Archive for the 'india' Category

The Eye of God

Published on March 1, 2006 in ego and india and mwt. 0 Comments

We were 12000 feet up, and we were freezing. Everyone slept fully clothed inside their sleeping bags, and we all huddled together on the beds for collective warmth. The first hint of morning was a very slow and subtle change in the glow filtering in through the open, barred windows low on the wall from black to the darkest of blues. I remember thinking of how amazing it was that that relatively small elevation in energy, between none and a barely measureable some, made such a palpable difference. Where previously had stood a squarish orange outline now stood a wooden door with latches on the side faintly aglow, its perimeter still haloed in shabby electric light from down the hall.

We rose, creakily, the temperature making everything brittle and difficult. The air, though quite cold, had a brisk and clean quality to it that is unique to the mountains. Certainly thus far in India, it was the cleanest air I’d breathed, and a welcome relief.
I heard the monks up in the temple stirring, clinking, chanting. There it was again: that feeling you sometimes get in India that you are connected to a human ritual that has gone on for thousands of years without you, and will continue on for thousands more after you’re gone. We were in the tiny village that had grown up around one of the most ancient temples in Hinduism, way up in the Central Himalayas. We’d climbed to the summit of the mountain the previous day, but had been teased and taunted by high, fast-moving, occasionally all-enveloping clouds. The monks, and our Principal-Ji, had noted that the best time for a good view was sunrise. Feeling ambitious (perhaps brought on by the mild effects of oxygen deprivation), we had decided the previous evening to
rise before the sun did and re-complete the last stage of our trek.

We set off in the rising blue glow, now notable enough for us to not require flashlights or anything like that to find the path. The path set out rather south-east, towards the south-facing, nearly sheer cliff wall of the mountain. It hugged a well-trodden path above this dropoff as it turned more directly east and up.

The path itself was a miraculous thing: it was assembled by thousands of pilgrims to this holy spot over thousands of years. Stones of mixed sizes and shapes all elaborately placed together and cemented in with mud and gravel. In some places the winter had obviously washed away parts of the path, and we walked in the beds of what must have been the ad hoc streams of the metling snows earlier that year.

The path zig-zagged for, to guesstimate, a thousand feet up the steep side of the mountain, hard grasses and snaggled, tough-looking shrubbery on all sides. Up and up, back and forth across the mountain-face we went. It was notably easier than the previous day, perhaps because we’d just slept a bit and hadn’t had to climb the whole rest of the mountain that morning. There was a section, closer to the top, that was a slight plateau, a respite before the last leg. From down below, the plateau looked decievingly like the top. The realization that another few hundred feet lay beyond and above the plateau was not a welcome one.

A holy man sat on a mat in his bright orange robes, his hair silver and gray and partially dreaded, in his hand a lit and lightly fuming opium pipe. From his neck hung necklaces and medallions. He was very still, sitting there with his pipe idling away. He moved then, very deliberately as if in a Noh drama, and put the pipe to his mouth, inhaled and put it back down where it had been. He looked at me as I passed him, and he nodded. I thought I saw a crease of a smile, but if I did it was soon gone and he was looking back across the valley behind me.

I turned, after I’d passed him, and looked out at the massive valley behind me and the glorious, snow top peaks that passed away to the north and northwest. We’d seen basically none of this the previous day, due to the clouds, fog and light rain you commonly get at that altitude. It was a tremendous sight to behold.
Just near the top there was a kind of out-cropping beyond which I could not see. Where the side had previously been steep but not vertical, here it went basically straight up, the shrubbery boldly daring to grow out of the side of the exposed rock. The path straightened, cutting through the vertical out-cropping, then turned to the north. Up I climbed, quite winded and starting to question how wise this whole endeavor had been.
And then I saw God.
I stopped in my tracks and felt as if my body were inconsequential, that I, me, this, the element, did truly, unquestionably, exist and was part of something larger and more beautiful, something that far escaped my ability to describe it. There, atop an ancient and holy mountain, at just the moment the sun leapt from behind the far mountains to attain its own whole, I looked into the Eye of God. It was overwhelmingly, shockingly powerful. I just stood there, taking it all in. The sun, the sun, the sun, brilliant and whole, warming in every sense, lit the whole world. The peak felt like an altar, and appropriately so, because for the first time in my life I deeply understood what it was that made men worship God or Allah or Yahweh or Vishnu or Buddha or whomever. A creation of that beauty, power and magnitude deserved acclaim and praise and absolute humility before it.

I stumbled forward to where my friends, similarly stunned, were gathering, near the eastern edge of the peak. We just stood there for a while, just taking it in as a collective experience. Someone would occasionally get out a “Wow…” and trail off. We could see the opposite range of peaks, some many, many miles away from us. (Principal-ji had told us the day before that those peaks were so far away that most of them were actually in China. So, though I’ve never been to China, I can claim to have seen it with my own eyes.)

We stayed there for a great part of that morning. It was unbelievable and I could never describe it all. What I can say is this: the experience of living in India connected me, I believe, to many of the extremes of human experience. I came away knowing what the human extremes of misery, poverty, cruelty, corruption, humility, charity, tolerance, peace, beauty, and faith all look like. I cannot say that I felt and experienced many of these personally, and I am thankful for it. But the extreme that will perhaps be the most lasting, and is perhaps most important, I touched directly: the human existential experience itself. The experience of truly being human.
That is perhaps the best thing I can say about my time in India: I went there merely breathing. I came back alive.

An image from the top

Tea

Published on August 16, 2004 in india and mwt and observation. 0 Comments

Fair warning: This is a long, detailed entry about something very small and unimportant. As entries go, feel free to skip this one, but I liked it and had to post it.
Today I had 7 cups of tea. I never liked tea a lot, really, until I came to India. This past semester I’d go to Tealuxe and do work, etc. It wasn’t about the tea, though, it was about the environment, the people-watching, the interesting separation a pair of good headphones could provide. The tea was just a reason to be there. Tealuxe will stay in business for a long while because there are enough people like me who would do that, just go for the vibe, the experience, and not the product. The fact that they apparently have a world-class selection of teas will probably increase their longevity as well. In India, though, as much atmosphere and people watching as there always is, no matter which way you turn, there’s a very different aspect to this whole tea thing.

I’ve been thinking about it and I think it’s the ritual. Today I got up at 5:10 (yea, I’m totally losing it), and, honestly, what got me out of bed was mentally walking myself through the immensely and inexplicably satisfying procedure of preparing my tea and buttered toast breakfast. While I hit the snooze button on instinct, a minute later I actually shut off the alarm entirely and went and did what I had just walked myself through.

Someone, I think Mike or Noel, always remembers to turn off the fans and the lights in the living room and kitchen. Early in the morning there is very little light, but my newly adjusting eyes make out everything fine, anyway. I walk into the kitchen and grab the water-boiler. I fill it up to it’s maximum, 1.5L capacity, as it saves me a trip a half-hour later. Plus it’s easier, in that early morning daze, just to fill to the little line rather than think about your average primary tea displacement. I put the water boiler on its stand and press the button, the orange light on the side lighting up the whole left side of the kitchen in an orange that changes color as my eyes adjust to it, a ripe Florida Orange orange fading to something I think closer to a near-maroon. As soon as the button clicks, a high-pitched, fuzzy electrical whirring emits from the base of the boiler, dominating the early morning sonic landscape with equal aplomb of the shifting light below.

The water on, I open the cupboard and feel around for one of the bigger mugs. I slide it across the counter and turn around to get the sugar. The sugar here isn’t fine a fine crystalline, like it is in the States. It’s thousands and thousands of small but long rectangular crystals that don’t stick to each other. We refilled our sugar recently, so it pours freely, nearly too freely into the mug. These days I consciously blink my eyes and make sure it’s actually sugar that I’m pouring into my sugar. Three days in a row last week I put in salt by accident and had to do this whole ritual over again. Now the salt, which is in the exact same looking container and is not labeled, is nowhere near the tea ingredients. The sugar poured, I put it back and grab a tea bag. We buy these 100 packs of tea bags, and they’re all perfectly folded and arranged inside a small square box. It’s really a brilliant arrangement. Four rows, twenty-five to a row. Tea bag, string. Tea bag, string.

The pitch of the fuzzy water has been steadily rising as I walk around the kitchen. It’s approaching it’s apex as I open the fridge and grab the milk. Cat and Anusha, ever, if unnecessarily, hip-conscious females, have been buying skim milk lately and it’s just not the same, but in the early morning daze I’m just proud of myself that I’ve found a liquid to pour into my tea and not rice or something. The sound of fuzzy water rings its final declaration across the early-morning silence, and dies away. The button clicks back with a plastic thud and it echoes around our small but high-ceilinged kitchen. The echo is short-lived, as the water finally hits a boil and starts shaking.

I pour the steaming water into the mug, keeping in mind how bloody hot steam can be. Nearly lost a thumb a couple weeks ago when I was messing with the water-boiler. If I’ve aimed correctly, the water went directly to the bottom and filled up the mug slowly, melting the sugar into it instantly and not disturbing the tea bag. If done correctly, it looks like there’ s just water in there. I pour in the milk and watch the solid streams of milk start to break apart in the heated environment. They twirl these amazing patterns in the water. Here I can chance a swirl with the spoon to mix the milk, water and sugar quite well. The result is a uniform, pure white liquid.

Now the best part. Two tugs or so on the teabag, held to the side of the mug, and brown shoots straight across the white like the most imaginative scimitar you’ve ever seen. It hits the other side and splits apart, circling around the circumference. If you’re really lucky, for just a little while, the tea infusing into the milky, sugary water makes a pattern that looks like a swirly London Underground logo. It’s absolutely brilliant. If I were a filmmaker, I would shoot this scene from twenty angles, or maybe just one, and watch it all happen. I’d let the lens linger there as the bisected circle breaks down and stops rotating, and the tea takes on that taffy-brown color it should when it’s well-constructed. I know it might sound stupid and fanciful, and it probably sounds like something a starving artist would say, but honestly watching the tea steep into the water is the best part of my morning. If I do it correctly, it’s honestly a beautiful display.

There’s only one electrical outlet in that part of the kitchen, and the water-boiler splits time with the toaster. I throw two pieces of white toast in the murderous toaster and pray. I don’t bother actually turning the dials on our toaster. Ha. What a concept, a toaster that responds to even vague requests of cooking length and intensity. Ha. No, this toaster has a mind of its own, and that mind is a sick one. No matter what the setting, 1-10, odds are good that your toast will either come out looking like a deformed hockey puck or like it hadn’t been in a toaster yet. And attempting to retrieve your toast, via any method including unplugging the devil box from the wall, will fail. I guarantee you. The slider you push to push your toast down to its death, not unlike that memorable scene from Temple of Doom, come to think of it, stays down and immovable until it damn well feels like releasing your toast. Bastard.

Let’s assume it’s one day in ten, and instead of scorching my toast beyond recognition or palatability for any 1+ celled organisms, the bastard manages to punch out perfect, lightly browned, hot toast. It’s only happened maybe three or four times total, while I’ve been here. Oddly, other people here report no big problems. Maybe it’s just me? Anyway, I butter the toast, one side only, and no matter how hard the butter was when it came out it’ll melt on this toast. It fades in to the toast, gives up, really, and I enjoy a piece straight up, usually still at the kitchen counter. I butter a second one and do one of two things.

The first is more usual. I go back to my room and sit down at my desk, check my email, do some dems coding, read the news, maybe talk online, before I go take a shower. I usually am not done with the first cup of tea by the time I take a shower so I just take it with me. It’s a nice feeling to get out of your own shower and still have a hot cup of tea waiting for you.

The other option is much more rare. I’ve only done it twice, but it’s been amazing. As I’ve explained before, our rooftop is a flat terrace that stretches the length of the building. Our stairs go right to the terrace, so we do lots of stuff up there. On the eastern side of the building, the “Rutgers Girls” wing, there is a separate terrace that’s hardly ever open. Once in a while someone will leave the door open overnight, though I’ve only seen that happen twice. People on our side of the building are less anal about doors being locked and whatnot.

This terrace faces directly east. In the foreground is Ring Road, a huge highway that circles Delhi. Beyond that is a huge temple, the Tibetan colony, the Yamuna River, a big stadium/cricket grounds, and the eastern horizon. It’s a rarity, but days where the terrace on that side is open and it’s a really clear morning, there are some truly awe-inspiring sunrises. Typical India that you have to look over 8 lanes of honking, high-emissions vehicles to see it, but it’s well worth it regardless. To sit there, a brilliant cup of tea in hand, the sun rising, a light breeze blowing…

You guys ask me all the time, “So what do you do over there?” Well, when you picture me here in India, picture me sitting high on a terrace, sipping tea, looking off at the eastern horizon ablaze, with my thoughts inescapably wandering exactly the opposite direction.

Debate

Published on August 7, 2004 in india and mwt. 0 Comments

The St. Stephens Debating Society, the word goes, is probably the most elite debating society in India. They throw a debating tournament in November that attracts debators from all over Delhi, all over India, and all over Asia at large (good teams from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Bangkok). Former winners of this tournament include former Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, and heads of major businesses. The society engages in competitions where the cash prizes average (average!) well over $1000 for a semester. All the members of the executive board have already paid off the rest of their tuition and rent to St. Stephen’s with earnings from debate, with plenty to spare.

And I just walked onto the team.

There were two rounds held this week. The first was an individual round with 24 hours preparation, requiring a 4-minute speech and 2 minutes of question answering. The topic was “This house believes there is no such thing as national sovereignty anymore.” I was on the government side, so I had to affirm the topic. I argued that the cumulative Philosophical, Technological, and Economic developments of the 20th century had nullified the concept of national sovereignty as it stood for the last 1000 years or so. It was a pretty good argument, and I spoke pretty well, I think. I was quite nervous, but I think it came across well. Cat said I moved too much while I was speaking, so I worked on that in the second round.

The second round was a real test. The resolutions given were really abstract and you had to make a concrete case out of them in under 3 minutes. Cat’s resolution was “This house is comfortably numb.” She crafted a case that said social apathy was the biggest obstacle to constructive social change in the world today. My resolution was more straightforward: “This house believes in free-for-all,” and I had to speak for the opposition. I crafted an argument that said “This house should show a proper respect for law and order.” I said that a proper respect for law and order permitted economic growth, enhanced democracy, and saved lives. It worked out pretty well. I thought I spoke very clearly. I didn’t even get any questions, which I thought might be a bad thing.

After I spoke, they told us that the list of those who had made it would posted on the main board tomorrow (today – Saturday) morning. I have classes early Saturday morning, so I knew I’d be able to check. I honestly didn’t expect to make the team. There were some very good speakers. It was interesting, actually, that the speakers were mostly either very, very good or very, very bad. The contrast from speaker to speaker was striking. There were enough good speakers that I put my chances at making the team at 50/50. Thus it was nice to come in this morning and fine both my name and Cat’s name on the list. The list said that we qualified for the “interview round.” I thought this was the final selection process, but apparently, in talking to some of the exec. board members, it’s just a “get-to-know-you-and-give-you-crap-because-you’re-new” session. It should be interesting.

I’m excited for the debate tournaments to start. Apparently we’re going to be practicing rather hard every other day for the next few weeks in order to prepare for the first big tournaments. Apparently a big topic at these tournaments is to rail against U.S. foreign policy/hypocrisy, etc. This, of course, begs the Teddy Roosevelt question: Does partisanship really stop at the water’s edge? For most Presidents/Congresses, I would probably say yes. This one is so ludicrous and vindictive that it’ll be fun to take it to task with greater precise knowledge than most Indians could.

Let the games begin.

UPDATE: The interview round yesterday was really more like an explanation of what was expected in terms of membership. It’s a lot of debate, a lot of competition, but also quite a bit of work. If we were prepared to give a lot of time and effort to the society, we would gain a lot in return. But the relationship, said the President, Anvesh, should be you giving something to the society, not the society being solely for your benefit. He said if they saw that, that a student was taking advantage of society membership and not helping out with anything that it does, that that person was out. Cat and I are both very serious about doing debate, so this didn’t phase us at all.

After the interview/explanation, the President and Secretary took us aside and talkted to us for a bit.

“I just want you to know that the people selected for the interview round were selected based on debating merit alone. I was under a lot of pressure not to select you two, as you will be leaving in December and won’t form a good basis to build the society on in the future. But since we decided to select people based on debating merit, we didn’t take those things into account. We just wanted to be clear with you regarding that: the only reason you made it here is because you deserve it.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” we responded, rather uneloquently.
“That said, I don’t think it would be untoward of us to ask quite a bit from you in return. By virtue of being from a different place, you think differently than we do. We could see this in your debating style. It’s just a product of geography and culture. So we want you to interact heavily with the society, to share your ideas and different views on things, your experiences regarding organizing and putting on events.”

I responded with something stupid like “Absolutely, as long as you do the same. I want to learn from you as well,” then went on to talk about how I had organized some big events before and that I had an idea of how to work with unwieldy administrational/societal internia problems.

Cat was actually on the executive board of the debate team back at Brown, so she responded that she had been smiling the w whole time Anvesh had been talking because the problems he described were precisely the problems that the Brown debate team grappled with every year. So she knew what she was doing.

The President and the Secretary seemed pleased with our responses and our enthusiasm. I’m even more excited to get going with this than I was before.

Monkey Wars

Published on August 6, 2004 in india and mwt. 1 Comment

I almost don’t believe this, and if I weren’t in India I wouldn’t think that it was true, but the Asian Age reported yesterday that companies are now buying trained langurs (big, black-faced, white-furred monkeys that I threw rocks at in the mountains) to defend their buildings against typical rhesus monkeys that are all over Delhi. These trained langhurs will patrol the grounds of a given building and will violently attack any other monkeys that come near it.


If the monkeys here are like terrorists, these Langhurs are like the Special Forces.

I’ve yet to see a Langhur/Rhesus battle, but I bet it’d be interesting. The langhurs are big (probably a good 40+ lbs) and strongly built. When we were in the mountains, it was legitimately scary when they charged. The rhesus monkeys are just funny and pretty small, if terrorist-like. Plus they travel in huge groups, titling the scales in their favor. All in all, it’s nice to know that in the war on terrorist monkeys, someone (something) is out there fighting for us.

Good Management

Published on August 4, 2004 in india and mwt and observation. 0 Comments

Today I was walking through Kumla Nagar, a long street of markets near college. It was near lunch time and it had been a while, so I decided to get McDonalds. I just beat the lunchtime rush, which came in after me. The staff were getting more overwhelmed as my order was being processed and people kept coming in and getting in line. They got my fries and coke very quickly, then promised to bring my burger (chicken burger, by the way – big sign out front that says “No beef products are sold in this establishment.”) out to me. Time went on. My coke disappeared. Then my fries. Most of the people who had been behind me in the lunchtime rush had already finished their food. So I walked up to the counter to see if I could just get my burger. I was prepared for the worst, because the typical Dilliwalla businessman answer to this kind of question is “You didn’t order one,” or “We gave you your burger. Did you lose it?”

But the manager was standing right there and said, “You didn’t get your burger?”
I said yes, that I had been waiting for it for quite some time.
He said “Oh, goodness, I’m terribly sorry. Let me get you fresh fries and a coke.” While he did so, my burger arrived, fresh and hot. I relayed my sincere thanks and went back to eat my food.

This story is worthy of note because it’s about the best, and most unexpected, single example of management that I’ve seen yet in India. I am absolutely going back there again, and not just for the food. Stuff like that sticks in people’s minds. If the manager or someone working there had given the typical Dilliwalla business response, like some hellish rickshaw drivers I’ve had, there’s a good chance that not even the allure of a nice chicken burger and fries would get me to go back there.