The great Indian wedding

An extended family thing. So, on a fateful weekend, my mom and I reached Mumbai. My brother and his family came all the way from California. And we were treated to the spectacle. .
The bride was beautiful. All brides are beautiful but this one Was particularly beautiful. She wore the traditional red saree. Blood red. With gold embroidery.
The bridegroom looked happy. All bridegrooms look happy.  But this one was exceptionally so.
They’d met through Internet. She is a dentist.
The rest of it was a mix of colour clamour and some pretty bad Bollywood Hindi music. Most of the guests sat and wondered what we were about. But then it happened. The one minute miracle. That gets you dewy eyed and thinking about happiness and lifetimes. The moment when, they looked at each other. And were alone. Together.
Against Bollywood and the world

What a privilege to be there.

Henné 

Magic in 10 minutes 

Too integrated.

There’s something like being too integrated. Right now, that’s how I feel. Between looking for toxoplasma bradyzoites in BRain biopsies, jumping with joy at the strongyloides larvae( I found it!!)  and optimizing plasmodium pcr, Ihave really started liking this place. I like it when they discuss cases with me, like it when they share their lunches, like it when they talk of food , or films or Tuberculosis.
Will be sad when I have to leave.
I suppose my fellow was successful 

 being in a tropical country is like being surrounded by vigorous sounds and smells. Nature seems to express herself uninhibited, unmuted. For example, In Kolkata, we were awakened, every morning, by a particularly vociferous Koel bird, singing away at 300 in the morning.She liked the jackfruit tree in the backyard. This jackfruit tree was laden with fruits and anyone who has  ever smelt a jackfruit, can never forget the aroma.  Flowers have odours too. And very unlike the soft smells of lavender in our canadian streets in summers. Walk down a Mahua tree, and breath in the  intoxicating odour of the mahua flower. literally intoxicating: they do brew a kind of alcohol from these flowers in East India. ( i didn't like it very much, but then again...)

 And  the Sheeuli tree ! Harsingar in hindi, dunno what its called in english. The trees are laden with white flowers with orange centres. What a fabulous, heady smell.And so very distinctive of  autumn. Morning finds the soil around the tree covered with these flowers; we would scoop them up in handfuls. Once, in my linguistic zeal, I asked my friend, Aung si the latin name of this wondrous plant. Aung si, who knew everything, didn't disappoint.
Nyctanthes arbor-tristis. The tree that cries at night. And the flowers on the ground are the tears.
Nice!

Delhi is an old old city. And it’s been the capital for a long long time. Greedy rulers from Central Asia had a habit of  plundering Delhi.  Some would loot, kill, and ride away. Some would stay and rule. And construct. And what’s left of these constructions, is pretty much spectacular
  When we were kids, we used to take Delhis heritage for granted. Walks in Lodhi gardens, playing  hide and seek around 800 year old tombs, driving about roundabouts built around solid,round domed stone monuments, and picnicking in the rose gardens in the ancient ´purana quilla’ (old walled city) were considered normal weekend activities.
 And now, after so many years, One is quite simply fascinated  by them. and how they blend into the city scape. Mughal architect is characterized by ’true arches and domes’  said the school textbook. And so much more. Exquisitely designed stone, almost unravaged by time. Tiles. Carvings. And parrots making their homes in the Stone crevices. Home to the dead  kings and queens of yore. Somehow  a part of the collective unconscious.
Delhi redeemed 🙂

And the war fizzled out. Or rather, transformed  into a  soap opera. Our pilot was captured. Our pilot was released. Mothers all over India wept tears of joy in front of 24 hour exclusive live telecasts on 24 h exclusive live TV channels. All 20000 of them. Abhi is back. God bless . The pakis are bad bad bad but somebody , perhaps Donald trump, drummed some sense into their heads. (And assured his next years sale of  F16 fighter bombs )
And we change channels. An India Australia cricket match. Telecast 24 hour live exclusive on TV.

India won. 

Talk of war with Pakistan. All around. And social media amplifiés things so much that reality starts getting blurred. Ppl talk of the kinds and makes of fighter jets India possesses. In fact we hear these jets flying above. Going somewhere. Whooooom. So big and noisy. It’s a nuclear state and so is Pakistan. Deterrent, restrain, annihilation. Revenge and retribution.

It’s scary at a very practical level. Of course I’d rather not be a part of it. At any level. Even if I think it’s mostly propaganda and populism. War mongering wins elections. And elections are round the corner. Nobody can afford to seem unpatriotic these days.

Hmmm.

Finally a splendid Delhi winter afternoon. The kind I remember from my childhood days.
A warm bright sun, clear blue skies and children playing somewhere in the background. Sitting with a book on our manicured lawn. With the assorted cats of the neighborhood . Why don’t you come to eat ? Calls mom. Because Sunday lunch was special. Almost a ritual. Meat curry and rice. The house was fragrant with the simmering spices. Yummy.and the cats got  the leftovers.

Smog
 embedded envelopped enclosed encapsulated encompassed engulfed enshrined
Shrouded
In
Smog 

Bargain country. 1$. 🙂🙂happy

That’s our macaque in residence at the hospital campus
I meet him on my return almost everyday.
He is tolérated and fed. Something to do with Hanuman I suppose ( that’s the monkey god )
And he has a very red bottom. 

Not to see

Don’t find much to write about in Delhi. Perhaps because it’s a city a know. An administrative city. People come here to work. Earn a living. A goal directed city.  Nobody belongs to this teeming metropolis. Bursting at its seams. Where you are scared of putting your foot on what looks like the street as vehicles come honking from all possible directions with the sole purpose of crushing you into a pulp.
People in and around the hospital look resigned and sad. Throngs of people in Ill assorted clothes. The kind you wear when you take a long long bus from your village to get your child treated in India’s premium institution. I am reading more into it than I should. It’s probably not all that. All the sadness and resignation and parents sitting on sidewalks holding their babies and waiting and waiting.
Actually put on dark glasses and tried to close my ears. Head lowered. Hum a tune. Think about montreal. The trick is To not see.

Fantastic academic setup. Parasite and NDM paradise. I participate. That’s good. And fun.

Not a good post. Will not like it in retrospect.  Sorry

Went to AIIMs. All India institute of medical sciences. It’s huge. Prestigious. And

So many many many many people.
Absolutely overwhelming 

Ganesha

About Ganesha. He is one of the more interesting Hindu deities( there are lots n lots of Hindu Gods;a mixture of the ´pure’ , the pagan , and perhaps the tribal. Not very different from many other religions ). His form is interesting. A man with a head of an elephant , a big belly, 4 hands. His means of transportation is the mouse. It really is. And he likes to eat round yellow sweets called ladoos. Oh yeah. My kind of God. 

When one has an elephant head and a belly,one is liable to be represented in so many ways. Perhaps no other deity has been subject to as many representations.  Ganesha represents bright optimistic stuff. Success. Luck. So he is everywhere. In houses, in temples , on car dashboards, in shops, restaurants.

So much everywhere,that rustam has to know. He is in a taxi cab.  Ganesha looks on with a kind of benevolent resignation. What is that ? My rambling explication of symbolism in religion is not very adapted to the situation. This is Worse than the birds and the bees. Guess I panic. Ganesha is a super-héros, rustam, says the mother improvising unabashedly.  Like Batman Spider-Man and Hulk. Il tue des méchants. How did he get his elephant’s head ? Let’s tell him the truth, it’s always easier. His dad décapitated him by mistake. And then fixed him up with the head of the first being he found. And what happened to the baby elephant?Rustam is sad. Avec Raison. It’s not nice to cut off heads of animals. Oh he grew it back. Regenerated. Like lizards tails ?

Good enough. We talk of lizards. Ganesha smiles on. Benevolently. 

The ridiculous life
Of a VFR

A slightly lyrical post box

Leans to the right. 

Politics here leans to the left.

barks and cascades

Its 11 44 pm. Jetlagged. 

kolkata is not serene or silent. 

Stray dogs. It requires an extension of vocabulary to describe the kinds of sounds dogs are capable of making. Specially when you have about a 1000 of them in a pretty small radius. Sounds as varied as the breeds that make them. Yelps , yodels, howls, woofwoofwoofs?, WOOOOOF, oooooooooooows, aye aye aye ayes.

 The hummm of conversation, quasi constant. The cat(S), almost as varied as the dogs. TV. Car doors. Car horns Peeeeep peeep. A train. A steel plate. Someone somewhere just dropped a steel plate. It clanked. It didn’t break ( i suppose it didn’t, its steel isn’t it) 

And then, this,

Sitar.

Strains of  someone playing the sitar,

The stuff George Harrison played Norwegian Wood on. Ravi Shankar? 

Its Like

Ripples and cascades

Of some mountain stream 

So pretty,

1154. pm. 

goodnight.

Planes are too fast. Like anonymous capsules that spin you into a warp. And suddenly you are breathing a new air.how does one prepare for this ?  Rustam is surprised that ppl are brown and speak the same language that he speaks at home. Fortunately too overawed to ask questions; existential or otherwise . I am surprised at the poster  inciting travellers from Nigeria, Syria, Somalia and Pakistan to vaccinate themselves with the polio vaccine.  A bit too pretentious for what I know to be a dismal health system.
Hired car. Trying vainly to recognize Kolkata at 2 am.  Through constructions, shadows and posters of politicians: Smug,fat and smiling. Till I realize that one can’t recognize a city without the people who make it. A sudden lake ( yes there are lakes in this metropolis) and   the  big fat moon that still looks like  a spoon. THank goodness for Dylan. Restores faith in all kind of things.