Journey to India

Even stagnation passes

2012-02-02T06:38:00.002-08:00

All things must pass. Even stagnation passes. I walked up the hill
from my apartment in Rishikesh, towards the mountains and the more
distant concrete and brick houses. The road was torn up and broken, as
a newer drainage and sewage system was being put in, a covered one
that would take sewage to a treatment plant and people would not be
able to add their trash to the open gutters that now served as
drainage.
Labourers were sitting on their haunches looking at the various pits,
some lined with gravel and earth, others with running water and pipes
at the bottom. A couple of them were working hard to dig and move
piles of gravel manually, shovelful by shovelful.
Usually the water drains down the hills along the street in open
gutters. The water has a tremendous force as it sends downhill all kinds of debris, consisting of leaves, branches, twigs, tetrapaks,
plastic and paper. But even the force of the water cannot clear away a
blockage of the modern things if they refuse to get soaked and rot.
Stagnant pools form, like small dams all along the road, usually where
the gutter narrows, or where there is a grill for the purpose of
straining out the big stuff and the debris creates temporary barriers
and the water then sits, and seeps through very slowly, and often,
just flows over and onto the road and creates new pathways.
Often men and women clear the blockages in front of their house with a
stick or rod, but they do it by sending the debris further down the
gutter, rather than take it out, unconcerned that this creates a
problem a few meters downhill. And so the solid matter forms another
plug. Today as I was walking, I saw a young woman clearing the
waterway only to have it accumulate two meters down. I asked her in my
broken Hindi, using my leverage as an elder, why she was doing it this
way. She giggled, and looked at me sheepishly. I took a stick and
started removing the second pile and throwing it over the side onto
some uncultivated land near a small waterfall, where the organic
debris would at least decompose. The water flowed better for the
moment. I thought of all the uncleared stagnant water on this hill,
both natural and manmade. I suppose, unattended, all stagnant things
eventually clear with a little help from someone or from
decomposition. Sometimes that eventuality can take a very long time.
If that time does not come, then the life force just finds another
path.

The Haridwar Hustle

2012-01-17T06:58:00.001-08:00

It's difficult to sleep properly on a night where one has to get up very early to take a train or plane. I had set the alarm for 5:30 but did not sleep very well, having drunk too much tea and gone to bed by midnight. I kept waking up. Then Auntie Gulati woke me up at 5:25 anyway and I was mildly upset for missing that extra five minutes when I really was asleep. Having showered and packed most things the night before I didn't have much to do, so we left early for the Metro, which was running. I realized I absolutely had to go to the bathroom, and when I found myself waiting 9 minutes for the next connection, I was horrified at the thought of not being able to wait or to miss the connection. I did drag my three pieces of luggage up the stairs, and found out the toilets, maintained by some sacrosanct sounding society, were outside the Metro, so I had to drop in my token and run. The female metro operator was not only completely indifferent, but I am quite sure I heard them all laugh as I schlepped my belongings to the loo. The toilets were a disaster... the doors were rusty and ill fitting in this new Metro, the seat was dirty with muddy water, the flush did not work, you had to use a small piece of branch poked into a little hole where the handle used to be, to choose between low flush and high flush. I was immensely relieved that I did have some toilet paper, as the requisite little bucket and water tap were filthy. The floor was filthy too but I had no choice but to put my bags somewhere. It was preposterous, to be crammed into a dirty little toilet with three pieces of luggage, harem pants and down jacket, running late, with no sleep, to be unable to suppress nature's call, and at the same time be stuck deep in the cement bowels of a "new" Metro. Is this what I am reduced to when I try to hold my head high? It's funny of course, yes, in an absurd, film noir kinda way, but it was damn stressful, and the only thing that saved me was my steady breathing and refusal to give up. On the way back into the metro, I had to yell to wake up the security personnel who were fast asleep on the job of preventing terrorism in the fancy new Metro, a world class target for some ancient tribal feud. Perhaps these guerrillas could skip the security check and bomb the toilets?

I finally made my way through the pre-dawn concrete jungle at Ashmeri Gates of New Delhi train station, dodging mud and excrement pools, and found my way to my car and chair number with five minutes to go. The usual anti-terrorist squad were inattentively passing all our bags through a huge screening machine. Someone had taken my window seat and pointed to me to take their aisle seat, so he could sit next to his brother, but I refused. I asserted my right to look out the window at this country that was mine to be revisited, and viewed especially after I had reserved it that way. He relented, and moved, but left his shopping bag hanging from a hook over the seat. I didn't notice at first, but once the train started to move, it kept gently knocking into my head, so I asked him to please take it, which he did. My neighbour got to talking to me, and I discovered he was from Ottawa, had lived there for ten years, and was here for his father's funeral rites. His father had died suddenly, so he and his wife had flown into Delhi just a few days ago. He was on his way to Haridwar, and as a devoted Hindu son, he and his brother were bringing the ashes to the Ganges River in this most holy of cities. I expressed my sympathies, and he nodded towards the bag hanging now next to his brother in the next seat. Those were his father's ashes. I nodded and kept a poker face as I realized his father's ashes had been knocking against my head in a benign looking shopping bag. It is a little unsettling intellectually to think of this, but on a biological level, I could only think "so what, some more organic matter, his ashes, my head, distributed in some random permutation". I focused on the landscape, the endless trail of plastic trash in various states of compression, but not degradation, refusing to disappear, the stern, grimy, grim, tired, depressed faces of thousands of early morning risers and workers and students at the railway stations and crossings. I was hoping for a sign, a signal, something to reassure me that this was not all staged by a very dark humorist.

A few hours in the winter sun

2012-01-01T22:20:00.001-08:00

I am sitting here in this tiny mountain village with my down jacket
on. This morning I decided to count my blessings, as I sat next to a
very ancient woman, so bent over she was incapable of standing up
straight. She indicated to me to sit down next to her in the sun, the
few hours of winter sun limited by the surrounding hills to maybe five
hours a day. We sat for a few minutes and she indicated "let's turn
around", and there we sat, two old women, with our backs to the sun,
soaking up the rays, and I could feel her muttering and trying to
revitalize her bones, so used to bone cold winters, no heating system,
hard labour, poor clothing, poor nutrition, feudal superstitions and
traditions, perosonal pain and loss unrecognized and disregarded.

All I could do was sit there and decide to count all the things I am
grateful for. I thought about my father, his migration to Canada, as
he was leaving behind the people he loved to escape from that which
was not good for him, and his move gave me the things I normally take
for granted. Suddenly the old woman got up painstakingly. Into our
little courtyard came a wailing woman with an entourage of kids and
other women. She had lreceived news that her father had died this
morning. Since she was married, she had had to move villages and her
father was far away. She wailed and wailed inconsolablly, and the old
woman took her place along with other ancient woman to surround the
young woman wailing. They sat there, rocking back and forth, every now
and then trying to say something consoling, sometimes berating, and
otherwise just looking very old and haggard. There is so much pain in
life. We all have pain, and I am grateful for the presence of people
and a culture that acknowledges my pain, does not dismiss it, and is
not entirely helpless in the face of the expression of my pain.
Someone listens to me when it hurts. I am grateful for human
migration, for evolution, for the moving forward of life, that the
planets rotates fully once a day and the seasons in our lives. In this
moment, whatever I have learned is forgotten, and gives way to simply
sitting in the sun, with a tear in my eye, grateful for the vessel
that carries me here and there.

Happy New Year from Sainji Village

2011-12-31T11:34:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year from Sainji Village in Uttarakhand, a small village of
35 houses sitting atop a small mountain, which itself is nestled
amoung taller mountains, in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 17
kms west of Mussoorie and about 2000 ft lower down. Tonight the local
folks have put on a New Year's Eve performance consisting primarily of
dance and more dance, from traditional to Bollywood moves. It's cold,
but everyone is sitting on the floor and holding out till the end.
Five minutes to midnight!

Ah midnight came and went and no one bothered to make a big deal about
it. Funny, that. Some young people let off firecrackers without any
regard for who was around or what was going on on stage. Stage was the
cement block surrounded by bits of cloth, quite nicely done up, the
block used earlier that day to sit and play and gossip during the few
hours of bright sun. In the couples dances it was usually men and
women, but every now and then a male would be the female and vice
versa. Traditional Indian theatre, like the Elizebethan age in
England, only has male actors. So it's not a leap for dancers. But the
boy doing the feminine role was in fact super effeminate.

Time and Earth

2011-12-29T05:35:00.001-08:00

We hear time is linear, and then that perhaps after some recent very
fuzzy physics, that time is not linear after all, and so I ask what is
it time might look like. I got to thinking one night, late at night,
before dropping off to sleep, or perhaps in the middle of the night,
that perhaps time is circular. That is, that time goes around and
around, repeating all the moments, repeating the history, but on such
a large scale, that none of us can really ever grasp it. I dont' mean
that history repeats itself in the usual way that is said. I mean
literally every single thing happens again because we go all the way
to the end of time, or at least the very furthest we can imagine, but
there is no edge, as it bends back onto itself, joins up with itself,
and starts all over again. I don't know how long that cycle could
be... it could be millions or billions of years, or two seconds, or
some unit of time that is not measurable in our usual way, but
nevertheless quantifiable in some way. There is a precedent. People
used to think that the world was flat, and that at the end you would
fall off, or before people traveled very much, that at the very least,
the world was flat and went on forever. Then eventually it came to be
that we figured out that if we kept going we would find ourselves back
to where we came from. I would like to know if this could be possible
with time.

The Taj Mahal

2011-12-26T22:34:00.001-08:00

Having already seen the Taj Mahal a few times, I thought I would be
perhaps blase. But no. Framed by the red sandstone southern gate
archway, I saw a hint of the Taj, like you might see a cheekbone and
one eye through someone's scarf wrapped around their head. The arches,
though they were 30 feet high at least, did not reveal the Taj in her
entirety. I walked along the center line of symmetry, slowly,
deliberately, one foot after another, while tourists flooded in around
me, eagerly, assymetrically, into the opening. The Taj rose, creamy
and pale, and I knew then what Jupiter might look like as it rises
over the horizon of Io, and then suddenly breaking away from all
horizon, hovers, like a marbled dream entirely filling half the sky.

Family theft and lies

2011-12-22T00:47:00.001-08:00

I met a lovely young woman, of Korean ancestry, but raised in Germany.
She is taking yoga teacher training here, and she remarked that her
yoga teacher, who is otherwise an impeccable guru, with high ethics
and values, accepts theft from within his own family. He told her that
his brother-in-law regularly disappears with his car, and uses it as a
taxi, and when the car is missing, he "finds" it, and returns it, all
washed and clean. Everyone knows he takes it, uses it as a car for
hire, and then pretends to find it again. The yoga teacher accepts
this as it is considered bad form to call a family member a liar, or a
thief, even though everyone knows it. So where do we draw the line? If
a family member is a thief, liar or worse still, a social criminal, is
it an Indian's duty to say nothing, to protect family beyond the law?
Beyond basic ethics? I find this hard to reconcile. What is it that we
owe our family members? Are we helping them to be the best they can be
by supporting their lies? How is this helpful? Indian families have
very poor boundaries when it comes to asserting their basic rights.
Indian people do stuff their whole lives in order to please their
families, often living an entire life outside their purported ethical
values. This is sad, and confusing for me.

2011-12-21T22:34:00.001-08:00

It's the coldest on record for 32 years in Kanpur, Khajuraho,
Varanasi. I freeze at night. These buildings were not made for cold,
but for hot hot weather. I wonder what the homeless people do. There
are so many. The fog is thick and impassable at night. I thank the
powers that be that I have a duvet jacket and extra leggings. And hot
chai in the morning. I survived one night in a cold jeep heading
through the dense fog and the most horrible bumpty mud/sand roads
imaginable, and slept in the jeep when we could go no further,
squished between a pokey seat belt thingie that would not go away and
the steering wheel. And survived. Frozen, stiff, but I made it.

I like to think of myself as a tough old broad, but I sure as hell
don't like getting it tested. Yet, it's amazing how far will power
will take you.

Around 1 am we were barrelling through a tiny town/village and
suddenly out of nowhere a horrible police siren jolted us. They told
us the road was too dangerous and we needed to stop driving for the
night. The girls were asleep in the back under a warm blanket, so I
did not want to wake them up to get into some cold possibly dank
"lodge", so I offered to sleep in the jeep, while the driver took his
blanket and went into the police station to sleep. Also, I really
don't trust police anywhere, but especially not in India, in a small
village, and wanted to stay close to the girls. Hence, I ended up in
the front seat with Hannah's sleeping bag but absolutely no
comfortable position to sleep in. My face was frozen too. But
somewhere in there I got a good-enough nap that I actually felt
refreshed by 6:30 am wihen the dawn broke.

Briefly in Santiniketan

2011-12-08T20:28:00.001-08:00

We are currently in Santiniketan, West Bengal, hanging out till 11:30
at the Hotel Emblic, complete with grungy walls and doors, waiting for
our taxi driver, who we have hired for five hours at a cost of $14 to
take us around to see all the sights here. It's a quiet place compared
to Calcutta. No constant blaring horns. The occasional bleating of a
cow, and the constant chirping and/or cooing of birds in the trees.
This morning I saw a brilliant yellow bird in the tree outside the
balcony of our hotel room. It sat and looked at me, then flew to my
window grill, for ten seconds looked at me, and then flew off.

Life is dusty, and slow here. I like it. You can smell the clean air
and it is refreshing. I like long quiet moments in India. It's the
India I remember from my childhood in Kanpur. Quiet, and slow, in the
hot afternoons, sleeping on a mat on the stone floor, and having all
the time in the world. I miss those days. I think they exist still in
pockets here and there, but they are hard to access when traveling,
when the mobile phone calls you with sms or the netbook beckons you to
check your email, filling in the potentially quiet moments with
static, noise, pulling you away from stillness.

Clubbing in Kolkata

2011-12-03T23:01:00.001-08:00

Well the girls and I went clubbing in Kolkata and I got a fair amount of attention from the crowd which was young and wanted to know which country we were from etc.etc. A young man asked me if I wanted a drink. I said no thanks as I already had a tall fruit juice complements of another young man who said he had membership in the club and fruit juice was free for him, and since he was making money from outsourced telemarketing to Canadians, it was his way of giving back to Canadians. Then he had a good laugh. So the first young man told he didn't want me to get the wrong idea. I said no, no, I dont' have the wrond idea. Then he added he had offered me a drink because I reminded him of his grandma. ;-) He meant it as a respectful compliment and I took it like that.

Non-Chalant Defiance

2011-12-01T19:30:00.001-08:00

It's wedding season in Kolkata. The bridal car is often decorated
gloriously with flower garlands and other props including styrofoam
cutouts naming the couple and wishing them a happy life together.
These cars, like our cab, get stuck in traffic where street beggars
work the captive cars amidst the brutal honking and diesel fumes. As
one girl, about 10 years old, begging, was being shooed away from the
bridal car, her partner, perhaps a younger brother, broke a large
chunk of the styrofoam center piece of the grill off with great malice
and satisfaction, out of sight of the passengers, and threw it down on
the ground non-chalantly, and went on to the next car to plead for
food and mercy, putting on his masterful hapless victim act.

Shanghai November 2011

2011-11-22T18:44:00.001-08:00

There are many ways to get to India from North America. I wanted to go
by land and sea this time, but it was a bit difficult on short notice.
One could take a 21 day cruise on a standard ostentatious cruise ship,
last minute discount deals, from Los Angeles or thereabouts, working
your way up to Alaska, then over or under the Bering Strait, to Tokyo,
Shanghai, Phillipines etc. but cruise ships are not the reflective
industrial ship travel that it used to be. Freight ships are out of
range as they now charge some crazy $4000 price for freight ship
"adventure travel". Crewing on sailboats or yachts might be an idea,
but they require a good deal of luck and planning.

If one got a boat of some kind. one could then get off in Shanghai,
and after spending some time there either work one's way across the
great land of China in small train trips visiting the countryside and
smaller cities and towns heading towards Lhasa. Or one could take the
new brilliant speed train to Lhasa, but either way, getting into Lhasa
requires a fair amount of bureaucracy and a guide is mandatory along
with some minimum exorbitant spending amount. And one does have to go
to Lhasa to make it to India. Going via land over Vietnam, Cambodia
and Myanmar is not easy either as Myanmar demands that you fly into
Rangoon. Oh well, so it was just easier to fly to India. Shanghai was
offered as a free stopover by China Eastern Airlines so we took it.

Shanghai of course is not typical China. It's a modern fast paced
relatively clean city boasting breathtaking skycrapers and jet setting
night clubs, alongside street food vendors, narrow alleyways and clay
tile roofs that are old and musty with mould and dank rot. The smell
of sewers and urine are frequent but not ubiquitous. Street cleaners
are constantly sweeping the roads and polishing the handrails on the
pedestrian overpasses to the super wide main roads. Bits of the
revolution survive in things like streetside public exercise machines
and old people looking neat and clean in the older drab uniform style
clothes of the sixties and sventies. Like the rest of Asia, people are
mean to street dogs and crying children who, though loved fiercely,
are chastised and shamed heartlessly in public. This I always found
hard to accept and it takes a deep inhale of the breath to move on and
stay out of it and let it go. I am staggered by China's 1,338,000,000
people. I am also staggered by India's 1,210,000,000 people. I have
visions of furious procreation, as furious as the production of
dumplings and samosas, noodle soups and rice and dal to feed the
steady stream of humans, each one of us living as if we are the only
ones, caretaking our aches and pains, our dreams and visions, our
health and wealth, only occasionally looking up to the sky and
catching glimpses of a bigger picture.

The Bamboo Flute Burning

2010-02-03T10:32:00.001-08:00

I burned two old bamboo flutes today in the woodstove. They were old,
perhaps 30 years old. They were broken, and unplayable, and really,
unfixable. That is, not worth fixing in a material kind of way. I used
to think they were worth fixing in a non-material way and that is why
I hung onto them. I thought every flute is sacred and important and
that I had a responsibility for each one in my care. But I never did
get around to fixing them.

I kept them, even broken, because they remind me that somewhere in my
fiction I want to play bamboo flutes, meditatively, quietly, perhaps
on a Bengali village roof top, or perhaps in a Zen like Japanese
setting, and some such mundane nostalgic thought place. They remind me
I had ideas about this other life. And as I live this life, and not
that life, they serve as little ghosts, hanging around, reminding me
of *that*, and when I am reminded, then I am not *this* and I am a
little torn, every day. When I walk through the house, turn around,
and look at those flutes out of the corner of my eye, look at myself,
with some firmness and some clarity, I know that they are in the flute
bin, collecting dust and not really being helpful. I have kept one.
That is enough. It works, it was fixed by a kind friend. There are
thousands of bamboo flutes in the world, perhaps millions. If I live
that other life they will be there for me.

Fixing things

2009-10-28T02:00:00.001-07:00

I don't think anyone can "fix" anything in India, or "help" in some way that is simple and satisfying and efficient. We can take little steps here and there, and plant seeds of ideas and give some encouragement here and there. It's not that change is not possible, or that good people aren't doing good things. There are millions of good ideas. But it's always quite complicated. It's like a large derelict castle that needs fixing, a castle with inner holds and villages next to it within the caste walls, within the moats, and all of it in shambles; not just a quick reno job on an old house.

I was in Prince Edward Island last year with Mehdi, and there was a huge cathedral-like Catholic church for sale. It was only $60,000. It recently had had a $60,000 roof repair. The facade needed a $100,000 face lift and the whole building needed perhaps $1,000,000 to make it in good condition. But in good condition for what? There were not enough parishioners for a congregation - that's why it was being sold. I wanted to buy it but didn't have that kind of money. Even if I wanted to fix it while living in that section behind the altar, a sort of half circle bowl shaped room, I wouldn't know where to begin fixing things. If I fixed one thing, it would look great for a little while and then the next thing would look ridiculous next to that. My idea of fixing it as majestic as it used to be is a vain and silly notion. But somehow I couldn't stop dreaming about fixing up that beautiful old church, as homage to what it once was. That church serves no function anymore, and no financially accountable developer would turn it into condos as it is just too far out in the countryside, away from the marketable oceanfront. Its time as a beautiful church has come and gone.

There are many such things in India that are not worth fixing. I am not talking about buildings only, but those too. So many mechanisms, structures, social and personal, are no longer of any use here. They get left behind readily by Indians looking for a better life. Why hang on to some old custom or tradition if it no longer serves a purpose? Why be sentimental? No one wants to be a rice and corn farmer, slogging and toiling in the fields and at home, threshing corn and leading cows from one place to another, and barely be able to eat at the end of the day. No one wants to adhere to cumbersome rituals and work in order to make pretty photos for academics and tourists to show off. Well not no one. Some do, but given a chance, most of us would trade that life, restricted by taboos and traditions and superstitions, for an easier one, trading in difficulty for ease. We would not be interested in maintaining a culture for its own sake anymore than we would spend our money and our children's money to renovate a majestic church for esthetic reasons. Much in India simply doesn't work and has to be thrown out. Much can simply not be renovated and is not worth renovating. Archaic religious customs that don't deliver what they promise, hopelessly lazy bureaucracies, mindless schooling systems, corrupt policing organizations, mind numbing political rhetoric. As an evolutionary process, tihngs change, they always do, and as I honour that which has been, I also release my attachment to it so that it may disappear happily, making room for new rituals and ceremonies. Some institutions will resist change, but it si futile. The tighter it hangs on, the harder it falls. India will be reborn, again and again, but not according to the plans of politicians or intellectuals or fundamentalists of any stripe. India will be reborn as it sees fits, in ways that are inscrutable to any of us. This may mean that the structure and form of the old, that which we are attached to, has to crumble in its entirety or perhaps only partly, maybe keeping a facade or an aspect or two, and then take on a form that is useful, affordable and hopefully still esthetically pleasing and uplifting for our spirits.

Rice and Nutrition

2009-10-20T03:54:00.000-07:00

Please don't accuse me of being a spoil sport. I know you all love Indian food and the taste of it. It is the most delicious food in the world. My concerns are around nutrition. I believe today's Indian food is severely lacking in nutrition. In the old days everything was organic, and things were eaten in balance. Chapatis were made of whole wheat, people ate sugar only occasionally and heavy meals were not taken more than once a day and that was only if you were lucky. Rice is a staple here as many of you know.

All rice eaten is white rice. White rice is brown rice with the outside polished off. I am not sure what the process is exactly. But it is fair to say that the lion's share of nutrition is lost when rice becomes white. Like in Europe in early last century, only rich people ate white bread and the poor people ate brown bread. Guess who was healthier? Then poor people, wanting to imitate the rich, started eating white bread when they could afford to do so with their new found middle class wealth. And then it became the staple. I remember back in the seventies, when you would get treated like a real weirdo for asking for brown bread in restaurants in Canada. It is like that here, if I ask for brown rice. Nix that. I don't really ask for it. I mention it and no one has any idea what I am talking about. Except for a few brave souls who have figured out how healthy it is. If India would switch to brown rice, overnight nutrition would improve drastically for 8-900 million people. That's a lot of people. Most of you readers know the benefits of whole grain foods. In North America, it is poor people who eat white bread now and those with bigger budgets eat brown bread and its many cousins. This is what is going to happen here. Poor people will continue to eat white rice while middle class people will be eating brown organic Basmati rice and exporters will be thrilled to have found a domestic market much larger than the export one. The only ones negatively affected will be rice polishers. Let's hope they find something else to work on. I'm sure it will happen very soon.

Status & Getting By

2009-10-15T23:59:00.001-07:00

Indian people, by their own account, are deeply motivated by desire for social status. Status is everything. If a man or woman is broke, and they currently enjoy the status of say, bank clerk, they would not in a thousand years stoop to serving tea in a tea stall. Who I am seen with, what I wear, what shop I buy my things in all count. What really counts is where I live. It doens't matter if it's humble, it's the address that counts. If I present an address at a bank or post office or optician that is considered a premium location (such as the address of the friend whose flat I have been living in) I immediately get respect and admiration. This is rooted in the feudal caste system, among other things, so in today's economic climate it becomes a matter of both caste and class. It's an incredibly deep snare to get caught in.

Keeping up appearances is paramount. To do so, it is quite acceptable to lie, at least in amounts so that no one can check up on you. People lie so that they can save face and appear successful and happy. It doesn't matter much whether they are happy or successful... e.g. they could have a job in a prestigious firm, but it would never do to share with anyone that your boss humiliated you daily. To say that you have drunk a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label gives status as opposed to some cheap Indian scotch. I will be traveling by train soon. I took 2nd class AC (air conditioned) because that's all I could book on short notice, would have settled for the 3rd class especially if my kids were here as we would have saved a lot of money, but I get a lot of approval because I am taking a higher class. It would not do for a "lady" of my status to go share a berth with the common folk. I have of course done so all my life, especially our 2006 trip.

I can't get used to it. I have lived too long in the west to get used to the idea that these stratifications are a must. I look in people's eyes for signs of life, signs of commonality, understanding, signs of recognition and connecdtion that transcend all this status stuff. It happens from time to time. Looking in people's eyes for too long, especially into the eyes of men is not a good idea as it might seem to be a come on. But I get off the hook to a large extent because I have grey hair,. and am not a likely candidate for sex object. When I can, I like looking into people's eyes. I often smile, and that breaks the tension. I make that connection briefly, politely, without being intrusive. That's how I can be here and not distance myself from everyone based on my clothes and foreigner look. My foreignness is itself a status symbol. I have come from the west and the ultimate power that I have in status world is my ability to leave this place which is impossible to live in sanely and impossible to leave; for most people here.

Cell phones aka mobiles

2009-10-13T04:12:00.001-07:00

Everyone except for perhaps the rag pickers, who are really the advance guard of manual recyclers, have cell phones. Rickshaw wallas and peanut sellers, the unemployed, the old and the very young all have mobile phones. This makes sense to me as we need to communicate so desperately with each other. We need to be in touch and just a bit of timely information can save time, speed up transactions and make lots of things more safe and efficient.

Similarly, as human beings we need to actually listen to each other, talk to each other, and feel heard. That is the next generation of communication. To really hear each other. To sit and listen without judgment, without giving advice, with compassion and with respect.

Communication is precious.

Difficult things

2009-10-12T07:24:00.001-07:00

I came to India to learn more about my father's life. I discovered that the way to do that was to talk about my own life. It is difficult to ask someone to share things that are intimate about themselves or their family. My father's aged sister, who looks so much like him, is not used to disclosing or discussing such things. Like most other people, she prefers to only share the Disney version of the story of my father.

Tonight I told her about my life. It was not easy, but it was good. I shared the real version and I felt lighter.

In the heat of it - Thanksgiving so to speak.

2009-10-10T20:09:00.001-07:00

Like so many other cultures, people in India tend to say that "the past is the past" meaning we should not talk about it because it is done and irreversible. Yet, at a moment's notice, with just a little question or comment they will throw themselves into the details of some event that really hurt their feelings. They have a story to tell, a grievance to air. How shall I listen to this? It is easy to get wrapped up in the details of the story for me, as if it's a family member then I usually I know some detail as well. But I don't want to get wrapped up in the story as it is not helpful. I have heard of lies, distortions, trickery, cheating, stealing on subtle levels and not-so-subtle levels. People are dismissed, marginalized, disrespected and humiliated. The pain does not go away. It eats away at people, and when it is too much the only relief is from taking it out on a hapless victim, usually a child or a spouse. Alcohol and consumerism is also a popular venue for letting off steam. But it doesn't really help. And then when it comes time for the proverbial Thanksgiving Dinner (Canada) or Durga Puja (India) then we are all expected to put on appearances, act like one big happy family to keep some senior member of the family happy with a fake presentation of family unity. Act like all is fine, while people are seething with rage and disappointment. And often hate.

Beast of Burden

2009-10-07T03:11:00.001-07:00

I've been sick with a terrible cold, so was unable to get out and blog and upload etc.etc. but it was a wonderful respite in that I was able to catch up on some reading. Rana, whose flat I am staying in, had Kushwant Singh's book Burial at Sea, which was a fine light story that touched on some key elements of how India functioned in the last century. Now I am reading some essays by Salman Rushdie, and I must say I have an intellectual crush on him. I left the book here 3 years ago finding it too heavy, but now it's just perfect. I learn so much about India from these writers. It all fits together. And, I am feeling much better now thanks for water, rest, grapefruit seed extract and fruit.

People often say someone or something is "strong" when they mean that it has stamina. India has stamina. It just keeps going despite all kinds of pitfalls, insane hurdles, road blocks, savage interventions, amazing acts of everyday cruelty, basic disrespect, stifling authoritarianism, strangely warped sidewalks, rule books no one gives a damn about, ethics you can navigate a spaceship through, insults, ignobilities, humiliation, all these and more are heaped on people and institutions every day. The beast of burden carries on.

I suppose it is a kind of strength. I respect stamina. I do. Stamina is a very useful thing when we use it to pursue well thought out plans, plans that are helpful to people, plans that have designed into them some degree of efficiency or intelligence. But to waste the precious resource of stamina by grunting forwards with a burden and load of bad ideas towards an unknown direction is a true folly.

Yes, there are many good things. Beautiful babies, stunning women, great food, but I am quite certain we don't have to accept that as a balance. We can have all those things that are good and noble and beautiful and also work on doing away with all that is bad and base and ugly. It's not good enough to say "that's the way it is". Of course many activists etc. are working hard, that's not the point; the vast majority of people are quite resigned to the way things are. Sometimes I give gentle and friendly and laughing feedback to cafe, restaurant and shop employees. We chat. They see I am not hostile. They lament and when I commiserate, we have a good laugh together. It's good to laugh. What else do you do when the beast of burden has a momentum that makes it unstoppable - in this moment?

Kolkata & Durga Puja

2009-09-30T03:01:00.004-07:00

My taxi sailed through many red lights without any pretension at
braking or stopping. The Calcutta police were not that interested and
anyway there was no traffic. It was post Durga Puja rush, the streets
were incredibly quiet after the insane and wild ecstatic dancing by
thousands of really happy people. The Durga takur was being taken in
large lorry trucks packed with revelers of all ages, faces all smeared
with vermilion powder beaming with huge smiles.

My cab driver honked for no reason from time to time bot often as we
sailed through those red lights, I suppose just in case there was
someone coming through the green lights the other way. I felt safe as
I am pretty sure that the cab driver valued his life, probably more
than he valued mine. People were settling down for the night in their
apartments, on the sidewalk, on rooftops, on chapawas (cots) in
alleyways. Once we hit downtown from Behala I could see that some
people were still going to Zeeshan's for a midnight meal. It's
exhausting to dance ecstatically and wildly for hours on end to the
relentless sounds of the drums (name? help me out Bengali readers).
I got home exhausted and safely.

I had joined the dancing too, invited by my cousins and their kids.
The crowd didn't expect me to do much being a grey haired lady and
all, but I gave it my best Bollywood cum bellydancing moves, with a
some Sufi hair flinging thrown in for good measure, and they went berserk with
pleasure and appreciation. Lots of people video'd my dancing, but of course,
I couldn't so you won't see me when I post my photos and videos. I
can't post them today for technical reasons.
Please check again soon. I will upload to this page all the incredibly
beautiful and wild photos and videos I took.
It's monsoon pouring outside. I am going to go and watch it and get
out of this sticky little internet cafe, yar!
(voc: "Yar" = "Dude")

Good Beginnings

2009-09-25T23:45:00.007-07:00

It's been a great beginning to my trip to India this time. Last time was different. I landed in Kolkata from Dubai, and I had a reality collapse as these two cities are as different as identical tiwns are the same. This time I transitioned from my home on Vancouver Island to Manzil House in New Delhi (www.manzil.in) and they are similar in many ways. This house is a private one, yet so many youth are here all day long and the kitchen is constantly busy with the cook providing an endless stream of parathas, masala tea and cold water, while the young ones bustle about making music, going online, hanging out and coming and going.

The photo on the left is of the kids who were supposed to be learning Englsh having a great time with the freecycle Lego and Duplo I brought. It was a first time with these toys for most of them, and it's so intuitive, no explanation needed and beautiful creations emerge immediately.

I'm right at home... except that geting two long shirts ironed downstairs at the market only cost 25 cents. At this price, I would be outsourcing most of MY housework. YES.

It's hot here, but manageable. Sunny and Meeta had me over for lunch yesterday in their cool apartment (literally cool as it is on the ground floor, shading them from much sun) and I learned a whole bunch of stuff about Indian culture that I did not know and needed to know. What is lying? When is it okay in which culture? If someone's feelings are saved from being hurt by lying, does it make it okay? The religious stories of Hinduism, says Sunny, are full of examples of lying to save the day, save the person or the tribe. My question is when does lying honourably become a slippery slope into lying for less than honourable reasons? When does it catch up to you? If you lie to your parents, and it's okay, then I suppose it's understood that one's children would lie to us. And if they do, is that okay?

The night before I had stayed up late with some younger ones, discussing whether one should and can practically follow one's heart's desires. In India. there is the question of duty to your parents to a much deeper and wider extent than it arises in Canada. It exists to the point that aside from looking after them in their old age, that we have a duty to keeping them happy long before they are old by following their wishes and plans, much to do with the physical and financial security of the parents, rather than one's own heart's desires.

These are complex questions, that have certainly been factors in my family's life in India, and the subsequent emigration to the West.

There are some journeys we must make alone.

2009-09-18T21:27:00.002-07:00

It is not possible to take everyone with you all the time. Or any variation on that theme.

The heart is a lonely hunter. Laurens van der Post said that. But it's true. The moment of death, the moment of birth, well, it's alone. There may be a midwife or a host mother, but the struggle is so immediate, so daunting, that we are in fact alone. No cajoling, no support, no rah-rahs, are of any use. There is only the task at hand. It hurts. It is scary, and for once, it's not even funny.

There is no choice but to be born. There is no choice but to leave behind the known, and face the unknown.

Mad about India

2009-09-10T11:12:00.001-07:00

I'm going to India, again.

A friend of mine said her daughter was India-mad and would I be blogging? Yes, I would.

I am mad about India. I am at mad at India. India is mad at me. It is madness to go to India. It is mad not to go. Madness is an aspect of love in that love is not a rational phenomena. Salman Rushdie said on CBC the other day that he loves India, and he goes back over and over again because it's an endless source of story and that he comes back with bulging notebooks. I go back to hunt for some method in the madness that is half my life. I don't expect to find it, but I make plans anyway just in case I find some jewel, some method with some symmetry. My father. It is because of him that I am half Indian. Bengali in fact. It is because of him that I go back to India look for signs, clues, look for justice, poetic or otherwise, and I look for symmetry in our joint story.

And much less sublimely, going to India is fun. Lots of fun. It rudely tosses out my pastel existence and covers me in a strong shade of vermillion diesel studded with aluminum paan condiment wrappers.

Home again in Nanoose Bay

2007-03-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

We came home January 30th. I wanted to write something but there was too much to write. At first, all I could do was stay home and be quiet. I walked around the house like someone who had found a quiet cloister after years of a 24/7 social setting. I so enjoyed the quiet. I admired the mountains, Northwest Bay, the trees, the green, the rain, the softness of the air and all the good things in our home. I did not want to go anywhere. The cats did not look too perturbed about our absence. A tree had fallen over during the storm and had landed on our house. Strangely, it had not gone through the roof, but just sort of sat there. At first it was alarming, but we said "we'll deal with it tomorrow" and then that tomorrow was finally 3 weeks later. It seemed quite normal to live in a house with a fallen tree on the roof.

Every day was full of things to do, but nothing seemed to be needed done in a hurry. We went about our business as if we had never left, but with a reflectiveness.... each of us with our memories and thoughts, sometimes talking about Dubai and Delhi and "that time in Varanasi". I thought a lot about my friends in India. The kids started going to school at Ballenas High School, part time, and were really happy to be with their friends again. So many of the friends complained that things had been really boring for them while we were in India. Since we came, the house had one or two or several friends over every day. The kids had a big party sometime in February and it went really well.

Nothing has really changed for me. I am quieter. I will go back to India, there is so much unfinished business for me there but now that I have "shown" the kids, I can go alone next time. As Sunny said, "India is an abstract concept". It's not really a country, but a collection of feudal tribes with thousands of cultures and ideas, and histories, and concepts about how to live and die. Borders aren't clear, either geographically or emotionally. The India I longed for, even knowing before I left that it was naive of me to do so, never really existed except in my heart, one already jaded. But I found that India in my best friend: Mehdi. He is my India.

Then there's the country India. It's my mother and my father and my worst enemy. It's the proverbial impossible therapist. The one who treats you badly and expects you to submit and then get enlightened. :-) You know, boot camp. Survival of those who are best at transcending, denying and/or opportunism.

I am touched by the everyday lives of people. Here and over there. The moments of grace, of euphoria, of affectionate recognition by someone you know, even if I have been in conflict with them. I feel bonded with them; we are friends. They are part of my life, my landscape. I love them.

My children are great. I mean, great. How did such symphonies happen?

Excellent

2007-01-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

In our Benaulim Goa hotel, a small Indian woman called to me across the court yard. I looked up and she hurriedly came over to say to me: "You know, I have been looking at you, and you have very excellent features!". I said "why thank you, no one has ever said that to me before".

"Well, they cannot have been looking properly. I have been studying your face, and you have very excellent features. You must have been very beautiful when you were young!". She was beaming.

I thanked her and she hurried off.

Good News

2007-01-23T22:17:00.000-08:00

In my last few days in Goa ( I am in Delhi now ) I was uplifted to see some really good coverage in the national newspaper, as well as places of the environmental crisis that India is facing. There are two magazines worth reading that I know of, and probably many more: Hard News (hardnews.com) and Himal Mag (himalmag.com). India's challenges, environmental, human rights, law & order, etc. are all concisely and squarely faced. The national newspaper had a huge spread last week covering success stories of people who were fed up with the politicians, and cleaned up rivers all by themselves, and started mini revolutions of people taking action. I also met an American couple who are living in Varanasi for a year. She's a writer and he's a professor of Hindu religion. I don't have his last name handy, but David wrote a book : A River of Love in an Age of Pollution. In it he traveled the country and among other things interviewed river activists. He made a friend in Kanpur, my home town, and this fellow, Rakesh, pictured above, has given up his personal life and career to clean up Kanpur. More on him at www.ecofriends.org. I plan to follow and support the Kanpur cleanup. I had read in a November Time magazine report that Kanpur was among the ten most polluted cities in the world. This man has taken on factories, the city, but in a positive and motivating way. He has personally hauled out bodies from the Ganges to give them a proper funeral. A Sikh man in the north got so fed up waiting for politicians, that at a meeting he personally jumped into the water and starting hauling out garbage. That has now become a legend, motivating thousands, and they now have a pristine river. Good news.

Blogged down

2007-01-18T23:56:00.000-08:00

Here we are on the beach in Goa, trying to do some vanilla flavoured R&R by the sea, before heading up for the journey home which starts January 26th from New Delhi, via Dubai and Zurich, and ends up at home January 30/31st. Goa is not like India. It's a different place, an expensive Guatemala or perhaps a Jamaica without the music. I have avoided getting excited about inequities or bizarre prices, because it's not good for my health or Zaman and Bashu's enjoyment, but it can be aggravating. A 2 km ride on an autorickshaw, bargained down from Rs 100 is Rs 65. In Delhi, supposedly expensive, a 20 kms ride is Rs 100 in a real taxi, and Rs 75 in an autorickshaw. Kian and Mehdi are in Sri Lanka, and claim it is totally laid back and completely different. We have met a great American Quaker homeschooling family, dedicated and working for peace in the world. We had many common experiences in India, and so it was good not to feel alone. Also, at errol.ca, you can see the blog of a Canadian man, of Indian origin, but born and brought up in Edmonton, wherein he copes with his experience of India.

==========

India has been difficult for me this time around. I have tried to fall in love again, but it didn't happen. I don't suppose it ever happens, with countries or with people, when we "try". I felt obliged to try, because I was in love with it before, and because it is the place of my emotional roots. That place of my childhood lives in my heart now as an emotional abstraction, an imaginary number, such as the square root of negative one.

India is racing towards something, I know not what. Various claims to superpowerdom, economic booms, world class competitive edges, all fall flat and sound like so much hype orchestrated by a few, for a few. The benefits of such growth are largely for a few, living it up in posh flats in city centres, and five star resorts in Goa and other beaches. The cost of such growth is borne by every poor child for the next 50 years, in the form of mind boggling air, water and earth pollution, and staggering poverty. India's rich history of architecture, religion, intellect, music, art, mathematics, spirituality, multiculturalism, all mean nothing, as they are eclipsed by the one main system of belief that money is God. Money is the one most important item of worship. This is of course true everywhere, but only India has temples, mosques and altars every 20 meters, adulating everything from Christ (in Goa) to Shiva, Kali, Islam and so many more. Only India has the fantastically profound and explicit philosophy of transcending materialism. Philosophically, theoretically. Not in practice.

The Taj Mahal lays like a humongous breathtaking jewel, in a city of unbelievable dirt, pollution, chaos, and open sewers. I would trade all the monuments and buildings of India, all the gold and jewels of India, transport them away, in exchange for an ecologically sustainable economy where every human being had enough food, shelter, education and protection from abuse: verbal, physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse. An India where there is breathable air, recycling, clean water and land enough to grow pure food for everyone, locally.

The pollution that I have been objecting to stridently in my postings, is a metaphor for the incredible neglect that I have seen human beings have for one another here. If we cannot respect each other, there is little chance that we can respect our earth. While there is a huge amount of love and attachment to children in families, I have seen them by in large be treated with disrespect: hit gratuitously, yelled at, pushed aside, laughed at, scorned, in the community by strangers, but also within families by parents and grandparents. The archaic education systems condemns them to days of rote learning and horrendous fear-mongering by teachers ready to physically punish with a ruler and ridicule the child in front of everyone. This is terrorism.

From www.photoryan.com/pages/essays/dalits/dalits_image06.html

The humiliation and trauma are not consciously inflicted, but that is the result. It is just the way things are. No one seems to think that there is a discrepancy between loving your child and ignoring their psychic pain. And so it is with animals, spouses, and the earth, all treated with equal amounts of insensitivity. As many of my Indian friends have said, it is a disconnect that happens when you are thrust unceremoniously from village to city, in search of wage work, robbed of your land by a feudal mafioso that rapes and tortures you if you object. This is all compounded by living under colonialism for hundreds of years: the Moghuls, the British, and now globalization; self esteem is so low it's hard to measure.

Who's got time to do anything but survive? I get that it is a priority to make it through each day for the vast majority of people here.

This is not about comparing India with Canada. I can list what ails Canada easily. This is about my experience here. There is no race for first place, or last place.

My India is a big wounded, bleeding family with open sores. It hurts. It really hurts. It hurts so much I want to run away to wallow in my own brand of soma: Life in Canada.

Yes, there is "resilience" amongst my people. Yes, there is tenacity, Yes, there are thousands of dedicated intelligent people working to change things in India. Yes, there is hope. Some hope.

I just hope that the big change comes before too many people, animals and the environment have suffered unnecessarily and die horrible deaths.

KaliYuga can't finish soon enough for me. Come on, the new age. Come on, the big change. Come now. My door is open, and I will gladly be your handmaid, your coolie.

So much India

2007-01-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

We have covered so much of India since the last time I wrote. It's really hard to keep up as there is so much to process. We have been to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho to see the erotic temples, and meet up with old friends, Delhi to visit with Manzil House, an alternative school, where Mehdi worked a little with some of the students, and then Mehdi went to Sri Lanka with Kian on January 11th. Ryan, Zaman, Bashu and myself went off to Rajasthan and visited with the only homeschooling family I know in India, in Udaipur City, and that was a blast. Aside from being tourists, we participated in the cooking and music at Shiksantar, an alternative learning center started by Manish Jain and Vidhi Bandhari, with whom we were staying. I gave a bellydancing workshop, which was prematurely ended due to the electricity being cut off. But also, we had a meetup with about 30 people, to discuss homeschooling. From Udaipur to Jaipur for a day on January 13th, and then on the 14th, I saw Ryan off to Europe.... this left me and the boys with one more day in Delhi, and then we flew off to have a vacation within a vacation, in Benaulin, Goa. Goa is to India, as Hawaii is to the USA. It's beaches, relaxation and a good book.

I have so much to process. I have met so many great people in India, who are working very hard to effect real change in India. I have met so many people who are sad, or lonely, or frustrated with the way things are, and feel helpless. I have been the recipient of so much generosity from so many people, while at the same time being the target of a thousand ripoff artists, due to my inherent touristness. There is much to write about.......... when I get home. :-)

The Kids' Blog and Comments

2006-12-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

Allo, Hola and Namasté

So, just a reminder that the kids' have a great blog at http://www.moghog.blogspot.com and that in my posting "Down and Out in Andal" there are a couple of good controversial comments that are worthy of a much longer conversation.

We all went out looking for a drink and Christmas company on Christmas Eve. We didn't find it, but we had fun. We took a couple of autorickshaws, aka as "tuk-tuks", to a fabulous rooftop hotel restaurant/bar, complete with a green lawn, but alas, there wasn't a soul there, so it was hard for us to get into the spirit .... the relucant manager told us to go to the Taj, a chain of five star hotels in India. We got there only to find that the place was swamped with soldiers and eager looking tagalongs who were fawning over the Minister of Railways, whose name I forget. We made our way to an empty dance floor in the back, where a well intentioned rock and roll band were churning out old western hits. Much to our dismay, we found that that neither Mehdi or I had brought our credit cards, so we had to make do with about 1500 rupees, which is normally a fortune, buit not at the Taj. A beer cost 165 rupees... mind you it was a big domestic Kingfisher beer.

So after a little beer, and lots of snacks which were on the house, Mehdi and I danced, all alone on the dance floor which had these funky square lights.... between the Bollywood moves, bellydancing, blues-y dancing, chacha, salsa, Ricky Martin moves, we just had so much fun.... the staff were really appreciative as they had otherwise had a really slow night. They smiled and waved and egged us on. So did a Japanese couple who appeared to be on their honeymoon, and said my dancing was better than the singing. I invited the railway minister to join us, but I don't think the waiter actually gave him my message. . The waiter also volunteered that perhaps the minister was too fat... too bad for him. It would do him good. At some point, Bashu and Zaman asked if they could perform, and since it was a slow night, they said yes.

We took the tuktuks home, as they had been waiting for us. The streets were deserted, and we crawled into bed, exhausted and happy that we had made ourselves a great Christmas Eve. :-)

Merry Christmas....

My father

2006-12-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

I miss my father. He died in 1995. I would love to talk to him about India, his family and his life here in India and why he left; what he felt after he left, and how he felt when he came back. As a matter of fact, I did travel with him for three weeks in India in 1982. We had a lot of fun together. It was summertime, and really hot. We used to laugh at a lot of things together. He was on a business trip, but as he always did, he took time out to go to Calcutta to visit his mother and his sister, and a host of nephews and nieces.

Baba enjoyed being a Bera Sahib, taking taxis, and drinking scotch in the late evening when the somewhat cooler breeze would come through the verandah doors into the living rooms with high ceilings, slow fans, and perpetual attendance of house servants, at his friend Lal's house in New Delhi. He also enjoyed going to the market and buying vegetables and fruits and bantering with the kaprawallahs about the textile business.

Baba never haggled for very small amounts... he said the sellers and rickshaw drivers worked hard and deserved the money. He did haggle shrewdly with his suppliers for large amounts of hard dollar cash.

Baba left India for good in 1963 and though at times he lamented all things western and threatened to go back to India in his old age, he never did, except to visit. After three weeks of visiting, he couldn't wait to get back home to Canada. Not only because his family was there, but because after three weeks, he couldn't stand it anymore here. He would use the dirty toilets as an excuse, but it was much more than that. He wanted to keep it as simple as possible, and liked it when things were reasonably reliable. He had gotten used to that. Baba was as ready to spend 6 minutes studying an eggplant in a Canadian supermarket, as he was to spend it talking to a man with a cart full of eggplants in Kanpur. But, at the end of the day he wanted to go home to a quiet place, with lesser stress levels.

What I have not blogged about, and will not do in public in detail, is Baba's pain and suffering. Much of it is common to all Indians, much of it is common to all humans in the world. What I can say is that I have a great deal more respect for him now than I did in the past. Baba escaped a very tight stranglehold of a culture, where there was a great deal of love, in the family and in the community, but very little of it was unconditional love. It was nearly all conditional. He had to perform. He had to perform financially, morally, educationally. Oh, he got a lot of perks, all sons in Indian families do, especially the oldest, but he also had to do the dirty work. He was not free to be himself, not even remotely. And that is what he got away from. It wasn't easy. You can take the boy out of India, you can even take the Indian affectations out of the boy, my father was very western in many ways, but what could not be taken out of the boy was the unhealed wounds inflicted on him by a very ancient culture. And this I know, not from conjecture, but from what he told me.

And so, I love my father more than ever. I miss him. Yes, I have been angry with him for things, and that was a natural reaction on my part, and one I wouldn't take back. I had things to be angry about. But now, I would love to drink a couple of beers with him in Varanasi. Not on the ghats, overlooking the holy river, but at the Taj Hotel, with bearers at our bidding, with him bantering with them about anything and everything, including life, love and death.

Back in Varanasi

2006-12-24T03:04:00.000-08:00

After picking Mehdi up in Kolkata, we are back in Varanasi. It's so good to have him with me to share in the responsibilities. I realise now that it takes a fair amount of energy to balance being a tourist, visit family, write, and connect with the all the wonderful people I would like to connect with.

During our last visit, Deobrat and Pandit Shivnath Mishra, classical sitar artists, were very kind in hosting us in their Academy of Indian Classical Music, which was under construction at the time. During that time I had been doing during daily drawing sessions with their 10 or so tabla students, aged 7-15, and working in a little bit of English lessons, based on Deobrat's suggestions. The process was incredibly popular, and therefore successful. I think it was popular because though they have art lessons in school, it is never with the freedom to draw nonsense, or scribble, or draw what they want. This new freedom resulted in a proliferation of wonderful drawings, from wild tactile experiences to concise drawings of fruit, landscapes, flags and tablas. So when we came back after a week, we were all very happy to see each other.

Mehdi took over, and added to the process by bringing wooden building blocks, intended for his Sri Lanka trip. These were also a big hit. The Mishras were in and out, doing a concert in Delhi and then in Chennai. They had various aggravations with cancelled train tickets and construction delays on their academy, and together we commisserated on what didn't work in India.

The question of what to focus on during this trip to India comes up for me every day, as someone recently commented on my blog. There is so much in India that is beautiful, and so much that is not, such as in any country. I realise I may sound snotty and uppity about the pollution and other unacceptable aspects of India, but I don't mind if I sound like that. The bottom line, for me, is that the health of India is compromised severely, and I do not wish to see India die a slow painful death. I am sure that won't happen, but I am wondering whether the rescue will have happen in the eleventh hour, after much pain and suffering has already happened needlessly. Today on the way to the Main Ghat, to have Bashu's head shaved, I suddenly envisioned how painful it must be for a cow to die on the street, as a plastic bag gets clogged in its intestines. Would anyone notice? Would anyone see the cow's suffering? I had heard these things happen and in Delhi some people do emergency surgery on cows.

On the way back from the ghats... unbelievably, I saw a cow lying in its death throes on a pile of garbage at the very spot that I had envisioned this. I am not given to clairvoyance, so I was startled. The cow's eyes were rolling, its head was thrusting this way and that, and it was covered in thousands of flies, an unusually high number. I did not rescue it. I moved on, and I saw beautiful children playing a hundred meters further on. Both the cow and the children are reality and both existed. But I choose to describe the cow, in its death throes, as the cliche of beautiful Indian children has been done over and over and over again. I will no longer take photos of beautiful children only.

Down and out in Andal

2006-12-17T23:42:00.000-08:00

Mehdi has arrived in Kolkata and it has been wonderful for all of us. We all missed him, in particular his sense of humour and big hugs. We were heading to Kolata from Varanasi, knowing there was a general strike in West Bengal from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. but having no idea that it would mean that the train would stop in its tracks at 6 a.m. and sit there for 13 hours. Even at the last hour, we were told that perhaps it was a 24 hour strike. This would mean that we would not be there for Mehdi's arrival. It was really frustrating. We were stuck in a small town station, using the same toilet, no water, whose function we could smell on the tracks all day. However, it was a peaceful town, Andal, with the occasional cha seller and Communist Brigade doling out hot food as a good will propaganda gesture for the stuck commuters. We did not complain ... no use.... there were no buses, cars, or any alternatives. One fellow in the next town had tried to open his shop for business, and not only did his shop get closed, he got killed by goons for trying to do so.

We made friends with our fellow travelers and talked about... once again... homeschooling and unschooling. Everyone loves the idea, but always say "but it can't work in India... you need your certificate to get a job". At any rate, thanks to our good friend Ashish Bejoria, a car was sent to the airport to pick him up at 4 a.m. the next morning. Thank goodness for mobile phones. We did arrive safely around 11 p.m. and took a cab home, through deserted streets. It's amazing how fast you can get through the normally crowded noisy streets of Calcutta, but at night.

Wedding Season

2006-12-12T02:51:00.000-08:00

Last night after a delicious Mughlai dinner at the Broadway Hotel in Varanasi, we were enjoying a sweet poem that Bashu was reciting, recently composed.... when we were interrupted by huge bangs outside on the street. It was a wedding party. The groom was hidden in loads of gold and silver coloured metallic outfits, riding a white horse who was equally fantastically bedecked. There were hundreds of people in the procession. Loud Hindi Bollywood music, ecstatic dancing, fireworks, and workers carrying large electric displays, like huge Christmas lights, on their heads, hooked up electrically to several electric generators also being carried on the streets on rolling trollies. It was wild...absolutely wild. Boys and men were dancing with abandon with wild Michael Jackson moves, Bollywood moves, and every known dance move, from gangster rap to Masai warrior dancing was included. Zaman started to video a particularly talented young man, dancing on the sidelines, who made Michael Jackson's Thriller look patsy.

After a while, someone asked me to dance too, and I was surprised as there were no women there, but it seemed harmless enough, and it was late, so I thought why not? So I made a few bellydancing moves to rival the young man's and the crowd went wild. I stopped after 30 seconds, but they begged to join the wedding party, behind the horse and the ornate carriage trailer. I figured it was innocuous enough as there were few lights. At first I said "no" seeing there were no women, but after some persuasion, I joined up briefly. I did a few good moves influenced heavily by the bellydancing that Bahija has taught me....mixed in with some Indian eye and hand movements and you would not believe the surge from the crowd. I instantly had a roar of approval from 100 odd men and boys and they started dancing absolutely wildly. As I twirled around, using my doopata as a veil, I saw a rifle in the crowd, a stern looking Hindu man, and an official bridal party member, and I thought hmmm... perhaps this is not appropriate. I sought quick approval from them to continue, got it and continued for another 30 seconds or so, just long enough to not get into trouble. I had a great time. I danced in the streets of Varanasi. They ran after me to shake my hand as I got on the rickshaws that Kian had arranged in the meantime for our quick getaway. I put my hair back up in a stern looking grey bun, draped my veil modestly around me and off we went into the deserted midnight streeets, back to the hotel.

Drop me a line

2006-12-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

I am aware that a number of you are reading my blog. I have heard from some of you. If I haven't please do drop me a line or post a comment on the blog. It keeps me going. :-))

Ma Ganga

2006-12-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

It is difficult to find time to write when you are on the road, unless you make it a strict regime. I find myself wanting to say lots, explore lots of my half baked ideas, and end up thinking them and then moving on, but sometimes managing to say a little in emails to friends.

I am behind in my blog by about a month. I want to tell you about my good experiences in Kalakankar, Delhi, and now in Varanasi. And I will.

In the meantime, we are in Varanasi since December 1st, taking in this small dusty town on the banks of the river Ganges. I am looking for the magic that it promises, which indeed I did see when I last came in 1983. It's hard for me to see it. I have seen loads of army troops, stationed to keep the Hindus and Moslems from fighting over a spot that both feel are holy to them. The ubiquitous urine, garbage, plastic, cows, dogs, beggars, more holy men, red pan juice, is hard to ignore. The Ganges, also known as a pesticide soup by environmentalists, is supposed to clean itself up miraculously from whatever you put into it. And indeed, tests were done many years ago that indicated that it did contain a very efficient bacteria that seemed to digest biological waste very efficiently. However, that did not include the toxic waste of hundreds of large factories upstream who dump everything into the river....

"From the plains to the sea, pharmaceutical companies, electronics plants, textile and paper industries, tanneries, fertilizer manufacturers and oil refineries discharge effluent into the river"

http://www.sacredland.org/world_sites_pages/Ganges.html

The huge increase in population has tested its miraculous abilities sorely. It's always been known as Ma Ganga. So I ask myself, how much can mother take? As a mother, I can clean up, and I did, constantly it seemed, after my little kids. But somewhere in their growing years, I taught them to clean up themselves. In a household where the kids grow up, and bring in friends, is it reasonable and respectful to expect Mother to clean it all up? How indeed do we treat a mother? If indeed a mother is a person who is expected to work till she drops dead unquestioningly, then it makes sense to treat Ma Ganga like a bottomless garbage bin.

I see her as a mother who needs a very big break, a chance to recuperate, and some respect. She is beautiful either way, but the devotional love has more meaning when the relationship is based on respect, and not just an unseeing adulation.

Sarah Ebell 1960-2006

2006-12-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

Our adopted sister and aunt to our kids, Sarah Ebell, died on Monday, November 27th, accidentally. It's really hard to be in India, when all my community back home is hurting and grieving. They are arranging her memorial, and I wish I were there. But it is too costly and impractical, and I know that Sarah would understand why I am not going back to Canada ahead of time.

===========================

Sarah took me for granted, and I took her for granted. She was always there when needed, disappearing sometimes for a few days, at most a week, and then reappearing unannounced for a cup of coffee. That was our ritual. She would drop by on her way to or from a landscaping job, and I would stop what I was doing to make a cup of something. She liked my coffee, fresh ground and brewed, and we would chat and gossip, discussing anything from the price of computers to human relations and her school courses. The kids didn't bat an eyelid when they woke up to find her in the kitchen, not finding it any more necessary to say good morning to her than to me. Sarah stayed for dinner and though she didn't like doing dishes, she was always ready to build a fence or deck. She was ready to lend Kian a hand with his catapult building and happy to discuss the latest Harry Potter book with Bashu. When Sarah was stuck, she called us, and when we were stuck, we called her.

Once when Zaman was eight or so, and Sarah had tucked him into bed, I went in to say goodnight. Zaman said to me "Ma, you know, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but.... " and I said please go ahead and tell me, he continued "well, Sarah is like a mother, I feel as if she is like a mother". He didn't want me to see her as competition, but he wanted to express that she had that feeling about her, for him. Sarah didn't mother him per se, in a clichéd way, but simply had been there for him for so long, so often, that it just felt like a mother.

Sarah was like a sister. I don't mean that in a sort of mushy way. In fact, like any biological sister, she annoyed me. And I annoyed her. We let each other know. And like sisters, it didn't stop us from getting together all over again. When I was down and out about something she obliged by listening to me. And vice versa.

I am going to miss the little annoying things that were part of my landscape at home. Her shoes, like my children's, would be left at the door and invariably I tripped over them. Sarah had a funny habit of not closing the door when she left. Winter of summer, I would find that door open, letting out the heat or letting in the mosquitoes. I would close it and consider Sarah incorrigible. I won't hear "hello, hello" through the house anymore, from the doorway as Sarah lets herself in. I always thought Sarah would be there. I always thought that we would grow old together and pick on each other, and fuss over the kids, oohing and ahhing over their achievements, and get together for yet one more family dinner, one more big laugh, with a glass of red wine, more laughs and general commentaries about the absurdness of life, complete with its terrible pain and relentless beauty. I always thought we would get to the bottom of the mystery of the meaning of life, together, cackling and crying, all at the same time.

And maybe we did.

--
My travel blog will be
http://www.journey-to-india.blogspot.com
===============
Anita Roy
anitaroy@gmail.com

The Road to Kalakankar

2006-11-25T07:30:00.000-08:00

We made our way from Chitwan National Park in Nepal to Kalakankar, a small quiet historical village in Uttar Pradesh, via Sonauli, Gorakhpur and Allahabad. And what a roller coaster of a ride it was. After a five hour bus ride from Chitwan, complete with unauthorized stops to pick up customers for extra cash, our bus full of tourists, from Israel, India and Canada, we were dropped off somewhat unceremoniously at the border where we had to fill out exit documents for the Nepali government. Given that it is all hand written in large bound ledgers, one wonders how the information can ever be quickly useful.

As we walked across the border into India, the roads instantly become more clogged, dirty and populated. Diesel, dust, garbage and humans multiplied by a factor of three. Incredible India, as the tourist posters proclaimed. After much haggling we got a car to Gorakhpur, the nearest train station. It was the same price as getting a bus, and usually faster. However, a bridge had collapsed somewhere, so the driver had to take a detour. This detour was 3 hours of winding village road, on land, dusty and narrow, with a village every 500 meters or so, consisting of 10 houses or so. The driver drove with Hindi film music whining the whole way, but we all go to liking it after a while. The tape was quite old, so I think it's something I was vaguely familiar with from the eighties. And anyway, half the time, he had his hand on the horn, chasing down little children, bullocks, dogs, old people, horse drawn carts. Everyone must get out of the way. It is breathtakingly scary for me to be a passenger in a taxi, city or countryside. I can't quite get used to it.

We saw endless fields, meticulously plowed and irrigated, thousands of peasants bent over their back breaking labour, and walking the small paths between the fields going to and from their homes and villages. It was clean and peaceful, except for our noisy car. People stared at us and I was quite embaraased to barge through their life in such a discourteous manner.

We finally arrived in Gorakhpur, at the train station, and after paying a heavily solicited tip to the driver, we went to find railway tickets, an overnight trip to Allahabad. As usual, I got indignant about something. A couple of blonde tourists, two young women, asked for the cheapest fare to Kolkata of the ticket seller in the next booth. The ticket seller demanded to know why they needed the cheapest tickets. They had to practically beg. Having a guidebook with them, they knew what class was available to them. I told the seller in my wicket that this was outrageous; that his buddy had no right to ask this. I told him that just because they were blonde was no reason to assume that they had lots of money. They were in fact from Poland, as I had chatted with them before. I told him so. He looked a bit sheepish, but did tell his colleague. I further added in my broken Hindi, but taking advantage of my matronly gray hair to pull some rank, that they had a lot of nerve, as so many Western people come to India and give generously of their time to volunteer here. How dare they treat them so arrogantly?

The overnight train ride was fine. We were in sleeper class AC, which means air conditioned. We didn't need AC but that was the only thing available. The real advantage is that it includes bedding and a sealed unit, so you don't get the endless dust and stream of food sellers and beggars that you get in non-AC.

In Allahabad, it took us 4 hours to find an ATM that worked, and a driver willing to go to Kalakankar for a reasonable price. Allahabad has much to offer if you have friends and if you seek out the holy places, and on grand mela days, but this day it was just another crowded, dirty, noisy, polluted city in North India.

And then to Kalakankar.

Between the lines

2006-11-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

There is hope. I may not have had a chance to blog the good, and perhaps focussed only on the bad and the ugly. But there is much good and much hope. And many people have given of their time and resources generously to us, such as Rana Bose in Kolkata with his beautiful flat at our disposal and Ashok Singh with his ancestral home in the village of Kalakankar, where we were treated like royalty. I will elaborate as soon as I have more leisurely internet time.

All the positive practices of compassion, gratitude and kindness, such as thinking of three things every day to be grateful for are more imperative in India. I am challenged to remember these things here, when these are much easier to practice at home when I am surrounded by graceful forests, clean communities and mindful friends.

I have not been compassionate or grateful or kind on many occasions. It was not done out of malice, but rather as a strong reaction. I felt entitled to my reaction, and I still do. It is alright to feel disappointed when someone you love dearly, such as a father or mother whom you have not seen for 23 years, has progressed from a mild smoking and drinking habit to one that is so excessive that it is killing them with emphysema and cirrhosis. It is possible to love that parent and still be angry and disappointed. One is always a child in that respect, fearful of losing a loved one and angry about the downhill turn.

I don't have a right to expect anything of India. India is India and owes me nothing. It has a right to go to hell in handbasket. But it is the country in which I spent my formative years, and I have an emotional bond which runs deep and brings tears to my eyes. I heard recently that enlightenment was not about seeing the light (as a kind of "light") but rather accepting things the way they are. And that is why it is so difficult. "Accept India the way it is". Acceptance is not apathy, although frequently so confused. Apathy is about doing nothing about it and not caring, whereas acceptance is a kind of loving understanding of the situation. Acceptance has room for doing something about it too. I don't even know that I have accepted India as it is yet on this trip. And I am not going to be hard on myself about it. I will let myself feel what I feel, not trying to contrive my feelings to go one way or the other. And I am trying to let go of my more negative feelings... in that, I feel them but am trying to not to invest in them so I don't have to wear them like a burden.

I too want to imagine and support the idea of a healed homeland. I too want to piggyback on the mulitude of good deeds and fine people I have met here who are working to make positive change. To them I take my hat off... and make my obeisances.

From Katmandu to Delhi

2006-11-20T04:43:00.000-08:00

It is so hard to blog when you on the road, and priorities are to find transportation, lodging, food, etc. I have so much to write about. Mehdi said he would buy a laptop and I hope to do more when we get it.

From Katmandu we moved on to Chitwan National Park, with elephant rides and tiger camps. Needless to say we did not see any tigers, as they don't want to see us, but we did see some crocodiles on the sandy shores of the river. They were absolutely still, so we pondered if they were not perhaps plastic replicas planted for us rather unclever tourists. I saw a woman washing clothes on the banks of the river, and it would have been one of those idyllic travel pictues, if it had not been that she was wearing jeans and a skimpy top. Since it was only 1-2 kms from the "eco" resort, I thought perhaps it was a tourist in another lodge. I asked our guide Lalu, and he called to her in Nepali and she turned around and waved to him. She was Nepali. During the jungle walk, which was largely uneventful, I had a lovely leech fall onto my clothes. Beautiful red bugs, as large as grasshoppers, but walking like beetles, were in the thousands everywhere on the path and the forest floor.

I had really mixed feelings about our elephant ride as it is so contrived to have loads of tourists, albeit most of them were Nepali school children, crowding together in an elephant caravan. And isn't it out and out elephant abuse? Zaman and I were of like mind, but having come this far, we decided to go with it, justifying our actions by saying to ourselves that these were domesticated elephants. In fact, they were not wild, and had been bred in captivity, much like the ubiquitous cows and bulls. We went in serach of the one horned rhinos, which we did not see. However we did get to feed the elephants a lot of green bananas.

The funnny thing is that I took my Danish wooden shoes off so they would not fall off on the ride. I placed them in what I was told was a secure place, but lost one somewhere in the jungle. The guides promised me that they would look for it the next day, but now it's been ten days and no word from them by email. These shoes are really comfortable, summer and winter, and nt cheap, so I was sorry to lose them. And they are still looking for them. So it brings a smile to my face that every morning, in the resorts off Chitwan National Park, a group of elephant riders are looking for a Canadian tourist's Danish wooden shoe. And by the way, I did leave the other one there too. So they could be together, and hopefully someone would use them one day. But I don't imagine they will use them. Wooden shoes in Nepal are quite an oddity.

The new coalition in Nepal

2006-11-09T23:21:00.000-08:00

It seems to be a day of optimism here in Nepal as all political parties have finally agreed to work together in an interim coalition government, consisting of the current Nepalese Congress party and the Maoists, as well as five other minor parties. The UN has overseen an arms truce, which consists of both the Maoists and the army putting away all their weapons under lock and key, ostensibly, and having access to them but only in such a way that video cameras would record the where, when, who, etc. People seem to be really happy here about it, but cautiously. It's hard for them to think that something major could change for the better, although it is acknowledged that some things have changed for the better over the last thirty years including less hunger and more education opportunities. Countries all over the world are congratulating the new accord, and Nepali people are cautiously looking at removing the monarchy entirely, even as a figurehead.

Today we wrapped up our extensive shopping spree, and shipped it all home. I am tired of shopping for things, though I must say one is easily overwhelmed by the hundreds of stores selling fantastic chunks of turquoise, coral, silver, emeralds, exotic textiles, buddhas, prayer flags, and kurkuris. Tomorrow morning early we head of for Chitwan National Park on another ecotour, to see one horned rhinos on elephants, and hopefully to sight a tiger or two. After that, southwards to India again for Allahabad and Kalakankar. Life is good. I hope I surrender to India and make peace with her.... soon.

Our last evening in Kathmandu was celebrated by having a Nepali dinner in a small restaurant with our British friend Patrick and our Nepali friend Manju and her 9 month old daughter Anju. It was the first time Manju had ever eaten in a restaurant. She is 30 and sells Tibetan silk bags for 80 cents on the main tourist drag. Anju was awfully cute, trying to climb up on the table and bang various dinner spoons on dishes and glasses. We took turns feeding her bits of rice. Since she wasn't wearing diapers, we had to make sure Manju took her out the street regularly to have a little preventative pee. The owners were very accommodating of us all, though one could see they had rarely seen such a motley crue for dinner. Eight of us, all sizes and shapes, from all over the world, eating and laughing and just having fun.

The Soaps

2006-11-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Good news and bad news. We went to the opening ceremony of a wonderful orphanage in Godavari, a suburb of Kathmandu. A German woman of Yugoslavian origin has worked, against all odds, to build a most beautiful orphanage, a Rolls Royce of buildings to house and take care of 62 wonderful children of the lower castes. She came as a tourist and could not turn away. We saw a beatifully designed facility full of large spacious rooms, clean toilets, playrooms, libraries, gardens, all built on ecological principles. ... complete with passive solar water heating, earthquake resistant walls, septic tanks that empty into living pond filters... and rain water harvesting. The children had actually been with her for many years, but in a different facility. The architect, Wolfgang, who was there for the ceremonies, told me about a model house he designed and built in Nepal using local materials and traditional design elements, but incorporating modern ecological principles.

You can visit her web site at www.happy-children.de

We left Kathmandu to go to Dhulikhel, a small town at the top of Kathmandu valley, one that I had visited with my brother back in 1972, and then again in 1983. Things had naturally changed, and one of the new things is a big huge hospital, funded by Austrian donors, and completely run by Nepali staff. It is clean and spacious, and local people are charged a nominal fee compared to private medical care in Kathmandu. I had a lovely visit with the administrator, and he gave me some literature, celebrating their ten years of operation.

Wolfgang's model house is in Dhulikhel. I asked around for it, but most people did not know what I was talking about. I finally found it within the municipality's administrative grounds, and asked to see it. A very formal town administrator showed me the house but did not bring the key, so it was a bit pointless. After a courteous amount of time, I expressed my regret that there was no key since we had come so far. It magically appeared and we took a good look around. The house seemed ideal for a large family or two small families complete with passive cooling and heating systems. Unfortunately no one had actually used the design, which is available free of charge, with tax break incentives, since it was built in 2002. There seemed to be no reasonable explanation for it. The house is used occasionally by visiting dignitaries as a place to sleep.

We were fortunate enough to run into an English speaking foreign urban planner working there. He was reluctant to talk at first, but his frustration was obvious. He said that nothing can change in a country where people do not see any need for change, and where people accept the hardships they are faced with. He said that in his experience, between the feudal system, corruption, unstable government and fatalism, most people do not think they can change anything, and therefore do not entertain the idea that things need changing. Of course, there are many exceptions, but generally this it the case. So the model house sits empty, and new houses are being built constantly using designs that are neither ecological, earth quake resistant nor cheap to build. And so the world turns, like the soaps.

The River

2006-11-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

As I make my way up the ostensibly 365 steps to the Swayambunath
stupa, or the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu, I hear a clear small girl's
voice in Danish: "Ja, men det er jo ikke så slemt, far." but I am too
winded to turn around to look at what must be a very fair
blonde-haired little girl. She keeps talking and walks past me up the
stairs, but she is a small fair complexioned Nepali girl. I chat with
her in Danish, to her surprise, and her Nepali father tells me they
are on a two week visit back home from Denmark. Her mother and baby
brother stayed back in Denmark. Finally reaching the top, after
passing scores of hawkers and beggars, I sit down to simply rest and
gawk. It's hard for me to be here. I want to cry again.

I want to cry because Katmandu is so smog covered. I want to cry
because Vishnu's river, which we had to cross on a bridge, is so
filthy, so depleted, with raw sewage, wild pigs foraging large black
bags of garbage, the stench, the filth, is more than I can bear.
Perhaps I am naive, perhaps I am frail, but I don't mind. I cry.
Across the river, there is a small temple, and inside the inner
chambers where I find dark images of various Hindu gods and goddesses,
and reliefs of the Buddha, all smeared in sindhu, vermillion powder,
rice, ghee, marigolds, I start to cry again. I mourn and grieve all
this is lost to me and to my world. There is no judgement about who
and why and where. I know that the whole world is on a monumental
environmental roller coaster ride, reaching incredible speeds near the
bottom, and that the only difference between my Vancouver Island and
this place is that we hide our filth better.

I cry because I have lost so much. My Hindu Grandmother, and her daily
faithful devotions in her Takugorh, despite the incredible injustices
she suffered silently in her life, having no choice, and me sitting
beside her on the cement floor fifty years ago, is never again going
to do that for me. I cry because my Grandmother Earth also so
violated, having no choice, continues to heal herself stoically. The
river, handicapped, terrorized, continues to flow.

There is no solace in my worldliness. And that I am, worldly. I blend
into any culture I want in Katmandu, by simply changing my clothes and
language. The old Moslem tailor from Bihar and I chat in my broken
Hindi about his family and the lack of tourists due to the Maoist
insurgency. We talk about his five daughters, and his opinion that
there is really only one God for all people, and it doesn't matter
much which one you worship. The Danish bookstore owner has lived here
for ten years with his Nepali wife, and we discuss the mental
development of children who have learned more than one language before
the age of five. Two young Frenchman from Bretogne discuss the
depression and drug addiction among Tibetan monks and laugh at my
Quebecois French. I get treated differently when I wear a salwar
kameez and tikka on my forehead. My greying hair allows me to be firm
with taxi drivers and the hawkers assume I am not interested or unable
to afford their adapted-to-western-taste would-be Himalayan
merchandise, mass produced Goddess knows where. I get lots of nods and
extremely friendly smiles from Nepali women and children.

It is a pleasant distraction, all these people. But there is no solace
when the water and the air and the earth of this subcontinent, and
that of the earth, are ravaged with poisons and garbage and sewage. I
am a doer. It is hard for me to do anything here, on a short term.
After a good cry, and a rant that my children kindly listen to, the
sun rises again in my heart. The monkeys in the monkey temple are
funny. If indeed it is the end of the Kali Yuga in 2012, I for one
can't wait. I hope it comes now and I hope it comes fast. I need a
renaissance, a new cycle in the wheel of life. I need to know that
there is another way to live. That we are not inevitably greedy,
careless, cruel and violent, towards our planet and towards each
other. I need to believe that my efforts, however miniscule here, in
the form of kind words, and somewhat larger actions at home, are
meaningful and that the New Age indeed will be upon us. And I don't
care much what the new cycle is called. Just come now, and hurry. Let
the earth restore itself, let the waters run clean, let the air move
oxygen into our lungs and carbon dioxide to the flora.

Kathmandu again and again

2006-11-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

We have landed into the capital of Nepal, Katmandu. To keep matters simple we headed straight for the tourist district for at least the first night. Tom Carter ( www.moonmountainadventures.com) had told me it had changed vastly since I lasted visited in 1972 and 1983. So I was prepared for a change. And it had changed. The urban sprawl is one huge dusty bowl in what once was a pristine valley with a small town in the middle. The tourist section has changed from one main tourist drag to several streets completely dedicated to selling mounds of cheaply duplicated Tibetan dorjes, prayer wheels, pashmina shawls, dope smoking paraphernalia, plastic look alike turquoise jewelry (old stone, Madame), hippie clothes galore, Buddhas and Taras by the thousands, in resin, metal, plastic, gold, you name it. The shops are cutely piled next to each other, jammed tight, with a permanent festive air for the benefit of the tourists, who happily trundle around buying bracelets, munching on chocolate cake, croissants and apple crumble, after arduous days of trekking in the Himalayas. The party is complete with New Age fusion music and hundreds of internet cafés and restaurants with Thai, Japanese, and Italian cuisine. I suspect Tokyo might have been like this fifty years ago. It's gay, pretty, and inviting. The hawkers badger you but it's innocuous enough. The beggars are not too pushy and it all looks like a third world "happy" hippie Disneyland.The air is comfortable and cool and the tourist district of Thamel is relatively well kept, so it makes you want to believe that all is well. Relax and shop.

Patrick is from Liverpool and takes year long vacations from his job as a street worker with drug addicts. He has also spent meaningful amounts of time in Vietnam, Ethiopia and India. He helps us out by showing us a much cheaper hotel on the second night, and what pitfalls to avoid and where to buy better quality cheaper goods from real Tibetan refugees. He speaks a bit of Nepali. He tells us about the seedier side. Most of the young kids on the street are sniffing glue and begging to support the habit. The young mothers begging with nursing babies, ask for milk powder (insist they don't want money) and when well meaning tourists buy them a $10 bag of powdered milk, they sell it back to the grocery store it came from for hard cash. The teenagers who harangue the female tourists for money use it on cheap Indian heroin and African cocaine (what do I know? I thought it was from South America) and ecstacy. African men ostensibly setting up a missionary network are actually setting up drug distribution networks, and somehow using Nepal as a gateway to get immigration into Europe. Tourists are flying in from Europe via Bangkok to get cheap sex in the massage parlours. Indian shopkeepers sweet talk and seduce young blonde female tourists traveling alone, have a fling and then sell them fake jewelry at exorbitant prices. All the prices are inflated 3-4 times more than a reasonable profit - and tourists often fall for it when they only have 48 hours here. They take home all kinds of goodies, mass produced in China but with labels showing "Made in Nepal". The Chinese are buying out hotels opened by Tibetan refugees, and they are moving onto other businesses. My kids are infatuated by all the goodies for sale, but the novelty wears off. Patrick takes us to a jewelry factory just behind our hotel. A dismal dark stairway with loose planks, stinking of old urine and garbage, takes us up to a hovel of a workshop where two men work at making huge silver rings with humongous pieces of coral and turquoise suitable for the fingers of the well to do. I consider buying a large quantity for resale and fund raising cutting out the middle men, and giving the workers a fair price. But this raises six hundred other questions, ones I cannot answer because I cannot fathom them.

A long bus ride

2006-11-01T02:18:00.000-08:00

We left Rumtek on the morning of Oct 30th for a gruelling day of jeep and bus rides. The drivers are incredibly sure of themselves as they stare death down at every high risk turn and sideless mountain pass. We seem to get drivers that have to pass every vehicle on the road, be it a monster truck, bus, jeep or motorcycle. We are downright blasé about near misses. The drivers don't stop for vomiting people. A poor slight Bengali woman threw up the whole time, retching and retching, and we still went ahead like a bat out of hell. Along the way, we stop to pay off police blocks as it is payday for them, end of month. Fifty rupees for our jeep apparently. I learn a lot as I speak a bit of Hindi and Bengali. I chat a lot with everyone.

In Siliguri, we switched to another jeep that takes a different load to Kakkarvitta, a small border town. It was night time by then and everything looked exceedingly seedy and humid and decrepid. Leaving India means having your names registered in a tiny office manned by resentful officials who bark out orders in a menacing way. They have a humongous book and everything is handwritten. All our names, addressed, birthdates, passport and visa numbers have to e recorded. The air is thick and smelly, and scores of people stare at us through windows with metal bars. One young man in particular looks very friendly. He has short hair and is conservatively dressed, but his very sweet and effeminate smile, and his little gold stud of an earring, and the twinkle in his eyes tells me he is gay. This is a not a problem in a big urban area, but in this little border town, full of smugglers and goons, I can imagine he isn't that safe. I think we have a meaningful exchange with our eyes. The official softens up considerably when I play my Bengali card. I speak to him in Bengali, talk about my Bengali roots and he sees my trademark conch shell bangles. I remain subservient; it's an act, but it works. We get through the line much faster, and the service is now with a smile.

The Nepali border isn't much better. They all seem to have gotten out of bed at 8 p.m. to take care of us. They are dressed in singlets and lungis, and shake their heads because I don't have passport size photos for the visas, which in themselves cost USD30. They don't accept Nepalese currency. They talk, scratch their heads, and decide the absence of photos will cost me an extra five hundred Indian rupees, for which I don't get a receipt. Corruption is rampant.

More on Rumtek

2006-11-01T01:58:00.000-08:00

For those of you much interested in Tibetan Buddhism, here is the official site of the Rumtek Monastery: http://www.rumtek.org/

We would love to load up more pictures to go with the blog, but it isn't always easy. It means the connection has to be relatively fast, and the internet cafe must have a USB port, which not all the computers have due to age.

Rumtek, Sikkim

2006-10-29T22:22:00.000-08:00

Our escape to the hills started in Gangtok the capital of Sikkim but aside from a few points of interest such as the Museum of Tibetology and Enchey Monastery, Gangtok is not that interesting. The government is quite keen to be seen as an ecological state, so there are strict rules such as "plastic-free state" which means shops are not allowed to give out plastic bags. However, the streets are still quite dirty as Bengali tourists in particular chuck anything and everything on the streeet, as they walk along with their large families. The Sikkimese are a kind and gentle people, of Nepali, Bhutia, and Lepcha tribes. They are quiet and reserved. The traffic and broken roads do make it hard to negotiate the hills... the whole town is built on a large hill, so everything is uphill or downhill. Hard on the legs if you not used to it. They call themselves the "Switzerland of the North".

We stayed two nights and then went 24 kms out of town, in a two hour jeep ride to Rumtek Monastery, the headquarters of the Karmapa, similar to the Dalai Lama, in that he is the head of one of the four branches of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is the political head of all of them, but he is only the religious leader of one of them. The Karmapa is 21 years old, and the 17th incarnation of Karmapa. However, he is not allowed here. He is in Dharmsala with the Dalai Lama, due to political problems.

In Rumtek we stayed a very clean and well kept hotel for $10 and $6.50 each for two rooms. Meals were about $1 each. We went to the monastery but aside from the ceremonies, we had a great time hanging out in the monks' café, speaking in broken English, Hindi and Nepali. The kids were invited to visit the monk's quarters and attend a smaller meditation in the dorms. The next day they played soccer with the monks for three hours... it was the monks' one day off and they're crazy about soccer. It was so beautiful, with millions of prayer flags flying heartily in the breeze about the soccer field. The Karmapa had allowed the field to be built 12 years ago, and since it's on a steep hill no chance of bulldozers. So the monks excavated the whole field by hand, into the hillside. It must have taken months if not years, but there it is, on top of small hill, surrounded by temperate forests and fabulous Himalayan views in the distance.

Gangtok, Sikkim

2006-10-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

We are currently in the capital of the state of Sikkim, Gangtok. It has about 25-30,000 people all sprawled on hillsides overlooking a valley. We in the foothills of the Himalayas. The air is so much cooler and the traffic is nothing to speak of in this small town . The Nepali culture is quiet and unassuming, and the change has done us good. We did a quick tour by taxi of the Tibetology Museum and two monasteries, as well as some other touristy places. Today we leave for Romtek monastery 25 kms or 2 hours out of town in a shared jeep. There we have to find even more peace and quiet. The idea that all of this is just one big illusion, in line with both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy is more than I can fathom. There's a fine line between philosophical acceptance and complacence. I am searching for that fine line. Our food and lodging continues to be incredibly cheap. We eat a good meal for the five of us for less than $10 canadian dollars, and a clean, decent hotel room for 2-3 people with hot water and a TV is $10 as well. However, you wouldn't want to watch TV - old Hollywood and Bollywood flicks, interspersed with endless commercials to achieve perfection and happiness with the right product.

Beyond Kolkata

2006-10-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

Well now that we have celebrated Diwali (fireworks, lights and crackers for the kids) and also Kalipuja, very similar in activities to Durga Puja, except that it's Ma Kali. The kids have had what I consider a great exposure to Kolkata, becoming quite conversant with the luchi-walla (the guy on the corner who sells you a quick meal of luchis and potato curry for 8 cents), where to buy misti-dhoi (sweet yoghourt), and the sweet shops in general. They have bought books at the Oxford bookstore, and are quite comfortable navigating the streets, with its hairy traffic patterns. We are off to the north tonight, on a train, with six bunk sleepers. Tomorrow morning we will be in the hills near Darjeeling or Sikkim, eager to enjoy the cooler weather and cleaner air.

My kids' blog

2006-10-23T03:31:00.000-07:00

My children have started their own blog... you can go to
http://www.moghog.blogspot.com if you want to read it from their perspective.

2006-10-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Despite the impression I may have given hitherto on this blog, India does have many fine qualities and things, and people. It's not that I don't notice these things, but Internet time is short here, and I write about that which leaves the biggest impression on me. But I have been contemplating what may come across as my "negativity" to readers.

Which brings up the question of love/hate, and the right to, and privilege of, criticism. A relative of mine, in sales, and therefore predictably full of sales jingos, brought up the question of whether the glass was half full or half empty. He thinks that I was saying that the glass is half empty in my impression of Kolkata, rather than looking at all the beautiful things that Kolkata had to offer. He loves his city and that I do respect and admire. You really have to love Kolkata to see beyond the obvious. But this is true of anything. You cannot really understand something, anything, if you don't love it. The act of loving changes the knowledge of that thing or person being loved. And sometimes, as you get to know something, or someone, you start to love.

But to reduce an impression to a question of a half empty/full glass is absurd. Even as I am grateful and appreciative for the half full glass, it behooves me to look at why it is half empty. To only look at the full glass, and simply ignore the empty is a form of denial, one supported by easy jingos. If I wake up and bitterly regret the half empty glass every day, then it's a real problem of attitude. But to wake up, appreciate the half full glass, then work on how to fill the other half, is a problem of action.

I do have some rights, as a person of Bengali origin, to take a hard look at things. Bengalis have lots of problems in Kolkata. I have a right to have my impression. Aside from larger questions of economics, the environment etc. on a cultural level they, or should I say "we", have some serious problems. So far, I have had very few conversations in which there was a reasonable dialogue. I did not feel heard, as I am often cut off in mid-sentence, my thoughts wrongly guessed at, and then wrongly addressed, shouted at, in the name of love and enthusiasm, and last, but not least, ignored whenever I say something that is a bit unusual. When I say something ever so slightly unorthodox, the subject is usually changed.

On the other hand, I find myself defending Bengalis to insensitive American tourists, recently on a tiger sighting expedition. The utter insensitivity of suggesting that I throw a toffee in midair so that a tourist could be amused at the sight of little Indian kids scrambling for the one toffee was so utterly revolting, I had to hold myself back from engaging in a verbal diatribe which would have completely gone over her oafish head.

She also said it was simply so obvious that people should throw garbage in a bin and not on the street, that she had no idea why they weren't "getting it". Her body language was one of disgust. I agree with her completely that gargabe belongs in bins, but for her to suggest that they were so intrinsically dense that they were not able to "get" the obvious, was really offensive. I said, somewhat gently, that things were not so differnt at home. That people at home should know how obviously bad it was for the environment to drive Hummers and SUVs and live in humongous houses, but that they did it anyway. She changed the subject too. Sigh.

To make or not to make art

2006-10-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine in India said

"You have to get in and find the sparks and that takes time. There are places with spirit and hope." He also explained the logistics of refugees streaming into Kolkata over the last fifty years. From the rural underemployed sectors, from droughts, flooding, Bangla Desh...they have all been streaming in competing for what little Calcutta has.

I do know all the reasons, of course, and I also know about economics, demographies, etc. and my need for compassion, personal growth, patience, endurance, and I have even been here before a few times since I moved from here at the age of 7, in 1963. Yet this time, I feel no movement in my head or heart and that itself makes me cry, whereas actual poverty somehow does not make me cry.

Strange, and curious.

I do know there are many sparks. I spend my days being a tourist, when I am not with my loving, but dysfunctional family. One of my children, Bashu, likes to give out small change to everyone. He does not do this because he feels guilty, he just thinks it makes sense. The other likes to buy sweets for the children every now and then. I take photos, with permission, and show it to the children, who get a huge blast out of seeing their own picture. I have bought oil pastels and paper tablets, to do art with anyone spontaneously, but I have not had the heart to do so. I spoke to Mehdi in Canada today, and he is brilliant at this sort of thing, drawing out self esteem and self worth in children, and he said that these activities should only happen in a safe and well defined relationship. When he did so in Sri Lanka, he did not have any other relationship with the kids, and this kept things clear and un-muddy. Once you give out money or sweets, etc. the relationship is altered in a way that compromises the outcome of self-esteem through art making. So in a sense I was relieved, because I don't wish to wear too many hats, and I do not wish to wear the art therapy hat and do a third rate job.

Leaving Kolkata, I know things will change. Now Diwali or Kalipuja is upon us this weekend, another huge festival of the goddess Ma Kali, and then we will retreat to the cool hills of Darjeeling and perhaps Sikkim. There are of course children everywhere, who want to play and draw and have fun. And of all things, I do like being with children best. I would rather that than see museums and memorials and temples. They are alive. Like Zen koans say, throw away the book of teachings and be. Likewise, disregard dead monuments and see the children, alive and playing.

Recycling and Freecycling in Calcutta

2006-10-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

There won't be any need to freecycle for many scores of years in Kolkata India. You cannot leave anything without it being taken, used, repaired, sold, sold again, taken apart for parts... you name it.

There are people here who are garbage pickers... an unsavoury profession, yes, but that is how they make their living and when you are hungry, there really is no choice.

Garbage is collected in two ways... there are few garbage cans. People just throw stuff on the street as they walk along. Or they empty their garbage out their house/apartment window into the gutter or into bags which are then put out on the street. Then at night, people come by to sweep it up into larger bags, which then are hauled to various street corners, where they are dumped. Then men, women and children pick their way through mountains of garbage for paper, plastics, useful items, and recycle them in one fashion or the other. They walk barefoot high up amongst a mixture of kitchen compost, junk, paper, plastic, toxic materials, sharp objects, filth and dust. It is shocking. What is left over is picked clean of organic matter by cows, crows, stray dogs and cats. Then what is left over is hauled away and then pigs go through it in a bigger dump.

If you have an appliance that is broken, say a toaster, which can be bought new for $10-$15, then instead of chucking it like we do, it can be repaired for as little as fifty cents or a dollar. So no need to dump stuff. Or if it is not repairable then someone will take it apart for parts and use it for something. When you live on the sidewalk and a tarp is your roof, and you cook stove is a clay pot with coals and sticks in it, then you can use just about anything.

Entire families live a few hundreds feet from our house on the sidewalk. They eat, live, work, play and socialize right there, in a sea of noise, with diesel-belching autorickshaws, taxis and rickety old buses. We are incredibly rich as we walk by. I don't know what to do. I can't feel anything sometimes. I don't know what is appropriate. If it is inappropriate for me to have a cup of coffee in a local upscale Starbucks look-alike for forty rupees here (one dollar), knowing that limbless beggars are outside the air conditioned café, waiting, then how is it any more appropriate to have a $2 coffee at Cha Cha Java in Parksville, just because it's far away and they are out of sight? At least this way I am fueling the local economy. It's difficult. The air is dirty, the place is completely overpopulated, with a population of more than 15 million people, with a city that is designed for perhaps one fifth of that. But in some strange way, they are recycling much better than we are. Nothing much is wasted.

There are many forces at work. Poverty has many roots, including pure economics, but there are also so many entrenched belief systems, about who is deserving and who is not. In fact this is not much different from Parksville, where we attend workshops to work on our well entrenched lack of self esteem. We get life coaches and therapy, to reprogram deep set notions that we are not deserving of love, health and prosperity. We have so much in common, our two communities.

Everyone has a business, or shall I say, scam. We all carry on somehow. Our various burdens are much different, but we have the same drive to live, prosper and multiply. To have sex. To eat tasty food. To look good. To play.

And another day

2006-10-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

It's hard to feel anything some times. Part of me wants to b e proud of my father's heritage, of my childhood, and the other part of me wants to take a large heavy duty power washer to the whole city, to buildings, sidewalks, bridges, shops, everything. I love powerwashers. They use water and electricity to clean, clean and clean. I am no clean freak, but the layers and layers of soot, diesel exhaust, dirt, grime, is unbearable at times.

I try to be philosophical, but it's hard. I wouldn't know how to work here and have hope. Not even the little things I do give me hope. They are less than a drop in the bucket. The beggar children may be poor and malnourished, but they aren't stupid. They know how to play the game.... beg, pester, badger, delay you, pull on you, do the woe-is-me routine, "food auntie, auntie!', till you are sick of it. My cousin says he doesn't give money, but may buy them some food, such as a wrap (known as a roll here and avaiblable everywhere as fast food) , but even as I did that , the boy stuck the wrap in his pocket and kept asking for more money. I had seen him frisk a younger boy, perhaps 6 years old, and almost had him strip naked in do wntown Kolkata, lest he be hiding and keeping some of his begging earnings. Real operators. Amidst $6000 surround sound systems in Bose shops and the Grand Hotel, and $10,000 wedding sarees, limbless beggars, old men, lying studiously on the sidewalk, strategically placed between hawkers of cheap shirts and global dollar store junk. It's all too familar. I feel angry that nothing has changed. I talk to everyone, to the Oxford book shop coffee shop employees (like Starbuck/Chapters ), to the traffic cops, the chawallahs, our security doormen, the little kids who I teach how to shoot a photograph and to family members. They are all aware of the problems, but I see no one expressing any vision or enthusiasm to change things. I know they are out there, but they must be in the minority. I saw some young Greenpeace volunteers handing out pamphlets once but when I told the optician, who was preparing glasses for my son, about their efforts, he said they were all "garbage". He was a most educated and affable man, and he announced that all the food in the city was "garbage'. When I asked him what he was doing to change things, he changed the subject.

I see people preening themselves to look beautiful as they step out for the evening. Great attention is paid to matching earrings with the clothes, well coiffed hair, surrealistically beautiful clothes, cavalier and dashing looks amongst the men, but then they step out on a sidewalk that is broken and treacherous with potholes, dog crap, plastic bags, and all manners of fruits and vegetable peels and many other assorted debris. And they don't notice the absurd dichotomy as they pursue what Romeo and Krishna have pursued for thousands of years: romance, love, glitter, the momentary seduction.

Too hot to handle

2006-10-09T02:54:00.000-07:00

Kolkata is mercifully quiet and the air is wonderfully breathable today. That is because a general strike has been called from 6 am to 6 pm for all shops and commecial vehicles including taxis, autorickshaws, buses, shops ec. There are a few private cars running around and the occasional passenger-less cab. It is amazing how peaceful and well ordered things can be. Usually a ride through the city is a breathtaking experience as every driver is an expert driver, honking heavily 50% of the time, spewing out dirty diesel fuel into the air, dodging pedestrians, motorcycles, dogs, cows, rickshaws, driving on whatever side of the street is necessary to get ahead.

Today, you can feel the stillness in the backstreets as cats yowl at each other and dogs lie on the hot cement for their afternoon nap. Even the beggars and poor people who live on the sidewalks have to relax today. We also went to shop for groceries yesterday in anticipation of the strike day where no supplies would be available. We decided to go to a nearby western style mall, at Goriahaat Mall, and buy stuff we were used to, instead of our usual fare of luchis and potata curry from the local street seller. I felt quite guilty shopping in an air-conditioned mall, buying extravagant goods. However, even with the higher prices, our total grocery bill came to less than ten dollars, when the same would have cost us $30-40 back home. So you can imagine that eating out is very cheap... you can eat out all the time for less than it costs to buy groceries in Canada. However, there are many ranges of prices, and to get the lower prices you have to settle for a less than pristine restaurant. But the food is good, and you get accustomed to everything with time.

I think perhaps my age is making less resilient. The heat and pollution and humidity is getting to me, but it doesn't seem to bother the kids as much as me. However, we are extremely fortunate as we have our own private spacious airconditioned apartment, which doesn't make me feel guilty as at all. I know that if I had grown up here, I would adjust faster. I do know that Calcuttians (is there such a word?) love their city very deeply, being attached to all its aspects, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I asked a few people what they would change if they could change one practical thing... and I got

Corruption

Street infrastructure

Make people love each other

Durga Puja

2006-10-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

We did have other accommodations in Calcutta (Kolkata) proper, but our family really wanted us nearby for the annual Durga Puja celebrations which I can only compare to Christmas. It's four to five days of intense activity centered around the goddess Durga, an incarnation of the goddess Parwati, who comes back to the earthly home of her father and mother, a short time after her wedding. This is a custom for new brides in India. Brides, after a few months, come back to their mother and father to stay a while, and when it's again time to return to her husband's house, there is much tears and joy. And so, ornate depictions of the goddess in 3D are built in temporary temples, throughout the city, often only 3-4 blocks apart. I will post pictures as soon as possible. Then she is immersed back into the Ganges river, amidst huge amounts of fanfare... which we luckily videotaped. You can google Durga Puja for more information. The celebration is especially important for Hindu Bengalis.

Kolkata first day

2006-10-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

We have already been in India since September 22nd and I simply haven't had a chance to write. But here we go. We landed in a blast of heat in a run down airport in Kolkata, and at that moment, for me, nothing had changed in India after 23 years. It was comforting in a way, as it would be hard to come back and find radical changes. But no, there was still heat, noise, dirt, potholes, cows, and people doing back breaking labour. Cha-wallahs, cows, fornicating dogs, and brilliantly coloured saris amidst it all. We drove immediately to Howrah, where my cousin lives. We were extremely tired as we had been on an overnight flight from Dubai, which means we didn't sleep at all. He had obtained a flat for us near his house, so we could be close together to socialize, but it was a bit of a shocker for the kids, Ryan especially. We were on the floor in a tiny 400 sq ft flat, with very primitive toilet facilities, complete with lizards on the walls, and cockroaches in the dark corners. I have seen it before and it doesn't bother me, but with our lack of sleep, the heat, the dust and sleeping on thin cotton mattresses on the cement floor, well, it was hard to sleep. After a few hours sleep we were awoken so we could sleep at night again. Our family was most thrilled and welcoming.

I was overcome with emotion at seeing my aunt especially. She is 78 and the person perhaps closest to my father, who passed away in 1995, excepting perhaps my mother, who was certainly the closest to him. I cried, and she cried. And she was so sweet to all of us. I love her. At four foot ten, she is tiny and cute, and I want to pick her up and hold her and take her back home with me.

More soon...

2006-09-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

We've already been here a whole week and I haven't blogged because we've been in the country side of Switzerland.... namely in a Swiss chalet in the Alps.... hehe... it's absolutely idyllic... cows, meadows, snow covered peaks.. google Jungfrau and you will see the region we are in... Jungfrau is the top of Europe. And we are staying in a small town called Beatenberg. From there, our kids have gone paragliding with my good friend Tarcis, who I have known since 1982... met him in Iceland while I was hitchhiking around Europe. Everyone should have a friend like Tarcis. He's exuberant, generous, enthusiastic, and resourceful. And he has a wonderful family too... Jatta from Finland and babies Olivia and Janina. Today the boys rented a paddleboat on Lake Thunersee. Yesterday we saw a reconstructed Swiss village with houses from all the regions of CH (Switzerland).. and the day before we went to a humoungous AquaParc with Devil's chutes ... and skipped across the border to France to eat a few crepes in Bouverte on Lake Geneva, so we could say we had been to France. It was very pretty. We also went to a Mystery Park, which is based on the book Chariots of the Gods. ... the idea that aliens have come to visit us regularly and that all major world religions are based on visits by such 'Gods'. The guy who came up with this idea is Swiss... Erich von Doniken.. not sure about the spelling. But you can google it... it is much good food for thought.

Tomorrow, we are in Bern briefly and then onto Tarcis' city house, where we will spend one night before flying to Dubai on Friday....

We are swimming in good cheese, chocolate, Rivella, neat and tidy everything, kirsch, fresh bread baked daily in Beatenberg's wood fired bakery, and .... and.... flowers, cottages, good drivers, steep uphill turns and winding roads... cows, goats, everything that CH is famous for. And did I mention fondue?? Tarcis and Jatta made a very typical Swiss cheese fondue for us which was soooo filling. We are really fortunate. I feel blessed ... great friends, great kids, and the opportunity to travel and see the world. What fortune...!!

So much to do......

2006-09-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

There has been sooooooooo much to do to prepare to leave. The actual journey itself is not a problem. It's preparing things at home so the house and business still functions that has been a challenge. There are so many details... but the great thing about traveling with teenagers is that they are easy going. Whatever we forget we will learn to live without or we will get when we are out there. I finalized so many things before leaving.... my will, locked in my mortgage, arranged money to be available through bank machines in the next few months, housesitters, took the car off insurance, disabled my cell phone... and on and on...

But this is it. It is happening in 24 hours.

The day before

2006-09-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

So it's happening. I'm finally taking an extended journey with my kids to a far away place. A place that has meaning for me personally, but a place that will be an adventure for the kids. I don't know if my love affair with India is like a teenage crush, a deep unbearable love that suddently dissipates when you see the object of your love for what he/she is, just a regular joe or jill. It wasn't their fault that you had a crush, they were what they were. They didn't change, you did. You grew up. Perhaps all loves are just different types of crushes... all basically dissipate one day when we grow up in one way or the other... it happened for me with Denmark. For all my life, I bestowed upon that little green patch all kinds of virtues and magical qualities, and then one day ... poof! it was gone. For me. Denmark hadn't changed in a profound way. In some small ways, yes, but not in a profound way. It carried on as it always has, with all its charms and monstrosities.

Here's a picture of our family last week. A friend of mine is practicing to become a professional photographer... and this is who we are just then.

India has changed they tell me

2006-08-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

Everyone tells me India has changed. Someone who goes every year tells me that there isn't as much poverty on the streets as before. It's there, but not as much as before. Last time I went all kinds of consumer goods were in high demand, and it was hoped that we would come with many such luxuries... tampons, electronics, perfumes, makeup, etc. Now it's all available there. Everyone has a cell phone there apparently. Even rickshaw drivers. And why not? Still, I hear from others that in many ways nothing has changed. I am excited and anxious to go and find out how my India has changed. I spent the first seven years of my life there and I have memories, illusions perhaps, and a lot of sentimental attachment to this idea of India.

Preparing for the Journey

2006-08-13T00:55:00.000-07:00

Traveling was always easy when it was just me - I was 27 last time I took a major trip. I did it alone. It was easy. Now I am 50, and I am taking my three boys and one of their friends. We will be gone for more than four months. I have so many details to take care of... connections to family, old friends, rough itinerary, where to stay, who and what to see, making sure the house runs well while we are gone, the plants, the bills, the pets... our health, budget & money, passports & visas... but the day is coming soon and I am very excited. Journeys like this change you forever. How will I change. What will my children think of India, the world, their place in it?

Here is a photo of a brilliant sunset from our backyard, overlooking Georgia Straight between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia.