A valuable thing.

I wish I could find the time to do all my reading, let alone blogging! A sigh of despair.

घर मीठा घर

gone are the days of worrying about the air i breathe, the water i drink, the ground i walk on. here, they're all practically sterile. By eliminating all that is unpleasing, we also eliminate any wonder or interest or character that a place can give off. I feel like people here are missing out on so much by going through life so conveniently. people are just people; though the level in dignity may vary among them, the humanity then rings all the more true.

my re-adjusting has conjured in me a feeling of general disappointment. i'm sad and disheartened to see the streets empty, everything happens behind closed doors. i'm stuck inside my house. and when i go somewhere, i'm isolated in the little vehicle. when i interact with other people, a counter and sometimes even a window separate us, and the interaction is almost always exclusively based on money. where are all the people that come up to me just because they want to know my life story? and what about all the fun to be had in eating with one's hands? and what about all the "allo madam" greetings i used to get? and who cares if i don't shave or use shampoo or deodorant anymore?

i've found what's important in life, and i've failed to find any of that to be valued or even available here. some have inquired further and i've tried to explain, but it's very hard to articulate to someone who hasn't been through it. (prior to leaving, i had always tried to keep my mind open and aware of the big world out there, but having a "global perspective" doesn't mean shit when you are an outsider and a newcomer to a civilization thousands of years old, and people treat you based on a completely different notion of how the world works, these people call the shots and reshape your schema)

however, i will try to expound on my statement... things that are important can not be bought and sold or worn or slapped on the back of your car. "freedom" is so awesome to americans, but we don't express ourselves freely or give of ourselves freely. everyone is trying to find and assert their identity, trying to express their individuality. but think about it, why is difference and individuality so important? as long as we strive to show how we are unique or different, the higher our propensity to judge others by how they go about doing that same thing. and with all this business going on, we fail to give people a chance, to get to know each other, much less have any real sense of unity. we think we have a conception of "the american people" or "californians" or "Muslims" or any other group typically stereotyped, but all this achieves is a division which is destructive to assessing or effecting the common good. meanwhile, the powers-that-be continue to bank off our ignorance. and they don't give a fuck about how you identify yourself, as long as you vote for them and consume the goods provided by the special interests with whom they collude.

man, I just want to scream this stuff to the world!!! WAKE UP, people!

but it seems i've gone a little off-course and tripped over my soap box. back to my reassessment of priorities. communication. it goes beyond language, and nestles on the strand of the commonality that vibrates in every human. to share that with someone, to be stripped of the symbols we are used to relying on and it's just you and another person, seeking common ground, understanding is more difficult, yes, but therefore immensely more rewarding.

empowerment and confidence. from being in india, i learned that a person, especially a woman, needs to be aware of herself and her surroundings without being afraid. i had to come to own my body and keep my mind strong so as to not be swayed or manipulated. before going there, i was nice to a fault. now, i'm nice whenever possible, but know it's proper limit. i also learned to figure out what i want and to clearly assert it. this assertion is not necessarily a bad thing, but necessary if you want to get anywhere. this also goes with communication. being nice and apologizing for any accidental contact with another with whom you share this planet will not get you a train ticket, food, a seat on a bus, or anything else that may be even remotely desirable to the other 1.2 billion people in India. this is one skill though that has transfered well into the efficiency-friendly u.s. of a. (friends and fam, you'll get used to it.)

so yeah, great to see ya again, Amurr'ca, but i gotta say, you've really packed on the pounds since I last saw ya. was it all the comfort food, the comfy seats, or all the awesome tv shows that did it? none of the above? ah well, it's probably still not your fault... Now, im not really one to talk. managed to pack on five kilograms myself, (you can do the conversion to lbs, i dont want to make my self-deprecation TOO easy...), but america, you're really starting to worry me with your habits and ways, is this a cry for help?

another thing about your habits and ways, man, is that we haven't even been reunited for a whole week yet and already you're a bad influence. you're giving me ADD with all your commercials and shows and music videos. i mean i cant even get a full thought out in this blog entry without starting a new paragraph about somethin else! you drowned my friendship with good ol' Patience in your gallons of coffee. (btw, where else are the words "tall" and "small" synonymous?) You encourage me to buy worthless unnecessary shit that'll break or go out of style in a month under the guise of the "spirit of giving." Your simple-minded novels and movies numb my active and questioning mind. It's like I don't even know you anymore, and from my impression, I don't think i'd like to get reaquainted...

***

this is coming to you from the waiting room of the sacramento county courthouse, where i wait to serve my civic duty on a jury. back to reality, from one extreme to another.

the in-between

blank mind but heightened emotions. if my brain activity gave off light the glow would be dim by the time it struggled through all the gray matter to reach the perceptive centers of another.
havin' to remind myself i'm in india again. but this time it's different. instead of marveling at the potential forms that this clay of unknowing could take, i'm exhaling, reflecting on the past one hundred forty-eight days of life in this parallel universe.
one hundred forty-eight days of vibrant, racing, bleeding, screaming, mad mad mad life. life for life's own damn sake, rolling on the breeze of my fancy.
packin' up today with a heart like a jellyfish. body burstin forth and limbs slowly following. theyre more thoughtful. more apprehensive, more sentimental. if human nature ever knew accumulation they sure as hell know it now. i came to this motherland with three t-shirts including the one on my back, and two pairs of jeans. today i have to fit a whole apartment into a single suitcase
listless and languishing lying in wait im still young but these travels will put some weariness on these bones.
the hours dwindle between me and my departure. Desi and Hanna's booming laughter has never sounded so beautiful.

Strange times....

Sometimes children that are waaay too young play with explosives. Sometimes the same children stone me when I'm walking home from school. Sometimes my friends get rammed by a cow.
Most of the time people say "okeeh okeeh" to a question that requires a long answer. Most of the time I am in the spotlight. Most of the time I don't want to be. Sometimes old women shove in front of me in line. Sometimes they just shove me out of the way. Most of the time I don't have a clue I don't know what in Shiva's name is going on in my classes. Scratch that. That would be ALL the time. Sometimes streets flood with sewer water. Sometimes taxi drivers literally do not know how to drive and a figuring out the stick shift as they go. Sometimes one can hear chickens being killed from my bedroom window. Sometimes I wake up my roommate in the middle of the night because I'm laughing in my sleep. Sometimes I give people fake names like Christmas or Phallus and tell them I'm from India when they ask me the dreaded question, "allo madam which country?" Most of the time it deeply perturbs me. Sometimes I think of home and fail at pushing those sentimental thoughts out of my head. Some time is left for me to live this dream life. More times such as these will be had, for good and for bad.

When I Was a Blue Bead

9 Oct. 2010 Saturday
From one week to another I find myself pondering, pensive along the scillating shores of the Indian Ocean. Presently in Goa.
Thursday I danced with the fluorescent lights along the river.
Friday I felt the waves' frothy force crash over my entire being, wash away the worries of life on land. Sand sloughs complacency off my skin. Aggressive gypsy women make shop on my leg, refusing to leave without receiving fifty rupees or giving sufficient manipulation. Their reflective clothing doubly implores their subject.
By night friends and I took to the streets of Baga. Narrowly escaped the propositions of an acid-walla. The evening ended blissfully in Peaceland under a mosquito net.
Now a bobbing blue bead, the taxi is threaded by 150 kilometers of a Goan road's dividing line. Navigating by way of the Siver Star, Palolem awaits.

10 Oct. 2010 Sunday
Today we emerge from the sandy shores and take to the sky. Headed homeward, four days of reality lie maliciously in wait before I set out again, this time for Kolkata.
My mood is one of semi-indulgent satisfaction. I allow myself one rationing of Pinback, for I know I can't get sick of them after a weekend of beach-borne pleasures.
Thoughts on the definition of a home in comparison to feelings felt, usher in the unwelcome tradition. I much prefer to muse over the myriad of palm trees, swaying top-heavily from their big coconut bosoms, and the open-air cafes, open to the air of elongated exhales.
My only complaints are mostly minor: The pungent odor exuding from all of my clothes, the gruesome eight-versus-one brawl I fell witness to, and the hollow rapping of homesickness in a back chamber of my heart.
From where I sit there is no divide between sea and sky, only brief the culmination of ether, air and water punctuates the vastness.

Keralan Magic *sigh*

22/9/2010
"Listless" would be a good word to describe how I've been feelin' these past few days. My return from Kerala threw me unwillingly into the drab dispassionate
reality of school. I was initially relieved at a semester of easy classes, but they're not so much easy as they are a complete and utter joke. I don't understand how professors (esp. in masters-level classes) can get away with borderline-racist rants or just nonsensical babble. I miss being excited to learn and I miss feeling challenged to think critically, but here my greatest challenge is to stay awake in class, or at least to find the most discreet way of falling asleep in class. Winter quarter, I'm sure, will provide a turbulent transition after six months of my brain under-functioning. I've had my fill of stiff drinks to ease the bristling edge of this fact, and instead I find solace in Vonnegut's statement, to the effect of "the closest thing to proof of god is music." So I hang my cares to dangle from the gentle billowing of the guitar's deliberate and gentle plucking...
On a much lighter note, this negativity comes in the aftershock of what was easily the best week of my life. Part of the EAP program included a week-long trip to the sunny, southern shores of Kerala. This means everything was already planned and paid for, and all we had to do was float carelessly from one destination to the next, meandering capriciously to the calls of coconutty, ayurvedic, spice-laden desires.
Starting with a long train ride, I threw myself into the beautiful words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, stopping only to sleep on the top tier of the sleeper train. When we arrived in the town of Kochi/Cochin/Kotchi, a van took us to our marvelous seaside hotel resembling a Spanish hacienda and complete with a dock leading out to the Arabian Sea. This is where one of Jesus' disciples came after Jesus' death and established Christian influence in India. Also, when the British came to colonize, Kerala was their point of entry. And now, Kerala stands as India's first and longest-standing democratically-elected communist government. Such distinction is certainly sensed when walking among the old colonial cemeteries and basilicas, and feasting one's eyes on the setting sun behind the nets of Chinese fishing boats.
The next destination was Thekaddy, home to the Periyar Tiger Reserve, where I got to go on a day trip of trekking and bamboo rafting (and leech-killing). Thekaddy lake is beautiful, with carcasses of trees reaching out of the water towards the sky, some capped with birds' nests, most left ragged from the whipping of the ripples. Falling asleep on the raft under the sun left my left eyelid a little burned, serving as proof of my unfettered submission to the warmth of nature's enveloping embrace. That night I managed to slip away from the group long enough to get an ayurvedic massage for some USD$10 and an extra-spicy thali which I ate with my hands and paid for with a mere USD$2! On top of that, I was lucky enough to seize the advantage of an odd-numbered group to stay in one of the Wildernest's HUGE rooms all by myself. As I wasn't one for partying after such a relaxing evening, I spent the rest of the night in shavasana pose, pondering the doability of a solo traveling trip to Pondicherry and the symbols and depth of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I woke early the next morning to descend from the crisp, exhilarating mountain air to the backwaters. Two houseboats awaited us whose crew welcomed us with wreaths of jasmine and large bottles of Kingfisher beer. Overwhelmed by inspiration, I immediately perched on the front of the boat to write, desperate to document (in crude form though it was) the sights, sounds, and smells of the moment. The peacefulness of the trip reached its climax at tea time, post-impromptu yoga sesh, where, with fried, cardamom-enlaid plantain in one hand and delicious chai in the other, I finished my book under the pink sky of the setting sun. I read the last page over, not to let an once of Marquez's magic escape me, and set the pleasure centers of my brain to smoldering like the cigarette I had let burn to the filter, un-puffed in my preoccupation. I gave myself over to the night after that, playing cards and swimming in the inviting waters. One night on the houseboat was simply not enough. We awoke the next morning and emerged from our mosquito nets sleepy and sad to leave so early. Driving through the town gave me yet another view of India, one where the sun gushes audaciously onto the streets that are almost clean and almost free of beggars. I wish EAP had a program of study in Kerala!!

(Sorry people but I'm afraid one blog entry per month will have to suffice...)

BRACE YOURSELF: looonnngggg entryyyy

26 Aug. 2010. Thursday.
My current state is one to which I think my Swedish roommates might respond, "OYoyoyoyoy." I haven't updated in almost a month! And my! how the frequency of eventfulness has oscillated off the charts!! Oh and yes, I did use the plural form of "roommates," because I no longer have just one roommate as I did in ol' Tagore, but rather I have found a cozy lil' apartment just outside of the south gate, in DiAmOnD hEiGhTs!~!~! It's one hundered percent as classy as it sounds. Only the best for my delicate lily arse! But seriously, Natalia, a fellow UC student (from Berkeley), and Hanna and Desi, students from Univ. of Gothenberg in Sweden, moved in just Monday. This accomplishment was a long time coming, though; we finally found, after almost 3 weeks, someone willing to rent to a bunch of "bachelorettes" (aka unmarried Western floozies with loose morals). But like everything else in India, it worked itself out--not how anyone could've anticipated-- but it worked out for the better, actually! I love having to swerve around the cows on my bike and following the sounds of the frogs to find my way home after dark! In the daylight, my journey home finds friendly children waving to me calling me "auntie" (!!!!), women cooking curry and chapati, and pigs at play. Even a "gorra" (white person) like me can feel at home here! And right now I'm waiting for four familiar gorras to arrive at the building with their belongings to become my new neighbors! In the meantime though, I shall scramble to recount all the happenings of the last four weeks...
The weekend after my last entry I went with Liz, Colleen, Alexis, Rob, Tucker, and Elliott, to Vishakaphatnam, aka Vizag. We bonded to a familial degree! It was a 700-km journey to the northeast, and it ended for us at the shores of Rishikonda Beach on the Bay of Bengal. My skin was a worthy sacrifice to the sun for my reunion with her unbridled beauty. The water was warm and clear, and we made no delay in suiting up and jumping in. Then the beach patrol scolded us and we had to get out. At the boardwalk I met a camel, a horse named Ladyboss, and some mermaids. We stayed at the ashram of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (the official Hare Krishna society). The next day we took an early train to the beautiful Aruku Valley inhabited by tribal villages. Once there we saw the Borra Caves, had a delicious lunch made by local women and served on a banana leaf, wandered through coffee plants, and scampered down a hill through rice plant terraces to a beautiful, beautiful waterfall! Alexis and I ventured out to the edge of the cliff to marvel at the lush valley below and green, rolling hills above. It was easily my favorite part of the trip. We caught the train back to Secunderabad at 6 AM, after arriving 2 hours early and the train leaving 1 hour late. Here is my diary entry written during this agonizing wait time:
Rats scurry about the dim & dingy railway station. It's 3:38 AM but oddly enough (or not) time has no feeling of rightness or wrongness. Cockroaches crawl across crates and carts and cookie packages in shopfronts. Some rats may be so bold as to venture between the pillars of my shins, while the roaches only retreat at the reproachful stampings of my feet. A train rolls in and those sleeping on the platform do not take notice. Clutching my thanda pani I can only hope the hours will pass sufficiently fast for an escape from the damp floors and watchful eyes of every passerby. In a place like this one can't be surprised by the multiple encounters with green slimy sludge. My first came in Yamunotri where I lost my new wool socks to a puddle of stagnant toxic waste green in color and encrusted with brown and yellow floating froth. Run in #2 came on Friday at the beach when, again, I mis-stepped while trying to traverse the rocky intertidal seashore. Waves and algae made for a dangerously slippery union as their wedding bed sent my feet from under me and left the love potion all over my backside. In a place like this it's also not surprising to confuse station stench with that which eeks from deep within the bowels. And the sleeping sleepers still sleep.
The following week was uneventful until I went to the history-rich Hampi that
Thursday. The open-air cafes inspired awe at the towering temples and holy rivers.
We rented scooters, got lost for 40 km, and rode around the beautiful beautiful town
visiting temple after temple. Also got to see the town pet, Laxmi the elephant receiver her morning bath! That night I peeked into the lives of so many Indian people. What a way to experience Hampi, as a small community going on as it always does, making no exceptions before the eyes of foreigners. We caught the Naga parade as we were leaving. Our bus just so happened to follow the scuttling sputters and croaking grumbles of engines laboring over hills and curves. On the bus the tension surfaced in the battle between old, the traditional, the sounds of sweet serenades with a rolling , easy beat beating leisurely along; and the new, the global, the World Cup, and Akon. Missed the train home and had to take a bus with a blacklight and minimal suspension over the unpaved roads. We got back to Hyderabad in the early hours of Independence Day. Delighted in the ceremony held on campus but wasn't allowed to go into town because of unfounded warnings of terrorism against Americans.
I'm finally closer to catching up now, phewwww!! Now I'll describe the previous week:
- went to a less-than-happenin' bar called Suraj on Tuesday night with my new roommates and Eric, Ray and Kotte
- took the local rain into town with Natalia and our Indian friend, Anjali, to patron the famous Karachi Bakery, Vindu Restaurant for a yummy lunch of butter paneer tikka, and then rode in the ladies' car on the way back to Lingampally station by campus. Spent some time at the craft village that I hate, Shilparamam, and bought a cool Madhubani painting of Ganesh and some sandals that proved to be dangerous and shitty on Saturday.
- Ate a pesto(!!) sandwich at Hard Rock Cafe Hyderabad and listened to an Indian Dio cover band...
- Saw Inception at IMAX for $USD 4 on Friday
- Went on a tour of the Lonely Planet-recommended sights in Hyderabad: Golconda Fort (SO cool!!! until I lost a chunk of my toe to a sharp rock...), Birla Mandir (great views of the sister cities!) , and Lumbini Lake, which separates Hyderabad & Secunderabad and is punctuated with a large statue of Buddha. Walking along the lake we got caught in the rain of course, and when we finally caught an auto-ricksa traffic was fierce and our particular auto died in the midst of it. The next hour or more until we got to our destination wore down on our wet bones only to be built up again by stiff drinks poured by a fire-juggling South African bartender. The ride home was by far the funniest yet...

This was Saturday, and goodness gracious, it's already Thursday today! Time flies when you're taking care of business on all fronts! Yesterday was a good day, since Hindi was cancelled I got to attend tea time! And from there set out on a short-lived hunt for sheets so I wouldn't have to continue rolling myself in my saree , when a big black zeppelin of condensed water vapor drifted over all of Lingampally and Gachibowli (neighborhoods near the university) and dumped its contents mercilessly and unprecedentedly. I can feel the pneumonia setting in. I was ankle deep in puddle within the first 3 minutes of downpour and lizards were swimming in the new river. I just can't even describe how it felt to be in the midst of nature's drama just after the sun had set, so insignificant and impotent and helpless against these ruthless forces. It was a good three and a half hours until the rain stopped go I could go home. BUT! twenty meters before the turn down the road to our apartment, the road was flooded so much that when crossing the puddle--on my bike-- the water was up to my calves. I couldn't understand what my neighbors were instructing me to do, I couldn't tell if the water was getting more or less deep, and I could barely pedal fast enough to keep my bike upright. It was NOT okay. I haven't left the house yet today for fear or reliving the horror. Still waiting for my companions to come move in, and Menomena is reminding me much too much of Sacramento life right now. All this remembering and recounting and time traveling is messing with me. I should really get back into reality with a good ol' smatterin' of studyin' for Human Rights...