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.