Holy cows, holy city, holy river.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Optimism
Varanasi warrants the following adjectives: dignified, ancient, holy, captivating.
Adjectives which will never be stuck to the City of Light include: neat, clean, and tidy.
The air is heavy with dust and the ground is stained red with paan juice. Walking along the ghats means dodging piles of goat, cow and dog droppings and keeping your feet out of the toxic water that sluices across the path now and then. Backstreets become open latrines. Kids scavenge anything reusable, street sweepers valiantly mill around with brooms and hoses, goats nibble on whatever they can, but there’s still a vast amount of rubbish and, well, filth lying around. In the face of all this muck, this cheery penguin shaped bin at Dasaswamedh Ghat struck me as a brilliantly, crazily hopeful civic installation.
The next time I walked past it, a mouthful of paan juice had been spattered across the penguin’s plastic belly, making a mockery of this sturdy little receptacle’s function.
Adjectives which will never be stuck to the City of Light include: neat, clean, and tidy.
The air is heavy with dust and the ground is stained red with paan juice. Walking along the ghats means dodging piles of goat, cow and dog droppings and keeping your feet out of the toxic water that sluices across the path now and then. Backstreets become open latrines. Kids scavenge anything reusable, street sweepers valiantly mill around with brooms and hoses, goats nibble on whatever they can, but there’s still a vast amount of rubbish and, well, filth lying around. In the face of all this muck, this cheery penguin shaped bin at Dasaswamedh Ghat struck me as a brilliantly, crazily hopeful civic installation.
The next time I walked past it, a mouthful of paan juice had been spattered across the penguin’s plastic belly, making a mockery of this sturdy little receptacle’s function.
Here and there
I missed the biggest barbie day of the year in Sydney without too much regret. Last year on Straya/Invasion Day I traversed the city twice on public transport. The buses and trains were for the most part full of bright-eyed youngsters keeping alive the great Australian tradition of getting tanked and affectionate in public places. They wore Aussie flags and Southern Crosses on their backs and green and gold stripes of zinc on their cheeks; peel-off flag tattoos from the Tele emblazoned many surfaces. The kids seemed to have been pulled from every shelf of the demographic pie shop and I wondered how they had come to accept and express so apparently uncritically the true blue lamington dogma. If the holiday was just a pretext for social interaction, why all the nationalist paraphernalia? Mostly though, I just wished they’d stop singing Waltzing Matilda. Things got a bit uglier later in the day: flags turned into drunken superhero capes; off-key singing turned into shouty aggro incoherence and corpses began to cover the pavements of the Cross. Waterside picnics con vino (chardonnay the tipple for special occasions like Australia Day) aside, I wasn’t devastated to pass it up this year.
The 26th January 2008 began far too early in the morning for me. I rose at 3.30am in order to catch a train from murky, menacing Gaya station. The train was late and I huddled in my blanket feeling very cold and cranky. Eventually the train shunted in and out with me aboard and I arrived in Varanasi, the most ancient city I’ve ever visited. Here in Shiva’s city, I discovered that the 26th January is also India’s Republic Day, this year celebrating the 58th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of India. More people milled on the streets and ghats of Varanasi than in Sydney but the milling was a little more low-key.
Lots of sari-strolling, marigold wreaths, floating candles, paper flags (none worn as capes) and perhaps a bit more tooting and beeping on the streets.
The 26th January 2008 began far too early in the morning for me. I rose at 3.30am in order to catch a train from murky, menacing Gaya station. The train was late and I huddled in my blanket feeling very cold and cranky. Eventually the train shunted in and out with me aboard and I arrived in Varanasi, the most ancient city I’ve ever visited. Here in Shiva’s city, I discovered that the 26th January is also India’s Republic Day, this year celebrating the 58th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of India. More people milled on the streets and ghats of Varanasi than in Sydney but the milling was a little more low-key.
Lots of sari-strolling, marigold wreaths, floating candles, paper flags (none worn as capes) and perhaps a bit more tooting and beeping on the streets.
As far as I know, Varanasi isn’t a dry city but I haven’t come across any booze vendors thus far; perhaps this is why I also didn’t happen upon any marauding clusters of Antipodeans thronging with nationalist fervour. Varanasi may be one of the few cities in the world not under sharia law where you can pass Australia Day under such conditions.
Life is short and art is long
It might be that my longish absence from Sydney is adding a certain lustre to the lily gilding process. Still, it seems like there’s been an explosion of new theatre in Sydney over the last year. My inbox is full of blurbs about shows, shows, shows. Hurrah! To wit, my outrageously talented friend Cait and her collaborators are staging Persephone’s Wolf at the Carriageworks, right now. If the stars, Malaysian Airlines, the real estate agents of the inner East and my immune system are working with me on the night the curtain falls on the show for the last time, I’ll be there, as should you be.
Plumdingers
Momos in soup at the Tibetan Om CafÈ, Bodhgaya, a locale particularly favoured by out-of-town spiritual questers dropping by that holy city. Not only is it a fabulous spot for the sceptical eavesdropper, it is a fine, flea-free, low fee place to eat. The soup was full of garlic, green chilli and some kind of leafy weed, a hearty, nay, pugilistic counter to the chilly, depressing situation outside and, indeed, to the drippy sanctimony of the clientele.
Barely visible in the background is an excellent glass of strong milky filter coffee. The Om crowd stopped comparing meditation stories for a few moments as it was brought to me, the punchy aroma of coffee in the morning briefly obscuring the incense burning in the corner. As their eyebrows fell and their gazes turned from my glass and back to their own, full of chai, hot ginger and lemon, Tibetan tea and lassi (salty, no doubt), I wondered whether the mild stimulus afforded by coffee drinking was viewed with some chagrin in this sacred place. Was mine a paranoid reaction? Hard to say, but in the half second before the puzzled, slightly disapproving glances stopped and the dharma chatter resumed, every demon in my chart urged me to yell out, Dudes, it’s my karma, right?, like some obnoxious precocious adolescent diva in a coming of age film set in Northern California. I kept the noise down and concentrated on broadcasting the vibes via my cosmic ham radio instead.
Barely visible in the background is an excellent glass of strong milky filter coffee. The Om crowd stopped comparing meditation stories for a few moments as it was brought to me, the punchy aroma of coffee in the morning briefly obscuring the incense burning in the corner. As their eyebrows fell and their gazes turned from my glass and back to their own, full of chai, hot ginger and lemon, Tibetan tea and lassi (salty, no doubt), I wondered whether the mild stimulus afforded by coffee drinking was viewed with some chagrin in this sacred place. Was mine a paranoid reaction? Hard to say, but in the half second before the puzzled, slightly disapproving glances stopped and the dharma chatter resumed, every demon in my chart urged me to yell out, Dudes, it’s my karma, right?, like some obnoxious precocious adolescent diva in a coming of age film set in Northern California. I kept the noise down and concentrated on broadcasting the vibes via my cosmic ham radio instead.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Hail the Dumpling!
A friend of mine proclaimed 2001 the Year of the Dumpling on the first dawn of that very year. Early in the morning after the year before, steamed dumplings struck the assembly as extraordinary entities: delicious misshapen orbs, miraculous in their very manifestation and the rapidity of their transition from freezer to steamer to plate to belly. As it has turned out, 2001 wasn’t the Year of the Dumpling, rather, its first dawn marked the beginning of the Decade of the Dumpling. It may even happen that we happy beings are living our lives in the Century of the Dumpling.
Anyway. I love dumplings: I can’t remember ever being seriously let down by dumplings. A little bit of stodginess, over-frying, under-steaming, gloopy filling, chewy pastry, none of these misdemeanours ever defeat the goodness of the dumpling experience. The Global Dumpling League admits a broad range of foodstuffs into the category of dumpling: something carbohydrate-y wrapped around something else and steamed, boiled, or fried. Gyoza, ravioli, frozen Chinatown dumplings, pelmeni, gowgees, dumplings homemade with Laura, samosas, dim sum, won ton, Chinese Noodle House and Silk Road fried dumplings, Mavis’ golden syrup dumplings, tortellini…all these take their place in the pantheon of dumplings.
On the streets of Kolkatta, I discovered a new variant: the Tibetan momo. Momo are small dumplings stuffed with spicy, super-garlicky vegetables and served with a chilli sauce. The street stalls in Kolkatta served five dumplings with a dollop of chilli sauce and a little bowl of peppery soup sprinkled with shallots for 10 rupees (about AU$0.30). Momo are ubiquitous in Bodhgaya as there is a huge population of Tibetan refugees here.
These may not look like anything special but they were dynamite: the best momo I’ve yet tasted. They exploded with hot golden curry veges – I love it when garlic is treated as a vegetable! I could hear the salsa in the centre being prepared as I waited – dice, dice, dice – raw onion, garlic, tomato and chilli in equal proportions. I think if I ate salsa like this every day, my immune system would be a stronghold with Death Star defenses. Mutton dumplings are also on offer but I haven’t tried them for several reasons: I’m wafting through a vego phase; I’m convinced that meat is the cause of all food poisoning; Indian mutton is goat.
I’m committed to eating plenty of momo before quitting North India in the hope of figuring out what’s in the filling. Are there any Tibetan restaurants in Sydney?
Anyway. I love dumplings: I can’t remember ever being seriously let down by dumplings. A little bit of stodginess, over-frying, under-steaming, gloopy filling, chewy pastry, none of these misdemeanours ever defeat the goodness of the dumpling experience. The Global Dumpling League admits a broad range of foodstuffs into the category of dumpling: something carbohydrate-y wrapped around something else and steamed, boiled, or fried. Gyoza, ravioli, frozen Chinatown dumplings, pelmeni, gowgees, dumplings homemade with Laura, samosas, dim sum, won ton, Chinese Noodle House and Silk Road fried dumplings, Mavis’ golden syrup dumplings, tortellini…all these take their place in the pantheon of dumplings.
On the streets of Kolkatta, I discovered a new variant: the Tibetan momo. Momo are small dumplings stuffed with spicy, super-garlicky vegetables and served with a chilli sauce. The street stalls in Kolkatta served five dumplings with a dollop of chilli sauce and a little bowl of peppery soup sprinkled with shallots for 10 rupees (about AU$0.30). Momo are ubiquitous in Bodhgaya as there is a huge population of Tibetan refugees here.
These may not look like anything special but they were dynamite: the best momo I’ve yet tasted. They exploded with hot golden curry veges – I love it when garlic is treated as a vegetable! I could hear the salsa in the centre being prepared as I waited – dice, dice, dice – raw onion, garlic, tomato and chilli in equal proportions. I think if I ate salsa like this every day, my immune system would be a stronghold with Death Star defenses. Mutton dumplings are also on offer but I haven’t tried them for several reasons: I’m wafting through a vego phase; I’m convinced that meat is the cause of all food poisoning; Indian mutton is goat.I’m committed to eating plenty of momo before quitting North India in the hope of figuring out what’s in the filling. Are there any Tibetan restaurants in Sydney?
The Middle Way
Bihar province, in which Bodhgaya is situated, is one of the poorest in India. If I was shocked by the poverty in Kolkatta, I am more so here. I left Kolkatta with warnings ringing in my ears about Bodhhgaya and Gaya, where the train arrives. People will cheat you, I was told. Don’t accept any food and drink, it might be drugged. Watch out for thieves. A friend of mine was drugged and had all her gear stolen in terrible circumstances around here a few years ago so I was a tiny bit nervous about arriving in Gaya at 5 in the morning. The train arrived late so it was light by the time I arrived. Stepping over bodies to exit the station, I got mobbed by taxi and rickshaw drivers wanting to take me to Bodhgaya. I made my decision and got abused by all of them except the one I elected to drive me. It’s been raining here and the whole area is cold and strikes me as a bit sullen.
Bodhgaya is where the Buddha attained enlightenment after sitting under the bodhi tree for six weeks. There’s a descendant of the original bodhi tree still growing here, the Mahabodhi temple, first raised by Ashoka in the 2nd century BC, and temples built by the communities of Buddhist countries. Chinese, Thai, Burmese, Tibetan, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese and Japanese temples sit side by side nearby; there’s also a mosque and a Hindu temple. Bodhgaya is an important Buddhist pilgrimage town and so the foreigner population is slightly different to that in the cities. Sitting at a café drinking tea, I watched a busload of Japanese Zen Buddhists in white pyjamas turn up as Thai monks swished by in saffron and burgundy robes and Westerners wearing prayer beads and windbreakers looked on. Tibetan ladies in bakus and aprons walk past quietly as Indian women hitch up their saris to keep clear of the puddles. You can attend dhamma talks and sit in on Zen instruction and buy tea and Free Tibet t-shirts from the refugee market. A zillion vipassana courses are on offer but as I’m not due for a karmic tune-up just yet, I’m here strictly as a voyeur.
People are watching me too. As a SWF, I’m some kind of target for small grotty children in ragged silks and dirty knickers: they chase me up the street, grabbing my hands and trousers, yelling Money, Madame!, No food!, You buy!, Very hungry!, Nice lady!, Small baby! until one of the street stall holders who wants my custom snarls at them and they move away. I share my coins amongst them and those who miss out start yelling. I realise that I gave the girl with a baby coins earlier in the day and refuse her entreaties, giving them to someone else instead. You have a bad heart, she shouts after me, a very bad heart. It’s a little difficult to maintain equanimity under the circumstances. The kids are more tourist savvy and persistent but they’re by no means the only hungry ones. The quiet hum of chanting around the temples is interrupted by the clanging of beggars’ bowls pushed through the fences as I walk by. Refugees from Tibet who’ve undergone who knows what kind of hell to get here, gaunt locals, hordes of yelping dogs, desperate rickshaw drivers who make you feel like a heel for walking, polite schoolboys hoping you’ll purchase books and cricket bats for them… I can see the benefit of a meditation program here as two-fold: the first, to reckon with the Buddhist concept of life being rooted in suffering; the second, to cloister oneself from the immediate evidence of how wretchedly true this is for the people of Bihar.
Bodhgaya is where the Buddha attained enlightenment after sitting under the bodhi tree for six weeks. There’s a descendant of the original bodhi tree still growing here, the Mahabodhi temple, first raised by Ashoka in the 2nd century BC, and temples built by the communities of Buddhist countries. Chinese, Thai, Burmese, Tibetan, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese and Japanese temples sit side by side nearby; there’s also a mosque and a Hindu temple. Bodhgaya is an important Buddhist pilgrimage town and so the foreigner population is slightly different to that in the cities. Sitting at a café drinking tea, I watched a busload of Japanese Zen Buddhists in white pyjamas turn up as Thai monks swished by in saffron and burgundy robes and Westerners wearing prayer beads and windbreakers looked on. Tibetan ladies in bakus and aprons walk past quietly as Indian women hitch up their saris to keep clear of the puddles. You can attend dhamma talks and sit in on Zen instruction and buy tea and Free Tibet t-shirts from the refugee market. A zillion vipassana courses are on offer but as I’m not due for a karmic tune-up just yet, I’m here strictly as a voyeur.
People are watching me too. As a SWF, I’m some kind of target for small grotty children in ragged silks and dirty knickers: they chase me up the street, grabbing my hands and trousers, yelling Money, Madame!, No food!, You buy!, Very hungry!, Nice lady!, Small baby! until one of the street stall holders who wants my custom snarls at them and they move away. I share my coins amongst them and those who miss out start yelling. I realise that I gave the girl with a baby coins earlier in the day and refuse her entreaties, giving them to someone else instead. You have a bad heart, she shouts after me, a very bad heart. It’s a little difficult to maintain equanimity under the circumstances. The kids are more tourist savvy and persistent but they’re by no means the only hungry ones. The quiet hum of chanting around the temples is interrupted by the clanging of beggars’ bowls pushed through the fences as I walk by. Refugees from Tibet who’ve undergone who knows what kind of hell to get here, gaunt locals, hordes of yelping dogs, desperate rickshaw drivers who make you feel like a heel for walking, polite schoolboys hoping you’ll purchase books and cricket bats for them… I can see the benefit of a meditation program here as two-fold: the first, to reckon with the Buddhist concept of life being rooted in suffering; the second, to cloister oneself from the immediate evidence of how wretchedly true this is for the people of Bihar.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Big Little Britain
There are reminders of the British presence in Calcutta everywhere and most of them hark back to Victoria ’s England when, give or take a Lucknow 
Victoria 
I’ve walked up
Traffic report
Spending half an hour outdoors in Delhi induces a coughing fit; an hour in an auto-rickshaw in Chennai traffic left me choked up for the rest of the day. The pollution in Calcutta Calcutta
Vast anarchic columns of vehicles belch out ominously dark fumes: yellow Hindu Ambassador taxis, autorickshaws, rickety old lorries, brightly painted buses, 
There are cooking fires and makeshift waste incinerators on every street and piles of rubbish and building materials throw up dust at the slightest provocation. My feet are sticky with grime from walking around the city for hours today. I managed to dodge the piles of ordure and dubious looking puddles but even so, the air down there clings to my feet more tenaciously than it does to my arms and face and neck. It’s quite amazing. Still, when I arrive back in my hotel room and slough bucketloads of dirt off my exposed skin, I can breathe easily enough.
In spite of the grime, I’m quite taken with 
The pedestrian experience of Calcutta’s architectural record of monumental imperial aspiration, its decline and transformation is tiring, not least because of the effort of figuring out how the hell to respond to the extremely visible grinding poverty. I’ve been confronted by various manifestations of poverty and inequality around the world but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a concentration of people living dreadfully tough lives on the street. Walking and driving past slums is one thing but walking over and through people’s lives as they sleep and wash and shit on the streets is quite another. Pushed into my path by their parents, children grab my sleeve and sing out ‘Madame, Madame, ten rupee’ again and again as they follow me along the path. Often, my motives in giving them coins have less to do with charity and more to do with irritation and embarrassment. Who knows where the money goes? I’m sure the right-headed would chastise me for responding to persistence rather than need. Each time I give money to a beggar, another equally needy person pops up and stakes their claim.
Anyway, anyway, it’s always enough already with the liberal guilt, n’est-ce pas. Back to the views, back to me. Keeping clear of the traffic, staying out of puddles, declining invitations into shops selling men’s underwear, deciding who to follow across the road, not getting lost, trying to imagine the transformations within and without these extraordinary buildings over the last couple of hundred years, it’s all hungry work. Fortunately,
The ubiquitous snack is the roll, 
Follow this sign a few metres down a little lane off
Affirmation in Pondicherry
As one of four sisters who were allowed to see the light of day all those years ago, this sign warmed my heart.
Aren't we all. Is it cheap to make mileage out of public health warnings against the real and awful phenomena of female infanticide? Possibly. Oh well. Here’s another dose of le charme de 
And, oh, why not. Here’s a poor old leukodermic Pondicherruvian temple elephant, a model of miserable stoicity and placid dignity, getting fed a dose of what looked like protein-enriched mashed potato.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Tis a chill wind
Thanks to OJS, I am now apprised of the worrying statistical correlation between global warming and the diminishing pirate population. I hereby pledge to pilfer more content from other people's blogs; to mutter and curse more frequently and less discriminately; to squint at horizons and wenches; to trade exclusively in rum and doubloons and to befriend me a parrot.
Superficialities
‘I had always maintained that in the choice of an itinerary one should always be guided by the sound of names, and that in doing so I had never been disappointed.’ So wrote Edith Wharton in her splendid, archly refined memoir A Backward Glance. I confess my presence in Pondicherry has more than a little to do with the allure of the name Pondicherry, a name that has since childhood sounded the promise of multicoloured seaside larks, magicians and sundry exotica.
Now arrived, what do I think of Pondicherry?
I wasn’t even slightly disappointed by Pondicherry and so hold Wharton’s axiom true. Pondicherry is quite splendid, an odd little Gallified pocket of India, all town squares and balconies and greenery dripping down walls. The streets are broad, shady and clean and the guesthouses are full of French people. Whether their journeys are spiritual or secular, it has been my experience that the more French tourists are clustered in a particular destination, the higher the likelihood of finding drinkable wine, salty bread and satisfactory coffee. Insofar as these essentials were concerned, Pondicherry delivered.
The festival of Pongal, a fertility celebration for the New Year in Tamil Nadu, was in full swing when I was in town; so the beaches were full of picnicking families and the roads were sealed off to make room for painted bulls to amble around.
The streets and paths were all decorated with chalk images like this, touched up every day of the festival. Admittedly, this is not one of Pondicherry's cleaner by-ways.
Enfin, the slogan emblazoned outside the local tourism office – ‘Pondicherry – you can check out but you can never leave’ – proved, happily, to be false. Even though my reprehensible backpack alienated many people, I made it back to Chennai on the local bus this afternoon. Next stop, Calcutta.
Now arrived, what do I think of Pondicherry?
I wasn’t even slightly disappointed by Pondicherry and so hold Wharton’s axiom true. Pondicherry is quite splendid, an odd little Gallified pocket of India, all town squares and balconies and greenery dripping down walls. The streets are broad, shady and clean and the guesthouses are full of French people. Whether their journeys are spiritual or secular, it has been my experience that the more French tourists are clustered in a particular destination, the higher the likelihood of finding drinkable wine, salty bread and satisfactory coffee. Insofar as these essentials were concerned, Pondicherry delivered.
The festival of Pongal, a fertility celebration for the New Year in Tamil Nadu, was in full swing when I was in town; so the beaches were full of picnicking families and the roads were sealed off to make room for painted bulls to amble around.
The streets and paths were all decorated with chalk images like this, touched up every day of the festival. Admittedly, this is not one of Pondicherry's cleaner by-ways.
Enfin, the slogan emblazoned outside the local tourism office – ‘Pondicherry – you can check out but you can never leave’ – proved, happily, to be false. Even though my reprehensible backpack alienated many people, I made it back to Chennai on the local bus this afternoon. Next stop, Calcutta.
I Yam what I Yam
In Pondicherry, I heard a tiring number of variations on the following theme: I have come to India to find myself. Of course, as someone who entertains extreme doubts about the integrity and singularity of anyone’s self, let alone mine own, I have not the slightest hope of finding my lost totality in India.
When I spied this stack of crates in Mamallapuram, the force of self-recognition was thus quite a shock. I want this on a t-shirt. Maybe I do have a spiritual side after all. Fruitniks of the world, unite.
When I spied this stack of crates in Mamallapuram, the force of self-recognition was thus quite a shock. I want this on a t-shirt. Maybe I do have a spiritual side after all. Fruitniks of the world, unite.
Monday, January 14, 2008
And after all that, we discover Facebook is evil
Everybody seems to be muttering about this article, the gist of which is that
Yep. Reading this article, I am almost convinced that Facebook is the new face of corporate malaevolence and all who use it are silly. One friend has already left the herd on the strength of it. In fact, I'm almost convinced that once I'm back in a city full of friends and I've extracted all the personal details of the people I actually want to contact from my Friends list, I'm outta there. So there.
...even if you don't buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius.
Yep. Reading this article, I am almost convinced that Facebook is the new face of corporate malaevolence and all who use it are silly. One friend has already left the herd on the strength of it. In fact, I'm almost convinced that once I'm back in a city full of friends and I've extracted all the personal details of the people I actually want to contact from my Friends list, I'm outta there. So there.
How do you ladoo?
This is an everyday Chennai streetscape. The fact that it is dominated by a large sweet shop advertising ghee and honey sweets is no coincidence. Invitations to gorge oneself on outrageous sweets are everywhere. I don’t normally define myself as a sweet-tooth but I’m changing hats here. My saving grace might be that my memory has reached saturation point for new food names and I can’t actually seem to remember the names of the tastiest treats. Still, pointing and smiling seems to produce good results and fill a paper box with delicacies for about the same price that paper bags were filled with mixed lollies back in my sunstruck Riverina jeunesse. Wherever I find to live for the duration of my Sydney sojourn, I’m thinking that Maya sweets will seem like a long way away and, at the same time, not too far at all.
Monomanual monomania
Try as I might to shove the punt down into the backwaters of memory, the process whereby I learnt to eat with a knife and fork has not been quite washed away from my conscious mind. A high premium was placed on manners at the family table; maladroit as I am, correct use of utensils was a lesson it took me a long time to pass. Now, however, I’m quite comfortable with cutlery. Knives, forks, spoons, I can use them all. A little too well, perhaps. Here in India, I’m discovering that after my long and arduous struggle against instinct, I’ve forgotten how to eat with my hands. Pleased as my parents would have been with this breakthrough, it’s causing me some problems in restaurants where there is simply no cutlery to be had.
The proliferation of breads on Indian menus is making more and more sense. Roti, chapatti, naan, paratha, even pappadums, they all help to scoop up rice and curry. Eating rice and curry without bread in a public place is still pretty much beyond me, I must confess. The thing is, not only are you deprived of a knife and fork when you tackle your thali, your left hand should also stay off the table. Try tearing a piece of naan big enough to use as a scoop with one hand. It is a very difficult business. Using it then to grab and sop up slippery pieces of curry is still more challenging.
This is where the dhosa comes in. Pancakes are far more malleable than bread and the dhosa arrives already wrapped around the filling. A good dhosa is soft and crisp and thus easy to tear and manoeuvre. Last night I managed simultaneously to devour a masala dhosa one-handed and to chat to the mother and daughter who sat down opposite me in matching pink saris about engineering courses in Australian universities. The masala dhosa was a gorgeous dish, eyeball and tastebud-wise but as, alas, the photo didn’t work out I’ll note that it was served on a banana leaf, stuffed with spicy yellow mashed potato, accompanied by a little bowl of sambar and a dollop each of coconut pickle and unidentified green goodness. The meal was made only more delectable by the fact that I was able to eat almost all of it with my left hand on my lap, proud as a spoon-enabled four year old.
I selected my dhosa-house on the recommendation of my Madras correspondent’s father (both, sadly, out of Chennai now) and his appraisal that it was a very clean place. Rightly so. I’d add that it is also cheap and delicious and further, that pomegranate juice, that extraordinarily restorative beverage, is on the menu. If you are in T.Nagar, Chennai and just happen to be walking down Bazullah Street, go to Sangeetha’s and don’t expect a fork.
The proliferation of breads on Indian menus is making more and more sense. Roti, chapatti, naan, paratha, even pappadums, they all help to scoop up rice and curry. Eating rice and curry without bread in a public place is still pretty much beyond me, I must confess. The thing is, not only are you deprived of a knife and fork when you tackle your thali, your left hand should also stay off the table. Try tearing a piece of naan big enough to use as a scoop with one hand. It is a very difficult business. Using it then to grab and sop up slippery pieces of curry is still more challenging.
This is where the dhosa comes in. Pancakes are far more malleable than bread and the dhosa arrives already wrapped around the filling. A good dhosa is soft and crisp and thus easy to tear and manoeuvre. Last night I managed simultaneously to devour a masala dhosa one-handed and to chat to the mother and daughter who sat down opposite me in matching pink saris about engineering courses in Australian universities. The masala dhosa was a gorgeous dish, eyeball and tastebud-wise but as, alas, the photo didn’t work out I’ll note that it was served on a banana leaf, stuffed with spicy yellow mashed potato, accompanied by a little bowl of sambar and a dollop each of coconut pickle and unidentified green goodness. The meal was made only more delectable by the fact that I was able to eat almost all of it with my left hand on my lap, proud as a spoon-enabled four year old.
I selected my dhosa-house on the recommendation of my Madras correspondent’s father (both, sadly, out of Chennai now) and his appraisal that it was a very clean place. Rightly so. I’d add that it is also cheap and delicious and further, that pomegranate juice, that extraordinarily restorative beverage, is on the menu. If you are in T.Nagar, Chennai and just happen to be walking down Bazullah Street, go to Sangeetha’s and don’t expect a fork.
The Prawn of a New Era
Arch and buckle, o, fractured temporal plane. We’re back in Kerala, last week. Life slowed down amazingly there.
Wait for an hour and a half at the Baywatch restaurant on Cherai beach, and this is what you get.
Tiger prawns as big as kittens, split and rubbed with oily garlic and spiced and grilled. Marvellous and messy with the sea rolling away just behind us. The only time I’ve ever otherwise seen prawns this big is at Doyle’s at the Sydney Fish Markets, one of my favourite places in the world. The tiger prawns stuffed with chutney ingredients and pine nuts have been on the menu there for donkey’s years; unlike the spicy grilled prawns at the Baywatch, they are a dish I’d advise nobody to order. The consumption of prawn heads has recently been a theme of both my reading and correspondence. Delicacy these may be, I’ve been lead to understand; the sisters Pike nevertheless left the prawn heads untouched.
While we’re on the subject of Keralan cuisine, cooks there use coconut oil rather than ghee as their fat of choice. I, however, was rubbed with spiced ghee and put into a steam cupboard to cook whilst in Kerala. Ayurvedic healing takes you to some strange places. The strangest place I’ve found myself in quite some time is sitting locked in a nineteenth century style steam cabinet with only my head poking out, wearing a cotton loincloth, dripping with aromatic, therapeutic ghee. True story.
The titular allusion to new eras provides a flimsy pretext for a reference to a new era in French presidential romance. I’m behind the times and I’m shocked. I just found out that Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni have become encoupled in a maelstrom of love. It’s way too late for l’esprit de l’escalier. I’m shocked. I know that I’ve intoned loudly in the past that the private lives of public figure should not be the topic of hysterical response and scrutiny. Still, smiling, nip, tuck, slash, burn, all in the name of progress sharks like Sarkozy and quasi-bohemian guitar strumming supermodel heiresses like Bruni should not even be allowed to meet. Je n’aurais jamais cru…
Wait for an hour and a half at the Baywatch restaurant on Cherai beach, and this is what you get.
Tiger prawns as big as kittens, split and rubbed with oily garlic and spiced and grilled. Marvellous and messy with the sea rolling away just behind us. The only time I’ve ever otherwise seen prawns this big is at Doyle’s at the Sydney Fish Markets, one of my favourite places in the world. The tiger prawns stuffed with chutney ingredients and pine nuts have been on the menu there for donkey’s years; unlike the spicy grilled prawns at the Baywatch, they are a dish I’d advise nobody to order. The consumption of prawn heads has recently been a theme of both my reading and correspondence. Delicacy these may be, I’ve been lead to understand; the sisters Pike nevertheless left the prawn heads untouched.While we’re on the subject of Keralan cuisine, cooks there use coconut oil rather than ghee as their fat of choice. I, however, was rubbed with spiced ghee and put into a steam cupboard to cook whilst in Kerala. Ayurvedic healing takes you to some strange places. The strangest place I’ve found myself in quite some time is sitting locked in a nineteenth century style steam cabinet with only my head poking out, wearing a cotton loincloth, dripping with aromatic, therapeutic ghee. True story.
The titular allusion to new eras provides a flimsy pretext for a reference to a new era in French presidential romance. I’m behind the times and I’m shocked. I just found out that Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni have become encoupled in a maelstrom of love. It’s way too late for l’esprit de l’escalier. I’m shocked. I know that I’ve intoned loudly in the past that the private lives of public figure should not be the topic of hysterical response and scrutiny. Still, smiling, nip, tuck, slash, burn, all in the name of progress sharks like Sarkozy and quasi-bohemian guitar strumming supermodel heiresses like Bruni should not even be allowed to meet. Je n’aurais jamais cru…
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Retroactive Rajasthani
I loathe anachronism. Mismanagement of temporal linearity which is not oriented towards precise narrative effects makes me jumpy. Too brief commentary makes me worry that something has been left out. Still, I've a wad of photos from Rajasthan already aging. I've been learning about the interwebs (a term which will never strike me as le mot juste) from someone who could barely read when the term information superhighway was hot. I've been getting tutorials in 733tspeak. Damn, I'm forgetting all my lessons. Clearly a noob.
Anyway. Time is passing. I'm out of touch and this blog might be getting out of date. These are like, last week's photos. Three thousand word's worth.
The blue blue houses of Jodphur.
Udaipur floats on a lake in the mountains.
It's the Venice of Rajasthan. I've been to the Venices of Asia (Bangkok and Phnom Penh), the Venice of East Africa (Zanzibar - a long shot) and now the Venice of Rajasthan.
The city floats on the lake and we floated by on a boat, a safe haven for taking voyeuristic photos of beautiful women in bright saris washing their clothes and themselves.
Time was passing. It's stopped in the present. I'm in Chennai now and spending the next week or so in Tamil Nadu. Once my ticket back to Sydney is in my pocket, I'm heading north again. I don't have much time left in India so I will be earnestly looking to make connection with my spiritual side. I'm doubling my stake: Varinasi and Allahabad; Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar. Uplife. Awaits.
Anyway. Time is passing. I'm out of touch and this blog might be getting out of date. These are like, last week's photos. Three thousand word's worth.
The blue blue houses of Jodphur.
Udaipur floats on a lake in the mountains.
It's the Venice of Rajasthan. I've been to the Venices of Asia (Bangkok and Phnom Penh), the Venice of East Africa (Zanzibar - a long shot) and now the Venice of Rajasthan.
The city floats on the lake and we floated by on a boat, a safe haven for taking voyeuristic photos of beautiful women in bright saris washing their clothes and themselves.Time was passing. It's stopped in the present. I'm in Chennai now and spending the next week or so in Tamil Nadu. Once my ticket back to Sydney is in my pocket, I'm heading north again. I don't have much time left in India so I will be earnestly looking to make connection with my spiritual side. I'm doubling my stake: Varinasi and Allahabad; Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar. Uplife. Awaits.
Table service
More booze.
According to second hand reports of hippy pilgrims to India, back in the day, all alcoholic beverages served in India were served in teapots. Such an absolute statement struck me as immediately dubious – in spite of the Troubles, I’m sure a few glasses were left over from the Raj – nonetheless, the image of a teapot full of beer was one I found charming. In Cochin, we were indeed charmed by beer served on the sly in teapots. Family harmony will be disrupted if I open the albums and reveal a sister mid-pour. Here instead is an abridged artist’s impression of beer poured from a teapot into a mug by a blood relative of mine.
Enchanting, non? And great for table banter. ‘No milk with that, thanks!’ Chortle chortle. ‘Hmmm, refreshing!’ ‘Tikkety boo!’ We know how to have fun.
Sadly I myself was unable to pose for a photo with a frothy teapot full of beer having been at the time afflicted with some strange fever-bug which killed both my appetite and capacity to consume even mild liquors. These extremely serious symptoms were made a bit more interesting by some remarkable nocturnal hallucinations. I was honestly convinced my limbs were made of cheese. Happily, the delirium was brief and mild: it was over by daybreak and, as it was pointed out to me, did not transform my room-mates into hungry mice.
Incidentally, I have reason to believe that my malaise was due to an ill-considered chicken sandwich at an establishment named the Tea Pot in Fort Cochin. Cursed by a chicken sandwich, how damnably prosaic. The death by chocolate cake had been struck of the menu, the doughnuts looked like death, the staff claimed to be fresh out of samosas… I ate a chicken sandwich and paid the price. This blog’s style counsellors appraised the Tea Pot thus: 5 stars for ambience and decor (teapots hanging from the roof – catchy) and half a star cumulatively for service, food and germ warfare. And it was the Tea Pot which deprived me of my chance to drink beer out of a teapot. Don’t go there.
According to second hand reports of hippy pilgrims to India, back in the day, all alcoholic beverages served in India were served in teapots. Such an absolute statement struck me as immediately dubious – in spite of the Troubles, I’m sure a few glasses were left over from the Raj – nonetheless, the image of a teapot full of beer was one I found charming. In Cochin, we were indeed charmed by beer served on the sly in teapots. Family harmony will be disrupted if I open the albums and reveal a sister mid-pour. Here instead is an abridged artist’s impression of beer poured from a teapot into a mug by a blood relative of mine.
Enchanting, non? And great for table banter. ‘No milk with that, thanks!’ Chortle chortle. ‘Hmmm, refreshing!’ ‘Tikkety boo!’ We know how to have fun.Sadly I myself was unable to pose for a photo with a frothy teapot full of beer having been at the time afflicted with some strange fever-bug which killed both my appetite and capacity to consume even mild liquors. These extremely serious symptoms were made a bit more interesting by some remarkable nocturnal hallucinations. I was honestly convinced my limbs were made of cheese. Happily, the delirium was brief and mild: it was over by daybreak and, as it was pointed out to me, did not transform my room-mates into hungry mice.
Incidentally, I have reason to believe that my malaise was due to an ill-considered chicken sandwich at an establishment named the Tea Pot in Fort Cochin. Cursed by a chicken sandwich, how damnably prosaic. The death by chocolate cake had been struck of the menu, the doughnuts looked like death, the staff claimed to be fresh out of samosas… I ate a chicken sandwich and paid the price. This blog’s style counsellors appraised the Tea Pot thus: 5 stars for ambience and decor (teapots hanging from the roof – catchy) and half a star cumulatively for service, food and germ warfare. And it was the Tea Pot which deprived me of my chance to drink beer out of a teapot. Don’t go there.
A Good Drink is Hard to Find*
It’s not as easy as it should be to order a drink in India.
We stayed at an Ayurvedic retreat near Cochin, a place where consumption of alcohol in the public gaze was verboten. Chakra disorientation or something. Thousands of years of clean living make it a habit. Maybe that is why Hindi culture has lasted so many thousands of years. Anyway, there was no alcohol on the menu whatsoever. Calling room service, however, changed the story. Not only were the staff ready to deliver beer to the door of our bungalow, they were prepared to charge into town and purchase any booze we wanted, as long as it was drunk behind closed doors.
We traipsed through Fort Cochin looking for cocktails with zero success. Here’s Lucy and Laura on the hunt.
Two wine bars and one very seedy bar called XL, a non-option, were all that we turned up. Later, over dinner, a Dutch woman whose manner seemed innocuous and credible informed us that all the waiters at these establishments had hidden cocktail menus in their pockets, hard liquor licenses being too expensive. All we needed to do was turn on the old nudge-nudge, wink-wink, what-have-you-got-in-your-pocket, and we’d be showered with margaritas and martinis and, ahem, pina coladas. This prompted several days worth of suggestive, significant looks and hopeful queries. ‘Do you have any, you know, other drinks?’ ‘There wouldn’t be another drinks menu, would there? Something harder?’ The responses ranged from bafflement to giggles to offended refusal. Not once were we able to procure either a hidden menu or a civilised mixed drink. Was this an example of the fabled Dutch sense of humour?
The rest of the family left India this morning. There was a bar at our hotel in Chennai last night so plans were laid for final drinks and some moral debt wrangling and settlement via games of chance. My sisters and I set upon a pre-dinner reconnaissance mission to Grammy, described as ‘a sensual and intimate cocktail bar, with stimulating music.’ Although Grammy was a cocktail bar, nothing on the cocktail list looked drinkable. My days of blithely considering the merits of a drink which combines beer and whiskey are gone. The door seemed to disappear behind us as we entered the bar, an unventilated pit. Apart from an early nineties triptych of Madonna sucking her thumbs, we were the only women in a very full bar. It was neither sensual nor intimate and there wasn’t any music to offset the tranquillising smoke of four hundred Classic cigarettes. To make matters worse, the cricket was screening and if the headlines are anything to go by, being Australian in India is a bit of a liability at the moment. We drank our G&Ts very fast and bolted. There were no cocktails. End of story.
* And, with further apologies to Flannery O’Connor and decorum, a Hard Drink is Good to Find.
In an effort to salvage a modicum of high-mindedness, I enthusiastically commend O’Connor’s story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ to everyone to whom bleakness, Faulkner, the South, observation of the similitude of skulls and cabbages, the literature of the heinous mother-in-law, and clean-lined, hard-headed late Modernist short stories appeal. There.
We stayed at an Ayurvedic retreat near Cochin, a place where consumption of alcohol in the public gaze was verboten. Chakra disorientation or something. Thousands of years of clean living make it a habit. Maybe that is why Hindi culture has lasted so many thousands of years. Anyway, there was no alcohol on the menu whatsoever. Calling room service, however, changed the story. Not only were the staff ready to deliver beer to the door of our bungalow, they were prepared to charge into town and purchase any booze we wanted, as long as it was drunk behind closed doors.
We traipsed through Fort Cochin looking for cocktails with zero success. Here’s Lucy and Laura on the hunt.
Two wine bars and one very seedy bar called XL, a non-option, were all that we turned up. Later, over dinner, a Dutch woman whose manner seemed innocuous and credible informed us that all the waiters at these establishments had hidden cocktail menus in their pockets, hard liquor licenses being too expensive. All we needed to do was turn on the old nudge-nudge, wink-wink, what-have-you-got-in-your-pocket, and we’d be showered with margaritas and martinis and, ahem, pina coladas. This prompted several days worth of suggestive, significant looks and hopeful queries. ‘Do you have any, you know, other drinks?’ ‘There wouldn’t be another drinks menu, would there? Something harder?’ The responses ranged from bafflement to giggles to offended refusal. Not once were we able to procure either a hidden menu or a civilised mixed drink. Was this an example of the fabled Dutch sense of humour?The rest of the family left India this morning. There was a bar at our hotel in Chennai last night so plans were laid for final drinks and some moral debt wrangling and settlement via games of chance. My sisters and I set upon a pre-dinner reconnaissance mission to Grammy, described as ‘a sensual and intimate cocktail bar, with stimulating music.’ Although Grammy was a cocktail bar, nothing on the cocktail list looked drinkable. My days of blithely considering the merits of a drink which combines beer and whiskey are gone. The door seemed to disappear behind us as we entered the bar, an unventilated pit. Apart from an early nineties triptych of Madonna sucking her thumbs, we were the only women in a very full bar. It was neither sensual nor intimate and there wasn’t any music to offset the tranquillising smoke of four hundred Classic cigarettes. To make matters worse, the cricket was screening and if the headlines are anything to go by, being Australian in India is a bit of a liability at the moment. We drank our G&Ts very fast and bolted. There were no cocktails. End of story.
* And, with further apologies to Flannery O’Connor and decorum, a Hard Drink is Good to Find.
In an effort to salvage a modicum of high-mindedness, I enthusiastically commend O’Connor’s story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ to everyone to whom bleakness, Faulkner, the South, observation of the similitude of skulls and cabbages, the literature of the heinous mother-in-law, and clean-lined, hard-headed late Modernist short stories appeal. There.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Blogger’s holiday
Most of the folks we’ve met offering guidance to tourists have repeated the slogan of the Indian Tourist Authority more than once: ‘You are now in in-crrrred-ible In-dia.’
And so we are. Long eared cows placidly block traffic.
There are not one billion Indians but one thousand million. Multi-purpose homeopathy is advertised on television. Hungry cows stick their heads into houses looking for food. Sideways.
Buses and rickshaws are garlanded. Every single form must be completed in triplicate. It is not just possible but quite normal to eat pickles with curry for three meals a day. There are over a hundred different types of traditional sweets and I can name about four of them. An embarrassment of temples litter the landscape. There are over thirty thousand Hindu deities with whom to become acquainted. Krishna had over sixteen thousand wives. I’ve played cricket. Rickshaws communicate via an amazing variety of beeps and toots. It was freezing cold up there in the north and it’s hot and sticky down here in the south. Spelling errors abound in public places. The road home is beginning to loom. Or rather, my shadow is beginning to loom over the road. There has been no shortage of faaabulous material for this blog. And in just one month, I'll be back in Sydney and all I'll be able to post is poached eggs and breakfast martinis. And yet.
Eldest siblings usually blame younger siblings for things that go off track in their life. I haven’t been updating my blog because I’ve been traipsing around with two of my little sisters. I blame them. Oh, but the fun! Honestly, we should have made a documentary about all the larks. Trying to find pina coladas in coastal towns without cocktails. Wacky! Valiantly making small talk with taxi drivers. Opportunities lost…
We are staying in a bungalow on Cherai Beach near Kochi which just happens to be part of an Ayurvedic retreat. As all the street signs tell you, Kerala is God’s own country. Where we’re staying claims to be His Permanent Address. Down the road, another resort locates itself at the point where the backwaters play hide and seek with the sea. Slogans are big news here and I’m all for them. There will be more.
And so we are. Long eared cows placidly block traffic.
There are not one billion Indians but one thousand million. Multi-purpose homeopathy is advertised on television. Hungry cows stick their heads into houses looking for food. Sideways.
Buses and rickshaws are garlanded. Every single form must be completed in triplicate. It is not just possible but quite normal to eat pickles with curry for three meals a day. There are over a hundred different types of traditional sweets and I can name about four of them. An embarrassment of temples litter the landscape. There are over thirty thousand Hindu deities with whom to become acquainted. Krishna had over sixteen thousand wives. I’ve played cricket. Rickshaws communicate via an amazing variety of beeps and toots. It was freezing cold up there in the north and it’s hot and sticky down here in the south. Spelling errors abound in public places. The road home is beginning to loom. Or rather, my shadow is beginning to loom over the road. There has been no shortage of faaabulous material for this blog. And in just one month, I'll be back in Sydney and all I'll be able to post is poached eggs and breakfast martinis. And yet.Eldest siblings usually blame younger siblings for things that go off track in their life. I haven’t been updating my blog because I’ve been traipsing around with two of my little sisters. I blame them. Oh, but the fun! Honestly, we should have made a documentary about all the larks. Trying to find pina coladas in coastal towns without cocktails. Wacky! Valiantly making small talk with taxi drivers. Opportunities lost…
We are staying in a bungalow on Cherai Beach near Kochi which just happens to be part of an Ayurvedic retreat. As all the street signs tell you, Kerala is God’s own country. Where we’re staying claims to be His Permanent Address. Down the road, another resort locates itself at the point where the backwaters play hide and seek with the sea. Slogans are big news here and I’m all for them. There will be more.
A lovin’ humpful
Camels are the new giraffes and anthropomorphism is my new favourite game. They have huge gorgeous eyes with which they gaze into the languid middle distance. Camels have attitude; they are as cool as early eighties breakdancers, the smug kings of Nerdistan refusing to fix your computer.
The best way I’ve yet discovered to ride off into a sunset symposium is loping the lope on the back of a camel.
Better, when camels aren’t chewing and mooching around, they’re smiling.
I’ve got a video of a camel chewing close-up and when the technology is right, I’m going to make my contribution to the happiness of the world and post it on YouTube. It is a thing of joy. Witnessing a camel standing up and sitting down is like being part of a piece of edgy stilted performance art, particularly if you happen to be wedged behind the hump. I’ve also got a video of my sister balancing precariously atop a camel as he leans forward into the sand to sit down. To even consider posting that on YouTube would provoke a family feud.
The best way I’ve yet discovered to ride off into a sunset symposium is loping the lope on the back of a camel.
Better, when camels aren’t chewing and mooching around, they’re smiling.
I’ve got a video of a camel chewing close-up and when the technology is right, I’m going to make my contribution to the happiness of the world and post it on YouTube. It is a thing of joy. Witnessing a camel standing up and sitting down is like being part of a piece of edgy stilted performance art, particularly if you happen to be wedged behind the hump. I’ve also got a video of my sister balancing precariously atop a camel as he leans forward into the sand to sit down. To even consider posting that on YouTube would provoke a family feud.
Infantile Intoxication
It is snide to chuckle at orthographical lapses. Still, it’s comforting to know that the alcoholic peccadilloes of the English are catered for in northern India.
You can buy Child Beer outside the miraculous fort city of Jaisalmer which sits above an ancient artificial lake in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan.
You can buy Child Beer outside the miraculous fort city of Jaisalmer which sits above an ancient artificial lake in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan.
Hogmanay
The family troupe stopped in Rajasthan to celebrate an unprecedentedly weird New Year. There were fireworks that exploded very close by into booms that sounded like they had been concocted in somebody’s garage. A man in a turban with a mighty moustache, the hotel major-domo, took advantage of the darkness to enthusiastically kiss my sisters and I a merry 2008. I bothered my near relatives with the plentiful, indeed, endless opportunities for self-help couplets the year 2008 offers: Motivate! Great! Higher state! Ameliorate! I don’t think they realised how much they’d missed me till then. All bodes well for a year full of lame puns.
Anyway, the details:
Where: In a sandstone fort outside Jaisalmer, ninety kilometres from the Pakistani border. Where: In a tent. Tents have been involved in previous NYE celebrations but none of them were hung with thousands of bright flags and lanterns.
With: Two sisters; one aunt; two cousins; one poor lass who has committed to marrying into my family.
Wearing: a Punjabi suit and bindi.
What doing: dancing, dancing, dancing to bhangra remixes of Ricky Martin, Shakira and the Backstreet Boys, being upstaged by my cousin who was invited up onto the stage to dance.
With: Random tourists and wealthy Indians.
Listening to: Eating: Selections from a ninety-nine course buffet, including no less than SEVEN pickles courses (ie. eight pickles).
Resolutions: Go dancing more; make a habit of wearing red lipstick; avoid buffets; pickle up. Amongst others.
Anyway, the details:
Where: In a sandstone fort outside Jaisalmer, ninety kilometres from the Pakistani border. Where: In a tent. Tents have been involved in previous NYE celebrations but none of them were hung with thousands of bright flags and lanterns.
With: Two sisters; one aunt; two cousins; one poor lass who has committed to marrying into my family.Wearing: a Punjabi suit and bindi.
What doing: dancing, dancing, dancing to bhangra remixes of Ricky Martin, Shakira and the Backstreet Boys, being upstaged by my cousin who was invited up onto the stage to dance.
With: Random tourists and wealthy Indians.
Listening to: Eating: Selections from a ninety-nine course buffet, including no less than SEVEN pickles courses (ie. eight pickles).
Resolutions: Go dancing more; make a habit of wearing red lipstick; avoid buffets; pickle up. Amongst others.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Happy 2008!
Merry happy bravo neues Jahr yah yah yaaaah.
Wireless internet access just dried up for a few weeks there. Rajasthan - a technology desert, I tell you. It's almost a week into the new year and the entry log for January is lamentably bare. The caravan Pike trailed through the north of India, leaving no samosa a safe haven. The group has split for a while: Lulu, Laura and I are bouncing between massages, beach wallowings and meals in Kerala. The backwaters can be tough. Postings of camels and banquets and pickles (joy) and temples and ladoo are all to come. Tomorrow. With pictures. As soon as I've had another circulation-imporivng massage and the wifi is back in action.
In the meantime, I'm still surprised by my decision to come back to Sydney for...drum roll...Semester One, 2008! Yes, it's ruby slippers time. Fickle folly, thy name might be Catri. Alternatively, hurrah! Sydneyspiders, I'll be seeing you in a couple of weeks for Compulsory Cocktails. If anybody hears of a wonderful housing situation into which I can easily slide, just whistle. A light filled studio at the top of a building in the Cross. A beach house that needs sitting for four months. A sharehouse balcony room with a small bevy of charming, sensitive, outrageous and yet well behaved types. Or anything really...
Wireless internet access just dried up for a few weeks there. Rajasthan - a technology desert, I tell you. It's almost a week into the new year and the entry log for January is lamentably bare. The caravan Pike trailed through the north of India, leaving no samosa a safe haven. The group has split for a while: Lulu, Laura and I are bouncing between massages, beach wallowings and meals in Kerala. The backwaters can be tough. Postings of camels and banquets and pickles (joy) and temples and ladoo are all to come. Tomorrow. With pictures. As soon as I've had another circulation-imporivng massage and the wifi is back in action.
In the meantime, I'm still surprised by my decision to come back to Sydney for...drum roll...Semester One, 2008! Yes, it's ruby slippers time. Fickle folly, thy name might be Catri. Alternatively, hurrah! Sydneyspiders, I'll be seeing you in a couple of weeks for Compulsory Cocktails. If anybody hears of a wonderful housing situation into which I can easily slide, just whistle. A light filled studio at the top of a building in the Cross. A beach house that needs sitting for four months. A sharehouse balcony room with a small bevy of charming, sensitive, outrageous and yet well behaved types. Or anything really...
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