He seemed like a nice enough young man, teenager, a little removed and grumpy but who isn’t at 6:30 in the morning and already at a boring job?  His name is Jay, and he was there to help out our housekeeper, house sitter, friend, on a Friday morning.  Our rude dogs were uncomfortable with him; Hops got a little snippy, and Pumpkin too barky, while Barley just avoided him.

I totally trust our friend to bring only good people into our home, and so I immediately trusted Jay but didn’t think he and I would ever have much interchange.  Does it matter that we’re white and he’s African-American?  Sort of…I could label him if I saw him on the street as surly or unfriendly or even a little frightening, but he’s just a young man who happens to come from a different background.  I was cordial but distant.  He was hard-working and reserved.

One morning a few weeks ago, as I sat at my desk while he and Wendy cleaned around me I saw him standing aside, looking at his hand and frowning.  “Jay, what’s wrong?”  “I have a splinter.  Ugh.”  I went to get the tweezers, and then held his hand to the light while we tried to get it out and he flinched, telling me he had had a foster mom who was too aggressive with the tweezers and they scared him a little bit.

Such a tiny encounter.  Such a very brief moment.  An intimate touch.  A shared fear.

What about this experience made it so powerful for me?  Is it simply that I look for chances to be a mom, to be needed, and here was one of those sudden opportunities?  Almost.  But as I took his hand I thought I heard a soft, short, pinging sound, that sound when there is an almost imperceptible break, a crack, or a tiny hole in the protective coating we present to the people around us.  A breach that can let humanity in, even for a second, and resonate through a day, a week, or forever.   Too poetic?  And yet that moment of holding Jay’s hand, helping him deal for a minute or two, it changed me just like every one of those moments in my life has changed me, nudged me closer to being the person I want to be.

I was thrilled to read this article today on some (small but real) progress in bringing toilets to Bihar state in India, where we visited Patna and rural regions in January.  This was a specific request from the women we met with–we need sanitation and toilets, because we all use the fields.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/toilet-initiative-means-lower-risk-of-assault-and-disease-for-women-in-one-of-indias-poorest-regions_55a92982e4b0c5f0322d2a06?

I have been to two Asian countries, 3 weeks in each–Japan in 2013, and our just completed visit to India.  Two crowded countries of mega-cities, each with population issues, commute issues, vast investments in infrastructure.

With my n=2, I will now make some only very lightly-informed pronouncements and over-generalizations on societal coping strategies in crowded urban settings.

National Sumo semi-finals

In Japan you can almost physically feel the stress, especially in the subways and, oddly, in elevators.  Japanese are very polite, very contained, very regimented.  They rush through train stations without eye contact.  They are impeccably dressed.  Everything in the commercial world we encountered was hyper-organized: lines of bowing clerks at opening time in department stores, perfectly timed trains, over-engineered public bathrooms (including the option of having music or sound effects play so no one is disturbed by the sound of your peeing).  Yes, of course there are messy edges, but in general it seems to the traveler that everything works.  99% of the restaurants have plastic food displays, so you know EXACTLY what you are getting–an example of a regimented, organized, planned-in-advance way of doing things.  Stray animals?  Other than the wild deer, none.  Dogs running along the street?  Never.  Though in Tokyo you can see a lot of the quirky teenage fashionistas and costumers out and about, for the most part the homogeneity is striking.  The obsession with cleanliness is delightful as a traveler–I could walk all day, and did, in Tokyo in hot steamy weather in sandals, and come back to the hotel with clean feet.  Private life–it’s invisible.

In India, everyone is just as, probably more, crowded, but everyone lives life in the open.  Bathing.  Changing clothes.  Men getting shaved, or shoes getting repaired, or clothes being ironed–it’s all on the street.  Homogeneous?  Not even close.  Every variety of sub-continent apparel and manner is available.  Colorful is an insufficient adjective.   Animals everywhere.  Broken sidewalks, people and dogs and beggars and cows and goats, wandering in and out of traffic, on and off the pavement, groups of people standing around everywhere eating, talking, hollering–your impression is that nothing is hidden, life is an open, communal, shared experience.  People clothe stray dogs.  People feed the cows by tossing fresh greens on the sidewalks in the afternoon.  People throw bananas to the wild monkeys.  And messy around the edges?  India is profoundly messy in so many ways.

When we returned from 3 weeks in Japan, we walked into our house and decided it needed some upgrading–and began planning a major remodeling project.  We laughed–compared to the cleanliness of Japan, our life looked a bit shabby.

When we returned from India it felt as if we were entering a surrealistically quiet, peaceful, clean, organized, and maybe a bit dull, world.

When we travel internationally we try to book 3 weeks, given the typically long flights  involved.  By the time I get to the middle of that last week I am usually beginning to feel homesick for my dogs, bed, food, cool breezes at night coming through open windows–all that good stuff of normal life.  Sometimes I’m even beginning to miss work!

Reentry is usually a fog of jet lag and general fatigue for a few days, and then I’m back, with all kinds of resolutions to organize my photos (rarely done), a big box of souvenirs and gifts to be distributed in the corner of the bedroom, and a return to digestive and sleep normality.

Coming back from India had a few aspects that surprised me a little.

To be clear, we don’t live out in the country, but rather in a medium sized city that sits in the middle of a pretty large metropolitan area.  Traffic, trains, and the rest of the urbanized commotion are the background of our lives.

• I never realized before just how quiet it is here.  Coming back from the airport was like gliding along in a dream, seemingly silently though I know there were real noises–they just couldn’t penetrate my armored consciousness.  Cars changed lanes, melding into the flow of traffic without scary near misses or horn announcements “I’m about to move;” “I moved;” “I am now past you.”  Eery.  When you honk your horn in the US it’s because someone is backing out into your car, not because you’re, well, driving.  And after five days, we are still noticing the peaceful state of the streets and freeways.
• I was struck by how intrusive it is to understand what people around me are saying.  Walking through the farmers’ market the day after we arrived, snatches of conversations interrupted my thoughts, my interior monologue, and my conversation with my husband.  English words kept barging in on us.  Parents talking to their kids, questions to vendors, adult conversations around us seemed almost rude!  Jee, keep it to yourself, would you?  Our last few trips abroad have been to Spanish-speaking countries where I do catch a fair bit of the talking around me, but in India the only words I understood were greetings, yes, and no.  The rest was atmospheric, not communicative.  I miss that privacy–not following what everyone is saying around you means you concentrate thoroughly on your own experience.
• We surely missed home-cooked and just plain homey food, and one of the first things I had thought I craved was a tunafish salad sandwich.  But it didn’t really taste that good–mild and salty at the same time.  Last night I made pad Thai for the first time because I wanted something “different.”  I am going to go for roast chicken tonight, our most typical dinner.  Maybe that will snap me out of it and get my palate back to normal!

All that aside, it sure is nice to be greeted by wagging tails and licks every time we enter a room and, it appears, our dogs are happy all over again to see we’re home.

Outskirts of Old Delhi–a vendor selling corn to feed to birds, with a large pan of milk for stray cats and a street dog curled up on front.

We had feared that by the time we reached our last day in India, a 20 hour stint in Delhi, we would be so tired, tired of India, and homesick that it would be a slog to get through it. The plan we formed a week or so ago was to go to Old Delhi, walk around, buy some spices, and punt the rest of the day. When we landed in Delhi our travel manager met us at the airport and we talked over the plan. He suggested that walking in Old Delhi alone was unwise, and he would arrange a driver to accompany us for the day. This sounded reasonable. It turned out the driver would be the same fellow who took us to the hotel that evening, so we finalized a pickup time for the next morning–he suggested 9 am, as any earlier there wouldn’t be much open anyway. The day dawned misty and chilly. We had gotten a very good night’s sleep and we awoke enthusiastic about the day, against all our expectations. Our visit to Old Delhi the second day in India had been brief–just a bicycle rickshaw tear through, up the hill to the big mosque, a walk around the mosque and then a tear down to be dropped at the Red Fort which is more or less across the street. This time we parked the car, one of the first ten cars or so in the dusty, unpacked lot, and set out walking to the disappointment of the ten or twenty rickshaw drivers who hollered for our business, “take ride to spice market! walk no good!”

Even on our last day, the beautiful and abundant produce still impressed us.

The sun was coming out, warming the street just enough and we felt more and more excited about the day. Our driver and guide, Santosh, pointed out all kinds of things and guided us along the already somewhat crowded streets, holding us back as motorcycles and rickshaws and handcarts came from every direction. The fruit and vegetable carts and stands and sidewalk displays were out and lots of commerce and bustle kept us entertained. We turned up a main thoroughfare, perhaps a full lane, or, for bicycle rickshaws ample two lanes, wide. Many storefronts were still closed, metal gates down, but many were open including breakfast poori and dal stands, and of course tea shops/stands with battered aluminum pots of milky tea at full boil over charcoal fires. We made our first commercial stop at a large–for Old Delhi–incense, oil and perfume shop.

Incense store.

We bought a few packages of cone incense, each with a little ceramic dish for burning them in, and got into a chat with the proprietor. Where are you from? Where have you visited? Very nice. We kept walking, watching the city come fully alive alleyway by alleyway. Santosh suggested leaving the main thoroughfare so we turned into one of the very, very narrow alleys.

Temple decorations.

Window symbol looks so Jewish!

The volume of goods moving by bicycle amazes–this is a cart of painted tables.

What a delight! Many sari and bead stores were opening, as we were in the sari district, and vegetables were for sale from canvas spreads on the pavement. I stopped to look at what I thought were ginger bulbs, but the ends were orange.

Produce for sale all over the place.

Upper left–looks like ginger but is fresh turmeric.

They were fresh turmeric! I bought a few (15 rupees) and hope I can bring them into California. We shall see. Cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, purple and spring onions, bananas, apples, star fruit, and a few things we couldn’t name. A few monkeys ran ahead of us on overhangs and, frighteningly, the sagging tangle of electric wires.

I hope you can see the monkeys running along the wires.

Vendors tossed bananas up to the monkeys which run along the overhangs and electrical wires.

At one alley corner a fruit monger was tossing bananas up to them, and it appeared to be a morning ritual as the monkeys each waited for his or her banana and one dropped down to the pavement to eat it. Off to the side of one alley was a wide, quiet, beautiful and ancient-seeming row of houses, a commercial office of what looked like an antique or arts dealer having a chat on a speaker phone, and at the end of the block a white marble building which must have been a temple of some kind. We took many pictures…it reminded me of the row of painted ladies in San Francisco in that it was impossibly picturesque.

Quiet side alley of beautiful buildings.

Another building in the quiet alley.

White marble, which we assumed was a temple, in the quiet alley.

In the quiet alley.

We wandered from one commercial district to the next–housewares, books, paper goods/stationery, saris, sari lace and beadwork, brass work, jewelry…and it got busier and busier as pretty soon every shop was open. It seems impossible that all this stuff gets sold, or that an establishment produces a sufficient income. But this is largely a wholesale district and it apparently all works. We insisted on getting to a spice market but Santosh didn’t know of it. We begged him to ask and he did, and we made a u-turn. The we were in the shoe district, the clothing district, the watch district–and I remembered that my watch and was fraying and so we ducked into a store, like most about 5 feet wide with glass cases up one side and a counter on the other. Yes, they had them! About five minutes later and 150 rupees lighter (a few dollars) I had a new watch band installed. Yeah!

New watch band.

Imported almonds-from California!

We came around a bend and store after store was selling nuts and dried fruits, including almonds from California, but mostly local. Santosh had us duck into one, and they sold a wide array of spices and masalas (spice mixes). A salesman started taking us through everything that they had. There was a open tray of compartments and he had us smell or taste each one–all, except Szechuan pepper, of Indian origin. “Taste this salt–it tastes like hard boiled eggs” as he picked up two large rocks of purple crystal, rubbed the, together to drop a few flakes in our open palms. Yup! It did, because, as I confirmed, it has sulfur in it. This is the black Himalayan salt–some of which I have at home but believe me it tastes nothing like this delicious stuff and I said right away I wanted some.

In the spice store.

Fellow on the left had us sample all the spices–great sales experience.

Tellicherry black peppercorns. Dried mace flowers. Dried whole turmeric. Vanilla bean. Cinnamon bark. White peppercorns. Coriander seeds that are light yellow and oval, unlike the ones in the states. The we went on to the masalas. Fish masala, chicken tandoori, and about five others. And chai tea mix. We ended up spending $140 or so…what fun!

Shiny new manual sewing machines–the ones we saw at street tailors and in, for example, the place in Jaipur where I bought the Afghan antique fabric.

A mound of a chickpea mix, decorated with slices of paneer and tomato, at a breakfast stand.

Santosh ran into an old friend on the street; note the sewing machine–a street tailor.

Street barber.

Snacks–so tempting.

Shoe repairman on the sidewalk (common).

We wandered back through the side alleys, gawking and taking pictures. The sun was shining and it was like the whole of India was crammed into this amazing place. Schoolgirls in uniform buying little dishes of noodles, all crowded around and pouring orange and green sauces on top. School kids jammed 6 or more into bicycle rickshaws to head to school. Muslim men, and some women, milling around the mosques. An oxcart racing, incredibly, up the street. A man hurrying down an alley with a washing machine balanced on his head. Poori stands (a puffed fried bread).

Girls going to school via bicycle rickshaw.

Looking at garnets in a small wholesale jeweler.

Typical bedding store.

Off the tourist path in Old Delhi.

Late morning crowd in the paper district.

Seems impossible for anyone to get anywhere, but they do.

Our guide told us the exteriors are deceiving–there are very nice apartments above the stores, even in the very old buildings

Beautiful old building. Sewing machine companies sell manual machines used everywhere. We saw only men sewing.

When we returned to the parking lot it was a mass of cars, so crowded and busy with cars coming in I couldn’t see how we would ever get out. But it took only a few minutes and we were on the road, which was midday full. We stopped at Pindi, which had been our favorite restaurant in Delhi, for our last, and most delicious lunch of paneer tikka, mutton saagwala (lamb in a spinach sauce), rice and paratha. Heavenly.

Need fireworks?

Goodbye

Major street repairs in front of old apartments.

Families buying saris.

You can see family groups selecting wedding saris.

Delhi. Goodbye India. Thank you for treating us so well and for showing us your beauty, squalor, messiness; for saving your history, your palaces, forts, temples; for your generosity, openness, curiosity; your spices, food, salt lassis; your Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims; your friendly children, beautiful and inspiring women, pushy businessmen; your cows and water buffalo, your dogs and cats and monkeys; soaring kites, both avian and paper, screaming parakeets.

We won’t miss the dusty roads, uncollected garbage, constant honking horns, beeping motorscooters, ringing bicycles. We won’t miss the unending construction, piles of bricks and sand and lumber, or having to buy bottled water or having every single meal at least a little bit spicy. We never expected to love it as much as we now do, and hope we will come back someday.

The next morning we headed to the airport.  We took a few goodbye pictures of the ‘highway.’

Enroute to the Varanasi airport.

We saw many basket shops, but didn’t stop to buy.

Morning tea.

A view of the ‘highway.’

Open road!

A lot of road construction means a lot of piles of construction materials.

We were pleased to find the 45 minute flight to tiny Khajuraho was in a nearly empty 737. Our stay was just about exactly 24 hours, there being one flight in, arriving midday, that turns around and heads back to Varanasi as the one flight out.

We knew it was a small town, with the only thing to do there being to visit the famous 25 Hindu temples and the hundreds of temple carvings which decorate them. This is, for India, a hamlet of 20,000 people. The hotel is 5 minutes from the airport. The temples are a 15 minute walk from the hotel–in the center of the commercial area. We heard birds singing. We had the window open in our room and it was silent all night. A heavenly respite from the commotion of every other place we have visited.

Laundry by the side of the road.

Directly across from the hotel, a woman with her goats.

Bustling metropolis of Khajuraho.

The weather was cool and foggy when we arrived. After a fast lunch in the hotel we met our guide and went into town. The driver went about 5 mph in order to give the guide enough time to give us the necessary background for our visit to the two clusters of temples, one on either side of the central square about 5 minutes drive apart. It would be two minutes if there were a semblance of a street grid and a bit of paving.

You pay a very small fee and walk into a vast, green, quiet, clean park dotted with ornately carved temples, dating from the early tenth century and some decades thereafter, with one built in the early 1900s. Our guide was so talkative that he drove David a bit nuts, and we tried to absorb the torrent of dates, descriptions, and names. In truth all the talking, though enlightening, was a distraction from the amazing site. Khajuraho is famous for the many erotic carvings on almost every temple. These are a small percentage, however, of the many, many representations of daily life of which sex is just one aspect, and that was the idea.

Entering the temple park–clean and serene.

Temples separated by lovely lawns and walkways.

Most visitors are Indian.

We not only loved the buildings, but were treated to the sight of three spotted owls sitting on a temple in the eastern group, as well as what we were told is a blue jay but nothing like our version, being bright blue and golden brown– beautiful.

We saw 6 owls in total! This one threw up for us–but I wasn’t quick enough with the camera!

I can see why the temples appeal to owls.

This is an Indian blue jay, they told me. Gorgeous, large, in flight the wings are stunning.

This is in the eastern group–much smaller and without a surrounding park.

t.

With our free morning the next day we walked into town to wander the temples on our own. What a great idea this was–the sun came out, we wandered for several hours, taking a gazillion pictures.

The side of a huge boar is totally carved.

Life scenes, thousands of them it seemed.

This peaceful park is adjacent to the bustling town.

Dodging the touts (hawkers), we walked over to the oldest ruin that is outside the park.

There are several remaining lakes in the town.

This temple ruin is outside the park, about a 15 minute walk. It is the oldest.

From these oldest ruins the main temple park is visible.

Then we walked the 15 minutes back to the hotel to pee and check out.

As we zipped up our bags in the room and made to leave, David suddenly realized he had lost his glasses. Lost IN THE ROOM as he had been wearing them all morning and had removed them just to change into a short sleeved t-shirt.  We turned the room upside down. Removed everything from every bag. Looked under the bed. Repacked and then unpacked again. They were gone gone gone. Since we had to leave for the airport we went to the desk, concluding they had to be somewhere in the luggage since they were clearly not in the room. At the desk the manager asked about our stay, and David said, it was great except I have lost my glasses…about to add “if you find them…” The manager opened a drawer behind the desk and handed them to David. A guest had found them. Outside. Near the pool. Where we had NOT gone.

We have no idea how this happened but glad it all turned out just fine.

On to Delhi for one last taste, and then home.