George Cardona will deliver a lecture in the Department of Sanskrit at the University of Hyderabad tomorrow. I have extended my stay here to attend the talk. Dr. Cardona is a pioneer in the field of grammar and linguistics, retired professor from The University of Pennsylvania.
More to come.
01 March 2010
22 February 2010
Southern Hospitality
A city passing in eyes--
everywhere people--
eyes sipping coffee and smoke
frozen, eddying swirls of neon
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada, English
ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್
Pleasant people and poetic pass-age
in Bangalore where
dance moves tell smutty stories,
a back-bend smile, mental acrobatics;
modern art, media outlets, and food fun.
Cucumber? Spicy Pineapple, anyone?
Hear this: It was all for a good cause!
a Queer Film Festival.
everywhere people--
eyes sipping coffee and smoke
frozen, eddying swirls of neon
ಕನ್ನಡ
Kannada, English
ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್
rounding from blue to purple
or eyes don't seem
to discriminate.
a tongue, nose, or mouse caresses
you control the pressure, do press.
Some clicking, too.
Not of growing bamboo,
but the equally speedy-to-develop buds
of friendship, buddies. Sweet, huh?
All this on the first date!
Taste of morning chai, The Hindu and The Economist;
a sip of ras, Mālavikāgnimitram;
Evening tide:
waves magical hips blooming to boom box boys.
Men, samosa, kingfisher,
a German, too! Carlsberg for good measure.
Like black coffee, a real,
one-of-a-kind experience.
Pleasant people and poetic pass-age
in Bangalore where
dance moves tell smutty stories,
a back-bend smile, mental acrobatics;
modern art, media outlets, and food fun.
Cucumber? Spicy Pineapple, anyone?
Hear this: It was all for a good cause!
a Queer Film Festival.
18 February 2010
07 February 2010
If My Words Did Glow, with the Gold of Sunshine...
Wow! How does one define an exceptional day? Today. That's the definition.
For the past three days (3, 4, 5 February), the Central Institute of Indian Languages (where I study Kannada) has been hosting an international poetry conference, Kritya 2010. This is a venue wherein poets from all over the world come together and share their work. I attended the first few days anticipating more of a 'local' flavour, but the 'international' rang more true at the end of days one and two; today, though--day three--was exceptional!
I will post some of the more specific poems as I meet with the poets over the coming weeks. I have been invited to attend a number of different classes, and even to deliver a lecture on my research to a class of M. Phil. students of English literature. That should be interesting! But it will give me something to sit down and plan out a bit. I'll try to even throw in some of my thoughts related to queer theory, which will definitely be a crazy experience for the students of Mysore University. But it'll be great!
The English-Kannada dual language setting at the Kritya conference really made today's poetry readings shine for amateur audience members like myself. Compared with most audience members, I have a fair amount more familiarity with the diction these Kannadiga poets use from my background with Sanskrit. Clearly, though, I can neither speak nor understand well poetry spoken in Kannada by any means. Presented, as these poems were, however, on a dual language stage with effective follow-up commentary on each piece, I really enjoyed a nice taste of numerous styles from about ten different Kannadiga poets, ladies and gentlemen.
We can see historically that generations of Kannada speakers self-consciously formed and birthed this tongue from poetic sentiment. All the earliest works of Kannada are responses to a dominant, subcontinental and enduring tradition of Sanskrit poetics. These early writers shaped Kannada into something of its own flavour, and thereby created their political and social-cultural landscape.
One of the objectives that I would have liked to see the conference deal with a little more was this political, social-cultural element of poetry; this is probably just the academic in me. I read some blurb at the conference or in a dream that was jotted down on paper, and it brought my attention to the necessary difficulty poets undertake to inhabit experience with language, to infiltrate the readers' senses and thereby affecting a particular reaction. The ancients' knew this fertile strength of language, and nowhere on earth--ever--was it refined and refined and refined to the precision that it was by the men who made it their means to moksha, or liberation, dwelling in the pre-modern lands we now know collectively as India.
Today, after lots of centuries, a particular model of discourse, or maybe a peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way occupies this spot of power. It's peculiarly eurocentric; Western. The dream object that I read at the conference spoke about how poets today often choose silence, how poets increasingly navigate the corridors of absence. Just like diction, silence, too, is a choice. A choice, I think, that is one symptom of the particular model of discourse, or peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way: Poetry?
The quiet power of the Kannada language really 'wowed' me on day three of this poetry conference. This quiet power was barely audible to me; maybe I imagine what I heard? But this is precisely the point! Even with all these other distractions emanating from a peculiar style of self-enactment that political and social-cultural tendencies of modernity proscribe and prescribe--and this being a force that the poet, subject of, often chooses silence--the undercurrents of sentiment from these Kannadiga poets shone through, doppling the ears and mind with its tambour, its rhythm quite unlike any language I've ever heard; its appeal direct to that of aesthetic concern.
[I am still in process on this writing, along with a number of other pieces. Check back in the coming days, please. I'll be posting pics of a quick jaunt to Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebeedu--VERY impressive. I plan to be in Sringeri for Mahashivaratri this Friday.]
For the past three days (3, 4, 5 February), the Central Institute of Indian Languages (where I study Kannada) has been hosting an international poetry conference, Kritya 2010. This is a venue wherein poets from all over the world come together and share their work. I attended the first few days anticipating more of a 'local' flavour, but the 'international' rang more true at the end of days one and two; today, though--day three--was exceptional!
I will post some of the more specific poems as I meet with the poets over the coming weeks. I have been invited to attend a number of different classes, and even to deliver a lecture on my research to a class of M. Phil. students of English literature. That should be interesting! But it will give me something to sit down and plan out a bit. I'll try to even throw in some of my thoughts related to queer theory, which will definitely be a crazy experience for the students of Mysore University. But it'll be great!
The English-Kannada dual language setting at the Kritya conference really made today's poetry readings shine for amateur audience members like myself. Compared with most audience members, I have a fair amount more familiarity with the diction these Kannadiga poets use from my background with Sanskrit. Clearly, though, I can neither speak nor understand well poetry spoken in Kannada by any means. Presented, as these poems were, however, on a dual language stage with effective follow-up commentary on each piece, I really enjoyed a nice taste of numerous styles from about ten different Kannadiga poets, ladies and gentlemen.
We can see historically that generations of Kannada speakers self-consciously formed and birthed this tongue from poetic sentiment. All the earliest works of Kannada are responses to a dominant, subcontinental and enduring tradition of Sanskrit poetics. These early writers shaped Kannada into something of its own flavour, and thereby created their political and social-cultural landscape.
One of the objectives that I would have liked to see the conference deal with a little more was this political, social-cultural element of poetry; this is probably just the academic in me. I read some blurb at the conference or in a dream that was jotted down on paper, and it brought my attention to the necessary difficulty poets undertake to inhabit experience with language, to infiltrate the readers' senses and thereby affecting a particular reaction. The ancients' knew this fertile strength of language, and nowhere on earth--ever--was it refined and refined and refined to the precision that it was by the men who made it their means to moksha, or liberation, dwelling in the pre-modern lands we now know collectively as India.
Today, after lots of centuries, a particular model of discourse, or maybe a peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way occupies this spot of power. It's peculiarly eurocentric; Western. The dream object that I read at the conference spoke about how poets today often choose silence, how poets increasingly navigate the corridors of absence. Just like diction, silence, too, is a choice. A choice, I think, that is one symptom of the particular model of discourse, or peculiar grammatical disposition, or a language of law that predisposes a person to think of their self in a particular way: Poetry?
The quiet power of the Kannada language really 'wowed' me on day three of this poetry conference. This quiet power was barely audible to me; maybe I imagine what I heard? But this is precisely the point! Even with all these other distractions emanating from a peculiar style of self-enactment that political and social-cultural tendencies of modernity proscribe and prescribe--and this being a force that the poet, subject of, often chooses silence--the undercurrents of sentiment from these Kannadiga poets shone through, doppling the ears and mind with its tambour, its rhythm quite unlike any language I've ever heard; its appeal direct to that of aesthetic concern.
[I am still in process on this writing, along with a number of other pieces. Check back in the coming days, please. I'll be posting pics of a quick jaunt to Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebeedu--VERY impressive. I plan to be in Sringeri for Mahashivaratri this Friday.]
28 January 2010
A Journey to the Lotus Feet of the Guru
लभते जनिं यः परमे स्वमूले
विचार्य् कस्मादहमित्युदायः।
स एव जातः स च नित्य जातो
नवो नवो 'यं सततं मुनीन्द्रः।।
labhate janim yah parame svamuule
vicaarya kasmad aham ityudayah.
sa eva jatah sa ca nitya jato
navo navo 'yam satatam muniindrah.
He attains birth in the highest root of the Self having thought "From where does this 'I' arise?"
Constantly new, this Lord among sages alone is born, and he is born into eternity.
Well, it's apparent that I have allowed some lax in a 'blog lately. A little laze, if you will, results from the return of an old friend of mine named schedule; and schedule's friend, habit, takes hold on somnolent and ambulatory patterns like a maid efficient in organizing one's living space. In the former, a familiar pattern that I recognize from a number of years ago, has (re)emerged at mystical times between waking and sleep.
When I moved to Pune, Mahrashtra, India twenty-one months ago, I stepped into a dreamworld. I told my mother as much before boarding my flight West from St. Louis, Missouri, "I feel like I am living a dream."
And settling in Pune, then, amidst a group of American scholars and peers, I spoke by phone with my mother:
"I want to make my study of Sanskrit relevant to today," I told her. And she replied, "Good luck!"
But more than simply luck, my mother and father consistently display a humble and encouraging force that, like good-habit, affects some ultimately mystical grace that guides my life in ways mostly unrealized. This in the form of love that they shower seems to fertilize a knowledge capable of coming to know that which is, at first, seemingly unknowable. It is the stuff of dreams. And in comparison to those dreams of two years ago, my recent dreams are of a similar nature: Too pleasurable to be a thing of waking conscious but too conscious to be a thing of sleep...
A glass within a glass. Each one floods into the other. The contents--one from the other--increasingly indiscernible, become some mixture of a world whose possibility is limited only by the thoughts that the mind chooses to hold. Our collective limitation, the stuff of language, is realized to be a creative bind.
ಆಶಾ ನಾಮ ಮನುಷ್ಯಾನಾಂ ಕಾಚಿದಾಶ್ಚರ್ಯ ಶೃಞ್ಕಲಾ
ಯಯಾ ಬದ್ಧಾಃ ಪ್ರಧಾವನ್ತಿ ಮುಕ್ತಾಸ್ತಿಷ್ಠನ್ತಿ ಪಂಗುವತ್
Imaginative hope has become some sort of fantastic fetter: Those who stand unchained are lame like a cripple; those bound by it run forward. They choose to create a mould for the future, realized (perhaps quixotically) in language.
The mangala shloka, or opening verse of this 'blog entry I memorized in the room where the mother of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi attained liberation.
The writing that follows that shloka is excerpted from a diary of about one month ago. It seems fitting, now, that this experience preceded my journey to live for three days at the base of Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu.
From the late 19th through the mid-20th century lived Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. The Self-realization and teaching on matters of the soul that Maharshi exposed has garnered hundreds of thousands of devotees across the world. Many of them (the fortunate ones, I suppose) descend upon what I can only imagine as a once quiet town in the South of India. The town, Tiruvannamalai, takes its name from the Annamalai Temple that dates from about the mid-9th century.
This is one of five prominent temples of Shiva in South India. Each one of these five prominent temples (four in Tamil Nadu and one in present-day Andhra Pradesh) is dedicated to Shiva. I spoke with one Sadhu, Maheshvara, on the slopes of Arunachala who strove to assist me in memorizing the places of these temples by giving to me a handy acronym: Tk^2TC. That is Tiruvannamalai, Kanchipuram, Kaalahasti, Thiruvannaikkaval, and Chidambaram. Each temple in each city is dedicated to Lord Shiva existing as different different elements, respectively: fire, earth, air, water, and ether/space.
I laughed over this acronym with Maheshvar, and joked that this is the 21st century Maheshvarasutra. (The Maheshvarasutra, for those non-Sanskritists, is a list of 14 phoneme clusters from which is derived elements of Sanskrit grammar.) Indians, too, are fond of acronyms as my brother, Chris, can tell you all about from reading Indian English language newspapers during his visit last year. He astutely pointed out that if you don't know a lot of acronyms, you're out of luck!
Maheshvara then told me that I had been enlightened by this acronym on b^2p, or the mathematical name of Arunachala-- beauty, bliss, and peace. However, to see Arunachala is something of a waking dream-like experience. To describe it with mathematical equations that signify adjectives like beauty and majesty falls short of its grandeur.
Maheshvar and I spoke for some time, and I sang some poetry for a small group of us who had gathered together on this path in a special place with all types of wonderful human experiences effortlessly packaged for us mortals by a respectable and great sage.
Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings focus a great deal on becoming increasingly aware of our self through a practice called self-inquiry: From where does this 'I' arise? The question originally forwarded by Maharshi to his first disciples was in Tamil, naan yaar, which closely resembles the same question translated either into Telugu (nevu...?) or Kannada, ನಾನು ಯಾರು naanu yaaru: "Who am 'I'" को 'हम्् ko ham in Sanskrit.
Jesus, too, is recorded as making a similar question in the form of a statement in Psalm 46.10: "Be still and know that I am god."
So what does it all mean? The beauty of the statement, like the the best poetry, has infinite and always new potential meaning. That is, it is timeless. It is timeless in the most transcendent and most imminent way simultaneously. It is both the core of our self and that which we seek. Never not present; also, often, unrecognized. When it is recognized, too, it is often not a conscious or fully aware recognition. It is the stuff of heaven in which we walk here, and that into which we will be born hereafter.
Try to imagine not understanding the language you grew into your young self. It is a difficult task, if not impossible. Can we ever not understand our primary language, having acquired it? Like our primary language, can we ever not know our self having understood the full breadth and depth of what the 'I' experiences?
Maharshi, the great seer, calls our attention to our experience of three types of awareness: Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. These are all aspects of experience to which we can relate an 'I'. I experience the world awake, and I experience--perhaps--a world away in my dreamscape; but I have little, or altogether different, or no recollection of the material world in dreams; and while I am in deep sleep, there is no awareness of a world or an 'I' at all, be it of dreams or 'real'. We can thus know via negative knowledge (the experience of waking in the morning) that 'I' exists even when we are not conscious of that 'I', an experience to which we can all relate.
Usually, too, I, while awake, have little or no recollection of 'I' in dreams; but when I do recollect, I also understand that 'I' in dreams to be different from the 'I' awake. What I think Maharshi tells us, then, is to strive to become increasingly aware of this 'I' in these three different aspects of conscious experience.
This is the stuff Maharshi's unique blend of Advaita, or non-dual, vedanta philosophy. Vedanta comes from the four traditions of sacred Sanskrit texts, the Vedas. Veda + anta = Vedanta literally means the end of the Vedas, and therefore refers to a collection of nine texts known as the Upanishads, or--literally-- those which are spoken while sitting near [the feet of the guru presumably].
The question-- in all its various formulations: naan yaar, ko 'ham, naanu yaaru, who am I?-- I think, poses a really interesting challenge that is productive in a lot matters of life. kasmaad aham itudarah? From what, because of what did 'I' arise? What did 'I' arise to do?
Clearly all of us will neither choose to sit nor are we destined to sit for years in meditation as the great sage, Ramana Maharshi, sat meditating in caves on the mountain of the dawn, Arunachala. But it seems to me reasonable that we attempt to bring our dreams and the rejuvenating pleasures of deep sleep into ever greater dimensions of self-awareness. The next step--and this is probably more important and more challenging-- is to give up that 'I'.
What is it, then, that we really need? If we accept this challenge to increase our domain of conscious experience, very little remains essential.
Seven years' time has passed since I read 'Be As You Are', a compilation of Bhagavan's teachings edited by David Godman. A friend, John, had given me the book during my first year of college at The University of Colorado, and reading it I began to meditate on Bhagavan regularly for some years; however, with a busy life and lots of study my focus shifted and lots of other things began to pile into my mind. Life happened, I suppose. Lots and lots of life!
Anyhow, I finally arrived on 23 January 2010 at 3:30 A.M. to the place Bhagavan regarded with such favor during his 71 years, at the foot of Arunachala. Upon arrival I visited the room where Sri Ramana Maharshi attained Mahanirana. Shortly thereafter, the gates to one meditation hall were opened and young students of the Vedas came from their morning baths to chant the sacred texts in front of Bhagavan's murti, or statue. The students and their teacher were very kind to allow me to sit with them, and after they finished their hour-long rote recitations I surprised them all with a few minutes of Sanskrit conversation--they were thus pleasantly surprised, as was I, in the early morning at the base of Arunachala.
One of my great pleasures in India is to listen to Vedic chanting and inquire from the students to understand the sutras' meanings: both what it means to them as students of the tradition and what it means linguistically. Vedic Sanskrit is an altogether different beast from the Classical Sanskrit that I study; but with my late foray into the tradition of Grammar, I am being to be exposed to a lot of examples drawn from Vedic literature that constitute grammatical exceptions from the perspective of the classical corpus.
Following the welcoming surprise, I was shown to the room in which I stayed. I bathed and rested and walked to the mess hall for breakfast. The style here is very down-to-earth, literally. We eat on the floor from leaves pinned together by twigs and dried. Cleanliness is not an issue--the place is spotless! The food is prepared by a brahmin kitchen staff and it is considered as 'prasad', or a gift from Bhagavan. It is 'sattvik'. That is, very pure according to an ayurvedic point of view. It is not too spicy, but not too bland; Ramanashramam is in South India so these are rice-based meals; and the food is meant to act from the inside together with the environment to cleanse the mind-body and promote general well-beingness. It works as Arunachala does: Like a dream!
It is customary for devotees of Lord Shiva to circumambulate Arunachala, regarded as a naturally born manifestation of the god. This is to be done barefoot over one of two paths. One inner, the other outer. The outer path is 14 kilometers, and it is along this path that I began to walk after my lunch in the late afternoon on 23 January. The experience is a trying one, as the ground is hot and full of rocks and the road is full of big busses, horses, trucks, cows, pedestrians--some walking, some crippled, some otherwise destitute--tractors, goats, buffalo, sheep, bull-ox, rickshaws, elephants, motorcycles, and more! It's pretty regular. Besides spending some time in walking meditation, I gained a greater appreciation for cow patties. These little islands of dry turd on hot concrete are welcome relief to the sole!
To see Arunachala from all sides alone makes the walk incredibly worth-while. A night walk, when the roads are more quiet and the moon is full, however, might be advisable for a potential future visit I would like to make with you who read this 'blog!
And so as I again spend my days in Mysore sitting in libraries to study ancient grammar and treatises describing the nature of poetic beauty, I feel my self again entering into the state of dreamscape expanded. This is the place from where I pull my thoughts, and my thoughts, then, through language, become the medium with which I create some productive tension between myself and the divine that is to be reflected, ever anew, in the letters and words and sentences of paragraphs, papers, and concepts.
Knowledge and thought alone is the stuff of experience. To recognize patterns in thought, and to create knowledge of those patterns which are not readily apparent is the stuff of scholarship. This is how I have been trained to think by teachers in the past. It is along these lines that I seek to engage a study of medieval Indian social, political, and literary history using materials that that are 1000+ years old to comment on and critique structures of power in the present. This is no easy task. Moreover, the possibility of this task is only barely possible from the knowledge intellectuals have developed in available scholarship. How, then, might the fruits of such labour appear? What are the means by which the student or scholar might realize such knowledge, and what cautions, or limits, must that student or scholar bear in mind regarding the possibility of such knowledge?
....................................................................................................................................................................
29 December 2009
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.
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!
23 December 2009
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.
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.
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