Sona Pani (one last time) – 5/22/15 through 5/28/15

                We spent our last week as a group at the wonderful resort Sona Pani. Transference, as Dragons calls it, was full of group bonding time that included games, a movie night, a constructive criticism session, a love fest, goal reflection and setting, feedback one-on-ones, and general relaxation. We met some wonderful guests and got a chance to really unwind after the whirlwind of Ladakh. As sad as I am to leave my group, I have my family’s trip to India to look forward to and I cannot WAIT to be back in the USA. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who has taken the time to read any or all of these blog posts and express my gratitude to everyone who has made this experience possible for me. I am lucky to be able to call India my second home and even luckier to have met so many amazing people while I’ve been here. Here’s to a great year on BYP and 4 great years to come at Princeton! 

Trekking – 5/10/17 through 5/19/15

                After Domkhar, we embarked on a nine day trek that would be a highlight of my time in India. Starry nights and fresh (deoxygenated) air are just 2 of the many perks of being alone in the Himalayas. Most days it snowed and we were hiking on ice-covered stream, but wool socks and down jackets kept us plenty warm. To be perfectly honest, our trek was nearer to glamping (glamour camping) than trekking. We had about 15 mules and ponies to carry our big bags and tents and six Ladakhi guides to cook us food and set up camp. Most days we hiked between three and five hours and always had a scrumptious breakfast in our stomachs and a hot lunch to look forward to. We crossed mountain passes taller than 16,000 ft. where we built a snowman, went sledding, and hung 30 prayer flags with the names of people we love in India and the U.S. After hiking, we normally had an hour or two of individual R&R before reconvening for games like SET, telephone Pictionary, thumper, and many more. We ended the trek at Hemis Gompa, the aforementioned largest monastery in Ladakh where Jenny’s homestay family member was head lama. He invited us to tea in his private quarters and gave us a personal tour of the place. We even got to see the monks perform their morning chants (prayers) in the main temple! The trek was exhausting and energizing all at the same time and I think I might have even gained weight they fed us so well while we were on it!

Domkhar – 5/5/15 through 5/9/15

                After SECMOL we visited a small village called Domkhar which is a little south and east of Leh (the biggest city in Ladakh). We each stayed with host families there and split our time with our homestays and the group. My homestay was the loneliest in that there were no kids (at least before the last day). My host mom and host dad were not actually a couple as I had originally thought, but rather sister and brother-in-law. My host grandmother was my host mother’s biological mom, but not my host father’s. Most days I came home and did work either in the fields, with the livestock, or in the forest. We peeled off the bark of trees so that the trees could be used in the construction of the second floor of my house and the bark for fire kindling. Due to the Zanskar River flooding, the electricity was out for three days. At night, we would all huddle around the solar lantern and woodstove and chat in Hindi about the day’s events (well, me and my host mom because my host dad had left to get his real wife and kids and my host grandma only spoke Ladakhi).

                In Domkhar our group did a couple of hikes – one through a valley that reminded me of AZ and one to a village across the river. Both were super fun and we took tons of pictures (especially at the village where the lighting was good). At our homestays, we all got to try yak butter tea (which is more like soup than tea), eat TONS of dried apricots, try consuming straight barley flour (it’s not as bad as you might expect), and expand our Ladakhi food vocabulary. On a rather unrelated note, one of Jenny’s homestay residents was actually the head lama at the largest Buddhist monastery in Ladakh!

SECMOL – 4/29/15 through 5/4/15

                Our first stop in Ladakh was a place called SECMOL that runs an alternative school for students who fail their class 10 board examinations. The organization previously worked with the government to create a Ladakh-specific curriculum for the schools in that area, but due to a falling out between the local government and them, now just focuses on the school. We arrived in the down-time between school sessions and got to spend a ton of time relaxing and chilling with the Ladakhi students. We played cricket, tried slacklining, played cards, sang, and danced with them over the week. Not to mention helping out in the kitchen and volunteering some hours to conversation classes. Caleb and I went swimming in the frigid Indus River and the whole group followed an ex-student, Chamba, to the top of the SECMOL Mountain. The food there was amazing and I probably could have stayed there for months if we had the time. 

How We Almost Screwed Up – 4/28/15

                Our transition to Ladakh was very stressful. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, and I am convinced the universe was conspiring against us to miss our flight. We woke up at 2:30 AM so that we could store the luggage that we didn’t want to take with us to Ladakh at 3:00 AM in the hotel. At 3:00, however, we were informed that there did not actually exist such a place for our luggage. After a good bit of confusion and wasted time, we dumped our stuff in the basement and covered it with a bed sheet. Now the time was close to 4:00 AM. We left the hotel in 2 taxis to the airport, one of which arrived at the correct terminal, one of which did not. Alex, Jenny, Chase, and I were at Terminal 1 (the wrong terminal) and waited for the others for a good while before calling them to see where they were. Upon doing so, we discovered our driver’s mistake and hailed another taxi to take us to the correct terminal (another 15 minute drive away). We arrived at the correct terminal close to 5:00 AM where there was slight delay in getting all of our bags checked (we almost forgot to put the med bag – which has needles in it – into a backpack for checking). Next, we headed off to security where some group members got stopped for items in their carry-ons. Among these people, Alex is the most notable. You see, he had forgotten to take out his survival kit from his backpack and had accidentally brought with him 2 Swiss army knives, 3 boxes of waterproof matches, and a length of rope. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had had a machete with him, too. Time approximately 5:30 AM, Ben P and I decide to go to the bathroom (I had chugged 2 liters of water that morning to avoid being stopped at security). Ben, on the other hand, needed to do a number 2. I came out of the bathroom speed walking (our flight was supposed to leave at 6:00 AM and board at 5:15 AM). That speed walk turned into a run as I approached the gate and saw Caleb flailing his arms at me. Ben came a few minutes later and we all hurried onto the plane: dead last with hearts pounding uncontrollably. And that is how we almost didn’t make our flight to Ladakh. 

Agra and Delhi – 4/25/15 through 4/27/15

                After an overnight train to Delhi, we transformed from residents of Banaras into tourists of India. We spent a few days seeing all the sights from the Red Fort to a Jain bird hospital to Raj Ghat (The Gandhi memorial) to the Lotus Temple (and many other things in between). We also took a train to Agra to see the stunning Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. We got up at the break of dawn to see the sunrise over the Taj and got great pictures before too huge of a crowd showed up. Our time in Delhi and Agra was short, but we packed our time with monument visiting before our flight to Ladakh. 

Bye-Bye Banaras! – 4/24/17

                After 7 long months of inhabiting a place, it’s hard to say goodbye. At first, I was displeased that most of my “loose ends” had been left untied. My host family left Banaras the week before and I was living at Dolly-ji’s house, my last day at NIRMAN had been what I thought was going to be my 2^nd to last day, I hadn’t said goodbye to my kathak teacher, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to get pakora (my favorite deep fried Indian snack) in over a week. That being said, my last day in Banaras could not have been more perfect.

                The day started with a long ghat walk with Ben P. We explored a Tibetan temple that we had somehow missed before and took a rickshaw through Godolia (the main shopping area) back to Assi (where we lived). We ate breakfast with the group at the Program House before cleaning it and preparing it for BYP 7.0 and then we biked back to NIRMAN for our final goodbyes. I talked to students, took pictures, and even got to see my graduated seniors (they came back to school that day to say goodbye). Then, I got a text message from my host sister, Madhu, telling me that they had returned to Banaras from the wedding. On the way home I saw my kathak (traditional Indian dance) guru-ji on the street, said bye to him, and then got to eat one final lunch with my host family. Madhu, Deep, and I played Go Fish and BS one last time before I said goodbye to them to get my last food in Banaras – pakora. Over the months in Banaras, I befriended the pakora-wallah (man who makes pakora) who lives near my Hindi class. I would sit and chat with him before class and much on his delicious fried treats. I wanted to pay him one last visit before departing and he even gave me all my pakora free! After getting pakora, I made my last stop at Dolly-ji’s house before heading to the train station to travel to Delhi! In the end, I felt completely satisfied with my time in Banaras, incredibly grateful for all the people there, and super excited for our last month in India. 

Trip to the Waterfall – 7/20/15

                As sort of a last hoorah before our group left Banaras, we took a day trip to a waterfall a few hours out of Varanasi. We packed lunches of puri-subji (fry bread and stewed vegetables) and hiked 30 minutes to a chilly (and muddy) waterfall). The girls swam in their leggings and kurtis and the boys in their running shorts (I think only Caleb and Alex had clothing even resembling swimwear). We spent hours swimming, climbing rocks, posing with the waterfall, and dancing to Bollywood music. It was refreshing to get in the water after a) not swimming for 8 months and b) the heat and grime of the city. I think all of us got at least a little sunburned and when we got back to Banaras we were so exhausted that we didn’t even have the energy to get ice cream as a group like we had planned. 

Last Day of School! – 4/16/15

In typical NIRMAN fashion, Ben and my last day of work was not totally what we expected due to seemingly random cancellation of class. Our going away party was planned for the 16^th (the day before we were actually supposed to be done working) and that went really well! All of the grades from the middle school and high school came to give speeches about me and Ben (sadly, my 3^rd and 5^th graders were not in attendance) and give us presents that they had made/bought. They talked about how friendly Ben was and how I managed to “make even the most boring subject [history] interesting.” Next, class 8 had thought of games for me and Ben to play like charades and a dancing competition. We had cake, samosas, and “cold drink” (what they call soda, regardless of if it is cold or not) to celebrate and got pictures with all of the students and staff members. Even though we were sad to leave that day, we thought we would still have one more day as employees of the school (volunteers of the school? We weren’t paid…).

The next day, however, was another one of the seemingly countless number of state/national holidays, and the school was closed. Don’t worry, Ben and I went back a couple of times to say our real goodbyes to all of the people we love there.

Spiritual Cleansing and Caste – 4/12/15

                In Hinduism, there is a huge emphasis on being clean, both physically and spiritually. Most Hindus take baths in the morning after they go to the bathroom to clean themselves after becoming physically dirty from the poop, but also spiritually dirty from it. I don’t have any qualms with being hygienic, but sometimes I feel like the obsession with spiritual cleanliness goes too far. After all, spiritual cleanliness is one thing that keeps the caste system alive and well and pretty much the excuse higher castes used to allow untouchability to exist. It used to be, as I am sure many of us learned in world history class, that touching a low-caste member of society meant that you had been spiritually dirtied. Even though now most (if not all) Indians would say that untouchability has been largely stopped in most parts of the country (if not the whole country), I personally know some conservative Brahmin families who would not eat food from the hand of a low-caste person.

What’s worse is that this aspect of “cleanliness” now has very little to do with being physically clean. Sure, I can fathom that at one point the practicality of many of the rules in Hinduism to keep you spiritually clean also helped keep you physically healthy. Touching someone who spent his days handling human feces might make you sick. Attending a funeral and being in the vicinity of a body who maybe died from an infectious disease could be dangerous for yourself. I can see why taking baths after these sorts of things came about as a tradition. What frustrates me is their continuation into the present as a method of perpetuating caste (not to mention it’s rather inconvenient, but that’s another point). Before people in India can be treated as an equal regardless of caste, everyone must do away with the notion that some people are less spiritually clean than others. Way easier said than done, however. As one person put it to us, gods must die before the caste system can be removed from Indian society.

Deep, my host brother, was so scared of me when I returned home from Stephen’s host dad’s funeral. Even after I bathed, washed my clothes, and changed into fresh kurta-salwar, he insisted that I go to the Ganges, fetch water and sprinkle it over my backpack and all of its contents that were with me. He then instructed me to get my bike washed because it too was spiritually unclean and contaminating the house. Ashok Sir died from kidney failure, not Ebola. It made me so sad to see Deep terrified of me and all of my belongings because they were spiritually soiled. He wouldn’t even come into my room to talk to me for a few days.

I am sure that living in arguably the most orthodox Hindu city in the world has somewhat biased my perception of this aspect of Hinduism and I know that many Hindus actively work against the stigmas of spiritual uncleanliness, especially in relation to lower castes. If I could, I would love to spend more time in big cities and small villages sorting out my thoughts on this issue, but until then I just hope that spiritual cleanliness is used more to promote healthy living (as I believe it was originally intended) and less as a way to perpetuate caste. 

Death in the City of Light – 4/6/15

                When I came to India, I never been to a wedding nor a funeral. I was excited to go to an Indian wedding (and fully expected to) and never really gave any thought to the possibility of going to a funeral. Living in Banaras, a place where people come to die, I’d seen funeral processions and bodies burning on the ghats, but it was not so sad because I did not know those people. The only other time I can think of someone who I knew who died was my friend’s mom in preschool. Even then, the only memory of her that I have is at Sunday school she taught us the song that goes “I see London. I see France. I see _______’s underpants!” and we thought it was hilarious. I don’t remember finding out that she died, but I do remember asking my parents, dressed all in black, if I could go to her funeral with them. When you’re three, though, death doesn’t hit you the same way as when you’re older and can understand it.

Stephen’s homestay father passed away early Monday morning. To say that it was totally unexpected would be untrue. After all, he had been undergoing dialysis treatment for some time and was so weak he could barely walk to the bathroom from is bed. That being said, it also was very much a surprise. We hadn’t really thought of death as something that could actually be an immediate result of is sickness. Just last Thursday we were at their house for Stephen’s birthday with him, singing songs, eating cake, and dancing (he sat in a chair and looked on). We helped carry him up the stairs to his bedroom after the party and said goodbye without giving it a second thought.

Most people found out via a text from Caleb-ji on Monday morning. I was showering when Caleb sent the text and then didn’t check my phone when I got out and left for the program house. When I walked in and Caleb told me the news, I didn’t know what to feel. It was sort of a sad numbness. I didn’t know Mr. Sachdeva that well, but of the people in our group I knew him best next to Stephen. He volunteered at Nirman before he got sick and would joint teach the 6^th graders math with me. I had snacks and water at is house a few times and bonded with him over the University of California Berkeley (where he received his master’s degree and where my older brother studies now). It didn’t feel real when Caleb told me. Ben P and Jenny were sitting quietly at the program house in a sort of gloomy silence. We heard the plan for the day – no work, meeting at 11:15 at Stephen’s house for a short ceremony, and then the boys would accompany the procession to Manikarnika, the big burning ghat where open fire cremations take place (girls are not supposed to go). More people trickled in to the program house and joined us as we sat in a cloud of melancholy. In the kitchen Muni-ji (the woman who cooks breakfast for us) was blasting cheery Bollywood music that was eerily out of place, but none of us bothered to ask her to change it.

Upon finding out about Mr. Sachdeva’s death, many of us suddenly felt the need to contact our family and make sure they were still okay. Death seems so unreal sometimes. You sort of get double think knowing that you’re going to die someday, but at the same time not actually expecting it to ever happen. When someone does pass away, however, reality gives you a punch and all of the sudden everyone becomes so mortal. It seems like anyone you know and love could just be gone in an instant. The worst scenarios jump into your mind and you just want the comfort of knowing that the people you love are still alright.

Hemant-ji showed up for our yoga class, but we told him to cancel. He sat with us for hours, though, first talking about culturally what you’re supposed to do when someone dies (since all of us were clueless on the matter) and then about other things, occupying our minds so we would not have to dwell on the sad news until eleven. At an Indian funeral you are supposed to wear brightly colored or white clothing (anything dark is considered inauspicious). You bring malas (flower garlands) to place on the body and once you arrive are not supposed to leave until after the body as left the house on the procession to the burning ghat. The procession consists of close friends and family members and typically involves carrying the deceased, wrapped in colorful cloth and covered in garlands, on a stretcher to one of the two burning ghats in Banaras, Manikarnika (the bigger one closer to the old city) or Harishchandra (the smaller one closer to Assi). During the procession the family/friends chant “Ram nam satye hai!” (Ram’s name is truth – Ram is a warrior king in Hindu mythology). After visiting the home with the dead body, Hindus believe that you have become impure and must bathe/wash your clothes before touching anyone/thing or going into the house. More of my thoughts on this practice in another blog. As it got later in the morning, our group split up to change clothes, tell our host families, etc. before coming to meet Stephen and is family at their house.

I didn’t expect to cry at the funeral. I’m not usually an extremely emotional person and very few of even my close friends have seen me cry. But while at Stephen’s house, I couldn’t stop the tears from creeping into my eyes and falling down my cheeks. In fact, I started crying on the bike ride over as I mentally prepared myself for the funeral. Sure, I wasn’t extremely close to Mr. Sachdeva, but I still felt immense pain thinking about what his family must be going through. Just thinking of my own father dying sent tears to my eyes and when I put myself in Stephen’s host sister’s shoes I couldn’t help but cry in earnest. When I arrived and saw Kushi and Pari (Stephen’s host nieces), I cried more because they had just lost their wonderful grandfather. What sent me bawling, though, was talking to Stephen’s host mom. I had visited her just on Wednesday to tell her about Stephen’s surprise birthday party and even then she had cried at the thought of Stephen leaving Banaras. Now, she was hysterical with grief, sobbing in garbled Hindi and English, asking what she will do when Stephen leaves in a few weeks and she will be all alone. To say it was an intense emotional experience would be a vast understatement.

What was perhaps even more disconcerting for me, though, was seeing the corpse. Only his head was visible (everything else was wrapped in colorful cloth and malas) and while I was placing the garland over is legs I simultaneously wanted to stare indefinitely at him and also shut my eyes and bolt out of the room as fast as possible. You read in books that people look peaceful in death, that they look like they’re just sleeping, but I did not find that to be the case. He certainly did not look like someone peacefully sleeping. Something was gone, was missing that made him now almost inhuman.

This funeral procession was a less traditional and orthodox than the practices that Hemant-ji had explained to us. The body was taken to Manikarnika Ghat in a hearse rather than carried by men on a stretcher and most people traveled behind it in either cars or rickshaws. Even though in Hindu orthodoxy it is believed that the soul cannot be properly released from the body unless the funeral rites are performed by the eldest son, the funeral rites were performed by Stephen’s host sister (Stephen’s host brother lives in America and could not arrive in time for the funeral).

                As weird as this might sound, I feel like this has overall been a healthy growing experience for me. I still fight back tears every time I write/edit this blog and think about what happened. I still wish that he were here and I could ask him for tips on how to manage the unruly sixth graders or talk to him about his days at Berkeley. But I can also find some consolation in the knowledge that he is no longer in pain. That he is in heaven or reincarnated into a body who will be taken care of and loved by his family (following whichever faith). His passage (or expiration as an Indian might say) has pushed me to really ponder life and death and made my experience in India more grounded and whole. I can now say without a shadow of a doubt that I have experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows of my life while here. Rest in peace, Ashok Sachdeva.

The Festival of the Egg – 4/5/15

                My mom sent me a package that included an egg dying kit for Easter and when I brought it home, Deep (my host brother) was very interested. The funny thing is that Deep doesn’t even eat eggs since he’s a Hindu vegetarian. He was curious to know about why I had been sent egg dye and I tried explaining Easter to him. The main problem being that Easter egg dying and what Easter celebrates have very little in similar. Deep could never remember the name of Easter and instead just started calling it the Festival of the Egg. “Indu, what day is the Festival of the Egg?” “Indu, you will take me to color eggs, nah?” “Indu, will Chini and Shiv and Anandi be there?”  

                The day before Easter we ad group masti (group fun) at the local university’s sports fields where we played cricket and Frisbee. Afterwards, we headed to Caleb’s apartment for the actual Easter egg dying. We had 30 eggs and Deep probably dyed about 10 of them he was so excited. We ate macaroni and cheese and potato chips and drank “cold drink” (what people here call soda). Ben P was at Dolly-ji’s house leading a Jewish Seder (I also hear that this was very impromptu. They had to make many substitutions for the Seder platter like mutton for lamb, cilantro for parsley, papad for matza, and water wit oral rehydration salts for salt water, just to name a few. Additionally, Ben P accidentally printed out a Jews for Jesus version of the Seder service), but everyone else besides him made an appearance. Jenny, of course, made some of the most artistic and beautiful eggs including the Scream and Spongebob Squarepants, but there were plenty of other good ones. Stephen’s host nieces came as well and added even more energy to the room. Once we finished dying eggs, we decided to make an Easter egg hunt for Deep and Stephen’s host nieces. We hid twenty-four of the eggs around Caleb’s apartment and had the kids search for them. I think Pari (the older of Stephen’s two host nieces) found the most number of eggs, followed by Deep, and then Kushi (the younger of Stephen’s host nieces). Also at the party, Ben T, Alex, and I filled golgappa shells (sort of an edible hollow bread sphere thing) with candies for an “egg” hunt that we planned for the boys at Bal Ashram the next morning on actual Easter.

                Easter Day was also interesting. We started off by hiding the filled golgappa shells for the Ashram boys, but monkeys kept stealing the candy! Alex and I walked around with big sticks to try to discourage them, but they would always manage to sneak a few golgappa “eggs” while we weren’t looking. The Ashram boys absolutely loved it (the Little Stars Hostel girls were also supposed to be there, but they were being punished for not doing their chores. Later in the day, Ben T came back and hid more golgappa for them). Later, we learned how to make gulab jamun (an Indian sweet) with Ben T’s host sister-in-law (I ate wayyyy too many) and then went to a church service at St. Thomas Church. The service was all in Hindi and the hymns sounded nothing like the ones in the US, but it was cool to see how the two cultures mixed. You still had to take off your shoes before entering the church (a very Hindu tradition) and most of the church goers were in saris (one woman was even in a sari decorated with pictures of marijuana leaves). Afterwards, there was a dance party to Indian Cristian rock music and some mildly sketchy free food. When I arrived back home, the Hindu temple outside of my house was also having some sort of party (not for Easter) and I ate even more free food in the form of Prasad.

Stephen’s Birthday – 4/2/15

                Stephen’s birthday was very fun, if not a little disorderly.  We had a series of surprises for him that all sort of failed, but it was exciting nonetheless. The first surprise that we tried to pull off was a scavenger hunt. Ben T orchestrated it and made it a good mix of hard and funny. I guess this one didn’t fail, per say, since Ben T did succeed in making a good scavenger hunt, but Stephen never ended up finishing it. This was mostly because Stephen ran out of time to follow the clues since he wanted to be on time for Hindi class. The ironic thing is that Ben T purposefully designed it that way (trying to make Stephen late) so that our group could get prepared for surprise number 3.

The second surprise gone wrong was making brownies. I started making brownies at the program house and made it through the first batch alright. Unfortunately, the electricity went out before the second batch had even baked for a few minutes, so I biked to our Hindi class with a pan full of brownie batter strapped to the back of my bike (the cooked brownies were also in my possession).  Luckily, our Hindi guru-ji has a stovetop oven. Unluckily, it is virtually impossible to control its heat. We did end up making semi-decent brownies, even if they were a little burnt on the outside and gooey on the inside.

                The third failed attempt at a surprise was at Hindi. The original plan was to have everyone get to class early and be waiting for Stephen to come in at which point we would surprise him with brownies and tell him class was actually canceled so that we could take him out to dinner. In classic BYP India 6.0 fashion, however, everyone except me, Alex, and Jenny were late (i.e. came after Stephen arrived). Plus, we couldn’t go into the classroom since the class before us was running late, and the second batch of brownies wasn’t ready yet. In any event, we took him to Ming Garden for dinner and ate some really good (and equally inauthentic) Chinese food.

                Our last try to properly surprise Stephen also ended up not working. At the end of dinner we each left in a few minute intervals, telling Stephen we had to go home for one reason or another. In reality, we all biked to his homestay and set up the cake and present that we got for him. That part of the plan went beautifully and we even remembered to park our bikes around the corner so that he wouldn’t see them. The catch this time, though, was that Stephen’s host father had just come home from dialysis and was too weak to get out of the car. Some of the boys had to help carry him out of the car and into the room where the party was going to be. It was during this time that Stephen came home and saw us all before we could surprise him.

                The party itself was really fun. We danced and sang to music, ate a lot of cake (we accidentally ended up with two cakes because both we and his host family bought cakes), and drank mango juice and soda.  Stephen fed his host family and us cake as per Indian custom and Kushi and Pari (his host nieces) smeared cake on his face. The party had to end a little early because his host dad was getting tired and all of the loud music was quite jarring for his delicate state. He was so weak that the boys had to carry him upstairs to his room afterwards.

                As a present we gave Stephen nice fabric to make a new kurta along with matching thread and fancy buttons. In the end, we had a really enjoyable time and I think Stephen still liked all of the surprises, even if none of them were particularly good.

Monkeys at School – 4/1/15

                I’ve been here for so long that the animals in inappropriate places barely even cross my radar. I bike past cows in the middle of the road without even blinking (although I do sometimes curse the traffic jams that they cause). I don’t think it’s funny or strange when Stephen tells me that he prefers to wash his clothes in the morning so that the monkeys don’t steal his clothes when they’re more active in the evening. I lazily watch the mice in my host family’s kitchen and gaze at the geckos in my room. The pigs eating trash on the corner of the road by the Assi River are mundane and the sweater-donning goats sauntering down the ghats are commonplace. I wouldn’t even think to blog about them if not for talking to my family in the US.  Banaras is the about the closest you can get to an actual concrete jungle. This blog is about a hilariously scary run-in with the dubious monkeys who inhabit Varanasi.

                After school one day I was working in the library when I heard the terrified shrieks of some teachers in a classroom nearby. “BUNDER UNDER AH GAYE!!!” “MONKEYS HAVE COME INSIDE!!!” It was the sort of high frequency squeal that can shatter glass and burst eardrums. Sure enough, when I peered into the room through a window there was a monkey perched on a desk and just hanging out. A few feet away, two teachers were cowering under desks. I, not wanting to suffer the same fate as Stephen, retrieved the bat that Ben P keeps in the cupboard that we share (he futilely hopes that one day his ninth graders will memorize the poem “Casey at the Bat” and he will reward them with a period of playing baseball out in the field). Ben had already left school to go to Urdu class and I decided that someone might as well be protected from the monkeys (they leave you alone if they think you can hurt them i.e. by wielding a bat). I camped out in a corner and brandished the bat whenever a monkey started getting too close for comfort. It was from this vantage point that I watched the monkeys climb inside the library through the open windows and start scaling bookshelves, grabbing books at random and throwing them on the floor.  A few monkeys even stole books and ran and still others chucked some books at onlookers on the lower story. Finally, some of the groundskeepers arrived with long bamboo sticks and started whacking any monkeys that didn’t leave.

                As the monkeys left, I took a look around to assess the damage. A couple of chairs had been turned over and 30 or so books were not in their right places, but I think it could have been worse. Many of the teachers were still under desks as I walked around and asked me if the monkeys had finally left.

I don’t think monkeys have often been near the top of my list of favorite animals, but if they were before, they certainly are not now.

Holi – 3/6/15

                My first taste of Holi was at school on March 4 when all of the teachers and students played Holi together in the field (which perhaps should not be called the field when there actually isn’t any grass there). The first half of the day I spent giving a 3-hour-long science exam to my 9^th graders, but after lunch was all fun and games. Grades 1 through 8 did poetry recitations and dances about Holi, and even though I heard the same poem about Holi recited by most of the grade levels, it was still cute to see them all give presentations with splashes of color across their faces. After the poetry/dances, it was all out war.

                Before I go too much into describing Holi, however, I should probably go over some of the vernacular and back story. The colorful powders (some chemically colored and others herbal) that you throw/smear on other people are simply called “colors.” Powdered colors that you mix with water to shoot out of water guns and launch with water balloons are called “liquid colors.” Powdered colors are considered cleaner since you can wash them out while liquid colors stain. Getting yourself and others covered with colors is called “playing Holi” and if you don’t really want to play Holi but still want some color on your face you can ask for “bus tika” (bus meaning “only” or “stop” and a tika is a mark placed between the eyebrows and is normally applied using either the thumb or ring finger). Here’s a quick and dirty overview of the story behind Holi (it’s actually a cool story if you want to look it up in more depth). Basically, there was this evil demon king who had a son who he hated. He tried many times to kill his son, but each time the son was saved by Lord Vishnu. The evil demon king was practically invincible – he could be killed neither inside nor outside, neither by a man nor beast, neither during the day nor the night, etc. One day he thought of an ingenious way to kill his son – he would burn his son in a fire. The reason why this was so ingenious was that the demon king had a sister named Holika who possessed a magical blanket that allowed her to touch fire and not be burned. The demon king planned that Holika would sit in a fire with her blanket and the baby son and the son would die while she would survive. When Holika sat on the fire with the boy, however, Lord Vishnu summoned a great wind that swept both the baby and the blanket away. Holika was left to burn and the baby was saved! Sometime later, Lord Vishnu killed the evil demon king in a doorway (avoiding the inside/outside problem) while in the form of a half-man/half-beast creature (avoiding the man nor beast problem), and at precisely a time when it was neither day nor night (I can’t remember if it was dusk or dawn, but in any event he avoided the day/night problem).

                That’s the story of why Holi is celebrated, but the backstory behind all of color business is slightly different. The story goes that Krishna, who was dark skinned, had fallen in love with a fair-skinned girl and thought that the only reason she didn’t like him was because he was black. When he told his mother this, she told him to go and put color on her so that she wouldn’t be fair-skinned anymore. He did so and thus sprouted the tradition of playing Holi.

There are four main Hindu holidays that used to be for the four main varnas (castes). Holi was originally for the Shudra caste (the lowest caste that included untouchables) and on the day of Holi everyone is said to be on equal ground, regardless of caste. The way our Hindi guru-ji talked about Holi made it sound like a real-life purge (if you’re confused, I’m referencing a movie that came out sorta recently). On Holi it’s permissible to act like demons, so people (namely young men) will drink lots of alcohol, consume lots of weed in various forms, eat meat (or meaty vegetables), swear like sailors, and generally be unruly. For this reason, girls are not allowed out on the streets before 2 PM on the day of Holi (at 1 PM there is a ceasefire for all crazy activity).

                Anyway, back to playing Holi at school. Most teachers decided to go bus tika, but Ben P, Mallory (a previous Dragons student who came back to India to volunteer at Nirman), and I wanted to get in on all of the fun. Some students were really sweet and would practically caress my cheeks when they smeared color on my face, following that with a tika and touching my feet to show respect. Other students, however, would come up from behind and violently rub my entire head with color before darting off to find another victim. It was an exhausting 20 to 30 minutes of play, but it was also SO FUN. After the kids went home, all of the teachers went to the performance room and had a dance party. It took quite a bit of scrubbing to get all of the colors off when I got home (I basically had to take 2 consecutive baths), but it was still nothing compared to the amount of bathing I had to do after real Holi.

                The day after Holi at school was the day when Holika is burned in effigy on huge bonfires throughout the city. Since a month or so people have been adding wood, garbage, etc. to the piles and some of them in the streets got so large that they obstructed traffic (much to my consternation). Lots of Hindu religious festivals also have some sort of cleaning aspect to them. On Diwali you’re supposed to clean your house or else Lakshmi (the god of wealth) will not come in and bless your family. On Holi, you scrub your body (namely arms, hands, feet, and legs) with a mustard oil scrub and clean off all of the dead skin that you can. Later, you collect the scrub/dead skin leftovers and throw them in the bonfires.

                The first bonfire that we went to that night was a real happening place to be. There was music blasting and a huge crowd of people waiting for all of the festivities to start. Once the fire was lit and the statue of the boy saved from the flames, everyone processed around the bonfire and people started throwing dry color. I wasn’t expecting to play Holi that night and was not wearing old clothes, but hopefully the color will come out when the dhobis wash it. The second fire that we visited, the one on Assi Ghat, was considerably tamer. There wasn’t any loud music playing and people weren’t throwing color like at the other one. When we got back to Dolly-ji’s house we pigged out on Bourboun cookies (amazing fudge cookies), peanut butter, and Nutella before washing up and going to bed.

                The next day we woke up late, had peanut butter sandwiches and bananas for breakfast, and then prepared for wet Holi. All of the girls donned white saris with the exception of Chase who just wore a white salwar kameez and the boys put on their white kurta pyjamas/dhotis. We actually started with just throwing dry color which was fun and considerably less painful, especially since we all had bought herbal colors which don’t taste so bad when they get in your mouth (at South Point’s Holi I had a mouthful of the most disgusting tasting colors ever). Inevitably, though, we started spraying liquid color. We had water balloons, water guns, and buckets as our weapons and more than just each other as targets. We launched water balloons at a nearby roof and were on the lookout for any unsuspecting passersby on the road below to soak with colored water.  We stayed at this stage of Holi for a little while, taking occasional breaks to eat namkeen (salty snacks) and just take a breather in general. We were all pretty much dyed blue, purple, or red at that point, and at least I thought we were going to be finished soon, but instead we were each initiated into what we decided to call Holi hazing. Holi hazing involves one person sitting on the floor while everyone else gets a chance to rub him/her furiously with color. This is probably what made us stay dyed for so long after Holi was finished. The color coating was so intense and so complete that even our teeth were dyed colors. Even though it was fun to be “hazed,” it was also kind of painful and pretty much everyone was finished with Holi after that. We took turns crudely showering off under the cascade of water from a pipe coming off Dolly-ji’s upper roof to her lower one, and gradually people started leaving to take proper showers in their rooms.

                I probably showered three consecutive times and brushed my teeth twice and still had a bluish tint. After bathing as best we could, we changed into newly bought clothes, as is traditional on Holi, and went downstairs to enjoy puri and chola (fry bread and chickpea stew). It was interesting to see how well each person had managed to clean up. Some people were significantly more colorful than others (perhaps a sign of who has effective bathing practices and who doesn’t?) and people with blonde hair basically had their hair accidentally dyed – Caleb’s hair is still a strawberry pink and it’s been a few weeks since Holi.

                Finally, we all grabbed boxes of sweets and went our separate ways home. The streets reminded me of what roads look like at 8 am on Christmas morning. All of the stores were closed and only a couple of people were out (in fact, the only people I saw were three men chatting at a paan (chewing tobacco) shop). When I got home, everyone was asleep. Playing Holi is exhausting and it’s customary to take a nap during the time that’s after the 1 pm cease-fire but before going out at night and visiting friends and family with mithai (sweets) and namkeen (salty snacks). Following my family’s example, I passed out for about an hour before Deep woke me up because, as he matter-of-factly said, “The painting lady is here.” Married Indian women have there feet painted with beet juice for all sorts of special events like weddings, holidays, parties, etc. and Holi is an especially auspicious day to get it done. I am neither married nor Indian, but my host mom invited me to also get my feet painted with her. It was a really cool experience and both my host mom and the woman making the designs on my feet thought it was hilarious how ticklish I am.  I was squirming the entire time and tying my best not to suddenly jerk my feet and upset the bowl of beet juice that was situated alarmingly close to me. After my feet were finished and covered in beautiful bright red lace-like designs, I went upstairs to wash my face again (to try to get more purple off still) and look presentable for going out that evening.

                I generally dislike Indian mithai and find them overly sweet, so, as you can imagine, I was ecstatic that on Holi people mostly serve salty, crunchy namkeen to express their hospitality. Madhu and I went out visiting neighboring families with a bag of dry color (the evening of Holi everyone goes bus tika) and we ate various chips, rice crackers, and papad (spicy potato wafer thing). We got home and had puri subji (fry bread and stewed vegetables) for dinner and by then I was so tired I couldn’t even bring myself to bathe one more time before going to bed.

19 Years Old! – 2/17/15

                My birthday happened to coincide with the Hindu holiday of Shivratri, the anniversary of Shiva and Parvarti’s marriage according to Hindu mythology. Because of this, I had off from school and got to spend the whole day celebrating festivities for both my birthday and Sri Shiva.
                I must admit that the beginning part of my day was kind of boring. I cleaned my room and went for a run at BHU (the local university) with Caleb, followed by lunch at Flavours Café (a coffee place with good American food and cakes that are like cakes that you can get in the US). I visited some Shivalingas (shrines to Shiva) to check out Shivratri festivities, but most of the day I had dinner on my mind. You see, I had promised my group that I would make panko chicken for them for my birthday. Panko chicken is basically just fried chicken except you use dried bread crumbs to crust it and it’s really crispy and delicious. In the US it’s easy to go out and buy meat. After all, it’s cleanly packaged in air-tight containers and you can barely imagine how the pristine cuts of meat came from an animal at all. In Banaras, buying meat is a whole other ball game – you go to a butcher shop and order fresh meat.
               Ben P and I biked to the Muslim quarter where meat is readily available (unlike in the Hindu-centric communities where we live) and found a butcher with a chicken coup outside. I asked for 2 kilos of boneless meat and so the guy working there picked out two chickens for me. At this point Ben decided he wouldn’t be able to watch the killing, so he kindly left to go get some ice cream for the two of us. Killing chickens is a lot less traumatizing that I thought it would be. I have always had weird notions of it from the saying “running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” but in practice it wasn’t so dramatic. They drained the blood, feathered, and removed the bones for me, leaving me a plastic bag full of all sorts of different cuts of meat to pick through. After finishing our ice cream and buying 5 eggs from the butcher, we set off to the program house where we were meeting Caleb and Rachel to cook all of the food (Caleb and Rachel had bought the vegetables for the meal).
                The day before my birthday I had gone to the local import store to buy bread crumbs. Instead of having bread crumbs, though, they just had loaves of dried bread. I purchased the one recommended to me by the store owner and didn’t think much of it until the next day when Rachel was crushing the loaf into bread crumbs and decided to try a piece. “It’s sweet!” she exclaimed, and I was surprised. Why was it sweet? We looked at the package and found that the very first ingredient was sugar! How can you even make bread that has more sugar in it than flour??? Panko chicken is a savory dish and definitely should not be sweet, so we had to add spoonfuls of salt to it to make it taste like normal breadcrumbs. In the meantime I had been carefully cutting the meat (still warm from when it had been alive an hour previously) into usable pieces and Caleb had been slicing zucchini and eggplant for the vegetarians among us (namely Rachel and Ben T since Shivratri is a day when Hindus are supposed to fast, eating nothing but milk products and fruit).
                After a few hours of preparing all of the chicken and veggies, we had a feast of panko chicken, panko eggplant/zucchini, and steamed vegetables (it was more epic in real life than how it sounds in writing). Dolly-ji arrived with the cake from Flavours Café and they locked me in the bathroom while they put candles in the cake and brought out my present. When I came out, Chase strapped a Happy Birthday cone-hat to my head and everyone sang. I got a cookbook called Mastering the Art of Indian Cooking from the group and many notes wishing me a happy and fun-filled birthday. My favorite note was from Shiv, Dolly-ji’s son, which was written in broken English but had “I LOVE YOU” written at the end. We even got to cap off the night with a Shivratri parade that was processing through Assi when we left the party!

Calcutta – 2/16/15

                Wow. It’s hard to express how much fun our trip to Calcutta was. Maybe the trip turned out so great because I wasn’t really expecting much, but in any event we had a grand ol’ time.

                The trip started a bit on a shaky note. Thursday we had work and then I rushed home to pack before rushing to Hindi class, before rushing to Dolly-ji’s house, to rush to the train station. Then, of course, the train was delayed. We found an abandoned ticket office near our platform that looked like a set straight from a zombie apocalypse movie and naturally decided to wait there for the train. It was kind of creepy with bare electrical wires hanging down, half dismantled waiting chairs, walls marked with graffiti, and a single, pale white light to illuminate the room. To kill time we came up with the order in which we would die in a zombie apocalypse and I think it went like this (the first person mentioned is the first to die, the second the second to die, etc.):Stephen, Alex, Chase, Jenny and Ben T (they die simultaneously), Rachel, Caleb, Dolly-ji, Ben P, Evelyn. I was nodding in and out of sleep during this discussion, but from what I remember the story goes that Stephen goes first because he has a history of getting bitten/scratched by animals and wouldn’t have it in him to kill something else. Alex goes next because he’s busy reading a history book to try to figure out how to avoid the zombies when they break in and kill him and then Chase dies helping everyone else escape. Jenny and Ben T then decide to go and find help, but get killed en route. Rachel sacrifices herself to save Caleb, but then Caleb is betrayed by Dolly-ji who first uses him to help climb away from the zombies, but then doesn’t return the favor and leaves him to be eaten. Once Ben and Evelyn realize what Dolly-ji did, however, they stop helping her and she dies. Finally, Ben and Evelyn, connected by the NIRMAN bond, are about to make it to safety when Ben gets bitten on the leg. In the helicopter Ben starts changing into a zombie and Evelyn has to kill him to save herself. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be flattered by my survival or not, but hey I’ll take it if my group thinks I have the stuff to survive a zombie attack. Coming up with the story was a ton of fun, but after a few hours of waiting we were tired and grumpy and group morale was low. We ate Zours (the most amazing candy ever created) and chocolate cookies as a pick-me-up at around 11:30 PM and felt so much better. The train finally came sometime after midnight and we all zonked out as soon as we hit our bunks.

                We arrived in Calcutta the next day around noon and the first thing that hit me was the heat. Not to say it was blistering or anything, but I have a pretty low tolerance for heat despite being from Arizona. We took cabs (yes, bright yellow cabs as found in NYC except maybe in the 1950s or 1960s. I know next to nothing about cars, but these taxis certainly weren’t from this century) and drove to the YWCA Hostel where we were staying. The hostel was pretty bare bones, but its location was hard to beat – it’s on Park Street within walking distance from tons of attractions and right near the metro station. That’s right, a metro station. Calcutta is still undeniably in India, but it’s got a distinctive modern flare that’s lacking in Banaras. We took cabs, buses, auto-rickshaws, trams, and the metro to get around the city, driving on what I would actually be comfortable calling roads and breathing air that was free from noxious burning trash and plumes of dust. Across from the YWCA was a KFC and down the street an Au Bon Pain (both of which were frequented by our group to get our Western food fix). Outside, couples walked freely and there were actually women walking about the streets (even at night!). We all felt more in our comfort zones than we have in months. The funny thing is that I think if we hadn’t been living in Banaras for so long that we would have found Calcutta overwhelming and challenging. I read that Calcutta is the second largest city in India (this might be untrue now since the book I read it in is a few years old) and is a crazy, bustling metropolis. There’s more hubbub in Calcutta than in Banaras just because of its sheer size, but it’s a hubbub that we understand and grasp, unlike a lot of the time in Varanasi. Caleb said that the first time he visited Calcutta a few years ago he found it exhausting, whereas now it was invigorating. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Banaras isn’t like everywhere else in India and going to Calcutta was a nice reminder that there exists a place in India not so terribly different from the cities we come from in the US.

                We did so much in the short time we were in Calcutta I won’t be able to do it all justice in a short blog post, but I’ll list the things we got to see and add anecdotes when I think of them. In no particular order, we visited the Victoria Memorial (outside of which we played on the grass for an hour or two doing handstands, somersaults, playing tag, taking pictures), the New Market (where we found a Jewish bakery and Chase and Jenny got makeovers), BBD Bhag (the old commercial/political district from British colonial times), Khali Ghat (a temple dedicated to Khali, an avatar of the goddess Shakti), the Mother Teresa House, two Jewish synagogues (there used to be quite a few Baghdadi Jews living in Calcutta), an Armenian church, a Portuguese church, Tagore’s House (the house-turned-museum of the writer of the Indian national anthem), Nicco Park (a local amusement park run by a Princeton alum), the flower market, the fish market, and Old China Town. There’s so much I want to say about everything that I hardly know where to begin.

                I guess I’ll start with food since that was a particular highlight of the trip. Bangladesh is famous amongst Indians for its food and sweets and due to Calcutta’s proximity to Bangladesh (the state it’s in is actually called West Bengal), the food there is to die for. In addition to the Western food we got at Au Bon Pain, KFC, and a semi-authentic Italian restaurant called Fire and Ice, we got super tasty Bangladeshi street food and went for dim sum in China Town one morning. The dim sum was SO GOOD. Stephen directed us in what things we should try and verified that the food was almost as good as you could find on a street corner in China. We ate pork buns, dumplings, fish soup, and the Chinese equivalent of mochi, just to name a few. I ate so much and it was the most fully full I’ve felt in months (fully full meaning full of substantial things like meat rather than just carbs). I skipped lunch that day and didn’t even regret it. Even though Bangladeshi food is pretty similar to that of India, there is a certain nuance of flavor that made the food we had a nice break from the mundane dal, subzi, roti (lentils, veggies/potatoes, tortilla-things) that we eat every day in Banaras. Since Bangladesh is predominately a Muslim country, there’s also a lot more meat in their dishes (a definite plus for the meat-eaters on our trip).Bangladeshi sweets are also particularly famous and we stopped for mishtidoi (sweet yogurt) whenever we saw a sweet shop selling it. You can ask anyone in our group and they’ll tell you that I’m not a huge fan of Indian sweets, but the Bangladeshi ones are actually pretty good (even if I would still prefer a piece of cake made by myself or my mom).

                After visiting the Khali temple Saturday morning we went to a flower market where almost all of us bought flowers unnecessarily (but, hey, it was Valentine’s Day). Ben T got flowers for a picture for Amber and all the girls got malas (flower necklaces). Chase even got one of the giant malas that are normally just worn during weddings. After the flower market we visited Nicco Park. It was small, but we got to ride all of the rides for free and on most of them I was so happy that I couldn’t stop laughing giddily. We met the Princeton alum and his two daughters and also got a free meal at the food court there. It was funny to see how much rowdier us Americans are at amusement parks than Indians. That also might have been because we were so excited to be there and hyped up on the thrill of Calcutta.

                There is typically a January slump in India BYP that people experience after coming back from Rajasthan that I think our group mostly missed due to Saurabh’s wedding and Dr. Bermann’s visit. I hope that after Calcutta there won’t be that onset of homesickness since we got a little taste of life back home. In any event, we have lots of things to look forward to like my birthday/Shivratri, Holi, and Stephen and Chase’s birthdays throughout the coming months. It’s hard to believe that we’ll be home in less than four months!

Thoughts on Health – 1/30/15

          I recently started teaching science to class 9 (I know this sounds very vague, right now I guess I’m teaching biology, but I will have to review chemistry and physics before the board exam) and am teaching a unit on “Why We Fall Ill.” I came across a passage in their book which was particularly striking. It said, “Human beings live in societies. Our social environment therefore plays an important part in our individual health. We live in villages, towns, or cities. In such places, our physical environment is decided by our social environment. For example, just think what would happen if there is no agency to ensure that garbage is collected and disposed? What would happen if no one takes responsibility for cleaning the drains to ensure that waste water does not get collected in the streets or open spaces? If there are heaps of garbage and trash littered here and there, or if there is open drain water lying stagnant around where we live, the possibility of poor health increases.”
          Now, I didn’t learn anything new by reading this and I wasn’t wowed by its factual integrity. Rather, I laughed. I laughed because this textbook is being read by kids who don’t even have to imagine living in a place where garbage isn’t collected and sewage water lays putrefying in the streets – these are two day-to-day aspects of Banaras. And here the book is asking students to just think what would happen. If anything, the book should be asking students to just think what would happen if the garbage were actually picked up and the sewage properly disposed of.
           I am constantly baffled by the beliefs behind health in India. Maybe coming from a home where my dad is a doctor and my mom spent 6 years in graduate school studying microbiology lends me to having a deeper understanding of health than most, but STILL (still what? I can’t even begin to tell).
          The past week has been rough on me and my fellow BYPers health-wise. All of us have been hit with some level of sickness or another and almost every Indian person who we encounter attributes it to the changing weather. Actually, every sickness we have ever had has always been attributed to the weather. It’s either too hot for our bodies, too cold, or just the mere fact that the weather is somewhere in between will send our immune systems collapsing. No, it can’t be because of the huge number of feces lying in the street or because of the trash piles that plague every street corner and are happy homes for harmful bacteria. It can’t be because of the sewage water that I bike past (and through when it’s raining). No, it must be the weather and the best prescription is to wear two jackets and a beanie every day until February 15^th (something Ben P is being forced to do on account of his host mother). You know 70 degree weather; it’s a real killer.
          Roli Ma’am (a colleague of mine at South Point School) missed a day of school because she her hand was injured. When she turned up the following day, her right ring finger was incredibly swollen, red, and hot. When Ben and I asked if she had been to the doctor she replied yes, so we asked what had happened to her finger. Her response was priceless. “It’s the cold weather.” Since when has cold weather caused a single finger to swell up immensely and since when have doctors in India been perpetuating the myth that weather is the cause of all illnesses?!?! I really hope that she hadn’t actually gone to see a doctor and is now going to see one. As Chase joked when Ben recounted the story, “You know, I cut myself on this rusty nail yesterday, but my finger is as swollen from this cold and rainy weather.”
          Another factor that many Indians swear leads to bad health is bathing at night. Now, this concept I really don’t understand. Their thought is that if you bathe at night then you will never get warm again and you will be sick the next day. They think this point holds especially true for winter when whether you have warm water or not, taking a bucket bath is rather unpleasant. No matter how fast you bathe, water is always evaporating faster, leaving you shivering in a 50 degree bathroom. How bathing at night will make you sick when you immediately don warm clothes and snuggle under thick blankets is beyond me. If you bathe in the morning then after your bath you have to face the 50 degree weather in just your clothes. So many times students have come up to me shivering in the morning and with icy hands because they just took a bath. If anything, bathing at night is healthier!
          This idea of sickness-inducing nocturnal bathes has been a rough concept to battle for us night-showerers. Stephen’s host parents said he shouldn’t bathe at night because it’s too cold, that he shouldn’t bathe in the morning before coming to the program house because he doesn’t have enough time, and suggested that he just bathe on the weekends. Stephen, understandably, wanted to bathe more regularly than every weekend and had to resort to asking for a bucket of hot water with which to “clean his feet” every night. It wasn’t a total lie since he actually did partially use the water to clean his feet, but he also used it on the rest of his body. Chase and I have met lesser resistance to night-bathing than that, but we both have had the “bathing at night is bad for health” lecture from our host families.
          This paragraph is mostly just a funny, semi-related anecdote from Chase (I am famous for giving semi-related anecdotes). One day she brought home a packet of pasteurized, refrigerated, non-expired milk and had it with dinner. It wasn’t a big deal since she’d been buying packets of this kind of milk and drinking them fairly consistently at the program house. Later that night, however, she got sick and threw up because of a totally unrelated bug that was going around our group. Her host mom and sister swore that it was the milk that made her sick. Now, even months after the event and several successful milk drinking endeavors, every time Chase brings home a packet of milk to drink her host family says, “Chase, you shouldn’t be drinking that milk. Remember what happened last time?” Yes, last time Chase had milk absolutely nothing happened.
          The best thing about this blog post is that I started writing it roughly two hours ago and had initially thought I finished it after only thirty minutes. Every time I got up to do something – go to my dance/Zumba class, eat dinner, bathe, etc. – I found myself remembering more times that I’ve faced ridiculous notions on health in this country. Here I am staring at a rant over 1200 words long and I still know that tomorrow morning when I go to post it I will think of yet another example to throw into the mix.

Dance (and other IEA’s) – 1/18/15

                I fully plan on finishing my blogs from Rajasthan, but for now I am going to go in bit of an anachronic order.

                We finally got to start our Independent Enrichment Activities (IEA’s) this week! In addition to group cooking lessons on the weekend, everyone got to choose one extracurricular activity to do in India. Everyone’s activities are as follows:

Alex: Joining both the Congress and BJP Youth Groups at Banaras Hindu University (Congress and BJP are both political parties that could be somewhat likened to Democrats and Republicans in the US)

Ben P: Urdu language study (kind of a cross between Arabic and Hindi)

Ben T: Tabla (a type of Indian drum)

Chase: Aruvedic massage (possible yoga theory?)

Evelyn: Bollywood dance and classical Indian Kathak dance

Jenny: Sitar

Stephen: Tailoring

             One day a week I go to a local workout center and have a Bollywood/Zumba dance/workout class with other Indian women and on Sundays I bike to the other side of the city in the Muslim quarter for Kathak dance lessons (even though my teacher is Hindu). The modern dance class is so much fun and an awesome way to work out while still being culturally appropriate (and not having to be the only girl in a gym full of 20-year-old Indian men). Kathak is a very rhythmic dance in which you wear bells on your ankles and stomp in time with the accompanying tabla. My guru-ji has an incredible ability to stomp his bare feet as loudly as I can clap my hands. I honestly don’t know how he does it, but I guess I’ll learn in due course since it’s an integral part of the dancing. The steps are split into phrases that are 16 beats long (four measures with four beats in each). We had my guru-ji come and give us a concert with his family (his son dances with him, his other one plays that tabla, his cousin plays harmonium, etc.) and I was just blown away by his skill. What we’ve been learning in class is so simple (obviously) and less impressive, but hopefully by the end of 3 months I will have some improvement to show for.

Forts on Forts on Forts – 1/7/15

In and surrounding Jaipur are tons of old forts and palaces. The most famous forts are situated just outside the city, namely Amber Fort, Jaigarh, Jal Mahal, and Tiger Fort. We decided to see them all in one day, spending most of our time at Amber Fort. You can ride elephants into the impressive fort, but we opted not to so that we could go to the block printing demonstration the next day.

Amber was not pristinely kept, but that also meant that we could explore the winding passageways and find incredible rooms that would probably have only limited viewing ability if the fort was actually maintained well. We got the audio tour guide and it was hilarious (even though it wasn’t trying to be). Throughout different parts of the tour the walls talked to you, along with the lake, the sun, the god Ganesh, and the list goes on. It was also incredibly difficult to follow the guide because there were so many hallways through which you could walk and nothing was well marked. The floating garden and the geometric carved screens (so that women could see out, but men couldn’t see in) were two of my favorite parts of the fort.

After leaving Amber we went to Jaigarh Fort (referred to as Amber’s “big brother” in the previously mentioned audio tour). This fort was more just a series of ramparts upon which you could walk and get stunning panoramic views of the valley below. The main attraction there, however, is the world’s largest cannon on wheels known as Jaya Vana. It can hold 20 kg of gunpowder and can shoot up to 40 km, but it was only ever fired once and it was for a test shot. This fort was designed as a drive-through attraction and Alex almost cried he was so offended by the notion that you can sufficiently experience a historical sight from the confines of your car.

                From there we visited Jal Mahal, a palace that has sunken into a lake. It’s always been in the middle of a lake, but, due to poor conservation efforts, when the palace started its descent into the lake, nothing was done and when the fairway (bridge) broke, nothing still was done. Now the only way to get inside is via (illegal?) boat tours. We got some pretty nice pictures in front of it and had a lot of fun watching the hordes of rats on the shore battle it out with the birds.

Finally, we rickshawed to the base of the hill on which Tiger Fort stands. We bought some amazing coconut candies from a random shop that were 2 rupees a piece and then hiked up the winding switchbacks to see the sunset over Jaipur from the fort. The plethora of kites in the air in preparation for Makarsankranti made the view that much more enchanting (even if the folks smashing beer bottles off the side of the fort walls were quite bothersome).

To top off the night, Alex, Jenny, Chase, and I ate at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that probably doesn’t see too many westerners. Its signboard was in Hindi and we got amazing food that was priced for Indians rather than tourists.

Chokhi Dhani – 1/6/15

Our first day in Jaipur, we went to a theme park called Chokhi Dhani. It was basically a theme park for middle/upper class Indians to come and “experience” rural India. In addition to an “authentic” rural Indian craft center, there was a mini EPCOT of various Indian states, a walk-around exhibit of some important historical events in Indian history, and a smattering of attractions (a magic show, a puppet show, carnival games, a small ferrous wheel). There were food stalls and lots of interactive activities in which you could participate including dances, running around a fire while hollering and brandishing a stick, a puja ceremony at a temple (this one I found especially weird), and Indian wrestling in a mud arena. Everywhere there were posted signs that said "DO NOT GIVE ANY TIPS” and yet we were constantly barraged by staff members asking for money, so we quickly learned to stop doing the activities. For dinner we had a wonderful Rajasthani buffet (that was ridiculously overpriced) and all of us ate so much it probably would have been easier to roll us out of the park rather than have us wobble out with our food babies.

Barefoot College – 1/5/15

Barefoot College (BC) is an organization that teaches village women to install and repair solar equipment in order to bring electricity to their rural villages. At first, the program was only in India, but since the early 2000s the organization has gone global, bringing villagers from around the world to India in order for training. BC does a lot more than just solar electricity, though. It runs a night school for children who cannot go to school during the day due to family obligations, it performs puppet shows that bring up issues like women’s rights, caste issues, and health, and there are even medical and dental clinics run by villagers. The college was founded upon the idea that even if you are illiterate, you are still capable of learning complex things (like solar engineering and dentistry). The college wants to empower rural villagers by teaching them skills necessary for a more “modern” society, rather than have outsiders come in and try to change things without the consent of the village people. At the end of our stay, each of us was given a ton of information on the college which has been really interesting. Since my readership doesn’t have access to these documents, however, I would like to simply recommend the Ted Talk that the founder, Bunker Roy, did in Edinburgh (it is viewable on YouTube). We got to have a meeting with Mr. Roy and he is just as fiery in real life as he is in the video. The college in practice, however, is a little less extreme than how the Ted Talk depicts it. It’s hard to word exactly, but the actual college is simultaneously how it is shown to be in the video yet also very different. In other words, I was skeptical of its practices after seeing the video and before visiting Tilonia, but now having seen the real thing, I think it’s a wonderful program that is tackling development of rural areas in a sustainable and logical way. (Hopefully I didn’t lose you too much in that last part)

While we were there, the international villagers were on the fourth month of their six-month-long stay in India to learn solar engineering. I got to brush up on my Spanish speaking to the villagers from Cuba, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and they were so excited to get to talk to someone in one of their native tongues (as you could maybe guess, there aren’t that many Spanish-speakers here). We got to visit one of the night school sessions and see where they recycle old newspapers, flip-flops, and other junk into folders, toys, and various teaching materials.  We met the lead architect of many of the buildings, an illiterate man who has been working with BC for the past 40 or so years (basically since its inception). I really enjoyed my time in Tilonia and it was awesome seeing women who must be so brave to leave their tiny village, fly to India in a giant mechanical beast, and live in a culture that they could not have even fathomed beforehand. 

Pushkar and Ajmer – 1/3/15

After leaving the delightful city of Jodhpur, we took a train to the Hindu pilgrimage city of Pushkar. The story goes that Lord Brahma was soaring through the heavens on his flying lotus flower when a petal fell off and drifted down to earth. When the petal touched the ground, it turned into a holy lake. The city of Pushkar is located on this lake, complete with its own mini Ghats (the steps that lead into the Ganges River – or in this case Pushkar Lake). Because Brahma’s lotus petal fell here, there is a Brahma temple in the city. Now, this might not seem like a big deal considering that Brahma is one of the three “main” Hindu gods and the creator of the universe, but there are actually very few Brahma temples in India (in fact, I heard that the temple in Pushkar is the only Brahma temple in the world, but I would need to do some fact checking before I could say anything for sure). 

I had assumed that Pushkar would have a Banarasi feel since it is also a sacred Hindu center, but I was so wrong. Pushkar reminded me most of the touristy “artisanal” market in Antigua, Guatemala. The narrow alleyways were lined with colorful shops that each sold the exact same thing: patterned pants, Rajasthani bangles, camel leather purses, wooden figurines, woven mats, Rajput daggers, etc. The difference between here and Antigua, however, is that in Antigua there aren’t camels in the streets that you can ride (for a couple hundred rupees, of course). Interestingly, there was a Shiva linga (a monument to Shiva) in the Brahma temple. Pushkar did feel sort of like Banaras in the sense that there were still tons of hippie westerners wandering around in their dreads and graphic tees.

The next morning Alex, the Bens, and Christy hiked a nearby mountain at sunrise to see a temple (everyone else opted to sleep in). After they got back we headed back to Ajmer (Pushkar doesn’t have a train station, so we technically arrived in Ajmer before taking a taxi to Pushkar the day before). Before coming to Ajmer, we had heard that really the only thing that was dekne layek (worth seeing) was a Sufi shrine there (Sufi being one of the two major sects of Islam). Little did we know that Jan 3 happens to be the Prophet Mohamed’s birthday and there was an absolutely enormous festival going on in the city. Part of the holiday is giving alms, but taken to a new level. People on the street were handing us everything from fruit, to crackers, and even samosas! Although it was a nice gesture, we were advised not to eat the food we were given because, as the old saying goes, “do you know where that’s been???”. Ben T was feeling courageous and did eat a samosa, but he sure paid the price later that day. In addition to food distribution, there were also tons of marching bands out and a whole parade of music and dance. We got to talk to some men from Afghanistan and it was cool to hear them talk about their country. They spent most of the time telling us that most people in Afghanistan are not bad and that we should visit and see for ourselves how nice of a country it can be (idk if I’m quite ready to take them up on that offer, however). In any event, being in a predominantly Muslim part of Ajmer for Id-Milad-un-Nabi was an unforgettable experience and so much fun, but it was a little unfortunate that we didn’t get to see the Sufi shrine.

Miniature Painting – 1/2/15

                Just to be clear, miniature paintings aren’t called miniature because they are small in size (in fact, they can be quite huge). What delineates a miniature painting is that it has miniature details. Every soldier in an army of 100 will have a uniquely drawn face complete with eyebrows and a moustache and each chain in their armor will be drawn. The day after coming back from our camel safari most of the group went to an art studio that gave free art lessons in miniature painting. Each of us got to do our own small painting of an animal (namely elephants but also a camel and a peacock). I use the term “art lesson” loosely here since the owner of the place didn’t really give us a lesson so much as just tell us to copy some art that he was selling. My elephant turned out okay, but mostly I just possessed neither the patience nor the fine motor skills required to create such delicate work. Jenny, Chase, and Rachel on the other hand all had amazing works that looked as good as or better than the ones they were copying. Stephen, Caleb, and I all made reputable works, but not masterpieces.

The experience was really fun, but we could all tell there was something somewhat fishy about the owner and his art shop. We probably spent close to 6 hours in there crafting our paintings (or at least the people who did a really good job) and during the course of the time we heard several different renditions of the description of the art school/studio that was being “run” there. First, we heard that the studio was an art school for local Indians to learn about the rich culture of Jodhpur and get in touch with their heritage. To the next woman who came in, the studio was an art school that taught rural women about miniature painting to empower them and teach them a trade to make money. When the third person strolled in and the story changed yet again, we all had our doubts as to the authenticity of this “art school” and to all the paintings being sold in the store.

Later on we heard from several different shop keepers that the studio was a total scam and that the art being sold there wasn’t even made by the owner nor by any of his fabled students. The point being that here in India I’ve been lied to, stolen from, and cheated more than in any other country that I’ve visited (granted I’ve mostly visited places in the “developed” world). I had to start locking the door to my room in my house with a padlock when I left during the day because the maid was stealing and eating the power bars that my mom sent from the US. Alex had his shoes stolen from him from outside the program house door where we all (used to) put our shoes (he also had to start locking his room because the maids were taking and eating the chocolate in it). Students at school blatantly cheat in front of me and deny it to my face when I call them out. The giant snickers bar that my mom sent the group for Christmas mysteriously went missing from inside the program house while we were on our trip to Rajasthan. The list goes on and on.

Recently Nita Ma’am (the director of Nirman and professor at Claremont Mckenna) gave a lecture to our group about the Indian education system and the reasons behind why she thinks it is a failing system. One of the reasons she stated was that schools don’t teach their students how to be good citizens. In the US, people normally learn good citizenship (not stealing, cheating, lying, picking up trash, etc.) from a mix of their families and at school. Since many kids here don’t have the parent teaching them not to do these things, the responsibility falls to the school and here very few schools actually do it (South Point school does try to teach good citizenship for which I am very grateful). My hope is that as India develops it will also start becoming a place with less dishonesty.