Head Massage

For Yom Kippur Anna Oppenheim traveled from Vadodra to Ahmedebad for services at the synagogue here. Overwhelmed by this new city and my very raw loneliness, I was really excited to see her. “I will meet you at the bus station and we can find the synagogue from there, together.” Unsure of traffic congestion, where I was going, or where anything is in this city, I had no idea how long it would take for her bus to arrive or for me to get to the bus station. I decided to leave with plenty of time and while I was wobbling along in a rickshaw to the bus station a text message told me that I had smoothly left way too early – she wasn’t scheduled (and schedules rarely run on schedule) to arrive for 1.5 hours. Sweating like a mad man on this cool 90 degree day, already in transit I figured I was best to keep going, grab a coffee and read for a while. The time would fly by. Silly Aaron, Trix are for kids.

The bus station stands at a sweltering hot intersection where it is rusting, crowded, and putrid. No coffee. No nothing. A couple of fruit sellers, kiosks, and countless taxis. With few other options I decided to go for a walk to pass the time. Because it is in the old part of the city, the bus station is surrounded mostly by factories and crumbling 6-story apartment buildings. There isn’t must to see and in the heat that is no such thing has a leisurely stroll so I calmly park under the shade of a nice tree and revel in the super modern form of entertainment popular on Nokia phones: Snake II. Soon enough two boys chat me up, and we hack our way through a conversation. It only really gets as far as me telling them that I am from U.S. Before I know it, the three of us are surprised by an older man, roughly 60, telling us he is Bruce Lee.

After Mr. Lee kindly makes our acquaintance, he backs up a little and starts to show us some of the latest, most lethal karate combos. I really have no idea what is going on but am totally amused and tell him that he is SICK! He loved it, prompted by my enthusiasm and energetic response to dice the air something fierce. What a lame organic compound, it didn’t stand a change. With the air properly annihilated he sat down next to me. We talked about everything and nothing. Interrupting me mid sentence while I was trying to explain what I am doing in Ahmedebad sitting on the side of the road under a tree by myself, he told me he is a masseuse. I laughed. Bruce Lee had just become a massage therapist.

Bait, line, and sinker, I bit the bait. I don’t know what I said, or how “No, thank you, I’m fine, I really don’t need a head massage, but that is quite kind of you to offer,” was misheard as a ‘yes’ but I sat there and watched him walk into a nearby shop and return with a packet of hair oil with Shah Rukh Khan’s photo on it. Casually, with the airs of normalcy common between two old friends, he flicked his shoes aside and straddled me, sitting on the top part of the bench against which my back was resting, his knees on the outside of my shoulders like we were getting ready for a chicken fight.

And, sure enough, some warm goo splattered all over my head and Bruce started to massage my head, still on the side of the road, still under the tree. Everyone who passed reacted: giggles, full-on laughs, looks of absolute confusion, nods saying: “That’s right, give that boy a head massage.” The entire time I grinned from ear to ear, just waiting for Anna or anyone to call so that I could tell them what was going on.

Thoughts on a Tuesday

This is a rough cut, some thoughts thrown together about the past few days and the next few days… didn’t have much time to work on it but it gives an idea of what’s going on and where my head’s at.

Work is going slowly. Each day I arrive at 10 a.m. and for the rest of the time I never know what I am going to do. So far I’ve been able to help with a few proposals, proof read a few other documents, and read a substantial amount of literature so that I add nuance to my understanding, but as we get started in the beginning things are very unclear and I have no projects. At the moment, just a week in the office, I don’t expect anything else but I am trying to think about my time here and how I can begin a conversation that will result in a clear understanding of what is going on within the organization over the next months, what I will be expected to do, and by when. Thus far I have been surprised by the lack of enthusiasm over my presence in regards to the work we are doing. People at the office are very happy to have me here and we talk often about our homes, favorite foods, and the lot, but I have not been inundated with questions or requests. Compared with the other experience I have in the developing world, admittedly very little, people were much more deferential in the work setting, assuming and expecting an expertise in any and all areas. Maybe these expectations will come, maybe they won’t, or maybe there just isn’t that much work, but my bluff had been called, arrived with the expectation that I would be doling out cure-alls within hours on any and all issues but instead, and rightly so, being treated like the little man that I am.

Part of this has to do with my age, and part of it has to do with confusion over what I studied. My colleagues, flat mates, and the other people I’ve spoken with about my background don’t understand what qualifications I have. In part they are right, I don’t really have qualifications. I have a few clues to guide and a small amount of experience, but I don’t really have a background. But, that is not what they don’t understand. They don’t understand the crossing over of fields, that I could have studied anthropology but that I am here working on documentation, workers rights, web design, etc. Why aren’t I doing anthropology? Liberal arts as a concept, as an idea for career preparation, that you read a lot, write well, and think critically is anathema to the dogmatic thinking of professional development and the immediate connection between a track of studies and the field of work one will enter. Each discipline within the liberal arts canon exists here but not as a part to a whole, a whole itself, geographers becoming map makers and English students writers. Surely this rigid view does not hold up across the boards, some of the most prolific contemporary Indian minds are hybrid thinkers, but they are the exception. People I met do what they studied and can’t understand why I am here or how I am doing differently.

Yesterday I bought a bicycle. It is a beast. Made in China out of the heaviest steel in the galaxy, it is the quintessential bike of the ‘developing’ world. Kenya had the same bikes. Exactly the same. Big, heavy, designed for work. A kick stand that lifts the whole back wheel of the floor in case you want to exercise in your home. I am glad to have it because it affords me a basic level of independence for personal transport. This city is too sprawling to really rely on it as a way to get around, but I can commute to work, get to shops, and explore at a faster pace. I am very happy to have it.

This morning woke up, went running, showered, read the paper, and biked to work. It felt like a very adult routine, a routine I expect to repeat for the rest of my time here. So too is it a routine that frightens me and is making the transition to this new place very difficult. Living in India, part of the developing world, has made me rethink both of these words. India is a confusing place with more diversity and disparity between classes and cultures than anywhere I’ve ever been, and sitting in a glittering mall makes thinking of it as a developing place difficult. Attempting to understand these issues will continue no doubt. Compounding these baseline thoughts is the thought that I am no longer in college, I am not here on a summer fellowship, I don’t get to return to Never Never Land. Riding my bike this morning I was singing to myself, and so too am I not sure that I want to grow up. This is the issue that has been most difficult to deal with in the last week. I can’t leave work early if I am bored and go play sports or meet friends for a drink. I am not in college and life is before me, a life that will mean certain things and I don’t really know what those things are exactly and of course much is in my hands to control but I have to pay rent, be at work on time, do things that I don’t like, produce results, work in situations that are not ordeal. All of these questions are questions that recent graduates face but facing them here makes them a little more harsh because I am so far out on my own, facing that same conversation on development and India in the context of the exploration of my post-college, young adult self.

Last night India beat Pakistan in cricket in the finals of the World Cup. It was a great match that went down to the wire and the moment India won I thought our apartment was being fire bombed. Everywhere people swarmed the streets, set fireworks, cheered, and danced. It was a joyous day for India and a fun time to be here.

Checking my email this morning, I feel very distant from my life. I packed my suitcase 7 weeks ago and supposedly brought my life with me, but my heart, my answers to peoples questions about where I’m from or where I went to school, those emails, my nights, are not convincing of that fact. I know that I am new here and it takes time to build community but so too do I know that my dear friends and family are at home or somewhere and many of them are going through times of great transition and uncertainty and it would be nice to be there for them.

On Thursday we are going for a site visit and then there is three days of training over the weekend. Those days should keep me busy, my mind active, and teach me a lot about what is going on.

Hunt for Housing

Searching for housing has been fun. Amusing really. In a hotel for the first three nights, I was keen to find a permanent place, get set up, meet people, unpack my bags, and begin creating a routine. As arranged previously, several paid accommodation rooms were located and appointments made to scout them out.

On the first afternoon we quest. After a couple wrong turns, some confusing directions and many bumps, we get to one house in a fine neighborhood. A small ad in the newspaper directed us there. Up the stairs, we ring a doorbell and hang tight. We wait a little longer and as I go to ring the bell once more, I hear noise inside and decide against it.

His shadow lurches to the door, the bare light bulb behind him illuminating the tufts of white hair escaping from his turban. With each step, the shuffle of slippers. He gets closer, fiddling with his pajama pants as they fall below his hips, a white undershirt hugging his fat middle age torso. This man is a wreck. Like a character out of “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest,” he looks deranged, glassed cockeyed, a few more wrinkles on the left side of his face than on his right, a scraggily beard, and a suspicious look in his eye. Awesome. I really want to stay here. “Come in.” We go in. Perfunctory words are exchanged, how long I am going to be here, my name, he offers me water, the weather, all the while his eyes traitorous of his mind, broadcasting what he hears: “Bla bla bla..”

“You want to see the room.” It is more a statement than a question. I guess, I think to myself but say, “Yes, sir, please, of course.” Those slippers are even more harrowing resonating in the hollows of a hallway with no light. I’ve seen this movie. I am glad I registered with the embassy, they will find my rotted carcass at some point. Lurching, struggling, pushing, the door finally decides to let us in. More tinkering with the drawstring. Lucky me -- he could have been a plumber. We are standing in a room that looks like it’s been underwater for three days. Black mold like wall paper, one cracked window, a bed, and broken dresser strewn about from the crane that dragged it from the ocean floor.

With a sleazy smirk, a slow motion turn, eyebrows aflutter, a touch of used car salesman, “You like?” Are you mad you insane old man? This is a dungeon. I am not picky. I just want a room where my things can be safe, a bed, some water, and a shower, and no looney old men creeping about with their pants falling down. I am super mellow but I am not staying in this opium den.

I nod, “It’s ok.” Then I turn and slowly make for the door as if to redirect our school of fish. Before he can say any more I kindly thank him, refuse to stop at his floor and continue down the steps on our way.
Later that afternoon we go to meet a broker who is set to show us two places. We trade phone calls around lunch time and finally get a hold of him. We are set for 3 p.m. So as not to be late we catch an auto rickshaw around 2:30 and head to a corner. It is not exactly cool but we wait for a while. We wait a while longer, put in a couple of phone calls, and then leave feeling like a divorced tax attorney who has been properly stood up for on an internet dating site rendezvous.

With our ears to the floor and our purebred bloodhound hunting skills guiding us, the next day we go to a house arranged by someone close to the organization. If I have learned anything thus far it is that it is standard protocol to go somewhere and not know exactly where it is, asking for directions along the way. We head in the right direction, ask around and one man finally knows where we are to go. He casually tosses his left arm and chin in ‘that’ direction.’ Again, it is standard practice but this time ‘that’ direction is down a dirt path that appears to go into a thicket. Those ears are so good at wafting hot scents right to our nose. At a loss for options, we go ‘that’ way. Luckily we find the place.

We walk in the door to a warm reception of a young man in a pressed white shirt. After offering us water we sit and cycle through the standard conversation. At the point where one gets to the point, we ask to have a look around. Look. Around. We are sitting in the room, the only room on the first floor, the room he uses like a swiss army knife, a versatile space as capable as opening a bottle of wine or cutting a toenail as it is to being a kitchen, study, or bedroom. There are two beds in the corner, tackling the angle in an L shape. Immediately I wonder if we go head to head, feet to feet or head to feet. Thinking about this man’s feet near my mouth as I try to fall asleep is more unnerving the thought of the water I just drank. Since there’s not much else to see, we kindly thank him for his gracious offer and head out.

This time the recommendation for the room comes from a colleague who works with my host organization often and with great success. Set to examine the house after work, I have a good feeling about this third-time’s-a-charm place. Six creeps around so we head there for a 6:30 appointment. With the help of some merchant navigators we find it without too much fuss. Trying to look like I am not holding bottled water, I wait. Trying to look like he is not with me, my coworker waits. In attempt to diffuse the tension, and because he actually is with me, we go for a walk around the block and quickly realize that the block bleeds into a slum, the pathway peppered with dead dogs, trash, and shitting children. Cozy really. Something the real estate world might call an “up and coming neighborhood,” or “a community with room for growth.” Truly, I am not perturbed by the thought of living in this neighborhood, but do want to know what the house looks like.

Over an hour late, the man staying at the house rushes up panting, sorry, and eager to have a roommate. He has never met me so I am not so sure why he is so keen to invite me in but as soon as we step foot inside the door and he turns on the light I understand. He lives inside of an indoor swimming pool. Brand new, some wires visible and the lot next door still unfinished, this one man lives on a blanket in a white room with white tile floors and a bare light bulb, his only companion his echo because there is nothing – no chairs, beds, rugs, pillows, light fixtures, paintings, yarn, stove, refrigerator, pot, pan – to absorb any sound.

Hosting me is not an easy task and I understand that many hours and dollars have been invested in my placement and the last thing on my mind is to be difficult. Surely I am flexible and am deeply appreciative of all that’s been done for me and is still being done , a personal favor called in to make this a possibility. It must be a massive bed sore, head ache or some sort of tropical infection to host your first Western volunteer for an extended amount of time and find him housing. That said, I don’t want to live in a swimming pool.

By the grace of god I find a place the next day. Delerious with joy I see Nike’s statue on my eyelids, the clouds opening, lightening clapping, drops of joy pouring down. Divine intervention is the only possible explanation for such a blessing. I happen into sharing a flat with four Indian bachelors who are living and studying in Ahmedebad and are stoked to take on another roommate, live with a dude from the U.S. and lower the rent. Not only has my housing been solved, but so too have so many issues around my social life been remedied. The guys I am going to live with are smart, know the city, speak English, have more degrees than a thermometer (just thought of this one, pretty bad huh), and are just chill, sweet guys.

Grinning from ear to ear I leave, set to move into the apartment and my life the next day.

What do you DO?

“Good Intentions are useless in the absence of common sense.” Jami, Baharistan
From “India Unbound” by Gurcharan Das

--

Emails, MOUs, funders, and friends ask me what I am going to during my 9 months here. Right now I don’t know and am in the process of trying to understand that process that might let me understand what needs doing and where I fit into that – so may processes and lots of trying. In these beginning days there are no deliverables, no tactics grounded in any methodology, thoughts of sustainability and capacity building are in the distance. Right now I sit with people, gain their confidence, make jokes, laugh, smile a lot and hack my way through some Hindi, trying to make an effort and willing to be the brunt of a joke.

In the mornings we sit, take tea, and read the newspaper in search of coverage on the mistreatment of sewage workers. Each day passes slowly. A proposal is revised, a receipt stamped and submitted for reimbursement, lunch, more tea, training manuals stapled. Western thoughts of output and efficiency sit on one shoulder, but the wiser voice prevails, taking my time in the beginning, in no rush to push things along, trying to understand the dynamics of the office, who does what, who really does what, and each person’s strengths and weaknesses. Showing pictures of my family and friends, the staff agree that I was fat -- we are communicating and that’s good. I ask about their children, pepper some serious work questions, but mostly I am just trying to land delicately like the ballerino I am at heart. Of course I wonder about what I am going to do, know that the work plan is not going to write itself, and that I came here because I want to contribute in a meaningful way, but right now I can only learn what’s in front of me. So, I learn about the organization and I learn about sewage workers.

It is by far the most disgusting work I can imagine (I am not calling the people who do this work disgusting -- to the contrary, I have an immense respect for the work they do each day and the epic personal constitution it must take). I contemplate the actual details of the work, of what it must require to go from sitting on the edge of a manhole to the action of propelling yourself into it. These men dive, depending on where the stop up or blockage is, into the network of pipes that drain pit latrines and industrial waste.

They are real life snakes and plungers. Up to their waste and higher, wearing nothing or just their underpants (no protective gear), a string tied around their waste, they wade in the vilest sludge of weeks worth of fermented human feces and industrial waste and use any kind of homemade implement to clear the pipe. Each year dozens of men die this way when they suffocate in a pipe that has no oxygen or inhale a toxic gas trapped below the street. From a recent report, quoting Justice Ramesh A Mehta (Retd.), “In Gujarat within a short span of 56 days there were 16 deaths of manhole workers in the manholes.”

There are many issues in play: caste, the law and the gap between its words and its enforcement, money, corporations… I have an idea of this scenario in a bigger setting, the common themes of the abusing the poor and taking advantage of the most at risk, but I don’t know the details of this situation. Each day I learn a lot, trying to understand the problem first, then the details of this organization, and then my place within it over the upcoming months.

Arriving in Ahmedebad

It feels like what it really is.

The shit has hit the fan, I am not in the corner, there is no spotlight, it is not the summer of ’69, and it doesn’t smell like teen spirit. Maybe I will write a song about it one day, but right now I am on my own and it feels like it. Wandering around this new city, in a new state, in a new country, on a new continent where I don’t know the language, I walk with hopeful, yearning eyes, corners are especially suspenseful, that I might see someone I know on the street, a small world story, a familiar face, a couple of degrees of separation and the resultant drink, my friend from Kindergarten, my sister for her birthday. I don’t know a single soul; I feel like a pixel on a screen displaying an image of Earth from space. I am not visible, don’t know any of the pixels around me, have no idea what this all amounts to and the people who complement me best stand in the starkest of contrasts thousands and dozens of thousands, oceans and landmasses away.

We left the guest house in Mussori at 6 a.m. on Sunday, and the damp morning air bettered only by the pleasant surprise of not vomiting on the 2-hour, 30 km descent. In a cluster for the last time, our backpacks, luggage, bags, and suitcases bumpering our way onto the train – no one even noticed us -- we load up, stuff big things into small compartments and buy water. Stretched out on the lower bunk of a second class sleeper, I am chilling, chatting it up, swollen from my last post that I am readier than ready to be on my own, snoozing some. Anna, Sunita, and the heat greet us in Delhi. Four of the fellows set off for their train to Mumbai, and as they walk up the stairs, dragging their center of gravity in their packs behind them, I calmly look on while the Everglades encroach on my ass.

Just for practice, to get us back into the pace of city life, the taxi drivers waiting outside like lions at a river during the wildebeest migration across the Mara and Serengeti in late July, put us through an exercise in bargaining, and manage to rip us off just enough so that we felt good about slashing the original price and they knew who was screwing who. At Anna’s apartment, the remaining 11 of us waiting for later overnight trains relax, cool, check email, and eat like wildebeests. Slowly, in 45-minute increments, taxi’s come, honk, go, the trickle of geographically labeled clusters of people, some to the south, some to the west, some the south then the east, return to the station, the last place of familiarity any of us will return to for a long while.

Unlike the trip down the mountain, for this trip across half of India, I have the top bunk, accompanied by a very able and on cooling vent, spraying me directly with freezing cold air. Luckily, my blanket handy, I form a chrysalis and defeat the enemy attack. As 16-hour train rides go, it is good. At the station, a man from my host organization meets me along with another type of different, drier, somehow as hot, heat. With all my things, the rickshaw lurching back on its two hind wheels, we speed, sorta speed, to the hotel.

Ahmedebad is a busy city. It is dirty, bustling. There is traffic. Millions of people, swarms everywhere. Bicycles, cars, carts, horns, motorbikes, camels, dogs, goats. Buildings are stone, cool, some brick. On the roller coaster of my emotions, the ride to the hotel is the slow, exaggerated, dramatic, teasing, ascent to the pinnacle of the ride. Inside the door of my hotel, the operator pulls the crank and that roller coaster car dives straight to the ground, physics lessons enter my mind, my stomach clenches, literally freefalling. As the cold air of loneliness encroaches on my body, my mind and heart catch up with the goosebumps of my skin – the room empty, standing there alone. Really alone, no friends down the hall, around the corner, a couple blocks, a few miles on my bike, several hours in a car. No phone.

Writing this the Thursday after the Monday, these feelings have waned, with each passing day my comfort growing, but in that moment I was mortified. Admitting so is not easy for me, the person who likes to think himself a world class adapter, converting any voltage or wattage output with ease, someone capable of hoping a flight to any part of the world, somersaulting through customs and landing on my feet at baggage claim on my way to a direct taxi ride, familiarity with a place and rapport with the people, thoughts of trepidation never evident in my face – in my armpits of course – but able to make the best of any situation. That’s always been the style I’ve tried to command, and I know I’ve not always done it, too cool, unflappable, able to get along with any and all. That door slammed and with it slammed many of these ideas but their remnants firmly present, important lessons on the good and the bad, that life is not all ups, that the downs are as instructive as the ups. My growth lies here I and I know it, I don’t like it, but this time will make me a better, more complete person.

Rather than putting my hair in a high pony tail and bashing things with a spiked club, after sitting in the room with my sadness for 20 minutes, I walk. Without direction or purpose other than to get my mind off myself, I walk. Hot and humid, I sweat, but I walk.

There are no other white people. I don’t see them and from the looks on people’s faces, they haven’t seen any in a while either. And yet people don’t seem to care or take much notice. Smiles smile back. Young boys wave, a few cyclists dare a touch, others ignore me plain and simple, children gawk, grandmother glower. I walk on.

Down a main street, onto a side street that spits me out blocks later onto a bigger artery, a quick right, down a bank, up the stairs, over the bridge, a moment of hesitation then left. Each step pounding the pavement with the most profound anxiety I have ever known, each step speaks and the ground hears me. My tensions trickle from the furrow in my brow, through my hunched shoulders, compressed spine, tight lower back, aching hamstrings, flexed calf muscles, and exit through the soles of my feet into the ground of my new home. Organically, in time, with my mind and body together I will grow to learn this new city and it will learn me, its people, make friends, do good work. It will take time, but that walk was the first and most important set of steps to doing so.

A little less empty when I return, I sit with my thoughts and fall asleep, still afraid, shutting my eyes for a second that feels like an hour, but a little happier, a touch more comfortable, a touch more prepared.

Ready to Go

I wrote this on Saturday night, September 15, 2007

Walking home from the Internet cafe, Mussori glows in the hills below, calmly, comfortably, its routine done for the day, children and shops warmly tucked away, dreaming now. Meandering, the path leads me home, visible in the light of quaint century old street lamps. Remnants of my conversation with Sidney bounce around in my mind, thinking of NYC in the cooling summer days, streets my heels know, long time friends, a city I call home. B.C.'s warm hello makes me smile. He sounds good. We wished each other a happy new year.
In the past month, my life has settled into a routine, easy and without challenge, woken by a bell, meals prepared, white people all around, English spoken. Challenge has been absent. Emails and phone calls fill out the frame, inform me of the comfort zone that I know so well and has crept over this latest locale. But, as comfortable as its been, so too has it been stifling. Scuba diving since I've arrived, my air is delivered through one tube, my interactions staged, group dynamics swimming with me as a school of fellows, trapped near shore during low tide of this new and foreign ocean. We can't swim too far, our instructor watches intently. Terribly frustrated, I am ready for this to end. No more masks, no more groups. After a month of being in India I am ready to be in India.

That comfort zone is nice and I think of it often, question the decision to leave it and participate in this trip. Absent from the lives of friends and family during a time of much transition and uncertainty, guilt often enters my mind. At times I too provide that comfort zone for others and my choice to be here impacts them. Computer screens and Internet profiles type to them, tell them that I am there for them, a sounding board for any thoughts they might be having but my dot com aliases are wholly insufficient, failing people in their times of need.

Lucky for me, despite my absence, I know they remain there for them, and me for them, in whatever ways we can. A tight rope walker's safety net, there, but not in sight, sure to catch me if I fall or waver, looking down to see people who love me, encourage me, advise me, put my eyes back where they need to be.


These are the questions I am curious about. What sort of personal constitution does it take to live overseas? Could I work in international development, live worlds away from the people I adore and rely on? Aware that these questions are not easy, aware that there answers lie, in part, in the next nine months, this land of fairytale clouds needs to end.

With that safety net secured, my mask set to be torn off tomorrow morning, my time in India starts. Finally I cast off into the ocean on my own, without any one way to go, no instructions on how to breath, where to go. I can't wait; I am terrified. More than anything, I am ready. I am ready to try and learn the language that has stared back at me from textbooks and grammar exercises, to get to work, to understand Dalit discrimination in a lived sense, to meet my coworkers, move out of a pack, breath city air again, get lost on buses, meet new people, work, feel alive, useful, exploring throughout the tough questions that arise, aware that they hold the key to personal growth. Comfort forces me nowhere.

Walking on, there are fewer street lamps now. Tomorrow's path, my time for the next nine months on the other side of the world is before me: there, but I can't see it. It is not lite. Wise trees line the road, guiding me back to the hotel. Tomorrow these wise trees, these calm mountains, this comfort zone is going to be traded for honking cars, smog, uncertainty. No more street lights to show me home. Safely, I arrive at our hotel where I will sleep for the last time. Smiling, I am ready to try and light my way from now on.

Whose Responsibility

From Octavio Paz's "In Light of India:"

"Besides the intellectual and political elite, who have been the historical protagonists of India for over a century, one must also note the emergence of a new middle class in the principal cities. This class -- without much culture and with no great sense of tradition -- is, as in the rest of the world, enamored of technology and the values of individualism, especially in its American version. This class is destined to have more and more influence on society. A strange situation: the middle class, in India and on the rest of the planet, disdains public life and cultivates the private sphere -- business, family, personal pleasures -- and yet they increasingly determine the course of history. They are the children of television."

--

From Edward Luce's "In Spite of the Gods:"

"Perhaps the most conspicuous item of consumption in today's India is the wedding, which owes a lot to Bollywood and vice versa. Vandana Moha, owner of the Wedding Design company and New Delhi's most successful wedding planner, told me the smallest metropolitan middle-class weddings start at $20,000, and climb to more than a hundred thousand dollars. In 2003, Subroto Roy, a prominent industrialist based in Lucknow, spent an estimated $10 million on the joint wedding of his two sons. The event, which almost every Indian politician attended, was stage-managed by Bollywood directors, stage managers, and choreographers... One much-publicized Punjabi wedding in 2004 had South Africa as the motif. The parents of the bride actually transported eight giraffes from Africa to add that authentic touch. "It is as is if some kind of madness has gripped India's middle classes," says Mohan, laughing."

--

From "Freedom at Midnight" by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins:

[Of Gandhi] "His nightmare was a machine-dominated industrial society which would suck India's villagers from the countryside into her blighted urban slums, sever their contact with the social unit that was their natural environment, destroy their ties to family and religion, all for the faceless, miserable existence of an industrial complex spewing out goods men didn't really need."

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On a Saturday for myself, I take some time to walk through Missouri, eat every two hours, and enjoy my independence in a new place. Dehydrated and too close to the end of my book to keep walking by this coffee shop, I duck in. Tucked into the corner, I start to read but my attention is stolen. Bad Indian pop music is blaring, scattering my thoughts initially before they fall into a state of intent focus on a group of women and their teen girls against the window. Lip-synching with the performative flair and accuracy required to fill the biggest venues in Mumbai, the words to this song are sung as second nature. Articulate, well-coached English broadcasts the very vague, unmeaning lyrics. Plush, brown leather couches and the complementary earth-tone cushions comfortably support the on looking women, creating a court scene, performers performing and their adoring patrons draped elegantly on an exotic fur as they drink exotic concoctions from far off lands. Wearing sari's themselves, their daughters don the most notorious name brands, the same ones bootlegged all over the world, available on Canal Street and Fifth avenue. Daughter and mother alike are painted a certain complexion, their eyebrows maintained.

My mind is captivated, enraptured by their speech, enchanted by the scene playing out in front of me, a scene I just read about, was told about by the leading commentators on India. As the bill arrives one of the mothers dismissively places a large bill on the check presenter and shoos the boy away. She doesn't say thank you; she's busy gossiping about the latest on Salman Kahn, what earrings she had on at dinner or what clothes he was wearing on his day off from boarding school. Louder than they music, the composition of this scene far more telling of something bigger, more 'Indian,' these women represent the future of India and it is a frightening future that no amount of decadent leather couches can warm me to.

Converted from the theoretical to the real, Octavio Paz's "In Light of India," Amaryta Sen's "The Argumentative Indian," and Henry Luce's "In Spite of the Gods," words enter my mind, their warnings of a rapidly growing population - growing in population and power - of wealthy, educated, privileged, consumer-crazed, well connected, disconnected Indians. This burgeoning sub section of the population, vastly atypical of the average Indian, is a critical mass that is responsible in large part for furthering an obsession with money, products, packaging, labels, the conveyance of status at the expense of the starving people who live in the shadows of their mansions.

Surely this is an overly simplistic diagnosis, reducing the economic problems of the 12th largest economy of the world to a sentence, to the people who go to Bollywood movies on a Friday night. But, it is undeniable that a pernicious classism is emerging and the rich are setting the agenda, controlling the flow of money, entertaining foreign investors. This isn't different from the other countries I have been to and the larger trend of the world today. But, I think about why I am here. Arrived in this country on the wings of funding meant to prompt sustainable development, to cultivate a class of leaders who will try reverse these harmful patterns, poverty. So, often, in the front of my mind are questions about how to do that, how to effectuate positive change in a meaningful, lasting, fair way and in this coffee shop right now the real question is: whose responsibility is this? This fellowship has one thought, suggesting me as a possible answer, and hearing that from them sounds nice, flattering to think that I might be able to do something so big. But, it seems, these women sitting there have also suggested me as answer, seemingly unfazed by such questions, choosing instead to purport the exact system I am thinking about. In Delhi, on the train, in Mussori, in the billboards, malls, advertisements, it feels that the percentage of Indians who have "made it" do not care about where they have made it from, this history that has put them there and the opportunity they represent going forward, instead choosing to blame the poor, caste differences, or varying State cultures as the reasons for the inability of other people to pull themselves up.

They are now taking pictures of the three girls, divas, sprawled on the couch, their shiny digital camera clicking away.

The earth can't support this growth; I know this. So too am I aware that it is hypocritical of me to sit here at the same cafe paying, the same inflated prices for a coffee, very much the product of a consumer crazed country controlled in large part by class structures, to be passing judgment. Admitted. But it feels, thinking about ideas of development and the future and India somehow falling into this term -- set to surpass China in 2030 as the most populated country -- that there is an opportunity to reconsider these assumed thoughts of progress, material gain etc. and change a course because the goal ought not and can not be an American lifestyle of consumption. There are things we can do better, cleaner, more inclusively, to not make the same mistakes that the "developed world" made and continues to make.
Cue the violins. Sure this is idealistic but there is not reason this music should be so bad, - it is a product catered to a consumer class more concerned with communicating their status than listening to good music. A bottle of Jack Daniels costs $90, a sign the stinks of a desire to be American, not to drink good bourbon.

Walking

On the walk down here I finally had the chance to be present in my mind and my body, to participate in this town as an individual, not a member of a group. An old man farted as I walked by. The egg seller sat among his riches, crates stacked by the dozen higher than his seated posture. An antique store shopkeeper sits with his daughter, still wearing her starched school uniform, looking at school photos. A woman's bangles clank exactly in step with her stride, her own personal bandleader. An impromptu director of traffic asserts his force, funneling one car to a parking spot, another to honk a little less, carefully pupeteering a overfull truck through a tight squeeze, then walking on with his shoulders back and chin out. Bangra music blares. A group of old men play cards on a milk crate, one smirking as he smacks a card down with the distinct motion of putting an ace on a king. A donkey yawns; so bored, dumb. Samosas fry. Binidis rival the Japanese flag in the intensity of red and perfection of an exact circle. Tailors stitch.

It feels so nice to walk, on my own.

Development and Me

Walking home, this mountain makes an indelible mark in my mind, a parable for approaches to development - this ever enigmatic term that is constantly on the tips of too many tongues. But I'm guilty too, and the wisdom of this summit takes me on as an ignorant nubile, shedding light on the ever important idea of perspective. Walking, I think about the work I will be doing, and how to do to it best, learn all the time, and leave with lessons for myself and some sort of deliverable on the ground.

Through the haze of the clouds blowing over, many paths are visible. All eventually will get to the antenna at the peak. Some look more direct, some bend out of sight, others curve and curve and curve. Trucks roar by, cars zoom, the fastest two ways of getting to the top, traveling in an enclosed vessel, bullying people with your horn, blurring images in haste. Motorbikes are an option. Some speed, the air in your hair, things slow down and you get there. I e signed away my right to ride on a motorbike, but I have a feeling that I prefer walking. Each brick under my feet. Slower, yes, but ferns come into focus, I stop if I want, watch monkeys in the trees, squashed butterflies in the road, appreciate laborers as they haul stones on their back, people say hello, snippets of their conversations buzz - the importance of the details emerge, details that are only accessible on foot. Clouds come and go, unsure at times of where I've been, my goal not always in sight, the goal unsure, out of reach. But, I am in no rush. I am slowly progressing, sure of that, accompanied by peace of mind that I've done this journey well, appreciated the things around me, considered them, my body with my mind, understanding the process that begets the process. Though, at times, I may have had to go backwards to go forwards, I didn't drive, hurry, spending time with each pixel of the picture, not the easiest way or the fastest, but it feels right.

Haircut

Sitting in class I decided I was going to get my haircut after lunch. My self-cut and styled faux-hawk/mohawk was at a Eurotrashy point that needed to go. On top it was hanging on to cool, standing up, sorta stylin', but the back had grown to look like a wet rodent, and because the top didn’t exist without the back and the back existed at all, it was time.

Walking down the mountain, zig zagging on the roads to the town of Landour, tunnel vision engulfed my eyes, people's hair was all I noticed and this new country provided a lot of variate fodder for consideration. My last teacher of the day wears a bob, a Golden Girls middle aged do with little style, lots of natural curl, and the humid air. Voluminous always.

Approaching me was a nice looking older man in a button-up shirt, grey slacks that looked to be about the same age as me, sandals, and a sharp part swooping his hair from left to right. It smelled nothing of a balding accountant or first communion participant in a white suit and dotting mother. Clean shaven. Smart.

Zooming by on his motorbike a young stud strut his stuff, his brown locks on full display, perhaps the only reason he bought the bike in the first place. Flowing behind, tended to with much time, loving comb strokes, overpriced product, and a constant dose of vanity, his hair matched his tight shirt, tighter pants, and designer sneakers. He too was clean shaven. Around the curve was an older man, seemingly wise because of his hair, venerable in grey. Long and kempt, his beard was wise in its own right. Nothing special in his style, organic, growing from the tested proteins of his oft-tested brain.

That beard opened a can of worms, blaring new tunes of facial hair styles at me in keys I've never heard. Paramount among them: the moustache -- a style often made fun of in the U.S., at parties organized around the theme, pedophile jokes, and white trash punch lines. In India, the 'stache is in. It is everywhere, cooler than bellbottoms, sliced bread, or what that guy on the motorbike thought of himself. Fruitseller, bus driver, tailor - a man assumed to have a sense of style, sporting the stache without shame -- another guy on a motorbike, one of my teachers at the school, business men in the newspaper. The list could go on. Pubescent boys do their best, but need to wait their turn. The moustache, replete with wax, attention, trims, and a garish air, is hip.

Sikh men grow their hair long but rock their turbans with the same concern for appearance as the trendiest secular Bollywood star. Purple shoes, a violet shirt, and darker hue in the turban, one Sikh man struts his stuff like the coolest rooster in the pen, feathers puffed, chest out. There are an array of colors, but the most common are black and white - white is the new black once again, just after black was the new white, equally timeless despite the best efforts of marketers and fashion magazines to suggest something outlandish like earth tones. Simple, becoming.

Some men use henna in their hair, an orange like a tiger, fuming almost in the intensity. That color, if put on a dude in leather with piercings is available on St Marks Place, but here it is just right, fitting and fantastic.

Women are far more understated, a part in the middle, their natural beauty does the talking, not highlights or bloated chests. Most school girls put their hair in two braids, looping the bottoms with ribbon, but even still there are no bells or whistles, texture and natural beauty the expression here.

I'm ready to part with my current style. One week into Hindi language school, we've not yet learned, "Please shave my head." Turning into one shop, a storefront no more than 4" by 6", I am met by a blank face. May I please have a haircut? Still blank. More blank. Then some hand waving, frantic, a two handed fast forwarded hello. He is not the barber. Walking on, another sweet beard on another owl-like older man, the moustache featured but aware of its strong supporting cast. About the same size, two chairs, two mirrors, a small bench, some pictures of Ricky Martin, I feel good about this barber. May I have a haircut, please? Yes, please sit. Doing better already, I like where this is going, ready for this teen of about 14 to go get someone. Instead, this young man, unable to even enter as a contestant in the ratty 14-year-old moustache growing contest, is, it seems, the barber.

His hair is awesome, well oiled, trimmed, a meticulous part in the middle, not as slick as Alfalfa and without the cowlick, a little more air underneath it, wing-like. A sweet guy, yes, but I don't want his haircut. Grinning in amusement, laughing at the absurdity of the situation and absence of my Hindi skills I begin: Can you please cut it all one length? Reminded by his face and the mirror, I have a mohawk on my head. Touching the sides, he asks me something. Language barrier. I pick up the clipper and ask him for the #2 attachment. Nice, now we're going. He shuffles through a drawer that doesn’t glide open, but in its worn wood that just fits, it sits in place, hanging down, its contents rushing forward. There are matches, papers from the Dark Ages, rusty scissors, magazine shards, and lucky number #2. Right where I put it, perfectly organized, a little smile peeps through from the barber, amused at what is going on. I’m right there with him, still smiling. One length please, all, cut it off... I try numerous approaches to the same end, taking the clippers and motioning them through my hair. Enter hands: not just saying "one length, #2" but pushing my hands through my hair as if I just surfaced from underwater, then scissorhands, back to the water motion again. Slowly, the boulder creaks forward; we are on to something, about to start rolling down the hill. The sweet buzz of a hair clipper, a soft hmm like a blue mosquito light, my hair running to the blades and their dramatic end. Smoothly, the sides are crisply clipped. Now I really look ridiculous.

Getting the clippers through the thicket on top proves challenging, far more testing of the clippers, mosquitoes upgraded to Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a wild animal far more difficult to tame, but not unconquerable. With great care, this young man, a young man with great experience but no frame of reference for this foreign species, crouches slightly, pauses, unplugs the weapon and calls for backup, reaching into a bag on the wall to produce another clipper. "New." My smile grows, as does his, and my mohawkquivers in fear, eyes darting like a cornered mouse, aware that it doesn’t stand a This new clipper has been raring to go, a young colt pleading for the track, a Porsche feigning for the Audubon, no seat belts, bets placed, harnessed with current, plowing ahead. There is a lot of hair, but his savvy enters here, the homestretch in sight, he saves enough for the straightaway and comes up strong to challenge and over take A Few Stray Hairs, Precarious Ear Area as well as the favored Encroaching Back Moss.

A deep breath on both our parts; little did I know we were just getting started. Those awesome rusty scissors jumped out of the drawer. I'm stoked to think that they are going to touch me with the intent of cutting things off my body. Sweet. But, young Luke Skywalker uses the force, shaping the hairs around my ear keenly. Nice. I think we're done. Then, like a samurai wielding numbchucks, he does this crazy thing with a straight razor, like a ninja with a butterfly knife, too fast for a mere mortal to really understand, aided by instant replay and dramatic camera work. A new razor inserted, my neck is cleaner than a newly Zambonied ice skating rink.

Unknowingly, we had now arrived at the final frontier. With his palms down, arms bent at the elbow, and my body the location of a fire, he started fanning me and saying some words. Clueless, my face blank stare said that I didn't know what was going on. More flapping and I finally got it. I crouched in my chair, deciphering the "can you please schooch down" motion that he was trying to tell me - there wasn't actually a fire. Then, Spider Fingers went to work with a divine touch to rival that of Brancussi, massaging my head in ways I didn’t know were possible. Jammed into the chair in a proper crouch, I was delighted.

Baby powder, payment, and the awesome burst of air on my newly shorn head. One last look back, our smiles were mutual, entirely amused with what just transpired.