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Ok, so in the interests of continuity I decided to go back and write a bit; I haven't been writing for a while.

Mumbai, I have to say, is an amazing city. It was a fascinating transition, from the tiny town of Ellora way out in the backwaters of Maharashtra, to the city of Aurangabad where I needed to catch a train; I spent an hour wandering around Aurangabad, searching for a functional ATM, and then another several hours sitting in a cafe, ostensibly working. The train ride was from 9:30 at night to 5:30 in the morning, on the sleeper class (to simplify, classes in trains in India go First AC, Second AC, Third AC and then: sleeper); light was kept on all night, there were stops every half an hour or so, and I had been under the misplaced impression that blankets and pillows would be provided as part of the cost. Oh, and: remember those views, that were decent in Ellora but quite effortful? It turns out that at some point on that trek I came in contact with some sort of relative of poison ivy. Now, poison ivy is not supposed to exist in India, so I was not careful, but based on the rapid spreading and itchiness off the rashes that erupted along my arms and hands, feet and chest, and the similarity to other experiences I've had, there was definitely some urushiol oil involved. Urushiol is the worst, and I did not sleep well that night.

Ok, so there are a kind of lot of these. But! It was a giant place, beautiful and diverse. All kinds of cool things going on.

Spirituality is a word that I've always had trouble with. It is very imprecise, very vague. Which, admittedly, is something I'm generally quite a big fan of. See the 23 previous usages of the word “beautiful” in this blog. And I'm not quite sure why I have so much trouble with the word “spirituality” when I don't have any qualms about the word “beautiful.” Perhaps it is the violence and vehemence attached to the word, in its darker contexts. More people have died and killed for their views on spirituality than their views on beauty, probably. Or perhaps its the range of meanings, from healing crystals you can buy in a shop in suburbia, USA that smells of incense and has plenty of wooden Ganesha statues for sale to people who are not, in fact, Hindu, to that feeling that gives people the power to live, to love, to die and kill. Perhaps it is simply that I don't really understand it at all. I'm more of an aesthete than a theologian. And I am definitely unqualified to write about it. It seems so perpendicular to everything else. I cannot deny its power, or the fact that certain things do seem to resonate, deeply within oneself.

I haven't really had time to look through, do simple edits, and figure out what are good and what are bad photos, but I took a few hundred in Ajanta. You know, for research.

At the entrance to the Ajanta cave park lies a space station. Upon closer inspection, it is not actually a space station. It has a large metallic dome, though, and many metallic cylinders. It has a gigantic parking lot and a beautiful garden right outside, polished, clean floors and many chairs and tables and no tourists. Ilan and I walked in, and found ourselves in a one of the nicest maintained buildings I've been in in India, well staffed (there were probably fifty or so people walking around, doing nothing much), clean, and cool: air conditioned, even! It is a museum set up by the Maharashtra Tourism Development Company, with an architecture designed around the golden spiral and many informative information placards and four full scale replicas of caves, and no tourists. We were the only non-staff members there. They didn't charge us anything, because presumably no one would pay. To go see plastic replicas of the caves when the real-life caves are just a five minute bus ride away seems absurd, and I guess most people felt similarly. There were two empty restaurants and an empty student's cafeteria, an empty auditorium and an empty gift shop, a beautiful and dry water fixture and staff wandering listlessly back and forth, some cleaning or busying themselves whatever way they could, some sitting around and talking, and always one or two watching Ilan and I curiously. It felt like walking around an abandoned theme park, or perhaps like in Jurassic Park, when the park hasn't opened and it feels like something is just wrong. I suppose if the statues of Buddha came alive, nothing much would change.

That feeling that you get when you are standing on the second floor of an ornate monastery carved out of a cave, looking between the columns of the porch at a statue of a woman, half completed and a quarter eroded emerging out of the cliff face and then a leaf, bright, piercing yellow against the hazy background of green trees and blue sky and smog, falls upwards and out of sight. Buoyed by the thermals, the hot-air convection currents that so frequently occur near cliffs above water, your rational mind says. Like in Artemis Fowl, your rational mind says. But that is silly, and that is not here. Here it is just a yellow leaf falling upwards past the disbelieving face of the half-hewn woman, 1500 years old.

This is the perfect compliment to the preceding apricot and almond cake. While that was light, fruity and fun, this cake is dark and brooding, with the dense and gooey molasses mixing with the rich and piercing flavor of ginger to give it just the right spin. We added some homemade whipped cream to the top in a generous dollop that accentuated its own contrast with the other. 

A light, fluffy and moist cake whose fusion of almond and apricot flavors approaches the sublime. Or anyways at least something very good.

Pakora is rather like the Indian part of the worldwide phenomena of deep fried things. It is delicious and I'll just go ahead and claim healthy. Probably. Right? This recipe is just the batter, and really most things can probably be fried in it. We just did vegetables, though.