I reserved my flight while traveling in Varanasi. My shoes had turned to mold in the rain and the open sewers; my skin smelled musty from the tap water, always a film of mud and shit on my feet; and my schedule was over-full with music, friends, luncheons–rich, eye opening, but suddenly overwhelming. I was relieved when the cheapest flight to Israel turned out to be the earliest flight: September 6th, just in time for the Jewish New Year. And in this case, the word “flight” is fitting, since it is a literal escape from the pressures of traveling in India–and at the same, the pressures have given me freedom. I’ve learned to be friendly but cautious, adventurous but staid, self-sufficient but always surrounded by tourist friends (or if possible, Indians…although that’s much more difficult when traveling alone, because it’s usually Indian MEN who want to be friends–with hopeful benefits).  I feel I can go anywhere and do anything, and if I lose the gamble, it’s karma…to repeat what half the hotel managers, restaurant owners, shopkeepers, and horny men have told me in sentimental heart-to-heart sessions: “Who knows what the future will bring? Best to be honest and kind now and good luck will follow.”

Before I go, here are some highlights of my last month of travel (I’ve been recording my travels by hand because using a laptop in public in India is asking for trouble. So, brief notes will have to suffice until I get to Israel):

1) Hyderabad: met a wonderful French tourist at the train station and ended up living with her in the Hyderabad YMCA. She was a world traveler and French lit teacher, and under her guidance, I began to enjoy exploring India as a Westerner for the first time. We visited the Muslim quarter, Chowmahalla Palace and Golconda Fort…

2) Hampi: Decided to visit the ancient capital of the Vijaynagara Empire (14-16 century) with a friend of Kiki’s from Bangalore. Two days of hiking and visiting temple ruins and learning about the NGO scene in India.

3) Varanasi: Made friends with a tailor, who invited me to lunch twice. He lived in a one room flat in the old city with his wife and two children. The wife was only 29 and her oldest kid (a son who played tabla like a magician, hands moving so fast they blurred), was 11. Both the son and daughter were smart, bright, engaged…and I wondered what they would become in Varanasi. Then I wondered what they would have become in my life and my home in the USA.

4) Varanasi: took tabla lessons and watched a sitar performance.

5) Delhi: visited Nitz in her fabulous home in Gurgaon, went to malls that look like they came from upscale New York or San Francisco, and lived with Kiki’s friend in the trendy suburb of Lajpat Nagar.

6) Delhi: spent 6 hours trying to mail a package home, then got ripped off by a travel agency (to the tune of USD 200). While waiting for an early morning bus arranged by said travel agency, a man sexually harassed me. I missed the bus, but reported the whole affair to the police  and got all my money back from the travel agency.

7) Agra: Saw the Taj Mahal with three French hippies.

8 ) Jaipur: traveled with two Italian tourists and learned how silk dying works. In the evening, I found myself in a boutique that sold Rajastani miniature paintings and marionette dolls. I pretended to speak French, to have a husband back “home” in Montpellier, and to have “very little money.” The owner of the shop undercharged me for a miniature painting and a doll because I was his “good friend” but he did offer to give me a breast massage and was very upset when I declared that my breasts were for my husband only.

9) Jaisalmer: the highlight of my trip to Rajasthan. A beautiful city built of yellow sandstone that looks like a part of the desert, rising out the sand like an intricate, catacombed dune. Went on a camel safari and spent the night in Great Thar Desert; woke up covered in sand and looking out on the scrub and a trace of smoke where my camel driver was cooking chai.

10) Udaipur: the city of lakes, the Venice of India: a very touristic town that features the largest palace of Rajasthan, cradled in a mountain valley and overlooking a large lake dotted with hotel islands. Met the most lovely French and German girls, also traveling alone, and relaxed with them in a variety of European bakeries, gorging on chocolate balls and discussing different cultures.

11) Mumbai: one last visit to the doctor to get a health certificate that says I’m physically and mentally fit to work on a kibbutz in Israel. Exploring South Mumbai–India Gate, the Taj Mahal Hotel, and Malabar Hills…then good-bye India…

Before I left Chennai, I wrote a good-bye post so here it is:

My last post ended in Mumbai, but I’m about to leave Chennai to travel north to Hyderabad, Varanasi, Rishikesh, and Delhi. I’ve been living in Chennai for six weeks, growing used to the street vendors, the constant stream of woman in saris, and the auto-rickshaw drivers who slow when they pass me and shout “haloooh, Madam!”

Some parts of Chennai still frighten me: Ritchie Street, which is computer and mobile bazaar jammed with couriers, vendors, bikers, pedestrians, and the occasional auto-rickshaw parting the torrent like a rusty snowplow; Mount Road/Anna Salai, which is the wide boulevard that runs diagonally down the center of Chennai, bordered by upscale malls and filled with car honks, dust, eternal brown smog, leathery vendors, prostrated beggars (like San Francisco), and sewage stench; and Adyar, the large suburb just north of Thiruvanmiyur, which shouldn’t overwhelm me, but does, probably because of the crumbling sidewalks and the ever-present shadow of the freeway flyover. That said, parts of Chennai begin to feel like home—specifically the neighborhoods around Kiki’s apartment and office: Valmiki Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur and Basent Nagar. In fact, they are in many ways more convenient than any other place I’ve lived. As in any Indian neighborhood, the volume and density of shops have no counterpart in the Western world (except, perhaps, a farmer’s market in the middle of the city where independent vendors sell on the street and the awnings of corporate stores loom in the background). In Valmiki Nagar and Thiruvanmiyur, however, nothing is corporate except for a few names. I dropped into a “Gift Park” that advertised Vodafone so that I could buy an Indian SIM card; not only did they sell phones and recharges, they sold train tickets, bus tickets, lamps and lampshades, figurines and plastic crystals, clocks and watches, pictures frames and photographic paper, among other things.

There are three grocery stores, Reliance Fresh, Prince, and Singapore Shoppee, although they remind me of the American convenience store: everything slightly dusty, packed together with a logic more dictated by the shape of the building that the products being sold. Reliance Fresh cashiers have a register and credit card machine and automatic scale, like Safeway, but Singapore Shoppee has a split system—cashiers that ring up your purchases and hand you a receipt that you take to the money desk, where you pay and receive change. Security guards outside both Reliance Fresh and Singapore Shoppee demand that customers leave their bags and backpacks at the door. Prince is a much smaller store with basic provisions: spices, rice, toast, soda, candy, soap, toothbrushes, etc.; when I shop alone there, I can expect the three to six attendants in the store to immediately stop whatever they are doing ask if they can help Madam, please. I like to shop in privacy, and have considered purchasing a burka on these occasions.

There are also three internet cafes, each charging 15 rupee an hour, which is a very good price (equivalent to 40 cent in USD). I love going to internet cafes, because it’s one of the few private spaces in public. Computers are usually housed in hooded cubicles that look like a thinner cousin of the roll-top desk—the same curved top, except nothing to roll down. The curved and the wings on either side do create an effective cocoon. It’s easy to block out the honks and beeps on the street, the slight smell of must that pervades tropical climates, and the roving glances of men. (When browsing histories haven’t been wiped, they usually contain a few Tamil porn websites—not surprising, since I don’t think guys get much, despite their congenital need to press themselves on independent woman, white or Indian). I can gchat or send e-mail or even read the New York Times, and for an hour, I can realize my dreams of returning home to a weekly garbage trucks and large houses and central air and toilet paper (guilty dreams, I admit; it takes coming to India to realize how much needless energy I consume each day, and how much waste I produce).

Better yet, there are two tailors down the street; they’ve set up shop on their respective corners, and they take care of the neighborhood mending with thimbles on their thumbs and absent smiles and their feet in constant motion as their treadle their ancient sewing machines. There’s most likely a cobbler as well, but I haven’t found him yet (maybe he’s one of the men who seem to be selling secondhand shoes; it’s difficult for me to ask, because these vendors don’t speak English). There is, however, a cheap cobbler in Basent Nagar, who also fixes broken luggage.

And there’s the fruit market—my favorite part of Thiruvanmiyur, even though I’ve never bought anything there. I’m too lazy to bargain, especially with a pack of sari-clad woman who watch me pass with steely indolence; unlike the men, they never call out. I always feel the need to apologize for myself, and if I spoke Tamil, I would. Like the fish ladies, these vendors have banana-thatched stalls on a raised square of dirt, kept in place by a low stone wall. Their produce varies day by day, and Kiki’s mom tells me it’s probably second or third hand produce—carted in the wholesale market on the outskirts of Chennai, where farmers and farming businesses sell it big vendors, who sell it to smaller vendors, and on down the chain until it ends up in the tiny Thiruvanmiyur market, protected by the led-faced women with flowers in their hair. When I arrived in Chennai, they sold Alphonso mango; now they see raw mango, tiny, spherical lemons, pomegranate, beans, roots, and Indian cucumber (light green, wrinkled and curved at the tip). They also sell jasmine and marigolds for worshipers on their way to the temple down the street. In fact, part of the temple is located directly opposite the fruit stand: a large, brown lake with a pagoda like structure in the middle, which houses a god. I’m told the lake is like the Jewish mikvah, to meant to cleanse and purify (even though it looks anything but pure). There is also some sort of ceremony each year, where people send floats across the water to pay homage to the god in the temple, but I’m a little hazy on the details.

At night, city lights reflect off the edge of the lake, but the center remains quiet, still, immune even from the great clouds of dust that layer the rest of the suburb (the roads are only paved in the middle and there are no sidewalks on the main streets). Behind the lake, neon lights blink on the temple tower, spelling out a Tamil word and softly illuminating the sculptures that form tower, stacked atop each other in a narrow, flat-headed pyramid the shape of Maachu Pichu. The sculptures on each level tell a story—brightly painted gods and goddess playing music and resting under trees and morphing from avatar to avatar as they ascend to the top of of the tower. I wish I knew more about Hindu mythology. I could have learned, but instead I’ve been bombing through the books in Kiki’s house: “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Dead Man’s Mirror”; a selection of Tintin comics; “A Room of One’s Own”; Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories, including “Toba Tek Singh” and the “Dog of Titwal”; John Irving’s “The World According to Garp”; Harry Potter Number Four (yes, Harry Potter—I love Harry Potter).I even read one of Kiki’s childhood relics: Enid Blyton’s horribly quaint and nauseatingly British “The Children of Cherry Tree Farm.” In my defense, I was sick.

Most of all, I will miss this apartment. It is safe and comfortable and clean full of air and light. I will miss Kiki’s brother tramping in a two in the morning to quiz us about football (a.k.a. soccar—which neither of us follow). I will miss the willowy frame of Kiki’s mother reclining in a straight back chair, a glass of wine in one hand, and a wide lipped smile—like a child who knows she’s been good. (Only Kiki’s mother could recline in a straight-back chair, her head resting halfway down the back, chin upturned, her back curving into the seat of the chair, one foot perched on the chair edge, her calf propped against the table, and the other foot delicately resting on the opposite chair seat, long toes and a gold anklet.) Most of all, I will miss Kiki—absorbed in her notebooks, in the neverending debates on sexuality and class that whirl around her head even when she doesn’t speak them aloud. I will miss her  bursts of vanity and humor and self-satisfaction, not just in herself, but in her family, her friend—in me.

I’m scared to leave Chennai. Every time I do, the cities overwhelm me—interesting sights, but I have to explore them with my fists out, pretending that I’m not lost or new to the city or interested in stopping for minute to get my bearings, take a picture, admire or piece together…But I’m hopeful about my trip. One of Kiki’s friends will meet me in Hyderabad and hopefully a friend of friend will meet me in Varanasi. And in Rishikesh, I will stay in an ashram. In two weeks, I’ll arrive in Delhi where I’ll see Kiki once more—and reunite with another college roommate, Nitz, the Wall Street Wonder Girl, whom I haven’t seen since graduation.

A sleeper compartment has four windows and just enough space for eight people carrying one or two bags.  The upper bunks are about six off the ground (level with the top of my head) and permanently lowered, bolted to the ceiling by means of two steel belts. Although the car is eleven or twelve feet high, the ceiling feels low because the upper bunks forbid anyone from standing outside the aisle way, which is just big enough for one fat man, two thin men, or one and a half skinny giants like me. The aisle runs down the length of car and separates the side berths from the regular berths, which extend perpendicularly from the wall. Each car is just over six feet wide, with two side berths and six regular berths. The side berths are fully exposed to inter-car traffic, but in my view, it’s a small price to pay for the extra space. Those lucky enough to get an upper side berth can sit without hitting their heads on the ceiling, and their counterparts on the lower bunk get two full windows to themselves. People consigned to the regular berths have to be a bit more communal, since the lower bunk doubles as an all-purpose bench during the day and the middle bunk folds down to serve as the bench back. If a middle-bunker wants to, say, take a nap in the afternoon, he has to use the upper bunk (if it’s not in use already) or convince everyone on his bench to move across the compartment. Everyone in the compartment will help him raise the middle bunk and fasten it to the upper bunk with a hook and a steel chain. Roundabout dinnertime, everyone will insist on lowering the bunk so they can eat sitting up.

A note about meals: train porters serve lemon rice and biryani and pav bahji (bread and fried potato with spice) in aluminum and plastic packaging. Most people eat with their fingers (Indian style), although disposable spoons are available on request (Western style). Almost without exception, they throw their disposables out the window, which has no screen and no glass, only four horizontal bars. The tracks are littered with plastic bags and food trays and tiny chai cups, and all sorts of detritus that would give the environmental nuts who pick up cigarette butts on San Francisco beaches a heart attack. I can deal with moldering coconut husks and fly-ridden fish stands, lack toilet paper and wet bathrooms (according to Kiki’s mom, the wet floor is a sign of cleanliness in India, as is a woman wearing a wet sari). But I hate watching people willfully litter. Before traveling in India, I never paused to consider hygiene as a cultural phenomenon. Rules of purity have always been a given: wash your hands, never touch unclean waste, throw away trash, make sure you smell good, make sure your surroundings smell good, polish and dry surfaces until they shine—especially in a kitchen or bathroom.  And never, never litter. In fact, I would argue that littering defaces public areas more than graffiti because it’s more of a hazard. Kiki argues that rag pickers will clean up the litter and put it in the landfill, so there’s not much difference between throwing trash in a can or on a train track. (Not that she condones the system that perpetuates rag pickers. According to her, they save the government and its subjects hundreds of thousands of rupees each  year  through informal recycling, but receive next to nothing for their labor—aside from chronic diseases and drug dependencies.) “What about birds who eat plastic bags?” I shot back at her, thinking of Coastal Clean-Up advertisements that feature seabirds strangled by six-pack rings and jellyfish suffocating in a sea of Chinese take-out bags with ‘thank you’ printed on their sides.  “Birds eat plastic bags?” Kiki said. I debated relating my limited knowledge of point source and non-point source pollution but decided to let the subject drop.

I got assigned a lower regular berth, which meant that I could spend most of the train ride looking out the window.  It also meant that I was furthest from the aisle and could watch the sleeper car traffic in relative privacy—a privacy compounded by the fact that I don’t speak Tamil or Hindi. Although I bought a “Learn Tamil Through English in 30 Days” textbook,  I had to slog through the alphabet before I could learn grammar or phrases.  Tamil has thirteen vowels (three “u” sounds), thirty-four consonants (three “n” sounds) and two hundred and fifty-two vowel-consonant pairings (that’s where I gave up).

When I entered the compartment, a pair of young men in Western attire were arguing with pair of men in Indian attire over which berths their respective family members would occupy. The men in Western dress had fair complexions, jelly roll midriffs, slicked but thinning hair, and two fat aunts with asthmatic wheezes. The men in Indian dress had black complexions , wiry frames, voluminous hair, and a plump mother with a headstrong daughter. I believe the dispute revolved around seating arrangements, since the men kept pointing to their tickets and the asthmatic aunts kept gazing at the berths across from me and shifting their weight with impatience. The Western-dressed men kept avoiding eye contact with the Indian-dressed men, a difficult feat since the Indian-dressed men were like guard dogs on a short leash—growling, stamping, crowding, pushing. When the ticket conductor passed, the Western-dressed men showed him their tickets (while a shooting a smug, condescending look at the Indian men, who returned the gaze and put their hands on their hips). In the end, one of the aunts lowered herself onto the lower berth opposite my seat, breathing heavily with her hand on her heart and I think everyone felt sorry for her. The whistle begin to sound, and the Indian-dressed men left the train and ran onto the platform, waving to the mother and daughter through the window. The daughter began to cry. She had a diamond jaw and samurai eyebrows that gave her a prideful air even as she curled on her mother’s lap, emitting limp moans. The asthmatic aunt grunted and loosened her sari, and the daughter glared at her while the mother whispered, “shh, shh.”

We rolled past slums on the outskirts of Chennai—one room shacks packed wall to wall in long rows, separated by narrow alleyways and lined with trash. Some shacks had brick frames with aluminum roofs, but most were either entirely aluminum or a combination of banana leaf lattice and a waterproofing agent. Clothes hung to dry on the walls, and women stirred outdoor kettles while naked bottomed children pulled their saris. I noticed that many of the young men walking through the alleys wore pressed slacks, button down shirts, and slicked hair; they could have been the auto drivers or security guards or shop attendants in Kiki’s up-market neighborhood.

Whenever we stopped, a fresh batch of beggars boarded the train: mothers and children, cripples, hijras (transgender women), and floor sweepers who moved on their hands and knees, brushing trash from under the seats with their hands or with little strips of cardboard. The floor sweepers never made eye contact until they asked for money, and even then, their attitude was so deferential that their whole bodies seemed to point to the floor: “I am less than dust, less than ashes, less than the least.” As a white girl, I was always their primary target, which meant I had to make the decision of whether to give and how much while the rest of the car watched and judged. Kiki’s mother had advised me to give out of compassion rather than guilt, but the distinction between the two seemed arbitrary in light of the volume of beggars and their pointed attention to me. In practice, I based my decisions on 1) the number of ruppees in my pocket; 2) how many beggars I had just encountered; and 3) the strategy of each beggar (did they approach anyone else in the car? Did they give me space to make a decision? Did they employ guilt-inducing tactics, such as aggressive eye contact, jabbing their babies, and making their children beg?).

The train sped across a long valley studded with round bushes that looked like tropical tumbleweed and short trees with palm fronds that protruded at odd angles. Brown light filtered through the clouds and whenever the train stopped, the wind vanished and the air became thick and stagnant. Every few minutes, we passed farmland where men and women worked to cultivate rice, vegetables, and some sort of leafy stalk that drooped in the heat. There was a startling lack of machinery: no tractors, no dusters, not even a sprinkler—nothing to aid the farmers aside from cows, carts, and bulging baskets. They lived in small villages that resembled the shanty-towns outside Chennai—aluminum siding, banana lattice, clothes drying on the walls—but the villages seemed much healthier when removed from the city smells and trash heaps.

As we entered Andra Pradesh, an elderly couple joined the compartment: the husband had cropped hair, a double chin and pop-eyes; the wife had large glasses, gray streaks, and a round face. Her sari was wrapped all the way to her blouse so that not even a crack of midriff showed. In English, she asked where I came from and I decided not to lie—why should I? It was a friendly question meant to elicit friendly conversation. When I mentioned San Francisco, her face lit up. “Oh, America,” she breathed. Her eyes traveled the length of my body, taking in my hair, my skin color, the maroon kurtha I wore over a western tank top, and my old pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. She lingered on my jeans, her eyes veiled, then snapped back to attention and asked what I was doing in India, where I was going, and why. I discovered that she was on her way to Mumbai to visit a sick uncle, and that she rarely traveled outside her home in Kanchipuram—especially on behalf of her family, not her husband’s. The uncle must have been in critical condition. She had two younger brothers who lived in Mumbai and kept advising her to move to the city. “They tell me to be free,” she said. “But…” she clicked her tongue and flicked her eyes at the bunk where her husband slept, the corner of his dhoti dangling over the edge. She changed the subject: “My brothers speak excellent English. I was learning, but I got married and no one anyway speaks English in Kanchipuram. I like your English. It’s very stylish.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I like your English, too. You speak very well.”

She laughed and blushed and waved me away. “No! No, no no. My English is like a child. It’s good to talk to you. I can get very good practice. Do you like India?”

I hesitated, thinking of the way men shouted and leered at women on the beach, of auto drivers whose eyes pinwheeled with greed when they saw me, of stinking open sewers. A man sitting across from me flicked a plastic cup out the window. “Yes,” I said, setting my teeth into a friendly smile.

She decided not to press me. “America is very different?” she asked.

“Yes. Very different.”

She hesitated, then added in a timid voice: “In America, you are free.” She was looking at the hole in my jeans, and somehow I knew she meant “women” when she said “you.”

I watched her blink for a moment then murmured: “freedom is relative,” even though I agreed wholeheartedly with her statement.

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean America is lonely,” I rephrased. “Families aren’t as strong.”

“My family is anyway too strong!” she laughed.

That evening, I ate bread that I had purchased in Chennai—not because I was worried about hygiene, but because I had spent two hundred ruppees on provisions for the trip and I didn’t want to spring anymore money on food. Vendors walked past our compartment every five minutes with little aluminum containers that emitted marvelous scents, but I sat in my corner shaking my head at all the delicacies. A teenage girl and her father had boarded the train in Andra Pradesh; she eyed my bread bag with a mix of curiosity and amusement, and daintily snacked on lemon rice (I noticed she used a spoon instead of her fingers).

Around eleven or twelve, the residents in the compartment wordlessly agreed to go to sleep. We raised the middle berths and I slid onto my lower berth, shuttering my window before drifting into a light sleep. I woke to the sound of vendors chanting “chai, chai, chai” and pulled up my shutter.

I saw mountains. They swooped above the tracks in graceful curves and planes, tipped by rainclouds and covered with dense, green jungle. They dropped into jagged gorges and narrow planes where farms and tiny villages struggled for space among the trees and vines and thick, grassy ground cover. On steep slopes, pristine waterfalls trickled down the bare rock-face before disappearing once more into the foliage (at least, they looked pristine; who knows what kind of run-off they picked up). The talkative woman slid off her bunk and joined me. She reported that we were in Pune. “It’s beautiful!” I said, secretly thinking that it was a landscape worthy of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli—and secretly hating myself for comparing India to literature written by the imperialist who popularized the term “white man’s burden.”

The woman watched me intently, then put a finger on her left nostril, took a long breath, and switched the finger to her right nostril as she exhaled. “Breathe [she inhaled], and breathe [she exhaled]. It is very relaxing,” she said. “You have to—” she struggled for the correct English word and settled on simply saying ‘nose.’ “You have to nose [she touched her nostrils demonstratively] or it does not relax. I’m sorry my English is so bad.”

“Don’t worry, I understand.”

“Do you mind if I talk?”

“Not at all.”

“When I’m very busy and very sad and I have no space, I breathe—and breathe—like that. It’s very peaceful. We have meditation in India. Do you meditate?”

“Not for a long time,” I said. During my depression in high school, I took a comparative religion class through my synagogue and learned a bit about Buddhist meditation. I used to sit against the wall, my legs crossed, my back aching while I held it straight. I’d visualize my thoughts and put them into an imaginary gray weather balloon, push it through the top of my skull and let it drift into the heavens. Unfortunately, as soon as I released one balloon, I had to start filling another. Thoughts piled on thoughts, so many that they became impossible to visualize. My back would collapse, my legs would spasm, and I’d curl against the wall telling myself to breathe in and breathe out. Perhaps I should have tried putting a finger on my nostril.

“It’s just a little thing. It’s something I do for only myself. Very peaceful. Very nice.” She repeated the gesture and motioned for me to try it. “Finger on nose,” she said. “This nose.” She pointed at her left nostril. We breathed in silence.

“I learned this from my guru,” she said. “Are you going to visit South India?”

“When I get back from Mumbai.”

A smile erupted on her face and she produced a glossy booklet from her bag. “Do you mind?” she asked, opening the book and placing it on my lap.“This is my guru—and my ashram. You must visit! There are lots of people from the West; my guru is famous all over in the world! You will like it.” She proceeded to guide me through the booklet, which described the ashram, its construction and the many merits of her guru, a silver bearded, finely wrinkled man with deep set eyes and a complaisant mouth like the Buddha. Recent photos feature him in white robes with a white turban, but the woman took special care to show me older photos of him as a young man in bellbottoms with a handle bar mustache. In one print, him cradled an acoustic guitar on his lap, reminiscent of Seegar or Dylan—the folksong army.

The woman told me that she had helped build the temple in the ashram, a huge brick dome dedicated to Shiva. Her fingers lovingly caressed images of Shiva, his linga, and the guru meditating in the lamplight. “Look!” she exclaimed, tapping an photo of a white girl who had joined him in prayer and smiling at me as if to say, “this could be you!”

“We build the temple with no help,” she expounded. “Volunteers, is that the word? We moved every brick—so much work! But it was very good for me. My mother died only a short time ago, and I liked being with nice people in one nice place—not at my house! I was very close to my mother, I still miss her.” The woman caught her breath and paused. I hoped she wouldn’t cry.

“What was she like?” I asked.

“Oh, she loved me,” the woman said with a pained smile. “I got married very young and it was at first very hard. I was in a new family and my husband was such a BIG man—he anyway seemed big because I never had a boyfriend, not like America. You have lots of boyfriends in America. I was afraid of my new family when I got married, and I had to baby one year later and I was very lonely. My mother called me every day; she made me laugh—she always makes me laugh! So funny!” The woman paused and rested her hand on a picture of her guru. “I’m sorry my English is not very good.”

“It’s better than my Tamil!”

“But you must learn Tamil—I can teach you.”

“I bought a book,” I said, pulling “Learn Tamil through English in 30 Days” from the crack between my water bottle and the wall.

“Oh! Very good! Very good!” Her hands flew to her cheeks and her eyes began to shine.

“I haven’t gotten very far, I’m stilling working on the alphabet,” I apologized.

“It’s a beautiful language, you will see. I wish I could explain it to you. You must visit us in Kanchipuram—take my phone number. I will be home in four days and after that, you can call.” I nodded and entered her number into my cell, but she looked disappointed when she saw me twiddling with the electric buttons. “Would you mind very much signing my book?” she asked. “I would be so…so happy.”

I thought it was a strange request and agreed to do it on the condition that she signed my book in return. She wrote on the title page: Drink hot tea or coffee, burn your lips and remember me. “My mother said that,” she told me. “It’s nice, hmm?”

“Very evocative,” I said, and corrected my language when she gave me a blank stare. “Very nice. I like your handwriting, too. It’s perfect.”

“I won first place in handwriting at school,” she beamed. “But that was a long time ago.”

The train pulled into the Mumbai. Like Chennai, shanty towns lined the tracks on the city edge, although a few moldy high-rises broke up the monotony of aluminum roofs. Snappy signs advertised the high-rises as “social housing projects.” As we approached the city center, a monsoon broke and began to pour through the compartment window. We lowered as many blinds as possible, but a few of the were stuck, so we all crowded toward the aisleway to escape the wetness. The headstrong daughter who had cried as we left Chennai said something in Tamil and motioned disapprovingly at the cuffs of my jeans. I couldn’t understand what she wanted and shook my head apologetically. She bobbed her head at me and turned away, shoulders square and fist balled. Her mother “shh-ed” her yet again, and smoothed her kurtha so that it covered her knees.

The talkative woman insisted on giving me advice about how to travel to Kiki’s friend’s apartment, where we would be staying. “My brother will talk to the taxi driver. You have to be careful with the taxi drivers or they will take you all across town.” She turned to the mother and daughter and described my situation to them in Tamil; they gave me sympathetic smiles and bobbed their heads.

The train pulled into the station and I followed the woman onto the platform. My entire shirt and backpack got drenched in the half second it took to step from the sleeper car onto the platform. I could see the taxi stand directly ahead, drowning in a lake that grew steadily deeper as the rain continued to pound. The woman’s brother greeted me, a clean shaven young man, well-muscled with a firm handshake. “Abhishek is a wrestler!” the woman exclaimed. Abhishek gave me a cursory smile, the kind coffee-bearing businessmen flash each other in downtown Sydney or San Francisco. He addressed me in perfect English, just as the woman had promised, and he used the language of deference and rote politeness that characterized most Americans: “So nice to meet you. And what’s your name? And how was your train ride? Are you taking a taxi? Wait one minute, I’ll arrange details with the driver.” Already, three or four drivers had spotted me and had crowded round, asking if Madam would like a ride. The brother turned to one and his smooth, professional manner immediately dissolved into a raised voice, exaggerated hand gestures and an uninterrupted series of disgruntled head shakes. At last, one of the drivers sighed and gave me a disappointed look. “Come,” he said. The brother turned back to me and became soft-spoken and polite once more: “Have a nice day, and don’t let him charge you more than 400 rupees.” I gave the woman a hug and stepped into the rain, wading through a knee deep puddle to the taxi (I suddenly understood what the headstrong girl on the train had been trying to tell me: “Roll up your pants!”).

The taxi driver ended up swindling me for 1000 rupees, but that’s another story.

When we arrived at the ticket depot at 4:30am, there was already a line. I counted eighteen people on mats and crouched on the sidewalk in front of the gates. Kiki said the depot would open at 8am. Train reservations fill up quickly in India, so if you want to take a last minute trip, you have to reserve tatkal tickets, which are released two days before the train departs. Althouh the number of tatkal tickets depends on the number of cancellations, they usually disappear about half an hour to an hour after sales begin. Last time Kiki had bought a tatkal ticket, she had to arrive at 3:30am to ensure success; the time before, she had arrived at 7:30am, and by the time she got to the ticket window the seats on her train were long gone. The ticketmaster behind the window had given her a very smug, condescending look when she complained. “You should have been on time buying the tickets,” he had said. She protested that she had arrived half an hour early and the ticketmaster laughed. “Try six hours early! Some people spend the night here!”

We lay our sleeping mat on the sidewalk and claimed spots 19 and 20 in the queue. Kiki assured me that we had a good chance of getting the takal ticket–the first thirty people were usually successful. I don’t know how she came up with that figure, but she didn’t pause to explain. In a minute she had passed out of the mat, her arm over her eyes. I lay next to her. A man joined the line and motioned that we should move our mat, but I shook my head; it was my space. He sat cross-legged behind us–number 21–while I curled into a ball in a effort to shield against the mosquitos. I dreamed about my family dying. We were in the middle of a jungle full of banana leaves and mold and flying beetles, and when I fought the man who had murdered my sister, I bit him like a dog.

At 5:45am, Number 21 kicked me in the butt. He was running towards the gates trying to maintain his place in line, while twenty or thirty young men rushed past, shouting and elbowing. “COME!” Number 21 bellowed, then added a few words in Tamil for emphasis. I slung my backpack on my shoulder and took a step toward the gate, then realized I couldn’t leave Kiki behind. There was no time, so I followed Number 21′s lead, and kicked her in the butt as well. I told her to meet me inside with the mat and the pillow.

Chaos had erupted inside the compound, everyone cheating and arguing and jockeying for a better position. I tried to join in the fray and push to the head of the line, hoping that people would give way because I was a girl (and a Westerner), but Number 21 grabbed my arm and positioned me in front of him. “Stay,” he commanded, puffing his stomach and looking up his nose at me. He had handlebar mustache. I scanned the line and saw I had been demoted to number 35, but decided to listen to the mustache man, formally Number 21 and now Number 36. He handed me an English and Tamil order form, which demanded information about my name, address, train line, preferred method of payment, etc. I filled it out while the man tried to help me in Tamil, pointing every now and then at and empty box and insisting that I fill it in. I shrugged my shoulders in response and tried to communicate that I couldn’t finish the form–I didn’t have all the information.

Kiki wandered inside the enclosure, set the sleeping mat on the ground across from the line and fell asleep again. Every now and then a young man stared at the curve of her hip or the way her hand draped across her head. At around 7:30am, she woke up and sat next to me. Several woman in saris arrived and joined their husbands or boyfriends with steaming cups of chai. Kiki eyed them mournfully, and wished that a breakfast vendor would set up shop in the courtyard.

Half an hour later, the ticketmasters opened the depot doors and everyone filed inside–this time very quietly and orderly. Number 21/36 wheeled me into the seat in front of him and ten minutes later I was standing at ticket counter watching the ticketmaster print a receipt. Kiki and I celebrated with a breakfast at the fast food joint down the street: thirty ruppees for chai in a metal cup and a liberal serving of Masal Vadai (fried lentil pancakes) with mint chutney. Arounds us, the neighborhood woke up. Cars honked and auto-rickshaws tailgated bicyles. Fruit sellers arranged their wares, while the smell of mango and car exhaust drifted down the street.

I didn’t tell Kiki, but I was relieved to be traveling again. I wanted to be on my own.

The good news: I don’t have giardia or tapeworms or any other excrete-able parasite and/or bacteria. The bad news: what do I have? Who knows. When I asked the doctor, she wagged her head (none of her curls moved) and announced that I had “an Infection.” Where? I asked, and she vaguely pointed at my torso: “Stomach…bowel…intestines…antibiotics…dehydration…electrolytes…” She dismissed me with another head wag (was she wearing a wig?).

So that’s my diagnosis. How to treat it? Eat two horse pills of heavy-duty antibiotics morning and evening, drink a lot, sleep a lot, and eat sparingly. No caffeine, no alcohol, no chillies, no milk, no raw food, no street food, no high-acid food, no food at all except yogurt, rice, chips and wafers. Last night, I broke out of my lethargy and joined Kiki’s friends for a good-bye dinner on Mosque Road in Bangalore. The menu featured “chicken clear soup,” and I almost cried when I tasted it. I’m thinking about setting up a shrine to my Aunt Awesome in California, who makes the best chicken soup in God’s good world.

Although I spent most of my time in the beds and bathrooms of Kiki’s family and friends, I do have a few impressions of Mumbai and Bangalore: I went on two twenty-four hour train rides (once alone and once with Kiki), hung out with Kiki’s gay activist friends, explored the Bandra suburb of Mumbai, saw the latest Bollywood chic flick, haggled in a street market, had coffee with some cool French backpackers, and learned a bit about Hindustani and Carnatic music. I will write about all of these experiences in my next few posts. For now, I will leave you with my strongest impression: relief. Relief  from the strict dress code and male/female etiquette of Chennai. Relief from the day-to-day battles of haggling and avoiding eye contact with passers-by.

Mumbai and Bangalore are more liberal and—in my experience walking through well-to-do neighborhoods—more Western than Chennai. Middle class girls wear jeans instead of kurthas. Families shop at opulent malls and drive SUVs. Trendy young things lounge in bars and coffee shops where Rihanna hits alternate with the latest Bollywood special. I have to admit: I enjoyed it. I enjoyed international brand-names, spoken English, tidy streets and gated communities—even as beggars held out their hands and Kiki’s never-ending chant against capitalism and gentrification rang in my head. I enjoyed displays of wealth because they represented a freedom that I missed in Chennai: the freedom to be young and a woman and all alone. The freedom of knowing the rules (Western rules) and being able to follow them. The freedom of not feeling guilty.

Before I go, I will say that Mumbai is a relief after Chennai. Boys and girls mix more freely, there are more people of different races visible on the streets (not to mention different religions) so I don’t stick out as much, and the infrastructure is in better repair—in the good neighborhoods, the streets have sidewalks and the electrical wiring isn’t exposed, and the facades of the buildings are trim with new coats of paint. Women wear jeans and by the Marina, they can be seen walking alone with designer dogs. The auto-rickshaws aren’t owned by the mob so their meters work and they don’t try to rip me off. The men on the streets don’t shout “halo, Madam, where are you from?” whenever I pass. And beggars don’t follow me for blocks, touching their lips with two fingers as a sign of hunger. I feel free here and I have to keep reminding myself that the only reason the quality of life is so high here is because people have become wealthy off foreign money. The power of the dollar is not to be underestimated. But more on this later, after I get my computer fixed.

I bought leggings and a maroon kurthi for much too high a price. I still haven’t worn them because I’m embarrassed. When I walk down the street, I never listen to my iPod—Western music feels out of place; then again, I resist dressing in traditional clothes. I’m so tall and white…I can’t hide that behind an embroidered tunic.

*
Two days ago, I got caught in a monsoon. I was walking across the beach, trying to dodge a rain cloud, but the faster I jogged, the closer the cloud blew. At last, I realized it was moving seaward from the city, the edge of it curled in a mushroom rim as it pushed against an ocean front. I couldn’t escape it. Soon, heavy drops were smacking my skin, so thick they stung. In a minute, I was drenched down to my underwear. I hoped to find protection at the bus stand, but the wind blew raindrops underneath the shelter. When the 6D arrived, I had to ford a torrential gutter and soaked my shoes and socks. Inside, the bus lights flickered and threatened to die, but I felt relieved to be among sari-clad women and heckling men. For the first time, no one seemed to care that I was light-skinned or foreign. An elderly lady patted an open seat beside her and bobbed her head in distinctive Indian fashion. Her specs twinkled. “Sit,” she said with a thick accent. I wiped the water from my face and bobbed my head in return.

The parade wasn’t so much a protest as a celebration, a mix of skin color and nationality and language—Western dress alongside kurthas and pyjamas, men wearing lipstick and transgenders wearing saris. They danced with their hands in the air, their hips swaying, belly fat jiggling, mouths open in celebratory shrieks. They danced the way Jewish woman dance at a orthodox wedding, free behind the barrier that separates them from the men, wigs askew, sweat on their lips, arms linked, unafraid—at last, at last—to touch and make love without kissing. I have seen gay pride parades before, but never the dancing, never the mix of gender, the celebration of feminine beauty, and never the flash of saris on broad shoulders. The air smelled like sea salt, perfume, and pancake make-up.

When the parade ended, Kiki and her boss gave an impassioned speech about changing gender identification on the census, families accepting sexual minorities, and hospitals providing affordable, non-discriminatory healthcare (see http://orinam.net/chennaipride for more info). The moment after the speeches ended—protestors cheering and waving their banners—policemen broke up the parade: “OK, time’s up, your time is up, off the street, out of the way.” Some transgender woman started a quiet after-party on the lawn, but a group of officers ordered them to leave. Kiki intervened. She said that the women were sitting in a public place; they had a right to relax on the beach along with families, heterosexual couples, vendors, beggars, and cat-calling boys.

I bought a Popsicle (pre-packaged) and sat in the sand with Kiki’s friends while she coordinated clean up and talked to the press. Her friends had accompanied her on the bus from Bangalore: a former IT technician (native to Bangalore); a Chilean photographer; an American musician and pre-med candidate; an Indian-American activist and education student; and an American hippie from South Carolina who fosters communal living through gardening. Kiki met them in a collective called “Jaga” where her boyfriend had lived before he returned to America. Activists build Jaga in two weeks from concrete slabs and they host a variety of projects from a community garden to writing workshops to art galleries. Jaga residents don’t pay rent; they contribute to the building and organization through hands-on work.
We talked about art and travels and India and effective modes of collaboration while the sky darkened and electric lights outlined kiddie carnival rides, a makeshift acrobatics show, ice cream stands, samosa stands, and every now and then the flicker of a horse half-prancing, half-limping. Wooden floats and canoes lined the ridge that separated dry sand from wet sand, their hulls pointed toward the ocean. During the day, men huddled in their shade while mothers sat on their walls and played lifeguard for children who never wore swimsuits: girls splashed in the waves wearing scarves and kurthas; boys unbuttoned their shirts and sank into the water, naked from the waist up. During the night, women abandoned the boats, but men continued to loiter. I suspect that they sipped alcohol from black plastic bags while they watched families and vendors walk along the surf. The vendors rang cowbells and trailed a string of cotton candy bags behind them.

At length, Kiki returned to our group, glowing in triumph, and an old woman interrupted our conversation, slapping an ebony stick against her palm in a menacing fashion. She was a “fortune teller” and only had half her teeth. Kiki said she spoke with a accent to add mystery to her act—but, unfortunately, the “mystery” prevented Kiki from understanding a single word. Later, a boy leading a monkey held out his palm for a few rupees. Someone had pinned in a piece of fabric around the monkey’s waist and painted its cheeks and lips with rouge. I gave the boy a few coins, even though my disgust at animal cruelty counterbalanced my pity…

I gave him money because he reminded me of the “gypsy” children who had begged for money before the parade started. A four-year-old girl did back flips and contorted her body through a hoop the size of a four-egg frying pan while her older sister accompanied the act on a makeshift tabla drum. Her brothers passed a tin. One of them had crossed eyes; the other had a chipped tooth. Kiki offered the contortionist her lunch, and after a short consultation, all the siblings crowded round with metal plates and bowls asking for more, more, more. We obliged them with two flavors of biryani, riata, Chinese style paneer, and a three litre water bottle. When they had finished, we saw them washing their plates in a mud puddle.

We had dinner in Valmiki Nagar, the beach town where Kiki lives. After turning down a dark alleyway, trash and dogs and mud puddles on either side of us (as usual), we ducked through a gateway encircled by running lights and well-maintained wooden slats. Inside, palms rustled beneath party canopies and Ray Charles growled the blues. The menu listed pizza and ensalade and antipasti at American prices. Female customers wore capri pants and polo shirts instead of the traditional sari or kurthi. I lounged on a leather couch and wondered where India had gone.

India is culture shock. It’s not the poverty – I was prepared for much worse. It’s what happens when the government is corrupt and too poor to provide services to a burgeoning population: trash everywhere, packs of dogs in the street.

I went to a party with Kiki’s brother last night in a nice three story house–rich even by western standards, but surrounded by rundown apartments (peeling plaster, rags in the windows), sewage in the streets, more dirt than pavement, at least 11 cows munching on paper garbage in a side street (yes, I counted). By US standards, the neighborhood looked like a desperate ghetto; however, inside the house, beautiful terracotta floor tiles layered the floor and granite slabs covered the counter tops and  books, knickknacks, electric equipment, photos, etc. etc. filled the shelves. The owner (someon’es auntie) had purchased a full entertainment system complete with an expensive projector

I also have trouble adjusting to the fact that none of the public spaces are private, if that makes sense. No benches on the streets downtown, no parks (at least they aren’t very common – I finally found one today, across from the secretariat building). Vendors set up camp on the sidewalks so pedestrians share the streets with the cars and bikes and mopeds and auto-rickshaws. I spent an afternoon on the beach and about 26 men asked who I was and where I came from (I tell them Israel, because everyone thinks people from the USA are suckers. Israelis have a reputation for being loudmouths and relentless bargainers). One guy offered to teach me Tamil phrases, so I decided to talk to him. Bad idea. Even though I said I had a boyfriend – a long-term, very committed boyfriend – he kept winking at me and talking about how he loves girls and I’m so pretty and it’s really not safe on the beach for a girl, and why am I alone, anyway? It’s like that everywhere. I don’t look men in the eyes anymore, just stare straight ahead.

Even finding a restaurant is hard. There’s street food which I don’t tend to eat even though Kiki assures me it’s OK. Then there are cheap fast food Chinese and biryani places, but they are full of men, not a single woman. So I don’t eat there, either. Women (women plural) usually eat at trendy joints that look terrible from the outside (like I said, the facades of all the buildings are falling apart) but have marble inlays and cushioned chairs and a suave, Western feel on the inside. Even in these restaurants, the servers—all male—raise an eyebrow at a white girl dining alone. They give me the evil eye or wink and ask where I’m from (Israel, goddammit!).

Now, more than any other time, I wish I was traveling with a partner. India is a very very very communal society, so I feel like a pariah being alone and a girl and white. Oh, and the f-ing auto-rickshaw drivers are the worst. They always want to rip me and I’m still learning how to bargain with them, so I always end up paying too much. One driver had the audacity to ask if I wanted to go jewelry shopping – yeah right, like I can’t see through that scam. I talked to one of Kiki’s brother’s friends about it and he said the thing to do in that situation (this driver also tried giving me faulty change) is to get out, write down the plate number of the rickshaw and tell the driver you’ll call his manager. Next time.

After a week, I’m starting to get used to the fact that there’s order in the trash, in the beggars on the street, in the vendors selling everything from flowers for temple to coconut to fresh mango (and you haven’t lived til you’ve had Indian mango–not a hint of bitter, it’s just pure sweet juice, like the ripest yellow peach from the farmer’s market, but more flavorful). It turns out Kiki lives in a really upscale neighborhood, the equivalent of Galveston in Houston. I didn’t realize that until she took me to trendy restaurants that look like nothing from the street–and until I rode the bus across town and saw “low income” neighborhoods and, finally, the slums: shacks with banana leaf walls and banana leaf roofs, avenues of garbage, sewage in the streets, and bony children wearing shorts the color of sludge.

For all Kiki’s outrage about Indian government, media, and business downplaying poverty, she comes from a very privileged background. At University of Chicago, she made sure to tell friends and acquaintances that she spoke native English – a first language, not a second language – because her accent led people assume she was a FOB, low class, etc, etc. She didn’t exaggerate—English IS her first language, but I now understand the stereotype she fought against: in India, English is a mark of wealth, class, opportunity, power. Now, Kiki is a sexual rights activist and Chennai, and she brags about her Tamil skills. Many of co-workers come from disadvantaged homes or demographics (transgenders, sex workers, etc), and aside from “yes,” “no,” “come,” “go,” “madam,” and “thank you,” they don’t speak a word of English. Speaking Tamil makes her seem like one of the “people,” even though she comes to an airy apartment with posh light fixtures and marble table tops, a fridge full of food prepared by a personal cook, English books, and extended family who travel abroad, pay memberships to VIP clubs, and associate with the rich and powerful.

The cook is another uncomfortably foreign presence in my experience of India. Vassinta is efficient, obliging, engaged (although she speaks almost no English—and I speak no Tamil), but I can’t get used to her. How should I act? What should I say? Is it rude to insist on cooking for myself or washing my own dishes? (Yes to the former—the kitchen is her kingdom; no to the latter—saliva, even secondhand through a plate or spoon, is dirty, impure, polluted.) Whenever she prepares a meal  (shaved pumpkin in yoghurt for breakfast, sambolina for lunch), I want to jump from my chair, to offer help, to shout out: “no worries, mate, I’m not worth it, – anything but serve me, please!” I’ve never before been served in a home on a regular basis, and it chafes against my sense of self-sufficiency and class equality.

All the same, I’m slowly starting to enjoy Chennai. Going out doesn’t scare me so much, even if it does take energy to fend off men, beggars and auto-rickshaw drivers who demand exorbitant rates. Today, I told a guy to get lost and successfully bargained with a driver – so there! I visited Fort St. George, the first British stronghold in Madrasputnam, and St Mary’s, a church in the middle of the fort where the faint strains of Mozart drifted through a quiet garden. The tall steeple with its bell and its cross and the quiet sanctuary within—vaulted ceilings and a gray monotone—soothed me, comforted me. As I watched a solitary Indian pray, his hands clasped in a palmer’s kiss, I suddenly identified with the colonizer who bends and forges history and culture to fit his own image. I understood why the British were so eager to import their clothes, their buildings, their food, their lifestyle: a familiar oasis in a sea of saris and jasmine buds and toothless beggars, crumbling sidewalks, mustachioed peacock men, garbage—blowing in the wind.

Here is an account of my last impressions of Australia, and my first impressions of India:

*

Fremantle, Perth, at six forty-five in the evening: a stiff breeze, a few stars visible between darkened cumulus clouds, headlights from the airport shuttle glaring down a street that is already asleep for the night. Kiki’s ex-boyfriend takes my suitcase firmly in hand and delivers it to the driver. He asks me if I have my passport, my rupees, my dinner, my bag of fruit for the flight, and I nod yes, yes, yes, yes. His eyes glint in the streetlight, thick brows drawn into a steeple of concern, and suddenly I’m filled with overwhelming gratitude—for him, for the last seven and a half months, for Australia, for a journey come to an end. I don’t want to leave, but I step into the shuttle and close the door.

*

Perth airport at eight-twenty in the evening: white men in suits, sun-wrinkled women with blonde highlights, cellphones, clean tiles, clearly marked signs, and a smooth Aussie accent over the loudspeaker. I eat my dinner and throw away the fork. I can’t bring pointed metal objects through the security gates.

*

Singapore airport at four in the morning: touchdown. Taxi headlights outline a lawn and monocot leaves the size of a man. Outside, the air feels like a jacuzzi; inside, the air-conditioner is so cold that kids wear sweaters as they slide through a plastic play-set. Their parents sip McDonald’s coffee.

*

Five in the morning: an Indian master’s student strikes up a conversation with me: “Very nice to meet you,” he lisps. “I am your good friend. If you need anything in India, do not hesitate to call.”

*

Six in the morning: I get my boarding pass and head to the main terminal where there is another play-set, stronger air conditioning, jewelry stands and fine liquor shops, spotless floor tiles, flat screen TVs, and a free internet kiosk that I can’t resist using.

*

Seven in the morning: a white hall, like a doctor’s office. I am sleeping in an armchair across from the ticket counter, a potted palm on one side and a window on the other side. Mist on the runway.

*

Singapore airport at eight in the morning: an Indian in uniform calls for boarding passes; women in saris surge in front of me, and the Indian student appears to my right, his knapsack over one shoulder, his lips pursed while he waits for me to wake up and unfold my boarding pass. We stand at the head of the queue. Outside, the mist has thinned to reveal lush, evenly spaced trees bordering the runway. The corridor behind me fills with dark skin and cotton pants, sandals, silks, flowers, sunglasses, and western backpacks. I am the tallest girl and the whitest girl; I can see over the top of every single head. Two pilots push through the crowd—buzz cuts, blue eyes, lanky mid-western frames. I miss home.

*

Chennai from the airplane: squat buildings, avenues obscured by tree tops, white plaster and the occasional splash of color, faded to Mediterranean pastels—lavender, periwinkle, mint. I look desperately for the hint of another world, a towering temple perhaps, or better yet, an elephant; instead I see a freeway and a rim of pollution.

*

Chennai airport at ten in the morning: humid despite the air conditioning; a white corridor that seems yellow after the pomp and polish of Singapore; slow-moving traffic on the tarmac outside. I duck into a bathroom and don’t think twice about using the toilet paper, unaware that it will be the last square I enjoy for two and a half weeks. At the end of the corridor, mustachioed guards lounge next to a shrine with candlesticks on either side of a five-foot, brass-sculpted god. They give me the evil eye when I throw my fruit in the dustbin and pause to fill out my customs form (I don’t declare the cheese that I’m bringing to Kiki and her mom).

The customs hall is large, dimly lit by overhead fluorescence, and entirely empty except for officials and the other passengers from my flight. The Indian student tries to catch my eye, but I decide to stand in a line on the opposite end of the hall. I hand my passport and customs form to a dry, bespectacled woman with a long braid and faded sari. “Reason for your visit?” she asks in a heavy Tamil accent. I don’t understand her immediately.

“I’m traveling,” I say. “I’m a tourist.”

“Rrrreason for your VISIT?” she repeats.

I point to the box I’ve already checked on my customs form. “Leisure/Holiday,” I tell her. “I’m. A. Tourist.”

She snorts and tosses her head, as if trying to shoo away a fly. After a long pause, she asks: “What is your education?”

“What?

“Your degree? Education? School?”

“BACHELORS DEGREE.” I want to pound my fist on the counter top and demand why the question has any bearing on my leisure/holiday. I could have the education level of a kindergartener and still enter the country—so long as my passport has an Indian visa.

We lock eyes and the corner of the woman’s mouth twists into a snarl. Her hand hovers over my passport. At last, she stamps it and hands it back to me.

“Welcome to India,” she says. I nod curtly.

*

Chennai airport at ten forty-five in the morning: a small crowd gathers by the baggage turnstile People wheel their luggage past white-clad security guards who occasionally make an effort to check a passport or question a suspicious bag. They seem like they could care less about avalanche of items rolling into their country.

Westerners say the smell of India is the first thing that shocks them when they leave the airport. For me, it is the noise and the crowds. A small aisle way extends along the outer wall of the airport, separated from a crowd of families, drivers, and business reps by a thin rope. Torsos twist across the rope, heads crane, hands wave, fingers jab, bodies in the back push to the front, and everyone shouts. The language sounds angry: rolling “r’s”, consonant stops, clicking tongues. Everyone in a hurry, everyone up for a fight. Tense greetings and hurried departures. A scene out of Rodin’s “Gates of Hell.”

Because of my height, I can see past the crowd to a line of vendors against a cement wall, which blocks the airport from what I assume is the parking lot (car honks emanate from behind it).

A man from a pre-paid taxi stand approaches: “Would you like a ride, Madam? Very good price.” Kiki, her mom, and her ex-boyfriend (the one who hosted me in Perth) all recommend pre-paid taxis as the best transport option because drivers can’t overcharge or take unnecessary detours. I tell the man I’d like to go to Valmiki Nagar, except I mispronounce both words (“Val” as in “valley” and “Nagar” as in “nagger,” not realizing that the flat “ahhh” sound doesn’t exist in Tamil). When I show the man a written version of the address, he rips it from my fingers and scribbles the neighborhood name on a slip of paper, which he thrusts back at me in a single motion. “Taxi pick-up is down the corridor on your right hand side,” he says. “Go now, Madam. Immediately.” Before I have time to respond, he’s pitching the next potential customer: “Pre-paid taxi! Best price! Very fast!” Co-workers on either side of him lounge against a table, swatting flies and fanning themselves with their shirt collars.

*

Kiki instructed me to call from the airport, but I don’t know how the telephone booths work. Some have coin slots but no sign saying how much a call costs; some have a phone connected to a timer and receipt machine. Women in dusty saris sit next to the machines holding coin pouches and swatting flies. I decide to try a person-operated booth because I don’t have any change, but after I finish my call, I can’t understand the girl who tells me the price. Twenty rupee? Two rupee? Twelve rupee? I hand her a 100 rupee note and she laughs at me. “No change.” I explain that I don’t have a smaller bill, but she keeps repeating, “twenty/two/twelve rupee, Madam.” Even though she can’t understand me, I feel compelled to tell her that I’m leaving to break my bill at a coffee stand and I’ll be back in a minute. She shakes her head as I walk away, still repeating her refrain.

At the coffee counter, a fan blows hot air while an old woman cleans the display case. She frowns when she sees me, annoyed that I’m interrupting her routine, and shrieks into the kitchen. After a minute, a swarthy man appears, and I ask for the cheapest things on the menu—a cappuccino (he only has king size) and chocolate ice cream (he only has vanilla). I pay him for the vanilla ice cream, pay the girl at the phone booth for my phone call (twelve rupee), and walk to the end of the aisle way, where I see the taxi stand to my right as promised. The sun is invisible behind a thick layer of clouds, but heat presses my skin and my windpipe. As I finish my ice cream, I smell India for the first time: dog fur, piss, masala, dirt, and my own body odor.

*

I stop looking at the road. The taxi driver has no respect for the lane markers (when there are lane markers, that is); he tailgates trucks, plows between motorcycles and blasts his horn at pedestrians and bicycle-drawn carts that fill the shoulder. I wonder how many people he’s run over. Hundreds, probably. Out the window, I see a cow with one horn painted blue and one horn painted red; it’s dragging a cart full of sapling trunks while an old man in a white cotton shirt guides it. His eyes are dull, deep-set, the bones in his face and arms protruding unnaturally. Ahead of him, a group of woman in jewel tone saris walk with flowers in their hair and a swing in their hips. The taxi driver turns up the radio—fast tabla drums and Bollywood style singing.

Half an hour later, Kiki meets me at the gate of her apartment complex. She’s wearing a long skirt and a faded t-shirt, and she’s grown her hair down to her shoulders. A feminine curl escapes her ponytail and drifts across her forehead and cheek. I’ve never seen her so modest, so tense with the taxi driver—and yet so peaceful, a part of the landscape. Inside, her mother greets me with an expansive embrace: “Welcome home.”