A Holiday to Remember

Thanksgiving seemed ever so surreal this year.

Evan, Sarah and Oliver joined the two of us at the Lonergans’ Oak Park home, and Alissa nicely managed her first ever holiday turkey feast, serving up not only all the essentials and pumpkin pie for desert but adding a pumpkin cheesecake to the mix as well.


However, in the background loomed the disconcerting news from Mumbai, deep into the second day dealing with a series of devastating terrorist attacks. The saga has continued unfolding even this morning with commandos still seeking to clear out remaining terrorist holdouts in at least two locations, the Taj Hotel and Towers and a conservative Jewish community center.

Furthermore we have become aware that some of the reports found in the New York Times are being filed from the scene by Jeremy Kahn, a friend of Evan and Sarah’s whom we are planning to see in Dehli next week!

We’ve also been contacted via email by a tour traveling companion wondering about what we make of the situation and its potential effect on our trip to India. We’ve replied that we still plan to go (!) and, on the basis of earlier experiences in similar circumstances while traveling in Europe, expect that “things will work out for the best.” Of course, the entire situation is still quite fluid – which only adds to the tenuous sense of what the immediate future holds in store …

Surreal, indeed!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - A (Very Personal) Film Review

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, which we saw yesterday afternoon at the Century Theater in Chicago, proved to be an astonishing film, a fantasy romance set amidst the endless complexities of contemporary life in India, particularly Mumbai (the site of a coordinated terrorist attack targeting two luxury hotels, a hospital, the train station and other sites throughout the city even as we watched the movie).

Director Danny Boyle hurtled us, his rapt audience, through an ever-changing kaleidoscope of images and set pieces, rummaging through slum and mansion, organized crime gang life, back office call centers, abandoned high rise construction sites, crowded train stations, alleyways, brothels, even airport runways!

One sequence stitched together a fascinating loop of scenes set on various trains racing through the countryside (clearly a reference to Boyle’s earlier hit film, TRAINSPOTTING). We’re even taken to the Taj Mahal but see it from a totally different perspective (a cautionary tale for us soon-to-be visitors, one involving shoe thefts and clueless “innocents abroad”).

The bits of humor sprinkled throughout often focused, in fact, on stereotypical tourists – Australian, German, American – as well as British call center supplicants angered by being shuttled off to Indian respondents. The cultural gap between East and West was thus yet another theme explored in passing; so, too, were Bollywood films, Hinduism, sanctioned police brutality, rapid economic change, family ties, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and the persistence of True Love through all manner of time and circumstance.

The resulting stew proved riveting – and, truth be told, a bit daunting. On our way out of the theater, Heidi remarked “Maybe I’ve had enough of India,” even without setting foot in the country itself! Clearly, for her at least, it provided a wake-up call, throwing into sharp relief the distinction between a fifty-year-old idealistic set of images and dreamscapes and the hard realities of the early twenty-first century.

We found Thailand upon our return visit in 2003, nearly forty years after our Peace Corps years, to have been transformed beyond our wildest imaginings. Likely India will prove at least as revelatory an experience, one transforming our expectations into concrete experiences.

Our trepidation, as a consequence, has only increased, if only in light of the fact that this distance between image and reality, expectation and experience has grown exponentially, just in the past few days!

Thanksgiving Eve 2008

The Megabus trip yesterday between Cleveland and Chicago took a bit longer than driving, but – even with the local rapid transit rides tacked on either end – we still arrived in Oak Park before 4:00 p.m. I don’t mind driving but found the time passed much more enjoyably when I could read and listen to my iPod Touch and look out over the countryside from the top of the double decker bus instead ...

After an early dinner, Alissa and Ted went off to see CHANGELING while we took care of the grandchildren, reading those interested some of the books about India we had brought with us as gifts. We escaped the snow swirling around when we left Cleveland and seem assured of sunny (if seasonably cold) weather over the next several days, a welcome respite from Cleveland’s cloudy gray.

This afternoon the two of us are off to see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, a much-anticipated prelude to our trip. The reviews (and a personal recommendation from friends in San Francisco) have been particularly complementary. We were pleased to discover it showing here in the Chicago area – it won’t open at the Cedar Lee in Cleveland Heights until mid-December. Tonight, after the movie, we’ll have supper with Evan, Sarah and Oliver in their Lincoln Square home before returning to Oak Park.

Sounds like a good way to spend the day before Thanksgiving …

In Anticipation

Early tomorrow morning we are off for Chicago, taking the Megabus to be with the Lonergans and the Evan Makelas for Thanksgiving. The trip will seem something like a shakedown cruise for the longer trek to Delhi scheduled for a week from today. Since we will be back here Saturday evening, we will have a day and a half to recover and to pack up for that trip; but, certainly, anticipation hangs heavily in the air this evening, believe me!

Partially this sense of anticipation revolves around the uncertainty surrounding what lies ahead. Not that we both haven't traveled internationally prior to this. Lee, in fact, spent a day in Mumbai, then Bombay, back in 1962 (on the same voyage during which he stopped off in Sri Lanka -- then Ceylon -- as well as Singapore and Saigon ); both of us have been elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, too: Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia ...

But India is something else again. On the one hand, we might find the atmosphere like that of Thailand in the mid-nineteen-sixties or Japan a few years earlier. But, certainly the cities will seem, at least to some degree, much more integrated into the global community than either Bangkok or Tokyo was "back in the day." And neither country was nearly as poor nor as crowded even then as India is today.

I often caution my students, when discussing Chinese history and culture, to avoid saying "the Chinese" since it's impossible to categorize an entire population of over a billion with a single adjective. Clearly the same is true of India. On the other hand, I'm sure, once we are on the scene, we'll make some categorical generalizations and feel some kind of general emotional reaction (empathy? detachment? unease?) that will serve as a touchstone thereafter. What that reaction will be, however, remains the great unknown at this moment in time.

And therein lies the anticipation.

... and a Quiet Sunday

A sunny, but VERY cold, day, perfect for staying inside and reading through the New York Times Sunday edition and our local newspaper. All this cold weather will make India's warmth in a couple of weeks all the more welcome!

Among all its many articles today, the Metro section of the Cleveland Sunday Plain Dealer carried a nice, long, illustrated article about yesterday's Shaker Heights street sign sale, making the same point about how the response indicated something special about the nature of our local community identification hereabouts.

A few days ago the paper carried a similar article focusing on the Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights' Candy Circle concluding its activities after some ninety-five years of twice annual gatherings to make hand-dipped chocolates for sale to benefit various church projects and activities. This morning the entire Plymouth congregation honored all those taking a hand in these sessions over the decades with a valedictory during the service followed by a Silver Coffee (using silver donated by the Candy Circle years ago) and announcement that their final project would be to donate the needed funds for a total renovation of the Conference Room, hereafter to be known as the "Candy Circle Conference Room" -- a nice way to honor all those years of service to the congregation (to say nothing of all the sweetness provided during that time)!

Yet another reminder of the very special nature of this particular community ...

A Busy Saturday

Much of the day was spent printing out, addressing and stuffing our annual holiday letter, focused on Thanksgiving this year since we will be away much of the month of December. We also watched Ohio State defeat -- quite handily -- the University of Michigan on T.V. in the final football game of the current season ...

Lee also walked over to City Hall several times hoping to snare one of the "old" Braemar Road street signs being offered for sale beginning today (even though the replacements aren't yet fully in place, at least on our street). No such luck, however. On the first visit he picked up number 240 (!), figured it would be a couple of hours before he could get in to the display area to see if one of the two signs available was still around, and returned home where it was nice and warm to wait 'til noon to return.

On the second trip, he found the numbers only up to 95, went back home again for another couple of hours, walked back again around 2:00 p.m. only to find the available stock had dwindled down to a precious few -- only about twenty were still lying around waiting to be "adopted," not including either of those from our street.

The whole experience just goes to show how much affection folks here abouts have towards their neighborhoods and the city of Shaker Heights in general. Sort of makes you feel good all over -- even if we didn't snag one of the signs for our very own.

Considering Images and Attitudes

Throughout my entire thirty-five year university-level teaching career, I began courses asking students to complete attitude surveys I hoped would capture their existing impressions of the culture, a study of the history of which they were about to embark upon over the weeks and months to come.

The images and attitudes conveyed in these surveys helped me gauge where it was that students stood, as a group and individually, at this critical departure point so that I could link the course effectively to their existing knowledge base. The exercise also provided a benchmark against which these same students could measure their future progress, at least to some degree. Otherwise students often misjudged how much (or how little) they had actually learned over the course of a semester's study of Japanese or Chinese history. Over time another benefit emerged: I could begin to see changes in general American attitudes towards Japan and China reflected in my students responses to three simple questions -- "When you think of Japan (or China), what comes to mind?"; "When you think of Japanese culture, what comes to mind?"; "When you think of the Japanese people, what comes to mind?

In introducing these surveys, I always used "India" as an example, outlining for my students the type of responses I was seeking from them by providing examples drawn from my own personal responses to the survey questions posed above with "India" substituted for "China" or "Japan." I concluded with the following set of summary observations:

I have a fairly specific view of India but in general it lacks depth. I find India as an image is largely depressing although exotic as well. The Indian people fascinate but repel as individuals -- I don't appear to hold them in the best of lights. Indian culture appeals strongly. To sum up briefly, India comes across to me at the moment as a problem area of the world while the Indian people have a favorable image -- at a distance -- and the culture of the country intrigues a great deal.

Interestingly, I have never felt the need to "revise" this set of images and attitudes during the last thirty-five or more years ... until now.

This afternoon I finished reading Mira Kamdar's Planet India which I found to be, among the several books I've read lately in preparation for our trip, to be by far the most useful and informative overview of contemporary Indian life and culture. In her concluding pages, the author sums up the transformation I have come to feel myself in how I have come to see "India" on the eve of our departure:

India has within its grasp all the elements it needs to imagine a different trajectory. Because it is still a developing country, it can chose to develop differently. India does not have to blindly follow the American agribusiness model and become another fast-food nation. It does not have to allow a military-industrial complex to dictate national priorities. It can -- it must --forge its own path, lest a world hell bent on consumption for its own sake and the dangerous vanities of military one-upmanship lead us all into oblivion.

Kamdar's overview provides much more than this, especially in its litany of specific information about the current state of Indian life and culture. I found the book so useful that, although I began reading a copy from our local library, before finishing it, I ordered a paperback version to bring with me on tour to refer to as needed when attempting to identify personalities and products and other particular interests I might want to look into while we are "in country." Her focus on India's "soft power" was also welcome -- I'm very much looking forward to exploring some of its manifestations on the ground from which they originated.

I still am perhaps more tentative and apprehensive about this travel adventure than any other I have ever been on in years past. But the excitement IS building -- and Planet India has provided much of the anticipatory momentum I'm now experiencing.

Preparations All in Hand, We Think!

More than a year ago, shortly after our return from our THIRTY-TWO RAKAN tour of Japan, we decided to act on one of Heidi's most persistent dreams and make plans to travel through India as our next major international travel trek.

Fortunately, good friends and neighbors, Nancy and Tony Saada, had recently traveled there with Overseas Adventure Travel, an agency through which they had taken a number of enjoyable and worthwhile tours in the past. We looked over the OAT itinerary, liked what we saw, called to make reservations and ended up with a December 1, 2008 departure date. We let another good friend (and traveling companion on trips to Kyoto and Macao in 2003) , May Chu, know of our plans; and, lo and behold, she signed on as well together with another one of her friends!

Realizing that our return air flight would take us through London on December 23rd, we decided to realize another long held desire to witness the annual Twelve Lessons and Carols Christmas Eve service at King's College Chapel at the University of Cambridge and made reservations at a Bed and Breakfast in Cambridge where we will spent Christmas 2008.

Our only misstep was not realizing that Thanksgiving this year fell during the last week of November. Although we tried to change our flight reservations once we did, that proved prohibitively expensive. So we are taking the Megabus to Chicago next Tuesday, November 25th, spending the holiday in Chicago, returning to Cleveland on Saturday, November 29th, then flying out to Dehli (via Chicago!) on December 1st. At least Lee won't have to make the drive back and forth to the Windy City by automobile ...

Otherwise, with lots and lots of Pingo phone calls to England, emails to contacts in India and other bits and pieces of communication, everything seems "ready to go" at this point. We've done lots of reading, bought new suitcases and other travel paraphernalia, even borrowed a brand new small portable laptop computer from Cleveland State University's Department of History to make this blogging process a bit easier to manage over the weeks ahead.

So there you have it: the first entry in yet another series of travel blog entries ...