Three Kingdom's and Three Questions

Hundreds of years ago in Udaipur, the White City of the Mewar Kingdom, stood guards in the inner recesses of narrow halls of the City Palace. Hidden, upon entering a doorway you could be asked a question, a prompt, for a codeword. With hesitation, stumble or error you were swiftly cut down by a sword of Damascus steel. I fielded many questions in my two week solo travel, of which 11 of the days were spent in Rajasthan, India’s Northwest state bordering Pakistan. Three questions in some variation in particular, none fortunately that carried the sentence of death with my answer.

1.       The most common, “Where are you from?” Many who pose this are shopkeepers, tuktuk drivers, and commission players, still others innocently curious. My skin complexion had them guessing.

“Are you from Spain?”” I was asked by one in Jaipur, the millennial city of crumbling walls and the weeds that overtook them, overhead which flew the paper kites of a hundred thousand children. “Yes” I answered. And as I walked around the sandstone walls of the old bazaar, I pictured myself as a Spaniard of a lost age. Not some blue blood tough, see by my Moorish eyes, that let me travel through Morocco and what would later be French Algiers untouched, passing through to Cypress and a stop in the narrow streets of old Constantinople. Merchant of dates, silk and silver.

In Udaipur I found a street stall, one of the best I have tried in all of India. At these I am an anomaly, Westerners pass by and look at me, Indians don’t know what to make of me (many in North mistook me as Indian, and would come up to me throughout the trip speaking to me in Hindi). There I ate the best potato paratha doused in ghee and dahl. It was all over my face and hands at the end. Sitting around the small ledge that surrounded the street stall, I passed sauces and spices to and fro as requested, ducked as dishes went over my head, and squeezed to make more room when another came to sit. At the end I was catching a few intrigued smiles and one man took it on himself to point out I could get more sauce for free since I was out, and extended his arm to greet me. I showed him my messy hands but he didn’t care, he shook it anyway. And in answer to where I was from, I received a name and a welcome to the city. Then he walked away.

“Obama” some would say or “Land of the brave” “The Mighty Dollar,” when I truthfully said America. Something my mom requested me not to do given that I was 300 miles from the Pakistani border. And in recent months IS and Al Qaeda both have been jostling to outdo the other in some sort of intrusion into India. But to be American was a welcome novelty. “Good country” they would say. And when they say something that India was wrong in its “population, pollution and politicians” I would say there was more to this place. And when I share the things I have seen and felt, and yes this is a good country too, they  felt proud.

And I thought of how the President would be visiting India shortly, at the invitation of PM Modi on Republic Day. And laughed how he wouldn’t have a tour guide who helped him jump the railings of the lines to get into the Taj Mahal, and to the shouts of Hindus, Muslims, Sheiks, and foreigners in a hundred tongues, climb over a sea of pushing and shoving people to get in to the Taj Mahal. The ageless symbol of love.

2. “Are you married? Or do you have a lover at home?” On seeing I was travelling alone.

In the shadow of the Taj Mahal stand rows of jewelers that the tour guides on commission drags tourist to. It’s all a game, and I was just playing along, picking up piles of sapphire, emeralds and rubies and the precious star of India, letting them run through open hands. I got lost in the sapphire though, that looked of gentle waters of a moonlit cove. The jeweler took this as a sign to show me sapphire necklaces, earrings and rings. “Do you have a lover at home?”

Nope. “While you can buy for your future love.” And that seemed like the oddest thing to me. “Hey here you go, I was in India two years ago and though I didn’t know you yet, I got this for you,” and I would go off in an excited tangent under her amused, patient gaze about the Persian artisans, descendants of the original craftsmen that the Mogul king enlisted, who carve into the marble to inlay with precious stones, designs of lotus and peacock.

I made it to Jaipur the next day 12 hours late, after 8 hour train delay and eventual cancellation due to winter fog that forced me and the Swedish couple I met to spend the night in Agra. Now I had only one day in Jaipur. Coming out of the district of metal workers, cobblers, carpenters, silk dyers and later the sheds of block printers, pashmina and cashmere weavers and their shops in the front, an elephant with colored designs passed my tuktuk. I went to reach my hand and touch his leg as he passed us on the road, but he greeted me first, and his whole trunk came into the backseat of the tuktuk, sniffing around and kissing my face and ruffling my hair. I squealed with delight, a sound I didn’t even recognize and the elephant pulled back in surprise.

Returning to the hostel in the evening, I was too tired and didn’t feel much like being social. Until meeting an Irish law grad. He had done a semester in Paris and we got to talking about the distinctions of Napoleonic law, which he contended was a continuation of Roman law. And I talked of how I remembered Dublin cobblestone roads in the rain and their muddled reflections of dull yellow lights. And we talked a little of politics, and I got to thinking of Michael Collins, the IRA, Green Tiger, all these things that lay dormant in my nerdy me. And I was excited and awake again. Another conversation in another room. An Italian, Argentinean, several Indians and myself. Laughing about first instances of Delhi Belly. And talk of girls, trains and girls on trains. I thought about this girl I met once in some train station in Southern California, awhile back. We talked of the beach, music and just laughed. And the smile and wink I got as I walked off. I lay in bed to the sound of snores and distant night trains cutting through the desert and thought of thoughts I haven’t thought of in a longtime.

I missed my train again the next day after waiting five hours on its delay. The platform was not updated and peering between the cars of a train on my platform, I saw it pulling out of the station on another. I ran after it and people were leaning out of the car waving me on, but I didn’t make it. I let myself have a 30 second outburst than sat on the open bed of cargo car on the abandoned tracks next to the station to figure out what my options were. It would be getting dark soon.

I threw myself into the street to the immediate courtship of tuktuk drivers. I pitted two against each other for information and price. 2:52 pm, next bus leaves at 3:00. I tossed my bag in the back and rocketed off in the rattling tuktuk to the sputtering choking sound of its engine under my seat. We were racing through traffic and ignored the whistles of traffic cops. He hesitated to stop and I just yelled “Go! Go!” In front of us another tuktuk slammed into a bus and sent the back tires up in the air as it came to a sudden stop.

BOOOM. This second sound came from our tuktuk. A cop from the other side of the street had seen the driver ignore the commands of his partner and had come out of the street and swung his stick down to crack on the hood of our car. The driver and I instinctively ducked, and with an exchange of yelling, we drove on and never stopped. We chased the bus down, waved it over and I got on, and fell asleep to the sounds of wailing babies and men boarding the bus and walking down the aisle, chanting what they were selling. And after several fretful nights’ sleep, I finally passed out.

I was dropped on the side of the road in Ajmer and took another tuktuk to the local bus stand for the 30 minute ride into Pushkar. I was only affirmed I was on the right bus after pointing to my ticket and the old man next to me repeating “Pushkar, Pushkar.” We climbed the mountains and came down into the small city. I had the name of my guest house on a slip of paper, at our stop he motioned me to follow him through the narrow alleys of Pushkar, a loose strand from his turban tailing behind him, as he walked slowly with hands held behind his back past small window shops and oxen and hogs walking silently through the streets. We got to a small opening and pointed my way. 

I walked into a narrow alley of a bunch of children lighting a firecracker. I stopped. Dud. I kept walking and it exploded with a resounding boom that amplified off the walls. They ran up to me jumping and smiling, and I assume laughing but I couldn’t hear anything for a few seconds.  

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Under the morning sun I went to the roof of the guest house and watched the owner’s son kite fight in and dance as he cut two kites in the distances and we watched them spiral to earth. And kids in distant roofs jumping ledges to retrieve their kites that came crashing down.  

I washed my barefoot feet in the ghats to cleanse my sins. To my right the males of family with shaved heads with a long strand signifying a recent death in their family were also washing, to my left a lady was a performing a puja of leaves, incense and candle which she placed on the lapping lake under the eyes of a baba, priests I had to be told to avoid.

They gift you roses from the local fields to place in the lake (if you are lucky you can watch the lemurs fetch them out to munch on) and then demand a large donation. If you refuse they will curse you and create a scene. “Are they really priests then, if that’s how they act?” I asked the owner of my guest house, as we sat on cushions on the roof patio, to the sounds of another guest playing Creedence and Coltrane on guitar. “Yes. Modern priests.”

“Gerald! Gerald!” Damn those Babas are good I thought. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my friend from Calcutta, the one I met in the hostel the night before in Jaipur. He was only in Pushkar for a few hours and was tired from carrying his two bags so I took one. We walked around the lake and its 52 bathing Ghats and choose one to sit at.

He told me about how Lord Brahma created the world from this lake, and from the ripples of a single lotus pedal sprung forth the surrounding mountains that I descended in the rickety short local bus last night in complete darkness. “Pushkar, Pushkar,” the old man kept saying to my look of apprehension last night. My friend wasn’t religious he said, but he felt at peace in coming here. One of the holiest spots in all of Hinduism. We talked of the ending year, his new job, moving to a new city far from family, Calcutta and finding out shortly after his love of four years was engaged and in love with someone else. “I’m numb to it now and want to start over.” I sat listening and nodding as I looked out over the lake.  He was heading to Delhi New Years to meet a new girl. We laughed in that in both of our two week trips we each packed 2 pairs of jeans. Whereas I was switching mine each day, he was saving one pair just to see the girl and look good.

He was heading to Ajmer, to see the tomb of Sufi mystic where it is said that if you say prayer there it will come true, only if you don’t tell anyone. At the bus stand I gave him back his bag and with a handshake passed him my prayer to relay.

3. “Do you have any siblings? What are their names?” And that since I was the oldest, how I was told countless times that I was in a position of responsibility and trailblazing. The wayward one.  

I found myself talking about my family to complete strangers. Alone, And though I had made it conscious to decision to pretend Christmas was cancelled this year (and this was easy to do because I didn’t see any decorations or hear any music), I talked of my brother following my dad’s footsteps to a be firefighter, my sister at school in Portland. And all my friends and family I missed deeply from the way I could picture their laughs in the moments I wish I could share with them.

Outside Jodhpur in the 28 caste villages, I visited the home of the Bishnoi people and their unique branch of Hinduism that reveres nature even to the extent of self sacrifice, as had happened hundreds of years ago when the Maharaja came to the village to fell the holy kherji trees, and while the men were away in the fields, over 300 women and children were slaughtered as they circled the trees in prayer to shield them.

I woke the morning of my 25^th birthday in the Vishnoi village on the fringes of the Thar Desert. With the youngest son’s help, I rode the motorcycle through the village, complete with stalls, fumbling the clutch and sending the bike thumping when in the wrong gear. He reached from behind to honk the horn as we dodged goats, donkeys, roosters and cows. Much different than the first time I drove a bike in the backwoods of Maine.

The slow morning bled into a red afternoon of bidis and masala chai. I intended to write in my journal on the village mat I laid on in the courtyard. But I handed my journal to the children at my feet to draw in and write their names in Hindi as I fell asleep, waking to a perfect big eared caricature.

I had a change of plans and found my entire second half of the trip was open. “How long is this bus?” I asked a man loading his family into the bus I decided to take and head south in the direction of an eventual flight back to Bangalore I had to catch in a few days. “8-9 hours,” my face said it all. “It’s actually a good thing, we will get there when the sun is coming up, any earlier and you will freeze to death.” 

We got there at 5 am and I thought I really would freeze. Die on my first full day as a 25 year old. I called the homestay I was staying at, apologizing it was early but wondering if I could get a bed to sleep. I came over and there were no free rooms so he allowed me into the family wing and made up a bed. He turn kept apologizing because it was one of the hard rigid village style beds. I didn’t mind, told him I had slept many nights on these just fine, and passed out until the family life was playing out in front of me and the sun was coming through the windows.

I wandered around the alleys and rooftops of Udaipur the next two day and the nights drove me back inside the homestay where in the courtyard fire I sat with his family around the fire. The mother of the owner continued to feed me though I begged her I was full. They told me of their family, the haveli which had been in their family for almost 200 years. The son and owner had recently married, they handed me their baby to play with. He was a tour guide in the city and spoke of the Mewar horses, the car collection of the king full MGs, Rolls Royce and Bugattis, Hinduism and his late 20s in learning of my bday. A conversation that went late into the evening and left me sore from smiling and laughing.   

I eventually made my way south to the neighboring state of Gujarat to stick with my original return flight through Mumbai to Bangalore. On New Year ’s Day I just so happened to be a few kilometers from Gandhi’s home and Ashram along the river, and in the place where he stood each morning and evening in reflection, thought of everything.

Don't Worry Be Hampi

The train pulled into Hospet after 3 am and I opened the latch, and with half my body leaning out and bag slung over one shoulder, shawl tailing out the open door for several feet and whipping in the night air, I hoped out of the moving train and onto the deserted platform. Under yellow lights and stars I could make out a few bodies of individuals and families sleeping on the ground around the station and quietly passed them to awaiting tuktuk.

There was only one awaiting already fully loaded with a family, so I sat upfront on the single seat meant for the driver, with the father of the family sitting on his opposite side. I kept making funny faces to the baby in the backseat, who smiled under her blankets.

We dropped them off a few kilometers away and continued the next ten kms with me in the backseat, leaning out of the car as he smoked his bidi and the embers flew about the tuktuk, just so I could see the moon. I stopped leaning out though after a ravenous stray charged our auto, jaws chomping and the tuktuk jerking violently to avoid him with an evasiveness reserved not even for dodging potholes.

He dropped me off at the entrance of 100 feet tall pyramidal entrance of the Virupaksha temple where a hundred pilgrims slept under blankets. In the morning the temple gate would open and river would be free to cross. So I slept.  

I woke up and looked around sometime after sunrise; all were awake except for a few. Monkeys were running around everywhere disturbing those that still slept. I paid 50 rupees to enter the 700 temple of the god of destruction, and after passing before the Deity, dropped another 5 rupees down the trunk of the temple elephant Lakshmi, who passed it to his caretaker and returned her trunk to my forehead for a blessing.  

On the edge of the town begin the ruins of deserted bazaar. A level marketplace outlined by stone corridors overgrown with weeds. Here merchants from all over Indo-China once exchanged goods and openly sold emeralds and rubies. At its edge lay another temple and path through a set of switchbacks behind a mountain, which eventually cut off the view of the new bazaar and sight of moving people in the distant village. Succulents, oaks, thistles and brush between precarious boulders that formed valleys, ridges, and mountains that looked of the sand castles you make on the beach as the sand dribbles out and accumulates in round balls. Each turn revealed hidden temples and outposts. I passed through an old temple ground complete with several buildings, with no company but a half a dozen holy men in orange robes who floated by.

I climbed the mountain and sat on a ledge overlooking the river to the left, the temple grounds below and plantain groves and coconut trees alongside a stream to the right. I had run out of water so headed down another way to the village, fell asleep while awaiting food on a comfy pillow floor, and made my way to cross the river.

There I met an Indian girl, a rare talkative solo traveler, and we talked on the river steps next to bathing men, women spreading linens out in the sun, and kids running around. After the boat ride she asked me to join her for lunch so I ate again. Her friend came and she told me to join them at the lake, as they left on a moped. I checked in my room by the rice paddy fields and within ten minutes was on a bike heading out of the village, past goat and cattle herders, hunched over men carrying bundles of weeds on their backs and a sickle from their hip, and a lonesome white donkey walking all alone on a dirt road. I explored the alcoves of the lake but never found them. Instead on a rock face two men who, though we shared no similar language, motioned me to join them over their makeshift dinner of rice as I came out of an outcropping. And so I joined them, with a wagging tail stray next us, and none of us spoke, just smiles. They encouraged me to eat more rice from the open bag where the three of us ate with your hands and scooped handfuls of mint rice with curd and peanuts up. They sprawled out after on the rock, to watch the sun dip below the ridge and wanted me to stay, but I wanted to drive the bike back while it was still light. Dodging potholes, cattle and cars is hard enough when you can’t drive in the day.

Back at the guest house, in an open air terrace of pillows and candles and hammocks, I motioned for a beer and hoped the boulder wall for a better view of the sunset over the raised rice paddy fields and river. Overhead herons flew, dogs played in the fields, and I found a Spanish man and Portuguese gal. We talked well until it was dark and they invited me to dinner, to a quiet place they had seen last night, after discovering the owner drunk and passed out in the street and kids standing over him laughing and poking him. They carried him into his guest house and got to talking with the family. There we ate a meal of thali and the kids came in and fell asleep where they dropped. The power cut and we continued conversing over candlelight. It came back on, and the three of us sat as the family relaxed next to us, the wife and husband watching a black and white TV, while the kids slept about her, later whimpering as she lifted them and put them to bed.

I thought of waking up as we pulled into the driveway after driving back from seeing grandma in LA. And standing on the toilet seat to get a piggyback ride from mom or dad to bed.

The mosquitoes came out, and I thought of how after dinner my dad would take us to nearby Christopher Park and when we felt our first bites, we walked back happy.  

I woke in the morning to a message from the Indian girl to meet her early afternoon, before the last boat to cross the river, which I planned to take to catch my bus in Hospet back to Bangalore. I checked out and chucked my bag in the corner where other backpacks piled up and got back on the bike, and at the village intersection turned right for Hanuman’s birthplace temple, the Monkey God, principle character of the Ramayana epic. At the top the morning breeze met and cooled my sweat. A barren tree with ribbons billowing in the wind. Monkeys gorging on offerings of bananas. Next to it stood a cement pinnacle with a circle stone at its base that worshippers placed their hands around, and a miniature cave with three deities decorated in flowers and bindi, the markings of a thousand oil candles and incense and ash on the floor. The temple was white and red on the exterior, and the inside had a papier-mâché look of metallic gray paint and red and blue markings, with chants and a layer of undisturbed smoke of incense and candles at its ceiling. We approached the deity on hands and knees and stood whisking the rising incense in our face in commune with the divine, and after a series of prostrations and bows, I stood alone as the room cleared. In a state of meditative trance, watering eyes I get when I can’t explain something beautiful, all tampered by a subduing equanimity.

“Where are you from?” asked the attending holy man that stood next to the deity, overseeing a table of donations, coconut water, sugar, leaves, red kumkum, and clay oil lamps.

“America.”

“Here, please” and he poured the holy water in my hand to drink and run the remaining through my long hair, and parting my hair, with thumb marked me with a  red bindi and turned to the wall and rubbed the remaining powder on the wall, streaked with a  thousand red marks from previous pilgrims.

As I made my way down the white steps behind me I heard the cheerful sing-song voice of Hingilish children ask all those they passed “Helloooo, where you frommmm?” As I stood on an overlook the two girls passed me and asked, I answered and gave them slight bow and “Ram Ram, Namaste” to their delight. They motioned for a picture, hoped over eagerly after to inspect it, and went about skipping hand and hand down the steps, stopping in conversation with old women holding their sarees as they climbed.

I took the bike further down the road to Anegundi, passed small villages and terraced paddy fields with boulders sprinkled about. Anegundi was on the smallest villages I have yet to see, and as it was Sunday, the dirt streets were quiet but for children everywhere playing in the streets.

Bought a coconut for 20 rupees that the man spun in his hand as he sliced it open for me to drink. Walked alongside the river, exchanging greetings with all that smiled my way. The banks were covered in thickets. There was an opening on a flat rock where women washing dishes and clothes talked, and I sat alongside the river. I later found the circular boats of intertwined reeves docked and lapping in the water, and climbed into one and fell asleep the sound of the river, playing kids, and roosters. 

I made my way back to Hampi early afternoon to meet the Indian girl. “You should stay another night, don’t leave yet.” She said what I had been thinking all day. So, I did. I skipped my bus, took her up on her offer to stay the night with her, and made plans to meet her later that evening after she said bye to her friends.

I had found a small eat on the outskirts of town near the river earlier in the day while joy riding, so went there for a meal of Aloo Gobo, cauliflower in gravy, and chapatti. At the foot of his restaurant was a path, he said after dinner it was the best place to see the sunset. As I climbed I found a company of other travelers up there, and barefoot children jumping boulders carrying insulated jugs of chia, the Indian mainstay tea, effortlessly following them. I cut open my hand as I slipped on a boulder, and the blood looked even redder and pure against the setting sun.  

We met up later, I showered to clean the dirt and blood out. We talked on the porch till the last of the daylight disappeared and then walked around the guest houses and their restaurants on the street, while on the opposite side stood paddy fields that softly reflected stars and moon, and housed a symphony of crickets and other company.

On our way back to the room we found a few foreigners she had met earlier on her trip outside their rooms so we joined them. The power was out again and the only light came from the candles and their smokes.

In the morning I rented a bike again from a ten year old kid, and without any exchange of information or ID, just 200 rupees, I took her to Anegundi. She was doing a report on cottage industries rival, namely community art forms that have been threatened to the point of extinction in many villages. Whereas Channapatna near Bangalore continues to make wooden toys that she remembers playing with in her childhood, or Jaipur in Rajasthan is known for block printing like the shirt she wore yesterday, Anegundi is known for banana fiber products. Here, a woman has dedicated her life to reviving the craft and even founded an eco-heritage nonprofit not only to support the local women working in the trade, but to safeguard the village ruins, promote sustainable living, and foster community centric economic development. She invited the two of us to lunch in a friend’s garden, that with the sound of the birds, magpies, laurels and many others I don’t know mixed with the laughter of the school kids next door during recess.

After lunch we decided to split for a little bit, while she interviewed some of the women and spoke to the director of the nonprofit. Over her shoulder during lunch I saw a stone path that bent behind a tree through the garden so, leaving my sandals behind that I had taken off before lunch, I decided to follow it. The path led out of the garden to a flat rock with pink, purple, green sarees spread in the sun drying, and a littering of kids clothes. To the right was a rock ledge I hoped and through the brush, sat on a boulder overlooking a rice paddy field. This field led to another, and another, and I followed on the compacted mud paths with imprints of feet and hooves. Soon I was on a dirt road, and I kept walking, past a cow herder who motioned to me. He didn’t speak English, but he pointed to my pocket hearing a sound and I pulled out a bell, the same worn by cows and goat. I had bought it yesterday in the bazaar from a lady under a Banyan tree who sold coins from the East India Company, Pre-Independence era and Nehru’s time. The lady didn’t have change so she pointed to the bell. Perfect, I thought. I had had a bell on my camping bag since the Rockies to warn bears we were coming but had ripped it off before Rajasthan. This will do. I forgot I had left it in my jeans, not noticing the jingles as I walked, jumped and climbed about. He smiled when I pulled out the bell. Then motioned for a smoke, so we both did, in the middle of his herd, and then parted ways. I walked through the grazing fields, saw a rock cropping and began to climb and leap from one boulder to another. I saw in the distance a temple of the same stone and made my way. Under crumbling arches and the empty nests of the deities in the temple’s inner sanctum, I sat. To the west stood a formidable ridge and the remnants of the old cities defensive parameter, and another abandoned temple. I traced my barefoot meditative steps back to her, and found her in the village on the dirt porch of a woman’s house surrounded by four sitting older women all seated differently. In a dirt intersection where a man reading a paper manned his both, a dog slept on a pile, and another grouping of old ladies sat talking on an opposite porch. And old roadsters passed, goats and barefoot kids.

Back in Hampi I waited for the boat in the hammock sipping a mango lassi, watching red ants with the sun behind them illuminating them, as they crossed a clothes line. We crossed the river and shared  a ride to Hospet. She had a 7 pm train and me a 10:30 pm bus. At a train crossing, the idling tuktuks and bikes spewed petrol in the cold night air. In our open air tuktuk, next to us inches away where others, piled with families, children, men on bikes. And she sang a Hindi song about love in my ear. We parted at rail station and I bummed around Hospet for a little in search of food and clean clothes for the 9 hour night sleeper bus. And in the end, just stood at a wooden shack with sheets of tobacco pouches and jars of treats, with a few men watching an old film, and with a chia in my hand and a shawl wrapped around my head, sipped and sighed.     

Goa and Gorkana

"I'll be telling this with a sigh, ages and ages hence"


My coworkers suggested a kickback at my apartment the night before our 6 am flight. Last minute packing consisted of throwing clothes in my backpack. At 3 am the 12 of us drove to the airport for our flight to Goa, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, south of Mumbai.  At the airport we loaded into a Traveler van and followed the coast to our stay, a homestay just off of Baga beach, one of the main beaches in the state known for all night beach parties on long stretches of white sand under swaying coconut trees.

Goa is an anomaly in India. Though Bangalore is considered one of the most Western cities in India, “Pub City,” though bars are ordered to close at 11 pm, the beach territory of Goa caters to the flocking tourists that sustain it. As a result, the police, normally dismissive bribe hungry overfed men in khakis, are on their beat to protect the tourists from themselves and the elements that prey on them. And the Russians. Goa is their Caribbean vacation. I had read somewhere of how the Russian mob and tourist packagers discovered Goa a few decades back, and since fortified their hold over the once easy breezy sands. They brought and bought clubs, hotels and attractions, and controlled all the elements for losing control, creating a Vegas on the beach. Together this eccentric state was a mix of Red Russians (I mean this because they were sunburn, nothing else), Indians selling beach trinkets and marketing tattoo shops on every corner, and all night and day beach shacks blasting Bollywood hits.  

My first swim in the Arabian Sea. The water was brown and with salinity like nothing I had ever tasted before. To find shells I just closed my eyes and used my hands to scour the bottoms, looking near the sand bars. I found one and in feeling it, something crawled out of it and felt me back. I immediately dropped it. And on the shore, starfish and hermit crabs in the spirally shells washed past your feet with each receding wave.

During the days we went swimming and returned at night when the shacks put tables on the sand with candles for dinner and picked from the catch of the day. While our seafood dinners were prepared we were visited by all sorts of people walking the beach offering head massages, tattoos, and fresh pineapples. On our first night there, with but an hour sleep from the night before, we went to an Indian club. That was interesting. The next day we headed to Old Goa, the former capital of the Portuguese colony. Through narrow streets and under the shade of trees, we rode past churches in ruin on our mopeds.

Our visit to Goa coincided with the display of St. Francis Xavier’s body every ten years in one of the churches. I believe the intended effect was aiming for something of reverence and awe, and obediently felt some of that too, but also a curiosity and revulsion when looking at a 500 year old saint’s body.

That night my friends had me try the local liquor of fermented cashews and another, err interesting night ensued.

And as days on the beach with too much sun and little sleep do, the days blended together. We slept in and stayed up late. On our last day we took the scooters to Anjuna beach for the weekly market where locals and people that were once tourists sold to tourists. In the parking lot, ear cleaners from the street greeted everyone getting off their bikes with their metal picks and waist bands that held their cleaning oils. I have grown accustom to politely declining unwanted sellers, and for the persistent ones that followed, ignoring them. These simply came up to you when you weren’t paying attention and started examining your ears with their hands and prodding you with their metal cleaners, to which I first shocked then laughed, had to push away. One Russian man in the same predicament turned red and began yelling, sending the people around him laughing even more.

We made our way to Vagator after, and climbed the hill to the ruins of a Portuguese fort atop the bluff that overlooked the mouth of a river flowing into the Arabian Sea. The hillside was strewn with the same red and black porous rocks that made up the natural beach walls, the same rock of the old Basilica and fort we approached. I sat on the ramparts of the old walls and watched the sunset. The first sunset I had ever seen over an ocean that wasn’t the Pacific. A whole 12 hours ahead of all those back home sleeping, and I imagined them soon waking to the same sun I was seeing now dip into the Arabian sea.

The next day, Thanksgiving, I ditched my flight back home. My coworkers tried to talk me out of it. They saw that after a week of Goa I was exhausted. But I had stumbled upon an article about this isolated beach gem south of Goa called Gorkana and decided I had to go see.  I had only looked at it from a map and misjudged the distance. I be there in 3 hours I figured. Three buses later and almost 8 hours down the coast shouldering the Arabian sea and Western Ghats, the bus came to a halt in the last stop in Gorkana village and I figured it was as a good as time as any to get the hell off. I had been sitting on the window watching the passing seaports and fishing towns and ended the trip with a sunburn on one side of my face, a two-faced look.

I hadn’t eaten much all day except local cashews I bought before leaving Goa and the fruit I purchased from the bus windows from women who swarmed the bus when it stopped long enough in the villages we passed to extend offerings of plantains, pomegranates and oranges.

On the ride down I became aware of an incredible body ache I was having. I attributed it to peculiar arraignment I found myself in on one stretch of the trip where the crowd of the bus forced me into my seat before I could take of my bag and I was squeezed in a corner. But as soon as I got off the bus it hit me again, and harder. I planned to get a ride with the Chilean backpackers I had met on the bus, but I realized I needed to get moving. It was a 9km ride from the village to the coastal bluffs, through the corridors of the village up the dirt roads to the untouched hills that spilled into the ocean.

From the bluffs I put on my pack and made my way down the rocks. As soon as I hit the sand something happened. I was having trouble breathing.

Maybe my straps were too tight. I dropped my bag on the sand, when I realized I was having an asthma attack. I couldn’t even stand. So I too dropped to the sand, hand clutching my chest. The sun was going down. I needed to find a vacant beach hut on Om beach and soon. Each deep breath sent me coughing and a pain ripping through my chest and head. I grabbed my bags and in shallow hauls, kept moving. My arms were getting tingling.

I struggled to formulate sentences and inquire for an empty beach hut. I finally found an owner with one and as soon as he opened the door, I walked in, dropped my bags and sat up in the bed.  Under the mosquito net I turned on my cell phone for the first time since LA to notify my mom and college roommate of four years I was having an asthma attack. First one in almost five years, but I knew the symptoms too well.

And I knew I had to spend the night there. I was a 2km hike to a 9km service road to a village hours away from a main city. I had to relax as best as I could. Thankfully I packed an emergency inhaler.

This was my 7^th Thanksgiving away from home, first alone. I thought of all my friends and family and their very different Thanksgivings, far from being alone having an asthma attack in some isolated beach hut. And my very different Thanksgiving last year. At first this made me resentful, I was cursing my stubbornness and curiosity that got me into this situation. I was alone except for a monkey overhead of the hut keeping me up. So in the middle of the night in just my jeans I moved my stuff to another hut closer to the beach. And then I did something a little more productive, thinking about the things I was thankful for. And for the first time since August, fell asleep to the sound of the waves.

I woke up to the sounds of the roosters roaming outside my beach hut. After muesli and a mango lassi, I took a swim in the sea. In August I spent a lot of time at the beach, in the weeks leading up to leaving for India. On one of those days I went with some friends, days before some of us were leaving for school, work, some of us not knowing we would soon leave. I was in my favorite cove. With goggles, I swam out and kept going down to the bottom, turning around and kicking off. As I approached on one dive and was about to touch the bottom, the sand shook up right my face and a stingray the size of dinner plate came up and darted past me. I remember spending the rest of the day swimming around the cove with my friends, bobbing in the waves, listening underwater to the waves run over the pebbles, utterly content.

Only this time there were no rays, only gentle slow turtles. I felt so rejuvenated after the swim I almost convinced myself I didn’t need to leave today to see a doc. For the first time since getting to this secluded beach paradise I felt on the same wavelength as the backpacking couples around me. Lounging in the sand, playing Frisbee with locals, and swimming together. That has always been my definition of perfection, swimming in the ocean with someone you love. And despite the coughs and shallow breathes, I managed a nap on the beach. Waking up I went to a shack and had red snapper fish for lunch. “Stay for dinner and the fishermen promised me king fish” said the cook. I agreed, but knowing I had to leave that the beach before sunset.

I packed up my bags and left after my late lunch, stopping along beach several times to breath. I stopped a French couple to take my picture since I hadn’t had any of myself before I left. The protective lens somehow shattered on the bus ride here, and catching the sun, casts a tear down each shot. I took pictures as I walked, knowing I had seen the most beautiful beach I had ever seen in my life, and though my stay was shorter and unlike what I imagined it to be, I might not ever see it again.

At the top of the bluff, out of breath and coughing, without the usual verbal arraignments, I jumped into the tuktuk and agreed to whatever price it took to get to the village and await the 10 hour sleeper bus to Bangalore. While waiting for the bus I figured it was as good of time as any to self medicate. The cities and villages of India have medical shops on each corner, some Ayurvedic natural medicinal and other pharmaceutical. No need for a prescription or doctor’s note. I walked up to one and conversed in a cough and pointed to my chest and was handled a bottle of something. With no legible instructions, I drank some as I boarded the overnight sleeper bus to Bangalore.    

With my bag at my feet, the scent of the incense in the driver’s cabin drifting through the body of the bus mixing with the mountain air of the Western Ghats, I lay on my lower cot with the windows open and watched the stars on my way to Bangalore. And but for the brief stops picking up passengers in the dead of night at crossroads and train tracks, the medicine knocked me out. I made it to Bangalore and the hospital got a breathing treatment for the first time in five years, rested and recovered.

And I kept thinking for what I was thankful for. My niece, my grandmas. The power of support coming from all my friends and family back home, and how in turn I will share them such stories. And my parents, to witness not just their love, but a bond of commitment and communication, and how those two things gift a lifetime of shared moments borne of sacrifice, raising a family, and giving to the other continually. I’m thankful for the ocean, for being big enough to take all of my worries and thoughts and give me serenity and ecstasy in return. I’m thankful for my coworkers turned friends, who help me order food, who grab me by the arm and lead my across streets while I cross oblivious to cars I assume will stop. Who show me their homes, answer my silly questions, introduce me to their children, share their stories. I’m thankful for a job that gives me this opportunity. I’m thankful for cilantro in Indian food. I’m thankful for trains. I’m thankful for elephants. I'm thankful its December and I have a tan (Arabian sea tans look quite good on me). I’m thankful for India tapping into and indulging my politico, spiritual and nerdy history sides. And I’m thankful to be able to move. Thankful to breathe. And yes I am even thankful for my stubbornness and curiosity.  

Mountains and Temples

Once in Chikmagalur I found my driver, with the always helpful description “I have a blue backpack.” When I arrived at the homestay, the owner greeted me over a fresh glass of buttermilk from the plantation’s cows, and shared how his family acquired the 100 year old British estate after independence, his heritage as a 6^th generation coffee grower, and his recent 1 year anniversary at the end of the month to his wife.

Except for the company of their four cats that begged me for chicken curry, I ate lunch in the courtyard alone. Afterwards the owner had the house servant walk me through the 400 acres of coffee plants, over foot trails carved by the estates laborers, as the family called them. They floated through the coffee plants silently and would disappear. I briefly lost the servant and turning down one path, saw a lady with a jug of water in the distance, made eye contact and then turn and I lost her amongst the forest.  

On returning I found the owner’s bachelor friends from Bangalore all circled around in the courtyard. I accepted the owners offer to join them for a beer saying “Just one” and he told the servant “bring him two.” The friends were rising government players, traders and one a Kannada actor, that I did not believe until he showed me video clips. Soon the owners uncle joined and a niece, some of their nine dogs, and I tried to follow as I best I could to a good natured political debate spoken in Kannada with sprinklings of English.

After not having slept on the bus, my second cup of coffee gave me a second wind. Later that evening, they asked if I wanted to join them for drinks at their hangout, an outdoor roadside shack isolated on a mountain ridge. “How many beers should I pack you?” the owner asked. Just x would be good. “No, no I’ll bring you more.” We took two separate cars and I rode with him and his beautiful young wife who once in the passenger seat, turned around to introduce herself and ask questions about my travels, family, love status, and the peculiarities that strike many Indians around a solo traveler. “We Indians like to travel and be in big nosey groups, you are only the second solo guest we have had.”  

“You like spicy food?” she asked surprisingly as I ate from the side dishes we ordered over drinks, as more of their friends from neighboring estates joined us on wooden stump seats. “Of course, I’m Mexican!” I said, later feeling a heat rise in the side of my mouth where I was chewing, and mixed with the cold mountain air, left my jaw feeling like it had been shot off and was just hanging by a few tendons.

The party spilled into the parking lot, and when the yellow lights from the shack cut, and we all were standing there with just the light of the moon and one or two estates on the opposite side of the valley. In the car the wife sang a song perfectly in the direction of her husband as he swerved around the mountain roads with one hand on the steering wheel and another pounding the roof of the car to the music. I sat in the back, riding the rollercoaster brought on by the road, drinks, and closing my eyes, I laughed. At the estate gates we found his alcoholic guard slumped over and the owner playfully scolded him that he needed to quit. “He can’t support a wife and his thirst on his allowance” he later told me. This was but one of many impassioned speeches he went into, one preceding being to his friend who had an accompanying servant/driver/body guard with him and his friends need to recognize his worth. That this man was an extension of him he said, and he owed his livelihood to him, just as the man owed his to him. I stood there as an observer to that one, the owner, the government friend, his servant and myself. Together with a conversation about the lives of the laborers on his property, an intimate insight into notions of servitude, workers and caste that I had long observed without insider commentary.  

Over a fire in the courtyard, the drinking continued with his bachelor friends and those that followed us back from the shack. The friends were happy to welcome me in, and on a comment on one’s gratitude for the surprise in having met me, another’s on the path that was leading me to this place, the owner launched into another speech, this one aimed at dispensing wisdom to me. About concepts of Hindu beliefs in fate, friendship, the guest is god, the necessities of a man in his twenties (with the playful disapproving looks his wife sent us), advice and commentary on the parts of my story I had shared with him earlier, responsibilities he has to those who depended on him, and that we are but simply playing out our lives. It was planned our paths would cross. Though drunk I listened intently as I starred at the fire. Thoroughly convinced in all parts, if in part owed to the high spirited energy and mood of that night.

“My wife will accompany you to dinner,” he broke off and I don’t remember what he said before that. “You have a long day ahead.” And so away from the party and fire, we sat over dinner talking. In the shack there was but one light from the roof that cast all our shadows about. In front of the fire I could only partially see faces shown briefly by the flickers of flames. Now as I sat with her I could see all of her face. I imagine this is what it likes to feel like a don juan on a hacienda, I drunkenly thought. She was happy that I liked the dessert she had made and after a glass of water from their spring, I went up to bed. 

The next morning after coffee and idly dosas, I hired a driver and Mahindra Indian Jeep. He grew up in Chikmangalur, left for Bangalore in his twenties for a job and quit within a week “I can have money or I can have peace, I want peace.” Through the trees, past fruit and overhead birds I have never seen and did not know, we drove through coffee estates and their accompanying villages of 10- 20 buildings that housed the laborers. They were all working and empty now except for a few elders, running kids and dogs. .

The first stop was a waterfall. He dropped me off at a trailhead that wove in and out of a path wrought by runoff and erosion. Convinced I was lost after sometime and having not seen a single soul except a few curious monkeys above, I finally heard screams and laughs ahead, and then the waterfall. I returned with a photographer I met on the trail and bracing a tree and extending his tripod, helped pull me up an embankment. He showed me how to eat the ripe coffee cherry  skin and tossing the tan seed. “We use to add salt to this as a kid, never concerned with the value of the seed.”

I trekked Mullayyanagiri next, the highest peak of the state, and part of the Western Ghats that stretched from Mumbai to the backwaters of Kerala . Atop was a temple. As customary, I took off my shoes. The approach to the temple was slow as I tried to navigate the rocks barefoot. Inside the temple I sat on the cold stone floor and listened as adults rang the bell before the diety and children added to the sounds running around, sending their anklet chimes ringing.    

I spent the rest of the day touring the quiet hill station with my driver, before ending with a swim in a lake at the base of Mullayyanagagiri. On the way back to the homestay we picked up a couple going our direction, and the three us rode in the back as the jeep climbed a rock face for sunset. On the way back the sounds of the night bugs reached a fervor, and against the wind and roar of the jeep, we sat in the backseat. We abandoned our attempts at conversation and sat listening contently quiet.

Another party with the bachelors ensued that night. Exhausted from the day and perfectly happy, in predictable manner I followed. One showed me that before drinking it was customary to dip three fingers in the night’s first drink and cast the drips to the ground, “to stave off the three vices.”

“What are those I asked?”

“It all depends on you. They are your three demons.” I immediately saw mine.

Guests came again and I recognized one from last night who had talked of his estate in the interior, and soon he invited to move the party there. Deep into the tiger reserve. With the mention of a night hike there, this little part of tigers was lost on me, especially when someone had said there is the chance to stumble upon sleeping elephants. I must have also missed the part about boar hunting too because as soon as some from the party opted to join and we piled into a jeep, British surplus rifles and double barrel shotguns were loaded.

The second time I had been involuntarily dragged into a hunt. Though the idea of boar bacon did seem like an appealing addition to my meat diet of chicken and goat.

We went deeper into the interior and the trees grew larger and all their roots that cut across the dirt path and gripped boulders, looked of snakes that were waiting to wrap around our jeep. The sound of the bugs drowned out everything and the only light came from the headlights and the pair of lights behind us from another jeep that joined us.

At the estate we waited and drank. I was not sure of the legality of what we were planning, much less was I sure what was even unfolding. I simply heard sleeping elephants and jumped in the car. We were waiting for it to get later, it be safer they said. But shortly after 2 am forest department officers came. Shots had been heard earlier and they were looking for poachers. They searched the owner’s property for registered guns, and when they found a pair of antlers in one of the laborer’s homes, an argument began between the accused, his pleading wife, the liable homeowner and the plumb forest officials.  He was taken away for questioning and the homeowner was obliged to attend.

Five of us were left alone in the house. Soon the power cut and sent us all into darkness. The dogs went beserk and we sat in silence. Tiger! I thought. They went out for a smoke soon after and I followed. I made way to the edge of the property, along the cement clearing where the coffee seeds dried up in the sun dropped off to the mountain face below. I sat there with the company of one of the dogs, and resting his head on my lap, we watched the moon through the trees. 

The bachelors and I were dropped back at the homestay around 4 am. That night, as the night before I listened to the intermittent calls of peacocks coming from the sloped coffee grounds around me. I imagined that blue moon and the colors of their feathers in that light, as they slipped and silently darted in and out of the plants, their plumes shaking the coffee leaves and cardamom spices.

The owner and his wife left for business in town before I woke but left me a message. I hired a driver to take me down the mountain, through the valley where the coffee was roasted, and to stop in the temple cities of Belur and Halebid before dropping me off for the night in Hassan. He spoke very little English but sitting in the front seat with him, through points and words of “corn” “ginger” “wheat” “sugarcane,” he identified the fields we passed over. He was 24, a student, lifelong resident of these parts. He accompanied me through the temple grounds of the twin city and as we exited each, helped navigate me back to the car amidst the rush of sellers that would greet us.

“Look look! See see!” One man who managed to stop me by jumping in front of me and blocked my path said, pointing to an open page of the Karma Sutra. “Hair hair!” he shouted, with his long pointed finger highlighting the depiction of a man pulling a woman’s hair while in the act.

“Yes, yes. Nice, nice.” I took off my glasses and looked to my driver and we both just started laughing. 

At dusk we made our way through the small villages to my night stop in Hassan. I motioned him to stop for bhutta, roasted corn, and we ate while learning on the hood of his car. I dozed off after and woke up in Hassan. We spoke about a hundred words that whole day together, but for some unexplained reason I felt it hard to say goodbye.

Within fifteen minutes of my hotel room I was restless so with the 250 rupees I had left, wandered around looking for food but found a bar first. On the way back I passed street stalls and stopped to watch the clamor of shouting orders, extended hands, and the preparation of dosas and scoops of rice from the ping of stainless steel vats. The commotion excited me and I was joined in shouting “Dosa dosa!” to place an order. A man next to me noticed and helped me. Despite not speaking a shared language, we managed a small conversation of parts. To my animated objections, he paid for my plate. As we pushed through the throngs of people I motioned for him to sit with me on the side of the road over our dinner. He pointed to his car and his waiting wife. I understood he had to go.

I walked back and stopped at another quieter stall. I was still hungry. As I sat with the other three men on our stools surrounding the cart, a family pulled up. “The pretty girls are always with their families” I remembered a coworker saying. We made eyes a dozen times as we sat there eating our dinner in silence but for the sounds of the street, clanking of the vendor’s pots, and soft talk of the standing men smoking that blocked my sight once or twice. A path cleared and we stopped breaking away and finally I got to see those brown eyes. I motioned to the vendor I wanted to pay and how much, and he did not understand me. She overheard, spoke to him in Kannada and he turned to me and said “30.” I paid him and turned to her and said thank you, she simply nodded. As I was walking away, her family passed in their ride, I looked up just in time and we both gave each other the biggest smiles we had never given to anyone else. Mine complete with a gap and rice all over my shirt. I looked down and had to bite my lips from breaking into a childish giggle.  

In the morning I threw my stuff together, slapped some sambar into a chapati, rolled it up into a banging burrito, grabbed the paper, ran to wave down a rickshaw, gave him my remaining rupees, caught a bus and headed back to Bangalore. 

Lights and Fire

Well I guess the shark and squid teamed up with the goat and quail because a few days after my return from Puducherry I became ill. I ignored it at first as the flu but my boss suggested I see a doctor, so a friend took me to the hospital. Despite my body aches and pain I was giddy to go, experiencing another country’s healthcare system struck me as a chance for a case study. Admittedly if I destined to the emergency room or for a surgery I might not have had the same sentiment. After a payment for the entire bill that equaled my co-pay at home and an examination, the doc said I likely got a bacterial bug from something I ate. I tried to pinpoint which street side stall, shack or restaurant was the culprit. Weak western guts.  

Take this, this and this and get some rest. I was relegated to my apartment that weekend. Being sick is never fun but especially when you are far away from home. Lounging about in the rain, in my moment of sickness and weakness, I had my first acknowledgements of homesickness. Disarmed and alone, I wrestled with these thoughts as I tried to sleep over the body aches and sweats. My bedroom became a battleground.

Well timed calls from friends and Facetime sessions with my family jolted me, quieting my restless mind and allowing me respite to heal. Feeding off their support and finding the strength to do so much more than just kick a stomach bug. And when everyone you have ever known is asleep somewhere far off, the company of the muses. The song from Fleetwood Mac that reminds you of childhood camping trips to the Sierra with your family, serenading the landscapes of the Southwest, as you sit in the backseat feeling safe and secure surrounded by baggage with your Gameboy and blanket. The song from Crosby, Stills and Nash that represents the dream your parents had when they settled down and created a family, and how everything that has been revealed is greater than that dream could have ever imagined. The song from Van Morrison that was the song to this past summer and evenings on the porch with your mom, dad or whoever had stopped by that evening, and over a cold beer you could close your eyes and still smell the coastal sage brush from your beach trip, hike or bike ride.  They, along with a makeshift army of carefully arranged stones, the sentinels of your soul.

And about my apartment, the mementos of true love and support that allows you to jettison off into a future unknown, and in the face of momentary lapses of self-doubt and withdraw, continue on renewed. The realization those pillars that I built my life on will be there to greet me when I return and share our stories. The ceremonious letter my nana has written for me, before each move whether heading back to school, moving to Denver. The picture of my niece by my bed stand. Pictures of smiling friends and family on my walls. Drawings from the students of Annunciation. I miss my Cardinals.

I spent a lot of time on the balcony and when the sun broke through the clouds and I felt stronger than my body aches, walking around the village for tea and bakery treats. And the never-in-a-hurry sit on a cinder block, watching people in the street or games of cricket in the empty lot. And doing the things I kind of lost track of before India, playing (loose word) my guitar, writing and reading (I blame that in part to one or two god awful books that started my year).

“When many gather in the sky and circle about, we believe it is going to rain” someone had told me of the hawks over Bangalore, and almost every evening they did and it rained for a week. And from my balcony I dutifully watch them. Gliding above the neighboring courtyard and its sole tree in the center. Twisting and turning through clothing lines and the fluttering sheets on the neighboring rooftops. Diving and spinning in dogfights with other birds. Circling above unfinished skyscrapers popping up everywhere. I have long since known a porch or balcony is the most valuable place in a house.

My health improved and coincided with the gathering festivities surrounding Diwali. In every doorway were draped ribbons or marigold and jasmine, cars adorned with palms, and markings of thanks given to the items in life that we owe our livelihoods to. These blessing were a tribute to Lakshmi, Vishnu’s wife and goddess of prosperity. In every profession and age, people marked the tools that sustained them, kept them safe, and fed them, with a blessing of thanks and wish for future prosperity. The front car lights that illuminate our way, the office doorway that provides families a living each time we walk into work, the food seller’s street cart that allows him to display his offerings of nourishment to others . In the evenings oil lamps were lit in windows and doorways to guide Lord Rama home, and in the final days the fireworks competed with colorful balcony and rooftop lights for attention in the skies of Bangalore. And if your neck got tired from looking up, at the feet of doorways the beautiful Ragoli sand designs crafted by older women bent over in their saris, accented with pedals and lamps.

To an American it was a mix of Fourth of July and Christmas. Families in homes and festivities in the streets.

At night some of my coworkers joined me at my apartment to shoot off the fireworks I had purchased on the outskirts of town, where they were manufactured and then sold in the temporary buildings that popped up to unload a year’s worth of firework stock for the four day holiday.

As we ran up the flights of stairs, each exploding firecracker made us run faster and skip steps, eager not miss anything and excited for the pending show of our own. From the unlocked rooftop we had a view for miles of fireworks bursting over Bangalore, and immediately set up our poured out beer bottle for a stand and lit the smaller ones first with candles. Flower pots and sparkles, crackers and butterflies. We got bolder as our stock grew smaller and boyish laughs got louder. Taking one of the remaining butterfly firecrackers (called this because they changed colorful and flew through the air in random changing directions, making a fluttering sound of wings) I lit it and just when I went to toss it off the roof, it caught in my hand and shot backwards towards everyone else gathered. We killed over laughing. With tears in my eyes I examined the blacks of my hand. We saved the largest rockets for last, the ones marketed like some sort of Indian scud missiles. After a few that just exploded on the ground, we got a good fly off the last one.

On the final night of Diwali, on the backseat of a friend’s Royal Enfield, my kurta and ears catching the night air, we went flying through the streets under the exploding skies of Bangalore. Shot off from roofs, sides of the road, and alleys. I stupidly asked how fast this thing goes and we picked up speed. Faster and faster. Festival of lights and of hope.

I’m back.

Challo bye. 

Indian Roadtrip

Our last stop in Bangalore was to buy jasmine from sellers gathering before sunrise for the weekend market, to adorn the statue of Ganesha on the dashboard in well wishes of a “safe journey.”  It was just after 3 am when we started off and exited the city limits and shortly after crossed into the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. A Tata truck with neon lights, equivalent to our 18 wheelers that traverse the interstates at night, flew towards us flashing their high beams and blaring their sequenced horns. This wouldn’t be unusual, to see an oncoming 10 ton truck in your lane except that we were on the national highway. There are rules here! Cones, dividers, if not speed limits at the very least signs that read “Speed thrills but kills.”

“Um can he do that?” I asked after I sat up alert in the backseat and the lights and noise passed and before us returned the darkness and silence of the highway.

“It’s India” my coworker friend said, “Incredible India.” We laughed and the music continued and the four of them joked in their mother tongue and I just smiled, a real smile. My first Indian road trip. The nation with the largest stretch of road second only to America. Eisenhower highways, the road leads West, Grapes of Wrath, Route 66, roadside diners, ghost towns, the car. I wondered what this would reveal about India. And that maybe, as at least I interpreted, that look some give you when on the road, the one that conveys the same message you have seen on faces elsewhere scattered across the Southwest, is universal. Where are you coming from? Where are you going? A look from the ones who dream of mobility in faraway towns and villages, even in the big cities you pass through. Not a look concerned to find an answer to who are you? The need to move isn’t an exclusive tenant of some American “exceptionalism.”  

I realize in writing this a few weeks after the fact is a disservice to my recollection. But after such a long writing hiatus in general, I accept infrequency as a side effect of my return. But I disclosed that to you in my first post, that my sharing might be sporadic. And, as in the following retelling of the trip, I will also call upon the transparency clause of my first post. For many reasons. When I return home I can share with you over some laughs the parts that even after a few weeks of not putting down in paper, I won’t soon be able to forget about this trip and the entirety of my stay in India.

Alas (because you never get to say that enough unless you are Tolkien or Whitman, but the latter is a prick) we continued driving into the night and soon passed what was to be the sole McDonald’s (or any Western fast food joint for that matter) we would see on a 13 hour road trip.

I had my knees bracing against the backs of the driver and passenger seat, since there were no seatbelts in the back. Going 135 kmph, this little useless precaution made me feel safe. “Do you want the corner seat belt?” my friend asked when he noticed my peculiarity. “No its okay, my life isn’t any more valuable than yours” joking and we laughed.

I did my best to stay awake, but woke up to a roadside pit stop. It was just after sunrise and through the fog, a village was waking and a few in the distance were already walking through their mango groves and sugarcane fields. After an extended visit to Vellore and the Golden Temple, we picked the last brick buildings on the outskirts of town to eat, before the road again gave way tropical forests of green, only to break into the clearings of rice paddy fields and isolated inhabitants. At a three walled blue building we sat outside next to an open fire and metal slab that turned out hot dosas we dipped in even hotter sambar and chutney. As soon as we got inside the car and not a second later my friend reached under his seat and threw me a beer (because it’s legal-ish for passengers). Cold beer is not a necessity they told me. I had one and immediately passed out from exhaustion, waking up half an hour later to be instantly handed another.

The roads led through forests and farms, until villages turned into trading hubs were we would stop at crossroads. At each we pulled over and asked directions to Pondi, take an unmarked turn, and were back on green stretches, stopping only for fresh pressed lemonade or sugarcane juice.   

By the time we reached Pondicherry I was feeling excited, immediately though I sobered up when seeing a commotion on the side of the road. A crowd of people was attempting to lift a car off a calf that was trapped underneath. It came bolting out full of adrenaline and small streaks of blood on its white coat. I sunk back in my seat processing that image, just as we passed the sign welcoming us to the union territory of Pondicherry. The greeting humidity and lack of sleep set me into a gentle delirium, but that was soon calmed with a gentle stroll down French quarters and Goubert Avenue that ran alongside the Bay of Bengals. Over pineapples from the fruit carts, we spent the rest of the evening on the boulders overlooking the sea.

On the first full day and after a good night’s sleep, we headed out to an island of Puddacherry full of dragonflies. After volleyball and beers under a shack, we headed back to the mainland to sample some Indian seafood, a spread of masala crab, minced shark, and curry squid in a dimly lit restaurant. The usual food coma set in, mixed with that blissful post-beach exhaustion. After eating we drove outside the French quarter to an open beach head to swim. I had apparently lost some weight since summer and had to use one hand to hold up my trunks. I can only guess it lends itself to being cut-off cold turkey from craft beer and tortillas. However my exploratory addiction to sweets here and the revelation of an expansive world of Indian breads beyond the naan will likely counter the issue. Think roti, chapatti, parathas, poori, all in different types of finishing adornments, cooking methods and regional flare.

                I asked my friends to come out deeper and join me bobbing out in the murky water, but they all confessed to not being able to swim, a reality I often forget growing up by the sea. I never understood how American inlanders could travel miles to a beach vacation to just sit on the shore and read, to deny the euphoria of the waves and summers past, forgetting not knowing how to swim is a damn good reason. I stayed out there till I spotted a red jelly and came back to shore. We left shortly after, not before eating fried fish from the seafront stalls and drinking them down with coconuts, sitting amongst the painted fishing row boats beached on shore.

                That evening again we spent like I imagine brisk weekend nights of French Rivera would be spent. French heard drifting through the air from vacationers and residents helped. The pastel yellows, blues of whites of the colonial buildings all stood silently facing the sea, with families and lovers walking down the yellow lit boardwalk. The slight humidity and faces under swaying coconut trees reminded you weren’t in Europe, but somewhere far far away. We went for drive later, past the old French administrator buildings, churches and residences, across the canal and into the Tamil Nadu quarter with narrow streets of concrete and steel, painted signs and billboards, and metal storefront doors and roofs. The streets were abandoned except for the laying oxen near empty carts and occasional orbs of red light that would appear down a narrow alley as someone struck a match to smoke.

                We had plans to sleep on the beach under an awning but with the cyclone advisory for the neighboring northern state, we were content with the room. One by one we feel asleep until it only a friend and I were awake, with another snoring in the middle of us. We got to talking over beers about our perceptions of each others’ countries but also of a shared and I presume somewhat universal goings of 20 somethings. How when answering what were some things that intrigued me of Indian culture, I answered a reverence for the family and the measure of restraint and duty people seem to govern their lives by. This was something missing in the cities he said, the fluid definition of family, how when he would go home everyone comes by your parents house to see you through open doors, to hear your stories and share in your victories. Things were shifting, demands that had driven people from the villages to the concrete cities of Bangalore, amidst a great backdrop of changing norms of the individual, love, faith, and obligation, playing out in the lives of millions. He got to telling me a religious story from childhood, how the humble Chipmunks got its stripes, adding he did not know if people really believed it. I nodded saying I was not sure not if believing that story or maybe even others was the point, but rather what the story represents. A connection to our roots, the families we left back home, our communities that sustain us and a framework instilled since childhood that determines how we see, interact and make sense of this world. It’s written on our foreheads, he added at the end of one the stories shared where it can be hard to make sense of it all. A reference to How Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer have marked you with an ineligible destiny.

                On our last morning we took our time. We stopped at a roadside stall for vada, idli, sambar and coconut chutney, down a cobblestone corridor that fed into the sea. The ocean breeze channeling down the walls kept the rising temperature at bay. After we strolled alongside the sea one last time, passing the weekend carts selling trinkets on the sand. We found the old man who was shouldering a hundred pounds of necklaces over his neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists that we had spoken with last night, with his wife carrying their baby. She talked me into a red coral necklace for my sister. Our last stop was to the liquor store to stock up on alcohol in the union territory where taxes were suspended, but limits strictly enforced at border checkpoints. We held our breathes as we crossed the border from Pondicherry back into neighboring Tamil Nadu and when passed, laughed and drove off fast.

                We took a different route home and found the national highway, stopping in a town known for leather. We quietly ate biryani and deep fried quail on palm leaves, to the sound of clanking metal bowls in the open kitchen and the call to prayer from the adjoining white mosque. It had been sometime since I have heard the call to prayer, but hearing it an enclave of town where India’s largest minority was the majority, added with the heat of food and atmosphere, and commotion of foot traffic and motorcycles that had become my white noise, seemed to heighten its impact. A feeling of serenity and affection for strangers around me, the normal act of a roadside lunch turned transcendental communion.

                And that all too common “I don’t know what I am eating exactly but damn this is good.”

                After lunch we stopped in leather shops (the byproduct of anything but the revered cow) and sampled shoes and belts in one basement level shop. The power cut, stopping the single fan that cooled the storage container-sized store, the fan that I had been standing under sipping my lemon soda. I returned to street level to walk around. Soon after we piled into the car and onto the highway, catching the sunset before it cast the valley into increasing darkness.