Some advice for future Alliance students

As we're wrapping up our time here, I have decided to share some advice that I've been noting all semester. Going to India is an incredible experience, and the Alliance usually does a pretty good job of helping you through your stay. Nonetheless, like all programs it's not perfect, and this advice will help you fill in the gaps. For those of you who aren't planning to go to this program, this will probably not be all that helpful for you.

Packing advice

• Bring at least three pants and six shirts; laundry won't be possible for the first week while you're in the retreat center. A Tide ToGo Pen also doesn't hurt.
• Bring shampoo and body wash; it is also unavailable the first week and after is hard to find (though most medicals stores have a selection of unfamiliar products from familiar brands). However, you can always borrow from friends if you forget.
• Bring basic medical supplies, especially pepto bismol/tums and advil (and anything you need specifically). You can buy lots of medicines here relatively cheap, though you'll need to know the drug name rather than the brand name (ex. Cetirizine instead of Zyrtec).
• Bring hand sanitizer. Public washrooms usually don't have soap. The program center has extra, but you don't get to the program center the first week.
• If you have dust allergies, bring a dust cover for your pillow, as well as scarves and handkerchiefs. All of India is dusty, and it just get worse after the rainy season ends.
• Make sure your family knows that you won't be able to contact them for the first couple of weeks because wifi is hard to come by. Once classes start, though, it's pretty easy to Skype from the program center.
• Bring a poncho if you're coming in the rainy season. They're not easy to find here but they're really useful.
• Bring a laptop running either a new version of Windows or a Mac, as internet access is only reliable (well, as reliable as anything is in India) when compatible with those systems. And make sure you bring a computer; it's practically impossible to get by without one.
• Bring movies and other digital entertainment already on your hard drive. Internet access is rarely unlimited (bandwidth-wise), so downloading can be difficult.

Notes to Make Things Easier Earlier

• Small change (anything less than a 500) is hard to come by; make change in every shop you can; conversely, many shops will not have change for a 500 rupee note or bigger (even though it's less than $10). Both Uttara and Shela (who work for the program) will often have change as well. Don't risk going places without change; it can make rickshaw interactions very difficult.
• Even if the program says they have contacted your host family about something, call anyway to make sure. Oftentimes communications don't go through quickly.
• You will have to miss class early on for police registration or sickness, but the professors expect this so it is okay. Despite the fact that the program asks you to confirm that you'll prioritize academics, you won't be able to always.
• Find a WiFi cafe that you like early on, because you probably will not have access at home and the program center's is unreliable. The Chocolate Room has fast wifi but slow and expensive service, and no wifi on weekends. CocoBerry has slower wifi but is more consistent. There are also plenty of CyberCafes but you won't be able to use your own devices as they're wired connections.
• The Alliance program does not allow students to use their printer, and nearby printer shops don't open until after your first two classes. For anything you need to print for class (which you will quite often) you'll have to plan ahead to make sure you have time to print.
• For lunch food: There's not a lot of time to go to restaurants on Ferguson College Road between classes; the only ones you can be sure will serve you in time are Wadeshewar and Roopali, which are both close. However, the Gokhale canteen has cheap Indian lunch food served family ste, and the Ferguson College canteen (which is through the gate right by the entrance to Gokhale) has a la carte snacks and lunch food on the cheap.

Academic Advice
  I wrote a post already on choices for classes.

On Internships, Research, and Film

•   The program is really great with finding things that seem perfect, but in practice it's often quite inconsistent. Some internships keep you busy doing useful work, but quite often NGOs really have no idea what to do with you. Research tends to be even more this way, which can be frustrating.
• Both internships and research generally involve interviewing people and talking about your findings from those interviews. If you're lucky, your organization will find you people to interview (often who are already associated with your organization). Otherwise, however, your faculty advisor will be able to help.
• For interviewing a lot of people, you'll need a translator. Most are students at local colleges, and all are provided by the Alliance. Working with a translator is a great experience to have, especially if you're planning on doing work internationally in the future.
• Documentary Film, like most big projects, starts out pretty slow and then gets to be very hectic toward the end. As long as you stay on top of things, though, it's less work because it depends less on other people.
• You're told you need to spend 150 hours on your research, internship, or documentary film. You are not likely to spend that much time.

More general advice

• The most important thing in India is to be as open as possible to new experiences and to reserve judgement. You'll be exposed to a lot that's uncomfortable, both physically and emotionally. The good thing is, the other people in the program are going through similar experiences, and they'll form a good social network.
• There's a lot of really great festivals (at least toward the beginning of the fall program). Ask your host families (especially host siblings if you have them) how they celebrate, and try and go out with Indian friends to see as much of the festival as possible. Ganapati, for example, turns into an awesome dance party.
• Find extra things to do out in Pune. For example, my friend Casey has gone on several treks with trekking clubs in Pune, and has been able to make friends with lots of people outside of the program. Other friends have used things like Tinder and going out in Koregaon Park (which is pretty far and relatively expensive) to meet other people in the city (often Europeans who are working in the tech sector or volunteering).
• If you can, travel over weekends. While places like Varanasi and Goa are a bit of a stretch to do in a two-day weekend (though with a couple hundred dollars you can fly and see things), there's plenty to do that's a bit closer. The Ajanta and Ellora caves (near Aurangabad in Maharashtra) are cool, as is Mumbai if you like large cities. Some of us have been able to squeeze Bangalore or Hampi (a temple site in Karnataka, which is the state south of Maharashtra) in a weekend, though that's a bit of a stretch.
• On the other hand, there's a lot to see in Pune itself. There's Agakhan Palace,  Vetal Tekdi (which has a beautiful quarry lake and a tower from which there's a gorgeous view of Pune), good street shopping along Laxmi road, and night life in Koregaon Park. There's also lots of events that happen throughout the year.
• Regardless, make sure to take some time to relax. India is super stressful, and sometimes you just need a weekend to relax and decompress without doing much. I've had those weekends as well, and they're welcome.

Live music or living music?

One of the examples of multiple Indias I experienced this weekend is in how different generations patronize music. This weekend I was able to attend two very different concerts. One was a sitar and tabla concert by our (Katie, Ryan, and my) sitar teacher and her son, and the other was an outdoor rock concert put on by Coke Studio (an Indian MTV live music TV show funded by Coke), which featured the bands Agnee and Papon (and his band, The East India Company).

The sitar concert was completely instrumental, with ragas that changed tempos and tones to evoke different moods and facets of their subjects. Some parts had tabla accompanying, some parts were solo sitar, and some parts were dialogues between the two instruments. Introducing the musicians before the performance were some of the organizers from the Home, most of whom seemed to know both our teacher and her family beforehand (they were speaking in Marathi, but Saum translated some for me). Before the final song, various people from the Home felicitated our teacher and her son with flowers, poetry, and even one story where a woman shared how hearing sitar music reminded her of her late husband (Saum translated for me). They even gave Katie, Saum, and I a flower to welcome us as visitors.

The Coke Studio concert, took place the next night some 10 km outside Pune on the campus of FLAME, a small (population- but not acreage-wise) liberal arts college. Saum has a two-wheeler, which we took the 12+ kilometers of badly upkept roads to the campus, traveling through the small town of Lavale and along rich-smelling dirt paths surrounded by agricultural land, bouncing on potholes and bumps the whole way. (Luckily there was a more direct route with better-maintained roads for the return.) The concert occurred in an open air stadium that made the concert feel like a nighttime Dillo Day. The crowd itself was quite a bit bigger than the 700-odd students who go to FLAME, when it all gathered, which was surprising given how out-of-the-way FLAME's campus is.

The Coke Studio concert had many characteristics. Subtly in advertising is not one of them.

The concert was introduced by the Coke Studio spokesperson, who was an energetic woman in a red dress. After two commercials projected on the large screen that served as a backdrop to the stage, and lots of exhortations to “Make some noise” in a classic rock-concert-y way, the first act took the stage. The band is called Agnee (which means fire; and yes, they were playing at FLAME). My favorite song they sang was “Sadho Re”, which was in Hindi. It began with acoustic background and the sort of rhythmless soaring sweet vocals that sounded like a mournful ghazal or Turkish ballad, but after the first verse the full rock band band came in. There was also an extended bass guitar solo, which was pretty cool. Agnee's songs were bilingual, and even quoted Holocaust wall-poetry.

Agnee on stage.

The second band was led by Papon, an Assamese musician who had written several songs for Hindi films (including for Barfi) and had a boyish stage presence that was at times energetic, playful, and sweet. His fellow musicians included a jazz keyboardist, a multi-percussion tabla-player, and an automotive engineer guitarist, who when prompted to play while Papon introduced them ended up playing music that sounded more like funk than Bollywood. The song that the audience most wanted to hear, Banao (the Hindi imperative of “make”) was about Papon's experience biking in the Himalayas and talking to various spiritual gurus, all of whom were big fans of Mary Jane. (Yes, even in India everyone's favorite is the stoner song. These Dillo Day comparisons write themselves.) However, he also had several reimagined folk songs in his set list, one of which, Jhumur, was related to an Assamese harvest and fertility dance (here's a recording from an earlier Coke Studio concert). Several people from the audience came up to show us all the dance, which was a beautiful example of how the concert combined the traditional with the modern. All in all, the Coke Studio concert was one of my favorite concerts that I've been to, even though I had never heard of the artists before and couldn't understand a good portion of the lyrics.

The East India Company onstage during the song Banao. Note Papon with the acoustic guitar and the tabla player in the background. Also the giant Coke bottle in the background.

 Looking back, there were some interesting parallels between the two concerts. Tabla was used in both concerts. Both concerts made a point of emphasizing their connection to older cultural forms, rather than their international character, though both concerts had musicians that had performed in multiple countries. Our sitar teacher has played in Dubai as part of a South Asian cultural festival, while many of the musicians in the two Coke Studio bands also have played various places outside India.

On the other hand, the two concerts were situated in totally different places. The sitar/tabla concert occurred at Navara Old Age Home in the heart of Pune as one of their regular cultural program, and other than Katie, Saum, our sitar teacher's son Suvrat and I the average age was probably sixty-someting. (This is probably not surprising to anyone who's gone to a classical music concert in the States.) The Coke Studio concert was dominated by people between the ages of 18 and 25, mostly living in Pune but originally from as diverse places in India as Assam, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat.

Papon dancing onstage with audience members

The concerts also both represented two of the most powerful forces shaping India today. Coke Studio, obviously, is funded by a massive multinational company that thrives on its ability to situate itself as a hip, socially aware vanguard of the New India, with its rock concerts, relentless star-studded commercials (Coke Zero just came out in India, as we were told several times during the night), and polyglot cosmopolitanism (both the Coke Studio representative and Papon switched occasionally from English to Hindi in order to better express themselves). However, the show's deep Indian roots were also clear in the diverse stylings of the artists, who in addition to jazz and rock elements used Assamese and Punjabi folk music and vocals drawing from Islamic prayer traditions.

The sitar concert did not have vocals to be in a specific language, but despite this the musical and cultural vocabulary was very specifically based in Hindu religious music. The one song that was not a raga had to be specifically marked as lok geet, people's music. Unlike the Coke Studio musicians, who came from all over the country, our sitar teacher is from Pune and was playing primarily to other Punekars, people who had lived in the city since long before its recent expansion. It's telling that my friend Saum, who I went to both concerts with and is from Pune, was known through his father to several of the attendees of the concert, while the only relationship he had to the Coke Studio musicians was that he was wearing the same shirt as the bassist of Agnee. This is the difference between community connections of family and individualistic connections of consumption.

This was supposed to be us excited after two concerts. Eh, close enough.