Do Lucknow

I have to admit I thought twice before going to Aminabad, the neighborhood where my camera got stolen and where I was grabbed in the butt on chand raat, just before Eid. But my list of Saturday errands required things in Aminabad: a book of Urdu short stories, the guy who darns things so I could get that cigarette burn on my jacket darned up, the alley of picture framers where anything is framed for two dollars each, the best vegetable juice stand to get my fill of vitamins and protect myself against bird flu, plus I had to go by the tool shops in Lalbagh to get a jeweler Phillips screw driver so that I’ll finally be able to install more memory on this valiant computer.

The reason I thought twice wasn’t the butt-grabbing or thievery (or the narrow-minded police), but the cartoon hungama. Lucknow got shut down last weekend for protests (just after we returned to Lucknow from Hyderabad); buildings were burned, windows were broken, and I stayed inside. I did go out for milk in the evening, but besides the neighbors waving hi to me there were strangers who glowered and whispered and I didn’t waste time gossiping. So today I loafed around until 3 before getting up the nerve to venture into a perhaps over-sensitive, over-crowded and nervy neighborhood.

In Urdu danish means understanding, sagacity, wisdom, or intellectuality. Danish traders were some of the first traders from the west in India and they had the reputation of being open-minded and knowledgeable. I found my book of short stories at Lucknow’s best Urdu book store, which also happens to be named Danish Mahel. I bought about ten other books along with it (they join the 12-series detective novel set by Ibn-e-Safi stacked on the floor next to me) because I know that I’ll never be able to find them in America. While my bill was being calculated I sat down on the couch with the little group of elderly men deep in discussion who often hang out there. I was politely requested to do so. “Please, miss, would you spare some time to talk with us? We’re very curious about what you think of the situation. Can you tell me why people in the West love freedom so much. Freedom of the press, freedom this and that. It’s so different from how we feel here” in careful English. I sat down and said “I think it might have something to do with our history…” and the discussion started. It switched to Urdu when the two other men joined in, and I lost my competency but even when I could only get the gist of the criticism I could feel the psychological importance of letting it pass by my ears. We talked (I mean, they talked and I listened) about westerners fighting so hard for religious freedom, separation between church and state for one thing but also even the ability to decide your own religion, whereas the east has been pluralistic for so long and has had a better record of benign dictators: Rajas, Nawabs, Nizams; even the Mohammed was a progressive social reformer. There isn’t that sense of struggle and achievement for personal freedom here (except from colonialism); respect and honor are more important. It was acknowledged that the violent protests were the work of ignorant jerks… and pointed out that every country and religion has its jerks. Then they talked about colonialism and development… I couldn’t tell you where the transition was.

My favorite part was hearing the word for progressive or liberal: roshen khial. Bright ideas, light in your thoughts.

Sitting behind Prem cycling me home, I considered my adventure to Aminabad. The darner had tried to trick me into not paying him for 45 minutes of darning; the dried fruit woman gave me an extra bag full of coconut-date-raisin trail mix stuff after I had already paid; the danish-mahel elders had thanked me profusely for sitting with them. I couldn’t get vegetable juice because the electricity was out, but I had a big glass of fresh orange juice for 30 cents. All my 8 by 10 inch photos are getting framed and will be done by Wednesday, and Prem had insisted on waiting two hours to take me home. I got a set of jeweler screw-drivers for 75 cents. I couldn’t help but feel that people are taking it on themselves to make up for the backlash against westerners that is happening on a different level. It’s so interesting. Why do they feel responsible? Personal efforts to backstop their own religious community’s over-sensitivity to international events in a little neighborhood in Lucknow… very 21st century.

This is the way I tell stories: first I went to Delhi on the night train, without a confirmed seat so I had to sleep on the floor without a blanket, then I went to a seminar on climate change and carbon trading in Asia, which was great but I was really tired, then I caught a plane to Pune to visit my aunt Mira and cousin Sunita and a couple days later Brooke showed up and it was so good to see her, we stayed up till 3 every night talking, then I went back through Delhi and spent the night at Ravi Satkalmi’s place and had lunch with Robyn McGuckin at the Embassy, then caught a train to Aligarh and met my Urdu friends and we spent four days meeting with people at Aligarh Muslim University. The highlight of it was going to the riding club and seeing the horses, and of course staying up talking with Sadaf, and maybe also chatting with the linguistics professor about Urdu and Marathi and war.

No wonder five years ago a boyfriend said I can really ruin a story! I was inconsolable for a number of hours. A story was never the point, though.

This is the point: two observations. First, that Indian cities are like a big party, and second that I’ve started noticing various shades of hypnotism, both in myself and in the people around me.

Parties don’t feel like a party until you get a certain density of people milling around, talking to each other and making an appropriate decibel of noise. There we go; simple analogy. But then think about trying to actually get work done at a party; a bank transaction for instance. Everyone in the immediate vicinity will be curious about the process; they might think they could do it better, or maybe they just like watching and commenting. About a month ago my purse dropped out of my rickshaw into the vegetable market, sabzi bazar, never to be seen again. I let it go with minimal hand wringing; by the grace of god my wallet and phone were in my pocket. But I realized several days later that it had contained my bank ‘passbook.’ A passbook contains the records of everything; it acts sort of like an ATM card but a million times less convenient. I decided not to worry about that either, as my bank account is not so huge, and sometimes 5,000 rupees is not worth the trip to Nishat Ganj. I know, it sounds ridiculously luxurious, but ahh, so am I. So off I went for ten days, here and there to Pune and back, as you read in my story, and only decided to get the passbook blocked in the middle of the week after I returned. After waiting an hour at the bank I was told I need a police report. Rules; no way around them. I prefer not to deal with the police because they are not so chill, so I protested, but to no end. To distract myself from the rising rage of impatience inside me, I went to the UP State Archives. That was lovely, and I have plans to return. Eventually, though, I found myself at the Hazrat Ganj Police Station. I explained to them, wrote my letter, got it stamped, and left. This time no questions about why I’m not married with children, nor comments to the effect that I must be a bad scholar if I study Urdu and not computer engineering. The police station was almost business-like. The next day I went back to the bank. Waited an hour, got directed to the Accounts Manager. Then the Branch Manager. Then back to Accounts. Then to the woman over there. Then to the man next to her. Then back to the woman. Then into the line at the end. Finally, with several over-the-shoulder helpers, the man printed out a new passbook. By the end I was sitting reading Alice in Wonderland in Urdu, appropriately. Man oh man. I don’t think Indians ever lose their passbooks, at least not State Bank of India clients. I have lost Seven ATM cards in my life, maybe more. That carelessness comes from living in a system that is not at all like a party; a lost ATM card means a phone call to a computer and nothing more. I could take the analogy farther (assumed familiarity, bad trips, the popular kids), but so could you, without me, and you can also feel free to tear it down and rip it to shreds. That might be fun too.

According to a study (this is the way I start far too many sentences, even now, three years after leaving a studies-reading-job. It’s a hard habit to break), most of the information we interpret is bottom-up. That means when we reach out and feel a rough wood surface the signals go up to the brain to be interpreted as rough. But sometimes a surface looks so smooth and we expect it to be smooth so when we feel it, the brain sends signals to the hands to feel smoothness, and they do, even if they get cut on the roughness. That’s what happens in hypnotism: all the signals are ‘bottom-down,’ and bear little to no relation to reality. The mind has such strongly suggested expectations that it proceeds to adjust reality. I’ve been observing my own various shades of hypnotism, little hiccups in reality perception. Like yesterday, when I asked the rickshaw wala how much to the train station? And he said twenty, bis, but I was expecting anything between 25 and 50 so I heard 25, pachis. I had to stutter to get back on track. And I’ve been noticing other people’s, like when Brian ordered rajma rice, and the waiter repeated rajma rice back to him, and then brought a chicken burger. Previous white people ordered a chicken burger, so that’s what he expected and heard. And when I wear a burqa with my face uncovered, people don’t perceive me as American, or even white, because it’s too unexpected (except when they have time to observe how clumsily I wrap the dupatta and the way I stand). And sometimes when I speak Hindi in very tourist places, like near Osho Ashram in Pune, I have to repeat myself three times because they hear my Hindi words as sort of weird American-accented English. I notice it more in India than I’ve ever noticed anywhere else, is that because I know what it looks like now, after reading the study? Or because so much is based on rote memorization, and top-down methods are easier, especially at a really crowded party? And maybe because people tend to stick to their roles more here.

I have so much to say, it’s been building up, every little thing. Mohurram, the flirty elephants and shy camels, walking on coals for God, the movies ‘Rang De Basanti’ and ‘15 Park Avenue,’ my aunt’s broken foot that forced her to sit down and talk instead of running while talking. The coolie interviews, which were underwhelming. More exciting was the guy with the gun who walked by glaring at me. I only noticed him because he looked like a respectable maulana, so I was taken aback at the anger in his glare, but then I also saw his gun in it’s green military belt strap with bullets, and it occurred to me that shooting people from inside a departing train would be a fool-proof escape, so I walked away in search of a coolie on a different track. Coolie is a Hindi word for a professional luggage carrier, it’s not a slur. Turns out they have an all-India union, and 550 of them work at the Lucknow station alone. The two I interviewed had been coolies for thirty years, and were both Muslim.

I wanted to tell you that Naf means navel in Urdu, and it also means the center. Of the universe, of everything. There are a bunch of other things, but I have to go to sleep and anyway this post is getting long and confusing. But just to remind myself for later, nazr means gaze, and to ‘come into gaze,’ nazr main ana, has two meanings, good and bad: to fall in love, and to not be spared criticism.