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.

Let's call it purple tourism: Pride in Bangaluru

This past weekend we went to Bangaluru, which was yet again a different India. It's an India of five-story malls, corporate-sponsored Pride Marches, vast public gardens in the heart of the city, luxury apartments with pools and gyms, and food without any ethnic context. In short, our Bangaluru was the neoliberal India, a reminder that mostly-unregulated knowledge-driven capitalism is a powerful force that's shaping millions of lives in India.

Our Bangaluru adventure began at the Swargate Bus Depot in Pune, where Saum (who wasn't able to come with us but who had taken the bus before because his sister lives in Bangaluru) and I met Casey to prepare for our journey. There had been some ticket confusion earlier and up until moments before we got on the bus we didn't know our ticket numbers. Of course, it turned out our IDs were all we needed so that worked out, and soon Casey and I were on our trip to the distant capital of Karnataka. 

Sunrise of sorts through the fog.

It was a fourteen hour bus ride but we slept for ten of those hours, after which point we were basically there. We didn't wake up for the sunrise but we did get to see the still-red morning sun through the mist of rural Karnataka.

Bangaluru is a beautiful city. The streets are straight but crowded, and billboards fill the skyline and ground walls. It is definitely a big city on par with Mumbai rather than the more subdued, possibly even intellectual climate of Pune, though everywhere was apparent the glitz brought by the large tech industries. After debarking from the bus we took a quick rickshaw ride to Mantri Mall, beside which was the new apartment complex in which the Khubchandanis (parents of one of my favorite Northwestern professors who is no longer at NU) live. Their apartment is beautiful, filled with Southeast Asian Buddhist art and will a peaceful wind-chiming terrace with a gorgeous view.

Mahatma Gandhi road, with a light rail.

After a conversation in which karma was discussed extensively, we sat down to a breakfast that included eggs, wheat toast, cheddar cheese, and papaya. In other words, a vegetarian's paradise. And then from there we were driven to a location in South Bangaluru where there was a Pride Carnival where there were vegan snacks and handmade jewelry. We had a nice conversation with the guy who made the snacks, for whom this was also the first Pride Carnival, and it turned out he wasn't himself vegan. The cashew nut butter was delicious anyway.

A commercial street, but not the one named "Commercial Street".

We were there early though so we wandered around, shopped a bit in what could have passed for The Magnificent Mile because of all its namebrand stores, and the had lunch at a place Saum recommended called Truffle's Ice and Spice, where we ate American food and a dessert called a "Kaluha Fantasy".

Preparing to eat a fantasy.

Fully satiated, we returned to the carnival, where the cultural performances still hadn't begun. We looked around and some of the stuff that was being sold, which included what looked like a couple people's personal belongings (I guess like a garage sale), and some hand-carved wooden bangles and forks made from guava trees. We also met Suresh, who makes candles, including rainbow candles that smell like cranberries. Casey went to get her tarot cards read nearby so I ended up talking to Suresh for a bit while I waited. He's Tamilian, though he has been in Bangalore 25 years, and only recently started making candles. I suggested when he make rainbow candles that he make each color a different smell, an idea he didn't seem to think as much of as I did, and then we ended up talking about the community in Bangaluru. For example, it turns out that even without the marriage bureau and family pressure, colorism is alive and well in the androsexual men community, where even a fashion sense, confidence, and symmetrical features don't make up for skin color (a conversation that made me uncomfortable as a pale-skinned American for privilege reasons). We also talked about the fact that Bangalore has also changed a lot in recent years in a way that many Bangalurians find unpleasant; it's gotten much more crowded and much less vegetarian. Suresh was also one of several people wearing superhero shirts; whether this has something to do with how Indian society closets sexual minorities or not is up to your interpretation.

The diversity fair, complete with lots of food, but several hours before the performances started.

Finally, the performances started, and Casey and I sat on the root of a tree to watch. The first act was a guy who played Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, and The Lumineers covers (we met him the next day too; his name is Ian and he's from South Carolina), followed by a singer songwriter (who's named Mahesh and has a SoundCloud but I don't know the link) who reminded me a little of Fountain Penn. Casey was a fan of both. Another man sang Hindi love songs to his life partner (luckily some people in front of us translated), and a pair of men dancing salsa. There were also more classical forms; one woman (who I believe was one of the organizers) danced kathak, another person danced Odissi. There were drag performances, beat boxing, and a rousing street theater performance indicting IPC 377 (which mixed English, Hindi, and possibly Kannada).

One strange tidbit is that at the fair they announced that permission for the march had been briefly rescinded by the police because of fears about the Kiss of Love protests. The organization that plans the march managed to assuage the fears and get permission but had to tell us all to avoid PDA during the march, a piece of conservative prudery that seemed strange among the liberal triumphalism of the Pride March. This New India is clearly marked by some tension, where couples (even straight couples) kissing on the street is unacceptable but a march that in large part celebrates and affirms illegal (under IPC 377) behavior is kosher.

Casey and I ended up ducking out of the fair before the performances were over because it was getting dark and they had been going on for hours, and after deciding Cubbon Park was too dark to visit we returned to Mantri Mall, where we took a peek at Bangalurian consumption practices. Inside Mantri Mall, the first thing we noticed was the Taco Bell, KFC, McDonald's, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and Baskin Robins. We went to the Taco Bell briefly, but since the bean burritos cost considerably more than a dollar I was too offended to try them. After some short rounds Casey and I decided we weren't ready for global capitalism and returned to the apartment and had a nice dinner where we discussed the places Aunty Shoba (my professor's mother) had travelled.

Doing yoga on a tree in Lalbagh Botanic Gardens.

The next morning we got up bright and early to leave the house by seven thirty in order to get to Lalbagh Botanic Gardens, which are free entry from 6-9 am. When we got there, Casey took my camera and forced me to pose. I communed with some trees (which are apparently not appropriate to climb), and then we went to Cubbon Park.

In our first experience, Cubbon Park, unlike Lalbagh, was not very well kept-up, and had lots of litter. Yet it's unkemptness was great because it in some ways felt more wild, like nature. We also saw some people doing puja, a father jogging with his two daughters, and a nice security guard that tried to talk to us in Kannada. Then we found a library in the park! Casey thought we needed library cards but I didn't and I walked right in. There's a huge variety of books arranged Dewey Decimal, though not a large collection of YA. I also met a friend named Sijao who was studying for his exams and said hi.

A panorama of the library.

After leaving the library we discovered that there was much more to the park than we'd first thought, including loads of flowers and trees, one of which I climbed.

This is a beautiful, lush land I see.

We walked from Cubbon Park to Mahatma Gandhi Road (which ironically is the most commercial, global firm-dominated places I've seen in India), and after a delicious Chinese and Thai lunch we took a rickshaw to the City Railway Station. We got there thirty minutes early though; we couldn't find the march and even ended up getting a rickshaw to go to the ending point! Luckily a nice person with flowers in their hair let us know we were in the right place, and soon many more people began showing up.

Me, Casey, Nick. Nick and I are sporting Casey's rainbow drawing skills.

We met Nick, who is from Shillong originally, and his friend Amalie from Norway, as well as Ian, who had played guitar the night before, and his friend Shubhang, who goes to the same college, wears sunglasses, is Australian, and gave me a free hug. Ian had markers, which Casey took full advantage of and decorated all of our cheeks with rainbow art. Before the march started, we also met Sheetal, who works for the MoMA in NYC and is a Northwestern alumna (go Cats!). I'm constantly amazed by how varied people's places of origin are. I've met Indians from Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Saudi Arabia, Gibraltar, the US, Australia and Ghana, all living in Bangalore. It's incredible!

Ian, also with Casey's artwork on his cheek.

The march itself was huge, far bigger than the one in Pune (though still quite a bit smaller than Istanbul), and had a great welcoming energy. (It helped Casey and me that most people spoke English.) People chanted slogans; one of my favorites went "1-2-3-4 Open up the closet door; 5-6-7-8 Don't assume your kids are straight," which, considering the number of people I've met in India who aren't out to their parents, is a pretty relevant chant. I also saw a sign that declared that "The right to life is a fundamental right", and heard chants of "My body, my rights!" Those two rhetorical devices had a beautiful reunion in such a different context from the American culture wars.

A couple and others holding brightly-colored umbrellas for pride.

The march was several kilometers long, and in the process we all lost and found each other several times. We also marched right by where we were staying, and through an area with BJP flags hung up (Nick explained that area was mostly pretty high caste and conservative). Finally, the march ended in a large amphitheater called the Maleshwaram Grounds. Unfortunately Casey and I couldn't stay had to rush off and grab our stuff in order to catch the bus, so we didn't get to hang out with any of our new friends. I was sad about this, but we did catch the bus home (though the ride was both chillier and less comfortable than the first since we sat near the front). We got home in one piece though, several hundred miles travelled and one beautiful weekend in our memory.

The end of the parade at Malleshwaram Grounds, a football stadium/cultural events space.

As for you, dear friends, have you ever had an experience where you met new people but then had to rush off? Did you stay in touch with them? Even if you never see them again, as I will probably never see most of the people I named here, are you glad you met them, and what did you learn from them?

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?