I propose we search again! This time, with science!

Despite all the crazy adventures I've had in India so far, and all the classes I've taken and places I've seen, it has been clear that the central experience of the Alliance program is the research experience (or, for most people, the internship or documentary filmmaking experience). This past week and a half the majority of my days have been taken up with doing this research, so I figure I should share it with you.

We're all assigned organizations to work with based on our stated interests. I had said that I was interested either in studying agricultural organizations or LGBTQ+ (or, as they say in India, LGBTIH, which includes intersex and Hijara people) issues. After being informed that the nearest agricultural organization was miles outside of Pune, I decided on the latter. So I was paired with Samapathik Trust, as I have mentioned before.

On the subject of pride and advocacy.

Samapathik Trust organized Pride, but they're primary goals are HIV/AIDS testing and prevention among MSM, transgender women, and tritiyapanthis in Pune through interventions such as condom repositories, HIV testing, and health education for these communities. However, the organization also works on advocacy around political causes, most notably in opposition to section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which deems all non-procreative sex "unnatural" and illegal (in a country in which sterilizing women is state policy). Thus, one of the research topics the Trust offered me was looking to see what social science professionals, such as psychologists, sociologists, and social work professors, thought about the law and how they taught it to their students.

AIDS-prevention posters.

However, I didn't choose this topic. The Alliance program and Samapathik Trust also happened to notice that I had taken a class on Thai-based gender affirmation surgery and had some base knowledge on the subject, and so also described a research project on the attitudes of mental health professionals toward the gender identity of their transgender clients. Basically, because for a long time "gender identity disorder" as a diagnosis pathologized gender variance, mental health care as a field has not been very welcoming to transgender and gender variant people. In India there is reason to believe that is changing, and with the removal of gender identity disorder and the adding of "gender dysphoria" (which is experienced by some, but not all, transgender and gender non-conforming folk when their bodies and how society perceive them does not match how they perceive themselves, and also as a diagnosis addresses the problem as one of finding ways to help people match their gender identity rather than seeing the gender identity itself as a problem). My research is to see how mental health professionals deal with and understand the gender identities of transgender people, and also what mental health issues are most pressing among Indian transgender people.

Rameshwar Market. Samapathik Trust is on the top floor.

I have been working on my research proposal and literature review in Samapathik Trust's office, and while most people prefer to speak Marathi too each other, several people speak English and I've made friends with them all. I make sure to eat lunch (provided by the Alliance in a tupperware tiffin) with the organization every day, and while I only pick up a few of the words (mostly English terms or queer terms), it's great to have people around doing awesome stuff while I'm writing and analyzing abstracts and such.

Mmm, lunchtime.

However, as of today I have finished my proposal, so I will be spending a lot less time at the organization and a lot more time out and about, interviewing people. I'll still return here to transcribe the interviews (which is the hardest part of the research in my opinion), though, so that'll be good.

The entrance to the Law College. I have an interview scheduled for Thursday here!

Interactive question time: Are you close your workplace colleagues? Or, if you don't have a job currently, do you prefer to do work around other people or alone? Why?

A Day in the Life: November 8-9

Who says a day has to be wake-up to sleep time? This “day” in my life is actually an evening followed by a day. This day is not quite a standard day, because it exposed me to two Indias, one hypervisible, and one too often reared invisible.

For dinner on Saturday, November 8^th, a group of us went to an area in Koregaon Park called ABC Farms, which was at one point was a famous urban garden for its cheese. Now it's mostly restaurants, like the Moroccan restaurant styled a la e.e. cummings, habibi. I didn't take any pictures there (oops), but we had tabbouleh (which no one but me liked), stone roasted vegetables (which were delectable without the sauce and then had beautiful garlic, hummus, and spicy sauces on the side) and falafel, among other things. But the real reason we went to ABC Farms is because it's right next to High Spirits, which is a music joint. Casey and I went earlier than the others (because for some reason the rest of our group was having really intense conversations while we were paying for dinner), and explored a bit, but took no selfies because I forgot I had a blog.

That night at High Spirits the band was Mr. Woodnote and Little Rhys, a multi-tracking saxophone/rapper duo from Australia and Bristol, England, respectively. I don't know how well that video demonstrated for you, but I could feel the music in my bones. I confess, multi-trackers are my favorite instrument, and I just really love how Mr. Woodnote combines beat-boxing with saxophone tracks to create funky music. Soren got pretty into it, though, and so did Casey. Some of the others in our group were a little less enthused, but I guess music tastes vary. We also met some nice German people who are studying on an exchange program!

My High Spirits wristband and a stamp from the night before.

The young, hip, (wealthy), music-savvy, skilled-laboring India of Koregaon Park may be what everyone thinks of when discussing The New India, but the next morning a group of us were able to encounter a different sort of new India. We went to Pune's Pride March, which was organized by the organization I'm doing research for, Samapathik Trust.

Katie, Ryan, and Elena. Julia and Majesta joined us later.

Ryan, Katie, Elena and I all met at Gokhale at 10 am (okay, maybe more like 10:20 am) to walk together over to Sambhaji Baug, a park in the middle of the city where the march started and ended. At first we went into the park, which was beautiful, green, and had public trashcans (which is a big deal), but could not find the march crowd for a bit. I even asked a couple eating breakfast if this was the right park (it was). Then we spotted it in the distance. A rainbow flag. A growing group of people.

Signs.

We went to the large group and registered for the march. We were handed corn muffins, a chocolate, and a small bottle of water, which is a very Indian way of felicitating us all, and stood around waiting for the march to start. At first Katie and I were a bit alarmed by the very skewed gender balance (the march was organized by a group that works primarily with MSM, so the people associated with that were mostly men), but as time went on more women showed up. We met a group of people from FLAME, which is a liberal arts college outside of the city, and made friends. I ended up spending most of the march with one of them, Avantika, who had grown up in Britain and Bangalore and now studies in Pune. I also got a rainbow flag painted on my face, which was cool and marked me for the rest of the day.

Bindu Sir is speaking to the crowd. The woman behind him with the megaphone has "I am Hijara" written on her face.

Before the march began, Bindumadhav Khire, who is my contact person at Samapathik Turst, gave us all instructions over a megaphone in both English and Marathi. I couldn't hear him, but it was good to know we had a solid plan. As the march began, some of us were also handed signs. Mine said simply “We are here, We are queer”, which is exactly how I described the point of the march to my friends.

In case people were worried.

The march itself was incredible. You could sense the exuberance of a group of people who had only recently found their voice and the language to talk about their identity, and the excitement of a small community meeting itself in full for the first time. There were enough people marching that I couldn't see either end while we were marching, and flags and signs flying everywhere. As we walked down JM road, an a capella group near us gave a rounding rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Born This Way (which was powerful despite my disagreements with the song's message), and the Hindi song हम होंगे कामयाब (which became something of an anthem by the end). Elsewhere, people were chanting in English and Marathi, call and responses like “I'm -insert LGBTI identity here-” “That's okay!” and “Hey hey ho ho, homophobia has to go!” (which I don't think was partially in Hindi because “Is is is is” doesn't make any sense). I didn't catch the Marathi slogans.

Look at all the pretty people.

On the big roads I didn't see many non-marchers other than people with cameras watching us, but after we went down JM Road and up Ferguson College Road, we turned for the last leg of our journey down a much smaller street through a residential area. Like with all large parades, there were lots of people who stopped to watch, mostly very confused children but with some adults. I was surprised by how happy people seemed to see us. I caught the eye and smiled at both kids and adults, some of whom responded in kind and others who did not. Avantika and I had lost the rest of our group by this point, and were walking so far to the front that we had to stop a couple of times to not get lost in front of the parade. I recognized many of the leaders of the parade from my organization, including one guy who had simply “377” with a circle and a slash through it painted on his cheek.

The sign says "Love is not a crime". Under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, all acts of non-procreative sex are illegal.

I am always reminded of how different Pride Marches are in countries like India and Turkey, where the climate is generally more hostile to LGBTI+ people, from in large cities in the U.S. In cities like Charlotte, Pride is a massive commercialized festivals in which the parade (rather than march) is full of pre-existing organizations marching in step. In Istanbul, and even more so in Pune, the march is of people themselves declaring either their minority sexual or gender identity or their solidarity with gender and sexual minorities. This is an India of people making simply themselves be known. We're here. We're queer. हम होंगे कामयाब| It's a more humble statement, in some ways.

Afterward we went to lunch with our newfound friends! From left to right it's Sashank, Avantika, Ryan, Vrindy (who is Canadian), Me and Elena, Katie, Mansi, and Sakshi.

Diwali

Here's another India for you all. My friend Tom says that I'm getting to go to India to explore my roots. I think it's more like going to India to explore new branches, and see what fruits are growing from the same tree that sprouted me. Okay, maybe that's a labored metaphor. Anyway, I went to visit my family in Lucknow for Diwali, October 22-26.

No place like home for the holidays!

I left from Pune airport at 11:30 am to my new home, the Indira Gandhi International airport (where I have spent a good number of hours in the last month). It keeps promising new changes coming soon, but they don't seem to have happened yet. But, I mean, I guess the anticipation is reinforcing the idea that “change is good” that all the posters declare to me. I ate disappointing biryani and a much less disappointing brownie and fig bread in the airport, learned what a South Delhi accent sounds like (British with a hint of Manhattan), and was thus well-prepared me well for the short flight to Lucknow.

Diwali lights at my younger Bua's house.

When I arrived in Lucknow, the sun was still up, which made it easy for my younger brother Devansh and my Fufa (Devansh's father) to find me and drive me to their house. As we got in the car, the sun was setting, so when we took a route outside the city along the highway, and could see all the beautiful Diwali lights on the houses while listening to Devansh's stellar music tastes (of which I recognized Nicki Minaj's voice a few times and Lana Del Rey's Summertime Sadness). Naturally, it was the perfect introduction to Lucknow.

Playing cards. From left to right, I'm not sure who, Choti Bua, Chacha, Choti Fufa, Ivanshi didi, me.

At home, there was a large group of people waiting; my Dadi (paternal grandmother), two Buas (paternal aunts), another Fufa (Fufas are married to Buas), a Chacha, a Chachi (father's younger brother and his wife), a sister, and another brother. We all had dinner and then played cards. I borrowed some money from one of my Buas to play, and ended up bluffing my way to a big haul. After that, though, the game was less interesting so I decided to watch (as they played the next two evenings too). It was a blast for all concerned, with everyone talking in Hindi and me stumbling through the few phrases I know.

Diwali candles, though not the ones I helped with.

Thursday was pretty chill. We mostly just hung out at home, since this was Diwali itself. My relatives did their pujas, and in the evening I went to go visit my my Bua (my father's older sister) and Fufa I was not staying with, who lives about a kilometer away. I made the big mistake of not bringing my phone or camera, because my Bua is an artist. Her house is full of paintings, glasswork, and painted elephant sculptures. Most of them depict Radha and Krishna, who are popular gods. Krishna is famous for his role in the Mahabharat (the great Indian epic that's literally named “Great India”) as a confidant of the prince Arjun and as a powerful and wise warrior. Radha isn't mentioned in any of the Vedic texts, but in later texts and stories the two of them are basically inseparable on a spiritual level, and Radha's devotion to Krishna is not just romantic or sexual but spiritual. Plus, there are loads of folk songs about their relationship in which women describe themselves in the role of Radha. I also got to see my Bua and Fufa do their puja around sunset, and rang the bell some to help. I'm not all that good at it. In the process, we made and lit bowls of mustard oil with cotton wicks in them, which we then placed all around the house and on the roof. (Naturally, I couldn't take pictures of the puja or candle-lighting either, but I did get a picture of the candles left at the house I was staying.)

This one's the new blog background.

After we lit the candles we returned to my father's younger sister's house. I met up with my cousins and we decided to light some things on fire that were a little more spectacular. Everyone here calls fireworks "crackers". Apparently lots of people forgo crackers for environmental reasons, and given that the smog never really lifts off Lucknow I can't help but say they're right. Then again, burning metal compounds look really cool. Especially the volcano and spinning ones.

This one was my favorite.

On Friday, my brothers and Fufa (but not Ivanshi-didi) went to Imambara, which is an important (Shia) Muslim site from the 18^th century (when Lucknow was the imperial seat of the Nawabs). Well, we went to the big Imambara, but it was prayer time (oops) so we went to the smaller Imambara first.

Chandeliers! Lots of 'em!

The smaller one had a plaque explaining how Muslims remember the death of Husayn ibn Ali, who was the first Shia Imam and the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the Battle of Karbala. His death was one of the first martyrdoms in Shia Islam and remains an important historical event, and Husayn ibn Ali is highly respected. The Imambaras are Shia congregational spaces used for remembrance, and have shrines set up in them that people can take pilgrimages to. The Imambara itself was full of mirrors and blown-glass candle holders, and I'm sure with the candles lit it would have been incredible. Unfortunately, they were not.

Panorama showing the antelawn to the large Imambara and the gate outside

Panorama of the lawn, mosque, and large Imambara within the Imambara gate.

Afterward, we went to the larger Imambara. We weren't allowed in the mosque, but were able to look in the Imambara itself, which was topped with a stair labyrinth (Bhul Bhuleya). It would have been perfect for hide-and-seek, and apparently that's exactly what it was intended for: to give the nawab's family some place to play in. Isn't that sweet? Oh, and there was also a cistern that had reflective water for the purposes of military defense. After we saw the Imambaras, we went home for a biriyani lunch, which was tasty and also the only thing we did that evening. (Other than Devansh and I looking on the damnyouautocorrect tag on Pinterest, which just goes to show that some things are universal. Or at least transnational.)

Picture time after Bhai Dooj! Left to right, Devansh, Ivanshi didi, Ayush (in the back), Pranjul didi, me.

On Saturday three of my sisters (Pranjul, Ivanshi, and Konica) each came over at a different time and gave me and my two younger brothers a blessing and a sweet in this ritual called “Bhai Dooj”. (There was some variety; in addition to the tika and sweet, Konica-didi gave us a dried chickpea to swallow. I'm not sure what this means.) They prayed for our long lives and happiness, and then we reached and touched their feet to asks for blessings. We also gave them money, which would probably seem more patriarchal if my Bua hadn't given us all the cash to give our sisters.

Sister-blessed brothers giving cash to a sister. From left to right, Konica didi, Devansh, me, and Ayush.

Later that day, Devansh and I made pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, and basil (though no tomato paste). I loved it, but I don't think it was all that interesting to my cousins. Still, being able to cook for myself and eat tomato pasta was a nice reminder of home, or maybe Turkey. Then we ordered pizza and watched movies on TV, specifically The Last Airbender, which was every bit as bad as I had heard. (It's not just that the special effects, acting, writing, and weird racial politics was bad, it's that, well, I guess it was all of those things.) But we had fun anyway, because it was the last night I was there and everyone was heading back to work and school soon.

Me, Dadi, and Devansh took a selfie together. #CoolFamily

Sunday, my chacha and Devansh took me to the Lucknow airport and I flew home, but before that I finally figured out how to talk to my dadi. Apparently I just needed to speak up so she could understand my Hindi, because we were able to at least exchange some small talk. So, chalk that up to a victory for my Hindi lessons?

Overall, it was a pretty chill trip. It was nice to see my family after such a long time, and it was nice to be able to relax for a few days. A bunch of my friends went to Goa and had a similar experience, so I think we were all feeling a bit stressed out about everything, just because day-to-day life in India can be exhausting and finals were coming up. It was also strange to come back to Pune and feel, to some degree, like I was coming home. Pune seems familiar, now, compared to other parts of India. Even if I still get lost going home from Laxmi road sometimes, I think I've adjusted. I guess since the program's more than halfway over that's to be expected.

Now for the interactive portion: For me, going from Lucknow to Pune was travelling from one home to another, and I also have a home at Northwestern and in Charlotte. How many places do you call home?

On Hindi and its friends

I say that I speak English and that I'm learning Hindi. Both of those are, of course, true. Which English I speak and which Hindi I'm learning, however, is a bit more complicated. While in the states, for example, I was in a Hindi class in which the vocabulary skewed slightly Urdu (which is itself very similar to Hindi for everyday use). We would pronounce singular and plural third person pronouns (यह, ये; वह, वे) the same: as “yay” and “voh”. I had a little bit of difficulty when I arrived in India and my Hindi professor (who is also fluent in Sanskrit) insisted that I say the words as written, as that is the proper way to say them. (Indians like to refer to doing things “properly” or “nicely” when I would probably say “correctly”. Indian English isn't American Standard English, I suppose.) I also found later, when visiting my family in Varanasi, that some of the words I was familiar with from my Hindi classes were not the normal words. Of course, my paternal grandparents both have been Bhojpuri-speakers, so that's even another set of vocabulary, even if the basic grammar is the same. To make things even more complicated, I made a friend with one of the guys who works for the university whose English is better than my Hindi and whose Hindi is better than my Marathi who uses “आप" with “हो". (In standard Hindi you would say “आप हैं" instead.) This is probably what is called “Bombay Hindi”.

As I explained in an earlier post, there was a big debate back sixty years ago (though it went on for several decades) on what the language of the federal government should be. Part of the compromise solution was the decision to require all schools to educate children in Hindi, English, and a regional language. That sounded like such a great plan, until I found out a couple days ago while reading an article about the state of the Muslim Community. Apparently, in areas where the dominant language is Hindi among Hindus and Urdu among Muslims, such as much of North India including Uttar Pradesh, offer Sanskrit (which is spoken natively by only a couple thousand people) rather than Urdu courses. This means not only are many Muslim residents deprived of education in their mother tongue, but that many are instead being taught the language of Hindu scripture! And on top of this, of course, majority Muslim areas are often denied infrastructural access to good schools, and in those schools there are very few Muslim teachers and those teachers often face discrimination. There are Madrasas, which primarily teach religious education in Urdu, but only 4% of Muslim school-age children go to those and in any case that's not exactly a substitute for state-run secular education.

Basically, what I'm saying is that these small differences in language aren't just cool aspects of linguistic diversity, but also have political meanings. The lack of Urdu-medium schools and Urdu-language classes is a form of discrimination against Indian Muslims, a deliberate attempt to erase and stigmatize their distinct cultural heritage. It's a reminder that despite India's striving for equality and diversity, sometimes communities get pushed down by something as basic as linguistic discrimination.

Some things only make sense after English-medium education. Some things still don't.
(That's Rachel, Genevieve, and Sarah.)

Interactive question time! In the US, there is no policy for maintenance of linguistic diversity like in India. Should there be? Should schools be required to provide primary education in common minority languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Tagalog? What about minority dialects like African American Vernacular English or Appalachian English?  If you're not from the USA, does your country act to preserve linguistic heritages? Do you agree with that policy?

Varanasi (part 2)

When I last posted, we had been walking south along the ghats. Upon reaching the south end of the ghats (more or less), we paused to evaluate our own exhaustion. The past two nights of little sleep were catching up with us, along with the brightness of the sun and the thirty-something Celsius heat. We decided that, while we wanted to go exploring and shopping inside the city and wanted to walk back up the ghats to see things like the Aurangzeb Mosque and the Hanuman Temple, we needed to take a break beforehand. At this point, it was around 10 am, so it wasn't near lunch time, so we headed back to the hostel to rest and cool off. On the way back, we passed a man who offered to take us to see a cremation (whom we ignored), which remains, for me, one of the strangest things about Varanasi. While I understand that major life events in India are more community-oriented than in the US (broadly speaking, marriage processions are inclusive of everyone on the streets, and funerals are more open than the hearse-processions of the US), I imagine it extremely uncomfortable to pay to witness and gawk at someone's cremation rituals. Something like mourning should not, in my mind, be used to appeal to the curiosity of religious foreigners with no connection to the deceased. Besides, we passed the cremation ghats going both south and north, and I've inhaled the ash of more strangers than I'd like to, anyway.

A painting of Shiva dancing on a defeated demon, painted onto what is probably a temple along the ghats. Photo courtesy of AJ.

Several hours later, after a lunch with unsatisfactory service and a visit from my बड़ा फ़ुफ़ा and a relative whose grandparents were my great grandparents (I think; he's related through my grandmother and is an “uncle”), our small band of Americans found our way to the ghats and to a German bakery called Brown Bread Bakery. It is situated on a fourth-floor rooftop, with a gorgeous view of the river and rooftops of the old city, and a grate to keep out the monkeys on the nearby trees. Not only were the smoothies delicious (and iced with mineral-water ice), but we got to meet some lovely people from England who were touring the subcontinent. The others all decided to come back in the morning, and I'm sure they had a great breakfast there. It was refreshing to be in a place with familiar food and people whose English was easier to understand, and while I will always advocate for us to spend more time interacting with Indian people, given how stressful the day had been (and, though I didn't know it, would continue to be), it was nice to be able to relax in that way.

Me with a mixed-fruit smoothie. Yum.

That night, after some shopping in which I tried to convince AJ to buy a Ganesh statue to go with the Shiva statue he bought for his father, we made our way to the ghats, where a night of Navatri festivities were in full force. The ghats were covered in people and idols of Durga and company, and we were able to get quite close to a ritual involving blessings of fire. From what I could tell, different ghats had similar ceremonies under the purview of various different temples. The others took lots of pictures (Ryan and Rachel each used my camera briefly), and I'm sure Rachel's blog will have more details.

A ritual performed on the ghats for Navatri. There was lots of fire and it was more amazing than this picture, which is also amazing and was taken by Jenny.

After that, we headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner (or so I thought) with my relatives. At that point, however, I didn't know that Pranjul-didi's estimated time of arrival home from attending an engagement in Lucknow was 11 pm, far later than anyone in our group was willing to be gone from the festival. I was taken by surprise, then, when my uncles showed up and we left my friends behind. Though we eventually were able to contact each other and communicate our plans, we were unable to all have dinner together. In retrospect, after the lovely day we spent in Sarnath, it wasn't that big of a deal, but that, combined with the crowds and noises of the festival, and the aforementioned sleep deficit (advice: don't go to Varanasi sleep deprived; it's far too intense of an experience to deal with on depleted physical and emotional reserves), left me extremely stressed and touchy. I tended to snap more than I would have liked at my uncles, who I eventually managed to communicate with a desire to just go ahead and go to my cousin's (Pranjul-didi's) home so I could get some rest (since due a computer error Ryan and I were left without a room that night; adaption is key in India, or I guess in life in general). The great thing about family, though, is that they understand when you're tired and cranky, and know how to make you at home.

The sweet shop from which we got lavanglata and mango sweets.

Buddha teaching his first five students. It's now beneath a sapling of Bodh Gaya but was not at the time.

After a blissful night's sleep, a lot of catching up with family, and a visit to a sweet shop which sold the Varanasi-favorite lavang-lata (which tastes a lot like baklava), my didi, jijaji, and fufa went to meet AJ, Jenny, Rachel, and Ryan at Sarnath, which was the location of the Gautam Buddha's first teaching (that is, the birthplace of Buddhism as a religion, since Siddharth Gautam was the first person to achieve enlightenment and be known as Buddha). There was a gorgeous temple there with walls covered in murals depicting scenes from the life of the Gautam Buddha and a golden statue, but the heart of the pace was a tree, grown from a sapling cut by the Emperor Ashoka's daughter from Bodh Gaya, the tree under which the Buddha meditated and received enlightenment according to Buddhist tradition. Sarnath is the second of four pilgrimage sites that many Buddhists take, following the enlightened journeys of the Buddha. All the inscriptions were written in Nepali and English, which I found strange being so used to Hindi and Marathi scripting. There were also these metal cylinders that are to be rolled while meditating, which reminded me (here betraying the depth of my American-centrism) of the symbolism of the Air Nomads in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Inside the main temple at Sarnath.

Detail of mural. The Gautam Buddha is being tempted away from enlightenment by demons.

My didi also showed us a place where silk is woven into these beautiful-designed cloths, and all of my friends got an item or two. Before my didi and company took us to the airport, we all went to this restaurant called Annapurna's Kitchen, which had various different cuisines from around India and around the world. We all tried a drink that was flavored with black salt, and I had sattu paratha, which is sort of bland on its own but went well with Rachel's vegetable dish. It was a delicious and communal way to end the trip, and my family and friends got along well with each other. Overall, I think that early afternoon meal, not the religious sites or the ancient beauty of the river गंगा, was the most beautiful experience I had in Varanasi. It left me satisfied (and not just because the food was amazing).

All of us enjoying ourselves at Annapurna.

Interactive portion: In your experience, do you find that your memories are more meaningful when they're made with other people?  Or do you find that the fundamental subjectivity of your experience and the knowledge (experiential, spiritual, emotional) is impossible to communicate and share fully?

Varanasi (Part 1)

Though I kept careful notes and could write a play-by-play of my trip to Varanasi, there were so many ups and downs that I will instead provide some images of various points in the trip, in roughly chronological order.

After a sizzling meal in a heretofore unexplored part of Pune, where the speakers played primarily American Top 40 from the last decade with some classic rock thrown in, and after some time visiting with Jenny's host-family and naps in front of the fifth Harry Potter movie, we woke ourselves at 3 am to catch a taxi to Mumbai in order to catch our 9:30 am flight. It was not a comfortable ride in a mid-sized sedan cramming five of us, all of whom are larger than average for Americans, let alone Indians. We found it hard to sleep in that position, but since it was the middle of the night we managed it. I can't speak for the others, but despite the physical discomfort I found it somewhat therapeutic to be squeezed in the back seat with three good friends, especially since we all were trying as best we could to make each other comfortable while not having our feet fall asleep. My doze, at least, was a more zen sort of doze than I'd have expected. Perhaps for our next group meditation we should try all meditating while crammed in an enclosed space with each other.

AJ's sizzler, and Ryan. Several hours later, Ryan's feet were asleep and so was AJ. Coincidence? Regardless, AJ took this photo. I wasn't even there at the time.

 

Flash forward through plane delays, a not-unpleasant flight with samosas, and a stopover in Lucknow, and we were at the Varanasi airport, getting a taxi (two, this time, so it was considerably less crowded). AJ, Rachel, and Ryan took one taxi, and Jenny and I took another. As we were driving, she mentioned how similar the landscape was to other places in India, particularly Rajastan near Jaipur, which she had visited some weeks earlier. I had been thinking the opposite, how the landscape felt less like the flat agricultural land of Karnataka or the bustling cities of Pune and Mumbai. I thought it looked in some ways more like former factory towns of the American south, with many decaying brick sculptures and warehouse-type spaces. Regardless, the area definitely had the high population of cows and wandering roads that many associate with rural India. As we got closer into the city, though, the buildings grew taller and newer and were filled with shops, until we were near the city center, which had the sort of planning that was to be expected in an area that had been settled for thousands of years.

A panorama shot of the city from the rooftop of our hostel, Suraj Guest House.

In downtown Varanasi, we were guided through narrow alley frequented by cows, goats, and far too many two-wheeled motor vehicles for a two-meter-wide passage. Our guest house was situated far enough back from the main road that finding our way out was difficult, but once we learned the route to the ghats we found it was quite close. In the guest house, we met some of the men of the family that runs it as well as some puppies, who were quite friendly and didn't really understand that I had no plans of feeding them. We also got to see the view with the roof, which included Ganga Mata and plenty of old-city rooftops. In some ways it reminded me of old city Istanbul, but there was never any doubt that I was in India.

Rachel took a selfie with a puppy, and the puppy made the same face as her.

That night we wandered through streets and barely looked at the Dasara/Navatri lights as we wandered down crowded streets full of shops in search of the entrance to a temple which we never found (though I saw it the next day right on the main road). After twists and turns and one complete turn around, and the continued encounters with cows and two-wheelers (as well as some AK-47 sightings) we eventually found our way out of the street maze. I hadn't realized that I would be claustrophobic when surrounded by tall walls on all sides, but I suppose since I didn't stop walking or yell at anyone that objectively it wasn't that bad. It's good to learn your limits, and Varanasi definitely showed me those.

Jenny and Rachel take pictures of AJ, who is taking pictures of the three of us. Metaphotos are our meme.

A less abortive but far more comfortable sleep later, I once again woke before dawn in order to make it to an early river-tour of the old city. To get to the boat, we tiptoed across steps covered in alternate streams of running water and cremation ash, skirting near still burning pyres and trying to take in the dawn over a river and city that simultaneously made the mysophobe inside me pass out in shock and the antiquity-fancier inside me indulge in the illusion that it was hundreds of years ago. The boat, they had said, could fit twenty people, but it seemed pretty full with nine (three Germans, our youthful guide, and our group of five). As we paddled out toward the more open water, past still floating remnants of pyres and green bubbles of algae that illustrated the term “eutrophication” far better than anything I had seen before, I was surprised by how clear and cool the air was. I suppose it was early morning, or perhaps my nose was no longer registering scent, but the atmosphere felt almost clean, much more than the dust of humanity and livestock on land.

A submerged temple on a ghat. Photo courtesy of AJ.

Though I, of course, looked at the various ghats, with their walls frequented with art and the temple buildings showing their silhouettes regularly, I also spent some time watching the others in boats. The other people in my group were discussing how Indians always seemed to assume that Jenny was not from the US, despite her DC-suburb accent, and even would contradict her when she explained that she was, in fact, American. After all, if I had a rupee for every time someone here heard my name and was confused as to why I had an Indian name, I'd be able to pay exact change for my rickshaw rides. I found myself considering how throughout the world, people are surprised when any person from the US who is not white tells their country of origin. The US is, undeniably, an ethnically and racially diverse country, but that doesn't translate to being perceived as such abroad, where the vast majority of American ex-patriots and tourists are white (which, admittedly, is mostly due to the fact than those with the income necessary to travel from the US historically have been white). The Alliance program, though significantly whiter than the schools the students are enrolled in, is still much more racially (and probably, though this is harder to tell, socioeconomically) than the average American traveller. As I looked at the other boats, I realized that ours was the only one in which the group of tourists was multiethnic (I thought I saw an exception in one man who looked Indian-American, but then he made an announcement to the rest of the boat and I realized he was a tour guide). It is a bit sobering to realize that even on the other side of the world, in a city that is a pilgrimage point for two major world religions and has been around for thousands of years, that America's white-normativity remains painfully apparent.

Cremation pyres often include plants and other decorations, so this cow is picking through the ashes looking for delicious morsels. Photo by AJ.

Later, after a breakfast at the hostel and a walk past the boy who offered us hash (no thanks), we were walking along the ghats. We saw the cloud of smoke before we reached it, and I wrapped my handkerchief around my mouth and nose and tried to breath shallowly and ignore the smell of smoke. AJ mentioned seeing an attached foot in a burning pile far to small to be a person, and I decided aloud not to think about the implications of that while we were still so close, and possibly never. Rachel brought up a previous discussion we had concerning whether religion would exist without death. She explained that after talking to one of her religious Jewish friends about it she decided that if people didn't die there would be no reason to think there was a world outside of our own since there was no need to put the people who had died there. I commented both that Judaism has a much foggier theology of the afterlife than the other religions that grew out of it and that there would still be a need to explain things we don't understand, such as bad luck or strange phenomena. Ryan commented something to the effect that bad luck and explicable things only made since in the context of a finite human life. I still maintain, though, that the fact of our own mortality is so deeply ingrained in everything that humans do or think that the thoughts of such immortal humans would be impossible for us to predict. I also wondered aloud what immortality even was, if in this world people would just age indefinitely or if at some point they would stop. We decided then to focus our energy on walking through one of the more crowded ghats, which had lots of bathers and people trying to sell us postcards.

In the interest of not making you read 2000 words at once, we'll take a break here. Here's a question for you all: Have you ever had an experience with people whose view of death is categorically different from yours, whether because they do or do not believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation, or because they seem too certain that death is not the end? Did hearing their perspective make you reevaluate your views?

A day in the life: September 30th

Good morning!

 This morning I woke up to the smell of smoke, which was a little bit alarming, but was probably just burning trash fumes wafting through my open windows. Such is life once the rainy season is over, I suppose, though I hear scrap can be a lucrative business if you use it right (see the paragraph about SWACH in the last post).

Speaking of valuable scrap, look what Soren found on the ground on our way to the rickshaw! She had to stop and go back for it. She later found 100 rupees. Perhaps the two are related.

After I got ready and met up with Soren and Casey, we set out to find a rickshaw. We wandered through a bright warm morning, which is apparently typical of the hot season after the rainy season, and searched for a rickshaw. Our normal place was empty of three-wheeled transport, so we ended up walking a good kilometer to the main road, where we found a rickshaw and piled in.

This is what Soren calls a "Casey-Soren Sanjwich", us three sharing a rickshaw. It would be more funny if my name wasn't SUNjay.

At school, we had meditation, breakfast, and our Contemporary India class, in which we discussed language. Specifically, we talked about the choice of Hindi as a national language. On one hand, Nehru and others who were instrumental in the founding of the nation did not want English to be the official language because it was a foreign legacy of imperialism. On the other, there was no language spoken by the majority of Indians. Thus much of the population would see the imposition of Hindi as privileging the North Indian states where Hindi was the majority mother-tongue.

The definition of a language can be complicated. Many languages share common roots, like this banyan tree outside Phule Wada, and it can be hard to tell whether something is a dialect or a separate tree. Regardless, we can all agree that trees, they are us. More or less.

The constitution officially named 12 (now 18) languages as official languages, and each state took the majority language as the language of administration. On the national level, however, since the Indian National Congress was primarily constituted of North Indian, high caste, Hindi-speaking people, their leadership of the independence struggle had been primarily through a Hindustani (lingua franca of North India; if written in Arabic script with Persianate vocabulary it is called Urdu, and in Devanagari with Sanskrit vocabulary, Hindi) or Hindi medium. When they put the issue of a common administrative language to vote, Hindi edged out Hindustani by one vote (presumably because after partition Pakistan's official language was Urdu). This angered Indians not from these northern states, who preferred English, and eventually (and this took until Indira Gandhi's ministry) a compromise was reached in which both Hindi and English were used in an official context and all students were required to learn Hindi, English, and either their mother-tongue or (if they spoke Hindi or English) another Indian language. We discussed whether a stronger effort to make Hindi the lingua franca would have helped or hurt Indian nationalism, and also the relative merits of English- Hindi- or other-medium schools. (We ended up deciding that the teachers should know the language in which they were teaching, which is hardly universal and kind of important, maybe.)

Rachel, Jenny and I near Phule Wada. We got there early.

After that class I had Hindi, in which I learned how to use he particle ही and the verb लगना. So that was cool. Then our Social Justice class went to Phule Wada. There was some initial confusion about rickshaws which led some of us to arrive before the others, and so we discussed the Illuminati and various people's membership within it. I argued that it was irrational to argue who was in the organization specifically, because in reality the organization's membership has to be secret in order to protect it from the lizard people who actually run our society. Who of course don't exist either.

Mahatma Phule Wada

Jotirao Phule, whose house we were visiting, was a Maharashtrian social reformer and critic of the caste system. He envisioned a coalition of resistance between shudras, ati-shudras, and other non-Brahmin castes against the Brahmin caste-based hegemony. He also championed women's rights, viewing women of all castes as a part of the coalition of oppressed people who needed to rise up against Brahmin dominance. It's a couple of steps short of intersectional feminism, but considering that he was active in the 1860s and '70s he was pretty radical.

Busts of Jotirao and Savitribai Phule, social reform and caste-anarchist power couple. Savitribai was a Marathi poet in addition to being an epic social reformer in concert with her husband.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside his house, so I mostly took pictures of the outside. However, I did take a picture of the well, which was the first well that was shared communally by people of different castes in this part of Maharashtra. Traditionally (and this still continues today in some rural village areas) people who are considered “untouchable” are not allowed to dip their vessels into wells, and instead other people have to draw the water for them and pour it into their vessels without letting them touch. One of Phule's main points was that this sort of segregation is wrong and dehumanizing and was a result of a purity-based high-caste dominance. So, he made a well on his property that all people could draw from. He also provided food for many of the people near him during famines and such.

Our Social Justice class (professor in the back row with the face) making good use of the touchability of the well. And yes, my camera does not take panorama views.

As we were returning from Phule Wada, I had a short conversation with my Social Justice professor where we decided to bring up the subject of class-discussion of readings rather than lectures in class on Wednesday. Apparently in the past there's been a problem with people not doing the readings, and so she lectures instead. That should be cool.

Rachel demonstrating how great FroYo is.

A group of us from the field trip then when back to Ferguson College road, which is close to our program center at Gokhale, and went to a Chinese restaurant. In addition to noodles, we had some delicious pepper-cabbage pickle (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is), and afterward we went to get frozen yogurt. On the way there, we ran into a group of people from the University of Chicago, who are studying abroad for their “civilizations” requirement, which I don't understand but is probably a distribution requirement of some sort. They seemed cool, and we hadn't seen them before because they had just arrived, so perhaps we'll hang out with them some more.

Rachel, Jenny, and AJ demonstrating why we actually went to get FroYo.

Back at the program center, the power went out and all the fans stopped. Since it's quite warm, this was somewhat unpleasant. However, the internet was still working, as were some of the lights, since they were on a back-up generator. Then Katie, Ryan and I had sitar lessons (which I have no pictures, though I might add one from next week). We learned how to play three-note sequences up and down the scale, which is great, though I have yet to develop calluses on my fingers so it was a bit painful. Actually quite painful, but theoretically that should go away over time, right?

Mohammed, Khalid, Naseem, Casey, and I at KFC.

After sitar lessons, Ryan and I went to meet our friend Casey and some of her friends (a couple with one member each from Iran and Iraq, and their friend who is Kurdish but from Iraq) at KFC. They are cool people, and we talked about the things to do around Pune and how much we all love it here. Then we had fried veggie sticks, because it's India so KFC can't just serve chicken (hooray!).
I went home at that point. While I was taking a shower, I was visited by a messenger from the lizard people, who had heard me talking about them earlier (and may cause this blog post to be taken down or me to be disappeared, just to warn you). I didn't have my phone with me at the time, of course, and when I grabbed my towel the messenger scurried across the wall to the window. Luckily I was able to grab my phone and get this picture for you. That I was able to take this picture is proof that I have been chosen by the lizard people to let you all know that while they may be a shadow organization running all the world's governments, they also are watching you. Which should be some comfort, I guess.

A messenger. Possibly a warning, possibly an endorsement.

For all of you reading, here's today's question: Whether your life is affected by hegemonic oppression in the form of high-caste religiously hypocritical patriarchy, like the people Phule helped mobilize, random coincidences like finding 100 rupees, or the politics of language and education, how do you take that opportunity to improve your own lives and those of people around you? Does that mean changing the system through coordinated action, a willingness to accept what cannot be affected, or, most likely, both?