The Scent of Old Books

[[posterous-content:pid___2]]

There’s nothing in the world like the smell of a library filled with old books. It’s a scent our children may never know. When Rakhal first took me to the library at St. Anthony’s College, I almost cried, it brought back so many memories. Row after row of books. Musty. Dusty. Slightly mildewed. A whiff of decay. 

 

Modern libraries have almost no smell at all, or if they do it’s sterile, metallic. And all the old books? They’re being taken away by the truckload and burned or dumped.

 

Old books have soul. They carry memories, the imprints of all the hands that have thumbed through them. A kind of communion occurs between the reader and author. Old books are the closest we’ll ever get to talking with the dead. You can have a relationship with a book, a real book, that you can never have with a Kindle--and I love my Kindle, but it’s only a tool for reading; it doesn’t involve the whole sensory, tactile experience of holding a book. 

 

So many good memories are tied up with libraries. As a teenager, I sometimes cut school and hitch-hiked to the downtown library in Canton, Ohio. It was great library, several floors packed with books. I remember sitting on the floor between the rows reading Thomas Hardy, C.S. Lewis, Virginia Wolff--influences from my mother, probably, who loved British writers. 

 

In my twenties I also haunted libraries.The man I traveled with back then, zigzagging  in a crazy pattern across the U.S. and Canada, had a tendency to go berserk every now and then, but my instincts are good. I knew how to run and often I ran to a library--the last place in the world he would have ever thought to look for me. And, there I escaped, at least for a while, the insanity. Books have probably saved my life.

 

The library at St. Anthony’s is in the basement of the Media building. The light is muted, the way a good library should be, and the shelves are filled with books. Books in Hindi, English, Urdu, Bengali, and Khasi. One corner is piled with ancient journals. I love to leaf through them, the writing like the thumbprints of fairies. Sometimes I choose a book because of the way it looks. I like ones with faded cardboard covers, the dust jackets long gone, the pages yellowing. Today I picked one up that’s  only been checked out five times since 1981, and for several hours I lost myself in the Amazon, far from India, far from the U.S., in a small plane gliding over the jungle. 

[[posterous-content:pid___3]]

Etiquette in a New Land

 

There’s so much to learn about social etiquette. These subtleties of culture, the body language, the unspoken cues that tell you how to act, are hard to grasp. Most of them are learned through screwing up. 

 

A few lessons.

 

Tea

 

Tea, or here in the northeast, Nescafe, is served everywhere. At the police station while I’m filing my permits, at workshops, in stores, in homes. Usually with lots of milk and sugar. The first couple times I was invited for a cup of chai, I responded with something along the lines of “Sure. Thanks, I’d love some.” Wrong response. I could tell by the expression, although my host always very politely went about serving it. After watching the tea ritual for a while now, I think the correct response is, “No. No. It’s too much trouble.”

 

Then the host can respond with, “Please, it’s no trouble at all.”

 

You answer, “No, really. I don’t want to put you to that much work.”  Continue to protest vehemently. 

 

The host, “I insist. Please. Have some tea.” Both parties should engage in the appropriate hand signals--hand waving or strong-arming, depending on your role. 

 

At this point, it seems you can either reluctantly accept or keep the dance going a while longer until your host urges--adamantly urges--that you sit down and have a cup of tea. Then you can throw up your hands and say, “Okay, if you insist.”

 

This needs to be remembered in reverse as well. Whenever someone comes over I offer tea. They always refuse. The first few times I shrugged and said, “Ok.” Very rude. Now I insist. I insist until they reluctantly accept. 

 

Directions

 

Throughout Asia, people hate to tell you they don’t know where something is. They will lose face. So rather than say “I don’t know” you will get sent just about everywhere except where you’re going.

 

Yesterday I got lost. Shillong is not a big city and so far I’ve been able to navigate my way without a lot of mishaps. Yesterday, however, I just couldn’t seem to find my way to a familiar-looking landmark. Along comes a soldier. “Don Bosco square?” I asked. With great surety, he pointed up the hill. Shillong is a hill station and these are serious hills. I’d already been up and down so many I’d lost count, but I trudged up another one. Soon the houses began thinning out and I seemed to be heading into the forest. I stopped and asked a woman coming down the road. She pointed down the hill. 

 

When I got to the place I had started from I asked again. Eventually, I did make it to Don Bosco Square and the college after a 2 1/2 hour hike up and down hills, through neighborhoods and criss-crossing roads while dodging traffic.

 

Lesson learned: Buy a map.

 

Clothing

 

India, especially, away from the cities, is a conservative country and I’ve tried to dress accordingly: long skirts or pants, no sleeveless or low-cut shirts. Basically, I try to keep as much skin covered as possible. In Shillong, women wear Western clothes as much as saris or punjabi pajamas, but these are usually basic pants and blouses. 

 

I still felt like I was standing out until I bought a shawl. Women wear shawls in India. They can be draped around the shoulders or used to cover the head, but a shawl is a must. Now I don’t leave the house without draping a long shawl or scarf around my shoulders. It’s fun to buy them as well. The bazaar is filled with row after row of beautiful  silk, pashmina, wool shawls--colorful, embroidered, gauzy, some with sequins that come loose and stick to your body so you look like a Christmas tree by the time evening comes. Of course, the women here are graceful as gazelles with theirs, while I’m a natural-born klutz and will probably end up strangling myself before my stay is over. So while I still don’t quite fit in, I do feel less conspicuous with a shawl. 

 

A good website for women travelers: Wanderlust and Lipstick. Lots of good tips for traveling solo, dressing, etc. They, too, recommend a shawl. 

The Sister of Mercy

Who would have thought that my first week in India the person I would be spending the most time with would be a Catholic nun from Kerala. Sister--I don’t know if she has another name, all the nuns seem to just go by “Sister”--comes by regularly to sit and chat, always apologizing for disturbing me. I’ve come to look forward to her visits. She’s vivacious and charming and totally devoted to her calling, spending several hours a day in prayer. Her smile is radiant. (I’ve noticed a commonality with the women I become attached to--they all have beautiful smiles. Coincidence?) At first, it was hard to understand her accented English, but listening closely to what she has to say is worth the effort. It’s forced me to look at my own intolerance. Whenever I complain about someone else’s bigotry, all I’m doing is showing my own. May all the rednecks and holy rollers of my past forgive me. 

 

The relationship has also helped me to be more sure of my own identity. I’ve always been a bit chameleon-like, bending and adjusting to whatever situation I’m in. While there might be some value in that, it can easily cross over into no boundaries, with no idea of what I really think or feel. That’s changing. 

 

A few days ago, she stopped by. The first question was if I was a Christian.

 

I told her no. I’m a Buddhist. We both laughed a bit at the incongruity of an Indian nun and an American Buddhist. 

 

Then she asked about my family. “How are they doing without you? Don’t they miss you?”

 

“My sons are grown. Out on their own. I chat with them pretty regularly on Skype.”

 

“And your husband?”

 

Ah. The husband question. I've noticed in many my travels throughout Asia, a woman alone is suspect and divorce practically unheard of. One friend counseled me to say I was widowed, but I balked at that, not only because of its untruth, but because it didn’t seem fair to my husband, who is a decent man, to relegate him to the afterlife before his time. So I took a deep breath and said, “I’m divorced.”

 

After a long pause, she asked, “Was yours’ a love marriage or an arranged marriage?”

 

“A love marriage.”

 

“Ah. Maybe if you had let your family arrange your marriage they would have chosen someone you could be compatible with into old age.”

 

“But people change. How can you know you’ll be the same person 20 years from now that you are today?”

 

“That’s true. People change. But what about children? They need their papas. They need their mamas. I would be so sad if I couldn’t go to my papa for advice.”

 

“Yes, they need both. But they can still have both.”

 

“But it’s more difficult if you’re not together.”

 

“What about love?” I asked. 

 

“Love is important. But you learn to love. Falling in love is short-sighted.”

 

Good point. That also has been a lesson. My younger years were dominated by this obscure search for love, but I’m not sure I ever really understood what it meant. I confused romance with love, and one is short-sighted while the other isn’t. Probably my children are where I first began to understand real love, the kind that thinks of another rather than myself. But the other kind, the romance, still pursued me into middle age. For years, I was so passionately attached to my husband that I nearly lost myself. Ours’ was a fiery, volatile relationship, and it was a disservice to him as much as to me. Only by extracting myself from that role of a wife could either of us grow. 

 

So now I find myself in a situation I never would have imagined--chatting with a nun about love. And I found myself opening up to her in a way I also wouldn’t have imagined. For once, I didn’t pretend to be someone I’m not, but shared the incredible sadness that comes with ending a long marriage, the hopes that died, the loneliness. Yet I don’t regret these choices, and I’m so glad I didn’t move from my marriage into another relationship which is the pattern of my youth. Falling love is short sighted, yet love is so multifaceted that once you start opening up to all its possibilities it's breathtaking. The love of the universe, that’s simply part of being alive can be transformative. 

 

Thank you, Sister. 

 

 

 

Journeying

The Fulbright is the vehicle that brought me to India, but really this is a journey of spirit as much, maybe more, than of intellect. Of course, they are all tied up together--mind, body, spirit--and imagination as well. The Buddha and the Hindu Upanishads both stress inquiry as part of the spiritual path, and I do honor the intellect, yet who we are, our essence isn’t the mind, nor is it the body. I suppose that’s what the soul-spirit-consciousness is. 

 

I don’t know of any other country where the spiritual is so integral to the culture as India. Rakhal, my liaison at the college told me that for some Hinduism is a religion. For others it’s a philosophy, a way of life. I’ve never really explored Hinduism before. It seemed confusing--all those gods and goddesses. That’s one reason I’m drawn to Zen rather than Tibetan Buddhism. Too many deities to keep straight and I’m at a place where I want simplicity. But I’m developing a deeper respect for these complex religions. I especially love the way Hinduism embraces all. Jesus is a Hindu saint, probably to the chagrin of some of the more fundamentalist factions. Buddha, too, and Ghandi. They’ve all made their way into the pantheon of Hindu immortals. 

 

And I’m beginning to grasp the value of having so many different aspects of the divine--and in a sense of ourselves. The gods aren’t reality but rather metaphorical representations of reality. They hold our egos up for examination and show us both the good and bad of who we are. 

 

The Buddha and other mystics have also taught that we all have the potential for enlightenment, that God is inside us. It’s up to us to uncover it. Even Immanuel Kant wrote “God is not an external substance, but rather a moral condition inside us.”

 

I’ve met some truly wise people in my life, and some with a fire in their hearts and a breathtaking passion for living, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone I consider truly enlightened. I know I’m nowhere close and doubt that I’ll achieve it in this lifetime. But I’ll continue to sit on my cushion, and o, what a journey it is. 

Letting Go & Dancing

Lesson 1. Let go of expectations. My second night in Shillong turned out to be a techno dance party at the girls’ hostel to celebrate the birthday of one of the nuns. And these girls can move. The music was loud, electronic and pulsing. Even the Sister was out there boogying. Once the music ended (it’s lights out for these girls at 10 p.m.) they ended the night with a hymn. 

 

Shillong. St. Anthony’s College. Northeast India. None of it is what I expected which just shows how easy it is to have misconceptions about other cultures, other countries. St. Anthony’s is run by the Don Bosco Society, a Catholic organization with a strong focus on education, especially for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it. And while Shillong seems to have a lot of different faiths--walking through town I saw Muslims, Hindus, Sheiks, and a Buddhist monk--it’s primarily Christian, dominated by St. Mary’s Cathedral, a big blue church on top of a hill. There has to be a lesson here for this Christian cynic. At the moment it all feels slightly surreal.

 

Northeast India, however, is fascinating. As I’m told over and over, it’s not like the rest of India and while I would love to spend more time in “the rest of India” there is so much to absorb here. I have no idea how many tribes there are. Shillong is mainly Khasi, Jainita and Garo. Other tribes live elsewhere, each with their own ancient ethnic traditions and language, although English is spoken pretty much everywhere which makes it easy to get around. Tomorrow is Independence Day, but the northeast corner of the country will not be celebrating. According to Sanjoy Hazarika even after years of independence in India “people in its North East...realize how marginalized they have become in relation to the policy-miking apparatus in New Delhi and their own ruling elites at home, and how great remains the ignorance of officials and politicians who govern them despite all attempts to educate them. The mindsets in Delhi and Dispur remain largely unchanged” (Rites of Passage, 2). I certainly had no idea about this part of India before coming here. It’s also a land of fluid borders, especially between here and Bangladesh--but I’m nowhere near understanding that issue!  

 

In the meantime Strangers in the Mist and Rites of Passage by Hazarika are two of the best books I’ve come across lately for bringing alive a culture--or many cultures--and a place. 

 

Monsoon in Kolkata

The word rolls around on the tongue like a marble, cool and smooth. I've always loved the sound of "monsoon" so am happy to arrive in Kolkata during monsoon season. And the rain has been coming down off and on since the plane landed. While I'm happily soaking in the humidity and dampness, the city isn't handling the heavy rains as well. Roads are closed due to floods and some areas of the city are inaccessible. As always, it's the poorest residents who are hit the hardest, the thousands of people living under newspapers and in tin shacks. In the morning I pass entire families sleeping on the seats of rickshaws or the doorways of buildings. 

I’m staying at the Ramakrishna Institute of Culture in the Golpark section of Kolkata. It’s a huge place with green, manicured lawns. At first I thought it was a former British embassy of sorts, but the website says it was inaugurated in 1961. According to Swami Vivekananda the philosophy of Ramakrishna Institute is “We reject none, neither theist, nor pantheist, monist, polytheist, agnostic, nor atheist; the only condition of being a disciple is modeling a character at once the broadest and most intense. Nor do we insist upon particular codes of morality as to conduct or character, or eating and drinking, except so far as it injures others. Whatever retards the onward progress or helps the downward fall is vice; whatever helps in coming up and becoming harmonized is virtue.”

I always discover new places by walking and today I put in miles. I woke up this morning to the sound of horns and a quacking duck outside my door.  How quickly the place begins to feel familiar and how quickly my Asia survival skills kick in. First rule of traffic--ignore walk signals. Instead find a corner where others are crossing, preferably a whole group, and squeeze in the middle. Step off the curb when they do. Weave in and out of the honking cars. Don't look up. Ignore shouts. Ignore screeching tires. Trust you'll reach the curb.

Outside the rains have started up again. The street is a sea of umbrellas and the neighborhood cloaked in gray mist.

Namaste.

Bollywood

As well as devouring books and listening to an anything but Ravi Shankar selection of music, I’ve been on a Bollywood film marathon. Naturally, I expect to land in Kolkata and find the streets full of smoldering men and svelte, gorgeous women sashaying through traffic and bursting into song. I’ll be so disappointed if this isn’t true.

Seriously, though, aside from the bigger films released in the U.S. like Salaam Bombay, I haven’t seen a lot of Bollywood films until this past year. A few of my favorites:

Water. Although, probably not technically a Bollywood film as it is written and directed by Canadian, Deepa Mehta, Water is in Hindi and takes place along the Ganges in Varanasi, 1938, toward the end of British rule. I loved this movie and had to put it first on my list. The story centers around Chuyla, a child bride who is widowed when she is eight years old and sent to an ashram for Hindi widows to live out the rest of her life with the other women who range in age from Kalani, a teenager, to a toothless widow at the end of her life. Like Chuyla, she had been there since she was a girl. Mehta does a brilliant--and subtle--job of weaving together the strands of these outcasts’ lives without making judgements or turning it into a morality tale. Seema Biswas is fantastic as Shakuntala, one of the widows.

Omkara: Just when I thought not another modern rendition of Shakespeare, along comes the Hindi version of Othello, or in this case, Omkara directed by Vishal Bhardwai. This movie felt like my first real dose of pre-culture shock. On the one hand I loved it. Omi, a small-time gangster and politician, is the illegitimate son of a Brahim and a lower-caste woman. Desdemona becomes Dolly and defies her father to be with Omi. Iago, or in this case Langda, (played by Saif Ali Khan) is a great villain, well balanced between crude and edgy. One of the things that seemed a bit uneven with this movie was the translation. I felt like I was reading a script pieced together by several translators. A line like “buzz off you scum” comes just a scene or two before Dolly describing her love for Omi as “a blind bird plunging down an empty well.” Uneven. Probably the most jarring scenes though, were the full scale Bollywood numbers that seemed to just come out of the blue. The first came about halfway through the film--totally unexpected and wholly erotic, both hetro- and homo-erotic, with a healthy does of S&M thrown in, and even an anti-smoking message. Nearly the whole cast showed their dancing finesse, with the exception of Omi and Dolly who were off making love. But I liked Omkara. There was some beautiful background music in the score which was also composed by Bhardwai.

Mumbai Meri Jann (dir. Nishikant Kamat): In July, 2006, seven bombings went off at various Mumbai railroad stations. This movie  follows the after shock of a selection of characters whose lives were shattered by those bombings. I had some trouble following the different stories, but there were some good character sketches.

No One Shot Jessica (dir. Raj Kumar Gupta).  A bit over the top at times, but is based on a true case--the shooting of a model in Dehli.  Although, he initially got off, No One Shot Jessica shows that sometimes justice does prevail.

There’s a lot more richness and texture to Bollywood films than I realized. And I have of list of more to see.