Darjeeling, India from 9-29 April, 2010

Darjeeling is one of several hill stations in the West Bengal state of Eastern India, bordering Nepal. Any Indian who can afford to escape the parasitic heat of the plains, Delhi, Mumbaiharu* during the spring before the monsoon does so by coming up here. You can’t even get a seat on a reserve AC train nowadays, and the jeeps up from Siliguri are packed full; young guys even hang off the ladder in the back. I spent three weeks in Darjeeling during April, and I would like to tell you about my experience there, because maybe you want to travel to India, and also some interesting things happened.

* haru is a very useful Nepali suffix meaning “and others;” so “Fulbrightharu” means my friend Emma and her fellow Fulbrighters. “Mumbaiharu” means hot places like Mumbai.

1. Weather

While Siliguriharu are 38º-45ºC, Darjeeling hovers around 20º, a bit warmer in the sun. It rains fantastic many nights, there’s lightning and thunder and terrific winds and it’s just like being in a movie, with sheets of peanut m&m droplets pouring down. It’s like the shower. My house, like all of Darjeeling, was built into the side of a steep hill looking across a valley. On the other side are other villages and in the center a dry riverbed. You can see a dry waterfall, which rushes full during and after the monsoon. Fog comes in the wrinkles of the hill like the wisps of a long beard, unfurled Q-tip, some kind of cloud comma. Low clouds look like a hand clawing over the peaks to take out all the dry. One time there was a big anvil across the valley, over the village opposite my room. I could see black sky with stars on three sides and Zeusian bolts of lightning hitting the ground below. The hills were close enough to see the individual bolts, like a doodle. But on all other sides, black and starry. Rare.

2. Water Carrying Vehicle Accident

One day, maybe Monday the 19^th, I was walking up my road to Chowrasta, the center of town. Maybe I was going to internet or to buy biscuits. Every road is like a bobby pin and very steep. In Darjeeling people are fit from so much walking uphill and down. And when I reached the guest house with the pretty fence, there was a massive crashed water carrying vehicle. It had skidded down the very vertical dirt slope from Chowrasta, probably 40’ above. Where the truck had skidded was clearly visible; fresh and damp dirt smelled summertime and planting, even down to the road, where the pavement was broken away and the pretty fence crushed into the guest house. Glass and rocks and dirt strewed the road. The whole truck was upside down, and inside the cab was shattered glass and the bent steering wheel and decals of Hindu gods and pompoms and maybe that dark stain was blood but maybe not. The very verticle slope continued down the other side of the road and it was beyond remarkable that the truck didn’t just keep on skidding down.

JQA Dollar Coin

The John Quincy Adams dollar coin was released May 16th, 2008. Do you know where you were on that day? Kristin and I were in our last few days of college. I can safely say that it was raining in the northern suburbs of New York City. We remained unaware of this dollar coin's release until March 27, 2010. When did you first discover JQA?

What we like about this coin is mainly just the muttonchops. Neither Kristin and I really count JQA as one of our favorite presidents, but his style is a welcome addition to the US currency.

durham to chapel hill: comparative review of roadways

Rarely have I regularly commuted by a car. For the past weeks, I have been driving daily about an hour round trip from Durham to Chapel Hill.

15 501: this is the main highway that is very convenient to get to from my house. All is well with this one until you get to the part where there is eternal construction, and what I have known for years as The Longest Light Ever at the Garret Road intersection. You might think that is the worst that it gets, but wait until the section known as Fordham Blvd. The woman who owns the farm I'm working at describes this bit of road as Torturous. There's no way to avoid Fordham Blvd., but I find it somewhat more bearable if I avoid getting on 15 501 for as long as possible....

+ Fast in theory....though only if there isn't traffic which is basically never
+ Easier access to other roads like I40, the Freeway etc...
+ You don't really have to worry about deer
+ It's easier to just stay on this road rather than turn off, especially at rush hour on the way back from CH to Durham.
+ there is a conveniently located bojangles
- People are aggressive
- People drive really fast and try to run you off the road
- It's crowded and there are lights and there's always construction
- I'm pretty sure they took down the best billboards which said Walk to Duke/Bike to UNC
- I feel worse about humanity when I am on this road


Erwin Road:
This is a "secret" rural road that goes basically from my house to the start of horrible Fordham Blvd. essentially cutting the amount of time spent on 15 501 in half. I've always known it as Old Erwin, but apparently the street signs just say Erwin. This road is the best because it's scenic, but get this: the speed limit is the same as the majority of the bad part of 15 501. Also, this road has a lot of landmarks on it for me: my middle school, a lot of childhood friends lived off it, and the pool we used to go to in the summer. It is dark and wind-y...one house actually mounted a mirror on a tree across the road from their driveway which I have always thought suggested that tricky and/or dangerous situations have occurred there in the past.

+ so lovely in the sun dappled light of afternoon
+ lots of flowering trees this time of year
+ sights include: my middle school, a church with active wayside pulpit, a horse farm
- lots of deer a night, I'm always terrified of hitting them
- people blind you with their brights nonstop on this road
- I always get stuck behind slow people
- the round-about at the durham end of the road is always nonstop confusing
- it isn't really a secret so sometimes it can be busy

Verdict: why would anyone not take old erwin? my quality of life is so much better after taking that road.

this is as pretty as it gets on 15 501...

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

My friend Carlea has been watching all of AFI's top 100 films, and while I was searching for something vaguely productive to do while it was raining yesterday evening, I took a bit of inspiration from her, and decided that I'd try to watch at least a few of the most famous ones on the list. Particularly the ones that are available instantly on NetFlix.

So, we come to Guess Whos Coming to Dinner (#99), a film about an interracial couple who announce their wedding plans to their parents, none of whom are too terribly pleased to hear it. I'm not sure I can do a really complete review of this film, but I'd like to bulletpoint a few of my thoughts on it, and I hope you'll leave some comments with your thoughts on the film, also, so we can get something a little more cohesive together.

• Katharine Hepburn is pretty much the most amazing woman on the planet. She's just so great. Her costumes in this are fantastic, and she has such a command over the film. Spencer Tracy is also charming.
• Working for a newspaper and an art gallery used to be way more glamorous than it is now.
• If these were my kids, I'd be much more concerned about their decision to get married after knowing each other for two weeks than the color of their skin. I definitely get the sense that they don't really know each other, and I think knowing someone is a pretty big qualification for getting married. Although, things seem to have been different in the late 60s and early 70s. My parents moved in together after only knowing each other for a week, and 30 years later, they're still together.
• Sidney Poitier is almost as beautiful as Katharine Hepburn, and better at conveying emotion. He withholds something very powerful in this film and you can see it nearly brimming from him.
• I was fascinated by the way racism is portrayed in this film as so completely obvious and so completely latent. However, I wonder if it doesn't perpetuate racism somehow by silencing two of the black characters who disapprove of the marriage, instead of allowing them a change-of-heart in the way that Joey's parents are allowed one. I'm not sure how far I can go with that, but I found it noteworthy.
• I believe the film would have been vastly improved by cutting Joey's father's speech at the end by about 10 minutes. If he'd analyzed his own personal racism, and then given his approval, I think it would have been much more effective than giving a plot summary and then his approval.

Holi

Sunday 28 Feb was the biggest day of celebrating the holiday Holi in the Kathmandu Valley. Even though the story of Holi is pretty disturbing, it seems to be a holiday about fun and color and impish mischief. The story of Holi is this: One king of demons, Hiranyakashipu, tried to kill his son Prahlada, but he could not be killed because of his intense devotion to Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu’s daughter Holika had a special shawl that kept her safe from fire; Hiranyakashipu thought that if he wrapped Holika in the shawl, put Prahlada on Holika’s lap and put both children on a pyre, Prahlada would die and Holika would live. Actually, Prahlada’s devotion to Vishnu caused the shawl to fly from Holika to him, and ultimately Holika died and Prahlada lived. Later Vishnu came and killed Hiranayakashipu. (For this information, thank you to the guy on the Pharping bus and Wikipedia.) Maybe the link between Holika dying and women getting water thrown at them is because Holika's faith in Vishnu wasn't strong enough to keep her protected from the fire, and Vishnu is associated with water, or maybe it's because water extinguishes fire. I am not sure. In any case, people of many religions celebrate Holi. This article from the Himalayan Times tells about members of Nepal's Constituent Assembly celebrating Holi.

The whole valley, from Bouddha to my village of Pharping, was full of people throwing water at each other for the past three days. Groups of kids stood around and waited for passersby they could attack with lolas, or water ammo, like balloons and squirt guns or just buckets of water. Some of the water is very dirty or colored with powder or dyes. The colors are actually quite toxic, yet all around town people were covered with powder residue and painted their faces with toxic metallic paints to celebrate. On Friday ago I rode 20km to KTM on a motorbike with my co-worker Phurba and we were pelted with three water balloons. Then Sunday morning in Bouddha, I had litres and litres of water dumped on me, many water balloons thrown, lots of water squirted at me from makeshift plastic water bottle guns, and was freezing and miserable on the 90-minute ride back to Pharping. It was like I had taken a shower. I had wet hair, was soaked through to the skin, wet underneath long underwear and my chuba and my sweater.

I guess Holi is fun--I'd feel like a spoilsport saying it wasn't fun--but actually I was uncomfortable and dirty and then anxious and irritated. Plus, mainly girls are targeted with lolas. In Holi-focused newspaper interviews, people said extreme things, like The government should regulate the selling of water guns or Boys throwing lolas should go to jail. But this type of communal neighborhood raucous activity is endemic to Nepal, and I can't imagine it will change any time soon.