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.

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!

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:

Rachel and I wore our new outfits to meet our parents.

It's official! I'm now with my host family in their two-bedroom apartment about 15 minutes from the program center where my classes are. The father's name is Adil and he is an English literature professor at a nearby university, and the mother is named Khadeejah and she works for BBC. Their 7-month-old daughter is named Iman she is the quietest little baby I've ever met. She's adorable and curious and I'm really excited to see how she grows while we are here.

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.

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!

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!

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!