city-of-light

The walk I take to school is by far one of my favorite things about the city and my experience so far. I live in an area called ‘Assi Ghat’ which is a large and vibrant part of the city. It is one of the main ghats (places along the river) meaning it attracts a lot of visitors (aka western tourist- which I have some other thoughts and feelings about this which maybe I’ll delve into in a future post). Regardless, our program house where we have our meals and classes is near a place called ‘Durga Temple.’ The walk from Assi to Durga is about 15 minutes, give or take how quickly I am walking on any given day.

Every morning I leave the guest house that I am staying at and am usually first greeted by a cow grazing in the nearby trash pile right outside my house. This is always a warm welcome to the morning, starting the day with a nice, familiar cow face you could say. A nice greeting before I enter the busy streets for a sensory overload.

After I say hi to my cow friend, I walk out of the small alley way that my house is nestled in to be greeted by a lot of Indians standing at the corner of a very popular breakfast street food stand (okay greeted might be a strong word- they usually just stare at me or too entranced by Idli’s- a South Indian breakfast food- to even notice me). I continue down the main street and take in all of the colors, sounds, smells, sights- all while trying to avoid stepping in cow poo.

The street is lined with so many shops and vendors- it literally is a farmer market lover’s dream! Women sit on the side of the road with a beautiful display of carrots, onions, peppers, pumpkins, eggplants, tomatoes, radishes- while right across the street you will find fruit vendors with carts full of perfectly arranged apples, bananas, oranges, pomegranates, grapes, watermelon, and so much more. These fruit and veggie vendors line the entire street. Cooking here has been so wonderful. The nights I cook dinner for myself I just walk down my street and buy whatever I need for the night and nothing more. Everything is so fresh and also reduces my waste caused by over buying.

Every day, without fail, I can usually count on two things happening. One is hearing the phrase ‘HELLO MISS- Rickshaw?!’ to which my answer is always ‘Nahin chaahiye’- meaning literally ‘No, I don’t need!’ This usually is enough to make them more along but sometimes they are very persistent sales men. The second thing that is usually a given is seeing men pee wherever, and whenever they want. This was by far the most shocking thing when I first got here. It’s not uncommon to see some guy- no matter what age- turning to the side of a wall and unzipping his pants to take a leak.

After continuing on navigating my way through tons of (very obnoxious, and very loud) traffic horns and cars and motorbikes and bicycles and cows, I get to my favorite part of the walk. Every day I pass by a Dalit neighborhood. The Dalits- or untouchable caste is historically the lowest and poorest caste within the Hinduism Caste System. Initially, why I loved walking past this neighborhood so much was because there were lots of animals- pigs, chickens, cows, and the best was the goats who are always sporting great looking sweaters. Little kids, tiny babies, and their mothers are always right outside the neighborhood as well. The more I started walking by this area, the more I starting liking it. Despite how many people or little kids there are hanging out right outside of the neighborhood, they never stare at me when I walk by. The kids are always too preoccupied playing games or running around to even take time to notice this strange western women that walks by. This truly has been a breath of fresh air. From the minute I arrived in India everyone has always been staring at me. But here- no one stares when I walk by and I don’t feel like some complete outsider that doesn’t belong.

A little further down on my walk comes the great landmark of Durga Temple. Unfortunately, with this also comes my least favorite part of the walk. Outside of the temple are always beggars. Usually these are older women or children or young women holding babies. Some people in the U.S. say that they feel uncomfortable when they walk by homeless people on the side of the street asking for money. Well here, those Americans would feel about 10 million times more uncomfortable walking by these beggars. However, on the other hand there are also people in the U.S. who maybe don’t feel uncomfortable around homelessness and will always stop and smile while walking down the street. Well, those Americans would feel about a trillion times more uncomfortable walking by these women and children begging outside the temple. I say this because many times the young children will follow me all the way down the street with their silver tins asking for rupees and saying ‘chapati, chapati’ (a type of food here) over and over again, sometimes tugging on my jacket or hand. But the worst part is that you have to just keep walking, looking straight ahead. Even today, I walked by and made eye contact and smiled at some of the women begging outside the temple, and then they sent a child to follow me down the street, persistently asking for money. I knew that I would encounter some uncomfortable situations coming to India, and this is always one I struggle with. Every day as I approach Durga Temple I find myself holding my breath just a bit, hoping that I can maybe avoid catching the attention of one of these women or children. When I asked one of my friends who was born and raised in Varanasi about these women outside the temple he told me that sometimes the beggars are part of a scheme or almost a company hierarchy. He said that sometimes the babies that the women are holding are not actually their children- they just are holding them to hopefully gain sympathy and get more money. He said the money that these women and children collect goes to one central person who decides how it gets distributed. Knowing this (and I haven’t really done the background work to fact check this at all) really just makes me even more uncomfortable.
[*Anyone who maybe has been to India or abroad and encountered this situation or a similar one and can offer any advice on the best way to approach this, please share!]

Once I finally pass Durga, I am almost to the program house. I pass by some more fruit stands and eager rickshaw waalaas (a person who drives a rickshaw), I pass Jalans- maybe the equivalent of a Super Walmart or Super Target. It is a huge department store that has everything- including a ‘food court.’ I walk through a small alley way, pass a large open space filled with trash and cows grazing, turn a corner and BAM, there is our cozy red building. The program house has offered a small oasis for myself and the other four students in our program. The walk getting there is always a wonderful way to start the day, but I am always happy to see our beautiful red building at the end of the block.

Well, here I am. Seat 42 A. Three rows from the back. En route to Delhi, India. My one and only friend (the old gentleman sitting next to me), seems to have abandoned me and is asleep with the rest of the cabin.  I still have another 9 hours and 17 minutes to fully perfect this first blog post before I send it out for the entire world to see.

To whomever decides to read this post, or any of my future posts down the road, I thought I would take some times to address somethings before we really get going.

First and foremost, I’ll just put this out there that doing this blog I think scares me more than the fact that I will actually be studying abroad in India. Having other people read my writing is something that I am not entirely comfortable with nor confident about (Hence why journalism is not my calling). I mainly am doing this for my mom’s sake and the many others that I told I would keep updated with my experiences abroad.

Secondly, I apologize in advance for any spelling errors, grammatical mess ups, awkward sentences, and things that just don’t make sense. Something that makes sense in my brain may gets lost in translation to others.

And finally, I wanted to give the whole explanation for the, “Soo……….why India?!” question. Every time someone has asked me this, my answer seems to always change. What I can boil it down to is there are a number of reasons for the answer to “why India.”

1. When I first started my search for a place to study abroad I knew I wanted to go some place…unique. (This is where my mom would say “So you had to pick India?”) At Gonzaga, where I am a junior, most students choose to study abroad in Florence, Italy. To many this is a wonderful destination! But it just wasn’t for me. I knew I wanted a study abroad experience that was going to challenge me and push me outside of my comfort zone.
2. That brings me to another reason. Minoring in Women and Gender Studies and Social Justice, I know that my passion lies in working with marginalized populations. This has mainly been cultivated through working for the non-profit Easter Seals at a camp for kids and adults with disabilities; but also through various other service programs that I have been involved in at GU. Being a privileged, white, middle class citizen, there has been very few times, if any, where I have been the minority in a situation. By choosing to study in India, I am giving up my majority privilege, and moving into the minority- at least in terms of race and nationality. Although I will never fully able to know what being a member of a marginalized community is like- whether that be in terms of disability, homelessness, race, etc.- I hope that this experience will allow me to connect deeper to those marginalized members, at least having some experience of what it is like to be on the outside.
3. I have had a few friends (few meaning 3) who have studied abroad in India and I think talking to them and hearing their experiences really motivated me and inspired me to study there. (S/O to those 3 friends!)
4. Honestly I think a big reason why I wanted to go to India so badly was because everyone kept telling me NOT to go there.
5. When I would tell people that I was going to be studying there it more often than not was greeted with a look of confusion. This also was a big motivating reason. To so many Americans (myself included), India is really just somewhat of a mystery. We know just about as much as the media tells us. Many things that Americans think of when they think of India is Slumdog Millionaire and the various India Food chain restaurants that are throughout the United States. I wanted to take this opportunity to find out what the real India is like. And I also wanted to know why it is such a mystery to so many people in the western world.
6. The last two reason are probably the strongest in my argument towards why I chose India. In the fall of 2014, Gonzaga hosted 3 global humanitarians on campus for an award ceremony called the Opus Prize.I was lucky enough to meet one of the humanitarians Mr. Gollapalli Israel . I gave Mr. Israel a tour of campus and got to know him throughout his visit. His local non-profit is located in Chennai, India and works with the members of the Dalit caste system. Hearing him talk about his organization, his country, his people was so moving. It was inspiring to hear a man so passionate about not only social justice, but his entire country. After meeting him was when my curious really started to grow and my desire to study there became a real idea.
7. Finally, for me it all came down to a dream. Early on in deciding where to study abroad I had a dream. At the time I was thinking about either New Zealand or India. I don’t often have very vivid dreams, but this was truly seemed like real life. In my dream I traveled to New Zealand and I saw scenery with rugged mountains and pretty lakes and it was very beautiful, but there was nothing that really stood out to me. From there I traveled to India and this part of my dream I will always remember. This part of the dream was unlike anything else.  The colors were so rich and vibrant and it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. When I tell people the reason I chose to study abroad in India is because I had a dream about it, I know I sound crazy. But really and truthfully, this was my sign. I don’t know what it is, but I feel called to go.

At the beginning of the book The Alchemist, the author Paulo Coelho says:

We all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling?
It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth.
Whether we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.

Whose to say if maybe that was God telling me something through my dream or if I would just like to think that, but either way I am so excited, overjoyed, overwhelmed, nervous, terrified, thrilled, unsure, and everything in between about this journey ahead. I hope you all enjoy following me throughout it 🙂