Photos

Commercial Street

Thali Lunch
Sweet Shop
Mmm . . . Spicy!
Hostel

Let's Do It Again!

I'm going home tonight! It's been a busy week of not paying attention to how soon the trip would be over. And thank goodness I checked my ticket home, because I thought I had another two days here.

Last week we finished the program and the whole group of us went to Sravanabelagola, Belur and Halebeed to see some more stunning temples. It was nice to get to hang out with everyone one last time. The highlight for me was waking up at 5am, trundling onto the bus and arriving at the Halebeed temple in the still of the morning. It was a serene stroll around the temple grounds, and the stone carvings were all the more impressive in the cloudy morning light.

Yesterday there was a festival for Ganesha. My host family waited for the servant to clean their house before going out to buy a clay statue of the elephant-headed god of wisdom. Your house is supposed to be clean before you bring Ganesha home. My roommate and I went with our host sister to buy the god and the offerings that would be given to him. We bought grasses, banana leaves, guavas, bananas and beautiful garlands of purple and yellow flowers. My host mother had been preparing yummy sweets for the past couple of days, and those were arranged in front of the statue along with our other purchases, oil lamps, and all the other Ganesha statues already in the house. When the shrine was ready, the family performed their pooja. Then we got to eat the delicious treats.

In the evening, we attended the wedding reception of a relative. The day before we went fancy clothes shopping, which was initially my worst nightmare. When I shop I like to get in, find something as fast as possible and get out. No help necessary, leave me alone, I hate this. Shopping here requires a different state of mind. Once I got into that state, it was awesome. When you go into a sari/salwar kameez shop, you are immediately attended to, usually by a man. You sit at a counter, tell him what you're looking for and then the clothes begin to appear before your eyes. Outfit after outfit is brought out and you have to accept or reject every single one. There were three of us looking for clothes, so the mountain of fabric piled up quickly. It took three shops and four hours for all three of us to walk away with something appropriately fancy. Whew! I have never seen so many beautiful fabrics in such rich colors, embellished with embroidery, gold, stones, sequins, sparkles. It was like a fashion show with no models. The Seattle standard black uniform is going to seem so drab.

But I'm still looking forward to home. I can't wait for that moment driving home from SeaTac, when I get that first glimpse of the Seattle skyline. Then it's back to Ballard to figure out what in the world has happened this past month.

(I'll post my pictures when I get home.)

Lord Krishna's Birthday

Yesterday was Independence Day, but we didn't really celebrate that. The past couple of days have been all about the celebration of Lord Krishna (he's the blue god, often depicted with a flute). Our host mother was nice enough to take me and my roommate with her to the HUGE Sri Sri Radha Krishna Chandra temple. People go to leave offerings for the god and do some religious-related shopping.

When we first entered the temple grounds we took off our shoes and paid 1 rupee each to have them safely stowed until we came out again. We followed a winding pathway to an outer temple where people were standing in line, waiting to get in and view the god. Each person stood on a red granite slab just large enough for your feet. A unison chant of "Hare Krishna, hare Krishna, something something, hare lama, hare lama," was gently reverberating in the air and each time the chant started over, we moved forward to the next block of polished rock. The slabs were warm, the voices were steady and calming -- it was the most pleasant and relaxing waiting in line experience I've ever had.

After viewing that god (I'm not sure who it was), we moved on to the big temple where Krishna resides. We were walking into a cathedral. I felt small and insignificant under vaulted ceilings with vivid frescoes depicting scenes from Krishna's life. A massive chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling. It was a tapering, tiered structure made of gently curling petals of gold. At the front of the room, under another masterpiece in gold that looked like a castle, were three sets of golden Krishnas, each in different positions.

For the number of people packed into the temple, it was surprisingly quite. We sat on the floor in the middle of the room and just watched as people passed the statues, paying tribute.

I felt honored our host mother would be willing to bring us here (we were pretty conspicuous) and awkward being in someone else's place of worship at a very holy time. After wandering the rest of the temple and viewing all there was for sale (cute baby Krishna's in real, rocking cradles!), we wound our way out of the building and headed to Commercial Street.

We treated our host mother to a delicious lunch of palak paneer and kulcha (spinach paneer and flat, buttery bread) and then went shopping. I found some very cool sandals and am still weighing the coolness against the comfort. Is the cool factor high enough to outweigh a low rating on the comfort index? Hmmm. This trip is all about pondering life's big questions.

Tattoos

When I first got here, I was a little nervous about how my patterned left arm would be received. Crazy, American girl with no respect for her body. For the most part, my arm gets many stares and almost as many compliments. I can't count the number of times people in markets have commented on the beauty of the designs. They attract little kids, are great ice breakers and often lead to body art comparisons. On the Hampi trip, there was a sweet Auntie sitting in the row across mine, and she adopted me, always checking to see if I was in the group, smiling at me whenever anything happened, and taking my hand when she needed help down stairs. She spoke no English, but she came right up to me, took me by the wrist and gently stroked my tattoo, smiling and nodding. Goosebumps.

Ink, man. Powerful stuff.

I am happily recovered from my weekend illness. Unfortunately there is still a handful of sickies in the group, including our leading professor and the other assistant. But no one seems to be getting worse -- at least physically. The fatigue and homesickness is starting to wear on people, which is to be expected. The intensity of our studies is also taking a toll.

Since I last posted we have left the hostel in the north of Bangalore and are now staying with host families in South Bangalore. My family consists of a daughter, mother, grandmother and Chilly the dog. They are a very kind and welcoming family and I am very happy to be with them. I actually have two families. I was initially with another family but switched houses with a student who was having a severe allergic reaction to Chilly. My first host family was very sad to see me go (even though I'd only been there for 24 hours) and have invited me to come visit them this weekend. EVERYONE IS RIDICULOUSLY NICE! And eating home-cooked food is so much more delicious than eating out, which is incredible because I thought the food I was eating out was already delicious.

Our work with ESG (Environmental Support Group) continues to go well. We have been learning a lot about the way urban growth and development changes the culture of a city, and straight up steam rolls over the lives and livelihoods of people who have been established in an area for 50 years or more. There is a huge metro rail project in progress in Bangalore, which requires huge amounts of land and resources, much of which are acquired in rather shady ways. Our group went out and spoke with people whose homes and business are being demolished or sliced up for road widening or to make room for the metro. They encountered a range of attitudes about the projects from those hopeless and clueless as to how to make a living or where to live, to those who are losing much but still feel hopeful that the metro will improve life in Bangalore. We are also speaking with our host families about their opinions on what we're discussing in class. ESG wants us to start to understand the many, many perspectives on the topic. There's no one opinion, just like there's no one solution.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. My host family likes to stay home and watch the festivities on TV. With the amount of energy I have at the moment, that sounds wonderful. Plenty of enthusiasm, just need a few more hours of sleep.

Hampi and Mantralya

I love a farce, preferably from a comfortable distance. To be a player is far less pleasant.

The Hampi weekend was beautiful and ridiculous. It began with the repercussions of a meal we all ate on Thursday. By repercussions I mean diarrhea, nausea, dehydration and exhaustion. All six of us on the trip had some degree of all of the above. Ugh.

After an all-night bumpfest on the bus, we finally arrived in Hospet at 4am. Our tour guide allowed us four hours sleep in the hotel before we shuffled back to our seats and rode the short distance to Hampi.

When I finally get my pictures posted, I will let them speak for themselves. The ruins were stunning. I was in a bit of a haze thanks to the sickness, which added a surreality to the entire experience. It was a non-stop jaunt around the site -- look at this, stop here, walk here, listen to this description, climb that thing, on the bus, off the bus, no time for dawdling. Our tour guide was relentless. But very knowledgeable.

Eight hours of activity in the sun squeezed the last bit of enthusiasm out of me. When I got back to the hotel, I went to bed and slept for 11 hours.

The next day we headed to Mantralya in the state of Andhra Pradesh, north of Karnataka. In Mantralya the birthday of an important saint was being celebrated. It was another 8 hours on the bus through potholes, backroads and tiny towns where we had to turn around because the driver made a wrong turn somewhere.

When we finally got there a procession was coming down the street. The six of us foreigners were nearly swallowed by the crowd of men whose interest we piqued. Drums were pounding, people were yelling, a huge wooden statue thing was being carried down the street, a random man smeared red dust down my forehead. It was intense.

We had 8 hours to do as we pleased, but when we did anything, people followed us, stared, asked to take our pictures, crowded around and made it impossible to stand still for more than 30 seconds. It was amusing at first, but quickly became downright annoying.

So we hid out at the hotel most of the day, occasionally venturing out to see what was happening in town, but mostly too tired and sickly to care.

At the end of the day, a friendly couple from our bus invited us to walk to the river with them. We gladly accepted and had a lovely talk by the shore watching people do their evening bathing while the sun went down. It was almost jarring how serene the evening was after two days of hectic scrambling.

Despite the intensity of bumping, I was tired enough to sleep on the 9 hour bus ride back to Bangalore. I went straight to bed and didn't wake until 11:30am.

I'm still tired. I want a cheese sandwich. I've run out of toilet paper. These seem like insurmountable problems at the moment.

I know they're not.

Love Aaj Kal

All this scholarship is certainly being balanced by fluffy good fun. A couple nights ago a group of twelve of us went to see the latest Bollywood movie, Love Aaj Kal (roughly translated to "Love these days"). It was in Hindi, but fluency in that language is not necessary to understand a cheesy romance. The script was sprinkled with the occasional english word (as is the language in general), which tipped me off to the major plot points. It wasn't until the music began to swell and one of the main characters got out of his car and was suddenly in a surreal club with dancers and spooky clowns that I remembered Bollywood films are punctuated with spectacular song and dance numbers. Amazing! If only real life would imitate this art. World Peace through choreographed dance! Okay, maybe not.

As this is monsoon season we are also seeing a fair amount of rain. Fortunately it keeps to a pretty regular schedule and only appears in the early evening. Unfortunately, that was the time of evening several of us were wandering a market a few days ago. We were thoroughly monsooned. It was dusk, we were walking past a mosque at the time of evening prayer. The call to prayer was sounding over the loudspeakers. Muslim men were rushing through the streets choked with rickshaws to get to the mosque on time. Two huge cows emerged from a side street and ambled toward us with no regard for the neat single-file line we were walking. A street lamp suddenly started sparking and humming. A pack of dogs growled at us menacingly. The sky opened up and we were nowhere near cover. We finally made our way to a crowded bus shelter, but not all of us fit under it, so a brave three of us decided to walk and get wet instead of stand there and get wet. It was fun and exhilarating and a little scary.

I am still loving it here, but the tiredness is beginning to set in. And when I'm tired, I want things to be easy and familiar. I want to use my left hand. I love being left-handed, I'm so proud of it; but here you do not eat with your left hand. Handing someone money with your left hand is insulting. My poor, maligned left hand. I also want to wear jeans and a t-shirt.

I can't complain too much about clothing, though. I've been enjoying finding several new salwar kameez for myself in the markets here. A salwar kameez is a coordinating long tunic and trousers. At first I felt a little self-conscious about wearing the local styles -- stupid American hippie just wants to be like us. But now I just don't care. It's cool and comfortable and the fabrics are swirling with bold colors and designs. I'm getting rid of the ugly plaid shirts I brought with me so I can bring home my new wardrobe.

Halfway Point

Today was our last meeting with Hengasara Hakkina Sangha and it was sad to say goodbye to the amazing women who run that organization. We had a delicious farewell lunch and fully embarrassed them by taking loads of pictures and giving them big, sloppy, but genuine, American hugs.

The last week has been absolutely packed with activity. On Sunday night I got to experience my first train ride in India and it was the most comfortable and restful traveling experience of my life. We rode in an AC 3rd Tier car, which means it was air conditioned and there were rows of bunks stacked three high. The train was filled with friendly people who were interested in what in the world we were doing. Chai-wallahs (tea sellers) walked up and down the aisles offering their sweet, hot sustenance and little kids giggled and pointed at us. Once I was tucked away in my bunk, I was lulled to sleep by the rumblings of the train and didn't wake up until we arrived Monday morning.

The purpose of traveling to Belgaum, our final destination, was to meet with a Dalit Women's Federation. (Dalit refers to people of the lowest castes.) These women represent 600 women from 29 villages throughout Karnataka (the state Bangalore is in). They traveled great distances through inclement weather to meet with us, so our 10 train ride was nothing compared to their efforts.

These women -- when I think about them I am still moved by their bravery and spirit. It is only within recent years that Dalit women have begun to organize and band together to oppose violations to their safety, health and general well being. They are fighting for the most basic of human rights -- the right to food, employment, natural resources and clean drinking water. They face the scrutiny of their communities and families by participating in this organization, but it doesn't hamper their commitment or enthusiasm.

After our meeting it was back on the night train to Bangalore. We took Tuesday off and I enjoyed a bit of shopping around the city. There is a spectacular bookstore called Strand Book Stand, where I've already greatly contributed to my luggage weight limit. I've only purchased 7 books so far. That's incredibly restrained for me.

Yesterday we met with people from an organization called Sangama. They represent the interests of people from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community. We watched a film about the many manifestations of sexuality and gender in Bangalore. It was exciting to see people interviewed in places I recognize around the city. Once again our discussion revealed how incredibly complicated social justice work is. It was so exciting to see the ways in which LGBT communities are coming together to re-shape what is seen as an acceptable way of life. The ostracism and outright abuse that exists is disturbing, but that there are groups like Sangama to look to for help is heartening. So much work to be done still. It was fascinating to learn how differently human sexuality is organized in India compared to the United States. In the US, identity is so inextricably linked with the physical -- what you put where determines who you are. In India it is not so simple. There are more fluid definitions of sexuality that don't necessarily depend on how one has sex. It was a big shift in my thinking to realize, oh, there is a whole other vocabulary for all of this. Love the brain expansion!

This weekend we have a four-day break. I am traveling with a group of 6 to Hampi, the site of some pretty astounding ruins northwest of Bangalore. With all this new info threatening to make my brain pop, it will be nice to have a mini-vacation. (Of course, traveling with a bunch of students interested in social justice hardly leads to fluffy conversations. But hooray! Lots of people to mull over big, big ideas with.)

One of the recurring questions that our group has been considering is "What else can social justice look like?" It doesn't just have to be Doctors Without Borders, or giving billions to AIDS education and treatment. I've been thinking a lot about the support that's needed to do this kind of work. Being a background, support person, boosting up those on the front lines of social movements is also social justice. Taking time for self care to prevent exhaustion and burn out is social justice. What else?