Zebra Roundabouts

arriving in Delhi - Some things are new here, all the airport control guys with their heads buried in glowing cellphones sending SMS text messages to their secret lovers...maybe that's why our plane was parked in the "wrong spot" and we had to get taxied back to the landing strip and get shuttled from thjere, and so why that blast of the 1st breathe in India off the plane, less filtered than usual, the thickness of powdered marble and a hundred thousand mini-fires burning colored plastics and paints with some rose petals thrown in here and there.
All the prices duct taped over at the prepaid taxi stand, printed receipts with #'s bearing little resemblance to the price I was asked to pay. And the tiniest tax I'd ever seen with a driver insisting on an added night fee and me insisting back at him in Hindi that he stop joking and drive. I was envisioning my friend Amber (ranee)with me trying to make up a new Bollywood song to respond to the taxi driver, thinking up words to rhyme with "chinta" (cheap/rip off) and "chinta mat karo" (don't cheat me)
Every sidewalk curb was painted in yellow and black stripes for miles and miles, as if fat zebras were lined up asleep aong the roadside. it seemed we could have been going in circles with all the round-a-bouts [by the way according to the delhi times paper, some 15,000 words have now lost their hyphenation due to the invasion of sms grammar] wheels screaching as they seemed to take the driver by surprise ever time, luckily we were in luck with all the red lights - not that we missed them, but that no vehicles were traversing the intersections when we sailed right through the reds.
In the airplane while we were 're-parking' I fell asleep and dreamt I was with my parents and brother in a small car, to pass on the narrow lane we went into a small ditch upon a precipice, we watched two other cars plunge off and tumble over the side and way down. I got out of the car, my brother was going to figure out how to back out.
As if driving through a war-torn neighborhood of crumbling buildings, lights flickering in murky shops (though Nizamuddin was still hopping at that hour all bright lights and hundreds of men in little caps filtering in and out the restaurants across from the mosque entrance), I found my way to my friend Bindiya's house. She and I settled into her brother's huge bed (he and his wife in London for the year) and she filled me in n life as it had passed for her since we met 19 months earlier. Though it was past midnight I wasn't spared looking through at least one of her brother's wedding albums. And when it finally seemed all topics had been fully exhausted she started to tell me of her 'amour eternel' a recent love affair that came about through her work with a foreign consulate. Fascinating! She quickly ran to find a small stash of love letters, so I would look at the handwriting and tell her what I saw. A dashing blue-eyed pilot from Normandy nearly 40 yeatrs her senior who has fallen so deeply in love with her he seems ready to do anything to create a life with her. She's not quite ready, days from finalizing a divorce with her Bollywood studio owner 1s husband from mauritius. And, her father has yet to hear anything about this kindling love.
As for the weather, while the sun does not seem to be scorching, every single pore is dripping. I think my very fat cells must be melting and I'll have lost pounds by evening (speaking of amber, we used to joke about creating a weigh loss program that includes travelling in india - but it really would work).
My first day was Friday, I got up with bindiya, ironed, had chai and paratha with aloo. She left for the office and I tried to leave but every excuse I could think of to go outside was countered by her father. I need a SIM card for my mobile phone 'my wife has one extra SIM, no need to buy one, she will give you when she comes at 2'. I need to just go buy some soap and toothpaste. ' no need, I have some here for you, just take this' Defeat, I suddenly felt trapped and after minutes of jittery wonderment I marched up to the 4th floor rooftop where he was watering plants to announce I was going out for a few minutes.
I called the instrument maker who will Go-willing, delivewr a sitar and sarangi which I will then take to pakistan with me tomorrow. he said 3 or 4, so I hope he comes by 5 or 6, but think that is even stretching it. And I bought tooth-paste, some fancy, expensive Ayurvedic blend that tastes medicinal. I was exhausted before I had walked around the block, as if I'd been out there for days. there were lots of people and cars and motorcycleas making their way through the world all around me, it all ssemed to be in slow motion and i hummed to myself to keep the sanity as I casually shuffled along, matching the genetral gait as if it was my actual 'walk' to begin with.
Arriving back at te house i realized the electricity was out, and that menat no matter how manyu times I pushed the 4 bells, no one would hear and come unbolt the door for me. The guy at the corner clothing sore adjoining the house said to pound on the door, but I knew it would hurt my hand and not reach to the roof anyway. so i waited, and he came down by chance eventually, as I melted into the dirt-laden stoop; and inside I went, to sit and fan mysel with a woven straw stick type of thing, watching the calendar of the drowning tiger.
There was a sudden deluge of rain in the evening so Bindiya ad I did not head out to lajpat nagar as planned for shopping. nizam sahib did come basically at 5:30; a nice man, interestingly slow roundabout droll. The sarangi he made is very different than the last one, it has a fish and ornate work, though not ivory and not varnished, some nice things, and a great heavy bow. some 'doctor' friend of bindiya's wanted to take us out for dinner, but we ended up at some fancy scmancy neon bar with pounding music, cigarette smoke, lots of whiskey and loads of guys too cool for their own shirts. I had to go to teh lobby to wait for them at the 3rd ropund of my virgin fruit punchy. Perhaps it was the mix of wasabi green peas and mojitos that had bindiya up in the loo in the middle of the night, between bouts of flinging her arms over me and pushing me to the very edge of my side (oh the joys of indian family life - I guess though, we could have fit 2 or 3 more people in the bed, so nothing to complain of). I woke up listening to pavarotti's 'ave maria's and pasquale's 'te voglio bene' on the ipod joe has graciously lended me. I cought the morning sun on the rooftop and called my friend gokul in bangalore - we had met 9+ years back in albany waiting for the bus when I asked if he spoke hindi and would mind helping to teach me as the bus headed on towards bennington.
At the airport I was stopped before immigration to identify my bags, when I pointed out the sitar and the huge bag with a fiberglass sarangi case inside, I was interrogated about my profession. I said I'm a student. "what do you study?" "medicine" it was the right answer, I guess if i had said music that they would have denied me my instruments; not sure why but that's the feeling I got. The flight was packed with hundreds of men, and a couple of women. The actual boarding gate #3 was closed off until it was past boarding time, and we were metal-detected and patted down a second time 1/2 way through the gate before actually stepping on the plane. Somehow my ticket was in business class. The very movie-character-fit young woman sitting next to me called over to the stewardess, 'who is flying', demanding, to the bewilderment of the stewardess, the names of the pilots. On towards sunset we flew.