Re-Entry Is a Little Bumpy Sometimes

For those of you who don't know, I'm baaaack!

I've been home now for almost exactly two weeks. It has been wonderful to see family and friends, to get settled into my house again, cuddle my pets, and enjoy my sunny-but-not-scorching home town. I suppose most things have gone well. I am happy to be back, and at least work-wise, so glad that everything worked out; I was beginning to get desperate. But, on the flip side, I do miss my Indian family, a ton.

I left my old HP laptop with the boys at the house, so Aarif checks in with me daily on gTalk. Manik took his tip money and bought a cell phone, so even he calls me from time to time. Sometimes the modern world is amazingly small, and it's both wonderful and creepy to be able to keep such close contact with them. People from the office ping me occasionally, when they're online late at night, so it's easy to stay in touch that way, and every now and again, I talk on the phone with Devindar.

Everyone has a different reaction when they leave home, and visiting India always makes it's own unique impression. I think most people are eager to leave the chaos and beauty of India, because it's overwhelming to many of us who weren't brought up in that type of culture. For me, it's the opposite. More than anything, since I've been back, I have this nagging fear that I'll lose what I learned in India, my Hindi will slip, my taste for the fiery spices will wane, my ability to understand (somewhat) and integrate into Indian culture will evaporate. I feel, sometimes, as if exiled. I think India somehow helped me develop another sense, an intuition or awareness that I'm desperate to hold on to. Or, perhaps it's the relationships with friends, colleagues...Somehow, I managed to feel that I belonged there, and I miss that. I seem to get particularly nostalgic on Sundays. Yesterday, I was running errands and shopping when I should have been unpacking boxes, and I found myself missing Devindar and having him along with me for the Delhi version of this Sunday ritual. I called him, just to say 'hi' and catch up on all of the news and notes from Gurgaon. The same thing happened last Sunday - maybe it always will.

My first week back at work, I ran into a colleague in the cafe who had also spent over a year in India. She asked me if I was glad to be back to American food and commented that she didn't think she'd had Indian food in the three plus years since she'd been back. While I understand the sentiment, that is not how I feel. Afraid that I might at some point, I went searching for a good Indian grocer and bought a full range of masalas, chili and cumin powder, green cardamom, dosa mix, my favorite Indian cookies "Nice Time", and some plaintain chips. A culinary cultural transfusion, performed right here in Sunnyvale. Now, I just have to use them; wish me luck.

You often hear Indians being nostalgic about their homeland, or pining for tastes and flavors that you can only get in India. That always seemed somewhat odd to me, or over-the-top, because especially in the polyglot Bay Area, we have almost everything. Now, though, I think I understand a little. It's not a rational thing. It's not that you can't get garam masala, or chicken tikka, or even alphonsus mangos. It's not that you won't hear Hindi spoken or meet Indians. It's the fear that you'll forget. Forget the tastes, the flavors, the smells, the history, the chaos, and the embraces of your family and friends. So, my American family will have to forgive me if I'm reluctant to stamp the Indian dust from my shoes, if the most natural response to a question still comes out as "ha," and if Sunday evenings make me a little sad from time to time.

The World According to US

The graphic above has been making the rounds with my peers here in India.  While it's mildly insulting, it also reflects some truisms about Americans and their world view.  Certainly, this is how we, and our egos, look from the vantage point of the second and third worlds and their burgeoning markets.  I particularly like the characterization of Canada as "uninhabited."  We discount, criminalize, and marginalize a lot of the world that we either don't understand or don't have time for.  Not that we're alone in this.  My colleague who sent this to me commented that she'd love to do one of these from India's perspective.  I suggested that she just change the labels and have a little fun, since she's very witty.  Her rejoinder was that she'd have to start from scratch because certainly the Indian subcontinent wasn't large enough, relative to the other countries, to reflect the local point of view.

If there's one thing that the past year-and-a-half has taught me, it's not to discount the nooks and crannies and huge-ass continents of the world that I haven't seen.  It doesn't take but one visit to Khajuraho, Amer, Chiang Mai, Darjeeling or Ladakh, to put you in awe of the world's natural wonders and myriad cultures in all their complexity.  I cannot imagine my life now without having seen some of these things, but save for this opportunity to live and work in India, it's very likely that I never would have laid eyes on much of what I've seen.  It's amazing how single decision points can shape you as a person.  I hope that I remember to never stop exploring, and that I instill this wanderlust in my family someday.  We must truly be citizens of the world; no one of us exists in isolation.  The sooner everyone figures this out, the better off we'll be.

Bangkok - A Whole Lotta Wat!

I learned never, ever take Shannon on a late night flight.  Pumpkin needs her beauty sleep and did NOT enjoy the 3 hour flight and choppy sleep we got at the airport and on board the plane.  Fortunately, we arrived at the lovely VIE Hotel and were able to immediately check in, clean up and get some rest.  Which we promptly did, sleeping until 1pm or so.  Shannon swears she tried to wake me multiple times, and it's all my fault, but I argue she was sleep-deprived and under-motivated when it came to getting me out of bed.  In any case, the extra half day I tried to get us by taking the red eye more or less got frittered away in our spacious, ultra-modern, and ultra-cool hotel room.  Anyway.... sometimes you just can't fight these things; in the interest of domestic happiness, we took a much-needed pit stop and had a really yummy Thai lunch.

Kind-of refreshed and ready, we headed out to hit the first of many, many Wats, or Buddhist temples.  Our first stop was Wat Pho, or the Temple of the Reclining Buddha.  This was one of my favorite temples that we saw on our trip.  The Buddha is very impressive and the decorative arts on the temple are amazingly beautiful, but it was these things in combination with what Shannon and I ended up referring to as "temple+party" that really made the place come alive.  For some reason, the courtyard of the Wat was chock-a-block with food stalls, places to make offerings and buy incense, and monks chanting and singing.  Because the trappings of Thai Buddhism are quite ornate, colorful and shiny, the overall effect is one of a carnival.  It was great fun.  A place of worship like that would make you want to come every day.

After bowing to Buddha's mother-of-pearl toes, we made our way to Wat Arun, or the Temple of the Dawn.  Situated on the riverbank, Wat Arun gives you a spectacular view of the city skyline and the traffic on the river...if you're willing to climb the super-steep steps to the top.  I thought of Mom, because all of the temples are covered with ornate mosaic work, some in colored mirrors, some in porcelain flowers and figures - it's a pique assiette paradise!  I took lots of pictures to inspire my favorite mosaic artist.  I almost wished she was there, but not quite...Bangkok might just be the hottest city I've visited to date.  By the time Shans and I climbed to the top of Wat Arun, we were literally watering, and the fun continued throughout our time in Thailand.  I'll definitely go back, but if I do, it will be wintertime.  

Hot and sapped by our brief adventures into the wat-age, Shans and I headed for air conditioning.  Bangkok has a number of huge shopping malls and entertainment complexes where people hang out in air-conditioned bliss.  We discovered MBK, and found our home away from home in Bangkok.  Their food court is huge and operates on this coupon system that makes it pretty easy to get amazing Thai food for super-cheap.  We gorged on green papaya salad, pad thai, and a few new delicacies like hoy tod, mussels cooked in a scrambled egg mixture with chili-garlic sauce...mmmm, mmm, good.  MBK is also knock-off paradise, so Shans and I got our fill of fake Nars, MAC, Ed Hardy and Burberry, as well as some ultra-cool Thai t-shirts for Dad.  And to top it all off....they had Starbuck's!  Does it get any better?

On day two, we headed to the Royal Palace compound and were immediately transported into the set of The King and I.  The temples and palace buildings are amazingly beautiful and shiny.  I don't know how much of the work is original anymore, as the buildings must take almost constant maintenance, but they're still beautiful.  Shannon was most chagrined because there's also a dress code, and somehow neither her capris, nor her cute-little-top made the chastity cut.  Thus, she enjoyed our tour in two extra layers of men's shirt and sarong - not exactly the stylish figure she's used to cutting - double thumbs down from the Shan-doggy.    

Our second stop was the Jim Thompson House museum.  An expat silk magnate who popularized the Thai silk industry, Thompson was also a collector of Thai architectural pieces and household goods.  After his mysterious disappearance in 1967 (foul play suspected), Thompson's house was turned into a museum, to compliment his very popular eponymous silk stores all over Thailand.  The tour of the house and gardens was interesting and a nice respite from the crowded city outside.  After the museum, we walked to MBK to cool off and complete our shopping, before heading back to VIE and hitting the pool + cocktails.  Now perhaps we lack imagination, or perhaps the heat was a legitimate excuse, but Shannon and I were of one mind when it came to evening plans, and room service won out over the hassle, heat and bother of going back out into the city.  We had a very nice meal with a bottle of wine, and hit the sack early, in preparation for our morning departure to Ko Phi Phi, by way of Phuket.

Green Elixir

Green chutney might just be the world's greatest condiment.  Mixed with yoghurt and tamarind sauce, it forms the perfect trifecta for any fried food.  On its own, it compliments just about anything, grilled meat, paratha, paneer, you name it.  The champion of sauces, in all it's glory:

Green Chutney

100 grams fresh Coriander leaves (cilantro)

1 tsp chopped ginger

1 tsp chopped garlic

2 green chilis

1 tsp lemon juice

25 grams of fresh mint

1/2 tsp of cumin seeds

1/2 onion

1/2 tomato

Salt to taste

Mix and grind all ingredients in a food processor or grinder.  If liquid is needed, water or plain yoghurt can be added.  Puree and serve.

At Home in Kolkata

After Darjeeling and Sikkim, Shannon and I headed to Kolkata.  I had been wanting to see India's Eastern-most metropolis, in all it's teeming glory, and it just so happened that one of my friends from work, Debdutta, was going to be home for Bengali New Year, so we decided to make a visit of it.  

Shans and I had had about enough of the B-grade hotel action (of course), so we upgraded to the Oberoi in Kolkata, also because it was on some sort of wicked sale at hotels.com and was only costing $130/nt for all of it's 5-star glory.  Arriving there was a balm to my soul, truly.  Beautiful pool, lovely room, great room service, and fabulously attentive staff.  The Oberoi hotel is one of those places where you can get anything you need, promptly and with style - internet access, courier service for the sarees I bought, an amazing spa.  What more could two girls want?

On our first full day, Debdutta picked us up and took us to the Victoria Memorial.  The building and park are beautiful and they had a nice exhibit (with AC!) that gave the history of the city.

  Afterwards, we headed to the India Museum, only to find it closed the day before the New Year.  Darn it.  We'll just have to shop.

We grabbed a quick Bengali lunch and hit the saree shops looking for something for Shannon.  Poor Debdutta was so patient.  But, we were successful!  Shannon got a beautiful Bengali woven silk saree, turquoise and iridescent violet with an openwork flower design woven in pale gold.  Very pretty. I, on the other hand, chose a tussar silk saree, with a traditional design in vibrant turquoise and red.  Not because I need another saree, oh no.  Because it was on sale :).  Kolkata is also famous for its woven cottons, so Debdutta took us to the weavers' shop that her mom buys all of her cotton sarees from.  These are much more affordable than the silk sarees, running the equivalent of $12 to $25 USD.  I bought a few for mom to use as yardage, and 2 for me to maybe someday wear.  They are so beautiful.  I have to admit that all of the patterns and colors bring out a very greedy side of me.  Just the experience of being in the shop and unwrapping all of these unassuming little bundles only to find amazing, bold prints inside, was pretty spectacular.  Shannon and Debdutta got bored long before I did, but lucky for me they're good friends and very patient.  Hot, steamy and tuckered out from our day of shopping, we retreated to "the Obs" and let Debdutta finally go home.  We are indebted in so many ways for the tour guide services and the company.

The following day was the Bengali New Year.  Debdutta's parents were kind enough to invite Shannon and I over for lunch and to meet the family.  Debdutta picked us up at midday and wisked us off to her house, which lies on a street carrying the family name.  Debdutta's father is very involved in state politics, having once been a Member of Parliament (MP) representing Bengal.  Now, he organizes for his party and helps select the candidates that will run for major positions in the government.  Thus, it was a rare occasion for him to be home to meet us.  

It was lovely to meet Debdutta's family.  Her mom made us an amazing lunch: aloo poshto - potatoes in poppyseed curry, huge prawns, fish, Bengali dal - which is sweeter than North-Indian dal, mishti doi - yoghurt sweetened with brown sugar, and rasgullah for dessert.  Needless to say, it was amazing.  Since we were the guests and the youngsters, we ate first, and then chit-chatted in Debdutta's room until her parents finished their lunch.  Bengali New Year is an auspicious day to buy gold for Bengali's, so after lunch, we went with Debdutta to look for some gold jhumki, bell-shaped, traditional gold earrings.  We found some beautiful ones that Debdutta went back and got with her mom later in the day.  Too much fun.  After saying goodbye and many, many thanks to Debdutta, Shans and I headed back to the Oberoi to pack up and hit the spa.  Our flight to Bangkok was at 2am, so we dithered around at the Oberoi for massages and dinner, before heading to the airport around 11.  Bye bye Hindustan, hello Thailand!