Rainy Rainy ("Well I Usually Read Twilight")

India's seasons are as follows: Monsoon, Spring, Winter, Summer. We have been waiting on the rains since our arrival in mid August, and they have finally, finally arrived. This steady (glorious!) rainfall will continue for about twenty-five-ish days. That means twenty-five more nights of being sung to sleep by thunderstorm lullabies, twenty-five more days of polka-dot umbrellas and splashing through puddles, twenty-five more evenings perfect for snuggling up with a novel and hot cups of coffee (hasta la vista, chai), and twenty-five more afternoons heavy with the delicious smells-like-rain air. Sigh, life sure is tough sometimes.

In other news, if you haven't checked my facebook, some pictures are up of my adventure thus far, including some shots from last week when Swapna and her twin sister took my flatmates and I shopping for saris. Now, when I say "shopping" for saris, what I really mean is: "sitting on an ultra-comfy floor cushion and drinking steamy complementary coffee, while the shop keeper unfurls glamorous fabric after glamorous fabric directly in front of you, and your job is merely to say 'oooh' and 'show me another.'" Needless to say, I felt very much like royalty. After giddily admiring about dozens of these expensive woven rainbows, I saw one that was simply to die for. Soft and silky (pure silk, mind you), in a blue that matched my eyes, with a shimmering golden trim. The shopkeeper said, "Come. You will wear this. I will show you how." And he wrapped me inside the sheer beauty of India. It is here that I am standing, awe-struck and staring in the mirror, thinking I am looking very much like a princess indeed--until Swapna suddenly shouts "Wait!", leaps up, and pops a red sticker (out of nowhere, mind you) onto my forehead. "There," she tells me breathlessly. "Beautiful." Even princesses, it turns out, need stick-on bhindis.

{Side Note: I need to make an amendment to my last post. Swapna's sister is the fastest walker ever. Really.}

The weekend was nice. Restful. And zero homework. I need to make myself realize that this isn't summer anymore, and that the school year has actually started. I especially need to practice Hindi. I can't read, I can't write--ha I can't even pronounce half the letters... But it is incredible to learn an entirely different alphabet and to start decoding a few of the signs around the city. After Suddha ("sood-huh", my extraordinary roommate) heartily laughed at my general pronunciation fail, she helped explain a lot of the things I'd been missing. Turns out that she knows six or seven languages and is now teaching herself French. I can hardly speak English. Go figure. Anway, she was such a good teacher. Literacy here I come!

In other news, I saw a boy riding a camel in my neighborhood on Saturday. I know, right? A camel. The boy knew enough English to ask, "Want to ride?" but not enough to answer the all-important-question "How much?" Of course. I guess I'll just wait till next time..

Also, I would like to document the conclusion of what Erin and I have dubbed the Great Roach Genocide of 2010. I may or may not have told you, but our flat may or may not have been experiencing difficulties with a certain deeply-loathed insect. It came down to living with them or killing all of them. So, obviously, we blared the theme from "2001 Space Odyssey" as we emptied half the can of MAXO ("The Roach Killer")... And we haven't seen a sign of the enemy since. Victory, amigos, is indescribably sweet.

Lastly, stuff with the women at the hostel is still going splendidly. Every night, all fifteen of us have family-style dinner together. I am getting to build relationships with my peers half way around the world! It is filling a place of my heart I hadn't known existed. One story from tonight... Prachi (prah-CHEE), a hilarious eighteen-year-old who refuses to wear anything other than sassy Limeted Too-esque t-shirts, was leaving the dinner table saying how she was going to read the newspaper. "I just have to read it before I go to bed," she explained. I remarked how impressed I was with her worldliness and maturity. To which she responded, "Yea... Well, I usually read Twilight, but my friend stole my book, so I just figured I'd read the newspaper instead." Because the news is obviously the best alternative to vampire rom lit. I love India.

With love,

from India,

Jeannie

P.S. Foreshadowing: My Californian ecofriend named Allegra, Erin, and I are plotting to visit Darjeeling in northern India together over our travel week in late October. Said excursion would mean: tea plantations (home to the tea by the same name), a world-famous railway, possible tiger sightings, Buddhist monasteries, and, that's right, the Himalayas. Hold onto your butts.

Week Two (Saris, Strikes, and Internet Sticks)

Well, I finally feel settled. I’ve cleaned and shopped and organized, and my room at last appears as a cozy home-away-from-home. I’ve bought most of the clothes I planned on buying over here. My stomach has adjusted to Indian food (luckily, no major issues there). Classes started this week, and I am loving having a routine again. I’m making friends. And I know my home. Woot. This past week, it seemed that I had hit Indian ground running, panting, and hardly able to keep up with myself. I now feel confident that my feet are underneath me at last, standing on solid ground. Even though it might seem silly, it feels worlds less stressful finally knowing that I am ready for India, that I can handle India, and that I like India. And, I think, India likes me too.

A lot has happened since I wrote you guys last. The cliff notes include visiting a Sikh temple, exploring Pune both with my program’s guidance and alone, running with my compatriot flatmate, Deven, (which, if you ask me, is the only real way to see a city), getting to know some of the Indian women at the hostel, starting classes, boatloads of delish Indian food, and my first sighting of the many cows that mosey along the city streets next to motorcycles and autorickshaws. Oh, by the way, I get to and from everywhere by these small, street legal taxi menaces that more resemble go-carts than anything else. The “rickshawalas” (rickshaw drivers) expertly duck and dive through the absurd traffic of India. Swapna says, “If you learn to drive here, you can drive anywhere in the world.” And honest to God, I believe her.

The nerd in me kept bouncing up and down in the rickshaw this past Monday chanting, “First day of school! First day of school!” In consideration for the dear Rickshawala and my new friend and flatmate, Erin, I refrained from audibly celebrating. Classes since have been great. This semester, I am taking: Beginning Hindi (hard but way awesome), Contemporary India (an all-encompassing insider’s intro to what India is all about), Environmental Perspectives (hasn’t met yet), and hopefully Public Health. The PH prof is tallish and would very much be an old, moustached, big-eared Indian man who says things like “the britishers” and “I like people who smile all the time, because I smile all the time.” Love him. :) But get this: school was CANCELLED today because of a strike! Ok, well, not my classes (typical, right?), but the other students of Fergusson College went on strike to protest some schools wanting to privatize education (the reason we pay so much for education in America). This random guy burst into our Marathi class this morning to say, “We students of FC are rioting against the privatization of education. We are going to have to ask you to go now so that we won’t have to fight you.” Yes, fight us. So, we moved class to “The Program Center,” our home base on FC’s campus, and continued the lecture outside. Indian kids don’t get snow days. They get strike days. Yup.

Yesterday, Pune celebrated a holiday called “Raksha Bandhan Rakhi” in which sisters give their brothers (or guy friends) bracelets, and in return the brothers promise to protect their sisters. Swapna made sure that we came back to the hostel with bracelets for her thirteen-year-old son, Satiam (“sah-tee-ahm”). Satiam is the scrawniest, goofiest kid I’ve ever seen, and he’s almost exactly the same height as his mother. Because of this, Swapna and Satiam always look so lovably comical standing side by side. Anyway, we each gave Satiam a bracelet last night, and he gave us each a gift of stick-on bhindis and life-saver-looking earrings. I feel so blessed to even know Swapna. This deserves a quick pause.

Reasons why I love Swapna:

1) She is an incredible mother to Satiam.

2) She has this unquenchable vitality that makes you breathe deeper and your eyes shine brighter just from being around her. She has so much heart and passion for life and people…

3) She is the fastest walker ever. No, really.

4) She gently bops you on the head (and endearingly pouts!) if you’re late. Don’t test her, bro.

5) She is a brilliant cook (best meals so far have been eaten sitting on the floor of Swapna’s kitchen).

6) She is an unbelievable host-mother. Swapna has already told us repeatedly that we are her daughters now and insisted that we MUST tell her anything we want to do while in India, so that she can see to it that it happens. She said, "You know, I already have decided that these four months... I give them to you. This is not much time, you know, just these four months... so always I am here for you. Do not waste time with me. Say, "Swapna, can we do this?" and then, we will do this. For you. Always." Do you love her yet? Cause I do. We call her "Tai" or "Swapna-tai," which means "big sister."

Thus, when Swapna took the four of us to an I-just-recently-got-married-to-my-husband-so-let’s-party celebration for her cousin’s sister-in-law’s niece (or something like that), the evening couldn’t have been anything short of magical. Little girls and white-haired Indian grandmothers were all dressed in the most beautiful saris I’d ever imagined, and a group of women performed a traditional play for the bride. It was all in Marathi, so I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it was all about, but there was singing and these absolutely crazy dances… I got some on video and am hoping to post them to facebook. For the blog’s sake though, just imagine forty and fifty year old women jumping and twirling, dancing and laughing, all in whirling waves of purple and gold and green and blue. The highlight of the evening, however, was easily meeting Swapna’s twin sister. Because what could be better than Swapna? TWO Swapnas. ;)

I apologize for the delay in posting again... I am going to try to post more frequently (about once/twice a week), but we have all been waiting to get wireless Internet. Right now I’ve been restricted to emailing/posting at the Program Center, which has made communication a bit difficult. Preston, our one of our alumni advisors (he did this same program last fall) has been telling us, “I know a guy.” And TOMORROW is the day on which that guy should come and award us all with “internet sticks” that plug into our computers and give us the oh so blessed gift of the world wide web. This means I will finally be able to skype and call home to you all. Cue the angel choirs and the opening of the heavens. Hallelujah! The only thing is that we have to keep track of how many GBs of info we use the Internet for this month, so that we know how many to purchase for next month… and the log that tells us how many we’ve used apparently always says “This count may or may not be accurate.” Helpful. But that, it seems, is just the Indian way of doing things.

With love,

From India,

Jeannie

First Impressions (Home, Sweet Pune)

Hey everyone! Salutations (“Namaste”) from India, my home base for the next four months. Specifically, I’m studying at Fergusson College in a city called Pune, which is about a two-hour bus ride southeast of Mumbai. The city itself is what I imagine would exist if New York were dropped squarely into a tropical jungle. There are so many cars and people that I can hardly see straight and enough curbside venders to rival even Canal Street. The only two observable rules of the road amount to “don’t hit anything (or anyone!)” and “don’t get hit.” Needless to say, crossing the street is a repeated adventure that depends entirely on a fluid understanding of traffic laws. And yet, in the midst of this metropolis’s bustle, disordered greenery bursts the city at its seams. Unfathomably lush trees, ivy, grasses, and flowers seem everywhere—no, really, everywhere. I still cannot seem to wrap my head around this bizarre fusion of urban and rural landscapes.

The other students on my program and I landed in Mumbai just last Sunday night. We spent our first three days at a retreat center in Durshet for what seemed like the longest orientation of our lives. If our directors had forced us to sit through one more Q&A about Pune without actually taking us there, every single one of us would have mutinied and some even started walking to the city. Okay, to be fair, it wasn’t all bad. Because we’re in the beginning of monsoon season, the weather is cool and drizzly—perfect for either curling up with a cup of chai to watch a Bollywood film (okay, two!) or playing a pre-dinner soccer match in the mud. Also, we took a short morning hike up the small mountain across from the retreat center… straight into the jungle… straight through a tiny Indian village with mud streets and goats. The only indications that we hadn’t somehow slipped back into the B.C. era appeared in the presence of two motorcycles, several mounted satellite dishes, and a “Bon Jovi (Have a Nice Day)” t-shirt hanging out to dry. Equally as amazing, upon this backdrop exclusively comprised of browns and greens, women of the village moved about in vivid pink, yellow, blue, and purple hued saris—balancing multiple metallic jars filled with water on their heads. They were all so strong and beautiful.

I also held a baby goat. Heck freaking yes. :)

The ride into Pune was astounding. It is so odd for me to feel foreign to any green space… I have always felt so peaceful, so at home, in these places. This country (like my dearly loved mountains of western North Carolina) is impossibly green. But Appalachia does not have the trunks or palms of coconut trees, nor gigantically wide banana leaves. North Carolina doesn’t have rice paddies. Or crooked-horned cows roaming along the road. Or monkeys. The mountains are not so steep, nor covered with plummeting waterfalls. The landscape’s wet rocks are grey—almost black. And the rest is green, impossibly green.

But now we are here, in Pune. Finally. After the nightmare of trying to convince my bank that I was in fact in India, that I had already told them that I’d be here, that my ATM card had been denied, that I did mind being put on hold for eight minutes while being charged international telephone rates, and that, yes, high maintenance me, I would need to have access to money sometime in the next four months (oh. my. gosh.), we got a tour of the college campus.

{Side Note: Did you know that Gandhi studied at Fergusson College? Freaking Gandhi. This semester was such a good idea.}

Finally, we arrived at our host homes. I am living with three other students from my program (named Erin, Devin, and Lilly) in a young women’s hostel full of Indian students, artists, and musicians. Oh, and the woman who manages the whole thing is a boss. On top of managing seventeen girls’ living spaces, she plays violin professionally… and teaches classes in violin, dance, classical Indian vocals, yoga, and rangoli—like Indian sand art, but intricate, vibrant, and jaw-droppingly gorgeous… and is a single mom with a twelve-year-old son. This Indian woman stands about four foot eight with personality like a firecracker and a smile that melted our four hearts instantly as she chatted to us over chai. Her name is Swapna. I’ve already decided she is going to be my guru while I’m here. Now I just need to let her know at yoga tomorrow morning.

With love, from India,

Jeannie