Ok, I complain about buses and traffic a lot, but yesterday was worse. Yesterday I was in a bus whose engine was deafeningly, cripplingly loud while idling.

It was less like a purring kitten and more like shattering dishware. Like a whole pottery barn, exploding.

It was so loud, in fact, that I couldn’t hear the sirenof the ambulance that was stuck in gridlock traffic* ten feet ahead of me. I watched its red lights blink and flash and I couldn’t hear a thing. It was like that scene in Mr. Holland’s Opus where Mrs. Holland realizes that her son is deaf because all the other kids at the parade start crying when the fire engine turns its siren on, but hers doesn’t.

That was me.

 

*You’re right. Itisextremely problematic that ambulances get stuck in gridlock traffic all the time. That can be content for another early morning blog sesh.

In India, stoves are run by propane gas

In India, stoves are run by propane gas which comes in big, red cylinders. Underneath every sink in this city is a can of propane. I have known for many months now that when the gas runs out–and it will run out–you’ll have to call some unknown entity and pay them some unknown amount of rupees for a new cylinder to be delivered.

I have been holding my breath for my gas to run out, hoping I could make it until April without dealing with this unsightly part of Indian homemaking, but alas!

Mid-oatmeal preparation last Thursday morning my luck ran out.

I called the number of the company that was left here by my predecessor, but I made the mistake of beginning the conversation in English. So he hung up on me.

Not to be outdone, I called him back, this time in my broken Bangla: “Ami gas lagbe. Accountar name “Shekhar,” tik acche?” That’s about all I knew.

“What your account number?” he asked (in English).

“####”

“No, that’s not an account number.” Boom. He hangs up again.

So I handed the phone off to one of my inherently more competent co-workers and had him make the call. I listed to their conversation as best I could, then he hung up and conveyed the point.

I hadn’t withdrawn gas in the last 6 months, he said. That amounts to inactivity. So my account has been closed.

But, I protested, the reason I hadn’t withdrawn gas was because I hadn’t needed it. That’s neither here nor there. In India, families go through gas in less than 6 months, obviously. Anything more than that is deliquency.

In order to get gas, I’d have to re-apply. I’d need a photo ID and a copy of my electrical bill (for address proof) and a letter from my landloard… I’d need to find their office, which is only open from 11:00am – 5:00pm, and I’d have to queue and petition and placate until I got a cylinder.

NEVERMIND I’m still reduced cheese and crackers and cereal in the mean time.

Later I complained about the phenomenon to my landlord and he, too, was amazed that I hadn’t ordered gas in 6 months. At the very least, he told me, you should have ordered a cylinder 4 months in and then sold it to one of your friends or neighbors.

Duh!

All this is to say: India feels like I’m playing a game but haven’t been told the rules. Again and again I’m out–sometimes more painfully than others–and again and again I’m the one saying “Oh, that’s the way this works? How was I to know that?”

To be fair, this isn’t really outside the realm of possible. In fact, it fits really, really well with everything else I know about this place. And getting gas is really no harder than ordering jugs of drinking water or hiring somone to come fix your hot water heater or doing laundry without personally offending your downstairs neighbors.

As far as the game goes, this is totally concurrent.

As it turns out, 6 weeks before I go home, I’m kind of emotional. I find myself hating India as much as I ever have. I also love it sometimes too.

This time is about finishing strong, if not gracefully. About putting processes in place and buying one more pashmina (never too many!) and finally, somehow, saying goodbye.

I have recently found myself sitting underneath the flyover

I have recently found myself sitting underneath the flyover of one of the largest intersections in this city. A few times, actually. The intersection happens to be almost exactly between my flat and the flat where Bill is staying, and it makes for a good meeting location – as good as any screaming loud extremely crowded multi-lane four road intersection can be.

There’s a median right down the middle of the road that, belive it or not, is a nice sort of oasis. There’s no hawkers there, and there’s a metal railing that keeps people from driving over it – with the flyover overhead, it’s really rather cosy. Some city planner picked up on this phenomenon and decided to install little bench-like perches along the median for weary pedestrians (who just froggered their way across many lanes of traffic). In the case of Gariahat, the benches are shaped like tree stumps. Fat, grey, cement tree stumps.

You might think that the underside of a big city intersection is seedy – I certainly did. I assumed lots of illicit things happened there – drugs and prostitution and knifings, oh my! As far as I can see, that isn’t hte case at all. At least not at this intersection. The medians become camp grounds in the wee hours for street-abiding families, but at 7:00pm when I’m coming home from work, they might as well be a public park.

Yesterday I saw a gaggle of young, well dressed deaf Indian men signing to each other. They were all huddled around on the median, chatting away.

Before that I’d begun to notice the prevalancy of good looking hand holding young people on the tree stump perches. They’re young and beautiful and western looking. Catch a movie, grab your girl a latte, and head on down to the Gariahat flyover! They don’t mind me sitting too close to them – they don’t mind any of it. I had a front row seat for their heart to heart–I and the other 16 million of us–as if I belonged there. As if the querulous bus honking and bright flashing signs and all that incessant hollering were part of the romance. It’s like Times Square. It’s like the state fair. It’s like a high school basketball game. It’s like a preschool.

And nobody minded but me.

Once I was sitting there waiting to meet Bill and was joined by a group of street kids. They might have been related, or maybe not. The leader ws a girl who was either 12 or 30, depending on how you looked at her. They hassled me for money a little bit, but eventually we settled into a wonkly little conversation wherein they said 100 things and I responded with my go-to Bengali phrases: “Yes,” “Oh, good!” “Oh God!” and “Ok Ok.”

Where’s your family? I asked and they pointed to the other side of the intersection – the other median. You have a mother? Yes. And a father? Yes and no. No, one boy said, “Baba nay.” I told him I was sorry and we continued talking about just whatever we had been talking about before I noticed the boy was pointing up to the road above our heads. Tara, star, he said. Star, star.

Star? I said and made a little diamond with my thumb and index fingers. Small star?

Small, no! He said. Big, very big star, he said and pointed to the sky which neither of us could see but we both believed was just on the other side of the overpass.

My father is a big star, he said.

I’m still alive.

I’m still alive. It’s Wednesday. I checked emails and edited some work photos  and took a TUMS because my stomach felt a little queasy. = normal.

But something is different here. I’ve taken to leaving work promptly at 6:01pm (or 5:59pm, or, let’s be real, 5:15pm) on the dot. I’m anxious if my bus is slow or traffic is bad. I delight in planning dinner.

The difference is: Bill.

My boyfriend Bill arrived here nearly three weeks ago and I’ve had conspicuously less time to blog. My co-workers have claimed him as their own, referring to him alternately as

“Boyfriend Bill,” (When does Boyfriend Bill get here?) 

“Wild Bill,” (What’s Wild Bill doing today?)

and “Mr. Bill.” (How does Mr. Bill take his coffee?)

He’s committed to staying in this city for the next couple of months, which makes him more than a visitor. It also makes my life here feel more than temporary. Suddenly (and sometimes for the first time) I catch myself thinking “I think I could do this for a while.” It all becomes so sustainable.

This is the post about Christmas.

This is the post about Christmas.

This is what my Indian Christmas looked like:

I spent the first 22 Christmases of my life with my immediate family and, excepting the freak blizzard of 2010, extended family. But that wasn’t possible this year. I knew when I signed on to a year abroad that I would miss important things back home, but that reality was never so present as this last month. My loved ones would tell you that I’ve been particularly volatile these last few Skypes – both hungry for news and photos from home and emotional and sad at the reports of halls being decked, etc. But I happen to live a country wherein I have many good, beautiful, loving friends who opened their families to me. Their celebration of this holiday felt beautiful and real and I hope that I don’t forget it in the merriment of years to come. That said, I will walk to Saint Joseph, MO December 2012 if I have to.

On Thursday December 22nd I flew to Chennai where I was met by some old friends from the Good Shepherd Mission* who greeted me saying, “Oh, you’ve become thin.” Lest I become all puffed up about my hot new physique–Oh, I have been walking more. Cooking with olive oil, you know–the disappointment on their face was evident.

It was chorused by everyone I met: “You’ve become so thin.” (Clause: I haven’t.) “I think you were more beautiful when you were stout,” Henry said. Once I tried to defer what I still assumed was a compliment but was shushed. “It’s OK,” they consoled me. “Living in India is hard, and you don’t know how to cook for yourself.”

A-hem.

When I told them that I cooked for myself most days they poo-pooed me. “No, no. Indian food is hard – it’s ok. It’s ok, you’re still young.”

On the 23rd we prepared for the coming festivities. We cleaned and put up the Christmas tree. All that day and most of the night I was with Henry as he distributed Christmas bonuses to his various employees, then gave out new clothes and food to patients in the AIDS clinic and beggars from out town.

On Christmas Eve I joined Mary to help fluff up the girls in their new Christmas dresses. We lipsticked and eyelined and powdered like they were barefoot porcelain dolls, then gathered for a candlelit Christmas Eve service. The mood was festive – kids danced and we passed around cake that had “Happy Birthday Jesus” written on it in purple icing.

 

On Christmas morning I slept late, got dressed and had a morning dosa, just like every morning. But then one of my friends looked me up and down and said, “Are you going to wear that?” She promptly re-dressed me in a stiff silk sari. I was in and out of it in an hour – I’m a cotton salwar kind of girl.

That turned out to be a good decision because Christmas at GSM is really just all day outdoor eating and festivities. The poor and beggars in Puttur know Henry well and they come to him every Christmas for food. This year, like many before it, Henry hired caterers to prepare more than enough food for the 600 people who came to his lawn to eat. They had giant iron pots of rice and pappu – kilos and kilos of tomatoes, that they sliced in their hands and scraped into the pans.  When they ran out of plates he sent someone for more, because on this day, nothing should keep empty bellies from being filled.

“How do they hear about this?” I asked him. “Do you go around and tell people to come?” Henry looked at me, perplexed, as if the idea that a social service organization would have to advertise, would have to seek clients. “No Sister,” he said. “They just come. They know we’re here so they come.” And I thought: Damn, I should live my life like you.

My Christmas peaked in the company of this little fellow. His name is Sridhar and he’s four. He’s The Man.

That evening I Skyped with my family while they opened presents and terrorized my pet street cat and my mom said silly things like “Ok, I’m gonna open this one for you from Santa” because that makes it more normal that my family bought me things, wrapped them, and then unwrapped them for me, via the internet. Thanks Mom.

(I breathed a sigh of relief when my sister flew back to London because that part of me that was perpetually jealous/sad/lonely/self-pitying was finally relieved.)

After Christmas GSM resumed its normal work. I helped out some, but I snuck away often for naps or quiet reading time in my bedroom. I spent most of my free time with Praveen at the HIV/AIDS centre, with Mary, while she combed and oiled my hair, and with Henry, on his porch, drinking afternoon chai because the electricity was out and there’s nothing else to do in such a situation but have some tea.

I was scheduled to fly out on Friday but thanks to Cyclone Thane and my never-very-dormant fear of flying, I canceled my flight and booked an overnight train home. (My new year was wrung in from a side upper berth on the Coromandel Express. I was too afraid to eat the train food because my friends left me with visions of tapeworms dancing in my head, so I subsisted on cashew nuts and raisins.) I left Puttur at 1:30am on Saturday morning and arrived home to a hot shower and self-prepared omelet this afternoon, Sunday, 2012.

 

*If you have known me less than 3 years or are not a semi-regular attendee at Wyatt Park Christian Church in Saint Joseph, MO, much of this post will be unclear to you.

Good Shepherd Mission is an organization run by an Indian family in rural Andhra Pradesh, (southern India). It was started more than 30 years ago by a young couple and today is home to hundreds of children and sick, old, or extremely poor adults. They also operate a small but impressive hospital, conduct regular medical camps in villages, support village churches, and have recently begun an HIV/AIDS centre.

I came to this place as a precocious but naive 18 year old where I met Henry, the GSM patriarch, and the rest of his family. Henry is a sometimes crotchety but always gentle man, who is alternately sprightly, grandfatherly, and professional. (Henry’s ringtone is a cool jazz version of Titanic‘s “My Heart Will Go On.”) He is also the most genuine servant I have ever known and even if I had had the good privilege of sharing tea every morning with Mother Teresa, I imagine I could find myself in the company of no greater grace or wisdom. (If this sounds like the sort of place you’d like to spend your time or money, I can put you in contact with people who go and give regularly. It’s worth it.)

I have returned to Puttur in the years following that first trip, and have been ever more warmly received at their dinner tables and under their mosquito nets. And even though I’m an unreliable pen pal they continue to love me from afar and welcome me back, hugging me and kissing my hair.

I was awake until 3am on Sunday last

I was awake until 3am on Sunday last because we had an airport send-off to two (of only five) of my interny co-workers.

The night was the build up of hours and weeks of anticipation, because nobody likes to fizzle out. We all had a slow morning, but met for dinner at a restaurant that purports to serve food from Sikkim, but mostly offers a lot of “Tibetan” and “Chinese” dishes.

We made our way to the Victoria Memorial (which is even more stunning at night), in the hopes of a late-night tea picnic, but found it to be surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards and we thought “We’ll just look from here.”

We compromised on a romantic* horse-drawn lighted carriage to the river (for 200 rupees more than we should have paid) so that we could hire a boat (for 150 rupees more than we should have paid) to have mid-river tea and (fake, no bake) cheesecake.

*There were 6 of us in a carriage build for maybe 4 Indian-sized people.

One of my co-plotters brought glowsticks which eventually made their way into the hands of a horse driver, a boatman, and launched down the Hooghly river, respectively.

Then we hurredly packed up two taxis worth of suitcases and shuffled the boys off to China, and then home to tearful moms and jittery younger siblings.

I arrived in July and those two boys were all that remained of the Interns of Christmas Past. I am now the most senior intern in our office which is:

a.) a big deal, because interns are the keepers of a lot of knowledge and

b.) terrifying, cause I know only a little more than nothing about how to survive here.

Taking them to the airport was an odd, surreal experience because I was simulatenously re-living my arrival (when I traced this same route in a car with these same fellas) and pre-living my departure. It was like I was on a teetering tottering teeter totter, and I was cognizant of it.

It’s like you arrive here, and spent the first three months just getting here and being the new girl.

And at some point you leave, and the three months preceeding that are just preparation – you’re just the one that’s leaving next. Someone’s always coming and always going around here.

But I am five months in to a ten month internship and I can feel it shifting underneath me. When I left in June spring 2012 seemed like a lifetime, but now it seems like a manageable tenure and I have been vested with some odd, unmerited authority.

So I did what any responsible unpaid intern with a BA in English would do: googled “non-profit job openings in the greater MPLS area.”

Which was not, you can imagine, reassuring.

Sometimes life is really hard

Sometimes life is really hard, but sometimes this is happening inside me:

 

My friend and co-worker Srestha is a Mrs.

My friend and co-worker Srestha is a Mrs. as of last Monday. Preparations for the day started weeks and months and 20 years ago, depending on how you count it, but on Monday November 21st we all stretched and sucked our ways into our nicest saris and made our way to the church.

The week before my roommate and I hosted Srestha’s bridal shower for the ladies of my office. We bought fresh flowers and ate fresh fruit and made lots of fresh jokes. (Bridal showers are one of the many Western traditions to be adopted into the Christian Indian wedding ceremony. At one point one of the young office interns leaned over to one of my co-workers and said, “Do we have to shower her?”).

 

Go ahead and comment on how clean my apartment looks. I’m not a natural hostess and that’s a hard-earned hospitality.

Then last Saturday was Srestha’s Haldi ceremony. As part of the pre-marriage ritual, all the women (and a few choice gentlemen) gather (first with the groom and then) with the bride. They bring gifts and wear beautiful clothes and eat delicious food. Oh, and they also take the opportunity to rub haldi paste (mostly made up of the very yellow spice turmeric) on the bride’s body. My understanding is that the celebration stems from traditional cleansing practices; today it’s a big fun mess. For the old people, the practice is somber and reverent. For the young people–especially the single women (who Indians innocuously refer to as “spinsters”)–it’s an eye for an eye.

If you need a visual, this might be it:

Or this:

Photos from the actual wedding when I have loads more time.

A couple of my co-workers and I went to Thailand

A couple of my co-workers and I went to Thailand,

partially because Indian law requires that foreigners leave the country every 180 days,

partially because the Asia-Pacific Forum on Human Trafficking was happening in Chiang Mai, and

partially because one of our friends called it an “oasis” and we thought that sounded alright.

 

We were only in Bangkok long enough to catch an overnight bus up to Chiang Mai, but we nearly had to caulk and float our way north. We lived at a guest house and passed our days walking around. We shopped some and ate excessively, and conferenced only when we felt like it. (Hey, it was voluntary!)

For inquiries regarding food, see “delicious,” “cheap,” “street stalls,” and “hand crushed passion fruit smoothie.”

For inquiries regarding conference, see “left early.”

For inquiries regarding waterfalls, see “I scaled a waterfall with only my bare hands (and feet)!” and “didn’t bring my camera.”

For inquiries regarding the prevalence of cowboy hats in Chiang Mai, see “awesome.”

 

 

 

Ok, it’s been a while

Ok, it’s been a while, but I’ve had a busy few weeks.

For starters, Wednesday 26th was Diwali, the Festival of Lights.  (If you’re saying to yourself “But wait – didn’t we just have a post about an uproarious Indian holiday?” you’re right. My neighbor estimated once that if everyone in India celebrated every Indian holiday, there would be 365 bank holidays. (But, to be fair, October is a special month. It’s like the holidaying period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.))

Diwali looks like Christmas lights on every building

And noisy Was-That-A-Car-Bomb? Firecrackers

And tiny clay pots called diyas with oil-fed flames on every windowsill.

It’s beautiful, and it’s not even an especially big deal here. Fireworks and lights are all around, but the city goes crazy on the day-of. This is a photo that a friend sent me – a satellite photo of India on Diwali.*

*OK, so apparently it’s a fake, but it gives you an insight into the Indian cultural understanding of its own holiday, doesn’t it?

Also, there are a lot of fireworks.

My Diwali was spent with good friends and poorly [hand]packed fireworks. Here is a sample of my night:

I came out of the night with a few small burns on my feet and ankles and a ringing in my right ear that didn’t stop until morning.

Earlier that week I failed to send you photos and sweet snacky stories because I spent my good blogging time at a cricket match. That’s right Dad, I went to a cricket match. The English team was playing the Indian team in a 7 hour match and a few of my friends and I had gotten a set of seats. We left work early (but still a good 3 hours after the game began) and left at 10:30pm, hours before the game was over. (India won.)

A former intern at my office was in town and, being English, he was invested in the match. He also agreed to lug a few clumsy Americans after him, which meant he spent the whole match explaining things to us. (That’s right folks – for a few brief shining hours, I understood cricket.)

Understanding it or no, it’s an electric game to watch. At least here. Cricket, like baseball, is won by repeating lots of unimpressive actions rather than some flashy wham-bam touch down, but still my Indian compatriots found every wicket to be a cause celebre. They’d leap to their feet and then, when that wasn’t enough, onto their seats – shouting and dancing and waving flags. For every wicket, which is to say, every time they caught the ball.

They jeered and heckled us because they assumed we were English. “We’re rooting for India!” I hollered once. “No we’re not,” Adrian whispered under his breath. When we left, India was showing strong and the Indian crowd assumed we were slinking out in shame. (Not shame, just embarrassingly tired at 10:00pm.) “0 and 5!” they jeered us as we left. “These two teams have a history?” I asked Adrian and he gave me his British non-smile smile and said, “Well, yeah, you can imagine.”

Also eventful this week: I finished Jane Eyre.

George Eliot, after she finished the tome, said, “I have read Jane Eyre , mon ami, and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. …the book is interesting–only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.“

I mostly agree.

After all that, I packed up and shipped out to Thailand, but that story is for next time.