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.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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?
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?
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