in medias res

I'm going to have to start in the middle of things. I've thought about starting this blog a hundred different times in a hundred different ways. The good thing is that I've waited until I have plenty to say, and I'll have some retrospective commentary for the many parts of this trip that have transpired over the last two months pre-India. But I'll talk about Berlin, Prague, Paris, London, & Edinburgh as though I were still in the middle of these vibrant cities--vibrant in a completely different way from India.

So I'll start with India for now even though many good bits just keep break off from memory as the new experiences draw my attention and interest. To begin discussing my experience here, I'll have to start with bits (the same sort of bits that I'm losing from... Scotland, for instance--like the way full moon came out right at sunset as were on top of Arthur's Seat looking across to the North Sea and Edinburgh Castle and the grass was so soft, remarkably so). Anyway, we are in Chennai-, which is on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu. The first thing I always have to say about this place is that it's hot. It's muggy. Nashville is muggy but pales in comparison. You can get soaked by just leaning away from a fan. It's not just hot though, it's city-hot. The streets here are nothing like Ankara's or even Cairo's.

Since elementary school, I had this image of India: it was of a group of people sort of bustling through the streets. The scene in my mind is dusty but nostalgically sepia-toned and urban but simultaneously quaint, rustic. In this street--actually it's a large dirt road--there are women in saris with baskets on their heads, cows, elephants, beggars, men in turbans, bicycles, kids running around. You know, it's typical romantic, exotic scene. It could have been in the Jungle Book or from an old black-and-white sketch made way back in the day. I've seen plenty of all of these things, except the elephants and the sepia-coloring for all of it. The sun is alway bright, until it's gone. Asad and I were flying a kite up on some rooftops one night and almost caught Chennai in that light, but it wasn't really the shade I'd imagined. Basically, everything here is raw.

The streets are concrete, and I see naked toddlers sitting in them everyday. Cows can be found in the most unexpected places, but most of the time they'll be by a dumpster eating trash and adding a bit of their own to the filth. India's not necessarily a dirty place. In its favor, my stomach has done better here than it did in Turkey, though Turkey was decent gastric preparation. But it can be filthy. That's really all I want to say about that for now. Back to the bits: most women wear saris all the time (Chennai's a conservative city, but while in Bangalore recently I saw many in Western dress--also hearing that some were attacked now and then); English written everywhere alongside the spiraling Tamil script (English is the one common language from one Indian region to the next); train and bus doors are always kept open (standing by the door of the train two-stories high has been one of the best, breezy views of the city I've gotten; normally you have to run alongside the bus to get in or out); red splatter-marks all over walls from paan (Indian chewing tobacco, chewed inside a folded palm-leaf with a mix of all sorts of stuff, like walnuts); eating saucy meals with your hands--correction: your right hand; kids playing badminton barefoot in sidestreets with chickens trotting around between them from one doorstep to another. Most doorsteps have quick but elaborate chalk designs drawn around them, often a crisscrossed diamond or a flowery Star of David with all sorts of extra swirls wrapping round.

Mentioning this one form of decoration/religious ritual brings me to how ornate Hindu society seems to be--and I'll end on this point. They mark much more than their foreheads with red dots and horizontal saffron stripes--which I believe indicate that you're primarily a worshipper of Shiva. Somewhat consistently, they dot statues, rickshaws, walls with double yellow-red pinches of wet powder. Little temples--each with a barrage of iconography from the Hindu canon--dot the city as well. Decoration go wherever they can be afforded it seems. You'll be likely to find paintings or little tiles of the elephant-headed Ganesh on walls at street corners. Trucks are painted with birds, flowers, big-toothed smiling faces, and mysterious eyes. Most of them are covered; it's a very colorful place.
More later on my favorite parts of Hinduism and it effects on living around here. One teaser: Ganesh was the son of Shiva, who was married to Parvati. After leaving her for a long time, Shiva returned to find a boy at his house who told him that he couldn't see Parvati because she was bathing. Of course, Shiva said, "She's my wife, and by the way I'm Shiva." And he cut off the boy's head. When Shiva entered to see Parvati, she first asks him, "Oh, did you meet your son?" Yeah, crap. So Shiva goes out and takes the head off the nearest animal, an elephant, and he puts it onto the body of his beheaded son. This is why Ganesh has the head of an elephant.

As you can see, I like just letting bits and details flow out. Eventually, I will start writing coherent things, but this blog may end up as an outlet for desperate updates for all of my distant--perhaps estranged but simultaneously dear--friends and family out there. This is more than a travel-blog though, I think I'll hold onto this one for a while I think. The title is a reference that I really liked to both the Talking Heads and Miles Davis--again, bits.
Good night, mc