Do Lucknow

I brought my aunt Mira’s illicit cargo to Delhi and achieved all my goals for the weekend: see Robyn, Ravi and go to the beauty salon at IIT Gate.  I  went to the plenary session for the Women and Health conference Mira was attending and heard a presentation by a Filipina woman who was forced into the ‘comfort’ service by the Japanese military.  She was married for 50 years and never told her husband. 

I also wanted to write about economics, especially the economics of cycle rickshaw wallas, but I don’t have a lot of time.  Here are the basics: it costs 400 rupees a month to rent a rickshaw (a new one costs 8,000, the exch rate is 44 rp to $1 ).  On average they ride about 100 km a day, but a lot of that is not with fares.  Most of their fares are taking children to and from school.  You can go about 4km for 50 rupees.  If there is a crash, the rickshaw wallas don’t have insurance and have to pay for damage out of their own pocket.  There are no cycle rickshaw unions, though there are for bus drivers and tempos.  Cycle rickshaws have been ubiquitous in Indian cities since about the 1980s. 

Now on a personal note: while biking to school last week I saw a rickshaw walla stop at the big pile of trash and look for food.  It was about 8:30 am.  It struck me, later, while talking to John: this is why New Orleans is not big news here, or even very interesting. 

A lot of the Lucknow we see is that of the streets.  On the way to school, to shop for food, and back home. It’s the Lucknow of outside public spaces.   

I have to give a presentation tomorrow on the northeastern states, where I will probably spend my fall break.  Soon I’ll figure out how to get the photos off my computer and on to the internet.  One that I wish I got: Two men carrying a 40 foot bamboo ladder by bike, one on each end, navigating the chaotic intersections without hesitation. 

Our ‘monolingual’ guest today was a darji, a tailor.  We all sat in the main room; five teachers, Shuklaji who makes tea, Sandeep who administrates and us six students.  The darji came with his daughter and introduced himself and showed us his daughter’s work, gorgeous embroidered ‘chikan.’ The kind of clothes you only get for weddings or mushairas: 5000 rupees and that kind of thing.  We asked him questions and he would answer and I understood almost nothing when he started going beyond the simple explanations like where did he learn to sew and how is business compared to ten years ago.  And then the meeting took a dramatic turn:  first Nathan recited a poem about clothes, then Aftab sahab another about love, then the Darji several about roses, traveling the world, and loneliness.  He sang a ghazal that almost made me cry! I didn’t even understand it.  It was so beautiful. 

Then we had tea, and I asked his daughter for sewing and embroidery lessons, and then she put on her burka and they left.  It was the first time I ever talked to anyone in a burka.  I think it does make your eyes more beautiful.  And sometimes I even understand the attraction of wanting to be underneath all that covering.  Not for god or modesty; just to get away from all the constant staring. 

I bought a bike today and rode it here, arriving a little shaky. I didn’t go faster than 7 mph but I’ve never had to be so watchful, not even on a motorcycle going 70.  It was my birthday present to myself. A brand new Avon, made in Ludhiana, India.  And now I am craving a normal cup of coffee, which is apparently harder to find in Lucknow than a bicycle. 

My schedule goes something like this: wake up at 7:15, take a cold shower and lie back in bed to read until about 8:20, walk (now bike) to AIIS, about 1km away, sit in 1 hour classes from 9 to 1 with one very sweet tea break, have lunch all together cooked by Geeta the cook, then have one more class from 2 to 3.  Once a week there is a Persian class, and once a week an Arabic roots class.  The class size is from one to three.  Today we had oral presentations, and I gave mine on this book Locust: the devastating rise and mysterious dissapearance of the insect that shaped the American frontier.  I just finished it and it is so so amazingly good.  I could write a lot more about it, but I’d be tempted to give away the end, and instead I just want to reccomend it highly.  It’s the best book I’ve read in years. 

I arrived in Delhi last night, sitting with a fellow Berkely Urdu studier, Sadaf, from georgetown. She’s a religious studies wonk, as is the third fellow, Brian. We got to the guest house by 2 am, me heartbroken by the pain of separation. There’s a word for ‘one who suffers from separation from her lover’ in Urdu. I’ll write it here when I remember it.
I brought my aunt Mira 30 vaginal speculums and 15 pounds of cat food. I forgot the perfume and fancy liquor.
We’re heading to Lucknow on Tuesday, and I won’t be back to Delhi till the 24th, when I hand over the eccentric presents to my beautiful aunt, visit Ravi Satkalmi and Robyn McGuckin, and go to an Italian restaurant.
Mostly I just want to say that I can be reached on skype by the user name rosedakin, and also my hotmail address rosedakin@hotmail.com.
I keep thinking of new orleans and rehnquist, wishing I was in washington around those conversations. The discontinuity is difficult.

I’m setting up this space to have a place for my thoughts and observations from Lucknow, India.  I’ll be there September — May 2005 studying Urdu on a UCB fellowship.  So here, to start, is a list of things I need to do: get passport photos and send them to Daisy Rockwell, call the travel agent, and start making space at home for John’s new housemate by posting things on Clist.  Also, I need to take the van to get checked out in Bethesda and I need tickets to Will and Caitlin’s wedding, I need to make more/other lists of contacts in India/Lucknow for Rani and for myself and I need to tell the relatives in Delhi and Bhopal and also Suru that I will be there soon. 

So this is a start.