First Canada, and then the World!

Drawing conclusions

2008-07-03T22:50:00.003+05:30

This blog has been silent for quite some time, and I think the hiatus marked the unofficial end of "First Canada, and then the World!" I'm now in Seattle, I'm busy and happy and transitioning and missing India all in one breath. But I have no doubt that I will return to the Tamil Nadu heat before too long, if only to indulge in fresh grape juice, Classic Milds and the company of dear, dear friends. In the meanwhile, I'll be starting a new series of written ramblings here: chezmaddie.wordpress.com

À Bientôt!

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost, "Reluctance" (thanks to Nina McConigley for reminding me of this poem)

Brighton. Doug. Li. Transitioning.

2008-04-29T08:32:00.006+05:30

Abel's Index

2008-04-29T07:41:00.004+05:30

Number of months in India: 8
Number of states visited in India: 4
Number of states in India: 28
Average temperatures in Chennai in December: High 27C, Low 21C
Average temperatures in Chennai in May: High 36C, Low27C
Average amount (in Indian Rupees) spent on cell phone per week: 121
Number of times cell phone stolen while in India: 2
Cost of a Masala Dosa in Chennai: Rs28 / $0.70 / £0.35
Cost of a Masala Dosa in New York City: Rs270 /$6.75 / £3.39
Cost of a Masala Dosa in London, UK: Rs875 / $21.86 /£10.99
Number of days taken off from work: 19
Number of times I beat Kovitz at ping-pong while in Thailand: 4
Number of times Kovitz beat me at ping-pong in Thailand: Dozens
Number of train rides while in India: 6
Number of plane rides while in India: 6
Number of bus rides while in India: too many to count
Number of road accidents personally experienced while in India: 2
Number of journals completed while in India: 2
Number of trade book fairs attended as Tara's representative: 2
Number of trade book fairs attended in life: 2
Number of months until seeing Gita and Sirish at Frankfurt Book Fair: 6
Number of times appeared on Indian national television: 2
Number of books read while in India: 12
Number of times Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino read while in India: 3
Number of boxes of books mailed from India home to Seattle: 5
Average number of Hindi classes per week while in Chennai: 2.5
Average number of cups of coffee per day while in India: 4
Total weight in kilograms of luggage when leaving India: 27.3

Tamil Nadu, tu vas me manquer beaucoup!

2008-04-07T16:52:00.003+05:30

Tonight - well, technically tomorrow morning at 4am - I board a flight to London's Gatwick airport. My time here as a Tara intern has come to an end. It breaks my heart to leave these people and this microcosm of happiness, even if I am leaving for all the right reasons.

Actually, it feels as if I have been punched in the gut. What to do?

Last weeks in Chennai

2008-03-31T12:58:00.008+05:30

A Photo Essay

Intern and the "Bosses:" (l to r) Sirish, V. Geetha, myself and Gita

Extended Family (Arun and Nina added to the mix, with Helmut as photographer)

The Fancy-Pants Collective.

I'm obsessed with my Indian nighty. Sirish loves his cheetah prints. This photo was inevitable.

Nina and Nancy on Nancy's 21st birthday.

One of my favourite photos: Gita and Sirish take a break from writing.

The mad scramble to make repping kits (dummy copies of our forthcoming releases that go to all of our North American sales reps). Could not have done this without Nancy, Ranjith, Senthil and Mr. A.

I guess technically this is Bangalore, but I still think it's a classic.

Dinner at Mr. A's, with the requisite dancing. Naya showed us how it was done.

I'm surrounded by strong women in India. It's the best part of my day-to-day.

Nina and I on our Farewell Lunch at Amethyst. Our stomachs hurt from the thought of leaving, but you can't tell.

Amethyst

Fresh Zone, our juice shop, and Jayalakshmi Medicals (where, as Nina noted, you can get medication without a prescription).

Rainy streets near the beach

abel-bodied?

2008-03-27T12:45:00.001+05:30

Have reverted to a diet consisting of 1.5 meals per day, 27 cups of coffee and far too many cigarettes.

This can only mean one thing: separation anxiety.

And, in case you're curious, here's what an Abel-bodied life looks like over the next two months:

April 8: Fly to London-Gatwick

April 8-11: Stay with Great Aunt Daphne (paternal side of things) and attend to Tara business/art exhibitions.

April 11-17: Visit with Doug and Li Elsey in Brighton (it's about damn time).

April 17-21: Abel family reunion on the isle of Manhattan

April 21: Drive with the Dons to Muskoka. 10 hour parental road trip - watch out!

April 25: Dawn, ever the trooper, goes in for surgery #4.

May 10-ish: Move to Seattle, WA!

At times like these, I make lists.

2008-03-20T17:59:00.004+05:30

The Top 5 Reasons Why I'm Excited to Go Back to North America:
1) Don, Dawn and David
2) (tie) My Pacific NW Gents: Kovitz, Daniel, Adam
2) (tie) My Pacific NW Gals: Mirmo, V, Hols
4) Bike rides & dog walks & camping in the mountains
5) Not being harassed by drunken auto-wallahs and crowds of teenage boys

The Top 5 Reasons Why I Can't Bear the Thought of Leaving India:
1) (tie) My Madras gals: Gita, V. Geetha, Nina, Nancy, Rajeswari, Suseela, Natalia
1) (tie) My Madras gents: Mr. A, Sirish, Ranjith, Helmut
3) Fresh foods and spices (especially fruits and juices)
4) Evening walks along Elliot's Beach & evening bike rides to Kotturpuram
5) Waving to and laughing with my autowallah friends, juice stand crew and neighbourhood aunties

(I've never felt so emotionally schizophrenic in my life)

there's no taming the phoenix

2008-03-19T13:36:00.000+05:30

Today I have not been a good feminist. I’m actually quite ashamed. It’s all well and good until you’re challenged to live your politics. And so I offer as a hymn of penance these lines from Ani Difranco, who always seems to put it best in such scenarios:

“…and god help you if you are an ugly girl
of course, too pretty is also your doom
’cause everyone harbours a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room.
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash.
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying past.” from “32 Flavours”

To days of greater solidarity.

A better-than-average Tuesday

2008-03-18T14:41:00.003+05:30

The makings of a good day:

1) The prior evening spent drinking wine and eating Chinese food with a good friend.
2) 7:45am wake-up for rushed homework before 8:30am Hindi class (also taken with and taught by good friends)
3) Hour and a half spent reading old texts and eccentric treatises on yoga in the lush and aromatic courtyard of Madras' Theosophical Society Library.
4) Happy return of boss from oppressive, materialistic, misogynistic country/book-fair. Having Gita in the office makes the team complete, which in turn makes the office hum. She came back with interesting design concepts and stories that would make Margaret Atwood's hair curl.
5) Lovely co-worker makes infamous coconut rice. Lunch spent being sassed, walking to the market for diet cokes and oranges, and enjoying other habitual affairs.

Someday I'll post about Madurai and Coorg and Bangalore. Just you wait. In the meantime, check out these publishers:
MCCM Creations
DaronBoz

Damp and Happy

2008-03-14T10:45:00.003+05:30

I absolutely love rainy days in India. There's something relieving about the low, continuous rumble of a thunderstorm cooling off the otherwise humid Chennai streets. While I will always associate downpours with our flooded house, I also cannot help but express gratitude for the cool breezes and lower temperatures that linger after an unexpected March shower.

India is making it very difficult indeed to say goodbye.

"Sweetness" by Stephen Dunn

2008-03-12T17:26:00.000+05:30

Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet. ...

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

"Sweetness" by Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems 1974-1994.

Brief News Update:

2008-03-12T11:11:00.002+05:30

So I've got good news and I've got bad news. I'll start with the bad, as I do like to end these entries on a positive note.

Last night my cell phone was stolen as I was riding to the beach. I was on my bike, texting as I pedaled down the street (I know, I know, unsafe in its own right). It was about 8:30pm, and there were several pedestrians and fellow cyclists about. Suddenly, two bandanna-masked (no joke) guys on a scooter rammed into me on my right side, knocking me off my bike onto the road. They proceeded to prey on my state of total surprise, kicking me while I was down and nicking my cell phone. To top it off, they yelled "Sorry" as they drove off into the night. So if you get a call from my Indian number, do make sure you yell at the hooligans on the other end, because I'm right pissed at them.

The much brighter news is that my dearest, loveliest friend Tesla (who is just wrapping up a year and a half teaching and living in Japan before traveling south east asia) received early acceptance to the MA program at the University of Toronto's Department of English. She's a brilliant academic rock star, and might actually start to believe this about herself. Congrats, my love. Congrats.

Will post soon about my fantastic weekend with Nina in the Coorg region of Karnataka. My pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jennifah.abel/Coorg

My family in India...

2008-03-04T14:46:00.004+05:30

We had to take team photos for the award we just won at Bologna, and I thought I'd post some shots to show the people who have become very good, life-long friends. From left to right: Bottom row: Arumugam (Mr. A), yours truly, V.Geetha, Nina, Nancy; Top Row: Ari, Sirish, Gita and Rajeshwari.

V.Geetha and I: If I were still in academia, I would have a serious crush on this woman and take all of her classes. Instead, I just take Hindi from her mom.

The ladies.

Nancy (far right) never smiles in photos. So I told her I wouldn't smile too.
It's really an inside joke, but I love this picture.

Muji. Office Dog. Fat, Lazy and Lovable.

It's best to read Barthes aloud, alone, at 1am.

2008-02-28T13:21:00.001+05:30

From Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse

“Waiting: … And, long after the amorous relation is allayed, I keep the habit of hallucination the being that I have loved: Sometimes I am still in anxiety over a telephone call that is late, and no matter who is on the line, I imagine I recognize the voice I once loved: I am an amputee who still feels pain in his missing leg.

Am I in love? -- Yes, since I am waiting. The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits.

A mandarin fell in love with courtesan. "I shall be yours," she told him. "when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window." But on the ninety ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put up his stool under his arm, and went away…

Dark Glasses (the amorous subject wonders, not whether he should declare his affection to the object of said affection, but to what degree he should conceal the turbulence of his passion: his desires, his distresses; in short, his excesses.)… ...Yet, to hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other. I advance pointing to my mask: I set a mask upon my passion, but with a discreet (and wily) finger I designate this mask…

The Love Letter: (This figure refers to the special dialectic of the love letter, both blank (encoded) and expressive (charged with longing to signify desire).

Like desire, the love letter waits for an answer; it implicitly enjoins the other to reply, for without a reply the other's image changes, becomes other. This is what the young Freud explains so authoritatively to his fiancée: "Yet I don't want my letters to keep remaining unanswered, and I shall stop writing you altogether if you don't write back. Perpetual monologues apropos of a loved being, which are neither corrected nor nourished by that being, lead to erroneous notions concerning mutual relations, and make us strangers to each other when we meet again, so that we find things different from what, without realizing it, we imagined.”

Six Months in India!

2008-02-26T10:52:00.003+05:30

Six months ago today I arrived in the Chennai International Airport with two backpacks and a computer bag. I was wearing Kovitz's bright-green baseball cap and Chacos, smiling like a crazy woman. Ari picked me up, and I remember noting that he moved much slower than I did. I think I've since adopted his speed (most of the time).

Life is crazy. Wonderfully crazy.

Delhi. A Belated Entry. Part I.

2008-02-25T14:33:00.003+05:30

For the photographic account of my trip, please click here and check out the Slideshow feature.

(Quite ironically, I’m writing this listening to U. Srinivas, a Carnatic mandolin player and one of the most popular south Indian musicians today. I should be listening to an epic Hindustani vocal track, but I just cannot embrace the sounds of the north the way I have those of the south – with the exception of a few choice artists. It is true what they say: your loyalties will always lie in either south or north India, never both.)

As many of you know, I spent the first 10 days of this month in India’s capitol city for the World Book Fair. This was an absolutely fantastic, chaotic, mind-expanding and physically tiring experience, and one that I have not really had time to relate before now. On Friday, February 1, I flew with Sirish (co-editor/publisher/author/friend at Tara) to Delhi, where we checked into the uniquely memorable Asian Guest House. It is difficult to explain the Asian Guest House; no space-heaters or even windows that fully closed, despite the fact that Delhi was in the throws of an unusually cold winter with evening temperaturess sometimes dipping below freezing. 24 hour running water meant that at any time of the day or night, a boy could be fetched to run you up a bucket of water. This water was only hot between the hours of 9 and 10 am. Most of the rooms were inhabitable because the place was under severe renovation, which was a problem because Sirish really needed to change his room. When we arrived, he was ushered into a room wholly outside of the guest house itself. The room had a newly redone bathroom and absolutely no windows. When he went to open what he thought was a closet, Sirish was promptly told that the door lead to a private office and should therefore not be opened. One night my bathroom wall fell into my bathroom, leaving a hole in the wall into the adjoining room. Another night the construction right outside of my door never stopped.

Despite, or perhaps because of these many sordid details, I became wholly enamoured with the Asian Guest House and refused to leave, even when Sirish made it very clear he thought I would be more comfortable almost anywhere else. Hell, the staff knew me, they knew my routine of two buckets of scalding hot water and a poorly made cup of instant coffee at 10am sharp, what more could a book-fair-walla need?

The book fair itself took place at Pragati Maidan, an enormous compound that contains 15+ convention halls of various sizes, lots of marginal fast-food joints, an amusement park, a water park and – in pseudo-Epcot Center style – a pavillion for each of India’s states. The whole place really is a surreal homage to 1960’s Soviet architecture, with the exception of the Andra Pradesh pavillion, which seems to have been designed by someone strangely confused by terms such as “avant-garde” and “post-modern.”

Perhaps the most fascinating and often upsetting aspect of Pragati Maidan is the large community of people who are entirely dependent upon the conventions centers as their only means of income and shelter. A great many men make their living building elaborate stands for convention participants (Sirish and I garnered more than a few stares when we set up our entire stand by ourselves). Small, filthy children run around the halls, rolling large magnets on the floor to collect scrap metal. Women gather discarded wood scraps to fuel the evening fires that glow about the convention center grounds. Dogs, goats and crows make the buildings their homes. And petty theivery is commonplace – we actually had 20,000 rupees ($500 US) stolen from our stand on the second day. There is absolutely no security and the halls are open to the public (unlike other book fairs, such as Frankfurt, which are strickly trade-based). I would love to do an in-depth look into this community wholly sustained by rotating conventions, fairs and shows. There is definitely an article there waiting to be written.

More on the Delhi and my Cinderella-like experience at the book fair to come….

Revisiting a Topic: Weekends in Chennai.

2008-02-25T14:30:00.002+05:30

Friday evening: rally the troops across the city (International Justice Mission friends, IIT folk and flat-mates) for a free jazz concert at the Alliance Francais. Arrive ten minutes late thanks to Chennai’s typically horrible rush-hour traffic to find the concert completely full. Loiter about as the troops slowly trickle in (everyone being caught in similar traffic), and make the decision to relocate to local outdoor hookah/coffee spot. Stroll through the wealthy backstreets, enjoying the tropical evening and the general feelings of safety despite my gender and my skin colour (both a relief after ten days in Delhi). Smoke strawberry-mint sheeshah, drink delicious Indian coffee and revel in a rare chicken-pesto panini. Home by 10pm. Have the landlady’s 10-year-old son teach me The Electric Slide, which he just learned at his local dance class, in the middle of our empty street. In bed by midnight.

Saturday: Snooze through my intention to go to the gym. Up in time to shower and apply sunblock before wandering through our neighbourhood to the bus stand. Meet up with Ari’s friends and wait and wait and wait for the bus south to Mahaballipuram. Take a share-auto with five other foreigners to another bus stand, where we wait only 5 minutes before catching a bus that will take us to our destination: Ideal Beach Resort – the favourite getaway for Chennai’s resident expat population. Slightly-spendy beach resort sandwiched between two local fishing communities. Spend the day sleeping in a hammock and drinking Kingfisher beer with intelligent and engaging Americans before driving home together along the coastal highway at dusk. Home by 8pm.

Sunday: Make it to the gym. Leave said gym early to come back home for the first-ever “10^th Cross Street Neighbourhood Watch” meeting. This meeting was organized by my landlady after one of our fellow tenants had her cell-phone snatched from her hands out on our street by two men speeding by on a scooter. I was amazed that twenty-plus neighbours showed up to sit in a circle in plastic chairs to argue and talk over one another and make suggestions on how to best protect the houses from “hooligans, burglars and snatchers.” There is something quite encouraging and optimistic about the grassroots activism that takes place all over Tamil Nadu. Such small meetings and impromptu collectives are much more efficient than the larger bureaucratic systems. There were both men and women at our meeting, and many of the women acted as representatives for their households. We’re going to petition for a police booth (these are notoriously empty all over the city) and for more apathetic, overweight policemen to ride their motorcycles down our street at more regular intervals between 11pm and 5am. We’re also hiring a man who will walk up and down the street all night, ostensibly keeping would-be burglars at bay. Finish quitessentially Tamil meeting, nap, then meet Mr. A (Arumugam) to do our Hindi homework together (have started twice-weekly Hindi classes). Come evening, visit friends, visit folk art/tribal crafts bazaar, lazily attempt to cook myself dinner, write current blog entry. In bed by midnight.

Post-Script: The Kalekshetra Craft Mela is absolutely fantastic! There are rows and rows of handmade crafts, silks, artwork and artists. I’m planning to go back tomorrow, and will probably find an excuse to browse on several more occaisions this week. Durga Bai, one of the artists in The Night Life of Trees, is there selling her work, and she is very sweetly letting me practice my apalling Hindi with her.

From "Seed Catalogue" by Robert Kroetsch

2008-02-15T16:36:00.003+05:30

We took the storm windows / off
the south side of the house
and put them on the hotbed.
Then it was spring. Or, no:
then winter was ending.

‘I wish to say we had lovely success
this summer with the seed purchased
of you. We had the finest Sweet
Corn in the country, and Cabbage
were dandy.’
- W.W. Lyon, South Junction, Man.

My mother said:
Did you wash your ears?
You could grow cabbages
in those ears.

Winter was ending.
This is what happened:
we were in the garden.
You’ve got to understand this:
I was sitting on the horse.
The horse was standing still.
I fell off.

The hired man laughed: how
in the hell did you manage to
fall off a horse that was
standing still?

Bring me the radish seeds,
my mother whispered.

Into the dark of January
the seed catalogue bloomed

a winter proposition, if
spring should come, then,

with illustrations: . . .”

A Very Happy V-is-for-Vagina Day!

2008-02-14T15:31:00.003+05:30

As I'm sure you all know my opinion of this ridiculous day, you won't be surprised that I've linked a few articles that really pushed my feminist buttons (courtesy Nina McConigley, Intern 3 Extraordinaire!)

Isn't Seattle supposed to be progressive?

To Settle? To Be Realistic? To Have Missed the Entire Point of the Women's Movement?

Tara wins a BolognaRagazzi Award!!

2008-02-13T15:46:00.002+05:30

I know I haven't written and that people are starting to grumble. While you're waiting for a update, please be content with good news from the publishing house in which I work.

Tara won in the New Horizons category for The Night Life of Trees, our beautiful handmade visual title featuring artwork and stories from three Gond artists from Madhya Pradesh. This is a huge honour, as the Bologna Annual Children's Book Fair is the the world's leading event for children's publishing professionals. Publishers, agents and licensing developers are there, as well as a discerning, buying public! :) Gita and Sirish will be there end of March/beginning of April, and Tara was already to be featured in an exhibition, a children's workshop and a bookstand. We took Jaipur by storm, we certainly held our own in Delhi, and now Europe must brace itself!

http://www.bookfair.bolognafiere.it/page.asp?m=52&l=2&a=&ma=34&c=3312&p=52newhorizons
(the link does not yet announce our win, but I imagine it will in a day's time).

As vicious as Roman Rule...

2008-01-31T12:34:00.000+05:30

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/46425-death-cabs-chris-walla-threat-to-homeland-security

Courtesy of Ms. Leigh Ann Lieberman - rock star, hero, best friend.

Equal Thirds

2008-01-29T11:05:00.000+05:30

Over the course of the last five months, I’ve come to realize that my heart has divided loyalties. One third is dedicated, through nostalgia and familial affection, to Muskoka. One third is, much to my delighted surprise, proudly affiliated with the Pacific Northwest. And the final third, ever ready to cause complications and inspire adventures, rests wholly in Asia. While I cannot reconcile the three parts, I do not wish to. It simply means that I will remain a penniless backpacker, firmly rooted in family and snow-capped mountains framing saltwater harbours and the stillness of a Buddhist temple and the urban clamour of 10 million people and the international language of pingpong until the end of my days.

Thailand was beautiful. It was also heartbreaking. The casual destruction of the Koh Samui environment for a few more jungle spas and hill-top resorts truly detracts from the island’s beautiful beaches and tourqoise waters. The endless stream of men with one (or even multiple) Thai prostitutes by their sides became almost blasé. And I had forgotten just how fat the Western world really is. But none of these details could spoil the two weeks for me, or for Jeff. We found ourselves a few excellent little bungalows in which to hide, retreated to the tiny island of Koh Tao and managed to play pingpong and gin to our hearts content. Honestly, I think we’d find Kabul amazing if there was a pingpong table and beer available. I also really loved Bangkok, particularly once we left the shady tourist areas and saw some of the smaller temples and the “JJ” Weekend Market. Jeff was a bit shocked at the pollution and garbage, but compared to Chennai, Bangkok felt like being in a Western city. There were 7-11 stores! And Starbucks! And hot showers! Oh my! (Of course, I live happily and well without these things…particularly Starbucks…but I had to have my soy latte nevertheless.)

Koh Tao was supposed to be a one-night stop-over, but we ended up spending five nights tucked away in various coves overlooking a variety of absolutely stunning vistas. The best snorkelling I’ve ever had, ATVs on the island’s otherwise innavigable roads, and sushi and wine to top off the week. Romantic as hell, to be sure, and Jeff spoiled me rotten. But I think both of us grow tired of only vacationing together – I welcome the day when we can really make a day-to-day life together. Watch out, world!

On Wednesday evening I leave for Delhi. 38 hours (if I’m lucky) on the Tamil Nadu Express Train. I hope to arrive by Friday at 11am, when I’m due to take possession of Tara’s stall at the World Book Fair in India’s capitol city. The Fair itself runs Feb. 2-10, and I’ll be in Delhi until the 11th. I’m incredibly excited to visit northern India (south Indians have quite the prejudice against the north, and vice-versa), as well as partake in my first real book fair. Meetings on foreign rights and collaborative efforts and author signings and upcoming projects. An opportunity few North American publishers could offer me. And yet another experience to satiate the third of my heart so deeply in love with this place.

But the two remaining thirds clamour for attention, as do my personal finances. And in oversimplifying my reasons and my decision for the sake of brevity and privacy, I will simply state here that I have decided to leave Chennai early, to return to Muskoka via the UK (Doug and Li) and NYC (Dave), and to be back at Mountain Trout House when the ice melts and the first boats need to be launched in mid-April. Come first week of May, should the universe continue to send blessings my way, I hope to be moving into a small red house with a big yellow lab on a hill overlooking Green Lake in Seattle, WA. The world is a strange, funny and delightful place sometimes. Baruch Hashem.

High-Jinx

2008-01-05T10:34:00.000+05:30

This trip may just be cursed. Not sure why, or by whom (or what), but I deeply suspect a plague o' all the houses.

Evidence:

1) Miriam gets the mumps (an ancient virus that should have gone out with the whooping cough - although I've had dear friends get that horrible sickness as well) 36 hours before she is to fly. As of 11am Saturday India time (I am due to arrive in Bangkok at 1:40pm Sunday India time), I still don't know whether Mirmo is coming or not.

*Update*: Miriam is officially not coming. She tried to fly, but felt so ill after Portland to Seattle that she felt it would be an enormous mistake to fly the other 2 legs of the trip. Of course I'm incredibly disapointed, and the worst part is that there are no flights available in the next few days should she feel better and still want to come. What a different trip this is turning out to be. I'm trying to practice patience and openmindedness and remember that I'm still seeing Kovitz and I'm still going to freakin' Thailand.

2) Sarah is denied entry to Thailand because her passport expires in April '08. Evidently (although we still cannot find this printed anywhere), the Thai government requires at least 6 months validity on all passports, even though North Americans are allowed 30 days entry to Thailand without a visa and Sarah has a return ticket scheduled for January '08. So as of now, she isn't coming at all because it will cost $300 to rush a new passport and then all flights to Bangkok are booked (she's flying on points) through the 14th of Jan.

Ick. I feel an ulcer coming on.

Out of Station

2008-01-03T10:25:00.000+05:30

To use the Indian phrase, I will be "out of station" for the next two weeks. For those of you who have not been privy to my excitement frenzy, I leave for Thailand on Sunday! Fourteen days of delicious food, white sand, gin & tonics, and these clowns:

I find myself wondering if I will experience culture-shock in Bangkok and at the tourist beaches. Even being in kitschy Kerala sent my head spinning, as I was no longer in the minority and could find things like french-press coffee and porridge without effort. I imagine I'll be a bit overwhelmed for the first few days. I can't wait!

I imagine there will be very few posts over the next weeks. I'll be too busy jive-talking and laughing like a crazy woman. Bring. It. On.

(no apologies for the number of exclamation marks in this entry).

A few good clicks of the tongue…

2008-01-03T10:22:00.000+05:30

In that absurd 101 Things to Do Before You Die book, attending the December/January music festival in Chennai is not listed. But it should be. By far, the most enjoyable part of this city continues to be its art scene. There are often ten to fifteen concerts a day, in venues all over the city and featuring world-class musicians, dancers and actors. And while I have only been privileged to see a half-dozen performances, almost all of them have been an incredible showcase of talent and musical heritage.

On Saturday, Natalia and I went to Kalekshetra – where we saw the sunrise concert – for an evening recommended to me by a work colleague. T.N. Krishnan, a Carnatic violin prodigy now in his seventies, was performing with his daughter at 7:30pm. But beforehand, seeing as Kalekshetra is a dance academy and temple dedicated to the arts, there would be a Bharatanatyam (Bharata: India; Natyam: dance) performance. Mythili Prakash, an Indian American who has been dancing traditional Indian forms since she was eight, had flown in for the Chennai music festival. And while I studied the history of Bharatanatyam at length in university, it would be my first live performance.

The entire night was a metamorphosis. Bharatanatyam pieces are often stories told through dance; mudras, or hand signs, facial expressions and bodily positions tell tales of heroes and demons, gods and goddesses, women in love. Mythili Prakash became the goddess Parvati. She was mother and lover and warrior, all in her dance. It was absolutely beautiful, and I’m so excited to see her dance again in her native U.S.A.

T.N. Krishnan was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. In 2005, I went with Seth to Tanglewood in the Massachusetts Berkshires, the summer home of the Boston Pops. I remember thinking that it was a rare occasion to see such talent, such deep commitment to classical music and its inherent emotional potential. Not since that summer have I seen such musicianship, have I heard such a beautiful rendering of the violin. Sri Krishnan played the violin with his daughter, and was accompanied by two incredibly talented percussionists. Much of Carnatic music involves very complicated rhythms, and this performance was no exception.

Also like Tanglewood, the audience on Saturday evening was knowledgeable and scrupulous, and many of them were obviously artists or retired artists themselves. Indian custom calls for one to show appreciation of a musician not through whoops and hollers, but through a soft clicking of the tongue and a few well-timed grunts. So as T.N. Krishnan played, you could here what sounded like scolding clucks reverberating through the crowd. It was truly amazing to be part of such an engaged audience – and Sri Krishnan obviously felt the same way, because he played 3 encores.

After the concert, Natalia and I rode our bikes to the beach, allowing ourselves to further absorb the evening as a blood-red moon rose over the Bay of Bengal.

Martyred in Pakistan

2007-12-28T12:44:00.000+05:30

A poignant article from Salon.com one day after Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan was assassinated.

"The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," President Bush predictably told reporters in Crawford, Texas. "Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice." He's missing the point. This is not an episode of "Law & Order," where the killers have to be caught and punished. That would be the way to end the story of Benazir Bhutto.

If Washington and Islamabad are really serious about democracy in Pakistan, they would do better to heed the words of Indira Gandhi: "Martyrdom does not end something; it is only a beginning."

Happy Christmas to all...

2007-12-20T14:34:00.000+05:30

To those in Ontario, Alberta, NYC, Koriyama, PDX, Seattle, the UK, D.C., New Jersey, California, Florida, and India, I'm sending you my love and best wishes for the holidays.

Dave, you've got to read "The Night Before Christmas" by yourself this year. I know you can handle such a big responsibility. Take care of the Dons...they might be extra weepy come the 25th. Watch "Muppet Family Christmas," and kindly remind them that Gobo has always said "Eh" right before the final scene. I miss you guys so damn much!

Maureen Elsey (McManus)

2007-12-18T10:22:00.001+05:30

Maureen Elsey (McManus)

After a valiant struggle with dementia, Maureen Teresa Cecelia passed away peacefully in her sleep on Sunday December 16, 2007.

Mourning her loss are her five much loved children: Brent (Catherine), Dawn (Donald), Cathi, Mark (Laurie) and Scott (Matina). She also leaves her grandchildren: Douglas (Li), Sheila, Michael, Donna, Krystal, Ishmail, Jasmine, Jennifer, David, Garrett, Karlie, Mackenzie, Stephanie and Jamie all of whom she loved dearly. Maureen was predeceased by her husband Norman, grandson Richard, as well as her parents and siblings.

A celebration of Maureen’s life will be held at St. Laurence Anglican Church, 5940 Lakeview Drive SW, Calgary, on Monday January 21, 2007 at 1.30 PM with a reception to follow at The Glencoe Club, 636 – 29 Avenue SW Calgary.

A heartfelt and sincere thank you to the staff at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, Units 12-2B and 12-1 for the wonderful and compassionate care they provided to Maureen.

In honour of Maureen’s commitment to serve others, as a nurse and as a volunteer for many organizations, we ask that in lieu of flowers, donations can be forwarded to The Calgary Drop-in and Rehab Centre 423 – 4 Avenue SE Calgary, AB. T2G 0C8.

An Old Irish Blessing

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind always be at your back

May the sunshine warm upon your face,

And rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

As my youngest cousin, Jamie, noted, "Now Grandma Moe can spend Christmas with Grandpa Norm."
We love you, and rest assured the clan will continue to be loud, boisterous
and - most importantly - together.

Mother, May I?

2007-12-17T16:57:00.000+05:30

May you please let us know if you will sell our books? May you please make a reservation for me at 6pm for two? May you please shut the hell up?

My boss today told me I have a "strange turn of phrase" in my apparently singular use of "May you please/May I please." Blogging co-worker told me she found it odd - in a good way. This is not the first time someone has pointed this out to me (my American employers at OHSU thought it was both archaic and grammatically incorrect - they were at least wrong on the latter account). But my entire extended family uses this phrase. I was taught, along with the generic "please" and "thank you," that an oft-placed "May I" was essential to good manners. In fact, I'm often taken aback by those who don't use the formal request in business, although it would appear I have inappropriately high expectations.

Manners are sexy. I was raised by generations of Brits - I'm genetically wired to think so.

Running in the Red

2007-12-15T15:07:00.000+05:30

Saturdays at the office. Not something you'd initially be excited about. Not something I was excited about when I woke up this morning. But after a banana smoothie and a good laugh at The Hindu's weekend "Gender" Section ("Air Kissing is in this month!"), I rallied my spirits and meandered into work. Besides, we only are supposed to work until 1:30pm on Saturdays...

Three interns, a production manager, a master printer, a secretary and a jack-of-all-trades convened upon the Tara office to do the last-minute mailings for a last-minute and ridiculous book launch for our new title, Matchbook. I say ridiculous because the artist behind the book has insisted upon a glitzy, Bollywood-aspiring, pop-culture-aggrandizing party two days before Christmas. And it was our job on this beautiful and cool Sunday morning to stuff 1600 invitations into bright red envelopes, address and seal said envelopes, and then courier them to Mumbai. But after 2.5 hours at the office, the invitations still hadn't arrived from the printer.

At 1pm, after waiting around all morning, the invitations finally arrived. And they're actually quite stunning, very posh for a Bombay glitzorama - or whatever the lingo is for those in-the-know. So now we all hunkered down to stuff envelopes (typical intern work!). Imagine a sea of red envelopes, scattered glue sticks and Scotch tape (Indian envelopes don't come with glue), and seven hungry workers. Inevitably, we started talking about food, and before I knew it, I was online with Mr. A, our production manager, trying to figure out how to have Domino's pizza deliver to the office. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like the nostalgia that comes from having two large pizzas delivered to your office in suburban Chennai, South India. I don't think pizza has ever tasted that good...

You can't read it, but the party is called "THE PYROMANIAC PARTY"
and features DJ WHOSANE!
Rumour has it that Bollywood's top actors might pop-in. Ha!
I'll be on a beach in Kerala.

Reasons being...

2007-12-14T10:45:00.000+05:30

So if you received an invite to my blog and are wondering why you didn't need this before, a brief explanation:

Turns out, a co-worker of mine at dear old Tara had a blog on which she posted exaggerative, sarcastic and often downright ugly things about her world. This happens to include her day to day work life. She gave everyone and everything a nickname (mostly hurtful). She was also stupid enough to leave a link to her blog on my roommate's blog, so of course I started to read it.To make a long and childish story short, after she started to mock me with content from my blog, I decided enough was enough. It is really quite a shame that my blog cannot be public right now, but if my words are going to be misconstrued and twisted by an immature young woman who hates her job, I've got to just remove her from my readership.

So I'm sorry about the extra step in coming here to read this damn thing. The internet is strange, strange place. And co-workers can be awful, even in India.

Sundaze

2007-12-11T10:42:00.000+05:30

The land of spirituality. A place to find yourself. The wellspring of god/enlightenment/peace/happiness.

We’ve all heard these euphemistic descriptions of India. I encountered them prior to my arrival, and I certainly am bombarded with them now that I am here. So many people from every nationality come to this place seeking solace, answers and inner change. While there is no doubt that India is imbued with spirituality, a land filled with seekers is not always a positive place in which to reside. Many come to India expecting her to fix their problems, to heal mental and emotional wounds, or to run away from lives and realities back home. On the other hand, pilgrims and devotees and yogis can be incredibly inspiring with their bhakti and dedication.

I’d recently felt a deep frustration that my life here felt – at times – rather mundane. Press releases and mailing christmas presents and budgeting are things I can do anywhere in the world. Working and residing in India is quite different from romantically, haphazardly backpacking around for months on end. Yet I’ve always been grateful that I am seeing India from a day-to-day urban perspective. Chennai is quite cultured, if barely cosmopolitan. What we lack in nightlife and liberal alcohol laws we make up for in classical music and dance. Still, I found myself feeling challenged by the fact that my India was, in many ways, a life quite ordinary. But I was simply missing the details.

About week ago, along the walk to work, a group of men began to build an enormous structure in the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a bus depot, then perhaps an impromptu wedding hall. It turns out it is a puja, or worship/ritual structure that has gone up in honour of an important pilgrimage that takes place this time of year. On Friday, this place was lit up and featured live musicians and various hawkers and the requisite firecrackers. There were 20ft tall images of the three important Hindu goddesses outlined in tiny coloured lights. And yesterday, as we three interns were trying to catch a rickshaw to a Tara book launch, we got stuck in the midst of a long parade. Well-dressed women and children carried oil lamps as the men danced around with drums and horns, and all moved ahead of a large deity processing on an oxcart. A brahmin priest sitting with the deity gave me ash for my forehead. And I smiled as I remembered why my life here will never be mundane. I merely have to open my eyes – something I can do anywhere in the world.

As if to reassert this point, Natalia convinced me to go to a Carnatic (classical South Indian style) music concert on the beach at 5:30 on Sunday morning. The (free) concert was to feature two of today’s most revered and talented professional vocalists, and was to be Chennai’s first professional sunrise seaside event. While I will typically sleep in until 11am or noon on a weekend, a small voice inside urged me to go. We rode our bikes to Kalekshetra, the dance academy/school near the shores of the Bay of Bengal. We then walked down a torch-lit path to the beach, where there were 300 other early risers mingling in the pre-dawn light. We settled on a mat just in front of the musicians, and listened to the most beautiful music as the sun rose over the ocean.

It was, by far, the most moving experience of my time here in India. The vocalists started by chanting Om and Sanskrit mantras to the sounds of crashing waves and accompanied by Indian violin and percussion. Then, as the light in the east grew brighter, so did their songs. They picked up the tempo, welcoming the day, as local fisherman wandered across the beach to hear the music. At one point, I felt compelled to envision myself doing the Sun Salutation (flowing series of yoga poses meant to honour the sun and invigorate your day). I breathed in time with each imagined pose, doing one complete salutation. I opened my eyes, looked towards the sunrise, and saw a dozen young yogis, all dressed in white, going through their own Sun Salutations. It was surreal!!! I felt so connected to my surroundings by the music and the environment and the yoga (real and imagined). What a beautiful way to start a Sunday!

2007-12-07T12:53:00.000+05:30

My new favourite site:
http://www.someecards.com/

Habituated

2007-12-05T16:55:00.000+05:30

New Habits:

- making coffee/tea for the office sometime between 4pm and 5pm. This involves querying one boss on his choice of beverage, remembering who wants sugar and who wants sweetener and who’s a diabetic, and generally having the same conversation at the same time every afternoon

- days on end of sobriety

- keralan martial arts at least twice a week, complete with mostly incoherent lecture from instructor (whom I am supposed to call “Master” – not yet a habit)

- half-heartedly tutoring a nine year old Korean boy twice a week, which means reading Captain Underpants or playing Hangman

- making bad puns (an influence of the local culture/office environment)

- text messaging Seattle several times a day

- cooking the occasional South Indian dish (this used to be much more habitual)

Old Habits That Die Hard:

- setting unreasonable exercise goals to be achieved at unreasonably early hours, and then snoozing through my alarm for an hour and a half

- going to bed after midnight every night

- inclinations to brownnose despite better judgment

- procrastinating at work

- inability to manage money

- inability to write friends and family back within a reasonable time frame

- enduring idealism

- habitual, compulsive planning

Another masterpiece from 3147...

2007-12-05T09:54:00.000+05:30

So while most of you did not get to meet Dan Klockenkemper or Adam Stone (former Portland roomies), I think I bragged about them enough for everyone to know that I think the world of them both.

A month or so after we moved in, Dan purchased a ton of whiteboard from Home Depot and mounted a large piece on our kitchen wall. While ostensibly this was for roommate-to-roommate notes, we really ended up using it for impromptu art projects and as a way to tell one another when one of us had last fed the neighborhood cat. This cat, whom we call Frank Larson (long story), managed to convince every house on the street that he had been abandoned and desperately needed food. Actually, come to think of it, that's not too different from our office dog, Mooji.

Today Dan sent me the latest collaborative effort from 3147. It's called "The Frank Larson Story." Enjoy:

Tesla Schaeffer is the love of my life.

2007-12-03T10:08:00.000+05:30

In a recent e-mail to Tesla, I wrote:

"Life has been crazy, in completely different but completely empathetic ways from your craziness. India and I are wrestling like Jacob and his god, but to continue the metaphor, it is a struggle in love."

Today she writes me:
"wrestle away, my love. thats where god is. and in those moments when both you and india herself are lying sweat-drenched, black and blue and wasted on the ground, kiss her and tell her that you love her."

It makes me cry with gratitude to have a friend like Tes. (Her graduate school proposal is also brilliant - Get Ready, World!)

The Dons and their toys

2007-12-01T15:53:00.000+05:30

So Dawn Abel is the cutest woman alive. And yes, she had my dad spray-paint her crutches so they wouldn't be so damn ugly. But she chose lime green, which for me raises a few questions about what she deems "ugly" in the first place.
When my mom got in her motorcycle accident, my brother and I jokingly told my parents that they were to sell the motorcycles and purchase a Ford Shelby Mustang or some equivalent. Obviously they took us seriously. This picture explains why my father is the luckiest man alive:

Happy Birthday, Ari Phillips!

2007-11-27T15:01:00.000+05:30

Today, in celebration of fellow intern Ari Phillips' 24th birthday, he and I woke up early and rode our bikes to the Rajaji Bhavan. There, we were told we could buy train tickets for our planned trip to Kerala (southwest India, on the Arabian Sea). But as it turned out, all regular seats were sold out, and while there were evidently tourist-quota seats available (seats reserved for foreign tourists), you can only reserve these seats at Chennai Central Station, 20km to the north.

So we rode to work, "surprised" Ari with a batman birthday hat and shiny garland, and my boss made him a fruit pie/cake. Then we geared up to take the suburban train for the first time all the way to Central Station.

The train itself was a lovely (and free - there's really no place to buy tickets at our stop because the train station was never completed...it's a half-finished construction zone) respite from the autos and buses, even if it felt a bit 1920's the whole ride north.

We arrive at Central Station, stumble around a bit among the crowds, go up two flights in an adjacent building to a small, air-conditioned office specifically for tourists, where they proceed to inform us that unlike the office we were in this morning, they do not accept credit cards. Foreign tourists must pay in US dollars or UK pounds, or in Indian rupees if your rupees come with a receipt proving you changed US dollars or UK pounds into rupees while in India. Needless to say, we had none of this. We had Rs.800 ($20) and no proof that we didn't make these rupees in our suburban Chennai flat.

Nor could we buy tickets, because they were all sold out. Ari could buy a ticket from Hampi to Chennai in January, but he had no way to get to Chennai. So we returned home, again via the unintentionally free train, as it began to rain gently.

Chumbawumba comes to mind: "I get knocked down, but I get up again, 'cause you're never gonna keep me down." They love this song in India. I can see why.

Plan as of 4:00pm today:
Friday, December 21: 8am flight from Chennai to Trivandrum, 2 hour bus to Varkala, where we will stay at the Bamboo Haven Resort. I get to stay in a bamboo cottage overlooking the Arabian Sea, surrounded on all other sides by leafy jungle.
Monday, December 24: Bus to Cochi/Kochi/Cochin/Kochin, where there is the largest midnight Christmas Mass in India. We'll be staying at the Fort House.
Tuesday, December 25: I leave Ari to fend for himself for two weeks, and I fly back to Chennai on Christmas Night. Kingfisher Airways. Just too posh.

The things we do for the holidays.

"So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten"

2007-11-23T10:05:00.000+05:30

“Oh, well, these are night thoughts produced by walking in the rain after two thousand years of Christianity.” – Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

I think “Sodom, South Georgia” and “Upward Over the Mountain” by Iron and Wine are two incredibly beautiful songs. Bluegrass and the banjo sustain me here in India.

•

What does it mean to have never had your heart broken? Are you cold and impenetrable? Are you merely practical to a fault? Or are you just biding your time before the inevitable, horrible moment when your steadiness comes falling down around you? Is the broken heart a human, all too human right of passage? Or just a convention in chickflicks and chick-lit and the self-help section in Barnes and Noble? I remember when I used to look to each new relationship with an almost masochistic sense of expectation, half-hoping this would be the individual who would finally break my heart, finally get the ordeal over with. I also used to think I couldn’t really be a writer until someone had shattered me to the core. Now I’m wondering if I ever have to have a broken heart. Can’t we actively seek out those people who will be kind to our hearts – and if they start to mishandle our emotions, can’t we love ourselves enough to walk away? This is where I find myself today, happy and assured, but curious about the tropes of love.

•

One of my bosses was a casual friend with Edward Said. He once smuggled her into a Palestinian solidarity meeting in New York City by convincing the organizers that she was Arab (South Indian, Middle Eastern, no one knew the difference). She says he was incredibly good with his students, an egalitarian when it came to relating to men and women, and was “never bad to look at.” I stared at her in awe – I’m still incredibly fixated upon the romantic ideal of the academic. Tes once took a class on academic celebrities…why again was I taking Sanskrit?

•

What is it about Thailand in particular that draws my kindred spirits and I there to have open-ended trysts imbued with expectation and passion?

•

I dreamt last night that Ari told off our crazy landlady. I woke up feeling refreshed. Evidently Ari’s moment of glory during Tuesday’s floodwaters has instilled me with hope for his abilities and motivations. I think these might be false hopes. He’s taken to simply quoting me on his blog rather than write his own entry. He rightly observed to his girlfriend that I buy his bedsheets for him. He still makes funny noises when he sees a large cockroach. He’s still tone-deaf. He still opens the fridge, overlooks his fresh and delicious loaf of real whole wheat bread and instead grabs the old, mouldy bleached white bread that doesn’t even belong to him. None of this makes any sense to the reader, I’m sure, but I did promise Ari that I’d be sure to make him look pathetic again. Done and done. But he can quote Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber with me, so it’s impossible for me to write him off entirely: “I think it’s the pâté.”

•

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans. Go Gators. Enjoy your Friday festivities, SoFla crew. xoxo

Finally!

2007-11-21T11:37:00.000+05:30

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/277648

Of Floods and Bugs...

2007-11-20T13:04:00.000+05:30

Brought bedbugs back with me from Bangalore. They fell in love with my sleeping bag, and soon took to biting me all over my body. I'm itchy as hell, and it looks as if I have the chicken pox on my arms and back. But things could be worse...

After a night of pouring rain and thunder, Ari woke me up to tell me that Nina's room was flooding. "Big deal," I thought. "This is old news. It's probably just a trickle." But then I heard shouting, and upon investigation, was surprised to find a veritable deluge coming in through Nina's window. With water well over ankle deep, our entire house was threatened. Basically, our landlady's consistently bad construction sense had struck again, this time aiming the rain run-off from the entire house into our flat. The rest of the morning is a blur. Ari donned a past intern's gigantic blue rain suit and turned into Superman, making makeshift pipes and giving sound advice. Nina ran about half-naked, soaking wet in her pink pajamas and rain-spotted glasses, piling mud and sand in front of her window to stop the rushing waters (her efforts were successful, if scandalous). For the most part, I played the useless assistant - fetching old pipes, building Lego-like contraptions to make up for the lack of gutters in this country, and bailing out Nina's now rather silty room.

Must remember that 2300 people lost their lives in Bangladesh from the cyclone. Must remember that our housekeeper did not come today because of massive rain damage to her own home. Must remember that we still have it pretty damn good.

Today on the phone, Jeff laughed and jokingly asked me "and what's so appealing about India again?" The truth is, at 7:45am in the pouring rain, with landladies and roommates yelling and mud streaming into our house and the bed bug rash spreading, if someone had asked me in that moment, "Do you still want to be here?" I would have screamed back, "YES" with all my heart. Perhaps India isn't appealing, but I still am exactly where I want to be.

Happy Three-month Anniversary, Interns!

So this is real life...

2007-11-19T14:22:00.000+05:30

I swear I will never want to eat another banana after I leave India. Bananas: the pealable, oh-so-safe, local fruit staple. I hated them as a child. My father and brother used to gross me out by chewing bananas with their mouths open at the dinner table. I wouldn’t even eat banana-flavoured yogurt or drink fruit smoothies that listed bananas as one of the ingredients. But then, while in Nepal, I discovered that my love of fruit paired with my desire to be kind to my intestines meant that I had to embrace my old nemesis. And so I tolerated bananas – even started buying them in Portland during the weeks when I was particularly broke. Here in India, I will admit that when you’re doing martial arts and yoga and riding around on a bad bicycle, the potassium helps to placate sore muscles. But I’m still banana’d out, and it is only November.

The honeymoon is over – that is to say, my travel high has ended. And in many ways, I’m actually relieved. A state of awe and euphoria can only be sustained for so long. Now there are days when gratitude comes slowly, if at all. I must work harder to love this place, although I still do (and with all my heart). I must work harder to thank Hashem for the world and the people around me. As in all too many relationships, I am beginning to find my lover’s flaws difficult to endure. My Chennai is an incredibly polluted place, and I’m now stuck with a cough that sounds as if I’m a heavy smoker. I no longer find the auto rickshaws fun, but rather see them as an expensive frustration. Working full-time at Tara means that I do not have the time to travel and see India for weeks on end, as do many of the foreigners who are here to study or do research. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I really did not bring enough money, and am learning to live on quite the shoestring (many of the westerners I encounter still convert rupees to dollars and justify a Rs.500 brunch as “only $12!” But Rs.500 is one-tenth of my monthly salary. Ari is helping me, through well-meaning if poorly timed criticism, with the embarrassing state of my finances).

But I’ve started to take Bharatanatyam classes with a woman I met in my martial arts class. And I could not be happier with my job and the people I work with. And I buy fresh papaya and lime from the street and make the most delicious salads. And I’m learning to be alone again, something I had forgotten how to do between my time in Montreal and Portland. And I’m quietly in love, “without complexities or pride,” and so that always helps.

I’m reading Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer. I believe this will be one of those books, like Gatsby or Breakfast of Champions or Love in the Time of Cholera, that will stay with me for my entire life. At first I was completely put off by Miller’s violent fear of the feminine, of his inability to see female sexuality as anything but an emptiness, a vacuum, a zero-sum prize. It is as if, in one book, he gives enough linguistic and theoretical fodder to last generations of feminists. However, I choose to love him in spite of these flaws (let us be honest: it is not the first time I have fallen for an antifeminist). Miller’s Paris is, in many ways, today’s India. I refer not to the rampant sexuality, but to the poverty and stress of a rapidly developing area. Paris, like India, also attracts the wild, mad ones – the North Americans and Europeans looking for that which they can not find at home: companionship, God, validity, cheap thrills, art, spirituality, nihilism, adventure, silence, meaning. But, as a friend and I discussed this weekend, you bring your baggage with you, whether it be to Paris or to India. Wherever you go, you cannot hide from yourself forever. India, Paris, California, Tokyo, New Jersey, Portland – in their differences and their similarities, these places will always reflect the same image of ourselves back upon us. It is then up to us to decide whether or not we must change, and whether or not we can muster the strength to do so.

Some Recent Photos:

Tied up in the shopping district...

Running from the monsoons' return...

Our front entrance, now with tile and some plants I resurrected

Holiday Frenzy

2007-11-06T13:42:00.000+05:30

So Diwali is upon us here in India (as it is for Hindus the world over). Diwali is described as a festival of lights, the New Year, the festival of sweets, the festival of too many sweets, the festival of loud but not-so-visually stunning firecrackers, the festival which welcomes Ram back from the forest to Ayodhya in the Ramayana. In short, it is one of the most important festivals on the Hindu calendar. And, much like Christmas, even non-Hindu and atheist Indians tend to adopt some of the traditions associated with the 5-day holiday.

The best part of this time of year is that everyone is excited and hurried, just like at Christmas time. Shops are promoting "Diwali Super Sales," traffic is awful and the shops are crowded - but everyone is still smiling! I rode home from martial arts class last night laughing and smiling with several complete strangers. There is constantly music blaring from tinny temple speakers. So while I won't get the same sort of Christmas spirit here in India, it is really wonderful to partake in a similar kind of festiveness.

Some Diwali traditions I can't help but love:

Tradition One: Firecrackers - set off as many of the loudest mini-bombs as possible before you blow your hands off. The younger you are (ages 4-7), the better!

Tradition Two: Travel to your hometown - Does travelling to your boss's hometown count? Ari and I will be taking a night train from Chennai to Bangalore for a weekend away. Because Tara is the kind of place that lovingly infiltrates every aspect of your life, it turns out that most of the office will be in Bangalore at the same time. So we'll probably just go out for coffee or have mildly artsy dinner parties. With wine...there's wine in Bangalore.

Tradition Three: Eat sweets - Are you kidding me? Dessert is my favourite meal!

And this is what I want to do for a living?!?

2007-10-31T15:50:00.000+05:30

A brilliant, if depressing, look into The Frankfurt Bookfair (my bosses spent 3 weeks in Germany representing Tara) and what it connotes for the world of publishing at large.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2190553,00.html

An excerpt from the article:

"Why does anybody even want to be a writer? And I say that as one. Two weeks ago the BBC reported that it came top in a survey of the nation's dream jobs. I end up ranting about this at the Bloomsbury stand [at the Frankfurt Book Fair], and Alexandra Pringle, the editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury, rants with me.

'I know!' she says, 'It's mad. It's a horrible job. It doesn't pay well. It's lonely. It's depression-inducing. It's frustrating. There's no fun to be had. But everyone has a drive to be a writer. And everyone thinks they can do it.

'Whereas to be one is some sort of mental derangement! They're all bonkers. When my writers say I could earn more money at the till at Sainsbury's, I say, well go and do it. There's no point writing unless you feel that you have to do it. You have to really want to do it and to be prepared to suffer to do it. Or else you really might as well go and work on the till at Sainsbury.' "

Cathartic

2007-10-30T13:27:00.000+05:30

Cooking South Indian food eases feelings of homesickness, frustration and general malaise. Or maybe it's just cooking in general that helps renew perspective. All I know is that I hit my 2-month wall last night, and hurdled over with the help of generous amounts of dosa mix and salt.

Conceptually Delicious

2007-10-29T14:19:00.000+05:30

It was a big weekend for those of us here at 21/8 10^th Cross Street. We spent some serious bucks (a term that can apply to rupees as well as dollars), and managed to see quite the cross-section of Chennai’s nightlife. A not-so-brief breakdown:

Friday

After a routine kalaripet (martial arts) class – during which Ari left after the warm up and I laughed too loudly with new friends – it was time for a quick shower and a white-knuckled auto ride to celebrate Stacy’s birthday. We were to meet Stacy, whom I met through Mel, a former PDX roommate, and some friends at 10 Downing Street, Chennai’s newest (and one of the city’s swankiest) bars. “Now wait just one minute,” some of you might say. “Isn’t 10 Downing Street the home address of the British Prime Minister?” And I would applaud you for your astute memory. Indeed, as if colonial identity was not already a tangible presence on every street corner, white foreigners and wealthy, upperclass/caste Indians can now drink in the symbolic namesake of British power. Perhaps the bar owners are trying to be ironic. My experiences on Friday night lead me to think otherwise.

Fridays are “Retro Nights” at 10 Downing Street. This means that the DJ will spin 70’s disco hits (“Hot Stuff”), the occasional Madonna song (“Holiday), and that bad early 90’s techno song from Night at the Roxbury. All of the patrons know the words to every song, and the middle aged Indian women sing and dance with particular abandon. But the highlight of the evening was most certainly the waitstaff. For those of you who follow my blog (I think there are three of you), you might remember that we found a bar with waiters dressed as pirates. Themed uniformed staff are evidently a sign of a quality establishment, as the waiters at 10 Downing so flamboyantly demonstrated. Picture, if you will, a man in tight khaki pants, matching khaki beanie cap with brim, cowboy-like collared shirt with orange 1960’s floral print (imagine an Austin Powers’ montage), and large faux-silver dollar sign necklace. Add a Rod Stewart disco hit, a real gin & tonic or whiskey on the rocks, and an incredibly comfortable bar chair, and you’ve got 10 Downing Street all figured out. We closed the place down – which means that we stayed until midnight when they turned on all the lights and made everyone leave. In Chennai, if a bar stays open past 11pm, you know it’s been a good night.

Post-script to Friday: smoking a peach menthol cigarette from Japan in an autorickshaw is one of life’s secret pleasures.

Saturday

New sandals for $2.50! Cheap jewelery! Monsoon rains! A friend with a car! Ari, Natalia and I thanked our good fortune for having befriended Tanya, a fantastic Italian-Brit who owns a rather old and mostly functional compact standard. The four of us met up with a crew of European engineering students at Mocha, a reasonably priced outdoor café and sheeshah bar with only a slight mosquito infestation. We spent hours smoking strawberry-mint hookah, indulging in strong coffee, and asking one another the same two questions: “Where are you from?” “What are you doing in Chennai?” With a group of 10, this can take up quite a lot of time. Also, I had bites of real fudge, delicious salsa and a hot apple cinnamon muffin. Simple indulgences!

Although the rains had really started to fall and the roads were well on their way to flooding, we all decided to go on to Speed, a hole-in-the-wall club that was supposed to be having a trance and house night. One of many reasons why I love encountering Europeans abroad: they always are ready to dance to my favourite kind of music. So we piled into a caravan of cars and autos, trying desperately to keep our expectations low. When we arrived, I was convinced that Speed was the kind of club that I would never, ever visit back home. Bad blueish black lighting, even worse hip hop music, and a mini racecar mounted behind the bar dictated my first impression. Strangely enough, this bar also confirmed my suspicions that Chennai bartenders believe that gin and tonics must glow blue to be authentic. Strange, strange indeed. But twenty minutes after our arrival, as promised, the DJ began to spin some surprisingly good deep trance and bass, and the evening really took off. Another reason why I love Europeans: they dance like maniacs, and infectiously so! Even my fellow intern got his ass on the dance floor after a drink or two. Ari self-describes his dancing skills as the following: Good. Fast. Fresh. I can only hope that my silence on the subject will be interpreted as consent.

Again, we closed the place, this time dancing until the music stopped and the lights went up at 1am. Night owls, watch out!

Post-script to Saturday: Clubs in Chennai only admit couples (aka men and women in pairs) and single women. While this can make the solo male a bit frustrated, I do have to admit that it makes my time on the dance floor much more enjoyable. Not once was I groped, grabbed or otherwise harassed in two hours of dancing.

Sunday

This was supposed to be a day of rest. A day without surprises. It was raining quiteheavily, so Ari and I just wanted to venture out quickly for some lunch and hole up in the apartment for the rest of the day. The previous interns and some martial arts friends had recommended Sanjeevanam, a healthy neighbourhood vegetarian restaurant, and so we thought we’d check it out. Having seen the menu the previous day, I had plans for tofu tikka kebabs and some veggie stir-fry. Instead, we discovered that at lunch, Sanjeevanam only serves the RAJA LUNCH. As scary as it sounds, the Raja Lunch consists of five juices (to be drunk in a particular order), a similarly ordered series of uncooked vegetables, followed by an ordered series of partially cooked vegetables, capped off with a free-for-all of cooked rice, cooked veggies, spicy pepper water, and a literal handful of honey (which Ari managed to get on his nose). Most of these items were not good, and some of them were downright awful. We didn’t even have time to protest or run away, as they start to serve you as soon as you sit down at a table. I think the pictures speak for themselves, and I can only add that this was not what we wanted for lunch and that my stomach is still gurgling hours later. Ari observed that it was like the Passover Seder, in that you have to endure all of the prayers and bitter herbs before you can have the tasty dishes. I think he was being generous.

Post-script to Sunday: The monsoons are here in full force. Today reminded me of the first storm-bands of a hurricane in Florida, with the consistent downpour of rain and the palm trees tossed about in gusts of wind. So far our house has not flooded. Fingers crossed, dear reader. Fingers crossed.

Post-Script to the Post-Script: I wrote this entry on Sunday afternoon. By Sunday evening, Nina’s room had a third of an inch of water, our kitchen tiles were leaking, and a sizeable puddle had formed under our fridge. Ari and I began “bailing” by using towels to soak up water and then squeezing said rags into a bucket, but these efforts soon proved useless. So we washed our feet to prevent cholera (supposedly something you can catch from walking in stagnant water), turned off all electrical devices, and hid in my room watching a movie and drinking wine.

Just when I thought I was used to life here, the monsoons arrive and destabilize everything.

A taste of Chennai in NYC...

2007-10-26T11:01:00.001+05:30

For those of you who can get to Washington Square Park (aka SG), a must!

https://pardonmyhindi.com/samachar/02/dosa/*

*Link credit to N.S.M.

An article for the bibliophiles...

2007-10-25T15:43:00.000+05:30

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24book.html?ref=books

True Love

2007-10-24T17:07:00.001+05:30

So for the first time in my brief but diverse career history, I am completely fulfilled by my job. I am given a great deal of responsibility, I look after marketing and art exhibitions, something of which I know nothing about, and - most importantly - I absolutely love the people I work with. We all laugh together, take frequent and well-deserved coffee breaks, and really compliment each others' interests and strengths quite well.

While the above pictures are hardly flattering, they do capture the group's colour and closeness.

Days Slipping into Normalcy…

2007-10-22T10:11:00.000+05:30

This weekend, I often felt as if I was having a typical weekend. Friday at the office was like a Friday in many workplaces I’ve experienced in the past: goofy, filled with laughter, and lightly sprinkled with anticipation for two days off. We belatedly celebrated the birthday of Mr. C. Arumugam (fondly known as Mr. A or Boss), our printer and man who oversees and is the energy behind our beautiful handmade books. We surprised him with cake, and Nina wrote him an impromptu poem and made him a crown that bore more than a slight resemblance to a Burger King hat. It felt good to bestow such love on the man who more than anyone else has been responsible for the ease of my transition here in Chennai. Mr. A helps me with my South Indian cooking almost every day – he gives me tips whenever I bring in a dish, he tells me the best stores to get local ingredients, and he even came over to teach the three interns how to make dosas. He helps us fix broken appliances, he came to see a silly Tamil film with us, and we share our various music tastes with one another. He has also one of the most infectious laughs…so Happy Birthday, Mr. A!

This Saturday was a particularly important day for many Hindus, as it marked the culmination of the nine-day festival Navratri. Saturday was a special puja (religious ceremony/celebration) day in honour of Saraswati and Lakshmi, the goddesses of wealth and knowledge. Many people, Hindu and non-Hindu alike, give thanks and bestow blessings upon the tools of their trade, the means and ends of their successes, and the possessions that aid in obtaining knowledge. In other words, cars, computers, hammers, dump trucks, cows, bicycles, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, storefronts, restaurants, elevators, and gas pumps were all decorated with banana tree leaves, smashed pumpkins, and a splattering of sandalwood paste and red tikka powder. I spent Saturday morning riding my bike around our neighbourhood, visiting the Lakshmi temple, enjoying the music blaring out of various auto rickshaw speakers, and purchasing fruit at the many impromptu markets and stands that sprang up all over the city.

In the afternoon, Ari and I ventured northwest into the Chetpet neighbourhood of Chennai, where we followed a fellow ex-pat’s tip (many thanks, Stacey!) and went to French Loaf. Sweet HEAVEN! Whole grain breads with walnuts and sesame seeds! Baguettes and sandwich rolls! Amazing lattes! Chocolate chip cookies that taste just as they should, with the sugar granules crunching between your teeth and the sweet mixture of flour and shortening and baking powder and love all softening in a glass of milk before you take a bite of the perfection. Needless to say, we spent quite a long time enjoying the place. You can make your own sandwiches and they have cold cuts! For those of you who take such things for granted, please note that I had a turkey breast sandwich for the first time since I’ve been in India. Thinly sliced, fresh deli meats are quite impossible to obtain, and so French Loaf is a goldmine.

Saturday evening was spent in southern Chennai at a pasta and mohito party (fresh produce makes such gatherings all the more delicious), with good company and the ocean breeze to top off the night. Sunday Ari and I again ventured north, this time to Choolaimedu, for a potluck brunch with friends we’ve met through facebook and six degrees of separation. It was a team effort, and I’ve never ever been so grateful for mixed veg scramble, banana shakes, french toast, hashbrowns, fruit salad, and americanos. We even had syrup for the french toast (98% corn syrup, 2% maple syrup)! Nicely done, kids. Nicely done.

Mooji (the dog formerly known as Bhooji)

2007-10-18T14:34:00.000+05:30

Just had a lovely “Lassie” moment with the office dog, Mooji.

Riding my bike back to work after a lunch-break filled with errands, I encountered Mooji on the main road, sniffing away at a trash pile. I called to him, and he ran along side me as I cycled to the office. He barked, I laughed, and I could almost hear the orchestral soundtrack playing in the background. As we turned the last corner, Mooji suddenly caught sight of two large cows blocking the Tara gate. He dashed ahead, barking and jumping about wildly. The cows merely snorted and chewed their cud. As I pulled into the office, I congratulated Mooji on a guard-dog job well done. He wagged his curly tail a few times before lying down to nibble at his flea bites. I think this makes us friends.

Gaining Momentum...

2007-10-12T16:42:00.000+05:30

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/13nobel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I am grateful that the Nobel committee has so publicly acknowledged that the fight to stem climate change is a worldwide effort with ramifications as large as the concept of "peace" itself.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Life as a Series of Anecdotes: Part Two

2007-10-10T15:41:00.000+05:30

As friends and family can attest, I am notorious for overextending myself. I love to commit to ten dinner parties in a two hour period. I love to think I can train for a marathon and work two jobs and save the whales all at the same time. I also love to make unrealistic exercise goals for myself, and am thus inevitably laden with guilt and self-loathing when I do not accomplish said goals. Why shouldn’t I be able to rise every morning at 6am for a 6:30am yoga or martial arts class? I only abhor the mornings and think a reasonable time to start work is 10am and cannot possibly understand how anyone functions without caffeine in a typical workplace.

So when I decided to bring both my yoga matt and my inflatable exercise ball to India, it was most certainly a decision made by Jenn-the-Overextender. However, I am happy to report that I use my yoga matt 4-5 times per week and I manage to get to martial arts class 2-3 times per week. Surprisingly exciting! And yesterday I decided it was high time I blew up my purple exercise ball and had regular conversations with my abs (we have never really been on speaking terms because I was always too enamoured with beer. Le sigh.).

An inflated exercise ball proved to be a difficult thing to obtain. I did not bring a pump (smart) and so I accompanied Ari to our local bike-repair stand (consisting of a wagon under a tree with a dirty tarp strung from the branches to provide some shade). This man took one look at my pathetic, deflated ball and immediately told me – in Tamil and without being prompted – that he was not the fellow for the job. He helpfully gestured further down the road, repeating “right side, right side.” After Ari’s bike tires were sufficiently full of air, we continued on in our quest.

The lovely thing about our neighbourhood is that many of the locals are now quite used to seeing my pallid face roaming about, and look to help me whenever I appear even slightly confused. So as we stopped at various stands and stalls along the road, many different men were very glad (and not at all surprised) to direct us along to the mysterious place that would fill up an exercise ball. Finally, we found a bike stand that looked remarkably similar to the first, but who had a tiny attachment for their pump that gave them the competitive edge. Much to my chagrin, this tiny attachment was of no use with my ball. As first one man, and then two, and then three gathered to blow up the damn thing, spectators would pass by and offer their suggestions for how best to get the air to stay in. An older, half-naked gentleman smoking a cigarette paced between his fruit shop and the bike stand, muttering directions and looking rather sceptical. After about 10 minutes of heavy pumping, the ball was sufficiently inflated (and sufficiently dusty), and there was a mutual feeling of satisfaction in a job well done. I tipped 5 rupees on the 5 rupee labour charge, and let one of the men bounce the ball like a beach toy (which I’m sure was what they all assumed it was).

Let it be known that I did not let such an adventure go unwarranted: I did an ab workout this morning before breakfast. Making that a habit? I’d rather have an I.P.A…

Libra

2007-10-09T12:25:00.000+05:30

Happy Birthday to Scott Elsey and Seth Oranburg! Thinking of you both in South India!

We often cannot explain why we love the things we love...

2007-10-08T14:49:00.001+05:30

Pianissimo Pêche

2007-10-08T11:54:00.000+05:30

One pack Pianissimo pêche (peach menthol cigarettes)
One 500mL bottle of C.C. Lemon (70 lemons’ worth of Vitamin C in every bottle!)
Three packages of tragically stale sesame mochi with red anko (Tesla’s favourite)
One blissfully fresh large mochi ball with anko (devoured immediately)
One packet of green tea
One packet of strange yet delicious almond toast/cookie/brittle substance
One juice-box filled with sake
One miniature can of Kirin, the Japanese beer
Two packages of what might have once been mochi but arrived at my door as slightly moldy slush.
One beautiful photo of Tesla taken in a photo booth

These are the contents of the world’s most thoughtful, lovely and timely care package. On September 4^th, Tesla (who is teaching English in Japan) mailed me a care package the likes of which had never been seen before. While the typical parcel takes about 2-3 weeks to arrive, I had honestly given up hope for this gift from Koriyama. I had visions of lazy postal workers in Delhi delving into my mochi with ravenous delight, smoking the peach menthols and philosophizing on why India had not embraced vending machine culture. What I completely underestimated was inter-Asian prejudice; from my limited experience, I find Indians wary of the Japanese, whom they believe are heathenistic raw-meat eaters. Perhaps no one in the Delhi postal service would dare try Japanese rice and bean paste for fear of sashimi. I also forgot that the Japanese overpackage everything to the point where you cannot actually discern the contents of an item from its external appearance. A moment in which I am grateful for the inherent and quirky differences between cultures!

The real climax to this elusive Japanese care package story comes on the morning of Saturday, October 6, 2007. Ari, himself eager to retrieve a parcel from home, rose early to beat the “rush” at the nearly-local post office. As he was rummaging through the backroom of forgotten packages for his box of personal affects, he found Tesla’s shipment just sitting there!! Eureka! A discovery akin to those of Copernicus or Newton (needless to say, Ari has accumulated an endless supply of brownie points and a juice box filled with convenience store sake). He also earns “I told you so” rights for his prediction that the package would only arrive after I had given up all hope and on a day when I was not thinking about it. Nicely Done.

So many, many thanks (and a few tears of awe – reminiscent of those shed on the Shink) to Tesla for her wonderful present. The C.C. Lemon, as always, was the perfect hangover cure. The one ball of fresh mochi was all I hoped it would be. And the peach menthols will certainly be a welcomed break from my dangerous flirtation with a beedies addiction.

Three Months and Counting!

2007-10-04T12:38:00.000+05:30

Booked my flights to Thailand today!! I leave Chennai on Jet Airways at 5:50am on Sunday, January 6th, fly through Kolkata, and land in Bangkok at 4:15pm local time (about 4 hours after the Mirmo and Kovitz arrive). Best early Christmas present I could have given myself.

Bring on the debauchery! Any bets on whether or not I can bring myself to leave paradise after two weeks???

Running Fool

2007-09-29T10:04:00.000+05:30

In an act that certainly felt more normal than it would have four weeks ago, I went for my first run in Chennai today. I initially woke up to my 6am alarm with the intent to attend a 6:30am martial arts class. But five minutes into my bike ride towards the beach, I realized that it was actually “cool” enough outside to go for a run. *Note to reader: Up until this morning, I have been unable to drag my sorry ass out of bed before 8:30am. Neither construction workers nor honking traffic nor humid, stale air could force me from my cot until the last possible minute. So today’s exception was quite notable!

Besant Nagar (our neighborhood) is an entirely different universe before 7am. My only fellow exercisers were all over 40 years of age: power-walking brahman men with bright white tennis shoes who swarmed about the seaside boardwalk. Cardiac health is practically a new fad here in South India, and one only adopted by retirees and those with enough money to live a healthy lifestyle. Billboards advertise life-after-heart-surgery, cereals and aryuvedic products claim to ensure a healthy heart, and obesity is an oft-discussed disease. (I actually learned a crazy statistic the other day: one in four diabetics on the planet is an Indian.) Here, wealth often manifests itself as obesity – if one has money, one can afford to eat often and much. Also, I’ve never passed a sweet shop that wasn’t swarming with customers. It is both curious and disturbing to watch elements of Indian culture interpret North American and European obesity as a mark of prosperity. There are, of course, many Indians who react against such an interpretation (the power-walkers, the yoga and martial arts practitioners), and like I said, health-consciousness has arrived on the scene in a craze quite like bellbottom jeans or American (Indian) Idol.

Back to my run: I took about forty-five minutes to run to the beach and back. I passed a temple clanging its bells and applying tikka paste to the horns and foreheads of some local cows. I breathed in air pungent with fresh fish, dog feces, cow feces, human feces, and mystery feces. Dressed in sneakers and work-out clothes, the auto rickshaw drivers knew to leave me be. An elderly foreign man who was walking in the opposite direction gave me a stern glare, as if he had hoped to be the only pale-faced outsider that morning. I saw a motorcycle carrying three men and their tennis rackets, dogs sleeping in piles on the beach, and games of frisbee, volley ball, and soccer along the Bay of Bengal. It was so quiet, relatively cool, and I felt as if I was seeing my neighbourhood for the first time…again. I’m so glad to have the chance to renew my love and appreciation for the area, as this week I had begun to feel a bit stuck (I blame the rain on Thursday).

Today we’re working a half-day at Tara (in preparation for our bosses’ departure for the Frankfurt Book Fair next week, and because of the state-wide strike on Monday). Then I’m off to the tailor, the post office, and the grocery store. We’re having a few new friends over for dinner tonight, and I’m finally exposing to the world my newfound love of South Indian cooking. I’ll be sure to post my favourite recipes here soon.

Happy Early Birthday, Gandhi-Ji!

"Finding roaches in the pot..."

2007-09-27T10:13:00.000+05:30

Ari and I have reached an unspoken agreement regarding our particular roles in the household. Should the world’s largest cockroach enter our kitchen or bathroom (such a thing occurs with some regularity), Ari’s task is to either immediately leave the room or climb on the tallest piece of furniture and survey the scene with great dismay and perhaps a groan or two. My responsibility lies first in the panicking, then in the spraying of the world’s largest cockroach with undue amounts of roach killer, and finally in the disposal of the world’s largest cockroach in the dirt outside (Last evening, Nina took over that final step). While these roles hardly seem equal or fair, they are what they are. Ari is a pansy and I am a cold-blooded murderer. Such is life at Old 21/New 8 10^th Cross Street.

Update: We do in fact get The Hindu every morning. To use Kovitz’s phrase, “I’m the provider!”

A cycling blog (4 pockets!) dated 22 Sept. 2007

2007-09-26T16:43:00.000+05:30

Cycling in this city is exhilarating! Weaving between people and motorcycles, adding the ring of my bell to the din on the streets, feeling a rush as I pass by the buzzing shopfronts. I rode my bike to the very outskirts of southern Chennai today. I wanted to find the Shivananda Yoga Center (where they hold intensive classes, meditation retreats, etc). It was about a 30 minute bicycle ride, and what a way to see my neighbourhood!I'vebeen fighting a cold all week that came on full-force last night. But following a great deal of Sudafed and some local remedies, I felt at least somewhat capable of taking a day alone, for myself. After I snuck in to the Theosophical Society and hid out in the “Liberal Catholic Church” grounds to write in my journal, I grabbed a few idlys and headed south.

I took a detour to search for the news shop that sold the previous Tara interns their subscription to The Hindu, India’s equivalent of The New York or London Times. All I had to go on was a receipt that was taped to our refrigerator and used as a note to eulogize a four-legged, two-anused chicken (don’t ask!).

In Chennai, the addresses are literally composed of lines such as “21/81 Behind the Water Tank, Thiruvanmur, Chennai” or “56 76 K.K. Road, next to Mr. A’s house, Besant Nagar, Chennai.” So everyone has to ask for directions. After several attempts at finding the elusive newstand, a very nice young engineer on a motorcycle informed me that his friend and neighbor owned this shop and he would be happy to take me there! He brought me to a narrow back alley – so narrow, in fact, that I had to leave my bike at the entrance in order to fit between the buildings. After a bit of searching, we found the home of the owner of the newstand. Said owner was out delivering papers. However, his wife and four-year-old son informed me that he would bring over our first Hindu tomorrow and that he would call me in the evening to confirm. The amazing thing is that without having randomly asked the particularly kind engineer, I would never have found the home of the man who sells newspapers from a shop of which nobody knows the address. This is every-day Chennai! And it works! Somehow everyone gets their paper every morning and a man can make a living selling subscriptions to one the most widely circulated newspapers in the world out of his backalley apartment.

So with the newspaper subscription tentatively secure, it was southward-ho! Using a city map left to us by our Tara predecessors (honestly, we could not survive without the various resources they passed along!), I made my way down the coast. To my surprise, I passed through neighborhoods and by an Italian Restaurant (Bella Ciao) that I had thought was quite a bit further away. It was reassuring to discover that friends and food were not as distant as I had been told to believe (there is a strange obscuring of distance within the Chennai expat community that I do not yet understand; some places are actually quite far but articulated as “close-by,” while other areas are “so far away” and yet I can cycle to them without complaint).

Along the ride I passed hoards of dragonflies, grazing cows, fishing villages, Ganesh and goddess temples, women with 100lb bags on concrete on their heads, and countless other people, places, and things. As I left the city proper, the environment grew lusher, more resort-like. I found the Sivananda Center and learned about their various yoga programs, took some time to observe a class, and wandered about the surrounding neighborhood.

The ride home was all the more exciting, as I knew where I was and could focus more on the sights and sounds of the trip home. It was around 6pm and the Saturday evening rushhour had begun. I was competing for road space with auto rickshaws, cars large and small, fellow cyclists, pedestrians, buses, and the occasional animal. I wove in and out of traffic, I rang my bell and yelled at those who brushed past too close for comfort. Almost home, I came to one of the few traffic signals in the area. With the other bicycles, I jockeyed and dodged my way between the cars and motorcycles to get to the front of the pack waiting for the green light. The signal changed, and we all charged forward en-mass, horns and bells ringing our forge ahead. It was thrilling and really made me feel as if I was a part of the chaos instead of merely a witness to it.

As I smiled and rode on, an auto rickshaw driver pulled up next to me and told me that at my speed, I could charge 100 rupees (a lot for an auto) “no problem!” We then raced to my house, bike versus auto, and of course he let me win. It was the funniest moment. It was also the first time an auto driver had interacted with me in a way that did not somehow involve a money transaction – again, another moment of feeling more local than foreign, although I no doubt drew the driver’s attention because of my overt foreignness. Ahh well. It was fun nonetheless. And again I end my day madly in love with India.

"In Mumbai, one man's meat is another man's poison"

2007-09-24T16:46:00.000+05:30

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/21/asia/india.php

Dawn, etc

2007-09-20T10:44:00.000+05:30

My mom called me yesterday. She has been in the hospital since the night of Tuesday, August 14^th, and will realistically remain in fulltime care until just before Canadian Thanksgiving (mid-October). She is incredibly strong and upbeat despite her situation – or perhaps, in part, because of her situation. The accident has truly opened my mother’s eyes in a way that is difficult to convey. She now can now witness herself as a vital member of several communities; she is an old friend to many, a fellow business owner, a resident of Muskoka, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a daughter-in-law. She is a role model for so many of the women that she encounters, and I believe she is beginning to see the deep and meaningful affect she has had in other’s lives. The outpouring of love, support, and aid that my parents continue to receive is overwhelming. Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude.

David and I were very fortunate to have a mother who stayed home with us until we left for college. But I believe that it was difficult for my mother to find new routes of meaning and fulfilment once her two children had left the house. So it filled me with a deep joy to hear her on the phone last night talking about writing in a journal for the first time, networking with others in the area, and fighting hard to get well. She has always been our family’s fortitude, and she is now (finally) turning this endurance towards her own needs. My father’s unwavering presence and boundless energy certainly help her to maintain such positivity and progress.

In other, completely unrelated news, I ate a “thousand year old egg” today. Evidently in Taiwan (where Ari stopped on his way to India), they bury eggs underground for an extended period of time, only to unearth them and then eat them as some sort of treat or savoury dessert. In the burying/unearthing process, the eggs turn black, the whites harden into what resembles a cheap plastic, and the yolks turn the colour of a smoker’s lungs. Ari brought some of these delicacies into our home and left them on top of our rather dilapidated refrigerator, where they have sat since mid-August. Tonight he half-jokingly suggested that we finally try one. My motto for this year is to try to be open to every experience, even dirty, centuries-old egg experiences, and so I agreed. It was exactly as I expected. Awful. The worst part was that as I put it in my mouth, I could not help but fixate exactly on what I was eating: a black, chewy egg that had been allowed to rot, ferment, and otherwise metamorphosize under the ground.

I’m going to continue to try not to fantasize about Wasabi Bistro in Seattle, WA.

Life as a series of anecdotes:

2007-09-19T15:37:00.001+05:30

I've had to abandon certain environmental ideals since I've been here. The reality of street garbage, excess packaging (I'm starting to realize that is an Asia-wide phenomenon), and omnipresent air pollution somewhat curb my zeal. And so I am able to appreciate the wonderful manner in which the local juice stand packages a sweet lime soda to-go.

As you can see below, the soda is presented in the same way one might receive a prize carnival goldfish: securely tied in a plastic bag.

This is India in the minutiae. This is the India I encounter every time I open my rust-iron gate and step into the street. Fresh lime, fresh sugar, imported club soda, and enough plastic to kill the street dogs who will surely munch on my trash when my cleaning lady throws it into the street.

India is like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book...without the choice.

2007-09-18T12:50:00.000+05:30

A Haiku for my Cleaning Lady

Lovely Nagama,
I hate cleaning pots and pans.
You scrub them for me.

- - - - - -

In case anyone was curious about the world’s worst place to have a hangover, India officially takes the blue ribbon. To begin with, one does not drink as much here as one might back home. Tamil Nadu has particularly strict alcohol laws, and a few beers at the house feels like a party (add a Punjabi Pop mix album to the ambiance and things seem out of control!). So your system isn’t prepared for heavy drinking to begin with. Add a day’s worth of dehydration, salty snack food at the bars, and the most surreal and circus-like clubbing atmosphere you’ve ever encountered, and you’re already headed for a tough morning. But it isn’t until the morning is upon you that India’s reign as the world’s worst hangover hotspot truly becomes apparent. Despite the fact that it is Saturday and the holiday celebrating the god Ganesh’s birthday, the construction workers arrive at your home at 7am. They have made absolutely no visible progress all week; however, today is the day they are hell-bent on finishing their task. Sounds of hammers, chisels, shovels, and shouting bombard you through your windows. An argument breaks out in expressive, exasperated Tamil, only to be drowned out by an auto rickshaw’s sputtering engine. The neighbors begin to blare devotional songs from their home stereos. The landlady scolds one of the workers for moving a pile of dirt to the left of the gate when it should have been relocated to the right. You begin to regret the gin and tonics from the previous evening. You remember those drinks well, double shots glowing neon blue beneath the club’s ambient black lights. Come to think of it, whatever made them glow in the first place is also making your stomach seize now. Stumbling out of your room and into the bathroom, you swat the tropical mosquitoes from the toilet seat and brace yourself against the cold, grainy tile. And then you smile to yourself, softly, because in this moment your hangover is the most familiar element in your whole reality. The pain in your head and the uneasiness in your stomach recall dozens of past hangovers, all ripe with the memories (or lack-thereof) from nights past. You take a deep breath, pour a glass of drinking water, and lie back down on your cot, finding a strange – and slightly nauseating – comfort in your hangover’s universalism. And then you pass out.

Night and Day, You are the One...

2007-09-14T16:45:00.000+05:30

Why I love Miriam Douthit...

2007-09-12T13:10:00.000+05:30

I wrote Miriam and told her that I was planning to take two weeks in May or June to go on a yoga retreat. This would involve waking at 5:30 every morning, two-three yoga classes per day, two pure veg meals per day, a couple of hours of daily service to help with the upkeep of the ashram, and back in bed by 10:30pm. It only costs 600 rupees for the whole two weeks (about $15US).

This was the Mirmo's response:

"...Oh and I think your vacation to the yoga thing sounds like smoking crack. Abel-you know I love you! And I love that you are eccentric...I hope one day many many years from now I will know you still and we will meet up and you will have a fresh hena application and way too much stone jewelry and a pamphlet about how to clean toilets for tibetan monks on your next vacation....and I will hug you and remind you then that I love you so and hand you a toilet scrubber. Yoga your ass off sister....do it up. Whatever floats the boat. Personally I would rather go to Vegas and get massages all day and a nice tan."

Oh Miriam, I love you.

Trial and Error.

2007-09-11T13:18:00.000+05:30

It is easy to forget about the belly button. Today I cleaned out my belly button, which I had evidently forgotten to do since my arrival in Chennai. Let’s just say I’ll be doing that much more frequently. Gross. I asked my housemate (or flatmate, as he is called in the local British-borrowed slang) if he had a particularly dirty belly button, and he informed me that stomach hair keeps most of that crap out. Live and learn. Or live, learn, and covet belly hair.

Monday was for failing. But failing can be funny, even enjoyable, when your entire framework is destabilized and you’re adjusting to living in the moment. After an incredibly hot afternoon spent hosting an art workshop at a local school, I returned home determined to make my 6:30pm martial arts class. Ari was coming along for the first time, and we left the house around 6:05pm. Right now we only have one bike (mine), as Ari’s cycle is in shambles and Nina has decided she’s not quite ready for hers yet. So the plan tonight was for us to ride to the class (about 15 minutes away) like the locals: one of us would steer and sit on the seat while the other straddled the back rack. It didn’t take us long to realize that I was horrible at balancing two people on a bike. Ari also felt a bit like I was literally his servant carting him around, so we switched and I straddled the rack. Imagine slowly branding your ass with a rusty composite metal…

Let me just say right now that riding a bike in India can be unnerving. Straddling the metal bike rack, wincing over the slightest bump, and having no control over where you are going…this, this is terrifying! We rode on for quite some time, and then decided to take a short cut that we had seen the rickshaw driver take earlier in the day. And then we got lost. This is the second (!) time I’ve been lost on the way to martial arts, and this time we never made it to the class. We did manage to make it to the post office to mail our days-old letters; however, we were told that unless we wanted speedy post (more than $10US to mail a letter), we had to come back between 9am and 5pm. Strike Two. The final failure was when, as we were walking home because our asses would no longer let us ride pseudo-tandem, we stopped at the new dance studio that opened up just down the road. Their sign announces in pink and black lettering that they offer line dancing, rock and roll, hip hop, jazz, waltz, cha cha, jive, salsa and marangue. But as I was told this evening, you have to start with line dancing and work your way to salsa. The owner told me that if I started classes with him, he’s have me confidently dancing in all sorts of social situations. Evidently he’s unaware of his competition, my much cheaper means of letting loose on the dance floor: gin.

Time to sign off. We’ve made pasta sauce and linguini. Very exciting.

Photo: Cows outside the Tara Office. Here cows are put out to pasture as well; the difference is, the pasture is a neighborhood in a city of 8 million people.

Two Week Anniversary!

2007-09-10T13:04:00.000+05:30

Today was the weirdest day yet in India. It was also the most wonderful day. So this is going to be a long blog entry. For those of you who like me to keep it brief, you might just want to skip this entry!

Realities have started to set in: I have a stomach virus that makes eating anything other than plain bread and the occasional orange wholly unappealing. Chennai proper (we, in all honesty, live in a rather green and relatively cushy southern suburb) is polluted and horribly crowded. But the people here are some of the most helpful I’ve ever met. Every stranger we’ve come across has been more than willing to guide us to the right city bus or to negotiate rickshaw fares for us. Chennai citizens are also notorious for carrying cards finely printed with their personal information. Business cards, without the business. Ari and I were thinking we should get some of these printed – hell, we could have them screen printed by hand for less than Office Depot would charge us back home. And then we could distribute our mobile numbers to the world! Or maybe not.

So today Ari and I had resolved – stomach viruses or not – to venture onto the Chennai buses for the first time. It takes 50-60 rupees to get downtown by auto-rickshaw, and only 4 rupees by bus, so we thought we should master public transit as soon as possible. After a bit of stumbling and confused head turning, we found the crowd of people that signifies the local bus stop. While we knew we were looking for the 23C bus, we got incredibly excited when we saw the M23C bus and jumped aboard. Priding ourselves on our excellent bus boarding skills, we soon realized that we were not going the right way. Never fear! Chennai’s concerned citizens were there! We got off the M23C and, after 20 minutes of waiting in the dusty, hot (32C without the humidity) afternoon, we found a bus that would take us into the central city.

One of Chennai’s major landmarks is Spencer Plaza, a three-story shopping mall in the middle of the city. Around this area are several famous bookstores, hotels, restaurants, and mosques. We wanted to find Spencer Plaza in the hopes that we could then find some of these other important locales. After a nearly two hour bus experience (Ari noted, quite observantly, that all forms of transportation here are really thrill rides. No one’s actually in a hurry to get anywhere, they’re merely driving for the near-death thrill), we fled into the air-conditioned labyrinth known as Spencer Plaza’s. What a sociologist’s wet dream! This “mall” is really a series of halls hastily stuck together filled with a combination of overpriced Kashmiri and South Indian souvenirs and American and European brand stores. Reebok, Wrangler, Levi’s, and Music World abut “Sari Land” and “Sri Lankan Tales.” Most of the shoppers are from India’s middle and upper classes. Chennai’s mall rats look just as smug as bored as those in Boca Raton or Portland, but here the fashion is a strange mix from the past four decades. It is so interesting to see what fads made their way over here, and how they must have been distilled by cultural prejudices, time, distance, and language. Men wear acid-washed, extra-tight bell-bottom jeans. Women wear early nineties t-shirts. Heavy Metal, Nirvana, and Chumbawumba are still big here. Needless to say, Spencers Plaza was a mind-fuck…and I mean that in the most culturally sensitive way possible!

We made our way up to the food court, where our weary digestive systems were met with a Subway! With real bread and honey mustard sauce! Keeping in mind that I’ve been experimenting with South Indian cooking and that I bought a South Indian cookbook today, I think I’m allowed to have a weak moment and indulge in Subway. In any event, Ari and I split a foot-long veggie patty sub. While my fellow intern is naturally reserved and hardly what you would call an expressive individual, he seemed thrilled by his good, nearly old-fashioned sandwich. And I have photos to prove it.

After our bland and thereby enjoyable lunch, we wandered about the shops both in and around the store, finally settling in Giggles, a tiny bookstore attached to a five-star hotel near Spencers. Giggles, usually a corridor filled with books, was bursting with titles today (the boy who usually opens and organizes the books had a tooth infection and the store had temporarily slipped into what I can only suspect was further chaos). The storeowner was a lovely bibliophile who knew of Tara Books and our team, and who sold several of our titles (“I am the hen sparrow!”). She talked books and Chennai and cricket with us for a while, and Ari and I took turns standing in the store (it was only big enough for one person to enter at a time). We invited her to the art show opening we are having tomorrow night for one of our books, and she asked that we not tell her whether India or England was winning tonight’s final cricket match. She even gave us her home phone number in case we ever had a dire need for a particular text. It’s nice to know that somewhere in the world there is a 911-ecquivalent for avid readers.

We were going to a guitar and vina (traditional Indian slide guitar) concert in the hotel in which Giggles was located, but we were over an hour early. So we wandered through the posh locale and found the pool. Sitting under an umbrella beneath palm trees and flowering tropical plants, I could have been in Boca Raton in July. The hotel was really the most ridiculous part of the whole day. Here in the middle of a developing city of 7 million people, in the middle of South India and all that the region connotes, is a luxury hotel (one of many). All of the employees are Indian, all of them address me as “Madam” or “Miss”, and they will not let me open a door or light my own cigarette. Only (white) foreigners stay at such places, giving the hotel an apartheid atmosphere. Several times today, I was very uncomfortable when I was given dramatically different treatment simply because I was not Indian. The residue of the British presence here in Chennai makes me feel dirty; it is a layer of dust the settles on my face and arms whenever I leave the house.

So after a brief sit near the Florida-like pool, we went to the bar and ordered beer! It is really difficult to get beer in Chennai (you must have more than 20 rooms in your establishment in order to serve beer (???) and you cannot buy it anywhere). Domestics – Kingfisher and Blacklabel – and I was so happy to be drinking beer that I didn’t care that Kingfisher tastes like watery MillerLite or that I was spending 225 rupees (over $5) for a beer. Ari and I were the only ones in the bar. We watched the cricket match as the bar staff showered us with various snacks. There was a lot of smiling going on. The bar reminded me of this ritzy skybar I went to in Tokyo with Tesla; while it lacked the gorgeous view of the Tokyo skyline, it was just as absurd and just as welcome in the moment.

We finished off the evening by meeting Nina and attending this guitar/vina concert held by the Alliance Francaise and the French Embassy. A Moroccan guitarist and a local Tamil vina player performed both separately and together, and the music was quite beautiful and often unlike anything I have heard before. After dinner, there was a private party for the guests of this event (we got in for free thanks to the Tara hook-up…I was sorely underdressed…but Dave, now I can say that I’ve worn my Christopher Walken t-shirt to a cultural event in a five-star hotel!). The food and wine were delicious, and while my stomach cramped and moaned all through dinner, I forced myself to ingest meat and bread and a Bailey’s shot. Yum!

A couchsurfing friend drove us home, and now I sit on my cot/bed/irregularly stuffed futon writing this entry. It’s midnight and I’m exhausted. Maybe in the next entry I’ll tell about the never-ending construction going on at the house. Or about my crazy landlady who might take me shopping. Or about her dog who likes to pee on everything, especially people. Or maybe we can discuss my growing concerns about foot fungus. Or my search for a yoga school. Or maybe I’ll just post pictures and let you all sort things out yourselves. XOXO!

"Quick and Bitter"

2007-09-06T12:18:00.001+05:30

The end was quick and bitter.

Slow and sweet was the time between us,

slow and sweet were the nights

when my hands did not touch one another in despair

but with the love of your body

which came between them.

And when I entered into you

it seemed then that great happiness

could be measured with the precision

of sharp pain. Quick and bitter.

Slow and sweet were the nights.

Now is as bitter and grinding as sand –

'We shall be sensible' and similar curses.

And as we stray further from love

we multiply the words,

words and sentences so long and orderly.

Had we remained together

we could have become a silence.

~ Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

translated by Assia Gutmann

Text-isles.

2007-09-05T10:49:00.000+05:30

Life here in the Besant Nagar neighborhood of Chennai moves along at a comfortable, leisurely pace. While traffic may brush past with horns honking, very few people actually appear to be in a hurry. The horn is more of a cultural inclination than an effective driving aid. It implies "If you don't move over I'm going to hit you because why would I possibly embrace such notions as right-of-way." India and I are in love.

I've joined a Keralan martial arts (South Indian style of self-defense) class that meets three times per week near the beach. Held the former home of one of India's most talented national dancers, the class is by far the hardest physical activity I've ever engaged in. Imagine kick-boxing combined with yoga in 85 degree weather with 90% humidity - I've never sweat so much in my entire life. We practice in the courtyard of this beautiful Raj-era home. The structure is hundreds of years old, and the stones literally breathe with humidity, mold, and a kind of calm energy. I'm excited to continue the class, if only to meet people (both foreigners and locals) and add a kind of structure to my days.

Photos: Fishmarket at night. Nina and I at a nearby Indian restaurant. Me and my shiny face trying to correctly pour South Indian coffee (which, by the way, is the only way anyone in this wide world should prepare the coffee bean. Lots of milk and lots of sugar...brewed fresh for every cup).

No need to go to San Francisco

2007-09-03T11:44:00.001+05:30

You can wear flowers in your hair in Chennai! There is fresh jasmine for sale all over the city, particularly during festivals and on temple holidays. You buy it from local vendors who sit at the side of the road. It is incredibly uplifting to wander about smelling of jasmine, and I imagine this will become a new habit of mine.

An entry dated 29 August 2007

2007-09-03T10:53:00.000+05:30

What an absolutely incredible day. So much has happened, so much of Chennai has revealed itself, and yet this is only my third full day here.

I will start from where my current energetic high comes from. Tonight at about 8:30pm, an American woman and a German man pulled up in a tiny Korean compact car to pick Ari and I up and take us to dinner. Ari had met this girl on Facebook (it’s everywhere!) – they went to the same university but had never met before last Sunday. She has introduced him to around 15 Europeans (mostly Germans…Germans are running Chennai from a business perspective...more on this later) and they invited us to come out tonight.

We originally planned to go to dinner and then to a club, but a torrential thunderstorm stopped us from leaving the restaurant. So we just ended up staying at this “Italian” restaurant on the beach. It took us quite a long time to get to the place, as Chennai has been steeped in festivities for the past three days (although no one can seem to tell us why everyone is celebrating). Also, driving in this city is terrifying, and I was so glad that someone else with nine months experience was at the wheel. Basically, as the Germans explain, once you forget about any road rules or prior driving habits, you will be fine. Just honk your horn, expect to hit a car or two, and don’t worry about which side of the road you drive on. Finally, we arrived at this “Italian” restaurant just south of the city. I felt quite ambiguous about the establishment, as it was obviously an upscale resort hotel that catered only to the expats and visiting Westerners. It was, however, beautiful, and reminded me of the villas in Key West. There were so many people, and while I think I remember only two or three names, it was a good first glimpse of the foreign community in Chennai.

We spent the evening drinking French wine (which is incredibly expensive in the province of Tamil Nadu), smoking cheap cigarettes, and hearing about the others’ experiences of the city and of India. Most of the Europeans were very surprised that Ari and I would stay here for 12 months without returning home (Europe often being a direct flight away), and such comments made me even more appreciative of Thailand in January. It seems as if there will be numerous people to meet and activities to participate in (beach volleyball, bowling, yoga) –I will have to simply get over my unathletic tendencies in order to engage the community at large.

The night concluded with a very rainy drive home; however, the sounds of the storm and any remaining traffic were drowned out by the deep bass of Euro trance blaring from the car stereo. As the techno beat on, I stared out the window at a Chennai fast asleep, my thoughts drifting to memories of Thursday nights at Parking in Montreal.

I am so grateful for this opportunity at this stage in my life. Three years ago, my experience in Nepal was slightly tainted by a lack of self-confidence and a fear of how others might perceive me. Tonight, I was eager to meet the larger community, but completely unconcerned by their perceptions of who I was. In 2004, I think I would have been paralyzed by the size and scope of this year abroad. But at least for tonight, I found myself able to let go of any doubts, any misgivings, and simply appreciate the moment in the present. I believe this current, confident attitude is largely in thanks to the love and support I have found over the last twelve months. I have had more reassurance, more connections, and more cheerleading in the past 365 days than ever before. So thank you to the family, friends, and even passing acquaintances who have reaffirmed that this was the best decision for my stage of life.

I recognize that I am on a travel high at the moment. Who wouldn’t be after such an international evening?! But I also want to recall tonight for when, three months from now, I begin to lose perspective and start to scream for a break. I came here to have once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The difficult thing to sustain will be the understanding that here in Chennai, every day offers such opportunities.

Sweet Dreams, loves of my life!

Packing

2007-08-24T10:41:00.000+05:30

There is something remarkably liberating to the act of fitting a year's worth of necessary belongings into one large backpack, a daypack, and a computer bag. Twelve months of simplified living, with a few minor luxuries (yoga mat, plenty of socks, favourite incense holder, iPod). I know that despite the light packing job, I will still bring too much to India. I cannot possibly anticipate all of the things I will need, and will instead assume that I might need a wool mid-layer, a sleeping bag and thermarest, and nalgene tupperware.

Jeff noted something today and while said in jest, I think he is dead-on. He remarked on my tendency to spend unnecessary amounts of money on gear when I am very capable of simply making-do with what I currently posses. This is a bad habit I picked up in recent years, and Kovitz made it all the more glaring when he drew attention to it this morning. I would very much like to leave such things behind when I board the plane on Saturday. So add "making do" and "moderation" to this year's goals. I think India will lend itself to such endeavors.

Time to read Harper's and hope for sleep.

Shades of Gray

2007-08-22T11:43:00.000+05:30

If I had to assign a colour to the cities I have visited, Toronto would be gray. Stale, slate, mid-March gray. Toronto should be the same hue as its concrete subway stations, the same shade as the late-summer rains that fall on congested Highway 401.

Portland would be a dark evergreen – the colour of a douglas fir. Seattle would be a deep sea blue, Santa Fe the burnt orange of adobe clay. Montreal would be red, as it is both the city in which I feel the most Canadian and the city that strikes me as the most socialist, the most creatively subversive. Tokyo would be neon yellow, the colour on the sides on the Canon Building in Shinjuku (or was it Ginza?). Of a more muted, spiced yellow is Kathmandu, the city of turmeric piled high in the marketplace. Kyoto, ever camoflaged with a veneer of projected and glorified history, would be the chalk-white of a geisha’s facepaint. Worcester will always be purple, Baltimore is the shade of its maroon-brick student row houses, and Honolulu is a bright, inviting teal. But Toronto will always be gray, no matter how much time I spend in or away from the city. We just were not meant to like one another, the GTA and I.

Tornados in August.

2007-08-19T09:11:00.001+05:30

What a turbulent, heart-wrenching few days! As many of you know, my mother - although slated for a full recovery - was in a serious motorcycle accident on Tuesday evening. She is currently in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, where she has undergone several surgeries to address a shattered right femur, broken left ankle, cracked ribs and chipped vertebrae. The surgeons and staff at Sunnybrook are both professional and attentive, and my entire family has been impressed by the hospital's quality of care. My mother's day nurses have been particularly supportive, and provide examples of the unique patience and positivity required of those who wish to enter the nursing profession. The next six months will be nothing short of difficult, as my mother heals and prepares for rehab and physical therapy. If you wish to contact my parents, please e-mail them at thedabels@yahoo.ca .

And then there was Seattle. And then there is India. And all of the excitement and memories and expectations associated with those two places. I spent August 9th-14th in Seattle, WA - and I fell in love, all over again, with that beautiful city. Snow-tipped mountains in late summer, an intricate maze of lakes, harbor, and ocean inlets, cyclists and fresh fish and environmentalism and community and potential. Every time I return to Seattle I am shocked by my feelings of comfort, of belonging. Having moved so many times, I sometimes sentimentalize our Ontario cottage as my only "home." But Seattle (in a way only Portland, OR can rival) involves and invites as if I had lived there for many years. Soy lattes foamed by women who ride fixed gear bicycles. Micro-brewed beers enjoyed beside an outdoor fire. Ping-pong games played overlooking scenic mountain ranges. Rustic mountain camping 90 minutes from the city center. How can one feel anything but excitement for all that Seattle holds? And don't tell me about the rain...I've seen it, I've lived it, and it just isn't that bad!

Of course, it helps that I've met this fantastic person who lives in Seattle, who can dangle Bainbridge Island and delicious BBQ salmon before my eyes as incentives to return in a year's time. Jeff, I owe you such gratitude for the incredible amount of laughter and relaxation (not to mention ping-pong and G&T's) that you have brought to my life this summer. I cannot wait to learn what the next year holds for you, and Thailand has no idea what madness we are about to release! You are, to use your own phrase, such an enticing "breath of fresh air."

(Blogging still comes so unnaturally to me. In my constant attempt to over-think every issue, I often find myself wondering if I share too much or if I dwell in the trivial. There is even a bit of the Bronte in me that wants to, tongue-in-cheek, address you as "dear reader.") (Oh the self-indulgence of it all!)

And finally, hopefully: Sunday, August 26th, 11:45pm IST I land in the Chennai International Airport (after, to spoof Nietzsche's concept, the eternal defer; although I should note here that, the eternal defer, like Nietzsche's eternal return, can exist merely as a hypothesis, and need not be real to have actual meaning and effect). I continue to waver between indifference, eager anticipation, and fear. But friends from around the world have offered their support and encouragement, and I begin to remember why I applied to Tara in the first place. Rereading The Rough Guide to India helps to rekindle my excitement. I can only speculate - and God knows I do - what the morning of Monday, August 27th will hold!

There are a few things I would like to strive for while I am in India. These are loose goals, hopes:
- Create and sustain a personal, at-home yoga practice.
- Take a traditional Indian dance class.
- Write, write, write. Finish the short stories I begin, rekindle my poetic voice (however feeble). Take creative chances with my writing and ignore my fierce inner critic.
- Live in the moment, thinking less and seeing more.
- Practice gratitude in the present, for the present.
- Take millions of photographs.
- Enjoy an entire year just for myself.

Baruch Hashem for sparing my mother's life! Baruch Hashem for all that 2007 and 2008 hold!

"I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation..."

2007-07-30T07:52:00.000+05:30

I want to share a poem by Ani Difranco entitled "Self Evident." You can read and/or listen to it here. At first I thought I could wait until 11 September 2007 to post this poem, but the more time I spend away from the United States and the more time I listen to distilled Canadian news broadcasts and the more time I find myself missing the Pacific Northwest, the more I am convinced that I myself must work and speak and share to effect the change I wish to see in my adopted nation of America. Because before my greencard expires in 2014, I must make a choice - a choice of homelands, of identities, of communities. I pray every day that in seven years there will even remain a choice to be had. I by no means intend to use my Canadian citizenship as a "Get Out of Hell Free" card; however, I will return to the passive-aggressive, beautiful, semi-socialist, intermittently open-minded winter wonderland in which I was born should our neighbours south of the border pass the point of no return (and many would argue that they already have). So I am posting this poem out of anger, out of fear, out of anticipation, and as a call to every reader, regardless of nationality or political affiliation, to enact real and positive change in the United States of America.

Or, to quote Ms. Difranco again, "I’m gonna take all my friends/and I’m gonna move to Canada/and we’re gonna die of old age."

Favourite Summer Photos

2007-07-27T10:32:00.001+05:30

Kovitz

2007-07-26T08:41:00.001+05:30

So, I think they just do it better in Seattle. Or rather, those in Seattle know how to do it better wherever they go. Summer 2007 will go down in infamy as one of most hysterical, joyful, and rejuvenating breaks I have ever had. "I'll prob your case..."

"Pop the cork, a champagne glass
Raise to the future, drink to the past
Thank the Lord for the friends he cast
In the play he wrote for you..."
Ellis Paul

Words for the 24th year:

2007-07-07T09:41:00.000+05:30

As I begin, to use Diane's phrase, another loop around the sun, I want to share a quotation from Elizabeth Gilbert's phenomenal book, Eat, Pray, Love:

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

All in the family

2007-07-04T04:35:00.000+05:30

So I love my brother. Today I picked him up from the airport and we spent two and a half hours listening to all sorts of music (Infected Mushroom to Feist, Rod Stewart to Phil Collins, Lynard Skynard to Postal Service), laughing about our parents, and genuinely having a great time. At one point, I turned to him and smiled, saying "I'm so glad that we get along so well." And I am!

Dave decided that as we drove into the marina, we should have a grand entrance in honor of my Dad's 52nd birthday. So we rolled down all of the windows and blasted "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple as we parked in the middle of the marina grounds. My parents came out, my mom bawled her eyes out as she laughed, and we showered my dad with balloons and hugs. Best birthday present ever: having my entire family in one house.

Happy Independence Day!

A new definition of "work."

2007-06-30T08:19:00.000+05:30

Every day here in Muskoka ends with the feeling of total, yet pleasant exhaustion. Hours and hours under the sun spent lifting, cleaning, schmoozing, painting, towing, fixing, and mowing can leave one with very little other than all-consuming weariness. But I say this not to complain, but rather to compare it to my previous position. In Portland, I passed eight to nine hours per day behind a desk, answering phones, writing letters, and compiling documents. And, in all honesty, I actually spent many of those hours procrastinating on such intellectually stimulating sites as gofugyourself.com and perezhilton.com (I'm not proud of this, ok? I'm just an addict! I did manage to maintain a love affair with salon.com as well, but Miriam and I often spent far too many hours with the Fug Girls to concern ourselves with international affairs). I would often return from the office bored and unchallenged, and would use my evenings to burn off the excess energy I had managed to accrue throughout the day.

Here at the marina and at the cottage (and yes, I understand that I am dealing with a novel, short-termed situtation), the hours fly by with barely a moment to catch one's breath. There is always work to be done, this work is always an outdoor task, and it always involves manual labour. I am so grateful to have this time in my life to help to contribute to my parents' business and contribute my own strength, sweat, and energy to their life's dream. Tonight I spent an hour cooking an elaborate vegetable stir-fry for my parents - I even got my dad to enjoy tofu - and they were unbelievably appreciative of someone else preparing dinner for them after the first day of the Canadian Long Weekend.

Tonight, like every night thus far, I will collapse into bed and sleep for at least eight hours. I have been here at the lake just over a week, and already notice my body slipping into a deep, healthy, and invigorated relaxation. Now, I could use this entry as an starting point from which to rant and rave about obesity and boredom and the lack of self-sufficiency in our culture today, but instead I will simply express for the opportunity to live simply for a few weeks this summer. India will certainly bring about a new set of challenges, and I am fortunate to have the time to pause, reflect, and work hard before I move to Asia.

Sweet Dreams!

Am I home now?

2007-06-24T08:44:00.000+05:30

I made it to Canada! I'm staying at Mountain Trout House Marina, the business my parents own on Kawagama Lake north of Toronto. They were incredibly busy today, probably because it was officially the first Saturday of Summer and the cottagers are arriving in flocks. What blows my mind is just how many people frequent Muskoka these days, and how many of them have huge wake board and ski boats. I remember when the tincans with the 10HP engines were the most popular boats on the lake. Now I sound like my grandfather, who continues to lament the arrival of the jet ski ("Damn things make too much noise, those people act like they own the damn lake").

Leaving Portland was really difficult, although not in the way I imagined. My going away party at Amnesia was a ton of fun, and Vanessa had better send me her pictures asap! I thought that leaving work would have been more emotional, but I really felt as if I finished out the year and made a real contribution to the program. It felt good to see my chief resident and friend Gautam complete his training, and I'm glad I ended with the Finishing Dinner. I met much of his family, including his mother-in-law and grandmother, both of whom are from Chennai! I have contacts there now, which is very reassuring as I have a feeling there will be many days when I will really need a touchstone from home. Three of my doctors at OHSU gave me contacts in Chennai, and I will certainly ignore the British mannerisms in me and be sure to reach out to these friends-of-friends while in India.

There are already things I miss about Portland: walking into work at 8:30am and already laughing with Miriam, the smell of the flowers and trees in our neighbourhood, cycling about town and exchanging knowing glances with other riders, the all-local, mostly organic grocery stores, omnipresent recycling, coming home to Adam and Dan, cackling with Vanessa and Holly, Wendy's spinning class.

I'll be out and about in the next six weeks, and have decided to post the tentative schedule (more for my own excitement than for general interest or posterity)

July 3rd-July 9th: Dave comes to Muskoka, we've got 3 birthdays to celebrate, and my uncle Scott, aunt Matina, and cousins Stephanie and Jamie come up for a weekend of tubing, picnics, and eating!
July 10th-12th: Don, Dawn, and I attend the Stratford Festival of Canada, this enormous and prestigious Shakespeare and theatre festival. We are seeing Merchant of Venice, King Lear (my favourite of Shakespeare's plays, ever since Professor Mike Bristol reenacted the Gloucester eye-gouging scene), and Oklahoma!
July 13th: Kathryn's 23rd birthday (party location TBA). Of our 14 year friendship, I have not been around for enough of her birthdays, and this year I will celebrate with her, come what may!
July 14th-21st: Jeff visits from Seattle! Boat rides, dinners cooked on the grill, G&T's, a three-day Montreal excursion, and even a Motorcycle Bar and Museum in Toronto. Oh, and the Ping Pong Championship of North America, winner-takes-all.
July 21-27: Elsey Family Reunion! Mark, Laurie, and their crew are coming down for just over a week. There will be trips to Canada's Wonderland (hopefully without losing our feet on the Drop of Doom), tube wars, and long dinners at the 15 Finchley house.
Late July: Road trip to New York City to visit Dave and hopefully catch up with Leigh, Sarah, and Maggie. Oh, and the real purpose behind the trip is to see The Simpson's Movie with my brother.
August 6th: Leave for Chennai (via Buffalo, NYC, Dubai) - arrive in India at 8:00am India Time on 8/8/07

See you along the ride!

On the stereo, as usual these days: Anything by Patty Griffin Make sure you check out "Long Ride Home" (thanks V!)

2007-06-15T11:03:00.001+05:30

Umm...there are no words.

Happy Birthday, David Abel

2007-06-12T08:12:00.000+05:30

Happy 20th Birthday to my "Zany" (his own words) Baby Brother.

This morning I woke up to find a beautiful e-mail from my mother. She wrote a long e-mail detailing her and my father's memories of Dave over the past 20 years. I can only attempt to imagine what it must be like to bring a life into this world and then suddenly see that life blossom into an intelligent, funny, and caring young man. I remember David running around in his Ninja Turtle pajamas as clearly as I remember him giving me a tour of the NYC subway system. My parents must look at us and see us as the Trafalmadorians would see Time - like a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, equally age 3 and age 20 in the same moment.

I was talking to the woman (Jill) who is replacing me at work today. Jill is a sixty year old woman with a thirty year old son and two baby granddaughters. She told me that she is very proud of her son because he is such a good father, because he isn't afraid to take risks and have adventures and make mistakes in front of his children. Jill remarked that it is important for parents to show their children how to adventure, and I almost started to cry because I realized that is exactly what our mother and father have shown us our entire lives. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to "The Dons" for their brave spirit - I think it helped to raise two rather interesting, motivated children (if I do say so myself).

So Happy Birthday, Dave. I love you very much.

Detroit Annie, hitchhiking

2007-06-06T19:44:00.000+05:30

by Judy Grahn

Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken
artery and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with great
dangling black feathers,
but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it, simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water
are phonies, or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very
cool and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fisherman think perhaps she's a fish, but they're all
fools. She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid. Now when she
smells danger, she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you dont mind
The common woman is as common
as the reddest wine

Good Souls, all.

2007-06-05T21:27:00.000+05:30

Do you ever have moments where you are overwhelmed by the people in your life? This morning I feel a gratitude and a sense of awe towards the brilliance and kindness of my friends and family.

Tesla is in Koriyama, learning about Samurai culture and loneliness and what it means to be a truly urban, intellectual Canadian in the midst of rural Japan. Leigh graduated from John Hopkins, ran Barnstormers, touched hundreds of people's lives in a surprisingly personal way (Facebook whore!), and has a full scholarship/travel fund for her PhD at Princeton. David is an intern at an indie music label and lives with his two high school buddies in lower Manhattan - he often calls me from Battery Park where he writes or takes photographs. Miriam is in an inspiring marriage with a man who loves her deeply, she has been my saving grace and catalyst for contentment here in Portland, and she succeeds at one of the most difficult jobs I can imagine. Jeff is this soul who just popped into my life and yet somehow managed to bedazzle me

with his vivacious outlook on the world, his day-to-day lifestyle, and his ability to evaporate my naive understanding of relationships. Don and Dawn spend every day in Cottage Country, Ontario, working harder (in many ways) than they have before. Kathryn has accepted that she must go home after university to work off her debts, and has comes to terms with her reality with strength and determination. Doug and Li are eternal survivors, my Uncle Scott is an incredible risk taker, and my Grandma Moe and Grandpa Norm raised an entire clan of decent, loving human beings. Again, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and absolutely consumed with love for each and every one of these individuals. Good souls, all.

Tokyo-bound

2007-03-24T11:47:00.000+05:30

Just a quick note before I leave for Nihon-koku.

In the past 48 hours I have received phone calls, e-mails, and facebook posts, each expressing the caller's/sender's well-wishes for my trip and support over Seth's move to D.C. I just wanted to thank Hashem for the friends he has given me, the loving family I am blessed with, and the incredible network of people I am connected to across this crazy globe. Thank you again and again to everyone who checked in to inquire about life - it meant quite a lot.

Jaa, mata atashita!

Ira Glass is my new best friend.

2007-03-21T23:28:00.000+05:30

So on a special edition of "This American Life," the public radio show featured stories around the theme "What I Learned From Television." This particular show was unique in that it was live - taped in front of a lively, appreciative audience on a 6-stop tour.

On the bus home from work last night, I turned on my Ipod and selected the new "This American Life" podcast (If you don't know podcasts, you'd better get to know! They are especially helpful for pathetic souls like myself who get carsick when they read in a moving vehicle...or even think about reading in a moving vehicle). In the best show I have yet heard, sex columnist Dan Savage confesses his prudery and Ira Glass admits he sings the lyrics to "The OC's" theme song whenever the show airs. But my favorite of the four acts was David Rakoff's painful rediscovery of television programming. Having sworn off tv after college, Rakoff agrees to watch 29 hours of television - the very amount the average American watches in one week.

Usually my bus rides are relatively uneventful, at worst punctuated by a drunken passenger, meth head, or obnoxiously loud cell phone chatter. But last night, "This American Life" made me shriek out loud with laughter, drawing the attention of my fellow bus riders. I tried to smother the laughs, giggling into my hand and twitching about in my seat. But David Rakoff's attempt to watch "My Super Sweet Sixteen," "America's Funniest Home Videos," and other cultural gems sent me over the edge.

Thank you, sexy radio hipsters. Last night you made me look like the crazy one on the bus.

http://www.thislife.org/

2007-03-06T11:17:00.000+05:30

Here is my favorite series of photos of Seth and I. These were taken at Cannon Beach, OR.

I post these pictures because I'm feeling particularly enamoured tonight. To explain: this morning, as per usual, Seth did not wake up when my alarm went off. Instead, he slept deeply as I showered and dressed for work. As I was bustling into the room to grab a sweater, he sat up abruptly, still very much asleep. And then gently, ever so carefully, he leaned down and kissed the pillow where my head would have been had I not been rushing off to catch my bus. Having "kissed" me, he then promptly rolled over and slept on. Smitten, I pounced on him in bed, trying to tell him what he had just done. "Seth," I said. "You just kissed the pillowcase!"

"Oh," he replied. "I missed."

A Blog Virgin, touched for the very first time.

2007-03-03T05:24:00.000+05:30

Dear me! I've made a blog. A rudimentary one at that, but I've still managed to make one. I think at one point I swore I'd never have one of these - they're very self-indulgent!

In any case, this will become my replacement for mass e-mails while I am away in Chennai, India. I'd rather friends and family be able to check up on me, share in the delicious madness, etc without feeling obliged to reply to my long and often-intense e-mails. Not that I won't write to my loved ones...you'll just get personalized notes rather than impersonal rants.

To check out where I'll be working starting in August, go to: www.tarabooks.com The image above will be my workstation. Yay Macs!

Cheers!