YOU THINK SECURITY IS BAD AT U.S. AIRPORTS? TRY INDIA

Just getting into the airport building in Delhi is a challenge. I thought the new airport would be different, but was I wrong! There are guards at every entrance and the line is long. But don’t push. This is when patience is definitely a virtue and a lack of said virtue can put you behind the eight ball big time. You need to have your ticket handy, your passport, and whatever extraneous information came with your ticket print out. In my mind I ask them if a pint of blood and my firstborn would suffice, but I keep that joke to myself. A sense of humor should be parked at the door along with any sense of urgency.

Once inside you are faced with a swarm of humanity that takes your breath away. As you know, I’ve been traveling for centuries, or so it seems, and you’d think I’d be hardened to such mob scenes. But this was the longest, most circuitous “Congo line” of my life and it snaked like a giant intestine that forgot to stop growing.  I kid you not, I was in line over an hour. At that point I was so tired that they could have stashed me in an MRI machine and I would have remained comatose throughout. Don’t ask me to relate the padding up and padding down. Beaten and bewildered, I didn’t even notice.

A couple more observations about India that I failed to mention along the way are that the vegetables are plentiful, cheap, and superb. Cauliflower, one of my all time favorites, was huge and in every conceivable dish. The carrots were the large reddish variety and sweet, and peas were a special part of the many paneers (cheese dishes) served in a succulent sauce. Being a vegetarian in India is no hardship…it’s a pleasure, for there is so much variety to choose from and unlimited imagination in the preparation. Once I persuaded a particular restaurant in Gokarna to make me “veggies al dente”  (my phrase) without spice, I was in heaven and never wanted to leave. I even ate them for breakfast.

Another food that I had from the very beginning was papaya…huge, ripe, orange papaya. Cary and I ate one a day in Dharamsala and you could get the large ones down south for less than a dollar. I never tasted any like this at home.

Before I leave Gokarna, let me share a few more photos of this charming location.

Lee sunbathing on the beach

He just keeps walking, closer and closer

Trimming the palms in our front yard

The restaurant next door

Our cozy cabin

Squabble on the path...I'm outa' here!

Pilgrims swimming in the evening

Watching the passing parade

Beach life

A delightful young man at his sewing machine....

Camel ride at sunset

We exchanged hello's on the beach

Bargaining at a local shop

Gullvi and yours truly in front of the local “chariot”

Ladies washing clothes in communal wash tanks in the middle of town

...and now they have company

I had to slow down on theater this month because of rehearsals for our last concert. The Plainfield Symphony went out in a blaze of glory led by Charles Prince, our new conductor. We knocked ‘em dead with an evening of French opera featuring two soloists and highlights from Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah and Bizet’s Carmen. It doesn’t get much better than that!

I did, however, see some pretty great shows starting with Million Dollar Quartet, and ending with The Book of Mormon, the new smash hit musical, which looks like a Tony winner. Irreverent, totally off-the-wall, it was the first Broadway show by the two masterminds behind South Park. You can imagine the language!

At the Metropolitan opera Rossini’s Le Comte Ory was perfection, starring Juan Diego Florez and Susanne Resmark.

I waited until the end to be sure this glorious spring was not going to go away. Maplewood/South Orange is ablaze with color and here is just one slice. I thrill at the richness of nature that I enjoy on my daily walk up and down the hills of this peaceful town.

My little begonia finally found a home....

GEORGE W. WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO NEEDED AN EXIT STRATEGY….

I’m still laughing and scratching my head as I remember some of the business strategies observed during my recent three months in India.  Consequences were not factored in; life was totally in the moment; and time and again I would come upon abandoned projects—road repair, half-finished buildings, a trail ending at the edge of a cliff, abandoned fields—as if money had run out or there was no more interest in the work at hand.

I watched one of these projects grow and fizzle during my three weeks in Gokarna, a town south of Goa on the Adriatic coast where I was staying in a small compound on the beach (see Jan. 21st blog). It was a delightful place of simple cottages surrounded by a spacious sandy area with numerous tall palm trees, and an ambitious owner whose plans included the making of a farm, a petting zoo, and an internet café. The last part of the plan depended on his success in finding a wife, which, in and of itself, was a difficult task for a middle-class Indian who needed to find someone of his own “class” with enough money to be a partner in his work. She was to run the internet café, he told me. These were imponderables, which would be settled later. But first he decided to dig a duck pond in the front yard. I had not seen his two ducks and asked him if he realized what those ducks would do to his lovely sandy “lawn.” The head just wiggled to and fro and he smiled at me with the look of, “Don’t confuse me with facts when my mind is made up.“ I shuddered to think of what the ducks were doing to his upstairs apartment and, having had experience with their bathroom habits, could see the cessation of all future moonlit walks through the pristine dunes.

To attest to our owner’s imagination he designed the pond in the shape of a turtle and lined it with stones that resembled a shell. Then he filled it with water and loaded it with lilies and let it sit for several days. At this point the lilies had died and the water had a green scum on it. His little dog made regular sojourns into the water, and sand began to gather at the bottom. Not to be deterred, our man regaled me with tales of the animals he was going to import for his zoo and the grass he was going to grow so they could graze. Grow grass in sand? Hmmm.

The painful knee episode. You didn't believe me?

It just gets better and better....

Even the camel can't contain himself....

The digging begins

And the water is added

It really does look like a turtle

When I left, the owner was still planning to take down most of the buildings to make way for his “farm,” but he also wanted his “wife” to start a small restaurant for the remaining guests (all four?). He was ebullient about his plans and the duck pond was soon forgotten. As I made my way past the deserted pond and out of the compound, he was sitting on his swing smiling while the dog splashed in the thick green water. I thought I might return next year to see how his farm was coming along and to share in his ebullience.

I soon realized that a good number of Indians don’t worry about tomorrow. If they did why would they throw garbage on the front lawn? I know, I know. There’s another side of India I may be neglecting, but I’ve always preferred my adventures “down and dirty” as compared to the sojourner who insists on classy hotels and the accoutrements of business travel. Traveling that way you side step the messy parts of Indian life and can simply have your driver pull up to your hotel and avoid the crowds, noise, and dirt. But you also miss the side that I’ve been describing–the color, myriad smells (natural and manmade perfumes; cooking; flowers; fields), and the festive atmosphere that await you in the real India–the crowded bazaars, the thrill of darting rickshaws, and the panoply of flamboyant, imaginatively-dressed people.

A small bazaar along the road

Sunset on the beach outside our cabin