City Adventures

My life in India is beginning to feel comfortable (as comfortable as I can imagine it being, I mean). I live in a beautiful house, in a sunny room. I get breakfast and dinner made for me each day, and I live 3 minutes from campus. I'm doing yoga every day, I go running around campus, and...I'm really sick of curry. That is besides the point though; because the point is that I am really lucky to be here, and although there are parts of it that are totally overwhelming at first, it usually seems to always work out some way. I sit each day on my balcony and write or talk to people at home. And I can feel some things changing: it is winter here and I'm feeling cold when it gets below 75F. I have the urge to go to the left side of the road when I bike. My boogers are black when i go into the city and I'm okay with that. The roads suddenly don't seem so crazy, I can sleep through the sounds of night usually, and I'm growing to feel comfortable with the bugs and spiders of my room.

Yet, Frank Lloyd Wright is a perfect example of how there are changes, and yet I'm still quite prissy at heart. As attached as I had become to him, he was becoming a problem. I had grown used to him and had resigned myself to the idea that he was going to live in the corner farthest away from my bed and that was that. However, one night I decided to watch him once I turned my light off and realized he was doing laps around my head while I was sleeping. Not okay. He could stay in one corner, but he can't have free reign of my room at night. I think Arletta got sick of hearing me cry out about how I was going to get rid of him (but not doing it) so she came in and took a towel, grabbed Frank and threw him out the door. Frank is gone!! So it seems there was a part of me, and still is I guess, who would be willing to let him live in my room, and yet there is always going to be that part of me that just needs to have some kind of wall between the bugs and creatures of this world and my bed, however holey that wall is (as is hole-filled).

(Of course, the next day I came home to find a 3 inch hornet in my room. We proceeded to freak out (all three of us this time) as we opened doors with long poles and tried desperately to coax the hornet outside. Finally we went downstairs and told Amma, who came upstairs to investigate, saw it, started laughing at us, removed her shoe and smacked the hornet against the wall. All in about 2 minutes.)

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A few days ago our program took us to see a movie. The movie theater was like walking back to the States, except that the tickets cost $1.50 and you got free popcorn and a drink with it; and there is an intermission in the middle of the movie. We saw a really great movie, called Taare Zameen Par, which means "Stars on Earth" in Hindi. The movie had no subtitles, so understanding it was really hard, but I got some of it, and it was understandable even without words. It was really interesting as an experience to see a movie without understanding the words that people are speaking and only get the story from the visual. It is about a little boy who has dyslexia and yet also about India and the places, lives, and positions that a boy or man can have within this country. I really loved it.

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Yesterday a few of us went into Hyderabad to explore some more. This is truly the biggest city I have ever seen. It's the 5th largest in India, which is terrifying because the idea of something bigger is not possible in my mind. At the center of the city is the lake, Hussain Sagar, which separates the old city, Secunderabad, from the new city, Hyderabad. We went to a the modern art museum (which was really amazing) and a planetarium (which was adorably Indian in how excited it was about itself). There are some hills at the center of the whole city, near the lake, where the Hindu temple Birla Mandir stands, looking out onto the lake. The area around the temple feels totally different from the rest of the city. You have to walk up steeply inclined, narrow streets, filled with various vendors and stores, all winding in and out of one another. When you reach the top, you must deposit your shoes, all cell phones and all cameras before being allowed into the temple itself. The temple is actually really new, and incredibly beautiful. It is all white marble, and is dedicated to Lord Venkatesawara (I don't know who that is actually.) All along the outer walls are engraved depictions of stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and each of the main gods of Hinduism has their own shine where people daily come to pray and just sit. The views from the top of the temple are spectacular, and it from here that I first really saw how gigantic Hyderabad actually us.

It is not a city in the way a US city is: that is, there aren't tall sky scrapers, or business districts, or large apartments in one congregated area, instead the city is just an expanding mass of small streets and junctions that all have the same kind of stores: bike repair, fruit stands, home appliances, book stores, restaurants, hotels. As the city has grown in recent years from all the tech companies from the US that build their corporate centers here, the city is expanding out towards where my university is. High-Tech city, as it is called, is the area around where we live, holds all the tech centers and corporate buildings. Apart from this area, Hydereabad is just a giant village, full of thousands of little streets, the same stores, and tons and tons of people. From above it all, it was incredible to look down and have it all appear to work so smoothly. Looking out from the temple was so peaceful, and the city seemed to function, flow, and work below me. And then I rememered, immediately almost, the chaos of the city at the street level: the smells, the cows, the dirt, trash, dogs, people, cars and buses. From above it seems to work, but living in it, my host father really did get it right: Hyderabad is like a broken ant hill.

We sat and watched the sun set, I said goodbye to the sun, giving him up for the night to you all back in the states. It is such a cool and weird thought to realize that, as the sun was setting for me last night, it was rising for you all at that exact moment. To look out and realize that out and down was home is weird and quite amazing. And then we realized that the sun had set, not below the horizon line, but a good distance above it: the sun set into a thick layer of pollution and haze that lies between the sky and the ground. It was so strange to feel so peaceful, to be living in this moment of real beauty and life, and then be reminded so strikingly of humanity and our impact on our world. I've never seen the product of mankind's waste and pollution so apparent and obvious before.

Looking around at the city that I am living in I got another taste of what Indian life is like: that is, an entire country of people who actively believe and live their religion each day. The temple was full of people all come to worship, pray, and just sit above the chaos of the city and enjoy the sunset. The thing I love so much about Hinduism so far is how welcoming it is, how open it is to people who believe different things. The religion is so incredibly accepting of all other faiths, it feels like an affirmation of the idea of unity of humanity, within a structured religion. I really love it. A perfect example of this: walking around the temple are carvings of the ancient texts and stories of Hinduism, depicting stories of heroes and battles, lessons of life and self realization; across a small walkway are three panels, each dedicated to the teachings of other great thinkers: the words of Confucius on one, Judaism and the 10 commandments on another, and Christianity and Jesus' words on the last. Standing proud in the middle of the lake way below is a statue of Buddha, and off in the distance are the Muslim Qutub Shai Tombs, where the ancient Muslim rulers and their wives are buried. This city is so alive with the idea that all religions speak a common language of spirituality. This seems unique to Hinduism, at least in my limited experience with it and other religions. Where else would you find the writings of Jesus, Moses, Confucius, Buddha, the Koran, and Rama all in one place on the top of a hill, than in a Hindu temple in Hyderabad looking out as the sun sets into pollution. This country so full of dichotomies and contrasts.

Maybe I am romanticizing it all, but at least on first impression it feels great to see a culture that keeps its religion so central to daily life, and to have that religion accept all people regardless of how they believe. It feels like the solution to religious conflicts (and what conflicts aren't religious at their core?) that people have searched for for so long. I've run away with my thoughts, but it feels good to find something like this.