Some thoughts

December 5^th, 2010 (on the plane back to the states)

I find it exhilarating and disorienting sitting motionless while moving the speed of sound, being taken over the sea and placed back down where I began this whole thing.  I can sense everything about it fading in my memory.  What can I do to remember?  Engrave it on my arm with a needle, repeat the events in sequences of three, collect artifacts, write pictures or draw poems?  It frightens me that such events, fraught with meaning, are subjected to the faulty log of memory, where my pain goes to rest and my pride charges rent.  “Must I write?” said Rilke.  I must, but I do not.  Plato said philosophers must have good memories.  Perhaps writers must not, so that they are forced to write in order to remember.  Maybe I am lost and have just spent so much time running away from what people say I am - an Aries, an artist, a failure to society, a society for the failures - that I haven't developed that aspect of my life enough to be happy with it.  Maybe I should make war.  War with callousness and detachment from feeling.  I get that.  That I understand.  Because that world exists inside of me.  Those battles over utter nihilism and overzealous romanticism happen every time I breath, because every breath either means everything or it means nothing.

December 20^th, 2010 (on a bus to Minneapolis)

If I could be a simple person, I would.  It seems that those people are the ones I look up most to or have influenced me the most.  Jesus was a carpenter, so were his disciples; Socrates was a peasant; Dostoyevsky was a poor man.  I think in circles to the point where everything looks the same.  I guess this is the result of unbearable complexity.

            I’m not thinking clearly since I’ve been back in America.  I feel like a stranger in my own country.  I am not articulate in American culture as much as I used to be.  The knowledge that I picked up in India is unimpressive or just simple irrelevant to the people I’ve talked to.  I went to a trivia night at a bar in Chicago the other night and I was completely dumbfounded at the questions.  I felt useless, and in many ways it deepened my feeling of isolation.  I went with my brother and his roommate David, a slim man with small glasses and a distinctly wide gait.  He always has one arm folded when he’s discussing anything intellectual, his elbow forming a right angle with his upper arm, waving it with the degree of emphasis he puts on each sentence, as if he was sharing a very well thought out universal truth.

            When we arrived at the bar I knew I’d become claustrophobic and anthropophobic very quickly.  The trivia answer sheets were handed out to everyone.  I contributed only one answer to my team about a videogame.  I learned a great deal, however.  More facts to lose track of in my brain while trying to come upon some existential truth.  Nepal’s flag is the only flag that is not shaped like a rectangle.  John Lennon’s sons’ names are Sean and Julian.  Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980.  1772 was the year of the Boston Massacre.  Jacques Costeau invented the aqualung, etc.  But lately I’ve been concerned about my ability to remember things.  I have flashbacks to high school when my friends would make fun of me for it.  Maybe it’s the effect of falling on my head as a four-year-old boy taking its toll.  Or maybe this is what culture shock feels like.  What a silly concept.  I haven't really talked to anyone who really knows exactly what it is.  I had been waiting for it the whole time in India, but it never happened in the way I understood it.  Evidently, it is different for everyone, and that's why preparing or waiting for it is so useless.

            I’m writing in darkness of a crowded bus, but I can't help but be reminded that it's nothing like the congestion of the metal behemoths on the roads of India.  People talk on their phones.  A boy next to me puts his headphones on and later reads the first couple of pages from a checked out Stephen Fry book before falling asleep.  Next to him I’m surprised to see a woman watching “Xena: Warrior Princess” on her computer.  She has a backpack with feminist pins on it.  The peaceful hum of the road beneath doesn’t quite seem real.  I have always been rather enamored with the stillness with which we can move at 60 mph over the earth’s surface.  In India the roads are much crueler.  The roads, if they are there at all, are marred with potholes that give a jolt to your spine when you go over them.  I would always make sure my back was straight when I knew we would be driving over one, assuring that my back could sustain the force of gravity that would soon be shooting through it.

            I had been through a few bus rides in India that had taken such a physical tax on me that I nearly fainted.  Through the winding roads of the Himilayas, you forget where your center of gravity is, and so does your stomach.  I put on my headphones and breathed deeply to keep back the rush of vomit brewing in my digestive tract from sailing into my neighbors unkempt lap.  The music I listened to wasn’t helping.  In a blend of narcissism and desperation, I flipped my Ipod (not sold in India) to the letter S.  Saathiya, Saliva (why is that still on there?), Sam Brownson.  I scrolled to the third option and clicked.  Albums.  EP.  Shuffle.  The sound of my own voice and of my own creation centered me.  My nausea subsided a bit.  I closed my eyes.  It felt like I had lost myself for a moment and then found it again.  These songs are who I am, I listen to them to remember who I was and how I’ve changed.  Call it narcissism or call it self-realization, I don’t know, but I don’t what I would do without having my songs somewhere, labeled, documented.  And safe.  I get scared when it’s all left up to my memory.  These past couple of years have been characterized by my increasing need to write and record what I used to be able to remember with a moderately-functioning associative and photographic memory.  That goes with age, you know, and with age (hopefully) comes greater wisdom, so the antagonistic relationship between the diminishing of memory and the broadening scope of wisdom must be mediated or bridged by documentation and expression.  I write to discover and to remember, not to explain.  I find the former more exciting.

Journal 10: A Picture of India

I’ve thought about how I could sum up last weeks of my stay in India, from the two-week trip up through the Himalayas to the farewell party where a group picture froze all of us in a moment of time that we would be remember each other by forever, and my inability to describe only the past few weeks in light of the fact that I will have to try to convey the entire experience of India to my family and friends back home absolutely terrifies me.  I can’t describe what a horrible feeling it is to have to leave a place where you’ve grown so much in such a short time.  I have just begun to get close to people here and learn how to live in the culture.  I love everyone here.  I’m home here.  What’s that about?  I can’t remember the last time I have been able to say that.  It baffles me how such an unfamiliar place could become such an integral part of my identity in such a short time.

It’s funny how a death of someone close to us can be so devastating, yet we expect that leaving someone without knowing if we’ll ever see him or her again to be in some way easier.  It’s like a lottery.  Some of these people may be dead to me after this; some of them may make an appearance later.  To an uncomfortable amount, it’s up to chance.

The world is gigantic now.  It’s like I’ve become suddenly smaller.  I feel like I know something other people do not, yet I can’t be heard or seen because I’ve become microscopic in proportion to my surroundings.  Either that, or I just can’t convey the information to others.  It’s wrong, of course.  This feeling.  I really know nothing.  Indeed, sometimes it feels like I know less now that I’ve seen more, like a reverse gestalt.

ge·stalt or Ge·stalt n

a set of elements such as a person’s thoughts and experiences considered as a whole and regarded as amounting to more than the sum of its parts.

No, what I think this Gestalt gentleman meant was that an organized whole is less than the sum of its parts.  How else something can be larger than life?

(I’m sorry for any confusion caused by my journals.  You have to understand, I write these to discover, not to explain.  Much to the chagrin of the reader, I’m sure.  It’s actually quite a selfish act.)

On Friday, my family and I went out for dinner and I went for perhaps the last ride ever on Abhijit’s motorcycle.  We went to a place that sounded like Abhijit’s name, Abhishek, which I am convinced Abhijit chose because it sounds like his name.  We shared Veg Pode Puree (?) and Paneer Tikka Masala (!).  The Pode Puree dish was notorious for its spiciness, although I had not known this until I tried it.  My eyes began watering as I uttered Marathi phrases of astonishment (aai ga…bap re…).  That’s when Abhijit turned his head to muffle a laugh into the arm of his blue fleece jacket, the one he always wears whenever the temperature is not above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, while Aiyee had already put on her token look of motherly concern and Baba was scolding Abhijit for failing to ask the waiter to make the dish milder.  I was laughing as well, the tears caused by the pain of the spice blending with tears caused by the hilarity of the situation.  I watched my host parents’ frowns loosen as I assured them I was fine and punched Abhijit lightly on the shoulder.  Baba’s slightly gapped teeth opened up into an animated smile.  He has always seemed like a caricature of himself.  Aiyee lifted her eyebrows as she laughed, as if to pull the laughter out of those around her with them.  I continued to laugh as I listened to the humorous exchanges in Marathi between father, mother and son.  I laughed because I knew that that moment was a picture of the Tamhankar family that would stick with me; it was a microcosm of our relationship.  I felt that I knew them like I knew my own family.  I never felt closer to them.

Afterwards, when Abhijit invited me onto the back of his blue Pulsar motorbike with a top speed that melts my face, it had become quite chilly and foggy.  He said the wind was a gulabi thandi (pink cold), sad and romantic.  When he said this, I repeated the phrase two or three times in bad Marathi, laughed, and breathed in heavily the misty air, which magically becomes clean when the night falls over Pune.  We passed by the paan shop where he would get his cigarettes and paan leaves to chew (as with nearly everything he does, “it helps with digestion”).  After dinner, we went to smoke cigars at a place where we had frequently gone to share our experiences: what we were learning from each other, what I missed about America, what I didn’t miss about America, Abhijit’s dreams, Hindu mythology, marriage, family.  The spot is near downtown.  It’s nothing special at first glance: just a small strip mall with a paan shop next to it.  On one corner there’s a crooked bench that is used as a mini-landfill, and despite its awful smell, we sometimes went to sit there because it was a good location.  There’s a set of stairs leading up to the bazaar that are pretty clean that we would sit on and watch the cars pass. Sometimes there are college kids pushing each other around and laughing there.  We call it “the sharing spot”.

I have so many memories of conversations with him there.  I remember one night we sat under a tree as it rained and he told me that his spectrum of emotion was much bigger than mine because of the complexity of his mother tongue, Marathi.  I couldn’t really argue.  I don’t know Marathi as well as he knows English.  But it made me realize how different we really are.  I haven’t felt half of what he has.  How could I?  I mean, the scripts of our mother tongues aren’t even the same, and language is the way we make sense of what we feel.  Of course, there are some human emotions that are always universal, like anger, sadness, happiness, etc.  But these are without nuance.  Languages provide that nuance. 

In my experience here, I’ve tasted flavors that I could have never before in my life imagined, heard music and learned phrases in different languages that have created new associations and emotions, and seen colors and combinations of images that I could never have put together before.  I have lost myself and recreated it again with new raw material.  Of course I should expect that it is going to be painful going back home.

Last night we went to the sharing spot again, and we talked about our last thoughts.  A poor man with a cigarette was burning trash across the street to keep warm, and there was still a group of men hanging around the paan shop talking.  Abhijit and I were trying to figure out a way to get him to America.  It’s very expensive, and after being in India I know America is not the most welcoming of places.  I think I’ll even feel like a stranger when I come back.  Not only that, but the exchange rate makes it even more expensive for Indians to come to America than vice versa.  A round trip ticket for me was around $1300 (about 60,000 Rs.), which is about Abhijit’s yearly salary.  Realizing that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere positive, I tried to change the subject.  I asked what Abhijit’s earliest childhood memory was.  He said it was when he was learning to ride his bike with training wheels, and he drove into a trash can and fell headfirst into it.  “It makes sense”, I said laughing, “that your first memory would be of a bike.” 

Abhijit’s passion is for mechanics.  He said to me once that his family and his bike are his pride.  He even cut his thumb off trying to repair the thing because he just wanted to learn to do it himself.  What a horrible day that was.  I got a call at school from Aji while he was screaming outside the house, and she told me that Baba was going to take him to the hospital.  He was cleaning the chain and the rope got caught with his hand in it.  Had he not pulled out when he did, he would have lost his entire hand.  He is fine now, save the fact that he doesn’t have a thumb from the nail up.  The day after the accident he was smiling and laughing like always.  He told me at the sharing spot one night that he would find out in the future why he had lost his thumb.  He believes most things happen for a reason, and that gives him strength.  Earlier, he had said that him and I were one soul, and that I had come to India as his brother, with a purpose; that I was to teach him many things.  Unfortunately, I guess one of those things is not mechanics.  Throughout the trip, Abhijit has constantly asked me about the different cars and bikes available in the U.S.  I feel inadequate as a result.  When he asked my favorite types, I listed off what I know of the roster for Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit II, which I owned in the third grade and played on our family desktop: Lamborghini Diablo, Aston Martin Spider, Mclaren F1 (top speed 210 mph, mofo.  Cops had nothing on me), etc.  He was impressed, and amazingly we both had the same favorite car: Lamborghini.

He said numerous times as we were sitting there in our spot that he would miss me.  He had never thought an American would have behaved the way I did.  He expected me to be a closed-off, self-centered workaholic (which, admittedly, I was at times).  We had become as close as brothers in a couple of months, and it felt like I was leaving at the beginning of the best stage of our friendship. 

I left Sunday, touching each of the elder’s feet with my right hand and putting my hand to my heart.  Namastes all around.  I saw my Aji and Aiyee cry for the first time.  My Baba put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed so hard it almost hurt before giving me a hug.  My little niece, Maitreyee, and my sister Dipdi called on the phone to say farewell.  I said thank you more consecutive times than I think I ever have in my life, and assured them I would return.  Baba and Abhijit led me out to the taxi, bags in hand.  When I was all loaded up, as I was climbing in, I looked each of them in the eye and said my farewell in Marathi, “mi yeto, maza kutumba, mi yeto” (I am coming, my family, I am coming).  The driver started the car.  Taxi drivers always seem so cruel when you are saying goodbye to someone you care about.  I watched them shrink through the window as we drove, as if I was slowly falling down, waving at the figures standing at the top of a cliff.

A few nights before, I was going through my things to pack, and I came across a folded piece of thin paper.  Over its folds was written an address, in Marathi, of an old woman who lived in the mountains near Shimla.  Aisha and I had come across her on our way down from a hike.  She lived in a village no bigger than my neighborhood at home, her house made of stone shingles.  It appeared that she lived by herself.  When she saw us, she asked if we spoke Hindi.  We shook our heads and said something in Marathi, hoping she might catch a few words.  She didn’t.  She just kept smiling, oblivious to our meaning.  There was an awkward silence before she made a gesture towards our cameras: she wanted a picture with us.  We agreed and followed her up a few stairs into her home of one bed, two rooms.  The sun shone through the windows at an angle, forming a bright yellow triangle on the navy blue bedcover that appeared to be hand stitched.  To the right of the entrance there was a ladder going up to a second level.  As she went up to the second level to get something, she insisted that we sit down on the bed.  I was hoping she wouldn’t make us tea, as that would mean that we would be there for at least a half an hour, and it would be flattery to the point of embarrassment.  Thankfully, a couple of minutes later she came down only with a handful of walnuts and set them down in our hands.  We both nodded in appreciation.  I saw her looking at our cameras, so I pulled mine out of my bag and prepared for a picture.  She pointed to places where she wanted us to stand, moving stuff around and checking to make sure the house looked clean.  The pictures turned out wonderfully.  So wonderfully, in fact, that she wanted copies of them.  She knew words like “send” and “mail”, and she gestured in ways we could understand.  We tried to tell her that we would never be able to get it to her, but she failed to understand English or Marathi.  She wrote it down in Hindi on a piece of paper for us.  We took it anyway, smiling and shaking our heads.  Who knows, I thought, maybe we can get one to her.  With the piece of paper and a few more walnuts, she sent us on our way.  I still haven’t eaten them yet.

Standing in my nearly empty bedroom that night, I remembered her.  I remembered her darkly aged and wrinkled face.  I remembered her letting us into her small home and offering us the only bed in the house, and how she never stopped smiling the entire time we were there.  I remembered all the promises I made to the people I’ve met in India and everywhere, and how hard it is in life to keep them.  And I remembered the India I knew before.  I saw in the woman’s face all the ways in which it had changed in the last four months: everything I had deconstructed and reformulated, feared and braved, lost and found was gazing back at me and smiling, asking for nothing in return but a picture.  And when I picked the paper up out of my wardrobe full of dirty clothes and garbage, I could do nothing else but sit on the floor and cry. 

I could have thrown the paper away.  It could make no difference.  But in the end, I put the slip of paper in my backpack.  There it would be carried back to the states and found again someday, reminding me of all the promises I've yet to keep.

Journal 8b: Apprehension, Admiration and a Thank You Note

I would just like to say that this kind of discrimination on this trip is very new to me.  I have never in my life been denied access to a space on account on my gender or of my race up until I got here.  Nor have I ever been singled out on the expectation that I would fulfill the stereotype of my gender.  Of course, I respect that this woman and the people in our program have come from a completely different culture than my own; I am not even angry about it.  I simply find it to be interesting and educational, and I’m surprised that it happened in Mumbai, of all places in India.

Anyway, though we didn’t know it then and wouldn’t think of it at the time of it happening, this rejection was actually the root of the chaos that followed.

Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to stay with the woman, Amy arranged a place for me at her host family’s parent’s house.  I certainly didn’t mind.  We told Anjou, our program supervisor, about it, and she reluctantly let us plan the trip ourselves and go, despite the fact that she wanted to plan for us.

We arrived on Friday at around 6 or 7.  We couldn’t find the place where I was staying for a while, since it was literally on a sideroad of a sideroad.  But we found it, and the Phatak family took me in welcomingly while the rest of the group went their separate way.  It was an older family: a married couple, both in their 60s, and the husband’s brother, who was probably in his 60s also.  I was to sleep on the floor in their living room next to the bed of dada, or older brother.  He had cerebral palsy, so both the others had to help him with getting around the house and communicating.  He didn’t say anything to me, but his company was certainly comforting and I felt greatly appreciative of him allowing me to sleep in his room.  The couple was humble and gentle-hearted.  The way the brother was taken care of reminded me of what my own father’s family must have gone through during the time when my uncle Billy became mentally ill.  Encephalitis had burned half my uncle’s brain and the next day he was like a different person.  I think I sensed in the Phataks the deep-seated anxiety that tends to accompany such unconditional love because I have seen it in my own family.  I felt like it brought me closer to them.  It seems that in getting out of my own country and culture, the things I have in common with people have become much more meaningful.

I didn’t sleep that night, nor would I sleep the next night.  The stray dogs of the block decided to all congregate right beneath our window and communicate across the city to their compadres.  At around 4 am or so, street vendors began to set up shop outside, speaking loudly and stacking up boxes of fruits and veggies while I struggled to push my earplugs closer and closer to my eardrum.  It would be the same case the next night, but I didn’t mind.  I saw the slums on the way in; I was lucky to have a roof and a blanket to sleep under.

A few hours later I woke up, trying to catch up to the early-risers of the city. The Pathaks had made me a glass of warm milk and cornflakes for breakfast without me asking.  I have never had cereal in India with cold milk.  Nor have I had cereal other than cornflakes in India.  It turns the flakes to mush pretty quickly, which is quite frustrating.  Wait for a minute and it’s like eating snot with a spoon.  But it was thoughtful and I was satisfied.  After all, breakfast wasn’t really a part of the deal.  They gave me directions to the group’s host’s house and I was off, neglecting to tell them what time I would return home.

I took a rickshaw and met with the group at the misandristic widow’s complex.  Outside her flat, I bought a Times India newspaper for 5 Rs. and then walked up the stairs to her door.  She smiled kindly as I came in.  She had actually food leftover from breakfast that she allowed me to eat, which was nice of her.  It was nevertheless awkward meeting her, the person who last night rejected me from staying in her home.  As I waited for the others to finish breakfast, I read an article or two of the newspaper, sufficiently forgot about it, and looked over the schedule for the day.  After an hour of incessant food provisions and failed attempts of denial, we headed to our first destination: the Hare Krishna temple.

The Hare Krishna temple is mostly a tourist haven, but the architecture, the music, and the artwork provide a relatively immersive cultural experience.  The walls contain glass cases with statues and paintings of Hindu mythology and figures in the history of the Hare Krishna movement.  A statue of the founder of the movement, Prabhupada, surrounded by dancing hippies and college students is in a case by the entrance, marking the movement’s founding in America in the 70’s.  Ah, cultural appropriation at its finest.  Other more interesting statues feature things like a cycle of the evolution of man through one life, which instead of going in a progressive straight line goes in a circle.  The different statues represent each of the four stages of Hindu life: Student, Householder, Hermit, and Recluse (I don’t remember the Sanskrit names).  The Student stage is up until you are around 25 or 30, and during this stage you are celibate and you study under a guru or gurus.  From 30 to 50, you enter the Householder stage, in which you become married, engage in sex (kama), and be an all-around faithful husband (or wife, although these stages don’t typically apply to women at all) and providing father.  In the Hermit stage from 50 to 70 or so, you engage in introspection and spiritual devotion, and cut off social ties even to your family.  The final stage is where you reject the world completely and only engage in pure contemplation, eventually attaining Nirvana.

One case is a statue representation of the incarnation of Vishnu as a half-man half-lion with six hands ripping apart a demon.  The story behind it goes that this demon was promised by the gods that he could never be killed by conventional weapons or by natural causes.  Overly zealous and bold, the demon stood up to Narasingha, the lion incarnation of Vishnu.  Since Narasingha’s arms and hands are not conventional weapons, the demon could be killed by them.  In the end, Narasingha says it was necessary that he kill the demon because there was no other way for the demon to die, and everything must die.  Pretty insightful, if you think about it.

Afterwards, we made our way to the Bombay Hanging Gardens, the Haji Ali Mosque, Malabar Hill and the Queen’s Necklace.  At the entrance to the mosque, when speaking to the ticket taker, I made the brilliant mistake of referring to it as the Babri Mosque, which is the name of the mosque in Ayodhya that was destroyed in 1994 and is now a cause of major controversy between Hindus and Muslims (just look it up and you’ll see why it was a stupid mistake).  I quickly corrected myself and we moved on.  There was a pier the length of a football field that led out to the mosque.  It was strewn with salesmen, limbless beggars, and surprisingly a lot of Indian tourists.  People carried bags that said “Reedok” and had shirts with Nike signs that had thrashes through them to avoid copyright infringement.  India is full of these products.  It’s ironic that the brand names were probably made in India and manufactured in the same factory as these imitators. 

I went in to give offerings at the altar, touched it with my left hand (doh!), and then sat on the floor with a group of Muslims in the circular house of worship.  I had forgotten to bring a bandana for my head, so I was given a corny plastic hat that looked more like a plastic crown taken from high school theater dressing room than a holy covering.  I suppose it’s only appropriate that foreigners be humiliated in this scenerio; it is, after all, a holy place and tourism has done it’s job in desecrating places like it in India for years.  Feeling a bit foolish and ridiculous, I uncrossed my legs and rose to my feet to proceed to the back of the mosque, where the Arabian backwaters crashed against the edge of the pier.  Four Sikhs elegantly dressed in white stopped me on my way back around to the entrance, shaking my hand and asking me where I was from.  I watched their joyous expressions slightly wane as I told them I was from America.  They still wanted a picture though.  I don’t know why it was awkward, since I’m kind of used to getting stopped for pictures by now, and they were very friendly.  But it was.  They seemed stuck uncomfortably between admiration and apprehension.  We left without really saying goodbye.

In the late afternoon, the group and I met up and found a taxi and made our way to Malabar Hill.  I sat in the front seat.  The taxi driver said nearly nothing.  They always did.  I wondered if it was the language or cultural barrier or if it was more than that.  Did they even talk to Indian passengers?  It felt more like they were trying to be invisible, as if they were adapted to being only in the periphery of the passenger and of society.  I’ve found here that most Indians live within that periphery: in the informal sector, in the villages, in the slums, and in statistics and numbers they’ll never see but the developed world is looking over and shaking their heads in disbelief.  The Indian government’s range of vision could never possibly keep 1.2 billion people at its focal point.  The taxi driver probably wasn’t poor in his country.  He may be quite wealthy, in fact.  However, his position in the informal sector, unregulated by the government, makes his value as a citizen inherently lower, and his rights significantly less.  I had asked him his name, but I had forgotten it before he had even said it.  He didn’t say anything after that.

We arrived at the Queen’s Necklace around 7, and the sun had gone done completely.  The Queen’s Necklace is the name of the semi-circle of city lights surrounding the Arabian backwaters near Malabar Hill.  You can see it from the coast.  It’s quite beautiful, although I find the name ugly – ugly in that colonial British way.  We sat and talked on the pier for a while until we got hungry.  It was 8 by then, and we had eaten an early lunch at the Taj Mahal Restaurant, where our meals had cost what we could use to buy food for a week in Pune.  Amy mentioned a decently cheap bar on the other side of town called The Bullfrog.  It had live music and, according to Lonely Planet, it was “the best thing to happen to the Mumbai music scene”.  It sounded perfect. 

Well, apparently, the best thing to happen to the Mumbai music scene is a cover band, but they were certainly very good at what they did.  The music started after we ate, around 10:30.  It was a five-piece rock band with a singer who looked like a 21^st century-born Jakob Dylan.  They played CCD, Jason Mraz, the Eagles and other Billboard hits, making us all a little happy for the familiarity but a little uncomfortable about the concept of American music being played in an Indian bar. 

Before the music had started, at around 9, we had called my hosts, the Pathaks, to tell them that I would be coming home around midnight.  That was when things became messy.  Mr. Pathak was immediately frantic when he picked up the phone, asking me where I was and what I was doing and that he was worried sick about me.  We had all been drinking a bit, and so we did not think twice about trying to convince him to let me stay a bit longer.  Eventually, he did something resembling allowing me to stay by saying that I should come home as soon as possible.  We assumed it would not be a huge deal to assume that this meant I could stay until 12.  We had gotten the restaurant to arrange for a taxi to come at 11, and so I left the conversation assuring him that we would leave as soon as our taxi arrived. 

Everything had gone as planned up to a point.  We got in a taxi at around 11:15, and I had called Mr. Pathak right before we left.  He was still frantic, which surprised me, but I was able to tell him that we were getting in the taxi and were on our way.  The taxi, however, did not take us where we wanted to go.  We soon realized that he was taking us in circles, pretending to be going somewhere he knew.  Each mile he tacked on was more money for us to pay.  We wanted him to take us to my host’s place first, but he instead headed the direction of the widow’s apartment.  Later he went to a rickshaw driver to ask for directions.  Shortly after that point, we would arrive at the widow’s apartment, panicking and getting angry calls from the Pathaks, whose house we still were miles and miles away from at midnight.

In the taxi, Amy and I had argued about calling them.  She wanted me to call every five minutes, and I thought it’d be unnecessary.  After a few minutes of arguing, she frustratingly threw up her hands and gave up on it.  In between us in the middle were the other two girls, uncomfortably trying to mediate the conflict.  We were all very high-strung.  All this time there was a drunk man in a rickshaw next to us screaming (in English) “Stupid tourists!  I live here, motherf**ers!  Ha!”  Before I had angerly responded out the window by screaming Marathi phrases that were not as aggressive as I intended them to be, such as “Do you study MARATHI, young man?”  The others told me to shut up, so I did.  When he pulled up next to us again later however, I flicked him off (I had drank a little too much; apparently so had he).  Wanting to resolve the conflict with Amy, I agreed to call the Pathaks and said I was sorry without sincerity.  “Whatever,” she said, “do what you want.”  But I insisted.  After all, she was the one whose host family is related to the Pathaks, and therefore she would have to deal most with the consequences.  But she just kept telling me to forget it, dropping the issue like this morning’s newspaper.  Finally, as we were approaching the widow’s apartment, I spitefully said, “Fine, if you want to be stubborn, that’s your prerogative.”  That’s when she screamed at me for the first time.  It was her at her angriest.  We had come to a stop.  She told me to shut up, swung open the door and stormed out onto the sidewalk.  It was a long time coming.

I was pensive then.  Stupid.  I got out of the taxi with the rest of the group and Amy was calling the Pathaks, her back to the road.  I would soon find out that Mr. Pathak was telling her that I could sleep on the street for all he cared before he hung up on her.  He wasn’t going to let me in his house at this hour.  I sat on the curb by myself.  Amy and the others paced around aimlessly until the widow came down from her apartment.  She had been called earlier and knew what was going on.  She used Amy’s phone to call Mr. Pathak and tried to reason with him.  Mrs. Pathak apparently took the phone away from Mr. Pathak mid-conversation, realizing that he was not in any condition to be reasoned with, and assured us all that I could come home.  Eventually, her and the widow figured out a way to get me home.  A rickshaw driver was arranged and the address written down for him in Hindi.  The widow’s kindness on my behalf came as a surprise to me.  I was reminded then that people are all too complex to be predictable.

Before I got into the rickshaw, the widow had left and it was just Amy and I and the driver outside.  We stood staring at each other for a few moments, still in shock by what had just happened.  I recalled that she had wanted me to come on the trip.  I had found out after I had asked to come that there were already too many people going on the trip according to the program coordinator, and I changed my mind to think that it might be best for me not to come.  But Amy and I had become pretty good friends and she thought it would be safer for everyone if I came.  Simply having a guy with you as a girl in India opens up a lot of opportunities.  We convinced the program coordinator to let me come.  But at that moment, outside that apartment complex, I was the problem.  My presence had gotten the Pathaks involved in the first place, since the widow would not host a man, and every issue we were having was as a result of my stay with them.  Amy was about ten feet away from me.  She looked exhausted.  “Sorry,” I said, looking up at her with my hands in my pockets.  Her eyes were glassy under the florescent lights coming from the parking garage.  She pressed her lips together in a failed smile, “Me too."

When I got back to the Pathak’s apartment, Mrs. Pathak answered the door.  She neither looked at me nor said anything.  I looked at the clock.  1:30 AM.  I had said midnight, and even that had caused Mr. Pathak to lose his mind with worry.  He was in bed by then, but I knew he was not sleeping.  I went straight to my bed on the floor without saying a word.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.  Then, for the first time in India, with Dada still sitting on his bed, silently watching me in the dark, I cried.

The next morning, the sun came up, to my relief.  I immediately wrote a note apologizing to the Pathak family and thanking them for their kindness and generosity in letting me stay with them.  I was halfway done with the note when Mr. Pathak came out into the living room where I was sitting and asked if I wanted cornflakes.  I said I’d be okay, I was having breakfast at the other group’s place.  Then I asked him if I could talk with him quickly.

I apologized for the night before and explained to him that much of what happened was outside our control.  We had left when we said we would leave and everything was going according to plan on our end until the taxi driver took us the wrong way.  He was quick to say it was okay, and that he was just worried as the host since he would be responsible if anything happened to me.  Mumbai is a dangerous city, he said, especially for foreigners, and he didn’t think we fully grasped that.  People with white skin are dollar signs, and taxi drivers will do whatever they can to get a nickel out of you.  Not to mention there are a great deal of bandits roaming the streets at night.  We could get into a lot of trouble.  He told me he had been waiting outside on the balcony for three hours after I had called.  He was expecting me at any moment, not understanding that I would be home at twelve but that I would be home as soon as I could before then.  His concern for me was genuine and heartbreaking, and I was deeply moved by his caring for me as if I was his son, even though I was only a guest in his home.  That same weekend, his sister-in-law was being treated for breast cancer, so their anxiety level was even higher than usual.  Yet, despite that fact, they still let me stay there.  After our conversation, I finished the note to the family, now with even more for which to be appreciative.

Before we left, I slid the note under the telephone on the counter.  As we were walking out the door, I saw Mrs. Pathak find the note and pick it up to read it.  Mr. Pathak led us out the door and down the stairs to a taxi so he could tell us how to get to the bus station.  I gave Mr. Pathak a hug and again thanked him profusely for everything.  His wise eyes smiled as his strong hand shook mine.  I was just about to get into the taxi when I looked up.  In the third floor window I saw Mrs. Pathak smiling, one hand holding the note, the other waving goodbye.  She was mouthing a thank you.

Journal 9: In a Word, Existence

These are the easy ways out, human coping mechanisms designed to make us comfortable with ignorance.

But this is only waking life. 

I had a dream near Halloween that was the closest thing to a nightmare I’ve had since I was in high school (I dreamt about a group of mad cows tickling me unceasingly with my arms tied up over my head.  It’s funny until you have one).  Now, dreams are coping mechanisms, and that fact can backfire.  What coping mechanism is available within a coping mechanism?  They make us slaves of the mind, where the unreal becomes the real.

Anyway, the dream:

I don’t know how it led to this moment, but I remember being in India and going into a Mcdonald’s (the fast food here is fine cuisine in comparison to the states).  Since it was around Halloween, there was a special available: people fingers instead of chicken fingers, with blood for dressing.  I placed an order and laughed a macabre laugh with the cashier. 

As in many dreams, what followed was an abrupt change in setting.  As I turned around, the restaurant wall on one side began crumbling.  The opposing wall opened up into a deep cave.  I looked back at the cash counter and found that the cashier had turned into a demon.  I turned the other direction (the only direction I hadn't turned: between the crumbling walls), my heartbeat steady and my mood unfazed, and saw a mass of dead and semi-dead humans moaning and walking slowly and clumsily towards me.  They were men without hands asking for money.  I dropped my order of people fingers.  They were legless men pushing themselves forward and then throwing their backs on the ground, flaunting and flinging their stumps in a desperate attempt to extract pity for money.  They were women holding their jaundice-infected children gazing at me with their yellow eyes, making motions towards their mouth asking for food, as if they were trying to take the very air around them and eat it.  I soon realized that I wasn’t just in a cave, but more like a slum that was dug up by a giant bulldozer from the depths of Mumbai and placed in the middle of a cave.  But the scene was now a horror film.  Every terrifying thing seemed magnified in intensity, yet I didn't flinch.  I couldn't flinch.  It was not a matter of will.

A dark angel appeared in place of where the cash counter was, up on the wall.  I began speaking to her.  I said that I wasn’t afraid of what was around me.  I was angry.  Feeling short of the proper words, I said that what I saw was just of the flesh.  I said there was beauty somewhere beneath it.  There was a deeper meaning.  She said, “Don’t run from reality. To not accept reality for what it is is pure hatred.”  I didn’t understand. “How is that hatred?”  I screamed over the agonizing drone of the dead.  But she sat in stoic silence on her throne, high above the starving and mutilated mass of zombie beggars surrounding us.  I kept screaming at her as they closed in on me. 

I woke up, mumbling something incoherently in an abrupt exhalation.  It felt like I screamed, but no one had woken up.  I was sleeping in the same room as two other ACM students.

I thought about what it might mean.  Who knows.  Probably nothing.  But I thought it an interesting idea that not accepting something or someone for what it/he/she really is could be a form of hatred towards that thing or that person.  To over-simplify our existence is to hate our existence; to over-complicate our existence is to hate our existence. 

We should not ask anything from reality when it just is.  You don’t ask the mountains to move when you are trying to get to the other side.  You make your way up the bitter cold and rocky face of the mountain and experience the despair of the ranges’ valleys and the salvation of its peaks, or you have to turn back or fly over it, 30,000 feet from the ground.   Gravity pulls us towards reality, towards earth and each other.  We push back.  This contest of forces is completely necessary for any sort of stability, just as the resistance of reality is necessary for our sanity.  That’s why we need stories, religion (and science, I might add), art, entertainment, and social interactions.  We can’t crumble under the weight of the atmosphere, just as flying past the thermosphere will freeze a plane and eventually send it soaring into outer space.  I suppose we collectively have to respect reality by experiencing it holistically, even the atrocities that we have brought into it (and believe me, we are the ones that bring into life all that we can’t bear to experience).  The best life for an individual is a balanced life, as Plato and Aristotle have both aptly pointed out.

Now I’m sure you might be wondering how I explain the fact that many people, including myself, experience the atrocities of existence vicariously through the suffering of others, as in this dream-which-was-not-all-really-a-dream.  Of course, the best life is the balanced life of one who is able to experience this suffering (to a very limited degree)  it but is still able to get away from it and experience the greener side.  Most of the world doesn’t have this option.  What about them?

Well, my privileged friend: balance both your lives by helping them.

How’s that for an oversimplification of existence?

Journal 8: News Articles and Quick Summaries

However, that’s not to say I haven’t had moments where I have really wanted to write.  I suppose I would say that my ability to express them in a timely manner is becoming increasingly difficult.  Here’s a quick overview, a to-do list if you will, of the moments and periods of the past few weeks about which I wanted to write or should have wrote, but couldn’t:

• Weekend in Goa
• More about the train rides
• Going to Mumbai/utter cultural confusion/drama drama drama
• Our research projects and the caste system
• Going to a slum
• Meeting Dalit college students and talking about American hip-hop music
• Meeting an Afghan exchange student and talking about the war
• Meeting a Sudanese exchange student and not feeling the tension that would have existed had we been in the U.S.
• My experience of the Indian educational system
• My bhau getting his thumb cut off by his motorcycle engine
• Pink eye
• Parasites
• Near-death experiences
• Awkward friendship with an Indian in Pune
• Sufjan Stevens, a candlelit Hindu shrine, and my resolution to read the New Testament during Winter Break

As you can see, it hasn’t been easy for me to narrow these down to one blog.  But that gives you some idea of what’s been happening.  I hope that I will be able to blog about all of these at some point, but for now I'll just post a couple of news dispatches that I wrote for The Knox Student back home.  Here they are in order:

September 23, 2010:

Hello Knoxites,

Approximately three weeks ago, I landed in Mumbai, India, where the smells of rubbish heaps hover over one side of the city while the other side shimmers with Bollywood glamour. I’ve heard it said that Mumbai is a city that looks like it was never finished: it has construction throughout the city, potholes mar the roads, which look like they were put together by accident or sheer coincidence, businesses are run out of garages and tents, and at 3 am, those without homes who aren’t digging up pavement are sleeping in auto-rickshaws and on roadsides.

Needless to say, it was in Mumbai that I had my first experience of India. I should point out, however, that this was Old Mumbai, not New Mumbai, which is far more clean and ‘modernized’. The government created a new part of the city, distinguished from the old by the backwaters of the Arabian Sea. Urban expansion is happening so quickly in India that before long one can imagine that Mumbai and Pune, which is three hours away from the former, will just be one gigantic city. While now I am in Pune, much of the environment is similar to Mumbai. 

Anyway, for my first ‘ambassador’ report to you all, I thought I’d just let you know some things that have first stood out to me as the biggest cultural adjustments. First of all: the traffic. Traffic regulations here are more suggestions than laws; the sheer number of cars on the road alone makes regulation almost impossible. The way that most people survive the overwhelming congestion is by communication rather than by regulation.  You use your horn, your lights, and your eyes. For example, on most large trucks here there is painted “HORN PLEASE OK”, and boy, do people listen. Being stuck in traffic in Pune sounds like being assaulted by an army of circus performers, as many of horns of larger vehicles have quirky melodic themes to them. Also, fun fact: when you put an Indian-manufactured automobile in reverse, it plays a melody of your choice to warn those around you that you are backing up. The other day I was walking through my neighborhood and heard my neighbor backing out of his driveway to My Heart Will Go On.

Second, the cleanliness and hygiene. As many of you probably know, most Asian countries don’t use toilet paper. They wash, we wipe. I had an interesting experience when I was first introduced to this concept, but I won’t go into here (it’s posted on my blog, if you’re interested). Indians also generally eat with just their hands.  It is important to note that they eat with their right hand, not their left, which is considered unclean because of the aforementioned practice. So technically, the system is very hygienic, although it may not seem that way to the average wiping-westerner.

Third and lastly, organization, punctuality and bureaucracy.  The conception of time here is much different than in America.  Being on time often means being ten minutes late.  This can be seen at multiple levels, not just with individuals. For example, it took our group five hours to be registered with the police.  Our teachers here often come into class as late as fifteen minutes behind schedule.

Of course, there are just as many, if not more, similarities as there are differences between India and the U.S.  A common saying I’ve heard here is that for everything that is true about India, the opposite is also true.  There are also many amazing things and more profound adjustments that I am experiencing here that are a bit more difficult to put into words right now.  I will continue to update on these adjustments in TKS and on my blog at www.xanga.com/sabledog.  All in all, everything is amazing here and I wish I could express it in so many words, but I can’t.  Hope all is well in Galesburg!  I miss Knox like a kid with a fast-metabolism misses cake.  All the best!

Sam

***

October 6, 2010:

It seems that time moves twice as quickly here.  So this article is a week overdue and there’s a lot to say. I suppose, though, things are smoothing over and I’m in something resembling a routine, although there is never a dull moment.

A lot has happened since the last article. A lot of unfortunate things, in fact. One girl has gone back to the U.S., there have been a lot of sicknesses going around, I got into a rickshaw accident, etc.  Nevertheless, we’re alive, and despite the chaotic and somewhat precarious turn of events in the program, I’m finding ways to take the randomness as it comes. Here and perhaps everywhere, it’s best to expect nothing and embrace everything right now. Otherwise, you’ll be lost and forgotten underneath the one billion voices fighting to be heard.

That is, if you are Indian. It’s actually near impossible to be lost and forgotten here when you have white skin. In fact, your chances of being heard and listened to are magnified by it. You see it when you stroll right into the luxurious Taj Hotel in Mumbai as an American while right outside Indians sleep just beyond the security check; or when you pass by a group of rickshaw wallas you’ve never seen before as they yell over each other asking you where you’d like to go and gesturing for you to please take a seat in their three-wheeled homes; or when you walk down the street of a slum where people reach out just to touch your hand.  One can find skin-whitening creams in most pharmacies.  Billboards and Bollywood stars showcase skin tones that are pale in comparison with the general populous.  The evidence of white privilege isn’t hard to find here. 

While India is quite socially welcoming to visitors, it does not go easy on them (or its own people, for that matter) physically or emotionally.  The pollution in the urban areas here is so bad it is said to take ten years off of a man’s life. There are virtually no street signs; even people that live here oftentimes cannot tell you what street something is on. The sicknesses that spread around the country are some of the nastiest ones in existence. 40% of the population of Pune (whose population is 3 million) lives in the slums.  The country is massively overpopulated (1/6 of the world’s population lives here on a land mass about half the size of the US, people), which makes it near impossible to ever be alone. And, most frustrating of all, right when you think you’ve figured India out, there’s another contradiction waiting around the corner to assure you that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

On the other hand, India has a culture that is so respectful of humanity and the natural world, so beautifully complex, so old, that all these difficulties vanish, especially when you begin to actually have conversations with Indians themselves. You would be hard pressed to find people in this world that make you feel more welcome in their home country than Indians.  My host family (mostly my mother) tells me frequently that it is their duty to serve their guests well.  The humanitarian characteristics of the culture can be found even in the languages themselves and their practice.  Most Indians are at least familiar with three languages: their local language (usually their mother tongue), Hindi (national language), and English.  English is usually spoken fluently only by the upper educated classes, although most Indians in urban areas know at least broken English.  It would not be inaccurate to assume that this multi-lingual background reflects the guiding principles of pluralism and co-existence in the culture.

Also, interestingly enough, in Marathi (the local language here), there is no word for “to have” or “to possess”. There is only the literal translation of the phrase maadjyakaade ahe, which is, “is near to me”. Similarly, I do not “have” a sickness; rather, a sickness “comes to me” (malaa alo).  Not even having a word to distinguish what’s mine vs. what’s yours operates under a philosophy of selflessness and sacrifice.

Now it’s time to fall asleep to the monsoon rains outside my window.  It seems that in all of India’s unpredictability, those rains are something I can always count on.

***

October 20, 2010

This past week was Navratri (nine nights), in which nine different forms of Shiva are worshipped and no one is allowed to eat eggs.  I’m not sure why this is yet, but I’ll let you know when I am. My homestay doors are still decorated with flowers and the floors with intricate Hindu murals made from rangoli, a sticky powder-like substance.  Songs sung in unison echo throughout our flat and into the city as families do puja for the last time.

Alas, now the holiday is over, and it’s go-time for our research projects. 

Now since my research is on the Hindu caste system, and since the caste system is still a huge part of Indian society (even though it was ‘abolished’ 60 years ago), I think it would be good to attempt to explain roughly how it works. While infinitely more complex than this explanation, it is basically divided into four varnas, corresponding (as it was explained to me) with the parts of the body: Brahmins (intellectual and priestly caste; associated with the head/brain), Kshatriyas (warrior and kingly caste; associated with the chest/arms/upper body) Vaishyas (merchant caste; associated with the genitals and therefore materialistic desires), and the Shudras (service caste; associated with the legs and therefore toil and labor). Below the Shudras and outside the cycle of reincarnation are the Untouchables, or the Ati-Shudras. These are associated with the feet, which in Indian culture is considered the vilest part of the body. In fact, if you accidentally touch another person with your foot, there’s a specific gesture you are expected to do in order to apologize in which you put your hand on your heart while looking down, extend your hand outwards, and then bring it back towards your heart. Many foreigners mistake caste as similar to class, when it is not really like it at all. With class, you have mobility. Caste, on the other hand, is something you’ve inherited from birth, and it is your duty or dharma to follow your caste’s regulations until you die. If you do not, you end up an outcaste of society. This is, interestingly enough, how the Untouchable community was created. They are all descendants of those who greatly violated their dharma when they were in a higher caste, and were therefore rejected from the caste system altogether.

I’m doing research on Dalit feminist literature (songs and poetry) and the caste system in the state of Maharashtra. The term ‘Dalit’ literally means “the oppressed”, and it is the title now preferred by one of the groups in Indian society that were once known as Untouchables. Caste was partly divided according to occupation, and the Untouchables traditionally were the ‘caste’ that disposed of human feces, cleaned floors and swept streets, and disposed of the dead. The Dalits are still suffering under incredibly inhumane treatment in rural areas. In urban areas, if you ask most people on the street here that will understand your English about the caste system, they will say that it was abolished at independence and it’s no longer an issue today, while there are actually entire slums of Dalits living on the other side of the city where you will find virtually no upper-caste Brahmins. It is similar to the way in many Americans talk about racism as if it were a problem existing only in pre-1960’s America, while urban low-income areas tell a very different story. The Dalit movement represents the attempt to abolish the caste system completely and liberate the Untouchable community, as well as to facilitate Dalit culture and expression.

So now you know a little bit more about the caste system. Like most religious practices and dogmas, it is an indubitably awe-inspiring, complex, and absolutely horrifying human achievement that many people are trying to reform while still maintaining their religious culture. In the end, it seems the struggle is not all that much different than the one we all are having with the eminent approach of modernity.

Be well, Galesburg.  Namaskaar.