Feeling Young Again

On Friday I went to yoga at seven in the morning and fell asleep in the third position. Not just shutting my eyes and fading off, but a little bit of drool was on the mat when the instructor called us to move again.

Tuesday was Rakhi, a holiday where sisters give blessings to their brothers, give them bracelets, place Bindi on their foreheads (with some rice pasted on the dot to accompany the rice in the hair), and perform some other rituals. They do this all in exchange for lifelong protection.

Kate, I have protected you until now with no recognition. I believe you owe me.

Our program, Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), showed us this ritual between classes. With four boys and twenty-three girls, the ceremony ran short of “brothers.”

That night, we were invited by one of the girls in the program to her family’s home, where it was the first anniversary of her host sister’s marriage. This is significant for Indians (all I believe, though if only for Maharastrans, my bad) because in the days when girls were married as girls and not as young women, they wanted to play and dance with their friends as they did before their marriage. So it became tradition that one year after her marriage, a daughter returns to the home of her parents to play, dance, eat, and be merry with her family and friends.

We three boys (Gluten, Sam, and I) went searching the streets of Pune for some Indian formal wear. But first, an afternoon excursion to Chatushringi, a local temple. Since it was Rakhi, it was quite crowded. We hiked to the top where the shrine was, and then climbed more up the hill. At the top, we could see most of Pune, the sprawled out city that it is. More people waving at us. I wonder why….

We passed by a young couple hiding between a large boulder and a shady tree. I tried to give them their privacy, but alas, they were right next to the path. They did not stare at us because we were foreigners.

Searching for Indian formal wear was harder than expected. Walking on F.C. Road (for Fergusson College, one of the many nearby. Guess which street it’s on.), we found a plethora of high-end Western-style men’s stores, but none that sold men’s traditional Indian attire. It was becoming frustrating. We ate Pizza Hut and considered our options. We were getting near dinner time, and we did not want to be too late. The fresh-baked personal pizza, spiced Indian (and much better than American Pizza Hut), provided a spiritual re-awakening. Two men stopped us on the street, took our pictures and asked us if we were their brothers. Sure, whatever. Let’s just go to another market.

Back in Tulsi Baug, we three walked not far to find a store selling them. In fact, many were. After choices became actions, we went straight to the dinner party, still in our street attire.

We arrived timely and underdressed, with our formal wear in white plastic bags. It was only after everybody arrived looking all fly and fancy did we get a chance to change. Oh, don’t worry. This was not the only time we felt uncomfortable.

With twenty-seven white people and about forty or fifty friends and family of the wife watching Indian dancers, we could not help but be segregated to one side of the room. Yes we could not understand the storyteller and yes we did not know the significance of the dances and yes we still got some curious looks from the audience and yes I felt like a weirdo being in this huge group of foreigners watching this festive occasion with as much curiosity as an anthropologist, but no, it was great. The dancers were all women aging from their late twenties to late sixties, performing dances that resembled scenes such as a rowers on a boat and the waves surrounding it or a wife washing clothes faster when the husband is watching. They also grabbed each others’ wrists and spun in circles, and spun quite fast. We also danced.

The food was khoop chhan as always and I drank two glasses of tap water and didn’t get the sick like everybody warned me I would.

In fact, my habits have adopted quite nicely. I eat with my hands (Indian manners say you dirty your right hand only and do everything else with your left, such as drink water or dish out food). I don’t want dinner until nine thirty or ten, which means food coma and sleep coincide quite nicely. Tea is splendid and so are my baths. The warm water is turned on and so is the gas water heater so that hot water pours into a plastic bucket from the bath spigot. Add some cold and wait until the bucket is half full. I take an oversized plastic measuring cup, dip, pour, and there you have it, my daily “bath”. And it’s lovely.

Whenever I am in a group of other Americans, many people keep referring to us as “you people.” Even in the yoga studio. What do you people mean, “you people,” huh? Huh??

After yoga, Gluten and I found a cafeteria to eat breakfast. We chose to be late to class because we know what’s most important in the day. What’s that, you want to know the combined cost of breakfast for two? Forty five rupees. The Indian Dollar Menu. Did I tell you I love this country?

I got a middle school flashback on Friday. There was a traditional Indian singer who performed for our class. Her voice was hypnotizing and every note felt like there was no other in the world.

Her son came to the performance and invited Sam to a concert of his friend’s band that night. I did not know where it was, but Sam did. I had to use the landline (more like the lameline! Sorry.) to coordinate the time and place. Baba was chiefly concerned about time and transportation, and “helped” me figure it out. He ended up calling Anjou, one of the program coordinators, to figure out what the story was with the concert. Finally, after about two hours of degrading and frustrating phone tag between my baba and Gluten’s, my baba and Anjou, my baba and Sam’s baba, we figured out something.

Gluten and I took a rickshaw to the venue, which was a restaurant/lounge in the basement of a swanky hotel called E Square. The venue was called “Jazz on the Bay,” and it had pictures of prominent traditional Hindi singers and people like Louis Armstrong on the paper coasters. The band was an American rock cover band.

After going through metal detectors, we entered through the bubbled glass door into the blue dim lit room. The place had a large bar with its bottles nearly empty, a seating section with tables facing the stage, and plenty of booths filled with young couples and double dates. The band had already started and was finishing up a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover.

Then it began. The nineties alt. rock/cliche rock nightmare. Nickelback, really? Three Doors Down, are you serious? Smoke on the Water, the guitar song that every novice learns right after “Smells like Teen Spirit”, honestly? Is this how they view American music?

I spoke with some of the Indian guys we came with:
“So what kind of American music do you like?”

“Mostly metal.” (Dear God) “But also some softer stuff too.” Bradley, my music snob alter-ego, tempted me with self-aggrandizing premeditated judgment.

“Oh, yea? So who do you listen to?”

“Uh, you know, uh Gun’n’Roses?”

(God, that’s terrible, says Bradley) “Oh yea. I know them. They’re good,” I lied, pausing before saying that last word.

“And, uh, Led Zeppelin.”

(Ok, the most well-known rock band of all time, for good reason, but anything else? wonders Bradley) “Oh yea they’re great.” I said.

The band busted out another Nickelback cover, and Gluten and I look at each other and laugh. I danced sarcastically as the band was received incredibly well by the audience. Then, Hotel California. The crowd went crazy and sang along.

“I think that Hotel California may be the most cliché rock song of all time,” Gluten said to my ear over the chorus. (Word, said Bradley)

Sometime between Tears of Heaven and Comfortably Numb I had an epiphany, and Bradley was silenced.

I think of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian afrobeat legend, then of Bob Marley. Do I know any reggae that does not have the name Marley to it? What about Afrobeat without the name Kuti? While I’m thinking about it, what about Indian music? Can I think of any non-Ravi Shankar Indian musicians? What’s that Bradley? Not one?

How trite and ignorant am I?

I began to view this concert totally different. Whether I like it or not, this is their exposure to Western rock, and whether I like it or not, they know more about my music than I do theirs. How snobby is that to not appreciate this truly cultural experience? Bradley, silence yourself, this is the Eastern cover of Western music. This is pretty cool, actually, and the band isn’t bad either.

I stand and listen to their Nirvana cover, and think to myself, “If I hadn’t heard Hotel California a million and a half times, would it really be that bad?” And when it comes down to it, it’s a catchy song.

The next morning we went on our first field trip outside Pune. It was an old Hindu fort named Singhad, where the Maharastran hero Shivaji was known to have climbed atop a giant lizard to get to because he could not climb it. It was in the clouds. The fort was quite ruined, destroyed by the Mughals. Now it sits atop a mountain as a local tourist destination. A shanty small town developed selling snacks, water, and other tourist knick-knacks. After a snack of deep fried onion blooms and chili-onion-garlic chutney, friend Alayna and I went exploring. We found an old stone overlook. We saw the valley below, the verdant mountainous ridge layered with light and dark greens. The fog cleared and you could see the entire landscape.

It reminded me of the singer's voice we heard on Friday, lost in every sight as if it were the only view in the world.

Alayna and I hiked along a ridge on a cow path down from the fort. We saw all sorts of little Indian critters and many Indian cow patties, and after we climbed a particularly high precipice, we saw cows below. We got pretty close to them and I touched a white one with horns painted orange. "Seems like a pretty appealing lifestyle," Alayna said. "Eat bountiful grasses all day, have a complete three-sixty postcard-worthy view to soak up, poop wherever you want."

Amen.

After the trek, we ate lunch provided by the locals. We had some fresh yogurt (very sour and curded), a lentil (I think) slop, chili eggplant deliciousness, and a local twist on roti (Indian bread that is softer than naan). One of the local women made lassi by hand . She combined sugar, some yogurt cups and water, churned it by hand, and there you have it, something roughly similar to a plain milkshake. I liked it but would not order it at a restaurant. Then she made one with cumin, and I never imagined spicy, smoky cumin could mix with sweet and sour lassi, but in the weirdest way possible, it did. I think I was in the minority of people who liked it.

Coming back to my home I met my host parents' grandson or some may say, my nephew. WHAT! Adu is five with fair complexion and blue glasses and was quiet at first, but then I showed him how to shape his hands to look like a dog. That won him over. We drew, looked at a flower book with great excitement, and even listened to some Beach Boys. A little neighbor girl came over and joined us. I tried to teach them Go Fish, and it did not work. Adu's interest in me grew as my weariness wore in. Aai and Baba (to him, Aji and Ajoba) kept apologizing to me for him bothering me. But the truth was that I was having a pretty good time with him, aside from the normal child tendencies to change games quickly and return to others repeatedly. It was a bit awkward when they would apologize and I felt obligated to appreciate their looking out for my interests. To respect them almost more so than for myself, I showed disinterest in Adu. Persistently he tried to play and persistently my aai and baba assumed he was bothering me and chastised him to stop it. I couldn't really tell them to stop stopping him because it was not my place, so I just went with it.

I spent all of Sunday doing nothing and then trying to find an internet cafe in the consistent monsoon-season rain. I found a computer lab.

It has not stopped raining in days and I should probably start wearing my raincoat. But I hate raincoats.