Intermission: Paris

So I took a break from India for a few days, and I flew to Paris to visit Kevin. The whole journey was spectacular, but let me start at the beginning.

Emirates is a great airline to fly. Some perks that I most enjoyed: hot, damp towels at the beginning of every flight; 600+ movies to choose from in individual touch-screen entertainment systems; airline food that tastes like real food; and REAL-TIME VIDEO feeds of the journey! Seriously, one of the coolest things I've experienced about the actual act of traveling. All four of the planes I was on (all Boeing 777's) had two cameras: one at the nose, and one somewhere along the bottom of the plane. Under the information section of the entertainment systems, in addition to the digital maps tracing the routes and all the stats about temperature, distance, time, speed, etc., there was the option to view either the forward or the downward cameras. So I got to see deserts, snow-capped mountains, seas, and cities from a higher-than-birds-eye view. Well, I didn't see anything on the way back because it was all dark, and most of Europe was really cloudy on the way, but I had a lovely aerial view of the Middle East. It was surreal, and completely awesome. Sometimes technology is pretty amazing.

Dubai is the largest, sparkliest airport I've ever been in. Granted, I've only been in a minuscule percentage of the world's airports, but every inside surface was literally shining, and the pavement that I saw outside (runways, sidewalks, etc.) had zero visible dirt. Crazy. Walking from my arrival gate to my departure gate, I refused all the glitzy duty-free shops, the luxury car raffle, and the $5,000,000 raffle. I stood in awe for a moment at the 3-story, 30-40-yard long wall waterfall with four glass elevators zooming up and down side by side in front of it. I then continued on my way, distracted by the shiny Rolex clocks sticking out of the wall every 20 yards or so, and I laughed at the tiny men in white suits, goggles, and masks suspended very high in the air with the terrible job of cleaning the arched wall of windows. There was a surprising lack of people in the airport, but perhaps that's because of how gargantuan it is. I'm pretty sure all of Logan Airport and then some could fit just inside the part of Terminal 3 that I walked through. (On my return trip, I timed how long it took me to walk from the gate where I arrived to my departure gate: 25 minutes.)

 

I'll skip over the boring flight from Dubai to Paris and the inexplicably long train ride from CDG to the center of Paris. On Friday, the weather was actually quite pleasant, though a bit brisk, so we decided to walk. A lot. We stayed at a hostel in the Bastille district, so after breakfast (bad coffee, French bread, and Nutella that Kevin brought), we wandered out in the direction of the Notre Dame. We walked to Notre Dame, peered around inside, and continued on along the river towards the other touristy things. Since it was a nice day, we admired the museums from the outside. We paused for a little while at the garden at Tuileries, then made our way through the little side streets around the Eiffel Tower. After much standing in line and bundling up against the wind and cold, we found ourselves at the top! The view was amazing. One of the things that struck me was how even Paris is; nearly all of the buildings are roughly the same height and almost exclusively some brand of cream/off-white, so we looked out on a vast sea of grayness punctuated by the green of parks just awakening to spring. It was very pretty, a view made all the more dramatic by the giant clouds overhead.

When we had become thoroughly chilled and windswept, we left the Eiffel Tower and decided to continue walking to the Arc de Triomphe. We spent some time trying to figure out if it was, in fact, a death wish to try crossing about six lanes of traffic in the roundabout to get to the actual monument. Once we finally consulted the guidebook, we found the underground tunnel that is there to prevent that sort of dangerous decision, and we sat and admired the pretty sculptures and beautiful day. (I still think we should have just crossed the road through a break in the traffic, but that's the Delhiite in me talking. I don't think the French would understand this Indian habit of just walking out into extremely busy streets and expecting traffic to stop for you.) Having driven by India Gate several times a week since I've been in Delhi, I can see how people draw similarities. It's interesting to see such similar structures in completely different contexts in different parts of the world. I think I like the simplicity of India Gate better, though the decorative nature of the Arc de Triomphe definitely fits in with its surroundings. 

Next, we walked down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, contemplated shopping for luxury cars, and found a bench to sit on and flowers to look at instead. Turns out that Champs-Élysées is not a good place to shop if you're on a budget. (Please note that we did actually know this beforehand. We just felt that since we were there, we should see what all the fuss was about. It's not very exciting.) While we were sitting, a random French gentleman inquired of the whereabouts of the metro station, which we sadly did not know; Kevin told him we didn't speak French and didn't know where the metro station was anyway, and the man went on his way. A little while later, we felt his pain; the metro station that seemed on the map was a matter of meters from where we stood appeared to have been protected by an invisibility charm. After some searching, we found it and returned to the hostel for a nap before dinner. Dinner was cheap and delicious, and we had a quiet evening, going to bed early because I was busy being jet-lagged and no fun. Looking back at the map, however, I feel I had a perfectly legitimate reason to be tired; we covered quite a bit of ground that day.

On Saturday, we took the train out to Versailles. We were both still tired, so in between the train station and the Château, we stopped for coffee. I paid 4 euros for a cappuccino, which was delicious and completely overpriced. I went back to cheaper-but-still-overpriced espresso after that. Walking up to the Château de Versailles was a little mind-boggling; seeing gold-leaf on everything inside and out was a bit overwhelming. Inside was a further display of opulence and luxury for the sake of luxury. Colorful, regal, and utterly impractical. It was fun to walk through, but I could never imagine someone actually living in a place like that. Although I'm sure some smashing parties were thrown in the Hall of Mirrors.

It was pouring rain when we were ready to leave Versailles and continued to rain when we got back to Paris, so we spent the rest of the afternoon in the Musée d'Orsay looking at famous European art. I found my favorite Monet painting ("Houses of Parliament, Sun Breaking Through the Fog"), which was very cool. I wrote a poem based on it during my freshman year in high school that won an award, so it brought back memories. It was nice to see the original painting in person. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes.

We grabbed some food on our way back to the hostel and again needed an early-evening nap, but we ventured out into the night after that. Stopped for some delicious Nutella crepes on our way to the most bizarre night club I've been to possibly ever. Lace curtains, big oak tavern tables, religious statues, and odd postcards don't even begin to explain. The music got progressively more eclectic (and worse) as the evening went on, but the place had a line down the alley and out to street, and it was overflowing with dancing Europeans the whole time we were there. It was a lot of fun, although I half-expected to hear bad Bollywood songs blasting out of the speakers every time the song changed. :) Since it was no longer raining when we were ready to go home and the metros had stopped running, we walked the couple miles back to the hostel and crashed.

Due to daylight savings time, which I had noted before I left but promptly forgot about upon my arrival in France, we missed free coffee on Sunday morning at the hostel, so that was first on our to-do list after we had eaten and showered. After we were properly caffeinated, we walked a few blocks down to the Sunday street market. I adore street markets of any variety, and I was not disappointed. I was "ooh-la-la"-ed by what I believe to be an Italian produce vendor (since he said, "Buon' giorno!" right before "Ooh, la la!"), which made me giggle. We bought delicious fresh bread made from every grain known to mankind and some awesome Camembert cheese, which was a mid-morning snack (and lunch, and an afternoon snack...). To top it off, we got a scrumptious chocolate tort. There were Spanish boys singing a cappella, abandoning their songs midway to burst out into laughter, and there were old ladies selling daffodils, and there were cute puppies. There was stencil-graffiti on the sidewalk that said "NAMASTE" so I took a picture, and we sort of wandered the aisles gazing at the wide variety of goods available (including one lonely crab, which startlingly turned out to be alive, though just barely, we think). 

When we finished with the market, we went to the Louvre Museum. Though we had walked by it on Friday during our Paris-by-foot exploration and commented on how huge it looked, it wasn't until we were inside the thing that we fully realized how HUGE it is. Large portions of it were closed, and we walked through many, many galleries, but we still saw only a tiny portion. I didn't realize how overprotective they are of the Mona Lisa; it's in a glass case on a wall by itself, with two layers of barriers arcing around it. You can't get closer than about fifteen feet, and there were at least three museum workers/guards (not really sure what they were, but they were official-looking) keeping an eye on the crowd. So we saw it, took pictures of us with the painting in the background, then sought a less crowded area.

After a few hours we decided we were completely visually overstimulated and incapable of properly appreciating any more art, so we sat outside at the edge of a fountain, ate some more delicious bread and cheese, and planned our next move. That wound up being a journey out to Montmartre, climbing up the hill to the Sacre Cœur, and hanging out for a while. It turned into an absolutely beautiful and calm afternoon, so when we were done exploring the church and watching the street performers, we found ourselves a bench on a quieter side of the hill and relaxed for a while.

That evening, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up for nighttime. We came approached it through the Parc du Champs de Mars, which also contains the Wall for Peace monument. It was so pretty. And so cold. But so pretty.

Monday morning was just breakfast and packing, then off to the train station, and I continued on to the airport. My return trip was less fun than the journey there: I woke up Monday morning with a cold (that's what I get for going from 95˚ and dry to 45˚ and rain and wind), and I couldn't find any place in the airport to buy medicine. I spent my last 10 euros on a travel pillow (which was a ridiculous price! but I was desperate), and that allowed me to sleep some on the plane to Dubai, but the descent into Dubai was absolutely terrible. I was unable to pop my ears to equalize the pressure, so I had a pretty terrible headache the whole 40-minute descent, and my nose was running like crazy. It was after 12:30 a.m. local time when I finally made it across the airport to my gate, and I tried to nap in the uncomfortable chairs by the gate, but it was not at all a restful sleep. Once we finally boarded the plane (I had a 4-hour layover), the pilot announced that due to the weather, we weren't allowed to take off. So we were stuck on the plane for more than a half hour before we pulled back from the gate, and then when we approached Delhi, I noticed that we were circling. We made a giant loop around Delhi, about a 30-mile radius, which set us back an additional half-hour behind schedule. When I finally made it through immigration and collected my suitcase, I went to the pre-paid taxi stand, which is supposed to be the surest way to get from the airport to anywhere in Delhi. It wasn't. Though the taxi driver acted like he knew exactly where he was going, and I gave him a landmark in addition to the name of my neighborhood, I somehow found myself on Neeti Marg in Moti Bagh, not at all near Neeti Bagh. I did, however, find out that Delhi has a national rose garden, a railway museum, and several lovely hospitals. And more traffic circles. Always more traffic circles. Anyway, after asking an ice-cream wallah, a random pedestrian, and an auto-wallah, my taxi driver (who spoke no English) finally received directions that he understood, and I eventually made it back to the residence. At which time I promptly took a nap. It was a very long and exhausting journey home, but worth every second of frustration and discomfort.

I loved Paris. I loved getting to see my boyfriend. I loved traveling more and seeing something new and exciting. I loved that I could successfully eavesdrop on German conversations at breakfast in the hostel, and I loved being able to photograph more things.

I had no classes yesterday, so I spent the day doing laundry and catching up on emails and sleep. I feel better today - more rested, and less sick, which is good. Everyone else in the house except one other girl is still traveling, so it's nice and quiet here, which I'm enjoying. My weekend plans consist of actual schoolwork (crazy, right?), writing papers and doing lots of microeconomics reading and remembering all that Hindi that got lost with hearing French and German for four days.

Congratulations if you made it all the way to this point; I know I've been putting up lengthy posts lately. It's hard to be concise and detailed at the same time, and I already feel like I'm leaving so much out. Hopefully between these stories and the pictures I've put up, you get a good idea of what I'm experiencing. I need to tell these stories now before I forget them all or just have too many to tell. :)

Now that I've recorded all the observations, I'll try to get some thoughts up next time. 

Until then, namaste, beautiful people.

P.S. The date on the post is correct. I did, indeed, begin writing it on March 31st, and it took me a full 48 hours to find the energy to complete it. Blogging's hard. :)

Delhi Days

I've spent the last few days here in Delhi, doing Delhi-things. A quieter weekend than most, but a good one.

I've been bringing along my little Canon Powershot in hopes that I'll remember to take pictures of daily life, but I've only rarely been succeeding. However, here's a picture of a major intersection near my house, right by the flyover for the highway and in between Neeti Bagh and Defence Colony, where we go for good food, good desserts, and American groceries.

It's getting hot here in Delhi, so the autorickshaw rides provide a much-appreciated breeze and shade from the sun. I think that's still my preferred method of transportation.

Speaking of autos, I don't know if it's something about me or something about auto-wallahs, but these days I've been getting a lot of "meter se" - price by meter. I also realized that if the auto-wallah doesn't name a price when I say where I want to go, I should just get in and sit down rather than asking how much he's going to charge. Then I point at the meter, say I want the price by meter, and most of the time they switch it on right away. By that time, they've started driving and don't want to risk losing a passenger because they charge too much.

I was going to take pictures at Ramjas one day last week when I was there for classes, but then I remembered how nosy all the students are. Classes are done this week, so the campus should be relatively empty. I'll still be going back to meet with teachers for the independent study portion of my two Ramjas courses, so I'll bring my camera along on one of those days without having to answer a million questions about who I am, where I'm from, and why I'm taking pictures. However, I did take some pictures of these interesting flowers because I see them everywhere:

They come from some sort of tree, and I keep forgetting to ask someone what their name is. They're strange creations; they are these huge, fleshy flowers that fall of the tree right after they've bloomed. They haven't started withering at all when they drop, which is rather peculiar. They're all over the sidewalks, though, so I step on them on a regular basis. My roommate said it feels something like what she imagines stepping on a dead rat to be. I don't think of it in such a grotesque way, but there is something a little eery about it. These flowers behave strangely.

When I'm traveling between Ramjas and the IES Centre in Nizamuddin, I get off at a metro stop by Connaught Place, right in the center of New Delhi. My auto route always goes past India Gate Park, one of the most famous places in the city. It's a giant circular green space with playgrounds, paddleboats on tiny man-made ponds, and lots and lots of ice cream wallahs. The focal point of the park is India Gate itself:

I've heard it referred to as India's Arc de Triomphe. Guess I'll have to go see the latter so I can make my own comparison. :) At any rate, it's a nice part of the city, and part of my daily routine.

At the Centre, we have a black cat who is a stray but basically lives at the YMCA because Cate feeds her. She's pregnant right now and is very noisy, and she likes to come sit in on our classes, which my Hindi teacher doesn't like. She shoos the cat away in very terse Hindi. But she always comes back.

I'm going to steal one of the kitties if they're born before I leave. I want a kitten! And a puppy, and a monkey, and a lizard, and those cute kids from Abheypur...

At any rate.

Another of the very cool things that happens in Delhi is actually just a few minutes of walking from my house. It's called Thursday Market (for obvious reasons: once a week, on Thursdays...), and it is one of the most amazing things in Delhi. The markets are all interesting and fun and cheap, but this one has probably anything I could possibly want or need: food, produce, jewelry, fabric, underwear, safety pins, dishes, cosmetics, bootleg copies of Bollywood CDs and DVDs, spices, posters, incense and puja thalis...the list goes on and on.

This is a spice-wallah. He'll probably be my best friend right before I leave because I want to bring spices home with me, but nothing's labeled and I'm not good enough to identify all of the jars of delicious-smelling powders.

A very small glimpse of the produce section of the market. It's things like this that make me really wish I had a full kitchen to use here...I love raw fruits and vegetables, but it would be awesome to be able to cook with this stuff.

One of my favorite Indian sweets is jalebi, and there is nothing better than watching someone make them streetside, then consuming fresh, hot, sticky, greasy goodness. Like fried dough, only better.

***

On Friday, after an uneventful mid-semester group check-in with Dhyan Summers, the eccentric white woman IES wanted us to have available as our therapist, the whole bunch of us went to India Gate with Harini, our teacher (who will be reading this later as part of my Cities of Delhi project - hi Harini!). We wandered around for a short while and got ice cream, then headed over to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's house. It's massive - 350 rooms, and the whole complex covers an astounding number of acres for being in the middle of a very large city. Lutyens, the architect of most of British New Delhi, certainly figured out how to do grand displays of power. There are some nifty features, like the base of a statue of Lord Buddha in the main ballroom/hall being in a straight line from India Gate and the base being at the same elevation as the top of India Gate (because the President's House is built on a hill). There was a museum with lots of portraits of important British people, a kitchen museum of presidential kitchen gadgets, and a museum with all the gifts given to India from leaders of other countries. The UAE gave an outrageous jeweled necklace glittering with all kinds of precious stones. The USA gave a glass bowl. Way to go, America.

Something extraordinarily cool about the visit was making our friend Kashika pose in front of a huge portrait of her great-great grandfather...who happened to be the first president of India. How cool is that? Even though the president in India doesn't really have power (it's all the Prime Minister), that is still pretty stupendously awesome.

My favorite part of the visit was the sprawling Mughal gardens. Impeccably well maintained, bursting with color because spring has hit full force in Delhi, and so, so pretty. I wish I had pictures to share, but we weren't allowed to bring cameras or cell phones past the reception area. 

Friday evening we just hung out at home, enjoying the warm evening up on the terrace and the fact that no one was jumping on a bus or a train at some crazy hour of day or night.

Saturday morning I got up early to do homework, then in the afternoon went to the American Center library to get a membership (which turns out is probably a waste of rs. 400, since I don't think they actually have any resources I'll be using), and then went to the most fantastic restaurant in Connaught Place. It's called Nizam's Kathi Kabab, and those people are food geniuses. They take already delicious Indian food, mix it with a fried egg, and wrap it all up in naan, which they then also fry. Sooooo indescribably good, and pretty cheap. 

That pretty much brings me up to date. I spent today doing productive things like homework and housing forms and all that kind of fun stuff, taking advantage of the fact that my roommate went up to the Himalayas for a few days with a friend from home that's visiting. 

As usual, there are some more pictures up on flickr of the events described here.

Namaste. :)

Silk, Sun, and Sleepless Nights

Last Thursday night, Paula, Reema and I hopped on a bus headed for Udaipur. After some confusion about where the bus actually stopped, that is. We ended up at the edge of the city limits running towards a gas station with a dog chasing us as we hurried to catch the bus. We caught the right bus, though, and began our adventure driving through the spot-lit suburb of Gurgaon, past all the glitzy hotels, construction sites, and Air Force complex.

Thirteen hours later, we arrived in Udaipur. The night on the bus was interesting. We had sleeper seats, which meant we were in little boxes with cushioned floors above the rows of seats. Each compartment had a television hooked up to a DVD player in the front of the bus, so we were entertained by the Hindi version of the film Memento. It was terrible cinema. I fell asleep halfway through it. Sleep, however, is not part of the package on these buses, as I discovered in the middle of the night when there were heated arguments occurring below me, one of the bus crew shouting out the stops quite loudly (fast and in Hindi), and the driver careening around bends and flying over potholes like he thought he was driving the Batmobile.

Our bus, though it left Delhi on time (ish), pulled into Udaipur an hour and a half behind schedule. This meant that I was awake for the last two hours of the ride, though the sun hadn't risen when my alarm went off. That turned out to work in my favor; I saw the most beautiful sunrise at the edge of the Aravalli hills and through stretches of rolling plains and tiny towns. It was worth losing sleep. The sun rises bigger, brighter, and more fiery than at home.

We finally got to Udaipur and got an autorickshaw to take us to our hotel on Hanuman Ghat. Since check-out time wasn't until 10 a.m., our room wasn't empty - which also worked out in our favor. We went up to the rooftop restaurant overlooking the water and City Palace on the opposite bank, and we ate a delectable breakfast. And drank the most delicious masala chai I've ever consumed.

Once our room was ready and we deposited our belongings, we headed off to City Palace. It was big and beautiful and close to where we were staying, so it seemed like a logical starting point. On the way, we stumbled upon the Jagdish temple, which was really pretty. We also walked in while a special puja was occurring, so there were extra bells and singing and incense. 

The City Palace was very cool. It's actual a series of palaces all kind of built next to and on top of each other, but you can't really tell by looking. The oldest part of the palace is from the mid 1500s - young, by Indian standards. The neat thing about it is that it has a lot of furniture and decorations still; it was lived-in until the 1960s or 1970s, I believe. The interior walls are also very colorful, which is not a common feature or any Indian building, even palaces. (Not old palaces, anyway.)

We spent much of the rest of the day shopping. We're very good at that. Rajasthani art is very distinct, so we visited some of the art shops by the art schools in Udaipur...very cool stuff. We ate lunch and dinner that day on two other rooftop restaurants (again, one of my favorite features of Indian architecture: useable roofs). The restaurant where we ate dinner was one of the very many restaurants who had nightly showings of the James Bond movie Octopussy. I had completely forgotten that that one had scenes in India - most of those scenes were filmed in Udaipur. It's just really crazy to be walking around a small city in India seeing all these signs advertising screenings of Octopussy.

Also, Udaipur has an incredible number of French tourists. They were everywhere.

On Saturday we went out to Moti Magri (Pearl Hill) to walk around the park. We wanted to ride out to the gardens in the middle of the lake at the bottom of the hill, but the boat people were charging crazy amounts for foreign visitors and wouldn't give us a discount for being students in India, so we went just outside the city to see a village several people had recommended to us. It turned out not to be what we expected, but it was still kind of charming in its own right. It was similar to a place called Dilli Haat here in Delhi, only in a village setting. Every two weeks, the dancers, musicians, artists, and vendors in the village change; they come from real villages all over Rajasthan to sell their wares and entertain tourists. When we were done there, we headed back to downtown Udaipur, where we did more wandering and more shopping.  Then it was back on the bus for the 13-hour ride back to Delhi.

This week has been extremely busy, with a microeconomics presentation, Cities of Delhi midterm, abstract and beginning research for Cultural Diversity, and winding up actual classes at Ramjas. I haven't slept much this week, but I got everything done, and I'm here in Delhi this weekend, so I can catch up on my sleep and get ahead on my work.

Lonely Planet's Number One Highlight in India

Udaipur. Photos up on Flickr from my trip this weekend, blog post to follow in the near future.

Holi: Rites of Spring

Today was the festival of Holi here in India. It's the festival of colors, which marks the beginning of spring, and it's celebrated with a special kind of vigor in Northern India. Let me try to capture the vividness of the last twenty-four hours in words (and a few pictures).

Yesterday was Chhoti Holi ("Little" Holi), which is just a prelude to the celebration. Society still functions as usual, with perhaps a water balloon thrown here and there or some school children running by with colorful faces. In the evening, neighborhoods or families perform a small puja, or offering. All of us in the residence (as well as three homestay students) went to the Chhoti Holi ceremony for Neeti Bagh in our park. There was a giant bonfire fueled by tree

 trunks and cow dung patties that shot flames about twelve feet in the air when it was first lit. It looked like this once it calmed down a bit:

It was still a very large far - note the people standing a good ten to fifteen feet away because it's so hot.

So after the bonfire was lit, people began to circumambulate the fire, praying, asking for forgiveness of sins, and making wishes for the coming year. The neighborhood association provided grains for tossing into the fire as part of this process (typically, fire offerings consist of things like popcorn, peanuts, sesame seeds, and puffed rice). It's a very simple ceremony, but I found it rather moving. It's a very intimate setting, and it consists of two fundamental aspects of life: fire and food. When you toss your handful of food into the fire, it's symbolic of burning away the evil parts of life. Regardless of culture or religion, I think that's something everyone can relate to.

After making our way around the fire a few times, we mingled with the neighbors and drank some chai (because what would be an Indian gathering without chai?). A short time later, we made our way back home and went on with our evenings. A quiet but very nice way to set up for the festival.

Today, on the other hand, was anything but quiet. Holi is a holiday for everyone, meaning no one goes to work, public transportation is closed until 2 p.m., and no one has classes. I woke up early to do some studying on the terrace (for the brilliantly scheduled midterm I have tomorrow), and around 10 a.m. I went downstairs to get dressed. Katrina, one of the homestay girls, was in the dining room armed with bags of colored powder, spare clothes, and water balloons. She and Kashika, one of the other girls from the University of Rochester, were talking about going to JNU. Since I had just applied my coconut oil to keep the colors from sticking too much and didn't have anything else to do before lunch,  I decided to go with them. On our way out of the neighborhood, we stopped to exchange Holi greetings and colors with all of the guards sitting by the road. They seemed to enjoy that a bunch of Americans were so enthusiastic about the holiday.

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures from out and about at the university, since I had great fear about my beautiful camera's wellbeing in such lively and messy festivities. JNU was crowded and friendly, but far less scary than I thought it would be. The paper has had stories about various Holi celebrations for the past week or so, and they inevitably involve horror stories about people being tossed in sewers, having clothes torn off, unknowingly consuming bhang lassis or pakoras, or generally being mistreated. The JNU crowd, however, was all respect and happiness. No colors were flung in our eyes, no clothes were torn off (I was wearing two shirts just in case), and there was no pushing or shoving or harassment of foreigners. We experienced lots of well-wishing and "Happy Holi!"s and color-smearing from strangers, but it was all in a spirit of genuine fun. We posed for pictures, got covered in colors, made some new friends, danced a little, watched people turn trash into percussion instruments, and generally had a good time. We decided to leave before the party was over so that we could make it back to Neeti Bagh for the neighborhood celebration and lunch at the Neeti Bagh Club. We promptly threw more colors, ate delicious deep-fried food, had chai, and mingled a little more.

The weird thing about Holi is that it's generally over by 2 or 3 p.m. We went back to the house and I took photos of everyone, which will soon be up on Flickr. Here's an idea of how I looked for most of the day:

Imagine a city full of people who look like this, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the visual overload that is Holi. 

My roommate Rachel and I after returning home from the outside world this afternoon.

A half-hour shower, lots of scrubbing, and two shampoos later, I emerged mostly clean, refreshed, renewed, and looking forward to new beginnings. The simple symbolic acts of this festival are awesome - the burning and the washing away of colors are so simple but so powerful, and I think the fact that they are such basic actions is a large part of why they had such an effect on me. The whole festival is an amazing experience; it's one day when India is united despite caste, class, educational, religious, or cultural differences, and it's purely celebratory. Friends mark each other with color as a sign of forgiveness, and people often wear white so that these marks are more visible. The day was made even more fantastic by the fact that once everyone was multi-colored, it was hard for people to tell that I was American, so I felt much more like an insider than I do on a daily basis. The whole experience was refreshing.

I wish upstate New York wasn't so cold in March so that I could get this tradition started on campus next year. I plan to buy some colors and bring them home with me, just in case. :)

Tomorrow it's back to classes and my regular routine (or as close to routine as one can get in this city), then in the evening I'm heading off on an overnight bus to Udaipur with Reema and Paula. Updates towards the end of the weekend/beginning of next week.

Namaste.

Fruit Basket.

I bought my first mango of the season yesterday from the phal-wallah who wanders around Neeti Bagh. It was the most delicious mango I've ever eaten, and they're only going to get better between now and May!

I love being able to eat fresh fruit here. Pomegranate season is coming to an end, but up until now there have been pomegranates in every market and on every fruit cart on the side of the road. (I'm eating some pomegranate seeds as I'm writing this, which is kind of what inspired the post to begin with.) I eat papaya and melon every day in fruit salad at breakfast or dinner, and there have even been strawberries floating around recently. On the trip to Ajanta and Ellora I bought guavas, three for rs. 10. That's approximately twenty cents for three pieces of fruit. Which makes me really happy. I can't imagine what it must be like living in southern India around now...I'm here in the north and we have all these different kinds of awesome fruit.

End ramblings about fruit. Just wanted to share my excitement. :)

Punch, Thug, Loot, Pajama...

...all were stolen from Hindi. Your trivia for the day.

But to make it more relevant, I am currently sitting in my pajamas working on a paper for microeconomics, thinking about becoming a thug and doing some looting this summer to finance further world travels, and I drank some punch this morning at breakfast. (That last bit isn't quite true - I drank a juice of mixed fruit, but it was pre-made by Tropicana, not called punch, and probably didn't have the traditional panch [five] ingredients of the original punch. But it almost works.)

In other news, today three of my friends and I were chased by a snaggle-toothed, gray-haired, bent-backed auto-wallah who was angry we didn't give him more money. We got in after him agreeing to the price by meter plus rs. 10 for the extra person (for more than three people, 10 extra is standard, though some try to convince us to pay more). Upon arrival in Nizamuddin, however, he wanted an additional thirty (which is outrageous, since the distance only cost rs. 35). He got out of the auto and was yelling at us, but I just gave him what we owed as per our agreement, and we walked across the street to the Centre. He jumped back in his auto, drove into the parking lot, then chased us inside the building. We ran up the stairs to enlist the help of Reeta or Pramod (the office assistant who doubles as our bodyguard), and I guess he either gave up or someone yelled at him before he got up the stairs. He looked like a cartoon villain, though, which made the whole thing hilarious.

That is all. Back to my paper.

Midway Thoughts: The Universe Sings

Yesterday marked the halfway point of my time in India. These are all-the-way thoughts about the midpoint of my stay. 

[Disclaimer: The following paragraphs contain feelings and reflections. If you want adventure stories, skip this post and read the other ones about Jaipur, Aurangabad, Abheypur, or Agra.]

Yesterday evening was the first time I felt positively in love with Delhi. Ravi Shankar performed a free concert in Nehru Park near Chanayakapuri at dusk, and nothing could taint it, not even the rude guy sitting next to me who kept staring at me even though the gorgeous Anoushka Shankar's live image was being projected on the screen on the other side of him. At the time, these were my thoughts:

It reminds me of that time in Rochester that we stood on the footbridge to watch the sunrise.

A sliver of crescent moon clean and bright, with the sun melting behind the palm trees. I can't speak or I'll ruin the magic. The most exquisite moment, the moment I saw clearly spirit of Bharat. A lone hawk kettling low in the dying sky, singing the sitar melody that floats above the lawn. The air is so still, yet simultaneously it swirls and fills itself with music. A rustling crowd settles down and never here have I seen the masses so quiet. The audience listens with rapt attention to the maestro bent and ailing but spry and caring. 'Namaskar, Delhi-friends,' and he begins. He ends, 'Everywhere I play - Paris, London, Brussels - people ask me if this is my final performance. I do not know. I say it is only semifinal.' The whole while, there's the smile of spending half a life playing, a quarter of life tuning, and a whole life learning which the sentiment of the evening. India opens her arms to me in a cool and colorful embrace. A silver plane trailing pink smoke shoots the moon, and I feel it will reach that place. The ballet-dancing hawks are replaced by waltzing bats, and the moon overtakes the sun. The stars bashfully reveal their positions behind azure curtains thickly blanketing this sacred space. There is no room here for anything but beauty.

After living in Delhi for two months, I feel I can step back and realize how much I've learned.

I adore India and all of the sensory input that overwhelms me every day: the landscape, the ruins, the colors, the cooking, the weather, and even the dirt and mosquitoes. However, I still I feel like an outsider most of the time, and this is clearest to me when I'm walking in and around Ramjas. Students that I know speak at least some English stare at me but don't speak to me, or say hello and quickly return to conversations in Hindi. I inherently distrust all men here, which is a sad feeling, but one that has seemed necessary for me to continue my life as uninterrupted as possible. I don't make eye contact in public with any male I don't know (the ones who stare a lot tend to be the creepers, whereas the nice people keep to themselves for the most part), and most of the females are too shy or too well-trained or too...something to initiate conversations with strangers. At times, it's incredibly lonely, and I feel like there's a barrier between me and the real, complete India. There are things I feel I simply cannot access because I'm not from here. Yet, unlike at home, I cannot hide in anonymity and content myself with absorbing all of my surroundings, observing everyone and everything but remaining unobserved. Even dressed in salwar kameez and head covered in dupatta, I feel that there are always eyes on me, always people watching my every movement. And it's true. Someone is always watching, but it's more like a stage performance or a zoo exhibit than normal, friendly people-watching. Every now and then I wish I could experience India as a twenty-one-year-old male instead of as a young woman. The university students my age seem to be by and large intimidated by members of the female sex, particularly if they are American. The boys in the program have much more frequent and much more meaningful interaction with our peers because for some reason, they are less threatening. Or something. I don't really know what it is.

EDIT: As I was sitting on the grass at Ramjas this morning typing this post, two Indian boys came up and started talking to me. We went to the canteen for coffee, they showed me some parts of campus I hadn't seen before, and then we talked to a few more of their friends for a while. They were very excited to have an American friend they could use to practice and improve their English; the two boys are from Haryana, the state where our rural excursion took place, and I got the impression they're also more village boys than urban kids. They don't even speak much Hindi, so trying to hold a conversation was very funny. Neither Hindi nor English was quite sufficient, but it was a lot of fun. Exhausting, but fun. I hung out with them for about two hours. I discovered the secret to making friends on campus: pull out a laptop when you're sitting by yourself. It's like a magnet; that, or it's a big banner that says "Interesting, friendly American student!" That's how Mark Iscoe, the most popular of the boys in our group, seems to have made all his Ramjas friends. I can't believe it took me this long to discover it.

Despite feeling like I will mostly remain an outsider in India, I firmly believe that there is no other place in the world like it, and I do not for a moment regret my decision to come here. In fact, it is one of the best things (if not the best) that I've done for myself. I feel more grounded in myself, more confident and independent, more capable of finding my way through chaos, more sure of what's important to me, and better able to unravel mysteries I find around me. I'm refining my definitions of beauty, peace, and happiness, and I've seen people living in a manner that's not quite real until you experience it firsthand. I've seen both sides of the opulence-destitution continuum, and I've discovered the cultural complexities involved in so simple an act as waving to street kids or playing with them for a minute before moving on. I'm learning how to cross language barriers and built makeshift bridges across cultural gaps, even if they're only temporary. I've traveled by all means of transportation and engaged in conversation with all types of people. I'm learning new communication and language skills, realizing the value of the ones I had, and resurrecting a talent I thought I'd lost. I'm cataloguing images and sensations and collecting memories. I'm maintaining relationships that I thought slowly evaporate and letting go of things I thought would stay with me for far longer than they should.

Delhi is full of surprises, and every day is a new adventure. I feel like I could live here for a year, go to a different neighborhood every day, and still be surprised by what I find. I've also realized that I would love to come back and live in India when I'm no longer a student. The education system is sub-par compared to what I'm used to and want, and the academic side of this trip has been disappointing. I had very high expectations for my classes, and perhaps that's my fault, but I also quite simply do not jive well with the Indian teaching system and rarely feel challenged by my courses. It's frustrating to spend time commuting to classes that don't happen when there's so much I want to see and do before I leave. So my solution is to come back at some point after I graduate and find someone who will pay me to do all that exploring. :)

In summary, I am all love for India. I even love the parts that are terrible. I don't think I can ever explain properly.

I'm happy that you all have been reading my blog and looking at my pictures, and that you've been commenting, emailing, skyping, and IMing me. I've had a lot more contact with home than I thought I was going to, and I think that's made a huge difference in the way I deal with everything going on here. Thank you. :)

Namaste, good night, and happy March.

Ellora.

A little late, but....

Last Monday was part 2 of the field trip, a journey out to the rock temples at Ellora. The sculptures there were amazing. Kailash Temple in particular drew everyone's attention. Our tour guide told us that it's the largest monolithic structure in the world, and even if that's not true, it is seriously impressive. I was amazed at how different all of the caves were; each one evoked a completely different feeling, but all of them left me in awe. Part of why I liked Ellora better than Ajanta may have been that there were fewer people, but the statues are also more impressive than paintings you can barely see because they've deteriorated and there's virtually no light in the cave. The scale of the temples in Ellora was much grander than the ones at Ellora, which probably has something to do with religious differences, too. Ellora is primarily Hindu, and Ajanta is mostly Buddhist.

I was a little disappointed in the trip because there was so much to see, but it's a generous estimate to say we saw a quarter of it. People were complaining about the heat and being hungry on the first day (we were in the middle of nowhere), and on the second day, the tour guide and the IES teacher decided which temples were "important" to see and skipped the rest. That was frustrating; they live here and can come back whenever they have a free weekend, but I don't know when or if I'll get to go back. We saw some pretty cool stuff, though. I'm happy I went.

On our way back to Aurangabad from Ellora, we stopped at the tiny Taj! It's another tomb for a woman, but this one was made by the woman's son because her husband the emperor was a cheap jerk. (I don't actually know why he didn't want to give his wife a nice tomb, but compared to the story for the real Taj Mahal, this one is sad.) It's very strange going there. They copied almost every detail of the Taj, but poorly. The architecture is imperfect and not at all elegant, and it's completely disproportionate. The minarets are taller than the dome, and the main body of the tomb looks squished compared to how tall it is. However, like in Agra, the Indian tourists there wanted to take our pictures. We said no. We made friends with an Indian schoolgirl, though, who was adorable and shy and kept waving and smiling and looking like she wanted to talk to us but was afraid to. It was pretty cute.

The train ride home to Delhi was less than stellar. Though we had eaten dinner on Monday night and breakfast Tuesday morning in the hotel to avoid anyone getting food poisoning, about half of us (myself included) were sick on the train ride back. I didn't want to have to throw up in the train bathroom, so I took some medicine and slept. Surprisingly, it worked. I slept much of the way back, which I'm very thankful for because it would have been utterly miserable otherwise.

Pictures on Flickr of the pretty Buddhist and Hindu rock art. :)