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.