Be Here Now all over again
Here is a story from my first years in India along with a few facts about life here in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. On our first trip to India, my former partner Ashish and I planned a weekend trip to meet his sister, Sangita, and her husband in Shimla. Early one morning we began our journey on a treacherous mountain road, racing 225 km across northern India in a small rinky cab with a madcap driver--even by Indian standards. He careened and jammed, reducing the almost 7 hour trip from McLeod Ganj to under 5. It was only my second long trip by car in India. This is not a myth: the roads and the driving are unlike anything in the West. Over 350 people a day die on the roads, which in a population of more than a billion plus seems small, until you figure into the calculation that fewer than 10% of the population use cars. It takes some getting used to. The British Raj selected this idyllic spot for its summer headquarters when the heat of the plains became too much for their...