If it's worth a dream, it's not worth a compromise

I've just returned from our weekend away at Bangalore! Which actually turned out to be a weekend at Mysore (where we stayed) with excursions into Bangalore and other cities. For those who are world conscious, we couldn't do much in Bangalore because of the water protests/riots that have been happening for the past month or two. Short briefing on the background to the riots here.

This weekend turned out to be...prepare yourself for my favorite overused word...amazing. I just tried to spell favorite with a "u" and the blogger wouldn't let me. Anyways. We had a great tour guide who was an art historian and as it turns out actually did her MPhil and PhD at Columbia!! One of her thesis reviewers was the husband of one of my profs last year, and I had read his book for class. So we had some great conversations about NYC and Morningside Heights that made me realize how much I miss Columbia and everyone there.

This weekend also turned out to be one in which I did a lot of writing. Partially because I am reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow, which just won the Nobel Prize in Literature where the main character, Ka, is a poet. In my humble, not-so-widely read opinion, his writing (Pamuk's, not Ka's) is brilliant. Let me quote the New York Times Review when I say "[Pamuk is] narrating his country into being." My roommate Brittany and I have a running joke on the NY Times book reviews. They seem to be excellent at producing these vague, grandiose statements which somehow manage to tell you nothing whatsoever about the book itself. My personal favorite, and a classic, is their review on the front of James McBride's The Color of Water "[A] triumph." I love that "A" is in brackets. They also specialize in brackets.

Anyways, so this was one quote which I found to be particularly insightful in Pamuk's novel, which I also copied into my journal:

"You're deceiving yourself! Even if you did believe in God, it would make no sense to believe alone. You'd have to believe in him the same way the poor do; you'd have to become one of them. It's only by eating what they eat, living where they live, laughing at the same jokes, and getting angry whenever they do that you can believe in their God. If you're leading an utterly different life, you can't be worshiping the same God they are. God is fair enough to know it's not a question of logic or reason but how you live your life." (Pamuk 204)

I'm not sure that I agree with it, but I'm turning it around in my mind as "food for thought." On the same note, the title of this entry is something that was painted on the side of a building we passed in our bus on the way to Mysore. Yet another thing I am turning around in my mind.

I think I'll have to post about what I actually saw in Bangalore in a later entry. I still have writing on the mind. And speaking of writing, I have decided to post the first poem I've written in India, about India. Not that I wrote other poems outside of India about India, but this is the first one that I wrote here about here....okay you get the idea. It's still in revision mode, but it's been sent to the CIEE newsletter, the Hyd Times for publishing. The editor has lavish cutting and slashing rights, of course, but only because he's a friend of my friend. ; ) It's centered/inspired both on the concept of circular (as opposed to linear) time that exists in India, as well as many of the visual/sensory experiences I've had here thus far. Here goes:

Familiar

I never travelled here,

I was reborn the moment my feet

touched dusty earth,

stamping the beat of an unknown drum

to unknown steps.

Nothing, everything’s new

under this Indian sun,

deja-vu in the best

and the worst sense:

Time flows with the sweat that rolls

down so many different skins,

speaks through the tongues that curl

around a thousand different scripts,

hangs with the human smells that tang

burning summer air.

Night skies reveal stars I’ve seen before,

but the streets that shimmer

beneath their light are unfamiliar.

Still, somehow I find my way home.

Copyright Anna Hunt 2007