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  The garden at Ueno palace is two tube stops from the Asakusa station, Tokyo.  Sixty two acres of green, lightly visited, very restful.  During summer it is filled with kids and their folks and amateur jugglers, musicians, speech makers (a la Hyde Park). The days I was there the Inca pipe band drew quite a crowd—-Latinos in colorful chamisas serenading  stone faced Japanese business men  in their standard uniforms of narrow black tie, white shirt and gray suit.

      Le Marais around the Pompidou is jammed with five storey apartment buildings.  There are a few tourists spots besides the Pompidou—-Picasso Museum, specialty food and clothing shops–but not enough to make the vibe more Disneyland than Paris. Parisiens in this area of town expect to linger at lunch, argue politics and comment on books and art. Wine flows, there is laughter and singing too, if it is late. 

Nudity, making love, discussing love, openly kissing and holding a lover is normal behavior and frankly, quite sweet to witness. People watching is rewarding, because the locals are  interesting and seem to lead  balanced and rich lives—- equal parts friends and family, a smattering of concern for career and plenty of leisure time for good food and books. It is a human culture designed for human enjoyment on a human, rather than corporate, scale. 

In the States our work drives our lives.  We squeeze in time for ourselves only if our career allows.  A business book promising greater efficiency, not John Burdett, is on the night stand. Work first—- underpaid hard work at that— is the only way to keep pace.  No time for the frivilous. And we all know the cost of being a cog in the corporate American economic machine: alcoholisim, pill addiction, high divorce rates, crime rates, road rage. “Freedom Fries,” indeed.

Old neighborhoods in Beijing are known as hutong. They are multi-family, one storey homes (siheyuans) with several small rooms.  Each home is bounded by alleys barely wide enough to allow a cart to pass.  As families grew, one siheyuan was joined to another, such that entire blocks would consist of a single extended family. All of residential Beijing was built in this pattern—- during the banking climbout over the city, the combination of hutong and siheyuan appears as a vast sprawling chessboard of interlocking neighborhoods.

Hutong is almost gone in Beijing—destroyed like the rain forest.  The remainder of these ancient homes butt up against museums and the new sleek towers of glass, which house the hum of the dynamic, emerging modern Chinese economy.  Hutong are either funky and owned by stubborn familes who won’t move, or hip, cool spots filled with young tech and intelligensia.

My guide, Lily, loves the silk  shops and the local cheap eats here in  Hutong.  We eat crispy pig’s ears and rice in a relative’s kitchen.  I ask her if she lives in hutong.  Ever the modern college girl, she says simply, “No.  Would not be koveen-int (convenient).”

       In  711 a teenage Arab general, Mohammad bin Qasim, conquered most of the Pakistani coastline and Karachi bringing Islam to what is now Pakistan.  Competing Shia and Sunni proselytizers soon followed—-like the Catholic friars on the heels of the Conquistadores in America. Religion abhors a vacuum.  Whether you are a peasant in Pakistan or a pagan Indian in the American Southwest, you can always count on some religion to show up and pound your head into the sand until you cave and buy the dogma.

As in America, religious fundamentalism took hold.  In the States fringe religions—-Quakers, Unitarians, Rastafarians—eventually popped up.  One of these days—probably not in my lifetime— it will even be OK to say you are an atheist or agnostic and hold public office in the USA.  Imagine that.

In Pakistan the fringe was more limited.  Sufi mystics arrived from Central Asia and straddled the ideological line between Sunni and Shia, preaching a combo of both, as well as adopting local cultural traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.  They pitched their Islam catechism with a twist.

Does it matter?  Maybe only if whatever  flavor religious brainwashing intrudes on human values. I mean the dudes of jihad cannot be counted on to reintegrate into a tolerant culture, no more than the American Jesus fanatics will somehow become open minded about abortion.

So, do we let the Pakistani flood victims twist in the wind because their ranks are full of assholes who use murder in their quest  to turn the West into a monotheist bloc worshipping at only a mosque?

A rowdy Brit wouldn’t shut up.  The bar was quiet except for him and he liked his own voice.  Couldn’t tell if he were drunk, but it was a pub—in a basement somewhere near the wharf in Hong Kong.  I loved this dive because my ferry to Kowloon left every half hour from only a block away.  A pint or two here after a day in HK gave me time to journal and leave when I felt relaxed and beat, with a gentle beer buzz to protect against the chill of the sea.  An Irish couple, the Chinese bartender and I chatted, pretending not to notice the flamboyant one, now solo dancing near the rugby posters near the stairs.

“Michael leaves for Saudi tomorrow,” said the middle aged wife. “My last oil dig then we’re home to Dublin,” agreed Husband.  They were glad for my company that diverted from the sadness of their prolonged goodbye.  I took their pictures, wished them well, and walked to the stairs.   

Out of nowhere the Brit jumped me from behind, triggering that crazed adrenaline one summons as a foreigner, attacked.  Before I could smash his throat with my elbow, he released me and continued his harmless cavorting around me, waving hands above head, “Look at me mate?——There’s a daft one thinking a Scottish queer meant harm!  I love ya Laddie!” and he bounded up the stairs to the street.

You make a left here and there and arrive where you are.  Sometimes it’s Spain or Greece. Maybe you are still capable of loving and being loved, maybe not.  The turns teach us that finding one important thing in your life doesn’t mean you have to give up all the other important things.

In Mumbai she told me, “What I do know is that being with him, loving him, left me feeling more self confident, knowing I still could be important to someone. I loved his belly on mine. He was starved to tell me about his struggles and dreams. And I listened although I had no point of reference with this man——but do you need one?  He was suffering. I am a woman and had what he needed so I freely gave to him.”

     Delhi is north and inland, most of its 14 million are Muslim, whereas Mumbai is coastal and 10 million, mostly Hindu.  Delhi is the modern capital, and is loaded with government buildings and very wide, parade ready streets.  Mumbai streets are impossible (see post below) and its architecture smaller scale, dating from the British Raj, and is a more garish version of London East End Victorian.

The entire city of Delhi is choking on hot red dust that never dissipates, except in the monsoon season—picture August, noon, Yuma, Arizona.  The remains of the past Mughal Rule in India are everywhere in Dehli. The crumbling structures and congested by-lanes still exist within the old walled city.  Lal Quila (“the Red Fort’) is a block of disintegrating red sandstone— the same shade of the infield dirt at Dodger Stadium.  It squats on the bank of river Yamuna.  This monster was built by Shahjahan, the same Mughal King who went nuts for a woman and built the Taj Mahal, now a mecca for throngs of white western females swooning over the fairy tale edifice to romantic love.

Kingfisher beer is cheap in the cafes and often served with a saucer of peanuts.  But Delhi street food is great too—way better than in Mumbai, although you’ll miss the grilled mackerel and coconut fish curry. There is plenty of  fresh fruit, briyani (spicy basmati rice slow cooked with cheap diced meat and whatever is handy), puri (unleavened pocket bread deep fried and sometimes filled with whatever is handy) and masala (“masala” means “mix of,” usually paired with “garam” meaning hot  and spicy, or “chana” meaning chickpeas—blended with—you guessed it—whatever is handy).  For some reason the lassi (cold yogurt drink) is creamier and silkier here than down south.

With every street food order you get a star child chef ——-a tiny Indian version of Bobby Flay, skillfully tossing together local ingredients over a makeshift oil barrel grill fueled by scavenged construction site wood. “Are you ready for a throw down?”