Novel observations

Because Lin can probably say it better than I can:

Snaking lines of sari-clad women carrying dishes of gravel on their heads wove through all the workplaces, from man-made dunes of small stones to the yawning mouths of ceaselessly revolving cement-mixing machines. To my western eyes, those fluid, feminine figures in soft red, blue, green, and yellow silk were incongruous in the physical turmoil of the construction site. Yet I know, from watching them through the months, that they were indispensable to the work. They carried the stone and steel and cement on their slender backs, one round dish-full at a time.
---Near my flat there is a building being built. This is a scene I've seen played out many times. The women carry gravel and cement to and from the construction site on round plates. It seems like nothing would ever get accomplished in this manner. It hasn't been fast, but over the past 6 weeks I've seen that building torn down and partially rebuilt by sari-clad women and boys with ashen faces, greyed from the dust. Don't get any ideas Dad! I know Mom's not particularly accomplished at saying "no" but I would bet money that she wouldn't go for this... :)

I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.
--The power frightens me more and the endurance gives me hope. In India majority of the people are being crushed by the power of others. Kept down because it's convenient for a select crowd of people who grasped at power and used religion to justify it. Religion has always been used in this manner. It's a great tool. A dirty tool. A bloody tool. And the people in the slums endure this weight that they carry daily. It isn't frightening that these people can live through such an existence, but rather it is a hopeful example of the human spirit and the will to go on. People in the slums have to be optimistic that the next generation will see a better life. I have that in common with them: optimism.

It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
--True story. A good secret will sleep in your heart and close your mouth. When you let it go, if you get the chance, you're a lighter soul.

(This one has been edited to fit the audience of this blog...) This is India, man. This is India, This is the land of the heart. This is where the heart is king, man. The F*ing heart. That's why you're free (out of jail). That's why that cop gave you back your phoney passport. That's why you can walk around, and not get picked up, even though they know who you are. They could've screwed you man. But they didn't do it, and they won't do it, because you got them in their heart, man, in their Indian heart. They looked at all what you did here (the slums), and how the people in that slum love you, and they thought, well, he screwed up in Australia but he's done some good shit here. If he pays up, we'll let the guy go. Because they're Indians, man. That's how we keep this crazy place together- with the heart. It's the heart that keeps us together. There's no place with people like my people. There's no heart like the Indian heart.
--Every Bollywood movie, or rather every "masala" movie from Bollywood is a love story. A story of the heart. I haven't been here long enough to know if this passage is fully true, but I believe it. They fall in love fast and hard. Friendships are made between people within minutes of a greeting, and as V & Varun have proven to me, they'll do anything for you. This country gives from the heart and it's a beautiful generosity.

I love her too much, Lin! Is love, yes, when a terrible feeling makes you happy? When you worry about a girl, more even than you worry about your taxi? That's a love, isn't it? A great love, isn't' it?
--Love: a terrible feeling that makes you happy. teek hai. Acha. (okay. good.)

...men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it's the other way around.
---So women reveal what they think when they hesitate and what they feel when they look away. Again, I don't know if this is generally true. But another question, why is it that people attack hesitation so brazenly? When someone is asked a loaded question like, "I love you" and the person that the question was directed at hesitates even for a second, it's taken as a bad sign. Women will sit together over coffee or martinis and tell their friends, "but he hesitated. What does that mean?" It means he's a guy and can't form the correct response instantly and fitted to your liking. It means he took a breath. That's what that means. It's over-thinking that kills confidence.

The Indians are the Italians of Asia. It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the indians of Europe. There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much indian in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna - they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he's happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is music inside the body, and music is food inside the heart. The language of india is the language of Italy, they make every man a poet. These are nations where love - amore, pyaar - makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on a street corner, and makes a princess of a peasant girl, if only for the second that her eyes meet yours.
--I think this is why I love both countries.