Sentence of the Day

It's been another long day. The rhubarb roundup will have to wait.

But what I'll give you as a sentence. And an introduction to the sentence.

In my senior year of college, I discovered Elizabeth Bishop. And though I didn't read much poetry in general, I developed a crush on Elizabeth Bishop almost immediately upon reading her sestina called "Sestina" (She has a second published sestina called "A Miracle for Breakfast" but I don't like that one quite as much.) I wrote about my infatuation with Bishop in a short essay in the Christian Science Monitor a couple of years ago.

I read her Collected Prose the summer after I graduated, and I read the longest essay in the book--called "Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore"--while visiting my friend Mo's fiance's parents' summer house, a camp, they called it, on top of a mountain and next to a lake in the Connecticut Berkshires. I read the essay lying in a chaise longue beside the lake, and later that day, or the next morning, Mo and I swam across the lake and back. I was almost completely content.

And even though it's been almost 21 years since I first read the essay, and I've forgotten many of the details, there's one sentence I still remember with clarity. It's in a paragraph a few pages from the end, about Marianne Moore's "originality and freshness" of diction and her "polysyllabic virtuosity." And here's what I've remembered over all these years (with the sentence preceding it, so it makes sense).

"A friend has told me of attending a party for writers and artists at which she introduced a painter to Marianne by saying, 'Miss Moore has the most interesting vocabulary of anyone I know.' Marianne showed signs of pleasure at this, and within a minute, offhandedly but accurately used in a sentence a word I no longer remember that means an addiction, in animals, to licking the luminous numbers off the dials of clocks and watches."

After all of these years, I am still amazed that such a word exists. I'm not sure I even need to know what it is. It's enough that Marianne Moore knew what it was and that Elizabeth Bishop thought to tell us about it.

Sign of the Day

It's been a long day.

There was the extra early wakeup by a naughty little black cat who decided that rather than sleeping peacefully with his brother and me, he'd prefer to be on the shelf on top of my closet. Except he can't get there by himself, so I awoke to plaintive meows and the sight of the little cat standing on his hind legs on the chair where I dump my clothes, his claws firmly planted in the sleeves of my shirts hanging in the closet, as if he could scratch his way up to the shelf. (Since he is more docile and obedient than his willful brother, he was persuaded that he could live without being on the shelf for awhile, though the effort to convince him of this--via some well-aimed squirts of the spray bottle next to my bed--woke me up for good.)

And then there was the long morning meeting and the long late afternoon conversation about something I don't usually have long conversations about (supercomputers), which made me feel rather fuzzy in the head. (It's for a freelance project, not because I've developed a sudden interest.)

And then the gym, which defuzzed my brain and got me pleasantly tired.

And then a dinner consisting of leftovers from the lovely all-spring-all-the-time meal I shared with Alex and Lizzie last night, the highlights of which included the asparagus soup I wrote about on Monday, scallion-cheddar drop biscuits which I've made many times before but which are especially good with new green onions, and rhubarb cobbler with ginger frozen yogurt. The cobbler was going to be my subject for today, but it will have to wait til tomorrow which will hopefully not start quite as early.

So, all that's left is to say thanks again to Lisa being my guest blogger yesterday and to say that the link to my piece up at Like Fire--about Noel Streatfeild, Maud Hart Lovelace and why adults won't buy books they love if the cover is purple with swirly letters on it--is here, if you haven't wandered over there yet.

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is possibly my absolutely favorite sign in all of India, which is saying a lot since I've seen a lot of good signs over the years. (If only I'd taken a photo of "Don't Create Chaos--Stay in Your Own Lane!" all those years ago when I first saw it.) And without further ado, I present to you the photo which, in snapshot form, has lived on my refrigerator without cease since I took it in Goa in December 1999:

Guest Post Day: Lisa Peet of Like Fire

Lisa Peet usually blogs over at Like Fire (and sometimes still at Mappa Mundi). Today, however, I'm delighted to have her here.

Goodbye and Thank You

I wonder if with all the press and airtime it’s been getting, hoarding isn’t becoming the ADD of the 21st century, with everyone running to locate themselves and their friends on the spectrum. The media saturation hits just the right notes of assurance in between No, I couldn’t possibly be as messed up as those people and Gee, that explains a lot. This was a major topic in a group conversation last week: How we relate to our stuff, the behavior and subtexts involved, how much is too much.

I moved to a good-sized house six years ago, after living in apartments my whole adult life, and it’s been luxurious to relax and let crap collect a bit. I have all my son’s stuffed animals and some baby clothes in big black trash bags in the attic, and five boxes of my father’s scratchy classical albums from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. None of these are things I’d miss for a minute if I got rid of them, but the act of taking them downstairs and putting them out on the street would feel like some obscure kind of betrayal. I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to worry about them for the time being. They can sit where they are.

But I don’t think of that as pathological, really, just sentimental. I’m truly hoardy in only two areas: books, including literary journals and periodicals, and paper goods—stationery, blank books, fancy paper, postcards, stickers. None of it falls into the realm of weird, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t save newspapers I’ve read, or little scraps of used wrapping paper or pens that have run out of ink. Nothing has taken money out of my pocket that I couldn’t afford to spend; none of it takes up more room than I have to spare. I read a lot of books and I write a lot of letters (though sadly, far fewer than I used to before email). What qualifies it as hoarding, in my opinion, is how much joy I get from the process of acquisition. I’m not much of a shopper otherwise, but the pleasure I get from blowing $10 on weird Japanese stickers on Etsy or finding a beat-up paperback of a book I’ve wanted at a secondhand store is completely separate from the pleasure I’ll get using them. It’s an end in itself. And I definitely own more than I consume.

Which is OK. Nobody puts your kid in foster care because you have a lot of books. But the conversation got me thinking about where, exactly, I could draw some lines in the sand. And my gaze fell squarely and somberly on my bookshelf of cooking magazines.

I learned to cook in my mid-20s. I had been a picky eater as a kid and spoiled, and as a consequence never got much beyond pasta and scrambled eggs. But then I found myself broke and pregnant, and the idea of living on Chinese food, Snickers bars and beer didn’t appeal much anymore. So with fierce determination and no real idea what I was doing, I subscribed to Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and Gourmet, and proceeded to cook my way through every issue for the next 10 years.

It was a good plan. A year in, once the panic subsided and I started to feel a bit more comfortable in the kitchen, I realized that I loved cooking. A bit further down the line and I realized I’d gotten good at it. There was a certain exultation in that learning curve, that feeling of mastering something slowly by sheer perseverance. And in the same way that you always remember your first forays in a new neighborhood, before everything becomes commonplace, I remember each of those hard-won meals:

• The spinach pasta with salmon cream sauce—how I blanched at the price the fishmonger quoted me until I found out it was for a whole poached salmon, whereas I politely inquired how much for just the half pound the recipe called for, and he politely suggested I buy a salmon fillet and poach it myself.

• The first meal I ever cooked for company, a crusty lemon-herb veal roast with scalloped potatoes and green beans in a shallot vinaigrette on New Year’s Eve, 1987.

• My first pie: crimson pie, with blueberries and cranberries and a tangerine. I still use the first pie crust recipe I ever tried, made with equal parts butter and shortening and a little more than a quarter cup of sour cream, and it’s never failed me once.

• Lasagna from my mom’s crazy two-meat, three-cheese, sauce-from-scratch recipe, which over the years I’ve managed to get down to a couple of hours of prep. The first time took me half a day.

• The Jamaican seafood stew that was so phenomenally delicious I called my best friend up and made her come over to taste it right that minute.

• The mango-orange mousse cake I surprised another good friend with on her birthday, how the filling glowed in a way I’d never seen on a dessert except in Wayne Thiebaud paintings, and how it made me understand that food could be unexpectedly as beautiful as a work of art.

And hundreds of others—triumphs, failures, elaborate projects that left me exhausted and the kitchen devastated. All the memories, even the worst of them, tinged with affection some 20-odd years later. But the memories didn’t reside in the magazines, certainly. And there they were, a long low bookcase crammed with years and years’ worth of cooking glossies that honestly, I was never going to use again. The recipes I liked best had been transferred to 5x8 recipe cards in the grease-speckled box sitting by the stove, and most are available online via a quick Google or Epicurious search. These days I go to food blogs and Tastespotting.com for inspiration, and it should surprise no one that I’ve amassed a healthy collection of cookbooks. With the magazines gone I could shelve my floating books, and even better—the sure sign of a hoardy mind—give in to the pleasures of organizational fussing.

But I wasn’t in the mood to take them all at once and tie them into bundles for Tuesday-morning recycling. The magazines that taught me to cook deserved something a little more epic, a project to honor them. So I began pulling: Every magazine with an April or May date on its spine came out, a foot-high stack. And then I sat down at the kitchen table with the magazines, a stapler, and an exacto knife. I didn’t linger, but ran quickly down the index pages of each, and any recipe that looked appealing I cut out. It wasn’t hard, as I’d put neat check marks in front of everything I thought sounded good at the time—I was so organized back then!—and I could dismiss a lot of them out of hand. I was no longer stuck at home with a toddler and the days stretching out endlessly, needing to be broken up with stroller-laden trips to the farmer’s market, the butcher, the grocer, the cheese shop, all channeled into long, complicated assemblies with the boy on a stepstool at the counter. These days I’m interested in easy weeknight meals, slow cooker recipes, maybe something more involved for the weekend that will last a few days. No more homemade chicken samosas, no 25-ingredient paellas. If I suddenly craved either I could find them online.

It was a fun project, skimming and cutting, like something I would have done as a kid on a rainy weekend afternoon. I ended up with a thick pile of pages, enough to stock a month’s worth of grocery lists easily. Of course . . . this is only May. And the corollary here is that if I keep up with this, I’ll be doing it for a year, freeing up shelf space inch by hard-won inch. I very well may lose patience and toss them all at once. But in the meantime it’s fun revisiting that part of my life, the education that stretched over years. These days cooking is something I can relax into; I may be worn out at the end of the day, but as soon as I take my place at the counter with knife and cutting board I get that small secure rush of knowing what I’m doing, the comfort of muscle memory and proficiency. And while I definitely need those magazines a lot less than the shelf space, it’s nice to take a little time to say goodbye to them, and thank you.

Asparagus Soup, redux

Before I get to today's post, a brief announcement. Tomorrow is guest blogger day for the May Blogathon. Last year, I had the pleasure of swapping with Vera Marie Badertscher at A Traveler's Library. This year, I'm swapping with a blogathon alum--my buddy Lisa Peet over at Like Fire. I told Lisa to surprise me with her post, so I don't know what you'll find here tomorrow, but I, for one, am looking forward to it. And my post will be over there for the day, so please go visit! And now on to today's regularly scheduled post . . .



Today, I bought my first bundle of Hadley asparagus. If you don't live in Western Massachusetts, you might not know that the small town of Hadley (mostly known for the seemingly endless corridor of Route 9 that goes between Northampton and Amherst) is famous both for its soil--Hadley loam--and for the asparagus grown in that soil. Still, Hadley asparagus has gotten a decent amount of press, from articles in Saveur to Yankee Magazine to the Boston Globe. The Saveur article is particularly interesting--apparently, Hadley and the surrounding areas were one of the country's premier asparagus growing regions until the 1970s when a strain of Fusarium, a soil-borne fungus, decimated the crops. (Fusarium is what caused last summer's tomato blight as well.) On a more cheerful note, I also learned that Flayvors of Cook Farm, a local restaurant and ice cream place, makes asparagus ice cream every spring. I had no idea.

I've seen the occasional sign for local asparagus over the past week or two, but it wasn't until today, when I was driving the back way from Amherst that I saw the table outside a farm stand with bundles of asparagus standing in a shallow tray of water. I handed over my $4 and took a bundle home. It's going to be a couple of years (if all goes well) until I have a reliable crop from my own asparagus bed, so I feel lucky that I live so close to the former asparagus capital of the world. (Apparently, signs in Hadley used to say that. I'm not sure if any still exist.)

I didn't have to dither at all about what to make with my first bunch of Hadley asparagus; there was only one choice--the asparagus soup from the Greens cookbook (written by that soup genius, Deborah Madison). For me, this is really spring incarnate. What's especially lovely about the soup is that it has so few ingredients--asparagus, leeks, a potato, a bit of parsley, some lemon zest, a sprinkle of Parmesan if you want it. And that's basically it.

The other nice thing about it is that it uses all parts of the asparagus and the leeks. First, you make a stock out of the tough asparagus ends and the leek greens. Then, you saute the white part of the leeks and the middle section of the asparagus in some butter with a potato, if you'd like. You add the stock and boil until everything is just tender and still bright green. Then you puree it, add the lemon zest and Parmesan, and you're almost done. The final step is cooking the asparagus tips for a minute in boiling water and garnishing the soup with them.

I've made this soup several times already this season, but I feel like it doesn't really count since I used California asparagus. Today's soup was really the inauguration of local spring produce, a harbinger of the day soon to come when I will pick strawberries from my garden, strawberries a fraction of the size of the gargantuan ones from California that have been in the stores lately but that much more satisfying because I barely had to go anywhere to get them. Hadley isn't quite my backyard, but it's close enough.

I wrote about this recipe in the first weeks of this blog, but it's so good, and tis the season, after all, that it seemed worth repeating, and it's definitely worth making, whether or not you have Hadley asparagus at your disposal.

Asparagus Soup

Barely adapted from the Greens cookbook

The Stock

1 lb. thin asparagus, lower ends only

1 cup leek greens, roughly chopped

1 bay leaf

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

4 parsley branches

½ tsp. salt

8 cups cold water

Snap the lower ends off the asparagus where they break easily when bent. Rinse the ends well and roughly chop them into 1-inch pieces. Combine all the ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-25 minutes. Strain.

The Soup

1 lb. thin asparagus (about 12 oz. after the ends are removed)

3 tbs. butter

2-3 leeks, white parts only (about 8 oz.), sliced

½ tsp. salt

1 large potato, peeled and cubed (optional)

1 tbs. parsley, chopped

5-7 cups stock

¼-1/2 cup light or heavy cream (optional)

Freshly ground pepper

½ to 1 tsp. grated lemon peel

Parmesan, grated, for garnish

Cut off the tips of the asparagus and set them aside. Roughly chop the stems into 1-inch pieces. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the leeks and cook them over medium-high heat for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring as needed. Add the asparagus stems, salt, potato (if using) and parsley. Pour in 5 cups of the stock and bring to a boil, then cook at a simmer until the asparagus are just tender, about 6 minutes. Blend the soup well, then work it through the fine screen of a food mill or through a chinoise to remove any fibers.

Return to the stove, stir in the cream, if using, and thin it with more stock, if necessary. Season to taste with salt, freshly ground black pepper and the lemon peel.

In another pot, bring a few cups of water to a boil with a little salt. Cook the asparagus tips, 1-2 minutes until they are done, then pour them into a colander.

Garnish the soup with Parmesan and a few asparagus tips in each bowl

A few notes:

It’s really worth it to make the stock, which give it an extra essence of asparagus.

I usually use the potato to thicken it a bit, but I’ve never added cream—it’s delicious as is and doesn’t really need it.

I usually use the zest of a whole lemon, partly because it’s easier than measuring and partly because it seems like a good amount.

I have strained it occasionally, but you don’t really have to if you’re not serving it at an elegant dinner.

Pretzel Rolls!

Although I've been to Germany a number of times (my brother lived there for 8 years), my knowledge of the German language is practically non-existent. My vocabulary basically consists of the words danke, bitte, auf wiedersehn and laugesemmel. That last word? It means pretzel roll. My brother wrote it down for me so that I could go to the bakery and ask for what I wanted without having to point. And every time I went to the bakery, that's what I asked for.

So, I was very pleased when I moved to Northampton and discovered that the Bakery Normand--a German bakery, after all--made pretzel rolls regularly. Round ones and long ones, some with cheese melted on top. Yum. And though I don't go to Normand as often as I used to since the Hungry Ghost came to town (and because the counter people are surly, as a rule), I still stop by occasionally for a pretzel roll. Encountering the surliness is a small price to pay for a good pretzel roll.

Not long ago, I discovered that now the Whole Foods bakery also makes pretzel rolls. I tried one, and it was fine, though not as good as Normand's. I tried another one, just to make sure, and my judgment stood. And then I remembered that a few years back, Deb at Smitten Kitchen had written about making pretzel rolls (called "bretzels"), and I decided the time had finally come to try them myself.

The dough itself is easy to work with. What makes these pretzel rolls rather than just ordinary rolls is that they are boiled for a minute before baking in a water-sugar-baking soda bath.
Basically, you make the dough, (I used my Kitchen Aid mixer rather than the food processor in the original recipe.), let it rest and then divide it into 8 balls. I used my nifty new(ish) scale to make sure that the dough balls were approximately the same size. (They were after I fiddled with them.)

You make an X in each ball and then let them rise again til doubled in size:

Meanwhile, the oven is preheating, and the water is coming to the boil. Here's the action shot:


And then you place them on a baking sheet, ideally one covered with a piece of parchment paper sprinkled with corn meal. At this point, I followed Deb's suggestion and slit the X into the rolls a second time, as the boiling seemed to close it back up. (Next time, I might just wait til the end to do it, or I might do it twice.) You brush them with an egg white wash and sprinkle on coarse salt. When I got to that point, I (mentally) kicked myself; I have kosher salt and Malden salt and regular salt . . . but no coarse salt. I sprinkled with the kosher salt and hoped for the best.

The pretzel rolls were, I have to admit, not as good as Normand's. But I've decided that they've just had a lot more practice, and for the first time around, these were just fine. In the meantime, coarse salt is going on my shopping list, and pretzel rolls are going onto my regular baking agenda.

Pretzel Rolls
Adapted from Bon Appétit | January 1994, via Smitten Kitchen

2 3/4 cups bread flour
1 envelope quick-rising yeast or 2 1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon celery seeds (I didn't use these as I don't really like celery, though some of the epicurious reviewers recommended them.)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (about) hot water (125°F to 130°F)

Cornmeal
8 cups water
1/4 cup baking soda
2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg white, beaten to blend (glaze)
Coarse salt

Combine bread flour, yeast, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar and celery seeds (if using) in food processor or bowl of Kitchen Aid mixer and blend. With machine running, gradually pour hot water through feed tube, adding enough water to form smooth elastic dough. (If you use the mixer, just add the water and then turn it on. I used the lowest speed and the dough hook, and it took several minutes to come together into a ball.) Process 1 minute to knead. Grease medium bowl. Add dough to bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, then towel; let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 35 minutes.

Flour baking sheet. Punch dough down and knead on lightly floured surface until smooth. Divide into 8 pieces. Form each dough piece into ball. Place dough balls on prepared sheet, flattening each slightly. Using serrated knife, cut X in top center of each dough ball. Cover with towel and let dough balls rise until almost doubled in volume, about 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle with cornmeal. Bring 8 cups water to boil in large saucepan. Add baking soda and 2 tablespoons sugar (water will foam up). Add 4 rolls and cook 30 seconds per side. Using slotted spoon, transfer rolls to prepared sheet, arranging X side up. Repeat with remaining rolls.

Brush rolls with egg white glaze. Sprinkle rolls generously with coarse salt. Bake rolls until brown, about 25 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Serve rolls warm or room temperature. (Can be prepared 6 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm in 375°F oven 10 minutes.)

Saturday Wordle

In a bit of fortuitous timing, partway through last year's blogathon, I learned about Wordles. You go to the site, put a link in, and you get a word picture instantly. Pretty cool.

Last year, I used one, as my friend Lisa put it, as a "Get Out of Blogathon Jail Free" card, and this year, I'm going to do the same. It's a gorgeous, sunny Saturday, and though the asparagus bed is done for the moment, the rest of the garden isn't.

What I like about the wordles is that they're a snapshot in time, a moment in the life of the blog. In last year's wordles (I did two), my concerns were mainly yogurt, which I was making for the first time, and the sinkhole in the bike path. This year, it's pretty clear what's been in my blog most recently. I'm going to make a note to myself that I should do wordles more often and not just when I want to spend a day in my gardens rather than at my computer. Do click on the image, as it's better when it's big. Happy Saturday!

Delhi Metro Love Revisited

I can't tell you how excited I was to see on the New York Times homepage this story by Lydia Polgreen about the Delhi Metro: In India, Hitching Hopes on a Subway. And not only that, there's a slide show, which includes a shot of the volunteer Metro monitor trying to convince some young men to stand rather than squat by the door. As anyone who read this blog during last year's blogathon knows, I adore the Delhi Metro with a passion not usually expressed for a public transportation system. If you read the article, you will see that clearly I am not the only one.

I was really bummed about not being able to go to India in January because of my stupid Lyme disease, but there's one small saving grace: according to the article, the Delhi Metro is due to be completed on time, this fall, in time for the Commonwealth Games, which will take place in Delhi in October. Which means that when I arrive in the winter, the Metro to south Delhi (not to mention to the airport!) will no longer just be a messy construction zone but a reality. And if I want to ride on it all day, from Green Park or Jor Bagh or the stop across from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Delhi Branch) where I stayed the first time I was in Delhi in 1989-90, up to Connaught Place, or the New Delhi Railway Station or even Chandi Chowk in Old Delhi, I can. After the countless hours I've spent in auto-rickshaws and buses over the years, I can't think of a better way to spend a day of appreciation of the wonder that is the Delhi Metro.

And partly because it's a Friday, but mostly because I feel slightly prescient for having declared my love for the Delhi Metro exactly one year before the New York Times wrote about it, I'm going to re-post an edited version of my post on Delhi Metro Love, originally posted on May 14, 2009.

Delhi Metro Love: One Year Later and Still Unabated

Early on during my first stay in India in 1989-90, my friend Rasil gave me a public safety tip. She pointed to a red line bus roaring down the road and said, "If one of those buses is coming toward you, get out of the way. It won't stop." And sure enough, in the news every week or two was the news of a red line bus that hadn't stopped and had run someone down. It was, as you might imagine, rather terrifying. Eventually, despite that, I started taking the bus anyway; partly, I figured that I'd rather be on the biggest vehicle possible on those roads. And when I came back to live in Delhi on my Fulbright a few years later, I kept taking the bus. Not everywhere or every day, but often enough.

But there is no way you can describe a bus in Delhi as a pleasant experience--they're mostly crowded and dirty and crowded and hot and crowded. If you're lucky enough to have a seat (and there is a small section of seats that are officially "ladies seats"), you will often have other people's parcels and bags and occasionally babies handed to you to hold onto while you are sitting. And if you are a lady, you may also have some overly friendly fellow pressing against you, and sometimes, the the bus will be so crowded that there is not even room to elbow him in the groin as he deserves.

Despite all of that, I do still occasionally take the bus when I'm in Delhi, for old time's sake (or because I don't feel like haggling with a rickshaw-wallah). And basically, over the past 20 years, nothing has changed about them except for the fares have gone up slightly--a ride that might have cost 2 rupees 15 years ago now costs 8 rupees. But the key thing to remember about the buses is that, until the Metro, they were the only public transportation in Delhi at all. Mumbai and Chennai, at least, have viable commuter trains, and even Calcutta has a Metro, but in Delhi the only options were bus, auto-rickshaw or taxi. (There are bicycle rickshaws as well, but they're only allowed in Old Delhi.)

Contrast this with the Metro, the lovely, lovely Delhi Metro, which has been in existence in its partially completed state for just over 6 years. Apparently, the person in charge of the Metro project would only take it on under the condition that it would not be business as usual--meaning, no patronage, no bribery, no baksheesh, no giving of contracts to a second minister's brother's company sort of thing. The result of this was that the first phase was completed within the budget and 3 years ahead of schedule. Imagine that.

The thing about the Metro is that, despite having been operating for more than 6 years, it still looks new. The stations and trains are clean. There is not that seemingly inevitable sense of collapse as there often is in India. It's shiny and easy to use and supremely functional. It's kind of amazing.

I have 2 brief stories to tell from when I was in Delhi in January. I only went on the Metro between a few stations, but I went through the Connaught Place station (where the terminal is called "Rajiv Chowk," after assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi) a number of times. It's the busiest station I saw, and as the train doors opened there, I was prepared for chaos. (On the buses--and other places--people just shove their way in without much consideration for anyone--really out of necessity.) Instead, the people getting on the Metro stood to either side and filed in that way, leaving a wide open space in the middle for people to leave the train. I was amazed. The one time I saw someone attempt to buck this and barge in through the middle, another passenger pulled him back. The next time I was waiting for a train, I happened to look down at the floor and found that, at the place where each car would stop, there were arrows painted on the floor for where entering passengers should stand so as not to get in the way of exiting passengers. And it worked.

The other Metro story also takes place at Rajiv Chowk. It was one of my last days in Delhi, and I had (of course) been shopping. I had multiple bulky bags with me, including a large bag containing more than 3 kgs of Assam tea. I was meeting Sunil and Navtej at a dance performance, and I had planned my itinerary such that I could hop on the Metro in Connaught Place and get off at Mandi House, close to where many of the auditoriums where performances are held are located. I hadn't really thought about rush hour, but it was about 6:30 by then, high rush hour. The line for the Metro trailed up the stairs and nearly into the street. I debated trying to find a rickshaw but thought I'd see how fast the line was moving first. I had only been in line for a minute when the man in front of me looked at me and gestured to me to go ahead. I wasn't sure what he said, and then I heard the magic words: "Ladies Line." And it was true, that everyone in the very, very, very long line was a man. Who was I to reject a ladies line that was offered to me? I walked down the stairs and through the corridor, past several hundred men, and got into the line that had approximately 5 women in front of me. It turned out to be the line for the security check rather than a ticket line. The young female army person checking the bags seemed startled to see me and all of my bundles. (She was even more startled that I could talk to her in Hindi.) I began to open them up so she could see what was inside--some shawls, some clothes, some fabric and multiple gold foil bags of tea. She looked at me quizzically when she saw all the tea. I shrugged. "I like tea," I told her in Hindi, and she laughed. The rest of my trip was quick, and although I wasn't exactly early for the performance, I wasn't late either.

But that very, very long line of men was like every other line I saw in every Metro station--mellow, patient, polite. The Metro, as far as I can tell, demands politeness of its riders, and the riders oblige.

It would be easy to go on about why it took so long for there to be a viable public transportation system in such a huge city, but really, I'm just happy that it's there now. And I will be even happier in September 2010, when the next phase (which goes down to south Delhi) is finished. I never thought I'd be so excited about a train system in a city I don't even live in, but what can I say--all of that time in Delhi has indelibly printed on me the challenges of getting around there, and every Metro ride (which means one bus or rickshaw ride that doesn't have to happen) still feels like a blessing.

And although my Delhi Metro bag has a broken handle, alas, I will immortalize it here one more time: