Tuesday, February 10, 2009

End of India

During the approach of winter there were a couple of changes on campus. Most notably, besides the sometimes frigid nigh time temperatures, was the nasty caustic fog that often seemed to rise in the mornings. It was a blend of water, something surely carcinogenic, and perhaps dust, which was pretty irritating to my eyes. One positive thing that came to, though was the appearance of these red eyed ferret like things that I think are mongeese. (Plural of mongoose?) The Indians partially told me yes that it was a mongoose, or no it was something else. In any case, whatever they are it is reputed that if you see one, your day will be lucky. I've seen many of them and on one day I saw two or three. I dunno if I'm particularly lucky, but the day I saw the most was peculiarly good.


Winter also brought along with it the majors (final exams) which brought classes back to my immediate attention. I'd been pretty blasé to most of my classes, especially since my main interest had been in learning things outside of academia. Still it had been my general policy to attend all the classes as I usually have difficulty understanding any of the material if I don't attend. This may not have been such a great idea as they were all a bit early and that destroyed my attending any of the nocturnal happenings which may have been going on. One class was pretty bad as I really couldn't stand the teacher, who would just scrawl one prolly incorrect proof or poorly thought out example after the other on the board. It always seemed more or less the same to me somehow, so I couldn't help but think about the last time I was sitting in her class. It was as if I had woken up from some sort of a dream whenever I stepped into her class and she was continuing her lecture from just before I dozed off. Anyway, by hook or by crook (and with many clichés) I had managed to pass everything before the majors, so I wasn't too stressed about performing well on the last exams. I studied quite a bit for the majors, but mostly out of principle.


Amit and I had decided to go for a trip together after the end of all the majors. We had two goals; I wanted to relax and he wanted to see snow. This made us pretty flexible, but the first objective made the whole trip pretty poorly planned. I thought it would be cool to go pretty far since it would be my last trip before I toured stuff I knew with my Mom, but I didn't take into account the amount of time it would take to go from place to place. Also objective number 1 also made the amount of research that went into trains minimal, so it wasn't till the day of departure that we figured out what train we would be on. This made for several goodbyes to the same people, which is actually kind of awkward. At the very end after everything was decided Nitin invited me to a last treat where on Johannes's ingenious prompting I had two ice creams in a row. It was great to be together one last time with my best friends in one place before we had to separate. It drove the fact that I was leaving permanently home, though.


The first stop on Amit and my journey was a place called Varanasi. Varanasi is also known as Benares and is popularly known as one of the holiest cities in India. It lies on the Ganga (Ganges) and happens to be one of the dirtiest places I've been in. The tradition in Hinduism is to burn the bodies of the dead and then dump their ashes into a river. As the Ganga is a river who's source is in heaven being 'buried' in the Ganga is thought to be a pretty good thing. Our hotel was right next to one of the places where the funeral pyres are built. This troubled Amit once he found out about it. People who rent out their land to grieving families are said to be very polluting according to Hinduism. If you see one of their faces in the morning your day is bound to be bad they say. Because Amit had such an aversion to the burning grounds, we avoided them for the most parts.


Having Amit along made life much easier for me as a tourist. On the one hand I got no contact with the locals, on the other hand there were no difficulties with languages anymore. Amit spoke both Hindi and the local dialect so he could get reasonabler prices on most items. Also most of the local people who wanted to talk to me in Varanasi were just out to loot tourists, and so wouldn't have made too great of experiences. The one time I left Amit for two minutes to see a burning Ghat I was already latched on to by one of the tourist sharks. I was standing there, trying to be respectful while someone's loved one was being given last rites, and this dude appears out of nowhere like a vampire. He starts with the usual tourist questions, to get me into some sort of conversation that inevitably leads to some reason to give him money. I left without being friendly.


We met a Hungarian tourist named Zoltan in our hotel. I found his story interesting. Apparently he had developed a fascination for this musical instrument called the toubla. It consists of two drums which are played with only your hands and have a pretty big variety of sounds that come out of it. He had found some Hungarian musician who played said instrument in a band and after a long time accepted Zoltan as a student. Now after having studied the instrument for a while he decided to go to India for the dual purpose of seeing the land from which his instrument came and to attend some classical Indian music concerts. I was amazed that someone could become so enamored with the drums as an instrument, and impressed that he would go so far as to visit a foreign country for 2 or 3 months because of it. There seemed to be a bit of interest in Hinduism there too, but it seems it all grew out of his love for the instrument. Zoltan then accompanied us through Varanasi and it made the otherwise pretty unpleasant city worth visiting. Zoltan also made one surprising point about fireworks. I've always liked them and thought of them as a demonstration of how great people are. He on the other hand found them to epitomize pointlessness as they are expensive, and only worth seeing for some seconds before leaving just garbage and smoke behind which pollutes the world around us. I had never thought of it, Zoltan may have a point.


Most Indian cities have a popular drug of choice, which most middle aged men partake in. In Delhi it's chewing tobacco, but in Varanasi it's this thing called pan. Pan is essentially this leaf which changes your spit red after you chew it. Usually the leaf is wrapped around all this tasty stuff, occasionally with spices, occasionally with tobacco. I dunno if marijuana is put in it or not. Anyway, rumor has it that it is bad for your teeth, and people are certainly addicted to it. I was intrigued so I tried it. I had only a simple pan with tasty stuff but no other added things. It tastes like eating a potpourri box if they taste like they smell. The taste was imitated in some mouthfresheners that are served after meals, so by that time I had acquired a taste for it. Essentially you just chew till your mouth is full and then you spit. At first your spit isn't red, but after a your mouth is empty it becomes red. It was pleasant but not particularly exciting. I was later informed that there are pan shops where you can buy the finest pans for maybe 100 times what the sample I tried. I'm not going to indulge that far, though.


The next step in our journey was to go north into Nepal where we wanted to find snow. This was a bit problematic as crossing the Nepalese border requires a visa which is only buyable in US dollars (25 to be exact). This is an enormous sum of money, and I needed to find a place to change the money. After getting the moneys it was necessary to go to the border which we had to do in two steps. First by train and then by bus. We ended up arriving on the border at this village called Sonauli, whose only highlite is one honest shopkeeper and the border. The rest was surrounded by people trying to screw tourists. We got a night bus out of Sonauli, but it necessitated our waiting for quite a while in the middle of nowhere. We met a taylor there, whose little brother was aspiring to be a professional cricket player. We also met this guy from Ireland who was staying in Varanasi to learn toubla as well. His tourist visa had expired so he was traveling to Kathmandu (Nepal's capital) to renew his Indian tourist visa so he could continue his music studies. He was not nearly as friendly (or as not crazy seeming) as Zoltan, and it made me wonder why this particular instrument had captured the minds of two such different people from such different places.


The bus ride to Pokhara (Nepal's biggest tourist center) proved to be long and winding and unfortunately ended before dawn. Nights in Nepal are colder than those in Delhi. I did not have enough warm clothes, so I made a provisional jacket by wrapping my sleeping bag around me like a jacket and strapping it into place with my backpack. It was stylish and effective and thus equipped we found a hotel. It was tricky though, because here the official language was not Hindi, and most people didn't speak english.


The hotel owner was incredibly nice and took us to see the sites of Pokhara which boil down to a lake and the mountains around it. I had planned to buy a jacket from Nepal, since it would be colder in the north where we planned to find the snow. Unfortunately the jackets in the local markets were not only too short, but generally not very cool looking. When we looked in the tourist markets they had some of the cooler "traditional" looking tibetan jackets. It occurred to me then, though that I had not seen a single person wearing them. It seemed to me as if I could play make believe in a toy jacket made for such a purpose, or I could get something that is worn. To avoid living in a constructed world, I therefore ended up buying a ludicrously cheap North Face rip off as it was indeed the sort of thing I had seen Nepalis wearing.


The hotel had a cook named Suraj in it. Suraj works as a cook for tourist hotels and moves from season to season to different areas. At the moment it was Goa season, and he usually would be working in Goa, but for some circumstances that I don't really remember he was now in Nepal, for which it was off season due to the temperatures. He was a great cook and was very friendly with us. He also spoke excellent Hindi according to Amit, and it would have been cool to have stayed there longer, but the main objective of the trip, to see snow, had still not been achieved, so we had to leave after only one day in Pokhara.


My usual technique for traveling is to guestimate how long trips will take between places and then grab whatever mode of transportation works, after I've decided that I wanted to move on. This usually worked pretty well, in India, and allowed me to go on very flexible vacations, but this time it went severely wrong, as I had not adequately informed myself about the differences between Nepal and India. Nepal is basically entrenched in the Himalayas and so the reason that people come is for the beautiful nature. This lends itself to some awesome vistas, but unfortunately also made train travel impossible. People prolly didn't build trains as the mountains are pretty tricky to reconcile with tracks. Instead, roads were built on the mountainsides. This made bus travel the only means of transportation. The buses travel twice as slow as the estimate for my hypothetical trains that I had envisioned to use from one place to another. I discovered this on the day of our departure. I also found out that there were no buses that traveled north in such a way as to see snow and return to Delhi on time to pick up my Mom from the Airport. We then planned to go by a more southern route to Delhi which passed through a Wildlife preserve.


Unfortunately the bus ride made Amit sick so we had opted to get out halfway very close to Sonauli in the exceptionally unpleasant Butwal. Butwal prolly has the worst selection of hotels in Nepal. The best hotel was ridiculously overpriced, so we opted to find a different hotel. When we learned that all the other excuses for hotels were more expensive or about the same price we looked at the rooms of the hotel. They were so bad I decided to look at the marginally cheaper ones. They were in fact so bad that we returned for a third time to the best hotel which was bad by any normal persons standards. Apparently, Nepal is well known for prostitution for which the hotels in Butwal are generally used. Also it seems to be common knowledge that the laundry is not often washed in these hotels. I was so appalled at the whole situation that I didn't eat dinner, although I had already more or less skipped lunch and breakfast. Needless to say we left as soon as possible for the border and I reentered India only 3 or 4 days after having left. (Pretty anticlimactic.) However the bus rides back were incredibly beautiful.


After arriving in Sonauli essentially we found the fastest way to return to Delhi before my mother arrived. This involved first getting a bus to a place Gorakhpur and then a train from Gorakhpur to Delhi. In the process of traveling to Gorakhpur we also left lunch behind and so I arrived there unnaturally aggressive due to being in starvation mode for too long. We were then standing in a line to get tickets for a train which was leaving in half an hour. Of course, as every Indian bureaucratic procedure I'd encountered, it was horrendously slow. Miraculously we were approaching the end of the line just as our train was bound to arrive. Now, Indian lines are generally not lines they consist rather of a big amorphous mass of people around a ticket counter window through which you need to force your way to the front. This sucks especially if you haven't dealt with it before.


This line, however was a proper line like you see pretty much anywhere. Out of right, however this young guy appeared and tried to slide his way into the front of the line. People told him not to and asked him nicely and less nicely to leave, but he would just smirk snidely at them and then turn back to his creeping to the ticket counter. I was furious and all the pent up aggression of having been cut in line for the last 5 months and the lack of food made something snap in brain and just as he forced his arm into the window of the ticket counter, I forcibly dragged him back out of the line. He was surprised and asked me "what?" in Hindi. I had lost it at that point and just told him in English to get to the back of the line, and pushed him back for added emphasis. He ended up hovering around the beginning of the line a bit prolly to provoke something similarly ridiculous from me, but eventually he disappeared somewhere into the crowd. I was a bit upset but didn't dwell on it as it had become necessary to hurry to our own train once we got to the ticket counter who told us to go to some other counter as our train was waiting on the platform.


We delayed a bit at the other counter but eventually decided to bribe the conductor of the train rather than wasting our time. The conductor told us it would cost 1000 rupees to get to Delhi and he would accept whatever we might give for himself. So the assumption was that it would cost 1200 rupees, which is quite a load of money. He didn't make out the ticket immediately, though, so we had some time to scheme while crammed in between luggage and people with tickets. I had plenty of time to fume, as I didn't want to pay so much to return. I finally calmed down after Amit magicked a vegetarian burger off of a vendor. Once I had exited starvation mode, I was able to rationalize the fiasco of having to leave Nepal in a a rush as well as having to overpay the conductor. Amit, however had used his time to scheme instead of fume and so he quickly suggested some alternatives. My original thought had been that it was easily possible to evade the conductor by simply leaving at one of the next stops and then finding a new train going in the right direction, but I felt it would be unfair to betray the trust of the conductor. People in India have a pretty cool tendency to trust strangers and so rickshaw drivers take you places before getting paid, people don't pick your pockets, and sometimes people will tell you to come back later for your change (which they give to you even if you come back much later). This is pretty awesome and in this case the conductor let us on the train without a ticket because he trusted us to pay the ticket when he finally returned. So one option was immediately not cool.


Amit's alternative however was good. He suggested that we tell the conductor that we'd prefer to get out in Kanpur, which was about halfway to Delhi. In Kanpur then we could change trains and board a train on which one of Amit's friends was head conductor. This would give us a relatively free alternative to arrive in Delhi with a bed. The only downside was that we had to get out in Kanpur and wait on the station. When the conductor finally arrived Amit asked what the price of a ticket to Kanpur was, and got the response that it wasn't possible to make an official ticket to get to Kanpur. Amit then asked whether it would be possible to get an unofficial ticket and so then the conductor told him that he should pay him when he left the car so that it wasn't as obvious that he was accepting bribes. (The conversation took place in Hindi so I have no clue what exactly was said.) Anyway, Amit and I then had to decide what would be a reasonable amount as a bribe. I suggested 400 rupees which apparently is a good amount. (200 per head is normal.) Amit then left the wagon after the conductor had moved to the transition between cars, and paid him and we were golden. I don't approve of bribing conductors on principle, but the sangfroid with which Amit perpetrated it without ever having done it before was impressive.


Kanpur's train station is a sketchy place and we arrived very late considering that we had been doing exhausting things all day. We got out around 11 and waited for the train which should arrive around midnight or 1. The train in question, however was notorious for being late, and this time was no exception. We had to wait till 2:30 or 3 till the train finally arrived. While we were waiting it was necessary for Amit to buy a station pass for us as we weren't allowed on the platforms if we didn't possess a ticket. (Apparently the penalty would have been an enormous fine which would have defeated the purpose of changing trains in the first place.) We managed to find Amit's friend's father immediately by asking another conductor, and so we quickly got on board, and without any question as to why we needed his help we where set. Our benevolent host did not have any free beds in his wagons but the man we asked first offered us the free beds in his wagon without hesitation. We then talked a bit with the our host who also provided us with tea, and by we, I mean Amit in Hindi, before we finally went to bed.


We got off the train in Delhi one day before Mom was supposed to arrive. She was coming in at a ludicrously early hour. Contrary to the debacle involving Nepal, I had planned ahead for my Mom's trip and booked all the important trains ahead of time. The planning did not include hotels as I was certain we could deal with that on the spot and I did not know how reserving hotels in India worked. As my master plan involved having mom stay the first night in Delhi, I needed to organize a room for her. Johannes had used the local guest house to provide a room for his girlfriend when she arrived, so I figured I'd be able to do the same for my mom. Well, it was Sunday on the given day before Mom arrived, but I still wanted to make sure there would be a room available. I therefore searched out the headquarters of the guest housing and I found someone who seemed to be in charge of doling out rooms. I asked him about prospects for a room for the next day, and he told me I'd need to get a signature from the Dean of Students on a particular form which he gave me, and then he told me he might be able to get me something, although there was nothing at the moment. Well, as the last time an Indian had told me not to worry about something it all worked out, I followed the same principle, and took the form. Now all I needed to do was get a signature the next day when the Dean of Students was around and I would have my room.


I arrived early at the airport because Delhi is a bit of an overwhelming place when to come to for the first time. As I merrily waltzed to the door to the terminal I was greeted by a guard carrying an automatic weapon. Despite his poor english I understood quite quickly that no non ticket carrying people would be allowed in. (The tremendous crowd of people outside waiting also tipped me off.) Now, it is a good rule of thumb not to argue with people toting machine guns, so I resolved to wait at a different entrance far from the crowds. Mom's plane arrived, but her luggage came off the plane at the very end of the unloading period so I was worried the whole time that she had left the terminal through the main door, and I had missed her. However, she did eventually come, but the adequately armed guard still refused to let me enter the terminal and help her change money despite the fact that she clearly recognized me.


When we got back to IIT I showed her various ordinary campus things, which I figured might interest her as well as took her to collect the signature for her housing. At some point I took her to a convenient place to check email, and then I nonchalantly resolved to get the gentleman from the previous evening to get me a room. She agreed to do various internetish things while I went to take care of the simple situation. Well, when I returned to the headquarters of the housing people, I was unpleasantly surprised by finding not one benevolent gentleman from the day before, but rather three or four hostile bureaucratic types from the day itself. I went to an old man with a rather sinister mustache who seemed to be in charge of everything and handed him my impeccably signed form. He glanced at the dates and briskly informed me that there was nothing available and nothing he could do for me. I was momentarily off balance, and appalled at the idea that the room that I had quite confidently assured my mother would be there for her, might in fact be somewhere entirely different. I thought for a moment and remembered what someone had told me a while back about tourist prices and the like. If you argue long enough people will give in, but if you just accept what they say they will be only too happy to give you whatever garbage you are willing take. In this case the garbage was nothing. So I resolved to just stand around and argue with these people till something materialized. I tried unsuccessfully to talk to the evil looking boss but he was no less abrupt. The other office people also took notice of me and glanced at my paper and assured me that nothing could be done, although one of them showed the paper again to the boss. He seemed to realize I wouldn't leave so he told me to go to this other guy (Mr. Sharma) in one of the hosels (Arawali hostel) who was in charge of a different branch of guest housing.


Mr. Sharma was incredibly nice on the other hand, but he informed me that I had the wrong form. I would need to get a much simpler one with the same signature on it, otherwise, he couldn't help me. I was on a mission at this point and I was not too thrilled with the prospect of unearthing the Dean of Students again, so I applied the same technique of arguing. I had to make the point that he wouldn't disallow me getting housing in a more modest location (the first form was for the best the campus had to offer) after already giving me permission once. Then I had to make the argument that he would be very difficult to find. One phone call by Mr. Sharma to the Dean later, it was confirmed that I could have the room without going on another expedition to find the Dean. Unfortunately my new room would allegedly not have any bedding, but I figured I could deal with that drawing on student's bedding in my hostel.


Ordinarily I would just have my mother sleep in my hostel, but Kumaon, like all other boys hostels would not allow any women to sleep there (or generally even enter) because of the constant danger that perhaps some sort of intercourse might occur. Fortunately the New Vindhyachal Appartments as the modest housing was called did manage to dig up some bedding for my mother, so the first night ended up being pretty comfortable doing justice to the odyssey that was required to make it possible.


The next morning as we were going to return the key of the room we encountered a hoard of dogs angrily barking at extremely screwed white dog. I was feeling bad for the one dog and generally looking at the various dogs when I noticed an oddly fat brown dog which was walking just several steps in front of us. After a moment I realized it was a monkey, which is actually pretty odd for campus. There are black-faced white monkeys with long tails called Langurs, which are kept on campus to scare off the red faced brown ones. There are also glass shards placed on the campus walls to keep monkeys out. The fact that a brown monkey had made it on campus anyway, was surprising, as well as the fact that the dogs ignored him. (Apparently 4 dogs vs one monkey ends up in favor of the primate.) Anyway, I was so shocked that I stared at the monkey who had stopped and turned around. Now, these brown monkeys are incredibly mean and annoying animals, in that they destroy all kinds of things to get food, learn how to deal with most human things, and attack people if they look the monkeys in the eyes. While my brain was trying to reconcile the monkey's current location inside campus walls with my understanding of monkey policy, I was blankly staring directly into its eyes. The monkey then reacted as I was told monkeys do and bared his teeth and came at me in a monkeyish attack. I didn't particularly approve of the idea of getting mauled by a monkey and contracted aids or something next to my Mom, so I gathered my monkey dueling knowledge that I had acquired earlier. Apparently, the way to defeat a monkey is not to throw things at them because they can dodge very well, but rather a monkey can be beaten into submission with a stick. I had no stick on me, so instead I kicked at the monkey with my sneaker clad foot. He backed off but I didn't take my eyes off him because I was worried about his next move. He got up on his hind legs, bit his arm and came at me again. I kicked out again and he backed off for a second time, but he still wasn't convinced that he couldn't take me. There were no sticks obviously available, so I then took my backpack, as I figured it would seem adequately stickish when swung and on his third charge swung it at him. Monkeys know about human's superiority involving sticks, so my adversary got the idea and sat himself down some distance away from me and let us pass. Needless to say, I felt pretty pumped for the rest of the day after having emerged victorious.


While still in Delhi, I took my mom to the famous SN (Sarojini Nagar) cloth market. It was hectic as usual, and served to give an impression of what markets are like in India. On the way I also finally perfected my auto-rickshaw fare estimation method. Essentially all that is necessary is one distance for which the correct price is known and a map. Every other distance is measured in fractions of the known distance and the price is the same fraction of the known price. This was the first time for a long time that I had to use the autos since I had switched over to buses since I had figured out which ones to take. I was surprised by my often unreasonably obsessive need to get what I surmised were the correct prices. I was a bit overboard in haggling for the rest of our journeys, through India.


When we finally left Delhi on the train it was interest to note that now that I was accompanied by Mom I was less approached by random guys who wanted to engage in small talk. Mom also was hardly approached, even in the trains where it is usually typical to waste the time on long trips with longer delays with talking to random strangers. It was prolly because my mom is a women and randomly approaching them is less accepted. Also I think during my journeys I was seen as her guardian or keeper, and so got a different kind of treatment than on my other travels. The impression of my keeperhood would make sense as often I would walk ahead of Mom through crowded streets where there wasn't enough room to go side by side. I also generally did all the talking to local people as I had thought I knew how to talk to them, as well as I would have to deal with all the unpleasantness such as bargaining. In addition to this, I kept all the smaller bills in my more accessible wallet, whereas Mom had all the more valuable stuff in less readily available pockets, so I was always the one who paid for everything.


Our first stop after Delhi was Orchha, which I had already visited. It was also very nice the second time around. The next planned stop was Amit's house in Aligarh for which I had no train ticket for. Since my phone had stopped working properly after entering Nepal, I had to borrow other people's phones to make a plan with how to meet Amit. Unfortunately, there were no trains to Aligarh from Jhansi, (the only train station near Orchha) so we needed to take a train to Agra and find a bus from there. Agra is an incredibly horrible place, which has become a nightmarish den of tourist sharks due to the presence of the Taj Mahal. The best way to lose a ton of money is to go there and trust anyone. We therefore went straight to the nearest prepaid auto stand and had ourselves driven to the bus station that had buses that go to Aligarh. Unfortunately our train was incredibly late, and so we arrived in Aligarh around midnight.


I could vaguely remember the way to Amit's house from the train station though since I had walked from there on my last visit. I resolved to do it again in the dark with my mother as I didn't have a phone, and I figured the crime rate was too low to be worried. The path is actually very simple and I quickly found a critical junction where I was certain we had to turn left off of the main road we had been on and walk a little bit down what was a market by day before turning right at a peculiar curb which would lead us directly to Amit's house. I considered the rode that should be a market during the day and then figured it was the right one. As I started down the road, however, an Indian shopkeeper who happened to selling something at that time to a crowd of other late-night wanderers shouted to us. As he sounded pretty excited I stopped at went to him as he may have had something important to say. He did not speak much English so I tried to communicate to him in my terrible Hindi. According to him there was a dead body in the street somehow and I was quite confused as to how or why. He and the other peoples in the street were adamant that we not continue on our way. Quite quickly they woke up a slimy lawyer type who happened to speak English and lived at the junction of roads.


This man then enquired as to why we were there and what we were looking for. I explained that I was going to my friend's house. After I had established that it was indeed a friend and not some sort of sketchy personage, the lawyer enquired as to the address of my friend's house. He was obviously unimpressed with my rationality when I told him I did not know it. Eventually he ended up calling Amit who was awake and nervous I would get lost. He happened in his house right were I would have ended up walking if I hadn't been detained by a mob of helpful locals. Despite being furious at having my arrival in the middle of the night without help thwarted, I thanked the various mob members for helping us out, because I think they did the right thing. I would have preferred to have been left to my own devices, but, despite that they had no idea who I was, these guys saw a situation in which they thought help was needed and went out of there way to provide it. Such a willingness to help and attempts to do so are awesome in my opinion and deserve thanks, even if they don't always prove helpful.


Once at Amit's house, we were of course served as is customary for guests. The food was excellent as usual, and my mom and his mother seemed to hit it off well. Amit's mom and sister took the opportunity to let my mom try the various Indian outfits, which included a Sari and this more ceremonial outfit called a Lungi. They also insisted on getting bangles for my mom. Bangles are circular bracelets worn by married women so that their husbands have longer lives. They are in fact vestigial chains from a slightly less liberal time. Apparently recently bangles weren't only worn on the arms, but on the feet and the necks as well. The bangles were made of heavy silver and so obviously represented chains. Anyway, nowadays bangles are thought of simply as jewelry without any sinister implications which have the added bonus of increasing the life of the husband. Amit's mother and sister also insisted on providing my mom with a bindi (one of those stereotypical red dots in the middle of the forehead). I was happy to watch, and happier that no one was trying to fit me out with a Kurta and a Dhoti.


We of course took my mom to the various things to see in Aligarh, one being the AMU and another being a temple. The temple was a little ways off from Amit's house, but we had eaten so much that walking seemed like a good idea. The temple was equipped with a musician and a stereo system, which was set to too loud. The temple itself was nice, though. On the return journey to Amit's house we encountered a Maruti van, which was hanging with the back left wheel off the side of the road over a huge ditch. Apparently the differential in the car was poor, so only the airborne wheel was spinning. Happy to find a situation which I understood and knew how to help I decided to help push the van (it was a pretty small one by European standards) back on the road. Amit and I helped the one guy who was standing a bit cluelessly next to the car push it back on the road. The whole incident prolly only took less than two minutes and we immediately left the scene afterwards, but I was pumped.


The time with Amit's family was very peaceful and beautiful so that when we returned to the busy roads of Delhi for a couple of hours en route to Jodhpur it was like descending back into hell. We killed some hours tourist watching at the Red Fort (Lal Qila) before boarding the reserved train to Jodhpur.


Nitin found us easily and we were once again buried in a pile of delicious food. It is customary to serve the guest of the house till they have finished eating before the people in the house get to eat. Nitin was not used to this role and so instead of paying attention to how full our bowls were he would talk with us. Occasionally he would remember his hostish duties he would offer to refill one of my dishes. It was not as traditional as the red carpet treatment in Amit's house, but it made me feel a little more at home, than the more formal serving etiquette.


We went to see a beautiful park filled with Langurs and some archeological sites for which Jodhpur is not famous for. We also went to a temple where Mom and I were given Prashad (holy food) and some sort of holy cloth on the whim of one of the priests there. I was nonplussed at the gift, the cloth portion of which was wrapped around my head as a turban and given to my mom as a shawl, so I accepted and looked at the various secret sacred trees that he deigned to show us.


When we returned to Nitin's house we were encountered by a young boy and his mother. The young boy was named Himanshu (means "piece of ice" or "moon"). His mother wished him to try his English on me. He was a bit nervous at first but ended up talking quite a great deal. He seemed to be pretty excited about American movies and that was the first common ground we found. Himanshu had indeed seen a ton of movies. Just as I suspected we had run out of conversation material he then invited us to come to his house, which was just down the street. Nitin accompanied us to help us make a more graceful exit I suspect. Himanshu lives with his mother and sister, but their father died a while ago. They were relatively poor but his mother seemed to be have been able to keep them above water till now. (How they will pay for the daughter's dowry I have no idea.) Himanshu claims to want to be a terrorist when he grows up. I guessed he said that because he wanted to provoke a response, so I didn't make a big deal about it. It seems, though, as if he doesn't really know what it means. He finds guns to be cool, as is pretty typical for kids around his age, and he watches a ton of violent movies. I think he imagines that a terrorist is like a police officer but without being hampered by technicalities that prevent him from doing the right thing. Sort of a lone ranger sort of thing. In any case, he was not very negatively inclined towards the US as it was the unending source of amazing movies and apparently of American watches. (I don't know any famous American watch brands off the top of my head. Perhaps Timex?) He then seemed very interested in giving me something. At first he wanted to give me a beautiful and very large deepak (mustard oil lamp) which was hanging from the ceiling, but I didn't want to steal stuff from his house. I took him up on his second offer of a battery rigged to an LED which changed colors so that he wouldn't offer me something else. His sister was studying for her midterms in the final year of high school so she could go to a good college in Electrical Engineering. She barely spoke any English, but it seems that she was studying out of interest and not for typical reasons of money. I tried to communicate my approval of her area of study, and we left so as not to disturb them further.


Nitin showed us the marriage video of his older brother, which was pretty interesting. As I had not been able to attend an actual marriage this was the best window into the tradition as I would get. It is said that everyone enjoys Indian marriages except the bride and the groom. It also seemed that way as everyone was dancing and having fun except for the bride, who were slightly scared looking and the like. An interesting custom at the end of the marriage is that the bride and her family should cry as the bride leaves home quasi forever. The bride is essentially marked as the property of the man by the addition of a bindi and some red paint on her forehead just in her hair, which she renews whenever it starts fading for the rest of her life. So essentially the red paint in her hair is like a wedding ring. The man doesn't need to wear anything to symbolize his responsibilities or whatever to the woman. The other telltale sign of married women is their wearing of bangles.


Nitin's mother also dressed my mom in a Sari, as well as gave her some bangles of her own. The bangles she had were of Rajasthani (the state Jodhpur is in) style and were much thicker than the ones that Amit's mom gave my Mother. They barely fit over Mom's hands and she had to relax while Nitin's mom applied an excessive amount of force to get them on her arms. Prolly my mom now has enough bangles that my dad will never die.


When we left Jodhpur we went to Udaipur, which was also in Rajasthan, and so famous for its castles and lakes. The coolest thing I saw there, though, were elephants. I saw three, my first and only three during my stay in India. As camels are bigger than I expected them, elephants are smaller. Essentially they are similar size as camels, although perhaps slightly taller. They are very broad, and they pretty much don't have a neck. Still their feet can't be much bigger in diameter than the length of my foot. About one or two people fit on on an elephants back and that's about it. I saw one on two occasions walking along a busy street, once across the a lake and once just on the other side of the street. Contrary to my expectations the elephants move gracefully and deliberately despite their huge size. They seem to be much more graceful than camels in any case. I saw a third one from very close. It could be be hidden behind a large tree, and happened to be chilling next to such a large tree with an elderly bearded Sadhu sitting on its back. I did not have the courage to ask him why he happened to have an elephant or any other of the intriguing questions which pop into my mind. I did manage to work up the nerve to take a picture of the pair. It made coming to Udaipur worthwhile even if there had been nothing else to see there.


The return journey required some clever haggling tricks to get to the train station at a reasonable price, but the return to Delhi was relatively uneventful. In Delhi, fresh off of the train station I met two German tourists who had just gotten off of the plane and were looking for a bus to Agra. I would have liked to tell them to relax and get some bearings before rushing off into tourist hell, but they were in a hurry and only wanted my expertise in getting the first bus to Agra. I did so but not without second thoughts. Mom and I then went to the beautiful Humayun's tomb which is only slightly less beautiful then the Taj Mahal, while being many times cheaper and many more times more peaceful. It is located right next to the Nuzamuddin train station which happened to be the station we arrived on. After we finished seeing the tomb and had collected the change the cashier promised to give me when we entered, we returned to IIT again to have the famous butter chicken (Murg Makhani) which was only our second or third meat dish since arriving in India. (Nitin had provided the previous one.) Butter chicken is prolly the most popular meat dish in India, and so I figured despite my mother's vegetable addict tendencies I had to introduce her to it. It was a hit as can only be expected from such a dish.


Again I had to organize a room for my mom to stay that night. This time I didn't feel like embarking on a new crusade to the various hegemons of the different hotels. Instead I asked the warden of my hostel, who had been so kind as to offer me assistance as I was leaving and not in need of it a little more than a week ago. At first he only half heartedly went about suggesting useless alternatives, but soon after he quickly mobilized his resources and magicked together two nights in the appropriate hotels and for that particular night he got Mom a spot in Himadri, the local girls hostel. Luckily for me there was an open room on the second floor of the hostel, but the mattress for the beds was on the first floor in the common room. This meant that someone would have to abet the guard to lug the mattress up a floor so that my mother would have something to sleep on. The obvious colugger was clearly me, so I gained entrance to Himadri to make sure Mom's room was appropriately outfitted. The girls' hostel was much cleaner than the boys hostel, and more modern. (There are only two girls' hostels as opposed to 9 boys' hostels, which might explain the added care.) The rooms however were just as dirty, but they didn't have an annoying dividing wall between the two portions of the room. Other than that I didn't see that much scandalous stuff.


When I asked the warden to help me find a room for Mom, he invited me to wait in his home while he made some telephone calls. This was my second visit to his house, which is part of the hostel. The first time was at the very beginning of the semester when I was checking in and needed to borrow his internet connection. The first day his apartment seemed pretty crummy to me. Especially by western his standards, his apartment wasn't the greatest. Curiously enough, the second time I entered his abode, it was as if transformed into a quite nice accommodation. All the other hostels and houses and hotels I had seen brought a huge change in my expectations out of a house. The change was pretty blatant to me when I finally saw his home again.


The last two days were spent Christmas shopping. (I was already almost finished by some hardcore haggling in Udaipur for shawls, so I was not too pleased.) We went to this place called Palika bazaar, which is an underground market underneath Connaught Place. It was a mess. You could not walk more than two steps without some skumbag calling to you to look at this or to buy that. It was also full of people looking at stuff. It was the loudest and seediest market I had seen up to that point. We left without buying anything as it was just to ridiculous. We ended up taking the metro to the Jama Masjid instead. Jama Masjid is the biggest mosque in Delhi, and was built by Shah Jahan, who is best known for his construction of the Taj Mahal. It was my first entry into a mosque and I was unprepared for what I saw inside. Essentially and wholly contrary to my expectations, there was nothing inside, just some carpets to sit on and some niches in which perhaps people sat. It was not even really a building in a normal sense, more like one wall and a roof supported by pillars. I thought there would be some sort of altar or something, but there wasn't. There was only this gate/pulpitish thing on the way in, which may have served as a place for an imam to do his thing. I resolved to inform myself more about this sort of thing as clearly I have no idea.


The last day before leaving I and my mom went one last time to SN market to buy some more last minute present type things. It was incredibly peaceful after Palika Bazaar and all the various tourist markets I had been on. We were blown away by how relatively nice it was despite how crazy it had seemed the first time we had been there. It was here that I made one more discovery. I spoke to the people in Hindi for various prices and other questions and low and behold, they without batting an eye answered in Hindi, and generally were delighted to deal with me. Also on the previous day I had found an auto driver who spoke so little english I had to direct him almost purely in Hindi to my destination. The nasty haggling attitude had disappeared and we could reasonably arrive to a decent price and get on with our lives. Unfortunately for me the Hindi number system is still beyond me and many other words are pretty far over my head so I did not understand the responses of the various SN market shopkeepers, but a lightbulb finally appeared over my head. I realized that all this time when I had been feeling like a foreigner, it wasn't my skin color or the like that locked me out of society, but rather my language that kept me in my role. I'm convinced that if I could speak Hindi I would quickly be accepted by the majority of the people I encountered as someone who could be dealt with as a member of the society and not as an outlandish stranger loaded with cash for the taking. By using English constantly I forced people to come to me on my terms and was not joining into their culture. I don't doubt that to this made the difference more than anything else. Using the language is the key to entering the culture and a huge step in understanding the thinking of the people. Surely I would not be treated as an Indian, but at least I would become in their eyes someone who belonged there.


Amit showed up on the last day I was there and shared dinner with us one last time before I was leaving India for good. He was also kind enough to organize a taxi for us on the next day, which saved me a ton of trouble and haggling that I was only too happy to avoid. It was tough saying goodbye, but I was also happy to return to my family in Germany.


So, that was India. I've spent a large portion of my free time here in Germany writing all this stuff up (as you may have surmised by the obscene length of my letter) so that I will have it later. It seems as if it takes as much time to document something as is needed to actually do it. The next step from here after New Years is to go to Hong Kong, which I'm psyched about, but nervous as well. I'm sure I'll learn a lot, and surely it will be as interesting and eye opening as India. India was a complicated place and I'm glad to have been there, but I'm also glad to be moving on. The worst thing about going is leaving all the good friends I found and made behind.

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