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.