Much tired.

Well, this started off as a pretty lame day, but in the past hour or two I think maybe I managed to turn it around to at least only a *kind of* lame day.

I couldn't sleep last night because my brain was trying to pointlessly solve a couple of problems with my dissertation. One part of my brain was trying to figure out how to work around a problem with the first chapter of my dissertation, and another part was trying to figure out if I really needed to do research in Jaipur, and if so, when? A third part of my brain was yelling, WTF! GO TO SLEEP! I don't lose sleep often to thoughts about my research, so I guess I should be glad it was only one night.

Anyway, I woke up this morning tired and cranky, and that wasn't helped too much by having to eat another parantha for breakfast. I miss the days when they were being slightly lazy by giving me toast and jam for breakfast. Ate breakfast, tidied my room, discovered my autorickshawallah was not waiting for me as he should have been. Ordinarily, Mr. Host would just take me to work in this type of situation, but he's in Delhi, so I had to walk out to the main road to catch a lift. Not a horrible hardship, but it is 107 out right now (on its way to 113), and walking outside is not SO much fun.

And you know what? I only lasted two hours at the archives. I really needed a bathroom, and there is no working bathroom for women there. I wasn't having much fun, anyway, so I came home after two hours only just so I could use my bathroom.

Pretty lame, right?

I came home, sat down in front of my computer, and thought: "JR, you are so lame. You are in Bikaner to do research, not play computer games. Quit being so lame." So, I took a deep breath, brought up the web page with the phone number for the City Palace in Jaipur, and proceeded to try and call the director of the archives there. I don't know if you've ever tried to make a phone call in Hindi, but it can be pretty stressful. The first man I talked to was really nice and helpful, and gave me a second phone number. At that point, things went down hill, because the guy who answered the second phone call started laughing hysterically at my Hindi and passed the phone around to all his friends so they, too, could have a good laugh. Eventually, I got angry (long distance, yaar!), and they finally put me through to the director of the archives. Who was really nice, by the way.

To get permission to do research in Jaipur, I have to write a letter to the director explaining my research agenda, and then he will forward it to the princess, who will either approve it or not. If she does approve it, I guess then I write to SSRC and ask if I can go to Jaipur for a couple of weeks instead of spending my last three months here in Bhopal.

Speaking of SSRC, I spent some time working on the rough draft of my second field report after I calmed down from the phone call. It's not due until 15 May, so I think between that and the phone call (and two hours at the archives), I can say that I have been at least a little productive today. At least productive enough to upgrade my day to only *kind of* lame, don't you think?

New Home.

So, here I am at the edge of the Thar desert. While the city itself seems to be surrounded by sand and scrub, you can see from the picture above that I am living in a fairly typical suburban neighborhood in Rajasthan. It’s going to be uncomfortable on those days when the weather forecast is for “blowing sand,” but otherwise, it reminds me a lot of Jaipur (also unpleasant in sandstorms). The hotel (the Shri Ram, if any of you feel like sending me mail in the next 10-12 weeks) seems pretty comfortable. In fact, the only complaint I have so far is that I can’t figure out how to turn off the AC.

I stayed last night in Mandawa, and while you’d think the architectural historian part of me would have wanted to see all the havelis I could before nightfall, the freakazoid part of me voted for staying in my hotel room. I had low level anxiety attacks all day during the drive from Delhi to Mandawa, alternating with periods of intense sleepiness, and by the time I got to Mandawa, all I wanted was for no one to talk to me EVER AGAIN. Sadly, I messed that plan up right away by all-but-deliberately locking myself out of my cell phone. I swear, I thought, “If I do this, I’m going to disable my cell phone, and I don’t want to do that because today is the day I am scheduled to call my parents.” But I did it anyway, and sure enough, I rendered my mobile useless. In my panic to get out of my hotel room and find someone to unlock it for me—on a Sunday evening on a festival weekend, good luck with that—I caught my finger in the lock mechanism of my hotel room door. I stopped at the front desk to explain that I needed to find someone to unlock an Airtel phone, and when I looked at my phone, I thought, “Huh. It’s covered with sticky stuff. Why is that?” and tried to wipe it off. Really sticky, though. Then I realized my fingers were also sticky, and when I tried to wipe them off, I realized, no, not sticky, bloody. I had pinched my finger so thoroughly that I had torn the skin, and I had blood dripping from one finger all over the place. I was so focused on the fact that I needed to call my parents so they wouldn't needlessly worry that I didn’t even really notice that wow, my finger really hurts!

Anyway, for 50 rupees, the guys at the front desk not only fixed my cell phone, but bandaged my finger.

The drive from Mandawa to Bikaner only took a few hours, and it was pretty easy to settle in here. I think this is mostly a backpackers hotel, so they are used to freakazoid foreigners. It’s the off season for backpacking, though, so I seem to be here pretty much by myself. Just by asking I got a discount on my room, so I am paying considerably less for this place than I was paying in Delhi. Not sure about the food or laundry situation yet, but it will all work out.

Tomorrow my goal is just to find the archives, and maybe darken the door with my presence. No one has been able to give me an address for the place, so it could take all day just to get from here to there, wherever there is. By Wednesday, hopefully I will be fully registered, and by Thursday, hopefully I will be working. I don’t want to be too ambitious and invite disaster (although I checked my forehead this morning and it seems I will live to see another day), but I am optimistic.

Why am I here again?

You know, sometimes the disparity between the outcome and effort put into something to produce that outcome is so great that I end up wondering just what the point of life is, anyway.

In my fifth week here, fourth week in the archives, I finally found a useful document. One useful document, and that made me very happy. Yes! Progress! But then I started thinking about how I could use said document in my dissertation, and realized it would help me write two sentences only, or three if I decide to be really verbose. Is that really worth sitting in a room to which I'm clearly allergic for four weeks? No.

I'm actually just mad because the smallest tasks tend to derail me, sending me into a crash of depression and anxiety. Example: I stopped to get my phone recharged so I can call my parents this weekend. I wanted a 501 rupee top up, but he talked me into a 666 rupee top up. Then he mistyped, and ended up topping me up for 999 rupees, but I only had 700 rupees with me. I can't even go to the ATM because I've made my maximum withdrawal for the day to pay my Chandigarh driver tomorrow a.m. I can't take any money out of that stash because I need to pay out at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I can't guarantee an ATM in the neighborhood will be working tomorrow a.m. if I try to go out early and make up the 300 rupee deficit for the phone (only one out of the four ATM on my street was working this afternoon, but that's another story).

But here I am, and he's telling me I have to give 1000 rupees, and I am saying I only have 700, and he is saying, this is not a problem Pablo here can go to your house and get the 300 rupees from someone there. Or he can come over this evening and get the money. And I'm trying to explain in my stupid fucked up Hindi that no, he can't go asking my landlords for money, and I don't have the 300 rupees, the ATMs are broken, and NO, he can't go to my house anyway. And you know how red my face is by this point.

Anyway, someone else came over and started explaining it all to me in English, and I'm like, dude, I get what happened, but that doesn't change the fact that I only have 700 rupees, the ATMs are broken, and I'm going out of town tomorrow a.m. In the end, I agree I would bring him the 300 rupees on Tuesday, and I will, but I probably won't go back to the same place after that. A 300 rupee typing mistake will not turn me into a return customer.

Just send me a Missed Call.

I've had this cell phone for four days only, and already it is dictating the rhythms of quotidian life here. It wakes me up in the middle of the night, it wakes me up in the morning (btw, how do you politely tell someone who is trying to help you get things done that you need more uninterrupted sleep?). Calls, missed calls, text messages--I feel as if my phone is glued to my hand already, and without it, I am no one.

This is somewhat true here, of course. Pradeepji told me that even someone who only makes Rs. 2000/month will invest in a b/w cell phone, say for maybe Rs. 500. They will never recharge it (or "top it up" for those of you from the UK), or use it to make outgoing calls, because that costs money. Incoming calls are free, however. As long as they have the capacity to receive incoming calls, they have an identity and a location.

Some Americans use their phones the same way here in India--never paying to make outgoing calls. Instead, they call and hang up as quickly as possible, creating a "Missed Call" message at the other end of the line. That way, the other person has to go to the expense of making the call back. I'm not quite sure why Americans suddenly become reluctant to pay for phone calls here, but it seems to be a common behavior. Common enough that I can't get upset about it, anyway. Rest assured, if you are my friend, and you send me a missed call, I will always call you back. I love you THAT much. I will gladly pay Rs. 10 to talk to you for ten minutes.

Unbelievably...

I now own four cell phones. A surplus of riches, I'm sure. I had good reasons for buying them all, I swear. The first is, of course, my US cell phone (an old phone, replacing the one I stupidly ruined last summer). That's my only phone for use in Illinois, and with the commute of the last three years, and the hockey travel before that, it can only be considered essential. The second is the phone I bought in India in 2006. Not absolutely essential, but making phone calls while standing along side the road got old really quickly. The unreliability of public ISD service was making me break out in hives, so that phone felt pretty essential, too. Oh, and I had to buy the new phone, because the US phone wouldn't work. Third, the phone I just bought in London. My US phone was locked, and the India phone needed an adapter, both of which would have required I find a new store. The fees for unlocking and cost of an adapter were equal to the price of a new handset, so I just got the handset and thought, well, now I'll have yet another backup the next time I carefully place my phone in a pool of water.

That brings me to the fourth phone. I won't tell the whole story of me visiting FIVE different mobile phone stores yesterday, but let's just say that arranging for a cell phone provider in India can be a super headache. I didn't need a new handset, only a SIM card--both my first India phone and the London phone will work here--but in the end, my need to call my parents was greater than my need to get exactly what I wanted. India can be a very complicated place, and it tends to make you go for the compromise more often than you would otherwise. [Sidenote: Mark, you were in the Airtel store, dressed in all white. You made your own verification call, during which you told your friends that Airtel wanted to "verify if you were human"--thanks, you made me laugh. Also, your Hindi is brilliant.]

My journey through five stores probably wouldn't have been so exhausting if I hadn't stood in line at the FRRO (office for registering foreign visitors, necessary if you are going to stay longer than six months in India) for approximately 4.5 hours beforehand. Well, I stood in line for two hours to get the green form, on which I wrote my name, address, passport and visa numbers, and incoming flight information. This might look exactly like the information one has to write on the landing card before going through immigration and customs at the airport. Well, it is. I'm not sure why they need it a second time. Filling out the green form took approx. 2 minutes, then I had to leave the office, go outside, down the street, and get two copies made of the green form. Then I had to paste passport photographs on these three forms and in the visitor's booklet, then get back in line. That all took about 15 minutes. Then I stood line to get my forms stamped. After approx. 1 hour, the entire office went to lunch, leaving all in the office. After lunch, which took approx. 45 minutes, I waited approx. 20 minutes. My forms were stamped, and then I went to In Charge, where it took approx. 15 seconds to deposit my forms in a wire basket.

So, you can see that was approximately 4.5 hours well spent.

Actually, my friend Rebecca did her registration today, and she showed up at 8 a.m., an hour before the office officially opens. She was 3rd in the queue, and was done by 10 a.m. So, there you go.

I've done all my tasks. I am waiting now for my letter from the U.S. Embassy, necessary for access to the National Archives. All I can do is wait now, the request has been made. Claire says that I can keep trying to be the first person ever to get into the archives within two weeks of her or his arrival date, but I will just end up exhausted and frustrated. After yesterday, I suspect she's right. I'm going to take this time to try and write up some of my London research more formally, even though I'm not quite sure where it's all headed yet.

btw, water is bad for your cell phone.

For a smart person, I can sure be dumb.

Without telling anyone EXACTLY how dumb I am, I'll just say that I am responsible for killing my own cell phone. Permanently. I have a replacement for the phone, but unfortunately, not for the three-year's worth of contact information stored on it. So, if you think it might be important that I'm able to call you some day, you might want to e-mail me your phone number.

This morning I woke up to find my alarm clock in bed with me. I'm not sure what it was doing there (especially as it doesn't light up); perhaps my cell phone was being ganged up on and needed an ally in the fight against the flashlight and MP3 player.

It has been a *$&(! long week. Really. A $(*#(! long week.

Last night, we were all out late at a wedding. Anitaji, one of our teachers, has an older sister, and she invited us to her wedding. 1000 guests! It was a really nice show, but must have cost a fortune. The bride's sari was beautiful, and so covered with gold it was barely red at all. Most importantly, there was a lot of food at the wedding, and most importantly out of that, they had jalebi. Arvind says he overdosed on jalebi as a kid, but I don't really think that's possible. At least, I haven't managed to do it yet.

Andyji is back in town for two days only, so we are hanging out this afternoon. I skipped out on lunch at the Institute, and went out for chowmein with him at this rather sketchy looking dhaba. He says he's eaten there before, so I trusted his judgement. Now we're hanging out together checking our e-mail, which sounds like a weird thing to do, but there you go, we've always been an odd couple. Today, I got more hassle on the street than I have had to date this summer, and I'm absolutely sure it's because Andyji was with me. We look very funny, he 6'-7" and rail thin, and me 5'-2" and round enough to roll down the street with just a small push forward.

Today, I did a stupid thing and walked off and left my wallet at the shop next to my hotel. Luckily, the boy who works there saw it and tucked it under the counter. I'd just been to the bank, so I would have lost 2100 rupees or so, plus my bank card. Not an insurmountable lost, but definitely enough to panic me momentarily. I have to think of something nice to do for the kid, other than start considering him my son.

In the three weeks I've been in India, I've developed one really odd habit: sleeping with objects in my bed. I'm not talking about the extra pillow I use to prop up my shoulder, or the blanket I use to cover my eyes, or even the pile of clean (or dirty) clothes at the foot of the bed. I'm talking about plastic and metal inanimate objects that I would never keep in the bed at home. Every night before I turn out the light, I take my flashlight and MP3 player out of the nightstand drawer, track down my cell phone, and arrange them on the empty side of the bed well within reach. I only realized last night that I had been doing this every night. Why? Why can't the flashlight and MP3 player sit ON the nightstand? Why do I need my cellphone? I don't call anybody at 3 a.m. I was thinking about this after I was in bed, and while I was flipping through all the Johnny Cash songs to get to the death metal section of my MP3s (in case you're wondering, death metal isn't a great substitute for a lullaby), it suddenly occurred to me that all the spare items in my bed light up. My phone, my MP3 player, my flashlight, they all make my room as bright as day when they come on during the night. Who knew I was so afraid of the dark that I needed not one, but THREE, lights next to my pillow? India's a great place to get to know oneself.

One last post about my cell phone, and then I promise to shut up about it already. Much as many of you may have suspected, I just needed to throw more money at the problem. If I had walked in on the second day and offered to empty my wallet, I'd probably have wasted a lot less time. Anyway, it turns out what I needed this entire time was a top-up voucher. I have at least five balances on my phone: a global (ISD) balance, a local balance, an All India balance, a Rajasthan SMS balance, and a main balance. This main balance? God knows what it is. I can't figure out how to check it, and before two days ago, I never even knew it existed. So, the solution to my inability to SMS is to buy top-up vouchers to add to the main balance. I have no idea what the main balance is paying for, or how quickly it disappears, but at least now I know that I need it.

Well, a lot of time spent at both the Hindiwali Reliance store as well as the Angreziwali Reliance store, and I'm not sure I'm any closer to fixing my SMS problem. I'm also not sure why it seems so urgent: before ten days ago, I'd never sent a text message. Suddenly, if I can't text message, my world will end. Well, it's nice be able to communicate without having to actually *talk* to people, so maybe that's the attraction.

This morning, I dragged a classmate to Jai Niwas gardens so I could take photographs--I'm working on the second draft of an article (well, we can hope it turns into an article) about the Jaipur city plan, and I need my own photos. I'm really pretty excited about it, especially now that I've revisited the gardens and re-experienced the space for myself. I even managed to get a photo of the facade of the Chandra Mahal that faces the Govind Devji temple. I looked and looked for one this spring, but except for a 19th b/w print in the British Library collection, I wasn't able to find one. So, that alone made the rickshaw ride through the bazaar this a.m. worth it. The ride was so hair-raising that I handed the rickshawallah 2x the agreed upon price when I got out of his rig. I mean, really, it was pretty intense for a few minutes there.

Also in Jai Niwas gardens is a Hanuman temple, and outside is a monkey corral full of happy monkeys eating temple offerings. Baby monkeys with wrinkly baby monkey faces = SO CUTE.

We walked around Jai Niwas, and then around the bone-dry Tal Katora. Hard to believe the site used to be marshy and wet during the 18th c. Today, it was full of boys playing cricket. We saw this unfortunate 8-year-old albino boy--my eyes hurt from the sun here ALL THE TIME, even with sunglasses. Imagine his pain.

I think perhaps Julia and Crystal are getting tired of my impromptu architecture lectures. "Look at the Shahjahani baluster columns!" "Oh my god, look at the faux chini khana!" Crystal had to sit through an endless session of me with Ebba Koch's Mughal Architecture (OUP) book while we were drinking watermelon sparkles in Barista: "Look at the perfect hesht behesht!" "Look, aren't those fantastic squinches?"

Today, a 26-year-old informed me that 40 = over the hill. She apologized, but said that's what she thinks. Over the hill, and I haven't even finished my Ph.D. yet.

In other news, I still can't speak Hindi. I also seem to be suddenly struggling with English, however, so maybe that's a step in the right direction.

A few random points:

• I feel compelled to go back and correct the misimpression I gave about the quality of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom as a movie. Mr. Bachchan's role as a sutradar (sutradhar? where is my dictionary?) was quite awesome, and the music is snappy. Otherwise, I have to say the movie was really just a timepass. Don't get me wrong--I'd pay INR90 to sit in an A/C cinema hall and watch Preity Zinta do just about anything, but that doesn't mean it was a good movie. As far a PZ goes, I'd say that she really needs to find better roles. It couldn't have been in the least bit challenging for her. Well, physically, I suspect it was grueling, those are some high intensity picturizations. But as far as substance? Not worth her time.
• There is a "closed for renovations" sign on Big Shopper. I suspect the sign should really read "Closed because Reliance Market down the street put us out of business," but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not sure I get this whole Reliance Market thing. Can you imagine shopping at Cingular Market or the New AT&T Market? Rajapark and the surrounding neighborhoods are definitely high-end (one of the host fathers described the houses here as "bilkul palatial"), and Reliance Market shows it. Its major selling point seems to be its produce section--even I have purchased apples there, each with their own little "Washington State Apple" sticker (because I am doing my part to help my family's local economy, even if I'm doing from without in a global economy, right?). Anyway, mostly it seems to be a place for rich locals to shop without having to haggle over prices. Also, it seems to be a place to buy microwave popcorn, but I don't know anyone here with a microwave, so I'm not sure what good that does anyone.
• Survived the first full week of classes, took my first exam. It's hard to get too worked up when you're not actually being given a grade. Anyway, we just got next week's schedule, and the homework seems to have doubled. Plus there is the major project to think about. I should be able to do something about the jantar mantar. The project is really a way to force us to go out to talk to people. We need to write up a questionnaire, go ask random strangers all the questions, then write a paper about it. Some crazy student once wrote a 45-page paper for their final. I think if I can manage 10, that will be good. Anyway, I think I'm going to hang out at the various jantar mantars and just ask people why they came and what they think about them. It's nothing I can really use officially in my research, but you never know, I might hear something really useful.
• Speaking of the jm, apparently they had a gathering at the Delhi jm to watch the occultation of Venus by the moon. The same may have happened here in Jaipur, but I was sick and thinking seriously about dying that night, so I missed the entire thing.
• Back to the topic of Reliance: So, I paid almost $40 to get a Reliance cell phone. That price included the phone, the activation fee, 220 local minutes, plus INR575 worth of international minutes (about 110 minutes). For some reason I was given a Delhi phone number, but everything seemed fine. A couple of days ago, my SMS function suddenly stopped working, and I kept getting a message saying the SMS mobile function hasn't been activated on the network. Back to Reliance, where I paid INR35 for 1000 local SMS messages. I was assured that as long as I had minutes on my 575 card, I could SMS to the States, too. Today, I am still receiving this message about not being activated in the network. So, here's the question. Do I go back to the same store, where everything has to happen in Hindi and there's no paper work to back up these transactions, and no one really explains what the problem is, they just say it's fixed, or do I do the colonial thing and pay INR50 for a rickshaw to Gaurav Towers where there is a very posh Reliance store with English-speaking employees and many forms and explanations for every transaction? I think I'll try the Hindi-wala people one more time, but if it doesn't work, I'm off to GT. And maybe I'll eat at Pizza Hut while I'm down there.
• Dude. The rickshawwallah I had on the day I got sick was TOTALLY singing Ye Dosti from Sholay. I mean...seriously. I leaned forward and asked him (in Hindi), "Hey, dude, are you singing Ye Dosti from Sholay?" And he said, yes, and wasn't that a great movie? So we talked about what a great movie that was, and then he told me that in June he was going to Washington with a friend, and was it nice there? And then he stopped at the petrol station for a drink of water. And then he took me to Rajapark.
• Sunday night, a young father was out with his little boy, teaching him how to ride a bike in front of my hotel. Well, that's okay, because there's not much traffic there. The kid fell off a couple of times while I was watching. Fifteen minutes later, I saw the kid out in major traffic on Big Shopper Road, father trotting happily behind. I hope the kid made it home alive.