New Delhi

Delhi feels like living in a big, grey dome. Today is fairly clear, and from the top of our class room building visibility is maybe a kilometer? Beyond that buildings and trees fade into a ghostly shade of gray that of unbeing. On the streets at night gloating lights glare through the gray until the dark masses of cars, busses, bicycles and three-wheeled auto rickshaws bear down like a horde, honking and schreaching their war-cries of hustle and bustle. The long rickshaw ride to my homestay each evening leaves the inside of my mouth feeling gray and grainy-filthy. This morning I blew my nose and something black came out. Assode from that I am excited to be in India.
After a week of vacation in Arusha, a city at the base of northern Tanzanian mountains, I was antsy, ready to pack my bags and move, excited to reclaim my status as a psuedo-nomad. (This urge almost worries me--what will I do when I return to the states?) The whole group was together again, all piles of bags and bodies, pouring in and out of busses and through security. At a center of the night layover in the Ethiopian International Airport some of us heap ourselves on benches and drink vodka from the bottle, celebrating our return to each other and the freedom of movement.
I can already tell that India will leave its mark on me far more than I will leave my mark on India.

Written 11-25-2009


It is 7:15 on a friday night.
I am riding out of the city center, contorted onto the front bench of the rickshaw with its driver, a 500 Rupi fin no one seems to care about. Half my butt is hanging off the seat and half my knee is hanging out the side. A muslim couple is riding in the back and the goat they shoe-horned in with them breaths warmly on my hand. It is 7:20 on a friday night.
The goat is a sacrificial one, and tomorrow it will be killed and eated, some of the meat given to those who can't afford it in a muslim tradition. But for now ot nuzzles my hand as I hold onto the ricksahw frame, holding myself into the little green three-wheeled vehicle and out of the staccato rush of traffic. I smile.

Written 11-26-2009