Om Diary

There is this feeling you get when you first visit Varanasi that can be summarized in two words  Dante's Purgatory . In a good way. This was not my first time here so  I sort of knew what to expect, but the magic of India (one of them) is that it surprises you with something new all. the. time . So, although the Ganga is still there, the devotes are still worshipping, the chai walla are still doing their thing,  and the tourists are still snapping their pictures.. .  The vibes you experience change according to how you feel. What state of mind are you in when you walk about the ghats? When you watch the sun rise? When you sit on the warm, dirty stone amongst stranger to experience the daily offerings to the sacred river? Are you going to focus on the sweltering heat , the garbage scattered everywhere, she smell of sewer filling your nostrils,  and the many homeless bodies sitting wherever they can? Or are you going to...

There is no doubt that living in India is a lot different than visiting India.  Many things get unnoticed when you are sightseeing, enjoying the tasty foods, visiting temples, and going shopping. But actually staying put and blending ( well, trying to ) to the community you live in is another story.  So, here is some of what I noticed during my 12+ months in India. And please, don't get me wrong, this is not a complaint or a comparison with the western world. India can harden your heart or break it open, the choice is yours. First things first, life in India is not easy. You have to have a strong will and a loud voice (literally and figuratively) to be heard.  There are sounds here I have never heard before and at times it's difficult/impossible to detect the source. Drivers honk constantly and I've learned that there are different techniques. For instance, the " get out of my way " horn is long and fierce whereas the " I...

There are many things i love about  India  and then of course there are the many that drive me insanely mad  (these are for another blog).   The various shades of green in the  Himalayas  i had only seen in pictures, and  wow  what a difference in person!  The many nuance  of yellow mangos together with ripe bananas, and tiny juicy red apples from Himachal Pradesh neatly arranged on the make-shift carts, covered by a beach umbrella , because the heat and rain. The lotions and potions of the improvised barber at the side of dusty alleys. The colorful silky  sarees  gently undulating, barely covering the adorned feet of Indian women. The many shades of bangles making their unique  "bangling"  sound, like tiny pieces of glass dancing together. I left Rishikesh at the beginning of monsoon season for a road trip_ on a Vespa _ to Nepal (400+km) and Himachal Pradesh (1200+km).  Of c...

This is the face i make when i attempt to put a concept into words and eventually speak it out loud in the intricate labyrinth that is Hindi . This the same face i make when someone says something to me and i squeeze every particle of my brain to understand him/her in the love/hate relationship i have with this mysterious language. In the process my English is going to s***t and i t's making me the mad!  "Wait... are you talking about yesterday or tomorrow?" Because the same word k al - कल -  is used for both... so how do you know when the narration actually takes/took place? you have to wait until THE END of the sentence when you hear the verb to put it all together... and of course this process works in reverse, when you want to say something: you have to formulate the whole phrase in your head and keep it all together until you get to the verb. Just FYI it is also possible to place the subject after the verb because in Hindi there are rules and then there ...