Don't Try This at Home

Aerial massage by Nathan. Pre-tumble.

Of Mice and Mailmen

There’s a can of refried beans in my kitchen. This is remarkable because Indians don’t do refried beans. I get a thrill every time I look at it. It arrived last week in a care package my friend JJ mailed from LA almost four months ago.

The Indian postal service is notoriously unreliable. It’s not unusual for packages to be “lost” in transit or arrive with half their contents missing. Customs agents and postal workers, like mistresses, are particularly fond of sweets and new clothes.

On Tuesday morning, my flatmate Nathan and I were swapping postal horror stories. He’d knocked on a dozen doors and paid the equivalent of $300 in fees and bribes to rescue a package he’d shipped from Korea to India. I’d lost hope of receiving JJ’s package. On Monday I’d been to the post office and lectured the workers on airmail ethics. “It will go soon, yes?” I said as they pried an LA-bound package from my fingers. “Not lost. Package will not be lost, yes?” In that moment, I hated India.

Tuesday afternoon my phone rang. JJ’s package was waiting for me at the post office. I couldn’t have been more surprised if the caller had told me I’d won a million dollars.

I picked up the battered package the next day. There was a hole about the size of a fist on one side, and when I peered through it, I spied a stick of Toblerone. How remarkable, I thought. Bloody postal workers passed on Swiss chocolate.


Inside, I found a ready-to-make Mexican meal: not just refried beans but also flour tortillas, corn chips, flavored rice, cheese sauce and jalapeno salsa. But my jig of joy stopped short. There was a gash in the box of rice. Corn chips rained from their bag. It looked as if someone had taken a giant bite out of the 10 tortillas.

Postal workers weren’t the culprits, it soon became clear. A rat had raided my care package. A rat with a taste for Mexican and not the slightest hint of a sweet tooth. (The Toblerone was untouched – at least until Ben came home – as were a pair of Twinkies.)


I’m planning a fusion meal: chapattis stuffed with refried beans, chunks of paneer, and sautéed onions and bell peppers. Chapattis, a staple here, aren’t unlike wheat tortillas. Nathan’s cook taught me how to make them this weekend.

JJ had thought of everything. He’d read my entries on itches and ants and sent calamine lotion, ant motels, and Ziploc containers and bags. There were Band-Aids and Banana Boat sunblock, Wet Ones cleansing wipes and Purell hand sanitizer, Imodium and Tylenol PM, organic deodorant and Odwalla Bars, Emergen-C drink powder and Q-tips, chamomile conditioner and hemp peppermint soap.

And one more thing:

To Ted

I was about to start my yoga practice when the call came yesterday. That is to say, I was leaping and twirling around my room. Lately, I’ve been kicking off my practices by dancing wildly to a particular Fatboy Slim song. It’s surprising that I heard the phone at all.

Chitra sounded down – someone-died down – and I turned off the music the moment I heard her voice. Someone had died. Our friend and former editor Ted, dead of a heart attack at 55.

Ted didn’t look like a guy who would die of a heart attack. He was slim and shaggy-haired. He often wore cowboy boots and a screw-The-Man smirk. You could tell by looking at him that he’d had more fun than you in his youth. You could tell he had a better CD collection.

I met Ted when we worked together in New Jersey. We kept in touch after I transferred to LA. When I visited our East Coast offices, we’d grumble and gossip and grumble some more. He’d offer his house for a welcome-back bash. I quit in August. Ted stayed with the company; he had the house and a teen-age son and a sweet salary that kept him in shackles.

Because I’m so far away, his death doesn’t seem real. I picture Ted at his desk, not in a box. I won’t be there for the viewing or memorial service, so I asked a friend to bring a flower for me. Ted was into flora. And birds. He was really into birds.

I didn’t finish my dance number yesterday. I couldn’t bring myself to bop around. Instead, as I started my practice, I cranked up “Amo la Vida,” a Spanish song whose title means “love the life.” Because Ted did.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Because it was strapped to a bike.

Being Britney Spears

“Indians can be very racist,” Chitra told me one time.

“I know,” I said. “And I love it.”

It was a joke, and we both laughed. Chitra and I have the sort of friendship that allows for politically incorrect humor. Racism, of course, is not only reprehensible but also uncool. It’s for nitwits, a trademark of the lumpen, as unattractive as plumber’s butt.

But I sort of meant it.

Being white in India is like wearing a VIP badge at a Springsteen concert; it gets you everywhere. You want to peek backstage? Right this way. Care to meet Bruce?

It’s gratifying to walk into a 5-star hotel or boutique in a dingy T, flip-flops slapping on marble floors, and be treated like royalty. Try that in New York or Paris and you’d be sneered at like Pretty Woman on her first shopping excursion.

When Alex was visiting from London, I took him to a swanky Chennai bar with a sign at the door: “No T-shirts. No shorts. No sandals.” Alex was wearing all three. We should have been turned away, and if it weren’t for our SPF 45-sporting skin, we probably would have been. Instead, we were whisked to a plush backroom where our code-busting getups wouldn’t be noticed.

Being white means almost nothing is verboten. You can hop barriers at sports stadiums. You can park your scooter in a “cars only” spot and swim in a “guests only” pool. You can pass through gates closed to the public.

A couple of weeks ago, I had another visitor. Jon is a WM who lives in LA, stands 6-foot-5 and travels on business so often that he wrangled four free nights at Mumbai’s luxurious JW Marriott. I’ll confess: I didn’t see much of Mumbai. The beachside hotel boasts three swimming pools, eight restaurants and bathrooms with – holy smoke! – tubs. I hadn’t seen a bathtub since Thailand. So you can understand why I found it difficult to venture past the hotel’s torch-flanked gates.

One of our few outings was to Mumbai’s most famous landmark, the Gateway of India. Indian families picnic in the shadow of the triumphal arch while bare-chested boys take turns leaping into the Arabian Sea. On the land side of the Gateway is a fenced garden. When Jon and I visited, it was closed to everyone but a few guards and landscapers. The guards waved us in.


They escorted us through the garden, snapped photos with our cameras and, after some negotiation about their tip, opened the gate and let us out. At which point we were swarmed by some 30 children who’d been eyeing us from outside the fence. The bolder ones reached out and touched Jon, giving him his first taste of a celebrityhood I’ve grown accustomed to.

A couple of years ago, I was taking a walk in my Santa Monica, Calif., neighborhood when I saw a pack of paparazzi outside a pet store. I stopped and asked an onlooker what the fuss was about. Britney Spears was shopping for a new best friend, I learned. I joined the paparazzi and passers-by waiting for her to emerge, and when she finally did, clutching a ball of fur, I jockeyed for a better look. “I can’t believe she’s treated like a zoo animal,” I thought as I treated her like a zoo animal.

Then she and her mom got in their car and ran over a photographer’s foot. But that’s a story for another time.

The point is: I know how she feels. Throughout this country, I attract stares and sometimes a train of children. Indians on holiday ask to take my picture. At the Taj Mahal, I became the main attraction for a gaggle of teen-age boys. When I visited a waterfall in Coorg with Chitra and Alex, a mother beseeched Alex and me to pose for photos with her son. She yanked off the boy's jacket and smoothed his hair before pushing him into the frame. Chitra was waved aside.

“I was this close to stripping naked to get some attention,” Chitty whined later.

Sometimes I tire of the attention my skin attracts. Sometimes, like Britney, I yearn for anonymity. But the perks outweigh the inconveniences. Britney gets goody bags filled with the latest gadgets, jasmine-scented eye pillows and assorted bling. I get free coffee at banks and office buildings where I have no business. I’ve been plucked from an all-Indian crowd at a Hindu temple and treated to tea, sweets and an audience with a priest.

The other day I got a free scoop of ice cream. I ordered chocolate and strawberry; the bill said just chocolate.

“You forgot to charge me for a scoop,” I said to the lads at the cash register.

“Two for one,” they insisted, smiling and goggling at me like I’d stepped out of US Weekly. “Where from?”

Free strawberry: sweet benefit of being vanilla.

Number of Times I’ve Been to the Gym Since My Last Entry:

0.

Here's the thing. I left Chennai the day I wrote that post. I came back and left again. Came back and left again. I’m back in Chennai now but clean out of “gymspiration,” as Helo puts it. Maybe it’s because the rains have stopped. Maybe it’s because my flatmate Ben installed a water heater in his shower. Maybe it’s because my resolution for the new year is more about diggin’ what I got than chasing what I don’t.

Happy 2007, my friends. Thanks for the cards, the Ouidad Deep Treatment Intensive Conditioner and the “where the eff are you?” messages.

Here’s where I’ve been.

My first journey was to Tiruvannamalai; the second, Mumbai. The former is a pilgrimage town dotted with temples, shrines and ashrams. The latter is India's financial capital, a city that rivals New York in pace and flash. The third trip was to Pondicherry – or Puducherry, as it was recently renamed – a former French colony where breakfast means baguettes and croissants.

Tiruvannamalai is a three-hour drive from Chennai. I made the trip with Ben and Nico, a friend from the yoga course I completed in September. We stayed for three nights, during which I slept a combined eight or nine hours. Something kept me from sleeping soundly. It might have been the slumber party atmosphere in the room we shared. It might have been the plus-size mosquitoes that circled our heads.

I think it was Arunachala, the extinct volcano that rises over Tiruvannamalai. It’s steeped in Hindu mythology and considered a manifestation of Siva, a VID (very important deity). Pilgrims come from across India to circle the holy hill. The 20th century Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi made Arunachala his home, living and meditating for 23 years on the mountain before building an ashram at its base. We stayed in one of the ashram’s dormitories, and at night, when I gave up on sleep, I sat in the bathroom and read about Ramana. I scribbled the sort of fizzy journal entry that makes me cringe on later reading:

I don’t know what it is about this place, but I feel giddy … Is it the smile I exchanged with the white-clad, bead-draped, ponytailed man outside? … Is it because the restaurant down the street serves porridge with dates and honey? Or the fact that hiking’s on the weekend agenda? Is it Ramana Maharshi?

Lots of people find serenity in the shadow of the “Red Mountain.” A few reach enlightenment. I attained a state of perkiness familiar to anyone who’s snacked on cotton candy and Coke.

That energy came in useful. I hiked for nine hours over two days. On the first morning, I joined the stream of Indians circling Arunachala. I started the 14-kilometer circumambulation alone, but within a few kilometers I’d been adopted by a pair of women who led me by the hand from one holy site to the next. They jabbered at me in Tamil, and I responded with smiles and shrugs. They made hard-to-interpret hand gestures. They examined my hair and clothes. I’m fairly certain they were keen on giving me a makeover.

On the second morning, Ben and I decided to scale the mountain. We set off for Skandasramam, a cave-slash-cottage where Ramana lived. We acquired a guide who courted us with fistfuls of lemongrass and daubed our mosquito bites with medicinal leaf sap.

Ben on Arunachala. That's Tiruvannamalai's Arunachaleswara Temple below.

We left the guide and our sandals at the entrance to Skandasramam and joined the Ramana devotees meditating inside. After a brief meditation, we huddled behind the abode and plotted our ascent. I suggested we find a trail and follow it. It was Ben’s idea to clamber over the boulders that flank Skandasramam, crawl through some dense shrubbery and head straight up.

I was feelin’ all spiritual as we scrambled, barefoot, up the steep, rock-strewn non-path. Spiritual and sexy in a spiderwoman-ish way. It seemed less a hike and more a quest. We talked about yoga and mysticism and gender politics and worried about disturbing the yogi who's reportedly been meditating on Arunachala since 1990. We climbed for more than an hour, and then, the terrain changed. Rocks gave way to vegetation. Our battered soles forced us to turn back.

The return trip – not so sexy. My feet felt like they’d been flayed. I yelped with every step and rued a decade of pedicures. I spent half the descent on my ass, shimmying down the sacred hill.

At Skandasramam, we retrieved our sandals. Our guide was still waiting.

“You have good meditation?”