Mariah: Initial Observations

      Anyone who has read E.M. Forester's A Passage to India will be familiar with Adela Quested's continual desire to "see the real India."
     Throughout my time here I have been attempting to understand why, exactly, the "real India" is so elusive.  No one could show the impatient miss Quested the truth she was searching for, so in her stead I am investigating her failure (never mind that she's a fictional character).
     Ahmedabad is, by India's standards, a pretty calm city.  The traffic is crazy, but there's no alcohol allowed here, so credit goes completely to the citizens.  Every visible piece of asphalt is an opportunity; people, cows, dogs, two-wheelers, and rickshaws weave in and out of traffic as though they are on a loom, although any fabric they produced would be very tangled indeed (perhaps that's why the textile industry is migrating south).
     Women ride motorcycles, wearing scarves and sunglasses to cover their skin; whole families can be seen on the back, shoulders cradling sleeping children.  Women in bright orange saris sit in the back of trucks that read "horn ok please."

At some point someone must have realized, but probably didn't have the heart to mention anything, considering that it's written on the back of almost every large vehicle here

     People's faces are weathered, brows furrowed.  They don't look except to stare, some excitedly, others suspiciously.  At times they exude a sense of fatigue.  When beggars ask for money people look away, an expression of forced apathy on their faces.  It is too much to see the child in the arms of these women, to feel a sense of empathy, because that is where the real expenditure lies, not in the pitiful sum of ten rupees that they ask for.  To care for one would mean having to care for all, and so people squint uncomfortably and fix their gazes anywhere else.

     Why couldn't Adela discover the key to India?  Because no one possesses it.  No one is India – or its gatekeeper for that matter. The narrative of every citizen is so different that there is no way to understand the conglomerate force of energy that drives everything here.

Almost getting run over by a cow in the old city seems tame compared to the stampede that ensues every time a bus stops

     The starkest contrast that I have seen here so far is that of poverty and wealth, and not just in the monetary sense.  There is an abundance of life everywhere you look, but at the same time a paucity of it.
Not a second is wasted.  Every breath of fresh air, every sidewalk, every storefront is used constantly. Ahmedabad is completely saturated.
     India bore this city, spending itself continuously in the form of mangoes and monsoons.  But its populace is spreading far faster than can be contained.  People and animals blossom, yawning into the dust.  With pluck and tenacity they work to coax bungalows out of the trash and shrubs, to carve patches of grass from this exhausted land.
     Those who succeed are able to recline in the absence of chaos; they have tamed (lizards aside) the small plots on which they live.  Those who do not must continue on in the heat.  Like their predecessors they tumble forth, swept away by the inertia of Ahmedabad.

Historic Tour of Old City-Ana

Hello Bloggers!

So, today, on our seventh day in India, we went on a historic walk in the old part of the city. Similar to when one walks into China Town in NYC, the density of the people immediately quadrupled. Crossing the street involved ducking and running for your life, and walking in a straight line involved turning  sideways, and moving ones legs in a manner resembling the minister of silly walks (Monty Python). However, chaos aside, the old city was everything about India that one imagines. It started in a beautiful old temple where men and women were separated by a partition, and where the sounds of bells and Gujarati rose, and floated in the air above us. Then it led us through tiny streets from the 14th century with secret passageways that connected courtyards, and finally to a mosque (Gujarat is a muslim state), where we were met with stern stares, curiosity, and suspicion. Unsurprisingly, for a bunch of high school kids from the city, this experience was simply incredible, amazing, fantastic, superb, and any other adjective you could think of to describe something so unbelievable. So, without further ado, the picture of a (not too ecstatic to be photographed) Jain monk, exiting a smal temple...

The ice man (attacking his ice with admirable determination), who we saw in the narrow streets leading to the mosque...

And, finally, a beautiful woman (with a, might I say, incredibly subtle nose ring), in the temple at the beginning of our tour.
More to come, anxious bloggers (shout out to our 7 followers)! Love, Ana

The Workshops - Emma

Hey, all!  

So I never actually described the full purpose of my presence in India and my previous blog post may have indicated that I am here primarily to observe and tour.  This is an untruth. Here is a picture of some goat herding women that I took.

some goat herdesses 

No, but tourism aside - ITSA, the organization that brought me here, is a social action organization that is attempting to give Indian students the critical thinking skills they need to become fully functional global citizens.  Last Friday and the subsequent Sunday, the first two ITSA workshops took place.  They are themed on identity and aim to explore the minds of the participants as fully as possible. 

The above picture is from the second workshop and shows the kids explaining how the pictures they drew on their folders represent aspects of their identity. 

As an onlooker, this has been a fascinating two classes.  Back in the city, I attend Bard High School Early College, a school affiliated with Bard College and some of its programs.  One of these is the Writing and Thinking workshop, a weeklong workshop in the beginning of each academic year that forces students to think critically and carefully.  It can be a bother (by the end of the week in the past, I've had spurts of intense resentment for both writing and thinking) but it always forces you to grow and to think in ways that require personal involvement.  

These kids have never had that.  Searching for ways to describe and determine their identities and polestars is novel to them. Watching them push themselves so hard and enjoy pushing themselves that hard is absolutely wonderful.  In just two classes, it seems apparent to me that they have been hooked on the freedom of thought (yes, of thought) and expression that comes with the workshop.  In that line of thinking, one participant even crowed to her friend "it's like you have complete freedom of speech here!"

some of the participants writing short sentences on their identities.

I cannot wait to see these kids - not really kids, they are in eighth and ninth grade, so young adults, I guess, grow into their full mental potential.  It's exciting and fulfilling and damn but it's fun to see.

Thol Bird Sanctuary - Ana

On our first full day in India (INDIA!) we went to the Thol Bird Sanctuary just outside of Ahmedabad, to see the sun rise. After a chaotic ride through the streets, entering Thol was like a dream. The land was dry and cracked open, and deer-like animals rode off in the distance, and birds swooped overhead. Considering that at the same time the day before all of us were sleeping in airport chairs during our 9 hour layover in Mumbai, Thol was, of course, disorienting, but even more so, breathtaking.

On our way leaving Thol, we saw a man sitting by the lake with a walking stick. The man was staring at  a water buffalo in the middle of the lake (and as you can see, neither of the two were very happy to be photographed). One of our interns, Max Baird, got a little too close to the man when photographing, and was subsequently shouted at in Hindi…or maybe Gujarati. As we left Thol and re-entered the insanity that is driving on an Indian road, we were reminded of just how diverse India is, and we love it even more for it.