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.

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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.