To Blog or Not to Blog—that is the question.

Here in sunny North India, I find myself tardy in my blogging obligations, but unrepentant.

You may guess that it is because of my lassitude—basking here in the semi-tropical sun. But you would be mistaken.

Despite the flowers, shrubs, and plants now blooming here in profusion, despite attractions of the swallows arcing overhead, the long-tailed shrike and the undulating archon bird, I have been reducing my sizeable shnoz on the proverbial whetstone, so much so that I have left not so much as to sneeze with, much less to gaze upon the majestic foothills of the Himalayas be-jeweled at night with the city set on a hill—Moosourie.

Now that my wandering luggage has come back to the Ark, yielding its lectures to my outstretched hand, I have worked tirelessly—yea, assiduously, to provide my protégées with syllabus, class schedule, and term paper guidelines.

Hence—now that the basics are in place, blog it is.

I have had, amid many severe trials, the pleasure of missing that great non-holiday: Halloween. (That word used to have an apostrophe in it—or am I mis-remembering?) But its spookiness has found me 8000 miles away. (That’s 12,000 kilometers for you friends in Great Britain.) You see, the campus here is again under construction. This time it’s the guesthouse—a 6-unit hostel, including the suite (two rooms) for the college founder, Uncle George, and his wife, Leelama.

Apparently there’s an ever-increasing number of guests that stay here for conferences, or as visiting faculty or chapel speakers, or even as visitors passing through. (You are always welcome to be in that number no matter what may bring you to India.) This is good. Very good. The west wall of the guesthouse now opens to a walkway that bridges a small ravine to the new wing. The concrete slab floors are held up with crookly hardwood poles until they harden. Looks kinda shaky, but at least it appears more reassuring than the bamboo scaffolding used in far East Asia. There is soon to be a larger suite for Uncle and Auntie, who spend a good fraction of their time each year here before returning to the USA for the endless rounds of fund-raising. And there will be four additional guest rooms as well.

However—here it comes, you say—my arrival must have circulated in an advance warning to the world. In yesteryears I have found a fellow-guest or two, and even Uncle “Founder” George was hear on my previous four visits for at least a few days.

This year—November 2007—no one. Not a living soul. “Home alone.”

And it is Halloween. I, like Scrooge, do not really believe in the holiday, nor have I the appropriate holiday spirit. And I too—like he—am to be visited by the spirits seeking to convert me to proper devotion to “those gone on.” as we used to say. All Souls’ Eve, indeed. Humbug!

The first to come is the Spirit of Darkness.

With a horrible SNAP the lights on the walkways and in the hall go down. They left me a tube light, but where is it? Ah—I feel it. I saw them twist the black top so the top would slide up and reveal the bulb in the lantern glass. But it’s not coming up. OK—I stumbled on the secret. But where was that switch?!?! There are some noises out there somewhere. Dogs are barking. I’m now feeling a bit tense as my jet-lagged alimentary canal is signaling “Urgent.” You can stumble in these all-ceramic cells. You can find yourself, in the darkness, sitting on the edge of the Asian shower sinkhole instead of where y—O, forget it—I’m not going there. Just as I think I have located the switch and can turn it triumphantly to “ON” there is a roar as the campus generator leaps to life, flooding the place with eye-squinting brilliance, since in your panic you had unknowingly turned all the wall switches you tried to their highest luminosity settings.

The second to arrive is the Ghoul of Noises.

This jet-weary troubadour has finally dropped off the ledge into sweet sleep, so much craved after a dozen catnaps on a twelve-hour flight and a six hour train journey that have served only to torment with the mocking memory of how delicious real sleep used to be. Then a wailing bugle call just outside the bedroom walls, cascading around the empty cavern’s concrete walls, floors, and ceilings. Now, I am a grown man who has spent nights in a plastic tarp on mountain trails (and whose honeymoon included a thankfully forgiven if not forgotten rain swept night on the slopes of Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire in a leaky WWII army tent), so I am not a weenie! But this is new. Nor can I recall any of the phone numbers of the nearby faculty. So the phone on my nightstand is no comfort. I have no clue what creature may be clawing at the foundations, scenting a tantalizing snack on the other side of the wall. If it would only trumpet again perhaps I could triangulate and make out its nature. But only silence. My mind races through all the files stored in the basement of every living brain, hoping to find a match. So many files, so little time. Ah—there’s one or two. I decide (hopefully) it is a cow. They do wander at will in this country, being sacred and all. That’s what I’ll comfort myself with anyway. Now maybe I can try again to slumber—please. I drop off while meditating anew on the biblical phrase, “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills….” Most of them must be in India now….

The third to come is the Spectre of Spooks.

They are running water now. I can hear it hissing through the pipes. Is someone in the kitchen? I recall how I did not bolt the door to the guesthouse, not knowing if someone had a key to one of the upper rooms and would wake me from my hard-earned rest in the middle of the night. They could let themselves in, I had thought. Now I remember that my room is the one where the previous occupant—cursed be he—had absconded with the key. So my room is unsecured. And now some Hindu extremist is rummaging in the kitchen, likely looking for an additional backup for his knife and is now running water to whet the edge thereof! I slip silently off the bed, slide into my pants and sandals, ready to see if the way is clear for my Dagwood-Bumstead-style exit from the front door into the lane. Poking my head out my bedroom door, I see that it is barely dawn, and a worker is at the spigot out back filling a plastic bucket. He is covered with what looks like a pair of boxer shorts and is all lathered with soap! He starts dipping water as he stands on the concrete slab. He douses himself repeatedly. Hair and head. Shoulders and arms. Down the front of the shorts. Down the back of the shorts, then the sides. His work-toughened brown frame glistens in the last-quarter moonlight high overhead.

He is clean. I am not, having no luggage with fresh clothing. He is rested and ready for an 11-hour day on the wooden ladders and rough slab site. He has slept on a mat and is tough. I am soft and tired. Have mercy! Let a poor pampered wandered from the West get a break. Why can’t you people have a second cup of tea or coffee and come to the job site when the sun is up—like maybe noon?!?! O MY STARS! There comes his wife! When will their nearly-naked urchins show up?

Now I know how Scrooge felt when forced to surrender to what he once called the affects of “a bit of undigested beef or underdone potato.” But he was rewarded with Christmas and the joy of his nephew’s holiday dinner. This is no Christmas. This is Halloween. I’m home alone….

It’s just not fair!