While we were still in China, i requested, very clearly, to Tiffany that i wished to enter India by myself; i felt that IT was a very important part of my personal journey, and i hoped she would understand and respect my wishes.... She agreed.... And then decided that she wanted to go to India at the exact same time as me; Tiffany then tried to book herself on my flight to India, but pressed the wrong button while booking the ticket and got the plane on the next night after mine (China to Bangkok, Bangkok to Kolkata; her flight to Kolkata wouldn't leave for a week after getting to Thailand, so she could chill on the beach for a bit)! i was pissed off that she was disrespecting my wishes, but relieved that at least we wouldn't be on the same tracks.... We both traveled to Guangzhou to get the Indian visa stuff done, and then chilled in the area for a week to get the visas....
The day before i was going to leave, she got notified from Air Asia that her first flight had been cancelled, and she had been re-scheduled onto MY flight.... i said okay, well at least she's gonna be in Thailand for a week, and i'm moving on, IT's all okay....
Then the day of "our" flight to Bangkok, she was notified by Air Asia that her NEXT flight to Kolkata had been cancelled, and she had two options of planes to re-schedule with: one three weeks after her planned flight, which meant that she would miss having her birthday with our friend Ritodhi in India and miss the awesome wedding he had invited us to in Mumbai; OR.... (you guessed IT).... re-schedule onto my flight.... Which do you think she picked? Now, i asked her to please respect my wishes, and take the later flight, but her birthday plans were important to her, she said, and there was nothing i could do to stop her....
And so there we were that very night, magically together AGAIN on the plane to India....
.... Oh and by the way.... Happy Thanksgiving.... i'm being super-really-grateful for the wonderful friends and family, like Tiffany, i have around me, huh.... Nice, Me
~~~~~
Here's some people met along the way:
Wassim, friendly Vodafone agent who got us back on the 'net, 2G style - met in his Vodaphone outlet in Kolkata
Abdul, Hawai'ian-shirted cool guy, born in India but moved early on and lived in London for 40 years, newly back in India and doesn't like IT much, has girlfriend named Tiffany back in London - met as he walked by us sitting on Park Street corner in Kolkata
Arjun, excellent friend who chefs at the Park Hotel and enjoys life in Kolkata these days, told us about Johnny Depp filming "Shantaram" in Mumbai - met as he was walking home from work up Park Street in Kolkata
Prithvi, friendly little Kolkatan guy who loves to connect folks through Couchsurfing - met through Kolkata Couchsearch
Anneke, strikingly cute Clark-Kent-type German bass/guitar playing chick, was pro for a few years in Berlin but not a for-real player - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata
Claudia, loveable glassesed Austrian chick with quite the spirit on her - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata
Azmat Khan, sweet Bangladeshi guy who enjoys hanging out, and warmly invited us to come visit with him in Dhaka - met through Prithri and CS in Kolkata
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Chaplin Square! A tribute to Charlie Chaplin in the form of a giant bowler hat over the gateway to an electrical power substation.... What do these things have to do with each other? Who knows? Who cares?
Slice of India: Man pulling rickshaw through Sudder Street, carrying two young men AND their two goats; the goats are clearly enjoying the royal treatment
Slice of India: Down on the Kolkata Metro, a skinny superfab guy with sunglasses straight out of some men's fashion mag, and his completely-black-outfitted face-covered girlfriend, with arms around each other's waists and looking so glam.... and so religious
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Rikh Mukerjee, awesome solid Bob Dylan-lovin' guy from Kolkata, loves China and photography (and is really quite a hot photographer!) - met at the Park Hotel poolside bar through Couchsurfing in Kolkata
Sanjay Paul, local CS Abassador in Kolkata, lived in Georgia in the US for a while, very on-point and interested guy.... Oh, and don't forget his "Hobner" guitar, made in May of '93, restrung and played by me at two Couchsurfing Meetups in Kolkata.... So nice to play a real guitar again! - met through Rikh at the Park Hotel poolside bar in Kolkata
Ratnesh, fun CS guy, brought us all back to his place for games of Taboo and Mafia - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata
Dan Tasse, real-life glassesed good guy from Cleveland, ready to help! - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata
Anjan, tall gawky "Heil Hitler" guy, awkward but well-meaning - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata
Alana, dark hair/skinned beautiful girl originally from Colorado Springs, moved to DC for school, a natural winner at Taboo - met at the CS party at Domino's Pizza in Kolkata
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"Stupiest" - Anneke's word
"Just as the sun's light does not become different when IT goes into different homes, in the same way, [ITs] great spirit does not become different when IT enters other living beings." - Munshi Premchand
Wow, still awake at 4:44 AM, while i download the text of Manly P. Hall's "The Secret Teachings Of All Ages" onto my phone, while some dude down the hall in our Hotel Afraa retches and pukes over and over and over again.... This is one loooong night
Chirag, nice and sweet dude, glassesed and cleanshaven, from CS Meetup @ Cafe Coffee Day
Maggie Van Cantfort, game and sincere girl-lady who's fun to hang out with, almost shared our first taxi in India together - met on our arrival into Kolkata airport
Parminder, wonderful pompadour sweet guy from CS, freelance film guy who also does work lining up musicians and creating film scores - met at the CS Meetup in Kolkata
We also met Rajasri (Tinni) Mukhopadhyay at the same CS Meetup, who is a wonderful bright artsy countercultural art historian lady, working with The Asiatic Society, and married to Supriyo Sen, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker who made "Way Back Home", which won the National Award and the BBC Audience award for Best Doc (check out www.supriyosen.com); both these lovely folks (and their beautiful little son Megh) wound up being some of our best friends that we've met so far on our travels! They are very liberal, free-thinking people, and really appreciate meeting the same sort of hippie artistic intellects in myself and Tiffany.... Friends for life! :-)
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Pigeon shit! Again and again.... Luck for the German and Austrian girls in Kolkata....?
Quite a fun night of art, thanks to Tinni, here at the Center For Indian Modern Art (CIMA Gallery), for the opening night of "Adbhutam - Rasa In Indian Art" exhibition....
Gravid? Lambent? God i gotta love art gallery descriptive blurbs for displayed pieces! Inchoate?
"....Mythologized in his creative crucible...."? Really?
"Is this, then, a futuristic fable of insidious lull, pretending to be a modern landscape?" Geez....
"His environmental conscience leads Suresh K. Nair beyond the anthropocentric focus of humanism in his homage to the cow." Oh sure....
"Is IT an encounter with extra-terrestrial forces? Or a mushroom cloud blooming with radioactive particles? Or a memorial to violence, with the severed heads of smart alecs?" Right on....
"No never don't they say,
Yes i can and will,
i'll fly above the tangled mess,
On a soaring bird of will"
- Collaged poem that Maggie liked from CIMA
Another good suggestion from Tinni brought us to see Tan Moy and "Baul And Beyond" at The OAT (Open-Air Theater, a.k.a. Nazrul Manch), for a almost-wonderful Indian traditional/rock fusion concert! Fun band.... but what a shit mix! You just don't want that much reverb on a giant fifteen-person band with a bunch of trad drums.... i had to restrain mself SO HARD from going up behind the incompetent sound guy at the big giant board and tweaking things to fix the issues; IT would have just been so wrong to do that, but would have produced such a right effect....!
"This has deep metaphysical percussions in Heaven, Hell, AND Earth." - Ritodhi
Mitashi, awesome beautiful friend of Ritodhi's who is into him from school, living in Hartford CT for work - met for lunch in Kolkata
"Why would you have strip clubs in a country that doesn't believe in clothes?" - Ritodhi
"i have problems for your solutions" - Kolkata t-shirt
"Life sends up in blades of grass ITs silent hymn of praise to the unnamed light." - Kolkata park sign
Bharat, older Groucho-looking owner of Earthcare books, one of the best specialty bookstores i've ever entered, with hand-picked hard-to-get titles spanning pretty much every aspect of environmentalism, agriculture, horticulture, Permaculture, and the natural world - met behind the desk at Earthcare Books
"The Observant Owl" by Kaliprasanna Sinha, well-written satirical on old-school 1800's Kolkata, one of Rikh's favorites - read this shit!
Mitul, cool guy who loves Dylan and has his three favorite Sagittarean music people (Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Clapton's teacher John Mayall) - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata
A wonderful little evening of music at the Earthcare Bookshop in Kolkata; flute and tabla classical stuff for a while, me playing my stuff on my little silly axe, and music from a good accordion player named Erich from Germany, who plays with passion and gusto, who played his songs about working in a hiking hut in Germany, and his quest to find the Bangalori singer on a random cassette!
Somir, cool dorky soft-spoken glassesed organic farm guy who's trying to abolish the money system (on a small scale) and wants to open a fair-trade handicrafts shop in his Kolkata suburb where his urban organic farm is - met at the Earthcare Bookshop in Kolkata
Vicky, longhair cool rock and film dude with lots of friends i should meet - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata
Uperajita, cool & beautiful Kolkata lady who lived in the US for a while and is fully in support of Occupy - met at the small Earthcare Bookshop's music concert upstairs in Kolkata
~~~~~
Five days of staying on Sudder Street, paying too much rupee for a windowless cell of a roach hotel room was five days too many, and our forays into the world of Kolkata Couchsurfing brought us a way out into the greater world of Kolkata, and a true CS gem: Akhilesh Gurung and his band of cousin-brothers from Kalimpong in the mountains of northern West Bengal, who just made a CS account a few days before and wound up having us living in their place for over a week as their first-ever couchsurfers! Akhilesh is a philosopher trapped in a 9-5 corporate job system, who only wants to play guitar and travel around the world, and we all hit IT off immediately....
Our awesome Dudey Dude Couchsurfing housemates: Akilesh, our solid suuuuper-cool guitar-playing host guy; Bubesh (M.C. B), the rap superstar of the house and the only guy getting laid out of the bunch; Yugo, basketball-loving Playstation-playing sweet kid with the same birthday as Tiffany; Ranjay, super-sweet-souled son of Aki's dad's eldest brother who reminds me of Josh Epstein; and Jhoti, under-chin bearded freaky friend of the family.... All these guys (and more all the time! A seemingly endless army of friends) seemed truly delighted to have me rock Aki's Pluto acoustic (which was a pleasure to play, after so long of the Backpacker) all night long, so much so that they didn't seem to mind me and Tiffany taking over one of the three bedrooms.... They actually seemed quite content to pass out on the padded floor in front of the Playstation every night, and had a completely communal system of room-sharing set in place anyway, where each bedroom belonged to whoever fell asleep in IT on a given night.... They cook each other food, and care for each other like brothers, including Aki (who is the oldest at 26) having to scold the others for not going to class enough, as they are supposed to be in college; however, many of their classes are taught in Hindi, and since Nepali (and somewhat english) are their main languages, they find IT impossible to understand their professors most of the time, and wind up skipping classes to sit around playing Playstation.... Aki tries to keep them motivated, but IT's somewhat an uphill battle, and he succumbs to some Old Monk rum and Playstation himself, after getting off his soul-sucking corporate work at midnight.... Living in the Bro's Hideout at 107 Bickramgarh in Jadavpur, near Tollygunge in south Kolkata, was the closest that i've felt to being back in Folsom House since i left on these travels, and IT is heartwarming to know that we are welcome there anytime for the rest of our lives....
Wow all these crazy dreams about India which i can't really remember clearly, which completely twisted right at the end to a badass "Dukes Of Hazzard"-styled guitar called the "General Lee".... i'm not much for Southern Chic, but that was on gleaming badass guitar, with the skull inlay on the lower neck.... Plus earlier, Alex Henry, in Trinity School helping me out with the squat place while i'm sleeping homeless out on the street between Columbus and Amsterdam; i think i was invited into the school afterwards to do something with the kids, or maybe to study as a student? IT was a little sketch for the faculty because i was just some homeless guy, but IT was all going to turn out okay.... Alex and i were going to play guitars together, i remember.... i was excited because we were gonna play "Hippie Chick" with the full bridge.... IT's the American-themed stuff that i can remember, naturally, and all the India stuff just slips through the fingers of my memory as i awake....
Well, the Dalai Lama giving the Kalachakra blessing in Bodh Gaya on Christmas Day this month seems like a truly wonderful experience! Tiffany is set on being there, and maybe that will be okay.... :-/
The Holy Floatel.... The only floating hotel on the sacred Hooghly (Ganges) River!
Thanks to Tinni and Supriyo once again, we got to enjoy Slow Joe & The Ginger Accident, live and onstage.... This unforgettable band of young French classic-rock guys features one creaky old Indian dude, "Slow Joe", who sings in a stylized 1940's crooner-oevre while dancing as though he'd had his skeleton replaced with golf clubs, thrusting his pelvis back and forth in a jerky and unsexy manner to the 60's-San-Francisco-Sound music that the white-boy backup band churns out.... Quite the night
T.W. Watters translation "Travels of Yuan Chuang", Tinni says read! Chinese Buddhist monk coming to India, 629 - 645 AD
Communist Concubines!
"Kalighat Fetish" - Rajasri's professor friend in the states's film about the goat sacrifices
Santiniketan, Open-air school-place for music & spirituality, founded by Tagore - Aaro Aakash, the Non-resort nearby - Bolpur, train stop near Kolkata.... Go there sometime!
- Well, i've officially made my latest dumb move, which occured after walking into Aki's local guitar shop here in Tollygunge....
In amongst all the other regular nice Les Paul knockoffs and whatnot on the walls, there was this one axe standing out like a big yellow sore thumb.... i walked over, and saw neck-through! i started to get a little interested, and picked IT up off the wallmount - and IT was fucking heavy! Yes, i thought! Yes! i examined the odd thing a little more; there was some pretty inlay on the neck, a Spartan warrior on the headstock along with the name Harvey (?), and yes, locking crap instead of a nut with the stupid whammy fine-tuner bridge (engraved with the words "Licensed Under Floyd Ros Pats.").... There were three humbuckers with the plastic still on them, an engaving on the headstock back saying "Made In Korea", and a couple of dings here and there....
We had made plans to go meet Tinni, so i came back to the shop later and played IT (after waiting for them to change strings, fiddling around with the locking bridge and locking tuners, etc.).... IT felt and sounded pretty good, even though the locks weren't on the "nut" (which was held in with screws, ugh) and the thing didn't hold tune super well; still, IT held well enough.... So.... i bought IT for like $200.... even though all the components and wiring, i'm sure, were crap.... The thing is, though, i think the body's really solid, and good for my taste and my preferences (another cheap workingman's Alembic!), and with a little love and a few coil-tapped Seymour Duncan pickups, i think this thing could be very serviceable and maybe even sound good! The guy said IT was a custom job from Korea; i don't know about all that, but IT certainly seems solid, and i can't find "Harvey Guitars" anywhere on the net....
So! IT's sitting at Tinni and Supriyo's place in Kolkata near the Kalighat Lake Market, along with the little tinny green-leather crap-amp they threw in for free, just waiting for me to come back and love IT some more.... i'm seriously thinking about mailing this sucker back home to Paul for some tender loving? i'd have to pack IT up real good and maybe IT would survive the long journey overseas....
~~~~~
.... IT's interesting about the belief thing; i had a good philosophical converstion the other night with our Couchsurf host-buddy Aki, which included a part on talking about belief and what role (if any) IT functionally plays in all of our lives.... Devon's phrase in his email about "believing in the instrument" (concerning my belief in the potential upside of the new Harvey guitar) opened up another thought-path for me.... If we see the potential in something or someone, usually we call IT potential because IT's something that's not being manifested right at the moment; but IT's something we can see existing there even before IT's there, a glimpse into a possible future which might grow into reality if nurtured and coaxed into the "proper" paths.... If we're going to "believe in" that potential reality, and try to aid in ITs existence, we have to go through a motion of relationship with something that technically doesn't exist.... at the moment.... and this thing we call "belief" is actually descriptive of this sort of relationship with the non-existent, which is sometimes the only way to manifest one's desired realities....
i always say, "i don't believe that i have to go to the bathroom; IT's just something that happens!" Which is usually my argument for the non-necessity of "belief" in our lives - meaning that the things which are really important and affect us in our lives have no belief attached to them at all! Which is, in my mind, simply a truism.... Yet, then, what about the other side of the coin? What is up with attention to, and relationship with, things which are NOT immediately apparent and DON'T seem to have any effect upon our present experience? "Sounds crazy, no? But here in our little village of Anatevka, you might say that every one of us is a fiddler on the roof!" Maybe "believing in the instrument" is a more important activity than i've been giving philosophical credit for....! Because i KNOW that i feel very strongly from time to time about giving a lot of my time and energy to something that i know is only potential at the moment.... and i'm happy to do IT! So maybe the deal is that we "believe", when we "believe" that our "belief" will be most useful and helpful to the manifestation of our most desired realities.... Seems sort of crudely simple, now that i read what i just wrote, but still a far jump from where i've been hanging out with "belief" as a useless endeavor of illusion with no practical value....
~~~~~
After two weeks of just beginning to get to know Kolkata, we are heading out from Howrah Train Station towards Ritodhi's friend's wedding in Mumbai.... A train ticket across the entire country costs the equivalent of $10 US.... Unreal!
An amazing sunset, peach-and-pink behind the nearby small blue mountains, with marshes and tropical trees in the foreground, as i watched from the open door of the Gitanjali Express train heading to Mumbai with the wind whipping past.... i feel that there is magic in this land, maybe of a sort that i will be able to see clearly.... There is magic here.... and people living in tent villages
Arup Kumar Roy, little older bald ex-Civil Service kind-hearted man from way-east India, has good ideas on the world's iniquities and how they should be fixed - met as the sun set on the train to Mumbai
