Seeing India has been a long-time dream of mine. I think the first time I knew I *had* to go to India was when as a 17-year old architecture student in Riga I was listening to my Architectural History professor telling us, his students about the ancient temples of India proudly displaying stone-carved sculptures of couples copulating in all imaginable and (mostly) unimaginable ways. Now, what you need to know is that at the time my university was a Soviet Institution, and as such was there to affirm the official party line that sex was a capitalist invention and hence did not exist. My old professor's slide presentation was a revelation (and an act of brave rebellion on his part)!
Konark: The Sun Temple.
A year later I was reading Krishnamurti, standing on my head, and trying (rather disastrously) an assortment of exotic recipes: my best friend and I were testing the limits of the spiritual awakening theories. Partial awakening arrived in the form of a completely inedible stone-hard loaf of bread that we concocted based on one of our obscure recipes obtained from even more obscure sources. Our self-esteem nearly crushed, we decided to return our focus to architectural studies instead.
Fast forward some years later, characterized by successful avoidance of the experiments of aforementioned kind. (Except for one embarrassing incident when doing a "downward dog" left me partially immobilized for two weeks, and I was forced to walk bent 90 degrees forward! Imagine all the patterns in my town's pavement and my living room floor I discovered over those weeks! My sympathy levels for the old and disable have since skyrocketed. I had always proudly avoided any yoga instruction, instead learning from what looked like hand-printed Russian books on Yoga.. There you have it, i thought!.. So, yoga aficionados, go easy on that downward dog, or you'll become one!)
Downward Dog, from an old Hatha Yoga book in Russian, "Начала хатха йоги"
But back to my story..
Fast forward once more.. Soviet Union, that sex-less empire, falls. I settle in the territory of its once fiercest adversary, the "inventor of sex", the US, my home now. An ALIEN myself for more than a decade (that's what you are called here, until you obtain a Green Card that is NOT green, or become a citizen), I meet Indians, among other 'aliens' like myself, and discover to my amazement that in life they don't embody the public promiscuity of the famous couples on the India's temples.. Quite the contrary. They seem to be an impeccable embodiment of chastity and purity. One of them becomes a very dear friend of mine, literally over the course of one conversation - involving the Sanscrit, Tagore, Indira Gandi, and architecture - which leads me to believe in either of these two things: 1. Either I was once an Indian. 2. My friend was once a Latvian/Russian. 3. Or, we are all one. (or, *some* of use are one, anyway) Which ends up being more than two things, really.
At the end of last year it becomes evident that my dream trip is possible. The realization sends me into an intoxicating state of frenzy, excitement and agony for a few days, before I finally decide to do it. It's much harder to make such a decision now that I have a 16-months old son. I'm twice the age I was when I had my first son, and back then I didn't think much about leaving for extended concert tours through Europe with my choir, or venturing out to produce dirt and skeletons at the archaeological digging sites at the ancient Roman ruins in the South of France. At 20, everything seemed simple, possible and permitted. Add to that 20 years of Life's schooling, with intense courses on Responsible Parenting 101, Existence of the Limits of Possibilities 202, and The Vague and the Concrete Consequences of Following One's Desires 303, and what you have here is a new type of mother. But the thing is, I still live with that unquenchable sense of adventure!...
Just before I set out to buy my airplane ticket, a vague thought crosses my mind to check if I need an entry visa to India. Turns out I do! So I spend the last day of the year 2009 frantically rushing out my application along with a $125 check that covers the visa processing, a third party fee and FedEX both ways. I part with my passport. An alarming move, especi
ally considering the fact that it's going out by mail in a pretty much anonymous direction, and that I also buy the plane ticket that same day. The visa arrives after surprising two weeks! It's shocking, considering what an epic undertaking it had been, in the previous years, to obtain a US visa! (I could have for instance circled the Earth a couple of times on foot while waiting for my US work visa to get processed. Except that of course I couldn't: the way it works, you've got to remain in the country while your visa is being minted!) Sigh of relief. Now, it's time for immunizations! I call the travel nurses in the area, they are all overloaded with work: everyone seems to be heading towards the Japanese Encephalitis-infested areas this winter! Eventually, I manage to get a tight appointment at my primary health care provider. They seem bent on providing me preemptively with what they promise: health. I get armed with a bunch of prescriptions, three immunization shots, and two pounds of literature on how to avoid Japanese Encephalitis. Except that I do not plan on staying at a pig farm for four months, a prerequisite condition warranting such a precaution.
I am flying out of Newark next Wednesday, February 3rd, and heading down to Chennai, via Mumbai. The flight, the longest non-stop flight I've ever been on, is 15.5 hours long. I am meeting my friend (remember Tagore?) in Chennai where she is living again, and where she has offered, in the most gracious display of goodness, to pick me up from the airport at 3am. (THANK YOU MY DEAR FRIEND!) We haven't seen each other for some years now. But you know those friends who never change on you, whose lives always remain in sync with yours no matter how much time passes, and how many continents lie between you two? Well, that's the kind of friend she is.
I am bringing along my photo camera, along with two batteries, tens of gigabytes of flashcard space, a charger, and some other photo paraphernalia, along with those filled out prescriptions and wearable cotton (hard to think of it, with an inch of fresh snow outside my window). That summarizes it really. I know I am headed to the most technology savvy place on earth, but apart from spending some days in Chennai the rest of my 2-week itinerary is still quite vague. So I may end up in a place and a situation where the only photographs I can take are in my imagination. ..At least it won't be on a pig farm... I do promise to bring you photos of those carvings though, if I make it that far! But I doubt it. It is only on the maps in my guidebooks that India appears small and easily navigateable, as it is only in Krishnamurti's books that life seems to make complete sense...
