singh is king

hey everyone,

it's week 3 in delhi and i still love it. yes, the project is coming along, though i defs feel kind of behind (if you've ever met me, no surprise), but its coming. I'm getting more and more into the project every day. At first, I was really confused on what I should ask in interviews and how I should go about doing the whole topic even, but after some good talks with my AD its all sorted out. Anyway, some really exciting stuff about my project. so my other AD gave me a contact at BBC India, and I went to meet him late last week. Now when my AD said BBC India, he did not tell me that I would get to go to the BBC Headquarters for all of South Asia. This, my friends, was SO WONDERFUL. Now I don't get really really really excited about many things, but this WAS SO EXCITING. Stepping our of the elevator into the waiting area, I saw the sleep silver BBC logo and flat screen TVs playing BBC television news. Through the class doors on each side of the waiting room, I got a look into the office: full of TVs, computers, clocks, and intellectual and westernized-looking Indians, both young and old. Eventually, my contact came to the waiting room, and (obviously) over a cup of chai we talked about my project. He said he wanted me to mail (which really means "email" here) my questions to him. At first, I was really mad cuuz id spent all this money on a rickshaw, but then he took me inside the office to take a look around and to talk more about my project. At this point, I was totally star-struck. Yes, I'm that cool. I was walking around with the biggest grin on my face and the widest of eyes, looking at all the activity swirling around me. After going into a small boardroom with sleek round chairs, we talked more about the project, and he ended up giving me really great advice/contacts. The downside: he has yet to send me back answers to my questions. Uncool. Still, the experience was incredible, and a part of me really wants to be a part of it all. maybe one day.

Today I had another interview (1 of 10 I've done so far), but this one was different. I was asking mostly the same questions that I usually do, but it was different for two reasons. 1. I felt like it actually went well, like I engaged well with him and also kept the conversation going well enough so that I could get good information and 2. I saw a new part of Delhi. This was a Muslim neighborhood, which more than any other neighborhood I'd seen in South Delhi is like the rest of the India I had seen and lived in: dusty, crowded, narrow streets, houses with paint peeling, advertisements everywhere, carts pulled by donkeys, goats, you name it. The tendencies in India here is for different religious to occupy different parts of the city (as opposed to a racial divide), and the Muslim areas generally tend to be poorer. I looked around at the first very "underdeveloped" parts of Delhi and I started to realize that I knew exactly how this happened: communalism. So the story goes here, but one forgets when living in ritzy Hindu GK-3.

For now, that's all I can think to say. I'll get back to you with more. Otherwise, less than a month until home (a good and bad feeling unsurprisingly, but more on this another time).

Love,

Mimi

bhut accha laga

An interesting tidbit about Hindi: there is no way to distinguish between liking something and something feel good. There is something about this imprecision which is really interesting, and which I had not thought about since I learned this until right now, when I decided to sit down and talk about my first week in Delhi. I can say that I really like Delhi AND that Delhi feels good. It's nice to be in a place with fairly functional urban infrastructure, with modern influences in food/fashion/lifestyles in general, but at the same time with a definitive Indian twist. Seeing "modern India" is really great in this way. Yes, Jaipur was certainly more accessible because it was smaller and we lived with families who could give us a lot of information, but Delhi is so much more exciting. It's HUGE! There's a ton to see and a ton to miss also, lots of markets and neighborhoods and parks and live music and clubs and theatre and restaurants. Its nice to be somewhere with a lot going on. This is why I like Delhi. Delhi feels good to me I guess also for this reason, but it's more because of the tone of the city. It's really hard to describe because it's so intangible, but within the first two days of being here and just travelling around the city in a rickshaw I just loved how I felt, surrounded by greenery and communal space, lots of people and lots of commerce. It felt comfortable right away.
But everytime I think about how much I enjoy Delhi I find myself stepping away from it, realizing I'm slowly being pacified by luxury and privilege as many wealthy Indians my age tend to be. I feel myself reminding myself every day that this infrastructure serves about 0.00001% of India's population. 70% of Indians still live rural, have little to no access to health services, clean drinking water, or education, and maybe even worse then this, don't realize that they are entitled to these things. Being in Delhi, I know I am in India, but I find myself forgetting what India is for so many and the India which I had experienced before. It's really important for me that I don't forget this, or I'll feel like my experiences and development studies will have been meaningless.
My project is going....alrite. Reminder: I am studying peacebuilding initiatives by people-to-people diplomacy NGOs in Indo-Pak relations Post-26/11. Yes, I will eventually come up with a shorter name. BUT, it has been really interesting to study thus far. Mostly I have been interviewing people involved in this diplomacy, mostly activists and members of the media. Every time I interview someone, I'm surprised by how humble they are and how willing they are to talk to me. My academic advisor has been great about getting me these contacts, and some I have gotten from the contacts he gave me, so I'm pretty set on primary research. The coolest person that I've met: editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times, the biggest english newspaper in the country. I was really nervous to meet him, but he turned out to be really down-to-earth, and when he was busy editing something, he sent me over to the editor of the political news section to ask questions. He was also suuuper Indian in pressuring me to have a lot of chai. So wonderful. The only thing about this project that isn't so great is my lack of experience with writing a paper based on primary research. It's definitely really different, because you have to make sure that your interview questions are really good so that you can get really good info. Luckily, follow-up interviews are usually possible. BUT, it' still weird. I talked with my academic director about it today, and she helped me restructure my paper so that I could focus my questions better and tackle the whole topic a bit better. So, right now, I think I'm heading in the right direction, if a bit nervously.
So I hope all of your lives are wonderful. As of now, my summer includes a month in vancouver, 3 weeks researching at midd, and then two months interning in DC. SO, in that time, I hope to see all of you.

Love,
Mimi

ps: It's 97 degrees outside and it's around 9 PM. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

it's nearly one in the morning and I need to be awake by 7. Every once in awhile, I can hear mosquitos buzzing in my ear and I won't be able to fall asleep. I'll get close to falling asleep, but then I hear the sound and I go to swat it away and adrenaline once again takes over. fmylife.com. That, combined with my three hour nap today after having a terribly sleep on an overnight train, is spelling failure for the possibility of sleep tonight. Instead, I'll tell you all about the (great) week I just had. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in another blog entry, but a part of the semester is a workshop with an NGO. This basically means that we go an observe and participate in the work of one NGO in particular. I, along with 3 other girls, one Hindi teacher, and one academic directory, went to Lucknow, a city in Uttar Pradesh. It was certainly a city unlike any I had seen in India. Sure, it was busy, dirty, and crowded, but it was also dotted with incredible Muslim historical monuments and sites, stunning old Mughal architecture, and even a small body of water. The first day there we got to see some of these great sites and for the first time since Humayan's Tomb we got to a look into India's Muslim minority culture. After that, we had probably the opposite experience: we went to the mall. Oh yes, and not once, but many times did we go to this mall for want of western food which we had been craving endlessly. Seriously, subway has never tasted so good.

Getting back to the point of the workshop. we worked with an organization called Tehreek, which works for the empowerment of the impoverished Muslim communities in Lucknow, and especially their women. This is probably going to sound waaay melodramatic but (a) this is probably the most apparently worthwhile academic part of the program so far and (b) their work and the results I saw made me realize that NGOs really can make a difference here, even if only for a small number of people. To elaborate, they have some really incredible programs that they set up in the slums in Lucknow. They set up women self help groups for economic, political, and social empowerment, and also start up children's commities to inform children of their rights and their communities' rights in regards to health, sanitation, gender roles, etc. With this information, the women and children speak to others in their communities and in surrounding communities to further the progress of empowerment. Now I know what you might be thinking. There are 29389457489450945 NGOs in the world that do these sorts of empowerment projects. But to me what made this unique was that for the first time, I really could see tangible results of these programs. Having visited other slums around the country, it was easy to see how much more empowered women and children were in the Lucknow slums I visited. The women there were willing to speak out against their husbands when they opposed these women's initiatves, the children were hardly shy to talk to us and ask us questions, and there was actually normal interactions between the young boys and girls (a rarity, believe me). There was one boy in particular in the committee who was really intellgent, and made very enlightened comments about communication and understanding, poverty, and development. This kid was 16, and great. It was sad to know that because he was Muslim, even with the help of orgs. like Tehreek, and even though he was really really smart, he probably would face so much discrimination when/if trying to get educated that he would probably not get very far. That realization was certainly one of the most difficult parts of the experience: even if they are empowered in their communities, will other Indians accept them? probably not, or at least not enough. They'll be better off, but by how much?
We got to do some other great stuff in Lucknow also. We got to go to a press conference given by the founder of an NGO which operates on cleft lips and palates of poor children in India. I don't know if you've heard of the documentary Smile Pinki, but that's the NGO I'm talking about, and we got to see the documentary also. Incredibly moving. They really do great work. Another example of an NGO really making a difference. We also got to see the work of a hospital that treated poor Muslims for a nominal fee. There, we learned that many diseases that they see have come about as a result of desperate living conditions and terrible hygenie. These patients had neither the understanding nor the economic ability to make their conditions cleaner, so the doctors told us that many of the problems persisted. We saw some really sad cases, such as babies which were much too small, young mothers clueless about how to care for them, and old, wrinkled tuberculosis patients camping out at the hospital to receive treatment at every possible opportunity. The hospital had a tought time: they could only be open saturdays because all the doctors were volunteers, and many of the people who came simply could not follow what the docotr suggested. These people were so poor that they could not afford a bar of soap to clean their children more than once a month or so. That kind of poverty is totally incomprehensible to us at home. This sort of challnge makes it really difficult for these doctors to make a lasting effect on their patients lives. It must be frustrating, but all of them at least seemed to have good senses of humor.

Did I mention that I got sick???!? Yeah, I know, I was doing so well, and then it was all over. Like in that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry ate the black and white cookie and broke a like 20 year no barfing streak? That was me last week. So uncool. I had to miss one day of work as a result. To this day, I'm a lot less excited about eating the food here.

btw, whenever the Mullahs of the communities wanted to discredit Tehreek's work, they would call them "agents of alien Jews." Oh yes. I nearly lost it every time the director of the org. would mention that. It's like the most juvenile name-calling. So goes life.

Wishing everyone the best and so excited to see you in May!!
Love,
Mimi

uuuuuuumm?

I guess I'm trying to figure out how this study abroad experience really is. Talking to people, I always say that it's great and that I'm learning a lot, but I'm trying to step back from that these days to see how I really feel about my experiences here. So on the one hand, it IS great. This is an awesome country. I like the food, the clothes, how cheap things are/bargaining, the people in my program, and the different places and things I get to see. On the other hand, I had all of these expectations that study abroad would be a really formative and academically fulfilling experience. I guess I'm not really sure where I have changed at all from being here, but sometimes I just feel like I've supplanted myself from one context to the other and am basically living an American/Canadian life abroad. Yes, I do things such as take rickshaws, watch Bollywood movies, and eat mostly veg. food, but I for some reason don't feel like this is a very culturally shocking experience that is truly making me evaluate my own culture. Perhaps it is more subtle than that, that how I feel about this experience is something which is more under the surface and needs to be deliberated and articulated. This will of course be much easier to figure out once I come back to the West (which I'm not actually missing right now), but I'm still wondering what this experience is doing for me. Yes, I am learning how other people live, but I am not finding it radically different. Family cohesion and the unspoken importance of religion, for example, are not new concepts for me; that was my life at home. Certainly I am being exposed to different ways of life: Hinduism; Jainism; vegetarianism; a more difficult battle between secularism and religion; more widespread use of natural medicines; yoga and meditation and wide and deep spirituality in general; archaic gender roles; and caste-based divison and discrimination as opposed to race and/or class. So yes, I am seeing different lifestyles, and learning about them, but not REALLY living them so in a sense not REALLY understanding them. Am I missing out? I don't know. Maybe I'm just coming to understand better the ways in which different worlds overlapp because of globalization, etc. That is certainly a learning experience, that is, not having culture shock because in many ways things aren't that different. I guess I just expected to be more blown away by things.

Maybe I should come back to these thoughts after starting to live in Delhi in a flat without everything from the program, I don't know.

On the academic note, I'm also a bit disenchanted. Experiential learning is great, but we don't do a good job of connecting the different things we see. In a sense, I have a lot of trees, but not a forest. We visit great NGOs, from ones which make prosthetic limbs to ones which harvest water, and I learn about different development efforts this way, but I am having a hard time reconciling everything I see in a meaningful way. This might have to be something I do on my own more deliberately, but I did not expect to have to do that. ISP should be really great for me academically, because I'll get to study exactly what I want and take control of my research. There's fear in this independence, but I'm also excited.

Time for some updates. I did actually play Holi in the end, but it was kind of short and defs. not as fun as if I had gone to the old city. Most of the boys in the program went, and ended up being invited to some great Holi parties by perfect strangers. My Indian dream.

Something I forgot to mention before. When I was in Jaisalmer, three of us decided to take a paddleboat out on this holy river in the city. We decided upon my insistence to cram ourselves into a two person swan-shaped boat, and went around the lake to see the various monuments in the lake (I dont really know what purpose they served). At one point, we got kind of close to one of the monuments, and we just stopped moving. We tried everything: rocking the boat back and forth, paddling really fast both backward and forward, and just seeing if we would float away. Nothing worked. It was hysterical. We thought at one point that we should jump ship, but swimming in open water in India usually spells parasite. We just sort of laughed for awhile, and figured someone would come save us. Our friends kept calling us, and at first we ignored the calls, but then we eventually told them to send help. This big metal rowboat with two Indians eventually came, and they just sort of laughed at/with us when we all struggled together to pry us loose. Soon we were free and paddled back to land and freedom. Surpisingly, we werent charged for extra time; they probably enjoyed the situation enough not to demand more rupees. So great, so unsurprising. Oh, our lives.

I'll update more when I can think of more to say.

Love,
Mimi

I wish I were a boy for 2 hours

Hey everyone,

Time for an update. Today is holi, one of India's biggest holidays, and I am not participating. Why? Basically because I am a girl. Holi is a holiday in which Indian MEN take to the streets and have color fights, here in Jaipur with colored water. They are drunk and in many cases on lots of drugs, and women are therefore advised against joining in these festivities because they WILL be assaulted, raped, abducted, etc. This, of course, is not something I want, so I am not participating. The boys in the program are going (or are there now) to the old city and participating in all the fun, but women are to stay behind closed doors for their own safety. This holiday really highlights why it sucks to be a woman in India. Incredible sexual repression and rigid gender inequalities make it so women would actually be in danger simply being in public today. We were even told not to take rickshaws to and from different places. For some, holi can be a family holiday, but mine does not play. And my impression from talking to the other people in my program is that their families don't either. For the boys, that's fine, they can go to the old city, but for the rest of us, it's sort of lame. I feel like I'm missing out on a really incredible cultural experience. On the other hand, I am starting to understand the culture a bit better in terms of gender and sex, so I guess that's something. I hate to dwell on this, since it isn't really productive, but I can't help being really angry/upset at the situation. On the other hand, I did some cool stuff yesterday. I went to an elephant festival in the city for holi, saw one of the traditional bonefires, and saw a hindi movie with my family. The elephant festival was both really cool to see and really interesting to observe as someone here studying culture and development. The packaging and presentation of Indian/Rajasthani culture for the hoards of tourists and Indians alike was somewhat cheesy. It emphasized some traditional elements of the culture but made it brighter and more exciting for us all. There was traditional dancing, an decorated elephant contest, and elephant rides. The marching band, as my friend Ella observed, played a loose and somewhat discordant melody which somehow worked together. Functional but not functional. So India. Going to the movie was also an interesting experience. First of all, we went to a mall to see the movie, which looked incredibly American on the one hand, but was really Indian on the other hand. While it was multi-leveled, clean, and had high ceilings, it also was void of huge chain stores and instead had small, individual stores. It was like taking the individual vendors out of the market and giving them their own little venue in this mall. Definitely an Indian style mall. Also, you buy tickets for specific seats, and the movie had an intermission. Totally different. The movie that we saw was called Dev D, recommended to my host father by his students from the course he taught for the last three weeks in Amdebad (spell check where r u?!?). It was a story about love gained and lost, and the misery entailed by the lost part. There were tons of scenes of the main character drinking and doing drugs, and after awhile I felt as though I got the point. In reality, I would say that a good half hour or forty five minutes could have been cut out of the movie and I STILL would have gotten its point. No such luck. Also, people talked unabashedly throughout the movie and even answered their phones. My family hardly noticed. I certainly did. Today, we will be having a family gathering at my host father's family's house. Family affairs are certainly a part of holi celebrations, so I'm at least experiencing that part.

Rewind to last weekend. Went to see the Taj Mahal. It was unsurprisingly spectacular and beautiful. Seeing pictures and seeing the real thing are leaps and bounds different. It's hard to pintpoint how you feel when you see this incredible monument of love and experience the nuances of its architecture. We played hackey sack there also, which is ridiculous and awesome. Ill put up pics of this later. The only thing about the trip which really sucked is that we got ripped off and scammed for money. After specifically not hiring a guide at another site, someone started talked to us about the place, claiming to be doing it out of religious faith, and then pressured us aggressively for money at the end of his "tour." I tried as hard as I could to walk away, but it was incredibly awkward. I probably should have known what would happen, but I was unsurprisingly naive.
I have to go get ready for my family gathering so I'll just say one last thing. I have decided for my independent study to research track two diplomacy between India and Pakistan and how it has been affected by 26/11. I will be living in Delhi, maybe alone, and am really nervous. If it turns out that I would have to live alone, I'll probably opt for a host family, but regardless of this, I'm really nervous about conduct my own field work. I have to do all of these interviews, and I'm really unfamiliar with that format of research and am worried that I wont actually be able to find contacts/set up these interviews. Any input from SIT alumni would be helpful.

Firme lenge!
Mimi

Acha cha cha cha

Hey everyone,
As usual, it has been too long since I have posted, and I'll try to remember most of what I have done since last post. I'll TRY, but keep in mind a lot has happened (as usual).
So generally, I'm finished with phase 2 of culture shock, which is the homesick/lonely/isolated feeling and I'm really starting to get used to life here. I realized that just this past Sunday, driving for hours through the desert back to Jaipur from Bikaner. It's nice feeling more at ease, more comfortable with the group and my host family. I was really surprised that when my host mother left for a few day trip I actually missed her. I'm also more acclimated in the sense that I know where things are. I now have found a park where I can exercise in the mornings, and I no longer get lost on my way home from places in spite of there being no street signs. Also, I have yet to get sick even though I've accidently had sips of water 3 times. So I'm overall happier than I was before.

Some small events of late include going to a bookfair, a book launch, and sleeping over at Becca's house. The bookfair was not nearly as cool as the ones at home, but there were the most random English books EVER, most of which cost about 50 rupees (aka about $1). Needless to say, I didn't buy any of them, but instead bought "A G-d of Small Things" which so far is excellent. The book launch was a different story. It was of a novel about global terrorism inspired by 26/11 (the terrorist attacks in Mumbai during American thanksgiving). During the "press conference," the author made a number of really chauvanistic (spelled correctly) comments, and was more or less fear mongering. It was kind of like the US after 9/11, or so the news/American friends have told me. All in all, waste of time. I did not buy the book, but did end up arguing randomly with another person in the audience about the Arab world and how it did, in fact, attempt to promote peace sometimes. Sleeping at Becca's was both really great and really eye-opening. I saw a more traditional way of living in India (house architecture, gender roles, etc), and got some quality time with her when I could just talk about our lives at Midd. I was really taken aback by her host father, who I found unnecessarily combative toward us. Not fun.

On bigger events, this past week we went on an educational excursion to Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, which are more desert-like than Jaipur, and therefore waaay hotter. There, we witnessed the work of various development NGOs. We saw a rural hospital, a school, a women's empowerment project, and a refugee settlement. I hate hospitals, but it was great to see what they were providing to the rural populations of the area, services ranging from medecines to operations to sexual education and midwife training. The empowerment project was interesting but problematic, since each women gets her monthly funding for this project from her husband. If her husband won't give her money, then she cannot "empower" herself, so it is somewhat flawed. For my independent study, I might work with the NGO who advocates for citizenship for these refugees. In that case, I would work in their office and probably observe how refugee camps in the area work and what the lives of the refugees are like. Just a possibility, esp. considering how hot it will be in April. We also went on a camel ride through the desert on that trip. At first terrifying, but then SO COOL. Probably cooler than autorickshaws.

Today we were introduced to the various locations/NGOs for the workshops we will be doing later this month. Basically this means we are observing/helping the work of one NGO. I hope to work with one in Lucknow which helps Muslim women become aware of their political and social rights, or one in Varanasi (where in the Ganges is) that preserves the city's traditional weaving culture. The Ganges is cool, but the NGO in Lucknow sounds waay cooler to me.

btw my Hindi is also improving. I tried to speak it to someone at my house the other day and failed miserably, but then I found them and corrected myself and they just sort of awkwardly laughed at me. Progress? maybe.

btw, if anyone wants to send letters or care packages with western treasures, here is my address:
Michal Micner
World Learning, India/SIT
2, Shree Rampura Colony
Civil Lines
Jaipur, Rajasthan, 302006
India

love from Bharat!
Mimi