Feb 3, 2017MayaAt night the stars come out in force and as night falls, lights begin to turn on in the houses and villages spread out over the foothills of the Himalayas. One night, there were clouds in the skies, no stars and Asunda (a South African volunteer who is taking a break from law school and has established in his hometown a community garden and is planning on starting a community library [or rather, true-brary, he says]) described it “as if the stars had fallen from the sky and sprinkled the countryside.” The effect is glorious; the lights are spaced out in constellations and only vaguely hint at the nature of the rolling terrain underneath. Kripa is a Nepali college student and hurt her ankle in December when she turned off her flashlight to better appreciate the effect. Her ankle hasn't gotten better because she just has kept working, kept walking and given it no break.
Jan 3, 2017The Hyderabad DaysThe Hyderabad days, I must confess, were comparatively uneventful, although not without note. Punctuated by the occasional visit by a high school friend of Aahlad's I mostly stayed in his bed, catching up on my Netflix and reading and learning Nepali and playing on my computer. His foot slowly got better, but every time he went to the doctor's, they ordered a longer recovery period. He wasn't complaining: it was an excuse to stay in bed, and keep relying on his mother for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) in bed. I must confess I enjoyed that perk as well. His family was interminably hospitable and kind, really indulging my (and of course, their son's) laziness. My mom had told me to fatten up before I go to Nepal: some extra insulation against the cold and snow. This, combined with my habit of not saying “No” to hosts, meant that I ate a good deal of food, in proportion to the amount that Aahlad did not eat. His mom was quite pleased with this.
Dec 23, 2016A Tour of the Hospitals of GoaWelp. While scooting along on scooters shortly after sunset yesterday, we encountered a particularly bumpy set of speed bumps. There are two different types of speedbumps in Goa: one large one, that occasionally catches you off guard and you get a bit of air and otherwise you just slow down, or a series of small thin lines – sometimes, they are just painted on! But these ones, they were pretty bumpy, and Aahlad was thinking that they were painted on, so he was going a bit too fast, and he started loosing control. To accelerate on a scooter, or at least the ones that we were using, one simply grabs the right handlebar and rotates it towards you. To one relatively inexperienced in the art of scootering, perhaps more familiar with biking, the instinct when you are loosing control is not to release the handlebars but to double down and tighten your grip, perhaps pulling yourself towards the handlebars. This, one might be able to note, is not a good thing. When Aahlad started wobbling a bit, he leaned forward, gripping tightly on, and in fact accelerating. He slipped off the road, got back on, wobbled a bit, and then went over for the last time, falling down a scraggly bank with his bike on top of him.
Dec 15, 2016Conclusions of StudyOk, so in the interests of continuity I decided to go back and write a bit; I haven't been writing for a while.
Dec 2, 2016MumbaiMumbai, 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.
Nov 28, 2016Ellora: The PhotosOk, 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.
Nov 27, 2016And Now: ElloraSpirituality 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.
Nov 22, 2016The Ajanta Caves: Some PhotosI 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.
Nov 21, 2016The Ajanta Caves, Part 2At 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.