Trivandrum Dreamscapes: Leading a Parade; Internet on Train

In the dreamscape of Trivandrum, Kerala, I experienced last night a strange reaction: Soft breezes cooled me through the early-early morning hours, but I awoke in sweat.  Unable to modulate the fan, Colin flipped the switch sometime around two A.M.  Instead of demanding the rise of consciousness to reverse the switch, my mind did the grunt work and I woke at six in the morning.

Our "Tourist Home" bears the same name, Manjalikulam, or "Collection of Bouquets," as the road it is situated on.  It was the most modestly priced receptacle we could find in God's own (sultry) country for our touring bodies; at Rs. 500/night it was neither cheap nor overpriced, but the staff (as per usual in my estimation) did take us for saps!

Colin asked if it'd be possible to get a sheet before sleep last night, so I placed my book down down and picked up the phone to call the front desk.

"Good evening, sir.  This Rao (read Ralph) in room 3 aught 6.  Would you please send a sheet or blanket to the room?"

"Mr. Rao, non-A/C rooms don't come with sheet.  No sheets,"  replied the man at the front desk.

"Oh, that's nice," I said.  "Please send a sheet up to 3 aught 6.  My friend would like it for sleeping."

"O.K.  Hold one minute, sir," replied the man at the front desk, and he handed the telephone receiver to another man at the desk.

"Hello.  Sir?" Another man at the desk said.

"Hello, good evening.  This is Ralph, Mr. Rao, in room 3 aught 6.  Would you please send a sheet to the room for my friend?"

"It's non-A/C room, sir.  No sheets for... Actually, the sheets are gone for wash," the other man said.  "We've been calling the washer, and they say 10-15 minutes."

I know better, but how can I disagree with such a statement?  I placed the receiver down and went back to reading my book, Textures of Time.  Colin was using the computer to access the internet and listening to Regina Spector through headphones.  About twenty-five minutes later, he completed his work and asked me, "What about the sheet, man?"

"Oh, they don't want to give us any sheets because we're in a non-A/C room," I replied.

"What?"  Colin said.

"Yeah.  Well, the two guys at the front desk are claiming that they're waiting for the sheets to come back from the laundry, but I'm pretty sure the sheets are 'coming from the laundry' and not actually coming from the laundry."  It's a fine distinction, I suppose.  From a Westerner's perspective, a lie?  But these men most certainly aren't lying, and they certainly aren't being lazy.  On they contrary, they would just have a boy bring it up to room 3 aught 6.  I am as hard-pressed to believe there are no sheets in the hotel as I am when I hand Rs. 100 for a Rs. 75 purchase, for instance, to believe that when someone asks, "Change, sir?" that they actually don't have change.  Sometimes, yes, it is true--they don't have change.  But more often than not a simple, equally honest or sometimes true, "No.  No change," ends up producing the correct balance.  Maybe, though, with not as big a smile.  I, too, want small-bill change.  When there's no meter or price tag, it's handy to have!  In the same way, I am thinking, this hotel must have a sheet.  It's a hotel!

So Colin went to the front desk and asked the men for a sheet; they told him they'd have to get it from another hotel, and it would take about 10-15 minutes and cost about Rs. 10.

Maybe they were telling the truth: There were, indeed, no sheets in the hotel and they had to borrow sheets from another hotel on Collection of Bouquets road.  The night passed and there was no sheet.  There was also no fan, because Colin got cold and turned it off at two in the morning.

And so, in the dreamscape of Trivandrum, Kerala I experienced last night a strange reaction: Soft breezes cooled me through the early-early morning hours, but I awoke in sweat.  Unable to modulate the fan, Colin flipped the switch sometime around two A.M.  Instead of demanding the rise of consciousness to reverse the switch, my mind did the grunt work and I woke at six in the morning.

Today (29/12/2009) the Bharatiya Janata Party organized a political strike in Trivandrum.  I found myself unintentionally leading one of the noisy parades of mostly yellow-lungi-clad and some crazily-costumed, or stilt-wearing men beating drums REALLY LOUDLY as they walked behind a jeep with a generator on its hood powering concert-grade loudspeakers that announced--in what sounded like Sanskrit--something I couldn't understand semantically, but it wasn't secular.  That much I got, and a bus ticket to pull myself out of the lead.

I made my way to the Sri Chitra Art Museum in Trivandrum's botanical gardens.  The exhibit is mostly comprised of Raja Ravi Varma's celebrated Sanskrit-literature themed paintings, and they are INCREDIBLE!  They are, in fact, more incredible than the BJP's parade was loud.  I'll try to work on this 'blog update a bit more to add details of Raja Ravi's work, but just google or wiki him for the time being, please.

Right now I am using wireless internet from berth number 26 on an Indian railcar with my computer charging from "lohagaminividyut" (that's train electricity for non-Sanskritwalas).  The sound of the rain, indistinguishable from that of my fingers at the keys, patters away on the train.  The breadth of India from Trivandrum, Kerala to Chennai, Tamil Nadu where I will spend New Years passes beneath me.

I miss you all, my family and friends, especially during these Christmas and New Year festivities.  I am coming to realize how my life has changed in these past two years; I look forward to spending the holidays in the years ahead back home in the U.S.A., or here in India, but together with you all.  Enjoying the finest company and the warmest hearts the world has to offer me, or to anyone, in my estimation.

I pray for all of your health, happiness, and continued successes in the New Year 2010!

The Mission of the Goose: A 21st Century Retake

I set off from Mysore, Karnataka a little over one day ago with a friend, Colin, who currently lives in Jaipur, Rajasthan studying Hindi.  Our departure was, from the start, unsure.  We had no tickets for the bus that departed Mysore 22 December; but a ticket broker suggested I bribe the bus captain, a man Colin and I affectionately nicknamed as 'Swami-ji'.  This is also the nickname of our Hindi teacher, and we temporarily fixed it to the bus captain because the appearance of the captain and our Hindi teacher resemble one another remarkably!  In executing their quite different duties, too, they use effective and efficient means.

We rode on the 'rajahams', or the "Goose King" class of Karnataka State Tourist bus.  Rajahams, though, was a leery king, and required numerous repairs during the routine journey.  Swami-ji called "Halt!" to the Goose King's mission no less than twice for extended periods to service the mechanical innards of the bus, still very pregnant with passengers on board.  Weather-beaten, dented and rusting shells add a surreal, almost comic effect to most Indian buses that otherwise glide along smoothly, safely shuttling a closely quartered community in time-tested metal as black plumes and gooslings straggle after it.  The Goose King, something of an inversion, bore neither dents nor rusting shell; the only thing surreal about this Goose's tale is how ruffled our ride was.

About one hour into the trip, we pulled into a bus depot and many passengers disembarked for a smoke and tea break.   On Swami-ji's order the Goose King advanced to the depot's garage with passengers, caught midway through break, frantically running from behind to jump on board.  Most of them made it as we parked under a large shed over mechanics, who quickly got to work on the underbelly of the bus.  About twenty minutes later, the technicians completed the first servicing and the mission to Cochin resumed.

Colin remarked to me, "The sound of the gears' grinding has gone away."
And I replied in Hindi, "jagad gaya [It's been temporarily fixed].  Just wait a few minutes," as I handed to him a headphone from the iPod.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later the sound of metal grinding on metal would again drowned a mixture of songs compiled on the eve of this great adventure.  As darkness fell and Karnataka State boundary gave way to Kerala, signs indicating "Tiger Crossing.  Drive with extreme caution and refrain from use of horn" showed that we had entered a wildlife preserve in South India.   The winding and narrow road shifted the prime perspective out the bus's front window from Colin's view to mine.  Along this long two-lane, underdeveloped stretch of wilderness, Swami-ji's unflinching gaze upon the negotiations between traffickers provided my only comforts despite a number of close calls and thoughts of sure collision.

The Goose King's mission was proceeding smoothly until a string of uniquely colorful goods carriers obstructed the left lane.  Of course, then, the Goose King, along with the rest of the flock, bore right to continue south and avoid the large, colorful distractions.  But southerners were also heading north, and the ensuing bottleneck on an otherwise apparently desolate road in the middle of a tiger preserve in South India revealed the size of the flock in the form of a traffic jam.  Pitch black forest peppered with "Tiger Crossing" signs and rife with competing calls of cars' back-up songs gave light to unending, motionless traffic in a situation that seemed to be the stuff of a horror film.

Fire suddenly ignited aboard the bus and filled the cabin with smoke.  We drew our handkerchiefs and stuck our heads out the window, whereupon I engaged the man in a neighboring goods carrier in Hindi: "kya huaa? [What happened?]" I asked him.

The man, smiling just a bit too much (maybe from a white man's Hindi?), reported, "aage bahut log mar gaye the [many people died]" in an accident that occurred ahead on the road.  Minutes later, however, he let me know he was joking and told me about a checkpoint forty meters from where the Goose King sat, motionless, filled with smoke; Swami-ji had the on-board extinguisher in hand and was quickly putting an end to the brake fire.

He lit up a beedi smoke and we, his gooslings, knew that everything was going to be O.K.  The brakes had burned, though, and another repair was necessary.  We proceeded slowly to the next depot as the driver kept the extinguisher close at hand to quell the fire as it reignited en route to the garage.

With most passengers on board the bus, our midway twenty-minute break turned into a long repair (read despair).

"kitna samay lagaega? [How much time will it take?]" I asked a man who guided the Goose King up a small ramp.
"Das minute. [Ten minutes]," replied the man, smiling.

And I braced myself for the longest "das minute" (read two and a half hours) repair I've ever sat through.  I pulled out my iPod and reached for photocopies of Panini to spend the time reviewing some grammar under the fluorescent light of the garage.

In the cool breeze of the Goose King's post-repair resumption to the road, due to a now tired brain and body, Colin and I fell peacefully asleep.  That sleep wasn't to be interrupted again until loud sounds of low-gear awoke me to signage reading "Tenth hairpin turn."  I don't know how many hairpin turns preceded, but when the next sign shortly came into view, "Ninth hairpin turn," I braced myself for several minutes of discomfort and prayer.  Now a hairpin turn I have dealt with before in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado; but in a state like Kerala, India public roads' projects are not up to the reassuring safety standards of the Western world.  My window, several rows back in the bus, at times edged over sheer cliffs whose elevation I could only estimate by the impecunious size of house lights and those of other cars in the distant valley below.  The elevation, in my estimation, was precipitous.

After a precipitated roadside repair of the Goose King's brakes the road's precipitousness made me fear for the integrity of my life (Colin's dreaming at this point), and brought to mind several conversations over tater-tots and grilled cheese that I have unwittingly engaged with three- and four-year-olds about the realities of life's end.  The only child this time, though, was my own inside.  Soothing reassurances like being able to be a princess, or to color a picture, did not offer to me the help I required in those moments as they have to the other children in my past.  So I dialed up a stotra on the iPod, and stared to the heavens as opposed to the deep, dark depths that plunged below me and beside the Goose King.  Here in Kerala the heavens are particularly visible, and the Milky Way was shining brightly.

The Goose King safely descended from the path's great heights, and came to rest peacefully in Cochin, Kerala at about 9:30 A.M. 23 December.  Colin and I disembarked the bus only to immediately board another bound for Allepey, Kerala--the Venice of India.

Just another Roz

This is a morning view from my room.

Thought-evoking Fun

I cannot come to decide how to begin a new entry in the 'blog; this suggests the now structurally-famous question, "to 'blog, or not to 'blog?"  And I respond to myself (because there is no one else around) in the positive, "To 'blog!"
This past week I finished two applications: one to The University of Chicago and one to the University of Texas at Austin; today I finished the first 15 lessons of my Intensive Course in Kannada at the Central Institute of Indian Languages.  The combination of a little less tension about finishing applications and continuously improving Kannada skills provoked me to begin exploring, in earnest, Mysore, Karnataka and its surrounding environs.  If you are a subscriber to facebook, then you can see some of the pictures I've uploaded there.
The jaunt was a success, and it makes me excited to begin making more similar journeys throughout "Suvarna Karnataka," or "Golden (literally, 'nicely colored') Karnataka" as the State is billed by advertisements on a system of tourist buses that transport loads of people from various places to tourist sites.  Precisely because I can read what is on the side of the bus and what destination is detailed in the bus's front window, I feel comfortable traveling out more and more.  People here also have absolutely zero issue speaking Hindi with me, so I am getting a lot of great practice with my Hindi as well!
This past weekend, I started off on a bus from Mysore to Srirangapattana.  It is about 15 kilometers distance, and cost 10 rupees to travel there.  Once there, locals guided me around with Kannada directions from which I was able to glean the meaning and get to where I wanted to go.  The city of Srirangapattana has a long history as it was a very important city from the time of the Gangas (reign beginning ca. 4th century) all the way up through modern times with negotiations of power going on between colonial occupations of British with more recent Muslim rulers.  One of my goals during my time here is to take advantage of history like this.  Read about it in a book, and go visit it.

The history is totally apparent in ruins of walls and tunnels that fill the landscape with a presence similar to plant life, there structure overtaken by centuries of power shifting attention to other endeavors.  It's a strange element to experience in a country like India where the linguistic and material presence of the past make circular-concave temporal realities, like Einstein's description of gravity bending light across stretches of the universe.

Only this universe--that of India--has long known its boundaries; the universe of modern science has yet to discover its own, and I doubt the conceptual tectonics of Western philosophy will ever allow such a boundary to be perceived.  And when one travels out into this beautiful land of circular-concave timescapes, utterly different from the very standardized and regular experience of time in the West, bubbles collide at speeds Cern scientists are trying to imagine ever more perfectly to reveal matter's first moments.  In a very real sense here, far-from-traditional wormholes made from language, thought, and action create some sort of a potential for time travel; the experience is on the order of trawling an incredibly different, intricate, and aesthetically addictive past from temporal depths into a present that yearns for clarification, order in the face of entropy as the universe of us moderns continues to expand and the world, paradoxically, becomes smaller.
Needless to say, it is thought-evoking fun!

A Wandering Man

A telephone call from home awoke me this morning.  Actually, I had been in one of those semi-sentient modes of doze: The type when everything feels still connected to you, when the room and the sounds of the birds are all one, and the current of waking consciousness gradually eddies into a comfortable position on a soft spot, tucked into a bed, savoring early morning peace.

After the conversation with home, I left to buy daily ration of milk and water before brewing up a cup of Indian joe.  Like a drying clay pot, its earthy color--if well-prepared--matches that of the brown-red cow that ate some spoiled bananas that I had to offer it while I purchased the milk.

There are sanyasis who wander the neighborhood some mornings.  These are older men who have renounced their worldly pursuits for a life of asceticism.  They carry only a metal basin for water, the clothes on their back, and this bell that doubles as the basin's lid.  The bell's sound is soft, meditative in comparison to the occasional bursts of voice that emerge from their frail bodies that shout for money to sustain their worst habit--being born.

I was taking my laundry down to hang out, so I grabbed three rupees from my desk and the old, gentle man offered me the bell lid, held out flat, for me to place the money on it.  I suspect the intermediary of the bell's surface purifies the money I offer him.  Here is a man, a slave--from one perspective--to the very social system he has renounced.  But the three rupees' clink, somehow, magically removes him from the interaction.  The gentle man funnels the rupees from the bell's surface into some or another fold of cloth; and falling in, the clink of rupees to rupees doesn't issue.  These folds must hide some secret.  One, I am sure, that is not easily known--if it is even possible to know it.

The bell sounded again, "Who might iron out the wrinkles the sun refuses to take?" I asked myself as I hanged my clothes, and relaxed into thinking on the solitude of the gentle man.

Like two deaf men communicating, their conversation--unfamiliar measures and strokes of silent signifiers made to dangle into an unknown space fraught with meaning yet untouched by words--exists in harmonious counterpoint to the general din of otherwise daily life.  A peace not too far distant from that of these two men must also exist in this gentle man's solitude.  Like deaf men he, too, cannot avoid the realities of the world.  Those coins clink not here, not in front of me, but inside the magical, unknown folds of some world known by words, yet far beyond anything they convey when wise men string them together over time, constructing a chain of behavior that contorts our heart, mind, legs, and knees into otherwise awkward positions at mysteriously specific times, measuring our genuflections.

We, too, are left to wrestle with this frustrating handicap: A body that doesn't care, at times, to recognize the quiet movements of its soul.  Ears, eyes, and sex.  These are things we can get behind.  Touch, taste, and smell our way safely through hordes of people; but when it comes to subtle operations of the soul, a body tuned to fives sees sevens as awkwardly bent, wearing a hula-hoop and going about daily business.  Strange.  Exhaustion characterizes operating in those realms free of truths emanating from a horn behind us, blatant like a thorn in our toe.  There's also uncertainty because reason, too, has its limits.

And so today I set off, and I won't leave any sound behind.

Hey, look. There's a pony. And an Elephant.

It's a daily bike ride to the gym and the ensuing workout that keeps me going.  Amidst all the peaceful chaos that could drive normal people (from the United States) mad, one regularly timed activity in the day seems to be going to gym.  A little ವ್ಯಾಯಾಮ "vyaayaama," or (a nice word my new Kannada dictionary tells me) ಅಂಗನಸಾಧನೆ "anganasaadhane," or perhaps a little more locally spiced ಕಸರತ್ತು "kasarattu" all meaning exercise.
A small etymological thought to chew on: "vyaayaama"--the first word there--is a nice Sanskrit derived word.  It comes from a dhaatu, or verbal root "yaa" meaning 'to go'.  There's one wonderful stotra to the goddess that I like to chant, and a line of it asks,
इदानीं चेन्मातस्तव यदि कृपा नापि भविता निरालम्बो लम्बोदरजननि कं यामि शरणम््।
idaaniim cenmatastava yadi krupaa naapi bhavitaa niraalmbo lambodarajanani kam yaami sharaNam.
"This instant, all-compassionate devi (Mother), if even your kind compassion will not be there to whose shelter do I go, supportless?"
You recognize "yaami" in the transliterated sentence; that is the verb of this particular verse and it means "to go."  I've here translated it as "I will go."  "kam sharaNam yaami?"  To which shelter/whose protection will I go?  And similarly, with exercise we have the same "yaa" dhaatu, or verbal root.  But this time we see it has a "vyaa" preceding it.  The "vyaa" are known as 'upsarga', or "those which follow before."  There's a finite number of them and they are:

प्रपरापसमन्ववनिरदुरभिव्यधिसू््दतिनिप्रतिपर्यपयः। praparaapasamanvavanirdurabhivyadhisuudatinipratiparypayaha
उप आङिति विंशतिरेषः सखे उपसर्गगणः कथितः कविना।।
upa aaNgiti vimshatireShah sakhe upasargagaNa kathitah kavinaa

"This, friend, is the collection of twenty 'upasargas' as told by the poet:
praparaapasamanvavanirdurabhivyadhisuudatinipratiparypayaha upa aaNg.

You can count as well as I can to see there are twenty 'upasargas'.  This is in a cool meter known as तोटकम् which supposedly sounds like a snake because it rambles.  Kind of like me.  There's actually the precise same number and order of short and long syllables in this meter (8 and 8 making for 16 per line and 32 for the verse).
We see, then, that before "yaa" in one of the words for exercise there comes first a "vi" and then an "aa."  If you say "vi" and then "aa" it naturally turns into "vyaa," na?
"aa+yaa," then, comes to mean something like "passing," and specifically the passing of time.  And then "vi" is an interesting 'upasarga' because it can be either one thing (a negation), an elephant, or the opposite of one thing which is an 'intensifier'.  Here, though, in "vyaayaama," my bike-ride-etymology making tells me that it is, in fact, an intensifier even though I saw an elephant on my way to the gym.  Exercise is something which makes time go by faster; but, paradoxically, not when you're timing yourself on the treadmill.  It's more liable to speed up experience, or, perhaps, condition the body to engage more actively its world.  Then, distracted, with mind occupied through exercising body's calisthenic engagement of the world, time just flies.  And that's what made me realize why my week has gone by so quickly!  It's "vyaayaama."  Time passing quickly.  Exercise.
The other word my Kannada dictionary shared with me is "angasaadhane."  "Saadhanam" in Sanskrit is the nominalization of a ninth gana (group, out of ten groups) verbal dhaatu, or root, meaning "to do, or accomplish."  "Anga" is a Kannada tatsamah adoptation of the Sanskrit word "anga," meaning a "limb," or "part."  "Angasaadhane," then, means "to accomplish something with the body"--exercise.  In modern parlance, going to the gym.
If you're still reading this, I am impressed with your ability to endure a few minutes of my inner dialogue expressed on the 'blog!

Every day Subhash, a bike owning man who hangs around/lives/works here at this new Dhvanyaloka spread I'm living at, lends me that bike to ride about 2.5 km to the gym.  Its wheels are a little shaky, its hard seat wobbles forward and backward, and the brakes don't work too well.  Needless to say, all this makes for a great ride to the gym everyday!  The ride is mostly relaxing on the way to the gym when I can still see the textures of the roads; but after the gym, coincidentally, I think of myself as having turned into a whale.
A new type of nighttime sonar-awareness switches on in the brain, as if it is adjusting to another new register of the many it gears into and out of through the day.  This language, though, is of the shadowy murmurs an ornately adorned Goods Carrier's harvest-moon headlights grease upon the road textured with potholes and dirt piles and rocks.  As makes its way toward me, from the distance, its horn grows louder against the backdrop of those coming up from the rear while I pass a drunkard lying half-naked on the side of the road with four of his buddies arguing--intoxicated over something--and three bicyclists, one coming the opposite direction to me along with a car driven by a man hurrying to get money from an ATM where a cow is grazing on cabbage left by a bhajiwala who doesn't have a card but knows as much to sit where those who do emerge after they've parked their car with which they nearly hit, while rushing, a man who was riding by on a bike with no brakes and then scream from their window, "I'm sorry!" as he gears into park and I into 'whale mode'.  I think I know now how the whales feel about nautical traffic interrupting their song on the seas.  Eventually, my thought tells me, they won't mind it so long as we keep to our laws about no whale hunting.
And in that moment I realized not only what I think to be a whale's perspective, but also that I can't fault the apologetic driver for nearly hitting me.  If there are rules on the road here (or anywhere for that matter), one thing is for certain that nobody knows them.  Rules of road in the logic of law are simply psychic substance--infrastructure, if you will--that allow one person to cultivate what they think to be a better understanding of the 'rules' in order to fault those who don't follow, admitting that they among all others don't really know.  Kind of like the perspective of a whale.  Who the fuck am I to know a whale's perspective?
All sorts of complaining about hyperactive lawsuits in the U.S.A., I realized in this bike ride, stems from the fact that there exists all of this infrastructure, letters making words into an Aristotelian logic that is pretty like Ceasar's face and (ass) cheeks.  Here I have to learn not to fault people but to outsmart them, or rest comfortably in my sweet-assed fate.  There's something liberating about it, however dangerous.

Unfortunately, the metempsychotic physics of fate, when sculpting this body-vessel into a greek god, forgot the 'r' and instead created a geek who loves Sanskrit, dusty bike rides, and books the same way.  And now I need to stop 'blogging to do Sanskrit work.

A Separate Peace

I shifted yesterday into my new place at the Dhvanyaloka Institute here in Mysore, Karnataka.  My room is spacious and cozy with a bookshelf, two sitting chairs, two cots, an eating table, another table, and a carpet.  The bathroom is highly utilitarian, as most Indian bathrooms are.  It's one of India's great traits of interior design, the bathroom: two bigger buckets and one smaller (to fill with hot water from an instant heater), a toilet (this time Western style), a sink and a mirror, a place to hang towels, and a stool.  I was chatting with Alicia (my sister) on g-chat a few days ago and remarked to her, "I just finished splashing some water around.  A.K.A. I just took a bath."  That about sums it up.  Don't get me wrong, with such a wide array of natural-scented, quality soaps and shampoos to choose from here I am cleaner and better smelling, generally, than I ever am in the States.  Mysore is actually known for one great brand of soap, "Mysore Sandal Soap."  As its name suggests it's made with sandalwood oil.  Anyone who knows me knows I love sandalwood above all other smells (and if you didn't know, now you know).  There's also Himalaya, an upper-end brand of beauty care products for sale at Whole Foods in the States at about $20 a bottle for which I pay less than 1/20 the price here in India.  Wow.  I am really getting off track here.
Living here at the Dhvanyaloka Institute, I will be the only resident student; I'll have access to a beautiful library, and my environment couldn't be more prettily filled with plants, trees, dogs, and birds.  There are a lot of servants around the Institute, most of whom work for Jay Shree, my hostmother and director of the Institute.  They promptly bring me whatever it is I might be in want or need of without me even having to ask.  For example: This morning I woke at 7:15 and just as I got arranged for the day around 7:30 there came a knock on the door with my morning coffee and news that breakfast will follow around 9:00.  Last night, after arriving from the gym, I was greeted with a delicious meal of bhindi masala (spicy okra), green beans, chapati (flat bread), curd, mixed fruit bowl, and rice.  After dinner I had a warm cup of milk and a bottle of water and read some history.  A wonderfully delicious and filling meal.
Earlier this week I got unfortunate news that one of my Kannada teachers, Dr. M.R. Talwar, has been in a serious motorcycle accident.  Class was canceled on Monday due to confusion in the normal schedule at the Institute due to his absence.  I plan to visit him in the hospital sometime this week, but he remains unconscious as of yesterday.  Please keep him and his family in your thoughts, prayers, and special intentions.  He is a very agreeable man, always the source of a quality laugh or two amidst a chaotic and great learning environment.
My Kannada, insofar as that goes, is coming along as can be expected of a new tongue.  I spend most of my free time just listening to people speaking, and picking up when they speak about numbers because that's what I get most practice on going to the gym everyday and counting my lifts or being told, "hattu nimesha madi," "Please do this for ten minutes."  I found upon returning to Pune in early November that this strategy of just feeling dumb and stupid in a language environment actually helps quite a lot.  I could follow and actually speak quite a bit more Marathi than I was able to do during the time that I lived in Pune; so here in Mysore I am adopting similar practices knowing that the acquisition of Kannada is going to be a long-term process, but exploiting the tool of submersion while it is available to me.  Also along the lines of language acquisition, I had yesterday a great test: A kind, though oddly proportioned man, Prakash, helped me shift from the old place to this new one.  Incidentally, I came to know of Prakash as I bought a new Kannada-English dictionary.  After purchasing the dictionary, the kind woman asked me in Kannada if I wanted anything else.  I smiled, broke into English, and asked, "Do you know anyone who has a small goods carrier?  I need to shift today from Sarasvatipuram to Bogadi Road."  I bet this is the third- or fourth-to-last thing she expected to hear from me in response to her rote, capitalist question; but being in India, she was prepared to meet any and all customer service obligations with kind professionalism and courtesy.
"Oh, just one minute, O.K.?" She said, and promptly pulled out two cell phones and began to make some phone calls.  Within about three minutes she had Prakash on the line.  She told him about me and inserted the directive, "He's a student of Kannada and Sanskrit and he knows Hindi, but speak to him in Kannada, O.K.?  He needs practice."  I smiled again, and she told me to take down the number.
In the afternoon a number of very challenging Kannada-based phone calls ensued during which Prakash would kindly break into Hindi just as my frustration levels met maximum.  Trying to find my old place on the less-popular 12th main proved challenging for Prakash, so I had to make the walk to wait for him.  But this time it wasn't my devilishly handsome fair skin that made me stick out.  No!  It was the name, ಪ್ರಕಾಶ, I can now read on the side of Prakash's truck that made me flail my hands and scream out, "Prakash!" across the bullocks and horns of traffic.  Thus began the ritual: I jumped into the vehicle, gave directives back to the house, we packed up, and headed off; but not without a little bargaining.  Prakash wanted 500 INR and I wanted to give only 200 INR.  We settled (I generously so) at 350 INR and I made him do the heavy lifting.
In this adventure I've discovered a whole new possibility of transporting larger items across smaller distances in India-- the small goods carrier.  It just yesterday became apparent that people invest in these small, three-wheeled Ape vehicles (remember how much I loved these cars in Italy, family?!?!  I got to ride in one!) to hire themselves out to transport office furniture and files, or gas canisters, or coconut husks, or anything else under the great big sky of India from one place to other locales, locally.

Chikkana is the name of one of the very helpful servants here at the Dhvanyaloka.  He makes my breakfast and dinner and keeps me appropriately caffeinated with South Indian brew--a famous type of brew I look forward to sharing someday soon with you who read this blog.  Only being here at the Dhvanyaloka for about twelve hours now, I already feel at home and more welcome than I had felt at my last flat.  Chikkana brought me idly and coconut chutney for breakfast this morning and it is delicious!
It sure is a great feeling to feel a comfort and a peace in a place that is so separated from many family and friends; but I have not been able to recreate the peace of home I experienced while back in Florida for September/October.  I think I'll need to go home for that, but I don't think my schedule will afford me such an extended stay as that I previously enjoyed.

Simultaneity: Future's Past

After a very long time,
I watch the clouds go by
and like the birds--
they must be only half way there,
but seemingly among them--
I feel a sense of freedom,
wonder I haven't felt for a long time.

The importance of understanding
processes of change historically
is in the theoretical models
such a history will yield.
Without such historical awareness,
no such theoretical understanding
will reveal itself.

Intellectual Trends of a Westerner's Indian-historical Perspective

Wow.  So it's been a few days, I guess.  My schedule is filling up and I am adjusting to new obligations, I suppose.  This has thrown my blogging off a bit.
I've joined a nice gym here in Mysore.  It's name is Core Power, and the staff and fellow gym-goers are really kind.  It's so refreshing to go daily into a community of people that knows I am trying to learn the local language.  People really appreciate it.  Indian people, as a whole, are the sweetest people around whom to struggle in acquiring a new language.  That is, once they get over the shock that a white-assed dude gives a damn.  I get a lot of help with my numbers, obviously, as the staff tells me "eenedu asari madari," do this fifteen times, twice; and buff locals laugh with me as I struggle through a challenging workout--both in terms of understanding the directives in a foreign language, and physical exertion.  It's a workout for body and mind.
Language practice continues after the workout when I go for fresh-made grape juice from Ananta Rao's Savories and Grape Juice Shop.  He speaks to me in a mixture of Kannada and Hindi, and asks that I speak to him in Sanskrit because he wants to learn.
I am walking, writing, and thinking a lot every day.  I walk from home to school, and then from school to the Oriental Research Institute, and from there a walk back to my home for an afternoon coffee/Kannada study.  All this walking and exercising makes productive synergy of my emotional, intellectual, and creative physical juices just in time for an evening jaunt to gym.
Lately I've been really lazy about sleeping in-- I don't wake up until 7:30 or 8:00, which is very unusual for me.  I don't yet know how I feel about it.  I think I need to get settled into a place that is more conducive to me somehow...  That will happen this Sunday, thankfully.
I am planning to move into the home of the owner of the Dhvanyaloka Institute here in Mysore.  I'll post pictures of the area I'll be living in once I settle there.  It's about the same distance from The Central Institute of Indian languages where I am studying Kannada, but a distance farther from my Sanskrit teacher's home.  My new hostmother, however, is looking into a used bicycle for me.  That will eliminate all my troubles, and save me a lot of time in the day!  And she is also a really, really cool lady.  More to come on Shrimati Jay Shree in the coming posts, for sure.

These days, I am thinking to write a scholarly article about my experience over the past two years living throughout India, and reading all this really old literature.  I've become somewhat critical lately of the attitude many Indians adopt toward the study of the ancient and medieval past.  To begin with, the study is usually engaged while accompanied by some sort of ideological motivation.  The ideological motivation (usually conservative Hindu, or Hindutva) is problematic in a number of ways.  Firstly--and this list is not exhaustive of those ways--this particular ideological discourse makes sweeping claims concerning a past about which we know, in all truth, a pitiful dearth considering the surfeit of textual material that exists to substantiate scholarly inquiry.
The utter difficulty of the languages doesn't make this an easy task, however; and the ability to see why the difficulty might pay off in the long run--that is, historically--comes from quality, sound education.  Those resources, these days in India, go to the engineers and doctors... Basically, there's nothing simple about the situation, and the only simple thing we could do--if we were to be simpletons--would be to blame British colonialism as a lot of post-colonial theory has done, simply.  And I, too, now engage in similar sweeping claims as I critique current scholarship and contemporary political/economic realities here in India.  Thus the need for structure and logical argument.
Returning to the ideological motivations I see underpinning Sanskrit studies in India.  Secondly, the ideology of Hindutva, literally "Hinduness," stems largely from a colonial encounter.  So, for instance, there's this claim of sanatana dharma, "eternal religion."  But Sanatana dharma is literally no more eternal than the 20th century.  No such conception can be found prior to this time.  I suspect, though I admittedly don't know, that this concept originated in the North of India at a time around Independence.  Why in the North and not, say, the South like Karnataka?  Well, the caste structure of society--a structure I doubt I'll ever really understand in a way similar to a socialized Indian-- was not always so impermeable as it has become: Brahman, Kshatria, Vaishya, Shudra and never the twixt shall breed.  That is, today.  There's clear mention of intercaste marriage, albeit according to specific formulae, in texts like the Dharmashastra among others.  North Indians seem to me to have had a more severe reaction against the colonial encounter than, say, a Kannadiga (thank you, Sudhesh ; ).  In the North, that reaction has taken the shape of severe and rigid caste boundaries that are practically worn on the cuff or kameez of the boreals.  It happens here in the South, I would have to imagine, as well; but so far, it happens in a way I haven't discerned.  Now, for instance, I am sure the trash collectors here in my neighborhood, or the city-employees who sweep dust into the air from the street every day are not brahmans, or kshatriyas, or vaishyas for that matter.  But I am rambling now a bit.  Basic point: The caste distinctions are weaker-- or more meager-- here in the South.  Southern cultures have insulated themselves somehow from the more caustic reaction that typifies Northern cultures.
Now, back to historical perspectives for a moment, and the lack of (unbiased) motivation to study Sanskrit literature in India and its effects.  In the West we have highly developed theories of political processes: How we become subjects of political rule, ityadi, etc., etc.  Thinkers have developed these theories because there exists a historical frame within which to speak to such important issues and thereby propel society forward.  No such elaborate historical understanding of any sort exists for most textual traditions of India.  Whereas in the West we can trace historically from ancient Greece through Roman imperial expansion, into medieval Europe, Renaissance, etc.  It simply doesn't exist here (and there is, again, a larger question of historiography here).  Thinkers, then, that are producing theory in the Academies of the West are able to do this because of a type of (well-imagined, basically) historical continuity that exists for those intellectual traditions.  However, these very same intellectual traditions are largely responsible for the denigration of Indian language materials from premodern times.  Western philosophical traditions claim as possible only a single, albeit potentially multifarious universal.  This is not the case in Indian thought.  There can simultaneously (and paradoxically to the Western mind) exist numerous universals.  It was the goal of colonial occupation to squelch these autochthonous forms of intelligence in order to advance foreign discourses of power aimed at domination and economic control.  Effects of these discourses largely funded the Industrial revolution of Europe, and the subsequent rise to dominance of the West.  Their effects are still playing out in India to the sensitive eye, however "post-colonial theory," for what it's worth, isn't doing much in the way of helping us to understand that because it hasn't yet done the "dredge work," as it were, of digging into textual materials from a philological/historical perspective.  And that's basically the point I want to make without rambling in an article I hope to author over the coming months...
I am trying to design my long-term intellectual work to address such issues with an eye toward developing theory from a Westerner's Indian-historical perspective.

International Pizza Delivery

Tonight.  Well, tonight is a pizza night.  Dominoes.  "Shitty choices make for shitty pizza."  There's Papa John's new pan-India advertising slogan.  Maybe they can put it to some beautiful tunes and replace my dry wit with some uber sweet and hip Kannada music for their Karnataka ad-campaign?
The Pizza delivery man, however, was the first person to make it to my house without assistance after I tried giving false directions for the first time.  If you're a regular reader of nyaagrodhamuule, you might remember my post of several days back about the perplexing proximity of two 12th Main Roads, one belonging to Kuvempunagar and another, less well known, belonging to Sarasvathipuram, where I live.  Usually when I tell people my address, I have to walk about seven minutes from my house to the nearest landmark, the Kuvempunagar High School and 9th cross road, stand on the corner, flag the vehicle down (I'm easy to spot), hop in/on said vehicle, and direct them the short distance to my place.  Tonight with Dominoes I tried something new.  I labeled my house as existing at 192 12th Main Kuvempunagar.  Amazing!  Not even 15 minutes later there was a super-kind Dominoes delivery man at my door with a smile, garlic cheese sticks (so-so), a pizza, and a bit of info: "You gave me the wrong address, sir.  This is Sarasvathipuram."
"Oh, really?" Said the idiot videshi, "I thought this was Kuvempunagar."
"No, this is Sarasvathipuram, sir.  It's O.K.  I found it."
And find it he did!  "This pizza's for you."  InBev might be hard-pressed to give up that slogan though.

Hey, man. Whaddya want, man?

Well.  Now this is comfortable.  I have finally gotten my internet connection after a lot of haggling and what I think was a bribe.  It works out nice that way: I don't think I've ever been fully aware of the bribes I may have given in the past, but afterwards I think, "Hm...  That might have just been a 'bribe'."
Does it even work like that?  I guess it's more like I am getting ripped off; not bribing anybody.  Or maybe the person extorting me is thinking something like, "If you let me rip you off right now, I will get done what you want me to get done."  Anyhow.  It's done.
My week has been relatively quiet so far.  Daily classes in Kannada, and only two Sanskrit classes so far this week.  The frequency of Sanskrit will pick up through the weekend probably.  I have enough work that keeps me busy anyhow.
I would like to explain my Kannada lessons.  First, I'll set the scene of my learning environment.  I arrive at the Central Institute of Indian languages daily at 11:00, or thereabout.  Two guards greet me; I sign a log book.  I ascend a large, marble staircase littered with the corpses of dead bees.  Two dogs, not dead, are regularly sleeping on the staircase as well.  My class is on the third floor--that's fourth floor to you and me, however, as in India we start counting on two.  Three teachers rotate through my hour-long classes throughout the week.  Two of them are excellent, and one among them is superb.  About the third:
Entering my teacher's office, one notices there is always someone there.  Actually, most times I enter there are numerous people in the office; but this 'someone' I am referring to, who is random and varies, seems to just be hanging out.
There is a long conference table covered by green felt with artificial flowers in a wire vase placed at the center.  On the desk proper, attached by way of the same green felt sheet, is a basket of stamps, a service bell, a Taj Mahal snow globe, five books on top of stacks and stacks and stacks of papers, another vase (no flowers), no desk space, and old tea cups.
There are truly some amazing moments of both pedagogical breakthroughs, and short attention span getting the better of one or the other of us.  One of the 'regulars' in the room, a short, old, worn and grayed man, regularly comes in to use the phone.  He only speaks Hindi on the phone, so I can understand what he is saying, and it is always related to things around the house.  Instructing what needs to be done and how it is to be done.  My teacher looks at him with funny glances, and has started attempting to block him from doing this with questions that I assume are like, "What do you need to do this for now?  I have class."
The older gentleman pushes his way past my teacher's belly, and makes for the phone.
Another teacher, who teaches me Kannada script, is incredibly kind and will eventually teach me fantastic Kannada script-- it might take the entire time that I am here though.  The elements of Indian languages' alphabets that are foreign to most beginners--like aspirated versus unasperated, or palatal versus dental, etc.--are, to me, now known having studied Sanskrit and Hindi.  However, I have a lot of review on these subjects now, despite my informing him that I have studied Sanskrit and Hindi for a number of years.
Shree Vijaylakshmi is my favorite teacher.  She is no nonsense, to the point, and highly effective from the time she starts my lesson to the time she finishes.

I have not yet made time to visit sights around Mysore, but I will begin that within the coming week hopefully.  I'll be able to read the signboards and understand better what precisely is going on around me at that point as well.  The city is becoming slightly more familiar to me; I am developing my circles--milk man, vegetable man, convenience store man.  The city is very laid back.  There is a big influence from a large yoga crowd that comes here.  A lot of the store owner's only English is (and I am not kidding here): "Hey, man.  What's up?  Whaddya want, man?"  And they're so chill when they say it.  It's sweet!
I am more fully settled into my flat now, and remain busy with Kannada, Sanskrit, and my applications to graduate studies.  They are all coming along very productively.

Colourful Cows, Loud Horns: My New Settlement

My feet and ankles have become a mine-field erupting every so often with intense itching from countless bug bites; my ankles are even a bit swollen.  My nights are less than "comfortable" as I unconsciously battle with the bugs that invade my dreamscape.  Weird memories and awkward insecurities that would be better off left in the recesses of the mind--forgotten--are drawn to the surface as if by the mosquito's needle.  They are scratched and soothed out over a breakfast of remembrance with coffee, and then fade into background.
My days are full!
Life in Mysore is shaping out just fine.  A mosquito net and a bicycle are two remaining items of somewhat urgent need; I will also search for a small refrigerator and hopefully acquire internet connectivity over the coming week.
I am leasing a flat from one Dr. Shivananda, a retired physics professor from the University of Mysore, and his wife.  There are three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen.  Two of the three bedrooms are, however, filled entirely with many many copies of books that Dr. Shivananda publishes.  This turns the three-bedroom effectively into a single.  Uncle-jii must be aboard this "Desktop Publishing" fad that, gauging by the number of shops and advertising around town, seems to have launched in the literary world of Kannada.  It's exciting!
In the bathroom an instant gas heater warms the water and fills a bucket; in the kitchen there is a microwave and a magnetic stove top (kind of neat!).  I bought a pressure cooker that I use to prepare dal and caaval (rice and lentils), two thalis, or "plates," and two katoris, or "bowls."
My room is painted in a sea-green that glows to almost neon when the fluorescent bulb is switched 'on'.  There are two windows providing excellent cross ventilation, and the temperature is ranging from comfortable to chilly throughout the day.
I bought a beautiful desk for 1,500 rupees that I know I'll be sad to part with when the time comes; and I bought bed sheets, towels, and some leisure wear--a lungi.
I have less-than-stellar luck keeping clothes on this trip.  On the first night, I lost a pair of jeans, a sweater, and several t-shirts as the cab sped off as soon as I got out of the car.  In all honesty, I am lucky it was only some clothes!  Next, I took my nice shirts to an old launderer I patronized last year, Sanjay of Jay Sri Ram Laundry on Prabhat Road in Pune.  I asked if he could have my clothes ready in four days because I was departing for Mysore, but he failed and he hasn't called me either.  Therefore, I am giving his business this plug in my blog space, and I've assigned a friend to go claim my clothes, give him a hard time, and not pay--or at least not full price.  Here in Mysore, I've ordered a couple new shirts as I wait for the old ones to make their way back to me.
An interesting note regarding the address of my new flat.  My address is 192 12th Main Road, Near Kamakshay Hospital Road, Sarasvathi puram, Mysore.  Two blocks away exists another, and more popularly known, 12th Main Road belonging to the neighboring Kuvempurnagar.  Needless to say, this has led to a lot of confusion.  Only here, only here...  I love it!
This will be my first full week of classes.  A description of Dr. Talvar's office is on its way...

Brief notes about my walk to the internet cafe:  There is this group of 'traditional' guys, I have yet to discover their name, who walk around with random, loud musical instruments--a large drum, a trombone, or a large clarinet-like horn--and a bull dressed with incredibly colorful pieces of fabric that make something of a saddle.  These guys post up in front of houses or business establishments or me and begin to make loud, obnoxious sounds until someone gives them an amount of money that seems to make them happy.  The large clarinet-like horn lifted toward me and sounded, so I gave over two rupees and tried to have a conversation--he didn't know Hindi though.  And then the beggar children saw me handing over money, so they, too, came running.  I asked them, "Where is your cow?  What instruments do you play?"  But they, too, didn't understand.  I didn't give them any money.

कृत्स्नं व्याकरणं प्रोक्तं तस्मै पाणिनये नमः

I've just enjoyed a cup of magical black coffee from the dasaprakash hotel, brought to me in my room where I sit at the beautiful desk. A short, scruffy, older gentleman--truly--short a few teeth and perhaps a little wit brought it to me as I read the Times of India.
The immediate work of establishing myself here seems to me to be progressing quite fine. After meeting at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) yesterday, I have worked out five hours a week of Kannada instruction with three teachers who will rotate days and focus on different aspects of the language.
"Naanu yaaru?" Who am I?
My brother, Chris, once formulated a similar question on the streets of Varanasi. Questions like this have been posed by intellectual and spiritual greats throughout history, with various answers given and methods prescribed. The most recent installment of the same old question came up in my first Kannada lesson with Shree Vijaylakshmi of the CIIL.
"Naanu yaaru?" I asked.
She replied, "Niivu yaaru? No, I am sorry. What is your name?"
To which I replied, "Naanu Ralph." I am Ralph. And thus began what I am sure will be one of the greatest recent challenges in my life, the Kannada language.
I will report to the CIIL 11 O'clock daily Monday-Friday for about one hour of Kannada instruction with rotating teachers, as I mentioned earlier. Each will stress a particular aspect of the language: Speaking, reading, and writing; one, as well, Dr. Talvar, will slowly expose me to classical Kannada styles as my time here progresses. His specialization is in 13th-16th century Kannada literature.
Over the course of six months, I should develop a solid foundation for further years of Kannada study, which is what I am hopeful for.
Today will be my first day of Sanskrit instruction with Dr. Nagaraja Rao; I admit, however, that I don't know quite how to prepare for the hour I will spend with him studying the aShThadhyayiibhaaShyaprathamaavRttih, or, as I understand the title from the first glance: The first edition/installment/inclination of that which is to be said concerning the Eight Chapters. The "Eight Chapters" here refers to the traditional book of Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, composed by Panini 400-300 years B.C.E.
Is it not incredible that four solid years after beginniong the study of a language I am again like a child in the face of this new intellectual genre of grammar? I shouldn't say a child, I guess, as I do have some sense of Panini--I studied his text for about eight months in Pune, Maharashtra; however, crores of people have spent their lives in an attempt to understand Panini. This book promises easy comprehension of an approach to language very different from our contemporary Western linguistic's approaches. In short, this study, too, promises to be a new beginning.
Dr. Rao and I will meet for five hours a week and we will rotate subject matter between vyakaranam (grammar), kavyashastram (poetic science), and kavya (poetry). Each subject, or text, will reinforce and synergize the contents of the others. This week I'll memorize some 41 or so sutras relating to the 14 sutras of Shiva--a seemingly unintelligible collection of sounds: a-i-u-N. ru-lruk. e-ong. ai-ouch. ha-yavarat. lan. jna-ma-nga-Na-nam. jha-bhang. gha-Dha-dha-Sh... etc. Out of these 14 sutras, the entire grammar of Sanskrit, to this date the most complex and concise the world has ever known, emerges as, traditionally understood, a gift from the god Shiva, who also seems to be providing me with housing in Mysore. I just got off the phone with him.

Mysore-Bangalore-Mysore 12 November 2009

A quick jaunt to Vedanta bookhouse in Bangalore exhausted me. Luckily, I ate a healthy lunch of pakoda--fried veggies--and South Indian thali: a tray with rice, puri (fried bread), an assortment of lentil-tomato-based soups, veggies, curd, and a sweet.
I arrived back to Mysore (pronounced My-soor) and promptly fell asleep early in the evening last night.
On the return journey from Bangalore, I met a nice young guy, Amit Kumar. He and I shared pleasant conversations during the three hour train ride. He, too, is applying this year to graduate school in the U.S. so we spoke about our processes of writing personal statements and possibilities of where we may end up attending school.
Today, I plan to contact one Mr. Talvar, currently a teacher at the Central Institute of Indian Languages. I'll try to update this later...

Mysore, Karnataka 10 November 2009

I arrived in Mysore, Karnataka early this morning via the Ajmer-Mysore Express. The train's name belies its habit of slowly creeping to-and-fro between the North and the South of India. Like the first time I returned from the north to a more southerly Pune, Maharashtra nearly a year ago, already today there is a much greater sense of homey comfort in Mysore.
Early in the morning at 4:15 9 November, the train arrived at platform 2 of Pune Station. I boarded and stowed my luggage. It happened a family of four was to occupy the berth across from my single, and their company over the twenty-eight hour journey south brought many smiles, pleasant exchanges, and an invitation to Madikeri, the source of the holy river Kaveri. Satish, the father, tells me Madikeri is the "Switzerland of India." I'll take this to mean it's hilly or mountainous, green, and breathtaking. Not too different from the description I'd offer the countryside of Karnataka from the views during my long trainride. Similar, in a way, to my first journey south from Delhi to Pune, the terrain just keeps becoming more and more luscious, alive but moistfully demure.
I have received a tip from a Columbia Art History student to stay at the Dasaprakash, the light of the slave, hotel. It's relatively cheap at 315 rupees/day, clean, hospitable, and with a desk and a chair I was sold on my stay. Though how much spare time I'll have to spend in that particular model of desk and chair is yet to be seen. I suppose I'll get a good few hours in tonight after this post.
In a new place, I have a number of things to explore and contacts to be made. My frist two orders of business are to contact the former director of The Central Institute of Indian Languages and meet with him. (Done, details follow) I will begin as soon as possible lessons in Kannada, the language of Karnataka. It's script and grammar are quite different from the dominant Nagari script of Hindi, Marathi, and numerous other North Indian languages, not to mention Sanskrit. However, one finds Sanskrit written in all varieties of script, depending upon the region and time period of a text's composition. Nagari script is historically relatively new; but Kannada's script dates farther back into early medieval Indian history. More than this (and why I am so keen to begin my long study of the language), Kannada literature records an awareness of time from this early date that did not exist in other Indian languages as they came to auto-reflexively understand themselves as constituting a regional place (the exception here may be Tamil, a subject I am not knowledgable in). More on this over the coming months, I am sure.
Today's breakfast consisted of two types of rice--both subtly different and exquisitely tasty--along with black coffee, to whose strength even I have to adjust.
Now, following breakfast I made two phone calls: 1) Dr. Raja Purohit and 2) Dr. Nagaraja Rao; they both graciously agreed to meet me today at their home and The Oriental Research Institute of Mysore, respectively. Having met with them now, it seems I will be studying Sanskrit grammar (vyakaran), poetry (kavya), and poetic science (kavyashastra) with Dr. Rao 4-5 hours a week; Dr. Purohit is kindly assisting me in matters of meeting a teacher of Kannada. Both, fortunately for me, are helping in matters of long-term housing. I may, finally, get that homestay I have been craving... News to come, surely.
The Oriental Research Institute of Mysore, where I am sitting now, is an old, elegant building just beyond the city's center. It took me about one hour's explorative meandering, successively asking directions from different different people to arrive in its library. The manuscript collection seems incredible, but one can't know whether its contents will weather the tropical climate here in the South of India. Years ago--perhaps decades or centuries--it would be incumbent upon young students of language to copy texts and thereby both learning how masters craft the language and preserving the material for future generations. Nowadays, unfortunately, the study of ancient pasts is out of fashion and attracts little attention from serious students in India.
The sky is clearing now and the air smells sweet, the fragrance of some flower meandering as I was not so long ago--it resting in my nose and I in a library--both to give pleasure to the creations of some unknown maker. Taking time to understand what it is they record, our respective reactions, that is--me to the scent and the texts to me--each one, the flower and myself, attempting to understand what it is the object of delight records, and think about how its use in the present might help to propagate its life and beauty.
The bag resting in my lap holds a round-trip ticket to Bangalore for tomorrow morning 6:45. It's a good thing I like bhaaratiiya rail! I am to visit the Vedanta bookstore nearby Uma cinema hall and have a field day amongst my flowers--Sanskrit books. I'll sit and read them, probably in that very O.R.I. library, over the course of months. They'll become for me like the flower for the bee, each one without the other would wander aimlessly about; but with each other our wanderings at least have some complex purpose, the intricate geometries of which I am only now coming to understand.

Indu Nivas, 8 November 2009

The bhajiwala is crossing in front of Indu Nivas, screaming melodically to potential buyers still tucked into their homes.  It is 9:00 A.M.; I've been awake now for three hours.  The day starts with the flip of a switch--hot water becomes available within ten, just enough time to once more doze lazily under the fan.  This is probably the only time of day that I'll be cold, and I pull a musty blankey over my torso.
A warm shower rinses remaining sleep from my body.  Clean, I sit on the terrace singing to the now rising sun.  Two eggs--hard-boiled--and toast make a tasty breakfast, and the first extended conversation with home satisfies an appetite of a different sort.  It seems 1/4 kilo of coffee is too much for ten days, so I decide to make the cup truly robusto.  Twenty minutes later as I speak with dad, the cup is ready and now my focus slightly too perked for much use beyond describing the day so far.
I'll leave early tomorrow at 3:45 in the morning for Pune Station.  I've arranged a former, dependently regular autowala to pick me up in front of Indu Nivas.  A 4:30 A.M. departure for Mysore promises to begin a new experience with a new experience: I've never boarded a train in the middle of the night.
Having returned to Pune this week, I realized how much I miss it here.  Now leaving again, it is only the assuring promises of new friends and helpers, as well as cravings for something new and yet different that incite me to go again.  I've wondered in the past week when, if ever again, time might afford me the pleasure of calling this magical place, the house of the moon on morning road, my home.
It seems, now, I will never again be a person with just one, if ever any of us are indeed such persons.  Our hearts always residing in multiple places, octalocating our spirit sometimes in obscure, other time in more obvious places.
Lately, again, I feel myself resting in the beauty of a language--that of the gods.  It offers a pleasure I enjoy every day as the light and sounds--birds' song, syllables, and the shifting tide of time pulling in, too, more horns--strung together along various colored threads of scent and sound are sewn together by eyes, two hands and feet, pulled by overriding intention to please the goddess of language who does, indeed, support everything.  How do we experience, know or create anything but through language?

A large palm tree and a pine frame my view today.  Buildings grown dirty, too, as they are allowed--simply allowed--to sink back into the environment from which architects and craftsmen conjured them, enchanting earth with spells.  It's one of my favorite aspects of the immediately perceptible Indian aesthetic: Time, decay, mossy-moist life on earth transformed--concrete--become ornaments, not eyesores.  Something about this is warming.  It lacks presumption that time will not have its way; indeed, just helping time--that most successful of beasts--perform its duty and function, even though time, among all things of the world, needs the least help.  Then, too, in offering help to time, perhaps we may get time on our side.  Not a bad story of success to have sponsoring one's actions, I suppose.

Orders of business for the day include (hopefully) internet, tiffin, lock and lockbox, vegetables, and packing.  In acquiring internet I've so far not met with success: the one thing not as prepared as I would have hoped, it is, among all things to be prepared, of the least order of importance and will keep life just that much more interesting.
It's been too short a time here in the holy city, punyapattanam; but, alas, all good things must, in time, come to an end.

The Goose King and a Gaggle of Gays

In the mirror of Rajhams, my dadhi katnevala [beard trimmer] on Prabhat road, I see a flamboyant clap of hands raised above a shadowed face. Parmesh, the hair dresser, had seen them coming; I wondered about the pause in my shave as he fumbled through his pockets for change. 
"mujhe pamch de de! (give me five [rupees])" Parmesh was demanded with another clap and a scream.  His two rupees weren't quite enough.  I gave ten, and another friend entered the store.
"I'm a gay!" shouted the rose-cheeked, shadow-faced hijra wearing rectangular frames.
"ham meim aisa dekh sakta hum [I can see that]," I replied.  "kaham se haim?[Where are you from?]"
"You know Hindi?!" they screamed, as if this was a bigger surprise than having a relaxing shave interrupted by a flamboyant display of ascetic devotion, two (wo)men in drag.
Parmesh, I could see, wanted them out of his store; but seriously, how often does this happen in life?  Not nearly enough in my estimation.
(S)he asked me for my phone number, "aap ka cell number aahe ka?" in a nice mixture of Marathi and Hindi.  I've had similar experiences with Indian men--never a woman--before, and have learned the high value of secrecy in such matters as a cell phone number, often the only thing remotely resembling what people in the U.S. value and know as 'personal space'.
After some time spent correcting make-up in the mirror, adjusting their hair, and rearranging the dupatas they've yet to have nearly enough practice wearing, they left.  But not without first giving me a sweet pinch on the cheek, "I like you," I was told.  Smiling, I took my blessing and waved them both goodbye.

Bureaucracy: Matters of the Spirit. Please, take a number.

25!  Token number 25!

There'll be more to come on this one, but suffice it to say that a day spent amidst the chaos of Indian bureaucracy is, well, practical in matters of the spirit.  Patience, that all-too-often-forgotten virtue, becomes strong like bear; soulpower exhausted like salmon. 
Swimming up a multi-directional, quasi-fourth-dimensional stream of directives (or lack thereof) reminds one of the biopolitik: legal impartiality, blindness, din, and sadomasochism.

#5 Indu Nivas (The Moon's home), Prabhat (morning) Road, opp. Hotel Laxman 3 November

I returned early this morning to my flat in the Deccan Gymkhana area of Pune, Maharashtra.  I will live here for about one week before taking the Mysore Express train to Mysore, Karnataka.  The same 'bai', or maidservant, Devashalabai will work for me cooking food, cleaning clothes, and making her best effort to keep the flat somewhat clean.  It's kind of hopeless at this point, though--the place is so dirty, but it's familiar, and it's in a beautiful location.  Devashalabai, whose name means "abode of the gods," was excited to see me and I am excited to be seeing her again.  The flat is large for one person.

The bureaucratic process of registering as an alien is underway; I hope my travels to Mysore will not be delayed due to the complicated process of police registration, but chances are they will because that's just the way things roll here in India.  I have plenty of work that needs to be done, and now I have a very comfortable place to do it.  Tomorrow, I'll be able to pick up a country-wide, mobile broadband connection so I can make more regular blog updates from my laptop wherever I am!
I have been greatly helped by my friend, Jon, who has given me contacts of a potential host family in Mysore; the family apparently has a wonderfully nice home to share, but their rent seems a bit steep to me at 12,500 rupees.  It's possible I could find someone to share the place with, as I also learned there will be two American scholars of Art History in Mysore whom I plan to meet.  Mysore is known for sandalwood and its yoga schools that attract a fair international crowd of yogis.  Perhaps I, too, might one day become one through instruction offered by a flatmate at a flat rate.
After I complete this blog entry, I'll do some shopping for vegetables and pohe, a flattened, dehydrated rice flake that I enjoy preparing for breakfast.  I'll invest in some doodh, "milk," and possibly some flour and rice for Shalabai to prepare meals for me.  Baingan bartha is top on the list...
I've been returning to old stores and restaurants I once frequented, and enjoy the responses I receive.  Today I returned to a tailor whom I asked to hem some pants for me: As I walked into the shop he said "You're late," and he pulled my khaki pants out from the cupboard they'd been hanging in for about five months.  Thankfully he still had them, because I was down to one pair of pants after my taxi driver sped off immediately after dropping me at a hotel upon my arrival in Pune.  In the car was a free bag of my jeans and some t-shirts.  Luckily, that was all.  For a first loss of a trip, it's not bad.  And now I have a handsome pair of khakis to boot!

Lunar landings, aerial view, late-night Bombay 30 Oct. '09

Aluminum-amber
glow of moon butters wing.
Melting liquid, light drops
splattering numbers increasing
of lights below.
Bombay approaches.

Pune, Maharashtra 1 November F.C. Road

Only in Maharashtra have I seen the men and boys of potraj beggar families whip themselves for money, absolving donors of their पाप, 'pop', or "sinful misdeeds."  Members of these families travel together, usually in three or four.  The lady--wife apparent--holds a baby swaddled close to her chest by cloth, like those that have become a hip, new accessory of modern moms.  Medieval as this may sound, these men, their boys and family are born into this walk of life.  You can always be sure this type of family is nearby when the low lull of a particular, constant drumbeat is heard with loud, intermittent cracks of a whip--they're coming back for another round I can hear--but this is business as usual.
I'm sipping a cold drink in the company of five hundred most proximate, middle-class देशीs, 'deshis', Indians, those--literally--"endowed with direction" or "of a country" in this land where I am विदेशी, 'videshi', "without direction" an "expat."  The proximal deshis are marrying themselves off at a "parichay," or "introduction" of particular caste members to one another.  Well, at least I know some people know they're not headed into a career of self-flagellation.
The potraj men and boys of are adorned by a colorful skirt-like waistband comprised of blue, purple, red, or various other bright colored strips of fabric dulled by dust worn over patterned, baggy pants.  Their rhythmic step is highlighted by bells that add to the clamor of drum and air-piercing crack of the whip.  On the men's and boys' forehead, shoulders, and gaunt, concave chests red powder, tilak, is smeared marking them of their god.  The women wear a sari, and usually carry what I assume to be the family possessions on their head.  I've never given them money, but maybe someday now I will, as describing them in words, adorning them and their vocation with language, reveals them to a self beyond the immediacy of judgment, yielding a chuckle and a smile.
Back Street Boys' "I want it that way" begins to be piped out of the speakers; the beggar family drums away--mere meters constantly separate insurmountable distance between all walks of life, everywhere.

Departure, travel, and arrival

Even before setting off to return to India, my mood was distinct from the first journey's excited anticipation.  I was asked repeatedly, "Are you excited to return?  Are you ready?"  A year and a half ago, I would have quickly replied, "Yes!  I am so ready!"  At that point, perhaps who I was then was, indeed, ready.  This time my reply to the question that had been asked and answered before was much more measured.  "Are you excited to return?" Yes and no.  Yes, new adventures await and new friends and teachers are to be met.  No, I am ready to settle down somewhere for longer than a while, rent an apartment, develop common friendships and enjoy the company of my peers.  "Are you ready?"  "Well," I replied walking the streets of New York City, "my experience is about to change completely.  Ready or not, it's on its way."
And the airport--a peculiar mind-bending hub-- and the plane did just that: My world has changed again.  Back to Pune, Maharashtra.  I arrived via taxi at 5:00 A.M. 31 October from Bombay international where my plane landed at 11:30 P.M. 30 October.  I was excited, actually, for the drive to Pune because the Bombay-Pune highway, even at night, is a sight to behold.  Lots of intricately painted, colorful goods carriers traveling at turtle-paced speeds across three-lane roads that wind through the rocky terrain of the Deccan south.  The Deccan is a large plateau in the southwest of India where the region gets its name from.  Like all things Indian, its name is highly practical-- it literally means 'south'.  Around 4:00 A.M. the driver naturally starts to get tired; the car's acceleration and deceleration become more pronounced at increasingly irregular, sporadic intervals, and this is my cue to practice some Hindi.  Luckily, I am fully awake because of the roadside scenery.  My fresh arrival, too, from some different spot under the sun, disorients the waking/dreaming film schedule of the mind's cinema.  Slowly I am syncing into my new spot, and a walk around my old neighborhood yesterday with a friend, Jon, flooded my memory with a fresh familiarity I don't experience on the side of the city I am currently located.  Early this week, I'll move back into my old flat before taking off by train for Mysore, Karnataka.
Until then, I'll be doing bureaucratic things like registering with the police, organizing paperwork to streamline processes like getting a new mobile phone number and internet connectivity in Karnataka, and reading and writing a lot as I attempt to finalize applications for graduate school back in the States.  That process weighs heavily on my mind these days, and I feel over a solid year's productivity attempting to express itself in the space of about a page and half.  It's a slow process of writing, re-writing, re-thinking, re-writing, re-citing, re-clining, and penning again as the fingers' tips patter away on an apple.