Music in the Park

Music in the Park was a joy, to say the least. It felt like a reawakening of the art music scene here in Delhi following two years of relative inactivity. As with so many recent happenings, the event carried the gravity of being the first of its kind in two full calendar years. Instead of writing a play-by-play review, I'll share some highlights. Truth be told, I outright missed a couple sets I would have loved to have seen, namely Vikku Vanayakram and Parween Sultana on Saturday evening. The concert started late, some of the earlier performances ran long, and the concession scene proved minimal. Watching live music is great and all, but sitting for long periods without food or drink has its limits. Ashwini Bhide Deshpande sang beautiful khayal Sunday evening, but I was too far away to get decent recordings. 

                                                   

In my last post, I shared the above clip from Sanjeev and Ashwani Shankar's shehnai performance, accompanied on tabla by Mithilesh Jha, that opened the two-day concert in Nehru Park. I'm sharing it again here for the sake of formatting. I always love me some shehnai, and the brotherly vibes between Sanjeev and Ashwani were strong. Mithilesh, whose name I didn't know prior to seeing him perform, really impressed me. His tabla tone and clarity were about as good as it gets. I hate to stereotype a whole demographic, but Indian audio engineers are notoriously mediocre, at least in the live audio realm. I have no idea what goes on in the studio. Lord knows this particular crew had their fair share of issues, including outrageously piercing feedback early in Shankar brothers' performance. That said, whatever they did to Mithilesh's tabla worked perfectly. A large share of the credit has to go to Mithilesh-ji himself, of course.

My level of familiarity with Carnatic vocal music is quite minimal, but I like to think I know good drumming when I hear it. Sanjay Subrahmanyan's Saturday afternoon set was an undeniable crowd pleaser from beginning to end, and the highlight for me was Neyveli Venkatesh on mridangam. I don't get to see a lot of mridangam, but I tip my hat to this fella. The stamina and rhythmic dexterity he displayed throughout the set was admirable. The above clip shows his longest solo passage.

Bahauddin Dagar. Where to start. Well first off, I guess it's worth noting that I'm a sucker for the Rudra Veena. When I saw Bahauddin Dagar would be opening Day 2, I made sure to get there early enough to find a seat on the cushions up front. Sunday was hotter and not as breezy as Saturday, and by the time Bahauddin launched into his alap the the sun was low enough to cut under the canopy and blast me pretty much directly in the face. I didn't really care. The music was sublime. The Dagar family are hereditary dhrupad specialists par excellence, and Bahauddin represents something like the twentieth generation of that family inheritance. Talk about baggage. He was exceptional, as expected. The alap was the highlight, as tends to be the case in dhrupad, but I was so transfixed I couldn't bring myself to pull out my phone and take a video, particularly not while sitting up front like that. It felt sacrilegious. Once Bahauddin moved to a composition and Sanjay Agle entered on pakhawaj I felt empowered to record a short clip. These thirty seconds hardly do the performance justice. Do yourself a favor when you need something calming this week and listen to his rendition of Raga Bhimpalasi on Spotify or wherever music is streamed.

No offense to Tajendra Majumdar on sarod, who performed well, but the highlight of his set was seeing Ojas Adhiya on tabla from fifteen feet away. That's the risk you run when you hire one of the hottest young tabla players on the planet to accompany you. He knew what he was doing. What to say about Ojas. It's hard to put into words. I've actually seen him perform three times this week, this being the first, and most recently at Stein Auditorium last night, where he played a mind-bending tabla solo. He's one of these guys who started playing right out of the cradle and never looked back. Every time he gets introduced they talk about how he's in some Indian record book as the youngest tabla player ever. Not sure exactly what that means, since I'm pretty sure you could put any baby in front of a set of tabla and they'd at least slap at it a bit, but I know Ojas was performing by the age of four. Now he's 34. Born in 1987 just like me. I'll never be that, but he's an inspiration to be sure. If anyone manages to carry the mantle once Zakir Hussain passes on, my money is on that person being Ojas.

The last two sets on Sunday got swapped, due to issues with Shahid Parvez's sitar, but that meant I got to see Sajan Mishra, whose set I might otherwise have skipped. Sajan and his brother Rajan Mishra performed together for 57 years as one of the preeminent Hindustani khayal vocal duos. Rajan passed away in April 2021 after suffering complications related to covid. Sajan was quite straightforward with the audience about his profound heartbreak. 57 years performing together. Can you imagine? I'm tearing up just thinking about it. In any case, Sajan is keeping the music alive and now has his son, Swaransh, singing alongside him. This was one of those sets where I didn't know quite what to expect and ended up getting my mind blown. Sajan's voice is one of the clearest I've ever heard. Astonishing really. The clip above is taken from latter portion of the performance when he was really hitting his stride. As an audience we were all shaking our heads in disbelief.

Shahid Parvez is a sitar legend. As one of the principle exponents of the Etawah (Imdadkhani) Gharana, Shahid requires little introduction in India. He's a consummate performer, even well into his seventh decade. November 2019, I actually saw him give a concert at UVA before heading back out west and into the covid abyss. That performance was solid, but sorry to whoever was playing tabla that night, he wasn't Ojas Adhiya. Seeing these two together, old maestro and young lion, was thrilling. This Saturday Shahid-ji gives another free concert at Lal Qila (the Red Fort) here in Delhi. I'll certainly be there.

Ojas Adhiya ripping it once again

 

Second Gear

With Nageshwar Lal Karan

Two sides of the Delhi music scene

After thirty-six days of emails, calls, zoom meetings, reading, note-taking and various other planning-phase activities, I sat for not one but two in-person interviews on Friday. The boundaries of what can be considered "research" are always a little blurry (I'll spare you my reflections on that for now) but in a tangible sense these interviews felt like the beginning of "Doing" the "Research" I came to India to do.

My new friend and collaborator Anirban Bhattacharya, a Bengali singer and scholar who lives here in Delhi, arranged both meetings. Anirban toured with the late great kathak maestro Pandit Birju Maharaj for over a decade and is well connected in the music and dance world. It turns out I actually saw him perform with Maharaj-ji and Zakir Hussain at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco back in June 2018. The concert, a celebration of Maharaj-ji's 80th birthday, was part of what ended up being his last U.S. tour. After years of deteriorating health, he passed away on January 16, 2022, a couple weeks shy of his 85th birthday. Without getting into the politics of kathak lineages, or nationalist cultural revivals for that matter, it's safe to say Birju Maharaj was the physical embodiment of kathak in India. As the premiere hereditary exponent of the Lucknow "Kalka-Bindadin" Gharana, Maharaj-ji did as much to bring kathak into its modern form as any other single individual. His name recognition is without equal in the Indian dance world, and his children and disciples continue to play prominent roles in shaping the space.

On June 8, 2018 a second tabla player shared the stage with Birju Maharaj-ji, Zakirbhai, and Anirban in San Francisco. His name was (is) Utpal Ghosal. Zakir Hussain, an international celebrity who has toured the globe since the early 1970s, draws crowds wherever he plays. He always has. Ghosal, by contrast, is not a celebrity. But whereas Zakir worked with Maharaj-ji on occasion as a guest accompanist, Utpal da was a regular member of his touring group. In fact, Maharaj-ji recruited Utpal during a chance encounter in Kolkata (Birju Maharaj was on the way to the washroom and overheard Utpal practicing), after which Utpal relocated to Delhi and built a new life around accompanying Maharaj-ji.

Anirban and Utpal are great friends--both are Bengalis and both worked with Birju Maharaj until the end of his days. As such, Anirban wanted me to interview Utpal first and arranged for me to do so at Kalashram, Birju Maharaj's kathak institute here in Delhi. As fate would have it, Kalashram is about a ten-minute walk from my front door in Hauz Khas, just the other side of Gulmohar Park. The institute, which has been closed since March 2020, is actually where Maharaj-ji passed away on the night of January 16th, having recently gone into covid isolation there. The building is beautiful, built in the classic Lucknow style with a central haveli (courtyard). The place is covered with pictures of Maharaj-ji at various stages of his career. In light of his recent passing, and the continued closure to students, the whole compound currently feels like a shrine.

I got a little turned around cutting through the park and arrived at Kalashram at 11:29 am, still technically early for the 11:30 meeting. One of the large glass doors on the front of the building was open, but the gate to the street remained shut. As I tried to figure out how to proceed, a stocky man on a motorbike pulled up alongside me with his daughter sitting on the front. They both took off their helmets, he introduced himself as Utpal, and we walked in together. We stopped to offer pranam to a picture of Marahaj-ji on the way into the compound, and by the time Anirban arrived fifteen minuted later we were old friends.

As a foreigner and a researcher, you never know how people will respond to you, but interviewing Utpal was a best-case scenario. He was as relaxed, forthcoming, and generous as he possibly could have been. When we moved upstairs to one of the practice studios, Utpal jumped up on the riser and started tuning the tabla that were sitting there. Anirban gestured for me to sit on the riser to Utpal's right, and he pulled up a chair in front of us. I asked for permission to start recording, given without a second thought, and we were off. Utpal needed minimal encouragement to share. For over an hour, he talked about his musical background, general thoughts on accompanying dancers, and specific experiences working with Maharaj-ji. On this last topic, Anirban also jumped into the mix at length. Anirban's occasional questions, as well as English summaries and interjections, added to the conversation, and in the end I probably only asked five or six of the fifteen questions on my meticulously translated script. Once, following a long, multi-pronged response from Utpal da, I looked down at my script, saw that he had just knocked off no fewer than three of my prepared questions, then looked up and said, "Yeh bekar hai" ("This is useless"). They both laughed.

While the entire conversation turned out to be interview gold, the highlights were Utpal's tabla demonstrations. It's one thing to hear people talk about their craft, but it's always better to see it in action. He showed a number of tihais and chakradars, complete with explanations of how working with Maharaj-ji had influenced his approach to playing these types of compositions in the context of dance accompaniment. We stopped after seventy-five minutes, said our goodbyes, and I left with Utpal's phone number to coordinate future meetings. It sounds as if Kalashram will remain closed into July, but until formal classes resume Utpal appears open to meeting again, perhaps with two sets of tabla next time.

Following a huge lunch of chole bhature at one of my regular spots along Gulmohar Park, Anirban and I set off for Kathak Kendra, the preeminent government-subsidized kathak training institute in Delhi. Anirban had arranged for me to meet Nageshwar Lal Karan, a tabla teacher there who has published a Hindi-language book on tabla accompaniment for kathak based on his dissertation. I had only just managed to procure a copy of the book and had read a grand total of one page, which given the register of the prose and my level of Hindi literacy took me roughly an hour. Needless to say, I felt underprepared for that interview, not to mention that it had been scheduled only the day before. When we entered the third-floor tabla studio, Nageshwar-ji had a class of six students (five Indian women and a man from Tanzania) in session. I immediately recognized the kayda they were playing (DhatiDhageNaDhaTirakita), a standard of the Delhi Gharana repertoire. From there, they proceeded through a series of simple tukras and chakradars. Not bad considering all the students were in their first or second year of learning tabla. Every dancer at Kathak Kendra is required to take drumming (tabla and/or pakhavaj), singing, and yoga courses as part of the ten-year preparatory curriculum. With the exception of Imraan, the Tanzanian, none of them had come explicitly to train as drummers.

The second interview lasted only thirty minutes, which was fine by me. By that time, the huge plate of chole bhature had me in an afternoon haze no amount of chai could penetrate. Even so, it felt good to get a foot in the door at Kathak Kendra, and Negeshwar-ji was generous to meet with me and offer his time and perspective. Perhaps we'll have a second session once I've had time to adequately work through his book, which at the rate I'm going could be months from now.

When we left Kathak Kendra, Anirban and I had one last chai across the street and I hopped an auto back to Hauz Khas. It being Friday night, and having just completed my first two formal interviews, I decided to accept a friend's invitation to see a DJ set at nearby Summer House Cafe, just the other side of Sri Aurobindo Marg from the Hauz Khas Market. I did a fair amount of dancing (fueled by a bit of drinking) and by the time I hit the pillow around 2 am it had undeniably been a long, eventful day. Saturday I rested until setting off in the afternoon for Music in the Park, a free two-day concert of preeminent Hindustani and Carnatic musicians held this weekend in Nehru Park for the first time since 2020. I'll return this evening for the finale, and promise to report back with more video clips and thoughts on that soon.

Holi

My plan for Friday, March 18 had me traveling down to Gurgaon to meet Shubha Chaudhuri, my academic supervisor here in India, and getting familiar with the archival holdings at the ARCE. That didn't happen. When Shubha proposed the date some ten days earlier, she clearly hadn't looked at the calendar. Had she done so, she would have seen that Holi--described to me as a "complete holiday for all of India"--fell on the 18th. Rather than wallow in disappointment, I embraced the festivities.

Each year Indians celebrate countless festivals, but Holi and Diwali reign supreme in terms of scale and widespread acceptance. Holi marks the arrival of spring, which honestly feels more like its departure. Other than copious eating, drinking, and general merriment the distinguishing feature of Holi is the jubilant throwing of colored powder. The festival celebrates the divine love of Radha and Krishna, and the colored powder references a playful Krishna throwing colored water on the unassuming gopis (milkmaids). The national consensus in 2022 seemed to be that after two consecutive Holis lost to the pandemic India wanted to party.  I had no concrete plans to partake, having only recently learned I wouldn't be spending the day in the archives.

Late Thursday, the night before Holi, I reached out to Suman Puria, a Delhiite and longtime friend of my aunt Charlotte, who I'd been meaning to connect with since settling into Hauz Khas last month. We had a short WhatsApp exchange Friday morning (she was impressed with my ability to read and write Hindi) and by 10 am she had invited me to come spend the holiday with her family. Within the hour, Suman and her husband Sanjeev (pictured) had scooped me at the Hauz Khas metro station and driven the five minutes back to their house in nearby Munirka. 

The three of us sat and sipped chai, speaking in a mixed Hindi and English, while the kids played in the courtyard of their compound. Sanjeev--already covered in red powder--and I slipped out back to join them once Suman turned her attention to lunch prep. The courtyard scene soon splintered into a group of dads chatting about neighborhood affairs while their kids bounced around spraying each other with water guns. Mostly observing, I chatted a bit with the dads and also took my share of water blasts from the kids--a welcome relief from the intense sun. Each time new members joined the party, we paused to trade smears of colored powder, generally applied to some part of the face. Somehow I also ended up the recipient of the silly hat featured in the photo above. What no one ever tells you about those colored powders is that they smell great. I'm sure there are synthetic varietals out there, and lord knows people throw all kinds of other weird shit on Holi, but the quality powders are naturally derived from flowers. Or so I'm told.

After we cleaned up, the adults sat down for lunch. Suman and Sanjeev have two daughters, one in her earlier teens and one a little younger, but they were off doing their own thing. I had trouble saying no to anything offered to me, and the combination of multiple pakoras, vada sambar, and chole bhature (all delicious) filled me to the limit. Following lunch we relaxed with chai again, chatting about everything from Ukraine to Zakir Hussain, and then Sanjeev beckoned to the elder daughter to bring out her tabla. She is very shy, part of the reason I didn't catch her name, but she obliged. In addition to being an aspiring kathak dancer, she learned a bit of tabla at some point--by no means unusual given the centrality of tabla to that particular dance form (i.e., my Fulbright research). Her practice had trailed off during the pandemic and the drums needed some love. I sat in the living room tuning tabla, playing a bit while also trying to keep the cheaper, lighter drums from sliding across the smooth marble floor. When she quietly told her mom she wanted to show me what she had learned, I gladly handed them over. From there, she also showed me a piece of her kathak repertoire, for which I reclaimed the tabla in order to learn the composition as she danced it. The younger daughter, who also knew the piece, recited as we played.

Having missed my usual afternoon siesta, I started to fade by late afternoon and Suman and Sanjeev drove me back to Hauz Khas. I offered my profuse thanks and we parted with "jaldi hi milenge" (we'll see each other soon). Given the possibilities for language tutoring with Suman, who is a Hindi teacher, and offering my tabla services to the daughters to support their practice, it appears we have much left to do. Beyond all that, we're friends now. In the true spirit of Holi, it was a day of new beginnings.

One Month

Left Syracuse one month ago today. Took off in snow. Hard to believe. Temps are up into the 90s today in Delhi, and we'll be flirting with 100 here by the weekend. Haven't turned on the AC just yet, but it's only a matter of time. Despite the heat, there's still a bit of a breeze and the air has an autumnal quality, falling leaves and all. Today I took a relaxed stroll over to Hauz Khas Village to visit the 14th-century ruins and grab lunch (rava masala dosa, sambar, and chutneys). After a couple hours, I hopped an auto back towards the market and retreated into the cool of our third floor apartment, which I currently have to myself. Kyle left for Rajasthan yesterday morning and will return towards the end of the month. 

I'm taking a breather after submitting my UCSC dissertation year fellowship applications this morning. Also in the midst of an IRB application for human ethics clearance to conduct oral history interviews in India. The application is a pain in the ass, but getting exemption for my study is a good idea if I ever want to present and publish on the material, which I do. 

Heading down to the archives in Gurgaon for the first time on Friday, which also happens to be Holi. Should be a crazy day pretty much everywhere in India, Delhi being no exception. Til then, keeping cool and close to home. Exploring is great and all, but there's a lot to like right here in the neighborhood. Already starting to feel like a seasoned Dilliwalla.

Agra

When my alarm went off early Thursday morning, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, let alone driving the four hours to and from Agra. Kyle had been battling a cold earlier in the week, and it finally caught up with me Wednesday afternoon. But I'd made a plan, and despite a lack of quality sleep and general wooziness I walked outside at 7:30 to meet Rakesh, his eldest son Divyansh, and Harpal Singh, our driver for the day. I told Rakesh I'd been up with a small cold (chota zukaam) but he didn't seem too concerned. I masked up and hopped into the taxi. South Delhi is pleasantly quiet at 7:30 on a Thursday, and we made it out of the city and onto the Yamuna Expressway, a six-lane toll road built to cut down on Delhi-Agra traffic, in no time. Traffic remained thin for the entire 165 kilometers to Agra.

Diyvansh and I sat in the back, breaking in and out of Hindi and English in sporadic conversation about school, music, sports, etc. Rakesh, up front in the passenger seat, tuned in and out, chatting occasionally with Harpal. Divyansh is twelve and currently learning English and Sanskrit in addition to his native Hindi. From what I understand, the family also speaks some Punjabi--Rakesh's mother tongue--in the home. Needless to say, the kid is not a dud. But private schools are brutally competitive in India, even at that age, and one of the reasons Rakesh wanted to bring Diyansh along, apart from giving him a day off amidst online exams, was so he could practice his English with me. Much to Diyvansh's amusement, however, I am always looking for opportunities to practice my Hindi. So we moved freely between the two.

This is how it usually goes with Rakesh when I'm cruising around Delhi in the back of his rickshaw. Sometimes we'll speak exclusively in Hindi, sometimes English, but our default mode of communication is a hybrid in which I speak Hindi to him and he speaks English to me. This gives us each the opportunity to practice a second language with maximal conversational flow and minimal confusion. If he can understand my Hindi and respond coherently, then I know I'm doing ok, regardless of minor grammatical mistakes or occasional broken phrases. Conversational fluency with native speakers is by far the most difficult aspect of language learning, and my rides with Rakesh provide training wheels of a sort. In addition to his all-around good nature, it was these relaxed, low-stakes practice sessions that won me over--first as a return customer, then as a friend. 

But on this day, there was no rickshaw. Rakesh, who had organized the trip, was just along for the ride. As conversations sputtered around the half-way point, we listened to a little Punjabi music and Divyansh and I played a game of speed chess on our phones. He beat me on time--only slightly less humiliating than if he'd checkmated me, which for a moment seemed imminent. I started sweating when he took my queen, but managed to return the favor several minutes later. Even so, he rattled me good and I played slowly after that. It gave him the edge, and his 10-minute timer had 1:04 remaining as mine expired.

We pulled into Agra after 11 am and stopped to pick up Sumit, our guide for the Taj Mahal. All ticket purchases at the Taj are now contactless, and Sumit helped us navigate the online ticketing system as we approached the entrance gate. On the walk into the Taj complex, Sumit and I got to chatting, and he was thrilled when I requested the tour in Hindi rather than English. A combination of deliberate pacing, clear annunciation, and word choice made his speaking easy for me to track, and I stayed engaged throughout the tour, asking questions and stopping to clarify unfamiliar words and phrases when necessary. The whole experience with Sumit felt empowering--the antithesis of those social encounters that occasionally leave me wondering if I actually know Hindi at all--and he was clearly moved by my engagement, interest, and linguistic persistence. Whether or not it was warranted, he complimented my pronunciation and basic command of the language. Chatting with him, and listening to his spiel, my skills felt as relaxed and fluid as they had at any point since arriving in India three weeks earlier.

As for the Taj Mahal, what's there to say that isn't a cliche? Pictures don't do it justice, that's for sure. I could see being put off by the Agra tourist scene--particularly on busier, hotter summer days--but the Taj itself is miraculous. I'm a sucker for Mughal architecture, of which North India has plenty, but it should come as no surprise that the Taj Mahal is the most impressive single specimen I've encountered. Crafted entirely of white marble from nearby Makrana, Rajasthan, the main mausoleum (makabaara) is adorned with ornate inlays of semi-precious stones from around the world, both inside and out. I don't have time or energy to recount the elaborate love story of Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, and Mumtaz Mahal, his second wife and chief consort, who together birthed 14 children. Suffice it to say, when Mumtaz died birthing their 14th child, Gauhar Ara Begum, in 1631, Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal to hold the remains of his favorite wife. With construction completed in 1653, Shah Jahan was laid to rest next to Mumtaz when he passed in 1658. Pretty darn romantic, even if the idea of holding multiple wives (not to mention concubines) and a massive building project that required hundreds of thousands of man-hours of forced labor cloud the fairy tale.

If pictures of the Taj Mahal were currency, I'd be set for life now. Sumit knew exactly where to stand for all the best angles and had very particular ideas about which poses we should assume at which spots. He wouldn't take no for an answer. If anyone wants more glam shots, or pictures of me standing on a bench picking up the Taj Mahal by its spire, just let me know. They didn't make the cut.

Upon leaving the Taj, we visited a reputable marble crafts store Rakesh knew from a visit to Agra five years earlier. There are apparently a number of imposters near the Taj Mahal that will rip you off selling fake marble, but I was assured these guys were the real deal. I had no desire to shop, and spent over thirty minutes trying to convince the salesman I really did think the craftsmanship was impressive but I really didn't have the money, need, or luggage space to justify purchasing an ornate white marble table top or chess set. "No problem, we ship everywhere." In the end I settled for a small Ganesh murti with semi-precious stones inlaid in the style of the Taj Mahal. I had been on the lookout for a Ganesh anyway, and this one felt right for the bedroom in Hauz Khas, where it now stands on a shelf above my left shoulder when I practice tabla.

Then on to lunch with Rakesh and Divyansh, where I crushed a massive Punjabi veg thali, and a sweet shop famous for a type of pumpkin-based sweet called petha, which I had never even heard of. Naturally, I bought the large sampler pack for 320 rupees (about $4.20) and some masala peanuts to take home as snacks. Then we started the trip back, stopping for chai around the two-hour mark, and eventually trading the relative calm of the Yamuna Expressway for the cacophony of Delhi rush hour. By the time I returned to the apartment it had been a twelve-hour day. In my state of fatigue, the cold symptoms resurfaced. One of the symptoms, unfortunately, was difficulty sleeping for a second consecutive night.

Now I'm fine. Finishing up dissertation-year fellowship applications for UCSC this weekend and still waiting on my FRRO registration, which as of tomorrow will have taken longer than the maximum expected turnaround time of two weeks. So that's a little frustrating, but there's nothing I can do I haven't already done. Kyle is off to Rajasthan for a couple weeks on Monday, and then it'll just be me here. We finally have Hindi TV channels up and running, to complement our recently acquired high-speed internet, so at least there's that. More next week regarding research plans and prospects. For now, time to brew up afternoon chai and then maybe off to Westside to find warm-weather shirts to match my two pairs of freshly tailored linen pants.

Farewell to Spring

Depending on who you ask, North India experiences no fewer than five seasons and possibly as many as six. If we go with five (sorry pre-winter) that leaves winter, spring, summer, monsoon, and autumn. From all I've heard, winter in Delhi is particularly rough due to toxic pollution, cold-ish temps, and domestic infrastructure that is not designed for the cold. I know I complained about the January postponement, but in climatological terms it did me a huge favor. I missed winter entirely and arrived at the peak of spring, one of the most idyllic times of year in North India without question.

Now if you do the math, making room for that fifth season in a twelve-month calendar requires a bit of reallocation at the expense of the four-season cycle those of us from the global northwest find normal and natural. Alas, spring is first on the chopping block. According to delhitourism.gov.in, spring--which the website describes as "sunny and pleasant" with average temps ranging from 20-25 Celsius (68-77 F)-- begins in February and lasts through March. Summer--described merely as "hot," with average temps ranging from 25-45 C (77 to 113F)--begins in April and lasts through June. Then the sweet relief of monsoon, as the heat and humidity give way to daily rains and cooling temperatures: the stuff of romantic fantasies and Bollywood movie magic.

With all due respect to the Delhi bureau of tourism and their knowledgeable statisticians, the weather app on my iPhone suggests summer will begin next week. My knowledge of the climate in this part of the world is admittedly spotty, but all signs point to steadily increasing temps as we move into April and May. The frontal systems that create dramatic spring swings throughout the eastern United States are simply not a factor here. Once it gets hot, it stays hot.

For the grand finale of my spring tourism, before the oppressive heat moves in and my research kicks into a higher gear, I plan to head to Agra tomorrow morning to finally see the Taj Mahal. In 2017, I avoided Agra like the plague. Most reports from my itinerant classmates portrayed it as cesspool of heat, frustrated tourists, and predatory vendors. Rajasthan had its share of iconic tourist destinations, and heat, so I willfully abstained. 

My reliable rickshaw-wala and friend, Rakesh, has hired a car and a guide for tomorrow and will tag along for company. I'm hoping a Thursday in early March, during a waning pandemic, will be less overwhelming than the picture my classmates painted of their summer visits to Agra five years ago. Regardless, it's something I need to see at least once in my travels around the subcontinent. Or so they say. 

Hurry up and Wait

Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah, est. 1325

The kind of research I'm doing--the kind in which you look for small openings, establish personal connections, and nurture relationships over time--unfolds gradually. You can't force it. And you can't just go sit in a library for eight hours and call it a day. You can put yourself out there with clear intentions, but then you must sit back and let the world respond. Or not. Even if you're raring to go, your research counterparts may not be ready for you. In these instances it can be hard to know how hard to push, and this is particularly true in a foreign country. As a general rule, less is more. Good to remind people you're still alive on a semi-regular basis, but more important to stay relaxed and let them reach out to you when the time is right. The last thing you want to do is read as needy and overbearing, pushing potential teachers, mentors, and collaborators away in your state of heightened exuberance.

Entering my third week in Delhi, the above roughly encapsulates the current state of my Fulbright research. Right out of the gates, USIEF prodded us to move as quickly as possible to lock down long-term accommodations and tackle the mountain of paperwork required for the FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Officers) application--a daunting bureaucratic gauntlet by any measure. That process consumed most of the first week and change here, and I finally submitted my application last Saturday. Now all I can do is wait. Technically, I'm not even supposed to leave Delhi until the finalized registration FRRO comes through. This means any travel to the tabla school in Ahmedabad will also have to wait, though based on the general lack of communication from Gujarat I don't think they're itching for a hasty visit. All in due time.

So far my experience with my sponsoring institution, the ARCE (Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology) in Gurgaon, has been similarly static. I emailed my advisor there on February 17, the day after arriving in India, to schedule an initial meeting and obtain a mandatory "joining letter" per USIEF request. Though we met remotely the following week, and I managed to procure the letter, I'm yet to physically visit the facility. I've probably reiterated my intentions 3-5 times via email, each time leaving space for my advisor to determine when it's safe and desirable for me to head to Gurgaon. Still waiting.

The bright spot--beyond the great time I'm having sightseeing, practicing on new tabla, hanging out with Kyle in Hauz Khas, enjoying the perfect spring weather, and systemically eating my way through much of South Delhi--was a remote tabla workshop I attended last weekend on zoom. The morning I left Syracuse, I had come across a promotion on Instagram for an online workshop in kathak accompaniment for tabla players (more or less my exact Fulbright project). The workshop, taught by Mumbai-based tabla maestro Yogesh Samsi with live demonstrations by kathak dancer Manasi Deshpande, took place over two sessions on Saturday 2/26 and Sunday 2/27. I attended, took furious notes, and made reference recordings of both sessions (with permission from the hosts, of course). Sorting through all those notes and formulating more nuanced research questions provides a rather amorphous task to fill the current lull.

Even with what feels like dead time on the research front right now, important things are happening. The online workshop marks the formal beginning of my Fulbright research and provides plenty of food for thought regarding online pedagogy in the tabla world, proliferation of virtual communities during the pandemic, and the current complications of doing much of anything institutional in person as India slowly reopens. The bottom line is that even though I was permitted to travel here in mid-February, concert and event calendars remain empty. Most archives and schools aren't ready for foreign visitors. Even the world-famous Thursday-night qawwali sessions at Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah (see second video) still end early because of covid.

With extra time on my hands, I'm able to focus on tying up critical loose ends back home, foremost dissertation year fellowship applications, that will dictate the shape of the 2022-2023 academic year. Not exactly frittering away the hours. Tom Petty was right when he said "the waiting is the hardest part," but once things get moving they tend to move fast. Nine months will fly by, and then I'll find myself back in the States trying to make sense of it all. 

Best not to wish away this moment of repose.

Street Food

Chole Bhature

Pyaaz (Onion) Paratha

Rajma Chaaval

Pav Bhaji

Dinner Spread at Rajinder Da Dhaba

For foreign national traveling to India, a piece of advise reliably parroted by U.S. medical personnel and program administrators is to avoid street food outright. The problem with this prevailing wisdom is that street food in India is  delicious and incredibly inexpensive. Back in 2017, when I lived in Rajasthan for a summer (my first and only previous trip to India) I honored this protocol faithfully for the full eight weeks of my Hindi intensive in Jaipur. Only in the course of visiting an Indian friend in Kolkata after my program did street vendors become a regular part of my life. Perhaps by then the flora in my intestines had acclimated to South Asia, perhaps I simply have a strong stomach, or perhaps eating street food is always and forever a game of bacterial roulette, In any case, those initial forays into Kolkata street food proved digestively uneventful and remain some of my fondest culinary memories from that summer. They also gave me the confidence and resolve to hit the ground running this time around.

"Delhi Belly," a euphemism for the common and rather unsavory symptoms of food-borne illness experienced by European-American visitors to the subcontinent, is well established in the Anglo-Indian vernacular. It is even the name of a "Hinglish" Bollywood film produced by Aamir Khan (2011), which I have not seen but probably should. At some point during my nine months here, I will almost certainly suffer digestive issues. Rest assured, if things get bad enough, I have prescription medications courtesy of the gracious physicians at the UCSC Student Health Center and I'm not ashamed to use them.

For now, it's open season. The weather in Delhi is perfect for meandering the streets of Hauz Khas Market, relaxing in Gulmohar Park, and indulging in the diverse offerings of the neighborhood street vendors. Within two blocks of the apartment there are vendors selling kathi rolls, momos, chole bhature, rajma chaaval, parathas made to order with your choice of fillings (potato, onion, paneer, etc...), aloo tikka, pav bhaji, the list goes on and on... Most of these items would never appear on the menu at Indian restaurants abroad. On the off chance they did, chances are slim they'd hold a candle to the stands lining Gulmohar Park and Hauz Khas Market. Even then they'd cost 800-1000% percent what we're paying on the street in Delhi. Lunch has become a 55-100 rupee affair most days. For reference, 100 INR is roughly $1.33 at current exchange rates. That would be on the expensive side. For 100 INR, I can order rajma chaaval and a paratha, then stand there and watch a fine gentlemen and his helper, presumably his son, make the meal by hand--finishing it with fresh cilantro, thinly sliced red onion, pickle, and green chilies. For an additional 20 rupees, I can visit the chaiwala down the block and indulge in chai masala, also made to order. It's heaven.

I relay this information merely to convey my current level of excitement, which is immense. Anyone who knows me knows I am enthusiastic about food and drink, and this week a new stratum of the culinary spectrum has opened itself to me. If it sounds as if I'm throwing myself into this new world of seductive delights with reckless abandon, that would only be a half truth. Kyle and I have already established a subset of reliable vendors near the park, and when venturing beyond known vendors we rely on instinct and experience to decide where and what to eat. In general, you want to frequent high-traffic institutions that are moving a lot of product. You don't want to consume a mint-cilantro chutney that's been sitting in the sun for seven hours. There are plenty food carts out there I would refrain from patronizing due to lack of foot traffic. I'm sure they're fine--or could be--but as much as I'm enjoying this honeymoon period, I'm still wary of ending up in fetal position in my bed regretting an imprudent caloric indulgence. 

Specific beloved street foods, such as golgappa (panipuri), are the primary offenders for foreigner travelers. This is because they are little more than crispy, fried dough filled with spiced water. In the end, it's usually the water that gets you. Sure, these days I brush my teeth with the stuff that comes out of our tap in our apartment. But I never drink it. And I never drink water from unknown sources on the street. That's just the way life is here. RO (reverse osmosis) water is your friend. Street water is not. Even with this knowledge it's possible to slip up, but observing simple rules gets you through most situations.

That being said, definitely eat the street food. A universe of flavor and adventure awaits.