We went with the whole group to Tamil Nadu, the southern most state in India, to the cities of Chennai and Pondicherry. I've put some pictures up of the trip. We saw lots of really ancient temples still active today, went to a beach (which smelled and was covered with poop. delightful!), went to an ashram, visited a school that teaches children both standard education and all types of art forms, and we visiting this place called Auroville, which is a utopian community started in the '60s in honor of Sri Autobindo--it function without money, is all communal, and is home to people from all over the world who have decided to dedicate their lives to living locally and in harmony. they drink dynamized water, which means it has been played bach and mozart to remove impure bacteria that comes from the pollution of the planet. The weekend was really fun, surprisingly since we had so many people, and we were traveling by a huge bus, all organized by CIEE. I loved getting away again from Hyderabad. and this time coming home felt great, though sad once more since it made me think of home-home. But I am so happy to be here. I am thinking about myself, and thinking about what I want to do with myself, what I really want to pursue and what seems important to me.
Everyone's first question is, 'Why India?' Here's how I feel about that: I'll tell you when I leave. As time begins to pass I am realizing small reasons--hopefully by the time I leave I will actually know why I came here. For now, besides the obvious "I want to experience another culture" answer, here's what I've realized: I am in India because I want a break to think, to grow, to smell bad, to eat curry, to watch Bollywood movies, to BE in tollywood movies (that's right, im working on it...), to listen to insane Indian pop music, to ride in dance party autos rickshaws. I am here and I am thinking more and more about what I want to get out of this process--what I want it to be like. and I am lucky because I can shape it how I want to. I can travel as much or as little as I want. I can paint every night, every day, if i want to. I could learn sitar, or dance. I could stop using a computer. I have stopped eating meat (though that is more because of avian flue, etc.) I am here and I can take a break from the life at Columbia that can be so stressful and overwhelming. I am here to take a step back and think about what I want my education at this stage of my life (whatever kind of education that even means) to be like. maybe even so i can come back and actually use Columbia--or my life for that matter--for all I can.
I see mounds and mounds of garbage everywhere--there are no trash cans in this city. none. there are more trash cans in my house and at the university than there are in all of Hyderabad probably. Even when I do put things in the trashes around where i live and go to school, the next day I see my trash out in the middle of the field or outside my house in the ditch. So what is the point? There is no recycling system in this whole country. It puts all my efforts at being as carbon neutral as possible back home in the states, into perspective. What possible good can me unplugging my coffee maker do, when here in India, plastic bags, bottles, and trash are burned everywhere. There are garbage fires everywhere--it's how they get rid of the piles of trash here. This world is so much bigger than the United States. It is polluted, and it is dirty, and there are cows on the roads, and trash on the streets. it depresses me
I found out a few days ago that the children who come running up to our cars at red lights, baby siblings in their arms, crying for money or food, are forced by 'pimp' like older kids to get money, give it to the pimp, who then does...what ever he wants with it. I also found out that sometimes beggers here will break the limbs of their children to make them more pitiable so people will give them more money. these kinds of things could never occur to me. i'm still not sure i can believe that people could actually be that terrible to one another--let alone to their children. I don't know what or how I am meant to react to these kinds of fact. They are reality.
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It is becoming ever more frustrating being a woman in this country. I feel the restrictions on my sex from all sides. I can't make eye contact with men that i see; I certainly can't smile at them. I can't make friends with Indian guys, and women seem aloof and uninterested. I can't bike to school, but my house-mate Tim, can. I can't travel anywhere alone, but all the guys on my program can. I can't even go to the nearest town, or into Hyderabad on an exploration-adventure by my self, but the guys can. A few nights ago a couple of us went out to dinner with some Indian guys we met at a bar one night. They were really nice, but so disgustingly wealthy that I could barely believe it. One of them is getting 3 planes at the end of the month and, would we like him to fly us around India? (i mean sure, but what kind of question IS that??) I can't help feeling like these guys, rather than being interested in anyway in who I actually am even getting to know, becoming my friend, are only interesting in impressing me with massive displays of money and influence. It feels so wrong, when we step however briefly, into the world of the rich of the rich within India because that world is just so over the top wealthy. Even trying to compare or rationalize, or believe even, that THAT world is coexisting with the one where children's arms are being broken to make a few extra rupees each day, is horrifying, unbelievable...what it is really I don't know exactly, but it is certainly something that feels wrong and unfair beyond the limits of my normal brain activity.
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love to all.
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good to hear your thoughts & questions about why you are in india. it sounds like this semester is a gift of time to look at your life from a hugely different angle--not something we often get. i was wondering just this morning: "was there something i was originally meant to do w/ my life--i mean when i was born, was there a purpose, and am i fulfilling it, or did i miss it?". so the questions you have asked don't necessarily get answered all at once, or go away as you get older. but they certainly are good questions.
as for your awareness of the super rich and the super poor, what a shock it must be. we are shielded from this in the states, as almost everyone appears roughly middle class. but everywhere in the world, even here in the states, wealth is badly distributed, and the very rich are becoming unbelievably wealthy compared to the masses. luckily, there are some wealthy families, like bill gates & the rockefellers, etc, who give proportionately to their wealth. this is the good that is possible. but newly rich ("new money") is usually wasted on self-promotion and indulgence, as you saw in those young men.
maybe you can someday invent a garbage can for poor countries that reduces the garbage w/o burning it. it could also have a recycling bin, a compositing bin, and a trash-that-is-somehow-decomposed bin--and you would have to invent how to destroy it w/o pollution. there's a good life's work!
--thy mother who loves thee
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