oh delhi belly

so in addition to everything else that I've experienced in Delhi, I've experienced yet another thing: HOSPITALS.

The main problem with foreigners visiting India is that you will certainly get sick. It doesn't matter if you don't drink the water (which you shouldn't) or are careful of your diet and wash your fruits well and all of that - it just happens. There's too much bacteria here that our bodies don't know how to handle. I've been sick with various stomach issues before on the program, but this last Wednesday I pretty much checked myself into the hospital because I didn't think that I could tough it out with ginger tea this time. I'm feeling fine now, and barring any random terrible thing happening I should be able to leave tomorrow morning. The hospital is really quite nice, and the nurses here are extremely kind to me - I'm going to miss them when I leave. I'm ready to go though. There's only so much time that I can spend in bed, believe it or not.

I might as well take this chance to update everybody on my spring break, even though that happened a good three weeks ago. My friend Deborah and I decided that we wanted to go to Darjeeling, which is in the state of West Bengal very close to the border to Nepal, and while we were in the area we might as well visit Kolkata (Calcutta), because if you're in India you have to. It's too important to miss. So we flew to Kolkata and stumbled around Sudder Street, which is where most of the tourists stay in the city. Our hotel was... not the best, but ok. The most remarkable thing about the area though was Karim, a 13 year old girl who lived on the street. She helped us find our hotel after the one we had made reservations for fell through (typical India...) and showed us around the neighborhood, introducing us to the women that she lived with and shooing away the ubiquitous Indian men that gawked at us. It was a complicated relationship though - the first night I helped her buy baby formula for her little brother, which was more expensive than I had guessed, and after that everybody on the street knew who we were and asked us for money. Deborah and I helped Karim and her mother out a bit more, buying them rice and lentils, but somehow that wasn't enough for them either. One moment it would be "Thank you sisters, God bless you," and the next would be "but one more thing..." It put us into a difficult position, because on one hand they really were facing some considerable problems. In addition to oh, not having a house yet having four children (Karim is the oldest) to care for, Karim's father has TB and they don't have the money for medicine. Plus the money for shoes. Plus the money to make sure that the kids stay healthy enough to stay in school. And and and...

The thing that I've learned about India is this: nothing is simple, and the closer you look at anything, the more complicated it gets. Because almost everyone who begs for money has these problems, or similar ones. And there's only so much that two people can give. That's the bitch of it.

Outside of Sudder Street, we explored a lot of Kolkata. We went to the Armenian church and found an abandoned synagogue nearby; we went to the used bookstores crowded College streets; we visited the Botanical Gardens and saw The Great Banyan Tree, which is I think the biggest tree in the world; we went to Kalighat and saw where Mother Teresa worked; we wandered around the Victoria Memorial and watched couples make out under every single tree; and we went to St. Paul's Cathedral and the Academy of Fine Arts.

A few awesome people that we met along the way:

Shurjendu - this is Anila's (one of the girls on our program) friend from back home who has relatives in Kolkata. We had dinner with him and Anila our last night in Kolkata in this really nice restaurant called Peter Cat (god knows why) where I had my first gimlet.

George - we met George outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, where he works as the groundskeeper. He told us that we were a little too early for visiting hours, but we ended up talking and having chai with him. He's probably one of the most interesting people that I've met in India - he's over 70, grew up in Goa, worked his ass off to get his two daughters through college/graduate school, and loves to dance with his wife, to whom he's been married for nearly 50 years. An amazingly sweet guy, deeply spiritual, and I hope that I can be half as cool as he is when I'm all grown up.

That's it for part 1 of spring break - I'll tell you all about Darjeeling in the next post. But first! A few pictures!



Deborah and me with Karim's mother, who gave us henna!















Here's Deborah with George!

so

Here's an update finally, but I'm not going to talk about my trip in this one.

No, this post is about the many problems that plague IES Delhi.

Some problems are inherent in study abroad programs, I know. For one thing, this particular program is extremely new; for another, any and all study abroad programs, particularly those in developing countries, are going to subvert expectations to a certain extent. That's partially why I came here - I know that I needed my world-view shaken up a bit. However, this particular program has certain problems that I don't think are unavoidable. We'll start with the one that has become most pertinent.

"Domestic Help" + theft

like most middle-upper-class Indian households, the IES student residence has servants. The staff refers to them as the domestic help, but for a Westerner who has never even had a cleaning lady, that's pretty indistinguishable from servants. All of us were uncomfortable with their presence simply because of different cultural standards - it's very strange watching someone sweep my room when I know that I can do it myself - and honestly Parul, our residence coordinator, didn't help with that much, as she especially treated them as if they owed her the world. Every morning Pawan or his wife Maya would come into our rooms and sweep the floors, which was all well and good until one girl found a few hundred rupees missing from her wallet. She took it for simple absent-mindedness until more girls started realizing that money was being taken out of wallets and bags. This came to a head when one girl had 4000 rupees (about $100, but it buys so much more here) taken out of her wallet while she was in the room sleeping. Vibha, the program director, was pretty reluctant to accuse the staff, so we all got a big lecture on the importance of not stealing and of keeping everything important locked up even if we were in the residence, despite the fact that all of the locks to the drawers of our desks - if they even work - are identical. The thefts stopped for a few weeks and started up again at the beginning of this week, climaxing when one girl's entire wallet went missing. She searched for it furiously and we all helped, again assuming it was merely misplaced; at one point however, her room was empty for about the space of a minute, with the outside ground-level window open. The wallet was then discovered, empty, in the middle of the room, most likely having been thrown in from the window after the hue and cry of the wallet search had started. The only people with access to that particular side of the house is the 'domestic help.' Additionally, students from last semester have reported missing money as well under the same circumstances.

So basically this has made an already awkward situation worse. There's no way of trying to ignore the thefts at this point or pretending that we don't have relatively clear evidence as to who has been doing it, and all of the students have agreed that Maya and Pawan should no longer be employed by IES or present in the residence. Which breaks my heart even as I agree with it - it's pretty obvious that the stealing was in part driven by compulsion, and they have a two-year-old kid. But over 10,000 rupees has gone missing in a program that we are already paying a hefty sum for. Vibha is going to announce her decision tonight - I can't imagine that it will be anything other than Maya and Pawan leaving their position.

What frustrates me most is how this has been handled. Vibha is constantly asking us for help and then putting the responsibility of what happens to them on us despite the fact that the responsibility is hers, as she hired the staff and did not handle the situation adequately when it first arose. Also, this is, you know, HER JOB. Parul is pretty useless when it comes to this, as has been the case almost always - apparently she was the only one who even applied for this position, so we're not exactly getting expert help here. She's incredibly small-minded, tactless, and incompetent, and Vibha, while intelligent, is extremely duplicitous and pretentious.

I've loved being in India, but if I had known what I know about the program now, I would not have chosen IES. The entire program is marked with miscommunication and misinformation - much of it deliberate - and the inability for the leaders to treat us like adults. The majority of the staff I respect and love (then again, it consists of maybe 10 people including professors), but these two positions are incredibly important and are filled by people who are not doing their jobs correctly and moreover often blaming us for their lapses.

Sorry that this isn't a very happy update - you should check out my pictures to get a sense of where I've been going. Spring break was honestly amazing - I think that I want to end up living in Darjeeling, it's so beautiful. (Plus the tea and momos are amazing!) Feel free to ask any questions here about specifics of my trip or my complaints; I know already that I'm going to ask the UPS study abroad office to put me into contact with anyone who is considering this program because people honestly need to be warned about the inefficiencies here.

brief update

Hey all - I know it's been a while, but just checking in to say that things are pretty much okay now. When I have a bit more time I'll give a more complete update on what I've been doing, as well as pictures of all of the places I've been now, but I'm actually leaving in an hour to go to the airport! For spring break I'm flying to Kolkata, spending a few days there, and then taking the train up to Darjeeling. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.


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Listening to: Sondre Lerche - Things You Call Fate
via FoxyTunes

at a bit of a loss

India is great and all, and the vacation to Kerala was amazing, but I can't help but feel at a bit of a loose end. I've already spent a month here and I feel like I haven't done anything substantial for myself. I'm not not friends with anyone here but I also always feel like I'm tagging along rather than being involved with any activities, which just makes me profoundly tired and even less involved. I just wish that I didn't have to work so hard at being around people here, you know? I can't imagine how isolated I'd feel if I did the homestay. I feel alone enough living with 13 other people, who either seem to be happy being alone or have already split into small groups. I don't know.

This weekend I'm hoping to take the train to Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India, that I've been wanting to go to since before I came here. Hoping also that I can find someone to go with; I don't feel comfortable traveling alone. I don't know, social anxieties just make it so hard to enjoy myself here, and being aware of that and my fleeting time I get even more anxious and worried that I'm not getting the most out of this experience. I'm lucky to be here, I know. I just wish that I felt like that all the time.

It was lovely being in Kerala for its different atmosphere, but in a way it makes coming back to Delhi that much harder. In Kochi there weren't children begging or salespeople that wouldn't leave me alone after I told them 'no' or so many sad stray dogs. There were goats wandering around instead, which was good because they eat a lot of the garbage, and cats. Kochi's probably not going to be like that forever though. It's developing pretty fast, the land is running out, and no one wants to do agriculture anymore, leaving it to migrants from other regions. I think it'll become more like Delhi soon. I feel like Delhi is somehow an inevitability for any developing nation.

It's easy to despair here. There's a lot of hope, yes, and a lot of really smart people working towards better things. But change is slow and there are just so many people here, so many, and I feel like I'm just taking up space and using up resources because I don't know what the best thing to do is or how to do it. Classes here put me into a bit of an emotional yo-yo -- studies in literature are sometimes uplifting by the simple fact that people can write and think such things and that they are out there to be shared, but economics so far is pretty damn depressing and history isn't always much better.

I don't know. Maybe all of this is just part of the funk I'm in right now. Coming back from vacations is always depressing, and realizing that I don't have a whole lot of time left just puts the pressure on. Will probably do more reading for class and then maybe some yoga.

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Listening to: This Will Destroy You - Leather Wings
via FoxyTunes

large update!

So it's been a while.

First, two weekends ago I went to visit some friends of my parents from back when my dad went to Harvard. Here's a picture of them with their dog, Fidel. Their home is lovely and they fed me an enormous amount of food.

Second, for my class on the history of Delhi, I went to see the Qutb Minar! It's a pretty amazing structure in the southern area of Delhi and was built by the first Islamic rulers there. There's a mosque attached to it as well as the famous Iron Pillar, the remains of a university, and the foundation of the Alai Minar, which was a failed attempt by an unpopular king to one-up to Qutb Minar. Pictures are up at the other site.

A few interesting things though:
The mosque in the Qutb complex was one of the first Islamic buildings in the area; previously Hinduism had been the main religion. As such, the mosque has many decidedly un-Islamic characteristics. Almost all of the builders were used to building Hindu temples, which are more based on the square and a series of beams, so many of the arches and domes in the mosque that are characteristic of Islamic architecture are lopsided since the builders didn't know what they were doing. Also, despite the taboo against any images of people or animals in a mosque, this one is full of them. A lot of this is due to the fact that many Hindu temples were dismantled easily and the materials used in them, including already carved pieces of stone, were simply reused. This is something that happens a lot in the history of Delhi; Hindu architects rarely used any type of mortar (which speaks a lot to their skills), and as such whenever the establishment changed and something new had to be built the temples were taken apart to be used in something else.

The Iron Pillar, which is made of 98% pure wrought iron from back in the 4th century AD (over a thousand years before metallurgists in Europe figured out how to cast such pure iron) is only now beginning to rust. It is much older than the Qutb complex and the mosque it stands in was actually built around it; however, according to the inscription on it the Iron Pillar originally stood in a village about 50 km away. It's very strange.

That's not all though! Last night I cam back from having spent 5 days in Kerala in South India. We spent two days in Kochi, the capital of the region, and then the rest in Alleppey, which is near the backwater region. Kerala is dramatically different from most other parts of India, especially Delhi: it has a long international history, having traded with the Arabs for centuries before the Muslim invasion and also being occupied by the Portuguese (led by Vasco da Gama) and the Dutch. Currently it is unusually in having a democratically elected communist government, the highest literacy rate in India, some of the best economic growth in South Asia, and a huge emphasis on gender equality. It's much different from Delhi in other respects too. Tourists are typical there, going to the beautiful beaches, the backwater, and the old churches, and as such they're welcomed. People actually SMILED at me! Strangers! Delhi is a fascinating city but it is not a friendly one, so being in a warmer environment - both socially and climate-wise - was really nice. We stayed at a lovely resort in Alleppey and I got my first professional massage, which was at first a little weird with being handled completely naked by a stranger, but in the end really cool.

There's so much more to talk about, but for now I need to catch up on reading for classes tomorrow. I'll post again with more personal impressions rather than a hurried summary of everything I've been doing.

another brief update

Hello all! Sorry for the long silence - the past week has been full of classes sort of starting and I managed to get sick again. Next weekend I'll be sure to update with my adventures at the Qutb Minar and the Lal Kot (pictures are up!), but I'll probably be going to bed pretty soon here. The reason why? I'm flying to Kerala tomorrow! So the next update will be full of all of my experiences there as well. Pictures too; I'm realizing now though that I need a larger memory card for my camera, so I'll be on the lookout for that. I won't have computer access while I'm gone until Saturday. Anyway, I need to finish packing.

Mom, I'll try to call home sometime this week.

(meep)

assorted adventures!

so!

This week was more or less the first week of IES classes - I say 'more or less' because one professor is not going to be in the region until Monday and as such the classes she's teaching are not yet set timings-wise. (Instead of "times" or "hours," in India they're called 'timings' like, "The timings of the FRRO is 9.30 AM to 4 PM" although I think that that estimation is a little generous. Bureaucracy in India is horrible - everything is disorganized and largely random. Avoid it if you can.) I've attended "Cities of Delhi," however, and the readings alone are pretty fascinating. Delhi may not be as popular or well-known as Kolkata (Calcutta) or Mumbai (Bombay), but it has a ton of history that is steadily reincorporated into daily life here. Again, nothing here is ever completely lost. The stones of ruined temples are used to build new ones.

Things have been a bit crazy here because it will be Republic Day this Saturday. Republic Day initially celebrated the creation of the constitution for an independent India; now it's mostly an excuse for India to show off its army. The result is that for the past two weeks most of the roads leading to Connaught Place (the center of New Delhi, which is specifically where the British government resided) being blocked off randomly so the army can practice their parades. Tanks, air shows, everything. Traffic comes to a complete standstill for hours at a time because there isn't sufficient announcement beforehand that roads will be blocked. After this weekend things should be calming down a bit and it'll be easier to get around the city; right now I'm pretty much restricted to South Delhi.

Demonstrating how I am an independent and self-sufficient human being, I managed to find a market that sold imported goods and cook Italian-esque pasta, vegetable stir-fry, and mozzarella/tomato/balsamic salad with what I found for my housemates. It wasn't very difficult, but it's definitely gratifying to attain a bit more self-sufficiency here. One of the most frustrating aspects so far has simply been being so helpless; we don't know where things are, and Delhi can often be overwhelming and dangerous if you don't know where you're going. But we're getting better. There are a few markets I can walk to as well as several parks, restaurants, and a mall, and I know of some of the other places to hang out in the larger local area like the Defense Colony that I can reach by autorickshaw (which I've gotten use to taking). The hardest thing here so far has been the budget that I've imposed on myself: 4000 rupees per week, or around $100. Normally it wouldn't be too difficult, but these first few weeks have involved such activities as buying notebooks and clothes that I need as well as other toiletries and essentials. Hopefully once these die down and I know of cheaper places to eat I'll be set.

I still can't believe that I'm here, sometimes. When I dream, I'm back at home, planning to come here, or traveling here and realizing that I've forgotten things, or unexpectedly back home for a week or so before leaving for here again. And then part of my brain clicks and says, no, you're here in India, and I wake up. I always have strange dreams when I'm getting used to a new environment, and this has proved to be no exception.

More later. There are a lot of strong impressions that I'm feeling but I'm going to wait until they become more effable before writing them here. peace.

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Listening to: Afro Celt Sound System - House Of The Ancestors
via FoxyTunes