November

Hello everyone,

Sorry that I have seriously fallen off the wagon. I will try to post more often, but perhaps in smaller and more manageable blurbs.

Today is Thanksgiving for all of you people in the States, and I am so jealous! One thing I miss so badly about home is the variety of food, and thinking about all the food on tables and wonderful family and friends surrounding it is making me more homesick.

I have been having some health issues recently, which has been scary. I went to the hospital here and got an MRI because I was having problems with my vision and bad headaches, and it turns out that there was a buildup of pressure in my brain. However, everything else was normal, and I got some super cool pictures of my brain! How often do you get to see that? I have taken the prescribed medications and things are getting better, but they're not 100% yet. Still waiting with crossed fingers.

In other news, my dad and Troy will be here in ONE WEEK. I am nervous and excited, because I have been looking forward to this for months and months, and now it is actually happening.

I have a lot of strong feelings about everything that is happening now, though, because I can't wait to see my boys, but that also means that the program is coming to an end, and I will have to leave my host family and friends. I am also nervous about re-entry into American culture, because things here are just so drastically different than anything at home, and things like automatically hot water from the tap and fitted sheets will be insane.

Okay, I am off now! I have just finished most of my final papers and such, so this weekend I am planning on doing present shopping. We'll see how it goes!

Love,

Rose

I'm alive!

Hi friends and family! I am alive! I am just lazy.

I will update soon, I promise. This weekend is our Independent travel weekend, and the girls are all going to Orcchha (I'm pretty sure that's spelled incorrectly).

Only six weeks left in the program, and only five until I see my dad and Troy!!

Also I'm 21 now! Woohoo.

Love to all.

October reading

October at last! And in 25 days, I will (finally) be 21! I am excited that I will be allowed into bars. I don’t want to drink anything there, because bars are expensive. But maybe I will just hang out in them for kicks. Another girl in my program has her birthday on October 30^th, so we are thinking of doing a joint birthday dessert night or something. (Also two other girls’ birthdays are on November 11^th and 12^th, so we’ll get to celebrate again!)

Wow I have so many things I want to talk about. I really need to update this blog more, because otherwise my rambling thoughts have even less structure than they normally do. For this post, I am going to make a list: 1. The Namesake. 2. Sarnath. 3. The Ramayana. 4. Slumdog Millionaire. Okay, here goes! (Edit: I have decided to split these up to make it less intimidating to read.)

First off, I want to talk about books! Books are possibly my favorite things, after air and water. They are certainly better than people most of the time. Anyhoo, I brought Gene Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Sherlock Holmes with me to India and finished them both before we even got to Varanasi. Oops. So a couple of weeks ago I went to a teeny tiny book shop (I am not exaggerating; the shop is one closet-sized room) and purchased Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.  The cover had pictures from the movie, which would normally deter me from purchasing it, but I was desperate.

For those of you who don’t know, The Namesake is about a first-generation Indian couple who moves to the United States and begin their family. The father has a special connection to the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, and so they name their first son after him. Gogol grows up to resent his name and identity, and the readers are given a look into the lives of first-generation immigrants and their second-generation children, and the struggle to find and comprehend one’s identity.

The book, as you can imagine, is not an especially cheerful read, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. I enjoyed it immensely, but I think I was able to understand it in a dual context considering my current location. It was interesting to read about the concrete floors inside the houses and the clothing and food and other quirks of India and actually to be able to relate to said experiences. Reading about Ashima’s experience of moving to Cambridge and feeling like an outsider was definitely relatable. Though she speaks English, she feels as if everyone is staring at her and wondering about her accent, and finds it difficult to make any American friends or even acquaintances. I unfortunately do not have the advantage of speaking Hindi, but I do feel that everyone stares and notices me. Well, they do. Not a day passes where someone stops to stare at me or watch me suspiciously, and while I am making friends within my program, I do not have any Indian friends outside of my host family. Of course, I do have the luxury of travel, and I can bear these difficulties fairly easily because there is a definite ending point to them.

Sarnath/The Ramayana

That was a paraphrasing of my entire thought process, but I do want to get onto other topics! Okay, what’s next on my list? That’s right, Sarnath! This should be pretty short:

This past weekend, we took a field trip with our religion teacher to Sarnath, the place where the Buddha gave his first sermon. It was boiling, and I was glad I happened to have my umbrella to use for a little bit of shade. Most of the buildings that were once there (mostly monasteries and stupas) had been torn down by a ruler of Varanasi who wanted building materials for a mansion, including the grand one built by Emperor Ashoka. There was still one large stupa that had been overlooked and bore the marks of several centuries of decoration. While it was originally just brick, the stupa now has layers of incised and decorated stone on top of the brick. On the way back to the bus, our teacher bought us some crackers as a snack. I ended up being the one voted to hold everything, and as we were walking down the street, several hungry-looking children followed us and asked me for food over and over. I didn’t know what to do and felt horrible and helpless. I know that giving money to children really does not help them, but food? We had so much extra, and I’m sure no one would have minded giving the biscuits away. But still, giving food to one person can be dangerous, as there are so many who have so little and they may swamp you. I have no solution or any well-fleshed ideas, but I do know that it is awful. India can be beautiful and majestic, but there is also a part that people do not want to talk about, and coming face to face with that reality is a shock, to say the least.

Okay, topic three. The Ramayana. The Ramayana is an Indian epic that tells the tales of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, as he travels the world and fights demons with his brother, Lakshmana, and his wife, Sita. Last night outside of our program house there was a performance of one of the scenes from the Ramayana, where Rama strings, shoots, and breaks a bow that no one else had even been able to lift, and wins Sita’s hand in marriage.

The actors were all men, and dressed in fancy-looking costumes. There were some small thrusts, but mainly they were in the field within a fence strung together that morning with bamboo and rope. People crowded around outside the fence and inside the fence as well. It was not the sort of performance that we have in the states, with a seated audience and a formal stage. There were children throwing flowers at one another and playing tag through the middle of the scene, and a man stood by each of the speaking actors, reading the lines to them before they projected out to the audience. This seemed to be the norm, however, and no one was fazed. There were people there with lighted toys and masks and ice cream and snacks, and I bought a “feast bar” that ended up being pretty good. It was certainly not what I had expected, and I did enjoy being part of the crowd.

Slumdog Millionaire

Okay, fourth and last: Slumdog Millionaire. I just (like an hour ago) rewatched this movie and made so many different observations about it than when I had first seen it. First of all, I could understand a lot of the simple Hindi (yay!!), even when they didn’t provide English subtitles. I also realized how much of the movie is in English, which puzzles me a bit. I suppose it was produced for an English-speaking audience, which is evident in other aspects of the film as well. For example, the main characters throughout the entire story are wearing extremely western clothing, something that happens rarely here (at least in Uttar Pradesh, where I am and where parts of the movie take place). The Indians I’ve met rarely wear western clothing, and women would certainly not even leave the house in the garb that Latika, the love interest, wears. (Slight tangent: Today Amy and I took Riti, our host sister, to a café in the morning for a snack, and she pointed out some Americans to us and told us that they looked really silly. She said that they were all showing so much skin that it looked like they were in their underwear, and then giggled. Most visitors do not know this, I suppose, and just walk around in what is considered underwear here, getting even more stares than they normally would.)

At the same time, I appreciated the visual aspects of the film more and more, as I’ve been to similar places. There are a few slum areas near us, which we have to be cautious about, but nothing like what they show in the movie. Also, I heard that there was some controversy about the use of the word “slumdog,” as it is a pretty insulting thing to call someone, and was perhaps not used respectfully. Also, the movie does not mention caste at all, which is something that is so incredibly present in every aspect of life here. Perhaps this omission was purposeful, and served to allow Jamal to become a “slumdog” millionaire. (Not that caste can be equated to wealth—the two are almost entirely separate.) Unfortunately as well, children born to economically or socially disadvantaged families, and especially orphans, have a very slim chance at bettering their circumstances so dramatically. I did find the part about the economics and business side of child beggars interesting, though. I would like to research the topic more someday.

All right, I have finished my essay! Thanks for sticking with it. As always, I welcome constructive criticism or comments.

Things!

25-09-2013

I realize that my last post was rather heavy (and also lacking in personal adventures), so here comes a lighter and hopefully less serious post about my life.

Where to start? I am currently in my room with my Christmas (or Diwali) lights on, and my fan on full blast. My favorite thing to do after class is come home, take off my Indian clothes, and lie under the fan in a tank top and underwear for several minutes. I would say that it is a guilty pleasure, but it is almost necessary to keep me from dying from heat, or something like that.

All drama aside, things here have been settling fairly well. I have been here for over a month, and am finally working my way to a routine. There are still things that I find surprising, in both positive and negative ways. For example, the other day I was walking to a café when a man riding a bicycle passed me. Attached to his bicycle was a wide cart, and on the cart were tied about eight goats. Yes, tied. They were all on their bellies with their legs underneath them, and tied down to the cart and to one another with a piece of twine. None of them looked particularly distressed; in fact, they looked around with curiosity, almost seeming to enjoy their private carriage. I regret that I didn’t have my camera with me, because I doubt that I will ever see anything like that again. On the flip side, there are also unpleasant surprises, like rickshaw drivers following you for blocks, asking if you need a ride and unfazed when you yell “NO!” at them in Hindi. These people aren’t usually dangerous, but man, are they a bother. I have a serious need for some Hindi expletives, or at least some rude hand gestures.

Things with my host family are going well, though the family conducts itself in a way that I am entirely unfamiliar with, and often don’t know how to function in. Our host mother, Sarika, cooks dinner for everyone, and serves us (and often our host sister as well) dinner around 7:30 every night. We are expected to just sit and wait for our food to come on round silver plates, and after we finish we put them in a bin on the floor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eat, for she waits until her husband gets home (around 10:00 or 11:00, I believe) so she can serve him and then finally sit down to eat as well. Our grandmother seems to wait as well, though she is a mysterious force in the home, yelling Hindi and giving us meaningful but indiscernible looks as we eat our food.

A woman comes every day to clean all the dishes and clean the house as well, so our host sister, Riti, has not been brought up to be neat. Quite the opposite, really. She is also incredibly destructive, to a point where I have no words left to say. Last night she sang us a song about poop, finished her dinner and threw her plate on the ground, wiped her face and hands on a newspaper and then on a doll, then proceeded to pick up the doll and use it to hit me on the head, an activity she seems to find particularly rewarding. Well, as long as one of us is having fun it’s okay, I guess. She seems to hit me out of affection or some other strange emotion, or at least that is what I’m telling myself. Still, I do like her a lot. She is smart and silly and fun, as long as she is breaking her own things and maybe taking a break from violence.

School has continued to be frustrating, though it has been inspiration for some very good doodles. I have talked to several people about the class format, but nothing has seemed to change much. I think the problem is that so far I have been respectful and sweet and quiet. It’s time to let the real me out! Of course, I will still broach the topic respectfully, but I need to be firm and quietly angry. We’ll see if I can channel that. I tend to be the “good cop” in situations like these, but I think it’s about time for a role change.

We are in the middle of week five, and our semester is only fifteen or sixteen weeks. During week eight we have a week-long travel period, and two weeks after that is our independent travel weekend. When we get back from that, we will have only about a month left. While India has been confusing and hot and scary, I really am enjoying myself here, and I will feel strange leaving.

Well, those are my ramblings for today. Thank you for putting up with them. Stay tuned for next week, when I will relate my soul-bearing origin story from ordinary shmuck to formidable superhero!

Women in India

24-09-2013

We’ve been talking a lot about women’s status in society, and while I thought I knew about many of the issues present in India today, it’s completely different to read about them in my cozy dorm room in upstate New York and to walk amongst them and feel the societal expectations all around me. Something that has struck me is the discussion about child marriage. Southeast Asia has a huge number of child marriages each year, and apparently India accounts for 40% of that number. Even though individuals are not legally allowed to marry until age 18 for females and age 21 for males, the sad fact is that this law has not done much to protect young girls and women. The government cannot intervene unless the marriage is legally arranged, and this law has only caused child marriages to occur more secretively. Child brides are at high risk of being exposed to domestic violence, in-law torture or starvation, death from pregnancy or childbirth complications, STDs, and (not surprisingly, after this list) severe depression. We have been talking about reasons for child marriage, and while some of the explanations make some sense to me, I still feel that there is something missing. We have been told that child marriage began in India when the Moguls began to invade, as a way to protect them. If they were given to another family, they would have a man and another set of parents to keep them safe. It was also explained as a “solution” to rape, by which I assume they mean rape from invaders. Economically, child marriage allows poorer families to have one less mouth to feed and to pay a lower dowry rate.

We have also been told in our Women’s Studies class that women in Ancient India were free and equal to men, though the evidence that we have been shown has seemed unreliable and questionable. It seems to be a widely accepted idea, along with the notion that women’s rights began to be restricted out of concern for their safety from invaders.

What upsets me about these dialogues is not necessarily the topic, because I had steeled myself for difficult discussions. What makes me angry is the way they are presented. I haven’t heard any accounts of child marriage from a woman who actually was a child bride, and there doesn’t seem to be any solid evidence about the speculation about ancient Indian women’s rights. It seems to me that these issues are presented with a certain degree of detachment. I want to know the why behind these questions. Why does child marriage really exist and continue? How can we actually stop it? And why, if women were equal to men, would they allow their rights to be taken away from them? If there were important priestesses and queens and speakers that were highly educated, how were they duped into giving up all their agency? I don’t know solutions to these questions, otherwise there would be an answer key at the bottom of the page. But I want someone to acknowledge that these are legitimate questions and learn about the debates that surround the multitude of issues surrounding women in India (and the world).

Recently, with the public eye on the violent rapes occurring in India, I have learned a bit more about the cultural stigma of rape here. If a girl tells her family that she has been raped or sexually assaulted, she becomes damaged goods, and can no longer be married. If her family supports her in her search for the rapist, there is a slim chance that he will be found or arrested. And if he does happen to come into police custody and is convicted of rape, he and his victim must marry. The recent case in Delhi is unusual, and may have to do with national attention and pressure, and perhaps these men are being used as an example. While I would like to think that no one wants to promote rape, this is what we Americans call “rape culture” at its peak. Of course, my judgments and observations are based on my American upbringing, and my ridiculous feminist assertion that society ought to be egalitarian, with men and women on equal standing. I realize that as an outsider looking in, I may not have the experience or right to judge. But I think that listening different angle of view can also be a good wake-up call. If only someone would listen.