chartandwaters

These are some old thoughts that I wrote up a couple of weeks ago, but got distracted and never posted. As a result they feel a bit out-of-date, but they do sum up some experiences of the female question here for those who are interested. I'm in McLeod Ganj, home of exiled Dalai Lama who is here until his birthday on July 6 (I just knew he was a Cancer); by contrast with dim but eager Kashmir, at the moment McLeod Ganj feels thriving and happy.

Rafiq told me that the reason some men here have crazy ideas about the looseness of white women is that they've watched too many American movies. What movies are they watching? Not Terms of Endearment. Not Steel Magnolias. Not Stepmom. That's for sure.

Maybe he meant porn. All the computers at internet facilities are private, with curtains or doors, I don't think because of all the internet banking.

But that's not really fair, is it; even in the finest movies, like Pretty Women and Striptease, women have serial lovers, one-night stands, etc.

There are a few women besides tourists on the streets of Srinigar who don't cover their heads, most women cover their heads but their faces are not covered, say 17% (please go with it) wear burkas, and I've seen a few women use their scarves to cover their mouths as well as heads, though this is most likely to avoid a nearby stench. If a full burka looks as deliberate and conscientious as can be imagined, a burka with the veil pushed back so the face is revealed looks refreshingly careless, somewhat the way a man in a business suit looks when he throws his tie over his shoulder. I don't think I've seen any women locals wearing Western attire but many men do, some of the younger ones looking quite flashy; the young men like to dress in a European style, tight form-fitting shirts, any buttons undone at the neck, slick multi-pocketed jeans that are systematically faded and sometimes painfully tight (painful to look at). As in Delhi, the people on the street in Srinigar are about 90% men.

Maybe two Sundays ago I went walking with Tasleema in Shalimar Barg, one of the three huge gardens built here by the Mughals, who loved a good garden. Shalimar has plots of rose bushes, long rows of poppies in shades of red and pink, many grassy areas where tourists and locals alike sit and have picnics, and a coursing cement waterway with shallow fountains and waterfalls. This is all in front of Alp-like Himalayas. It's always so pretty and funny to me when people put potted plans or rose bushes in front of really stunning natural beauty; in what seems to me a very touching way it says, "we can improve on this", and also "look how little we can improve on this", or "look how mere we are", as one of my friends would say. I wonder how the Mughals would feel if I said their grand gardens were mere. But I don't wonder too much since they're dead.

When I walk with Tasleema my whitefemaleness is invisible because she is very tall and stately. Here, I can give you proof. In the garden, a man sitting on a blanket with his gorgeous, shy-looking wife looked at us, his teeth gleaming, and said, "You look like Kashmiri girls."

We had just left a previous garden because there was a spooky gardener staring at us, a small scythe-like gardening tool in his hand, so this felt the more annoying. I told the wolfish man that Tasleema WAS a Kashmiri girl, which wasn't short of obvious, and he said again, as if it were the very most reliable pick-up line, "You look like Kashmiri girls." Maybe it was the only English he knew.

Admittedly we'd been drawing attention to ourselves; we'd been playing soccer with a half-filled water bottle, and Tasleema is fiercely competitive so it was a lot of movement in that frisbee-less park.

I turned to his wife, who had been looking at us as if she weren't part of the conversation. I introduced myself and she did the same, and gave that soft, vague handshake that, aside from the big kiss greeting, is the other very common handshake. I made a little more smalltalk while alternatively glancing blankly at him and trying to smile as warmly at her as I possibly could. Finally she broke into a huge, deep, shy, surprised smile, as if I had bestowed something really, really great on her. Goddammit. Goddammit. Is this as much attention as she ever gets?

For those of you who read my defunct staring blog or know about how common and accepted staring here is, and how white women seem particularly fascinating to people, one of my friends proposed that some women must travel here because of the ego rush. I wanted to talk about that. There can definitely be an ego rush, but I think you would have to lack a certain amount of knowledge to ride that wave. For me the appropriate biological response ("I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!") is followed by a bunch of cerebral machinations about what they're seeing versus good old me. But much, much more powerful than that is that I frequently feel I'm doing my sequestered sisters an injustice by befriending some of the men I meet. At first the desire to have any friends, and then the need for help in navigating or flagging down transportation, won out, and there I was, smiling agreeably at the assistance perpetually offered. But a series of those encounters has been making me more self-reliant.

As I've said, in Srinigar it's very clear that many men are walking after you in the hope of either a visa or sex. In addition, in large part because there's no other way to advertise, men come walking after you on the street to get you to buy something. I'd just started to feel okay ignoring them when I got this: "Hello Madam, how are you?" Ignored him. "I just want to talk to you." I turned and smiled and said "I'm sorry no thank you." "Can I have five minutes with you?" I crossed to the other side of the street. "You are not nice you are not kind you are not polite!" On the other hand, a nice 21yo man seemed much more agreeable, and I believe would have settled for a friend, a customer, an import-export partner, OR a wife-and-visa.

The following Wednesday I took my longest walk alone all around Lal Chowk and the residential area Raj Bagh and back to the city center of Dal Gate, full of very old homes. (Who, what will tell you how old? Despite a day of bookstores, I did not find that source, but Rashid, the guide at the Dabloos, agrees: "Very old".) As I walked, I thought about how all the stares were triggering every stereotype I had and all the wrong receptors: my image of what a terrorist looks like, my idea of when to cross the street when someone stares at you in a certain way. It was an intellectual battlefield that felt a lot like playing Centipede (sorry I think that's the last video game I played), shooting down all these stereotypes that keep falling on you, and it made me feel very tired and drained.

After the walk I was also very hungry and sat down in a small--16 by 16 foot--open-air restaurant for lunch. A few of the men in the restaurant stared at me in their different ways, not looking away when I looked back, in the Indian style. Sitting there, I was thinking how I should have been coming up with good questions about people's experience in Kashmir, but what I really wanted to ask was what men here thought when they saw a white woman like me. I was wondering if they would ever tell me if I asked straight out. Then I was thinking perhaps I could have a focus group, pay each 100 rupees ($2.50), keep their identities' secret and write it up. I know how sensitive this issue is here, but it was hard for me to imagine that people who were so brazen with their looks would not talk about it.

(I have already talked about it with I think two Indian men and two Indian women, but none of these were starers. In one chat room a man wrote that people should stop trying to decipher the Indian man's stare and chalk it up to one of the many mysteries of India. Now why on earth do that???)

My food came, then a young man came up to me and asked if he could look at the book I was reading. Then he asked me some stuff about myself, and I, so tired and hungry, couldn't muster the conversation. I told him I would talk to him when I finished eating. Then without really thinking I asked for a to-go bag. As I waited I still couldn't imagine talking to him. Then he and his friend sat next to me at my four-seat table and ordered food. The first boy looked at me and asked me something, maybe where I was staying. I looked at him, leaned in and smiled and said that I was wondering, "When you see a white woman, what do you think of?" His face broke into a smile, as if happy the engagement had begun. As if the surface tension of our interaction had been broken. "Nice," he smiled.

"What else?" I asked. "Different minds." "What do you mean by different minds?" "They think different things." His face lost its smile, but it was if he were too busy fielding the questions to find another expression. "What kinds of things?" I was still smiling and looking at him intently, having watched too much Barbara Walters and being driven by some fuel I didn't know I had.

"I cannot say."

"Oh but you can, because, you see, in our country we talk about these things."

"No, I can't," he said very seriously, and now his face looked very grave. I looked down, and I remember wondering whether his face would show any embarrassment when I looked up. It did: his face and neck were the deepest red all over. I said (I really wasn't being unkind) "Could you if I paid you?" "No", he said extremely. I turned to his friend, who had not felt implicated in the conversation and was offering me his Biryani. "Could YOU if I paid you?" "No," he said deeply. The first man didn't look angry at all, only very embarrassed and, it seemed to me, respectful. His friend asked my name and introduced himself. I answered, paid, and bound out, ebullient. As happy as I'd been drained. Spring in my step. I must have looked like the cat who had eaten the canary.

Within 10 meters I started to wonder at myself. The happiness I felt was in direct proportion to the stress I had felt at the various reactions to my skintone--a kind of misdirected and unnecessary retaliation--but I don't think what I did was cruel. I was just calling him on the mat and he knew it.If he could hit on me, I don't see why God wouldn't think he should also be able to put words to it. And yet the reason he couldn't talk about it appeared visibly to do with his, and his friend's, devoutness. It had to do with what their law permits. It didn't have to do--I don't think, but most of this trip is random guessing--with whether I would keep his privacy. He was too devout--visibly--to put words to it, and too scared. How could I not sympathize with this?

I asked two other men about it. The first was a man who, when I said I was going to the Hazratbal mosque, said, oh, me too, and hopped on the damn bus with me. (This is what Rafiq had done too. You need to go to the gym? I need to go to the gym.) Hazratbal man said, this is a very embarrassing thing to discuss. Ogling's fine?? "Hello honey" is fine??? The other said that if I had gotten to know these guys, after a day or two they'd open up. But at that moment I didn't want to get to know them.

For some reason my most recent post, on being overcharged, is below the post about Monica's conversation with the blogger. So if you would like to hear about being overcharged by the Dabloos you must scroll down.

After my immersion in the Dabloos I feel less inclined to get to know our new houseboat family, but Michele has done better and really, since we have just gone away for four days and come back, I am feeling very grateful to see their familiar, kind faces. The family includes a grandmother, the eldest, who sits most of the day as she has poor circulation and weakness due apparently to diabetes. She has a wandering eye and I've seen her face show these few expressions: enthusiasm (at seeing us, since we are so nice), blankness, and weariness. Sometimes she props herself at the houseboat window, which I think has no glass, and looks out. The window is just a a few feet from the floor and a few feet from the door, which opens to the wide, very long porch. The porch has a clothesline, a patio table for guests to dine at, and plenty of space for people to sit and hang out.

Abdul, the grandmother's son, is a very cleancut man of about 40. He is accommodating and perhaps understandably officious, frequently appealing to Allah in his wish that we will have a GOOD time and tell others about the boat.

There's Auntie--Abdul's sister?--thin and unassuming, sweet and interested in us. She wears her headscarf tied in the back in what is probably the least self-conscious and most efficient way to tie it (since it never falls off or has to be repositioned). Her son is Maharaja, an extremely cute, tiny 2-year-old who has the face of a slightly devious 40-year-ld. He speaks a little but never to us, and his muteness adds to the sense that he's hiding something. Like the other kids I've met here he is very compact and easily thrown over the shoulder. Alma is Abdul's wife; she is larger and sturdier than Auntie, her face rounder and wiser, jolly and warm.

I apologize that these descriptions get so pastoral; it would take too much time to edit that out. But I did want to say that my description of the Dabloos was particularly romantic in part because I didn't want to say anything negative about them in a public space. You can see I've given up that goal. Abdul's family is easier to speak of because they all seem so purely decent and genuine.

There are two beautiful daughters whom, for the lack of a common language, we can only hug and do charades with. As usual we get to know the young, hearty, charismatic sons best as they speak English and are assigned most of the tasks to assist the tourists. The sons are given nicknames that are easy for tourists to pronounce, so Javed is David and the other--I forget his real name--is Raj. They really are decent, incredibly hardworking and helpful and not leering (which makes them stand out in a crowd). They take us to and from the shore in shikaras and give tourist advice and do not always want to sell us something, as their otherwise helpful father does.

Except for the grandmother, the whole family is strong and fit from all the physical labor they do.

Something that makes me very happy is the sight of muscular people doing small tasks. Thus was I really lucky when Michele offered me half of her new supply of Q-tips (in Indian English "cotton buds" and in Urdu something else completely). I was carrying them in my fist when Michele decided to go tease Javed about something. I followed her in and for fun started offering Q-tips like flowers to each of the family members, starting with the grandmother. She eagerly took one, as did the two sons, and when the mother saw I was offering them she came after me to get one. Then I offered one to the auntie, and she accepted. As each person received her Q-tip, she put it in her ear and started to clean steadily. We then sat down at the communal patio table with David to talk about our upcoming trip to Pahalgam, a mountain village. As he gave us instructions and fielded our questions, he dug vigorously but gracefully into his ear with his cottonbud.

This experience was so funny to me that I was really happy to hear Michele describe it as the highlight of her week.

The next day we went to Pahalgam and stayed four days, went on one long hike and one shorter one, stayed in a really nice large cheap cabin, the Brown Palace, whose walls inside and out are covered with bark (like many places there). It is a very large, three storey place that has a sitting/dining room with a small fireplace, and two other dining rooms. There are many personal photos and nice pieces of wood and plants scattered everywhere; a 300-foot strand of ivy runs around the inside of the reception room, and in the sitting room a strip of soil is planted into the floor along one wall and dotted with plants. The rushing Lidder river is right outside the cabin and covers all outdoor sounds with its own.

Even with the unbearable poverty, and in large part because of its cheapness, Pahalgam was one of the most soothing places I've ever been. Just being there made me want to write a lot. I wish I could go back and stay 5 months. During our stay a huge group of twenty-somethings--mostly Israelis, one Australian, many of whom had just met--came from Dharamsala for a 7-day stay at the cabin. Their stay included all meals, a 2-day trek, a pony ride, and other things you are supposed to do when in Pahalgam. On their second night the cabin staff hired musicians to come and play for the group. The staff said this was the first time since '89 that they'd had music in the place, and that for several years before '89 the Brown Palace had been known for its lively full moon parties. (Feeling mistrustful after the Dabloos, I was dubious about this moving story but started to believe it after asking around.)

The musicians sat in a circle and played very beautiful Kashmiri folk music that against all odds I'm going to try to describe. It was very rhythmic, with the tempo changing frequently and unexpectedly, often to very fast or to very slow. Frequently one soloist would sing--a man or a woman--with a keening, sort of crying voice, then everyone would join in, not in harmony but singing the same notes in perfect pitch. The man's voice was pure and steady as a reed instrument but with an almost Bruce-Springsteenish rasp or hoarseness. They must have played for three hours or so, from 10pm to 1am. It was really so beautiful. The male soloist played a harmonium; also there was a drum--a nood--and a stringed instrument--a rabab or a sarangi?

The woman soloist--the only woman--was maybe forty-five or fifty with dark heavy eyebrows and a confident, unself-conscious face. She wore a bright pink rayon dupatta and paler pink floral salwar, and for most of the show stood up and danced in circles, stamping her feet evenly to jingle her ankle bells and twisting her arms and wrists somewhat as in Balinese dance, but with much less structure, and a little as in belly dancing (her hands twisting then opening upwards, fingers spread like flowers). She pulled people up to dance with her and Michele danced twice. She also passed her scarf so people would put money in; she then carried the scarf back to the circle of musicians, opened it up and shook it out so the money would fall out and they would see what they had gleaned. Some of the guests were not comfortable with this and argued about whether their discomfort was "cultural".

When I asked what the subject of the music was, one of the staff, a really nice man of about 30, managed to make a facial expression that indicated infinity and said "the universe, the nature of the gods, and the love." "Everything?" I asked. "Everything," he said surely and looked at me, his face joyfully conveying how successfully the music conveyed the absolute. I was really sad not to have my recorder with me but Michele or I may buy some Kashmiri folk music while we're here, or else in the states--where the recordings, :(, will be better.

I am either going to Dharamsala for a few days and then Delhi, or straight to Delhi and then Bangalore, where I'll start research on setting up the art classes I'm supposed to give.

This is just some comic relief. My friend Monica (whose blog, which I miswrote earlier, is www.monicaintheworld.blogspot.com) was just in China. She was able to post items on her blog but couldn't view the blog or read any comments written back to her. So she wrote the blog company, Blogger, to find out what she could do about it. Here is the dialogue; I just cut and paste it because it is so funny:

Blogger Support wrote:
Hi there,
Thanks for contacting Blogger Support. Since we cannot always respond personally to every message we get, we encourage you to check Blogger Help, where you can find answers to many common questions. Here are some of the top articles which could help you out:
CHANGES ARE NOT APPEARING ON YOUR BLOGhttp://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=639A BLOG IS MISSING FROM YOUR DASHBOARDhttp://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=656HOW TO DELETE A BLOGhttp://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=70THIRD-PARTY ADD-ONShttp://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=40HELP WITH HTML OR CSS CODEhttp://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1116
If you don't see what you need in these articles, you can use the searchform in the upper right corner of any Blogger Help page. Be sure also to check our Status page and our Known Issues page. These cover many known bugs and current operational problems. BLOGGER STATUShttp://status.blogger.com/KNOWN ISSUEShttp://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=791
If your question or problem is not addressed anywhere in our documentation, please simply reply to this message and let us know. We will help you out as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.
Sincerely,
Blogger Support

From: Monica Goracke
Subject: Re: [#224977] Problems viewing blog
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 19:00:53 -0700 (PDT)
Hi,
I don't see my problem addressed in any of these articles. And, for some reason I'm unable to access the "Status" page. In advance, thanks for helping me out!
Monica

Blogger Support wrote:
Hello Monica,
Thanks for writing in. I visited your blog and was able to view it. Please try viewing it again. Stephanie
Blogger Support

From: Monica Goracke
Subject: Re: [#224977] Problems viewing blog
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 21:32:00 -0700 (PDT)
Hi Stephanie,
I've concluded that the Chinese government is in fact censoring my blog, because I've tried from several different computers over the last several days, and I've also tried to look at a couple of friends' blogs that are also at blogspot.com but have been unable to access them. And finally, I also tried to look at a website about Tibet but that was blocked too. It's okay though (sort of) because I can still post, and my mom has been sending me the comments that I receive. So, please feel lucky that you live in a free country and can look at whatever website you want!
Take care,
Monica

Blogger Support wrote:
Hello Monica,
Thanks for keeping us posted. I'm glad to hear that you were able to resolve your problem. Sincerely,
Stephanie
Blogger Support

From: Monica Goracke
Subject: Re: [#224977] Problems viewing blog
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 20:30:21 -0700 (PDT)
Dear Stephanie,
My dad emailed me about a New York Times article confirming that China in fact restricts blog access and that it's cracked down even harder recently after millions of Chinese used blogs and other personal communication devices to organize protests against Japan gaining a seat on the UN Security Council. It wasn't that the Chinese government disagreed with the protests, they just don't want individuals to be able to communicate outside of state channels. Here's the article - it's quite chilling, actually - in case you want to read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/international/asia/08china.html?oref=login
It's ironic, don't you think, that I was able to read the article but I can't read my own blog.
Is Blogger doing anything about this censorship? Complaining to the US government, or China's government, or anything like that? I would think it's in your business interest, just as much as your moral interest, to oppose oppression and censorship everywhere. Also, I don't remember reading anything on the Blogger website warning users that if they go to China, they won't be able to read their own blogs or anyone else's. That might be a helpful warning to post. It might get readers interested in the issue of censorship and how it affects them personally.
Just some thoughts, Stephanie - thanks for your time.
Monica

Blogger Support wrote:
Hello Monica,
Thank you for your feedback. We are always interested in ways to improve the blogger experience.
Sincerely,
Stephanie
Blogger Support

This is what I wrote her back:
Dear Stephanie,
Are you a person, or a computer?
Monica

Still waiting for her/its response....I'll keep you posted.

// posted by gabrielle marcus @ 1:33 AM 2 comments

Some of you would like to know when I am getting out of Kashmir. Monday or Tuesday next I expect to go to Dharamshala. The Dalai Lama will be there on the 23rd so maybe he will get to see me!...

In the following short skit, Michele, a righteous God, arrives from Srinigar to find that Gabi, an all-forgiving God, was initially quoted way too high a price for her room. Although the price had altered to "as you like" once it was clear Gabi was staying a while, could not afford the original price, and was posting loving things about the houseboat to various chatrooms, the Dabloos still pushed in the final negotiations for a high sum and renegged on their proposal that Gabi could even stay on "for free".

Michele has been travelling for five months in India and had purchased a ticket from Bangalore to Srinigar long before either of them knew Gabi would be here. A crazy coincidence, almost as crazy as the fact that they have nearly identical sandals. Gabi and Michele worked in the same room at Disability Rights Advocates about three years ago. Michele is very very funny and nice. She likes to engage people and tell the truth. She has a lot of chutzpah and often says things to people that make Gabi want to run and hide under a chair or a table. Abdul, the owner of their new houseboat, says Michele has a very clear, true heart, which is true even though he may only be saying it to get her to buy something. Her father is Israeli and she went each year to Israel growing up. She is a religion junkie and knows a lot about the many religions here. She is here travelling and doing some research for a doctorate program she is starting in medical anthropology; the research involves visiting disability-related NGOs and buying carpets and shawls.

Gabi had already concluded in several moments of bitterness, and absolutely unfairly to the entirety of Kashmir, that some cultures do not need a word for "liar", only for "truth-teller". She repeatedly thought the Dabloos were lying about something or other and would confront one of them about it. They'd then proceed to have long stupid conversations in which Rafiq would say that he never lies and she would decide that he was lying but either had to or felt he had to, which amount to about the same thing.

But while she knew the price she'd been quoted was not the lowest in Srinigar she did not realize she could get a near equivalent deal for one-third the price. It also came out that they were quoting absurdly high prices for trips and things (40% commission?), such that the trips were unaffordable to poor Gabi.

Part of the reason this happened is that even when Gabi noticed that they were lying, she decided that Generally they were trustworthy and she was Wrong. And this is because she thought she was a Good Judge of Character.

Setting: Walking on the sidewalk up Boulevard Road, the main access road for the houseboats on Dal Lake, about sunset. Tourist shops on the left, the mountains behind them. To the right the lake and the long front string of houseboats. At dusk the old paint jobs and crumbling facades start receding and the houseboats turn on Christmas lights and other multi-colored lights, so that they twinkle and the lake looks as everyone wishes it always would.

Gabi: "I still just feel so sorry for them."
Michele: "I don't."

CURTAIN


POSTSCRIPT: Who is right? I was definitely complicit in not laying down a more specific price. And in truth, so long as I agreed at first to the high price, what's a poor man supposed to do? What I'm finding beleaguring is in part that I was so trusting, and in part that I can't really figure out whether they were inherently wrong to try to cheat me. Two friends have told me, "It's all relative."

And it especially upsets me because it is the exact opposite of how they will get the Western tourists they crave, the ones that stay longer (than Indian tourists) and make the tourist industry boom here, the way it did, supposedly, prior to '89. It seems to many that people are still too poor, and the future way too uncertain, for them to be able to think about the future and what Western tourists truly want.

We shamed the Dabloos, too, because leaving the boat and going somewhere else is a very visible phenomenon in this small community. We went back the next day to take Tasleema out (of course she couldn't go, who knows what terrible things we'd tell her) and they wanted us to set a dinner date. Our family misses you! Rashid said he'd cried all night and continued to do so in front of us. We don't know what kind of exchange happened when we'd gone, whether we feel like family to any of them. Rashid said, come back, you can stay for 100 Rs, 200! Michele said, "It's too late. It's too late."

Michele says the lying phenomenon is throughout India but seems to her more extreme here. A couple of people have said it's specific to the tourist industry here; the government, too, goes without saying. It's no wonder that people here say so often (you'll hear it three times a day): "All five fingers of the hand not the same". Maybe given the media coverage and the generalizations tourists make in their attempts to form impressions of a strange place, locals always have to field such shocking questions as "Are Kashmiris good, or are Kashmiris bad." "Are Kashmiris perpetual liars? Or no?" It is also their way of warning you of the dangerous elements here, while reassuring you about the good ones.

When Rashid--who had also quoted me bad prices--had said, "I don't trust people, I trust only God", part of me realized this was a big problem: If you don't trust anyone then what's the likelihood that you're trustworthy yourself? Since there's no reason to be trustworthy in a sea of sharks.

Now, the place we have now is very very nice, and we were quoted a very fair price and are taken care of.

And now to (some of) my lies. There are several repeat questions that people ask which may be businessy or may be cordial. They include: Are you travelling alone. Where are you from. Where are you staying. How much are you paying for your room. I've taken to lying constantly, but Michele rarely lies and has taken to making fun of my lies. For example, many men would like to date white women here either for sex or a visa (I personally think the visa is the bigger issue, but I haven't taken a poll). So today when someone asked us if we were alone, I said Michele's husband was in Bangalore and mine was back in the states. To which Michele added, "Yes, but she's thinking of divorcing him."

I thought more of the Dabloo family read and wrote, which is why I didn't understand the lack of books. I don't know if I assumed that, or if I asked and someone hedged or didn't understand. About 90% of the houseboat community does not read or write, and only the Dabloo school-aged children do. School-aged children are learning literacy in English and Urdu but I've not seen parents who are teaching themselves to read or write. During the war BBC and Voice of America were lifelines for people, but now people have stopped wanting to hear the details.

(Dear Mark, thank you for your support. I was trying to give people breathers between my long blogs. What does Venantius mean? And now here is a very very long blog.)

There's a sign on Jamia Masjid, a famous mosque in Srinigar, that says you can't go in if you're "naked," meaning not fully covered, "by Order of the Secretary". I know everyone else knows who the Secretary is, but how, how are tourists supposed to know? This is my endless gripe with tourists hotspots that are also war-ravaged powderkegs: frequent oversights and errors of omission.

Given how many people find Kashmir heaven on earth, I actually imagined a feeling of escape might be conjurable amid the devastation. I didn't feel in need of an escape, but I thought one might be available. Maybe if I'd needed a vacation more I'd have suspended the necessary disbelief in order to enjoy myself here. But I am finding the contrast between the tone the Kashmiris desperately hope to set--joyful, serene glee--and the reality of poverty and oppression heartbreaking on an almost minute to minute basis.

The frequent oversights and errors of omission aren't limited to the tourist industry--they're culture-wide, the symptoms of poverty and desperation and depression and many things I don't understand. Of course there's the low funds, and especially funds poorly or corruptly spent; I'm told India gives enormous aid to Kashmir each year, and that Kashmir has been somehow rated the second most corrupt state in India. There's the depression of a community used to living in desperation. For instance: The sitting room in the Dabloos' houseboat is completely beautiful. The walls are 18th century wood panels in the British tradition, perfectly preserved. The floor is covered with a deep red, spotless fabric, some kind of woolly acrylic knit embossed with a diamond pattern. The coffee tables are the walnut Kashmir is famous for expertly carved to look rippled around the edges. When I first saw the room there were three vases of fresh flowers in different colors, which were especially touching because this room is rarely used. There are polished wood-framed chairs, a couch and a settee covered in deep red plush. And on each couch and chair are little round raw silk pillows that are very, very dirty. And the whimsical fabric lampshades are unwhimsically off-kilter, a problem a hammer could fix.

It's as if the people have for too long had to squint their eyes to avoid seeing the disaster too clearly. I met a shopkeeper the other day who goes by the name of Crocodile. This may be because his teeth are so white and big. He also has big eyes and big eyelids that open and close dramatically. I feel bad for him because in a place where everyone is charging the tourists fake rates Crocodile is an unalluring nickname. Over a please-purchase-something chai he told me the Kashmiris are no longer thinking clearly after the years of war. "Depressed", I said, and he nodded his head adamantly and lowered his big eyelids, "Depressed, yes, that's the word, depressed."

(The Kashmiris are a dramatic people--the Italians of Asia, a British woman told me--and very expressive with their face and hands. Frequently I think they're arguing when they're not, but they argue a lot. Their language has thick guttural sounds and that rolling r that makes every word sound dramatic, and for some reason I haven't checked when they say English words like "milk" and film" they say mil-ik and fil-im, which also gives the impression that each word deserves more time, for them, rather than less.)

Then there are the joyful, playful colors of what appear to be a naturally artistic people, including giddy, often mysterious slogans hand-painted on the sides of rickshaws and the backs of trucks. ("Wait for Signal, Don't Break My Heart;" "You and me nice 2 members," "Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour." --"Wait for Signal" means wait for the truck to tell you to pass though no one does it.) You can contrast this, if you must, with the unsuppressed desperation in people's selling practices. So many whole shops will spend hours with you, just you, offer you chai, breads, answer any question you have, invite you to their homes, despite your repeat protests, in the hope of a purchase. The place is teeming with tourists, but tourism isn't anywhere near what it needs to be for these shops to thrive.

By the way, I desperately want people to come to Kashmir. A popular phrase here, particularly as you are leaving a shop empty-handed, is "As you like, as you like." So come, please come. You can suspend disbelief or don't, as you like.

Meanwhile, everyone is scrabbling for your money while asserting their complete honesty. Some of them are being completely honest (I think). Frequently it seems as if they're trying to be honest, and to convince themselves of same, while lying, although my new acquaintance Habib, a former tout (see below), put it to me more interestingly: "When I lived here, I would say, honesty is the best policy, but I didn't know what it meant." He agreed with me that people can't--or maybe feel that they can't--fully permit themselves to wonder whether they're being honest or not, they need your money too badly.

I should say that there are actually lots of people with money here. There's a developed, newer part of town called Lal Chowk where people don't look so hungry or desperate. I was startled to meet someone the other day who was perfectly relaxed--turns out he has a business in gold that's doing fine. There are some nice residential areas. There are people who make good profit in the government or in drugs. The town is very proud of its university, which has an excellent reputation in India. And in a weird turn, I met a couple who explained that the houseboats are pretty well-moneyed; when I looked shocked, they said I clearly hadn't travelled India much, meaning that by comparison the houseboats were doing fine. Sure there was the bad 10-year-stretch after the violence escalated in '89, but we're coming out of that. (I've heard some put the bad stretch at 10 years, some at 15, some 18.)

The tradition of having a houseboat is so strong that for those in the business there is very rarely movement to do anything that might make better money, such as selling a $70,000 houseboat and investing the money in three more lucrative businesses. You see many people with massive determination, cunning, ambition, charisma, and streetsmarts focus all of it like a laserbeam on housing their families and getting their travel agency cum import-export cum houseboat business really happening. The houseboat tradition is rooted in part in a deep pride in being self-employed, not servile, and self-sufficient. A woman also argued that it's rooted in the fact that many men don't want their women to witness Delhi, Bangalore, or any of the other big cities, so if the men have shops elsewhere, they have to keep two households.

The commitment to families, extended families, and the many friends who become like family, is very appealing to me. But one man noted with dismay, "Their whole world is from the front of the houseboat to the back." I was relieved to hear him say this as it confirmed my own impression: For instance, the kids receive little in the way of teaching or lessons at home; they are played with constantly but no adult cracks a book, or teaches a new game, or gives any kinds of lessons, although some of the adults can read. (Of course there's nothing about any of this that isn't true of people in other cultures, or that is true of all Kashmiri.) When people are not working they sit on the dock and just stare, or else they watch TV. They complain that they don't know languages well enough to lure in tourists, but they don't spend the good amount of free time they have practicing. There doesn't seem to be a vision of forward motion--I guess it's the commitment to "progress" that I'm missing.

This man told a story of a professor who was trying to show his students how much more there is to the world. He filled a jar with big rocks and asked them if the jar was full. Yes, they said. So he added a bunch of smaller pebbles and asked them again. Yes, they said. So he filled it with sand and asked again. Then coffee. The man said that the Kashmiri people only know a life of big stones; they don't realize, don't involve themselves with the many intricacies and complexities of the world. He also thought the lack of ambition was largely laziness and a lack of creativity; but isn't laziness usually another word for fear or for hopelessness?

But adhering to tradition is a typical quality of people who have been through hard times, isn't it--sticking with what they know, staying together. Nor is there easy access to anything outside of Kashmir--visas, for one; and many complain that in order to get a job in any other part of India you would have to pay for it. The history of Kashmir--going back hundreds of years--is mostly a history of oppression, and oppression nearly always creates a feeling of helplessness even once it's ended (fyi).

A government employee I met today--his department provides subsidies to foster business--said that the government tried to foster a technology sector at the end of the 80s but it was no go, the competition from Japan being too great; they've realized now the real business is in tourism, pashmina shawls, all the stuff everyone appears to be doing too much of. Whatever's driving these businesses, when you look at the rows and rows of people doing the exact same things it looks like virtual suicide.

The government employee said they may also start guiding students toward computer programming and software engineering soon. FYI, Tasleema had never seen or heard of an Ipod (rolling her finger over the round touch-dial--whatever it's called--"This is magic, eh?" and in a sign that she is a good daughter, "Now I get back to my laundry.") The town also appears to have been saved from McDonald's, which feels like some sort of horrible consolation prize.

Now, here's something that the man would say has to do with knowing only the big rocks. Rafiq says that if you are not dressed well here, people will say your father does not take care of you, so everyone takes care to dress very nicely and wear gold (a dowry thing) although they may have to borrow for, say, cataract surgery. The Dabloos and all the people I've met typically do their laundry meticulously and press their clothes so they look extremely presentable. Today I watched one of them doing her morning laundry. She put soap on a hard-bristled brush and scrubbed hard on each of the clothes one by one (which explained why my brandnew scarf suddenly looked so worn out). Then I saw that she rinsed the clothes IN THE LAKE. Eight full feet from the toilet, which empties, as I've noted, into the lake.

So this is disgusting. And so that I was extremely happy to meet a certain couple this afternoon. I was taking a shikara to look for a certain houseboat, couldn't find it and decided to just randomly visit some. The second one I visited was called "The New Texas". The owner was of course not as impressed as I was that I had lived in Texas and here I was in The New Texas. But the owner's son, Habib, is a Kashmiri man who, as a tout, had married an English woman 15 years ago, and they are both staying here with their son Adam just for the summer. Habib is working on many amazing Kashmiri projects, including an effort to clean up Dal Lake by developing sanitation systems for each of the houseboats. He's calling the project DL2035, testimony to his impression that the Lake, Srinigar's shining star, is being polluted with such vigor that it won't survive past 2035 if no one acts fast.

It turns out that the garbage man who comes in a shikara in the mornings only comes to the row of houseboats facing the road, about 300, so that the lake will look clean from the road. There's an entire back row of, say, another 300 tourist houseboats as well as many more residential boats. (Some 10,000 people live on the lake.) The garbage collector's job is mandated by the government and used to be free. But now he's started to come every other day or every third day and asks for money each time.

Habib's wife, Hillary, is a doctor who offers services for free while she's here and provides check-ups at the local orphanage. She sympathized, unsurprised, with my shock at the laundry-washing and offered other disgusting examples of this disconnect between cleanliness and hygiene. Hillary also said she was recently asked, "Is she really a doctor? She isn't wearing any gold."

Habib took me with him on a visit he had to make to the government official, who said I could take a tour on Monday of some of the government schools that are teaching children skills and crafts.

I've been leaving out anything about the violence. I've been told a few of the thousands of stories of brutal abuse by the Indian army, who accused my friends of being terrorists and then beat them. The army lines the streets here as most of you know--every street, it appears. I heard someone call it "reassuring", but am more likely to believe the locals here, that any current violence is staged by the army. Someone today told me that the freedom-fighters' violence clearly stopped after 9/11, he thinks because the US was funding them but realized--ding!--that these were the same terrorists who had attacked us. He said an Indian newspaper had discovered that each freedom fighter was getting 50,000 rupees a month--about $1200--which amounted--for all the freedom fighters combined--to $13,000,000 a week. The newspaper conjectured that no one has this kind of money besides the U.S. After 9/11, freedom fighters were out looking for work.

The tea served everywhere here and offered to you usually within minutes in shops, cafes and homes is milky chai--always served with milk and either salted (yeh, it's weird) or sugared as you like. Rafiq remembers when his family lived only on "rice with salt...and tea"--he leaned forward to get the English out--"with no milk."

P.S. Read this blog at your own risk. It turns out Rashid only told me hocking loogeys into the lake was "okay here" to avoid embarrassment at how frequently he does it. Although Mr. Dabloo also does it (louder than I've ever heard anyone) it's not officially polite.

For those of you who already read my other Kashmiri post, I wanted to add that the "With you for you always" slogan is, according to locals, the Jammu and Kashmir government slogan, although I think the Delhi government slogan was similar. In Delhi it seemed sadly comical, as did the sign saying "Keep Delhi Green" (there ARE the usual city tree-planting efforts amid the haze) and one voluntary smog-check station that said something like "Keep Delhi Pollution-Free". If I hadn't already been choking, I would have then. I pictured young spunky auto-rickshaw drivers, the equivalent of the boys I knew in high school, using the station to compete to see whose rickshaw could pollute more. Srinigar is much cleaner, neater and more orderly, and everyone says you can drink the water (though I don't).

Did I say that I am staying in the private houseboat of a family that runs a guest houseboat on Dal Lake, in Srinigar? The houseboats and rickshaws and shikaras--boats that serve the lake like gondolas--are each very festively decorated, full of beautiful floral fabrics, ceilings with many colored bulbs, bunches of colorful plastic flowers (all reminiscent of Key West) and hand carved walls and furniture. The boats have odd English names like “Beauty Star” and "Rolex" and "Hawaii", and mine, Houseboat Cherry Stone. There are about 600 on Dal Lake alone and many more on the two other large Srinigar lakes. According to Lonely Planet the houseboats were built when the Kashmiri government refused to let the British own land here; the Brits, in love with the Kashmiri scenery, solved the problem by living on the water. But now they are most all locally owned homes and hotels.

I am paying for the room--whatever I can afford, they say--and have all my meals with them. The family I'm staying with: Mr. Dabloo, the father and grandfather, the down-to-earth patriarch who reminds me a lot of my great grandfather Harry, casual, informal, but very much in control, carefully counting his money and running the ship. Grandpa Harry sailed our family through the Depression with a weird confidence and cleverness. I think Mr. Dabloo did something of the same. His beautiful wife communicates with me only through her warm smile and sometimes a patting on the head. Her heart is weak and she sits still all day on the patio or living room, sometimes lying down to sleep. They are saving for surgery for her. She wears a long olive-green robe with gold embroidery at the cuffs and collar, a white scarf draped simply over her head, and she dies her hair deep black. I feel that I know her through her family, the hardworking, kind and open-minded sons and daughters.

The Dabloo's children include Rajya, who is totally mothering me, insistently tidying my messy room and stuffing my bed with too many water bottles. When I come into a room looking awkward, she shoves my shoulder and aggressively says, "SIT", which means, "Get comfortable damnit". Rajya's daughter is 19yo Tasleema, whose English is very good and who is way too charming; on the first day she sat down, put her legs on either side of mine and said, "Now I tell you everything about myself. Because I trust you. Some people I do not trust but I trust you." She is used to foreign tourists and courageous with them, as well as with her family and her life. She is feisty and argumentative and at the same time a very good and committed daughter. Her schedule on schooldays during the summer involves cleaning all the houseboat rooms in the morning, going to school, going to part-time work to learn to sew, then coming home and cleaning and ironing all the boat's laundry.

A common greeting here—perhaps only of women to women?—is to grasp your hand and kiss the top passionately. Or they may grasp your hand and hold it long and warmly, as a 10 year old boy did to me yesterday. You are good, they seem to assume, very good.

Longtime friends and employees of the family are Rashid and Gulshun. Rashid is a guide who has accompanied me on many trips, helping me feel safe as I get comfortable here and giving me some background on what I see. His English is halting so our conversations are quick and efficient. Gulshun does all the cooking and speaks no English though she understands some. I am embarrassed about the way I gawk at this family but they are all extremely beautiful; when I see Gulshun I always want to say, "You are so beautiful."

Gulshun and Rashid have three of the most endearing children you'll ever see, Shabnam (means beautiful), 7yo, Khushboo (means happy, pronounced just like it looks with the "u" as in "curd"), 3yo, and the youngest, 2yo, whose name I can't spell. Because Gulshun does all the cooking, Rajya takes almost complete care of Gulshun’s baby, feeding it, holding it, wiping its mouth and face with her scarf. Rashid's family looks all well-fed, while he appears very thin. He led me nimbly on a two-hour muddy hike the other day; at the end my shoes were covered with mud and his were not. During the winter he works construction. Normally, his hair is dark with a few bright patches of white, but this a.m. he died his hair in the living room, using a little pot of dye and a fragment of a broken mirror.

The family has no visible books, and I think a few don't read or write though the kids are all learning English in school. There are also no newspapers; shikaras passing by the houseboats sell cloth for tailoring, film, vegetables, and wood, and provide foreign money exchange, but so far as I can tell you have to take a rickshaw into the main market for a newspaper. For some reason, unique to this family, the kids aren't allowed to play with their toys during the day, so they crave all the little items in my room, the make-up, pens, and notepads. The family does not have much nervousness about what they will get into; e.g., this a.m. 3yo Khushboo brought 7yo Shabnam the sharpest knife in the house so that Shabnam could sharpen a pencil.

Rafiq, the 26yo son who speaks the best English, fled Kashmir at age 10 with his parents’ blessing and started a table selling Kashmiri goods in Goa. At the time he had no idea how to sell things, so he would just wave and smile at everyone very nicely. An English woman who visited every 6 months and always stayed in a nearby hotel saw how sweet he was and how innocent, and began to help him, directing people toward his shop each year that he came. He has no idea where she is now, but he still thinks of her with enormous gratitude. He is sharp, savvy, extremely hard-working and charismatic. He says he has never seen the inside of a school, and he appears to have no hang-ups about his lack of schooling--it seems indicative of both his ability to make his way and the deep networks of support his people provide each other.

Like a lot of people, I assume a high level of formality until directed otherwise. In this very informal family, the rules and principles that are laid out in the Koran and the culture seem all related to goodness rather than to propriety or formality. For example, because it is the Koran’s teaching, the Dabloos cover their heads and bodies; but there is nothing in the Koran that says the men cannot loudly hock a loogey into the lake, or use the lake as a sewer system--and then fish in it. However, in typical worldwide contrariness, it is not cool for women to hock loogeys into the lake.

And it’s funny how the clothing that translates to me as austere is to them--you know--attire. The women wear salwar kameez with long sleeves, pants to the ankles, their heads perfectly covered by the scarf, and in this they do their very physical houseboat work, carrying laundry across the planks that connect the boat to the dock, squatting to do the dishes, tending to the children. There is an enormous informality to their movements and something so informal and comfortable about the way everyone sits on pillows and the floor. (I confess, there is something so sensual about the way people arrange and rearrange themselves on the pillow that I understand burkas extremely well in this context.) And I am so ignorant. I though the bright white cap Mr. Dabloo wore might be an aspect of his faith, so I asked him what it symbolized. He took it off and put it on my head, “A nice cap, a very nice cap, we get you one just like it.” Although they are much used to foreigners, it was hard not to cover my head when all theirs are covered; it made me feel naked so at first I did try to cover my head as much as possible but gave up when I started to not feel myself.

Despite their own careful attire, they all watch the dastardly sexy music videos, including Mrs. Dabloo.

Because I do not want to attempt to cook for them but want to thank them I am giving face massages to Tasleema, Gulshun and anyone else who wants them.

There is an intonation, an expression, and a conviction in the way the Kashmir people I’ve met say “really” or “honest” that makes you feel that, at that moment, they are more believable than anyone else in the world, and that you will never believe anyone else as much again. But I did ask Rashid whether there was a kind of culture of goodness and trustworthiness, as some Kashmiri had told me: “Not all people are good. All five fingers of the hand not the same. But many people are very good.” And later, “I like people, but I don’t believe people. I believe only God.”

On a separate note, I just read that Monica, who has just finished with 6 weeks travel in India and now on to China (see the wonderful www.monicaintheworld.com) wrote that the sideways headnod of India for some reason makes her feel more than anything else that she is truly in another culture. I second that; some of the ways the natives’ heads move, ours just never ever move, and those ways in which our heads also move mean something else completely. For instance, this a.m. my host asked me if I had slept well. I angled my head quickly right, which means “absolutely”, but which felt like it meant (in the Jewish style) “I didn’t sleep so good, I didn’t sleep so bad, what do you want from me?” or possibly "fuck off".

There’s a wide variety of ways of angling the head right or left or swerving it right and then left here, a whole bunch of opportunities for the head that we don’t happen to take. Depending on the ways it is done and the context it can mean, “Exactly yes. Absolutely. No doubt. Obviously. Sure that’s great. Maybe. I don’t know. I doubt it. How should I know? Sure. Sort of. Hard to say. Of course of course. No way in hell do I want that fake-ass saffron but I’m being polite.” In dance we used to talk about a tendency people have to move on a grid: moving forward, backward, right or left; there’s a school of dance called Laban that places a lot of emphasis on the diagonal, which may sound ridiculous till you do it (okay it's a little ridiculous even then). This nod reminds me of life on the diagonal. It also, probably without any justification, reminds me of colonization, and how slaves in America found many ways to communicate that their masters wouldn’t understand. If I were colonized I could think of nothing more happily or deliberately ambiguous than this moving around of the head to mean either “yes” or “no”.

Sign:
“New Mazda Tours and Travels: We care to be more specific”.

The other day I went with Rashid to Shankarachaya (sp?) temple, a temple at the very top of a large hill with a beautiful view, that claims to be Hindu and that Hindi tourists flood. But Rashid explained that it was a mosque that had been converted to Hinduism when the Indian army took over—-by which I think he means after the Partition in 1947, rather than during the more recent 18 years of fighting. As everywhere else the Indian army is posted along the way and at the top. You’re searched before you go in. I asked whether I could take my camera up, since my hosts had told me I couldn’t; an army woman gruffly said, “Take one picture”—she gestured toward the entrance—“and go.” What did she mean, that I take a picture and then leave my camera, that I could take my camera with me, that I could take it but take no more pictures? “One picture and go,” she said and forcefully waved her hand toward the entrance. I asked my guide to translate. After some dialogue he concluded that I had to take a picture of the entrance. Then I could go through and take as many photos as I wanted. I had to take a photo of the ugly entrance to a temple that was really a mosque because they were insane. My guide and I shot the photo, shook our heads in amazement and fled through the gate. At the top there was a level courtyard, and in the center still more stairs to the small stone shrine. Inside, Christmas-like strung, blinking lights, fake flowers, an assortment of icons and a donation box. Many Hindi travelers lovingly kissed the steps of the shrine and forced their way through the small crowded space to circle it. And it did make me feel very gross to watch them worship innocently and devotedly at this temple that should be a mosque.

No one has been telling me ANYTHING about the way Americans are perceived here, except that they are much welcomed and safe, safe, which was making me feel very confused and annoyed and unbelieving. Finally, yesterday, I had two frank discussions. I was having trouble because I did not want to do any of the touristy things, gondolas and horseback rides on malnourished horses, shikara treks (not that they're bad) and shopping. So Rafiq arranged for me to meet with a friend of his, a well-known physics professor (specializing in quantum physics and fiber optics), just to talk. We first went to the house of a cousin of Rafiq's, who would take us to Professor Kahn.

There the family, as I’d been told before, said that the Kashmiris are so hungry for tourism that they are very grateful to each American, individually, for our patronage. Second, they believe or at least like the idea that Americans are safer here then elsewhere because everyone in Europe and Asia is hating Americans right now, but in Kashmir they desperately need our business.

They cited a lot of the conspiracy theories summarized in Fahrenheit 9/11, and said everything was for oil and the military industrial complex. More than Iraq or Israel, they focused on the fact that the fighting in Kashmir, which overtly seems to be between Pakistan, India, and the Kashmiri separatists, could stop in an hour if America wanted it to--but America wants the tension here to weaken the area and protect their oil interests in the Caspian Sea: they sell arms to both sides and feed the fire. (Please don't hesitate to comment and elaborate.)

Most Kashmiris do hate the American government but not its people; one man said with conviction that he knows we’re not the ones at fault because the government lies to us (I think Indians, with their horribly corrupt government, understand this better than we do). He said bin Laden's Islam is not theirs, and they were not happy when people died in 9/11--but they did wish, as was true of so many countries, that we could feel the pain they feel continuously. He said they know how scared Americans are when we come and they feel sorry for us: Bush has ruined our name. He looked at me closely and said, “Clinton? He was a diamond. A great diplomat.” But Kerry was a bad candidate. This man told a story about how Hillary visited Delhi and interrupted her important schedule to spend three hours in his uncle’s rug shop. Later, when the Clinton’s came back to India, they listed three people they wanted to see: the President, the Prime Minister, and his uncle.

When Rashid and I entered Professor Kahn's office, he was in the middle of a meeting in which he was explaining that the world is almost wholly electrons. Electrons are always moving, in life as in death. So science makes no distinction between life and death and doesn't answer the question of what they are. When his guests left I interviewed him about his work, and he said he was happy to talk, and in particular could try to answer any questions I had about Kashmir or Islam. When I asked what he would want Americans to know, he said that he wished we would become moral and ethical leaders as well as technological. He then led me through a Socratic dialogue about different kinds of religion which, it took me a moment to realize, was meant to lead me intellectually to the conclusion that Islam was the only true religion. He did not feel that other religions were bad, only that they did not provide sufficient principles for living--for example, Islam believes Christ is a true prophet, but he didn't do enough in the way of providing principles for good living. Only Islam does this. He hoped that eventually I might become Moslem and encourage the same in my communities at home.

On the way home I asked Rashid whether he agreed with this. No, he thought it was good that there were many different kinds of religions and thinks, as he and Rafiq had both said several times before, that we are all worshipping the same god: "Belief is the same, faith is different."

Indians call Kashmir "heaven on earth" for the most obvious reasons: Tall, pristine snowcapped mountains, valleys filled with shining lakes, clean streets with none of the rampant signs of poverty or a careless government so vivid in Delhi, and deeply, profoundly intact traditions of shepherding and farming. In addition, Kashmiris, as a rule, love their government, which is a really fascinating phenomenon. The government's slogan, posted frequently, is "With you for you always." (Ed. note: Actually I think this was the slogan of the Delhi government as well; is it the slogan of each state or all India?) And today I saw, where they are repairing a road, the government had posted a sign: "Inconvenience Regretted. Thank you." I believed them.

It takes startlingly little effort to love Kashmir; try to push it away and it will chase you down and hug you like the most endearing child. In Delhi I was repeatedly directed away from the hill stations (Darjeeling, Dharamshala, Shimla, etc.), with their current hypertourism, while getting mysteriously mixed reports about the "cool" microclimate in Bangalore (one person says it's cool, the next says it's 98 and humid, a French woman told me, "No it's cool, it has a special microclimate"-- a word that should always be pronounced with a French accent--to which the next person, from Chennai, guffawed.) I had vowed, however, not to go out of my way to go to Sri Lanka, or Indonesia, or anywhere where there was supposed increased risk of violence, like, uh, Kashmir. But I fell in with some (very nice) Kashmiri touts who work for one of the more trustworthy government-affiliated travel agencies in Delhi--had a long dinner with their family, and was so touched by their gentleness and kindness that I wanted fiercely to know whether this was something in the water in Kashmir. I asked and asked everyone I could in Delhi whether a visit there was wise, given my nationality and religion and all else. They all said, "Kashmir is heaven on earth. You'll be fine. Just stay with large groups."

My aunt tells a story of a waitress she knew, from Bordeaux, who had only one wine recommendation. In the upscale restaurant where she worked, this could only go so far. What shall I have with the pasta? "Bor- DEAUX", she would say in her thick accent. And the fish? "Bor-DEAUX". So it was with the Kashmiri travel agents, who really did know how to book things elsewhere but cherish Kashmir with all their hearts, and wish to show people how safe it is. (The state is currently flooded with tourism from India, with other countries slowly joining in. Many people think the incidences of separatist violence, scattered intermittently throughout the state, are staged by the Indian army, in part to justify its presence here.) And their families are all in the tourism industry, so horribly ravaged.

I think I inherited what I'm calling "strategic paranoia" from my grandmother on my dad's side (instead of how are you, she would ask, "are you okay?" on the assumption that you were always on a precipice with a terrible cliff on one side). If your default mode is nervousness, you'll always be prepared. It can be both efficient, the way default modes are, and totally ineffective, in the way that, if I don't shut off my camera's default flash, the pictures are complete misrepresentations. But weirdly I think I've also inherited my mother's strategic optimism--when something wonderful happens, she's prepared to enjoy it. Strategic optimism told me Kashmir was where I was supposed to go next, the only magnificent option. Strategic pessimism put me in an unholy funk once I got here, because I was suddenly petrified of travelling anywhere alone, could not find anyone who spoke English I understood, and the person I was coming with became completely sidetracked with a serious family drama.

Some people may be concerned that I'm Jewish and Srinigar is predominantly Muslim. But my Jewishness is about as obvious as my being from the U.S: not. Second, I will tell tomorrow all the amazing discussions I've had with people here, about America (and Canada, where I'm frequently from), their feelings about it, their feelings about being Kashmiri, from heaven on earth, full of incredible resources including diamonds, timber, and wool, and watching their livelihoods simply be mangled for money. And how all of this has yanked me out of my unholy funk and put me in a much holier one... Till tomorrow, here are some signs in Sringigar:

Tuk 3: Seabucktthorn Based Drink
Amul Pasteurized Butter: Utterly butterly delicious.
Cement Agency.
Vigor, Vitality, and Stamina: Commando Capsule.
Inshallah Motors
The weirdest one is for a life insurance company: It reads, "Children's Money Back Policy"

Much love to all--

P.S. Who doesn't love a pillow? In the middle Eastern style, all the floors here are lined with pillows; and people sleep on the floor, or sometimes on a low mattress on the floor. For eating a cloth is laid on the floor, and everyone is given their own individual bowls of each dish, as well as one big aluminum bowl--beautifully fluted, with a stem--full of rice, into which you mix all your other little servings of food. With all these personal little bowls, you feel like a queen. Everything else takes place on the floor: the women wash the dishes in a tray on the floor; many salespeople sit on the floor and display their wares from there. I think most people, um, unless they have knee problems, would have to fall in love with this, but when I was a kid I designed my dream home, one room with pillows all over the floor, and in college doing a lot of dance I was really good at anything that involved rolling around on the floor (you do a shocking amount of this in modern dance). When I was thinking about leaving this place, I realized how sorry I would be to give up the floor.

In addition, when someone showed me exactly how to eat with your hand, when my thumb, cupped in my palm, popped the food into my mouth and rice didn't spill everywhere I was actually exhilarated. It really makes chairs, tables, and utensils all seem so comical.

Today Tasleema, the 19 year old daughter, said nervously that she was uncomfortable with the fact that my upperlip was growing that moustache shadow that I have a weird pride in, as I associate it with being Eastern European and because in Texas very few people I knew growing up had it. "Are you going to do something about it?" she asked. So she did the "threading" thing where you weave thread around each hair and yank. With each yank I screamed and curled up into a fetal position. "Please, Gabi, it doesn't look nice," she'd say again and again each time I pulled away. "Please, Gabi. Stop." I looked a lot better afterwards and even imagined the family smiled at me in relief.