Maytime Mussoorie

The monsoon season has started in spurts this year. Every morning there is a dense mist that comes sweeping across Dehra Dun and enfolds Mussoorie. Rain is always threatening. In this picture, I am relying on candle-power to get through an outage.


All the roofs in Mussoorie are made of tin. You can always tell when a monkey is crossing your roof because of the unique metallic ping of monkey claws on metal. While rain can make a din, nothing compares to hail. Being under a tin roof through a hailstorm is like spending an afternoon in a Japanese pachinko bar. In this picture, my neighbor’s kids, who themselves are little noise machines, are enjoying the hail.


Mussoorie is roughly divided into three parts. To the far west is Happy Valley, where the Tibetans and Nepalese descendents of the ghorkas live. In the center is Mussoorie proper, with its mall, touristed streets and many restaurants. I was told that Mussoorie has 40,000 live-in citizens, but over 2,000,000 domestic tourists will visit each year. Perhaps local lore – I haven’t been able to substantiate the claim. My end of town is called Landour, and luckily it doesn’t offer many tourist attractions and remains peaceful. In the distance, you can see a white stupa, or Buddhist reliquary mound.

This Christian house (cross on the door) is about as cute as a gingerbread house.

My Korean friends, Chang O (the guy) and Hyo Jung. Chang O works at Koongmin bank, and is here to learn Hindi in the hopes of opening a bank branch in Delhi. Hyo Jung originally came here to learn Hindi for her job, but ended up extending her leave of absence for another year. They both studied for eight months in Delhi, and will go back for a second year after leaving Mussoorie. When I went to their house for a Korean meal, I was astonished to see how many Korean imports they had. In this picture, you can see Chang O grasping his most precious bottle of Soju, the lifeblood of Koreans.

Again with Soju. Chang O had recently returned from a visit to Korea, and he brought back to India an entire box of Soju, a kilogram of kimchi, glass noodles, pepper paste, soy sauce, individual-sized tubes of Korean coffee and tea…

The main attraction of the meal was kimchi chigae, or kimchi soup. Hyo Jung thinks we could have cooked it for a little longer, but I think it tasted just as good as a Pocheon brew. Back in Korea I would eat kimchi chigae a few times a week. Even writing about it is making my mouth salivate.


The Indian national elections were on the 13th. After they’re done fixing the vote, they’ll announce the winners on the 16th. It was neat to see the democratic process in action. All this past month there have been political rallies, even in a sleepy town like Mussoorie. Other places like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh must have been seething with chaos. In this picture, my tutor Rani and I are holding up our fingers. Rani had voted earlier that morning, and the official marked her index finger with black ink. A blackened finger is the way that the government attempts to contain one person to one vote. The ink can take as long as a month to rub off. When I saw her inked finger, it reminded me of the albino monk who turns up dead in a vat of pig’s blood with a blackened tongue and forefinger in The Name of the Rose.

Election posters. The only way to get anything to stick to lime-washed walls is to adhere it with glue. Lucky for the politicians, these posters will probably still be there when the next election cycle rolls around. These posters are for the predominately caste-based Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mayawati, the female dalit from Uttar Pradesh. Their symbol is the white elephant. BJP is a lotus flower and Congress is the upraised palm. There’s something very Rauschenberg about this wall.

A Sai Baba festival outside the Sai Baba temple. Sai Baba is the living reincarnation of god who has a divine afro. In this picture, Sai Babaists are feeding the community.

Sai Baba


When Babaism becomes Dadaism...


…becomes Miroian Surrealism. Mussoorie at night.

On the twisting road outside my apartment with my neighbor.

Sable Paws enjoying a snooze.

Relaxing on a wall overlooking a lethal precipice.

If you examine the edge of the wall closely, you will see the hairy digits of a baby languor (a white-faced, black-bodied monkey). We played hide-and-seek until I took out my camera, and then he swung away. Monkeys have two opposing reactions when you point a camera at them: they either high-tail out of there, or they treat your camera like a surface-to-air missile launcher and counterstrike.

Right outside my apartment is a litter of puppies. This is baby season: all the monkeys and dogs have ‘em. This puppy made it through the cold, rainy night by linking with his siblings into one big ball of fur.

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream),
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor has left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass,
you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again.

The ghost trapped inside my computer.

Today marks the two year anniversary of my vegetarianism. It was two years ago to this day that I, having fled the duck platters of Peking and the mutton momo mountains of Tibet, met Adrienne in India, where we both took to a Brahminical diet. It stuck (not counting fish in Korea and Japan). My main nutrients now come from vegetables, beans and basmati rice…

And my daily bag of Kurkure! It has 100% of the masala amino acids that growing boys need.