OK, so I'm back to slackerdom, apparently.
I am going to make an excuse for procrastinating and say that I'm just trying to enjoy some good old fashioned laziness before I start back at work next week. This is probably bullshit -- anytime is a good time for laziness!
Anyway, in order to stave off anybody's anger at not hearing most of the exciting adventures of my final days in India, I have started to upload some pictures to my flickr account.
The most convenient way to look at them is to click right here.
Please note that since I took SO FREAKING MANY pictures, I am starting to add them very slowly. At this point, I have only added photos that I don't want to tweak in photoshop. Which means this is some of the less exciting stuff, aesthetically. Mostly just plain old snapshots. But it will hopefully whet your appetites for the pretty ones to come. I hope you appreciate this more 'curatorial' approach rather than me just plonking into flickr every damn picture I took and letting all of you wander aimlessly through my 50 practically-identical photos of some Nawab's tomb in Lucknow.
As for why I have given you the silly ones and not the artsy ones, it's because I deleted CS3 off my computer before I left. Why did I do that? Dude, I was so stupid back then...
Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
That Is All I Have To Say About That
This is not photoshop. I really went to the Taj Mahal.
You can tell I'm not making this up because I look like crap.
Would I have photoshopped a picture of myself looking this bedraggled into the Taj Mahal?
You can tell I'm not making this up because I look like crap.
Would I have photoshopped a picture of myself looking this bedraggled into the Taj Mahal?
Thursday, March 6, 2008
I'm Home!
OK, yet another quick note just to let yall know I'm back home in Brooklyn, safe and sound. More later.
Serious catching up, and wrapping up, etc etc etc is in store, so don't think this blog is over yet!
For instance, in the next few days I'm hoping to either make some photo recap posts or post a link to some kind of flickr slideshow or something. So stay tuned, because OMG I took literally a thousand photos and now you all have to look at them.
Serious catching up, and wrapping up, etc etc etc is in store, so don't think this blog is over yet!
For instance, in the next few days I'm hoping to either make some photo recap posts or post a link to some kind of flickr slideshow or something. So stay tuned, because OMG I took literally a thousand photos and now you all have to look at them.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Homeward Bound
I'm sittin' in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination...
Or, really, I'm sitting in the internet cafe around the corner from the seedy Mumbai guesthouse that is storing most of my luggage, trying to mentally prepare myself to come back to America.
But I do, in fact, have a ticket for my destination. One outta two ain't bad, right?
Anyway, folks, it's been fun. I'm not entirely finished with this blog, because I know I haven't written about the Taj Mahal (which was like a week ago, what is WRONG with me?), or about my upstairs-downstairs train trip back to Mumbai, or about the several days I have now spent between Mumbai and Pune. I will fill you all in on all of this from the comfort of my couch in Brooklyn, in a couple of days.
From here on out, I pretty much just have to go reclaim my stuff, get a taxi to the airport (I'm really hoping for one of the especially cool ones with the velour interior, blue strobe light, huge shrine to Ganesh on the dash, etc. But honestly any cab will do.), and bon voyage!
Or, really, I'm sitting in the internet cafe around the corner from the seedy Mumbai guesthouse that is storing most of my luggage, trying to mentally prepare myself to come back to America.
But I do, in fact, have a ticket for my destination. One outta two ain't bad, right?
Anyway, folks, it's been fun. I'm not entirely finished with this blog, because I know I haven't written about the Taj Mahal (which was like a week ago, what is WRONG with me?), or about my upstairs-downstairs train trip back to Mumbai, or about the several days I have now spent between Mumbai and Pune. I will fill you all in on all of this from the comfort of my couch in Brooklyn, in a couple of days.
From here on out, I pretty much just have to go reclaim my stuff, get a taxi to the airport (I'm really hoping for one of the especially cool ones with the velour interior, blue strobe light, huge shrine to Ganesh on the dash, etc. But honestly any cab will do.), and bon voyage!
Friday, February 29, 2008
A Bumpy Ride
On the way into town from the train station, my rickshaw driver, in the interest of getting himself another fare, talked on and on about this place called Mehtab Bagh, which is a park across the Yamuna with great views of the Taj Mahal. I had absolutely zero intention of hiring him to take me there, but it was good to know about.
Of course, once I got settled in and really did want to go out to Mehtab Bagh, I now had to find a way to get there. As all of you have probably learned from this blog, the getting there is at least 70% of any experience in India. Wandering a few blocks from my hotel I found a cycle-rickshaw. [As I said yesterday in my post about my perfect day in Delhi, cycle rickshaws are my favorite way to get around an Indian city.]
"How much to Mehtab Bagh?"
"100 rupees there and back," according to the driver, Lalu. Rickshaw wallahs are always keen to take you somewhere they know you'll be a long time, and then charge you more than double so they can sit around smoking bidis and be guaranteed another fare after that nice break.
After a long lecture about how there are no rickshaws over at Methab Bagh to bring me back (riiiiight...), it will get dark soon, it's not safe, blah blah blah, I agreed. I seldom have the energy to get into all-out bidding wars with rickshaw dudes, because it tends to not actually save you much money. You'll eventually arrive at a fare 10 or 20 rupees shy of what they wanted in the first place, saving you a grand total of like 50 cents, max. If you have any chance of a much lower fare, he'll agree right away.
So I climbed up and we were off. On a map, Mehtab Bagh looks very close to my guesthouse just a few blocks from the Taj. I figured it would be 2 seconds away and I was an idiot for paying so much and agreeing to the "there and back" scheme.
We left the backpacker hotels and souvenir shops of Taj Ganj and coasted through the winding streets of the old city, past madrasas, bazaars, and crumbling havelis. Men lounge on charpoys, alternately spitting tobacco and sipping tea fro disposable-yet-eco-friendly terra cotta cups. Women draw water from street corner hand pumps which pour into stainless steel amphorae the women somehow manage to cart home on their heads. The call to evening prayer comes from a thousand directions -- there are as many mosques in this part of Agra as there are churches in small-town Mississippi.
We passed a tractor. Then a bullock cart. Then a convoy of camels. This is India at its most scenic, the stuff that makes you want to come here in the first place. OK, so it seemed Mehtab Bagh isn't as close as I thought. Well, that's fine, makes me feel like less of a newb. I'm along for the ride and loving it.
And then we came to the bridge. From afar it looked just like any bridge over any river. Then we actually got on it. It's studded with potholes -- for the first time, I wished rickshaws had seatbelts. I stupidly looked down and notice that some of the potholes were so serious that I could see the river through them. I white-knuckled the arm rests, thanking god that this rickshaw had armrests. It's as scary as my annual spin on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island, except scarier beacause it's not on purpose. Visions of travel insurance danced through my head. It occurs to me that I'm going to have to do this again coming back. I curse my agreement to ride back with Lalu. Maybe I can just pay him and then hitch a ride in someone's taxi.
Finally crossing the bridge, we headed through a slightly newer part of the city, which gradually transitioned into the slums that line the flood plain of the Yamuna. Jubilantly grimy kids gave chase, calling, "Hello! You give one rupee! Hello! You give one school pen! Hello! You give one chocolate!" I would happily hand over an entire Office Depot worth of Bics if I thought it would help them. I want to smuggle them back to the US in my luggage and give them a real roof, three meals a day, and an education.
The kids fell back as we approached the park. Lalu parked the rickshaw and stalked off in search of paan. I took a right down a wooded path and there it is. The Taj Mahal. It's so beautiful I decided it was definitely worth it, and not only that, I'd be fine riding back over the bridge in Lalu's rickshaw.
Of course, once I got settled in and really did want to go out to Mehtab Bagh, I now had to find a way to get there. As all of you have probably learned from this blog, the getting there is at least 70% of any experience in India. Wandering a few blocks from my hotel I found a cycle-rickshaw. [As I said yesterday in my post about my perfect day in Delhi, cycle rickshaws are my favorite way to get around an Indian city.]
"How much to Mehtab Bagh?"
"100 rupees there and back," according to the driver, Lalu. Rickshaw wallahs are always keen to take you somewhere they know you'll be a long time, and then charge you more than double so they can sit around smoking bidis and be guaranteed another fare after that nice break.
After a long lecture about how there are no rickshaws over at Methab Bagh to bring me back (riiiiight...), it will get dark soon, it's not safe, blah blah blah, I agreed. I seldom have the energy to get into all-out bidding wars with rickshaw dudes, because it tends to not actually save you much money. You'll eventually arrive at a fare 10 or 20 rupees shy of what they wanted in the first place, saving you a grand total of like 50 cents, max. If you have any chance of a much lower fare, he'll agree right away.
So I climbed up and we were off. On a map, Mehtab Bagh looks very close to my guesthouse just a few blocks from the Taj. I figured it would be 2 seconds away and I was an idiot for paying so much and agreeing to the "there and back" scheme.
We left the backpacker hotels and souvenir shops of Taj Ganj and coasted through the winding streets of the old city, past madrasas, bazaars, and crumbling havelis. Men lounge on charpoys, alternately spitting tobacco and sipping tea fro disposable-yet-eco-friendly terra cotta cups. Women draw water from street corner hand pumps which pour into stainless steel amphorae the women somehow manage to cart home on their heads. The call to evening prayer comes from a thousand directions -- there are as many mosques in this part of Agra as there are churches in small-town Mississippi.
We passed a tractor. Then a bullock cart. Then a convoy of camels. This is India at its most scenic, the stuff that makes you want to come here in the first place. OK, so it seemed Mehtab Bagh isn't as close as I thought. Well, that's fine, makes me feel like less of a newb. I'm along for the ride and loving it.
And then we came to the bridge. From afar it looked just like any bridge over any river. Then we actually got on it. It's studded with potholes -- for the first time, I wished rickshaws had seatbelts. I stupidly looked down and notice that some of the potholes were so serious that I could see the river through them. I white-knuckled the arm rests, thanking god that this rickshaw had armrests. It's as scary as my annual spin on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island, except scarier beacause it's not on purpose. Visions of travel insurance danced through my head. It occurs to me that I'm going to have to do this again coming back. I curse my agreement to ride back with Lalu. Maybe I can just pay him and then hitch a ride in someone's taxi.
Finally crossing the bridge, we headed through a slightly newer part of the city, which gradually transitioned into the slums that line the flood plain of the Yamuna. Jubilantly grimy kids gave chase, calling, "Hello! You give one rupee! Hello! You give one school pen! Hello! You give one chocolate!" I would happily hand over an entire Office Depot worth of Bics if I thought it would help them. I want to smuggle them back to the US in my luggage and give them a real roof, three meals a day, and an education.
The kids fell back as we approached the park. Lalu parked the rickshaw and stalked off in search of paan. I took a right down a wooded path and there it is. The Taj Mahal. It's so beautiful I decided it was definitely worth it, and not only that, I'd be fine riding back over the bridge in Lalu's rickshaw.
Time Warp
OK, so the next two posts are from things I wrote in Agra, a few days ago.
Agra is yet another city with a tough reputation, but which I don't find to be that bad. Yes, the constant flow of "come in my shop!", "Buy my marble doohickey!", and "You want rickshaw madam?" is midly annoying. But there's an easy antidote: ignore them. I don't live here. I don't know these people, and I don't owe them anything. If they think I'm stuck up or rude, who cares? I think they're annoying, and yet that doesn't appear to affect their behavior.
The bottom line - I got off the train without a word from anybody. There's a prepaid auto-rickshaw booth which charges sensible fares to key parts of town. My guesthouse is pretty much everything I could ask for, and dirt cheap. I didn't even face an unusual level of hassle at any of the very, very famous tourist sites I visited. I just don't get what the fuss is about.
Agra is yet another city with a tough reputation, but which I don't find to be that bad. Yes, the constant flow of "come in my shop!", "Buy my marble doohickey!", and "You want rickshaw madam?" is midly annoying. But there's an easy antidote: ignore them. I don't live here. I don't know these people, and I don't owe them anything. If they think I'm stuck up or rude, who cares? I think they're annoying, and yet that doesn't appear to affect their behavior.
The bottom line - I got off the train without a word from anybody. There's a prepaid auto-rickshaw booth which charges sensible fares to key parts of town. My guesthouse is pretty much everything I could ask for, and dirt cheap. I didn't even face an unusual level of hassle at any of the very, very famous tourist sites I visited. I just don't get what the fuss is about.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
...Drank Sangria In The Park...
Today I had probably my all time most ideal day, ever. Seriously, if you asked me to list exactly what I'd do if I could do anything in the world, today would be pretty much it. Not even counting the India aspect.
Got up about 8:30 without an alarm or anything. There was hot water. Put on clothes which were clean, matched, and which I actually wanted to wear. (this wouldn't usually be a specific stipulation for my perfect day, but in India it needs to be said after two months with only two or three changes of clothes.)
I jetted off to the cafe across the street and had my favorite Indian breakfast - aloo parantha (basically flat bread stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) and some of the best yogurt I've had in India so far, washed down with a big ol' cup of chai. While doing this, I read the paper. The sudoko was just hard enough to be interesting, but just easy enough to make me feel smart.
I got into a cycle rickshaw (favorite mode of non-train transportation in India, hands down) and headed into Old Delhi without incident. Old Delhi is all of my favorite aspects of New York, distilled into everclear. My rickshaw happened to take me up an entire street of stationery markets, and I managed to make a mental note of how to get back there later, because at the moment I was headed for one of my all time favorite ways to spend a day: historical nerditude.
The Red Fort (AKA Lal Qila in Hindi) was the seat of Mughal power in India - it's basically the Tower of London and Versailles rolled into one, except with way cooler architecture. It's also, hands down, the best preserved, maintained, and organized historical site I've visited here. Everything is clearly labeled. There are clean bathrooms, orderly paths, and kiosks selling drinks and simple snacks so if you get thirsty or realize you forgot to eat lunch, you can grab some bottled water and chips or cookies or something to tide you over and don't have to rush through the place in order to get out and find something. The museum is skillfully curated and has actual important artifacts on display. Even the silly little tourist guidebook the hawkers sell out front is full of genuinely useful and interesting background information (Aurangzeb staged a coup and murdered his two older brothers right here in the Diwan-i-Khas, for instance). So I had a fascinating morning learning all about the various Mughal emperors and the history of Delhi while also admiring incredibly beautiful architecture.
After I finished up there, I decided to have a wander down Chandni Chowk, the fabled main thoroughfare of Old Delhi. Chandni Chowk translates to something like "Crossroads of the Moon". Apparently it was the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue of 15th century Delhi, which at that time was basically the capital of the civilized world. This was the India that European royalty sent scores of explorers to find. This was where you could get all the jewels, spices, gold, silks, and perfumes craved by the back asswards folks in crappy third world countries like France and Spain. I think it's important to remember that at this time, India was such a world super power that the elite of Europe didn't even fricking know how to GET THERE. Literally.
In the intervening centuries, Chandni Chowk has been transformed into something that bears a striking resemblence to Canal Street in New York. Cut-rate clothing stores. Fast food restaurants and snack stalls. Teensy stalls selling luggage or cheesy souvenirs or a collection of random items you can't live without (buckets, padlocks, plastic sheeting). There are even designer knockoffs, which in India tend to be so crappy they in no way resemble the real thing (for instance a t-shirt with the Nike swish logo, except it's spelled "Nixe").
After an amazing lassi and a jalebi or two I decide that it's time to set off for the Jama Masjid. The Jama Masjid is just as major as the Red Fort - it's one of the largest mosques in the world and was the Mughal equivalent to Canterbury or Chartres or St. Peter's.
The weird thing about mosques is that the inside part, what I guess you'd consider the main sanctuary, is kinda dull. It's basically a big empty room. Sometimes it's a real pretty empty room, but it's not like a church or a synagogue or a temple, where there's a holy-of-holies or some sort of focal point.
What's interesting about the Jama Masjid is the outer courtyard. There's a huge tank, meant for ritual ablutions but also working aesthetically along the lines of a fountain. For some reason one corner is paved with birdseed, which means there are pigeons swooping around everywhere, little kids chasing them, mothers and big sisters trying to herd the little kids, etc. etc. It feels like a park or a public square. I could easily sit there all day.
What's even cooler is the fact that for a small fee you can climb up to the very top of one of the minarets and get a view over all of Old Delhi. Unaccompanied women aren't allowed to do this (I mean, this is Islam - we can't have people feeling all happy and inclusive and all...), so I teamed up with the first white guy I saw, this German convert to Islam named Imtiaz (who proved to be really interesting, but this blog is getting long and it's only like 2pm at this point). Climbing a minaret is actually not that fun. It's one big spiral staircase, and for a minute I was too winded and dizzy to remember why I'd gone up there in the first place. I really thought I was going to fall out -- which is funny considering that someone at Christmas warned me to be careful not to fall off the side of a temple. What about a mosque? Would that be OK?
But then I caught my breath and my balance and spent forever looking out over the city, or more correctly one small segment of a city that is twice as big as L.A.
After getting down, which was thankfully a lot easier than getting up, I sort of stupidly decided to get another rickshaw back to Connaught Place, which is the main drag of tourist-centered New Delhi. It's where all the good state-run craft emporia are, as well as the big Fabindia flagship (Fabindia is like Banana Republic with an Indian twist), and lots of other good shopping. Which was half the reason I came to Delhi in the first place. I say "sort of stupidly" because traffic was outrageous, and because Delhi has a metro with a stop right on Chandni Chowk which goes directly to Connaught Place in like 3 stops. Luckily the outrageous traffic made for really good exploring, because while my rickshaw-wallah played bumper-cars I got to scope out all the weird little stalls and beautiful old mansions from back before Partition when this area was still the creme de la creme of Muslim culture in India.
Inching along, we came upon a woman who'd been looking for an empty rickshaw for ages, and between the Hindi-speaking driver, English-speaking yours truly, and bilingual her, we agreed she could ride along. We spent the rest of the traffic jam talking about her mother in law, Hawaii, and all sorts of other interesting things. This is the BEST thing about India - people actually talk to each other, and not just small talk but anything and everything. Which was about to be repeated to brilliant results just a few minutes later.
After finally reaching Connaught Place, I had what I'd usually call retail therapy except there was nothing to be healed. It was like Christmas shopping, except better because everything is both beautiful and cheap. I even got to console myself that 90% of it was for other people, AND was at shops that sell "village industries" crafts and clothing, therefore not all evil and consumerist. In one of these shops I jumped into a casual conversation about the movie Lagaan, which is the only movie I've ever seen which is about cricket and taxes and yet still manages to be really, really fascinating. This developed into a longer conversation between me and this Brazilian girl named Raquel who is making a documentary about Bollywood. We finished our shopping together and decided to go for chai.
On the way to the chai stall, we passed a big group of mehendi-wallahs. You know, what in the US is called "henna tattoo". Raquel has lived in India for several months and thus knows good mehendi when she sees it. I'd been wanting to do this, but seeing a lot of ugly work on other tourists. We started up a conversation with two of the mehendi-wallahs, Anjali and Rajkumari, who agreed to get their kids to bring us chai so we could do both at the same time. It's a lot like getting your nails done back home. You sit back, relax, have girl talk, and basically have an excuse to do nothing for a long time. And even better, when you leave a nail salon you look ordinary and presentable -- when you get mehendi, you walk out decorated.
The sun went down, and calls to prayer came from every direction, from all the mosques, the Shiva temple, the Hanuman temple. Because Raquel speaks pretty good Hindi, we were able to converse more deeply with the mehendi-wallahs than I usually get to with nail ladies in New York, so lots more idle-yet-intense conversation ensued while they worked, and then in the hour or so that we had to wait for the henna to dry enough for us to use our hands. Another mehendi-wallah came back from the Hanuman temple with prasad for everyone. Prasad is sort of like communion, except way more casual and it actually tastes good. Hanuman temple prasad is a golden sphere of sweetness called a laddu. Since my hands were still way too muddy to touch anything, someone just popped my share right into my mouth.
This is another one of those amazing India moments. Nothing like it can exist anywhere else on the planet. I'm sitting in the middle of a public square, getting my hands painted with mud, and someone comes along and hand-feeds me holy candy.
When our hands finally dried, Raquel asked if I wanted to get dinner. It seemed she had a coupon for Domino's pizza (how surreal is this?). For a second I was mentally rebelling against eating pizza, Domino's no less, in India. Especially to crown my perfect day, and that ridiculously intense moment with the laddu. But then I gave in - I came to India to experience all of it, not just the quaint parts. And for better or for worse, Domino's pizza is India. Luckily Indians have all their own seperate pizza conventions, and we ended up getting chilli paneer on ours (chilli paneer being one of the more popular dishes in the Indian take on Chinese). We went back to Raquel's guesthouse to order pizza and hopefully scrape the dried henna mud off our hands before it arrived.
This whole thing had developed the same way you make friends as a kid - you see some other kids who look interesting for whatever reason and start playing along with them, without the need to join a club or take a class or be formally introduced. This is possible in India in a way that it's just not possible in the west. Raquel and I exchanged info and I bundled into an auto-rickshaw back to Pahar Ganj.
Why can't every day be this awesome? Even in New York - it doesn't have to involve crazy India stuff like randomly making friends in a shop, or having people pop sacred sweets in your mouth.
P.S. I haven't forgotten to blog about Agra, the Taj Mahal, and all that -- I just keep having so much to say about Delhi... It's coming, I promise.
Got up about 8:30 without an alarm or anything. There was hot water. Put on clothes which were clean, matched, and which I actually wanted to wear. (this wouldn't usually be a specific stipulation for my perfect day, but in India it needs to be said after two months with only two or three changes of clothes.)
I jetted off to the cafe across the street and had my favorite Indian breakfast - aloo parantha (basically flat bread stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) and some of the best yogurt I've had in India so far, washed down with a big ol' cup of chai. While doing this, I read the paper. The sudoko was just hard enough to be interesting, but just easy enough to make me feel smart.
I got into a cycle rickshaw (favorite mode of non-train transportation in India, hands down) and headed into Old Delhi without incident. Old Delhi is all of my favorite aspects of New York, distilled into everclear. My rickshaw happened to take me up an entire street of stationery markets, and I managed to make a mental note of how to get back there later, because at the moment I was headed for one of my all time favorite ways to spend a day: historical nerditude.
The Red Fort (AKA Lal Qila in Hindi) was the seat of Mughal power in India - it's basically the Tower of London and Versailles rolled into one, except with way cooler architecture. It's also, hands down, the best preserved, maintained, and organized historical site I've visited here. Everything is clearly labeled. There are clean bathrooms, orderly paths, and kiosks selling drinks and simple snacks so if you get thirsty or realize you forgot to eat lunch, you can grab some bottled water and chips or cookies or something to tide you over and don't have to rush through the place in order to get out and find something. The museum is skillfully curated and has actual important artifacts on display. Even the silly little tourist guidebook the hawkers sell out front is full of genuinely useful and interesting background information (Aurangzeb staged a coup and murdered his two older brothers right here in the Diwan-i-Khas, for instance). So I had a fascinating morning learning all about the various Mughal emperors and the history of Delhi while also admiring incredibly beautiful architecture.
After I finished up there, I decided to have a wander down Chandni Chowk, the fabled main thoroughfare of Old Delhi. Chandni Chowk translates to something like "Crossroads of the Moon". Apparently it was the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue of 15th century Delhi, which at that time was basically the capital of the civilized world. This was the India that European royalty sent scores of explorers to find. This was where you could get all the jewels, spices, gold, silks, and perfumes craved by the back asswards folks in crappy third world countries like France and Spain. I think it's important to remember that at this time, India was such a world super power that the elite of Europe didn't even fricking know how to GET THERE. Literally.
In the intervening centuries, Chandni Chowk has been transformed into something that bears a striking resemblence to Canal Street in New York. Cut-rate clothing stores. Fast food restaurants and snack stalls. Teensy stalls selling luggage or cheesy souvenirs or a collection of random items you can't live without (buckets, padlocks, plastic sheeting). There are even designer knockoffs, which in India tend to be so crappy they in no way resemble the real thing (for instance a t-shirt with the Nike swish logo, except it's spelled "Nixe").
After an amazing lassi and a jalebi or two I decide that it's time to set off for the Jama Masjid. The Jama Masjid is just as major as the Red Fort - it's one of the largest mosques in the world and was the Mughal equivalent to Canterbury or Chartres or St. Peter's.
The weird thing about mosques is that the inside part, what I guess you'd consider the main sanctuary, is kinda dull. It's basically a big empty room. Sometimes it's a real pretty empty room, but it's not like a church or a synagogue or a temple, where there's a holy-of-holies or some sort of focal point.
What's interesting about the Jama Masjid is the outer courtyard. There's a huge tank, meant for ritual ablutions but also working aesthetically along the lines of a fountain. For some reason one corner is paved with birdseed, which means there are pigeons swooping around everywhere, little kids chasing them, mothers and big sisters trying to herd the little kids, etc. etc. It feels like a park or a public square. I could easily sit there all day.
What's even cooler is the fact that for a small fee you can climb up to the very top of one of the minarets and get a view over all of Old Delhi. Unaccompanied women aren't allowed to do this (I mean, this is Islam - we can't have people feeling all happy and inclusive and all...), so I teamed up with the first white guy I saw, this German convert to Islam named Imtiaz (who proved to be really interesting, but this blog is getting long and it's only like 2pm at this point). Climbing a minaret is actually not that fun. It's one big spiral staircase, and for a minute I was too winded and dizzy to remember why I'd gone up there in the first place. I really thought I was going to fall out -- which is funny considering that someone at Christmas warned me to be careful not to fall off the side of a temple. What about a mosque? Would that be OK?
But then I caught my breath and my balance and spent forever looking out over the city, or more correctly one small segment of a city that is twice as big as L.A.
After getting down, which was thankfully a lot easier than getting up, I sort of stupidly decided to get another rickshaw back to Connaught Place, which is the main drag of tourist-centered New Delhi. It's where all the good state-run craft emporia are, as well as the big Fabindia flagship (Fabindia is like Banana Republic with an Indian twist), and lots of other good shopping. Which was half the reason I came to Delhi in the first place. I say "sort of stupidly" because traffic was outrageous, and because Delhi has a metro with a stop right on Chandni Chowk which goes directly to Connaught Place in like 3 stops. Luckily the outrageous traffic made for really good exploring, because while my rickshaw-wallah played bumper-cars I got to scope out all the weird little stalls and beautiful old mansions from back before Partition when this area was still the creme de la creme of Muslim culture in India.
Inching along, we came upon a woman who'd been looking for an empty rickshaw for ages, and between the Hindi-speaking driver, English-speaking yours truly, and bilingual her, we agreed she could ride along. We spent the rest of the traffic jam talking about her mother in law, Hawaii, and all sorts of other interesting things. This is the BEST thing about India - people actually talk to each other, and not just small talk but anything and everything. Which was about to be repeated to brilliant results just a few minutes later.
After finally reaching Connaught Place, I had what I'd usually call retail therapy except there was nothing to be healed. It was like Christmas shopping, except better because everything is both beautiful and cheap. I even got to console myself that 90% of it was for other people, AND was at shops that sell "village industries" crafts and clothing, therefore not all evil and consumerist. In one of these shops I jumped into a casual conversation about the movie Lagaan, which is the only movie I've ever seen which is about cricket and taxes and yet still manages to be really, really fascinating. This developed into a longer conversation between me and this Brazilian girl named Raquel who is making a documentary about Bollywood. We finished our shopping together and decided to go for chai.
On the way to the chai stall, we passed a big group of mehendi-wallahs. You know, what in the US is called "henna tattoo". Raquel has lived in India for several months and thus knows good mehendi when she sees it. I'd been wanting to do this, but seeing a lot of ugly work on other tourists. We started up a conversation with two of the mehendi-wallahs, Anjali and Rajkumari, who agreed to get their kids to bring us chai so we could do both at the same time. It's a lot like getting your nails done back home. You sit back, relax, have girl talk, and basically have an excuse to do nothing for a long time. And even better, when you leave a nail salon you look ordinary and presentable -- when you get mehendi, you walk out decorated.
The sun went down, and calls to prayer came from every direction, from all the mosques, the Shiva temple, the Hanuman temple. Because Raquel speaks pretty good Hindi, we were able to converse more deeply with the mehendi-wallahs than I usually get to with nail ladies in New York, so lots more idle-yet-intense conversation ensued while they worked, and then in the hour or so that we had to wait for the henna to dry enough for us to use our hands. Another mehendi-wallah came back from the Hanuman temple with prasad for everyone. Prasad is sort of like communion, except way more casual and it actually tastes good. Hanuman temple prasad is a golden sphere of sweetness called a laddu. Since my hands were still way too muddy to touch anything, someone just popped my share right into my mouth.
This is another one of those amazing India moments. Nothing like it can exist anywhere else on the planet. I'm sitting in the middle of a public square, getting my hands painted with mud, and someone comes along and hand-feeds me holy candy.
When our hands finally dried, Raquel asked if I wanted to get dinner. It seemed she had a coupon for Domino's pizza (how surreal is this?). For a second I was mentally rebelling against eating pizza, Domino's no less, in India. Especially to crown my perfect day, and that ridiculously intense moment with the laddu. But then I gave in - I came to India to experience all of it, not just the quaint parts. And for better or for worse, Domino's pizza is India. Luckily Indians have all their own seperate pizza conventions, and we ended up getting chilli paneer on ours (chilli paneer being one of the more popular dishes in the Indian take on Chinese). We went back to Raquel's guesthouse to order pizza and hopefully scrape the dried henna mud off our hands before it arrived.
This whole thing had developed the same way you make friends as a kid - you see some other kids who look interesting for whatever reason and start playing along with them, without the need to join a club or take a class or be formally introduced. This is possible in India in a way that it's just not possible in the west. Raquel and I exchanged info and I bundled into an auto-rickshaw back to Pahar Ganj.
Why can't every day be this awesome? Even in New York - it doesn't have to involve crazy India stuff like randomly making friends in a shop, or having people pop sacred sweets in your mouth.
P.S. I haven't forgotten to blog about Agra, the Taj Mahal, and all that -- I just keep having so much to say about Delhi... It's coming, I promise.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)