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.