Return

Aside from the hurry and scurry of life at home, I haven't yet written from here because I haven't really known what to say. Like arriving in Hyderabad, there's been this span of time where I find it difficult to think about all the differences from a macro-level as I'm struggling just to take them all in. But now, it's been nearly a month and I'm home, not just in Wisconsin, but in the bedroom of the house I grew up in, able to pause and reflect on what's changed and what's stayed the same.

It's actually quite hard to believe it happened. Fleeting like a dream, I have to talk about India with people constantly, to assure myself of it's occurrence and crystallize it in memories and stories. It's most assuaging with the people who were there with me, the ones who are also struggling to make sense of this strangely new yet static, unchanged place we call home.

None of us are entirely sure what to do with ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm having the time of my life playing games with kids at a summer camp and teaching them yoga, training capoeira again and seeing everyone I missed. But there's still this sense that one's going through the motions and isn't always entirely there. It's hard to just drop everything and fall back into the routine of life at home. The terrible thing would be if it wasn't, if one could just come back and seamlessly fall into place. Things have been in many ways, very, very good here. But I don't feel like I fit anymore.

In a sense, returning to Madison carried the same self-indulgence of going home - a regression to an infantile state in an environment where everything is taken care of for me. It's lovely, comfortable and convenient, but I feel restlessness a-brewin'. For that reason, my mind's been somewhat trained to the future, preparing for my senior thesis and thinking about my plans for post-graduation (taking a post-bac research position somewhere for a year or two, possibly in DC), even as I make a point of living in the present. While I find many of my friends and peers fearful of post-graduation life, it's something I'm massively ready for, just as I was ready for college life come senior year of high school. After India, it's hard to find life without adventure and environmental challenge satisfying, hence why I've been keeping myself challenged and busy in other ways since leaving. But I'm excited to be somewhere new again and slowly transform it into a home, running it over with memories like ivy.

But how is it being home?...It's good. Spending so much time with American kids (who are far more like Indians than American adults) has made it easier, and practicing yoga daily has kept be connected. The latter reminds me that India really did happen, and assures me that it really did change me. The most terrifying thing about being home is the prospect of getting run over by the current, and forgetting all the quiet truths I learned abroad. Like mantras, I've repeated the jarring differences between here and there in conversation to anyone who asks, the ones that had me reeling my first week home.

And what of these? First, it was the environment. Like any animal removed from his native environment and simply dropped into a foreign one, I was initially stupefied. My brain wasn't sure how to process all the wide open spaces of my home town, sterile like a hospital, as bursting with personality as a loaf of Wonderbread. The scarcity, whiteness, and indifference of everyone made me feel uneasy as well, drawing such a sharp contrast to the constant circus of grinning, colorful Indians tumbling one-over-another of which I'd grown so fond. Not to mention the indulgence of expensive, air-conditioned cars and orderly, $3.75-a-drink coffee shops lining the wide, open roads.

And secondly, hitting harder and deeper, were the social norms. Cynicism, sarcasm and the act of complaint had become altogether absent, something I failed to realize but now miss terribly. Adjusting to these and their near-constant presence in most any conversation I found myself in has been a generally unpleasant experience. Truly, I miss the laughing optimism of people in India, the acceptance of life as a rigged lottery and heartfelt gratitude for it's happier moments. American Entitlement does not resonate with me and I have a hard time relating to the shallow woes of others (not that deeper pains do not exist here as well - more on that in a bit) which I cannot help but place in newfound perspective alongside street children and begging, child-bearing mothers. Thankfully, disgust does not arise in me in response to these whinings, as I easily remember making them myself many times in the past. An understanding of how luxuriously the vast majority of Americans live cannot, I think, arise without having had the opportunity to experience a place where people live in far harsher conditions. So I do not resent them; I just wish they could see outside their time and place.

But as I said, this is not to discount the pains of people here. Rather, I was stunned by the air of sadness that hung over people at a show in Madison, the night after I got home, which I left with the uncomfortable, unavoidable feeling that people here are simply not as happy as they were in India. Paradoxical as this seems, given our affluence, it's something I've been made constantly aware of over the last month. I'm floating all kinds of theories as to why, coming up primarily with a) the alienated, disconnected nature of life in a place where you can exist without interacting with or relying upon others, b) SES-isolation which prevents people from seeing how well they live and how much worse many people are forced to and c) the spiritual vapidity of most religious life in the States. I realize these are rather bold claims to make without walking the reader through my reasoning, but doing so would take a long, long time, so I'll suggest simply asking me if you're curious.

Getting back to social norms, it's been an odd readjustment. We keep ourselves so separate here, I sometimes feel lonely at the lack of interaction with others. While one cannot help constantly bumping into, tripping over and being squished up against others in India, I find people here apologizing for invading my personal space without having even made contact. Similarly, while strangers in India would frequently ask what I was doing there, whether I was married and why I wasn't married, strangers are strangers in the States and you generally don't interact with people you don't know if you're hoping to avoid strange looks. Switching from a country which wears it's collective heart on its sleeve to one which is guarded and frequently fearful has been unnerving. I miss the openness of people, the implicit trust and goodwill that peppered the most mundane of daily happenings. Really, nothing in India was mundane. Every day felt like an adventure and the sheer personality of the country made buying a cup of chai an opportunity to meet and learn from another.

These are the sharp contrasts that threw me off-kilter, to which I've been slowly, steadily adjusting this last month. Though I'm getting used to them, I refuse to forget that things could be different and that our way is not the inherently best way. In many ways, our way is no longer my way, and that deliberate resistance and rejection of societal norms which turn people into strangers has become a part of me. Through simply living my life one way and not another, I hope to Indianize America in the ways she could use it. Comfort is not the highest good. This is something we've forgotten.

And yes, I am most certainly going back. I've begun a lifelong affair with India, and realized I'd love to one day own a house there, in which I could live for several month stretches when the feeling grabs me. Happy as I am, being there, there's no good reason not to. In the short term, I'm planning to take my parents on a two or three-month tour some time in the next couple years, as I'd love to share the subcontinent with them and simply show them everything I've recounted.

I've transferred the pictures from my post-semester travels from my camera to my hard drive, but have yet to get them online with explanatory blurbs. I'm planning to finally take care of that next weekend, and I'll post something here once I do. For now, I'm going to go enjoy my family and practice my morning yoga. Much as I love sharing it with my kids (many of whom have taken to it like fish to water, much to my delight), it never affords the same, serene shanti I enjoy when practicing at my leisure. Take care, readers.

Foot out the door

The last few days of preparation for both my remaining exams and my next six weeks of traveling around the subcontinent have been, shall we say, hectic. But, all is going more or less according to plan and I'll ideally have passed my Cognitive Psych final with flying colors, completed my list of numerous little things to do and be sitting on a plane to Kerala in forty-eight hours. For the curious, my itinerary will take me through the following locations before flying home June 4th: Kerala, Mumbai, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Agra, Amritsar, the Himalayas, Dharamasala, Hardiwar, Rishikesh, Delhi, Khajuraho, Varanasi and Kolkata. Yes, that is approximately fifteen destinations. Yes, it will be a miracle if it all works out seamlessly. I'll be traveling with friends for about three weeks of it, before traveling on my own a bit and meeting up with some Indian friends in their respective stomping grounds before heading back to Hyderabad for my eventual flight home.

As I'll be traveling all over the place sans laptop, I'm not sure just how accessible internet will typically be. Do email/facebook if you need to get ahold of me, just know I may not be able to respond very swiftly.

If I had the time to stop and reflect on leaving Hyderabad, I'm sure this post would triple in length. However, I still have those aforementioned million-and-one things to do, and at least one more exam to take. I'll post more from my journeys if/when I get the chance and hope to get those Mamallapuram and Pondicherry photos up tomorrow afternoon. You can expect, dear readers, a "Whoa, I'm back in the U.S." post sometime shortly after I get home. But as I mentioned before, I intend to do a great deal of writing on India over the next six weeks and well into the summer, some of which very well might end up on here. At the very least, I have one more lengthy post marinating in my Blogger "Drafts" folder, which I intend to share upon it's completion.

Let me just state for the record that I, once again, have absolutely no idea what to expect. Also, I'm ecstatic. Phir milenge, yaar.

मुझे अपने भारत से प्यार करते हैं

Nothing could be more awkward than starting a blog post with an excuse, but I swear I've been writing - just not here. Having (it seems) just settled into life here, I've been trying to wrap my head around the reality of the end of my time at UoH, in (my God) a week. After my last exam next Friday, I'll be flying to Kerala to begin my nearly six week tour of India, the details of which I'm just now nailing down. Before then, I swear *hand on hypothetical bible* I'll upload my Pondicherry/Mammallapuram pictures and talk a little bit about that trip, in addition to uploading at least one more post I'm in the process of writing.

Anyways, the weirdness of nearly being at the end of my time here has been fortunately offset by my tremendous excitement for my upcoming travels as well as the summer to which I'll be returning afterwards. By some stroke of incredible fortune, I've managed to secure both senior thesis funding and a brilliant summer job, meaning I should be able to pay off my India loans by the end of the summer, for which I'm thanking my lucky stars. Beyond the relief of temporary freedom from financial concerns, I think it's going to be a fantastic summer of good work and good friends. All of this is making it easier to think about leaving in India in seven weeks. But really, it's knowing I'll come back that makes it okay.

So, given my limited internet access, I won't be writing a whole lot here in the next six weeks. However, I think it will take a summer's worth of reflection and turning-over before my time in India will actually come to an end, so I expect to be writing on the matter for some time. Some of that will likely appear here and a good deal, I think, will turn up in my private journal.

A friend warned me early on of writing too much early on and trying to make sense of everything too quickly. While writing is usually a big part of my sorting-out process, it was good advice in a way because it reminded me that I was here to experience and that it would take some time for those mental maps to come together. Now, all at once, I'm piling up observations upon observations and can't wait to get it all down on paper, thought out and mixed together. The other day at GOPs, I started jotting down notes on subjects I wanted to remember to write about. Moments later, I was staring at a two page Word document full of small notes, any one of which I could (and plan to) turn into pages with sufficient time and effort. There's a hell of a lot churning in my head and I plan to get it all out, one way or another. I started toying with the idea of a series of essays or, dare I say it, a book of sorts. I think I'll just start writing though, and write and write until it's worked out, without any preconceived notion of format or audience. Then, my frenetic brain satisfied, I'll decide what, if anything more, to do with it.

I've been thinking about what will come home with me from India and I keep coming up with 'everything.' It's so much more than some crafts, yoga, meditation and improved Hindi - it's every moment of every day that took me in and worked a change in me I can't yet put into words. I came here burned out, stumbling into the new year, not really understanding why I needed to come here, yet profoundly certain that it needed to happen and happen precisely then. What I found I can't yet describe - that's what the writing will be for. But I can tell so much has deeply, irreversibly changed in ways I sorely needed. And knowing it isn't over, that the changes are still working and moving me to something, someone more, I can't help but feel like I'm sneaking off with glorious treasure. I'll share what I find, one way or another.

And I know I'll come back. In a sense I'll never leave; there's no getting away from love after all.

Snippet

Tonight was the SIP cultural show.

I danced Thriller in a formal kurta. Pictures and video soon.

It's starting to feel like the end (of my time at UoH). Weird.

Anticipation

I’ve been getting restless lately, so perhaps it’s a good thing today’s got me occupied with a six-page philosophy paper. I usually get this way when I’m verging on two weeks without travel. Actually, I think it’s been more like three weeks but I kept myself busy enough last weekend (more on that soon) that it feels like two. Anyways, it’s Indian Philosophy today, Cognitive Psych in-class presentation tomorrow and then I’m leaving for Chennai, Pondicherry and Mamallapuram Thursday night (more on that too).

This restlessness is mostly intellectual; it’s not that my classes here aren’t engaging – they are and I generally love them. But there’s very little work assigned for outside of class, a fundamentally good thing as it’s kept my weekends clear for travel. Academically exhausted as I was upon arrival, I really didn’t mind. And in fact, I’ve sufficiently filled my free time with meditation, yoga, exercise, reading, writing and exploring the city to keep myself from getting, sin of sins, bored in India.

But even with all of that, I’ve been feeling a bit torpid. To some extent, I miss getting thoroughly engaged with whatever I’m studying on my own, outside of the classroom. While, as I said, I’ve been a more avid leisure reader than I’ve been since I was eight years old, plowing through Goosebumps and Animorphs, the nature of the reading has been more like savoring than concrete learning, probably because I’m a sucker for fiction. Come to think of it, my nonfiction reads have been mostly handpicked by past professors – that’s something I’ll have to learn to start doing for myself. But for now I’ll work out this restlessness through writing.

As for recent adventures, Taylor and I went into the old city (downtown Hyderabad) last weekend to properly see Charminar and the Laad Bazaar. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to be calm and poised amidst the same chaos that stunned and overwhelmed me to the point of brainfreeze four months ago. I can so clearly remember the city’s sensory overload when CIEE unloaded us some day in our first week here and struggling to take in something totally unlike anything I’d ever encountered. Having grown up between rural and suburban Wisconsin before moving to college-town Madison, my experience of ‘the city’ had been limited to Milwaukee’s evening music scene and a handful of afternoons in Chicago. The difference between that and the hundred-thousand sights, smells and sounds sounds sounds of Hyderabad is staggering. And stagger I did, one warm January afternoon, between smoking rickshaws and yelling, pearl-waving vendors in a single-file American line into a local restaurant. Sidenote: Any hopes I had of a country-boy lost in New York City moment have been thoroughly dashed – something tells me Hyderabad’s got it all, louder, brighter and inescapably closer.

But there Taylor and I were, this last infinitely hotter Saturday afternoon, immersed in the same old ocean of noise (three points if you get the reference), sweat and smoke, feeling, of all things, lucid tranquility. A creeping smile betrayed my confidence in a place I could have nearly shit my pants mere months ago. Like when I’d sorted the ins and outs of local transportation, I felt like I was making it. And it’s a good feeling – making it from scratch was part of the unique challenge India presented that lured me from my countryside cocoon.

The day was pretty run of the mill – we saw Charminar, shopped a bit at the Laad Bazaar and had some damned good Chicken Biriyani and Pallak Paneer at a local hole in the wall – but it was good to spend an afternoon in the heart of the city so nonchalantly. It felt like I’d made Hyderabad somehow my own. But then again, it’s I who’s adjusted. So really, it’s the other way around.

Last night I realized I’d unwittingly arranged to spend Easter Sunday in Pondicherry, a former French colony on India’s southeastern coast. To my great fortune, a number of 18th century European-style cathedrals still operate throughout the city, promising a truly unique Easter service experience. Besides, no one does brunch like the (residual) French.

The semester’s end is nearly in sight – two exams next week and two the following before I hop an airplane to Kerala, free as a bird for six long weeks. A small group of friends and I have worked out a fantastic post-semester itinerary (which I’ll post here soon), taking us through India’s essentials, well-known or otherwise, before they fly home from Delhi and I travel a bit more on my own. I’ll be fortunate enough to have friends from the University in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta, who’ve offered (read: insisted, for those of you unfamiliar with Indian hospitality) to show me around their stomping grounds when I’m in town.

All in all, I’m bursting with the same excitement I felt in the last weeks of 2008, waiting for my next great adventure to take off. Study abroad made for a marvelous excuse to live here, but this is the India I’ve really been waiting to see – India without the frills and comforts of being an American student at UoH; India, thousand-faced like Vishnu with a few good friends and essential possessions, seen from the jungles, ruins, backwaters and mountains with a sense of what I’m seeing, a sense of where and who I am. This is going to be brilliant, electric, unreal.

Aurangabad Follow-up

As promised, the photos from my weekend in Aurangabad have all been uploaded to their respective albums including Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Kailasantha Temple and Daulatabad Fort. Here are excerpts from the album descriptions of two amusing encounters, should you (heaven forbid) otherwise miss them.

From Ellora Caves:

"While exploring the Buddhist caves, we noticed a group of Indians frantically waving their arms and motioning us inside. A few minutes later, we learned that someone had disrupted a large bee's nest in one of the nearby caves - a cave we'd need to past if we wanted to see the rest of the caves or, you know, leave. Learning of a second exit, we followed some fellow tourists to a large locked iron gate, which one could sort of climb around, if not over. Moments after scurrying up and around, the man with the keys to the gate arrived, and managed to pry it about six inches open. Weirdly liberated, we meandered down the road to the entrance of Ellora and approached the Kailasanatha Temple."

From Daulatabad Fort:

"On the way down, countless Indian children swarmed around me, also making the descent. One young girl, a few years older than her peers, boldly issued a "Hello!" with outstretched hand and set jaw before breaking into giggles when I returned the same. That previously set jaw swiftly dropped when I asked in Hindi how her day was, a reaction I quickly followed with a fake gasp and the exclamation "Vuh Hindi bolta hai!" or "He speaks Hindi!" She and her friends' eyes widened and giggles poured forth tenfold as I grinned and head-bobbed at her stunned expression. I love the kids here."

In other news, I've at last completed my Yoga certification course. Three months of 6am yoga culminated in eleven hours of final examination, spread over three days of testing. I should find out my exam results by late April but I think (knock on wood) I did just fine. It's really been an amazing opportunity, being able to study yoga during my time here, both in its actual practice and its theory, history and philosophical outlook and I definitely plan to keep it part of my daily life. That said, I'm excited to push it back to a more reasonable, 7 or 8am-ish timeslot and introduce regular, sufficient sleep to my daily life. While I discovered that I can be more of a morning person than I previously thought, I'm far from a pre-dawn person. But what good is enlightenment anyways if you get there groggy as all hell?

Overdue

I'm rather stunned that a whole month's gone by since I last updated my blog. I mainly blame the lack of hostel internet, but we've finally got a couple of desktops with internet, if not wifi. I was stunned actually, and am still adjusting to the phenomenon of readily available, reasonably quick internet.

I've been on two trips and celebrated two holidays since last I wrote. The pictures from the Mysore trip are already online and rather than reiterate what we did, I think I'll just copy-paste what I wrote for the album descriptions on Picasa:

"CIEE took us on a weekend trip through Bangalore to Mysore, the second largest city in the state of Karnataka. While there, we visited the Mysore Palace, which was constructed from 1897-1912 for the former royal family of Mysore. Nowadays, half of the palace belongs to the government and is maintained as a museum, while the other half still belongs to the heirs of the former royal family. Sadly, cameras were not allowed inside but you can see the palace exterior here. After seeing the palace, we journeyed into a local market where potent scents of fresh vegetables, bananas, incense and perfume joined forces to overpower our collective olfactory systems. Later that evening, we arrived at the lavish Sandesh hotel where I was lucky enough to share a suite with two friends and feast on their breakfast and dinner buffets.

For our second day in Mysore, we traveled to Shravanabelagola, a major Jain pilgrimage center and home to the massive Gomatheswara statue, built approximately a thousand years ago. The album cover captures my first sighting of the statue. Having walked off to the side after the long many-staired ascent, I turned around and nearly jumped out of my skin to discover a giant stone head, looming over the main temple. Numerous other sculptures immortalize Jain saints who dedicated their lives to Jainism's teachings of nonviolence. Afterwards, a local hacked open fresh coconuts and I drank the first coconut milk I've ever actually enjoyed (outside of a Pina Colada, that is).

After Shravanabelagola, we shuttled over to Melkote, a small, local village for a traditional Iyengar (Hindu Brahmin caste) lunch at the local Dharamashala (a place where pilgrims, wanderers and vagabonds can stay while on their journeys), possibly the best meal I've had in India yet. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to wander around the lanes of Melkote, an 'actual' Indian village. You'll notice pictures of signs posted on some houses of a red flame set between the trunks of a white U. These signs denoted that the family within was of the Iyengar caste and worshipers of Vishnu. Finally, we visited the local ancient temple, dedicated to Shiva. In Hindu temples, the main statue of the deity is believed to house the actual God, and is never moved once set into place. I was stunned to realize that the statue of Shiva within had resided in that single place for over eight hundred years. Or, to put it into perspective, approximately four times as long as my own country has existed."

I found out that the head cook at the Dharamashala in Melkote often takes on students after final exams for a weeklong crashcourse through Indian cooking. Following my mental flowchart for life decisions from 'Would this be, in hindsight, awesome?' to 'Will you likely ever get this opportunity again?' I find little reason not to, particularly since I'll have around five to six weeks between my last exam and my flight home. Also I'm not sure life would be worth living without learning and occasionally preparing that man's Safron Rice recipe.

Food-related tangent: my Hindi teacher recently had us over to her house again, where we prepared Chicken Biriyani, a Hyderabadian specialty. Slightly overcooked, it was nonetheless delicious and I look forward to dazzling the tastebuds of unsuspecting hungry friends upon my return to Madison. You've been warned.

A couple days after we got back, it was time for Holi (also on Picasa):

"Holi, the Festival of Colors, is ostensibly celebrated throughout India for such lofty reasons as the triumph of good over evil and spring over winter. But as any Indian will tell you, people really just want an excuse to cover each other with colored powder, water and the occasional egg. While playing with the other students on campus, I was lucky enough to accumulate all three in staggering quantities."

I celebrated Holi with the student population at Gop's, UoH's quadrangle/place to hang out and eat snacks. Looking like lost sheep and blank canvases, we Americans were swiftly powdered, doused and egged without exception until no patch of white skin could betray our foreign origin and we, for a time, blended in with the technicolor crowd. This lasted until the singing, dancing, makeshift-drum slamming crowd was worked into such a frenzy that they began tearing each others' shirts, hungry for blank slates. My peers, following the 'when in Rome' mentality, made sure to include me in this ritual, prompting a pink, green and orange-bearing mob to descend upon me once again, so that moments later, my bare chest was as color-covered as the ripped, ragged tshirt I clutched in my neon green hand. Blinking, I watched the mob's attention turn to some other exposed impostor, whose pristine white skin disappeared just as quickly as mine. Christmas might have just lost its favorite-holiday throne.

Last weekend, I traveled with some friends to Aurangabad in Maharashtra, home of the Ellora and Ajanta caves. We first visited Ajanta's Buddhist caves which date back to the second century, B.C.E. The big, open caves were carved into square or rectangular pillared rooms, featuring huge stone carvings of the Buddha, Boddhisatvas and other traditional symbols like the twelve-pointed wheel.

That Saturday, we visited the less-famous but in my opinion, even more impressive Ellora caves, which showcase incredible temples and monasteries from the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain faiths. Interestingly, they were all carved around the same general time (550-750, 600-875, and 800-1,000 C.E, respectively), suggesting a time and place of interreligious harmony. The Kailasanatha Temple was the most impressive of the caves, carved with incredible detail out of a single rock, covering an area "double the size of the Parthenon in Athens." Further details can be found here but yet again, it's a sight of such incredible scale and detail that words simply cannot hope to capture the thing itself, so I'll refer you to the forthcoming bundle of pictures I took instead. I will point out that the carving alone took ten generations of God only knows how many people. Thinking about that while craning my neck in a stupefied attempt to take it all in gave me some appreciation for the immense devotion those artisans must have had.

While in Aurangabad, we also visited the Bibi Ka Maqbara or "Poor man's Taj," a mausoleum strongly resembling the famous Taj Mahal, as well as the Daulatabad fort, reminiscent of Hyderabad's own Golconda Fort. Pictures of all of these will be up soon, time permitting.

As for that second holiday, I got to celebrate Ugadi yesterday, the Telugu new year. A holiday in Andhra Pradesh, it also celebrates the beginning of spring and life itself. My friends and I went down to Shilparamam to celebrate, as we did for the Sankrati festival. While munching on a variety of mango-themed dishes, we enjoyed some traditional Kuchipudi dance, featuring ornately costumed women and smiling, adorably bumbling children dressed as flowers and bees. I also got some new kurtas and, finally, some lungis. The latter are essential for the rapidly heating climate (it's averaged over 100 at midday lately) and infinitely more comfortable than pants when lounging indoors. And hell, when it's socially acceptable to wear a glorified bedsheet wrapped around your waist, why not?

I think that covers most of March's main events. Classes are winding down, which is doubly strange as I still feel like I just got here and classes never really heated up in the first place. That's not to say they aren't engaging, but aside from attending lectures, academic demands have been few and far between. And really, that's fine by me, so long as I'm still learning and feeling intellectually engaged. Indeed, I've learned a great deal about the eastern religions and philosophies that originally piqued my interest in India, in addition to making leaps and bounds in my Hindi.

(Brief aside: Speaking Hindi with people while traveling on weekends or just going downtown has been one of the coolest, most rewarding aspects of this trip. It's fantastic and bizarre to find myself on the other side of the world, speaking with people in their mothertongue, meeting their children, wives and brothers while sharing a bit of my own story. All the hours of drilling vocab and learning the difference between a "d" and a "dh" were worth being able to speak with a three-year-old girl and her mother, even though neither speak a word of English.)

After three months of waking up at 5:30 in the morning to bike over to the yoga center, I'm about to take my certification exam. I've been studying all the relevant philosophy, psychology and physiology this weekend, as well as getting all the Sanskrit names straight and making last corrections to the asanas in practice. I originally started yoga for the sake of my capoeira game, hoping to become more flexible. In addition to learning that it was really my balance that needed improvement, moreso than my flexibility, I learned that I actually love yoga itself. So, finding the 6am certification course more challenging, I signed up with a group of friends, of whom two others remain and will be joining me for the exam. If all goes well, I'll pass and receive teaching certification, which could, I hope (*knock on wood*), yield some sweet part-time employment. Whether teaching students at the UW SERF or hippies in Madison, it'd be great if someone paid me to do something I'd be doing every morning anyways.

Everyone around me has been marvelling "My God, I can't believe it's almost over already." In one sense, I see where they're coming from and it is rather weird to be already registering for my fall UW classes. But it seems far from the end for me, as I'm really only around 60% through my time in India and the best is yet to come. I've felt the most here when traveling, and while I have made some good progress in seeing the south, I have a few more stops here and the entirety of the north to see. So I guess I'm marking time with those experiences and the majority of them are yet to come. I'm getting really excited for my five-ish week trek through the north, which I'll begin by cutting out west to Goa before working my way clockwise around the subcontinent. I plan to see the desert, hike in the Himalayan foothills, and visit some wildlife preservation sites to name a few, and will be starting to arrange a more concrete itinerary with my accompanying friends soon.

I've been thinking about those five weeks and how, money permitting, they just might be the most free five weeks of my life. I'll really have no obligations other than making my eventual flight home, leaving me free to go wherever I please, taking time along the way to enjoy what sights may come my way. I know it's going to be wonderful and that unbridled freedom to explore, experience and grow is a big part of what called me here. So the journey's far from over for me. And I think, after it all, I'll be ready to come home.

Go(ne)karna

Miracles unfold, dear reader: two posts in two days. Have I regained your affections, your eternal faith?

Photos from Gokarna upload as we speak, which I've divided into four folders (four! behold my dedication - no detail left undocumented; come one, come all - delve into lands unseen in the comfort of your slippers and the company of your morning coffee): getting there, Om Beach, Southern trails/beaches and crag-scaling adventures north of Om.

Given Gokarna's three-part nature (beaches, trails, seafood-serving huts), there's less to say, so I'll refer you to the brief descriptions accompanying each photo album. But to summarize:

Gokarna, a coastal town on the Arabian Sea, features numerous beaches, trails, cliffs, unbelievable views and little else, being thankfully, mostly untouched by tourist-aimed development. It's the sort of place one would hope to end up under the discretion of a benevolent superbeing or through a total rejection of modern society, for those externally and internally-locused, respectively.

At midnight, Friday evening, I floated on my back in the swaying Indian Ocean as I watched the most brilliant, starry night's sky I've ever witnessed. That feeling will forever be my Gokarna.

Hampi: Monkeys, Hippies, Temples

Q: When does the internet work for every computer in the building except your laptop?

A: When you're in India, trying to upload pictures from the last month.

Never fear, avid followers (avid you must be if you're reading this, considering my lack of updates). There are libraries and buildings promising internet just around the corner and I intend to make good on updating Picasa or further demonstrate the elusive nature of interwebs hereabouts. Enough - after my first heat-induced sleepless night, our promised AC units (the modern man's oasis) have at last arrived, so I'd best count my technological blessings and move along.

Here I sit, upon an internet-enabled, virus-ridden desktop, wondering what to write about for the next fifteen minutes before Hindi begins. Perhaps I should first excuse my Rushdie-infused erratic writing style; I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and have moved on to Midnight's Children. And as always, whatever book I'm currently engrossed in temporarily molds my consciousness to its outlook (nasty business, when you're reading In Cold Blood) and thought processes (oh the joys of still reading Dr. Seuss on occasion).

So, that apology killed five minutes - ten to go. I think I'll tell you about Hampi, my first out-of-state travel destination for which copious documentation is just waiting to besiege you:

Imagine if one day humankind colonized Mars and decided to grow rice, bananas and mangoes exclusively. Accordingly, imagine a lot of hippies decide to live there. If you're visualizing shimmering rice patties as far as the eye can see, lined with towering palmed mango trees and shorter, wider-leaved banana trees, all superimposed upon a bizarre, red, rocky hillscape, you've closely approximated Hampi. (Rushdie, what have you done to me?) Fill in the spaces with dreadlocked Israelis donning kurta pyjamas and table-watching Indians hawking handcrafted clay meditation balls, marble sculptures and camel's leather journals. Now just spatter the horizon with ridiculously elaborate temples stacked upon ridiculously precarious boulders. There, that's it.

Breaking now for Hindi but I'll pick it up in an hour.

---

Dear reader, two hours later, I've struggled with Picasa for the past hour, trying to convince it that the numerous pictures which Windows clearly recognizes sitting on my external do, in fact, exist. Finally, after some folder shuffling and renaming, Picasa has decided to cooperate. As my Hampi albums putter their way online and I sit here, anticipating dinner, I'll finish my description of Hampi and my stay there.

Hampi, as I'd alluded to, is a bit touristy. However, it's touristy in such a strange, novel way, that it almost ceases to be touristy in the first place: when I hear touristy, I think of a place as being rife with Western comforts. But while Hampi does attract a fair number of Americans and Europeans, the bulk of their passers-through are, as mentioned, Israeli. Israeli hippies, to be specific. Thus, while Hampi is far from strictly Indian, it caters to such a random, offbeat niche that it's far from touristy in the usual meaning of the word.

How does it cater? Lodgings primarily consist of bungalows, strewn about lush forestry, each assortment featuring an open-air, cushion-laden common eating area which I'd hazard from calling a restaurant because it's more like a lounge. Tables, knee-high, bear all sorts of Western, European and Israeli delicacies, from hummus to pastas to nutella pancakes. Psychedelic posters cling to multicolored walls as reggae or reggae-fused music thumps through nearby speakers. There the customers sit, lounge and eat, casually watching a nearly always gorgeous landscape through the open air where windows would otherwise reside. And let me tell you, after a month of almost only Indian food, the familiar food was unspeakably comforting to spirit and stomach alike.

Besides laying about, gorging all day and buying any number of affordable, homemade crafts, what might one do in Hampi? Go see countless temples dedicated to any number of Hindu deities, that's what. Hampi is the world's largest UNECO World Heritage Site, a former Hindu kingdom for two centuries before its eventual destruction. Numerous temples still stand today, the two most significant being the Hanuman and Virupaksha temples, dedicated to Sri Ram and Shiva, respectively. I have no words for the temples, but offer pictures instead, which should give you a far better idea of the scope, detail and sheer size of these temples.

Tangent: I overheard a sadhu singing something familiar as he scaled the many stairs to Hanuman temple. Stopping to recognize the song, my eyes widened/jaw dropped to recognize the artist: Jack Johnson. Needless to say, I promptly joined in. India just gets weirder every day.

Hampi itself, I should have already mentioned, is divided into north and south sides by a river. For ten rupees, the only boat in town will take you from one side to the other. When we arrived in the morning, we found many of these people washing their clothes in the river and observed the town elephant (who would later 'bless' me for a banana and a rupee by gently thumping me on the head with his or her large, hairy trunk) receiving a morning bath. Most of the lodgings I discussed, the Hanuman temple and several others reside on the north side of the river. To the south is the Virupaksha temple, the local bazaar and the residencies of Indian folk actually living in or around Hampi. There runs a single main strip of road, south of the river, which we traveled the next day by rented scooter, allowing us to see the more rural area surrounding Hampi, traveling through small villages where grinning children waved and shouted 'Hey man!' and parallel the river where it straightens out. This was not only exceedingly fun but a great way to see some of the surrounding nature. Again, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

That should pretty well cover Hampi and give some backbone to the (nearly, finally, uploaded) pictures on Picasa. Description and photos of Gokarana coming soon, provided Picasa gives up the attention-wanting obstinate child routine. The trials of documentation endured, I'm off to dinner.

Solidarity

Living in India for the last six weeks has, as I’d expect happens to most Westerners visiting so-called “third-world” countries, opened my eyes to countless luxuries I enjoy and expect in the States. A number of these are commonplace: hot water, easily accessed stable, quick internet, nearly-24 hour libraries and gyms. Among the heavier-hitting luxuries (though still, luxuries) I’ve come to recognize is the relatively more respectful, open and receptive student-administration relationship I enjoy in Madison. Observing student politics at UoH has made it quite clear that this is not a universal luxury.

Last week, while I was in Hampi, a doctoral student here committed suicide. The wake of this tragedy has been tempered with general unrest as this is the second suicide by a doctoral student in that department in the last two months. Allegedly, student-unfriendly bureaucracy played a major role in both incidents, as the students found their faculty and administration extremely detrimental to carrying out their work, generating enormous stress for the students. In the first case, a faculty member was allegedly preventing the student from working on his fellowship project for stretches of months, ultimately costing the student his fellowship and his place in the university.

Many here argue it ultimately cost him his life; I would, admittedly with only a superficial understanding of the situation, question such a brash, singular assignment of responsibility for a man’s decision to end his own life, particularly when that assignment totally abdicates the man himself. It strikes me as a swift, unsophisticated pointing of the finger, but such is to be expected when tensions run high. I believe I understand where the students are coming from – undoubtedly this sort of massive stress could contribute to serious mental upset, lending itself to depression and the perception of a hostile world. But countless other elements of this man’s own outlook, experiences, environment and brain functioning could be equally responsible. It’s a messy algebra, trying to put together one’s reasons for ending one’s life, and surely irresolvable. But I refuse to believe any singular experience or phenomenon can be held accountable as the sole force which pushed these men over the edge.

I digress; my intention here is not to parse apart the hows and whys of double-tragedy, nor is it to critique the human urge for swift, indiscriminate justice. My point is to tell you of the response: the following Monday, the students staged a bund (from ‘bund kurna’ in Hindi, literally meaning ‘to close’), protesting the faculty and administration’s role in these suicides by refusing to attend classes and protesting around campus. While SIP (Study in India Program) classes still met, many students refused to attend their classes, and would collectively enter classes requesting the professors to cease class and allow their students to leave in solidarity. To the worried, I would stress the deliberate nonviolence in these students’ method and note that I’ve heard nothing of anyone being hurt or threatened in this process.

My initial reaction was to question the usefulness of this process. Would it not be more effective to demand the administration’s implementation of systems (i.e. free student counseling) to prevent future tragedy? Or to issue a collective statement bearing the student body’s signatures? The simple walking out of class seemed rather ineffective in resolving the existing injustices.

Today I arrived to my Cognitive Psych class to discover a large number of students assembled in front of the building. A friend from class explained that the students were again staging a bund, this time in response to a controversy surrounding the mess (cafeteria) in the Integrated Students Hostel. It seems that while a number of students living there had paid for the semester’s worth of food, the worse off students on government subsidized meal plans were still waiting for their scholarships to come through. Though the University apparently has funds aplenty to cover their meal costs and could simply wait for the government to reimburse them, they decided to instead close the mess hall for forty days. Beyond inconveniencing those who could afford to eat elsewhere on campus, the less wealthy students have apparently been either going with very, very little food or simply returning home, unable to afford meals at the Student Canteen. A week ago, a similar bund resulted in the administration offering meal coupons which could be used at other mess halls on campus, but failed to follow through, and so the students are again in protest.

Not only does it amaze me, coming from where I do, that this sort of thing would happen in the first place, but I am stunned that this issue could remain unresolved for so long. It certainly implies an unresponsive, indifferent administration, unconcerned with the obvious injustice of this solution (as is, in my opinion, the case with any sort of ‘punish the group for the individual’s offence’ method). And so I found myself reevaluating my appraisal of the bund as reactionary and ineffective, as it seems to take that level of collective statement through action to be heard on this campus and indeed, it is one of the only tools at the students’ disposal. It’s a shame to see an administration so disconnected from its students and, at best, indifferent to their desires that students are forced to refuse their role in the educative system in order to be acknowledged and listened to. 

From my conversations with Mr. Das, the benevolent man who manages the new SIP hostel’s affairs, this seems to run rampant through governmental organization in India. Without reason or rule turning higher-ups’ attention to those they manage (the most benign verb I could conjure, in my libertarian revulsion…), further-downs stand little chance of being noticed, across contexts and spheres of influence. And in that ugly apathy, one senses the cogs of civility and progress slowing to a halt. Even in India, real, meaningful social responsibility sometimes seems to elude apprehension. But so long as people continue to reject the status quo in simple, human solidarity, there is the possibility of resolution, ahead but en route.

Bulletin Post

It's a bit late, I'm tired and not in much of a writing mood, yet there are a few things I'd like to mention and apparently Blogger lets me generate bulleted lists:

• Went with my class of five to my Hindi teacher's house, allegedly for a make up class, but actually to eat her incredible cooking, play with her beautiful baby girl and see the inside of an Indian house. Mission accomplished, pictures en route.
• I finally finished and highly recommend Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Now reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (my heavy read) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (my light read and the reason I'm being so matter-of-fact in this post - I just set it down moments ago).
• I've started to learn guitar with my friend Tyler's assistance. I'm going to teach him and some other friends a bit of capoeira in exchange.
• Yoga, frequent biking and going to the gym has me in a constant endorphin-soaked state, doing wonders for my productivity, mood and general outlook.
• I've made a conscious decision to become proficient in Hindi, after which I will return to French and do the same. This will probably take a few years but is infinitely more likely to happen with those goals in mind.
• I sat in on a fascinating lecture in the Philosophy department (where a three-day seminar is going on) concerning the validity of testimony as a legitimate source of knowledge. I'll elaborate later because I think it's well worth sharing.

I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. Oh, the joys of novel formatting.

Getting settled

Tomorrow it will have been a month since I left for Hyderabad and I can feel myself settling in. The little things let me know I'm getting used to life here: rickshaw rides no longer scare the living hell out of me, the chaos of mid-day in the city doesn't phase me the way it did and I've come to expect the stares and extended hands that come with being a white American. The novelty is starting to wear off, but it's giving way to a new sense of home and normalcy. Through daily exploration, I'm coming to know the city. Ive learned the bus system, train system and the reasonable price for a rickshaw ride from point A to B. Walking through the city streets, I'm piecing together Hyderabad's geography and gaining a sense of where all the places I've been lie in relation to one another. It's a good feeling, this slow transformation from alien to familiar.

I came to India, in part, to fling myself into as different and foreign a place as possible (I'd figured it doesn't get much more different than India) and to make of it a home. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and that human beings, anywhere in this world, share more than they endure alone. I'll save you, dear reader, the stereotypical, lengthy "People are just people" revelations. But it is a nice thing to see and confirm, I must say, especially on my first jaunt outside my own culture.

The prospect of being here for another four months is also starting to settle in as I slowly stop expecting to suddenly wake up back in Madison. It's a nice notion and makes me feel like I can take time to stop, breathe and reflect amid my travels, without fear of missing out on some crucial experience. So I think I'm striking a balance of ample exploration without forcing myself to be constantly, endlessly preoccupied. That said, I look forward to doing some traveling outside of Hyderabad over upcoming weekends. This process is somewhat difficult, as we have to submit all travel plans two weeks in advance, since the Mumbai incident. Train tickets also must be procured several weeks in advance as they inevitably sell out at the most inconvenient times. But I'm currently planning several weekend trips with friends, so I hope to get out into the unknown again sometime soon.

On that note, I've uploaded some pictures of my recent adventures and will be uploading more soon, including the ex-labor childrens' school, the French jazz concert, the Sankrati festival, the zoo, the flea-market-esque exposition grounds and Golcanda Fort.

Currents

India has no ivory towers and Hyderabad suffers a water shortage. So far I'm 0 for 2 on blog title/reality intersections, but what use is travel if you find what you'd expected?

What I mean to say is, there's little physical insulation from the everyman's poverty, here. One can escape into luxury for several hours, but even the most methodical reservation could not ensure total removal. There simply isn't enough space. So, for the locals, psychological constructs dam oceans of heartbreak and hold back flooding empathy.

It works the same way in Madison, really. There are people without homes, but they inevitably become "homeless people," invisible, irrelevant. If I sound like I'm on a soapbox here, I'm only chiding myself - it's a shameful fact of human nature that we shut out the sufferings of others to get on with our lives and I'm as guilty as anyone.

A big part of coming to India and a big part of living in India has been stepping outside of my own ivory towers, physical or otherwise. There's a system-shock in seeing the abject poverty on every street corner here, from having never seen it, let alone lived in it before in my life. And as I've mentioned before, there's no space to turn your head and no way to ignore it, not coming from where I am.

There's a big movement in modern India today to get children out of manual labor and into schools. While resistance has come from the widely spread "families need working children to survive" perspective, NGOs have found that many parents do want to send their children to school, but face social and geographical boundaries to doing so. And where the perspective does hold true, a number of NGOs have worked through communities, winning their support and generating a social norm of education for all children. It appears a slow, arduous procedure, but longer-lasting when compared to interventions which ignore communities' misgivings, uncertainties and challenges.

Today I had the opportunity to visit a school where children live and learn, children who previously worked long hours for less than half the minimum wage. I sat with my peers and heard their stories. Two sisters were cast out with their mother when their father had a second marriage. After their mother succumbed to alcoholism, the sisters returned to their father, seeking shelter. Their stepmother abused them, refused them food and forced them to live outside. The girls were put to work and forced to live like stray dogs until one day they escaped and found their way to the school.

The abuses these children had endured horrified me - some sufferings escape human understanding for everyone but the ones who lived it. I couldn't imagine the bond between those sisters, from the lives they'd endured and fled together.

The younger one is supposed to be a brilliant dancer and proudly announced her intention to be a doctor. If I knew the Hindi and thought it could mean something coming from a stranger, I might have told her never to let go of that dream. But believing that my older age meant I could pass some kernel of wisdom onto her would have been callously arrogant. In the boiling belly of Hyderabad, she has surely lived a thousand bitter winters and knows resolve and survival better than any human being should.

I don't doubt she can dance like a flame. Beauty is so strangely often born of suffering and her radiant smile was no exception. How someone could laugh, smile and play with a stranger after such heartwrenching rejection amazes and humbles me. Every child had a story and a testament to forgiveness, resolution and restoration. Lord knows we didn't deserve those smiles, and we could never have faulted them had they lived brutal, distrustful lives. We, as adults, others and unknown, would have deserved their hatred.

But they laughed, took us by the hand and led us to lunch, to play, to scrawl our names in their new, pristine notebooks. None of us deserved an ounce of it but they gave it, calling us brothers, sisters.

I've never seen God, but I fell weeping at their altar in my heart of hearts. Theirs was a love I've seen only a handful of times in this life, and it broke my notion of what a spirit can endure, how a person can live gracefully though staggering loss. Sometimes we forget what incredible things this flesh can overcome when there is no other option.

After their stories, some of the children sang and danced for us. They fairly insisted we overcome our shyness as well, so we sang in return.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me.
Shine until tomorrow,
Let it be.

It was their song, their stories as best we could retell them, that sounded in that dirt-floored classroom.

"So, is it everything you'd hoped for?"

I sincerely love the life that I am living here in India. I wake up before the sun, 5:30 when the predawn is cool enough to warrant a sweater. My drowsiness fades as I peddle to yoga, and after twenty minutes, I am warm and awake. My friends and I lay out our yoga mats and sing the Sanskrit prayer before calming our breathing to a deep, steady pace. The give and take of yoga alternates strain, relax, strain, offering pragmatic training for exploring Hyderabad, where one must foster constant alertness while maintaining calm repose.

Every yogic act is deliberate and self-aware. Each demands total physical and mental commitment, for which relaxation poses reward one with relief from dharmic effort. Like capoeira, my body rejoices in these movements, and I find comfort and stability in their already familiar execution. Here, action and nonaction manifest to breathy rhythm.

From this ancient ritual, I live my day from a point of inner balance, a plane of inner tranquility. I smile more loosely, laugh more easily and want less frequently, for the contentment in my limbs and quietude in my mind. This peace lifts my spirit and makes of me a new man, born with the rising sun into the infant morning.

Hereon, the day is my trove. My philosophy professors teach loudly with fire in their bellies, honest passion. My Hindi instructor and third or fourth Indian mother leads us through new fields of expression and beams through our stumblings and successes alike. I return to the hostel for two of the best meals of my life, twice a day, where smiling men offer generous portions.

With my spare time, I read, write and reflect, habits I'm realizing are nothing short of essential to my life. I collide and converse with the other students, each of whom possesses a passion and a genius for any number of pursuits. Hardly a day goes by without the passing of a deeply human thread through my life and another's.

And there is time for exploration, time for getting lost in the city's every nuance. Buses and rickshaws take me into a new world which bursts with color and life and I give into the current, let her take me away.

After it all, I fall asleep earlier and quicker than I ever have, expended from the day, restless only for the morrow.

I will carry this Way home; I will build from it a life.

Sights sans sounds

Thought I'd quickly mention that I recently uploaded a massive batch of new pictures including the Lumbini Park, Birla Planetarium, Qutb Shahi Tombs, Galconda Fort, Laad Bazaar, Charminar, Chow Mohallah Palace, New Year's Eve and yet another bus ride. Free vicarious expansion of cultural horizons, step on up.

Love Lived, Life Loved

I'm home from a very long, exciting, interesting day. Today we had a treasure hunt which spanned the city and resembled the Amazing Race (which, I learned, I would love and excel at for about three hours before crashing), called Khojo Hyderabad. Essentially, we were given money for travel and had to follow clues and hop rickshaws to reach our travel destination. My group came in second, winning us a small sum of rupees. It was fun - particularly when multiple rickshaws were racing to the destination, four kids crammed into the back of each, cheering the driver on ("Juldi, bahaee!" -- "Quicker, brother!") and jeering the opposing teams. In the process, we visited a small local business which produced numerous types of beautiful clothes and rugs (a traditional process which was essentially saved and revived by a single woman, who told us of her story and her art), a sprawling local art museum and a Hindu temple and community center, where a sadhu (ascetic) lectured us on his guru's teachings of yoga, strength, virtue and unity of thought, word and deed. During that last one, a second speaker and follower of the same guru wasted no time leaping into a discussion (he emphasized, not a lecture) on purpose, happiness, goodness and wisdom. Near the end, social barriers to philosophical discussion thoroughly dismantled, he asked if we had any doubts (a word Indians frequently seem to use meaning "questions", though doubts was perfectly appropriate just then).

So, I asked him a question which has plagued me ever since I took my first class on Eastern philosophy - how does one love fully without attachment? Buddhism teaches that all of life is transitory and impermanent, and that it is our perception of things as stable and unchanging which causes the suffering in our lives. Thus, if one frees oneself from attachment through the recognition of all of life as fleeting and in flux, one frees oneself from suffering. Traditionally, this realization is the essence of enlightenment, liberating one's self from the material world through attainment of nirvana.

Much of this sounds about right to me. I understand that attachment to some standard is at the heart of any pain and ultimately responsible for the experience of pain itself. What eludes me is how one could be free of attachment in human affairs without sacrificing some degree of passion, in turn sacrificing a bit of one's very humanity. It is easy for me to feel little attachment to material goods or power, for instance, because I place little stock in them. Necessarily, my passion for these things dwindles as does my love for them. In these two cases, I would say that's most likely a good thing.

But where love is concerned, for others and ideas, I see the death of love and passion as an end to life itself. Without these guiding forces, these basic principles which move us forward, directing and defining our lives, I should not find life worth living. And so for these matters, one cannot simply extinguish love and attachment together. Somehow, one must carefully blow out the harsher flame, leaving the gentler, essential one aglow.

How could one love, entirely, devotedly, humanly without attachment? Is not the pain of loss the proof of love extended? How can one feel so terribly much for an ideal or human being without the desire to maintain the beloved's presence?

Wondering how to live a brilliant, energetic life without delusion, I posed the sadhu this inquiry. He offered the example of his guru, a man who came and fulfilled his dharma (duty) avidly and lovingly before simply, elegantly, leaving. The how was shown more than it was told, conjured through images of indiscriminate love and humility. Such seems to be the way of wisdom; it cannot be transmitted, it rather must be realized.

He offered two closing prayers, so we chanted ancient Sanskrit with this smiling, gentle man, before joining him again in our native tongue. He spoke the first few words and I half-smirked in recognition.

We then shared the serenity prayer.

One Billion Guiding Forces

We've now got wireless at the hostel, which will make the process of updating my blog and uploading photos much easier, along with checking email, news, etc. I've gone ahead and uploaded a number of pictures to Picasa, catching me up, more or less. That said, I've found the recent lack of internet something of a relief, and I'm determined not to get caught up wasting time online now that I have it again. That's never been much of a problem for me, though I have spent decidedly more time doing "productive things" and it's a habit I'd like to maintain. I find there to be fewer distractions here, in general (that is, things which distract me from spending time the way I'd ideally like to), confirming my suspicions that I'd find a simpler life preferable to one muddled with haphazard excess. Honestly, I feel more free here than I have in a long time. There's a lot of room here, room for dreams and reflections, room to sort out the hows and whys of what's been and what lies ahead. It's good to stretch out here, out of the current for a spell, and consider these things.

I was thinking about what I write here, how I write it and why I'm writing at all. There's been a tension in my writing between an "x then y happened" sterile sort of recording and a more genuine account of what occupies my thoughts and the meaning I've gleamed. To be honest, I have a hard time making sense of what all these changes signify; I feel like an infant with some multi-levered, flashing-buttoned, chirping, whirling machine who can't make heads or tails of what he's even seeing, let alone how it works, let alone what to do with it. There is so much to take in, so many alterations to my environment that I'm still simply trying to put it all together. But when faced with the incomprehensible before, writing's often served me in connecting the sporadic, too often seemingly random dots of experience to form some sparse outline, a template for life and my place within it. So I think that will be this journal's purpose: a place to unload the jumbled days and sort the wheat from the chaffe.

That philosophy established, I may not not make a point of recounting each day's events or each new exploration in painstaking detail; I think the photos I take along the way will tell those stories instead. I should like to delve deeper than description and honestly, it should be a hell of a lot less boring to read. So, off we go - cheers.

I've never believed too strongly in fate, in some invisible guiding hand which intelligently directs the goings-on of this corner of the universe. Perhaps it's the scale, perhaps it's a belief in evolution, perhaps it's the atrocities of man which make life and existence seem so ostensibly absurd. Whatever the reason, I know existentialism struck a brilliant chord with me, in AP English, and has held a persistent tone for three years and counting. The individual's power to define and thereby create his or her identity and then affect the surrounding world is the stuff of legend to me, vibrant and inspiring, and it is one of those fundamental beliefs which accounts for much of my perspective on human affairs and my own life-vision.

Yet, it seems equally clear to me that beyond our capacity (and I reiterate - there is so, so much room) there are forces which define this place over which we have very little control: time marches on, seasons cycle and life ebbs, flows. Taoism's teachings of release and adjustment to these forces rang another bell in my heart, singing an equally beautiful song. Though ideas of peacefulness through nonaction seem at first opposed to the establishment of identity through the exercise of will, I would suggest that deliberate nonaction is itself an assertion of humanity and actually fits quite well with existential thought, generating a more complete picture of how we can be the people we decide to be through manipulation of perception and (non)action.

But while I can get quite carried away on our abilities and human power, I am reluctant to concede those powers beyond our grasp. For that reason, my enthusiasm for Taoism or any philosophy of release and surrender has never approached that I experienced when reading Sartre's "Existentialism as a Humanism." Yet, it's remained a truth I've known but determinedly ignored, preferring to soar on endless possibility.

And India is challenging that, bringing this fact to the forefront of daily life in a way that affords little wiggle room. The poverty cannot be ignored and taunts me with its prevalence. It's a miserable, undeinable truth over which I (alone, here, now) have precious little control. It's humbling and deflating, tempering my leaping spirits with clear, stubborn reality.

Between these ideals, I'm sure a balancing point exists. With a degree of release, there is calm, peaceful being and freedom from hopelessly massive, crushing expectation. But this release demands a constriction of personal ability and power of will. The answer to this riddle is lost on me, but the serenity prayer often fills my thoughts. Clearly the best one can do is to do one's best - and that seems to be the easy part. Understanding how much weight and responsibility to allot oneself for the world and its conditions is a much more difficult art, one I hope to make strides in during my time abroad. I do feel that I am learning to foster an inner peacefulness through acceptance of my place in this new world and relieving myself of the need to struggle beyond that. Stunned by this dramatically altered reality, I am recalling that understanding must precede action if any good is to come of it. So I am learning to be calm, quiet and attentive before trying to manipulate anything at all. It is an ancient lesson, born in this land thousands of years ago, and it is one I hope to learn through it's very practice.

From the ground up

Pardon the lack of updates - we moved into our new hostel where there's no internet yet and I've been too busy with orientation and the like to make it over to the library. Expect some lengthy posts to come, concerning my first time in the city outskirts, the Indian fusion concert, getting new duds at Fab India, New Year's Eve, and our jam-packed day of Hyderabad exploration, including a palace, mosque, series of tombs and ancient fort. Also, I saw my first Indian movie yesterday, Ganjini (a Bollywood take on Memento), at a local theater.

Everything is going spectacularly well. There are lots of adjustments, some superficial and some less so. The poverty is very hard to understand, let alone accept as another fact of life. I don't think I'll ever get used to the pleading eyes of a malnourished, hobbling child tugging at my pantleg - I don't think I'd like to.

This world challenges the boundaries of life and humanity as I've known it so far; I've seen more intense joy and sorrow than I recall having ever seen before. It's constantly said that India is a place of extremes, but what they don't tell you, is that it is a place of constant, simultaneous, seemingly irreconcilable extremes. Towering new office buildings grow out of roughshod huts, made of tarps and bamboo, until the work is done and another sprouts up by the same workers' hands. Women smiling brilliantly in shining saris pass the starving people, in their ragged nests. Chaos rules the streets through insistent merchants and motions, waves of people from all sides in all directions, while ten feet away, pigeons congregate outside a tranquil mosque.

That such extremes could exist comes as no surprise; that they could do so tangled up with one another, distinct and apart yet wholly integrated (each essential to the other), stuns and humbles me. It is overwhelming to feel my mental framework reworking itself anew to try and account for these paradoxical inconsistencies, like a toddler making sense of a language's ins and outs, learning an incredible lot in a very, very short time.

I came to India for a challenge, for a fresh start and to redefine my world, my life and in turn, myself. I didn't realize this wasn't about expansion - it's about reconstruction.