Just Fruit

     At 7:30 in the evening I sat in a cushy booth seat, chilled from the monsoon’s blanket of dampness and depressed from that day’s events.  Across from me sat my husband, whom I hadn’t spoken more than a few sentences to all day.  Around me, at Mama Ji’s North Indian style restaurant were a kaleidoscope of colors.  The walls were painted sunflower yellow, plastic chairs of vibrant apple reds, oranges, grass greens and yellows.  Posters on the walls displayed rather inelegantly captured photographs of some of the most famous of North Indian dishes and sweets, Jalebi, my favorite fattening sweet among them.  In the background played a variety of ethnic music, elaborately sung Hindu chants mostly, meant to sooth and inspire.  The atmosphere around me attested to the true colorful world of India, its vibrancy and celebration of life.  But tonight the colors only brought me further into my depression, reminding me of the memories I had lost earlier that day.

     On Monday morning, I had sat down at my haphazard desk to work on two computers: a PC I have, for all intents and purposes, been forced to work with, and my Macintosh laptop – the touchstone of my life.  Neatly organized within its mechanical layers – my art, my writing, and my connection to the world, otherwise essentially known as my existence.  Although outdated and technically obsolete according to this world of consumption where nothing is meant to last for more than a year, my Mac, at its impressive five years of age, has become an extension of myself, a love of mine that I never wanted to part from.  That day however, she crashed, leaving me crippled without her constant presence in my life. 

     As I stared at the screen attempting to get my Mac to respond to my requests, to do anything, I began to have an ominous feeling come over me – that my life within that computer may never be retrievable again.  Despite that I have an external hard drive carefully stored in my closet drawer, I cannot remember the last time that I used it.  The longer I thought about, the more I realized how careless with my precious documents I have been.  It has been three complete years since I have backed up my photographs.  My life since the summer of 2010, all of my memories, the documentation of the places I have been, and the experiences I had undergone were locked inside my computer, hanging onto to reality by a thread.

My system had gone corrupt and the only way to revive my computer was to completely replace the running system, effectively rendering my Mac in the state of its early life, when her and I were not so closely connected. 

     Like a family member anxiously awaiting news of a surgery, I paced the rooms of my apartment all day.  The next day I received the results, that my computer had survived her transition, all hardware intact and running efficiently, but she was no longer my own.  My photographs, the art I had slowly and painstakingly created, compiled, sorted, and edited over the last three and most exciting years of my life – were gone. 

     Later, lying in my bed staring at the ceiling, I began to slowly recall everything that I had just lost in vivid snapshots of memories.  I remembered, most recently, the photos I took of my dad on the one warm day we had during my May visit home, when we took the Harley out for a lazy cruise, and stopped at the park in Rogers City to see the river.  My visit to New York City, Times Square at night, the buildings and lights.  The Brooklyn Zoo and the hundreds upon hundreds of photos of animals that just didn’t make the cut to my photography website.  The two weeks in October that Kristie and I spent at home in Michigan, the last remnants of the glorious fall colors that I hadn’t been able to shoot in years.  The pictures of my Grandpa and my dad together that I hastily took during our goodbye visit.  The photographs of Little Pup when I first brought him home, so fragile and tiny.  The photos of all the animals in my life, pictures of my cat Weshe outside for the first time, of my precious dog Bubby and his many photo shoots,  Boo Boo and Tyra, Meeko, and Kody.  But what really hurt the most was the loss of my the documentation of my experiences and travels in India for the past three years.  My time in Delhi, sightseeing like a real tourist.  The two-week long train trip to the south, my visit to the Arabian Sea and travels in the rural areas through Goa and Maharashtra.  The jungle videos and mountain-scapes.  The last year of my life living as an expat here in Bangalore.  The hundreds of faces I thought I forever captured with my lens.  The links to my many memories in India that I never wanted to forget.

     As I sat at the table waiting for the massive plate of food that would be my only meal of the day, I attempted not to think of my loss, of the death of my memories.  Just as the sadness began to swallow me up again, a cook came from the kitchen sporting a hair net and a blue shirt with something written on it.  Struggling to read the stark white writing as he quickly passed me by, I realized that it may just be a message for me.  It read:

 “Life was much easier when Apple and Blackberry were just FRUIT.” 

     Like the mass majority of workers in India, this cook undoubtedly makes barely enough to feed and shelter himself.   He could never could afford the advanced gadgets that now make our lives so complex and superficial in the Western world and increasingly so in the East.  Despite this, his cheap t-shirt remains to be an essential reminder for all of us so dependent on electronic materialism – that life could be much simpler if we’d only let go of that obsession.

     Shortly thereafter, my surplus plate of food came.  As I ate, I remained depressed, but a little more conscious and aware of my present experience – taking in the variety of smells, tastes and textures of my food, the beat of the music, the vivid colors, the feeling of being alive at that moment.  It may be after all, the only documentation I can ever really rely on. 

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My Puja Mala

    India is considered the mystical land, extraordinarily magical – the embodiment of spirituality.  It is said that those who visit India are touched by its ancient charm, forever entranced by its majesty.  My experience in India was no exception.  I was utterly vulnerable to its power, fully captivated by the energy flowing throughout that sacred land.  And it was through such captivation that I discovered that India is also a land of resiliency – people, animals, and culture prevailing despite the struggle to survive.  Raw and unadulterated, India is a place of ultimate wonderment and beauty, yet a place where the unspeakable occurs.  My connection to it evoked intense experiences: spiritual moments of profound energy, fleeting and powerful emotions, and physical encounters that ravaged my senses. 

There is no other place in the world quite as vibrant as India.  Even when inside the home, the energy that is the essence of India penetrates the concrete walls and beckons one to experience it.  Outside that door, every sense belonging to the human being is overwhelmed and stimulated beyond conception.  It is for this reason that people feel alive when in India.    Because every element that makes a being sentient – the physical, mental, emotional, and the spiritual – are awakened and moved to become part of the larger whole.  It is not millions of other beings living outside of our own existence, it is a single organism of energy from which each one of us connects with, feeds upon, and contributes to.  This collective energy encompasses the whole of India, yet its qualities vary so greatly that the feel of it is unique to each specific location. 

Bangalore, an urban development within the southern state of Karnataka, was my city.  To write about the deep and sometimes perplexing relationship I have with Bangalore, and India as a whole, would require an expansively detailed account of every single experience that formed that connection.  I cannot describe it in a summarized or shallow piece.  It would take me a book, maybe even several to fully get my perspective across.  Yet, as I sit and contemplate how I am to fit an elephant into a mouse hole, I being to think about puja malas (prayer garlands).  Constructed of exactly 108 beads, puja malas are used in daily prayers to the divine.  My story in India – the occurrence of my own entrancement – cannot be told in one bead, but many beads that make up the whole – my puja mala.  A single experience – one bead of the garland – will never tell my story, but it will provide a glimpse into a perspective that is my own.

My connection to India on a transcendent level was roused by the rich spiritual culture consisting of multiple religions, ancient philosophy, and the mystical.  The enigmatic religions within India have always drawn me like a moth to a flame.  I am a Pagan, my religion near extinction in the Western world.  Yet in India, I have seen reflections of it in spiritual practice.  Festivals celebrate the solstices and equinoxes – the cyclic alignment of the moon and the sun.  The divine is connected to nature – Earth goddesses and Sun gods revered and worshipped on auspicious days – all life, including animals and plants, valued as sacred. 

It was in the Hindu temples and the Buddhist monasteries that I found the strongest vibrations of the collective life energy of India and the essence of the divine.  Beautifully designed and adorned with colorful images of the deities, the outward appearance of any Hindu temple enticed me to come inside.  I would enter one with bare feet, weaving my way through the cumulative crowds, until I found my own place.  There, I would ground myself to the Earth below the temple’s structure, breathing in the positive energy conjured by the hundreds of daily visitors that released their energies through prayers to the divine.  The smell of burning sandalwood incense and fresh cut flowers, both given in observance of the Gods, permeated the air in and around the temple, and was accompanied by the sounds of sacred chants and prayers.  Through pujas, I obliged to run my right hand through the orange flame in prayer, offer flowers to the Gods represented in sculptured form, and sit in a meditative pose on the cold marble floors while reflecting on life.  During such visits I observed the divine, and such experiences became the spiritual beads of my mala.

Through my daily experiences to discover the real India, I had various encounters that gave birth to my physical and emotional connections with India.  On a physical level, my senses were constantly assaulted.  While eating Indian food, the variety of tastes – sweet, salty, and very spicy, enveloped me in an environment of worldly pleasures.  I said I hated mangoes until I tried one native to India.  Alphonsos they were called, small, but packed with a delicate sweetness so divine that I became obsessed with obtaining their juicy flesh.  My love for sweet and spicy coconut chutneys paired with the crispy wafer of a dosa served with spiced potato became my most desired meal.  Indian chai – the perfect blend of native northern teas and boiled milk and water became a fixation, the sweet smoothness of it served in ridiculously miniscule quantities and just the right amount of caffeine left me endlessly jonesing for its warm pick me up.  On my daily walks, I would visit a local restaurant, order two chai, and sit on the entrance stairs, my presence stationary among the bustle; my eyes forever straying to faces glancing my way as I sipped for a moment’s respite.

Like the asanas in yoga, movement of life within Bangalore is fluid, seamless throughout the day.  I used to stand on the rooftop of my four-story apartment building and watch the city.  Everywhere there is life, pulsing with that hidden energy of which we are instinctually attracted to.  Spotted eagles above me soared in the sky, crying their eagle calls.  Parakeets glided across the ever-present breeze in streaks of green color that only added to the array of hues painted upon the endless expanse of buildings below.  Above me, monsoon clouds gathered and slowly rolled across the sky.  They were foreboding, threatening at any moment to open up, while the sun continued to peak through in bursts of light that shed golden shafts of beauty upon the environment. 

When walking the streets, I experienced an array of smells so contrastive that I either wanted to vomit or breathe deeply and sigh.  Most often, the smells unveiled were of cow or dog shit, rotting garbage, and putrid smoke.  If lucky however, I’d come across the cultural fragrances: jasmine flowers, quality incense, steaming chai, or authentic Indian cuisine.  It was when I got to experience such exotic sensory stimulators that I felt the sacredness of India and the beat of its life all around me.

The collection of color presented throughout the whole of India is best described as a kaleidoscope of piquancy.  Experiencing such an endemic element of India was a daily occurrence, found in the bright saris the women wore, the billboard signs, and the contrastive buildings, trees, and soil of the environment surrounding me.  Wandering the streets, my sense of sight, along with my hearing, was assailed through the movement on the streets.  People, dogs, and cows walking every which way, and the flow of traffic too close for comfort created a dizzying display, while the noise that accompanied it incessantly incapacitated my hearing. 

Everywhere I went I carried my camera, eyes alert for scenes that might just capture the energy of India.  I would walk feeling as though I was moving through a sea of energy, a vacuum of which my presence was floating and existing among millions of others.  The farther outward I explored, the more people stared.  Facial expressions revealed curiosity, surprise, or distaste for the presence of a white skinned woman roaming their territory.  Poor children approached me, sheer curiosity overcoming their shyness to ask me to photograph them.  They would gather together, happily smiling as I arranged compositions.  Their delightful giggles drawing more to the crowd that encircled me to catch a glimpse of images produced. 

My emotional connection to India grew intense and compelling.  I respected India, feared it, loved it, and hated it.  The encounters with the people and animals stirred my emotions in ways that left me wondering who I was.  I fell in love with India through the experiences that were uplifting, inspiring, and transcendent.  My love for India grew because of the welcoming and kind-hearted people that invited me into their homes, introduced me to their culture and befriended me in lonely times.  That love was also found in the rich culture that drew me in through its promotion of peace, and in the life energy that encompasses all existence. 

I hated India because of my witness to raw and indescribable things that saddened me so severely I felt utterly helpless.  The emotions that brought pain to my heart included my encounters with the starving and suffering animals, the homeless beggars, the abandoned elders, and exploited children.  Poverty and resilience are everywhere in India, and I could not escape their impressions upon my life.  The poor gypsy children without education, food security, or positive futures unveiled their despair and their hope when I looked into their eyes.  Their dirty, tattered clothing, and frail, tiny bodies reminiscent of experiences no child should ever endure.  I encountered the malnourished and neglected animals fighting for survival in a cruel world, bodies ravaged, and rampant with disease, yet awareness and tenderness still presented for those who showed them the slightest bit of compassion.  I witnessed centuries old trees cut down for development, felt their Earth spirits dying, as I smelled the exhaust of the machines that took their lives.  Such an emotional attachment and empathy for all life within India provoked me, informed me, that I would one day return no matter how painful it would be.  The proverbial beads of emotion within my mala reflected all that was right and wrong within the world I lived.

My connection to India encompasses every element of life, the deepness of it surpassing my shallow existence in America.  India’s impression continues to evoke my awareness, connect me to the spiritual, and remind me that I am alive.  In all its majesty, tragedy, and mysticism, India is a sensory, emotional, and spiritual experience like no other.

My Left / Right Hand Dilemma

    There’s a certain type of anxiety I get when I eat in public.  In India, people generally do not use silverware, and it is customary to eat with the right hand.  The use of the left-hand to perform certain actions like eating or giving money is considered taboo.  From an anthropological standpoint, this concept serves both religious and social norms in Indian society.  In relation to ancient Hindu belief, right-handedness is associated with the sahaj /dakshin marg, or the yogic way – essentially the light path.  While left-handedness is associated with the vaam marg, or the path of the Aghori – essentially the dark path.  (Think of Star Wars for a serious simplification).  Children are taught from an early age to write, eat, and perform every activity with the right hand.  It is rare in Indian society to find a left-hander. 

     But the left-hand taboo isn’t all about religion, at least according to my best attempt at understanding this behavior.  The need to eat right-handed is primarily influenced by the need to maintain proper hygiene.  Due to other factors I need not discuss here, Indians don’t use toilet paper when they go to the bathroom; they use water.  Now to an American, this act may be considered perplexing if not downright insane. (I just happen to know an Indian who will defend to the death the advantages of using water).  Judgments aside, wiping oneself is done with the left hand.  Thus, for sanitary reasons, it’s essential to eat with the right hand.

     As a left-hander myself, I find it difficult to abide by the right-hander rule in India.  I can adequately feed myself with my right hand, but using a cutlery is a lot easier that making spoons out of rotis (wheat bread) or using your thumb as a sort of food forklift.  Whenever I am at a special function like a puja, I will consciously eat only with my right hand, as a sign of my utmost respect and understanding of the taboo.  However, eating dosa at a stand-and-eat restaurant where the ultimate goal is to consume your food as fast as possible and move aside for the next dozen people to do the same is not where I want to practice my ambidexterity.  For the sake of avoiding any further bouts of food poisoning on my part, and the desire to actually enjoy a meal, my husband and I typically eat only in the enclosed, we-have-seats-for-you restaurants.  Even in these places though, I feel somewhat perturbed by the left / right hander dilemma.  I am after all, a proud leftie, and I do prefer to eat with some semblance of sophistication, even if I am eating with my hand.  But people don’t know that, nor do they care that I am one of the rare lefties.  As a white woman in India, my skin apparently screams “look at me!!” (Sounds vain but it's true).  Thus, my act of eating with my tabooed and dirty left hand is put on display for all to witness.  All I think that they are thinking is that I am eating with my ass-wiping hand, committing a social faux pas, and bypassing all rules of sanitary behavior.  It all reminds me of this stupid joke told to me long ago.  Someone asks you what hand you use to wipe your ass.  After you reply and return their question, they, so quick-witted, tell you neither, they use toilet paper.  

The Present 2013: My Return To Writing

It's hard to believe how fast time goes by, how you can feel as if you are the only steady thing in a world that never ceases to change.  Today marks my first day of return to my India blog, originally started in the summer of 2010 and left neglected for an indeterminable amount of time.  Much has happened in the time gaps, it's true.  There was a disastrous stunt in California in late 2010 and early 2011, a return home to Michigan with a four month separation from Sanjeev; a brief, but enlightening return to India in the fall of 2011, this time in Delhi; a train excursion from North to South India and back again; the return again to my home for seven months of separation; and a repeat return, quite surprisingly to Bangalore in the late spring of 2012 accompanying me this time was my beloved, and now world traveler chihuahua Bubby.  Since then I have been relatively rooted in one place, pardon two more trips to the U.S. and visits in Michigan and Long Island, New York.  We have successfully achieved a full year of living in our highrise apartment in an upscale (and quite snotty) location smack dab on Hosur Main Road in Electronic City - the Silicon Valley of India.  Quite accidentally we added another furry child to our life, an Indian street dog who has been thoughtlessly dubbed "Little Pup".  He's come a long way from his near death puppy-hood and is now a happy, healthy, and quite naughty one year old, even if he only has one and a half ears.  In February of 2013, after three full years of a roller-coaster life, and with a lot of help from our Rupee currency, Sanjeev Kumar Tyagi and I officially married.  Since then, it has been a smooth sailing, and a quite mundane Indian life.

This time around I am not a tourist, nor am I the wide-eyed girl that was so overwhelmed in the new experience of living abroad.  I have become quite Indianized you see, and this return to writing really isn't about documenting exciting experiences in India (though I hope some will rear their heads once in a while).  Instead this blog is all about my return to writing, an inner journey that seeks to again find some of that moving writing I believe I was once able to create.  A challenge created and presented by yours truly to push the limits and test the waters of a writing life.  My blog is bias, it is a purely subjective documentation of my experience and perspective of living life in Bangalore.  My perspective about the reality of life here only represents my own world-view, it cannot be assumed to be fact, nor can it represent any true sense of reality.  I state this disclaimer now so as to avoid persecution for my raw and perhaps insensitive, inaccurate, or overly dramatic writing.

With all of that said, let the writing (and hopefully reading) commence!
*crickets chirping*

The Later Years 2012: Fractured

Originally Posted on December 28th, 2012.

     What is identity?  What defines a person?  Is it the present moment, the way in which an individual lives in the now that defines who they are?  Or is it the collective moments, the past, full of experiences, that shapes the identity?

     Can a person have two identities?  Can they exist in balance with the other?  Can a person really choose their identity? What happens when an individual can no longer surround themselves with those comfortable things that they believe makes them who they are?  When an individual is taken out of their known environment, when they are separated from those things, all those things that they believe defines them, what happens to them?  What becomes of their identity?  Does it get remolded? Does it continue to be defined by the past, full of things? Or does it split, becoming fractured?
Perhaps that is what is happening to me.  My identity, my self, my individuality has become fractured.  I am no longer the me of the past, the reality I took so long to construct.  I am just in the now, floating, yet reminiscing about the past, wanting to cling, but without much to cling to.  I am now someone or something different, yet not easily defined.  This mesh between America and India, a neophyte of identity, belonging to nowhere.  I no longer belong to the society, the reality, the American identity I had.  Yet I will never belong to India, its culture or its people.  I am lost, uncomfortably foreign, unfitted, unreal.  Alive but not subscribing.  A stranger to myself, I no longer know who I am.

The White One

This poem was written in 2010 during my first stint in Bangalore.

The White One
I am drown in the life
of another place so strange and foreign.
A dance, I breathe between the shades
of white and brown.
Where there is no security in numbers
no comfort to be found.
I am on the outside – the Goree – the one to watch.
Constantly on display, performing.
This is a white woman.
This is how she looks.
This is how she talks, walks, laughs and smiles.
I am the one who cannot understand,
the world around me.
Everything is a mystery.
I am a sponge.
A dance I breathe.
Do you see me? The white one?

The Later Years 2012: Excuses Excuses

Originally Posted on July 23rd, 2012.

Several of my attempts at posts sound a little as if I am mentally tipping over the edge.  They reflect the deeper part of me – something I am not so comfortable with sharing.  But the whole point of this blog is to document my life in India, therefore, I cannot simply construct a blog that portrays the happy go-lucky me; because if you know me, you know that is not me, or at least not the real me.  I’m not sure why I am procrastinating on my blog; there are a thousand excuses.  The primary though, is this sort of zombie rut that I am in.  I feel like I am just going through the motions of every day life.  I want to be creative, I want to spin interesting thoughts into works of art, but I have not found my muse, (I will admit that even the ganj is not doing it). When I do write, it seems to be a pathetic attempt, fake in expressing my mind’s wit, and forced.  There is no fluidity in my writing, the wheels are not turning, and I am surprised.  Where has that zest gone?  Where have I veered away from the progress I’ve made?  I feel so closed in my mind. Not just in regard to writing, or any art for that matter, but generally.  I am mystified at how I live in one of the most insane cities in the world, and I am not getting inspiration in life.  Sanju tells me my lethargy and lameness is due to the monsoons.  He says they do this to everyone.  Certainly when the rains come, I feel like crawling into bed for eternity.  Yet, I still cannot blame the rains, they have only just arrived a week ago, and I have felt this way since I came here.  I feel sort of like I am in a maze, and sometimes, I think I know where I am going, and I am happy and energetic to get there, and then I hit a wall.  Frustration sets in and I feel like screaming at the world to fuck off, feel like finding a spot where there is only nature.  Is it culture shock? Is this what I am feeling?  Perhaps.  I do tell Sanju multiple times a week that I am homesick.  I am naturesick, I miss my country, my American food, and well spoken English.  Whatever the culprit, I wish it would leave me the fuck alone.  Zombies are no fun.