay I love you, too,” Sonu says very rapidly, then hangs up.

Damn it. A drive-by I love you. I’ve been sideswiped and the culprit didn’t even stop to trade insurance cards.

It’s clear the next time I talk to Sonu, if there is a next time I talk to Sonu, that I’ll have to establish some unequivocal boundaries. This “happy new friendship” isn’t working out too well. Boundaries are long overdue.

It’s like reverse Stockholm syndrome, my husband suggests when I relate the situation to him. Where normally the vulnerable person taken hostage feels a strange affection for her captor, in this situation, it’s the captor feeling the affection for the hostage.

The truth is, I was vulnerable: plopped down in a city across the world by myself. The truth is, I did feel a kind of attachment to Sonu—not romantic in any way. I felt gratitude, indebtedness for the help he provided to me. And this must have confused him wildly.

And then there’s the matter of the social mores that I violated.

I think in India the domestic help aren’t quite treated as equals; there is a real feeling of “rank” here. This is probably true in the United States as well, but I wouldn’t know. Here, though, you would never hang out with your cook. There’s a class difference that keeps people apart. With my egalitarian American ways, I totally treated Sonu as an equal.

In addition to this, I’ve never had domestic help and have no idea how to act in a situation where I do. It’s strange to have to be “professional” with someone in a domestic setting; it’s a contradiction to me. I want to be familiar with people I’m relating to in my home. But these aren’t familiar relationships; at heart, they’re professional ones. These people are doing their jobs, and their jobs are not “being your friend.”

Treating Sonu like a friend was all the more exceptional, then, and all the more confusing for him.

I wish I could rewind, but would I want to give up the sweaty paddle boat and the elephant ride? Would I want to give up following those angel wings up the steps of the Purana Quila fort and having Sonu point out to me the many temples that constitute the closest thing to a skyline that Delhi has? Not for the world. I would just want to avoid hurting Sonu.

His exile in Punjab is fortuitous. I hope he falls in love with this wife while he is there.

Goodbye Sonu

Thursday morning, a brown-haired woman approaches me at the breakfast table. “Are you English?” she asks in a wonderful British accent.

“No, I’m American,” I tell her.

“Yes, but you speak English,” she says, sitting down, looking relieved. She just arrived at three in the morning. She asked for a wake up call at ten, but found herself wide awake having received no call at all. That’s how the jet lag works when you come in this direction. You are wide awake in the early morning, regardless of how much sleep you’ve had, or haven’t had.

She didn’t know what time it was because her cell phone ran out of charge and there are no clocks anywhere. She says this with a hint of desperation.

My cell phone ran out of charge, I want to tell her. I didn’t know what time it was either. I woke up early. It’s like I’m talking to myself four weeks ago. The recognition makes me jubilant. I want to hug her. I want to tell her it will be okay. She hasn’t fallen off the planet.

I can’t quite figure out the deep need to have a clock, to know what time it is, but it was one of the most disorienting aspects of my own arrival at the Ahuja Residency. I needed those little square red numbers glowing at me, keeping me company, telling me where I was. You are at two o’clock. You are at three thirty. Without them, I felt lost, blinded.

I remember pleading with Sonu, “Watch, clock, store, please!”

My breakfast companion looks pretty good for having just been reborn, India-style. I ask her if she’s been here before, and she hasn’t. She’s been to some places in Asia, but not to India and not alone. I ask her if she’s figured out the hot water switch yet. No, she hasn’t, but her shower was warm. “There must have been enough leftover,” she laughs. It’s true. The same thing happened to me. There was hot water the first time, and then it was gone.

These are the things, she says, that the hotel should have written down on a sheet. I tell her to check her desk. There is a sheet inside, but they don’t mention the hot water.

She sees that I’m eating a mango and wonders if it’s safe. She wonders if the bottled water the hotel provides is safe because it just says “drinking water” on it and not “spring water” or “filtered water.” I never even looked that closely. Yes, I can assure her. Everything at this hotel has been very safe for me so far, and the mangos are delicious. She should have one.

“Are there many English speaking people here?” she wonders. Not that many, I tell her. She says there was a Japanese-looking man here earlier who looked all bleary-eyed and was throwing his head back and yawning and would only grumble “morning” to her. She grumbles “morning” just like he did, only with an English accent. He must have just arrived, she figures. No! I tell her. He’s been down here every day for more than a week. I know exactly who she’s talking about. It’s not jet lag. Our Japanese friend is just not a morning person.

She relates an anecdote about how she couldn’t get her key to work in the door last night after she arrived, so she got the man and showed him the problem. I think it was the grey-haired, skinny Pachu. Anyway, at three in the morning, Pachu wordlessly demonstrated that she should latch her door from the inside instead of locking it with the key. So that is how she slept last night, with an unlocked door, held closed by a latch.

Yes, I’ve been there. Yes, that happened to me too. I feel strange being the “experienced” one in the conversation for the first time in a long time. My life for the last four weeks has been me needing help, me asking questions. But today at breakfast, I can finally help someone else a little bit, even if it’s only to offer commiseration in a common language.

My breakfast companion is in India to visit her brother and his family. They are living in one room up in Dharamsala. Her brother is teaching there. She is very curious to see how he is living. She is only at Ahuja for this one day and will take an overnight train to Dharamsala tonight if all goes well. She’s been on a foreigner’s wait list for three weeks to get the ticket, but she says it’s much easier to get a first class ticket than anything else because nobody can afford them. First class is nice, she says. You get clean sheets and everything. The ticket will cost about twenty dollars. She was going to take a bus, but someone told her they can go off the road. Trains stay on their tracks.

She wants to know how long it will take her to get to the station. I’ve seen it on local maps and it’s close by. I tell her a half hour is plenty of time. She can either call Mrs. Sonu for a cab or just get an auto-rickshaw. In case she wants to take an auto, I show her how to walk to the market, pointing down to the street below us. Take your first right, then your first left. “Your first right, first left,” she repeats. I can tell her head is spinning a little bit. I hope her journey is safe.

I wish she were staying on beyond today. I wish we could swap a few more Ahuja Residency stories, but I have to go get ready for work, so we say goodbye.

I go up to my room and take my steroid and my antibiotic. Finally, today, my necrosis looks like it’s abating. It appears that my leg won’t rot after all. I’d been worried about the flesh turning black and seeping like I saw in the Wikipedia entry for necrosis, but my necrosis is not nearly so severe. I didn’t realize how worried I was about this until I was off-the-hook and it was definitely getting better, but I am hugely relieved.

The guard knocks at my door. “Madam, your driver.” I walk down the smooth white marble staircase wondering what will happen when I get outside. Will there be a stranger there? Will Sonu be back after all? Did he get fired?

Outside I see Sonu standing next to the white Indica. I feel a mixture of discomfort and relief. “Sonu!” I say. “I am happy to see you,” but then I think perhaps I shouldn’t be so eager. Perhaps this is confusing. Perhaps I should scowl just to be clear. But I scowling isn’t my style.

“Madam,” Sonu says, and opens the door for me on the left side of the car. He also gets into the left side of the car—the side without a steering wheel—and motions to a man sitting in the driver’s seat. “This driver today. He driver. Me, no.”

Sonu will ride with us just for today, but Balminder Singh with the fuzzy little mustache will be my new driver. “Hi, Balminder,” I greet him and he nods nervously. He looks all of nineteen years old. I’m glad Sonu is accompanying us on our first drive so we don’t experience a replay of my first excursion to the office (which took an hour and a half and included some of the, shall we say, less touristy areas of Delhi).

“Ma’am, I go back Punjab,” Sonu tells me as we approach the market then turn left instead of right at the highway. They fired Sonu.

“Different way?” I ask.

“Yes,” Sonu says, as Balminder drives. I don’t mind the alternate route—until we run into a mash of traffic. The Ring Road looks like a parking lot.

“Oh no,” I say. “Bad traffic.”

“What?” Sonu asks.

“Bad traffic. Many cars,” I clarify.

“Yes, very. Very many cars,” he agrees.

Sonu takes out a silver flip phone and tells me, “Friend. Phone. I call you. Punjab.” He’s going to call me from Punjab? “Number,” he says. He wants to give me his phone number. I find a scrap sheet of paper and pass it up into the front seat. I wonder where this cell phone came from if he was having the money problems he explained to me.

Then we pass a billboard for a cell phone. The price is listed at 1390 rupees, though Sonu told me a new cell phone would cost 5000 rupees the night before when I asked him. Was he lying? Did he think he’d get the money out of me?

“And what about that day when Sonu was wearing different clothes when he picked you up from work?” my mother wondered over Skype with me. She’s been combing the blog for clues like it’s a detective novel. Where did he go? Maybe he’s picking up other fares. Maybe that’s where the gas is going.

Or maybe the advertisement I see is for a really cheap cell phone whereas Sonu is saving for an expensive one that takes snaps. Hard to say what the truth is, if there is one.

Sonu passes the scrap of paper back to me and looks at the darkening sky. “Rain,” he says. A few moments later, there is a deluge. The men on motorcycles are instantly drenched, their collared shirts going transparent and sticking to their bodies. The streets quickly fill up with water. The traffic snarls worsen.

Despite all this, I am only about fifteen minutes late. As we pull up in front of Pearson, Sonu turns around. “Umbrella?” He wants to make sure I have one so I don’t get wet on my way in. I know he keeps one in his trunk because he used it the last time we went to the Lotus Temple. Now he’s ready to jump out into the torrential rain and get it for me so I stay dry on the way into my office.

Maybe he is just that nice. Maybe he wasn’t trying to rip me off. Can he be so kind and mature that even after getting rejected by me and losing his job on the same day, he treats me with the same loving regard as before? Or is he hoping I’ll change my mind about him?

“I have one,” I tell him, and hold up the tiny polka-dotted folding umbrella that I’ve just dug out of my backpack. “But thank you.”

“Same time, madam?” he says, as he asks every day when we arrive at my office.

“Yes,” I’ll be leaving work at the same time as always. Six o’clock.

Whatever Sonu’s business dealings or misadventures may be, things are okay between Sonu and me. I smile and duck into the rain.

At work, I edit a chapter from a book on finance and learn about the Haridwar pilgrimage from Amar at lunchtime while eating from our lunchboxes, newspaper spread out underneath to keep from slopping our eggplant subzi on his desk.

Midday I go outside for a walk and see Sonu standing outside his car. He is ready. Do I need to go somewhere? The doctor’s, maybe? No. I’m just taking a walk, but the streets are too filled with water from the morning rain and after about fifteen yards, I have to turn around unless I want to wade.

In the afternoon, I’m working and I see an email from Marjorie Scardino pop into my inbox. She’s the CEO of all of Pearson: a very busy woman. She wants to tell me she read my Pearson India blog entry and it made her day. I am elated. I’m happy I get a chance to thank her personally for the most challenging and amazing experience I’ve ever had, and I send her a reply telling her as much. Between this and attending the event with the Prime Minister next week, I’m starting to feel a little like Forest Gump.

After work, I climb into the car with Sonu and Balminder. “What will you do in Punjab?” I ask Sonu as we pull up to the crumbling industrial park gate plastered with tattered postings. I think maybe he’ll get a different job.

“I no no. Babies,” he says.

“Your babies,” I say, “That’s good.” I think of Saturday at India Gate when we saw a bunch of kids playing in the green gook fountain. My first thought was, “How dangerous, they might slip on that slime and hit their heads,” and he smiled hugely, “Childrens!” he said. I think he must like his babies, even if they’re girls.

Sonu turns around and holds up his new cell phone. He asks very seriously, “Ma’am, snaps? Indraprasthra Park. Only five, ten minute.” Indraprasthra Park is on the way home. It’s where we stopped one day at the Buddhist stuppa and I learned about emptiness.

All of our other snaps, of the elephant ride, the paddle boat and the Lotus Temple are lost in his broken cell phone. Even though I rejected him, he still wants my picture. He still wants to be friends. He is my friend. I probably should, but I can’t say no.

On the way to the park, he helps Balminder honk at the appropriate times. He tells him when to pass and when to speed up. He’s really an interfering backseat driver. Balminder is very patient. I ask if he’s from Delhi. I wonder if he knows his way around okay. Sonu answers for him, “From Punjab, like me.” I wonder if Balminder speaks English at all. Sonu hasn’t given him the chance.

We park near the stuppa, and Balminder stays with the car. On the way in to the park, Sonu tries to explain what happened with my driving arrangement, but his English fails him. “You call my boss. On yesterday. My boss. Ms. Sonu. Problem. Gas. Problem. Yes.”

I don’t understand. I tell him so. He changes the subject. He tells me he’s going to Punjab for one month. He’ll be back on August 28th, when he’ll be my driver again. “Just you, ma’am. Your driver.” I don’t believe this will actually happen, but Sonu is clearly counting on it.

He tells me he got the cell phone from a friend. It’s his friend’s phone. And he gave his friend his old phone, or he’ll give his friend his new phone when he gets it. Again, it’s hard to say just what is the case, but then there’s the question of how much it really matters.

We reach the stuppa and I take out my camera as well. I show Sonu a picture of my husband (just to remind him), and of my house (“Your house? Nice house. Verrry nice.”) Then I show him a movie I took out the back window of his car while we were driving home the other day. I point at the men in orange at the side of the road, “Haridwar,” I say, proud of my newfound knowledge about what was going on. “Haridwar.”

“Yes,” he says, then “Fast!”

“Yes,” I agree. “You are a fast driver, Sonu.” The other day in the car I asked him how many hours away Punjab is. For most people, he said, eight hours. For him, six or seven.

We take a few pictures then walk back to the car. He tells me he will miss me. I tell him I’ll miss him too. “Balminder is probably a really good driver,” I say, “but you’re the best. The best driver.” I stress the driver part as opposed to, say, a best friend or boyfriend. At the time I think I’m making myself very clear.

Back at the car, Sonu asks Balminder if he’ll take one more photo of us standing together. Balminder quietly obliges. I wonder what he’s thinking about this whole shenanigans.

A man approaches the car with a ticket. He wants ten rupees as a parking fee. I start getting out the money but Sonu has his wallet out before I can even grab my purse from my shoulder. “Sonu, I can pay.”

“No ma’am,” he says. “Okay,” and smilingly forks over the cash. Ten rupees is so much more to him than it is to me.

In the car, Sonu reviews his snaps, showing each one to me. “Nice,” he says.

“Nice,” I say.

Then he mashes a few more buttons and an animated graphic appears on the display screen. It says, “I… Miss… You!” He holds it up for me to see in the backseat, “Ma’am?”

“Oh, Sonu, I’ll miss you too,” I tell him. He smiles. I hope I’m not confusing him.

There are more animations for me to see on this new phone: a baby doing push-ups with one arm, two babies kissing, then three pictures of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th and final Sikh guru. “This is my god. One god. My god,” he tells me. I tell him I’d like to see a Sikh temple when he comes back in August. Can he take me to one? “Yes, madam. Yes.” I don’t count on this ever happening.

Back at the Ahuja Residency, Balminder gets the receipt ready and Sonu says goodbye. “Tomorrow, I, Punjab. Tomorrow, 8:45? Driver.” Balminder is slower, he’s telling me. I should leave earlier.

I think if we use Sonu’s old route we’ll be fine. “Same time tomorrow, Balminder,” I say. He nods in silence.
I tell Sonu to have a safe trip home to see his babies.

“Yes, safe,” he says. “Goodbye madam. I miss you.”

Goodbye, Sonu.

My Commute

Here is a picture from my afternoon commute home from work. The people in orange you can see in the background carrying the colorful structures are on a pilgrimage to Haridwar, a Hindu holy site where the Ganges River meets the plains. They have been lining the streets all the way home for the past four days. I have a video where you can see more of them, but it’s taking too long to load right now. I’ll try again later because it’s fun to watch.

I asked Sonu about them earlier in the week and all he could say was, "Haridwar." I didn't even know that Haridwar was a place, so his explanation did little to elucidate the matter. Amar at work was able to shed some more light today at lunch.

For people who can't make the trek into the mountains, Haridwar, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, is considered the source of the Ganges and, therefore, sacred. In fact, Haridwar is roughly translated to "god's door." This is an annual pilgrimage and, Amar says, people who can't afford regular vacations will make this a sort of holiday as well. If you look properly, he says, you can see some of the pilgrims carrying hockey sticks and iPods in addition to the vessels they will fill up with the holy river water and save for use throughout the year in pujas (prayers) and rituals. If you see a tent at the side of the road, it was built by the government for the purpose of providing free food and shelter to the people taking this trip, which necessitates thousands of miles of walking for some. But before I get too impressed, they're not all religious, Amar says. Some of them are hooligans, gundas, bandits who will attack your car if you graze them as you drive past. He means attack it: flip it over and break all the windows. I don't think I captured any gundas in my video. They all look pretty peaceful. Still, I'm glad I didn't get too close with my camera.

Also of note for your trivial pursuit games, Rishikesh near Haridwar is where the Beatles spent their time in India. Amar's wife is a big Beatles fan, he tells me. So is Angshuman. "He thinks they are gods," Amar laughs. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a shrine to them, too, somewhere over here.