Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Raju
They arrived late in the season for their kind. Four of them. Our men - Tarro, Karfur, and the young one, Maman - saw them situated. Mine was the dark one: a female, and heavy. I lead them out across the barren planes that have been my home for fifteen years. We reached the sand by midday - the time when the humans must seek shelter from the heat. They did, leaving us to the sun. I settled near to watch our men prepare food, feed them, and leave them to rest in the shade.
We would bear them for four days. Our men would feed them - toast, eggs, and porridge - every morning and - dhal, rice, and chapati - every evening and afternoon, as they do with every load we've carried across the desert. After the sun sets they sing to them in the human language I understand - Rajasthani: the song about the tortured love of a man trapped behind the wall in Pakistan, silly songs about chickens and chai, and - on their final night - the song that celebrates the passing of another year. They laugh, jump and throw the beetles that roll away our dung, kill scorpions, and look at the sky. When they've gone to sleep on the metal frames that Kaloo carries from the village, our men extinguish the fire and see to us before retiring themselves.
Every day we ride. Our long legs easily covering the distance between the dunes of sand people are so fond of seeing. We stop once a day at the adobe villages that dot the landscape to drink and collect our food. The children of the villages run out to inspect our load. Sometimes the women sing to them or give them chai. These stops are our only contact with people other than our men and those we carry. Of our own kind and our wild relatives we see few. For this reason, I was glad to be ride of this load. Soon we'll be turned loose by our men's village as our desert will enter the season people have difficulty surviving. Those of us that have adopted humans will reunite and look after ours. For now, our men stand by the side of the road waving. Another group of people has looked their last on the land they had come so far to see, and is gone.
Raju
We would bear them for four days. Our men would feed them - toast, eggs, and porridge - every morning and - dhal, rice, and chapati - every evening and afternoon, as they do with every load we've carried across the desert. After the sun sets they sing to them in the human language I understand - Rajasthani: the song about the tortured love of a man trapped behind the wall in Pakistan, silly songs about chickens and chai, and - on their final night - the song that celebrates the passing of another year. They laugh, jump and throw the beetles that roll away our dung, kill scorpions, and look at the sky. When they've gone to sleep on the metal frames that Kaloo carries from the village, our men extinguish the fire and see to us before retiring themselves.
Every day we ride. Our long legs easily covering the distance between the dunes of sand people are so fond of seeing. We stop once a day at the adobe villages that dot the landscape to drink and collect our food. The children of the villages run out to inspect our load. Sometimes the women sing to them or give them chai. These stops are our only contact with people other than our men and those we carry. Of our own kind and our wild relatives we see few. For this reason, I was glad to be ride of this load. Soon we'll be turned loose by our men's village as our desert will enter the season people have difficulty surviving. Those of us that have adopted humans will reunite and look after ours. For now, our men stand by the side of the road waving. Another group of people has looked their last on the land they had come so far to see, and is gone.
Raju
Camel of the Thar
Jodhpur
The train ride had been long and hot. Men had stared and we arrived after dark. Past the hassle and the pushing, I caught a rickshaw to the clock tower. I said I'd walk to my guest house from there. No madam it is very far. No it isn't, but he doesn't get paid a commission there. Walked through the dealings of a closing market and asked directions. First right on the left. Find the guest house and up the stairs. No singles, but you can have a double for the single rate if you change tomorrow. Climb the stairs to register. The restaurant on the roof is still open. Sweaty, dirty, tired I climb once more. Only table in a dark corner. I sit, examine the menu in the dim light, and order. He goes and I breath and - finally - look around.
And, then,
Suddenly I'm a ninja.
I'm dressed in black and my mission is to scale the wall of the impenetrable fortress I now behold. I had been sitting with my back turned to the very thing I had come to see. The Meherangarh. The next day via audio tour I would learn that it has never been taken. Cannon balls scars and gates bared against elephant siege stand in testament to this fact. Today, the stronghold is assailed by tourists as the Maharaja, who still lives in the ginormous palace that can't be missed on the horizon, has opened it to the public.
I wandered dazed that strength in stone could be so beautiful. Listened as the British narrator explained that the hand prints enshrined on one wall are all that remains of the wives that burned themselves - without a sound - alive on their husband's funeral pyre. And - when this chilling image had passed - peered down at the city below and smirked. It would take one tough ninja to scale these walls.
And, then,
Suddenly I'm a ninja.
I'm dressed in black and my mission is to scale the wall of the impenetrable fortress I now behold. I had been sitting with my back turned to the very thing I had come to see. The Meherangarh. The next day via audio tour I would learn that it has never been taken. Cannon balls scars and gates bared against elephant siege stand in testament to this fact. Today, the stronghold is assailed by tourists as the Maharaja, who still lives in the ginormous palace that can't be missed on the horizon, has opened it to the public.
I wandered dazed that strength in stone could be so beautiful. Listened as the British narrator explained that the hand prints enshrined on one wall are all that remains of the wives that burned themselves - without a sound - alive on their husband's funeral pyre. And - when this chilling image had passed - peered down at the city below and smirked. It would take one tough ninja to scale these walls.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Ajanta's Caves
Have you ever had one of those moments where you stand mouth agape, awestruck that the pictures in your architecture book are real places, made by real people? Saturday, March 7th I had one of those moments. Standing barefoot in a room of columns carved into the side of a hill. The caves at Ajanta. The pinnacle of rockcut Buddhist architecture. Unreal.
Slumdog Millionaire
I've been in Mumbai before - and I remember the slums. It was on layover, my groggy face pressed against the quadruple pane of the airplane's oval window. My first glimpse of India in the early morning haze - corrugated metal stacked for living. I continued on to Dhaka. Nadi to Seoul, Seoul to Mumbai, Mumbai to Delhi, Delhi to Dhaka, the day I learned my love of flight has a 36 hour limit. But I remember the slums and their proximity to the airport. I remembered.
In Rio, a tourist was shot on a favela tour while I was there. Why anyone would want to tour an area so obviously ruled by drug lords is beyond me. It was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing - tour operations, in slums - and where I made up my mind. I don't tour slums. The thought made me cringe then as it does now. Remember that question you'd bounce off your sister at the zoo? Who's watching who? It wasn't but 150 years ago when we would be on the other side of the bars. People aren't for display. I don't tour slums.
The same girl told me where I could watch the Slumdog now famous. The Regal - not five minutes from my dorm bed. I went excited and emerged dazed - and there they were. They've been there all along, but Mumbai has far more than anywhere else I've been in India. Blind, maimed, matted, and - most importantly - persistent. What does one do? I contemplate - after walking past the wanting hands - lying in a room whose window overlooks a palace. The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower - freshly painted. Who would have thought the city's cheapest and most expensive accommodation could be found on the same street? It's beautiful - the Taj. Fit for kings. On its street a man who will beg in the morning lies with rats. I remember learning that the health of a country can be measured by the size of the gap between the rich and the poor and the amount of people in it. Here, the gap is everything. It's the difference between a slumdog and a millionaire.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Hampi
The big dipper pours upside down. When the dogs fighting by the river wake me at three in the morning, I open my eyes and marvel at seeing it overturned. Beyond the roofs' low lip, the landscape reaching skyward between the palms is just as alien.
I'm in Hampi and by day the area seems to suggest that God - whilst feeling whimsical during creation - began dropping boulders into the clear blue sky. Here, they landed in precarious piles and long ago emperors came to love them and covered them with buildings ment to make them more sacred. After the emperors died and their cities lay barren, these buildings remained precariously a loft just as the stones from which they came. Then, others - who had probably been there all along - painted the flat areas between the piles green with vegetation and carried on until still other people - people like me - turned up to admire the wonderful peculiarity of both the temples built by the dead emperors and the strange rock piles left by God.
We spend our days climbing them - over, across, and around - Clay, April, and I. Yesterday - February 28th - we undertook what other Hampi guests describe as "the epic quest" to Hanuman Temple. After breakfast, we crossed the rice paddy and began - headed up and over the gigantic smooth surface of the mega boulder that bisects the two rock piles closest to our guest house. Our ascent was being watched. Out they sprang, racing down the rock their black faces surrounded by collars of light fur. What type of monkey they are I do not know, but they have the longest tails I've ever seen on an animal. After the first ascent, we appeared to be traversing the moon but over the next rise a spray painted advertisement reminded us this was not so. Baba's Cafe apparently lay waiting in the next valley.
We would lunch there on the return journey. After crossing the stream, passing the shepherded goats and water buffalo, walking the road dividing the banana plantations, and climbing the stairs. Oh - the stairs. All 500 and some of them leading to the very, very top where a whitewashed temple and a white flowering tree stand serine. There were supposed to be monkeys, but the midday sun apparently sends them into crevasses of hiding. I don't blame them, nor did I much mind their absence. All of Hampi lay below us, its boulders and temples sand brown in the heat.
Tonight, there's a film showing at the Laughing Buddha Restaurant tonight. I was initiated into this nightly ritual last night. We laughed like idiots at the antics of the animated cast of "Open Season 2". Us - an American and a Canadian - finding comforting familiarity in the notion of a comic deer and a gangster Grizzly joking amongst an evergreen forest surrounded by snowcapped mountains in this place - India, a world away from home - where even the big dipper pours upside down.
I'm in Hampi and by day the area seems to suggest that God - whilst feeling whimsical during creation - began dropping boulders into the clear blue sky. Here, they landed in precarious piles and long ago emperors came to love them and covered them with buildings ment to make them more sacred. After the emperors died and their cities lay barren, these buildings remained precariously a loft just as the stones from which they came. Then, others - who had probably been there all along - painted the flat areas between the piles green with vegetation and carried on until still other people - people like me - turned up to admire the wonderful peculiarity of both the temples built by the dead emperors and the strange rock piles left by God.
We spend our days climbing them - over, across, and around - Clay, April, and I. Yesterday - February 28th - we undertook what other Hampi guests describe as "the epic quest" to Hanuman Temple. After breakfast, we crossed the rice paddy and began - headed up and over the gigantic smooth surface of the mega boulder that bisects the two rock piles closest to our guest house. Our ascent was being watched. Out they sprang, racing down the rock their black faces surrounded by collars of light fur. What type of monkey they are I do not know, but they have the longest tails I've ever seen on an animal. After the first ascent, we appeared to be traversing the moon but over the next rise a spray painted advertisement reminded us this was not so. Baba's Cafe apparently lay waiting in the next valley.
We would lunch there on the return journey. After crossing the stream, passing the shepherded goats and water buffalo, walking the road dividing the banana plantations, and climbing the stairs. Oh - the stairs. All 500 and some of them leading to the very, very top where a whitewashed temple and a white flowering tree stand serine. There were supposed to be monkeys, but the midday sun apparently sends them into crevasses of hiding. I don't blame them, nor did I much mind their absence. All of Hampi lay below us, its boulders and temples sand brown in the heat.
Tonight, there's a film showing at the Laughing Buddha Restaurant tonight. I was initiated into this nightly ritual last night. We laughed like idiots at the antics of the animated cast of "Open Season 2". Us - an American and a Canadian - finding comforting familiarity in the notion of a comic deer and a gangster Grizzly joking amongst an evergreen forest surrounded by snowcapped mountains in this place - India, a world away from home - where even the big dipper pours upside down.
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