for joe

My friend Joe revered about the mystery of some shapes grabbing our attention among the sea of shapes that flood our vision every moment of the day. I know that when I look for my keys (a climactic and thrilling adventure taking place daily between the walls of my room, occasionally also in the kitchen and living room) I notice an odd sock that was so dearly missed after last batch of laundry, Amartya Sen book I feel guilty about for not finding time to read, camera that belongs to Kris... I don't notice a tea cup on my dresser,hairspray, my purse, or thousands of random (mostly useless) items that clutter my room. When I sit down behind my desk to work, my eyes glide across photographs I put on my wall. One in particular succeeds to always make me nostalgic, even if it is just a meta-nostalgy somewhere on a parallel level of my consciousness and only for a split of a moment.
Mountain ranges do that to you. Krivan is a signature mountain of High Tatras. When that range enters my eyesight, even if it was pencil drawn against a background of EKG curves, it sets off a whole pallette of sensory and emotional triggers. I smell the wood smoking away in a fireplace in the mountain cottage where I spent every summer, every winter of my childhood. I almost taste a wild mushroom omelette that auntie Hanka would make in the mornings, after we did our chores. One of the chores was washing dishes in a freezing cold spring pool that uncle Vili built. I can feel my knuckles hurting from the rushing cool water. I can smell the wild strawberries and cranberries and the tingly sensation in my stomach of suspecting a bear lurking in raspberry bushes. One or a few specific memories fleet through my head: us, four girls, daughters of two sets of parents that spent all vacations together,collecting cones for stove fire for cooking; a bee that stung me on my eyelid when dragging wood to my dad for chopping; or that old sheppard that used to come by and sit in front of our cottage, baffled by my mom, demanding :"Jolka, talk about something, anything." For a nanosecond all these little fireflies of memories storm across the darkness of my head behind my eyes like little Halley's comets. All triggered by that familiar curve of Kriváň. For a nanosecond I am oblivious to the noises of the city seeping through my window and babble of people behind my back. For a nanosecond I am ultimately happy.

Fwd: failure notice

Well...they tell me I can post to my own blog this way, emailing from my own email account. Ha. I wonder if that is the truth. It would be neat if that was the truth. Not that it matters much. As someone once noted, truth is objective. Stripped of anything personal, anything subjective. Why the heck care about it then? And it does not even involve bacon, chocolate, or Simple Green. Godspeed, and as a popular song says:"Feel the magic, zip, zap, zoom!"

India Diary of a Wordly and Street-smart Traveler

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Saturday Feb. 19, 2005
My parents drop me off at the South Station. Feeling guilty sure helps - I tried to be as good as honey during this past week that they visited me in Boston. Remnants of my difficult puberty, I suppose – I always get grumpy and snappy at my parents for no good reason being around them for just a few hours. Not this week. Although I lodged them in style at Tunie’s mansion on Brattle Street, and spend a good amount of time with them every day, my head was full of the trip to India. I didn’t get my passport until Friday, which was a source of some minor anxiety, though being a lazy Slovak that is so unfairly lucky in her life, I figured it will work itself out somehow, as it always does. It did work itself out, as it always does. My parents were understanding as ever, and we managed to have a great time in the midst of all the pre-trip havoc and planning. I was about to get on the train to Newark where my flight to Mumbai takes off from, when I realized I have no cash. I ran to get $100, to be able to exchange some money should there be no ATM at the airport in Mumbai or Kolkata. Good girl. There certainly was no ATM at the airport, but there were many people who dragged my luggage 5 meters back and forth and demanded ‘at least ten dollars, ma’am’ for it. Before I learned the tricks of the airport I dispensed about $30. I was truly pathetic.
I say goodbye to my parents, worried whether they will find their way back to Tunie’s safely, and whether they will make it to the airport the next day. I have to remind myself that they did just fine before I was born and somehow they managed to survive even after I left home some five years ago for Boston. Perhaps they will be OK.
On the train I watched Casablanca on my brand new laptop that I’m dragging around with me despite the well meant advise of all of my friends and even my rational department of the brain. No use, the computer is new, it has to come with. I am thinking about the backpacking trip to Morocco we undertook with my sister Sasha in 1996 instead of our dreamt out train trip to Vladivostok and back on the Trans-Siberian Magistrale. The trip through Russia was too unsafe at the time, so the two of us (at the time 18 and 23) set out for Morocco. I recollect all the smells and sights, go over the visual diary of that month and prepare psychologically for anything imaginable - not being able to blend in, for smells and noises that everybody was warning me about repeatedly, for difficult situations when I might have to tread very carefully, as the conflict resolution meetings may surely present. I think of the first few minutes in Tangier, when we were encircled by tens if not hundreds of ‘tourist guides’ and had to finally consent to have one of them drag us all over the city for some forty German marks, a lot of money for us at the time. I am determined to be a worldly, street-smart traveler. I go over the vivid images of horse heads, or was it cow heads, stuck on poles in the narrow alleys of Tangier’s open market, the unmistakable smell of Medina, the old town, in every Moroccan city, constant entourage of people no matter where or when we went. It took a few days for us to get used to it, especially since our first night in Tangier happened to be a wedding night in the house next-door to our cheap hotel. Wedding guests slaughtered a cow and proceeded to burst spontaneously into some horn-pipe and drums music every twenty minutes all through the night. How much wilder can India be? A worldly and street-smart traveler.
In Newark I get in line at the Air India counter, trying desperately to get some clues, and pretending that I fly to India every other day. I catch myself sniffing around to see whether I am really going into some putrid smelling universe. I don’t smell anything, I reprimand myself for being a sissy. (Deep down I am also clandestinely relieved that I can’t smell anything and upon realizing it, I conclude I indeed am a sissy and that I deserve to go to a putrid smelling universe.) I also call my parents about seventy times. They are not picking up. I call Sasha, she has not heard from them all day. Naturally I panic and accuse myself of causing my parents’ death, abandoning them at a train station in Boston. They probably tried to walk to the Harvard Club, got on a wrong bus and are hopelessly lost somewhere in Dorchester in minus ten degree weather. Sasha will keep calling them. OK. I get on the plane, pleasant aroma of curry is winding through the boarding corridor. I love Indian food. I adore curry. A glimmer of hope. I’m going to make it after all. I sit next to a guy that reeks. He’s French. Nobody else reeks. Ha. Stewardesses and stewards are all super-model material, very polite and pleasant. Food is hands-down the best airplane food I ever had. I smile. I relax. I sleep, after what seems like ages of stress and anxiety.

Sunday 20th February.
Flight to Mumbai takes over 16 hours, with a 2 hour stop in Paris. Smelly French guy gets off. I fall in and out of sleep. I fall asleep deeply for ten minutes at a time, too excited and worked up to sleep longer. It helps anyway. We get to Mumbai at shortly after midnight. They herd us like sheep from room to room, finally load us on buses and bring us to the domestic terminal. There we wait until four in a little room until they open the gates. Very few Europeans, mostly Hindi couples and families. Women wear beautiful saris, henna on their hands and feet, intricate jewelry. Everybody’s quiet and patient. My new computer chirps, barks, and howls. I wear a fleece sweater, goretex jacket, jeans, and sneakers. I feel slightly out of place. At four they let us into the terminal, then we wait for another three hours to board the plain to Kolkata. I read The Times of India, and the Indian Daily Telegraph, to demonstrate how at home I feel in Mumbai. We get on the teensy plane to Kolkata. Pretty stewardess is very tricksy. She asks me whether I want this dish or that dish, unwrapping them and showing them to me. But I am a worldly street-smart traveler and I know that one dish is dosa and the other a stuffed paratha - I heard her asking people in front of me which one would they like. So I tell her with utmost non-chalance that I want a dosa. She asks: “This one?” I nod. My neighbor asks for a stuffed paratha. He gets the same dish. Kudos to her, she is probably laughing at me with other stewards at the back. I don’t really care, it is delicious. Getting off in Kolkata, I am hit with a humid tropical weather. I got the weather reports wrong - it is Kerala that is cool because of mountain elevation. Promptly removing layers upon layers of clothing. Hot, tired, and confused. Everybody’s pulling at my sleeves, taking hold of my luggage, ordering me to take this taxi and that taxi. I opt for a prepaid taxi. As soon as I am spotted clutching a slip of paper with the number of the taxi, a swarm of porters descends upon me, a brief skirmish ensues, and the winner escorts me to the taxi, demanding twenty dollars. He gets two. I am pleased with my worldliness and street-smartitness. Taxi pulls off, my eyes are on top of my head, trying to soak everything in. There is luscious grass everywhere, slight rolling hills, palm trees, big river. Later I learn it’s the Ganji river. Streets are lined with people sitting around, baking nuts, polishing shoes, selling trinkets, begging. There indeed are cows in the street, we nearly hit a few. For a little while I am afraid that I got into a madman’s taxi. Later I realize, to no relief, that everybody drives like a madman. There is a near death situation every thirty seconds, it’s a miracle there aren’t bleeding creatures scattered around everywhere. After awhile I do see a dead dog in the middle of the street. No wonder all the cabbies in New York are Indian. I keep my eyes wide open, right foot stomping on an imaginary brake, gasping every now and then as we nearly shave another cab’s side off. Space is precious, thus Kolkatans fit four lanes onto a two-lane road. There are no signals. It is pure Darwinism. Car with the strongest honker gets the way. As we get closer to the city, things get dirtier. It looks like one immense Gypsy settlement. OK, those I know. We go through shanty towns made up of tin-plate roofs elevated on wooden poles. Dogs are certainly not sacred here. They are dirty, scruffy looking, scratching constantly, some look very sick. I want to take every one of them home. I try to smile at the driver a few times and conceal my immediate fear of violent death. He must know what he’s doing. The city itself is a wonderfully bizarre bursting melee of ancient, colonial and modern styles, interspersed with clutters of makeshift tents and slums. All tall houses have two or three stories somehow glued on top of them. They seem to be made out of mud, but that is perhaps because I am willing to see anything. We pass an old town - a walled-in complex of ancient buildings full of round curves and arches. We pass a snow white Victoria monument, a stunning piece of colonial architecture with towers scrambling over each other, full of crenelations and statues sticking every which way. It screams from the background of dirt roads, grey buildings and armies of street people. Finally we make it to the hotel. I dispute with myself whether I should give the driver hundred or hundred and fifty rupees for a tip. I hand him a hundred, expecting he will ask for more, but he hands me 80 rupees back. I hand him another twenty out of utter confusion and stumble into the lobby. The hotel feels instantly homey. Built sometime in the seventies it has that undisputable touch of style dominant in communist architecture: cascading round lights, marble walls, kitschy plastic flowers, checkered tablecloth. I feel as if I stepped into the Hotel Panorama in High Tatras, or any Slovak state administration building for that matter. I ask at the reception whether my boss Hillel is here. I am told he has not arrived yet and is to come today. I am puzzled, for he is supposed to be in town since Saturday. Well, I sit down and wait. People at the registration desk change, so I think it wise to ask again. After all, I learned about the Indian way of dealing with things through my lengthy visa application. They mailed my passport from New York to Slovakia and back just to get one stamp, which they regularly issue in New York. Organization and efficiency is not on the list of top priorities here. I speak with the receptionist and get more information: Hillel was here, but checked out and it seems he’s coming back today. Well, that’s more reassuring, although I do not understand why would he leave. Must have been a matter of urgency, perhaps some meeting in Delhi or in Nagaland came up. I sit down again to think whether I should take up a room or try to contact him somewhere somehow. I don’t know where or how. I decide to take a room. I go to the desk again, to make sure one more time there isn’t another reservation under Hillel’s or my name. “No”, he shakes his head. “Are you sure?” “No, reservation is for one single room, see for yourself ”- he hands me the fax with reservations from our travel agent. It says: “One single room 19 - 23 February and one single room from 21 - 23 February.” Ah, that would be mine. We argue for a little longer, receptionist claims it is one and the same single room, then he concedes that perhaps it isn’t logical to have one room for some time and then another room in an overlapping time for the same person. I am let in. I ask again if Hillel is in the hotel. No, I am assured he isn’t. Hooray, I am in my room, ready to collapse, I don’t even remember when I slept in a bed last time. Some twenty minutes later Hillel calls, wondering where I’ve been and why I haven’t contacted him at all. He was at the hotel. It figures. We have a meeting with the Seagull Foundation shortly. I shower quickly, pull myself together somewhat, and head out into Kolkata. Taxi driver does not know the way, so we get to see lots of back streets. Very interesting, although we are awfully late. He jumps out of the car every now and then and herds crowds of people around him, who then start an argument which way the Merkhajid Street is. Everybody points in a different direction. We move on, repeat the group exercise, move on again. We pass a street where the corner shop happens to have address written on it’s window sign. 4 Merkhajid Street. I attempt to explain this to the driver, he doesn’t get it. He jumps out and starts caucusing again. We climb out and try to pay, pointing behind us to the street. Yes, he got it. He forces us back in and insists on driving us those three and a half meters to the foundation. I feel relieved to be inside in a familiar non-governmental organization setting. It seems they have the same atmosphere everywhere in the world. We discuss our future project about Commemoration of the 60th anniversary of India and Pakistan’s Partition, coming up in two years, and a possible oral history document project. Talented, young, dynamic people. Quick and productive meeting, just like I like them. Looks very promising. Then we head off to Jadvpur University to meet a professor of human rights and ethnic conflict in Northeast India Omprakash Something or other. A very knowledgeable, well read and well spoken person. Also very slimy. His bad lisp makes his attempts at suaveness comical. He gives me his newest book that he inscribes and hints every which way that we should perhaps go for a coffee or dinner before I leave Kolkata. Hillel immediately asks about the well-being of his wife and children, bless his soul. Subject swiftly changes. Professor Omprakash happens to be extremely well connected, he advises the Indian Government on issues of security and communalism and will be very useful in the Commemoration project. He seems shady, I can’t figure out where his loyalties lie. When asked a question, his eyes jerk left and right for quite awhile and you can see the million thoughts in his head. Then he pulls out one and presents it as an unshakable truth. I decide not to involve him in any other project and to google him thoroughly before we proceed with anything at all. We talk about putting together a colloquium of scholars and high level government people for the 60th Anniversary. He introduces us to a specialist on the ‘disturbed territories’ in the Northeast that is very eager to help us out with channels and information should we proceed successfully with our plans with Naga leaders program. Omprakash tries to call me later, luckily it is during a meeting with the Nagas in my hotel room, so I pass him on to Hillel. Besides it is impossible to understand who’s calling when the caller happens to combine a heavy Indian accent with an awful lisp. The Jadvpur University campus looked like schools I saw only in documentaries and pictures. Dirt paths leading around a duct with standing slimy green water, trash liberally scattered all around. Buildings were run down, paint must have been from 1960s or earlier. Bricks and cracks peeking through everywhere. It is very dark inside, stern rough cement corridors echo every step. There is nothing in the classrooms besides a few plastic chairs and a plain wooden desk for a professor. Omprakash’s office has a computer and a ceiling fan. It’s obvious he is well respected at the university. We head back to the hotel, not knowing whether our young Naga leaders will be able to make it into town tonight from Nagaland. They are stuck in bad weather in Dimapur, and are on a long waiting list for the nearest flight. I finally collapse into bed for some two hours. I wake up on a phone call - our Nagas have made it, we are having a work dinner at the hotel’s Thai/Indian restaurant. I am mightily excited about the prospect of two more weeks of non-stop Indian food, wondering whether I will regret being adventurous anytime soon. Our leaders are young, seem motivated, but I have no idea who is who, what they really do and want from us. I know there is a lamb saag in front of me, I want to eat it and resume sleep STAT. We are meeting with them all day tomorrow, I’ll get a better sense of them then. After dinner I sleep like I haven’t slept since after the Comprehensive Exams. My room overlooks Sudder Street, full of street vendors, beggars and dogs and rickshaws and cars honking at all of them. Sensory defensive or not, I sleep as a lamb. I sleep as a little slaughtered lamb. I dream of lamb saag.

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Tuesday Feb. 22nd
From 6:30 on, I wake up every few minutes and go peak out of the window to see what’s going down on the street. Usual bustle of bicycles, clinking of pots and pans, honks of the passing madmen vessels, barks of shooed and possibly squashed dogs. At nine I meet with Hillel, we prepare for our full day of Nagas. I run to the ‘Business Center’ - a room with a computer - to check email. My parents are alive. They were however turned back from the airport and had to spend another night in Boston. They got home by bus and subway and even got a taxi for themselves early in the morning the next day. I am amazed. Nagas arrive at ten. We ask them what they want to be involved with in Nagaland in their futures and listen to their fascinating twisted families’ and tribes’ circumstances, the Indo-Naga war and the peace process, the young generation’s quest for reconciliation. They are very impressive and eloquent. Akum, who cannot be more than 25-30 (I can’t tell), has a vocabulary of a born leader. I have not met anyone who spoke quite so beautifully and judiciously in my entire life. There isn’t a single one little word that could be left out. Before he speaks he looks up for a second or two and then the words come out cascading as in the best presidential address ever. What he says is measured, reasonable, peaceful, progressive. No nonsense of ‘Maoist insurgents’ radicalism (popular term over here, local version of Arab ‘terrorists’ I suppose) we were readying for in the worst case scenario. We sketch out their trip to America, workshops, press conference, meetings with other groups. We agree on October. We try to get them on board behind the idea to have their trip sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. They are very weary of that. We convince them that it doesn’t mean that they will be dragged around the White House and Congress by a horde of CIA agents. They more or less consent to it. When they depart, they are almost moved to tears. Apparently we are the first international institution that showed interest in working with the Nagas and spent two days hearing them out. It is overwhelming, challenging, desperate and exciting, all at once. Later we meet with the State Department people at the American Consulate. We walk there on foot. Well, on both feet, really - I never understood that expression. We are stopped by beggars on the corner of our street. Hillel dives into his pocket and hands out a few banknotes. Soon we have a loyal entourage that doesn’t leave us until we reach the Consulate some half an hour later. Sidewalks are full of holes, sometimes they switch to strips of sand. People keep staring at me as if I was a green Martian with antennas on my head. Perhaps I am. State Department meeting was fine. Very... state-departmental. We briefed them, they showed support, they can’t really help us now, because they have projects and guidelines, but in 2007 they might be able to do something with us. We thank them and leave. I dare to take a few pictures in the street, although I feel guilty about it. I think of trips to the Roma settlements in Eastern Slovakia when I worked for the Helsinki Committee. We took many pictures to document our trips for a brochure, and were accused by the Roma that we came to look at them as tourists go to look at wild animals at the ZOO. So I take pictures when no people are directly around. In the evening we set out to stroll around Kolkata. Almost immediately we are seized by a family who wants us to buy them something to eat. There’s a store right around the corner they know. OK, why not, even though it won’t solve anything for them in the long run. We follow them for some good five blocks, getting to the store that is ‘nice’. We get them four kilos of rice, four bottles of cooking oil, and two large bottles of milk for the kids, per their requests. While Hillel is buying all this and bargaining with the trader (who insists that milk is 200 rupees when near the hotel it is 60), I am being tugged at and talked at from all sides. I strike up a conversation with a woman who is holding a sick child. The child has a malaria, she tells me. And a big worm in his belly. The child sneezes and coughs all around and proceeds to scratch me repeatedly. I wish I had the smelly powdery cream Jakutin that we used to use on our field trips to Roma settlements to avoid skin worms. I tell Hillel about it. We venture into the nearest hotel and wash up profusely. I am relieved that he is washing up, too. Still not being secure in my role of a worldly and street-smart traveler. The hotel happens to be the Grand Hotel where we were aiming for anyways. It feels absurd after the rice and oil ordeal with the street family. There are Bohemian crystal lusters hanging every half a meter as if they were trying to stock up on glass before it goes extinct tomorrow. A large swimming pool with palm trees in the middle, with restaurants overlooking it all around. I realize that’s where all the white people are hiding. Full ballrooms of them. We have a small dinner and go home the short way, stepping over many people sleeping on the sidewalks. I wash my face and brush my teeth like every night at home. I drink my glass of tap water like every night at home. I realize I am drinking tap water. Not worldly and street-smart at all. I wonder if I’ll pay for it tomorrow. I decide to bet on my dumb luck. After all, it has a good track record.

Wednesday, 23rd February
I could not sleep for the devil last night. I typed up my diary, and watched Memento on my beautiful new laptop. I fell asleep after 5am, got up at 7:30 in time for breakfast with Hillel’s friend that works at the Consulate in Kolkata. A very pleasant woman. Breakfast here is opulent, there are ten different cooked meals on the buffet table, breakfast stuff, some dumplings and naans and parathas (that I now even recognize from each other), fruit, cakes, anything one could think of. My hopes of getting terribly sick during the trip as a way of dieting are just not materializing. After breakfast we have an hour or two to stroll through the open markets in Kolkata. Too much pressure, everyone is pulling us to their stands and shops. We are in search of a woolen vest for Hillel’s son. He used to have one for years until it disintegrated. We are sucked into a ‘shopping mall’ - which are the same stands with vendors as outside, only these guys have a better chance of trapping us in the limited space. My front line of defense is smiling. I smile at everyone: “No, thank you”. We see about seven hundred vests of different sorts. Finally one looks like it might be it, but is too small and we run out of time. We have to catch a plane to Bombay. Now Mumbai. But I like Bombay better, it sounds more bombastic. We go get our stuff and rush to the airport. Traffic is abominable. We are stuck in narrow streets behind bicycles, rickshaws, autorickshaws and other cabs. We are late. Our driver does what he can. I learned a lesson: never tell an Indian taxi driver to hurry if your life is dear to you. We make it to the airport alive somehow. My suitcase sends all alarms off, they need to inspect it. I have a tape recorder in it, forgot to take the batteries out. I proceed to find it. I am not the neatest packer. I stuff things in as they fall in, filling all empty holes and crevices with socks and underwear. As I pull all of those out and spread them around, security guards are somewhat taken aback, withdrawing slowly. I found the damn thing, guards nod and vanish in a heartbeat, leaving me alone trying to stuff everything back in and close the suitcase. I succeed eventually, cursing profusely. I drop the suitcase, corner brakes. Oh well. We make it to the gate some 15 minutes before the flight is supposed to take off, but they let us in. I sit between two businessmen. We play the usual airplane elbow war, fighting for space reading the newspaper. Indian men are polite. I win. I am awfully tired. Everything starts to itch. I’d rather have an upset stomach if I could choose. I am starting to get a tiny little rash, probably from that tap water or from something I ate for breakfast or touched in the market. Businessmen look at me sideways as I fidget and scratch incessantly. Bombay appears under us. It stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, it doesn’t begin or end. It just is. Twenty six million people live in Bombay, 65% of it lives in shanty towns. That much is obvious from up above. Shanty towns cover entire hills and plains, it seems that we’re landing right in the middle of one. It is hot and humid. From the airport we catch a black and yellow cab to the Marriott Hotel. Mumbai seems a lot more orderly than Kolkata. There still are four lanes of cars where there shouldn’t be, but roads are smoother, cars are newer. Except for the cabs. Cabs that crowd the streets of Mumbai seem to have all been made in one year, sometime in sixties. It must have been a great year. Our cab attempts to bring us up a little hill towards the Marriott. It sputters and fumes, stalls, sputters again, very much like a dying mule. Not that I ever saw one. All the bell boys are chuckling, laughing out loud in fact, slapping their knees. “Welcome to India, ma’am,” says one bobbing his head from side to side. I catch myself doing that now sometimes. Marriott is monumental. Insanely so. Grand lobby above a grander yet cafe/restaurant area overlooking the grandest terrasse above the sea. No end to it. There is one more measure of grandioseness these days: wireless internet. Mariott’s got it. My loyalty is established and will extend beyond my grave. I don’t have much time to exploit it as we are meeting with Meenakshee from Human Rights Watch. She is a journalist by training. That is visible at first sight. There are two coffee cups in front of her. She lights a cigarette, tucks her long wavy hair behind her ear. As she listens her thoughts are jumping one over another, she looks around often, resting her eyes on some passerby, then on some detail on the wall, then on some formation of hair on your head, on her empty coffee cup. She talks about one thing, then another one, third one, comes back to the first one and somehow make sense of it all. By this time I am beyond exhausted and every inch of skin on me is itching. We rush off from my beloved Mariott to meet Tara and her boyfriend, Hillel’s friends daughter. After the usual circling around, stopping to caucus about directions to our hotel, we find the Hotel Bentleys. It looks lovely - quaint little hotel with a courtyard full of crawling wines and flowers. Halls are illuminated with a soft gas light, there are handwoven carpets on the floor. That is not where we are staying. We are staying at a ‘guesthouse’. Two young men seize our suitcases and we follow them for a bloc, two blocs, around a corner, another bloc, around another corner. The outside of the house does not foretell anything good. We come upstairs, and are shown to our rooms. They look like student dormitories where Sasha lived in Prague. Tall ceilings, tile floors, memories of pleasant and unpleasant events on the walls. Mostly unpleasant. Some of those memories are overgrown with some sort of a fungus. Sheets have seen better times way back during the Second World War, when they must have been made. They are gray, decorated with random smudges, spots and holes. Perhaps they used them in a field hospital during fierce battles. There are small pieces of broken glass on one of them. Musn’t grumble, there are worse things in the world. Say, genocide in Sudan. After all, I am a street-smart, worldly traveler, remember? That means I can sleep anywhere. I register at the ‘reception’. There is one totally stoned American woman sitting with the receptionist. She is not capable of anything more than grinning from ear to ear. I want to run for cover. I am shown the bathroom. Or rather a bathcloset. Toilet, sink, and shower over the toilet fit into one square meter. It’s only for three nights. There are worse things in the world. I am a street-smart.... Tara and her boyfriend come to meet us. They keep apologizing profusely, they thought we would be put into the main hotel. We tell her not to worry. It’s not that bad. There are worse things in the world...
Tara is a daughter of an Indian dancer. Hillel was once pushed out by a crowd to meet her, because ‘she is American like you’. Not knowing what to say, he asked:”So..... you are a second generation Indian American?” “No way!,” exclaimed she, “I am a Litvak from Detroit!” Needless to say they became friends. Tara is a little fragile girl with a face of a deer (that, in Slovak, is a great compliment, though I am not sure if I’m doing her a favor in English). They are both lovely young people, very philosophical. We all go to their favorite corner restaurant. Tara talks about the media and their failure to report the truth. In fact they conspire with governments to keep the masses placid. Her boyfriend talks about his research on fear. I am way beyond being able to pay attention. I am keeling over. I think about the horrible bed in my room with nasty sheets and how I won’t be able to fall asleep in that. We stroll back to our humble abode. I climb onto my disgusting burrow and fall asleep within three seconds.

Thursday 24th February
In the morning everything looks less disgusting. One really can get used to anything. I take a shower in the bathcloset, feeling better. The itching has gone, thank good Lord on the heavens. Or Vishnu, or Allah, since those seem to be more popular here. As a heathen I should be thankful to all, as I don’t know whose jurisdiction I fall under. Perhaps it is allocated by district - whoever has the majority in a given area of my presence has to provide me with the guardian angel and all such. I pack my $3,000 worth of random equipment into my rolling laptop suitcase and we set out. I can’t decide whether it’s safer with me or in the room, but I’d rather fight for it tooth and nail than have it stolen behind my back. The sea is at the end of our street. It does not smell like sea. Luckily it does not smell like much at all in the morning. You can see the Gateway to India on the left, which was built to welcome King George, or Leopold, or Henry - I forget which. Right next to us is the fantabulous hotel Taj. Tara recounts the story behind it for us. A local rich Parsee was not admitted into one of the chi-chi hotels nearby, so he decided he can build a better one. The best hotel in the world. And he did. Except the construction workers had the plan turned around backwards and the grand entrance with a beautiful park and a swimming pool is facing the street. Hotel’s butt is facing the sea. The butt is still very nice. Taj is not better then Mariott though, wireless is only for hotel guests. Pfffft.
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We find a nice little café, café Basilico. That’s our base for next four hours, reading, working on lectures and workshops we’ll be doing at the DC School of Management and Technology in Kerala next week. It seems that this is the place where all tourists come to hide to and to take a few deep breaths. It is very peaceful and laid back. I don’t ever want to leave. In the afternoon we climb into a taxi and set out to find the Khoj Foundation, recommended by Meenakshee. All we know is that it is off of one of the main arteries in Mumbai and that it is opposite a Škoda auto dealership. By now I am entirely used to the Indian way of driving. It seems like the most natural thing ever. Of course you zigzag between other cars until you fill every little opening. Of course there are six cars next to each other on one road. It’s a big road. Of course cars have no side mirrors. They don’t even make cars with side mirrors in India. The only cars that had side mirrors at some point (and now have holes after they were ripped off) were made elsewhere. Mumbai reminds me of Prague, I can’t tell exactly why. It is the combination of wide busy roads lined with 3-4 stories tall buildings from the turn of the 20th century, and some socialist-looking architecture. Buildings are gray and streets dirty. That I find charming, none of that Vienna official-looking clean nonsense. There is a shiny shopping mall every now and then. Open markets with the usual shawls, flip flops, trinkets. It would be puppets, glass flowers, mugs in Prague. I see the Škoda dealership. Even that is Czech. After 15 minutes of driving back and forth on a stretch of 100 meters we convince the driver to let us out, we’ll find it on our own. It is right there, we passed it a million times. The foundation is in a teensy building, in fact it looks like a converted garage. It is the most efficiently used space ever. How many people can fit into one garage? There are about 8 computers crammed right next to each other in the front part. Behind them is a sliding door, a round table with 4 chairs around it, just enough space that you can wedge yourself in there to sit. Still behind the table are another three computers. A ladder goes upstairs, I imagine they must have been able to fit another twenty spots in there. Office is like a beehive, busting in seams with activity. I know that the foundation produces an insane amount of materials, works on dozens of different large scale projects. Some girls are sorting papers outside on the benches. We meet with “Dr. Jabed”. He is also of the ex-journalist sort, like Meenakshee. Dr. Jabed is a handsome rugged man, wearing green khakis, a wife-beater with a mustard yellow shirt over it, and a string of black leather around his neck. He is restless, talking about seven things at once. He’s a good catch, his foundation has very similar interests to ours, we will surely work together in future.
From here we are on the way to the Mariott again. Yesss. We catch an autorickshaw. Roof makes it feel safer than it actually is. All of them have ‘Don’t touch me’ written on the side. I imagine what must happen to one of these in a collision. A mashed tricycle. Tricycle sauteé. We have a meeting with two girls from a think-tank there. All meetings should be held at the Mariott. I clandestinely peak at my computer that I keep on a chair next to me. Email, what a luxury! After the meeting I embark on another mission to find postcards. In vain. Not to be found even at the Mariott. Funny that. They do have pajminas and shawls though. A turquoise one addresses me and demands to go home with me. How can I say no. We take a cab back to the burrow - it takes over an hour. Mumbai is mind-blowingly gigantic. There is a centre every fifteen minutes. All the money of Bollywood mixed right in with all the shocking poverty of the slums. Millions of people live in slums in and around Bombay. Somebody constantly sticks their hands into the cab, asking for money, selling baloons, flowers, candy, anything. It’s a mystery to me how those millions of people survive each day. Tara meets us again, we set out for the Starlit Café, on the roof of one of the buildings on the bay. The Bay of Bombay. It is full moon, harbor looks gorgeous. From up here you can’t see or smell garbage that swims around in the water. I order Murgh Baghdadi for dinner, it is delicious. Tara and Angad brought their friend along. Rohit Gupta, a fiction writer and a journalist. He has the most wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. “I don’t write, I just channel stimuli,” he says. “It’s not an art, I don’t do it by choice, I can’t help it. I am a sewer that this stuff just happens to go through.” Engineer by training he claims he just decodes messages that were coded elsewhere. He doesn’t believe in truth, in fact truth is not important at all. Truth does not belong to anyone, it is impersonal. So why care about it. It is the subjective that matters. I am mightily pleased. I want to listen to Rohit forever. Instead I finish my dinner and go back to the nasty burrow. This time I don’t mind the hotel at all. In fact I find it charming. My room is big and has a balcony with a table and two chairs. There is a pleasant breeze. One of the mushroom creations on the wall looks like a regal knight on a horse with an inflated belly. What more can one wish for? I fall asleep at eleven - close to unprecedented in my world. Ceiling fan is providing me with white noise more than anything.

Friday, 25th February
I wake up with a sore throat. I stand up, feeling dizzy. I walk to the balcony and peer down on the street, my hands are shaky. Not a good sign. Especially since I have to work with some 200 kids for two days from Sunday on. Ooooof. I walk over to the bathcloset. Somebody’s behind the plastic divide - sort of a half wall. I contemplate whether to take a shower or wait. The person is not leaving anytime soon. Screw it, I take a shower. My cleansing is accompanied by the other person’s violent vomiting, accompanied by genuinely meant cursing. I can survive, we street-smart travelers can handle anything. One breath at a time (one day at a time just seems such an inconceivably long prospect). I go find Hillel at Café Basilico. An attempt at breakfast. Can’t force the toast down. I stick to tea. Dabbling at work, not getting anywhere. At 11am we have a meeting with former Chief of the Police Force of Mumbai at Nehru Institute. The city smells of burnt rubber, dust, and a mix of decomposing food and fresh spices. Near the sea there is only one kind of smell though. It reeks of urine. Nehru Institute is a round sky-scraperish building. Chief is very polished, outspoken, well mannered, if a bit defensive. He is a very imposing chief. I am mostly silent, my palms are sweating. I don’t feel sleepy, but I’m not there either. Chief talks and talks, at least I take a lot of notes. Everything he says is discouraging and hopeless, India is one doomed paralyzed bureaucratic trap. Finally we part, thanking him for his motivational speech. In the elevator I remember I forgot to take a single picture of him. We proceed up again, posing around embarrassingly. Phew, down finally. On the way back we stop at the Taj Hotel, hoping to do some work. We fail. Sitting in the café I cannot connect to internet, and Hillel is dosing off behind his readings. After an hour or two of sustained efforts we give up. There is a large handcrafts supermarket around the corner. As if some higher power unleashed me after months of imprisonment, I dive into bags, sarees, teas, anything and everything. I buy chachkes for everybody.
For dinner we venture to a local Parsee restaurant, Olympia. We get a special treatment: that means forks and clean glasses with mineral water. We retire to our modest premises early, after strolling through the street markets, and after another rice ordeal. A girl convinces me to go buy her a bag of rice, that turns out to be more of a twenty pound sack of a rice. She probably gets tourists here often enough - people in the market are pointing their fingers at me, grinning. Oh well. When we walk out, I notice the girl hands the rice over to some man and walks back to her spot on the street. Hmmm.


Saturday, 26th February
I wake up at 3:44am, one minute before my alarm clock goes off, as usual. Not that I usually wake up at 3:44am. I wake up before my alarm clock goes off. We are on our way to Kerala in the south. In the morning, the ride to the airport takes only twenty minutes. I get a window seat on a plane and await Kerala landscape impatiently. I’ve heard so much about it. True paradise on Earth. As our plane starts its descend, I see vast green forests with rivers spilling out, intertwining through the greenery as a giant silver spider web. There are mountains with a soft fog resting on top of them. Bridges look like hairpins on giant ponytails. On the way from the plane I am escorted by a young, rather handsome gentleman who is quite unfazed by the fact that I am walking with someone else. He sets a pattern that I later label ‘ the Kerala phenomenon’. It goes like this, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman: “Welcome to Kerala, ma’am. Are you married? Why not? You’re not ugly. How old are you?” Then he adds: ”May I share something with you? You are very very attractive.” All the while he is bobbing his head from left to right like they all do and I cannot help but think of Baboo from the Seinfeld episode, shaking his finger at Jerry after he got him deported back to Pakistan: “You’re a bad man. Very very bad!” I try hard to control myself. The Kerala phenomenon is sometimes enriched by additional remarks or questions. One of the girls at the school we are about to go to asked me most seriously: ”Ma’am, are you a spinster?”
Hotel Abad in Cochin sends a driver to pick us up. Everything is green beyond belief, all shrubs and trees, every stem of every living green thing is in bloom. There are bright pink hydrangeas hanging off of fences, flowering magnolias, giant rhododendrons, from white to absolutely red. Streets are much better than anywhere else, everything seems clean and tidy. Certainly after Kolkata and Bombay. Our driver opines that it is because of the communist government Kerala had for a few election terms. Cochin has a small city feel to it. It may even be one, I wouldn’t know. People here operate in lakhs and krores and seem to vastly exaggerate population numbers. I was told Mumbai has twenty six million people and Bangalore about ten to twenty million (one to two krores). Cochin, our driver claims, has at least ten lakhs (a million), but it really looks like Liptovský Mikuláš, spiced up with palm trees and orange soil. We get to our hotel, it’s still early in the morning. We work for a few hours, then I embark on a tour of the city. I get two tour guides: a driver that the hotel called, and his friend, who actually speaks English. The two of them drag me around town for about three hours. We drive through the new town towards the backwaters, cross a bridge to an island. Backwaters are an inland sea - water from the ocean seeps up through the soil, creating salt water lakes connected with rivers and creeks. There are naval and military bases on the island that stretch to us from wherever an eye can see. Hordes of soldiers armed up to their teeth guard alongside the tall walls. We cross another bridge to the old town of the city. My guides stop on the bridge and won’t move until I take a picture. It’s a port like any other, but they feel very proud of it. That’s where oil tankers that carry oil from Mumbai oil fields are built. Or perhaps it was something else, I am not really listening that much. Finally we get to the old fort. That’s where merchants, missionaries and all sorts of other colonial adventurers sailed in, building mansions, churches, synagogues. We get to the bay, battling our way through a thick trap of vendors. This area was the outer boundary of the Tsunami wave this past December. Cochin wasn’t hit badly, only six people died, but many houses and businesses were swept away. We see fishermen with Chinese fishnets. They have an odd-looking large wooden machine where the poles serve as levers to lower gigantic netting into the water and to pull it out. They yell at me when I want to walk on - I have to watch. OK, I watch. Fishermen pull out the netting with some 4-5 squiggly fish. Not very impressive by any standards. Bad luck, they exclaim. They make me watch again their second, third, fourth attempt. No, I do not want to buy a fish. Or a bucket of fish, for that matter.
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After I fight them off, I battle a vendor with jewelry of all sorts - I end up getting a turquoise necklace with matching earings and anklet. The old city starts right on the beach - there is a remnant of the wall that surrounded the fort, colonial buildings, and most of all church upon church upon church. Unlike elsewhere, all buildings are well maintained, everything is clean and colorful. My guides drive me from place to place, but I don’t really feel like going into museums of all different sorts. They are panic - stricken. They have to drive me around for at least two hours and I have probably seen all there was to see already. To please them, I go inside to a Hindu temple turned into a museum with one of them. It has scenes from Mahabharatha and Ramayana on the walls, costumes, weapons, artifacts. The nicest thing about it is a little courtyard in the back. There you can pray to the God that removes all obstacles. I like that one. My guide, who has been accompanying tourists around town for years is inside for the first time. At least I have achieved that. Next I am forced into a huge expensive handcrafts store. It is full of carpets, furniture, bronze statuettes, silver and gold. It is intimidating. I announce to everyone left and right that I am a student and cannot afford to buy anything. I do buy a ring in the end. A granite ring, no less. They are wicked good, these merchants. I stumble out as fast as I can. So does my worldliness and street-smartitness. I appease myself that I really needed a serious ring anyway. Liar, liar, pants on fire. When the boys finally drop me off at the hotel, I am happy to be alone in my room. I find out there is a wireless connection in the business center, so I sit there perusing my email. I am discovered by DC Ravi, the very founder of the business school up in the mountains. The poor guy has traveled three hours up from Kottayam just to greet us, and was looking for us since two in the afternoon. Hillel has gone to see the inland sea. Ravi, as it turns out, spent seven years in Lowell, Mass., so we discuss Boston and environs. For a rich successful businessman he is extremely humble and shy. When Hillel comes back, he has to leave back for Kottayam almost immediately. We have dinner at the hotel. I venture outside on a sandals quest, I buy two pairs after trying about seven hundred pairs on. The store was already closed, they opened it up just for me when they saw me looking in.

Sunday 27th February 2005.
I am picked up by a Prince on a white horse in the morning. Well, horses are about two hundred, under the hood of a jeep, and Hillel is picked up by the same Prince. But the facts remain: I got a prince and a white horse, just like in that Slovak fairy tale. That’s the funny thing about Kerala. After centuries of being a merchants and sailors hub, people have names from all corners of the world. The jeep honks its way through Cochin and embarks on a four hour journey to the tiny village of Pallikkanum, where the DC School of Management and Technology resides. Countryside is beautiful. People cultivate rice paddies, bananas, tea, coffee, mangos, coconuts, and rubber. Business is not going well, Prince tells me that Malaysia is a tough competitor in rubber market, and China in tea. School was founded on a tea plantation that went bankrupt. DC Ravi bought some three hundred acres of land and decided to build a school. I am an instant attraction in every village we pass through. Kids point their fingers at me and yell something excitedly, adults either smile or frown at me. Nobody looks away. I practice my ‘senile professor smile’ - the sort of uncertain smile I developed for my students, or rather for adolescents that look like they might be my students. The driver is very amused, because I want to take pictures of the first banana tree I see, the first coconut tree, the backwaters, anything and everything. Our jeep starts climbing up to the mountains. I feel like Madonna in that Guy Ritchie BMW commercial- where she gets tossed and shoved every which way on a back seat. But being a worldly and street-smart traveler that I am, I assume a nonchalant expression as if I commuted this way to work every day. I do good, except my knuckles are white from clutching the handle above the window and my hip joints hurt from shifting pressure from foot to foot in order not to be propelled into the front seat or out of the window. We cut curves like Michael Schumacher. Behind one of them, there is an odd looking large horse, or is it a mule? It’s an elephant! An elephant! I am all excited and demand to stop, taking pictures of course. Driver rolls his eyes: ”It’s just an elephant...” I calm down and on we go up and up. Road is carved into the mountain, serpentines are very narrow. Driving is much like in the city - the only precaution is increased honking. The view opens under us - fantastic mountains and deep valleys of rainforests, mostly untouched by anyone. The road ends when we come to the plantations, it is dirt road from now on. I shake off all my pretense and hold on to anything available. People up in the villages are marked by lifelong hard work. They are shrunken and dry, bent towards the land they are working. They look at us with suspicion. We take the last curve and descend towards the school. It is gorgeous. White buildings with red slate roofs are perched on a mountain side. The view is breath-taking.
As we get out of the car, life on campus stops. They have been expecting us, in fact they cancelled school for three days because of us. Normally students would be in the classroom, even though it’s Sunday. They study for twenty five days non-stop, then go home for five days. They have classes from eight in the morning until ten-eleven at night.
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We are encircled by curious students. Two of them take a lead, they will be taking care of us while we are here. We proceed to meet the faculty. Most of them are young guys, probably handpicked by DC Ravi himself. Students are mostly from Kerala, a few from Tamil Nadu or Gujarat. They are mostly Christian. Devotedly so, although that doesn’t make them uptight or in-your-face converters. Just kind and considerate to the core. I have never encountered such a thing in a student body of any sort. We are taken to the cafeteria for lunch with faculty. There we’ll discuss plans for the next few days. We walk in, I freeze and a cold sweat pours over me. I didn’t realize I will have to eat with my hands. What was I thinking? I should have been mentally prepared for such a thing. It’s rice for lunch. And not the sticky rice that would at least cooperate with my new clumsy feeding vessels. It’s Basmati rice, where every grain is neatly separated. Few deep breaths. I talk about work, while trying to shake off rice and sauce that now cover my arm almost up to my elbow, probably much of my face, and all of the table. Everybody slurps and smacks and I cannot think one straight thought. Should I tell them I am sensory defensive? I don’t think they would quite grasp the concept. I just better get used to slurping. Sigh. Everybody is finished with their lunch, while I barely made a dimple in my pile of rice. They politely wait for me another forty five minutes or so, finally I give up. We agree to meet in the evening. Sudeep and Nidhin, our students-caretakers, take us to the guesthouse. It is all the way on top of the campus, one has to climb up there on a steep path. It has a stunning view. I review sheets for tomorrow’s workshops, brief moment of panic when one of the documents won’t open. I retype it at the speed of lightning. Then we meet with faculty again for a few hours, come up with a schedule, print out materials. In the evening I have to face the dinner again. Second time around it is not so unnatural to dip hand into delicious spicy sauces around. It comes with a naan, that is easier to handle than rice. I am offered silverware (I assume it is because otherwise they feel obliged to wait for an eternity for me to finish), but I refuse. After all, it is the best training for my worldliness and street-smartitness. If I can eat with my hands, I will survive anywhere. Resolve. Sudeep and Nidhin come to fetch us - they have rallied troops of students to meet us in the Activity Center. That is a nice open hut with a roof, with pleasant breeze rushing through the open walls, overlooking the mountains on the horizon. Here they gather every evening to study, chat, sing, work on projects, practice for art shows. Informal gathering does not translate into Indian. We have an effect of a student repellent - they disperse in a thin line around the walls of the Center. We say a few words and try to mingle with students. That is quite a challenge. I am terrified to think about tomorrow’s workshops. If they won’t participate, I’m done for. Sudeep and Nidhin escort us to the guesthouse (it is too dangerous for us to walk alone those 80-100 meters, apparently). I left a light on and windows wide open. How street-smart and worldly is that? My room is filled with fist-sized tsikadas, there are a few giant spiders and a plethora of buzzing and crawling insects everywhere. I attempt to work on my computer. There is a bird up near the ceiling. It is chirping and fluttering around. I am convinced I see a tarantula on the ceiling, too. I try to convince myself that those don’t live in India, but it doesn’t help much. I shut off the lights, keeping only my computer on. The screen attracts attacks of all sorts, something rather large hits me in the head. The brave adventurer dives for cover. I spend good fifteen minutes under a sheet and a thick blanket contemplating my next move. It’s boiling hot, I can’t stay under cover forever. I shut my computer off, listen to the buzzing quiet down. Rainforest outside is alive with all sorts of sounds. I shake last bugs off my bed, wrap myself in a sheet tightly (if tarantula bites me through it, will I die instantly?) and I stare into space paranoidly for a good while before I finally fall asleep.

Monday, 28th February
I wake up after a restless night at around five-six in the morning. Whenever the birds do. Sounds of awaking rainforest are incredible. So is the sunrise above the mountains. Everything is so calm and peaceful. It would be impossible to be depressed or irritated in this corner of the world. Perfect harmony of all elements. I am not sure if I’d think the same should I come back in rainy season. Six months of pouring rain nonstop. My own self is however not in balance. My throat is sore and I feel dizzy again. I go battle breakfast. I think I’m getting a hang of it. At least I am less sloppy if not faster just yet. Parathas are for breakfast, with a spicy potato sauce. And of course the local delicious tea with milk and a ton of sugar. At nine we start with our workshops. I have my own class, and it’s going good. Kids are really participating. The second workshop is even better, even though I am really pushing it, straining my voice. Lunch makes me feel really tired - all the teaching combined with a concentrated effort to get the rice to cooperate with my fingers. Third workshop is difficult, I am at the end of my rope with energy and all disoriented. It is like plucking hair out of a fuzzy blanket. So we join the groups together for the fourth workshop. Much better. I have not much voice left anyways. In the evening I have to put together an exercise for tomorrow and get everything printed out. We have dinner with the students - upstairs in the cafeteria. It is a big commotion, professors don’t come up there much. I stopped minding their giggling at my lack of skill in eating with one hand. If I have to use hands, I need as many as I can get in my plate. After dinner I play one of the futile ‘get online’ games - internet is tricksy here. It lets you connect for just long enough to see that you have emails, but not long enough to read them. I am escorted to the guesthouse by our handsome caretakers and asleep soundly as soon as the sun sets, in perfect harmony with everything buzzing and crawling and chirping in my room. Hiding under a blanket? Me? Never. Who ever heard of such a thing!

Tuesday, March 1st 2005
I wake up again with the rainforest. It is still gorgeous as ever, I open my windows wide to let the fresh breeze in. It comes from the woods, full of faint fresh and exotic smells. It would be very invigorating, but my head is throbbing. I try to make a peep, no use. My voice is gone altogether. We join forces for the workshops again, they go really well. Especially an interview exercise I wrote up last night gets students going. Some, that didn’t have time to take turns in all three prescribed roles are finishing it after class! I imagine my American students and wonder what sort of a miracle would I have to come up with to get them working after class voluntarily. These students amaze me constantly. Even if they’re just kids who don’t know much yet, they are extremely perceptive and adaptable. No matter that they don’t know the concepts, as soon as they see a lead towards an idea or a situation they can relate to, they jump at it and are perfectly able to build a whole system of ideas on the spot. Not that other students would not be able to do so, but few classrooms I have been in are so willing and hungry to work with you. It is a joy to teach. Towards the end of the first session I get chills all over. I wrap myself in my beautiful light blue pajmina, freezing in a 35̊C weather. Sudeep and Nidhin keep bringing me ginger tea that I am by now willing to give up my life for. When you think you are going to collapse any second, this liquid brings you from the clutches of Death and props you up for at least a little while. At the end of a second workshop professor Narayana gathers everybody together and announces that there will be a session for volunteers who want to get more involved with our project. Good. Then he says we need volunteers to raise their hands. Not good! My plan was to just show up and sit down with those few that stroll in and help them think through what needs to be done to get some student-run body off the ground. I freeze in horror. There is a moment of silence that feels like forever. If I haven’t had a fever already, I sure would get one now. They hate us, I think. They think we are bloody American fools (no matter that I am a Slovak) who came to talk their heads off and are glad to be rid of us. I sink into my chair and wish for the ground to open and swallow me. Then one hand comes up shyly. And another one, and a few more. Forty seven of them step forward to be the ‘student leaders’. Out of about seventy in the room. Now I have chills for another reason: What on Earth am I going to do with all of them? I know how to start an organization if I have, say, five people. But forty seven?! In any case I am so dizzy by now I resolve to just show up and play it by ear. They all know I’m sick anyway, it’s quite obvious. When I speak I sound like a rusty kettle. Or I feel like one anyway. We have lunch with students again. They seem to enjoy having us up there. They take turns sitting with us. Naturally, because it still takes me about an hour to go through rice with my hands, three sets of students will finish their lunch before I finish mine. I go to the workshop. This is my show. I have no plan. Luckily Sudeep steps up as a natural leader and addresses everybody with questions about what they want to do and how. I am mightily pleased and relieved. They are doing this on their own. All I do is help them steer towards important questions of their organization’s setup, division of work, etc. I propose they should perhaps have a smaller group that would meet more often and decide the day-to-day tasks and a general assembly that would meet once a month or in two months to monitor their work and decide on important things that determine the direction in which they will go as a group. They elect a Steering Committee. Originally they decide to vote for a group of ten people. But since fifteen students stand up as candidates, they approve all fifteen. I have to smile, I like how kind and appreciative they are of each other. Then they proceed to elect a chairperson. Most people urge Sudeep to run. Some other voices sound, and there are five candidates. Nidhin comes running to the front, he does not want to run even though he was nominated by his friends. He does not want to run against his best friend. I smile again. They are on a roll, all excited, fleshing out first ideas about projects. I get all nostalgic, remembering my own beginnings at the Helsinki Committee. I and my friends were nineteen and knew didley squat about how things are done or about reality as such. We wanted to solve the Roma problem in Slovakia. We set out on a field trip to the settlements, and came home depressed and disheartened, not knowing where to begin or what to even dabble at. It took years for us to put together a ‘Roma project’, and that only involved one small village. I try to keep the kids in bounds of reality. They are doing good. Steering Committee will meet tomorrow for the first time to figure out the basic division of roles and the first plan of action. I am as pleased as can be. Exhausted, but eternally happy. I am glad to see Sudeep and Nidhin behind the wheel of this whole project. They are both motivated, determined, and serious about their work.
I feel like I am on a vacation. The work is behind me and I can now fully enjoy the beautiful campus, with all the beautiful people in it. They indeed are beautiful people, did I already mention that? Lovely cocoa skin, nobody is overweight. Some boys could lose their mustaches, but what do I know. Perhaps girls here like it that way. But they are also beautiful inside. Not one sign of malice in any of them. Truly remarkable.
I venture to the Activity Center to check email, and end up chatting with students before, during, and after dinner until I go to bed, appropriately escorted. I get to know some of them better. Anitha is a beautiful girl who has her hands in everything. She joined the Steering Committe, and is already involved in a community development project, writing for the school’s newsletter and working, with Sudeep, on establishing a business magazine, to be launched this March. Rejna is very cute. She is the one asking me if I am a real spinster. She sits next to me: ”Ma’am, tell me something.” I smile, what would she like to know? Anything, really, it doesn’t matter. So we chatter, I show them pictures from Boston that I have on my computer. One of the guys, Sree, grills me on the topic of my boyfriends, within the lines of the Kerala phenomenon: how many boyfriends did I have? And, most importantly, are they all married now? Geeze, I don’t even know! Funny fascination. I keep telling him it’s history, it’s best not to ferret about in it. He calls me on the stuff we teach in our workshops: come to terms with the past, deal with it, dispute it, talk about it. Funny guy, clever as a whip. We’re joined by Nidhin and Sudeep. They still keep calling me ma’am, even though I asked them million times to call me by name. It is charming, they can’t help it. They were brought up that way. They were all brought up very well, too. Nobody on campus drinks, nobody would even think of it! Parents taught them it is bad and unseemly to drink. They would not do anything to contradict their parents, none of them. They also sign a contract when they start at the school, vowing to devote themselves fully to the school for the next two years - no vacation except for a few days for Christmas and for Easter. Part of the contract is that if anyone drinks alcohol, he or she cannot enter campus for twelve hours afterwards. Sudeep, Anitha, and a few others sing Malayalam songs, others join in or clap. They want me to sing. Luckily I have no voice. Though I do sound like an oversmoked, overdrunk cabaret singer, I don’t think I can actually produce ear-pleasing sounds right now. Nidhin accompanies me to the guesthouse. His English, or at least his daring to speak it has improved so much since we came. He tells me about what they do on campus when they don’t study. He plays soccer and cricket and gets involved in just about anything on campus. It is a joy to see him during the day - he is so alive, always laughing, always in the center of a group of people, running from place to place. He also happens to have a body and face of a Greek god and a fast and sharp mind. The young man will not be lost in his life. He is awfully shy around me, but finally this evening he talks somewhat more at ease. He never had to speak English before he came to the school. He understood, more or less, but he really learnt only at this school. I am impressed - he just plunged in and dealt. And dealt well. I putz around on my computer for a bit and fall asleep before Hillel comes back from the computer lab.
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Wednesday March 2nd, 2005
I wake up feeling a little better. Still no voice. I start coughing and hack out massive amounts of disgusting solid green element. Good grief, I wonder what the heck it is that I have. Ha, my voice is partially restored. Who really cares, I feel fine. I hum in the bathroom, enjoying my newly found vocal cords.
Hillel is leaving for Madrid this morning. We debrief and head for breakfast. Sudeep and Nidhin are waiting for us. We eat with the students, then say goodbye. Students line up to wave at Hillel. Jeep leaves and comes back multiple times - they forgot someone on campus it seems. I am to meet with the librarian Arun and with Sudeep and Nidhin about the students’ project and how to write a project proposal for their fund-raising efforts. They walk with me to find Arun, only to mumble that they have a class which they are already late for. Silly boys. I send them to class, we’ll meet later. I decide to walk around, now that I finally have time for myself. It’s unbelievably hot, so I wear a tank top and shorts. I pass the boys’ hostel, of course they’re all hanging out of the window, yelling at me as I walk by. Politely though, that is the Indian way. I walk down the dirt road, headed for the mountains. I have to wedge my way through a pack of cows. Or a herd, is it? They sure know they are sacred, they look me down with their large brown eyes asking how dare I disturb their chewing. I find lovely fragrant pink and orange flowers, I stuff my bag with them. I get to the end of a dirt road, there is a gaping valley between me and the mountains. I turn right and head for the rainforest. I come by an impressive rock formation, that seems to be a river channel during the rainy season. There is only a trickle coming through at this time. There is a fence at the edge of the forest. I climb over - I do need to see the rainforest. There is a tiny narrow path leading through the thick greenery. Dozens of birds are announcing my unwelcome arrival. After a few minutes I come across about ten foot long thin bamboo poles with red flags at their ends leaning against a tree. I wonder what they are for. Perhaps to keep track of each other when people come in a group? Perhaps it’s a hunting season? Or are these spears of some local nomads? I was told by the students that nomads live in the forests. Needless to say I rush back. I find the riverbed again, and lay down in the sun for a minute, absorbing the incredible energy from the rays and from the rock under me. When my skin feels hot, I decide to venture back to the campus. After all it is noon, sun is baking smack in the middle of the sky, and I have no sunscreen lotion on. It would be silly for such a worldly traveler to get a bad sunburn. By the time I get back to the campus, my shoulders resemble boiled lobsters. I have my lengthy lunch with two or three batches of faculty. I am getting much better, I can make balls of rice with tips of my fingers like a pro. Still a little slow for the rest of them. I walk with Arun to the Dean’s office. Sudeep and Nidhin are waiting. I tell them my comments and suggestions for the project proposal, we talk about their ideas for field trips and research. They leave and I play the ‘connect to Internet’ game for awhile. Sudeep and Nidhin come back after five minutes, all shy, shuffling their feet: “We would like to know something about you, ma’am”. What can one say to that. We sit down and spend the next two hours chatting away. I tell them about my family, they are particularly interested in what communism was like. They also want to know if people are different in different parts of the world and how. I try my best to compare Slovaks, Americans, Moroccans, whoever else I can think of. They hang on to every word I say. What do I think of Indians? Say, if they went to America, what do I think would be their greatest weakness? I talk to them about how individualistic and competitive Americans are and that they would probably get tricked and cheated very soon. They know they are gullible. But they maintain it is better in the long run. If someone tricks them, it’s only a short-term loss. They keep their integrity, good conscience, and remain at peace with themselves. I cannot agree more. For twenty year olds, they are incredibly grounded and reflective. They both have a clear idea about who they are and what they want to do: Nidhin will be a grand events planner and manager - that is a big hot thing right now in the field of management in India. He wants to do festivals, conferences, banquets. Preferably with his friends from the school. Sudeep believes in people management. Everything, after all, comes down to people management. Politics, conflicts, business, all matters of life and society. He is very skilled artistically. He writes and sings music, paints, writes for newspaper, as well as stories and poems. He wants to manage a company that has to do with arts in some way. Ideally establish his own. They wonder why I am called Dasha if my real name is Dagmar. I tell them that we all get nicknames in Slovakia as soon as we’re born. Every Dagmar is Dasha or Dada, every Alexandra is Sasha, every Maria is Maja. In India nicknames are not name-dependent, but given by the parents because of something the child does or says, or simply as an onomatopoeic term of endearment. All names have meaning. We realize ‘Sudeep’ and ‘Dagmar’ mean the same thing: day light or bright light. Nidhin is ‘gold’ or ‘treasure’. They are very proud of their friendship and only talk in superlatives about each other.
Tea is brought and Sudeep and Nidhin run for their classes, they are late again. I have a few more visitations from students, I move with them to the Activity Center, giving up all hopes of sorting my emails or doing any work. There I am spotted by Varghese, the property manager. He wants to show me around. We walk through the tea plantation - I pick a bunch of tea leaves to bring home to make my very own tea. He finds that funny. He shows me a coffee tree, a jackfruit tree, black pepper vine, cashew nut tree, cardamom palm tree. He brings me home to visit his wife and mother. They don’t speak English. Great. I make attempts at conversation with my hands and feet. Varghese lived in Nagaland for 29 years and brought his wife there from Kerala. Those are the only two places they saw. They agree I look like a Naga woman. Nagas are Mongolian. I think about this and realize that since I don’t look Indian, with my fair skin and cheekbones I must look just like Nagas to them. Not Indian equals Naga. On the way home I pick a few cashews - they are yellow fruits with the cashew nuts stuck at the end of them. Fruit is quite tasty, not sweet at all, a little bitter.
Sudeep and Nidhin take me to dinner, we spend rest of the evening at the Center again. About twenty students line up with their camera phones to take pictures of me. I sit there as in a photo studio, with my hair pointing every which way after a day of trekking in a blowing wind, sporting a brand new sunburn and a matching pink and red shirt. They couldn’t have picked a better day. Some of them ask for my photographs that I have on my computer. I download them to one of their laptops. They are all networked and have infrared connection - so from one laptop to another my photos travel. They are all very sweet. Gokul has a software for playing with photographs, he creates four versions of me, accompanied by a loud group cheering. He makes me into a Sherlock Holmes, with a beard and a hat, into a bride (of course!), into a creative hippie, and an intellectual. Good times. I feel ten years younger. The new program’s Steering Committee comes by and Anitha asks me if I would kindly attend their first meeting. They are very into it and try to hash out the program’s objectives, project ideas, time planning, publicity, all such things. I am awfully pleased with how things progress. They discuss possible names for their group. Shanthi, which means peace and harmony, seems to be it. At least I like it and I throw it around as often as possible, to make it stick. Ladies have to go to their hostel by 10pm, I stay with Sudeep, Nidhin, and Sree in the Center for a few more hours. They all want to show me something - Nidhin has a documentary on a communal riot in Marad, which is near where Sudeep’s family lives. Sree is showing me his web designs, all look very professional. Sudeep tells me about his writing and singing, his grandfather Menon Narayan Vallathol was a great poet. Nidhin and Sree dig into their computers searching for websites about the great poet immediately. Again they compete in who has better things to say about the other. Sree plays some Indian music. I’d like to have some on my computer, I say. I need to say no more, they herd their laptops, point them at each other with their infrared antennas and are compiling a CD for me from all of their resources for the next hour or so. In the meantime I chat with Prince who is about to graduate about the life after school. It will be difficult, after three years of intense community experience they have on the plantation. He will work for a software company in Bangalore, then will be probably sent to Los Angeles. He sighs when I ask him how will he manage to adjust to a new lifestyle. He cannot imagine going to work in the morning, then home from work and being alone there. I agree, I have only been here for three days and I cannot imagine going back home. I want to stay. I want I want I want.
Gentlemen compiled a CD with over 15 hours of music for me. 127 songs. From traditional Malayalam and Hindi through all sorts of variations to current Indian pop music. We are online so I show them some photos from Slovakia that I have on my website. There are some paintings I did, they examine them closely and quiz me on what meanings are behind them. Sree again grills me on issues of boyfriends and marriage. At this point it is just unbearably funny to me, so I tease him for a little while. Finally I get lighthearted reactions, they do have a sense of humor! Hooray. I am still a ma’am, although now they try to correct themselves, I become a “ma’am Dasha.” It is already midnight but Sree and Nidhin insist Sudeep shows me his paintings and plays his music. He runs to fetch the CDs. Both are very remarkable, he paints beautiful oils, all have a deep spiritual meanings of course. He has a soft warm voice, accompanied by music he composes on a computer. He even made scores for some TV programs and documentaries. Nidhin tells me how beautiful Sudeep’s lyrics are. “Tell her what they mean!” he says. Sudeep blushes (or almost blushes, it doesn’t show through that silky cocoa skin): “Oh, they are about love, that’s all,” and he hurries to play another song. I am naturally flattered beyond myself by all the attention and urgency of their need to share as many things with me as possible before I go. I ask Sudeep how he finds time for all the things that he does. “God sends these gifts to me, I cannot afford to be lazy.” Humph. I am completely humbled. I resolve to become a better human being as soon as I come home. All three of them escort me back to the guesthouse, politely waiting outside until I get into my room and turn the light on. What a day. I spend a long time looking at the amazing night sky - you can see every littlest star on the sky above the mountains here, it is almost full moon and if feels like what it must have felt like when the Earth was just created. I am getting worried about returning to Boston.
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March 3rd. 2005
I wake up later then I should have, proceed to stuff everything into my decomposing suitcase hurriedly. Hillel left a bunch of books and papers, I acquired two pairs of sandals, a heap of trinkets, some shawls and pajminas, two large bags of tea and cardamom. I close the damned thing just by sheer willpower and realize I cannot open it again before I come home. That’s OK, it’s hot, I will just wash everything at the hotel in Bombay tonight, it will dry by the morning. I rush down to have breakfast with the boys. I am finally blending in! It is unfair that I now have to leave. Sudeep hums some song at breakfast, Nidhin discusses an upcoming school soccer match with a friend, Asha is reading for a budget meeting they are going to. No overly polite conversations, I am a part of the team. Well, as we clever Slovaks say - you have to leave when it’s at its’ best. I climb into the jeep with a heavy heart, dreading the prospect of grey cold Boston and the aloneness we willingly impose upon ourselves there. I wave at the boys and watch as the campus disappears behind me in the dust. I seriously think about coming up with a way how I could manage all of our projects in India from India directly in the future. I am fiercely in love with this land and its people. Except for Bombay. That I can safely avoid for the rest of my life. Jeep propels down the steep mountains, we see kids in uniforms on their way to school, the dried up elderly folks heading for plantations. They smile at me every now and then, but it seems to me that they too got used to me, even if they see me for the first time in their life. We meet the same elephant around the same corner as on the way to school. Are they just posing with the elephant for tourists to take pictures of? When we get to Cochin, traffic is abominable as usual. We honk our way through, driver shakes fists at other drivers. I hear a yelp of a dog and a quick subsequent ‘thud’, ‘thud’. I don’t look back. Driver doesn’t look back. Instead he looks at me worriedly, to see if I noticed. Of course I noticed, I will not forget that sound until the day I die. I pretend that nothing happened, as if I drove over dogs every other day. A rugged traveler cannot get all mushy or show emotions. It could get her killed in a decisive moment. I wave goodbye to the driver and embark on the way to hated Bombay. It quickly and forcefully reminds me why I dislike it. The smell of dust and burnt rubber hits my nose as soon as I get out of the plane. After a long while the travel bureau finds me a nasty little hotel that is cheap enough, and where I can have my own bathroom. Everybody wants a tip again. Beggars sticking their hands into the car, some even hit me or pull on my shirt. I do my best, but by now I am thoroughly bitter and I feel dark. I want back to Pullikkanam. At least I manage to bark back at all the tip solicitors. No, you don’t get a tip now, I will give you something when you drive me back to the airport in the morning. And you, what have you done to get a tip? You are just standing here. They are all pushy, one of them has his nasty greasy hair dyed orange. Yech. I shut the door behind me, order in. Dinner is surprisingly delicious. Tikka Masala is hot as hell and the butter paratha is just right. I calm down. I decide to venture out to spend the last three hundred rupees I have. I don’t care who looks at me or what I look like. It’s working. Hardly anyone notices me. Great. I am at a whole new level of this worldly street-smart traveler game. I am It. I melt into crowds. I hassle with one of the vendors and get three bracelets and six packs of spices for me and the girls back at home. I feel wisened and toughened. I listen to my Indian music compilation before I go to sleep. In the morning the sleazy driver takes me to the airport. He has to share the tip with a porter who came along like a vulture, just to get some money out of me. He shouldn’t have taken him along, his fault. I have a few hours before the plane takes off. I stroll into one of the handcraft stores and see beautiful sarees. I think of Asha, Rejna, and Anitha. They tried to talk me into wearing a saree. What the hell. I try one on, a beautiful turquoise creation with yellow flowers embroidered on it. There is no way how I can ever wear this anywhere, but I don’t care. I buy it. And another peach shirt with flitters and embroidery. I stuff it into my computer bag, not daring to touch my suitcase. On the plane I sit next to two Indian graduates who just got H-1 visa to work for an American software company in Newark. Outsourcing in practice, sitting right next to me. On my right is a shriveled up man, who doesn’t eat anything the whole way (over 20 hours), and has a nasty cough. It seems he will cough his lungs up. He seizes my passport to see what my name is. Attempts conversation. I put headphones on. I can’t be bothered. Young men talk to me about India and America. We land in Paris for two hours, they are wondering if Paris is beautiful. Of course it is, I tell them, but Kerala is far more beautiful. They seem rather shocked to hear that. Nobody has said that about Kerala before. I shrug. Newark is cold, gray, and nasty, just like I expected. There is no food court at the train station, so I get some snacks at the magazine stand. Everything is disgustingly sweet. I try to curl into a ball against the wall. Perhaps if I just close my eyes, I can imagine I am sunning on a rock in that dry river channel outside Pullikkanam. I can’t, it’s too damn cold. Everybody is so pasty and self-absorbed. All of me is grumbling loudly. Kris picks me up at the South Station. I let out a heavy sigh, face the reality. Yes, there’s the Pru. Still bloody standing. I get home completely exhausted. I feel ready to move away from Boston, set out on a longer trip. India, Africa, Southeast Asia. Who knows. With that thought I am able to finally fall into a deep dark coma.