I'm convinced. God wants me to dance. Luckily, I agree with him.
This January -- 2009 -- I'm producing a night of West African dance at the Epicentre in Gurgaon, one hour outside Delhi, India.
The official date: Monday, January 5, @ 7:30 pm.
My program is a multimedia lecture, performance, and dance class that reveals the interconnectedness of traditional African and Indian dance and drum.
Through story and dialogue, my program also reveals the challenge of my contemporary attempts to unearth and speak through the dances of the past.
I'd be a fool not to see my show as an opportunity to launch a dance movement in India and to find sustainable ways of empowering African dance in communities hungry for its lessons.
I am ready. I am ready. I am ready. I am ready!!
Stay tuned, and if you're wondering about my photo, that's me breaking out in full motion at a outdoor restaurant in Rajastan where I ran into a boy drummer and his horn playing partner.
Now marks the 38th hour of a terrorist takeover in Mumbai, a western coastal city-- India's financial capital off the Arabian Sea.
I'm two hours away by flight in Delhi. In the past 8 years Delhi has seen similar human heists and terrorists blasts -- but nothing as targeted at Mumbai, where jean-clad gun-masters have shot more than 80 Indians and a clutch of Westerners. At least 100 people are dead.
Americans, British, and Jews are under unique attack. The terrorists, more than a dozen of them, are checking passports. But in India, now is a bad time to be a civilian, no matter your nationality. And across the world, as belligerent acts of political violence spikes, we are all on alert.
Yesterday, when phone calls from concerned family came at dawn, a wave of pain came over me. I was just in Mumbai 3 weeks ago. And everytime I shop in Delhi, a friend can point to every pillar and post where a body was blown to parts by blasts that struck a week before I arrived in Delhi.
In Mumbai, I was reporting at a women's business conference at a hotel that shares a name with the Taj Hotel now burned and blood-splattered. The Mumbai terrorists attacked the Taj Hotel and the Oberoi Hotel, a train station, restaurants, and a hospital.
Learning of the carnage in Mumbai, I couldn't help but think of the spirited and determined employees of the Taj Lands End where I was covering a conference. I couldn't escape thinking that people just like them -- warm, surviving, everyday people--put on their clothes for the day, said goodbye to their homes and families, entered their jobs, and faced the worst consequence for engaging the world.
For the rest of the day, I joined colleagues and friends, in angst and fear, debating who to blame for this terrorism; if we should launch a war of arms, or a war of silence -- refusing to grant the terrorists their limelight.
Either way, when will we see that our policies now, our state actions now, have failed us, have failed to reduce terrorism? When will we start thinking alternatively and passionately? When will we say No!
I'm bringing together two important events -- Obama's presidential victory and World Aids Day-- to form a project: My Obama Panties and World Aids Day Project.
The site of this convergence will be my bum, where I am currently wearing a pair of Obama panties, and where my fight against HIV/AIDS starts.
Earlier this year, I got a pair of Obama panties -- underwear with Obama's face on it. I didn't wear them until today. It's a long story, but last night at a dance club in Delhi, I ripped my favorite jeans, my only jeans in Delhi, and today, I wanted to defy the destruction of my pants by wearing terribly proud underwear. So I grabbed the Obama panties.
Then the idea dawned on me. What if I wore my Obama underwear everyday, of course, washing them every night? Obama could be an intimate reminder to bring excellence to every part of my life, especially my reproductive parts, and also the men I choose to date.
This logic really got me brainstorming some action around World Aids Day, which pushes the global movement to stop HIV/AIDS every Dec. 1.
I find my best activism begins with my body and my life.
So in honor of World Aids Day – and its 20th anniversary--I am going to don the Obama panties – Every Day – to personalize my pursuit of a better world that Obama personifies. Only a man like Obama is worth even seeing my Obama panties.
Black women especially need an Obama Panties & World Aids Day project.
Today, black women form the cover-girl image of the Hiv/Aids epidemic in America. Black women are more than half of all new cases of Hiv – still more than 40,000 a year. And I'm writing this from India, where so many women, like in America, contract the virus from their main partner.
Many experts point to a lack of sex education in black schools and towns as a main cause.
But let's be real: Black women still struggle against the distortion of their worth in pop culture and in the world. Starved for positive reflections of our worth, we may be prone to finding security in haphazard relations instead of the independence, and self-study required to turn this epidemic around.
So I hope my project will encourage a conversation about personal responsibility.
Unlike many women in Africa, South America, and Asia, black American women have an incredible degree of choice in our sexual matters and education.
How long are we going to expect free, government-issued condoms to protect our crisis of self-esteem that undergirds poor sexual choices?
After several days of refusing group hang-outs and instead, catching up on American music and books, I went out with two American journalist friends and a former AP reporter in Delhi who is Indian. All ladies --so much to talk about.
So we landed at a square table in Shalom-- a restaurant where the men waiters look a lot better than the food tastes--and the cathartic blabbering began with a topic ceremonious among girlfriends-- men!
Right away, the Indian lady talked about her Caribbean-born Indian husband who feels like a double immigrant. He's not exactly able to call the black Caribbean home, and then, after moving to America, he still wonders how his estranged Indian heritage forms his identity.
His double immigrancy was an expressway to talking about race and double consciousness: that historic feeling held by many black Americans who know their claim to America but can't reap the rewards of this claim.
Being so far from America, I've been struggling to articulate my ideas about race, but last night, we four women arrived at some points that are never too late to make.
And here, I'll share them with you.
Me: I experience the stares in Delhi, like I imagine anyone who looks different in this city would. But once people learn I'm American, suddenly I get the open door.
Indian lady: When they see you're American, many Indians just see money. If you ever need to hire an ass kisser, hire an Indian! Indians know how to kiss ass like nobody else!"
Me: I really feel racism at home in America. But there's a distinction. I experience a lot of prejudice. Racism happens when we start talking money, hiring, and systems. A study in Chicago showed that resumes with white names were 10 times more likely to be called for an interview than identical resumes with black names. See that's racism.
All my life, I've battled the perception that my race marks me as unintelligent. I can't tell you how many times I sat in a waiting room for an interview just to realize the other folks waiting for me were expecting a white person to walk in the door named "Malena." The idea that a black person could be so ambitious never crossed their mind. And I still get followed around in a boutique. Black people are tired of being criminalized.
[Later]:
Indian lady: I'm tired of people calling Obama African American. He is not African American! He's biracial. He's not even a son of a slave! Why can't America have a biracial president? Then it would really be a victory. For white people and for black people. I just don't get it.
American reporter 2: I think when it comes to race in America, race is whatever the public needs it to be at the time. Right now, black Americans needed Obama to be black, to claim their victory. But whites needed Obama to be black too, to relieve the guilt that the country can't elect a black man. Me: Like so many Americans, Obama was not born black, but he became black, having the identity imposed on him. But also, Obama chose blackness as a political and social identity. But let's be honest, Obama wouldn't have stood a chance of winning if he were married to a white woman. That would have stole his claim to blackness in the eyes and blacks and threatened whites who still fear black men sleeping with white women.
Just recently, when ripping the net of strong-black-woman music, I ran into Beyonce's new song, "Single Ladies (Put a ring on it!)".
The second breakout crank on her third solo Album, the song was just the magic I needed to remind me that I am always in control of my wants, desires, and my goals. And I can’t hang on to people who aren’t about building a bold new world with me.
Most refreshing, Beyonce toughened me up about men and my frustration with feeling so hungry for marriage --and primarily because living in Delhi makes me crave something stable and consistent. But she helped me reassert the ‘it!’-ness that I have!
So on the dot, I sent the video to some friends. Very shockingly, hardly anyone agreed with my reading of Beyonce as an ultra-feminist! Beyonce didn’t just spark a hot dance that I’m aggressively trying to learn, but she's started a real talk about women, marriage, and today.
You gotta see this video. It's ground breaking. And below, read some of friend's analysis.
Robert said: "Completely post-feminist. If Mariah Carey did that song, it would be more showy and if Christina Aguilera did it, it would be mournful. With Beyonce, it's matter-of-fact and dismissive."
Bukola said: "I fail to see how this is about female empowerment or feminism. At the end of the day Beyonce has to shake her ass at the camera to get attention. How is that post-feminist? The word you're looking for is faux-feminism."
Brie said: "At first I was surprised by some of the dance moves, then I remembered, this is Beyonce and she did coin the term 'bootylicous.'"
I said: "We all end up shaking our ass for some attention. It may not be as graphic as Beyonce, but in private or in public, we strut our stuff, and we ride so much of our confidence on our quality of booty shaking. I think she's making the reality plain. As much as the ring is a metaphor for the love she wants--Her booty is a metaphor for the love she has to give!”
Part of my reason is because I'm reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," an inspirational guide on how to get financially savvy. The book is a breezy and didactic read and I love it.
One lesson that stuck out is this:
Many poor or broke people who work their asses off don't realize the difference between an asset and a liability. An asset is something that makes you money, a liability is something that spends it.
The author of the book, Robert Kiyosaki, says we gotta find the things that are assets. Many of us burn a lot of cash on buying stuff instead of investing cash into asset-creating programs. The goal is to own your talents, your money-generating production instead of having others own them.
To me, that means I'm better off financially leveraging my talents in markets where they have value, in addition to saving my money, consuming less and targeting my consumption toward goals like a mutual fund instead of a leather couch when I know the futon will do.
Super capitalist Warren Buffett would agree. Right now, I'm reading a book about his rise to Wall Street hall of fame and his philosophy.
See, Buffett loves earning money, but he hates spending more than he has to. He prefers cheap restaurants and reasonable home arrangements. Making money is a sport to him, not a way of filling a consumption lust. Reading about Buffett, I learned that some things will always have a certain value --like coats in Chicago and flip flops in California. Looking at things this way, I'm inspired to work on building and leveraging talents that are intrinsically and classically valued -- like writing!
Which brings me back to my blog.
Why not empower my blog financially? Especially since I'll be blogging anyway!
Today marks the start.
Not only will I be working harder, writing daily insights, I will investigate dynamic methods of launching my site as an ideas forum, in addition, securing ways of monetizing the blog.
I hope you join me -- Sex in the Delhi loyalists...
A pot of millions, Delhi has over 130,000 rickshaw taxis sputtering around the city. Competition is thick like the pollution. Yet still, drivers turn customers down a lot. And many times because they don't want to drive a short distance. The longer the ride, the more likely they can hit you with a ballpark fair.
Last Sunday, I'd had it with auto drivers refusing to take me home. While standing on a corner near Khan Market, 15 minutes passed and two rickshaw drivers had stopped for me and sped off when they learned I wanted to go just around the corner. I stood on a long, dusky street. Five minutes into my wait, a skinny man with his hands behind his back walked up to me. I assumed he had a knife. So I stared him down so hard I missed an empty auto racing by. Shooooot, Delhi!
Finally, and as I started cursing out loud, a driver pulled up to me. By then, the night had totally collapsed on the city, and I was alone, trying to get a ride. The driver had a stringy head of hair that licked the skin below his hears. He was hunched over his wheel like most auto drivers are by the end of the day. He seemed too tired to say no. So I grabbed the main bar of the rickshaw and blurted my street -- Tilak Marg! And its address in Hindi.
It all appeared in slow motion -- but the driver shook his mangy bob no and pressed his gas. But I was in the mood for justice and exercise. So I took flight on foot and ran alongside the auto, holding it with my right arm. And as he sped up, I jumped into the moving auto, causing the driver to halt the auto and turn around.
That's when I went off.
"Look, there are police across the street," I pointed at the darkness. "If you don't take me to Tilak Marg, I will get them."
I couldn't even hear what he said back. So I kept yelling until the wheels started moving.
"It's the law. You take me. Now! 40 rupees!"
Right away, the driver turned in the direction of my house. Sure, I ripped a man's man-skin off. But that's what I had to do.
The whole ride, I sat up in the jittery machine in case he made a wrong turn and I had to jump out. Once we reached my destination, I gave him my money and patted him on the shoulder. I hope he learned a lesson.
****
And here is where I find my main frustration in India. I'm tired of fighting for a ride.
Like many men in this city, women with no car in Delhi have to take auto rickshaws. But being a woman in Delhi is a safety liability.
Buses, like many side streets in Delhi are clunky, horny cages of men. Every time I think about hopping on one, I see arms groping out the bus window and the warp of men turn to look at me from the bus, and I start chasing down a rickshaw.
Knowing how much people depend on them, rickshaw drivers go out of their way to mark up their fair in Delhi. The first few weeks I was in Delhi, many of them lied about the agreed-upon price at the end of the ride. I now prepare the exact change.
A popular way getting more money is to get the passenger so riled up, you know, so ready to knuckle-up, that you give an embarrassed-faced, peace-making tip having cursed the driver’s mama and kids.
Aside from the fair fights, many drivers have just been assaulting -- and only when I'm alone. One time, a driver kept slowing his car down to turn his entire body toward me and then body search me with his eyes. Another laughed wildly and every time he checked his rear view to look at me, his laughter got bigger and bigger.
Recently, I invented a cruel pose to avoid any hint that I can go for a run.
First, instead of asking the driver if he can take me, I practically bark out my destination. I then slap my hand on the central rickshaw bar connecting the front driver's seat with the passengers'.
When the driver repeats my order to confirm his trip I say yes with my best scowl, like I'm saying to-hell-with-you!
Yet still, people hear my accent and feel vibrations of a money tree. So now, I don a South African accent. All this-- the gangsta warrior dance and the fake African accent --makes me feel like a new kind of woman.
I tried and tried to resist being interviewed in India about Obama's win.
Reporters always call me when something big and black happens.
But when it comes to talking the Iraq war or the global financial crisis, then suddenly, my color and my gender disqualifies me. Which reminds me of the irony of watching the news of Obama's win on BBC TV where a table of old white men analyzed the election numbers.
Ok, who am I kidding!?
I was ecstatic to learn a reporter with the Indian Express* in Delhi wanted to talk to me about Obama! Being black in India has its perks for sure.
Chinki Sinha, the reporter, didn't quote me 100 percent-- not shocking here-- but this is what I said:
For African-American Malena K Amusa, who cast her vote at a party organised by the group Democrats Abroad, the victory was spectacular but the bigger concern is that Obama was seen more as a symbol of race rather than unity in the US. “His colour is an added bonus,” Amusa, a journalist working with a Delhi paper, said. “But the big fear now is Obama may not want to talk about racial profiling or affirmative action.
“We are wary that he is such a president of the people that he may not focus on race specific policies.”
But Amusa is happy she played a role, howsoever small, in creating history and though she missed being in the US, she celebrated in Delhi. “The elections proved that if you are Democrat, you cannot win without African-American voters,” she said.
As Johnson said, though much has changed over the years, the black community has struggled with stereotypes, prejudices and oppression. “Maybe with Obama, all that will change,” he said.
*I initially called Chinki's paper the "Financial Express." That's wrong. She works for the "Indian Express."
It was Wednesday morning in Mumbai when I nearly jumped out of my drawers to celebrate the news of America's new president Barack Obama.
Being far from home, from St. Louis and New York and being a part of Obama's monumental win was so aching, and still very beautiful.
The people I work with in India are remarkably sensitive to my home-lust and to the importance of my being black and electing the first-world's first black American.
And many of them shared their excitement with me, the best they could. One cook in the Mumbai guest house grabbed me with his great smile and said: "Big history made today!"
As much as that history was Obama's, that history was also mine and his -- and our undeclared campaign to relate to each other.
Lucky for the world, Obama and every day people coming together, and not McDonalds, is our generation's best example of a globalized earth that despite the reality of social divisions, desires deeply to celebrate life and understanding.
Most thrilling, the crazed election celebrations are turning Obama into a God.
Working up a new calling, Obama inspires us to re-envision a human religion based on the ethical pursuit of excellence and goodness.
I still find it hard to believe, but last Tuesday Oct. 21, a gaggle of Americans in India got together at this sea food place in Lodi Garden, Delhi to cast our absentee, long-distance ballots for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama -- the tall, mocha, and wholesome man we all want to triumph in this year's Presidential Election.
Aside from the Wow-gloss of dropping my second major election vote in India, I was surprised how much I miss Americans... especially our dorky small talk... ahhh, you know the kind that swings from self-deprecation in one breath to self-referential adulation in the next. It's the sort of short-hand talk that gives waaay to many personal, juicy details, then sobers up to talk politics and careers.
Allow me this one generalization, pleaase! But everyday Americans are so loud, so front-porch story-tellers, and we wrap our humor around our disgraces. And it's something I think I can't live without, having been in India and grown tired of the manners culture here among middle-class Indians.
Middle-class Indians, like the ones working at my newspaper remind me so much of everyday Africans. In a greeting, you gotta step through so many formalities before you start talking about the dirt. Meeting an Indian or an African, (and again, my analysis only works if you appreciate the value of some-truth-based stereotypes)-- you can bank on the following questions:
What are you studying?
How do you like Indian/African food? Is it too spicy for you?
How do you like Delhi/ eerr say Dakar?
What do your parents do? Where are they from?
Are you married?
Of course Americans also bounce through scripts, but it's rare you'll find the conversation I had with one respectfully employed American at the party, on the first talk with an Indian in Delhi.
Me: Oh so you visited Mumbai, I hear the city is so much fun!
The American: Yeh! On my first time there I went to a G-rated brothel.
Me: You went to a brothel? What?! Wait, what's a G-rated brothel!?!
The American: I know man! See you go in, and the girls line up with their backs to you, then they take turns turning around to smile at you. Then, they'll walk up to you to talk if they want.
Me: And you pay for this?
The American: Yeh, some guys get off on just the flirt!
Me: Wooooow...
The American guy's friend: Oh man, I totally forgot, we can go to a strip club in India! Man, let's go to a strip club!
Me: Hahahahahahah... so what are you guys doing here again?
The American: We just started a solar paneling business. It's our first couple weeks in India and we're excited to be here.
Ah, I love the smell of self-asserting irreverence and I-don't-give-a-hoot-what-you-think (as long as I'm not doing harm to the world), and especially at an election party...
It was the second week ya'll...and I rode a camel to work!!
Camels aren't even indigenous to India. But a camel herder can spin a dazzling rupee offering magic camel rides, especially now during India's big holiday season.
Still, I was shocked to see the camel guys creep up behind us on my walk to work and instantly I felt riding one would be my closest chance to fulling my childhood dream of riding big bird...lol,
Elsa, the beautiful journalist joining me on the ride, is my Delhi crime buddy. When we roll together, we always get on top of things -- while trying to get to the bottom of others. Our handsome reporter diva Michelle shot the footage (which also includes a school of children racing out to gallop with us, and later, hitting fashion model poses with the camel playing backdrop!)
Ah! And Later peeps, I'll have a whole talk about transporation in Delhi -- its the most diverse in the world I think, and it's deep ya'll, how people get around here.
But tonight, the crowds attending Dheli Fashion week were put under the spell, and it was sexiest curse this country has seen.
Laimi, a twiggy, midnight-toned model from Namibia just made her second run on the catwalk as the first black woman to crunch the fashion carpet in a major fashion week in India.
And get this: her effortless pump down the runway was only outbeat by another black model, Millen, a Tanzanian Goddess. Watch them warm up for a set organized by the rock-n-roll Namibian Jan. When Laimi pulls out the smile -- you can see why she's put up front.
Laimi was prepping for a set designed by Tarun Tahiliani when we met. Confident about her first-ever status, Laimi talked about her hope for African girls. She wants to show them they can only assess their success once they've tried succeeding. For this, Laimi said she wants to be Africa's top model. And who can blame her. Her black-crystal stare could freeze a lot of competition. And it has.
Sitting with her, I felt the chill. Her beauty was so divinely composed, an adrogenous mirage.
But also, what really frosted our encounter was the feeling that I was looking in the mirror.
Like Liami -- I am a Black-to-India first.
I am the first black American journalist to work for the largest business paper in Asia.
And too often, it's easy to feel like I'm the only black woman in Delhi.
When Indians see me, they just don't stare. They imprint a tattoo of their curiosity on my body. The everyday Indian knows that Africans live in Delhi, but they don't work or communicate with these Africans.
Walking around Delhi, I feel like a visual-wiki for Indians, where they gain a quick glance at what black people are all about. So accordingly, I walk tall, erect, and hard.
Maybe that explains why Laimi and the South African model Millen performed so radiantly-- I mean so drastically better than the other models, that the catwalk looked more like a walk-off between Tyra Banks and her newbie understudies on America's Next Top Model.
Fittingly, the designer Tahiliani chose Liami and Millen to execute an exercise in futurism. India can't survive on the world market clinging to its most damning social signage: NO DARK PEOPLE ALLOWED.
Tahiliani is a balding, middle-aged designer but his perspective on color is neither balding or middle-aged.
Tahiliani said the privilege of lightness --and Indians' skin-whitening fetish --is all wrong.
What's fascinating about the fashion world is that it understands that to make a political point, you just can't trump the right notes.
You got to show bodies in action.
The challenge of India -- and this is across industries -- is how it'll embody, not just talk up, its claim to modernity and its call for equality.
This fashion week is the slickest progress I've seen since I got here.
Front-staging black models in bright, contrasting colors is not only daring, it could have been a career disaster here in India. The risk is a rare, but righteous one.
Yet and still, I am a tad skeptical.
A big part of me is tired of black bodies forming parts of political speech. I'm tired of us being used as symbols of this and that. As representations rather than representatives.
The talk I had with Liami was telling. So engrossed by her presence here, I doted on her symbolic value, the frame of her purpose here, and not the textures of her canvas.
When really, by the end, all I wanted to ask was...so, how do you like India?
****** PART 11 ****** For readers like Brittanie who are obsessed with Fashion *****
Delhi Fashion Week is a rebel splinter faction of India's Fashion Week, the 11-year-old event that features name-drop-able designers, but overall, fashion that hard appeals to India's sari sensibilities.
A sari is a traditional wrap around dress worn by women and of course, cross-dressers. I met one on the side of the road and he begged me for money.
Saris are utilitious outer-wear, but after seeing nearly every woman outside the office wear one, the sari wears thin on uniqueness and thick on India's obsession with tradition.
I haven't figured why --in their words-- a bunch of designers decided to form a separate coalition.
There are perks to leaving New York City for three months for a special reporting program arranged by Columbia University and the Times of India.
My guest house is purely botanical and decked out -- marble flo' for real and window doors and two levels of zen-like design and 24-hour gaurds with the warmest smiles.
And in my backyard -- I have two pet cows!
My favorite place is a deck behind the dining room that opens up to the world-- a nice view of another beautiful house and grass and the sounds of bats, birds, and lizards.
I've been praying all over the house. I've been dancing all over the house too. Like on a terrace of white stone -- rarely occupied by a sound.
My guest house reminds me of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. Here, I know I'll meet God in a form I couldn't fathom just days before.
I had a Color Purple moment ya'll. I swear I did!!
At lunch time today, I stepped out the shower and right into the blare of dhol drums pounding through my windows and right into my heart.
Instantly, the drums grabbed my feet and I started running to the sound, running and running, and running-- practically yelling "where are those drums!? where are those drums!?"
I didn't even have on shoes.
So I went back in, grabbed my bag, a camera, and some shoes. On my way out again, I grabbed one of the house men and begged him to take me to the sound, which had snaked out of an alley right behind my guest house.
When we rounded the corner, I spotted the a cluster of dholis, rapping out the Bhangra sound and dressed out in button-downs and fitted slacks -- no different than the Indian men who show up to New York's Bhangra nights.
A ring of young men flung their Bhangra arms and twitched their shoulders to the boom -- the signature riff of Bhangra dance. All smiles and curious stares, the wedding parade invited me into their flock, racing toward me first with their piercing eyes and shocked reception.
A few women stood by staring hard as hard can stare at me, waiting to see if I'd take on the man crowd or race out screaming.
I did both! And all the while, I kept thinking -- THIS is my dream. One of my biggest reasons for coming to India was to witness the dhol sound live and among the people closest to its origin. Already, so much of my hope for my India trip has been fulfilled. And today's wedding was a good savor for the future.
I tried taping it all. But my camera kept blinking out.
And in the midst of about three guys yanking my arms and plopping me in the middle of the dholi donut -- I had to just go with it.
The lead dholi even stopped the whole drum round to introduce me with the silence of the gawkhers. A herd of people looked on, stuck on my foreignness.
When the lead dholi broke into a round --me and the guys jumped up and down. Ya'll know I couldn't bust out the Zulu because it would have turned into a feeding frenzy quick -- and I would have been carted off by the crowd and my wallet would have been stolen for sure by about a dozen kids who kept harassing me during this whole affair (those brats even threw some rocks at me. They're sooo lucky I was engrossed with the wedding and the dhol!)
But knowing the party wasn't mine -- and knowing I hadn't even stretched to take on the dance challenge -- I ran out the Bhangra gang to take some footage-- which again failed to shoot.
So the men pulled me in again to the steppin' orgy. I ran back out. In and out. In and out!
Until finally, a tall smiling man calling himself David came to my rescue. He stuck his hand out and said Hi. We had a great talk.
Most amazing, David invited me to another Punjabi wedding Tuesday. I'll be ready then. I will bust out the Shaka Ya'll. Lets face it: the Indian Dhol party is an ode to our African rhythms and traditions.
For now, I just have to laugh at myself -- at the way the dhol drum possesses me. It's my holy ghost for now. It's the spitfire spirit that makes me wide-eyed and even dangerous with arousal and energy (I relent to my Xena force over watching out for bodily injury) -- much like the West African djembe drum was for me 5 years ago.
Running to the dhol, and abandoning my everything for the sound, I realize that drums are meant to call us together. We have to continue to sensitive our spirits to receive the givingness and totalizing rapture of drummers who drum for love and for celebration.
The beauty of the drum must be a lesson in love and the uniting of people.
But I'm afraid India's strong male contingency -- and the aggressiveness of Indian men will prevent the Dhol circle from being a co-ed space of joy and abandon.
I practically had to break limb and leg out of that alley to make it home. Thank god Sundeep, a house man was with me. But he wasn't much help. He didn't see much wrong with the throngs of guys grabbing me and getting toooo close.
I'd say a third of the men in Delhi drive scooters or motorcycles - and all on reckless roads where, despite traffic lines, drivers think the big goal is to run into as many cars and people as possible.
Driving in Delhi is not just hazardous. It's stupid dangerous.
To add to the melee of motor madness, only drivers are required to don helmets.
That law doesn't account for the thousands of women who side-saddle on the back of the men and who never wear helmets. Which is not the case for men who double team on a scooter or motorcycle. About half of the male passengers on the back of a cycle wear helmets!
Even zanier, often women carry their toddlers while riding on the back of the scooter--again, not crouched up to the guy with open legs --but with the whole body slung over one side.
Women want to protect their vanity by not wearing a helmet, some reporter friends say.
Women want to protect their honor by riding with their legs together and slinked on one side, rather than cock a more safe squat with their legs akimbo, and latched to the back of the rider's legs.
And at least once a day -- I see a family of five piled onto one motorcycle. A mom, a dad, and three kids. I 'aint lyin.
So you can imagine how terrified I'd be to ride a scooter in this city.... righhht.
Well-- just the right scooter driver offered me a ride around my neighborhood Friday night!
And between the prospect of wisping through the dusty wind and seeing Delhi at night -- I had to go for the ride -- though I didn't have a helmet. And God knows I 'aint got enough hair to pad my fall like some of the Turban-wearin men.
But the scooter ride was delightfully mind blowing. I felt like I was wind. Coming from my past two years in New York City, riding the subway, and feeling no control over my mode of transportation, I felt unstoppable on the scooter though I wasn't in command.
And the moon is so spectacular when you're going 40 miles an hour under it and the only thing in between you and moon is the wind thats parting its blankets to allow your bug-splattered face to shine...
So the next night, Saturday, I asked the same scooter driver to grant me another rip through town.
We talked the whole time-- like talking while doubling up on a scooter at night, and without a helmet is exactly the type of stories you want to tell your parents...
What woman does not want a man to cook and clean for her, smile at her every entrance and laugh at her jokes even when he doesn't get it.
I don't know one straight woman who is self-loathing enough to turn down man pamperage?
The thought of men avenging the static feminization of domestic work is so heavenly -- so frothing at the mouth of so many relationships, that so many of us have --like me--begged to marry the man who served up the first home-cooked meal and a back rub-- in the same night!
But here in India, and inside my guest house, I'm learning that male servitude comes at a price: good English.
Since I arrived at my guest house, a team of three men have catered to me and the five other American journalists I'm staying with.
Their names are Angat, Abbal and Heyat. They all have the most radiant smiles I've seen. They all weigh about a buck 30. They all speak bare-bones Hinglish -- an elixir of Hindi and English. Meet Angat:
Having pampered me with two-to-three meals a day everyday, with chai tea on demand, with laundry service, with folding my dirty underwear, with making my bed, with being profusely humble and gracious and upbeat --- these men have opened a room in my heart. I love them for their work.
But I just can't stand the subservience and the silence wrought by our mutual incompetency in each other's language.
Most of our exchanges amount to headwobbling -- a gesture everyone in India does to the left or right to say, "ok, I'll take care of it."
I thought I'd never say this, but I'm tired of the men taking care of me. I want them to tell me their dreams, their visions for the world. Their philosophical perspectives on India's rapid modernization. About the way their heart bends when that special woman looks them in the eye and says, 'thank you.'
Ahhhhhh...It's 7 am in Delhi and I'm watching the Vice Presidential debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin on NDTV.
And I just can't believe the words 'poverty' and 'women' --despite the bankrupt grinning of Palin --are never uttered.
Oh and I heard from my mom that tickets for the debate were going for $1,000!
So people had to pay for a load of nothing. That money could have very well gone into a much-needed anti- bullshit-in-the-world fund.
But let me explain why I'm so cranky and why I think poverty and women are the issues of our time Right Now!
Yesterday --I walked from my newspaper job to my guest house --that's a walk from a dust-bin corner to Beverly Hills. On the walk, I saw the gruel of a city that still can't provide water clean enough to brush your teeth with.
I walked over puddles of mud covered with God knows what kind of virus-carrying bugs.
I walked over feces tracked in grounded gutters, urine showered rock hills, children as skinny as dolls, and mothers whose eyes always looked worried.
There were men everywhere. Men rule everything in India.
No matter what you've heard about the strong Indian female --and there are many, and yes, they have good jobs where they start the show. (Like the top editor at my paper Soma who is the Nefertiti of looking you in the eye --and being like-- Tell Me Something I Don't Know)
But for the rest of India -- women are stamped out of mainstream markets and public spaces where they are safe.
Yeah, I know that's not much different that the U.S. But in Delhi, a woman can' t walk alone without the fear of being pulled to a side rode and raped on a road bend.
Knowing this and watching Palin's post-feminist stance on everyththing pisses me off!
And then Palin had the nerve to sing the praises of Biden's wife, a school teacher of 30 years by saying that "Her reward is in Heaven."
Tell that to the women here I've seen whose slice of freedom in heaven will come too soon.
You can rest assure Mama, I won't be having sex in India. Especially in a place where the national pay-phone service is called STD.
But I feel at home registering the meaning of sex to describe what I'll be doing for the next three months, working as a business repoter in Delhi, and learning Indian dance and drum.
Roget's Thesaurus describes Sex as "making love," "getting it on," "scoring" and "intercourse."
The best things that evoke Sex also evoke the depth in which I aim to experience my life in India: loving and engaging, and holding close, so tightly close, the meaning of life, change, and the human spirit. Join me!
For friends reading this now. I am such a woman of my word. I kept saying I'd make it to India. And here I am. A Sistah in South Asia !!
For newbies reading, I'm a writer, reporter, and dancer. This is my first trip to India -- the destination of so much of my intellectual and artistic desire.
I'll be here for at least three months!
Pray God, Let's Pray!
And I just can't believe the words 'poverty' and 'women' --despite the bankrupt grinning of Palin --are never uttered.