Do Lucknow

Tomorrow is my last day in Lucknow. Brian, Maryam and Nathan have left and Geeti, Rohish, and Sadaf will leave after the weekend. I’m right in the middle, balancing a year.

For the past two months I’ve been reading detective novels. It reminds me of when I was in 5th grade and discovered Sherlock Holmes. The author Ibn e Safi lived in Allahabad and died in the 1980s and is wonderfully funny and equally hilarious, in a very Hindustani style. There are more theatrics and ghazals. And sometimes exoticised Americans who exoticize India. The stories inspired me to write one of my own for my final project, and I’ve been working on it for the past month with a teacher, Sheba Iftekhar, whose family is from Allahabad and whose father was a close friend of Ibn e Safi. I unveiled the plot yesterday and read a couple chapters, and it was a good reminder how keeping secrets can be so rewarding. In my story, a new Lucknowi terrorist group (originally from Aligarh, of course, there could be no home-grown Lucknowi terrorists) takes Brian hostage. Aftab, Wafadar, Nathan and Rohish go around helping the detective, but Rose sends Prem to investigate independently and Prem uncovers all the clues, finally riding up behind the gun-weilding detective wannabes pulling Brian on his rickshaw. Prem is the hero. It came out to 20 pages but I’m still working on it.

Prem is taking me to the train station at 4:45 Saturday morning in another heroic act. I’m meeting my brother David in Delhi and then Brooke in Ladakh, my best friend since seventh grade. We used to eat ice cream in the fog and argue a lot. Now we mostly agree and almost never eat ice cream. She’s been in India for the past six or seven months doing an incredible amount of Vipassana, yoga and service, and she’s going back to America on May 7th. David, Brooke and I will be in the mountains for a week. I never made it to the Lucknow Vipassana dhamma, or the botanical gardens. Or Allahabad, Jharkand, Ayodhya or Bhopal. On the 8th I’m heading down to Pune to spend my last week in India with my aunt Mira and cousin Sunita.

Day before yesterday my calligraphy teacher Mohammed Ali said: no one can say where they will be next; we’re not in control of our destinations. All we can do is sit on the bike and pedal as hard as we can. It’s not a very American philosophy, but it’s what I’m doing. I have no idea what will happen when I get back to the States; what kind of job I’ll take, if I’ll go back to energy and climate change or intelligence analysis or keep writing Urdu detective stories.

Today I said my goodbyes to Bhavna and the Darzi family. Tomorrow I have to say goodbye to the Siddiqis, my singing teacher and everyone at the institute. Geeti is presenting some kathak dances, then I’m going to pick up my wedding dress from Aminabad, have a goodbye dinner with my housemates, pack my bags, and set the alarm. I’m ending my blog with a list! Just like I started it.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 3:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.