The Materialist's Lament

Before the Materialist left for India, she asked her friend Sheila for advice. "I only have one thing to say," Sheila said. "Buy everything."The Materialist giggled.

But once the Materialist got to India and began her tentative explorations, she realized that Sheila was right: the riches of India are too numerous and too diverse to sift through anew at every stop.  Sure, you may see that lilac-and-silver watered silk scarf again (or something like it, at least), but are you really willing to visit stall after stall in bazaar after bazaar until you find its equal when you could have just bought it on the spot in the town where you first saw it? The Materialist thinks not.

So here, another story of the Materialist's folly: the Materialist and her mother took an afternoon in Jaipur to go shopping. They were both feeling good. The Materialist's mother had stopped vomiting, and the Materialist was blissfully unaware that her own torment was about to begin.

The Gems of Jaipur

One of the Materialist's purchases from Gem Palace, Jaipur

Before the Materialist learned her important lesson in self-control, however, she was in Jaipur, the emerald capitol of India, learning a rather different kind of lesson.

Those who have been to India before know that here, ornamentation is more than mere decoration (although it's also, splendidly, that as well): it's a way of announcing to the world your identity, your status and station in life, even your temperament and astrological sign. All of the Materialist's Rajasthani guides--all men, as it turned out--wore at least two rings on their hands--a milky pearl set in a band of silver (to cool the temper), and a stone recommended by their astrologer to bring them luck: a emerald-cut yellow sapphire; a tiny, brilliant-cut ruby. Even the rickshaw drivers, the Materialist saw, wore bright-colored chips of stone on their fingers. There was therefore a strong sociological--as well as acquisitive--element in the Materialist's pilgrimage to Gem Palace, one of the city's best-known and most prestigious jewelers and certainly its largest.

The Materialist learns an important lesson about self-control (Udaipur)

View from the Materialist's room at the Shiv Niwas, Udaipur

God, what a varied life the Materialist leads. Take right now, for example, in which the Materialist is sitting in her room at the Ananda Spa high in the Himalayas, listening to the mewling peacocks and admiring the glitter of lights from the town below. Just a few minutes ago, she was in the bathtub (with the same view), reading Suketu Mehta's excellent MAXIMUM CITY and digesting the last of a macadamia-nut salad.

Monuments to Glory (Agra)

A photo of the Taj Mahal taken by Tess1, a contestant in Conde Nast Traveler's Dream Trip Contest

Saturday morning, at almost the exact time her colleagues back in New York were gathering in the conference room on Friday afternoon for cupcakes to celebrate the magazine's two National Magazine Awards --an annual distinction whose ceremony, held in a midtown hotel, is optimistically likened to the Oscars but is in fact more akin to the Tonys, dominated as the night is by gays and women who spent high school feeling misunderstood and tortured and vowing that someday they'd show them all--the Materialist was rising at dawn to go see the Taj Mahal, the most famous temple to love in the world.

The Materialist in India

The Materialist's guide to the new India

So look, the Materialist's sorry it's been such a long time since she wrote. But she has a good excuse (as usual)--she's in India, suckers!

The Materialist is too tired to go through all the boring details of her travels so far--sharing a bed with her mother, who is accompanying her on her 18-day trip through Delhi, Varanasi, Khajuraho, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, and the Himalayas; her near-brush with deep-vein thrombosis; her inability to catch a stomach bug and thus lose the six pounds her trainer, Anthony, gave her hope she might lose--and will instead say only that she is right now in her groovy teal-and-violet pool view room at the Taj Chandela in Khajuraho, whose decor reminds the Materialist a bit of the hotel Fredo manages in Anita, first-gen Indian-American now living in Dehli, but with tons of gorgeous silvery-grey marble everywhere and luscious swags of shantung and habutai silk. In an hour or so, she'll go meet her guide, Balendu Singh of IVAT, to see the famously erotic friezes at the nearby temples.