Of Ivory Towers & Holy Waters

Peanut Butter Brain

2010-06-17T17:10:00.006-05:00

Jetlag is its own weird brand of madness - a blend of alternating insomnia and fatigue, weirdly timed hunger or lack thereof and a general, constant sense of just being out of sync. I'm currently caffeinating at Caribou to try and get myself through the afternoon without a nap (which I fear would just further mix me up), reflecting on the strangeness of being back home.

We really shouldn't be able to do this, you know - practically teleport to the other side of the planet, go for a run, a shower and grab a cup of coffee. It's kind of unnerving to think about the countless individuals who dedicated their entire lives to making pilgrimages shorter than what I just flew in under sixteen hours. One normally wouldn't just trip their way into such a totally different, alien culture. Rather you'd meander your way into it, slowly and steadily, one culture at a time, each different from the other by a step or two or three but probably sharing the weather at least.

There's a reason this is called culture shock - like the sudden abrupt trauma of jumping into a cold lake. You were completely dry - now you're utterly wet, a half-second's breadth separating one from the other. It's shocking to be here, this place where people roll up their windows and turn on the AC when this is the coolest air I've felt in over a month, save a few evenings at SVYASA in Bangalore. There's a legitimate fear of creeping consumerism in India today; as KFCs and Pizza Huts crop up more and more, the typically tumbling horizon slowly slips into line, less colorful and bold, more orderly and corporate. But in these few days, all I can see is black and white: the utter comfort and ease with which everything always happens everywhere, the cleanliness of every street and every person, the obvious displays of wealth in cell phones, designer jeans, beer bellies and nice, new cars which no one even notices because it's everywhere all of the time.

More than anything it's what I don't notice that shocks me; it's negative space throwing me off kilter. Where are the beggars, haranguing me for money (because Christ, look at me, I must be loaded)? How the hell is everyone so fat and well-dressed? Where are the skinny, dirty, poking ribs, the tattered rags and desperate eyes? Where is the heat and how can these people walk around in the middle of the day like it's no big deal? Where the hell are all of the smells? Beedies and bananas, rickshaw exhaust, stinking stray dogs, wafting curries and the way everything anything smells baking under hot sun day-in day-out? Where are the masses of people, tumbling and tripping over one another into buses and out of movies, squatting over chai and ogling one another, grinning or serious, mustached every one? And the noise and the sounds - Hindi chatter, fighting dogs, arguing wallahs, fruit vendors, goddamned noisy autorickshaws, laughing children, "sir"-ing workers and pissed-off bosses - all of it, utterly silenced.

It's unnerving to say the least, especially with the jetlag and all. It's a different world and a different way of living. I don't care who you are - India's a tough place to travel and a tougher place to live, whatever your socioeconomic status. I'm grateful for the rampant opportunities I enjoy here - the experiences I've been able to have and the fruits my labor has been able to yield. I look at my similarly academia-bound friends in India who have to struggle through a whole hell of a lot more red tape than I do just to get the chance to work their asses off for a PhD. Who will be completing (and paying for) two master's degrees while I get paid to work at NIH and gain experience and connections which will lay the foundation for my career. I'm grateful as hell for the value our nation places on education and the resources at our disposal to creative opportunities for dreamers with a work ethic.

But I already miss the challenge of day-to-day living or more specifically, the gratification of overcoming small, everyday adversities. There's a color, a spice to life in India which isn't for everyone but will shake you out of your complacency if you ever find yourself growing soft or stagnant. It's easy to forget that our American lifestyle is totally bizarre: daily living has never

been this easy. Getting a meal and taking a nap used to be matters of life and death. Sometimes it seems like life reduces to a matter of picking one luxury over another, constantly evaluating a situation to pick out the easiest option and I think it's a lot of what contributes to the general depression and listlessness of your any given American. When life is a struggle, there's a constant opportunity to overcome adversity. Sometimes you lose of course, but even disappointment and failure are consequences of living at least.

I don't mean to glamorize or romanticize life outside wealthy, Western nations. In fact, I think this idea that life was so much better and more real when we had to fight mastadons and die from measles is utter bullshit and nothing irritates me more than an idealistic anarchist. But non-new world civilizations do have something we don't. Greater difficulty in doing virtually anything for one; it certainly seems to me that life is *generally* more of a struggle outside our nation's borders than within. But there's something about adversity which unifies people: as we collectively identify that which needs change, we come together and do something about it. Individual I's melt into a collective We and suddenly you belong, you become a part of something, connected and inseparable.

Life without a struggle is hardly living at all and a dismembered limb is a bleeding, dying thing. For all the goods our society enjoys (e.g. the wealth and means to educate ourselves, protect ourselves from countless imminent threats, and make some sense of the world around us), I feel our society sometimes disconnects us, leaves us so satisfied we're stranded, not sure what to do. Post-modern life is just plain weird: when survival becomes irrelevant, it's easy to lose direction. You (or I) can become so comfortable that we forget about life outside our bubble, about the billions of people who live without clean water or sufficient food. And when you forget about the struggle so many face, when you fall for the fallacy that the world around you is the world around everyone, it's hard to find the meaning. Being here, satisfying your desires, one after the other becomes repetitive and senseless, an ever-skipping CD that never goes anywhere but only repeats those first four tracks.

In a way, we need the world's problems. We need the struggles that exist because they simply give us something to do. I'm waxing philosophical but I can't help but observe that the nation with the most time to sit around and think about itself has the most people saying "fuck it, I want out." I think this is part of why traveling matters so much to people in our lot: it reminds us that some people have real problems, pops that bubble and gives us something meaningful to do. Maybe one day we'll solve every problem and will finally collectively have to figure out what to do when there's no injustice left to resolve. I sometimes wonder what we'll do, if we ever get there.

Homegoing

2010-06-14T13:16:00.002-05:00

Giving myself no more than five minutes to type here because I need to pack badly and need to sleep worse. Another last night in Tagore - how very strange. But it's better this time. This time it carries the afterglow of delight that comes with returning home and knowing you can always come back. And I must say, it beats the apprehension of leaving a place where I'd grown, changed and become comfortable again, for a place that seemed long and far away, a place where I wasn't sure how I'd fit in. There's nothing so comfortable as taking some time at home (or homes) before setting off on another great adventure. I feel so blessed to have been able to take this time in India before I take off for D.C. It's done a great deal to remind me who I am, was, became and wish to be. It's grounded me as only India can (and apparently always does) and I'm very grateful for it.

More soon, especially about my research, what all I've been up to in Hyderabad, reflections on the experience and so forth. But now to pack and get some rest before a long two days of finding my way back home.

Homecoming

2010-06-11T03:17:00.004-05:00

The last few days, the last few weeks have been such a whirlwind I don't know where to begin. I feel like I've been struggling to track some of the major events here while scrambling to make my next interview/plane/bone-rattling rickshaw ride, so that many of the details have fallen through the cracks. Let's see what I can recapture:

I'm here in Hyderabad and I cannot cannot believe it. Not just Hyderabad, but the Tagore International Students Hostel at HCU, i.e. my home from January until June of 2009. My facebook status reads "words cannot describe; brain cannot compute" and that's really the best I can put it. It is just surreal to be here again, in this space where I grew and changed from who I was to who I became. Every inch is laden with memories which surge and swirl until I realize I've been standing on the balcony, staring into space for the last ten minutes. It's truly otherworldly.

Backtracking a bit, Bangalore was great. SVYASA was marvelous respite from the noise, pollution and utter chaos I've been enduring in the cities the last several weeks. Thanks to the tranquility of the forest, the friendliness of the scientists and the omnipresent calm of everything and everyone, I felt weeks and months of stress start to wash away, tightly bound knots beginning to let loose. I realized that I never really got a chance to relax even after finals and graduation, so swiftly was I scampering off to India. And even since I arrived here, I was rushing so much to either complete my research or get on to the next place that I really didn't get a chance to just stop and look around. Granted that had a lot to do with the heat and the pressures of time. But it was also a matter of mindset, the "hurry up and go - the sky's falling for Christ's sake" kind of mentality Madison well-conditioned me into.

But now, now it is done. My research, school, and hopefully that mentality. As I hope I've made clear in the past, living in India is not always easy. It can be quite stressful and frustrating at times. But what I love about India is what it teaches me, what it makes me to remember. Something about the lack of control you have over any given situation forces you to let go. That or lose your mind. This letting-go isn't easy - as far as I can tell, letting-go almost never is. But when India pushes me to let go and I begrudgingly submit, I discover something wonderful: there's more to life than rushing around from one place to the next. There's more to life than whatever single aspect you're currently fretting over. And things really do tend to work out, regardless of how much you worry and wonder. So why bother at all? Why not just be here now?

These are the hard but necessary lessons India's taught me once before. And this crash-course in non-Western living has again reminded me with a not-so-unheavy hand.

But I'm here again. I'm worn and weary but I remember now. And I hope to meditate on these truths during these next three-ish weeks. I hope Hyderabad can remind me of the life I made here, the way I decided I wanted to live when my life belonged to me again (and not UW-Madison, love it though I do). Slowly, this sense of urgency, of calamity around the corner is leaving me. It's something I'll need to work at - I haven't been as regular in my yoga and meditation as I'd like. But as Gandhi says, we must be the change we wish to see in the world. If I hope to make this world mindful and get the people meditating, then I'd best lead by example. After all, the only people we can truly change are in the end ourselves. The rest, what's seen in the world or others, is just an extension of those small, original adjustments.

More stories soon and yes, pictures too. I've finally got a sufficiently reliable internet connection and, more importantly, the time to make good on those promises. But for now I'm going to go and meditate. Then we'll see what I can do.

Heaven is a place called SVYASA

2010-06-08T04:23:00.002-05:00

Any doubts? See for yourself. Lots of pictures there with mine to follow.

This one's going to be quick. Woke up at six o'clock this morning to a whirlwind of rickshaw-dealing and bumpy rides. Thank God I took my usual "get there way early because something's gonna go wrong" approach - the website had the wrong time and I made my bus by five minutes. Oh and this is one of those way the hell out in the boonies kind of places where there's ONE bus per day at seven in the morning and if you miss it, you try again tomorrow. But Shiva-be-praised, I made it in the end and now here I sit, typing in the library of the world's leading yoga research institution.

Had a nice breakfast with the many students, patients, researchers and other visitors here before meeting with the scientists and seeing their facilities. Totally amazing research going on here - physiology, psychophys, EEG, sleep studies, you name it, they're doing it. fMRI even through a partnership with NIHAS (but not here sadly). The generous scientists are prepared to pile heaps of research upon me, which I am only too happy to take. Have only scratched the surface but they are treating and researching yoga applications to everything under the sun: cancer, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, schizophrenia, PTSD, anxiety, depression, the list goes on and on. Promising results on all fronts, I look forward to getting into the research nitty gritty.

And did I mention it's bloody beautiful here? The campus is tucked away in a veritable forest of greenery: palm trees swaying, birds chirping, it's the kind of place I could stay for a while. And I hope to do just that someday - they've got monthlong yoga courses for all comers not to mention BS, MS, and PhD programs in yoga, yoga therapy, yoga science, so forth and so on. This is the place alright. More brain candy soon - time now for more interviews!

Mixed and Mixing Up

2010-06-05T04:55:00.018-05:00

I haven't been updating nearly as frequently as I'd like but I have some very good reasons *cough*excuses*cough* for this deficit: 1) I've been sick, 2) I'm trying desperately to find housing in DC and 3) I'm in India.

But anyways, I realized I'll only be here for another meager week and a half so I'd best get writing while the writing's good (or at the very least, vaguely recollectable). That said, it's easiest to start with the recent past so I'll tell you about Mumbai and then I'll get to Delhi.

I'm staying at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, one of the leading research institutes for the social sciences in India today. When I originally prepared a Fulbright proposal to directly investigate yoga's benefits to alcoholic individuals, it was with one Dr. Das, a tremendously resourceful and generous professor here at TISS. Having studied and advised the World Health Organization on improving medical and psychiatric care for public health issues such as substance abuse and HIV/AIDs throughout India, he seemed like the perfect mentor. Obviously the Fulbright fell through, but he's been a great help for my current research, facilitating meetings with leading addiction treatment centers here in Mumbai.

Getting here was a relief but to explain just why, I guess I'll have to delve into Delhi. Readers, seatbelts please.

Delhi. Delhi was hard. The heat was hotter than I knew India got, the roads dustier, the clamor more uproarious. The entire city's a construction site for the Commonwealth Games and Pahargang is in ruin. Whole city blocks were being steadily dismantled by seemingly everyone in sight: young men beat the snot out of buildings and aunties used the remnants to further bludgeon larger remnants. Spider-legged, sinewy uncles hoisted off-white burlap sacks (full of mortar and thrice their weight) off to God knows where. Bricks rained and wires hung, flustered Indian men substitute for the orange cones or yellow tape we Westerners might look out for. And it's a damned good thing they were there to scare whitefolk out of the street because I saw no shortage of bricks barely miss their targets, Makers missing their made. A terrible, black lake of dirt, feces and filth inexplicably grew from the middle of the main road, forcing passers-by to hop bricks and outcropped steps, narrowly avoiding the foulest of foot-plunges.

It was, shall we say, overwhelming. I forget the sort of mental toughness living a single day in India can demand and being thrown into the thick of it quite knocked the air from me. I must assume some responsibility as I picked the arguably worst place to readjust to Indian living. But having procured my kurta pyjamas, scarf, and rugged, open-toed sandals, I found myself far more prepared for the elements. The rubble made city-walking precarious and the beating, merciless sun made ten minutes outside feel like a day's work. Still I was grateful to be edging my way around the commotion rather than required to pitch in with the work. The food made quick work of me, but I submitted and eased my way around curries like worksites and soon found that I could get by well enough. My room? A swamp at best, dreary and cavernous. But there's always that silver lining: what's dark and dreary can be cool and refreshing, even if the pillows smell a bit like feet.

My work was exhausting, constant but fruitful, as I've discussed a bit already. My meetings were primarily with the workers and directors of various rehab centers, of whom I am amazed, indebted and inspired. One interview per day felt like two days' work after the hours of stinging, rickshaw-riding winds each trip would demand. But my caretakers were so kind that I scarcely left an interview without sitting down to eat. "Guests are like gods," I was reminded more than once. I was also happy to reunite with old friends who temporarily bent space and time by taking me to a fancy Indian mall (which, I'm convinced, was actually a mall located somewhere in America, emptied of its inhabitants and replaced with Indian tourists, buying smart saris and flaky samosas - I'm on to you both, Vipin and Simpi).

Still, I rushed and hurried, bustling my way through and out of Delhi with the hope that Mumbai held respite. And indeed, TISS has been a lovely place to recharge, relax and remember just where I am. I've taken ample pictures of the campus (which I'll upload soon - really, I will) which reminds me so much of HCU (University of Hyderabad) that it felt like home at first sight. Palm trees and foliage adorn the campus, drawing lovely, green contrast to Delhi's metal and brick. Fresh air and bird song replace dust and constant buzzsaw, fresh-faced, friendly students in place of hawking wallas. And my room, oh, my room. Private bathroom and hot shower? FLATSCREEN TV and WORKING computer?! Pinch me I'm dreaming (wait, no, let it go on). Yes, I did get sick again, and yes, had to scare a monkey on out of my room. But what a place to lie around ill: a place where you can step outside at noon without breaking out into a fervent, all-out sweat. I've also made some nice new friends here through lazy, afternoon-long conversations held over lunch, chai, and dinner. One I'll be meeting in Bangalore quite soon, the last city of my yatra, a veritable Mecca for yoga, I'm told.

My work here has shifted towards institutions of yoga to learn more of the practice and its known benefits. Recently I visited the Yoga Institute of Mumbai, where I met my Indian grandmother. And by that I mean a woman precisely my grandmother in manner and appearance, whose warm, welcoming spirit captured what South India means to me. There I met with a yoga instructor and recovered addict who told me of his struggles and the new life he's found through yoga practice. May I just say as a researcher: ask and ye shall receive. As I said before, there's so much here. So much telling me this is just the beginning.

Tomorrow I fly to Hyderabad to visit my home from spring of last year. And what a joyous homecoming I'm sure it will be. More to come - especially those pictures!

Odysseus in Kurta

2010-06-05T04:30:00.004-05:00

There I lay, innocently chatting with my parents and lying on my bed in the bleary-eyed morning. Mumbai's a good deal cooler than Delhi, especially out near the Tata Institute, but the window's propped open to let in the breeze. Just then I notice a blurry, lanky form sitting on my windowsill. I scramble for my glasses to discover a blank-faced monkey watching me watching him. "Just a minute," I tell my folks, dropping the phone to grab a chair, the nearest, cheapest, potentially noise-producing weapon of war I can find. Banging it on the ground and sort of hissing, sort of clicking, I start inching forward, a menacing foe to behold.There he sits, watching me blandly, defiant in his ignorance of the force with which he reckons.

But oh, adversary, what business I meant! Business and how! Clapping now! Clapping, bug-eyed, lunging forward, mumbling and chair-banging, fury incarnate! Now, now he wavers. A step back, a turn towards the outside, apprehensive paw raised to defend against outright assault.

Now. Now I have him. I let loose my whistles, quicken my claps, wave my legs like tomahawks and crash red chair like Thor crashing hammer. He knows his goose is hopelessly cooked and retreats to the outside, safe and away from this merciless God, the raging master of Room 406.

Window slams shut and rapping knuckles pummel his transparent protector - a warning to his brethren and heart-trembling reminder of their fragile, fleeting, mortal lives.

Return, part two

2010-05-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

It's been a full week but it hasn't yet set in. I've never been able to get my head around India existing on the other side of the planet. Nextdoor to Pakistan? Got it. Proxal to Thailand, check. A quarter-globe from England - roger. Opposite Wisconsin? Does not compute.

Yet here I am, in India again. Maybe the geography doesn't add up because the concept of slipping into an alternative dimension seems like a more straightforward explanation. Like everything's fundamentally the same, but bent and reordered (or disordered as the case may be, but aré, let's keep on task). In every aspect of space and time, India, she's worlds away to me.

Can I be frank? I spent the last six months so entirely doubting that any of this would actually manifest that even now that it's come, my mind disbelieves. And as an aside, I wonder if one of my yatras to India will ever one day be preceded by anything other than chaos and disorder. But again, would the shanti be half as striking without some madness beforehand? The storm makes the calm oh-so-quieting.

Despite my many doubts (to employ the Hingrish favorite once more), I am steeped in Mother Bharat: Hindi chatter, hot chai; smoking sadhus, steamy samosas; "Hello, my friend?", "Is no problem." All signs that I have crossed over, slipped into the stream like a weary pilgrim into the Ganga and oh, how I'm ready to let it take me away and wash me clean. Maybe that's when the realization comes - when I let go and float along, buoyed by the joyful moments of "I am really here ; this is really happening," contrary to Thom Yorke's emphatic wail.

Note to self: I'm here, you're here, you made it. I'll chant it like a wish until it comes true (or like a mantra until I realize its truth). Both times I've come to India, I come on fumes, tank empty, waving my barren meal plate, begging for sustenance. Admitting I'm out of fuel has taken some days each time, and comes only after I'm sure the whole scene won't evaporate like a mirage following my concession. But oh, I thirst. And God, I'm waxing philosophical for what feels like the first time in a year. This massive inner tide of wonder and introspection has been delayed by a year of "not now" and "get this done first." Now, I realize how desperate I've been to be here again, to reclaim my shanti.

Now here I sit and as I type, I realize it's here within reach. If I were typing this outside under floral canopy and dimming sunlight, oh, the tide would come forth. Four weeks ahead for meditation and mindfulness. Four weeks to learn how people are everyday coming forth from the dirt and rubble of addiction bright and smiling, miraculously remade.

What have I learned in a week? I've learned that yoga is saving lives over here. Not independently of other contributions -- I'd be a yoga-fanatic and a right crummy scientist to go that far -- but helping save them all the same. I've visited four prominent Indian rehab centers to meet with more than twice that many directors and staff workers, many of them ex-addicts themselves, to learn how yoga is changing lives. I've learned how it appears to ease the experience of the negative emotions which frequently cause the knee-jerk urge to use drugs. I've learned how it helps people reassess their internal and external experiences to make good decisions and not succumb to their cravings. I've learned how people are using these practices to reshape their minds and reclaim their lives. The stories I've heard in a week could make you weep for a lifetime - for the sorrow of loss, the beauty of hope, the glory of triumph.

A week -- somehow, just a week. I made the offhand comment to someone, somewhere recently that I could go home tomorrow and feel my work is done. But that wasn't quite true: by outside perspectives it would seem enough but from my own sense for what lies beneath, my own suspicions of how deep this rabbit-hole runs, my God -- I've only begun to dig. So far, this experience has offered wondrous validation for my own beliefs of the power these practices hold. It's done miracles to assuage my own doubts and uncertainty of whether these questions are worth asking, whether this trail is worth blazing. But in the heart of these conversations, just as in the depth of my own meditations, my hesitations disappear. I sit with myself and I look and I know. That this is dharma, to ask these questions and find their answers. These truths are my truth; to pursue them undauntedly is to realize my nature. "Tiger gotta hunt, bird gotta fly, man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why."

And if I'm going to quote Vonnegut, I'm going to do it twice: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." I won't preemptively apologize for my growing certainty that people are coming into my path a hair too serendipitously for me to chalk it all up to chance and happenstance. Besides the ones I've sought out myself, I have seemingly randomly bumped into an increasingly bizarre number of people who practice yoga and meditation and have shared their (often incredible) experiences with me. I've received nothing but encouragement in the path I'm choosing to take, to try and peer into the brain and watch the mind dance its weaving, mystic dance. If you know me or have ever asked me "So how was India?", I don't need to tell you the dance these conversations bring about in myself. I am loving this; little has ever felt so right.

More to come soon, but necessarily after dinner. There's much to tell of just what all I've done and now that I'm here in Mumbai, I finally have the means and the wherewithal to tell it. Photos to boot - precious Karnatakan children and luscious Indian foliage lay just around the corner, I swear. Now to eat, phir milenge to all. Dearest blog, I give you new life, new form for your undying spirit.

Return

2009-07-03T09:04:00.000-05:00

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

2009-04-23T05:36:00.000-05:00

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

2009-04-18T02:51:00.001-05:00

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

2009-04-08T12:16:00.000-05:00

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

2009-04-07T07:20:00.001-05:00

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

2009-04-03T05:58:00.000-05:00

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

2009-03-28T04:42:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-27T02:12:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-26T05:09:00.000-06:00

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

2009-02-12T08:17:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-31T10:30:00.001-06:00

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

2009-01-25T07:43:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-17T05:54:00.000-06:00

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?"

2009-01-12T09:06:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-11T22:21:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-11T09:23:00.000-06:00

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

2009-01-10T02:53:00.001-06:00

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

2009-01-03T01:13:00.000-06:00

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.

More pictures

2008-12-29T20:06:00.000-06:00

Old SIP House

Campus

To and from the new House

First trip to the city outskirts

2008-12-29T19:12:00.000-06:00

It's 6:45 in the morning and I'm sitting in the commons - this is the first morning I've woken up and felt like I'm in India. There's so much to talk about and it's all been so jumbled that I really have no idea where to begin. I guess I'll turn to chronology for now.

I began the morning by taking pictures of the old SIP house before walking over the the Folk Culture Studies building and beginning . We all received these hand-woven bags which essentially amount to Indian man-bags, filled with materials concerning our next several days of orientation and Hyderabad at large. Chai was served, and we rode over to see the newly constructed SIP house. It's more of a resort than a house and I can't help but feel embarrassed at receiving brand new housing when the money could be used for other purposes (i.e. not pampering American students), especially after seeing the slums behind it, where the builders have lived for the last several months.

I was discussing with some friends the extreme hospitality of Indians, which is both extremely generous and moderately uncomfortable when it seems like we're being treated or regarded as being somehow better or superior. Hyderabad, the city, really seems to capture the tension between traditional and modern, rich and poor, rural and urban which challenges India as a result of globalization.

As we traveled through the city in the afternoon we got our first taste of India outside the University bubble. Never have I seen so much vying for so little space. Temples, shops, slums, apartments, expensive new office buildings and massive billboards all fight for space and your attention, stumbling over each other in a sort of unintelligible jumble which just leaves you confused as to what exactly you're looking at and how it all fits together. So much modernity, from the shops selling western products, to the subway ads, to glass vaults for wealthy businesspeople is prevalent. Yet on the same streets, cows amble through slums as a ragged man squats in the street, smoking.

We left our bus and did a bit of shopping and I was overcome by just how massively different everything was. Indians stared at us as we wandered, doelike, into the shop. Within the store, the uncomfortable sense of being deferred to because of my skin color and implied nationality continued, as women seemed to avoid both my eyes and my path, adjusting themselves to my presence. I can't help but feel like a bit of a sham - there seems to be so much hope in their eyes when they meet mine, for the American Life so many Indians seem to aspire towards. While I hope that globalization has improved the lives of people here, I can't help but feel like I'm peddling defective wares when I smile and say hello; the smiles of the children in the slums demonstrate such a greater happiness than I think the pursuit of wealth could ever accomplish, and I wonder if India's loss of simplicity and Westernization is really all it's cracked up to be.

Going into the city was eye-opening, for certain. For all my hand-wringing, the welcoming smiles of most everyone I saw (well, the men anyways, societal propriety being what it is) really did warm my heart and I felt that incomparable Indian hospitality I've heard so much about. I guess I just hope it doesn't verge on deifying or...just massive resentment if this whole Westernization thing doesn't pan out. But I can certainly appreciate people wanting a better Standard of Living (rife with inherent subjectivity) and the freedom to pursue what they will - and towards that end, I hope they find their happiness. I am just so overcome by my ignorance of Indian life, history and culture to feel remotely qualified to begin identifying problems or solutions within this society or comment on where they're headed as a people and whether that's the Right (see Standarding of Living) way to go.

This is turning out to be a massively humbling experience. A passage I read in the Dao De Jing just before leaving comes to mind:

"Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health."

Baby steps.

First Impressions

2008-12-28T03:45:00.000-06:00

I'm currently sitting in the old SIP (Study in India Program) House lobby with the other students, waiting to go on a walking tour of the campus. I keep phasing between total alertness and heavy drowsiness (currently experiencing the latter) due to the 11.5 hour time difference.

Getting here went well, and didn't feel as long as it sounded. I dozed a bit on each flight and enjoyed meals as they came, without much regard for which meals corresponded to which parts of the day. The whole thing felt like one oddly stretched out day, broken up by reading, sleeping and eating.

Heathrow was posh, filled with trendy bars and restaurants serving expensive drinks and meals. That said, the British accent never fails to bring a smile to my face, especially when conveying meaning through unfamiliar phrases ("you're welcome" = "that's alright"; "trash" = "rubbish", etc). I didn't have much time to wander around the airport, but nabbed some pictures as I rushed through security to my security gate.

The next flight was more of the same, though it was sadly dark outside as we approached Hyderabad, so I wasn't able to see the landscape below. I quickly realized I had become the local minority, exiting the plane and waiting in line to pass through customs. I shortly bumped into the other CIEE students and we worked our way through the airport, emerging to crowds of Indians who vied for our collective cab fare in the pre-dawn darkness. The weather immediately reminded me of Hawaii in the morning. Spotting the CIEE-sign-holding fellow, we were herded out of the airport over to a large white bus (sadly not the ornate, purple one), which we then rode for an hour through the city, to the University.

As we drove along, we saw all sorts of little shops, strewn across an arid backdrop, from which a series of cement and wire-framed structures errupted. The smashing of rural and urban struck me as most peculiar, as the two areas, generally mutually exclusive in America, meshed together. Slums were strewn along decaying adboards and partially built, some seemingly abandonned, buildings. Among other unusual sights were herds of goats and sheep, wandering stray dogs and multi-colored everything - buses, rickshaws and buildings to name a few.

We arrived at the University and moved into our temporary rooms, at the old SIP guest house (we'll be moving into the new one today or tomorrow) before having some breakfast (Indian pancakes for the win). The temperature steadily increased as we drove to the University and had reached Hawaii's mid-day by around 9:30. After breakfast, I went exploring with some other students - the campus buildings are beautiful, in a state of semi-decay which seems to be characteristic of much of pre-modernized India. I am hopelessly in love with the open-air design of the buildings (again, highly reminiscent of Hawaii) which appear to have been built around nature itself, so that the interior of most buildings is rife with flowers and unique trees.

Lunch was also delicious (I'll upload some food pictures soon) and I went exploring again afterwards, this time in the opposite direction of campus, which led to the discovery of cactus trees, tall, upwardly-pluming peacock-like trees and a surprise lake.

--Writing from the next morning--

The tour yesterday afternoon went well, as we saw some areas of campus I hadn't found on my intial wanderings, specifically the yoga center, gym, bus stop and local shopping area. They pointed us in the direction of the new SIP Guest House, which is about 2km (1.6mi, I think) north of main campus. For that reason, we'll be getting bikes soon, which should make it easier to get around the sprawling campus. In the evening, the heat (it got very warm from around 11-2) eased and the evening temperatures again resembled Hawaii's at that time.

I felt an overwhelming calm, walking around campus last evening, as the birds chirped and dogs wandered around us. I wonder how this campus was conceived and built; the area seems so undisturbed and the buildings so casually strewn about, that it almost seems as though they selected already cleared out areas as building sites. The buildings are so often obscured by the surrounding forrestry, that one often has the sense of being in an area unaffected by man or woman. Beyond scenic, it is truly serene.

New photos

Restless and ready

2008-12-25T21:59:00.001-06:00

I'm all packed up, ready to drive down to Chicago and leave for Hyderabad, India tomorrow. I'll update once I have something to say and have recovered sufficiently from jet lag to say it coherently.

Also, I'll be uploading photos semi-regularly to http://picasaweb.google.com/craigw648

Strange - the next time I'll be writing here, it will be from the other side of the planet.