Perfect Metaphor for India

Have you seen the new War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise? I realize I'm a little late in commentary, but Indian TV is a little behind the times. Last night, alone in my hotel room, I was laughing out loud; let me give you a few images.

Tom Cruise drives his stolen minivan and two kids through a crowd of yelling, screaming people, who attack his car, breaking windows, climbing frantically into the car. I couldn't help but laugh, because it was that exact image I saw not two weeks ago. A man broke open the emergency window of the Jhansi-Delhi Exp train, and luggage, women with babies, men smoking beadies, began flying through the open window (which perhaps measures two feet by two feet in area.) The overflow was stunning; soon enough the entire train was blanketed with people, crying mothers with their crying babies, men piled eight and nine deep on the benches. The frantic, insane boarding the train was life or death, it was imperative all thirty of their relatives and all sixty of their children and one hundred pieces of luggage got on that train right then. Life or death.

The second image that made me burst out laughing was when Tom Cruise and the mob of people surrounding him were stopped for a passing train; which wizzed by, on fire, smoking, at 100 mph. I couldn't help but remember all the times I sat, waiting for trains, and saw basically the same image ... minus the fire.

All of Tom Cruise's panic-stricken glances at the sky, his frantic searching for a place to stay, eventually finding a moldy basement maintained by Tim Robbins. Considering the vast array of hotel owners and lovely hotels I've stayed in during this trip, even the couch Tom Cruise's daughter is laid on to sleep seemed somehow familiar. The dripping water, the muttering proprietor, the axe ...

Finally, Spielberg's characteristic moments of absolute beauty amidst the world-wide destruction were also reminiscent of India. Cruise, escaped with his daughter, runs from the tripod behemoth robots through a misty forest, as a rain of clothing falls like snow. Moments like these, when India slows down amidst the clamor and chaos and reveals something truly beautiful, albeit horrifying. A vulture circling overhead as I stroll through a scrub-forest in a desert, the sun glancing off slum villages' corrogated tin rooves, garbage circling around bathers underneath a massive industrial bridge, glinting black spots in a flickering ocean of reflected light ...

What Country

I go to the temples now, the “Sacred Spaces,” that I came to do Important Research on, and albeit beautiful, they don’t heave at me the way they did when I arrived. The first few days in India and I drank them up like a man dying of exposure reaches for a recently issued wool blanket. When I first got to Ajanta, never mind that I hadn’t slept all night, my first order of business was a half hour rickshaw ride up to the View Point. The teary-eyed reverie over the photograph I’d longingly stared at for over a year in Providence, longing to be there, was right in front of me. Naturally my reverie was interrupted within forty-five seconds not by one, but five men trying to coerce me into looking at the tiny quartz and amethyst gems they’d chipped away in the jungle, or found while plowing their farm, actually pulling on my elbow. The best way to start a conversation with a tourist is, as every Indian knows, to ask “What country?” There are several variations on this question: “Your Country Name?” the well-educated, “Good Sir, may I ask your place of origin?” the use of the complex English word ‘from,’ “You Come From?” the more colloquial “You From?” et cetera. All pronounced as proper nouns strung together with no formal connection, like “Salt Lake City.”

When I got here I was on a mission. Now all I want to do is sleep. Read. Watch Indian TV. I long to be back in New York City where you have to be a raving lunatic wearing an enormous hot dog costume for someone to look at you, and even then ... God forbid talk to you. I imagine walking down the airy hallways of JFK, “Moving walkway – please step down,” glass and Christmas wreathes glinting. Perhaps stopping to use the bathroom, marvelling at how I can actually see my reflection in the clean blue tiles, and the suction on a flush reminds you of your airplane cabin losing pressure. All there is on TV are Christmas films, huge marble tiled expanses of shopping malls, Christmas shopping. Everyone bundled up in big coats, smiling through lipstick lips, big plastic bags! I haven’t seen a plastic bag bigger than my hand in months! Another marvel in American movies is the shininess of everyone’s car. Desperate House Wives drive sleek, seven-seater SUVs that look like they just drove out of the show room. No dust, no gravel, only impossible mazes of highways, uninterrupted asphalt.

Will I miss these people? What country? What country? Where are you going? The beauty of this place is perferated with unbroken accusatory stares, rickshaw-wallahs following you out of train stations, tailors looking up from their sewing machines, literally stopping what they’re doing to stare, children dropping their cricket bats, men calling across the street What country? What country? like they’d never seen a white person before. Maybe they’re confused. I do happen to share some resemblance to Matt Damon. Or like they just spotted the brand new model, Walking ATM­­. The stares happen in the most private moments. At the public urinal men lean over to see what a white guy’s looks like, at the cigarette stand men crowd around to see how much cash I’ve got in my wallet. I try to imagine what they imagine will happen if they talk to me, con me into looking up, even a glance at their shop will suffice­­­­—they’re out of their chair, awake, ready to sell. I imagine turning around, a huge grin on my face, “Oh, you have a rickshaw? Will you take me somewhere?” and reaching into my pockets and hurling fistfuls of 500 Rs. notes gleefully into the air­—better yet, American dollars. “No change! All for you!” I would shout.

The earliest train from Ahmedabad to Bhuj with any availability left Friday night at 2:10 AM; so I booked a ticket for the Kutch Express three days in advance. I left the restaurant that night in time to pack, giving myself enough time to leisurely take in Die Hard With A Vengeance, the only Die Hard film not set at Christmas. I paid my bill when I got to the hotel, before I packed; the night manager told me the Kutch Express is typically on time, and there’s no need to worry about getting out of the hotel, because there’s 24-hour reception. Departing the hotel, I woke up the two men sleeping on the floor in front of the door, and the boy removes a broom stick from the swinging door’s handle to ‘unlock’ it for me. Twenty-four hour reception. I left for the train station leaving myself loads of time to peruse the various chai stalls, the omelet stations that roam up and down the crowded concrete platforms. I arrived at the train station forty minutes before my train was meant to depart. The massive digital sign board flashed Gujerati, then Hindi, and finally English:

9302 Kutch Express – Delayed – Arrives 2:45 AM.

Okay, no problem. I order a Black Coffee 15 Rs. (distinguished from Coffee 7 Rs., Milk Coffee 10 Rs., and Espresso 20 Rs.) I have to wade through a sea—I’m not exaggerating—of sleeping people, which blanket the whole lobby. I sit on a cement divider in front of the train-station’s huge terminal, open to the street, smoking.

It’s not long before I’m approached by a beggar, with jet black, plaster-straight dirt-caked hair, wearing shorts and sandals that reveal dirt-caked feet. What country? Being two o’clock in the morning, I tell him, “Go away.”

“What do you mean Go Away?” He starts walking away, repeating Go Away under his breath, doubles back and advances on me. “This is MY country, not yours!” He vapidly gestures to the concrete divider I’m sitting on, “This is mine!

“You tell me Go Away!” his hand extended to me in fury, fingertips floating an inch above my forehead. Having heard the commotion, three police officers with standard-issue wooden batons advance on him from the lobby. Also having heard the commotion, half of the train station is now staring at the two of us (me, sitting, smoking, him standing, waving his arms). I motion to him to turn around, to alert him the police are coming; he doesn’t. In fact, his gaze doesn’t break from me even after the first baton slap to the back of his thigh. Now a car has stopped behind the divider, and its two (fat, rich, Hindu) drivers are standing and watching as well. The baret-wearing brown-uniformed police officer, flanked by two cohorts, has had enough and yanks the guy away by the collar. No one’s gaze has moved from me, sitting in what feels like an auditorium. The huge lobby, open to the street, is begun with a fleet of steps, not that dissimilar from an ampitheater; it’s certainly big enough. I’m on stage.

The two fat, rich, shiny-car owning Hindus approach me. What country?

Heavily shaken, my coffee cup and cigarette still in hand, feeling something in between guilt (Should I have just told him ‘USA’?) and a burrowing hatred of India and everything about it, wishing I was home Christmas shopping rather than sitting in a smelly train station strewn with hundreds of sleeping yatris (travellers), I reply, “Look, I’ve got half the train station staring at me, would you just leave me alone?”

It takes some serious convincing, but I manage to look tired enough and angry enough, muttering words like “nutcase” and “finenow,” for them to back into their car and drive off. On their way back, the police officer’s glance at me. I give them a half-namaste (right hand raised to forehead vertically) half-“Thank You” half-“Hey How’re You.” They give me a half-smile and a curt nod.

At 2:30 AM I’m a little nervous, so I don the standard Distressed Tourist face and approach a few railway officials on Platform No. 1, my ticket outstretched to them desperately. They assure me my train will depart before three, and that it’s leaving from Platform No. 3. So I head over there, taking my time to observe a chai-wallah in his element, boiling the milk, mixing the spices, all in a delicate martial art of hand movements, one’s he’s taken the last twenty years or more to master. I head up onto the “fly over,” the huge walkway perpendicular to the rail lines, and take the steps down to Platform No. 3 and 4.

There’s nothing on Platform No. 3, no one waiting, no train; only three guys sleeping on a haystack-sized pile of shipment bags. They tell me the train has already left.

Sure enough, back on Platform No. 1, a closer inspection of my ticket reveals that I’m travelling to Bhuj, not Mumbai, and was meant to get on the 9301 Kutch Express, which would obviously not be on the LED screen because it arrived and left on time, at 2:10 AM. It’s now 3 AM. The 9301 left on time. The 9302 is delayed. They tell me the next train to Bhuj departs at 6:10 AM.

After some commotion and being sent to three different windows, a man at Counter No. 22 helps me cancel my ticket to have a fifty percent refund (the IRP equivalent of two US dollars). I show him the number written on the back of my first and now useless ticket and ask him to book the train for me. He has me write out a slip, hands me a train ticket, 100 Rs., even gives me five 10 Rs. notes change so I can pay the rickshaw to get back to my hotel. They wake up, laboriously ‘unlock’ the door, wave me in, groaning. They hand me the key.

Back in my room, I discover the train ticket Counter No. 22 gave me is merely a receipt for having cancelled my last train ticket. The poor boy I woke up downstairs rings my doorbell. I open the door to discover he has the check-in book in hand; he wants me to reenter my Passport and Visa Number. I tell him “Go to sleep,” and close the door. The phone starts ringing. “You Check Out, New Entry, Now!” the man’s voice yells through the receiver.

“It’s three in the morning. I’ve already paid you for tonight. Goodnight.” I hang up the phone.

I can’t sleep. I get out my cell phone and set the alarm for 5 AM. 5 AM – get there at 5:30 AM – book the ticket – board the train – sleep. I still can’t sleep, I just keep hearing the crack of the police officer’s baton on the homeless man’s ass, and wonder if I’m an ugly American. I read my book under the dim florescent light and listen to the fan clinking against the hole in the styrofoam ceiling tile it sticks through.

I’m back at the train station at 5:30. This time my train really is late. The Deputy Station Manager tells me it should be here at 7. At 7 the Deputy Station Manager gets on his walky-talky, speaks a few words in Gujerati, and tells me the train will arrive at 7:30. This process continues for another three hours. Every half hour I walk to the Deputy Station Manager’s office (he’s the only guy who speaks decent English) and he tells me it will be here in a half hour. Then there’s confusion about platforms. “Platform No. 7,” he tells me at 8:00, but the Puri – Ahmedabad Express is sitting on Platform No. 7, and no one is going to Bhuj, so I trudge all the way back to his office on Platform No. 1. He tells me Platform No. 6, and the train will arrive at 8:30. Then 9. Let’s not even mention what it’s like going to the bathroom in the train station.

At 9:15 an anonymous (labelled only in Gujarati, which is very irregular for India) train arrives on Platform No. 6, and a ticket collector tells me this one is going to Bhuj. “Are there any berths in Sleeper Class available,” I ask, dreading the idea of sitting, packed like sardines in General Class. He replies, “Whole Train Available.” I laid down and didn’t wake up until we got to Bhuj at 4:00 PM., with the exception of being poked awake by the ticket collector, who wanted 380 Rs. ($10 US) to upgrade my ticket, the lunch man who wanted to know if I wanted a thali, and then again by the lunch man who wanted 30 Rs. (75 US cents) for the thali. And of course the precocious twin girls and their family sitting across from me, signing the theme from Om Shanti Om.

“Do you like Shao Khan?” all the little girls always ask me.

It doesn’t stop in India. The lunch man on the train wakes me up to ask me if I want food. Two in the morning at the train station: every time I walked toward the exit three guys would attach themselves to me “Where You Go? Hotel? Rickshaw?” I’m sorry, did a train just arrive? Or do you think I’ve been waiting around on Platform No. 7 since the last one got here?

Three in the morning, and Counter No. 14 won’t sell me a ticket even though he’s not working with anyone, I have to go to Counter No. 22, where there’s four guys trying to squeeze their faces into the small circular hole in the window to talk to the bored man on the other side, leaning back in his chair. No matter how Distressed Tourist you look, the cursory glance at your ticket—regardless how nice his suit is, or how well he can speak English—he still gives you the wrong information. There’s never a moment to let your guard down. Three in the morning, the hotel manager thinks he can get more money out of me, so he asks me to check in and reenter my numbers so he can ask me for another 300 Rs.; even if you can lock the door, they call your room phone. No escape.

I’m woken up at the end of the line, porters piling on the train, their heads wrapped in traditional scarves used to keep heavy luggage on their heads. These are old men. Swamped by rickshaws outside the station, there’s no time to think, you just pay. Always have them drop you off at a tourist site near the hotel – never the hotel itself. He drives me right up to the Aya Mahal (the Palace of Mirrors). It’s a 17^th century Romanesque cathedral made of sandstone and marble, flanked on every side by Moghul ruins, a 10^th century style Indian temple stands huddled in a corner of the grounds, and on the fourth edge of the scrubby garden, what looks like a 20^th century building stands, also in ruin. The combination of different architecture is dizzying, and so are the hundreds of pigeons circling overhead, cooing from the various rooftops of the cathedral. Ah yes, this is what we tourists suffer for, to see shit like this.

I walk outside and stumble across a huge lake, the sun setting in a perfect golden disc over the lake. To be blunt, I knew nothing about Bhuj before I arrived, I just came; I didn’t know there was a lake, or a cathedral, or anything else besides a train station, actually. I walk past four old men smoking ganga out of a small pipe, they smile amiably and offer me some, and I politely decline. A man introduces himself as Ganesham (he translates it to Black River in English) smiling broadly. They test my name, “Stee-pan,” “Stee-pun,” “St’pun.” I sit on the lake, marvelling at the amount of fish there are in it. This might be the first clean water I’ve come across in all of India. There’s a woman down the way throwing bits of bread to them, and they’re swarming around her; the lake is teeming with fish, rare fishing birds, women pulverizing their laundry on tiny ghats. The sun floods the scene brilliant orange, red. I’m overtired, stunned by the beauty of this tiny city I wasn’t anticipating, almost moved to tears.

Ganesham arrives behind me, smiles, and offers to take me for a spin on his bike. At first I decline, but when he says “Five minute, five minute, around lake, no right turn, only left,” I reluctantly accompany him to his bike. The city opens up, starts rushing past, the lake glinting in the sunlight, everyone laughing as we rush past, the traffic, Ganesham pointing out various temples and ancient buildings to me as we fly by. And that’s when the tears come. After all that, all the disinformation, all the aggression, people vying for my money like food stamp collection day during the Depression starts to fade away. This guy wants nothing more than to show me his home city, where he was born, where he grew up, where he’s lived his whole life, where tourists only recently discovered, the Capitol of the Kutch, Bhuj, a city so small not even India knows it. And it was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Ganesham’s guileless gesture.

It’s moments like these that can only happen in India.

Banal Chores

To walk and buy a notebook and a pen it is not a banal chore but rather a quest thru labarinthine alleys a jungle of trees (in which I see everything, every tropical bird, every monkey carrying her young, every glossy leaf.) One is surrounded on the streets by poster advertising, layered and thick, each panel like an abstract expressionist painting or decollage worthy of museum-admiration. The vast amount of people spread out before me the street's familiar beggars atop their livingroom (blanket over sidewalk) complete with naked children, anonymous businessmen fat and smoking Benson & Hedges, random crowds coagulating around (inevitably) a cricket match broadcast. Thru the screaming, life-or-death traffic I wade and again I'm side-walk bound where every five feet there is a charcoal fire being fanned to life exhaling clouds of opaque smoke, a tea stand and a sweet stand right after that, complete with crowd of drinkers and onlookers, beadie-fumes and innumerable marks of red spittle like spackles of blood over the pavement. Animals and insects whirr through the traffic as well, flea-bitten dogs, their multiple puppies in adorable disease-ridden piles, rats scurrying through tiny holes even in broad daylight, all to be stepped over, avoided, danced around, dodged by the parade of padestrian traffic. At the end of the road, down a narrow alley, behind a tea stand, over several collapsed dogs, weaving thru people walking and buying and cutting me in line, I find my notebook-pen-wallah embedded in some crack in some wall. And even then I still have to barter a good price. And so, even after a seemingly banal chore, one must go home and take a nap.

Park St. Cemetary

I.

Banyan tree jungle
festooned in vines
like a Yeats poem rich
covered in moss a jewel
from Victoria's crown
engraved into the city
like monsoon-wolloped
inscription on the tomb.

An older India left to rot
submerged in banyan trees
& vines where crows reign
a symbol of its age as if
the city turns to say,
"Look what I've become!"

Like one's own dim image
behind a cigarette in
smoke-filled sunlight
pours from pub window
like the light that pours
misty & slow thru cemetary
over dusty poetry.

The years inscribe,
"Look at what I was,"
and shamefully,
"Not what I am today!"


II.

10m underwater kelp reaches sunward
myriad fish dart thru barnacle graves
so many dates washed away

Silt builds between Roman columns
trees dip their roots into murky water
swathing tombs with spider-fingers

In the wilderness eels twist
vile snake bodies, the dead rot in stone
under stone inscriptions

The city muffled by the water
its noise blurred, failed fishermen left
vast nets draped over the cemetary

Bright green leaves burst the darkness
like daubs of paint, the mossy walls of plackards
commemorate deceased children

A marker of civilization bereft from India,
a diver might know nothing of the
Baudelairean city above.

Kolkata Windows

Blinking A - N - I nocturnal
neon eyes dormant thru the day's
traffic ambiance

Men's voices up from Ave.
screams, drumming processions
drone of car horns

Pidgeons flittering at my sill
behind half-curtains
made of sunlight

My half-circle room of
2nd story windows more real than
the chaos of Kolkata

A voice thru the telephone
dancing celebration news broadcast
I pretend I live in this city

Where hot bath emerges fastidiously from
plastic bucket delivered
a 10 Rs. note

the 10 Rs. note her mother gave her
the last time she saw her
Raped and murdered on Puja night.

Newspapers daily arrival under doorcrack
fiction's dense foliage clearer than
the cacophony of the street

Unwavering description of a woman
gazing at her naked body in a mirror
noting her own bone structure

and my own image reflected
the clean coincidence of fiction of the
US-India Nuclear Agreement

rather than the unbearable puking
into refuse on coal-smoke morning
the stench of cooking

or naked in the dark bedroom
struggling to weep against
your own reflection

Hotel room is a chunk of America
embedded in Kolkata, in here it's NYC
and out there is India

The space between my window and dingy
gray walls of city is vast
I am high above the street

Stepping outside is the slight gasp of
stepping under cold shower
back into India

into the sunlight masses, clouds of smoke
beggars gently tapping my elbow
mocking my shock

Swept up into the sea of yellow cabs under
brilliance of windshield reflecting
Hoorghly Bridge

Bill

1 bucket hot water
1 pot tea
1 mineral water
1 rehydration salts
1 antibiotics
1 plain toast
like the brutal truth
1 condom wrapped in toilet paper
in the bin
100% humidity forecast
the hotel summoning ring
white hot vomit in
cold bowl

The Flower Market Stroll

A thousand pounds of
flowers tread into mud
bare feet thru the sewage
of grueling poverty
inside ancient ghats
men defacate over deities
disease bombarded by
screaming ambulance
crush of metro, the poison
water of the Horghly
and they sit, so content
stringing strings
vibrant flowers
framed in muck

Nahi Translation

The strangest thing to have no words
No word for I'M SORRY
No word for EXCUSE ME
No word for THANK YOU

The strangest thing to have no words
to ask WHAT IS THE WORD?

Roma Dove Sei

Non é abbastanza da vedere
un quadro in India.
Mi mancha Italia come la aria.

Mi mancha la luce quando la notte arriva
e le chiese scrivono la luce alla piazza.

Mi mancha la luce quando la fontana inizia
e l'aqua é chiaro e la piazza é pulita.

Sto pensando della Strade di Roma
quando gli Indiani mi guidono, brutissimo.

Loro arrivono a venti, a trenta
Mi chiedono Di dove sei? Che fai?

Roma, Roma, dove sei?
Kolkata non puó stare piú bello!

Quando io sento Hindi, mi sento Italiano.
La mia lingua mancha la lingua Italiana.

Mi mancha Italia quando fino una cigaretta
quando sono fuori il mundo antico.

Outside My Country

I am the face of America.
I spout Ben Franklin idealisms.
I practice singing the National Anthem,
lest I ever be asked to recite it.
Like an anthem, I recite
Go Ask Alice When She's 10ft Tall.

Tourist Central

Cloth wrapped streets of permeable architecture
changes moment by moment without order, only
unending noise ridiculous tourist row Hey Hey Hey
My Friend Namaste! streaming between iron wheels
cow pies steaming between infected dogs collapsed
like corpses and buffalo, asses, the whole farm
wandering without farmers through capillary alleys.
Good Hash Marijuana Fly In The Sky? amidst streams
of barefoot pilgrims and holy men with dreds
corroded high onto their heads, ashes of the dead
smeared on their brows with vermillion, pollen,
blood only to be washed away in Mother Ganga.

Pandi Ghat

Laundry relentlessly beaten
6AM bathing men in the Ganges
while temple bells are ringing
Vishnu's conch sounds like an
elephant's trunk.

Is this the only time that's
truly mine?

Accordian drones Hare Hare
to rid himself of earthly desires
the modern fast life full of
riches and deceit.

Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Rama Rama

The Third World

Stars funnel down thru barred bus window
screaming along thousands of kilometers
narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic
incessant conversation where I stand
teetering, strapped to a backpack.
An almost-asleep girl smiles at me.
I will never understand India.

Amorous Love

like another lung gasps for air
insatiably pulls, a vast undercurrent.

It is the noise when all other noises
have gone quiet.

Under-the-surface despiration when you wake
like the endless drumming of cicaedas.

I thought sex could be anything
we wanted it to mean.

Proud to be an American

Things I'm Proud to be an American About.

1. Breakfast.

2. Jefferson Airplane.

3. New York City.

4. Protesting the Government.

5. "The Star Spangled Banner" (what a great poem!)

6. American Universities.

7. I went to art school and my parents didn't disown me.

8. Equal rights.

9. LGTB-Q.

Kolkata

I'm in Kolkata, the center of the counter-culture intelligensia of India. The city alternates (like Barcelona, like Rome) between narrow, richly dilapidated alleys filled with primitive imagery of an antequated moment of Indian history, and glass-faced corporate buildings that loom over wide, yellow-cab-choked streets.

There is a deep, deep relationship with New York City and I feel it in the energy screaming thru these streets from the moment I first arrived. The familiarity of a certain amount of tolerance of everyone; of hordes of eunichs (half men half women castrated early doomed to wear Saris for the rest of their lives working as prostitutes, beggars and witches, haunting train stations and red light districts all over India) are totally ignored, even smiled at, even spoken to, like real human beings. Bookshops line the streets -- not just any, mind you -- real, live, English bookshops filled with fascinating books, old and new. I see copies of Kipling's The Jungle Book everywhere -- how perfect.

"America, I've given you all, and now I'm nothing. America, two dollars and twenty-seven cents, January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind." came on our Indian friend's computer at a random interval in the evening and I was struck, stopped, captivated. I sat weeping next to his computer for the duration of two revolutions of the poem. Ginsberg spent a great deal of time in Kolkata and is now held up, regarded as the leader of the Left, his poetry the boiling point, the historical antithesis of everything Raj, of everything collonial, of everything oppressive, intimidating, destructive.

Homosexuality is flourishing here, where in every other major metropolis it is still unspoken, silent, pervasive. Gays are regarded with a respectful disinterest. The clubs are open, the bars are wet, I've not yet arrived.

Kolkata is the center of the Durga Puja, the largest festival and religious celebration in India -- Kolkata boasts the largest and most elaborate festivities. Each village, in fact, each block, really, constructs, by hand, massive Pandels. They are architectural temple structures made from traditional wood scaffolding tied together with rope in massive grids, covered with canvas, painted inside and out, and decorated with intricately carved styrofoam freizes, corrogated cardboard silhouettes, electric lights, fans music, floors. All to worship the great, ten-armed Mother Goddess Durga astride her mount Tiger, who is always depicted slaying a demon who rides a Buffalo. She is flanked by her consort of children: Ganesh, the Elephant-headed god of luck, Laxmi, the Owl-riding goddess of wealth, Saraswati, sitar-holding goddess of music, art, wisdom, education, and one other tiny god named Kurta or something whose purpose I can't remember.

The spaces are completely immersive, decorated with twenty-foot tall, three-walls long digital prints (!?) or various kinds of light, fabric, sculptures (!?) made out of styrofoam (!!?). They're like a vastly more important Christmas display, and instead of being in department stores made by Spaeth Design, they're made and paid for by the local community. So at night throughout the 5 day festival everyone "Pandel-hops" from one to the next, the equivalent of Christmas shopping.

Kashi

Kashi goes to sleep at 10 o'clock piously
Kashi rises before dawn to hail Mother Ganga
Kashi wakes the tourist with laundry-thwapping
Kashi scars images into my mind
of burning flesh, a dead man's foot
like a roast chicken over open flame

Kashi bathes in heavy metal deposits
Kashi sneezes sinus infections of pollution
Kashi rickets thru narrow streets on rickshaw
bike heaved thru burning sun in traffic ocean
Kashi layers and births itself upon itself
like so many past lives revisited
It has so many names

Kashi where fleets of tourists set out at dawn
in 100 Rs. boats through seas of salesmen
Kashi where night is suffocating silence of
black alleys, star studded black sky
Kashi where capillaries open to vast stairways
Kashi where the Ganga stretches on forever

Kashi where guest houses crowd ontop guest houses
pile up over the Ganga like suckling children
like the markets, thousands of people
crowding around various shops, tea stands

Kashi where pilgrims walk without shoes
the ground here to holy to be trodden
on bare feet over cow manuer
Kashi where men gag themselves repentantly
at the edge of the river, shit in bathing water
piss all over the ghats

Kashi where the holy men cover themselves
in funerary ash, and eat bits of the dead
Kashi where the insipid fear of tourists is used
as a scam, to suck them dry like ATMs.

Kashi where men pluck, gouge, shave, clip, preen
like a beauty salon under a rag-umbrella
like the ancient baths of Budapest.
Kashi where the city's piled up on one side
and there's only silt on the other
at night there's nothing on the other bank
only a great black expanse at 3AM

Kashi where the Holy Trident of Shiva stands
Kashi where the Holy Fire is kept burning
Kashi that is two thousand years old
Kashi the city that Shiva made

Kashi the Luminous

Arrived Varanasi (Benares) three nights ago and I've completely fallen in love with the city. Run a google search for Ganga Ghat and see tons of photos, extremely well documented famous city. Being surrounded by tourists is a huge relief actually as I am normally the only white guy for hundreds if not thousands of miles surrounded by hundreds of school children crying "Hallo Hallo Hallo" having rarely if ever seen a non-Indian. Pretty decent guest house with good community (wow there's a first in India) reminds me of the pseudo-hippy culture of Backpack Budapest. View of the Ganges from balcony restaurant/cafe is incredible. Dawn is unbelievable here with fleets of tourists loading into the daily river-commuter traffic of boats (all for Western tourists).

At the cremation ghat was taken right up to the funeral pyre where the grizzly remains of a recently ignited body filled the air with thick white smoke, the deparded's rancid roast chicken leg complete with brown foot stuck pointedly out of the mass of blackened wood while a man nonchalantly explained to me the protocol of burning, the religious reasons for being burned at the Ganges, and the process the family must go thru: 5 times clockwise circumambulation of fire, Holy Fire of Shiva taken from temple to ignite fire, remains of chest or pelvis collected to be sent into the river, the Holy Men that use the crematorial ashes to decorate their bodies, smoke and eat cooked human flesh.

City is rich and alive with thousands of capilary streets flowing with cows (rich hot cowpies steaming in summer heat) and markets with thousands of shoppers crammed into tiny allys buying selling buying selling.

In my new lavender dothi (wrapped cloth around legs) and kurta (long dress-like cotton shirt) -- the traditional outfit of Mahathma Gandhi, his dynasty and his millions of devotees -- people approach me like a spectre of history, telling me, almost tearing, that I look like Rajiv Gandhi (the one-time botched Prime Minister of India still hailed as a hero and martyr).

This city -- one of its many names -- is called Kashi, "the Luminous," and truly, the shady winding alleys (many times not even a cow's width wide -- which proves to be a problem at times as this city has 15 times as many cows as Sandro Illuminati di Gubbio) open to tides of steps leading down to the water, the city opens up at its edge like a precipice against some brilliant dawn, expanse as wide as an ocean view, flooded with Venician-style boats rowed by toiling millions who bathe ritualistically in the heavy metal laden toxic water of the Ganges, swimming and stewing with fecal matter and funerary ashes (floating limbs) only to exit to be groomed at the many umbrella and cloth-shaded stands, their nails, their beards all trimmed like an exotic and lucious spa, or the baths of Budapest (when they're not occupied with gagging themselves at the fringes, puking onto the hot stone for God only knows what reason).

Every guest house is piled 10-stories high up against the Ganges, nestled in and around the temples, and are many times built right over one; my Guest House doubles as a Vishnu temple. And thus, the pseudo-hippy Guru-seeking Ashram-style hippies bongos guitars and rattles are interrupted by long elephant-like tones of horns, ringing bells and soft sitar music sporadically throughout the day and night. I'm woken at dawn by the beating of clothes pulverized on the ghats to wash sin from laundry as well.

Tora Shanti Ligie, I coax the prowling salesmen/boatmen/shavers/massage therapists as they crowd around me in my flowing white garments "Like a bridegroom" one ancient Indian man, crouched in the shade, told me. And with Bharat's new name (his name means India, how apropot) for me, "Shiva," I dance through the ancient city of my namesake God with the greatest eas and the most unspeakable pleasure.

Kashi the Luminous

Arrived Varanasi (Benares) three nights ago and I've completely fallen in love with the city. Run a google search for Ganga Ghat and see tons of photos, extremely well documented famous city. Being surrounded by tourists is a huge relief actually as I am normally the only white guy for hundreds if not thousands of miles surrounded by hundreds of school children crying "Hallo Hallo Hallo" having rarely if ever seen a non-Indian. Pretty decent guest house with good community (wow there's a first in India) reminds me of the pseudo-hippy culture of Backpack Budapest. View of the Ganges from balcony restaurant/cafe is incredible. Dawn is unbelievable here with fleets of tourists loading into the daily river-commuter traffic of boats (all for Western tourists).

At the cremation ghat was taken right up to the funeral pyre where the grizzly remains of a recently ignited body filled the air with thick white smoke, the deparded's rancid roast chicken leg complete with brown foot stuck pointedly out of the mass of blackened wood while a man nonchalantly explained to me the protocol of burning, the religious reasons for being burned at the Ganges, and the process the family must go thru: 5 times clockwise circumambulation of fire, Holy Fire of Shiva taken from temple to ignite fire, remains of chest or pelvis collected to be sent into the river, the Holy Men that use the crematorial ashes to decorate their bodies, smoke and eat cooked human flesh.

City is rich and alive with thousands of capilary streets flowing with cows (rich hot cowpies steaming in summer heat) and markets with thousands of shoppers crammed into tiny allys buying selling buying selling.

In my new lavender dothi (wrapped cloth around legs) and kurta (long dress-like cotton shirt) -- the traditional outfit of Mahathma Gandhi, his dynasty and his millions of devotees -- people approach me like a spectre of history, telling me, almost tearing, that I look like Rajiv Gandhi (the one-time botched Prime Minister of India still hailed as a hero and martyr).

This city -- one of its many names -- is called Kashi, "the Luminous," and truly, the shady winding alleys (many times not even a cow's width wide -- which proves to be a problem at times as this city has 15 times as many cows as Sandro Illuminati di Gubbio) open to tides of steps leading down to the water, the city opens up at its edge like a precipice against some brilliant dawn, expanse as wide as an ocean view, flooded with Venician-style boats rowed by toiling millions who bathe ritualistically in the heavy metal laden toxic water of the Ganges, swimming and stewing with fecal matter and funerary ashes (floating limbs) only to exit to be groomed at the many umbrella and cloth-shaded stands, their nails, their beards all trimmed like an exotic and lucious spa, or the baths of Budapest (when they're not occupied with gagging themselves at the fringes, puking onto the hot stone for God only knows what reason).

Every guest house is piled 10-stories high up against the Ganges, nestled in and around the temples, and are many times built right over one; my Guest House doubles as a Vishnu temple. And thus, the pseudo-hippy Guru-seeking Ashram-style hippies bongos guitars and rattles are interrupted by long elephant-like tones of horns, ringing bells and soft sitar music sporadically throughout the day and night. I'm woken at dawn by the beating of clothes pulverized on the ghats to wash sin from laundry as well.

Tora Shanti Ligie, I coax the prowling salesmen/boatmen/shavers/massage therapists as they crowd around me in my flowing white garments "Like a bridegroom" one ancient Indian man, crouched in the shade, told me. And with Bharat's new name (his name means India, how apropot) for me, "Shiva," I dance through the ancient city of my namesake God with the greatest eas and the most unspeakable pleasure.

Mt. Kailas

Larger than I could have ever imagined with architectural and sculptural complexity unrivalled by any other rock-cut temples I've seen. Every detail, every angel, floating, every tiny gargoyle, every 20-ft tall freize of 400 arms and 25 heads and 40 micro-sized worshippers cowering all PLANNED. Everything was drawn, diagrammed, designed! 100% pre-planned. Someone looked at the largest cliff-face at the site, hundreds of feet high, maybe thousands of feet deep and said -- CARVE IT UP!

The strangest aspect of Kailas is how much they left solid (for example, the easily 20 story temple-top is almost entirely solid rock. Also, the base (which is at least two stories tall) is also entirely solid. The contrast between the interior architecture which is relatively small and intimate, and the exterior which is the most grandeous, ridiculously huge thing in all of India is staggaring.

Where Ajanta is like an open studio, where 1500 years ago hundreds of artists were given free reign; "Draw 12 Buddhas today! Sculpt a grid of 100 Buddhas today!" Mt. Kailas is a methodized, Mannerist construction; the most ambitious work of architecture and art I've ever seen. Unlike Ajanta, there's no way these works were executed in the timeframe Spink suggests. 15 years is simply not enough, even to move the 250,000 tons of stone they had to excavate.

The relationship with ancient Greek and Roman sculpture/architecture is very clear. Kailas's layout is essentially cruciform, clearly based on human anatomy: Head, Chest, Abdoment, Feet, Arms. The continuous-narrative miniature sculptures certainly harken back to the Triumphal Obelisk of Constantine in Rome. The large-scale sculptures, esp. when they interact with one another, recall the Parthenon or Agamemnon. I am absolutely beginning to question how much influence ancient Greek and Roman art/arch. had over these projects here in India.

Kailas proposes man vs. nature problems unprecededented in the previous caves. To literally level a mountain (actually, as a King, to even propose that idea) in the name of your God. It is the most ostentatious, arrogant, ambitious project ever.

These ancient works of art do not ask the question "What is the meaning of making your work?" but "What can we, as a civilization, accomplish together?"

How Time Passes in India

Between sing-song truck-honking non-stop round-about God-forsaken traffic one split second head-turn ballet pirouets out of motorcycle-over-toe close-calls thru left-leaning two-wheeled right turns on packed busses two hours to four hour internet pit-stop to compile photo/e-mail/Facebook bullshit.

Leaving Fardapur

An ancient man of ancient men
I wander far from local shore
(where friends are lovers and lovers friends)
a stranger now among strange men.

From ancient tome I read ancient poems
crackle parchment lines my bed
ancestor poetry is no substitute
for the man I found in Fardapur.

I share the company of fathers and sons
(their mothers bent to the stove)
never before so alone, leaving Fardapur.
I am an ancient man of ancient men.

What is the Date

Order the water boiled for tea!
Clay stove set afire again!
Pigs graze sewage streets!
Faceless hotel, familiar face
To calculate the date!

Infected dogs rampant run!
Naked childern on muddy feet!
Brilliant smiles without teeth!
Foreign world I can't believe!
American dreams easy to see!

Milkfat film on boiled tea
As if there's no time here!
It's ticking hasn't reached
our crumbling ancient village!
The tea's swirling brown steam!

The face gone, the room locked
per chance to meet again
some far off American city
that these children will never see!
I am left with nothing
To calculate the date!

Sex with Ganesha

Why would he sleep---completely obscene
naked on the bed?
Horrible trunk curling and lolling
to invite me in?

Why would he wait----fucking the air
balloon stomach and smothering mouth?

Monstrous tongue neon pink slips
thru black mustache, plastic beads
between Elephant teats!
Google-eyes squinched in Ecstacy!

He knows I'm coming.
Stench of incense belched
thru unlatched window.
Incandescent red clouds force me
to my knees, his Holy Scepter held high!

The unlocked door crept open!

Another Teacher

To break convention
To be Ancient Greek
To deny the Shiva-Lingam
its flowers stream!

Why can't I tell him
how perfect Bach is!
I can't stand it!
Writing about learning
just as drunk on music
as the warm whisky
while baboons fuck
late in the day.

Do you ever feel your whole life is a sham?

At 79, we'll rise to the top together
like mold.

India!

Disgusting rancid beautiful country
India! cranes up my left shoulder scorches
my stomach pit, nauseous with beauty!

India! whispering forbode into me.
India! where Eden was just our jungle
when we were monkeys.

Mumbai

Filled with natural and physical beauty
teeming with life, all varieties
cars constant honking like so many tropical birds
which sound all night (a kind of crow)
back and forth in jungle of hanging vines
foliage that blankets city streets
canopies of animals and trees.

My window a wealth of information
I can barely tear myself from my tea!
Men and women constantly selling me!
Strangeness to baffle any European city!

Cavernous buildings with pillars of rotting stone
countless beggars cripples bazaars sweaty
every article drenched with sunlit rain.
Bombarded with barracades, police with semi-automatics
aiming; You want Hash? You want Hash!
Complex as the city itself!

Systematic passengers ushered in on endless trains
the rush of busses passing either side so close
turn your head to save your nose!
The Phalanx of commuter street crossing!

Crowd of people inhale to make more room!
Still boarding even though there's 200 people on this bus
They still want their six rupees, arduously punch your ticket
A friendly hand reaches around to grab the rail!

They're all smiling! So happy!
Saris are rainbow sprays in the mist!
Amidst the smother of ruin, incomplete construction
are glowing rich stores pristine restaurants
filled to the brim with thousands of rupees!

At night so many homeless men, women, children
have collapsed on the sidewalk anywhere, or between
parked cars as if dead to sleep next to all the sellers.
By 12, the lights are off! All passed out on their wood
counters, under heavy stone ballastrades
awaiting the new day!

Mumbai Taxi

Slum village seeps
like dumpster juice from airport
to empty cement high rise punctuated
by glass ATM chambers

Permanent flea market piles
of metal rickety tin roof two-by-four
architecture makes screenless windows
into flourescent light interiors labeled
lik gated communities.

Men slept shirtless on
stoops amidst rancid trash heaps
picked through by stray dogs
so peacefully!

Assaulted by delicious
vile stench of garbage, piss &
incense, the gewy handfuls they chew
spit all over the sidewalk under
palm trees, tropical breeze.

Then smell him on
unwashed shirt, the last real thing
I've seen! Brooklyn & Queens
so clear!

Wake up wide-eyed
white washed windowless room
with damp raggedy sheets where
lopng hall with blinking lights & drip
drip A/C begs the question

What are you doing here?

Over Europe

A few miles over Bucharest
cloud sheet vanished!
Massive river spawned the city
reflected the sky, split the long gray
farmland of Romania!

Have I walked these fields?
From a train window glanced
for an instant?

Missed Flight

Find yourself alone, Heathrow
at the end, long dark corridor
all stations closed, black terminal.
Does this beat Scranton
Saturday night movie?

9hr Time Difference

Counting backward, boarding the plane
3 AM Bombay rickshaw slum
planning my sleep, the Dramamine.

Imagine the B4 Heathrow transfer bus
flight attendants, vast clean airports,
first taste of raw food.

How quiet Brooklyn streets will be!
In white blanket of snow I'll come
back to America with warm blood.

A flight only stretches the inevitable
that won't change regardless how far I fly
how hot the summer was.

At the end of the long conveyor
after lightless shell of plane
first breath of American air

I'll do what should've happened today
return to departed arms, tear salt lips
old breath shared.

Counting backward from NYC arrival
to pull that day apart, make the flight
as though it never happened.

First Poverty

My first jet-lagged 5PM block outside my hotel after a dizzying, disorienting amount of sleep (with the intention of recovering from jet lag), I find myself on Colaba Causeway. It's a four-lane job that stretches for miles, tiled with Western retail shops encased in glass and A/C, Indian diners, wood and lumber shops, hindu temples (complete with holy cows, incense, and the to-go station on the street where one might pray for a moment and continue walking) and piled atop those are thousands (literally thousands) of street vendors, selling everything from wooden statues of Ganesh to pashminas to sarongs to rotten fruit.

As I was saying, my first block, I meet a young woman, no taller than 4'9", carrying a one, maybe two-year-old in her arms. She's barefoot. She asks me, "Please, sir," and will not accept no for an answer. "I do not need your money, sir, please follow me to this shop; my son needs milk, and cooking rice." She followed me down the Causeway for at least three blocks, and waited for me outside Hutch Mobile's glass door for at least five minutes.

The dim cell

Two florescent lights on opposite walls flicker to life when you enter the room, after the 2 lbs. padlock. Dominated by a massive mat of a bed, the room is simple, poorly painted in an ivory color, and flickering in a dim, purple light. Sleep is equally interesting, as there are no windows, one cannot tell what time it is at all. One might as well be sleeping in a refrigerator, a meat locker, a time machine.

Dreams of late have been filled with violent, unpleasant imagery and complex plots. A struggling police drama, treason, ends with me, a sergeant, trying to strangle the traitor to death at the edge of a building, unsuccessfully. And after the appropriate information is gutted from our former colleague, my boss gingerly places a 1930's pocket revolver at the prisoner's chin and blows his head off.

Wake up in Bombay

The monsoon has left a dirt residue over all the buildings. High rises are cast concrete and appear to be abandoned. Everything looks like the abandoned Masonic Temple in Providence, RI. Covered in dirt, grime; like the city's been underwater for a few months. I'm assuming it pretty much has.

There is no glass in Bombay; open air, florescent lit apartments are closed in with screens and metal bars. These are taxied by slum villages, labeled the way Americans label their gated communities, with big signs, and stone entrance ways. A permanent Porta Portese. Vague, metal plated architecture held up with two-by-fours covered in moldy, rotting garbage, picked through by packs or rabbid dogs and stray cats. The taxi ride in was jaw-dropped wide-eyed red-light running amazement.

My hotel room, no windows, florescent lights, a double bed with damp sheets is comfortable enough. There's a private bathroom and shower, air conditioning. You can't tell what time it is in there.

The long hallway outside my room to the only window at the end of the hallway, shaded with palm leaves, asks the question "What are you doing here?"

On the street I'm a walking ATM machine, my zippable knees scream TOURIST so loud I might as well be walking around beneath a flashing ROUGH GUIDE LONELY PLANET sign. Every vender, every cripple, every homeless mother strapped with her infant child begs for my money, "My friend!" is around every corner.

Mumbai is a sprawling metropolis with intense, impossible amounts of traffic and almost no rules. Crowded with Hindus, Muslems, Catholic school children, and dogs. The prices here are adjusted for Western wallets; there's two prices. The Indian price, and the Westerner price; which tends to correspond with Western prices. $20 hotel, $4 drink, 25 cent bottled water.

The humidity is stupefying, the heat (even at night) is enough to stop you in your tracks. The smells around you wake you up to how little you know about this place. You can't even place the stench, let alone qualify it is a bad or good; it's simply overwhelming.

Hope to get out of Mumbai as quickly as possible.

Initiation

Welcome to my Travel Journal.

Statement of Purpose: To actively document my travel research in Central Asia for the purposes of continuing my work based on religious art and architecture began in Rome, Italy in 2005.

Goals: To construct a body of poems, small works on paper, and an archive of digital photography, notes and other forms of documentation on sacred space in India and Nepal. I hope to use this blog as a method of communicating with friends and family, a method of archiving my research and experience, and as a poetry-workshop space.

Personal note: 127 tablets of Doxycyclene for daily intake to prevent Malaria, $78. 105 tablets of Malarone for daily intake to prevent Malaria, $750. Thank God for antibiotics.