Classical v. Devotional music, take one

The intersection of classical music and devotional music in North India can be described many ways. It is certainly a mutually-beneficial relationship. In the main strains of devotional music, particularly Hindu bhajan, Sikh kirtan, and Sufi qawwali, there are educated performers and enthusiastic listeners for whom the presence of classical ragas and talas heightens the spiritual experience. The overlap is small, and the vast majority of devotional music is in a simple style that does not conform to the rules of ragas. Even so-called “light classical” music demands a higher level of apprehension for the listener, and so is not much more prevalent than strict classical style. But Hindustani classical music definitely exists in pockets in these traditions.

In fact, in Sikhism, although the 'classical' elements are strictly and adeptly applied by only a tiny minority of musicians, even those devotees who do not understand classical music pay lip-service to the idea that classical ragas are the ideal for the Gurus’ kirtan. In fact, it may be that they are much more enraptured with the idea that classical music represents the standard of Sikh music than actually listening to it. I had heard about this phenomenon from Sarbpreet, my contact in the States, as well as my music teacher in Punjab. Even though the Sikh scripture contains a prescription of a particular raga along with the text of every hymn, kirtaniyas in village gurdwaras, and even many who have major CD contracts, sing in a style that is not raga-based (i.e. theirs uses only 3-4 notes) or lift tunes from the world of popular Punjabi and Bollywood songs.

This came home to me when I was at a CD stand just outside the entrance of the Golden Temple. I was looking for a CD by the accomplished ragi Amrik Singh Zakhmi, who we had discussed in my lesson. Although there were many glossy CD’s of turbaned and bearded men doing kirtan, I couldn’t find this artist, who my ragi had described as a major contemporary figure in kirtan. When the shopkeeper finally understood who I was looking for, he said dismissively “Oh, you want classical.” He then reached underneath the counter to take out a small stack of CD’s. This is precisely the phenomenon of devotees publicly acknowledging the importance of their music’s classical roots, but privately supporting the accessible, non-classical artists and leaving the purists to languish under the counter.

Returning to the comparison of mutual benefits, a typical classical concert is never absent devotional content, whether explicit or implicit. In the West we like to see ‘absolute’ music (as opposed to program music or sacred music) in a secular, intellectual context. Of course, it’s not fair to say all Western academic music is secular – composers like Bruckner, Messaien, Arvo Part (to name a few) saw their music and compositional process as deeply devotional – but we can say a major difference is in a narrative of music and its supposed effects on people. In a Hindustani classical vocal concert, the artist will at some point sing through a short composition, a few lines long and of a devotional nature to one of the Hindu gods. Though this is explicit, the importance should not be overstated. This might only be a few minutes out of an hour-long piece, and the rest of the time the artist is singing solfeggio or nonsense syllables, or merely vocalizations.

Thus, the more direct contribution of spirituality to the ‘classical’ setting is implicit in the accounts some listeners and performers give to classical music. My ragi used to talk about how a raga like ‘kalyan’ would give you a peaceful feeling. Indians and non-Indians musicians with whom I talked in India referenced the fact that the drone of a perfect fifth and octave show the “unstruck sound”, or the true reality of the universe in Indian philosophy. In that sense, listening to a modal music that explores intervals around that unstruck sound is a means to perceiving the ultimate reality. This is not really that different from the way saints and theoreticians have long described devotional music in the Sikh, Sufi and Hindu traditions.

Still, this narrative is only a small part of the interactions with classical music. With my teacher, more often our entire discussions would revolve around the mechanics of particular ragas, how to differentiate them from other ragas, or particular techniques of singing or composition. The philosophical side is also minimal in the selective audiences of classical music I saw in Delhi. Critics and astute listeners liked to fixate on the particular strengths of a performer, and program notes usually discussed only the gharana (pedigree of music teaching) and the various awards garnered. Additionally, the audience for classical music is not strictly Hindu devotees, or people who are there for the spiritual saturation – it cut across secular elites, Sikhs, Muslims and others. In fact, while all surface observations would lead me to conclude that it was a secular, artistic tradition, it was really only when I pressed that audience members would switch gears from technique and talk about the importance of spirituality in listening – as though it was simply understood, and therefore nobody thinks about it!

The picture is further complicated by the history of Indian Classical music (though by ‘history’ I should acknowledge that a lot of this is oral history, which tends to be heavily subject to the later narratives imposed upon it). However, one prevalent idea about the lineage of what is now called Hindustani classical music is that was more devotional in its (very distant) origins, and the current image as a sophisticated, mostly secular music is fairly recent. The Mughal emperors reigned in North India for a period of several hundred years – actually until they were fully displaced by the British in the 19th century. These were Muslim rulers, mainly of Persian blood and cultural heritage. They realized, however, that they were governing an area that, despite the presence of many Muslims, had its own ancient civilization and arts. The Mughals, then, essentially adopted Hindustani raga-based music as its court music, subsequently muting the more overtly devotional parts and infusing Persian modes into many of the ragas.

This history is worth considering because, as I realize it, this whole post begs the question of what is actually the distinction between devotional and classical music. In order for them to have an ‘intersection’, they surely must be separate entities. In my descriptions of my experiences, though, this distinction is blurred considerably. For instance, most devotional music (by volume) is not in classical ragas, and much of the audience of classical music talks about it in secular terms; on the other hand, classical style is held up as the ideal of devotional practice, and spiritual benefits are touted as historic roots of the Hindustani classical tradition. Hence, it is a complex relationship, and I may never be able to draw a line around each tradition to say ‘here is where they are distinct’ and ‘here is where they mix.’ In subsequent posts, though, I hope to turn to more specifics of the traditions as I saw them, to flesh out the picture somewhat.

Shear Madness

Forgive the slow start to my “writing every day” on the blog. In thinking about it, I believe that I have ‘psyched myself out’ by thinking: “Now I’m in the processing phase, not just recording, so every conclusion has to be brilliant and lead towards this masterwork of scholarship.” Needless to say, this is incorrect but still potentially paralyzing. So I’ve freed myself by downgrading that to a minor concern and reassuring myself that whoever’s reading this already knows I’m a big dork and therefore is not expecting anything concise and brilliant. No offense to any of you, but that’s what I need to tell myself to keep from putting off this project.

So, back underway, I’ve remember the other problem, that there’s just too many darn things to write about (another possible source of paralysis, but making lists always helps with this one). Today I thought I’d start with the most far-fetched thing on my list, in hopes that it further frees up my creative juices. So, [drumroll] I give you: ‘Religion and Hair’.

Hair in religion might seem a ridiculous thing to fixate on, but there was a particular instance that drove home its importance in India. On February 27th, I traveled by bus from Amritsar to Dharamsala in the mountains. The place I left, of course, is the holy city of the Sikhs, who are under injunction by the 10th guru from cutting any of their hair…ever. Consequently, Punjabi Sikh men in their prime (at least the ones I saw without a head-tie on) have thick hair that goes down at least to their waist, as well as a full-grown beard in varying lengths and styles. Women generally have very long hair, but it is often either in a braid and underneath a covering that’s part of the traditional outfit. Some women had very noticeable facial hair, of course, and particularly noticeable are the braids that very young boys wear or the wound-up bun that teenage boys sport before they have started wearing a turban.

In addition, there are many levels and layers to the Sikh practice of growing one’s hair. For historical reference, by the way, this injunction is called “kes” in Punjabi, and is one of the five kakkars that mark a mature Sikh (men and women) as part of the Sikh Khalsa (martial and spiritual community). All of the kakkars start with K and are ‘visible’ signs of one’s Sikhism, though the hair is the most obvious.

Obviously, there exist Sikhs, even in Amritsar, who shave their beards and cut their hair. This does not mean that they are banned from any of the Sikh sanctuaries or activities, but there exists another level of distinction in addition to the word for baptized Sikhs (“amritdhari” meaning baptized with nectar) which is known as “kesdhari” (my translation: baptized by hair?) Thus, while there is not active discrimination against those who cut their hair, all of the musicians who were ragis or people that actively supported me in learning kirtan belonged to the kesdhari crowd.

There are many shades in between, too.; such as men that wear the turban but trim their beards. There is also a style where the beard is not trimmed, but instead tied-up in varying styles so it lies flush with the chin. Even of those who grow their beard long, there are many different lengths and therefore styles. A final ‘formal’ style available to older men is the piece of cloth that hangs from the turban like a chinstrap and makes the beard look more kempt. While one man tried to ascribe this to a ‘British’ formal style, another said that it actually represented ‘laziness.’ All of this debate and strong feelings about hair within a single religion! It gets more complex when you move between religions, which is almost impossible to avoid in India.

Upon arriving in the Dharamsala, the seat of Tibetan Buddhism’s most esteemed spiritual leader and home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, I immediately was overwhelmed by the sight of the many thousands of crimson-robe-wearing Tibetan monks (more than normal because of the teachings). Although I had seen groups of monks throughout my education, and even walking around Boston in groups, it was never so apparent to me that all their heads were shaved – men, women (and, I should add, non-Tibetans of both sexes). Certainly it was because I was coming from a place where hair was so prized for showing one’s orthodoxy and that’s why it struck me that the act of devotion here was in shaving.

Comically, the point was driven home to me even more when I encountered, in a hilltop restaurant, a girl who had graduated from college with me and lived in the same residential dorm. At first we didn’t recognize eachother, and then later commented with a laugh that it was because I had grown a beard (living among the Sikhs) and she had shaved her head (traveling in Tibet on a fellowship).

Though this contrast was perhaps the most extreme, many other examples exist. When I was in Ajmer I heard someone draw the distinction between a ‘khadim’ (caretaker of the shrine) and a ‘true sufi’. Interestingly, this informant referred to the man pictured in the previous post about Ajmer as a ‘true sufi’, because he grew his hair long but kept a trimmed beard. By contrast, most other middle-aged to older men in Ajmer kept the trimmed beard favored by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the hadith, but at least half of these had their grey or charcoal hair colored by orangish streaks from dye and henna. It’s even more confusing because, as I remember later, men are supposed to shave their heads when they are on the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, but here, at the most important shrine of South Asia, I didn’t see a single head-shaved among thousands of men.

Moreover, any time you are near a Hindu bathing place or temple – and, lets face it, when in India you are always near one of these – one of the most common sights along the street are the impromptu barber-shops. These include a chair (mandatory but of varying qualities), a mirror (usually propped up on a fence rail), and about four men sitting around watching. There are physical shops, of course, but my understanding of the purpose these fill is that 1)few men shave at home (either for lack of resources or time); 2)it is important to have one’s hair freshly trimmed, and beard shorn (most Hindu men wear a mustache) before appearing in front of the deity; 3)the cost is incredibly low and also provides a social interaction with the other men sitting around. Hence, the vast numbers of mustachioed Hindu men with a fresh shave.

So this is just a taste of the many interactions of hair and religion, lest people argue for the impracticality of religion. Though you may argue with how I’m defining practical here, the fact is that many people have to get up and think about their hair vis a vis their religion, and then interact, or at least see, other people all day who are following different prescriptions. For my part, I tried to maintain as neutral a look as I could – which amounted to short hair that I never cut (I had buzzed it before I left the US so I wouldn’t have worry about cutting) and beard that never looked neatly trimmed but also was never as grown in as my Sikh hosts.

Introduction to Ajmer

This is going to be a short post that's all about context. While you heard a fair amount while I was in Punjab of all the Sikh historical gurdwaras and holy places I visited, my research of devotional and classical music also had a multi-religious aspect. My visit to the Tibetan buddhist capital of Dharamsala was documented on here, as well as several un-affiliated or multi-affiliated ashrams. Christi, Kirsten and I witnessed the evening arti ceremony on the Ganges at Haridwar and visited hilltop Hindu temples there (where it was impossible to get away from hearing all the Hindu bhajans, songs, that too-closely resembled Bollywood heartthrob soundtracks). I also was in Pushkar, which contains a lake that is a major pilgrimage place for Hindus, on the festival of Holi.

But one place that struck me as much as any other, even with all the time I spent at the Golden Temple and witnessed the major Vaisakhi festival, was the "dargah sharif" at Ajmer. Ajmer, and the dargah, are located in the middle of the state of Rajasthan, which is primarily arid with spiny hills. The famed palaces of Udaipur and Jaipur are a few hours on either side of Ajmer, and it is a major transit point, largely because of the dargah and the close proximity to Pushkar. In case you don't know, a dargah refers to the shrine around the tomb of a Sufi saint. I say complex because most of them have grown to include, in addition to the main tomb, the tombs of many (many, many, many...) followers and descendants of the main saint, as well as usually several mosques, stalls selling flowers for offering at the shrine, a langgar kitchen, and large marble courtyards in which people can gather. These are just the more noticeable features of a dargah, though, and I have found them to be endlessly intriguing and evolving places, containing many different spaces for different people within, like a whole city to itself.

What drew me to the Sufi shrines is the practice of Qawwali singing (more on that later), but what particularly drew me to Ajmer was the contact information of this gentleman. He is one of the khadims, the name for the ONE family who was held the keys to the shrine for the last, oh let's see...800 years! Now there are several thousand of them, of course, and they pursue other interests besides just the opening of the door. Many study abroad, or are interested in business or scholarship. My contact, in particular, has studied Sufi art and music. He has written about the so-called "sama'" debate in Islam and Sufism (more on that later, also).

I hardly knew anything about dargahs to begin with, however. I visited an associated shrine, much smaller, in Delhi during my first week. I posted some videos of that Qawwali, which I had also studied a little at Harvard in my courses, but after that I was absorbed into the world of the Sikhs in Punjab for some weeks. So, thinking I only needed a change of atmosphere (and religious fashion and hairstyle) I sent an email to my contact and departed south from Amritsar, via Jaipur, to arrive in Ajmer. Only later did I learn what people in many circles say about Ajmer: that one should only go when she or he has been 'called'. As I continue to talk about it in other posts, you can try to discern whether I had been truly 'called' or whether I went in defiance of this adage.

Conversation with Bibi Jaswant Kaur, 22nd April, 2008

(photo courtesy of www.gurmatsangeetproject.com)

On my last day in India, after a harrowing trip with too much luggage (another story) from Amritsar to Delhi, to Ajmer, and back to Delhi, I visited a place called Guru Gobind Sadan (www.gobindsadan.org). This multi-faith retreat in the suburbs of Delhi is rooted in Sikhism, but includes a mosque, several Hindu temples, a Buddha pavilion, a sanctuary bearing the Sh’ma Yisroel and yes, even a 7-foot high Jesus wearing Indian-style robes in whose hands the devotees could bury their heads. I was guided by a wonderful New England-raised woman named Mary, but I was there to meet and speak with Bibi Jaswant Kaur.


The actual environment of the interview was difficult. First, there was the presence of a Russian lady, another guest at the ashram doing a translation of the Sikh scripture, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, from English into Russian while studying the Indian classical dance bharatnatyam. Since the Russian gal had lived there several years, this led Bibiji to speak more than half the time in Punjabi. I had difficulty following, and even when I could follow the outline of what she was saying by context, the details I was grappling for, from someone of her stature, eluded me. Moreover, it would not have been possible even to record the conversation for later translation because the giant cooling fan/apparatus was droning on so loudly (it had been 105 that day in Delhi) that we all had to lean in even to hear eachother.

Sidenote: at the end of the conversation I put into practice my theory that “Indian music is just like when you harmonize with the vacuum cleaner” by taking the drone of the fan and singing a raga around it – Bibiji was pleasantly surprised!

Earlier, I had listened to Bibiji sing her kirtan at a 5:30pm session before Rehras Sahib (the evening prayer in Sikhism). In addition to the other complexes at Guru Gobind Sadan, there was a main gurdwara with an outside langgar hall, etc. Bibiji’s voice came over the loudspeaker with another man who repeated her lines in the same octave (her voice is so low, I could have sung in the same octave as well). This fair-skinned Punjabi, who they called simply Bhagatji, accompanied on dhol with very simple beats, not classical taals.

I was a little disappointed once we had first settled into listen to this kirtan. However, I do credit Bibiji that I could understand the words of the shabads she sang perhaps better than in any setting with other singers, including my ragi in lessons with me. It’s hard to articulate how often during my research I was listening to kirtan and had no idea even the general shape of the words that were being sung; those that weren’t deformed by the singer were swallowed by the empty spaces of the hall. Gobind Sadan did have a good sound system, which made it feel more intimate than in many gurdwaras - these ashrams tend to have wealthy contributors overseas that can outfit them with luxuries they take for granted but are not common in the rest of India. I also acknowledge that, since it was the end of my time in India, my improved ability for listening to words in Punjabi, combined with her pronunciation, enabled me to differentiate the words.

In spite of this, the kirtan did not satisfy what I knew to be classical style. There was no tabla (drum), and Bhagatji was not playing in taals (classical meters). Also, in spite of my initial excitement that Bibji was a “classical singer’s singer”, since I knew she had learned ragas from the most famous family of singers in the history or Sikhism (more on that later), after some time I began to doubt whether she was really singing in ragas at all. There seemed to be no improvisation - she repeated each asthai and antra the same, with no alaap or taan - and her accompaniment on the harmonium was square. Still, despite lacking musical interest, I resigned myself to the fact that perhaps the impact of her kirtan lay in something else, for example the clarity of the words (what my ragi called “shabad ang”). This was somewhat highlighted when Mary turned to me to ask, ‘do you understand the words’, and translated for me the refrain “with every breath I remember your name, o God”. She seemed to be very moved by the kirtan, and once I knew the translation I appreciated that the ‘breathing’ of the musical line had a mesmerizing quality, even though it was not in the high-classical style I expected.

At the conclusion of the twenty minutes of kirtan, I was introduced to Bibiji and Bhagatji, and we fixed an appointment for after Rehras at 7pm. I was left at the gurdwara, and there followed a confusing sequence of rites, similar to what would happen in a gurdwara, but much more opaque to me as an outsider to this community – how quickly people in these closed-in ashram settings must internalize the timings of a daily rite and forget that the proportions might feel unfamiliar to an outsider, even one who had observed Rehras in the Golden Temple on many occasions. Some hukamnama was taken (reading from a random page of the scripture), but it struck me as much longer than normal, and at times the reader left the page and went from memory. Rehras Sahib wasn’t chanted in the usual tones, and instead it led into a long aarti prayer, where volunteers gathered in front of all the shrines in the complex waving elaborate candelabras – not just in front of Sri Guru Granth Sahib but also at a well devoted to Guru Nanak’s son and a brick chimney bearing many plaques.

Just before seven, when the Russian was supposed to take me to Bibi’s residence, Bhagatji came over to me in the gurdwara hall and asked if I still wanted to meet Bibiji. He then assigned one of the volunteers (clearly not a resident of the place, I knew in that way that I began to distinguish these things without any specific observations) to take me. He walked me over to her condo in the ashram, where it was somewhat impressive she lived on her own at 88 years old. She had put together a little plate of biscuits and when the Russian arrived a few minutes later she offered us some coca-cola.

Despite the difficulties mentioned above, I learned many interested facts through the course of the conversation with Bibiji. Since the Russian girl didn’t know much (anything) about kirtan history, I persuaded Bibiji to talk a little about the rababis who had trained her. I have to interject a little history here, much of it gleamed due to the work of my friend Sarbpreet at www.gurmatsangeetproject.com. The whole tradition of Sikh kirtan goes back to the first Guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, in the late 15th century. Kirtan itself, or devotional singing to God, was nothing new, and in fact had swept back into style in the preceding centuries by a massive Hindu revival movement called ‘bhakti’. However, Nanak’s kirtan was distinct enough to launch his own movement, which became Sikhism, because he had a strong reformist message and a folk-friendly style that appealed to non-learned Hindus and Muslims alike. As he traveled and sang his messages, so the stories go, his companion Mardana went with him, accompanying his poetry and songs on an instrument called the rabab. Mardana belonged to a lineage (caste) called ‘mirasis’, who are traditionally Muslims and to this day noted for their inherent artistic ability (such that I would hear people in conversation laud their vocal quality). Mardana passed down to his mirasi descendants the playing of the rabab and the association with the Sikh gurus and shabad kirtan. Thus, all the way through the centuries and up to the time of Partition, the hazuri ragis (main singers) at the Golden Temple have been descendants of Mardana, and remained Muslim! At the time of Partition, which was especially violent in Punjab, these ragis moved to Pakistan with most other Muslims, leaving open their preeminent posts at the Golden Temple. The irony, of course, is that most Sikhs moved out of Pakistan, abandoning even the historical gurdwaras there, leaving these trained Rababis (as they came to be called, as identifying caste such as ‘mirasi’ became un-PC in India) with nowhere to sing. This over-simplified history is important because Bibi Jaswant Kaur, as a young girl growing up in Amritsar, learned Sikh kirtan from these same musicians, and is now one of the only remaining links to, and repositories of, their compositions and style.
(rabab, from Rabab Revival Program)
Bibiji didn’t go into detail about names, but from Sarbpreetji I understand her teachers to have been Bhai Lal and Bhai Taba. She was born in Amritsar and grew up there (at that time a fairly major city of Punjab, but overshadowed somewhat by the capital in Lahore). She said that her first performance in the Sri Akal Takht Sahib (in the Golden Temple complex across from the main sanctuary) was at the age of eight (80 years ago!) when she sang a shabad there. She continued studying with the rababis for the next 18 years until Partition.

When I pressed for specifics about performing with the Rababis, she said there were no traditional instruments used in the Golden Temple (though it may be an overstatement to presume this means ‘never’). Thus, despite the name ‘rababi’ (a player of Mardana’s traditional instrument), by and large the group was only two harmoniums and a tabla player. On that score, the Golden Temple today employs a fourth musician in most kirtan on a traditional stringed instrument like dilruba or sarinda (I never saw a rabab in action). So, in certain respects, the current official version of ‘traditional’ kirtan is different than what the rababis were practicing in the 20th century…but I digress. In fact, Bibiji still has on her shelf the first harmonium she ever purchased, in 1956 at a shop in Delhi for 250 rupees (today it’s more like 5,000). As she continued telling her life story, I heard about how after Partition she had moved around with her husband, who worked as an engineer for the government. She continued singing kirtan, but because of the moving, and other expectations for a woman, she never acquired any serious students of her own to whom she could pass on the rababi compositions.

Interestingly, when I mentioned that I had enjoyed her kirtan from earlier in the evening, she dismissed it, saying that it was not at all in serious ragas. I was a bit taken aback by this candor, but she recognized that I knew something about classical style, and bemoaned the fact that she could not do that style at Gobind Sadan. For one, there was no experienced tabla player to accompany her (though she was surely appreciative of Bhagatji’s energy, I guess she didn’t have the energy to teach him). Further, she feels too old to practice all the storied compositions (even that night she had to cut off some of the verses of the shabad because her voice got too tired), and so she forgets them even after 80 years of living with them. Finally, she gave the reason that people just don’t understand the ragas and they would rather hear her sing the simple stuff. I heard this line before from ragis, and it always seems somewhat insufficient as reason to me, but I didn’t want to push her and that’s a subject for another post.

To jog her memory I mentioned a few specific ragas, asking which compositions she knew. For a while until her memory faltered, she obliged me, singing a few lines in a voice that, despite its grating, sounded much more agile than on first impression. I didn’t know the particular shabads, so it was hard for me to appreciate in the moment how these compositions were special, but she tried to impress it upon me in statements that were part determination, part desperation: “Now, [some] ragis come to me and want to learn these compositions, but I am too old to teach them. So I say,” reaching into a bag on the table to pull out a tape, “listen to these cassettes…and you must learn.” I was touched that Bibiji gave me a cassette, entrusting me with the same imperative to learn the compositions and propagate them, despite the fact that I don’t even own a tape player. She said that she is hoping to get them put on CD’s soon, and maybe that’s something with which Sarbpreet or I can help.

In the end, I realized how happy and lucky I was to have met her. It was strange, upon reflection, to visualize an entire history of music with violent political disruption embodied in a sweet old lady who offered me cookies and spent more than half the time talking about her grandchildren. I’m glad to have been taught the lesson that sometimes history speaks like that. To someone like Sarbpreet, she and her music rest on a fine line between present and past. He strongly feels that this is his heritage poised on the brink of murky obscurity. For me, the experience a glimpse of the passion in her faded voice - the long life lived at the height of her artistic powers - and then a heartfelt thank you and a walk out into the sweltering evening…towards my bags, towards the airport, and back to a place where most have never known she existed.

Blogging from the First World

Hello All,

I just wanted to put a post to introduce the next chapter in this blog - that's right, you don't get to stop reading just because I'm home. However, this next part, I must admit, will be as much for me as for you. Not that that means it'll be boring! In fact, I hope the blog posts will actually stay interesting to read, due to the fact that I have more time and focus to devote to crystallizing my thoughts and notes, and less to the fact that you're living vicariously through me.

Essentially, I'm going to try to write one or two short essays a day on very specific places/contexts/issues. I'll try to give a little background to locate each one, but essentially it'll be away for me to articulate and put thoughts down about each vignette (again, as much for me as for you). To keep the exciting spirit alive, I'm going to try to persuade Christi and Kirsten to do little posts about our travels together which, in addition to their witty commentary, will be a vehicle to show our best pictures to those of you that can't attend the Portland-based India festivities this weekend!

With much love and hope for the continuation of the blog~

Kurt