Cunningham Road

After work, we go and look at carpets. I’ve set this up of course before hand with a colleague who knows what I am looking for, and though it is a perfectly normal endeavor to undertake, it feels nonetheless incredibly elitist. We see many carpets, silk and wool, hand-woven, and, to me, of reasonable expense. It seems logical to pay five or six thousand dollars for one of these fine pieces. We are offered tea. I decline, but only because I have had a gallon of tea already, and a gallon of coffee, and I feel I am already faring the worse for it. I am losing my voice and gaining a cough. It is a pleasant experience to see the hard work of one or two families gain such a price (but they are no doubt worth much more: 10 years of man hours in effect bubbles up only to twenty thousand US or so).

Afterwards, our driver takes us to Cunningham Road where there is more shopping and the crushing blow of humanity unabated, even on a Monday after hours (which is still the US Sabbath). Our driver parks in a secluded spot and we walk a few blocks into the core of the market area. It is almost impossible to not step into the path of an oncoming truck or motorcycle and yet at our feet are small children hibernating or weaving necklaces of flowers. It is an amazing mix of horse and cow, man and woman, child and smaller child.

I nod off in the car on the way back. I am unsure of the team either here or there, and note only my fatigue which is, at once very distinct. I am losing my voice and begin to feel completely drained.

At the Oberoi, a man in a Gurkha uniform opens the door for me.  I take a spin at the bar with a book and a clean notepad or two. The bar is called the Polo Club and it is done up in dark greens and all sorts of Anglo-isms (pictures of locals in black and white, and random artifacts from Colonial times) which normally I would mind and find offensive, but in this case, I find them oddly un-ironic. I order pints of Kingfishers and watch India versus Zimbabwe in cricket. The game is weeks, perhaps months old now, but it still holds my attention.

My bartender, Sreeram, charges his cellular phone on the bar.  His boss, a very dark Indian stares at him and chastises him in front of me: “In front of the customers?” he says to Sreeram. “Move it,” he says. There are Brits at the bar, one in a suit, and they are drinking lagers. I believe that they are bankers from HSBC and they smoke Marlboros and tell jokes. Sreeram moves his phone (with a fashionable designer case) below the bar next to the ice chest where I cannot see it. It is ironic to me that Sreeram is so badly chastised by his manager, the man who forgot to bring me a menu, and it occurs to me that the reason Sreeram was charging his phone where I could see it was just so that I, and everyone else, could in fact, see it.

I am joined on my side of the bar by Americans, here for the same reason as me. I listen to them discuss their work for a time, but find it boring and depressing. The Brits leave and the cricket highlights turn into, of all things, badminton highlights, mixed doubles.

I find my ideas, my preconceived notions of large families from years ago, of dynasties really, are still with me, and they still very much shape my world view. I can see now our family as a large one, possessed of large quarts of ice cream and many bags of fireworks, skis, skateboards, our children and our children’s friends nodding off still in sandy, wet swimsuits exhausted from time at the beach or the pool or the club, struggling to right themselves during a long trip in the back of the Disco, holding hands together maybe or holding books they can no longer see to read in the darkness.

I am relieved and excited when Sreeram, cleaning out his refrigerator, reveals a number of Guinness and I have two before I realize they are ten dollars each; I want a Clannagh tattoo desperately even though I am at most one quarter Irish.

Boston, Frankfurt, Bangalore

Chilly morning departure. Some tears at the front door, waiting for the taxi. Isabel says she won't be sad and that she will take care of mommy and Lee-Lee. Lee cries huge tears as he has begun to recognize my bags and what they have come to symbolize.

My cab driver sparks a discussion of globalism, and of capitalism in China. He is from the Congo. That his life is hard is an understatement.

I see neighbors in the airport. They are heading to D.C. to take a night away from the boys, and they are relieved that we sold the house to a couple who plan to restore it.

One clonazepam before boarding and a phone call home.

















I am dissuaded from taking pictures on the tarmac at Logan and am more than a little put off by this until I remember that the initial flights from September 11 were dispatched from here. So much for Boston, which is, as much as I can recall, the same as when we left it: frozen, with dirty boulders of clumped snow spread wide across the runways.

The stewardess, while I was sleeping, refilled my water bottle and left next to my pile of books, a hand-drawn map to the farthest end of the light-filled terminals from where the international flights come and go and I use this little map to get to the Blue Line bus terminal. Though technically accurate, the map proves to be somewhat more confusing than just following the signs.


At Houlihan’s in the terminal by the E Gates, I order a stout and watch Roy Williams and Carolina pummel Arizona, then watch golf at the bar (thinking of Isabel and Lee, and Hari or Jack at the club). Read (Cheever and “War Trash”) and eat. I do have an image of all three of them in whites, sun-burned and tired from humping bags of clubs up and down Finley all day on an August Saturday. Or the three of them lined up like a cadre of revolutionaries driving range balls halfway from here to Sunday in rapid-fire succession. A nice thought. I will carry this with me to sleep.

Somewhat ironic to begin reading Ha Jin in Boston since he teaches here at Brandeis and is a frequent reader at AGNI events. Am making good, solid headway with “War Trash”, in between prepping ops review materials and making session plans for my trip to Germantown.

No cell coverage in Frankfurt (and T-Mobile Hotspots are all mysteriously down) so call Lia from a payphone. She cannot hear me (the connection is awful and wavers in and out) and we have an awkward series of “I love you’s” interspersed with pauses, then finally, “You’re breaking up.” At the gate, I sleep for maybe two hours solid before waking disoriented and even more tired than before.

Eight hours and five minutes from Frankfurt to Bangalore. I take some cold medicine and have a gin and tonic. I sleep for maybe three hours, read for maybe two, stare off into space for the remainder. Landing in Bangalore after midnight, and the airport is chaos. Customs and baggage are a swift series of fits and starts and when we are through being processed I step into the night air to a swarm of cab drivers and hotel shuttles. My driver, Anish, meets me with a colleague and I am given a cell phone to use while I am here. The night is cool and the air is clean though punctuated with the sharp smell of tobacco, and the endless honking of automobiles. The activity here is daunting and I am not prepared for the “awake-ness” of it all.

Anish swings us through downtown Bangalore which seems to be asleep compared to the activity at the airport and I see only stray dogs in the streets, circling and scratching themselves under Banyan trees.

Happy yet?

Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, may have an idea why (or why not). Oswald's research interests are in quantitative social science, applied economics and, as it turns out, happiness. In a recent article in Financial Times, titled "The Hippies Were Right All Along About Happiness," Oswald documents how industrialized nations, especially those with higher than average economic growth indicators, tend to have poorer mental health, higher rates of depression and suicide, and (somewhat obviously) increased levels of stress.

In short, studies and surveys have shown many in the US and the UK are more successful and less happy than our predecessors. At the root of the problem, Oswald posits, may be the fact that we're also less able to determine and choose those things which will make us happy.

The Symposium on Economics of Happiness in LA this March promises to shed some light on the topic.

It's a new year (thank God!) but between Christmas, New Year's, selling the house, buying another house, packing, learning how to make beer, and working, I haven't done anything original in weeks (I haven't even started my Bread Loaf application). That being said, I have been spending a lot of time dorking around on Flickr and lingering on Gnispen - a nice Amsterdam blog.