so a little thing happened where I sat in a bus for 4 hours with the end result of SEEING THE TAJ MAHAL. you can see my lovely pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/lucinda.stroud/ as well as photos I took while on the road to Agra. In driving to Agra we passed through the more rural side of India which we had seen little of in Delhi, and in some ways it's another world. There are people literally living in shacks by the side of the road that are smaller than my bunkbed at home. There are entire villages that you can see for a few seconds while passing by - barber shops, water pumps, children naked in the street, old men resting on bed frames, women crouched and working. And cows, of course, simply sitting, or pulling carts beside the buses and motorcycles, and herds of goats, and chickens, and camels (!), all mingling with the traffic. The traffic here is crazy and hectic, yes, but in a way it freaks me out less than traffic in the States - people use their horns here as a means of letting the cars ahead of them be aware of their presence rather than being royally pissed off. I'm learning that when the people around me are calm I tend to not panic, even if I can barely hear myself think. And one of the main features of Indian culture is a sort of calm pragmaticism. If you know of a way to make an extra dollar, you try it until someone stops you. If you see an extra meter you can edge forwards on the road, you take it. Things don't always work, naturally - I saw the result of a car accident on the way back from the Taj Mahal where one of the small cars was entirely decimated by a truck that had overturned completely. I can't imagine how there would be many survivors.
But enough of that. I WENT TO THE TAJ MAHAL.
You enter the Taj Mahal complex through the gatehouse. Architecturally it's absolutely brilliant; if you walk in the exact center through the archway, the main building of the Taj is revealed to you gradually, step by step. First you see the center building, then two of the surrounding towers, then the other two, then the mosque and corresponding empty building on the other side. And the size is unbelievable. That people could have built something like this... amazing.
A few facts you might not know about the Taj:
The main building and surrounding plaza is built entirely out of Indian marble, which is the hardest in the world. Not only is it incredibly hard; unlike Italian marble it's completely non-porous, meaning you can touch the marble all you want and no harm will come to it. In fact, the way that the Taj is kept clean is by simply washing it every few years with soap and water; it washes off with no residue. The gatehouse and mosque are built of sandstone and thus have to be periodically repaired/maintained.
Speaking of the mosque, although there are perfectly symmetrical buildings on either side of the Taj, only one is properly situated to face Mecca. The other was built entirely for the purpose of maintaining the symmetry of the entire complex and never served any purpose whatsoever.
The Taj took 22 years to build. After completion, the king's son who succeeded him deposed his father, who spent the rest of his life mostly in prison. He's buried at the Taj beside his wife.
(This is the bit I liked the most) Around the archway of the gate house is a long line of Arabic script; this is repeated around the main arch to the Taj and much of the inlay throughout the building. It turns out that all of this writing consists of 14 passages from the Qu'ran detailing mourning and the humility of man before God (suitable texts for a mausoleum); there are 14 passages because the queen the Taj was built to honor bore the king 14 children, dying while giving birth to the last (who also died). Language is beautiful, and I love how it was worked into the architecture. The way religion mixes with architecture is fascinating.
Visiting the Taj Mahal was definitely the highlight of my weekend, but other cool stuff happened as well. I was complimented by the yoga instructor that visited the residence for my technique and had one of the most physically challenging yet spiritually significant sessions that I can remember. I also washed my socks and underwear by hand out of the same bucket I shower from. In short, fulfilling and challenging. This has been a long post so I'll sign off now, but be sure to check out the pictures and leave comments here if you have any questions about any of them. I'll be working on rearranging some of them into individual albums.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
brief update
not too much more to report, in the light of what I'll be doing tomorrow: going to the TAJ MAHAL, bitches! but I will proceed to relate a summarized account of what I've been doing the past two days. an announcement, though: it turns out that it's a big hassle to import photos to this blog in that it takes a really long time, so instead I'd invite you to view my associated webalbum, http://picasaweb.google.com/lucinda.stroud.
as I take up space I may need to relocate to another server, but for the time being this will work.
in any case, we visited the campus of JNU, which is undoubtedly the largest and most politically active campus that I have ever seen. it remains to be seen whether or not I'll be taking classes there after all - the commute is long and arduous and they don't really have any classes that apply to me - but in any case it's an amazing place. i took pictures of the political posters that cover almost every surface and of the squirrels (well, one squirrel) that frequent the area near one of the outdoor cafes. after JNU was the first bout of "intensive hindi," which was predictably intense but not too bad. what little hindi I had studied on my own proved to be an enormous help in mastering concepts, especially the alphabet. it was tiring though, and i called it an early night.
today involved standing in very long lines. for some reason, only a handful of us in IES delhi have to register at the FRRO office: if you're staying in india for more than 180 days you're required to register with them within 14 days, which makes sense except none of us are actually going to be there for that long. very confusing. anyway, we stood in line for a good hour or so to receive the forms we needed, and after filling them out and preparing to stand in line for at least another hour, probably much longer, we realized that we didn't have the lease or some other sort of necessary document with us. Manoj, probably the only male adult involved with the IES program, seemed uncertain about this, so we vowed to return early on Monday, prepared for the inefficiencies of the office. next lunch and more intensive hindi. and now NOW, in which I am preparing to go to bed and wake up very early tomorrow to be herded off to the TAJ MAHAL, which will be amazing. pictures, I promise.
heart and fuzzles.
as I take up space I may need to relocate to another server, but for the time being this will work.
in any case, we visited the campus of JNU, which is undoubtedly the largest and most politically active campus that I have ever seen. it remains to be seen whether or not I'll be taking classes there after all - the commute is long and arduous and they don't really have any classes that apply to me - but in any case it's an amazing place. i took pictures of the political posters that cover almost every surface and of the squirrels (well, one squirrel) that frequent the area near one of the outdoor cafes. after JNU was the first bout of "intensive hindi," which was predictably intense but not too bad. what little hindi I had studied on my own proved to be an enormous help in mastering concepts, especially the alphabet. it was tiring though, and i called it an early night.
today involved standing in very long lines. for some reason, only a handful of us in IES delhi have to register at the FRRO office: if you're staying in india for more than 180 days you're required to register with them within 14 days, which makes sense except none of us are actually going to be there for that long. very confusing. anyway, we stood in line for a good hour or so to receive the forms we needed, and after filling them out and preparing to stand in line for at least another hour, probably much longer, we realized that we didn't have the lease or some other sort of necessary document with us. Manoj, probably the only male adult involved with the IES program, seemed uncertain about this, so we vowed to return early on Monday, prepared for the inefficiencies of the office. next lunch and more intensive hindi. and now NOW, in which I am preparing to go to bed and wake up very early tomorrow to be herded off to the TAJ MAHAL, which will be amazing. pictures, I promise.
heart and fuzzles.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
pictures part 1 - our residence
So today I'm feeling a bit better and figured that I'd post a few of the pictures that I've taken so far. This first one is sort of the "backyard" to the group residence - it was taken around 9 am, so you can see how foggy it is in Delhi in the morning. The tree that's hanging over the fence has a lot of little orange fruits on it; I don't know what they're called ... yet.
I've never lived in a gated community, but I have to guess that in India it's a lot different; you may have migrant workers there to work on your lawn/swimming pool/ whThis is the inside view of the gate that closes our residence off from the rest of the community. In the US I'veatever, but you don't have them sleeping on the street outside of where you live at night and building fires to keep warm. Not that the upper-middle-class Delhiites are really ok with this - apparently there's been a lot of lobbying to keep stuff like that more "hidden." We'll see how effective legislation is...
This is the gate from the outside. You can see the basic shape of our residence as well as the security booth/guard (I don't know his name yet). The buildings of both the residence and the center are pretty discrete - apparently it's a security risk to have to be incredibly obvious where all sorts of (mainly female) naive foreigners will be congregating. Not that it's not obvious enough to follow all 13 of us when we're being shepherded from one to another as well as whenever we go out to dinner, etc. The lovely girl exiting the gate is my roomie, Beth Graves, who also goes to UPS. She's also now officially our first floor representative!
There are technically four floors to the residence:
THE BASEMEN
TThis is a communal area, although no one has really communed here yet, I think because we're all too tired and the florescent light is scary. The director of IES, Vibha Sharma (soooo awesome), has said that a yoga instructor will be coming at some point and that this will probably be where we'll be doing it. It'll be awesome to take yoga from an actual Indian - I love Martha, my instructor at home, but I feel this guy will probably know more. Anyway, there's computers (even though everyone brought a laptop) and a DVD player/TV.
THE GROUND FLOOR
This is where around half of the residents live and we eat. The kitchen down here is mostly controlled by Pawam, an incredibly nice man with an incredibly beautiful wife and incredibly cute 1 year old boy. It's a small space but we work with it. You can see the water cooler in the back, which gives us filtered water to drink and make tea with.
THE FIRST
FLOOR (note: this is where I live!)This is the common area for the first floor. We have our own kitchen/refrigerator up here that we'll use on the nights that we cook, as well as another water cooler. The rest of the residents live up here, including me! You can see a bit of my room in the corner as well as my bed, which is predictably messy. If you'd like a better look, though ...
MY ROOM
This is the room that Beth and I share. It's small but pretty decent - the only things I'd complain about would be the hardness of the mattresses and the view outside of our window. We basically look out onto the backs of other buildings and a little alleyway that is sometimes filled with garbage. Also, fences. High fences with pointy tops and barbed wire. Mmmm security. I'll post a picture of it when it's light out.Meanwhile, there's one more floor....
THE SECOND FLO
OR/TERRACE
This is the top floor of the building, and is where Parul, our residence director, lives. (Her room is behind me in these pictures, so don't worry - she doesn't live out in the open air.) On the top floor though is a lovely terrace where the air is relatively fresh - for Delhi at least. It was night obviously when I took these photos (about 15 min. ago...), so you can't see it too well, but it's really quite large and pretty. The view from it is decent as well, as I'll show you when it's lighter.
Anyway, that's really all the time I'm willing to put into this particular entry - getting all the photos the way I want them in Blogger takes a bit longer than I had expected. Ah well. I'm feeling a lot better at this point although not 100%; a bit more sleep and careful eating will probably help even things out. Have to say though, if I could change/do away with any part of the body, I'd get rid of the digestive system. Seriously, there has got to be a better way to get nutrients. Tomorrow we'll be visiting Jawaharlal Nehru University which should be exciting. Gonna sleep now. Later!
----------------
Listening to: Paul Cantelon - Tank Graveyard/Valse de Suzana/Dee-yed
via FoxyTunes
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
day 2 con't
the main problem that I have with IES is that I want to take almost all of their classes.
Initially I had planned on taking 3 classes with IES: Hindi, Indian Women in Fiction and Film, and Cities of Delhi. I still want to take these classes, even more now that I've met the teachers. (Except for Hindi - of all of the professors I was least impressed with her.) But there's also Visual Narratives in Hinduism, which would basically be a combination of Visual Rhetoric and Hinduism, and Cultural Diversity, Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions in India, which frankly sounds awesome.
There are a few other unavoidable problems too. The pollution is pretty bad here to the point where everyone's boogers are black (TMI, probably, but the best way to describe it). The beds are hard so everyone wakes up with body aches, they gives us too much food so we're caught between guilt and gassiness, and honestly, walking along the street, trying to not make eye contact or step in dog shit or get run over is a bit wearing. Everyone has a bit of "Delhi belly".
One of the things that has most struck me here is the issue of water. Not being able to drink the water that comes out of the tap changes everything - we have to brush our teeth with drinking water. Also the simple fact that hot water is very limited makes showers pretty impractical; yesterday I showered out of a bucket and I'm just about to do so again today. It makes you so much more conscious of how much water you're using and how much you need it. All of this would have made an excellent piece for the water project...
Anyway, going to learn a bit more about mental health and such, so had better go. meep!
Initially I had planned on taking 3 classes with IES: Hindi, Indian Women in Fiction and Film, and Cities of Delhi. I still want to take these classes, even more now that I've met the teachers. (Except for Hindi - of all of the professors I was least impressed with her.) But there's also Visual Narratives in Hinduism, which would basically be a combination of Visual Rhetoric and Hinduism, and Cultural Diversity, Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions in India, which frankly sounds awesome.
There are a few other unavoidable problems too. The pollution is pretty bad here to the point where everyone's boogers are black (TMI, probably, but the best way to describe it). The beds are hard so everyone wakes up with body aches, they gives us too much food so we're caught between guilt and gassiness, and honestly, walking along the street, trying to not make eye contact or step in dog shit or get run over is a bit wearing. Everyone has a bit of "Delhi belly".
One of the things that has most struck me here is the issue of water. Not being able to drink the water that comes out of the tap changes everything - we have to brush our teeth with drinking water. Also the simple fact that hot water is very limited makes showers pretty impractical; yesterday I showered out of a bucket and I'm just about to do so again today. It makes you so much more conscious of how much water you're using and how much you need it. All of this would have made an excellent piece for the water project...
Anyway, going to learn a bit more about mental health and such, so had better go. meep!
Monday, January 7, 2008
arrival/ orientation
guess what?
I'm still in India!
Seriously, every time I wake up or go outside or do anything really, I just get so damn excited all over again. I'm really here. This isn't a dream.
Picking up from where I sort of left off last time, I woke up around 11 am Indian time and no one else was at the residence. The house we're living in sits in a sort of gated community, with each house having its own gate and security guard. We're right across the street from a public park, and about a block away is a cricket field for little kids and then another one for adults. I feel bad taking pictures when there are other people around, so none of those yet, but I'm working on it. In any case, I figured that I could take a bit of a walk around to get my bearings.
This isn't a horror story by any means. No one was rude to me; no one even really spoke to me. But I was very very aware that I was a foreigner. People stare. When the IES group walks anywhere along the road, it's like a parade - cars and bikes and stuff honk at us as they pass. Children call us 'goli' - white people. For once I'm in the ethnic minority, and while it isn't bad necessarily it is pretty stressful. I walked around the park a little and watched the birds/children/dogs/construction workers.
A bit later all of the IES students finally met up with each other and we wandered off to the IES center, which is outside of the gated community and across a very busy street. Which is another weird thing about India - if I had to cross a street like that in the US I'd have a panic attack. Here... it's just the way things are, and understanding that makes it a lot easier for me to cope. In any case, we met the director of IES Delhi, Vibha Sharma, who is easily one of the smartest and classiest people I've met. She's amazing and I'm excited to be working with her. After a crash course on safety, rules, academic stuff, we had a tea break (awesome!) and then went out to dinner. Walking over there at night we saw many of the same construction workers that had been working during the day huddled around fires that they built on the side of the street. The class disparity here is so obvious. In a way it's refreshing how little it's hidden, although there are many people in gated neighborhoods like this one working on hiding this inequality.
Dinner = SO MUCH FOOD. India is going to make me fat. Then we went back and passed out.
Today introduced us to more professors associated with IES Delhi - all women and all very intelligent and classy. I'll go into more detail later - right now I need a nap from walking around. Laters!
I'm still in India!
Seriously, every time I wake up or go outside or do anything really, I just get so damn excited all over again. I'm really here. This isn't a dream.
Picking up from where I sort of left off last time, I woke up around 11 am Indian time and no one else was at the residence. The house we're living in sits in a sort of gated community, with each house having its own gate and security guard. We're right across the street from a public park, and about a block away is a cricket field for little kids and then another one for adults. I feel bad taking pictures when there are other people around, so none of those yet, but I'm working on it. In any case, I figured that I could take a bit of a walk around to get my bearings.
This isn't a horror story by any means. No one was rude to me; no one even really spoke to me. But I was very very aware that I was a foreigner. People stare. When the IES group walks anywhere along the road, it's like a parade - cars and bikes and stuff honk at us as they pass. Children call us 'goli' - white people. For once I'm in the ethnic minority, and while it isn't bad necessarily it is pretty stressful. I walked around the park a little and watched the birds/children/dogs/construction workers.
A bit later all of the IES students finally met up with each other and we wandered off to the IES center, which is outside of the gated community and across a very busy street. Which is another weird thing about India - if I had to cross a street like that in the US I'd have a panic attack. Here... it's just the way things are, and understanding that makes it a lot easier for me to cope. In any case, we met the director of IES Delhi, Vibha Sharma, who is easily one of the smartest and classiest people I've met. She's amazing and I'm excited to be working with her. After a crash course on safety, rules, academic stuff, we had a tea break (awesome!) and then went out to dinner. Walking over there at night we saw many of the same construction workers that had been working during the day huddled around fires that they built on the side of the street. The class disparity here is so obvious. In a way it's refreshing how little it's hidden, although there are many people in gated neighborhoods like this one working on hiding this inequality.
Dinner = SO MUCH FOOD. India is going to make me fat. Then we went back and passed out.
Today introduced us to more professors associated with IES Delhi - all women and all very intelligent and classy. I'll go into more detail later - right now I need a nap from walking around. Laters!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
arrival
so! I'm in New Delhi.
Left Kansas City a bit after 2pm on Friday, Jan. 4th. Arrive in Newark a few hours later - kind of a shitty airport frankly, but still better than KC's. Found a burrito place and got a veggie one with guacamole. Never managed to get to Chipotle this break - that will have to be rectified upon my return.
Found the gate in Newark and hung around there for an hour or so, sneaking glances at all of the other people waiting with me. A lot of them were Indian, unsurprisingly, but the word "Indian" is so misleading, because there is so much variety there. North India, South India, rural India, Muslim India, Jain India, Sikh India... and even these are gross generalizations. Anyway.
The flight was ... unmemorable, really. Even now looking back on it, it seems to have taken place in some sort of limbo without time; we left Newark at night and landed in New Delhi at night too, so in a way it was as if no time had passed. But of course it had, around 12 hours of it. Spent part of it watching "Knocked Up" and simpsons episodes available on the nifty little tv built into the back of the seat in front of me; most of the rest of it was semi-sleeping. Before unboarding we were handed sheets of paper we would have to fill out to get through immigration and customs - in doing that I found a few other IES students on my flight: Amanda and Beth, who also goes to UPS. We met up again after unboarding and found Laura, also an IES student. Immigration and customs were disconcertingly easy. The airport we went through, Indira Gandhi International (named after the only female prime minister in India; her story is interesting to examine, especially in light of Bhutto) was very much under construction. There was a sense of dust and smoke everywhere, and that didn't stop when we went outside. During winter the nights in Delhi are foggy, which combined with the dust from all of the construction everywhere and the smog makes for pretty poor visibility.
Driving to our IES residence was a bit harrowing. The traffic actually wasn't bad at all since it was so late; even though lanes are pretty much considered loose suggestions to Indian drivers, I actually felt really at ease with the traffic. Everyone knew what they were doing, from the motorcycles to the farm trucks to the autorickshaws to the taxi I was in, and even though there was honking everywhere none of it really seemed in anger, which is what most distresses me about US traffic. So it wasn't the driving that scared me, or even the driver... for the most part. I only became unsettled when our driver decided to stop following the other taxi that was taking students to the IES residence and struck off on its own. Then all of the horror stories I could think of crowded into my head - we were going to be robbed, raped, whatever, by this driver that I don't think spoke any English, or just left in the middle of New Delhi at night. In any case, that all turned out fine, but it was still worrying.
But Delhi!
There are stray dogs everywhere, trotting along and minding their own business. I saw at least seven around the airport and on the way from the airport to the residence, so this morning when I ventured out and actually saw pet dogs on leashes it was a bit unexpected. People make their homes wherever they can. I saw more than a few mud shacks among the construction sites. And there's graffiti, in both Hindi and English (strangely enough, the English writing was advertising classes in English, but it would be necessary to read English to understand where it was being taught in the first place...). The birds here are different, and there are some squirrel/chipmunk animals that run around our house.
I'll update later with pictures of our residence and info about what I do today. Meep!
Left Kansas City a bit after 2pm on Friday, Jan. 4th. Arrive in Newark a few hours later - kind of a shitty airport frankly, but still better than KC's. Found a burrito place and got a veggie one with guacamole. Never managed to get to Chipotle this break - that will have to be rectified upon my return.
Found the gate in Newark and hung around there for an hour or so, sneaking glances at all of the other people waiting with me. A lot of them were Indian, unsurprisingly, but the word "Indian" is so misleading, because there is so much variety there. North India, South India, rural India, Muslim India, Jain India, Sikh India... and even these are gross generalizations. Anyway.
The flight was ... unmemorable, really. Even now looking back on it, it seems to have taken place in some sort of limbo without time; we left Newark at night and landed in New Delhi at night too, so in a way it was as if no time had passed. But of course it had, around 12 hours of it. Spent part of it watching "Knocked Up" and simpsons episodes available on the nifty little tv built into the back of the seat in front of me; most of the rest of it was semi-sleeping. Before unboarding we were handed sheets of paper we would have to fill out to get through immigration and customs - in doing that I found a few other IES students on my flight: Amanda and Beth, who also goes to UPS. We met up again after unboarding and found Laura, also an IES student. Immigration and customs were disconcertingly easy. The airport we went through, Indira Gandhi International (named after the only female prime minister in India; her story is interesting to examine, especially in light of Bhutto) was very much under construction. There was a sense of dust and smoke everywhere, and that didn't stop when we went outside. During winter the nights in Delhi are foggy, which combined with the dust from all of the construction everywhere and the smog makes for pretty poor visibility.
Driving to our IES residence was a bit harrowing. The traffic actually wasn't bad at all since it was so late; even though lanes are pretty much considered loose suggestions to Indian drivers, I actually felt really at ease with the traffic. Everyone knew what they were doing, from the motorcycles to the farm trucks to the autorickshaws to the taxi I was in, and even though there was honking everywhere none of it really seemed in anger, which is what most distresses me about US traffic. So it wasn't the driving that scared me, or even the driver... for the most part. I only became unsettled when our driver decided to stop following the other taxi that was taking students to the IES residence and struck off on its own. Then all of the horror stories I could think of crowded into my head - we were going to be robbed, raped, whatever, by this driver that I don't think spoke any English, or just left in the middle of New Delhi at night. In any case, that all turned out fine, but it was still worrying.
But Delhi!
There are stray dogs everywhere, trotting along and minding their own business. I saw at least seven around the airport and on the way from the airport to the residence, so this morning when I ventured out and actually saw pet dogs on leashes it was a bit unexpected. People make their homes wherever they can. I saw more than a few mud shacks among the construction sites. And there's graffiti, in both Hindi and English (strangely enough, the English writing was advertising classes in English, but it would be necessary to read English to understand where it was being taught in the first place...). The birds here are different, and there are some squirrel/chipmunk animals that run around our house.
I'll update later with pictures of our residence and info about what I do today. Meep!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
