Books Read on the Road

roughly in correct chronological order (of my reading of course, not their publishing):

"Wild Swans" Jung Chang

"Beijing Doll" Chun Sue

"Things Chinese Don't Eat" Xinran

"The Namesake" Jhumpa Lahiri

"Hearing Birds Fly" Louisa Waugh

"In the Steps of Genghis Khan" Stanley Stewart

"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" Haruki Murakami

"Amrita" Banana Yoshimoto

"Sumthing of a Mocktale"

"From Heaven Lake" Vikram Seth

"Shantaram" Gregory David Roberts

"The Devil Wears Prada" Jennifer Weisberger

"Such a Long Journey" Rohinton Mistry

"Transmission" Hari Kunzru

"Fiesta" Ernest Hemingway

"Notes from a Small Island" Bill Bryson (unfinished, but challenging enough to slog through)

"Dawn on the Coast" Ann L. Martin

"Ramona Quimby, Age 8" Beverly Cleary

"A Farewell to Arms" Ernest Hemingway

"A Suitable Boy" Vikram Seth

not bad. 

Back in the Western World

and it hasn't been too much of a shock. I think by the time I got here (London) I was so ready for cleanliness, warm showers and food that I know won't make me sick that I didn't have time to be confused. Took the tube in from Heathrow and giggled to myself as the people around me had to sit next to a backpack with filth on it from a variety of places- including, but not limited to the horse head I rode with in Mongolia. Mostly I've enjoyed not worrying about where my passport is, going out for wine, and realizing that not everyone is staring at me. Also, sitting in parks undisturbed by questioning children is nice. London weather hasn't treated me too poorly, and when it does it just provides a good excuse to stay inside and job hunt.

Now, two haikus jointly written while riding on the general class of an Indian train. An interesting experience in space management and the art of time-pass:

sprawled like a raja
sparkling black sweater vest
my mustache, my pride

ma'am, you come here now
the rickshaw rigamarole
eighty rupees gone

The Mother

Jane and I are currently staying at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram's guest house. Who is Sri Aurobindo? This ignorant traveler still doesn't quite know, but I do know that he and "The Mother" - a French woman who made her home here in Pondicherry- co-founded a religion. I also know that stern pictures of them stare down at me from the walls of my room and that sort of freaks me out a bit. Whenever I say something silly I see the Mother in the corner of my eye admonishing me and wondering why I don't just pay more attention to myself and my surroundings since, as I've gathered from her quotes posted around the walls and replenished in the check in area each day, heightened awareness brings us closer to enlightenment. Whatever that means.

India is the only place I've ever been that plays host to such a wide variety of people- foreign tourists with flowing scarves and an appetite for wine, native Tamil people who have no need for shoes, even when they're riding long distance buses, and women covered almost head to toe, but are still in internet cafes- simultaneously, while seeming to give each of them something to be happy about. No wonder "pagal" a Hindi word that I loosely translate as "crazy/mad" is so popularly thrown about in film, that's really one of the only ways to explain this place.

Oh yes, and dirty. Today I had one of those moments where I felt like screaming "LET'S JUST CLEAN THIS BLOODY PLACE UP!" Why, on the coastline, in coconut tree groves, and throughout every city are there piles of filth? Why does every gutter or crevice seem to be filled with repugnant, stagnant, stanky water? I know that there are reasons. This is the world's largest democracy and plays host to more than a billion people and is practically the definition of contradictory, but please, can't we just set up a garbage system that isn't just the poorest and lowest caste people being made to haphazardly pick at and then redistribute waste? China certainly felt more polluted, but India has got dirty cornered.

Enough for now, must get back to the guest house before curfew. Since I breezed through the Babysitter's Club Book I bought on a whim today, I can now settle in for some more highbrow reading and feel slightly better about the Mother's glare.

Editor's Note.

Both parents have pointed out my poor grammar in the last post and as a result I felt that some clarification is in order: blessedly, my Nana did not die in the Salvation Army in Mumbai, rather she died peacefully in London. I just had the misfortune to find out while I was in a nasty, dirty place thousands of miles away, somewhere that I'm pretty sure my Nana would have happily given me money to avoid. In my haste and lack of attention to detail (no read out louds in Goa) I made a mistake which may have been offensive, but in some ways reminds me of Nana's letters where there were always endearing misspellings, none of them painful enough to obscure the sincere meaning behind her words.

Goa

Now that my schedule consists roughly of wake up, read the paper, sit on the beach, eat lunch, sit on the beach, splash about in the warm and calm Arabian Sea, shower, eat dinner, sleep, it seems like I have no excuse for neglecting this space.

India, as usual, has been a series of highs and lows. High- celebrating New Years in the Rajasthani desert, singing songs around the fire while our camels gamboled around, grazing on plants. Low- finding out that my Nana died after having spent a day sick in bed in the Salvation Army in Mumbai, a place where most people (though thankfully not us), get bed bugs. High- hopping tearfully in a cab to the synagogue in Mumbai and being instantly surrounded by Jewish warmth (and of course, some irritating Jews from Scarsdale). Low- hour 11 on a warm Indian train cramped into a seat with a million young Indian men and realizing that the whole car was empty except for the dudes who felt the need to surround us. High- asking them politely why they were all in our space when there were plenty of other seats to take and watching as they scatter.

And it goes on.. I think we have firmly left fort exploration in Rajasthan, which is too bad because it afforded us ample time to wander around hunting for new and exciting names carved into the walls "Raju loves Pinky," and I thoroughly enjoyed my meeting with Mr. Sharma, the resident fort palmologist. I was informed that I am very fertile, have no money problems ahead of me, am healthy and will have a good career. Unfortunately Jane and Donovan both distrusted his reading, but I prefer to ignore the inaccuracies in his reading and focus on the positives that my future has in store.

I think that's about as much writing as my chilled out mind has to offer right now. Off to read the news from New Hampshire...

thursday is sai baba day.

back in Delhi. get off the air china plane (no individual tvs, surly flight attendants) and it smells like India. Walk to the check in, board the escalator and almost immediately get tangled in the melee at the bottom. 2 hours later and we're checked in after much jostling and general disbelief. Ah, India. No matter how many signs proclaiming that this situation is temporary, it's hard not to believe otherwise. Yesterday we wanted to see Om Shanti Om, a real bollywood movie right here in India with SRK, number one hottie. We ask for help and a kind toothless Indian gentleman and a woman whose Indian accent sounded suspiciously like Smita's directed us toward the number 500 bus. "This is in very nice area, you should go there. It should take half hour." We board the bus and toothless man reappears through the window, "this seat is for senior citizens only" he smiles and gestures. Boards the bus and gives us plenty of directions, at one point lightly slaps my cheek, for being a rapscallion, I guess. The story rolls on: throughout the night we manage to miss 3 movies, take 5 rickshaw rides, be in the same mall as Aamir Khan (whose presence causes all movies to be cancelled), get dinner for free from some sai baba fans on the side of the road, have a rickshaw breakdown, switch rickshaws to ride with someone who mysteriously speaks japanese as well as english and hindi and finally make it back to where we started right as the final movie is beginning only to be told that no bags are allowed in the theatre. no lockers, no submitting to a bag check. we collapse into hysterics as our japanese speaking friend ushers us back into the rickshaw for the final ride of the evening, home. No wonder Indian fiction is so damn good.

totemo iidesu-nee!

Saturday night- 8pm. just checked in to brand new capsule hostel, slightly disappointed that capsules are not actually enclosed tube-like structures, rather, they are nice little mini-rooms. I am experiencing a twinge of sadness to leave Kyoto, a place that rapidly zoomed to the top of my list. I love the teeny tiny bars piled on top of each other in unassuming buildings off alleyways that we spent three nights exploring, staying out till 5am on a wednesday and finding people on the streets even as we made our way home. The zen temple that has a 700 year old garden filled with moss and carp so contemplative that they stay completely still. The bike path along a river that is visited by cranes and crossed on large turtle shaped stones. The best meal I may have ever had made in an unassuming restaurant, with food so fresh and delicious that sometimes I laughed when I first tasted it. And real live geishas. I glimpsed two luminescent figures whiz by in a human pulled rickshaw and saw one exiting a job in the Gion neighborhood, where tea houses have played host to wealthy men being entertained by geishas since the 18th century. The combination of history, beauty, energy and care in every thing I have experienced here makes me love Japan more and realize how my outlook has changed since I was 16, when I first came here. Its nice to know that I had some inkling that this place appealed to me in a special way and now that I have grown up I can appreciate the style of living here and wonder if 16 year old me had some special insight. A question I am sure I will continue to ponder as I re-explore Tokyo for the next few days.