happy birthday, hindustan.

I went down to breakfast this morning and greeted my host-father with a brisk, “Happy Independence Day!”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged, and looked at me without enthusiasm over his black-rimmed glasses. “My friend sent me this text message,” he announced, and withdrew his phone from his breast pocket. It went a little somethin’ like this: “It’s independence day. But is India free? Is India free from poverty, from corruption, from illiteracy? Until we have these things, India is not free.”

I shifted awkwardly on my bench. “That’s a good point,” I offered. He then proceeded to explain the mess that poor Hindustan has gotten herself into. “All the parties are corrupt. Nobody follows the laws, everything is done with bribes. Most of India is younger now but the government is still run by 75-year-olds.” He then suggested that India become like China, that people start taking the country into their hands and fix the mess. But, “People here are too selfish. Everybody is too selfish.”

I have gotten used to conversations with my host-father. They are few and far between, but I appreciate them, as he seems to actually enjoy talking to me. In fact, for all my complaining about my host-stay situation, I really like my host-father. The host-mother has a calculating and cold look about her, but my host-father just looks sort of bumbling and nerdy in his Rivers Cuomo glasses. At home, where he rarely is, he is usually outfitted in his casual wear of t-shirts advertising Thailand and Canada, and basketball shorts. When I ask of him a question or offer a short statement, much like my own father, he often takes the invitation for conversation and runs with it, using the opportunity to fill the air with his every thought on the topic.

But I understand the dynamics of our conversations now, and know that they are meant to be one-sided. They are usually rife with interruption on his part when I begin any sort of statement, and it is implicitly understood that I should be pleasant and agreeable. So I didn’t interrupt his lecture with the firework that went off in my head (i.e. China is the last country anyone should try to emulate). Instead, I absorbed his diatribe. This is how Indians feel on Independence Day: partially proud, partially scornful. So I have seen. They love their country and culture; they hate the government’s corruption and ineffectiveness but feel powerless to affect it. It is, imagine, the way so many Americans felt this year’s 4th of July.

But I find Indian pride to be far, far more charming than American pride, for several reasons. Some places in the world, some groups, are more in need of pride… India is a country ready to shred itself apart at any given moment, with so many angry Hindus and Muslims willfully hating each other. One party with a lot of power is the Hindu nationalist party, and I have even seen an actual fight break out between a BJP advocate and an irritated Muslim–over breakfast. So many “Indian” cultural practices are fundamentally religious, and so many stakes are driven in between culturally different individuals in this massive and diverse country, that national pride–waving an Indian flag–is far more uniting than detrimental. It can be a peaceful act.

That a political party can openly identify itself with and base its policies on a specific religion, and then get elected, is reason enough for me to realize a tiny twinge of American pride–the GOP may ooze Christianity through its very oily pores, it may make its slimy presence felt in the megachurches of America, but I still don’t think we’ll see the day when they declare themselves the party by and for Christians.

(Although I have to shudder and admit that writing that statement makes me question it. Is the only thing that keeps the GOP from being God’s Own Party the fact that they hope to attract voters of other faiths? Or that in America, with the “separation of church and state” business given some voice in elementary school, identifying yourself as the Christian Party can make even some of the religious voters squirm in discomfort? Is there even anything keeping the Republican Party from claiming Christianity as its official guideline for social values? Are the GOP and the BJP just brothers of another color?)

Back to India–

National pride here shows something good; it shows that people are willing to embrace each other as Indians. Not just as fellow Hindus, or Muslims, or Sikhs, or Rajasthanis, or Southerners. In one of the most fragmented countries in the world, it’s good for the national peace.

In addition to that, there’s not a lot India is doing — at least in my mind — to discourage a little celebration and self-love. When it hurts, it hurts itself. Any open-eyed, progressive American gets a little uncomfortable on the 4th of July. When America hurts, it usually hurts others. It’s easy to celebrate producing Bob Dylan and jeans and great independent movies and sock hops; it’s hard to celebrate foreign bloodshed. And sometimes it just seems hokey to celebrate America; it’s redundant. It’s boring.

My self-loathing as an American has been elevated to orange this week.

Onward and upward.

Having made some local friends (really! It’s thrilling) recently, Mara and Kari and I met Ashik–a twenty-something businessman (“In the business of handicrafts”). A. is new and strange to us–he is relentlessly friendly, entirely popular, and completely unsketchy. He looks a little like Aamir Khan. He is always dressed to the nines in patent shoes and striped button-ups, and he chauffeurs us places in his car and answers his constantly ringing cell phone. Then he buys us food and drinks and chauffeurs us home. We have experienced this a few times now. I hardly know what to make of such hospitality; it seems he has made entertaining us his new job.

Today Ashik picked us up and took us to Mr. Beans, a hookah/coffee shop. There, five of us–the three Amrikan larkiyan and A and his friend Imran–gathered around a hookah and I partook of the tobacco for quite a while. I also had an Assan tea and a mocha, and the conversation was a little stunted and boring for a while. Nobody’s fault, really; but what do you talk about in these situations? After a while, it picked up… broken Hindi always makes the Indian boys laugh, and I learned for the first time that in asking for the bathroom, I have been continuously using the word that is shower-specific. I have, essentially, frequently insinuated in many public places that I need to go bathe please, and where can I do so?

After Mr. Beans, we squeezed back into Ashik’s car, picked up another of his friends, and found ourselves being driven to an unfamiliar part of Jaipur to the blaring tune of Sexyback (this is globalization). Roads turned dustier and thinned out a little more, trees sprouted up a little more thickly, and then it was dusk, we were on a dirt road in a small residential area, and the car stopped. We were going to a school “function”.

This function was set up on a grassy area, a tent overhead, tarps on the ground, a stage in the front, and colorful block-printed sheets on strings providing something of isolation on one side. In the back were seated parents and grandparents in folding chairs, and near to the front were young schoolchildren in uniform. On the stage, off to the side, sat a few men of importance, in white traditional clothing, looking bored. On the table in front of them sat a requisite Hindu idol, wreathed with an orange garland, with incense burning before it.

As we approached from the side, every head turned in our direction to stare. I felt a little uncomfortable–were we going to take away attention from the acts?–but as we came closer a man came forward and led us past the parents, past the schoolchildren, and (really) on to the stage. We, the three Americans and Ashik, were seated beside the men of unknown importance, in kushy white chairs. The two other guys sat off the stage but closeby. A young guy with sunglasses and a microphone celebrated our presense and the audience of possibly two hundred–definitely more than a hundred–clapped. I felt completely strange and flattered.

From the stage we watched various performances by younger kids and preteens. We watched a group of nine of so girls perform a Rajasthani folk dance. We watched a nervous boy recite a nationalistic poem (I think?) with frequent use of the phrase “our country” (that’s about all I caught). We saw one of the important men give a longish inspirational speech about educating the young. We watched a group of boys perform a humorous play as drunks (none of which I understood). Intermittently a young boy bearing honorary garlands of marigolds came forward and the MC introduced each Important Person and they stood up to receive their garlands. I wondered for a moment–and then yes. We were acknowledged. More garlands were obtained and little girl in a sparkly lavender outfit, comfortably fashioned on her father’s hip, put these over our heads.

At one point I had to pee and whispered this to Ashik–I was then wisked away by someone administrative through the dark, and I followed him up the dirt road and into a house, through the twists and turns within the house and up an uncertain set of stairs with the sky over my head to a second level, where he motioned at a pitch black closet-looking room with a toilet buried somewhere inside. “Halka?” I asked, which I hope means “light”. He tried some switches nearby to no effect, and handed me his cell phone.

Later, Kari, being late for something meant to happen at 7:30, whispered to Ashik and we stood up and filed off the stage. Walking back to the car, more important-looking men shook our hands. We thanked them for their kindness, and they thanked us for coming. “Ashik is my boss,” one of the men explained, smiling. So that was it. The boss had shown up with three white girls, and this is occasion for stage-sitting and garland-giving. I don’t know, incidentally, how A is associated with the school, or how he seems to have his tentacles in everything, as a mysteriously important Jaipuri. We have begun to suspect he is in the Mafia, but I suppose we’ll never know.

As if this wasn’t enough, before we got into the car, some of the men begged us to come inside “just for a moment”, and then we were led into a tiny room with a map on the wall, a small globe on the table, a dusty computer and a messy desk. Here we occupied the chairs for only a minute before the food appeared, pakoras and jalebis, and water was presented, and Jesus were we spoiled. This sort of hospitality is disorienting in its over-the-top nature and leaves me looking immensely confused and gratified. I’ve found it in several places but so far this has been the pinnacle.

We got in the car and I spoke to Ashik–”Aap mashahur hai,” I said–you are famous. “I am famous because my heart is big,” he replied.

Who knows how true anything tonight was, who can begin to untangle the complicated strings of what is or isn’t deserved, whether my presense is positive or negative, who A is to this society, and what happens when I pass by in a nice car those who are living such different lives on the other side of my window. So much of being here is just seeing the large mass that is what I don’t understand.

What I do understand is that I was dropped off outside my door wearing a garland of orange marigolds and a little pin with the Indian flag on it (this acquired at Mr. Beans). It was a good night.

Happy 61st, India.

Gulabi Shahar

Really good day.

Went to the pink city this morning with Rebecca and Mara for the intended purpose of getting Mara some jewelry, Rebecca something I don’t remember anymore, and me some things I don’t want to say because some of them are gifts (!!). I hate shopping, usually. But shopping here is like, as one shopkeeper told me, “Heaven for the womens.” Not only are things cheap in price, they’re barely resistible; colorful and strange and beautiful. It’s jewels and skirts and sweets and shoes… a line of shops sinking me into consumerism. And the ease of shopping, here. You walk through the doorway, point at something, it is shown to you. “Kitna hai?” you ask. “200R,” he says. “Nahin,” you spit and contort your face–”100R”. He pauses and looks blank. “170,” he offers. You head toward the door, but before you’re gone he’s shouting lower and lower prices and eventually, if you know your quality, he’s at 100R and suddenly money is exchanged and suddenly you’re one shiny-thing richer.

And it’s out the door, and onward.

Took a cycle rickshaw and saw monkeys crawling over rooftops. Smelled garbage and spices. And I bought a little tube of red nail polish, for my toes. I don’t think I’ve painted my toenails in years, but now seems like a good time.

oops.

I think it’s harder for me to keep up on this ‘blogging’ thing not because I don’t have enough time, but because normally I write about very small things and here things are so different that it’s exhausting just thinking about it. I mean, I’ve made enough mental notes that it’s all oozing out my ears; the streets, the waste management system, the host “family” situation, the food, the implications involved with everything I do, the begging children, bangles, animal treatment, the feel of nighttime, and on, and on.

I feel like if I start writing anything I’ll feel obliged to make a novella out of it, and I don’t have the energy here.

That said, here is what to expect soon:

–A painstakingly detailed and critical evaluation of my “host-family”

–The meaning of “developing”

–My travel plans for the month of September

looking up.

After assessing my last post, and maybe a bunch of posts before that, and generally thinking and doing and speaking and thinking more, I have come to the conclusion that I had an immensely sensitive weekend, and that I frequently use blogging as a medium for complaint to flow from my head into other people’s (which is maybe just like having an irritating friend, only in voluntarily readable form). So I’m going to write something that’s actually…positive.

A few days ago I seemed to pass over some kind of barrier. I’m not sure what caused this passage, or what prevented it from being passed before, but somehow I’ve shed my angsty and vulnerable veneer. I have become consistently happy. Happy to be under this hot July Jaipur sun, happy to have sweet lime sodas and chai and happy to eat this savory food, happy to be somewhere so different. Knowing that I will have to deal with stares and harassment and gouging has become ingrained in the way that Chicago accustoms one to bitter winters and overheated summers–it’s just there, an impersonal, irritating, and distinguishing part of the place.

Again, I don’t know how I have somehow settled and come to rest. Maybe I crossed into familiarity with the animals, the infrastructure, the people. The meaning of “developing” and how one finds a home in such a place.

So I thought I’d do something nice and point out two things I find particularly charming about this country.

1. Men can show affection. Walking down the street, it is hard to conceal the smile that overtakes my face when I see two middle-aged men, or two teenage guys, walking down the street, grinning, hand-in-hand–and without any question of sexuality.

2. People paint and decorate things here. Lorries and rickshaws are normally painted with designs in bright pinks, blues, greens, yellows, oranges. “HORN PLEASE” is usually painted on the back of trucks, accentuated by maybe some peacocks or elephants.

America would be better if straight men held hands in brotherly affection and vehicles were painted by their owners.

Like a rabbit in a human-skin coat.

I’m in the ice cream shop I now frequent regularly–as it’s one of the only places I’ve found that has an inside and has space to sit down, and is cooled down with fans, and people don’t ask you to buy things. Plus there’s the internet access and proximity to the school.

I feel a little like I’m being hazed. How shall I start? My host-family.

I’ve given up any illusion of having some sort of relationship with my host-family that doesn’t base itself completely on money. It’s a bit sad, but that’s essentially what “home-stay” means in this neighborhood: a paying guest situation. They call them PGs, if you’re Indian. If you’re foreign they call it a home-stay, maybe because it’s a nicer connotation? But the idea is the same.

When my host-mother talks to me, it’s almost always about money in some way. She tried to get 500R. extra out of me for this month, declaring I gave her 250R more for half-month’s rent (because she was “confused”) and then, last weekend, tried to offhandedly remark that maybe we (Rebecca?) should pay more for air conditioning than is already paid. Because R. was gone in Delhi this weekend, I slept in her room (hers has AC, mine just has a cooler). One morning at breakfast, the mother sat down and said, “Don’t you get chilly?” I looked confused, and she said, “Using the air conditioning all day and all night… don’t you get chilly?”

“I’ve only been using it at night,” I clarified.

“Well, we got the air conditioning bill. It was 2000R for air conditioning alone… we may have to start charging more for AC.”

Ahem.

1.) AC is included in the room’s cost — it’s 1500R extra.

2.) They use air conditioning too. And if we’re expected to cover the entire house’s AC costs, well, maybe someone should have told us?

3.) According to R., who has lived in Delhi for a couple years, there’s no separate bill for air conditioning; it’s included in the electricity costs.

4.) It’s not even MY ROOM. If you’re going to seek out money, shouldn’t you be just a little discriminating about it?

Maybe I would feel bad, or kind of believe it. Maybe. Maybe, if they were at all hurting for money, and not buying new cell phones and adding additions onto the house and going out for fancy family dinners while we stay home and eat Ramen noodles. Maybe, if this weren’t one of many “misunderstandings”. Maybe, if I weren’t sick and tired of being the white, ambulatory pile of money in the eyes of so many people.

There is a stare that is so aggressive and contains so many notions of power and sex that it can be unnerving. Usually I can ignore it. But the way it overpowers the kindness I also receive from strangers… that’s frustrating. Yesterday, in the park, a kid grabbed my boob. A LITTLE KID. The woman I assume was his mother did nothing. A couple sitting nearby looked amused. I smacked him.

Maybe if that weren’t omnipresent, or if it didn’t feel as omnipresent as it does in my somewhat sensitive and erratic state, maybe then, host-mother, I wouldn’t fight you on the freaking air conditioning. But as it stands, a lot of things have become a battle of principle.

–Which, as it turns out, is a battle I have begun to win. The other day I argued a rickshawvala down to 15R. from Raja Park to my home. This is an acceptable local amount. He spoke no English and I had to make it clear in Hindi. He would accept only 20R, he said, so I started walking away. That’s the key to bargaining–never seem to want anything too much. He agreed to 15R. and on the way we spoke (in Hindi! I love the rare non-English speakers — everyone else is too impatient to let me use Hindi) about what I’m doing here, how I liked India, etc. When he dropped me off, I handed him a 20R. note. He started looking for change, but I stopped him, “It’s fine!” I said smiling. “It’s fine! Keep it! It’s OK!” He was confused and kept looking until I insisted.

And that’s what I mean. I can give up the extra rupees, but only after I win the battle. That’s how I get back my humanity here… in little, insignificant, feisty ways.

This will come in handy when I have to start dealing with MAC again.

blah blah blah blah

So, I’m on my “vacation”. This means 3 days off school and time to do what I want, but also time not to spend lots of money, so after Pushkar and Ajmer I’m back in Jaipur. Almost everyone else is somewhere else.

Everything I have wanted to do lately revolves around reading, lots and lots of reading, reading of English. Literature and nonfiction and the backs of cereal boxes and the instructions on my plug converter. I read The Kite Runner (should I give reviews? Bland) and The Painted Veil (Better) and now I’m in the middle of What is the What, and then I have the following waiting on my shelf: A Passage to India, Midnight’s Children, The Magic Mountain, and about half of The Best American’s series’ Best Essays of 2007.

But I’ve also been exploring Other Stuff, mainly online. I’m on the 7th Google page of DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, for example, who I have a more-than-mild obsession with and whose every interview and reading and review and story I have been absorbing with perhaps an unhealthy persistence. Maybe because for me everything he writes rings so authentic and unpretentious but simultaneously aware and brilliant that I want badly to consume every thought that comes out of his head. I have no experience with his fiction (except this story I found in the New Yorker), but I have read Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and this commencement speech (which tries so hard to be honest that I want to hug him) and this interview with Charlie Rose in which he is so self-conscious and dorky and SMART.

Also I have been reading a bunch of New Yorker stories and articles and bookmarking a bunch of others to read later. And my face hurts from looking at the computer but it’s really hard to stop, because I can find all sorts of things I want to read with this devise.

Anyway. I’m lonely. Does anybody want to do a short-lived book club with me? Of course, I would be in India, and you would probably not be, and we’d be limited for a while to one of my four books, but at least they’re all reputable and probably not bad and we can feel productive. I really like the idea of a book club, but I really don’t like what most people read in book clubs.

Last night my host-father tried to have this conversation with me about Osho. He really likes Osho; in fact, there are pictures of Osho in almost every room and there’s an Osho calendar in the kitchen and he’s reading an Osho book. It was only after he had talked about him for a while that I realized Osho is the same guy my mom–who is skeptical of almost every religious leader, especially the ones who start communes and buy dozens of Rolls-Royces–was telling me about over Christmas break. Spitefully. And with lots of laughter. It was weird, but because this was one of those conversations that’s obviously one-sided and didactic, and because there are a bazillion Osho pictures all over the house, and because he has been an Osho follower for 13 years and any meddling on my part would cause great discomfort and disturbance, and because these people feed me, I just nodded.

I’m serious about that book club thing.

A bit of Indian film history

Hindi: “Mera juta hai Japani/Yeh patloon Inglistani/Sir pe lal topi rusi/fir bhi dil me Hindustani”

English: “My shoes are Japanese/These pants are English/A Russian hat is on my head/But still I’m Indian at heart”

This song, which is ridiculously catchy (and so much better than so many terrible Bollywood songs) came out not long after India won its independence in 1947. It was written for Shree 420, a movie that released in 1955 about an orphan who travels to Bombay dreaming of stardom. The main character, seen in the video, is based on Charlie Chaplin’s “Little Tramp”, hence the striking similarity. Raj Kapoor portrays this character, in addition to directing and producing the film.

Raj Kapoor himself is legendary as an Indian actor, director and producer, and was involved in filmmaking from his debut at 11 years old in 1935 until 1985 (he died in 1988).”Mera Juta hai Japani” is a song meant to encourage Indian solidarity and pride after independence–a theme that took precedence in many of his earlier works. It stands as one of the most famous songs from Indian film.

FACT: Popular Bollywood actress Karina Kapoor is the granddaughter of Raj Kapoor.

FACT: Raj Kapoor and I share the same birthday!

Note: Instead of being able to sing this song for Hindi camp, I had to sing (with a group of others, THANKGOD) this monstrously high-pitched, uber-saccharine tune:

I can’t find a subtitled version, but the first few lines go like this: “My little heart, little heart of hope/A heart so filled with joy, bursting with hope.”

Inside the Indian Beauty Shop

The purpose of a beauty shop is to make the costumer feel ugly; this is intuitive enough. Feeling ugly means money. Feeling uglier means more money.

This is how I went to the beauty shop for threading and found myself half-heartedly tacking on a facial, manicure and pedicure. As I walked in and received the familiar smile of the woman working behind the counter (the white-people-equals-money smile) I was pointed toward a chair.

“I need threading,” I explained, feeling somewhat embarrassed; by this point, I really needed it. She scrutinized me carefully. “And clean-up,” she suggested, indicating a spot above my lip. “For your pimples and your acnes and your blackheads.” I felt immediately strange and exposed; yes, I had one zit, but I didn’t think it was so open for discussion. And what would I be saying, turning down this obviously necessary service? That it’s okay, I don’t mind being “unclean”? There is a blatant professionalism to the beauty shop, an indiscreet method of making your body the target, leaving no room for a different beauty philosophy. So I thought about it for a second. “Okay,” I said.

And I was ushered away to a back room by a girl in a blue salwar-kameez. She closed the door and gestured to my shirt. I stood stupidly for a second, knowing that removing it, if that wasn’t the command, was going to be very awkward. “Remove?” I asked. She nodded, pointing again. She seemed bored. I took it off and she tied a long sheet around my body at my chest and had me lay down on a gurney-like bed. I did and she tied my hair back. “OILY SKIN,” she declared. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I laughed uncomfortably and said, “Yeah.”

The next 20 minutes or so were relaxing. They involved perhaps dozens of lotions and oils being rubbed and massaged into my skin, something needlelike and pricking being moved across it, and more lotions and oils. She asked me things in simple Hindi – where was I from, how long am I in Jaipur, how I liked the massage – and some more quick or complicated or colloquial things I didn’t understand. By the end, she had talked me into a manicure and pedicure. The facial was just so nice.

The threading was less comfortable. The beauty shop was empty, save for the woman up front, the girl who’d done my facial, and three guys, also employed there, who just sort of lounged around and talked. Oh, and watched my threading. “Stretch karon!” the girl commanded, making me stretch my eyebrow out so she could better thread. She still seemed vaguely bored; maybe a little annoyed. This was awkward… I acknowledge I hadn’t plucked in a while, but I was hardly Frida Kahlo.

After this was when I realized that the lounging guys who had just watched the threading–which culminated in my eyes watering–were going to do the manicure and pedicure. They brought me to a little tile tub and one of them gestured that I should take off my flip-flops and hand him my foot. He had a file in hand until he realized that he would have to clip my nails as well. At this point I began to think maybe this was a bad idea. I haven’t clipped my nailed yet in India, and even paying my feet more attention than washing them down every night seems futile. This country isn’t exactly a palace, and I’m not exactly a princess.

He clipped and filed, and then began the exhaustive task of pumicing my paws. Intermittently he would sigh and pause, then continue. Before long another guy was administering the manicure. I sat in the chair, feeling freakish and flawed. The pedicure guy paused and brought my ankle near his face, where I’d missed a few stray hairs from shaving yesterday. He found this so interesting that he called over the facial girl, and they discussed it for a moment. “You shave,” she pointed out. “Yeah,” I said. Then, in Hindi, “Usually I wax, but here I just shave.” She nodded and they smiled smugly, as if to say, “Those Americans really do have beastly habits!”

A word now, about the fact that two reasonably attractive men were soaping up and massaging my forearms and feet and hands and calves.

MEN.

In America, it is more than likely that any man in this position is gay, and when that’s the case, he knows what to say. The American hairdresser who cuts my hair says all the right things; your hair is so thick, your hair is so soft. He does not say, your hair has so many split ends, and this is why I give him a tip. I also tend to feel that outside of the beauty shop, men–at least the men I surround myself with–tend to have a certain ambivalence and sweet disinterest in the details of the woman’s beautifying regimen, whether or not she’s wearing make-up or perfectly hairless. I think men tend to have an appreciation of the more general and universal things–how women move and talk. In fact, I tend to think that women are the ones who keep other women in check, who make all those details seem so important. But maybe I’m misreading.

Regardless, one place I do not want men–especially straight men–is in the position of correcting my mangy India feet and watching my stray eyebrow hairs get removed. Both sexes work under the suspension of disbelief that women are somehow naturally hairless and attractive creatures. Some things keep that going. And the bored, possibly horrified, apparently heterosexual man pumicing away at my feet–that breaks down the illusion.

MEN.

…Not to mention the mild sexual tension of having a man massaging your arm with soap, threading his fingers through yours and looking intermittently, solemnly, into your face. My.

MEN.

I didn’t enter the shop feeling ashamed of my feet. I guess I learned the lesson of beauty shops.

Sigh. Men.

Case Study #3: Khana

A lot of people have been asking me about specific things, and one of the things that seems to catch a lot of peoples’ interest is food. And so, as someone who’s already a little obsessed with food, I will devote this next topic to the joys and complications of Indian khana.

Having been a vegetarian for a year and a half, coming to India is like coming home. By far, most of the home-stay families cook only “veg” food, as this is long-standing Hindu tradition. (The “purer” and more religious you are, the more strict you are about this policy–it’s common also not to eat eggs, although pure veganism is a completely elusive concept here, as milk finds its way into almost everything.) So, for the first time in a year and a half, I am a totally normal person in dietary terms. I no longer have to specify whenever I go out for dinner that I’m a vegetarian and to hold the chicken, please. (Have you been to Applebee’s lately? It’s a freakin’ slaughterhouse.)

I’ve even forgotten on several occasions that I’m a vegetarian, because it’s just so obvious.

My three meals a day are breakfast with my home-stay family at around 8 or 8:30; lunch at the institute, prepared by the cooks, at 1pm; and dinner again with my family at sometime between 7:30pm and 9pm. Because I don’t know what kinds of Indian food people are aware of, I’m going to proceed like everyone is ignorant and explain in detail–

Breakfast is one of my favorite times of day, especially on the weekends. Whatever other problems may arise with my family, their cooking (or the cooking of the maid, Punima), is not one of them. Some mornings we just have white toast for breakfast, accompanied by butter and usually strawberry and apple jam (I don’t like strawberry anything, but I really like the apple jam). This might sound plain, but the Indian alternative is not something my stomach wants to see most mornings–Indian breakfast food is frequently deep-fried and spicy. So the toast is a nice, comforting option. And toast is never unsatisfying.

Sometimes my host-father also makes omelettes for us–plain but with some additional spice or pepper. My host-father is pretty cool in that he defies some standard gender roles that run even deeper here–and being a man in the kitchen is one of them. He makes us breakfast often, and he’s good at it.

We’ve also had a few Indian meals for breakfast, like pao bhaji, which involves toasted hot white buns with a side of different vegetables and spices, mashed into a sort of thick sauce which generally gets spooned onto the bread and eaten. (History lesson: this dish was introduced into Bombay centuries ago by the Portuguese–hence the white bread.) Pao bhaji is popular, and usually very tasty.

We’ve also had “veg” burgers (which are considered acceptable khana at any time of day) and these I am not so excited to eat just after waking. In the states, a “veggie burger” is usually composed of soy. Here, they tend to be potato patties. And eating a potato patty in between two pieces of white bread is a little too much starch for me so early in the day (or maybe at any time).

But regardless of what we eat for breakfast, we’re also given a steaming mug of chai, which is so comforting that I’m sure I’ll miss it terribly when I leave. A variation of “chai” has drifted over to the states, but here the substance is especially milky and sweet, and completely omnipresent. If you walk through the bazaar at the right time of day, you see almost all the men sitting in groups with their small glasses of hot chai, a platter sitting by on which the glasses all arrived and on which the empty glasses will disappear again. I’m not sure how it’s arranged–whether the chai-valas in the area have their pre-established customers, and get their rupees up front at the beginning of each week… or maybe someone is sent out each day to retrieve the drinks–but it’s definitely a sacred custom, not to be disturbed.

At the institute, hot lemon tea is available every morning when we arrive, tiny green mugs filled uniformly on a platter in the main room. This is usually the only time of day I can find tea steeped in water rather than milk. Later, chai is served again around 11am, a few hours before lunch. (It is also served around 3pm, at which point I’ve usually had so much milky chai throughout the day that I decline.)

Lunch usually goes like this:

–A platter of sliced vegetables (called “salad” by Indians, which seems a little comical), generally involving green peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Sometimes (in my home especially) these vegetables are lightly coated with salt and/or spices.

–A side of fruit, usually mango (as it happens to be mango season)

–Plain naan–always good

–White rice

…and then usually two or three different varieties of sauces to be eaten with the rice. Usually there is something with potato (aloo), and frequently a type of lentil (most often yellow dal) or chickpea. My favorite is when something is made with bits of paneer, or the mild white cheese they eat here, not unlike fresh mozzarella. Spinach or peas are made this way (palak paneer and mutter paneer, respectively).

Yellow dal is a standby, is usually very mild and gets a little boring–dal makhani, a brown dal involving kidney beans, is usually a bit spicier and better-tasting.

The potato is one ingredient that is actually used more often in India than in America. I am so sick and tired of the potato, in fact, that I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t eat it again for months.

Another thing–I am sort of confused and bemused by the popularity of white bread in India. There is the traditional and deeply comforting naan, but if you order toast, or even a sandwich, from any restaurant you’ll get the most American-looking, 1950’s-reminiscent square white toast. Wheat bread of the kind that prevails in Europe and has taken hold in the U.S. is something I have not seen at all here. There is tradition, and there is unhealthy modernism. Of course, this parallel goes much further than food, but that’s another topic entirely.

Dinner is not unlike lunch, except usually there is one main dish instead of a few choices. Also, at almost every meal served by my host-family we have chapatis–a flat, round bread not unlike a tortilla. It is normally brushed with ghee (a clear, clarified butter, which tastes much better and finer than regular butter) and Punima delivers it hot out of the kitchen to be eaten with the main dish (whatever the main dish is, it never goes without a type of bread or rice.. in this house and region, normally bread).

This type of food I’ve described is mainly Panjabi in origin, I believe… especially the paneer dishes and brown dal.

Sweets do not seem to be a regular part of the diet, although my host-father made very good jalebi the other day–a deep-fried syrupy batter made into a pretzel shape, which can’t possibly have an ounce of nutrition in it but tastes irresistible.

Indians have also embraced–strongly embraced–ice cream. It is available everywhere now, in many Indian varieties, and I’ve taken advantage of this by stopping too frequently at the ice cream parlor near the institute to have an ice cream shake or sundae for about a dollar (rather expensive for India, but still on the cheap side for U.S. standards).

And one last word about Indian fruits–they are so much better than anything in the states. There are still the standby phal like the banana (where in the world can’t you get a banana? Siberia, maybe) and some are mysteriously nonexistent (I haven’t seen any apples) but the things people mainly eat are obviously tropical, like the mango and the papaya, both of which are entirely sweet and delicious.

And my favorite by far is the lychee, a fruit common all over East Asia and India. It’s roughly the size and coloring of a strawberry, but the rough skin is easily removed and beneath is the soft, pinkish-white flesh that you eat (with a hardened brown pit in the middle). The lychee is amazing. I love the lychee. I want to bring a seed home with me and plant it outside my apartment in Chicago. Because it tastes–really–exactly the way a rose smells. It is a beautiful thing.

Deep inside I hope you feel it too.

How bad I am at this.

So, I had planned to write a post about a week ago for your reading pleasure, and in fact composed a thoroughly detailed, novel of a post about my trip to Agra, half of which was promptly deleted and I become so angry and angsty as a result of this that I haven’t had the heart to compose since. Well, that, coupled with housing issues (will this come out in good time? maybe) and also being bone-tired at the end of every day and having homework and everything I want to write seems so large that tackling it is like me being David and what I want to say being Goliath and the fickle, deletion-happy internet rendering whatever slingshot I have useless.

I’m already very tired (and in a room with AC!) and I’ve made plans to go to a movie tomorrow afternoon, so I will not try to make this too long.

Today was the first day I felt like I had fun in India. It was also the first day I did anything on my own, and I don’t think those facts are coincidental–the truth is, I’m a very independent woman (a la Destiny’s Child) and I like my time alone. I like to do things alone. In Chicago, I like to ride the el alone and I liked to ride my bicycle alone (before someone else decided they liked to steal expensive locked-up bicycles) and I like to go to coffee shops and order tea and do my reading alone.

Here, that solitude I savor so much in the states is routinely challenged. I have a roommate, for example, with whom I eat my meals and walk to school and, until a few days ago, shared a bed with. I like her a lot. But I also like my time alone (and she, even moreso–she had to push for our getting separate rooms, threatening to move out if the family didn’t comply [we were promised separate rooms in the beginning]).

Similarly, going out is something of a trial, and it’s usually nice to have another American on hand to bargain with you and help power through the stares and potential light harassment. Being alone–especially being a girl alone, and–as far as I can see, the predetermined least-powerful type of individual–being a foreign girl alone, means almost certainly getting more excessively scalped and getting more blatant stares. So you think.

But today, I went out alone and it was strange and frustrating but fine. I was on a quest to find a notary public, a term I only just became acquainted with and which no Indian this side of Adarsh Nagar understood. My first rickshaw-vala stopped three different times to ask directions from different people. I had given him an address (where, according to the internet, I could find a notary public) and, through the help of these people, I ended up outside the address. It was for Someoneorother “and Associates” and offered legal various services. I followed a man who led me through a courtyard and up some narrow stairs and on into a room where a man lay sleeping on a cot. The room was the messy nook of a legal mind–heavy, dusty volumes filled the shelves on the walls, and on the desk several papers were sprawled, things jotted down in ink. The man who led me to the room tried to get the sleeping man’s attention three times, saying his name more loudly each time.

Needless to say, of course, I was not at the right place. You never are the first time, not in India. When the man finally woke up he looked at me like I was an alien and I tried out my Hindi–”Kya mai angrezi me–” (“Can I in English…”) before he interrupted me with, “You may speak in English, is fine.” Then I explained the situation–that I need a notary public to sign my apartment lease application–for about 5 minutes in 5 different ways before it was understood and a new destination was proclaimed. The man who’d led me up (was he my leader at this point?) led me back down and out to the street for a rickshaw. I don’t know why he was helping me, unless he was bored (which is actually pretty frequently a reason people help you, as far as I’ve seen) or thought maybe I’d give him a tip. Maybe I should have, in retrospect.

Several autos stopped at once, which creates the situation of bargaining. At first, my leader was telling me, “You can get there for 5 rupees” but once he’d stopped someone and they’d had a brief conversation he was trying to convince me that 40 rupees would be a great deal, and to go with this guy. Which translates to “You’re white, rich, and stupid, and I just made a deal with this guy that I’ll get 20 and he’ll get 20 if you take his rickshaw.”

That’s the thing. People are clever and money is made in ways like this constantly. It isn’t usually hard to catch, but it does put you in an awkward situation of determining how you feel about the situation and letting the other person know–because once you become suspicious, everything begins to look like an effort to rip you off. You’ll find yourself arguing in a strongly offended manner against a 100R. scarf, and then realize to your chagrin that it’s considered quite a deal, even for an Indian woman.

Anyway, this may have been what happened, as I made a big deal out of choosing a different rickshaw but ended up paying something like 60R. anyway. I ended up in Mandli Park, or something close to that, and was in Notary Public Heaven. 150R. later, and I had done my duty. A walk further down and I found myself outside of the “India Bar Association” and realized I was in the lawyer hangout. I had no idea where I was in the city, so I walked back out to the main road and got a rickshaw-vala to get me back to Raja Park.

I don’t know where I was in the city, but I do know I want to explore the area more. The first mistaken area was especially alluring–it seemed more developed than the dusty Raja Park I walk through every day, and every had what looked like sit-down coffee shops and different bookstores. As hot as India is, it’s extremely difficult to find relief outside your home. The market is a place where you buy and go–most places you can’t enter, and a person just sits behind a counter, a stockpile of whatever you might be looking for (electronics? school supplies? medicines?) on shelves behind him. When you can enter, you can’t sit. The one exception to this rule I’ve found in Raja Park is an ice cream shop called “Au Natural.” Here you can sit in a comfortable booth, use the Wi-Fi, and hear Mr. Big’s “To Be With You” over the speakers. It’s a weird Western reprieve.

Anyway, soon I will look into the Jaipur that lays outside my one-mile vicinity, drink chai while sitting down, experience an Indian McDonald’s, and, hopefully, go out to a night club. You can bet that will not go unrecorded.