Indian Routines, or Lack Thereof

Is it ever possible to be truly settled here? I keep telling people that I'm still settling-in, that my routine isn't cemented yet, that I'm waiting for my initial busy-ness to calm down.... It seems like a never-ending refrain, and given the metamorphosing quality of my schedule here, I can't imagine a week where I'm not rolling with some unexpected punches. Everyone said India was unpredicatable, but no one ever told me my routine would be as well.

There hasn't been a single day since I posted last with a fully repeating schedule. I started off taking shared auto-rickshaws to work. Then, with my new purchase of a bike, that changed. I biked one route. I biked a different route. I biked to the office and the center in the same day. I went only to the office. I went only to the center. I left work early. I came to work late. I didn't go to work at all. I got sick. I got better. I thought by now I'd be "settled." But, clearly, I was mistaken.

I've now been to Guria's non-formal education center a handful of times. Much fewer than I would have liked, but, as I said, it's clear that India controls these things, not I. Nevertheless, I appreciate each and every time that I have gone and am always looking forward to next time. I arrive at the center and am immediately greeted by a room full of excited, often screaming, children. The room clamors with their calls of namaste ma'am! and they all beckon for me to sit next to them, calling out ma'am, ma'm, here! From there, things can go a million different ways (although I'm sure a concrete number of ways will become apparent once I've spent more time there). Sometimes it is time for art, sometimes games, other times sports, and, at times, a free-for-all that translates in to a small mass of kids clambering for my attention.

Communication can be comical, but I understand just enough that, for now, the energy, excitement and enthusiasm of the kids can fill in the blanks. Some things, however, get stuck on one side of the Line of Communication, weighed down by too many unknown words and no amount of men nehin samajti hoon ("I don't understand") can unstick them. That, mostly, is when things get frustrating, and as patience is not a virtue of mine, I have to constantly remind myself to be satisfied with incremental improvement in my Hindi - and my relationships with the kids. There are so many of them - ranging from toddlers to about my age - all with names I've never heard before, which has made learning them quite difficult, but the kids seem to intuit this problem and continuously remind me their names. Besides playing kabaddi with them, drawing elephants, camels and sadhus on command, and embarrassing myself trying to replicate their Bollywood dance moves, I will hopefully start taking over some of the typing classes, a smaller setting in which I hope to get to know the older kids better.

My goal is to go to the office and the center every day, but even with my newly found affinity for biking, that is still a 24 kilometer circuit, so it's something I'm working my way up to. I always hated biking in traffic at home, so with the jigsaw puzzle traffic, ubiquitous collisions, short stops, stubborn cows, herds of water buffalo, and general unpredictability here in Benares, I was quite nervous before my first eight kilometer stretch from the program house to the office. What I discovered, however, is that that best way to deal with the traffic is to join it. There is so much more freedom in biking here than in walking - and I would say much more freedom in biking here than in biking in the states. You are simply another part of the many-faceted traffic, and with an eye over your shoulder and an eye up ahead, you can slide in and out of traffic, past the incredibly annoying cycle rickshaws and onward through crazy intersections, just another bike among thousands. That's not to say that I've never hit impassable intersections, been unceremoniously cut off by motorcyclists (always), stopped short by a cow, or had near-collisions (the bruise on my arm may beg to differ with the "near") with crazy rickshaw drivers, but it's all just part of the experience - and, even more importantly, it means that I have the ability to go wherever I want in Benares whenever I want, delving deeper and deeper in to life here.

Although the majority of my time is spent on a bike, at work, in Hindi class or asleep, we have had the opportunity to involve ourselves in other parts of Indian culture. Last weekend, we went to a dandia, which is traditionally an Indian dance done with sticks, but the event that we found ourselves in attendance of was clearly dandia for the year 2012. We arrived in a rather non-descript part of town, with a beacon of light coming from a set of bouncer-guarded doors that opened on to an long walkway, draped in richly colored cloth and twinkling lights. At the end of the walkway, feeling as though we had just walked down the red carpet to the Oscars, we found ourselves in a huge, enclosed outdoors space, surrounded by endless tables of food, flashing lights, vibrating music, and crowds of people dressed in their finest, draped in rich silks and sparkling embellishments and laden down with armfuls of bangles and elaborate ornamental jewelry. It was difficult to do anything but stand there, dumdfounded, thinking what is this place? After making our way through all the food stations (twelve meal-sized appetizers and deserts, as well as one many-tabled "main meal" station), we found our way to the dance floor. Armed with two sticks per person and no knowledge of the traditional dandia dance nor any current dance moves, we danced the night away, drawing a lot of attention to ourselves, as well as more accomplished dancers who tried to, rather unsuccessfully, teach us by example. Eventually abandoning our sticks and fully embracing the current Bollywood hits blasting from the speakers, we all discovered our newfound love for this incomprehensible phenomenon - dandia.

In a week of festivities kicked off by dandia, Navratri, Dashera and Bakri Eid followed. Navratri is actually a nine night festival which had started the previous week, but it was only after dandia that we took part in the festivities praising Durga, the supreme goddess to which the holiday is dedicated. On Monday night, we went on a "Durga pooja" walk, driving all across Benares and stopping at the best and biggest Durga shrines. At nine o'clock at night, when the city is us ually going to sleep, the Durga-dedicated enclaves were loud and bustling. Massive temples made from metal frames and wrapped in cloth, erected just for the nine days of Navratri, gave the impression that they were ancient, intricately carved buildings. Inside these optical illusions, tightly packed masses of people crowded in to see the towering, larger than life statues of Durga. The air clamored with the sounds of prayers, of music blasting from invisible loudspeakers, and of the rustling of hundreds of shuffling bodies. Insence-laden smoke swirled out in tendrils from golden lamps. Outside the temples, it looked like a fair-ground, with strands of holiday lights draped across buildings and strung out overhead, flashing, twinkling, and making the normally drab night-time streets of Benares glow with color. All around the temples, and spread out among the crowds of people, were stands of food vendors selling fare ranging from chaat and golgappa to popcorn, peanuts, momos and ice cream. The Indian festival season was in full swing.

After two consectutive nights of celebration, we had one night off, and then on Wednesday, it was back to festivities with the arrival of Dashera. The source for Dashera is in the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic important to Hindus (although whether it has actual religious significance is up for debate). The Ramayana tells the story of Ram, the paradigmatic Indian hero, and the kidnapping of his wife, Sita, by Raven, the evil devil-king of Sri Lanka. In short (because the Ramayana is still on my to-read list), Dashera celebrates the day on which Ram killed Raven, ending his life with a fiery arrow blessed by god. In rememberence of this, on Dashera, all across India, effigies of Raven are lit on fire, exploded, and shot with arrows. Thus, on Wednesday night, we made our way to Lanka where a 50 foot tall statue of Raven towered over the packed streets, and hawkers laden with pinwheels, bows and arrows, and toy swords pushed their way through the crowds. We waited in anticipation of the main event as fireworks exploded across the sky. Suddenly, struck by a fiery arrow, Raven's head went up in flames. Spurred on by the small explosives stuffed inside, Raven's effigy was soon fully ablaze. Moments later, a pile of smoldering ashes lay where the 50 foot devil-king had once stood.

Then, this past Saturday marked the start of Bakri Eid, a Muslim holiday that commemorates what in Judaism is called akeidat yitzchak, also known as the "binding of Isaac" - or when Abraham was told by god to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but at the last minute was told to sacrifice a ram instead. The difference between the Jewish and Muslim tradition, however, is that in Islam, it is Ishmael, Abraham's other son (who is generally considered to be the forefather of Islam), who Abraham almost sacrificed. Thus, on Bakri Eid, Muslim families slaughter rams (or animals similar to rams) in commemoration of Abraham's sacrifice. In India, Pakistan and Bagladesh, goats are typically the animal of choice, and thus the name used for the holiday in those countries - Bakri Eid - comes from the Urdu word for goat. Wealthy families, apparently, will slaughter camels or water buffalo instead (quite a feat if you've ever seen a water buffalo or the size of the camels that have been wandering the streets around here).

Braced for the slaughter, we headed over to the home of Bridge Year's Urdu teacher (for those people who decide to learn Urdu as the year progresses) to witness his family's observance of Bakri Eid. As we walked in the door and he welcomed us, we were all prepared to be sat down, prepped for the slaughter, given time to gather ourselves and then, with emotions in check, lead to watch the slaughter of the first goat. But as soon as Salman welcomed us and started to lead us in to the house, we were informed that "the slaughter is already in progress." To me this meant that perhaps the first goat was already out there with a knife at its neck, but as soon as I got a glance into the house's small courtyard, I realized this was not the case.

If you're squeamish, I suggest that you skip the next paragraph.

Covering the stone floor of the courtyard was the carnage of dead goats. Glazed eyes, heads unnaturally bent back, and pools of red, red blood flowing slowly in to the drain. At first, the image was quite jarring, like the scene of a massacre flashed across news headlines. But the goats were dead - there was nothing to be done for them - and there had been nothing sadistic about their killings. It was only our minds, racing, looking for associations, trying to label and categorize what it was seeing, that gave the scene an eerie feel. But as we stood there, watching, acclimating, fascinated, and the men began to transform the carnage in to food, cutting, skinning, disemboweling, and cleaning, what had appeared to be a bloody mess became and organized, logical process for obtaining food. The most interesting part of the process was when the internal organs came out; it was almost unfathomable to me that the non-descript, mushy mess in front of my eyes had been able, moments before, to sustain a living being, and that I, too, sitting there, breathing, talking, thinking, watching, was alive and running due to the very same internal mush. If there was anything religious about the experience, it was that realization.

It was only after witnessing this process repeated for several goats that we saw the actual goat slaughter. Salman's family was slaughtering thirteen goats overall - the ideal is one for every person in the household, but between the several families participating in this joint venture, even with thirteen goats, they had not quite reached that goal. Having already seen what "after the slaughter" looks like, we were much more prepared to watch what was coming. We watched as three more goats were slaughtered. Again, you had to dissociate what was happening in front of you from the normal associations the brain makes with death and killing. The eerieness of slaughter comes from associating it with people, rather than thinking of it as a method of acquiring food. Obviously, some vegetarians may disagree, but people who eat meat have to admit that slaughter is an integral part of the process of obtaining food, a procedure that is quite different from the non-technical meaning of the word "slaughter," the one with which our brain most commonly associates. This is not at all to say that I enjoy watching animals be slaughtered, but I thought it was an important, interesting and edifying experience to have, not to mention that being part of a Bakri Eid celebration was an intersting experience in and of itself.

Now, with a short break from the festivities, I'm catching my breath before the biggest celebration of all - Diwali.

Happy festival season, all!

Benares

Benares! What do I say? We arrived here just about two weeks ago (!!) after a very long, very Indian, overnight train ride. We chained down our bags and were stuffed a bit like sardines in to little berths piled one atop another. We were woken up by the violent shaking of the train, arguments in the hallway, and one of a million different hawkers yelling their product's name. We drank chai from little disposable clay vessels and tossed the cups out the door. We had an Om Shanti Om dance party - much to the amusement of our Indian compartment-mate. And then, many, many, hours later, we arrived in Benares. Back to the heat. Back to the crowds. Back to the dust. Back to sensory overload.

Thankfully, it took hardly any time at all to realize that Benares is not Delhi, as we had feared. Benares has the same traffic, the same dust, the same smells and the same pollution, and yet it is different. Delhi was a bit like living in the presence of a monster - unpredictable, unfathomably large, and too intimidating to be lovable. Benares - while there are certainly places I far prefer over others - is more like a person - with its own heartbeat, personality and flair. It can be finnicky, but there are always beautiful places to be found, friendly people to talk to, and adventures to be had.

We spent our first two nights at our program house, which is directly on one of the ghats (more on ghats in a bit), and is beautiful. We have two floors, a garden, and a balcony that overlooks Ganga-Ji (the Ganges River). Over the next seven months, the program house will be the place where we eat breakfast, listen to speakers, have sleepovers and do any other group activities. Our nights at the program house, despite its beauty, were a pretty brutal reminder that we are in India - where resources can be scarce and infrastructure poor and, as far as Benares goes, that means there isn't power for much of the day and frequent power outages the rest of the time. Our power went out in the middle of the night both nights, signalled to us by the horrible sound of whirring fan blades winding to a stop. It took mere seconds for our room to turn in to an oven, precluding all chances of us having a good night's sleep. Instead, tossing and turning. And sweating. And tossing. And turning. And very little sleeping.

Since then, however, I have very few complaints (other than the frequency with which I get dehydrated - it's so hot here!). We spent our first week visiting all the available service sites, wandering through the roads and alleyways of Benares, sitting on Assi Ghat, watching a fire pooja from a boat on Ganga-Ji, avoiding collisions with cows and herds of water buffalo (difficult), frequenting a cafe called Open Hand, making Samosas, watching Bollywood movies, and attending Hindi class with the venerable Virendra-Ji.

Here's a run-down of what our Benares looks like. Bordering one side of the city is the Ganges River, along which, running from north to south, are the 88 original ghats. Ghat, in Hindi, means stairs, which is exactly what they are. Each ghat is a very wide set of stairs which descends down in to the river. When the river is high, during and after monsoon season, many of the stairs, and even what appear to be small building-like structures, are under water. (That is the case right now, although the water level is receding quickly, which means that soon we'll be able to walk the length of Benares along the river - Yay!) The ghats are primarily where people go to bathe in Ganga-Ji (which, by the way, is an inviting milky brown color, full of pollution, parasites and the ashes of cremated bodies - and the odd corpse as well), but many of them are also gathering spots - to eat, to shop, to watch pooja (a Hindu prayer ceremony) - but, for the most part, to simply sit, talk, watch the river, and be with other people - or just yourself. Despite my rather graphic description of Ganga-Ji, it is a beautiful river - to sit by or to take a boat out on. It's wonderful to see the river act as a communal meeting place, a public space that brings people from all over a huge bustling city together. And the fact that the common draw is nothing but the river definitely imbues Ganga-Ji with a certain magic.

Now for important locations: The ghat that our program house is on, Bedhaini Ghat, is a small ghat in a residential area that is reached by a series of alleyways leading from the main street. My home (more about my host family in a bit!) is in the same neighborhood, just a little bit further down the alleys. Alleys that, unfortunately, are commonly blocked by cows which, like all cows in Benares, are completely oblivious to other traffic, whether pedestrian or motorized. Other than my house and the program house, also in my neighborhood is Tyler's homestay. Just a five minute walk away, near Tulsi Ghat, is Mackenzie's homestay. Further down the road, no more than ten minutes from my house is Assi Ghat. Assi is our main hang out area, where there are bookstores and cafes, as well as Nick and Ada's homestays. Assi Ghat is a larger, more lively ghat, with restaurants, vendors and poojas, and is always full of people and various goings-on - definitely a great place to hang out (if you can ward off the little kids trying to sell you things and ignore the locals' stares). South of Assi Ghat are several important things: Virendra-Ji's house, where we have Hindi class, Lanka, an unbelievably busy shopping street, where you can go to buy anything from bikes to clothing, Allen's homestay, and beyond that, Will's homestay.

My homestay is with a wonderful family, the Agarwals, who live in a huge blue house deep in the alleyways near Bedhaini Ghat. My host mom is a teacher at a local school and my host dad is a stock broker by night and saree shop owner by day (Literally. He works really crazy hours because he needs to be in his office when the New York Stock Exchange is open). I have a host brother, Shobit, who is away at college in Lucknow, as well as a host sister, Shubhi, who is in tenth grade and is super nice and helpful, speaks amazing English, and always checks my Hindi homework for me. My parents, on the other hand, hardly speak any English, so luckily I get to practice my Hindi with them. My Hindi is still more practical than conversational so getting to know my parents has been difficult (and I'm also hardly ever at home because of my insane schedule), but I come home every day able to say exponentially more, so I have faith that I'll be chatting away with them soon. Even with the language barrier, my family has been so sweet to me and constantly reminds me that their home is my home and their family is my family.

This past weekend, we all got placed in our service sites, and started work officially on Wednesday. Ada and I are working at Guria, an organization that combats sex trafficking, particularly child sex trafficking, as well as second-generation prostitution. They also work to reduce the social stigma against sex workers and their families. Guria consists of the office and the Non-Formal Education Center, both of which we'll be working at. The Guria Center is located within the red light district of Varanasi (the first child-prostitute free red light district in India, thanks to Guria's actions) and acts as an after-school center for the children of sex workers in the area. The center uses art, medidation, games, and other methods to provide the kids with a safe, happy place to spend time in. They also hope to indirectly influence girls to not resort to prostitution as they get older. (Disclaimer: Because it takes four rickshaws and over an hour to get from the office to the center, and Ada and I don't have bikes yet, we've only been to the center once, but we'll be there more soon!) The office obviously has to do a lot of fundraising and grant writing, but their main project is the rescue of trafficked girls and the prosecution of the traffickers and pimps. Although India has many laws against trafficking, the enforcement is abysmal, and the police are often being paid off by the traffickers. Guria certainly has its work cut out for them. To give you an idea of how severe the problem is: (Ada and I were reading statistics) in 2006 in India, only 5 people were convicted for buying girls for prostitution, 19 for selling girls for prostitution, and 14 for the importation of minor girls, despite the fact that reasonable estimates put the number of child prositutes in South Asia (and India is certainly a hub) at a million. So you can understand why Ada and I are really excited to get involved!

As for my schedule, we have breakfast every day at the program house, after which we all head to our respective service sites. After a full day of service work, we have Hindi for two hours, and then it's home for dinner, and up early again the next morning. In terms of getting to work, Ada and I have an insane commute that consists of shared auto-rickshaw from Lanka to Cantt Train Station, another shared auto-rickshaw from Cantt to Kachari, and then a bicycle rickshaw to Guria. Getting a shared auto-rickshaw at any of the above locations can be a nightmare. Ada and I are typically swarmed by a crowd of rickshaw drivers, all insisting that we have to take a private auto as opposed to a reserved one, all trying to rip us off (some guy yesterday tried to charge us 225 rupees for a route that usually costs 50...we've also had drivers blatantly ask for less money from their Indian passengers and then tell them not to pay until after we've left so that we won't see how little they're paying), and all taking forever to understand where we want to go (half the time, speaking in Hindi seems to actually complicate the situation). Despite that complaint, Ada and I luckily know what typical prices are and how to stand up to the rickshaw drivers that insist on more (I've gotten really good at saying "I pay x amount every day!" in Hindi), so it's not that we've been getting ripped off, but the whole process can seriously take a toll on your mental state. Sometimes, though, you get nice rickshaw drivers who soften up once you start talking in Hindi (two days ago, an auto-rickshaw tried to charge us 50 rupees for a route that normally costs 10, so we went with a bicycle rickshaw, and when I paid him 10, he insisted, "no, 20, the other guy wanted to charge you 50," but when I kept insisting on ten and said, in Hindi, "the other guy was crazy!" he found that really funny and laughed and agreed to 10), or, rarely, ones that will charge you the actual going rate, no questions asked (and give you back change when you expected to pay more).

The worst parts of our mode off transportation? Being squished in the back of a rickshaw with creepy men, inhaling horrible fumes, being deafened by blaring horns, near collisions (for example) between your feet and menacing, sharp metal poles, and, a total travel time one way of an hour plus. (A lot of these problems, thank goodness, will be alleviated when we get bikes.) Even worse, on a bad day, when there are monsoon rains, commute time: two hours. Ada and I were unfortunate enough to have this experience on Wednesday, when, after a terrifying experience with a rickshaw driver who drove like a maniac in an off-roads vehicle, we ran in to a massive traffic jam and were told by our driver to get out of the rickshaw and find our own way because there was no point in sitting in unmoving traffic. Ada and I were several miles from our destination and didn't really have a plan, but it was obvious that our only choice was to walk onward through the traffic. Let me clarify the meaning of "traffic" in this instance. There is always traffic in India and I described it in detail earlier in my blog. At the moment, however, "traffic" means a storefront-to-opposite-storefront traffic jam, with the space in between filled by a tightly interlocking jigsaw puzzle of auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, bikes, motorcycles and cars. And nothing is moving. The reason for the traffic jam? The lakes covering the road. So off Ada and I went, zig-zagging back and forth between all manners of vehicle, squeezing through impossibly tight spaces, and trudging through mid-calf deep, dark brown water, colored by dirt, poop, urine and a lot of trash. The weaving and squeezing and trudging went on for at least a mile and half, after which my pants were soaked and covered in filth and my white dupatta splattered with bacteria-infested mud. If that doesn't sound that bad to you, at one point there was a dead dog in a bag sitting next to us in the water as we trekked though it.

I'm glad to say that we made it through, and I've discovered that I love Benares enough that all the terrible things I've mentioned in this blog post have no impact on how I feel about this city and about being here. It's always interesting, always fun, and always an adventure. The challenges add spice to my experience - as well as a lot of fuel for laughing at the craziness of it all.

Celebration

Written on Sept 21, 2012

These past few days have been a series of celebrations for me, spread widely across cultural and religious spectrums. I partook in festivites marking the 50th anniversary of Happy Valley, the first Tibetan settlement in India and the first place the Dalai Lama came to after he escaped Tibet - festivities that included seeing the Dalai Lama himself. I observed Rosh Hashana with my Bridge Year group, I celebrated my 18th Birthday, and we marked the end of our time in Mussoorie with a deliciously home-cooked meal at my Hindi tutor's home.

Before I was told that we would be seeing the Dalai Lama, I knew what most people know about him - that he's an important religious figure and that he lives in exile from his native Tibet. In preparation for meeting him, we watched a movie about his life, called Kunmun, and between the movie and peppering my program director with questions, my knowledge suddenly grew exponentially in the span of two hours. The Dalai Lama is, traditionally, both the religious leader of the dominant sect of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the political leader of Tibet, itself. (The current Dalai Lama, despite having taken on serious political responsiblity as a teenager, officially stepped down from his political position a few years ago.) Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama reincarnates, and thus, the one that is alive now, the one that we saw, is the 14th Dalai Lama. He was only around thirteen when China invaded Tibet, at which time he was called on to negotiate with the powerful, worldly Mao Zedong, the Communist leader of China at the time. I won't recap the entire movie or everything that I learned, but the basic point is that China was a lot more powerful than the army-less, pacifist nation of Tibet and, for his own safety, the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet in 1959, and hasn't been back since. Likewise, not very much progress has been made in terms of solving the Tibet-China problem, and Tibet continues to be a non-autonomous, Chinese-controlled region.

The most interesting thing that struck me while watching the movie was the issue of maintainting a theocracy - which Tibet was at the time of the Chinese invasion - in the modern world. For centuries, the people of Tibet had been entirely isolated from the rest of the world, and were completely satisfied with their system of governence, as well as lovingly devoted to the Dalai Lama. There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to maintain that tradition in the modern world, no reason why their cultural heritage and traditions should be taken from them; but, at the same time, once outside influence seeps in to Tibet and cultural exchange begins, beliefs and values will begin to shift, and there is no guarantee that a theocracy could continue to be representative of the entire population. And if it isn't, then what? How do those who don't identify unwaveringly with Buddhism or with the Dalai Lama come to terms with living in a country that has both those things at its very core?

After watching Kunmun and learning all these things about the Dalai Lama, it was a surreal experience to see him the very next day, listen to him speak, hear him laugh, and have him walk right beside me. It's difficult to comprehend how compassionate and postive he is without hearing him speak. As far as political and religious leaders go (of which he is/has been both), there is certainly no one in this world with such a pure sense of positivity as he. He spoke to us on the topic of compassion, emphasizing that one does not need to follow a religious code or identify with a certain religion in order to be an ethical human being, and that, furthermore, just because someone follows the rules of a religion, they are not a good person, nor are they a good Buddhist/Christian/Muslim/Jew etc unless they are compassionate, ethical people as well. The most endearing part of his presence was the way his demeanor gave the talk a relaxed, intimate atmosphere, as though he were a kind, loveable grandfather, sitting with his beloved grandchildren, telling them stories of the world. He certainly also made a lot of jokes, about himself and about others, heartily laughing all the time his distinct grandfather-ly laugh.

We were also celebrating the 50th anniversary of Happy Valley, a celebration that included a colorful, elaborate, costumed performance of Tibetan "opera." Wearing traditional Tibetan dress, ominous masks and rainbow headresses, the men and women on the stage marched, motioned, stomped and spun to foreboding, drum-laden music. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and even more special because of its true authenticity - we were the only foreigners in a massive tent packed with Tibetans of all ages, Tibetans who ran and jumped, bowed and crowded, asked for blessings and gave gifts as the Dalai Lama walked by - and we were lucky enough to be privy to a performance put on by and for these very people in celebration of their heritage and their most prominent member.

On Sunday night, I had the opportunity to celebrate Rosh Hashana in India. Since we were up the mountains, there wasn't another Jew for miles (other than my program director), and so Debi - my program director - and I celebrated together, and decided to share the celebration with the other members of my Bridge Year group as well. Debi put together an explanation of Rosh Hashana, which she read to everyone, after which we lit candles and all partook in Rosh Hashana customs together, eating apples and honey while Debi and I spoke about what Rosh Hashana means to us. It was really nice to share the holiday with the rest of the group, and being put in a situation where I had to explain Rosh Hashana to others actually made it a more reflective and meaningful Rosh Hashana for me, as I found myself expressing why it was important to me and how I am effected by its observence.

Immediately after Rosh Hashana ended, we launched into yet another celebration - my 18th birthday! It was strange to celebrate it away from home, my family and my friends, but my awesome new Bridge Year friends made it a wonderful celebration, full of delicious food, cake, surprises, gifts, cards and music. In addition to many other wonderful things, I am now the proud owner of beautiful, sparkly (glass) bangles (although less than were originally given to me, as it didn't take long before I broke a few, injuring myself in the process), the remaining of which are all currently adorning my arm. Mostly however, it was really nice to have people I've known for only a month - and some for less time than that - come together to celebrate with me, and to create such a wonderful celebration on my behalf.

The last celebration of the week took place at our Hindi tutor's house: At our last class, Yousef invited us to dinner at his home, an invitation that we took advantage of last night. It was a really special invitation to recieve because this obviously is not something he does for his other students, and also, considering the size of our group relative to the size of his home, it was quite an offer. I can say without a doubt that my entire Bridge Year group would agree that Yousef is the most interesting, thoughtful, endearing person we have met so far on this trip. He speaks with such candor and open-mindedness, but also with such conviction in his beliefs. We all sat together cross-legged on the rug-adorned floor of his bed-living-dining room and ate the most delicious meal we have had so far on this trip. I am proud to say that I ate for the first time with no silverware at all, even when we briefly ran out of chapatti (a flat, pita-like bread that is torn and used to scoop up the other food), at which point I followed his lead and simply pinched up my paneer with my fingers, plopping the delicious pieces in to my mouth. Although I can't say that I've mastered the hands-only technique when it comes to a soupier substance such as rice and dal, I'm well on my way! As always, it was really interesting to listen to Yousef speak, particularly about taking on responsibilities as head of the household after his father passed away, finding husbands for his sisters, and about his own arranged marriage, as well. It turns out that Yousef may be able to visit us in Banares later in the year, so we're all really looking forward to that!

And now, post celebration-mania, we're off to Benares, about to delve back in to real India and begin our gap year for real.

(pictures to come once I find a better internet connection)

Religion, Roaming and Rain

The week before last, our Hindi tutor, Mohammed Yousef Ansari, a lifetime Mussoorie resident and a professor at the Woodstock School, offered to take us to his mosque, show us around, and talk to us a little about Islam, as well as specifically about Islam in India. This past Sunday morning, we took him up on that offer and met him in town, in front of our group's favorite chai and sweet shop. From there, he walked with us to his mosque, pointing out his house along the way. A couple days later, at our tutoring session with him, we got to talking about house prices in Mussoorie, and Yousef told us that his home, which from his description seemed to be in total about the size of one of my high school classrooms, would sell for two million rupees, about $40,000. That may not seem like a lot when you compare it to house prices back home, but when you think about the size, the relatively poor upkeep of the surrouding area, and the fact that the average meal price for most Indians is somewhere around a dollar, two million rupees becomes an unbelievably steep price. Yousef told us that even he, on his middle-class salary of around 40,000 rupees a month, or a bit less than $9,000 a year, would never have been able to afford his house if it hadn't become his by inheritence. In a city like Mumbai, he told us, some one living on his salary would probably still be living in a slum. It is unbelievable to me that India, a country with a relatively weak currency, filled with millions of unimaginably poor people, and even more importantly, a middle-class that earns an average amount far below the poverty line in America, would have such an explosively expensive real estate market.

Yousef also explained to us that soon after India gained independence, a law was passed that made it almost impossible to remove a tenent once they have lived in a certain property for more than three years. This law was inacted to protect the almost 99 percent of Indians who didn't own property from the few very wealthy people who did. The law also dictated that rent could only be raised at a rate of 5 percent every so many years. Nowadays, this law means that people often become unable to utilize their own property and, as a result, it is very difficult for Indians to find homeowners willing to rent to them, as they much prefer renting to foreigners who they know will move out in a number of years and won't hold their property hostage for generations. Additionally, since the permitted rent increase doesn't even come close to matching the inflation rate in India, the law also means that in a case like Yousef's, where part of his family home was originally rented out by his grandfather 50 years ago, he now pays many times more in property tax than he recieves in rent. Yousef and his brothers, after marrying and starting families of their own, came to need the entire house, and in order to make use of the property they own, they ended up having to pay bribes to their tenants' lawyers, pay their own lawyers, and finance 80 percent of the purchace price of a new house for their tenants. The total amount of money they spent could have purchased an entire new house for themselves, but without being able to increase their tenants' rent in the old house, they were losing too much money, and thus found themselves stuck in a catch-22.

At the mosque, Yousef sat down with us on the criss-cross of woven mats covering the floor, and began to talk to us about the five pillars of Islam, its different rituals, its holidays and its prayer schedule. Afterwards, he demonstrated for us one set of the traditional prayer positions, beginning standing, going through all the different bowing motions, and ending up on his knees. Even though I had heard many times about the similarities between Islam and Judaism, I found it really interesting to hear about these similarities from Yousef as he told us about what he felt were the basics of Islam: Yousef spoke about how prayer is a time-regulated, more than once a day activity, and about how the daily prayer times change as sunrise and sunset changes. He also spoke about beginning to fast during Ramadan at the age of 13, and about how women, unlike men, are not required to pray at a mosque.

Yousef told us that Islam in India is the world's largest minority, but that it is also India's poorest minority. The majority of the Indian Muslim community works low-paying labor-intensive jobs. He said that he worries about sending his children to Muslim "sunday schools" because it is environments such as those, full of the destitute and the hopeless, that breed extremist thought.

For a brief interlude, before I talk about the Jain temple that Yousef took us to next, here are pictures of the adorable and fascinatingly human-like monkeys that were practically swarming the area outside of the mosque (and that, in general, are constantly roaming the streets of Mussoorie):

The Jain temple, just down the road from Yousef's mosque, with its intricate carvings, clean white exterior, marble floors and gold decoration, clearly serves a much wealthier (and, in fact, much smaller) population than its neighboring mosque. Yousef knew the Jain "priest" well and translated for us as he spoke a little about Jainism. Jainism originated in India and has many similarities to Hinduism, although it has its own gods and holy book. One of Jainism's most significant tenets is non-violence, including against animals, and even insects. While we were at the temple, we witnessed a family come in and complete a Jain prayer ritual, which included offering rice, saffron rice, cardamom, cloves and almonds to the god, an intricate, fully gold buddha-like figure, sitting impressively in an alcove in the wall.

The beautiful domed ceiling of the Jain temple

This past week, unfortunately, did not include any such explorations, but we did fall in to a good routine, a busy, walking-intensive, elevation fluctuating one. I'm sure that I've never walked so much in my life, and certainly not if you factor in the significant portion of our daily trekking that involves near-vertical inclines. At first, having to do these walks at an elevation of more than 7,000 feet was taking its toll on my lungs, and now, well, it still is, but I've come to appreciate how active we are, and how self-sufficient winding up and down mountainsides makes me feel. It's true, I still hate the inclines, but the 2.5 mile walk in to town now feels like a standard stroll, and in fact, is one of my favorite things about about being here - mostly because every single time I walk in to town, despite the fact that it is the same single road-route every time, I can't leave without my camera; there is always something new and interesting to see, always something I missed on a previous walk, always something I'm seeing in a new light, literally and figuratively.

It's been really amazing to have a growing sense of independence here, whether in terms of my language, navigation, or other skills. In terms of language, I'm finding my limited vocabulary and grammar skills slowly combining and allowing me to, if only briefly, express myself in Hindi, rather than English. Just yesterday, I found myself asking the Woodstock School chef, "kya yeh veg hai?", "is this veg (the bizzarely cute word used ubiquitously instead of vegetarian)?" Earlier this week, when I was at the tailor's being measured for my first-ever custom-made kurta (an experience similar to being a little child in a candy shop, in which I got to pick out material from stacks upon stacks of options, sift through millions of types of trim, and dictate how I wanted it all put together), he had me write my name down on his list of measurements and asked me if I could do it in Hindi script. I did, successfully, and he looked down at the paper and asked, "Hannah?"

Another big portion of our stay in Mussoorie is the work we've been doing at the Turner Organic Garden. The walk down to it every afternoon is daunting and I can't say that the time we spend there is among my finest moments, but it is really nice to contribute and be active. Our group tends to split up in to the weed-ers and the machete-ers. I started off weeding, but found that I have a lot more fun hacking down all the overgrowth encroaching on viable, plantable land. On Thursdays, we spend some of the time harvesting, which this past week included uprooting, cutting and cleaning lettuce and bok choy. The biggest accomplishment our group has achieved so far (which I have to give most of the credit for to Danesh and Urmila, our overseers at the garden) was building a mini-greenhouse. It was a pretty basic project, consisting mostly of bamboo, string and special plastic tarp, but it was really nice to be able to see the concrete fruits of our labors, as opposed to the more abstract sense of accomplishment that comes with weeding and hacking.

Ada
Photo cred to Tyler Fair 

Nick
Photo cred to Tyler Fair

Photo cred to Tyler Fair

Walk up from the Turner Garden

Walk down to the Turner Garden

I mentioned earlier this post that my favorite thing about being in Mussoorie is the walk in to town, but I have to qualify that statement and say that it's my favorite thing to do here in Mussoorie. What really touches me as the most magical part of Mussoorie (tied perhaps with the clouds) is the monsoons we've been experiencing recently. When we came, we were told that monsoon season seemed to be coming to a close, and the thunderously loud, ground-shaking thunder we experienced several times was limited to the middle of the night. I kept hoping that I would be able to experience one of Mussoorie's notably intense storms during the day, instead of when I was trying to sleep, and yesterday, struck by our first-ever daytime monsoon, I got my wish. It was right after lunch, and suddenly, Woodstock School became one massive shower, every staircase, ramp and wall turning into raging waterfalls, and the ground metamorphosing into an assembly of overflowing lakes, rivers, and tributaries. Standing in the middle of it all was, by far, one of my favorite moments in Mussoorie so far.

Photo cred to Tyler Fair

Photo cred to Tyler Fair

But for the most important information in my entire post: I'm meeting the Dalai Lama tomorrow! Stay tuned:) 

Life in Mussoorie

Now that we've settled in to a routine in Mussoorie, I'm definitely overdue to describe what we've been doing here. We're staying at the Hanifl Center, the outdoor education center of the Woodstock School, a prestigious international school and one of the best in India. Compared to what the rest of our year will be like, we are practically living in the lap of luxury. The toilets still may not flush, the showers don't completely work, we seem to have a spider problem and the internet is pretty testy, but everything else about this place is wonderful! The dorms are clean, the beds are comfortable, the air is fresh, the weather is cool, and, best of all, the scenery is incredible. The best part of every day is waking up and looking out our dorm room window.

After that consistently breathtaking experience, every morning begins with a hike up the side of the mountain (literally) to the Landour Language School, where we take our Hindi classes. The lessons are intense, interesting and a bit intimidating, but definitely also fun. The language school, which specializes in intensive courses - basically like the Hindi version of ulpan - uses a really unique approach (which I'm still unsure how I feel about). Instead of starting by teaching pronouns and basic verbs, they throw piles of common vocabulary words at you ("common" being things like chhota (small), panni (water), qalam (pen), achchha (good) and so on and so forth), and every class (so far) have introduced a new question word (kya - what, kaisa - what kind, kahan - where, etc) and the means of answering it. So we've spent the past few classes mixing and matching vocabulary words in order to answer questions like "mez par kitab kaisi hai?" (what kind of book is on the table?) with "mez par kali kitab hai" (a black book is on the table), and yet, it wasn't until yesterday's class that I even learned how to say I, you, he or she (and still haven't learned we, they etc), and we still don't really know anything about conjugating verbs. But, then again, although the Hindi we're learning doesn't seem to be focused on realistic conversational ability, it is certainly focuses on practicality. After only two days of Hindi classes, we felt completely comfortable walking through town, with the ability to ask key questions like "what is this?" and "where is ____?" and to order X number of chais or sweets.

Unfortunately, Hindi is like no other language I've ever learned and is like nothing I've ever heard before, so although I'm having a lot of fun picking up new vocabulary and hearing exotic-sounding sentences come out of my mouth, I can already tell that the learning curve will be intimidatingly steep. Still, the easiest and the most fun and beautiful part of Hindi for me is the script. It uses an alphabet just like English does (so not characters like Chinese, thank goodness), which is called Devanagari, but just like the Hebrew or Arabic alphabet, looks absolutely nothing like the Roman letters we know. The letters, however, are beautiful, and fun to write, and deciphering them gives you a feeling of accomplishment unlike saying any spoken sentence.

Hindi is always followed by chai and then the walk back down to the Hanifl Center. The middle of the day usually includes lunch and free time, orientation stuff and/or group activities. Starting this past Thursday, the staple of our afternoons became work at the Turner Organic Garden (although I have to admit that I haven't started working there yet due to a minor case of dehydration). The other option for our afternoons/evenings is walking in to town. Which is amazing. To get to town, you just follow the main road as it winds through the mountains and, eventually, stores begin to pop up alongside the street, and then more stores, and more people, until you reach Mussoorie's colorful, bustling center. 

Mussoorie is like Delhi's infant sister. You see the same colors, clothing, dilapidation and liveliness, the same tiny shops, food stalls, and stray dogs, the same narrow streets, nonexistent sidewalks and crazy drivers, and yet, everything is infinitely more calm. Here, crazy drivers means a single car thundering around a curve with complete disregard for other beings in the road, whereas in Delhi it would probably be ten cars, seven motorcycles, five rickshaws, three trucks, two bikes and various pedestrians all attempting that same maneuver. Here, even when it's bustling and the streets are buzzing with people's energy, you still have space, and fresh, unpolluted, crisp-smelling air to yourself. Here, you have all the time in the world to stop and stare and take in the dazzling surroundings.

Our group spends evenings either with a Hindi tutor, at the Woodstock gym, in town, or just hanging out. Ada and I, while both sick in bed, were the first to venture into the wonderfully ridiculous world of Bollywood, watching movies complete with random dance numbers, murder, corruption and reincarnation. We even discovered our first favorite Bollywood songs/dances, which I'll post here for you to enjoy as well:)  

Until next time,

H

A Journey Between Two Extremes

Written on Sept 2, 2012

The past two days sit in my mind in stark contrast to each other. Yesterday, day two in hot, humid, sweltering Delhi, began with a walking tour of one of Delhi's poorest neighborhoods, an area in which many street kids - children as young as five years old who have run away from home from both near and far - converge. The tour was organized by an organization named Salaam Balak, whose goal is to assist, nurture, educate and provide homes to street kids in Delhi. It was led by a former street kid - a man named Iqbal who, as a five-year old, ran away from home and boarded a train to Delhi in order to escape his parent's abuse, and who, after working some odd jobs and trying to survive on his own found his way to one of Salaam Balak's shelters - all before his seventh birthday. Iqbal - cheerful, optimistic, well-spoken, and full of dreams - asked us all to guess where in India he was from, and after we all threw out the names of the various Indian cities we know, he smiled and told us that even he didn't know the answer to that question.

His tour took us through narrow, damp, fly-filled streets, dotted with hole-in-the-wall barber shops, crumbling buildings, shrines to the Hindu gods, little food vendors, and both the begging and the motionless poor. 

Iqbal then took us to one of Salaam Balak's shelters, a temporary home for boys aged 6-14. The second he brought us into the room in which the boys were gathered, it turned to pandemonium. We were swarmed by the kids, calling out to us "didi, didi!" ("big sister"), reaching out to shake our hands, telling us their names, jumping, climbing, grasping, yelling. They radiated energy, pure and unadulterated, running around the room, bouncing off the walls, meeting each one of us, taking pictures with our cameras and chattering away in Hindi that we couldn't understand. 

In the room, playing with the boys, it would have been impossible to comprehend - and it didn't even really hit me until now - how much life they've lived already. It's not simply that they're poor, that they're living in a shelter, or that they were abused (most likely) - those are problems that we're familiar with in the United States. The thing that is truly impossible to believe is that many of these six-seven-eight year old kids have lived even more life than I have - they've been on their own, traveled across country, lived completely alone, fed themselves, tried to make their own way - and all in a city as congested, hectic and unforgiving as Delhi.

In the afternoon, we walked around Khan Market, what is considered Delhi's upscale shopping area, full of expensive foreign brands, in addition to fancy Indian ones. Even there, despite the extremely apparent difference from the slum-area market - much fewer people, more Western clothing, less trash, better smells - it was still a "marketplace" full of old, crumbling buildings, dirty streets, zig-zags of phone wires, beggers, pollution and a general run-down atmosphere. It was like nothing you would ever expect to see in the nicest neighborhood of a capital city in the United States or Europe. But, from my two days of experience in Delhi, it fit in perfectly there. Delhi, intoxicating, interesting, and overwhelming, is dirty, congested, run-down, a weird mix of sprawling impersonal city and underdeveloped village. It's vast - more vast than you could ever imagine - and filled with more people than you could ever imagine - people that are constantly out and everywhere, walking, driving, biking, working, all going in different directions, all almost colliding, all with nowhere to breathe because even in the open spaces, the air is too dusty (and often smelly) to get a good breath.

Now place that in contrast to the place I am writing from now: on Sunday morning, we took the Shatabdi Express from Delhi to Dehra Dun. The train ride was around six hours and breakfast lasted for at least half, if not more, of the time. Breakfast was a whole affair, with many different courses and rounds of tea periodically being served. Upon arrival in Dehra Dun, we took taxis on an hour ride up through the mountains, the streets gradually narrowing, the turns sharpening, the incline steepening and the cliffs growing. We drove up and up, past signs marking the rising altitude, past monkeys sitting on the side of the road, past little villages full of little school chilren, past lush greenery, all the way until we reached the mist-laced city of Mussoorie.

Mussoorie is where I'll be living for the next three weeks for orientation and intensive Hindi classes - and it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Everywhere you look there is rich green foliage and all surrounding us you can see the verdent mist-shrouded foothills of the Himalayas dotted with little villages and winding roads. The mountainside is unbelievably steep and, looking over the edge of the road, you can see these incredibly deep drops, covered in trees seeming to grow sideways out of the mountain. The most beautiful part of Mussoorie, however, is the mist. Most of the time you can see it moving in wisps right past your face, dancing and swirling as it travels. And boy, does it travel. If you stand, looking out over the mountains you can see the mist moving, rising up like an all-powerful being from the depths of the earth, becoming amorphous, joining with other clouds of mist, shifting, growing, whiting out the sky and the green in a matter of seconds - and then clearing again soon after. At times, when the mist is rising from below, thick and heavy, it feels like you are watching the earth being born, peaks rising out of the thick nothingness of the fog, a wonderous creation emerging out of a steaming pot. 

When you compare this to Delhi, it is difficult to believe that it is even the same country. One is ruled by human needs and the other by the law of nature. One raises your hearbeat, the other calms it. Being able to experience both places in quick succession has been a really amazing lesson in India's diversity and has truly opened my eyes to what India has to offer.

Traffic

This post concludes my first day in India, a colorful, dusty, muggy, intense, loud blur of a day. We arrived at the Tibetan Colony of Delhi late last night after a taxi ride from the airport spent slipping back and forth between lanes, narrowly sliding past nearing trucks, dodging overcrowded motorcycles driving the wrong way, and nearly hitting wayward pedestrians. Walking through the narrow, dim alleyways of the Tibetan Colony, exhausted after a fifteen hour plane trip, I had almost no sense of where I was or what Delhi was like. All I could think about was putting down my 30-pound backpack and taking a nice, refreshing shower. And then I saw the shower. A loose shower-head and a bucket sitting in a bathroom whose door didn't close. But, in the spirit of my trip, one of reevaluating my own standards and embracing a new way of life, I just jumped right in. And a room that, upon first entering, had appeared dirty and dismal, and had caused the mind involuntarily to recoil, suddenly became comfortable and clean.

In the morning, after spending just over a dollar on an exotic tea and a delicious crepe-like pancake, Ada, Mackenzie and I walked around the Colony, cautiously navigating the alleyways, beggars and stares of passerby. If you've ever been to Old Havana, it looks a lot like that: dilapidated buildings with dangerously rusted balconies and uneven cement, dirt-encrusted ground. The only difference is the plethora of tiny street-level shops with neon signs and flashy interiors. At the end of the main, pedestrian-only thoroughfare is a small park, the sky striped with lines of Tibetan prayer flags, the benches dotted with red and orange-robed Buddhist monks.

Soon drenched in sweat, we returned to the hotel for a briefing on India and another laughably cheap meal.

It was only after lunch, though, that the action really started. We took a taxi to Old Delhi, where we all hopped on rickshaws for a makeshift "tour." The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Old Delhi, the one word that sums is all up, is the traffic. But not in the LA sense, the unmoving line of vehicles sense; rather, when talking about Old Delhi, traffic is the literal traffic - the many different beings that make up the jigsaw puzzles that swarm the streets. Traffic means rickshaws, motorcycles, trucks, bikes, taxis, business men, old women, young children, teenagers, dogs...all darting in front of one another, edging other beings and vehicles out of the way, stopping short, almost colliding, starting up again, and honking, always honking. It would come as no surprise then when our rickshaw turned in to oncoming traffic or drove the wrong way down the street. That was simply the way things worked.

It is true when I say that the most striking thing about Old Delhi was the traffic. The buildings, the signs, the leaping monkeys, the street vendors serving up what appeared to our safety-briefed eyes to be Giardia-invested delicacies, the many silks and colors were all secondary. But the colors were certainly a close second. Colorful signs and silks, rainbow fruit stands and saris, painted rickshaws and advertisements, all competeing, clashing and combining in to to an overwhelmingly interesting whole.

Through congested thoroughfares and narrow alleyways, our rickshaws fought their ways, yelling and swerving and turning around to try and haggle with us for more money. We left them at the Jama Masjid mosque, a massive, red-stoned, fortress-like building. Upon entering, Mackenzie, Ada and I were unceremoniously wrapped in flower-printed kimono-like robes by a old man with a hawk's-eye for Western (inappropriate) dress. The inside, a huge open square surrounded by minaret-topped prayer rooms, was a people-watcher's heaven. There were groups of women in beautiful saris, packs of men in white prayer robes, little children feeding pigeons and families, wandering.

Then, the staple adventure of Delhi was repeated: another crazy auto-rickshaw ride later, we arrived back at the Tibetan Colony. Time for things like Chai, semi-functioning air conditioners, and people offering to clean out your ears. One day down, and still processing, I leave you with that - very Indian - image.