How did I chance upon this treasure?

This is probably the most beautiful short story I have ever read. I will be truly blessed if one day, I could write anything as remotely beautiful as what Chekhov has achieved here. Hopefully one day I will.

About Love, by Anton Chekhov

.....

I also remembered. Another most beautiful short story if Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited. Another one to aspire to...

बोलिए

बंद करें इंटरनेट को, बहुत हुआ,

और पढ़ कर भी क्या करना?

ख़बरों में भी कितनी रूचि रखना?

सब फ़िज़ूल की चर्चा जो है

कुछ मन-गड़ित रचना भी है 

और फिर, मन को कितना दहलना 

रेप-ओ-फ़रेब का ज़माना जो है।   

और यह जान, जिस निहत्थे ने 

अपने विकलांग बच्चों के समक्ष, 

जो ना-पैदाइश, फ़रमाइश से हैं अपाहिज, 

अपनी जान खोयी थी, क्या बदला है?

आज भी उन्ही, बेनाम दलों की

आपसी मुठभेड़ की टीवी पर चर्चा है

कुछ मीडिया की टीआरपी से, 

कुछ आपके खून के उबाल से, 

संशोधित यह सारी समस्या है।

कानूनी इदारों का अस्तित्व अभी भी 

न्याय का मुखौटा बनाये रखना है। 

हर किसी के जानिब से सुनने में आया है

यही सब चलता था और चलते रहना है। 

जुर्म-ए-गुज़िश्ता का 

जन्म-जन्मान्तर दोहराया जाना है। 

अपनी बेवकूफ़ी का परिचय

हर शख़्सियत को हक़ से जताना है।

पर सच्च बताएं, कब तक यही चलते आना है?

जब सब सुर-संगीत बे-राग हो जाए?

दिलों की नज़ाकत मसल-कुचल दिया जाए?

नदियों-नहरों को अमिट सियाही पा जाए?

और नफ़रत-ओ-खून बस लाज़मी हो जाएँ?

बोलिए, कब तक यही सब सहना है?

कार्तिक अग्रवाल 

The worried mind.

In the solitude of this night,
my love, in the flicker of the fire.
In the misery that is our circumstance,
there is a gentle romance.

We have but one another,
amongst this, the smoldering ember.
and in this lonesome nadir my heart yearns,
for your mellow whisper.

The softness of your touch,
your resting glance---how it rested,
the world out wide had felt, in that moment,
all yours and all mine.

Your sweet blessed scent,
that had traveled past the seems,
of your tresses; my world has not known
the joy, in forever since.

And the time we curled up,
I had lain over your timid frame,
your world must have seemed, so certain,
but I had felt the same.

In the great span of the stars,
that dot the desert of the night sky,
uncertainties, that haunt our simple minds,
are drawn plain, I'm sure.

The night may yet deepen,
but the darkness will soon surrender,
a new dawn will come arisen, as it must,
and our hearts left tender.

Kartiek Agarwal


UPDATE: I had written this poem because the worry of searching for post-doctoral positions had become too burdensome. After coming close, but not getting a postdoctoral fellowship in many top places, I became extremely dismayed. All this was exacerbated by the fact that when I was traveling around all these places, some at the last minute, I did not have my wife physically present to comfort me. Such is life. But as the poem says, troubled times always wade over. I'm more than excited now to be going to Princeton for my post-doc---and this was anyway my top pick to begin with! :)

Fall on the White Mountains.

पुर-कशिश हैं इन पत्तों में

गुलों के रंग भरे

अरमाँ होते हैं पत्तझड़ के भी 

बहारों में बुने
(कार्तिक अग्रवाल)

پر کشش ہیں ان پتوں میں 

گلوں کے رنگ بھرے 

ارماں ہوتے ہیں پتجھڑ کے بھی 

بہاروں میں بنے 

(کارتک اگروال)

(Loose translation)

With such grace, these leaves

are now painted in the color of roses. 

The ambitions of the fall,

are, after all, woven of the spring.
(Kartiek Agarwal)

Relax-max rambling.

Q1. How do you lead a stress-free life? How do you become fucking zen?  How do you have a heart rate of 55 all the time, any time? How do you control your temper, needs, desires?  Yet, all these things---greed, desire, need, stress---have lead and continue to lead to growth. Is growth achievable without stress? Maybe. You could avoid growth, but that would lead to decay. Or you could grow as much as you can without stress. But the modern world doesn't exactly allow you to grow without stress. Another way is to love, love much. Think of that person you love most and just hope, want, wish to see them happy. Imagine them happy. If you can, go hug them tightly, and know that they exist, and that the existence of such love is happiness in itself. But love only so much that you let them be themselves; even if it means that they occasionally do things you don't agree with.

Q2. How to grow balls? Because balls are very useful, colloquially speaking, and sometimes literally. You can't please everyone. Balls help you overcome the desire to do so. You can't make everyone like you, respect you, and appreciate you. And it's not necessary for them to. You don't need it. But do you really not need it? Do you really not want that person, who disrespected you other day, in one way or the other, to have thought a little more about how you might have felt about it, and how it had ruined your day? That's why, it's good to grow balls. And then, once you do that, you may realize, that it was never about you. It was all about someone else's bad day in life. And someone else's bad day at work. And sometimes, it's because you were actually in the wrong and you really deserved it. It's also good to laugh at yourself more often. It can make growing balls easier. And it's also just better that way. And no matter what, don't stop being kind, even if you've grown loads of balls.

Q3. How can you respect everyone? How can you be more humble, not like humble-out-loud for everyone to see, but really, humble-in-the-head, deep-down-in-the-soul kind of humble? How can you be kinder? How can you hurt less? Sometimes, it seems, that knowledge and humility are incompatible with one another. The more you learn, the more you deign down upon those who cannot learn. And yet you have this zeal, this want to learn which you cannot and should not tame either. Humans are born out of and live by their condition. You are no better than someone who can't get abstract math. Tell yourself that, a few times, until it begins to sound as obvious as it should have always been. What if they just weren't born with the brain chemistry that allowed them to do so? And what if they never got the help that you got growing up to be what you are now? How are you better than them, then? Find that person. Who loves, gives, learns, with the best that they were given; and who definitely cannot comprehend abstract math. That person you admire, is what will make you know what true humility feels like.

Q4. How to want? You do not know, often, what you want. And what you need. And you confuse the two. Often, you just want what they want. And sometimes they want what they cannot get. Want what is true, sublime, pristine and forever. Because wanting well is living well. And want happiness for others, especially for those who want it for you too. And want for those who do not have what you have; because that's the hardest sometimes, to fulfill.

Q5. How to get high? Because everyone gets high in some way or the other and the body needs it too. You feed on vicarious pleasure, or you feed on a drug. Maybe something innocuous like food. Or you breathe. Because you're used to it. So why not do it properly? Wake up early morning. Do some yoga, or go on a run. (I know, bloody hard.) And then when you're done, breathe. Do some pranaayaam. And then, finish it off with bhastrika. Take in a long, long breath, so long you feel the top of your lungs bursting with air. And exhale sharply, forcefully. Repeat as many times as you can. Hopefully 100-200 times. Unlike other things that help you think, like coffee and cigarettes, this actually lowers your heart rate; and the absolute control and calm of mind you achieve is, quite inexplicable. You're happier too. It's a high, totally. So avoid coffee. It kills. Reject tobacco. It kills much faster and it's disgusting anyway.

And remember, all of the above needs a constant effort to implement. Until, of course, hopefully, it will become second nature. And then, you're probably Zen. 

Portland, Maine

We went to Portland this weekend. Weren't sure where else to go. But it turned out to be a unique visit in itself. The town has the most beautiful ocean smell coming through all the time and eating fresh oysters (poor Saloni doesn't know what she misses out on!) in the salty ocean breeze has its own charm. It's also a very touristy town so the parking rates are a bit excessive. For all the tourist interest, surprisingly, it's not a very well maintained town. The same red brick buildings that look great in Cambridge don't look so good here because there is hardly any variety in the architecture to make the red of the bricks pop, and besides, the red is more often a dull sooty color that reminds you how old they are. But still. I cannot forget the smell of the salty breeze, the white wine and the beautiful variety of oysters. It's totally a life anyone could get used to.

IMO, oysters are seriously the best thing the ocean has to offer. 

Red-brick Portland. 

Saloni in Portland.

Ferry ride begins!

We left pretty late, so we didn't have much time to wander around the town. The most popular thing to do there is to take a ferry ride to the nearby islands. This we did, and we got some magnificent photographs of the place from the ferry. It helped that there was a massive thunderstorm. A little bit of disaster is always great for making things a little exciting, after all. I mean, ideally the boat should have sank, and we should have managed ourselves back on a lifeboat. But the storm was a decent outcome. I was actually a bit surprised by the reactions of some of the people to the lightning strikes. Maybe they were drunk, but somehow I got the feeling that this was new to them. My reaction to it was blasé, but then that is my general disposition in life. They were certainly not comparable to the ones that struck on a regular basis while I was there for a year in Singapore as a kid.

The storm from the ferry. 

The Storm again. 

Also, we loved the sea-gulls. Very animated birds that cackled away. Some more shots from the ferry:

Taken over the ferry. I spent a lot of time clicking photos of the storm. And during all the clicking and viewing the storm through the lens, this super well placed, (probably) super gorgeous woman suddenly appeared in the frame and I thought to myself," I better not screw this up." This has got to be the best photo I've ever taken, and possibly will ever take. I mean, what the hell. It's just so vivid, proportioned and yet maintains a sweet somber tone. The best part I like about it is the green deck. Where do you get that? It adds a completely new color to the photograph. The only thing I dislike is the red life-saving thingy on the right. That could be cropped out, but ideally, I think, it needs to be selectively toned down in brightness in something like photoshop.

These waves were pretty cool. This train of a dozen or so wave-crests was actually very stable and long-lived. However, I did not manage to see any solitons. that were as long lived as these wave trains. Is it possible that this train of crests can be described as a system of interacting solitons that somehow stabilize each other? Will have to think of it more carefully...   

Also a note on the car: Ford Fiesta is a decent drive. But it's got to be the ugliest car inside and out. I so wish I get to try out a Mazda on the next rental. That's the one I dream of, every day, a Mazda3.

Trip to see the stars.

Because of my driving itch, we made an impromptu plan to escape Boston on Saturday night and go to some place where we could see the stars. This has been, for some time now, a dream of mine---ever since I saw a clear sky in Aspen, I've been wanting to go to a place where I could truly see the Milky Way. And luckily Saloni buys into this dream.

Light Pollution map around Boston (lower right corner). The first bit of purple is where Mt. Sunapee State Park is. 

 A light-pollution map we found on the web showed that Mt. Sunapee in NH is the closest place in Boston to a truly dark sky; well, darker than Aspen anyway. Mt. Sunapee is just about an hour and a half drive from Boston, although I could care less about the drive time :) We quickly hashed up the ideal plan: 0) Buy torchlights. 1) Reach Mt. Sunapee by 9 PM. 2) Park the car and climb up the Summit by 11-ish PM. 3) See the stars, photograph them, whatever. 4) Climb down and sleep in the car, or, my pick, "Dexter's Motel" (going with the eerie-night theme). (More on the serial killer reference later on.)

I asked for an economy sedan and but since AVIS was out of economy sedans, they gave me a much larger premium sedan: a Chevy Impala. This wasn't a good thing actually because, as it turned out, this car sucks. Not that the Subaru Legacy or Chevy Cruze are amazing, but the Impala just has no muscle whatsoever. I felt like I had to murder the accelerator to maintain speed climbing up the hilly highways in NH. The transmission felt like it was always lagging behind. (Apparently this isn't too uncommon with automatic transmissions; drivetrain losses are much higher and the actual torque on the wheels can be much lower than the manual version of the same car, see link! Besides, it almost feels like a handicap to not be able to change the gear when you hear the engine moan.) And the car had only ever run 7500 miles. That said, the drive overall was OK. It was clear weather all the way and the people in this part of the country were more cautious about the speed limit. This meant that I never felt forced to drive much above the speed limit. But it also meant that we often came across slowpokes who couldn't drive 5 mph above the speed limit and had to be constantly overtaken. But this, I enjoy.

No lights, anywhere. 

Spookfest.

Back to the actual trip. When we reached Mt. Sunapee, things got a bit complicated. There's a very long winded road with a max speed limit of 15 MPH that drives you to its gates. It is absolutely unlit and it doesn't help that at that time of the day, the place is almost entirely deserted. You cannot see any signs because the roads don't have reflectors and this made everything more confusing. I even ended up driving on the wrong way for a minute (on this super slow road) or so before turning back.

Anyhow, we managed to find a (fucking huge) parking lot in the State park. It was also super eerie. Again, imagine begin in an area where the human density is like 1 person every 1000 acres of space. And then you see an empty trailer. And you shit your pants, maybe just a wee bit. The whole idea of being in a nearly deserted mountain forest with a primarily (at least, in my imagination) white population was driving me a bit insane; probably because the only previous experience I had had of this kind of a scene was from watching serial killer shows. (I must say, I create an eerier atmosphere in my own imagination just to get a kick out of the whole thing.)

Since we didn't feel like venturing out so much, we drove higher up on a unpaved road until we found another tinier, and also empty parking lot that seemed to be at the apex of where we could go with our car. Now, in an ideal world, we would have got out and hiked up the summit in the pitch darkness. But honestly, it just didn't seem like a safe thing to do; there were all kinds of animal sounds, at some point I even heard a woman shriek from god-knows-where, and so we ultimately decided that it didn't make sense to do this in the night unless we'd done the hike in the day time once before so that we knew what to expect from it. And so we got, and ventured just a little bit to see if we could get some nice images of the stars.

North Star, possibly?

Big Dipper. 15 second exposure; Aperture f1.8.

And, sadly, we really couldn't see the stars so well. I mean, yes, there were a bunch of stars, but you definitely could not tell how they shaped the Milky Way. The real downer was that, of all the days we could have come to this place, we came on a full moon night. This is a complete no-no for star watching. The only things we managed to see was the North Star (ughh) and the Big Dipper (ughhhh.) But we still learned something! When you look at the image real close, you realize that one of the stars in the Big Dipper is actually 2 stars. (In fact, they are totally 6 stars that grouped into 2 chunks that from the naked eye look almost like just 1 big star.) When we searched about it online, we realized that in ancient Indian astronomy, these stars are known as Vashishth and Arundhati; representing a man and a woman; and one of the things they say in Sanskrit during the Hindu marriage ceremony (which we mostly don't understand) is that a husband and wife should be close like these two stars. Sweet! We then ended up feeling too lazy (and cheap) to go find a motel so we slept in the car. It was actually a pretty decent sleep surprisingly.

Waking up in the deserted Mt. Sunapee.

Getting breakfast. 

In the morning, we woke up at 8ish, got breakfast, went not the hike that we were supposed to do in the night. The peak had a nice view of Lake Sunapee. We were too lazy to go beyond the peak to this hilly lake called Lake Solitude. It looked pretty good in photos, and with a name like that, I should've been more into going there, when I come to think about it. Nothing like a bit of solitude and a good smoke (ah pleasures which I sadly cannot enjoy anymore).

Hike up to the summit in the morning. 

Red cherries.

Blue cherries.

Close to the apex!

Apex!

Me giving new meaning to "layers of clothing". The hill climb was nice but I clearly need to do more to get into shape. 

Great view from the top. 

Chilling....

Fiddling with the camera to get focus on the little things I forget what they are called. 

Climb up. Ride down. 

A little scary. Unnecessary-wind-on-the-balls moment. 

Fire when we were coming back to Boston. No one was hurt, according to the news. 

First Road trip: Visit to Williamstown.

I got my drivers' license finally! It was about time I got down to learning how to drive and getting my license; I'm 26 now after all! I took 5 hours of lessons and by the end of them, I was pretty confident about driving. Still, I was really nervous about the road test and actually did not sleep well that night. But I couldn't have nailed the parallel park and 3-point/K-turns at the road test any better. I only wish they could have given me a grade on that exam which would have nicely stroked my ego :P  The only complaint I have is that nearly every car in the US is automatic-shift, which means I still can't drive if I had to in Europe or India. Something has to be done about this.

I was itching to drive all week after I had cleared my exam on Monday. I couldn't stop smiling for a whole hour after the exam. Every car that passed me, felt like it deserved to be driven by me. So when the weekend came, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a car and go out. There were two choices. Williamstown which has the Clarke Institute that was temporarily showcasing a massive Van Gogh collection vs. another nearby town where you can have fun rafting over tough rapids. Because I just admire, adore and literally worship Van Gogh so much, and the collection was only temporary, it had to be Williamstown.


About the drive: 1) I really enjoyed driving in the suburbs of Boston and Massachusetts in general. When the roads are empty and you cruise along slowly, it's very relaxing. And the whole place is just so goddamn beautiful around summer. I bet driving in the fall would be even better. 2) Highway driving is tricky. There was a time when I drove at 95 mph on a near empty highway. The max speed was 65 mph and I still got tail-gated. People are passive-aggressive pieces of shit. Lesson learnt. Drive on the 2nd lane always and drive max 10 + the speed limit. If people wanna drive faster, they can pass me from the left. It doesn't save you all that much time anyway.

My first real-life parallel park. I actually nudged the car behind me but luckily no damage was done. Just when I has escaped without anyone noticing, a guy pulled up right next to me, and asked me to bring down my window. I thought he was going go off with, "You won't get away with it! I saw you!" Instead, he said, "Great going, I totally didn't think it was possible to make that one." How fucking sweet. First attempt at something and instant validation. If only life in general was so validating like that.

About the Van Gogh exhibit: It was absolutely worth the 3 hour drive. There are almost 60 original paintings at the exhibit that have been put together by requesting museums all across Europe and North America. You could actually see his development as an artist, his mental state across different stages of his career through the paintings there. Two of his best paintings, the Potato Eaters and Starry Night weren't up for display, however; for those, you have to go to MoMA in New York. Another favorite of mine, the Bedroom was also not there; that's at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Old People!

The wife!

About the people there: One word, old. Most of them were retired, senior citizens. I guess Williamstown is a rich peoples' retiring place in the middle of nowhere. But this also meant that they were often very knowledgeable. Although Saloni and I would've have preferred chatting with younger people, it was still fun talking to the old lady who quickly dismissed Van Gogh's paintings by saying, "they're all so eerie and sad, ugh, I hate them." Haha. There were also some weird pretentious people talking about angles and lines. Fuck them, I thought, they don't get shit. Van Gogh is pure emotion on canvass.                                                                  

You don't need to analyze the angles of lines to know when someone's heart was poured out on a piece of paper. IMO, every beautiful work of art will evoke a feeling of sublimeness in the heart of someone who is capable, perceptive, able to feel. There's got to be a universality to it, I'm sure of it. For me personally, just the ability to be `this' close to something that a person as beautiful as Van Gogh created over 100 years ago is worth it. Yes, perhaps I know I have a tendency to go a little overboard in expressing my admiration for certain people/things. But there are only so many things in the world that can feel sublime and these must be cherished.

We bought a book that details the complete artworks of Van Gogh!!!

As Van Gogh said, "It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done." If there is something that makes you feel that it is sublime, then it must be converted to love and the emotion cherished, because it can make you become better and achieve something you couldn't have otherwise, not without being driven by that emotion, that belief in the beauty of what you are doing. For instance, when it comes to science and research, I cannot commit myself to a project until I feel for myself that it is, in some way, sublime and beautiful, and that it must be done; and when I feel this way, it is the most wonderful feeling in the world. I think this is what Van Gogh refers to. (And I will not complain about the times my advisor asked me to publish something I didn't think was worth it. And so I didn't.) "you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and..."

Best parking ever. How you ask?

I was actually going up the road on the right. I proceed to then to put the car in reverse gear. I performed a U-turn in reverse along with a 90 degree turn to get the car parked on the right (in black). Fuck yeah!

Oh, and we also went to visit the Andy Warhol exhibit in the nearby Williams College Museum of Art. Andy Warhol is a peevish nutter. His drawings remind you of one those guys you knew who had a great quirky sense of sexual humor. Is it art? Sometimes. I mean, of course, there's a lot of original thought and contribution which is undeniable there. This exhibit was a lot about his initial illustration work. Many quirky things. Fat overly sexual fairies. (A lady standing next to us just burst out laughing sooo bad when she saw that exhibit.) Short stories about aliens and toads and such... The guy clearly had an overactive imagination...

India trip thoughts.

Every time I `visit' `home', I feel differently about India. And so it seems worthwhile to write down my thoughts; so that maybe 10 years from now, I read this and think, it's interesting that I thought this way...

1) There were two defining features of the India trip this time. For one, I was going to get married and that was really the major story of the visit, and second, I was going to go to my real home, in Delhi, and not the temporary place down south (Chennai) where my parents have moved to for my dad's work. It is impossible to feel at home in the south of India where you have to use English to get around because the local language is not even in the same broad category of languages as is Hindi! (Hindi, like Sanskrit, belongs to the Indo-European language family; Tamil, and other southern indian languages, are not based on Sanskrit---they are Dravidian languages which is an independent family of languages.)

2) This time I felt like I was `visiting' India, instead of going home. I've become too ensconced in my American existence. A lot of my Indian colleagues are far more attached and they miss India all the time. Honestly, I never felt this way. I was happy to assimilate into life in America and make friends from all parts of the world and learn about their cultures etc.. (That said, I don't think others feel the way I do; most foreigners in America, including Indians, tend to be pretty cliquish and hang out with people from their own country/region. So having a friend group often just boils down to having a group of friends primarily from your own community which is a bit sad.) And I had begun to feel really at home in America. So much so, I felt a bit nervous about going back home this time. Truth be told, I always despise changes and that probably added to the nervousness. But then I saw the Lotus Temple from the airplane window and when, upon entering the airport I saw, "भारत में आपका स्वागत है।" ("Welcome to India"), I ended up with a huge lump in my throat. When I saw the Babu at the immigration counter and knew he wouldn't ask me jack-shit when I showed him my Indian passport, I felt like hugging him. India will always be home, after all. 

 3) Racial remarks/intolerance etc. While we waited to receive my cousin-didi (who was flying in from the US) at the airport, we saw a black guy come out with an Indian muslim lady. There were some big oohs and ahs, and some muslim folk (identifiable by their Saudi garbs) started laughing. Pretty sad. Then, as my cousin came out, she rolled her eyes (a distinctively american trait) describing how she saw a white girl traveling solo (in particular, without any male friend) and blogging, "And the adventure begins!". We laughed about it, wryly.   

4) Religious intolerance, etc. I had forgotten how it was totally OK to make fun of muslims or sardaars, or baniyas, or south indians, with any random person, even the muslim, sardaar, baniya or south indian etc. on the street. It began on the ride back home from the airport, and, at first, it felt like a sudden shock to the system. I think it was the posters of the much-popularized ``Yoga divas" (``Yoga day") that triggered it. Someone mentioned how people were beginning to celebrate Yoga around the world, but muslims in India are opposing it because it is ``Hindu". Lots of bad blood was subsequently spilled. The Sardaar taxi driver joined in gleefully in the muslim bashing. I will add though that I still think that Indians, on an average, are actually far more religiously tolerant than westerners despite the occasional unpleasant mouthing-off which, to be fair, is done in a way to pass time more than anything. When shit gets serious though, it can be bad, especially in the villages. 

5) Food. For some time now, I had begun telling people that Indian food in restaurants in America isn't all too different from Indian food in restaurants in India. I think I had lost my mind. Food simply cannot taste as good as it does in India. Going to the Sardaar meat shop in Sector 13 market and getting hariyali/patiyala shahi kababs reminded me of what flavor is. Unbelievably flavorful food. And just the awesome feeling of going at 6 am to get fresh Cocount water from the neighborhood market, or the mixed fruit juice squeezed right in front of your eyes, which costs less than 60 cents a `pint' and comprises lychees, pineapples, mangoes, pomegranates, sugarcane, apples and bananas---that's unbeatable stuff, especially if you pair it with the time spent laughing along/at the old folks performing "laughter yoga" in the nearby park.

Morning. Time to go get groceries. View from home sweet home. 

A good life is incomplete without the daily morning dose of freshly squeezed fruit juice. 

6) Birds. Why don't we see any birds in American cities? I don't know, but I found myself a bit shocked seeing swarms of pigeons and parrots and koels. And then I realized I hadn't seen swarms of flying birds in a while. We also had a very angry pigeon nesting outside the bathroom window; this made pooping a somewhat unpleasant experience because the guy just couldn't stop giving you the "I'll kill you if you hurt my babies" look while you did the deed. Should have gotten his picture. 

7) North-western India vs. Northern India. I never thought it, but there's a huge difference, and I got to see this when I went to visit Saloni's relatives in Jaipur. North-western India is distinctly more conservative, vegetarian and anti-alcohol than `northern' India. And, for a change, a lot of the prominent architecture is of Hindu origin. Unlike the north, with Punjab, Haryana, U.P. (but not so much Himachal), where the Mughal conquest led to the near-complete razing of Hindu monuments (and subsequent establishment of Islamic ones on top of those) the north-west was always well-protected because of the powerful Hindu Rajput (literally meaning, "sons of rulers") rulers. And so Hindu monuments and forts etc. survive. (A lot of Rajput monuments are now in Pakistan, however.) I also thought that the inner cities, which are typically very dirty in India, were much better here in Jaipur than they are in Delhi or U.P. in general. I was pleasantly surprised; I certainly did not expect this.

Jaigarh Fort courtyard.

View looking into the city from the courtyard in the previous pic.  

Rajputana Hindu temple

More birds! 

8) Family. I always put my work first. And family second. My dad made me so. But this time, for the first time, I truly realized what makes India home. And it's family. Everyone, my cousins, my bua-fufajis, maama-maami, tauji-taiji made Saloni and my wedding possible, and so special. Just that ability to go and meet them and have chai and chat. Life in America is, in this regard, lonely.

9) Driving is not fun in India and this is one of the first things you notice after living for a while in America. And also the first thing you notice when you come back to America. "Fuck! Cars can drive in straight lines!!! My god, this land is so fucking beautiful"

Exhibit A: Driving in the middle of the road. 

Exhibit B: Who's "lane" is it anyway?  

Exhibit C: Q. Why did the Sardaarji decide to stand in the middle of the road? A. To avoid being hit by a car.  

10) There are so many more lounges and pubs in Delhi now.  We had a great time in a nautical-themed lounge called "the Vault". I was itching to smoke a hookah, but I refrained.  There were a lot of really smartly dressed young couples---a lot of PDA---heck, I even saw a couple kissing on the streets! Who would've thought that could happen in India!

11) I missed traveling on trains in India.

The (hideous) New Delhi railway station. 

This somewhat-shy baby girl kept us entertained. Her hair was actually brownish-blonde! I guess it will turn dark soon. 

12) Pollution/Filth. This time I focussed on this aspect of life in India. Filth actually doesn't bother me as much; I don't think it's that dirty in most places. Other than U.P., of course, which, sadly, is really really filthy. A huge hoopla had been made of the air pollution in Delhi this time by a few writers in the NYT for instance. I can see the reason why. While the air in the residential areas is pretty clean in Delhi, on highways, it can get pretty bad. Old trucks are apparently the biggest culprit.  Then there is the massive traffic congestion and honking and so on...

13) Final thoughts. And questions. What makes me not want to go back to India? In one sentence? There's just this general worry about not being able to truly fulfilling life's potentials in India. There's the lack of better career-related opportunities, the lack of freedom to just quietly drive out to a beautiful place for a trek or joy trip, the lack of earnings to enjoy regularly traveling or vacationing as you want... All that said, this time I felt very differently about India. I felt a longing for the land I hadn't felt in a long long time. And how about having lots of friends and family around? The importance of this just cannot be overstated.

Alas, one cannot have everything in life. As Rumi said (translated from Persian to Hindi),"joh bhi hoga apni asl se judaa, hoga wasl-e-kheesh uska muddaa".