Last Friday I spent the whole day at South Point School's village campus. After a morning of rather confusing logistics, I eventually got on the bus and was surrounded by children. After getting to the school I proved to be an immense distraction to every student there and instantly became the bane of every teacher's existence. I had no idea how to control it, and everything I did was interesting to the students.
There were a few highlites, not the least of which was being flat out laughed at when I pronounced the word "jagged" like "jagg-ed" and not the ever-popular "jaggd". I swore to them that that was how it was pronounced in America and NO ONE believed me. They also asked me for help in their homework and when I corrected it, they would tell me I was wrong. And I'm not saying these kids don't know English. These kids have been taking all their classes in English for, at minimum, three years, which is no small feat. When I was their age, the idea of bilinguality wasn't even within the limits of my 9 year-old and subsequently tiny brain. That being said, I know that the sentence, "We went to the bazaar in market time for buying carpet," doesn't make sense in my native language. I would tell them, "No, but seriously guys. I'm from there. I remember America," and in response I just had a group of four girls cover their mouths due to their erupting laughter. In any case, I was right and they were wrong. Hah.
After that lovely experience, I ate lunch by myself. I watched dozens of children running around the sizeable courtyard, and watched a few groups of boys watching me. Spilling some rice on my dupatta, I then watched myself being laughed at. It was a touchingly reminiscent of my life in 5th grade, and I really appreciated the opportunity to go back.
Then, a few boys came up to me.
Him: You have hair like a boy cut.
Me: Yeah. It's even shorter than yours! (Silly me, trying to make light of the grave situation of gender play)
Him: Why. (This wasn't a question, even though it was masked as one.)
Me: I just wanted to cut it.
He walked away.
After that I was asked several variations of the question, "Allison ma'am, are you girl or boy?"
My first response: I'm a girl.
My second response: (sigh) Yeah, I'm a girl.
My third response: I'm still a girl. (This one was met with a lot of confusion, but then complacency)
My fourth response: You said "ma'am", didn't you? You did.
School finally got out at around 3 PM, and we all went home. The bus ride back was great.
In other news, I've been teaching English to Salman Raghib Sahab's kids and it's been SO GOOD. His three older children are incredible (he has another who is about 9 months old and doesn't have too much of a personality outside of a strong and palpable hatred for me). His oldest son is named Shahnivaz, whom I have previously mentioned. He is 17 and he can speak pretty quickly, but he makes a lot of silly grammer mistakes. The next is named Shaheriyar, and he is 12. His English is fairly good, but getting him to talk is probably as hard as getting him to put his face in a garbage disposal. His daughter, Zoya, is the youngest of the group that I'm teaching; she's eight. She's also one of the smartest people I have ever met. She learns faster than her two brothers and is SO EFFING CUTE. OH MY GOD. I think Salman Sahab is a little weirded out by how much I talk about his daughter's intelligence. I'm almost weirded out by how much I talk about it.
The best moment of English class 'chez Raghib' is when Shahnivaz said, in the middle of a question I was asking to Zoya, "Did you know I ride bike way fast?"
Let's analyze this question. Firstly, did I know? How could I know? Does everyone know? What are the chances that someone on the street would stop me and say, "Hey! Now look, foreigner here to exploit my country's fractured economy under the auspices of studies, a boy who lives here, he rides bike way fast."
Secondly, let's consider the sentence structure. I ride bike. We can all agree that what this sentence needs is a nice article. Something to ground it a little. Hindi doesn't have articles, so I understand that it's hard for Hindi speakers, and trust me, I empathize. Subjunctive? "It's sort of a tense, but more of a feeling," is literally what I was told in 7th grade French. I thought it was a joke when I heard it. It, as is probably obvious, was definitely not a joke and it probably successfully shaved ten years off of my lifespan. Subjunctive still remains to be the single most confusing part of language for me, despite the ten years of French, and now nine months of intensive Hindi. Subjunctive is just as messed up to me as articles seem to Indians, I'm sure. But, you still need to use them. The last part being perhaps the strangest part of the question, "way fast" is weirdly colloquial to be put in a grammatically ravaged sentence. It makes him sound as if his English is fine, but he was just so excited to say it that he couldn't be bothered to use the extra syllable an article would have caused. Actually, the second part was probably true.
Luckily, afterwards he told me all about it, and I thankfully now know he rides bike way fast.
Outside of teaching and other children-related things, Sara and I have started running the mornings together. I'm going to take a moment to let that sink in. I, I'm Allison Carney I think some of you have met me, am running for exercise. There is nothing chasing me, I am just running. I won't say for fun. But, suffocating in India has turned out to a not entirely unagreeable experience.
It's been kind of fun and nice to see my improvement and feel the difference in my body. But, hands down, the funnest part is the men who decide that talking to me is an okay thing to do. And by talk I really mean incessantly ask me if I need help or want to ride their bicycles. The second question is interesting because I am, at that point, already running in circles on a track. I am obviously not late for any appointment, and am simply not getting there fast enough. That and I had ridden my bike there.
Now the best moment was when, after several men asking me various questions, a man of about 20 came up to me. I immediately put on my don't-talk-to-me-I'm-a-huge-bitch face and kept walking. He asked me, in perfect English, if I was a physical fitness teacher. I did a double take, looked forward, looked down at myself, and looked back at him. I don't think I even said anything. He repeated his question a little slower, as if he were checking for grammar mistakes. I eventually worded a response something like, "Are you kidding?" After which I discovered he was very much not kidding and wanted to be able to run a farther distance. I softly told him that I was a beginner (which I thought was clear after the 10 minutes of running that nearly killed me), and that I couldn't help him. He thanked me and jogged off.
The moral of this story is that questions about me being a regular exercizer will throw me off more than questions about my gender. Dually noted, India.
-allison
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Remember how I ended the last post? Yeah. About that...
When I returned to Varanasi I hadn't realized that I would be returning to a frigid Minnisotan winter. In reality, it was probably only about 50 degrees during the day, but we were all monumentally unprepared for it. For four days, I swear to god, I had to sleep in wool socks, a wool sweater, a wool hat, and two wool blankets. In that state, I could almost put myself in a place where I began to remember what warmth felt like. I was also really itchy.
Anyway, after those few days of intense arctic weather, it warmed up a little and not the weather is roundabout perfect. At night it's cold enough to use a blanket, but warm enough to not need a wool hat, and during the day it's cold enough for a light jacket or a scarf. It's absolutely perfect, and I want it to last forever. I would maybe liken it to early October in New England minus the trees, brick, and reliable electricity. Speaking of reliable electricity, and using this as a way to get off the topic of the weather, did you know that only 5% of the government primary schools in the Varanasi district have electricity? That's insane! There are a lot of non-government primary schools though (especially within the city), and many have very low school fees due to government subsidies. But still.
Do you know why I know that? Because, if you remember, I have an 80-100 page research paper due on April 15. My Saturday routine included a morning run with Sara, followed by a shower and then a breakfast of flapjacks (there are two places in this city to get good pancakes. I found and subsequently annexed both of them). For the rest of the day, Sara and I sat in my room not talking and writing our papers. I would say we were in my room for a total of 7 hours and I wrote 3 single spaced pages of the most pretentious writing I think I have ever penned. Perhaps that was ever penned. I actually wrote the sentence, "Now based upon clause (1) of Article 29, we can assume that the institutions alluded to in Article 30’s clause (1) are institutions specializing in a certain minority’s language, script, or culture."
Yeah, I wrote that.
But, let is go back to before the running, fun-loving time of this weekend. Last Sunday I woke up and spent the day tooling around my neighborhood, jumping from one cafe to the only other cafe in town, and then at night went to a concert. Just to paint that picture for you, a concert here means sitting on mats on the floor and listening to sitarist or whatever other Indian classical instrument for at minimum one hour. So, during the concert I started to feel a little nauseous, but that happens all the time. An hour later it had progressed to something I don't often feel in India, and I decided to go home.
Over the next few days I partook in some recreational vomiting and spent all my time in bed pondering what death really was, and whether or not your heart had to completely stop beating to mean your life was over. The past week, as you may have gathered, was a bad week for me. I didn't do any work besides some extremely poorly written Hindi assignments that now have more red ink on them than black, and I spent approximately all my time thinking, 'This doesn't happen in America.' I would then move on to what ice cream flavors are available in America, and then would think about what my first mexican food would be. (I eventually came to the conclusion that it would be two chicken tacos with a side of rice and pinto beans with extra sour cream. But this is all very premature; I still have a few months to fine tune it. Perhaps a pupusa is in order, but who can say?)
In addition to a bad case of Delhi Belly (or the India Heebie Jeebies as my brother calls it) I got a cold the day after I arrived in Varanasi. After a short five days I was over the cold, but the cough has since decided to take up shop. I wake up in the morning with a swamp in my lungs. I'm going to repeat that because it's not a joke. There is a swamp inside my lungs. I cough and think, "Hey, I remember that time I went to Florida," or, "What's the difference between crocodiles and alligators again?" I think my lungs are slowly liquefying and I am powerless to stop it. This is all a long way of saying that my health has seen better days. That includes, for your information, any day in the last 20 and a half years.
Well, I am going to take a nap and then talk to a doctor. There are rumors of viral meningitis going around, and luckily two people on this program (Mary Beth and I) have been flirting with the idea of being bedridden for the last week. Wish me luck!
-allison
Anyway, after those few days of intense arctic weather, it warmed up a little and not the weather is roundabout perfect. At night it's cold enough to use a blanket, but warm enough to not need a wool hat, and during the day it's cold enough for a light jacket or a scarf. It's absolutely perfect, and I want it to last forever. I would maybe liken it to early October in New England minus the trees, brick, and reliable electricity. Speaking of reliable electricity, and using this as a way to get off the topic of the weather, did you know that only 5% of the government primary schools in the Varanasi district have electricity? That's insane! There are a lot of non-government primary schools though (especially within the city), and many have very low school fees due to government subsidies. But still.
Do you know why I know that? Because, if you remember, I have an 80-100 page research paper due on April 15. My Saturday routine included a morning run with Sara, followed by a shower and then a breakfast of flapjacks (there are two places in this city to get good pancakes. I found and subsequently annexed both of them). For the rest of the day, Sara and I sat in my room not talking and writing our papers. I would say we were in my room for a total of 7 hours and I wrote 3 single spaced pages of the most pretentious writing I think I have ever penned. Perhaps that was ever penned. I actually wrote the sentence, "Now based upon clause (1) of Article 29, we can assume that the institutions alluded to in Article 30’s clause (1) are institutions specializing in a certain minority’s language, script, or culture."
Yeah, I wrote that.
But, let is go back to before the running, fun-loving time of this weekend. Last Sunday I woke up and spent the day tooling around my neighborhood, jumping from one cafe to the only other cafe in town, and then at night went to a concert. Just to paint that picture for you, a concert here means sitting on mats on the floor and listening to sitarist or whatever other Indian classical instrument for at minimum one hour. So, during the concert I started to feel a little nauseous, but that happens all the time. An hour later it had progressed to something I don't often feel in India, and I decided to go home.
Over the next few days I partook in some recreational vomiting and spent all my time in bed pondering what death really was, and whether or not your heart had to completely stop beating to mean your life was over. The past week, as you may have gathered, was a bad week for me. I didn't do any work besides some extremely poorly written Hindi assignments that now have more red ink on them than black, and I spent approximately all my time thinking, 'This doesn't happen in America.' I would then move on to what ice cream flavors are available in America, and then would think about what my first mexican food would be. (I eventually came to the conclusion that it would be two chicken tacos with a side of rice and pinto beans with extra sour cream. But this is all very premature; I still have a few months to fine tune it. Perhaps a pupusa is in order, but who can say?)
In addition to a bad case of Delhi Belly (or the India Heebie Jeebies as my brother calls it) I got a cold the day after I arrived in Varanasi. After a short five days I was over the cold, but the cough has since decided to take up shop. I wake up in the morning with a swamp in my lungs. I'm going to repeat that because it's not a joke. There is a swamp inside my lungs. I cough and think, "Hey, I remember that time I went to Florida," or, "What's the difference between crocodiles and alligators again?" I think my lungs are slowly liquefying and I am powerless to stop it. This is all a long way of saying that my health has seen better days. That includes, for your information, any day in the last 20 and a half years.
Well, I am going to take a nap and then talk to a doctor. There are rumors of viral meningitis going around, and luckily two people on this program (Mary Beth and I) have been flirting with the idea of being bedridden for the last week. Wish me luck!
-allison
Monday, January 5, 2009
The Winter Land Odyssey around India: Text
I had a lot of ground to cover in this post, so this is Part I. This is just the text about the trip and you can look below for the corresponding photos. I did this because because I will kill myself if I have to spend another two hours of my life formatting photos and text together on my wonderful blog host, Blogger.com.
After Hyderabad I went to Chennai for a few days to kick it with Padma and Scott in their apartment before we drove over to Goa, which was fairly uneventful. Except for the time when Scott asked me to run over to the Chennai High Court to coax a lawyer into getting him some documents. Yeah, except for that. I spent two hours with this lawyer; he took me into every single courtroom and explained, I think, everything he learned in law school. He turned out to be a really nice guy, and even bought me a cup of chai.
The car trip to Goa was pretty easy. We almost only listened to "This American Life" and songs from the Civil War the entire time. I think there may have been some Elvis Costello. Anyway, it was fine and the cockroach count for our one night stopover hotel was only four.
Goa...Oh my god Goa. I don't think I really have a lot to say about Goa. My daily routine was something like this:
10am-12am: Breakfast with Scott and Padma
12am-4pm: Lie on the beach
4pm-5pm: Eat sandwiches
5pm-8pm: Shower, nap or read
8pm-10pm: Dinner
10pm: Sleep
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It was amazing. I- I really can't talk about it or do it justice. Christmas in Goa was brilliant- though I did find myself missing the standard snowy New England Christmas. But I got over that real fast.
After a week of amazingly delicious food and sun and ocean, I had to say goodbye to Goa and move on to Bombay. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to try taking a bus to Bombay instead of sticking to train travel. My brother drove me to the bus station, I said goodbye to him and Padma, and they drove away. The following is the story of what happened afterwards.
After wandering around the "bus station" which is really just a mish-mash parking lot of bicycles, motorcycles, and bags of grain, for an hour or so, my bus finally arrived. By this point I had met a Finnish couple (what is it with me and finding couples from small European countries?) who were also going to Mumbai on my bus, and we set off together. The Finnish woman got on the bus, while her boyfriend and I went to the back to drop off our bags. As we were putting our bags in the the bus, it starts moving. At first it was slow, and we though it was just reparking. That, not surprisingly, was wrong. The bus sped up, and Sven (That was probably his name, right?) and I just stood in silence watching the bus drive away. After it turned the corner, we realized that it was not reparking, and we somewhat half heartedly ran after it. Finally we found it behind the bus station, which should have been obivous I guess, and got on.
I then found my bunk, which was the bottom bunk in the third row. I got in and was immediately ecstatic. The berths in buses are at minimum 1 and a half times as big as the ones in trains and cushier. There's a built-in pillow on the bed and the bed and there's a window that spans the entire berth that you can open. Finally, there's a curtain in between you and the aisle that you can close at your leisure. I was in the process of writing that description in my journal when an Indian woman sat down next to me.
"So, could I have the inside?"
Snap.
So I move over a little to allow room for person number two in my berth and she is immediately incredibly friendly and I notice that her English is impeccable. Throughout our entire time together I never heard her speak Hindi once. She spoke English to everyone on the phone and to the driver. Well, sort of. Instead of writing out our conversation I'll do one of those dialogues I'm oh-so fond of.
Her: So where are you from?
Me: I'm from America.
Her: (Smiles and slowly nods) You are a committed Christian.
Me: (bewildered) umm not- not really...
Her: (Smiles and nods) I see.
(Insert more chit chat)
Her: So you are learning Hindi?
Me: Yeah.
Her: Make sure the Hindu religion doesn't suck you in.
Me: (At this point realizing that the friendship may be strained from here on in) Uh huh. Don't think that will happen.
Her: (She says this in a completely soft voice as if it was all something I had heard before) It's just...you know, it is a very silly religion. There was no religion before Christianity and all religions are based on of it. Even Hinduism, whith its many Gods says that truly there is only one God. Islam says the same thing. All of the world religions are based off of Christianity, you know. They have just all deviated from The Path. Even Catholicism has. I used to be Catholic, but I have accepted Jesus as my Personal Savior and have been born again.
Me: Uh huh. Kay.
Her: (After a moment) What do you think about the world situation?
Me: The world? Like...the whole world?
Her: (Knowlingly knods)
Me: Umm...well uhh I'm happy Barack Obama was elected. I think Israel's being overly violent. The economic crisis is pretty serious. Is there something specific you wanted me to respond to?
Her: Do you think there's a hidden agenda?
Me: ....By whom?
Her: There's a hidden agenda to rip the morals from today's youth, from people like you. By the media.
Me: Mmm...
Let's just say it continued like that for a while...Until she made the decision to tell me about how it is the Endtimes.
Her: The Bible proves to me that this is the Endtimes because of everything that is happening. In the next few years, this is what will happen. The world will get worse and worse for 3 years. There will be almost complete chaos, and no one will be able to stop it. Then, all of a sudden, the world will become peaceful for no apparent reason. A calm will come over the world, but it will only last for 2 years. And then it will be Armageddon.
Me:
Apparently the people who accepted Jesus as their personal savior will get into Heaven. But, the people who haven't will go to Hell. Also, the people who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior in the final 5 years (so pretty much anyone who isn't Born Again already) STILL might not get in because there is "limited space". Heaven is like an 21+ concert and I'M AUTOMATICALLY GOING TO BE LAST IN LINE.
I really don't have a joke to say about her. She turned out to be really nice woman and helped me get into Bombay safe and sound. She was a very good woman, and an even better Christian.
So after that conversation in the middle of the night, I went to the bathroom. This meant that when the bus stopped so all these men jumped off to pee (no women) I was followed suit and became that crazy Westerner. I scurried passed all the men and scrambled over a stone wall to shelter myself from the bus's headlights. As I was sitting there, I looked at the sky and saw the most stars I think I have ever seen. Due to the lack of pollution and dust, I could see about ten times as many stars as I can normally see. It completely blew my mind. After I got back in the bus and laid down, I looked passed the back of Yvette's (that was her name) head and watched the stars for hours. It was exceedingly beautiful.
After arriving in Mumbai I walked around my first day. I think in total I covered about 5 miles of Bombay's Bandra neighborhood. The second day Sara came with her two friends, Lisa and Jocelyne, and we went out with a few Indian friends for New Year's Eve, which was awesome. We went to a club and danced for a few hours. The men were CRAZY. We all went to the bathroom in a group, and someone grabbed Sara. I proceeded to berate the guy, yelling at him in a really thick Hindi accept IN ENGLISH (It's a weird thing that starts when you've been here for a while- when you can't speak Hindi to them, you start talking to Indians in their accent). I was yelling, "Sir, you grabbed my friend. You grabbed her! You can say you didn't, but sir, why would she lie? You can't do that. That's not okay." My hands were waving in his face and I had pretty much taken on the attitude of a stereotype of a really pissed of Indian woman. Who spoke in English. Happy New Year.
The next day we walked around South Bombay, which is more or less exactly like Manhattan. It was a pretty fun day and we ate lunch at the place that the Bombay attacks started, a restaurant called Leopolds. The bullet holes were still in the walls. The next day we went to Elephanta Islan which has all sorts of relgious importance that I would describe to you, but I wasn't really listening to the guide so I can't tell you anything correct about it. There will be pictures in the next post.
I left that night to come back to Varanasi and take the second 36-hour train ride of my winter vacation. I slept the first night without much problems and spent the entire next day sitting and staring at people. I just napped and stared. Most Indians on the trains just sit and nap, so I decided to try it out (well, I was also avoiding copious amounts of homework I had and still have). It was surprisingly easy. The time still went about as fast as it would if I have music and books.
The next morning I woke up at 3 AM to the coldest temperature I think I have EVER experienced. Ever. At least, the coldest temperature that I was in NO WAY prepared for. I had two sweaters and a blanket on and I would have let someone chop off my feet if it meant an end to the pain. Later on in the morning, I woke up, and sat with a huge family. They were amazed that I was learning Hindi and surrounded me. The family had one grandmother, 8 aunts and uncles, and each of those people had at least thirty children of their own that I met. And every child that met me was forced to shake my hand and say good morning before they would be allowed to eat breakfast. It was great and didn't make me feel awkward at all.
Upon finally getting in the vicinity of Varanasi, I asked how much longer. Everyone said twenty minutes. Our train was doing the seemingly impossible- it was going to arrive on time. But, as that is impossible for India for do, the train stopped. It came to a full stop and didn't move for another five excruciating hours. Five hours of sitting in the middle of this family and talking to all of them, being asked to sing American songs as well as well known Bollywood songs, and being flat out laughed at. Roundabout hour three, one of the many girls asked me for a gift from America. At first I said I didn't have anything American (most of my stuff at this point is Indian). but finally I dug up a three-year-old mini perfume bottle that I had never used and gave it to her. In return I got an elastic bracelet with mini roses on it meant for a six-year-old. What a sucker, right?
So after I sat in that train for a total of 34 hours, and when I arrived I found out that a) my wallet was stolen and b) Varanasi is 57 degrees but feels like the blueish center of a snow bank. My wallet only have about 600 rupees in it (about 12 dollars) and I still have my passport so that wasn't hugely bothersome, but still was pretty annoying.
My first day of class back we had a really painful two-hour long meeting about logistics. I don't want to talk about. What I DO want to talk about is the fact that my program coordinator, Shashank, was late to work. When he got here I asked him why he was late. He said that he couldn't leave his house because someone had performed black magic in front of his doorway, so he couldn't leave. Someone is trying to kill him or hurt him, so he had to get someone to sweep it away form his front door before he left the house...obviously.
Yeah. So...yeah.
I'm overall very happy to be back. I worried lot about my time in India for the last four months. I was just always worried that I wouldn't like it here or I would miss being at school too much. I guess I was just worried that I wouldn't adjust well. But I think my time in these past few weeks (i.e. lying on the beach, traveling alone so much, figuring out everything myself, seeing so many new cities, standing up for my friend, getting my wallet stolen) has somewhat tied me close to India. Also, Varanasi feels a lot different than it felt last year (It's 2009, guys). Maybe it's the cold, or maybe it's the fact that I've been here for four and a half months, but I really feel at home here. Well, at home and really really cold. I need at least one pair of socks if I plan on surviving, and, taking my previous week into account, it seems as if I'm going to do that.
-allison
After Hyderabad I went to Chennai for a few days to kick it with Padma and Scott in their apartment before we drove over to Goa, which was fairly uneventful. Except for the time when Scott asked me to run over to the Chennai High Court to coax a lawyer into getting him some documents. Yeah, except for that. I spent two hours with this lawyer; he took me into every single courtroom and explained, I think, everything he learned in law school. He turned out to be a really nice guy, and even bought me a cup of chai.
The car trip to Goa was pretty easy. We almost only listened to "This American Life" and songs from the Civil War the entire time. I think there may have been some Elvis Costello. Anyway, it was fine and the cockroach count for our one night stopover hotel was only four.
Goa...Oh my god Goa. I don't think I really have a lot to say about Goa. My daily routine was something like this:
10am-12am: Breakfast with Scott and Padma
12am-4pm: Lie on the beach
4pm-5pm: Eat sandwiches
5pm-8pm: Shower, nap or read
8pm-10pm: Dinner
10pm: Sleep
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It was amazing. I- I really can't talk about it or do it justice. Christmas in Goa was brilliant- though I did find myself missing the standard snowy New England Christmas. But I got over that real fast.
After a week of amazingly delicious food and sun and ocean, I had to say goodbye to Goa and move on to Bombay. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to try taking a bus to Bombay instead of sticking to train travel. My brother drove me to the bus station, I said goodbye to him and Padma, and they drove away. The following is the story of what happened afterwards.
After wandering around the "bus station" which is really just a mish-mash parking lot of bicycles, motorcycles, and bags of grain, for an hour or so, my bus finally arrived. By this point I had met a Finnish couple (what is it with me and finding couples from small European countries?) who were also going to Mumbai on my bus, and we set off together. The Finnish woman got on the bus, while her boyfriend and I went to the back to drop off our bags. As we were putting our bags in the the bus, it starts moving. At first it was slow, and we though it was just reparking. That, not surprisingly, was wrong. The bus sped up, and Sven (That was probably his name, right?) and I just stood in silence watching the bus drive away. After it turned the corner, we realized that it was not reparking, and we somewhat half heartedly ran after it. Finally we found it behind the bus station, which should have been obivous I guess, and got on.
I then found my bunk, which was the bottom bunk in the third row. I got in and was immediately ecstatic. The berths in buses are at minimum 1 and a half times as big as the ones in trains and cushier. There's a built-in pillow on the bed and the bed and there's a window that spans the entire berth that you can open. Finally, there's a curtain in between you and the aisle that you can close at your leisure. I was in the process of writing that description in my journal when an Indian woman sat down next to me.
"So, could I have the inside?"
Snap.
So I move over a little to allow room for person number two in my berth and she is immediately incredibly friendly and I notice that her English is impeccable. Throughout our entire time together I never heard her speak Hindi once. She spoke English to everyone on the phone and to the driver. Well, sort of. Instead of writing out our conversation I'll do one of those dialogues I'm oh-so fond of.
Her: So where are you from?
Me: I'm from America.
Her: (Smiles and slowly nods) You are a committed Christian.
Me: (bewildered) umm not- not really...
Her: (Smiles and nods) I see.
(Insert more chit chat)
Her: So you are learning Hindi?
Me: Yeah.
Her: Make sure the Hindu religion doesn't suck you in.
Me: (At this point realizing that the friendship may be strained from here on in) Uh huh. Don't think that will happen.
Her: (She says this in a completely soft voice as if it was all something I had heard before) It's just...you know, it is a very silly religion. There was no religion before Christianity and all religions are based on of it. Even Hinduism, whith its many Gods says that truly there is only one God. Islam says the same thing. All of the world religions are based off of Christianity, you know. They have just all deviated from The Path. Even Catholicism has. I used to be Catholic, but I have accepted Jesus as my Personal Savior and have been born again.
Me: Uh huh. Kay.
Her: (After a moment) What do you think about the world situation?
Me: The world? Like...the whole world?
Her: (Knowlingly knods)
Me: Umm...well uhh I'm happy Barack Obama was elected. I think Israel's being overly violent. The economic crisis is pretty serious. Is there something specific you wanted me to respond to?
Her: Do you think there's a hidden agenda?
Me: ....By whom?
Her: There's a hidden agenda to rip the morals from today's youth, from people like you. By the media.
Me: Mmm...
Let's just say it continued like that for a while...Until she made the decision to tell me about how it is the Endtimes.
Her: The Bible proves to me that this is the Endtimes because of everything that is happening. In the next few years, this is what will happen. The world will get worse and worse for 3 years. There will be almost complete chaos, and no one will be able to stop it. Then, all of a sudden, the world will become peaceful for no apparent reason. A calm will come over the world, but it will only last for 2 years. And then it will be Armageddon.
Me:
Apparently the people who accepted Jesus as their personal savior will get into Heaven. But, the people who haven't will go to Hell. Also, the people who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior in the final 5 years (so pretty much anyone who isn't Born Again already) STILL might not get in because there is "limited space". Heaven is like an 21+ concert and I'M AUTOMATICALLY GOING TO BE LAST IN LINE.
I really don't have a joke to say about her. She turned out to be really nice woman and helped me get into Bombay safe and sound. She was a very good woman, and an even better Christian.
So after that conversation in the middle of the night, I went to the bathroom. This meant that when the bus stopped so all these men jumped off to pee (no women) I was followed suit and became that crazy Westerner. I scurried passed all the men and scrambled over a stone wall to shelter myself from the bus's headlights. As I was sitting there, I looked at the sky and saw the most stars I think I have ever seen. Due to the lack of pollution and dust, I could see about ten times as many stars as I can normally see. It completely blew my mind. After I got back in the bus and laid down, I looked passed the back of Yvette's (that was her name) head and watched the stars for hours. It was exceedingly beautiful.
After arriving in Mumbai I walked around my first day. I think in total I covered about 5 miles of Bombay's Bandra neighborhood. The second day Sara came with her two friends, Lisa and Jocelyne, and we went out with a few Indian friends for New Year's Eve, which was awesome. We went to a club and danced for a few hours. The men were CRAZY. We all went to the bathroom in a group, and someone grabbed Sara. I proceeded to berate the guy, yelling at him in a really thick Hindi accept IN ENGLISH (It's a weird thing that starts when you've been here for a while- when you can't speak Hindi to them, you start talking to Indians in their accent). I was yelling, "Sir, you grabbed my friend. You grabbed her! You can say you didn't, but sir, why would she lie? You can't do that. That's not okay." My hands were waving in his face and I had pretty much taken on the attitude of a stereotype of a really pissed of Indian woman. Who spoke in English. Happy New Year.
The next day we walked around South Bombay, which is more or less exactly like Manhattan. It was a pretty fun day and we ate lunch at the place that the Bombay attacks started, a restaurant called Leopolds. The bullet holes were still in the walls. The next day we went to Elephanta Islan which has all sorts of relgious importance that I would describe to you, but I wasn't really listening to the guide so I can't tell you anything correct about it. There will be pictures in the next post.
I left that night to come back to Varanasi and take the second 36-hour train ride of my winter vacation. I slept the first night without much problems and spent the entire next day sitting and staring at people. I just napped and stared. Most Indians on the trains just sit and nap, so I decided to try it out (well, I was also avoiding copious amounts of homework I had and still have). It was surprisingly easy. The time still went about as fast as it would if I have music and books.
The next morning I woke up at 3 AM to the coldest temperature I think I have EVER experienced. Ever. At least, the coldest temperature that I was in NO WAY prepared for. I had two sweaters and a blanket on and I would have let someone chop off my feet if it meant an end to the pain. Later on in the morning, I woke up, and sat with a huge family. They were amazed that I was learning Hindi and surrounded me. The family had one grandmother, 8 aunts and uncles, and each of those people had at least thirty children of their own that I met. And every child that met me was forced to shake my hand and say good morning before they would be allowed to eat breakfast. It was great and didn't make me feel awkward at all.
Upon finally getting in the vicinity of Varanasi, I asked how much longer. Everyone said twenty minutes. Our train was doing the seemingly impossible- it was going to arrive on time. But, as that is impossible for India for do, the train stopped. It came to a full stop and didn't move for another five excruciating hours. Five hours of sitting in the middle of this family and talking to all of them, being asked to sing American songs as well as well known Bollywood songs, and being flat out laughed at. Roundabout hour three, one of the many girls asked me for a gift from America. At first I said I didn't have anything American (most of my stuff at this point is Indian). but finally I dug up a three-year-old mini perfume bottle that I had never used and gave it to her. In return I got an elastic bracelet with mini roses on it meant for a six-year-old. What a sucker, right?
So after I sat in that train for a total of 34 hours, and when I arrived I found out that a) my wallet was stolen and b) Varanasi is 57 degrees but feels like the blueish center of a snow bank. My wallet only have about 600 rupees in it (about 12 dollars) and I still have my passport so that wasn't hugely bothersome, but still was pretty annoying.
My first day of class back we had a really painful two-hour long meeting about logistics. I don't want to talk about. What I DO want to talk about is the fact that my program coordinator, Shashank, was late to work. When he got here I asked him why he was late. He said that he couldn't leave his house because someone had performed black magic in front of his doorway, so he couldn't leave. Someone is trying to kill him or hurt him, so he had to get someone to sweep it away form his front door before he left the house...obviously.
Yeah. So...yeah.
I'm overall very happy to be back. I worried lot about my time in India for the last four months. I was just always worried that I wouldn't like it here or I would miss being at school too much. I guess I was just worried that I wouldn't adjust well. But I think my time in these past few weeks (i.e. lying on the beach, traveling alone so much, figuring out everything myself, seeing so many new cities, standing up for my friend, getting my wallet stolen) has somewhat tied me close to India. Also, Varanasi feels a lot different than it felt last year (It's 2009, guys). Maybe it's the cold, or maybe it's the fact that I've been here for four and a half months, but I really feel at home here. Well, at home and really really cold. I need at least one pair of socks if I plan on surviving, and, taking my previous week into account, it seems as if I'm going to do that.
-allison
The Winter Land Odyssey around India: Pictures
Here is Part II! You can read the text post and then refer back to these photos with their neat little captions!
This is a map of India with all of my travel methods detailed out.
This is Goa. Merry Christmas to me.
Scott, Padma and I buried each other in the sand. It was awesome.
We all went a little crazy after being freed from our sandy graves.
The Taj was being worked on while we were in Mumbai. There was some debris on the backside of the hotel, but it still looked as grand as all the pictures make it seem.
This is Elephanta Island. There were lots of really old statues, and some really nice offering flowers.
This is a map of India with all of my travel methods detailed out.
This is Goa. Merry Christmas to me.
Scott, Padma and I buried each other in the sand. It was awesome.
We all went a little crazy after being freed from our sandy graves.
The Taj was being worked on while we were in Mumbai. There was some debris on the backside of the hotel, but it still looked as grand as all the pictures make it seem.
This is Elephanta Island. There were lots of really old statues, and some really nice offering flowers.
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