Krishnamurti Center – 12/14/14

                As a mini stay-cation in Banaras, our group decided to go to the Krishnamurti Center, an education center dedicated to the life and works of a man named, you guessed it, Krishnamurti. It was pitched to us a place of peace and quiet removed from the hustle, bustle, and grime of the rest of the city. The center is located in Raj Ghat, the first ghat of Banaras, which is about as far away as you can get from Assi Ghat, the last ghat of Banaras, while still being in the city. When we arrived we were certainly happy to see grass and trees, but, unfortunately, there was a wedding going on right next door that was blasting music late into the night. Luckily, the wedding only lasted one day and the rest of our time at the center was really pleasant.

The first evening (Friday) we all had time to just chill in our rooms and read or write or sleep. After breakfast the next morning, we had a lecture of sorts on the philosophy of Krishnamurti and saw an hour long movie about his life. Fundamentally I share a lot of the same values as the philosophy of Krishnamurti who says that you should look at and listen to things with as little prejudice as possible, but the other people who we met there seemed to take it to a whole new level with metaphysical discussion on thought and mind. After that meeting we had lunch and then Alex and I went to see the archeological site of the old city (it was burned to the ground when the Moguls invaded) as well as the giant bridge that passes over the Ganges. Upon returning from that, we had even more time to read and write or whatever before six when we met as a group to have a check-in about our feelings/thoughts/aspirations/etc. now that 40% of the program has passed (the halfway mark happens either during our trip to Rajasthan or soon after). Next, dinner and then group bonding where we went through all of our pictures and showed everyone the particularly ugly ones (and a few nice ones). Finally, the last day was dedicated to more writing (people in our group really need a lot of time to write their group updates for Princeton) and relaxing.

Overall, the entire weekend was a really nice retreat (even if we still couldn’t fully escape the noises of the city). I got to take two baths with hot water in a row, used toilet paper, and slept more soundly than I have in months. I am really excited for the coming weeks with Open House at the South Point School (I’ll write a blog about that later) and Christmas and Rajasthan. It’s weird being here and not really feeling the same holiday spirit that grips the U.S. following Thanksgiving, but I still get happy butterflies in my stomach when I think of the coming holiday (especially since our group is doing a Secret Santa exchange).

Wedding Craziness – 12/8/14

                I have always heard about crazy Indian weddings and going to one was fairly high up on my bucket list when I came to India. So naturally I was extremely excited when Jenny told the group that her host brother would be getting married in early December. Even though our group only went to two days of the wedding affair (here, weddings last an entire week), I was still blown away by the opulence of the affair - all of the food, dancers, DJs, decorations, etc. The group attended the actual wedding ceremony as well as the wedding reception.
                When we went to the wedding ceremony I was impressed by the scale of the event. Before the ceremony we went on a parade through the streets with the groom at the back on a white horse. The parade was contained within two lines of children holding huge light displays on their heads and at the front of the line was a marching band clothed in baby blue suits. Next came a drumline and a few trumpets who provided the dance beat for the guests to dance through the streets. I am sure we really messed up the already awful traffic and during the whole procession we were being assaulted with irritated honks and bell rings from motorcycles, cars, and bicycles passing by us. Once we arrived at the actual wedding location, we found a huge tent with cushioned chairs and small sofas for guests to sit in and a stage decked out with hundreds of flowers and two thrones for the soon-to-be-weds. Bordering the perimeter of the grassy field where the wedding was being held, there was a huge buffet of Indian food and drink. In one corner was a dance floor that lit up and was flanked by huge speakers blasting music. Technically we didn’t even stay for the ceremony (which starts at midnight), but we did get to see the bride and groom exchange garlands and take pictures with them. Perhaps my favorite part of the night (besides the fresh butter naan and cream sauce pasta) was dancing to the latest and greatest Yo Yo Honey Singh songs with the other BYPers and a bunch of the other Indian wedding guests. Even though we had a great time jamming out to Indian pop music, our group really went crazy when Justin Bieber’s “Baby” came on the DJ mix. Here in India, people really like Justin Bieber and Enrique Iglesias and seem to think that everyone in America is obsessed with them too. Whenever people ask me who my favorite American singer is, they always interject that theirs is either Justin Bieber, Enrique Iglesias, or Pitbull (Indians also have a habit of interrupting a lot when you are speaking). In any event, I was blown away by the scale and pomp of the first day, but I had no idea what was to come a few days later for the wedding reception.
                The wedding reception was held in Cantonment, a rather wealthy and touristy part of Banaras, in the Hotel Paris. We pulled up in our car to the weddings to find a huge golden Ganesh statue under garlanded arches with a red carpet path. Following the carpet, we were led to an enormous area roughly divided into two sections. One was a place with tables and chairs for guests to sit and watch the goings-on of the stage, the other was an area just dedicated to food. On the table/chair side, there was a stage with hired dancers from Calcutta and a professional singer and next to this an even bigger stage with a kingly couch for the newlyweds. Waiters came around with drinks and hors de vors before the dinner feast was served and we happily munched away while watching the dancers and singer. Then, the announcer spotted us, the sole videshi (foreign) guests, and called us up on the stage to dance. Luckily, the Bens had previously learned a Bollywood dance for Dolly-ji’s birthday and we could perform that without looking too much like total fools, but I’m sure we looked hilarious and I’m glad that both Stephen and my host brother got it on film. Afterwards we each said a simple sentence in Hindi to impress the crowd and then returned to our seats. Once we gave the bride and groom a bouquet of flowers and took pictures, we headed off to see what food was being offered (or more correctly, what food wasn’t being offered). There was a Chinese (spelled Chinees) food tent, a Punjabi food tent, a street food tent, a pasta food tent, a dessert tent, a fruit tent, etc. etc. etc. My goal was to try a little bit of all the food, but I soon found that to be impossible. After going up about three times for plates of food, we were all stuffed and a little cold from the nighttime chill. There was a hookah bar and a paan (chewing tobacco) station that was garnering a lot of attention from the other Indian guests, so we decided to go check it out. I tried sweet paan (one without any tobacco) for the first time and had to spit it out in about three seconds it was still so disgusting (making my host mother laugh considerably). It was about eleven at that point and we all still had work the next day, so after the paan (and then wolfing down some naan to get the bad taste out of my mouth) I left for home still a little giddy from all of the fun.

An Indian Thanksgiving – 11/27/14

                Our group really poured our hearts and souls into cooking for Thanksgiving. We met at 9 AM to eat breakfast/plan the day and then didn’t stop moving until 7:30 PM when we were all seated and eating Thanksgiving dinner. Our menu was oddly reminiscent of actual Thanksgiving, which was a miracle considering what we had to work with. We had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, mushrooms, cauliflower, grilled cheese, tuna melts, stuffing, and deviled eggs (not to mention the apple pie, but that’s not technically included in this list since we didn’t make it ourselves). I think the most incredible feat was the stuffing, mostly because the only ingredient we had in common with the original recipe was bread (and even then we didn’t have stale bread). To make things worse, our toaster oven doesn’t get hotter than 250 degrees Fahrenheit (and that’s when the electricity is actually working). The stuffing had bread, carrots, apples, vegetable soup (we couldn’t find broth anywhere), and oregano (from Domino Pizza spice packets) in it and somehow still managed to taste a lot like any other stuffing you could find in the U.S.

We each invited some of our host family to join the feast and the six interns currently living at Nirman and all went around saying something that we’re thankful for and we sang the Johnny Appleseed song for grace (we were originally going to have a person from each faith say a little prayer of sorts, but that quickly devolved as people started eating). Tejbal, Ben P’s host brother, brought Indian-style macaroni to add to the feast and I laughed a little as both Deep and Madhu (my host siblings) commented that their favorite food at the meal was the sole Indian dish present. By the time we were done with dinner and ready for dessert, the pies we bought from Vatika Café were already cold, so we decided that we should heat them up. A few of them were put on the stove (which was off but still hot) and then Jenny and Stephen had the brilliant idea to put a pie in the toaster oven. The one thing that they forgot to do, however, was take the pie out of the cardboard box before turning on the hot coils. The result: a pizza box on fire in the program house. Luckily, it was discovered early and nothing bad happened. Once all the smoke was cleared out and we went to eat the pie, we were depressed to find that even after all of that chaos, the pie was still cold. Nevertheless, it was quite tasty and satisfied everyone’s desire for a pie on Thanksgiving. After everyone’s host families went home, we and the Nirman interns played Salad Bowl, a game that is a mix of taboo and charades. Overall, the day was fantastic and most of us (if not all, but I don’t want to put words into other peoples’ mouths) weren’t even homesick because there was such a sense of family and community during both the preparation and the meal.

Love Marriage or Arranged? – 11/28/14

                In the U.S. there arranged marriages are definitely looked down upon. I mean, before I could hardly say the words without getting a bad taste in my mouth and conjuring up images of 15-year-old girls getting married off to 60-year-old men. How could you be forced to marry some you might not even like? It always seemed like such a backwards concept that belonged in the medieval times when marriages were just another strategic move you could make in political chess. The other night, however, I had a very thought-provoking conversation with my host sister about marriage and what its goals are, what it means.

                The whole conversation started when I was talking to her about the upcoming weddings that I’ll be attending and then that sliding into me asking more about marriage norms here in Banaras. I was relieved to hear that the average age for people to get married here is normal (basically in your 20s) and was going to continue to ask questions when Madhu (my host sister) asked, “So, do you want a love marriage or an arranged marriage?”. To be honest, I had never even fathomed having an arranged marriage and I had to let out an awkward laugh when I replied, “Well, I don’t think an arranged marriage is even really an option for me. They aren’t very common in America.” I asked her the same question and, much to my surprise, she told me that she wanted an arranged one. I guess I never realized that some people actually might want an arranged marriage. Interested in her viewpoint (which was evidently much different from my own), I asked her why she wanted an arranged marriage rather than a love marriage and she said matter-of-factly that arranged marriages seem to last so much longer.

                Why is that? Why are divorce rates much higher in the U.S. than in India? Is it arranged marriages? Is it just cultural differences and the way people perceive marriage to be? It got me to thinking about what’s at the root of each of these two different types of marriages. For one, love marriages are founded in sincere love for another person (as you could probably tell from the name). Arranged marriages, on the other hand, are founded in a sense of societal duty and inter-family relationships. To expound on this, love marriages can break down when the two people who are married either change the way they love each other or just stop loving each other altogether. Arranged marriages have a stronger bond in the sense that when you marry someone else, you are vowing to provide for and protect your spouse, regardless of whether you love them or not (especially since love or even any familiarity is not a pre-existing condition for this type of marriage). Technically wedding vows in the U.S. hold the same weight as in India. I mean, ‘til death do us part is a pretty intense phrase that many couples say during their wedding ceremonies, but there are enough societal pressures against divorce in India to give real meaning to those words.

                Am I gung-ho for arranged marriages now? That might be a little bit of a stretch. I still think that a love marriage in which two people deeply love each other is stronger than any other bond in the world (maybe excluding that of a mother and her baby), but at least now I can see the reason why arranged marriages exist. As long as your parents make a good choice for your husband (or for your wife), you’re given a real shot at a stable, happy life.

 

Inanity of the Day - 11/22/14

                On the program house whiteboard each day our group tries to write a different “Inanity of the Day”. As you could probably tell from what we call them, most of them are fairly stupid and childish. A couple examples include:
-          You usually have 10 toes, but if you cut one off it would bleed and hurt a lot and then you’d only have 9.
-          There is no i in teamwork, but if you read it backwards you get “Krow Meat”.
-          Life is like writing in pen – you usually can’t do it in space.
-          Barking up the wrong tree: when the nut you want ain’t the nut you get.
-          पूप (the Hindi transliteration of “poop”)
o   This one particularly showed how we are all still 5 years old at heart.
-          What is the meaning of mankind? First we have to break it up into its components – mank and ind. What do those two words mean? No one knows and that’s why mankind is a mystery.

Even though the inanities are pretty, well, inane, they do bring our group much joy. There’s nothing like a particularly stupid joke to start the day off right and sometimes they’re just the perfect pick-me-up when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed (how many clichés can I fit into one sentence?).

Mice - 11/19/14

                I’ve known that there are mice in my house for almost as long as I’ve stayed in it. At first, I couldn’t care less that they were there. Besides, they stayed away from me and my stuff – or so I thought. I mean, sure, I was a little grossed out by the abundance of mice in the kitchen and all of the food being prepared on the floor where the pesky rodents run around, but Deep (my host brother) gave me a pretty rude awaking on Dev Diwali.

                The earlier part of Dev Diwali had been amazing. I got breakfast with Alex and Steven and then explored the city with Alex, leading us to a temple with animatronic idols and the entire Ramayana printed on the white marble walls. Then, we all had a killer lunch at Dolly-ji’s house and went to a Sikh temple to see the festivities for the Sikh holiday that day. To top it all off, we went on a beautiful boat ride down the Ganges to see the ghats lit up by thousands of candles. Needless to say, I was in a fantastic mood before Deep delivered the news – a mouse had been curled up in my sleeping bag earlier that day. Worse, Deep didn’t even bother to move it! He found it hilarious that a mouse had appeared to enjoy my bed so much, but I was not amused. Up until this point I had kept my room fairly clean. The distinct lack of cabinets or drawers means that my clothes had to be folded on the table in my room or my whole room would appear a mess. That being said, once I found out that a mouse had been in my bed, I started taking a ton of precautions. I hung all my food in bags from hooks and made sure nothing was ever on the floor.  Then, the second incident struck.

                Every morning at about 4 or 5 AM I wake up and have to use the bathroom. Most days, I just keep sleeping since I get up at 6 AM anyway, but this particular incident happened on a Sunday, so I decided to get up and go to the bathroom so that I could sleep in. When I turned on the bathroom light, I saw that there was a mouse crouching in the middle of the room (the bathroom is shaped like a long and skinny rectangle). I stomped around and tried to scare it away, but the mouse would not budge. I took the bucket that I use to bathe and tried to tap the mouse out of the way, but it still would not move. At this point I suspected that the mouse must be pretty sick for it not to respond to any stimuli, so I decided I should just jump over it and do my business. I went back to bed hoping that in the morning it would have moved, but, alas, it was not so. Later that morning when I got up for the second time and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, wash my face, etc., I opened the bathroom door only to find a dead mouse keeled over in the middle of the floor.

                I told my host dad and asked him to get rid of the dead mouse and he assured me that a guy would come to clean it up. Again, however, when I returned home that night the dead mouse was still there – worse, it was covered in ants now. I went back downstairs to tell my host brother and he told me to take it and throw it out the window onto the street (aka how most families here in India dispose of trash). Knowing I wouldn’t get any help, I ripped some cardboard from the packages my mom has sent me and I scooped the mouse up. Now, the window have metal grates and the first time I attempted to fling the mouse out the window it didn’t go through and flopped on the floor by my feet. After letting out a particularly feminine squeal and jumping back a foot or two, I gathered my wits and successfully disposed of the deceased mouse. At this point I was exasperated that the mouse hadn’t been clean up earlier, not because I wasn’t willing to dispose of it, but because it would have been less unpleasant earlier in the day when the thing wasn’t crawling with ants and who knows what else.

                This second incident sparked an even more thorough cleaning and I searched everything I owned for traces of mice. I guess before I had been living in ignorant bliss, not wanting to believe that the small, brown things I found everywhere were mice poop. At that point, however, I examined every speck of dust and was appalled by the amount of mice feces in my room/on my stuff. I stayed up far too late that night putting tape around the legs of my bed and table so that the mice couldn’t climb up the sticky surface and devising plans to trap the little buggers. The plus side of this whole ordeal is that my room is always very clean. The downside is that I feel like I have to always be on high alert for possible things that might attract mice.

Modi-ji – 11/9/14

                Modi-ji, the prime minister of India, came to Banaras and our group (Jenny and Stephen not included – they were asleep) got to see him! We woke up super early and walked down to Assi Ghat (where Modi-ji was going to be to bathe in Ganga-ji) and sweet talked the guards into letting us into the press area/private area. We were the only white people there, lol (also, #winning?). Anyway, while we were there about 6 different TV/news stations came and interviewed us in Hinglish and we made it into the newspaper/on TV!!! Unfortunately, much of our Hindi skills escaped us as soon as the camera was pointing at our faces, but it was fun practicing our Hindi on low-ranking Banaras officials in the private area and making conversation in Hindi with random military men (there were probably as many military personnel at Assi Ghat as there were spectators). The closest we could get to Modi-ji was only about 50 ft away and that was while he was getting shooed into his car by the Indian equivalent of the Secret Service. I have tons of pictures and videos from the event that I’ll post, but it was really cool to be able to see him in the flesh.

Beautification – 11/5/14

                I know I briefly mentioned A Fine Balance in one of my earlier posts, but I would like to just take a second and explain the book a little more. My comment that I was reading AFB was sort of off-hand, but really the book has had a fairly large impact on both my group and me. Christy-ji was the first to read it and then I the second, and we both campaigned really hard for everyone else to read it (as of now, only Ben P, Alex, and Caleb still need to read it). The book is incredibly relevant to life in India today, even though it is a piece of fiction about India in the 1970s. It is written very well and I seem to find a connection to the book every single day in something I see, learn, or do. I would highly recommend it to anyone (well, mostly adults. The book can be somewhat graphic at times). One of the topics it covers is the “beautification” of cities in India by the local governments. In other words, programs that are well-intended, but often carried out in such a way that they do more harm than good. I’ll leave it at that so as to not spoil the book for anyone who wants to read it, but today I saw firsthand the effects of a similar “beautification program” going on in Banaras.

                Prime Minister Modi is arriving to Banaras on November 7^th and the whole city is getting ready for his arrival. Part of the pre-arrival plans includes cleaning up the streets. In some ways it is really helpful – giant heaps of rotting trash have been picked up by huge trucks and a few of the many potholes have been filled with asphalt. On the downside, the beautification process also has destroyed the business of the local dobi (one of our newfound friends in Banaras). Now, this issue is a complex one and I’ll try my best to give due credit to both sides.

                Starting from the beginning, there are laws in place in Banaras that forbid people from creating structures on their properties that obstruct the road (a quite reasonable law). This law, however, also goes unheeded for 99% of the time. Tons of businesses from subjiwalas to hotels to the local dobi have “structures that obstruct the road” and the police just turn a blind eye to them. During this beautification process, however, local law enforcers have really cracked down on most of the traffic laws, this one included. The local government sent giant trucks/bulldozers around the Assi Ghat area to enforce the law, taking signs/advertisements off the road and throwing them into a truck and bulldozing anything “illegal.” The catch? Businesses could pay a 5000 rupee bribe to the police so that their illegal structures would go untouched, resulting in only the poor people having their (technically illegal) property destroyed. The dobi previously had a stand outside their house where they ironed clothes that was reduced to rubble one day and the subjiwala stand across the street was torn apart. Meanwhile, the ramp for the nearby hotel was allowed to stay because the hotel owners could pay the bribe.

It’s hard to find blame for these kinds of situations – is it the dobi’s fault for having created the illegal structure in the first place? Is it the police’s fault for not enforcing the law earlier? Is it the corruption’s fault for not treating everyone equally? Talking to local people, most say that what happened to the dobi’s platform and subjiwala’s stand needed to be done, after all, they were illegal. And they admit it is sad for these people to lose their property, but also say that they didn’t have a right to it in the first place. We see injustice, they see law enforcement. No matter which side is “right,” it was heartbreaking to see the usually bubbly dobi family morose after the destruction of their platform, to see the dobi grandmother screaming with all her might at the bulldozer as it tried to collect the broken bricks and bent rebar (she convinced it to move on and the whole family came together to salvage what they could of the mess). The USA has a lot of problems, but when I see things like this happening in India, I am always reminded of how thankful I am to come from a place with less corruption.

Evelyn – 11/5/14

                I love my name. In the United States it’s the perfect balance of unique yet common (yes, I understand that’s an oxymoron, but you all know what I mean). Unique enough that I am one of the only Evelyns that any one person knows, but common enough that people don’t really struggle with my name, spelling or otherwise. If someone does misspell my name, he/she probably wrote “Evelin” instead of “Evelyn” and I can totally see the confusion there. In India, however, the name “Evelyn” seems to be one of the most foreign concepts you could imagine. People here struggle a lot with my name. The first month of the trip it was sort of an inside joke amongst our group that our good friend Hemant-ji would pronounce my name like “Eh-woe-leen,” but my name was just as mispronounced as other peoples’ (Jenny was called Jonny by her host mom in Munsiyari and Ben P was called Dan by his homestay family there, too. Chase’s name oftentimes comes out sounding more like “Chess” than “Chase” and Caleb’s name sounds like “Call-eb”). Since arriving in Banaras, however, I have had the most struggles with people learning my name. This is partly because as a teacher I interact with a lot of people who want to know my name (i.e. all my students and coworkers), but also because people really can’t get a handle on how to say or write my name.
                The first crazy experience I had with my name troubles happened at South Point School. It was first period and one of the men who works in the office came to my class with a slip of paper that announced who would be subbing what classes for the day. I scanned the paper for a good 30 seconds, didn’t see my name, and so gave it back to him assuming that I wouldn’t be subbing any classes that day. About twenty-thirty minutes later, however, Khushboo Ma’am (the in-charge of the middle/high school), walked into my class and asked me why I didn’t sign next to my name saying that I could sub the eighth graders during third period. I apologized and said I must have somehow missed my name, but when I looked at the paper I still couldn’t find where the heck my name was. She prompted me, “Class eight, there” and I saw she had written “Awlis” next to that slot. How are you supposed to politely tell your superior that they managed to spell your name with only one letter in common with how you actually spell your name? At that point I wanted to apologize, but at the same time how was I to know that the name “Awlis” was referring to me? When I obviously looked perplexed, Khushboo Ma’am asked if my name was not spelled correctly and I gently told her that “it was spelled a little differently.” I proceeded to write my name in clear print for future reference (this attempt failed, however, seeing as my name is still misspelled on the master schedule for classes).
                The second most striking experience also revolved around South Point. This time was a phone “conversation” that I had with the front office. The reason I called the school was very simple: Ben and I had said that we would be at the teacher meeting on Saturday, but then later found out it conflicted with our BYP group meeting and had to let the school know we wouldn’t be coming. You think this would be an easy 30 second phone call, right? Not quite. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, this is Evelyn Ma’am. Just calling to say that Ben Sir and I won’t be coming to the teacher meeting today.
Them: Sorry, who is speaking?
Me: It’s Evelyn. Evelyn Ma’am.
Them: Sorry, who?
Me: Ev-eh-lin. I am an intern here.
Them: So you want to talk to our interns?
Me: No, I am an intern. Ben Sir and I just cannot be at the meeting for teachers today.
Them: So, you want to meet our teachers?
Me: No, it’s Evelyn Ma’am. Me and Ben Sir are from the same program.
Them: Ah, you want a meeting with Ben Sir, then?
Me: No, no. I do not need to meet with anyone. I am a teacher here.
*Current speaker hands phone to someone else*
Them: Who is this?
Me: It’s Evelyn Ma’am. Evelyn.
Them: Sorry, who?
Me: Ev-eh-lin. Evelyn Ma’am. I teach math.
Them: You want to teach math here?
Me: No, I already am a teacher here. Ben and I cannot come to the meeting today.
Them: One second.
*Current speaker hands the phone off to a third person*
Them: Hello? Who is speaking?
Me: Evelyn. Ev-eh-lin. The math teacher. I am an intern here with Ben Sir.
*Conversation continues like this while the phone gets passed to everyone in the office*
Finally…
Them: OH! Ah-woe-leen!! What do you need?
Me: Ben Sir and I won’t be there today.
Them: Okay. Will you be here on Monday?
Me: Yes, we will be there on Monday.
Them: Very good. See you Monday.
*End Conversation*
                No matter how many times I write my name phonetically in Hindi or try to explain how to say my name, no one ever seems to get it. The closest I’ve come to success is that my sixth graders call me “Eleven” which at least has all the right sounds in it. It’s actually kind of comical all the different things that I’ve been called, most of which I can’t even remember because they are so far from what my name is. When Ben and I arrive to school in the morning, it is customary for everyone to say “Good Morning _____ Sir/Ma’am” to each other. Ben always gets his “Good Morning Ben Sir” and then the same person will turn to me and just say “Good Morning Ma’am,” surreptitiously leaving out my name from the common phrase. What’s worse is that at this point it would be hard for me to start asking people to call me by my Hindi name, Indu, because that would just confuse them more. At least now a solid 10 or 12 people (mostly students) know a modestly correct version of my name. In any event, I never thought my name would cause so much strife here in India. 

Halloween – 10/31/14

                One of the main reasons that I wanted to write my last blog was to talk about Halloween here and then I promptly forgot to write at all about it! Anyway, here is a small recount of our holiday shenanigans.
                Now, Halloween isn’t really a thing in India. In fact, I can hardly think of something that alerted me to Halloween’s coming besides the pictures I saw on Facebook of my friends at various parties. The one reminder that we had here in India was Dolly-ji incessantly mentioning the Bollywood dances we would have to perform on Halloween for her birthday present (her birthday was on the 25^th). Thus said, most of our costumes were pretty haphazard for the party, but we all still had a ton of fun.
                The “pre-party” was a discussion on faith, diversity, and unity in both the United States and India which lasted for a couple of hours. Afterwards, real party preparations began. Stephen ran home to grab his costume and I went to my house to grab a charger for the speakers. When I came back, the rest of the group had created a chart for guessing each other’s personality types (using Myers Briggs Personality Types) to play a game where whoever guesses the most number of personalities correctly would get extra chocolate at the party. Then, Stephen walks in wearing the exact same clothes that he had been wearing previously and all of us were like, “Wait, Stephen, we all thought you were changing into your costume?” Stephen then ripped off his shirt and pants to transform into Shyam: Guardian of the Night and resident superhero of India 6.0. The rest of our costumes were as follows:
                                                Evelyn: American tourist
                                                Ben P: Foreign tourist on a spiritual journey
                                                Chase: Lord Shiva himself
                                                Jenny: Maggi minute noodles
                                                Ben T: Salmaan Khan
                                                Alex: Tourist with dreadlocks
                                                Caleb: A girl (which then became a Hijra)
After writing down our predictions for each other’s personalities, we all took the test and then went around announcing what everyone was. Stephen came out on top for the guessing, getting 5 of the 9 people correct (I tied for last with Dolly-ji, only guessing one person correctly). Our personality types are as follows:
                                                Alex: ENTP
                                                Stephen: INFP
                                                Ben P: ENTP
                                                Ben T: INFP
                                                Jenny: ISFP
                                                Chase: ENFP
                                                Evelyn: ESTJ
                                                Caleb-ji: INFP
                                                Dolly-ji: ESFP
Interestingly enough, I am opposite of the majority of people in my group for 2 of the letters and the only person with “judging” rather than “perceiving” for the last letter.
                After the personality tests, we got onto Pottermore and found out our Hogwarts houses if we hadn’t already done so. Unfortunately, this activity was cut short due to the arrival of Dolly-ji’s two kids and Hemant-ji, as well as Dominoes pizza, and more snacks. At this point it was getting kind of late and we wanted to end our party with a dance party. All of us were supposed to have prepared a dance, but really only Jenny and the two Bens did. I am sure those videos will make it up to the internet soon, but I’ll just say that the two Bens had a KILLER performance and no one even came close to their dancing skillz. Even though it didn’t really feel like Halloween, the party was definitely a huge highlight of last week.

Diwali, Work, etc. – 11/2/14

                Last week was Diwali, a festival that celebrates the god of wealth in the Hindu faith. Basically it’s a huge mashup of New Year’s and Christmas – there are tons of fireworks/firecrackers, Christmas lights everywhere, and people by a ton of new stuff. There is actually a day dedicated to buying new metal objects/appliances and it’s considered auspicious to wear new clothes on Diwali. The days leading up to Diwali were crazy. Every night on my way home from Hindi the streets would be packed with people buying stuff and as October 23 (the official day of Diwali) came closer, the number of firecrackers going off through the night drastically increased. We had a shortened week of school at South Point because of the huge festival, but we might as well have not had school at all because so many kids were absent and the kids who were present spent the entire time being excited about Diwali. On the Wednesday before the 4 day weekend, we actually didn’t have any classes. The whole day we spent cleaning and decorating the school with langolis (sand art) and candles. That’s another interesting thing about Diwali – the god of wealth, Lakshmi, is said to enter your house and bless your family only if your house is clean. This means that there was some furious cleaning going on that week in my house and in houses all over the place. On the actual day of Diwali, at night you light candles in front of many different temples and you exchange sweets with friends and family. After doing pooja and sweet exchanges, everyone goes to their roofs to watch/set off fireworks. I let Deep and his cousin do all of the setting off of the firecrackers. I just sat back and enjoyed the view of hundreds of fireworks being set off (there aren’t any rules to buying fireworks like there are in the United States, so anyone can get their hands on any size firework). This holiday is by far Deep’s favorite (as you could probably guess from my previous post about him and firecrackers), and, even though he was sick, he still managed to be exuberantly excited to celebrate the holiday. He had bought so many firecrackers that he just finished setting off the last of them yesterday evening (unfortunately when I was trying to take a nap).

                School has been going much better since the first week. The kids are finally starting to listen to me more and I even had all of the fifth graders doing their work for a solid five minutes on Friday! Every day there is a mix of good and bad at school – if one grade is especially good that day I can bet that one of the other grades will be particularly challenging, but I have learned to take it all in stride. Many times I feel like the day goes by much as an 800 m race would in track. The first three hundred meters go by quickly and easily (these classes include 3^rd grade English, 12^th grade math, and then my one free period). At the three hundred the first inklings of tiredness set in and the next one hundred is a little more difficult (my 7^th grade math class). After the four hundred there is a small spurt of energy as I tell myself that I’m halfway done (lunch), but then the next two hundred meters are the worst of all (my 6^th and 5^th grade math classes). During the last one hundred meters I am exhausted, but the prospect of the coming finish line propels me forward (the time from 2:15-4:00 when school is over, but teachers stay to plan classes and grade papers). Like my track coach says, you just have to take it 100 meters at a time and it all seems easier.

                Here people have a very different view of Hitler than people from the west. First of all, they just know a lot less about World War II in general (which is to be expected since India didn’t play a huge role in that war). Secondly, apparently Hitler sent pro-nazi minions to India to spread his beliefs, a lot of which were already supported here (ie people here are very racist and everyone wants to be as white or “fair” as possible). The Hindu sign for peace is a backwards swastika and is actually called a “swastik”. During the Diwali decorating time at school, all of the kids were drawing them everywhere. I walked into my seventh grade class and found that someone had accidentally drawn 5 of them backwards – a sight very jarring for me considering the deeply ingrained hatred I harbor for all that the Nazi swastika represents. I asked the kids to redraw them in the correct direction and then later Ben P told me an interesting/funny story about what some of his students had said to him earlier in the week. When asked what religion he was, Ben P replied “Jewish,” to which one of the girls in his class said “Oh, wasn’t Hitler Jewish!” Not quite. When Ben said that Hitler wasn’t Jewish, a different girl then said, “Jewish people normally have blue eyes, right?” and again Ben had to correct her. When we recounted this story to the group, Chase told us how some people here actually liked Hitler. Hitler is probably one of the only historical figures that almost everyone dislikes in the West. If you want a non-controversial villain, you pick Hitler and the Nazis. It’s weird being in a place that knows so little about something that we are taught about from the time we are little children and that views someone who is completely demonized in the west as an “okay guy.”

Teaching – 10/19/14

                I’ve heard my whole life that teaching is hard and I always thought that I had a pretty good handle on what that meant: kids not listening, hours of work grading/planning, etc. Additionally, I tutored a good deal in high school and thought I had a feel for what teaching is like. The truth of the matter is that you really can’t know what it’s like to be a teacher until you’re thrown into a classroom and start teaching.

                The first week at the South Point School has been a whirlwind. I found out on Tuesday that I was teaching 3^rd graders English and 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 12^th graders math and then started classes Wednesday (the very next day). Sure, 13 years of schooling prepares you a little bit for being a teacher – after all I remember the teachers/teaching methods I enjoyed/found effective – but so much of teaching happens behind the scenes and I am woefully underprepared when it comes to teacher preparation. What the heck does a class plan even look like? How do you make/keep to a schedule to fit all of the necessary topics in before the end of the year? When should there be quizzes? tests? projects? And to top it off I have to do some of it in a language I just started learning a month and a half ago (the school is technically an English-medium school, but 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders just don’t know that much English). Not to mention the fact that midway through the third day with my 12^th graders I learned that I have to prepare them for the Indian equivalent of an AP exam by the end of February (except in India the test holds even more weight because college acceptance is based completely on exam scores).

                It’s a lot to take in, especially with such little guidance from anyone at the school. Part of my stress comes from the sheer difference between classroom environments at South Point and those back home. This point relates most directly to my math classes, although I am sure I could find traces of this same theme in my 3^rd grade class as well. Anyway, at the school children are encouraged to learn at their own pace – something that in theory I am not opposed to in the slightest (I was a tutor for years. I get the need of kids to learn at different speeds) – but the way in which this policy manifests itself in the school is so incredibly foreign to me. Basically, each kid teaches himself/herself out of the textbook and asks the teacher whenever he/she encounters a topic with which they struggle. This a) makes kids who are all in the same class be on multiple different sections, heck, chapters, b) allows students who don’t want to learn math to not learn any math, c) makes the teacher explain the exact same problem 10 different times to 10 different kids, and d) fosters an environment in which those who are struggling get left even further behind.

                After the first half week of working I had pretty much decided that after the next unit test in my seventh grade class I would have formal lessons and keep the kids on relatively the same page. During a conversation over lunch I brought up my plan to another teacher and she was shocked by the proposition – how could you make a class learn things together when some kids will inherently pick it up faster and others slower? Said teacher went on to describe that the current system functions the way it does because of lack of incentives/disincentives. At least in my school back home, if you were disruptive in the class you were sent outside or called to the principal’s office or assigned detention or given a lower grade or had your parents called. Here, the school has a policy that forbids sending kids out of class or to the office and it completely lacks any sort of detention system. Grades hardly matter when it comes to progressing to the next grade level and many/most parents just don’t care how their kids are performing in school. How, then, are you supposed to convince kids that they need to sit down and be quiet in class to learn?

                The answer to this question is externally incredibly easy: gain the students’ respect and trust. If students respect a teacher, they will jump through the most ridiculous hoops to please them (I know I did for those teachers who gained my respect in high school). BYP students from past years have left notes that the most important thing they developed while working at the South Point School was relationships with the students. Sammy (BYP 2013-2014) very astutely wrote in his advice to future BYP teachers that the most effective way to discipline students was to first get to know them outside of class and then use this familiarity to call out kids when they were being disruptive. The immediate problem with this solution is time – so far I have not had the time to spend time with students during lunch or breaks to talk to them and learn about their lives/circumstances (I haven’t even taught 5 days yet for goodness’ sake). Additionally, the language barrier (and current state of my half-deaf right ear) inhibits my ability to talk to the kids. Sure, I can play games with them and say “Hello! How are you?” just fine, but I still feel like I’m not being as effective as I could be in my exchanges with them. Again, the remedy to this concern is time: time learning Hindi, time becoming less of a stranger to the students, and time talking/interacting with everyone. I just wish I could be a better teacher now.

                Another concern in the back of my head is just my capability to effectively teach the subjects that have been chosen for me. Yeah, I technically know all the math that the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders are learning, I just have very little recollection of how that information was initially taught to me (how are you supposed to explain why you find the area of a rectangle the way you do without bringing in even more complicated math?). Even harder, I know English and English grammar well enough (even if you can’t tell from the haphazardness of the grammar in my blogs, oops lolz), but I have no idea how to teach it to someone else, especially to a 3^rd grader who doesn’t understand 90% of what I say anyway. I know I’ll figure it out soon enough, but this is more just an open invitation to all of the teachers who may or may not be reading my blogs to give me any sort of guidance.

                All of this rather pessimistic writing isn’t meant to be pessimistic. I’ve had a blast the past week starting to get to know my students – the good ones I can count on and the devilish ones I have to look out for – and getting my feet under mean as far as what I should be doing in class every day. It’s been exhausting and I swear that the 8 hours I get of sleep a night are somehow transformed into a mere 4 hours. Teaching, planning for teaching, Hindi class, and doing Hindi homework feel like the only things I do besides eat and sleep at the moment, but the busy rhythm is also strangely nice. Besides, I have weekends to hangout and recharge and spend more quality time wreaking havoc with my host brother Deep.

Tonight, we buy firecracker – 10/12/14

I’ve gotten to know my host family a little better in the past two weeks that we’ve been in Banaras. Madhu, the 16 year old sister, is really nice and always talks to me about things are fairly relevant in my life (ie service placement pros and cons, university admissions, wear to buy a nice sari, etc.). My host brother Deep, however, is much livelier and wants to do less talking and more doing. When Dolly-ji first gave us our homestay assignments she told me that my host brother was going to be a handful, but I never really appreciated those words until he dragged me around the house to play cards, video games, and set off firecrackers.

The first few nights I played cards – namely ERS (a game where you slap cards), War, and Set (a game where you find patterns in cards). I would normally win ERS and Set, but Deep will probably never forget that I lost to him three times in a row in War. The whole time we played cards Deep would ask (demand?) “After we play ‘Eyes Closed’ okay?”. At the time I had not been sleeping well at night and I was barely conjuring enough energy to play cards, let alone run around with my eyes closed and try to catch Deep. Finally, after three days of avoiding the game and going to sleep, I relented and played with him. I think we played about six rounds before I called it quits (Madhu also played with us). I thought this would be the end of Deep’s shenanigans of late night game play, but just as those days were ending, he started up with a new request/demand.

“Tonight, we buy firecracker. Go to roof and explode!” The coming of Dewali also means tons and tons of firecrackers/fireworks being sold. Every night Deep implores me to walk with him to the nearby store and get some. Some days we do, others I tell him I need to sleep (which is true, I’m trying to get over an ear infection after all). When we do procure firecrackers, Deep wastes no time in setting them all off. In the alleyway by our house, on our roof, in the courtyard in front of a nearby temple, everywhere. A small crowd of children inevitably joins us and Deep never fails to remind me to “keep firecracker away from naughty childs.” We use sticks of incents to light the firecrackers from a safe distance and then Deep yells “Run! Run! Too dangerous!” even when I am already 15 feet from the blast zone.

Last week I went with Deep to a festival that occupied the main street near my house and I watched him get ice cream and buy little toys to entertain himself. He proudly points out all of his friends that he knows and brags about the money that his grandparents give him to spend on whatever he likes (mostly firecrackers as far as I can tell). Deep loves speaking broken English at a rapid-fire pace that is virtually impossible to understand. Sometimes I can’t even tell if he’s speaking in Hindi or English! Usually he tries to cover himself by ending his sentences with “No more English. Sister translate. I’m very much tired” after which he continues in speaking in broken English because he can’t go a minute without talking.

 

So much to do, so little time to do it – 10/14/14

                This is another topic that I’ve already talked a little about, but since arriving in Varanasi it feels like we have even less time to fit everything into our busy schedules. Now that we have gotten our service placements and all my schedule look something like:

                                                7:00 AM: Meet in program house for breakfast/morning meeting

                                                8:00 AM: Ben and I arrive at South Point School

                                                4:00 PM: Ben and I finish at the school

                                                6:00 PM: Hindi class

                                                8:00 PM: End Hindi class and go home

                                                9:00 PM: Dinner with host families

                                                10:00 PM: My unofficial bed time

Of course, each of us has a slightly different schedule. For example, Jenny has to leave at 7:30 AM to catch the bus to Kiran and Alex doesn’t eat dinner until 11 PM (don’t worry, though, he has nap time at Bal Ashram). As you can see, this agenda doesn’t leave too much free time. We always joke about how we’re expected to consistently update our blogs, skype with friends and family, upload pictures, go shopping for clothes & other necessary items, explore the city, drink chai on the ghats, prepare for our service sites, study hindi, write yaks/group updates, wash our clothes/go to the dobi, practice yoga, journal, and do it all while getting enough sleep to keep energized throughout day. I’m not complaining about the multitude of things I want to do while I am here (I’d much rather have the problem of too much to do rather than not enough), but it’s certainly require a lot of prioritizing.

                Since coming to Varanasi all of us have gotten sick in some capacity. It all started with Chase having a sore throat that she then gave to me and Alex, who then spread it to the rest of the group. I got an ear infection from the throat sickness and both Ben T and Stephen have recently developed a cough. Chase was throwing up yesterday and in general our group energy is in a current slump. I reckon it’s probably a mixture of the increased work, the crappy city air, the abundance of cow dung we are in contact with every day, and the rainy weather that’s come in as a residual part of the storm hitting farther south. This is just a gentle reminder to friends and family back home that we are all trying to stay connected and sometimes it’s just hard to get to an internet café when you’re running errands all over Assi.

Levels – 10/13/14

                I’ve already briefly described biking here in the city, but the other day Caleb-ji had such a good thought I am going to write about it again. Biking is a lot of fun, but it’s also pretty stressful. You have to be on high alert the entire time. Besides, you never know when a cow or water buffalo might come charging down the street or when a motorcycle may come careening down an alleyway and onto the road. We each find ways to process the multitude of sensory input barraging our brains and maintain sanity where lack of order abounds. Caleb-ji, however, has created one of the most entertaining methods of coping.

                The whole premise of his method is that we are all characters in a video game set in Banaras. The goal of the video game is to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, while also staying safe (you do only have one life after all). In this game there are different levels of difficulty. They are as follows:

Level 1: You are the sole biker on the road

Level 2: You plus pedestrians                     

Level 3: Level 2 + other bikers

Level 4: Level 3 + cycle-rickshaws

Level 5: Level 4 + cows

Level 6: Level 5 + motorcycles

Level 7: Level 6 + auto-rickshaws

Level 8: Level 7 + cars

Level 9: Level 8 + subji-walas on the side of the road

Etc. Etc. Etc.

The levels keep intensifying in difficulty as more of each of the above listed items (and other unlisted ones) crowd the roads. On a single ride you can encounter a broad range of levels, quickly changing from Level 3 to 10 to 6 in less than a kilometer. Thinking about biking like this helps keep you focused on the roads rather than on the latest daydream in La-la Land. Over the course of the year I’m sure our perceptions of what is a “Level 1” street will change, just as a “Level 10” street might seem like a “Level 6” in a couple of months. (To be clear here, even though the above list is technically the definition of the various levels, they are more based on overall difficulty in navigating a given road than on the system described above. After all, each road will always have at least one cow on it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automatically a Level 5). It’s quite a silly thing that we have created, but it’s also a great tool to describe how our bike rides of the day have gone.  

Life in the City – 10/8/14

                We are all settling into our new lives here in Banaras. We have our new names, new host families, new bikes, new service placements, and a new Hindi guru. Our Hindi names are as follows:

Alex: Abhishek (Meaning “the act of coronation”)

Ben P: Bhanu (Meaning “sun”)

Ben T: Veer (Meaning “strong man”)

Stephen: Shyam (Meaning “Color of Shri Krishna” aka “dark”)

Jenny: Jonhvi (Meaning “Ganga” as in the Ganges)

Chase: Chini (Meaning “sugar”)

Evelyn: Indu (Meaning “moon”)

Caleb: Camal (Meaning “lotus flower”)

Christy: Mishtee (Meaning “sweet” in Bengali)

Dolly-ji named us all throughout our second day in Banaras and it was cool to then later learn the meanings behind our names and ponder why Dolly-ji named us what she did.

                My host family’s last name is Tripathi. I have a 16 year old host sister named Madhu, a 12 year old host brother named Deep, and then a host mom and dad (an uncle might also live at the house but I’m not completely sure). We live in a very tall and skinny house – there are 4 floors that each have a few rooms. My room is situated on the 3^rd floor next to my host sister’s and we share a bathroom. My host dad is a criminal lawyer and my host uncle is a policeman of some kind (my host mom is a housewife). We also have a guinea pig with a name that is very hard to pronounce/understand and a parakeet whose name I’ve never heard them say. I live fairly close to the program house (all the girls do) and am situated right next to a temple that wakes me up every morning. To be more exact, the house is surrounded by three different temples that all love to ring their bells very early in the morning.

                Biking in Varanasi has been exhilarating. As far as I can tell, there are very few traffic laws in India (if there are laws, they can’t be very strictly followed). Motorcycles, cars, tuk-tuks, pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, and bicycles all occupying the same space in a chaotic jumble of horns and wheels. People here greatly prefer using a blaring succession of horn blasts to signal that they are a) coming up behind you b) passing you c) turning off the street d) turning a blind corner or e) just for grins and giggles. It is a generally effective way to manage city traffic, but it’s very confusing and somewhat terrifying at times. You definitely have to be on high alert while biking and it’s really a good idea to wear a helmet, even if you get made fun of by the locals (no one here wears helmets or seatbelts and they give you a funny look when you do). It’s been quite fun exploring the city on bikes. Already I’ve found a splendid dhobi (laundry person), an awesome lassi shop, a superb sweet shop, and the go-to general store near Assi (where we are living).

                After visiting all the service sites and completing a mini application for the ones we liked best, we were each assigned a place to work.

Ben P and Evelyn: Nirman (a school that emphasizes learning through the arts)

Alex: Bal Ashram (an all-boys orphanage/organic farm)

Chase: Guria (an NGO that fights human trafficking)

Stephen: World Literacy Canada (an organization that promotes literacy esp. for women)

Ben T: Little Stars School (a school that teaches impoverished kids)

Jenny: Kiran (a center for the mentally/physically disabled)

I won’t expand more on this because in the future there will be many blogs, yaks, updates, etc. about each of these places.

                Our new Hindi guru, Virendra-ji, is world renowned for his teaching abilities. It’s a fairly unconventional style (at least by American standards) and it’s taken some getting used to. We aren’t allowed to write anything down for the majority of the class because he wants us to focus on listening rather than writing. Additionally, we haven’t really had a single grammar lesson, just starting with a basic sentence and then expanding on that to form new sentences with a similar structure. Sometimes I really really enjoy his teaching style, but other times I just really want to be able to jot something down so that I can go back and review it later on. It will be interesting to compare the academic settings in which I learned Hindi and Spanish at the end of my nine months here.

On to Banaras! – 10/1/14

                Sorry in advance that this doesn’t follow the chronology of the rest of my blogs, but I haven’t had a chance to write about this until now (we’ve been very busy in Banaras, but more on that in another post).

                The transit from Sona Pani to Banaras was long and tiresome, but also really fun and cool in a lot of ways. We started out with a four hour drive from Sona Pani to Khatkudam that most of us slept through because we had been staying up late listening to music at the Sona Pani Music Festival all the previous nights. Next, we boarded a sleeper train that would take us to Lucknow (arriving at 3:00 AM – yuck). Now, having been on a sleeper train in Europe I thought I knew what to expect when we boarded, but India did not fail to surprise me once again. The train was maximally packed with bunks. Down one side of the train were back-to-back triple bunks that ran parallel to the alleyway. On the other side were compartments that each held 6 bunks (3 on each side). I mean the word “compartment” in a very loose sense. There wasn’t anything like a door or curtain to separate it from the rest of the train, rather, the mere layout of the train gave it a more compartment-like feel. I will have to upload a diagram of what I mean because I know that description probably made very little sense and the train was too cramped to be able to take a picture that captured the dimensions of everything.

The next morning we departed the sleeper train at 3 AMish (we were supposed to arrive at 2:20 but trains are constantly arriving late to places) and we waited/slept for our next train in an air-conditioned waiting room at Lucknow. There were tons of people sleeping on the platform outside and we were really lucky that we all secured spots inside the AC room. Even with the AC room being the one of the “highest class” waiting rooms, there were rats scurrying around and darting under the sofa chairs. At 6:30 we boarded the next train that would finally take us to Varanasi.

                Our train departed from Platform 9, which for some weird reason was next to Platform 1 and not next to Platform 8. The group didn’t read signs and so we ended up on Platform 8 on the far opposite side of the train station. In the USA this would mean that you would have to retrace your steps back up the elevated walkway and to the correct platform, but in India you can just cut across all the rail tracks to get to your intended destination. Luckily, there weren’t any trains scheduled to arrive/depart  when we were clambering over the rails to get to the correct platform, but it still was kind of exhilarating crossing the tracks and then launching ourselves (weighed down by our packs, mind you) from the tracks up onto the 4 or 5 foot tall platform.

                The actual train ride was much less fun than our time at the station.  I got a solid 6 hours of reading in to finish A Fine Balance, but also didn’t get to eat much on the train and arrived starving at the program house. The first day we walked along Assi Ghat and then slept at the program house. This is the night that Stephen was attacked by monkeys – a story that I would like to clear up for the parents/friends. The whole thing is a mix of funny and scary, but I just want to stress that Stephen is doing really well and that most of the medical attention he is receiving is precautionary rather than because the doctors here actually think he has rabies/simian b/etc. Additionally, I am relaying the story as it was told to me by the boys who were actually present at the event – Chase, Jenny, and I were all downstairs and unaware of what was going on besides hearing some shouting from the roof.

                Around 6 or 6:30 AM we all woke up and were entranced by the beauty of the sun rising over the Ganges with people bathing on the ghats. The girls, being downstairs, observed the scene from the downstairs of the program house where we had slept. The boys, however, decided to take advantage of their position in the upstairs portion and use the ladder on the porch to get to the roof to watch the sunrise (well, most of the boys at least. Alex was sleeping when the monkey business was occurring). So, Ben T, Ben P, and Stephen were all enjoying themselves immensely on the roof until this one monkey comes and chucks a stick off the roof to the porch. We had seen tons of monkeys in the Himalayas, and there you merely wave your arms or yell and the monkeys flee. With this in mind, Ben T did his famous “langoor scream” (langoors are a certain type of monkey) and starts at the monkey to try to make it go away. Turns out city monkeys and mountain monkeys are very different. At this gesture a whole multitude of monkeys streamed onto the roof in a very aggressive fashion. Ben P quickly scampered down the ladder to avoid the conflict and Ben T moved to defensively swat away the onslaught of monkeys, but Stephen unfortunately had a monkey attack his back, away from where Ben T/P could see that he needed help. Ben T yelled at Ben P to throw the stick back up from the porch and quickly regained control of the situation once he had that with him to shoo away the pests. The “puncture wound” on Stephen’s back is mostly just a scratch. You can see the 5 points where the monkey’s nails first made contact with his skin and then lines about an inch or two long of where it scratched him. Thankfully, this happened at a time when Stephen won’t have to miss many activities for his trips to get shots/pills at the clinic. Princeton and Dragons have both been handling the situation exceptionally well and we are all very thankful for their support and concern for everyone’s wellbeing. Needless to say, I don't think anyone is going to return to the rooftop.

Cooking in India – 10/2/14

                I’ve already touched on this subject in one of my earlier blog posts where I wrote about making roti with my homestay mom, but there is so much more to cooking in India than having fingertips of steel to pick up insanely hot food with your bare hands.

                First of all, almost all the cooking I have done/seen done has been conducted on the floor. On a related note, there are no counters anywhere – not in the kitchen, not in the bathroom, not in the bedroom, etc. This has posed somewhat problematic in regard to the bathroom, especially when I was sharing with Chase because neither of us had a place to put our stuff besides the (not always clean) bathroom floor. Usually an abundance of hooks on the walls make up for lost counter space, but at my homestay in Banaras I can’t find a single hook in the bathroom. I’m going to have to ask what the heck I’m supposed to do with my towel while I shower considering there isn’t a separate space for showering (the showerhead is in the middle of the bathroom without any curtains or anything and water gets everywhere). In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a single shower curtain since I’ve arrived in India. Anyway, back to cooking. All of the slicing, stirring, kneading, peeling, grinding, washing, and rolling of food products is performed on the floor (not straight on the floor, there are plates under the food that is being prepared). Actually, most things happen on the floor here. You sit on the floor to cook, you sit on the floor to eat, you sit on the floor to bathe, you sit on the floor to learn Hindi, and the list goes on and on. At first all this floor sitting hurt my American hips and knees that aren’t accustomed to sitting cross-legged on the floor for extended periods of time, but I have since adjusted and now find the floor considerably more comfortable (although, I do admit I would prefer to sit in a chair every once in a while).

                This next cooking related thing is more of an interesting anecdote from a while ago that I forgot to write about until now. On Ben T’s birthday (September 19) we decided that we were going to bake him a birthday cake. As an avid baker back home, I offered my services to the group to come to the program house in Munsiyari an hourish early to bake the cake. Upon arrival at Malika-ji’s house (aka the program house), I realized that there was a) no recipe for me to follow and b) no oven in which I could bake the cake. The second issue was quickly resolved by a solar cooker being brought out for our use, but I have to admit I was a little nervous about just haphazardly throwing ingredients together to make a good tasting cake (I didn’t want Ben to be disappointed on his 18^th birthday now did I). I roughly gestimated two cups of flour, a cup of sugar, two eggs, a cup of butter, a half a teaspoon of baking soda, a quarter cup of milk, and a cup of a raisin/walnut mixture and mixed it all together (adding milk/flour to fine tune the batter consistency). We cooked the cake in a cheesecake pan and proceeded with the impromptu frosting. Since there wasn’t any powdered sugar to make a glaze or frosting, I just mixed milk, butter, and granule sugar together until it was a semi-pasty consistency. Half the cake (well, maybe more of a tart since it didn’t rise at all), was then coated with the frosting and we all sang happy birthday to Ben. The cake miraculously tasted fantastic. It was nice and spongey and the frosting’s crunch (due to the undissolved sugar) was reminiscent of crème Brule. If only all of my forays into recipe-less cooking were as successful as this one…

                At Munsiyari we had cooking lessons that were incredibly fun. We made pakora (the most similar thing to it in American food is the onion ring but it’s not really anything like that either), samosas, and marijuana seed chutney. All of us were quite intrigued by the interesting chutney and a little reserved about trying it at first. We were all assured many times by multiple reliable people that it would not have any effect on us, but we all still giggled when we saw that it was 4:20 PM while we were eating the pakora and chutney. People here love all sorts of chutney. Outside of blueberry chutney with brie I had never really had much of it, but sooo many dishes are served with one chutney or another. It’s one of those words that people here use to describe everything. “Yeh kya heh?” (what is this?) “Chutney.” Or even worse is the word “subji” that just groups all kinds of vegetables together into a single word.