This Post is dedicated to the memory of the Fakhra Younus, the Pakistani 33 year old female who was a well known acid victim. She recently took her own life. A reminder how hard it is to be a woman in some parts of the world, and how we should take more advantage of the freedoms that we have.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Saga Continues... Tough Nuns and the Indian Boy George
After two international flights and one very long delayed national flight, I am home, well, I am in my mother's home. Buried in the ease and quiet of a small american western resort town, I try to regroup from my travels before returning to Oregon to work. I have depleted the majority of my funds, and TG is already discussing the next country. Oh boy! I better get back to the grind. Meanwhile, TG is still there, in that strange dust and spice infested world, finishing up his projects. He is finally breaking out of his solitude, and beginning to have interactions with the people around him. These are the stories he shares with me, in his own words:
As I was nearing the end of the epic "Shantaram" in the Parkstreet Oxford Bookstore in Kolkata, the characteristically rude staff told me to get out of their cafe. So I found a corner and was immediately approached by a young man with a lot of questions. He was a chemical engineer, had once worked on converting methane to hydrogen in a clean energy research program (I had worked on hydrogen transportation in my internship with U.S. Congress) so we talked about that for a bit. He said he liked to talk to strangers and treat people as his subjects. The store was closing but he was keen to continue the conversation, so we went and grabbed some chicken tikka in a restaurant shaped like a train.
He talked about his ambition to be famous so that he could show all the people who had disrespected and disregarded him that he was better than them. He spoke of hating India and Indians, and hating his job as well. He mentioned getting a lucrative scholarship in Europe but having to turn it down because his mother said no. He said that no one really understood him, that he had to act and pretend all the time, and that I was one of the only ones who had ever seemed to accept him. The next day he called, but I was too busy to meet. The memory of a neglected and similarly intense lonely boy, when I was young, prompted me to call back this Indian fellow to hang out on my last day in Kolkata. He told me that his mother ran the family and his father was rarely home. He had been instructed to be with his sister at all times. He shared her friends from an early age and her things and life. He almost died after a snake bite as a boy, which made him terrified of dying alone, and caused his mother to never let him go out without his sister till he went to college. His mannerisms were very feminine, and while in most U.S. universities, there would be a group of people ready to accept that kind of behavior, apparently Indian universities are still culturally dominated by machismo. Even in his working life, he couldn't connect with anybody in Kolkata any more than an effeminate man could connect with anyone in my redneck home town. Its time for the tyranny of machismo to die in popular culture. They need a Boy George (or a Michael Stipe) and a Patti Smith (or even a Wendy O).
On the other hand, in my first foray talking to foreigners in a long time, I ran into a Portlander volunteering in a hospice for the dying. He worked with a crew of tough mother fucking nuns helping impoverished Indian people die with some dignity. The hospitals here. I mean: people are lying and screaming in crowded rooms with no attendees and the hygiene could not possibly by good enough. People are taking their last breaths in the streets, coming in with terrible wounds and diseases that could have been cured if they had waited until way, way too late.
And there is me, in villages that are drinking straight out of a waste canal, floods throwing them from their homes 2-3 times per year, barely scraping a harvest together or always a few days away from completely broke. Fishing, craft markets, agriculture, all declining in a crisis state: and there are safety nets here in India: not always the best implemented safety nets, but the government does help hundreds of millions of people.
It seems like in such a state, a social revolution for equality would be secondary or thirdary to basic human needs. I'm not sure. Thats the way it worked in America, we got richer, then we got more tolerant fifty years later. But India needs to leapfrog the U.S. in development patterns in a lot of ways, and I've met so many women ready to change the way women are treated there and with the power and education to do so. One more generation of mothers, hopefully. Mothers that say, "go out and make a good impact on the world" instead of "stay here with me and never leave."
As I was nearing the end of the epic "Shantaram" in the Parkstreet Oxford Bookstore in Kolkata, the characteristically rude staff told me to get out of their cafe. So I found a corner and was immediately approached by a young man with a lot of questions. He was a chemical engineer, had once worked on converting methane to hydrogen in a clean energy research program (I had worked on hydrogen transportation in my internship with U.S. Congress) so we talked about that for a bit. He said he liked to talk to strangers and treat people as his subjects. The store was closing but he was keen to continue the conversation, so we went and grabbed some chicken tikka in a restaurant shaped like a train.
He talked about his ambition to be famous so that he could show all the people who had disrespected and disregarded him that he was better than them. He spoke of hating India and Indians, and hating his job as well. He mentioned getting a lucrative scholarship in Europe but having to turn it down because his mother said no. He said that no one really understood him, that he had to act and pretend all the time, and that I was one of the only ones who had ever seemed to accept him. The next day he called, but I was too busy to meet. The memory of a neglected and similarly intense lonely boy, when I was young, prompted me to call back this Indian fellow to hang out on my last day in Kolkata. He told me that his mother ran the family and his father was rarely home. He had been instructed to be with his sister at all times. He shared her friends from an early age and her things and life. He almost died after a snake bite as a boy, which made him terrified of dying alone, and caused his mother to never let him go out without his sister till he went to college. His mannerisms were very feminine, and while in most U.S. universities, there would be a group of people ready to accept that kind of behavior, apparently Indian universities are still culturally dominated by machismo. Even in his working life, he couldn't connect with anybody in Kolkata any more than an effeminate man could connect with anyone in my redneck home town. Its time for the tyranny of machismo to die in popular culture. They need a Boy George (or a Michael Stipe) and a Patti Smith (or even a Wendy O).
On the other hand, in my first foray talking to foreigners in a long time, I ran into a Portlander volunteering in a hospice for the dying. He worked with a crew of tough mother fucking nuns helping impoverished Indian people die with some dignity. The hospitals here. I mean: people are lying and screaming in crowded rooms with no attendees and the hygiene could not possibly by good enough. People are taking their last breaths in the streets, coming in with terrible wounds and diseases that could have been cured if they had waited until way, way too late.
And there is me, in villages that are drinking straight out of a waste canal, floods throwing them from their homes 2-3 times per year, barely scraping a harvest together or always a few days away from completely broke. Fishing, craft markets, agriculture, all declining in a crisis state: and there are safety nets here in India: not always the best implemented safety nets, but the government does help hundreds of millions of people.
It seems like in such a state, a social revolution for equality would be secondary or thirdary to basic human needs. I'm not sure. Thats the way it worked in America, we got richer, then we got more tolerant fifty years later. But India needs to leapfrog the U.S. in development patterns in a lot of ways, and I've met so many women ready to change the way women are treated there and with the power and education to do so. One more generation of mothers, hopefully. Mothers that say, "go out and make a good impact on the world" instead of "stay here with me and never leave."
Thursday, March 15, 2012
From His View; The reason we came
A video of some of the small villages we visited, the projects TG has been working on, and the people he has been working with and for. The reason for it all.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Color Me Bengali Baby
On the 11 hour sleeper bus, TG tells me a story. " There was once a girl. She was in love. She followed her lover deep into a crazy world. Everyday she fought past the tangled overgrown web of dangers. The barbs of life pricked at her skin, and though it stung, she plucked the painful poisonous spears from her body, and continued on. She emerged somehow, stronger than before." Oh. So much for ghost stories.
We have arrived in the New York of India, the cultural capital of the country, Kolkata. Banyan trees stretch over the wide sidewalks. The cabs are large, yellow, and furious. Modern colored lights and office buildings couple with tiled mosques and faded time washed walls to makeup the cityscape. The city looks as if it has been burnished; antiqued for our pleasure. We arrive the day before Holi, the colorful Hindu festival of Spring.
We spend the majority of the day searching for internet, but to no avail. Then, happily drench ourselves in the bright customary powders of Holi. Bengalis walk about their skin stained red, green, and purple, for days after the holiday. TG is apple green, and I am cherry red. In our colors, we drink, and are merry.
Until now, we have been living on $15 a day each, including housing, food, and transportation. Talk about budget travel. We live on the locals budget, doing what the locals would never do, and going where the tourists would never want to. The dirtiest hotels, the cheapest buses, the longest commutes, and I am realizing what I have survived, and what I have grown to love.
I seem to have grown quite fond of cold showers, flat shoes, and Mcdonalds. Not all changes are good of course. I have learned I can not go without toilet paper, raw leafy vegetables, or internet. Oh India. Three months ago, I would not have imagined that this would be the impact the country would have on my life. I'm also more grateful than I have ever been. We lead such a privileged existence, and as a woman, with education, choice, and freedom, I have so much, I don't think I ever realized how much, until now.
We are staying at a 600 rupee night hotel, approx $13 a night for two people. They are modest accommodations, but surprisingly clean, homey, and with the best view I have seen in all of India. TG has a few weeks off. We bask in the warmth of the locals, the endless winding neighborhoods, and the emptiness of the day. The sky turns purple when the sun sets. It is my final week in India.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Dead or Alive
Wonder of wonders we are miraculously still alive, though it's been a little touch and go the past few days. We had arrived in Vishakapatnam, nicknamed Vizag for short. TG had work and meetings in the area, and his colleague, Ron Jon, a German/Indian fellow partnering on many of the same developmental projects, had rented a room at a rundown sea side resort. We decided to follow suit. We rented the cheapest room; a woven hut with an attached bathroom. All seemed well and right with the world.
After a day of running errands, we decided to take a swim in the ocean. The beach was clean. The water was clear and blue. About twenty minutes in the water, I heard TG cry out. He began desperately swimming for the shore. He collapsed on the beach, twinging in pain. He had stepped on a stingray. I ran to the reception for them to call a doctor. Neither of us knew what to do in this instance. All we could remember were that stingrays were poisonous, and sometimes deadly.
He limped, shaking in pain to the hotel. At the hotel, no one knew what a stingray was. They watched him seizing, seeing only the small cut on his foot, and decided that he was overreacting. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room." The doctor finally arrived, and instead of helping, he stood there saying the same thing. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room. Change clothes," they pointed at me, since I was still in my bathing suit. My bare skin was more of an issue to them than TG's health. The doctor didn't even bother to check his vitals, before denying TG's condition. TG thought there was a something lodged in his foot from the sting, and wanted to go to the hospital.
An hour later, someone finally brought a car around. I was getting desperate, since TG was still in terrible pain, and no one would do anything to help. We drove into the city, but the two locals in the car didn't know where the hospital was, and kept driving around in circles asking. I jumped out of the car in evening traffic, barefoot and wet from the beach, trying to wave down an auto to take us to the hospital. Vizag drivers watched with morbid curiosity as TG hopped in his swim trunks across the street into the auto.
The driver had a passenger who spoke enough English, that he understood that we needed a doctor. They drove us quickly through the tangle of alleys, where we finally reached some sort of empty local emergency clinic. We had made it. Soon after we arrived, TG's pain finally started to subside. The doctors at the hospital dug around in his foot, but found nothing. They shot TG in the ass with a painkiller and sent him to a government hospital.
Upon arrival, we were immediately terrified at the state of the building and interior. The hospital was filthy, and patients were strewn on ripped stained stretchers. Their loved ones stood around the beds, and in the hall. Very few were being helped, and their cries of pain echoed down the corridors. The place was more like a medic tent during the war, than a hospital. We waited for a moment, but quickly left. Treatment there seemed more terrifying than the pain.
After returning to the resort, TG doped up on pain killers and me on adrenaline, looked up stingrays on the web. Rarely fatal, the venom causes muscle contraction, severe pain, and swelling. If the barb of the stingray strikes a vital area, one can die. Steve Irwin died when a stingray struck him in the chest. Experts recommend pouring hot water on the wound to help breakdown the poison. None of the doctors we met did this, or mentioned it. None of them had even heard of a stingray.
TG is well enough now, though he has great difficulty walking. I'm wondering if it is time for me to leave this country. We just can't seem to get a break.
After a day of running errands, we decided to take a swim in the ocean. The beach was clean. The water was clear and blue. About twenty minutes in the water, I heard TG cry out. He began desperately swimming for the shore. He collapsed on the beach, twinging in pain. He had stepped on a stingray. I ran to the reception for them to call a doctor. Neither of us knew what to do in this instance. All we could remember were that stingrays were poisonous, and sometimes deadly.
He limped, shaking in pain to the hotel. At the hotel, no one knew what a stingray was. They watched him seizing, seeing only the small cut on his foot, and decided that he was overreacting. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room." The doctor finally arrived, and instead of helping, he stood there saying the same thing. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room. Change clothes," they pointed at me, since I was still in my bathing suit. My bare skin was more of an issue to them than TG's health. The doctor didn't even bother to check his vitals, before denying TG's condition. TG thought there was a something lodged in his foot from the sting, and wanted to go to the hospital.
An hour later, someone finally brought a car around. I was getting desperate, since TG was still in terrible pain, and no one would do anything to help. We drove into the city, but the two locals in the car didn't know where the hospital was, and kept driving around in circles asking. I jumped out of the car in evening traffic, barefoot and wet from the beach, trying to wave down an auto to take us to the hospital. Vizag drivers watched with morbid curiosity as TG hopped in his swim trunks across the street into the auto.
The driver had a passenger who spoke enough English, that he understood that we needed a doctor. They drove us quickly through the tangle of alleys, where we finally reached some sort of empty local emergency clinic. We had made it. Soon after we arrived, TG's pain finally started to subside. The doctors at the hospital dug around in his foot, but found nothing. They shot TG in the ass with a painkiller and sent him to a government hospital.
Upon arrival, we were immediately terrified at the state of the building and interior. The hospital was filthy, and patients were strewn on ripped stained stretchers. Their loved ones stood around the beds, and in the hall. Very few were being helped, and their cries of pain echoed down the corridors. The place was more like a medic tent during the war, than a hospital. We waited for a moment, but quickly left. Treatment there seemed more terrifying than the pain.
After returning to the resort, TG doped up on pain killers and me on adrenaline, looked up stingrays on the web. Rarely fatal, the venom causes muscle contraction, severe pain, and swelling. If the barb of the stingray strikes a vital area, one can die. Steve Irwin died when a stingray struck him in the chest. Experts recommend pouring hot water on the wound to help breakdown the poison. None of the doctors we met did this, or mentioned it. None of them had even heard of a stingray.
TG is well enough now, though he has great difficulty walking. I'm wondering if it is time for me to leave this country. We just can't seem to get a break.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Drought of Milk and Honey- Theme Song
I wrote a song in Mamallapuram. I used to write a lot of songs, but I'm all dried up. I managed to squeeze this one out. Since I wrote it, TG and I will often find ourselves singing or humming the tune. It's been declared the theme song of our travels. Enjoy!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
When a Butterfly Wants a Mango
I am in Chennai. TG is somewhere in Andhra Pradesh, the neighboring northern state. The do-gooders from GIZ have stolen him away for the week. They perhaps are putting him to better use than I could. I will fly to the northern part of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday, to meet him. Then we will head north to Kolkata. Below are the emails we write to each other.
Note: They are edited for content
Escapes kept me alive for the worst years of my life. Escapes are just as much life as reality. Life is just the time we spend eating and finding money. The rest of sadness is just thinking about shit too damn much: I want to escape for a good chunk of my life. I love the people who create the best escapes. Those are the godsends and the king makers. Teaching us to dream about more than some dim view of what is real. Quit thinking that you hate the way the world works just cause of the frivolity and unfairness. We only see .00000001% of what the world is: a fantasy novel is, mathematically speaking, as much a percentage of the infinite "reality" as every single thing your senses tell you. Don't look at the world around you. Look at the world as a play ground; its all we get and we get to breathe and feel things on our skin and see color and hear juxtaposed tonality. The suffering is no more real than marauding flocks of giant tree bats in cyclone-ploded arboretums. Your feeling like you want glitz and comfort is no more important or worthy of shame than a butterfly feeling like it wants a mango. Its interesting. Its insignificant. Its personal and fun and silly and not worthy of guilt. Nothing you do is worthy of guilt or shame. We are infinitesimal, largely intestinal, progeny of a gross testicle, grown slaves of the subliminal, worthy of love but not ridicule. For christ's sweet-ass sake, lets quit moping, ever, and just have fun before we die. We are healthy enough to feel good, so lets choose to do so no matter what. If our stupid brains tell us we're sad, deny it. Don't feel what you feel: that's just hormones deviating according to cellular stimuli; feel what you tell your brain you want to feel: gratitude. I'm grateful that I'm wearing shorts and can push against a matress with my toes. i'm grateful that i get to talk to you and say a bunch of silly things. i'm grateful that i feel air going into and out of my lungs. that children threw flowers into my hair today, that the streets were full, that somewhere, someone is ecstatic and blissful right now. that i don't have to care about anything, that nothing that is too much for me to handle is my responsibility. i'm happy for movies and not knowing myself and not feeling guilty right now. There is no injustice because there is no justice. There is no justice because no one deserves anything. No one deserves anything because having ever been alive is its own reward. I don't want to be a void. I want to have existed; I don't care how many horrible things happen, they're worth it and its not my fault. Lets just take the little lives we were born to and enjoy them; its childish and selfish to do anything else. Lets escape- all the time.
Note: They are edited for content
Ok so, I'll try this. Writing. I'm sitting in the room, with
Slum Dog Millionaire on the television. I'm laughing to myself, because
India in real life is so much more like this movie than any of the other
movies I had watched prior to coming here. I had forgotten it. If I had watched it again, maybe the culture shock would have been less.
I have spent so
much time alone, venturing through the world, trying on different
things, you think that I would know myself better. I am having a mid
life crisis before my mid life. I crave glitter, ease, and speed, while
at the same time longing for quiet, simple, and gentle. How can I have
both? When I have one, I always long for the other.
This past year I have trained myself to
care an awful lot about looks, money, and possessions. Now I'm
trying to train myself to care about simple things again. It is harder
than I thought. It is hard not to be comfortable. I have become so used
to being comfortable.
I hate that the world is this way. I get used
to one
injustice, and then I am introduced to new ones. I don't understand the
world we live in. How can I choose something to pursue in this life,
when so much of it seems frivolous and unfair. That is what this trip
is. Learning how the world works, and I hate it so much. That is the
truth, it is not India, it the state of the world.
How can I go on existing in this place, contributing
to the terrible unfairness. You are doing something to change it. What
am I doing? Sitting in a $20 a night hotel, writing fantasies. That is
the only way I can exist in this world, by creating escapes. Only in
them can I escape.
Good night,
I will see you soon :)
Escapes kept me alive for the worst years of my life. Escapes are just as much life as reality. Life is just the time we spend eating and finding money. The rest of sadness is just thinking about shit too damn much: I want to escape for a good chunk of my life. I love the people who create the best escapes. Those are the godsends and the king makers. Teaching us to dream about more than some dim view of what is real. Quit thinking that you hate the way the world works just cause of the frivolity and unfairness. We only see .00000001% of what the world is: a fantasy novel is, mathematically speaking, as much a percentage of the infinite "reality" as every single thing your senses tell you. Don't look at the world around you. Look at the world as a play ground; its all we get and we get to breathe and feel things on our skin and see color and hear juxtaposed tonality. The suffering is no more real than marauding flocks of giant tree bats in cyclone-ploded arboretums. Your feeling like you want glitz and comfort is no more important or worthy of shame than a butterfly feeling like it wants a mango. Its interesting. Its insignificant. Its personal and fun and silly and not worthy of guilt. Nothing you do is worthy of guilt or shame. We are infinitesimal, largely intestinal, progeny of a gross testicle, grown slaves of the subliminal, worthy of love but not ridicule. For christ's sweet-ass sake, lets quit moping, ever, and just have fun before we die. We are healthy enough to feel good, so lets choose to do so no matter what. If our stupid brains tell us we're sad, deny it. Don't feel what you feel: that's just hormones deviating according to cellular stimuli; feel what you tell your brain you want to feel: gratitude. I'm grateful that I'm wearing shorts and can push against a matress with my toes. i'm grateful that i get to talk to you and say a bunch of silly things. i'm grateful that i feel air going into and out of my lungs. that children threw flowers into my hair today, that the streets were full, that somewhere, someone is ecstatic and blissful right now. that i don't have to care about anything, that nothing that is too much for me to handle is my responsibility. i'm happy for movies and not knowing myself and not feeling guilty right now. There is no injustice because there is no justice. There is no justice because no one deserves anything. No one deserves anything because having ever been alive is its own reward. I don't want to be a void. I want to have existed; I don't care how many horrible things happen, they're worth it and its not my fault. Lets just take the little lives we were born to and enjoy them; its childish and selfish to do anything else. Lets escape- all the time.
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