dhire dhire (slowly, slowly)

Today we went to see a Hindi film and do you know what? I understood about 80% of the dialogue!! This is unbelievable to me. During class movies I understand MAYBE 30% or 40%. So it was a great feeling to catch the jokes (most of them anyway) and to really follow in detail what was going on.

After the movie we went shopping. I bought some pretty fabric and am having some pretty shirts made and a beautiful skirt. My Hindi must be better than I thought (warning: boasting ahead), because one of the shopkeepers said I spoke the best Hindi among the group of us. There’s been so little to feel really good about that I’m going to hold on to that compliment for a little while. Just to nurse my ego a bit. it’s taken a bit of a beating in the last few weeks.

So, I think maybe I like India. Maybe just a little. Talking to people (and understanding what they say) is getting much easier, as is navigating the streets. I feel less overwhelmed by the streets lately (probably a function of both my Hindi getting better  and growing a thicker skin) and much more comfortable in the shops. I even managed to buy things like batteries from the electronics-wallah and phone cards from the cellphone wallah. It’s been a hard adjustment to India, and the gender differences are still preposterous, but somehow it seems to be getting easier. Well, that and I memorized some choice Hindi phrases for asking people what their problem is and if I should call the police. And I’ve been taking friends with me wherever I go, which reduced the harassment.

So, tomorrow we leave for a week-long adventure to Ajmer, Pushkar, Amritsar and Dharamshala. I’ll try to update while we’re gone, but i can’t say for sure. I still miss everyone and hope you are all doing well.

Cows: the untold story

Someone told me that the cows here are all owned by people. And that at night, everyone finds their own cows and herds them off. To where exactly, I do not know, as this is a city with not a lot of pastureland. I assumed that was why the cows were eating garbage in the first place, because there was nowhere to put the cows. Where do the cows go at night? Into people’s apartments? It is a mystery to me. So if the cows are not wandering cows, if they truly belong to people, then are these cows used for producing milk? (Why else would one own a cow that one considered holy and un-eat-able?) So these cows that people own, they eat the trash off the street, and so I have to wonder: Are they producing the milk that goes into my morning lassi (yogurt drink)? Or the paneer in my lunch? Is that street trash being recycled into my evening meal? I try not to think about this, but I am definitely curious.

Although it’s becoming more normal to walk by cows on the street (and pigs and goats and dogs and camels and horses), I don’t know if I will ever stop being startled by the sight of such LARGE agricultural animals nosing through the large piles of trash. There are some really fat pigs and cows here. I think it’s a permanently startling sight.

Also, we had a monkey on the roof last night! (And yes, I can say that in Hindi. I can’t say “leave me alone,” but I can tell a story about monkeys!) I didn’t see it on our own roof, but I saw it hopping around the neighbor’s roofs. Except for their funny-looking red bottoms, they are so human-like it’s startling. Every time I see a monkey I’m startled by this, especially by their eyes.

As for the other wildlife in the street, the Jaipuri men have been leaving me along a little bit more. I’ve cultivated my scowl, and I’ve been draping myself in excessive layers of clothing (so much that I’m starting to think a burqa would simply have to be more comfortable). I’ve also been trying to go with people when I walk somewhere, but I’ve had less success with that. The harassment is a big downer. There’s nothing like constantly getting the message that you’re a second-class citizen who’s not entitled to decide what happens to her own body to make a girl feel blue. It’s really made me dislike this city, which is a shame, because I hear lots of other people rave about how wonderful it is. Why, just today, we had a (male) professor from the US talk about how easy it is to talk to shopkeepers in Jaipur. Yep, easy. Until they start following you down the street, and send their brother to look for you after you’ve finally ditched them, and generally keep harassing you (happened to me and Clare). I’m betting that this has never happened to that particular professor. I’m still pretty cynical about this, clearly.

Today is Friday. On Sunday we leave for a short “Hindi camp” trip to Ajmer and Pushkar. After Hindi camp we have a five-day break. Some friends and I will be leaving on a massively-unplanned trip straight from Hindi camp to go north to Amritsar and Dharamshala, so I won’t be back in school until July 21. I’ll try to update from the road, but as the trip itself is unplanned, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find the internet. But: HIMALAYAS! How awesome is that?

Overall, I’m feeling better but still pretty down. This trip has been really really hard, and some snarky comments from classmates (“If you feel like you can’t wait to get back to America something is WRONG”) have left me feeling sort of…lame. I know it really is hard, and I shouldn’t feel bad, but I do. The exciting news is that when I get back from my trip to the Himalayas, two good things will happen: this whole adventure will be halfway DONE, and the following week I’ll get to meet Kathleen O’Reilly, a prof. who studies water and society and gender in Rajasthan. How perfect is that?

Ten good things

So, I know I’ve complained a lot, and obviously, I’m not sure I like it here. But in the spirit of fairness, I’ve decided to post about ten good things that have happened on my trip. (Note how many of them involve my tastebuds…)

1. Chai: We have tea at least three times a day, sometimes more. And it’s delicious, and milky, and sweet. Our host family has tea ready for us when we come downstairs, there is lemon tea when we get to school, we get tea halfway through our class day, and there’s tea again at 3:00 at school.

2. Ice cream: the ice cream place close to the school has excellent chocolate fudge ice cream, a fact I just discovered yesterday. Also, waffle cones. Waffle cones! Filled with chocolate ice cream!

3. Meals: Our school and our host family both serve excellent food which is tasty, healthy, abundant, and completely vegetarian. In fact, it’s much easier to be a vegetarian here than in the US. Most restaurants proclaim on their sign whether they offer “veg,” “non-veg” or both kinds of food.

4. Sweets: Indians make some very good sweets, though they are frequently nut-based and different than the ones in the US. They are tasty, and we also often have really deliciously ripe mangoes (and other fruit) for dessert.

5. Friends: There are some great people on the program, and I’m happy to have the chance to meet all of them, especially the people I live with and the ones I’ve traveled with.

6. Hindi: Despite my love/hate relationship with the language, it IS cool to be surrounded by it and to have so much opportunity to practice.

7. Traveling: I am having fun traveling, taking photos, and seeing exotic places I may never get the chance to see again. It’s been a long time since I left the country (the last time I left was before 9/11) and so it’s been great to have the chance to be a tourist again.

8. Pretty things: India has an abundance of pretty things to buy, including jewelry, brightly colored clothes and quilts and fabrics, sparkly shoes, bells, jewels, bangles, and all sorts of other things.

9. Air conditioning: I have never, ever been so appreciative of air conditioning in my whole life. Air conditioning is awesome!!

10. Purpose: Last night I was listening to Chris Pureka and in one of my favorite songs (perhaps of all time) she says: “You wanted something you saw in the sunset, so don’t you leave here ’til you know what it is.” There’s a reason I came here, even if I can’t articulate it (though somehow I convinced the grant-keepers that I had good reason). I should probably spend some time thinking about that. What drew me here in the first place? And what I hope to get out of the rest of my trip?

Monsoon, garbage, street dogs, verbs

I forgot to say in my last post that Sunday it started monsooning again. My housemates and I were certain that we are the first people ever to create this word, and we were pretty proud of it for about an hour. Anyway, my room has a great big window (one wall is 80% window) and so we sat and watched the monsoon. The skies got dark, so dark that we couldn’t really see for more than a block or two, and the rain came down in torrents. The streets flood relatively quickly, and there was probably 6 inches of water in the street in front of our house very soon after the monsoon started. We watched the people-who-iron-clothes on the sidewalk across from our building frantically pack up clothes, irons, carts, and babies, and run off to who-knows-where right before the storm started. I hope they were dry. Clare, another student here, was walking home from our house in her brand-new bright blue salwar qameez when the storm hit, and the dye ran all over her and turned her blue. So blue, in fact, that her host mother wouldn’t let her help cook dinner because she looked like a smurf. Well, that’s not what the host mother said but that’s how we’re interpreting it.

Shortly after the monsooning ended, we saw a garbage truck rumble by. It was followed by a front-end loader. So THAT’s how they clean up the massive piles of trash. They scoop them up with earth moving equipment. Makes perfect sense now. Yesterday when I walked home someone had thrown out a bunch of fabric scraps in the dumpsters right next to the stinky community pee-place that’s about a block from my house. When I went back to school this morning, every bit of fabric was gone. But not the rest of the trash. There’s a story in there, but I don’t know what it is.

There is a street dog that has taken to sleeping in our hallway. Once you enter the property gates of my building, you can walk up to my hallway without having to go in the house. So I woke up this morning and when I went outside, there was the dog, just hanging out in the hallway. I went a little closer to try to shoo him away. And as I got closer, I could see that he was shaking just a little bit. He did not respond to me at all. Someone here commented that all the street dogs here look broken. It’s true, and sad. Of course, there are plenty of people who look equally hungry and desperate, so why should the dogs be different?

By the way, I try not to really emphasize this, but dammit, HINDI IS HARD. There is this one verb that has about a bajillion different uses, everything from “striking” to “feeling” to “costing” to “spending” to “passing” to “hanging” to “beating.” We noted at least 32 different uses of it yesterday in grammar class, and another one popped up this morning. Also, in Hindi there are compound verbs, so if you want to say that someone did two things, you can sort of say it at once. But there are all sorts of connotations that can be implied by double verbs. Today I am having one of those days where Hindi seems impossible and now I know why. The verbs are all over the place. Undisciplined verbs, that’s my problem. I need to get myself a good linguistic paddle and whip those saucy verbs into shape.

Also, I moved into my new room last night, just down the hall from where I was staying, and let me just say that I’m very VERY happy to be able to unpack a little bit. Plus the curtains are pretty. Hey, this trip is hard enough, I’ll take my solace where I can get it.