There Are Two Sides to Every Rupee

It comes at you like a runaway freight train, that slack-jawed, saucer-eyed cartoon face: “Why, in God’s name, would you want to go there?”

Trying to explain why isn’t so simple: It’s not a vacation; it’s an experience, and one that will shift your perspectives irrevocably.

In the world’s largest democracy, reason is nothing short of unreasonable, time is folly, and your gut is far too busy working overtime on a bacterial masala to be trusted. Unlike an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation, packaged in percale predictability, you do not take a trip to India; it takes you.

Journeys south of the Indus River will take your breath away for all the right — and wrong — reasons; yet trying to separate the good from the bad would be like trying to shave the face off a coin.

***

The Depths

A few steps off Chowringee Road, and several steps back in time, barely stands the nearly 150-year-old New Market. Inside, lining the ramshackle halls: five-foot-high sacks bulging with cloves, curry leaves, and cardamom; a phalanx of purple Santas jam cheek-by-cotton-bearded-jowl clogging the aisles, while glittering saris of every hue flow above.

I had just ordered a chai at a stall when I feel a tug at my kurta. I shrug off the clinging children in Hindi and then in English, “Sorry, no rupees for you. Excuse me.” The counterman shushes them away to no avail as he warns me not to look at the “beggar boys.” I pay for my tea, turn toward the exit — then something in the haze of my peripheral vision freezes me in my tracks. There, a little boy, no older than six, is facing up at me. I stop a breath in my throat, staring in disbelief at the voids where his eyes should be. There, in the open sockets are dark red holes of flesh. My hearing muffles as his soiled face mouths “money — money — money.”

I look away and rummage for my wallet. The chai wallah calls back to me, “No madam, please! Don’t give them money. This is mafia. They will keep doing this to the boys if you give money. This is what they do to boys. Don’t, madam!”

I look back at him; I look back at the boy, my heart thumping, my vision blurring. I kneel down offering to buy them a cold drink or sweets but they insist on money, tugging and yelling, the bigger one reaching into my purse as I push him away, their grease-covered hands grabbing at me. “Please, money! Please, money! Money!”

I want to give something to help — to make it stop — to make them go away, but I counter my instincts and obey the counterman.

I pull my bag tightly, shoulder though the crowd and back out into the blinding chaos of my first morning in Kolkata. And breathe.

***

The Heights

I arrived at the Old Delhi Railway Station in the pitch of a shivering morning.

Wrapped in my oversized shawl, I navigate the iron staircases that bridge above the maze of moonlit tracks looking for the Shatabdi Express to Agra. Up and down from one platform to another I search frantically until I finally find my train, check and double-check the compartment number, then the seat number, exhale, and cozy into my book.

An hour into the ride, I’m lost in my guidebook, so thrilled to finally see the Taj Mahal — “begun in 1632… ‘pietra dura’d’ in semi-precious stones… twenty-two years and 20,000 men to complete…” — when the conductor comes by to check the tickets.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” He scrunches his face and calmly shows me that the car number matches, as does my seat number. I look up at him, “They match, yes? What’s the problem?” He jabs at the destination on my ticket, panting in Hindi, while wildly gesticulating around the train. I stare, bewildered.

A young schoolgirl in the seat ahead of me turns around to translate. She looks at the ticket and back at me quizzically. “Madam, this train is not going to the city of the Taj Mahal. This train is going in the opposite direction. It is going to the border of Pakistan.”

The blood drains from my face and my stomach drops. “But the car and seat number match. How? I asked someone before getting on board if this was the correct train and he nodded, yes.” The girl calmed me and told me to get off at the next stop and change trains there. “Don’t be upset. Everything will be fine; it is your destiny.”

I disembark at Panipat, and with a resigned huff I ascend the metal stairs that creak above the width of the tracks below. As I descend on the other side toward the depot I look out, and there, perhaps 200 pairs of eyes are all staring at this very pale, very tall white girl.

Once on the ground, they crowd around, barely giving me enough berth to allow me to pass. I quickly exchange my ticket, and then I walk to the farthest end of the outdoor platform and light a cigarette.

No sooner does the first puff plume skyward than I hear the shuffling feet — maybe twenty men in total. They encircle me and, sheepishly, I greet with them with “hellos” and “namastes,” although when it’s clear to me that my salutations will not be volleyed back, I thump my smoke toward the track, roll my eyes, and head toward a small group of women.

“Come with us, Madam. Come over here,” the largest in the group yells as she twists her rope of braided black hair back atop her head. “Men are disgusting. Don’t look at them. Where are you headed? Delhi? Oh, very good. There is a women’s car on that train so you sit with us.”

The compartment, with its wooden pews and cageless metal fans bolted to the ceiling, feels like a working-class relic from the Raj. The train grinds slowly through the bucolic landscape, occasionally letting out a metallic wheeze around tighter bends. Outside on the trailing dirt road, a girl in a green sari switches the hind of a water buffalo and waves.

“Madam, would you mind to please smoke a cigarette for us? The girls would like to see this.”

I was now learning the reason why I had recently been gang-circled by gawking men earlier: “You see, only prostitutes and low women smoke. This is funny.” The young girls in their school uniforms crowd around me, giggling and covering their smiles as I take one out, tap the butt against my Gold Flakes pack, light it, and in my best Catherine Deneuve, deeply French Inhale. I blow the smoke out the window and stub it out on the clapboard floors to the applause of the entire car.

And now, I’m asked to autograph their schoolbooks. I don’t even flinch; I go further and actually draw cartoons of myself, and a map of America, and what ends up looking like a severely disabled Lady Liberty.

The mothers in the group offer me their breakfasts from battered tins: spicy potatoes and curried peas with bits of naan, and from a thermos I’m poured steaming chai into tiny clay cups. Conversations overlap and addresses are swapped.

Then about eight or ten of the girls all turn to face me, jockeying into place, preparing for something. One of the older girls steps forward, just a couple feet away, and begins to sing. The other girls join in unison, a rolling Hindu hymn in perfect soaring harmony. The train is clacking along the countryside, past the crumbling temples, the morning smoke from kitchens rising. A temple bell clangs.

And this singing. And the mothers looking proudly on and beaming in my direction while arching their brows for approval. I smile broadly and nod humbly.

I glance out the window and back to the girls, and to the mothers, and to the wobbling ceiling fan above, and I try to hold it all in.

Call it destiny or call it kismet. I call moments like these the golden threads in the embroidery of our sackcloth existence. So seldom do we ever find more than a few glimmering strands in our lives, but today an entire glorious tapestry rolled out before me and nearly tripped me over.

***

I have often said that it is impossible to talk about India without littering your speech with an avalanche of antonyms: revolting and resplendent, putrid and perfumed. The country is the geographical embodiment of cruelty and kindness, yet over time, the good memories glitter over the garbage, and that’s what lures you back — just hop on any wrong train and it’ll take you exactly where you really need to go.

The Women of Panipat

09.12.01 Ten Years On

“Let then come to New York, stand on the shores of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window—no, I don’t feel how small I am—but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” The Fountainhead

***

In the hinterlands of central Burma, in the pitch of night, a man threw open the clapboard shutters of his shop, cranked up his generator, turned on the television, and yelled for his neighbors to come see what was happening. They came scurrying down the dirt streets and stood, mouths agape, their faces illuminated by the flickering images of a faraway land of modernity crumbling to a smoldering heap. “Many people not see these buildings before this time—we can’t believe,” Mr. Nynt told me in 2005. “And we cry for America. Everybody cry.”

The whole world owns September 11th, 2001. No matter where you go, everyone has a story and they love to tell it. And we, as New Yorkers, listen—sometimes humbled, sometimes annoyed—but we get it: they own it, too.

But only New Yorkers own September 12th. Trying to explain to someone what it was like in the days that followed is like trying to teach someone to jump rope in a tar pit.

The idea of concentrating on a book while riding the subway was unfathomable on the day after, and it would be like that for months. On that first morning, heading into work with a bundle of newspapers clutched to my chest, I sat on the farthest end of the subway. If they chose to bomb us today, I thought, they’d enter from the middle of the car; I might have a fighting chance by the connecting door.

The only sounds on the A Train that day, and for some time thereafter, were the rustlings of newspapers and gentle murmurs of “excuse me”s and “I’m sorry”s. And in between the turning of a page, you’d lock eyes with a stranger and force a half-smile. We’d nod in silence as if to say, “I know—me, too.”

On 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue I passed policemen in bomb gear strapped with machine guns standing sentry by Port Authority, by the subway entrances, and on the corners down the block. Already the fliers looking for lost husbands, girlfriends, daughters, sons were plastered everywhere: “Have you seen…?” And, as if it were our duty as New Yorkers, as hopeless as we knew it was, we’d stop and read them—just in case.

And you could smell it sixty-plus blocks up. You could actually smell it—them—burning.

The new security at the ground floor of the Hilton Times Square inspected my bag as I ascended to Above, the north-facing restaurant on the twenty-first floor, where I was an assistant manager.

I’d barely slept the night prior because I wanted to arrive (uncharacteristically) early for my shift. I’d already seen the televised coverage, but now I needed to know it. I put my handbag under the podium and began checking the lunch reservations. Then I heard the janitor cleaning the marble floors in the back of the dining room. I’d seen him before, but we’d only exchanged one-line pleasantries. I went over, he turned off the spinning polisher, and we looked at each other, smiled that half-smile, shrugged and patted backs. I asked if he’d lost anyone, but he couldn’t get the words out—his tears answered my question.

I took the elevator up a couple of floors to the ballrooms that faced south toward downtown. And there in the empty spaces were hundreds of employees weeping at our gaping skyline. And the smoke rising. And the people pointing. And the sniffs. And the arms around each other. And the what-happens-next?

That lunch-into-dinner shift was filled with remembrances from the staff and some from stranded guests who were unable to leave the city as flights wouldn’t resume for another twenty-four hours. “Did you know anyone?” became the common addendum to any greeting. One of my waitresses, Gabby, had known some of the firemen, and she was particularly fragile.

A party of six in the corner was celebrating a birthday as most people do, drinking and laughing: business people stuck with us for another day. They’d go back to their safe communities that terrorists don’t even know exist and worry that Al Qaeda was going to blow up their bank at the strip mall. Gabby was their waitress and it just didn’t seem right to have fun. Not like that and certainly not yet.

I went to the table and whispered to the shrieking woman that while we were grateful that they’d chosen to dine and celebrate with us, her waitress had lost friends at World Trade Center, and if she could please try—just a little bit—to be respectful of that. To her defense she gasped and apologized because, well, she remembered the day that she owned this tragedy—yesterday. For her it was over. For us it had just begun.

I’d held it together quite well throughout until I met an elderly couple from Georgia. They were telling me how they’d watched the whole thing unfold from their hotel window and how they’ll never forget it. But then the lady touched my hand and sweetly asked, “Honey, how are you doing?” And the tears finally came, shaking to a sob. And the tiny woman hugged me.

Later that night security detail swarmed the upper lobby but no one would tell us who was coming. Our bar was packed that night with many first responders and tourists and locals from the neighborhood. And then the elevators opened, and I saw him—a man I once despised, a man whom, years earlier, I’d yelled at from my taxi on 54th Street. But now he was our Churchill, our FDR, the only public official who actually said what we needed to hear at the time—and this time I was the first to applaud Mayor Giuliani. Instantly, the lobby exploded in cacophonous adulation.

It was a time when if two people coughed in a room we thought it was biological warfare. If sirens went off then surely another building was coming down. The subway stalled? They got us again. In a silent moment during a play on Broadway, a garbage truck was heard outside shaking a dumpster and the entire audience froze thinking we were under attack. I didn’t wear heels to the theater, “in case I have to run.” Even hearing from a friend that he was going to a ballgame the following week elicited a bit of warning until he sang, “…buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I ever get back.” We needed that.

But after work on silent cab rides home for months I’d look out at the nighttime skyline of the city I love the best—my home—and wonder how much longer I’d get to love it.

Ten years on I still live in the best city in the world and in the same apartment. My friend who banged on my door and pushed past me to show me that World Trade One had been hit, Teddy Tan, has since passed on. Both of my cats have died. The sofa went curbside. My roommate at the time, Paul Nicely, moved back to Indiana. When New York City’s economy screeched to a halt the following month, I, like many of my co-workers, lost my job. I would remain jobless until the spring. Rudy Giuliani would quickly fall from grace when New Yorkers were reminded that, with the exception of that one brief shining moment, we’d really had enough of his cocky arrogance.

Back then I was asked if I would ever leave New York City. My answer then is my answer now: No. I cannot imagine ever leaving this city. We know an attack will happen again; the astonishing thing is that it hasn’t happened yet. For as long as it is inhabitable I will be here. There are worse things than dying in New York—never having truly lived.

My building's airshaft. Photo by Galen Stolee

Through a Glass Darkly

We’ve seen it all before in one fashion or another: familial callosity, incestuous touchings-upon, and the ever-popular careening head-on to madness. But seldom have we seen these topics imbued with as much passion as in Jenny Worton’s stunning adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly.

Screams cresting on a crashing wave are the first sounds we hear before the lights come up on director David Leveaux’s interpretation of the 1961 Academy Award-winning film. It’s a prescient device that ebbs quickly to laughter while the four characters enter smiling, toweling off from a romp on the beach. Sunbeams are cast on a whitewashed beach house and all seems swell on the Scandinavian coast.

The summer smiles do not last for long, however. The protagonist, Karin, is swept up in a whirl of schizophrenia, succumbing to the voices she hears from behind a papered wall. Her father, a mediocre novelist with a “sliver of ice in [his] writer’s heart,” watches with analytical detachment as his daughter sinks into the deepest end of insanity. Her brother, Maxie, who mirrors his father’s literary ambitions in a desperate bid to please, comforts Karin blindly with deviant sincerity. Her doctor husband, an emotional custodian, will do anything to keep her tethered to reality, but his efforts seem doomed to fail as she slips further and further away.

Bergman centered much of his work, both theatrical and cinematic, around the questioning of God’s existence: pitting the faithful against the faithless. In his earlier works, his arguments bent more toward his Lutheran upbringing, most dramatically in The Virgin Spring, while his later works reveal his apparent adherence to agnosticism. In Through a Glass Darkly, the first in his religious chamber trilogy, it is entirely evident that Karin is mentally ill, and yet Bergman toys, albeit tenuously and briefly, with the prospect that she may actually be right about God’s beckoning. And if not, then how is her belief any different from those who disbelieve her? In the end, the question is one of faith, and being couched in psychosis does not change the reality of the faithful.

Karin is peeled away with lush restraint by Carey Mulligan, a performer of incredible depth. The 26-year-old actress rarely stands flat-footed on the stage — always flitting about charmingly in between emotional collapses — hypnotically impassioned but never histrionic. Ben Rosenfield, as her younger brother, making his professional stage debut, is an alluring force of layered nuances, his internal back stories playing across his face like projected moving pictures. Jason Butler Harner brings a desperate buoyancy to Karin’s husband. Chris Sarandon, as the patriarch, charms in spite of his despicable text, yet his performance seems clapboard amidst the solidity of the rest of the ensemble.

David Leveaux, no stranger to heady works, directs the production with clean constraint. David Van Tieghem’s original music and sound design are astonishing. From his aforementioned ocean waves, to the cries and whispers in Karin’s head, to the almost godlike whirling boom of a helicopter, Van Tieghem’s work is practically a character in itself.  

Through a Glass Darkly weaves linguistic austerity into well-trodden territory. It’s a conventional story spun well by Worton and company, who unspool Karin’s psychological fiber with delicate precision. Not a single word is wasted, nor is a single breath unintended in this powerfully moving production.

Originally published in Show Business Weekly June,  2011