On the Fly

We've been making things up as we go, deciding our next destination only a couple of days ahead of time. The freedom is glorious! Since I don't really have much time or a laptop to organize my thoughts beforehand, the below post might be a bit of verbal vomit so be forwarned.
After 3 days of incredible Kochi humidity we retreated to the hills along with what seemed like the entire middle class of southern India. Munnar, an old British hill station, ranks amongst one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I've ever been. Lush, green tea plantations carpet the valley and surrounding mountains, and the cool air was a relief. At 5 in the morning our 2nd day there we awoke to conquer one of the surrounding mountains on a guided trek. The sun rose as we climbed. The fog in the valley below slowly dissipated, moving smoothly over ridges like a waterfall. I wish I could post pictures.
Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Madurai, in the state of Tamil Nadu. The main attraction here is the Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple, the most ostentatious version of Tamil's unique style of temple architecture, called gopuras. The temple itself is made up of a tangled maze of shrines, towers, sculptures, and colonnades and the complex is always overflowing with religious activities and fervor, disorienting to the untrained eye. Yesterday evening we visited the temple and witnessed men lay down flat on the floor in front of a shrine, arms above their heads and hands clasped in a prayer. Women layed tiny newborn infants in the floor in front of a statue of Nandi, Shiv's bull-vehicle. Four men carried a small statue of Meenakshi on a dais, following a seemingly illogical route around the complex.
This morning we found out that we had arrived in the midst of a huge festival held only once a year, celebrating the wedding of Meenakshi (a form of Parvati) to Sundareshwarar (a form of Shiv). The wedding ceremony was to take place this morning. We wandered around for a while like lost puppies trying to figure out if non-Hindu's were even allowed in, being told over and over again by strangers that we were lucky to be here on this day. After 20 minutes or so of confusion we found ourselves packed into a queue with mostly Indian women, the smell of jasmine in their hair almost making us faint, clutching a pass that somehow worked wonders when we showed it to the police standing guard. Getting in was a little nerve-racking as we recalled past stories of people being trampled to death in India; for anyone that has experienced waiting in lines with pushy Indians, you know what I mean. Once inside we found what turned out to be 70,000 people sitting peacefully on the floor. Jumbotrons were set up so that people in the back could witness the complex ceremonies taking place on the stage. It was like we were at a music concert or a political rally! After this, I look forward to a Rs. 30 meal of rice and various curries I can't keep straight, served on a banana leaf.

Karoline, Karoline and Karly do Kerala

Surprise! I'm not in Rajasthan anymore. This might seem abrupt but in my mind it's been a long time comin'. There are a lot of stories, reflections, and thoughts I'd love to put up here from the past two weeks of finishing up my internship and then my entire academic program, but for the sake of catching up to the present I'm just going to have to skip over those for now. Or else I fear I'll be forever stuck in the past!
April 29 at 4:35 AM marked the beginning of phase three, my 20 or so days of exploring the rest of India. We arrived at the Delhi airport at an ungodly hour, charmed our liquid bottle-filled luggage through security using our Hindi as a lubricant and by 9 AM found ourselves staring at nuns in habits under palm trees outside the Ernakulam airport, our sweat glands working over time from the sudden humidity.
We've spent the past two days exploring Fort Kochi, a small, relaxed city on a peninsula jutting out into a bay opening out into the Arabian sea. Like most port cities, Kochi is a smorgasbord of cultures, left behind by the various people that have come before (Dutch, Portuguese, Jewish, Chinese, Chola, and other ancient Indian dynasties names and dates of which I can't keep straight).
I spend most my time here thinking about the ways in which Kerala is different from Rajasthan. Examples abound! Food: a preference for rice over roti, fish, idli and sumbar, coconut in the curries, poori, porrotta. Language: English and Malayalam, the script of which looks like curly-cue doodles you'd write in the corner on your notebook for a boring class. Needless to say, Hindi doesn't do us much good here and the phrase "Ham Hindi sikh rahi hai" ("We are learning Hindi") doesn't have quite the currency it did back in the airport. Weather: we got soaking wet in a thunderstorm today, the first rain I've seen or felt in three months. It was wonderful. Religion: a strong Christian influence from the Portuguese and the Dutch. People have names like Thomas, churches and Christian iconography prosper. We attended an evening mass today and realized that worship has a distinctively Hindu flavor. Politics: the Communist Party is a stronghold here, even though Congress just won the recent election...The people even look physically different, hair curly from the humidity, skin darker, features softer, and men stockier. Women wear flowers in their hair; I wore a hibiscus behind my ear today and was soon warned that that broadcasted to the Keralan world that I was angry. I quickly tucked into the braid behind my head.
All this difference makes me wonder how the hell this country stays together. The only source of similarity I can think of (one India has over America) is the uniform time difference.

“I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure."

Caroline and I have returned to Jaisalmer from a short reprieve in Jaipur for our mid-internship seminar, and we’ve returned with new vigor. Our first day back started with a bang, quite literally, as we were woken from our sleep at 7:30 in the morning by a violent shaking. Everyone groggily jumped up, yelling “Uper, uper, uper!” as we ran outside. “Kya hai? What was that?” we asked, and I soon discovered that I had survived my first sizable earthquake; after, of course, a few minutes of inevitable language confusion. Unfortunately the Hindi word for earthquake, bhukamp, sounds an awful lot like bomb, and thanks to the profusion of Border Police, army tanks, soldiers, and trucks in the area, we’re quite aware of our close proximity to the border with Pakistan. Not until I found a Hindi newspaper clipping lying around the office a couple of days later did I find out that it was a 5.3 on the Richter scale. Cool!

Caroline and I have been accompanying Vimalaji and Anoopji on their daily visits to the surrounding villages and we’ve kind of settled into a rhythmic routine. In the morning we head out either on the back of Anoopji’s motorbike, which makes us feel like we’re about to go save the world, or, if Vimala is with us, in a public bus, which usually just makes us feel like sweaty animals being gawked at in a cramped zoo. When we arrive at the village of the day little kids and women quickly catch word that white people are in town and flock to the meeting sight. During these field visits Anoop is supposed to be holding a meeting with a Mixed Group (a kind of Self-Help Group) consisting of 10-12 locals that URMUL has organized, but thanks to us the register signed at the conclusion of the meeting usually has at least 25 names on it. Once chai is offered and introductions are made, we’re instructed to take a photo and “bat karo” (converse!). But, remember? We don’t really speak Hindi. So our conversation, rather than illuminating the complex cultural reasons for the high rate of female infanticide in rural Rajasthan, or the specific challenges of providing health care in a desert village, quickly turns into a kind of characterized cultural exchange. We can count on being asked what kind of food we eat in America, why we don’t have chapatti, if we’re married, why we’re not married, what kind of animals there are in America, if it is hot in America, if we work hard in America, what time it is at that very moment in America…once we were even asked what kind of trees there are in America. God knows why. In turn we ask everyone what their names are, how many brothers and sisters they have, how many children they have, and what they do for a living; all information we promptly forget in a minute’s time. All of this bat karo-ing is conducted in a kind of Hinglish that Anoop and Caroline and I have gradually established over the past couple of weeks with each other.

In the village of Kanode we explained that we eat fish in America while making a swimming motion with our hands. Anoopji said, “Sank? Ap sank khati hai?” with a shocked expression on his face. We said yes, not really knowing what sank actually was and the whole group erupted into various expressions of surprise and laughter. Thinking that the idea of eating fish was simply absurd to people that had probably never seen the ocean before in their lives, we put the incident behind us. Not until the next field visit, when we caught Anoop explaining to the group that in America, they eat snake, did we realize our mistake. So thanks to our unofficial diplomatic visit, the entire population of Kanode will most likely go on thinking that Americans eat snake for quite a while. Oops! Guess that’s why I’m not an International Studies major.

Anyways, our first day back, the day the earth moved, was full of more surprises and the bhukamp proved to be a good omen. We were scheduled to visit two villages situated close to one another, and we had traveled there with just Anoop on the back of his motorbike. After our first meeting we stopped at the village of Hamira, where Anoop’s in-laws live, for some khana and rest. As we were sitting in Anoop’s father-in-law’s room one man came in who spoke surprisingly good English. Not only that, he knew where Minneapolis was (Caroline’s hometown); and had been there. A little more discussion revealed that his name was Khete Khan and he was a world-class Indian classical musician who had traveled to and performed in over 40 countries, many of them with Zakir Hussain, a famous percussionist. We accompanied Khete Khan back to his house to hear him play and found out that, in fact, the whole family is of the musician caste and patrons of the Rajputs, historically the ruling caste of Rajasthan. Khete Khan’s parents began touring when they were young, and the superior condition of their house made it clear that their ability to find alternate channels of patronage allowed Khete Khan’s family to harness the advantages of globalization and continue to prosper.             

Not only all that, but when I met Khete Khan’s brother, he looked familiar to me. It turns out that we had seen them play in Jaipur about a month back when we had gone to a concert with Caroline’s homestay parents. The concert had consisted of a handful of groups representing different musical traditions from around Rajasthan, but Khete Khan’s group had been by far our favorite. And now we were getting a personal concert from them in their own home!

Each boy would learn to sing and play these songs as soon as physically possible, songs that had been handed down orally for hundreds of years. There was one boy no older than two who was already singing and, with some coaxing, learning to tap out rhythms on his thigh. From talking with Khete Khan and his family, it was clear that they were all immensely proud of their craft, their history, and their recent global accomplishments. They had traveled all around the world, and still came back to this small village in the middle of the Thar Desert, because that was where their family was, yes. But also, in my opinion, because of this deep pride and connection to the past. They could confidently say that there was no other place in the world they'd rather be.

To Survive and Savor

“Travelers tend to regard time spent here as a right of passage to be survived rather than savored.” I’ve been trying to plan my after-program travels and this quote from my Rough Guide describing Mumbai made me laugh at first and then made me think about my own experiences. The difficult transition into my internship knocked the wind out of me a bit, a blow I’ve now fully recovered from. At the point I read this quote I was still trying to pull myself out of one of those infamous lows on the study abroad culture shock graph. “I don’t want to just survive, but lately that’s all I’ve been struggling to do,” I thought and said aloud to Caroline. She of course reminded me of all the savoring we’d been doing as well.

I met a woman from Hungary last week that had come to the country for a month before and had “fallen in love with India.” Now she’s back for longer. I’ve already been asked here “So how do you like India so far?” and I have no idea how to answer such a seemingly simple question. Usually whoever asks is someone who only speaks Hindi, so I just leave it at “Achchha laga,” and call it a day. But I come up stumped when I try to figure out how I’m going to answer that same question when I return home. I find myself jealous of the Hungarian woman, who could state so easily that India has claimed her heart. I too came to India heart open, ready to, even expecting to fall in love. But India has proven to be a tricky lover. What a naïve, selfish girl I was! Expecting India to fill up all of my empty spaces, without taking any of my blood, sweat, or tears in return.

So as all the wonder and excitement of India’s newness wears off, I’m starting to map out a different kind of love, one strengthened by an interwoven blanket of both survival stories and savory moments. I can see now how the surviving reinforces the savoring, just like Caroline assured me. It’s a kind of love that will still be impossible to explain in passing conversation, but hey, that’s the best kind of love anyways. Now, in order to survive the lows that have grown increasingly shorter in length, intensity, and frequency, I go back to one lazy, hot Friday afternoon spent with Surjan Ramji last week. I sat in his office, while the rest of Phalodi was so quiet it seemed the entire town was taking its after-lunch nap at once. The only noise was the fan above us as we ate apples and grapes in smile-filled silence. I finally stopped wishing my Hindi was better and just accepted the silence, and watched a trail of tiny ants doggedly climb the wall next to me, and felt the kind of understanding that can only pass between two people without a common language. 

Divine Bovine: A Photographical Offering

Program Change

I’ve kind of hit a wall this past week. Turns out not knowing what I’m going to be doing, nor having control over what I’m going to be doing everyday is exhausting. And the “language discussion problem” continues to bar my ability to build meaningful relationships with people. I’ve turned into a fountain! The past four days I’ve averaged a good two cries a day. Earlier I wrote a post called “Soft Landings.” Little did I realize that the whole classroom phase in Jaipur was a soft landing in comparison with the internship phase. In these low moments I miss my parents and my friends. I miss my “American life,” I’m sick of my “Indian life” and no matter how hard I try to bring both together in my mind I can’t seem to reconcile the two, which is the most frustrating part. I knowingly romanticize my American life so that it seems like a Shangri La filled with loved ones, English-speakers, free Internet access 24/7, pleasant surroundings, and the freedom to move about on my own terms.

            Fortunately the “I Want my Mommy” moments are interspersed with some pretty awesome experiences. After Phalodi the whole UMBVS crew trekked to the Pokran offices, about an hour’s drive away. There they were organizing a conference on women’s land and asset ownership rights. 450 women from the villages descended on the facilities for 2 days and a night, plus the staff of the 7 NGOs that organized the event. It was overwhelming to say the least. Caroline and I shared a room and would wake up to strangers walking in and out to use our (I guess not really ours, but that’s the American in me) bathroom. It was impossible to find privacy, but on the upside easy to find someone to help us put on our saris for the first time. At one point I found myself in the middle of 4 women folding, tucking, and pinning me into 6 meters of fabric. After a full day of wearing one, my official assessment is that, though beautiful, saris are about as comfortable as wearing a ball gown everyday.

            We stayed in Pokran one more night after all the women had left, and it was just us and the men again. To celebrate, we had non-veg…shhh. Out here in the desert, non-veg consistently means mutton. A.k.a. goat. Whether you eat veg or non-veg is one of the main ways people divide and identify themselves. It is one of the first questions we’re asked when meeting new people, along with our marital status, how many brothers we have, and what our parents do for a living. Anyways, when we first asked what was for khana, middle-aged men in gleeful whispers told us, “Non-veg…shhh.” Preparing the goat was kind of a clandestine operation, even though everyone knew what we were doing. You would’ve thought they were saying we were going to get drunk or something. As we sat outside peeling garlic with Jakir everyone looked at us knowingly. When it was ready we sat huddled in groups around shared plates under the stars, eating the meat and roti soaked in the sauce with our hands. It was the spiciest food I’ve ever eaten in my life. The only sounds for a good half an hour were of 10 men and 2 girls eating with mouths opened wide, burping, and breathing in and out rapidly to provide some relief from the 3 ladlefuls of chili powder that were dumped in the sauce. Mom, you would’ve been appalled at our manners.

We Weave, Therefore We Are

“Western Rajasthan: One of the most inhospitable regions for human habitation in India!” These are the words that greeted me on the page of a pamphlet I browsed while sitting in the office of Surjan Ram Jaipal, Executive Director of URMUL Marusthali Bunkar Vikas Samiti (Desert Weavers Development Society). These same words have a whole new meaning now, a day later, as I’m holed up in my dark (the power has gone, which is a common occurence), tiny room waiting out my first sandstorm. My keyboard is gritty from the sand accumulating underneath my fingertips as I type. I can hear the wind doing damage to the tin plates and porcelain chai cups in the courtyard/kitchen below. This is a whole ‘nother level of unfamiliarity, isolation and culture shock.

For the internship portion of my program I’ve chosen to head back west to Jaisalmer with my partner in crime Caroline (pronounced Carolyn, which has been just so much fun to try and explain to everyone. In fact, Jakir the cook has renamed us "Shasha" and Malia, after Obama's daughters). On the way we’ve stopped off at UMBVS’s main headquarters in Phalodi, a small town halfway between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. UMBVS originated as a small organization of weavers, banding together as dalits (formerly of the untouchable caste) looking for a way to generate income during the severe drought of 1987. There are now 178 weavers (only 10% of which are women. Contrary to what we would think, weaving is traditionally a men’s task) in the organization who work and live in various villages of the Jodhpur and Jaisalmer districts. UMBVS’s role in the community has expanded. There are a variety of development programs being run, which focus on health care, primary education, water and energy, Self-Help Groups, and women empowerment.

Today we drove 60 km (about an hour by jeep) to Surjan Ramji’s village. There we met his extended family and saw some weavers in action. The villages are divided and organized into Dhanies (a cluster of 5 to 10 huts), which are usually quite far from each other. The huts are usually made of cow patties with thatched roofs.

So inhospitable living conditions, yes, but the people here are quite the opposite. In fact, they’re the only reason I don’t go running back to the city with a white flag of surrender trailing behind me. The language barrier is a challenge (as Surjan Ramji put it, “Language discussion problem”), but the men working here are the least creepy I’ve found in India yet and their young and invariably large families that live on site are adorable and welcoming. Plus, kids help break down language barriers.

As for what we’re doing from day to day, a lot is unknown to us and we’ve therefore learned to go with the flow. We have a roughly outlined schedule for the days ahead; for example, we know these next two days that we’re in Phalodi we’ll be doing field visits to the surrounding villages. But what a “field visit” actually entails we’ve yet to find out. Once you let go a little bit, it’s fun and exciting not knowing what awaits you when you wake up in the morning. Usually I’m pleasantly surprised. 

Caroline, more technologically able than I, has helped me figure out how to post pictures! Above is a picture of me from Holi, my parents and I at Amber Fort in Jaipur, a picture of me in front of my fourth and final birthday cake of the day, and the infamous sandstorm.