Verse 1: A reason to sing: you caught me ready to remember. I’d take your everything just to try to make a sad song better.
Verse 2: Surrender and swing! You taught me love comes like the weather. What changes may it bring, I would ebb and flow with you forever.
Chorus: You’re a postcard from the road less-traveled, a phone call from the long way home. Morning sees you off with nets to scatter.* Will evening bring you back? I never know. How many days does it take a river to wander to the sea? That’s how long I’ll wait for you to come on home to me.
Verse 3: Of salt and stone you are king*, but you brought me home again to pleasure. I’d hold my breath and swim every tide that brings us home together.
O, while I sleep, come close to my bed, the way that Laura appeared in Petrarch’s room in the night, and as you near me, your breath will touch my skin, and when it does, my lips will part…it will touch my anxious brow, where perhaps a dark dream that has lasted too long is clinging, which your glance will elevate like a star and suddenly my dream will shine with light! And then, on my lips, where a flame is burning, love’s flame that God himself has purified, place a kiss, and as an angel transforms into woman, suddenly my soul will awaken! O, come!…the way that Laura came to Petrarch…
But don’t just believe me! Let Leontyne tell you:
‘Oh! Quand je dors’ Music by Franz Liszt, Poem by Victor Hugo
As Tom put it during our car ride from Indira Gandhi Airport to my hotel in South Delhi: highways in India are, at least, totally democratic. Lawless as they seem to terrified Americans, lanes are shared equally by pedestrians, un-helmeted cyclists and motorcyclists, cars, 18-wheelers and the occasional ox-drawn cart…more to follow about my experiences as passenger and pedestrian on the streets of India. Meanwhile, Payal was telling me that my best options for getting around the city for site-seeing purposes would be taxis and auto-rickshaws, and that the practically brand new Delhi Metro was a perfectly good alternative, as well.
Being intimately acquainted with the concept of subways, I was instantly interested in this option. What could be more familiar in a completely foreign country than underground public transportation? Commuters in big cities around the world surely have the same needs: affordability, reliable service, basic personal safety and access to a city’s important places. The Delhi Metro seemed a good choice as much for comparative research as a fellow commuter in a big, global city as for a cheap and useful way to see the sites as a tourist.
It did not disappoint! The spotless stations; wide, vaulted platforms; and suburb/exurb connectivity reminded me of the DC Metro, while the graphic design of maps and logo reminded me of the London Tube. The people watching was a tie between the MTA (diversity and sheer number of fellow passengers) and the Paris Metro (their beauty and impeccable style).
But, naturally, the Delhi Metro is entirely its own thing. For one thing, it’s mad cheap: you can buy a 1-day Tourist Travel Card for Rs100 ($2), plus a Rs50 ($1) deposit, which you get back when you return the card. It’s got metal detectors: my first time in the system, I stepped blithely up to the men’s line and was immediately waved over to the women’s line by a compassionate and quick-witted lady guard. And, best of all, the single-sex theme carries through all the way to ‘Women Only’ train cars: I found myself loving their peace and quiet, so much so that I would not at all mind a few Women Only cars on the 4/5 train, especially during rush hour.
Why? Because, at least as far as the Delhi Metro is concerned, Women Only subway cars are empirically cleaner, quieter, less…full of men. I adore men, but anyone who enjoys clean, quiet environments and not being stared at by men might reasonably prefer to commute in a Women Only subway car. Just saying. But with Tom’s observation about the ‘democratic’ highways of India in mind, I wondered about the social separation of gender underground, and elsewhere in public. What an intriguing challenge to my cultural assumptions about gender and democracy. Clearly I’m coming from a very specific cultural viewpoint: gender is such a complicated subject for Americans (New Yorkers?), and apparently, such a simple one elsewhere. But is single-sex anything really so simple…or democratic?
Not that I’m prepared to answer that question, except to note that the value of traveling (on a daily commute or around the world) does seem to be related to the experience of sharing the lanes.
