The Scoop Down to Fine Leg

Tuesday morning I am cold in bed, and though it feels as if I should be getting up , my room is still gray. The morning is overcast, and water stands in shallow puddles on the slate surface outside the door of my guest house. The rain seems to have banished the humidity--the obtuse houseguest--that lingers on too long after monsoon, and a gentle breeze blows coolly. I welcome the change, not because the heat of the previous fortnight has been withering--the temperature rarely crept much over 90 during the day, and evenings have been exceedingly pleasant--but for the simple fact of difference. Though I hope beyond geography and reason, there is no hint of autumn in the breeze.

I know already--have known--that among the fiercest blows of this year (along with no family and friends, no Cheer Cheer for Old Notre Dame (although there's nothing to cheer this year), no hot homemade applesauce, no costume party on Halloween, no Washington Post at my door every morning, no Christmas carols (no frosted sugar cookies or popcorn balls either), no Happy Hours, no New Yorker, no "Oh Indiana, we're all for you!" and no March Madness, no Opening Day and buy me some peanuts and crackerjack, no Easter candy, no bicycle rides, no moviegoing with a box of Junior Mints rattling beside me, no Simpsons!) will be the loss of the seasons as I have come to know them. I will miss autumm and spring the most, followed by winter, and least of all summer, which arrives almost without distinction but is not without its charms (lightning bugs, sunlit evenings, and lily-strewn roadsides all come to mind).

I will spare you any fulsome enumeration of my love for the others: it would serve no purpose, particularly here. It's a vain taxonomy of the fond and familiar anyway, perhaps summoned understandably in an alien setting such as this, but no less useless for the fact. India offers its own bracing and transcendent natural milieu, if only I will open myself to it. For example: Tuesday night the moon is nearly full and as clear and bright as I have ever seen it. It is pure white--bedsheet white--and throws up a golden corona of impossible thickness amid the clouds that demurely ply--never crossing--its path. I am suitably awed.

In the past few days, a pair of frissons to puncture the daily routine. On Sunday, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan (equivalent to the governor of a U.S. state) visits Seva Mandir to dedicate a new floor of its library. In welcoming, Udaipur's main roads are edged with double lines of chalk--one white and one a vivid pink (also, in a few places, I notice a third line of mint green). At Seva Mandir, garlands of marigolds are wound around, draped, and hung from every surface. (My mother grew marigolds when I was young, but I never cared for them--too monochromatic. The Indians have taken that uniformity and made it a strength; the garlands radiate a consecrating warmth and power.) On the floor of the library someone has created an astonishing representation of a flower (lotus?) blossom, a brilliantly hued vision of painstakingly sprinkled and sifted chalk a full meter in diameter (see image above). Chai and cookies are served on the grounds. The ceremony itself, perhaps not surprisingly, is perfunctory--a few speakers, lots of photo ops, and then it's over. Tuesday's morning rain disperses the power of the chalk lines, like the faded batter's box after a baseball game. The marigolds in the library are browning.

Monday after work, I ride with my roommate Arun and another coworker to his apartment to watch the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Twenty20 final between India and Pakistan. Cricket to Indians is like football to Americans, if football were America's only real source of pride on the international athletic stage: It is an obsession that matters. As in nuclear bombs, in cricket, Pakistan is India's chief rival; thus, the match counts for much nationally, internationally, and psychically. Cricket matches are notoriously long (test matches are played out over 3-5 days), and the Twenty20 format is a radically abbreviated version of the sport designed, like a picture Bible, to entrap the casual fan by flash and sheer pith. Twenty20 in comparison to test cricket is the equivalent of reducing a baseball game to a contest of two innings, except Twenty20 cricket matches are still more than three hours long, and there's enough scoring that the probability of a tie is virtually nil.

India bats first and manages a mere 157 runs in its twenty overs, a fact which creates much consternation among my viewing mates. India had hoped for 180 runs; conversely, Pakistan sought to hold them to 160. The mood is somber. Alas, after an interval of rest, the Pakistani batsman don't fare much better. Here is an account, by Dileep Premachandran of the website Cricinfo, of of the match's denouement:

"With Misbah on strike, Pakistan needed 13 from the final over. After a great deal of thought, Mahendra Singh Dhoni gambled on the inexperienced Joginder Sharma. When he started with a wide, Indian fans groaned, and the situation became even more desperate when Misbah pummelled a full toss miles over long-off for six. But with victory in his grasp, his judgement failed him. Moving across his stumps, he went for the scoop down to fine leg. He didn't connect cleanly, and millions on the subcontinent held their breath as Sreesanth came under the ball at short fine leg. When he held it, the stadium erupted."

Got it? In brief: India wins by a mere five runs, in what some regard as the greatest final in any form of World Cup cricket action ever. If live television coverage was any indication, fans all over the country were igniting fireworks in celebration. Like low-grade artillery, the cracks and pops of pyrotechnics could be heard across Udaipur for hours afterward. What to make of a country that seems to have fireworks at hand for any occasion?

Meanwhile, I've visited the field again, this time for two days and a night. More soon.

A Solitary Aravalli

On Monday, I zipped through the hills south of Udaipur in a white Land Rover, on my way to the village of Helpia, one of 589 in which Seva Mandir is working. It was my first real glimpse of the Indian countryside, and I was grateful for it: Even after four years of city living, I think I'm probably still a country boy at heart. India is undoubtedly one of the more geographically diverse nations on the planet. In addition to the Himalayas (the country's highest point is more than 28,000 feet in elevation), it hosts an additional eight mountain ranges with peaks of at least 1,000 meters. The Thar (Great Indian) Desert dominates western Rajasthan, and the largest mangrove forest in the world is located at the mouth of the Ganges in West Bengal. Tropical rainforests and jungle cover both the northeast of the country (the part that kisses Burma) and the inland western coast, and all told, India has more than 4,000 miles of coastline. The only thing it doesn't have is tundra. But maybe somewhere in the Himalayas...

My initiation into this surfeit of biologic, geologic, and pelagic riches? The Aravalli Hills, the sputtering out of India's oldest mountain range, which cuts diagonally from northeast to southwest across the entire state of Rajasthan, nearly reaching Delhi in the north and the state of Gujarat in the south. Once upon a time the Aravalli Range contained snowcapped peaks, back before the subcontinent came crashing into Asia, back, even perhaps, to a time before the subcontinent existed. Now the southern Aravallis are a haphazard series of modest hills, beaten down by millions of years of weather and erosion, and in their current post-monsoon incarnation resemble nothing so much as (if you can excuse my inelegant metaphor) a rash of green boils breaking upon the face of an otherwise featureless and largely monochromatic landscape. But if I were a young, scarlet-caped ingenue, and southern Rajasthan were a devious wolf horizontal in its nightclothes, I would remark, "My, what lovely boils you have!"

Unlike the Appalachians, another formerly forbidding range reduced to a green and stunted senescence, there is no uniformity in the arrangement, shape, or appearance of the Aravallis, at least in the ass-end of the range, where I reside. The hills are sprinkled across the land without any obvious uniting rationale: bunches here give way to a stretch of flat land interrupted, perhaps, by a solitary Aravalli, which in turn gives way to another stretch of flat, perhaps hemmed in by another bunch, utterly distinct from the first. It is a lovely and chaotic assemblage, sometimes bordering on the whimsical. The hills near my home in north Udaipur are crowned with temples that, illuminated in the evenings, beckon to the pilgrim spirit in me (or maybe it's only the prospect of an encompassing view of Udaipur that stirs). Mt. Abu is near, offering the highest peak in the Aravallis, 5650 feet above the tumult of this country.

Into these hills I rode, on a new highway that in some cases had been hewn through rock (lancing a boil, as it were), pressing on toward Helpia, where a meeting of the village GVC (Gram Vikas Committee--a local governing unit with no official mandate, begun with the urging of Seva Mandir) awaited. Off of the main highway, the road narrowed considerably, becoming too thin for two cars to shoulder past one another, and as we wound through the hills, the road snaking unpredictably ahead, we dodged all manner of livestock--cattle, goats, domesticated buffalo, and the occasional donkey. Just outside of the only town (in this case, the only grouping of habitations with a commercial center) en route, we arrived at an impasse of sorts. Recent monsoon rains meant that a shortcut across a normally dry streambed was underwater. We could attempt to ford the stream, which was quite shallow, or continue on the more circuitous route to Helpia. We watched as men walked their motorcycles across the modest current. The driver, encouraged by their progress, decided to hazard a crossing. The five passengers, myself included, disembarked, rolled up our pant legs (in some cases ditching footwear as well) and began the work of stacking large stones in one particularly perilous depression. (The water was deliciously warm, so perfect, in fact, that I thought that to duck underwater here might be the closest one could come to returning to the 98.6 degree suspension of the womb (yuck! I know). If circumstances had been otherwise, I might have joined some local kids who had stripped to their underwear and were frolicking in a nearby pool.) In two attempts the Rover made it across, and we dutifully waded after, the water reaching not even to my knee at its highest point.

Helpia lay along a seldom used road of surprising quality (much better, say, than many roads in LaPorte County, Indiana, where I grew up), tucked among the hills and fronted by a stream that bent at a right angle close to the village (like most around here, really a scattering of hamlets). After bending with the stream, the Land Rover came to an abrupt stop beneath a tree whose branches canopied most of the road. "This is their meeting place," Anita, In-Charge of the People's Management School at Seva Mandir, said. "No one uses this road." The road and ground beneath the tree were spattered with cow shit, and after some minutes of waiting for the principals to assemble, a thin, coarse carpet of a deep reddish hue was rolled out under the tree and into the road, and a long and thin cushion arrayed at its fore. The cushion would have covered the lane line had the road been marked and wide enough to accommodate lanes. In total, about ten adults gathered, with a smattering of children present as well, and three men shared the cushion, presumably as a signifier of their positions of authority within the GVC. The meeting lasted perhaps seventy-five minutes; all told, we were in Helpia no longer than two hours, during which time, by my count, only three vehicles passed on the road, all motorbikes.

Unable to follow the progress of the meeting because of my woefully deficient Hindi, my eyes wandered about the world before me: buffalos wallowed in a limpid stream, some with egrets perched on their backs; cattle quietly filed past en route to their next feeding ground; the Aravallis rose verdant all around, overshadowing the neat village homes with their red-tile roofs (owing, Anitia said, to the nearby zinc mines). Forgive me for thinking I had entered some bucolic idyll. But alas this was September, the monsoon had ended not a month prior, and the world around me would be transformed come next June. Likely the stream would be dry, the earth scorched by a pitiless sun, and the Aravellis parched and wilted to a browner shade. The hale but already thin cattle would turn skeletal. Or so I imagined. I really didn't know. But I will find out.

The 2963 to Udaipur

"Train travel is the best way to see the country," I've often been told. And I don't mean only by Indians; I've known Americans to remark the same regarding the U.S. Of course, with Americans this declaration is usually followed by a "they say," since few have actually traveled extensively by rail, and one is left to wonder who "they," those who make such a recommendation, really are. Perhaps there is truth in the statement; however, I can't say that I saw much of India on my initial train voyage here, that is, I saw nothing of the country's physical landscape. Much of this blindness can be attributed to timing: the 2963 from Delhi to Udaipur departs at 7 P.M. (just as the sun sets this time of year) and arrives at 7 A.M., perhaps an hour after morning's first light. Thus the window for prime landscape viewing is brief, and in any event light was irrelevant for me: from my vantage in the upper berth, I could see no more than twenty feet to one side of the train. Ultimately, my voyage would be defined by its boredom.

I had purchased a ticket for a 3 Tier AC berth. Evidently, 1st Class was sold out; the ticket agent offered me a choice between 2 and 3 Tier. "What's the difference?" I asked.

"The difference is one of comfort, sir." (It was only later that learned that the nomenclature referenced the number of bunks along the wall in a compartment.)

"What's the difference in price?"

"Anywhere between 700 and 1100 rupees ($18-$27)." (Which actually was the difference between 1st class and 3 tier.)

I opted for less comfort and the Rs814 ticket. My expectation of sharing a compartment with one, or at the most three other people proved optimistic: I would pass the night with eight others (including a three-year-old boy, no ticket required, who shared a berth with his mother). My 3 Tier AC car comprised eight such open compartments of eight berths, abutted by a bathroom on either end.

I had an upper berth, close to the ceiling and clustered among the six berths (three on each wall) on the larger side of the compartment. Among my compartment mates were an older couple who were quite accomodating of my large bag, which couldn't fit under the seat. Their son worked in Manchester, England, they told me. The man was friendly and had rumpled, unruly black hair, a gray moustache, and brownish nubs for teeth. His cell phone would beep throughout the night, intoning a waiting voice message. The three-year-old boy (I'm estimating his age) would cry himself to sleep around 11. Inexplicably, written on his denim shorts, in small letters just above the hem of his left leg, was the word "LICK." Across his butt, in large script, the word "DUDE." Other mates included the boy's mother, a young Sikh man who shared the upper berth across from me, two stern middle-aged men, and a youngish man who climbed into his berth prior to departure and didn't speak a word or descend until we had arrived (except, perhaps, to use the bathroom).

At nine, after eating dinner (my only meal being a small bag of Lay's "India Mysterious Mint" potato chips), everyone, on unspoken assent, prepared their berths and crawled into bed fully clothed. By 10 the lights were extinguished, although I tried for some minutes to read by the glow of an adjoining compartment. Berths were about six feet long, the same as a normal mattress, and precisely as wide as my shoulders. They came with a pillow, two thin sheets, and a heavy brown blanket. In my aerie, I was close enough to the ceiling that I couldn't sit up fully. The lulling, rocking motion of the train was pleasant, and the train's whistle sounded a bit like the soft, sustained note of a trumpeter; still, I couldn't sleep in the cramped quarters. My body continues to adapt to the time difference, a process which will likely take a couple of weeks. I wonder, however, if it will ever adapt to the thin, stiff mattresses and pillows that Indians seem to favor. After a few hours my body ached--shoulders, back, neck, head--and I would manage perhaps a total of two hours of sleep for the night. Dawn's arrival--the window opposite my berth turned gray--was welcome, for it meant I could soon disembark from my berth and the train. Udaipur beckoned. Outside the train station, I asked an auto-rickshaw driver to take me to Seva Mandir (a name known to all in Udaipur), and I was on my way.

The Happy Snake

What can I tell you about Delhi from my forty hours here that you wouldn't already know or be able to guess? Probably not much: it's hot; it's crowded and bustling; the drivers are crazy. Such is true of many places in the developing world: from my admittedly limited experience, however, Delhi carries these stereotypes to tragicomic extremes. Take the drivers, for example. The greatest single instance of government waste in this country no doubt lies in the budget line item (if such a thing existed) for the painting of lane lines. In truth, the roads need only a double yellow line to demarcate the directional flow of traffic, and even that seemingly firm boundary is violated with shameless regularity. A four-lane major thoroughfare may, at times, contain eight or ten indistinct and ephemeral lanes of traffic. It's not that the marked lanes are exceptionally wide; the sheer variety of vehicles on the road (and consequent variety of widths of vehicles) means that they may be fitted together in a virtually infinite number of combinations. A bus and motorbike (or possibly two) fit one marked lane of traffic, as do a car, auto-rickshaw (took-took), and motorbike. Five motorbikes may ride alongside one another in a lane. The fitting together is not comfortable, least of all for passengers who hail from the comparatively sane roadways of North America and some European nations. They say that baseball is a game of inches: perhaps driving in India is a game of centimeters. And if it is any game at all, it most closely resembles Tetris, but only if all of the pieces were in a perpetual push to advance. The dance can be mesmerizing, I admit. There is some greater force guiding the paths of these vehicles as they jockey for position: there must be, or else traffic fatalities would rival disease as the preeminent cause of mortality in this country. Traffic here is an organism forever shifting in its shape and composition: first cars interspersed with took-tooks and a smattering of motorbikes here, now a bus surrounded by bicycles and taxis there. Bulging here, now tapering, then bulging again, a pattern that is endlessly repeated, like some snake that has swallowed an entire family of mice. In truth, I find it thrilling, and if I stayed in Delhi long enough, I would likely find it unremarkable in time. But I haven't even mentioned the pedestrians! Fearless, they cross the street with disdain for bodily injury. When forced to stop mid-cross, as they invariably must, they create their own lanes of traffic, which drivers must negotiate like any other in the street. The fact that pedestrians are moving both with and perpendicularly to the regular flow only heightens the intrigue.

How easily does misunderstanding arrive? Yesterday I asked a took-took driver to take me to the New Delhi Train Station so that I could buy my ticket. "New Delhi?" he asked. I repeated my destination several times, wondering how it was possible that even a driver who obviously spoke only a few phrases of English could not know this. I enlisted the help of some passers-by. "You want the New Delhi Railway Station?" they asked. "Yes," I said. "New Delhi Railway Station," they told the driver. We went.

Speaking of the New Delhi Railway Station, I found it frightening. People everywhere, like ants swarming a carcass in the roadway. I tried to make my way upstairs to the Foreign Tourist Office, where passage is booked with a fraction of the waiting and hassle than among the crush of Indians. I chose a route to the stairs that forced me to cross several queues of Indians waiting toe-to-heel to purchase their tickets. Coming to the first queue, I said "Excuse me" evenly and waited for a parting. No one budged. I pushed close. Still no movement, only steely glances from a tiny man waiting there. I was a head taller than everyone in the immediate vicinity. I retraced my steps and chose a route to the stairs circumnavigating the queues. It was a game of Red Rover that I obviously couldn't win.

At night, when I lie in bed and the clattering rush of stimulus has subsided, the pangs of homesickness arrive. I realize that my assurances to family and friends that one year was really a short period of time, that it would pass more quickly than could be imagined, were really attempts to quiet my own fears. On my second day in India, one year seems an eternity. These feelings, too, will pass in time, but at the moment my mind returns to them when it has the chance.

It's off to Udaipur now, where the substance of my time here will take shape.