Bollyblog, Chapter 11 - Alanaan

Bollyblog Day 11, September 11, 2012

I'm going to need a 12-step group to let go of my compulsion to consume Naan. This Indian bread marvel magic amazement is too much. It's too much. I can't not eat it. And wheat really messes with me, having decided to jump on the gluten-free bandwagon with the rest of my hippie friends.

            No. There's not a song in it. There's just magic bread and all the varying chutneys, pickles, raitas (yogurt sauces) and all manner of everything creamy and holy to slather on it. I could be talked into being an Indian food critic. No, I have no background to draw on, no sophisticated palate in this realm, and I'm not sure I'd even enjoy the critique even if the Indian people would offer anything other than mildly annoyed amusement at my attempt. Nope. I would just really love to get paid to eat Naan.

           Meanwhile, here's a picture of Dave at the Red Fort. It was astounding. But I used all my good adjectives on the Taj Mahal and the Naan. So you'll have to settle for a visual and imagine accompanying flowery language. (It was spectacular, though. It really was)

Bollyblog, Chapter 10 - It can't be made of marble

Bollyblog, Day 10, September 10, 2012

Whatever you think about the Taj Mahal - whatever cliche', over-exposed, iconic, yes, among the 7 wonders of the world, yes, but come on, how different could it be than the countless pictures we've all seen from childhood on - thing you think you know.  You don't.

So the point in even putting this picture in this chapter is, well, 'monumentally' stupid. But Great Ganesh almighty, the Taj Mahal is maybe the single most glorious structure I'll ever see. A thing of such concentrated beauty that it almost pulses like a quasar, emanating light for eons..
                  Finished in 1653, it was built over 20+ years by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Granted, she was his favorite wife, among many, which of course left me wondering exactly how many food tasters were in her employ in the day.. but oh, he must have loved her fiercely, because love actually seems to be a living component in this structure. It is made of solid marble.

"How can that be?," Dave the engineer asks.  "The sheer weight of this thing..." followed by his jaw dropping as we both slowly walked the perimeter, gaping like thirsty bird dogs on a Mississippi dirt road in the middle of July.

Of course we couldn't be in Mississippi because our car engine was a camel.

Bollyblog, Chapter 9 - Send in the Cows

Bollyblog, Day 9, September 9, 2012

It's all true. On the long road to the Taj Mahal, there are at least 750,000 cows... lying leisurely in the medians, on the sides of the roads, in the road, on the grass, in the heartbreaking miles of dirt and mud that make up what would be sidewalks, or houses, or beds elsewhere... and they walk down the middle of the road, against traffic even, while cars whizz by unbearably quickly, dodging children, street dogs, motorcycles, tuk tuks (that green & yellow 3-wheeler behind the cow up there) and yes, cows... they're like dogs, tied to trees, walking down the road on thin pieces of rope, led by small children. Cows... Women in beautiful, bright saris and wraps adorn the cacophonous streets.. and the backs of motorcycles. Shoulders must be covered, but not midriffs.  Yesterday, a man wanted money for us to take a picture of a monkey which he led around on a thin rope.

I won't settle in here before I leave in the next few days. How could I? So much sound, smell, color... floating like dust on the rumor that Delhi is a city full of djinns, forever protecting it from permanent ruin...

I want to believe in something today. But the djinns don't belong to me, though I wish I'd found a lamp to rub at Dilly Haat.

Bollyblog, Chapters 7 & 8 - Betel nut, Betel nut, Betel nut

Bollyblog, Day 7, September 7, 2012

The show on Friday was enlightening. Mostly because I realized just how many references I make to liquor, guns and even cigarettes (gasp) in my songwriting. Of course, singing to a theatre full of students (some of them as young as six), faculty and parents, .. well.. really made me take stock of things. In a blushing at first, but inevitably just admitting that debauchery plays a big a role in my imaginary life. Because I don't smoke, even though I own a .22, I tell myself.

 Seriously, I must not be living right. Despite the fact that the audience, on the whole, including the six-year-old contingent of girls dressed in princess garb, found the whole thing hilarious, and I got a curtain call (truly unexpected), I think, for my new happy album, I'll come up with subject matter other than grain alcohol. 

Bollyblog, Day 8, September 8, 2012

Dilly Haat market... the cab driver was a Sihk with a beautiful head scarf.  

The market was a melange of color, music, smells, merchants pushing all manner of silk pasmina, carving, camel-skin wallet, exotic instrument and little statues of Ganesh. It was a beautiful night, the perfect temperature with a light breeze, as the stars came out... and then it wasn't. The rain started, and the tarps were extended, and the humidity rose... so that I was essentially soaked to the skin and beyond... I left with a new wallet, and not much money in it.

                                  

                      

The next evening was a visit to the India Gate war memorial.. 

                                                                                                        

more merchants, with different, lighted wares - LED-lit whirling copters that flew high in the air and down, glow-in-the-dark super balls, neon-colored cotton candy, ice cream vendors everywhere... 

AND an interesting looking treat made of something called Betel Nut.   
You apparently chew the stuff like tobacco, with similar nicotine effect, and it turns your teeth blood red,                                                            and you spit red stuff all over the place, and.. no, I didn't try it in the way that I didn't try stewed silk worms in Seoul. Nope.

 

Bollyblog, Chapter 6

Bollyblog Day 6, September 6, 2012

Got a little closer to a monkey. Frankly, up close, they're a tad menacing.. something about the long claws.. still, I risked it and took a photo. He was dozing, but those little eyes were open enough to make me think Ridley Scott was hiding around a corner with a camera somewhere. Like the monkey was feigning sleep, and then he was going to come and eat my head, and Ridley would catch the whole thing in H-D. Luckily, he didn't.

Lodhi Gardens yesterday was beautiful.. mosques and cranes..

                                                     

And the markings of humanity.

Bollyblog, Chapter 5

Bollyblog Day 5, September 5, 2012

I finally got to leave the compound with a driver and go to Humayun’s Tomb, the precursor to the Taj Mahal. It’s stunning.

         

             There are street dogs everywhere, 

even here, in the national treasures...               . 

                               The trees look to be wrapped in the souls of dancing women…

Bollyblog, Chapter 4

Bollyblog Day 4, September 4, 2012

Finally!  A monkey sighting. There were many more than this little guy, but we were running late for rehearsal. There were at least 20 of them, climbing up and swinging around the abandoned building that is lovingly referred to ‘monkey house.’ 

Speaking of monkeys, American politics are getting me down, even at this distance. I’m trying not to let it keep me awake at night, but still.. even ‘The Earth is Enough’ isn’t distraction enough. I’m in India, for the love of Mike. THAT should be distraction enough. I’m hoping that the trip to a shrine and a market will smack me into a broader perspective. I feel like songwriting, but my brain is still time-travel mush. Rehearsals every day and edits, edits. Still – this show is going to be wonderful. I’m working with amazing people. I’m luckier than anyone should be… All this and monkeys too? You’re right. Who cares about the donkey and elephant circus when you’ve got monkeys and the REAL elephant, Ganesh, waiting to enchant you around every corner.

Bollyblog, Chapter 3

Bollyblog Day 3, September 3, 2012

I've been outside a total of 10 minutes. All day spent in the theater of the American Embassy School, working on the new musical. This place and the students are amazing. Here's a clip from yesterday's stab at choreography for one of the ensemble pieces.

On the walk to the theater, my host informed me that the chances are good in the next two weeks that I'll be accosted by monkeys if I'm carrying food. I, of course, am looking forward to the experience, in a theoretical way. Of course I'd give up my granola bar if push came to shove. Maybe I'll see some of the city tomorrow. Maybe the monkeys will show up. In the meanwhile, internet comes and goes with the rains...

Bollyblog, Chapter 2

Bollyblog Day 2, September 2, 2012

At departure from Heathrow to Delhi, insecticide was fogged all through the cabin of the plane. I covered my face with my scarf, and then realized the futility of such a thing, in a closed, recirculating-air system. British Airways is now my favorite airline, despite the toxic perfuming (they claim it’s not, but anything that carries the suffix ‘icide’ I generally consider to be less-than-healthy). The meal (curry, with two kinds of chutney and a cardamom and orange ‘posset’ (pudding) was really tasty, the service was great, and one attendant made the trip my best int’l flight ever. Not a lap dance, no, but, I wanted to give him some sort of gold statue. Or a big wad of cash. Instead, I thanked him warmly and fell soundly asleep on my travel pillow of fluffy goodness, in the whole row of empty seats he snagged for me.  I stretched out and slept an amazing 6 hours straight.

Now, I've arrived, and I didn't fall out of the sky. It occurs to me it's a little morbid posting those "psychic" premonitions. Secretly, I wanted the posthumous kudos: "Wow. She could make a decent guacamole AND was a psychic, too!"Ah well. I'll have to conquer telekinesis or something.

Answer #194 - Do a Daily Blog on India, Chapter 1: Bollyblog

Bollyblog Day 1, September 1, 2012

What do you do when you've got approximately 20 hours to kill?

In the Chicago airport, enroute to London Heathrow, I’ve just tried Rick Bayless’ Frontera. It’s actually great, and the sources for all the fare look to be within about a 6-hour radius. Minimal carbon footprint, compostable plastic, and the best guacamole pretty much anywhere. Except my house.

I’m more stressed than I’ve been before a trip, as I head into India on my own. Maybe it’s being alone, without Dave. Maybe it’s that two of my close-in relatives have died in the last couple of months, and these things happen in threes, and my father keeps having worrisome dreams about me…

So I’m scared, getting on this plane to London. Yes, I’m cursed with a wild and melodramatic imagination, but still, I don’t like that I’m scared, despite all of the glorious speeches I’ve imagined at my imaginary funeral, where the football stadium at the university is crammed with people, waving farewell, enmasse, like you do at football stadiums.

Still, the guacamole rocked and now I’ll actually open up the Rick Bayless cookbook my sister sent me last Christmas.

Answer #193 - Get Happy in 5 Easy Steps


So how do you shift your perspective from the introspective?

Here are 5 easy steps to banishing your innate existential angst while contemplating the new HAPPIER album you're planning to write.

   1) Acknowledge that change is the new static. 

      Roll with it. Realize that you have the choice whether to  a) completely lose your mind and write a personal anti-change manifesto on the side of your neighbor's barn, in the blood of a recently deceased goat who died of natural causes, and send it, piece by piece, to Mark Zuckerberg's office over the course of a year, or b) just post your stupid status update in whatever new form Mark Zuckerberg wants you to. Then you can acknowledge that, eventually, the entire net will be thought-driven, and not screen-driven. And ha! You'll laugh! Oh yeah.

2) Buy a new Hello Kitty iphone cover. 

     Then, when you find yourself suddenly asking Siri all those John Malkovichian questions, and getting increasingly angst-ridden at the soothing condescension of the programmed voice, pretend it's Hello Kitty answering you. This will make you laugh. And others will laugh.


3) Give away all your Solzhenitsyn paperbacks.     Just stop it. The Gulag's probably closed by now anyway. Time to pick up 50 Shades of Gray and get on with it. Laugh erotically and stop wringing your hands.

4) Learn to like Microbrew beer. The people that drink microbrew beer look alot happier than you and your over-sized goblet of red wine (in order to aerate it, yes. It needs air). They are telling jokes and laughing and sweating from bike rides. Laugh, and while you're at it, buy a mountain bike.

5) Find a pink tutu and wear it everywhere.       Not like Sarah Jessica Parker on the Sex and the City opening sequence, but like this guy.* Tell everyone you could have danced with the Bolshoi but didn't want to shave your back to cater to someone else's esthetic sensibility. They'll laugh, and then you'll laugh. And then, as God is my witness, you'll write that happy album!




*Who, for the record, takes photos of himself all over the world in a pink tutu, to increase cancer awareness on behalf of his wife. That actually makes me really happy...

Answer #183 - We are the People

Channeling Gertrude Stein via Senator Vi Simpson

It’s American as apple pie and chutney yes it is it certainly is. Equal representation yes it is equal and fair and right it’s Creationism alongside Judaism and Islam and Scientology and every other worshipful thing and I can respect a good story no matter who propagates it or what their head dress or how they hold their hands it’s a free country this native land of ours yes it certainly is. Free free freedom free to speak freedom of speech free thought free market where is the freedom in the market when there is inequality where is the market when inequality is the market and when did the market displace the good and true liberty as she stands there on the island sinking to her knees, all alone now. In our hands are the hearts of our children in our hearts are the minds of our children the minds the wonder in the future the future the future in the hands of those who would bring the walls in tight and hard and rope the minds like cowboys in the old west and they think they are, they certainly do. But here we stand and the good boys coming home from war not like WWII when the pride swelled in them and there they stood dapper and crisp and we shook their hands in those cafes and slapped their backs those strong backs and those good hearts but here we stand and the boys coming home from war are not like those boys no they’re not. Boys. They’re boys. They’ve always been boys and some girls too some girls some young and not young and for this freedom freedom they’re fighting with not enough armor and breathing the poisons we thought we’d outlawed in Geneva 1925 and scavenging like hermit crabs looking for shelter in the shrapnel and scrap for pride and home home home home begging to go home go home and for this we offer them a rope and tight hard walls and tell them no matter where their grandmothers come from those grandfathers who built the grand nation on their backs and with their own bleached bones and no matter their generations upon generations of head dress and hands held and eyes pleading heaven or stars or trees for mercy and light they will learn to pray pray pray our father who art the lord almighty have mercy upon us have mercy upon us here. At home. Home. Have mercy. Have mercy. Theocracy that is. A Theocracy and I am no theocrat and America is Democracy I’m a Democrat, democratic red white and blue we are guided by the stars and the bars and the good constitution by the good people by the good by the good, the right isn’t always good but the good is always right. oh say can you see oh say can you see through the tight and hard walls graffitied in dogma a mighty fortress? oh say can you see his wrath and power are great and armed with cruel hate America the Beautiful can you see?

         In good conscience, ladies and gentlemen I must insist I must, I certainly must insist upon equal representation for we the people. We are the people and we the people are individuals and we blaze our own paths we blaze them and walk unafraid into the deep woods and ladies and gentlemen pray that there will always be deep woods to blaze and places that no government has paved over forever. American as apple pie & chutney, ladies and gentlemen we are a nation of immigrants who’ve brought, thank God, God with us in many scarves and many baskets and if god is everywhere and everything then ladies and gentlemen let us teach our children to recognize the face of god everywhere they go and in every vision ever held in the mind of man of the love of god. Pray ladies and gentlemen that god is merciful pray that all gods hear us pray hard, pray hard and earnest for ladies and gentlemen we have boys and girls mothers and fathers who can’t yet come home who hide in tight and hard packed sand walls until one day they can burst from airplanes to run in open air in free air and ride in parades in New York City city of freedom and ladies and gentlemen, when they arrive with prayer beads worn down and small clenched tight in hands held in every worshipful grateful way, who are we to tell them that their god has been asked to leave America?