Monday, August 17, 2009

Happy birthday, Krishna and India

Last week, we celebrated two birthdays, one of a Hindu god and one of a country.

Lord Krishna is considered to be among the most attractive of the Hindu gods, which is supported by the fact that he has approximately 16,000 girlfriends. The fact that he is blue also adds to his sex appeal, as well as his ability to take a different form each time he sleeps with a different gopi (shepherdess).

Krishna was said to have been born at 12 midnight on August 15th, so at around 9 pm, women gather at the local temple and begin chanting and playing tabla/harmonium in celebration. I spent about 2 to 3 hours just chanting, playing instruments, and laughing (not to mention keeping an eye on my saree to make sure that it didn’t catch fire–this didn’t seem to be of concern to any of the other women). I think that my interest perplexed my host mother, given the fact that I understand 1 in every 10 Hindi words and, needless to say, my Sanskrit is lacking as well. Regardless, it was a really fascinating and warm environment...

The whole alter and pooja set-up was quite interesting, as well. Along with the standard alter offerings (fruit, money, fire, etc.), there was a golden cradle set up with a Krishna statue, and part of the prayer ceremony was rocking the cradle.

Then at midnight, a small Krishna statue is put inside of a hollowed-out cucumber and forced out to mimic Krishna’s birth. The cucumber is cut up and eaten in this rose petal-cucumber salad.

I’ve asked approximately 10 people a) why a cucumber? And b) what is the significance of eating Krishna’s mother’s womb? No one seems to know.


The other birthday was India’s Independence Day. I attended a celebration at a local boys orphanage, which provides school tuition, school supplies, food, housing, and job training to boys without parents or with single parents unable to provide for them. It was an interesting program: a series of performances of Sanskrit verses by students, each recitation topped with a vigorous ‘JAI HIND!’. There was also a tumbling team that made a pyramid of people with complex gymnastic moves and then had a small boy climb to the top and say ‘JAI HIND!’. The whole day sort of felt like a time warp...


On a completely unrelated note, I made buckwheat pancakes for my host family yesterday. I gave a plate of them to Kishaan, a servant who comes in the morning, and he just gave me this look, like, ‘What am I supposed to do with these?’ He ate the pancakes with dal and garum masala and said they were delicious.

I also made coriander pesto for my family twice (they flip over pesto, it’s incredible.), and both times, they seemed to enjoy the dish with lots of ketchup.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Walking to the Moon

It's Hindu festival season, so it seems like every other day, there's some new festival, fast, pooja, or pilgrimage. Plus, this Saturday is Independence Day, so all of the private school girls are furiously rehearsing for the dancing competitions. There are two teams who practice for four hours every morning under the balcony at Sambhali...

The first festival that I celebrated last week was Rakhi, which is the celebration of sisters and brothers. Everyone spends the entire day traveling around and tying fancy bracelets on the wrists of their brothers and sisters, feeding them sweets, and giving them a coconut (I'm still unclear about this one. I think its a Hindu symbol for prosperity.) Brothers give sisters money, jewelry, sarees, etc.

Then comes Tij, the holiday that culturally insensitive Dani has deemed an extremely sexist holiday. It's the day when women fast for the health of their present or future husbands, do pooja for their present or future husbands, and participate in a variety of other prayers and ceremonies to ensure that they are blessed with a good husband in the future or that their current husband is healthy. I told one of my friends at the local juice place (he's this really sweet man named Mohammad, who is a devoted Muslim and stops making juice five times a day to walk to the local mosque and pray. It's just this routine: drop the papaya, and go pray) that I thought boys and men should also fast and do pooja for their wives...that is if the holiday is truly a celebration of marriage.

The truth is, at least from what I've studied and what I've learned from the women I've spoken with, a woman is somewhat made by her husband in Indian culture. This is, of course, a vast generalization both because...well, it's a vast generalization and this is Rajasthan, so many customs and ways of thinking are more conservative. However, a woman really isn't a woman without a husband. A woman's identity is wifehood. So praying for a healthy husband is essentially praying to maintain a female identity. Being single, being divorced, or being widowed all make you less of a woman. As such, many women who are single, divorced, or widowed are cast out, gossiped about, denied jobs, etc...

There is, however, a beautiful part of Rij. The most wonderful part of Tij happens at night. All Hindu women come out of their homes around 11:00 to do pooja for the moon. So I went out with my host mother for a walk and saw all of these female faces lit with the fire of the pooja candle, swirling the prayer tray and chanting at the moon. It was breathtakingly beautiful for two reasons. One, visually, it was gorgeous. Two, the moon isn't a man. The meaning of this ceremony is simply to pray to God to continue keeping the world spinning, the moon in the sky, the tides coming, generally maintain the natural cycles that enable us to live on Earth.

My host father said something really beautiful the other day. I asked him why he believes so fervently in astrology, and he asked me: 'What does the moon do to the ocean?' I answered, 'Well, there are tides..." He said 'If the moon can effect the ocean, imagine how it affects humans, who are 80% water." Kind of a beautiful way to think about things, regardless of scientific accuracy.

Last night there was another festival where women must walk around at night until they see the moon. Until that time, they cannot take food or sit down. It was quite a sight seeing all of these women dressed in fancy silk sarees and jewelry just walking around...

The sexism here has been, of late, irritating and infuriating me. The way my host father speaks to my host mother sometimes, even though they have a really respectful relationship. The stories of sexual and physical abuse. The comments that men direct at women on the street. The way some women are limited to their home.

The fact that there is no word for a female orgasm in Hindi - the word only applies to men.

The name of the leading condom brand is "ManForce."

I had a really startling conversation in the car coming home from my host mother's brother's home. There were two women in the car (cousins?), Anjou and Sultana, and Sultana of them told me how lucky I was to be able to travel around and do things by myself. "I used to travel around India in college," she said, "but now, I can't go 3 km without my husband. I don't want to. I'm too scared to go out. I'm completely dependent on him."

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

On Travel, Solar Eclipses, and David Foster Wallace

I'm officially coming to grip with the fact that blogging has no logical, sensical progression; that there will be gaps, leaps, assumptions, etc. that exist between and within entries, and it's unrealistic to hope for a complete, logical 'whole' that is a collection of blog entries (it's unrealistic to hope for a complete, logical idea, even...the mind oftentimes can't finish what it starts).


This morning, as I was watching my first solar eclipse from the roof of my house, I started thinking about the millions (perhaps even billions - in India, this is not an unfair assumption) of people in India and other parts of Southeast Asia doing the same thing at the same moment. I came downstairs to find my host mother watching the local Indian news channel, which was covering the eclipse in 5 different Indian cities, filming the parties, festivals, etc. happening in honor of the event...images of thousands of people gathered early in the morning with special glasses, waving flags and balloons, celebrating the occasion.

I guess I've had the concept of 'entertainment' (in its broadest,most philosophical sense) on the mind since I finished the only-recently-late David Foster Wallace's social commentary Infinite Jest about 2 weeks ago. For some reason, the book was made all-the-more powerful given my current context...I've been thinking a lot about why this 'semi-novel' feels so pertinent to my time here. On the surface, it couldn't have less to do with this context: a story set in the future, in both a drug rehab clinic and elite tennis academy in Boston, discussing a plot by wheelchair-bound Quebecois terrorists to sabatage the US by distributing a film that is so entertaining you die when you watch it. Okay, so here I am having finished this 1,000-page book, and I mysteriously feel like I was supposed to read it here...it was very strange. Throughout the final stages of the book, I felt like it was some sort of holy text or something, like whenever I opened it up, I was like Muhammad receiving some text for the first time. Very powerful, very odd given the fact that I've never experienced this sensation before. Reading, that is.

I've been thinking a lot about what entertainment actually is, how we qualify it, how it motivates everything we do. Going to touristy cities in Rajasthan, seeing how a large percentage of the Rajasthani economy (about 60-70%) revolves around tourism...around providing entertainment, a certain type of experience. In the simplest terms, that's what it comes down to.

Some people travel seeking entertainment, and some go seeking something else. There's this whole other aspect of travel - the part that involves a great deal of personal growth, discomfort, challenges, depression, loneliness...the things that can't really be provided for you, in the sense of externally providing entertainment, but things you find yourself. Perhaps it's the growth that many people seek, the growth that happens when we step/are forced outside of our comfort zone...

At least for me, I feel like I grow the most when I continually expose myself to new ways of being human. There is just nothing more jarring, nothing more enlightening than experiencing a way of living (a way of dancing, eating, praying, cooking, sleeping, working, relaxing, socializing, marrying, being born, dying, etc.) I've never experienced before. Of course, we know that it's possible to live differently than we do, that is, we can conceive of it, but to actually live in a completely different way - that's something else. That's experiencing another way of being human. I think that's why I love Anthropology so much - it's essentially an exploration of what being human is, how we got that way, and all of the ways we can be human. These seem like some of the most important inquiries out there.

I sort of had this moment the other day when I realized that an enormous piece of Indian culture involves sentimentality. One of my host brothers was returning back to engineering college in Gujarat (an adjacent state), and before he left the house to go on the train, there was a 'traveling' ritual. This is a Hindi ritual that families do before someone goes on a journey: each member of the family puts kum kum (the red powder) in a tilak (bindi for males) on the persons forehead, puts some grains of rice on the sticky red powder, and then feeds them a bit of sweets and a spoonful of yogurt (yogurt is supposed to be the official food of luck for traveling). Just like packing and showering are rituals before leaving home, so is this good luck ritual that brings the whole family together for about 5 minutes before someone leaves. It was extremely personal and moving, I suppose because these types of rituals are all over the place in India, and they do an amazing job of making moments sentimental and memorable.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

B.I.I.

There's a very useful saying in the Indian NGO sector which is mostly uttered by foreign interns, but not strictly reserved to foreigners. Whenever things seem stagnant, frustrating, or downright unjust, and you just keep asking 'kyo, kyo, kyo?' ('why, why, why?'), there is often no answer other than "B.I.I"..."Because It's India." I guess, in short, BII means that you can't really explain why processes develop the way they do in a culture...I mean, you could, but this would mean a lengthy history lesson in Indian culture and the origins of Indian governmental structure, gender relations, religion, etc. We're not talking about 'It happened on the Mayflower in the 1600s ' here. We're talking about 'It happened in the Indus Valley in 2600 BCE.' India gives a whole new meaning to 'old.' Regardless, it's just easier to accept and work within (but by no means embrace) the way India does things.

Yesterday was BII overload, I have to say. A little background:

I've been working with this one woman Sati (pseudonym) on English and just talking about her beyond-shitty domestic situation in general.Sati and I have become fast friends: she's one of the most animated women at Sambhali, probably only slightly older than me. We've been having a great deal of fun together, me teaching her English while she teaches me some Hindi. We have this joke, 'ap mera adyaphak hai, ap mera viyarthi hai' (You're my teacher, you're my student)...she seems to really enjoy this relationship - I think it makes her more excited to learn English.

She showed me her wedding pictures and her husband looks no older than 15, no joke: his face is covered in acne, and he has that naive 15-year-old grin on his face. His family demanded 3 lakhs (300,000 rupees - a.k.a. a lot of money) for Sati's dowry, and her father, dollars signs in his eyes, forced her into marriage for the financial security that her husband's family would bring. It was funny, she had this photo album from her marriage with about 100 pictures in it, and after she finished presenting to me, I asked which one was her husband. She sort of had this reaction like, 'whoops,' and then pulled out one single blurry photo of him from underneath a picture of her mother. This is pretty much how she feels about her husband.

Her in-laws and husband are extremely abusive-she has bruises on her arms from where her mother-in-law threw her against a table and scars all over her face from her husband. Her father-in-law pours dirty water on the floor when Sati is cleaning it, just so she has to do the entire thing over again. Her husband wants her to give up her teaching position to help in his neon-sign business. Then, about a few months ago, Sati starts to realize that her husbandis literally mentally disturbed (from her description, he sounds either bipolar or schizophrenic). He can't work because of his mental instability, and his family essnetially demands that her family pay for his medication. Of course, their answer was absolutely not - they need to feed their own family and pay for their children to go to school (Sati has a younger sister and brother).

So Sati has been going through the process of trying to get a divorce in India, perhaps one of the most difficult and bureaucratic processes imaginable because a) it's not a very common process and b) it's looked down upon. Fortunately, in Sati's caste, she can remarry, so she has a choice in the matter. However, I can't help but think about all of the women who in the same situation stay with her husband because otherwise, she would be essentially disowned - I mean seriously disowned. Like people won't eat food that's cooked by her or drink water she's touched.

Yesterday, I went with Sati, her brother, and her mother (I had met them before when I visited Sati at her house after the program one day) to the High Court in Jodhpur, which is where all of the major Jodhpur district business gets done. This was pretty much my first exposure to India's government bureaucracy beyond the local panchayit system (this is the more local system of government representation where someone from the local area is elected to represent local concerns - the unique aspect of this system is that it's on a rotating caste and gender system, meaning that each year, there's a representative from a different caste and every certain number of years the rep. must be female...).

Like most institutions in Indian society, there isn't much red tape. Even in this government building, where the magistrates and collector (the equivalent of a US mayor) work, pretty much anyone can wait outside their door and walk in whenever they have the opportunity to. People just come for the day with their written complaints/cases and sit there for HOURS, waiting for various officials to show up. If the person is traveling to a meeting, people try to get into the car with him/her. Then they wait more. If the official doesn't show up, they do it all again tomorrow. This is just how it's done.

So we went to the high court and waited for 2 hours for this certain magistrate who my supervisor has a relationship with (this is also how things work), but this guy never showed. Then we're told that he'll be back at 2. So we go and grab some chai and bananas in some sketchy park nearby. We come back and wait another 2 hours. It's finally evident that this guy is not showing up anytime soon. So we go to the associate magistrate and walk into his office to present Sati's case.

The craziest part was that I thought that I was there to sort of stand in the background and represent the organization she's a part of and present the letter from my supervisor pleading the case...not so. As soon as we got there, Sati's brother just hands me the case statements and pushes me forward. Because of the color of my skin, I'm the natural spokesperson. Why? BII.Even though I have absolutely no authority in this situation...I'm not a lawyer, I'm not her father, I'm not familiar with the legal system...of course, after all of that waiting and asking different officials where to go, the guy just said he couldn't help us and that we needed to go to the civil court, which is on the other side of town. So next week, we're going to go to the civil court (which, I imagine is worse because there will be more people trying to file cases) and do it all over again. Sort of a moment of comic relief, however, was when I told Sati's brother that while today was a bust, Monday, "Ham kick some ass ja-on ghi" (We will go to kick some ass). He found this very funny, so now it's like an agenda item: "Dani, I see you on Monday at what time to go kick ass?"

The other 'BII' moment was when we were meeting to organize a press conference for the organization's year's activities and future projects, and my supervisor tells me I have to go and buy bedsheets as gifts for all of the journalists. And put them in shiny wrapping paper with ribbons. This, apparently, is how things are done: journalists only write stories when they're bribed with samosas, numkeen, chai, and fucking bedsheets, BII.

Friday, July 3, 2009

First set of photos










View from my hostel in the old city during my first week


The Fort, c. 1400

















A creche at Bari, a village about 45 minutes outside of the city



I have my camera temporarily stolen...




My street
My host brothers, Siddhant (L) and Siddharth (R)



Dancing at Sambhali...



Microfinance meeting in Setrawa



Best juice in Jodhpur


Wedding! (must blog about this at some point....)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Epic Post, Part II

So I’ve just come back from an incredible day in Setrawa, a relatively large, rural village about 2 hours outside of the city of Jodhpur. My head is spinning right now, I’m thinking about everything that went on today, and the excessive desert heat doesn’t help much. I also drank village water straight from the well, I was just so thirsty, so we’ll see how that turns out.

Today was the general interest and informational meeting for a potential microfinance initiative in Setrawa. Essentially, the organization that I’m interning with is putting together a proposal to provide 5,000 Rps. loans to 40 women in the village, mainly for stitching and textile work, but also for handicrafts, livestock, and food. Around 30-35 women (from two different self-help groups in the village) showed up for the meeting, which gave 2 Hindi-speaking interns the opportunity to explain the overall microloan system as well as the risks involved. The self-help groups that have already been established will be used in the proposed microloan structure, which includes mandatory savings (50 Rps./month) over the 6-12 month pay-back period.

The school day was just ending, so we got a chance to spend time with girls, singing, dancing, etc. (I work at the Sambhali school near my home in the city, but there is also one in Setrawa. Both schools do sewing/stitching training and teach English.) The girls had a very impressive repertoire, including some traditional Marwari songs as well as ‘You are My Sunshine’ and ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I sang the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ very poorly and did some kathak as well. I then sat down at the meeting and began fanning myself and another elderly woman with a cardboard flashcard of famous Indian architecture…

I think the most incredible part about today was seeking this lofty concept of ‘microfinance’ on a very basic, fundamental level. Today was literally the beginning of the entire initiative: explaining how the system would work, having a discussion about its feasibility, and collecting information about the problems that the system will face in this specific community. For example, stitching and sewing are considered prideful, accomplished trades for an Indian woman, so most women are interested in producing clothing, textiles, etc. But economically, all women can’t produce the same items, it will just lead to a race to the bottom. That was a major point of contention. It was also easy to see the tensions between the wealthier members of the village and those who have their food subsidized and are involved in public works projects (the wealthier women usually are interesting in positions of power within the SHGs, so this may become a serious problem when loans are distributed).

Then, we had chai with two of the school teachers in a modest, concrete-floor house that reminded me a lot of Frida Kahlo’s studio (the colors)…best chai I’ve had yet in India, by far. I have so much to say about all of these issues, but I’m going to wait until I have time to write a long rant/essay/reflection piece about the microfinance project and the politics/problems associated with it…very humbling, this whole process.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Epic Post, Part I

I think a 'Ramayana' of a post is in order. So much has happened since my last posting, I can't possibly express it all in a few paragraphs, but finding time to simply sit down and blog is difficult and internet access is spotty. Here goes, and there will be pictures (soon! I have to manually shrink the file sizes, so the whole process is extremely time consuming) to make up for what my descriptions lack...

I have now settled in with my host family, the Nahals, who live in a socioeconomically diverse residential area of Jodhpur. Coming from a country where various levels of housing are very much sectioned off, it is strange to live in a modest, middle class home, yet be sandwiched between a dirt floor home and a mini-mansion. I walk down a busy road to work each morning after going jogging on a local track (I was very happy to discover that some women do jog here, although most going walking [in full-out traditional sawar cameezes and saris, no doubt], and that, enduring copious stares because in addition to being white and blonde I am also jogging, I can jog at 6:30 in the morning before Vishnu lowers a magnifying glass so that the sun can stream through and set India on fire. I had a funny interaction the other day, actually, when I mistakenly asked 'Sportsbras kaha hai?' (Where are the sportsbras?) in an athletics store, only to remember that even alluding to breasts is considered extremely risque...the female salesclerk just sort of lowered and shook her head.)

My host family could not be more wonderful. I have a host mother (Rekha, she lets me call her 'didi,' which is a term of endearment sort of meaning 'sister'), a father (Nirmal, he lets me call him 'Bhiya,' which is a term of endearment meaning 'brother'), and two host brothers (Siddharth, 19, and Siddhanth, 14). I am consistently surprised at how well the whole family gets along, how much family time they take together. One morning I woke up to find the whole family sleeping in the same room, in the same bed, even though there is a whole other bed and couch in an adjacent room...my host mother says she prefers to sleep next to her children. She is such a sweet, simple woman, and even though it is sometimes difficult to communciate with her (I can only communicate basic concepts to her in English and Hindi, because both her English and my Hindi are by no means at the level of fluency), I feel like she still expresses a great deal of concern and affection for me...

I have become a very popular conversation piece. My host family finds my random knowledge of ancient and modern Indian cultural knowledge extremely humorous, and they like to tell stories to their friends and family members of, like, that one time Danielle bargained in Hindi at the fruit stand ('Jada hai!' (That's expensive!), and 'Kam karo!' (Bring the price down a little)), or the time she knew all about Agni, the Vedic fire god. Whenever I speak Hindi, everyone repeats exactly what I say with a little chuckle. I suppose that it seems odd to many people that an American is interested in Indian culture and is trying to speak Hindi, simply because so much of Indian youth culture attempts to mimic Western youth culture.

But the more I ask questions about various cultural nuggets (What is this spice? Are government schools much worse than private schools? Why is your neclace sacred? Is this typical for your caste? What am I eating right now?, etc, etc.), the more I continue to realize how interesting my cultural and country is. Of course, India is very exotified (this is a very relative term) in the West - we owe this to the spice trade and Christian opposition to animism/pagan traditions (many people mistakenly think that Hinduism is the direct worship of animals, which isn't true...deities such as Ganesh and Hanuman are mere avatars of God, which is described as a universal energy, close to Kabbalah's interpretation), not to mention that exotification brings tourists and, more importantly, money...

My family, to my surprise, has a very exotified view of Judaism. It's not that they view Jewish traditions and beliefs as exotic, but more so that they believe Jews to be a very small minority of the American population...it’s a very rare religion. My host father is obsessed with the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and he believed that Judaism, to a great extent, was extinguished when Jesus died. Anyway, my host father is very interested in reading Talmud…

Explaining Judaism relative to Hinduism has been fascinating, just explaining various Jewish holidays, beliefs, foods, etc. by comparing them to the Hindu tradition. I think one of the most fascinating discussions was talking about how much Christianity changed when it was translated in the King James Bible, how, before that point, the religion actually had a lot in common with Hinduism (in terms of the view of mother earth, creation, etc.).

I think that one of the things that joins Hinduism and Judaism is the ceremonial and aesthetic quality. It’s easy to describe Jewish traditions in terms of symbolic foods (my host father was very intrigued by the whole Passover sedar concept), ritual candle-lighting, blessing food and drink, marriage rituals (stepping on the glass, the chupah, etc.), and the general sacredness of speech and word. This last one is extremely important in both Vedic and Jewish traditions. The chanting of Sanskrit is, in and of itself, a sacred act, just like chanting Torah in trope is.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Field Visit

Today, we went to two rural villages about 30 minutes outside of Jodhpur with a local organization that works with the mining sector as well as migrant mining populations. These mining communities seem to be where interconnected environmental, social, and economic issues collide in devastating ways. Of course, there are the harmful environmental effects, but you also have rampant HIV/AIDS and TB due to the promiscuous behavior of migrant miners; respiratory diseases from sandstone; child labor; water contamination, the list goes on...





Alcoholism is also an enormous issue in these communities, where there is little for men to do after work except drink away both his and his wife's earnings. Men control the family earnings, and while they often have two to four mouths to feed, men in these communities drink away 60-70% of his earnings. The rest purchases desert vegetables and other cheap staples which have little nutritional value. Domestic abuse is very common.





I met several women who are forming female self-help groups in an attempt to prevent alcohol from being illegally sold in these communities (policemen are bribed so that alcohol can be sold illegally at night). These women's groups meet weekly to discuss issues like this one and develop plans of action.





It's so hard for me to think about these issues when I spend time with the children who go to these NGO-sponsored creches (small, one-room school houses)...they are just so eager to learn and practice English, recite poetry (by the way, what ever happened to poetic recitation as an art form?), sing songs, count, and play with my camera. The girls and women are breathtakingly beautiful. Two best friends, around age 8 or so, found the fact that I was sweating profusely very amusing...it was pretty hysterical: they kept immitating me panting, I would smile, and they would shrink away to giggle for a few minutes. I think my shitty Hindi also cracked them up (they learn both Hindi and English in school because their local tongue is Marwari.) Silliness seems to be much appreciated.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

First Post

I've just spent two nights in the old city of Jodhpur, known for its vibrant indigo houses and intricate fabrics. Perhaps the most wonderful part of jetlag is waking up at 4:30 am and listening to the sounds of city, before the streets scream with the sound of rickshaws on cobblestone, merchants hawking their wares, motorcyclists revving their vehicles, and hammered copper pots clanking against each other as women prepare chapatis and chai for breakfast.

I was woken yesterday morning by the call to prayer, which was echoing through the narrow streets from a mosque only a few hundred yards away. It was one of the most beautiful melodies I have ever heard...the sephardic scale, which Indian and Arabic music share, has such a haunting quality, especially amidst morning silence. I went up to the rooftop deck of my hostel, where I could see the entire city and the historic fort, which is carved into the cliff less than a mile from where I was staying.

Many people sleep covered in thin tapestries on their roofs, so you just look around and see these small colorful cocoons stirring every few minutes. Slowly, people wake up and begin the day. This elderly woman, who seems to take a liking to all different shades of pink saris, got up two mornings in a row at 5 am to just lean over her balcony and look around before hanging up laundry. A man in the building across from me does yoga and meditation. A beautiful young wife brushes her teeth each morning in a beautiful orange sari, her head and face covered in the way that many Rajasthani Muslim women do: she lifts her veil slightly to spit in the polluted stepwell below her window. It's amazing how quickly this quite, slow city turns into a bustling marketplace and maze of crowded streets...

Things move very slowly here. Of course, the city is rather noisy and crowded during the day, like most Indian cities, but everyone takes his or her time. Everyone is extremely late for everything. I see men just standing around at work, people-watching or leafing through a newspaper. I've been hearing from many interns that this slow pace gets frustrating in the NGO sector, where tasks and projects take forever to complete and the fruits of labor take a great deal of time to materialize. At the same time, just being able to pause throughout the day and enjoy a cup of chai (this is one amazing thing about India: everyone has a small cup of steaming hot chai in hand all of the time, regardless of the fact that it is 120 degrees and humid) with friends and colleagues is wonderful. Margaret Mead says that studying culture allows one to understand one's own. I think that I will be experiencing that process a great deal throughout this trip, but so far, the 'Indian pace' has made me realize how out of control the US is...

Friday, I purposefully got lost. I feel perfectly safe walking around the city (Jodhpur is a very safe city in general), but being stared at, whistled at, called at all of the time is exhausting. Friday morning, I woke up and just didn't feel like dealing with the constant attention...so I forced myself to go into a bit of 'training,' simply by walking around and getting used to feeling uncomfortable. Probably the hardest part is not making eye contact with men, one of the keys to avoiding confrontation by 'inviting' unwanted advances. The humorous part was acting like I had a destination even though I was walking aimlessly.

One of things that is so jarring is the contrast between the extreme poverty and the vibrant colors, both of which abound here: the soot, dirt, cow dung, piles of half-eaten dal against bright blue buildings or at the feet of women dressed in brilliant orange and green saris. This seems to be a general metaphor for Indian society. India's booming economy is only reaching 20% of the population. Colorful, energetic Hindi films only express the lifestyles and concerns of the upper castes, totally ignoring the economic depravity of those living in slums and in rural areas. This goes for any society, of course, but the contrast is especially stark here: there are too many people for anyone to spread out, for the classes to really separate into different spaces. Everyone is just crammed together in this overwhelming clusterfuck of wealthy, poor, progressive, traditional, Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Catholic, craftspeople, IT specialists, etc. Societal compartmentalizations are much like Indian traffic patterns...they don't exist.