bangalore/hyderabad, february 7-13

Our last week or so before arriving in Kerala seemed to pass as quickly as the two months before. We traveled for a few days to Bangalore with my mom and sister to visit some family friends. We visited the countryside for a day and then spent the next couple of days in the city, wandering the streets of this hi-tech town. Nima and I spent one evening at a lounge, mingling with the incredibly hip tech crowd. We were quite impressed with what may be, along with Mumbai, the most modern, hip, and cosmopolitan of cities in India. Bangalore is certainly severely congested and more polluted than it used to be, but the Garden City still has residual natural beauty in a couple of beautiful parks as well an aura of style and confidence. That this town is prospering is readily evident in its facades and its attitude. Interestingly, it's also a cauldron of political activism, where people rioted after Saddam's hanging and where multiple strikes and protests were happening during our few days there - in fact, there were apparently over 2000 protests in Bangalore last year alone!

Soon it was back to Hyderabad, where we spent a couple of days at home packing up the apartment, visiting family and making travel plans. My mom, dad, and sister headed off at the same time as us so in some ways it really felt as though our time in India had come to an end-though we did decide in the end to spend a week in Kerala.

I have to say, Nima and I have been incredibly grateful for this trip. We have not had this much time with family in a long time. And so much time in India...it is hard for me to express what we have seen and felt, despite all the stories we have told on the blog. I think these months have changed us both. More than any other time before, I have been struck by India's wonder- its beauty and ugliness, its richness and poverty, its hope and hopelessness. Maybe that statement is a bit too quaint but it has been among these contrasts that we have lived our days here.

khajuraho/ajanta, india, february 3-6

Our "pilgrimage" to holy sites did not end in Allahabad, though our next three days were spent visiting sites that that are not truly active religious sites currently. I have wanted to see the temple sculptures of Khajuraho and the Buddhist cave paintings at Ajanta for many many years, so to see both over these few days was wonderful. Khajuraho especially, lived up to the stories and pictures that I have seen.

Getting to Khajuraho, though, was one of the funniest and most unbelievable experiences of our lives. Nima and I have been debating whether we can do this story justice with our writing. But, even as I write I can't stop chuckling so maybe I will give it a shot. On this shotgun trip throughout the north, we were very dependent on the timeliness of the Indian Railway system. Overall, it had done little to fail us. But on the morning of the 3rd, the delayed train was the beginning of our own "series of unfortunate events". Nima, Vikram, and I were dropped off by taxi at the train station around 7 am after a short night's sleep in Allahabad. The plan was to catch the train to Satna (supposedly about three hours away) where we would be picked up by taxi for the 2-3 hour ride to Khajuraho. We were wait-listed so we arrived a little earlier than usual to sort out the seats. As Nima and I tried to decipher the departure board, it dawned on us that the train was delayed by six hours. So after some debate and discussion we decided to call back the taxi driver and see if we could arrange a car to Khajuraho- a trip we expected to take 6-7 hours. Sounds pretty simple. Somehow, by the time we stood in line to return our train tickets (which never happened) and loaded the small Indica as perfectly as possible, it was 9 am. So we started our travel through town. Nima, being the responsible person he is, called our hotel in Khajuraho to cancel the car pick up an let them know we would be arriving late. Something made him ask about road conditions and travel time. After the unexpected answer of terrible roads and 9-10 hours travel time in a very cramped car, we were thrown into disarray. To make an incredibly long story short we decided to just wait for our afternoon train and spend a relatively relaxed morning in Allahabad.

Okay, so its 1:30pm and we are back at the train station standing on a very crowded, very hot platform being periodically pelted with bird droppings (no kidding). After two and half more hours, relief washed over us as the train arrived on the platform- about eight hours late. We settled in for the three hour ride. Three hours passed. Then three and a half hours. Then four hours. Finally, we were told we would arrive at the station in 10 minutes. So we gathered our bags and stood in the doorway ready to hop out at the station. But instead, we stood and we stood and we stood- for about an hour, mostly waiting for the train to move from its unexpected stop about 2 km from the station - Nima threatened to jump out of the train and walk the rest of the way. Meanwhile, Nima was in constant communication with the guys who were waiting at the Satna station for our arrival - they had been waiting for 13 hours! They were a bit testy.

As we finally stepped off the train, we were greeted by our taxi drivers who whisked us quickly to our car. We should have known by the looks of it that our travel had just started. The rickety old Maruti van had no trunk space because of the compressed natural gas cylinder, so we piled the luggage onto the seats and squeezed in. So we waited to go, but for some reason we weren't going anywhere - because we were boxed in behind like 8 cars in this mess of a parking lot! Twenty minutes later, after Nima and Vikram directed traffic we finally made it out of the parking lot and were on our way. We sputtered along in a car with no shocks and maybe 2 cylinders in the engine; even auto rickshaws seemed to be whizzing past us. Nima stuck his thumb out the window to hitchhike, joking that maybe one of the faster cars could take us on their rooftops. Not a moment later, the car started swerving rather uncontrollably. The driver pulled off to the side and his buddy noticed a flat tire. No problem, they had a spare, so we figured a 15 minute delay. Of course we became worried a moment later when it the darkness of the night we saw the driver rolling the spare tire down the road. Turns out the spare was also flat. He had to roll the tire to some unknown stand about 2-3 km away but an hour later we were back on our way. While we waited we were entertained by ghost stories from the second driver but we will have to share those with you later.

So, back on our way, now at almost 11 pm, we were all yawning and vying for a place to sleep. About 1 hour later, while Nima and Vikram were zonked out, I woke up to the car inching along at a snail's pace. For a few minutes we seemed to be coasting down a hill with the car in neutral. Then it it dawned on me that we were out of gas-- natural gas-- with no stations in site. The driver jumped out of the car, popped open the trunk, took out the canister, shook it around, an put it back in. The car started up again. No problem, that is, until about 5 minutes later when it happened again, and again, and again. Five times he jumped out to eke out the last of the natural gas. It was a wonder we made it the last 10 km at all. By 2 am, we arrived at our small hotel, too exhausted and hungry to pay attention to the 30 mosquitoes hovering over our heads. Luckily we fell asleep laughing, thinking this story was worth the journey.

Okay, back to the temples of Khajuraho. We visited many of the Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu temples over the next two days. The temples were built mostly from the 9th century through the 11th century during the Chandela rule. The sculptures are exquisite representations of the daily life of humans and of the gods. The female form is particularly beautifully represented. Some of the most famous structures are the erotic ones that some say depict the Kama Sutra. But all of the sculptures, most incredibly well preserved, are beautiful. We saw them at sunset and sunrise and leisurely examined many of them close up.

After another train ride and car ride we arrived in Ajanta. The grottoes were carved out of the rock starting around the 2nd century BCE. Paints were made from local mineral rocks, except for the bright blue which was made from Lapiz Lazuli imported from Persia. The paintings mainly depict two eras in Buddhism- the Hinayana period (during which the Buddha was not represented in his human form) and the Mahayana period. Sadly some of the paintings have been destroyed by inclement weather and vandalism over the last 50 years though active preservation efforts have been made more recently.

I should take a moment here to say that we particularly appreciated the company of my cousin Vikram. Besides his sense of humor and overall willingness to go with the flow, Vikram is also an incredible pleasure to be around. He taught us a lot about the Indian Independence Movement. My only complaint is that Nima and Vikram made a lethal combination when it came to taking photographs. Vikram is even more enthusiastic than Nima- and if you can imagine Nima behind a camera lens then you know what I mean. I had to boycott all photography on the last couple of days to reassert some sanity. In the end, though, they are the reason for our wonderful visual memories.

I know that the descriptions of the sites themselves is a bit short but in this case, hopefully the pictures can do them more justice than my words. Regardless, both (especially Khajuraho) are definite must sees if you travel to India.

bodhgaya/varanasi/allahabad, india, january 31-february 3

Here is when we somehow managed to accelerate our rapid-fire tour of North India, covering three cities hundreds of kilometers apart in just 3.5 days. These are THE holiest cities in India, which millenia of history behind them. We rushed because I was determined to get us to Allahabad, the westernmost of the three, on February 2nd for one of the most auspicious dipping days of the Kumbh Mela, a massive 1.5 month-long Hindu gathering that occurs only every 6 years or so. We left Kolkata on an overnight train to Bodhgaya, arriving at 5AM. We slept a bit more and ventured out into this small town, which is Buddhism's holiest site. It is in the poverty-stricken state of Bihar, and at least some of the streets reflected the struggles of the poor there.

We walked up a short hill, turned right, then looked right onto the magnificent Mahabodhi Temple, the epicenter of Buddhism and a World Heritage site. On the grounds of this temple, in the 6th century BCE, when there was nothing but trees and birds here, Gautama Buddha went into deep meditation and attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. He went on to meditate for one week at a time at several different spots in this same small area before venturing out to spread his message of the "Middle Path" to freedom of suffering. This is a quick summary of a great story. Anyway, the temple itself was started in the 3rd century BCE and completed much later. It is an elegant and imposing structure surrounded by beautiful gardens and in the back is a descendant of the very tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment. We walked around this place for several hours in total, as it really is impressive.

It was a joy to just watch so many pilgrims from East/SE Asia (and some from India and the West) in prayer and in awe of this place, some even prostrating themselves over and over until they covered every part of the complex. The Bodhi tree was simple but magical in that setting, with people either praying or meditating peacefully on either side of the fence that guarded the trunk. Of course it wasn't peaceful when a leaf would fall from the tree, in which case people would leap after it like it was gold. The meditation was impressive. Some people meditated for several hours in the same exact position - I have a book that teaches one how to do this but I doubt I can purge enough of the chaos embedded in my brain to succeed at such a thing. I actually tried to meditate at the Temple for a half-hour and I think I had 30 seconds of relative lucency and questionable clarity, which isn't bad considering that is was dusk and the mosquitoes were out in full force - this guy next to me was absolutely still as a rock and undeterred while 5 mosquitoes were feasting on his left hand alone!

We saw a giant Buddha statue and temples from countries all over Asia before sleeping to wake up the next day at 3:30 AM to catch our train for Varanasi. So we went from the capital of Buddhism to the capital of Hinduism in a matter of hours. Varanasi, unlike Bodhgaya, is a sizeable city so it has all the energy and madness of any other Indian city, and you can't tell it's a holy place until you get to the Ganges river, which we didn't do until about 4PM ----

I must make a detour here and describe what these days were like. We would wake up ridiculously early, race out of the hotel to catch a taxi to barely make it to the train station in time, chug along for a few hours with minimal sleep, arrive, choose among the marauding rickshaw guys, find a hotel (we usually didn't have a reservation anywhere), check-in, maybe shower, then race out to see everything we wanted to see with the remaining 6 hours of daylight. As some of you know, I can be demanding when I have my mind set on something, so I laid down the edict early on that we could not take a break for lunch with such a tight schedule - at best, we could have some street food. Madhavi made us brake this rule in Bodhgaya and she could tell I was not happy with the "wasted" hour of lunch, so she resigned herself to my military-like tour thereafter.

--- So in Varanasi we managed to take "too long" to shower and only had about 5 hours of daylight left. So we caught the first auto rickshaw we saw and hired him for the day. We hadn't eaten since we woke up 10 hours earlier - and I was STARVING but we had to stick with my master plan so I didn't complain. We grabbed some oranges and bananas and ate them like animals while the rickshaw raced around to temple after temple. One of the temples was dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey-god, and fittingly there were monkeys flying all over the place doing whatever they wanted at this place - Madh stepped in some monkey poo with her bare feet and I bought some shampoo (all we could find) for her to clean up with. Anyway, none of this distracted from our escalating hunger so we bought some peanuts to tide us over before we finally arrived at the holy Ganges river. I must say, the "Ganga" in Varanasi is quite a sight as it gently arcs by an ancient city that rises lovingly beside it on its north side while offering only a sea of sand, a distant forest, and a few dedicated sadhus on its south side. We took a boat down the river, where we rowed by the famous ghats (embankments), where people prayed, took dips in the holy water, and where bodies were cremated in preparation for final resting in the river.

We disembarked and entered dark narrow alleyways leading to the Golden Temple, re-built in 1780 and one of the holiest temples for Hindus, which was highly guarded and tucked away behind a densely packed marketplace, completely out of view before passing by armed guards. I only saw the gold-plated dome, while Madhavi and Vikram entered and were shuttled from one puja to another, at each being asked to donate 500 rupees each ("this is a 500 rupee puja for your parents", the priest would say); they did give and were quite disappointed. We hopped back onto the boat and watched parts of the luminescent daily pujas that occur along the ghats. By the time we got back in the auto rickshaw, we realized that we were STARVING!!! For some reason we decided to drive a half-hour back to the hotel where we knew they had a decent restaurant. By the time we STARTED eating it was 9:30PM. Madhavi and Vikram somehow were not requiring much food, but I think I devoured more food than I have in years. I was stuffing my face continuously for an hour and a half.

The next morning we again awoke well before sunrise and boarded a train for Allahabad. We arrived at a hotel by 9:30AM, but somehow we didn't leave the hotel until 1PM - Nima not happy! To top it off, we had to visit a travel agent for over an hour to hammer out our itinerary from there (you really need travel agents to book train tickets in India - that's all we use them for, we're still hard-core). So we only had like 4 hours of sunlight left this time - you can just imagine what that was like. We stopped first at Anand Bhavan, the home of the Nehru family and the meeting place of the Indian National Congress and various freedom-fighters - we all really enjoyed it. Places like this, of which there are so many in India, bring momentous history to life and are wonderful!

Finally, we reached the Yamuna river, where we again hopped on a boat and were taken down the waters towards the confluence of this river with the Ganges, a meeting point which extremely holy for Hindus.
This area is called the Sangam and is the focal point of the Kumbh Mela, where millions of Hindus converge to dip at the place where a drop of the nectar of immortality fell from Gods battling in the heavens ages ago. We watched the dipping pilgrims as the sun set behind us. The water is unfortunately heavily polluted, in fact septic, so we didn't enter at all (though a few drops splashed on my left foot). We walked through the Kumbh Mela campground and, to our surprise, fairgrounds too. This was far from just a serious gathering of ascetics, it is yet another Indian party. There were food stands, carnival games, and even small roller-coasters! We got back to the hotel, AGAIN STARVING as we had eaten maybe a few crumbs all day. We swore we wouldn't impose such a fast again, but this wasn't the last time by a long shot.

Overall, these three insanely intense days were very memorable and worth every minute. Little did we know that our next day would test us like nothing else had.

kolkata (calcutta), january 28-30

Of course our flight was delayed, again and again. When a flight is delayed in India, just add about 1.5 hours to the new departure time and you’ll get the earliest possible actual departure time. This is no big deal, unless you’re in an airport like Delhi’s which is cramped with no air-conditioning. Here we discovered how incredibly adaptive human thermoregulation is - locals were sitting in this oven of an airport wearing sweaters, suits, even wool hats while we were half-naked and still sweating. We arrived in Kolkata around midnight, and the 45-minute drive to our hotel provided us with an unpleasant first impression of this forsaken city. The air blowing in through the windows had an odor alternating between smog and sewage. The visual was no reprieve either as a scene of decently modern and maintained storefronts near the airport gradually gave way to decaying concrete structures and dark littered streets in the city center.

Our hotel was described as a decent mid-range joint in the Lonely Planet, but it turned out to be a real dump tucked away on a dark eerily quiet street. The rooms we reserved had water-damaged walls with a stench of mold, dirty linen, rock-hard mattresses, stained linoleum-type floors with cockroaches, and the general ambience of shittiness that accompanies such places. We asked for a room change but our new room was only marginally better. Madh and I felt so guilty that we dragged Vikram along on this shoestring journey through his own country and landed him in a place like this – we were cursing the Lonely Planet, which we usually hold in high esteem. So it was now almost 2AM, the manager and assistants had gone to sleep, and we were standing outside with our bags debating whether to tough it out till the morning or just bail and look for another hotel immediately. While we were outside thinking about it, Madhavi looked down and saw a gigantic rat (a mutant species, we think) running around her feet and that made the decision for us. We woke up an assistant, who was sleeping on the ground outside, and told him we had to leave. He and the manager implored us to stay and promised everything would be OK and that leaving at that hour was unsafe blah blah blah. We relented. We tiptoed into our room, scanning every corner, not letting our feet touch the floor or our skin touch the bed (kept full clothes on all night, closed all our bags airtight) though our heads had to touch the damp and dirty pillows. Our revulsion was a bit extreme and seems silly in retrospect but at the time it felt justified, even though that night we acknowledged and sympathized with the fact that millions of people live in worse conditions every night. Somehow we slept OK and the picture to the left shows Madh and me calling other hotels first thing in the morning.

Our two days in Kolkata were actually pretty fun. The city looks better in the right places and during daylight, and it’s a place of immense importance - within India it is unmatched in its modern political and literary history. It was the seat of the British Empire in India for over 150 years, and this was where much of the resistance movement was born. On our first day we walked through a great park for some relaxation and saw a famous giant banyan tree, which has one of the largest canopies in the world. I had never seen such a tree, which in this case had thousands of aerial roots created by branches diving into the earth at mechanically strategic points.

The next day we visited a colonial cemetery, which was quite beautiful and whose loving tombstone inscriptions reminded me of how eloquent writing was in days gone by. Later we went to a museum dedicated to Subas Chandra Bose, a Bengali Indian freedom fighter who broke away from the Ghandian non-violence movement in 1939, and while exiled in Germany and then Southeast Asia he created India’s first army, one whose fighting chant is still used in India’s military today. This army alongside the Japanese actually defeated the British in parts of India before their ultimate defeat. He is a hero for Vikram, who strongly believes that India would have won independence decades earlier if it weren’t for Ghandi (there were other armed revolutionaries around 1920 whom Ghandi refused to support). We debated whether or not a violent revolution, though perhaps serving justice, would have led to as successful a democracy as now exists in India. I think not, and to me that was a major part of the genius of Ghandi’s way.

We had lunch at a quaint restaurant in a former living room which served authentic Bengali food, including fish with a mustard curry. We then realized we had only a couple hours to see the Tagore museum (Tagore is India’s most famous writer, another Bengali and a Nobel laureate ~ 1912) and Victoria Memorial. We hopped onto the sultry subway (India’s first but not its best - Delhi’s subway is fantastic) and traveled halfway up the city then walked a kilometer before being told that the Tagore museum was closed. So we hopped into a cab and got to Victoria Memorial, which is the finest architectural contribution of the British to India. Inside was a great exhibit describing life in Calcutta under the British. One section describes the unbelievable divide between the colonialists along with elite Indians and the masses of poor. A typical East India Company higher-up had dozens of servants in the home, and one caption describes his typical day which starts with him rolling out of bed, being bathed, and then standing “like a statue” while the servants dress every part of his body – ridiculous!

We thought our experience in Kolkata would counterbalance our preconception of a devastatingly poor megalopolis, but it only did so partly. The culture and history of this city were compelling, as were the Bengalis themselves. They are very warm and openly helpful people. If we looked lost, people would routinely stop us and ask where we were trying to go with nothing expected in return. In the chaotic cities of India, this is not common. They also seem to possess a distinct humor and good-natured charisma – Vikram reminded me that’s it’s not called the “city of joy” for nothing. Nevertheless, the dire poverty, pollution, and occasional filth of the city can be difficult to bear, and unfortunately these latter qualities left a lasting impression. This is a city that was overwhelmed by a massive influx of millions of people in just a few years around the time of independence due to famine and then partition with East Pakistan. It still hasn’t recovered, but apparently it’s improving, and we hope so for the nice people who inhabit it.

delhi, january 25-28

At 1PM Pallavi, Madhavi, Vikram (cousin), and I took off to Delhi, where we met up with Sriram (cousin). We were going for the Republic Day parade on Jan 26th, which is the anniversary of the ratification of the constitution in 1950. On our brief remaining time on day 1 we kind of roamed the streets to make sure we knew how to get to the parade grounds; we saw the Presidential Palace (formerly the residence of the British Viceroy) and India Gate and took some cool evening pics of the brightly lit palace. At night we went to Connaught Place, a major hang-out in the well-groomed New Delhi (British), which looks quite a bit different from the Old Delhi (Mughal). We ended up at Café Coffee Day, which is the Starbucks of India. It’s a pretty cool place with good coffee - as with any non-Indian drink (or food) anywhere else in India, it is best to ask for the sugar on the side; if they’ve put it in for you it’s like drinking Fruit Loops – and pretty good music, though sometimes more befitting a nightclub. We just hung out, people watched, and such. We had a very tasty dinner at Nizam’s Kathi Kebab – cheap and good. We headed back to the Ministers of Parliament Guest Complex, where we were staying – Madh’s uncle has connections. These guys drank some vodka straight from the bottle while I sniffled and sneezed with a cold and slept early.

The next day was the parade – we got up early and walked about 4km along with thousands of people (tight security, roads closed to autos) to Rajpath boulevard, carried our invitations (not in our names – I practiced saying “Sri Venkat” over and over in line, though it turned out they didn’t ask), went through tight security where our pens were confiscated, and on to the bleachers. What ensued was a 3-hour military and cultural parade, mostly meant to show off the country’s might. We saw umpteen regiments march in perfect unison, arms swinging and rifles held straight up. One of them was carrying skis - they patrol the Himalayas and are the highest elevation permanent defense regiment in the world. Tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, missiles and their launchers, etc. all went by. This was followed by floats from most of the country’s 30 or so states depicting local culture/economy, which were mostly very well done. It finished with an air show, including a demonstration of mid-air fueling and a rapid acceleration formation (like a budding flower) of India’s most advanced fighter jets. If we were militaristic, it would have been more thrilling; nonetheless, it was our first such parade and was quite interesting.

The next couple days we met close family friends for breakfast, then Madh and I met up with Geeta, a wonderful and youthful middle-aged woman who heads the microbiology department of a Delhi medical school and was Madh’s classmate in Berkeley’s public health program. She took us to the International Center, an exclusive club of the intelligentsia, for lunch. It was pretty interesting to sip tea in a room with writers, artists, prominent professors, and politicians (the second in charge of Kashmir was in the room). We tried to be appropriately proper and stimulating.

That night we hung out in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi’s main street, which is a must see for any visitor to India. I’ll never forget my first experience there 3 years ago, when my parents, Madh’s family and I tried to cross the street from the Red Fort onto Chandni Chowk towards Jama Masjid at dusk. In one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, we were nearly carried across the street by a swarm of humanity that criss-crossed in every direction while we dodged every type of vehicle and animal trying to zoom in front of us. This time, it was similarly crowded, though that intersection has cooled off a bit with the addition of some functional crosswalks. We took some bicycle-rickshaws through alleys and streets that transported us back to the 19th century en route to a hundred-year-old local institution called Karim’s for a great dinner.

The next day Pallavi and Sriram went back to the South, but we convinced Vikram to stay with us for the adventure of a lifetime – he couldn’t refuse, so we were off to Kolkata (Calcutta) that afternoon. Before leaving we sampled some important places in Delhi, like Humayun’s tomb and Indira Ghandi’s and Nehru’s homes, all of which are full of history and well worth seeing. We were off to the airport and a night of waiting while baking.

hyderabad, india, january 18-24

Back home again. This last week in Hyderabad did cement this city as our first true home of this trip abroad. We developed somewhat of a routine here, waking up naturally every morning, which means I would wake up first and start reading a couple Indian newspapers on-line and less often the NY Times. Madhavi would finally roll out of bed at like 10AM - I'm teasing her but she'd often stay up later at night reading some wonderful literary masterpiece like "Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai or "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamluk while I'd pretend to read this terribly written, unrelentingly opaque, randomly purchased South Asian history book for 2 minutes before just konking out, so our schedules were off a bit. By the time we got our acts together and showered, etc., Dad would come home from work for lunch, which consisted of Mom's fantastic cuisine and relaxed family conversation. When this was over, it was 2PM and we'd figure out something to do with our 4 hours of remaining sunlight.

This is when we'd sometimes feel like we should do some medical work or something contributory, and in fact as many of you know this was our plan initially. However, with Madh's whole family here (a rare event) and many planned activities, including the village trips, it was difficult to see how we could do anything useful in so short a time. As we discovered from previous experiences, you really need a few continuous weeks somewhere to make any kind of impact- on the world or even on oneself. Do you notice that I'm trying to justify our occasionally lazy time here in India? This is a peculiarly American phenomenon, I think. The Europeans that we met in China never asked WHY we're travelling, just WHERE and for HOW MANY months or years. Don't worry, though, the above sentiments and concern about the environmental impact of repeated jet travel notwithstanding, we're not having too much of a problem with guilt.

On a couple days I used these daylight hours to visit a nearby poor working class neighborhood. The narrow streets were lined with small concrete homes, which often had a short wall between the street and their tiny courtyards where brightly colored saris hung high on long sloping clothes lines; and interspersed were tiny shops, the kind that are ubiquitous in Asia, Latin America, and Africa but never seen in the West. Of course this is India, so filling in the street scene were cows, goats, dogs (no cats in this country, by the way), and people and more people everywhere. Standing out the most were the young children. They’re mostly too short and too thin due to some degree of malnutrition, so to guess their age just add 3-4 years to their apparent age to a Western eye. But that’s not what you really notice – what you see is radiant energy and expressive joy. They are not weighed down by junk food or video games, and they run around chasing each other playing games that require nothing more than four limbs and healthy vocal cords. What they have in abundance are friends and family – this is in contrast to many urban poor in the U.S. This is not to minimize the scourge of poverty at all, but when poverty is not desperate (like that of the very sad innumerable street beggars) maybe it is not always miserable.

These little excursions are also a photographer’s dream – Indians kids LOVE being photographed and will almost be offended if you’re walking around with a camera and don’t capture them on the little screen. So I shot plenty of pics in this neighborhood – I’ll be going back to distribute prints to them. One time Madhavi came and the kids were particularly wild and exuberant, jumping all over us. A few teenagers among the crowd were playing cricket - THE ONLY sport of discussion in this country – so I took advantage of my moment of fame to take a couple swings of the bat. The boy bounced the tennis ball my way slowly like I was an old man or something and I crushed it – it would have gone out of the neighborhood if a stupid electrical wire hadn’t impede it’s meteoric trajectory. Fortunately for the kids that meant that they got another shot at this old man. So the boy reared back and hurled a blazing fastball at me – only because I wasn’t expecting it I whiffed and whiffed badly. For some reason Madhavi decided that this was the moment she’d photograph!

We spent our other days doing various things like bowling and going to cafes with Madh’s cousins, trying the famous Hyderbadi biryani (not as good as Mom’s version), visiting some local parks. For the latter I of course forced Madh’s cousins to stop one day to buy a Frisbee. So Madh’s cousins Vikram and Vineeth and I tossed the Frisbee around and, predictably, all the kids in the park stopped what they were doing and ran up to watch, chase down errant throws and try their hand at it. It was a blast to just observe their reckless enthusiasm.

So it was a lot of unplanned time spent getting to know family, enjoying the moment, with nothing like sightseeing even on the radar screen. On the 25th we boarded our flight to Delhi. The pace was about to change.

gudimellanka, andhra pradesh, india, january 12-17

Festivals are such an important and colorful part of life in India. Unfortunately over the last decade our trips to India have been too short to really spend time at these celebrations. This time, however, we were lucky to be here in January. Sankranthi, the harvest festival, is a three day event in mid January (no longer at the time of harvest as planting cycles have changed with changes in agriculture). It is a time when family comes together, celebrates, eats, lights bonfires, gifts new clothes, and relaxes. Most kids are off from school and people often take a few days off from work.

We spent Sankranthi in my mom's village Gudimellanka in East Godavari at my late grandparent's home. Almost everyone on my mom's side was there- minus my brother and one of my cousins, both of whom we really missed. We spent a week relaxing among coconut groves and rice fields. It was a relatively raucous week full of stories, laughter, music, some dancing, and of course food. With 12-16 of us there at any one time, we slept anywhere, almost piled on top of each other and ate in shifts. With one indoor bathroom, showering basically required almost six hours. And since none of us are quiet, the stories never stopped.


There were stories about sibling rivalry between my mom and her sisters and brother. There were stories about our childhood and my late grandfather making sure our older cousins (who he used to call monkeys without tails) would not lead us into too much trouble. We heard stories about Indian history (or at least each person's own version). We heard about how India is changing- the people, the land, religion (the most obvious change in the huge number of churches that seem to be popping up in every town). My oldest uncle, a playwright, told us stories about his plays and about literature in India. He is completing the first ever book in Telegu on play production.

I wish I could recount some of the stories to you in person. But for now, here is one that continues to make us laugh. We have a great uncle who has been nicknamed Tuqluq after an old king. He is a kind but unfortunate man with a history of alcoholism who is full of wild comments. Though he knows my family well, his memory periodically lapses. So, as we sat out on the veranda and introduced ourselves again, my mom explained..."Remember, I am the daughter who went to the US. I have three children....". His reply..."So what's the big deal if you went to the America, I am planning on going the moon!!" We all burst out laughing, including him, almost to the point of tears. Later on, as the cousins walked to the fields to chat, he followed along. His is a bit afraid of water so as we approached the fish ponds, he whispered to my cousin Vineeth about the men trying to guide him on the narrow path, "Help me, these guys are hell bent on killing me".

Our week was punctuated by occasional trips to visit the Palakol (a town nearby where my mom's youngest sister lives) and by a visit to the beach. The beach on the Bay of Bengal continues to reflect some of the havoc caused by the Tsunami with the sand shifted much higher and the tide much lower. Our trip was sandwiched in between visits to my dad's aunts and uncles and friends in the town of Bhimavaram. As my mom, sister, Nima, and I reflected on the train back to Hyderabad, we realized that this was a rare time for all of us-- so much time with our family in an almost idyllic place.