Namaste India

I haven’t updated the blog in a while, and it’s not because my life is boring in the US, but because when I’m there, I can usually share my funny life stories immediately with the people around me. That urge being satisfied, keeps me from needing a release of pent-up amusement here.  Blame the sisters, that’s what I do.

So India…unlike China or the Middle East, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t find India fascinating. Initially I thought China was boring because the pictures in history books for the “China Unit” were always of boring things like pottery or water color paintings. When I got there and saw the swords and amazing architecture, I was won over. Also, their language is pretty cool. The Middle East seemed too oppressive to me as a child, and, frankly, it is, but they also have a cool language, fascinating architecture, and an impressive selection of weaponry…so you really can’t lose (unless you get your head cut off by a terrorist on youtube, but some of us try to defy stereotypes). But back to India…

Favorite tree!

India was the land of the Indus Valley civilization, a multitude of languages with a wide variety of beautiful scripts, the Ramayana, curry, Riki Tiki Tavi and the Jungle Book, mouthwatering bread, beautiful colorful clothing. But the thought of visiting India as a tourist was really overwhelming. As a tourist, you have to see everything…or at least the “main things.” And I didn’t see how it would be possible to see everything AND learn the language.  Contrary to what you may believe, I don’t care if I learn every language in the world. OK, to be honest, I’d want to learn the language of whatever country I happen to be living in, but there are only a few countries that I would want to visit because I really want to learn the (or, in the case of India, one of the) language spoken there.  I remember sitting in a restaurant in Indonesia when Uncle Don told me that if I learned Hindi, Chinese, and Arabic along with Bahasa, which I already spoke, that I could speak to the majority of people in Asia. And at the time, Asia was really the only place that existed for me. Since then, I’ve broadened my horizons a bit and ventured to Africa, Europe and elsewhere, but Asia was the first place I chose to be my home. And it always holds a special feeling for me.

Driving around this last week, I’ve felt very much at home—the red mimosa trees and the black and white stripes painted unnecessarily on the sidewalks, Walls Ice Cream advertisements in the shops, blue strapped flipflops, crazy traffic driving on the left side of the road, pollution, smoke, incessant car horns, hot green chili peppers…I kind of love it all.  I know that eventually the car horns will become unbearable because, while I can handle noxious fumes and near death taxi rides, ever since I sat next to a speaker at that Palestinian orphans’ camp which gave me a constant ringing in my ear for the next month and a half, my ears have been especially sensitive to loud piercing noises. But really, something about life here feels comfortable in its familiarity.

With Shomili

This week has been very full. I spent a day and a half in the office, convinced the Boss somehow to let me go on a field visit by myself for two days, came back for one day in the office, spent Saturday exploring with Diane, Sunday to church and then to meetings which lasted until a couple of hours ago. Our meetings were mostly very long with lots of important information but too much sitting, too much AC, and not enough black tea. I think my favorite moment was this morning when we were ordering breakfast. The meetings were held in a really fancy meeting room which one of our board members hooked us up with. Impressed with the gourmet food we’d been eating, Diane thought she’d ask if  they had French toast. “No,” said the waiter, “We have Indian toast.” She ended up going with my choice: a masala omelet with extra green chilis. It was mumtaztik.

Elderly ladies offering wisdom at community meeting

I am loving the green chilis here. I learned how to say ‘green chili’ in Bengali, Hindi, and Nepali. I wasn’t planning to learn Nepali when I came here, but I think it’s going to be inevitable since that is the lingua franca of our office. Fortunately, it is very similar to Hindi, so if I learn Hindi first, then maybe I can understand what the boys are saying about us. Bengali is definitely going to be useful, not only in Calcutta, but also in the field. When I was on our field visit, the English level of our partners is at a level where occasionally I got the answers to the questions I asked, but sometimes we had conversations like this:

Me: So how long were the visitors with you?

Arindam: We will arrive in 2 hour.

Using a Neverthirst pump

Or me: How much time in a day did the woman spend fetching water before Neverthirst installed the hand pump?

Dmaity: She is very happy because now the water is near her home. She say it taste like fridge water.

I can even have mutually unintelligible conversations at home in the office:

Me: So the Kolkata Knight Riders won the cricket match? What was the score?

Ashish: 190 balls out of 100 balls over 3 wickets…(Or something like that. In this case, I don’t think the language was the communication issue. I don’t know that I’ll go back to the states fluent in cricket lingo. If Lagaan couldn’t do it with singing and dancing, I don’t know that Ashish will be able to teach me no matter how passionate about it he is.)

So I’m happy to be here, looking forward to learning more and having more adventures, and excited to learn as many languages as possible. 

Woman washing clothes and dishes in dirty water

I feel like I have so many more stories, but I don’t have time to write the book yet.