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By admin, January 2, 2010

The Chain of the Pendulum

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The pendulum is swinging faster and faster.

With a bit of preparation and a fair amount of hard work, I’ve now found myself in exactly the position I had dreamt up. It’s New Year’s Midnight, in the shadow gap between 2009-2010. The West Coast of India murmers gently just below the coconuts on the sand dunes, the tropical sun is shining. There are friends scattered throughout the Subcontinent, and projects, schemes, and collaborations planted throughout India. All are worthy of devotion and commitment. Just after midnight we will leave the beach and take a midnight train to Cape
Cormorin-Kanyakumari, or Cape Cormorin, where we will see the sunrise at India’s southernmost point.

Living the dream, as it is, and yet I am still swinging between the extreme avatar-forms of this dream. It’s a cliche to talk about the vast differences on display throughout India; it’s not a surprise to be challenged by the diversity; and it’s not at all unexpected to find that I’m struggling to describe the extremes.

The chain, then, is where the stress of percieving and accepting all of this is concentrated. It’s the mental flexibility and effort to make some coherent thread from all of these experiences and travels. It’s not easy. It takes time and energy to even simply list all of the places in sequence, and with the modern aids of Narcissus there are now photos to be sorted and tagged, maps to be annotated, and people to remember.

So I’ve decided to take those coherent chain-threads and twist them into some sort of yarn, or rope. It’s time for me to take a break from these -y- little writing-ramblings. Almost ten years ago, I gave up writing a paper-journal chronicling the [usually mindnumbingly boring] trivia of my teenage days; and now I think there’s a change coming in my writing habits and goals. It’s been half a year- from the summer solstice to the end of 2009, since I’ve really been up-to-date on this endeavour, and in that time a paradigm shift in ideas has slowly been evolving. The same energy that I’m using to share these observations, I’ll resolve to use to write into a book. There’s been repeated reminders that there is, somewhere, a story worth sharing, and I’d like to find that story and spin it into coherency. So stay tuned.

But let me wrap up some of those last threads, and at least take a moment to outline the twisted route that brought me from the White Midnight of Delhi’s solar eclipse to the End of the Calendar Year.

After two months in midsummer Delhi, I was ready to escape it with a vengeance. I love the city, but I love it like I like camping on snow: there is an interesting beauty in its austerity, but it’s not a place to live permanently. And there was still, the Landmark Trees of India project, needing to be followed into it’s inevitable second half. So off I went, to find a strand somewhere else: late summer, with my brother into the buzz of Mumbai, battling fevers in the city, then northwards through the muddy lowlands of coastal Gujarat and into the desert Land of Kings, Rajasthan, to climax with his three days in the hospital of Jaipur. Then returning to Delhi, saying farewell to him as he moves to teach in China for a year. At some point in early August, there was the end of my scholarship; I am now just a freelancer on a research visa. After one and a half years in India it was time to start thinking of a resolution.

But first, this required the torturous continuing process of extending my visa. This led to me racing out of Delhi, escaping Indian Government office absurdities, for three subsequent trips to the Himalaya. First, to travel from evergreen Manali over the highest mountains into the Tibetan-plateau treeless rocky desert of Ladakh. From Ladakh, into the paradise-valley of Srinagar, to the houseboats drifting on Dal Lake. Then, into the wooded oak mountains of Ranikhet, to meet a group of American wilderness medics for a recertification course. Into the mountains for the third time, through the gridwork boulevards of Chandigarh city, to the cool mountain summertime retreat of British Imperial power, Shimla, and across Himachal Pradesh to Dharmsala, where the Tibetan Government-in-Exile carries on its struggles. From there, I went down to the fertile grainfields of the Punjab, where the Sikh people developed their martial philosophies in the repeated warpaths of Muslim invaders. Their paramount Golden Temple, and several other gurudwara temples, were built with sacred historical trees as vital cornerstones, and on my return back to Delhi, I visited the banyan tree at Kurukshetra, where Krishna delivered the Bhagavad-Gita.

I had only returned to Delhi to bid it farewell. I handed off the keys, and the rental of the place for the winter, to a friend, and headed to Bangalore in the south. The last days of October was the much anticipated International Canopy Conference, a science and conservation conference for forest ecologists studying the treetops.

I had planned on attending this for almost two years, and was delighted to have the opportunity to make two presentations- one of the 2007 Willapa Bay work for The Nature Conservancy, climbing trees and catching bugs in the coastal rainforests near Seattle, and another on the Landmark Trees geography project. One striking observation to be made, as we listened to the more senior forest scientists, was a measure of despair. They realize things have gotten worse in the years of their career, and we now have the satellite imagery to watch it happen in appalling detail on a global scale. Climate change and population growth have developed, for the negative, at a rate to match the exciting positive developments in information technology and global environmental awareness. We very well might be at the high-water mark of energy-intensive civilization, where all this fancy plastic palace comes melting down around us, burning and blistering. But hope for our planet’s environment and biodiversity is like a starfish-you cut away at it, and it and it just takes on new shapes.

From Bangalore, there’s been a triplet of trips into the tropical rainforests. It’s almost ridiculous to consider, but these three trips were part of a series of FIVE nested triangles I’ve charted from Bangalore towards the west coast and back. It seems almost like drunken stumbles around the map. First, with a team of scientists from several institutions to the woodlands of Mudumalai National Park, where we could barely work for fear of wild elephants. We used laser technology to measure the structure of the forest canopy in the dry woodlands, coffee plantations, and montane wintergreen forests of the Nilgiri Hills. This was the some of the first I had seen of the montane tropical jungle, and in these ancient granite mountains, much of this rare forest cover had been lost to the countless tea planations and eucalyptus groves.

Next triangle, to join the King Cobra scientists at the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station and help establish some measurement plots for their future forest science work. This was great fun, a few days in the powerful rain measuring trees and feeding leeches. When the work allowed and the sun came out, I joined Tengu from Treeclimbing Northwest (USA) on the ropes in the jungle as he taught a canopy access class to a squad of Indian students. We kept our eyes open for the rare, potentially mythological, Karnatakan jungle octopus, but couldn’t get a clear sighting of one. We’ll simply have to try again another day.

Afterwards, down to the coast, to the young college-student town of Manipal (this must be the only one in India), to the temples of Udupi (famed for it’s masala dosa cuisine) and down the coast, revisiting north Kerala. On the coast there, two nights in the city of Calico, or Khozikode, where the grain and cloth warehouses abut the ocean, and across the jungles again through Nilambur, a town built around forestry. Here were two places remarkably appropriate for the pilgrimage- the giant teak grove planted by the British in 1840, and the rather obsessive Teak Museum. Then, with a sigh, to Bangalore for another dose of air pollution, and to give an evening seminar at the city’s oldest restaurant, Koshy’s Cafe. (There’s a set of photos on the wall as a small-scale art show, so if you are in Bangalore, please pay it a visit. It’s in the Chill-out icecream section of the building).

And the next day after that, another train journey, to the much-loved and world famous beaches of Goa, a former Portugese colony. Somewhere along the way I picked up a tiny little netbook computer, design inspired by a seashell, and that immediately transformed my backpack into a work office. From there, southwards along the jungle coast to the beaches at Gokarna, up to the fluted limestone rock spires of Yana, through familiar territory into Kerala State… A Kiwi traveler and I climbed into the steep grassland slopes of Chembra Peak at Wayanad, and reconnected with the rainforest botanists at Gurukala Botanical Sanctuary. And then over the mountains through the Pallakad Gap, staying up all night at train stations and pushing through into the plains of Tamil Nadu state. Up into the granite cliffs and montane rainforests of Kodaikanal, where the dedicated conservationists at Vadaikanal Trust took the time to show me some of the endangered shola forests. Hiding on the granite slabs on a lauraceous-delicious rainforest valley, we visited the world’s rarest tree, an Elaeocarpus, the last of its species in the wild. With a Mumbai-walla friend, next, it was over the mountains again at Munnar, where we biked amongst the tea plantations and struggled for space amongst all the Christmas revelers. Again down to the coast, to the lovely Old Town of Fort Cochin, where Keralan, Dutch, and Portuguese influences all mixed up to make an enchanting destination. Somehow I connected with a team of dedicated treeplanters and environmental activists, and this opened up Cochin’s human and natural histories beyond my wildest imagination. We manifested a big day of fieldwork, mapping and photographing their favourite trees, and hopefully before too long they will have signboard and maps made for a Tree Trail. I couldn’t imagine a better way to learn a new town. We left Cochin for the south, towards the tip, via a slow lazy canalboat on the quiet backwater canals of south Kerala.

And that is, appallingly, a chronology of six months of adventures, relationships, and thoughts, presented in a incredibly abbreviated form. It seems that things simply happened to quickly for me to write about them.

—
There is an image so romanticized that I feel guilty even writing about it. I have moved my office to the beach. Unbelievable. The waves are scarcely thirty meters away, and to my left and right the beach is lit up with colored lights and candles. Countless vacationeers are here, with huge smiles, tiny bikinis, soaring frisbees, strong cocktails, and relaxing agendas. Fish masala and a mint tea on order. It would almost appear that I am yet another person on vacation, but I am still working…sort of. I watched the sunset over the ocean with my feet in the water, pockets filled with shells and hundreds of trees scattered behind me throughout the subcontinent, from snowy Himalyan mountainsides to the tropical rainforests to the edge of Ocean.

So the pendulum swings away.

The chain of the pendulum, then, is where the signficance of the events and the stress of accepting it all concentrated. It’s the mental effort to make some sense of this variety of landscapes, people, experiences, emotions, challenges, and pleasures. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably recognized that somewhere in between all those little snippets describing the Grand Tree Chase are thousands of real kilometers, dozens of days that actually happened and a large handful of people with their own stories (maybe you!).rds.

I tell people I am writing a book, but really the Landmark Trees book will write itself; all that’s needed is to line up the photos, the maps, and a bit of text. Maybe there’s another story hidden away, with meanings and significances beyond the geography and the environmental education angle. The Landmark Trees book will coalesce into the form it was meant to, but what about the rhythm of the tale?
–
What is the pendulum?

It’s the swinging between geographic extremes-icy rock desert mountains, and the emerald pulsing tropical rainforest. It’s also the swing between cultures- the new perspectives and ambition of the modern high-tech generation of Indians, and the historical depth permeating the country. It’s the diffference between working with world-class science institutions and then finding myself alone on the beach trying to keep projects afloat via email. It’s the contentment and pride of people with large families and the assessment of the long term relationship I have managed to maintain with my backpack. It’s me typing away and scheming documents and emails while in the company of Goan beach-vacationeers, escaping from their offices and routines.

The pendulum is also the difference between the wild mountain landscapes of Himalya Ladakh, and the silky white mist of Bangalore’s air pollution. It’s the blue moon at New Year’s Eve and the midday crescent sun of the solar eclipse. It’s sunshine at the southernmost beaches and the icy moonshine of Kargil in the far north. It’s the flat-soled sneakers of the girl from the big Indian city and the technical rock shoes of the Karnatakan state climbing champion. It’s the luxury hotels and the train platform. It’s the smug self confidence of Indian chauvinism opposed to the striving amibition to be seen as a world power. It’s the hippies’ dreadlocks and the almond oil and jasmine in the young woman’s hair. It’s the contempt and fear for America mixed with respect and It’s meeting the yogis and their students, still and unmoving, while I’m spending more time on trains and buses than actually at destinations. It’s the quick rapport with the foreign backpackers that I may never see again, and the unfairness that my Indian friends can’t so easily visit the other countries of the world. It’s the crowded outdoors and the quiet interiors behind doors. It’s my overly detailed technical science skills and the true knowledge that the locals have of the forest. It’s the self help and mental organization books for sale throughout the country, and the organic competencies of the coconut harvester and the fisherman. It’s me alone at New Year’s on the beach, surrounded by thousands of people, and me sharing a bidi with the shephards amongst the snowfields of the high mountains. It’s the story of the trees, solidly rooted, and my ongoing story, continually branching.

Like so many other foreigners I am seeing my future life inexplicably knitted into India’s ongoing existence. But like so many other long-term visitors, I am both enthused by, and exhausted by, the whirlpool nexus of people, history, geography, and life that is in India. But the most rewarding energy is finding a rhythm, and writing it up has allowed me share it most efficiently and most widely. As life goes on I’m finding some sort of pulse to the sequence of days. There’s a rhythmic structure built into it! Wondrous! Like a student, I realize there is always more to learn; like a professor, I appreciate how much I’ve learnt already; like a blogger, I want to share the story; like a wanderer, I look forward to the next place; like a sadhu, I value the discomforts; like a pilgrim, I’m now a devotee; like a rainforest biologist, I’m addicted to the complexity; like a comet, I can never escape; like a satellite, I’m falling off towards the horizon.

There’s a rhythm to the pendulum. There’s a pulse of opposites, and it beats harder here than anywhere else on Earth that I’ve seen. If we listen carefully, maybe we can realize that they are all synchronized- the sun, the moon, the satellites, and the waves…

-y-

Thanks for reading. Write to me, please, and tell me the stories of your days.

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By admin, September 17, 2009

http://www.treeoctopus.net/YoPho/-y-WhiteMidnight/
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There are some things you do in life without a clear sense of costs, or benefits, but simply because it feels right at the time. And later in life, if you look back at that decision, no matter how frustrating or stupid it would seen when looked in hindsight, you know that there was no other way you could have gone. And you can remind yourself that it was the right thing to do.

Spending the summer in Delhi was like that; nowhere else in my life had yet intimidated me in such a crowded, polluted, overheated, frustrating, dried-out way. I can certainly list off some of Delhi’s charms, but it is almost always in the context of defending my enchantment to a skeptical party. The summer was the natural time to be trekking in the mountains, surfing before the monsoon on a wave of cool Himalayan breezes, or perched in the Britisher’s hill stations, trading anvil heat for teatime vistas. Delhi was subject to an oppressive midday heat- white midnight, as Dalrymple calls it. But, somehow I twisted this all about, and living in Delhi for the summer became a challenge that I wanted to face: if I can thrive in Delhi in the hottest part of the year, then…

This talk is insane, of course, but there it was, I spent most of the summer typing away and working on making something of the Landmark Trees of India project. The time had come to line up all of those photographs, map coordinates, and stories. I had been sketching little diagrams of data structures: how tree locations related to file names related to photo datestamps related to print outputs, and I was truly eager to make tangible things from this elaborate thought-structure. There weres a handful of seminars, slideshows, and presentations given, and a postermap developed and published. I arranged a photo art show at the American Cultural Centre, and continued to mull over a return to the research side of science. Some articles were written, some computer tools developed, all leading up to a book in the not-so-distant future. Not only did I want to learn how to be happy and healthy in the air-pollution heat of Delhi, but I wanted to work hard at my research as well.

One of the keys to the whole affair was Sanjay Van Forest, and the ancient Tughluk fortress there. This forest area is visible from the balcony of my apartment, and trails lead through a scrubby forest of (exotic) trees to crumbling fortress walls. The place is quiet, green, empty of people, and filled with animals. A morning run there balanced a day working in a cement cube of an apartment, and was an healthy antidote to the often-necessary autorickshaw rides, jammed solid in traffic and jerked around by overeager (always male) rickshawallahs. Another key: breakfast at home, no attempting to fight the reality that few Indians are eating healthy breakfasts outside the house.

The monsoon, 2009, was late, insufficient, inadequate. Delhi experienced almost none of the lifeline torrential rains. Instead of the drenching sheets was the flat subtropical noon sunshine. The climate is changing, and what is a strangeness to the city is a tragedy to the countryside. ‘The seeds are burning in the ground,’ as Rajiv said. When the rains do come, they come with their vengeance, but for too short a time. The streets flood, sewers overflowing, people gather for impromptu meetings beneath the shelters at the bus stops.

I began the process of extending my research visa for a second time. What was a single fullday affair last year has turned into (as of now) a one month plus project involving about seven visits to three infernal government offices, including a police residence check at my apartment and endless queues at those offices. The process continues still.

An astronomical event punctuated this twisted test of a summer. A ribbon of India’s geography was lucky to be able to witness a solar eclipse in late August. On a cool clear morning, we climbed above the neighbourhoods white cement buildings to the rooftop, just in time to see the clouds break. The sun light was clear like a white midnight diamond. The moon passed in front and for a few minutes the crescent sun shined like a inverse hallucination.

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By admin, August 25, 2009

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Morningtime after getting caught in urban Bangalore’s April rains, on a train crossing over the mountains in the southwest corner of India. Sitting at the door at sunrise, steep green gorges spilling hundreds of metres away just beneath my feet. There is fog swirling throughout. I am traveling with two French and four Indian scientists into some of Asia’s lushest and best-preserved jungles, the Subramanya Forest Reserve. They are hoping to get some 3-dimensional structural maps of their study trees; I’m hoping to get a chance to climb into the canopy of the dipterocarp trees in India’s Western Ghats rainforests.

Only days before, I had said farewell to my parents in Brussels. Time slips away from the smiles and sunshine of a birthday in Amsterdam, and I keep thinking about all of those stories- seeing my parents, meeting Jemma again, exploring the canals, the midnight blue art show, the carnivals throughout the night, the croissants and coffee, climbing ancient oak trees with Simon in the rain just outside of Brussels…and finally decide they are stories that will serve just as well in the keeping, as in the sharing.

But back to work in India, using the landmark trees project as a way to approach a more science-based research opportunity. Our fieldwork, over four days, was sweaty, dirty, shady, and constantly in the companion of leeches and mosquitoes. There are more tree species in a small study plot than in all of Canada. The scientists, all at the French Institute in Pondicherry, were familiar with the place and knew it intimately, but to me the amount of living activity was an epiphany. The temperate forests I had worked in before seem quiet cathedrals by comparison to these tropical forests. We managed to climb and measure two trees, more to prove it could be done than to actually process the information, and following this novel fieldwork experience, I parted paths and headed down to the Karnataka coast in Mangalore.

I met up with Varsha, another Fulbrighter, and we traveled together south into Kerala, where we found Ashok from Delhi. It was a perfect tropical windy day, to arrive to the city of Kannanore. Ashok, one of the social cornerstones of my life in Delhi, was a student at the Ayurvedic medicine school, and we arrived just in time to catch them in their final exams and the revelry that provoked. I never knew they could make such strong alcohol from coconuts. Kannanore, and by extension Kerala, was indeed a place with a different feel from the rest of India. Tucked into the corner, these lush and fertile jungles of the coastal strip felt more oxygenated, more living, than the dry monsoonal woodlands throughout the subcontinent. It was therefore with great anticipation that Varsha and I headed up into the hills, to explore the mountains and forests of the Wayanad region.

We succeeded in our first goal, to visit the Gurukala Botanical Sanctuary, where a small team of dedicated gardener-scientists have created an ecological ark. This sanctuary is a green, lovingly restored patch of functional forest in a rapidly changing landscape of exotic tea plantations and urbanization. Their efforts to catalogue and preserve the unique ecosystems of the corner jungles are commendable; they manage to be an educational, research, archival, and activist institution in complementary ways.

Our other plans, to see the prairie mountaintops and giant teak trees, had to be abandoned because of poor timing. It was May Day, a holiday, and that weekend we found every sort of tourist facility overflowing and completely full. Rather than fight it, Varsha and I decided to save it for another day and went over the mountains (too quick!) to Mysore.

Mysore is famous for its cuisine, its yoga, and its warrior-king Tipu Sultan. He fought the British like a tiger, and his memory is treasured today in independent India. Another Fulbrighter, Katherine, hosted us and showed us this attractive, quiet city, from the city palaces to the top of the hills. Her specialty is in the temple sculpture artwork of the Hoysala kings; they are now long gone but their buildings remain in the countryside nearby. On a long driving tour day, we managed to visit a few of these elaborate stonework temples- some forgotten in the corners of rice paddies, and some lovingly maintained in the center of town. Along the sides, intricately carved figures hold their positions still; the best evidence I can give to their attraction is that Katherine chose as a historian to specialize in their details.

And then, alone, I closed the loop and returned to Bangalore. This city had always figured high in my plans for India, as it is home to several highly effective ecology research institutions. One of them, Ashoka Trust for Research on Ecology and Environment (ATREE) warranted a few days visit. I had spent much of the last year as an educator and outreach scientist, and to meet the scientists here (and to work with the French Institute) was to reconnect with my technical science background. ATREE has a canopy science program, and will be hosting a international conference this October. I managed to spend almost two weeks working with them, and besides the excitement of networking, began to organize the data and techniques to share the Landmark Trees work.

In Bangalore, I was fortunate enought to stay with Stefan, from Hamburg, Germany, and with him, Nandini, and Chandan, embarked on a good collection of adventures in the granite mountains surrounding Bangalore. Two of these monoliths, Savanadurga and Shivganga, are truly massive, granitic monstrosities, forested and green at the base, and steep and craggy above, making for excellent dayhiking and rockscrambling. These new friends, and others, were all delighted at the newfound motivation to explore the area, and in my turn, I was delighted at the adventuring companions. Bangalore, once known as the Garden City, now seems a bit overexcited with its newfound status, and to get out onto these rock faces was a huge change. Both mountains were ancient historical sites, but with only the slightest alteration in our route and we had the granite sweeps to ourselves.

Near Savanadurga Mountain, Bangalore’s famous roadside Giant Banyan offered a reminder of just how quickly development, and motor car abundance, was changing the landscape. The forest within the trees branches had been made amenable to tourists, and now surrounded by a fence this tree was being loved to death by overenthusiastic construction nearby. The charm of the place seemed long gone, or, just as likely, the natural beauty of the tree’s interior didn’t compare to the sunny, windswept granite slopes.

Within the city, however, at Lal Bagh, an excellent botanical garden offered a good exposure to a wide range of tropical trees. Thanks to Vijay at Bangalore Heritage Walks, Nandini and I were able to get an insider’s tour of the vast park, certainly one of India’s finest urban parks. Giant trees from around the world made for great stories from Vijay, and I was delighted to see his just-published book-with a map- on these heritage organisms. Vijay also mentioned one more tree, just out of Bangalore, the ancient Tamarind at Nallur Grove. Just a few days before I flew back to Delhi, Chandan and I headed out there and found this gnarled, lightning twisted tree, witness to perhaps a thousand years of weather and changes. It was a ‘botanical marvel’ as Vijay put it, like no other tamarind known. It had twisted itself and planted its own branches, which were resprouting from the earth, and inversely, new trunks were coming up from the edge of its rootstock. This was only the most impressive of several dozen ancient tamarinds in the grove. Unfortunately, this sacred grove was strewn with trash and plastic wrappers; an old shepherd told me and Chandan that few of the young people there notice or care for the place. He thanked us for coming, and caring.

-y-

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By admin, July 14, 2009

-y- Amongst the Gearmakers

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There is a famous legend, authentic and important but not universally
known. I've known it my whole life, and maybe you have heard it
yourself. In this story, the forces of industry and national pride
turn malignant in a powerful kingdom, and this cancer begins to
spread. It seems that this cancer, linked with other tumors, will take
over the world and the place from which it came. Only a hero can find
the medicine- the weapons to kill this cancer. That hero, you,
marshalls the resources of a vast slice of a fertile continent,
gathers a team of diverse companions and then, after great trials,
carves this monstrosity out at its heart. Amongst the companions would
be one rival, from the snowy forests, another great hero now fated to
tragically turn malignant itself. Amidst the bloody mess in the centre
of the cancer are found insane factories of death, where humans are
pulled apart alive by machines, and then thrown into the furnace, for
no gain, no purpose. The ghastly few pulled from the gears are
unrecognizable, scraps of flesh crushed and gouged by the machines.
The companions, and the smashed gearmakers around them, look around
and realize that carving out the cancer was only the first, most
dramatic trial. The hero- gifted with the lightning rays of the sun's
heat- and the rival, and the companions, and the gearmakers all had
different ideas of how to rebuild it. The real challenge was to rescue
the future from despair and learn some lesson from the experience.
But what lesson? How?
………………..

A cold sunny day at a small sheltered beach, in the earliest days of
the European spring of 2009. Four friends are sitting on a blanket
near the gentle waves. Around the corner is Denmark, and upstream on
the canal is the lowland of Germany, or Deutschland. The day was
special not just for the companionship, and the sunshine, but also the
novel (to me) concept that it is wise and good to start the day with a
bottle of red wine. My companions had opened the first of the bottles
before the train had left red-brick Hamburg Station, and our midway
stop in the medieval island-fortress of Leubeck was made in a sunny
midmorning. Smiles were seen and giggles were lost on the wind; there
was a stillness to the beach that was reassuring. There was nothing to
worry about; the gears had been smashed long before we were born.

——————–

To cross into Germany from Denmark, in April 2009, it was a simple
matter of catching a train. This train was rather strange in that
mid-way, it would leave the rails and enter a large boat (complete
with souvenir shops and cafes), and upon arrival in Germany join the
rails and continue on to Hamburg. It was warmer then Denmark, the
sunshine was out and people were absolutely glowing. The city is
compact, busy, wealthy, organized, and apparently happy and healthy.
The river Elbe groans through the city, and a pleasant waterfront with
ferry boats, underwater tunnels, and countless bars and cafes
counterweights the massive industrial presence across the way. My
first guide and host was Ronan, from the far isle of Ireland. He had
lived and traveled extensively in India, and as outsiders both in
Germany, we walked across the western portion of the city studying the
Deutschlanders- (have you noticed that everyone here has a day-planner
calendar?)- and talking elaborate schemes of mindmapping and
speedreading.

And there was Cynthia, cute as a button, smiley as a happy-face
emoticon. We had met in Delhi the year before, and by good timing were
both in Hamburg at the same time. I had met many Germans, worked
closely with several, and had hoped to see them in their home country
one day. But despite our relatively short past, as it came time to
visit the country I had made plans with her to visit Neuengamme, a
Nazi concentration camp near the city. Nobody was forcing me to visit
the place, but I felt a vague compulsion. I have no idea why she
agreed to come with me, since these places are nightmares.

To a Jewish person born anytime in the modern day, and especially one
growing up in America, there is a special mythology about Germany.
It's a dream of symbols as well, turned into a nightmare. The cancer
was Nazi Germany. The hero is the United States of America. The
lightning ray is an atomic weapon. The companions are the Allies of
World War II, and that rival companion is Russia. The gearmakers are
the Germans. The factories are the concentration camps. Those scraps
of flesh are now tough as nails- maybe too tough- and now there is
absolutely nothing on Earth that can intimidate Jews as a nation. And
maybe there is something fundamentally different about this particular
case of genocide- because it involves machines, industry, and
factories in a way that no other atrocity has since.

But that mythology can only go so far. Each character, of course, has
their own version of the story. And its easy enough to find the ways
that that mythology has caused its own future troubles. In the USA, we
barely remember a time when we weren't supposed to be the heroes, and
for Jews, we are easily forgetful of our own gearmaker tendencies; in
our remembrance of our ancient past, punctuated by those factories.
Those atomic weapons are not granted by the divine sun, and the
gearmakers were often victims themselves. The very first I had ever
heard of Germany was this myth- its a place where you go to die, and
those train tickets are one-way only. The gearmakers were embedded in
my mind amongst the very first things. (Yet several times I've been
surprised at that wizardly country of a billion, India, where few
people know any of these stories, but are curiously pro-Hitler. Of
course- he was a strong leader, he loved the Aryan people and adopted
their Swastika sacred symbol, and most importantly, he fought the
accursed British). In my life, and in the stories of my parents and
grandparents, so much World War II history had been sent my direction
that it was in danger of overwhelming other important stories.

So two generations later, what good would it really do me, and
Cynthia, to go to place filled with despair and guilt? Why bring that
into our friendship? So many of the Deutschlanders I've met overseas
are doing good works for the world, with a humanitarian and
Euro-intellectual sensibility that many others in the colonies of the
West fail to develop. They've dealt with their own national past their
whole lives. We all know what happened. For me, it was great to
realize that I didn't have to go see the death camp factories. Why
would I trade her smiles into tears? We won't forget. Although we
might be descended from them, we are neither scraps of flesh or makers
of gears.

………………………….

Berlin: A sprawling, sultry, elaborate, damaged, cleareyed city… as
I edged closer to it, people would always say "you MUST see Berlin."
Who was I to argue with this positive enthusiastic compulsion? The
metro rail system is extensive, there are more city districts and
enclaves than I had time to visit, and there is grand history lesson
amongst the government buildings and along the remants of the Wall.

My perceptions of the Berlin Wall were hazy; I had never realized how
the delicate balance of those two rivals were leaning against each
other, forehead to forehead, allies and atomic weapons adding mass to
the scrum. I also had never realized that the Wall was built by the
East German government to keep people -in-, the East Berliners were
prisoners. But now, East Berlin, where I spent most of my stay, is
filled with the young Deutschlanders coming in to find their own
paths, and to make out what the reunified city will look like in the
future.

But what does it look like now, what did it look like to me? There is
a museum district, with giant buildings of the sort one expects in
European capitols. There are tourists, and international student
groups on tour. There are several canals and several inviting
restaurants situated in the most dramatically pleasant places on these
waterways. There are green parks, with one including a small organic
farm where kids can meet the animals that they will grow up to be so
fond of eating. There are some old trees, and a relatively large
forest park in the center of the city. There are memorials to the
victims of the Nazis, and countless posters for concerts, dance clubs,
and art shows. There are bombed-out churches left as reminders, and a
few shiny glass buildings. There's a giant needle-tower in the middle,
visible down the street from the huge Soviet-style apartment blocks in
East Berlin. There are people on the streets, with an obvious level of
health and wealth. There's Angela, dressed in white and biking around
town putting up flyers for her Thai massage business. There's Thomas,
back at home and typing hard away at his master's thesis on
solar-powered transport after just completing an around-the world trip
powered by solar energy. There's Gordon and Lydia and Oliver, a
triplet of friends who fondly reminisce about their Tasmanian Overland
track while staring at the Lonely Planet books on the massive
bookshelf. There's Starbucks Coffee, reminding me of that my last
golden sunset at Pike Place in Seattle before leaving for Asia.
There's the picnic on top of a hill in a park.

There's the line of people eight deep at the bicycle repair shop.
There's the amazing graffiti culture- an obvious thing considering the
presence of the world's greatest painting wall- culminating in giant
octopus arms reaching out. There's the random public art, some
disturbing (pathetic human figures being gobbled by giants) and some
interactive (the structure of iron gridwork and fences at skewed
angles, perfect for climbing). There's the German history museum,
expensive sure, but educational and easier to approach than the art
museums. There's Jemma, my old mate from Tassie, longlost for five
years now, blinking her way off the overnight bus from Paris to a hug
and a smile and a few days adventuring down to the lowlands together.
There's the afternoon drink in the giant Sony plaza amongst the
screens and waterfountains. There's the collection of people to be
seen on the trains, usually impeccably mannered but sometimes drunk
and best avoided. There are the bakeries that seem to provide good
healthy food even in the most obscure subway stations. There's the
faint memory of banyan trees under a hot sun on the other side of the
world. There are the distant craggy mountains of the German Alps, to
be savoured in photographs but not visited this time around. There's
the warm sunshine, leaves and flowers on the trees, which means spring
must have arrived. And there's the fast approach of the tenth of
April, which adds a strange whistfulness to the air… because these
must be the final days of my twenties.

-y-

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By admin, June 25, 2009

-y- Scoured Flat

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This was, by far, the furthest I had been from the equator.

What to say about arriving to Sweden, sunshine on the snow? The
airport struck me like a space station…through the chilly, empty,
hallway to the immigration section, there were several signs saying-
"Beware of pickpockets." There was not a single other person in the
hallway. There were wooden rails on the staircase, unexpectedly novel.
The passport control officer seemed bemused by my monsoon-molded
passport, but quite soon I was riding the buses and trains towards
Stockholm city. For the moment, shiny kronors replaced rupees, and
empty forests of birch and spruce stood in place of endless cement
construction and farmfields.

More than anything, the landscape screamed "ice!" There must have been
kilometers of ice piled above where the train now sped, and it had
left only just a short while ago. Everything was scoured out flat, and
the forests were just again getting established. As the earth warms,
they'll continue their march north, but it certainly struck me how
that these trees and plants were merely one wave in an army on the
move towards the poles.

The public transport system reincarnated me in the middle of
Stockholm, on my way to find Gustav and Kinga, friends from India,
newlywed and living in the southern outskirts of town. In the city,
there were many strange sights. Clean sidewalks. Quiet. Space. Civil,
not communal, society. Counterculture clothing. Unonstentatious
wealth. Construction workers wearing safety equipment- reflective
stripes, helmets, glasses. Why were their lives so valuable? Business
suits. Automobiles stopping, at pedestrian crossings, for hopelessly
immodest ladies in skirts and winter coats… Kids, in punk regalia,
displaying they were not in with the system. Obviously not willing to
accept their duties to their families. Rubbish bins. A nice concept,
but so naive as to think they'd be used. People hurring to and fro,
without stopping to just appreciate where they were. And so much
activity midday, shouldn't people be relaxing when the day is at it's
warmest? Astonishingly, women were out on the streets, making the city
a far more feminine place than anywhere back in India. This was a
fundamental difference. Most distressing was the fact that nobody
cared who I was, nobody looked at my funny skin or light coloured
hair. Nobody looked at me with any mix of curiousity, desire, or
preconception. For the first time in more than a year, I was
invisible. I was no longer special.

But I'm lying to you, these things were no surprises, it was all
expected, and it was all eerily familiar.

Soon enough I was standing in the sunshine, crunching ice beneath my
feets, and entering a brick apartment building. Kinga greeted me, all
smiles and music as ever, and thus began a wonderful sequence of
hospitalities that would stretch across Northern Europa down into the
nether lands, beneath the sea. I had met these two Swedes trekking in
the Himalaya, and at that point had no idea that I would be visiting
them within a few months. They had grown up in the forested, flat open
lands of this scoured country, and my time with them in the steep
peaks and crowded cities of India was far removed from our quiet
surroundings. They treated me well.

It was in the first days of spring, and the glow was pulsing through
the city. While the days were still cold, the sunlight was coming, and
people were ready to turn a corner in their metabolic cycle and play
outside. Leaves were just about to bud on some of the trees, and the
light-eyed Swedes were just beginning to look around their well
decorated, nicely furnished, cozy apartments with the giddy bubble of
claustrophobia. Their-my- fair hair and light skins, attested to an
intrinsic seasonal rhythm, and there was a a giddy exhilaration as
metabolisms geared up for the sunshine. I had had an overdose of
sunlight over the last year, but was glad for the reminder of
springtime cheer.

Stockholm is tidy, and abundant with bridges and waterways. On the
spring equinox, Gustav walked me through the old city, where dense
stone walls hid steamy cafes, into the forested parks, where snow
slowly melted underneath the uniform pines, and across the bridges to
the new city, where shiny glass punctuated the stonework. He told me
about growing up in the northern Swedish woods, in a a quiet place
with few others around, and a few years before technology
interconnected the isolated homes in the snowy winter. So far from
Delhi where we had last met! But that day, people enjoyed the
sunshine, eating ice cream cones whilst sitting next to the frozen
harbour. I was content and happy to walk around, mostly aimlessly,
with my city-subway pass good for a few days of spontaneity. I had
been making too many decisions, about plans, health, safety,
destinations, motivations, for me and others during the last year.
What a delight to abandon that mindset and just say "sure!" When
Gustav asked if I wanted to see the museum of the Vasa, a four hundred
year old flagship brought up from the harbour floor- sure! When Kinga
wanted to show me the walking paths to the shore, where the ice still
crisped up against the land- sure! When they suggested we watch a
critically acclaimed (yet pretty awful) vampire movie- sure!

Kinga invited me to join her on a quick trip out of Stockholm to visit
her mother in Uppsalla. Sure! It's a famous university town, but also
notable for being home to Linnaeus' botanical gardens. The place was
closed for the winter, but I could peek through the gates and see the
location where a cornerstone of modern biology was put into place. In
Linnean taxonomy, every organism is arranged on a branching pattern
and identified in a standard Latinized way. In every aspect of my
professional life as a scientist, this model of organization has been
absolutely essential. We returned to Stockholm, and somehow it was
already my fifth or sixth day in Sweden. I wasn't keeping track really
well of the days, and enjoying that greatly. The snow had begun
falling again, dampening my hopes that I'd see the flowers would bring
out the ecstatic smile of the Swedes. But to see a blanket of white
cover Sweden added to the exotic experience- only a few days before I
had been under the diamond-sun of Jharkhand.

A train, sleek and hi-tech and far removed from my much beloved
sleeper class (upper berth), brought me to Sweden's southwestern edge.
After 10 minutes running around the town of Malmo, I was on another
train which brought me into Denmark, and Copenhagen.

It's impossible to understand my relationship to Denmark without two
critical elements, which are intrinsically inconsequential yet have
somehow become close to mythological. First, 6th grade, Hollenbeck
Elementary school, Sunnyvale, California: my school paper on a foreign
country was on [randomly chosen] Denmark. So visiting was the
culmination of almost twenty years of anticipation. Second, Mary, now
Princess Mary. Our first Royal!, as the Tasmanian newspapers declared
proudly. She had married the crown prince of Denmark and thus
fulfilled the fantasies of many an Australian tabloid magazine. My
connection to her was precisely zero, but my enthusiasm multiplies
that connection a thousand times over!

I don't know many Danes, and despite that school report I don't know
much about their country. One of them, Liv, was living in Copenhagen
and graciously hosted me for a few days. She treated me well. We had
met some years back, at the start of New Year, on the edge of Canada's
evergreen stormcoast. She set me up with a map, and a bike, and sent
me off into the chill sunny days to explore (sure!) Immediately, of
course, was the Little Mermaid, the sad girl with the fish tail and
the blue heart. She could never be part of our world. She is, as they
say, a small statue, but certainly she is amongst the world's
treasures.

To prove to myself that I was indeed a tourist, I spent three days in
a row visiting the Danish National Museum. This sprawling place is a
gem- no admission fees, free lockers, warm corridors safe from the icy
rain outside, and several days worth of exhibits. There, you can see
such curiosities as prehistoric amber carvings, runestones, 10,000
year old plaits of women's golden hair found in a peat bog, Viking
weapons, church statuary, 1980's stereo equipment, old executioner's
swords, ancient bones, old artwork, and treasures and trinkets from
around the globe. But outside the museum there were other sights, all
deliciously touristic. The Danske Geologiske Museum, for rock nerds
only, the Botanical Gardens, for tree nerds only, the pedestrian
malls, for shopping fiends, and the Roundhouse tower, the castle and
courtyards, the canals and streetways. The bicycle was key to the
whole affair. I could pretend that I was one of the illustrious,
incredibly fast and focused bicycle commuters of Copenhagen. And when
I was done with that, I could go back to my locker, lock up the bike,
and visit Liv, working literally across the lane from the Museum's
entrance.

Like Stockholm, Copenhagen is incredibly expensive city to spend
evenings out in, and in both cities this made for pleasant warm
at-home dinners during cold outside nights (you can even drink the tap
water). Inevitably, India and my experiences there came up with my
hosts and their friends. But it's too complicated to analyse easily,
and the comparison deals with global issues of the present day. I
think I've adapted pretty well to India, I can keep myself happy and
healthy there, but I'm not sure that everyone in Scandinavia, or the
US, or Australia, could do the same- or would want to do the same. I
couldn't have arranged a stronger contrast between two regions of the
world. Only an blind person could fail to be moved by the
differences. Few in Scandinavia starve to death, people are happy and
healthy, and they live a good life. People live good lives in India,
and are often happy, and often healthy, but what a reality check to
wee what refined conditions in which the Swedes and the Danes are
living. They've figured out a great many things- how to build a
pleasant city, how to take care of each other- that we still deny in
the USA and Australia, and that India simply can't be bothered with as
it hurtles to live the unsustainable dream of a Western lifestyle. The
culture shock- the poverty shock, the gender shock, the street shock-
was far stronger for me coming out of India for this brief vacation in
Northern Europe than it was when I entered India. In one afternoon in
Delhi, I can go into a 5 star hotel and be fawned over by a dozen
waiters in a fancy restaurant, and I can walk past the irredeemably
messy and crowded areas that are tucked out of sight of India's
aspiring middle class. There are Sony hi-fi stereo shops, and lepers
on the streets. This type of variability simply doesn't exist in
these two icy countries, and I think the core of the matter is that
they are nation-states, Danes and Swedes, and they will take care of
their small populations in a way that crowded and communally
fragmented India can accomplish only with massive changes. These
changes might come, but I think there will be ecological limits to
growth too soon. I am simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic about
India, and America, and Australia-this balance swings back and forth-
you've got to love the good and hate the bad- but the best thing I can
say about Denmark and Sweden is that… I'm mosly optimistic.

Also, like Stockholm, I wasn't keeping track of the days very well.
From Copenhagen, lovely Liv helped me to arrange a train to Hamburg,
Germany (sure!). I had learnt a great deal about Germany at a very
young age, almost entirely dealing with death and genocide and war.
But I woudn't let that shadow my trip. Ten days passed in Scandinavia
had brought forth those bright little leaves, and as I entered into
Deutschland the winter had fled- spring had arrived.

-y-
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………………….

sure!

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By admin, June 15, 2009

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–
Upon arriving from the warm oceanside tropics of Tamil Nadu back into Delhi’s foggy winter chill, the usual whirlwind of city life ensued. This culminated in me spun out of the city, 1st day of March 2009 on an airplane to Calcutta, one of India’s most legendary, intimidating, and curious cities. The US-India Educational Foundation was holding a conference for the Fulbright scholars in-country at that time, and thus I visited my fifth of India’s big six metropolises.

Like so many other visitors, my first impression of Calcutta, or Kolkata, was atmospheric; as we exited the plane, the humid, swampy air of the lowest parts of the Ganges River wrapped around us new arrivals like a rotting paper bag. It’s a cliched observation, I know, but what a change from Delhi’s midnight sunken air pollution. All the usual air particulates were there, but there was a vegetative thread to the smells that was new. But the next few days was spent in the air-conditioned halls of a the Hotel Hindustan International, five stars of downtown luxury fortress in the midst of the expected chaos of urban India just outside. The conference offered a chance to reacquaint with several other scholars and administrators. There’s a stunning array of themes being studied: deodorant marketing campaigns, technology in rural schools, forced-labor repatriation, air pollution exposure in police officers, ancient temple statuary, genetic modification of food, to remember a few. All of these subjects pursued with conviction form one element in current dayIndo-American ties, and many of the scholars there would certainly continue future work within India. My presentation went well, and the conference was just grande fun. It seemed a bit of a shame to be traveling so much; hearing others’ stories of civic, rural, and institutional involvement gave me a bit of thought to the amount of time I’ve spent on the move, by myself but not alone.

The luxury hotel, air conditioning, exciting colleagues, and humid weather all conspired to keep us in the fortress. I remember clearly how exultant it felt to skip out of the conference one evening and have a quick walk through the streets of downtown Calcutta…it was a heady rush of noise, smells, and activity, and I kept walking faster and faster and faster amongst the pedestrians and cars and buses and hand-rickshaws past the planetarium and the Victoria Memorial and the giant sportsfields and the theatre and the fountain and under the trees and bridges and buildings and back into the hotel. What they say is true- much of the city’s British-era capitol grandeur is literally decaying. But the people are vibrant, and the oppressive orderliness of the imperial British Raj is becoming masked under the relaxation of grime, soot, and algae. I wouldn’t go so far as to insist its the dirtiest of the Indian cities, but the other metropolises have the austerity of the desert, or the proximity to the ocean, that mask the generally high level of public mess. At the Victoria Memorial, a stunning white marble building complete with pillars, arches, domes, and sprawling gardens filled with wonderful exotic trees, I was told that the brilliant golden winged angel on the dome spire no longer spun to face the wind. It had rusted, grimed into place years ago and never fixed. But who noticed, who cared? There was a functioning subway, there were cricket games at the sportsfields, and there were people strolling through the gardens.

More food for thought, of the less palatable sort: during the conference, the Sri Lankan cricket team was attacked in neighbouring Pakistan. It was supposed to be the Indian team in their place, but they pulled out at the last minute. This event must be understood in the context of cricket as an informal state religion (for all three countries involved), a key pivot of culture and pride. For all the excitement of the India story in the late 200x’s, it’s worrisome to read the sad editorials about the ‘neighbour unhinging.’ Over the next few weeks Pakistan would go from signing a peace submission with Taliban-allied movements in the north, and then shortly thereafter muster forth and kick them out of those regions. Indian media, always shrill, started using the phrase, “Talibanistan” in reference to southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. It is hard to tell what is truly going on over there. But these things seem distant, down in the swampy city at the bottom of the Ganga, where the branching pattern of tributary streams flips itself into the coastal delta of distributaries.

One of India’s most famous trees is in Calcutta, at the Botanical Gardens across the river in Howrah. The Great Banyan was planted in the flagship English botanical institute, and just continued to grow outwards, sprouting new trunks from the bottom of its branches, and it got bigger, and bigger, and bigger…it is now one of Earth’s largest trees(depending on how you measure it, of course). It simply sprawls in a corner of the Gardens, and dominates the visitor’s attention in a way that nothing else in the Gardens can. It’s a kilometer in circumference, although its network of interlinked stems is more like a small forest than a solid mass of wood. This tree, like the Bodhi Tree in Bihar, was mentioned in the first paragraph of in my original proposal to come to India, and to see it finally was the culmination of almost three years of planning. I first went there with a collection of other Fulbright scholars, and then, on my second visit to the tree, met up with a scientist from the Botanical Survey of India. He graciously arranged the key that let us into the fenced off interior, and we had a chance to visit the vacant space in the middle where the original trunk had died away. It was like being behind the scenes in a museum, but this museum was living.

When the conference was over, I walked out into the city to meet my friend Tom, with notebooks filled with other scholars’ emails and phone numbers, and plans for collaborations and adventures throughout India. As far as I know, I was the only one to leave the conference to travel on overland back home, and I’ll confess I felt a little more at home getting out of the air conditioned luxury hotel and into the flow outside. Tom is a Britisher, through and through, and his experience working as an intern at the Statesman newspaper has been a classic case of cultural exposure. The paper, unfortunately, is going down, undermined by predatory competition and changing media landscapes. So his internship experience involves a strange work life,writing articles for a publication in its final days, and staying in company housing embedded in massive, dusty factory building just on the edge of downtown. We Through Tom, I met Shreya, a young writer at University and we all explored Calcutta, so changed in 150 years since its British capitol heyday. We stumbled upon the old Scottish cemetary-overgrown but still appreciated, visited the locked gates of the houses at Tangra-Chinatown, sampled the cafes and bars on Park St, stepped into the famous student coffee house with the lazy fans and dusty high ceilings, walked along the murky docks at the boat ferries, and observed the crowded temples at the city’s namesake Kalighat. There was little to engage the landscape enthusiast. There are no rocks to be seen in Calcutta, only dirt carried down from the Himalaya towards the sea.

My return to Delhi was overland, via two cities in the mineral-rich state of Jharkhand. I had given up a return flight trip- 2 hours back to Delhi- for what would turn into 35 hours of arduous train journeys. The weather in Jamshedpur was more typical for North India- hot and dry and sunny. First, a midnight train to Jamshedpur, where I was a bit worried to arrive on the holiday of Holi. This, you may recall, is the psychedelic hashish-fueled color waterfight holiday, when the joy is joyous rainbow and the foreigners do their best to get off the streets. It’s a beautiful event, but to arrive in a new town, the only foreigner around, made it a bit of a worry. I had gotten in touch with a second hand acquaintance, Badshah, who not only rescued me from the train station on a motorbike, but helped me avoid the revelry in the streets. Jamshedpur is truly a company town, entirely a Tata Steel phenomenon. It’s named after Jamshed Tata, an industrialist whose empire thrives still, and is a clean, friendly, attractive town…although perhaps I didn’t choose the best day to go out. We not only found a famous tree, upon which countless passport and work-visa hopefuls had nailed their applications for good luck, but also managed to visit a zoo and a viewpoint just outside of town. Jharkhand literally means “jungles”, but my ability to get out into them was limited. The rock outcrops scattered throughout town and forming nearby hills, however were a nice reminder of distant shores and years past. It was dolerite (!), which in its more crystalline form is responsible for the surreally striated and impressively sheer pillared landforms of Tasmania. How strange to be surrounded by a billion people and to be so much more excited and connected with a darkish, blocky rock.

From there, to Ranchi, Jharkhand’s capital. Poor timing meant a long wait through the night at the train station, but during the days, visits around town to see the African baobab trees at Doranda college, and to climb up onto Tagore Hill, where the famous Bengali literary star supposedly wrote some of his works. Stone hills rose up from the plain, and somehow beneath the earth were hidden a country’s trove of metal treasures.

The dolerite was familiar, but I was all upside down in the wrong hemisphere; the sun was bright like a diamond, but too striking to enjoy its rays; the surroundings were pleasant and intriguing, but my mind was already off in the corner of Eurasia…one train ride and seventy-two hours later, I was back in Delhi and again buzzing in an autorickshaw through the cold midnight mist of air pollution. There was a plane to catch to Sweden, inexplicably, and a month in Europe meeting family and friends. It had been more than a year of learning, working, and adapting to India, and I suppose I had weathered out the changes as well, or better, than I had expected. Soon, at sixty degrees north, I could see the sea ice clustering in the waterways of the Baltic Sea.

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By admin, March 26, 2009

-y- On The Rocks
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++The Silicon Sorcerers ++

Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh, is one of the two capitals of
the Indian computer industry, and nowhere else can you better see that
age old cliche- the contrast of new and old. Its a gnarled mess in
standard India fashion. The traffic is bad. The air is horrible. There
are very very poor areas and very very rich areas. Some areas have
hundreds of years of history, and some were built just last year. But
let’s not forget the very very old. Hyderabad is built on ancient,
weathered, twisted boulders of granite. These wondrously shaped rocks
form the eastern side of the Deccan plateau and are amongst the
worlds oldest rocks, two and half billion, or 2500000000, or 2.5×10^9
years old. This is comparable to the age at which photosynthesis
first began. But now, these rocks are eaten up and turned into
building materials by machines burning fossil fuels. The granite is
the foundation, literally, for that most modern and ephemeral of
pursuits, conjuring demons of pure logic and ensnaring them in silicon
mazes. The city’s famous and vibrant computer Information Technology
industry sector (IT) is built on ancient rocks

The city was still in shock and confusion. Much of modern India’s
confidence in the world economic stage had come directly from the IT
sector here and in Bangalore, and these billions (hundreds of crores)
of rupees had manifested in uncontrolled city growth. At New Years,
there was the unexpected confession from the CEO of one of the premier
IT companies, Satyam, that he had been regularly and massively
embezzling from the company on a massive scale. The brashness and
confidence of India’s premier industrial sector has been shaken to its
core. But for all the worries of economic meltdown, and loss of faith
in Indian industry, there were some things that would stay with
certainty- the fancy new homes, the shiny office buildings, the air
pollution, the gridlock of traffic, and all the other things that came
with the high tech modernity dropped on top of an ancient city.

I arrived in Hyderabad sometime in the first month of 2009, without
too much in the way of plans. I spent the days there staying with
Prasad, who is a dynamo of practical energy and one of the most
coherently industrious men I had yet met. Prasad invited me to stay
with his family at his quite luxurious apartment. Its filled to excess
with books (hundreds of them), artwork (dozens of pieces), bottles of
alcohol (hundreds), trinkets (countless), and furniture (well chosen).
He and his wife run a reproduction clinic, to help couples conceive.
This has spun off into several other business investments, but he
maintains his office in the clinic building. Rather than call it an
‘infertility clinic’, they invented a new positive Telugu word. It
translates as ‘marriage-success clinic’. Prasad is living the dream,
happy in his financial success but still engaged in charitable works
and connecting with foreign travelers such as myself.

There was a fruitful excursion, with Frauke Qader, a German woman
living in India. She is one of the more active members of the Societyt
o Save Rocks, a conservation organization that blends geoconservation
with habitat conservation. If the rocks are turned into roads and
buildings, they can never be replaced. While their mission at first
seems entirely an aesthetic concern, there’s a critical element of
wildlife habitat. I was immediately excited by their work, and loved
their listings of remarkably scenic boulders. She took the time to
show me a magical ‘fairy tale’ banyan tree, growing from a crack in a
giant boulder on a hilltop, with its roots spilling over and wedging
open the crack. While the arguments to conserve biological resources
are well developed, it is generally the case that arguments to
conserve geological heritage are less so. Itwas educational to see the
enthusiasm and dedication they’ve devoted to saving the living rocks
of Hyderabad. They are a treasure.

With Prasad, there was an escapade in the city was to Golconda Fort,
yet another fantastical Indian fort with a bloody history, perched on
the summit of a rising hill of boulders. Within the outer walls of the
citadel, the huge Hathion ka Ped, the Elephant Baobab tree squatted in
an obscene splendour. This tree was rotund, obese, a simple parody of
what we expect a tree to look like. We went there with our newfound
friend Marie and clambered up into the branches of the tree. Inside,
over its five hundred years, the center had rotted and burned out, and
we dropped in to a small cave inside. This, perhaps, is one of the
most exciting trees I had yet visited. It combines history, giant
size, wierd growth, exotic lineage, climbing, caving, and
photogeniality in one individual. We could experience being under the
tree, in the tree, near the tree, with the tree, on the tree, beside
the tree.

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++ The Gravity Monks ++

Southwards to the state of Karnataka, to Hampi on a midnight bus,
desperately trying to shut out the sound of an overloud
Telugu-language movie. It’s significant that my mobile phone’s clock
seemed to go awry upon arrival. It seems that there’s a timewarp in
this amazing town. Surrounded by strikingly picturesque granite
mountains, and with the thousand year old ruins of the Vijay Empire
capital city crumbling slowly around it, Hampi is one of India’s
backpacker havens. Foreign backpackers, with their fancy rucksacks,
wild clothing, taste for banana pancakes, decadent morals, and
enthusiastic pursuits, converge on the place with devotion and
excitement. Hampi is truly a fantastic place. and like so many others
i found it to be a timewarp. I met up with Johnno, my rockclimbing
ropegun from a decade past, and Ritik, emergency room doctor on a
yatra around India, and Ashok, a good friend and laptop warrior from
Delhi. There’s nothing like finding your friends in a foreign place,
knocking on some hotel room door in a strange location and walking
into a friendly surrounding. We stayed in the tropical ideal idyllic
scene; sunset views over the nobbly rock peaks, past the palm trees
and the rice paddies, drinking coconut juice while lying in hammocks.

Hampi is known amongst the foreigners now for the strange new breed of
gravity monks. There is a group of dedicated priests, humble and
patient, who can most easily be found at the Goa Corner Hotel, in the
back right corner of the rice paddies on the ‘other side’ of the River
from Hampi town. Their yoga, bouldering, is an intense, low altitude
form of rock climbing, with no ropes. The routes, or problems, tend to
be insanely difficult and require intense concentration. And once you
get on top of some big, curvy, rock, how do you get down? The same way
you got up- carefully. John and I went out a bit and tried out these
disciplines on the rocks. Between the two of us we’ve probably spent
twenty years fighting gravity, but we found these boulders to require
skills and strength beyond our expectations. We did, though, get on
top of some of them. But, unlike the joyful, tense, reassurance of a
safe rope descent, and like the bottom point in a cave, the top of
these boulders requires a mirrorimage challenge to get down to safety.

The days in Hampi blend. There are fantastical temples and ruins, from
the Vijaynagar kingdom, which in its day (1300s to 1600s) was a Hindu
city to rival Rome. The location is stunning, the weather grand. Like
all the other travelers, we’d wander around on the rocks and each day
was the best day ever.

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++ Challengers in Chennai ++

But soon it was time to hit the road, and almost at random, John and
selected the southeast coast metropole, Chennai, formerly Madras, in
Tamil Nadu as our next direction. This turned out to be a more magic
and fruitful adventure than I had expected.

The two stage train ride was miserable, but with an lovely chance
meeting with an Israeli man named Yossi and a French Reunion Islander
woman named Yohanna. So, at one strange moment, we had three ‘Yo’s in
one train compartment. Curious. We arrived in Chennai exhausted,in a
non airconditioned sleeper car growing hotter and hotter in the
tropical sun. Chennai is India’s #4 city, and in so prominent a city,
the visiting foreigner is surprised at how difficult it is to get a
feel for it. Tamil Nadu is more organized, and more conservative, than
many places in North India. And the city does indeed seem more
functional than other places Ive been. But it’s not very user
friendly, and there are few tourist attractions…but not to worry, we
made friends and found many things of interest. One of the first on
the list is the Great Banyan at the Theosophical Society grounds. I
can’t tell you too much about these seekers of Truth, but one
noteworthy fact is that they maintain a sizable, forested campus in
the heart of Chennai. In the middle, a famous, landmark banyan trees
sprawls out. It’s one of Indias more famous trees, and it did not
disappoint. John and I monkeyed around in its slender aerial
branch-roots, and hurried on to explore more of the city with Kavitha,
Yatan, McKay and Katherine. Like Delhi, Chennai is a city where you
need to know people. Connecting with these locals and foreigners made
all the difference to us in enjoying the place.

Out of Chennai, we passed through the temple town of Kanchipuram,
spotting a mango tree around which a giant temple had been built. The
original tree had died a few years ago, but this being an important
temple, they just replanted a new one and things continue as usual.
Following this, we stopped in Mamalapuram and enjoyed the beach life.
Just a short time back the ocean had spilled over in a deadly
tsunami-don’t forget- and smashed apart much of the city, but it had
been restored well and was one of the most pleasant places I had yet
been in India. Warm water, fish curries, coconut juice, palm trees,
lighthouse beacons, more granite, Pallava ruins, more temples- this
town occupies a nice niche on the South India tourist track between
Chennai and Pondicherry, and was a nice place to soak in the sunshine
and let the fact we were in the tropics sink in. Johno had been living
the beach bum life around India, and California, in the recent past,
but it was a much anticipated experience for me.

Across an ocean, far away, a new president took office in the United
States. But just over the horizon from Tamil Nadu, a war was grinding
to a bloody end in Sri Lanka. The Tamil civilians in the north, were
reaping the bitter harvest of the Tamil Tiger’s ruthless battle
against the Sinhalese majority, in the south. India, too recently the
victim of terror, would not interfere with the annihilation of the
Tiger terrorist group, and the Indian people of Tamil Nadu were
horrified at the situation just kilometers away across the water- the
Sinhalese forces had cornered the Tigers, with their communities, in
their last holdout towns. Blood would spill, blood is spilling.

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++ The Aurora Dreamers ++

We headed a bit south to Auroville and Pondicherry, and it was in the
latter, formerly a French colony, that I reached my closest point yet
to the equator. Pondicherry is a treat, a slow window out of time,
with excellent croissants and coffee to be had. The colonial heritage
is there, and so are the French tourists. I had never yet seen such a
coherent Francophone scene in India, and I was surprised that the
colony’s history would be such a draw to this foreign contingent.

Auroville, ‘a universal city in the making’ just north, was perhaps
the more remarkable and strange place. It must be one of the largest
intentional community collections in the world, a product of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother’s inspired vision of peace and harmony. The
energy of all these people has helped to reforest a dry tropical
landscape, and it has become an amazing convergence for seekers and
practicioners from near and far. It’s tempting to dismiss the place as
a dreamer’s playground, but dreaming and playing are grand things both
worthy of respect. The city is like an unexpected aurora that shimmers
with interesting colours.

Auroville, more than any place I can think of in recent past, defies a
simple and quick interpretation. But I can start with Arseny, my host,
and one of the first generation of Aurovillians. He is twenty years
old, smiles easily, is fantastically fit, and has been educated well
and carefully. His mother, a Russian woman, came to Auroville in the
seventies, and like many foreigners, decided to stay and raise her
child there. Arseny, in his stature and charisma, is the product of
conscious love and community, and like all the other young people of
Auroville, an impressive person to meet. I met up with him at the
Solar Kitchen, where the huge community kitchen stove is powered by
the focused sunlight. Auroville has forty years of tree plantings and
is a green and shady place, in contrast to the active farming
landscape surrounding it. Old tamarind trees predating the place pop
up on the roadside. The friendliness, and also the tensions, between
the locals and the (mostly?) foreigner Aurovillian contingent can be
sensed in many places: in the storefronts along the entrance road, at
the waterbodies where people fish and relax, along the East Coast
Highway heading to Pondicherry, and at the beaches where the Bay of
Bengal tickles the land.

Johno and I stayed at Sadhana Forest, a six-year-old
forestregeneration project begun by Aviram and Yorit, two Israelis who
have commited their lives to Auroville. Sadhana Forest had been on my
mind for a long time now, as many backpackers had told me about the
place by word of mouth. I did not expect our stay there to be so
productive or exciting, but each day got better and better. Sadhana is
hosting more than one hundred international residents, and has as much
an emphasis on sustainable conscious living as it does on forest
planting. There was a class on sustainable land
management–permaculture-taking place at the time and it was a delight
to find there my friend Pankhuri, from Delhi.The area is surrounded by
rampant runaway forest of Australian wattle, and that is surrounded by
farmlands and development. Aviram and Yorit have been restoring the
landscape with a combination of water irrigation techniques and native
forest plantings. There´s an emphasis on reforestation using the
heart, more than the head. I’ll acknowledge that that is a strength
and an unfamiliar direction for me as a forest ecologist. Sadhana has
had thousands of volunteers put in backbreaking labour to dig
waterpools and wells, plant seedlings, and build the infrastructure
for an incredibly cosy community. But when I asked about the maps and
the forest, I discovered that there were pretty much no maps or forest
measurements available.

With all the energy and enthusiasm surrounding the Sadhana Forest
project, I figured it was a good opportunity to invest some of those
technical skills that I had learned in a formal forestry setting. I
was also empathizing with some future ecologist trying to produce some
report on Sadhana, and their frustration at the lack of any baseline
data. Equally importantly, it gave Johno and I a chance to stay and
work on the positive connections with the international group there. A
Canadian fellow, Kelly, had worked in the remote wild forests of
British Columbia, and we spoke the same language and had overlapping
skills. So we tracked down a GPS unit and walked all over the Sadhana
Forest property, taking photos and performing a tree measurement
survey. It was great fun, simple work for us, and provided a good
resource to the project. We took a few days writing it up and
producing aerial maps, data, photopoints. You can take a quick look at
the simplest version at
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.88a3ed84-0faf-4ee2-bfb7-4d5422e71c6b

And besides this fun work, the living there was good. Yummy vegan
pools, swimming in the mudpools, climbing in the banyan trees, jumping
in the beach, the Valentine’s Day party at the Auroville childrens
playground, and the pirate ship treehouse…it was a interlude from
the other concerns in India. But a chance encounter by the beach
snapped me out of any illusions of relaxation. I encountered Pascal, a
French scientist at the branch of the French Institute, in
Pondicherry. I had heard of their ecology group already, and the more
I spoke to Pascal the more exciting their work sounded. I joined him
on a visit there the next day, and it went better than I could ever
have imagined. They are working on several projects, all of which are
things I am very fond of: paleobotany (ancient plant life),
computer-aided tree identification guides, forest mapping in India’s
superlatively biodiverse Western Ghats mountain range, tree structure
and measurement, and forest growth dynamics. These are all coming
together in one building with a small, intensive group of scientists.
It’s not a teaching university, so they are focused in a different way
than educational academics. And it turns out they are just putting
together a project to help the Indian Space Research Organization
interpret its satellite data in regards to how much biomass, or carbon
dioxide, is stored in these forests. The French Institute has the
maps, the study locations, and the statistical expertise- but they are
lacking someone who can climb trees and measure them in detail. I
think I know who can help them out; the result is that in late April
I’ll be heading south to the Karnataka rainforest to help them with
their annual measurement session, and start talking about more
concrete research relationships for future.

This last encounter, really was too much excitement. John and I had
set up plans to meet Ashok, Lily, and Ritik in Kerala, in the
southwest corner of India, to head off trekking into the too much
information to process, and a conference coming up in a few weeks, and
it was simply time to go home to Delhi. I said my farewells to Johnno,
backtracked from Auroville and Pondy to Mamalapuram, then Chennai,
smiled at the ocean, and a short time later was fighting off the cold
as the Delhi autorickshaw walla sped through the dark night smog.

-y-
in Copenhagen, Denmark
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http://picasaweb.google.com/treeoctopus/YOnTheRocks
http://picasaweb.google.com/treeoctopus/YOnTheRocks
http://picasaweb.google.com/treeoctopus/YOnTheRocks
www.treeoctopus.net\india.htm
www.treeoctopus.net\india.htm
www.treeoctopus.net\india.htm

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By admin, January 29, 2009

======================================================
-y- Flow With The Go
-Maharashtra State, India

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::::People flow towards opportunities, towards each other, to lovely
places, downstream, to the ocean, to the buzz, to the glamour.But you can decide to choose your path, and that’s the go.::::
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http://picasaweb.google.com/treeoctopus/YFlow_With_The_Go
http://treeoctopus.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/treeoctopus/YFlow_With_The_Go
http://treeoctopus.blogspot.com/
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In the very last days of 2008,the Ocean and I met each other for the
first time in many months, at Juhu Beach in Bombay. The contrast with
the flat and insular colonies of Delhi was terrifying, here were
people in a public space making a relation with their geography. The
air was cleaner. In
Delhi, we make our own insular landmarks, but here, I could walk to
the beach and experience what civic spaces provide to society. The waves
flowed onto the beach, and all visitors were free to greet them
There were few fences here.

So the sun set bright red through the haze, and I had spent the day
stuck on an airplane at Delhi airport, waiting for the thick white
soup of cold-sinking-air-pollutions to clear enough for us to fly. Like
so many others in India, arriving to Mumbai was filled with the
iresistable buzz of opportunity and potential. Rickshaws used the
meters, the streets were straight. Women walked without fear. A breeze
came off the ocean and I wondered why I lived in Delhi. The answer,
essentially, though, is by default- I simply hadn’t known enough about
Indian cities to have any preferences between the two.

But damn, Mumbai is a city on fire.

The bulletholes from 26/11 were still fresh in the landmarks, and the
sense of insecurity was still there as New Year’s approached. But on
the surface, little could be seen of the trauma. The flow of business
and the go of It was there, though.

The meetings with many trees and many people were all of the most
excellent sort. Most refreshing was the sense that foreigners had
integrated well into communities, and that young women often lived
lives independently from their families without fear of judgment or
danger. In Delhi, both of these groups, and so many others, have turned inwards
into communal insularity, but here there was a sense of
civility-rather than factionality- that glowed throughout the city,
unlike anywhere else I had seen in India. And, additionally, there was
a go of sexuality, and honesty, internationality, and hard work…
Civil society, as I see it, meaning that strangers meet as equals, far
away from the
crushing molten lead casting of Delhi’s administrative society.

I met up quickly with a cast of friends new and old who made the city
come alive. Miller, volcano-climber-ropemate from wayback Seattle,
traveling with Laurel, hoping to return to Sri Lanka to revisit
friends, despite the upcoming bloody ending with the Tamil Tigers. Other
scholars, Karin, a H20 geographer, within a day a close friend
and confidante (mapmaking and landmarking being nearly identical pursuits),
Tayiba writing a novel -a-story- in a totally different style than my own book,
Zakir describing the magic of filming in the industry with the camera
before his eyes, and Dr. Latoo, a tree-loving botanist at Mumbai Uni.
I crashed on the floor at Eddie’s place and learned about the life of
an aspiring Bollywood actor, inevitably and always typecast as the
white guy, Meenu, teaching me about the simplicity of a Jain life,
Saurav, living at the top of an apartment block, Nidhi, staying up
late for drinks after her workday at the bank, Amy, with whom a brief
meeting was recalled later when we magically bumped into each
other on the street downtown. (You haven’t arrived in a city until you
bump into someone you know on the street). It’s horrific to write such
tiny
statements about so many people, but together they populate and
illustrate a sense
of place, hopefully.

A spell was being formed around me, a glamour of ocean views, parks,
fine cafes, wonderful conversations, parties, huge rain trees
spreading out over the streets, European architecture amazingly
maintained well and respected, and an accessible excess of ocean
sunset conversations with Karin. It appeared that to go with the flow was
for me to engage with all this glamour and see what could form.

Though I knew the strange basaltic plateau of the Deccan was waiting
for me, spilling off the subcontinent in dramatic escarpments just
east of town, I found myself repeatedly jamming into the overcrowded
railways to return to the buzz and excitement of downtown Colaba
district. Every day coming in from the jammed moshpit train, crowded
beyond comprehension, was like a rebirth as I hopped out onto the
platform downtown to a lovely pedestrian city.

Remember that there are more than a billion people in this vast land,
but then also that one in evry three Indian tax dollars comes from
Mumbai. But the foundations are truly weak. Grand areas of slums,
which I did not experience or visit, spill out of the city and keep
the privileged residents alive.
The city centre, is a terminating peninsula built on reclaimed
land, and from the promenade of Marine Drive, there are strangely
shaped cement blocks piled up to break the energy of the waves. But
the image I have of octopuses exploring Florida’s cities transmits
here as well. One day
soon, it will be underwater.

The eleven days in the city flow into each other, punctuated strongly
by a perfect triplet of parties at 2009. There were periods
of time. I know that I spent one day scouting trees with Dr. Latoo,
one morning jogging past the mangroves,
one night crashed on John and Laurel’s hotel floor, one afternoon
locating trees with Karin on aerial photos, one night introduced to
Bengali cuisine by Saurav, two nights out for
dinner with Tayiba and Zak two breakfasts sitting by the AK-47
bulletholes at Leopolds, two days unsuccessfully trying to find an
ancient Urdu manuscript for Walt back in Delhi, two nights at Prithvi
Theatre Cafe, two nights at Nidhi’s, two nights at Meenu’s, three
nights at
Eddie’s, five days happily exploring the city core through Karin’s landmarks,
seven days of sunsets, eight days of train rides, eleven days of
magic. I learned several new
tree species and got a slight forewarning of the biodiversity waiting
for me farther south…

And then, after dark on a Friday evening, I knew I had to escape. The
days flowed, I had to go!
The last train of the full moon night left from the Victoria Terminus
rail station, where only a few weeks before, dozens of innocent
victims were gunned down. Two hours from the city centre found me
standing by the open train door with one of the ticket
collectors, watching the strange cliffs pass by in the moonlight. They
let me off one stop early, at a small town asleep for the evening.
Above, Nagphani, the Cobra’s Hood, was a tapered point at the end of a
long basaltic
step-ridge., and I had learned about a simple climbing
trail on the backside. Attaining the ridge involved clambering up the
messy boulders of a steep drainage, and crossing under a aqueduct
leading to a small lake. Once on the ridge, the steepness and distinct
stratigraphic layering of the basaltic flow was obvious and familiar.
Peaks, from harder rocks or volcanic plugs, poked out as zigguratic
pyramids, and the whole landscape flowed down under the moonlight to
the ocean, and the city, and the friends I had just left. There was a
glow of electric lights visible to the west. I slept on the ridge
huddled coldin only a few layered shirts, but woke to that crystal
clear sunrise and the ecstacy of open mountains to explore on foot. In
the sunshine, I found there were
three still peaks to traverse to get to the summit. So it was down the
steep grasslands and slopes into desert valleys, and up again, past
pockets of jungle, in
blazing morning tropical sunlight, and eventually onto the back of the
Cobra’s Hood, a topographical singularity. All around the clear solar
rays battered down, and I trudged down to meet the train.

-y-
Hampi, Karnataka

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By admin, December 24, 2008

-The Midlands of India: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, & Madhya Pradesh
-Nov-Dec 2008
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“My subject matter was still inevitably myself: my life, my experiences, my hopes, my disappointments, and my loves…To deal with myself I had to treat myself with greater objectivity, to examine myself in the way a protagonist is examined in a novel. A described life is not the same as a real one. Living is not an art, but to write of life is…Life is disorganized, lacks shape…lacks story.” –Christopher Priest, The Affirmation

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http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/TreesOlderThanMountains/TreesOlderThanMountains.html
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/GEOMagazineInterviewDec08_cover.JPG
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/GEOmagazineInterviewDec08_low.jpg (Photo by Andrew Larson)
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It’s in chronological order. But every paragraph has a Dot.
Dots struggle, and Dots grow stronger.
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It has been far too long since I have seen the ocean. Nowadays in India, people fear the coast. I can hear the waves drifting to me on the clouds…But the grand valley, the heart of India, sings a song, in Hindi, and the first days of November 2008 found backpack and sneakers back on the tree-trail. For six weeks I traveled in the Midlands, by train, bus, car, wagon, tractor, pushbike, motorbike, foot. Eastwards from Delhi to Patna, the Capitol of Bihar, where strange rounded buildings, Shiva banyans, and sprawling museums add interest to a city renowned for it’s negative qualities. The city is less unpleasant than its reputation, and although the air is horrendously polluted, there are smiles everywhere we go. A morning train brings us to Rajgir, and into the history of the Jains and the Buddhists.

A huge Ficus tree muscularly reposes beneath the unexpected white mountain ridges of southern Bihar. Ages ago, on the modest rocky heights, both Siddhartha the Buddha and Mahavira the Jain Tirthankara developed new philosophies that still resonate today. In my ridiculously simplistic word triplets: The first- clear your mind! The second- Every soul’s divine! Both a rejection of Brahmin Hindu caste divisions, and both still aapplicable today. With Walt & Jin-hee, I arrange lodging at a Burmese monastery and clamber onto the mass of parallel hills. Nearby, at Nalanda, the site of an ancient Buddhist University 1800 years ago, I find an oddity: an 8-branched dwarf date palm. Long ago, the students would study books as well as the blankness of their interior minds- the struggle to sit still and clear themselves of their desires and distractions. Every one of the Burmese monks had a quiet glow radiating from them.

Splitting from my friends, I travel to the most sacred of all Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and India’s Landmark Tree, the Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya. At this very site, under the immediate ancestor of the Ficus religiosa tree standing there now, Buddha attained enlightenment. Buddhists and Hindus from around the world come to pay their respects to the tree and the location, and in a lovely garden temple complex, this Very Old Tree marks the Big Event. Siddhartha denied all desires for 49 days, and then Something Clicked. It’s a sprawling Peepal tree, and certainly one of the most remarkable specimens I’ve seen. But like any holy site, there’s a strange feeling for those who are not believers or practitioners. Visiting this tree had been foremost in my plans from the beginning of my project, and yet I could only bring myself to stay for a day. A very peaceful tourist and monastery town, countless souls clear their minds of desires for the past and future here; while I, contrary as could be, hurried on to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, to see the Ganga and get lost in the famous maze of alleys and avenues.

Waranasi, as it’s pronounced, is a legend, for its age, its atmosphere, its importance, and its relationship with the Ganga River. The truth of the legend was a pleasantly intense mix of religious piety, backpacker comforts, filthy alleys, inspiring riverside locations, and a constant hum of activity. Smoke in the air from burning bodies, where devout Hindus aspire to have their funereal rites performed. Inevitably, one must inhale some wisps of this smoke, inspiration of a different type! A handful of fantastic old trees landmark the long walk up and down the river along the cement Ghats (steps). If you are a foreigner, you will be constantly approached by hardworking young men, who like many others are selling saab kuch (everything)…clothes, train tickets, hotels, music lessons, drugs, whatever you desire. At first, like all other tourists, I felt a bit threatened by the attention, and certainly these fellows didn’t appreciate the don’t-bother-me-hostility radiated back at them from the foreigners. But this is soul-destroying. I wanted to step through that shadow and come out on the other side with a healthier way of interacting with them. A certain portion of their interest in me was obviously financial, but I tried my utmost to recognize the other portion, that of friendly interest in the visiting foreigner. Once I acknowledged that, I could attempt a friendly conversation. Clearly, Varanasi is a holy city, and this permeates the atmosphere, but I was constantly reminded that it is also a working town, and tourism is a major industry.

I encounter many other foreigners, and amongst us Americans, something is different…When asked “Your country name?”, that tragic millisecond of hesitation is shrinking, as the rest of the world blinks away tears of frustration with our government. With a Korean Christian traveler, I made it to Sarnath on the outskirts, the site of Buddha’s first sermon, and the location of Ashoka’s iconic 4-sided lion statue, the emblem of India’s government. Ashoka’s reign is still recalled as enlightened and prosperous…after all of the trials that this region of the subcontinent has been through over the 23 centuries, surely we can hope to say things are still enlightened, and prosperous…can’t we?

Allahabad, on Children’s Day, Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday, and his hometown. Harit, a Delhi friend studying at the Agricultural School, provided the perfect tour guide, from the orchards of the School to the Immortal Tree at the Fort, to the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers. At Anand Bhavan, JN’s home, cultural celebrations marked the event, and the presence of a Angrezi (Britisher, as people assumed me to be) was an minor event all of its own. Harit and I entered into the museumized house. To give you an idea of the reverence Pandit Nehru is held in: we saw several labeled items and places of importance from his life: ‘British Driver’s License’, ‘Tennis Racket’ ‘Shaving Brush’ ‘Umbrella Handle’ ‘Travel Electric Iron’ and my favorite- ‘Spare Button’. And Gandhi-ji was also there in those days- ‘Here the Congress Working Committee Took Momentous Decisions’, ‘Here Mahatma Gandhi Worked’, and ‘Mahatma Gandhi Often Stayed Here’. Like Emperor Ashoka long before, these two men are still held up as paragons. It was the British Driver’s License that offered me the most insight into their motivations. Both JN and MG had studied and lived in London, and undoubtedly had Britisher friends, intimates, classmates, and neighbours. And yet these young friends of theirs would be assigned to a British India government position, and hold the fate of crores and lakhs of JN’s and MG’s contemporaries in their hands. It was these two men who took the concept of India as a single nation from the British, and they were the most keenly despairing of the Partition. And fortunately, when these momentous, world-defining events were occurring, Nehru had at least one coat-button in reserve.

An afternoon train to Lucknow, (the city with the most optimistic name) delayed far into the night. An ancient chair car, with dirt clinging to the walls, was my conveyance. The chair before me reclined too close, and asymmetrically, and there was at least one cockroach exploring its surface. I don’t know what it’s living off of in the train car, but like all roaches it was a surely tougher than nails, and perhaps more content with its surroundings than I was. I closed my eyes and at midnight I arrived in Lucknow, to attend a conference on “Plant Life Through The Ages” at Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany. They had offered me a University hostel room, and I expected to quietly disappear and go to sleep. But no, it was also Birbal Sahni’s birthday, and in honour of their founding paleobotanist, there was a big party in progress. I finally pulled myself away, and went to sleep remembering that I had a presentation I needed to write in the next 48 hours. But for me, deadlines are best when they are tight, and in inspiring surroundings. I had both- The Institute is the world’s largest collection of fossil plant experts, and their much-anticipated conference was soon enough. Amongst the museum displays, library, and experts located here, it was an excellent chance to brush off such lovely sounding words as Cenozoic, Phanerozoic, Mississipian, Dadoxylon, paraphyletic, and to work on some sort of synthesis in my own mind between plant branching patterns and taxonomy.

The conference was a magical experience. I met a handful of scientists who knew Estella Leopold and her pollen lab (my introduction and inspiration in paleobotany), and learned about some fantastic research going on. There are too many interesting things, and too many research directions. It seems that most every ecology scientist is suffering from almost-crippling curiousity and overenthusiasm and never enough time to satisfy it. There were business cards handed out, telephone magazine interviews, frantic typing and presentation-building sessions, tea breaks, international and Indian scientists, and of course research presentations. If you are interested in life on Earth- and at some level that means green plants- then this was a fascinating crowd. All these ancient producers of energy- photosynthesizers- evolving through countless stresses to form such strange things as roses, gaarlic, strangler banyan figs. A distressing number of the paleobotanists’ sessions were textbook examples of poor communication skills- powerpoint slides completely filled with small text, constant allusions to esoterica that the viewer was assumed to know, and general lack of narrative. Sitting through some of them was arduous. But entirely educational, and I was happy to share my own esoteric contribution. (Link below to the presentation, ‘Trees Older Than Mountains’.)

Exploring Lucknow with Amy, another Fulbright Scholar, and Mr. Kim, a Korean backpacker. We had to bluff, cajole, and plead our way into the Botanical Gardens, which surprisingly are not generally open to the public. Following the classic tourist route, we took rental bikes to the Bara and Chota Imambara (Big and Small Palaces), opulent structures built by the Nawab-Kings and maintained as the city’s premiere attractions. The Martiniere, on the other side of town, was a bit more of an architectural mash-up, with funny statues, Muppetesque lion sculptures, and empty rooms to sneak through and imagine when India’s richest man used to reside here. Despite many similarities with Delhi, Lucknow seems a more functional and pleasant town than the Capitol. Riding a bicycle in the motortraffic was horrible, but we soon learned the hang of it. Driving or biking or walking on Indian roads requires fatalism, and far less active concentration. When a truck with forty-six people and two cows piled on it is sneaking up behind you while blasting a horn that maxes out your ears, you do whatever it takes to move through.

Out of Lucknow, two excellent adventures to visit two wonderful trees: The Giant Akshayvat Vriksh Banyan at Majhi, only twenty kilometers away but generally unknown, and Kaleemullah’s Masterpiece Mango. The Giant Banyan is insanely large, one of the world’s most fantastic multi-stemmed banyan figs. it’s surrounded by mango orchards now, but has obviously stood there for many centuries. In those years, the surrounding forest must have changed beyond recognition. For some reasons of reverence or prudence, people let it stand and it’s now a last reminder of jungle long gone. (Later, I would burn out my eyes on Google Earth aerial photos trying to locate it amongst the checkerwork of orchards.) Not far away, at Abdullah Nursery, Kaleemullah Khan is an elderly Urdu gentleman renowned for his mango crops. As an experiment, or amusement, he began grafting different mango varieties onto a single tree, cutting a sprig from a separate tree and binding it to a cut on the target tree. Over twenty years, he has succeeded in grafting 312 flavours. While his English was nonexistent, and my Urdu/Hindi halting, we still managed to have a satisfying afternoon visiting this tree, and my only regret was that I wasn’t there for the fruiting or flowering season.

Escape from Uttar Pradesh (”North State”) into Madhya Pradesh, (”Middle State”). MP is vast and central, and I had been told of some rugged jungley mountainous areas in the central highlands. Arriving into MP I had the simultaneous experiences of spending an entire night at the rail station (Sleeping on concrete isn’t as uncomfortable as one would expect) and finding that Lucknow interview published in glossy GEO magazine. (Article linked below) I arrived to Khajuraho in the north. This town, surrounded by farmfields and not much else, is famous for its temple sculptures, which one brochure describes as “uncompromisingly erotic.” The temples are impressive, and without much work you can find some charmingly sexual stonework. Indeed, the sculptors ingeniously captured the sly smiles, twinkling looks and sideways glances of the mating Homo sapiens. But equally educational was the gauntlet out in the tourist town, where, like Varanasi, dozens of young men worked at meeting foreign tourists to sell whatever services were desired. While the initial thought might be that they are all trying to cheat foreigners, I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s mostly manipulation by politeness. The storekeepers and prospecting tour guides are keenly aware of Western social mores, and the innate inability of backpackers to simply say “no” to a friendly person. But like I had been thinking in Varanasi, there’s another portion of their interest beyond the ambition, and since I was utterly in control of the financial relationship, I could have the space I needed to make a friendly relationship. I made two friends, Sumit & Baba, and we explored the older parts of town and beyond. A set of dramatic rocky ridges beckoned nearby, but these two had never climbed onto the mountain. Without much convincing required, we started across the fields and up through the thorny plants. We soon crested the ridge, and rambled along above the small cliffs across a series of summits. Both of my new friends were amazed and pleased at the experience of climbing a mountain, and I did everything I could to convince them to take an ecotourism angle to distinguish themselves from all the other a young men working hard. The landscape was punctuated dramatically by these ridges, and up above we could forget the twin desires clinging to Khajuraho- the sexual desires trapped in stonework, and the opportunistic desires that foreigners trigger by the strength of dollars, Euros and yen.

East of Khajuraho is Panna Tiger Reserve. Just near this National Park, I was acquainted with Raghu, a tiger-specialist and acquaintance through other ecologists. Millions of years of evolution and struggle, and somehow is the cat of fearful symmetry, an iconic, deadly, and enchanting survivor. Lifetimes of valiant efforts by biologists like Raghu have only slowed the demise of the cat to the rifle and axe. He graciously hosted me, despite a busy schedule preparing a hotel business, and was able to take a morning ride through the Reserve with me. It’s a large area of healthy jungle, and even though I paid the horrific foreigners price of 2,000 rupees, that wasn’t enough for a tiger sighting. In fact, this high ticket price (far beyond the Indian prices), even when combined with the town nearby, and the ecotourism resorts, and the vehicle safari fees, and the mandatory guides, and the government regulations, and the layers of bureaucrats, and the prestige of being a Tiger Project Sanctuary, and our open-top jeep, and my host’s decades of expertise and experience, wasn’t enough to provide a view of those wonderful, threatened cats. Can you guess the reason? …There may be, at most, a single tiger remaining there, and I suspect this is only so because you can never prove a negative statement.

To the northern MP town of Gwalior, where the Fort dominates the skyline, and where Emperor Akhbar’s famous gem, Tansen the musician is buried next to a famous but deceased jujube tree. It was here, on Election Day, that the news reached me of ongoing events in Bombay, far away on the coast. A chill descended on the country. But the blood and tears may make Nehru’s vision stronger in reality: as Indians of all religions and communities are targeted not for their fractured identities but for their Indian identity. I can think of no stronger way to create a national identity than to hurt people enough to make them contemplate what they’ve been clinging to. We shall see how India reacts…is the USA a model to emulate? Unfortunately, the audacity and lethality of those ten demons in Mumbai was forged in the heat of the pursuit, as the USA, India, and allies tries to chase them down in the mountains just above.

Gwalior, though, is an interesting town, with the Fort to remind you of the periodic fighting between prospective kings, and the strength of their empires finally submitting to the Britisher’s rifles, and then ultimately to Gandhi-ji. It’s a massive block of sandstone with elaborate fortifications, with no approach not guarded securely. On top are several landmarks- a Sikh Gurudwara, a massive antenna, a museum, an old palace, and a peepal tree perched right on the edge of the block. From all of east Gwalior, a glance back at the Fort and this young tree is prominent like a flag- a perfect landmark! At the Gurudwara, Kristiana, an Italian woman, and I accepted an invitation to join them to see the prayer hall and eat a meal. Picture this if you will: hundreds of people sitting on the floor, and members of the community coming past with giant cookpots of dal (lentils), rice, and chapati (flatbreads). No matter your station in life- whether a scientist or tour guide or beggar- you put out your hands in supplication and get the fuel for life. Setting aside the spiritual and historical aspects of the Sikh religion for a moment, and looking at it minimally as a social community- consider what it would mean in your life if you knew you would *never* starve. All visitors are welcome to be fed at a Gurudwara (for work exchange, though). For two Western visitors from wealthy countries with few people in grinding starvation, the experience was striking. We fight for human rights, and consumer rights, with our cultural mechanisms, but the Sikh people need not this help. Through starvation and armies spilling over their homeland, they’ve integrated many wise practices, and it shows in confidence and stature.

In the railway junction town of Jhansi, I met up with my colleague Emma, from Finland, and we spent a weekend in the palace towns of Orchha and Dhatia. First, an interminable bus ride to Dhatia, where almost no tourists visit. A seven-storied palace, shaped as a swastika, was perhaps the most exquisite piece of architecture we had yet seen in India. Then, we returned to Orchha, where a handful of massive palaces sprawled on a river-island. We explored the buildings, which that famous Australian travel guidebook brilliantly describes as ‘an assault course of steep staircases, precipitous walkways, bamboo scaffolding, and rubble-filled rooms’. Coincidentally, we met four more Finns, and a young local girl named Hirdesh working as a guide. We were, I confess, charmed by her perfect English and forthright manner. She was the only girl working as a prospecting guide, and as we learned later was sending herself and her brother to school. This teenage girl had far more responsibilities than Emma or I had at the same age, and her ability to do so translated into confidence. We hired her to conduct a tree tour of town, and first to take us just south of town. I had spotted, in the cold morning fog, a giant Baobab tree, and we made our way there to take photos and interviews at sunset. Baobabs, with their grotesquely fat trunks and undersized branches, are amongst the world’s most remarkable trees, and though I had seen many picture books of them in their native Africa, this was the first baobab of any size I had ever seen. A landmark tree of distinction and wonder! The kids playing there told us it was named Mallanimli, and it was sheer delight to dance around the tree…. sorry, I mean, to get some work done, as the sun set.

Crossing the Line of Cancer and arriving into the Earth’s tropics, I arrived in Bhopal on the first days of December, not realizing the significance of the date. At midnight Dec 2-3rd, 1984, in a spasm of death, Bhopal joined Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the history books. A cloud of toxic methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide Factory in the NW part of town, and more than 20,000 people died immediately, died later, or are dying from their exposure. With my friend Vinod, we went to the gates of the factory on the 24th anniversary, where a handful of somber events marked the occasion. I wish I could write that the people were stronger for their experience, and that India and industry had learned and accepted the lessons from the event. Undoubtedly, there are some survivors who have become eloquent campaigners and activists for environmental justice. Amidst the euphoria of wealth creation and industrial growth, we must listen carefully to hear them.

Near Bhopal, a quick trip to see the Great Buddhist Stupa at Sanchi, the ancient Pillar of Heliodorus, and the Udaigiri caves carved into a rocky hill. All are steeped in ancient mysteries, and remind one of the long histories of civilization in the Midlands. But next- to Pachmarhi, the land of the Gonds, and a highland area of great scenic beauty and wild jungles. I suppose one nice thing about living in noisy, polluted, dangerous cities is the absolute joy triggered by exploring a wild place. I had heard of MP’s jungles from Delhi tree guru Pradip Krishen, and his expertise and connections in this small hill station were invaluable. Pachmarhi is set in a valley perched in a craggy sandstone plateau, with jagged peaks, slot canyons, and strange formations abounding. This, officially, was tropical jungle!

Over five days, I explored forest trails, along carved sandstone reminiscent of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. A pushbike rented allowed for easy access to many locations, and I think after a few hard pedals up slopes I managed to knock the rust out. On top of Chaurigarh Peak, a small stunted but living semal tree is adorned by countless tridents that pilgrims carry up in honour of Shiva; at Mahadeo a shrine is ensconced far back in a cave; at the lake a giant Semal makes for a good sunset point; ancient Buddhist Caves at Pandav are decorated by gardens; a small limestone layer exposed by a very deep slot canyon inspires a shrine in a small dissolved cave, and scattered remnants of the Britishers brings a colonial ring to the place. This foray into scrubby tropical jungle made a great impression on me, not least as it was the original home of the Gond people. I can’t exactly say I met any Gonds during my trip, but historically this region was inhabited by a people with ancestry older than the later Hindu arrivals. In Tasmania, any biogeographer can spin you a tale of the vast land Gondwanaland…when Australia, South America, Africa, New Zealand, and those two rogues Antarctica and India were all one cozy supercontinent. But things have changed, and they’ve all split apart. Antarctica sulked off to its frosty solitude, and India, more sociable by far, went screaming north to embrace Asia. The Himalaya is their offspring, and all of these landmasses retain strong biological evidence of Gondwanaland. As it went northwards through the latitudes, the plants and animals and everything else adapted to the difficult changes in conditions -or died- but they certainly couldn’t change their ancestry. So after years of talking about Gondwanaland, to finally be in the namesake locality was a happy achievement.

Two more destinations finished off six weeks of travel, and by this point the overstimulation and excess of experiences was already causing me to think of my quiet apartment in Delhi. In Western Madhya Pradesh- Mandu, on a dramatic basaltic (?) plateau, home of elaborate Mughal palaces, and adorned with many baobabs. These trees (and Mallanimli) were all brought over from Africa as exotic decorations, and though none approached Mallanimli for scale or sheer drama, they added a strange and magical feel to the place. While far from their home, and likely far from their coevolved pollinators, they seemed relatively healthy and happy trees. Mandu was filled with Indian tourists, glad the quiet fields and cliff lines of the plateau.

Lastly, Ujjain, the center of the Universe. A sacred city to Hindus, and officially the center of the Universe according to Indian astrology. My Delhi neighbour Addy, a native of the city, got me in touch with his friends and family, and the hospitality was absolutely optimal. Abhay, his friend from childhood, took me around town to see Siddhavat, a tree pointing the pathway straight to heaven. At the ghats along the river, and a second time at the Mahakaleshwar temple marking the centre of the Universe, we found trident trees- three tree species growing out of a single fused base. Wonderful. It was in Ujjain that I finally saw my first elephant in India! And then, a final destination, the Jantar Mantar, an astronomical observatory hundreds of years old reminded me about Indian astrology and its differences from Western astronomy. The first was founded in religion, and the difficulties of human existence. The second was founded in ocean waters, and the difficulties of navigation. Both are still practiced today, and Ujjain’s line of longitude is still used as the basis for all calculations.

So, through the midlands, from the heart of Buddha’s history, to the center of the Hindu Universe, I had collected experiences and adventures in excess, and I knew it was time to leave for a safe and familiar place. For all the travails it was a sublime expedition, fully awash in ancient history, lovely people, spiritual roots, magnificent cultures, and about sixty landmark trees. It was time to put some sort of mental definition to it, and turn, only forward toward the next field trip…

…Of course, I arrived back to Delhi to more excitement: a quartet of houseguests, long lost friends from Seattle finishing a disastrous near-fatal Himalayan climbing trip, a rose garden picnic, a high tea with US diplomats, an eco-art festival with a tour to Delhi’s sewage plant along the Yamuna River, two more elephants, and, best of all, on the Winter Solstice, the 25 km walk from Qtub Minar to the Red Fort. So much to do in Delhi, and amidst the chaos, a great place for exploring and making friends. But when your stories turn into mere listings of events, separated by commas, it is time to finish off your tales, forget the chronology, and focus on the Dots.

-y-

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http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/yopho/-y-The_Strength_of_the_Dots/
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/TreesOlderThanMountains/TreesOlderThanMountains.html
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/GEOMagazineInterviewDec08_cover.JPG
http://www.treeoctopus.net/india/GEOmagazineInterviewDec08_low.jpg (Photo by Andrew Larson)

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Dots struggle, and Dots grow stronger.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EmaciatedBuddha.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodh_Gaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwalior
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khajuraho
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tansen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Akbar_and_Tansen_visit_Haridas.jpg
http://www.vsaint.com/prince/ch5.html

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