Ouch.

I miss my brother. I really, really miss him. It's been a year since I've seen him, and it's going to be at least another half year more. He wasn't there for my wedding. We didn't spend Christmas together, for the first time since he was three. I missed his sixteenth birthday and I won't be there when he turns seventeen either. He is growing up without me and so far away that I don't feel like I can reach him, like I can let him know how much I love him, like I can be part of his life. I keep hearing and seeing things that remind me of him- a snippet on the radio about Canadian adoption, a conversation with my folks, a TV show plot about a brother who needs his sister to be there for him - and falling apart. I just ... yeah. It's harder for him, and I know that he needs to be where he is, and that it's part of growing up for him to be away from us like this. It's just, I'm probably the only important person in his life he doesn't have major, deep-seated issues with, and I'm thousands of miles away. That sucks, no other word for it.

Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop popPop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop

Observations from January:

1. My dog now has one eye and some truly painful-looking stitches. The veterinarian says that she will probably eventually lose vision in both eyes. She is groggy and in pain and keeps bumping into things. I want to bubble-wrap her, as I imagine (somehow) that this will preserve her from any further harm.
   
   
2. Bubble wrap is just a damn good thing in general. The past few weeks I've felt as though I could use a few layers of it myself. I used to have a therapist; hell, I used to have two. But honestly, maintaining them is almost as stressful as not having them, what with the finding them and paying them and keeping them and having to see them all the time. Not to mention the actual talking to them. Fuck it. Bubble wrap all the way.
   
   
3. My brother writes from Samoa: "The new meds I am on are either working or the placebo effect is very good." My brother is a very funny young man - and he is a young man, these days. He no longer writes like an exile. His last letter sounded like the letter of a (yes, lonely, yes, sad) person who lives elsewhere but is writing to tell you what is going on in their lives. This is a huge improvement over the two-sentence "I-hate-it-here-bring-me-home" emails we've been getting until now. Still, he's been gone almost a year now. I miss him so much it hurts. So do my parents. I think we all believe it's for the best, but goddamnit, I want my brother back.
   
   
4. Maybe if I wrote to Christos I could convince him to go out and bubble-wrap Samoa. God knows he's wrapped every other damn thing I can think of, from the Eiffel Tower to the Grand Canyon. Samoa would be a cinch.

With a whimper.

WHO warns of dire flu pandemic (CNN). And there's not really anything that can be done to prevent it, on the individual action level. How lovely.

That's what I thought. I'll just be adding some light reading to my Amazon list, now.

Of course, this is if the mega-volcano or the mega-tsunamis or the mega-quakes or the mega-idiot-in-the-White-House-hitting-the-red-button doesn't happen first. Or the meteor.

Mmmm. Days like this, I think to myself, "Hey self," I think, "Let's have children."

Warning: May be Hazardous To Self And Others

When I was in the third grade, I couldn't pay attention. I mean, I was just the spaciest kid. Ms. Bowen got this tri-fold thing, like cubicle walls, and put it around my desk facing the front of the room so I couldn't look out the window or at my fellow students. I guess she thought it would work like blinders on a racehorse. But I just waited until she wasn't paying attention, and then moved it around so I could only see out the window. The other kids all asked me what I was doing, and I seem to recall telling them, "It's more interesting this way."

It wasn't just school, of course. My parents used to call me "the space cadet" because I was always way out there in orbit, mentally. Somewhere else. The family joke was that when you played cards with me I got "lost" between turns and you had to call my name several times before I noticed you were speaking or realized it was my go. If it weren't for the fact that I could concentrate when it suited me, though never on "suitable" things, I'm sure we all would have suspected some sort of mental disorder.

Frankly, I think I'd be happier if it were a mental disorder. As it is, I have no one but myself to blame when I tune out the important things.

This post brought to you by the fact that I have let my insurance lapse on one of my houses and both our dogs without realizing it, because I spent about six months last year not opening my mail and didn't check to make sure the automatic withdrawals were functioning properly. By the fact that I turned a significant report in significantly late this week because I couldn't focus enough to get it done on time. By the fact that I just remembered I got a traffic ticket in 2003 that I spaced going to go to court for (I were innocent, yrhonor, honest I were) and then haven't yet paid the penalties on. By the fact that I just plain forgot to take my sweet spaniel to the vet on Saturday, because her eye was looking a bit irritated, and we went yesterday and the doctor says it is acute onset glaucoma and she might lose her vision on that side.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Photo is of a sign I found painted on a wall in Jaisalmer Fort, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India. It wasn't Himself's favorite sign; he liked the one that said, "This Way To Up," but it's quite apropos for me these days.

Companion texts to travelling

There's so damn much history in India for which I had no reference points. I was working so hard in the months before I left, I didn't even have time to read the Lonely Planet guides, and my previous knowledge of the entire Indian subcontinent included "big" and "crowded" and "sacred cows" and not much else. So I did a lot of reading while I was there, mostly around politics and cultural conflict, because that's what I found most interesting. I present to you, in the order I read them, all the India-related material I devoured while abroad. (I also read some Douglas Adams and a Wodehouse novel, but I'm sticking to the salient items, here.)

• A Traveller's History of India by Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda. The Cliff's notes history of the subcontinent. Woefully inadequate as a single source, but an excellent jumping-off point for further exploration.
  
• The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. A light re-read that was far more interesting after my English degree than before, but still less than illuminating.
  
• India: A Million Mutinies Now, by V.S. Naipaul. Amazing. People have told me that Naipaul is known for being a "cranky" author, but this was the first of his works I have read, and it was a very open, honest series of interviews with various Indians, from the standpoint of one who truly wishes to listen. A great introduction to the bewildering variety of cultures that comprise the nation.
  
• The Jewel in the Crown, by Paul Scott. The first in the "Raj Quartet" series, a novel set in 1942 India before Partition and Liberation. Fascinating, well-written, and politically interesting.
  
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice, by Arundhati Roy. Essays on politics and social justice by the author of the Booker-Prize-winning The God of Small Things. She writes with passion and a leftist slant that is dear to my heart about both Indian and global issues. I would like to introduce her to my Aunt Max, if they don't already know each other; they seem kindred spirits.
  
• No Full Stops in India, by Mark Tully. I didn't get to finish this, but it was my favorite of all, after the Naipaul. Nonfiction from the British BBC correspondent who has been covering India for decades.
  
• India: From Midnight to the Millennium, by Shashi Tharoor. The elite educated Indian's perspective on India, from the UN Director of Communications and Kofi Annan's right-hand man. He's also a Keralite, and it was wonderful to read about Kerala specifically.

All of these were in some way the accounts of outsiders, or people not representative of "the common man" (who is, as far as I can gather, even more of a mythical figure in India than he is elsewhere). For one, all were written in English, which is not the primary language of 98% of the country. Most of the authors were well-off and had spent quite a bit of time abroad, and four of the seven were not Indian nationals at all. Our cousin Gayatri, when asked for book recommendations, said that we should read something written in an Indian language and translated, because authors who write in English are not addressing the same audience as authors who write in Indian languages. She suggested Pather Panchali, by Bibhut Bandopadhyay. Rabindranath Tagore's work was also highly praised by several people I asked. Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could pick up either one.

Still, I think my reading helped me to get some vague shape of what India or the many Indias might look like, a sort of through-a-glass-darkly kind of impression. Like an intermediary step to reading more "authentic" Indian literature (though, yes, I'm entirely aware of the many problems with the whole concept of "authenticity"). Whether or not I will ever have time or inclination to take that next step is unclear; what's certain is that I know a great deal more now than I did when I left, which is all I hoped for upon my departure.

Christmas in Kerala

Two nights before Christmas, there was a ruckus outside the house. Baby Ammayi said it was Christmas carolers. Kerala as a whole is about 20% Christian, but Khottayam and Cochin are the center of the Christian culture, and lights and paper stars were strung everywhere. "The local urchins are out," Baby Ammayi said, "Come see." So we went out to the front of the drive to watch, and sure enough, across the road a group of nine or ten preteen boys were "caroling." They seemed to know only one song, more of a chant than anything I had ever thought of as a "carol," and they accompanied their singing with a great deal of slightly arrhythmic percussion on an assortment of plastic jugs and metal cans. One "urchin" was dressed as Father Christmas, in a red suit with a pillow stuffed in and a florid plastic Santa Claus mask. He had balloons tied to the top of his pointed red hat, and balloons at the top of his staff, and thin brown limbs sticking out to all sides, and he danced.

The boys came over to us, once they saw that we were watching, and started in on the song again. The Father Christmas came to the front and started to dance for us and my face nearly split from grinning. What a funny dance he did! Flailing and jigging about from one side to the other, with more enthusiasm and goodwill than talent. His friends banged away and chanted, and gangly skinny Santa flopped and capered about to the best of his ability. I can't remember the last time I saw something so hilarious. At the end of the dance and song, Baby Ammayi went in to find her purse while the leader practiced his English on me. We gave them rupees and they all trooped off to the next house, one of them shouting "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!" back over his shoulder, to the giggling amusement of his friends.

(Photo is from the next night's batch of carolers, which were much the same story, with a less floppy and flaily Father Christmas.)

... plus c'est la meme chose.

The first day I was in India I spent in Delhi, jet-lagged and stupid with too much travel. Padma Ammayi's school was having a student talent exhibition, and I asked to go, having no idea what it might be like. Himself (perhaps wisely) begged off, going instead with Chandran Amam to the railway station to arrange our tickets.

Padma Ammayi teaches chemistry at a large private school, and she was in charge of the seventh and eighth form girls for the day, which was charmingly and hilariously billed as "Annual Day." She shooed me out of the chaos of student preparations, so I went out to the seating area. Hundreds of chairs surrounded a huge green sporting lawn with a backdrop hand-painted by the students to look like temples and mosques, and were gradually filled with parents wearing bright saris and nice summer outfits, holding digital cameras and video recorders. I felt like a complete lump in my drab travel clothes and sneakers and unwashed hair.

The actual event was...well, a school talent show. Need I say more? There was student singing. There was student dancing. Student athletic demonstrations. Student awards. The music played between acts was, hilariously enough, Muzak versions of classic Pet Shop Boys songs. The best part, though, was the audience. The parents sat politely in their chairs right up until the students started to perform, and then they all moved forward, sitting on the ground, standing in one another's way for the best camera angle, pushing to get to the front. By the end, when all the students came onto the field, it was a chaotic crowd of proud mummies and daddies, each trying to hold their camera or videorecorder over the heads of the rest.

I wandered into Padma Ammayi's classroom as the girls were returning the costumes and heading home with their parents. The room was large and unwelcoming, concrete and bare, with only a few student works (in Hindi and English) lining the walls. I wondered what the public schools looked like, if this was what the private schools boasted for facilities. Further proving that teenagers are teenagers the world over, the only thing written on the board other than directions for arriving and lining up for the day was a large sentence, in bold chalk:

What did I tell you about the NOISE?

I was raised on National Geographic and had been expecting India to be all tropical greenery, comprehensive poverty, and intense humidity. Already, I was having my preconceptions challenged, but not quite in the way I had expected travel to challenge them.

(Photo is an unrelated snapshot, from about a week later. In Jaipur's stunning Amber Fort, beneath a golden ceiling hung with crystal chandeliers, between silver urns commissioned by the Maharajah to hold the holy water of the Ganges, a small child refuses to smile for her parents' camera, despite the cajoling and jollying of a whole passle of accompanying adults.)