[i love my india]

This video from India's Got Talent, passed on by a Facebook friend, is a great example of what I find so compelling about India: the passionate mix of high and low, sacred and profane, beautiful and silly, devout and camp, until you're completely unable to tell which is which.

[chaos in mumbai]

So when the situation in Thailand went pear-shaped, I started looking at other places to go. One of those places was Mumbai.

Then, of course, Mumbai was struck by a horrific series of terrorist attacks, which are still unfolding. They've targeted places popular with Westerners, which means places I've been. I've met people and relaxed in the Taj Mahal Palace lobby, even bought a shirt there. I've caught trains at Shivaji Terminus.

And Leopold Café! Friggin' Leopold's! For a New York equivalent, it's as if terrorists attacked not just the Waldorf-Astoria and Grand Central Station, but also Katz's Delicatessen. It's just wrong — and yes, I know that the whole thing is about as wrong as can be, but bringing Leopold's into it is so dementedly off-script for this sort of thing. It's horrible, and I'm sad.

Meanwhile, Thailand seems to be moving towards a confrontation with the protesters who have shut down the airports. Will I still be going there? We'll see. If there's not any actual fighting, and the airport is open, I probably will. And if things suddenly get nasty again? Well, "I was trapped in a foreign land by a military coup" would be the most interesting excuse I'd ever given for missing work.

We'll see.

Update: A Mumbai Chabad House has been attacked as well, and there are hostages inside, and probably some people have already been murdered. Horrible.

[dreaming of fluorescent pepsi in the night]

So where were you last Tuesday night?

Seven years after the definitive where-were-you-when moment for Americans under sixty, it is with great relief that there is now a new moment to talk about. For the past week, conversations have turned to the election, which has unleashed a giddy elation in myself and countless others.

As for me, I was at a house party in a high-rise on West 42nd Street, where I stayed to watch first McCain's and then Obama's speech. At around 12:30, I headed out, planning to walk back to Times Square and take the subway home, but soon it was clear that something extraordinary was happening. Packs of people streamed by, chanting and waving Obama signs. Strangers were smiling and talking to each other, even embracing. A black woman threw her arms out and howled, "I'm goin' ta work naked tomorrow!"

Times Square was still packed when I got there. The big screens around the square were all showing the results still coming in, and Obama's picture kept drifting by on the giant LEDs. I called my sister, then my parents, then some friends, to let them hear what was going on. "YES! WE CAN! YES! WE CAN!" "O! BA! MA! O! BA! MA!" "YES! WE! DID! YES! WE! DID!" Fire trucks drove by and honked in rhythm. I talked to a man from Guinea who was texting his friends back home. They were still celebrating, though it was nearly morning there.

I bought a T-shirt that said President Barack Obama. I cheered and I chanted with strangers. I stared at the monitors and talked shop with strangers about Senate races. At last I headed home, by cab, sharing my joy with my Senegalese driver. It was a beautiful night.

*

The next day, I bought my ticket for Thailand. I'll be going on December 20, returning on January 4. At first I agonized over how I would book internal flights for when I arrived, but yesterday I decided to let that go. I'll just show up in Bangkok and figure it out. There's always a bus to somewhere.

Bus travel, of course, is unpredictable. I have been battered and bruised on buses, ridden on the roof over mountain roads, crossed the United States with Euro-hippies, been awakened by snapping fingers in my face and a man barking, "Tea, toilet!" But what comes to mind most viscerally for me are two experiences. In one, I am riding through Bridgeport, Connecticut, gazing out the window at a bombed-out husk of a city, and listening to "Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997," by Beck:

I was born in this hotel, washing dishes in the sink
Magazines and free soda, trying hard not to think

The other memory is of India, staring out the window of a night bus — god knows where — listening to Dig Your Own Hole by the Chemical Brothers and watching these islands of fluorescent light drift by, illuminated roadside bhatis with walls of turquoise and pink, hand-painted Pepsi logos, and skinny, mustachioed men with bushy hair, bushy mustaches and dhotis.

In each case, the memory mixes music, bus travel and alienation. Buses, it seems to me, are an ideal environment for feeling alienated, with none of the romance of trains or the sense of occasion that still clings to air travel even in the age of the flying cattle car. Buses rattle and bump, stop unpredictably, go off course, get stuck in traffic. And music is ideal for creating a contrast, or an emotional frame, for absorbing images that are somehow surreal and out of context.

And so I'm sorting through my music, trying to figure out what goes on my iPod for my trip to Thailand, and contemplating a bus trip up the country, from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, with stops in Ayuthaya and Sukhothai and who knows where else. What will settle into my memory this time?



My first little taste of adventure travel was on a Green Tortoise bus down from Oregon, and it sold me on the notion. I soon spent ten days crossing the Northern US with the Green Tortoise, and then another fourteen days heading back across the South. After college, when I leaped blind into India, I experienced bus travel in whole new ways: riding the roof with a couple of cackling old men on the road that winds over the mountains back into Pokhara; wrapped in a shawl, trying to sleep as the cold desert wind whips through the empty window frame of a night bus to Jaisalmer; pressed up against a man smelling of sandalwood and sweat, trying to tune out the high-pitched warble of distorted Hindipop. I have been bounced and battered in a sleeping compartment with no seats. I have been awakened early in the morning by snapping fingers in my face and a man barking, "Tea, toilet!" I have



Bus travel is unpredictable. Some of the best and worst travel experiences of my life have involved buses. My first trip, down from Eugene, Oregon to San Francisco, was a revelation: my first time jumping into a travel experience with no clear idea what it would entail. I sat on the back, on the mattress platform, while an impromptu bluegrass band struck up, and then sat by a river at the Oregon campsite stopover and shared stories with probably the most beautiful woman I've ever met.

Over the next couple of years, I twice crossed the United States in Green Tortoise buses. Then, after college, I made a grand, blind leap into India, where

[springtime in new york]

It's spring, and a lovely one. The weather is delightful. There are cherry blossoms on the trees (well, the cherry trees), and whole streets are paved in petals. The magnolias too are in bloom, and the dogwoods, and the tulips are getting slightly obscene. 

My life here continues apace. All is well at Google — I've had my first guest come in to ooh and ah at the wonders of my Googley life, and if you're nearby, you're more than welcome to swing by sometime for a free dinnner on Uncle Google. And this weekend I'm finally going back to the All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music, an annual event held at St. John the Divine's Synod Hall. I went once years ago, discovered a love for the bansuri, India's wooden flute, and left at around 5 a.m., by which time I was seeing spots. I was younger then, too. We'll see how far I get this time. One advantage is that I won't be on my own (at least for the first few hours), as a Punjabi friend of mine will be joining me. And she may even know something about the music, which would be a welcome improvement over my admittedly blissful ignorance.

See you on the other side!

[swastika hysteria]

Fashion house Zara has gotten itself into trouble by accidentally selling purses with swastikas on them in the UK. Denis Fernando, national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, responded forcefully: "Fascism and racist symbols are sometimes legitimised in popular culture, this is one of those times."

Except it's not. As a nice Jewish boy with a swastika on my living room wall, I'd like to explain.

Like most people in the West, I grew up associating the swastika strictly with the Nazis, and I was appalled by any display of it, in any form. It had a kind of radioactive power that compelled disgust — an entirely appropriate response to any attempted glorification of Nazism, however crude. When my German-descended high school classmate drew them on his desk (in pencil, crookedly and backwards), I took it as a personal insult, and that's how it was intended.

It was my trip to India in 1997, just after college, that changed my perspective on the swastika. Again and again during my four months in the Subcontinent, concepts I had never thought to question turned out to be completely contingent on cultural context, and swastikas were no exception. In Nepal, I was amused to find that the swastika was included with the hammer and sickle in a pro-communist graffito, a juxtaposition unimaginable in the West. In India, I saw swastikas branded on camel's butts, put on goofy stickers for kids, painted on people's faces. I even saw snacks arranged into swastikas. Three years later, in Korea, I became even more used to the ubiquity of swastikas, which tended to mark Buddhist gathering places or shamanistic fortune tellers' shops in otherwise nondescript streets of three-story brick suburbia.

The swastika on my wall is on the palm of the Hindu god Ganesh, in one of four extraordinarily beautiful posters I picked up for a few dollars on the street in Mumbai back in 1998. It's a symbol that can mean death, horror and destruction, but also means welcome and good luck to millions upon millions of people in our world. (In this respect, it's not unlike the cross or the crescent.) Ganesh's swastika is not the Nazi black outline on a white circle in a red field. It's red, trimmed with gold, hand-painted with affection. Likewise, the Zara swastikas were a cheerful green, enclosed in a red sunburst.

What interests me in all this is the way this fundamental shibboleth of Western culture makes absolutely no sense in the context of a globalized world. This won't be the last time some Asian swastika sneaks its way into the West. At the same time, the whole Danish-Muhammad-cartoon crisis makes it clear that these kinds of misunderstanding can run in every direction. What is necessary on all sides is a ratcheting down of the knee-jerk rhetoric, a consideration of context before the declarations of outrage.

I recognize that this won't be easy. Some jackass is always willing to scream bloody murder just to get attention. But we should remember that any symbol sent from one culture to another is in need of translation. A swastika from India is no more an obscenity than a Vietnamese person named Phuc.

[yesterday's news]

Today the first of my purchases from Thriftbooks arrived: the 1996 edition of the Lonely Planet India, complete with a business card for Ashoka Arts of Udaipur¹ (which I have visited) and someone else's notes on when to go see the Taj Mahal.

Now, why would anyone want an outdated travel guide? Simple: to reconstruct a journey taken in the past. The 1996 edition differs considerably from later versions, and it's the one I hauled around with me during my baffling, overwhelming, life-changing slog across the subcontinent back in 1997-98.

Ever since that trip, I've wanted to write about India in one way or another. I have taken a number of disappointing stabs at an India novel, but I think that the processes I'm going through in my life right now — the hard struggle to face my fears and my shame squarely, to take a rigorously honest look at myself and my life — may open the door to better, truer writing.

India will almost certainly be a part of that. It has to be, I think, considering its importance in my life. And so will Judaism. I remember Björg, my Faroese traveling companion through Rajasthan, telling me she'd never heard anyone talk so much about being Jewish. Why was it that after four years of going to college three thousand miles from my parents and sleeping with exotically Scandinavian-named women, I still felt it necessary to go on a Grand Tour of a country that celebrates exactly the kind of idol worship Abraham found objectionable? And why, once I was there (and in the company of another Scandinavian), could I not stop talking about what it meant to me to be a Jew?

These are questions I wouldn't even have been able to pose until quite recently. The whole Jewish thing, wrapped up as it is with all my parental angst and fundamental sense of dislocation and alienation, was simply too frightening even to look at. That may sound silly, but there it is.

And so I've decided to get myself copies of the Lonely Planets that guided me through that journey: not just the India guide, but also the one for Nepal, and for trekking in the Nepal Himalaya. If nothing else, this new-old Lonely Planet has confirmed for me the existence of the Peacock Hotel in Pushkar², along with its location — issues that remained vague for me even though I stayed there, no doubt because of the bhang lassis I consumed each night during my visit to that pleasant little town.
—
1. And I quote, all sic:

Mfrs. & Exporters of : Painting on Silk, Wood, Paper and Marble
96, Patwa Street Near Jagdish Temple
UDAIPUR-313 001 (India)
We Accept All Credit Cards & Foregin Currency

Ashoka Arts A Mile Stone in the Field of Paintings.

• See How Artist Make Paintings with Natural Colours.
• A Co-operative Orgnised by the Artists.
• A Reflection of Indian Culture & Historic Background.
• Most Economical & Best Quality Painting on Marble, Silk, Paper on wood.

Ashoka Arts
Best Miniature Paintings,

2. "On the outskirts of town is the Peacock Hotel, a good choice despite being rather far from the lake. The rooms surround a large, shady courtyard, and the swimming pool and jacuzzi are a big drawcard. Singles/doubles cost Rs 50/80 with common bath, Rs 120 for a double with bath attached, and there are more upmarket rooms at Rs 300/450." I remember neither pool nor jacuzzi, but then, it was seriously cold during my visit.

[un to nepal]

After UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour culminated a tour of Nepal by calling for war crimes trials, the New York Times reports that the UN Security Council has decided to send a political mission to Nepal to oversee the ceasefire.

This is the first time since my arrival in UNistan that the organization has begun a serious involvement with a country I actually know something about. I'm certainly not a Nepal expert, but I've been there twice and followed its story over the years. And I'm not at all certain that the fragile new order needs outside interference.

Like Thailand, another tourist favorite, Nepal was never colonized. Certainly it has deep-seated problems, but they are not the problems of post-colonial societies. The thought of Western good intentions going awry in Nepal fills me with dread; I imagine Nepal's warm hospitality — which, let us not forget, is its only really viable product for foreign trade — curdling into the bitterness and resentment of the colonized.

On the other hand, my concept of Nepal's internal sensibilities comes from visits to the Kathmandu Valley, one particularly tourist-favored stretch of the Himalayas, and one small town on the edge of a lowlands national park. The angry part of Nepal is down there, in the area known as the Terai, where the draining of malarial swamps has opened up new land for farming, but where the zamindar system of landlordism keeps most people impoverished and powerless, just as it does in some neighboring Indian states. Or so I have read. Maybe these sections of the country feel just as colonized as anyone else ruled by people who speak another language and see them as less than fully human.

In any case, it's a test for the UN and for Ban Ki-moon, and one in which I feel a personal sense of anxiety over its outcome.

[anjalic]

Mistress of Disguise | Seven X Eight | Feline Woman by Anjali

Twelve long years have passed since Portishead first unleashed Dummy upon an unsuspecting world, tapping into a deep, hitherto unnoticed craving for ethereal female vocals over moody, noir-tinged tracks with sophisticated electronic production and hip-hop beats. Eight years after Portishead's final album, the revelatory PNYC Live, where can one turn to satisfy this peculiar, overly specific jones?

Well, if you're willing to forgo the extraordinary Portishead scratching in favor of some sitar and don't mind your spy movie music taking on an Austin Powers vibe, I suggest you give Anjali a try.

Formerly the drummer in UK Riot Grrl band the Voodoo Queens, Anjali Bhatia now claims descent from the Bhatti line of maharajas of Jaisalmer. Whether that's true or not, her music has ventured as far from Riot Grrl radicalism as her identity. One can hear traces not only of UK trip-hop, but also of Cibo Matto and other late-nineties electronic experimenters, not to mention heavy doses of Anglo-Indian fusion, tinged with old-fashioned Bollywood goodness.

Find more MP3s at Bazaar Sounds, Anjali's Beggar's Banquet Site, and her personal web page.

[bollywood hip-shake]

Hips Don't Lie (Live at the VMAs) (Google Video) | Hips Don't Lie (YouTube Video) by Shakira

According to the BBC, Shakira so enjoyed the Bollywood costumes and choreography she tried on (with moderate skill and success) at the MTV Video Music Awards that she is now hoping to do a Bollywood-style music video with that night's choreographer, Indian director Farah Khan (no relation to Louis Farrakhan).

Considering that Shakira has long blended genres, combining Latin, Middle Eastern, hip-hop and rock music and dance, throwing in a little Bollywood flavor should be easy enough. And I am generally in favor of artists of all stripes dabbling (1, 2, 3) in what I want to call "Indiana" but can't because a certain Midwestern state has stolen the term. I'm also generally in favor of Shakira's hips, whose veracity is open to question but whose booty-shakin' snap-and-shimmy skillz-with-a-Z are not in doubt.

I therefore look forward to seeing how this musical polymath incorporates Bollywood's masala into her multi-culti stew. (And yes, it is pleasant to think of Shakira as fusion cuisine, isn't it?)

[breaking the glass ceiling]

PepsiCo has named a woman CEO: Indra K. Nooyi, an Indian-American who was born in Chennai (then Madras) and educated at Indian universities before graduating from the Yale School of Management.

Nooyi joins 12 other female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. This low rate of representation for women at the highest levels of American business suggests that the glass ceiling is still a concern. Still, Nooyi's promotion is perhaps a sign of change. Keeping in mind that people don't typically become CEO until well into their careers, and that women only started entering the workforce in great numbers perhaps 25 years ago, we may still be in the early stages of transition in the upper echelons of the business world. After all, people of my generation, still in their thirties, are the first to have spent their entire professional lives in environments regulated by sexual harrassment laws. When people born in the 1970s are old enough to be CEOs of Fortune 500, I expect to see a higher percentage of women in top executive positions, if not total gender equality.

[the best hotel in india]

When we were in India in 2002-2003, our favorite hotel was one we didn't even stay at: Killa Bhawan. Located in the honey-hued fort walls of the historic Thar Desert city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, the hotel was run by an affable Brahmin who was wise enough to see the value of inviting non-guests up to his extraordinary terrace for chai and conversation. We were given a look at the gorgeous interiors, put together in conjunction with a French designer, then ushered up to comfortable wicker chairs on the crenellated curve of the fort wall, where we drank in the views along with the sweet spiced tea.

India was an enervating and difficult place to travel, but Jenny and I could see heading back to Jaisalmer simply to while away our days at the Killa Bhawan. More even than its stunning location, what so impressed us about the Killa Bhawan was its immaculate, lush sense of style. Its color schemes — Rajasthani oranges, pinks, greens and reds against tan sandstone and dark wood — became a kind of shorthand for all that we found most compelling about Rajasthani style. Alas, the tight spaces of New York apartments are more suited to the clean lines and simple elegance of East Asia, while its more northerly light works better against the muted shades of those temperate countries than with the bright juxtapositions of the Indian desert. But one day I do hope to decorate a home, or part of a home, in the style of Killa Bhawan. And in the meantime, you'll notice that the look of this blog owes a bit to the color and feel of that remarkable hotel.