Bihar is beautiful in the springtime...maybe.

Last Wednesday at 10 AM, my brother's flight landed in the Varanasi airport. In tow, he had two pairs of Gap jeans for me, six T-shirts, one friend from college, and one bag (half full) of Reese's. He had already eaten the first half, which no one could blame him for, and I surely did not.

After he arrived, we visited the school where I teach (not the Muslim one, but the other one. It's called The South Point School). There, I never have any idea what I'm doing and I have terribly broken conversations in Hindi with the two women I work with about labeling and organizing books. I don't know the Dewey Decimal system in English, let alone describing it to someone in Hindi. (In fact, my first day at Mount Holyoke College I actually thought all the books were in alphabetical order. The entire library. I'm not kidding.) Anyway, I showed Scott the room that I am responsible for turning into a community library, and the rest of the campus. After that we went to lunch and then finally went to the Radisson.

If I had some sort of sweet sound effect to attach to that word I totally would. It would be some epic drumming or opera. I'm leaning towards drumming, but maybe opera would have the classy tint I'm looking for. In any case, we went to the godamn Radisson and it was, to quote my facebook status, "almost like heaven, but, like, a lot better." The shower was like a dream come true. I took such a long, hot shower, that afterwards I was dizzy from the heat. It was SO GOOD. It definitely helped that it was my first shower in 3 months, which made it AMAZING. And the beds? Don't even. And the pillows were a dream come true. The day we left the Radisson, I took one, and spent the rest of the day with my backpack full to the brim with just the pillow. Because it was that fluffy.

Okay, now that you all understand how incredible the Radisson was, I'll describe why I was there in the first place. Jason, Scott's friend, works for a research group (or something, I don't quite get it) where he is based in Norway, travels around South Asia, and gets funded by the Norwiegan government to do cool shit. I think that that is his entire job. I know. I'm jealous of him too. Anyway, he has lots of money and I got to stay at the Radisson.

So on Saturday Jason was going to go to the India-Nepal border to do some fieldwork on the Naxals, who are big bad Indian commies. Scott and I decided to tag along, though I was more tagging along than Scott, due to his legitimate I'm-a-journalist-ness.

At 6 AM on Saturday, we ate our complimentary breakfast at the Radisson (because it's incredible) and then we located our car and driver to go to Nepal. As soon as we get inside, Jason checks to see how long the drive is. We expect it to be about 6 hours.

Jason: Kitna sumay lugega? (How much time will it take?)
Driver: Kyaa? (What?)
Jason: Kitna...sumay....lugega? (How....much time...will it take?)
Driver: *shakes head* Gyara gunte, bara gunte. (11 hours, 12 hours)
Jason: Kyaa? (What?)
Driver: Hahn. (Yes.)
Jason: Me...che gunte nahien heh? (I....not six hours?)
Driver: Nahien. (No.)
Jason: Janne? Ya anne-janne? (Going? Or coming and going?)
Driver: Hahn. (Yes.)
Jason: ...Anne-Janne? (...Coming and going?)
Driver: Hahn. (Yes.)

From this, Scott, Jason, and I decide that the driver meant six hours there and six hours back, which was totally do-able. It was what we expected.

Our driver also turns out to be the slowest drive in India. Ever. If India thought it ever had slow drivers, I challenge it [India] to watch this guy drive. Seriously. And he lives in India, of all places. He was even a slow driver for AMERICA. Yeah. This guy deserves a medal. Anyway, so we drive into Bihar, which is the state directly to the east of Uttar Pradesh, where I live.

Bihar is the most backward state in India. It is the bottom state of almost every single ranking in India. The literacy rate? 44%. The literacy rate of women is half that of the men in the state, and it is one of the most oppressive states in India. We drove through a village where there were absolutely no buildings, only wood shacks with tarps as rooves lining the road. My brother jokingly said, "This is the third largest city in Bihar." It was supposed to be a joke, but I believed him. It wasn't a stretch.

So when we were about 1 hour away from Patna, the capital of Bihar, we passed through a town called Araa (What's Bihaarrrr's favorite city for pirates? Aaaarrrraa). We got stuck in an epic traffic jam that existed for no reason, and while idling we asked our driver how much longer. He said, "Che gunte," which, if you don't remember the previous dialogue, means "six hours." We decided to immediately procure a map and figure out where we were. So, we got out of the car and walked around the beautiful city of Araa. What's in a Araa? Bad food, turns out. Anyway, so we found a map and discovered that, in fact, the Nepal border IS 6 hours away. Super. We were then left with three options.

1) We turn around, and go back to Varanasi (another 6 hour drive)
2) We all go to Nepal, getting there at 8 PM and leave at 10 AM, our stay sandwiched between two 12-hour drives.
3) We all go to Patna, an hour-long drive from Araa, and check it out.

Jason was for turning back, but my brother said we might as well see Patna. I have no deciding weight, and didn't really care. We decided to go to Patna.

Now, if I were to equate Patna to a town in the States, I think I would say a shitty Detroit. If Detroit had no cultural influences (i.e. if Eminem weren't from there) and was about 60 times dirtier, then it might be Patna. Maybe. It would also have to be in India, I suppose.

I can only think of the word "bleak" when I think of Patna. The stores are piled on top of one another, there's racist grafitti against Bangladeshis everywhere, and the hotel we stayed at was super expensive and smelled like urine. It was totally lame, and I can now say I vacationed in Patna.

I will say, however, that Patna has one thing that was completely amazing. And that, my good friends, was the Patna zoo. There is no really good reason to go to Patna, but there's a really godamn great reason to go, and that's the zoo. I saw a tiger, a white tiger, elephants, rhinos, and Scott's camera got licked by a giraffe. I don't want anything else from a trip, so I considered it a success.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was pretty low-key. We left at 8 AM the next day and drove the 6 hours to Varanasi. I can honestly say that there has only been one thing that has made me really like Varanasi. Patna. While we were in Patna all I was thinking was, "Thank god I don't live here. Thank god." And as soon as we crossed the bridge over the Ganga to Varanasi, I was actually happy to smell my home city. I can tell you that that was the first time I have ever been happy to be met by that smell. So, all in all, the Patna trip was a success.

When we got back we stayed at the Radisson one more night (that was when I stole the pillow, by the way), and the next day I had class. Really, other than my trip to Patna, not much has happened. Oh, except for one photoshoot I had with my brother on the ghats. Here's a bunch of photos I took.

Now let's just start by saying that I have a goat problem. I love goats. I love them too much, and I know that. The number of pictures I took of these two goats is utterly absurd. For real.

Anyway, here is a picture of goats cuddling and a photo of Scott taking a picture of a goat.






Here are some mildly artistic pictures I took.






And these pictures are just ones that I thought worthy of my blog. Everyone who knows me knows about my weakness for puppies, Indian children, and Water Buffalo.














The final photo is definitely my favorite. In fact....Do you know what Water Buffalo remind me of? Those things in The Dark Crystal. The wisemen or something that use canes and have serious spinal problems. They were called Mystics. They walk, in the film, exactly like Water Buffalo. Okay, that's enough dorky references for one day.

Tonight the program house is having a fake early Thanksgiving. One of the girls on the program, Ariel, has taken charge and is cooking up a storm. Everyone's bringing or making something, and I will be making devastatingly delicious garlic mashed potatoes. It's going to be awesome, and you all should be jealous.

-allison

There are a few things I hate about my life

Number one is that fact that today I found a 6-inch centipede trapped in a bucket in my bathroom.

It was crawling (crawling? running? scampering?) as fast as it could around the bottom rim of the bucket. I stood staring at it for five minutes, and only looked away when my snoozed and subsequently forgotten alarm sounded. I looked to my alarm, then the bug then back again. I've never had to deal with an insect this large. I knew that I only had ten minutes to brush my teeth, get dressed, get all my things together, and take care of the animal before I had to go to my Urdu class. I awkwardly left my bathroom, turned my alarm off, got some clothes on, put my books in my bag, and then promptly returned to my bathroom. The centipede was still there, as I more or less expected. He was still scurrying in circles. Little had really changed. I had 6 minutes until I had to leave.

Still looking at the 'pede, I opened my medicine cabinet and got out my toothbrushing things. With my brow purpetually furrowed, I slowly started brushing my teeth. Now that I think about it, it was probably mroe of a scurry. Not so much a scamper, and definitely not a crawl. Actually, I would use a made up word to describe what he was doing. Skittering. I think, if he were doing anything, he would be skittering. Not as bumpy as a scamper, not as busy-bodied as a scurry, and with a definite goal of escaping. Definitely a skitter. T-minus 3 minutes. I had to finally face the problem of what I was to do with him.

I didn't want to kill him, but I also didn't want him anywhere near me. "Live and let live" is a nice idea until something has an exoskeleton and is 6 inches long. In those cases, I much prefer "Live and put outside". So, I carried the bucket out of my house, only flipping him over once by accident, and threw him into the only potted plant we have. Case closed. Looking back on it, I have no idea why it took my so long to do that. But for a good 8 minutes, the solution to the problem was unconceivable to me.

So that was my morning. After I left the house I went to Urdu where I continued to be shamed approximately every five minutes. Example.
Me (reading from a textbook): kh...khoora
Urdu Professor (Salman Sahib): Khooda. What does it mean?
Me: Doesn't it mean "trash"?
Salman Sahib: ... It means Allah.
Me: ...Yup, yup it does...

That's just one of the things that has happened which has knocked me off whatever pedestal I thought I deserved.

The other most annoying thing in my life is that my camera has decided to stop working. It keeps showing me this message which is something like, "Full CT," and I have absolutely no idea what it means. That's what I get for allowing Scott to lend me his super fancy camera. I think tonight I'll charge the battery and maybe that will fix it. I don't know. In any case, that is why I haven't been taking, or posting any pictures.

In other news, Salman Sahib asked me if I would like to teach english to Muslim girls next semester, which I definitely would. My internship at South Point School hasn't started yet, but I plan on going over there today. It looks like my life will be full of Indian children soon.

I still go to Salman Sahib's school every Saturday morning for an hour to teach english conversation, and it's getting more and more fun as time goes on. The second day though, when they were taking pictures of me with their phones, was a little tense. After I confiscated the phone, which made me feel like a totally hardass-teacher, I tried to delete the photos. Then I couldn't figure out how to. That made me feel old. And I'm 20.

In any case, now they seem to like and pseudo-respect me. They correct my Hindi and I correct their English, so I feel like it's a good system. I prepare a lesson for each class (I know, right?) and try to talk to them in Hindi, while getting them to respond in English. Even in India, there are still those few kids in the class who know more than everyone else does and LOVE showing it. It's strange, but I sort of like them best. One of them is Salman Sahib's son, who's SO GODAMN BOSS. Last week we had an-hour long conversation in which he asked me every question he could think of about America. The following comments were some of my favorites.

Shanivaz: What is your favorite meal?
Me: Meal....hm. Probably pizza. But all the food on Thanksgiving is good too.
Shanivaz: Yes.
(end)
Shanivaz: In America, Empire State Building?
Me: ...Yup.
Shanivaz: How many floors are in it?
Me: Oh I have no idea. Maybe...a hundred and fifty?
Shanivaz: Wow!
(end)
Shanivaz: What is the tallest building in Boston?
Me: I have no idea.
Shanivaz: Oh!
(end)

He's so godamn cool. He brings Salman Sahib and I chai every day we have class. Because he's totally amazing. Also, his younger brother, Shaazan, is 8 months old and the cutest thing in the world. Seriously. I'm not kidding. Shaazan hated me for a month, but today he held my hand and smiled at me. I'm in love with an 8-month old.

Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures soon. The Ganga and the ghats are getting to be absurdly gorgeous at night, so I'll try to take pictures of that.

-allison

ps. The tallest building in Boston is John Hancock Tower at 60-floors, and the Empire State Building has 102 floors. Yeah, I looked it up.

Dwali Mubarak ho!

So today is Diwali, which is, as far as I can tell, the Christmas of India. Last night at the program house we had a puja, before which I volunteered to be the culturally clumsy white kid to perform. I offered a lot of food to Ganesh and Lakshmi, though I almost put the sweets behind the figures instead of in front of them. It was a significant faux pas, and the stupidest thing I did.

However, before the puja, I was put on the task of painting little feet throughout the house. The paint was made of spices and water and we had to put little feet in every doorway. They were so cute and tiny. In the next post, I'll put together a bunch of pictures from the night.

Post puja we went outside to set of fireworks, and I stepped on a sparkler(just like that time in 4th grade. Remember, Mom?) and it hurt, though it by no means ruined my night. It was a fun time. Tonight, apparently the fireworks will be crazy ridiculous and seen throughout the city. Diwali is also called The Festival of Lights, and apparently it's incredibly beautiful. I have no doubt that it will be.

I, however, am going to a special Diwali dinner with the woman I will be interning for at the elementary school. I am really excited, though entirely sure I will make a fool out of myself somehow. It's only a matter of time, really.

Okay well I'm off to clean my room. Happy Diwali everyone!

-allison

My Roommate Chris: The Iron Chef of Sweets

I had deep fried cookie dough last night. With a Cadbury chocolate center.

That's all.

Survey Post

In the last week, number of times seeing...
A dead dog: 2
A dead mouse: 1
A dead cricket: 80 billion
A mouse in my room: 6
A mouse in my bed: 2
Ants carrying other dead ants: 80 billion
Two men making out: 1 (It blew my mind)
The biggest spider in the world: 2

In last week, number of times eating/drinking...
Bugs by accident: 3
Food that I knew had bugs in it: 2
Amazingly delicious food: 2
Tuna melt: 1
Homemade mango juice popsicles from our freezer: 4
Chai: 40
Lassi: 4 (The lassiwalla on my corner and I are best friends. For real.)
Free meals: 11

In last week, number of times feeling like a complete fool...
In front of my Urdu professor: 30 (Sub point: Number of times Urdu professor has put his forhead on the table in what I can only guess is frustration: 8)
In front of my Hindi professor: 10
In front of any Indian: 200

In last week, number of...
Children talked to: 10
Misconjugated tenses: 75
Overeager rickshaw wallas: 20
Teenage boys that gawked at me and whispered in Hindi (during interviews): 36
Teenage boys that gawked at me and whispered in Hindi (outside of research): 50
Number of kids who speak better English than I do: 22

That's all I have to say. I thought of this list when I was riding my bike by dog carcass number two. I figured it was a susinct way of communicating to you all what my current life is like.

As a side note, I want to congratulate my brother on getting a job as a contributing editor at WIRED Magazine. In addition to being employed, he's like the coolest guy I know.

-allison

Super Shiny Flickr Page

Hey everyone, so there's that nifty slideshow thing I added (after an uncharacteristically significant amount of time spent yelling at my computer) in the top right corner of my blogger page. It's great, right? Well, there's more where that came from!

If you click on it it should send you right on over to my Flickr account page, whoes URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahcarney/.

Good luck getting there and understanding my organization method. Flickr only lets you have three big groups of pictures with labels, so you're going to have to sift through everything. Have fun!

God, I hate formatting.

-allison

Everything in India Either Doesn't Work or is on Fire

So I'm going to have to go over lots of things in this post. Here is a quick table of contents:

Chapter One: Mussoorie
Chapter Two: The Train Back to Banaras
Chapter Three: My New Apartment
Capter Four: Motorcycle

Chapter One: Mussoorie

After a few days in the town, we discovered a restaurant named Kalsang's.

Before I really delve into Kalsang's cuisine, I need to make something very clear. I don't think when I say this it will have the weight it deserves, but I'll give it a try. There isn't cheese in India. Take a moment with that sentence. In India, there isn't cheese. Think about the implications for almost every meal Americans eat.

Yeah. It makes me hate everyone in the States, including my former self.

Okay, so in this restaurant, which had Tibetan and Chinese food, there was one dish that I got every time. It's name was Spinach and Cheese Momos (to get them fried was a 5 rupee charge- needless to say they were always fried). Was the cheese definitely Velveeta? Yeah. Have I had better momos? Sure. Were they the best godamn thing to grace this planet? Definitely. I ordered them to the hotel three times, and ate them at the restaurant at least six. This means that out of the 15 days I was there, I ate them on a total of nine days; If you had caught me on any day, the chances that I had eaten or was planning on eating Spinach and Cheese Momos (fried) would be 60%. Sadly, I have no photos of them, and I apologize for that.

Another culinary experience we had was ordering Domino's in Mussoorie. Domino's in Mussoorie wasn't always bad, but it was definitely not always good. The first time we ordered it we decided to go out on a limb and order the "Cheese Burst" pizza. It was 20 more rupees, and everyone was hoping that it meant stuffed crust. The following is what it actually was.








Now, this was straight-up melted white Velveeta cheese (same as the momos, except this is disgusting) poured on the pizza. And though we ate it, we also admitted it was a grave error in judgement. As of right now, it's sort of a sore spot in the group and whenever anyone brings it up it's more in remorse than anything else.

Despite the culinary highs and lows, the view from Mussoorie were amazing. Here are a few photos to sift through.

That final picture is the view from where we had class every day. It's okay with me if you hate me for a minute while you click on that and maximize the window.

Chapter Two: The Train Back to Banaras

The train itself didn't have much special about it. I, obviously, spent a lot of time sitting in the doorways and listening to music. Though, I will say that this time I got two very extreme reactions. One woman, after giving me a stern talking-to in Hindi about, I can only assume, the danger involved in sitting there, left in a motherly huff. After about ten minutes she came back, but with candy. I gladly took the candy, a kind of spicy tamarind candy that vaguely reminds me of whiskey, and thanked her, telling her it was my favorite candy. The first time I had it, by the way, I was disgusted by it. Now I think it's delicious. It's also two for one rupee, which is great. The other reaction I got was full on screaming by a man who was personally offended by what I was doing. He, like the man on the train to Mussoorie, told me he would be back in five minutes. Like before, I didn't move, and I never saw him again. I'm starting to think India's made up of garbage, goats, and empty threats.

The one truly amazing thing to happen on the train was the fact that Virendra, my Hindi teacher, was given a puppy in Mussoorie, and he had to take it back on the train. He named it Woody. the first picture is of the three boys and the puppy, with the second being the puppy lying on Sam's tummy. I can't even talk about how cute this dog was. It was incredible.

Indian trains are absurdly crowded. The tickets usually get messed up and people usually get on earlier than they are supposed to. The result of this is that many people don't have a place to sit, so they stay in the connections of the train and everything's very crowded and uncomfortable. But, that all changes when a white girl walks through carrying a small animal wrapped in a blanket. Everyone thinks it's a baby, and every single person clears out. It's incredible. I will use this technique on every train ride from here on in.

Chapter Three: My New Apartment

Due to a variety of reasons, chiefly the fact that my old apartment didn't have a kitchen and my room had three doors, I decided to move out. I got an apartment in Assi Ghat (the Western part of Varanasi) which is a lot busier than my old neighborhood, and overall more fun. Here are two pictures of my apartment: my bed and my bathroom respectively.

My first move in my kitchen was to make Macaroni and Cheese, due to the lack of cheese problem previously mentioned. Here is the glorious (yet fuzzy) picture of that.

The next day I made salsa with Ed and then added it to a batch of scrambled eggs I was making. It sort of looked like tabouli, but it was totally delicious. I have three people who can attest to that. I make damn good Indian salsa.

My new apartment is pretty perfect. I love the kitchen and the refridgerator and my bathroom and even my mouse roommate. I haven't named him, but I've seen him about four times in three days. So far, he's been okay. The biggest problem with roommates is a ridiculous ant infestation reminiscent of a story my brother told me a few years ago about his ants carrying a gecko up the kitchen wall to their lair.

Yeah, it's a lot like that.

Chapter Four: Motorcycle

So Pandit-Ji (he runs errands for the program and is generally awesome. For the purpose of this story it is important to know that he speaks no English.) fetches me a Royal Enfield mechanic and brings him to my house. The man and him talk for a few minutes in front of me; I understand about 1/5th of their conversation. Pandit-Ji then finesses me and the mechanic into a rikshaw and we go to my old apartment. Before we leave the mechanic asks Pandit-Ji if I know Hindi. He says yes. This is the first mistake made.

It takes about ten minutes to get to my house, and I ask the mechanic what his name is. He says Rajesh. He asks me my name, and I say Anamika (my Hindi name that everyone loves). We don't talk for the rest of the ride.

At the apartment Rajesh fiddles with the bike, but mostly just talks really fast with a lot of pan in his mouth. Pan can be found in two forms in India, a leaf wrapped around a betel nut and some other goodies, or little packets found on carts on the side of the road that look very much like strips of condoms. In any case, I can understand very little Hindi, and even less when there are two ounces of red mush in someone's mouth. We have a brief conversation, and he tells me I need a new battery. I ask him how much it is, and he says it costs 1700 rupees. That's about 1500 more than I am willing to spend on this 30-something-year-old bike. I ask him to charge the battery first, and he agrees. We then walk to his shop. His shop is a 15-minute walk away without a 400 pound motorcycle that won't turn on. He laboriously walks my bike there, and I, still getting stared at by everyone, walk next to him feeling terrible the entire way.

We get to the shop, and he proceeds to take apart the headlight, the undercarriage, the seat, pretty much everything, while this battery is charging. After three hours (I left and came back) the bike can turn on. I make excited-white-girl noises and him, his guru-ji (Dinesh) and four children stare at me. I smile and promptly look away. He revs the engine a few times and things are looking up. Then the clutch falls off. Just clean off the bike. It's just really great.

He says he can repair it in five minutes. He leaves on his bicycle to get the part and I stay behind with Dinesh, talking to him about his family and where he lives. From what I gather, Dinesh is Rajesh's uncle (the son of Rajesh's grandma) and though they don't live together, they eat together. I dont understand, but he thinks I did.

Rajesh returns and after another 15 minutes he's back. I pay him with all I have, but I need to get more rupees. I tell them that I will leave, alone, and then come back in ten minutes. I say alone because it seems as if they really wanted Rajesh to come with me, but I felt that I would be better if I traveled without someone on the back, seeing how inexperienced I am. In retrospect, I probably should have taken them up on their offer instead of deciding to go alone. However, this is the first time I have driven on Indian roads and I will say that I did a damn good job. I didn't hit anyone or thing, and I only stalled out once. When I got back to my apartment, however, it was a completely different story.

There is a little ramp (at a 45 degree angle and about 2 feet high) to get up to the apartment, and I thought I could ride up it. That, after try two, was apparently incorrect. After try one, I'll take a gander that only six men were around me. After try two where I almost fell off the edge of the ramp into a gully, I'll guess somewhere around thirty. After a few minutes of watching the white girl with the kickass bike, one Indian man handed someone his baby and walks it up the ramp. Was I ashamed? Less so than when I was hit by a motorcycle, and not much more than I am on a daily basis. So, I get my money from inside and then I have to bring the motorcycle back down the ramp. At first I walk really slow with it, and everything seems okay. Then the motorcycle starts going faster than I want and almost falls over. Five children run over to hold it up and straighten it out. I am absurdly grateful. The same men from before are still there. They are actually rolling on the ground laughing.

I get on the bike and one thing is clear. I don't have a clutch. Somewhere between getting to my house and leaving my house the part totally snapped. I instantly blame the mechanic until I see that the cement of the part snapped. The cement. When I almost fell into the gully, I must have hit the clutch on the gate and boken it. Anyway, I was pissed. Then I walked it back to the mechanics, incredibly angry. It took so long and I was sweating more than any analogy I can make. I get there, he replaces it, I meet an Israeli who's greatly impressed with my bike, I pretend as if I've had it for ages, I pay Rajesh, and I take off. I get back to the house and walk it up the ramp, revving it the whole way, without incident. It takes one try and I even do it with some limited agility. After all this, I'm feeling pretty good about my skills.

This morning I walk it down the ramp also without incident, and try to start it. The battery is dead again. I try a few more times, but give up rather quickly. An Indian man (they love helping white girls with their motorbikes) tries to start it, but can't. He shrugs and starts to walk off. Before he does I yell to him to ask him to help me walk it up, for without the bike on I don't have the engine to help me. He does it deftly and quickly, and the men who work across the street are still laughing, but I have an in tact clutch and somewhat in tact pride, so I feel like I won.

In short, I'm over the bike. It's too expensive and I can't deal with it. I think I'm going to give to Daya, who's the guy who helped me retrieve the bike from the rail station, sometime in the next week. It's too bad because the bike's totally badass, and I really do love driving it. But frankly, I'd prefer one that works. In any case, I think this might be the final chapter for me and the bike being together. I'll miss it, but I can make do with my bicycle.

Well, that's about it for now. For the next few days I think I'm going to spend a lot of time in my apartment watching movies and reading. I plan on avoiding all the Indian men whom I've met recently. They've all been friendly and therefore very disconcerting.

-allison