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.

My favorite is duckling versus puppy.

Dear friends, merry Christmas and happy new year!

I went to Cambodia over our two week break, which was so beautiful and exciting. These were the new things for me: flying four hours east from Delhi but seeing more reminders of the west, like currency in dollars, miniskirts, SUVs, bars, normal size coffee mugs, and beef on the menu.

It was also interesting (and terrifying!) being robbed at gun point by well-dressed young men, eating dinner of crabs, frogs’ legs and watercress with John’s old moto driver friends, and seeing reminders of thousand-year-old-India in Angkor Wat and in words (gulab is rose, sukun is peace, Buddhist monks say namaskar) and the story of Rama and Sita and the battle of the Mahabharata engraved.

Christmas day was with John’s friend Jane and thirty of her friends at her apartment by the river in Phnom Penh. It was a huge feast with the best baked beans made by someone who had neither made nor eaten baked beans before. I still missed my family, and I tried to go to church, because I missed the Lucknow Christians. The first place we were taken to was the New Life Church, set in some kind of performance hall, and I couldn’t handle it. When I try to articulate why , it uncovers the truth about why I like religion – for culture, ceremony, and history. New Years eve was first with Jack Kneeland, a friend from SAIS, and his aunt, and then at the stroke of midnight in the Bangkok airport. We celebrated several time zones’ new years, and then my flight was delayed 14 hours and I slept in the airport hotel for ten of them and woke up to call California and usher in theirs.

Someone said (I can’t remember who) that traveling is like reading a book, and if you never go anywhere then you’ve only read one page. The thing about reading is that the more you read the more you realize how much you don’t know, up to a point, and then you start to feel like what you don’t know is for someone else to know, not you. But the thing about traveling is that you can suddenly have these insights into your own culture in a way that isn’t possible if you are from outside of it, and maybe isn’t possible if you have never left it, and probably isn’t possible from reading a book. This is mine, for today: Indian social customs are so strong, and, in a positive and negative sense, formulaic, that they can and often do replace love. American society is so weak that the attention placed on personal relationships is magnified. Love matters more. A marriage in India can proceed perfectly, and be perfectly love-less. Not possible in America. The success of Indian marriages isn’t only because divorce has such stigma, it’s also in a positive sense that the wedding carries so much transformative weight in society’s eyes. Positive and negative, but from a feminine perspective more negative because the burden is on the women to make the marriage work. Love in India exists mostly in films, poems, glances and text messages.

It also made me wonder, did Cambodia used to have strong social traditions that got broken? Or is it simply a more laid-back, less busy-body society? The question is why do Cambodian and Thai women go to work sleeping with western men? That just wouldn’t cut it here; those sex tourists would be cut up in little pieces. Dan Engber’s friend’s fiancée got beat up in Lucknow just for going out with a Desi girl. When the Sufi disciple at the Nizamuddin Dargah told Sadaf, when she made up the story about her being married to Chris, that it made them feel angry and want to beat him up. But, being a Sufi unconcerned with worldly things, he just laughed. In contrast, there wasn’t a day that went by in Southeast Asia that I didn’t see elderly white men with young prostitutes at the bar, on the beach, in taxis, walking down the street. In Sihanoukville we saw a westerner strolling by the ocean in full day-light hand-in-hand with a twelve-year old. When I showed my pictures of Cambodia and Thailand to my teachers and talked about the sex work there, their first question was: how do Cambodian men feel about it?

The insight was supposed to be about the weakness of ceremony in the US, and how that has maybe shifted focus to the inner life of partnerships…

The best part of my vacation was remembering what it is like to have a partner in everything. Lucknow is going through a cold snap, but I’m getting back into the swing of things. I’ve seen five bollywood movies in the last eight days. I’m tracking the rise of Abhishek Bacchan. Bakreid is day after tomorrow, and there are three goats outside my window waiting to be sacrificed in memory and Abraham and Isaac.

I hope you are all doing well, and I miss you, every one of you.

rose

“That particular fear has a texture you can neither forget nor describe. It is like the fear of the victims of an earthquake, of people who have lost faith in the stillness of the earth. And yet it is not the same. It is without analogy, for it is not comparable to the fear of nature, which is the most universal of human fears, nor to the fear of the violence of the state, which is the commonest of modern fears. It is the fear that comes of the knowledge that normalcy is utterly contingent, that the spaces that surround one, the streets that one inhabits, can become, suddenly and without warning, as hostile as a desert in a flash flood. It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the subcontinent from the rest of the world—not language, not food, not music—it is the special quality of loneliness that grows out of the fear of the war between oneself and one’s image in the mirror.” From Shadow Lines (Amitav Ghosh).

Thirteen years ago on December 6, the Babri Masjid mosque was destroyed by Hindu right wingers in Ayodhya, who claimed it stood on the site of Ram’s temple. All hell broke loose then, and it’s still a sensitive day. So we got the day off! Like a snow day, but for riots. Our teachers are careful—they’re Muslim, so they have to be. There were some other issues that compounded the sensitivity, like the murder of a BJP MLA guy a couple weeks ago, and the wedding anniversary of Ram and Sita, which follows the lunar calendar. I bought some milk at the corner store, but stayed in otherwise. I felt just an inkling of the fear that Amitav Ghosh described above, a sort panicky disbelief.

I learned my lesson when Sadaf and I were followed the other night by two guys on a motorcycle, but escaped ok, and then what the heck, we got a police report filed against us for being out late at night. It was only 10:30, people. But the police report says 3 am, and other lies, which give me immense confidence in the rule of law in the city. The police woman said: ‘if you go at after 9:30 we can’t be responsible for you.’ Ay ya yay, great, the police are really looking out for us. They also claimed they stopped us on the road, at 3 am, and we told them our names and address. Oh my, what fiction. But slightly sinister: how did they get our names and phone number and address? So that is why I am writing this, all cozy at home, at 9:30 on a Friday night. I’ll lay low for a while.

There’s a phrase in Urdu that I learned today: Ganga-Jamuni tehezeeb. Ganga and Jamuna are two rivers that meet at Allahabad, a couple hundred kilometers east of Lucknow. The place where they meet, called the Sangam, is holy. The rivers are two different shades of green, and for a while after they meet there is a line in the middle of the joined river so you can see which water comes from which river. Then they get all mixed up. So Ganga Jamuni tehezeeb means a culture that is mixed together but with elements that have different sources. People say you can only say that about the Lucknow culture; that Muslims and Hindus live together here like nowhere else. The only time there were violent riots was during the Babri Masjid destruction, thirteen years ago. There certainly weren’t any riots day before yesterday.

Lucknow is also the home of Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, a Shia scholar. The night we got followed by the young goondas, Sadaf and I were coming home from a lecture the Maulana gave clearing up various issues concerning women in the Quran. He touched on everything that you hear about Islam that seems so backward. I could write pages and pages on it, I was so impressed! The main thing that I want to relate from it is this analogy: a doctor might tell you to take one brand of medicine over another, which makes sense because the medicines are made by different producers with different materials. But all people, men and women, are made by the same producer of the same materials. They have the same soul (and he used a Hindi word aatman as well as ruh); a new form of dress doesn’t change the soul. This was his very first statement, to clear the stage. It might not sound revolutionary to you, but think of the context. I was sitting there waiting for the riot to start. But no one blinked.

In response to a question from Sadaf about using a rational or emotional approach in making decisions, he said that God granted every person with aql, which translates to smartness, or sense, or something like that, (intellect, reason, knowledge) and by using it you can figure out for yourself what is right and what is wrong; what is just. And Islam isn’t contrary to justice, so if you think it sounds wrong, it probably is. This is my loose interpretation; I’m still struggling with the language! So marrying off daughters against their will is wrong, beating your wife is wrong (‘The Quran says beating dogs and slaves isn’t allowed, do you think you can beat your wife?! Only a vulgar man would’), the triple talak divorce is wrong. In response to the issue about needing two women witnesses in place of one man witness, he said, that’s only for financial matters, for rapes you need four men for every woman! And who knows why the Quran says the stuff it says? It might not be implying that women can’t count money as well as men, it might just be because women are not obliged to go immediately to the court if they see a crime. For every issue he had an example. For the issue about why only men can grant divorces, he pointed out that in Islam, the men are supposed to pay for everything: the wedding and the dowry. Brides have the right of refusal at the wedding itself, but maybe if they could just marry and divorce they would start a business out of it. Hmmm, maybe. He also addressed one passage that says something about men being rulers of women, and he went straight to the Arabic to show that ‘men’ ‘women’ and ‘ruler’ actually more likely should be ‘husband’ ‘wife’ and ‘caretaker.’

The most heartwarming part of it was that he is also upset and angry at the way things are interpreted in his own religion. He was speaking to Shias, Sunnis, Hindus and me, a Christian. ‘Use your aql, people!’ he would say. And: ‘I don’t know if I should laugh or cry when I hear these things.’ The lecture was outside on the lawn of a beautiful old mosque built in the time of the Nawabs. Right across the street a new mall has gone up, called Sahara Ganj. It just opened two weeks ago. India is changing really fast; hopefully the old and new will blend like the Ganga Jamuna. Some kinks need working out. Noise codes and police integrity would be a fine place to start.

From: Julia Dakin
Subject: my thanksgiving
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:25:19 -0800 (PST)

Hi Rose!
I forgot it was thanksgiving but its just as well since everybody was out of the house and I was experimenting with sourdough pancakes, which are pretty good. It is snowing here, but with each hour it snows I get worried because it means the cows will be standing at the gate waiting to come home and eat silage. This whole morning I was getting frustrated with them because they keep running back down the hill to the gate if I ignore them for a minute while I’m getting other cows. They still have to dig in snow hopefully for another 6 weeks, just like every other year, but they don’t agree that should happen. I’m trying really hard to be patient but sometimes I just hate cows. Other than that I’m having a really great time riding around in the cold and snow and wondering why I love this job so much. I really do love it. Maybe Jon will discover how fun it is to be a cowboy and I’ll be able to keep coming up here in the winter sometimes. Now I gave you a story, you have to write another piece in your blog.
Love, Julia

Lucknow is at the top of the list of places that need a phonebook and mapquest, but instead information flows almost only through personal networks or not at all. A lot of streets don’t have names or signs. You know where you’re going first by the name of the neighborhood, then by the nearest landmark, then by asking people if they know the family. And this for a city of 3 million! So it’s a good thing Geeti’s cousins live here. They got us a yoga teacher, a Kathak teacher, two motorcycles, wireless internet and perfect chocolate cake. In exchange Geeti was expected to be a good Desi daughter, and several culture shocks followed. They’re mostly smoothed over now. There’s a bit of the southern sweeping under the rug; Geeti’s triple heritage. The other problem with extensive personal networks is that people recognize you and report on your whereabouts to each other, which would be fine if it weren’t such a shocking taboo to be seen out at night. (Geeti’s blog: link)

Other culture shock notes: I think it is terrifyingly lonely to have weddings where the bride and groom are on separate floors, or in separate rooms, or separate in any way. I like a lot of things about Islam in South Asia, but not that. In Hindu weddings the bride and groom are literally tied together, which is better.

And cultural crossovers: A lot of Desi people don’t eat fish and milk together, and Sadaf (US-Pakistan-Gujrat-5th generation Muslim) and Rohish (US-Fiji-Rajasthan-Hindu) agreed it was borrowed from Jewish Kosherness. Tuna melts can be an exception. I would love a tuna melt right now.

I went to Delhi last week with Sadaf for a Sufi saint death anniversary (the Urs of Amir Khusrao) at the Nizamuddin Dargah. We stayed at Mridula and Nirinder Kumar’s apartment in R.K. Puram. They were so sweet to us; they didn’t even mind when we came home at 1:30 in the morning one night, and 3:30 am the next night, and then had to catch a 6 am train. The whole three-day affair made me think Sufis must sleep during the day. Sadaf will say more about it on her blog link, I’m sure, since she is the Sufi and got tight with the Qawals in the wee hours of the mornings. I’ll just say that it was a treasure and that I feel blessed to have had access to it through Chris, the Fulbright guy studying that Dargah, and Sadaf.

We also had dinner with Robyn, her mother the ex CIA operator who now raises horses in Wyoming, and Ravi Satkalmi, who is working on a research project about returned NRIs in the Indian central government. We had such an American conversation (civil society, rights, accountability, attitudes of empowerment), sitting in Robyn’s beautiful house, drinking wine. It was my first glass in three months. We talked about Sami Al Arian, whose trial in Florida just ended. John is writing a story about the trial for the Chronicle, and Sadaf knows Sami’s daughter, so it was a topic close to our hearts. After dinner we went back to the Dargah, criss-crossing extremes of a large city’s physical and social geography.

Three more things: two thanksgivings, and a meeting. Our first thanksgiving was at Nathan’s place out at the Army Cantonment. Our teachers and my friend Bhavna came (the one with the 7 am curfew, but dinner was at 3, so it was ok) and we ate chicken masala, rajma, biriani, aloo and puris in the garden. It was a nice party, but I had to keep reminding myself that it was thanksgiving. So we decided to have another one at home around our big old round table. On Saturday I got the ingredients for salad, mashed potatoes, candied carrots, pearled onions, and applesauce. I cut my finger so Sadaf had to do everything under my hovering bleeding presence, and Brian made garlic bread, and we ordered a chicken. We had ice cream and applesauce for dessert. It reminded me of all my Saturday Thanksgivings at the Paasche farm in upstate NY, without the snow or babies. Before that, though, I met two other Americans in Lucknow. They’re married and have three kids and remind me of Heather and Andy Jennings. They’ll be here for three years; I’m not sure doing what; I’m not sure if they trust me enough to tell me. I did contact them through their website ‘Lucknow for Jesus,’ after all. They were lovely, solid people.

And one more thing: a horse race. The horses raced past. It was a much classier affair than Golden Downs in Berkeley, which has 20 races a day and run-down bleachers. These horses ran on grass. There were three races all day, with so much anticipation for each one. The track was so big I couldn’t see the start. It wasn’t crowded because only people with cars could make it out there. I’m thinking I need a car.

Tomorrow is the start of a new week. 7 hours of classes each day make the weeks go by so quickly, and then I’ll be a week closer to seeing John.

I forgot… this is a picture of the pumpkin with a diwali candle lighting it up:

and our new friends on the porch:

We had a halloween party that lasted till 2:30 am where, amazingly, people came in costume, actually a lot of alcohol was consumed, and we danced. Considering we know 3 people outside of the institute network, and one of them has a 7pm curfew, and 3 people in our 5 person house don’t drink, it was amazing.

The group of friends that we tapped into remind me of Deep Springers, but they’ve known each other longer, and there are more non-girlfriend girls. They know each other from La Martiniere (“La Marts”), which is the k-12 school designed by a crazy Frenchmen with a large budget and good aesthetic sense. So we had a skeleton (Anshul), a couple vampires (Siddartha), a bunch of Sinisters (Saim et al), a Gandhi/ghost (Brian), a gypsy princess (Sadaf) and a train porter (me). It was all of our guests’ first Halloween party, but at midnight everyone went around wishing each other happy Diwali. So it was a Diwali party too.

Diwali and Eid fell in the same week this year. They both last several days and involve staying up late, visiting lots of people and eating tons of food. I had 17 servings of seveya on Eid, a milky pasta sweet thing. It’s been such an intense week of celebrating that now I’m sick in bed. I even ate a sheher tukra, ‘double roti ka mita,’ which is a slice of bread fried in ghi, twice, and then soaked in thick sugar syrup. It has a bright orange color and looks like it appeals to the basest hunger instincts, which it does, because people eat it to break their fasts.

Wearing a helmet to protect myself from the Diwali fireworks. Safety first.

In Lucknow it seems to me that fasting for God is optional but eating for God isn’t. Every Muslim sits down for Iftar, the first evening food, whether or not they spent the day hungry. The day my camera got stolen I was in Aminabad, a Muslim neighborhood, and it was getting towards sunset. The streets were packed and blaring traffic was moving the speed of a slow walk. Snack vendors had expanded their area and were frantically seating people and serving little plates of fried snacks and fruit. No one was eating; the people sitting with food in their laps were quietly, blankly, waiting. The snack walla’s urgency extended to everyone who might conceivably be Muslim, and as I tried to wend my way through to the sidewalk to get my locked bike, he motioned to sit down and thrust a plate of food in my hands. I refused and kept going, pointing towards my bike. I got to it, unlocked it, and started untangling the other bikes and motorcycles and cycle rickshaws, when the Namaz sounded. The people seated started eating. For those several seconds while the sound of the Namaz thanking god floated over the intersection, the traffic stopped: no pushing, no horns, no cutting, no crossing. I stood and looked back at the people eating. I wanted to stare until I could figure out what was so arresting, for me and all the Hindus in the streets, about breaking the roza fast. It was like being in church, or at a wedding, or once when I went to a native american powow.

My new Eid dress, bought in Aminabad on chand raat, having survived two gropings in the crowd and a bull plowing through. I’m sitting with Sadaf’s friend Varda, which means rose in Arabic, at our 11th dinner.

I posted some photos accumulated over the past 1.5 months at shutterfly: link. I hope that works. Also, there are some more in my album here.
Diwali is starting soon. I’m going to put a Diwali candle in my green halloween pumpkin and hope it’s not too sacreligious. I think it is appropriate: celebrating the light in the darkness…

I went to the wettest place on earth, and it didn’t rain. I went with some other fellows in the program and the 38 hours train ride gave us a chance for cultural exchange: I had never heard a single Brittany Spears song; they had never heard of Built to Spill. Six years of music is a generational divide… almost impossible to bridge, but we tried. I still don’t like Brittany Spears, except for maybe that song I’m not a girl, not yet a woman. That one is pretty good. In the last five hours of the trip, we became acquainted with the group of Punjabi musicians in the next berth over, who brought out their huge drum and turned our berth into a crowded party. In a moment of incredible good sportedness, Brian responded to their request for a song with his version of one from the movie Aashiq Banaya Aapne, where Amitabh and his son dance with what’s her name.
While I was on the train, Colin and Dot got married. I’m looking at their photos now, because we finally got internet at home, and it is taking me as long to go through them as it would have taken to be there, so I am consoled. There is even a picture of John talking to me on the phone, at the next day’s barbecue, after I had arrived in Guwahati. There are 85 pages, and each page has between 40 and 60 photos. Sooo many photos.
There were other adventures in Assam and Meghalaya, besides the lack of rain. And other ones on the train, too, besides listening to Brittany Spears. There were the Hijras who pinched the Punjabi musicians’ penises at 7 am somewhere in Bihar, there was the snake charmer who shoved his snake basket in my face to get his ten rupees, there was the family of three who all slept on one narrow sleeper. It was enough to get us to change our ticket class for the trip back. The adventures in Meghalaya happened all in one day of trekking, and are due mostly to my inclination to hide from people after I’ve been in the woods for a while. Lost on a wide plateau, after climbing 4,000 feet up the gorge of the 4th largest waterfall in the world, I didn’t want to ask for help until after the sun had set and there was no trace of people for miles. Finally we spotted cows and shapes of humans and made our way toward them, only to meet two young men with big knives. But they were nice, and helped us, and we only had to walk 3 more kilometers in the dark, but there was a full moon. The man’s name was Freddy, he was a Christian Khasi, and his younger friend was Spencer. He was incredulous at our gall for walking into the middle of nowhere “without knowing anything about anything.” We showed him our map, and got defensive and repentent, especially when he told us about the Bangladeshi terrorists wielding AK47s; the reason he was wielding his knife/sword.
Now I am safely back in Lucknow. I’ve been fasting for God, but really for truth and love. Which Sadaf says are two of the names for Allah, among the 99. Even my brother is fasting, back in California. No one even blinked when I announced that I was observing Roza too, halfway through Ramzan.
More later, and photos soon.