We will head out to Jaiselmer tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I am extremely excited about this excursion, especially after the daily routine here that we've established so far.
Traveling within India is really expensive, so we've made plans and canceled them so many times that I'm glad that we've finally settled on something.
It's terribly hot everywhere and it is the off tourist season so things are a bit quiet.
There are tiny things about Udaipur that are really growing on me. The bright colors of doors here are very eye catching, at least to me. They are bright red, or bright green, or really bright blue or yellow with a hand painted picture of a Raja on a horse or a Rajasthani woman, and the entire door has decorative floral borders around it.
Or the tiny tiny little shops. the smallest spaces, like a bit of space underneath a stair case of some house is turned into a shop.
anyways, the day has been slow and slug and i've felt extremely unproductive. update on Jaiselmer coming up soon :)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Rani Bai
Going to Malaaria, the village, for the second time today everyone's moods were either testy or filled with suppressed frustration. It was an important day, we were going to the village again to not only sit in on the Women's Resource Center meeting but also to talk to female Jati Panchiat members, something that is integral and critical to the making of our documentary. How did they get involved, how were the percieved as they began their work in this traditional and male dominated system, what did they face and what changes do they want to see? these are the questions we wanted answered and the reason why we were venturing out again to meet with them.
of course, the most important days are the days when things never go smoothly and little things end up becoming unexpected obstacles. we were all running late because of all days today we were having trouble finding a rickshaw to get to seva mandir on time to catch the jeep that would take us to the vilalge. we got to seva mandir to find out that the interpreter that was coming with us was not there yet and the car that we were supposed to take was not ready. when we finally did get the car we realized that not everyone would fit in the car so one person had to stay behind.
we followed the same windy and dusty road to the village to go into that same room where the last meeting was held. Greeted with Pushpa ji (who is one of the head members of the Women's Resource Center and has worked with Seva Mandir for a while now to provide women in the village with health and education training) and we were introduced to Rani Bai, one of the female jati panchiat members and also an extremely experienced member of the community. dressed in a red and yellow colorful sari, with beautiful traditional bangles on her arms, hands and her ankles, she sat there a little shy in front of the camera. Then there was confusion about the translation part. Rani Bai would speak in Mewari, Pushpa ji would translate in Hindi and then Tanvika and I would translate that into English. A fairly long process.
Rani Bai spoke to us for a while telling us about different cases, her experiences, and her life. I was already in a testy mood from the morning and the lack of preparation from our part, our audio was screwed up so we could not hear the important things that Rani Bai had told us about her initial involvement and the camera was not charged so we ran out of film and did not capture the last part of her talking about specific cases. Trying to use alternate ways of video would be not only inconsistent with the rest of the footage but nothing could be heard from the ladies that were speaking. Everyone seemed lost and opinions kept on flying around in terms of what we should do. From little things of how long should Rani Bai speak before her speech was translated to trying to decide if we want to make them repeat everything they had said or just move on to the next interview and just make do with what we have, everything seemed to be up in the air. Perhaps it was this frustration, of knowing that some of these women had come from other villages, had traveled and walked miles to come see us and share their stories that made me speak the best hindi that i had ever spoken. through my broken vocab and broken sentence structure i was able to convey my sentiments and concers to Rani Bai and Pushpa ji about what was happening and what we needed to next.
We decided to just screw the tape and filming situation and just go on with the interviews, handwriting down everything that they were saying. It was extremely important for me that everyone get a chance to speak, because we could have just packed up our bags and had come back another day, but these women had walked miles just to come see us. I could feel the frustration of the other group members on our side feeling useless as they just sat there in the heat for 2 hours, 3 hours, not understanding any of the jibberish that was being said, be it Mewari and Hindi, and I could also sense the importance of going on and letting the ladies speak for as long as they want to, so that they feel that their work and their voices are being heard by us.
Rani Bai and another woman, Udi Bai had an amazing air to them. Here we are college kids doing a project in the summer in some far off country with our idealistic wishes and desires for "change". But these women, with their ages, have been fighting and have held on to their self righteous ideas of justice for years on end, organizing amongst themselves and forcing themeslves into systems to ensure that their concerns be heard. I was wholeheartedly inspired by their presence.
At the conclusion of this, we made time for the women that were in the room to also feel like they know us. the other team members on our side took turns stating their name and conveying their sentiments of how frustrating it is not be able to talk to them directly, how happy they are to be here working with them and making this film, and how beautiful and strong each of them were. the funny thing about being the middle person between these two groups is to see the irony in how the sentiments are completley reciprocated mutually, neither group seeing, or hearing rather that they are essentially saying the same things but just in differnet tongues. both groups wished to talk to each other directly but found it so difficult to do so. I would look directly into Rani Bai and Udi Bai's eyes, in awe of how much even the lines on their faces told about the hardships that they have encountered and the things that they have seen, and really listen to them. But then I would have to turn to Pushpa ji, because even though I feel like there is such a connectiong between them and us in the room, I have no idea what had come out of her mouth.
We told them how we felt that this kind of stuff, in villages, women and community members working together is something that we read about in books. to see these real faces and to hear their voices is incredible. and what did they say in return? they said that THEY had heard about these other countries, America for instance, in books and these places and the people living in these places only resided in their imagination, and for them seeing us be so interested in their work was inspiring.
The day had started off with a lot of obstacles and not with the most positive zeal. However the power and inspiration that emanated from that little room in that little tiny village of Malaaria between these women and us was completely worth feeling over losing the footage or not having everythign captured on tape.
As strange as this may sound, these local heroes to me are no less than other notable and worthy figures in history that have voiced and worked for their passion and dedicated their lives to their determination, like harriet tubman, like maya angelou, like mother teresa. i felt as though interviweing these women and being in their presence to hear their stories about how much crap they had to hear from society to organize together to form a more just community in their village is no less of a feat. Half jokingly Pushpa ji mentioned about the respect and authority that Rani Bai had made for herself. She said that if Rani Bai sitting in this room says something, then the person crossing the street would stop to listen to what she had to say.
We have a lot of work to do now. We have to look all of the stuff that we did get on tape and translate and have it typed out which might take hours. we also have to figure out what to do with all the notes of just hearing the stuff we heard from them and incorporating that into the video.
We will meet them again on June 7th for a Jati Panchiat meeting. We had stuffed ourselves back into the car, staggering ourselves to make room for everyone, and Rani Bai was still outside our window saying Namaaste, Dhannivad, and bye to all of us.
involving myself in this, of course i think about how i want to work in Bangladesh and this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to be a part of. And I keep on thinking of how AASHA can be a part of this.
I'll be plotting :)
of course, the most important days are the days when things never go smoothly and little things end up becoming unexpected obstacles. we were all running late because of all days today we were having trouble finding a rickshaw to get to seva mandir on time to catch the jeep that would take us to the vilalge. we got to seva mandir to find out that the interpreter that was coming with us was not there yet and the car that we were supposed to take was not ready. when we finally did get the car we realized that not everyone would fit in the car so one person had to stay behind.
we followed the same windy and dusty road to the village to go into that same room where the last meeting was held. Greeted with Pushpa ji (who is one of the head members of the Women's Resource Center and has worked with Seva Mandir for a while now to provide women in the village with health and education training) and we were introduced to Rani Bai, one of the female jati panchiat members and also an extremely experienced member of the community. dressed in a red and yellow colorful sari, with beautiful traditional bangles on her arms, hands and her ankles, she sat there a little shy in front of the camera. Then there was confusion about the translation part. Rani Bai would speak in Mewari, Pushpa ji would translate in Hindi and then Tanvika and I would translate that into English. A fairly long process.
Rani Bai spoke to us for a while telling us about different cases, her experiences, and her life. I was already in a testy mood from the morning and the lack of preparation from our part, our audio was screwed up so we could not hear the important things that Rani Bai had told us about her initial involvement and the camera was not charged so we ran out of film and did not capture the last part of her talking about specific cases. Trying to use alternate ways of video would be not only inconsistent with the rest of the footage but nothing could be heard from the ladies that were speaking. Everyone seemed lost and opinions kept on flying around in terms of what we should do. From little things of how long should Rani Bai speak before her speech was translated to trying to decide if we want to make them repeat everything they had said or just move on to the next interview and just make do with what we have, everything seemed to be up in the air. Perhaps it was this frustration, of knowing that some of these women had come from other villages, had traveled and walked miles to come see us and share their stories that made me speak the best hindi that i had ever spoken. through my broken vocab and broken sentence structure i was able to convey my sentiments and concers to Rani Bai and Pushpa ji about what was happening and what we needed to next.
We decided to just screw the tape and filming situation and just go on with the interviews, handwriting down everything that they were saying. It was extremely important for me that everyone get a chance to speak, because we could have just packed up our bags and had come back another day, but these women had walked miles just to come see us. I could feel the frustration of the other group members on our side feeling useless as they just sat there in the heat for 2 hours, 3 hours, not understanding any of the jibberish that was being said, be it Mewari and Hindi, and I could also sense the importance of going on and letting the ladies speak for as long as they want to, so that they feel that their work and their voices are being heard by us.
Rani Bai and another woman, Udi Bai had an amazing air to them. Here we are college kids doing a project in the summer in some far off country with our idealistic wishes and desires for "change". But these women, with their ages, have been fighting and have held on to their self righteous ideas of justice for years on end, organizing amongst themselves and forcing themeslves into systems to ensure that their concerns be heard. I was wholeheartedly inspired by their presence.
At the conclusion of this, we made time for the women that were in the room to also feel like they know us. the other team members on our side took turns stating their name and conveying their sentiments of how frustrating it is not be able to talk to them directly, how happy they are to be here working with them and making this film, and how beautiful and strong each of them were. the funny thing about being the middle person between these two groups is to see the irony in how the sentiments are completley reciprocated mutually, neither group seeing, or hearing rather that they are essentially saying the same things but just in differnet tongues. both groups wished to talk to each other directly but found it so difficult to do so. I would look directly into Rani Bai and Udi Bai's eyes, in awe of how much even the lines on their faces told about the hardships that they have encountered and the things that they have seen, and really listen to them. But then I would have to turn to Pushpa ji, because even though I feel like there is such a connectiong between them and us in the room, I have no idea what had come out of her mouth.
We told them how we felt that this kind of stuff, in villages, women and community members working together is something that we read about in books. to see these real faces and to hear their voices is incredible. and what did they say in return? they said that THEY had heard about these other countries, America for instance, in books and these places and the people living in these places only resided in their imagination, and for them seeing us be so interested in their work was inspiring.
The day had started off with a lot of obstacles and not with the most positive zeal. However the power and inspiration that emanated from that little room in that little tiny village of Malaaria between these women and us was completely worth feeling over losing the footage or not having everythign captured on tape.
As strange as this may sound, these local heroes to me are no less than other notable and worthy figures in history that have voiced and worked for their passion and dedicated their lives to their determination, like harriet tubman, like maya angelou, like mother teresa. i felt as though interviweing these women and being in their presence to hear their stories about how much crap they had to hear from society to organize together to form a more just community in their village is no less of a feat. Half jokingly Pushpa ji mentioned about the respect and authority that Rani Bai had made for herself. She said that if Rani Bai sitting in this room says something, then the person crossing the street would stop to listen to what she had to say.
We have a lot of work to do now. We have to look all of the stuff that we did get on tape and translate and have it typed out which might take hours. we also have to figure out what to do with all the notes of just hearing the stuff we heard from them and incorporating that into the video.
We will meet them again on June 7th for a Jati Panchiat meeting. We had stuffed ourselves back into the car, staggering ourselves to make room for everyone, and Rani Bai was still outside our window saying Namaaste, Dhannivad, and bye to all of us.
involving myself in this, of course i think about how i want to work in Bangladesh and this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to be a part of. And I keep on thinking of how AASHA can be a part of this.
I'll be plotting :)
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Jati Panchiat
Seva Mandir is based in Udaipur and amongst the many projects that they do, they work with the 200 villages that are here on the outskirts of the city. They have an incredible number of projects going on dealing with various issues in these rural villages. The partnership between Nourish International and Seva Mandir was the first and we're here to create a documentary for Seva Mandir.
I had arrived to Udaipur approximately 5 days after the other team members were here. Immediately the high of being in India had set me off in high spirits and I was excited to just absorb in the sights and sounds of this place. Going to Seva Mandir was interesting because I had absolutely no idea what to expect at all. Last week we had a meeting with a panel of committee leaders from Seva Mandir and us Nourish members to discuss exactly what we'd be doing, what issue we are covering, what our work schedule would be like, etc etc. We established that within the course of 6 weeks we would complete the making of one documentary. The issue that we are focusing on deals heavily with women's empowerment and the Caste Panchiat system.
I had never before heard about the Caste Panchiat (also known as the Jati Panchiat) system before . As it as explained to us, it is a traditional system within the villages that are typcially comprised of men that gather to resolve civil issues within the village. It's a familial thing so these members are not elected members. Marital issues are obviously a big part of this. Women have always been excluded from this. When they pass by the meeting arena, even if there is nothing going on there, no meetings or none of the members, it was compulsory that they take off their shoes as they pass by to show the utmost respect. Often times the civil issues dealt with domestic violence or polygamy and many of these issues that directly impact women had rulings being dictated from men.
The village we are working with is called Maalaria ( not sure if that's how you spell it, sounds like Malaria) and during the course of the past 40 years Seva Mandir has tried to enforce certain changes in the Jati Panchiat system. Through many years of trying to convince them to include women, this system is now looking towards some progressive change.
and that's what we are trying to document. how this traditional institution of ruling has evolved and how community members percieve this change. the system has not changed entirely and there are a lot of case studies that illustrate that. our task is to talk to village women, jati panchiat members, and other members of the community to not only showcase the jati panchiat system but how women have helped themselves and have empowered themselves to combat the injustices that they have faced.
the initial trip to the village was extremely difficult for me. we traveled on a jeep type thing ( i never get cars) for about an hour and a half and squeezing in 9 people was slightly hard. we passed through roads completely covered with dusts as there was a tremendous amount of construction going on followed by a long and windy and rocky drive to the outskirts. everything i was seeing was new. camels on the sides of the road with huge loads on their backs, women in brightly colored saris carrying heavy loads of bricks on their heads. when we arrived at the village we were greeted by Noja Ram, a gentleman from the village that we had interviwed earlier in the week who had been a member of the Jati Panchiat but then had become invovled with Seva Mandir and had been working with them for about 15 years. The meeting room where we sat was a small room with children and teenagers scampering to look in from the windows. This was our initial visit at the villagt to basically gage the atmosphere, what time of the day would be best for shooting, etc etc.
What sticks out the most are definitely the kids. there were so many kids so excited and happy to see a bunch of foreigners with a whole bunch of cameras and equipment. Although I enjoyed their company so much, the constant circular thoughts of the fact that this is their living conditions for every day life and the way that they will grow up is inescable. there are a lot of conflicting thoughts. i'm no one to think that my background is so much more privileged that i should feel bad for their life. that's ridiculous. at the same time its hard to reconcile why my life should be any better. there's a lot of thoughts going on that's hard to explain, a conversation about this would be better.
Issues of identity have come up in so many different faces so far and it hasnt even been a week yet. a post about that coming soon / later because i have to leave this cafe soon.
I had arrived to Udaipur approximately 5 days after the other team members were here. Immediately the high of being in India had set me off in high spirits and I was excited to just absorb in the sights and sounds of this place. Going to Seva Mandir was interesting because I had absolutely no idea what to expect at all. Last week we had a meeting with a panel of committee leaders from Seva Mandir and us Nourish members to discuss exactly what we'd be doing, what issue we are covering, what our work schedule would be like, etc etc. We established that within the course of 6 weeks we would complete the making of one documentary. The issue that we are focusing on deals heavily with women's empowerment and the Caste Panchiat system.
I had never before heard about the Caste Panchiat (also known as the Jati Panchiat) system before . As it as explained to us, it is a traditional system within the villages that are typcially comprised of men that gather to resolve civil issues within the village. It's a familial thing so these members are not elected members. Marital issues are obviously a big part of this. Women have always been excluded from this. When they pass by the meeting arena, even if there is nothing going on there, no meetings or none of the members, it was compulsory that they take off their shoes as they pass by to show the utmost respect. Often times the civil issues dealt with domestic violence or polygamy and many of these issues that directly impact women had rulings being dictated from men.
The village we are working with is called Maalaria ( not sure if that's how you spell it, sounds like Malaria) and during the course of the past 40 years Seva Mandir has tried to enforce certain changes in the Jati Panchiat system. Through many years of trying to convince them to include women, this system is now looking towards some progressive change.
and that's what we are trying to document. how this traditional institution of ruling has evolved and how community members percieve this change. the system has not changed entirely and there are a lot of case studies that illustrate that. our task is to talk to village women, jati panchiat members, and other members of the community to not only showcase the jati panchiat system but how women have helped themselves and have empowered themselves to combat the injustices that they have faced.
the initial trip to the village was extremely difficult for me. we traveled on a jeep type thing ( i never get cars) for about an hour and a half and squeezing in 9 people was slightly hard. we passed through roads completely covered with dusts as there was a tremendous amount of construction going on followed by a long and windy and rocky drive to the outskirts. everything i was seeing was new. camels on the sides of the road with huge loads on their backs, women in brightly colored saris carrying heavy loads of bricks on their heads. when we arrived at the village we were greeted by Noja Ram, a gentleman from the village that we had interviwed earlier in the week who had been a member of the Jati Panchiat but then had become invovled with Seva Mandir and had been working with them for about 15 years. The meeting room where we sat was a small room with children and teenagers scampering to look in from the windows. This was our initial visit at the villagt to basically gage the atmosphere, what time of the day would be best for shooting, etc etc.
What sticks out the most are definitely the kids. there were so many kids so excited and happy to see a bunch of foreigners with a whole bunch of cameras and equipment. Although I enjoyed their company so much, the constant circular thoughts of the fact that this is their living conditions for every day life and the way that they will grow up is inescable. there are a lot of conflicting thoughts. i'm no one to think that my background is so much more privileged that i should feel bad for their life. that's ridiculous. at the same time its hard to reconcile why my life should be any better. there's a lot of thoughts going on that's hard to explain, a conversation about this would be better.
Issues of identity have come up in so many different faces so far and it hasnt even been a week yet. a post about that coming soon / later because i have to leave this cafe soon.
Friday, May 22, 2009
5 days later feels like i've been here forever!
wow it's been almost a week since i've been here and i don't know where to start! it is still surreal. i'm sitting in a small internet cafe with hot fan air blowing in my face from all angles with cars and auto rickshaws passing by on the narrow windy uphill street that this cafe sits on, while of course cows and donkeys are passing by occassionally as well.
india, oh man how i'm loving this place!! nothing like bucket showers, extreme heat, strange smells emanating from the streets, and obnoxious traffic noise everywhere. and how else do i know this place and i are meant to be? KETCHUP IS SERVED WITH FREAKIN EVERYTHING!! YESSSS!!!
starting from my 15 hour layover (originally meant to have been 12 hours, but you know how flight delays are) in the Delhi airport, i realized that pastries and anything flaky or wheat-y is always served with 2 packets of ketchup. back in the states when i did that people regarded me as strange. no people, i'm just desi at heart. deshi rather.
I was really worried genuinely for being stuck in the airport for that long with my body having no conception of time, or day, or meal times, or anything at all, and i knew that i would have to stay extra extra caffeinated to make sure that i or my luggage doesnt get stolen. but alhumudillah i made a friend :) or rather the friend found me and we ended up talking the entire night which was excellent!
i wish i could update this blog more regularly but i really dont have constant access and i'm always scared that i'm going to spill my heart and guts over some serious heart wrenching issue that i just experienced or have extremely strong opinions about that made me rethink, re-evaluate and re organize my frame of mind in terms of how i view myself and my life, and in the blink of an eye the computer would crash and everything would dissappear and all of those thoughts would dissappear into nothingness in cyberspace.
also now i'm afraid that i'm going to ramble on for so long that you are going to stop reading and click "read next blog" or something.
City Palace in Udaipur
UDAIPUR is located in the southern part of Rajasthan. It is known as the city of lakes, or better yet the little venice of Rajasthan. Too bad we are here in the summer and all the lakes are dried up and the city is parched. The famous floating palace is now sitting on patches of grass. I drink like 5 giant bottles of water and pee once a day. the place is extremely hot and extremely dry. i'm not drinking all that much water just to be healthy, i'm drinking it to be alive.
I knew I would be surprised and pleased with little things but I didn't know what type of little surprises would be around each corner. for one thing Sunrises and sunsets in India are gorgeous :) so is listening to the wide range of birds early in the morning. Our hotel essentially overlooks a lake. and in the morning I wake up to go on top of the terrace to feel a kind of peace that I think is very rare, and it comes from listening to the beautiful sounds of nature. At a certain hour of the morning a bunch of water buffalos make their way into the lake and from the terrace we can see the herd and a bunch of cows cooling off in the lake with their daily showers. It's really awesome to see a city co-exist with animals and birds and everyone is simply doing their own thing :)
the skyline of udaipur from what we can see each morning are rectangular houses colored white, pale yellow and pink etched on the sides of hills, with occasional palaces that loom high above them. the hills overlook the city and it is truly a sight. i can not imagine how beautiful this place must be in the winter when the lakes are filled. it hasn't rained here for 2 years and the lakes keep on drying up. so the level of water keeps on decreasing. global warming sucks.
This is just desribing Udaipur, or briefly describing attempting to describe it. some sights i can't really describe in words.
Other fun tid bits about my experience so far :
- people are EXTRMELY confused by me being here. I'm with a group of 5 other UNC students and they are all white. i'm brown. I speak broken hindi. so when we travel, and I speak in hindi, the automatic assumption is that I am indian. When I say I'm american that leads to confusion, and when they try to ask wait no where are you REALLY from, and i say bangladesh then the confusion comes in as to how i know hindi. i basically seem like a "dumb and in denial city indian girl" hanging out with a bunch of white kids pretending to be a western foreigner tourist. bloody me.
- we've managed to squeeze 6 people in an auto rickshaw. i think we are all trying to prove our inner Indian ness in odd ways
- chaat and aloo paratha here are amazing. and life would not start each morning without that cup of chai.
More to come later :)
india, oh man how i'm loving this place!! nothing like bucket showers, extreme heat, strange smells emanating from the streets, and obnoxious traffic noise everywhere. and how else do i know this place and i are meant to be? KETCHUP IS SERVED WITH FREAKIN EVERYTHING!! YESSSS!!!
starting from my 15 hour layover (originally meant to have been 12 hours, but you know how flight delays are) in the Delhi airport, i realized that pastries and anything flaky or wheat-y is always served with 2 packets of ketchup. back in the states when i did that people regarded me as strange. no people, i'm just desi at heart. deshi rather.
I was really worried genuinely for being stuck in the airport for that long with my body having no conception of time, or day, or meal times, or anything at all, and i knew that i would have to stay extra extra caffeinated to make sure that i or my luggage doesnt get stolen. but alhumudillah i made a friend :) or rather the friend found me and we ended up talking the entire night which was excellent!
i wish i could update this blog more regularly but i really dont have constant access and i'm always scared that i'm going to spill my heart and guts over some serious heart wrenching issue that i just experienced or have extremely strong opinions about that made me rethink, re-evaluate and re organize my frame of mind in terms of how i view myself and my life, and in the blink of an eye the computer would crash and everything would dissappear and all of those thoughts would dissappear into nothingness in cyberspace.
also now i'm afraid that i'm going to ramble on for so long that you are going to stop reading and click "read next blog" or something.
City Palace in Udaipur I knew I would be surprised and pleased with little things but I didn't know what type of little surprises would be around each corner. for one thing Sunrises and sunsets in India are gorgeous :) so is listening to the wide range of birds early in the morning. Our hotel essentially overlooks a lake. and in the morning I wake up to go on top of the terrace to feel a kind of peace that I think is very rare, and it comes from listening to the beautiful sounds of nature. At a certain hour of the morning a bunch of water buffalos make their way into the lake and from the terrace we can see the herd and a bunch of cows cooling off in the lake with their daily showers. It's really awesome to see a city co-exist with animals and birds and everyone is simply doing their own thing :)
the skyline of udaipur from what we can see each morning are rectangular houses colored white, pale yellow and pink etched on the sides of hills, with occasional palaces that loom high above them. the hills overlook the city and it is truly a sight. i can not imagine how beautiful this place must be in the winter when the lakes are filled. it hasn't rained here for 2 years and the lakes keep on drying up. so the level of water keeps on decreasing. global warming sucks.
This is just desribing Udaipur, or briefly describing attempting to describe it. some sights i can't really describe in words.
Other fun tid bits about my experience so far :
- people are EXTRMELY confused by me being here. I'm with a group of 5 other UNC students and they are all white. i'm brown. I speak broken hindi. so when we travel, and I speak in hindi, the automatic assumption is that I am indian. When I say I'm american that leads to confusion, and when they try to ask wait no where are you REALLY from, and i say bangladesh then the confusion comes in as to how i know hindi. i basically seem like a "dumb and in denial city indian girl" hanging out with a bunch of white kids pretending to be a western foreigner tourist. bloody me.
- we've managed to squeeze 6 people in an auto rickshaw. i think we are all trying to prove our inner Indian ness in odd ways
- chaat and aloo paratha here are amazing. and life would not start each morning without that cup of chai.
More to come later :)
Friday, May 15, 2009
I'm off in several hours!
It's hard to believe that such an amazing chapter of life is over. Though some say that college days are the best days of one's life, myself included a lot of times, I'm incredibly excited to see what happens next. There's no structure, there's no rules and no pre-set or pre-formed boundaries that determines the learning experience. My mom got me a really sweet graduation card that says "no more all nighters, no more tests and no more papers...life is now an open book" and that is exactly my frame of mind right now and exactly how I feel right now! Yeah, it's scary but the thrill overrides it.
I hate sharing my writing, but I'm starting this blog to keep you posted on what happens next and to keep you posted on my trip to India for the next 2 months. I'd like to be updated on what's happening in your life as well! I'm not sure how often I can update this blog as I will not be taking my laptop with me, nor do I know how much internet access I will have, but rest assured I will update this as much as I can. Writing has always been a huge source of comfort and release for me and I can already feel the tension of amazing things ready to unfold. This will also be a way for me to feel closer to the people I really do care about the most, and I will be looking forward to your feedback. I LOVE EMAILS. email me at fahmidazad@gmail.com or post your comments here.
I will be leaving for Udaipur at about 6:30pm tonight and will hopefully get there in one piece by May 17th :)
much love, me
(as for the title of this blog, no i haven't seen a sunrise in india yet, i'm still in fayetteville north carolina where the sun has yet to come up, but I can't wait to see the sunrise in India :)
I hate sharing my writing, but I'm starting this blog to keep you posted on what happens next and to keep you posted on my trip to India for the next 2 months. I'd like to be updated on what's happening in your life as well! I'm not sure how often I can update this blog as I will not be taking my laptop with me, nor do I know how much internet access I will have, but rest assured I will update this as much as I can. Writing has always been a huge source of comfort and release for me and I can already feel the tension of amazing things ready to unfold. This will also be a way for me to feel closer to the people I really do care about the most, and I will be looking forward to your feedback. I LOVE EMAILS. email me at fahmidazad@gmail.com or post your comments here.
I will be leaving for Udaipur at about 6:30pm tonight and will hopefully get there in one piece by May 17th :)
much love, me
(as for the title of this blog, no i haven't seen a sunrise in india yet, i'm still in fayetteville north carolina where the sun has yet to come up, but I can't wait to see the sunrise in India :)
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