Mahabalipuram

I had the most amazing weekend; it was so surreal. It all started on Friday when I met Rajesh Vaidhya who is an absolutely incredible veena player - just an absolute joy to watch and listen to. He did a workshop for the KM students and played traditional Carnatic music as well as some really crazy english tunes like Michael Jackson and Beethoven and Mozart. He even played Fur Elise on the veena!! It was one of the best concerts I have ever been to hands down - of any kind of music. He has a certain effect that makes you stop and say "wait a minute, this is Waaay cooler than anything I do. I've got it all wrong."

Then , it was Rahman's mother's 60th birthday on Friday and the KM faculty were invited to a gala party for her at the Park Hotel which included fantastic north Indian fare, media cameras and involved fancy attire. I had just bought a really nice suit from Pantaloons that I enthusiastically showed off (I haven't had a chance to wear anything I've bought yet so this was especially fun) and I hobnobbed with a few people: the singer Sujatha who sang in Roja and Rahman's manager, Noel. I asked Sujatha about how to maintain vocal health in such a humid climate and she gave me some tips and told me about her ENT that she sees for vocal scopes etc. Anyway, I spent the night running away from cameras and uncomfortably sitting with the rest of the faculty who didn't know anyone. But it was fun. And I finally got to meet Rahman's wife and she is stunningly beautiful in person. What a woman!

But it didn't end there - we stayed up all night and early the next morning, Shasta, Robert, Eilidh, Michael, Liz and I jumped in a car and went to Mahabalipuram to watch the sunrise. I was so exhausted and was really debating not going but once we got there I was so happy I went because it turned out to be one of the best experiences I've ever had. We walked directly to the beach and sat on the sand while the sun came up. I don't know if I've ever actually watched a sunrise before but it was just incredible. After about 2 hours we walked back up and climbed the hills to see the rock carvings, temples and caves. It was only 7:30 am when we finished but it was already about 100 degrees outside and by that time I was just plain exhausted.

We got back in the car and were driving back until we saw a huge sign for Golden Sun Resort on the right hand side. We promptly stopped. We walked in and asked how much it would cost to use the beach for the day and it was only 75 rupees!!! I had brought my bathing suit just in case, but public beaches here are just so creepy and people just stand around and watch you so I never attempted to jump in. But the resort had their own private beach and at 8 oclock in the morning there was absolutely no one there except for a goat herder and scattered cows. The best part was that it was CLEAN. We ate a "continental breakfast" which was just eggs, toast and coffee, got into our bathing suits and jumped head first into the ocean. We stayed at the beach till 3 in the afternoon and I now look Nigerian. All in all, it was the best day ever. We came home and passed out for the rest of the day.

The next morning I woke up early at 7:30 am and went with Josh and Liz to the Sahaj Marg Ashram to meditate. Josh practices raja yoga through the Shri Rama Chandra Mission and is actually a preceptor himself. He's been having meditation sittings with all of us who are interested and it's actually quite nice. I definitely believe in the overall benefits of meditation in general, but I am suspicious of groups that say their way is the right way to gain spiritual clarity. The "master" only does sittings on Sunday mornings and it lasts for almost an hour. We sit cross-legged with our eyes closed and the master supposedly "cleans" out extraneous and potentially harmful layers of resistance that we have built over the years. I believe that that's true - we do add layers and layers of resistance to ourselves based on the experiences we've had, but isn't that just a survival technique in the darwinian sense? Don't we harden our psyches as a way to not get hurt again? I don't know how much I believe in this particular technique, but there have been a couple of times where I have felt incredibly potent surges of pure emotion like anger, fear, and guilt for no reason during meditation. So who knows? Maybe there's something to it. After the ashram, I went and sat at a coffee shop called Mocha and enjoyed a lamb panini, which I washed down with cranberry infused lemonade.

Seriously. It was the best weekend ever.

Some pics:

The sun about to come up










The sun starting to come up. It was a teeny bit foggy so the picture didn't come out as clear as it actually was

Eilidh and Robert watching the sunrise


The sun finally coming up




How crazy is this picture?? And it's not digitally enhanced in any way. Nuts.



There were these tiny little crabs running around all over the beach. They dig little holes and walk into them sideways.




The Shore Temple right on the beach. Apparently there are a whole bunch of small temples that have been covered by the ocean. And when the tsunami came and the water receded, all of these small temples were uncovered, so everyone went farther out to look at it and then perished from the wave.

All of us who went: from left to right, Liz, Shasta, Eilidh, Robert, Michael








Large rock carving








Remnants of a temple








A goat precariously perched on the rock wall








A random giant rock. I'd be a great tour guide wouldn't I?








Liz trying to push the giant rock








The view from the top







At the Golden Sun Resort







The view from the thatched hut








Oh how much fun it was!

The Wine Shop

Alcohol culture here is so bizarre. I think because the idea is so taboo, people react to it in such bizarre ways. Strangely, in fact. It is not by any means illegal, but even still, people act like it is. I wonder if they prefer to act like it’s illegal so they get more joy from drinking? I don’t know.

In any case, I’ve noticed that the idea of enjoying an alcoholic beverage is a concept completely foreign to their sensibilities. First of all, most restaurants, even high class hotels don’t have an alcohol license. So even if you go to a north Indian restaurant, it’s not possible to savor your tandoori chicken and naan with a tall, ice cold glass of Kingfisher. I have only seen alcohol served at 5 star hotels that usually only have foreign clients. Oh, and if you go to a whatever restaurant and ask if they have a liquor license, they look at you as if you’re an alien.

And then there’s the wine shop. It’s not an actual store that you can walk into, it’s just a random counter facing the street. So men, often already drunk men come, buy their bottle of whiskey, open it, drink it on the street and stumble off back where they came from. How weird is that?

There is absolutely no wine culture here because well, there’s no wine. Indian wine is the most dreadful beverage on the planet. So there really is only beer, whiskey and gin to choose from.

If you analyze the alcohol culture here, it’s actually indicative of more than just booze. I find that there is shame and guilt associated not with the consumption of these things, but with the public consumption of alcohol, and tobacco. I know plenty of women who smoke here but you would never, ever see them enjoying a cigarette during working hours, or on the street. But in the comfort of their own homes, they happily light up. Similarly with drinking, there are plenty of people who have a beer at home after work, but they would a. never admit to it because of the religious façade they’ve put up, and b. never offer alcohol to a guest because then everyone would know. But I’ve heard on more than one occasion that these same people “know how to party.” It is the idea of "people talking" that everyone is so afraid of. It's not the doing that is the issue, it's the "what will people think?" that is the problem. For example, because of the religious beliefs of certain people in this school, the faculty house is supposed to be an alcohol and tobacco free zone - which we were happily told with an overly exaggerated wink wink and nudge nudge.

So in conclusion, I’ve learned that everyone does everything, but no one talks about it. Weird.

Ridiculous

Geez, I’ve had the most eventful week, good and bad. I’ve never felt so high and so low in such a short amount of time. So the whole thing with Rahman happened and we were scheduled to record on Thursday. I was ecstatic. Of course Thursday morning like clockwork I come down with really intense chest congestion and fever. I thought, “I should just go see a doctor right away; I get bronchitis a lot anyway, it’s probably that – and maybe, just maybe I’ll still be able to record by this evening.”

I ask Faez to take me to a doctor. He says no problem, he’s right around the corner. We walk to a house where a man at the front gate tells us where to go. We walk through this person’s house, through the back door and up the back stairs to go to this tiny waiting room where we sit for 5 minutes. The door opens and he calls us in – it’s the same guy! No white coat. He asks me to sit and says “what’s the problem?” I say really really intense chest pressure and congestion, sore throat, body aches, fever. “Ah, ok.” Takes a flashlight and looks in my throat for not even a quarter of a second; just a flicker. “Hmm. Bad. Throat Infection.” Starts writing the prescription. I was like “mmm… shouldn’t you listen to my lungs?” He sighs. Sticks the stethoscope in the middle of my chest and tells me to breath once which I can’t because I’m so congested that I start coughing. He says “why don’t you breath?” I say “shouldn’t you be telling me?” No blood test. No blood pressure. No thermometer! On the upside he did check my weight and I’ve lost 19 lbs since being here which I’m convinced is all just muscle mass because I don’t look much smaller. He writes me a prescription for not 1, not 2 but 4 medications including amoxycyllin so I ask, 1. “How do you know what I have is bacterial?” and 2. “If it is bacterial, shouldn’t I be taking something stronger than amoxycyllin?” (Granted, I’m not a doctor and don’t know anything about anything, but I just remember taking amoxycyllin for ear infections when I was a kid and am usually given zithromax or azythromycin these days.)

This guy definitely didn’t like my questions and basically ignored them. If you’re thinking it was a language barrier, it wasn’t. His English was impeccable.

I got the medications and went to school and looked them up. I hate blindly taking medicine. It makes me really uncomfortable. He put me on a basic pain pill – paracetamol, a chest decongestant, an expectorant and the antibiotic. Not bad. I stayed in bed all day but even though I was taking the medicines my fever kept going up up up up and by evening I was shaking, shivering, and dizzy. It’s an odd feeling to be shivering in Chennai; not a feeling I’ve felt yet. It was actually Liz’s bday on Thursday and we were supposed to throw her an “American pizza party”. So Shasta and Robert (Viola and Harpsichord) ordered tons of pizzas from Pizza Hut, got bad whiskey from “the wine shop” and managed to somehow find party hats and balloons. I went to this event for about five minutes (the draw was most certainly the pizza) but felt so bad I just said Happy Birthday and left. I couldn’t sleep all night; I was so cold and no one had a thermometer. The next morning I started sweating so I thought “Ok good, this is a good sign.” I sweated out the fever for about 3 hours. Everything was soaked but afterward I felt so much better. My appetite came back, I had color in my face, things were looking up. The chest pressure was gone but the expectorant just gave me a hacking cough that I figured would eventually subside.

It didn’t.

The cough got worse and worse and started to taste metallic by the end of the night. I think I really started freaking myself out at that point and started getting nervous which then started bringing back the fever. It’s scary to be sick in a foreign country. I started thinking, “Christ, what if I really really got sick here and had to deal with doctors like this guy??” I started getting really nervous, then cold, then the body aches started again etc. etc. So I called another doctor and he said “come to the hospital, they’ll observe you over night and see what’s going on.” He said he’ll meet me in the morning. Ok fine.

I go to the hospital. The hospital itself was quite nice. I had heard horror stories from Liz about the hospital she went to (she’s gone twice for food poisoning) but I just have to share this experience because it is just so ridiculous. I get to the hospital and they take my vitals so I think okay good. I then meet with 4 different doctors separately and have to tell each one the same story. Not only do they not immediately check my throat and lungs, but I have to volunteer my prior health history, to which they say “Why? You’ve had something before?”

Then the “sister” comes to take my blood and she pulls out a giant 16 gauge needle – and not the kind that fills by itself, it’s the kind where you have to pull the end to suck out the blood. Oh. My. God. I look at the needle and look at my arm and I know, I just know she won’t be able to find the vein. She looks at my arm. Her eyebrows furrow. She looks genuinely puzzled. She finally sticks it in. I know immediately that it’s not in the vein. I assume she’s going to try and reposition the needle which is definitely uncomfortable but NOT as uncomfortable as when she tries to SUCK the blood directly from my arm. I was like “It’s not in the vein.. it’s not in the vein… for the love of god IT’S NOT IN THE VEIN.” She starts getting really flustered, pulls out the needle and calls the other nurse. The other nurse looks at both arms and chooses my right. She inserts the needle cleanly and it’s done in a flash.

Meanwhile, Faez and Liz were buying my saline. How funny is that – they came with a grocery bag filled with 3 bottles of saline, the IV, and bandages, set it down on the bed and then the nurse proceeded to use these materials to insert the IV. There’s a little counter next to the registration desk where you can buy everything that’s necessary. I guess this is good in a way because you know you’re getting clean materials, but it’s just odd for us – what would happen in a real emergency situation? The doctors would just wait for the patient’s family to buy all required materials? Strange. Anyway, once again the giant needle comes out and she sticks it into the vein in my hand – not at all an unfamiliar sensation but just the length and width of the needle is so alarming. I couldn’t bend my wrist because I could feel the tip of the needle a little up my arm.

I was told that I would be “observed” overnight which is the only reason why I went. I thought, “okay, my fever goes all the way down and then spikes really high every couple of hours, so maybe it’s better to just go and let them figure out why.” The minute I get there they put me on a high dosage of a drug that is basically the equivalent to Tylenol which covers up the fever completely. An hour later the nurse takes my temperature and says “fever all gone!” with a smile. I’m like… “um, but all you did was give me tylenol, I could have done that myself.” She didn’t understand and left.

I also had a chest xray. As we all know, I’m a pretty seasoned patient by now. I figured they would take a chest xray to test for pneumonia and purposefully wore the appropriate clothing so I wouldn’t have to remove anything for the test. This caused a huge stir. The man handed me the apron. I said “don’t worry, I’m not wearing any metal.” There is a heated discussion between them. He still wants me to wear the apron. I say “seriously, I’m not wearing anything inside.” More angry discussion and emphatic hand gestures. “Compulsory.” “Fine.” What kind of place is this where the doctors themselves aren’t allowed to say the word “bra,” or ask if you’re wearing one? Total and utter nonsense.

Meanwhile during the course of the night I’m getting bitten raw by really large ambitious mosquitoes while simultaneously being tested for malaria. What a cruel joke. The hospital was really clean but was just absolutely infested with mosquitoes. I slept with the sheet all the way over my head and must have resembled a giant vanilla jelly bean.

In the morning Dr. Girija finally came back and said “your tests are inconclusive. You can go.” “Huh?” “You have nothing, you can leave.” If I have a 104+ fever there is clearly something going on. “No, you have nothing.” “I clearly have something.” “Maam, you have nothing. You can go.” And then I started thinking, oh my god maybe I’m really just going bonkers and I’m having a really intense physical manifestation of homesickness etc. etc. etc. I had to admit it was possible. So I was discharged with a prescription sheet. As I was getting them filled I happened to look more closely at the sheet. Above the written prescriptions was a small box in which it said:

Diagnosis: Bronchitis, Pharyngitis

Now was that so hard?

A Long but Fun Day

I had a really long day yesterday: I started teaching at 10 am and ended at 5 in the evening which doesn't seem like a lot, but I'm learning that teaching really is exhausting; I never realized how much of yourself you have to give for someone to learn from you. By the end of the day, I just wanted to go home and sleep. One of my students and I had discussed looking into taking a yoga class together because we can see the sign from the conservatory and it's just a 2 minute walk from school. So after teaching we went together to check out the yoga studio and the lady was really wonderful. We're taking a three month course for 1400 rupees; one hour, three times a week for three months, and it includes meditation, poses, and nutritional counseling. She does all of her yoga classes on the rooftop terrace which will be pretty intense, but hopefully by evening it won't be so hot outside.

I had put my phone on silent while I was in the yoga class and totally forgot about it. I went to dinner with one of the faculty members, came home, took a shower, got into bed and reached for my phone to set my alarm for the next day. When I picked up my phone I saw that there were like 15 missed calls and 8 text messages all from the other faculty trying to get a hold of me. I finally called Selva back and... drum roll please....

He asked if I was available to do a recording session with Rahman! So of course I said yes, jumped out of bed, got ready and ran over to the studio. I walked in and found that Eilidh and Michael had also been called to record (cello and percussion) and we sat and waited for Rahman to come. He shows up and says Eilidh will go first so I just sit in the studio and watch while her tracks are being edited. A man then walks in and starts discussing the movie with Rahman and I introduce myself thinking he's a Tamil director (I swear I'm not a Hindi film snob; I just don't know anything about Tamil directors or actors so they're somewhat irrelevant in my head).  He asked if I spoke Hindi and I said no but then started throwing out random Hindi words that I know.  The guy laughed and left. Selva immediately was like "do you know who that was? You just met Shubash Ghai." Um. EEEEEEEEEEE!!! I just met a huge director and the song that I'm singing on is in his new film Yuvraaj which is coming out in a couple months. So from what I understand I'm going to be doing background operatic singing in one of the songs because apparently this movie is about an Australian orchestra or something so it includes a choir, western classical music and opera. Should be really interesting and I'm really ecstatic to start recording. There wasn't time to do it last night so I'm scheduled to record Thursday afternoon. The cd should be available in a few weeks!  I can't wait to see my name on the back cover.  Eee!

I'll let you know how it goes.