She's alive!

This happens with blogs. The long hiatus, often followed by a lengthy (or mercifully brief) explanatory confession to the blog gods, complete with reasons for absence and oaths/promises/best laid plans to never, never, never let things go for so long again.

Basically, we got back from India and ended up hospitalized for food poisoning. Thanks very much, Continental Airlines. Five months in India without so much as a single funky day in the bathroom, and then some suspect overcooked eggs at 35,000 feet and eight hours later, after the drama of trying to find our prearranged car at the airport and a totally illegal and terrifying ride on the Jersey Turnpike with db on my lap, we got home and had about an hour before the uncontrollable barfing began. And then uncontrollable diarrhea. It was kind of like labor after the castor oil kicked in. But maybe worse because in this case there was an actual baby requiring care and after a few hours of this insanity, we were both unable to stand upright.

We called Todd's parents, who had actually come over to see us but left because I was so sick. I got sick about two hours before Todd, so I didn't know that they had left because I was retching in the bathroom. I don't really understand why their thought process was more along the lines of "daughter in law is desperately ill after 18 hour nonstop flight with one and a half year old. Must leave" rather than "daughter in law is desperately ill after 18 hour nonstop flight with one and a half year old and therefore likely could use some help." Actually, I do understand. It has a lot to do with the Chiropractic Lifestyle (tm) worldview, or as I like to call it, the church of the holy spine. Illness is in your head. Ignore it. It will go away. And if it doesn't and you die, you won't be around to call attention to the fundamental insanity and lack of humanity inherent in such a worldview.

So we called them for help, twice, and they basically said stop whining, have some tea and get a better attitude about the dry heaving. In fact, you are not really dry heaving. So we called my mom, who while crazy in her own way, definitely understands that both parents being unable to stand up is a Situation, and she immediately got in the car and drove down to the city to take care of db.

While waiting for the upstate cavalry to arrive, we were lucky enough to get some help from Laura, our pre-India babysitter. It was Laura who took me to the ER and later, after Todd passed out on the way to the bathroom, it was Laura who called the ambulance that brought him to the ER. Why hadn't Todd sought help sooner? Well, it would seem that while you can check out of the Church of the Holy Spine, you can never leave. Practically speaking, this means that you will keep saying you are fine (in between dry heaves or crawls to the bathroom) until you wake up strapped to a stretcher.

Todd and I got to share the same room in the ER, side by side on his and hers drips. It was lovely. Depending on the kind of person you are, the ER room in an NYC hospital will either destroy or restore your faith in humanity.

Anyway, we were eventually discharged and we spent the next two weeks trying to get over jetlag (so much harder with jetlagged toddler), unpack, and get ready for what turned out to be the worst semester I've ever had not counting my first year of teaching, which is in a class by itself, or perhaps a class shared only by acute food poisoning after an 18-hour flight with a toddler.

Basically, 120 students is too many. Prior to this semester, I never had more than 60. So a smart professor would have maybe done away with some of the writing assignments. But that would not be me. As a result, I have been hopelesly behind since January, and until the spring semester ends this Wednesday, I do not anticipate catching up.

Plus - post for another time - the new owner of our building has been systematically not renewing leases in order to convert livable nice two bedroom apartments into illegal four bedroom apartment shares (8 x 10 bedrooms, anyone?), so in March we got our not unexpected letter saying get out at the end of May. I negotiated a slightly later move out date, but the stress of teaching plus page proofs plus having to move AGAIN caused hives and insomnia and general shittiness beyond my ability to convey in a single humble blog post.

On the bright side, db is now night weaned and sleeping in her own room.

So there hasn't been much spare time here, and much of my non-work time has been spent watching 30 Rock, The Wire, The Amazing Race, and (oh, the shame) Outsourced. Joss Whedon, save me! I did actually knit a Tiny Tea Leaves for db out of some brown Blue Sky Alpaca that I bought a long time ago and perhaps I will post pictures another day, now that I am apparently blogging again.

And yes, about the blog. It occurred to me recently that because I am busy, I have no record of my days other than iphone videos and photos and that most of the reason I haven't posted in so long was that this was supposed to be a knitting blog. Well, f*ck that. I could, I suppose, set up a "personal" blog and use it as a venue for long, photoless, humorless posts about My Life, but why have two blogs when one is more than I can handle?

Plus, there are about six friends' babies due this summer, so chances are pretty good there will be some knitting.

Noooooooooo

This morning our lovely cook/nanny called us with some exciting news: her daughter-in-law, who lives with her, had a baby boy last night. We knew that a baby was coming, so this was not unexpected, although it was on early side. The surprise is that the baby had to be delivered by cesarean section, and that means that unless the maternal grandmother wants to stay with the in-laws and help out, we have lost childcare and cooking help for the next few weeks.

Hence the Noooooooooo.

The internet came back today after a week of server problems (apparently when the guy who deals with broadband goes on vacation, no one else at MTNL is capable of solving server problems), and I was wondering what the next crisis would be. Now I know. The most devastating part of this is the timing - I am supposed to finish proofing my copy edited manuscript by 1 December. Which basically means I am screwed.

Let's try to cheer ourselves up with some recent photos of everyday Indian absurdity, shall we?


















But before '88 he was a really nice guy.
























I guess we wouldn't want any vehicles running over those manhole covers.


And a recent photo of db - playing in our sort of probably clean enough local park, which is closed from 8 am to 6 pm. That's right. 8 am to 6 pm. Don't try to understand. Unless you want to go totally mad.

















The Aviatrix hat is snug, but still wearable, and great for fending off intrepid end-of-season mosquitoes.

Delhi ate my brain and then pooped it into an open sewer

Ah, Delhi. Who knew that you would be ravaged, wrecked and otherwise generally destroyed by the upcoming Commonwealth Games? It didn't have to be this way - with the right management, you are capable of producing wonders like the Delhi Metro: built on budget and on schedule, clean, fast, beautiful, air conditioned. But the Indian government has had seven - SEVEN, count 'em - years to get ready for the games and it's come to this: the entire central part of the city is a torn-up dengue-mosquito breeding construction site from hell and the games are a week away. Today in a rickshaw I passed one of the games venues and noticed that the games countdown clock had stopped working: it's possible the clock just broke, but it's equally possible that someone disabled it since at this point all it's doing is reminding everyone exactly how hopelessly behind schedule everything is.

I wish I could conjure up the energy to say more, but setting up a household in Delhi has basically rendered me catatonic, and all writing energy has been directed towards field notes. I considered setting up a blog for posting my field notes, but for now anyway I think that's a little more pressure than I need, given everything else.

No knitting has happened except the hour it took to put the finishing touches on this sweater, modeled by a walkin', talkin' ever-changing, ever-charming db. This was my first knitting kit: it was a gift from a friend and while I normally don't use variegated yarn, I am happy with the result. The yarn was, I think, misti alpaca sportweight 50 pima cotton/50 silk: nice to knit with amazing drape; it's also incredibly soft, and what I like most about it is usually a yarn this soft has pilling issues (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, anyone?) but this one is wearing like iron. The pattern was Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos (aka Never Knot Knitting).























I hope I get my blogging grove back soon - I do genuinely love writing, but so much happens in a day here that I generally don't know where to start. That and after a while I find that speaking Hindi puts a real damper on English. Not that my Hindi is setting the world on fire, either. So basically I don't speak anything well at the moment.

Sleepless in Delhi

Also photoless in Delhi because the little drive I use to connect my photo card to my mac is in New York and right now finding an apartment that won't kill my daughter is a slightly higher priority than finding a way to upload photos. The past two months have been mad: getting an Indian research visa ended up being the living, breathing, monstrous embodiment of the soul of Kafka, just beating out getting IRB approval for my research project for that title. Finding a subletter who would not pee on our sofa or sell Todd's DVD collection to support a crack habit was also time consuming, and then there was the small task of packing for a five-month trip to India with a one-year-old in mind. So much could be written, and will be written, but at the moment I've been up since 2:30 am local time (and it's now 8 local time) and I think I need to have some protein and drink a lot of tea in order to have any hope of making it through the day. Db and Todd are still asleep, as they were for pretty much the entire night. I guess I should just be glad that someone will be functional today.

And knitting has, remarkably, been happening, though not on the 14-hour flight from Newark to Delhi. I actually put some knitting in my carry on and didn't even think about it - much less touch it - for the entire flight. I am not sure why I thought I would be doing anything other than keeping db from climbing me and the seat and all the other passengers as though they were here own personal Mount Everest.

Hahahaha ha hahahaha

From a July 16th, 2009 New York Times Business section article on the many, many Indian businesses whose logos and products transparently imitate American brands, pg. B4:

As Gary Locke, the commerce secretary, told a group of Indian executives visiting Washington this month, "U. S. businesses need assurances that when they come to India, they'll be operating in a secure and reliable environment for intellectual property."

Well, Gary, U. S. businesses can rest assured that the environment in India will change when hell freezes over. There's some security in such certainty, no?

of course.

The BRILLIANT graphic is not a pac man or a fortune cookie under duress; nor is it a baby carriage or a caution against jumping face first into a hammock. In fact, it is a highly creative representation of a corner.

In India, especially in the north, many people enjoy chewing betel nut, often in a preparation called paan. Betel nut is a mild stimulant and pretty tasty, I have to say, despite the fact that it temporarily dyes the mouth a lurid red color. It's also possibly mildly carcinogenic, but so is breathing in India, and at least the betel nut is all-natural and locally produced. Anyway, the procedure for chewing betel (or paan) is to stick it between the cheek and the gum. As your mouth fills with bright red saliva, you as a chewer of betel are faced with a question which, since I am actually going to type it without clever little "*" edits, may inadvertantly bring a certain subset of googlers to this post. That question? Spit or swallow. And in India, if you choose to spit, it's either particularly satisfying or particularly polite - I never made it a priority to learn which - to spit in a corner if at all possible. Which is why, despite the sign, it looks like there's been a bloody murder in every corner of the New Delhi Railway station.

Hint: this does not mean "do not force-feed pacman"

I've got Delhi on my mind, what with the recent bombings. Scrolling through photos of the last trip, I came upon this one, taken at the New Delhi railway station.


















Based on the BRILLIANT accompanying graphic, any idea what this sign is forbidding? I would be willing to bet a large amount of money - five dollars - that no one will figure it out, but amuse me with your guesses and I'll give you the answer in a few days.

This just in from a Paharganj internet cafe....

Knitcrit checks in to assure her - ahem - elite group of regular readers that other than her apartment's internet connection, all is well in Delhi. The connection iteself went down on August first, and after many calls to the landlord and the service provider, Knitcrit grew weary of pushing the boulder up the mountain and just gave up.

I might have tried a little harder to get things back on line were it not for the fact that our upstairs neighbor, in whose apartment our router and modem are located, is rather eccentric. By eccentric of course I mean completely insane, which itself would still be a manageable situation if he weren't an insane man with a vision. The vision involves merging his current business with what he hopes will be his legacy. The current business, the exact name of which I do not want to use because I don't want him to find this page (even completely insane people have feelings), involves scanning the client's fingerprint. After this, a complex mathematical calculation is performed, from which a person's future is determined. The legacy-in-the-making involves opening a college where students will be fingerprinted - then, of course, their natural aptitutes will be calculated. It's like the SAT but without all the tiresome multiple choice (and possibly just about as accurate as the SAT, but I digress...) Then the student will be placed in an appropriate course of study. All students, however, will study the art of communicating with animals, which so far as I can tell involves singing into a machine that our upstairs neighbor has invented. So, like I said, the crazy I can handle, but because our neighbor has figured out that both Todd and I teach on the college level, he really wants us to join the faculty of his college. Which means that every time we went upstairs to try to solve the connection problem we had to figure out some way to escape a discussion of what we might contribute to his institution. Which became very tiresome. Hence this dispach from a sweaty backpacker internet cafe.

Tune in about a week from now, when Knitcrit and Todd will be in glorious Singapore, swimming in our friend's condo's pool and enjoying tasty cocktails and a working internet connection.

You maaaade me feel shiny and neeew

There has been some knitting of late, much of it accomplished yesterday during a three hour, ten mile journey (yes, south Delhi traffic is that bad, and is made worse this time of year owing to the arrival of massive packs of Ganges-water-bearing Kanwaria pilgrims).
















I was in an air conditioned chariot of luxury because I thought it would be the best way to get to a potential field site in the extreme south of Delhi; as it turned out, the chariot may not have been the best choice because it had to sit in traffic and could not perform illegal u-turns; a rickshaw could have merrily broken many traffic laws and gotten us out of some of the worst backups.

The journey also dragged on forever owing to a series of wrong turns that were partly due to circumstances and partly due to the fact that the driver was an amazingly passive aggressive creature who had obviously recently crawled out of a dark, life-hating level of hell. But I digress. Look at the lovely colors of the Dream in Color Superwash, photographed in the brilliant, blindingly hot subcontinental sun:
















This is none other than EZ's famed BSJ, which I have named in knitter code so that the non-knitter for whom it is intended will not suspect anything. I held off starting it until I could confirm that a stateside friend could get me another skein - a bit of post-trip Ravelry sleuthing indicated that one skein of the Dream in Color wasn't enough. So far so good, and the pattern notes linked on the Ravelry page are helpful, though everyone who has knit this classic knows that it is nothing so much a cross between knitting and origami, and so impossible to intuit, even for an accomplished sweater-knitter like myself - it's just a big blob of knitting until the very end, and then, fold fold fold, and suddenly, out of nowhere: sweater!
















Pain; excitement; mystery - it's like losing my sweater virginity all over again.

Existentialism incarnate

Displacement, isolation, meaninglessness, confinement? I feel you, Mr. Gorilla. Sometimes being in India is like that only.

Jay Mata Di (or, Victory to the Mother)

Technology: neither evil nor good, but rather, a force to be reckoned with. Personally, I reckon that technology is currently contributing greatly to the great potential that Delhi men of a certain (young) age and socio-economic status have to be entitled, penis-bearing, big huge jerks.

Exhibit A: cars

It's now common knowledge that the burgeoning Indian middle class is buying cars in record numbers, creating more traffic than most roads in India can handle, especially when you throw in all the livestock and cycle rickshaws. About a week ago, Todd and I were taking a cycle rickshaw on a somewhat crowded road when a car packed full of 20-something Indian males pulled up behind us and proceeded to lay on the horn non-stop. As in, they were going to sit on the horn until the rickshaw got out of the way. Car horns are loud and sit exactly on the threshold of pain; drivers in their AC-infused bubble don't have to deal with the sound, which might account for some of their ability to hold the horn down for indefinite periods of time. Of course, our poor guy, pedaling as hard as he could, couldn't pull over because, well, the road was packed with cars and rickshaws. The horn was loud. And constant. So I turned around and looked at the car thinking perhaps they would lay off the horn if someone made eye contact with them, which of course did not happen, at which point I decided to do a little impromptu anthropological experiment to see if in fact the bird carries meaning here in India, with Todd joining me in this experiment.

I can report that the bird has, in fact, landed in India, if the drivers of the car behind us are any indication. So there was cathartic flipping off all round, and then our cycle rickshaw-walla finally got an opening to pull over and the terrible boy-men screeched by, on their way to wherever it was they were in such a hurry to get to. Except, amazingly, they drove to the end of the road, pulled over, and waited for us to catch up, at which point the one in the passenger seat frantically rolled down his window (not wanting to let out the precious AC air before we arrived) and shouted a heavily accented but passable "Suck my d*ck, you whore!," after which the driver hit the gas hard enough to squeal the tires and they were off in their little middle class chariot of a Maruti, frantically rolling up the window as they sped off towards Delhi gate. So we can conclude that internet pornography may not be such a bad thing, since it has clearly enhanced the English vocabulary of untold masses of emergent middle class Indian males.

Exhibit B: Cell phones

Just last night I was negotiating a fare with a local cycle rickshaw driver. It was taking longer than usual because Sunday is everyone's day off and for a remarkable number of these poor laborers, Sunday is the day to drink hard and heavy, so that by 8 a very high percentage of them are quite drunk. The cycle rickshaw guy was actually explaining that he couldn't take me (good call, methinks) and he was trying - kindly - to give me walking directions to my destination when a little group of young emergent middle class Indian men with their cell phones came walking across the parking area.

Here I must emphasize that this parking lot was nearly empty and that it had, by urban Indian standards, a cavernous amount of free space. So this pack of cell-phone wielding boys came closer, their leader somewhat oblivious of his surroundings because he, like many cell-phone owners, was engrossed in some riveting bout of text messaging (or maybe a really good game of snake. Hard to say). He got to where I was standing and without skipping a beat proceeded to push his way between myself and the rickshaw driver, uttering an indignant "excuse me," as he went. Because clearly walking behind me in the aforementioned cavernous amount of free space would have been too inconvenient. Or unmanly. Or something.

A new fearsome Hindu goddess needs to be created - one who wields a cell phone and car keys in addition to a sword and a severed head. Young men would be required to perform puja to her regularly, and at the slightest sign of abuse of technology, the Mother who giveth the accouterments of bourgeois living would take them away, possibly raining down a healthy dose of impotence or smallpox for good measure.

Masala

I've landed in Delhi and am thoroughly enjoying the sauna-esque climate and stomach-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown. Aaahhh, Delhi Belly. How I have missed thee.

To compensate for the verbosity of the last post, Knitcrit proudly presents a series of recent India photos with minimal commentary:

First, lest the knitblog police force me to change my blog name to Critknit due to lack of knitting content, there's been some heel-turning on sock number one:






















Pomatomus is still surprisingly easy and still fun. Knitters: does anyone know anything about a slightly-larger-than-lace-pattern-size hole on one side of the patterned part of foot? It happened right about the time I stopped the side decreases for the gusset. I really don't think I made a mistake. Anyway, I'm choosing to ignore it. Socks go in shoes, right?

English-language newspapers here continue with their hard-hitting coverage of the issues that matter most:






















This chicken DARES you to eat her:























Anyone else think this product is vaguely pornographic or do I just have a smutty mind?

















Just in case your body isn't producing enough on its own:






















Doesn't this make you never want to eat a popsicle again?

















Possibly only two regular blog readers will understand this, but still, check it out! I found the dargah in Mysore that has haziri - though there they call it tawaf karna. I was thrilled to find this - it's a good story, actually, but we're favoring pictures this time, so here's the sign that tipped me off:























Dedicated and clever readers: Normally I can deduce intention behind slightly ill-chosen Indian English words, but in this case, I admit to being totally baffled. Probably these helmets are actually made in China, home of the truly inexplicable English word choice, but still - any ideas on the intention behind branding a helmet as "deletion?"























Like many young men on the street in Mysore, these helmet sellers were cheery and possibly a little drunk. Photo concept theirs, photographer me:

















My new gold earrings! I love them!






















Shanidev street shrine - possibly Knitcrit's new post-dissertation project since the Unani thing appears to be tanking hard:






















And finally, even with a month and a half to go, I am still absolutely confident in naming this the best photo from this trip to India:

Perhaps not exactly the rant you were hoping for

The anecdote: I'm a big fan. The tiny story that hits every level of an issue in a pitch-perfect manner - no cumbersome plot issues, no surprise endings, no character development - just a nugget of juicy multivalent goodness waiting to be unpacked by, say, a deeply disgruntled yoga student knitblogger.

The anecdote featured in this post is, as befits an anecdote, short, but since the lead-in is a bit long, I've taken the liberty of breaking up the prose with recent photos from my burgeoning collection of fabulous hand-painted ladies' and men's room signs. Professor Knitcrit knows that nothing maintains audience interest like pictures.

Let the games begin.

Today the regular coconut water man wasn't standing in his usual spot directly outside the yogashala and so the usual post-practice pack of sweaty, ethnic print cheesecloth-draped yogis was not, mercifully, in evidence. Because I cannot live without coconut water after practice, I made my way to the coconut stand on the corner near the flat Todd and I are renting in Mysore. Several yoga students were there enjoying all the potassium-laden goodness, and as I stood there I overheard a woman whom I hardly know but whom I loathe chatting with a guy I also hardly know but whom I also loathe.

















I loathe the guy because years ago he taught at the schmanciest yogashala in NYC; I visited there once to see if it was a good place for me to practice and in the course of our very brief conversation I mentioned that I hadn't practiced in a while due to an injury and his eyes got this glazed look and he proceeded to give me a sermon on how in Astanga there are no injuries, just openings, and that the best thing to do when, say, one has torn a hamstring so badly that it is too painful to sit normally for nearly six months, is to keep in practicing yoga. Thanks, coach. Also, you are a maniac.

It is not at all surprising to me that this particular dude is now on an all-raw food diet and maintains a little shaved brahmin-esque topknot. Anyway.


















I loathe the woman because early in our time here in Mysore, Todd and I went to one of the yoga haunts for breakfast and were forced to interact with people because of the group table setup. So this woman and her boyfriend were chatting about the usual three topics here: food, digestion, and what we might loosely term Indian philosophy, a catch-all term encompassing discussions of "ego," WWKD (what would Krishna do), Sanskrit classes, and upcoming kirtan sessions. I was attempting to participate in this conversation when her boyfriend (who, incidentally, is the son of a pastor, has "make a joyful noise" tattooed on his lower back, and in general exhibits all the signs of being a classically screwed up estranged preacher's kid) mentioned that in their last "philosophy" class, their teacher had talked all about what a darn shame it was that when the "Muslims" came to India, they destroyed many finger-lickin'-good Sanskrit texts.

Which was pretty much the same thing as pushing the big red angry sermon button in the middle of my chest.

And so in the Om-curtain draped environment of Tina's breakfast joint, I proceeded to impart all the wisdom of my Intro to Islam class as well as a good chunk of my South Asian religion class. Salient points included:

(1) When the "Muslims" came to India, they did not find a bunch of non-violent vegetarians singing kirtan. They found empires. Hindu empires. Jain empires. Empires that had armies. Empires with deified kings and temples in which the central enshrined deity shared the name of the ruler. Deified kings whose patronage of tantric forms of Hinduism was intended to augment their power. In short, empires in which there was no distinction between the religious and the political. As Richard Eaton has shown, most temple desecrations performed by Muslim rulers took place in temples that were clearly symbols of political authority for Hindu kings. The wars between empires in India were political in the modern sense of the word, and they were political on both sides. Indian history is not the history of a bunch of fanatical Muslims declaring jihad on a bunch of non-violent love-filled Hindus. Full stop.

(2) Slightly limp but nevertheless true: horrific acts of violence have been perpetrated in the name of and using intellectual tools and systems from every so-called "world religion."


















We will get to the actual anecdote soon. I swear.

Somewhere in this impassioned sermon I realized that I might just be coming across like leisurely-post-yoga-breakfast wrecking maniac, and so I apologized for my tone and tried to explain that part of the reason I care so much about the topic is because the modern-day Hindu Right's re-writing of Indian history along the lines of the-Muslims-came-and-wrecked-everything-and -now-we-want-them-all-to-get-the-hell-out is used to justify recurrent horrific acts of violence against the Muslim community in India, and particularly against the poor and low-caste Muslim community.

While I was in the midst of my attempt to explain my impassioned tone, the woman checked herself out of the conversation and began copying a big list of Buddhist layperson's vows from a laminated plastic card she was carrying around into a nicey-nice little handmade paper book. Never mind actually learning something when you can copy your nice vows into your nice booklet.


















And now, at long last, the anecdote. At the coconut stand, this Buddha-lovin' woman was telling this openings-lovin' guy all about a terrible Astanga yoga teacher somewhere or other, someone who had the audacity to mix up the order of postures and teach beginners advanced poses, etc, etc, etc on and on and ON about this deviant yoga teacher, and the whole time she fails to notice that if she moved her massive yoga mat bag off the bench at the coconut stand, other people (people like me) might also have a place to sit. At a certain point, another woman sitting on the edge of the bench asked me if I'd like to sit down, and, having heard the offer, the Buddha-lovin' woman pulled her bag up on her lap in a way that still didn't make it particularly easy for a person to sit down, all the while going on about the horrible unorthodox yoga teacher. I finished my coconut standing up, paid the vendor, and left.

And THAT, more than anything else, is what I despise about the culture here in yogaland. These people, like fundamentalists anywhere, have become so taken with their ideological pursuits that they do not have the ability to respond in a courteous, kind, humane way to their present situations. As in, "please have a seat." Or, "I'm sorry that you tore your hamstring."


















You might at this point be thinking, okay, Knitcrit, I see how these people are perhaps a bit crazy and a bit annoying, but you seem pretty, well, mad. You are correct. Knitcrit is mad. Knitcrit is mad because she was raised in a fairly rigid evangelical environment and she can very, VERY clearly see that that these yahoos in Mysore are just as much idiotic, self-righteous fundamentalists as, say, Knitcrit's old youth group leader, whose most horrific moment was (it's a toss-up) either entertaining a bunch of high schoolers by eating a live goldfish or giving Knitcrit a long talk about how women should submit to their husbands in all things and also not aspire to becoming pastors since only men can lead. I wish he had choked on the goldfish.

Knitcrit has no use for devotion to ideology that gets in the way of people treating one another with courtesy and kindness. Ideology, including yoga, is a means to an end. Knitcrit, in case you are wondering, does Astanga not because she wants to become a superyogini enlightened bendy Sanskrit scholar, but rather, because it makes her more capable of being present, engaged, and kind when dealing with other people. Except yoga people, of course.

What exactly constitutes the "Japanese Technology" component?

Perhaps the barcode on the package?

The Mysterious East

Yoga: its acolytes profess its ability to impart peace of mind, immortality, magical powers, extreme sexual stamina, and/or nice triceps; however, it does not, apparently, offer protection from the common cold. Where I picked up this delightful illness is uncertain, though if I were a betting sort of girl I'd put my money on the Yogashala itself, since both of the presiding teachers have been sick and the combined breathing and sweating of 60 or so ardent and tightly-packed yogis gives the practice room a moist, warm atmosphere that I can only imagine strikes cold viruses as heaven (or, perhaps, samadhi) itself.

I am pretty tired of blowing my nose at this point, but perks of the cold include discovering this fabulous product while I was assembling the ingredients for tea:






















Coorg Honey. Coorg is a region about two hours from Mysore in the lovely Western Ghats, mountains known for their old growth jungle. Todd and I actually visited a working coffee plantation/guest house about a week ago. It was stunningly beautiful:















While there we also learned that if one is hiking in a leech-infested area, the leeches will always attack the second passer-by, having been alerted to the presence of nice, warm fresh blood by the first creature to pass through their lair. This was a somewhat more painful lesson for Todd than for me given his location in our little trekking party of two, though I was given ample opportunity to hone my leech removal skills. Note: mighty Dettol is your secret weapon.

But the Coorg honey is worthy of blogging not for its Coorg pedigree, but rather, because it is, as the label tells us, "coorg ahimsak madhu"









Or Coorg non-violent honey. The residents of Coorg, themselves not only non-veg but actually consumers of (da-da-da-dum) pork are, one suspects, pandering to the Jain mafia. Or perhaps the vegetarian yoga student mafia. Hard to say. But in any case, apparently nary a honeybee was harmed to bring us this Coorg honey. Though I suspect a few leeches were trampled during the extraction process.

Mother India

This just in from the English edition of the Deccan Chronicle:

















No, this is not a story about my exploits in Chennai, thank you very much - if you enlarge the photo and read the story, you'll be given not only the actual full name of the poor girl who was attacked by a new-ish friend after drinking late into the night at one of Chennai's swank hotel bars, but half of her address in Chennai, as well. This so that every man in the city can stalk her, one supposes, since as a drunken debased white chick she's really just asking for it.

Appreciate, also, the random photo of the endangered species turtle accompanying the story. It's a curious fact that English-language Indian newspapers often feature grotesque or otherwise weird-ass photos that have absolutely nothing to do with adjacent stories. Eerily, however, in this case the photo caption "cynosure of all eyes" fits pretty well with the newspaper story - nothing like a titillating story about a debased white chick to sell newspapers.

Of course, this attitude towards the white chick is old, old news to an old India hand like myself; studying yoga here in Mysore for the month at the Astanga Yoga Mothership, however, is completely new to me and it has inspired the mother of all blog posts on white spiritual seeker culture in India - a culture I have observed from afar for many years and in which I am now immersed and possibly drowning. For now, suffice to say that after this month I will feel absolutely, perfectly, and completely entitled to my witheringly scornful opinion of skinny, vegan, Sanksrit-chanting, scooter driving, Om-tattooed trustafarians. Coming soon.

And yes, there has been knitting. I haven't turned the heel yet, so it's probably premature to say so, but these Pomatomus socks aren't all that difficult...


















And finally, a poster for one of Bollywood's less fine recent features. Too good not to share, and sort of on topic in a Blogger labels sort of way:

<-- "She is Eagerly Waiting for you..."




















I bet this debased white chick doesn't have to worry about getting attacked on the way home from the bar.

Some for the road

I am of course generally worried about getting everything done before we leave for India on Monday. Specifically, though, I was worried that I'd manage to complete all the thankless tasks but I wouldn't quite make it to Knitty City in time to get yarn for my summer knitting projects. Chalk one up for Professor Slacker - my grades are still not submitted, but my knitting needles will be very well-dressed for summer.

Gender-neutral jewel tone superwash goodness from Dream In Color, purchased to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's ever-popular Baby Surprise Jacket - also meant to be surprise for an occasional reader of this blog, so no more on this project for now:
















For me, two skeins of Shi Bui's superwash merino in the romantically named Color 1675 - it's slightly variegated and manages to be cheery and earthy at the same time (it's a bit brighter in the photos than in real life). This will become Cookie A's Pomatomus, inshallah, unless pattern sends me off the deep end, in which case it will become the slightly less challenging Monkey, also by Cookie A.

















And finally, because billions of hip young knitters can't be wrong, I'll be knitting my first pair of Jaywalkers with this pretty self-striping yarn - superwash merino, of course.
















Now that I have yarn for said projects, I can get back to worrying about whether or not I'll get everything graded in time. Just so long as there's something to give me insomnia.
















Also coming to India: the wedding shawls. They're not done yet. The new unrealistic goal is finishing both of them before our first anniversary. And then I will never knit lace again.

Attention TSA: not letting me take knitting needles on the plane will actually be much more dangerous for passengers than just letting me get started on my new socks. (Alert readers will note that I have used the words "TSA" "dangerous" "knitting needles" and "inshallah" in the same post. Let's see what happens next.)

Putting off grading final papers takes many forms

Extreme disillusionment with the drop stitch lace tank (and subsequent frogging of the same) greatly contributed to getting the Koko Kimono from Minnies done prior to my impending India trip. Cute, no?














The burning question - and possibly the only active thought I've given this gratifyingly simple and drama-free pattern - is what to do with the i-cord closures.


The pattern calls for garter stitch i-cord, but having knit one, while I understand that it's supposed to match the garter stitch border of the kimono,






















when compared to a straight-up stockinette stitch i-cord, to me the garter stitch i-cord resembles nothing so much as a evil worm-like parasite not unlike those that will almost certainly take up residence in my intestines this summer. Less rainbow-colored, perhaps, but still...lumpy. Ugly and therefore malevolent. You know.
















So I'm torn: ugly thing that makes better design sense, or pretty thing that breaks garter stitch continuity of border? Because of course if I make the wrong decision, no self-respecting 6-month-old girl is going to wear the thing.

Orientalism

The summer trip to India grows ever nearer, and I have to say I'm looking forward to it despite the obvious drawbacks including but not limited to the scorching reality of summer in India and the fact that gold prices have gone so through the roof that there is pretty much no way I can justify (or possibly even just afford) finally buying the Golden Necklace That Got Away - the one that I fondled in the Connaught Place Mehrason's back in the summer of 2005 but did not purchase, concluding that it was "unnecessary." Idiot. All gold jewelry is unnecessary, which more or less makes all gold jewelry necessary, if you follow (and if you don't your brain simply hasn't been subject to enough heatstroke yet).

A few days ago I was shocked to see that my favorite little katie roll joint had been painted a lurid shade of orange and re-christened "the kebab factory." The sweet little chalkboard menu - sweet because an employee unfazed by his or her lack of actual talent had drawn a bird at the base of the menu - was gone, replaced by a menu of great, ominous breadth. After waiting for 5 or so minutes for an employee to appear at the take-out counter, I ventured into the bowels of the restaurant (dining area in basement = bad sign) looking for someone to take my order. Kebab Factory 101, should future potential customers wonder, is as follows:

1. Banarasi Chaat is only served at dinner. The other kind of chat (the name eludes me) is served at lunch and consists of chunks of boiled potato covered in a lumpy, brown, and (perhaps mercifully) tasteless sauce.
2. When you order paneer tikka, what you will get is a katie roll filled with some kind of saag and shredded (canned amul?) paneer.
3. It will require three employees to complete your order: one to cook, one to ring up the order downstairs, and one to stand around staring at you.
4. For all of your trouble, you will be given five plastic spoons at no extra charge.
5. They deliver!

Being there reminded me of everything I love about India: the extreme awkwardness and extreme graciousness, the good intentions, the grand ambitions, the lack of resources, and the complete and utter incompetence. All that kept it from being authentically Indian, actually, was the terrible food.

idliot.

There's a veg south Indian joint I frequent after work. Today wasn't a workday, but I was at Knitty City being initiated into the wonders of the integrated (aka attached) i-cord when I got a call from the department secretary. As it turns out, she was not calling to wish me a Happy Valentine's Day, but rather, to ask me why I wasn't at the department meeting. Oops. Bad untenured assistant professor. In the past, we have always gotten a email reminder, but for some reason this time the department head forgot to send one and I had written the meeting date in the wrong place in my datebook, and so I had to rush down to campus, feeling guilty the whole way.

After the meeting I went to this south Indian restaurant for a much-needed quick non-pizza lunch, and owing to the staff's peculiar insistence upon always seating customers right next to one another (even if the entire restaurant is empty), I ended up sitting practically on top of a couple on what was obviously a blind date that was not going particularly well. The boy, lily white as I am - though unschooled in the ways of south Indian restaurant fare - was gently guided through the menu by his lovely Indian lady date, and soon they had a table full of exotic food.

Lily White New York Banker Guy: What's that?

Indian Lady: (encouragingly) That's an idli. (She pauses to give LWNYBG a chance repeat the word. He does not avail himself of the opportunity. She moves on.) It's actually a breakfast food.

Lily White New York Banker Guy: huh - okay - which of these sauces is the best?

Indian Lady: Well, all the sauces are good. (takes bite of idli) mmm...they're the first thing I crave when I --

Lily White New York Banker Guy: (out of nowhere, the most he's talked the entire meal) When you're hung over?

Indian Lady: (carrying on valiantly) -- when I go back to India.