or striving for what I really

want to be?

Am I meandering,

or steadily treading the path?

Am I turning down the good life

for one which is great,

or am I simply settling for less?

America, a land of bounty

and wasted possibility.

India, a barren wasteland

but filled with beauty unseen.

Regardless, I’m reminded of Ricki Lake’s film “The Business of Being Born” and wanted to re-visit it, since I’m quite sure that things are taking a similar turn in India amongst the higher-income population. I think c-sections are viewed with less skepticism here than in the US, because it’s seen to be so much more technologically advanced compared to traditional birthing practices.

[youtube 4DgLf8hHMgo]

It’s an ironic contrast. The majority of women have very little access to doctors and hospitals in which to give birth, and there is a high rate of maternal and infant mortality. On the other end of the spectrum, wealthier women are getting pushed into ceseareans left and right, which also have their risks. I am sad to say, my husband’s cousin even died from one last year.

I used to be really fascinated by the growing unassisted childbirth movement, and have written about it in a couple of posts, see: Childbirth & Choices & Unassisted birth in India.

update, 22/5: She’s out of the hospital!

With the growth of Indian cities, people are out at all unnatural hours. But this song, written in 1931, brings up the point that before, no one would have ventured out except…

Why Englishmen? They would have had important things to do, like run a government! Conduct business! Otherwise wield their power over Indians!

This post is inspired by having to go out today at noon in the 44 degree heat, and dedicated to the courageous tourists who manage to sight-see against all odds.

I noticed the wind was picking up outside, and whistling through the windows. One of my neighbor’s doors slammed below.

I looked outside at the purple dark sky, and the orange street lights surrounded by a cloudy halo of dust. I could feel a thin cover of sand as I walked back to bed. In the stuffyness, I gave up on the mattress and opted for lying on the floor–first on a woven mat, then I migrated again to the bare marble-with-dusty-film. Between the heat and the hardness, I simply could not get comfortable. Not to mention the eery gusts of wind that beat against the windows and threatened to break them with bits of tin roof that they lifted off slum dwellings. Ok, maybe my imagination was exaggerating a tad.

Photo by Steve McCurry

While I was super-freaked, my husband slept on without any disturbance except me waking him to keep checking if the power was back, which was about every two hours. He has grown up having faced many of these outages and dust storms, so had no reason to be perturbed. He used to play on sand dunes.

I managed to drift off in between, but would awaken again to the stifling heat with severe stiffness. Somehow I got on the mattress and got a little rest there. At 4:30am we decided to open the balcony door, as the dust storm had passed, but then realized the pigeons might try to invade so the breath of fresh air was short-lived.

As the morning approached, it began getting even hotter. We awoke at 8:30am and hoped repairs would have begun, enjoying a bit of chill from the cooler, but were afraid it would get damaged in a power surge. Eventually, the voltage died down and we were left with nothing again. So we waited and waited.

At least the maid came, and we were fed. We decided to leave for my in-laws place, but the taxi which was supposed to come in 30 minutes took an hour to arrive, without notifying us of the delay. Customer service here is sorely lacking. In the meanwhile, to keep myself going crazy from the heat, I tried the following tactics: drinking something cool, sitting in one place, writing in my journal, standing in front of the cooler to get a wimper of air. I found walking/dancing to be pretty effective, since I was creating some wind. Or something. Maybe I was just more distracted from my discomfort. Mind you, my husband was merrily doing offline activities on his computer, with barely a bead of sweat on him.

Did you know that no power means no water also? Yes, because our water comes from a bore-well and is pumped by a motor. No electricity, no pump. So by this time the water in the pipes had run dry. The temperature was around 43 degrees Celsius/109 Farenheit.

Finally I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, and I would go wait in the lobby which had the chance of being slightly cooler than our top-floor apartment. It was, and had a nice current of air going.

I had the chance to observe many interesting characters. Our emaciated guard reading the newspaper (he’s literate!), looking at his watch (he has a watch, quite a status symbol!). A blue-collar worker, wearing fancy new sneakers with yellow details and inspecting them seriously, standing as if posing for a photo shoot with hands on hips. An overweight neighbor, heading out to his motorcycle with a white handkerchief on his head. The laborers outside, seemingly unfazed by the sun.

I'm a model, you know what I mean, and I do my little thing on the catwalk.

Just as our taxi arrived, guess what? The power came back.

I know what you’re thinking: “Eew, gross, a post about pigeons? Thanks, I’ll pass.”

I would have felt the same. Before losing the battle with them.

Pigeons are like the vermin of the sky. Dirty city birds, associated with disease.

They have conquered my balcony.

When we first moved in three years ago into this lovely apartment in Jaipur, India, I tried really hard to banish them from our otherwise unused balcony. Scarecrow, barbed wire, the whole works. I even considered getting spikes shipped from the UK, where they have pigeon prevention down to a science.

They would make spine-tingling scratching noises on my air conditioner, like fingernails on a blackboard, on the other side of the wall, just above my head. They would try to perch along every possible and impossible window ledge. They would even enter our apartment as unwelcome guests, through a window or a door left casually ajar. When we would try to chase them out, they often flew into the glass panes of the windows.

The last time we went for an extended holiday, they took over our place. Apparently we had left a door unlocked, and it had been blown open by a gust of wind. My mother-in-law found them all over the place, managed to chase them out, and thankfully did the cleanup job. But she didn’t have the heart to discard the two eggs in a nest on the balcony. She’s Jain.

So we waited it out. It wasn’t actually that much of a bother, except for our balcony getting covered by an ever-thickening layer of their excrement. I actually enjoyed peeking at them, inspecting their growth. At first, they were fuzzy and indistinguishable from any other cute chicks. It wasn’t long before they took flight.

But now, they’re back. I had discarded three nest attempts. I suppose the mother was just dying to get the eggs out, because it happened so suddenly and with so little support–just a few twigs, and the concave drain-covering as a base. I also found it difficult to chuck the eggs, so decided to leave them this time.

Who am I to get in the way of Mother Nature?

the armour around

our hardened hearts.

What is their purpose,

if all withers within?

Like a snake, I shed

these skins,

layer by layer.

This dry, brittle shell

can crumble.

I welcome you in,

waiting for the re-growth.

that I’ve gone insane

the truth remains

I’ve never been less so.

More clarity comes in simplicity,

more peace in dissolution.

While it may seem to some

that I’m swimming upstream,

I’m constantly being pulled

down by the torrents.

Becoming an offering

is no easy task,

requiring erasing

of all the past.

Limitations, like ropes

bind me tight;

still, Iike lightening

I strive for what’s right.

With no morality to direct me,

no rules to break,

I can’t escape from

this wonderous web

of creation.

If you’re feeling great today, you may end up inadvertently spreading the joy to someone you don’t even know.

This network from 2000, colored for average mood, shows yellow as happy, blue as sad, and green as in-between.

New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too.

From CNN

See here for their nifty video.

Thanks to Arnab in my Facebook network, who I’ve never met! I’m sure there’s a more advanced way to link to his profile from this blog, but I’m still new at this Web 2.0 thing…