talking lentils

Picture: Sadhu says, these aren't even the fun kinds of drugs! Tourists never give good tips.
Song: things by Dizzie Gillespie
Drink: gin and Whispers of Summer juice

This past weekend I traveled to Pushkar, to the camel mela. Camel sadles, brightly coloured ropes, kitchen knives, these are all the things I remembered of the dusty aisles four years ago. Now the falafel and Israeli signs and oddly shaped pants are encroaching. I needed to buy some blankets for my bed, and they were very amused by the ones I picked; ‘no Ma’am, those are for camels, not for humans’. After being grabbed once too often by skinny Rajastani village boys, I was glad to hide away in a Tibetan restaurant, ordering tofu from a menu printed in Manali. It felt very far away from India, and yet very much the same as restaurants for foreigners from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.

At sunset, the tourists line up like game hunters. Their cameras reach absurd proportions, sprouting off chests and tripods, pointed at the people bathing at the ghats across the lake. Pushkar, at that full moon, is originally a place to pray. I had just finished a book called ‘The Battle For God’, about the origins of fundamentalism, and I wondered at this religious voyeurism. Why were we watching other people pray? Would we ever go somewhere because God said so, and if not, why was it quaint to see other people do so? I wanted to have ceremonies I didn’t have to decide, a time of the year in which to forgive and be forgiven, a time after which it was forbidden to expect fresh peppers.

I had all sorts of plans for what I would do tonight. I was going to change money, make dinner and snacks, translate some Hindi, read, write, etc. etc. Instead I ate my weight in fried potato flour, spilled juice on the floor, and spent an hour and a half looking for a lost document. I wanted to know why the lentils I cook here never taste quite right, and whether I should be worried about the noises coming from the butane cooker. Instead I’m on my second gin and juice, and despairing of my discipline.

Tofu notwithstanding in Pushkar, I was more delighted by the onion pakora I discovered in the lane outside my office, a place with remains a constant source of fried wonders. These days the rickshaw drivers wear their scarves all up around their ears, and the children in the lane have metallic sparkly orange sweaters to ward off the cold. In the Ajmer rail station, I was reminded that men holding their wives purses, anywhere in the world, look pretty much the same.

Conversation on train from Ajmer

Aileen sits with young couple, orange Swami, and Tata IT consultant on train. Young couple appear to be actually in love, which although probably a development post-marriage, is very endearing. IT consultant starts to make conversation. Aileen is not trying necessarily to be difficult, and is ready to respond to any question except 'which country' or 'where are you from'.

Him: “What MNC do you work with in India?”
Me: “I don't work for a MNC.”
“You are posted here by your company?”
“No, not a company.”
“So why are you here?”...

A bit later
Him: “You must like Bryan Adams?”
Me: “No, not really.”
“Isn’t he Canadian?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“So you don’t listen to music?”

“Do you watch movies?”
“Yes, I’ve seen Om Shanti Om, and Chak De.” [Hindi movies out in Delhi]
“Oh. There is one in English you must have seen, 'Goal'?”
“No.”

“Do you read books?”
Aileen turns to talk to young couple.

Hot Little Rockets

The 3rd song on the CBC Radio 3 podcast from some weeks back is called ‘Hot Little Rockets’, and I don’t appreciate the verisimilitude. The Supreme Court in India has banned the use of firecrackers, so they are everywhere. The ones called ‘aloo bombs’ you throw at people’s feet, the flare guns you hold in your hand, possibly with a small infant in the other, the larger ones I don’t know about because they sound like an aerial attack. The city has been smelling like Froot Loops for some time now. Now it’s going to smell of exhausted gunpowder, diesel fumes and sweets. The lane outside my office is covered in garlands. The pakora-walla only sells ladoo, and the rice sacks are covered with dry fruit trays.

I asked a woman from my office today about the Hindu gods of this occasion. Diwali is basically a festival of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, except in the East, where it’s a festival for Kali, the mother of Lakshmi and other very important gods, and in Kerala, where it isn’t a big deal at all. In the mela, with candles and shawls and other traditional things a gauntlet of skinny men with brochures tries to get me to buy vacuum cleaners and water purification systems. I would like a mosquito killer and some airmail paper, which seems to be impossible to find.

For our office lunch on Tuesday I had to wear a sari. Six metres of fabric, a petticoat and a blouse, and nothing to hold it together but gravity and a prayer. My friend’s cousin says ‘you’ve never done it til you’ve done it in a sari’. I’m sure that much silk has more uses than as an emergency parachute. Apparently the prospect of twirling a woman around like a top is very attractive. Legs and collar bones must be hidden under this delicate arrangement, but women show a foot of belly. Used to one concept of femininity, I find it hard to feel the breeze across my midsection and maintain modesty with my ankles. The aesthetic of covering up, leaving it to imagination and the shifting afternoon light, I do appreciate. The difference between home and outside, loved ones and strangers, gives protection to a richness in internal life.

Even with a sari I’m not quite local. Maybe especially with a sari. My Hindi sounds like yelling, even in my head. The auto rickshaws start in Hindi and let me get by with a 5 or 10 Rs tourist tax. It’s still not the same as knowing people in the streets, knowing when the music starts and where the buses go. I want to figure out how the supposedly progressive Defence Colony waste collection works. The well-combed children who sort through the garbage don’t need to go through my banana peels on the way to the tinfoil. There are precise signs in Hindi on the garbage collections points, but that doesn’t help me. I want to organize tours in old Delhi led by local boys, and use it to fund the arts and drama programs they run for themselves. I may need an alarm clock with a snooze button if I’m going to wake up in time for all of this.

fence posts

24 Oct 2007

Roz once said that you don’t lose
your virginity, you grow out of it.

There are parents you
talk to in this world,
and parents you love
who exist only in your head.

With depression and
perhaps other wasting diseases
you don’t get to pick.

By a thousand little deaths
you grow out of your parents.

The Love Laws are broken.
You want to trust, or perhaps not,
but your judgment on this bet
is too often wrong.

I am at worst a refugee tonight.
Fed and housed, employed and scared
thinking of a perhaps still standing house
where they used to trace the circles
silent, screaming, up and down
the stairs, bed to bathroom,
sometimes stopped midway by
urge to hurt herself. We got in the way.

I look more like her everyday
and I fear again I ate
her breath, being born, again.
Again baffled by the sacrifice
our bodies have interrupted
between her body and the floor.

She taught us first to catch
bread dough, tossed through
chilly light in winter
kitchen laughing hours.

Despite my new-found self-
preservation, I want to ask.
Why are you punishing yourself?
Do you really like burnt toast?
How much do you have to yell
and how exactly did you try
to hit him with a fence post
on a Monday in late October
to rouse the old Italian ladies
next door from their gardens
to call the cops.

MAD gatherings

Drink – Kingfisher strong, alcoholic content between 5.25% and 8%.
Music – Verve remixed albums 1 and 2
Proud declaration – two different meals cooked, with sprouted mung beans, garam masala, and lots of garlic
Not proud declaration – what looked like a sandal tan was just dust. Lots and lots of dust.

It’s finally the season when we can turn off the fans at night, and the rickshaw drivers are wearing scarves in the morning. Some parts of the city spell suspiciously good, and some smell suspiciously like Froot Loops. I’ll take that any day over the eau de nala that normally accompanies my morning. The bread in the bakery has been replaced by gifts for Diwali; raisins from Afghanistan and almonds from California vying for shelf space with Kurkure octagons and pallets of Schweppes tonic water labelled in Arabic.

This past weekend I helped organized a conference for the McKinsey alumni in Development. The hotel staff asked us whether we really were the MAD group, and we assured them it was correct. We talked about climate change and financial inclusion, business models for social impact and the future of India. We drank spring water and ate buffet everything. The McKinsey cost curve for climate change was shocking, as it demonstrated that carbon emissions could be emitted with almost zero net cost to society, if only we could incent and distribute the benefits from those of us insulating our windows and those of us replanting trees.

At the last minute, I was asked to present Ashoka’s Hybrid Value Chain work. It was the first time I’ve ever presented with a radio mike, shadowed by a 15 ft powerpoint of my creation. When I arrived at my office at 11 pm on Saturday night to retrieve the presentation and the computer I had blithely left at my desk, there was a gapping hole in the wall where the wireless router should be. Not heeding the signs from the universe that I wasn’t supposed to talk, I plugged in directly and put down the most specific words I could find.

I’m excited to be here these days despite my confusion about what I’m supposed to do, exactly. The weekend offered so many moments of nerdy excitement. Maybe we could finance cow dung biogas with carbon credits! Maybe we could put returning NRIs to work for rural companies! Maybe I could do this forever.