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.

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.

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.

Chennai

According to Wikipedia, Chennai is the Detroit of India. Now I can’t say I’ve been to Detroit, but I feel pretty confident in saying that Chennai has no equivalent in the United States.

Chennai is one of (if not the) largest city in the state of Tamil Nadu. That locates it in eastern India, right on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. My gender studies teacher has often extolled Tamil Nadu for being one of the better Indian states in the way of interrelations between the sexes. She did not, however, warn us that Chennai was also a primordial bog of humidity, dirt, pollution, and mammalian outputs of the fecal variety. In an environment like that, you’ve got to stick together.

There are a lot of cultural excursions built into the study abroad program in India. Chennai was not one of them. It was an experience that we decided to bring upon ourselves with a naïve willingness. Although all of us students decided to go, it became gender-segregated as the boys set off with plans to be cost-effective and “rough it” by sleeping in the streets, on the beach, in a forest, or wherever else they could spread a yoga mat (read: in a five-star hotel). Us girls, more practical but equally as cheap, had made reservations in hostel that cost 70 rupees a night (about $1.50). So while the guys took one look at Chennai and hopped the first train out to go be rugged and manly in the luxury of a neighboring French colony, the girls set up temporary homes in the midst of a mosquito colony. The Salvation Army Hostel boasted metals beds with what I swear were holographic projections of mattresses and bug-infested bathrooms with squat toilets the doors half rotten away. Not exactly a romantic get-away kind of deal, I’m afraid.

Oh, and as previously mentioned, Chennai is on the coast. If white sand beaches and fresh saltwater aromas tickle your fancy, well… the Bay of Bengal might not be for you. Replace “hunting for seashells” with “dodging dead fish” and imagine laying out your beach blanket next to the emptied skin of a poor canine and you’ve basically got the makings for a Chennai beach. ‘Thong Song’ enthusiasts will also be disappointed—even if you were brave enough to strip down to your skivvies and expose your skin to the questionable Bengali waters, you’re not going to find much support here. India has yet to accept the knee-length skirt and Capris into its wardrobe repertoire; the swimsuit is asking far too much. (I’ve yet to conclusively decide whether this is good or bad, seeing as the idea of swimsuit shopping is infamous for causing undue panic and stress in the lives of women everywhere. Maybe the Indian ladies are onto something that we are not?)

The city scene was not much more impressive to me than the beach. It’s difficult to paint a picture of India that I feel an American would be able to comprehend. Chennai smells like a port-a-potty on a busy highway in the middle of August, and it looks like a frontier civilization from the Wild West—the ones with the colorful names like Toe Jam or Hang Man or similar. Scarecrow dogs so thin their entire internal anatomy is visible roam without any discernable purpose or control, and cows—yes, those holy cows—chew on garbage, emit all sorts of unsettling fluids, and mix their own barnyard fragrance into the already noxious, sun-baked city smell. Sidewalks crumble into dirt, cars honk wildly, and a population upwards of a billion is going about their business in the tropical heat without a second thought to their conditions. I’m not sure that I’ve gotten to see much of the Americanized, wealthy India I’ve heard connected with technology and urbanization; most everything has been carnal and back-to-the-basics. I come from a world of computers, video games, and private lawns; the open humanity and resourceful practicality of Indian life is something simultaneously shocking and intriguing.

I can’t say Chennai was all bad. It did have some fabulous American eats that cost more than a night with the Salvation Army, and I definitely left with an ardent appreciation for Mysore living. In the end, I suppose I can chalk it up as a learning experience. I’m a spoiled American, and I’ve been finding that I’m only comfortable in India’s extremes about half the time. At least I will never be able to complain about hotel rooms, beaches, or city streets in the same way ever again. And, after India, all the clogged toilets in the world won’t even make me blink. Bring on your worst, American Bathrooms. At this point, I’d say I’m a thug of porcelain thrones (or porcelain-surrounded holes in the ground, depending on your country of origin).

Enter Stage Right: India

Mysore, India, perhaps, is the last place I thought I’d end up during my collegiate years. It’s a bit surreal even now, especially when I open the door of my dorm room and am instantly faced with the waggling branches of a coconut tree. It’s September, and although I hear it’s getting rather frigid in that beloved winter wonderland known as Syracuse, temperatures in southern India remain in a delicious stage of early fall with no end in sight. The only thing not so delicious about Mysore’s consistent climate is that mosquitoes are left to enjoy their own form of manifest destiny on a year-round basis; I believe I have consistently had more mosquito bites than skin since I arrived.

Not that life in South Asia is so different from Syracuse living. Festivals abound, after all, and Indians, like college students, have perfected the art of partying. During the weeks surrounding the Ganesha holidays, for example, the neighbors were kind enough to treat us to a nightly play list, which included the always prolific masterpieces of 50 Cent and Sean Paul (it’s always reassuring to know that America’s musical tastes are being represented worldwide by such true classics). Cows, of course, are regular roadside sights (granted India’s cows are generally not in pastures and are even less often found in herds). And what could make college more collegiate than a resident swarm of unpredictable squirrels on patrol? Yes, believe it or not, India’s got squirrels. Five-striped ones at that. Squirrels know no borders.

Okay, so the crazed goat that serenades me every morning with its tortured bleating and the equally crazed man whom it took me three weeks to realize actually was a man and not just continued vocalizations of the aforementioned tortured goat are a little strange, even to a girl who hails from the backwoods of western Pennsylvania. I can handle this strange new breed of goat/man, however. I mean, I’m sure it has evolutionary advantages to be able to commune with one’s farm animals. I can also handle the weather (although I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult and strenuous and utterly depressing it is to exist in a constant state of sunny, humidity-free springtime). What is perchance the most shocking about my new address is the fact that Indian people are not into toilet paper. Feel free to take a minute to process. No TP—just a faucet and a plastic bucket. As the custom goes, the right hand takes care of the mouth and the left hand takes care of… well, the other end. I have seen exactly one roll of toilet paper in all of the public restrooms that I have paid visits to in the past month, and even though that roll of toilet paper was practically used up, grimy, and soaking wet with suspiciously brown liquid, I have to admit that I was, at the time, incredibly impressed by the progressiveness of that restaurant’s facilities. Shocking, I know. I once thought the lack of paper towels to dry my hands with in Syracuse restrooms was annoying; try as I might, I just can’t wrap my Western head around cleaning up with a pitcher of water instead of some quilted two-ply.

If the United States could provide the developing and industrializing India with a model to emulate, however, I’m afraid that I would not wish it to involve the hygiene product I had taken for granted my entire life. I will undoubtedly be ecstatic to return to the States and resume my dependence on Quilted Northern, Charmin, and Angel Soft, but I suppose credit ought to be given to India’s environmentally-friendly abstinence. I’m sure the crazy goat appreciates that his trees don’t get flushed down any toilets, at any rate. India has a bit of improving to do when it comes to toilets and sanitation; still, I think what this country is truly lacking is a revolution of the South Asian broom. Every morning, the staff of the Dhvanyaloka Centre for Indian Studies (our little oasis retreat in Mysore) transforms into an army of bent-over, hunchbacked Igors and Quasimodos as they swish around what appears to be stiffened horse tails. Their broom is the equivalent of a grandiose paintbrush that was used, improperly cleaned, and left to harden. It’s thin and pokey, and would ruin any Western janitor’s sleep with nightmares of arthritis and spinal deformations. Sweeping in India is like some subtle new form of domestic oppression.

Weather, scenery, sanitation, and background noise notwithstanding, I can still sometimes forget that I’ve flown some seventeen hours across the Atlantic and thrown myself into a radically new world. Sure, it only takes a trip to the local squat toilet to send me crashing back into reality, but studying abroad has definitely been the learning experience I expected. Thanks to India, for instance, I now realize that while the quality of our government may be in disputable favor, America definitely did something right with its broom. That, my friends, is something.