internet setbacks

Woa-

I finally have made it back to the fabled internet (almost as storied in its recent history as this land i've been is for its looooong history). It's wednesday night in Amritsar, and my last real contact to email, and your fantastic comments, was Sunday morning here. I've been in a very small village in the Punjab right at the Pakistani border for the past few days. While there, I had lots of time to write blog posts, upload videos, and even record some This American Life (This Punjabi Life?)-style audio recordings.

HowEVER, the crummy Intenet cafe I've made it to this evening claims to have no way to connect my computer to the internet. I don't really believe them, but I poked around at the cords in this little capsule, and it doesn't really seem worth my time to mess with. SO, tomorrow hopefully I will find a decent cyber cafe, or just crash one of the five star hotels and pretend I belong, so I can upload all my stuff about Preetnagar, where I've been out of communication for the past few days - though, interestingly, I was up to date on all the US primaries due to a Hindi copy of Delhi Times delivered by bicycle to this little town where I was staying. Apparently Hillary contacted the Chief Minister of Bihar (as state in Eastern India) to ask him to rally the American-Biharis, of whom there are quite a few. The things you learn by not reading in English!

In any case, some news. I'm back in Amritsar as of this morning. My hosts dropped me off at the house where I'll be staying in the city. A very nice fellow named Navjit has offered to put me up in a spare room on his house. We arrived just as he was cleaning off the deck by dumping water and using a wicker brush (very effective, and more efficient than just running the hose, and includes your daily exercise). I have my own floor of the house, which is a large tiled patio overlooking a park, a somewhat spartan room with bed, table, chair and bathroom (pigeons included). I am grateful that something has finally worked out, and he and his wife are such a nice and caring couple. His English is almost perfect, and he is willing to drive me around places on the back of his motorcycle (which everyone seems to have in this city).

I arrived with my backpack, and a harmonium on loan from my friends in Preetnagar. Hopefully I will begin kirtaan lessons tomorrow with my ragi (who also arrives via motorcycle from a neighboring town). Then Navjit, his colleague Livtar, and I shared a lunch of omelet, soy beans, roti and whiskey (and INdian specialty which I had avoided until this time). After a few omelets and rounds of whiskey, Livtar (who spoke almost no English) managed to persuade Navjit that this was the opportune time to play a joke on their office-mates, and the ultimate fool, their boss. This boss, I gathered, was the type who liked to walk around the office speaking only in English, showing off his multicultural professionalism, while at the same time being not at all proficient in the language.

I agreed to all this in the spirit of gratitude for their hospitality, and ascertained that my party in the drama was to play Livtar's 'dear American friend', and overwhelm the poor guy with more English than he could handle. So, off we went roaring on the motorcycles (only I had checked their level of sobriety as being able to operate a motorbike...not that it would make that much difference in this traffic), and the play went off on the boss. I didn't really feel sorry for the guy, honestly, and he took it with a good spirit - but he did get up and leave after about two minutes of my conversation. Then it turned into a very interesting parade of other co-workers, each more gregarious than the last. I was glad to finally have an "in" to talk to people (even if it was a fake pretense, and even though people only asked me what country I was from and if I had seen the Golden Temple).

After that followed more whiskey, fried chicken and, I hate to admit, more driving around the city on motorcycles. In my defense, though, I will say that it was aptly demonstrated to me that the Punjabis are the Scots of the subcontinent - liquor only revives them. In any sense, it was a gregarious and invigorating re-introduction to the city. Actually, while I'm on the topic, a little more about the roads. It's not only insane, it's slightly hysterical. To the point that I'm beginning to see this as normal, and our manicured and pageant-like traffic jams a product of our lack of creativity. In the course of a day, not only do you see everything from giant army convoys to fifty-year-old cars, to autorickshaws, to motorbikes and scooters, to cycle rickshaws and bicycles, to horse and mule drawn vegetable carts, but the road is treated only marginally as a place to drive. Frequently it is a place to converse, conduct business, free-load - I saw a cyclist holding on to a chain from a supply truck and getting pulled along - and rub elbows, literally. It's quite astonishing, and so far I've only suffered a slightly-mashed toe when our motorbike bumped an autorickshaw.

Anyhow, hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow with true purpose. I'll be in a room that I can call my own until I leave the country. I plan to purchase a cheap mobile phone so I can keep in touch with my hosts and music teachers, as well as talking to other scholars of gurbani around the Punjab. I'll begin to my way in and around the city, finding food options that work for me and negotiating a little more like local.

Linguistically, I've made some leaps in the last few days, probably mainly in the area of confidence. Now that I'm hearing this language spoken around me all the time, it's easier to latch onto common words, expressions, inflections, that just weren't possible studying in a coffee shop in Portland. I'll end this post with perhaps the most common of those, which expresses how I feel ("everything's fine"). Theek hai!