Karimgunj & SVoice Conclusion

Karimgunj formed around us after a solid six hours of bumpy roads and ruckus honking (after all the months I’ve spent in India, I have yet to condition myself to the strident noise of the streets and highways; Indian horns, unlike their American counterparts, are turn signals, passing alerts, warnings of nearness, and location markers and, as such, are a constant backdrop to driving). Our traveling seminar was coming to a close, and this was to be our last stop on our tour of northern India: Karimgunj, an authentic village in Uttar Pradesh, one the poorest states in all of India.

We had been slowly acculturated to the lifestyle we would be met with while in Karimgunj. Our seminar leader has an impressive forty years experience of living in and researching the village, and her advice was supported with reading material and shorter visits to a village in Rajasthan and a relocated village family in New Delhi. Even still, as our car jolted down streets laid by the villagers in an uneven network of bricks, transitioned onto narrow dirt alleys almost completely blocked by water buffalo with fodder dripping out of their lazily chewing maws, and tilted precariously beside a pond covered with a thick green sludge, I couldn’t help but feel as though we’d made a wrong turn somewhere and accidentally driven into the centerfold of a National Geographic magazine. I’m sure the language barrier didn’t help; these people with their babbling speech, strange customs, destitute condition, and overwhelming hardships just couldn’t be real.

The Brahmin family whose veranda (read: home for the water buffalo) we parked our car in contained three of the five English-speakers that I met in the village, two of which were fluent and one of which had a vocabulary only slightly more workable than the French I retained from high school. We were shown to our string cot beds, introduced to the family, and shown all around while the father proudly pointed out how well their electricity was working (it worked all day, then gave up for the rest of our stay). Let me just say: you know that something serious has happened to you when you take stock of your bathroom facilities (a squat latrine flushed by pouring water down the bowel), note the dead mouse in the corner being slowly ripped apart by a horde of ants, and exalt that this set-up is really very pleasant.

I came to India to experience something new and different, something radical and jarring; as my days here move towards their conclusion, I realize that I have certainly gotten that and a lot more. Not to be Aladdin about things, but it’s pretty much a whole new world over here. I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and collect mosquito bites. I’ve accustomed myself to the dismal quality of Indian bathrooms (now even squat toilets basking in a swamp of unknown fluid have become useable), and I’ve accepted that I’ll always have to strategize if I want to ply a few minutes worth of hot water from my shower. I can walk down the street and dodge cows, wild dogs, and their excrements without batting an eye. “Backwoods farm” and “thriving metropolis” have become interchangeable in my visual vocabulary. In short: India has defied all of my expectations, and it hasn’t always been easy. In fact, all the stories people have told me about how they went to India in their youth, absolutely hated it, and were inevitably drawn back to fall in love have sent shivers down my spine. Don’t get me wrong: despite all of its unexpectedness, difficulty, and foreignness, India’s been a good and worthwhile experience. Four months is a long time, though, and I couldn’t understand the desire to come back.

Until, that is, the village happened. When we first toured the village, a huge throng of schoolchildren trailed us as we walked and engulfed us whenever we stopped to watch something or meet someone. Later, these same children surrounded me to teach me Hindi from what I’m sure was the equivalent of a kindergarten reader. The family’s eldest daughter spent hours applying henna to my hands and feet, we spent nights playing marathon games of Safari Rummy by the light of a gas lantern, and the little girl next door—my favorite girl in the village—found me whenever I left the house, grabbed my hand, and stared up at me with the biggest and happiest smile that I have ever seen. A world like this would never exist in America (talk about your fabulous part-time jobs: in villages someone actually makes cow patties with their bare hands); it’s shocking and brutal and basic, but inexpressibly amazing. In three short days I understood how four months of desperately yearning for the comforts of home can become irrelevant. That’s the power of India: a day, an hour, a minute can change everything.

Things the World Has to See

My two favorite pictures of the Indian five-striped squirrel, taken at the Arya Niwas hotel in Jaipur.



What could be more adorable than a squirrel tea party? I only wish they had invited me!

Visualizing India: Karimgunj and Villages

From November 8 to November 11, I stayed in Karimgunj, an Indian village in the Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh. Although the experience was probably as close to "roughing it" as I've ever gotten, it was also one of the most enjoyable, educational, and inspiring of my entire India experience thus far. Uttar Pradesh is one of the poorest Indian states, but I found Karimgunj to be a pretty accurate replica of other villages we've visited. Hopefully these pictures will give you an impression of what average living conditions are like for most Indians.

This is a typical street in Karimgunj, and pretty typical of a lot of other villiages we've visited. Note the free-roaming animals, the ramshackle houses, and the copious dung piles; all are 100% authentic. Quite a bit different from small-town America.

Piles of cow dung patties. These are actually a staple of Indian life, as they make good fuel for cooking. Mm-hm. Dinner cooked via cow dung patty—it's enough to kick those saliva glands into overtime, huh?

Hey, someone's gotta make 'em. I don't know about you, but it makes me feel a lot better about all the bad job experiences I've had in my history.

A woman making bidis. She does this in her spare time, and gets a measly 20 rupees for every thousand she makes. Because of all of her household obligations, she can't even make a thousand bidis in a day. Indians need at least 40 rupees per day to make poverty line, so you can imagine how finances tend to go in villages.

Richa, my shadow and my favorite little girl in the village. She tried to teach me Hindi, but I'm afraid I forgot most of it. This is pretty much what she'd do to me all day: just stare up at me with that big smile on her face. So adorable.

Safari Rummy, which was played in marathon amounts. From left: Roslyn, Chaundeny, Shonu, Ashley, Unket, and I forget the other little boy's name. This is in the main room of where we stayed with the Brahmin family.

One great thing about villages: they have baby goats!

Oh, how I wanted to run away with it. The only thing that stopped me was that there was photographic evidence that I was the last to be seen with it.

One of Dean Wadley research assistants made us come back to his home to meet and take pictures of his family. Indians don't generally smile for photographs, so that's why they all look so depressed. What they're sitting on (and what's in the background) is a string cot, which is what the villagers sleep on.

A pig sleeping in what I'm pretty sure is an oven/stove. Not exactly smart.

Karimgunj, Hindi-Kindergarten, Etc.

Enrollment takes on a whole new panache when you set up next semester’s schedule in an Internet café in Agra, India, and then scamper a few kilometers down the road to view the Taj Mahal.

I am fabulously happy to be back at AIIS in New Delhi because it is familiar and has free Internet. I was able to sit down and send off some worthwhile emails, instead of my usual rushed “I am here! I am alive! I miss you lots! Ladedadeda!” sort of blather (I never actually write ‘ladedadeda,’ of course).

Unfortunately, I fear I’ve angered the AIIS showers somehow; they are luxuriously warm until I step in, wherein they instantly become frigid. I am letting them ruminate over how much this cruel teasing has hurt me (especially considering that I will be wandering in the desert of cheap hotels and questionable bathroom situations over the next week) in hopes that the Mary/hot water ban will be lifted.

I spent the past few days in a Brahmin home in an Indian village, and the experience was surprisingly enjoyable. I pumped water from a hand pump for the first time in my life, although I was pathetic and quickly demoted.

It’s very bizarre when you’re in a poorly lit latrine, squatting over a porcelain-surrounded hole in the ground (one that is “flushed” by tossing a bucket of water down it, no less), and the thought strikes that this is really a very acceptable bathroom. You’re impressed! All the while, there’s a dead mouse in the corner that’s spent the entire day being slowly torn apart by a troop of ants. And, no, the mouse does not make you less impressed. That’s what India does to a person.

Okay, well, it does a lot of other things. Take the village, for instance. It made me temporarily love India (although that was a very off and on thing for certain circumstances that I won’t get into now). I really adored the family we stayed with. Richa, Alika, Chaundeny, Shonu, and all the other little village children tried to teach me Hindi one night; we spent a lot of time on numbers, but with my terrible retention for languages I fear I’ve forgotten just about all of them besides a select few that sound like American words. The kids would say the numbers in Hindi, and then I’d repeat them. I think we moved to the alphabet at some point, then I don’t even know what they were having me say. The kids would say something, I’d repeat it, and they’d all instantly burst into laughter. I know one of the things they’d laugh at was a word that meant “you say,” which they were trying to use to get me to count off in Hindi. I just repeated the word instead of counting, until Shonu came and was able to translate it. The other things, though, I have no idea. Later, one of the kids got their kindergarten-equivalent Hindi reader, and I must have spent hours sitting on the string cot surrounded by a flock of Indians while Richa (who was 11) and Chaundeny (14) pointed at two-letter words for me to pronounce. They were very excited that I could read Hindi, but really I was employing my limited Sanskrit knowledge since the alphabet/script is pretty much the same. I didn’t know what any of the words meant, so after I’d read a word they’d try and translate a meaning to me without us having a common language. Shonu (the Brahmin family’s oldest son who is probably around 20 or so) and his friend knew a little English, so that helped. It actually worked pretty well. I don’t remember any of the words, but I did entertain the masses.

The night before we played a marathon of Safari Rummy, and Alika (23-ish, and a BA in English and English literature, so she was able to talk with us and translate a little between her family) did a bunch of mendhi (henna) on Ros, Dean Wadley, and me. Very pretty. Also the first time that I was henna-ed by a genuine Indian.

Generally, there was lots of bonding. Richa took to me. Whenever I left the house she’d be there to come along, and she’d just stand there looking at me with this huge grin on her face. She was really adorable; I think I could stand those kind of children in small doses. You don’t really have to do anything to make them happy besides exist, and they adore you for no logical reason. It’s very cute. It is also good for the ego.

Being in the village made me wish that I actually did know Hindi, and that I could help everyone there in some way. They were all so welcoming and happy to have us around. I admit, it kind of made me want to teach English to little kinds like Richa and Chaundeny, but we’ll see how long that lasts. I’m sure some other situation like Fun & Fitness hospital volunteering will come around that will remind me how deplorable I am when dealing with those persons under 15 years of age.

Okay, well, a lot has happened, and I’m sure a lot will continue to happen. Next week Ashley, Roslyn, and I will be venturing on our own to Hardiwar (the origin of the Ganges), Bombay, Aurangabad (passage to some temple caves), and Goa (a former Portuguese settlement famous for its beaches). We’re returning to Mysore next Sunday, so I’ll be a regular presence (or as regular as I have ever been while in India) after the 19th.

Pushkar Camel Fair

I’ve had some crazy car incidents in my day. In the snow-bound states especially, I’m sure it’s hard not to have some war stories to keep your driver’s license warm at night. Vehicular transport has always been on the interesting side of thigns in India, be it plane (Kingfisher, beer company and self-proclaimed distributor of “Good Times,” does it better than everyone, leading me to conclude that control of the skies should henceforth be forfeited exclusively to alcohol), train (sleeper cars are divine, excrement-soaked tracks not so much), or automobile (the driving rules here, in comparison to those of the States, are virtually nonexistent, yet surprisingly effective). I do believe, however, that I have recently experienced the crazy car incident to beat all crazy car incidents: a sideswipe by a camel, brought to me courtesy the Pushkar Camel Fair. “Hit and Run by Camel”—check one life goal off my list!

The Pushkar Came Fair is a celebration of all animals rideable, but especially those that double as a living canteen. Indians come to the annual week-long festival to buy and sell horses and camels, and tourists come to… well, buy. The markets and streets are spilling over with Westerners and their cushy exchange rates: an opportunity to push touristy souvenirs onto people with luxury money that few Indian merchants can resist. Compared to the price tags and passive employees of spic-n-span American malls, India is considerably more spontaneous and in your face. Walking through Pushkar, like many other markets in Indian cities, you are guaranteed to have venders at your side or waving at you from their booths, calling, “Hey-lo! Please come take a look! Very cheap!” as they barter off their clothes, bags, puppets, musical instruments, whatever. White skin is an automatic stigma symbolizing money, and it often earns tourists a bump in prices.

Still, camels are the main event and, as such, they are everywhere (dangerously so, it would seem) in full, flashy camel attire, piercings, and make-up. I’m not sure why Pushkar became camel-central, but I suppose the city’s placement in the Rajastani desert makes it seem a likely haunt for the two-toed farmhands. This Pennsylvania-raised girl has never experienced desert before; I can only liken Pushkar’s take on it to a dust-beach that’s lacking its ocean. I romanticized desert sands to be more of the seashore variety. Unexpectedly, Pushkar sand looks and feels more like it was stockpiled from the tops of all the world’s picture frames. Still, walking around Pushkar in flip-flops has that same futile quality to it that sandy beaches have, with the added benefit of desert brush (read: hidden thorn bushes) and frequent animal droppings. Let me just say that my feet will need some serious buffing before they’ll ever get back to their pre-India state of cleanliness.

According to the leader of our traveling seminar, Pushkar is a “hippy-dippy town” whose economy relies almost completely on tourism. I admit I felt a little Indian while there; it’s been months since I’ve seen so many white people in one place, and I definitely partook in some impolite staring. The Pushkar Camel Fair brings throngs of foreigners, and Rajastan spares no expense. The state’s name means “land of the kings,” and it has long been a popular destination for short-term excursions into the subcontinent. It’s a place built for novel views of India; the colorful clothing styles, scenery, animals, and cities all pantomime the “traditional” India of turbaned maharajas, daring snake-charmers, and ornamented dancers. I suppose I can’t say much about superficial tourism—in Pushkar, our foursome “camped” in elaborate tents with a completely functional Western-style bathroom. They even provided toilet paper, which is more than I can say for several hotels I’ve stayed at.

So what did I gain from Pushkar? Unfortunately, not a decorated Indian camel of my own (I think getting it onto the plane home would be a tad complicated). The most important life lesson, I think, was a bit of myth-busting. After spending two days completely surrounded by camels, the only things I saw spitting were Indian men.

Bharathanatyam Dance Performance

On Oct 26, 2006, two months of learning Bharathanatyam dance, the traditional dance style of South India, culminated in a performance. Some pictures, for your viewing pleasure:

Raksha, Rachel, Me, Nate, Guru Kripa, Roslyn, and Ashley


Me in traditional costume, jewelry, and make-up.


Kripa and me, only minutes after Raksha told me to "sit" more, and I only succeeded in ripping my pants.


Hand and foot paint.


Mid-dance. Ros looks angry. I look uninterested. Only Ashley is smiling like we should be.


We're head-bobbing and shoulder-jerking here, all in the symbollic attempt to encourage our audience to sit down a good hour after they already have.


Final formation in the lamp dance. I was fighting for balance the entire time, hence the strained smile.


Me and Ros, post-dance.


Stage make-up. My eyes are supposed to look wide and shiny.


Yar! Angry-Demon-Face! (Believe it or not, this face is actually made in association with one of the dance mudras.)


Dramatic. Note my hand paint: better to see mudras (hand gestures) from far away.


I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses during the performance, but if you ask me they go fabulously with my red bindi.

Diwali: The Fesitival of Lights & High Anxiety

For the past few days, Mysore has been a war zone. The air has been filled with a barrage of shots loud enough to rattle your ribcage and echo in your eardrums for several minutes following; even the silence is wrought with an electric anxiety of the next crashing boom. The roadsides are piled so high with debris they look like city dumps. A few people, including children, have been seriously injured. Many others have suffered mild burns. Yes, it’s that time of the year again: Happy Diwali, India!

As I sit at my desk, pleading cooperation from an Internet connection as staccato as the festival soundtrack outside my window, scratching maniacally at random mosquito-chewed appendages, jumping sporadically at gunshot firecracker bursts and quivering in the intermissions in anticipation of my ears’ next punishment, I am quite happy there are no video cameras around. If this instance was replayed without the sound, I think I could cameo as some evil villain’s slobbering, dim-witted minion.

Just days before the festival weekend started, a group of schoolchildren on bikes shoved pink fliers into my hand as they flew by. “No crackers on Deepavali!” the papers beseeched me. It took me a good minute to realize that the “crackers” were not of the Ritz or Keebler Elf variety, but actually referred to fireworks (a fact which surely only encouraged my flippant treatment of the issue). Crackers, according to the sheet, can cause all sorts of damage to the welfare of the environment and Mysore citizens. The smoke gets stuck on trees and limits their abilities to photosynthesize, as well as causing flare-ups of asthma, bronchitis, and eye troubles. The litter fills up drains and contaminates water supplies. The sound inspires headaches and fear.

The American in me scoffed, my mind summoning serene Fourth of July scenes involving sparklers protruding from sandcastles. Oh, India. How ridiculous! How could an innocent sparkler stand between a tree and its sunlight? And perhaps those party poppers filled with confetti or the round white snappers you throw against the ground could cause some litter, but certainly not enough to damage drainage systems!

I chuckled at the fliers, passed them onto one of the workers here at the Dhvanyaloka Centre for Indian Studies, and liberally made fun of them. I can only say that I was naïve; the American in me had a lot to learn about Diwali.

In America, fireworks are a restricted and government-regulated item. In India, there is no such thing as an illegal cracker. It’s every man for himself, as it seems civilians can purchase and set off even the grand-daddy incendiaries of extravagant Fourth of July shows. Indians really don’t seem to understand that they’re wielding explosive devices: they release screamers horizontally across busy roads with no regard to the cars passing by, and children deposit burning sticks of cracker-dynamite onto the end of their driveways just as jumpy pedestrians approach. You take your life in your hands when you go walking on Diwali. I can’t even imagine trying to drive with fire soaring through the air around me and unexpected, decibel-heavy bangs startling me every few minutes.

I am not exactly sure what is being celebrated on this weekend in October. I have heard rumors that Diwali marks the end of the rainy season and the start of a stretch of time during which it becomes socially acceptable for husband and wife to resume the baby-making efforts (makes sense, in that case, why such an event would be welcomed with riotous explosions). The holiday’s subtitle is “the Festival of Lights,” which is definitely no hyperbole. Indians seem united in the effort to keep a steady glow going. Crackers are set off intermittently throughout the day, although I can’t say I see the use of making white fire in the daylight. As night falls, however, it’s a constant soundtrack of booms, bangs, crackles, and pops for hours. Dusk happens around 6:30pm here, and Mysore hasn’t let up until well past 11 for each of the four festival days. My nerves were as shattered as the drain-clogging cracker debris long ago.

I once commented that Indians, like American college students, knew how to party. In light of Diwali (no pun intended), I rescind that statement. Compared to Indians, Americans celebrate like crotchety and fragile-boned misers in rocking chairs. I think one Diwali is plenty enough for my eardrums and mental stability, but I must give Indians their props. We’ve experienced a procession of elephants for Dasara, melting clay statues for Ganesha, premature deafness and temporary anxiety disorders for Diwali, plus days off galore for all. The States may commercialize at will; it’s definitely India who gets the most out of their unforgettably unique holidays.

Vacay

If you like traveling and think a semester’s worth of classes is just too long of a time commitment, I strongly suggesting planning South India into your collegiate future. Our classes last two months, lack Fridays, and are interspersed with long weekends to entire weeks of “cultural excursions” (read: vacays thinly veiled as education). At the end of the two months, we’re given three weeks to go off and be tourists free of scholastic obligation (although Syracuse students spend two of those three weeks in a three-credit traveling seminar—not such a bad deal). The final month is reserved for independent projects of the students’ choosing, which can be anything from intensive sitar to creative writing to an internship at a tribal school. Basically, coming to India is an open-ended question with a nice view and a lot of accredited time off. We’re always on the verge of some new trip, even when we’ve just returned from one.

Mysore, our home and base of operations in South India, is located in Karnataka. Dr. Rao, the program director, is somewhat of a celebrity as a result of his archeological and restorative exploits. Together, these two facts mean an intimate and cushy exploration of the southern state, brought to us courtesy our student fee and the Archeological Society of India. For the equivalent of about three weeks altogether, Dr. Rao and Bharanath Travels loaded all thirteen of us into a van and shuttled us from site to site, city to city, giving us a preview of what’s it’s like to be Kannada and closet temple-ophiles.

Now that all of our cultural excursions are finished, I can only say that I’ve had my fill and then some of Hindu and Buddhist religious architecture. I never need to see another carving of a yarla (a combination between an elephant, crocodile, and lion that really just looks like a tapir having digestive problems from both ends) or a dancing woman so awkwardly proportioned that she’d make Barbie jealous. All of the temples pretty much looked the same to me—and smelled the same too. I’m sure Axe and Tag and Bodman would be fighting over the rights to ‘Temple’ if they only knew of its existence. What woman, after all, can resist the pungent fragrance of soapstone washed with years of stale urine?

Ah, but the author doth protest too much. The excursions were not all temples, and the temples were not all bad. One, for example, came complete with its own secret identity. In Hampi, the Vithala leads a double life: mind-mannered worship site by day, entire symphonic orchestra by night. Once a famous musical hall, the pillars of the temple can be played like musical instruments. A mere tap on one of the stone columns summons drums, string instruments, bells, clay pots, and more. Each of the columns corresponds to a different instrument and each sounds like a different instrument, even though (to my untrained eye at least) they look as though they’re all carved in the same shape. I imagine any music major would be jealous of such digs. I know I certainly wouldn’t mind having a Vithala in my backyard.

Near the Vithala, the Virupaksha boasted a personal temple elephant which made rounds twice a day to bless the present visitors and help in the religious ceremonies. We just so happened to be there for the elephant’s morning stroll, and I just so happened to have her trunk on my head and her sacred breath in my face—a party story that I’m sure will never get old. I visited Pattadakal, a “neighborhood” of temples, wet and dripping after an unplanned and fully-clothed plunge into a sacred pool in Mahakuta, and Badami, while a bit on the smelly side, had some fabulous views and pretty entertaining signs warning visitors to watch out for the “monkey menace.” All in all, very much worth the chance to escape the classroom and set up camp in a hotel with hot water and toilet paper available at your whim.

Of course, no travel log is complete without touching on the Indian road system, which is a diverse combination of dirt, rocks, and pavement. Imaginative signs line the way with slogans like: “Come home in peace, not in pieces” and “Follow traffic laws, conserve rainwater!” Better yet, when we’re driving around on India’s jackhammer roads in the wildly bouncing van (a ride not recommended for pregnant woman or people with heart or back problems), Indian towns have a habit of transforming into baseball stadiums. As we pass through populated areas and the townspeople realize that a bus of white foreigners is rolling by, ‘The Wave’ is picked up en masse.

After all the time I clocked sightseeing in Karnataka, I can’t say I have a much better grasp on India. It’s a big country (all the better to build millions of temples in!) and Karnataka is only one part. Four months may never be enough to develop an understanding or familiarity with South Asia, but I’ve certainly learned a lot. Now when I set off for my traveling seminar, I’ll be extra sure to be judicious with my rainwater.

Food

When I told people I was running off to India for a semester of my life, elephantiasis, malaria, typhoid, and a whole slew of other third world diseases were always first and foremost on everyone’s list of concerns. While it’s reassuring to know that my family and friends don’t want me coming back foaming at the mouth with chronic hallucinations and an arm expanded to roughly the size of China, “disease-ridden” India has been pretty tame. (Mosquitoes are a different story altogether. Perhaps I’ve mentioned them and their atrocities in each of my previous articles, but you’ll have to get used to it as I’m sure I’ll continue to mention them. They’re terrible and they need to die. My lower legs are a war zone, and I am now sporting my third bite on the bottom of my foot. Mosquitoes, please, the bottom of my foot? I know my foreign blood tastes fabulous, but come on. How obnoxiously desperate can you be?)

The next concern is the food—the dreadfully, horribly, stomach-punishing, spicy food. I like to think of this “spicy food” infamy as India’s try at the Boogeyman myth. When gutsy American travelers plan their overseas adventures, it’s the little closet monster that concerned friends wave around as soon as South Asia is mentioned. It pokes its head out of a dark and shadowy corner, all fanged, prickly, and breathing fire, and gurgles, “Oh, do watch out for the food! They like spice in India! A lot!”

Okay, yes. India does like spice. But it also adores rice, curd (a more primitive form of yogurt), puuri (which I liken to fried puffs of air), potatoes, and these fabulous rice chips whose name I can never remember. It offers noodles, tomato soup, veggies, and some of the most fabulous fruit juices I have ever spent less than a nickel on. To prepare for India, I purchased a pharmacy of drugs intended to save my digestive system from certain peril. Two months later in Mysore, while taking inventory of my own personal Walgreens, I find that I have popped a couple Peptos and snacked on some Tums (yes, when Cheap College Student goes to India, calcium-enriched, tropical fruit Tums can double as dessert). Overall, my food-born digestive failures have been no more intense or frequent than what they would have been back in Syracuse. The Gobi Man, much beloved provider of fried and sauced cauliflower, whips up the hottest food I have eaten yet, and my mouth only sizzles for about five minutes afterwards. To summarize: India’s spice fetish is all bravado. You could get hotter in your local corner market’s buffalo wings.

Still, India’s food is definitely different. I had heard rumors, before my arrival here, that an entire Indian meal can be bought for the measly sum of one American dollar. Sadly, I must debunk this myth. I suppose that’s true for some restaurants and some stomachs; for the most part, though, there is a catch. My American belly is used to excess, but Indian restaurants are really only excessive when it comes to their sauce. Paneer pollack, for example, is a complete Indian entrée. In most restaurants, it would probably cost around an American dollar, but also in most restaurants, it would be comprised of about five pieces of paneer—small, party-sized cubes of a substance similar to cottage cheese—drenched in roughly a gallon of pollack—a spinach sauce. Hardly enough to satiate my “Super-size Me!” American notion of eating out, I’m afraid. Where’s my salad and my choice of side dish? So, okay, instead of $1, you have to invest in some naan (a.k.a. bread) or rice along with the entrée, which might just tip your bill into the $1.50 – $2.00 range. (Unbearable, I know. There goes the life savings.)

I’m sorry to say, but Indian food will never hit quite the same chord with me as fried chicken, fast food French fries, salads heaped in dressing, lavish desserts, and cow (steak, hamburger, ribs—cow in any form I’ll take). It’s fabulous that the new diet has allowed me to shed some pounds, but I’ve been hankering desperately for the calorie-laden, artery-clogging, obesity-loving American food I know and love. A good portion of our days here at the Dhvanyaloka Centre for Indian Studies is spent in nostalgic fantasies of all the food we’ll chow on upon return to US-living. Let me just say that no girlish fears of pudge will be enough to save my new Indian-born figure from total annihilation. Forget “hakuna matata,” life is just better when your only hope of avoiding a blubberous decline is a treadmill and a step machine. Now that’s the kind of motto this American girl can live by.

Foreigner Fame

Aspiring media darlings and lovers of the limelight: forget making it big in the States. Come to India instead. All you have to do is dust off that American accent and you’re an instant star. No preparation required.

I’ll break it down with some good old-fashioned stereotyping: the Irish adore their beer, Americans their money, Italians their wine, and the Aussies their now dearly departed Steve Irwin. The thing that gets Indian toes a-tapping is foreigners. “What country?” has skyrocketed to the top of my list of questions-people-ask-me, beating out even the standard assessment tool of colligates: “What’s your major?” In Mahabalipuram outside of Chennai, where the humidity and sun were so intense that the mere act of breathing is equivalent to an intensive full-body work out, Indians were clamoring to be photographed next to me. I graciously declined all offers, haunted by nightmares of my feverishly flushed and sweaty face making it into some family photo album. I’m not sure when standing next to a half-melted American became a Kodak-worthy event, but it definitely makes for a photograph in serious demand among camera-wielding Indians.

School pens, like unattractive pictures, are a currency all on their own. I may never understand why, but Indian girls and boys definitely find panache in being able to take notes in American ink. To make matters worse, Indian youngsters are ubiquitous; I’m beginning to suspect that teachers put class on hiatus when a foreigner comes into town just so one or two of the children can retrieve a coveted American writing utensil for show and tell. When I venture out into the streets or temple areas of India, I’m guaranteed to hear at least one voice beseeching me with, “Mah-dahm, skoo pen?” Don’t be fooled by the sweet, plaintive tone, though—it’s merely a cover. Just like the United States had beanie babies and Tickle Me Elmo to create frenzies among present-buying mothers, the school pen turns Indian children into greedy, wild savages. The one time that I did have a pen on me to give a child, a dogpile had formed on top of the boy in the millisecond before my offering even had a chance to leave my hand. Mind you, the pen that caused the fracas was the plainest and most boring pen imaginable; it was a solid white tube with a blue cap, one of fifteen from an off-brand, Big Lots multipack that probably cost no more than $1. It didn’t even have writing on it, so there was nothing that made it particularly American. I can only imagine the pandemonium that would have ensued from something with color or a retractable point.

The celebrity that Indians associate with foreigners is automatic and unconditional. At times, it’s a pest. Indian men must liken Western woman to porn stars: our appreciation for clothes that reveal both the ankles and the shoulders is of course a sure sign of unconscious nymphomaniac tendencies, like a Freudian slip of the wardrobe. Either way, it’s not considered a breach of etiquette in India to stare, and so stare the men do. Liberally. Openly. Not always so comfortably. It’s those times that you’re sitting in a restaurant trying to digest your fresh lime soda and Gobi Manchurian (arguably the best use of cauliflower ever discovered by man) with twenty pairs of eyes fixedly analyzing your eating habits that you find yourself cursing India’s foreigner fixation.

But it’s those other times, like when you find yourself at the Viveka Tribal Center for Learning, that you couldn’t feel more touched by this unwarranted and undeserved stardom. A cultural excursion landed us at the school right in the middle of its prime time for learning, so that we could meet the children and they could meet us. The students gathered in throngs when our bus pulled up. As we stepped off, we were welcomed with choruses of “Hello!” and “Good morning!” Young faces, 150 strong, stared at the group of us like we were The Beatles, or Audrey Hepburns, or Brad Pitts. They didn’t know our names or what our personalities were like—they didn’t even know that we would return their exuberant greetings—but they stared at us like were amazing. To them we were: we were foreigners. We came with our digital cameras, our clean and quality clothes, our obligatory educations, and our infinite school pens. Most of these children were first generation students; no one in their family had set foot in so much as an elementary school before them. As we wandered through the campus, kids from the “third standard,” without a teacher in sight, ran into their classroom and belted out the ABCs so they could show off to us how much they know. Girls from the “fourth standard” recited a prayer for us so we could hear the words. Others begged us to sing them American songs, taught us that “white” is “bili” in Kannada, asked us our names and shyly provided their own in return. As I passed by a classroom in the middle of reciting the alphabet, my eyes met those of a girl in the front row who, surprised, promptly forgot to continue reciting. I grinned and waved at her, and a bashful, sheepish smile stretched across her face. In that smile, all the unpleasant ogling in the world became unimportant.

India is extremes and contrasts. In the time it takes to breathe (or to break a sweat if you happen to be visiting Mahabalipuram), the things about it that you hate the most can become the things about it that you love, and the memories that you will treasure for years arise from the experiences that you started off thinking were worthless. You have to keep on your toes here: India, like any good media sweetheart, is all about the drama.