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.