This is going to be a rapid-fire, not proof-read post (actually this is all of them, sorry everyone for any misspellings or run-on sentences or puns/metaphors/analogies I try to use that don't make sense!).
On Friday, I had a meeting with Azim Ji and Abid Ji about my Independent Study Project topic (which is currently fluctuating between something about child labors/street children and women's health) and then head off to Select City Mall walk with Rachael and Tania. I had heard that it was the equivalent of an American mall, but in reality it's fancier, brighter, and more pleasant than most American malls I've been in. It was completely surprising but also incredibly nice to be in a place where we felt comfortable and no one stared at us. There were American and British stores and food places(Burberry, DKNY, Adidas, Puma, Cinnabon, etc., so not really places I ever shop anyway but still places that reminded me of home).
We then met up with Molly, Sarah Kate, Becca, Julia, Georgia, and Quinn at a hookah bar called Mocha, and people enjoyed some rare luxuries. Other people drank their calories in the form of sangria and breezers, but being me, I (of course) opted for flourless chocolate cake instead, which was divine. It was utterly relaxing and lovely, and a great break from the chaos of Delhi. I think we all needed it, and Rachael and I definitely went home feeling refreshed.
On Saturday, we went to Chandni Chowk, which is the big main market in Old Delhi. It's notorious crowded and hectic (this is the place that my host dad referred to as "dripping with people everywhere you turn"), so we went around 10 a.m. to hopefully beat the biggest crowds of the day. We took the Metro and got there around 11, and just happened to see Tania and Poonam getting off the Metro right in front of us. We caught up to them, and they were with Poonam's cousin Neha (who is good friends with Chidi from high school!) and her friend. Both of them are studying Hindi and Urdu for the entire year in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. We were lucky to find them, because all four spoke Hindi and helped us navigate Chandni Chowk. I pictured it as more of a market, but it was really just an area of tons of little shops and back alleys (called gulleys.. wait no they're not, I just looked it up. It's actually "gali" apparently, which makes a lot more sense since that's probably Hindi.) with food stands and people selling goods of all kinds. At first it wasn't too overwhelming, but as it got later, people really started to pour in and I was being jostled all over the place. I kept thinking people were intentionally bumping and hitting me, but it was just the crowd being so dense most of the time that it was unavoidable.
We didn't buy anything, but decided to go to Paratha Wali Gali to get parathas, which are like fried rotis/flat bread filled with whatever you want. I got mine with cashews, which was delicious. We then ventured out to find jalebi, and stopped at Sisganj Gurdwara, a Sikh temple apparently built in 1675. It was cool and open and peaceful inside, which was a nice break from the rest of Chandni Chowk. Eventually we found jalebi, which is basically funnel cake dipped in thick, delicious (but maybe too sweet) syrup. After that, Neha decided she wanted her nose re-pierced (I later heard she went to a sketchy place that didn't really clean the hook they used to pierce it... why she did this is unclear, but everyone just be happy I didn't do that too!).
Rachael and I decided to continue our adventures and head to Akshardam, and five-year-old Hindu temple that is incredibly impressive. Apparently some people think it's more beautiful than the Taj, but I don't think it is simply because it lacks the same history and lore. Entry is free, but we opted to also pay Rs 200 to go to the "exhibitions" that they have on display. Let me tell you, it was a strange experience. Exhibit 1 was a "robotics show," in which we were shuffled from room to room to see impressive but slightly creepy lifelike robots depicting the entire life of Swaminarayan, a 17th Hindu saint that some people believe was God himself. Apparently he mastered the Vedas but 7, left home at 11, traveled 12,000 kilometers across India barefoot over the course of seven years, mastered Ashtanga yoga by 14, taught everyone he saw to be a better person, and did a variety of other impressive things along the way. After this was over, we watched a 50-minute movie (also about his life) on a MASSIVE (Imax-sized, possibly bigger) screen, but it at least included lovely landscape views of India. Rachael and I both fell asleep. Next was a boat ride, similar to "It's a Small World," but depicting 10,000 years of Indian history using lifelike statues in scenes on the shores of the artificial river. It was more nationalist propaganda than history lesson, but the boat ride was at least fun.
Coming out of the exhibitions, which took much longer than expected, was worth it, however. The temple is ornately carved and lit up at night, and it truly is breathtaking. I shall post pictures upon my return from Udaipur (where I will be, sans internet, until Saturday morning!). We went inside, marveled a bit, and then headed out for the musical fountain show, complete with religious chanting, lights, and a truly beautiful water show set to a lovely instrumental Indian song. After our exhausting day (due to my overambitious planning, sorry Rachael!), we finally headed home. Actually first we had to collect our cameras and phones and water bottles, because security at Akshardam is weirdly tight. Also confusing was the presence of heavily armed security officers (apparently the pistol isn't big here, all the police officers and security men have rifles that they non-nonchalantly point wherever), because one of the main tenets of Swaminarayan's preaching was nonviolence. We were even treated to a cute/creepy display of talking animals telling us not to eat them.
On Sunday, we decided to have a relaxing morning, and Sulman (the maid, who is our age apparently and is very nice but with whom we struggle to communicate) made us plain parathas and eggs. I like the plain parathas with jam because it's like a crepe, but apparently they're really only a savory thing so people think I'm weird. We then went to an exhibition of crafts and such at the Indian Islamic Cultural Center, where a few host parents had booths. The wares were beautiful but expensive, but I didn't pass up the opportunity to buy a piece of chocolate ganache tart (typical, once again). We met up with Liz B. and Sagarika and wandered around Lodi Gardens, and then Rachael and I headed home. We were supposed to meet Khadeeja's mom last night, but apparently she's been under the weather lately. We met her niece though! She's very sweet and knows excellent English.
In t-minus two hours I depart for Udaipur, apparently the most romantic city in India. Don't worry though, there is no romance on this trip. Twenty-two of the 24 people on our program are women, and we were told to stay away from Indian men because apparently they think we're all harlots or something. Go figure. Thanks American media!
I will be without internet until Saturday at least, so I won't respond till then, but I would love to have a message from any/all of you waiting upon my return!
Oh also today we had a question in Hindi about what our favorite book was and I thought of a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I only read it while I was in South Africa but now I really, really want to read it again, which is not a feeling I get very often. That and maybe Cat's Cradle. I should read more, that's what non-Dartmouth terms are for, right? Theoretically I should have time to pleasure read. Maybe I'll buy a book in Udaipur!
Au revoir friends!
True story: As I was getting for bed just now, I grabbed my water bottle from the dining room table and the lid fell off and bounced off the bottom of the refrigerator. It then proceeded to bounce/roll LITERALLY 20 feet across the dining room, around a corner, and through the half-closed door of the squat toilet room (that's next to the regular bathroom) and INTO THE BASIN OF THE SQUAT TOILET WHERE THERE IS TOILET WATER. How do these things happen? It reminded me of the meatball that was lost when somebody sneezed.
I need to sleep now but I wanted to post something quickly and I'll expand tomorrow. Mini updates:
I got my nose pierced! It wasn't something I ever wanted before, but when in India, right? Of course my eyes watered profusely and I made some kind of awkward squawking noise. What else is new?
I finally finished the AZD summer newsletter, thank goodness!
Today we went to one of the nicest malls I've ever been to. It definitely didn't feel like we were in India. Then we went to a hookah bar and I got delicious flourless cake and people drank sangria! It was pleasant and comfortable and relaxing.
I got my nose pierced! It wasn't something I ever wanted before, but when in India, right? Of course my eyes watered profusely and I made some kind of awkward squawking noise. What else is new?
I finally finished the AZD summer newsletter, thank goodness!
Today we went to one of the nicest malls I've ever been to. It definitely didn't feel like we were in India. Then we went to a hookah bar and I got delicious flourless cake and people drank sangria! It was pleasant and comfortable and relaxing.
This is going to be short and sweet because it's late and I'm tired and I need to sleep. I'm finishing up the AZD newsletter for summer, and it's dragging on and on (possibly because I'm using PowerPoint; makes me think about investing in InDesign for myself). Tonight Rachael and I went with Adil and Kadeeja to "visit his friend" where they both teach, at Jamia Millia Islamia University. "Visiting" in this case turned out to be attending a video conference with people at York University in Toronto, who had just formed a new partnership with JMI about social media use (or something...). There were about 8 people in the room in Toronto, whereas the professors at JMI had recruited students and random people like us that he knew to sit in the room, so there were about 60 of us. Apparently he wanted us to participate, but we thankfully wiggled our way out of that one. At the very beginning, he said it would be a two-hour conference, and Rachael, Khadeeja, and I all looked at each other and made the there-is-no-way-we're-staying face. Khadeeja said the baby, who also attended, would be a good excuse to leave early. It ended up being slightly interesting but mostly boring, but it was exciting when they zoomed in on people in front of me who were talking so I was on screen. I stuck out like a sore thumb because of my white skin, blonde hair, bright magenta and green Indian clothes, and the fact that I couldn't stop laughing the whole time. I even took my hair out of ponytail so I could look good for my 15 minutes of non-fame via video conference (one of the Canadian men looked cute, and when he spoke it turned out he had a British accent. It was hard to tell how attractive he actually was, though, because the image was kind of blurry.). After probably bothering every stoic Indian academic in the room with our smileliness and such, we bolted when the camera wasn't on us. Tomorrow is nose piercing day though!
And here is a video I commandeered from Rachael at the Taj!
Uhh oops, I just tried to get water before going to bed, but we have to get it from a big filtered water jug thing and it was all out, so I tried to put the new one on myself and spilled water and banged around enough for my host parents to come out and help me. Apparently Khadeeja had been nagging Adil to do it for hours but he hadn't because he was "talking to his girlfriends" (just part of the series of jokes they make about things like adultery, the caste system, and wife beating!). It's refreshing, though, because I don't feel like I have to be super guarded or overly cautious about being politically correct with them because they're so frank and good-natured. Conversation earlier today:
Me: We saw monkeys here yesterday!
Adil: Oh yeah, be careful with them! They like to harass people, especially women for some reason.
Khadeeja: Yeah, that's because they're Indian monkeys.
यह सोने का समय है!शुभ रात्रि, दोस्तों!
And here is a video I commandeered from Rachael at the Taj!
Uhh oops, I just tried to get water before going to bed, but we have to get it from a big filtered water jug thing and it was all out, so I tried to put the new one on myself and spilled water and banged around enough for my host parents to come out and help me. Apparently Khadeeja had been nagging Adil to do it for hours but he hadn't because he was "talking to his girlfriends" (just part of the series of jokes they make about things like adultery, the caste system, and wife beating!). It's refreshing, though, because I don't feel like I have to be super guarded or overly cautious about being politically correct with them because they're so frank and good-natured. Conversation earlier today:
Me: We saw monkeys here yesterday!
Adil: Oh yeah, be careful with them! They like to harass people, especially women for some reason.
Khadeeja: Yeah, that's because they're Indian monkeys.
यह सोने का समय है!शुभ रात्रि, दोस्तों!
Quote from my host father:
He's actually hilarious. He seems pretty self-conscious a lot the time, but he's really knowledgeable about the history of India and Delhi and world events in general. Today we talked about the presence of several Christian organizations in their neighborhood, Warren Buffet and Obama's proposed tax increases, traffic in Delhi, Indian weather, American weather, the caste system, population control, the university he works at, Christmas in London, and plenty of other interesting and random topics. The other day he told us that Columbia University flew him to New York to interview for a position teaching Hindi, Urdu, and literature, but he ultimately turned them down because his mom wanted him to stay in India (he said the people at Columbia were quite mad because it's hard to find people who can teach both Hindi and Urdu, which saves the university money).
I also made a deal with my host mom to meet up in Morocco in a few years. We'll see how that turns out. Khadeeja is going to take Rachael and I to get our noses pierced this week! I'm still on the fence about the whole thing, and I want to run it by my mom because it seems like a common courtesy to let her know if I plan to punch holes in the body she gestated (this might not be a transitive verb but I don't care) for so long, but I think I'll end up doing it. Hi Mom! I figure I can have it here and if I don't want to deal with it, I'll just take it out. Khadeeja said she'll take us to a reputable place, and I actually don't think it will be at all sketchy because literally 75% of women here have their noses pierced, so the piercing people definitely have experience. Also Khadeeja is planning to get her nose re-pierced so if she's doing it, it must be safe (she has high standards).
Oh they put the baby on the floor just now! I'm going to go play with her and see if she will crawl. She's about 7.5 months old and doesn't crawl yet, but she was premature by a month so apparently they start counting developmental things from the due date, not the day the baby is actually born. Crawling normally happens at 6 months, I guess. I'll let you know how this goes. She usually just lays there when we want her to crawl.
"India has too many people — the country is going to sink from all the weight! You turn on the faucet and you're afraid people are going to trickle out. I think we should send half a billion people to Australia. They have a lot of coastline; the people can fish."
He's actually hilarious. He seems pretty self-conscious a lot the time, but he's really knowledgeable about the history of India and Delhi and world events in general. Today we talked about the presence of several Christian organizations in their neighborhood, Warren Buffet and Obama's proposed tax increases, traffic in Delhi, Indian weather, American weather, the caste system, population control, the university he works at, Christmas in London, and plenty of other interesting and random topics. The other day he told us that Columbia University flew him to New York to interview for a position teaching Hindi, Urdu, and literature, but he ultimately turned them down because his mom wanted him to stay in India (he said the people at Columbia were quite mad because it's hard to find people who can teach both Hindi and Urdu, which saves the university money).
I also made a deal with my host mom to meet up in Morocco in a few years. We'll see how that turns out. Khadeeja is going to take Rachael and I to get our noses pierced this week! I'm still on the fence about the whole thing, and I want to run it by my mom because it seems like a common courtesy to let her know if I plan to punch holes in the body she gestated (this might not be a transitive verb but I don't care) for so long, but I think I'll end up doing it. Hi Mom! I figure I can have it here and if I don't want to deal with it, I'll just take it out. Khadeeja said she'll take us to a reputable place, and I actually don't think it will be at all sketchy because literally 75% of women here have their noses pierced, so the piercing people definitely have experience. Also Khadeeja is planning to get her nose re-pierced so if she's doing it, it must be safe (she has high standards).
Oh they put the baby on the floor just now! I'm going to go play with her and see if she will crawl. She's about 7.5 months old and doesn't crawl yet, but she was premature by a month so apparently they start counting developmental things from the due date, not the day the baby is actually born. Crawling normally happens at 6 months, I guess. I'll let you know how this goes. She usually just lays there when we want her to crawl.
Yesterday, 23 of us took a bus to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. Before going, I was cautiously optimistic but also a little skeptical because, really, how great can a big white building that I've already seen hundreds of pictures of be? Pretty unbelievably great, as it turns out! It has this magnificent gleaming quality, and it truly is breathtaking when you first see it walking through the main gate. Even from so close, it looked fake in all its splendor. There were some clouds in the sky and it only magnified the effect — the sun somehow seemed to spotlight the Taj and since it's entirely white marble, it seems to glow. The Red Fort is beautiful as well and offers back views of the Taj as well.
Rachael and I also visited the Qutab Minar the other day, which is a tall stone minaret built during the Mughal rule of India. There were also stone ruins of other buildings, and it was a lovely area to sit and take pictures.
I'll upload more Taj pictures tomorrow! And a video!
Rachael and I also visited the Qutab Minar the other day, which is a tall stone minaret built during the Mughal rule of India. There were also stone ruins of other buildings, and it was a lovely area to sit and take pictures.
I'll upload more Taj pictures tomorrow! And a video!
Hi everyone! Today I finally took the time to read the blogs of two of my best friends who are also abroad (Hi Angie and Dylan!) and Angie's is hilarious and Dylan's has fabulous pictures, so I figured I would link their blogs here if you want to see what they're up to as well! I'm jealous that they're in Europe (Dublin and Prague, respectively) and get to visit other parts of the continent and drink in so much beautiful scenery and architecture all the time. I miss you both! And everyone else who isn't with me here of course. So many of my friends/friendly acquaintances are scattered around the world: Ireland, Argentina, Spain, France, England, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Hungary, Scotland, Australia, Israel, China, Korea, Switzerland, and of course the United States!
I'm stealing a post topic from Angie's blog here: Yesterday I came as close to peeing my pants as I have in a long, long time. I cannot even EXPRESS how bad it was. We were nearing Delhi on the train back from Aligarh, and I decided to wait till I got home to use the bathroom because it was 9:40 and I was told I would get home around 10:30 or 10:40. So manageable, I thought. What a bad, terrible, awful, ill-fated idea! We got off the train and got on a bus and proceeded to sit in the railway station parking lot for about 15 minutes. At this point I had to go quite badly (blasted two-liter bottles of water that they give out on the train) so I asked Archna Ji if I had time to go find a bathroom. She indicated we were about to leave so I grudgingly agreed to hold it (you are seriously getting a play-by-play of my near-accident but it was just that traumatic for me). I got increasingly antsy as we sat in the lot longer and longer, and Poonam suggested that I might be able to find a restroom in one of the nearby restaurants. Finally we were on our way, though! Thank you gods of all the religions practiced in India! Driving on Delhi roads turned out to be more painful, however, because potholes and uneven areas of road are even more plentiful than people in India (trust me, this is a feat) and the bus bouncing was not helping my bladder situation. I started pinching my arms to distract myself, and people could tell my situation was getting dire so they began offering me plastic bags and bottles (thanks guys, luckily I haven't sunk quite that low yet!). After taking literally six wrong turns and backing up like 100 yards on a six-lane arterial (I SWEAR IT WAS A CONSPIRACY), we finally dropped the first people off at Lajpat Nagar near the Central Market. I asked Bhavna Ji if there was a restroom nearby, and she said it would be difficult to find one. I think she knew I was serious though when I said I could hold it as long as she took me to the hospital today to get bladder reconstructive surgery. So as we dropped off the Lajpat people, Bhavna Ji found me an empty lot and I peed behind a gross wheelbarrow next to an abandoned building while Bhavna Ji stood watch and shooed away a curious (probably rabid) dog. Lesson learned: Never, ever turn down a bathroom in India, regardless of if you have to go or how gross it is. Restrooms are few and far between (hence the huge sanitation problem here) so take what you can get, because your next option might be a bottle or the side of the road. #firstgradelessons
Also I finally bought an external hard drive today and I'm backing everything up now! My screen has been having neon green seizures lately, so I'm hopefully going to take it to the Apple store soon to get it checked out.
And in closing, a quote from my guy Dylan Koutsky:
"I just read your most recent blog post and it seems like such a bigger adjustment to go to India than Prague. Like so far the most inconvenient thing here that I've experienced (except for the language barrier) is that the orange juice tastes funny."
I'm stealing a post topic from Angie's blog here: Yesterday I came as close to peeing my pants as I have in a long, long time. I cannot even EXPRESS how bad it was. We were nearing Delhi on the train back from Aligarh, and I decided to wait till I got home to use the bathroom because it was 9:40 and I was told I would get home around 10:30 or 10:40. So manageable, I thought. What a bad, terrible, awful, ill-fated idea! We got off the train and got on a bus and proceeded to sit in the railway station parking lot for about 15 minutes. At this point I had to go quite badly (blasted two-liter bottles of water that they give out on the train) so I asked Archna Ji if I had time to go find a bathroom. She indicated we were about to leave so I grudgingly agreed to hold it (you are seriously getting a play-by-play of my near-accident but it was just that traumatic for me). I got increasingly antsy as we sat in the lot longer and longer, and Poonam suggested that I might be able to find a restroom in one of the nearby restaurants. Finally we were on our way, though! Thank you gods of all the religions practiced in India! Driving on Delhi roads turned out to be more painful, however, because potholes and uneven areas of road are even more plentiful than people in India (trust me, this is a feat) and the bus bouncing was not helping my bladder situation. I started pinching my arms to distract myself, and people could tell my situation was getting dire so they began offering me plastic bags and bottles (thanks guys, luckily I haven't sunk quite that low yet!). After taking literally six wrong turns and backing up like 100 yards on a six-lane arterial (I SWEAR IT WAS A CONSPIRACY), we finally dropped the first people off at Lajpat Nagar near the Central Market. I asked Bhavna Ji if there was a restroom nearby, and she said it would be difficult to find one. I think she knew I was serious though when I said I could hold it as long as she took me to the hospital today to get bladder reconstructive surgery. So as we dropped off the Lajpat people, Bhavna Ji found me an empty lot and I peed behind a gross wheelbarrow next to an abandoned building while Bhavna Ji stood watch and shooed away a curious (probably rabid) dog. Lesson learned: Never, ever turn down a bathroom in India, regardless of if you have to go or how gross it is. Restrooms are few and far between (hence the huge sanitation problem here) so take what you can get, because your next option might be a bottle or the side of the road. #firstgradelessons
Also I finally bought an external hard drive today and I'm backing everything up now! My screen has been having neon green seizures lately, so I'm hopefully going to take it to the Apple store soon to get it checked out.
And in closing, a quote from my guy Dylan Koutsky:
"I just read your most recent blog post and it seems like such a bigger adjustment to go to India than Prague. Like so far the most inconvenient thing here that I've experienced (except for the language barrier) is that the orange juice tastes funny."
Namaste! I have now been here for three weeks and I'm happy to say I've learned boatloads already. I'm trying to finish some leftover things from school right now, for the sake of brevity I'm making a list of what I have learned so far in India.
~Human beings are remarkably resilient creatures. My host family's baby is the most coddled child imaginable when it comes to remaining healthy (apparently when Rachael and I put her on the carpet to let her practice crawling, it was the first time she had been on the floor in her seven months of life, oops), but we have also seen infants born in slums who seem to be doing just fine. While obviously they are at a great risk of health problems and will likely have a much more difficult life than a middle-class child, they somehow manage to survive and thrive in very unfortunate circumstances.
~Bodies never run out of sweat.
~I need alone time. After long days in the heat of Delhi or traipsing around hospitals in Aligarh, sometimes I feel guilty for wanting to sit on my bed and do nothing for a little while. I've learned, though, that this time is more important to me than I realized.
~People generally think that the United States is "religiously deteriorated and morally corrupt" (actual direct quote from an AMU student).
~Abortion is not seen as the huge ethical dilemma here as it is in the states. The only moral issue that comes up is sex-selective abortions, which are a big problem here and are causing wider and wider gaps in the number of women and men.
~Old cows in India can't be slaughtered because the majority religion (Hinduism) considers cows sacred, so elderly bovines are smuggled across the Pakistani border at night to be slaughtered.
~Gender roles are pronounced and not as egalitarian as in the U.S. According to one of our teachers, a gynecologist friend of hers said that when women come in to confirm whether or not they're pregnant and the doctor asks when their last period was, the husband will answer for the woman 99% of the time. Definitely not the case in the U.S. Also, women who live in dorms in India (or at least at Aligarh Muslim University) have a curfew but men don't. At AMU, curfew is 6:30 p.m.
~Never put a band-aid on your armpit.
~As my dad likes to say, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I have found bartering and dealing with people much more successful when I'm not frustrated and I can maintain my sense of humor. Trying to get a rickshaw has become easier now that I'm less angry about an extra Rs 10 or 20 (25 or 50 cents) and am able to haggle in a more friendly manner with the drivers.
~I think I really want to be some kind of medical professional. There's no way I want to or can finish all the premed prerequisites at Dartmouth, but I'm thinking more and more seriously about a post-bac program or something along those lines. I think I need to go see Lee Witters when I get back to campus.
~Hindi! I've learned lots and lots of Hindi. I can write all of this myself: नमस्ते.मेरा नाम एमिली है. मैं हिंदी सीख रहा हूँ.मैं अमेरिका से हूँ.मैं अच्छा हूँ.आप कैसे हैं? It says, "Hello. My name is Emily. I am learning Hindi. I am from America. I am good. How are you?" The transliteration of that would be something like, "Namaste. Mera naam Emily hai. Me America se hui. Me accha hui. Ap kaise hai?" The gender is wrong for "accha" but I'm too lazy to fix that in Google translator (it should be "acchi" for a girl).
~Notions of privacy are different here than at home. People ask questions they wouldn't in the states and adult children (like my host parents) often live with their parents or talk to them at least once or twice a day.
~Apparently (and this is thankfully not first-hand knowledge), it is possible for areas of your body that chafe (i.e. inner thighs) to callous over so the chafing no longer hurts. I have not experienced anything this bad, but I will admit I end up with weird heat rashes on my inner elbows when I sweat a lot (aka every day) and the band-aid-in-the-armpit incident occurred after I got similar spots there. Sorry for the TMI-nature of this, but honestly I'm desensitized to things like this because we're all constantly battling weird digestive and skin and sweat-related health things (don't worry though, it's all minor stuff!).
That's all for now, but I may add to this list later! I've definitely learned other things but I have to pack to head back to Delhi and I'm going to play some cards in a few minutes!
~Human beings are remarkably resilient creatures. My host family's baby is the most coddled child imaginable when it comes to remaining healthy (apparently when Rachael and I put her on the carpet to let her practice crawling, it was the first time she had been on the floor in her seven months of life, oops), but we have also seen infants born in slums who seem to be doing just fine. While obviously they are at a great risk of health problems and will likely have a much more difficult life than a middle-class child, they somehow manage to survive and thrive in very unfortunate circumstances.
~Bodies never run out of sweat.
~I need alone time. After long days in the heat of Delhi or traipsing around hospitals in Aligarh, sometimes I feel guilty for wanting to sit on my bed and do nothing for a little while. I've learned, though, that this time is more important to me than I realized.
~People generally think that the United States is "religiously deteriorated and morally corrupt" (actual direct quote from an AMU student).
~Abortion is not seen as the huge ethical dilemma here as it is in the states. The only moral issue that comes up is sex-selective abortions, which are a big problem here and are causing wider and wider gaps in the number of women and men.
~Old cows in India can't be slaughtered because the majority religion (Hinduism) considers cows sacred, so elderly bovines are smuggled across the Pakistani border at night to be slaughtered.
~Gender roles are pronounced and not as egalitarian as in the U.S. According to one of our teachers, a gynecologist friend of hers said that when women come in to confirm whether or not they're pregnant and the doctor asks when their last period was, the husband will answer for the woman 99% of the time. Definitely not the case in the U.S. Also, women who live in dorms in India (or at least at Aligarh Muslim University) have a curfew but men don't. At AMU, curfew is 6:30 p.m.
~Never put a band-aid on your armpit.
~As my dad likes to say, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I have found bartering and dealing with people much more successful when I'm not frustrated and I can maintain my sense of humor. Trying to get a rickshaw has become easier now that I'm less angry about an extra Rs 10 or 20 (25 or 50 cents) and am able to haggle in a more friendly manner with the drivers.
~I think I really want to be some kind of medical professional. There's no way I want to or can finish all the premed prerequisites at Dartmouth, but I'm thinking more and more seriously about a post-bac program or something along those lines. I think I need to go see Lee Witters when I get back to campus.
~Hindi! I've learned lots and lots of Hindi. I can write all of this myself: नमस्ते.मेरा नाम एमिली है. मैं हिंदी सीख रहा हूँ.मैं अमेरिका से हूँ.मैं अच्छा हूँ.आप कैसे हैं? It says, "Hello. My name is Emily. I am learning Hindi. I am from America. I am good. How are you?" The transliteration of that would be something like, "Namaste. Mera naam Emily hai. Me America se hui. Me accha hui. Ap kaise hai?" The gender is wrong for "accha" but I'm too lazy to fix that in Google translator (it should be "acchi" for a girl).
~Notions of privacy are different here than at home. People ask questions they wouldn't in the states and adult children (like my host parents) often live with their parents or talk to them at least once or twice a day.
~Apparently (and this is thankfully not first-hand knowledge), it is possible for areas of your body that chafe (i.e. inner thighs) to callous over so the chafing no longer hurts. I have not experienced anything this bad, but I will admit I end up with weird heat rashes on my inner elbows when I sweat a lot (aka every day) and the band-aid-in-the-armpit incident occurred after I got similar spots there. Sorry for the TMI-nature of this, but honestly I'm desensitized to things like this because we're all constantly battling weird digestive and skin and sweat-related health things (don't worry though, it's all minor stuff!).
That's all for now, but I may add to this list later! I've definitely learned other things but I have to pack to head back to Delhi and I'm going to play some cards in a few minutes!
I went for the catchy title, I hope you all like it! Just kidding. I am currently sitting in my bed in the guest house of Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh (UP). UP is a state east of Delhi with about 200 million people (apparently it would be the fifth most populous country in the world if it were a country of its own! Who knew?) and it is also one of the most impoverished. We are here Tuesday-Friday visiting various levels of health care and meeting doctors, publics health professionals, and professors of medicine.
I woke up at 4:24 a.m. this morning to take a shower and get ready to head to the train station with Rachael. We were basically out of water again, so I had to take a bucket shower with a bucket of water my host parents keep filled in the bathroom for bathing purposes. I also kind of squatted and tried to shower underneath the lower faucet because water was still flowing from that (but not from the shower head) but that was largely uncomfortable and unsuccessful. Apparently each flat has a water tank that fills every morning between 7 and 9 a.m., and that constitutes all the water that apartment can use for the day. This is almost always more than enough, but sometimes the water doesn't come properly in the morning and the tank doesn't get completely filled, so water runs out during the day. To be fair, this morning I was showering at the very, very tail end of the time period before water comes again, so it was understandable that there wasn't much left and there wasn't enough to build up water pressure for it to come out of the shower head. It happened the first night I was here when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but I just assumed they turned the water off for some reason. The next day, however, we completely ran out of water in the afternoon, so Adil had to get a big jug of it from his sister's house. As people like to say all the time, welcome to India.
After my bucket/faucet shower this morning, Rachael and I headed out the door to meet the taxi that Adil had kindly called for us the night before. Apparently the first call to prayer for Muslims happens at 5 a.m., so we heard that as we groggily left the apartment. Adil said the driver knew where we were going, but I tried to confirm once we got in the car. I don't think he spoke any English, so I just assumed he knew where he was going and eventually we ended up at New Delhi Railway Station! Everyone was looking super tired as we boarded our train at 6:15 a.m. to head off to Aligarh, but luckily we were able to sleep for about an hour in our air-conditioned coach.
After breakfast at the guest house, we bussed to JNL Medical College at AMU and had an introduction to the Community Health Department. I almost fell asleep (just like being in class at Dartmouth!) and then we were split up into groups to visit the outpatient clinics. I decided to go to the obstetrics and gynecology clinic with four other girls, so we were led down there by a medical resident. The hallways were bustling and crowded, with many women in head coverings and even burqas, because Aligarh has a large, conservative Muslim population. Almost as soon as we got to the OB/GYN section of the outpatient area, the power went out. Power outages are common in India but usually get resolved quickly in the cities. In rural areas, they often last for much longer. I assumed the hospital would be on a generator, but a doctor said that they aren't reliable and often take a while to kick in. In the clinic area, women waited outside while a guard at the outer door let them in a few at a time. The actual practitioners were in a rectangular room and sat at a small table, while people bustled around everywhere. At any given time, there were probably 20 or 30 people in the not-very-large room. The chief doctor said that she sees 180 patients a day, which is a ridiculously high number. There is no privacy for women speaking with the doctor, other than a sheet draped over the midsection during physical examinations.
For the first 10 minutes our so, the power was out but the doctors continued to speak with patients. After brief chats, the head OB/GYN would rattle off a list of things to a younger doctor, who would write them down and give them to the patient. The doctor told us that although Indian law requires hospitals to keep their own medical records, they make the patients responsible for holding onto their records at all times. She said that theoretically they could be sued for this record-keeping practice, but the patients are poor and don't know their rights so they would never raise a complaint. Just imagine if this is how the health care system operated in the United States! You would be forced to bring all of your relevant medical records with you to the doctor, wait for an extended period of time, discuss your most personal health issues in front of other patients and whoever happens to be in the room, and figure out how to do all this with incredibly limited access to resources. The government provides free kits for dealing with certain health concerns, so the doctor gave several of these out while we were there.
We saw an abdominal exam of a pregnant woman, a woman who had TB-induced infertility, and other women whose health conditions we couldn't discern because everything was done in Hindi. The woman who couldn't conceive had already had one miscarriage and (it sounded like) and intentional abortion before that. The doctor sent her for a round of tests, and she had her blood drawn by two men at a table in the same room.
We then heard a short presentation from people at the medical school, and we awkwardly sat in on a Doctors Without Borders presentation that was really meant for doctors at the hospital (but was really interesting anyway). Right now we have rest time, and in a few hours we're going to go on a tour of the university campus. We have several other hospital visits while we're here (to which we have to bring the same surgical mask we wore today, ew!) so hopefully I will have more to update about. Namaste friends!
I woke up at 4:24 a.m. this morning to take a shower and get ready to head to the train station with Rachael. We were basically out of water again, so I had to take a bucket shower with a bucket of water my host parents keep filled in the bathroom for bathing purposes. I also kind of squatted and tried to shower underneath the lower faucet because water was still flowing from that (but not from the shower head) but that was largely uncomfortable and unsuccessful. Apparently each flat has a water tank that fills every morning between 7 and 9 a.m., and that constitutes all the water that apartment can use for the day. This is almost always more than enough, but sometimes the water doesn't come properly in the morning and the tank doesn't get completely filled, so water runs out during the day. To be fair, this morning I was showering at the very, very tail end of the time period before water comes again, so it was understandable that there wasn't much left and there wasn't enough to build up water pressure for it to come out of the shower head. It happened the first night I was here when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but I just assumed they turned the water off for some reason. The next day, however, we completely ran out of water in the afternoon, so Adil had to get a big jug of it from his sister's house. As people like to say all the time, welcome to India.
After my bucket/faucet shower this morning, Rachael and I headed out the door to meet the taxi that Adil had kindly called for us the night before. Apparently the first call to prayer for Muslims happens at 5 a.m., so we heard that as we groggily left the apartment. Adil said the driver knew where we were going, but I tried to confirm once we got in the car. I don't think he spoke any English, so I just assumed he knew where he was going and eventually we ended up at New Delhi Railway Station! Everyone was looking super tired as we boarded our train at 6:15 a.m. to head off to Aligarh, but luckily we were able to sleep for about an hour in our air-conditioned coach.
After breakfast at the guest house, we bussed to JNL Medical College at AMU and had an introduction to the Community Health Department. I almost fell asleep (just like being in class at Dartmouth!) and then we were split up into groups to visit the outpatient clinics. I decided to go to the obstetrics and gynecology clinic with four other girls, so we were led down there by a medical resident. The hallways were bustling and crowded, with many women in head coverings and even burqas, because Aligarh has a large, conservative Muslim population. Almost as soon as we got to the OB/GYN section of the outpatient area, the power went out. Power outages are common in India but usually get resolved quickly in the cities. In rural areas, they often last for much longer. I assumed the hospital would be on a generator, but a doctor said that they aren't reliable and often take a while to kick in. In the clinic area, women waited outside while a guard at the outer door let them in a few at a time. The actual practitioners were in a rectangular room and sat at a small table, while people bustled around everywhere. At any given time, there were probably 20 or 30 people in the not-very-large room. The chief doctor said that she sees 180 patients a day, which is a ridiculously high number. There is no privacy for women speaking with the doctor, other than a sheet draped over the midsection during physical examinations.
For the first 10 minutes our so, the power was out but the doctors continued to speak with patients. After brief chats, the head OB/GYN would rattle off a list of things to a younger doctor, who would write them down and give them to the patient. The doctor told us that although Indian law requires hospitals to keep their own medical records, they make the patients responsible for holding onto their records at all times. She said that theoretically they could be sued for this record-keeping practice, but the patients are poor and don't know their rights so they would never raise a complaint. Just imagine if this is how the health care system operated in the United States! You would be forced to bring all of your relevant medical records with you to the doctor, wait for an extended period of time, discuss your most personal health issues in front of other patients and whoever happens to be in the room, and figure out how to do all this with incredibly limited access to resources. The government provides free kits for dealing with certain health concerns, so the doctor gave several of these out while we were there.
We saw an abdominal exam of a pregnant woman, a woman who had TB-induced infertility, and other women whose health conditions we couldn't discern because everything was done in Hindi. The woman who couldn't conceive had already had one miscarriage and (it sounded like) and intentional abortion before that. The doctor sent her for a round of tests, and she had her blood drawn by two men at a table in the same room.
We then heard a short presentation from people at the medical school, and we awkwardly sat in on a Doctors Without Borders presentation that was really meant for doctors at the hospital (but was really interesting anyway). Right now we have rest time, and in a few hours we're going to go on a tour of the university campus. We have several other hospital visits while we're here (to which we have to bring the same surgical mask we wore today, ew!) so hopefully I will have more to update about. Namaste friends!
Did you know almost all of the beef and milk in North India comes from water buffalo and not cows? I learned this tonight at the dinner table. We had this really delicious egg curry (fried hard-boiled eggs in curry "gravy") and sweet roti (flat bread basically) that Rachael and I both really like. I still struggle sometimes with the spices, but everything is more manageable when mixed with yogurt and interspersed with big sips of water. It's embarrassing, though, when I'm visibly sweating and my lips feel like they're on fire.
We went to a documentary screening this evening at the India International Centre, which is a cultural center right near Lodi Gardens. Lodi Gardens are these beautiful, lush gardens with a lot of lovely old monuments. Rachael and I walked around them (and ran into some of our friends!) the other day and it was incredibly pleasant. Anyway, Khadeeja's friend had produced a short documentary about women's madness and spirits in India so we went to that. My favorite part may have been the opening speaker. She was a professor of some kind and she discussed madness in cinema, how its portrayal has changed over time (especially with the addition of psychoanalytical theory into film story lines), and feminism. We watched clips from old movies, including one made by Alfred Hitchcock and another by Roman Polanski. The coolest part of her intro, though, was that she talked about ethnographic filmmakers that I studied extensively in my Ethnographic Film class this summer (Emma, are you reading this? It was crazy)! This summer, I wrote papers about Frederick Wiseman's High School John Marshall's N!ai, and then this woman at a random little film screening at a cultural center in New Delhi started talking about Titticus Follies, which was directed by Wiseman and shot by Marshall! This is probably not nearly as exciting for anyone else as it was for me, but it was one of those I-can't-believe-these-things-are-linked-and-this-is-coming-up-in-the-real-world sort of moments. Rachael thought I was crazy because I was writing on a business card I had so I wouldn't forget (I fully plan to email my film professor and tell him).
Tonight the scariest thing happened to us on the road on our way back from the film screening! It's the most frightened I've been since coming here. Adil was driving, Khadeeja was in the front seat holding little Iman on her lap, and Rachael, Khadeeja's sister and I were in the back seat. Delhi traffic is legitimately terrifying at all times without fail, but it was fairly busy on the road tonight and we were coming back around 9:30 p.m. Adil changed "lanes" (because really lanes don't exist, just general trajectories of cars) to the left, and a car zoomed by him erratically and quickly on the left, squeezing through the narrow space between our car and the curb. It was nothing too out of the ordinary, though perhaps slightly more aggressive than what we normally see, because usually only the motorbikes manage to build up much speed when passing. Then the two cars in front of us stop quickly, so we stop too. I assumed it was just come kind of small traffic jam, but then we saw the driver of the first car, a tall middle-aged man, get out of his car carrying a thick stick about two-feet long. I initially didn't realize what was going on and I thought it was some kind of wooden flute thing, and he was going to start playing it and asking for money. Obviously this doesn't make any sense because he stopped his car in the middle of the road, but really anything goes on Indian roads so it's not that absurd. I realized immediately, though, that he was actually quite angry looking and the wooden thing was a solid rod/club-type thing. He walked back to the car directly in front of ours, whose driver-side window was down, and began yelling at the man and wielding the stick as if he was about to beat the driver and/or his car with it. He wasn't just faking though — every time he swung it, we all thought he was actually about to club the driver. Even Adil and Kadeeja and Kadeeja's sister were somewhat dumbstruck by the scene. Adil tried to yell at the man, at which point I became concerned that he would come for our car. After a few minutes, Adil backed up and drove around the two cars. Khadeeja tried to calm the older man as we drove by, calling him uncle over and over again (what younger people respectfully call older people here a lot). The driver of the second car was out of his vehicle talking on a mobile phone by the time we drove by, and we saw him offer the phone to the scary angry man. I don't know who they were on the phone with, but I was just glad we were removed from the situation. I think perhaps they had gotten into a fender bender because the older man was driving recklessly. As mad as he was, any accident would have been his fault! Adil and Khadeeja said they thought the older man was drunk. Apparently drunk driving is very common here.
Tomorrow we depart for Aligarh, a two-and-a-half hour train ride away. We will be there for four days, visiting a university and several hospitals and health clinics. I may not have internet, but I will definitely have my computer because I need to work on some things unfortunately. It turns out trying to cram a semester program into a quarter is difficult. I would not have wanted to give up this experience just to make the transition a little easier, but boy was it hard to take finals early, and I'm still finishing up a bunch of things now. Someday soon I will be done with all those things though! I really should be in bed by now because we have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to get to the train station by 5:30 a.m. but when have I ever been in bed this early? Answer: never. Sorry mom! I try to have good sleep habits, I really do.
Ok I'm rambling so I should stop. Good night everyone!
We went to a documentary screening this evening at the India International Centre, which is a cultural center right near Lodi Gardens. Lodi Gardens are these beautiful, lush gardens with a lot of lovely old monuments. Rachael and I walked around them (and ran into some of our friends!) the other day and it was incredibly pleasant. Anyway, Khadeeja's friend had produced a short documentary about women's madness and spirits in India so we went to that. My favorite part may have been the opening speaker. She was a professor of some kind and she discussed madness in cinema, how its portrayal has changed over time (especially with the addition of psychoanalytical theory into film story lines), and feminism. We watched clips from old movies, including one made by Alfred Hitchcock and another by Roman Polanski. The coolest part of her intro, though, was that she talked about ethnographic filmmakers that I studied extensively in my Ethnographic Film class this summer (Emma, are you reading this? It was crazy)! This summer, I wrote papers about Frederick Wiseman's High School John Marshall's N!ai, and then this woman at a random little film screening at a cultural center in New Delhi started talking about Titticus Follies, which was directed by Wiseman and shot by Marshall! This is probably not nearly as exciting for anyone else as it was for me, but it was one of those I-can't-believe-these-things-are-linked-and-this-is-coming-up-in-the-real-world sort of moments. Rachael thought I was crazy because I was writing on a business card I had so I wouldn't forget (I fully plan to email my film professor and tell him).
Tonight the scariest thing happened to us on the road on our way back from the film screening! It's the most frightened I've been since coming here. Adil was driving, Khadeeja was in the front seat holding little Iman on her lap, and Rachael, Khadeeja's sister and I were in the back seat. Delhi traffic is legitimately terrifying at all times without fail, but it was fairly busy on the road tonight and we were coming back around 9:30 p.m. Adil changed "lanes" (because really lanes don't exist, just general trajectories of cars) to the left, and a car zoomed by him erratically and quickly on the left, squeezing through the narrow space between our car and the curb. It was nothing too out of the ordinary, though perhaps slightly more aggressive than what we normally see, because usually only the motorbikes manage to build up much speed when passing. Then the two cars in front of us stop quickly, so we stop too. I assumed it was just come kind of small traffic jam, but then we saw the driver of the first car, a tall middle-aged man, get out of his car carrying a thick stick about two-feet long. I initially didn't realize what was going on and I thought it was some kind of wooden flute thing, and he was going to start playing it and asking for money. Obviously this doesn't make any sense because he stopped his car in the middle of the road, but really anything goes on Indian roads so it's not that absurd. I realized immediately, though, that he was actually quite angry looking and the wooden thing was a solid rod/club-type thing. He walked back to the car directly in front of ours, whose driver-side window was down, and began yelling at the man and wielding the stick as if he was about to beat the driver and/or his car with it. He wasn't just faking though — every time he swung it, we all thought he was actually about to club the driver. Even Adil and Kadeeja and Kadeeja's sister were somewhat dumbstruck by the scene. Adil tried to yell at the man, at which point I became concerned that he would come for our car. After a few minutes, Adil backed up and drove around the two cars. Khadeeja tried to calm the older man as we drove by, calling him uncle over and over again (what younger people respectfully call older people here a lot). The driver of the second car was out of his vehicle talking on a mobile phone by the time we drove by, and we saw him offer the phone to the scary angry man. I don't know who they were on the phone with, but I was just glad we were removed from the situation. I think perhaps they had gotten into a fender bender because the older man was driving recklessly. As mad as he was, any accident would have been his fault! Adil and Khadeeja said they thought the older man was drunk. Apparently drunk driving is very common here.
Tomorrow we depart for Aligarh, a two-and-a-half hour train ride away. We will be there for four days, visiting a university and several hospitals and health clinics. I may not have internet, but I will definitely have my computer because I need to work on some things unfortunately. It turns out trying to cram a semester program into a quarter is difficult. I would not have wanted to give up this experience just to make the transition a little easier, but boy was it hard to take finals early, and I'm still finishing up a bunch of things now. Someday soon I will be done with all those things though! I really should be in bed by now because we have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to get to the train station by 5:30 a.m. but when have I ever been in bed this early? Answer: never. Sorry mom! I try to have good sleep habits, I really do.
Ok I'm rambling so I should stop. Good night everyone!
Moving through Delhi requires navigating a writhing swarm of cars, cycle rickshaws, buses, pedestrians, trucks, motorbikes, strange automobiles of various kinds, cows, stray dogs, bicycles, and auto rickshaws. Vehicles drive on the left side of the road, but it's not uncommon to see people defying law and good sense driving on the right side of the road against traffic (this is particularly scary when you're a passenger in a cycle rickshaw facing four lanes of fast moving traffic). Lanes may as well not exist, and every car had dents and scratches from minor run-ins on the road. People don't use turn signals and instead maneuver wherever they can find the smallest bit of space. Vehicles (and people) are routinely only inches apart. Every day I'm convinced that this will be the day we will get in some kind of horrific traffic accident (this is mostly me being melodramatic, but honestly it is terrifying sometimes. The roads are often filled with potholes, and I've been slightly afraid that my rickshaw is about to tip over on several occasions. Today I tried to take a video of our commute home from our friends' neighborhood, called Nehru Place, but traffic was remarkably light and it's not that interesting. I'll take another one on a more standard heavy-traffic day, but this will at least answer some people's questions (hi Rach!) about what a rickshaw is and such.
Today there was a bombing in Delhi at the High Court, killing 11 people and wounding 76 others. Luckily we were all at our program center in Hindi class (or perhaps on a chai break) at the time, and we didn't find out until a few hours later when our academic director nonchalantly told us he had been on the phone with SIT Brattleboro (the headquarters for our study abroad organization) because a bomb had gone off near India Gate (where I was a few days ago when I was attacked by the bracelet-making child). I had planned to go to Old Delhi today, but we were told to avoid crowded areas in case of another attack. It was some kind of terrorist attack, though I don't know anything about the group that apparently claimed responsibility.
Just now, about 20 minutes ago, there was also an earthquake! Apparently The Times of India is reporting that it was a 6.6 magnitude earthquake, but I suspect it will be downgraded because it definitely didn't feel that strong at all. Nothing fell off the shelves, and it was not nearly as scary as the Nisqually Earthquake when I was in fourth grade or the first earthquake I can remember when I was about four (our neighbor Ryan was babysitting me that night and we stood in the doorway of my living room and I cried).
It was a rough day for Delhi, but fortunately I am safe at home in bed, snug as a bug in a rug.
Update: Fliers were posted around Delhi today with rough estimates of what the suspects look like, and apparently three or four people have been detained by police.
Just now, about 20 minutes ago, there was also an earthquake! Apparently The Times of India is reporting that it was a 6.6 magnitude earthquake, but I suspect it will be downgraded because it definitely didn't feel that strong at all. Nothing fell off the shelves, and it was not nearly as scary as the Nisqually Earthquake when I was in fourth grade or the first earthquake I can remember when I was about four (our neighbor Ryan was babysitting me that night and we stood in the doorway of my living room and I cried).
It was a rough day for Delhi, but fortunately I am safe at home in bed, snug as a bug in a rug.
Update: Fliers were posted around Delhi today with rough estimates of what the suspects look like, and apparently three or four people have been detained by police.
This is lazy of me, but I'm going to copy and paste an assignment for my class here. We visited a slum, located in between the embassies of Nigeria and Singapore in a very posh area of Delhi, and we had to do an assignment in which we separated out description, interpretation, and evaluation. It's a slightly odd format, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what the slum was like.
Describe
In between rows of small homes with peeling paint and low roofs, we stand outside of one of the buildings as Abid Ji tells us about government-sponsored health programs for the slums and their various facets. Many of the houses have clothing hanging outside, and some are painted a bright turquoise color. We are at an intersection of two paths, and people walking, biking, and riding motorbikes continue to move past us as we clog the walkway. On either side of the dirty gray concrete paths are small drainage troughs, and we see children defecating into the dirty water and sludge in the gutters. Standing in front of the worn-looking building, I feel sweat rolling down my back and smell a pungent odor that smells like garbage, stagnant water, and dirt. We are told that preschool is in session inside, and we enter the small room in groups of two or three because no more than that will fit. The room is quite dark, and I cannot make out the faces of the children inside. They greet us repeatedly, shouting, “Hello, ma’am! Hello ma’am!” I try to ask in Hindi if I may take a photograph of them, but none of the children respond. I take a picture, and the bright flash lights up the room momentarily. I look at the picture to get an idea of the number of and ages of the children surrounding me, and then show it to them. The children, as seen via the three photos I took, are wide-eyed and unsmiling. There are about 20 kids in the room, mostly seated closely together, though a few are standing in the back right corner. The children continuously greet us out of synch until a teacher tells them to stop. One of the teachers brings me a chair, so I sit for a minute before standing up and saying goodbye to the children and leaving. Outside, I encounter more children who ask to have their picture taken, and I take photos to show them. Most smile and ask for more before I gesture that it is time for me to move on.
Interpret
The children in the small preschool seemed unsure of what to think about the visitors peering into their school. They did not smile for pictures, though they seemed largely satisfied being in the school. Several held up their chalkboards for pictures, seeming to indicate either a desire to show what they were learning or to show what they have. It was unclear how certain young children ended up in the preschool but others did not. As I continued to walk, I saw many other kids who seemed to be of the appropriate preschool age but who were not in school. The teachers, health workers, and NGO employees seemed proud of their work with the slum community, and they seemed happy to show us what was being done to better the lives of slum children. The children also were quite excited to have their pictures taken, I suspect as a novelty and as a way to alter the normal routine of their days. The parents often did not seem to be around, so I would guess that the children are often left alone caring for one another on a day-to-day basis. Having foreign visitors seemed to be quite exciting for them, though some also seemed a little nervous about our presence.
Evaluate
I felt a bit uneasy taking photographs and gawking at the children in the slum. While it was humbling and incredibly educational to visit the slum and interact with the kids I encountered, I felt that I was participating in poverty tourism to a certain extent. I think the way to ensure that I am not simply another wealthy foreigner challenging my sensibilities by walking around an impoverished area is to try to take what I saw and try to formulate potential solutions for the public health issues I encountered. I think a good starting point would be to encourage proper sanitation and waste-removal habits. Although I saw a public toilet facility at one end of the slum, I also encountered people unabashedly urinating and defecting right in front of homes and water sources. To me it is perplexing that someone would choose to do this in what is essentially their living space, but I suppose I am negating the reality of their situation and the lack of space and sanitation facilities. Additionally, I think the children would benefit from a larger, central preschool that all children attended. The slum houses 12,000 people, and I find it hard to believe that all the preschool-age children could fit in that little house even if they all wanted to go to school. I do not know what was being taught to the children, but I also hope that the curriculum both prepares them for later schooling but is also relevant to their living conditions in the slums. In my opinion, learning the alphabet is important, but it is also important to teach things like personal hygiene and nutrition. I suspect these sorts of lessons are taught as well, but I think it would be ideal to emphasize healthy lifestyles and disease-prevention early to help prevent the cycle of poverty and disease (poverty breeds disease, which can create, exacerbate, and maintain poverty).
Addendum: I have a lot of qualms about going on these kinds of tours. I did one in a township called Langa in Cape Town too, and my own ogling of people less fortunate than myself makes me squirm. Here is an interesting article (referencing two of the areas in which I have visited informal settlements) that discusses poverty tourism if you want to read more!
Today was one big challenging adventure. Rachael and I woke up around 9 a.m. and got ourselves breakfast (Cornflakes and 4% milk, which isn't even whole milk here). Our host parents seemed to be sleeping still, but we weren't sure about the shower situation because there was a bucket filled with water in the bathroom but also a shower head. Finally I built up the courage to wake Khadeeja up and ask. Thankfully we can take either a bucket or a regular shower, and we just have to turn a switch to get enough water pressure for a regular shower. After a wonderfully refreshing cold shower (the only kind I take here), we got ready and Khadeeja made delicious chai with milk and sugar. Tea is huge here, and I have actually kicked my coffee habit! This is a true miracle.
Anyway, Adil found us an auto rickshaw to take to the Lotus Temple, and the day really began. At some point I want to take a first-person video of driving through Delhi traffic so everyone can get a feel for what it's like. It puts the Cape Town minibus drivers to shame. We had planned to meet other SIT students at the temple at 10:30 a.m., but we didn't get moving fast enough so we saw them as they were leaving. The Lotus Temple is exactly what it sounds like (a massive, lotus-shaped building) and is used as a worship area for people of the Bahá'í Faith, which is an interesting religion whose basic tenet is that all religions worship the same God and all prophets from these religions are truly holy people. The inside of the temple is very open, with only chairs facing forward toward a single podium and some flowers. You are instructed to be totally silent and pray or meditate privately when you're in the temple, and we were there for a prayer service as well. Different people came up to the podium and chanted or recited prayers in different languages and the whole thing only took about 10 minutes. It was quite pleasant and it was a lovely chance to sit and think and reflect and pray a little.
After we walked around the grassy grounds a bit, it started to rain and we decided to try to meet up with everyone else. Side note: I pulled my dupatta, which is the scarf part of the salwar kameez set, over my head and shoulders when it was raining, and in this way it was quite useful. Normally, however, I find the dupatta quite burdensome because it's always slipping off and getting in the way and falling into things I don't want it to fall into (#dupattaproblems, as Rachael likes to say). Anyway, we were having trouble getting ahold of people so we started walking toward the Metro station, and eventually we talked to Sagarika and agreed to meet at a nearby mall to see a Bollywood film and get some food. When we got there, though, we found out the only thing showing was Body Guard, a heavily advertised movie of questionable quality that Sagarika had already seen with her family, and that it didn't have subtitles. Bummer. The "mall" turned out to only be the movie theater and a bunch of American food places (McDonald's, Sbarro, Domino's, etc.), so we went to McDonald's and I ordered the "BIG Spicy McChicken Wrap." It was pretty average sized and average tasting, but it was a nice change from what we've been having.
Post-food, we were having trouble deciding what to do and I was getting really frustrated with no one making a decision and 8 or 10 of us just standing on a street corner not doing anything, so Rachael and I decided we were going to go to India Gate and anyone who wanted to join us could. At that point I basically marched away to the Metro station, but luckily people were happy with that decision and Becca and Bryanna decided to join us on our excursion. We Metro'd it to the end of the Violet Line and managed to find our way to the wide grassy area (much like the National Mall in D.C.) that ran quite a ways down to the Gate itself.
It got busier and busier as we got closer, and soon there were lots of people taking pictures and selling knick-knacks and food and generally bustling around. Completely random thought because I get distracted mid-post: I just looked up what "gavotte" means because I've always wondered what kind of verb Carly Simon was using in You're So Vain and it turns out it's some kind of French folk dance. Now you know too! Anyway, these women with little rectangular baskets hanging from their necks kept offering to make us bracelets with our names spelled out in beads for 2 rupees (Rs 2 as prices are written here), which is basically the equivalent of 5 cents. It definitely seemed too good to be true, but Becca wanted one that said India and finally I gave in to the women who were pestering us and agreed to get one with my name on it. Big mistake. She made the bracelet quickly – they were pretty simple but cute for 5 cents — and tied it on my wrist and then told me I owed her Rs 50. Scam revealed. I argued that she had said Rs 2 and she countered that each bead cost Rs 2 and the string cost some additional price.
I'm paragraph-breaking here for emphasis. Now understand, Rs 50 was realistically not that much for the bracelet, but the principle of the whole thing had me seething (despite the fact that it was unsurprising and I should have known better), so I told the woman she could have the bracelet back and use the materials for someone else (because it was definitely easy to dismantle). She kept insisting I keep it and pay her, and I kept telling her politely but firmly that I didn't want it and it was hers. Things began making sense really quickly — a ton of Indian men had gathered to watch the whole bracelet-making process, and we couldn't really figure out their motives because they weren't harassing us or anything. They were there to see this whole price argument go down. Becca's woman finished her bracelet and put it on her wrist, and they began the whole argument that I was still in the midst of with my woman.
THEN SUDDENLY, SATAN'S SPAWN JOINED THE ARGUMENT. This harmless-looking little girl who was also making bracelets began forcing the bracelets back on our wrist and legitimately screaming at us to pay for our bracelets. We walked away but she followed us and sneak attacked us from behind, putting the bracelets on our wrists and demanding money as shrilly and obnoxiously as possible. Finally I shoved her away from me (because she kept grabbing me aggressively) and threw it on the ground at her feet and said, "It's not mine and we are not paying you." She scratched Becca's hand in the process and we basically had to run away to the other side of India Gate.
I bought a mango ice cream bar to make myself feel better and Bryanna departed to meet up with the only two boys in the program and their host brothers. Becca, Rachael, and I took an auto to Dilli Haat, a somewhat touristy and expensive market that you have to pay to get into (which we didn't realize the first time we went because it was with the program and they paid). We wandered around, practicing bartering, bought some stuff (I got a rug!), and finally decided to return home.
We were out of water and I personally was pretty exhausted, so we decided to spare ourselves the haggling and terrifying ride via auto and instead opted to take the Metro once again. Being the cosmopolitan women that we are, we even transferred lines! Becca's family lives in Lajpat Nagar so she got off there, and we continued on and debated whether we should get off at Okhla or Jasola Apollo, which is the stop we get off at for our program center but we were also told is close to our house. We decided to opt for Okhla because we thought it might be closer, but we exited to Metro station to find ourselves in some kind of one-road vegetable market packed to the brim with people and (urinating) cows eating garbage and dogs and motorbikes. There were no autos or cycle rickshaws around and we weren't on a main road, and it was getting dark to boot. After walking a few blocks and getting stared at by probably 2,000 eyes, we decided to turn around and take the train one more stop of Jasola and get a rickshaw there. After missing one train because we were on the wrong side of the tracks, we finally got one and thought we were headed home at last.
As we left the Jasola station, who did we run into but Goutam Ji and Archne Ji! They were headed to Lajpat Nagar. Seeing them honestly made my night ten times better. Archne Ji gave us huge hugs and we told them about our host family, and Goutam Ji talked to a cycle rickshaw driver and arranged for us to get home. That man, however, turned out to just be giving sweets to the rickshaw drivers, so we were on our own to haggle and discuss. A man agreed to take us to our home at 190 Pocket B, DDA Flats in Sukhdev Vihar. He ended up not knowing where this was and we made some circles and he asked people and finally dropped us at the gate. I felt bad because he was bicycling our big ol' American bodies around. He wanted Rs 10 more than we had agreed upon, which seemed somewhat reasonable but we didn't want to give him because it still was a very short ride, so that put me in a bad mood because I felt mean.
We asked a man how to get to 190 and wandered through a dark alley (bad idea in retrospect) with his directions. We popped out theoretically at 190, and after asking a bunch of other people where exactly it was, we found it. Bad news bears babygirl, though, because it wasn't our host family's house and the apartments didn't even look familiar. I called my host dad (while witnessing a dog fight) and we tried to figure out where we were, but we were still confused. A man led us to the main gate, at which point I was about to burst into exhaustion- and dehydration-fueled tears. Several very, very, very kind older Indian couples took pity on us and told us that we were not, in fact, in Sukhdev Vihar but instead were in the identically named DDA Flat in Sarita Vihar (thanks rickshaw man!). We had a pleasant conversation on the side of some mysterious road that we had been dropped on about us studying Hindi and one woman's godson in Chicago. They hailed a policeman, who hailed an auto driver (they do this sometimes to make sure the auto drivers aren't scamming people or doing anything generally unsavory). Finally we made it home, though even at the correct DDA Flats we had to ask a vegetable delivery man to show us to our home.
Being home and seeing Adil and Khadeeja and Iman was such a relief. I think there's no better way to make a place feel like home than returning there exhausted after getting lost and being able to talk to sympathetic people and drink milky chai and sit in bed. Indian hospitality is a lovely thing.
P.S. If it isn't already obvious, I just figured out how to add links to my posts so feel free to read about things I mention on Wikipedia!
Post-food, we were having trouble deciding what to do and I was getting really frustrated with no one making a decision and 8 or 10 of us just standing on a street corner not doing anything, so Rachael and I decided we were going to go to India Gate and anyone who wanted to join us could. At that point I basically marched away to the Metro station, but luckily people were happy with that decision and Becca and Bryanna decided to join us on our excursion. We Metro'd it to the end of the Violet Line and managed to find our way to the wide grassy area (much like the National Mall in D.C.) that ran quite a ways down to the Gate itself.
It got busier and busier as we got closer, and soon there were lots of people taking pictures and selling knick-knacks and food and generally bustling around. Completely random thought because I get distracted mid-post: I just looked up what "gavotte" means because I've always wondered what kind of verb Carly Simon was using in You're So Vain and it turns out it's some kind of French folk dance. Now you know too! Anyway, these women with little rectangular baskets hanging from their necks kept offering to make us bracelets with our names spelled out in beads for 2 rupees (Rs 2 as prices are written here), which is basically the equivalent of 5 cents. It definitely seemed too good to be true, but Becca wanted one that said India and finally I gave in to the women who were pestering us and agreed to get one with my name on it. Big mistake. She made the bracelet quickly – they were pretty simple but cute for 5 cents — and tied it on my wrist and then told me I owed her Rs 50. Scam revealed. I argued that she had said Rs 2 and she countered that each bead cost Rs 2 and the string cost some additional price.
I'm paragraph-breaking here for emphasis. Now understand, Rs 50 was realistically not that much for the bracelet, but the principle of the whole thing had me seething (despite the fact that it was unsurprising and I should have known better), so I told the woman she could have the bracelet back and use the materials for someone else (because it was definitely easy to dismantle). She kept insisting I keep it and pay her, and I kept telling her politely but firmly that I didn't want it and it was hers. Things began making sense really quickly — a ton of Indian men had gathered to watch the whole bracelet-making process, and we couldn't really figure out their motives because they weren't harassing us or anything. They were there to see this whole price argument go down. Becca's woman finished her bracelet and put it on her wrist, and they began the whole argument that I was still in the midst of with my woman.
THEN SUDDENLY, SATAN'S SPAWN JOINED THE ARGUMENT. This harmless-looking little girl who was also making bracelets began forcing the bracelets back on our wrist and legitimately screaming at us to pay for our bracelets. We walked away but she followed us and sneak attacked us from behind, putting the bracelets on our wrists and demanding money as shrilly and obnoxiously as possible. Finally I shoved her away from me (because she kept grabbing me aggressively) and threw it on the ground at her feet and said, "It's not mine and we are not paying you." She scratched Becca's hand in the process and we basically had to run away to the other side of India Gate.
I bought a mango ice cream bar to make myself feel better and Bryanna departed to meet up with the only two boys in the program and their host brothers. Becca, Rachael, and I took an auto to Dilli Haat, a somewhat touristy and expensive market that you have to pay to get into (which we didn't realize the first time we went because it was with the program and they paid). We wandered around, practicing bartering, bought some stuff (I got a rug!), and finally decided to return home.
We were out of water and I personally was pretty exhausted, so we decided to spare ourselves the haggling and terrifying ride via auto and instead opted to take the Metro once again. Being the cosmopolitan women that we are, we even transferred lines! Becca's family lives in Lajpat Nagar so she got off there, and we continued on and debated whether we should get off at Okhla or Jasola Apollo, which is the stop we get off at for our program center but we were also told is close to our house. We decided to opt for Okhla because we thought it might be closer, but we exited to Metro station to find ourselves in some kind of one-road vegetable market packed to the brim with people and (urinating) cows eating garbage and dogs and motorbikes. There were no autos or cycle rickshaws around and we weren't on a main road, and it was getting dark to boot. After walking a few blocks and getting stared at by probably 2,000 eyes, we decided to turn around and take the train one more stop of Jasola and get a rickshaw there. After missing one train because we were on the wrong side of the tracks, we finally got one and thought we were headed home at last.
As we left the Jasola station, who did we run into but Goutam Ji and Archne Ji! They were headed to Lajpat Nagar. Seeing them honestly made my night ten times better. Archne Ji gave us huge hugs and we told them about our host family, and Goutam Ji talked to a cycle rickshaw driver and arranged for us to get home. That man, however, turned out to just be giving sweets to the rickshaw drivers, so we were on our own to haggle and discuss. A man agreed to take us to our home at 190 Pocket B, DDA Flats in Sukhdev Vihar. He ended up not knowing where this was and we made some circles and he asked people and finally dropped us at the gate. I felt bad because he was bicycling our big ol' American bodies around. He wanted Rs 10 more than we had agreed upon, which seemed somewhat reasonable but we didn't want to give him because it still was a very short ride, so that put me in a bad mood because I felt mean.
We asked a man how to get to 190 and wandered through a dark alley (bad idea in retrospect) with his directions. We popped out theoretically at 190, and after asking a bunch of other people where exactly it was, we found it. Bad news bears babygirl, though, because it wasn't our host family's house and the apartments didn't even look familiar. I called my host dad (while witnessing a dog fight) and we tried to figure out where we were, but we were still confused. A man led us to the main gate, at which point I was about to burst into exhaustion- and dehydration-fueled tears. Several very, very, very kind older Indian couples took pity on us and told us that we were not, in fact, in Sukhdev Vihar but instead were in the identically named DDA Flat in Sarita Vihar (thanks rickshaw man!). We had a pleasant conversation on the side of some mysterious road that we had been dropped on about us studying Hindi and one woman's godson in Chicago. They hailed a policeman, who hailed an auto driver (they do this sometimes to make sure the auto drivers aren't scamming people or doing anything generally unsavory). Finally we made it home, though even at the correct DDA Flats we had to ask a vegetable delivery man to show us to our home.
Being home and seeing Adil and Khadeeja and Iman was such a relief. I think there's no better way to make a place feel like home than returning there exhausted after getting lost and being able to talk to sympathetic people and drink milky chai and sit in bed. Indian hospitality is a lovely thing.
P.S. If it isn't already obvious, I just figured out how to add links to my posts so feel free to read about things I mention on Wikipedia!
I have a lot of thoughts, but not all of them go very far, so I'm going to use this post for all of my little thoughts that will likely develop over the next three months here but right now are just little thought nuggets.
~ I will have to come back to India at some point. I already can tell. There is no way I'm going to be able to see everything and do everything I want to do in three months while taking classes. The country is huge and diverse in all sorts of ways, and it's going to be impossible to see the Himalayas and Goa and Hyderabad and Mumbai and Rishikesh and Calcutta in one trip. They also don't speak Hindi in southern India, so it would be somewhat of a waste for me to do my independent research project in a place where I can't use what I've been studying.
~ Today my host dad was talking about how India's economic growth is potentially unsustainable because it relies on the cheap labor of the (at least) 400 million Indians that can't afford the basic necessities, which consists of things like shelter, two meals a day, etc. He said eventually growth will stall or some kind of social upheaval will occur. All I could think about was wanting to write a short story about an uprising of the tragically poor Indian peasantry and the restructuring of society, but I don't know enough and there's the small issue of me not having any kind of creative writing talent.
~ Men here think all American women are easy, and some people think western culture is the downfall of good, traditional Indian society. Although my gut reaction is to take some offense, the more I'm here and the more I see of Indian "modernity," the more I can see why people feel this way.
~ I am so hot and sweaty all the time. It's like permanent Bonnaroo body and I think I have some kind of heat rash on my inner elbow. Lovely, right? It's fine, I'm just not used to the humidity and heat and pollution. Thus, I'm in desperate need of doing laundry.
~ I lose my train of thought easily so I can't think of other things right now. Apparently I might be taking bucket showers here? I guess I'll find out tomorrow!
In closing, here is a song/dance sequence from Three Idiots:
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| Rachel and I wore our new outfits to meet our parents. |
I'm staying with a girl named Rachael. I think both of our host parents still don't quite know what to do with us because they've never hosted before, but we had a delicious meal tonight and talked about economics and child rearing and mosquitos. The SIT people (Bhavna is in charge of homestays but we heard this from everyone) kept telling us about how good Khadeejah's cooking is, and they were right. It was a little spicy for me tonight (as in I ate everything with yogurt, which they call curd, and drank copious amounts of water to cool the lip-burning sensation) but I tried to tell her it was ok, because I want to build my spice tolerance. She could tell I was struggling though and said tomorrow would be less spicy.
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| This is our bedroom (and shared bed) at our new home! |
Adil's brother-in-law visited and we had an impromptu Hindi lesson, which was fun. I now can say some basic phrases, like "How are you?" and "The food is good" and "We are learning." Tomorrow I think Rachael and I are going to go to the Lotus Temple, India Gate, and perhaps to see a Bollywood movie in theaters! We watched one, called Three Idiots, at the program center the other day and I actually liked it a lot. All Bollywood movies are really long (like three hours), but this one had a pretty good plot and it was an emotional roller coaster ride. I recommend it if you're going to try watching a Bollywood movie for the first time. Perhaps my next post will be about all of the crazy Bollywood music videos we see on TV all the time! Ludacris even has a guest appearance in one of them. They all seem to take place at a club or a wedding, and often they have blonde women dancing seductively in the background because apparently all western women are thought to be loose/of dubious moral character. I'm sweating up a storm right now despite the fans, so I think I'm going to move into the bedroom where it's cooler. More coming soon though!
Update: There is some kind of whistling/stick-hitting-something/alarm noise going on outside constantly, but it seems to have just subsided as I type this. Also I just ate a sour gumball (thanks Rachel!) off the ground of my room so hopefully my immunity to Indian germs will increase!
Our teachers and program directors are all incredibly sweet and have made us all feel more comfortable and at home than I imagined they could. They’ve become like our collective parents, especially the two women. In Hindi, a respectful way of addressing people is by adding the suffix “Ji” on the end of their name, so our instructors are Azim Ji, Abid Ji, Archne Ji, Goutam Ji, and Bhavne Ji.
Azim Ji: He is our Academic Director and speaks the best English out of all of them (they all speak fluent and eloquent English, but Azim Ji is probably the easiest to understand). He says he’s an academic by training, and I know he has his PhD, but I’m not entirely sure what is background is. He’s fairly petite and is the spitting image of an Indian Steve Carrell. He has been conducting the majority of our orientation and likes to talk a lot, which is tedious at times but has also been good because we are oriented to every possible do and don’t. We know how to interact with our homestay families, what to do if there’s a terrorist attack, how to avoid culture shock, how to treat Delhi Belly, what clothes to wear, who to talk to for what, and on and on and on. He's co-teaching our Health and Human Rights Seminar, and so far we've had a few lectures about the history, polity, economics, culture, and social issues of India. He comes from Uttar Pradesh (near the Nepalaese border), which is a largely rural Indian state with the highest poverty rates in the country. His family sounds quite successful — in UP (as the they Uttar Pradesh), his extended family owns farms and orchards, and he also owns some kind of media production company. He is definitely the head of everything, but still jokes around with us and cares about the little pieces of our experience here. He keeps telling us he cares about use more than his four-year-old daughter, which is nice but a little concerning for his daughter I would imagine.
Abid Ji: He speaks the fastest out of all of them, so sometimes I only catch every fifth word or so, but I usually just nod along until I figure out what he's saying. He's also very nice and tonight we met his wife and 11-month-old son at dinner (so unbelievably cute). He has some kind of public health background — tonight at dinner he was explaining all about the sleep patterns of infants as they develop and how breast feeding works. He's really funny but probably the most reserved of our main teachers (perhaps because he's male and most of the students are female).
Archna Ji: Archna Ji is quiet and very motherly. Tonight I asked her what the Hindi word for "mother" is and we joked that I was going to start calling her Mommy Ji instead of Archna. She's slightly plump and always seems concerned about us. She's quick to laugh or offer a little passing shoulder rub, which I really appreciate because it reminds me of home. She is one of our Hindi teachers and has been married for 10 years to Goutam Ji, another one of our Hindi teachers.
Bhavna Ji: Bhavna Ji is beautiful and wears lovely, flowing clothes every day. She is another of our Hindi teachers and she and Archna Ji (they're neighbors too!) are constantly giggling together (like when we visited a doctor who essentially told us to avoid eating, touching, breathing, or interacting with anything in Delhi or else we would get sick). She has an 18-year-old son but isn't married, and I think her husband may have died. Traffic in Delhi is awful, and I asked her if she'd ever been in an accident, and she thought about it and then talked about how she and her husband had been on a motorbike that had skidded and she had been able to jump off but her husband had a bad head injury. I dropped the subject, but she didn't seem too bothered that I'd asked. She's also hilarious and keeps asking me why I'm so nervous when I ask a lot of questions.
Goutam Ji: He's definitely the biggest jokester of the group. He has a long ponytail and lots of rings that have something to do with his horoscope. He and Archne Ji don't really interact at the academic center, and we aren't sure if it's because they aren't a very close husband-wife pair or because of gender norms (I think it more has to do with gender norms). He comes from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, which is a major place where people go to die and put bodies and ashes in the Ganges because it's considered sacred. Goutam Ji answers all of our silly Hindi questions and is very much like a good uncle — funny when he needs to be, but also very concern with our well-being and safety.
So that's a general overview of my teachers! I can honestly say I like them all immensely, which is not necessarily something I was expecting. I'm sure I will write more about them later on, but ta-ta for now!
Azim Ji: He is our Academic Director and speaks the best English out of all of them (they all speak fluent and eloquent English, but Azim Ji is probably the easiest to understand). He says he’s an academic by training, and I know he has his PhD, but I’m not entirely sure what is background is. He’s fairly petite and is the spitting image of an Indian Steve Carrell. He has been conducting the majority of our orientation and likes to talk a lot, which is tedious at times but has also been good because we are oriented to every possible do and don’t. We know how to interact with our homestay families, what to do if there’s a terrorist attack, how to avoid culture shock, how to treat Delhi Belly, what clothes to wear, who to talk to for what, and on and on and on. He's co-teaching our Health and Human Rights Seminar, and so far we've had a few lectures about the history, polity, economics, culture, and social issues of India. He comes from Uttar Pradesh (near the Nepalaese border), which is a largely rural Indian state with the highest poverty rates in the country. His family sounds quite successful — in UP (as the they Uttar Pradesh), his extended family owns farms and orchards, and he also owns some kind of media production company. He is definitely the head of everything, but still jokes around with us and cares about the little pieces of our experience here. He keeps telling us he cares about use more than his four-year-old daughter, which is nice but a little concerning for his daughter I would imagine.
Abid Ji: He speaks the fastest out of all of them, so sometimes I only catch every fifth word or so, but I usually just nod along until I figure out what he's saying. He's also very nice and tonight we met his wife and 11-month-old son at dinner (so unbelievably cute). He has some kind of public health background — tonight at dinner he was explaining all about the sleep patterns of infants as they develop and how breast feeding works. He's really funny but probably the most reserved of our main teachers (perhaps because he's male and most of the students are female).
Archna Ji: Archna Ji is quiet and very motherly. Tonight I asked her what the Hindi word for "mother" is and we joked that I was going to start calling her Mommy Ji instead of Archna. She's slightly plump and always seems concerned about us. She's quick to laugh or offer a little passing shoulder rub, which I really appreciate because it reminds me of home. She is one of our Hindi teachers and has been married for 10 years to Goutam Ji, another one of our Hindi teachers.
Bhavna Ji: Bhavna Ji is beautiful and wears lovely, flowing clothes every day. She is another of our Hindi teachers and she and Archna Ji (they're neighbors too!) are constantly giggling together (like when we visited a doctor who essentially told us to avoid eating, touching, breathing, or interacting with anything in Delhi or else we would get sick). She has an 18-year-old son but isn't married, and I think her husband may have died. Traffic in Delhi is awful, and I asked her if she'd ever been in an accident, and she thought about it and then talked about how she and her husband had been on a motorbike that had skidded and she had been able to jump off but her husband had a bad head injury. I dropped the subject, but she didn't seem too bothered that I'd asked. She's also hilarious and keeps asking me why I'm so nervous when I ask a lot of questions.
Goutam Ji: He's definitely the biggest jokester of the group. He has a long ponytail and lots of rings that have something to do with his horoscope. He and Archne Ji don't really interact at the academic center, and we aren't sure if it's because they aren't a very close husband-wife pair or because of gender norms (I think it more has to do with gender norms). He comes from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, which is a major place where people go to die and put bodies and ashes in the Ganges because it's considered sacred. Goutam Ji answers all of our silly Hindi questions and is very much like a good uncle — funny when he needs to be, but also very concern with our well-being and safety.
So that's a general overview of my teachers! I can honestly say I like them all immensely, which is not necessarily something I was expecting. I'm sure I will write more about them later on, but ta-ta for now!
We're still in the midst of orientation, but we've ventured out into Delhi more and I'm getting really excited for everything I get to do while I'm here. We meet our homestays tomorrow, and it sounds like we'll be living quite nicely — I'll be sharing a room with another American student named Rachael (we get along well and she's not weird, so that's good!) and we'll have our own bathroom. The mom works for BBC (so perfect for me!) and the dad is an English professor at a local federal university. They're Muslim and have a 6-month-old baby girl, which everyone keeps telling me will be annoying because she'll cry a lot, but I'm mostly really excited to be around a baby!
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I bought my first salwar kameez set the other day! The kameez or kurta is the long tunic-type shirt, and the pants are called salwars. You can also buy churidar pants, which are like leggings that are really long (they're actually hilarious, the waistband reaches my forehead if I hold them up in front of me) and scrunch at the bottom, but I chose not to because I thought they would be hotter and possibly less flattering on me.
Update (because I started writing this post earlier and now I'm coming back to it): I now have several full sets of Indian clothes! I'm sure I will take tons of pictures later, but for now just picture me in really flowy orange pants, a white and black patterned tunic with rainbow beads and embroidery, and an orange scarf. For the other sets, we went to an area called Lajpat Nagar, which had a market (bargaining encouraged) and a bunch of little shops and stalls down side alleys. We took an auto rickshaw, the metro, and then a cycle rickshaw, which was quite the experience! I will write something else tonight about Delhi traffic, because it definitely warrants at least one post of its own!
I think my stomach is finally a little more settled — for a while it was feeling less than stellar/generally a little funny, but now it's ठीक है (Hindi for "ok").
I will type up some more posts about specific aspects of my experience (transportation, my teachers/pseudo-parents, the food, etc.) tonight and try to post those as well!
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I bought my first salwar kameez set the other day! The kameez or kurta is the long tunic-type shirt, and the pants are called salwars. You can also buy churidar pants, which are like leggings that are really long (they're actually hilarious, the waistband reaches my forehead if I hold them up in front of me) and scrunch at the bottom, but I chose not to because I thought they would be hotter and possibly less flattering on me.Update (because I started writing this post earlier and now I'm coming back to it): I now have several full sets of Indian clothes! I'm sure I will take tons of pictures later, but for now just picture me in really flowy orange pants, a white and black patterned tunic with rainbow beads and embroidery, and an orange scarf. For the other sets, we went to an area called Lajpat Nagar, which had a market (bargaining encouraged) and a bunch of little shops and stalls down side alleys. We took an auto rickshaw, the metro, and then a cycle rickshaw, which was quite the experience! I will write something else tonight about Delhi traffic, because it definitely warrants at least one post of its own!
I think my stomach is finally a little more settled — for a while it was feeling less than stellar/generally a little funny, but now it's ठीक है (Hindi for "ok").
I will type up some more posts about specific aspects of my experience (transportation, my teachers/pseudo-parents, the food, etc.) tonight and try to post those as well!
Namaste!
- Emily Fletcher
- Hi family, friends, and people I generally like! I'm studying abroad in New Delhi, India this term on a program that focuses on health and human rights. My first 10 weeks will be spent in a seminar about public health in India, intensive Hindi classes, and a research methods class. My last month or so will be spent on an independent research project of my choice, yet to be determined. Hopefully this will be a regular and easy way for me to update all of you, and I hope you all will be updating me regularly too!