10 Things We Loved About India

 C & I have now exited the land of the coconuts and Mughal palaces, and she wrote this list for her blog (Iowa Guru in the Land of the Coconuts) with which I concur. I put my comments in italics following her comments.

1.     Mangoes, the best I’ve ever consumed.  Also the Keralan delights of appam, dosas, and the coconut curries, and the paneer of the north and the lassis from M.I. Road in Jaipur. C made some of the most delicious mango lassis ever consumed by any human being. We even had the national mango festival across the road from us!

2.     Fabulous Textiles, hand-block prints, embroidery work, silks, and cottons. I scored a lot of good shorts. Although I'm not a clothes-horse, even my limited aesthetic can appreciate the incredible beauty and workmanship.

3.     Mughal era Palaces:  Udaipur’s, Jodphur’s, and Jaipur’s were all winners. These were quite amazing. We were living the life of Jackie O (visitor to the majaraja's palace in Udaipur) for a few minutes.

4.     Sari Shops:  Both the products and the shopping experience.  Saris are the funnest clothing I’ve ever worn. C learned to rock the sari as did No. 1 daughter. Ladies of all ages look good in these beautiful clothes, although given the temperatures, they look a bit hot.

5.     Nature, from the gorgeous coffee plantations of Wayanad, to the especially exotic birds like kingfishers, green bee eaters, and water fowl of every color of the rainbow. India has degraded far too much of its environment, but the parts that are preserved provide some beautiful viewing, except for the tigers we never saw!

6.     The beach at Kovalam, 30 minutes from our home in Trivandrum.  We didn’t get there often enough, but it was enough just to know it was there if we needed to escape. We could have had a good life as beach bums. Really a nice to hear the waves lapping up on the shore.

7.     Great traditions and festivals of both the Rajastanis and Keralan people, especially Devali in Jaipur and Onam in Trivandrum. I will never forget Jaipur during Devali: like a war zone so many fire crackers were exploding around us. Definitely a fun time. But C did fail to mention the kite festival of Jaipur, in which we watched (but could not master) the art of aerial combat with kites.

8.     The people, all the friends we made and all the people who were friendly and curious and very pro-American. This was the best. We made some wonderful friends and had some great experiences with people. Anti-American? Only one drunken auto-rickshaw driver in Jaipur.

9.     Cheap books. I bought too many--wait, that's a non-sequitur. But we both bought a lot. Nothing like the less expensive south Asian editions to whet your appetite to buy.

10. JLF:  Jaipur Literature Festival:  enuf said. What a treat! 

Thank you, India!

 

A Good Ol' Fashioned Fourth

Well, not really.

We were up early enough--5 a.m. But we were on a flight from Kochin, Kerala in south India on our way to Chengdu, Sichuan, China via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the day broke, I saw the southern most tip of India below me narrow into a vanishing point followed by a string of tenuous islands, followed later by a view of Sri Lanka, the land of the mythical city of Lanka, home of Ravana, the demon king in the Ramayana, the classic Indian epic. Not exactly the normal scene for Fourth of July celebration. Yet, I needed to do something. No hot dogs, no picnic, no parades, no band playing Sousa marches (not even on my iPod!).

First, I needed to address my custom of reading some outstanding work of American history for the Fourth. I panicked at first. I had only two paper books with me, neither a work of American history. But my trusty Kindle came through. I searched and discovered that I had The Education of Henry Adams that I hadn't finished. In fact, I hadn't finished it since my senior year in college when David Schoenbaum assigned it for his class on 19th century Europe. At the time I wondered how this work by an American about himself (written in the third-person) and published in 1918 could qualify for a 19th century Europe course. But I under-estimated both Schoenbaum and Adams. Now I could make up for it, and I dove back in. (I'd read some in Jaipur last year.) A great choice. Modern Library chose it as the outstanding work of non-fiction in the 20th century, and I wouldn't disagree. The work is a masterpiece. 

But one can only read a masterpiece for so long on a flight, where thrillers or less demanding works are the norm. So while disappointed that I didn't have "Stars and Stripes" or "Washington Post", I decided to listen to American music; American composers and performers. The list included the following: 

•        Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Band (early Sinatra)
•       Paul Simon ("The Myth of Fingerprints") and Simon & Garfunkel (Simon rates as the greatest popular American songwriter of the Baby Boomers—sorry Billy Joel). 
•       Stephen Schwartz's "All for the Best" from "Godspell", his musical of Mathew's Gospel, very early 70's America. The Gospel according to soft-shoe.
•        Barbara Streisand's "All in Love is Fair" from her "The Way We Were' album, one of the first albums that C and I bought when we were newlyweds. Babs rates as the best Boomer female vocalist, no?
•       Louis Armstrong. What more to say
•         "America" from "West Side Story". Bernstein & Sondheim. Wow. Great piece of Americana.
•         "America" from Simon & Garfunkel's classic "Bookends" album. Another piece of Americana.
•         "American Pie" by Don McLean. The beginning of college for me marked by this elegy for a crazy time in the 60's. A lot of history in this song.
•         Nathan Gunn performing Billy Joel's "And So It Goes". I'm a Billy Joel fan, but this performance is even better. Ran out of time to get to "We Didn't Start the Fire". Too bad. Kate made it into a fun 4th game.
•         "Anyone Can Whistle" by Stephen Sondheim (an American great) performed by Cleo Lane and James Galway (we'll make this Irishman an honorary American).
•         Ella Fitzgerald. Great. (Can’t recall which song. L)
•         "Appalachian Spring" by Aaron Copeland. Our greatest American  composer for orchestra? “Yes” for my money, and this is his best work. A pure joy. I couldn't listen to it all because I wanted to get a lot of variety, but it's great. Sorry I didn't get to "Rodeo"!
•         The Fifth Dimension performing "Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" from the American Tribal Love Rock Musical "Hair". The popular rendition by a fun, talented vocal group from the 60's.
•         "At the Zoo", Simon & Garfunkel.
•         "Attaboy" by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thille. Fun American folk music.
•         Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Is there an American orchestral piece more beautiful and haunting? (No!) Played continually on the radio when FDR died.
•         Dave Brubeck Quartet performing "Blue Rondo a al Turk". Classic jazz, the original American musical form.
•         "Because All Men Are Brothers" performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary with Dave Brubeck. Jazz meets folk. Fun. A song of hope and humanity.
•         George Winston performing "The Black Stallion" theme composed by Carmine Coppola for the film we saw at a drive-in with the G family. Great memory. I'm a big George Winston fan.
•         Billie Holiday singing "Blue Moon".
•         Tony Bennett. Vintage and still with us.
•         Aretha Franklin "Chain of Fools". Too little Motown so far!
•         Phillip Glass from his music from the terrific American documentary by Errol Morris, "The Fog of War" about Robert McNamara. An American tragedy to my mind. Great music. Also listen to Glass's soundtrack for the film of "The Hours".
•         "Colour My World" by Chicago, one of my favorite 60's/70's groups. Hard to pick, but this came up first.
•         Pete Seeger performing "Guantanamara". Another American performer for the ages.
•         George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" performed on piano by the Five Browns. This prompts a great memory: in the Bicentential of the signing in 1976, C and I took my Aunt Barb to Ames to hear Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic perform an all-American concert culminating with Bernstein conducting and playing the piano for "Rhapsody in Blue". To say it was memorable understates it entirely.  

I ran out of time. Some greats have been left out for a lack of time: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Judy Garland, Bette Midler, B,S & T, more Sinatra—I thought I'd get to them later. I didn’t even look further down the list! 

Having reviewed this, I'd say we Americans have done okay with our music. I like it anyway. Happy belated Fourth to everyone!

The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton

In this, another delightful book from Alain De Botton, of whom I’ve previously read How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy, De Botton once again adroitly mixes personal experience, paintings, literature, and famous figures to explore different aspects of travel. Each chapter is “on”: “On Anticipation”, “On the Exotic”, “On Habit”, and so on. Each chapter is a self-contained essay that explores its chosen topic through a representative figure from history, such as Flaubert, Wordsworth, and Ruskin, to name three of the more familiar figures. Each chapter uses paintings and photography to supplement the words of the essay. “On Traveling Places”, for instance, explores works of Edward Hopper, best known for his work “Nighthawks" (not used here), but who also explored trains, gas stations, and hotel rooms along his way. Finally, De Botton includes his own experiences to provide a contemporary perspective and to sometimes test the ideas of those upon whom he has drawn. 

Part of the pleasure of De Botton’s project comes from his ability to meditate on travel from many different angles. In the opening essay, “On Anticipation”, he tells the tale of J.-K. Huysmans, who decided upon a trip to London from his French residence, only to abandon it after having made all of the necessary arrangements and consulted all of the guide books. After consulting the guidebooks, he decided he’d seen enough! Sometimes, indeed, the imagination of anticipation exceeds the reality of even the most alluring of destinations. In “On the Exotic”, the French novelist Flaubert travels to Egypt to stay and experience an alien world, while Xavier de Maistre writes about his travels around his bedroom, and then his view from his bedroom window in De Botton’s “On Habit” chapter. (De Maistre travels abroad as well.) But even within the limited purview of a bedroom De Maistre finds, upon careful and leisurely inspection, more interesting things either he or we could have imagined. 

De Botton contrasts the city with the country. Samuel Johnson found the Scottish highlands a wasteland that merely created annoyance, while not long after Johnson, Wordsworth sang the praises of the Lake District. Our views of what’s worth visiting and experiencing changes with time and varies according to our temperament. The German scientist Alexander von Humboldt traveled the Amazon basin in the early 19^th century to catalogue all that was new to European scientists, loving the challenge and uniqueness of the journey. 

De Botton uses the paintings of Van Gogh to illustrate what might go unnoticed or unappreciated in a region and that can be newly (or perhaps first) appreciated only after viewing a painted facsimile of the scene. Of course, Van Gogh didn’t take a realist perspective, his cypress trees look as if they are on fire and his building are often all akimbo, but he forces us to take a new and closer look at what some once considered the boring countryside of Provence. By abstracting reality, we obtain a better appreciation of it. In a similar vein, Edmund Burke argues that we benefit when Nature overwhelms us with its grandeur and power in a manner that we label “sublime”. 

If you travel or you contemplate travel, De Botton’s book will serve as a meditative preparation, one that you can dip into at leisure, as each chapter constitutes a self-contained essay on some aspect of travel. We humans have been traveling and exploring our world for tens of thousands of years, and now, with travel easier than ever, we need to reflect upon its benefits and pitfalls. And in this, De Botton serves as an excellent guide.

#Americaheckyeah

We recently completed a brief trip to the U.S. for a wedding. A great time & the occasion for some observations:

Upon landing at O’Hare on non-stop flight from Delhi, we made a beeline to Frontera Grill for some breakfast. If given the opportunity, I think C would leave me in a heartbeat for Rick—if he promised to share his kitchen with her. Well, he wasn’t there & for now she’s satisfied with my company to enjoy some Rick-Mexican goodness. The taste of good quality Mexican food is a real treat. We just don’t get much variety here. While fans of Indian food, we don’t have much of break from it, even on our own.

We arrive on time to DSM. We promptly and efficiently rent our car & are on the road. Aw, the road, where the few vehicles on the road (“Where is everyone?”) and drivers stay in lanes and drive wonderfully predictably. We get on the ring road on the south side of DM and looking out at the countryside we see the beautiful Grant Wood-style fields. Everything so neat, clean, and orderly. Spring is late, but a hue of green is beginning to frame the countryside. What a joy to be behind the wheel through the lovely countryside—even if it is in a Ford Focus with an automatic transmission. 

We arrive at our first destination: the “Super Target” near Jordan Creek Mall. Entering the store, we find it nearly deserted. “Where is everybody?” “Where are the hordes of people?” Although the store seems short of people, it was full of goods. I think that we in the U.S. are way too consumerist and too enamored with stuff, but it is a gift to go to a store to find all kinds of stuff that you need in a roomy, well-organized, friendly atmosphere. We had a long list of stuff we wanted to purchase, and we were just in luck. Lots of stuff, easy to find. Good quality. Wow. We left a lot lighter in the wallet, but with many of our needs met.

We then went to Cheesecake Factory for lunch (no cheesecake!). Not great, but we could order a salad, and we did, along with some steak tips. Yum. A modest but most welcome salad. We get some more stuff & then head to our digs at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, that venerable old institution from days of Republican political gatherings and basketball tournaments. The room had a radiator, which as it turns out, we needed. The down side of our visit at the beginning was the weather: cold, windy, and rainy. With our current tropical locale, this was a shock to the system but not to the mind. The mind remembers. The room was fine but for the slow internet connection and the fact that the shower heads built for short people, which I can never figure.

Downtown Des Moines seems almost like a ghost town. There are people, but so few! It’s so roomy in this part of America. So easy to walk places: the rain, cold, and wind soon give way to sunshine & warmer temperatures. A small but not insignificant joy.

The wedding is a lovely. Happy couple, seeing lots of relatives. Good times all around. Thanks to good planning, everything runs on time. What a great idea! And the wedding, while lovely, was not an extravaganza, unlike some (most) Indian weddings. Good food, but not acres of it; a celebration for family and friends, but not one for every Tom, Dick, and Hari and their gals. Like a good many things, perhaps the expense of America limits everything, and in this case, for the better.

The only downside of the trip (besides loads of jet lag there and upon return here) was that something in the U.S. didn’t agree with my lower GI tract. I was down for a day with a problem the severity of which has never been matched in my India (or Nepal or Mexico) experience. Well, nothing is perfect, not even the good ol’ US of A.