February 2010
2 posts
Happy Ending
This third time at Joe’s Pub was for a music and reading series called Happy Ending. The title comments a bit more on the narrative nature of the performances than the naughtiness of the event’s embrace. MC Amanda Stern follows in the same glorious footsteps as hosts of other cabaret lineups like The Moth, and How I Learned in her rabid self deprecation and referential comedy....
OCD in WIlliamsburg
Riding the L east to Williamsburg, I wish I’d found a sushi place to grab a bite. I have three delis within spitting distance of my new apartment, but a desert of options beyond. I assume somewhere along my route I’ll pass something more appetizing. I still think of myself as an unpicky eater, despite a mountain of evidence. I travel freely across the city and amongst the boroughs,...
December 2009
34 posts
Epilogue: I like to fly redux
About twenty four hours ago, I sat in a plane that, from a standing start, headed west and leapt into the sky. At this point I should be clear: I did not rough it in India. Yes, for two weeks I worked harder than I ever have before. I dug and mixed and hauled. But I had a bed and hot water, and when I left for my tour I lived in nothing but the lap of luxury while traveling a land of squalor. So...
Day Twenty Four
Goa was a good break from my travels, but it would have been better right after Habitat. I could have cocooned myself on the beach for a few days and emerged ready to conquer the rest of my travels. Having it at the end of my trip was just a relaxing postponement of my return. Not that I minded. I hit the spa for one last massage before taking the long and winding road back to the airport. They...
Day Twenty Three
Goa sits on the Western edge of India, pretty far down the coast to the South. Unlike Rajasthan which was under the rule of the Mugul emperors, Southern India was under the control of Bijapur kings. There must have been some dissatisfaction with this arrangement, because in the early 1500s the Goan people invited the Portuguese to come in and replace the Islamic Bijapuris. I guess the Hindus...
Day Twenty Two
At one of my other cities in Rajasthan I ran into some of the people I’d been in Ranthambore with for the tiger safari. They broke the sad news that the very day I left, they saw a tiger that afternoon. They showed me a picture they snapped and then admitted they only saw the tiger’s butt as it walked off into the trees. So that’s the question. Is it better to let the tiger...
Day Twenty One
Stepping into the Udaipur airport, I leave the old world behind. Gone are the dusty roads, open sewers and sweatered goats. Once you get off the surface streets, transportation in India is rather efficient. From the trains to the planes, they have a clear system for herding people from one place to another. It’s not the same as ours and involves more papers and lots of luggage tags that get...
Desert Music
Day Twenty
I didn’t get much sleep. The Jain Buddhists get up super early once every other week and have some massive chant-fest. There’s music and prayer and all kinds of nonsense. Yes, everything’s nonsense when it’s at 4:30am in the morning. Luckily Areya was up and kept me well entertained. At 9:30am I met my guide for my horse safari. I wasn’t sure if this was a safari where...
Day Nineteen
As the sun rises, and the rooster crows, I walk from my tent onto the cold, cold sand. My plan is to walk south across the property to get a better view of the brightening horizon. But I’m stopped when what I first take to be a pile of blankets near the performance area turns into a massive german sheppard. Coincidentally, the instant the dog ceases to be a pile of blankets, he begins to...
Day Eighteen
Here’s what I’ve gathered about Jodhpur. Being that this is the second largest city in Rajasthan (under Jaipur), I think it’s a relevant discovery. Tourists are lured to the town by the fort so they can be sold handicrafts. That’s it. That’s the whole purpose for the city existing. Yes there are other industries, many to support the local community, but the majority...
Day Seventeen
After another great breakfast at the hotel, Parminder and I hit the road for Jodhpur. We have trouble communicating sometimes, and the drive I thought would be three hours turned into six. I don’t mind time in the car, but would have brought a box lunch if I’d known how long it would take. Between the major cities is an unending stream of farms, towns, and open wilderness. There are no...
Day Sixteen
Breakfast was a tasty buffet of fresh fruits and some scrambled eggs with black truffles. Not too shabby. I brought some extra muffins along for the guide and my driver. Parminder (the driver) had eaten a good portion of the lunch I brought along the day before. I got the sense he is avoiding spending money on food while on the road and that the muffins would be appreciated. I think their western...
Day Fifteen
I wont leave you in suspense. No tigers today. I left the hotel in Ranthambore defeated. By whom, I cannot say. Maybe the tigers? Maybe the men who took their skins and filled them with sawdust and set them on display? Maybe my own pride that I should be a man who’s seen these giant cats in the wild? I did get to play with some elephants for a while. The hotel’s had two sisters as pets...
Day Fourteen
The main reason for going to Rathambore is the national park. It had been the exclusive hunting grounds of the Maharaja, but in the nineteen fifties the government declared it a protected area. In the eighties it became an official wildlife sanctuary and all human use was banned. The focus of the park is the tigers. With only six thousand left worldwide, (half of them in India) the forty odd...
Day Thirteen
Today is about transition. As a team, we head over to The Park for their breakfast buffet. I might prefer my last meal in Delhi to be more meager. We’re all heading home, or off to exotic tours and will recuperate in due time with missed foods and posh comforts. I would like to leave Delhi with the taste of overcooked egg in my mouth, as a closing note on a slow sad song you want to remember...
Day Twelve
We rose in darkness and climbed the few steps onto the bus in silence. Every day we rode this bus to and from bawana; an hour and a half each way. The ride home, with our tired muscles turning to stone felt twice as far. But today we embark on the five hour journey south to Agra. We don’t know what to expect. No one talks about the ride ahead. We eat our box breakfasts (eggs, always eggs) an pass...
Day Eleven
Today was our Delhi sightseeing trip. I was lucky to get a full day last Sunday to wander around and see a few sites, but most of the group has seen only the YMCA Hotel and Bawana since they arrived. It’s nice we got to see a bit more before we leave.
Our first stop was at one of the oldest structures in the area. Built in the 1100s, by the first islamic king of India, it’s a giant tower of stone...
Day Ten
For our last day on site, Amit arranged for us all to move to a new location and assist in the pouring of a cement roof. A big effort is made to frame our work here as a complete project, so I know he worked hard to give us this experience. Considering the nature of our work to date, I was happy to try something different. The project site was a brick house in the same style as the ones on which...
Day Nine
We got to sleep in a bit today as we skipped the work site this morning and went on a tour of a nearby children’s home. This is a private facility supported by donors for caring for a variety of needy children. The home was founded in the seventies to house children who’d been abandoned. Many of these children have developmental or physical handicaps so the home includes orthopedic...
Day Eight
Today was our first day off after six of working on the site. Normally projects go four days on, one day off for two weeks. But we’re saving our R&R for two days of tours at the end. I didn’t mind the longer work week, but this rest would have been more satisfying if we’d ended on a high note. As it was, we agreed that it’s been anti-climactic, with the work petering...
Day Seven
Maybe I got addicted to the endorphin rush of so much strenuous exercise, and now that it’s diminished, so has my enthusiasm for the work. We’re still at it four or five hours a day, but now there are breaks and a bit of milling about. Or maybe it’s the context under which we’re working. I know it’s hard to imagine a worse context than incessant digging, but there was...
Day Six
Moved bricks. Mixed cement. Ate lentils.
Day Five
Remember all that stuff I sait about swastikas? It’s all true, and I do take it to heart. But It’s still very satisfying to sit on a giant pile of swastika bricks and smash them to pieces with a hammer. Shattered bricks line the bottom of the septic tank pit, so we spent a solid hour smashing a few hundred bricks. With the right focus, directed in the right spot, one good hit can split the brick...
Day Four
Out on a limb here, thinking the best way to start any day is by watching a herd (tribe?) of monkeys stampeed by your window. There’s this drained swimming pool in back of the hotel, bordered on two sides by tall trees. It looked as if the baboons were descending from the treas, crossing the pool deck, on their way into the city. Sixty million years of evolution. Right before my eyes. If...
Day Three
Today was easier in a way. We knew where to go, and we knew what to do. It’s hard being in a new place, but as we get more familiar, we can focus more on our project goals. That easing enables more hours of more efficient back-breaking labor. If yesterday was our introduction to digging, today was our perfection of dirt management. It’s not just about how you move it, but also where....
Day Two
Digging is hard. I can only do it for about seven minutes with intensity. After that, I have to rest and catch my breath. Maybe for two minutes. Digging was my world over the four and a half hours we were at our work site. The location is a vacant lot agancent to an existing brick house. We were supposed to tear down a thatch shack and replace it with a brick building, but there was some problem...
Day One
Let me start by saying that cobras are terrifying. I have no idea how often they actually bite people. Or maybe they just spit poison into our eyes or something. Either way, I feel no shame in posting these pictures where I’m clearly uncomfortable. When I handed back the cobra, one of the indian onlookers asked me if I’d been drinking. I wonder what he meant by that.
Holding...
I like to fly
I like to fly. I can’t remember if it’s always been this way, but the memories I have from childhood are pretty good. Sleeping down on the floor of the bulkhead, down by my parents feet. Magic marker books where secrets appear under the ink of a special pen. Trick peanut brittle, filled with spring snakes at our layover in Puerto Rico. Then in school, flying on my own, back and forth...