Nice Work If You Can Get It

life leaves you hanging
- works in progress -
suspended on the scent of an
oncoming indian rainstorm
- pungent and pregnant -
dry ground cracked longing,
thirsty for water that
actually threatens to come.

pictures of the ganges

the himalayas give way to
Ganga's plains at haridwar,
the holy lonely city.

temples turned funhouse thrown
from fairytales into the ground,
magic mountain theme park
idols guide the faithful
forms from garbage to gods.

giant shiva, terrible and majestic,
standing guard at Ganga's front door,
gazes casually over his mountain porch
winking third eye peeking
past worshipped, worshipper.

these are the banks.

we two virgin giggling joining
gather by the mother river,
hundreds, thousands, lakhs at
aarti har ki pauri shoreline paying
homage, making
wishes asking blessings.

small boys play fetch with
coconuts in the evening current;
one tiny one-armed dynamo
smile gripped grinning water
whipped on down the river,
and we sit gawk staring at the
fire flowers washing by
saying farewell to our sins.

two girls writing histories with
two right hennaed hands,
we perch in rishikesh's morning laughter
throat crying by the river.

grandma, tattooed by the water,
bare breasts hanging heavy filled
with silt and bearing
witness to the children she
has love worked into the world
washing life's hard lessons from her
skin;
betha calls and up over cover
the evidence, left hand holding
dupata while the right cradles her
cell phone.

Puja and Sumitra, 15 between them,
we've found two kindred, didi and
didi, all questions and smiles and flowers, madames?
we exchange offerings: five rupees, a match;
all flicks deft wrists she's
lit the incense and the wicks and
now we've given away two more
heartbeats to the river.

badgin pulses out over the water,
hearing gospel we are once more on the
river's stairs; one sighing one weeping silent
while the old man sways,
spectator, bum planted eyes closed dancing hands
keeping time with his invisible drum;
stair's stars and sky's stars pray stories to
gods i can't pronounce but am coming
to remember –
moon rises while the sun sinks swallowed by the mountains.

sunrise dip we give our bodies up,
surrender to the power of the river
washing over holding chains in fear but
laughing shrieking handa-i bohat hai;
two sisters cleansed but dirty dirty nothing
nothing can escape the silt and
rains our nature shower save us from the crowds
but cows our feet,
our feet they are encrusted in the shit of the holy.

i fell for the afternoon captain,
cello madame, indifferent
knee cocked rocking the boat into
the middle of the river
and a view of temple towers
through bent elbows and a bridge,
risking death whisking by
rushing fingers crossed we'll reach the
other on both sides.

mother Ganga she gives life and
best remind us she dost taketh away;
life disappears as quickly as the temporary
cyclones on the river's stony shore.

she expects her own to protect her own;
any unwatched woman
ripped torn foreign and ransomed can be
followed by unscrupulous men,
speared by the lazy street bulls
out for kicks and territory.

the river, she has a shakti even the
modern day walker jesus can't resist;
karma touches christians bound in
earthly things the monotheist swamis
will be chanting hari om by summer's end.

two children turn, weary shanti waving
to the mother river,
tired they are sighing out their days;
years and lives hang time threads left
drip dragging in their stead,
they've been sewn into Ganga patches
colour on the bottom looking up into the
once, twice, three dips into the lady who will
take your heart and never let it go.

I told Kirit last night that, when I came here, I wanted to grab India by the balls. It has since kicked me in box right back in retribution. I've gotten over belly bug #2, but I'm still riding out head cold #2, so my face is full of awesome (props, Naomi and Jamie) and I'm feeling pretty much like ass over here. All part of the adventure.

However, all is not unwell. Not too much in the way of adventures to update - we've been taking it pretty easy since we returned from Rishikesh. Could be the belly bug and the face full of awesome. :) I've had a chance to do some thinking this week, though.

I'm realizing that I will never fit in here. There are many layers to this, it isn't just some blanket miserable statement. To those who know me and matter to me, I will be accepted as a friend and in that way I'll fit in. But there are literally millions more people here who don't know and will never know me, nor will I ever know them. To those millions, I'll still be the ever exotic random white girl.

Some may think, "of course, you dummy, what did you expect?" My only answer is "I don't really know." I tried to come here without too much expectation, I didn't want to assign too much to the experience before I got here. Not that I didn't come without my own suitcase full of pre-conceived notions, but I tried my best to be as aware of them as possible.

Again, short answer, I didn't really know what to expect.

I've picked up on a few things over the past (gasp) two months that have allowed me to fit in better than what I would consider the average passing tourist. I can speak chota chota Hindi, which often wins me a curious look, a smile, and more Hindi lessons. Dropping the occassional achha or saying "nay bhayia, pachaas rupees" to the tuk tuk driver gets me to Gowry's with little hassle. I can bargain, mostly, and get a price for something somewhere between what a local would pay and what a tourist would blindly hand over. I can even throw in a carefully placed head movement to indicate that I understand what someone has said. This will usually illicit the same head movement in response, though the look on the head mover's face indicates that he's responding purely out of habit and can't figure out how this girl knew to move her head in the first place.

That said, mothers will still bring their babies over to meet the white girl. I'll still get stared at by people who don't get to the city much, and small children will still want to shake my hand and ask "country, madame?". People will still look at me with either lust or suspicion because I'm foreign, and some who I may have even called friends may come to judge my actions based purely on my skin colour.

Not that this doesn't happen everywhere, I've just never been placed in a situation where I really had to face it.

However, the bruises in my ego are healing. My well-nurtured sense of entitlement has taken a few hits, and I figure I'm better off for them. My time here is making me more aware of how I look at "foreigners" back home, be they Canadian or otherwise, and how I look at the world as a whole. It's also making those who matter to me matter even more; life is to short to spend my energy on those who don't look at me as a person, and too short for me to look at anyone in any other way.

Somehow my blog erased this post... thankfully facebook saved it for me!

I traveled alone this weekend. It was awesome. And dangerous. The parents who had come out to the dinner party hosted by my own the night before I left told me so, as did my mom, as did the Danish couple I met on the train the next day. But I did it. For a whole 41 hours, I was a solo traveler.

I got to the train station 20 minutes before departure and did the customary run back and forth up the platforms looking for my train. As usual, even though it was 5:50am (yes, am), the station was a madhouse. People walking, standing, running, dogs parading on the roofs over the covered walkways, people selling magazines, popcorn, chai, whatever you can think of. The nice lady came over the pa system and told me I was due on Platform #10 and that my train was leaving on schedule, 6:10am.

The train ride was beautiful even though it's the second time I've done it. It's the same train to Jaipur, only this time I was going to the end of the line, 2 hours farther west to Ajmer. From Ajmer it's roughly 10 kms to Pushkar where I stayed the night.

I got ballsy on the train and asked the first available random white girl if she was heading to Pushkar as well. She said that yes, her and her boyfriend were going to visit. So when we got off the train, Suzanne, her very large boyfriend Jacob, and I all piled into a taxi and, for a ridiculously small amount, were ferried off to Pushkar.

We ended up staying in this lovely little guest house called Hotel White House about a 5 minute walk from the lake and the heart of town. It was basic but clean, and the room I stayed in was awesome. Own shower, little window out onto a field, clean sheets, candles, etc. There was even a rooftop restaurant where I had breakfast the next day.

After showering and checking in with home (I had promised to do so frequently), the three of us met up for lunch at a cafe down the street and then headed for the lake. We were immediately accosted by Shiva, my first Pushkar friend of the weekend, who wanted to give us our Pushkar Passports. I had read about this in the Lonely Planet Guide, and was the only one who played along. All part of the adventure, right? Shiva took me down to the water and lead me through a puja of sorts, asking for blessings for myself, my family, and my "life partner" (I had an imaginary boyfriend for the weekend) for the low low price of Rs. 100. He kept asking if Rs. 100 made me happy, reminding me that this was to ask blessings for my whole family. I was adamant - yes, Rs. 100 is plenty. I figure he was probably phony anyway, but if he can make a few bucks off of silly folks like me, well then more power to him. He tied a red and yellow string around my wrist and said "Madame, this is your passport. If anyone else tries to get you to do this, just show him the passport and say Shiva already do. And when you bring your family and your life partner to Pushkar, you bring them to me and I give them passports, too." Thanks, Shiva.

We wandered around the lake for a few hours, took pictures, browsed in shops. Pushkar really is picturesque. The whole town surrounds a lake said to have been created when Lord Brahma dropped some water from his lotus flower as he flew over. There are bathing ghats and temples, 52 of them I think, around the lake, and it's overlooked by one small mountain to the East and a larger one to the West. There are tons of little shops selling hippie paraphernalia of all sorts, lots of hippies, and, well, more hippies. I can't say that traveling there alone was totally safe, but it didn't leave me in constant fear for my life or anything.

Eventually I split off from the Danish couple and did some solo wandering. Man did that ever feel good. I did some shopping (I did mention hippie paraphernalia, right?), took some photos, and then headed back down to the lake. Shiva wasn't there, so I actually got some alone time in. I just sat and looked at the bridge across the way for a while. The sun was still pretty high despite it being early evening, so there was still some reflection on the lake. It was good to just sit and think for a bit, relax, watch the crazy fish squirm around in the water... Things were going pretty well until Bull #1 of the weekend came by to grab a drink and say hello. I wasn't too cool on him being so close, so I high-tailed it for the street. Was getting about time to get ready for dinner anyway, uhh....

On the way home, though, I stopped in at a temple (Krishna temple?) and met Deepak, friend #2 of the weekend. He said something about Ayurvedic massage, but I wasn't really paying attention. I said maybe tomorrow... who would have thought? I wanted to go into the temple, but there was an edict from 1864 on the wall that said Europeans weren't allowed. The edict was pointed out to me by an old lady who I'm positive can't read English, but she certainly knows what the sign means. I just walked around it and looked instead.

Met up with the Danes for dinner at this random rooftop cafe down the road. There are loads of them - I bet one person decided it would be a good idea and then, in true Indian fashion, a host of folks followed suit. The cafe was nice enough, though, Baja something... The food wasn't great, but they had beer which made the Danes happy. Pushkar is supposed to be an alcohol free, drug free, meat free city, but I smelled weed burning more than once and it's amazing what gets brought to your table if you order special tea and promise to keep it hidden!

After dinner I packed it in. I wanted to get up early the next day to climb the larger of the two mountains, so I needed my energy.

My alarm went off at 6:15 Sunday morning, but the sun had woken up long before I did. I rolled around a bit in my strangely comfortable bed, threw on yesterday's dirty clothes, and headed for the mountain.

I found the mountain interesting because it houses Savitra's temple, one of Lord Brahma's two wives. He came to this spot to perform a self-mortification rite (I think?), and got ticked off when Savitra wouldn't join him. He married another woman on a whim instead, duly pissing off Lady Savitra. She vowed that this would be the only place in the world where he would be worshiped, so now her mountain temple looks down on the only temple in the world dedicated to Lord Brahma. Naturally I had to stop in and take a look on my way to the mountain.

However, getting to Lord Brahma's temple proved to be more difficult than anticipated. I took the long way around the lake without knowing it would be the long way, and ran into the bridge that was clearly owned by a small pack of street dogs before all the people came out. I could tell when I saw the dogs that they weren't going to let me pass easily. I figured, though, being as ridiculous as I am, that I could treat them like so many other things get treated here - just don't make eye contact. Didn't work. I tried walking past them, shoes in hand as shoes are forbidden on the bridge, but they started following me. First they started chewing on my shoes. When this got boring, they started chewing on my leg instead. All I could think of was RABIES!!! So I started back tracking and sticking my shoes in their faces, which they happily went back to, but they still wouldn't leave me alone. This is where old lady steps in. I've been rescued by more than one of these of late, they've seen far too much shit in their days to be bothered by a stupid pack of street dogs. She yelled at them and brushed them away with her hands until both of us could get by. After that I made sure I was in someone's wake crossing the rest of that bridge.

Street dogs behind me, I finally found Lord Brahma's temple. It's smaller and quieter than I expected, but it could have been the time of day. Lots of white marble, engravings dedicated to dead followers, paintings on the ceiling. It was quite lovely, in fact.

I didn't stay long, though, because it was already starting to warm up and I knew the climb up the mountain wasn't going to be a picnic. I met Friend #3 on the way to the bottom of the mountain, also known as Rakesh #1. He played me Frere Jaques on a little makeshift sitar and followed me for about a kilometre or so. I eventually asked if he was going to follow me the whole way. He didn't answer. "Aapka naam kya hai?" I asked. "Rakesh." "Mera naam Penny hai." We walked along for a bit more, conversing in what little we knew of each other's languages. Then he said, "Ma'am, I'm a little bit hungry." So I handed him Rs. 10 and told him to go eat something.

It was at the bottom of the mountain where I met Friend #4, Rakesh #2. He's the 21 year old who owns the music store and the water shop at the temple on the top of the mountain. He's met all kinds of people, some of whom have paid for him to travel around India with them. He says he always goes back to Pushkar, though, because that's his home, that's where his family is. All of this was explained while the two of us huffed and puffed our way up the very steep climb. He talked about the girls from Ajmer and how promiscuous they could be, and the foreign women who have fallen for him and asked him to come with them. I just smiled and nodded and let him keep telling his story. By the time we knew it, we were at the top.

Savitra's temple was probably the most austere temple I've seen. Thank goodness. No flash and dash, just a simple building overlooking a spectacular view. From the top I could see Pushkar's little lake, ridges of mountains on both sides, fields, roads, trees, skyline - it was probably the most green space I've seen since arriving in India. I could have sat up there for hours were it not for the heat and my 10am checkout time. I ran into some vacationing American kids studying Hindi in Jaipur, but aside from one of them they seemed pretty clique-y. I wasn't too choked, though. Whatever, I'm solo traveler girl.

So I soaked up as much of the view and the air as I could and then trundled down the steps and back to the hotel. I ran into Shiva the passport guy from the day before, who was convinced I wouldn't remember him. He was pretty impressed that I shook his hand and called him by name, but I wouldn't accept his offer to drive me back to my hotel on his motorcycle. I got home, and after a much needed shower and a change of clothes, I grabbed my stuff and headed upstairs for breakfasts numbers 1 and 2. I was hungry, what can I say?

It was here where Deepak reappeared. He was the one I met the day before in the no-Europeans temple. He mentioned again that he did massage, and said that he was the one who worked for Hotel White House, so I said I'd meet him at 12pm for an Ayervedic massage.

Having some time to kill, I threw my backpack in the luggage area and headed back out into town. I wandered close to where I'd met the dogs earlier that morning, dodging the Bull #2 who had it in for my right bum cheek along the way, and went to sit by the lake. Shiva wandered by, again, but was interrupted by this short but precocious 10 year old boy who wanted desperately to shake my hand with his left. I told him other hand, we shook hands, and Shiva disappeared. The 10 year old and his mother invited me back to their table at the Sunset Cafe, so I sat down with them for some lunch and chai.

The family was vacationing from Udaipur, and it was clear that they had some money to be able to do so. Anand and Rmrinder, mom and dad, had packed up 10 year old Varun and 4 year old Aditya in their car and driven all the way just to see the sites and take a dip in the holy lake, which they had done at 5:30 that morning. We sat and drank chai and talked about how, while I might be a foreigner here, Varun, the curious handshaker, would be a foreigner should he visit my country. Deep conversations for a 10 year old! Anand had started a pharmaceuticals company and Rmrinder was becoming a beautician, and both boys had a healthy appetite for pouting and hitting things with sticks. They gave me their address and phone numbers in Udaipur and told me to call when I was coming so they could cook me real home cooked food and put me up in real Indian household. I can't wait to take them up on their offer.

I was late for my massage, so I ran back to the hotel. I ran into Shiva one more time, who again wished me good life, good family, and good "life partner." I arrived at the hotel all apologies to Deepak. He didn't seem too worried. What followed was the most painful massage I have ever had. It was good, though, I think I needed it. He used all these crazy oils that heated up and smelled awesome, and I felt really good when it was done. Still smarting a little two days after, though! Deepak kept trying to convince me to cancel my train ticket so I could stay a few extra days and learn a bit about Ayerveda. Just what every aspiring guru wants: a young female pupil. I told him I had to work, though, but we exchanged emails as seemed customary by the large stack he had, and I said I would email if I had any troubles.

Once my massage was finished, I packed up my belongings, said goodbye Kapil who's family owned the hotel, Kapil's adorable 4 year old nephew, his mother and father who I had slowly befriended, and put myself in the hotel's taxi back to Ajmer. I walked out of the taxi and straight onto the train and was ferried, backwards, back to Delhi.

On the way I started chatting with Ribhu, who is from Jaipur but works in Delhi, who told me a bit about Rajasthan's history. What an amazing province, I would go back there again and again.

Anyway, that's the chronology of my solo trip to Pushkar. I didn't end up spending that much time by myself in the end, but I did it, for the most part, on my own. Happy I did, too, though I won't be chomping at the bit to do it again any time soon. I like to travel, but it's always good to come home, too.