Holi (the greatest holiday in the universe) and Kodaikanal

Lots to report America. I’ve again been neglecting my duty to record the mundane details of my life in hopes of finding something in my year abroad that I can trick potential employers into thinking is "life experience." However, the posts should get better because my sense of procrastinatory purpose has been restored. Finally, after months of arduous yet fruitless quests, I have real, actual books to read for a real actual research paper.

So starting with last week: unfortunately, India does not really celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, so there was no pretending to be Irish by dressing up like a leprecaun and singing Danny Boy (written by an English guy, just saying) this year. Instead there was Holi. America, I am not concerned by the fact that China is prospected to overtake our great nation in scientific output by 2013 (science is unamerican anyway), but shame, America, shame for neglecting the ridiculous holiday front. This should be our number one priority. Last Saturday morning, I was riding my awesome-hot-pink-recently-less-broken-than-usual bicycle back up from the football fields when I encountered a large mob of about one hundred strangers standing menacingly outside my dorm. I say strangers 1. because most of them really were strangers and 2. because the people I actually knew were completely covered in a rainbow of semi-cancerous neon paint powder. Armed with handfuls of colored powder, super soakers, and a drum which I can only assume came from Lord of the Flies, a sea of arms unceremoniously pulled me off my bike and completely covered me in Holi powder in a matter of 6 seconds. Surprise! I was more prepared on Sunday. The Frisbee team I’ve been playing with decided to play Holi (people say “play” Holi. It’s delightful), which resulted in my hair remaining green for about one week (also boogers are no longer black. Now rainbow). Riding home, strangers stained bright pink, the official color of Holi, would wave at each other, and for the next 4 days I would see people on the street with odd patches of green or purple on their skin, and assume they had contracted some form of alien leprosy before remembering. Best. Holiday. Ever.

Shirt started white. Just saying.

This past weekend (by this past weekend I mean from Wednesday morning to Monday morning because my classes are cancelled so often at this point that I only had to skip two of them to take this trip) I went with the Hyderabad frisbee team to our first tournament in Kodaikanal. As usual, I am going to talk about the train journey for longer than I talk about the actual trip because traveling in India is ridiculous (and because I actually may have spent more time on the train than I did in Kodaikanal.) Travel Buddy Judith and I boarded the train on Wednesday morning at 10AM, and with miraculously little incident we met our additional travel buddy, our English teammate, Beth (we bond over the fact that I know what "taking the piss" means) on the next train. As usual, the array of merchants selling chai, omelets, Rubik's cubes, car parts, etc. each chanting a song they had written about said merchandise (for example Chaichaichaichchchchaichaichaaaaaaiiii) paraded back and forth down the aisle for the entirety of the journey. We shared a compartment with a delightful Muslim man who switched seat with us every three hours or so in order to face the correct direction when he prayed. He became slightly less delightful when Beth accidentally let slip that she does not go the church, and he decided that English people are evil, but still smiled excessively and gave us candy. We discovered, as per usual India, that there would be no train from Coimbatore to Kodaikanal and that the bus routes had been blocked by a landslide. So the next morning we got off at the stop before Coimbatore, bought a ticket, found out that train was cancelled, and caught the following train which only came an hour late. Luckily this gave us ample time to get breakfast, at which point one of my contact lenses came out and literally the entire diner, including the kitchen staff, stopped in its tracks and watched in shock and horror as I put it back in my eye, as if I had just removed my eyeball. Waiting for the train we also met a gentleman with an extremely impressive mustach (mustaches are big with men in India. So are bell-bottoms. I never want to leave), who insisted that Beth speak to his college bound daughter on the phone about grad schools in England because her accent made her an instant authority on the matter.

 

This child road his bike back and forth down the aisle of our next train to the musical stylings of what I can only describe as a low budget sci-fi sound effects mix tape. A guy in the compartment next to us was happily listening to screeching sounds and different frequencies of static on his phone for the better part of two hours. Arriving at our next station, Kodaikanal Road Station, which logically seemed like it would be somewhere near Kodaikanal, an exceedingly persistent taxi driver decided to take it upon himself to inform us that there was no bus to Kodaikanal, but he would give us a very good and special deal. We found the bus station after an hour of searching and asking various people, with the taxi driver still tailing us and insisting that he would still give us a good and special deal, up until the point that the bus pulled away. We took two buses and it took about 4 more hours getting us to Kodaikanal about 32 hours after we'd left, but the entire trip was hysterical and the view up the mountain was gorgeous.

Kodaikanal is also called the Cloud City

 Kodai is cold at night. I have not experienced even mild chilliness since December, so I got to be a real frisbee player again and break out the ugly flannel shirt. Anyway, we finally got to the hotel where we were checked in by Messrs Kennedy and Clinton (not kidding) who very excitedly informed us 14 times that they have showers with hot water! 24 hours hot water, madams! No other hostel had ever had hot water, nor had they ever made mention of it, so imagine my excitement, like a child sprinting downstairs on Christmas morning, as we raced to our room to take our first showers after two days on public transportation. But you guessed it, America, my metaphorical Christmas presents were ugly metaphorical socks. I actually experienced brain freeze and saw my breath (I am not kidding) due to the temperature of the shower (turns out they just needed to replace the battery, but it was so hilarious at the time.)

The next day we stepped outside the hotel, and sure enough there was the same taxi driver from 80 km down the mountain, asking if we needed a ride. We got about a day of sightseeing in before the boys showed up, and then we had all our frisbee matches, which took up most of the weekend. If I elaborate much though, I'll start speaking in tongues (overenthusiastic frisbee jargon) and lose the remaining three people that compose my readership (one of whom I think may be the cat my mother has replaced me with). So just some highlights: For those unfamiliar with it, frisbee is actually a pretty serious game with a lot of plays and strategies. And I like to make my team pretend to be dinosaurs and/or turkeys once in a while to throw off the other team's defense. I love my team, and the people we played against were all really fun, so good weekend.

Other than that, yesterday India won the India v. Pakistan cricket match, meaning at 11:30 PM the streets were flooded with screaming, cheering people, firecrackers and other such explosives, motorcycles zooming by with giant flags, and lots of extremely happy strangers hugging each other. This is a country of really good celebraters.

Today, in Hindi class I learned that my teacher is not sassily calling me out every ten minutes or so like I thought for the entire semester. The word "jaise," pronounced "Jesse" means "like this," and she says it pretty sternly every time she writes an example on the board.

And finally, today the required books for my Human Rights course came in! Yes, the final is in two weeks, and yes, I have circumnavigated the earth and climbed Mount Doom searching for books for the past 3 months, but hooray! They're here!

I'm starting to get to that point that I got to last semester, where I'm finally more comfortable, have slightly more substantial friendships, and really start enjoying myself... which means I'm leaving soon. But that's okay. A month is a pretty long time. And it will be kind of a relief to sleep in the same city for more than 2 months in a row next year.

Also, I have a job and possibly a car for the summer, and a house with roommates for next year, and classes, real classes with real books. Little brother meeting me in Italy in T minus 30 days. Life couldn't be better.

I Visit Mysore and Extract the Plague

Dear America,

It is with great sadness that I must inform you that India has given me the plague (a small stomach virus). As we speak a small alien is feeding on my large intestine, growing and spawning until it will eventually claw its way through my tissue and burst from my stomach its teeth from its three bulbous alien heads gnashing (my tummy hurts) as it scours the area for its next victim (I'm going to purposely cough on the next professor who cancels class). I am too weak from sickness and despair to move (the Tylenol should kick in in about 20 minutes) and I find solace only in confiding in the motherland from my sickbed.

This past weekend CIEE planned a group trip to Mysore, oh foul seed of my stomach's undoing. I had been wondering where the giant program fee that CIEE required was going (besides our matching T-shirts, snack time, and prize money for inane contests such as the who-can-dial-the-program-director's-number-the-fastest contest). It went into this trip (Disclaimer: I get seriously irritated with CIEE sometimes, but the directors actually in India are doing a good job). The trip was planned for March 10, which coincidentally was also the date of the million person Telengana march, so our car got stopped several times by police on the way to the airport. That's right, you heard me correctly, airport. Super fancy luxury number one: a glorious, air conditioned, one person per seat, neutral smelling mode of transportation with real working doors that brought us to our destination in less than 18 hours. It was beautiful.

When we arrived in Mysore, after our 4 hour bus ride from Bangalore in our air conditioned, fancy-pants, TV containing, seat reclining, in-case-you-didn't-notice-we-are-tourists-please-stare-at-us! bus, I immediately started taking obnoxious tourist pictures 1. because it's super fun to be obnoxious and 2. because CIEE booked us for the fanciest hotel in the universe. This place had a chandelier in the lobby. We went up stairs where I jumped on my fluffy, bedbug and roach-free bed complete with linens that had been recently washed and two pillows, used my Western toilet with the little "this toilet has been sanitized" paper strip, and watched Indian VH1 (nerdy Indian gentleman with large 90s sunglasses and classy Indian lady in silver taffata dress earnestly co-ganster rapping) and Indian MTV (on which two Indian men were playing the slap game -- a game in which one person slaps the other as hard as he can for 30 seconds).

Inside one of the Buddhist temples

This is what the alien will look like once it has burst forth from my stomach and devours my carcass as its first earthly meal.

Since the trip was organized by CIEE, pretty much our entire time there was scheduled with lectures, performances, temple visits, and crayon drawings (not kidding), most of which were really interesting. We got to visit an exiled Tibetan community, and the Dali Lama had just stepped down as political leader the day before, so that was really exciting. Despite all the educational/historical/super old and beautiful/ridiculously fancy stuff though, I am going to have to say that the most memorable part of this trip was the food, not because it was delicious (which it was), not because it was the first recognizable green substance I have consumed in 2.5 months (which it was), and not because I believe it may be responsible for the evil parasite that is currently feasting on my innards (Tylenol, why won't you work?), but because India has several special rules about eating that I have heretofore not mentioned:

1. All food must be delicious. Preferably deep fried and delicious. This will both gain your guests' trust and encourage them to eat more.

2. Never tell your guests how many courses there will be. Always let them assume there is just one based on the enormous serving size of the first scoop of colorful, many-syllabled unidentified goop that you plop onto their plate. The subsequent 11 courses will be an exciting suprise!

3. All serving sizes must be huge. Preferably at least 4 times the amount of food that a normal human being can consume. Otherwise you are inhospitable.

4. Even if your guests say they don't want any more, they really do. You should plop another giant spoonful of butter fried rice on their plate even if they quickly pull their plate away and cover it with their hands like a nerdy 3rd grader trying to keep other kids from cheating off his spelling test, shouting "no, no please! I've already had 11 courses. My stomach is going to explode!"

5. If your guest does not finish all the food on their plate it does not mean that they are extremely full from the previous giant plate of food that you gave them, or that they are allergic to the food you have given them; it means that they hate you and your cooking. It also means that they do not care about wasting food or starving people.

6. If your guest manages to finish the enormous plate of food that you deftly managed to scoop onto their plate around their arms outstretched in protest, you should immediately refill their plate while they are not looking. Remember, this is a competition. The foreigner must never win. You must be more polite and hospitable than them.

Anyway, I would say it was a pretty successful trip. We got to fly all the way back rather than busing half the way, so I got to see four safety demonstrations narrated over an intercom by a creepily seductive voice for a safety demostration and acted out by flight attendants wearing bump-its and/or a natural Snooki poof (I think it was part of the uniform).

I'm going back to sleep now though. The alien is feeding again, and I need my strength.



Place 12 vehicles around it ,and three more adults and a small child or baby on the front seemingly steering the motorcycle, and you have a fairly common representation of driving in India.



Like the rest of India, this post is a little too random to have a coherent title.

Dear America,

As much as I want to talk about my various public transportation catching misfortunes, bicycle problems, and continuing quest for classes, (and then I'll talk about all my exciting trips to the store to buy batteries and train

missing experiences).

(India has decided to double space my post yet again.) I've been following all the protests going on in Egypt and Libya pretty faithfully, and I know that protests happen all the time, but it seems like this year is an especially revolutionary year, maybe because there are so many other protests happening close to home. The Telengana separatist movement has been getting increasingly intense (I'm still safe). There was another bandh last week, meaning the city was shut down by vigilante protesters for 48 hours, and all my classes were cancelled. Then there was the rail roko, which halted all local trains for an entire day. And I didn't mention this before because I was worried about presenting it with the gravity it deserves, but people have committed suicide as a political statement for this cause. Employees and students are striking, sit-ins are being staged everywhere, people are throwing rocks, police have used tear gas. There were a bunch of workers sitting outside the university gate yesterday and police milling around everywhere (not actually sure if its related though. I asked a guard and he said "Nothing is going on. Nothing is there!" the first definitive answer I have ever gotten in India: a completely inaccurate statement which actually means "Get away now, and don't ask questions.") According to the news, the final push is going to be a million person march into Hyderabad where they will lay siege to the city (yes, the article literally says "siege"). But I don't even know if it will be the real "final push" because the Srikrishna committee was supposed to have made a final decisive pronouncement in January. Things just keep getting pushed back. I've been careful not to express support for either side because it's not my fight/I'm supposed to be an ambassador for America/people are so passionate about it, but it's a very exciting time to be in Hyderabad.

Meanwhile, students at Dickinson just staged a massive protest to improve the school's policy on sexual violence, and I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't be there to take part in it (being Feminist Jesse and all). I'm just so excited about it because from what I gather, both side handled it really well, and it looks like Dickinson has already made a lot of concessions.

Now on to to more mundane: public transportation. I could say it was an unlucky week, but instead I'm going to say it was an adventurous week. While England has no visibly marked addresses, there are no road signs in India, and most people (including drivers) don't know where most things are, so I can't really go places without getting lost. But everyone in India is lost, so I'm never really lost. I had four or five bus adventures (lost, stranded, or otherwise detoured transportation mishaps) and two blown bike tires this week, so I'm just going to narrate one. I decided to take the local train to the park to play frisbee. So after getting up the requisite 2 hours early, battling a small zombie infestation (I know that sounds nasty, but there is no other way to describe the line for train tickets. There is a large crowd of men that push each other out the way to get to the front. I kid you not, one man actually grabbed another man around the middle and tried to lift him out of the way. And then about 12 people try to shove their hands into the little one person ticket hole at the front of the line while everyone continuously shouts their destination rhythmically, which begins to sound a little like a "braaaaains" chant), shoving our way onto the unlabeled train (we were lucky enough to find space in the toilet bay), my travel buddy, Judith, and I discovered that the train was going in the opposite direction of the park. Yes, we had gotten on the same train on the same track at the same time the last time we went to the park, but this is India; we should have known better. So after passing Gullaguda (a place that sounds suspiciously like the island homeland of the yellow polliwog from one of my favorite 90s Nickelodeon shows), we got off at the next stop, a random deserted field an hour outside of Hyderabad. We began to panic when all the sudden we heard a glorious sound... "Hallo? HALLOOOOOOO!!!! Where you are going, madams?!" ... the sound of a confused Indian man wondering what the two idiot white girls are doing at a deserted train station. After convincing him that we would rather take the 20 extra steps required to walk on the stairs over the train track rather than climbing down into the sharp, rusty pit to walk directly over the sets of operating train tracks, we met him on the other side and explained that we needed to get back to Hyderabad. Luckily, he was extremely friendly. He invited us into the control room for chai, told us his entire life story, showed us pictures of his grand kid, talked about the wonders of Jesus (this happens a lot. People seem to equate white people with super-duper Christianity), and sent us on our merry way back to Lingampalli. One great thing about India: higher ratio of entire-life-story-upon-meeting-you people. So, yes, I guess I could say I got lost 5 or 6 times, that my bike broke, and that I got attacked by zombies, or I could say I am still successfully surviving Indian public transportation, I fixed my bike, and I defeated several zombies.


Instead of going on a long trip this week I've been having a lot of miniadventures (most involving getting lost, actually involving India getting lost and changing the relativity of my geographic position through no fault of my own). I got to jumped on several rapidly accelerating buses this week, which is pretty much the equivalent of eating an apple pie at a baseball game in America. I'm basically assimilated. And I drove a motorcycle (in an empty parking lot for 8 seconds. It counts). Because my bicycle was broken (or as I like to say, operationally challenged since this is the optimism only section) this week, I got to do a lot more hitchhiking on campus this week (which makes me sound really awesome and On the Road-ish, but is actually a norm). The weekend consisted mostly of playing football(soccer) and frisbee at ungodly early hours of the morning to avoid the heat. We've officially hit the 100 degree range this week, and I can no longer get the shower to emit cold water. I never thought I'd have that problem.


With any luck, the maybe-test, that glorious hypothetical proof that I am actually doing something remotely academic and will receive a bountiful reward (course credit) for my arduous quest to procure syllabus and books, will be occurring today. It did not happen last week like I had hoped, but I'm sure the professor will actually show up for class today.


***** Update! ***** The maybe-test occurred yesterday (I started writing this on Monday morning but got distracted). Still no sign of my professor, but he did send a lovely substitute who lectured about something (unrelated to human rights). My doodling skills have been improving immensely!


Other mini adventures: I finally got to see the Birla Temple this week, which is this beautiful giant white temple in the middle of Hyderabad with ornate shrines to most of the major religions of India. I have successfully learned to ride my bike with no handle bars, another marketable skill from India that I will surely write on my resume for the internships that I really do not want, but should be applying for because if I don't get an internship this summer there is no possible way I will know what to do with my life, let alone get a job, my education will crumble to pieces, I will have to sell my hair (which I am told will soon fall out anyway due to the malaria pills) to pay off my student loans, and I will have to resort to keeping the twelve cats that I will be living with (since no suitable husband will accept me without a junior year internship) in my refrigerator box home.


I also got to see a Kuchipudi fusion dance performance in honor of Women's month. An Indian woman started with a short Kuchipudi piece, which is the traditional dance of Andhra Pradesh, and then a random German woman in the audience started talking to her, and she looked sort of taken aback. I assumed that this woman was actually a stranger interrupting the performance because something like that would actually be totally normal here [more and more, I am realizing that funniness is almost completely contextual. People do the most bizarre, hilarious things here -- like grown men joyously singing Barbie Girl on their bicycles and asking me for an autograph and chanting PEENAPELL!! (pineapple. And yeah, the double parentheses just happened) in a chipmunk voice continuously for an hour straight on a moving train at 6AM -- but they're social norms. Sometimes I worry that when I come home, my appreciation for the ridiculous will have dulled... or I will just have more fodder to freak people out with my weird behavior. One of those two.] Anyway, it turns out the German woman was part of the show and they were doing one of those weird postmodern, breaking down of the 4th wall in theater things. So she got up and did some really awesome, but very odd modern dance involving a machine which looked a bit like a jet pack strapped to her back which made various cricket, water, and other new-agey earth noises whenever she moved. And now everyone in the audience thinks that your typical Western dance. It's just like what I used to do in England: do something weird and insist that its an American tradition.


Other than that, I've just been spending a lot of time trying to talk to people on campus and in Hyderabad. I've had limited opportunity since I've been away most weekends (and CIEE doesn't want me to make friends so they keep me in a foreigners only fortress a mile from everyone else on campus. Shouldn't complain though. We get air conditioning). It's been a really exciting week in that respect. Everyone I've met has been really awesome/way more interesting than I will ever be. But conversations don't make for very exciting adventure stories so I'll leave it with that for now.


We're headed to Mysore this weekend for the CIEE planned field trip, so I'm preparing for more middle school fun. I hope we get to wear our matching T-shirts again.