Standard

It is standard for New Yorkers to walk aggressively, ignoring their sidewalk neighbors.

It is standard for birds to fly South in flocks.

It is standard to eat bread with butter.

It is not standard to experience a hailstorm in the summer.

It is not standard to eat applesauce on top of yogurt.

It is not standard for children to hate television.

One time my Mom read me a book about a boy that wished to become a butterfly—even though the standard life span of a butterfly was so short.

I associate the meaning of the word “standard” with butterflies.

Fresh

Fresh vegetables were what I craved for two months in India. While some of my travel buddies had no qualms with munching fresh tomatoes and lettuce that just happened to be served on their plates, I stayed clear of them. I watched people crunch on green produce with envy and resorted to my cooked breads and lentils. The upside: I never got sick. The downside: I became obsessed with open markets and could never indulge in the rainbow of vegetables.

Upon arrival in Munich, Germany, in transit from Delhi to Paris, I bought heaps of greens. I had it all.

Mountain Biking in Utah

I never knew it could be like floating. Like magic.

Yesterday, my father and I awoke at the crack of dawn, flew to Salt Lake City and drove for four hours to Moab, Utah. We arrived for dinner.

All day today, we saw nobody except for our guide within a one hundred fifty mile radius.

On mountain bikes designed by ingenious engineers, we cruised up ledges, down copper dirt, through wet sand.

Patches of snow speckled the eroded sandstone.

Rock salt stains formed plastic shapes in fissures.

A waterfall froze into an ice armchair; my wheels glided over.

I sprung onto Potash and glided on fossils.

Sunlight guided us up, then west.

Airports

First I shed my jacket. Then I kick off my boots. My hat and scarf get a bin for themselves. My backpack can slide in on its own. My laptop comes out of the case, and I (very gently) place it pressed against the edge of a new gray bin, so that the sticky plastic ridges do not soil it while it slides along the conveyor belt. My bracelets of course, because copper sets off the metal detector. Then I chug my water, send the bottle through, and hold my ticket out so that I can enter the airport gate.

Punctuality

With a dry mouth and a handful of grapes, I frequently run out my door on lazy weekend afternoons or on school mornings to meet a friend. I may strive for punctuality; instead I flirt with time. Rather than leave early, I play a masochistic, heart-thumping game to shrink transportation to an impossible slice of time. It is not always worth a five-block sprint to meet a friend for coffee—occasionally, my friends arrive late as well. But I feel most guilty around Claire, my forever-punctual friend, who quietly waits in snowstorms or heat waves and never complains.

Squash

Something thicker, sweeter, yes please.

Swimming in pools is boring, we need…

Something like Jello or pudding or squash.

Cooked or raw? Cooked with mashed peas,

And filled to the brim,

Below the knees.

Mix it with sugar, make a paste.

I dare you to dive in and take a taste!

Make sure to warn the next brave souls

That it is fun and short-lived before it molds.

Be aware of beetles, rats and wasps;

Avoid swimming with them at all costs.

If you need more squash to cover the floor,

Tell me and I’ll ask the farmer for more.

Allowing Sleep (Revised Draft)

(This is my revised draft of my braided essay. My multimedia project, however, is my final project. It currently resides under Barbara’s office door.)

October 17th, 2005
__The hot smell of diesel mixed with fermentation fills my nostrils. The familiar airport smell—that blend of cleaning fluid remnants and stale paint—is not present. This new smell in the Indira Gandhi International Airport has no resemblance to any odors stored in my olfactory memory. Soon I will recognize this smell everywhere, omnipresent, hidden, blunt, breeding, until it disappears.
*
December 5th, 2005
__Have you ever been to a rave before?
__No I have not, why? Have you?
__No but we’re about to.
__What do you mean?
__We’re going to a rave.
__I don’t think I want to do that.
__Yeah let’s go. Hop on, Clo.
__On what?
*
October 17th, 2005
__New Delhi. New Delhi, India. My eyelids are heavy, and my neck craves a massage. My flight for Jaipur leaves in twenty-two hours. Get to the hotel. I clutch the paper proof of my reservation for a twenty-eight dollar hotel. Only seven kilometers from the airport.
*
December 5th, 2005
__This is Rashik. He has a motorcycle.
__Lola, I don’t want to ride on that.
__It’s okay, just get on the back.
__No, Lola. I can’t do that.
__Really?
__Really.
__Why?
__Because it’s a terrible idea. What are you going to ride on?
__On Abdul’s motorcycle.
__Don’t let Abdul drive far away from Rashik. We have to stay together.
__Here, I’ll get on Rashik’s. You ride on Abdul’s.
*
October 17th, 2005
__I spot my tiny green suitcase on the conveyor belt. I need money. Rupees. Slow. Watch. A taxi or rickshaw is offered to me with my every breath and twitch. I take my time and ask nobody anything. Here we go. The little blue rectangle of plastic in my wallet manages to withdraw money from the gray machine. Magic. I take out three thousand rupees. Sixty-six dollars. I know that is more than enough.
__All the women I see flow by me with sweeping saris. Skirt hems reach the tops of their calloused feet. I look down and feel the moist denim on my legs strain. My waistline sinks below my midriff after hours of travel and contortion. Children are barefoot. In the airport too? I flex my toes, protected, inside my hiking boots. Clunk.
*
December 5th, 2005
__The hot air whips through my hair. No helmets really? Oh but at least Abdul has a turban! Great, just great. The motorcycle headlights illuminate cylinders of dust-black sky. Spreading through space. Maybe there are stars but I cannot see them yet. When I grip onto Abdul’s light cotton sleeves, my eyes close. We breathe warmth but there is too much of it. The motorcycles feel like they are flying uphill. The bars of light reveal groomed chaos. Oh, look out. Rock! Nobody is here except for us; the distant moon owns the view ahead, and we own the pitted road. No time for other concerns. I want to know that home—not imminent abduction—is in the future. I pray for this rave to exist.
*
October 17th, 2005
__All I need is a sign that says “MEEP MEEP HERE I COME, THE GRINGA.” Except there is a unique word for Gringa in Hindi.
__Swarms of eyes follow me, and the floor feels sticky. The heat is no longer a strong enough motivation to shed my bug-repellant fishing shirt.
*

I am not taking malaria pills but maybe I should be. No malaria pills bad idea why didn’t you just take the stupid pills what kind of side effects could be worse than malaria? Well actually the side effect of nightmares sounds terrible and scary hallucinations no thanks so maybe I am doing the right thing. But I have to sleep in a mosquito net then and have every piece of skin covered at night so that the mosquitos have no way

*
October 17th, 2005
__“Do you know where the Royal Palace Hotel is?” I ask the eager driver. He is exchanging eye contact with other onlookers, silently bragging that he is the chosen one. Is this really so exciting? Can we just make this happen?
__“Yes yes, no problem. Three fifty.”
__Does he mean dollars? How does he know I am American? I could be a European.
__“Three fifty what?”
__“Yes Madam.”
__“Do you mean Indian money?”
__“Yes Madam, this is India.”
__Three hundred fifty rupees. Obviously.
*
December 5th, 2005
__Cloooo how are you baby? Lola’s voice whistles through the speed.
__I’m good. There is nothing else to say.
*
October 17th, 2005
__The driver is lost. But he is still very happy.
__“How far is this hotel from the airport?”
__“Only seven kilometers, Madam!”
__Before I ask, “Are you sure?” I decide that it is a useless question when we stop at a travel agency so that he can ask for directions.
__“I will come back,” he says to me. The white teeth in his grin reflect the harsh high sun.

__What time is it?
*

to bite me because even though the chances are low I still could get that one scary mosquito that festered in a hot swampy puddle near the sewage of Tilonia and will have contracted malaria in this desert setting even though it is dry and hot and

*
October 17th, 2005
__Twenty minutes alone in the backseat with my small green bag. The honking on the road is an appropriate chorus for the rattling buses, swerving rickshaws, sedentary cows, goat carts, children begging between vehicles, and other automobiles dodging the infinite obstacles in their paths.
__Sweat. Swimming in my socks. Then my happy driver emerges from the travel agency and stands outside the front entrance, propping open the rickety screen door with his shoulder. A scrawny man with legs that appear to be twice the length of his torso stands very close to him and strikes a match on the wall. He simultaneously lights two beadies and they each take one between their lips and inhale.
*
December 5th, 2005
__I see a structure in the near distance. And I hear voices. Whether or not this is a rave, there are people. My finger grip loosens and my breathing slows.
*

apparently has practically no malaria. Who am I believing though? Who actually knows about all mosquitos in a whole entire region of a country? All of Rajasthan has no malaria? That tropical disease doctor has a clean office on Park Avenue with air conditioning and secretaries and I am here wrapped in a mosquito net sweatshirt and have my Aladdin cotton pants tucked into my brother’s socks that I borrowed for well uh two months and this sheet as far as I know has not been washed in ten years so I don’t think I can fall asleep on it and my bug spray smells good to me so why should the mosquitos hate it? I mean citronella is definitely not as gross to a mosquito as poisonous deet. If I eat more raw onions with my meals maybe I

*
October 17th, 2005
__I watch them smoke and talk for five minutes. Take action.
__“So!” I call from the car, my door half open. “Do you know where to go?”
__The driver looks at me as if has forgotten that he is taking me somewhere, and that I paid him already. Stay calm.
__After some more chatting in Hindi with his friend, who has now flicked the beadie onto a patch of broken clay cups, my driver walks towards me and says, “You go in there, you talk to him, he will make you a call.”
*

will taste worse to them. But no, probably not, even the cats here lick the leftover delicious daal that is not supposed to be delicious to cats because it is as spicy as hydrochloric acid and I cry and cry and inhale bottled water every

*
October 17th, 2005
__I leave my green bag in the car. I’m giving this happy man the benefit of the doubt. The scorching mid-day blazes into my retinas but I decide not to sport my sunglasses. This is not the time to look even more like a Gringa. On the small patch of pavement between the car door and the travel agency is a very skinny cow. It turns its head to watch me, horns rotating, lazy eyes. I walk in its direction, and it does not respond, so I walk around it.
__The scrawny man sits at a wooden table with a very old telephone and a stack of papers dividing the table’s rectangular surface into thirds. Next to him is a very fat man leaning against a dark corner, staring at a boy. The boy, wearing bell-bottom jeans, is watching me. Okay.
__I address the scrawny man. I show him the piece of paper that came out of my mother’s printer back in Paris, not so long ago. The Royal Palace Hotel, 14 Palace Road, New Delhi. Three stars. A little picture of the hotel accompanies the address. Even while I was in Paris, I could tell from the awkward tilt of the photograph and the cryptic angle of the building façade that the hotel would not resemble the image. But I assumed it would exist.
__The scrawny man looks at the paper and says, “I see.” He holds it towards his face because there is little light in the room, despite the white light outdoors. The fat man walks over from the corner and the boy joins them. All three men scrutinize the sheet and exchange long monologues in Hindi. The scrawny man lights two beadies and hands one to the fat man and sucks on the other one.
__I peer out the front door to make sure the driver is still there with the taxi, and that my bag is still there. I do not see the driver, but I see the car and my bag in the back.
*
December 5th, 2005
__A whir of light leads us into a field and finally I am alongside Lola again. We are exhausted and alert. A smell of sweet peanut oil wafts from a crowd of people clustered in clumps on the grass. Small gas stoves dot the landscape and illuminate the faces of white and brown people, some with eyes rolled into their heads, some asleep, some singing, some moving almost rhythmically, some with foreheads pressed together, speaking intimately. The sound of rave is penetrating.
*
October 17th, 2005
__Then I spot the driver. He is engaged in a histrionic conversation with a bicycle rickshaw man, who is lounging in the back of his parked open-air vehicle with his calloused feet dangling over the edge of the yellow seat. The rickshaw man suddenly sits up and brings his body upright, and begins to share some chapatti with the taxi driver.
__They are eating.
__He may not know where to go, but this taxi driver is harmless.
*

time I dip the chapatti into the daal so yeah maybe the mosquitos don’t care about hydrochloric acid or raw onions or anything else I could emit from my pores while sleeping on this mattress made of pure wood. Lola will be here in how many days now? In seven days. One week and she can help me get over the cockroaches in this house so that I don’t have to sweep alone and be scared of the spiders and the dogs that want to kill me every night on my way back from dinner in the dark. She will calm me

*
October 17th, 2005
__The three men continue speaking in the travel agency. They are agreeing with each other by moving their heads from side to side, bringing each ear to each shoulder. The scrawny man repeats, “Ha… ha.”
__“Chai?” the boy asks me, standing by my side. I did not notice him move towards me, but he stands there holding a tray of metal cups filled with steaming milky tea.
__“No, no thank you,” I say. I cannot yet remember the Hindi word danivat from my list of useful travel words. The scrawny man dials into the ancient phone on the table to call his cousin, a tour guide. I stop myself from raising my voice.
__Suddenly, I am calm. Whatever it takes. But today I will not sleep.
*
December 5th, 2005
__The four of us approach the bodies. Behind the matted grass is a risen wooden stage with no roof. Now I can see the stars clearly. Enormous speakers stretch up towards the bright specs of light. I could touch them from the top of the speakers. The moonlight sheds heavy shafts of light, illuminating the DJ, thumping. The pulsing mass of dancers is as crowded as water molecules.
__Abdul leads us to a circle of people he knows. They speak in Hindi and English. I forget what I am wearing and look down. When I notice that my arms are bare, I shiver. Lola finds a bag of green grapes, and begins to eat them.
__Don’t eat those, Lo.
__They’re so good.
__I know, but we don’t even have bottled water let alone dirty water to wash them with.
__We can buy bottled water.
__Where? I look around. I realize that next to each gas stove, an Indian woman wearing a sari boils water, cooks, and sells packaged snacks to people. People like us. The women and the rave-junkies stay out here through the deep hours of the night and linger with the morning sunrise. A few steps away from me, an old woman wearing a vibrant orange headscarf sings and rocks her heels into the dry grass, surrounded by a few porcelain cups, groundnuts, rice puff candy, and bottled water. Chai is brewing in her blackened pot. The euphoria of cardamom flows in my direction.
*

down and make me forget about all of the other diseases it is possible to contract from these mosquitos like Dengue Fever and Chikungunya. At least I am vaccinated for some fatal diseases and at least the food here agrees with me entirely I never thought I would like this whole vegetarian thing but

*
December 5th, 2005
__Lo, I’ll buy some bottled water and chai.
__Okay, get me a chai also. Chai masala.
__I doubt she would even make it without spice.
__Yeah, you’re right. Oh, and bargain with her. Abdul says these women can get away with murder. They sell water for forty rupees because—look at these people, they are all tripping out.
__The woman transfers two boiling cups of magic to my outstretched hands. As usual, the sweetness numbs my palate and I burn my tongue. These cups were not washed in between drinkers. I am tired enough so I am apathetic. The sea of limp faces blurs into soft shapes.
__Lola is speaking to an Australian traveler with dread-locks about Shantaram, the book we are both reading. I am almost done with it. Her words are evoking images that I imagined while reading the book. In the backs of my closed eyelids, dreamy sleep is waiting. My ear rests on Lola’s knee. I curl my body into a ball and the electricity of the music lulls me into a sedentary state. Just like the cows, when the motion and cacophonous surroundings of the city give them no need to move. Just like the cows, I am still, but I am not really asleep.
*

they do it so well and make it so delicious. I have to bring home so much chai. Remember that remember to bring home so much chai and email mom from an internet café and ask her if we have a lot of cardamom and saffron because there are so many things I can make with those now and maybe we can cook chana masala at home. Okay, sleep.

Lighthouse

Creaking door with a strip of light. A way out.

Ruthless wind flies inside. I hide.

Grasp. My hands latch onto the metal residue (is it copper?) of the rusted walls.

The fog is calling.

The power is humming through rubber-coated wires.

I hear a horn in the distance. I climb the final rickety step.

Hands accustomed and proud, I switch on every necessary button in the tower.

The powerful hum surges into a constant note.

I wait.

The horn diminishes. The ship has traveled through the vapor.

I remain, frozen, waiting. Boats keep to themselves.

The lighthouse is ready.

Clock

We are late, always. Despite the fact that our clocks in our house are set anywhere from ten to thirty minutes ahead of real time, we are late, always. When my mother and I are not looking, my father sets the time on the oven another three minutes ahead. One morning, his tactic fooled me during high school. I awoke to my alarm—set twelve minutes ahead—and leisurely ate breakfast. When I returned my dishes to the sink, I noticed the time on the oven. Flustered, I left my house without textbooks. I arrived early for the first time to Calculus.

Stretch

She grinned widely and navigated through her obstacle course of stuff in her Fifth Avenue apartment.

“Oh, this is perfect. I can’t wait. I kept all of this so that I could hand it down. It will be just perfect for you!”

I waited in the entryway. My boyfriend fidgeted. His mother reappeared with a plastic bag that smelled of moth balls.

“See, this was for my yoga class. And this outfit I wore on the treadmill. And this—this is my favorite! Try this on. It has no stretch, so it may not fit. But if it does, it’s yours.”