Three Ways to Know You're Back in California

My parents came to visit this weekend, and a few things happened which confirmed we were back in California, a place unlike any other:

1. You are reminded that Steve Jobs is your neighbor. That's what you call someone you see sitting at an outdoor cafe when you are walking to dinner, right? We were in Palo Alto, on our way to our favorite Mexican place, and we stopped to check the menu at a new restaurant. Credit Jessica for spotting the incognito Mr. Jobs, who was wearing a deceptive yellow t-shirt in lieu of his usual black. Apple fans will be happy to know that he was eating steak. With vigor.

2. The beach is filled with naked men flying kites. We took Violet and a friend to San Gregorio State Beach for a picnic. After the meal, Jessica and I left the girls with my parents and took a romantic walk down the beach. Romantic, that is, until we started seeing pasty overweight men hiding in the bluffs, sans maillots. To their credit, these gentlemen kept their distance, so we weren't blinded by the whiteness of their flesh (we're still not used to the prevalence of white people in this country). In fact the only nudists who came close enough for us to see the whites of their eyes were a couple of toned and muscular lads dipping their toesies in the frigid San Mateo surf. No fear of shrinkage, apparently.

3. Old friends pretend not to know you. And you, them. This scene would never happen in India: you are sitting in a restaurant having lunch with your family and a woman you used to know (before she and her husband divorced and she moved back to the midwest) walks in and starts looking around. She takes off her sunglasses and you make eye contact, confirming her identity (and she, presumably, confirming yours), but when she sits down with her friend at the next table, neither of you say hi, hello, or even hey. It's a game of chicken, waiting to see who will cave and make a greeting. But you have underestimated her determination. Forty five minutes later, you pay your check and leave without saying a word.

There's No Place Like Home

We made it. After an epic seventeen-hour flight from Dubai to Los Angeles, we arrived in the United States of America last Monday. The country was obsessed with the question of whether Congress would raise the debt ceiling, but we, the newly repatriated, were interested in much more pedestrian things. For example drinking water. Thanks to the ineptitude of United Airlines, we missed our connection to San Francisco and got bumped to a flight the next day. Luckily LA is the best place in the world for us to be stranded, because my family lives nearby. So we took a cab to my parents' house and then, because they were not home, promptly stretched out on the sidewalk. Why the sidewalk? Well, for one thing, because nobody was stretched out there already. Also because there were no stray dogs. And because it looked clean. After a few lazy, jetlagged moments on the concrete, I realized I was thirsty and began to wish I had purchased a bottle of water before we left the airport. But then I remembered! I leapt up, uncoiled my parents' garden hose, and shot long blasts into my mouth. Jessica did the same. Violet thought we were crazy.

I don't know how long it will be before I get used to drinking from the tap. Every night when we run our toothbrushes under the faucet, it feels a little naughty. I think Violet and Jessica feel this way about wearing tank tops too. That is, they would feel that way about tank tops, if it weren't so damn cold here! Apologies to any readers suffering heatstroke in the middle part of the country, but here in the San Francisco area, it is about 75 in the sun and 60 in the shade. In August. I am reminded of the time Jessica said, shortly after we arrived in India, that she realized she had been cold and sleep-deprived for the last four years (ie, since we moved to Northern California). I feel bad bringing her back here, but--did I mention you can drink from garden hoses?

Taking care of various chores over the past week (utilities, groceries, auto maintenance, etc.) I have had a realization of my own. Although our life was on the surface much easier in India--because we had servants to iron our clothes, drive us to and fro, cook our food, and so forth--in fact life was more difficult there. Say you want to buy a bag of pasta. You have to call the driver and wait half an hour for him to pick you up. Want a visa extension? Good luck with that. There is just more friction in daily life over there. Part of this is contextual--friction caused because I was a foreigner--but most of it is cultural. Indians don't think much of efficiency. In fact many of them believe (wisely, I think) that decreasing the number and duration of face to face interactions is not necessarily a good thing. My colleagues at the university in Hyderabad, for example, understand that a good portion of each day will be spent in perfunctory conversation with peers. To an American observer, this is wasted time. To an Indian it is a job requirement. And not a bad one, either. Want to get a chai?

Of course, this is not to say I miss the Foreigner's Registration Office. Jessica and I made one last stand there on the day before we left, begging for permission to leave the country one day later than her residency permit prescribed. I have grown accustomed over the years to Jessica waltzing effortlessly, thanks to her superior negotiating skills, into outcomes I could only dream of achieving, and that is exactly what happened: we were out of there by two pm, exit stamp in hand.

Of course, this being India, the guy at the immigration desk at the airport didn't even ask to see our paperwork, so we might as well have let everything expire.

Most of my re-entry observations have been the ones I expected--the miracle of clean water, lack of litter, quantity of white people, girth of those white people--but there have been some surprises as well. One is the friendliness of the average American. From the customs officers at the airport to the guy who smog-checked my car, we have been met by nothing but smiles and helping hands since we arrived. Maybe these people were all holding knives under the table, but it seems to me that Americans are a friendly bunch of people.

Another surprise is the almost baroque silliness of the American upper class. This past weekend we went down to Carmel, a town of rich dog-lovers and probably rich dogs (a la Leona Helmsley). I can't tell you how many times I wanted to stop someone--invariably a white woman between the ages of fifty and seventy, with eerily glossy skin, leading a flock of tiny poodles by a cat's cradle of leashes--and say, "In India, there are people living like dogs!" But I was afraid she would turn it around on me and say, "Yes dear, but in Carmel, there are dogs living like people."

And what do you say to that?

What it's like to be a writer (when your wife is a businesswoman)

Yesterday Jessica was home sick, which meant she had a rare opportunity to see me working. It looks like this: me with my laptop, typing, hour after hour, all day long. She said she was glad she didn't work at home, that it would be too boring for her.

So five o'clock rolled around, then six o'clock. Violet went down to the courtyard to play with her friends. Jessica said, "Are you still working?"

I said, "Yes. Are you surprised?"

She said, "Not that you're working, I knew you worked. I'm just surprised it amounts to so little."

Wrapping Up

We're about a month away from our departure date. All transitions should be clean and no-sense so as to reduce the amount of stress of those going through them. They never are. Uncertainty around my job when we return is causing some anxiety though I'm trying to remain upbeat about it. This is making it difficult to book a final vacation and tickets home. (Problems that are good ones to have.)

Nick's 35th

As the blog posts document, we've followed the typical trajectory of homesickness. We're in a final phase that has been (in part) fueled by our birthdays. (Hooray for middle age! It's finally here! We've awaited your arrival breathlessly for as long as we could remember!) We've been relishing what we love about living in India AND permitting ourselves to do some profligate customary tourist shopping (pashminas, madubhani artwork, more Hyderabadi pearls, etc...)

Mmm...Pudina dosa

Yesterday was a classic Saturday in reveling. Our wonderful cook, Saraswati (her name is for the Hindu goddess of knowledge, learning, and books), made the most wonderful South Indian lunch for us. Pudina dosas with masala and fresh coconut chutney with a side of sambar. Translation: fermented lentil pancakes filled with fresh mint chutney and a mashed potato-curry concoction. You dip these in delicious savory coconut chutney and eat a watery slightly-sweet dal on the side.

Now that's coconut chutney!

If I haven't expressed my gratitude to Saraswati in these blog posts yet - let me do so now. Every Saturday she makes us a delicious lunchtime feast (which is usually followed by a leisurely afternoon nap that I am slightly ashamed to fess up to. When we awaken, the house is clean, dinner is made, and tea is served.) On the weekdays, I get home exhausted and drained to find a nutritious and humble meal laid out on the table. Nick has been freed from the bondage of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during the weekdays when he's home writing. Saraswati embodies, in short, everything we will miss about our life here. I'm looking forward to sending her off with all of the kitchen supplies we purchased to make her cooking more efficient (a modern rice cooker, a food processor/blender, some pots, and china). I advised her to start a catering business, but she just laughed. The catering model may never make its way to India with the longstanding servitude of the Indian housewife and low labor costs.

After Violet's final Spanish lesson (her tutor is moving to Mumbai to attend a graduate program) we went out on one of our exploration/shopping trips. Nick and Violet were delighted to find our Guru (who lately is missing a front tooth) Yoga Master's  advertisement in front of his mythical Yoga & Meditation Centre. We visited our favorite local Kashmiri handicraft store, and then pulled over on the side of the road to have tea at a "local place" with our driver, Nayeem. (I'm mercifully omitting the hour-long massage I had at a local spa with my employee discount!)

Violet pays tribute to our Master

We got happy news last week that it looks like one of my buddy's from California will be our final visitor. She just began working at a start-up whose offices she'll be visiting in Bangalore. We're looking forward to reconnecting with all of you next month!

Staying Connected

Jessica observed the other day that at this point in history it doesn't matter where on earth you live, because so much of your professional life occurs online. That is certainly true for her, and for the writing side of my career. I only speak to my literary agent a couple times a year, for example. A month ago we had an hour-long Skype call to discuss my latest manuscript. I was in a Holiday Inn in Goa. It was night for me, morning for her--but there is a time difference to negotiate between California and New York, too. It was a productive meeting.

Okay, so Jessica's statement is not so true for doctors, teachers, and others who work face-to-face with clients and colleagues. But she got me thinking about other applications of the phenomenon of distance-irrelevance. One of the things I like best about living abroad is that my long-distance friendships and familyships have been unchanged by the change in distance. I only see my parents two or three times a year, for example, but I have corresponded with them more since I've been in India and feel like I have a better sense of what's going on in their lives from 8000 miles away than I did from 400.

The same is true is with old friends. To a friend in Virginia, what does it matter if I live in California or India? Either way, our relationship consists of typed words. And because I have been corresponding more since I've been in India (because I have more time, because it seems like the right thing to do...) these long-distance relationships feel stronger here than they did when I was in California.

I also feel like a better US citizen here. Mostly this is because I have more time--you could argue that if I had more time to browse the New York Times online from my office in California I would feel just as well-informed. What I'd like to point out, though, is that for a writer (or a computer programmer, or a day trader, or anyone who sits by himself in a room all day) the feeling of "localness" is no longer defined by where you are. For example, I have a "Menlo Park, CA News" heading on my Google News page. News articles from all over the web that mention Menlo Park show up there. I find that by reading that list of articles, I feel more Menlo Parky than I did most weeks when I was living in Menlo Park--weeks in which I rushed up and down the peninsula by car and train sometimes twice a day, grading papers in every scrap of time. Even the most annoying hallmark of localness--reminder emails from the elementary-school class parents--have continued to find me here. And I have continued to delete them, unread.

So yeah, Jessica, you were right. As long as you and Violet are with me, it doesn't matter where I live.

Indian Fiction Roundup, Part 1

Maybe the best thing about being in India is that it has given me time to read. In the US there is always something to do besides reading--laundry, dishes, grading, mowing the lawn--that reading ends up getting pushed to the end of the to-do list. Here, with all those chores taken care of, we have been able to indulge in kitab khana (in Hindi: "book food").

I have read mostly Indian fiction since I've been here, and I thought I would write up my impressions in a series of posts exploring Indian fiction in English, past and present.

My greatest discovery has been the amazing novels of RK Narayan (1906-2001). I am ashamed to say that I had never read anything by Narayan before coming to India, but now that I have, I realize that many of my favorite Indian writers were influenced by his work. Narayan is considered the first major Indian author to publish exclusively in English (he is also derided for this). His first novel, Swamy and Friends, was discovered by Graham Greene in 1935, who recommended it to his British publisher. Narayan sets all his novels in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. His work was adapted into an extremely popular public-TV series in the 1980s, and if you mention the word "Malgudi" to anyone here, that is the connection they will make.

I have read five or six of his novels now, and my favorite is probably The Guide. The title character, Railway Raju, works as a tour guide for foreigners visiting Malgudi. I was especially interested in him because we have met so many of these guides during our stay here. Narayan--who always knew his audience included a large percentage of foreigners--surely counted on this. Anyway, the plot gets going when Raju takes a scholar and his wife to see some ancient caves near Malgudi. Raju promptly falls in love with the wife--and she, neglected as she is by her workaholic husband, falls for him. I don't want to reveal too much, but it is a fantastic story of reinvention and rebirth, and ultimately of disappointment.

My second-favorite Narayan novel is The Vendor of Sweets, a refashioning of the prodigal son story using a Malgudi sweet-vendor and his expatriate son. The son returns with a foreign wife and a new set of morals. It is reportedly Narayan's saddest book, although that honor would have to be shared, in my opinion, with The English Teacher, which draws on Narayan's own experience as a young widower. Finally, I also recommend The Painter of Signs, a copy of which was given to me by my sister (thanks, Megan!) just before we left the US. This one is about feminism, population control, and the way love sometimes takes a back seat to principle.

Okay, one more Narayan book. I would be remiss if I did not mention My Dateless Diary, Narayan's memoir of the year he spent in the US (I think it was 1953) on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He's not exactly the Indian de Tocqueville, but he's close. Maybe if de Tocqueville had hung out with Aldous Huxley in LA...

Moving on. Few English majors these days earn their BA without having read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The book is a standard text in "post-colonial" literature courses, and with good reason: it is a masterpiece of historical fiction. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, was born at the strike of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment when India was declared independent from Britain--and so his life is an extended metaphor for independent India. Rushdie also riffs on three major Indian religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) and a host of other topics which make for excellent term papers. The thing is, few English majors really enjoy the book. I was lucky enough to have missed it in college--I say lucky, because when I finally read it a few months ago I did not have the baggage of a first, forced reading. I thoroughly enjoyed Rushdie's playful, rambling prose, his cartoonish characters, and his deft treatment of historical circumstances. If you know the basic outline of 20th-century Indian history, it is even more fascinating.

Another Bombay-focused novel that I enjoyed is Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. Somebody told me this was an Oprah book. I guess that's possible, but if so, it was an unusual choice. It's about two sets of characters--a group of Parsis and a group of Hindu Dalits (or untouchables)--who end up together in a small apartment during Indira Gandhi's martial-law Emergency in the mid-1970s. Mistry's narration is much straighter than Rushdie's, but no less masterful. Because his mode is more realistic, you see the characters and their circumstances more clearly. For example, Mistry takes you inside a jhopadpatti, or shantytown. But because his aim is not to shock you with the horrible conditions, he portrays it like any other neighborhood. Kind of.

If you are interested in slum life, I highly recommend Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. You may have heard of this novel. It's by an Australian convict who escaped a maximum security prison and fled to Mumbai, where he reinvented himself as a slum doctor and mob operative. There's no telling how much of the book is real and how much is fiction, but it follows the outline of the author's life fairly closely. But shock value is not the reason to read Shantaram: this guy is actually a hell of a fiction writer, and the 900 pages feel like half that many. He takes you inside the Cuffe Parade slum in Mumbai (where he set up his accidental clinic) and the notorious Arthur Road Prison, where he was beaten and starved to within an inch of his life. There is even a love plot--with some very flowery, Bollywoody sex scenes. I don't normally like crime fiction, but I loved this book.

Next time: Indian pulp!

Going Negative

On this blog I have tried to be as generous as possible in my reportage. I have given India the benefit of the doubt on everything from separatist riots to shitty New Years Eves in gay bars to negotiating the red tape of the immigration department. I never wanted to go negative. But a man can only hold off so long. Today, after another three hours wasted at the foreigners' registration office (and facing another three tomorrow) I have composed a list of things I really can't stand about this country:

Dishonesty

Academic plagiarism and political corruption get all the press--and rightly so, as both are endemic here--but I have noticed plenty of other kinds of lying as well. Our house staff, for instance, have both proven to be liars. We had to fire one of them last week because we discovered she was asking for time off not for physical therapy, as promised, but because she had another job. The other servant (the cook) basically pulled the same stunt on another family in order to come work for us. We found this out much later, when she locked herself in the bathroom one Saturday afternoon while Violet was having a playdate with a school friend. Turns out the girl was a family friend of the cook's spurned employer. Yes, you got that right: a grown woman was hiding from an eight-year-old. In a restroom.

Superstition

There was a holiday last month called Akshaya Tritiya, which was widely advertised by banks and jewelers, because astrologers had declared that it was an auspicious day to buy gold. As you might expect, the price of gold coins and bars (Indians buy these in astounding quantities) shot up that day, but people agreed to pay the premium because...it was an auspicious day to buy gold. Yes, people honestly believed that if you bought gold on Akshaya Tritiya, it would beget more gold. Like golden mice breeding in your safe. Here, astrology is not just a pastime of waitresses and cat ladies. Marriage ceremonies, for example, often occur in the wee hours of the morning because the family astrologer decried that time to be the most auspicious.

Oppression of Women

Like in America, the local-news page of the daily paper is filled with items from the police blotter. Most of these involve women being brutally murdered in the villages outside Hyderabad, and occasionally in the city itself. Most often the deceased is a young woman whose family was unable to pay the dowry demanded by her husband's family. Dowry is technically illegal in India, but plenty of families still demand it. Many observers decry it as a lower-class thing--a way for poor families to make a buck by literally auctioning off their daughters. But several reputable sources tell me that the practice is just as common among upper-middle-class families--and I would argue that it is more wanton in those cases, because the demands are more venal. (A rich family doesn't strictly speaking need a new refrigerator the way a village family might, but while they're making the list.... Think of it as marriage registry, Indian style.) Sometimes the bride's family is unable to deliver everything they promised. So the collateral (the bride) is repossessed. I wish I were exaggerating. I read this story three or four times a week. And the newspaper only covers this state.

Filth

Let me be clear about this: I am not a germophobe. But I am a pissing-in-the-street-a-phobe. And a hocking-loogies-in-the-pool-a-phobe. And a restaurant-restroom-grosser-than-a-set-from-Naked-Lunch-a-phobe. I am too young to remember America pre "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" but it could not have been as bad as this. On the train home from school I once watched a woman methodically unwrap six skeins of yarn, throwing the clear plastic wrappings one after another out the window of the carriage. I feel like a prig reporting this, because who cares about litter when people are starving, right? But I don't see the benefit of littering to the litterer, or street-pissing to the pisser. Is the convenience worth the cost? Friends here have told me that they know Indians in the US who obey all the strictures about trash bins and recycling and so forth when they are in America, but when they come back here they revert to throwing their trash on the ground. It pisses my friends off, too, but obviously it's going to take more than an (unenforceable) littering fine to change the culture.

The Music in Restaurants

Last Sunday afternoon Violet was over at a friend's house. Jessica and I decided to go out for lunch, just the two of us. It would be nice, right? Maybe even romantic. But it was ruined--as every restaurant here is ruined--by a soundtrack of American lite hits from the eighties. Here's a playlist from last Sunday's lunch: "Stuck on You" by Lionel Richie, "Only a Woman" by Billy Joel, "Against All Odds" by Phil Collins. There was a Hall & Oates number, too, but I don't remember the name. I think I've heard "I Had the Time of My Life," from Dirty Dancing, in half a dozen restaurants around town. Why? Beats the fuck out of me. And in the case of Sunday's restaurant, it wasn't even Lionel Richie singing: it was a sound-alike.

Oppression of Women, Part Two

You know it's time to leave India when your eight-year-old daughter says she can't wear shorts in 110-degree weather because "it would not be modest."

Oppression of Woman, Part Three

In India it is illegal to use ultrasound scans to determine the sex of a fetus. This is because male children are strongly preferred, and the government recognized that the scans were leading to sex-selective abortions. But this has not solved the problem. The sex ratio (defined as the number of girls born per 1000 boys) has fallen over the last thirty years from 945 in 1981 to 914 today. In the northern states of Haryana and Punjab (near Delhi) the ratio is only 830. Some doctors are still performing sex-determination scans, but there is also a crisis of "disappearing" infant girls. Experts disagree on the root cause: some say it's economic (see the discussion of dowry, above), while others argue that it is patriarchal (the need to continue the family name, etc.)

The Mango Poems

This mango once had 4 brothers and sisters. It wants me to eat it.

1.
Sublime mangoes embody India. 
Earthy and hot like the summer sun. 
Bright orange pulp. 
If the juice doesn't run down your chin, 
you didn't eat yours with the proper fervor.


2.
Words cannot describe the flavor of a mango.
Today's had yellow flesh.
A nation-wide past-time, mango-eating.
The endless debate of which variety from which region is superlative.
Juice between my fingers.

This mango is cut and ready to be eaten after dinner. Goodbye, dear sister!

3.
Mangoes like butter.
I am told they create heat.
Monsoons are coming.


4.
June showers today.
Cheerful golden balloons.
Mango festival.

Violet's Birthday

Soon after we arrived in India last December, Violet started talking about her birthday. It was clear that she was anticipating the occasion much more than in years past.

At first she was worried that she wouldn't receive any presents, but after we'd been here a while, and she'd seen the wares for sale, she realized there were plenty of suitable gifts in India, and that she would probably receive a few of them on her birthday.

Then she got this notion that no one was taking her birthday seriously. She decided that her birthday should be something like a weeklong festival, with life literally coming to a standstill (no school, no summer camp, Mommy stays home from work, Daddy doesn't write, and so on).

Jessica and I eventually figured out that her birthday had come to represent all of the slights and indignities she endured in moving to India. She was worried she would have no friends, for example. And that her parents would be too busy to pay attention to her. Neither of these is true, and last Friday we set out to prove it.

We took a vanload of girls to Hyderabad's best Italian restaurant, bringing with us a delicious cake baked by a neighbor.

The evening had its rough spots. Some Indian children reach school age without ever having been disciplined, so they had a hard time with "Jessica Aunty," who was happy to help them make up for lost time. And we had an incident in the restroom (but what's a birthday party without one of those?)

Tell me, does this look like a fake smile to you?

Our little technophile

I am confident that our babe can now survive in the wild. I don't know whether it's our station in India, her age, or my unnatural attachment to my laptop and smart phone; but Violet has acquired a few new survival skills worth mentioning...

Violet's morning ritual: emailing her grandmother and cousin and video chatting with her California friends

Take this sample email I got while sitting in a meeting at work (while her father was also at campus).

Subject: Oh No!!!!!!

Mommy, 

Saraswathi has not come................ 

Boooga

Violet was distressed that our cook had not come by 11 in the morning, so what did she do? She pulled out her dad's computer, entered his password, logged into his gmail account, and sent me this note.

Here are a few other classics that I hope she won't mind me sharing for posterity...

Subject: hi hi in the sky

Dear Mommy,

This book is soooo exciting! So I'm just going to finish it and start an A to Z mystery. Anyways, it will make up for the TV I used to watch a lot. I swam already. Maybe Daddy and I can go for a coconut. See you at 7:30, Mommy. I miss you!

Love, Violet

------------------------------------------

Mommy, 

Today was the worst day of my life at camp. Because we were writing stories and we had to make it about a certain picture and Bidushi only wrote one sentence. 

Then we graded each other. I was being honest. I gave Bidushi a 4 out of 10. Mine was a good story and deserved a 7 or a 6. But Bidushi gave me a 3! 

Okay, here's the worst part of my day. We were painting and I accidentally knocked down a bottle of red paint on the floor and it went on the cupboard and on the wall and a little bit on my backpack.  

Love, Violet

I think I must the luckiest 60-hour work week mom in the world to get notes like these between all-hands meetings and performance reviews. 

But how anyone can possibly function in society on her own at 8 years old, you ask? People! She even knows how to text. Nick and I had a late dinner in a hotel in Kerala a few weeks ago, and she begged us to go back to the room to go to bed. We took her up to the room and then finished up our meal (over-protective parents, judge at your own risk). As we were heading back to the room, I noticed I had a text message. It said, "When will you be done with dinner?"

These two developments may be more pride-inducing than her first smile, her first steps, etc...If she can send me an email when she's at home or send me a text, she can care for herself. But the cake-topper is that she's begun building power point presentations and sending them to me. This I find a little more disturbing, but in a strange way, I suppose it comes with the territory when you have a mom like me. And I guess kids need to know their way around technology these days. Is it sick that I promised Violet that she can come to my office to deliver a presentation on her birthday? 

Srilakshmi's Wedding

On Friday at exactly 9:31 am, one of my team members, Srilakshmi, married Sridhar for love. Sri and Sri (as they affectionately allow people like me to call them) have known each other since they were kids. Since they were both Brahmins - it was a match made in heaven according to their families.

Sri has been preparing for the wedding for months. One Monday I asked her how her weekend was, and she replied, "So busy, Jessica! I was sari shopping for my wedding."

"How many saris did you get?"

"10!"

"10! When will you wear them all? How could you possibly need 10 saris?!"

"Oh Jessica - I will wear them throughout my wedding." This is when the ladies surrounding Sri pipe in to explain that every couple of hours during the wedding, she'll change into a new 9-yard sari - in fine silk and no petticoat!

Sri invited our entire team to the wedding and told them that 9:31 had been designated the auspicious time for the wedding (I understand that the "marriage act" is also assigned an auspicious time which may or may not fall on the same night as the wedding), but naturally Sri did not mention that...

Meera, the kind woman on my team who meets me every Friday morning in the locker room to assist me with tying my sari (I wear one weekly and I can nearly tie it myself) arranged the collection for a wedding gift and coordinated our travel to the wedding Friday. Three of us (and Nick and Violet) arranged to leave the office at 11. Sri's wedding was on the other side of Hyderabad, close to Nick's university campus, so it would take well over an hour to get there. Our plan was to stay for an hour and have lunch (which apparently is perfectly appropriate - since the wedding ceremonies would commence at 6 am and go well into the night; people come and go throughout the day. We even saw guests sleeping in chairs and on the floors). My boss graciously gave us leave knowing that it would be a highlight of our Indian experience. Oh and it was...

An auspicious sign...

When we got out of the car, I started squealing about the poster with their faces that was posted outside of the wedding hall. As we approached the lobby, Sri's brother materialized (I immediately recognized him given their likeness), and said my company's name. "Come!" he said. He whisked us into a dancing crowd where Sri and Sri were holding hands (they held hands the entire time we were there). Sri was laden with flowers and henna and gold. Her groom was shirtless wearing a yellow dhoti.

The lovely bride and groom.

Sri's proud father greeted us (also shirtless) in a beautiful white and gold silk dhoti. There was a lot of bowing and gratitude for our presence. It was overwhelming. Soon we were introduced to Sri's mother who held my hands in hers. Sri's sister in-law also guided us around the dance circle after discreetly instructing me to fix my sari so that it was covering the entirety of my blouse.

Me with three women on my team (from left) Anaisha, Amulia, and Meera.

Then we were escorted to the front of the room by Sri's father where we sat in front of a TV monitor to watch the proceedings.

Violet in front of enormous vats of food.

Before long, a friend of the family took us up to have lunch early, because they understood we had to get back to the office. There Brahmins (also shirtless and wearing dhotis) served us a delicious South Indian feast - roasted channa, dahi wada, poori chole, puli hora, donda kai, brinjal, and laddoo. We ate with our hands and gazed at everyone's beautiful silk saris.

After lunch, we watched the Brahmin priests conduct various ceremonies around a fire that Sri and Sri sat in front of.

Marriage rites (note the hand holding!)

Sri took a break to come and show us where they had hidden the letters of her new husband's name in her henna designs. (Purportedly, he can only conduct the marriage act at the auspicious time AND once he's identified his name. Again, this information was not shared by his lovely bride.) Soon it was time to go, but what a joyous communal occasion. As we were leaving, Sri's father accompanied us saying what an honor it was for us to come. The married ladies in our party were given a wedding favor - a silver plate, betel leaf, banana, betel nuts, spices, and blouse material. We were also blessed with some yellow and red powder on our foreheads.

Sri - wishing you many years of happiness and loads of fertility (which I wasn't allowed to write in your card...)

Dharamsala

Namaste. We are back from the mountains.

Our three days in Himachal Pradesh felt like a week. The air was clean, the temperature was cool--basically, it was the anti-Hyderabad. Yes, Hyderabad has its merits, but natural beauty is not one of them.

We stayed at Jagatram Niwas, a guesthouse in the hills outside Dharamsala. The proprietor, Bavinder Singh, grew up here in the village of Heini.

Bavinder joined the Indian foreign service and worked for a few years in Pakistan before returning home to build the guesthouse with his brother. Their father still lives next door. Violet spent some fun evenings with Ansika, Bavinder's six-year-old niece. Here's a video of the girls playing cricket with a basketball. The colorful structures you see in the background are shrines dedicated to the goddesses Durga and Kali. Bavinder's son is lighting the shrines in anticipation of the evening puja.

Almost exactly a year ago we were in Yosemite for another long weekend, and I could not help comparing the two destinations in my mind. Both are spectacularly beautiful. However, like Indian yoga teachers (who are both more and less spiritual than their American counterparts), Indian mountain retreats are both more and less inspiring than American national parks. To begin with the "more," let's just say that I love the Sierra Nevadas, but they are hills compared to the Himalayas. I read the other day that the highest mountain outside Asia is a 6900-meter peak in the Andes; the Himalayas have over 100 peaks higher than that. So this is the world's center of mountain-ness. But it is also the center of the world's population. Which means that even after an hours-long trek through pristine wilderness, you are likely to end up at a cafe selling carbonated sugar water, and chances are you will have to share the triumph of the climb with a bunch of Punjabi guys smoking hash in their underwear and daring one another to jump in the freezing pool.

Then again, you might be alone. But there will be a cafe.

Can you believe I've made it several paragraphs into a post about Dharamsala without mentioning the town's most famous resident, the Dalai Lama? Well, His Holiness was out of town (in California, ironically) but we made a trip to the Norbulingka Institute, a center H.H. established for the preservation of Tibetan arts and culture. The gardens are meant to resemble the original Norbulingka complex in Lhasa, Tibet--now part of the People's Republic of China. Walking around the magnificent gardens at Norbulingka, you can't help but feel the sadness tied up in it. The Dalai Lama has not seen the real Norbulingka since 1959 and likely never will again, since he is prohibited from entering Tibet.

It started raining while we were inside the temple, meditating.

Finally I want to tell you what happened on our way back from one of the waterfalls pictured above. Rounding a bend, Jessica heard a noise in the trees. Her mind scrolled quickly through the most likely sources of the noise: a cougar, a tiger, a man-eating yeti, a very lost and confused member of the Taliban... I assured her it was just another hiker. But she didn't believe me, and she turned out to be right: the noise was coming from a herd of ... goats!

The goats were followed by a shepherd and his trusty dog, who kept an eye on the herd while the shepherd visited the cafe. He needed a pack of cigarettes. Tell me, where could a shepherd buy cigarettes in Yosemite?

Jai Hind!

Kerala Backwaters

We just returned from a short trip to Kerala, a small state in India's southwest. You may may remember Kerala as the setting of Arundhati Roy's 1998 novel The God of Small Things. Her representation of a place characterized by the ebb and flow of water is spot-on. We explored the "backwaters," a system of inland waterways and brackish-water lakes that goes on for hundreds of miles parallel to the Arabian Sea. There are villages along the banks and seawalls bordering rice paddies. Everything is green and wet. People say that when the monsoon comes about a month from now, the landscape will be even greener and wetter than it is. I can't imagine how that's possible.

We began our trip in Kochi (Cochin), a city of about a million, right on the sea coast. The Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama landed here in 1498 and claimed the harbor for Portugal. It later fell to the British, who brought tea and cricket. We stayed on an island in the middle of the bay and took a ferry to Fort Cochin, the old town. Here is a video of the ferry. Note the Bollywood music on the PA system.

One of the bigbest tourist attractions in Fort Cochin is the Chinese fishing nets, which are these crazy levering contraptions that are supposedly used to catch fish.

The fishermen explained to me that these days they make more money doing demonstrations for European tourists than from fishing. Apparently the Europeans tip well--he was disappointed with the stack of bills (around $6) that I gave him. Here is a video of the demo.

Later we cruised around the warehouse district looking for a wholesale market for spices. We found only tourist traps and small-time retailers. No one was willing to sell us a kilo of cardamom pods (yes, I am the Scarface of cardamom) for a price we were willing to pay. We later learned that the wholesale market is on the mainland, not in the old town. Anyway, here is a video of the autorickshaw ride. We are completely used to traveling by "auto" at this point, which means we only contemplate death once or twice per ride.

And we met our first female autorickshaw driver (or "rickshaw wala").

Kerala is one of three Indian states ruled by Communist governments (West Bengal and Tripura are the others). We arrived at the end of a weeklong election, and the campaign posters were everywhere. To an American born and raised during the Cold War, the sight of the hammer and sickle on every street corner was startling. Turns out the Communist politicians in Kerala look a little different from Stalin.

Note the Chinese fishing nets in the background of this poster.

Next we went down to Alleppey, a fishing village now home to over 1000 tourist houseboats. Everything we read told us not to book a boat in advance: better to see the vessel first, then negotiate the price. Turns out this was good advice, except on Good Friday. The houseboat terminal was packed with boats when we arrived, but the vast majority of them were out of commission so that the crews could--what? Go to Mass? Re-enact the passion? Kerala has a higher proportion of Christians than most Indian states, but still, Christians make up only 20% of the population. At any rate, it took us a few hours to find a tour operator willing to take our money.

Fortunately, it was worth the wait.

We concluded our trip with a night in Kumarakom, another backwaters village. Our hotel had a fishing pond, where Violet caught several gorgeous sunfish. My camera was out of juice so I couldn't take a photo, but she was beyond delighted. Freaked out is more like it. We used chapati (roti) dough for bait, which explains why the fish were so fat and happy.

Violet also did some pottery.

The best part about Kumarakom was the bird sanctuary next door to our hotel. If you've been wondering where to find the jungle of Mowgli, Baloo, Shere Khan, et al, this is it. Remember that all this is going to be even greener a month from now.

Next weekend we are going to the other end of the subcontinent: Dharamsala, in the Himalayas. This place is crazy, na?

Medical Tourism

I aimed to avoid the Indian medical system. You can run halfway around the globe to avoid your demons, but they will always come and find you. At first, I reluctantly sought care for some of my pesky health issues. Now I find myself seeking out the care because it's just so damn good, so convenient, and so cheap. Today, medical tourism in India is a $310M industry. In 2 short years, the Indian government predicts it will be a $2B industry. Put another way, you know there are issues with healthcare in the States, when your doctor in the US actually advises you to see specialists while living in a developing country. I thought she was crazy, but actually she was right. India has come to the rescue for the US system's inadequacies.

I was referred to the Rainbow Clinic, less than 5 minutes away from our home. As I pull up to the clinic I see young girls less than 5 years old carrying enormous stacks of firewood and/or babies and men piling bricks to be carried on their heads.

Once inside, I pay Rs 300 ($6) to see a specialist. Did I mention what it took to get an appointment? Just a call the day before (no automated phone tree, no waiting on hold) - the hours are so convenient that I can come after work or on the weekends. Why, pray tell, are all of my doctors in the States working part-time so that they can spend time with their kids? As a result, I receive no continuity of care and have to take off time from work just to see them. My health suffers because whoever is on call has no clue about my medical history and doesn't have time to listen. Shouldn't doctors in the US make themselves available to suit my busy schedule when I'm working 60 hours a week and sacrificing time with my own kid? Which system abides by the Hippocratic Oath?

Now, the Rainbow Clinic may not be much aesthetically, but it has opened up my eyes to the stark problems of the American health system.

In its advertising, the Rainbow Clinic cites a study which named it one of the 4 best OB/GYN/pediatrics clinics in India. Inside, there is a fascinating medical hierarchy reflected in the dress of the staff: Ayah-mahs wear the typical uniform-blue saris (and bring the doctors tea), receptionists wear an aqua one with pretty purple trim. The medical assistants wear green scrubs. Interns and medical residents wear salwar kameezes. The doctors and specialists wear stunning silk saris with gold trim.

Cons

First I'll take you through minor inconveniences of the Indian system, because should you visit India, you'll heed these first. Note that a $2B industry can easily fix the most pressing issues listed below:

• No rubber gloves (though hands are sanitized) when blood is drawn
• No bandaids either
• Ambulances should be avoided, because if you are in critical condition, you will likely expire on the way to the hospital in crazy Indian traffic
• No trashy magazines provided (I really don't miss them)
• No toilet paper, and possibly no soap in the bathrooms
• No emotional fluffiness provided (having a miscarriage? plan to be in the same labor and delivery ward as mothers-to-be and their omnipresent mothers-in-law as they welcome a new life into a country already populated by 1.2B people)
• No ultrasounds telling you the sex of your baby (that is against the law) and thank goodness because the birthrate of girls is falling annually here (927 girls to every 1,000 boys born in 2001; in 2011 it's 914 girls to every 1,000 boys)
• You may hear the words "I told you so" by your doctor or "You clearly don't need to work. I advise you to get your priorities in order and quit your job so I can treat you." As long as you can shrug these comments off as proof that your doctors are human (and fallible); they will diagnose you and treat you with more care, attention, and access to cutting edge medicines than they will make available to you in the States

Pros

• Stellar care - quite simply, smarter doctors who make themselves accessible to you. I kid you not, my specialist gave me her phone number. I called her on a Sunday, she picked up, and answered my question
• No waiting, no bullshit
• Tea! The best you ever tasted, always accessible, any time, any place (no matter what condition you have, it's always sweeter with tea)
• 45 minutes with a specialist costs $6
• Prescription drugs will cost you another $6 - there's no waiting for them, and you don't even need a prescription (why should the rest of us wait hours at Walgreens to protect that .00001% of the population who may abuse prescription drugs?)
• Tests that cost you thousands of dollars in the States will cost you $100 and a ride across town. But don't worry about traffic, because the clinics are open on the weekends!
• Access to your own medical records - you take them with you! No more time on the phone, signing waivers for scans of your own god damned body that you paid thousands of dollars for
• Next day appointments when it's convenient for you
• No hassling with insurance companies, because you paid cash!

Now it's true that many people in India can't afford this care, but the good news is many more can today than in previous generations. I think I'll go to the doctor every day between now and the time I return to the States so I can avoid ever going again when I get home.

My Master

The last thing I expected to find in India was a guru. I try to avoid cliches in my life as I would in my writing, and with a few exceptions (publishing a campus coming-of-age novel; liking baseball; marrying my college sweetheart) I think I have done a decent job. But the guy who teaches yoga every morning in our building's community room was just too real to resist. His name is Guru Navajeevan Viswakarma. He is a fifty year old vegetarian Hindu from Bihar, a predominantly rural state in the north. He moved to Hyderabad half a dozen years ago with his wife and daughter, and now travels around the city's western edge on his motorscooter, teaching yoga wherever he is called. As another famous guru once said, "Where two or more are gathered, there you will find me..." Okay, he will do one-on-one lessons also, but you have to pay more! I have been taking his class for about three months, and on Saturday I finally remembered to bring my camera downstairs. Guruji graciously agreed to sit for a portrait.

We chant a prayer at the beginning of each class. It is in Sanskrit, but the basic idea is, "God, grant us peace, and let us not hate each other." Then we rub our hands together to produce fiction, and we transfer the heat on our eyes, neck, arms, feet, and so forth. Namaskaar, class can now begin.

I tell people that Guruji is both more and less spiritual than any of my previous yoga teachers. He is more, because, well, he is Indian, and he wears a starched white kurta, and he understands the names of the poses. He even pronounces them correctly. (Note to American yogis: in Sanskrit, you don't pronounce the last "a" in "asana.") I also sincerely believe that he channels something, some god-force, when he does his om-chanting. His eyes roll back in his head as the lids remain open, so that you see two little crescents of eye-white. It is spooky, but very spiritual. On the other hand, he takes cell phone calls during class and occasionally slaps a student's errant hand or foot into the proper position. He is somewhat money-grubbing, for a yoga teacher, but that makes sense when you consider that he is making his living teaching these classes (we pay approximately US$2.00 per head per class). I don't think any of my previous yoga teachers made their living solely through yoga. To give you an idea, our last teacher in Menlo Park drove a Bentley--not bought with yoga fees, I assure you.

Because he has trouble with the short "i" sound, he calls me "Neck." Like this: "Neckji! Find your balance! Why you not find your balance before touch your heels?" I doubt he has any formal training in English, and his self-taught dialect contains all the charming malapropisms you'd expect. For example, when we are lying on our backs in savasana ("corpse pose"), he tells us, "lose your back, lose your shoulders, lose your neck, lose your head. Lose your stomach, lose your hip, lose your nezzer regions..." He means "loosen," not "lose." Some of the women in my class have asked him to improve his English, but I hope he never does. I am a fiction writer; characters like Guruji are my bread and butter.

Here are some of my other favorite lines: "Neckji! Look me!" (ie, watch me demonstrate the pose); "Apart your legs!" (slap!) When he wants me to remember to breathe, he approaches me on all fours and starts sniffing like a bloodhound. You have to understand that he is not trying to be funny. This is all deadly serious to him. He also burps and farts without shame, which Violet loves. She and her friend Avisha, whose mother also takes Guruji's class, have created a dance routine where they giggle and recite some of the guru's most famous lines.

A few weeks ago, he approached us after a Saturday morning class. "Jessica!" he called with a blazing grin on his face. "Madam, I want to make more people to this class. I need...marketing!" He asked me to create a poster for him on my computer. So I sat and took down the benefits of his style of yoga. According to him, they include stomach disorders, thyroid problems, constipation, and piles. When I asked if he was sure about these claims, he asked if I had spelled "thyroid" correctly. Then, a few days later he called to check on the status of the poster. "Neck!" said the voice in my cellphone. "Neck, it is your master. Hello!"

Special Puja Day

The phone in our apartment rang later than usual last night. The caller did not introduce herself, but I recognized the voice as that of Sandita, a neighbor whose daughters attend Violet's school.

"Hello, Nick, tomorrow is an auspicious day. We are having a puja to honor the goddess by giving gifts and sweets to small girls. Can you bring Violet at 10am?"

How can you say no to that?

So I dragged a terrified Violet ("They're going to make me pray to their God!") to the puja this morning. Sandita and her daughter greeted us at the door and led us immediately into her bedroom to see the "temple." This is small shrine dedicated to several gods, most notably Durga (she rides a lion) and Lakshmi (she rides an owl). You can't see the individual gods in the photo below, but you can see the jasmine garlands and incense.

Sandita gave each girl a dot of vermilion on her forehead (a bindi) and a red string bracelet around her wrist. For months Violet has been curious about these "God strings," because they are the only form of jewelry kids are allowed to wear at school.

Over the next half-hour, the doorbell rang many times and the living room filled with girls of various ages, wearing a variety of traditional costumes. Sandita set them up with plates of puri (a sort of fried airpuff), sauteed black chickpeas, and semolina halwa (sweet grits). Each girl also received a small gift, for example a pack of markers, and a ten-rupee note.

Sandita explained that young girls are believed to be the purest incarnation of the goddess Durga, and therefore it brings blessings upon your house to gather as many girls as you can and pack them full of sweets. I'm paraphrasing horribly, but that's basically the idea.

After the puja, while the girls played in the next room, our host tried to teach me some Hindi phonics. If you ever want to feel tone-deaf, try learning an Indian language. One of the tricks I learned is to hold your palm in front of your mouth when you say, for instance, chhota ("little boy"). If you are pushing air, you have it. I am going to keep trying.