A Tale of Four Temples (and a fort)

To begin this blog post like a bad high school essay, there are many emotions I have felt so far on this trip. They are:

-Hot
-Sweaty
-Awed
-Gross (from being hot and sweaty)
-Frazzled
-Amazed
-Cranky (from being hot, sweaty, and gross)
-Amused
-Annoyed
-Shell-shocked (in the mildest way possible)
-Giggly

(Please note that hot, sweaty, and gross are not actually emotions.)

Lead by our hosts, the elite students of the Shri Ram College of Commerce, today we ventured out past the university neighborhood into the more touristy sections of Delhi. These are simple, quiet streets full of serenity, with absolutely no one hassling or honking at you.

Our field trip's goal was to explore some of India's many religions: Sikhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and Islam. After the initial shock of stepping off the metro into the madness you see above, we donned headscarves and ditched our shoes for Girdwara Sis Ganj, one of the holiest Sikh temples where the Ninth Guru was beheaded by the emperor.

It's a real shame we couldn't take pictures inside most of the holy sites, because they were a-mazing. You're in absolute astonishment at the richness of the ornate altar and surroundings, the quarter tones of the singers, and the total devotion of the people who step inside. We hardly talked inside the temple, by far the most impressive one of the day.

Luckily, we had Singh, a Penn State student living in Delhi, joining us for the day, because he saved our butts in there. "No!" he hissed at us. "You can't turn your back on the altar. And you can't click." (Clicking is what they call taking pictures here.) Back outside, he instructed us on the origins and traditions of Jainism. None of the SRCC students are Sikh, so they listened just as eagerly as we did.

(The dude at the top of the post is a Sikh in traditional dress.)

Around this time, my friend Ana (you can see her at the right edge of the last picture) elbowed me and raised her eyebrows. "The guy in blue," she said, nodding to the bench where men were retrieving their shoes. "He's extremely attractive." We both made like typical college girls and giggled like goons. Remember this story for later.

Off we went to the Hindu temple, where we again took off our shoes and ascended into a cool, but still rather freaky, assembly of the various Hindu gods on altars. I was particularly creeped out by what looked like a giant aluminum-foil-wrapped baked potato with eyes (I swear I didn't mean to make that pun). "It is the god Ganesha," said one of the SRCC girls, coming up next to me. For you non-Hindus out there, that's the god with the elephant head and human body. I'm sorry, but this evil baked potato was a pretty poor representation of an elephant.

The more accurate, non-baked potato god.

Perhaps to counter Lord Tater, a smiling old man painted a sandalwood tikka mark on my forehead and handed me a marigold with a piece of cotton, little gifts from the gods. There was a heady, overwhelming scent of marigolds, and I stepped around a man washing the stone floors with a hose on my way out.

Two buildings over, we were at the Jain temple. (Note, these temples are all in pretty close proximity on the same street. How's that for multiculturalism?)

Jain is the world's oldest religion and is much like Buddhism. (You visit that many temples in a time crunch, you start to see the similarities between religions.) We viewed more intricate stonework and rang various bells around the temple, the sound of which is supposed to purify the air and one's mind. I don't know about that; I'd be pretty irritated if bells kept interrupting my prayers. There was also a bird hospital, and those of you that know me know that this wasn't my favorite thing on the planet, but I survived the claustrophobic land of many birds. Some of the girls found a talking parrot and were cooing at it, which caused the Jain SRCC student to fly at them, screaming, "Lord Mohar [founder of Jainism, dead for thousands of years] would not like you to make all this noise in a hospital!"

As we left the temple, Ana grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. "Remember the attractive guy in blue?" she asked in a low voice. "Three o' clock." Yep, there he was. Funny, I had seen him at the Hindu temple as well as the Sikh one. "I think he's following us," she said.

We alerted the SRCC students, who started murmuring and shooting looks at the man. Ana and I exchanged worried, yet proud glances. We were observant! We were looking out for the rest of the group! Surely word would get around that we had saved everyone's lives and wallets.

Until word got around to Singh and he started laughing. Hot Guy in Blue, along with three other men we hadn't noticed, were his bodyguards.

We then took a pause in religious instruction to visit one of India's historical sites, the Red Fort, looming at the end of the street.

This is massive, dating from the 17th century, built by the Shah Jahan (the dude who also built the Taj Mahal, in case you've heard of that). It used to be surrounded by a moat, and inside the walls are a market, gardens, a small military museum, and various other buildings that I really can't tell you more about. (Update: this website seems to be helpful.)

Around this time we started getting hungry, hot, tired, and cranky in various stages.

Or, in Maryrose and Ana's case, all of those at the same time.

 Lunch was in order, and we went to a restaurant specializing in South Indian food. Everything was delicious, but the only name I remember is pab bhaja, a dish of various vegetables stewed together and served with bread for dipping. (Lunch was a lot of dipping.) We all sighed at relief at how wholesome it was until we realized that ours was served with a healthy pat of butter. Don't be surprised if I come back from India in a Hover Round.

Our final stop, one life-threatening, rickety rickshaw ride away, was the Jama Masjid, a historic mosque. This was my favorite building from the day:

Unfortunately, this is the only view we got of the temple, as we were denied entry by a rude man who told us that our T-shirts were unseemly and that we had to have our arms covered to enter the mosque. So, to irritate him, we took lots of group pictures on the steps. I think we succeeded in our mission.

I would like to add at this point that we did spot a Baptist church on the same street, but considering I see one every day at home when I drive home from town, I didn't really consider this picture-worthy.

Our final adventure of the day came when the rickshaw carrying Ali (above, middle) and Drea didn't show up at the Metro station. There were frantic phone calls and waiting around, and our Penn State chaperone, Dr. Stoller, threw up his hands and shrugged. In the end, it was a minor misunderstanding. The rickshaw driver had taken Ali and Drea to the next stop up.

Ali started giggling madly when we had finally found here and were waiting for the next train home.

"What?" I asked. "What are you laughing at?"

"This...life.." she managed to get out, and we all laughed, too.

As close as they appear

Dear Mom,

Here are a few snapshots from my commute back to the hotel this evening.

Did I mention I was in a rickshaw? Yep, those things from the movies.

Cars in picture are indeed just as close as they appear. In fact, closer. And all honking.

Absolutely no one in India was fazed.

Yours, with love,
Laura

Double bonus

I'm here! In the land of Gandhi and Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri and Slumdog Millionaire! And I have WiFi, AND I haven't gotten sick yet! I'm considering this a double bonus.

In the heat of the night we stepped out of the Delhi airport after 13 hours in the sky (which went surprisingly fast; I slept a lot, albeit badly) and onto the bus that would take us to the International Guest House at the University of Delhi. Did I mention the humidity? It's like perpetually stepping out of a hot shower.

I woke up this morning, in my spartan-yet-peaceful hotel surroundings, at 2:30. (I'm well-known for my atrocious jet lag, which has been known to last for as long as two weeks.) Instead of falling back to sleep, I thought of pancakes and French toast for the next five hours, until breakfast opened. No pancakes (or coffee!) to be had, but chappatis with jam, toast, chai, and cornflakes with hot milk (?!?) filled in nicely.

We're off on our first adventure in about half an hour--a walk to SRCC, India's foremost college of economics. Assume, if I don't post again, that I didn't survive the humidity. Farewell.

Oh, and some wise guy decided to message me and ask if I was "Steve" and could fix his cell phone. Cute, guys, but I'm not desolate enough to start work at a call center.

Finally, finally

IT'S SNOWING!

I felt the need to mention that because it's Christmas Eve. True, it's not one of those big-flaked, merry snows, just a fast flurry, but it's just what I needed to push me over the edge into Christmas mode. I've been in finals mode for so long that when I finally relaxed, it didn't feel one bit like Christmas. But with a pie in the oven for dinner tomorrow and snow in the skies and Bing Crosby playing, I'm finally, finally in the holiday mood.

I've never had a busier semester. My friend Peter asked me several times if I was okay ("People don't ask other people if they're okay often enough"), and I had to reassure him that was fine, just running myself ragged. When I first got to college, it was quite an adjustment, but more of a growing-up and social kind than an academic one. This fall was the first time that school kicked my ass. And the best part is, I kind of enjoyed it.

Oh, I can't say I completely enjoyed all the late hours, the many classes I missed, collapsing on the couch at the end of the day, too tired to even cook. But, strange as it may seem, I really enjoyed what I was learning. Shocker, I know. I felt challenged, pushed beyond my limits, for the first time in college. But what my professors were teaching me was just so interesting that I wanted to go to class. My Walt Whitman seminar was truly phenomenal; BiSci opened my eyes to what I need to do to make myself happy (this was the lab science where pasting leaves on a mason jar counted as class); Old English was tough, but fascinating; and of course, I enjoyed my first fiction workshop with graduate students (even though there were days when I felt like the stupidest person there). I ended up keeping half of my books at the end of the semester because I wanted to go and reread Leaves of Grass and Coetzee's Summertime.

The "higher" part of higher learning came when I realized I was connecting everything in my classes. I quoted Whitman and commended his style of living in my BiSci journals, I used my German to help me translate Old English, and in turn used my Old English to help me in Early Brit Lit. That, to me, was the most rewarding part of the semester: that I could actually use what I was learning. It was my first semester of graduate classes, and I can now say that I think I'm really going to like being a graduate student. The thought of being a professor, never an option on the table before, has crossed my mind several times in recent weeks, and it's weird that I don't hate the idea. In fact, I kind of like it.

UPDATE: The snow is now large-flaked and merry, and sticking! How perfect. Hope my mother gets home from errands okay. It would be a shame if she died on Christmas Eve. (To put things mildly.)

It's been a learning semester in more ways than one, but I won't go through it all now. I'll just wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever else you celebrate.

Oh, and Life Lesson #66: Don't wait until December 23 to buy your tree, if you celebrate Christmas. After the epic Quest for the Christmas Tree yesterday, spanning three stores, an allegedly creepy Santa, and a grumpy father, I have given my parents express permission to get the tree before I come home next year.

Or else you find trees barely your height (and, for the sake of this lesson, you are extremely short).

Or massive trees that no one can lift.

And then you start getting ridiculous because there are no trees.

And your father is unamused.

Also: Neil Diamond's Christmas album NOOOOOOOOOO! Must... change... song... In the words of my sister just now, "You know, I don't really like Neil Diamond, but I consider this to be his most horrific work."

Then, "It doesn't even sound like he's singing; he's just got a sore throat or something. Or he's a drunken pirate."

After a year away, it's good to be home for Christmas.

Papers, papers, papers

I'm with you in Rockland
     where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
     where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
     where you're having as much trouble writing papers as I am
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I need a glass of wine
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I settle for some yogurt and granola instead
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I'll have to stay until I write 6-8 pages about our chumminess together in Rockland
I'm with you in Rockland
     where DON'T YOU FEEL ALL THIS COMRADESHIP WALT WHITMAN WOULD BE SO
     PROUD
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I give up on this paper and move on to an analysis of moral instruction in Wycherley's The
     Country Wife instead.
I'm with you in freaking Rockland
     where I realize that there is no moral instruction in The Country Wife and move back to Rockland
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I'm not getting up from this computer again until I'm done one of these papers
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I'm Facebooking about my despair instead of writing
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I'm wondering, is Rockland still around? What kind of a place is it? Must Wikipedia it for
     "research"...
I'm with you in Rockland
     where NO DAMN IT NO WIKIPEDIA RESEARCH JUST WRITE YOUR PAPER
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I'm grumbling and finding the dark chocolate hidden in the cupboard
I'm with you in Rockland
     where I feel like I'll be until the sands of time have worn away every last stone in Rockland, let
     alone me and this damn paper and the professor I'm writing it for

Soooooo...as you can see, finals week is going well.

   

A memorable time

And so, it's been a summer.

This may seem slightly premature, seeing as the actual season doesn't end for another month, but it definitely feels like the end of summer. The weather's changing, I start school again next week (! in America!), and there's already a tree in our backyard whose leaves are beginning to change. I warned it to stop, but it paid no attention. Mark my words, that tree will rue the day it was planted.

Brandon (remember him?) is ready for it to be fall, but I'd like about two weeks more of flat-out summer. It was a long summer for me (I got back from Germany in late April), but I spent a lot of the glorious weather working in an office (there may or may not have been a gleeful "I'm free" dance when I was done). I'd like about two more weeks of heat so I can get in the pool, sunbathe, and wear tank tops to my heart's content. After two weeks, we can commence with the fall feeling. Please and thank you.

That said, it's been a memorable time. It was the summer where "yolo" made almost anything acceptable. It was the summer that I started driving with the windows down. It was the summer that even if you had just met someone, it became perfectly acceptable to hand them your number and ask them to call you, maybe. It was the summer that I truly appreciated Americana, in all its ups and downs and slightly hicky glory, after a year away from it. It was the summer that I got my first-ever real job, and the summer that I really started writing, and the summer I turned 21.

Most of all, it was the summer that I realized how much I've changed. A lot has happened--some good, some bad, and maybe someday you'll know it all. I hope so; it's a great story. All you need to know for now is, I'm proud of the way I handled it all. I would have done things a lot differently a year ago.

I'm happy that I'm settling into my 20s so nicely. It's a place I'm starting to be really comfortable at, and I feel like I could have been here for several years by now. I'm looking forward to it. And there are so many things to look forward to this fall! I was worried that after I returned from Europe, everything would seem dull and bleak. But I'm excited for everything new under the sun. I started packing for school yesterday; it's the first time ever that I've wanted to do it that early. But I'm ready to go back. I like things somewhat settled.

 But, if you have some time before your summer ends, listen to Mumford and Sons. Brandon burned me Sigh No More last night, and I listened to the whole thing in the car this morning. I never realized how perfect it is for the end of the season, especially if you're in a conflicted, slightly melancholy mood. It's so full of defiance and hope and wistfulness; it's great for that unsure between-seasons feeling.

Oh, and go see The Dark Knight Rises, if you haven't already. Call me crazy, but I liked it even better than the second one. Slightly predictable, but it makes up for it with how astoundingly awesome it is. (Astoundingly. I should rename this blog I Like Adverbs.) Forget Fatih Akin, Christopher Nolan is my new favorite director. Plus, it's one of those movies that is ever so much more epic on the big screen, not in the least because it was filmed partly in IMAX. I've seen it three times now, which is the most I've ever seen anything in theatres, and I still get something new out of it every time I watch.

Or, as an alternative, this also looks excellent.

Whatever you do, and even if you didn't take a vacation, get the most out of your last days of summer. There's always more to be done, but for now, I'm fixing a glass of Porch Swing and listening to The Cave one more time...or maybe two...

Stay and save my life

Just a quick post for this evening. I'm packing up for the trip home from Maine (10 hours in the car tomorrow, woohoo!) AND trying to get an internship application done AND thinking about going out for a quick goodbye drink with some of my new friends, but I've wanted to share this essay with you for a while. It's written by Charles Warnke, a fairly young-looking writer living in the Bay Area of California, and it's been circulating a lot on the Internet lately. It's one of my favorites--a sardonic love letter written to the readers of the world, the real geeks among us, and for that reason it's addressed to me. Every bit of it is true. It's romantic and heartbreaking and sensual and disillusioning and thought-provoking and it stings in all the right places.

I should add that the last line isn't Warnke's; someone on Tumblr added it. In my opinion, it's an improvement.

"You should date an illiterate girl.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life."