"I go everywhere twice. Once to get the wrong impression, once to strengthen it." -- Don DeLillo, The Names

It's been three days of Mount Abu, Raasthan, and surey, much wi be missing from my account, but I wi do my best. First, an expanation is in order. Why have my speing (ha!) abiities disappeared? I have two answers.

One, (the inteectua bushit answer:) I have seectivey removed three etters of the aphabet in order to portray how memory is seective and remembers that which suits the paradigm of the present. Secondy, for a Hindi speaer to hear an American speaing their anguage, it is as though haf of their 44 consonants are missing. Here is my attempt to express this.

Or, for you practica types: the Tungsten's eyboard has partiay shortcircuited, eaving me with ony tedious ways of typing the etters: j, k, l, and the hyphen. Whie I consider how to resove the situation, I am so inspired by the content of these days that I insist on writing you a hopeessy iegibe etter. A itte imperfection in our ives is good for the sou. Besides, ambiguity is fun.

---

Gandhi said that the best weapon in India's possession was its weaponessness - its biggest strengths were its weaknesses. Perhaps reversals of bad to good are an established Indian tradition. I woe up around 2AM of my first night in Mt. Abu, shivering, and begging the ether why its temperature had to drop so much at high atitude. and why the hec is there a drunen party right outside my door?

Yet my seep must have been an optimistic one - I considered that I might be abe to turn emons into emonade. I shoe out of the freezing bed, grabbed the camera, and oced the door, freshy if dazey-eyed-determined to find my first Raasthani party.

It is interesting in retrospect what my mind had expected to find. There were ots of drumming, and ots of atona singing two essentia ingredients to an American party, of the type the suburban neighbors ca the cops on. Before ong, I found the source of the merrymaing, and found the "door" reativey open. Asing a man outside if I coud enter, he escorted me in.

Fifty heads turned to the white boy who had just entered their annua reigious dedication to Ganesh. Whoops.

No turning bac. I was shown a spot to sit. The musicians, absorbed in their organ/accordian thingies and harmonicas and a coupe of bongos, continued paying, casting wecoming oos. A friendy group of men gathered around me, offering smies, bidies, and toes of ganga. Here, I reaized, was a worthy aternative to seep...

...Severa hours passed. I payed my share of bongo'ing. I was giving mini Spanish essons in exchange for some Hindi. I met a man named Kaushik who offered dinner at his house for me the next day. At the concusion, we all feasted on some ind of raw cooie dough stuff and a famiiar yeow sweetmeat, one that my professor brought for cass a coupe years ago. (pasad?) It was around dawn when I returned to the room, with a warmed heart to which the cold evening could no longer chill.

A Day With New Friends

Sleeping in the next day, I woke up with few goals, except to take some photographs and meet up with my new friends at 5pm for some soccer.

But much earlier than that I met up with Lalit, who's house wasn't far from my hotel. Outside, we played some chess, while his sisters made a bid for attention by capturing a couple of their goats, clutching their front hooves and began racing them around us. It's funny how a simple laughing game like goatwheelbarrows can transform even the most humble of abodes into an unfailable environment of happiness. Surrounded even though I was by concrete, I was reminded of home, where my nieces sometimes play for my attention.

Lalit's father brought some tea out for us, and a few other players joined in over the next few hours, increasingly older men - a hierarchy was strictly being followed. I was shocked to see a father slap his son in the head three times simply for playing with one of my unmoved pawns while I was considering a move. I protested, saying that it was nothing, but by then the child had been ushered elsewhere.

As if I was the one who was slapped, something scarred in my mind and it wouldn't go away.

The last match finished quickly, and it was high time to play some football (soccer). Lalit and Rahul had been patiently waiting nearby. We walked through the winding streets of daily life: vegetable carts, camels, and cows, and finally made our way to the center of the village to the "polo grounds."

Much to our surprise the field was absolutely packed with people, all crowded with their toes along the touchline of the football pitch. A local game was underway. Naturally, I joined the throng. It reminded me of a high school match, with a much more dedicated attendance. I basked in appreciation for the central role that a sports park can have, bringing together whole famlies in small towns like Mt. Abu (or Ellenburg or Altona - my home towns in New York). Perhaps this is the essential ingredient for my future home town. Or, along another line, in a variation on Goethe, if there exists no utopia, it would be necessary to invent one.

But like all utopias, underneath the paint chips, the veneer was exposed: several hundred people, all men.

The crowd was not to be let down - a goal in the 90th minute forced an overtime and eventually a penalty kick shootout that required 8 sets to decide a winner. I'll never forget the chaos that ensued when the penalty kicks were declared: the touchline barrier dissolved and everyone in Mt. Abu wanted to sit inches away from the players on the field. The hundreds of us all, supporters of both sides, packed into a tight and suspenseful ball.

The referees tried to push us back. Inexplicably, I thought of Amritsar. A few people started laughing and pointing at me. I asked what they were laughing at and they grabbed my arm and placed it next to a friend nearby. Tan as I have become, the contrast between his dark skin and mine was nonetheless striking. He was a good shade darker than most, although I hadn't even noticed until then. He fidgeted and remained quiet. Certainly this is not a double-blind psychology experiment, but looking back on the previous few days, a new context appeared, and I began to consider the possibility that my new friend was a constant target of ridicule among his peers.

As the formal game came to a close, a few of us gathered amongst the remaining dusk and began a pickup game. There in the half light, I seemed to be the only one who couldn't determine who was who - everyone was dressed in a shade from ivory to tan to yellow to brown. We ran about barefoot, tripping on a field of patchy grass, cutting our feet on the stones, broken glass, and light bulb shards. It was a tactical nightmare: communications went unheeded, defensemen charged the ball handler two at once, collisions were rampant. A bit of the chaos of the streets had entered the field. Even in the midst of frustration, it laid bare a few reasons why I love pickup football - it was about the anarchy, about how the best never win, about unlikely comradeship, and in the broader picture, about a sick fascination with what happens when infrastructure fails. Or, put another way, no matter how much you called for Vishnu, Shiva would have his way, and you're better off praying that Krsna's playing with your side.

After the game, on my first visit to an Indian home, I joined Kaushik and his famiy for dinner. His house ay amongst abyrinthine motorbie passages, a modest three room abode. He lives with his mother and father, wife and three kids. They sleep above the house, in beds on the open roof. His family was his life, he said. Like all Indians in this area, his was an arranged marriage (he a few years older than me, she a few years younger) Money is sparse for Kaushik and many like him, but a happiness and reclined lifestyle pervades, one that would certainly be enviable by many people the world over. And I have met long-term travelers who have permanently traded a life with an indoor bathroom for something like this.

Humble India, Incredible India, Greedy India

A few mornings later, I was in Udaipur, and I woke up with a shameless craving for French toast. I went up to the rooftop restaurant and sat next to two other girls (who sounded like they were from France) The breakfast was well cooked and quite tasty, but I couldn't help longing for some maple syrup. I remembered how my government saw fit to rename what I was eating "Freedom Toast" during the Iraq war, renouncing the influence of "Old Europe." But then again, this definitely wasn't Freedom Toast - they didn't serve any Aunt Jemima corn syrup.

As I ate, I considered some of my feelings over the last few days, I wondered if I were becoming a cultural moralist. The many segregations, now becoming visible, have disappointed me. People say that you'll either love India or hate India, but I'm still undecided. Despite my intially ecstatic days, I have now become ambivalent.

One story might explain why. The day after football, I would play another game of chess with Lalit's father. A barber who was a spiritual and friendly man, he would chat with me with good english and have his wife boil a chai for us whenever he didn't have a customer. My last day in Mt. Abu, he offered me a dinner at his home. It was a good modest dhoji meal. I especially enjoyed playing with his year old son. His daughter, too, maybe ten years old, seemed to enjoy practicing her English with me, very good for her age. I was a bit shocked to realize that the women of the family: his wife, daughter, and mother, waited until we the men were finished, and felt a bit undeserving.

At the end, I wished a fond 'namaste' to everyone and returned to my hotel. Lalit's father followed me upstairs. Indeed, he followed me into the room. When he was inside, he stood there, holding his son, and asked for my pair of hiking shoes. I was a bit surprised by this, saying that I really couldn't. He then asked for several other items. This went on for 15 minutes, in which I've never repeatedly refused someone so many times. I was an extremely light traveler, and had nothing I couldn't spare or hadn't promised to someone else. I became completely stressed out, caught in a claustrophobic room of guilt. My possessions were strewn about the room and I tripped over them rummaging around in a panic, offering various items that did not seem to impress him. I even offered a generous amount of money, to no avail. I had already given him a chess book - I felt a pang not unlike being backstabbed by a friend, mixed with a sudden doubt, that I might have deserved it. His baby son quietly stared at my furrowing brow.

At the end, I gave the man my Thai fake-Converse shoes and a few American coins I forgot that I even had. After he left, I sat on the bed distraught, a fine evening's memory damaged beyond retrieval.

A Reckoning

That night I stayed in, ditching plans to hang out with Lalit and Rahul. Looking over my journal entries, written while waiting for a fight into India, I read of when my bandana few off my head whie I rode a motorbie, and I didnt want to ris the peri of a highway fu of autoricshaws paced with chicen eggs to fetch it.

The huste and buste, everywhere and anywhere in Asia, prepares the mind to ose anything. Things, peope, and even paces, are temporary. Even eyes on a eyboard. Nothing is ever had, so nothing is ever ost. This is a part of hinduism that Ive considered to be a deep wisdom ever since I read about it in high schoo. Ive heaviy appied this to my ife since beginning the Watson Year.

Yet, with that awward moment of gift-giving, I faied any definition of a wordrenouncer. No, far from it; I am a traveer who has constructed his own traveing faith: a pecuiar and powerfu shade of animism, whereby some of my things are inextricaby dear, with a sou of their own, unfaiingly returning to me even when forgotten... while others are wecome to part company at any moment they so "choose." Is this still not possessiveness?

Today, I've had a palmist tell me my future, present, and past. The lines of my hand apparently show that I am possessive, generous, self-doubting, ambitious, but lazy and unconfident all at once. Sure, maybe it's just doublespeak astrology, but often a paradox seems to say more truth than a consistency.

I pull out a harmonica from the backpack, so that I can play it (badly) for a reminder of things past. In a land of sitars, I long for my guitar.

P.S. The following are words of exasperation, written on a cold night heated by brandy. Censored, then uncensored again.

For the sae of holy bacflipping goats, why do you do this India?! This place of electric poles like Siva's trident, you're a great inspiration, with men riding motorbikes, swinging their arms as if composing an invisible orchestra. Others with one eye entirely white, or others with three thumbs. But I don't know what to make of you. Is it possible I give you too much benefit of doubt? Do your men have only pretences for emotions? Are they all business? Your eccentricity of segregation leaves no room for eccentrics and your rigidity has saved the identity of your culture, yet now that I am here, it only makes the kernel of rebel me grow rigid in response. I hold stronger than ever to my own animism, my own values, and my own idea of home. - and wonder where my tolerance has gone.

We're here for the long run - what will we do with each other's company?