Fulbright: Week One

 

With tabla maker Ustad Hazi Ishtiyaq Khan (right)

          

  

                                    

   

   

  Bedroom in Hauz Khas (pre-move) 

                                            

         

                                                                     

           Lodi Garden at sunset

 

Today marks a week since my first full day in India. And what a week it has been. Yesterday morning I left the Taj Ambassador in Khan Market, where I'd spent the previous seven nights in relative luxury, loaded everything into a taxi, then hauled all my bags (including freshly acquired tabla) up three flights of stairs into my new apartment in Hauz Khas. The apartment is incredible. Somehow it even feels like an upgrade from the Taj. The landlords, Anil Kumar and Urmil Jain, are pretty much the sweetest people ever and care about making us feel at home. We really lucked out.

I say we because I have a roommate here. His name is Kyle. Kyle is a Ph.D. Candidate in anthropology at the University of Washington. He does research on caste at Karni Mata--the Temple of Rats--in Deshnok, some 30 km outside of Bikaner, in rural Rajasthan. Like me, his sponsoring institution is located in Delhi, so he is obliged to live here, but he plans to spend most of his time in Rajasthan, once Fulbright permits him to travel there. Turns out we arrived on the same flight from Chicago last Wednesday. We met separately with USIEF staff on Thursday and they suggested to each of us that we look for apartments together. I had reservations, only because in my mind's eye I had pictured myself living alone (and I didn't know Kyle from Adam). He apparently had similar reservations, but after five minutes chatting on the phone we agreed to look for a 2-br in South Delhi together.

Good thing we did, because we struck real estate gold. We fell in love with the first apartment the USIEF realtor, Himanshu, showed us. Over the past decade the owners have only rented to Fulbright scholars, and the property sat empty for the entire pandemic til now. Neither of us could have afforded something so spacious and luxurious on our own, but together it fit well within our budget. The rest of the search felt like a formality--Himanshu was obliged to show us other rentals in other neighborhoods, but we were sold as soon as we saw the Hauz Khas apartment and it became the standard for comparison henceforth. One of the apartments, the second, was quite depressing. Couldn't imagine living there for a single week, let alone nine months. A few were perfectly adequate but in no way exciting or inspiring. It felt fated that Kyle and I would choose the Hauz Khas apartment. If we hadn't taken it, the next Fulbrighters to come along certainly would have. I can't imagine a better spot, and Hauz Khas is an excellent neighborhood. We're walking distance to Gulmohar Park (where we can walk and jog amongst greenery), Deer Park metro station, and the Hauz Khas Market (where we can find more or less any food we desire and then some). It turns out Himanshu and the Jains are quite close after all these years working together. As we sat around working out lease details it had the feeling of a family reunion more so than a business transaction. Even after calling off the search on Saturday, we spent several days making copies, working through paperwork, and getting everything in order for the move. The Jains had workers hanging wallpaper and bringing in furniture and appliances right up til the last moment. They were still fixing electrical issues as we settled in yesterday morning.

My nervous system is finally settling, which basically means I'm just exhausted now. Arriving in India after almost two years on the covid hamster wheel felt like being shot out of a cannon. All of a sudden things are happening again, and at lightning speed. India is nothing if not energetic, and Delhi embodies that buzz full throttle. After working through the jet lag, dealing with various arms of Indian bureaucracy, and moving into the apartment, I feel as if my whole being can now exhale. I've started to put out feelers on the research front, beginning with a remote workshop on kathak accompaniment offered this weekend by  Yogesh Samsi, a renowned tabla player and teacher in Mumbai. More on all that soon. For now, I have everything I need to rest and continue settling into my new life in Delhi: beautiful tabla crafted by Ishtiyaq Khan in Tilak Nagar, a handmade Kashmiri silk rug on which to practice said tabla, a new friend and roommate, and above all, a comfortable, spacious apartment to call home for the duration.

A few sites from Islamic Delhi

Lodi Gardens (Tomb of Sikandar Lodi)

 

Jama Masjid

Safdarjung's Tomb

                         

A full recap of week one will have to wait until after I move into my new apartment in the Hauz Khas neighborhood of South Delhi on Wednesday. A lot has happened this week. In the meantime, here are views from Lodi Gardens, Jama Masjid, and Safdarjung's Tomb. These three sites bookend the Mughal period in North India. Lodi Gardens actually predates the Mughals (with Sikandar Lodi's tomb built 1517-18), Jama Masjid is symbolic of the height of Mughal power under Emperor Shah Jahan (built 1650-1656 as the spiritual center of the Mughal capital, Shahjahanabad, now known as Old Delhi), and Safdarjung's tomb (completed in 1754) represents of the era of Mughal decline. It was actually the last tomb garden built by the Mughals.

I finally slept through the night--a first since arriving the evening the 16th. The ten plus hours doubled my sleep total for the trip to date. What a difference. More soon.

Chicago to Delhi (by way of Chelyabinsk)

On a sensory level, it felt like I arrived in India the moment I flashed my passport for the South Asian gate attendant at O'Hare and gained entrance to C16, a secure area subject to strict covid and visa regulations offset within an otherwise quotidian airport terminal. The fifty or so feet separating the United Club (where thanks to the generosity of my dear mother I had spent a three-hour layover sipping complementary beer and munching Chicago-style all-beef hot dogs) from Gate C16 might as well have been a wormhole into a parallel universe. All of a sudden mine was one of perhaps five white faces dotting a sea of brown, and spoken English receded from the soundscape, preserved only in the occasional announcements of bilingual gate agents. I remember feeling something similar in Amsterdam upon transferring both directions between San Francisco and Delhi in 2017. India began and ended at the gate in Amsterdam, not at the airport in Delhi. The flights were just a formality--a ritual consecration of sorts.

I've endured several particularly long flights in my thirty-some-odd years as a traveler, but the 14 hours from O'Hare to Indira Gandhi takes the cake, hands down. Despite the length, and the rather heroic feats of inactivity required to weather it in stride, it's hard not to marvel at the efficiency of traveling some 7,500 miles--just under a third of the Earth's total circumference--in a single day, accounting, of course, for the relative meaninglessness of clock time. We departed Chicago shortly after sundown on February 15th and reached Delhi shortly after sundown on February 16th. Ground speed averaged 600 mph at a cruising altitude of 37k-39k feet as we passed far above the North Atlantic and Scandinavia, then down over Russia and Central Asia before finally descending into Delhi. Boeing 787s are, quite frankly, the shit. In my limited experience, they are easily the smoothest, quietest, most technologically sophisticated, most comfortable long-haul aircraft to date. Lightyears beyond their predecessors, the 747s, in all respects.

There was a moment somewhere in hour nine or ten when--following dinner service (chicken tikka with basmati), a three-hour Bollywood romance (Dil To Pagal Hai), and a three-hour nap (could have used another three)--I checked the map and found us passing far above Chelyabinsk, a Eurasian metropolis wholly unknown to me at the time. In fact, at that particular moment I didn't recognize a single place name on the screen beyond Chicago and Delhi, obviously, and Moscow--provided merely for reference--some 1000 miles to our right. Chelyabinsk, it turns out, is the seventh largest city in Russia, boasting a population well over one million. Nestled discretely between the Ural mountains and the Kazakhstan border, Chelyabinsk is easy to forget. I bet someone reading this post knows about Chelyabinsk--and probably Shadrinsk, Kostanay, Lisakovsk, Zhetikara, and Kurgan too. I, however, knew none of them.

As we approached Pakistani airspace, I gradually began to regain my geographical bearings. Islamabad, Kabul, Lahore--these were places I could put on the map, even if I'd never visited them. And then there we were, thirteen hours and thirty minutes from Chicago, beginning our initial descent into Delhi. Lights flickered into view far below us, and for a moment the glowing orb of a full moon rising blazed through the windows off the left wing, which by now had lost the electric purplish tint that kept the cabin free of sunlight for the duration of our time-bending journey. 

From there, everything felt like a dream sequence: Landing. Befriending my neighbor Debanshu, a Delhiite now living in Salt Lake, who for most of 14 hours sat silently beyond the empty middle seat that separated us. Chatting with the Indian American flight attendant who, upon hearing me yapping about Virginia, divulged that he lived in Falls Church and had commuted for the Delhi flight just the previous morning. Immigration, baggage claim, customs, meeting the driver USIEF sent to fetch me at the airport, chatting him up in deliriously broken Hindi all the way to the hotel. Checking into room 311 at the Taj Ambassador, basking in a long hot shower, firing off a few short texts and emails to alert family and Fulbright of my safe arrival in Delhi. And finally, collapsing into a deep, dreamless sleep.

For exactly two and a half hours. Then suddenly...awake.

2:30 am Indian Standard Time (4 pm EST) and the jet lag hit like a freight train. Even in total exhaustion and delirium, my lagging circadian rhythms tricked my brain into unwelcome consciousness When that happens, there's no sense fighting back. You have to lean into it and avoid napping for long intervals during the day. Daytime sleeping only perpetuates the downward spiral of acute jet lag disorder (or "desynchronosis").

So I kept myself awake and made a modest to-do list for day one. A single hard rule: no vehicular transportation. One by one I checked items off the list, wrote emails, zoomed with the Fulbright office, explored Khan Market, ate delicious Indian meals at regular intervals, and plotted my return to routine patterns of sleep and a less fragmented state of being.

Still waiting on all that to unfold. Life here continues to feel eerily dreamlike after 48 hours (a grand total of six of them spent sleeping). In the meantime, I'm making the most of the mania.

My Funny Valentine

 

Millennials are notorious for taking pictures of food. It's laughable, and almost certainly a byproduct of the near-total technological addiction that has engulfed our adult lives. But it also conveys a sincere acknowledgement of culinary beauty and a pride in creativity. Or at least it can. I think we all agree that fine cuisine is about more than just calories. Certain food demands aesthetic appreciation. Sometimes we appreciate our food by sharing it with others, groaning with pleasure, and commending the chef on a job well done. Sometimes we simply pause to photograph it before we devour it. Millennials didn't invent the culinary arts or smart phones, but we are the original recipients of a consumer culture that has brought the two together as an integral feature of public life.  

Contrary to the beliefs of most elderly persons (i.e. Baby Boomers and above), these photos do not all end up on the internet, though some obviously do. Lord knows I am guilty of sharing many a food pic, but 95% of my culinary pictures never make it to social media. If you count those I text to friends and family that number probably drops to 80%... But the result is literally hundreds of images of meals cooked and consumed with pleasure just sitting on a hard drive gathering digital dust. As silly as this probably sounds, it's the way I want it. My food pics are their own form of journal--an archive unto themselves. I forget all sorts of things, but if I can go back in time and remember what we were eating, I might somehow manage to remember other important details. Maybe someday I'll make a coffee table book or something.

I only bring all this up because Allie and I must have taken a combined 35-40 pictures before we ate our first bite of dinner last night. But then again, if your Valentine's Day dinner turned out as beautifully as our and it was your last meal together for three and a half months you may have done something similar. Plus, my date was looking real good in her pink dress and new dandelion earrings, what can I say. The menu featured sustainably sourced wild coho salmon in garlic butter, roasted cherry tomatoes on the vine, and lemon ricotta over a parmesan risotto—all paired with an oaky California chardonnay. Every bit as delicious as it was photogenic. If I don't eat salmon again for nine months, memories of last night will sustain me. 

Bring on the curries and street food.

Snowdaze

When snow is in the forecast, a childlike excitement rushes in to eclipse my general distaste for winter. Sense memories of popping out of bed early to call the school closing hotline (296-5886) and hear the sweet refrain, "All..Albemarle..County...public schools...will be closed..." still prompt me to rush to the window upon waking to assess accumulation totals and prospects for a snow day.

I love snow, and this most recent winter storm did not disappoint. All told, Syracuse got about a foot between Thursday night and Saturday. Heavier wetter stuff on the bottom, topped with a whipped layer of fluffy lake effect snow that petered out by yesterday morning. Sure, the novelty of snow wears off eventually, perhaps when you lose electricity, or as you're still shoveling the driveway and chipping ice off your windshield in early March, but this year I'm enjoying all the benefits of a snow tourist. My three Upstate snowfalls have been punctuated by trips to California, Hawaii, Virginia (which to be fair, has had its share of snow this year), Arizona, and soon to be North India--where I am unlikely to see another snowfall. 

Estimated departure is now set for Tuesday, February 15. Syracuse to O'Hare, O'Hare to Delhi. Didn't even know that route existed before last week, but there you go. Accounting for mandatory seven-day home quarantine in a New Delhi hotel and the subsequent apartment hunt, I hope to hit the ground in earnest by the beginning of March.