Change In Plans

Greetings from Cape Town!  We continue to have a fun and relaxing “vacation from our vacation,” so to speak.  With my sister and family here, we have actually been going pretty hard for the last several days.

 India has developed a foolproof method for getting us out of the house early.  She leaves at about 7:30 am for a long run, with instructions to “pick me up at 9 o’clock at XXX.”  We meet her, she changes clothes in the car, and off we go.  Cape Town is  unbelievably crowded, so these early starts have been hugely helpful.

Sunday - Aquarium Day.  The weather was lousy in the early morning, so we went to the Two Oceans Aquarium, down in the waterfront.  The aquarium did a big refresh in the last year, so it was great.  Tallulah, in particular, had a fantastic time, running from exhibit to exhibit.  In the afternoon, Andrew, Zola, Winston (our neighbor) and I went surfing in Muizenberg.  It was pouring with rain, the surf was big, and very rough, and it had kicked up a lot of kelp and sand in the water.  To my surprise, all three boys had a blast, shrieking and laughing in the surf.  The rest of the group went back to Rhodes Memorial, and also got drenched having lunch outside (probably less shrieking and laughing).  The weather cleared in the late afternoon, and we had a great boogie board session back over in Llandudno.

ZOLA AND EAGLE

Monday- Wine Country Day.  We started at the Spier Estate in Stellenbosch, which has an orphaned-cheetah center and a raptor-rescue center.  Again, getting there early was a big bonus: all of the kids got to pet cheetahs, cuddle baby barn owls, and hold an eagle.  When we left, the line was hours long.  We went to Morgenhof Estate for lunch, which has been a traditional favorite.  It was fun to sit outside, and the kids had a grand time wrestling and running around, but the restaurant has lost its way.  By the time we left, it was pouring rain.  We visited two other favorite estates -Kanonkop, Uitkyk- bought some wine, and drove back to the city.  The Cape Town wine country is so close by that it is an easy day trip.  After we got back to Llandudno, Andrew and Zola played rugby on the beach, and I boogie boarded until until long after sunset.

SWIMMING WITH PENGUINS - BOULDERS BEACH

Tuesday - Penguin Day.  We drove down to Boulders Beach as early as we could, trying to beat the crowds and catch the low tide.  At low tide, the beach is literally five times larger than at high tide, and the whole experience is easy and pleasant.  We got the timing just right (for the first time in three years), and had a great few hours swimming with penguins, taking pictures, and playing on the beach.  Boulders is the best.  In the afternoon, we drove up to Kalk Bay, and had a long lunch at Harbor House restaurant, overlooking the fishing pier.  The Indian Ocean waves crash dramatically against the (second-floor) windows of the restaurant, and the seafood is always great.

BIRTHDAY HIKE

Wednesday- for India’s birthday, she wanted to run from Llandudno to Lion’s Head (about 15 kilometers), hike up Lion’s Head, then run to the base of Table Mountain and hike up that.  We dropped off Tallulah to play with her friend Sienna, and a big group of us (including Zola) walked up Lion’s Head.  It was a perfect morning for that hike: sunny and windless.  India ran across to Table Mountain, but it was too crowded for us to get cable car tickets.  Foiled again on that front.  India and I will do both peaks next week, when Cape Town clears out a little bit.

We are having a relaxed rest of the day, boogie boarding at Llandudno beach, preparing a New year’s Eve feast, and generally slowing down for Su and Dave’s last full day in Cape Town.

Happy Birthday, India (the person), and happy new year to all.  This has been a wonderful, interesting, challenging year for all of us.  More of the same in 2009!

Greetings from Cape Town.  My sister and her husband and two sons have been here since Christmas Eve, and we have had a great few days together.  This short post is about what we have been doing.

Yesterday morning, Boxing Day, we made a valiant but ill-fated attempt to climb Table Mountain.  It was windy when we woke up, but nowhere near as bad as many other Cape Town days we have experienced.  Unfortunately, the cable car was closed, so our idea of “climb up, ride down,” didn’t work out.  We walked about two thirds of the way up (about 500 meter climb), but the responsible parents in the group figured we should turn around.  As we shuffled back to the car in the strong wind (Tallulah happily on my shoulders), with the clouds socking in the view from the top, we all agreed that it had been the right call.

On our way to lunch, we stopped at a little carnival, and all of the kids rode the ferris wheel, and did the bungie cord slingshot.  They seemed just as happy with this as an alternative to mountain climbing.

As the wind died down, we spent the late afternoon on the beach.  Zola and his cousin, Andrew, and I swam and bodyboarded in the cold Atlantic.  Everyone else played on the beach and watched a great sunset.

This morning (the 27th) we organized a large group to go down to the Indian Ocean side and go surfing.  The logistics were slightly daunting to me: three families (including our neighbours here in Llandudno), six surf instructors, a 45-minute drive in multiple vehicles, wetsuits and board rentals, and 90-minute lessons in the very choppy water.  It all went off surprisingly smoothly, and everyone seemed to have fun.  Being at the beach in the sunshine makes it all a little easier.

For a late lunch, we sat outside at La Colombe in Constantia, which was just rated the best restaurant in South Africa.  The food was off-the-hook amazing.  The best part, though, is that the restaurant is on a wine farm, with a lot of outdoor space, including a cricket pitch.  We sent all of the kids (plus a few kids from other tables) off to play cricket in the sun, while adults enjoyed peace and fine cuisine.  The kids came back, gobbled down their lunches, and went back out to play.  Very civilized approach to the three-hour lunch.

After a quick visit to our friends, Ryan and Paula, we ended up back down at the beach at Llandudno.  The wind had dropped to nothing, and the water was very calm.  Andrew, Zola and I bodyboarded for about 90 minutes (wetsuits help), and everyone saw another amazing sunset.

We were barely able to get the kids to eat bacon and eggs for dinner, before they fell asleep.  The house was completely still by 10 pm.

South Africa is a great place to be on vacation.  I think that Su and Dave and kids are having a fun time.

Greetings and Merry Christmas from Cape Town.  Despite a fair amount of economic gloom this December, this post is about a series of hugely encouraging signs that we have seen in our travels over the last several months.  

India (the person) gave me a copy of Tom Friedman’s new book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded” for Christmas. His basic thesis is that we are in a global crisis of environmental change, crowding, and increased consumption. We all (led by the U.S.) need to develop new, lower impact, ways of doing pretty much everything.

Reading the book got me thinking about phenomena that we have observed in our travels that could lead you to believe that Friedman’s “Code Green” revolution is already under way.  These phenomena are all sort of related, so it is difficult to put a good structure around them.  So, in no particular order here are some encouraging signs:

Proliferation of connectivity - cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet are changing the developing world. The old streets of Fes and Marrakesh are medieval, but the rooftops are swarmed with satellite receivers.  We have had cell coverage almost everywhere we have traveled, and we have seen handsets being used in the most remote places, and by people who are very low on any socioeconomic scale (eg, the Chinese Net fishermen in Kerala, India).  In South Africa and India, cell phones are used widely for commerce, for entertainment, as well as talking.  We have also had wi-fi almost everywhere, and have seen public internet access (eg, cafes) everywhere else.  I think this connectivity is inherently good: more informed choices, less scope for fundamentalism, closer societal bonds, more fun.

Alternative energy - India does not have much petroleum, natural gas, coal, or firewood, but it has plenty of cow manure.  We saw simple biogas converters everywhere: mix water and manure in an airtight box, let it sit in the sun, and pipe out the gas for cooking.  We saw windmills all over India and Spain.  We saw solar water heaters on every house on the Turkish coast.  These are all pretty small scale (except the windmills), but they seem to work well and are cheap.  Because air quality is so terrible in India, use of LNG/CNG buses and motor rickshaws has been mandated (and enforced) in many cities.  I don’t know what the economics look like, but they are probably not terrible, and have made a big difference.  The experimentation is probably most important.

Mobility of labor - sitting in Abu Dhabi airport in the middle of the night, watching the great Gulf States job swap, was amazing.  Thousands of South Asians flying to jobs, however humble, that are better than anything they could find at home.  Migration of people across borders creates challenges (my guess is that South Africa’s real population is ~20% illegal immigrants) as well as opportunities.  But remittances greatly support the weakest economies (Nepal, Zimbabwe and Malawi, undeveloped India), and middle classes get formed.  Moving around also expands horizons and aspirations.

English-speaking (and reading/writing) kids - even in places with cripplingly low adult literacy (Morocco, Nepal, parts of India), we saw endless streams of uniformed schoolkids.  Everywhere, the vast majority of kids over the age of ten spoke to us in English.  Every kid that Zola has interviewed could read and write, and had grand aspirations for his/her own life.  Parents we met made their kids’ education a huge family priority (eg, the dirt-poor Moroccan family on the edge of the Sahara, sending their 8-year-old son to boarding school 10 hours away).  

Local and global optimism - every country we have been to, including our own, has a lot of problems.  Outside of the most-developed countries (U.S., Canada, Japan, Spain), what we heard from the vast majority of people we spoke to was great optimism about the future.  India, Ireland, and Turkey, in particular, seemed to be bursting with self confidence and impatient enthusiasm.  The individual behaviors that we observed seemed to support these optimistic words: investing in new equipment, planting new crops, educating girl children, starting new businesses, protecting the environment.  All autumn we would get a daily dose of despair from the New York Times on-line, and then see exactly the opposite in the streets of Delhi, and Istanbul, and Pokhara, and Cape Town.

It is Christmas morning.  My sister and her family arrived yesterday (hooray!).  Stockings and presents are opened, and everyone is anxious to get to the beach.  Merry Christmas.

HO, HO, HO!

Greetings from Cape Town.  A few months ago, I wrote a post which tried to capture some of the vocabulary which had emerged from our traveling-family subculture.  Some of those expressions have endured, but many of them faded from use, to be replaced by a new generation of expressions in India, Nepal, and South Africa.  

Here is a sampling:

“Hey yuh, big boy!” - Tallulah started using this when we were around elephants in India and Nepal frequently, and it has now become a private joke for her.  She says it in a quick sing song, with the emphasis on “BOY!”  She has applied it to elephants, tigers, a large bus, her brother, one-horned rhinos, a snake, and now to waves as they break on the beach.

“Fat Sajak” - months ago, Zola heard this expression while watching “King of Queens” on a flight somewhere.  Julie and Doug get an automated transcript of their fights, and he counts the number of times she refers to him as, “fatty, fatso, fat boy, Fat Sajak.”  Having never seen ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ I’m not sure why Zola thought this was so funny and memorable.  It has become his catch-all for anyone who he thinks is overweight or unpleasant, as in, “That mean old man was a real Fat Sajak.”

“Excuse me …” - this is Zola’s preferred way to interrupt conversation and ask a question to any person.  It could be followed by something awkward with a stranger, like “Why do you only have one leg?” or something insightful, like “Why are the Iraqis fighting against the Iraqis?” or “If the son [Aurangzeb] wanted to be emperor, and he killed all of his brothers, why did he lock his Dad in the fort, instead of killing him too?” or something completely obscure, like “How do we know that Major Tom was dead, instead of his circuit just not working?”  Sometimes Zola unleashes a torrent of questions, touching the awkward, insightful, and obscure within the course of a few minutes.  When he prefaces a question with “No offense, but…” we usually brace ourselves for something horrible and hilarious.

“And you, and you, and you, and Happy Hallloween” - a few years ago, we were at Disney World for Halloween, and this was the song that the skeletons in the big parade sang about a thousand times as they danced slowly past us.  The tune is simple in 4/4 time: “C  F -  -, C  F -  -, C F - -, C G/F E/D C, C  F –, etc.”  For some reason, Tallulah and I find ourselves singing this to each other several times every day, particularly when I want her to do something, and she starts with “No you…” and I respond “No you…”

“Namaste” - this is the universal greeting in India and Nepal, so we all said it a hundred times a day.  I think it translates, literally, into “I salute all that is divine in you.”  Nice.

“Hello, ‘Hungry’.  My name is …” - this one is probably borderline child abuse, but I can’t help myself.  Every time one of the kids whines “I’m hungry” or “I’m thirsty” or “I’m tired” they get a firm handshake and an introduction by that name.  This cracks me up, which proves that I am becoming my Dad.  (”Hello, Becoming My Dad, my name is…”)

“Nahi” - this is the Hindi word for “no thank you.”  It was very helpful for us to have this word on the relatively few occasions in India (Khajuraho temples, Jaipur old city, Pushkar camel festival everywhere) that we had a lot of people trying to sell us things or begging.   

“So you’re the living goddess.  What’s up with that?” - on NBC.com we watched the Saturday Night Live Mark Wahlberg parody and the actual Mark Wahlberg guest appearance, and paraphrased this line.  It refers to the Kumari Devi, the prepubescent living goddess in Kathmandu.  Zola mentioned that she could not attend school, because this is what the other kids would say to her.  I love saying this about everything.

“Can I please have some butter naan?” - even without having diarrhea or other stomach upset, Zola lost about 10% of his body weight traveling in India.  It would have been a lot more if he hadn’t discovered that you can order flat bread dripping with butter.  Many nights he would have two baskets of butter naan as his main sustenance for the day.  Our guide, Indrajit, started calling him “BNB,” for butter naan boy.

“You don’t see this every day, do you?  This is very rare, isn’t it?”  - Zola went through a phase when he needed some affirmation that what we were seeing was extraordinary.  The phase started when we were swimming with the crown prince of Jodhpur.  He increased its use while we were in Varanasi, and it peaked while tracking tigers.  I guess things are getting dull for him, because he hasn’t asked very frequently since we left Nepal.

“This is C-R-A-Z-Y, Dad” - Zola would whisper this to me on many days in India and Nepal (particularly in big crowds, near bizarre religious ceremonies, or when things were very polluted).  It is self explanatory, if relatively polite for an eight-year old.

“Was I born yet?” - Since we arrived in South Africa, India and I have been boring both kids with stories of what we did when we lived here.  Tallulah frequently asks this question, which may just be an innocent request for us to shut up or talk about topics which are relevant to her.

As we have slipped into more of a stable, if not entirely normal, day-to-day existence in Cape Town, many of these  second-generation special family expressions are also fading away.  The intensity of the shared India and Nepal experiences seemed to breed the vocabulary.  Now the novelty has worn off, and the need is not so great.  Perhaps we will have a third generation of vocabulary when we leave Cape Town for Namibia in the New Year.

ZOLA AND ALEC

RUNNING TALLULAH

Greetings from Cape Town, early in the morning of the longest day of the year.  Rereading the post about Zola’s birthday, written early yesterday morning, I realized that it is barely coherent.  One reason for the incoherence was that a large bird somehow flew into the house, and spent 45 minutes bashing itself repeatedly against the skylights above my head.  Eventually I was able to shoo him out.  The more abiding reason for the choppy writing is that I am completely distracted, thinking about moving back to South Africa when we finish our trip.

India and I were very happy living here from 1991 to 1993, and again from 1996 to 2000.  In early 2000, for reasons that I can’t really articulate, I became desperately eager to leave Cape Town and move back to New York.  The basic motivation was some vague but deep professional/personal desire to be closer to the vitality of “the center” and to not be languishing on “the periphery.”  There was no real push factor, except some sense I felt that it was “now or never”.  In moving us back to the U.S. in late 2000, I subjected India to a fair amount of professional and personal disruption and anguish.

At any time in the last eight years, India would have returned to South Africa on a single day’s notice.  She loves her family and her U.S. friends, but this is home to her.  During each year’s vacation here, the topic of moving back comes up for more or less serious discussion.  But each year, there was some determinatively strong factor pulling us back to the U.S. - runup to partner election, trying to have a baby, having a new baby, just moved to New Jersey, just moved to a new job, planning to move to San Diego - and at the end of some number of glorious weeks in Cape Town, we packed our bags and flew home.

This year is different.  The appeal of Cape Town is very strong, particularly after traveling for most of the previous six months.  Even acknowledging that we are living a vacation, not a reality, we have all felt remarkably happy, relaxed, and comfortable.  In the midst of this place infatuation, even the practical challenges of living here (e.g., earning money, finding a house, putting kids in schools, getting immigration documents, ensuring safety) seem easily surmountable.

The draw back to the U.S. is also weaker than it has been in previous years.  I have some professional opportunities in the U.S. under discussion, but no definite job to return to.  By the way, the U.S. economy seems a little rocky at present.  We are legally resident in Tennessee, but haven’t bought a house, or committed to a school.  Our friends and our families are important to us, but a few months ago we had been committed to moving to San Diego.  Practically speaking, South Africa isn’t that much further away: we would get back to our families and to our Catskills cabin just as frequently.  

So what is holding us back?  Again, assuming that the practical challenges can be overcome, the main issue is me.  At the core of it, I wonder if am I ready to sacrifice my abstract desire to be close to the center in order for my family to live what would likely be a happier life?  

It is a big decision, and is obviously more complicated than I am making it sound.  That said, the idea has infected my brain like a virus.  I can’t sleep, it is hard to concentrate on reading, and (obviously) I can’t write coherently.  I need to find a way to put the topic on the mental back burner for the next two weeks, and to re-evaluate with some distance and perspective.  Maybe then it will seem like a ridiculous idea.  Maybe not.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Greetings from Cape Town.  This short post is about celebrating our son’s ninth birthday in style.

On Friday morning, we drove up to Tulbagh, which is a small village north and east of Cape Town.  Incidentally, the drive to Tulbagh is almost exactly the same distance as the drive from Agra to Delhi (150 km), but it took an hour and half, instead of six hours.

Our friends, Paul and Lucille, have a wine farm on the western slopes of the Tulbagh Valley.  The farm is only 200 meters or so above the valley floor, but has spectacular, 20-kilometer views across to the low mountain range on the other side.  It is an amazingly beautiful and peaceful place.  They have owned the farm for nine years, and I think we have gone up to spend the night in all but one or two of those years.

The mid-summer weather, as always, was sunny and very hot.  We spent most of Friday afternoon playing in the pool, which looks out over the long views.  The pool water was slightly warmer than body temperature, so kids could literally stay in for hours. 

Being Irish, Paul likes the game of hurling, and has a bunch of hurleys at his house.  Hurleys are the crude, war-club looking sticks used to play this ancient Gaelic game.  Paul and I spent a couple of hours playing the hurling equivalent of catch, which meant standing 40-50 meters apart and whacking the hard, fist-sized hurling ball back and forth to each other.  

In the late afternoon, Per and Nada, other old friends Cape Town, arrived with their boys.  Between the three families, the posse of kids had grown to six: Tallulah and Sienna who both just turned four, Luca who is six, Zola and Alec who are both nine, and Ashlyn who is twelve.  Zola loves Alec, and immediately started with “Dude, let’s go swimming.” and “Dude, did you bring your DS?”  

Due to some wonderful and unexplained social dynamic (Ashlyn’s calm presence setting the tone), the kids all played happily together with minimal adult supervision.  This left the adults alone to build big big fires, cook, and drink wine.

Per and Nada had brought a small restaurant’s worth of exotic meats: smoked kudu, dried biltong, enormous beefsteaks, boerewors sausage.  We added a small chicken, and had a proper South African braai, cooking it all over an open fire.  Zola got to open a few presents, even though it was still the day before his birthday: a long-coveted Swiss Army knife with seventeen attachments, some other camping/survival tools, and a few books.   

After dinner, we sat around the fire until late in the evening, swapping stories of travel and work, talking about living in South Africa, and generally catching up.  Paul went off for an hour to entertain the littler kids with an elaborate story of fairies and princesses and naughty children living in a forest.  Much later, when kids and wives had all gone to sleep, the conversation had moved on to topics like free will and fate and aspirations and mortality. Paul, Per and I opened a bottle of Vin de Constance.  This is the same sweet dessert wine, from the same Cape Town vineyard, that Napoleon drank during his great campaigns, and (reputedly) that he requested on his deathbed.  It was a noble end to a fun evening.

The next morning was Zola’s birthday, and he was up early to start celebrating.  Before breakfast, all of the kids were in the pool, playing a game which involved hitting each other with foam balls and racing from wall to wall.  At Zola’s request, I cooked bacon and dozens of pancakes, which the kids ate with Nutella and with jam and whipped cream.  As the adults lingered at the table, or out in the sunshine, the kids went back in the pool.  The conversations of the night before picked up again.  Zola opened a few more presents.  At some point, a loose baby tooth that he had been wiggling for the last few weeks fell out, and he presented it proudly to us all.

India made a Nutella-frosted chocolate cake, and the little girls helped to decorate it with sprinkles, and candy and chocolate chips.  We all sang, and Zola blew out the candles.  After devouring the cake, the kids all leapt back into the pool, to continue the never-ending foam ball and lap-swimming game.  Paul and I went back out to the garden and to the hurleys.  

THE 2008 TULBAGH HURLING TEAM

Eventually, Per and Nada and their kids drove back to the city.  Paul and India spent some time taking photos of the little girls together, trying to replicate a picture they had taken two years earlier.  When we finally packed up and left, Tallulah fell asleep before we had driven out of the long driveway.

Back at our rented house in Llandudno, Zola opened up the rest of his presents.  India got him two elaborate Star Wars Lego sets, which may provide countless hours of quality Dad and son time.  He also got some more books, and some cool surfer clothes.  I ran down to the beach for a quick swim in the freezing water.

At Zola’s request, we went out for pizza in Hout Bay, a few miles away.  We sat out on the deck, watching the clouds chase in over the low mountains.  When dessert came, the waiters sang an elaborate cadence-style birthday song, leading into the more traditional “Happy Birthday to You.”  Tallulah explained that because he was getting a second birthday cake, he was no longer nine, and had advanced to ten.  At least she is consistent in applying the algorithm which advanced her own age to seven.

After so much sun, and swimming, and playing and cake, both kids are completely exhausted.  Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, so we hope to be surfing and boogie boarding and enjoying the sun.  I think Zola had a very happy birthday.

VEILED WOMEN AND BABY IN VARANASI

Greetings from Cape Town.  Our days in Cape Town continue to be not very noteworthy, so this post is about the role of women in Indian society.  Everything in Indian society seemed complex, and few things seemed generalizable across the entire country.  That said, the role of women was particularly difficult for me to understand.  Women seem to be treated unfairly by a large segment of society, and in many cases, just badly.  For example:

• the dowry system (which makes girl children a big financial burden)
• lingering societal enthusiasm for the now obsolete practice of sati, when the living widow throws herself onto the cremation pyre of her husband
• widely acknowledged gender-selected abortion and female infanticide
• societal exclusion of widows (eg, from religious festivals)
• “honor killings” of women who have been raped or had out-of-wedlock sex (relatively uncommon)
• female adult literacy of ~40%, vs, male adult literacy of nearly 60%
• expectations of very conservative dress, including head covering and veils in many cases, for both Hindu and Muslim women

At the same time, women are also idealized and exalted:

• The “five mothers” (birth mother, cow mother, Mother Ganga, mother Earth, and Mother Om) at the center of Hinduism
• Proliferation of powerful female Hindu goddesses (eg, Kali, the ferocious destroyer)
• Success of many female politicians across multiple parties
• Societal obsession with Bollywood actresses

To highlight the paradoxes, and as a testament to my confusion, I tried to summarize all of the women-related stories in the Times of India on November 20th.  The few Indians who I have discussed this topic with say that “these newspaper stories aren’t representative” for a variety of reasons.  I invite you to read the summaries and to draw your own conclusions:

Story 1 - an update on the “sex ratio” in Gurgaon, a wealthy suburb of Delhi.  ”Sex ratio” means the number of girl births registered per thousand boy births.  The natural rate is about 950, so Gurgaon’s rate of 847 implies that about 11-12% of all girl-fetus pregnancies are terminated (and/or infant girls are killed).  Sex ratio is such a commonly used term that it was not defined in the story.  This is an ongoing and closely tracked issue across India.  It will be interesting to see what societal changes come about from the demographic inevitability of having ~100 million young adult men in a giant, unmarryable bachelor herd in about 20 years.  If markets work, dowry prices should go down.  Let’s hope that the outcome is not much worse.

Story 2 - a Delhi pedestrian saw a stray dog dragging a plastic bag around, and discovered a living five-day-old girl child in the bag.  Police described this as “a pretty common thing.”  The infant survived.

Story 3 - undercover women police officers have been deployed at the Indian International Trade Fair to reduce the incidence of “Eve teasing,” which is an aggressive form of public harassment.  The commander of the unit said that the officers get the offenders to “apologize, or we bash him in front of his friends.” Police say that  women from the Northeast parts of India are seen as “easy targets” for Eve teasing, because they are “too soft spoken to retort” 

Story 4 - about upcoming local elections, where two of the three party leaders (Gandhi from Congress, Mayawati from BSP) are women

Story 5 - a regular feature called “Woman on Top,” which details triumphs of women.  This column was about a woman in the U.S. who won a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Story 6 - a long feature story on the difficulties that expat wives have in getting legal permission to work in India.  The story suggested that it was so difficult that they should give up, enjoy being in India, and raise their children.

FIRE DANCER IN JAIPUR

Story 7 - short profiles of women political candidates in Kashmir, summarized in a table of characteristics of Kashmiri women (From: uneducated, politically unaware, unemployed, and possessing low self esteem, To: educated, politically aware, employed, confident)

Story 8 - entitled “My Wife, My Trophy,” which argues, in earnest, for “a truth, universally acknowledged, that a rich man needs a beautiful, young wife”

Story 9 - a weird science story, citing a study that demonstrated that the use of hairspray by pregnant women increases the risk significantly of “genital defects” in boy children.

Story 10 - entitled “Macho Girls,” which claims that Indian women are “assertive and hard as nails” and have “Learned to talk tough and walk rough.” This story had a lot of hot photos of beautiful young women.

Story 11 - entitled “Sexy Is In the Mind,” with a racy picture of Eva Longoria, and the recommendation that overweight women should “tell themselves they are slim.”

Obviously, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from some personal observations and a bunch of newspaper stories.  India’s long-term success, however, seems closely connected to greatly normalizing the role of women, or at least not treating them so generally badly.  

Thinking about this topic made me for sure appreciate my strong mother and sister, and my strong wife.  It also made me appreciate more the accomplishments of prominent and successful Indian women.

WOMEN THRESHING GRAIN

ZOLA READING ON LLANDUDNO BEACH

Greetings from Cape Town.  This short post describes what we have been doing over the last several days. We have moved into a beach house in Llandudno where we will be staying for nearly four weeks.   As we hoped, our family is falling into an idyllic daily rhythm which is familiar from our previous December holidays.  

The specifics vary a little from day to day, but basically here is what the daily routine looks like:

• Everyone awake at about 7:30 am.  The sun comes up at about 5 this time of year, but only spills down over the mountain and into this house at about 7.
• India goes out for a run a little after 8, and the kids and I eat breakfast and play.  Zola does home schooling for about 90 minutes (including daily on-line math sessions through Stanford, which have been a huge boost to the home schooling program).  
• Kids and I pile into the car, and pick up India along the coast road between 10:00-10:30.  She is a running maniac when we are in Cape Town, averaging 15-25 kilometers a day on the road.
• About 50% of the time, we drive down to Muizenberg and go surfing in the warm water and gentle waves there.  Usually, Zola takes a lesson, I rent a long board and surf on my own, and Tallulah and India play on the beach.  This week, India mixed it up by buying a wetsuit and getting out in the waves with Casper, the handsome surf instructor.

MAMA-SAN SHREDDING IN MUIZENBERG

• If we don’t go surfing, we usually run errands instead.  We have done all of our Christmas and grocery shopping over the last few days at the huge V&A Waterfront mall.  I like when Tallulah calls it “the waterfight.”  I generally hate shopping and hate malls, but from some reason the Waterfront is a carve out, and we all seem to like going there.
• In the late afternoons we have been hanging around at our house, going down to the beach, and/or going on a walk together.  One of our family favorites is the path down to Sandy Bay.  This is traditionally a nude beach, but we have been able to shield Zola and Tallulah from any psyche-scarring visual images (though Zola has high hopes)

DON'T LOOK NOW, ETHEL!

• Most evenings we have been meeting friends for early, kid-friendly dinners.  Last night we had a Cape Town classic, outdoors at a beachfront restaurant in Camps Bay.  When we all met at 6:15, the glare from the sun was blinding, and half of the party went off to buy baseball hats.  When the sun set at 7:45, the temperature dropped and the wind really picked up.  Suddenly our table cloth was getting blown off, and all of the drinks were knocked over.  From sunburn risk to survival situation in 30 minutes.  It was a great dinner, but we had to retreat before dessert.
• Both kids have been pretty much staying awake for dinner, but definitely falling asleep in the car on the way home.  We are all usually asleep before 11.  Party, party.

This simple rhythm will change once we get into Christmas and Boxing Day, and once my sister and her family arrive.  With our eagerly anticipated guests, we will go and see all of the beloved sights: penguins at Boulders Beach, climbing Table Mountain and Lion’s Head, the Aquarium, Cape Point.  

In the meantime, it is great to feel temporarily settled on familiar ground, and for the kids to have some sense of daily routine.  In the midst of a trip which is basically a super long, work-free vacation, this is the first time in a while that we have felt like we are on vacation.  Cape Town is just an awesome place.

TALLULAH AND STYLING NEW HAT IN CAPE TOWN

Greetings from Cape Town!  This short post is about feeling lucky: lucky that we changed our original plan for the second half of 2008, lucky that we have had the opportunity to take this amazing trip while so many people are struggling, and lucky that we have all been safe and healthy in our travels to date.

 Way back on June 7th, when I wrote my first-ever blog post, I started with a list of blessings that I was grateful for.  Six months later, I am even more grateful.

Many times, particularly on days when the stock market haS tanked, friends have written or said, “You really picked the right year to be taking this trip.”  I appreciate the sentiment, but I have to say that the year picked me, rather than the other way around.  

Up until late May, our plan was: move from New Jersey to San Diego in June, continue working hard in my job as President of a medical-devices company, hope for the best.  Until the evening that my boss and I had the conversation that led me to resign, I was totally committed to that plan.  We had sold our New Jersey house, gotten our kids into a great private school in La Jolla, and were a day from being contractually committed to buying a house in San Diego itself.  We had even mapped out the daily travel plan for our drive out to California.

During our trip, I have reflected countless times on where we would be if our plans hadn’t changed.  

• We would be carrying a colossal mortgage on a house which was worth 10-20% less than what we paid. (We managed to get our down payment back in late June, and the house eventually sold in late July for 15% less than our agreed price.  It has almost certainly gotten worse since then.)  
• We would be frantic about money: all of our savings would have been in the (evaporated) equity of a house we stretched to afford, and I would not have been receiving the bonuses I needed to cover the mortgage.  I seem to behave erratically when I feel financial pressure, so who knows how badly I would be acting.  
• We would have unresolved marital and parenting issues, mostly related to me working so hard and traveling so much, compounded by financial pressures.
• Although San Diego seems like a wonderful place to live, we would be newcomers in a city far from our friends and family.

When I think about this, I thank God (or gods plural, when we were in India and Nepal) that things have worked out the way they have.  Basically this was dumb good luck.

We have also felt very lucky to be financially insulated and far away from New York during the financial crisis.  Watching it all from a distance, and sympathizing with friends and family members who have been directly affected, has been gutwrenching.  Seeing friends in the Catskills and in Manhattan when we were in the U.S. in October made it all more real.  No one seems to be having fun at work, and no one seems to be making money.  

To be honest, I have felt occasional flashes of “Stockholm Syndrome” guilt, for not being in the thick of it, suffering alongside my friends and peers.  The few times I have mentioned this emotion, though, the immediate response from each listener has been: “Don’t be ridiculous.  How could that possibly help anyone or make anyone else feel better.”  Fair point, I guess.  

As India (the person) described it: “We are in a bubble.  It is a bubble we can see out of, and we can see the effects in the U.S. and in the countries we are visiting.  But it is a bubble.”  We know that some time in early 2009, the bubble will be popped, and we will go back to the daily realities of our lives.  In the meanwhile, we feel lucky in our bubble.

Finally, we feel lucky that we have not had any health or safety problems during the trip (knock wood).  I am still surprised that none of us got food poisoning during our seven weeks in India and Nepal.  Despite having to struggle mightily (and with only limited success) to get Tallulah to take her malaria medicine, we appear to have escaped malaria as well.

More dramatically, in August we flew out of Madrid airport only a few hours before a jet crashed on the runway there.  We missed being at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai during the attacks by about 36 hours. Without a change in plans that sent us to Kerala for three days, we would have been there as well.  We have shuddered to think how our lives would be different if we had been in Mumbai, left the kids with a babysitter, and gone downstairs for dinner.  

BIG BIRD-SIZED HOLE IN THE WING

Finally, we feel extremely lucky that our ancient Yeti Air Twin Otter airplane did not crash when we hit a bird and ripped a big hole in the wing.  In October, an identical Yeti Air plane crashed near Mt. Everest, killing all 16 foreign tourists aboard.  We are glad that we have never shared that bit of Yet Air aviation history with our nervous son.

So, I hope I haven’t jinxed us by talking about how lucky we feel.  The small challenges and stresses we have dealt with while traveling are nothing, compared to how bad it could be. The joy and learning and family time are all a bonus.

This has been an extraordinary six months, and an extraordinary gift we have been given.  We are all looking forward to the rest of the trip.

FEELING LUCKY IN OUR BUBBLE

EXTRANEOUS PICTURE OF ZOLA SHREDDING AGAIN

Greetings from Cape Town.  Until we do something more interesting than surf, hike, and go to playgrounds, I was planning to catch up on some of the blog posts from other places, that I wanted to write earlier in the trip.  Sorry for putting things out of chronological order.  By the way, the surfing in Muizenberg today was off-the-charts great.  India (the person) was so inspired that she bought a wetsuit, and is starting lessons later in the week.

This post is about the books that India (the person) and/or I read while we were in India (the place).  We ran around a lot, and had less time to read than I would have expected.  The books we did get through definitely had an impact on the questions we asked, the details we observed, and our perceptions of India. Our reading list, in roughly chronological order, was:

“In Spite of the Gods” by Edward Luce (Non-fiction, published ~2005).  The author was a Financial Times correspondent in India for four or five years.  He described the problems and opportunities in India’s development process very clearly.  This definitely helped us understand and probe some of the the tensions in contemporary India (e.g., Hindu vs. Muslim, North vs. South, India vs. Pakistan, caste system, urban vs. rural).  Good book.

“May You be the Mother of a Hundred Sons” by Elisabeth Bumiller (Non-fiction, published ~1988).  Elisabeth Bumiller has gone on to become a hugely accomplished senior correspondent at the New York TImes.  She wrote this book in her late 20s, when she and her husband were living in India.  The book focuses on the role of women in Indian society.  India (the person) found her style to be a little angsty and self-referential, but we learned a lot, and started thinking and asking questions about the role of women.  This book definitely sparked a lot of good conversations between us.

“A Year in the World” by Frances Mayes (Non-fiction, published in ~2004).  Frances Mayes wrote the wildly popular book, “Under the Tuscan Sun” and a few sequels.  I read this book in my efforts to become a better travel writer.  Frances Mayes is a poet, and she writes beautifully.  I came to the conclusion that I am not her target audience: too many lavish descriptions of food and gardens, too many references to romantic literature, and generally too many adjectives.  I was also surprised because the “year in the world” was really a series of short trips in Western Europe.  She doesn’t seem particularly adventurous.  That said, her books sell a bazillion copies, and the writing is much better than anything I can ever hope to accomplish.

‘White Tiger” by Arvind Adiga (Fiction, published 2008).  This stylized novel is about an amoral Indian man, who escapes rural poverty in the north and becomes a Bangalore entrepreneur.  ”White Tiger” won the Man Booker prize just before we arrived in India, and it seemed that 25% of all tourists we saw were reading it simultaneously.  India (the person), and Indrajit, our guide, and I all thought it was phenomenally good.  Arvind Adiga’s writing is evocative and engaging, the story is perfectly paced, the protagonist/anti-hero is well developed.  It will be a classic of Indian magical realism.  Great book.

“A Year in Provence” by Peter Mayle (Non-fiction, published in ~1990).  This was another part of my autodidactic travel-writing education.  It is a slickly written and entertaining book, but light as a feather.  The overall theme seemed to be: “These Provencaux are just so wacky, but I love ‘em, and no other outsiders understand them the way that I do.”  Again, Peter Mayle must be doing something right, because so many people like and buy his books.  Good on him.

“Elephanta Suites” by Paul Theroux (Fiction, published ???).  India (the person) really liked this book of short stories, set in contemporary India.  She referred to places and situations in it frequently as we travelled.  Unfortunately,  I haven’t gotten to it yet.

“Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie (Fiction, published ~1982).  This is a truly outstanding book, totally deserving of the award for being the “best of the Booker Prize winners.”  It sets the standard for Indian fiction (Arvind Adiga owes a small debt to Salman Rushdie, I think), and is just an awesome achievement.  Being in India made the novel’s historical sweep and its dense web of cultural references resonate much more than when I read it 10 years ago.

“Divisadero” by Michael Ondaatje (Fiction, published ??). This is a sad novel set in California, and doesn’t have much to do with India (the place). India (the person) bought it in an airport, and liked it a lot.  Michael Ondaatje is a great writer, but this is not an uplifting story.  I am about halfway through it, but got distracted.

EXTRANEOUS PICTURE OF TALLULAH THE PRE-TEEN

“India - an Eyewitness Guide” (Non-fiction, published 2007).  This is the Dorling-Kindersley guide to India.  It has great pictures and diagrams, and tons of clearly conveyed information.  Because we knew where we were staying and eating in India, this was helpful for background information.

“The Age of Kali” by William Dalrymple (Non-fiction, published ~1998).  Many, many Indians recommended this book.  William Dalrymple is an excellent journalistic writer, and he writes about interesting topics, based on his bravely gathered first-hand experiences.  The “age of Kali” is similar to the “end-of-days” concept amongst fundamentalist Christians, and basically describes a society which is disintegrating from corruption, venality, violence, and bad behavior.  This is also not an uplifting book.  That said, it is 10 years old, and many of the societal problems he describes (e.g., caste warfare, graft and corruption, violent fundamentalism, profound misogyny) seem to have improved during that time.  Definitely worth reading.

“The Moor’s Last Sigh” by Salman Rushdie (Fiction, published ~1998). If anything, this is even better than “Midnight’s Children.”  Salman Rushdie’s ability to evoke grand themes of social relevance, his cleverness and word play, and his storytelling are all pretty much unparalleled.  This is another truly remarkable book.  As with “Midnight’s Children”, it was great to read “Moor’s Last Sigh” while we were in India.  For example, one of the critical scenes takes place in the ancient synagogue on Jewtown Road in Kochi.  We had been in the same synagogue a few days before I read that scene, which brought his great descriptions to life.

While India (the person) and I were reading these books, Zola devoured about a dozen young-adult chapter books about Indian myths, gods, and religious stories.  These books generally had a lot of fighting, and heads being chopped off, and Zola loved them.  I was amazed at how much he learned and retained about the various Hindu gods and goddesses, and how he could connect the stories to paintings and shrines and statues that we saw.  

Zola also read about half a dozen Asterix books, plus “Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain and “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  To his mother’s chagrin, Zola also spent countless hours memorizing facts from his “Field Guide to Pokemon.”  We are not sure how any of these relate to traveling in India.

Tomorrow we have a busy day in Cape Town.  We are interviewing a potential nanny/tutor who would accompany us for a while.  We have family haircuts scheduled, and have a lot of Christmas and birthday shopping to do.  We also need to settle into our new rental house down in Llandudno and stock up on supplies.  If the waves are good again, though, all bets are off, and we will be surfing.

EXTRANEOUS PICTURE OF DAD AND LU HAVING FUN AT LUNCH