Stupas, Tigers, Disco Beats. India, 1982.

An ongoing and occasional series on a 3-month trip I took to India in 1982. I was 25, and traveled by train across the country alone, writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry and combating the anxieties of youth and solo travel. Often includes references to what I wore. You can find the previous posts here. Today's post follows on last Thursday's far more immediately than usual because it is so much a part of the same story.

This photo is to prove, only, that I was dressed appropriately for the company picnic. Just by existing I broke other Indian cultural rules but never dress if I could help it.

And here's what happened next.

I missed the 7pm bus to Bhopal. When I got back to the hotel, I discovered that buses might not leave the next day either. A man, who was described as the son of a high priest, or an administrator, took me to the bus stand to inquire. Indeed, no buses were scheduled. He arranged for someone who was described as a traffic policeman to help me in an unspecified way the next day.

We went back to the hotel. I wrote,

"Sitting in the lobby, who do I find but my friend, Mr. K.K. Thali. He tells me that he was devastated to hear that no buses will go tomorrow morning, he has thought only of me, and he has come up with an alternative."

I was to be driven to a town called something like, but not exactly, Brnisa, where I could catch a bus for Jhansi at midnight. However, there were tigers, so we had to be careful. I wrote,

"K.K. Thali rustles up a 'conveyance' belonging to the administrator of Khajuraho. Off we go, me, K.K. Thali, the administrator's son, and the driver."

The conveyance turned out to be a jeep with padded seats, red interior light, and an 8-track cassette deck. If I recall, they played the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever.

It was darker than ever outside. We drove to Brnisa. Mr. K.K. Thali attempted to squeeze me rather a lot. We stopped. We got out. They waited with me by the roadside. After all, there were tigers. At midnight precisely, a bus pulled up. On I got, goodbyes all around.

The conductor asked me if I wanted making the love, using a very recognizable hand gesture. 'No thank you,' I said. He smiled, and shook his head in the Indian nod. I slept. We arrived in Jhansi at 3am. I exited the bus, precipitously, leaving behind my red down vest. I took a tonga to the train station. I found my bunk, and lay down to sleep, wishing I still had my down vest to use as a pillow.

I was reassured by the presence of an elderly gentleman, sitting on the berth below me, reading. I dozed off. I wrote,

"I am awakened by said gentleman asking me a question. I don't understand. I put my head down to sleep again. He caresses my head and I speak out in surprise. He shakes his head, as though I needn't worry. I lie down once more to sleep. Slowly he reaches over and touches my face as though I were insubstantial, transparent. Very gently he rests his hand on my forehead, my cheeks, my shoulder, my head again. He scratches my head, as though I were a child. I think it must be a religious ritual until I feel him raise himself up on the lower berth. I open my eyes to see him bending down to kiss me. 'Please, no,' I say. He nods, and sits back down on the lower berth.

When the train arrived in Sanchi, I hurried through the crowd of people getting off the train. I grabbed hold of three tall Austrian men and made them walk me to where I would be staying the night. I can make no excuse for my cultural bias. They looked familiar, and safe.

I always tell this series of events as a funny story.


The next morning I went to visit Sanchi's Buddhist stupa. It's old and massive. I woke up early and saw the sunrise on my way. I felt I'd been there in a previous life. The sky was blue and so bright I couldn't quite open my eyes. Things that weren't white appeared so anyway.


Then I walked through the town marketplace, where a man gladly sold me several inches of blue glass bangles. Bangle sellers have to squeeze your bones a certain way to get the things on. Pinky knuckle, thumb knuckle, wrist, wrist.


He held my hand and moved my bones just so. I wore the bangles until I had to break them off in business school. Too much jangle for note-taking.



Images:
me
They all expand when clicked

Ardor, Red Dye, Foreign Girls. India, 1982.

An ongoing and occasional series on a 3-month trip I took to India in 1982. I was 25, and traveled by train across the country alone, writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry and combating the anxieties of youth and solo travel. Often includes references to what I wore. You can find the previous posts here.

Politely watching snakes. With high-waisted pants and notebook. Fashion is cyclical, technology, linear.

Having finished with Delhi, and the Taj Mahal, I took a train to Jhansi.


I was headed to Khajuraho, but had to overnight at the Jhansi train station to catch a bus in the morning.

A man went down the stairs.

Another man and his wife went up.

I had heard one could sleep quite well in the railway retiring rooms for women. However, that night the only space was in the dormitory. Where we were to sleep on plank benches that rimmed the large room. Which stank of rats.

I wrote, as I sat, with my luggage next to me on the bench.

"It's very weird to be sitting here, knowing that I'll be spending the night exposed to this extent. It goes against the grain. I take my anxiety out in small worries. Where does the bus to Khajuraho leave from? Who can I ask to find out? Where will I leave my luggage while I ask? How will I avoid talking to the retiring room people I have already annoyed? How will I eat dinner? How will I wake up on time? What if rats bite me?

The sparrows are very loudly singing away the sun."

I must have survived the night. Growing older means surviving so many things and not remembering how. I made my way to Khajuraho on this bus.


Which I also survived. Turns out you don't really need windows when you have canvas shades against the dust.

Arriving at my destination, I settled into the hotel, planning to spend two nights and one day. Got up in the morning, made my way to the temples. Quite ugly from a distance, they were. To a classical Western sensibility, that is. No soaring arches, no flying buttresses. More like 17 castles made of wet, dripped sand. Their setting, however, was beautiful. Green gardens under a blue sky. Apparently British colonial governors hacked inappropriate lawns out of dry brush and overgrowth.


A few of the temples are populated by creatures. Elephants, for example.


But, for the most part, and to their great and enduring fame, the temples at Khajuraho are carved with people making love. Imaginatively and with a keen sense of community. Look at her beautiful foot.


Honeymooners visited Khajuraho as a matter of routine, in 1982. They may still do. As I walked through the gardens, from temple to temple, and carving to carving, I passed more than one couple holding hands. I was particularly aware of myself alone in those moments. Everything smelled of flowers, softly. The sun was hot.

I walked back to my hotel. Past mothers with their children,

men, talking to other men, taking a break from their pedicabs,


and fuchsia signs of the Holi festival. Probably best compared to our Mardi Gras. Characterized by throwing colored water, lifting restrictions, and lighting bonfires. I knew none of this. It would turn out to be important. When I got to the hotel, I found out that Holi was also an occasion to cancel transportation, including the bus I had planned to take back to Jhansi next morning.

What to do with an extra day in Khajuraho? The next morning, I thought I'd write a letter to the newspapers interested in my story about the Indian film industry. I asked at the front desk for a typewriter. They gave me one, but it was too old and I couldn't make it work. The young man I was dealing with, a Mr. K.K. Thali, offered to type for me. And then he invited me to the company holiday picnic.

Well, OK. Picnics. I knew about company picnics. I had nothing else to do and the group of young professionals seemed so familiar. Mistake. I was assured I would be able to catch a bus after the party. Mistake.

The picnic unfolded in almost total darkness. Other women attended the event, mostly wives who talked to each other, leaving me alone with Mr. K.K. Thali and his fellow employees. They all worked for Indian Airlines, so why he had helped me at the hotel is lost in the proverbial sands of time.

We stood around, chatting. Someone lit the bonfire. Mr. K.K. Thali carefully explained his great ambition to kiss a foreign girl. I wrote down his exact words. "Come Miss Lisa, why you have hesitation?"

We walked, with another man and his young wife, down to the river. Mr. K.K. Thali had a mustache.


On the way back up the hill, Mr. K.K. Thali insisted on his kiss. I declined. At which point his boss came down the hill and pushed us together. Gently, humorously, but with a hand on my back. I now understand it was Holi, after all, in Khajuraho. Then I wrote,

"Good lord, it seemed so silly. So I kissed the poor man. I honestly believe that he had never kissed a woman before in his life. Then we ate, and I noticed again that Indians at a party eat in a hurry, with no ceremony, and then everyone goes home right away."

Nothing but a kiss seemed to be required.

We might wonder now why I felt sorry for Mr. K.K. Thali, given that I was the one under duress. Looking back I seemed so completely witless, but maybe I had an awareness of my privileged position, even then. Like most archeologists or historians working with text artifacts, I am never going to know for sure. I don't remember the actual kiss. I do remember that we ate in noticeable darkness, despite the bonfire. Then someone, I don't know who, brought me back to my hotel. Safe, but impatient. Unsurprisingly, I had missed the bus. Apparently another would leave tomorrow. Surely another would leave tomorrow.

images
me and someone unknown for the snake

*If you are interested in India today, the artist of bigBANG studio is living in the Himalayas for a year and documenting with extraordinary photos.

Movie Stars, Marble, A Sitar Player. India, 1982.

An ongoing and occasional series on a 3-month trip I took to India in 1982. I was 25, and traveled by train across the country alone, writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry and combating the anxieties of youth and solo travel. Often includes references to what I wore. You can find the previous posts here.

This story has no pictures. Even at 25, I knew not to take pictures of movie stars in their houses. And this is a story with movie stars.

In Delhi I continued to research the film industry. One day I went to a movie theater. I saw a Bollywood version of "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers." It was 3 hours of men in overalls, dancing with women in saris. By then I understood that mine was not to laugh. I just watched, and noted.

The next afternoon, I interviewed the actor Shashi Kapoor. His father, Raj, was responsible for establishing the Indian commercial film industry. Shashi was a movie star. Second in fame only, in those days, to Amitabh Bachchan. Mr. Bachchan is the one who arrives by helicopter in Slumdog Millionaire.

We met in the lobby of the Taj Hotel, New Delhi. I was wearing my pale blue, skirted, seersucker suit. We drank tea.

Mr. Kapoor was terribly gracious. He told me all about his family and the meaning of the film industry for his country. He was right, as it turned out, but during that time in India how right he was or was not didn't matter to me. Whatever I was told, I entertained as possible. Tigers fed nearby on rubies, for all I knew. The Indian film industry would threaten Hollywood's world dominance, for all I knew.

Then Mr. Kapoor invited me to a party. If we'd been in Hollywood, I'd have recognized the host's name. But in stories, the famous often play the part of scenery.

I had to go all the way back to my hotel and change. All I had that looked like evening gear was my sky blue rayon salwar kameez printed with gold ink. I wore my pearls, though, in hopes. Left my hair down my back.

Mr. Kapoor and his assistant picked me up in a black Mercedes. Mr. Kapoor in the front, me and his assistant in the back. We drove through the streets of Delhi. I remember walking up the stairs to the second floor of the house, thinking, wait, these floors are marble. Wait, everything is marble. It turns out that marble is quite soft and cold to one's feet.

There were somewhere between 70 and 120 people at the party. It's hard to count when your faculties are consumed with making sense of new data. I appeared to be the only person not Indian. I suppose I talked to somebody or other.

Dinner was served. Buffet. No chairs. They didn't do chairs. Everyone ate more quickly than I would have expected, standing, holding plates, or sitting outside on the marble balcony. Then a couple asked me if I wanted to smoke marijuana with them. I declined. Again, some things one learns early.

After dinner we were called with a bell to sit on bright silk pillows scattered all across the floor. Orange, yellow, fuchsia, gold. That picture remains very clear in my mind. Pillows. The marble floor. A sitar player, again, a name I would have known, were I at home. But I was halfway across the world in a country and civilization that cut the word foreigner down to its bright bones. I remember everyone there had very shiny black hair. Except me.

And so we listened. Until the evening ended.

It was a generous night. I do not know who gave more to whom. Nor how I was glamorous or how I was not. But I felt beautiful. I was 25, when we are all beautiful. Looking back, I also see, I was so out of place. I didn't realize until years later that my cheap tunic made in a street bazaar, of a gold block print that would wear off sooner rather than later, was inappropriate to the occasion. To my shame. Or that I was probably saying silly things. What I remember is the polished surfaces, what I think is that the movie stars were all quite nice to a foreigner, and made sure I had enough to eat, and a place to sit.

The value of memories isn't known at the time. Nothing is a memory until it is remembered.

And Stately Boulevards Precede Us. India, 1982

An ongoing and occasional series on a 3-month trip I took to India in 1982. I was 25, and traveled by train across the country alone, writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry and combating the anxieties of youth and solo travel. Often includes references to what I wore. You can find the previous posts here.

I came into Delhi unannounced.

I wrote,

I expected Delhi to be different. I expected to arrive and find Paris waiting for me. I expected New York City taxi drivers all lined up with air-conditioned cabs and digital meters. Instead I got India. "Hellomadamrickshawscooterhotel? Noproblem20%nightcharge." A kindly old gentleman offers to share my scooter, and deals with the cab driver, and asks me to come to his house. Or to meet him later this week. Like I said, I got India.

I think I was not using the word, India, to explicate. Rather, I was reciting an incantation to create some meaning. Listing the things that shocked me and naming them India. Human beings need to understand, and they will work harder at this task than anything. (Reading now, I see that I also wanted to sound tough and world-weary. "Good luck with that," I say to myself, 30 years later. "Good luck with that." Trying to sound tough gets in the way of understanding, but at 25 I didn't know.)

Let me state the obvious. I had trouble understanding India using standard, rational, processes. But I was not alone; clearly the British also struggled. They constructed, in Delhi, a typical capital city, broad boulevards, monuments, squares. Made for processions of the ruling class. But they got India. As did I. Where sometimes events looked like home. But different. My first day walking around, I ran into this march.

The strikers above wanted to belong to the Ministry of Tourism, instead of the Ministry of Agriculture. OK. To an American, it sounded Orwellian. Except they wore chef's hats. A little ornamental for Orwell. OK.

The cow above mowed lawns, pulling a cutting tool behind to keep the open, green, public square open. OK.

On the other hand, when you get India, some things are in fact the same. Comprehensible.

When I was little my mother pulled my hair into braids every morning. I never sent my kids to school uncombed. We make sure our children go into the world looking tended to, so that no one will assume that they can be harmed, unnoticed.

Found in big cities anywhere. I lived in Manhattan, after all. Why was I still shocked that people slept on the ground? I think because India was so overwhelming, so new, that I razed my structures of knowing to the ground. I had to start fresh. Everything surprised me. What I knew. What I didn't know. But I could feel the new framework rising, in Delhi. Almost hear hammers in the background. Some of what we think, when we are trying to understand, is admirable. Some is just silly. Usually it's all comforting, however, there's comfort in the effort, and that's maybe as important.

I left Delhi after a few days. I went to see the Taj Mahal. Another response to the inexplicable. When someone you love dies, if you are a maharajah, you build this. A monument. With stately boulevards.

The thing is, we never control all the approaches. Even the grandest routes may be strung with wires. Glimpses sometimes tell us more.

That night at the Taj Mahal, I stayed in a little local hotel. I sat on my bed, and brushed my hair watching dust fall onto the covers. Outside, at a Muslim festival, men played music all night long.

Images: Me, an old camera, and dusty slides. For a more recent view of Delhi, with a different perspective, and great photos, visit The Existential Expatriate.

Rajasthan, Weddings, Measurements. India, 1982.

An ongoing and occasional series on a 3-month trip I took to India in 1982. I was 25, and traveled by train across the country alone, writing an article on the then-unknown Indian film industry and combating the anxieties of youth and solo travel. Often includes references to what I wore. You can find the previous posts here.

I left Udaipur and traveled up further into Rajasthan. Chittorgarh, Pushkar, Ajmer, Jaipur. I stayed at a government rest house, as advised, where, as it transpired, they tried to kick me out. I was invited, on a train, to the wedding of the rail line's paymaster's daughter. I declined. I was, at that point, intent on sticking to my plan. It was all I had in the midst of so much new and foreign.

But more than the signs quaintly telling me I was not welcome,


or those Technicolor temples I could enter, where newlyweds posed for the camera,

and mirrored mosaics lined the walls,


more even than camels pulling carts,

wedding parades with grooms on caparisoned donkeys,


or small children watching from arched and painted windows,


in this part of my trip I came to understand that by traveling alone in India I was inviting attention I neither wanted nor knew how to manage.

On the way to Ajmer, the train guard left me a note.

"Hello Dolly. Namaste. I want to meet you at Ajmer with you. You should meet me at platform. Then we go to picther or see the Ajmer city with us. I like you. Yours."

I did not meet him.

I took a bus to Pushkar. Three men sat on the bench seat in front of me. One of them, a propos of of absolutely nothing, turned around and asked, "You enjoy the sex?" I started yelling at him, "Why do you ask me that? How come you think you can just ask me that? What is wrong with you?" At which point he and everyone around me began apologizing. "I can tell you have good nature, " said the man next to me. "You say good."

That night I thought, "I should have gone to the wedding of the train paymaster. I would have been an honored guest. I would have given his daughter a large wedding present. Dollars." It would have been something neither the family nor I would ever forgotten. I only regret what I haven't done.

And then I decided I wanted a salwar kameez. The Northern Indian costume of tunic and pants. I wanted to fit in, to be less visible. In Jaipur, you could get one made at the street bazaar. Tailors sat in booths hung with curtains. I do not remember how I chose, but I picked out a sky blue fabric covered with small, muted gold patterns, from a young Kashmiri. He pulled the curtains closed, and began to measure me. Yes. Measure me. It took me much longer than my usual level of competence would predict to realize that these measurements were not necessary. I do not know if I was lulled by the way he kept patting my cheek softly, or by all the colored bolts of cloth, but when he looked up at one point and said, "This is OK?", I realized it wasn't. I backed up. He nodded his head, no objection, no more measurements, no harm done. As though he was experimenting with a new species to find out what was possible, and having found out, was content to let it go.

At least he asked.

Of all the mistakes I made in India, or wrong decisions, or social gaffes, that one stayed heavy with regret and embarrassment. I felt terribly ashamed, too ashamed even to admit shame. So foolish. I read my journal now and see that I was not honest with myself afterward. I tried to brush it aside, to tell myself it was OK. But I felt it was my fault, I felt I should have known, I felt I had participated. He had a pretty mouth.


I look back on my trip through India and I can see that I thought I could protect myself by dressing appropriately, keeping my head down, and writing diligently in a notebook. I didn't understand that by traveling alone, unmarried, in a culture where women married young and traveled in reserved train cars, I had put myself out on a cliff, lit by spotlights and announced by megaphone. My own personal "son et lumiere."

I hold no grudge, almost 30 years later. No one ever harmed me. No one persisted, much, past the first signs they'd gotten it wrong. A voyage of self-discovery at 25, unmarried, alone. I was apt to discover men. But I was too overwhelmed by the journey to pay attention, to understand the culture, to keep my guard up. So they discovered me first. I was not ready. That's no one's fault, not mine, not theirs. I am only understanding this today. It's been harder to forgive myself.

I no longer have the salwar kameez. I'd show it to you if I did.

Images: me

Udaipur, Egrets, Trains. India, 1982

28 years ago I spent 3 months alone in India, writing an article on their film industry and being 25. I am posting the stories here once or twice every other week. For previous excerpts from this trip, start here. Then here. Then here. Or use the terribly helpful labels and click on "India."

Time to leave Bombay. I had interviewed directors and government officials. Spent an afternoon on set for the filming of a wedding scene. Learned what I could about Bollywood. To know it existed at all being fairly remarkable. I wrote in my journal,

...had begun to feel as though I owed something to the city, had begun to orient myself. Got tangled in the streets. I could feel myself getting anxious, setting standards, not doing well enough...I just had to say, 'Lisa, hold on. This is your first project ever, and you just want to write an article, not a learned tome on the subject. Do you have enough to write? Yes. Well then leave it at that and go have a good time.'

Even then I talked to myself in a voice that knew more than I did.

I hopped onto a train. That's the thing about travel. You don't have to make to do lists. You can make to go lists. Feeling worried? Go to the next place. The journey has its own trajectory, even when the traveler is lost in one way or another. You have the train window to frame what might otherwise cause fear.


Overnight to Udaipur. Marked with a yellow star on the map above. Sleeping compartment, in first class, with a bathroom down the corridor. I took a shower. Stood naked and wet watching rails go by under the toilet. Changed trains at Ratlam. I thought the air was filled with ash like Victorian London. Not that I knew anything about Victorian London, of course, but I had no idea what I was doing and any reference was better than none. I saw all the second class compartments, full of people in bright clothes, squatting at the doorway and looking out the windows.


People rode the tops of train cars. I felt puzzled, but as I was already in a state of perpetual shock, it didn't seem any stranger than anything else. I wrote,

As we rattled along, I listened to a devout Hindu, a supervisor on the board of education in Ajmer, tell me that if I would only, "read Gita, read it not once and throw away, but read it with faith and you will have good peace, true peace of heart." The train stopped. A woman had fallen off the train roof and been cut in two on the rails. After 20 minutes we moved. "She expired," the supervisor told me.

We stopped at Chittargarh. I saw a large dusty fort. One of many, as it turned out. The north of India has a lot of forts. This was my first.

I got back onto the train.

If I remember correctly, two young men struck up a conversation with me. Their names were Ashutosh Panchodia and Awadhesh Kanungo. They made me write that down. I followed them into a second class train car. Where sat 50 more young men, taking the train to New Delhi for university entrance exams. They were what was then called, "tribals," participating in a special program to allow villagers from tribal groups to enter the Indian meritocracy. These guys had never been to the city. Had never met a Westerner. Terribly curious. Even more polite.

In second class, the seats are wooden benches. With slats. At least they were then. Luggage stored on slatted wooden racks over your head. Sometimes people sat on the luggage racks, if the train was very crowded. Not that day. That day we all sat on the benches. And looked at each other. For the most part their English wasn't up to conversation and I did not speak Hindi, or their dialect. They asked me if I had seen Khajuraho, temples covered with statues of people in intimate positions. This question was, although I did not know it yet, to become a theme of these three months. They asked me how much my shoes cost. Another theme.

I have no idea what that white blotch is. Perhaps a manifestation of my shock?

We fell silent. Some time passed. I don't remember how much. We were almost to Udaipur. The young man just opposite me, who had been writing in a notebook for a while, looked up and told me he wanted to read something. "Miss Lisa," he said, "In the moonlight, you are a white marble statue." I think I said thank you. In those kinds of situations I tend to remember my manners and not much else.

I understand that class and gender and history converged at that moment in a way that completely overshadowed my particular experience. I was only a 25-year old girl, traveling, trying to prove my own courage and worth. I am glad that I treated those young men with respect. They were nothing to laugh at. The Indian education system has led the country to an important position in the world economy today. The role of women in society, in America as well as India, perhaps is not fully nor comfortably resolved. But if the story is just about me, in 1982, I remember trying to sit with my legs together, hands in my lap, balancing the desire to smile with the need to cast my eyes downward.

We must have arrived in Udaipur. That's what happens on trips. You get where you are going. I believe I was met at the train station. And driven through the town. Up a hill. To see the hotel. Udaipur Lake Palace. The irony is not lost on me.


But when you are dusty, tired, overwhelmed, and 25, irony is not the first thing on your mind. The hotel looked beautiful, sitting on the lake. Someone boated me over. Me and my blue duffle bag and knapsack. The only passenger, in a motor launch, piloted by a man in a turban.

The palace was, and is to this day, gorgeous. More marble than I had ever seen, then or since. Marble, by the way, feels just fantastic on your feet. And alternating between marble and carpet? Ecstatic. Being told by the front desk on check in, that they hoped I like my room because they wanted me to feel like a princess? Heavenly. Chicken korma eaten from linen with silver in candlelight? Delicious. Reading by a pool, on a lake, next to bougainvillea? Glorious.

I lay by the pool, and listened. Sounds carry so far across a lake. I could hear the people calling to each other on shore. I thought I could be in New Jersey, from the sounds. I wrote,

Ten egrets float by, cutting the air slowly as if it were butter. The sky is pinkening. The sun sets.

Inappropriate metaphors are the territory of the young. You can only know what you know. I knew that it would be unlikely, were this New Jersey, to see ten egrets flying in a line over a lake. Unlikely to be surrounded by marble.


They treated me like a princess. Yes. In that context I was some kind of princess. With a lot of traveling left to do. Under a sun that sometimes lit everything else I knew right out of my mind.

Udaipur. Overexposed, with dusty flecks. Not unlike the reality.

*All photos from slides. Why slides? Someone told me they were better. It has meant that I have barely looked at these images since I took them.

A Luxury Coach To Ajanta And Ellora, India, 1982

The fountains weren't running at the Ajanta Ambassador. I don't blame them one bit, in retrospect.

I planned to spend an entire three months in India. And I mean PLANNED. It was that or waste a lot of effort on going to a faraway foreign country just to sit in hotel rooms with bad sheets, feeling panicked.

I have always made my way through the uncertainties and ambiguities of life by planning. Runs in the family. My youngest sister is known, affectionately, as Plannerina. Although she says kid #3 has finally put Plannerina to rest. But I digress.

I took guidebooks to India. Fodors and Let's Go. I thought about every step of the trip. And now I was in Bombay. With time on my hands. I had at least three or four days before film industry interviews would begin. The caves of Ellora and Ajanta were on my list. Or Ajanta and Ellora. Either way.

Somehow, and I do not remember how, I found a tour to Ajanta and Ellora. Via luxury coach. Let me say simply that words do not always mean the same thing in foreign countries. Even when they are ostensibly words of your language. The tour took us from Bombay out to the caves, one night on a bus, a hotel to shower in and have breakfast upon arrival, a day at the caves, and then another night back on the luxury coach to Bombay.

Oh take pity on a child. Even now I shake my head at my own optimism. Realizing at the same time that optimism can be a very good trait, especially for adventures. I got on the luxury coach, which, in this case, turned out to be luxurious enough even for a slightly spoiled young America. Sat down in my seat, a very nice seat, as it turned out, next to a middle-aged Indian man. And proceeded to have a violent allergic reaction to something I had eaten. Which caused me to itch all over, sneeze violently, and break out in hives. Hard to breathe. (This allergy was to become so serious later in life that the last time it happened I believe I almost died. But this was early days.) There was really nothing I could do about it that night but endure. So I did.

The attack passed. However. Right about the time when my throat opened up again, and I understood that I would probably live, I also understood that the man in the next seat wasn't squeezing my leg by accident. I twisted, I turned, I got annoyed, I tried to give signals that I was not appreciating the attention, I gave up. I moved to the back of the bus and sat down in the last row of seats against the back. Where I bumped around so violently that I could not sleep at all.

I arrived at the Ajanta Ambassador in a state of complete temper. As a 25-year old, on occasion I resembled a teenage girl. Not exactly the most gracious of species. The shower helped. Air conditioning helped. Breakfast really helped.

My knapsack. For daytrips. Completely impractical, but sentimentally valuable. Loaned to me by my boss at the time.

Off we set. The caves of Ajanta and Ellora were built by Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains between 200 B.C. and 700 A.D.. Carved into the side of a cliff alongside a river in the plains. Not even a grumpy baby Grande Dame could fail to put aside small annoyances, the wish for cold water, the discomforts of luxury coaches, in the face of this.


Like most of my trip to India, Ajanta was hot. Very hot. The sun was so bright I had to shade my eyes. Almost hard to see. But there were caves. And statues three times my height. All carved before my culture was much of a twinkle in some wild Saxon's eye.

We toured. I had remembered how hard it was to transition again and again from dark to light, from hot to cooler. But my notebook also tells me that a guide had us all wait outside one of the carved chambers. He went inside with other guides. They chanted. I remember now. Standing out in the white sun, a courtyard enclosed by decorated walls of statuary, men chanting in caves.


I'm embarrassed my notebook also shows I wrote about loud air conditioning on the same page. Everything I say is as truthful as I can make it. As best I can remember. I don't know if it matters.


Then we saw the sleeping Buddha. Carved in stone. I remember, at the time, I was not impressed. So what? A Buddha. I'd seen pictures. So what? He was long, and lying down. But now, looking at the Buddha's face, I think I missed something. I was very, very young. Pretty scared and trying to replace my fear with all kinds of inner commentary.


I made it back to Bombay uneventfully. If being 25, and alone, in India, in 1982, can be said to be uneventful. We humans have a remarkable capability to reset normal.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Telephones, Addresses, Movies. India, 1982

Stories start here

I woke up in a strange country. This should not have surprised me. But strange, by nature, is always a surprise.

I was overwhelmed with anxiety that morning. But so what? I was always anxious, in those days. In my 20's. I was anxious, as usual, sitting on a bed in the Taj Mahal Hotel, in Bombay, in February of 1982.

Anxiety laps me like a slow flood.

I made a to do list for those rising waters. A universal strategy, even in strange countries. "Call the National Film Development Society." India had a government body in charge of developing their art film industry. I had written a letter before I arrived. They had responded saying,"Yes, you may come visit us. " That meant I had to use the telephone. There was one. Next to the bed. It was beige. That didn't help. I had only a vague idea of how to use it. In those days, India's telephone infrastructure was erratic. Odd combinations of numbers required. I dialed. Clicking ensued. I dialed again. Someone said "Hello?" I don't remember any more than that, not what I said, not what they said in return, not how I knew to go find myself a taxi, not how I knew to tell the cab driver where to go. Certainly not how I could be sure that anyone at all would be there when I arrived.

I do remember the cab driver didn't know what he was doing much either. Bombay in those days was being built right under our feet. Streets were changing names. Buildings coming down and going up. Entire neighborhoods becoming. An entire city of becoming. The cab driver had to ask another citizen of the becoming, "Do you know this place?" Show the address I must have written down. Ask, of course, in Hindi. English was common, amongst the educated. Not so common amongst those who drove the educated around. It only makes me shake my head, to realize that India was so foreign to me that a new language barely registered.

I remember next, offices. White walls. Women, in beautiful saris, in charge of the National Film Development Society. Me, young, long blond hair, spectator slingbacks, seersucker suit. A conversation. In which I took notes, they explained what they knew, and schedules were made. Yes, they would take me to see a film being shot in what they called, even then, Bollywood. Mangala, a woman in her 30's who smiled and shook my hand, would meet me in the next few days. I would get a phone call. She put me in a cab and sent me back to the hotel.

OK. OK. Plans were made. Schedules set. To do, done. But I had said I was a free-lance journalist. In my mind, I was not. In my mind, I was a girl. That was also true. I felt like I was telling stories. I thought I was fooling someone. But in the end my article would be published by the Los Angeles Times. In the end, the National Film Development Corporation knew more than I did. In the end, they were right to treat me as though I was real, even though I felt I was hallucinating.


Now I had some time. Nothing scheduled for a few days. I walked out into the city. Down a side street. Every step more information than weeks of my previous life. Imagine marigolds. Imagine marigolds in a city. Hanging in garlands everywhere. Hanging around cows' necks.

I went back to the hotel. I put on my bathing suit and went down to the pool. I lay, in the shade, wearing a bathing suit, on a long pool chair. The walls around the pool were latticed, like the carved walls of the other Taj Mahal. Bougainvillea grew all around. Pink. Very pink. So pink. A waiter, turbaned, uniformed, asked me if I wanted anything. "Madam, can I bring you something please?" "Lemonade. I'll have some lemonade. Thank you." Even strange countries do not relieve one of the requirement for polite. And I sat, by a swimming pool, under a blue sky. I drank lemonade. Bells rang, intermittently, on cows outside in the street.


Images, from slides, India, 1982, LPC
1. A film billboard. In fact I believe this is from the South of India, not Bombay. But time is the enemy of exactness.
2. The Bombay train station. A kiosk.
3. Bougainvillea. On the walls of the hotel swimming pool.

The 21st Century Grand Tour, In Which Freud And Jung Come Along.

King's College Rare Book Collection

High WASPs like to travel. My mother, one afternoon, put down the New York Times' travel section, sighed, shook her head, and said, "I don't need to read this. I'll never see Finland again." My father is prone to private safari-type expeditions, to Africa, to Vietnam, and the British Virgin Islands. Well, maybe not safaris in the Caribbean, but cruises involving boats, crews, and few other people.

In our generation, given the state of the once-great family fortune, travel is a little less glamorous. No less compelling. Between us the siblings have worked in London, France, and Shanghai. Studied in St. Petersburg. We've been to most continents, on holiday, on pilgrimage of one sort or another. I'd list the countries but your imagination can probably do a better job.

Why? I don't think it's just the fact that we can afford to. After all, many people with financial resources are happy to stay put. I believe the construct of the Grand Tour is still with us. That, and the desire to poke holes in the comfort of wealth.

The Grand Tour was a custom, originating in the 17th century, primarily English, in which young men graduating from Oxbridge would travel through Europe for several years. Upon their return, expanded cultural knowledge allowed them, we assume, to take their place in society. Needless to say, these Tours involved the usual activities of youth, trysts, gambling, intoxication. The reality diverges from voiced lofty goals. But the Grand Tour became a cultural keystone, embodying the idea that to lead one must know more than one's backyard. Which, despite the colonial overtones, isn't such a bad thought. Even though we, the High WASPs, are no longer the leaders of the Western world.

The 21st century, of course, has added the personal to the social imperative. The thing about growing up with money is that you don't quite know what to trust. You are never sure what life would taste like if you really bit down hard. Blood on your teeth.

So we travel.

I admit, the travel isn't without accoutrements. It's not pure voyaging into a dark night. We think about the right wallet, the right suitcase, what to wear on an airplane. I have come to believe in Purell. My mother has a special travel bathrobe. I like black Pumas with Velcro fasteners.

It would be possible to imagine that portable comforts of home defeat the powers of new places. Having grown up in privilege, it's very easy, as I said, not to know what to trust. To mock oneself for not having really had to fight. To decide that only the most difficult is worthwhile. But that's not a way to make much progress. There are times when you have to relent. To say to yourself, "Fine. If I like belting leather on my rollaway suitcase, fine." As I remember, a durable duffle doesn't get in the way of India. You still have to brush the dust out of your hair at night alone in a hotel room.

Brought up in privilege, and full of nerve-endings, you are apt to feel guilt. You will feel the desire to know what you do not know. You will wish for courage. You will have some. Probably never quite enough. So you get on the train.

This is more difficult than I make it sound. But not unique. I believe everyone in privilege must face the same problem, how to test, and still forgive oneself.

Slumdog Millionaire

The Oscars are tonight. I went to see Slumdog Millionaire yesterday. And I loved it.



27 years ago I traveled alone in India for three months, writing a speculative freelance article on India’s film industry. In 1981 almost no one in the West knew anything about Bollywood. I was also going to India as many 25-year-olds about to get an MBA might do, in terror of growing up and looking for what I mistakenly thought would be my last adventure. I took the train from what was then Bombay, to Rajasthan, New Delhi, Agra and the Taj Majal, Bhopal, the temples of Khajuraho, the oldest Buddhist stupa in the country in Sanchi, what was then Madras, Trivandrum, back to what was then Madras, Bhubaneshwar, what was then Calcutta, then through Bihar, where I saw a woman carrying a dwarf child on her back as she vomited onto the train tracks, to Darjeeling, a side trip to Nepal (which required an airplane), down to what was already Varanasi, up to Swami Muktananda’s ashram, back to Bombay, and home. The red and pink lines above mark my trip. But that’s another story.

I recognized India in Slumdog, even all these years later. I loved the movie despite its complete lack of irony. I thought it was art. It felt like art. I felt exalted when I walked out onto the street, like I now knew something I hadn't know before, that I couldn't articulate.

I don’t know that we could make the same movie in America these days. Direct narrative disappoints us, unless a lot of explosives are detonated in the process, or we can define it a priori as a chick flick, a date movie. Only commercial, consumable movies get the direct plot and the high production values. Our art movies need a plotline with a twist, the boy is actually a girl, the girl was molested by her stepfather, or they need some unusual visual statement, everything is black or takes place in one room. We need something that surprises us, that adds sweet to sour, or sour to sweet. We are a little bored by boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl loves boy, everyone dances. Why? Because the background for our stories is strip malls where all the signage has to match? Because despite the problems in America so many live in relative prosperity and as a result we need more unusual distress in the plotline? I don’t know, and the answer requires a grander capability for generalization than I have got.

India on its own plays a role in Slumdog. The editing and cinematography brought it all back to me. I felt surprise. I suppose you could say, and someone probably has, that India is the real filmi star here, that India itself provides sufficient drama, grotesquerie, and humor. The movie’s story can unfold directly, all the while giving us the >>sense of rising above previously known meaning<< (I'd use one word but there isn't one that I know of) that in Western movies requires irony.

Or something like that.