India Journal: Desert Storm

Gradually our attention turned to look out the windows. Ensconced in our air-conditioned apartment, fortified against the blazing heat, we notice that clouds had gathered. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and now, stepping out, looking toward some of the higher buildings around us, we see a line of something. Rain? No, dust. 

The wind picks up, whipping trees and plants back and forth while the air fills with a fine grit. At the time, stepping out, you feel it; after the wind has died, you see it. Everywhere. It’s on our patio tables and chairs and in our screened-in kitchen, where anything laying about receives a coat of fine dust. Following the initial wind and dust comes the rain, large drops that turn the dust-coated table and chairs into little mud puddles. The rain falls fast and hard, and the earth never seems ready or able to receive it. Rain seems foreign to this land of hard soil and dust. (Our landlady’s perfectly manicured, putting-green lawn an exception). But outside of our compound, large puddles—if that’s the best word to describe these large collections of water—gather here and there haphazardly for lack of a drainage scheme. I happily consider that we’ll be gone from here by the time that the monsoon arrives. I now understand why the city was still fighting cases of malaria and dengue fever when we arrived last fall. 

Houses don’t have rain gutters, so we see the cascades of water pouring off the eves and roofs unabated. I’m surprised that houses and buildings don’t have some type of collection devices for rainwater, since water is a precious commodity, certainly in short supply as the incredibly hot summer days and nights push the thermometer higher and higher, parching the landscape and its inhabitants.

After the rain ceases, the sky clears, and a cool, dry breeze comes in, much like the aftermath of a sultry storm passing through Iowa. We sit outdoors and soak in the humane weather. It won’t last, but we enjoy it while we can. We thought we’d see this rainy, sultry weather pattern in Kerala, with its tropical climate bordering the Arabian Sea, but now we find it coming to Jaipur, in fits and starts. Weather, when following its normal course of hot and sunny, is not a conversation starter here (unlike Iowa). Perhaps it will become so. With changing weather, from hot, to hot and muggy, to thunder showers, to respite, we’re beginning to feel more and more in our element. How strange.

India Journal: Here Comes the Sun?

From the first early morning rays peaking over the horizon until the shadows of the evening, the sun here in Rajasthan is now brutal. The current weather is marked by a cloudless sky, a bit of a breeze, and temperatures pushing between 105 and 110 F. I could say a lot about this, but one item strikes me especially today: where’s the use of all of this solar energy? 

I see and hear persons touting solar energy as an alternative and renewable source of energy, and I know of others who pooh-pooh the idea. But if the practice of gathering and using solar energy has any value, it certainly should in this land of unremitting sunshine. The Indian electrical grid is shaky, as we know from occasional and (thankfully) relatively brief outages. We also know about last year’s system-wide outage that shut down service for a couple of days to an area including about 700 million persons. Of course, a huge number of persons have little or no access to electricity, so the blackout was an inconsequential event, but to millions of others working in offices contained in glass and concrete towers or in modern shopping malls, no electricity would have an impact similar to an outage in the U.S. Given the diversity of users in India, and the fact that a large number of users have their own generators and other sources of power, it strikes me that India provides a perfect proving ground for solar energy. Is it not economically viable? Must India continue to build and use terribly polluting coal-fired plants to produce electricity? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I’d love to hear from anyone who does have some answers.

India Journal: Umaid Bhawan to Shen and Back

We were sitting at a refreshment stand at Umaid Bhawan palace in Jodhpur. We’d done the tour of the palace museum, and the hoi poloi aren’t allowed in the main section, which is a now a Taj hotel that hosts  jet-setters and the very rich. So, being around mid-day and hot, C and I found some shade and had a seat. C enjoyed an ice cream cone, and I sipped on a box of cold apple drink (pure juice not available). I saw a small girl run free from her mother along the dusty path into the sitting area, and I observed the sense of exhilaration in the child’s face as she ran from mom for a short way. In a sort-of Proustian moment, perhaps triggered by a headline in the NYT earlier in the day about the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, and having  earlierobserved the two well to-to-do kids at the guest house where we stayed, I thought back on my childhood. 

I quickly brought C into my reverie as I sat there. In the 1950s and early 1960s in small town Shenandoah, Iowa, we had a pretty idyllic time. Compared to  the packs of unattended youngsters we sometimes see here and the well-to-do and very sheltered (and isolated) kids we see here, or the hyper-programmed kids in the U.S., I think that we had it pretty good. We both recalled kid-organized games of kick-the-can, halted temporarily by calls of “car!” to clear the street, and then back at it until it was completely dark. Kids of most ages (grade school) played. In the park behind our house, endless baseball games were ongoing. I was a horrible baseball player, but I played. The creek running between the park and the highway was more alluring (and forbidden), but exploring the creek was a continuing adventure. Standing under the wooden plank bridge when a car passed over provided quite the audio entertainment.

After moving to 6^th Avenue before third grade, I was now within easy biking distance of the baseball park (mornings) and the swimming pool (afternoons). My friends and I were almost amphibious during the summers. Swimming lessons; endless hours playing tag; jumping and diving off the raft; shooting headfirst down the big slide; and, eventually, after having swam the width of our very large pool, going to the deep end to use the boards: hour upon hour of fun and freedom. C reported the same experiences: mornings with her brother to the baseball field by bike and afternoons by bike to the pool. Parents were absent, unless we enjoyed the treat of an evening swim with the parents and siblings under the lights. I think that both of us have these distinct images of our respective fathers in swimming trunks, pale, skinny legs revealed. 

Of course, riding our bikes to Sportsman Park, which contained both the baseball fields and the swimming pool, provided its own adventures. The most exotic, both C and I agreed, was the Henry Fields building and the exotic shop inside. For a long time neither of us realized the hidden treasures inside. (By the way, this occurred quite independently of one another; we knew of the other’s existence, but neither was of any consequence to the other. Interest comes in junior high, but that’s a separate story.) The exterior of the building gave some clue to its exotic contents, as it consisted of a series of archways that one could walk or ride one’s bike under (provided some welcome shade). The arches and yellowish color of the building gave it a vaguely Spanish look, which, other than some seasonal Mexican migrant workers in the summer, seemed quite apart from the rest of the town. However, the unique façade also signaled a treasure inside a small store with a soda fountain and some exotic looking items, including live birds. Alas, other than the birds, I have no recollection of the particulars that created the exotic ambiance, only the certain feeling that this was indeed a hidden treasure. C’s recollection comported with mine. She remembers that she and her younger brother, having no spending money, ordered water from the fountain until told to scram. They too, had discovered the hidden cove. 

With our bikes, my friends and I could discover exotic locales at our whim. A large pile of sand by the railroad tracks served as a location of interest for several days when we found that we could grade roads and dig caves with our hands and then watch them disappear as the sand collapsed. Another time, my friend persuaded me to explore and picnic at Rose Hill, the local cemetery. Sure enough, on the edge of town, overlooking the broad river valley, with the graves of generations, including those of my grandparents and other ancestors, proved a fertile world for exploration—and a very pleasant picnic spot (two or three decades before I learned about the rural cemetery movement and that this wasn’t as bizarre an ideas as I’d thought at the time). Further, the cemetery lies east of Center Street, and it serves as a dividing line of sorts in the town. Having lived on the west side all my life, this was an unexplored area, and thus a completely new area in which to wander and explore. 

Now, watching the little girl back at the refreshment, having been corralled by her mother, C and I decided that we’d had it pretty good. Perfect? No. A nostalgic view? Of course, to some extent. But when she’s a little older, I hope that little girl enjoys some similar adventures.