Kyaa chal rahaa hai?

Dharavi

2008-05-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Christopher (see below post) and I spent a three-day weekend in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the largest city in India and one of the largest in the world. Mumbai has an official population of 19 million, and seems to me like New York (financial epicenter) and LA (entertainment epicenter) combined, except that over half of the people in Mumbai are desparately poor and live in slums. It was a pretty wild combination of sights, sounds, smells, and people, and I loved that there was something going on 24/7. It made Bangalore seem like a sleepy little town.

The most interesting thing we did there was tour a slum area called Dharavi. With over one million people, Dharavi is Asia's biggest slum. In 2003, the UN reported that one billion people - or 1/6 of the world's total population and 1/3 of the world's urban population - live in a slum, with that number expected to rise to TWO billion over the next thirty years. Increasingly we find that the rural poor are migrating to cities and becoming the urban poor, which has pushed the state of urban housing to crisis levels. While possibly a more urgent concern than ever before thanks to rising urban populations, slums are nothing new. A slum is created when a bunch of people with nowhere to live - always poor, often immigrants - begin squatting on some undeveloped piece of land, usually that is public. Often, the government will respond by blustering and making threats and trying to kick people out for a while, before conceding the land and offering minimal legal protection and facilities such as running water and electricity.

Mumbai's situation is especially interesting. The government passed an act in 1995, which offered an amnesty of sorts to existing slum areas. Those areas could remain, and basic utilities would be installed, but future slum-dwellers were guaranteed nothing. Therefore, in communities like Dharavi, you see buildings that pre-date 1995 and are equipped with running water and electricity, as well as those that have been illegally added since and have no facilites. Dharavi, in particular, is in trouble because what used to be an undesirable piece of land on the outskirts of Mumbai is now prime real estate located between two rail lines in the heart of the city. There is a scheme underway to allow private development in the area, with provisions for those slum-dwellers who have been there since 2000 (the 1995 crew and then some) but none for the thousands and thousands of people who arrived since. Hence, we will likely see a mass upheaval and migration of poor people to some new slum on what is now the outskirts of the city, and the cycle will begin again.

Dharavi is not a frightening place. It is filthy and crowded and the living conditions are abysmal, but the streets are orderly (sort of), people are productive, and industry abounds. In fact, Dharavi's total yearly export amounts to $665 million. There are many neighborhoods within Dharavi, each of which is devoted to some type of industry. We saw potters, tanners, women making papad (a spicy cracker thing), and people sewing garments and luggage in back-alley sweatshops. The largest industry in Dharavi is manual recycling, and we observed the process of cleaning, melting, dyeing, and reforming plastic waste into small black pellets which are sold to manufacturers by the kilo.

Cameras were taboo on our tour (and for good reason), but I found images on the internet that reflect exactly what we saw and I want you to see them, too. Credit for these photos goes to a variety of sources; ask me if you really want to know which ones.

Dharavi is mostly one- and two-story buildings with a few high-rises resulting from failed government redevelopment schemes.

Houses are made of anything and everything. The ones in the picture above are patched together with corrugated metal and tarps.

Garbage and raw sewage are everywhere. I can only imagine what it looks like during monsoon season.

There are lots of informal (and illegal) electricity-sharing schemes between the pre- and post-1995 homes. You can purchase from your neighbor enough electricity for a lightbulb and television for, say, 200 rupees per month (five dollars). Same thing goes for water.

Many times, entire multi-generation families will share one- or two-room dwellings. The entire community of one million people is located on a one square-mile plot of land, so it's safe to say that it's pretty crowded.

These workers are recycling cooking oil cans. They wash the containers and steam off the labels before selling them back to the manufacturers. Besides cooking oil and plastic, workers here recycle aluminum, cardboard, and glass.

Within Dharavi, there is a community of Muslim tanners that immigrated from Tamil Nadu - a state on the other side of south India. Here they are laying the processed animal skins out to dry.

The potters' quarter - known as Khumbarwada - is one of the more affluent neighborhoods within Dharavi. Some potters make up to 10,000 rupees per month, or $250.

Round-the-clock sweatshops are everywhere. We saw people making garments and luggage for 80 or so rupees per day - far more, however, than they earned in the rural communities all over India from which they emigrated.

Despite the squalid conditions, life is just life in Dharavi. Children go to school, people worship and celebrate, and families do all the normal family things.

There are something like 26 Hindu temples, 12 mosques, and 5 churches within Dharavi. (Those numbers are off the top of my head; don't quote me.) With a few notable exceptions (such as the 1992 riots between Hindus and Muslims that swept Mumbai), Dharavi's diverse residents get along remarkably well.

Seeing the bit of Dharavi that I did had a big impact on me. It's overwhelming, it really is. It's hard to confront a world where, within the same city limits, some people are spending $500 on one night in a hotel, and some good and very hard-working people don't see that much in a year. I think most of us would like to “do something”, but don’t really know where to start. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm no expert on social change, but I think it starts – and ends – with every person’s own heart and mind. You may find yourself overhauling urban housing policies in Mumbai someday, but it’s far more likely that you will have a more subtle impact. That’s okay, though, because the cumulative impact of many caring, knowing people adds up to a lot – more even, I think, than the impact of a few people who are hell-bent on drastic change. We owe those few people a lot, but we shouldn’t let ourselves off the hook because we’re not among them. And even those movers and shakers need to make sure their hearts and minds are in the right place. So what can we do? We can remember to be so grateful for what we have, we can stay informed, we can consume thoughtfully and share freely, we can pray for peace and equality, we can take care of the people we love, and we can try to be very, very broad about who it is that we love.

Okay, fine.

2008-05-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while. Things are well here in India. I've been busy. I keep meaning to update this blog, but this weekend I saw something in Mumbai that I really want to tell you all about, so it finally compelled me to write. First, though...

I've been getting a lot of flak from people who saw my profile on Facebook change to "engaged" and think I haven't spilled enough juicy details of my life lately. (Will someone please remind me how we caught up on all the gossip before the advent of the Facebook Relationship Status?!) I never meant for this blog to be all about me (more like all about my experiences in India), but I guess it is kind of a crazy story and deserves at least a brief telling. By way of explanation, let me just transcribe a conversation I've had about 50 times this month.

Me: ...well, actually I'll be going back to the States at the end of the summer.

Them: Oh really? How come?

Me: I'm getting married at the end of the year.

Them: Oh wow! Congratulations! I didn't even know you were dating anyone...did you meet him in India?

Me: Um...yes.

Them: So who's the lucky [or unlucky, depending on your perspective] guy?

Me: His name is Christopher.

Them: So is he Indian?

Me: No, he's American and also from Seattle.

Them: So he's working in India also? For how long?

Me: Actually, he lives in Mali, West Africa.

Them: Oh.

Sometimes they get sidetracked by offering congratulations at this point, but sometimes they stare blankly, in which case I keep going.

Me: We got engaged when he visited me in India last month.

Them: That is so great! So what is Christopher doing in Mali?

Me: He's a volunteer with the Peace Corp.

Them: How long has he been there?

Me: Almost two years.

This is where they stop to try and add all the pieces up and think, "Hmm...both from Seattle, but he's been in Mali and she's been in India. If he's been there two years, that's a pretty serious long-distance relationship...how come I haven't heard about this guy before? I thought she was dating people in Seattle before she left for India. Wait, didn't she say they MET in India? I'm confused." At this point I usually put people out of their misery and clear things somewhat up by saying...

Me: So actually we weren't dating all along. Things started to get pretty serious long-distance, and he came to India to visit and everything fell into place and we decided to get married.

Then if they're really bright they'll say...

Them: Wait a minute. Didn't you just say you met in India?

Then I have no choice but to say...

Me: Okay. So the whole story is that we met online last summer while I was still in Seattle and he was halfway through his stint in Mali. We began this amazing correspondence, talked nonstop for months, and fell in love before we'd even met in person. Then, he came to India last month and it was as great as we knew it was going to be and he asked me to marry him on our second day together.

By now people are usually stammering for something to say, usually some variation of...

Them: Oh my gosh! That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard!!!

...or...

Them: You're bloody crazy. You know that, right?

So that, folks, whether romantic or really bloody crazy is the true story of how I met Christopher. The answer to your second to last question is December in the Seattle LDS temple, and the answer to your very last question, which I realize I will never, never, never live down in my whole entire life is...http://www.ldssingles.com/. Baby.

Microfinance in pictures

2008-02-25T01:05:00.000-08:00

After over a year with Unitus, I finally had the opportunity to see some microfinance in action last month and I thought I'd take the chance to give a quick explanation and post some pictures of my visit to a center meeting. Broadly, microfinance is financial services offered to the poor. These can include credit, savings, insurance, remittances, and other products. What people usually think of when they hear "microfinance" (and what Muhammad Yunus is famous for) is essentially a small, short-term business loan offered to a very poor woman. The typical microfinance client is too poor to secure a loan with collateral so she joins a group of five or so women, all of whom receive loans from the same MFI (microfinance institution) at the same time. While money is received and repaid individually, no woman in the group can receive a second loan until she AND her group members have paid back their loans. This innovative lending methodology has resulted in repayment rates that are much higher than those found at traditional banks. The women use their loan capital to purchase the supplies or equipment or workspace they need to engage in some type of business. One might purchase chickens with the upfront money, and then sell the eggs to generate ongoing revenue and pay back her loan. Another might invest in cooking equipment so that she can sell food on the street. The possibilities are endless. In my opinion, microfinance is revolutionary because it challenges the idea that the poor can't be trusted with money, or need to be retrained. Poor people have many revenue-generating skills and money management skills - they simply lack collateral and access to capital. Many MFIs lend exclusively to women because repayment rates tend to be higher, and the social impact tends to be greater. A greater percentage of a woman's profits will go towards things - such as education - that benefit her family far into the future.

This center meeting was held about 45 minutes away from the city center, in one of Bangalore's large stretches of slums. These women were sitting on the floor of a member's home with many of their children crowded around the doorway.

Every woman had a yellow book (like the one that the woman in the blue sari is holding) in which they record their loan repayments and contributions to their savings accounts. They proudly showed the books to me and I observed that the average savings deposit was 50 rupees (or a little over one US dollar).

The weekly or bi-weekly center meeting is a chance for women to make loan payments, connect with the other members of their group, and ask any questions or talk about problems they were having. In general, they were chatty and seemed happy to be there. I kept getting distracted by their beautiful children, however.
Here are some scenes from their neighborhood. Some women who receive microloans become incense rollers.
The slums are filthy, filthy, filthy, and CROWDED, but not entirely depressing places to be. There were bright colors and beautiful, friendly children everywhere.

Betcha never seen...

2008-02-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

A bloody, severed cow head,

a nun in safety goggles using a weed-whacker,

a man with about forty tin pots on the back of his two-wheeler,

Or, well...enough said.

Just a hint of things to come...

2008-02-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I ran in a half-marathon on a commune in South India under a fake name. Ha! I've always wanted to start a story that way. It actually happens to be true, though. I owe you all many updates, and I will catch up, but here's a little something for starters. That's me, Benazir Muthubuthuamanarajan (not quite sure on the spelling of my last name).

Cows on the Beach

2008-01-01T01:42:00.001-08:00

Is that weird? I can't tell anymore...

I took an impromptu weekend jaunt to Gokarna, a tiny town on India's western coast. Gokarna is known for two things - fabulous beaches and really holy temples. The temples are so holy, in fact, that I wasn't allowed inside them, and was forced to spend all my time on the beach. Rough.

Anyway, Gokarna (or "cow's ear") is so-called because Hindus believe that Lord Shiva emerged from the ear of a cow there. There's a pretty great story about the history of Gokarna. Ready? Hindu gods attained immortality by worshipping a divine lingam (uh...phallus) that belonged to Lord Shiva. A king, Ravana, wanted said immortality so he approached Shiva and asked him for the lingam. Shiva said, fine, you can have my penis statue but DON'T PUT IT ON THE GROUND. I'll give you one guess what happened: Yep, long story short, Ravana was tricked by some other gods with ulterior motives, and the lingam ended up on the ground. Ravana tried to lift the lingam, but to no avail. It remained rooted to the ground and the Mahabaleshwar Temple was constructed around it. Like I said, I wasn't allowed inside, but here's what the outside looked like.

What I DID do was spend about 48 hours straight on the beach. Since my parents believe that family reunions in Utah are the funnest vacations ever, I'd never been to a tropical beach before and it was everything the Hawaiian Tropic commercials make it out to be - azure sky, palm trees, people with cameras in my face ALL DAY LONG. "Madam, one picture?" It's a little surreal to think about how many random photo albums in India I'm in.

The beach I spent the most time at is called Om Beach, named because it looks like an inverted "om" sign.

There was a whole class full of kids in pink uniforms that came with their teachers to play at the beach...

Some children hanging out in front of their house on the edge of town...

There are people whose job it is to scale palm trees - unaided - and harvest coconuts and palm oil. As I was walking along, I heard one such man yelling in the trees...

Okay, I think that's about it. Sorry to post so much at once. In parting I would only say, YOU SHOULD COME TO INDIA. Seriously. It's amazing. And if you come in the next year or so I'll be your tour guide!

Christmas in India

2007-12-31T23:52:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all for your happy Christmas wishes. I had a great holiday here in India. I missed things, of course (like family and the Messiah sing-a-long and Grandma's chocolate mint brownies [that I would have eaten this year since I'm not vegan anymore!!!]), but I think this will truly go down as one of my best Christmases. It was refreshingly uncommercial (except for the creepy skinny Santa in a pale-faced mask at the bank), and, as it is not widely observed here, everyone that did celebrate Christmas seemed to do so with a closer eye on the true significance of the holiday. I participated in a hilarious Christmas program at church, went to midnight mass at an Anglican church, spent time with friends, and was fed more food than I have ever eaten in a 24 hour period. I think I'll have South Indian food every Christmas from now on to remind me of the hospitality and generosity I was shown by the wonderful people here. (Mom, I know you always have tamales on Christmas; can we have tamales AND masala dosa next year?)

I know I have a pretty mixed audience on this blog, but I'm hoping you'll indulge me in a bit of reflection about what being in India for Christmas meant to me spiritually. You can skip to the pictures if you're not interested.

I've always loved the Biblical Nativity story but somehow being in a poor, dusty, hot country on Christmas gave me a new appreciation for some of the details of the story. For example, did you know it is 97 km (60 miles) from Nazareth to Bethlehem - the distance that Joseph and Mary traveled to pay taxes in the final stages of Mary's pregnancy? To take a BUS on the rocky, dusty, buggy roads here can be uncomfortable; I can't imagine what it would have been like on foot or by animal on the primitive roads that existed two thousand years ago. And speaking of animals? They stink. A lot. The whole city smells awful, partly because there are cows (and dogs and goats and chickens and cats and camels and enormous rats) roaming around as they please, pooping wherever they feel like it. To give birth among a bunch of them and their poop? Gross. By the way, living in a place with breathtaking economic inequalities, it's easy to observe that money makes things happen. If you can pay you can get what you want because people with less money than you will get it for you. That Joseph and Mary were relegated to a stable speaks not ONLY to the fact that there was no room in the inn, but also that they were poor. If they had had enough money, they could have gotten whatever they needed. That's just the way it works when some people have money and some people don't. Lastly, I was walking home at dusk one night last week and observed a number of destitute families leaving the construction sites at which they work as day laborers, headed for the makeshift shacks along the side of the road in which they sleep at night. Whole families were in transit, weary moms clutching babies, old men and women carrying heavy tools, filthy children (their dirty faces belying the fact that they were not in school but shoveling sand all day), and men that looked like they were too tired to take another step. The thought hit me that these families - poor, dark-skinned, tired, shuffled from place to place - probably look a lot like Joseph & Mary's young family looked, on the run in the Middle East for some number of years with at least one small child in tow. Anyway, it was interesting to have a new look at a story that tends to get sanitized, whether through religious idealism or irreligious disinterest in the origins of the holiday.

Okay, that's enough pontificating for now. Here are some photos of our Christmas program.

This is Elder Janga, as Jesus, and Bobby (in my bathrobe), as the callous sinner who rejects the message that the shepherds offer and then, after having been blinded in a horrible accident, meets Jesus thirty years later, repents and is healed. What, you don't remember that part of the Bible? That's probably because they added it. Anyway, it seems like the TYPE of thing Jesus would do, right? :)

None of my pictures from that night turned out very well, so excuse the poor quality, but this is Aishwarya, an 11-year old girl whose family I joined for dinner #1 on Christmas Day.

These people are roughly my age; here they are performing a little "lessons & carols" (I was at the piano). From left to right is Deepa, Saritha, Chennaswami, Mega, Prebhu, Manuel, Charles, and Pinto.

I cannot get over how beautiful Indian people are. These teenaged girls sang a couple of Christmas songs during the program. (I teach piano lessons to the one on the right, Subashini.)

Scrabble will always be my favorite sport

2007-12-30T21:22:00.000-08:00

I'm a little behind, folks. Let's see if I can't catch you up on some noteworthy moments from December. There was a cricket match in Bangalore that I attended with some friends. In case you know as little about cricket as I did, it is a little like baseball except that (and you thought a baseball game was long...) one game lasts for FIVE DAYS and your ticket comes with lunch and tea coupons, a fact which amused me to no end. I went to the first few hours of the first day of the match between India and Pakistan. Given that the contenders were India and Pakistan I was halfway hoping for a good riot to spice things up, but no such luck*. We sat on plastic chairs and waved signs and watched the game and yelled for India, and that was pretty much it. Oh, and we got on television. And I'm pretty sure India won.

*For a little primer on Indo-Pakistani relations, and why I was hoping for a riot**, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_relations.

**I wasn't really hoping for a riot. Riots are bad.

This is what the field looks like...

This is an infamous Pakistani fan who travels to all the team's games...

This is my friend Lizzie and I holding up the witty sign (made by Abhilash) that got us on television...

And these are the true India fans, Shash and Abhilash...

Why you shouldn't take the elevator in a developing country

2007-12-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a funny thing about Bangalore. It's modernizing rapidly, but there are still so many old customs that you see amusing things like a horse-drawn cart cutting off a luxury car, or a Buddhist monk in saffron robes walking down the sidewalk talking on his cell phone. (I have to do a better job of carrying my camera around...sorry.) Or, you can find some convenient modern devices and technologies but then the infrastructure isn't reliable enough to keep them working so you end up with things like daily power outages, or horrible traffic jams because a lot of people can afford cars now but the government hasn't caught up with good roads or parking. OR your apartment building conveniently installs an elevator and then it breaks down and you get stuck in it. That is what happened today.

I never take the elevator, right? I live on the fourth floor and I like the bit of extra exercise. Today, however, I had heavy bags and the stairs were all slick because it rained so I did. Anyway, I'm not sure if the power went out or the elevator just up and died, but all of a sudden it stopped between the second and third floors. It wasn't that far; I knew I could safely jump provided I could get the door open, but the door wasn't budging. So I knocked and banged and yelled for a while, but no one came. Then I tried kicking the door down and that didn't work either. So then I called the 1-800 number posted in case of "elevator breakages", but it turned out to be more like a 1-900 number if you catch my drift. So then I sat there quietly and tried to think of a new plan and in the meantime called my parents just to say hello and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. I accidentally called too late, though, and woke my dad up, and we had the following conversation.

Anna: Hi Dad.
Dad: (groggy) Hi sweetie.
Anna: Oh oops, I called you too late, huh? Sorry about that.
Dad: It's okay.
Anna: I'm stuck in an elevator.
Dad: That's nice. I'm going to go back to bed now.

*Click*

So then I sat there quietly some more and then FINALLY noticed this little lever jammed between the elevator and the door way up high. Praying that it was the "open the door" lever, not the "release the elevator and send it plummeting down to the basement" lever, I gingerly pulled it and was in luck. The door opened and I and my bags jumped down to the second floor and took the stairs the rest of the way up.

Moral of the story: Next time you're stuck in an elevator, don't call my dad. Just pull the lever.

Cacophony

2007-12-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

I just woke up in the middle of the night after a weird dream, and am now having trouble going back to sleep. Sometimes I don't sleep that well here, which is odd for me because, as some of you probably know, I am notorious for being able to fall asleep anytime anywhere. I think it's because the ambient noise here is SO different than anything I'm used to. When I'm up and awake it doesn't bother me, but at night my brain doesn't quite know what to make of it. I had never thought much about the different sounds of different places, but I'll tell you what: Even if I was blind I would know I was in a different country. Well, there's the smell - an aromatic amalgam of sewage and exhaust fumes - but besides that even...it just sounds so different. Right now, in the middle of the night for example, the stray dogs are going nuts. There are stray dogs everywhere here (the doc at the travel clinic told me that 95% of them have rabies...and then she told me that the rabies vaccine was $800). They are usually really mellow during the day. I don't try to make friends with them or anything, but I don't mind walking right by a pack of them. At night, though, they go crazy and sometimes it sounds like they're fighting with each other.

Roosters start crowing at about 4:30 and don't let up for a while. Another new sound is the muezzin from the neighborhood mosque which calls its worshippers to prayer five times a day. I can reliably hear it at 5 am, if I'm up, and sometimes I hear snatches throughout the day if there is a lull in the traffic noise. (The mosque pictured here, by the way, is not the one closest to me. This is the Jamia Masjid, Bangalore's most impressive mosque which was built in 1940 and can accommodate up to 10,000 worshippers!)

At about 6 am, the traffic starts up, which means the normal rumbles and engine-sounds and screeching of brakes, but which also means the HORNS. People use their horns here like people in the US use their turn signals - I'm not kidding. Anytime they pass someone or turn a corner, or want to let a pedestrian know that they'll be whizzing by, they lay on the horn. Different vehicles have different sounding horns too, which is funny. Trucks and buses make these low, deafening blasts, cars have a really screechy horn, motorbikes have a high-pitched, almost musical series of beeps, and autorickshaws make a sound as though the devil himself is running his fingernails down a chalkboard. I guess this is so - if you get hit - your dying thought can be, "That bloody [fill in the blank]!" The other funny and noisy thing about traffic is that vehicles play a song when they back up. All day long I walk around hearing snatches of Fur Elise and American Patrol, which never fails to make me laugh. I have to say, though, the only close calls I've had with cars (besides one that happened before I understood how to cross a street), were with ones that were reversing out of a driveway or parking lot, so maybe they're onto something. I still maintain, however, that just because your car is blaring "Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me..." doesn't mean you don't have to use your rearview mirror when you're backing up.

Anyway, at 6:30 the security guard starts coughing so forcefully that every morning I'm afraid I'm going to walk out of the apartment and find him keeled over with his lungs hanging out of his mouth. At about 7, the vendors noisily open for business. There's an old woman who sells brooms and wanders from house to house, hollering at the gate. There's a kid who yells something in a language I don't recognize. I'm not sure what he sells. And at about the same time, the workers at the construction site just adjacent to my apartment complex wake up and start pounding. At this point, traffic is in full force and the city is awake. It only gets progressively noisier throughout the day, and sometimes I can hear explosions, which I tell myself are merely firecrackers that people saved up after Diwali.

Someone told me that the first time I go back to the US it will seem so quiet that it will feel a little unnerving. I don't doubt that. A funny memory that's come back to me a few times since I've been here is that in the middle of the night at my parents' house in Bellevue you can hear the soft beeping of the crosswalk signal that's about a quarter mile away. I'm not kidding that here you wouldn't be able to hear that sound AT the intersection. Anyway, it's been interesting to consider that different places have different "sound profiles" and to compare Bangalore to other places I've lived. And I guess it's no wonder that I can't sleep sometimes. :)

Ethnocentrism

2007-11-28T06:37:00.000-08:00

Indian toilets suck. Western toilets rule. I'm okay with saying that.

A moment of grace

2007-11-26T02:54:00.000-08:00

I was feeling a little sad today because I was missing nature and silence and clean air and the green beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and then I looked outside and saw a full rainbow arching over the horizon, and I realized that you can't get too stuck on your own idea of what beauty is. Here in this big, noisy, dirty city in India, beauty is flowering trees, and textiles, and brown children, and the bangles that even the poorest women wear every day. And today for a fleeting moment, beauty was a rainbow outside my window.

Pictures from Hampi

2007-11-15T05:23:00.000-08:00

The Virupaksha temple, dedicated to the goddess Shiva. The intricacy of the carvings astounded me. They make you take your shoes off - which is par for the course in regular homes, let alone sacred sites - but the stones are BOILING hot and there's elephant and monkey poop everywhere, so it's kind of an adventure. One of the aforementioned pooping monkeys.

A couple of kids hamming it up on the back of an ancient stone nandi (bull).
My favorite thing about Hampi wasn't actually the architecture, but the landscape. There were all these geometrically-shaped, red rocks stacked in precarious ways. It looked like God got interrupted in the middle of a game of Jenga.

I joined a tour group in the afternoon and we hiked up a hill to some ruins that were further out of town. At one point on the walk, we (nine adults) got in the boat pictured here (called a coracle) to cross the Tungubhadra River. One of the most impressive features at Hampi was this stone chariot. I wasn't listening to the tour guide very closely at this point, so I can't tell you how old it is or who made it or what it means, BUT it looked really cool.

At the end of the day I watched the sunset over the ruins from the top of the hill. Not bad.

A few updates

2007-11-15T04:48:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't written in a little while. This time I can't blame a power outage, just my own business and laziness. Here are some updates from my life.

Our office is moving - and good thing, too. There aren't enough desks for everyone and, as the newest team member, I've been floating between conference rooms and apologetically wedging in between people's desks. Today I sat in the "discussion room". That's a room that most Indian offices have near the reception area, which is for handling the many vendors and suppliers and drivers that stream in and out throughout the day. That way they have a place to sit and wait and they don't interrupt the flow of traffic. Other qualities of Indian offices? We have an "office boy" - a great guy named Naveen who takes care of things like errands, cleaning, photocopies, etc. He also brings us lunch every day. (I know, it's a tough life.) Our new office will have a cleaning staff of 4 people who are there all day every day! This seemed like overkill to me until I remembered how dirty and dusty it is in India. You pretty much have to have someone mopping all the time if you want it to stay clean. Oh, and another characteristic of our new office? We are having a puja - a Hindu cleansing ceremony - to bless the office before we start work on Monday. Here's an exchange from a meeting today. Sandeep: "Okay, so now you two have to decide whether you want a priest that speaks Tamil or Telugu." Rama: "Ai. It's so hard to find a good priest these days. We'll have to take whatever we can get." I've never had that conversation in a business meeting before.
A monkey came in through our kitchen window and stole our bananas yesterday. I tried to get a picture for y'all, but it scampered away before I could grab my camera.
I'm almost completely used to being constantly stared at. I understand that I do stand out about as much as one could within a single species. Besides, it's good for me to be the racial minority, and it's good for them to see someone unfamiliar. Because seriously...if India really wants to take its place in the world economy like they keep talking about, they're gonna have to get used to blondes. Other things I'm getting used to include crossing the street (harder than it sounds here, believe me) and haggling with vendors and auto-rickshaw drivers. Things I'm still not good at are eating with my hands (actually right hand only) and converting to kilometers. And something that will probably always bug me is no recycling. At all!
I took a fun day trip to Hampi, a city about eight hours from Bangalore that is the site of some ancient ruins from the Vijayanagara empire. I took a sleeper train there, and an overnight bus back. The train was fun; the bus not so much. Hampi was great, though. I'll post some pictures next.
In general, as I round out my third week here, I'm having a great time. Healthy and happy, if missing you all. Come visit!

Why, how many people did YOU think would fit on a motorbike?

2007-11-08T00:00:00.001-08:00

It's not working so far...

2007-11-07T21:23:00.001-08:00

Stories from an evening walk

2007-11-06T05:29:00.001-08:00

The Catholic church closest to my house has a bright neon crucifix and display of Mary & Jesus. I don't know quite what to make of that, so I won't even try. It is pretty great, though. I live fairly close to what you might term one of Bangalore's Muslim Quarters. This mosque is no more than a three minute walk from my apartment, but the only time I can hear the muezzin is at five in the morning, as the city gets pretty loud after that. Every time I hear the call to prayer I feel like I'm eavesdropping on another century. It is a hauntingly beautiful sound.
As I was walking along tonight, I heard a commotion and looked over to see about six men crouched down and peering under a bus that was stopped in traffic, pointing and talking excitedly in Kannada. They were all riled up about something, but I couldn't tell what. One of them ran up to the front of the bus and told the driver not to move and another started inching his way under the bus. When I crouched down I could see some sort of trapped animal running in scared circles between the wheels. After crawling under the bus and catching what turned out to be a pigeon, he then posed for a picture with his conquest, laughing the whole time. (The whole time I was taking this picture I was scared to death that he was going to release the pigeon in my face, but he didn't.)
Construction sites like this are common around here. I can't ever tell what is being constructed, but there's no shortage of kinetic energy. During the day a site like this will be full of men pounding with primitive tools and dancing between ladders that should have been retired fifty years ago, and women scratching at the dirt with their hands or with trowels, and removing pans of soil that they balance on their heads. Sometimes they curtain the site with blue tarps, but I don't know why.
In an autorickshaw on my way home from a meeting today, I saw these two street kids (the boy in yellow and girl in red in the picture below) darting between vehicles stopped in a traffic jam. They were performing acrobatic tricks and contortions with the metal rings that are draped around their necks in the hopes of earning a rupee here and there from sympathetic observers. I was a sucker, and they got ten from me (a quarter's worth). I can't believe they didn't get killed when traffic started up again, but they're probably used to it. Later on my walk I stopped to talk to them and they got a big kick out of having their picture taken.

What's so different about India?: Part one

2007-11-05T00:42:00.001-08:00

Hi, all. Sorry to have been out of touch for a bit. We've had several power outages in the past few days which, as I understand it, is pretty much par for the course here in B'lore. (I'm actually spared from the worst of it because my apartment has a back-up generator.) This morning's power outage was intentional, due to some building maintenance. It's funny - in the US, a planned power outage would be preceded by a week of nice little reminders and apologies under your doormat with an 800 number that you could call if you had questions or concerns, but in India they just flip the switch. So if I'm ever talking to you and get cut off, or don't return an email for a while, don't be offended or concerned.

One funny thing that happened repeatedly in the weeks leading up to my move (they call it a "shift" here actually) is that when Indian or India-smart people would find out where I was going they would shake their heads and say some variation of, "Oh man. Are you sure? It is SO different there!" When pressed for details, however, they were rarely able to provide high-level specifics about HOW and WHY it is so different. So one of the things I'll be interested in doing here is seeing if I can manage to articulate to people at home and to myself WHAT exactly is so different about India. (Because it is true that everything is.) This will be a running theme so you'll hear about it repeatedly, but here are some notes on things I've noticed so far:

When I posed this exact question to someone I was talking to in the Delhi airport, he gave me the following answer: "I'll tell you what's different. In the U.S., boyfriends and girlfriends live together. This would never happen in India." I thought he was trying to tell me about the nation's entrenched social conservatism, but then he asked me if I had a boyfriend, which, as I later read in a guidebook to India, is a concrete sign of sleazy motives. Unfortunately I hadn't read the guidebook yet, so I answered him honestly, which only made things worse. :) But it probably does still stand as a fair answer to the question of what's so different about India.
I'm actually the most directionally-aware person I've run into here so far. (Those of who you have been in a car with me are shaking your heads in bewilderment right now.) It's not that people don't know where they're going, it's just that they have NO use for north and south, or even street names. (It's actually pretty hit-or-miss whether streets are signed at all.) Even official addresses will say things like "5th cross street, opposite the post office". I asked a security guard to help me find something on my map the other day, when all of a sudden I felt this hand on my arm, and looked down to see this odd, short British guy who told me (say this in a British accent with me now), "DON'T bother showing them maps. They haaaate maps. Even the rich ones don't know how to read maps." I wouldn't exactly say it like that, but it's kind of true. Getting directions seems to consist of rolling down the window at an intersection (or just stopping in the middle of the road...whatever) and yelling out the window to someone who looks like they speak your language and might know where you're trying to go. But I've actually developed a pretty good sense for where I am and how to get the next place I'm going. So to those of you (MJ) who like to make fun of me on this front, I say: I'm not dumb after all, I was just born in the wrong country! So there.
There seems to be a much lower premium placed on the value of independence. People in the office thought it was weird that I wanted to take a couple days off to get everything squared away before I started work. They kept saying, "Just come in! We'll tell you everything you need to know." Or just now, for example, I asked a colleague what kind of doctor I should see for the nasty back pain I've been having since that 30 hour plane ride last weekend, and she said, "Oh! There's this doctor, he's a friend of mine." She then describes in true Indian style how to get to his office ("You know Ulsoor Lake? There's a hospital near the lake called Lakeside Hospital. Well, across the street from the hospital is his office. You go down this curvy driveway and it's the one on the left."), then said she would just take me there tomorrow at lunchtime. I feel like that wouldn't happen between co-workers in the U.S. unless they were really close or one were really sick. (Which I'm not. So don't worry, Grandma. :) ) So anyway, I'll be curious to find more examples of this interdependence, and I think I'll come to really like it.

That's all I can think of for now. Pictures coming soon. I love you all!

I bet you ain't never had no Mint Mischief potato chips

2007-10-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm observing that one of the fun - and exhausting - things about living in a foreign country is that even normal daily things like going to the grocery store are completely new and exciting. After a day and a half of Clif bars and one pricey restaurant meal, I ventured into an Indian grocery store called Spencer's. One of my flatmates, an Indian, told me that I should either have groceries delivered (which all the stores do) or ask the housekeeper, Clara, to pick them up, but before I can do that I had to figure out what my options are. Here's what I got.

Two packages of these amazing fresh flatbread things. Tortillas are the closest thing that come to mind, but they're thicker and a tiny bit greasy.
Some dried and salted broad beans
Basmati rice
Green beans
A papaya (I had to ask an Indian woman how to choose a good papaya. She got me a good one, but she didn't speak English so I still don't know how she picked it.)
A bunch of these crazy tiny bananas
Potatoes
A pomegranate
Some ginger / garlic paste
The aforementioned Mint Mischief potato chips
Gouda cheese (Oh yeah, it won't really work to not eat dairy here. Plus, it's not an ethical consideration because cows are treated so well. And there's no soy - sadness! - so I would probably waste away without the protein. Weird, but okay.)
Onions

The bill came to Rs. 422.13, or about 11 dollars.

What else? I guess I didn't write this yesterday, but by the end of the day yesterday I was so sick to death of being stared at. I know I stand out appearance-wise and I was expecting it to some degree, but still. Today was better though, and I had some fun exchanges with strangers. The book vendor laughed when I asked him how I should have bargained with him (instead of paying list price). Maybe next time I'll actually do so. I also walked a little farther than I did yesterday to some pretty big and commercial streets a couple kilometers from my apartment. I'm starting to get why people call Bangalore cosmopolitan. You really can see every kind of person here - it's pretty great. I haven't yet gotten up the nerve to take out my camera very much (as I'm conspicuous enough as it is), but I will one of these days. I want to try and show you all what this city looks like. It's pretty amazing.

My new stomping grounds

2007-10-28T20:04:00.001-07:00

I live in a neighborhood called Richmond Town. Supposedly it is the nicest neighborhood in the city, but I would have no way to know if that is true or not. I do know it is around the corner from the office, for which I am very grateful. Traffic here is abysmal.

First view of Bangalore

2007-10-28T10:05:00.001-07:00

To be honest I didn't take this picture (thank you, Google Image) but this is exactly what it looked like when I came in tonight. I'm really excited to be here.

The women's bathroom at the Dehli Int'l Airport

2007-10-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not above admitting that this fazed me for a minute. Gets the job done, though, and it was fine once I told myself it was just a cathole in the woods. Minus the woods.

First impressions

2007-10-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

I had a good, relatively uneventful trip from Seattle to Bangalore. It consisted of three flights - to Taipei, then Dehli, then Bangalore. I was way less overwhelmed than I expected to be. It was pretty easy just to take things in stride. Dehli was a little nuts, but in an okay way. I don't feel jet-lagged at all either, though we'll see how I feel tomorrow morning. Here are some random first impressions:

There were a bunch of dudes at the Dehli airport with really big guns - guns that looked like they belonged in a museum. I'm not sure if that should make me feel more or less safe. :)
I've only seen one other white woman so far in India (and actually there weren't very many women out and about at all), and feel like I definitely stood out for being young and white and female and traveling alone. I didn't exactly feel threatened, just conspicuous.
Just because we all speak "English" doesn't mean it is easy to communicate! My driver asked me what percentage of his English I understood. I told him about 75% and he was pretty happy with that. My ears will have to adjust, which is fine.
My baggage arrived! Now y'all just pray for the boxes I shipped to get here safe and sound, and I will be a happy camper.
So here was the surprise portion of my trip: Turns out there are two airports in Dehli, an international one and a domestic one. They are across town from each other and I arrived at one and found out I had to get to the other in not-a-lot of time. Nobody felt the need to make this explicit to me, though, they just kept wordlessly pointing me through a series of dingy corridors. Finally, someone waved me outside to go wait for a bus that would take me to Terminal One. (I was picturing something like a shuttle that would take me to the other end of the airport.) I waited and waited and waited, attracting a flock of men who were hanging around on their lunch break. One of them, a taxi driver (or maybe just a pimp for a taxi company), asked me if I'd like to take a taxi rather than a bus. I declined, but when the bus was late I asked one of the other men, "So a bus will be here at about 2:00, right?" "Maybe." "Maybe, huh? So how will I know if it is coming or not?" He shrugs. "They don't always show up in the afternoon. If the bus doesn't come you take a taxi." So I took a taxi, and think I got ripped off for it too - I'm not sure. I don't really care. It was a fascinating ride through Dehli and I finally made it to the domestic airport.
Everything you've heard or would imagine about traffic in India is true, and then some. There seems to be a high level of trust in the laws of physics and the best case scenario. For example, theoretically there is no problem with four vehicles wedged into three lanes travelling abreast around a traffic circle at 50 miles an hour, right? They just don't see the need for the same margin for error that drivers in the US do. It's simple physics, really. If you're driving and you can observe how fast a bicyclist crossing the street in front of you is going, and you know how fast YOU'RE going, there's really no need to leave more than a few inches of clearance, RIGHT? The horn is used liberally and lane markings seem to be optimistic suggestions. The passing maneuvers would take your breath away. (They did mine, even though I tried not to show it. Best not to watch too closely.) Seriously, though, how would you design a multi-use thoroughfare that could accommodate cars, trucks, motorcycles (helmets? what are those?), buses, bicyclists, tricyclists, pedestrians, auto-rickshaws, cows, elephants, and the odd weird flatbed wagon thing? When you consider what they're working with, it's not so bad.
The security guard at my apartment building is drunk out of his mind. I'm not sure if a drunk security guard is better or worse than no security guard.
Bottom line: I'm really excited to be here. It's gonna be big. I miss you all already, though, and can't wait to talk to you soon!

Wanna buy my car?

2007-10-11T17:07:00.001-07:00

This 2001 Toyota Corolla has good gas mileage and a great engine, but more importantly it has character. We've been through a lot together in the past 17 months. Here's a partial list:

Three speeding tickets.
Two tickets for expired tabs.
One really big ticket (and near-arrest) for driving with a suspended license.
Several court appearances.
One $1500 warrant issued for my arrest when I forgot about one of said court dates.
Two instances of being rear-ended by an idiot without insurance. (The first girl told me she was changing her clothes while she was driving.)
One instance of me being the idiot and taking out my front headlight with a parking garage pillar.
Countless fun road trips and trips to the mountains.

So this car is a guaranteed good time! Let me know if you'd like any real information about mileage (125K), power accessories (doors & window), or price (depends on how much I like you).

You're doing what?!

2007-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Moving to India at the end of October.

I don't know exactly. It depends on how much I like it and what sort of adventure I decide to have next. But probably about a year.

I'll be working for an NGO called Unitus (http://www.unitus.com/). It's a fabulous org that increases access to microfinance--a powerful tool in the struggle against global poverty. I've worked in our Seattle headquarters for about a year and am now transferring to our office in Bangalore, which is now big enough to require a dedicated operations person (that's me).

Way far south, straight up from the bottom point.

6.5 million

Well no, I don't love pollution and heat and grime, but 1.1 billion people manage to make it work so I probably can too.

Okay, I'll try not to hit a cow. I heard the same thing.

Yes, you can come visit me!