Hollow Bones

Epiphany

2008-01-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

Dark and stormy night. The flash and crash pulls me out of my sleep, that irresistible, before-you-hit-the-mattress jet-lag sleep. I go up to the kitchen and hesitate before filling a glass of water from the sink. This is the first tap water I've drank in five months. Check the time: still not yet midnight. Still Epiphany.

The little things feel the strangest. Driving in the right lane---driving in lanes at all. Ordering food and having it arrive in a matter of minutes. Washing my clothes in a machine makes me giggle and grin; it feels like such wonderful indulgence. I shower completely for the first time in weeks and stand there under the spray, waiting for the hot water to run out and shaking with silent laughter when it doesn't. I curl up in my heated waterbed, so immediately warm. I'm shocked at the number of mirrors in our house.

But oh, the sky. In India I saw skies like I'd never imagined, skies so close that you could grab them, could be swept up by them, step off into them and never fall. But that was months ago, during the monsoon and before the rice harvest. The dry months made the sky a plain thing that no longer carried my gaze beyond the hills. In Kathmandu the smog had hid away the mountains. In Agra I had hid myself, in a hotel room with no windows, away from the hungry eyes of those who see my height, my clothes, my skin and assume I have money that should be theirs, by scheme or theft or charity.

I had never expected to come back to this, this monstrous god of Midwestern winter, stretching off to the horizon---the horizon!---and pulsating with the hot colors of the sunset. Somewhere over the ice crumbled arctic, during that long long flight, somewhere we must have found a rip, a wormhole, flipped around, tumbled off the world and landed in my home, a place of monstrous skies.

And now the sky is crashing, cracking, booming, flashing, the Thunderer of my ancestors welcoming me home, and I start to wonder what now I can write. What can I say, what poignant conclusion can I give? How do I "end it," "cap it," "round it off"? I've been telling people, at the party and before, that this week I'd finish this haphazard narrative that you are reading, but what can I say?

I'd always intended to write this post about Epiphany, the Christian holy day celebrating the three Magi's journey to see baby Jesus. Epiphany was the day after I got back, my mom had realized, so it seemed only natural to simply save our Christmas celebrations for then. Our plans grew, as did our guest list, and soon it began to feel obvious that Epiphany was the last thing I'd have to do, the end of my journey.

And now it is over. A fun day of seeing old friends and meeting new people, but nothing feels different. I'd chatted and talked a bit about my trip, some "did you know"s and "actually"s, but it all seemed so short, all over too quick. I still haven't had the conversation, that one long discussion where I finally articulate it all, the great lessons that I learned, the magic that I saw and didn't see, my wisdom from the East.

So what did I find out? I suppose the biggest shock and, in a way, disappointment, was discovering that India doesn't have any answers for us. There is no Shangri-la there, whatever the tourism posters might tell you. Folks there might be more superstitious than westerners, but few are really more spiritual. If you go to India to "find yourself," you will probably be disappointed---there is nothing like that there that you don't bring with you. Despite the color and texture and the intensity that can grip life in the East, there is no magic to be found, at least not in the obvious places.

"Epiphany" means "appearance" or "revelation," and the truth is that is what I went looking for. For the last five months, even up to today, I've been waiting for that life changing, mind blowing something to happen to me, and you know...it didn't. I wandered twisty back alleys, hoping to stumble upon a cult. I stared intently into the incense swirls at pujas, Tibetan chants, and witch doctor performances, waiting to see a ghost or god. I screamed alone at the alien landscape of the Himalayas, desperate for a sign. Now they are all done, checked off my list, all those things that I knew wouldn't work but felt compelled to try. In a very important way it is a relief: now I have no more excuses.

Still, I cannot say that I came back empty handed. I've already discussed the hard truth learned from my aamaa and my bhaai: that for some people life is simply and intolerably unfair. You hear this rejected so indignantly, but the sad fact is that arranged marriage is horrible for women, life in the village is not only serene and earthy but stagnant and painful, people in the third world are just as mean and greedy and violent and perverse as people in the first. These are the truths that now drive my wish to change the world, that shape my understanding of how things could and should be.

And then there is the magic, the real magic hidden under the dead crust of gods and legends and charlatans. Stare off at mountains wherever you are, think hard and long and often enough, and eventually you will find something, become something. I've heard people say that "India changes you," but where you go doesn't matter nearly as much as the going away. You go away, disappear for a while, break your habits and the expectations of others---you can come back a little different, as whatever you want, as a man or a magician or something else entirely.

I want to thank all of you who have read my reflections over the last several months. I hope that you have enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed sharing them. Obviously my style and method for this blog has changed a lot while writing it, and thus I am hesitant to declare it cohesive or complete, at least in the way I had originally hoped it would be. There is a lot missing, a lot I never wrote about, out of laziness or lack of time or some exaggerated sense of secrecy. Still, this is where it stops. I may come back, correct typos, polish it some, but this will be my last post. For better or worse, this journey is over.

It is good to be home, back to my friends and my family and the simple things that maybe I never appreciated until I had to go without them. I've spent the week resting, sitting around, enjoying food and warmth and bandwidth. But I'm not done. I have plans and plots and clever schemes. Among these is a new blog project which should begin in a week or so. Given how much this one evolved since its inception, I am hesitant to suggest details, but keep an eye out for the beginning and continuing prolific progress of Jump Buddha Gun. As always feel free to pass on the link to this or my coming project to anyone you think might enjoy them.

A happy New Year and a blessed Epiphany to you all.

Dhanyabad.

Kathmandu Tomorrows

2007-12-18T02:03:00.000-08:00

This is the world today: I sit in a Tibetan cafe on a little street a few twists and turns off Kathmandu's main tourist area of Thamel. Out on the road two men play a serious game of chess, taunting each other in English, while Christmas hymns and late 90s pop floods the street from a shop selling bootleg movies and CDs. I sip at my momo soup and read a 1930s manual of efficient study techniques on the small but pleasant screen of my iPod. Most stationary stores in Kalimpong had a variety of Indian and American business and self-help books, but here hotel libraries are paperbacked alcoves full of used travel guides and German translations of John Grisham novels. I poke into little bookshops and browse their haphazard shelves more out of habit than anything else. It is always interesting to see what books end up in these tiny shops, but why bother buying when a lifetime's reading of classics and creative commons awaits, free and weightless, wherever there is a trickle of bandwidth.

On the loosely crowded streets I dodge invitations to examine exquisite shawls and jewelry, for rickshaws and taxi rides, and for discreet purchases of marijuana. At a tall and beautiful stupa, a short tout in a North Face fleece urges me to inspect a shop full of detailed thanka paintings. He doesn't even bother to take the headphones out of his ears, and instead plays the dial from one cricket game to another. A colorfully and, I assume, traditionally dressed and painted old man strokes his beard and demands that I take his picture for twenty rupees. I resist the compulsion to punch him. These sorts of guys run a slightly more aggressive version of the Hollywood Darth Vader/gorilla suit gimick, except instead of appealing to people's love of movies they play off tourists' desire to experience exotic cultures. Nothing wrong with wanting to make a buck, but they belittle the sacred aesthetics of their own culture in a way that sets my jaw to grind.

I meet a woman in the internet cafe across from my hotel, and together we grumble about how slow my email is sending/her pictures are uploading. "E Daai! Ekdham bistaari bhayo," I say. "Hajur, ajaa chitto hunchha ki hudaina?" she says. I think we are both a little surprised that the other speaks Nepali, and after a minute of chat I find out that fifteen years ago she was on the same program that I just finished. When she finishes updating her daughter's kindergarten class's blog, she takes me across the street and through a short, stooping hallway to a blooming little courtyard. She points out her house, introduces me to her Nepali husband, and invites me to come by sometime for tea.

In Thamel and Jhochhe (Freak Street to us Lonely Planet clutching masses), westerners abound. In restaurants their eyes glaze over, and they huddle together, mumbling in German or Dutch or Russian or something. A few sit alone, nose buried in their Rough Guide and scribbling in little orange waterproof notebooks that I read on the internet last month were becoming hipper than the ubiquitous black Moleskine. At internet cafes they come in and demand calls to Europe or Australia, wandering out dejected when it doesn't work. On the streets they avoid each other's gaze as they tentatively prod at silk and spice shops. After a while the white people blur together, all in dreadlocks and knitted hippie jackets, trekking fleeces and backpack covers. I shiver at the thought of participating in their cliched sameness and long for a three-piece suit.

I follow a rack of rugged looking leather bags inside, and the shopkeeper, Ravi, is delighted to find that I speak Nepali. More even than in Kalimpong, everyone, including those reasonably fluent in English, seems really happy---even grateful---that I know more of their language than the crude spattering of phrasebook memorization. I introduce myself with my Nepali name and Ravi's grin widens. He tells me about how he makes the bags and wallets out of tough yak hide, and I am tempted to buy a roughly stitched wallet. In the end I turn it down; it didn't fit my credit cards.

I don't bother with curio shops anymore. All those pretty things of stone, brass, and beads---I know half a dozen places to buy the same things in Manhattan. With one on every street corner, they quickly cease to be curious. In Bhaktapur "student guides" lead us to a Thanka painting school. "Just to look." "To practice their English." Handicrafts is a major industry. I halfheartedly applaud the efforts of shops selling purses and rugs that are organic/fair trade/produced by women's self-help groups, but I don't buy. A deck of playing cards made from homemade paper: that's a bit more interesting. My most prized souvenir is a tiny flashlight that projects Osama bin Laden's face.

Next to me right now a ten-year-old-ish Nepali kid is looking for something on the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City website and playing an in-browser Flash version of the bouncy dirtbike racing game I was addicted to eight years ago.

Something is changing in the way culture works. The old ways of life developed out of necessity, were preserved by lack of options. You sang traditional songs, wore traditional clothes, ate traditional food because that was all there was. Most people couldn't go to other places, didn't participate much outside their family group. Life in the developed world is often full of options, mobility, choice of how to spend your life. More and more of what people do, how they make their living, what they eat, how they dress, what music and art they make or enjoy---all these things that constitute what we usually think of as an individual's "culture" are chosen by personal preference. Those people who dress up like zombies and shamble down Broadway every couple months: that's culture, but there is nothing "traditional" about it, not like what people expect to find here in Nepal.

Tourism is a particularly peculiar manifestation of these changes. It is strange to think that so many people and places are devoting so much of themselves to the amusement of foreigners. I've heard of trekkers who come down after ten days in the mountains and demand to see "traditional dances,"and the locals, often times, are happy to oblige. "If foreigners want to see our dances, our dances must be important," they say. In a way that is inspiring, but what does it mean for the culture that it is being preserved more to satisfy Western curiousity and guilt, or to help people hold on to collective identities that are quickly and quite reasonably becoming obsolete? In India this is compounded by the financial incentives offered to scheduled tribes and groups who can prove that they are "backwards" enough to need them; there is serious competition to be more "tribal" than the next village. But the view of "culture" that we have today is a completely new idea and has very little to do with the changes taking place in the way people live.

We worry so much about lost traditions, dying languages, vanishing tribes, and without a doubt these are aspects of the human experience that deserve to be remembered, that can enrich us with their wisdom and unique perspectives. Is it really fair, however, to expect people to live statically, to conform to practices and preferences that likely wouldn't exist if people had been able to choose otherwise? We worry so much about our civilization becoming a monoculture, and surely no one wants to see all places and people homogenized. But look around, click some links---there is already more out there than any one lifetime could hold. While we might all have access to the same things, will it really be a monoculture if we all choose our own unique paths of immersion, our own voice of ideas and desires? What is becoming is not a chorus but a conversation.

Kathmandu is one of these inbetween places. People sit on ancient, royal steps, listening to mp3 players and sending cellphone txts. Here we are all turning to the incorporeal, immersing ourselves in idea spaces while we trod foot-worn streets and caress rain-smoothed doors. It is a place boiling over with all times: the rough stone monuments to old and weary gods, the markets that service present daily needs, the posters and billboards that tantalize us with tomorrows. But it isn't perfect, and tourism isn't helping. Contrary to popular belief, tourism doesn't destroy traditions (the growth of self-determination does that), but rather preserves them in a shallow, cartoon way. We come to these places wanting to see exotic culture, and they give it to us. They give it to us in a form that we can see in a single afternoon, that we can take him in pictures. They turn it into something they can sell.

The air in Kathmandu these days is harsh and grainy, its aromas now colored more by car exaust than by the incense that burns in flower strewn shrines. The white-snowed mountains that ring Kathmandu are obsured into a hazy gray by the air pollution that sits in the valley like a noxious puddle of a cloud. A good third of the city's inhabitants wear bandanas or cheap face masks. I've been here less than a week, and already my throat is raw, my eyes prone to watering. But, as has been said, "we cannot separate the air that chokes from the air on which wings beat." For each thing that fills my mouth with bile and guilt, I see two things that fascinate and inspire, that gush and glow with vindicated imagination. If this is the world today, I think, imagine what it will be tomorrow.

Day 1, Day 10

2007-11-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

The streets are empty. It’s late, maybe midnight. The moon’s light is only half full, but still the hill is drenched in it, painting everything a phantom grey as if the city were covered with a layer of fresh snow or volcanic ash. The glossalalia babbling that had seeped into the office from the Pentacostal church next door has long since died away, and it’s quiet. Once a taxi drives by, its headlights playing shadow webs upon the building walls—a spinning safety-glass jigsaw of power lines and balcony rails. A few minutes later we pass a couple figures going the opposite direction, little more than silhouettes. I could swear they are carrying spears.

“Where are all the dogs, man?” Pema asks. It is my first day in Gangtok, and National Press Day. I got in too late to make the Press Day event, but when Pema got back that afternoon he sat me down and put me to work on tomorrow’s edition, editing, proofreading, rewriting. Native-equivalent fluency in English is hard to come by, and most reports and press releases that come my way are written in a peculiar sort of broken English. So I sit and work through them, rearranging sentences for flow and clarity, cutting out superfluous details, and doing my best to turn them into something resembling news stories. An hour into it Subash hands me a phone and tells me to take down the details on a new hydel project from their correspondent in Mangan. After fifteen minutes of “Ke re? Pheri bhannus na. Can you repeat that?” I think I have everything, and write the story. When I get back from dinner, Pema is on the phone with people in Mangan, getting the real facts—the sacred rock is actually a cave, the man who said he’s sell his land didn’t, that sort of thing. When the stories are done, Subash prints out the pages for me to proofread, and I go to town on a columnists’ feature on Indian fung shui, trying to get all the occurrences of cardinal directions into a single format. I’m halfway through when Subash takes the page from my hand. At this point those sorts of details aren’t worth caring about. We print out the finals, half-sheet transparencies, and head out onto empty streets.

When we get to the printer’s, we turn off the road and pass through a red metal gate with a tiny door in it. It’s late, maybe midnight. Subash tugs at my sleeve as I duck through the gate. “This is the entrance to hell,” he says, and grins in the moonlight.

***

"Sir, you need a ticket, and the photo exhibition is closed today." The guard doesn't even bother to get out of his chair.

"Don't worry, it's okay. I'm a journalist." I wave my invitation slip under his nose as I stroll by. He doesn't stop me.

I get up to the entrance and make towards the stairs. Again they say it is closed, but when they find out I'm from NOW! their whole attitude changes. "Come this way, sir," says a lackey, and he leads me up the stairs.

I'm a little late. There had been some sort of traffic obstruction on the way up, and it was pretty touch and go for a while. But that's alright. NOW! is the most popular newspaper in Gangtok, so I can afford to be fashionably late. I haven't really missed anything. The officials are all sitting around, nibbling on biscuits and sipping tea and coffee. I spot some other reporters, milling around with an assortment of notebooks and cameras, and we exchange what I hope are knowing glances.

I snap some photos of the bigwigs, and suddenly everyone with a camera is heading inside the exhibition room, ducking the red ribbon strung across the entrance. I follow.

"Excuse me, are you with the press?" Dr. Anna has an accusing lilt to her voice. Then she recognizes me. We had met before, on the official program visit to the Tibetology Institute. "Oh, you're Andrew, aren't you?"

"That's right," I say. "I'm with NOW!"

"Brilliant," she replies, and ducks back out to help with the elaborate process of ushering the ambassador from Bhutan into position.

Thirty seconds later the Ambassador pulls the loose, delicate bow on the ribbon and the place gets that shiny, inaugurated smell. Everyone either claps or snaps pictures, depending on what they have in their hand. I do the picture thing.

Dr. Anna starts taking the Bhutanese Ambassador, in his traditional Bhutanese dress, from one display of photos to the next. After a few minutes of shooting I notice that the screen on my camera isn't showing anything. I take a picture and it just goes white. I sidle until I'm next to one of the other photographers with the same kind of camera, and explain my problem. He take the camera and fiddles with it, then hands it back and assures me that the problem is just with the screen, that the camera really is taking pictures. I hope he's right.

I loiter, oscillating indecisively between my camera and my little notebook. Occasionally I'll drift close enough to catch a snippet of a conversation or an interview by one of the other reporters, and I'll write something down. When the Ambassador comes out to talk with the press and says ambassadorial things, I write them down.

After a while I decide to loiter a little closer to the snack table and get some coffee. It doesn't help. I've been battling a cold for a couple days now, and at the moment I'm too busy trying to keep my snot in my nose to really "get the story," as it were. Not that there is much story to get. Everything here is pretty standard, and Pema already knows most everything about the exhibition and the Tibetology Institute. I'm mostly here for the pictures. At least I hope.

I try striking up a convo with someone important looking, but they have pretty pressing business over there a moment later. I chat a bit with Tenzing Tashi, one of the major organizers and researchers on the photo project. She says that she used to work for NOW! as a marketing director, and she asks me call her “Tina.”

“Did you get everything you need?” she asks. I sniffle up my cold and assure her that I have. My cell phone rings, and I pull it out. “Maybe you have to go,” she says, and heads towards the exhibit room. I answer the phone, expecting Pema, but it is just B.B from the program house at Mountain Hut. I don’t have to go at all, but after that last exchange sticking around seems awkward. By now everyone seems to have left, so I leave too, my notebook full of disconnected facts and scribbled quotes. My first real assignment as a reporter, and I can't help but feel pretty out of my depth.

In the end, though, it turns out I wasn’t out of my depth at all. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t get every detail on the exhibit; most of what I need is waiting for me in a press release back at the office. After all the press releases I had edited, one would think I would have expected this, but I didn’t. Between the press release, my memory and notes, and a few details confirmed by Pema, the story comes together, and we put it on the front page with my by-line (my by-line!) and my picture of the ribbon splitting.

The next morning I get a text message on my cell phone: “That was a very nice piece on our exhbtn. Tks. Tina.”

Manu

2007-11-13T01:41:00.000-08:00

Manu was always beautiful. When she was little, she played among the flowers on the hills around her house, chased chickens and danced with goats, and sung carols with her friends during the fall festival of lights. Her family then was very poor---her parents were unskilled laborers on a sericulture plantation, spending their days collecting the glistening threads of silk from the trees where the tiny precious caterpillars inched and crawled. Despite their lack of money, however, the family managed to scrape by and send all of their eight children to school. Except Manu.

As the eldest daughter, Manu had to stay home and take care of her younger siblings while her parents went to work in the plantation groves. She cooked and cleaned, cut grass to feed the cows and goats, collected eggs to eat and milk to sell at market, and, when they were old enough, saw her little brothers and sisters off to school every day. It wasn't that Manu didn't want to go to school---she did---and she was as bright and sharp as any of her siblings. But the work had to be done, and though she wished that she too could go, could learn to read and write, she stayed and did the work, sacrificing her future for the sake of her siblings.

When Manu was eighteen a woman came. The woman had a son---an educated man who taught at a school in Kalimpong, several hours away. "My son is not yet married," the woman told Manu's father. "Give me your daughter." Manu's father knew that money was tight and the dowry this man's family would pay would do much to help put his children through school. So, things being what they were, and the groom being educated and respectable, Manu's father said yes.

Manu is eighteen years old and has plenty of experience doing housework, but she doesn't feel good about this. She knew that arranged marriage has been common practice in India for centuries, but she'd never thought it would happen to her, and not like this. Her new husband is half-deaf and nearly twice her age. She had only glimpsed his mother, the head of their new household, and she had looked ill tempered and mean---a fat old woman with teeth missing, and when she laughed it was a harsh, cackling thing. Her new husband had a good job, and the dowry was generous, but she doesn't know him, she never loved him.

Now fast forward to the wedding night, or not long after, and try to imagine Manu---brilliant, beautiful Manu---waiting in her tiny room for her new husband, a man she neither knows nor loves, to come up from watching TV and fuck her for the first time.

Oh how the stomach turns at this thought. Oh how one's bile must rise. For Manu never wanted this. She didn't want to stay home, to grow up illiterate and uneducated. She didn't want to get married. But she had done these things because she had to, because her family and culture had told her to. And now she had do to something else, something else that her family and culture tells her she must do. But how can she? How can this, of all things, be expected of her?

A year later she has her first child, a beautiful baby boy that her husband names Ujjual. A couple years later she has a daughter, Uma. They are smart and kind kids, and she cares for them more than anything else in the world.

Every day when I come home from class or the bazaar, Manu smiles at me. She is thirty-seven now, and a few wrinkles are starting to show around her lips and eyes, but she is still beautiful. Every day when I sit down after washing my hands, she brings me a plate of daal bhaat and smiles. When I sit and drink my tea she asks me about my day, and when I ask her to tell me about hers, she smiles. "Maile kaam garnuparyo," she always says. I had to work.

You see, though she loves her children as much as any mother could, and even loves the American students who come to live in her home for months at a time, she still doesn't love her husband or his ill tempered mother. And she isn't happy. Every day, from four or five in the morning till after dinner, Manu works. She cooks roti and daal bhaat, mixes nutritious slop for the cows, cleans, tends the fields, and makes the long walk an hour down the hill to the jungle to chop firewood and cut grass for the cattle and goats. When Ganess goes to his real home on holidays, she gets up even earlier to milk the cows and take the milk and cream into town to sell. Manu works harder than anyone I have ever seen.

Her husband is charismatic and successful, always chatting with relatives and neighbors, telling stories, and showing off his English, but he doesn't care about Manu. He does little work around the house or fields, preferring to stay up late watching cricket and American movies on television, and does even less to make her life easier. When she calls him for dinner, he often doesn't come for an hour or so, or runs in and takes a plate back to the TV room, or asks to be prepared something different. And when this happens, Manu has to sit and wait, for in Nepali culture the cook has to wait until everyone is served and almost finished before starting to eat.

I asked her, once, if she would like to learn to read, but she just smiled sadly and shugged. "Kaam garnuparchha," she repeats. You see, it isn't that she doesn't want to learn, but when would she have time? How could she possibly find time or energy amongst her exhausting daily chores to do anything to extricate her from her often frustrating and intractable lifestyle? She is too busy shoveling out water to fix the leak.

And despite all this, she still smiles, still laughs and jokes with me, still dances and plays with the goats when they are let out for exercise, still sings while she works.

Ansel tells me that my distaste of arranged marriage is just a western cultural assumption, that love marriages aren't any more or less likely to be happy or successful than arranged marriages. Given how commonplace divorce is America, not to mention broken homes and domestic violence, in some ways I am sure he is right. But I just can't get past the sex. In the West we may sleep with more people than Indians or Nepalis, but in general we only sleep with people that we know, people that, at least at that moment, we choose. So when I try to imagine what it must have been like for Manu---brilliant, beautiful Manu---to wait in that room for her new husband, my stomach turns and something feels distinctly not right.

My Australian friend working in Bangladesh has similar feelings. In Bangladesh, she tells me, American movies are generally considered sinful depravity, but since it is already all sinful depravity there really isn't any difference between watching a Hollywood flick and watching pornography. Thus, for many Bangladeshis, their only perception of American women comes from porn, and this combines with the Eastern arranged marriage value of having sex with strangers to give many men there the belief that western women will sleep with anyone. Obviously my friend has had some frustrating experiences.

It is getting late here, and I have to go. I don't want to get home to late, to make Manu worry. And I want to go home, because I know that she will be there to smile at me. But what I am supposed to do? I think about her situation, about the fact that she is trapped into a life that she didn't choose, and my gut fills with a cool rage. It isn't fair, I think. It shouldn't be this way. Of all the things in India that I expected to see, all the poverty and lack, I didn't really understand that the most intolerable things are the most subtle, the ones that you can't see in National Geographic pictures or the nightly news. But what could I do? Just like with Ganess, even if I could give her money or whisk her away to America, there would still be millions of women just like her, whose situations are just as intractable.

So I'm just going to go home, and thank her for all her work, for the food she cooks and the time she gives me to listen to my day. And for her smile.

Strange White Folk

2007-11-10T00:18:00.000-08:00

"England batta? Ko?" I asked, confused. It was the day after getting back from Labdong, a tiny rural village in Sikkim, and I had just returned from a trip to the bazaar. My hajuraamaa (grandmother in my host family), who is pushing eighty and has one tooth, had babbled something about people from England. I managed to get a few more details past her slur—they had phoned before, had been here that morning, and apparently they were going to come back—before she gave me a cup of tea and a pancake and wandered off.

I sipped my sugary drink confused. White people? Here, in my home? We occasionally see other westerners in the Internet café or on the streets around Kalimpong, but with a few exceptions it has been our habit to avoid contact with them. This is has been my experience everywhere I have been in Asia. No one wants to feel like a tourist, and other white people wearing similar clothes and taking the same pictures with the same kinds of cameras all serve to kill the sense that one is an adventurer, an explorer in the Mysterious Orient. Deep down, every travelling westerner wants to be Marco Polo, even me. So for the most part we all keep our distance, not wanting to break the spell.

But over time, as I have gotten used to things here and no longer feel so out of place, I have developed the same sort of staring curiosity towards white people that many Nepalis exhibit, albeit to a lesser degree. What are they doing here? Where are they from? What kinds of lives have brought them to the same place as me, here on the other side of the world? And, now, why the hell were they coming to my house, the very last place in the world that I expected to have to deal with other white folk?

They showed up again right as I was finishing, a whole pack of them. Heavy set mother in a hideous blue suit-dress, embarrassed fifteen-year-old son and shameless twelve-year-old daughter who poked at the dogs and chickens. They also had a middle aged Nepali man with them, who upon seeing me and the last of my tea called out "An err are oo um?" It took me a second to realize that he had actually spoken in English, but broken by a thick Welsh accent. Another second later and I had pieced back together the slightly accusatory question: "And where are you from?"

"America," I said. "New York."

"Ow are oo lick init ear?" How are you liking it here?

"It's great." I cast around the yard, hoping to spot some help, but there was no one. So I stood there, feeling more awkward than I have since my first days here when I didn’t speak any Nepali, and listened to the man explain that he and his family were from Wales, and that they are here in Kalimpong visiting family—which apparently included my hajuraamaa, his aunt. My hajuraamaa came out of the house and asked me to go get some chairs from inside. When I responded in Nepali, the father of the clan said "Oh look, he speaks Nepalese!" and leered at me as if I were a laboratory specimen. I got the chairs. We sat.

"How are you liking the food here?" I was doing better at understanding his accent now.

"It's great." Great.

"I ran the New York Marathon, you know. When I was in the army. And the Hong Kong Marathon. That was when I was in the army."

"That's great," I replied, grinning weakly. He chatted for a moment in Nepali with my hajuraamaa while his wife and kids looked at photo albums. It was a weird feeling, being one of the only ones to understand both sides of the conversation here---though their accents meant that I managed to pick up about equal amounts of Nepali and English. When his daughter showed him a page from Julianne's album, the student who stayed with my family last semester, he broke into a sudden and horrible rendition of "Country Road." The embarassed son gave me an embarassed look.

"It's important, inn'it, seeing how the other side lives?" The wife was talking to me. "Makes us realize how loocky we are. We have refrigerators and washing machines, and they have so little." I fought back a cringe. I had thought such thoughts before myself, but coming from her, talking about "the other side," they sounded wrong, dirty.

"Still a bit early in the day, inn'it?" She was talking to me again.

"Er, no. Is it? For what?" It was midafternoon.

"For brandy, of course!" the father said, and dashed into the house to find brandy.

At that moment my bhaai (younger brother) Ganess arrived home from school, and I quickly walked over to his room above the cowshead. I poked my head in, and Ganess nodded towards the house with a questioning look.

"AnauTho seto manche," I said by way of explanation. Strange white people. We stood there for a few seconds, not really wanting to go deal with them.

"Ghass katna man laagyo?" my bhaai said, his face brightening. Feel like cutting grass?

"Laaagyo," I agreed with a grin. At that moment cutting forty kilos of plant matter to feed the cows and goats seemed much more normal and much easier to face than chitchat with my host family's long lost Welsh relatives. We grabbed a pair of sickles and the large doko (basket) and headed out before we could get roped into further conversation.

Ganess isn't actually a member of my host family. He is sort of adopted. There is a practice in India and Nepal where children of poor families—and Ganess's family is very poor—will be sent to work for a somewhat wealthier family who can afford to feed them, house them and send them to school. How these servant kids get treated varies greatly, but from what I can tell Ganess has it fairly good with my family. My aamaa (host mother) and two siblings mostly treat him like a member of the family, albeit one that has to do more than his share of work in the house and fields. Of course, Ganess still loves his real family, and is always bouncing with anticipation when he gets to go visit them on holidays.

As we squatted amongst the weeds, grabbing handfuls of cellulose and cutting the stems with the battered sickles, Ganess t0ld me that he might be leaving the Karki's residence in a couple months, when the school year ends. He sounded excited at the prospect of living with his real family again, but it is a mixed blessing. Ganess is twelve, and around this age school starts getting expensive. If he goes home, the chances are good that this will be where his education stops. He has five siblings, and his family just can't afford to send him to school past his current grade or even feed and house him if he isn't spending most of his time helping keep the family afloat. I told him that he should continue going to school, that education is the most important thing, and he agreed. He likes school and wants to keep going as long as he can, but unfortunately it isn't really his choice.

On the way home, carrying the basket packed full of grass and leaves on my back, I got to thinking about the Welsh people, and what the heavy woman in the hideous blue suit-dress said. She was right, of course: it is important to understand how other people live. But not so that we learn to appreciate our washing machines and refrigerators. Don't get me wrong I think those things are great, and every day I see how much easier my family's life would be with them. Still, the way she said it felt slimy, intolerably judgemental. If there is one thing I have learned from living here, it is that there is no "other side." Us-and-them paradigms are never very accurate. For all the differences in culture and lifestyle, people everywhere are all pretty much the same, all just people.

But there is a reason to come here and see how the people live, a better one than coming back feeling warm and fuzzy and grateful for our wealth and our appliances. And that's because it sucks: it sucks that Ganess's life is not his own, that he is so limited by conditions he did nothing to create. I don't want to be preachy, but it is hard to know that I have so many opportunities and resources at my disposal and still feel helpless to do anything to help Ganess. If I started an NGO, got a job in development, what are the chances that my efforts would reach Ganess in any meaningful way? And if I could just give him money, found a way to put him through school or take him to America, there would still be millions of great kids just like him who would be left behind.

The white folk left not long after we got back, and my aamaa set down to cook a second meal for her, Ganess, and myself. It was late by the time we got to eating, and as the three of us chewed our food under the dim light bulb, we got to talking about gifts. To meet the Welsh relatives my aamaa had worn a dress that Julianne, the previous student, had given her. She loves the things that the other students have given her—clothes and jewellery, pretty things—but prefers to keep them safe and clean and rarely wears them. I asked what our visitors had given today. Money, she said, and smiled sadly.

Ganess grinned at me as he got up to wash off his plate. "AnauTho seto manche!" he cheered.

My aamaa grinned too. You're Ganess's favorite student brother, she told me fondly. None of the others talked with him much.

I felt a brief surge of pride as they both beamed at me, but I still couldn’t help but feel a bit sad and helpless. Ganess's situation still sucked. Even if I had been nice to him, went to cut grass and chat with him, it didn't change anything. Ganess's future was just as uncertain, and his situation just as intolerable. But it was something, I suppose, to have been a friend or a brother and not just another strange white folk.

I sucked it up and gave him a brotherly smile. "Ekdham raamro," I said. That's great.

Magicians of Labdong

2007-11-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

The shaman tossed another pinch of wet herbs onto the rock plate of hot coals, and for a second I think I see green sparks in the smoke. My new host mother has been feeling sick since before I got here, so today they brought in a dhaami, or witch doctor, to perform a work of aruvidic medicine. The dhaami, who happens to be another student's host father, came in, chatted for a while, drank a cup of masala tea, and started the ceremony. He chants methodically over a woven bamboo tray of little clay figurines, some of which are probably human, others quite positively alien. With a steady rhythm he waves a few grains of uncooked rice over the tray and in front of my host mother and then throws them over his shoulder. After a while one of my daajus (older host brothers) starts lighting short lengths of string on fire and draping them over the clay figures, where they fizzle or flare or burn steadily down the backs of things that look like slugs or vague cthulhus. About the time the dhaami starts to chant "Om," I find myself having one of those "Holy shit! I'm in India!" moments.

Labdong is a tiny town in rural North Sikkim. There is one road that snakes down the hill, and four shops which sell mostly the same things: candy, foodstuffs, lightbulbs. No one really comes to Labdong (except us, twice a year). Ideas don't really make it here, either. There are two TVs (one of which doesn't get channels), no phone service, no internet. The nearest bazaar is about four hours away. There is a school, but even today most children don't go past the fifth grade. Even then things are weird; some ten year olds in first grade, some twelve year olds in sixth. Labdong has produced two college graduates in its history. Plenty of people in the town don't go to school at all. Testing is coming up, so everywhere we hear the little kids reciting rote memorized English phrases in robotic, singsong voices. "Ay pee pee el ee. Aypal."

The town is inhabited almost entirely by members of the Gurung tribe who migrated to Sikkim from Nepal. Gurungs have there own langauage, but the people here don't know it. For decades the people of Labdong practiced the Hinduism of the closest neighbors, but sometime in the mid-80s the idea came to convert to Buddhism, the traditional religion of the Gurung tribe. Most people in Labdong claim this was because the ritual purity rules of Hinduism are too difficult to follow in the rural basti. The real reason, of course, was politics. The people of Labdong want to reap the financial benefits of becoming a scheduled tribe. For years there has been competition among various groups to see who can be the most "tribal," the most "backwards." For some reason Buddhism is seen as "more tribal" than Hinduism, so the people of Labdong decided to return to their cultural roots. This meant that they had to figure out how to be Buddhist. They put up Buddha posters, built a gumpa, and started praying to Buddha Bhagwan instead of the traditional Hindu gods. This isn't that uncommon; plenty of Hindus pray to Buddha as just another deity, and Jesus, and Sai Baba. If there is one thing I have learned here, it is that Hinduism has historically never been a cohesive religion in the same sense that Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism has. For that matter, India was never a single nation in the Westfallian sense until the British left. "Civilization" is a better term than "country" or "religion." For most of its history Hinduism was merely a vast collection of vaguly related practices, traditions, beliefs, and philosophies. In recent times the drive to create a national Indian identity has turned it into a sort of superstructure into which other religions can fit without much change to the basic local practices. The people of Labdong worship Buddha, but ask them about what he taught, about the eight-fold path or enlightenment or anything like that, and probably they will just look at you.

There have been a few real changes, though. They dropped the purity rules, mostly, but they still don't eat cow meat. While they say that as Buddhists they aren't supposed to drink, use tobacco or smoke marijuana, that is all most of the villagers seem to do. Though it took a while, Labdog has started to produce its first generation of lamas---little kids running around in the red and orange robes. Nevertheless, people still trust the traditional shamanism of the region as much or more than they trust Buddhism or western medicine. When the first round of jaadoo dubai (magic medicine) didn't make my host mother feel better, they called in a second shaman, who performed a much simpler ritual of chanting, herbs, and rice tossing (minus the clay figurines). When I started to come down with a cold, my host family told me that I should take some dhaami medicine, and waved a bottle of sketchy brown liquid under my nose. I told them I had already taken medicine, and hid in my room until my sniffles cleared up.

My first night in Labdong a bunch of kids came up to me and asked if I knew karate. I said I did, and their second question was if I could do a backflip and clap someone's ears with my heels as I soared over their heads. The fighting in old Hindi and new Nepali films is all assisted with crappy wirework and all grossly unrealistic, but it is the pretty much only martial arts that these kids have been exposed to. My fifteen year old host brother is creepy. A few days into my stay he watched me intently as I brushed my teeth, and as I am just finishing up he reaches out and strokes my head. "Sundar kesh," he said ("beautiful hair") and then asked if he could carry my toothpaste for me. My sisters run around playing with a tiny flashlight that shines a dim image of Osama Bin Laden's face on surfaces about a foot away. This place is fucking weird.

When my host mother isn't feeling better a few days later, the second dhaami (who turns out to be my maternal host uncle) comes back to give it another go. I'm sitting in my room when my host father comes in and asks if I would like to see the shaman jump. Giggling, he bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, holding his hand in front of him as if shaking dice. This particular shamanistic practice is apparently hiliarious to most people, even those who believe in it. I come down a few minutes later, and the drums are already going. The jumping doctor is holding a traditional handled drum and banging on it with a curved stick, his eyes closed, mouth forming words and sounds somewhere between a chant and a moan. Nearby one of my uncles slaps a brass plate with a stick, producing a jarring gong-like noise. His eyes are glazed and his head is tilted at a weird angle, but this isn't due to the ceremony. Labdong is full of genetic abnormalities: extra fingers, cleft lips, distorted hands and faces, mental retardation. Most men don't go more than a days walk to find wives, if that, and over the decades a serious inbreeding problem has built up. My daaju asks a couple times if you can marry cousins in America. His keen interest in the topic is worrying. Still, he says it doesn't happen here (if you do your families will throw you out) and is quick to claim that Muslims do it.

After what must have been at least an our of chanting, the jumping doctor starts to bounce up and down where he is sitting in strange convulsive motions, his body swaying from side to side. This, I realize, is the true trance state, the real deal when it comes to old indigenous magic with authenticity that modern day occultists lust after. Meanwhile a dozen or so relatives have crowded into the kitchen and are taking this opporunity to get really fanastically drunk. I see one person pour a glass of warm Hit Beer, but mostly the air is thick with the smell of raksi, a sort of Nepali moonshine. A pair of aunts smoking homemade cigarettes squak at me to go get my camera. I return with a pocket full of high-speed film and am immediately pulled around the room to have take pictures of relatives or have my picture taken (not that they know how to work an SLR). When they find out that the camera isn't digital and doesn't show the pictures after they are shot, the aunts, shouting to make themselves heard over the jumping doctor's moaning and drum playing, tell me to send everyone here ten copies of these photos from America. On the other side of the room an uncle sits next to the dhaami, heckling or shouting encouragement as necessary.

I wander out and find another dozen people watching a Nepali martial arts film on the family's makeshift DVD set up. When I return, the witch doctor is just starting to stand up. Eyes still closed he just sways and convulses for a second while he gets his balance, and then starts to jump---little hops, with feet turning one way and then the other as he continues to play the drum. I snap some pictures. My family gives a little cheer and goes back to their drunken chatter. After a couple minutes someone realizes that this is where my host mother is supposed to get involved, and she comes and sits in front of the oblivious dhaami while a relative slowly lifts a weird potted plant and feather apparatus and waves it over her head. When this is done, she returns to her seat on the bed, nursing a mug of raksi with palpable disinterest.

The dhaami eventually sits down again, still in a trance. Then, unexpectedly, his eyes open. He is still convulsing, but his eyes are wide and unseeing. He starts shouting shouting things out in Nepali. I can only make out a few words, but for the first time the audience starts paying attention. My host father stands in front of him and shouts questions. The heckling uncle heckles even louder. This is the nearest thing I've ever seen to channelling or possession. I sort of gathered that the jumping doctor was channeling the ghost that was causing my host mother's illness, and was now telling the family how to banish it. Eventually the shouting fades, his eyes close again, and he goes back to drumming. After a while, though, this too fades. The drumming stops, the shaking slows, and a few moments later the jumping doctor opens his eyes, wipes his face with a cloth, and starts cracking jokes.

I go to bed. By now it is nearly eleven---practically the middle of the night by bedtimes here. I'm just drifting off when the drumming starts up again. They aren't finished, apparently, but I am too tired to go watch. Sometime around 2 AM someone goes around the house ringing a loud, heavy bell. An hour later the witch doctor comes in and crawls into the room's other bed, and, half-awake, I have another one of those "I'm in India!" moments.

Pictures

2007-10-05T06:05:00.001-07:00

So many buildings go unfinished. They build up as they get the money, and in a good year will be able to afford a whole story. But if business has gone badly they may get a floor, support pillars, maybe a staircase. How strange they look. How visually addicting. These half completed structures draw my eye in ways that temples and monasteries fail to do, just standing there outlined against the misty gray curves of far off hills--stairs going to nowhere, thickets of rusty rebar thrusting out of concrete and into the open sky.

And then there are the people. All those people in all colors and styles of dress and manner. Monks with cell phones, grizzled old cullies in 50 Cent t-shirts, priests in their male kortas and pajama pants, women in modern variations of traditional garb, beggars with shrunken stubs of limbs or street children with small deformities of the face, Tibetan wanderers strung with heavy wooden beads and thick leather caps, children dressed like westerners, foreigners dressed like natives, teenagers dressed like teenagers. All walking contradictions, odes to the strangeness of the modern world.

Trying to do photography here is at once so easy and so hard. My photo professor once told me that in many cases all a good photo needs is interesting people in interesting places doing interesting things. And here I find that plenty. The whole landscape leaps with color and texture, and all the people speak of stories. But if every person holds visual fascination and every place is strange and beautiful, what then do I shoot?

The weeks have passed punctuated by bursts of frantic photography. Most days my camera sits at home, but on trips or holidays or weekends I'll sling it over my shoulder, stuff my pockets full of film, and venture out to, as great photographers have said, see what things looks like in pictures. This was mostly how I worked in the states, but here, without a darkroom or the money to develop every roll, it is mixed with an extreme delay of gratification. I won't see most of my hundred and twenty rolls until I get back to the states and begin the long process of developing and printing. Months, no doubt, months of reliving those manic days of pictures.

The change in setting and in process has been forcing upon me much reevaluation. Having shot as many rolls by now as I did all of last semester, I am trying to force myself to go beyond the images that we see everywhere hear which, while unique and unknown to foreigners, are simply scenes of normal life to most natives and, increasingly, to myself. I want to take pictures that Nepalis will find equally compelling, that will be as good in India as they are in the states. It is hard, though. I think I feel myself improving, but I can't see it. I haven't seen the pictures that I've shot; I have to imagine them and evaluate my technique blind and in the moment. Everyone else brought digital cameras, and can send their shots to friends. I would post my pictures here if I could, but film does not afford me that luxury.

I think it will be worth it, though. To come back and see it again--to travel twice to this strange place of decay and creation, if only visually--is a privilege that few receive. At the moment my pictures are as unfinished as the buildings. One day they, in a couple months, they may be built up higher still, but until then they remain just bones, outlined against my mind.

Of Singers and Security Guards

2007-09-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

So Prashant won, of course. After the power went out, my host sister started making frantic phone calls to neighbors and relatives, while the rest of us ran outside, listening for the telltale sounds of celebration. About twenty minutes later the fireworks started and the phone calls came, and siblings squealed with glee. I stayed and watched for a while, but eventually I went to bed, lulled to sleep by the sounds of distant singing.

The next day was a holiday. Even our program took a day off, though most other schools took four. I went to the bazaar to watch the celebrations. So many people were in Kalimpong that day, with thousands crowding into the Mela Grounds for a huge program. From the bleachers I could see the whole thing: mostly students, clumped together by their school uniforms. There were bursts of singing, and an arrhythmic clamor of drums and cymbals. Occasionally there would be a loud crack as kids tossed M80s into the air or scattered crowds with larger fireworks. No one seemed to mind, and slowly the air was permeated by the smell of gunpowder.

The crowd in the Mela Grounds gradually spun out into a procession that took over the streets and ran through the whole town. Everyone seemed to be singing and chanting and waving banners. But not just for Prashant. Sure, his face was still there amidst the flags, and here and there rowdy groups would shout his name. But it was nothing like the parades of support before the finale. Most of the songs were Nepali songs, most of the chants were chants of Gorkha pride.

There is a very different mood now that Prashant has won. All the talk has suddenly turned to bigger matters, and one specific idea that has faded in and out of Nepali consciousness for decades is again resurfacing: Gorkhaland. For a long time the Darjeeling District has felt alienated and neglected by the Hindi and Bengali speakers on the plains. Development programs initiated at the state level from Kolkata just don't seem to make it up to the hills. But the bureaucratic desire and ethno-psychological need of the Gorkhas for their own autonomous state in All India is one that has thus far been ignored by the rest of the country.

Somehow, however, the Prashant's run for Indian Idol became inextricably linked, either consciously or subconsciously, to the idea of Nepali vindication and of Gorkhaland. Everyone seems to think that, now that Prashant is Indian Idol, full statehood for Darjeeling is more possible than ever. This sort of talk is new to us, and so far we've been incredulous. But there is an energy to Kalimpong these days and a strange belief that one just naturally follows the other. "Do you really think," Tanya's sister says, surprised, "that we would spend so much money and time for a person? We only did it because it means we get Gorkhaland."

The reasoning seems to be along these lines: a) if Prashant wins, it will show the rest of India that Gorkhas have talent, and b) if Nepalis can show the rest of India that they are numerous enough to dictate the results if a show like Indian Idol, they will no longer be ignored. And, so far, they aren't being ignored it all. You see, it isn't over.

On Tuesday, during the second, more relaxed day of celebrations, an FM radio DJ out of Delhi made a comment along the lines of "Now that the watchman has become an idol, who will do the job of watchman?" Due mostly to their stereotypical portrayal in Bollywood films, most plains Indians believe that Nepalis are all khukuri wielding thugs who mostly get jobs as watchman and security guards. This goes back a long time, to the British use of Gorkha army units to control protests during the Indian independence movement. And for a while, because of their reputation as fierce fighters, many Nepalis who moved down to Delhi or Bombay or Bangalore, far from the majestic Himalayan hills of Darjeeling, were able to find jobs mostly as police or private security guards. Not that this matters, however, compared to the meaning of the remark. It was a Don Imus sort of thing. Imagine a radio DJ in the states saying "If we let the Mexicans get uppity, who is going to be our maids?" That's how the Nepalis took it.

The next day the whole district held a strike, and people came out for a proper protest. I wasn't there, but everyone said it was pretty big. They even burnt an effigy. The DJ claimed that his comments were misinterpreted, and apologized.

The strike was over the next day, but plenty of people were still pretty upset and continued to protest throughout the region. Then last night we started to hear rumors of violence erupting in nearby Siliguri. Nepali protesters attacked by vicious Bengali mob. Nepali protesters attacked by police. Army called in. Curfew in place. Nepalis being run out of town or forced into hiding. Four dead. Dozens dead. Five hundred dead.

This morning the newspapers give conflicting accounts. Still, things seem to be pretty bad. My host mother's oldest son lives in Siliguri attending flight school, and she has been on and off the phone with him all morning. Last we heard the violence had stopped, but the curfew was still in place. She tries to hide it, but I know she is scared.

There is something incredibly surreal and postmodern about all this. It is so strange to think that it all started with a reality TV show, a talent contest. But then, that wasn't really where it started, was it? The roots of this run deep within the basic cultural divide between people in the hills and people in the plains.

And what does Prashant, the boy from Darjeeling, say? He urges people to end the violence, saying that it will spoil the moment. He is worried that such agitation will distract him from his work on his new album, will break his concentration. There was a time when Gorkhas hung on their hero's every word, but now he seems hopelessly naive. After all, this was never really about him. It has always been about bigger things, more important things than singers, or remarks about security guards.

There is so much tension in Kalimpong today. There is a sense that something has started. No one seems to know if the end will be a successful bid for Gorkhaland or a replay of the violence from twenty years ago. Whatever really happened in Siliguri, things are happening now. I can't shake this feeling, and I can't help but suspect that the TV show's grand finale was really just the beginning.

Grande Finale

2007-09-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

All week it's been building. The signs everywhere, the dozens of free voting booths manned all day, the constant discussion and speculation. Now and then off in the distance you'd hear loudspeaker snippets of him singing, and a couple times at night I was woken by the unsettlingly near chantings of some faceless mob: "Prashant! Prashant! Prashant!"

Prashant Tamang, the kid from the hills, made it into the top two, along with his best friend Amit Paul, and Darjeeling went ecstatic. This time, however, the voting period was not a mere 24 hours but a whole week, transforming a weekly ritual into a movement of obsessive fervor. "How many times have you voted?" became a hungry addition to the standard daily chitchat, or, more often, "how many hours did you put in?" And yes, they do mean hours. People talked about the kid at school who voted a thousand times or the police officer who took the whole day off to vote. There are whispered rumors of a man in Sikkim who voted 100,000 times. Money poured in from Darjeeling and Sikkim, from Nepal, and even, we've heard, from Nepalis living abroad in the United States and UK. Kalimpong's local goverment, along with the rest of the city, made Prashant's victory their top priority, cutting money from schools and delaying employee's paychecks. "Indian Idol sakiepachi, sabai manche Darjeelingmaa garib hunuhuncha," my host sister joked: when Indian Idol is over, everyone in Darjeeling will be poor.

Practically everyone has voted dozens of times, and some wealthy citizens have donated tens of thousands of rupees towards the cause. How often or for how long has became, for one week, a major factor in one's social standing. No one seems to care that there will be no return on this huge investment, that the money being spent could go to school art programs, to repairing decimated roads, or to improving the economic standing of the Gorkhas. No one seems to mind that a win will do little to change the disadvantaged position of hills in within the tangled Indian polity. For them, Prashant's victory is a goal in and of itself: to have a Nepali be the face of Indian Idol.

In nearby Assam, Amit Paul's territory, the excitement was said to be just as big. We heard stories of Nepali speakers being turned away from voting booths and polling stations. Here in Kalimpong, they will let anyone vote, just so long as you vote for Prashant. There was a rumor about a girl going to a voting booth and voting for Amit a thousand times. When she was discovered, they dragged her into the street and hacked off her hair. This is a rare occurance, however. Amit supporters usually got away with simple beatings.

As the fervor built, I could feel some people start to get nervous. There was a sort of threat to it, a possibility of violence lying just beneath the surface. What would happen, a few of us wondered, if Prashant lost? My host sister claimed that Kalimpong and Darjeeling would riot, and I was inclined to agree. Others claimed that people would just forget about it, tuck their tails between their legs and go on like it never happened. Coming home on Saturday two teenagers stopped me on the path. "Have you voted for Prashant? Where? How many times?" "Twenty times in the bazaar," I replied. A lie. I gripped my umbrella tighter, holding it like a club. There was a sort of fanaticism to these kids. I could tell they had been wandering around for a while, making sure every passerby had done their part, looking for enemies and nonbelievers.

Finally the big day came. Yesterday the voting closed at six o'clock, and from then on the evening was punctuated by the occasional bang-crackle of distant fireworks. When I came downstairs at nine, our living room was packed with neighbors. The grand finale was being broadcast live from Delhi, from a huge stage and arena that had been built just for the occasion. Prashant and Amit came out in traditional and expensive looking robes. The production values were pretty impressive: every performance included elaborately costumed backup dancers, stunning lights, and pyrotechnics. First Amit and Prashant sang, and then throughout the evening a wide array of solo and group acts including: all the other finalists, in varying combinations, Hindi pop stars, the previous two Indian Idols, and two of the judges (I thought Alishia Chinai and her solid metal bust-lifting corset stole the show). I'm not usually into these sorts of things, but I couldn't help but be entertained. We were all anxious to find out who would win, but each performance seemed to be bigger than the last. It seemed to be building, both in suspense and in the feeling of just how huge a phenomenon this actually was. One hour went by, then two. Who would they bring out next? How long would it go? Probably till midnight, we all said. Another forty-five minutes. We could tell it was close.

And then the power went out.

Friction

2007-09-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

You learn so much from walking on mountains. Just little things, like how rocks look when they are slippery or what kinds of soil are likely to give. In Manhattan I can just swing my legs forward and, if it's night and I know or don't care where I'm going, let my thoughts slip into somewhere far away and nonexistent. Here on the hills, it is completely different. Walking, more than anything else, becomes an act of concentration. Every step has to be considered and calculated, at least half consciously, because every step is different, every patch of ground unique. It trains your eyes and feet and balance, gives your legs a sort of precision to their swing and kick. And, if walk the mountain long enough, I expect you come to know the path, feel the softness of the dirt and the shape of the stones in your muscle memory. Then, perhaps, the mountain lets you look away, frees you to think of other things. But not before, and not for a while. The mountain takes some learning too.

Every day I make the long trudge straight up the hill to the program house, next to and over streams, up tall makeshift steps, and along the narrow winding paths that cut through rice paddies and backyards. If it is sunny out, or if I'm in a hurry, I'll arrive soaked through with sweat. If it is raining hard, or if it rained last night, the stream will be too deep to cross without soaking my shoes and pants, so I'll go on a bit further up the path and leap--literally leap!--from boulder to boulder, like Mario or Indiana Jones.

Little girls giggle and namaste as they pass me on their way to school. Some days they'll hold up their hands like a camera or pinch their fingers to their ears, and if I've got my iPod on I'll take our my earbuds and let them listen for a few seconds. They giggle some more, and their friends will run up to ask what I'm listening to. The first time this happened I had on Public Enemy, and the tiny girl, half my height, turned to her companion and made crude gangster-y motions with her hands. Everyday since then that girl has stopped me and done her little hip-hop dance, endlessly chanting "waka-waka-waka-waka!"

Going down is easier, but takes just as much concentration. Friction is the key. I find myself remembering high school physics classes and wondering at the wisdom of the body, to be able to calculate so quickly and so accurately the coefficients of every rock and tuft of grass and mud puddle. At night or, worse, at dusk this becomes infinitely more difficult. In the dark I can't distinguish textures, and my depth perception becomes a mere suggestion. When I leave early, however, and walk home on my own, I try to go fast, and suddenly it all becomes a game. How much easier it feels when I don't try to stop and secure my balance, but let my momentum fly me forward and down, hopping from stone to stone, so light on my feet. And, thinking about those physics classes, I realize that it really is easier. If I'm constantly moving forward, I tend to put less weight down on sloping surfaces, and am thus less likely to slip. I can make better use of the friction when I don't cling to the apparent comfort of careful balance and slow steps.

This isn't a "and that's a lot like traveling" post. You can decipher your own meanings and metaphors. Suffice to say, a certain momentum can useful, if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of feeling grounded.

Sometimes though it is best to stop. Not just for balance and breath, however, but to stare at the textured greens and browns of the mountains across the valley and the complex fractal curves of the white billowed clouds. These are times I can't help but laugh, grunt that maniacal chuckle that comes from low in the stomach and deep in the soul. What wonders lie beyond those peaks? What kingdoms must be hidden in those clouds? The mountains have so much to teach us, and the skies, I think, even more. All we need to climb them is a little balance and determination, and perhaps a little friction.

Trash

2007-09-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

Butterflies flit and dip around dew-traced spiderwebs. I can feel the light, filtered through the high trees, warming a pattern on my cheek. Nearby my host brother smiles silently as he tosses pieces of dirty styrofoam into the stream and watches them bob and dance.

My baabaa had asked me to help him repair a section of the path that had been washed away in last week's heavy rains, but I find myself transfixed by all the trash. Plastic bags, old clothes, odd pieces of rubber, and the occasional broken sole of a single flipflop--it clings to rocks and cakes its way into the mud. I pass by this stream every day, but only now have I really stopped to study it. Ganess eventually finds two intact (but burnt out) light bulbs, and when be break for tea we sit and toss them repeatedly into the water and race their twisty, backtracking progress for a few yards before snatching them up again.

When work resumes it quickly becomes clear that my host father is planning to use some of the trash as a sort of makeshift mortar to fill up the gaps in our shaky stone path. Reluctantly I help them peel away the layers of matted garbage and toss it, with shovelfuls of dirt, into the hole. The rest we just let float downstream. I feel like I should say something, or do something, but I can't. I'm just one person, and even if I cleaned it all there isn't any better form of solid waste management in Kalimpong. So, I just let it go, watch the water carry it out of sight, if not out of mind.

The streets of Kalimpong are lined with bands of glittering color: wrappers mostly, from candy or gum or little packets of shampoo. When kids stop at the dokans for cookies or mints after school, they immediately tare open the plastic and toss it aside. The concept of "trash" simply hasn't entered most people's awareness here. Hill people in the region have always just let their waste roll down the hill, in streams or with the wind and rain. It goes down the mountain and into the Teesta, which carries it away to pile up and decompose elsewhere, far from the beautiful Himalayan views that have defined the world here for centuries.

This might have even worked for a while, long ago, but not anymore. India never had what you could call a wrapper-culture until recently. It is only in the past couple decades that things have come individually wrapped in plastic, or that Indians or Nepalis have started consuming so many things mass-manufactured outside of their own home or village. If you roll these things down the hill, or toss them in a stream, they don't go away or decompose--they just stay there, waiting to be dealt with by someone else. But even just getting their waste down the hill is far enough for most Nepalis to stop caring, so the trash remains, coloring roadsides and riverbanks in a sickly brownish collage.

Darjeeling Town isn't much better, but at least they are trying. "Clean Darjeeling" programs have been off and on since the 70's. Every year since '96 a different group takes up the city's anti-plastic campaign. This year it is the police department, and all over town, in shops and on the streets, clever signs display slogans like "Plastic kills, don't litter our hills." They've also put out large bins at a few major intersections, which are emptied when someone gets a chance, but even this isn't a solution. The infrastructure to dispose of solid waste effectively simply doesn't exist here--India doesn't have many landfills or incineration centers, and certainly none near Darjeeling--and attempts to develop it inevitably get caught up in the tangle of short-sightedness and corruption that defines modern politics in India.

Composting offers a better solution. 70-80% of solid waste in Darjeeling is still decomposable. Unfortunately, few people have any understanding about the need to separate organics from plastics and biomedical waste. Plenty of people burn trash, but with little awareness of the health affects; asthma rates in Darjeeling have skyrocketed.

A couple of cities have tried to develop in this area, but most attempts have been myopic at best. One city spent several hundred thousand on a "composting machine"--essentially a barrel that turns occasionally. This seems much more concrete to politicians than actually trying to change people's habits and awareness.

One city managed it, however. Down the river from Darjeeling, where all the trash from the hills piles up, there was an outbreak of disease some years back: plague, black death, something new--no one seems to know what it was. But it killed plenty until the city dealt with its trash and muck--and that of other people. Now the town is spotless, and its citizens have developed an environmental awareness unknown in most of India.

In my room I've been keeping a trash bag of the wrappers from all the candies and biscuits that I've let myself indulge in. After a month, however, it is getting full, and last night I could swear I heard something rustling in it. I've been dreading dealing with this thing, but I can feel the time coming soon. I could toss it in my family's dust bin, which I think gets emptied into the river, or take it to the trash pile at the program house, which gets burned. This isn't a very good choice, but it seems to be the only one I have.

I'll find a way though, and then I'll come back to America and take refuge in the apparently clarity of distance. Problems like these seem so simple from afar. They aren't simple, though, and I don't want to just move on. But I'll come back and preach a little, and eventually the problem will get swept from my thoughts, like that styrofoam bobbing in the stream. Out of sight, out of mind.

Dhanyabad, Namaste, Bling

2007-09-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

We had been looking for the monastery for about an hour. It was, were were sure, "somewhere around here," since we had seen it a couple times coming in and out of Darjeeling by jeep. We were pretty convinced that we were on the right road, but it was difficult to judge the distances originally seen from a car now that we were on foot. Still, it couldn't been much further, could it?

We started asking people at random. "Thulo gumba kahaa chaa?" One shopkeeper pointed us down a set of steep winding steps just a few yards away. "Dhanyabad," we said. "Huncha," the man replied after a pause. As we walked away he watched us, slightly disapproving, slightly perplexed.

Ansel and I obediently tromped down the stone stairs, past a surprisingly spacious tailoring shop, an old woman putting our laundry, a little girl and a midnight black dog. We peered around on tiptoe, trying to spot the big red roof of the monastery. Ansel said he thought he could see it and waved at a vaguely Chinese looking building a little ways in the distance. That wasn't it, of course, but it renewed our hopes anyways. Further down the steps, I stumbled upon the outdoor shower area of several scrawny, sad eyed boys. One wore a shirt that said "Drugs Kill - Sid Vicious." Another had "My body is a temple: I worship food." I poked my head into a doorway at random and discovered what a neatly painted sign named the "Buddhist Mission Boys Home." This must have been what the shopkeeper thought we meant by "monastery." We returned to the road.

We stopped and asked a group of men playing Parcheesi. They didn't know. We nodded and, saying nothing, walked away, awkwardly.

We first entered the program house meeting room a little over a month ago. Doors, windows, chairs, etc. were all labeled, and, since this is where we take some of our meals, the walls were also posted with terms meaning "please give a little" or "please give more." There was also a list of useful phrases: "speak slowly," "what's up?" "how are you?"

And there was the word "dhanyabad," which the poster translated as "thank you." We picked up on the word immediately, using it to thank the kitchen staff, shop vendors, people we talked to on the street, everyone. We used it, essentially, like "thank you."

This was not correct. After about a week Tanya got us all together and explained our error. Apparently "dhanyabad" didn't so much mean "thank you" as "I am deeply in your debt." Oops.

Among the various stereotypes about westerners that people have in India and Nepal, there is the perception that American "thank you"s are "cheap." In America, the norm is to thank everyone for everything, even when they have done little or nothing to warrant your gratitude. To Nepalis, this sort of overuse drains the word of meaning. Much like humor, courtesy doesn't translate.

Until coming to India, I never realized what how strong a compulsion our western courtesies are, or how integral they are to making encounters go smoothly. I still feel awkward parting after small purchases or quick requests for directions. The fact that Nepali also lacks a distinct word for "goodbye" doesn't help much either. The people of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, however, they just tilt their heads in the expressionless Indian side-nod, and watch you as you leave.

I haven't gotten used to the stares, either. Staring simply isn't taboo here. If asked about it, people get confused. "What? I'm just looking." Still, years of growing up under different sets of courtesies has programmed me to get nervous or upset as people's eyes follow me everywhere. "Am I doing something wrong?" I wonder to myself, and then "What the fuck are they looking at?" I grit my teeth and walk on, eyes determinedly forward in the best American fashion, trying to look like it is completely natural for me to be here.

These differences illuminate some subtle facets of Nepali culture. Often times people will stare, grim and expressionless, until I get close enough and decide to "namaste," a greeting meaning "I bow to the divinity in you." "Namaste," like "dhanyabad," is not meant to be thrown around lightly, however. It is meant to be saved for initiating the sorts of interaction that speckle Nepali social lives--stopping to chat on the road, or being invited in for tea. Still, I find myself using it when only passing, just to see the person's face break into a relaxed smile.

The blank looks I get when passing have a reason, though. "Namaste" is always performed first by the party of lower status. Status, usually dictated by age, penetrates every aspect of Nepali culture. Even in the language itself pronouns do not distinguish between gender, but always distinguish between status. If you namaste a child, or address them without the diminutive form of "you," they'll burst into giggles at the jokes of the funny westerner. If you fail to namaste someone older, they'll just stare at you stonily.

These are some of the most deeply ingrained elements of Gorkha society. Things are changing though. Having acknowledged that western "thank you"s are cheap, many people have started using the English term for just such cheap occasions as thanking a shopkeeper or waiter. The same with "sorry," since the closest Nepali has is a term meaning "excuse me." I wonder, however, where it is all heading. English words and western courtesies are being appropriated to fill in the gaps in languages and cultures all over the world. This isn't an accident, but the direct effect of the prevalence of English television and media. The more media we are exposed to, the more we base our understanding of norms of behavior on what they display--despite the fact that even non-fiction television and movies are inevitably an imperfect and distorted depiction of reality.

But I'm not sure it is a bad thing, at least not the courtesies. There is a distinct sense of alienation and "otherness" that comes with encountering a different set courtesies that one doesn't understand, and it is these feelings that, in my opinion, make it so hard to feel connected to people from other cultures and parts of the world. Building that much more common ground, even if it is western dominated common ground, could do a lot to create the sort of species/planet awareness that is so necessary to solving the basic conflicts of the human race. It is easier not to care about someone you've never met, someone completely different, someone who would stare at you as you walk by. But if "please" and "sorry" and "thank you" are shared worldwide, that makes us just a little less different, a little more connected.

There is an argument here for promoting English-dominance, globalization, and monoculture. And you know, there's a sort of appeal to the idea that I could walk into a Starbucks or a Burger King anywhere in the world and always know what to do, what to order--to never feel awkward or out of place.

But then I think of those kids at the Buddhist Boys Home, with their ironic t-shirts, and of businessmen I pass with Britney Spears ringtones. And of "Bling," the first hip-hop themed party in Darjeeling and a fundraiser for the suspiciously vague cause of "the environment." It was a sad affair of fights and drinking and bad dancing. What was most unsettling, though, was that many of these kids were clearly idolizing a culture they didn't fully understand. Just like kids in America who fall in love with anything and everything Japanese or "Asian," they lack the clear understanding of what in our culture is cliche, kitschy, ironic, retro, or otherwise not taken seriously. For us, the name "Bling" was hilarious, but for the Nepalis of Darjeeling it was completely serious. This is the real danger of monoculture and globalization: what if the process of homogenizing doesn't just destroy non-dominate cultures and customs, but produces a final product too bland and cartoonified to tolerate?

Culture is too huge and entwined and self-referencing to understand completely, or to export accurately. One way or another, however, it is all heading somewhere. I can see it in the kids of Kalimpong, their thugged out dress, posters of Avril Lavigne, and love of English. Can they possibly be expected to want the same sort of life lived by their parents, and their grandparents, going back generations? With everything they've seen, can we expect them not to have ambitions? But when they grow up, will our civilization be able to support them and give them escape from farming and shopkeeping and the simple life in the hills? The somewhere that we are all heading is too ephemeral and blurry with possibilities to pin down. Still, it can't be much further, can it?

Prashant

2007-09-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

"You guys! Come on! He's here!" Grabbing my camera and stuffing my feat into my shoes, I dashed out of my hotel room. In the lobby I met Jess, Fiona, and Corrine. Some of the others had already gone, apparently, and I was pretty sure there was another group left behind us. We didn't bother to wait for anyone else, however, but just ran out of the hotel and fell into step with the rest of the people hurrying up towards Chowrasta. The excitement and adrenalin was contagious, and next thing we know we are sprinting--literally sprinting--up the road. Mob mentality prevailed. Follow the crowd, we thought whenever we reached a fork in the road, go where the people are going. This is the way it works in any city when such spontaneous spectacles arise, and at the moment it was clear that the collective Gorkha consciousness was exquisitely attuned to one particular event in Darjeeling. You see, Prashant had come to Thunder Town.

All around us along the way, Prashant stared and grinned creepily out at us from posters and banners plastered over the moss. The four of us managed to stick together, and in a few minutes found ourselves in the middle of the human mass crowding the square at Chowrasta. There was a stage at the top of the square, and all around we saw people hanging out of windows and sitting in trees. I looked around for the sign that Nhan and Springsong had been making, but I couldn't see them. The sign had said "America Votes for Prashant" in red, white, and blue letters. Above us small white rectangles fluttered in the breeze. At first glance I thought they were Tibetan prayer flags, but when I looked closer I saw they were of a more local sort of religion: flyers for Prashant. Now and then a spontaneous cheer would start up from somewhere in the crowd, and for a few seconds the whole mob would stand up on their tip toes and peer at the road by which we all somehow knew Prashant would arrive. Mostly though, we all just shuffled around, murmuring in anticipation. Waiting.

Not much happened when he actually came. The mob went wild. Officials on the stage presented him with flowers. Children in traditional garb danced in a circle with drums while Prashant shook a tambourine awkwardly. After a few minutes he sang a couple songs, his voice blaring out over a crackly sound system. Everyone cheered and shouted. He left. The crowd shuffled out.

Prashant is now in the top three, and I can feel the people daring to hope that he might win. This does not seem an extremely unreasonable assumption, since, as Springsong pointed out, blue marker in hand, he has never been in the "danger zone" of the two least popular contestants. I can only suspect that Indian Idol isn't nearly the sort of community obsession in the rest of India. Maybe the collective Gorkha identity will be enough to put their champion through into stardom, into popularity, into whatever.

The past few days the newspapers have been dominated by pictures of Prashant's visit. I can't help but want him to win, if only to see the spectacle in Kalimpong on his victory. I worry though. I worry that the Gorkhas' will ask too much of him if he wins, or that the vindication they will feel won't turn into expectations that he can't possibly meet. One way or another, having an Indian Idol from the hills region won't rectify the underlying political and cultural issues that make the Gorkhas feel so alienated and misunderstood by the rest of All India. In the end, he's just a singer, good but not great, nice but not especially charismatic. Up there on the stage he seemed a bit overwhelmed by all that has happened to him since getting on the show and making it this far, just a little bit shocked at the way he had been made into, well, an idol.

After all, idols are just statues, just images--no more powerful than the beliefs and hopes that people have for them. It's a sort of placebo religion that keeps people going and keeps them satisfied, but has no substance to support them when the giddiness fades. The problem is, this idol, for the moment, is making people feel happy and important, and I don't dare shatter this golden calf when I have no tablet stones to offer in its stead. I'm not even up the mountain. I'm not a prophet or a leader or a messiah. The Nepali diaspora and the Gorkha identity of alienation is a far larger issue that I can only begin to grasp. Mostly, I just catch glimpses of it, visible for a few minutes on the faces of a crowd sprinting towards Chowrasta, eager to see their hero.

Nightfall in Thunder Town

2007-09-04T04:59:00.000-07:00

Headlights and street lamps project portentous puppet plays through the tumbling misty darkness. Most of the stores still haven't closed, and even the food-sellers remain open for business. Middle aged women and a few men sit cross legged on the raised platform of their bamboo and canvas stalls, chopping meat and fish or just waiting patiently for the evening rush to start. All around their dusty feet their fruits and vegetables are spread out for display, illuminated by thin candles sticking out of wine bottles and dangling from coat-hanger wires.

Everything in Darjeeling is moist and full of texture. None of the dusty pastels of Kalimpong, this is a city of earth tones--rich ones that leave the eye heartbroken that such colors appear so rarely. Paint chips and fades, concrete cracks and stains, and stone is slowly overtaken by thick green moss and spotty red lichen. The walls all speak of history and life. This is not an old city by many standards, but its peculiar trials and struggles have been worn deep into the cobblestones by a sort of loving neglect, giving the city an aged quality that towns like Kalimpong lack.

The name "Darjeeling" is Tibetan, meaning "place of the thunderbolt." Here the qualities that have endeared me to Kalimpong have been taken to a further extreme. The particular mountain on which the city is perched is higher, steeper, and cloudier than the hills I've grown familiar with. Darjeeling is colder too. Scarves and fleeces seem to be the way to go, even in early September. During the day the day the Chowrasta area near our hotel reveals its touristy nature, dissolving into a seemingly homogeneous soup of cafes, handicraft stores, and curio shops. When the sun sets anonymously behind the clouds, however, things change, become more interesting, more mysterious. You see, Darjeeling has a night life.

"Night life," of course, is a relative term. In Darjeeling it means that the last band finishes its set at 9:30, and even the hippest parties end at ten. Still, compared to Kalimpong, where lack of street lights and unpaved roads make getting home after six o'clock a treacherous task, the excitement practically never stops. The first night Ansel, Josh and I head out after dinner. We stumble past the scarab-green mosque and down narrow, steeply sloping road. The air smells strongly of halal, and here and there packs of street dogs dig through piles of soggy trash. We settle on a tiny bar whose name we can't make out. The inside is sparsely decorated with the strangest assortment of posters; the Dali Lama, the stars of the Harry Potter movies, and a poem about mothers all hang framed from the pale, unrememberably colored walls. We sit in a curtained booth, and one of the employees brings us our beers. I don't usually buy alcohol, but having a drink in a sketchy Indian bar seems too amusing to pass up. Two Nepalis we recognize as employees of our hotel nod to us as they leave. Hit Beer is poor and mediocre at best, but tries to make up for it by coming in larger quantities. The label says "for sale in Sikkim only," and we notice that it is stamped with a price twenty rupees less than what the bartender told us. Assuming they are price gouging for rich foreigners, we insist on the lower amount. The bartender explains that the jump in price is due to the risk taken in smuggling the beer across the boarder into West Bengal and brings out the bar's accounting books to prove that they do indeed charge everyone fifty-five rupees. We apologize and leave, chuckling at our paranoia.

The next night Tanya gets a call from our morning lecturer that a good band is playing at the area's hottest night spot, The Buzz. This time our whole group goes, including the program kitchen staff. The Buzz is apparently located is the basement of a Glenary's cafe and sweet shop. As we tromp down the stairs, the smells of alcohol mix with the doughy aromas of Indian pastries. Downstairs the interior design is an ode to western culture: model airplanes, pictures of revolvers and vintage cars, eighties electric guitars, forties pulp movie posters, a small boat. A band occupies one corner, playing American rock songs as tolerable volumes. We sit. Drinks and, later, hookah are brought out. We're joined by two trios of travelling westerners about our age, one from Stanford, the other from England. During one of the band's short breaks, Ansel goes up and convinces them to let him play drums for "Smoke On The Water." We all cheer and crowd the small dance floor. The lead singer introduces his special guest performance as "all the way from America!" and calls him his Nepali name, Prashant--a reference lost on our western companions, who have just arrived in the hills area. When the song is over Ansel and the singer hug, and we all stay up dancing for the last few songs of the set. Afterwards we jog home to make curfew, held in silence by the mesmerizing shadow-play of gas lamps through mist and marijuana smoke.

Shared Territory

2007-09-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

Last week I found a hornet in my room. It buzzed uselessly around the room's single light bulb, occasionally breaking off to swoop menacingly at my head. I had noticed the baseball sized nest hanging from the roof outside my window, but had decided that if I just ignored it hard enough it might eventually go away. As it turned out this was not an effective policy, as the huge black insects had apparently decided to claim new territory in my room. I went and got my host family, who cooed sympathetically at my predicament. My aamaa went down stairs and returned with a mouth full of kerosene, which she spit with startling distance and accuracy at the sinister gray hornets nest. Driven from their home by the deadly fluid, the hornets swarmed my room angrily. We retreated hastily.

I spent the next half hour sitting in the next room with my host father, eating peanuts. Now and then a hornet would venture our of my room, and I would jump up to the attack, swinging my thick worn copy of Heretics of Dune like a baseball bat and swatting them vengefully out of the air. When all the hornets seemed to have either fled or been killed by my heavy book, we used a straw broom to detach the now soggy and blackened nest, and bring it in through the window. Ignoring my pleas to take it to the next room, Shankar promptly cracked the nest open, spilling the fat white hornet larvae out onto my floor. These he explained, would make nutritious chicken feed. I went to bed, feeling triumphant.

The next night something huge and green awoke me with its loud flapping. I turned on the light and could tell by its dancing, distorted shadow that it was something like a grasshopper. I remained huddled within the safety of my mosquito net, and eventually it flew back out the window.

The day after that I returned to find a spider the size of my fist perched serenely on my window. The inside of my window. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen. I gently opened the shutters and flicked it away.

My room is not my own. It is the home, I am constantly reminded, of numerous ants, spiders, insects, and bugs. I've mostly given up trying to fight them. Once I accepted them, it ceased to be that bad. Now and then a small but insidious centipede will dart out at me when I open my suitcase, or a huge moth will flutter out of the folds of my hanging towel when I reach up to wipe the sweat off my face. Most of the time, though, I'll just wave my hand vaguely above my head, and try to make the journey from the door to cover of my mosquito net as quick as possible.

There is something incredibly humbling about sharing one's personal territory with the insect kingdom. I have come to feel a grudgingly privileged at being able to observe them so intimately. Their ways are so alien, and the uses they make of the room, the furniture, and, indeed, my own possessions remind me just how unique humans are when compared to most creatures on the planet. To them a suitcase is nothing more than a dark, dry place to hide. To me, it has a whole host of other meanings, meanings which to them, I'm sure, would be equally as alien.

I don't feel comfortable with them, though. The mosquito net provides an effective means of segregation, and I still twitch and jerk with paranoia at every itch and phantom caress that touches my skin when outside my nylon apartheid. At the moment I'm taking refuge in the air conditioned interior of the internet cafe. In a few minutes, however, I'll return home to the shared territory of my room, and lie there, listening to the hums and buzzings of a thousand lives not my own.

Struggle

2007-09-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Two creatures fight to the death. We all crowd around and egg them on. "Wasp! Wasp!" some shout. "Get em' Spider!" cry others. The two combatants scuttle and leap after each other, confining their battle to the top of the blue plastic water jug where we wash our hands. After a few seconds of dashing and dodging, they leap together, their many legs grappling furiously as they roll around their arena. The wasp and the spider are about the same size and seem evenly matched. Getting as close as we can, we watch the spider's fangs gnash perilously close to its opponent's abdomen. Before the arachnid's bite can find its mark, however, the wasp shifts position and plunges its vicious looking stinger into the spider's midsection. The battle is over. We cheer, and continue to watch, mesmerized, as the wasp drags its fallen nemesis off the jug, leaping nimbly from leaf to leaf on a nearby bush. At last we turn away and head in for lunch, content that we have borne witness to the fascinating struggle of the natural world.

The idea of struggle is one that infuses and informs much of the philosophy of the martial arts. Struggle is also, I think, one of the major ways in which the martial arts makes itself distinct and different from religion. It serves as a test by which misleading or excessive concepts are pruned and selected against: if a philosophy doesn't hold up when fighting for your life, it doesn't hold up at all. However useful a martial artist's ideas might be in his daily life, they all, in the end, must be useful in a struggle as well.

As a martial artist, I felt especially satisfied by watching the wasp and spider's melee. This, I thought, was truly real combat--not the endless fictions shown on TV and in movies, not the brutal but inherently limited duels of boxing or mixed martial arts, not even our own cherished freestyle sparring--real. So much of our understanding of the world has been built with the thin cardboard of media images and dramatized accounts. Perhaps fortunately, many of us in the West will never see what actual violence looks like or know what it feels like to fight for our lives. This is not a bad thing. We should cherish the peace and safety our civilization has afforded some of us. However, like with so many practices and experiences that have passed from our lives in the modern world, we should acknowledge that something is missing.

I pondered this way for a week.

The other I woke up to wretched cries. Out in front of the house, Shankar and a
fatherly looking man had ahold of one of my host family's goats. My host father held the animal down and hog-tied its legs together. The second man had a strangely shiny clamp device. This man is called a compressor. He carefully positioned the tongs of the clamp on either side of the goat's testicles. The goat struggled. The man squeezed.

I don't think I've ever heard a creature express such pain.

You must understand: goats have enormous balls. They hang hugely and proudly like a pair of blue ribbon apples in a leather bag. One can't help but be uncomfortably fascinated by them as the goats leap around the yard. Goats are also, I've been told, quite rowdy and difficult if not castrated. This is a quite standard procedure in animal husbandry, one that is probably practiced dozens of times a year in Kalimpong alone. I continued to stare, horrified and transfixed, as the compressor slammed the clamp down on the goat's testicles several more times. My host father saw me watching from the kitchen and grinned good naturedly at me. When the goat had apparently been mutilated to their satisfaction, the two men untied it and let it go. The creature staggered a few steps and just stood, quivering, looking out at the mountains.

Shankar went over to the barn shed and picked up second goat. After centuries of domestic breeding the goat was not very smart. Still, I could see its eyes dart from the first goat to the man with the shiny clamp, and I knew that it sensed danger. Again the goat struggled, and again it was overpowered and castrated.

This scene brought my thoughts back to the spider and the wasp that had given me such satisfaction. The way the goat fought as hard as it could, though it was too late, its every muscle pushing futilely against the hold of the stronger, better positioned men. Was the struggle of the goat any less significant than the struggle of the fighting insects? Was the violence inflicted by my host father and his friend any less primordial and elemental than that wrecked by the victorious wasp?

Though I have continued to eat meat, I have long felt deeply unsettled by the way humans often treat other animals. It is an extraordinarily self-centered fallacy to believe that the pain and harm our civilization often inflicts on non-humans for our befit is any different than that which we sometimes inflict on each other for much the same reasons. Watching the casual brutality of animal husbandry not only reinforced these feelings, but caused me to evaluate the issue from the perspective of a martial artist.

The violence and overwhelming odds faced by the goat seems to me to be exactly the sort of situation that we have been training for, with black belts practicing freestyle sparring against two attackers. How then am I to place the scene of the goat's castration into the framework of my larger understanding of struggle? I honestly figured it out yet. What I do know is that that martial arts cannot exclude human violence against other animals from world view, for this violence is perhaps the most common and brutal and archetypal violence that exists in the world today.

The goats have been better behaved the past few days. When let out of their pen, they no longer jump and cavort around the yard, chasing the cats and chickens. They'll walk about docilely, eating what treats my host siblings bring them. Every now and then, though, I'll notice one walk to the edge of the yard and just stand, unmoving, looking out at the mountains.

Indian Idol

2007-08-29T05:02:00.001-07:00

When I come down, I manage to catch the last few minutes of a program called "Boogie Woogie"--an Indian reality show where westerners try perform Hindi songs, hoping to snag a role in a Bollywood film. Soon after the scantily clad German girl finishes, I hear the distant bell tower chime 9 o'clock, and we, like nearly every family in Kalimpong, huddle together for the main event.

First, the classic opening: anonymous, computer animated figures step forward into stardom. Then, the lights on the stage rise, and the five performers jump out in gaudy costumes of black and gold. Each one holds a sparkling sequined later: D...I...S...C...O!. Their song finishes, and the hosts enter, announcing with enthusiasm the start of the Indian Idol (Season 3) Disco Special.

The similarity to the American version is startling. The make up of the judges, from what I could tell, was exactly the same: a grumpy, mean, critical one, a super-nice female one, and a slick, cool one. The announcers and the judges flicker back and forth between hindi and english when discussing each performance. When the third performer comes on, my aamaa cooes and my host sister squeals. It's Prashant, the hero of Darjeeling.

At their core, the Idol shows are little more than a popularity contest. In India, this manifests in the country's peculiar ways. Region, tribe, caste, language--these all make up an individual's identity far more distinctly than personal achievements. Most people in town will readily acknowledge that Prashant is hardly the most talented singer or performer of the bunch, but that doesn't seem to matter. Prashant is the first major contestant to come from the hill areas of Darjeeling.

The next twenty-four hours are a silent bustle of activity in Kalimpong. Text message drives have been organized, funded by contributions from various members of the community and set in motion by the local town government. All over the bajaar and from a big banner in front of town hall, Prashant's face stares out from posters encouraging--no, demanding!--that residents vote for him. When Saturday night comes, it is all made worthwhile. Despite his obvious mediocrity compared to several of the other contestants, Prashant is safe. In the distance I hear fireworks.

There is a telling insight to be found here concerning the differences between the Indian and American perspectives on individual value and community. In America, where your home town, religion, and ethnicity matter less, and where there is not the multiplicity of languages, favorites are picked based on looks, personality, and actual talent. Here in India, where community identity is so strong, whole states may rally together for a local champion. In Darjeeling, the long standing feelings of alienation and rejection felt by Nepali speaking Gorkhas amplify this sense of group identity to a palpable fervor.

There is a precedent in Darjeeling for this sort zealous support for an individual. In the late 1980s, when agitation for an autonomous Gorkhaland state reached its peak, Mr. Subash Ghising, the charismatic and nearly messianic leader of the Gorkha National Liberation Front, had all but unanimous approval among the hill towns. Strikes were called, ultimatums and manifestos were sent, and official platforms were touted, but still the state and national government refused to grant the Gorkhas statehood. As the frustration and discontent grew, the government called in the Central Reserve Police Force--a group synonymously throughout the country with trigger happy violence and police brutality. For nearly a near the CRPF occupied the Darjeeling district and Ghising's stronghold here in Kalimpong. They looted homes, raped young women, killed indiscriminately, and arrested the families of the dead as militants. All in the name of restoring law and order.

People in Kalimpong don't talk much about this dangerous, tragic period. But they talk about Prashant. The Gorkhaland movement may not been in full force anymore, but the sharp desire for recognition from the rest of India is obviously still very much present. Now they've found a new messiah to put their hopes and dreams on, and, for the moment at least, it's exciting. Inevitably, though, the show will, and Prashant probably won't be the last one standing. What will people do and say when their hero is eliminated? What will happen when the sound of fireworks doesn't come? I don't know, but I expect quiet disappointment. Most folks in Kalimpong seemed to have lost their appetite for violence twenty years ago. Prashant will probably fade into the ether, and people will start looking for another messiah. Another idol.

Shankar Karki

2007-08-29T04:34:00.000-07:00

The first day I met Shankar Karki he took me around his one acre property, pointing out the fruit trees and the big tree that marked the edge of his field. We sat with his neighbors in a concrete public shelter with an aluminum roof, and he named the landscape for me in Nepali: tree, rock, stream, road. Little children run up to him with pinches of tobacco leaves, which he grudgingly accepts. "Bad habit," he says with a wry smile. He points to his chest and adds, "Hard drinker, also." He tells me a story, which I could only partly follow, about a time when he got drunk and crashed a motorcycle. "Do not tell Prakash," he adds, chuckling.

The second day I showed him the articles I had to read on Hinduism. He slowly read the titles aloud, and then quickly launched into a description of his religious philosophy. Because there is only one Supreme God, he explained, he worshiped all gods equally, and all of the various personages that God had been when born as a human here on earth: the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Sai Baba the living god, a picture of whom hangs over our front door. His reasoning behind this seemed to include an elaborate conspiracy theory about man's first landing on the moon. When Neil Armstrong stepped down the steps, apparently saw and felt red clothed hands push him down towards to the lunar surface. He never told anyone until coming to India.

The third day he greeted my return home with sharp Nepali commands shouted out the family dogs. "Bite! Attack!" he barked, laughing and smiling warmly. The dogs ignored him.

The fourth day I asked him if he did Hindu astrology. He giggled and shook his finger at me. "Who told you? Who told you?" I admit that it was one of my language teachers, and he chuckles all the harder. He promises to give me a reading later that week.

The fifth day when I wake up I see him walking down towards the stream. "Namaste!" I call after him, but he doesn't seem to notice. Later that night I catch my host sister reading lips. Sharkar Karki is nearly deaf.

Graffiti

2007-08-25T02:58:00.000-07:00

English graffiti in and around Kalimpong:

"Cast your vote at the symbol of the drum."
"CPLM" (Next to stylized hammer and sickle.)
"Vote for GNLF" (Gorkha National Liberation Front)
"From east to west, GNLF is best!"
"Election is a election
Decisive it is
Big
Selection"
"We want Gorkhaland."
"I love you."

Jackfruit

2007-08-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

America suffers from a tragedy of flavors. Lemonlime, strawberry-kiwi, dragonfruit, acai berry, guava, jackfruit. Go into any supermarket and you can find sodas and fruit drinks of every flavor imaginable, made with 2% juice from every fruit on the planet. But how many of those fruits have we eaten? How many of those flavors would we recognize in anything but soft drink form?

The other day I ate a jackfruit. It's strange to say the least, a lumpy oblong thing the size of a watermelon. Its thick but supple peel is covered in tiny round spikes, like the skin of some alien. Inside is a thick cylindrical core surrounded by oddly shaped sections about the size of an egg. My aamaa scoops these out with a large metal ladle and plops them down onto a clean plate--off white and sticky looking.

I go to put one in my mouth, but my host sister Uma squeals for me to wait. I spit it back out onto the spoon, and the whole family laughs. Giggling, Uma squeezes one of the sections open. Each one contains a hard, smooth pit the size of a ping-pong ball. Putting the fruit back in my mouth, I work the pit out with my tongue and teeth and spit it onto the plate. Uma claps her approval.

This edible part is sweet and smooth. My pallet isn't used to its subtle taste, but when I closed my eyes and concentrated I thought (or imagined) that I could detect some of the same flavor from the jackfruit Vitamin Water I used to drink back in New York. Eating the actual fruit, however, is a completely different experience. The texture is strange, gelatinous and stringy. As I slide it around my mouth thoughtfully, I wonder about what other "flavors" are like in their original form. What does a dragonfruit look like? What's an acai?

I enjoy the sorts of sweet, flavorful beverages that we have every day in the states, and, based on the popularity of coca-cola and fanta, I'm pretty sure most Nepalis do too. What concerns me is that these drinks claim association with a fruit they bare little or no resemblance to. Like parks of concrete or astro-turf, our tragedy of flavors makes believe that we are close to nature, that we've experienced the "real thing." I feel unnerved and slightly betrayed at how different a real life jackfruit is to the soda-inspired one of my imagination. But this is the true mixed blessing of travel, and perhaps the most compelling reason to do it. It shatters our illusions and assumptions, and gives us a more accurate, more complete, and, in the end, more meaningful view of the world. I can't pretend that it isn't hard or disappointing sometimes; the India of real life could never be quite as magical as the India of my imagination. Still, eggs and omelets, right? More and more I'm finding my imagination racing further and faster than it has in years, not crushed but fueled by this double edged knowledge.

My adoptive host brother Ganess brought home another jackfruit yesterday. I've been eying it in anticipation as it sits quietly in the corner of the kitchen. My aamaa promises that we'll eat it tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I can wait. The desire to taste it again, to further enrich my understanding of that one tiny aspect of the world, is a difficult one to deny. Knowledge, once tasted, is transformative. It grows in you a second stomach, one that digests experiences for the nutrients of tolerance and better judgment they contain. I feel it rumbling now. I'm hungry.

Onomatopoeia

2007-08-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

Waakwaak: "About to throw up."
Rangibirangi: "Made of many colors."
Chijbij: "Stuff."
Oocus moocus: "So full I can't breath."
Gilli milli: "Many colorful lights."
Garunggurung: "Thunder."

Dreamsicle

2007-08-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

The white and orange kitten jumps into my lap. At breakfast I slip it bits of roti and a piece of onion from my omelet. Dreamsicle never purrs, but always seems to be smiling. Smiling with banana-yellow eyes.

V.I.P. Tailors

2007-08-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

In Kalimpong even nice stores are holes in the wall. The upper and lower cart roads leading into town are dotted with tiny general shops and stands that people lucky enough to have a house directly on the main path have set up in lieu of a front room. Most of these sport bright signs advertising ISD, PCO, STD, Aircel and other kinds of local and international pay phones. Like the street vendors I'm so used to seeing in New York, these places all seem to sell the same things: soda and potato chips, cookies and biscuits, some local unpackaged products that aren't safe for westerners, and individually wrapped mints, soaps, and medicines that hang from the low ceiling in long dangling strands of colored plastic.

Once you get off Dikshit Road and into Kalimpong proper, however, things diversify a bit. The general shops have been replaced with pharmacies that vary in size and sketchiness (the Tibetan store is supposed to be the best) and are spaced out between restaurants, dirty looking hotels, barber shops, and dark, occult looking places filled with grimacing masks and twisted, grinning Kali figurines. But the tiniest places of all, crammed into every remaining meter of storefront space, are the tailors.

The prospect of getting cheaply tailored clothing excited me since deciding to go to India. Check the tags on any given dress shirt, and there is a fair chance it was made in India. In the States, getting a shit tailored could run you at least a hundred bucks, but here in All India, where man hours are the most abundant resource, they'll do it for two. Since the program had told us to pack light, shopping for clothes and other essentials was high on our lists of priorities. Last week we finally went, with Tanya and Bishu taking the girls off to pick out punjabis and Lalit and B.B. leading Josh, Ansel, and myself through the crowded, haphazard sidewalks to buy cloth. The store was one of the larger establishments on the main road and, like fabric stores anywhere, was filled with color. After much browsing and subsequent haggling, we got our cloth and went across the street, walking quickly to avoid the mobs of rowdy teenagers chanting their football victory at the Mela Grounds.

V.I.P. Tailors is the smallest of the tiny tailors. Every available square foot is dedicated to hanging finished clothes or tiny push-peddle sewing machines. Outside rusty square table is used by a bookie to take bets on sports unknown, the nearby wall pinned with sheets of lottery tickets and paper prayers from the last holiday. Now and then the inconspicuous bookie will reach through a hole in the store's Plexiglas window and pull a mysterious and unreadable strip of paper from a small ticker machine. Inside its dark and hot. The irregular beats of the half dozen sewing machines are punctuated by the constant thumping of a small, vicious ceiling fan hanging just a few inches above my head.

The attendant tailor measures us and asks vague questions about pockets and pleats, all the while scribbling in some arcane combination of sewing script and devanagari. His notes form strange half circles around quick, crude sketches that somehow indicate style and preferences. He cut two tiny squares out of each of our fabrics, stapling one half into his heavy, leather-bound spellbook, and other to our indecipherable yellow recite. Assuring us that our clothes would be done by the 19th, he waved us out without a smile.

I went back on the 19th. A different man glanced at my recite and shook his head. The 21st, he said. They'd be ready on the 21st.

They were ready on the 21st. I went in and a third young man took my yellow slip in a sloth-like daze. He pawed aimlessly through the racks of hanging clothes until, finally, I pointed at a thinly lined white shirt I had ordered and said, "Tyo." I this-ed and that-ed four more items which the man pulled down, along with a few others I was sure weren't mine, to compare to the little squares of material snipped off the week before. Thanking and paying, I took my stuff and left. Tailoring for three shirts and two pairs of slacks had come to a total of US$10.50.

Ants

2007-08-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

This cold war just got hot. The ants finally attacked.

We've been at a standoff for days now, a grim agreement not to pursue further aggressions. They would poke around our defenses in the ceiling, and we would make forays into their territory to grab a book from the library. No formal attack had been made. Yesterday morning, however, I felt one bite me on the toe. It was a big motherfucker, the size of a lima bean. I smashed it with my notebook three times, but it just shrugged it off like it was nothing. When we got back to the room, we found them swarming out of a new hole in the ceiling, this one inside our first ring of protection. These weren't the small, tame ants from before; these were giant mutant evil ants. They crawled down towards floor, occasionally hurling themselves from the wall or ceiling onto the floor and beds with a sickeningly audible "plink." Soon they were all over everything, some carrying squirming white packages in their mouths--larva to hide in our pockets and poison our toothpaste.

I ran to Bim and got more magic chalk, but it was no use. These ants had adapted, like the Borg. When faced with a thick line of the yellow chemical dust, they just steeled themselves and rushed across. The borrowed vacuum had been returned to its owner elsewhere in the village: this time we had to Great Machine. We spent a few minutes vengefully stamping them into the carpet with our flip flops, but they were too many. Defeated, we beat a hasty retreat.

We spent the next few hours discussing various plans of action. There were spiders around that we could collect and turn loose in our room, but that seemed like it would create worse problems than it would solve. Finally, we decided that more reconnaissance was needed, poked our heads nervously into the room. They were gone. Other than a few mysterious and perfectly intact ant corpses scattered around the room--not our handiwork, I'm sure--there was no trace of their presence. I can only assume that they got what they came for.

The others cleared out the dead and laughed it off, but I'm still nervous. To leave after such a total victory doesn't seem to be in the ants' M-O. Tonight is my last night sleeping here at the program house, but I can't help but wonder what else they have in store for us or, more worryingly, what strange faction chased them away while we were gone.

Nature here isn't pretty and safe like in the states. It's loud and dangerous and in your face. It is clear to me now that humans are only here by the grace of being mostly neutral in whatever great secret war dominates the insect world. What would happen if we lost the protection of such neutrality or, worse, one side won? I don't want to think about it. For now the tides of battle seem to have shifted in our favor, and it seems wise not to push our luck.

Rain

2007-08-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning we celebrated the first day of winter, praying to Kali and the Nag snake gods to bring us good fortune with the end of the monsoon season. A few minutes later it started to rain.

A monsoon isn't just normal rain; it's the whole spectrum of wetness. Every possible combination of water and air flashes over the mountains with startling suddenness. Usually the clouds just drizzle, or sit in the air around us as a soggy mist. When it does rain, however, it pours, and within seconds the city is transformed.

For a city built on steep mountain slopes without any sewer system to speak of, water can be a problem. Every road, path, and piece of property is crisscrossed by crude aqueducts and dotted with makeshift drains that send the water spilling out buried pipes and hoses onto the next terraced level below. This is never enough, however, so the streets still flood with rivers of rushing brown water and rice paddies form a multitude of muddy waterfalls. Umbrellas are the order of the day, but they do nothing to help with the mud. Lawns that started out simply soggy quickly become treacherous sink-trapped ordeals to cross. Every time I go out I roll up my pants legs and steel myself for a squishy walk to the program house, and every time I return to my room I walk gingerly to the bathroom to wash the dirt of my feat.

We're still trying to figure out why the city doesn't simply wash away. Everything is so haphazard, it seems like only a matter of time before the whole town just tumbles down the mountain into the river below. Landslides are common. Whole neighborhoods are made inaccessible to taxis by places where the asphalt road broke and sunk down five or ten feet to create a jagged, gravelly cliff. The mountain is not made for cars.

Whatever the holidays may say, the monsoon season will continue in practice for another month or so. Glimpses of blue sky or--most glorious of all!--the sun are rare and cause for excitement. I haven't tried to wash my clothes yet, but the girls said it took theirs a week to dry. Knowledge that people have lived in monsoon regions for centuries gives me a sort of grim hope, but I still don't know quite how I'll adapt. These seasons are so strange. I'm not sure I could handle them, with the months of endless rain.

Third Mile Temple

2007-08-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Everything is wet and green. The dark rocks are splotchy with mold and lichen, and the fog-shrouded distance is lined with the trunks of tall, thin trees that branch only at the top. It has been raining off and on all day, but I lost my umbrella two temples back. Not that it would help much here, where the forest canopy collects the rain into scattered spills. Picking my way down the slick, uneven steps, I'm glad for the first time today that I had decided to wear shoes for our temple tour. My paint-stained hands desperately grip the rusty handrail on my right and brush against the dirty colored Tibetan prayer flags that hang from the rail and cling to the mossy rocks. The site manager had warned us that the path was too slippery to be safe, but Prakash seemed to think we could handle it. "I grew up on mountain, so I am like mountain goat," he jokes, trotting easily down the steps.

The going is slow, but after the cramped jeep ride I'm happy to have my feet on the ground. Fifteen of us had crammed into the rickety, low ceilinged vehicle, and I had opted for the extra elbow room afforded by the backless end seat in the middle row. As we bumped along, I felt grateful for the handbar in front of me, but its presence made our ride feel too much like a roller coaster for my tastes. The jeep careened around endless switchbacks and precarious mountain roads, as if ready at any moment to hurtle off the ledge and triple, spiral loop-the-loop down into the valley below.

About half way down the path we half to stop and take off our shoes. I try not to think about the loosely bandaged gash in my left foot that I'd gotten stepping on a suitcase latch the night before. I can feel it pinch with every step, but I don't have any attention to spare it. I've been stuffed up all day, and the last couple legs of our jeep ride had shifted the gunk out of my sinuses and into my right ear. My balance is shot, so I have to watch carefully where I put my feet. Now and then I hear a squeal as sometime slips on the moist stone, followed immediately by an "I'm alright!" Comforting.

Ahead of us our guide is explaining something about how this site was discovered just a few years ago by a swimming boy. He's a strange looking man, with smooth rounded features, high cheekbones, and a prominent chin-dimple. He looks so much like the Hindu deities in the pink pastel dioramas that decorate a few of the temples we have seen. Here and there along the path are mysterious copper boxes welded into the stone. Each features a tiny, burnt looking bowl that I figure must be used to burn incense during the drier months. Small nooks will be filled with half-hearted shines, as if trying to soak up second-hand sanctity from the temple below.

More altars around the cave entrance below. Hindu shrines are like nothing in American churches. They are dirty, cluttered things, smelling of rotten fruit and buzzing with bees drawn to the flowers and milky sugar water. From outside the cave is little more than a hole in the wall. Lalit hands us his dim flashlight, and Nita lights up a tiny flickering candle. I switch on the LED on my pocketknife. Not much light. Three of us go in first, ducking blindly into the hole. I can sense stairs under my feet, but the roof isn't high enough to do more than crawl. We pick and feel our way through the short tunnel, twisting past jutting rocks with contortionist purpose. Thick, wet drops of water plop down onto my neck and scalp, causing the thumb-pressed dots of paint on my forehead to run down my nose like multi-colored mascara running form a teary third eye. The wet walls dance red in the candlelight. Ahead we hear chanting.

We sit off to the side and wait our turn, lulled into fascination by the fast, arrhythmic chanting of four orange-clad monks. My ears pick up the occasional rhyme, and unconsciously my head starts to nod, waiting for someone to drop a beat over this elaborate freestyle prayer-rap. The shrine is as messy as the ones outside, but seems somehow to have been arranged with more purpose. Yellow painted stars glimmer on the ceiling, and for a moment I forget how claustrophobic the space is. The air is hot and choked with incense. Around us the earth silently rumbles.

The three monks get up, and the priest motions the three of us down. Indicating that we should repeat, he starts to recite the puja. When he pauses we intone the words as best we can. There is something relaxing, trance like about it. The prayer speeds up, repeating with minor variations. With a practiced calm, he summons Ghanesh, then Vishnu, then Kali, then the hundred million other gods whose names I do not know. We're babbling, not really sure what we're saying. The priest lights a couple of sugary looking squares with a match and tosses them into a golden object resembling a candlestick. We reach out to touch it, and together the four of us wave the flame in circles before the altar. A moment later he is thrusting sticky balls of orange, sweet smelling rice into our hands and pressing yet another daub of caked red paint to our foreheads. We namaste and stumble out, dazed.

Outside we sit on benches and wait for the others to finish the worship. Our guide informs us that the rice balls are prasad, the jutho (saliva) of a god. Human jutho is ritually polluting, but jutho from a god is a great blessing. Unfortunately it is not hygienic for westerners to eat, so, at Prakash's suggestion, we wait until no one is looking and surreptitiously slip them into Nita's offering basket. The idea that a blessing could make you sick just wouldn't make sense to most Nepalis.

I'm a good fourth of the way up the path before I realize that my sinuses are clear and my balance restored. Grinning, I leap up the stone steps with more energy than I've felt all day. Once we're back in the jeep it fades pretty quickly, but still I feel renewed. Back at the program house I catch a short nap, dreaming of echoing tunnel chants and yellow-starred rocky skies.

Taxis

2007-08-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

Taxi drivers are the same everywhere. Here they charge by the ride, not the distance, so they are even more eager to zip and weave around mostly oblivious pedestrians and a few startled cyclists. Lacking stop signs or traffic lights, they blare the horn at every bend in the twisty, crumbling road. The streets are filled with potholes, but most drivers seem to have the rough patches memorized. Occasionally the taxi will screech to a halt to carefully crawl over a speed bump. The car stalls every time, offering a few jarring seconds of silence before the cabbie revs the engine maniacally and zooms off again.

A chartered cab is forty rupees (one dollar), but to jump in one already going in your direction is only ten. The cabs themselves are cramped boxy things with musty, mattress spring seats that lack anything resembling a safety belt. I have to hug my knees when I clamber in, but somehow we still occasionally manage to fix six passengers in a single vehicle. "Bong busty garnus," I say as I squeeze in next to Ansel. "Mountain hut?" the driver asks, seeing that we are American. We nod vigorously, and the taxi takes off. A moment later the driver stops, and a handsome young Nepali man climbs in next to us, grinning. "Mero saathi," our driver explains. "My friend." Along the way we introduce ourselves to our driver and fellow passenger. We try to use what little Nepali we know, but their English is far better. Just two dozen yards from the entrance to the program house, our driver interrupts our conversation and points out the window. "My home is here," he says happily. Apparently he lives next door.

Independence Day

2007-08-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone has come to Kalimpong. People of all ages and dressed in all colors meander around the crowded streets. This is what they mean by "throngs"; I can barely move for stumbling over small children carrying toy AK-47s or bumping into groups of bling-clad high school kids making their way to and from the football pitch. Every time I brush against someone, I pat my pockets on instinct, but stealing doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the holiday.

Today is Indian Independence Day. After noon dal bhat I grabbed my camera and headed down towards town. The rain had stopped by the time we left, but the town is still engulfed in mist. Watching the kids slip and slide across the muddy field, I can't even see the far goal. Despite the gray, or perhaps because of it, the people seem to pop with color. Old men selling small bottles of soapy solution stand in the main square blowing streams of bubbles out of small brown pipes, while in the more twisty corners of the bazaar middle aged women push unsettlingly sharp swords at us from under yellow tarps.

Little children and drunk twenty-somethings wave at us as we pass, motioning for me to take their picture. Even cops and old women smile when they see my camera pointed in their direction. This is so different than New York, where I had to fight for every people shot. Here kids call over their friends and try to flash gang signs, chattering for just one more picture, just one more. Most move on after a few shots, but a few stop to talk. "America is my best country," says one thugged out 14-year-old when we tell him where we are from. We ask him why he doesn't feel more patriotic on his country's independence day, but he just shrugs. "America is best."

Mottoes

2007-08-15T03:10:00.000-07:00

School mottoes in Kalimpong:
"Love, truth, friendship."
"Strive towards excellence."
"Truth is God."
"Omnipotence."

Bugs

2007-08-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

Hordes of ants line our ceiling in clumps of shivering black, arming for their next campaign, massing for their next attack. Their colony looks like potting soil, but writhing with horrible collective purpose over their lumpy white larve. We're pretty sure they weren't here this morning. Bim brings the vacuum to counter their invasion, but we don't get far before the power goes out. When the lights flicker back on, we suck up their whole encampment with glee, but this only seems to make them angrier. More and more swarm out of the ceiling and into the black hole doom of our great machine. Bim takes the ant-filled vacuum bag outside and pounds it happily with his fists. When we finally seem to have quelled the tide, we draw a line around the hole with special chalk, and again all around the walls of our room, just above our heads. Eventually we go to sleep putting our trust in the chemical magic of our yellowish ward. Science prevails.

Bug are everywhere. Huge spiders that spin webs that look large enough to capture small cats. Mosquitoes and wasps that dive bomb our heads and buzz sinisterly around our feet during class. We are assured that most are harmless, but we have heard stories. In the last few months, eight people were killed by the venom of tiny crawling beetles that glow like fireflies. The victims died within ten minutes. No one seems to know where this new threat came from, but demons are suspected.

Clouds

2007-08-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Grains of fog pour in through mud-caked windows, and by noon the clouds have encased us in a wall of dull white. There is nothing in all directions; we can't even see the next hill. As the mist moves closer, our world disappears--erased, as in a dream.

It feels so strange to have the sky so close. "Imminent" is the word. Clouds of all consistencies tumble and roll around the valley below. Every time I glance up, a different set of wispy wet titans grapple and twist through the air. I've always observed them from below, but never so intimately. When they wash over me, leaving me dew-drenched and hiding the world, I can't help but feel reverent, made small by these meteorological deities, these untouchable atmospheric gods.

Language

2007-08-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

I am bleeding words. After just a few days of language training, I find myself overflowing with new phrases, new grammar. It sinks into the creases of my mind, and flows out feeling unexpectedly natural. You can't think about it, can't try to translate; what Nepali I am managing to speak doesn't feel like something is said, it feels like something that happens. Every new part of speech I learn, I can't help but want to extrapolate, to find the whole language. It is incredible how many possibilities are unlocked by learning words as simple as "this" and "that."

Learning a language in such immersion is like drowning in deep water. A part of you is screaming, desperate for land, but deep down you know that, if you can only learn to swim quickly enough, you can not only survive but thrive.

This tongue is so beautiful, it wounds me with its acuity.

Color

2007-08-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

The dusty sunlight gives the town a pastel vagueness, but color is everywhere. It tickles at my eyes and tugs at my camera lens. Oh city, your darkened alleys call to me. I shall follow soon enough.

Airports

2007-08-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

Airports are disconcerting places. Everyone in them is uncomfortable, and only those who can make your life miserable are certain about what they should be doing. The international terminal in Bangkok is a disorientingly long mall, a little bit of 5th Avenue that repeats every hundred yards. I had to walk the length of the place to get from my arrival gate to my departure gate. All along the way Clive Owen and that guy from Lost stared out at me from huge posters, willing me to buy their colone line.

The worst was Delhi. No one around seemed to be able to help me, and a man who grabbed my bag demanded larger tip than what I reluctantly offered. Have these touts no shame? In the domestic terminal, my baggage was screened half a doezen times at half a dozen points. Apparently x-ray machines are cheaper than channelling foottraffic more efficiently. This would have only have been a minor annoyance, had I not had my two bags of film, which the security staff became more and more reluctant to check by hand the closer I got to the airplane. In the end, though, I managed to make it through the whole ordeal without exposing my precious picture tape to image killing radiation. A precious victory.

Packing

2007-08-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

It is now two o'clock in the morning. I have been packing for more or less thirteen hours now, and I still keep finding nooks and drawers I haven't cleared out yet. I have taken to simply throwing out useful items and possibly valuable documents simply to save room. How did I ever allow myself to get so much crap? Some of these things can't possibly be mine. A pair of women's shoes, a Jewish calender from 2006, entirely too many hand towels. I suspect conspiracy.

I am drinking soggy powdered Gatorade mix out of a soup bowl. Part of me is dimly aware that this is the lowest I've sunk in a while, but I'm too busy gleefully stuffing pristine unread magazines into trash bags to care. There is something vaguely cathartic about getting rid of excess possessions so spitefully. It simultaneously shuns one's inner consumerist packrat and environmentalist snob. I secretly hope that the half-full jugs of detergent explode on the trash barge in the summer heat, or that the empty bottles of cleaning products melt and drip down through the landfill to mate with something poisonous and scientific.

In a couple days I leave for India. Feels like less. Dad called to tell me that the BBC is reporting on huge, monsoon-born floods displacing twenty million people around the region I'll be heading too. It's been thunderstorming here for five hours now, taunting me. The weather in this city can be so fucking smug sometimes.