The Day India Stood Still

Yesterday was the Cricket World Cup Semi-Finals.  India and Pakistan were up against each other.  This made it practically a public holiday in India.

I was in Kolkata for a third and final attempt (this trip, anyway) to see a bit of the sights in the big City of Joy.  Chandana had some business that took her in, so she dragged me along, quite willingly, on the Tuesday afternoon train, so that I could get to know the city she loves.  She'd hired a car and made arrangements for us to stay at Dr. Ganguly's daughter's flat in South Kolkata.  Rai Ganguly hosted us with all the charm of her 25 years and chatted eagerly with the most perfectly beautiful Indian-English accent, which is rather like a constant enchanting song.

Due to a staggering variety of obstacles, however, I saw, once again, relatively little of Kolkata.   It started off rather successfully as soon as we disembarked from the train, with a trip to Kolkata's first mall, New Market, which was built sometime around 1856 and which is still a wonderfully labyrinthine hive of small stalls that sell everything and anything a person could want.  There's even livestock, or should I say, soon-to-be-dead stock of various kinds.  We only managed a few minutes in this part as the smell of blood and guts was absolutely nauseating.

After New Market, Chandana and I went straight to a modern mecca of Kolkattan Commerce: fabIndia, a clothing emporium that specializes in organic cotton Indian style shirts and pants built for everyone, including foreigners with broad shoulders and big hips.  I updated my wardrobe so that I could retire the three outfits I've been wearing in constant rotation for three months.

By the time we got to Rai's my Shantiniketan hostess and I were exhausted, so our Kolkata hostess went in search of food to bring in and we sat on the floor and played scrabble and ate kabob and chocolate fudge, feeling ever so slightly guilty not to be going to the rehearsal for a play that we'd been invited to sit in on.  Sometimes I am the most ambivalent theater person I know.

Yesterday morning started out fresh and vibrant.  Rai insisted on making us breakfast, though she didn't really know how to make the eggs she wanted to offer us, so I gave her a little tutorial and then she, a very quick learner, made the rest to perfection.  It was a morning preceded by an evening that felt like family all hanging out on a really good vacation.  Chandana was the smart and able big sister, Rai was the funny and beautiful little sister, brilliant in living, with small, quirky holes in her knowledge base that just make her that much more lovable.  I said to Chandana as we waited for our "little sister" to cook breakfast, "This might go down as one of my favorite times in India!"

By 8:30 Chandana and Rai were out the door to go off and do their respective business and I got ready to see Victoria Memorial, a huge Raj era monument built in the the early 1900's which houses a museum and which is surrounded by lush, well-kept, clean gardens.  Set to meet up with the other gals by 12:30 or One, I figured it was the perfectly sized tourist trap to get caught in for a few hours.

Here's where things started to go pear shaped.  At first the auto-rickshaws wouldn't take me to Victoria Memorial.  One guy even started to take me, then stopped and basically kicked me out to get a fare he liked the look of better.  Or so it felt.  Later I realized that auto-rickshaws were nowhere to be seen around Victoria Memorial, so he simply couldn't take me and it had been a few moments into the ride before he'd processed fully my request.  He didn't have any English to speak of, so he simply chucked me out. So, I went to a taxi driver who just refused my fare, then, after calling Chandana and bugging her in her meeting to see if Victoria Memorial could possibly go by some other name that I needed to tell the taxi drivers which, of course, it doesn't, I got a cab to take me for double of what it probably should have cost.

After listening to the driver clear his throat then spit repeatedly and watching him pick his nose for the 20 minute ride, it was fun to get out of the cab at the end of the large elegant walk and stroll up to the huge edifice that fronts the Victoria Memorial.

I imagined for a few minutes what it might have been like when it was first built.  All the English Officers in uniform and the wives all dressed in white linen.  Everything and everyone oozing sophistication and cleanliness and decorum.   Maybe elephants decked out in colored blankets with large feathered head dress decorating the walks.....

The front doors shattered any illusions of being transported to a bygone era.  Armed guards with very large and imposing rifles manned security desks and metal detectors, though I must have looked harmless because I was ushered inside without so much as a sideways glance.

Inside, there was a peculiar exhibit in a very large rotunda of photographs depicting Sister Theresa's life.  They are very strict in the museum about which way you walk and so you follow arrows even though you are in a large open room, so as I went in the proper clock-wise direction I saw photo's of Mother Theresa which were nice enough, though mounted on poster board with little typed signs that reminded me a bit of some strange science art project that a kid might put together for the middle school science/history fair.

What made it really odd, was that every 10 feet or so, there was a break in the temporary Mother Theresa exhibit and then the regular exhibit would be on display for several feet.  This older collection was encased in glass and looked much more like it belonged in a proper museum.  It was an assortment of bayonets and other deadly weapons of war and mass destruction.  So, as I circumnavigated the Victoria Memorial rotunda I was inundated for 10 feet by PEACE and LOVE, then bombarded with HATE and FEAR, PEACE and LOVE, HATE and FEAR, and so on.  It was actually a very typical Indian experience in that it contained so strongly the one thing, PEACE AND LOVE, and equally held it's opposite, HATE AND FEAR, with no sense of contradiction whatsoever.

After an hour of looking at the Calcutta Gallery which told the history of the city from the time the first English trader staked his claim on the area through to partition, I was completely embarrassed that I'd ever daydreamed about the elegant and grand days of English rule in India.  How completely disgusting it all was. Though not without some benefit to a handful of native inhabitants, which is why I imagine the British influence is still palpable and strangely well-respected even to this day.

With an hour or so to wait for Chandana and Rai, I decided to find a cool and comfy spot under a tree to sit and write in my journal.  After a few minutes of lovely solitude, a young man plopped himself down next to me and started asking me who I was and why I was in India.  He told me that due to the big cricket match that was happening in the afternoon, no one had showed up at his office so he was having a leisurely stroll before heading home to watch the game.  He seemed nice enough, so I chatted for a few minutes, keeping an open mind that he was not going to be a jerk.  I am, it turns out, perpetually naive.

Soon he started trying to touch me, first catching a big ant that was on my shoulder...fair enough...but then he just reached out and touched my arm for no reason, while saying he was going to the planetarium and did I want to join.  Hmmmm....go somewhere dark with this guy.....no.  I got up and explained that I had to meet my friends and walked away.  He followed.  It was a very open space with lots of people around, so I knew I was in no danger as long as I stayed there, but I'd "gone to meet friends" who wouldn't actually be there yet.  So I pulled out my phone and pretended to call Chandana.  Eventually the guy took the hint and went on to the planetarium without me.

I sat on a bench and breathed a sigh of relief.  Chandana would be calling for real any minute and the car would whisk me away to adventure in a short while.  But the phone was not ringing. Another man sat on the bench next to me, so I got up and moved along.  I'd seen a big imposing church across the grounds and thought about checking it out while I waited for my phone to ring.

When I got to the intersection that I needed to cross to get to the church it happened to be where the planetarium was....shoot, what if the creep was there and what if he saw me.....after hemming and hawing I decided I had to cross in front of the Planetarium and take my chances.  I did. I was safe.  But the Church was closed.  So was the museum next door.  So was the film complex down the road.

I asked for directions to Park Street, the place I'd hung out the last two trips to Kolkata and therefore know and feel safe in, from a guy who spoke good English.  Turns out, I found out later, that he gave me directions for the cab route and I thought it was the walking route and I got utterly lost trying to get there on my own steam.  I should have known.  He told me to go straight, then take a left, then take another left.

So I asked him, "If I take a left and then another left, couldn't I just turn around right here and walk in the opposite direction of where you are telling me to go without turning at all?"

He said no.

Sometimes a common language is not enough for mutual understanding.

I was in seedy streets and tired of cabs refusing my fare and wary of stopping to try and sit for fear of being hit on and now it was well past the time I thought Chandana would be picking me up.  So I walked and walked and walked without finding anywhere stoppable.  I saw a posh looking mall, but it was across a street that was impossible to cross, which was for the best as I really didn't want to go to a mall that could be just like any mall anywhere in the world.

Eventually, I would walk to the nearest intersection and cross the street and make a u-turn to get to that mall just to try and go into an air-conditioned haven.  But, Ganesha was clearly off removing obstacles for some other more deserving soul because just as I was about to step inside the mall, my phone finally rang and Chandana and I proceeded to attempt to connect about where she was and where I was and how we could make ourselves be in the same place.

However, once again, a common language was not enough.  What I heard, instead of intelligible words and thoughts, sounded like Charlie Brown's mother was calling and yelling at me very loudly on the phone: WAHHHH WAH WAH WAH WAHN,  with an understandable word thrown in every once in a while, CAR, WAHH, WHAN WAH, WHA, GET YOU, WHAN WAH WAH WHAH, NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE WHAN WHA WAH WAHN WAH GO TO WHA WHN WAH PARK STREET WHAH WA WHAN WAH WA......

Between my feet hurting, feeling like I was a strange refuge roaming the streets of Calcutta who had no control over whether I would be displaced or find a safe haven, and the intense need to pee, I was not in a good space to be talking to anyone on the phone, especially someone who seemed to be yelling at me (she wasn't, of course, it was the phone acting up) and who wanted me to try and walk to Park Street which was effectively dead to me ever since I had tried to find it an hour earlier.

Finally I told Chandana that I wasn't going anywhere.  I was going into the mall to get a pedicure and I would have the salesgirl call Chandana and tell her where I was and the car could come there.

I was shown into the spa by the doorman (you rarely get to open a door in any establishment in India, either because there are no doors to open or close, or because a doorman is in charge of your door for you).  I approached the pretty lady behind the counter and looked at the two young men idly waiting for customers sitting next to her.  I asked if I could get a pedicure.

The girl said, "Oh, no m'am, I am so sorry.  But he has gone home.  Something wrong."  Here she patted her stomach and squinched up her face and tilted her head just so, all to indicate that the poor pedicurist had taken tragically ill quite suddenly with a stomach ailment.

I was in no mood.  I looked right at her and said, "Don't fib to me.  He's gone to watch cricket."

The two boys laughed.  The salesgirl looked stunned to be called out on her lie.  And I walked out.

A block away I found a cafe and realized that I'd heard the name of the cafe in some abstract form in Chandana's phone call," WAH WAHHHN WAH WHAN HENDUMANS CAFE WAH WAHN FOOD WAH WHAN WEHN RELAX."  I texted Chandana to tell her exactly where I was.

I went in.  It was packed.  The Cricket match was about to start and tv's were on.  I managed to get some food and a table.  I ate.  Thinking Chandana's arrival was imminent I opened a text to find out that she was making another stop and would be another half hour.

I had to give up my table.  I found another table in the sweet shop next door and ate a piece of cake.  Then I got kicked out of there.  I asked for more directions from a gal with impeccable English and headed, once more, intrepidly and fortified with sugar, in what I hoped was truly the direction of Park Street and the Oxford Bookshop.

On Camac street, another big shopping and tourist area that would lead me, I was told, to Park, a large group of men had gathered outside an electronics shop and was watching the beginning of the India-Pakistan match on tv's on display inside of the front window.  I'd never seen anything like it except in movies about when Kennedy was shot; of course, in the movies everyone stood in silence weeping, here everyone was full of electric anticipation and hope.

Shortly after stopping to take pictures of the crowd, I found another spa and took a chance that someone might actually be working.  They where.  All the hair stations were fitted up with their own individual tv's and the game was playing in 10 tiny boxes in a row down the length of the salon.  So I could be pampered while Rajesh and Naim, who made my hands and feet look pretty, got to listen to the game along with the rest of their countrymen.  Walking in sandals for 2 months is brutal on a persons feet so I did not envy my pedicurist his task.  Rajesh even asked me if this was my first pedicure.  I couldn't blame him.  My feet didn't look like they'd ever been pretty in their life.  I was glad the game was on.  No one should have to scrap my feet clean AND miss the cricket game of the century.

Almost three hours after I thought Chandana and I would be starting our tour of Calcutta, she had arrived and we were leaving to do something.  It was four o'clock in the afternoon.  This is, I'm afraid, a rather typical Indian kind of a day, so I wasn't really that surprised and the pedicure, and the added manicure that I'd decided to indulge in as well, had cheered me up.

We went visiting a cousin of Chandana and then, instead of going to see the Kali Temple, as planned, I chickened out on doing what promised to be one of the most intense experiences I could go to in India and decided that we would go to a movie at a mall.  It, too, was also planned, but as we started out so late, something had to get eliminated from the itinerary.  I needed a break from India, from wandering, from heat, from the unpredictable and I wanted to go somewhere familiar and safe, a nice air-conditioned, dark movie theater where I could get lost in a good story for a couple of hours.  Besides Chandana had had a very eventful and fraught morning herself; I suspected she was emotionally nearing her personal edge, exacerbated by the fact, perhaps, that she was still graciously trying to accomodate and make this fussy and exhausted traveler happy.

I was surprised as we were driven up to the mall to see people walking in. I thought every self respecting Indian who was not playing tour-guide to the likes of me, was glued to the match on tv.  Rai certainly was, which is why she wasn't with us.  But the mystery was cleared up when we went into the mall and found hundreds and hundreds of people cheering for some great cricket moment that had just been shown on the massive tv screen hanging in the atrium of the mall.

I kind of liked the idea that Chandana and I were going to escape the madness, yet not be too far away, like the safety of falling asleep in a peaceful room while you can hear the party your parents are throwing downstairs.  Indeed, in quiet moments of the movie, I could hear cheering from the multitude two stories away.

Going to a movie in India is supposed to be a treat.  So many people back home told me to do it.  I think they meant a real Bollywood movie which would be packed and filled with hoots and hollers and people dancing.  Instead, Chandanda and I went to a quiet family drama about an Indian family living in London.

The movie theater was as posh as any I've been in.  There were only about 12 people in the theater.  These two points were a plus.

But then the movie started without the foreplay of coming attractions which is criminal, if you ask me.  On top of that, the volume was so loud that the voices were actually distorted.  I had to plug my ears in order not to be in actual, acute, physical pain.  Then, everyone but me was TEXTING.  CONSTANTLY.  Obviously this is a culturally acceptable phenomenon.  Even Chandana, who is as respectful as a person gets, was texting.  At least people weren't talking.  Or maybe they were, I couldn't possibly have heard them over the volume of the movie.

Believe it or not, and there of those of you who know me who will really be challenged to believe it, but I actually made my peace with ALL that, as I became more and more engrossed in the family drama.  I told myself that this was how movies are enjoyed in India and that I needed to chillax and I tried narrowing my focus and tilting my head to just the right angle that the four people whose phones I could see light up every 6 minutes were not quite in my line of vision.

Things really got good and going in the film; I was thoroughly engaged.  The father and his favorite daughter finally had THE talk we'd been dreading and waiting for.  The daughter had run out, the father looked like he might explode, AND........ the lights popped on and a sign came on the screen that said, "Interval."

Remember when I said that maybe we needed less one-act plays and more intermissions to absorb a story?  I take it back.  I think this is bullshit, especially in a quiet family movie that was not made to be broken in half!

I was teetering on the edge of sanity.  The day had felt like a series of false starts and now in the safety of a dark movie theater, a sanctuary I am long familiar with, I was pulled right out of my comfort zone, which I was really working hard to stay in, onto foreign and shaky ground.  Chandana was excited because Indian movie intervals mean popcorn.  I bought some from the bloke roaming the aisles like peanut hawkers at baseball games while the texts were flying from every other movie goer to someone or other in the outside world and I felt like an alien on a planet that looked like a planet I had lived on once, but all the rules had changed.  I tried to accept that this was my problem, my hang-up, my immense pet-peeve.  I was glad that Chandana was having a good time and took a deep breath and tried to be grateful for the experience as it was and not how I longed for it to be.

When the interval was over, I took another deep breath and plugged my ears and re-submerged myself in the second half of the movie, which I'm sure would probably have moved me to great emotional depths if I'd been able to just let go and be in the present and accept the way things were instead of judging and needing and whining in my monkey brained head.  By the time we left I was convinced for the first time since I'd come to West Bengal that I was actually an American at heart and not a Bengali misplaced at birth.  I was legitimately homesick for the good old USA.

At 8:30 we emerged from the cinema back into the greater South City mall to the sound of thunderous screaming and applause.  The cricket match was on it's sixth hour and going strong.  In fact it had two more hours to go.  Chandana and I went to a lovely Spanish place a floor down from the movie theater and had dinner and watched the end of the game.

Facing different directions at the table, I could see a large screen and Chandana could see a slightly smaller one.  I understand nothing of cricket so I was really watching the fans in the restaurant to understand when something good or something bad was happening.  From what I could see the people in the restaurant were geniuses.  They seemed to be able to tell even as the the ball was leaving the bowler's hand whether it was going to be an out or not.  He would throw and the restaurant would erupt in screaming, then the batsman would hit and his ball would be caught and he would be out.  It took an hour before I turned around and saw Chandana's tv to realize that there was almost a 30 second delay on my tv.  All the other screens were in real time.  The fans were looking, I now realized, at the smaller screens, screaming, then I would see what they had already seen on the larger screen.

Eventually the game came to an end.  I can't really tell you why or how or why they didn't actually call it an hour earlier since that's when it became clear that the losers had no choice but to remain losers and that the winners had already won.  But at some point there was a pitch and the game was over and INDIA HAD BEAT PAKISTAN!!!!!!

I was in San Francisco when The Giants won the World Series.  That was crazy.  When India beat Pakistan in the semi-finals yesterday, it was lunacy.  Our restaurant crowd was fairly restrained, but you could hear mayhem on the streets outside.  Charmingly, our waiters all turned into 7 year old boys and jumped and hugged and beamed the sweetest smiles any child whoever got their greatest wish has ever beamed.  One smartly dressed Indian woman caught my eye and playfully gave me a thumbs up, then a few minutes later while on her way out to join the revelers she stopped and blew me a kiss.  I blew her one back, then she blew me two, I reciprocated, she blew four...and so on till she'd made it out of my line of sight.

The bill was paid at our table and we headed out into the streets for a 5 minute walk back to Rai's place.  The streets were full of people screaming.  Motorcycles were buzzing down the road with 3 or four men at a time on them, often one guy in the middle would be standing up on the seat holding an Indian flag that was streaming behind him.  Fireworks were erupting over the city in patchwork explosions.

Chandana and I only had to cross one intersection.  It was the only time I felt at all physically frightened for my life.  Chandana was being a real mama bear, though, and that was a great comfort.  People were idiotically throwing fire crackers into the maze of electrical wires that criss crossed the wide boulevard.  I became increasingly nervous that one of the lines would come undone and we would be fried right there on the spot.  It didn't help that the sound created by the impact of the firecracker and the electrical wire was what I can only imagine is identical to gun fire at a very close range.  It was mayhem!

Sitting on the balcony of Rai's apartment listening, a short while later, to marching bands and fireworks and partiers from a safe distance, I felt on the outside, unable to understand this unfathomable, loud, crazy country where people can be absolutely glued to the tv for 10 hours straight, bringing traffic and commerce to a stand-still, all for a Cricket match while sitting through a two hour movie without texting this, that and the other person is unthinkable.  I get that it was an historic game, two rivals, the semi-finals, Big Drama happening for real.  But I have a feeling the people texting in the movie were getting scores and staying clued into the game while they sort of watched a movie.  I was thinking about Mathew at Mundax and all our talks on mindfulness and being in the present.  I was thinking about the opportunity both arts and sports offers us to slow down, to leave our life behind and to BE HERE NOW.  It became clear to me that sports have become the more successful purveyors of escapism.  Maybe it's the adrenaline of rooting and hoping and fearing that comes from watching your favorite team battle for scores and prestige that captures the hearts.  The real-life theater of it all.....

While I pondered that, I heard the sound of a person hitting pavement on the road below.  I looked down and saw that a man had fallen over on his bike.  The road is under construction and there are big areas where the top layer of concrete has been removed leaving old cobbles and large potholes and a very uneven driving surface.  There also wasn't much light.

Oh, and, the guy on the bike was obviously completely wasted with the drink.

Drunk Guy laid on his side for quite a while and I wondered whether I should go down and check on him.  Just as I decided to get up, a man approached Drunk Guy and helped him get to his feet.  Once up, I could tell the man who'd fallen was trying to convince the other guy, Sober Guy,  that he was ok and he just needed a hand getting back on the bike.  Sober Guy wasn't hearing any of that and was obviously trying to get Drunk Guy to walk home.  They argued, though relatively quietly for two Bengali's.  Eventually Sober Guy walked away, seemingly resigned to the fact that he couldn't help someone who didn't want to be helped.  Drunk Guy stood for several minutes in the street, leaning precariously on the seat of his bike, trying, when the odd headlight would illuminate him, to appear as if he wasn't using every ounce of his strength to simply remain upright.

What happened next, simply knocked me for a loop.  Sober Guy suddenly re-appeared with a bicycle rickshaw....he was the driver.  He pulled up to Drunk Guy and convinced him to let go of his bike and to hold onto the back of the rickshaw wagon while Sober Guy hoisted Drunk Guy's bike onto the rickshaw.  Then Sober Guy hoisted Drunk Guy onto the seat, made sure bike and man were secure, then Sober Guy rode off into the darkness, presumably to take Drunk Guy somewhere safe to sleep it off for the night.

I don't know why this act of kindness so astonished me.  I've seen so much generosity of spirit in Santiniketan over the last six weeks, so much love and care on so many people's parts to make the lives of whole villages better.  Chandanda has been nothing but loving kindness to this wayfaring stranger.

Perhaps it's the extreme poverty of Kolkata, combined with the dog eat dog energy of Mumbai, the big city I've really gotten to know in India, that gives this outsider the illusion that human life is somewhat expendable in these parts.  This illusion was heightened, I suppose, by the Russian Roulette so many people were playing on the walk home, the throwing of tiny, but live, explosives into the electrical wires while several total strangers, Chandanda and myself included, frantically navigated home in the direct path of potential flailing live wires.

I don't know for  sure, I just felt like in watching Sober Guy rescue Drunk Guy that I was witnessing a pure moment of love for one human being from another, two strangers who might never know each other's names.  After a day of so many personal experiences of missed connections or interactions gone awry, while the country stopped to glue itself to the tv, I was touched that in a nation of over a billion souls, one man took the time to get another man safely home.  Maybe it was the spirit of the shared victory that opened Sober Guy's heart to aid his fellow Indian.   Maybe he would have done the same on any other night.

Either way, it was my favorite piece of theater I'd seen all day, purer than Cricket, or sitting in the dark of a movie auditorium.  No one went home a loser, like Pakistan whose team will most likely have to lock themselves in their houses for a few weeks to avoid getting beaten by an angry mob, and no one checked out to text someone about something completely unrelated to the moment that was being lived.

At the end of the day, after all our foibles, our naivetes, our missed opportunities and awkward attempts at connection, we are all just humans doing the best we can to get home on uneven ground.  Isn't it all we want, should we stumble and fall, to be lucky enough to have someone care enough to stop, pick us up and treat us with kindness, helping us to get to a safe place where we can rest till we are able to start moving again on our own? 

"So Easy or So Slow"

When I tell people that I'm writing a blog I sometimes feel a little cringe on both sides of the conversation.  I think there are some amazing blogs in the world.  Blogs are a great way to write and to investigate the endless variety of unique viewpoints.  Its just that it has become a bit of a cliche and it is hard to think of myself as a real writer when what I write is a blog.

On this trip, however, I am relishing the opportunity that the format allows me to try and process my experiences in real time in such a way that it translates to a wider audience. As we, you and I, have gone along for the last six weeks I've been developing a policy about what is appropriate to share and what is off limits.  Strictly verboten are memories or experiences that belong to other people who are easily identifiable.  I also tend to shy away from putting into the ethernet certain difficulties I've had with anyone who might read the blog, or who it might get back to.  I've found, really, that I don't miss those elements for the most part and that I can tell my stories accurately and with all the emotional truth, regardless.

It becomes tricky, tho, when an intimate chapter in my life is also an intimate chapter in someone else's.  It is sticky when, in order to be true to the telling I must, potentially, expose the soft underbelly of a friend, someone who will read what I have written.

This happens in a small way all the time.  Chandana, Nicole, Gary have all been generous enough to allow me to narrate some of our shared adventures.  My mother, over the years, has been a champ, giving me the space to write about moments in time that she might otherwise want to forget.

But the story I am about to tell is one of the scariest because I am writing it in the midst of living it, not from a vantage point smoothed out by time and distance.  It is a chapter with a beginning, middle and end in a book that hasn't been fully lived and written yet......

I returned to Calcutta on Thursday.  Chandana had booked a room for two nights at the prestigious Bengal Club, a relic built by the English, straight out of the days of white starched linen dresses and stiff gin and tonics.  The club used to be white men only.  Now they let both women and Indians in.  But when Chandana's plans changed, they were going to keep the 50% deposit even though she is a member of the club and she had given plenty of notice.

I thought it might be fun to see what an English club in Calcutta looked and felt like, since that bygone era is so much a part of what fascinated me about India when I was young.  I also wanted to help Chandana out and to be there for her on Friday when, after staying in other accommodations, she went for a long anticipated and wildly anxious-making interview for the US visa she needs in order to visit her son at Stanford next summer.

I also wanted to see Martin before he flies off to Jaipur tomorrow.

You may remember that I met Martin on my last visit to Calcutta a few weeks ago.  Along with Nicole, we traipsed off to South Calcutta into a little village on the outskirts of the Sunderbans.  What I didn't tell you then was that there were moments, brief, fleeting smidgens of silently shared understanding that had lodged themselves in my imagination and wouldn't let go. Martin and I would, in the midst of some particularly INDIAN craziness not catch each other's eye, so much as seek them out, the way you do with an old friend or lover, someone you know so well that you are sure they will be be there sharing your feelings and your delight in each strand of the experience: the beauty, the insanity, the scariness, the grief, and the genuine and simple pleasure that life has brought you to this exact moment in time.

Along with his central casting, upper middle class British looks, Martin carries himself with the comportment of an Oxford educated man who has worked for years and years crunching numbers in the heart of The City in London.  Even in the escalating heat of West Bengal, Martin wears his black, lace-up leather walking shoes with dress socks.  He comes prepared for the day with a largish black hiking back pack that I can only presume is stocked with any essentials he might need.  He doesn't wear this pack slung jauntily, carelessly over one arm, but rather it lands squarely and solidly on his shoulders and then gets fastened securely around his waist.   He is a soul with clearly defined edges, though these edges neither keep people out, nor do they, in any exceptional way, beckon you in.  Unless, that is, he talks to you.  Then, he subtly proffers a sweet invitation with his eyes.  The invitation reads not so much as, "Please come in", but rather, "Should you decide to go exploring, I've left the door unlocked.  I might be painting, but do let yourself in and make yourself comfortable."

I first got a look at the invitation on the train from Santiniketan to Calcutta two weeks ago when, while boarding the train, he saw me in my seat and said, "I hope I'm on the right train.  But I've just seen my name on the passenger list.  So I suppose I'm in the right place."  We shared a small laugh and he went on to find his seat four rows ahead.  I remember looking at the back of him and hoping, somehow, I could will him to turn around and decide to come and have a chat.  No such luck.  But the next day, when he arrived at the cafe and turned out to be the man Nicole and I were waiting for, he moved from intriguing to quite attractive when he said, "I'm starting a career as an artist."  I mean really?  What kind of guts does it take to up and declare in mid-life that you are quitting your day job to "start a career as an artist."???  By the end of the day I declared to Nicole that I had a wee crush on Martin.

"Really?  I'll be.  Martin?"

"He's quite handsome, once you get past the 'terribly British' exterior."

"Humph."

Well, I went back to Santiniketan and Martin's ex-wife arrived with her mom for a brief visit and a week went by.  Martin and I exchanged a few innocuous emails and when these two days came up we made a plan to meet for drinks on Thursday night and to plot out a day of sight seeing for Friday.  Though Martin was quick to make a plan, I had no idea if it was a "date" or not.  Of course, Martin is new at being a professional artist, so he tends to play his "cards" like an accountant.....an English accountant, at that.

We decided to meet at "my place" for a drink in the bar.  We greeted each other like old friends, or maybe just as new friends who are mutually relieved to get a chance to know each other a little better.

For the past couple of weeks when I would wonder about Martin, I practiced my mindfulness breathing along with the mantra, delivered in Mathew's voice, of "Be here now."  Sometimes I would switch things up and chant a little, "Que sera sera," because, well, what will be, will be.

So I sat down to drinks with Martin with no expectations, just an awareness that it was a pleasure to be out with a handsome, intelligent man, having drinks (my long awaited margarita!), in INDIA, and the evening felt complete.  We caught up on our adventures of the last week, and a week in India holds more adventure than the average bear of a week anywhere else.  Time flew by.  We decided to move on to dinner at a restaurant called Peter Cat where the line to get in gave it the air of exclusive sophistication.  Martin said, "It'll be like we won the lottery when my name is called."

We sat at a table against the wall.  I looked out, Martin sat across from me, with a phalanx of overly attentive waiters hovering just behind him, looking, from my view-point, like they were floating just above Martin's shoulders.  They remained there, grinning like Cheshire Cats for the whole meal.

Throughout dinner we conversationally delved deeper, touching upon the inner geological strata of our lives.  Every once in a while I was aware of being surprised by Martin's intelligence.  I wasn't shocked that he was smart, but rather I was taken aback by the way his curiosity and intellect led him to ask questions that took me off guard, or led to his own personal revelations, none of which were mired in the kind of brackish emotional soup I'd inadvertently pre-supposed a divorced, ex-ish accountant with clear-cut boundaries, starting a new career in his early 50's might get stuck in.  Everything he said, often so quietly and simply that I strained to make it out, was grounded in the present, like he was making sure he was reporting from the front lines of his inner evolution.  He was neither trying to impress me with his exploits or emotional maturity, nor did he seem concerned with moulding my perception of him with an ill-formed grasp of what his future might hold.  Whatever mid-life make-over he is going through, he seems to be doing it with grace and ease, putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time which made walking back to my hotel with him through the throngs of Calcutta feel easy and carefree.

Martin dropped me at the front door with a brisk kiss on the cheek and a promise to meet me the next morning at 11.  I went to my room happy, smiling.  I fished out my computer and sat on the side of my bed that hadn't been turned down.  In India, big beds are made up of two smaller beds nestled side-by-side.  Since I was alone, my personal room 16 go-to guy, had left one half of the bed dressed up in it's depressingly ugly duvet cover, essentially giving it the feel of one of those couches that some people keep encased in clear plastic slip covers.

While I waited for my travel modem to hook up to the Internet, I had a fleeting moment not of desire, so much, as whimsy and I thought to myself, "What a shame Martin has gone back to his hotel when there was a perfectly good, unused bed right here."  By the time the thought was finished my Internet was up and running and I was lost to the world of facebook.

15 minutes later the phone rings.  It's Martin.  We'd gotten out of dinner so late, that Martin discovered the hard way that the curfew at his hotel was strictly enforced.  I didn't hesitate and said, "come on over to my place.  I have a perfectly good bed that is just going to waste."

Hmmm?  Did I will that to happen, or had I had a premonition of things to come.....?

Of course, like you, I had a teeny tiny sliver of a doubt that Martin had really been locked out.  It's an awfully convoluted story, though.  I'm pretty sure if he had just wanted to come over he would have said so directly.  Besides, I was quite happy to have him back again.  He came up to the room and I continued on with my pre-phone call plan of taking a shower.  I put QI on for him to watch; he'd never seen it and I knew he'd love it.  I watched the second half with him when I was done bathing.  Then he asked if he could take a shower.  Of course I said he could.

It's funny how one moment can lead so simply and strangely to the next when you don't know, or think you know, what is going to happen next.

I am sitting in the bedroom and he pokes his head out of the bathroom door and says that he can't figure out how to get the water on.  I go in to the bathroom and he's there in his boxer briefs, as comfortable as can be.  I turn on the shower.  I leave, he takes a shower.  I crawl into my bed, safely tucked into the edges of my mattress.  He comes out of the shower, wearing his briefs and apologizing because, of course, he has nothing else to wear to bed.  He climbs into his clearly defined sleeping space.  We chat for a little while about this and that and then turn off the light and say our goodnights.

I feel like we are two teenagers at a slumber party.  I tell him I'm glad he's there because, "it feels festive."  And it does.  A grown up slumber party.

We toss and turn in our individual little rectangles.  It's dark in the room with the heavy hotel curtains, but I can see that after turning away, Martin's now facing towards me.  We are facing each other.   The narrow trench created by the edges of our mattresses delineate his safety zone and mine.

I half want him to touch me, or kiss me, or say something, anything that will tell me what he's thinking, and I half want to relish the exact moment we are in, the moment where I have no idea what, if anything, will happen.

His hand was dangerously close to crossing over into the territory of my bed.  I thought about grazing it with my hand.  I shifted a little, but chickened out on touching him.

Then I had to get up to go to the bathroom (Darn my bladder).  When I got back into bed it was the perfect excuse to see what would happen if my hand "accidentally" breached the outer limits of his bed.  At first nothing happened, but then he took my hand and suddenly moved closer saying, in his imitable English way, "Care for a cuddle?"

 It would be bad form to tell you what happened next.

I'll just say that it was lovely.

The next morning, my room-16 go-to guy who brought the coffee wouldn't allow me to carry the tray into the room and out onto the veranda, so he got a bit of a shock when he discovered that I was not alone.  Martin was sitting, as blazé as can be, on "his" side of the bed in his boxer briefs.  I had thrown my Santiniketan batik nightgown on and was shepherding the room-16 guy this way and that and feeling very much like I'd been caught cheating on my imaginary husband or, at the very least, cheating on the Bengal Club.

Once we'd been left alone, Martin and I went out on the balcony and sipped coffee.  Neither of us had really managed to sleep because, let's be honest, it's nearly impossible to fall asleep the first night you share a bed with someone new.

I joked about what I was gonna write in my blog.  Martin said, quite seriously, "Write whatever you like."

We checked in about the time spent in bed when we were, well, not trying to sleep which, like our conversational chemistry, was fresh and present, and not like any other time I'd spent in any other bed with any someone else.  I told Martin about Dr. Ganguly reading my palm, which he'd done only a few days before.  I'm not sure Dr. Ganguly believes that palmistry has any validity, but he's studied it from a very scientific and academic viewpoint and memorized what hand reading experts have determined that different characteristics mean.  Examining the cushiony part under my thumb, Dr. Ganguly decided that sex wasn't very important to me.  I informed him that that wasn't true.

But the more I thought about it, and this I told to Martin, I realized that in some ways my fleshy palm was right.  I'm not really interested much in sex just for the sake of having sex.  I need there to be a deeper connection, a spark, a little bit of a "what if" attached to the situation.  The older I get, the more true that becomes.

However, I think Dr. Ganguly was right in another important respect, and Martin helped me remember this.  Sex is nice, but sensuality is what I call "important."  I'm sorry that I don't feel comfortable elaborating on how Martin jogged my memory, but hopefully you can supply your own example.  However, sadly, I also know there are more than a few people who will think they know what I mean, who really don't.  But you, yes YOU, are not one of those unfortunate few.

Martin and I valiantly tried to make sight-seeing plans, but we were so tired that neither of us was moving very fast.  After he went to his place to get clean clothes and do some errands, we met Chandana for drinks and snacks in the hotel bar to celebrate that she'd gotten her US visa.  I sat on a couch, while Martin and Chandana sat opposite each other in over-sized chairs.  Chandana was glowing from relief and Martin was all satisfied relaxation.  I was happy to sit and bask in the two beauties I hadn't even known a month ago.  Chandana, my Indian big sister, gently grilled Martin and talked me up, but mostly charmed Martin who obviously knows a beautiful woman when he meets one.

Eventually, I had to retreat like a wilted flower to the quiet confines of my air-conditioned room for a little nap.  Chandana headed to Howrah and the train back to Santiniketan, and Martin completed some travel related errands.

While I tried to sleep, a rattle started up somewhere in the room.  I hid my head under the pillow, hoping to drown out the sound, but it only got louder. Finally I got up and saw that it was the door to my bedroom being blown against it's jamb by wind coming in from the other side where the bathroom vents to the outdoors.  I ran across to the door on the opposite side of the room, the door to the balcony, flew open the curtains and discovered a magnificent storm was raging over, and through, and against Calcutta.  Rain was pouring, wind was howling, thunder was booming and lightening was thrilling this storm deprived, west coast transplant.  I had literally been waiting and wanting a good storm in my life for years.  I never thought it would discover me in dusty Calcutta at the height of the dry season.

Martin came back and we realized that we weren't going to go anywhere. Instead of exploring the city, we explored each other.  When we did go out to eat, I was relieved that Martin simply left his bag and hat in my room; there was no emotional tussle over whether he should go back to his place, or any of that nonsense.

At dinner in a Chinese joint with a large domed ceiling that looks like a giant engraved golden gong, the sullen waiter didn't help my slowly sinking mood.  I was doing my valiant best to stay right there in the present, to enjoy the time Martin and I had left rather than thinking of the moment, 12 hours later, when we would have to say good-bye.  I kept thinking of that damn Bob Dylan song which I find rather depressing, but it is on my ipod none-the-less, and now it was playing in my heart: "you are gonna make me lonesome when you go."  I told Martin what Bob Dylan was saying.  Martin said, "you know if I'd met you back home I'd have asked you for a drink and then I'd ask you for another one a few weeks later, and then maybe dinner a few weeks after that, and so on.  Travel can somehow accelerate things, intensify them."

I kind of wished we'd met in London.  I mourned for those two weeks of anticipation, for the next date, and so on.

Martin had told me earlier in the day, while we waited for Chandana to arrive from the American Embassy, that contrary to how he may behave, "going with the flow" was a challenge for him.  But he likes, he said, to push himself to step out of his comfort zone (another of the many blindingly sexy things about Martin) and he just kept telling himself, he told me, "What will be will be."

As I struggled to stay present and to enjoy the date that I was actually on, I paused Bob Dylan, changed tracks in my heart and asked Doris Day to croon a little Que Sera Sera.  Doris worked her magic and I managed not to dissolve into heartache.

When we stepped back out on the street to walk back to the hotel, I turned to thank Martin for dinner and he leaned over to give me a kiss.  We started to walk arm in arm, but then he said, "I know displays of affection aren't really done around here." We both respectfully pulled ourselves back into our own little bubbles of airspace.

Back at the Bengal Club, tired and vulnerable we laid in bed and talked around the elephant in the room.  Martin leaves the country a week before I do; we compared our itineraries for our remaining weeks in India, being careful not to voice expectation or need for there to be a meeting point somewhere down the road.  As it stands, I have more freedom after the first of April; he has booked the rest of his trip with lots of commitments to various friends along the way. "But", as Martin said, "plans could change.  Let's keep in touch."

Are there four words that are more dispiriting when parting from a lover than, "Let's keep in touch?"

Sitting back in Santiniketan tonight, I am telling myself what I suspect Martin is telling himself:  That we've only known each other for three days.  I suppose I could have made it four.  I could have changed my train ticket, but I have to teach my Chitra girls tomorrow and I can't be depleted for that.  Besides, Martin flies away, and we'd only have been delaying the inevitable.

Three days is only three days.  Right?  Like me with my writing, Martin, the newly minted career painter, is just setting off on a mission to transform his professional life, even his very identity.  People can only cope with so much impute, so much change, so much possibility at one time.

Right?

At one point yesterday, in the late afternoon light of a rain washed Calcutta, Martin was lying on the bed beside me. When I sat up, my eyes took in his torso on the way up to the window and my brain transplanted us, momentarily, to St. Ives in Cornwall, half a world a way, a place where Martin and I have both been, but, obviously, not together.  It was as if, after taking Martin's eyes up on their invitation to "come in and make myself comfortable while he painted", we'd jumped ahead in time and place and become happily ensconced in each others lives.  Though I could not see them in the vision, I knew his canvases were all around us.

I tried to tell Martin about the vision, which lingered in the air like an impressionist painting.  I wasn't very brave in the telling and only vaguely implied that we were in St. Ives, in my minds eye, together.  I think he thought I said that Calcutta somehow reminded me of St. Ives just then and so he said, "I've been to St. Ives. It's very beautiful there.  Great light."  The impressionist painting dissolved and we were once again surrounded by the fading beauty of old Calcutta.

In the night, I'd had lots of dreams, bad dreams mostly about India, caste, and class.  I'd tossed and turned, being careful to keep my sturm and strang confined to my bed.  We'd decided to fall asleep without the a.c. and at some point, after my dreams had finally turned to the lighter side, I awoke with a start.  I turned toward Martin's bed.  He was looking at me and he said tentatively, "It's, umm, gotten a little warm, don't you think?"

I said, "Hmmm, yes,  I suppose it has.  Should we turn on the A.C.?"

He said, "What do you think?"

"Sure."

He got up and turned it on.  While he did so, I told him about the dream that had awoken me: he'd been telling me how he'd had to change from one pair of jeans into another, but for some reason he couldn't take off his shoes to do it and he'd said, in the dream mind you, "It was a rather difficult transition."

For some reason, that made us both laugh.

When he got into bed it suddenly occurred to me that he'd been waiting for me to wake up to address the temperature question.  He'd patiently been lying there without disturbing me.  He hadn't nudged me awake to discuss the issue, nor had he simply taken matters into his own hands and turned on the a.c.

I am pretty sure that's one of the nicest gestures any man has made for me.

Martin settled into bed.  We were facing each other.  I let my arm cross the great bed-divide.  We held hands.  Out of the haze of sleep that was engulfing me I said, "I like you Martin."

Martin liked me back.

After Martin and I said our goodbyes in the hotel room the next morning, he went off and left me a few minutes to gather my things and check out on my own.  I'd told Martin that I was going to be stoic, I wasn't going to cry or make a fuss and I had held to my word.

I walked down the third floor hall.  All the room "boys" were there, smiling at me.  Maybe it's my imagination, but I felt certain they knew I'd entertained a gentleman all weekend long.  Surprisingly there were no leers, but rather a series of sweet, kind faces greeted me.  Maybe they intuited that my heart was feeling tender, so they responded accordingly.

My room-16 guy carried my bag, took me by the atm, and hailed a cab.  After the taxi ride to Howrah 10 days before with Nicole, I was fully prepared to be hastled for the fare, but the driver simply put on the meter.  When we arrived at the station, he maneuvered the cab close to the door.  I gave him a 100 rupee note for a 60 rupee fare and asked for 20 rupee back.  He started to give me the full 40 rupee in change.  I insisted he take 20 back.  He insisted on handing me the 40.

I said, "don't you want a tip?" He shook his head, "no."

It was too much for me.  I could feel the core of my being crack open.  If I could have, I would have grabbed that taxi driver and clung to him for a full ten minutes.  I would have let loose a torrent of tears.

Instead, I took the change and put it in my purse.  I put my purse on my shoulder.  I got out of the cab and opened the front door and collected my suitcase.  I put the suitcase over my shoulder.  Then I put one foot in front of the other and walked one step at a time into Howrah station.

Seeing Stars

The last 48 hours have held the good and the bad of traveling in India.

I went by train to Kolkata which, after the quiet of Santiniketan, felt like I could be walking into the lion's den.  I was very nervous about how I would respond to the hustle and bustle of street life in big city India after so long away.  But I made friends with a young Australian bloke, Nick, who was sitting next to me on the train.  Turns out he already knew Nicole, who I was going to stay with, and was lodging around the corner from her, so we shared a taxi and I had a pal to ease my entry into big city life.

Kolkata, it turns out, has a very manageable feel to it.  It's crusty and shambly in an almost romantic way.  It moves quickly when compared to most mid-level American cities, maybe even when compared to New York, but it feels like a little town when stacked up against Mumbai.  Especially at night.  Mumbai goes into hyper drive around nine in the evening, and Kolkata is tucking itself in shortly after.

I found myself walking down the street with confidence, brushing off searing looks and pestering requests of rickshaw drivers (here they pull you the old fashioned way, with their arms and legs!) and begging urchins.

I was taken aback, again, by my complete lack of amazement that I was in India.  Shouldn't I be walking with my jaw on the floor, utterly aghast and filled with awe about where I am???  No, India fits like the old, dusty glove that it is.

Nicole had plans to go to the opening night of a Tagore exhibit at the Government College of Arts and Crafts.  She had befriended a professor there named Mr. Sengupta and his student, Irfan, a young Pakistani painter.  Through the usual process of calling person A to get to person B because person A was late to meet persons C and D, then person B calling person C, who doesn't really tell person D what is going on, the evening was a slow starter.

We, persons C and D, went to the quite exquisite exhibit and meandered while we waited for person A or B to find us in one of the three rooms we wandered through.  Eventually person B, Irfan, showed up but we'd been ambushed by a lovely woman named Mitha who wanted to make sure we understood that an exhibit of this magnitude only comes along every 150 years or so and that  we had "come on a very important evening!"  She also wanted to convey that she had gone to the college years ago and been awarded TWO prizes in the same year for her artwork, which apparently was quite the scandal.  She and I exchanged numbers, since that's what you do after any conversation that lasts more than a few minutes and doesn't have to do with buying something.  Then Mitha stalked off after the little man she'd met right before us who'd "had the privilege of reading many of Tagore's letters.  Can you imagine??"  She asked this as she held her phone in the little man's face, recording his every breath in case he happened to spontaneously start talking about Tagore.  Thus is the power of the Nobel prize winning poet in this part of the world.

Irfan introduced himself just as Mr. Sengupta showed up.  The professor is an ex-Bangladeshi man, fiftiesh, average height for a man in this part of the world, which is to say, slightly shorter than myself who stands at 5'5".  He has a warm, open face, broad smile that demonstrates good teeth, with the exception of the one that's missing right in front. Good teeth is a rarity in Bengali men, a missing one is quite common.  Irfan is a strapping, handsome lad of about 28.  He's a liberal young Muslim who has traveled to the US as an artist in residence in the Hudson Valley.  His face carries a joy and energy that speaks of possibility and freedom, despite the fact that his movements are heavily monitored by the state of West Bengal.  His visa is so specific that he cannot leave the confines of Kolkata and must be back in the college grounds by 10:30 every night or face possible deportation back to Pakistan.

Nicole wanted to see Irfan's paintings, so the four of us went up to his room.  While Nicole looked at paintings, Mr. Sengupta and I talked about theater.  He'd recently been blown away by a site-specific piece he'd seen in Delhi.  Then Nicole and I switched places.  Irfan's paintings were wonderful and edgy.  He paints modern people on large canvases using ancient miniature-painting techniques.  The piece he's currently working on portrays "The Fish Man", a beggar that works outside the college.  That man has a missing arm and lies on his stomach, hides his good arm, and deliberately flails about like a fish to get donations.  Irfan has been walking by often enough to see the man get up and drink his tea with as much decorum as you or I might.  Irfan has also seen a friend of the "fish man" in a nice car come and collect the earnings for the day.  So the painting as it stands now is just the man lying on his stomach, but it will soon have a carpet with gold strands running through it and around the man to show the complexity of what Irfan sees in this beggar who probably makes more money than the artist does in any given month.

The four of us went on to an evening eating street food, buying drinks that we took up to the roof of the hotel, and talking about art and life and the strangeness, "the abstractness" as Irfan would say, of India.  They told me about the street in Kolkata where several marching bands, all in uniform, hang out all day waiting to be hired, like the day laborers outside of the Home Depot back home.  Just as we were about to say our goodnights, a loud and joyful noise sprang up from the street 6 stories below.  At 10:00 at night, a group of people were processing down Royd Street, dancing, chanting, singing.  Behind them was a fantastic, neonish float, behind that....one of the marching bands!  Behind them, trucks carried statues of the Goddess that inspired the joyful parade.  We would discover the next day that Nick, from the train, had been dancing in the crowd. "Of course, why wouldn't he?"

The next morning, Nicole had plans to meet another friend, an Englishman named Martin, who was taking her, now us, out to some kind of sustainable community center in a village on the edge of Kolkata.  We went to a cafe filled with tourists and ran into Nick.  When Martin showed up, it turned out I'd already sort of met him too.

Martin was on the train from Santiniketan the day before.  We'd had a funny little exchange about whether or not he was on the right train, "but I've just seen my name on the passenger list outside, so I suppose I'm in the right place."  "Yes," I replied, "that's usually a good sign." I had hoped we might talk more, but it hadn't happened.

Now we had all day to talk.  I asked Martin, who looked to be about 50 and reminds me a little bit of a younger Geoffrey Palmer in As Time Goes By, what he does for a living and he said, "I'm starting a career as an artist."  This, I must say, might be the most attractive answer to the question "What do you do for a living" that I've ever encountered.  Martin used to be an accountant, working in The City, wearing black or gray suits and ties, conforming to all those things accountants working in The City must conform to, but now he's quit all that and he's turning his hobby of painting into a second career.  I suspected Martin and I were going to be fast friends.

After the usual round of phone calls to the gent, Gordon, whose community center we were going to see, and a long wait for coffee, and a stop at the photo store, Nicole, Martin and I climbed into a taxi and headed to South Kolkata.  We were only an hour behind schedule, which is pretty good in these parts.

What should probably have been a half hour drive turned into an hour and a half drive, or maybe it just seemed that long.  But it was great fun.  I had no idea where we were going, the company was great, and the abstract absurdity of driving through the seemingly disintegrating but sturdy world of Kolkata was a great example of why traveling in India can be so wonderful.  As if a theme had been devised for my weekend away from Santiniketan, we talked about art and form.  As the old city floated past us outside the taxi windows, we marveled together at the painting or photograph or essay that is each frame, each moment in time.  Every face, every rickshaw is a work of art.  It's almost painful, the endless parade of dilapidated beauty.

At one stoplight, the taxi driver bought a small bag of what resembled very thin apple slices.  He offered us each a piece explaining that it was good for the liver.  We gamely tried it.  It was sour and sort of good.  We talked about how the perils of eating street food, riding in taxis without seat belts, and having no idea where we were going were all made more fun and less daunting by doing it together.

Eventually we made it to a place where we were meant to stop and wait for Gordon to arrive.  When he did he was a very large man of about 60, bald, great York accent.  He looked like a merchant marine who'd gone native in his flowy green shirt, carrying his cotton string bag.  Gordon gruffly dealt with the taxi driver who tried to up the price of the ride and the random man on the street who came up and announced that he wanted 20 rupees just because.

We all climbed into an auto rickshaw for the next leg of the trip, which was, under the cramped circumstances, thankfully short.  We found ourselves, suddenly, right up next to the Sunderbans, a large area of mangrove villages famous for, once upon a time, harboring man-eating tigers.  Before I knew it, we were trekking into the countryside.  The air became clean and fresh, the view suddenly shifted to verdant open rice fields. As happens in small villages here in India, people started to come out to greet us, asking for pictures to be taken.  I don't think Martin or I could stop smiling.  Somehow it was inconceivable that this village oasis could be smack up against the crumbling metropolis of Kolkata, but we all knew that nothing, really, should ever be inconceivable here.

When we arrived at the community center, we discovered that it was only the foundation that had been built.  The new skyscrapers of Kolkata were only a few miles away, quickly encroaching on this little paradise.  Gordon was crest-fallen.  Since he'd run out of funds last April, he hadn't been out to the village and since then, the city had gotten much closer.  The fear is, of course, that all the village folk will be tossed out of their land, rendered homeless if "civilization" comes any nearer.  His hope is to prove that village life is viable and self-sustainable by creating a place where health-care, education, farming schemes are strong enough to empower the village to fight for their land and lively-hoods.  It's a noble cause; I only hope he can get the funds in time to stop the developers from taking over.

After the tour, Gordon invited us to his home for lunch.  There we met, Meetu, his 29 year old bride-to-be.  She made us a lovely meal of dal and rice while we struggled to engage her in English conversation.  Nicole, Martin and I exchanged looks that spoke of our concern for the young Indian girl who was being kept by this rather eccentric older English gent but ultimately we decided that all was well and mutually beneficial.

Nicole, Martin and I returned home via two rickshaws and the excellent Kolkata metro system.  It was much faster than the taxi had been.  On the way we shared a rickshaw with a young girl named Sumitra ("It means Good Friend.")  She helped us to find the metro and to buy our tickets.  We all exchanged contact information on the train, of course.  She adopted Martin as her new Guru once she found out that he was an accountant and that is what she is studying.  Such is life in India that gurus can be adopted on a 15 minute subway ride.

That evening Nicole had organized a going away party for herself at The Fairlawn, a little expat garden bar.  Here gathered Nick, Mr. Sengupta, Irfan, and an Englishman named Peter who Nicole was particularly close to.   Eventually one of Nicole's roommates from Amma's Ashram, a young Kashmiri film maker named Chaz, joined.  Later, Martin completed the set.

Irfan and I got to talking about life.  He asked me what my goals were, once I got back home.  I said I hadn't a clue, really.  "You're just going with the flow, eh?"

"Look," I said, "I've only really ever had one goal that I could ever really commit to.  It's always been important to me that at the end of my days I could look back and say that I tried to be the best human being I could be.  If I get to work in the theater a lot at the same time, or I write a book that gets published and makes people happy, if I get married, or have kids, or travel the world, that would be great, but nothing is as important as trying to learn how to be the best human being I can be."

Irfan sat with that for a long moment.  Finally, he said, "I'm curious.  What is your definition of a good human?"  Mr. Sengupta leaned forward.

I said, "Well, let me put it this way.  I've lived my whole life in the theater.  I've seen a lot of artists behave like shitty human beings for the sake of their art.  Or they use the fact that they are artists as an excuse to behave poorly.  I think that's bullshit.  We are all human beings first.

"I'm not really interested in what any church says about morality.  I believe that we all know in our hearts, when we are brave enough to open them and to listen to them, what are the right choices for ourselves, we know how to live, act, behave, love, work in ways that will not hurt other people or ourselves.  Conversely, I think sin is as simple as letting fear shut us off from our hearts.  I am under no illusion that I will banish fear from my life, only that I will try to be braver in that regard every day that I live."

Mr. Sengupta said, "Yes, Yes.  The important thing is that we try.

"There are two important myths in our culture.  First, there is a lion hunting a deer.  The lion loses track of the deer, but meets a man in the forest.  The lion asks the man if he has seen the deer.  The man, who has seen the deer, then has a dilemna: If he tells the lion where the deer is, the deer will die.  If he doesn't tell the lion, the cat will starve."

Irfan and I looked at each other....yes, this is a dilemna.  It's fairly impossible to make a "right" or "good" choice.  Ok....

Mr. Sengupta went on, "Another tale concerns a man walking through forest when a beautiful young woman comes up to him and says, 'sir, I am starved for sex, will you please have sex with me.'  The man thinks to himself, if I have sex with this woman it would be bad for her, but if I don't have sex I will be denying her."

From the look on his face, Mr. Sengupta made it clear that he thought it was right and good that the man not have sex with the woman.

Just as I started to launch my protest, Martin showed up and joined our conversation.  We gave a quick recap.  I then said, "I'm sorry, but I find it such a male behavior for our guy in the forest to think he knows better than the woman what is good for her.  If she wants to have sex, just for sex sake, then why is it bad?"

Before Mr. Sengupta could respond, Martin threw in a salient question, "Well, I guess we'd have to ask, would the dilemna be the same if it was a woman walking through the forest and a man came up and asked her the same question?  Of course then there'd be the worry of rape and all those sorts of things..."

The four of us went round and round.  Irfan, it turns out, had actually found himself in a situation not unlike our man in the forest.  The girl of his story had argued the same as I.  Irfan didn't share the outcome of his situation.

Ultimately it seemed to be decided amongst the men that since the man in the forest cannot separate his own experience of having sex out of the equation when having sex with the stranger then it could not be considered a pure act of kindness and therefore would be wrong and he should not do it.  I, rather dramatically, conjectured that if I was ever that desperate to have sex and I asked a man to gratify me, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other that he also had an emotional response in the process.  It would still be an act of kindness.

But I could see their point.  And I appreciated it.

I loved the whole discussion.  The fact of it.  The very reality that I could be sitting in a bar in Kolkata discussing the complexity of being human, of sexuality, of morality with three artists: one Hindu Bangladeshi man, one young liberal Muslim from Pakistan, and a formerly buttoned up British gentleman.  It was the height of what I call joyful communication.  When people ask me why I love to travel, I might very well call upon the memory of that unlikely event.  Actually, of the whole unlikely day.

After Irfan and Mr. Sengupta went off to make sure the young Pakistani made curfew, Martin and I continued to talk about the complicated process of learning how to identify oneself as an artist, the bravery it takes to own the moniker.  We talked about our fears of being self-indulgent and the scary reality that inspiration doesn't actually make an appearance every day just because you start calling yourself a painter or a writer.

Eventually it was time to call it a night, and Nicole, Martin and I, helped the young Nick, who had been less successful moderating his alcohol intake, navigate his way down the street.  When we parted from Martin, I felt a little sad to be leaving this new friend.  As he said, we'd "only known each other a day, but it was a great day!"

In the morning, Nicole and I had to gather ourselves together and get to Howrah Station for our 10:10 train.  From the moment we set out to get a quick breakfast, India seemed determined to irritate.  The customer service at the famous cafe we went to was beyond rude, the first taxi we hailed drove away when we told him where we needed to go, the second taxi driver gave us a hastle about turning on the meter and tried to get a flat rate out of us...a rate that was twice the price of a metered ride.  The magazine wallas on the train stood at our seat and repeated, despite our protests, 20 times in a row: Cosmopolitan, Femina, Hindu Times.  The musicians that had been so charming on my first train to Santiniketan over a week ago, decided to play a 12 minute jangled, disjointed tune right in our ears, then mumbled unkind words about me when I let Nicole give them money, but didn't cough up any dough myself.

Once in Santiniketan, I told our rickshaw man that I would pay 50 rupee, which we both knew was almost double the normal fair, for the trip to our house but we would be making a few stops along the way.  He literally ran to his rickshaw yelling with glee to the other drivers that he was getting a 50 rupee fair.  When we got home, though, he balked at the fare and demanded 100 rupee.  I gave him an extra 4 rupee I had in change and told him he could take that or take nothing.  He stood there for several minutes, but finally gave up and went home.

That night, when I had to go the computer guy to get my internet re-connected since it had stopped working in Kolkata, Nicole wandered in the tourist shops on the main Santiniketan strip.  Just as I was going to retrieve her, she came out of a store shaking with anger and bewilderment.  The man running the store had just exposed himself to her.  We debated the pros and cons of going back and causing a scene and ultimately decided to let it be.

I went to bed feeling exhausted from all the little barbs that can get under a traveler's skin.  I don't suppose it's really worse than days I've had in Paris or Belfast or Rome.  I also know that India, or anyplace, could be so much scarier if it decided to be.

Tonight while we were riding our bikes home in the dark from Chandana's house, I looked up at the stars and veered off the road.  Normally, this would be ok.  The edges of the road here are the smoothest part of the path, and pothole free.  Unfortunately, there was a short, stubby palm tree sticking out over the edge of the road that I couldn't see and before I knew what was happening I was flying over and through the shrub into the dirt on the other side.  Nothing was broken, but my right leg got torn up a bit and will be lovely shades of black and blue by morning.

Nicole flew off her bike and was at my side in no time.  I got up and could feel blood trickling down my leg, but thought it best to just get home before assessing the damage.  After walking for a few minutes to get over the shock, I climbed back up and rode on down the lane to the house.

It's amusing to think that by looking up at the stars, I landed flat on the ground, battered and bruised.

"Teach me to look at the stars, " I joked half-heartedly as I picked up my bike.

Nicole was a champion about letting the trauma of being flashed, go.  After I fell, I got right back up on my bike.  We both know, that those kinds of things are the price you pay sometimes for the extraordinary events, like our day of traipsing on the edges of the Sunderbans and our evenings of delightful conversations with artists from all over this crazy globe.

Falling on the ground, getting bruised and battered is simply that.  It doesn't take away the stars, or the memory I have of seeing them just before I fell.