The Far Side... India, Not Gary Larson

Nubra Valley... Ladakhi Heaven

2008-06-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

After a day acclimatizing in Leh (photos), and a 10-hour round trip jeep ride to Pangong Tso on the Ladakh-Tibetan border, we again commissioned a land cruiser for a two day trek into the North-Eastern corner of Ladakh. With permits on hand, we enter the Ladakhi paradise known as the Nubra Valley.

The Nubra Valley is linked by 150 km of road to Leh, and requires one to pass over the highest motorable highway in the world. At 18,380, the Khardung La pass offers one steaming garam chai, military handshakes, and prayer flag vistas toward peaks that tower above and below. Beyond the Nubra Valley is the Karakoram Pass which links Ladakh to Xinjiang province in Western China. This is not accessible even with a permit.

Descending over the Khardung Pass into the Nubra Valley, after snapping picts with a requesting Punjabi family, we came upon a desolately straight road. Always above 10,000 feet, even the bottom of the valley offers unprecedented topography. Glacial green rivers run clear over smooth stones, and the verdant banks provide food for wandering yaks. Hundreds of white and brown horses wade knee deep in a lush marsh at the banks of arid crags which descent thousands of feet from snow-capped knife-edged corners. The marsh is a verdant quiver for the arrowheads of granite which stretch, puncturing clouds, and slicing knife edges like obsidian into the deep blue sky.

On a solitary road that crosses the valley floor, we stop aside a moonscape of sand dunes untouched by humanity, only whipped by the Karakoram winds (photos). Ripples show in its silver surface. Beyond, visibility must be a hundred miles. The valley extends ad infinitum into a diminuendo of spikes, black, gray, silver, and green. The sky melts from a deep indigo above into a painted white canvas on the horizon. Giddy with discovery we attack the sand dunes, yell, pause, listen to the silence. We dive off the dunes, twirl and then stop in awe of our surroundings; Heaven.

We continue down the valley where we find a seated group of Bactrian Camels like those once used to cross the Silk Road. For $3 we commission rides across the dunes through a sand storm, before returning to the land cruiser for sunset at the Diskit Gompa hundreds of meters above the valley floor. The vista from the whitewashed buddhist gompa nestled into sheer rock walls is spectacular. Punctuated by the maroon robes of laughing children studying toward peace, we sit, breathless because of altitude and spectacle, feet dangling off the wall. The sun powers its way past a far off crag in straight rays which illuminate patches on the valley floor. Its yellow lines paint color into an already infinitely nuanced canvas, each hollow and line illuminated by the 5pm shadows, and called to attention by the angle of the light.

Pangong Tso... Ladakh and Tibet

2008-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

A death-defying and dramatic five hour drive from Leh, Pangong Tso (Ladakhi for "Lake") glows spectacular aqua and indigo in the sunshine at 14,000 feet. Though permits are required to climb the desolate and snow-capped peaks that bring you dangerously close to the Indian-Tibetan border, we managed to expedite the process through veteran antics and a wink from a U.N. travel-mate. Cramming our diverse Bain, Google, U.N. and Fulbright, Detroit-to-Ireland crew into a land-cruiser, and we set off at 5am.

By 8am we took rest at the Changla Pass, the world's third-highest motorable mountain road. Though it was June 21, the first day of summer in the rugged Himalaya still comes with flurries of snow. A Nepali man who had served 23 years in the Indian army served me a complimentary cup of chai in his tented green military outpost. Two fatigued men with rifles laughed at my basic Hindi and Bollywood one-liners aside their burning furnace, faces half-shielded by bandanas to keep away the snow. Whereas overpriced coffee would accompany any Western tourist stop, Ladakh is still remote, inaccessible, and hidden behind the expectations of a dangerous Kashmir. As such, it's a world of immense and unparalleled rugged beauty, smiles and rifles, edgy moments and deep histories.

Descending from 17,300 at Changla Pass to 14,000 where Pangong Tso straddles the Indian-Tibetan border, we came upon a world not known as Earth. Infinitely complex patterned lines carved their way down thousands of feet of arid red-brown rock. Martian hills plunged toward an un-Earthly green and blue crystal lake, and above them towered the knife-edged Karakoram peaks of Tibet. Surrounded by flat shale, the pristine lake offers unparalleled rock-skipping. Overcome by elation, dizzy with altitude, whipped by crisp wind, we laughed as we dipped to skip perfectly-shaped bits of shale over the rippled reflection of Tibetan peaks.

The journey to Pangong Tso consisted of 10-hours of extreme-altitude driving over a bouldered pass often lacking pavement or even legitimate form. The road, though a snaking line carved into the brown of nearby peaks, was often little more than a clearing or flattening of natural elements. Forging streams of glacial run-off, passing flocks of high-altitude Dzo (Yak-cow hybrids), agile goats, and grizzly Yaks (16,000 feet plus), our tires were frequently inches from thousand-foot drops, and spit flecks of gravel into lush valleys below. As Greg Morteson notes in Three Cups of Tea, it's the roads that will kill you before terrorism.

Kashmir... Landing in Leh

2008-06-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

Jammu and Kashmir is the north-western-most Indian state, known both for its immense beauty and its troubled past. J&K, as it's called, consists of diverse ethnic and religious regions. While Jammu, near the Pakistani border, is predominately Hindu, the Indus Valley and capital, Srinagar, is mostly Muslim. To the Northeast of Kashmir is a region known as "Little Tibet," and Ladakh (map). Ladakh is home to a buddhist community not so different from that in the nearby regions of Baltistan in Azad (free) Kashmir, neighboring Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. Ladakhis have the features and stature of their Himalayan brethren, and visibly differ from their Hindu and Muslim Kashmiri counterparts.

After reading Three Cups of Tea, a book about a K2 climber-turned-activist who builds schools through out Pakistan's Baltistan region in the extremely rugged Northeast, I was keen on understanding Ladakh. Split by the Indian-Pakistani "Line of Control," running north of Kargil, Baltistan and Ladakh are ethnically, historically, and linguistically similar despite their split national status. The Silk Road once linked the region to Central Asia and the Sub-Continent. Today, political divides leave those in Pakistan isolated amidst spectacular but spartan Karakoram peaks. Leh is linked only by bouldered roads to Kargil and Srinigar, and Manali.

Landing in the Ladakhi capitol, Leh, on a Deccan Air flight out of Delhi, I was reminded of the antics of Maverick dropping below the hard-deck in Top Gun. Narrowly avoiding the arid ridges surrounding Leh, we made our descent, wings paralleling the razors of rock, only hundred of feet of sky between. Deftly sinking into the valley, we touched down in Leh at an altitude of 11,500 feet. My head spun for the first day, but during the course of acclimatizing I managed to finish a book on Ladakhi culture called Ancient Futures. As the sun dipped lower on the horizon, we advanced up the final steps of the towering Leh Palace. Modeled after the Potala Palace in Tibet's capitol of Lhasa, it offered a perfect sunset view over the valley below.

Nepal 2.0

2008-06-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday King Gyanendra of Nepal stepped down from the thrown. On Saturday the palace was occupied by those who had peacefully deposed him. Saturday was also the day we, a Tamilian, a Canadian, Georgian, Coloradan, and Californian, arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal on Yak Airways.

We had spent one previous day slicing through the misty green hills of Pokhara atop motos, occasionally catching glimpses at nearby Fishhook, and the wall of the Annapurna Massif. We had hiked to an incredible vista over Pokhara Lake up an arbitrary trail through small Nepali villages. 8000 meter peaks are globally rare, but they frequently loom in Nepal, sentinels that stand broadly above the clouds. A day along the beautiful lake shores, and we were ready for a return to the diversity and pace of Kathmandu. Visiting a friend's former host family on the outskirts of Kathmandu, we found local hospitality warm, and smiles wide. We meandered through Pashupatinath Temple, where wafting ash in the monsoon sky told of passing lives on the burning ghats.

We toured Bhaktapur, a preserved city on the outskirts of Kathmandu, and ate plates of water buffalo momos (steamed meat dumplings) off the street for less than a quarter dollar. For fifty rupees we helped a weathered Nepali man spin a pot from clay on a slimy spinning wheel. And we cashed in Starwood points to spend a night at Le Meridien Gokarna Forest Resort and Spa, utilizing the innumerable amenities and smoking hookah into the rainy night on sheltered wicker chairs by candle-light in the King's forest.

On our final day, taxi strikes meant that we had to convince a private tourist taxi to return us to the airport. We set off cautiously, but within 3km of the international airport, perpendicular busses, abandoned cars, and loitering locals blocked our path. Our driver refused to go on, and with circumspection I discretely slipped a wad of Nepalese rupees into his hand amidst the protesting taxi drivers. With an hour until our flight we began running through the protest until we eventually found a pioneering and capitalistic taxi driver who, for double the price, agreed to drive us on the other side. In a confident push through airport logistics (entry, airport tax, boarding pass, baggage, customs, and security), we made our flight.

Real World: Gurgaon (Season 1)

2008-06-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

The New York Times, on June 9, covered the duality of life that exists in Gurgaon in far more eloquent prose than me, though it failed to address the relationships that exist between residents and staff. Though we have six members of our own house staff cooking, cleaning, and managing various activities, we also watch cricket with them, practice Hindi, and learn about their homes and lives. They make chai; we make conversation. But the NYT article highlights the divided world of gated apartment and slum-life that's increasingly visible in Indian metropolises. In cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay, and Delhi NCR (Noida and Gurgaon) where the educated 0.7 percent of the 1.1 Billion people work predominately in outsourced IT jobs (Source: Edward Luce) bifurcated communities are certainly evident.

Cycle rickshaws still patrol the streets, curbsides are crumbled and littered with the tents of road-side slums. The vibrant colors of residents ornament the dusty scene as usually seen through tinted windows of honking vehicles. In Gurgaon I find smiles are common, though most of my co-workers complain of local crime. I realize that my reception as a foreigner on the street is perhaps different, my involvement in street life is usually novel, and novelty inspires smiles in otherwise sad and desperate lives. Those with whom some interact when leap-frogging between the shopping malls that moonlight as oases, are not bad, but they are desperately poor. Some cite visiting malls as the only activity in Gurgaon. As Rory Stewart would agree, it's only The Places In Between that matter. The ubiquity of the desperately poor does not impact the extent to which luxury in India is available and growing; however, the fact that Mercedes and Burberry exist does not mask the truth that India has egregious resource allocation issues with consequences of the highest magnitude.

Dhaba... Dhaba

2008-06-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

With evenings occupied by video conferences with California and Euro 2008 football matches, I've recently found that I don't remember dinner until late-night. Last night, under the buzzing lights of a nearby office building, I frequented a 24-hour Dhaba in Gurgaon with my Chennai friend. Dhabas are road-side restaurants. Steam and smoke mix under the glow of street lamps. Behind a tattered billboard, and on an uneven dirt patch, plastic chairs and tables are packed for midnight snacks. The waiter accosts us, and shouts our orders over 100 others to the kitchen. There are no menus. Men and women hunch over flat aluminum plates, their fingers drip with dal and ghee from their hot parathas. I order a chai, dal makhani and two parathas.

The experience costs me Hindi embarrassment and 60 rupees.

CR Park Birthday

2008-06-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

Over Kingfisher and Sula champaign, Saturday marked a night of celebration for a friend's birthday. It was here that I realize the amazing group of people that have converged on New Delhi. The scene is small, but the smiles wide, and the conversations deep. In the Facebook world in which we live, collaboration is close. I realize that though lives will part in Delhi, as the transient expat world in which we live is short-lived, lives will again converge thanks to technology. In New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, friends in the room will reunite. Between Harvard and Columbia, Wall Street and the Wall Street Journal, East Coast and West Coast, the gaps in contact are increasingly diminishing. Though thousands of miles exist in flight, when one's address is on the information superhighway, memories are a click away.

A Pile of Shoes

2008-06-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Many Saturdays in India I make my way through Old Delhi to Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Asia. Atop the steps, as birds circle in silhouettes against the pale blue sky, the pink minarets tower above. Echoing over an expansive moving sea of bodies below, the muzzin performs the call to prayer. Beggars sit curled on the warm red sandstone steps, their withered skin telling a story of time passed. Men in white, beige, and green make their way slowly up the steps. Women in black slip from their sandals, and drop a few coins for the shoe patron. He tosses the coins below his rug for safekeeping. Aside the steps he piles the sandals and shoes in a neat pyramid. The Nike Air Zooms are on bottom as they provide stability for the others. The shoes tell a story of the men and women whose bare feet now shuffle over the textured standstone into prayer time. It's no longer an abstract concept, but a way of life. A man in a red and white gutra stares at me with penetrating eyes. His beard is worn long, and aside him a man stands in a lungee and chapan. Their faces are weathered, but their eyes kind. With a nod, there is mutual respect. A boy scampers to my side and asks in English if he can take a picture. His grinning father documents the moment on his Nokia, and when I respond with a "Shukriya," it prompts new conversation. The man behind me critiques the moment in Hindi, telling me that it was the boy who should have said thank you. I say it's ok, but he tells me of his life in Kashmir. My Hindi is basic, but I learn that he works in a Noida garment factory for 4500 rupees per month ($112). I tell him I'm American, and he buys me a chai. This is Saturday afternoon life on the steps of Jama Masjid, as the gulls dance to the Koranic call against a sky that dims into hues of color, and the night begins in India.

IndoChine and Mbeki

2008-06-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

After two late-night movies in Gurgaon and Saket watching Owen Wilson in Darjeeling Express, a ridiculous American movie filmed in Rajasthan, and the Bachchan family reunion in Sarkar Raj, a Bollywood revenge story paralleling the underworld Bombay life of the Thackerys, Friday night involved the coordination of 25 plus friends in an outdoor tent reservation at a South Delhi club called IndoChine. Operated in the Singapore style of its predecessor and with the Laos touch of its founder, it boasts a great outdoor lounge for hot summer nights, despite its hidden locale near Qutab Institutional Area outside Saket in South Delhi. Friends from Google, BMW, the World Bank, United Nations, Wall Street Journal, and Fulbright joined together in an evening that migrated to Rick's at the Taj Mansingh Road, an after-hours Delhi hang-out that combines the nights of an unlikely group, old and young, in an overpriced 3am cocktail.

When we returned to the Taj Mansingh on Sunday morning for brunch, the security and clientele was slightly different at the latter half of the weekend. Seated aside a camera-man, and receiving a text from a World Bank friend, I determined that the newest addition metal detector was not so much decorative as it was preparation for Thabo Mbeki, the President of the Republic of South Africa. He's no Shane Warne like in Bombay, but exciting nonetheless.

Home Sweet Gurgaon

2008-06-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

After work I typically board a cab that wedges its way into inching traffic. The bumpers of cars come surprisingly close, and deft motorcyclists somehow manage their way at speed through increasingly smaller gaps. With a ready hand at the horn, each driver is aggressively poised over his steering wheel. The free hand will gesticulate and frustration will become audible in the form of the word "yaar" (man).

Past the windows, men and women stand atop crumbled curbsides, longingly looking into the street. Bicyclists manage their way along the roadside edge, and vendors dole out dusty glasses of water for 50 paise (1 penny). Under a corner telephone wire, a local liquor shop stands surrounded by dozens of cycle rickshaw owners, each idly sprawled betwixt the metal bars of their livelihood in an uncomfortable collaboration of fabric and aluminum, legs and bike frame. Men in suits and women in saris travel to and from their BPO offices, some in AC cabs, others on dilapidated cycle rickshaws. It's a dusty anachronism on both the road and the road side. Brilliant edifices of glass are erected on a monthly basis, but surrounding them are piles of bricks, heaps of corrugated metal, spikes, tents that serve as the homes of those who labored 24-hours per day. The potholed road is littered with standing water, putrid in smell and green in color despite the fact that rain was weeks away. Tattered billboards with calls to action advertise products inaccessible to the majority of inhabitants.

Along the street side a family of three boys cooks corn atop a flame that spits out black smoke. It paints their faces darker, and only makes their smiles brighter. A woman draped in wrinkled skin holds her arms to me, and a bouffant-styled Bollywood look-alike fixes his Royal Einfield. Two boys feed sugar cane into a grinder that's powered by a sputtering generator which coughs deep black puffs into the air. Small children sit nearby. The sun dips on a dusty, crane crossed horizon, its brilliance dulled by pollution but its heat undiminished. Another day in Gurgaon.

Campai Mumbai

2008-06-02T03:17:00.000-07:00

When I arrived into Mumbai on Friday evening, I was giddy with excitement, and in the dizzying heat I commissioned a taxi to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel & Towers for 300 Rs, a 90 minute ride that cost $8. Inching by Marine Drive in the back seat of a Bombay black and yellow non-AC taxi in 42 degree C 8pm heat, I could not have been happier. Bombay has become one of my favorite global cities. Watching the skyline inch higher over the past year, I can tell that this is a city of the future, if not the present. If I were to describe Bombay, it's the pace of New York, the glamour of Hollywood, and the immediate access to local cuisine, street food, and real-life that one finds in a back-alley neighborhood. Even the richest people seem to know the best place for 20 Rs street chaat. It's grit and urbanity, a kaleidoscope incarnate.

We decided to splurge. The Taj is perhaps the nicest hotel in which I've stayed, save for the KL Mandarin Oriental. Host to movie stars and innumerable presidents, it's waterfront location just before the Gate of India is spectacular. In appearance it's similar to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. Inside, a dip in the pool conjures notions of swimming in an Ivy league quad, with victorian balconies, lush greenery, and the sound of birds surrounding. This weekend there was an added benefit; The semi-final Indian Premier League cricket teams were also staying in the hotel. At the pool, at breakfast, and in the bar we were surrounded by Aussies like Shane Warne who, in the world of cricket, make guys like Kobe Bryant seem like nobodies. Flanked by beautiful women, and illuminated by the flash bulbs of paparazzi, their presence added wickets of fun.

Friday evening we ate at Wasabi in the Taj, an acclaimed Japanese restaurant run by Masaharo Morimoto, the Japanese iron chef. Over a sake bomb, in a private dining quarter in which we sat seated at a round table nested in a dome windowed alcove looking out over the India gate, we cheered Japanese style, "Campai, Mumbai!" Saturday night, after rooftop drinks at The Dome, an incredible glass-walled belvedere atop Marine Drive's Intercontinantal Hotel, we visited a restaurant called Khyber for delicious frontier style food, and Sunday brunch at Olive Bar was fitting for Bollywood. In the posh Pali Hills suburb of North Mumbai, we discreetly pulled up in our dilapidated non-AC taxi into the languid Prada-clad melange of Bombay's in-crowd. We were inside, but more obviously on the outs.

And in between our opulent culinary endeavors, which seemed to be the running theme of the weekend, I strolled the sweltering streets of Colaba and Fort, entertained the adventures of Shantaram in Colaba's famous Leopold's Cafe, and read the entirety of One Thousand Splendid Suns poolside on Saturday. Contrasts such as these make one appreciate moments.

Boarding our delayed flight from Bombay on Sunday evening, the runway end was crowded by hundreds of people sitting on rooftops and loitering outside a nearby mosque. As the plane rounded the tarmac, I realized that they were all onlookers. There was no cricket match, and there was no entertainment except us, those people fortunate enough to board planes to other worlds, far away from the poverty and squalor that exists for most of Mumbai's 12 million residents. As the engines roared, the rushing wind gave lift to our wings, and in our escape we became but the fleeting entertainment of a hapless mass, making ends meet in the shacks that line the runway's end. The activities of my two days were vacation, but fuel the perspective on opportunity and fortune that must impel us to be cognizant of the disparities that are globally ubiquitous. That which makes us content without also making us good is selfish.

Giacometti in Singapore

2008-05-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

After a brief tryst with the West, a month-long journey during which time I ate reindeer steak in Finland and watched a dwarf sing karaoke on a ferry to Estonia, I've returned to India. True to form, in the last 10 days I've been between Philadelphia, DC, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Delhi, and Bombay. Life moves fast, but when the dust settles, not a whole lot has changed except my time zones. After spending a great day in Singapore, where I toured an Alberto Giacometti exhibit at the Singapore Art Museum, drank a Singapore Sling at the Raffles, walked the quay, and had a five-dollar shower in the airport (amazing!), I boarded my final flight to India. As I landed in New Delhi last night I smelled familiar smells, heard familiar sounds, and saw familiar sites. This has, after all, become my home. It is host to a year of my youth, and 4 percent of my life. It's a part of me, for better and for worse. The dialectic is powerful, and at every turn I find myself experiencing contradictory feelings of frustration, elation, resignation, and excitement.

India has taken part of my life away, and at the same time, made me a better person for having experienced something that so many other dare not embrace. As I looked over the serene Pacific from Highway 1 in Northern California, watching a perfect sunset, I knew it would appear different a week later over Marine Drive in Bombay. It would be accompanied not with serenity and sand, but with energy and vibrance, not with pensiveness, but with camaraderie, surrounded by eyes and smiles of scores of onlookers. As I squint through the hazy morning sky of Gurgaon, where a blanket of dust and smog obscures newly constructed glass edifices, I consider my health and the consequences of my location; As I step over the littered pieces of discarded lives, sandals, dusty cloth, paan wrappers and crumbled curbsides, I question the failures of a resource-rich country with gross governmental mismanagement; As I turn on the radio I realize I'm in touch with Indian, and not American pop culture, as I know the lyrics, gossip, and movies from which each song hails.

I will depart the sub-continent in July in person, but it has become part of me in practice. My relationship with her is complex. I love her virtues, but I despise her shortcomings. For every religious beauty there is a political fault; For each linguistic plurality there is a bureaucratic ultimatum; For each cultural purity there is a breath of carbon emission that makes one long for the clear skies of Los Angeles or Mexico City, and demand a better alternative than Kyoto; For each Bollywood ideal there is a system that cannot provide for its own people. I am Californian, and 4 percent Desi. That's a proud, and dismal truth.

Delhi to Helsinki

2008-04-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

When I reflect on the last 14 days, I've been in 7 cities on 3 continents. Jet lag only begins to explain my state of mind. Our final days in Delhi pre-departure were replete with active days and nights, hot afternoons in CP, Bollywood hits, lunch coffees at Barista, a night of talking Harare politics over Tiger beers with two Zimbabwe friends, and fantastic steak dinner and drinks at Smokehouse Grill in South Ex. Before my departure, and hiatus in California, we organized a feast amongst friends at the apartment, and managed to convince three non-residents to make the trek to Gurgaon. As our conversations moved from the ethics of development to stupid humor, and as my house manager, Kapil, embraced me and apologized for any sins or troubles he had caused me, it only reaffirmed to me that bonds grow strong quickly in new worlds. I dismissed Kapil's appeal with my jocular nickname for him, "Sri Baba Kapil ji," but was moved by the extent to which relationships in India, despite their often disturbing stratification, are genuine, poignant, and resolute.

After a three-hour delay at the appalling Delhi International Airport (the worst capital city airport I have ever been to, except for perhaps San Salvador) I boarded my FinnAir flight to Helsinki at 4am. Despite months of joy, a few hours in Delhi International can affirm any seeded desire to return home, and leave you counting down the delayed minutes until departure.

But when I arrived in Helsinki, Finland, I immediately missed the chaos and color of India. I stepped into fresh, clean, Nordic air under a deep blue sky. Before me new C-class Mercedes passed one after the other as airport taxis, gliding over clean cobbled streets. Although with each breath into my lungs I felt as though I gained strength post-Delhi pollution, and although I could have eaten my lunch directly off the pavement it was so clean, I immediately missed the vibrance of India. I missed the camaraderie that is ubiquitous; I missed the smiles and the bobbles; I missed the momentary entertainment that is a rickshaw negotiation, a languid buffalo, a paan-wala tout, or a carefree shoeless child that protects a makeshift wicket with a stick. India is uniquely complex, and while riddled with problems, it retains an endearing quality that is deeper than the superficial foreign understanding of its squalor and crowds. India is alive.

UP Nights... Films, Barat, and Kulfi

2008-04-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

An afternoon by the Taj pool, and a fantastic book, "In Spite of the Gods" later, I embarked for a movie at the local cinema. The first Pakistani movie to show in India in many years, I chose to watch a well-rated film called "Khuda Ke Liye," or "In the name of God." Though the movie was in Urdu, its spoken form is remarkably similar to Hindi, and so I managed the basics that along with visual tips allow for decent understanding. Khuda Ke Liye was a fantastic movie that, while lacking in much acting prowess, articulated a complex modern Pakistani, and Muslim, dynamic in the post-9/11 world. A British Pakistani girl is married by her father, and against her will, to an extremist cousin in Waziristan, marooned in Western Pakistan to the chagrin of her feckless mother. Captive in a Pashto village, the protagonist battles between accepting a culture unknown to her, but her own, and squelching a hatred for her father. Her husband, a young musician turned rock-to-faith, joins in a battle alongside the Taliban as his progressive brother moves to Chicago to marry his American love. While one man lives free, another is persecuted as an extremist. All too familiarly, a World Bank friend explained the plight of a former Stanford classmate of ours who was deported, despite a fervid love of American opportunity, for having studied Chemical Engineering.

Exiting the theater, I used the local bathroom to don my Sherwani and I quickly made for my good friend's wedding. As I was escorted out the exit, half of the hotel staff offered a hand to shut the heavy door of my white Ambassador car, waving with smiles and compliments, and asking who my Indian bride was. At the residence, with photographs, marigolds, and bountiful traditions of puja and dance and incredibly loud band music, we began the wedding festivities. Though I've before been to Andhran, Keralan, and Maharashtran weddings, I hadn't yet been to one from Uttar Pradesh, or the North. The Barat, or procession, began from the groom's residence.

Fit with a white horse, twenty men to carry heavy lights atop their heads, a truck blasting the recent Bollywood hits like Darde Disco and Mauja hi Mauja, and even a small man pushing a generator, we danced for two hours down the streets. Snaking through the darkened streets, through air suffused with heavy heat, a lingering presence of the afternoon sun, we danced and danced as the white horse and my princely friend followed. Eventually reaching the wedding hall, Kushagra bribed his way inside, paying handsomely to the bride's sisters and family to make his entrance. As we tossed marigold petals atop their regal attire, and they exchanged flowers and furtive glances, they were slowly (quite) conjoined in marriage. To celebrate, after a liquor and contraceptive yatra for the newly interested parties at 4am, we celebrated by eating all of the remaining ice cream (kulfi) from the ceremony. An hour later I flew home and went to work, having only just changed from my Sherwani.

Now... Lucknow

2008-04-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

After having been upgraded into a first-class sleeper, to my surprise and approval, I arrived in the capital of UP, Lucknow. I quickly hired an auto, and began site-seeing before the inevitable heat (105 F+) of the Gangetic Plain confined me to the shade. Though my morning bargaining skills were lacking, I secured a tour of various the sites of Lucknow, such as the Bara (Big) Imambara, a Shiite muslim shrine and the Chota (Small) Imambara. Within the Bara Imambara complex, there is an amazing bhulbhulayah, or labyrinth, that served as a protective surrounding to the Imambara. Nearly lost within its narrow stone passages, I contemplated climbing down a wall before I managed my way out. Like Theseus and the Minotaur, fortunately, my string and bred crumbs got out of the labyrinth, and back to the Taj.

By Elephant or Indian Rail

2008-04-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, after having hired an elephant for the morning to walk across the Raj Ghat corner of New Delhi, and after a four-hour, Moet champagne brunch at the Oberoi hotel, I boarded a third-class train car from New Delhi train station. I was bound for Lucknow, the capital of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh. UP, as it's shortened, has a population near 200 million people, and is one of the most complex regions of India to govern. It spans some of the most densely populated land on Earth, and combines a complex mix of topographic, linguistic, and religious differences. As I was dropped at the station by my driver, a man who explained to me last week how he had named his son after Saddam Hussein, the typical chaos ensued.

With a Moet-induced calm, I traversed a piling of bodies and bags outside the station, ducking my way under street lights buzzing with mosquitos, and shuffling past the burning metal of passing rickshaws and motorcycles. Once inside the station, having passed through a two-by-four 'metal detector,' I descended to the train platform upon which I was lifted and carried by an inching smash of human arms, bobbing heads, and fabrics. It was a festival weekend, and as a Bihari man explained to me on the concrete steps, everyone on the platform was bound for Patna for the long weekend. This man, the owner of a hot air balloon company explained to me how I could buy a second-hand Indian military helicopter, and then quizzed me in my minimal Hindi.

I was the only foreigner on the platform, but as I scampered over legs, past rice bags, under dupattas, between shoulders and through the heavy summer air that pinned me between bodies and a low ceiling, many helped me along my way. I managed to throw out a few high-fives before jumping onto my moving train, as my seats had inevitably changed and I boarded the wrong car. I eventually found that I had been upgraded, thanks to the Rail Minister Lalu Prasad's initiative at the helm of a million-person organization. Nine hours later I arrived in Lucknow.

College Tour 2008

2008-04-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today I spent meandering the campus streets of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in South Delhi with a Bihari friend studying in a Ph.D Linguistics program. Founded in 1967, JNU is one of a few Delhi academic institutions including the more urban Delhi University, and the famous Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). It is a school named after a man with one of the strongest Indian political legacies. Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and longest serving, held the first post-colonial post from 1947 until his death in 1964. The school that bears his name is, as was explained to me, fairly liberal in its academic flexibility, but hasn't yet moved as far in the direction of development as its eponymous namesake could have hoped. Whereas campuses in Hyderabad host wireless internet, the classrooms and library at JNU are, while palatable, not modern.

Over a dhaba lunch, and a five rupee coffee, I realized that despite different appearances India is home to a surprisingly strong cafe culture. Similar to a weekend afternoon in Europe, scores of students sat around makeshift chairs, crumbled concrete cubes atop a dusty hillside, nursing small chai and coffees over long conversations. It's Indian dhaba culture, and I've noticed it across UP, Punjab, and Haryana.

Despite the tranquility of our sunny afternoon, my friend explained to me issues that cause academic concerns. In the past five years government scholarships have grown to address Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in funding, in addition to need-based funding for families who earn under 1 lakh rupees ($2500 per year). Preferential treatments, however, are controversial. Members of ST, and students who speak one of 24 specified languages, can take their pre-college exams in their mother tongue. Though locations change, some fundamental inequalities are issues that transgress international boundaries.

Bollywood Politics

2008-04-08T23:00:00.001-07:00

When asked by a DC friend how the China-Tibet issues were surfacing in India, I had to reply that I hadn't heard much about it recently, as the news has been dominated by far more important issues. Bizarrely, the quibbles between Bollywood and local regional politicians is more news-worthy than Chinese incursions and draconian actions against peace-loving people in Tibet. For example, in the past weeks, news has been drowned in the absurd dialogue between fringe-party Shiv Sena ("Shiva's army") and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackery of Bombay claims that the superstar, originally from Uttar Pradesh (UP) but made a star in Maharashtra, hasn't done enough for the state that brought him riches.

At the same time as Bachchan is derided by a xenophobic regional leader for his dismissal of Maharashtran issues, another Tollywood (not Bollywood) superstar from Karnataka, a ridiculous Sly Stone action hero named Rajinikanth, has been lionized by Thackery for his commitment to Tamil Nadu on issues related to local water. Despite his roots in Karnataka, Rajinikanth's siding with Tamil Nadu (TN) is precedent for Thackery's absurd public excoriation of Bachchan. It amazes me that this news eclipses neighboring China's aggressive measures just North of the Indian border. But when it comes to Bollywood and Cricket, the sub-continental notion is clearly "do not disturb."

Worlds Between

2008-04-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

After three months in India in 2008, bringing my time on the sub-continent to 9 months, I realize a sad and awkward reality that I belong in two places. In the words of my Indian friend, I'm wedded to the country, and torn between two worlds. I miss California, yet I am at home in India. I am pulled between relationships on two continents, and I harbor an elusive status that precludes the depth that is sufficient to satisfy. As I dined in a pillow-adorned buggy in South Delhi with an edgy and charismatic girl, as I landed in Hyderabad and was greeted by my driver and friends, and as I encountered a high-school friend in a South Indian bar, I am reminded of my tryst with two worlds. My worlds are multiple, and my experiences have afforded me an ability to recognize and understand pride in Spain, Switzerland, Ecuador, and India. But with each understanding I have gained, I have left those behind who might have become great friends. In the perpetual and elusive change, I am both broadened and saddened by my global friendships.

Over the past week, as I walked alone through Old Delhi's Chowri Bazaar, my thoughts tumbled slowly through my mind as my body negotiated the surrounding chaos. The dichotomies envelope my every moment, thought, surrounding, and intention. As a dusty man sleeps atop crumbled concrete, I dismiss my haste with a claim that I am powerless to help one man, and that I will devote my efforts to affect broader change. But sometimes the demands of time and commitment and comfort deceive the good intentions of decent people. Intentions become excuses and then they become the fodder for champagne toasts; they become the stories of reflective prose; they become a lingering guilt that grows into indignation and questions what others have failed to achieve, and not what one's self has failed to demand.

But as I've vomited bile from the window of a cab, alone in Calcutta, I no longer desired the hard adventure that ostensibly broadens us, and defines us in youth. I craved comforts, and I had the audacity to desire them as I passed Kolkata slums. Moments in India challenge compassion and humanity; they challenge self-definition; moments make us question who we are and what we believe in. Some raise a glass, and others raise a fit. The truth is, many people do both, existing in the hypocritical world of dichotomies that appeases both our human desire for comfort, and our privileged but genuine philanthropic vanity.

PVR "Bringing Smiles"

2008-03-30T11:53:00.001-07:00

As is inevitable in India, one will encounter a set of arbitrary 'rules' for which no logic is sufficient for understanding. Pretenses are a favorite on the sub-continent, and enforcement and actual sense are less common. For example, each day I walk through a rectangle of two-by-fours which rifles off a loud beep to a man standing nearby who never looks up from his newspaper. Why then have the 'metal detector' if the goal and end of its positioning is not enhanced safety? Employment, I suppose.

The same illogical application of rules worms its way into diurnal activities. Today, as I attempted to enter PVR cinemas, a venue which prides itself on its 'bringing smiles' advertising campaign, I nearly thrust my fist through its colorful facade. After passing through a set of two-by-fours, being frisked by three separate men, and emptying the contents of my small backpack, my chewing gum box was confiscated and I was told I could not enter with my bag. Understanding the stupidity of nearly all Indian rules, and the flexibility with which they are typically enforced, I asked in a number of increasingly simplistic ways if I could both keep my gum and enter with my bag. Now, I understand the logic of no chewing gum in a theater, but why confiscate a stale pack at the bottom of my bag when the teenage girls around me chomp away on Trident? Wouldn't it make more sense to employ a dental agent at the door aside the two-by-fours prying gum from under each person's tongue? Ok, well perhaps it's no better. But to the second point, that bags are not allowed in the theater, my counter-argument was obvious: we're in a shopping mall.

Unyielding to even my most simplistic and sycophantic requests, I erupted into a slur of expletives, and leaned into the man's hollow face, shouting at him and excoriating his lemming-like dearth of purpose. I eventually gained entrance to the theater and watched a dreadfully bad movie that, as its highlight, featured Bipasha Basu dancing. Arbitrary rules, lack of context, and idiocy with which they are invariably enforced is painstaking across India, and affirms my desire to land on Finnish soil in three weeks. I hope that as I board my FinnAir flight, the tranquility promised bears more veracity than PVR's successfully well-orchestrated 'Bringing Smiles' campaign.

Another 'Real India' Poolside

2008-03-29T22:46:00.001-07:00

In continuing tradition, Thursday night marked the start of our weekend, aside from early next-day meetings. Endeavoring to alter the standard GK-1 N Block fare, we opted for poolside at the Park Hotel's Aqua lounge. Combining a group from Bain, and celebrating the admission of a few friends' to HBS, our overzealous ordering showed its striking face in the form of Rupees on our bill. Bombay and Delhi host venues that rival the likes of Hong Kong, London, and New York in price. Though India is understood internationally for its population and poverty, it's also host to Asia's largest number of 55 billionaires and over 83,000 millionaires. It's a country of contrasts and challenges and one that is remarkably pluralistic and diverse culturally, geographically, topographically, linguistically, and economically. It's a country in which some things do not move, and others are world class. I realize these differences on a weekly basis as I learn phrases in Guju, Punjabi, and Hindi; I learn this each time I arrive in a new city; I learn this each week as I frequent a chic bar or restaurant with Indian friends from work, and then spend my Saturday traversing the frenetic streets of Old Delhi.

The 'real India' is a country that varies and is personally dependent. Last year I went searching for it on trains and in small villages. This year I find an equally 'real India' that exists in an efficient Kingfisher flight with brand new AirBus 320 aircraft; it exists in as high-heeled women make a morning trip to Barista for lattes; it exists in a villager with a mobile phone, and multi-million dollar Bollywood escapism; it exists with bamboo scaffolding to erect glass wonders; it exists with an S-Class Mercedes and a chauffeur, in a taxi, in an auto-rickshaw, on a cycle-rickshaw, and over bare feet. I can only try to understand that these worlds are not mutually exclusive, but are the various versions of India that those around me all know and love.

Holi Weekend

2008-03-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend marked the confluence of three holidays, one Muslim, one Hindu, and one Christian. Mawlid, or the birth of the Prophet, coincides with Good Friday. Saturday is the Hindu Holi festival day, or the celebration of colors and of spring, while Sunday is Easter. It's a remarkable conjoining of traditions, and one that is quite apparent in India. On Friday, as I ventured into New Delhi, thousands made their way in traditional dress and skull caps toward the Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in Asia. On Saturday, innumerable Hindus "Played Holi" throwing and smearing colored powder onto one another in celebration of Spring. On Sunday, as I walked the streets of Calcutta with a Christian friend, she reminded me of Easter tradition.

In the lingering post-Holi days (holidays), one can clearly identify Hindus from others, as their skin holds the lingering pink hue of indelible Holi inks. While I did not celebrate this year's Holi celebration, as I had enough of the dry powder in my face last Spring, I did celebrate with the small victory of setting my AirTel mobile ring back as the latest Atif Aslam song from the Bollywood film, Race.

Cali(fornia) to Cal(cutta)

2008-03-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

As my plane touched down in Calcutta, I harbored innumerable expectations about a city I've wanted to visit for the past year. The capital of West Bengal, Calcutta, or Kolkata as it can now be called, is a sprawling mass of over 13 million people, most of them very poor. It's the home of Bengali sweets, of Tagore and other intellectuals who have defined Indian literature; it is the former British East India Company capital, and the site of Mother Theresa's tomb. It hosts the famous cricket ground Eden Gardens, the beautiful Victoria Memorial, and the posh Park Street.

Today it is a city that lags behind Delhi and Bombay, but also a city that quite resembles its ostensibly more developed counterparts. Upon arrival I expected images of destitution I hadn't yet seen across the sub-continent, as even my Indian friends warned me against going to Calcutta. I was told that traffic signals had only arrived a decade ago, and that infrastructure would be difficult.

In contrast to expectations set by Indian friends, what I found was a city that, to me, was unremarkably Indian. It was certainly no better than other Indian cities I have seen and experienced over the past year, but it was also certainly no worse. And despite its apparent status as a scapegoat city for many Indian natives, the challenges Calcutta has yet to overcome are the same as those extant elsewhere, yet it bears the sour reputation. While traffic signals may have only come in the past decade, Calcutta traffic was markedly better than Gurgaon, Hyderabad, and Bangalore, cities engineered in much more recent years.

Bubbles of developed infrastructure exist across India, but single stretches of highway in Delhi cannot assuage underlying problems in urban planning. In venturing into West Bengal's notorious capital, I was struck not by the penury, but by how remarkably similar it was to other purportedly developed Indian cities.

Sufis and Sitars

2008-03-20T11:36:00.001-07:00

Due to frequent visits, my driver now asks if I am going to Epicenter before he asks if I am going home. "Haan jee, mai Epicenter ja raha hoon," I replay. This week I attended a fantastic Sufi music performance by Rene Singh with a lecture on Sufism by an erudite Delhi University professor delivered in Hindi and English, all before my 10pm call with CA. Discussing Turkic Sufism from that of the Indus Valley and that of the Gangetic plain, I learned that in Sufi poetry the linguistic genders intimate as much about intention as the word meanings themselves. For example, reflective diction is nearly always in the feminine gender while assertions of power and authority are masculine.

Flanked by two friends on Thursday night, I attended again another Epicenter performance of Sitar and Tabla by a student of Ravi Shankar. In a fantastic display, the artist willed emotion from the strings with each poignant pull and pluck. The resonant timbre of the instrument echoed through the hollow hall with the undulating dip and drive of the tabla to accompany. As he created notes from the Sitar, it was difficult to discern if the physiognomy of his face influenced his fingers, or if the music inspired the physiognomy. Both performances brought to life more of the Indian classical music that I've grown to love.

Gone to Goa

2008-03-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

After a hectic week of interviews and presentations, I boarded a SpiceJet flight from Delhi to the former Portuguese outpost of Goa. India is full of linguistic pockets, both local and foreign. Pondicherry hosts blue tile street signs listed in French and Tamil; Cochin boasts its Dutch heritage; Goa contains Catholic relics for the Portuguese presence, and it's one of the few places in India where Christiano Ronaldo is more popular than Sachin Tendulkar!

A bumpy hour north of Panjim, the Goan capital, we arrived in Anjuna and checked into our humble hotel which cost 600 Rs per night. For an extra 200 Rs, we reserved motorbikes. A few King's beers into the night, we walked slowly down the country roads under a canopy of stars and silhouetted palm frawns. Whitewashed churches watched dimly from aside the dirt roads.

The weekend commenced eventfully with me crashing my bike on a sandy stretch of road. Having watched a number of Shah Rukh Khan movies (SRK), I launched myself from the bike and managed to escape with but a scrape on my elbow and knee. Perhaps Maverick might be a better comparison. Nursing my wounds with sun, sea, and beach soccer with a dozen British kids and their coach, an expat New Yorker who graced the beach in a Knicks jersey, I recovered by weekend's end, and celebrated with a henna tattoo.

Goa is India in a crucible. It's all and nothing at once. What it retains in the constituent cultural elements of India, it loses in its pandering to tourists. To an undiscerning eye it's all just India. But beneath the puppets is Rajasthan; beneath the Kathikali is Kerala; beneath the laborer's story is Bihar. Judgement aside, it is a beautiful part of the world that is free and wild. It's a barefoot Royal Enfield motorcycle, a canopy of palms, a melange of nations, and a fish dinner. And who complains about that...

GK-1 N-Block Thursday

2008-03-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

On Thursday nights, a club in the South Delhi section called GK-1 N-Block comes alive with a remarkable cross-section of new Delhi. It's IT professionals; it's Embassy staff; it's Bain and McKinsey consultants; it's an open world where conversations are international and reflective, and the talk is more than small.

As a Palo Alto kid, what's remarkable to me is that it nearly always ends in Facebook. It was true in Tanzania, it was true in the Maldives, and it's true in India. Punjabi bar talk turned into a discussion of Harvard's Kennedy School and international development, and ended with a Blackberry Facebook exchange and the realization that we had a mutual friend in New York, namely a girl I lived with my freshman year. Facebook is on the global map, and Malcom Gladwell knows what comes next.

Epicentre Gurgaon

2008-03-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday night, after having completed twenty-one 30-minute interviews, I made the smart decision of not going home, but instead going to Epicentre Gurgaon for a Carnatic music performance. One of the few reasons to remain in Gurgaon, Epicentre has nightly performances for Sitar, Sarod, Sufi, and Carnatic music, in addition to festivals for Chinese films and international art. Carnatic music is a form of Classical Hindustani, or Indian, music that is musically and rhythmically complex. In an escalating progression, the music follows particular ragas, or modal themes, and builds on itself into complex drumming and vocal patterns. Though I drifted in and out of sleep, the event was fantastic and provided my first good reason not to flee to Delhi after traffic subsides.

Old New Delhi

2008-03-08T09:40:00.005-08:00

From Rajiv Chowk, the central green within CP, there now exists a Delhi Metro stop. As we liken Gurgaon to the Gold Rush of 1849, with the daily boom of chaos and productivity creating change that is visibly measured in days and weeks, one can similarly observe the creation of the Delhi Metro. Three years ago it did not exist. Today, though photography is not permitted, it rivals Bangkok or Asia in its efficiency. And at six rupees per ticket, it beats New York in cost. Entering the station at Rajiv Chowk we shuffled over marble floors to an uncrowded ticket window. Handed a magnetic coin imprinted with an image of Qtub Minar, we pressed into the station where smoothly running cars glided in each minute. It was blissful, though Indians cannot handle the give and take necessary to efficiently board a train. Many Indians cram to board the car when others simply wish to exit. I’ve never tried it, but perhaps I should try to put my shoes on before my pants. That would work about as well.

Exiting the metro at Chowri Bazaar in central old Delhi, we emerged into the haze of the city and into a different time. At the top of the polished steps stood an idle cow, and we were immediately propositioned for a dozen cycle rickshaws. Inevitably in the way of someone, we dodged our way down a crumbling sidewalk past thousands of others. Men with twenty-feet of copper pipe would emerge before us as two children would clip at our heels and a moped would blast at us with its horn. Holes in the street would emerge, bricks and piles of dust would stand as obstacles, and men with hot pots of chai would careen past. As Tim paused to smoke his cigarette, a pensive and furrowed brow, the surrounding chaos made his casual stance look Guy Noir.

The walk before Jama Masjid and into Chandi Chowk is a journey that impresses itself into memory in a visceral, tangible, uncomfortabley sad and powerful way. A series of moments can outweigh the gravitas of novels, the words of authors, and the photos of magazines. It’s a sight, a smell, a wave, a smile, a whiff, a scare, and a moment that changes you. It’s a series of moments that comprise a minute of your life, and an eternity of theirs. It’s each passing life. It’s your transience and their permanence. It’s their home and your intrusion. A leper sleeps in the middle of the filthy street, face down on the concrete as rickshaws circle his crumpled mass and black feet; A man sweeps trash and dead dogs into a pile, the stench of death and garbage welling inside your nostrils; a child laughs despite poverty, tossing a rag into the air as a game, and stuffs it into his mouth after it lands on the road; a pool of frothy yellow urine pools around the feet of a man who turns to you and smiles with a head bobble; A beggar grabs your arm beckoning to you with her eyes, and her tout of "baba;" Four men shout "hello sir," and award you a grin worthy of welcome to the neighborhood; A rickshaw squeals its horn, and a woman brushes past you, her face mangled and nose missing, likely her terrible punishment as an unfaithful wife; A heroine addict stumbles into your shoulder as three men gape at you from their road-side mattress, hands clasping glasses of chai; Are you entertainment, or a target? You consider danger; you flex and smile. You engage, you glaze over, you reflect, you try, but you can't fully understand.

And then you enter a rooftop lounge, reflect over a Kingfisher, call an AC car, and return to a marble apartment.

Rooftop Mattresses

2008-03-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

At 21:15 on Thursday evening, a unique group assembled in Delhi atop an apartment rooftop. Together with friends from Stanford and San Diego, employees of the World Bank and U.N., Fulbright Scholars and venture capitalists and hippy expats, we dragged pillows and mattresses to the top of the roof. Using a projector, a laptop, and an inventive tangle of extension cords we displayed the recent Oscar-winning film, "No Country for Old Men" on the whitewashed wall of an adjacent building. Flanked by bamboo scaffolding that stood silhouetted against the Delhi-lit sky, and accompanied by the tossing of bricks, occasional car alarm, dog fight, or backfiring truck, we sat atop a pile of mattresses and pillows on a brick rooftop under the stars. Nearly 20 of us gathered in a truly remarkable and memorable night at the movies. Though I did not return to Gurgaon until 2am, the trip into Def Col put a wide angle lens on my perspective for Thursday night potential. As the movie ended, and the lounge continued to the syncopated beat of J-Five under the darkened sky, I could have been anywhere else, but I wouldn't have wanted to.

Japanese in Delhi

2008-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

Saturday night was one for the ages... It's rare that I do anything illegal, but drinking under the age of 25 has recently been added to this short list. On Saturday I managed my way past the Japanese bouncers at a party focused on the Tokyo expat community. With a friend's blessing, and Irish comrade, and a host of Japanese words like "Ohaiyo, genki deska?" we made an entrance. With each hint of Bollywood, the room of well-coiffed Japanese would erupt into a scene fit for Juhu. As the "Om Shanti Om," began to pulse through the fogged darkness of the hall, "Om Tiger Om," as the party was dubbed, came alive. With posters of Deepika Padukone on the wall (thankfully not Shah Rukh), we found it apt that through a friend, we had forwarded the invite to Deepika herself the day prior.

Arigato gozaimasu... shukria... Hindi and Japanese, Bollywood and Tokyo united with Irish and Californian, Emerald Isle and Honshu meet Golden State in cosmopolitan splendor... in New Delhi. Almost akin to the Swahili / Arabic mix of Zanzibar, recounting Shinjuku tales in Delhi was fantastic, thanks to Tim's MP introductions and our willingness to embrace East Asia in South Asia post-GK1 afternoon.

Sufi Music & Soccer

2008-03-01T04:29:00.000-08:00

On the three nights of the week when I am not in the office until 11pm, straining to communicate with my California counterparts in 1440 x 900, I attempt to create a life in between the maddening chaos of construction that is Gurgaon. On Wednesday I watched a fantastic free performance of Sufi musicians in Gurgaon. Sufi music draws you into its dream with the monotonous buzz and undulating dips of the tabla. You slip into a gossamer world of circumspection, and a series of moments veiled in mystery, until the lyrics, strong and poignantly flat, are emotive, and tell a tale that varies depending on your ear. The story is personal, and it relates to me.

On Thursday I ventured into Delhi traffic at the perilous time of 5:30. I made my way toward the US Embassy off Shanti (peace) road. The American Community Service Center boasts a fortified baseball diamond that looks more like a Marine barrack. In fact, you must pass Marines to arrive within its chain-linked walls. Inside, however, to the tune of 100 rupees, you can assemble some mates for a weekly football match. I've managed to find a Euro expat circle that plays each Thursday.

We played for over 2 hours under the lights. Representing Slovakia, Poland, Scotland, Italy, the US, and India, football became a common language across countries and ages. I realized an hour in that the throbbing in my calf after a hard tackle, the sweat down my face, and the bruises I had acquired on my shins made me, again, feel alive. I played one-twos with Martin, a highly-skilled 18 year old from Bratislava. As I received each touch, and sprinted down the flank, I remembered how much I missed one of the fundamental freedoms that India denies, namely, the ability to exercise outdoors. Though I failed to slot a few break-away goals past the Polish keeper, I had a Dennis Bergkamp 1998 moment when, as a long ball dropped in over my shoulder, I took it out of the air and volleyed it into the far post in two fluid touches without letting the ball hit the dusty pitch. We called a break, and an Indian guy bought me a gatorade in congratulations for my goal. The language of football, while spoken less frequently, still apparently works in India.

Jodha Akbar & Jodhpur

2008-02-25T09:04:00.000-08:00

After a typical Monday in Bombay, during which time you span one of the world's largest cities, dine at a fantastic restaurant called Khyber, encounter sadness beyond belief, challenge your originality in the banal ex-pat scene that is modern-day Leopold Cafe, and go out on Marine Drive, I flew home to Delhi at 4am. We had spent an afternoon walking Juhu Beach and stumbling upon a Bollywood model shoot. He had half invaded at the bequest of a mumbling beach-side man who half forced us to the bouncers because of our lighter than tan complexions. Don't worry, Shah Rukh wanted none of us.

Mid-week we spent ambling through Delhi and the various acronyms that make its scene cooler than it probably should be. Don't get me wrong, Delhi is fun, just not as fun as GK-1 would make it sound. That's a pretty damn cool name, and with rats running in South-Ex II, it's hard to argue that the place is as snazzy as the name. Speaking of rats, they're enormous... ENORMOUS. I giggled in nervousness as each one would dart into and out of street holes toward my feet. Good thing they can cook and they just won an Oscar for their artistry in animation. Hmm...

Friday's four hour stint at Bollywood blockbuster Jodha Akbar, written in Hindi and Arabic to accentuate the "Great" coming together of the Mughals and Rajputs, left us craving more Rajasthan, more Aishwarya, and well, more Jodhpur... so we boarded an Indian Air flight Saturday morning.

Jodhpur is the "blue city" due to its ubiquitous indigo paint and ancient 1459 Meherengarh Fort that stands 500m above the town on a massive rampart of rock. Descending from the fantastic palace, as we shuffled to the edge of a rock overlook, I was inclined, and did, burst into song. A whole new world had emerged, and we didn't buy the whole "riff-raff, street rat" gig. Though perhaps the most chaotic city center in India, Jodhpur is alive. It's narrow, it's grimy, it's friendly and intense. It's hundreds of cows, thick black rickshaw puffs, tiny lanes where bodies, animals, bikes, rickshaws, currents of street-side sewage, piles of gravel that tilt your vehicle degrees beyond sanity toward oncoming traffic, abandoned wagons and overturned machinery intwine in perilous moments of intersection where timing tempts the fate of futures and dreams. It is chaos incarnate inside the city walls, but after a few hours you learn the predictability that keeps you safe. You walk decisively. You move with pace and reason. You do not hesitate or you tempt judgement of those whose action may influence your own. Everyone does what they have to, and somehow, in the sheer disaster of it all, it works.

Cross-Country to Kerala

2008-02-25T02:23:00.000-08:00

After a 24 hour journey across India from Hyderabad to Delhi to rendezvous with Aaron, in from his Amman flight, we made the impossibly inevitable decision to mix a night in GK1 Delhi with one hour of sleep and another cross-country flight, a mix as potent as any cocktail.

While our delayed flight got us into Kerala after we'd expected, a frenetic drive landed us at our houseboat dock in time for four hours of afternoon cruising on the placid backwaters of Kerala. Armed with fresh fish, good company, Kingfishers (both bird and bottle), and a boat staff of three, we set off down the flat reflection of the sky, where the coconut palms reached toward us in reverse order, crawling with their fawns over the ripples toward our hull. With some light Arabic tunes from Madinat in Dubai, the mood was pretty unbeatable, and we crashed under the stars.

When we awoke at dawn, our houseboat staff was preparing for a dip at the water's edge. Although my post-swim sickness doesn't corroborate my claim that the water looked clean, I lathered up and jumped in covered in soap like a Keralan village local. The calm, cool water opened up a new day.

Arriving back at the dock, we had time to kill and so boarded a 150cc bike with three men and all our luggage. Again, helmets are optional, and we chose the cautious path of "not necessary." After showing the business owner Google Analytics tips on his shack wireless connection, I naively assumed that we were on good terms. Not more than 10 minutes later, as he pocketed our wad of 500 rupee notes for his troubles, he altered the arrangements of our transport, demanding yet 1000 rupees more. In a fit of rage I pounded the car, got on my cell phone and said two words beginning in B and S no fewer than 10 times. This delicate tactic smoothed over what I like to refer to in India as the "quid pro screw you." What happened to the quo?

That afternoon we spent touring Fort Cochin with a rickshaw driver who charged us a paltry 50 Rs for his all-day services (1 dollar), and took us to a number of sites, including a ginger factory where we even got to paint transport boxes. Our tour ended at a Kathakali performance in traditional Keralan style, and we watched, mesmerized, as men in dhotis spun swords, fought in traditional martial arts style, and performed Kathakali, or dramatic-style Peking Opera.

Following the performance we attempted to organize a driver for Munnar, or the far-away tea plantations in central Kerala. 90km inland, the drive takes nearly 5 hours. Because in Communist Kerala all drivers were protesting gas prices, we were warned not to attempt the roads. We were advised that we would likely get stoned by villagers. Heeding caution, we paid a muscular-looking local named Hari to drive us in his tiny personal Tata Indica. He promised that he could drive fast, and I can attest to his insanity. We made the journey in 3.5 hours, though for much of it the puzzle-piece hillsides of Munnar appeared more like a blur, and less like tea. We survived without even one stoning, and after doing a yell with 30 kids at echo point, eating fresh pineapple and black pepper off the trees, made our return to Cochin, a drive I likened to nearly 4 hours strapped into Space Mountain. We pulled the G-Forces of Maverick, and arrived back in town feeling more like Goose, albeit we'd seen elephants.

Hyderabad Homecoming

2008-02-19T09:18:00.001-08:00

After eight months in California, I returned to my home city of Hyderabad to smiling faces, the same sights and smells, and a yoga teacher who asked me where I had been. With rooftop drinks, 80 degree weather, a new office building, and motorcycle rides across town I began to comment that in comparison to my Gurgaon residence, "I'm a South Indian at heart."

Sunday marked the first ODI in a triangle cricket series between Australia, India, and Sri Lanka. As my friend drove me cross town on his motorcycle, the thought crossed my mind that my sunglasses would not protect me from a crash. Mother would be proud of my judgement. With an Indian win, an afternoon of home-cooked food and Kingfisher beers, it was a successful day when we merged onto the city-center airport fly-over.

True to all Indian construction, there's an overwhelming mix of labor, chaos, and an underlying magic in any completed project. Whereas there is continuity in an American or European project, in that progress is noticeable, in India progress seems to exist only as a finality. Sites are littered with laborer tents, squalor and sadness, dust and debris. There are no cranes, but only men. Women carry pail after pail of dirt on small head pans. Cows meander through the maze of bamboo shafts that support what may become a building. There is not the technology of Dubai; There are not the infinite cranes of China. There is only toil and tiny tasks, iterative enough that they amount to eventual change. And then, suddenly, in the fog of night a site goes from 200 Bihari hard-hat workers clambering over bamboo shafts to massive glass buildings. Despite a circumspect eye, it's hard to determine how such transformation is possible, or even when it actually happens. Apparently, though it's not normally noticeable, someone involved knows something about what they're doing.

One Goat Head, Please

2008-02-10T07:25:00.001-08:00

On Saturday before my Hyderabad flight departure I spent the morning wondering the grotesque alleys of Old Delhi near Jama Masjid. Dusty blankets mark personal plots of concrete, a frenetic sea of traffic slithers through the streets, jamming up against the slower bullock carts of fruits. DVD shops blast Bollywood hits. A three-year-old finds empowerment as he drives pigeons into the sky, and an 18-year-old mother in a brilliant salwar chemise giggles. The steps are littered with beggars parading pitifully before the shaded and stoic tourist with an SLR camera. Their hardship is, however, not exaggerated, but the artifice in their positioning makes even missing limbs a hard sell. The sadness and frustration well up, but a dishonest tout quickly transforms this to anger. I offer a smile and a Hindi greeting to an elderly man, but he demands more.

On the street men sit around a small radio pulling back the facial skin on a pile of severed goat heads. I pause to stare in curiosity. I look down and realize the softness under my New Balance is a goat ear, flavored with the spit of a passing driver’s betelnut paan. The squeeling horn of a rickshaw clipping my heels quickly refocuses my attention. I shuffle through the crowd behind a cluster of women in burqas, and locate the rusty steel sign that points to Karim’s, an alley-side restaurant.

As we enter Karim’s, a famed meat restaurant, and we purchase our lunch, I’m able to separate my plate from the outside world. Compared with the mall-lined friviolity of Gurgaon, Old Delhi is, if not trendy, at least authentic. The men and women who line the streets live their own lives, not pandering to tawdry Western style and mediocre clubs. Despite the palpable squalor that manifests itself in sights, sounds, and smells, somehow I find that the encountered cultural authenticity is sufficient to refresh me.

Office Shenanigans

2008-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

On Friday I was told, “good luck,” at least a dozen times after my willingness to participate in an office-wide Indian roast. I was to sit on stage and field questions from hundreds of coworkers, and tested critically on my wit and ability to respond to inquiries like “who killed the dead sea,” and “why is a manhole cover called a manhole cover?” Bollywood sound cues told me if my Shakespearean wit had failed or won the crowd.

When the tables turned and I was able to ask questions to my counterparts, I asked the office director, “Who’s a luckier man, Saif Ali Khan or Abishek Bacchan?” For those not versed in Bollywood gossip, Saif and Abishek are movie stars married (ostensibly in Saif’s case, based on recent reports and the large arm tatoo of Kareena’s name) to gorgeous Indian women, each with his own set of virtues and vices. For example, Saif has royal blood, and is a decendent of a former cricket captain and Nobel Prize laureate, while Abishek is married to Miss World Aishwarya Rai but lives in the shadow of his father, a man known across the sub-continent on every billboard and whiskey ad as the “Big B.” My question alluded to one obvious consideration, though the director parried my blow with a deft non-sequiter and a smile offering to keep it “family safe.”

Again, I asked, “in cricket, why are the ‘slips’ the guys with the surest hands?” After good laughs, laconic wit, and a general attempt to embrace the awkwardness that comes while sitting in front of 200 co-workers with an umbrella drink, being judged with Bollywood jingles, and walking the line between humor and homelessness, I survived.

Mid-Week Beats

2008-02-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

India allows for a bizarre dynamic of challenge and ease, discomfort and glamor. As our car pulls to the front of Ministry of Sound, an overweight, akimbo bouncer in 11pm sunglasses steps aside as my Rajasthani friend Vrinda and I make our entrance.

Inside the beat is part Punjab and part American hip-hop. The crowd is college local, and the drinks are surprisingly expensive. For 200 INR apiece, 700 percent mark-up on a Kingfisher is no deterrant to the visceral beat calling me bar-side like a Siren.

Punjabis, light on their toes, with undulating motions beckon us to the dance floor, and we cut through the fog and strobing lights with our well-practiced moves. We return the exchange of culture later in the night, as knowing Will Smith lyrics and preemptively enacting moves in the form of cheesy lyrical dances markedly improves our coolness.

Our 2am return on N8 from South Delhi to Gurgaon leads us through the toll plaza of inefficiency. Lack of lanes and laws leads cars to infinitely wedge into narrow points of entry, and the arbitrary price of 16 rupees means that each car must wait for a dilatory man to open packs of change, and dispense 2 small coins to each driver. Where are the Bobs from Office Space when you need them?

Tiger Team

2008-02-07T09:41:00.001-08:00

Friday marks departure for Rajasthan and Ranthambore National Park from Delhi. Departing from Bikaner House bus station near Khan Market, my Hindi comes in handy when I spout the phrase, “yaha bus jaipur se jana hai (this bus is going to jaipur?).”

After an iPod night aboard the bus to Jaipur, we arrive and check into our small hotel for a few hours of needed sleep. The car from Jaipur to Ranthambore is nearly five hours, though the distance is minimal. Roads are littered with oxen, doddling rickshaws and lumbering trucks for which our horn is a futile tool. Half way through the drive our grinning driver surprises us by pulling a DVD screen from the ceiling and putting on a faux-violent and typically disultory Hindi film.

Staying at the Raj Palace in Ranthambore, our facilities are nice, and are markedly improved by the warm sunshine, Kingfisher, and Ben Harper I play from my portable SonicImpact speakers. But not all is lost, as we have tiger-printed sheets and curtains.

Our first safari is unsuccessful, but we manage to spot crocodiles and paw prints, ostensibly fresh, but impossible to validate. Reminded of my September safari in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania where zebra and wildebeast became banal sightings, our initial enthusiasm for deer dwindled as scores ambled in the dry forest.

Five AM on day two tiger team has better luck. Traveling with two other Stanford kids and my Egyptian/Californian friend Heba, we cut through the frigid morning air as a hooded possie on the top of an open-air jeep. The tigers don’t know what hits them.

Our first spotting includes a tigress 10m off the path sleeping under a tree. As our unfortunate driver, hit by a branch as we careen down the dirt path, bleeds from his eye, we attempt to evacuate the park prematurely. Perhaps our second tiger sighting is a karmac reward for our selflessness, as it walks down the path toward our speeding vehicle. Pausing, we let it draw close, within 3m of the car until it nonchalantly graces by the front bumper and into the brush. With a heavy step, it powerfully takes deliberate steps, impressing the elusive paw prints into the soft dust for future jeeps to discover.

Satisfied with our fortune, we play soccer with Indian tourist kids, peruse over-priced Kashmiri carpets, and begin the return journey to Jaipur and Delhi.

Defense Ministry Invitation

2008-01-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

Rating up there with my morning at the White House Nobel Prize reception, and the Chinese Film Festival at the U.N. Office at Geneva where the unlimited fruit tarts define Anna’s conception of Heaven, tonight we attended a closed ceremony organized by the Indian Ministry of Defense. Sure, that’s normal right? I suppose if your friend’s uncle’s friend sets you up as is typical of both Indian generosity and bureaucracy.

Our driver, tentatively nearing the Presidential palace walls, drove toward a cadre of armed, khaki men. With the flicker of a generic white envelope, a smile, and claim as “Mr. Scott,” no not the Brazilian footballer, but the invitee, we entered the gates.

The end of the Rajpath is not unordinary, and is nor inaccessible on normal days, but this week it resembles an armed fortress due to the National Day holiday. Surrounded by taller-than-average men in khaki poised aside beeping security terminals (ostensibly metal detectors without enforcement), the ceremony for the Ministry was held on the Rajpath opposite the India Gate. The scene reminded me of Latin American airports. Between the “your machine’s broken” argument and the “empty your pockets” demand, the former is a much easier battle to win, a consequence that likely makes your life easier to lose.

“The Beating Retreat” as it is called, includes a live marching performance of the massed bands of the three services at Vijay Chowk. In immaculate order, and adorned with at least one hundred bagpipers, we witnessed a wonderful Indian ceremony obviously directed at the adorned men who had arrived in 1990s stretch Mercedes. We didn’t mind.

At the end of the night, after the men retreated into the night, the camels that had lined silhouetted against the sunsetting sky gently moved down the porticos to a point where their unique form belended into the graying stone of night, all building edges instantly illuminated in a Tivoli moment. It was Disneyland magic slash Copenhagen on the Sub-Continent. Just as the harmony of trumpets and campanile bells was echoing into silence, the lights ignigted an erruption of cheers from the crowd, and we departed.

Delhi Nights

2008-01-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

In an area called Defense Colony in South Delhi, I held a table at Barista where a cartwheeling four-year-old out my window gyrated in competition for attention with James Joyce sitting before me. While her smile lit up when I’d turn my head, I knew the futility of her act, and was saddened by the cold fact that it was driven by penury, and demanded by her mother. I turned my gaze back to the reflective words of Joyce on the page that had been before me for minutes, my thoughts tumbling through all but the storyline. I joke that my still reading the book “Dubliners” a week into Delhi is a testament to the Dublin pub life.

After a short wait my friend from Stanford arrives, and we catch up over tales of Google.org and the World Bank. I appreciate good company, old stories, and the broad smile she brings into an otherwise solitary weekend. She’s responsible for the Bank’s Malarial medication outreach on the sub-continent and reflects on the difficulty of compliance. A few hours pass and we walk to a nearby friend’s apartment in Defense Colony. I like to call Defense Colony the Coronado of Delhi because similarly, as you probably would not wish to provoke a bar fight with a Navy SEAL, there is a history of martial population. This is an interesting contrast to the Lotus Temple, a Baha'i house of worship and peace, that I visited earlier in the afternoon.

On an outdoor balcony, and over a few Kingfishers we discuss Punjab and Joyce. I reflect on Delhi with Dubliners. Making our way to another nearby home where two friends are throwing a party, the surprise of serendipity strikes again as a friend from work, and another Indian girl whom I’ve met at the gym saunter into the small living room gathering 10k miles from California. The crew is comprised of UNDP workers, members of the World Bank and French and Dutch embassies. Fulbrighters and venture capitalists, microfinance, and those fighting age by adopting a remote life wherein adventure can preserve youth.

I feel at home with this group, and I’m invited to join a local football team called “CNG Car” with Dublin backs, an Italian keeper, and the promise of letting me play up top.

Dubliners

2008-01-21T21:05:00.001-08:00

My week in the Dublin office offers me a chance to hit the ground running, albeit in the rain. Having set up 30 meetings, my workday requires the endurance of an Ironman, the intensity of a sprinter, and the agility of a decathlete, but at night I learn the Irish saying “Sober as a Judge,” and its late night spoonerism “Jober as a Sudge.” Over a dozen pints of Guinness, it’s Irish courage that comes about, not Dutch, and friendships blossom.

A Thursday night Brazilian party teaches me the ways of FoHo, as I miserably explain my dance failing in Rio de Janeiro to two Brazilian ladies from Goyaz, and recount to a Valencian, my poignant tale with the Girl from Ipanema, one that concluded with a long kiss goodnight, splashing puddles, chasing a taxi cab in the rain, and the consolation of two Brazilian bouncers who longingly annunciated the word “Belleza.” He philosophically rationalized that deeper understanding could have revealed incompatibility. I told him of my faith in the world, as on my return to California a guitarist aside me in a café began playing the “Girl from Ipanema” as my thoughts spilled onto a journal page. I approached the man with a coffee and told him, “I know her.”

On Friday I met had a night out of Buckfast, a potent Irish drink, with a dozen friends from India. Spilling into the night with all the Dubliners about whom Joyce wrote a book by that very namesake, my friend Giovanni and I made it home by 5am. Recounting memories from our time as roommates in Barcelona, comparing stories and perspectives Italian and American, and finding solidarity in our joint appreciation of Doesoevsky, I remember that true friendship can endure. After three years, we did not skip a beat.

We see Monets in the Dublin City Gallery, the Book of Kells at Trinity College, the National Gallery, and then meander the streets about which Joyce writes. St Stephens Green and Nassau Street, Merrion and O’Connell, Grafton and Mulligan’s…

Saturday concluded with a Dutch party that I attended with twenty friends from six continents. Conversations sparked in French, Italian, and Spanish, and topics varied from Biarritz surfing with a South African to discussion of Japanese alphabets with a Brazilian girl who has studied Arabic and Mandarin, pursuing the same focus in her life as I’d like to in mine, namely international diplomacy and economic development.

Aboard my flight from London, the sun began to rise over the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. Jagged snow-capped peaks revealed a country beyond CNN. Deep rifts held dangerous mystery, but somehow it looked innocent, untouched, and beautiful. In a part of the world most troubled, as we flew with Kabul and Islamabad out of my leftside, 747-window, I envisioned an alternative. Looking at my moving flight map, turbulence introduced a palpable fear dictated by the ubiquitous regional perceptions, but as I turned my eyes to the cold glass of my window, I was saddened by an unfortunate corruption of a beautiful land.

Belgian Beer and Harvard Law

2008-01-21T20:45:00.000-08:00

Attending an amazing two-day session with a Harvard Law School war crimes delegation, to which I was invited by one of my best 2L friends, Albert Chang, I was fortunate to listen to and discuss cases with lead prosecutors and defense attorneys at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in Den Hague. We met with the lead prosecutor for the Serbian propaganda chief on trial in the ICTY. Though I visited the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania in September, I was not able to enter. As I scanned my passport and entered the metal detector, it was fitting that my security agent was a Tanzanian with whom I could conduct similing Swahili banter, and mention the fact that I had a beer with his national team’s goalkeeper, Ivo Mapunda.

I was struck by our meeting with the lead ICC defense attorney for Charles Taylor. How could one stand with the conviction to defend a man who has allegedly sold arms to fuel war in Liberia and Sierra Leone, endorsed or at least not opposed the use of child soldiers and diamond mine exploitation? In his black and gold-rimmed glasses and gold watch, the bedazzled persona of Charles Taylor makes a difficult case even tougher. It’s difficult to consider how the cost of extradition, in that it’s likely a reasonable assumption of guilt, influences the perception of justice for the convicted. ICC has historically acquitted far fewer than 10 percent of cases, so then is the role of defense attorney merely a formality? I pensively drew lines in the condensation on my Belgain beer glass as an articulate man explained his belief in justice and reconcilliation as separate processes.

From The Hague we journeyed to Amsterdam where I walked the canals with Simon, my buddy from Munich. I visited my favorite gallery, and constructed my own version of the FT’s “Perfect Weekend” column, a feat that included two pre-India McDonald's burgers eaten in about 1 minute.

Head and Heart

2008-01-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

After visiting 17 countries across four continents in 2007, my new years resolution focused on far more personal and athletic goals than adventurous ones. Adventure is but one piece in a composite that for me approximates happiness. It is one piece that along with beauty, love, wisdom, and respect, creates an environment in which happiness can flourish. Man is assuredly defined by his choices, and not by his abilities. A desire for ability can infiltrate choice, and though my choices have remained adventurous, priorities that define choice are beginning to evolve away from my monolithic perspective.

I began my year with an intimate and powerful human spark, but my preordained choices revoked me from an immediate potential that my heart demands. Despite a love for adventure, the illuminating smile of a new friend indicted my priorities, and made me, in days, question the choices that have, for years, defined me.

At the time when my heart calls for California, my head has selfishly dictated alternate circumstance. The future thrusts its way through the present, an omnipotent but transient moment when the possibilities of the future become the memories of the past. I am resigned to the Stoic, in the classical sense, reality that I can only live the choice that I have created, which today, is another life in India.

As I departed California I was fortunate to have the companionship of great friends. The company we embrace makes the experiences we cull from life also the ones we cherish. Flanked by some of my best friends – Californian, German, Italian, Dutch – I spent 10 days en route to India, between Eindhoven, The Hague, Amsterdam, and Dublin.

Dhola Ri Dhani

2007-06-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

Upon morning arrival from Bombay, I began my last week in Hyderabad. Tuesday evening our team had reservations for a Rajasthani-themed restaurant on the outskirts of town called Dhola ri Dhani. The restaurant featured not only camel rides, a Rajasthani puppet show, a magic show, and innumerable other attractions, but also choki-styled seating and traditional dinner. As expected, our team of six exhibited remarkable enthusiasm for the location. With child-like energy we bounded from one activity to the next, accompanied by a man in a dancing horse costume. The Rajasthani puppet show featured puppets juggling fire, and the magician promised to retrieve someone's ring from my nose. He gave me orders in only Hindi, so somehow the ring ended up in the middle of a tomato instead.

The choki-styled dinner is one in which you dine seated at a small table. Dinner requires not only that you manage spices well, but also that your knees can withstand a couple hours of awkward pillow repose aside a stunted table. For me the former was not a problem, but the latter left me limping to the sink to wash up. After rounds and rounds of food, raita and dal, sweets, kulchas and gobi and aloo (all veg), rice and curd, I managed to convince the waiter that 'Nai, nai' was not embarrassed courtesy masking hunger, but was bona fide, 'Do not give me any more food or I will wipe my curd-encrusted fingers all over your turban.'

We finished up the night with Gujarati hits (out of theme, of course) and a little post-meal dancing. After an impressive demonstration by one of the girls on our team, (a former Indian Idol finalist!), we packed up the cars and left Rajasthan.

Whirlwind Weekend

2007-06-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of Anna on the sub-continent, we set off on a whirlwind India tour. Starting with dinner at Bukhara, the acclaimed 'Best restaurant in Asia,' and '50 Best Restaurants in the World,' our first day in Delhi was one for the books. Beginning with a 5AM airport arrival, we toured Delhi until 10PM. From the Qutb Minar to the Red Fort, National Museum, Rajpath, Old Delhi, we ravaged Delhi's tourist attractions in a successful effort to keep Anna awake. While we did make the mistake of walking the Rajpath from the Gate of India to the Secretariat in 45 degree C heat, this was imperative preparation for our upcoming stint in Udaipur, Rajasthan. When we had reached the Secretariat, having engaged in a nervous and jocular banter with two guards carrying machine guns, my mouth was parched and shirt soaked. An oppressive blanket of heat stifled every pore in my body, and I could feel the pulsing blood in the back of my neck. As even short distances began to present themselves as insurmountable obstacles, we decided to text Permeshwar, our Bihari driver, for more AC touring.

On Anna's second day we drove from Gurgaon to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, and then we flew to Udaipur for the forts and palaces for which Rajasthan is famous. A Jet Airways flight full of Italians, and an hour later, we arrived in Udaipur. Upon arrival we were reminded by our taxi driver that Bond's 'Octopussy' was filmed at the Lake Palace, now a Taj Group hotel. Although we tried for drinks there, popularity means that prix fixe is now the only sky-high reservation option. We spent the day meandering through the serpentine streets, playing Lewis Hamilton with the cows and rickshaws that kept us alert.

Low season in Udaipur means high temperatures, but little traffic. We had a private tour of the Monsoon Palace, another gorgeous vista over the arid Aravalli Mountains. As we looked Westward, little obstructed our view toward Pakistan. We had lunch at the nearly deserted Devi Garh, a five-star palace hotel featured in my Bollywood favorite, Eklavya. While it was the preferred location for Liz Hurley's wedding, its intimate size precluded it from being a finalist. With JW Blue Label on rocks in hand, we took a tour of its offerings.

After two days in Rajasthan we set off for Bombay, and our last stop before I had to return to Hyderabad for my final week of work. Mumbai offered stark contrast, and as we flew down Marine Drive at sunset, looking at the glowing orb set over the Arabian Sea, illuminating the skyline of Malabar Point, nostalgia began to set in. We settled into our Churchgate hang-out, and walked Colaba for a night out with two Nariman friends in Indiana Jones-style, Leopold Cafe. After street-side paan, and snaps of betelnut faces, we headed for 'Not Just Jazz by the Bay,' a trendy establishment in Churchgate that, at 1am, offered pretty faces and unlocked doors.

At 5AM I jumped a taxi for a 7AM flight to Hyderabad. In a rattling suicide mission to the airport, my taxista got me from Churchgate to Bombay International in 15 minutes flat. It was the type of drive for which the flicker of headlights and horn suffice as warning for our intersection crossing. Brakes are not used. While I could have buckled-up in the back-seat, what good is it at 'Mach 2 with your hair on fire.'

Amritsar - Kes, Kangha, Kara, Kirpan and Kachcha

2007-05-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

On Saturday our Air India flight touched down on the scorching runway of Amritsar, Punjab (and our landing gear did not fail)! When we arrived, we were met with heavily armed and bearded men on the tarmacadam, but an otherwise tranquil airport surrounded by languid construction. I say languid because in 48 degree C heat nothing moves fast. While Felipe stopped to smoke a cigarette at arrivals, we observed the slow unloading of bricks from a large truck, the half-constructed drive that was to facilitate taxi drop-offs, and were soon swarmed by the pre-pay taxi brethren. Upon arrival the crowd provoked my assumption -- Adam Smith's hand might work even in the Punjabi desert, and this means fair price -- but alas, all worked for one price-fixing pre-pay taxi monopoly that charged us an outrageous 450 Rs for a 5 minute drive to our hotel. With absolutely no alternative, scarcity was on their side, and not ours.

We arrived at La Cascade, a boutique hotel in Amritsar after a bumpy ride inside a non-AC Tata Indica. Passing turban-clad auto drivers, motorcycle enthusiasts, charrioteers on horseback with large bullock carts piled sky-high with everything, we made our way through the small city of 1 million plus. After a relaxing AC stint, fantastic lunch of border-style food served by a dapper gentleman with a dedicated mullet, we took an auto to the famed Golden Temple.

The Golden Temple is serenity in marble. Using the same Pietra Dura style of the Taj, with inlay marble designs, the Golden Temple is surrounded by a grand and shimmering pool, and white marble portico. Men and women with heads covered slowly shuffle bare-footed over the cool white marble, between you and the sparkle of the water. Bright and matching turbans punctuate the piercing white reflection of marble, water, and gold, and accent the flowing cotton that hangs toward the smooth marble walkway. Reds, blues, greens, pinks, intricately wrapped atop the heads of tall, bearded men with grand features, penetrating eyes, and aloof, friendly stares. Men who embody and espouse the Sikh panj kakke, or five symbols of faith, men with uncut hair (Kes), comb (Kangha), clinking steel bracelet (Kara), slung knife (Kirpan), and undergarmets (Kachcha) reverently glide by.

Many ask to snap pictures with us. I too ask a man and his young son to pose, showing them the magic of Panasonic in recreating the Golden Temple and them in miniature. Though the rectangular walk around the pool is small, we spend 2 hours in rotation, as prayers echo through the heavy hot Punjabi air. With my covering and beard, I trade my sunglasses for laughs with a few local kids who flip their collars for my film, grin and giggle, and demand nothing more than conversation.

From the Golden Temple we took a rattling Tata 30km to Wagh, the border between India and Pakistan. Over good roads, we drove at speeds that should have driven cool air into the cabin but at 116 degrees F, I had trouble keeping my eyes open. In the oppressive heat the glare of the sun was omnipresent, dry, and heavy, and I found my body beginning to shut down. Unconsciousness was closer than sleep, but there was little alternative. After an hour on the road, we arrived at the frenetic border area. Immediately accosted by flag, beer, food, and DVD vendors, we soon traded currency for refuge at the cost of 120 Rs and an overpriced, fly-encrusted 'Thunderbolt' Beer (only sold in Punjab). When the gate opened at 5pm, we were the first through.

The Wagh border ceremony occurs daily between Indian and Pakistani troops. Crowds gather on either side of a heavily fortified border, and military pomp and circumstance elicits innocuous, but nationalistic pride on either side. Chants of 'Hindustan' echo over the razor wire to the similarly-dressed, kurta-clad fans on the Pakistan side. The safron of the Indian flag unfurls in the wind before we sun dropping westward over Pakistan. And the green and white crescent of the Pakistani flag flutters before those who've made the trip from Lahore, capital of Punjabi Pakistan. After much trumpeting, chanting, stomping, marching, and stepping, the flags are lowered in tandem and folded, the border gates closed, and ceremony closed.

At dark we returned from Pakistan by road, a period that was reminiscent of driving in America not because of sanity so much as driving on the right side of the road. Our driver, in an attempt to pass every moving truck and bullock cart, every motorcycle and auto, every lingering animal and rival Indica, drove at least 75 percent of the drive home on the wrong side of the road. Regardless of oncoming traffic, a flicker of brights, honk, slight swerve, and nonchalant glance at the passengers sufficed for survival. In support of Darwin, we tipped him well upon hotel arrival.

And after a 90 rupee Punjabi Thali dinner at a local hole-in-the wall with bingo night, an outdoor stroll, and cycle-rickshaw home, we made rest for fantastic day two in Punjab.

Tandoor in Tollywood

2007-05-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday we were invited to a restaurant opening for 'Tandoor,' a nice new joint in the Hyderabad Lifestyles building. Upon entry, the flashbulbs were popping as they mistook us for the important guests. We shook hands with the owners, two friendly Punjabi men with bright turbans, flowing beards and clinking Kara, the iron bracelet that's symbolic of bondage to truth and freedom in the Sikh faith.

The scene was one out of Hollywood, or Tollywood, rather, as the glam and glitz crowd began to gather under the dim lights and lightly pumping music. The sparkle of glass, swish of fabrics, and the ever-important glazed eye stare as though one were looking for everyone and no one in the transitory moment of flashbulb bliss. We were amidst that languid mix, partaking in a night of free drinks and revelry, punjabi food, sitar and tabla, and self-important entertainment.

While they rolled out the red carpet for Tandoor in Tollywood, our photos didn't grace Page 3. Next time...

Priyanka to Punjab

2007-05-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

While I was quick to exalt the glories of the Little B's new bride, Aishwariya Rai, I overlooked another Indian Miss World in Priyanka Chopra, the stunning Punjabi beauty. Last week I watched the Bollywood stunner, 'Don,' also reputed as the Matrix-reloaded-in-India Shah Rukh Kahn response to Ethan Hunt. While thrown for some laughs by Shah Rukh's one liners, I was also enraptured by the skillful martial arts of Priyanka Chopra. Upon reading that she's a former Punjabi Miss World, I decided a trip to Amritsar, Punjab was in order... well, only half kidding. I already had my tickets to Punjab, but Priyanka was added impetus.

On Friday, after a hilarious night out at a testosterone-heavy Hyderabadi joint, we boarded our 03:45 SpiceJet flight for Delhi. Due to allegedly bad weather, the flight was inevitably late, closing the ever narrow margin of time we had before we were to board our Air India flight for Amritsar. Once our two-hour window had shrunk to 25 minutes, and after meek apologies and mumblings by our half-conscious stewardess, we dashed from the plane with an impossible task. Delhi Airport, unlike any airport in the world, is disconnected from its international counterpart. And not only are they disconnected, there is no shuttle (or an infrequent one at best) that forces one to take a 15-minute pre-pay taxi to get to the other side of the airfield. Fun, sure, but not when your flight is departing in 25 minutes. We shoved our way into a taxi, demanded speed, and then stuffed a hundred rupee note into the complaining fingers of our driver when he demanded $10 for his trouble. To his indignant huff, my only laconic response was, 'We don't have time for this,' before our dash inside.

Once we'd entered Delhi International through the staff entrance, as it was closer and we were nearly maniacal at this 7AM point, the Air India counter for Amritsar was closed. This was a half-relief, as the last two Air India flights about which I've read have involved failed landing gears, but we were still on a mission, so safety came a close second to Priyanka. Shuttling between the counter and the back office, I audaciously cut in line. To the hypocritical holler of those aunties standing nearby, whose conception of 'Line' was dubious at best, I tried to apologize for SpiceJet's typical negligence, and eventually got a point across. Utilizing the magical approach of one in-front, one behind-counter, we managed to convince an automaton employee that the customer is always right. A non-existent flight materialized, we passed through customes and into a departure hall filled with flights to unlikely destinations like Kabul, and 30 minutes later we were boarding a Dubai-bound flight with a stop-over in Amritsar.

We were finally Priyanka, and Punjab, bound. And what we found was not only miss-world hot, but other-worldly hot.

Indian Futbol

2007-05-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last week I stayed up all night to watch the Champions League semi-finals in India. Liverpool and AC Milan will again meet in the final, though this time Athens, and not Istanbul, will be host to the inevitable magic. Football is the global game, and I can attest to its veracity. I've juggled a ball with a beach-side Rastafarian in Jamaica, played pick-up at the base of Annapurna in Nepal (above), performed slide tackles on gravel roof-tops in Quito, played over a net in Brazil, inside a netted pitch in Italy, and on an imacculate court in Hong Kong. But I've not played in India.

If you consider India, you realize that football is really only 5/6 global, because 1.09 billion people in India do not play football, or if they do, they're not good at playing football. Since being in India I have seen football. All the EPL matches are broadcast and Champions League gets great coverage on Asian ESPN. But hardly any youth plays, and the pockets of passion seem few and far between. Goa and its Portuguese past is an enclave of football, and West Bengal, with Pele's brief '60s visit, has inspired a predominately Brazilian following. Kerala too has a smattering of futbolistas who I did see cristening some wet sand near Kovalam, but games are Spartan at best, and skill levels paltry. Although there is a domestic league, anecdotal evidence suggests that it's only minutely popular in those states listed above.

It's hard for me to imagine how a country of 1.1 B can't put 11 good players on a pitch, but it's true, and FIFA's Blatter had no qualms saying this in his recent visit to India. India is ranked 165 in FIFA global rankings, a dubious distinction that places them as ranking worse than St Lucia, Turkmenistan, and Andorra.

If you think of having a one-in-a-million athlete, India has 1100 of them, and they only need 11 footballers to create a winning roster. That means that they need one good player out of 100 million people. And this one person out of 100 million doesn't even need to be Kaka or Messi or Sevcenko or Drogba... just a player able to propell India to rank higher than Turkmenistan.

When India requested that FIFA revise its WC team allocation to include more from Asia the response was curt but frank (no, not the proper nouns). India and China can do a lot of things well, but putting the ball in the back of the net isn't yet one of them. When I want to watch the Champions League Final on May 23, it may be with some local friends. But when I want to kick the ball around, it'll be Felipe, my ex-pro Futsal buddy from Murinho's pre-Stamford Bridge home of Porto, Portugal.

Ruminating

2007-05-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Three weeks from today my Indian Airways flight will depart from Hyderabad for Bangkok. After a week in interim, between Cambodia and the beaches of Krabi and Samui, and the quick highlights of Seoul, Korea, I'll arrive back home in San Francisco, California. It's currently a mix of emotions, as my departure will mark a close to the time I lived in India. It will end an exciting and fascinating chapter in my peripatetic life abroad, and has broadened me infinitely.

Six months ago I did not know that I'd have the chance to live in India. Nor did I think I'd have to chance to visit 10 more countries, explore secular Turkey, travel solo through the Middle East, relax in the Maldives and trek in Nepal, bathe with elephants in Malaysia, and hopefully see the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia's Siam Reap. Life comes at you fast, but opportunities are not inspired by fortune; I firmly believe that they're the consequence of assiduity and resolve. In my final weeks in India, I'm trying to take a step back from my experiences and enjoy the day-to-day nuances of life here that make it different from my life in California. India cannot delude itself into yet thinking that lifestyle here is on par with that of other developed nations, but there are unequivocally pockets wherein you can find parallels.

I've undoubtedly lived a privileged life in India. Between 11 drivers and a 2000 sq ft marble-floored apartment, I realize that my daily life has been the furthest thing from ordinary. But it's hard to apply Western, or American, conceptions of luxury in a country where population, labor supply, and a generally low cost of living allow for formerly upper crust services to become simply above average. What I mean is that in India, even non-essential services are quite cheap because the demand for work is high. I saw an ad for a local Hyderabad apartment in which for under 4k Rs, (~$100) you could live in a furnished, all-amenities apartment fit with daily maid service. That standard cannot compute in the US. So while I accept, and sometimes deplore, our extreme privilege in India, it's not entirely accurate for me to judge my living standards with an American eye.

Many of my co-workers dine at the fanciest restaurants and call their favorite pub "Dublin," the posh underground bar at the ITC Sheraton. Granted they're IT wizzards who are doing well by local standards, but it's difficult to know exactly where to draw the line. There are discrepancies in certain prices, for example Hyderabad rent vs San Francisco rent, but flight costs are identical. So while local wages are based off the purchasing power parity of essentials like food and rent, there are certainly global disparities. The fact that I'm paid in dollars affords me certain relative privileges not shared by my Indian co-workers which are accentuated in certain spheres, such as travel, when no alternative exists. An Emirates flight to Dubai costs the same despite the currency of the salary. And that flight is cheaper to a Brit, and cheaper still to the Maltese.

Reflecting on this allows me to understand, if still feel indignant from, specifically "foreigner costs". Ecuador does it terribly with flight costs to the Galapagos Islands. It's less extreme in India, but a 1000 percent mark up for a white face is common. Charminar in Hyderabad, but one example, charges 10 Rs and 100 Rs depending on skin color. Despite my beard and floundering Hindi, I can't escape the "foreigner tax."

Some of these ponderous situations require introspection for which words do little justice. I should pay more, but yet I don't feel as though it's fair or right. And while I'm happily willing to donate, and likely would, I'm indignant at the fact that the color of my skin demands a higher price, especially despite my local status, burgeoning knowledge of Hindi, and growing appreciation of India's rich diversity. It's the typical, 'I'm not a tourist, so don't treat me like one,' mentality. But at root, I am a tourist, I am paid in dollars, so wihle it's "unfair," it's probably "right."

Sherwani Fingers

2007-04-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

During my last weeks in Hyderabad, I’ve tried to take in as much as possible. Last Sunday was my day to don the Sherwani at my friend, Mandar’s, wedding reception. After a brief Saturday Maharashtran ceremony, we met up Sunday for some snaps with the couple, mingling, and banquet hall dinner. It was a fantastic night full of laughs, as friends from office came in jeans and polos while I dressed to the nines in traditional garb. Though I lacked the curl-toed shoes fit for Sherwani, my traded sandals with Sayeed, our driver, accented my attire, and saved me from the brunt of the jokes.

My one frustration for the night stemmed from the inevitable trauma that standing and eating creates. It’s worse in India, because not only are you standing and eating, but also it’s hot, and you’re eating with your hands. Sure, by using your hands you avoid those awkward fork-knife moments when gravity and dexterity demand the need for more hands, and there’s that unfortunate reality that one must hold the plate. But then there’s the added problem of sullied fingers… dal and rice in the nails, butter paratha smeared on the knuckles… and the non-existence of napkins! Oh no, I thought, in my internal Jerry Seinfeld voice, what am I to do? I had just finished dinner and conversation, was asked for a photo with a few new arrivals, and went briskly for a napkin. None to be found… and what with the plates, you might ask? Yes, I thought of that too. But the napkins were maliciously stacked in with the plates in an alternating color-coded pattern, white plates and yellow napkins, and all napkins from the top had been swiped. Think, think…

Now only napkins 15 plates deep still protruded their angular corners from beneath the circular rims of heavy porceline. I tried for one, but after a moment of slippery fingers sliding over the napkin, dripping delectable masala from their tips over the pristine white plates that would serve others, I cringed in embarrasment. Now what? Smiles, the offer to shake my hand… 'I’m sorry, one second.' All at once I was struck with an epiphany – my pants! Of course - beneath the side of my Sherwani lay a slit up to the thigh, and beneath, the textured cotton of my pijama that knows its place as substitute. With a deft and furtive swipe amidst askance onlookers, I made my move and shuffled the painted fingers over cotton, front and back. At long last, I was free… free of the dal makhani and murgh malai that had encrusted my right hand.

In a moment of triumph I almost called out, beckoning the curries. In perhaps my greatest challenge in India, I had prevailed. I had escaped the impossibility of the napkinless moment when my fingers became my nightmare.

Living on all Sides

2007-04-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

I started my Saturday morning with the Times of India and a Kenyan coffee at Cafe Coffee Day. While not as posh as Barista, it's an Indian version of Starbucks that offers a cosmopolitan touch to any morning. From behind tall windows I sat inside over a frothy mug, staring out at the busy street ahead. Tall buildings and billboards surround, and only upon lowering one's gaze does one see the manifold rickshaws and passers by who betray the fact that I'm still in India. From the menu I cannot tell, but from the prices, it's apparent that we're not in Kansas anymore... ok, maybe Kansas.

Pockets of developed middle-class life exist in India for sure, but it's still pockets. In watching Guru, a recent Bollywood hit, this weekend, I see these pockets exemplified and magnified. Perhaps for few, but not for many. The Bollywood sets do bring India to life to the tune of a snappy beat and to the scene of a beautiful gyrating human, but it's India in a vacuum. I would never argue that Hollywood exemplifies realism in America, but I do think that more Americans can draw parallels and empathize with Hollywood storylines. The dichotomy between the average American life and the Hollywood movie life, and the average Indian life and the Bollywood movie life, is in my opinion, larger in the latter. But that's my opinion after 4 months and movies...

It's interesting to me because even after over four months in India, after two hours of watching Guru, beautiful Aishwarya Rai whirling under a Karnatakan waterfall, and second-class sleeper train Bollywood sets, I forgot that India has immense development challenges ahead. The Bollywood set glazed over poverty with a little make-up, avoided sanitation issues by showing Aishwarya plowing a pristine field in the rain, and convinced me that even a second-class sleeper car could be fun... with a soft 40-watt glow, bobbing beauties, and a bit of hay tossed on the floor for that agrarian touch, I had an idyllic longing to be stuck in close-quarters for an overnight journey... with Miss World Rai.

As I spent Saturday afternoon plowing through the Charminar crowds of central Hyderabad, surrounded by poverty, extreme population density, unsanitation, and the gamut of street animal life, I can only hope that my perception of Hollywood is less obfuscated by American idealism than Bollywood's is for India.

After shopping for glass bangles, and removing my shirt in-shop for a free Rajasthani block printing lesson in Charminar, we retired for dinner and later for drinks. As we paid the 1200 INR ($28) cover for Ahala, a posh Hyderabadi club, I looked around the linens and skirts that fluttered under the strobe light and undulated to the pulsing music. The pocket is undeniable, but in a city of 5 million, it's hard to imagine that many more people than were in the room could have afforded to be in the room. When we exited we got a hug and hello from a messy-haired guy in a Monaco Grand Prix t-shirt. Turns out he's a movie director. I guess if this is the life you live, the Bollywood set don't look all that inaccurate.

Extreme India

2007-04-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

India offers, like most large countries, a diverse topography. From the dry Deccan plateau in the south, hemmed in by the Western and Eastern Ghats and sub-tropical southern lowlands... to the Gangetic plane in the North, spanning across Uttar Pradesh... to the tea plantations of Darjeeling, Scotish highlands of Shillong in the far North East... to the Himalayan hill stations in Himanchal and Kashmir in the Northwest, to the arid deserts of Rajasthan in the far West... it's diverse. Many of my Indian co-workers see it as unparalled in scope, but this is myopic, for America, even Ecuador, have impressed me with equal diversity. In truth, topography is never, or rarely, distinct. But one trip abroad will prove this.

In the last few weeks, I've experienced extremes of India. I participated in a Rajasthani pilgramage to Amer Fort outside Jaipur in the sweltering, parched heat of the desert, and two weeks later was admitted alongside sadhus into a South Indian temple for the solar new year in Tamil Nadu. Both locations meant friendly inquiries, crowds, heat, beauty and squalor. The walkway up to the Amer Fort in Rajasthan was lined with beggars of every deformity, in the worst states of penury. With an arbitrary flip of a coin, the sari-clad women ahead of me would pass unsentimentally to the top. My throat was clenched, and my coins were not enough. The futility, the sadness, the reality of life, the stoicism, the shallow feeling of support, the coyness of philanthropy, it was frustrating.

Two weeks later, on the road between Trivandrum, capital of Kerala, and Kanyakumari, the southern-most tip of the sub-continent, I stopped off at famous temple. I was traveling alone, and hired a car for the day, as the bus schedule would not permit for my hasty Hyderabad return. My driver, a worshiper of Devi -- an incarnation of Parvati, wife of Shiva, (yea, it's complicated) -- was pretty excited to be headed to Kanyakumari. It's not only the tip of India, but it's also a sacred Devi city, and the location of Vivekanandra's famous meditation and spiritual epiphany. And Sunday was a festival day.

So after roadside puja for the Devi idol on the dash, we stopped at a Tamil Nadu temple. At 7am I was admitted to the temple despite the fact that I'm non-Hindu, a rare event. Without a shirt or shoes (though not in mandatory dhoti or sari), I was allowed inside in Hawaiian-bought O'Neil boardshorts. I was the only foreigner, and stood alongside sadhus and other worshipers as we passed through the darkened, damp, stone passageways which were lit mainly by oil lamps. There were men chiming bells, many colorful women crowded around idols, waiting patiently to catch a glimpse of an elusive golden statue comprised of Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva, and shuffling past me with eyes fixed. Toward the end of my time in temple we encountered the hoisting of a Devi, Shakti or goddess, and Nandi Bull, carrier of Shiva, statue by a dozen skinny-armed, dhoti-clad men. Amidst candles and chanting, under the cool canopy of stone that encapsulated us in time and moment, the men hoisted the statues above their heads for a Tamil Nadu solar new year procession. It was truly exceptional.

We continued onto Kanyakumari, where I was taken in by a local Karnatakan family who escorted me around the Vivekanandra temple and monument. I survived the over-cramped barge ride to the island thanks to the reassuring grip on my bicep from my host-father. He did not speak English, but would nod and smile, and held both his 14 year old son, and my arm as he guided us onto the undulating barge.

Boarding anything in India is sheer chaos. The transportation is invariably moving, and single-file "lines" are notoriously wide and convergant. Once aboard, I was given a seat and a history lesson. The exciting thing about traveling solo in India is that you're never alone. My cricket jersey prompted innumerable questions about whether I was affiliated with the BICC, and my beard meant half the time the hello was in Arabic. Salaam Alaykum. At all times I was surrounded by five people asking where I was from, if I was married, and how I reacted to the spicy food. California, not married, food no problem. Same same. Sunglasses prove refuge from eye contact and engagement, and I found myself wearing them more to secure moments of solitude amidst the inquisitive but friendly crowds.

India's diversity allows a panoply of experience, sometimes extreme, trying, always fascinating, and invariably expanding.

Operation "Malaysia"

2007-04-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

Over the long Easter weekend I was able to rally three others for a trip to Malaysia and the Petronas Grand Prix Formula 1 race at the Sepang Circuit. I'm not an F1 afficionado, but I firmly believe in coupling experience with exotic location. We did international cricket in Chennai, and a horse derby in Mumbai. If you're going to ride a camel it should be in Dubai. If you're wanting to ride an elephant and see F1, why not Malaysia?

Upon Friday arrival from Hyderabad via Chennai (Anna International Airport), we checked into the swish Mandarin Oriental at around 7am. Upon arrival we knew we were in for a weekend, as aside from innumerable Travel & Leisure awards, the lobby was adorned with the F1 Ferrari pit crew. I say adorned because an F1 entourage is comprised of more than just drivers and mechanics. Let's just say Ferrari isn't the only *model.

Our Petronas Tower suite was pretty sweet, and our 21st floor vista put us 20 under the double-decker skybridge that made 'Entrapment' more than just another Catherine Zeta-Jones film. We spent Friday meandering the city, snacking on dubious roast duck in a dingy streetside eatery, pondering the notorious Durian and its unfortunate smell. After Chinatown, we survived the scorching equatorial heat by absconding to the shaded park where the national mosque and butterfly farm were kept. And following a poolside evening, mojito in hand, watching the sun set over a James Bond infinity pool and South Asian skyline, we dined at a hard-to-find, but exceptional, restaurant.

Our concierge at the Mandarin, a man who not only remembered all our names, but our room number and preferences, recommended the Gulai House. A former mansion used to house visiting heads of state, when we arrived we realized that we were the only table. Dining with a wait-staff of half a dozen on an immaculate jungle-fringed, white-pillared veranda, we thought of our fortunate circumstances. As thunderclaps and gray rain clouds obscured the moon and bats circled above, there was an eerie perfection about our grand solitude and privileged night. But a car was called, and we returned to the Mandarin for our next adventure...

On Saturday we journeyed north two states to an elephant sanctuary called Kuala Ganda for relocated elephants. Surprised by the immaculate and streamlined Malaysian infrastructure, we were able to cruise at nearly 180 kph, autobahn-style. When we arrived, after feeding the elephants by handing them chopped bananas, cucumbers (which most did not enjoy), and watermelons, we rode elephants bare-back until it was time for them to bathe. With half a score of baby elephants only 2-3 feet tall, we splashed around in a muddy-banked Malaysian jungle river. Their vibrant energy, loud playful shouts and trunk waving induced euphoria in the cool water. Hairy-backed, big-eyed, and clumsily independent, the elephants were truly endearing. After an hour in the water, and half a day at the sanctuary, it was time to return to Kuala Lumpur (Kuala=river, Lumpur=muddy, this name in reference to its former history as a mining town, primarily for tin). Upon return to KL we unsuccessfully attempted to enter a VIP BMW F1 party. Given our elephanty smell and disheveled appearance, our surprise was that we were not ejected sooner!

On Sunday we made our way from the Mandarin to the Sepang Circuit, the F1 course 50km south of KL. Via subway, train, bus, taxi, running, and bus, we made our way to the race. The incredible infrastructure of KL proved itself again with enabled remote check-in for Malaysian Airlines from the train station, 12 hours pre-flight and 50km from the physical airport. Not to worry, we got our seat assignments, boarding passes, and confidently checked our bags before watching BBC and seeing Google news on the speeding bullet train to the airport. Coming from India, the word novelty is a relative understatement. Once to Sepang the traffic was appalling. A bus and taxi proved ineffective so we ran for it, 2km down a sweltering freeway through bumper-to-bumper traffic. At the checkpoint, the impetus for chaos, a cop asked us how we'd arrived. When we stated we'd ran, he smiled and said 'Welcome to Malaysia,' a funny line at the time given that his response indicated that he thought we'd literally run from abroad.

We eventually arrived at the Sepang Circuit about 20 laps into the 56. The audible buzz of cars signaled our arrival before sight could confirm affirmatively. We mounted the hill station that was our uncovered 40 ringit seat ($13), and endured the heat that was 56 degrees C' on the track. I'm not quite sure how we survived, but we managed to track Alonso and his McLaren car to the checkered flag, and enjoy our debut with the global F1 craze.

Next year, Monaco.

Indian Work Bash

2007-04-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Whereas in the States a corporate party will yield sparse turnout, terse small talk, jaded mumblings about office goings-on, and on the whole, the material that served as muse to Scott Adams and the director of Office Space, in India it's quite the contrary... at least at my job. Weekend offsites and team building camps are known to inspire 100 percent turnout, even when they spill over into other holidays. A going away party last week that ran late into the night proved no different.

After renting a local hotel space, and convincing (with little effort) 100 percent turnout, general revelry ensued. While we initially presented gifts to our departing manager in the form of framed pictures, books, a t-shirt, a 7 minute video produced by a teammate, the night soon devolved into a jack-of-all-trades variety show. The mike was passed, and no one could escape the eyes of 25 co-workers fixated on you as you had your limelight. Even those cowering in brightly colored saris could not escape the inevitable move of the mike, and one girl was literally forced into Kashmiri song.

I decided to make the most of my moment, as hesitation merely signalled weakness but offered little escape, engaging the rest of the group into chanting and clapping while I did my favorite Bollywood dance to the beat of Dhoom 2, a catchy number from a recent Little B (Bachchan) film. Others were far more cultured. Although we heard a less than PC impression of an American President, we also heard songs and dances from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kashmir, and Manipur. It was a fascinating look at the diversity of India. On my team of 25 we had six states represented in song, dance, and language.

Following a plate of Indian grub, more Bollywood dancing and multilingual songs, we took off for the night. Although this picture is completely unrelated, it's my good friend Arjun fondling his precious Luminary Award, offering at my request, lines from Lord of the Rings. As he speaks 15 languages fluently (including Swedish, Tamil & Swahili), he's lucky I don't ask but in English. Arjun is not only my cube-mate, but his namesake is the historical hero of the Mahabarata, the fabled archer who faces moral dilemma. I'm fortunate to still have my thumbs (see Eklavya).

Hyderabad Nights

2007-03-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, due to inadvertant flight mishaps, we spent much of the weekend in Hyderabad. On Friday night I organized a night out to a local pub called Escape that is known to host the Cricket World Cup on big-screen. An email chain, drivers, and and a rampage stop at the local Nike store for last-minute India team gear later, we arrived en masse at Escape in time to watch the boys in blue take to the pitch.

With an embarrassing loss to Bangladesh behind them, and up against Sri Lanka, it was a must-win situation in intro play. To advance to the Super-Eights, they had to defeat the Lankans. Wearing an Indian flag wrist band, armed with Kingfisher and dutch courage, and sporting the Indian jersey, we excitedly began our night of cricket. India was bowling first. Having held the Lankan team to around 180 runs after 42 overs, a reversion to pace bowlers coupled with aggressive batsmen left the target at a solid, but doable, 255. Having conceded more runs in the final 8 overs than in early powerplays, the last of the bowling was dubious, but didn't set the stage for impossible.

While the pub closed after the first inning, at the end of Indian bowling, we returned home to a couch and cokes for a bit of into-the-night cricketing that left us missing our SpiceJet flight to Jaipur (read post below). After a bit of duck hunting by the Lankan bowlers, Malinga and company, Sachin and other Indian stars had fallen. Indian dreams of an '83 repeat died with each wicket, and the swan song for Sachin was a duck, or getting bowled for a wicket after having scored no runs, a pitiful parallel to Zidane's football World Cup exit, albeit sans tete.

Well, and so you have the Indian World Cup story, as told from the frontlines of a Hyderabad pub. Saturday night was an local expat melange that ended with paparazzi and the girls making the 'Hyderabad Times' above the fold. Us lads weren't so lucky as to make the newspaper, but lucky enough to share the table.

Despise Spice

2007-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

This morning we made our way to Hyderabad's domestic airport at 5:30AM. After a night out watching India's unfortunate Cricket World Cup loss to Sri Lanka, we were running a bit late, and asked our driver to speed a bit. Asking one to speed in the States means adventure; in India it's nearly asking for an accident. At 100 kph, we sped over curving roads, darting through red lights with a flicker of brights and a smatter of honks, braking only slightly to allow careening buses to rage past us. At 5:45 AM we arrived at the airport. With no bags to check, a guarantee from Spice authorities on the phone, and tickets in hand, we were sure we'd make the 6:10AM flight. Flights are notoriously late, lines are short, and without bags, we could, and literally were expecting, to do this in our sleep.

When we arrived at Hyderabad airport, we were met with the staunchest intransigence I've ever faced. Not only were SpiceJet employees unhelpful, their strict interpretation of rules and policy became entirely unreasonable. While we attempted to reason with them for minutes, as our flight time approached even nearer, we grew impatient with their meek rationale for why their 'closed system' would not issue us a boarding pass. The SpiceJet employees, a quibbling, mumbling cadre of red-clad, brain-dead automatons who were hired only for their desired ability to mindlessly repeat policy tag-lines, were perhaps most frustrating to encounter at 5:45AM. When reason fails to make an impression, braun may prove equally ineffective, but far more enjoyable a method to vent frustration. At one point I shredded a paper, widened my eyes, slammed my hand down on the counter yelling through the still falling confetti of SpiceJet paraphanelia at a camel-eyed supervisor who stared back with indifference.

After forcibly missing our flight, exiting the airport in a frustrated 6AM huff, our only consolation was that SpiceJet would offer us a ticket on the next available flight, tomorrow morning, same time, same place, same automatons. So tomorrow we embark on a 10-hour stint to Jaipur. Faced with sunk cost, the allure of a day in Rajasthan only slightly outweighs the unenjoyment I've come to expect from SpiceJet that's sure to again be our morning rooster.

Paradise Found

2007-03-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

Paradise exists in a cluster of coral atolls a few hundred miles west of Sri Lanka. In the equatorial archipelago of the Maldives, marine life abounds just off the white sand beaches and palm fringed coast line of nearly 2000 islands.

My direct flight from Bangalore on Indian Airways landed me in the capital city of Malé, a densely populated muslim city housing around 300,000 sardine-packed into small alleyways and streets. The fifth ward, not New Orleans but Malé, is actually a separate island accessible only by ferry across the turquoise water.

According to the Economist, Malé is the most densely populated city on the planet, and is riddled with poverty, squalor, and saddness. What I found in the capital city was quite the contrary. Friendly, relaxed individuals ambled through streets that, by comparison with India, seemed empty, clean, and tranquil. Those with whom we spoke had a calm ease, and did not seem worried by over-population or global warming. Our travel agent spoke about 'consulting the Google God for answers,' the latest NBA scores, where Madonna stays when she frequents the Maldives, and why he admires Steve Jobs for creating beautiful machines. Abbu, introduced himself in jest as 'having the same name as the monkey in Aladdin,' a '90s Disney movie.

The people we met in Malé were traditional in dress, relaxed in spirit, and cosmopolitan in view. They had exposure to composite culture through their resort status, and seemed to make the most of such adoption in an admirable global perspective. Abbu works in a travel agency, but owns two power macs, an ipod, does web-consulting, and is building his own home. He frequents coffee shops alongside the coastal football pitches in the evenings, measures distance in the number of cigarettes it takes, and explained that an island taxi operates on a flat rate. Abbu was not exactly what I expected from the Economist article, but he's demonstrative of another side to Malé in the Maldives.

Outside Malé, we stayed at a resort called Lohifushi, now renamed Hudhuran Fushi. About 40 minutes North of Malé by speed boat, aside Club Med and Four Seasons islands, the all-inclusive resort is stunning. Turquoise and blue water laps at white sand on all sides, and palms nestle with thatch-roofed beach bungalos. The island hosts beautiful house reef and thousands of butterfly, sun, and parrot fish. Snorkeling, we saw two black-tip reef sharks about 3-feet in length, with fins and shape to make you think twice about following them around. On two scuba dives, we dove to 12m off an open-ocean coral shelf, and were able to see inside a small cave.

We also endeavored on a surfing expedition to Sultans and Honkeys, a beautiful point break hosting both a left and right, just outside Lohifushi. We surfed the 4-6 footers, bantered with a group of local sea-plane pilots, and confronted one of our ship-mates on her surfing ability only to find out she was the European Champion. After getting caught inside, battling through the chop to re-board the dhoni, I gnawed on a bit of coconut and enjoyed the placid waters that are truly host to paradise. With salty skin, board upright aside, coconut milk on my hands, I gazed into the green and watched a large Moray Eel slithered its way through a glittering rainbow of fish just below the surface.

Bangalore

2007-03-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

My second trip to Karnataka was on the famed 1 Rupee Spice Jet flight from Hyderabad to Bangalore. This was my first trip to the capital to the south of Andhra Pradesh, and I was pretty stoked to arrive in the IT hub about which I'd heard and read so much. I was impressed with Bangalore. While the IT mecca is undoubtedly still India, and Indian in its frenetic energy, traffic, polution, smells, character, and feel, its tree-lined streets with large banks and corporate giants were perhaps even reminiscent of the Bay Area, California.

I spent my Wednesday stint in Bangalore with two friends with whom I'd traveled to Corbett Tiger Reserve in Uttaranchal a month or so back. We had a wonderful evening near Bangalore's MG Road (Mahatma Ghandi Roads are in every city in India). Flanked by international chains such as Lacoste and TGI Fridays, we ate atop a building at a lounge called the 13th Floor. With Australian cricket on the tele, a cold Kingfisher in hand, and a vista over the skyscape of Bangalore and its Ministry building, we could have been anywhere. It was a glamorous setting fit for New York or any cosmopolitan setting, with the prices a good bit lower than our vista.

After riding motorcycles into the night, slowing only gradually to cross major intersections, I was struck as we pulled into the parking lot of an HSBC. Nine months ago I stood at the base of the HSBC tower in Hong Kong. Tonight I was sitting on the back of a speeding bike through the balmy Bangalore night, pulling out midnight Indian Rupees at a local HSBC, en route to surf in the Maldives. Life is fast, and the opportunities afforded are both fleeting and enriching, and those simple moments of contrast, reflection, and appreciation really bring to life the exceptional.

Ode to Frankies

2007-03-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

First off, this blog post is long overdue. Never did I imagine that I would wait so long to recount the delicious wonders of Indian street frankies, the delectable 32 rupee morsals bought at steaming Tibb's Frankie stand in Begumpet, Hyderabad near the Lifestyle Building... ah yes, these are the days. Frankies are not of the Ballpark. They are not squeezed from a tube, nor are they endorsed by Michael Jordan. A veritable Indian taquito, the Tibb's Frankie adds an egg, chicken tikka and onions in a sub-continental slam dunk to what I've otherwise found south of the border.

In California we have a place called In-and-Out, a place where a 4x4 is more than a truck, and more of a dream. It is a venue for which mere thought inspires salivation and longing, a place where cows and potatos meet their maker, or at least their eater, and a cleanly joint where a dreary day can turn, at times, even magical.

Tibb's Frankies is this, and so much more, because in its greatness are layered the surprise and wonder borne from the fact that such a tastey, joyous thing can be created out of so dubious a location. From the sullied parking lot of the Lifestyle building, from the dreary street corner aside perpetual construction, a small glowing red sign beckons one to stop, to question, to order, and to taste greatness in all its Mumbai, franchised glory. An unlikely turn landed us at the sign that was to be our siren song, and though we have tried to blind our eyes to its ebullient glow, to wax our ears and to bind our hands like Odysseus to the mast, it is of no use... we eat Frankies at least twice a week.

I know not what Frankies will do to me, but what I will do for Frankies...

ISB Balling & Liquid

2007-03-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

While we're still missing out on the Indian 'national sport,' hockey, by Wikipedia's definition, we have played a bit of local basketball pick-up at the Indian School of Business (ISB). ISB is an enclave of slience and peace in the midst of an otherwise hectic but vibrant Hyderabad. It's, to my knowledge, a one-year MBA program that's expensive and taught by American faculty from Wharton and Kellog. This week we took to ISB, and introduced the Iverson cross-over to the sub-continent. After about three hours of pick-up basketball on a slippery concrete floor, we left the manicured lawns of ISB's idyllic setting.

Although the week was incredibly hecitc, with conference calls at 7AM and 1AM on the same day, Champions League games to watch, dinners to attend, trips to plan, etc, we made due. Tonight we topped it off to a trip out to dinner at Fusion 9, and a night at the club with Liquid. Convinced that we'd seen Tollywood stars, we ordered a hookah and kicked back for the evening, looking out over a glassy skyline filled with half-constructed edifices and cranes. Actually, the term Tollywood star is a bit of an oxymoron, so we sat ponderously gazing into the reflective glass, slightly jaded at the fact that we'd been moved from our table to make room for those more C-list spenders than ourselves. While not the skyline of Barcelona or Istanbul, not the scene of Dancatoria or Leb-i-Derya, the atmosphere was a contrasting alternate-side to the faces we see on Hyderabadi streets daily. India continues to strike and enchant me as a nation of extremes.

Holi Hyderabad

2007-03-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

After a momentus but hectic 10-day trip throughout Northern India and Nepal, we were in good need of rest this week, and so decided to remain in Hyderabad. It only eased the decision that our company cover band was playing at a pub on Friday evening, that we could play cricket on Saturday, and that I'd be able to fully recharge with some downtime and good old-fashioned reading about pirates, namely, 'Cup of Gold' by John Steinbeck. I'm usually a proponent of reading where you are, but after a tepid experience with Rushdie I figure the read where you're from logic with Steinbeck applies as well.

After a fitting at the tailor, we spent Friday evening raging away at a local hotel club. The band, which is comprised of our friends and coworkers, does ecclectic covers from the Cranberries to Metalica to Bon Jovi. The turn-out was great, and we closed the place down, staying out near to midnight!

On Saturday it was rise-and-shine, a 7am wake up and drive to the cricket grounds for our match. A 12-over match, we were up to bat first. I was happy, as I didn't get bowled for a duck, and I did eat a mean Frankie on the bench (veg or non-veg taquitos a la Indian). I was, however, bowled out on the second toss, but with one ball wide I'd scored a run (inadvertantly). After setting the target at nearly 170 runs, we took to the field. I managed to field a few balls without error, and would have had an ESPN highlight-reel catch if the short concrete wall had not jumped out to undercut me mid-stride. Luckily my complaint about no warning track and subsequent wipe-out was after I'd already bowled out my buddy Greg!

Sunday was officially 'Holi,' a strange but playful Hindu holiday that consists of 'throwing color' at other people. Colored flour and tastey chemical dies create a rainbow of colors at street-side stands and shops. A few rupees buys a whole array of fun to throw at your friend, and ruin his morning if he's bound for a five-star brunch. Well, we didn't 'play Holi,' but 'Holi played us.' We were attacked by a pack of hot-pink youth on our morning 5k run, and were again targeted by our own managers in the parking lot. Our ride to the Taj Krishna hotel, and lavish bruch thereafter, was tainted, literally in color, by the Holi flour that covered us from head to waste.

An afternoon clean-up, Bob Marley at our complex pool, and a dinner at the Mariott topped off a rather lavish day of hotel brunches and relaxation. All and all, it was what we needed post-trip, laying the groundwork for more inevitable adventures to come.

The Ubiquitous Cafe

2007-03-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

Cafe options in India are limited, but seem to be a growing trend. The cafe life in India is a different scene than the drop-in European style, or on-the-go American style. Indian cafes, Barista and Cafe Coffee Day, are more up-market eating establishments than local bohemian cafes. Whereas Italian cafes offer the receipt first, the espresso shot at the bar, the ever-hasty euro coin and 'Ciao,' Indian cafes are full-on couples affairs with attire and style. Whereas Parisien cafes are host to musing writers and artists, and Japanese Starbucks are a refuge from luxury consumerism for Omotesando youth, Indian Baristas seem more weekend date than the spontaneous caffine fix.

My few trips to Barista have been met with quick service, prompt attention by the various staffers, delicious cappuccinos and espresso, all for around a buck. The courtyard features subtle tunes and a gurgling fountain, valet parking, and a comprehensive menu with coffees from as far as the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Compared with the ubiquitous Starbucks 4-dollar latte, the dapper style of Barista is proof of American mark-up. While labor is undoubtedly cheaper here, the fact that you can get an espresso from Kenya, Jamaica, or Indonesia for a mere 50 rupees is impressive. In the opposite extreme, the swank Bosphorous 'Gloria Jeans Cafes' in Istanbul tried to charge $7 for an insipid cup of joe. In two burgeoning economies with arguably cheap labor supply in both, it's interesting that a comparable Turkish joint can charge 700 percent more for the same cup of coffee. Although Gloria Jeans golden logo haunts the Bebek and Ortokoy districts of Istanbul, beautifully positioned on to overlook a continental spread, I think I'll stick to my Banjara Hills Barista for the time being.

Eklavya... A trip to Bollywood

2007-03-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight we took a trip to Bollywood, though not your typical song-and-dance number. The movie is called Eklavya, and is a modern day rendition and extrapolation of an ancient fable from the Mahabarata, to the best of my knowledge, the Homeric work of Indian folklore (Maha=great).

Eklavya was a gifted archer of low-caste beginning who studied archery in only the presence of a clay image of Arjuna's great guru. Arjuna, the archer hero of the Mahabarata, feared that his preeminence in archery would soon be surpassed by the low-caste Eklavya, and asked his guru to remedy the situation. Drona, his guru, demanded Eklavya's right thumb as payment. When asked to recuse himself from a future in archery, in deference to duty, Eklavya obliged and had his thumb cut off to make way for the great Arjuna.

Although complicated, and in HINDI (thanks Ruksha for the translation!), the movie Eklavya overturns and makes amends to the ancient fable of duty. I found my first Bollywood experience to be wonderful. Driven by powerful images, vivid colors, emotive physiognomy and expressive eyes -- perhaps more impactful because I understand little Hindi -- my first trip to the theater, seeing the Big B (Amitabh Bachchan) on the big screen, was a cultural couple hours in great company.

Annapurna Massif

2007-02-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

After a brief date with Indian and Nepali challenge, we were anxious to find solitude away from the traffic and polution of Kathmandu. Contrary to my expectation, Kathmandu is a sizeable city of nearly 2 million with frenetic streets, mostly unpaved. Streets are narrow, energy is friendly but high, and overall, it's not why you come to Nepal.

We booked a Ghorka Air flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a lakeside town huddled near the Annapurna range about 200 KM west of Kathmandu. Though we could have flown on Yeti or Buddha airlines, something about the Ghorka plane was reassuring... well, kind of. A high-wing Dornier 228 plane, roughly 18-seater, was home for a buzzing 40 minutes. The stewardess brought candies and cotton swabs for our mouths and ears respectively. I sat pinned to the window, watching the cloudy horizon and spectacular Himalayas poking through.

Pokhara is a village on a placid lake under the towering Himalayas. Untouched, forrested hills lunge into the cool blue mirror of a lake that reflects the Annapurna massif on clear sunrise. The town itself is shamelessly touristy, but this only means cheap knock-off North Face from China, Tibetan flags, and Buddhist novelties abound. There are few foreigners, typically Korean, Japanese or Chinese.

We spent two days lake-side, and one day climbing the nearby vista called Sarangkot. A taxi and climb to 5,000 feet leaves you well below the cloud line and mountains that poke through the gossamer horizon of morning moisture. From Sarangkot you can see nearly eight peaks, though their size is deceiving, as distance plays its tricky part. Fishtail, a sharp and holy peak rises above the Annapurna range, but is much shorter (~22,000 feet).

Annapurna I is the 10th highest peak in the world at 8091 meters (26,545 feet). Also in the range are Annapurna II, III, IV, Gangapurna, and Annapurna South. The sight of it rising half-way into the sky is unparalleled and magical. The crisp white of the snow blends with the clouds below, and I found I had a kink in my neck from gazing at the summit for too long with my morning chai. While October is purportedly the time to visit Nepal, we found perfection in our 70 degree days and relatively clear vistas of the world's tallest peaks.

After a night of pick-up football under the range, a japanese dinner at Koto, and a series of Everest beers, each label displaying the famous Sherpa who ascended with Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, we reterned to Kathmandu for a few days of Gompas, Stupas, Temples and other sights. We saw one of the holiest Shiva temples for Hindus, and the largest Stupa in Nepal for Buddhists. We met innumerable Tibetans who had been exiled and were living in Nepal without citizenship, forced to walk a month back home as their only alternative to the official Freedom Highway back to Lhasa. We heard stories of Maoist rebels, but mainly as a protectionary force for local disputes. A boy told us how he'd incited Maoist help to save him from gang retribution, a story that smacked a bit of mafia. There are eight parties, and the country is still politically unstable according to most accounts.

Nepal is a friendly and beautiful country that is worth more than a few days visit. I hope and wait for my return to the Himalayas, or in Sanskrit, the abode of snow.

Delhi to Kathmandu

2007-02-27T03:47:00.000-08:00

Our well-earned trip to Nepal began inauspiciously with a trip to the wrong airport in Delhi, followed by Jet Airways not recognizing our already-purchased tickets. There are two airports in Delhi, one domestic and one international, and there is absolutely no transportation between the two besides taxi. Once we made the right airport we had a new challenge. Apparently Jet Airways does not recognize electronic tickets, despite the fact that our record locator, meal preferences and seat numbers were in their computer system, and my AmEx had been charged.

What began as confusion escalated quickly to frustration and then to rage as one issue created another. We thought we understand the unfortunate solution, namely to swipe our card again and issue a subsequent chargeback with American Express to dispute the initial charged for unrecognizable tickets. This would have been easy -- easy, but their credit card machine was not working. In fact, no credit card machine was working in New Delhi International Airport! Despite pounded fists, shouts, and incompetent management loitering nearby, the concept of calling in a credit card was as foreign as our unfortunate situation. Instead, the proffered solution by Jet Airways customer service was to take an armed escort with us to the ATM where we could withdraw sufficient funds (around 3 lakh rupees). We soon find out that, of course, the ATM is not in this building, and while it thankfully recognizes our bank card, it limits withdrawl to barely cover our one-way to Kathmandu. But our one-way ticket to Kathmandu is paid in cash, and the receipt is a mere scribble on paper that does not even bear the company seal. Somebody's pockets were getting deeper along with our situation.

When we arrived in Kathmandu we fought our way through the crowds to the block brick building aside the International terminal that housed airline offices. Though the officials for Jet Airways did not show up for over an hour, when they finally did we were welling with hope that we'd be able to make a return flight to Delhi on Sunday. After smiles and greetings though, the nightmare continued with our Jet friends offering little more than an incoherent printout of matrix numbers and letters supposedly representing our confirmation. We were dubious at best, and offered to pay for tickets. Sure, but again, no credit cards. Ok, no problem, how about cash. Where is the nearest ATM. Oh wait, you will not accept Nepali Rupees? I thought we were in Nepal. Right, we are, but you only want American dollars. But we don't live in America, we live in India. Oh, you won't accept Indian Rupees either because of counterfeit worries... 1...2...3...3...2...1

We eventually bought return tickets at the Kathmandu office on Visa after blowing off steam in Pokhara, hiking under the striking beauty of the Annapurna range, and playing pick-up soccer with Nepali youth. Our business class seats on return to Delhi allowed us to spite Jet with each glass of mediocre Austrailian Merlot, an enjoyable but insufficient counterbalance to the sheer chaos that Jet Airways added to an otherwise wonderful trip to Nepal.

To the Taj

2007-02-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

At 5AM, after an alley call with mother nature, a dangerous cup of street chai and a bumpy rickshaw ride from New to Old Delhi stations, we discovered that squalor meets chaos at all hours, even in the wee morning. With the discerning help of a large and assertive Bombay friend, purchasing a ticket to Agra was, in an optimistic description, near impossible. Trips between scores, literally scores, of ticket windows was to no avail. A brusque wave of hands, another non-descript utterance in Hindi, and exhasperation drew deeper lines into our friend's already furrowed brow.

The concept of lines in India is both frustrating and hipocritical. You'll get cut off all day, and the moment you adopt comparable propriety, or lack thereof, glowers abound. After the eventual 68 rupee unreserved seat train ticket to Agra, we experienced the insanity of boarding an unreserved train in Old Delhi station. Hundreds, if not thousands, rush for the still-moving doors of the train. When we finally made the train, it was the wrong one, as our platform had changed a minute before. Five hours later we rumbled into Agra station, and spent the remainder of the day meandering the tranquil gardens across the Yamuna from the back of the Taj Mahal. A trip to the older Baby Taj nearby was even more peaceful, with the venue nearly to ourselves (save for garden monkeys, of course).

The Taj Mahal, built as a monument to fallen love by Shah Jahan, is without a doubt, the most spectacular monument I've ever seen. Its pure white marble reflects the light differently through the day, from pure to pink to gold, changing with the sun. Unlike many monuments, its size and solitude bolster its already iconic status. Whereas Big Ben isn't so big, and Corcavado of Rio sits a thousand feet above a city, the grandeur of the Taj is singular and unavoidable in Agra. Up close, the Taj is equally impressive. Well-preserved, inlay marble upon marble, rock upon carved rock, it's amazing that even 20,000 individuals could construct such a masterpiece. We polished off a terrific day with scotch and a Partagas Cuban cigar, a glass of Hennessey and a view of the famous silhouette from an Oberoi Hotel balcony, rocked a rickshaw home and then slept it off in our $10/night hotel. Next day, back to work from our Gurgaon office near Delhi...

Corbett National Park

2007-02-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

After an inevitably delayed flight from Hyderabad to Delhi on Air Deccan, the Southwest Airlines of India minus A-round boarding, we struggled to make it across Delhi for our overnight train to Ramnagar, Uttaranchal. Uttaranchal is the state wedged in Northern India between Himanchal and Nepal, Tibet and Uttar Pradesh. It's also the state in which Jim Corbett tracked the legendary 'Man Eaters of Koumon,' or tigers. Following an F-1 drive across New Delhi, me piled atop bags in the trunk, we shuffled our way into Old Delhi train station. I've slept in statioins before, namely Milan, and seen grime, but nothing compares to the Dickensian squalor of Old Delhi station. We happily traded the scurrying rats and festering pools of urine for the clacking night breeze aboard our six-hour ride to Uttaranchal.

Although the day began before 5AM, stumbling off a train into an ever-foreign world, riding on a safari jeep that sliced its way through the frigid night air under a blanket of glittering stars, after two-hours of sleep we were ready. We spent the day on safari, making our way through the forests of Jim Corbett National Park, and the open plains under the rolling foothills of the Himalayas. We saw hundreds of monkeys and spotted deer mingling in the golden grass, but failed to see a tiger. We closed off the night with a delectable curry and paratha dinner, and kept adding logs to the bonfire that kept us company until morning, through discussion of Ghandi, caste-life, and education with friends from Bangalore, Delhi & Mumbai. It was a memorable night of iPod jams, a blazing fire and lodge entirely to ourselves, an endless sky of stars, and wonderful company and conversation laced with laughter, smiles, and an exchange of cultures.

After a relaxing morning chai and a series of pseudo-adventure sports we piled into smaller jeeps and made off for safari day-two. Today felt more auspicious, as we silently bumped over softer leaves and muddy waters, deeper into the park. By noon we had spotted hundreds more spotted deer and monkeys, kingfishers and crocodiles. Soon thereafter we spotted the elusive leopard and her cubs. While not a man-eater, we didn't stick around to find out... overnight train back to Delhi.

Varanasi... India in Extremes

2007-02-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

This weekend we took the arduous, but worthwile, trip to Varanasi, India. Varanasi is the holiest city in India, and purportedly the second-holiest city in the world, second only to Jerusulem. It is an ancient city on the Western banks of the Ganges, and one of the greatest pilgrimage points on earth. Near Allahabad, at the sangum of the Yamuna and Ganges, the river plane of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India is one of the most crowded regions on earth, and believe me, it feels like it.

Varanasi is, to say the least, a city of extremes. As articulated by Greg, "Varanasi is India in a crucible." It is the incarnation of so many thoughts, expectations, stereotypes, cliches, and extremes. Innumerable adjectives could be used to describe the experience of journeying to Varanasi... overwhelming, powerful, incredible, uncomfortable, holy... the latter perhaps most poignant, altered, though not necessarily diminished, by the innumerable former...

When you arrive in Varanasi it's like any other Indian experience; your flight is inevitably 3-hours delayed, you stumble off your budget airline perturbed, but at least well-fed by veg food and square bottles of water, and you chart your exit from the terminal. Through the sea of eyes, crumpled name cards, and tan-clad security forces nonchalantly bearing weapons, you plot your course and walk decisively, brushing aside offers and "deals" that abound.

Varanasi was all this, but maximized on arrival, and compounded as soon as we began to enter the city. A 12-kilometer drive from the airport took us 90 minutes, and involved one minor accident of a motorbike clipping our bumper... an amazingly low rate given the magnitude and proximity of traffic. While, at a size of 1 million people Varanasi is as large as San Diego, it lacks even a modicum of proper infrastructure. Save for roads, which are paved, the city is impoverished to an extreme, more crowded than Bombay, and host to the putrid scents that I'm starting to associate as common. Scores of people walk amidst water buffalo, pooled water, and feril dogs. A wild boar stands aside a goat next to a man mixing concrete for a building construction staffed by a dozen employed, but idle workers. Trash cans do not exist. Bathrooms abound, and despite the diversity of life on the streets, the smell is quite similar. The smell also eminates from the lapping water of the Ganges, the river in which offerings are made, men and women bathe and brush teeth, and the ashes of the dead are spread.

A walk along the Ghats (steps) of the Ganges involves an uncomfortable but rewarding confluence of sights, smells, thoughts. Holy men in saffron, men who have denounced worldly possessions, stand in reverence aside the holy Ganges, partaking in puja, offering prasad, uttering words in Hindi with eyes closed. Twenty men build a small boat while children scamper to sell you a candle and flowers to offer the Ganga at sundown. Women beat clothes into cleanliness in water sullied by a million pollutants. Others swish the same water and toothpaste to purge their rotting red teeth of the betelnut-stain. And still other men, naked, or wearing only loin cloths perch in tents nursing fire and applying gray ash to their skin. Their hair is madded and made wiry by time spent resolutely devoted to their cause.

Further down the Ganges are more naked, ash-covered men, others in saffron, others self-mutilated into forms a boy explained to us as "in the form of Ganesh." Ganesh, the god of beginnings and good fortune, has the head of an elephant. One man atop the ghats too had one eye, and half of his face loosely hanging in a flap of skin vaguely reminiscent of a trunk. Again, I cannot fully comprehend, but I can appreciate the experience as an eye-opening look at religious devotion.

Our final stop along the ghats was at the "Burning Ghats." When men and women are prepared to die, many Hindu devotees will make the trek to the Ganges for cremation and final resting in the Ganges. It is believed that the holy river can absolve one of sins, and allow one entrance into heaven. At the burning ghats there are hospice houses. There are piles and piles of wood. There is banyan, mango, and sandalwood. There are pyres. There are colored linens that vaguely resemble human forms. There is one eternal flame from which all cremation ceremonies begin. Though there is undoubtedly sadness, there is reverence and there is also no crying. There is no smell but that of wood. There are a dozen fires on different terraces alluding to the status of the individual. There is silence, save for the lapping water of the Ganges, the occasional crackle of the flames, and the communal hush of respectful onlookers engaged in a timeless Hindu tradition on the bank of the Ganga.

Varanasi, while tiresome, culturally daunting and immensely crowded, retains a holiness that transgresses the squalor and saddness that are the brethren of poverty. And that experience is sufficient enough to visit, though perhaps not return.

Jolly Roger in the Straights

2007-02-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

On a Saturday night in Mumbai we met two guys at our table who were deck hands on global oil and container tankers. What began as an awkward drinks-for-four, two Americans and two Indian locals, quickly became an in-depth discussion about life married to the sea.

It's not often that you can compare favorite Ipanema joints, and hear an explaination about the process by which an oil tanker passes through the Panama Canal, but it's even less often that you get to talk about PIRATES, especially in Bombay. I'm not talking Johnny Depp, but veritable swashbuckling buccaneers... except maybe without the anachronism of the sword.

As deck hands they're given an assignment from Mumbai, flown to the necessary port (let's say Dubai). From there they board the ship and begin cruising in stints, 4 months for oil tankers, 6 months for container ships. They're modern mercantalists, shuttling goods around the world, beans from one location, jet fuel to another. On routes from Mumbai to East Asia, the only viable passing point is through the Straight of Malacca, the notorious stretch of ocean between Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. The straight narrows between Malaysia and Indonesia until Singapore, at which point the tanker can proceed East to it's port of call, say Manila.

When the tanker is in the Straights, there are a number of tactics they employ to avoid the Jolly Roger. By sticking close to shore, boarding up the hull, sailing full-steam, and expelling jets of water off the port and starboard sides they can deter pirates for the small window of time during which the tanker is vulnerable. The deck hands said there are never more than 20 or so guys on a tanker, so it's easy to see how a few modern Captain Cooks could commandeer a stockpile of jet fuel... marooning our friends on some Lost island paradise, or worse, sending them to Davey Jones' locker... shiver me timbers!

In Bombay Looking West

2007-02-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

Friday we decided to jet-set it over to Mumbai, the coastal capital of Maharashtra known as Bombay until it changed its name in 1996. It's the home of Bollywood, the putative New York City of India, financial and business center, and one of the the most notorious cities in the world for its crowds. Sixty percent of its 14+ million inhabitants live in slums that are heart-wrenching and troubled while the other half (or almost) live in places with the prices of Palo Alto.

The apartment in which we stayed had a beautiful view looking westward over the Arabian Sea, but as far up and down the Malabar coast as could be seen, dilapidated apartment towers loomed over the tin roofs of coastal slums. We spent less than $0.50 on a street vendor's bhelpuri lunch, and $100 on a dinner fit for Brad and Angelina. It is, like every city, one of extremes.

When traveling, I always have what I call "Thomas Friedman moments." The first came when I ordered a green-tea latte and a tall regular latte at the exact same time in Tokyo and Washington DC. A latte at a Narita Starbucks, a direct ANA Tokyo-DC flight, and another upon arrival landed me in two Starbucks restaurants on two different continents at the same time on the same day(with receipts to prove it)... but I digress. My Tom Friedman moment in Bombay came while drinking scotch, and listening to salsa music.

We were, as the story goes for many, asked to act in a Bollywood film. Approached by a "foreign model scout," he promised us 500 Rs and a day on the set. With a 4AM start, the opportunity cost of lost sleep far outweighed the $11 salary that our Bollywood good-looks promised, so we assured the scout that our agent would return his call... right.

We spent Saturday meandering the city and seeing the old British sites. The Brits inauspiciously constructed the "Gateway of India" sometime in the early 1900s, but did leave a number of beautiful buildings along tree-lined boulevards in the Colaba and Fort districts of South Mumbai. While the bygone buildings stand grandly aside cricket pitches, encircled by buzzing streets, the more modern financial area was surprisingly dilapidated. Despite police presence, the Mumbai stock exchange housed sleeping dogs on the steps, and opened to a razed dirt/gravel road.

Sunday we decided to splurge on the 25 Rs entry to the Indian Derby horse race tracks. The supposed second home to many Bollywood stars, I put 10 Rs down on "Gorgeous Blue" to win it all. My odds were not bad, but others were onto our tactics. A man in line casually asked if I, "liked the horse's name," in reference to my bet. "Yes," I responded, "and that's MY exact science... there will be no copying of strategy." Gorgeous Blue and Master Planner, my two horses, came in nearly dead last and dead last respectively. Needless to say neither was a cash cow, but then again maybe that'd be obvious to others.

After two races and no Bollywood sightings we returned home for another sunset over the Arabian Sea, the placid water sloshing against the backyard tide pools of the hundreds of brightly-dressed kids who'd emerge from the warren of corrugated-roofed homes to chase a cricket ball or fly a kite. India may be China's analog, but Mumbai is not Shanghai. In contrast to China's politically stoic feel, Bombay's vibrant democratic voters took the streets in their parties colors, thumping drums and lighting fireworks. It's hard to know what will ultimately improve the lives of those in coastal shanties... China's cold order, or India's impassioned chaos.

Mahabalipuram... on the Coromandel Coast

2007-02-02T02:59:00.000-08:00

After a jaunt past the famous Pallava-architecture Shore Temple and a seafood lunch to Bob Marley hits, we incited a small dance party on the sands of Mahabalipuram.

When the little girl's father came by, he agreed to catch crabs for us if I held his necklaces. While I wasn't able to hawk any to the other confused, passing tourists, he did catch us a small crab before asking that I take a photo of his daughter.

I obliged, and took a round of photos of his little girl to the giggles and exciting novelty that only Panasonic on the beach can create in India.

Wickets of Fun

2007-02-02T02:39:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we attended the India vs. West Indies cricket match in Chennai, India. Attending an Indian cricket match in the year of the Cricket World Cup was the unlikely and fortuitous result of the fact that our Indian co-worker has cricket connections. Having played at the state level for Tamil Nadu, and having roomed with one of India's rising stars, our friend secured us shaded tickets to an impossible match.

While the match lasted nearly 100 overs, and ran from 2:30-10pm, it was hardly a slow event. India is notoriously busy, and to layer on top of the status quo the crowd and enthusiasm of national team cricket in the year of a world cup still doesn't do justice to the craze and buzz in the balmy Chennai air. Streets were blocked, and we hopped our way over standing water and through crowded smiling streets toward the stadium, armed with flags, orange and green, and rare expat cricket enthusiasm.

India, in my superficial view, combines a bizarre mix of chaos and order that I suppose comes as a result of its immense population. Strict rules exist, but with the excess of employees, plurality of officialdom means you can often slip by. If mom says no, just ask dad. When I was stopped at the gate with my camera and told unequivocally that I could not enter, I merely had to loiter, shuffle pockets, claim it was a cell phone all along to a new guard, and walk through the buzzing metal detector to no notice. Bingo -- try doing that to the superbowl! It helped that I also distracted them with the old "sunblock in the white-boy pocket" card to evoke laughter from the bevy of bronzed local guards.

Though they don't serve "adult beverages" at Indian cricket matches, they do serve samosas and ice cream. While the samosas come with dirty fingers and greasy cardboard, they proved a tastey addition to watching Brian Lara (the Michael Jordan of cricket) disarm the Indian fielders with 80+ runs. West Indies won by 3 wickets.

On the Road... without Jack

2007-01-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

Throughout the past four weeks in India, it has been hard not to notice the highways, the cars, and the lifestyles that straddle the road. Roads in India are more ecosystem than transportation conduits, with families, settlements, and full lives lived out on their shoulders. In Chennai we saw countless families cuddled under blankets aside busy streets. We saw vendors covering their products with tarp for the night, and then settling down aside their goods for the night. The roads are never alone, and it's difficult, impossible really, to find a solitary moment irrespective of the time, day or night.

Despite the fact that 1 million new cars are being added to the roads each year, the total number of registered car owners is still less than one percent of India's population. Until a few years back the only cars available in India were Indian-made Ambassadors or Italian-made Fiats, though now virtually all models are available. Though Ambassadors are still ubiquitous, the India-made Tata Indica seems to be a rising star on the budget, but nicer-than-rickshaw level of personal car.

I spoke with an auto-rickshaw driver in Hospet, Karnataka who told me that he essentially rents his rickshaw for 140 rupees per day. He drives all night, and any money he makes above and beyond the 140 rupees he pays out is profit. He also has to pay for petrol, however.

Though there is a newly developing super-highway system in the works, linking Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, and Chennai in a giant rectangle of pavement, it has brought with it social and political issues. Rarely does the road allow pedestrians with animals to cross. Traffic is dangerous. With the construction has come a corresponding spread of HIV moving with the migrant workers across South India. While the highway's construction is a necessary improvement to inter-state infrastructure and concurrently facilitates auto sales by making car transport easier, it's also the harbinger of many less than salubrious externalities.

Republic Day in Pondicherry

2007-01-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

We arrived into Chennai late on Thursday night and immediately booked a car for Pondicherry. "Pondy," as it's known, is a former French outpost that still retains its Francophone flavor. Streets feature blue Parisian-tile numbers, the only difference being that the Rues in Pondy also feature the street name in Tamil... surprise! Tamil is one of 16 official languages in India, each relatively unique to its home state, but generally Dravidian in linguistic origin (in the South).

The ride from Chennai to Pondy is about 120 km. A private black "Ambassador" ride, set of drivers, and guarantee of adventure set us back around 1800 rupees ($40). Half way to Pondy our drivers pulled off for dinner at a street-side shop. We, apparently, didn't really have a say in this so we ordered a chai, chicken, and chiapati on a banana leaf. The two locals from Tamil Nadu with whom we sat didn't speak much English, but told us we were their best friends after 20 minutes across us in plastic chairs, fingers dripping and arms smeared with curries.

Upon arrival we watched the sun rise out of the Bay, looking across the water towards the coast of Thailand, Malaysia, and Sumatra, and across the water that experienced the Tsunami two years back. The coastline appears relatively undamaged today, but locals warn of dangerous rip tides due to offshore sediment and sea-floor changes.

Aside from Francophone Indians and culinary melange of crepes and dosas, Pondy is also host to a few churches, the biggest of which features a colorful statue of Jesus and facade fit for a coastal Mediterranean post rather than aside the Bay of Bengal.

A stroll through the back alleyways of Pondy landed us amidst a local cricket match. We rounded a corner to find a scurry of seven year olds, and a stone wall that stood as the makeshift wicket. Until we arrived, the only spectators were two loitering goats and a cow in the same alleyway. The kids called us over, and we guarded the wicket through an hour of enthusiastic bowls. After a dozen short-films of our enthusiastic young friends reveling in the street, a risky handful of home-made samosas, and an exchange of emails, we attempted to leave the alley and bevy of young cricketers but were assured that we'd get a tour of the city.

Six boys between ages 11 to 16 began giving us the grand Pondy tour, ripe with junkets through back-alley homes, a shrine blessing, guided walk through the Botanical Gardens, and stroll along Pondy's tres-French promenade. Aside from the vibrant saris that unfurl across the path, the large Ghandi statue, and dearth of silver stones, strolling the Pondy promenade is not unlike being on the Cote d'Azur.

As we neared the beach we invited the boys to lunch. Eight sandwhiches, six grape juices, and three banana splits later, we'd given our crew of cricketing tour guides an unforgettable Indian Republic Day, and we'd gotten to know pure Pondy.

The Wedding Crashers

2007-01-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight we crashed two weddings, and were invited to a third. It was an exceptional feat, really, to show up uninvited and actually make it inside two separate weddings. Our driver, the kind, beguiling Sayeed, unassumingly dropped us off at the first site of what we thought to be our friend's wedding reception. About 30 minutes into an awkward serenade and a room full of confused Indian eyes fixated on us, the wedding crashers, we received a call telling us we were in the wrong place... Wedding 1 consisted of multiple bands hailing the entrance of another participant, and the bride and groom atop gilded seats, sitting before the sparsely-populated auditorium.

When we showed up to wedding 2, we could not possibly conceive that the impossible would happen twice, but it did. Twenty minutes after piling food onto silver platters, aimlessly wandering and mingling with Indian guests, I again, received a call from Sayeed telling me that we had again arrived at, "the wrong wedding." The awkward impropriety to which we admitted during round one was becoming comical. The wedding director had approached me and asked how I was enjoying my food. Candidly, I told him that I was a bit lost, and he promised to have someone escort me around... and this was not even the right wedding! We surveyed the roti, curries, gravies and other delectable North Indian dishes, and escaped the less-than-innocuous paparazzi, making our way to wedding venue number 3... yes, 3.

Wedding 3 we half expected to be disasterous, but as we approached the table-covered knoll and thumping beat of music, we realized that our luck had finally converged with circumstance, and we'd found the right spot. Greg aptly likened our evening to Goldylocks... "The first wedding was too small. The second wedding was too big. But the third wedding was JUST right." We snapped a few photos with the groom and his girl, tipped back some Johnny on the rocks, bantered with the inlaws and their college cronies -- now behind the scenes in Hyderabad's finest uniforms -- and hit the dance floor.

Indian dancing is not something with which I have much experience, but even so, we proved ourselves to be the Michael Jacksons of the sub-continent, sans nose. Between the lightbulb dance, which consists of alternated, twisting wrists in the air, and rhythmic gyrations to thumping Hindi beats, we kept the cameras panning and helped incite a party. Indian dance is visceral elation... it doesn't get much better, especially when you get to do it at three weddings in one night, without provocation or consequence.

And to get a tase of what I'm talking about, YouTube a video by Shahrukh Kahn when you get the chance! In the words of my co-worker, this guy is so famous in India that, "He's like the Old Testament; He makes even athiests shake in their boots."

Monkey Business in Hampi

2007-01-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

This weekend we traveled to Hampi in Karnataka, about mid-way between Hyderabad and Bangalore. The site of Hampi is famous for its other-worldly topography and for its gorgeous temples and ancient ruins. The skyline in Hampi is a mix of Martian-red boulders littering the land, and the hazy tropical green foliage of banana and coconut palms that conjure Jurassic images. I half expected to see Taradactos.

When we arrived in Hospet, the gateway town to Hampi, it was 5 AM and the sun was not yet up. We piled into an autorickshaw and made our way, careening through the dark over bumps and jolts, riding a buzzing tin-can with axles, a giddy driver at the helm, far too enthusiastic for the hour. The journey was about 40 minutes, but time passed as in a dream, all at once and in slow motion, with gossamer figures in pale colors emerging from the dark, passing us in a whoosh of air. Through the clatter of bells on passing water buffalo, the barking of dogs, the buzz of other rickshaws humming their way toward Hospet, we made our way to Hampi and arrived before the sun had creasted the horizon.

When we arrived, sleep was only a contingency plan. We had to climb a pile of rocks to see the sunrise. Although weighed down by backpacks, and constrained by the darkness, with an agile, goat-like ability, we mounted the boulders by sunrise. The single headlamp was both our climbing necessity and our excuse for tresspassing, having scaled an 8-foot stone wall.

We rented bicycles and road the dirt paths through a banana plantation. We traversed a river and went bouldering for two hours, only to be rescued by a man in a giant basket after marooning ourselves on the far side of the creek. We received warnings of local crocodiles and bandits, but failed to heed warning in the marsh and were convinced that the only thieves were the monkeys that go after yellow bananas. And we survived. We saw old women shoot at pesky monkeys with sling-shots, and incited a James Brown dance party outside the Hospet trainstation with an iPod and speakers, and considered getting a jungle haircut until divine intervention showed itself in the form of a power blackout. After an exploding cup of yogurt on the inbound train sullied my evening, it was nice to know someone up above was on the lookout.

"Outsourcing" Models

2007-01-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

In speaking about Hyderabad work life, it's interesting that jobs here consist of two categories according to local workers. There are BPO, business position outsource, and KPO, knowledge position outsource, jobs.

BPO jobs are those that people in the US would typically think of as "outsourced jobs," as they're lower-end jobs that have moved downmarket to where a labor supply us cheaper than in the United States. These jobs are not as highly sought after as KPO jobs, and are typically open to those with a high school degree.

KPO jobs, in contrast, are knowledge specific, and do require specialization. These jobs are akin to financial overnighting (HSBC) in which CPA-level accountants and analysts do research around the clock for bankers in NYC. While some jobs in Hyderabad do bridge the BPO-KPO gap, with BPO positions evolving into more KPO roles, these two are fairly dichotomous and distinct. Highly qualified individuals with MBAs or BBAs may opt for an international post as opposed to a local KPO. These were the thoughts and tinkerings from a conversation that I had with an Indian girl who's worked here for about 5 years.

Golconda Lights

2007-01-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

Last night we watched the lights & sound show at Golconda Fort, a former stronghold on the Deccan Plateau. It's an impressive fort that was built atop a hill strewn with boulders, and was fortified with ramparts that were impenetrable, and impervious to everything but treachery. Local betrayal allowed Mughals from Delhi (basically Indian muslims of Turkish or Persian origin) to eventually breach the walls and conquer the Andrah Pradesh hilltop.

The lights show, while very Disney and a bit histrionic with famous Bollywood voice-overs and rhetorical questions, was a fun way to learn the fort's history, and see its walls aglow. We attended with three work friends and coordinators of the ambassador social committee, and over a dinner of North Indian cuisine, Lassis (yogurt drinks), curries, nan, and a delectable array of goodies, we learned a bit more about India.

India's religious breakdown is roughly 85 percent Hindu, 7 percent Muslim, and 2.7 percent Christian. One girl in the car was Christian, so she quipped that we were seeing a rarity! Hyderabad, in contrast, is nearly 50 percent Muslim, with the bulk Sunni (according to drivers). This is curious to me, as much of the former influence was Persian (Shia). Of the Christians in India, the bulk reside in Kerala on the Southwest coast. There is actually a Jewish presence here as well, somewhere near Cochi.

Another guy in the car is originally from Rajistan (Northwest near Pakistan), but currently lives in Kalcutta. He said that Kalcutta is a much warmer city, in personal touch, than Hyderabad. There he lives with his extended family. The wives join the men's family, and soon the house grows large quickly. He explained that this is quite traditional. His father, mother, uncles and their wives and children all live together under one roof. Their home is nearly 30 people large, and they own land to expand the home when need be. In contrast to Rajistan where he said many marriages still occur at ages 13-15, with the girl coming to live with and grow up in the boy's home, his family is less traditional. Dating is not discussed, but he said that it's something that is inevitable and happens in his family. At his home, the women are the primary caretakers and homemakers, a tough job with a family crew of 30 eating from one fridge!

A Number of Challenges

2007-01-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

As is true when visiting nearly any country, one must deal with the inevitable conversions that come with American hubris, and our non-adoption of the metric system. Why should we adopt the metric system? And, we'll call it soccer too while we're at it. I saw a relic in an Istanbul museum that confirmed that the "foot" and "inch" do have a historical foundation. What perplexes me more though, are the arbitrary and anachronistic comparisons that some nations still draw. Why does a stone weigh 14 pounds?

In India they have something called the "Lakh." A Lakh is 100,000, so a city of 10 lakh would be the population of 1 million. There, I did it... though it did take me a minute. Converting to lakh seems akin to revaluing currency. Or maybe a better analogy is that it's like putting the same amount of water in a short fat glass or a tall skinny glass... one glass makes you think there's less water when the volume never changes. When you have a population of 1.1 billion you've got to get creative. You can't measure your country in terms of people anymore because it sounds overcrowded and unappealing. Instead you have to invent new conceptions to group people to count them in smaller numbers... because India may be 1.1 billion people, but it's only 11,000 lakhs. China, in contrast, sounds appallingly crowded with 1.3 billion whole people!

This is not Indian logic, but I think that maybe it should be. Playing with numbers makes sense with lakh, but when you're at the gym curling 15 kilos you would appreciate if the dumbells listed 33 pounds. I know I would. It's the water in the glass again, but sometimes each glass just makes sense. Indians got it right with lakhs of population. Americans got it right with pound weights in the gym. Would you rather be the weakest strong person, or the strongest weak person? It's all perspective...

Cricket and Samosas - Week 1

2007-01-14T06:41:00.000-08:00

My first week living in Hyderabad has been one of extremes. On one hand there is the expat life, and on the other, the veritable but unfortunate contrast of local life. One life is the one from behind walls and tinted glass, the one with doffed caps and smiles, sirs and accomodation, the kind of world in which no matter how messy life gets in the morning, it comes back cleaned and starched by 6pm. It’s a world in which there exists a magic book wherein any request is almost instantly granted, the only stipulation of course being that one cannot wish for a second magic book! Darn... This life is beyond the any inveterate comfort, and, at times, beyond even comforts of predilection. It is not so much a spurious world as a world removed, detatched, and perhaps anachronistic, as technologies and possibilities that exist in our world are only far-off dreams in the world that exists within a stone’s throw of our apartment complex.

Tall walls and a road buzzing with the honks and motors of auto-rickshaws separate our world from the shanty tents that squat nearby. Shelter tenuously exists, held together by wire and hanging stones over a nearby wall, a pole anchoring the roof of the home. The smells are foreign and deep, striking and poignant, an uncomfortable tale of desperation, perhaps dispair and surely discomfort. It is not a contrast that is unique to this part of the world. It is a contrast that one can witness on any continent and at any point, but one that is equally striking the world over. I’ve been fortunate enough to bear witness to some of the contrasts that bring humility and appreciation to circumstance, images and memories that impel me to withold judgement or to offer explanation. I think that such images carry a gravitas and a responsibility. It’s cliché to talk about making a difference, but if witnessing the extremes of life make you a more compassionate person, than that’s a difference enough.

This was an absolutely brilliant weekend, my first in Hyderabad. Saturday morning lent itself to a cricket match of 20 overs, and a final result that was a near draw. I even bowled and fielded during the intermission, a nice interlude from the plastic chair that I'd rode during the first 20 overs. During the afternoon we toured the Charminar area of central Hyderabad, a confluence of traffic, capitalism and Islamic heritage in Andrah Pradesh. With vibrant colored saris, a flurry of honks and jingle of bangles, we disembarked from our car into the real world of Urdu, Hindi, and Telugu that is AP in India. It’s a fast-paced, close-up world of hands and smiles, golds and pinks and blues and greens, piles of fruit and gritty yellow taxis, standing water and bare footed, big-eyed, kids enthusiastically hawking bangles and sunglasses while displaying impressive English. It’s a world of families, photographs, penetrating gazes and the occasional introduction. Although I was dubious of the introduction, it usually concluded not with a sale but with a smile. It would end with a soft handshake and a welcome.

Charminar means four minarets, or towers. It’s a building that dates from the 16th century and is known by some as the Arc de Triumph of India. We climed to its top for a cost twenty times more than for the local Indian – 5 rupees for a local, 100 rupees for a foreigner.

Upon exiting a cute bare-footed girl began to follow us, asking for bangles. When we stopped for a chai and cookie, we offered her one of the 4 rupee treats (10 cents). She refused near the store, so we thought it better to offer food away from the leering shopkeeper. She followed us, darting through and under fruit stands, around rickshaws, scampering without hesitation or regard for what lay underfoot, a damp, festering earth littered with ditritus without name or form, and not what you’d want between your toes. She eventually took the food, though she continued to follow us until we eventually boarded our car.

We also engaged two boys selling plastic bangles out of small cardboard boxes. They told us of their schooling and football skills. A woman naerby came to observe our interaction. Shielded by a burqa, but without the veil covering her face, she watched us. When a break in conversation presented itself I offered her a “salam,” to which we bantered the only two lines I know in Arabic. It was a short interaction wherein we both said hello, how are you, and good, but it was a small victory with spoils of smiles. She walked away immediately thereafter after extending her hand to me to shake.

Today after a brunch at the Novotel, a delectable pile of savory and sweet treats, we explored the Persian tombs and Golconda Fort that make Hyderabad famous, or at least known to some techies or India buffs. What Hyderabad is actually known for, however, are its diamonds and pearls. The Queen of England’s crown contains a diamond from the Golconda mines, and nearly 90 percent of all pearls pass through Hyderabad for polishing and setting before going on sale across the world. This information, of course, came from a reputable source: our driver.

An evening of crafts and samosas and Malaysian corn in a cup, we enjoyed our spicy street food atop a crumbling wall and beneath the gaze of a score of onlookers. Week one from the other side, two worlds away from California...

Abra... Dubai

2007-01-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

My favorite place in Dubai was neither Ski Dubai nor the Burj al Arab, though both were impressive and unique. My favorite pastime was riding the local Abras (traditional boats) between Deira and Bur Dubai, two halves of the old and new quarters separated by Dubai Creek. While private boats will shuttle tourists for evening tours costing scores if not hundreds of dollars, the local Abras shuttle the Emiratis, Indians, and Iranians that comprise the majority of the population. For 50 fils, half of one dirham, and about $0.12 one can ride on a solid wooden abra with 19 others, plugging along the creek with a grisily motor spitting fumes and choking water in its drowning struggle under the weight.

The most impressive part of the Abra ride is not the boat, and though the drivers display an inveterate ability to navigate the creek with only their feet on the wheel, collecting and disbursing exact change with their hands, it’s not that either. The best part of riding the Abra is the natural efficiency with which a boat is chosen. As dozens of Abras line either side of the creek, each driver eager to pocket the profits from a full boat, the over-supply of boats puts the power of determination in the hands of the sailors, and makes collectivization an imperative.

A boat would not sail with fewer than 20 paying. As such, the take-off of an Abra would have made Malcom Gladwell proud... an instant demonstration of the “Tipping Point.” An arbitrary decision by one person would create a cascade that ultimately would determine which boat sailed. When a critical mass focused on an Abra, others nearby recognized the developing trend, rushed to the point of embarkation, and further incited the cascade. It was a frantic rush, but in an instant it'd be over, and would again repeat. As each boat was capped at 20 sailors, there were inevitably those who were left behind. A gruff hand would grip the turnstall, a shout in Hindi would send the driver to sea, and you'd have missed the boat, figuratively and literally. And then you'd crane to see where another crowd would gather, and rush to not miss the next.

With the over-supply of boats, and one arbitrary decision, it instantly appeared as though there was product differentiation (a better boat), and this in turn, caused indivuals to rush to the site of the gathering crowd and support the sailing of that particular Abra. The act of one individual, whether arbitrary or whether reasoned, caused others to follow, and ultimately caused that ship to sail. While I’m not a student of economics, I can’t help but assume that the pattern of cascading decisions is ubiquitous across more formal markets when value differentiation is negligible and trending begins from an arbitrary choice. I guess it boils down to, is the popular café more crowded because it’s inherently better, or is it more crowded because it was crowded initially…

Moving Against Time - West to East

2007-01-09T00:19:00.000-08:00

After two weeks in transition between West and East, moving from Paris to Prague to Istanbul to Bahrain to Dubai, I've arrived in Hyderabad, India, a fast-growing city on the Deccan Plateau of Southern India. My trip was a truly amazing journey that facilitated the cultural shift from West to East as I prepare for my three months working in India. Each city offered a deeper immersion in foreign culture as I journed the 8404 miles distance from Palo Alto.

In Paris I stayed with my sister in an apartment near Hotel de Ville in the heart of Paris. It was amazing to see Paris through the familiar eyes of a student and resident. We watched an amazing Chopin concert in a 12th-century cathedral, attended class at the Sorbonne, went for an 8-mile Christmas morning run across Paris and under the Eiffel Tower, and indulged a bit in life on both sides of the Seine. After about a week in Paris we set off for Istanbul via Prague. Thanks to practicing Russian greetings with my iPod Shuffle Russian podcasts, I was able to offer the kindly "Zdravstvuite" to the man next to me on the plane. He smiled.

Istanbul is a decidedly Western city that, in many parts, feels quite European. While probably not a sufficiently deep perspective to comment on its EU candidacy, it was interesting to engage citizens on the topic and get their opinions. For those interested in a cultural biography, I would recommend reading about Ataturk, the father of modern secular Turkey. In the 1930s he instituted revolutionary changes including moving away from Arabic to Roman script, outlawing religious marriage for civil, banning the purdah and other forms of traditional Muslim dress, moving the capital from Istanbul to Ankara, and giving women the right to vote. He's lauded the city over, and has the role of a more-contemporary George Washington in Turkey. Istanbul's skyline is a melange of East and West, a mosaic of minarets and domes, towers from the crusades, and Roman walls to keep out the Huns. The city is host to the Blue Mosque (6 minarets, one short of the one in Mecca), and the Aya Sofia. The Aya (or Hagia) Sofia is a fascinating juxtaposition of Christianity and Islam, as it became a mosque in 1453, nearly 1000 years after its construction. It has both the mihrab, the prayer wall that faces Mecca, and mosaic pictures of Christian figures. One example of this is in a photo.

Dubai is a deeper mix of East and West. While Istanbul feels European with influence from the East, Dubai feels like the Middle East with influence from the West. Its shopping malls create startling mixes of women in purdah carrying Dior shopping bags, men in the Gutra (red/white Bedouin scarf) drinking Starbuck's lattes, while Aussies in shorts smoke Sheesha on the Persian Gulf. I took a desert safari with me and six Iranians who only spoke Farsi. Unfortunatly I did not know more than a dozen overlapping Arabic words that provided our only common tongue. My one week base in Turkish provided me the skill set to decipher transliterated Arabic menus and speak stupidly with my Iranian tour mates. A drive down the road to Oman followed by three hours over dunes left us in a Bedouin world of sand and camels, sheesha, kebabs and a lone bellydancer in the Arabian night.

Madinat Jameriah, Dubai
“Alone in Arabia”

A warren of shops
Narrow passages, good spilling luxurously into the walkway
Trays, brass camels, inlaid-wooden boxes
Arab men sail over tiles
Women in black veils next to Brits to the nines
Casual intersection of culture
East and West
West and East in a whirl of smoke
Sheesha puffs
In long bubbling inhalations
Minty plastic and throat tickles
A sip of tea and another round of hot coals
Smiles and crooked teeth
Melange of accents, Indian, Italian and British
Arabic chatter
Salaam meets ciao
Garmets unfurled to the tile
Gliding sandals over a tapestry
Persian or Turkish
And the belvedere that is now
Timeless views of eras juxtaposed
Traditional modernity
Golden windtowers afront the purplish glow of the Burj al Arab
Strike a pose
Strike the flash
Capture the glow of the night that is Arab
That is casual
Ephemeral as smoke
A transient minty mist that dissipates
Bursting bubbles on tea and in pipe
Reveals a starry sky
Glittering gulf
Persian and foreign
Yet a moon that hovers the same
An obsever
Silent in the Arabian night
Only one thousand more
Adventures to come

--

I've now arrived in Hyderabad and have settled into my apartment. The Hyderabad office is vertical, much like New York, with an interesting vista over a developing sub-tropical skyline. The weather is quite warm and balmy, and the roads are sheer insanity. The days are presenting themselves in small challenges. Showering, telephones, and internet are, unfortunately, still surprisingly difficult.

Parisien Noel

2006-12-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

Wednesday arrival to Paris brought about giddy excitement. After five hours of delay in Philly, a troubled arrival, and long lines for customs, I finally made it to Les Halles, and into our apartment. In Paris you'll see six desks at which two people will work. In China you'll see two desks at which twelve people will work. The long customs line was served as an ad hoc indictment of the French lunch hour, and interesting commentary on labor supply. In Paris you get a long customs line; In Beijing you get seven crossing guards for one intersection, and two attendees to take your ticket on the metro.

Wednesday we explored the Marais and Les Halles before crashing early. Thursday morning we began with a walk through Ile de la Cite and into the Left Bank. After four macaroons from Pierre Hermes in the Lux Gardens overlooking winter greens, pidgeon fights, and hat-wearing enfants, we embarked to Reid Hall and then to the Sorbonne to attend a classical French literature course with Anna. A doffed hat, smile, and pseudo-Parisien nod got me through the university gates sans ID, and two hours later I remembered how little French lit talk I understand in French. After university we explored Montmartre, and took a walk to the top of Sacre Cour to watch the Eiffel Tower light on the hour. After an italian dinner we bought books at Shakespeare & Co. and listened to jazz in a nearby underground club.

Friday, after an Israeli falafal in the Marais, a Robert Doisneau exhibit at Hotel de Ville, and a trip through frenetic FNAC, we listened to a virtuoso Chopin concert in the oldest Paris cathedral, a small stone relic from the XII century. Though a meal at Entrecote was lined up next, vegetarian predelection stood in the way of steak, and we settled for a bottle of rouge and a balanced meal on Boulevard de Saint Germain in SG de Pres.

Aujourd'hui, after a sandwhich mixte and a pair of le coc sportif shoes, we spent the day at the Louvre, deciphering coptic and demotic, heiroglyphs, Greek busts, and oogling at Darius' former Persian relics. We snapped a few jumping pictures next to the Pyramids (Louve, that is), paid a visit to Buddha Bar, Rue St. Honore, and Hermes for up-market fun, and then settled on a spagetti bar in Les Halles to bring down our Sat night. Tomorrow promises Christmas fun... Joyeaux Fetes