The Final Post

India Time – 23:24 hrs. Been awake since 4:30 am. Went to bed at 1:30 am, and before that hadn’t been to bed at all in two days. 13 ½ hours since my departure from India. I’m beyond tired, beyond emotions, and have much to catch you up on…

Tuesday was my Hindi final, my last academic obligation in India. Hadn’t studied for the class the whole semester, so frantically picked up my textbook four hours before the exam, crammed relentlessly, and managed to hold a decent conversation with my teacher about the cultural differences between India and America and the difficulties of living in Delhi (obviously horrendously over-simplified). Held massive celebration / farewell party that night, which entailed the lethal equation of: 2 chocolate cakes with beedi candles + massive amounts of White Mischief, McDowell’s, and Magic Moments (the 3 cheapest brands of Indian booze) = 1 chocolate cake smeared living room, the guest appearance of our local hippie-nudist Tammy’s bare breasts, my drunkenness-induced victory spree at the beer pong table, one very pissed off landlord, a very sleepless night, and subsequent morning discovery of cake remnants behind my ear. Successful Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, my last day in India, my worrying expectancy of the worst case travel scenario was on high alert and so, as personal history could have predicted (like that time I forgot my Green Card…), less than twelve hours prior to my departure the great Jessica vs. Travel Agent showdown of 2009 took place.

It went a little something like this: Travel Agent had been pestering Jessica for some time now in regards to friends’ outstanding balance for the previous weekend’s Varanasi train tickets. Angelic, forward thinking Jessica had already paid her portion and therefore began to ignore harassing phone calls when reached annoyingly incessant level – perhaps not the wisest of decisions. You see, Travel Agent, crafty as he is, found through espionage-esque sneakery (i.e went to phone company, presented Jessica’s phone number, and thus retrieved ALL personal information, including passport number) that Jessica was leaving the country the next day. This quickly escalated into Travel Agent calling from outside Jessica’s house, screaming into the phone, and threatening that if R6,000 did not find its way into his hands that very minute that the police would become involved and she would not be permitted to board her flight in 12 hours. Important sidenote: Jessica does not have 6,000 rupees. Swift and shameful cursing coupled with frantic episode in manner of headless chicken ensued upon hanging up the phone.

It was horrible. Had to run downstairs and try to coax the angry Indian man parked across my street not to turn me in, to go to the people who owed him the money instead etc. etc. What a night! But at last after some panicked phone calls to said friends, I managed to get Travel Agent to pick up the money from their houses that night and not have me detained in India. Relief washed over my scattered nerves at last, and then the two of us sort of hovered there in an awkward post-fight moment before he asked, “So, tomorrow you leave India… when come back?” My exhaustion and anxiety finally got the best of me at that moment, and I just managed to blubber out a quick, “I don’t know,” in response before the tears poured out, making our strained moment even more awkward and scaring Travel Agent away completely.

Sneaky India, creeping up on my defenseless heart unexpectedly once more. I didn’t think I would cry so soon, not at least until I said goodbye to my friends, let alone find myself weeping through the street back to my home, flanked by people not even bothering to cover up in Hindi as they pointed and shouted in plain English, “Look, she is crying!” Perhaps it’s all because I’ve found something in this country that I know I won’t encounter anywhere else. Maybe because over the last nearly six months I’ve poured a lot of myself into the place, and been given such a mixture in return. The friends I’ve made here I will have back in California, but the culture of India, the other half of this dysfunctional relationship I’ve nurtured for half a year, I will not.

I got to see the sun rise over Delhi on my taxi ride to the airport. I inhaled the nauseating smells of the sewage run-off river in Mukherji Nagar for the last time. And I smiled as I sat in the backseat, sans seat belt, watching the driver weave dangerously close between trucks and centre dividers, and curse at the pedestrians he almost flattened. Then he asked me the same question that so surprised me on my last night in India once more. Well, as I sit here en route to Cyrus, surrounded by Germans for the 13^th consecutive hour, a country of people who appear to have a penchant for dying their hair weird colours, sausages, and cities that sound like Muppet characters (i.e. München), I have your answer Vijay:

Yes, one day I will be back, and No, you won’t be driving me to Rajasthan.

I just want to say thank you to any of you who read this blog and followed my journey through India. It will be one I'll never forget, thanks in part to this site and the support I had from those who took the time to read my words. And of course, I have to thank India, Bharat, Hindustan, for being the inspiration behind all of these entries; Mein aapko hamesha pyar karungi.

Thank you again, bahut pyar,

 - Jessica

One Tuesday, November 10th

I've prepared excuses for my desertion these last few weeks but they'll probably only be annoying. How on earth a person could run out of things to write about while living in India is something I wouldn't forgive anybody, because I never imagined it possible. With that, let me just say that I have accomplished nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during this dry spell in my little world of blogging. There, now you're caught up, so I'll start afresh with the little adventures of today that finally moved words into these discombobulated sentences flying through my head...

My sedentary life of late began with the necessity to sit in front of my computer and write papers for my classes, and ended with the distractions brought on by my obsession with an HBO show about vampires of the Louisiana backwoods that I watch online. Somewhere in between my mother almost successfully persuaded me to join her in a virtual farming game on Facebook, because she needed help with her dairy farm or some aubergines or the like, and I knew it was time for this all to end. So today on my oh-so-free Tuesday, nine days before I skip back to the planet from whence I came, aka America, I took on the mission of exploring the sites of Delhi I still had left to discover.

I woke up at 8am, not an easy feat for someone who is gradually turning as nocturnal as those aforementioned cable TV vamps. One hour on the metro, one short rickshaw ride later and I was at Purana Qila, or Old Fort. It was built 500 years ago at the site of Delhi's oldest city and the setting for the Mahabharata epic, Indraprastha. It took me a few minutes and more than a bit of sweet talking in Hindi but thanks to my student visa I snagged the Indian price entry ticket (93 rupees saved - I take pride in these little victories).

I walked through the huge "Bara Darwaza" entry gate into the mass of enclosed lawns behind it. At first glance it seemed more like a park than a fort, except surrounded on all sides by 18ft high, crumbling walls. The whole plot is also situated on a natural high point in the city, which affords great views of the rest of Delhi - considering that you are in fact facing East and looking out onto Humayun's Tomb and not the industrial power plant that lies to the West.

There was a mosque there, called the 'Qila-i-Kuhna Masjid.' It was the first Indo-Islamic structure to be constructed predominately from red sandstone and inlaid with white marble - a technique seen at the Taj Mahal. Oops, there goes Art History class in my head again. I just turned in my paper. Anyway, the other structure I came across was the 'Sher Mahal,' some sort of octagonal chamber built by Shah whats-his-face when he captured the empire from the Mughal Emperor Humayun. Hum regained the throne in 1555 and used Shah's fancy chamber as a library. He died a year later after taking a "mortal fall" down the steps there. Kind of an embarrassingly clumsy way for an emperor to go if you ask me. Shouldn't he have been impaled in battle or fallen victim to his son's betrayal by getting poisoned or fed to the crocodiles they kept in the moat? In another one of my important ponderings on ancient Indian architecture, I've decided that the name Purana Qila is very close to 'Piranha Killaaa,' which shall henceforth be my fantasy emcee name. Anyway, moving on...

Purana Qila is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India, as signs everywhere point out. But the only people I saw doing any of the maintenance and excavation work were a bunch of lower caste road workers. The parents dig up dirt and cart it around in baskets on their heads as their half-naked children lie on blankets in the dust nearby. The kids' English vocabulary already consists of the three words they'll need to get through life: "Hellooooo," "Byeeeee," and "Money! Money! Money!" As insensitive as I may come across here, the thought of beggars bothers me a lot less than now than it used to. There's no point in playing the blame game for what drives people to beg. Even chastising the caste system plays into that vicious circle, and letting yourself feel guilty because of their situation does too. I only feel real annoyance and shame at the shallow pocketed attitudes of some of the people I know when lately our ability to let go and accept the harsh end of a bargain seems to be dwindling since we've been here for so long. So I gave the little kids some change, after they posed like Charlie's Angels for my camera, of course.

I hobbled out of Purana Qila because my beautiful new embroidered Punjabi jutti had given me some very ugly blisters. Hmmm perfect excuse, I mean opportunity, to go do some shopping at Sarojni Nagar, the cheapest of the cheap among Delhi's shopping districts. On the way, as my auto flew down a freeway flyover, we passed within inches of three elephants who had their front feet balanced on the barricade, pulling stray branches from trees that hung over the road. It reminded me of living in South Africa and passing by bands of monkeys stealing bananas from fruit trucks on the side of the highway. Sometimes animals and people can live together, if not in harmony then at least in some habitable chaos for all. So I bought some new shoes at Sarojni and reveled in my power as a bargaining customer - in some situations it is actually ok to stick to your frugal guns, especially if you can get a counterfeit Camaieau top for R100 out of it...

I took a detour on the way home from turning in my Art History paper at the National Museum and went to a swanky area for expats and foreigners called Khan Market. It was so clean and lovely, and there was an actual cafe and bookstore there, I got so excited I just milled amidst the books for a bit, eating bruschetta and feeling metropolitan as I sipped my cappuccino. A framed quote was hung above my table: "From food are born all creatures which live upon food and after death return to food. Food is the chief of all things. It is therefore said to be the medicine of all diseases of the body" - Upanishads, 500 BC. Amen. 

Down on the street I found more havens for my food addiction - supermarkets. I haven't been in a supermarket since June, I swear I almost wet my pants with delight. You'll have to forgive my vulgarity, but they had prosciutto. As I stood at the checkout line with my freshly baked ciabatta roll and a tub of buffalo mozzarella, I began to wonder what sort of alternate universe, black hole, or some other physics-defying phenomenon existed there at Khan Market in the middle of my dirty city. That was the moment I actually discovered that a whole different world opens up to you in India when you have the means to live in a South Delhi sky rise, and all of the ant-sized commotion down on the street or outside of your air-conditioned car is just the background noise to a Bollywood-music-number-themed life. Honestly, how much more multi-faceted and contradictory can this place get?

My day ended with a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea amongst friends at an American bar called Blues. We sang nostalgically to tunes that hit their height of popularity around the time of my 8th grade dance, our voices becoming louder and more discordant with every refilled glass. It's funny to think of the worlds you can pass between just a few stops down the metro line; some ancient ruins, a bustling bazaar, a European cafe and an American jazz bar. It's also a good comfort to know that at the end of the day you've got friends who'll sit and drink with you and remind you of that other world you all left when you jumped on a plane five months back. 

Another day in Delhi, another pair of shoes I can't wear. Oh well, even if my feet can't stand up to the city, at least I know I can.

Ode to Indian Food

People told us we'd never make it this far, but just look at us now, five months on and every bite still as succulent as the first. Sure, we've had our fair share of problems (you've done things to me that my intestines are likely never to forgive you for) but what's a relationship without its ups and downs, the odd spot of trouble? There was a time when I (and my thighs) wanted to be rid of you forever, but I'm past that now. All the hours I spent in a stifling gym run by pervy personal trainers with short tempers, and still I just couldn't run from my feelings for you. No amount of squats, curls, or crunches could erase you from either memory or arse, so I'm chalking history up to my steatopygia (self-diagnosed). That's why to this day I still stick up for you, even when the hippy roommates walk through the door with their eco-friendly carrier bags full of whole grain muesli and high protein soya chunks, bleh.

O Samosa and your crunchy fried crust, O Kofta dipped in cream, and my lovely paratha with those floury swirls dripping with ghee! Even you Pista Burfi, who I took some time to warm up to, your zincy aluminium shell still makes my teeth tingle... And street food! Don't think I've forgotten you - how could I, after all those "accidental" brushes of unwashed hands? You were the most unassuming of all, drawing me into those undiscovered, quiet places like the dimly lit back alley of a cheap cinema for a quick nibble of your mutton momos or the chicken keema roll. Mmmmm...

But alas, one day, quite soon, we shall say our goodbyes, and I shall have to pick you off my diet as I pick the remnants of Khaju caramel cookies from the crevices of my molars. But I hope you know that I'll carry a reminder of you with me for a very long time - a 5 to 10 pound reminder, that is. 

Tis the Season... for Fireworks

Diwali officially began on Thursday, but children started shooting rockets into the air long before that, and they haven't stopped since. Their missile launches have only gained strength by both ferocity and frequency, so that by the end of last week even in the daytime I'd pass by groups of youngsters, huddled round a pringle-tin size box, striking a match and sprinting away in the mere seconds given to them by the cracker's impatient fuse. They look like a firework themselves, running away like that, spiraling in all directions like the arms of a Catherine Wheel. Then an ear-splitting bang pulses down the street, backed by the chorus of car alarms and barking dogs, received by the cheers and applause of seven year-old boys and the admonitions of annoyed neighbours. That's what has become of my otherwise pleasant Punjabi neighbourhood over the past few weeks, culminating in the festival to top all festivals, the beginning of a new year - Diwali.

Diwali, or Dipavali as it is also called, is celebrated as a national holiday but interpreted differently based on different religions. For Hindus, the majority of the population, it is marked to celebrate the return of Rama to his kingdom after fourteen years of exile in his pursuit to defeat the demon Ravana. The people of Ayodhya welcomed him home by lighting rows (avali) of oil lamps (dipa), hence the name dipavali and the tradition of this festival of lights. It was a special holiday for me too this year, as I was invited by my friend Komal to spend Saturday night with her family in South Delhi - my first Indian family experience since my arrival here. 

But before that night, there were several other little celebrations first. The five day festival started with a day called Dhanteras, an auspicious day to celebrate wealth. Traditionally, everybody goes out to buy something new for the home, be it as lavish as a widescreen TV or as small as a spoon. When I got off the Metro in the evening, returning from Hindi class, My street was packed with all kinds of people buying and selling and generally making things even more chaotic than usual, but the holiday spirit seeped into me too and I found myself buying a teacup on the way home.

Friday was Chhoti Diwali, which means 'small Diwali,' the day before the big celebrations. At a loss for how to celebrate it, my friends Komal, Regina, and I travelled to a market in South Delhi called Sarojni Nagar - probably the cheapest place to buy clothes in Delhi and packed with amazing stuff. Needless to say, my shopping endorphins went into sensory overload. Most of the clothes there had been made for export - most of them had the tags cut off but on occasion I came across a recognizable Gap top or an Urban Outfitters dress. Sometimes the police would wander by and scared shop owners would rush around to move their displays out of the little streets, making me wonder whether some of the goods were stolen. But hey, is it so wrong to be giving money directly to the sources our clothes in America really come from, or would it be better to pay twenty times as much to the department store they end up in? Well, I suppose it's that kind of thinking that ends with one dishing out 1500Rs, but I have a lot to show for it!

The next day on Badi Diwali, or 'big Diwali,' Komal and I set off for her family's house deep in South Delhi. I felt excited and nervous to be a part of their celebrations, not knowing whether the reputed quiet holiday at home would be too private an affair for me to join in on. Then I met her relatives and they were lovely to me. The house was Komal's maternal uncle's, but being a shared family home it housed over three floors her aunt and uncle, their two sons plus the wife of the elder one (the younger brother is soon to be married and will then welcome his new bride into the household, too), AND both sets of grandparents, as well as household staff. It seems such a foreign concept to me to have all extended family under one roof, as I've grown up with mine always living a long plane ride away, but I loved the closeness of everyone. Accordingly, I'm sure the idea even of an extended family is a foreign concept to them. Everybody from the aunt and uncle down could speak English very well, but the conversations were mostly in Hindi, so I had a fun time keeping myself engaged and listening out for familiar words in an attempt not to blend in with the furniture. I'm happy to say I think I got the jist of it.

In the evening we all gathered in a room that housed the family's shrine to perform puja, a ritual blessing offered to various deities depending on the occasion. Going into it I was worried, as I really had no clue what to do as the only non-Hindu there. But once again, the whole family welcomed me into their festivities and helped me along. I was surprised at how merry the atmosphere was in the room - as Komal's uncle lit the incense and prepared statuettes and coins for their blessing, the cousins joked around, pinching each other and giggling. Komal and I had nothing to cover our heads so took a bit of tinsel edged cloth from the cupboard and wrapped it around our heads and faces like demure Muslim girls, batting our eyelashes and making everyone laugh at our expense. When the prayers and singing began, Komal's aunt was nice enough to turn around at the end of each verse and offer me a translation. On the main night of Diwali you offer blessings to the gods Lakshmi and Ganesha - one the goddess of wealth, the other the god of prosperity. Her uncle bathed little figures of them in milk, along with coins from several different countries, then placed piles of sandalwood before them and dotted their foreheads with vermillion powder. We, too, got a crimson dotting. At the end of the ceremony each of us carried a plate decorated with candles in the shape of a Hindu swastika, moving it in circles before the gods. Hopefully I did the whole thing right - it'd be nice if the gods of prosperity and wealth looked favourably on me this year...

At dinner we ate some delicious homemade Indian food - sabzi, chana, roti and rice, some amazing mint chutney and aloo paneer. I took my fill but soon learned that guests in an Indian home really aren't allowed to refuse anything offered to them, no matter how many times one protests, so I ended up right stuffed. The kesar pista (saffron pistachio) ice cream and khaju burfi really finished me off - I thought they'd all have to roll me through the door to watch the fireworks outside.

The scene in the street took me back to memories of New Year's Eve in the Philippines, minus the scary after hours news footage of people in the hospital with their hands blown off... On the ground level children lit spinning 'chakris,' which whistled as they spiraled around on the road spitting sparks. On the rooftops other families had lit rows of oil lamps just like we had, and brave people set off big rockets in rapid succession. It felt like we'd stepped into a war zone, just with prettier, twinkly explosions. One of the cousins commented on how much better it was this year (in terms of less fireworks being set off) because people were more concerned about air pollution these days. I had a little laugh to myself about that one - if you saw the kind of stuff you blow out of your nose at the end of a long day spent in the smoggy heart of the city, you'd know why. We watched for a long time until my ears were practically ringing, but were eventually forced inside by the falling cinders of one neighbour's low flying rockets - one of the pieces even fell on my cheek. What a night!

In the morning light the street was a tired and soot covered reminder of the majestic night before, full of empty rocket cans overturned in the street and run over by cars. Another delicious but huge breakfast was forced upon me by my fantastic hosts, but soon it was almost time to go. Komal went into another room to pack her things and I waited awkwardly in the foyer with the grandparents who spoke no English. But then her Nani unexpectedly grabbed my hand and guided me over to the sofa, asking me to sit beside her. She apologized for not speaking much English, but I told her that she could speak Hindi and I would try to understand. It was amazing how much we could actually converse. Nani pulled out a big photo album and flipped through the pages, introducing me to every one of her many relations, and I meaneveryone. In translation it would be like "this is my husband's brother's daughter's sister-in-law. She's married to the Minister of Defense and comes from Madras." I nodded and smiled and she kept hugging and holding me as if I was one of these extended family members now too, it was really lovely. She even told me that I should stay in India for longer so that we could teach each other our respective languages. Probably my favourite moment of the whole weekend.

We left to many protestations on the family's part and promises on our behalf to come back again soon. I also left with presents in my hand, a box of mango cookies and a coin with Lakshmi and Ganesha on it. I can only hope that this very happy Diwali of mine is a sign of some good fortune and prosperity to come. Who knows? Maybe those mischievous kids in my neighbourhood will give up their rockets and go back to the serene kite-flying I love them for. Wishful thinking.

Fleeting Moments, Images, and Little Things I Will Miss about India

I'm compiling a list before I depart...

The walk from Rastrapati Bhavan to India Gate

Power outages

Women riding sidesaddle on motorbikes

Entire families squeezed onto one motorbike (current record: 5)

Getting to class and finding it's cancelled, and you're the only one who didn't know

CHAI

Looking across the metro bench under the For Ladies Only sign and seeing a whole row of Indian men sitting down instead

Random encounters with Hijra (eunnuchs and transsexuals, the "third gender")

Long lines of schoolgirls on field trips emphatically waving and shouting "Hello Miss!"

Hot Butter Laccha Paratha

Rickshaw drivers

Rickshaw drivers' strikes

Strikes in general that pop up for no reason but are always incredibly inconvenient

Pan splatter on the pavement

Indian porn titles ("Adult Frantic Sexual Intercourse")

Surprising people talking about me in Hindi that I understand Hindi

Cursing said people in Hindi

Living in a country that has festivals six months out of the year

Hopping on a train at the last minute and seeing somewhere amazing

Feeling part of a group, sharing this crazy experience

Broken shoes

Conveniently located cobblers who sit on the side of the road waiting to fix your broken shoes

Steamed veggie momos

Pausing lecture for a chai break

Bucket showers

Playing with the stray dogs on my street, especially my little Blondie, even though they gave me fleas once and I get funny looks from Indians for doing it (some even try to "save me" from the dogs and chase them off)

Sarees

LIMCA. Charley will sympathize with me on this one It's a lemon-lime soda, like Sprite only a billion times better

Wednesday nights at Urban Pind, and their free mojitos

Children playing with dangerous fireworks in our park

The 5R shared auto ride that's supposed to take five minutes but doubles in time because the driver usually has to stop to replace a wheel or fix the brakes

Vegetable sellers, broom sellers, balloon sellers, all of them calling their wares from the street 

Cows. Everywhere.

Cow shit. Everywhere.

Only half-caring that your unplucked, unshaved areas make you look like some Cousin It-Grizzly Man hybrid

Maggi Masala Instant Noodles

The personal trainer at my gym (which is really just a stuffy 10' by 12' room with death trap machines in it) who threatens us with a long wooden rod and shouts commands in a drill sergeant voice

Shopping shopping shopping

Eating eating eating

Sweet lemons and sour oranges

India's crazy sense of time (yesterday and tomorrow are the same word in Hindi, same as the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow)

Feeling part of a group, sharing this crazy experience

Finding writing inspiration everyday

Smiles from strangers (because one smile makes up for a hundred hostile glares)

Living in a foreign nation alone and not losing my mind (completely that is)

Learning I can be independent 

Surviving

Waking up and knowing that a whole different world is just a few steps outside my door...

And of course, being surprised by the fact that the things I'm going to miss the most are sometimes the ones that make my life so difficult now.

The Post About Nothing

I dislike the term 'soul-searching.' It connotes an uncertainty of purpose in one's life, the kind of thing I usually feel so sure about. When I decided to come to India over a year and a half ago, I fought against the opinions of other people that I would hate it there, that it was a smelly, dangerous, uncomfortable place and I would regret it. Maybe I fought a little too hard. Back then I was so certain of what the experience of living abroad in Delhi would mean to me, and the opposition I faced may have made me even more stubborn in my desire to prove that I could stand whatever came my way. 

Now, I am almost one month away from completing my program. I haven't left my apartment all week except to go to a few classes and grab some groceries. I'm in hiding from Delhi.

Why? It's complicated. Yesterday I had a long skype conversation with Mum and finally broke down about it. I'm drained - financially, emotionally, physically. I can't stand how taxing it is to leave my house. I can't stand being on my guard 100% of the time. Plus I no longer have the cash to pick up and escape the city for a weekend, so now I have to face these feelings every hour of the day. But more than anything, I can't stand the guilt I feel, and knowing that your experience anywhere you choose to live is what you make it. I mean, some of my friends don't seem to have these kinds of troubles. One in particular just seems to meet fantastic people wherever he goes, people who genuinely just want to sit with him and talk to him. That doesn't happen to me, and I can't really think of why, but I know that other students on my program like him probably won't understand my motives for leaving the country as early as possible, which in turn makes me feel like I have to stay as long as they do and prove myself. Of course Mum consoled me perfectly, telling me I've done enough traveling, seen enough things, and that I don't have to prove myself to anyone. Plus, our family situation has changed a lot with them living away from me in California - I can just tell my friends here that I have to leave in order to get adequate time with my family (time that I really really want).

And at the same time, I feel like I have to defend India. To me it's like that annoying sibling you may complain to your friends about. You might say how much they get on your nerves or inconvenience you or hurt you, but as soon as someone else starts turning around and saying the same things about your family, you know they've crossed the line, and you can't stand it. I have the option to leave here as early as mid-November. I'm ready to go now, I think, but do I want to take that opportunity so soon? When will I come back? And will I ever be back in the same capacity as I am here now? No. Sometimes I feel like running off and vowing never to return, and some days I really love it here. I know I'm not making any sense here. I told you it was complicated.

Yet I don't think I'm alone in all this indecisiveness and conflict. One thing I've learned about this place is that it's rife with paradox - the entire country rests on a fine balance that puts us, its inhabitants, in the grey area between love and hate. I turn to Indian mythology to explain a lot of concepts for me, and this Thursday in Art History class one of those dichotomies came to light for me in a big way. We were touring the Bronze gallery, and came to a familiar statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. 'Nataraja' is probably the most popular subject in the Indian Bronzes collection, repeated over and over by various artists. In it Shiva performs the dance of creation. Interesting isn't it, that the god with the power to destroy everything is depicted as the one who gave the universe life? With one hand he offers the viewer assurance, with another peace. The locks of his hair are fanned out delicately on either side of his head, forming the canal for the river goddess Ganga to be poured onto from the heavens and give us all life. But in his last hand there sits a fireball, powerful enough to destroy the whole universe. This is the figure Hindus must place their trust in - the man with the power to give everything and to take it all away. I look at the circle of flames behind the creator-destroyer's head, symbolically chosen because it has neither beginning nor end. India in a nutshell; everyday we're going around in circles as people suffer and celebrate. No wonder I'm confused.

And as I face making the decision of when and how I want my time in India to end, I think to myself, perhaps I really do have some of that soul-searching to do. 

Mamallapuram and the Long Journey Home

As I write this entry, Charley and I are sitting in the sleeper class of a train bound for Delhi. We are twelve hours in - only one third of the way through. A man is crawling on the floor next to me, sweeping up our crumbs. He seems mute, and he is begging everyone in the compartment for change. I try to ignore him and keep on writing. None of the Indian boys around us are giving him anything, so I look to their example. But he's still here. I hope I have change in my wallet. I give him a meager 2 Rs I find there.

This train car feels like purgatory. Even though I went to a travel agent more than ten days ago and paid him for the express train with an A/C cabin, we landed on the slow train in a 3rd class sleeper. I never imagined before how elite my usual train class was - it's nothing special, you know. But here at every other stop beggars and peddlers are allowed to jump on and ride the train into the next station, which I've never seen before. Also, a man groped me last night. I was sleeping, lying on my back, and woke up to the feeling of a foreign hand squeezing my right breast. I was in shock and blind and surrounded by sleeping people, so I never saw the man's face or chased him down the aisle to reprimand him as he ran away. I hate that. I was once pick-pocketed on another train coming back from Calcutta, but luckily I caught the guy in the act. It's just so frustrating looking back on both those times and knowing that all the guts I had to react with was to shout "Hey!" and then some bastard got away with it. So, we're hot, getting bitten to death by mosquitoes because we have to keep the windows open, and surrounded by deformed beggars and perverts. I'd say purgatory is a pretty good description.

Anyway, when I last wrote I left off with us on that bus ride to Mamallapuram. We arrived in town and got a cheap hotel that backed onto the beach. It even made us promises of 24 hrs electricity and hot water. With a positive outlook, we decided to do nothing that afternoon but swim in the ocean and read our books on the beach. It's really nice and clean in Mamallapuram. On one side it's filled up with little fishing boats but when you walk up a little further there are some nice swimming spots where the water stays shallow until quite far out. Charley pointed out at the sea and said, "Wait, is that the equator I see?" The beach is also lined with cafe restaurants with names like Sea Breeze and Sunshine, but the real gem is the Bob Marley Cafe, which pumps out reggae tunes as you eat fresh seafood and look out at the ocean. Evidently Mamallapuram, even though it doesn't have the fresh salty air or crystal waters of say, the Andaman Islands or the Maldives, is desperate to be known as the next hip beach destination in India.

We were just coming back from an evening walk around the town, deciding where to go for dinner, when the hotel manager caught us at the door, turned to Charley and asked, "Hey, do you wanna be in a movie?" Apparently they were filming a Tamil movie nearby and needed some white men to play background as old English police officers. There was a taxi waiting outside to take us if we wanted to go, AND the production team would pay. Once again, Charley and I, faced with another prospect of minor Indian video stardom, smiled at each other and made a little head bobble of our own as if to say, "Why not?"

It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. We got there and it was already dark because it would be a night shoot (little did we know an all night shoot). Charley immediately changed into costume complete with gun holster, rank ribbons, and a moustache that made him look like Freddy Mercury. The rest of the extras were already decked out in similar dress and hairstyles. We met them - 6 in all and strangely all Eastern Europeans, Poles, and Russians, save for one Argentinian. We got to chatting and found out that they had all been picked up from ashrams and were affiliated with the production team - wherever they travelled to in India they'd get a call on their mobiles asking them if they'd like to make a little money as an extra in the latest colonial drama. One guy, Alex, had been living that way in India for five years. He was interesting - the kind of interesting that five years in India makes of you. He actually told Charley he only leaves the country to take vacations in Serbia where he can finally "clear his head." Hmmm... None of them knew each other going into the shoot. Apparently ashrams just seem to attract a lot of Russians seeking enlightenment through a baba/guru type person. But you could tell that they all got along like old friends now, constantly breaking into Russian (with many interjections of the word "vodka") and probably bonding over their shared difficulty of getting by knowing zero Hindi and not the best English.

We had to wait for the extras' part to be filmed basically all night, and tried to entertain ourselves. I kept trying to get Charley to sing some 'Killer Queen' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to me, which made him laugh and also made his moustache fall off, which pissed off the make-up guy. We took lots of silly pictures with the Russians. By 2am we'd been there for about seven hours and things started to get a little weird. The Euros had taken to displaying their somehow common skills in the martial arts and mock-fighting each other, making us wonder if we weren't involved in some kind of KGB-esque conspiracy. One of the guys, Pablo (they all had fabulous names - one was called Valentino) was a very spiritual person who sat meditating half the night. He talked with us in great depth about numerology and each of our respective numbers. I have to admit, he got me down to a tee, not that I hold any store in that kind of stuff. He's from Siberia and hates living in India but has somehow pushed through it for two years. He says Nepal is the real place to be. I wondered why he didn't just go there then.

This entire time the crew had been shooting the same scene for the movie. It was taking forever because the Tamil director needed to get every shot precisely right. The film, "Madhrasputtnam," was about an English girl whose father works for the East India Trading Company and how she falls into forbidden love with an Indian boy. It ends tragically of course, and we were on the second to last night of shooting when the girl's lover is killed and she has to pull his body from the lake up onto her boat. So there was this girl, lying in the boat playing half-dead while the director shouted through a microphone as he sat far off in a van, telling her where exactly to put her head, "A little left, now right, up a bit..." It went on for hours like that while we poor extras and even lowlier extra's affiliates (I was the only one) didn't even have chairs and were being massacred by bugs.

At long last it was 5am and the boys had to be shot before day break. Why they didn't just shoot their one simple part at the beginning of the night I'll never know. So with Charley gone I went off and sat next to the English actress' mother. She was a lovely lady from Liverpool and we talked for a while. Her motherly presence, I have to admit, was a comfort - she kept calling me "love." She said her daughter, Amy, got into the whole project because she won Miss Teen World. After that the Indians caught on because they just love that sort of thing, and they asked her to be in their movie without even a lick of acting experience. I just felt quite sorry for them because all they'd seen of India was Chennai (disgusting) and the lake where the shooting took place, which was no beauty either. I told her about some of the best and worst bits of India, my own little highlight reel, and I think it half blew her mind - she looked really sorry for me, even though that wasn't my intended reaction. The script writer came and sat next to us too - a really grumpy bugger who was English but has lived in India for the past thirty years. He'd never bothered in all that time to learn either Hindi or Tamil, seeming to prefer to just sit around on movie sets complaining about how ugly the language sounded or how much better he could do each crew member's job himself, grumbling, "Stupid, bloody Indians." Actually, he complained about just about everything, including the state of the police officer's dress and the extras' behaviour, right to my face. Well of course they didn't look as perfect as they did at the beginning of the night - you had us all hanging around in the dirt entertaining ourselves with strange calisthenics trying to stay awake! Surely, I hoped, all that bad temper wasn't just from living in India for so long?

The sunrise came and we had to wrap shooting. In the end I think Charley had a good time - he got to live out a boyish fantasy and parade around pretend shooting a rifle. The crew seemed a little intolerant of the extras and annoyed at the end, but I don't know how they could've expected anything better when you're bored, tired, and uncomfortable. We rode back with the Russians and finally saw them in their own clothes - all homespun hippy fabrics. Then we noticed the huge neo-Nazi tattoo on the side of Alex's arm and were really confused. What a strange night. We had to remind the guy who dropped us back off to pay Charley. He made 800 Rs (about $16) - at least it covered more than the cost of our room for two nights! 

We slept in for more than half of the next day. We had been planning on renting another moped ad driving around to the sites of Mamallapuram but ended up being way too tired, grumpy and hot. The power went out so many times that in the end Charley ran out to the reception desk in his boxers and asked the manager, "Where's that 24 hr electricity you promised us now, eh? Oh, and by the way, my girlfriend and I are checking out tomorrow but we're not leaving at noon, we're gonna stay here until 4 O'CLOCK. Got it?" In fact all we managed to do for the day was make the discovery that every restaurant in Mamallapuram serves Nutella crepes for dessert. We walked down the beach at sunset and treated ourselves to great seafood for dinner - calamari, prawns, and an entire fish in garlic butter sauce, yum!

We also made arrangements to treat ourselves to massages the next morning. One more interesting Mamallapuram experience of note! At 7am Charley and I found ourselves lying on massage beds being forcefully undressed by our respective masseur and masseuse. I heard Charley say through the curtain, "Wait, you want me to get naked?" and the masseur responding, "It's okay sir, I give you a string to wear," then Charley again asking, "a STRING? Jess?" At the same time I found it strange that even though I was only getting a facial the lady had to unbutton my bra and lie me down topless on my back. I wouldn't even have been half as uncomfortable if we had been in an actual massage parlour, but we were in somebody's house and even with an eye mask on I just knew there were people passing in and out. At least it was a woman, I consoled myself, but then Charley was finished before I was and went back to our room. When my face mask was removed by who I presumed was the same woman who had been treating me the whole time, imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw Charley's masseur! Ah well. It turns out this guy really got quite the eyeful that morning - Charley's 'string' get-up was really just that, a piece of dental floss around the waist and a strip of toilet paper tucked in the middle! Poor thing.

In our last few hours at Mamallapuram we finally saw the things you're supposed to see when you visit. There was the Tiger Cave, a 1,300 year-old auditorium carved out of stone and decorated with tiger heads. It lay buried unknown in the sand for centuries until the 2004 tsunami hit and washed part of the land out to sea. The same goes for many of Mamallapuram's archaeological sites, and just nearby to the Cave we saw a similar excavation site in progress. We also saw the Panch Rathas, five temples from the same time period as the Tiger Cave that were all carved out of one massive piece of granite. And of course there was also Krishna's Butterball - a precariously balanced round bit of stone on a very steep slope. The British tried to move it once for some reason but even with a team of elephants they couldn't get it to budge. We took the usual silly pictures in front of it that make you look like you're holding it up all by yourself. Then we made our last scooter ride of the trip back to our hotel, each commenting on how badly our mothers would freak out/ have a heart attack if they could have seen us just then, flying down an Indian highway, on an Indian bike, without helmets (sorry Mum!). As for me, I'm quite proud to say I have mastered the act of sitting side-saddle on the back of a motorbike that I previously thought only demure Indian women in sarees possessed.

And then, after a long uncomfortable bus ride to Chennai, we got onto the train for one more long, uncomfortable journey. Charley is in the next compartment over playing cards with a South Indian family, a girl in a sari on either side teaching him how to play. I feel happy, ultimately, when I think of my first trip to South India, despite its ups and downs, because I think of all of the friendly people we met along the way. There were the many bys who came up to us at the beach, just to make conversation, or the French-Moroccan lady we ran into both in Pondicherry and Mamallapuram. I won't forget the weird guy who served us at the New Cafe with the only Indian afro I've ever seen in my life, or the masseur who probably gets off humiliating white tourists with a bit of string and some toilet paper. This is what I think of now, all those happy faces and hopefully the many more to come, as I sit on a train that reminds me of purgatory passing through the middle of India.