Note to self

Inquiry: Social security as a socially responsible, and potentially cost effective, means to economic nationalism.

What is partial rationalization of space? How much would be enough? What sections of local knowledge would be required, could be incorporated? Logical circle complete.

Why did I write this here? Because I know I will look at it again. I would have done it one a white board back home, but here I am.

"A Successful Indian Businessman"

Taken from "Games Indians Play" by V. Raghaunathan. (Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, pg. 32-33)

A city boy, Ram, moved to the countryside and bought a goat from an old farmer for Rs 1000. The farmer agreed to deliver the goat the next day. But the next morning the farmer went Ram and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The goat died last night.'

Ram replied, 'Well then, just give me back my money.'

The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I have spent it already.'

Ram said, 'OK then, just unload the goat.'

The farmer asked, 'What are you going to do with a dead goat?'

Ram: 'I'm going to raffle him off.'

Farmer: 'You can't raffle off a dead goat!'

Ram: 'Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later the farmer met Ram and asked, 'What did you do with that dead goat?'

Ram: 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at Rs 10 apiece and made a profit of Rs 3990, net of the Rs 1000 I paid you.'

Farmer: 'Didn't anyone complain?'

Ram: ' Just the guy who won. So I gave him back his Rs 10.'

Ram grew up and eventually became a successful Indian businessman.

The Holy Man

I'm still in Delhi until Monday. I will be traveling after that. I have a lot to do in the next twenty four days; I'll keep you posted. But, I only want to write about the last day or so. They have been fantastic hours.

I am currently writing a short story. Some of you already know this. Will it be good? Who knows. Will you like it? I have no idea. Am I enjoying writing it? More than you can know.

I had a whole section on the short story, and how it feels, etc. I've cut it though. I'll just give it to you, and see what you think. It doesn't have anything to do with India, other than I wrote it here.

On a different note, I went to the Lotus Temple yesterday. It's the South Asian equivalent of the Baha'i temple in Evanston, IL. It was beautiful, free, and quiet.

Read the enscription in the next photo. Who doesn't like this? The Baha'i don't ask for donations. They do not prosletize. Their monuments to God are built by beneficiaries and believers that want to give back. Their temples are places of silent meditation, where only religious texts can be read. Reading as the way to God! The written word.



Here is the view from just above that plaque.


And here are a few more pictures:


I had to take off my shoes.


Awkward.


Better.


This is the face I make when the person taking the picture looks like he wants to steal my shit.

As I have told you, I have spent a lot of time without speaking. I spend most doused in what I would call city silence - where your tiny world is quiet, but you can intermitantly hear the noise of the thousands around you. It influences the serenity more than disturbs it. Most of those who will be reading this know what I mean. The traction of a car driving past drifts through your Chicago window. A vegetable wala yells his presence to doors and people from the street below. City silence.

Sometimes it is perfect, but - when you are as alone as I have been - at times it can also be troublesome. You want it to stop or include you. But because I don't fit in, don't speak the most common language, and if none of my friends are free at the moment I am forced to listen alone.

The inside of this temple is as geometrically inspiring as the outside. The center atrium rises to the with interior butresses criss-crossed at lower levels, and the lights shining towards the top of the blossom are positioned to cast perfect shadows. And, no matter where you sit the lights make three shining points on the eight-corn gold star above you all. There are benches that are radially on a given point in front of all of them. But where you expect an altar... There isn't one. It was the first place where the silence around me was one and the same with the silence within. I was welcome. I sat there and stared around. I was happy. I was at peace. I stayed as long as the sensations lasted, and didn't force any more time upon myself.


The building was beautiful. It was a product of love that was meant to encourage love. It was amazing. In there, in its own little way - it worked. I wasn't just the white man. They were not just the Indians. The Tamil. The Punjabi. The Baha'i. The Christians. The atheists. I was just there by myself, and with them at the same time.

I enjoyed that I couldn't speak. I enjoyed that I couldn't take pictures. I enjoyed thinking about the sacrosanctity of rules, the variability of rituals, and the pleasures of community.

I enjoyed that I couldn't take pictures. I enjoyed that if you wanted to know anything about what I was talking about, then you would have to visit yourself.

It made me remember Elementary Forms of Religious Life, a secular bible, and how I didn't care about my secularism all at the same time.

I don't want you to laugh at me, but you can if you want. For a while I was thinking these things, both while in the temple and after I left.

I am the holy man for he knows the majesty of belief. I am the holy man for he has seen the serenity of God.

That's what that silence, and inclusivity did for me. I'll never forget it.

I walked out slowly. My legs were relaxed. It was a like a stroll, but it didn't encorporate the looking. They handed me an informational booklet in English, but asked what language I would prefer because they didn't want to assume. I asked them if they had one in Spanish. "Gracias," yo dije.

But I overheard some Spanish speaking tourists as I was getting my shoes. Their Indian guide's Spanish wasn't very good. "¿Hablantes?" I asked. They said yes. I explained what it was and gave them my booklet. "Tengan un buen día," I told them, and they all smiled. They wished me the same. I think they were from Columbia. They seemed to be a progressive family. You can ask me how I would guess such things if you like. They seemed very nice. I think that matters most.

This is the view from just outside the temple, opposite of where the creepy man took my picture.



I met a nice old man, Mr. Singh, who invited me to join him and his grandchildren at Humayun's Tomb. I got to sit in a van with three wonderfully rambunctious British children. I asked them if they wanted to go to Cambridge or Oxford. The two boys both said Cambridge, but the little girl hadn't made up her mind yet. She was only six. I asked them all which college the wanted to go to, but they didn't know. I recommended Queens and Sydney Sussex for my time there, but who knows where they'll end up.

I don't know why the British accent has been wonderfully immortalized, but it has. These kids shot twinges around the car as fast and as loudly as they could. The grandfather couldn't see me, but I must have looked like the Cheshire cat.

The tomb had just closed when we got there, so we didn't get to go in. I'll got back soon.

The family's driver dropped me off at a series of North Indian restaurants that my host recommended. I took an auto to my favorite bar after that, Cafe Morrison. I had a couple beers, aranged to celebrate the start of Ramadan in Old Delhi with Saad and his friends. He's going to lend me his 35mm for the occasion, so I have to get some film by Friday.

We also made tenative plans to go to Agra to see the Taj on Sunday. Saad is older than I am, and I asked if his daughter had ever seen it. It's a three hour drive, and I want to split the gas with him. I'll let you know if we go.

The last part of yesterday as important a highlight as the Lotus Temple though.

Who got to drive an auto-rickshaw in Delhi? Sam got to drive an auto-rickshaw in Delhi.

Examples of the ubiquitous Delhi auto-rickshaw.

The clutch was a little tricky. I'll get it down next time. I was smiling like a dumb ass. It was 2 AM. Another auto drove by, and all three of the Indian men in the back seat stuck their heads out to look. We got to a police checkpoint, and I asked whether me driving would be a problem. Jeetandar said, "You America. No problem." I got out and screamed, and smiled. I giggled like a gaggle of gallivanting girls. That's how it was.

It made me fall asleep feeling silly. Thinking:

There is good and evil in this world. And only when you are steeped in one - like ripening tea - can you speak about the qualities of one or the other, or of their products, with absolute impunity and traces of truth.

I spat something equally silly about how happiness and melancholy are infectious over the phone to a friend.

I went to sleep feeling so happy.

As soon as I start writing...

I've neglected this blog for a while now. I know though, that as soon as I start writing something, I am going to want to write more. This is a short post, but I have more, more, more to say.

Short post.

Here it goes.

STOP STARING AT ME!

I am not a museum piece. This goes out to all those people who grope me with their eyes, and all those merchants whose 'white tax' is a little to high. I am part of the last group on earth to know objectification as existential. I am an educated, upper-middle class, white, American male. I am not a woman. I am not colored. At home, I am not excoticized. For millions all over the globe, what I say is cool becomes cool - singularly because someone like me said it.

Put me here, and I know. Put me here and let a person I was trying to befriend stop me to say, "Listen Caucasian boy..." Put me here and let little children look at me like they don't trust me. Put me here and let men and women alike look at me like I am nothing like the fabric of the life I have been leading for two months. Let them look.

I am still a man. I am still rich by any Indian standard. I am still American with all the pros that come with it. I am still safe. So it is easier to bear for me.

But now I know, and I will punch any person that tells me I don't. Do you not think I am affected? Do you think I do not think I understand what singularity feels like in a sea of people? Do you not think I cherish the sense of community, or at least anonymity, that denotatively exists in opposition to it? I do.

Not knowing where to turn breeds a despair that I didn't even think I was allowed to feel before.

I am still able to take it, now. I know the feeling now. I'm telling you, right now, that I'm going to use what I've learned. Let them look.

Facebook Blogging

Facebook Blogging

All of these were written as Facebook status updates. They were ‘shared’ in succession, and were posted as rapidly as they could be finished and proofread. They are a skeleton sketch of what last Tuesday was like for me, and how I felt about it on Wednesday.

I woke up incredibly early and was dehydrated to such a degree that I wanted to cry. It was too early and no where was open except for a juice stand off the main market. I asked for paani. He poured me a glass of unfiltered water, and I just stared at it for 10 seconds before I said, '[omitted].' I finished it in one gulp and asked for another. I laid down on my mat and realized that it was so hot that I may not know if I have a fever.

I was in an auto driving to Gurgaon from Delhi. I understood that Delhi auto drivers won't cross the Haryana boarder, but he never fully explained his intentions. It's 13km to Gurgaon. He drives 10, and dropped me under a banyan tree. A police officer pointed to a speeding bus. He spoke as though I wanted that bus. He walked away after that. I walked along the side of the road, and stopped to admire a goat.

A stranger picked me up almost immediately after I parted company with the goat. It didn't take long for someone to spot me in full business attire 3km from anywhere. He dropped me off somewhere where I could catch a rickshaw. I rode behind a man on a bike for a mile. I reached my destination and had a meeting. Then another.

Then no one could help me find a cab so I walked the mile to where they all thought I could catch one. It was here, on semi deserted streets, in a city that I knew nothing about, going to meetings in which my entire modus is to duplicitously bully my way through to get information, that I found articulation for a question I had been meaning to ask: "How did I get lost in South Asia?"

I then got stuck in that city for another 10 hours. It cost me way too much to get home when I finally did. That said, I played pool with a Nepalese bar tender and ate the best chicken lollipops of my life. It made my night. That was all yesterday.

This is what I wrote when I was done.

“I'm outta here. I'm getting a milkshake.”

8/5/09

As annoying a breach in standard operating procedures as it might have been, I really enjoyed using Facebook in a way that it normally isn't. I don't recommend it for everyone and all occasions, but I say that having a hand in flexing the boundaries of one electronic medium with the information usually associated with another was fun for me. A small scale synthesis that got positive results. And this time it involved goats.

Loneliness – It’s not always what you think

Loneliness – It’s not always what you think

I have been basically alone for a month. I told you that I have spent entire days without having a conversation. I was unable to be alone before I got here. I was wrought with anxiety - so wrought that I like the images of shirtless men wielding hammers and flame to my not so ferrous frame. So wrought that I feel more akin to my father’s spiral staircase than I have ever been. “Walk over me!” It’s funny to know that I never said such a thing, but I could have. It would have been faster.

I have been physically alone for a month. The people next to me are often not that next to me. The people with me fleet. For need and cause I have taken up my pen and drawn in the walls of city silence, my most consistent compatriot. It would be errant to not recognize my brother in arms. I have taken up my pen and used it as a child’s sword to draw upon these walls. It would be unwise to not try to make this friendship mine.

To make it mine. To make it mine. I have had some of my most contented moments under the sweat stained shroud my loneliness has draped over me. I stared without a sound at the rotors above me while at home today. I was lying, and thinking about my luck. Thoughts did not jump in my head like cheap Mexican tricks; it was not like it usually is. Dreams and thoughts were dolled out. “Gruel for you Sam Chereskin? Yes, please I would love some more.” It was a moment that Dickens would not drain to write, but would love to live. Cool, refreshing, and perfectly controlled – my mind was like a garden hose in summer with free flowing gems that were perfectly controlled in the summer heat. I felt like I understood myself. I felt like I have learned enough things about myself—things that are hard to learn—to be contented for a day. I later set to work without reservation. I ate lunch by myself as always. I sat down on my roof and tanned my feet as I once again read about Mr. Darcy and Ms. Bennett. I got to page 120 that day.

But walking down the street. But realizing that you have not worn clean clothes in a month. Upon taking pictures of yourself just as photographic record of how within thirty seconds of putting on clothing that your expensive shirt and your appearance have become irreversibly transparent. Upon realizing that I have not peed in three days even though you drink between two and four liters of water a day. Upon realizing that you had not even missed it, and that you cannot fully recall the sensation. Upon realizing that it is undoubtedly caused by how much you sweat. Upon realizing that you want convenience again. That you want to tell someone about all the things you learned from your days alone, and from your days with millions upon millions of other people who your friends will never see… upon doing all these things the sweat stained shroud of loneliness simply becomes your sheet. It simply is that disgusting looking floral print sheet from the department store you never liked. It is simply dirty. It is simply sticky. It is simply nothing to you emotionally, and everything to you physically as you recall it is your only barrier from the even dirtier mat you call a bed. It is in these moments when the shroud is a coffin. Simple. Unimpressive. Probably made of cheap oak and open for everyone to see – like that funeral I saw three weeks ago. It is simply outside of your ability to control.

That is the loneliness that I settle into sometimes. It is physical, and is not mine. My mind is mine. My body sometimes feels like it isn’t.

I am settling in, and I will find the pillow once more. I will see the next sunrise through my window, and I will dance again.

I just wonder how it is that in a place where I have so many revelations, how it is that I cannot be sure whether I am slipping into sanity or out of it.

Bring yourself to ask, “How is it that so many things happen at once?”

All I want to do right now is go back to Jane Austin.




I have since gotten my clothes washed. I found a great café. I’ve started to catch up at work. I am almost done with Pride and Prejudice. I’m going to Gourgon tomorrow- I get to see something new which always excites me. My cousin said she would help me try to get into the classroom. I will have background information and at least 6 letters of recommendation when I take it to uncle and the CPS system. I’m happy today. I wanted to share this post because this is one of the few places I spell out what bad days feel like. We all have them, but we don’t always talk about them. They are downers. Even those delivered by friends are hard to deal with too often. I share it because living without air conditioning in a place that ranges from lows of 90 to highs of 115 has defined part of my time in Delhi. It has defined how I sit in rickshaws; how I handle my cell phone (so sweat doesn’t run it)… it effects how and whether I am affected. Good days and bad.

I think the constancy is interesting.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about Photography and Rain, why my father suggested I hide my camera in a box of cigarettes, the Delhi intersection I like the most, and how my meetings have gone.

I’ll leave saying that I saw an 8-year-old girl making roti the other day. She lives five minutes walk from me place in a row of tents on an undeveloped lot. She was wearing a pink dress. She sat low on the sidewalk, and tended to the bread and open kerosene flame. At the moment I saw her she wasn’t paying attention to the bread though. Her hand was still working, but she was looking up and smiling at her friend. Her teeth matched the whites of her eyes. You’ll have to trust me. It was a beautiful smile.

A small note on a book

It's very hard to find books on ballet in Delhi.

Did you know?

I just walked out of my office for a second. I need a breath of fresh air.

It occurred to me to ask, "do you know that trying to make a name for yourself on the world stage is very hard?"

All of those who read this probably know the answer. You all do. I guess that this question, the fact that I even posed it, is testament to how I could use a little more help than I have right now. I live on the surface of the sun, and trying not to sweat through the clothes that are my passport to important meetings. Like passports they only get you in the door, they are only precursors to the conversations that get you where you need to go. I'm nervous about loosing my Indian passport every time I turn off my fan to leave my room and start to sweat... but I am nervous about the conversations too.

I'm going to get back to work now. I'm going to keep calling these people, and sending them emails. I am going to call an air conditioned cab to get me to the meetings I set up. I can afford that. I can afford that here. There are other forms of air conditioning though, and I could use them.

I have thought a number of times about the bio-physical mechanisms of heat regulation that I learned in 9th grade. I can still see the diagrams from my text book. They showed a cactus, and tried to describe the cohesive and adhesive properties of the air around us. They tried to describe the thermal dynamics of evaporation and the effects of circulating air. It's almost amazing how often I think about these pictures.

I'm writing more emails to the major chambers of commerce today. I need to get meetings with all the industry leaders I can so that I may then meet with all the labor unions, and then I will start to travel. I have fallen behind. It's not too bad, but the next week has to be pedal to the metal time.

New question: does pedal to the metal count as slant rhyme? Its slant is so close that I have never thought about it before. Do we bastardize the phonemes to make an actual rhyme when we say it? Petal to the metal? Pedal to the medal? Do we say one with more frequency? Wow, the amount none of you care about this astounds me. You guys aren't reading this for stuff like that.

I'm in India. I just made plans to have dinner with the former Labor Minister who got me this job. I'm going to his house for dinner on Friday. I will gladly attend. I will also gladly pass up my friend's invitation to go clubbing that night. He's a former Mr. India, and he runs my gym. He's 34 and a consummate bachelor. Friday night is model night at a club called Urban Pind, and he wants to introduce me to, from what I remember, about five Indian beauties. He's organized a sort of exchange though. He wants me to introduce him to all of the white beauties. He has his cross cultural sights set. It would be a ridiculous night. It would be the kind that I only really liked once it was over and got to reflect on it. I am glad I'll be missing it this time. Maybe I'll go next week.

My grandmother took my request to heart and has started to call me more often. She has found out that I don't eat breakfast though, and I have a feeling that she won't stop asking about the big b-fast anytime soon. She asks about food and rashes. She asks about practical concerns.

I've started a new short story about a subtle murder plot of an unsuspecting American tourist in Delhi. I hope it will turn out to be very funny. Right now I just have the bare bones and the first paragraph. I'll try to share that first page soon.

It seems that everything takes me just a little bit longer here than it does back home. I guess I'm on Indian time.

I have a three part recommendation: I recommend that everyone come to India, that everyone have moments of personal discovery in an Indian metropolis for a month, and then watch Slumdog Millionaire for the first time. I don't know what it would be like if it wasn't your first time. It probably wouldn't spill over you like it spilled over me. You know that bucket I take showers with? Like that: orange plastic with day old water that makes what happens to football coaches look downright frivolous.

Back to work, I guess.

p.s. I still think the comics in the previous post are wonderful. Period hertz? Sheep? C'mon! (For those in the know, you should say that c'mon in a Job voice for full effect.)

No Post, I just want to share these with you.

They brightened my day. Maybe they will brighten yours too. For a little bit. All images are property of xkcd.com. These are wonderful.











Also, if there is ever a big dude at a bar who is creepily staring at your female friends legs it is a lot easier to make friends with him than fight him. Paul turned out to be a really cool dude. His grizzled head turned out to be filled with insight and personal experience, and he cast it all in thick working class English drawl.

No title, not today.

I have had a bizarre day.

All I can think about is how I am nervous to meet some of the largest industrialists in India tomorrow though.

I realized that I don't actually tell you what I am doing in India. I only tell you what I am thinking. I will start taking pictures. I can't write about all of it. I will try though.

I will try to make this more like a movie again, as some of you described my first consequential posting here, instead of just an X-ray of my head. I'll try to do that.

So you've seen inside me head. You got inside. You realize that I don't always make sense. You have probably realized, as I did yesterday, that I am absurdly eccentric. You got inside. Popular literature would suggest that such things can be done by magic...

Door, open. Door, closed. Wands or not.






If you want back in you'll have to ask, but I don't think everyone will. Not even close.

Post #3

Letters in The Indian Sand Take #2
7/4/09 – 7/21/09


Why am I still here!? It’s closing on three thirty on Sunday afternoon, and I am still in the office. I’m at my desk even. I’m going mad!

I guess it gives me time to catch my breath.

It’s been a long week. I’ve been in the office for at least nine hours, usually more than eleven, every day since I got here.

Don’t get me wrong; work is great. I simply wish I spent less time here.

Today had two adventures in the chambers before I even cocked the hammer. I had a seven-page brief to get out before eleven, and today is moving day. I’m moving to a new place - a New Delhi rooftop home. A college kid’s dream. I’m still jet lagged at this point. I get up at 3 am. These were the things I was planning on when I once again rose from slumbers hours before the sun.

I was surprised that none of my neighbors at ISI ever complained about my music. I would play it whenever I was home, and at all hours of the night. No one said a thing though as Nick Drake put me to bed, and Sea & Cake greeted my pre-dawns.

I’d read, drink copious amounts of water, [omitted], [omitted], shower, and repeat until 9 came. Then I’d go to work. There I’d read academic materials, stalk the Facebook labyrinth, write, email, and go home. [Clause omitted], and every once in a while I’d venture out – risking tardiness – for a samosa or an ice-cream. Everyday for a week. It is like I never left home. But I did leave home. I got laid more at home. Why am I still in the office? I’ve been driven to drinking. I’m only here because someone is supposed to be helping me move in. They are just sitting downstairs. They don’t speak English. They can’t tell me anything. So I sit upstairs. So I drink.
I bought a fifth of whiskey for my new place, but I’m so bored that I siphoned some into my flask. I could get fired for drinking here, but I don’t care. It was supposed to by my first day off.

So now I’m living somewhere new. I’ve described it in passing to several people, but never fully. Never like I can. The building is made of plaster and cement, but it’s narrow façade is covered in pre-fab bricks of an olive hue that I’ve only seen here. I don’t know when these bricks were made. Their shape, if this were America, would suggest the 50s – low, stout, and in love with cement. Their color however would suggest the 70s – when the fashion houses of the world went blind.

I’ve learned that the whole of south Delhi is less than twenty years old however. I have a lot more to figure out.

Oh my gosh, stop the presses. I’ll get back to the third floor in a second. The man next to me in this café has me in a daze. I’m in a Café Coffee Day. Their slogan: “You never know what will happen over a cup of coffee.” They specialize in espresso drinks and Indianisms like “much more prettier.” That said, the star bucks-ran-out-of-money-lighting is not what is driving me up a tree—it never is, I’m here once a day—it’s the man next to me.

I saw his ass first. Remember the animated Robin Hood? In the opening scene they rob prince john—and he thinking them beautiful admirers stick out his ring laden hands to be kissed… this man’s gesture was similarly regal as his right cheek caressed my left, but I will not kiss it. Nor do I want any rubies it may possess. He decided that he didn’t like the seat to my left, so he came back to my right – closer to the door – and smacked me with his bag in the process. It wasn’t until I had been repeatedly bludgeoned that I took stock of his appearance.

He looks like a million other members of an international artistic fraternity that meccas, or dreams of doing so, to NYC. He looks like a million other interesting looking twenty-somethings that seem perfectly nice, but who don’t immediately impress me. Man-pris, script tattoo, wide leather banded wristwatch. He’s a weird mix of international coolness… I don’t have a word to describe the volumes that his intricately constructed sideburns speak, nor should I. It was his shoes that made me jump.

Mix banana laffy-taffy & a yellow glow-stick together, and then apply that color to something that can only be described as a power moccasin and you have an idea. I stared for minutes.

Add a lower-lip stud and you understand the sweetness. He is loud, flamboyant, pudgy in a way that lacks portly’s attractive containment, and possibly a photographer. He may be gay. He is wonderful to be next to.

Back to my room. Okay. I started writing about something else.

No pressure. My life back in Chicago feels like it is full of pressures. It seems like I was expected to do great things all of the time. From the smallest thing to the greatest it feels like I wasn’t allowed to fail. If I cook it has to be good. If I dress it must be well done. If I play a game I must show promise, and return to the fun better than I was before. If I write it must be good. If I don’t win this time, I felt like I was expected to win the next.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Everything I touched was supposed to do well. I broke. Chicago, home, the compliments; all of them led me to fear waking up. I would hit my alarm for hours because I was afraid that if I opened my eyes I would be letting some expectation go asunder. If I missed on step, then I would let them, myself, down… and they would all leave me.

If I did not call then my habit would be broken, and friends would wonder where I had gone. They all know I keep busy. They all know that I’m always planning. If my plans don’t include each and every one of them then they might think, “Why doesn’t he call?” “He must have better things to do,” they might think. They might take offense.

It would kill me if they took it personally.

I have written about this before. I’ve written about it in this book before. It must be on my mind for me to have said it and want to say it again.

I really love being in India right now. It is not perfect. I can tell you all the ways it which I am uncomfortable later. For now, and most importantly, I do not feel the way I elaborated on above; I don’t feel that way here. I’m too far away from the physical and social pressures that I allowed to get to me. I’m currently solo, and it is liberating. That status quo may change as I get friends here, and as there are new demands on my time, but I do not want it to. I have no one to impress. I don’t want to impress anyone. I am teaching myself to relax for the first time in a year. I need it. I think everyone who can should get a job in a country in which they have no friends. You think mojitos are tonics, you think they shoot menthol and Cuban relaxation through your veins? Try this. You haven’t seen nothing yet.

That said I could use a drink.

It’s now Friday July 10th. I have not written much at all in this book for a week. But here I am. The ink is shining under the halogen lights. The house beats are shaking, and here I am writing. This is what I do. I go anywhere. I go to India. I watch the Sikh DJ try to make us happy. I write. I laugh. I write.

Today is one of the best nights of my life. One of the best days. I am next to a twenty-something couple and they are kissing and dancing under the blanket of a great sound system. I am tapping my foot too. Twice as fast as the man-in-the-textured-shirt-next-to-me’s hand is pumping. They just don’t get it. This is one of the best days of my life.

I’m drunk. They fulfilled my orders. I can feel the beat like I can feel the 120ml capariña, the Rob Roy, the Peach Dream (challenge to the bar tender) and the 650ml Kingfisher. I’m here. This is my cap at Rick’s. I came to the Taj on a Saturday to put a cap on my time. To put a cap on my pen. To see if I could sleep in an air-conditioned room. I asked if there was any availability in the hotel, but they were full.

A girl said a mouthful today. That was a big part of my day. I would have given anything for her to have been here.

Pingashka just introduced me to a friend. He said hi. “What is Love?” just came on. I met the best 13 year old in the world today. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I love life.

dj_rohan@yahoo.com (This is the email for the Sikh DJ at Rick’s. I sent him a song.)

Yes, I’m going to try. I’m going to catch you up on the last week. Here I am slowly walking into my 15th and 16th days in Delhi, I have done almost nothing to tell you how it is. How it’s going.

I’m sitting in an Italian restaurant on the top floor of a mall in South Delhi. This is what I wrote there as I sat by myself and finished my gnocchi.

I just melted my credit card in a way I have never done before. Sure my parents have treated me, and I’ve certainly purchased more things, and for more money, both. But my credit card has never been run quite so furiously through by so many hands in so little time. Italian this, Italian that – a belt, a shirt, a wallet – in that order. And for so little. Deviousness never came for such a low price.

I was walking around and I hope I was right to think so, but I couldn’t help but wish I had a female compatriot with me. Someone else that saw the fun, pure unadulterated fun, in fashion for both sexes. I have expressed fashion as an articulation within a system. Much like a language, where the letters are pre-substantiated, clothes sit on racks for our fingers to run down or on manikins for our greedy eyes. You can look at clothes quickly or slowly, but I’d like to think that only a set class or caliber of appreciators that look at fashion as earnestly as I do. I am in awe of each day’s aesthetic articulation and what pieces of iconography I can blend to say what on a given day. That’s what I say – just say something. If you do that then you understood fashion. Can you tell that I think it is just one more way to speak?

I wish I knew someone who could teach me about women’s shoes. I know a good deal, and I have my own opinions about them. I want to know everything though. Maybe not how they feel on my feet – at least not too often – but everything else. I want no condescension in this relationship. I want only a master and mentor; I want someone who can walk me through every aspect of shoes. I want to know which timeless bases go with each body type, which color palates, and what the best constructed among them look and feel like. I want to know what emotions are evoked in someone who is truly knowledgeable about this part of the fashion spectrum – the epitomes of material, effort and talent. The things that the others try to emulate. Then I can move down. I can see who is emulating and who is synthesizing. Where, and why. That is what I want.

I have to say that woman’s shoes have so much range compared to men’s chic. The later is often defined largely by it’s conservatism. I know men’s shoes can do fantastic things – I’ve seen them – but I rarely, rarely find such things. Do you?

I like complexity. I like fashion. I like women. I love life.

I think that the calories I just ingested are hitting me. I’ll explain why that is important for you to understand my current mood.

I was constantly overweight growing up. My father will be the first one to say that I was never obese, but I say that I was always overweight growing up. I ate a lot. I ate many times a day, and in large quantities whenever I did. This lasted for years. Not until recently, not until college, did I ever exist in a why that would allow me to appreciate the energy packed into a calorie. I never understood food as fuel. I was always running on full. There was no point of contrast through which I could formulate understanding. Now I know what a sugar high is. Now I know what it feels like when chemists understand calories as units of energy. As I told you before, I ate gelato in Athens once and I jumped over a dumpster. My ex-girlfriend’s parents asked her, “What is he doing?” She understood this part of me, and she answered, “He’s just had calories.” She had a smile on her face. Her parents quickly adopted it, and they laughed as I sprinted off down the street.

I thought I’d share this so you’d understand where I was coming from. I ate. I got my pick-me-up, and consequentially I told you, once again, that I love life. I realize I have been saying that a lot. I know that I haven’t said it much for a long time. I know that I used to at least think it a lot. It was in those moments that I used to write. It was in those moments looking over everyday things and associating them. I would take moments and the things I saw to create characters and hypothetical situations that smacked of things I loved. I’ll share some of them with you sometime if you ask. I still have them I used to make poetry from those moments. There was a period from the end of high school until two-thirds of my way through my second year in which I thought that line to myself at least once a day. “I love life” would pass through me, and I wouldn’t be happy just saying that. I wanted to share it. I wanted to let everyone know, but I wanted to say it in a way in which everyone would like to read, to hear. I wanted to say it well so they’d care, and so they would feel as I did. Well, now, I’m saying it again. Maybe I’ll get used to being this happy again, and then I’ll go back to just thinking it. Then maybe I’ll go back to writing the way I used to. Maybe I won’t. No matter. Regardless, that seems like a pretty nice part of someone’s life. A person I knew once told me, “Sam, you deserve to be happy.” I didn’t believe her. It made her very sad. My mother used to tell me, “Get happy.” Well Mom, I am.

I’m still in the Italian restaurant. I’m still thinking about aesthetics. I think aesthetics are amazing.

I think we pay for control. It is the instantaneous representation that we can manipulate surrounds into lines, colors, and depths that please us. It is the quality that lets us approximate permanence. Material and time. Both controlled for when we are truly comfortable. It does not have to be with money, but we pay for control. That is the modern aesthetic.

July 15th, 2009 – Things I did this week:

-Ate at a place that serves food on flaming foils.
-Climbed to the top of the Noida CNN Building
-Joined a gym run by a former Mr. India
-Traded a gym employee Spanish lessons for Hindi lessons
-Wrote great things for personal satisfaction, and felt the pleasure of sharing the,
-Re-read the 7th Harry Potter
-Read ‘Study in Scarlet,’ ‘The Sign of Four,’ and drooled over the new Sherlock Holmes trailer (I already know who I’d like to go with. Shout if you wanna come. You’ll see me giggle gaily on the way in.)
-Got too drunk to walk at the Taj
-Ate Gnocchi

Things I’ll do Tomorrow:

-See Harry Potter 6.

Things to write about:
- Exploring western iterations of Indian space and how that may be an appropriation of global factors (I swear this will make sense if I ever write it. Now? Only I know what I’m talking about. Don’t care.)
- Café Coffee Day
- City Walk Mall
- Universality of Gym Culture
- Exploring Housing Projects
- Witnessing a Funeral Procession
- Finding a Kite

Things I realized this morning (the morning of this post): If I could have two things—and if they could not be mutually exclusive even in a dream world—I would be in Chicago and Southern France for a time. I would go to Fox and Obel in Chicago, and shop for expensive olive oils and Pisco and then get a pulled pork sandwich from the deli. I also want to be in Nice for a day or two. I want to be back in that open-air market. I want to go into a cool deep body of water. I want to lie down on the beach and enjoy that spot as I think intently about all of my options for dinner like so many others have done for centuries. It’s a geographically specific dream that takes me past that Eastern Orthodox Church back to the place with the ravioli that I liked so much fully 7 years ago. I want to sit on a bench under a streetlight after that, at 2 am, and think about my favorite Hopper etching. I want to wonder if his man reading a paper, under a lamp in a park, on a bench, would be different if he were representing a Frenchman. I would decide that it would, and wonder how. I wouldn’t be able to figure it all out, and descend into a meta process about thinking about thinking. Then I would go home, and wake up in Delhi all over again. That’s where my daydreams took me while I was in the shower this morning.

I’m still mulling over the details from the 16th to the 21st. It has been another amazing week, but I am not prepared to write about it yet. I am not prepared to ramble through it.

I’ll fill you in on some of the crazy people I’ve met, all the parties I’ve been to, and how people all seem to want to help me. I’ll tell you how Delhi is like Chicago, and Bombay is like New York. I’ll tell you about the new cocktail recipe that I got from a bartender in South Ex. I’ll tell you about the chopper pilots I’ve met, the reporters that have taken me out, my not-so-interesting interesting love life, and more. I’ve just got to figure it out first.

Here’s a poem I memorized one summer day in 2006. I can still tell you the day. I mean to build off of its structure to hammer home my final point.

Advice

Folks, I’m telling you
Birthing is hard
& dying is mean
So get yourself
a little
loving
in between.

-LH

With the same earnestness implied I say: If you don’t mind dirt, and sweating, then you may not mind India. If you can bring yourself to say hello to everyone, if you have a good smile, and if you like both leading people around corners and being led by them around the same, then you may love India.

I really mean it.

I’ll show you around if you ever give me the chance.

So Far on the Fourth of July

I am tremendously happy.


I'm at work on a Saturday. I have to turn in a report by the end of the day, but I am unworried. The nicest moments that happened so far today all took place within a 30 minute period.

I had forgotten that a board meeting was going on today. They had all filed in downstairs and into the conference room in the basement without me noticing. It was not until lunchtime that the executive director walked into our office and told us all to join.

The cook was in but did not cook today. WE HAD TAKE OUT CHINESE instead. I thought it was hilarious. The whole gang, the entire office + the board members filed into the second floor office space where I work and in universal corporate fashion awkwardly filed past the hot trays of chicken, pork and low mein. I joked that I would give anything for duck, a spring roll, and hoisin sauce. I didn't think it was that funny - actually I wasn't joking - but those immediately around me started laughing. I don't know if they knew what I was asking for or not. It doesn't matter.

The crem de la crem, my wonderment par excelence, was with the tray full of french fries off in the corner. I asked Mandi, "are those french fries?" He smiles and affirms, "Yes." He sees me pick one of the shriveled things up with a fork and how I am examining the orange sauce on them. "They're indo-fries," he says. I laugh. "We never eat them." I had three helpings.

I was in awe of how office culture is the same the world over. I suppose that even the idea of office culture, and concepts about how it should run, are a western cultural export in themselves, but today's function just made me smile and laugh. I'm off in the corner of a brick alcove, just on the other side of the food. I eat. I talk. I watch the others around me. IT WILL ALWAYS BE THE CASE that there will be at least one person standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, eating alone standing up, as others mill past him. It usually turns out that you like this person a lot, but they are a little awkward, so you let it pass. Conversation floats between of little consequence with people knowing that they shouldn't be talking explicitly about work, but that they should not be talking about their personal lives either. Nom, nom, nom - bad joke - nom. And so the meeting goes.

This scene, and how I got to eat meat for the first time in a week, put me in particularly high spirits. I returned to my side of the social space, and back to my desk. I had an email from my uncle Rick. He explains that I will get to see how all governments the world over are too inept or corrupt to fix even the most obvious problems. He jabs that if I make it through these three months, if, then I get to return to another third world state - southern California. He's been offering me clandestine extraction via unnamed paramilitary helicopter since I got this job. I think it's excellent. A little crazy, but excellent. Thanks uncle Rick, it means a lot.

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The next half of this post was written on a massive sugar high. It was written in about two minutes. Read it as fast as you can, or at least keep that in mind, as things will start to not make sense.
---------------------

I danced out of the building and past a board member signing "I've Just Seen a Face" with a Texas accent. I like how smiles are infectious. Others around me, maybe because they don't understand me or maybe something more fundamental to the nature of smiles, but 10 to 15 other people started smiling. "Smile (pass it on)". I borrowed that from a friend.

I thought about turning up at the American embassy today to see if the 4th was being celebrated. Pallavi tells me that there is no chance that the embassy is doing anything however. It was the only shot to my balloon. I had been inflating this balloon over the course of the afternoon. It was the imaginary embodiment of my happiness and jocularity. She shot it. I'm so happy right now that I don't think it popped. I have a vision of a red balloon, like the one from the silent Parisian flick I grew up on, floating above a young blond boy. Robin hood, as a fox and in a stork costume, just shot an arrow made of two twigs tied together... And now its got a hole in it like Swiss cheese. It's silly, but the image makes me laugh all the more. Like there would be American independence day celebrations in Delhi.

Oh my GOd. They just gave me ice cream. Its a small cup of locally crafted vanilla heaven. What a good day.

When bubbles don't burst, when balloons don't pop... you just keep floating.

Also I am getting very comfortable here. It's like I never left Chicago. I read academic materials and news reports all day. Then I sleep. I don't hear my own voice as often because I have far fewer conversations, but I am content. The place is messy, trash laden, poor, but I am comfortable.

I'll explore some more tomorrow, on my first day off. Hope fully I'll know this place as well as I know Paris after three months. If you and I ever come back, I'll give you a tour.

I'm going to finish my ice cream now.

Peace and Peaches (I have no idea what that means, but I love peaches and the acoustic alchemy song "Georgia Peach", and it seems nice),

Peaches and vanilla cream, happiness on a Saturday, okay I'm actually going to go,


I once jumped over a dumpster in Athens last time someone gave me ice cream with this much sugar. DAmn.


Sam

Letters in the Indian Sand: A notebook by Sam S. Chereskin

These words are taken from the first twelve pages of a notebook that I am keeping. Not all of my posts will be this laden with pomp. This post covers my first five days here. It is measure of what I have done, and what I have been thinking. I have been thinking a lot. There will be more, and I predict that each subsequent post will be more concise than the last.

Here it goes.

---------

Letters in the Indian Sand: A notebook by Sam S. Chereskin

When a friend handed me this notebook, it was a gift. I mean for it to stay that way. The subjects of delivery will surely change, but the object, this object, will stay the same. It is my gift to be passed forward, on, over, backward, under and so on. Read it please. It is my newest three months.

The twenty-eighth day of June, 2009

When a friend knows a friend it is possible for one to make the other cry. When Alex handed me this notebook in her bedroom I started to pleasurably tear. There was a not with it in both English and Hindi that explained that it was hand made. I felt its weight and marked its marbleized cover. It wasn’t until I shuffled through the pages that I swooned though.

I saw the thick textured quality of this book’s ruby-salmon leaves, and I was instantly brought to say, “I love the third world!” Alex laughed. She had spent some collection of dimes on a present that caused her good friend’s eyes to glisten. I think we both enjoyed the moment.

She purchased this notebook in India, though I know not exactly where, and now it is going back. It is in new hands—the hands it was intended for, but I do not think she expected me to fill it directly above soil contiguous with those collections of ground on which she walked. She has told me some of the ways in which India is definable as a land of contrast, though I am sure I will discover many more. These are the things I plan to fill this notebook with.

I told several friends that I am excited by the prospect of my new experiences. I put great stock in relationships. I am fully cognizant of those connections, old & blossoming, that I left behind. But, I am even more mindful of the interpersonal links that are now within my power to engender.

I put great stock in relationships. They are the things that make me the happiest. Accruing new ones is my rush; it is my drug. I realize that this, by its very nature, makes me expansive. And, I realize in turn that this can make me difficult to live with. It cost me more than I knew I could bear once before. She called it an issue of boundaries. This is not wholly the subject of my writings here, but I bring it up because I am still running without care for boundaries. I know I break some, stretch others, and set up new ones all the time. I like boundaries, social ones, because they are a test each and every time. They are puzzles where new connections are the prize. They are new challenges where I get to see how far I can push the limits. I am intoxicated.

I go to India with this mindset. The cultural and working dynamics I will encounter are my difficulties now. I hope to earnestly and passionately engage these new strata in order to find new faces, new hands to be shook, new favors to be given & received, and new good times to be had.

These things, as well as the letters that I scribble, are the lines I will draw. They are the lines that I am always drawing. They are the lines that I will, this time, draw in the Indian sand.

I am currently on the plane. I have a little under an hour before we land. It has been my longest leg to date, but it has also been my most enjoyable. My parents, in their unwavering generosity, provided me with a first class berth. The sights, sounds and amenities were all agreeable. I ate a second dinner while aboard. It was served in five courses, and I began and ended the meal with sherry.

I think I have a taste for fortified wine. This time around I ordered it on a whim, but its amber color, nutty mid-levels, and subtle viscosity proved to be exactly what I wanted. I was instantly transported back to Crete and last august. Transported back to a dinner table lined with faces, and adorned with frittata. I had encouraged those around me to purchase leeks that day. They looked at me through humoring eyes, but thanked me only hours later. It was my suggestion, the cook confessed, that solidified the entrée’s standing as great. I remember the compliment fondly – as well as my accompanying smile & blush – as parts of a wonderful evening. My then current company rewarded me by allowing me to be the sole consumer of the fortified wine they had purchased. It came in a reused, unsealed water bottle and cost as little as would be imaginable for a homemade wine to cost. I believe they bought it at a gas station. They scoffed it after their first glasses, and seemed perplexed that I kept sneaking servings as they moved on to finer fares.

It too was nutty, and it made the night equally so. After dinner, my ex-girlfriend and I retreated to the lowered yard outside our basement room. We snuck a cigarette and Looked out over the Mediterranean and the mountain on which Zeus was purportedly born. The sky hung low with fullness and the unabashed stars that I remember. My seat on this flight folds down into a bed. I slept for twelve of the fifteen hours. This is what I thought about.

I told a friend that the first thing I am going to do upon disembarkation is feel some patch of unadulterated soil. To know its weight, color, and feel. Twenty minutes until we land, I figure there is an hour until I get my first chance to do just that. Hold for real-time commentary: we’re in line to land. We’re circling. It may take a little longer.

As quickly as it began, my life of luxury has ended. I am outside of my residence. It’s almost midnight here whereas my friends and family back in the U.S. are probably sitting down for their afternoon meals. My residence, the building, is austere in a way only middle-income buildings can be. It is entirely made of formed concrete. Tope & Ivory. The interior is a lead-based sky blue on the ground floor; the rest is a monotone beige that alternates between flat and high-gloss. The “Indian Social Institute: Residence.” Home.

I have no A/C in my room, but I got the stamped aluminum ceiling fan to work. It is, at first impression, not pleasant. IT seems palatable however. It is my base of operations—my only space in the world—and I am sure it will grow on me.

The building is 300 yards removed from the main street that my driver and I came in on. In that distance, traversed by vans small and upright, we passed a pitch’s worth of players – 30 deep a side. People were congregated by the main street. Their conversation far less impoverished than themselves. Then the sides of the streets quieted down, and those there were mostly asleep. They lined stoops to gated properties, the ground with blankets, and seemingly homemade cots. It is very hot here at the moment – 80 degrees at night and over 100 during the day – and I wonder if those asleep three to a cot are under the street lamps to escape the heat of some of the low-lying, semi-permanent homes that are about. Some seem to have such refuge, others do not.

It is very quiet out here as I sit on the ground. I changed out of slacks and into shorts and my England jersey. The only sounds are those of the night-time bugs, a distant motor bike, and the hushed conversation of a family to my left. I take that back, a stray dog is barking at me. It won’t go away, and its low moan is probably distributing those around. It finally walked away. Seemed like two minute. It kept up its half-hearted speech even as its tail rounded behind the peeling trailer to my right. I wonder what’s next for it. I hope the people to my left, the family I spoke of above, is not worried or harried by my presence. The man sat up, but I doubt he will say anything to me let alone come nearer. I don’t see him leaving his cot.

It is a mix of florescent and sodium light here on the ground. I am sitting in a pool where the white and deep yellow mix, and I can see my four legs cast as shadows on either side. I want to fill these pages with contrasts, with thoughts, I told myself. I am seemingly lost in exposition, but… Five dogs just ran by – the same one stopped to sound of at me again, but this time he was easily assuaged. He absconded bounding silently away, past the light and to where I cannot see him.

The drive to the hostel, I think, was elucidating [Jagged line on the page with note: dog just barked and scared the shit out of me] of what I think this whole trip will be like. The road was full of cars. The sides of the highways adorned with flashing LEDs. There was no clear pattern. Trucks were adorned with hand painted notifications, “Please Honk.” They seemed not to be able to see around themselves, so instead rely on the audible announcements of others to get bearing. The notifications seemed hardly necessary as car, truck, SUV, motorcycle and auto-rickshaw all added to the chorus without prompting. They traffic flowed as a nebulous, interweaving channel out of the airport and into the city. The lines demarcating lanes were visible, but not observed. My driver most often drive directly over one, moving left and right as he pushed around and forward. It was not scary, but I feel it was an allegory for the place. It is a place of rough parameters – even when they are finite. It is a place of guidelines more than rules. A place where those-who-can speak up.

I am back inside now. It is still my first night. The large ant like things were getting to me. I never liked bugs. I have told my boss I will be into work at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I spoke to her on the driver’s cell phone. I couldn’t understand much of what her rapid fire inflections directed, but I understand that I will catch an auto-rickshaw to work on the morrow. She had delivered a letter with directions to my non-English speaking driver. He gave it to me when I got in his van. They have paid for my room through July 5th at the moment. I will take a Nyquil and put my jet-lagged ass to bed.

I figured out exactly how indulgent my life in the states is. I took a shower using a bucket and a large plastic cup. Wet, lather, wet. Save the soap. Push it around with your hand to conserve the gently exfoliating dove bar. Practical concerns.

Ever try to play cricket with two young Indian children in a dingy Delhi side street? I recommend it, but bring the Neosporin. I was wearing my dad’s dodgy foam flip flops. They were still wet from the shower, and they made soft moist noises to those who cared to listen. Young Boy A, slightly older and more clad than Young Boy B, hit a gettable grounder to my left. I broke, my sandal broke, and I broke. My right foot slipped past my sandal’s tong and I fell straight into a puddle to my left. How little lateral motion I achieved I think was a noteworthy physical phenomenon in itself. I seemed to rotate 90 degrees in the air and fall straight down. YB-B roared with laughter. I had mud up and down my left calf. YB-A wouldn’t let me go to bat after that display, and I had passed up pitching on my first go. His bat was homemade, and had a plastic big dollar sign on the hilt. It made me smile. I adjourned smiling while still cursing their laughter. It was pretty funny. Where the fuck are the antibiotics? I would bleed in an alley on the first day. I would.

“What’s next?” – President Josiah Bartlet

There is a line in a movie about writing that I keep thinking of. An old Sean Connery asks why it is that the words we craft for ourselves are so much better than the ones we write for others. I have been pondering this line’s logical extensions for days now.

Whenever I write I am on the edge of a knife between being my own greatest audience, and writing for another that is equally great but ill defined. When writing for others I exercise constraint – I self–regulate the breadth of my expression. I do not share dirty secrets, I do not say everything that comes to mind. I try to say what others might want to hear. I tray to say what it is I think might make them, those I might present a work to, like me. Fuck it. Let them understand me instead. Let them know the weight of my collection, not just my mind’s razor’s edge. This book is to distant from a story that could make me friends. Not for seven thousand miles and three months. Instead, this book, right now, is my only friend. It is a tangible extension, and reflexive exercise of my own self-reliance. For three months, my words will be for me. I am summoning the courage to do that.

For me to be writing this, and saying the about, I think it is apparent that I am feeling the pressures of my solitude. I don’t think that there is a substance, living or otherwise, in this world that does not bend, shrink, contort, or break when exposed to enough pressure. I do not hear the sounds of my own voice often. But I am not close to breaking. Far from me to suggest that I am the stuff of diamonds, but I am currently exposed to enough heat and a rising number pf pressures. [Line omitted] My skin is shinier here than it is at home – with sweat, rain, and what salves I may need – and I have only been here a day and a half. Time as always will be the ultimate judge of the fruits of transformation. I’ll continue peering into the looking glass to see what reflections I may gleam.

There are choice revelries to be had that can only truly exist while alone. Social bearing causes you to up-end reflections that should have been longer, or to justify your interest and why it exists at all. I LIVE IN A LAND WITH NATURALLY OCCURRING GECKOS. I was in church of this night’s water bottle. I walked outside my residence and stopped in rigor at the sight of two ghostly bodies below me. Three steps down were two cream colored geckos, six inches long a piece. They scurried as I took a step. Off the green granite stairs and back into a tope world they ran. Past the yellowing line of potted plants and up the beige cement of my building. They stopped about seven feet up, a foot above me, and I found them again once I had rounded the shallow entry-way corner. Pure cream with domed dinner plate eyes of reflective black, that’s what they were. Eyes like the glossy undersides of dishes one would eat pasta from. I do not know if they were a profound albatross- beneficial at the first line, detrimental by the last – but they were whips that crack me to realize that New Delhi id not just a different place with different social constructions and rules. They helped me realize that, on a deeply personal level, Delhi, the difference, is more fundamental than that.

Pause. Let the profundity seep in; because I’m about to flippantly take some away from the pathetically small stores that I have conjured. Sure the cows and the bats could have tipped me off that Indian fauna, and whatever cockamamie fundaments it may speak of, would be different. Maybe it was the fact that I saw the lizards in a place and at a time when I was sure to be the sole audience. Maybe I appreciated them in much the same way I liked the Shins before they were a thing. Profound reflections, deepness in solitude blah, blah, blah… My big question of the night: If everyone stopped to admire the Indian geckos, and I could see them do it, would I still hear volumes resounding in those deep black eyes? (Best if last clause is uttered with a southern flavor, and a black-lunged dash of Marlboro Man ® age 50.) I thought about trying to answer that question. I think I can, but it seems an unrewarding venture.

I had my first day of work yesterday. I finally have some bearing on what it is that I’ll be doing. I have one week to familiarize myself with, broadly put, Indian Labor and the issues there in. The two weeks after that will be filled with meetings as I meet with representatives from all the major central trade unions and local unions in Delhi. I will then to into ‘the field’ for three weeks. I will gain on the ground perspectives about labor struggles in five areas. These I believe will be selected by my boss. I already know the cities, but have not been told which struggles I will be looking at in each place. I’ll come back to Delhi after that, and have two weeks to compile case reports before leaving for another fortnight’s field work. My tenure in India then closes with a three-week stint back in Delhi where I will generate my final comprehensive report. I have my concerns, but I will save voicing them until later.

Work was fine. The people were nice, although variously pronounced language barriers left me wanting conversation. I’m developing a crush on my boss. I’ll tell you about that and the coming of the monsoon later.

And so it continues. More work, more laughter.

Pallavi has a wonderful laugh. She closes her eyes, and smiles wide. Her face seems to shorten; its oval closes towards a circle, and her eyes loose some of their vertical dimension. Shorter. My distance to her, physically unmoving, too feels the condensing, collapsing, pressures of that laugh. I’m unembarrassed to confess that I want to close that distance. Until then, I’ll continue enjoying the sensation of proximity. Her laugh creates a causal circle, witnessing it inadvertently has made me want to cause it.

She is smart, personable, and attractive. I want to describe her full black hair, her defined but soft cheeks and the infectiousness of her smile. I cannot do them justice however.

My infatuations characteristically find voice quickly, but things are different here. I am reticent to simply ask her out as I would back home. I do not know what sexual or romantic tension even feels like in Delhi. I wonder why she keeps smiling like that. Doe she lean in to talk to me over the desk because…? Does she doe that with others? I do not know how to proceed, so I just don’t. Forgetting other considerations, she is my boss after all.

She took me in her car yesterday. It was only a short ride to the phone store down the street. Mandicandan came with. While he has proven to be very nice, at the time I was wondering why he joined us. It very well could have been that he accompanied us in order to provide Pallavi a dark skinned male escort. He did not say much, nor did he come in. That said, he is the one who offered me a place in his home. I brought up the excursion because it was on this trip that the Delhi skies opened up for the first time this season.

It was the type of prelude that would have startled any American I know. The wind played its section with bursting gusto pushing high notes past our ears, and lows through the dust and trees; and the horns of cars found a trailing dissonance arrhythmic as Schubert or Davis’ “In a Silent Way.” Sand played the strings’ staccato. One, two, three, in my eye. Each note built the pressure and then…

I could tell you that the rain then started. I could try to describe the several hours of pea colored skies and the gallons that fell on everything. I could tell you how I was wearing the exact wrong pair of shoes for such a day. All of that, on its own, is unremarkable however.

Delhi had been waiting for the monsoon. It was a week and a half late, and temperatures were well above 110 for a week. I was in India for only 20 hours before news that it was going to rain started to bounce around the office. The idea of a monsoon, a big word to unknowing western ears, was intimidating. You could see the muscles in the others cheeks tensing though. Like capacitors charging and discharging the excited birthday like anxiety crescendo-ed with smiles in the prelude I described above. The weather was awesome, but the combination of natural and social climates was more impressive. Most people got out of the rain, but no one was afraid of it. People got wet and kept going in a way that far more tempered than the frantic suited man or the giddy lovers dodging through rarity. I was next to a mother and young daughter for a while. It was explained to me that this was her first rain. Oh how she screamed, and threw herself; oh how she smiled and danced in her mothers arms. I look back now, and think that that was a tremendous first day.

Mandicandan had me over to his place Wednesday night. We drank cheap Indian whiskey and talked about women, our lives, Indian labor, and Marx for hours. He gave me my first ride on a motorcycle. He has offered me a place to stay in his home while his wife is away for several months. He is a Ph.D. student at JNU. I’m glad I’ve read as much Marx and Engles as I have. I might have convinced him, just barely, to accept that its possible to challenge Marx as a guiding social philosophy. No small feat, I guess, over a half liter of drinks. I ate with my hand in unabashed Indian fashion for the first time. I took my whiskey warm as to avoid the ice cubes. He messed up while cooking – he poured so much pepper in that we had to vacate the house for some minutes. We ran out sneezing, coughing, and laughing. We stayed up too late for me to be able to safely get home that night, so I slept over. I caught an auto back home early the next morning. I don’t know if I will live there.

I called one of Adtnu’s friends today, Thursday, after work. I’ll meet up with her and a group of her friends either tomorrow or Saturday night. It should be very nice. Adtnu forgot and said I was 22. I won’t correct him. I talked to her on the way to a national garden on Lodi Rd. near where I am staying. It was magnificent. Pampered yes, but not corralled by pavements and their invisible boundaries. You were welcome to walk through the trees. You were welcome to explore the 600 year old buildings. Families were everywhere. I saw a young child take its first 30 foot journey to her waiting mother. The grandparents were ecstatic, but looked at my smile wearily. I didn't mind. I saw a few young boys ineffectually playing cricket. Old men jogging. More people simply sitting and talking.

I explored an 15th century mausoleum and adjoining mosque. The base stones were iron rust red, decorated with carved sandstone and slate. The koranic inscriptions on the mosque to the right were breathtaking. The geometric intricacy of patterns uniform and sprawling. The swirling of scripture and floral designs. All carved sandstone and in the walls. I'd seen things like this before. You see something new each time. They were carvings that provided ladders with rungs just large enough for one's digits to fit, and the fingers of one's mind easily climb the thirty feet to the sparrows nests above. My eyes were drawn around as if by a string. It would have been hard to stop had I not been interrupted by a man asking for money for his school for the deaf and blind. I stepped back out under the sky.

I put my stuff down where the stairs came up. It was a 15-foot drop to my left, and the stairs trailed off in an L, down and left, below my legs in the near distance. I wrapped my backpack’s strap around my right leg and laid down. I closed my eyes. After a couple of minutes on the warm stones, knowing the sun was setting, I looked around once more. The moon was hanging low over the dome. The building seemed like it was mine for the next couple minutes. There were birds everywhere.

I wrote these silly things while thinking on a girl back home.

“I’ll explore other places tomorrow,” the boy said to moon.
“I’ll climb other mosques tomorrow,” he said through thronging sparrows’ swoon.
I’ll enjoy other purpling skies, and the aftermaths of sun warmed dreams soon.
But right now, I’m only thinking of you.

The moon peaked over a 15th century temple dome. Hawks, sparrows, Indian magpies are all loudly sharing song. Families are leaving - shame its just as the park really came alive.
The dynamism of those remaining can be seen to be self-sustaining as the human tide is waning. This old Mosque. The park is alive.

I came home after that. I bought a water bottle, and walked straight into bed. I was exhausted. I had been drifting off all day.

My Job at the CEC - Financial Crisis and Narratives on Labour

I received a rough outline of my job description today. Here it goes. This is copy and pasted from the email:

It is argued that India is not hit by the global financial recession the same way as the other countries world over. Industry representatives argue that that there has been a surge in foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector; there have not been any signs of a slowdown and that the International confidence in Indian manufacturing is very high. According to news reports the government was working with the private sector to increase manufacturing sector's share in the gross domestic product (GDP) to 30 percent over the next few years from the present 17-18 percent.

Yet on the flip side there is a plethora of stories of workers’ resistances, struggles and strikes since the outbreak of the global financial meltdown. Official data reveals that between January and October of 2008, there were 910,276 strikes throughout the country compared with 534,640 over the same period in 2007. Strikes in major companies include Hyundai, Mahindra and Mahindra and MRF. According to newspaper reports, in August 2008, about 100,000 bank officers called a strike to protest a proposed bank merger plan. Another strike call was made by 500,000 coal miners in December. Moreover, workers are being laid off across various sectors including the export oriented sectors such as garments and textiles. There is a large scale retrenchment of contract workers and casual workers who are not organized in any form and while there are spontaneous outbursts they are not documented. There are also labour responses which do not take the form of a protest or strike and remain unrecorded.

Given this Centre for Education and Communication (CEC) intends to document the geography of labour struggles from selected locations, chosen based on relevant parameters. The exercise should result in the creation of a database on labour struggles from different parts of the country. The expected out puts, therefore, include narratives on selected labour struggles and a e-database that provides disaggregated information on the enterprise, trade union and the struggle.

The person responsible for the task should be willing to travel within India and should have the ability to quickly pick up stories, build narratives and analyse the components. We also expect a project completion report at the end.

I do not know exactly what all of this entails for me, and I have no idea as to whether I am the only member of this survey team. I just emailed my contact at CEC, and I asked her basic logistical, financial, and project questions. I will let you know what she says in response. I am so fantastically excited about this.

In a letter I started to a friend I recently recounted how I have only a short time left in the United States before I leave for three months. I told her how I have no bearing on how many new experiences I will have. How I have no dreams that can calculate the number of faces I will get to see, the number of hands I get to shake. I told her I do not know where my list of new experiences will end, but I do know where they will begin. I want to know the earth. The feel, the color, the weight. It seems like a good place to start.

So I will be the crazy white boy in the airport parking lot that finds some section of earth that isn't recognizably asphalt or potting soil and touches the ground. I'll draw my first letter in the Indian sand. I'll let you know what it's like.

Best,

Sam

The First One

I am currently in the library, trying to finish up my last quarter of my third year at the U of C. I have one more week until that is done, and three more until I hop a plane to India.

I got my visa yesterday, but I still don't know where I will be working. Things are indefinite, and all around. They move fast.

I received one confirmation from an organization in Nagpur, but I am waiting on a response from the organization that I most want to work with in New Delhi.

I'm sitting in a basement under florescent lights in Chicago, IL right now. In three weeks I will be somewhere entirely different. I must say the promise of being able to describe to you what I see, hear, touch, smell - the people that I meet - is intoxicating. New experiences are on the horizon. I am very excited.

The blog has officially begun. I will be back soon.