Report from my Bro in India

Bangalore, India

Dear everyone,

Greetings from India! The greetings I received myself have included great hospitality and a GI infection. Special thanks to Amy Forren for the medicine she prescribed before I left Charleston. I know it sounds bad, but really it only put me down for an evening and left me at half strength the next day (at least with the antibiotics). The truly unfortunate consequence was that I had to miss our trip to Tirupati, a pilgrimage site about six hours from here. Our first introduction to Hinduism in practice, and I was left here in Bangalore reading books about it. On the upside, the cancellation and the relatively quick recovery makes it much easier to write to you, an opportunity I treasure. If great suffering produces great art, maybe a mild illness will produce a decent letter.

I love India. It’s loud, dirty, chaotic, self-concerned, and I would probably find it unbearable except that I have landed in a remarkable sanctuary: the United Theological College of Bangalore. It’s not that it’s an island of Christianity, although it has that quality. But its walled campus with green lawns, huge trees, and quiet interior provide an escape from the unending assault on the senses that one finds outside. More about the sanctuary later, but first the streets it blocks out.

Sights: mopeds, motorcycles, and three-wheeled moto-rickshaws predominate. And ancient buses. Cars come in between twenty and thirty percent. No lanes, or at least no respect for them. Streets are dirty. Sidewalks are uneven and occasionally broken up. It seems like half this city is under construction or falling into ruin, and you can’t tell the one from the other. People walk in the streets. People stand sometimes twenty feet out into the street to catch the bus. People cross the street through sheer opportunism. No pedestrian right of way. Like the principle that governs the charging foul in basketball, you have the right to the space you are standing on, but if you move….

Sounds: constant honking. It doesn’t express displeasure or impatience, at least not any more often than those emotions may occur while driving. More often, it just says “hey!” or “on your left!” or “coming through!” or “everybody else is doing it, so why not?” Buses roar. Motorcycles putter. They are all in varying states of repair, so no two sound alike. Red lights are a small engine symphony.

Smells: pollution. This is the worst. You can see it coming out of the tailpipes and wafting over the street. You feel it in your lungs like a chest cold coming on, but every day. On the one hand, it makes me think that the air pollution in the States is nothing compared to what most people in the world live with every day. On the other hand, I’m so glad that people back home fight for clean air. And food. Delicious smells of food. There’s very little containment of anything out on the street. Dust, shit, food, trash, poverty, wealth – everything is right next to everything else.

Taste: again, delicious food. This is south India, so it’s masala, sambar, and rassam. Thai cuisine is spicy and sweet, but here they generally keep the two apart: rich, savory, and mildly spiced sauces on rice and sweet drinks on the side.

Touch: we eat with our hands. Plates at my favorite restaurant are a banana leaf, and spoons are only intended to get the food out of the dish. Plop rice down on your leaf, ladle some masala or whatnot onto the rice, mix it up with your fingers, and pop it in your mouth. There’s an art to that last part: once you have a fingers-full of food, you twirl the wrist while pushing up with your thumb. The food is so good and the eating so natural, we do it fast. Swirl, mix, sweep, and eat, then choose another color/taste and put it on the palette. It’s like eating a Jackson Pollack painting while it’s being painted. Servers come by to replenish whatever you run out of, and you wash up with a bowl of hot water and lemon. The check comes in a bowl of cumin seeds and small chunks of sugar (for fresh breath and good digestion). All you can eat, 75 cents. That helps with the digestion, too.

Mind: India has the reputation for bringing up a lot that has nothing and everything to do with India. I know it’s a silly coincidence, but every time I type India, my word program offers up “Indiana University” as an autoformat option. Just press “enter” and my alma mater and home appears on the page. But I think it’s really the self-concern of this place that brings up the issues. So many worlds out there on the street, all exposed and none belonging to me, that it prompts self-reflection. It reminds me of wilderness where so much life is right there but not particularly for me, at least not any more than it is for anything that might come along. Thailand was very much for me and us: a well-developed tourist industry, an easy understanding of my needs and wants with proficient provision for same, a strong national identity that could present a unified front, a concerted performance in a continuously running theater of experience. Every once in awhile I could see behind the scenes. Walking along the side streets of Phra Nakhon I could see into the living rooms of the unairconditioned, street level apartments. In the heat of the early evening, the denizens would open their doors, close the metal gates in front of them, sit in their chairs and watch television. No mysterious Orient here. Such as these have to be the nicest people that development sent into atrophy. Taiwan was not so much for me and us. Actually, there was a very small, formalized, exquisitely deliberate self-presentation that we faced and lived with. But you don’t just “get” the culture just because you are there and have paid whatever you paid to get there. It just doesn’t work that way. Quick and full self-exposure is a mark of immaturity in Taiwan, something associated with children. And here in India? (My computer asks, “how about Indiana University?”) Hmmmm.

I don’t mean to tease, but I’ve only been here a week and I think it would be better if I let the rest of my reflections sit. The schedule should be a bit easier here, so I like my chances for a second letter before I leave India. And oh, it’s 12:40, I’m hungry, and I just got a whiff of something fantastic out the window. Bon appétit to you, too.

Take care, I miss you much, I love it here and will love being back there, ’til then,

Love,

Kerry