The Trail Guides

Here are Yeti, Bulbul, Phoebe and Tommy.

See-Through Vicki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connectivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you doing?” she asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can enjoy yourself. Can’t you?

Can’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

“There is?”

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

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

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

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

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

To The Peaks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A SHORT BREAK

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

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

Namaste for now.

My New Direction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is so selfless and supportive. I tear up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He tells me I’m overtired.

He’s probably right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, that’s the state where I’m going.

“Verrry nice,” he assures me. He tells me goodbye, then he mumbles, “Okay, I love you madam.”

This time I’m ready. This time I confront him. “No no no, Sonu!” I tell him. “You can’t tell me that. We are friends. Friends only.”

“Okay madam,” he says, and hangs up.
I feel like I’ve accomplished something small, but significant. I’ve made a choice for myself, by myself, on my own. I’ve confronted Sonu again, as clearly as I could.

Now if I could just stop missing Scott so much. But this is a good—no, great—problem to have. I think of Diane Keaton’s lines in Marvin’s Room: I am so lucky to have had so much love. I am so lucky to have someone I love so much.

To Go or Not to Go

Wednesday I’m lying in bed after my Skype call with Scott and the phone rings. It’s eight o’clock. If Balminder is this early, I’m going to kill him, I think. This is getting ridiculous. I pick up the phone.

“Hello madam. I am Sonu,” I hear.

“Hello, Sonu,” I say, trying to wake up and get my bearings.

“You are okay?” he asks.

“I am okay,” I say.

“You are working?” he asks.

“I am working,” I say.

“You are okay?” he says.

“Yes, Sonu. I am okay.” This early in the morning, all I can think to do is passively answer his questions. I think: I shouldn’t get into a big conversation with him. I shouldn’t encourage this phone calling. I don’t ask how he is. I don’t ask about his babies. I tell him, “Okay, Sonu, goodbye,” before he can say he loves me again. But just the fact that I didn’t tell him not to call me anymore probably encouraged him. Just the fact that I politely answered his queries was probably enough for him. It all happens too quickly for me to reason through a course of action. I just react. And then there’s the fact that I’m averse to confrontation, even over the phone, which is probably what this situation calls for—or maybe it will just go away. I can always hope.

At breakfast, I’m reading the Times of India and I notice a familiar face in a picture off to the side of the main article on the front page. The caption reads, “Proud Papa,” and the picture shows the Prime Minister hugging his daughter at the book launch I attended last night. I stare at it for a while. I was there. I met Upinder. She’s cool, but I didn’t tell her that. This time I was eloquent. I told her when she was signing my copy of her book, “I’m a former teacher, so I really appreciated your remarks tonight.” Score. Points for Vicki.

At work, Jonaki wonders if I was freaked out by Anindo’s comments about the trip last night. Nah, I tell her. No big deal. But Anindo’s cautions do feel a little different after the glow of the book launch has waned. I go about my day, but grow a little more worried as time passes.

It’s six o’clock and Jonaki is at my desk again, running through a checklist of things we should do and get before our trip. We should get medicine for motion sickness. We should get cash from an ATM. Amar listens in, eating a samosa in a little silver paper tray. “Do you want some nala food?” he asks me, then laughs. He’s not really offering me his nala food. Nala means drain. It’s the food they cook in the streets over the drains (read sewers). Jonaki says if you can eat nala food and survive, then you have an iron stomach. I take a pass on the nala samosa.

At home, I eat one of the packages of macaroni and cheese that Scott sent to me and have to stop half way through because I’m crying too hard. I watch the end of Marvin’s Room because I was in the stage version and I think it will be fun to see Meryl Streep play “my” character. Diane Keaton’s character just learned that she doesn’t have a bone marrow match; she’s going to die. She tells her sister, played by Streep, I’ve been so lucky because I’ve had such love. Streep says, yes, Dad and Ruth really love you. Then Keaton says, “No. I love them. I’m so lucky to have had them to love.” I think of my husband and dissolve into tears which do not abate. I curl up on my bed and cry, hoping that giving in to this fit will take care of the matter and I’ll feel better afterwards.

Afterwards, I see an accidentally smashed ant on my hotel room floor and get upset at the other ants for not having a funeral for it. They just leave it there on the floor. Aren’t they supposed to carry it off and do something with it? Careless ants.

I turn on the news. Exhiled Tibetans are protesting and screaming and crying on the Indian border with China. You can see the veins in their faces. You can see the grief contorting their faces and bodies. They want their home back. I want my home back, too. I know I’m getting mine back in three months, but it feels so far away in time and distance and culture and memory. I feel contorted tonight too.

I Skype with Scott on his lunch hour. I don’t realize until I start talking to him how frightened I am about this trip, and how the trip is what’s making me so homesick tonight. The trip means I’ll be cut off from Skype and email and all communication for five days. Plus I’ve heard that the roads are bad. And my guidebook says that visitors to the Himalayan National Forest near where I’m staying have to make sure their insurance covers emergency helicopter evacuations. The guidebook also has a warning box with the header: Fatal Vacations. It seems that a few dozen foreign visitors to an area just north of where we’re going have never returned.

Scott says I shouldn’t go. He says I can’t be sure that anyone here is looking out for my best interests but me. Law in India is like the truth: subjective. You might or might not be held responsible for something and even if you are, the courts will take years fighting it out. So businesses like tour bus companies and resorts have no interest in being safe. They just have an interest in separating you from your money.

He says everybody will tell me it’s safe, but I should just not go if it’s making me this upset. I think of not going, and, suddenly, I feel lighter. I feel fine. I’ll tell Jonaki tomorrow. I can’t go.