EIGHT AND A HALF A HEAD

The blog is back! Sort of...

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:39:00 +0000

Hey everyone! It's been a while. Some of you may know, I'm leaving for Ghana tonight for 3 months. I've decided to try a wordpress blog this time. If you're interested in following me, you can find me here: http://artoftheuncommonplace.wordpress.com/ and I will also be blogging on Columbia's Earth Institute website here: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/millennium-villages/

Hope to hear from you while I'm away!

Adam

Hollywood Ending?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:51:00 +0000

These photos and this coverage of the kids from Slumdog Millionaire caught my eye.

Courage and Consumerism

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:23:00 +0000

I could not agree more:

If We Don't Shop, the Terrorists Have Won?
That seems to be the prevailing sentiment within Mumbai's chic boutiques. Buy expensive stuff, or the terrorists have won. Eat in fancy restaurants, or the terrorists have won. Sleep in over-priced hotels, or the terrorists have won. So, we drain our bank accounts on useless crap and--we win?

I get the idea that fear tactics shouldn't break our spirit, yadda yadda, but how has courage suddenly been equated with consumerism?

The terrorists, and, to a less violent degree, the disenfranchised people they claim to represent, take issue with our free-market, unabashedly consumptive lifestyle. But maybe they don't just begrudge us our Louis Vuittons simply out of evil.

As Sameer Reddy points out in his fantastic piece for Newsweek, the deep divide between rich and poor in India (with most of the country's Muslims leaning heavily towards the poor side) is a petrie dish that grows resentment like bacteria. And resentment taken to a bloody extreme leads to violence, such as the kind we experienced last week. So maybe, instead of trying to defeat terrorism by frenetically swiping our credit cards, we could think more about how to close the gap between the have and the have nots, giving more people access to opportunity and bring them into the fold of society? Sure, it may cost us a pair of Jimmy Choos here or a summer home there, but isn't the prospect of world peace worth it?

Quick Conclusions

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:11:00 +0000

Suketu Mehta, whose book was my guide to Mumbai when I first arrived, writes in the NYT:

In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.
The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.
If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?
So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.

His initial analysis is right on, but veers off course at the conclusion, which is unsettling in its familiarity to what Bush said after 9/11:

When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.

We see where that got us. Instead, I'm drawn to Anand Giridharadas' article for the NYT Week in Review:

A text-message moving among Mumbaikars expressed the uniqueness of the now: “Brothers and sisters, it’s time to wake up and do something for the country — however little — related to this or not — start today and continue it through the years — do not forget as easily as we are used to forgetting.”

Many told themselves and each other that this time would change things, just as Americans had told themselves after 9/11. But they knew their own history, and America’s, and they seemed, even as they spoke the words, to disbelieve them already.

Closer to the scene

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:56:00 +0000

As a follow-up to my last post, this is the best collection of personal reflections, context, and analysis I've found, so far, about the attacks:

http://www.indiauncut.com/

Mumbai

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:24:00 +0000

(photo Arko Datta/Reuters, NYT)

The news out of Mumbai has felt very personal, very painful, and very close to my heart. Fortunately, those closest to me in the city are safe. And yet, watching, listening, and reading the accounts of the violence as it unfolds – the senseless loss of life – is simply stunning.

When I first heard the news, it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Automatic weapons and grenades: guerrilla warfare was taking place on streets and in places that hold deep meaning for me. I used to walk by Leopold, glance at the backpackers drinking huge mugs of beer, and somehow feel superior to those who had come to India and essentially stayed home. Those thoughts are now distant and meaningless. Westerners were certainly targets, but meanwhile, scores of local commuters were gunned down in the CST railway station. Eerie pictures of the aftermath show pools of blood amongst abandoned luggage.

Over the past three days, I’ve felt lost between many worlds: the comfort of home, the memories of Mumbai, and the new images – both real and imagined – that fill my head, of Mumbai as a war zone. I feel endlessly sad and empty.

The Mumbai I experienced is a city of extremes. You see it, smell it, and feel it when you’re there, but it’s far more than sensory. It’s personal. Life is lived out in the open, and it’s messy. More than any city I’ve ever been to, you can’t just observe it; you’re forced to internalize it and reflect on your place in it. Particularly as a foreigner, your presence in a crowd or public space affects and changes what happens, just as much as what happens affects and changes you.

That which is subtle elsewhere is polarized, magnified, and held directly in front of your eyes in Mumbai. The city’s most obvious juxtaposition of extremes is excessive opulence co-existing beside wretched poverty. And for me, nowhere in Mumbai was the contrast more visceral, or more likely to start a fit of existential anguish, than at the Taj Hotel.

I visited the travel desk at the Taj every few weeks to purchase Indian Railways tickets. For a small service fee, the staff inside the hotel was always impeccably friendly and eager to serve. I could never get over how helpful and patient they were, and how earnestly they worked at their jobs. I imagine they were caught in the middle of gunfire, and it hurts my heart to think what may have happened.

I remember traveling from my apartment to the Taj on the city’s local trains, packed in amongst thousands of sweaty male bodies jostling for space. The smell of raw humanity on those trains – hot armpits one moment, raw sewage (from the tracks below) the next – is unforgettable. Once, a teenage boy was staring at me from across the crowded car. I was standing near the open door as the train shot through the city. Suddenly he pointed at me and said to his friends, “Foreigner!” Eyes turned toward me and stared. I froze, unsure what would happen. Nothing did.

The station nearest the Taj swarms with maimed stray dogs, orphaned children, and others living and suffering whose eyes haunt you. I used to stop at the Coffee Day vendor and buy a shot of sweet milky coffee on my way through the station.

A taxi from Churchgate station to the Taj costs twenty rupees (fifty cents), but occasionally a driver asks double. After living in the city for months, there’s a swelling sense of frustration and righteousness when you know you’re being cheated. The feeling isn’t really about the money; it’s more the reminder that you’re looked upon as an outsider. Frustrated, I’d catch a glimpse of the glittering lobby outside my window and remember where I’d asked to be taken. There’s a good chance the taxi driver who took me to the Taj would return home at night to the slums. I’d usually pay double.

At the Taj, an Indian doorman with a Hungarian moustache, dressed in an elaborate white suit, smiles and greets you as you approach. He pulls open a glass door, and a wall of cold filtered air comes gushing out into the hot thick night, inviting you in. The lobby is full of lavish carpets, sofas, chandeliers, and white people who don’t know, or don’t care, to dress modestly and cover their legs. I’d make my way across the oval lobby, aware that this was one place in the city where I – a foreigner – would not be singled out, solicited, or started at.

To leave the hotel, I would walk past the famed bathrooms, through a long hallway lined with some of the world’s most exclusive retail shops. I remember a Luis Vuitton and a fancy bakery at the end of the hall. I’d pass the guests-only pool, and well-dressed people along the way, most of whom walked slowly, talked loudly, and smiled.

I’d step out the door, back into the thick air. Heading west, away from the water, I always looked up: the last chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling above the sidewalk always swung in the wind, and it always made me nervous. I’d look ahead and see a dog in the road. Then there might be a woman begging for change, or a child tugging at my arm, or a thin man selling humongous balloons. I never understood the appeal of those balloons.

I’d walk past these people, away from the Taj, through Colaba. I felt like all the people out there knew where I had been. Though I continued on my way, eyes glancing down occasionally, I’d feel my heart fill with guilt, anger, and a sense of alarming injustice. I’d walk on, acutely aware that I’d gone from a carefully manufactured world of wealth, the world for those who have ‘made it’, to one so unpredictable, oppressive, and real, full of those who have not.

A friend in Mumbai tells me this attack feels painful in a different way than others before. As I write, the latest news says the siege is over. Nonetheless, the stories from the last few days are heavy and hard to understand. I can’t seem to find a narrative to make sense of what has happened, and hold it all together. I’m not sure anyone can, just yet. I’m afraid something new has emerged, something awful, something that stokes fear and seeks death. I wonder whether something even more powerful will emerge, something powerful enough to meet people who choose such horrific violence before they walk that path, and show them another way. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m ready to look. I’d bet it’s somewhere between the polar opposites, so evident and so exploited this week in Mumbai. Meanwhile, life will surely continue to be lived out in the open, messy as it is.

Home

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:32:00 +0000

My time in India has come to an end. I came home late last night, home to State College, home to a loving family, soft carpets, fresh air, and more silence than I’m used to. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, even after 30 hours of travel, and it was because of the silence! My ears were ringing and I heard unfamiliar voices singing in my head, shifting from one ear to the other, like someone was toggling with the mixer on a distant radio, fading out of my left ear, into my right, then back. I had to play music on my computer to get the sounds in my head to stop. Has it been so long since I heard nothing at all?

Today we went to Wegmans – a long-awaited event. I was in line for a sandwich when the power went out and the store went dark, momentarily. Power outages: a fact of life in India. I heard a woman behind the sandwich counter say to a coworker, once the lights came back: “well that was scary!” I smiled to myself and shook my head. You have no idea. No idea. A thousand memories flashed through my mind, and then I immediately felt pretentious and unnecessarily self-important for thinking that way. Still, a part of me wanted recognition, attention, to be appreciated, recognized, and treated differently for where I’ve been and how I’ve lived. Which is odd (though not unexpected). In India, I wanted not to be an outsider. Suddenly, now that I blend in, I'm mentally seeking reminders of how I'm different: how my experience has given me a perspective that others, here at home, may not relate to, appreciate, or fully understand. I'm interested in how, when, and why these conflicting feelings take shape in the coming weeks and months.

Anyway, I’m back, so please be in touch. I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone.

Where I'm At

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:57:00 +0000

I had a little moment of insight this evening. A little breakthrough. I was walking through my neighborhood alone on my way to dinner, frustrated about you name it, feeling pretty low about my present situation, simply ready be back home. It was dark outside as I walked through the alleys. My level of self-pity was amazing. It was like white noise in my head, and I was using it to block everything else out. I just wanted to go home, back to my parents’ house, sink into the couch, and be with people I love. And to be honest, it’s not like I was upset over some sort of overt injustice, unique to India. No, I was mostly just moping because my internet server had crashed, again.

Then a thought snuck through the static and into my head. I thought of a book I’ve read over a dozen times since I arrived here (it’s less than 40 pages). It’s called The Way of Man, by a Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber. “There is something,” he suggests, “that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.”

A moment later, I saw it all quite clearly: going home, for me, has come to symbolize the same thing that going abroad symbolized before I left. That is, the solution to a lack of fulfillment.

Yes, of course that simplifies my reasons for going abroad. And going home. Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over here, it’s that I’ll only find fulfillment where I am. Otherwise, I’ll always be taking off to go somewhere new, to find fulfillment somewhere else, and it just doesn’t seem to work that way.

Mango Season

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:15:00 +0000

It's getting to be uncomfortably hot, but on the up side, it's now mango season, and there's a type of Indian mango called the Alphonso which is simply unlike any other mango I've tasted. Very sweet and rich, less of a citrus flavor, and not fibrous at all. It almost makes up for all of India's other inconveniences.

Life Before

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:29:00 +0000

V. Akka joined a little late on the first day of interviews. She is in her mid-thirties. Her face is handsome and strong; her biceps and forearms adorned with tattoos. She comments that her sisters are older than she, but people always think it's the other way around. V. Akka can neither read nor write. She is one of two illiterate women selected for a leadership position in this project.

She is her husband’s second wife. The first wife had three children. One committed suicide. V. Akka had two children herself, a girl and a boy. The girl died in the tsunami. Unlike other women in our interview group, her husband encouraged her to work – if only so he would have more money to drink. The work she did before the tsunami was extremely hard. She collected shells (to sell to a middleman for Rs. 100-150 (around $3) per day) and fetched prawns. She even fished on a catamaran.

To collect shells, she said, there were two methods. Sometimes she would stand in the sea and drive iron rods into the sand, to which she would attach a net. She lifted up her leg and showed us scars from misguided attempts to control the sharp metal amidst the current. Otherwise, she would stand with other women at the point where the waves break in the ocean, holding a special net under the water to catch the shells. Often times the waves would submerge the women completely.

Fetching prawns is done by hand, at night. I asked V. Akka if she ever got scared, standing out in the ocean at night. She cocked her head a little and looked at me out of the side of her right eye. The right side of her mouth turned upward, slightly. Yes, she said – but her answer was not what I expected. She and the other women with whom she worked, standing in the ocean at night, were scared of ghosts.

The Miracle

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:08:00 +0000

(Just for further clarification: I traveled to Tamil Nadu with a co-worker, Veeranka, who doesn’t speak the local language, Tamil, but can understand bits and pieces. Juliet, another co-worker based in Tamil Nadu, is a native of the state, and was our translator for the week. The village we visited is called Pulicut)

We arrived on Monday afternoon, with interviews scheduled to begin the following day. I was sitting on the clay floor of a cozy house in the village when I first heard about the Miracle. Now, from what I could gather, Pulicut is a fervently religious - Christian - place. At 6am every morning, two hours of (rather catchy) hymns to Mother Mary are pumped through a village-wide P.A system at the decibel level of a rock concert. Mass is broadcast every evening at 6pm over the same system, at the same decibel level. On the cast-iron gate outside the house where I stayed are the words: 'Prise The Lord' (though presumably it means Praise The Lord). I could go on. The story of the Miracle, as I heard it, is this:

Pulicut's old church had been demolished to make way for a new one. Proper prayers were not said over the old church before constructing the new one [if anyone knows what these prayers are called, please let me know]. A number of unexplained deaths soon occurred in the village. People began to suspect that Mother Mary was mad at them.

Then, a week before our arrival, a man with a cell phone camera stood outside the new church at night and snapped a picture of the flagpole. He claims that the lights atop the pole were dim at the time. No other lights were visible. Yet, what you see on the right-hand side of my photo is said to have appeared on his camera: two narrow and sinister-looking red/yellow eyes with white 'pupils' below two blinding sources of light (the pairing of that image with Mary came later).

The people in Pulicut called it a miracle. I didn't know what to call it. Any thoughts?

Interviews

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:54:00 +0000

In 2005, the organization where I work began a project in tsunami-affected villages of Tamil Nadu (south Indian state). Last week, I had the opportunity to visit one of these villages. The purpose of my trip was to meet and interview four women, from local villages, who work as community facilitators for the project. Their role in the project is to lead children through a process of healing. For three days, a co-worker and I spoke with these women - through a translator - about what their lives were like before the tsunami, what they were searching for after the tsunami, what was being offered, and what wasn't being offered.

The experience was one of the highlights of my 7 months in India. Have a look at some of the pictures I posted in the slide show at the bottom of the page. I'll write a little more about this experience in the coming days.

Personal Space

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:44:00 +0000

The other day I happened to glance at the front page of The Economic Times. Huge headlines boasted of the accomplishments of the railway minister. “Passenger fares cut for all classes & no increase in freight across the board.” I flipped to the second page: “Mumbai’s suburban trains transport about 680,000 commuters every day.” Per-day. Per Day! It’s an almost inconceivable number. That is, until you board a local train – or you find yourself amidst a crowd, like the one to the left, that is rushing to do so. More on that in a moment.

My transition to this city has been a bit of a wake up call. In Vijayawada, I didn’t have to – well – participate too much in society. For starters, I lived in a quiet, isolated compound, set back from the road. I chose to go to the grocery store once a week for biscuits and Haldiram’s, and I chose to take the 45-minute snot-blackening walk back. In that way, the invasion of my space – when it happened along the walk– was part of the adventure. In a way, I went looking for it; I wanted stories, I wanted experiences, I wanted to feel part of something - the culture - outside of work.

Here in Mumbai, when someone or something gets into my space, more often than not I’d rather it or he (it’s always a man) get out. Immediately.

I have a small studio apartment, which I love; but things keep showing up against my will. First of all, I don’t subscribe to The Economic Times. It’s delivered every day, but most days I don’t read it. Still, until this morning (I moved in three weeks ago), when a teenage newspaper boy knocked on my door, paper in hand, and asked, “Do you want?” I had no idea how to cancel the previous tenant’s subscription.

This also is the case for my (his) cable subscription. Similarly, I can’t seem to eliminate the sulfuric stench in my bathroom - though I’ll concede that the smell may actually originate from outside the window, or – and this would be far worse – from the water supply that flows to my faucets.

You see I’ve read that Mumbai’s aging sewage pipes run side-by-side, underground, with ‘potable’ water pipes, and that some of the sewage – that which doesn’t drain out into the ocean – leaks and is absorbed by the ‘fresh’ water pipes. In other words, one person’s shit ends up in another person’s sink.

And many days – of late – I’ve felt like the sink.

A studio apartment to myself is as close to personal space as is possible in this city. It’s a luxury, as is my running water. Smells of questionable origin, subscriptions that should have been discontinued, and a neighbor across the alleyway whose musical taste varies from Belinda Carlisle to “How Much is That Doggie in the Window,” are minor invasions of personal space in comparison to what it’s like to, say, travel on the local trains. So it comes, perhaps, as little surprise that I should have started to go emotionally downhill – fast – after riding the train during rush hour last week.

I board the train at its origin. There are no doors; none that close while the train is running. Pretty soon I’m folded and stuffed into the center of the massive human herd. I'm wearing my backpack. I find momentary peace in the anonymity of the crowd, until I remember that mine is the only white face amongst the 680,000 people who have chosen to join me in this car, stare at me, and fight their way into what I desperately tell myself is my space. At this point, I want nothing more than to be back in my apartment, watching someone else’s cable, bathing in someone else’s shit.

People burst onto these trains at every stop like water erupting from a broken main. I become convinced the crowd will throb and I’ll be shoved from the moving train. I grip the overhead handle, redknuckled, and try to keep a distance from the door. The ride goes on. I’m not thrown from the train, but my nerves are shot. I look around: others grip the doorframe and lean into the rushing air, heads and limbs dangling from the train. They are insane. The whole thing is insane. As for personal space? Forget it.

I don’t know how to keep these unwanted things and curious but occasionally invasive people away from me, so I’m learning to embrace it, and (if I can - hopefully) them. I can't maintain the level of frustration that I have been carrying around with me of late. I’m learning to turn inwards; to find peace in my immediate surroundings by changing my attitude - and my behavior. But it's hard. I take small steps. When the inward-searching fails, I buy air fresheners; I don’t ride second-class at rush hour; once in a while I flip on the TV. BBC. Animal Planet. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, if I’m lucky, there will not be a newspaper in front of my door.

Transition

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:15:00 +0000

Lots of changes taking place over here. Today is, most likely, my final day in Vijayawada. My placement in this part of the country is finished, and as I write, my bags are (almost) packed and I’m ready to get on a train. Actually the train ticket has not been confirmed, so I’ll be hauling my luggage to the station with all intentions of getting on a train. This should be interesting.

One of my bosses, whose house I've been sharing (living here at first, and eating all my meals here), planned for my departure accordingly, earlier this week:

Sivaji: “Okay, the train, maybe it is not confirmed. But…” – he pauses, inhales; a huge grin spreads across his face – “the biryani, it is confirmed!”

In India, the arrival or departure of a guest is typically the occasion for a huge meal. My departure proved no exception. Yesterday morning, a well-worn steel pot, half the size of a bathtub, sat perched atop the stove. By lunchtime I was devouring its contents: chicken biryani – a rice dish made with garlic, onions, tomatoes, chilies, nutmeg, a whole lot of ghee and oil, and an assortment of other ingredients. It was delicious and I feel enormous still this morning.

I'm not leaving India now: I'm moving to Mumbai. There, I'll move into a studio apartment and begin work at a new organization where I'll stay for five months. I'll write more about this transition in the coming weeks. Off now to finish packing...

Put 'em in a tree museum...

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:24:00 +0000

I took this picture outside of my office towards the end of October. My sole interest, at the time, was the white cloth in the foreground. I didn’t know what it was at first, but it seemed like an odd contraption to find hanging from the branch of a roadside tree. At first glance (this picture was taken later), it looked like there was something inside the cloth, weighing it down. In India, I’ve come to expect almost anything to appear almost anywhere, but I wasn’t expecting this: A baby, cradled in the cloth, hanging from the tree.

The next question was obvious: Why is there a baby cradled in a cloth, hanging from the tree?

The story is straightforward. The people you see in the background are construction workers. Construction on this street means heaving platefuls of rock and sand into the concrete mixer (seen just behind the tree), and heaving concrete from the mixer into the roadside ditch. They do this six days a week as part of the city’s road expansion project.

So the cloth, in essence, was serving as tree-supported daycare for a woman at the construction site. By the time I came back with my camera, she had taken the child, was holding him tight, and had tied up the cloth.

I’m posting this now because the picture hints at another, more complex story that’s been unfolding outside my door over the past two months - a puzzle a bit beyond my grasp. That is, what else happens when the city decides to expand a road?

For one thing, the landscape outside my office has changed drastically since late October. When I look at this photo now, I look as much at the workers, the tree, and the house to the left of the gravel pile, as I do at the empty white cloth. The tree was recently chopped down. The house, too, was demolished. There are huge ditches on either side of the road.

The workers, meanwhile, are still out on the street, earning money over long hours, doing by hand what heavy machinery could accomplish in a matter of minutes. From a simple economics perspective, their jobs would probably have become obsolete if labor weren’t so cheap. I also can’t help but wonder about the woman who left the baby in the cloth. What sort of life does she live? What’s it like, that she feels compelled to return to work so soon after giving birth (and bring her baby with her)?

From what I can tell, anyway, the expansion of the road causes the following: The environment suffers, some people get displaced, and some people get employed (to say nothing else of the socioeconomic situations of those employees). But why widen the road in the first place?

Presumably, they are doing it to accommodate an increase in automobile traffic. According to the local paper (this still requires some fact-checking), India’s automobile fleet is predicted to expand nearly 10-fold in by 2030. I wrote in my last entry about the thick and sooty air around here. It’s bad enough right now with the number of vehicles currently out there. Breathing might not be such a pleasant experience with close to ten times as many vehicles on the road.

Besides, why this particular road? From what I can tell, I don’t live on a major road, much less one that needs to be widened. It’s a mile long at most, and it’s on the outskirts of town. To the north, it forms a T-intersection with a major thoroughfare. What’s more, to the south it bottlenecks and becomes a one-lane bridge across a canal.

Unless the city aims to simply increase the volume of vehicles that can be present on the road at any given time, it’s unclear to me how widening a road that funnels into a single-lane bridge is going to accommodate increased traffic, whatsoever. It’s rather like trying to increase the speed at which water pours from a 1 liter bottle by expanding the bottle to accommodate 2 liters, rather than widening the opening at the top.

So who benefits from this? Do the bicycles, motorbikes, and rickshaws that primarily populate the road need that much extra space? Doesn’t anyone mind if more trees get chopped down to make way for more cars? Are the people doing the work getting a fair deal? What does it say about a city’s development priorities when people are evicted to make space for vehicles?

Unfortunately, that last question is not so black and white. I’m told the occupants of the now-demolished house had on that land illegally. If true, that complicates any argument about their eviction (but to complicate the situation further, there’s this: Fronts of buildings all along the road have been lopped off by the city– which, I’m told, is because the city allowed building owners to build out to a certain point along the road, and then recently said, in effect, ‘Oops. We let you go too far. We’ll have that back now’).

But what I do know is this. Most people in this area don’t drive large vehicles. In fact, it’s more common to see a personal vehicle like a motorbike or bicycle overloaded with people. I’ve even seen a family of five riding on a motorbike (granted – the three children were small). It’s hard to tell who exactly benefits, at least in the present moment, from all this construction. On the other hand, could the city be showing some forward thinking, adequately planning for a systemic shift from scooters to passenger cars, as cars inevitably drop in price and income levels of (some) people in this country rise?

Thomas Friedman makes a good case for why that’s not exactly forward thinking.

Back to the picture. In the end, perhaps the cloth in the foreground is still the main story. Perhaps the story is not so complicated after all. I tend to over-analyze things, yet I have to wonder: As all this development work steadily takes place in the background, as trees fall, people are displaced (rightfully or otherwise), and the landscape changes – who is thinking of the little guy in the white cloth, hanging from the tree?

A Stroll

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:58:00 +0000

Waiting for the bus, I stuck a finger in my nose and removed a crusty flake of blackened snot. I examined it as best I could in the dark. The usual suspects, probably. Diesel fumes, suffocating plumes of dirt, and tire grime. It’s a reasonable price to pay to escape the white walled box that is now both my bedroom and office. Which is exactly what I had done. I’d taken a walk, ten minutes down to the main road, my nose hairs incidentally accumulating the aforementioned pleasantries along the way. Now I was waiting.

I’d chosen a trip to the grocery store as my social release for the evening. My excuse was toilet paper, which is in fact hard to find, but more pressingly I needed to be lost in a crowd, though that too is an admittedly difficult task when you stand out from the crowd like a marshmallow from a s’more. Cars and trucks kicked the dirt up off the road. The singsong horns from the Tata trucks and the belching basses from the buses stung my ears and rattled my chest.

I used to take the bus religiously in New York. I remember standing on the corner of 86th street watching the digital display of the double-bodied the M15 snake its way south through yellow cabs and deliveries, gliding gracefully towards the curb, coming to an effortless and dramatic pause. Perfect. The hydraulics would hiss and sigh and the bus would kneel down to scoop up the men and women who minutes before were looking at their watches, cursing. The front door would open, and depending on the time of year, a cool gust or a warm radiance would tumble out onto the street. I’d have my card already in my hand, feed it into the machine, grab it back, and maneuver to the back of the bus to stand or sometimes sit. With a deep inhalation, the bus would stand back up and barrel off down the avenue.

Indian buses don’t always stop. Not completely. In the chance that one does, it’s brief, and probably because of traffic ahead. I hadn’t ridden the bus alone before, and when I asked at the office, ‘which one goes to Modern Market?’ the answer was ‘all of them’.

A hulking red bus, rusted and tired, slouched towards the side of the road and slowed to a near halt. Men jumped from the back door, running as their feet hit the dirt. Women carefully exited from the front, as the bus was now caught in traffic. The thing was comically full, and I could have sworn I saw torsos sticking out the windows. Two petite men with briefcases leaned from out the back door, leaving just enough room for me to slide onto the first step, bump into another man who was trying to exit, and climb up into the body of the bus. Alas.

Two rupees, ten minutes, one soft elbow to the eye socket, and an accidental backhand slap-to-the-jaw later, I jumped out the back of the bus, dodged an oncoming rickshaw, and snuck off to the side of the road onto what one might call a ‘sidewalk.’ I brushed my hands down the front of my shirt, turned around, and there I was, standing smack in front of the market.

Some 25 minutes later, at 6:45 pm, I was finished. I was in no rush to get home. I looked across the road to a densely crowded part of the street that could have been a bus stand, or just India, and thought to take a walk and look for a fresh ground Café Coffee Day bean wholesaler I remembered spotting once from the window of the car.

I got to walking and felt a strange sense of familiarity – a bag of groceries in my hand, no car, going on an errand. Walking. Jesus, I thought, I do this everywhere else I live – why had it taken me two months, a daylong bout of self-pitying semi-depression, and a rather spontaneous decision to chase after coffee, to get me walking and exploring?

The thought came to mind that perhaps I’ve simply been intimidated. I talk a big game about my isolation, the confinement of living and working in the same building (the same room! Short commute, at least…), the lack of any appreciable resources in my part of town. But what a crock of shit! In two months, I’d walked ten minutes in either direction, declared ‘there’s nothing here,’ and settled then for rickshaw explorations into other parts of town. I felt a bit ashamed of myself, because instantly, when I started walking, I felt a sort of perky awareness, a fascination with the city of fire.

I found the coffee bean wholesaler. Heaven! I asked the man – who didn’t understand my words but surely felt my excitement – if I could smell the beans. He brought me a handful, and I ordered half a Kg, which I naively thought was, well, not as much as it turned out to be. I left instead with ¼ Kg, which is, I don’t know, maybe a pound of fresh ground coffee, and continued on my way.

I passed another coffee bean wholesaler on my left, then another on my right! Where had these been? Where had I been? I started to feel the pulse of the street. Only unwritten social rules separate the pedestrian ‘sidewalks’ from the chaotic hustle of overstuffed automobiles. As I walked, I stayed what you could call a ‘safe’ distance from traffic, depending on your definition of safe.

I looked all around me all at once. There were food wallas selling deep-fried green chilies. I saw numerous advertisements for whiskey, and clusters of chitchatting students from local colleges. Stores were selling textbooks about Hydraulics. There was a beautiful artisan shop with slick wicker porch chairs suspended from trees in the night, and a dusty, yellow-lit workshop, rustic looking, where men were carving details into wood furniture. John Kenneth Galbraith called India a ‘functioning anarchy.’

Back a bit from the road, a woman – wasted thin – held an infant in her arms as she squatted by a small fire, stirring something in a steel pot. Cars, buses, people passed by without noticing, just as I had many times before. I kept walking. I saw a sign for a gym. The words were written in cursive over the image of a white man’s cartoonishly large back muscles. ‘Flat 104,’ the sign said. Hours for men were posted on the left side. Hours for women were on the right. I glanced quickly, but not long enough to tell how much the hours overlapped. I went so far as walking up the stairs – more out of curiosity than an actual desire to join – but couldn’t find the entrance to Flat 104. I turned back, still looking up at the second-floor sign, when suddenly, for no good reason, my eyes returned to the road in front of me. There I was, two short steps short of falling four feet into an open street-side gutter of sulfuric-smelling sewage.

I continued on, with gusts of air from the wake of passing buses and rickshaws and motorcycles pressing against the back of my long-sleeved shirt. A hand tapped me on the shoulder, and a teenage boy with a tucked-in polo and a backpack approached my right side, the traffic side, and started speaking fast in Telegu. When he saw that I wasn’t catching any of it, he switched to broken English. This went on. We kept walking.

We parted, and I stopped to recharge my phone (add more pre-paid minutes). This is done by walking into any store with your carrier’s name out front (they’re all over the place, often in the most unsuspecting spots), telling an employee your number and how many minutes you want (or, rather, choosing from the confusing options they offer), forking over the necessary cash, double checking that he wrote the right number, and waiting a matter of seconds for a text to arrive on your phone saying RE-CHARGE SUCCESSFUL. I was double-checking my number when I heard the sharp crack of a bicycle being thrown to the pavement. I looked up quick to see a yellow Tata truck stopped in the intersection, some men leaning out the windows high above, and a man down below sitting gingerly on the road next to his bike. He got up and walked off. Nothing else happened.

Finally, I turned up the road towards my office. My home. Moments later I heard a man call my name. I stopped, slipped on some rocks, kept my balance, and saw a co-worker waving a hand at me. I went to say hello and he bought me a delicious egg mixture with onions, cilantro, fried noodles like you get with Chinese delivery, and spices, all served on a banana leaf and eaten with some sort of durable natural scoop. Bark from a tree. Sugarcane. I don’t really know. The whole thing cost six rupees.

When I walked into my room, the time was 7:45pm.

New Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:54:00 +0000

With my computer back and mostly working, I've posted some new photos at the bottom of the page. Mostly pictures of children. I've caught some of them being 'awwwe cute', and others being downright goofy (or as Vani put it when I inquired about the kids on the way to training: They're not kids, they're thunderstorms). One picture makes me laugh out loud - can you guess which?

As the slideshow moves along, you can click a photo to read the caption. Some captions are too long to fit the page, and for that you can thank my partial-understanding of how this technology works. Speaking of which, more writing is on the way as soon as I can navigate my new hard drive's 30-day trial version of MS Office, which, inexplicably, is all in Italian.

Dance Off!

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 03:13:00 +0000

Last week I spent three days at a child support group training session. The location was a rather idyllic perch, tucked between fields of banana trees on the banks of the mammoth river Krishna, right at the point where the river bends back towards Vijayawada and evenly splits two sloping granite hills on its way to the Bay of Bengal.

Roughly 100 street children have been taken to live at this 'resort' full time. They're given food, an education, a home - and by default - a peer group. One boy, Ganesh, sat on my lap the first evening as we watched the movie Lagaan. Like all the other residents, he's an orphan and I knew that. I tried not to bring it up, but he wasn't shy. He asked about my family - Mom? Dad? Brothers? Sisters?. I gave him minimal details, and thinking where I could go from there, chanced it that perhaps he had a sibling. Nope. Then he offered this with a hesitant smile: "Mother no. Father no. You my father." I put my arm around him. It seems cliche but when you're there, it hurts.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, there were 40 other children who had travelled various distances to attend this training session - which ran the gammut from communication skills to art to child rights. One of the highlights was the nightly 'cultural activities' session. The video below pretty much says it all. The first boy you see is Koti. You have to say it with a hard TEE, or else it means monkey in Telegu. The second boy is one of the street kids who wouldn't leave us alone. He seemed to be born for the stage. He was HILARIOUS. Check it out...

Slouching Towards Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Sizing up its Indian surroundings and thinking, perhaps - What better place than here? What better time than now? - my sleek white macbook took a last look towards Bangalore, froze up, went black, and crashed.

I tried computer first aid (I’m not making this up) as detailed in the Everything Mac handbook, page 42. But it was too late. By the time my (local) call reached the Apple Support Center, she was a goner.

And in between bouts of panic, denial, and reminders that only a day before I’d met a women’s disaster-relief task force whose members frequently have their entire livelihoods ripped from them by the winds and rain of a cyclone. So came a touch of liberation and an ounce of excitement, even, at the thought of reading on paper and writing by hand.

So until I cart it up to Hyderbad on the overnight train, leave it, return six hours to Vijayawada, wait 7-10 business days, take another six-hour sleeper to Hyd., pick it up, return back, plug it in, sift through the ashes of my previous hard drive, and try to reverse upload the pictures that (by no conscious precaution of my own) automatically synced to my iPod, I won’t be posting anymore photos, or using Skype, or making the girl who brings us afternoon tea laugh (or cringe) by turning on the iSight’s ‘twist’ feature and letting her see herself through the perspective of a mirror-cum-soft-serve-swirl.

There’s Celebrex on my desk-bed (it’s both) that I bought when I thought I might be having a hernia relapse. I didn’t take it after I read that a potential side-effect is internal bleeding. Was it Robin Williams who says – that’s not a side effect; that’s an effect. Sort of like that effect that’s rumored to rarely come (though the doctor never told me this) from the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine –anaphylactic shock. So it goes. There are plenty of other ways to get sick here – the food, the water, the air pollution, fecal-oral, oral-oral, feline-oral, lightning, the gods; the list just keeps going and going. And I sleep under a bed-net in an air-conditioned room with white marble floors, with a plug-in mosquito repellent, a permerthrin-dipped wardrobe, and facilities to take a hot bucket-shower twice a day. I have boiled drinking water, cyclone-resistant walls, malaria pills, multi-vitamins, a change of clothes, and freedom from the various and oft-warranted fears for safety & discrimination, harassment or abuse – both latent and real – that I’d face were I not who I am, but rather, a woman, living as I do.

Why the stream-of-conscious rant? Maybe it’s a question of perspective, fear, loss, and appreciation. Sorting out what matters from what doesn’t; what can be changed from what cannot; what’s in my control, what’s not. Who, where, and how I am – and how to share, conceal, question, express it – experience it. Just the other day I meant to write a post explaining how things just ain’t all that different ‘round here than they is back home. But hell, by the time I started describing how I prepare coffee – using milk from the water buffalo that live outside the kitchen door – I realized the post was doomed.

The street I walk outside the compound – while dusty to the point it appears foggy, and heavy with the smell of sulfur - brings the most curious glances and delightful moments of joy. Such as the schoolkids who yell at once, in groups of eight or more, in English, What is YOUR name? and I smile and I tell them even though I know I’ll never hear, much less remember, theirs. I ask and they shout back all at once. So I go on and return and suddenly a critical mass has formed in the schools along the street and it’s as if their high excitable voices harmonize from balconies, cricket fields, or passing bicycles along the road, and I hear them when I’m jogging or walking back from buying vitamins, and with a hand waving and white teeth that deserve a cleaner school uniform, they’ll shout or smile or whisper nervously one at a time from behind a tree or looking up from the roadside whenever they see me: ADAM!

23 mattresses and one voice

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:41:00 +0000

The huge population of sandals outside the door meant the fisher folk had stayed the night.

I’d seen them in the conference room the previous evening. 23 coastal villagers, each with a dignified, quiet presence, sitting cross-legged on the floor. There were adults and elders. Men and women. Each person was invariably thin. One older woman was missing an eye. They dressed well. They were clean**. They looked like people on the cusp, for the first time, of gaining objective self-confidence.

They are called the Yanadhi tribe. Their livelihood is in crab picking, shrimp, and small fish farming. Most of them will own two, maybe three outfits over the course of their lives. Their living conditions, Sivaji (co-founder of this NGO) tells me, are minimal and extremely poor. They came by bus to discuss their rights and participate in a workshop about Community Based Organizations and self-empowerment, one of many in which they had participated over the past three years. They stayed the night in the thatched roof building that I had recently vacated.

On what did they sleep? I doubt this place has 23 teacups – let alone 23 mattresses.

Nonetheless, the morning came and they were still here. Their meeting commenced around 8am, so they were up early. A few of the men were seen brushing their teeth in the hallway sink at 6am outside Karen’s door.

Karen is a short-term AJWS volunteer serving here for two months. Today is her birthday. There was talk around the office about getting her a cake, and people were getting pretty excited. I walked past a colleague’s computer and saw that he had Googled birthday card images. Seems he hadn’t yet heard of eCard...on his screen was a solitary purple rectangle with a white cake, candles, and fireworks. It read Happy Birthday Gino.

Around 11am word came that we were to meet downstairs for cake. I put down my laptop and stepped out into the conference room. Except for an evenly spaced semi-circle of notebooks and personal items, the room was empty. What happened to all the villagers? I asked. I turned to Joseph. Oh downstairs they went to cut the cake, he replied.

Sure enough, all meetings and workshops had been put on hold, and everyone in the office – including the 23 Yanadhi villagers – sat on the floor awaiting Karen’s arrival. The men sat in the front left. The women sat in the middle back. The NGO staff sat on the right. Karen joined the group and sat front middle, accompanied by a shy younger woman in a purple saree who had agreed – nervously – to sing a traditional song. She began, and soon the rest of the tribe joined in. It was moving, but also it was remarkable. Remarkable that in the course of three years, a people’s confidence could swing from a low point - where historically they would not even reach out to neighboring communities for fear of harassment - to such a high, wherein they represent themselves at a workshop, and share their traditions with foreign visitors.

**I asked Vani (NGO co-founder) how one would tell that these people came from a “scheduled” caste (meaning the most neglected – poor, illiterate, forgotten). She said that a lot has to do with their physical presentation and the quality of their clothing. Three years ago, she said, when outreach to this tribe began, the people were literally unclean and they smelled awful. Upon arriving here, they would report that passengers on the bus had refused to sit beside them, or would stand up and change seats. Vani explained it to them in simple, fair terms: Before issues of discrimination could be addressed, they had to respect peoples’ right to protect their own health. The tribe made the change accordingly. So when I say they were clean and well-dressed, I point this out as a mark of advancement and a step towards overcoming actual systemic causes of discrimination.

New Photos @ the bottom of this page

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:57:00 +0000

Scroll down to the very bottom of this page to have a look at some recent photos from Mussoorie, the train ride south, and my NGO. To see a description of the photo, simply click on it during the slide show.

Vijayawada

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:42:00 +0000

I’ve arrived in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh – my home for the next 9 months. Hello Mudda…Hello Fawdda…Here I am in…Vijayawada. After 48 hours of traveling – one taxi, three trains, two ‘official’ changes in language – the train pulled around a slight bend to reveal modest homes painted in rich colors: Pinks, oranges, yellows, and sherbert greens, set against the backdrop of a slouching mountain. Palm trees, thatched-roof huts, and a creek. Albeit a creek with toxic looking foam around the edges – but a creek nonetheless. Besides, there were children playing in the toxic looking foam. If the children play in the toxic looking foam, the water mustn't be so bad. Right?

That last detail aside, the nickname for Vijayawada “city of fire”, and the belly laughter with which some north Indians responded when I told them where I’d be living, had evoked, say, a harsher image in my mind.

So I’m here. I’m settled. Well, sort of.

Over the past five weeks I’ve seen my fair share of sub-par living conditions. Dirt floors. Concrete pillows. Children romping through sludge-bubbling water. Blue tarp tents, rural, trackside. You know?

Actually, I read a great passage on the train ride down from Arundhati Roy’s book of political essays, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, (thanks Sam) a passage which I’ll post in full later on, saying something to the effect of: Of course India is a microcosm of the rest of the world…wealth and poverty existing side by side. The difference is that in India, your face is smashed right up against it.

So anyway, I’m very happy where I am, and am very fond of the NGO where I'll be staying. It’s certainly a matter of perspective, when it comes to living conditions, and I’ve seen far, far, far, far worse. That said, I had to vacate my initial room here, on account of my own discomfort/paranoia. I need to be healthy to work – and the five bug bites I received the first night, after preparing for bed in a room with only bars and wooden shutters for windows, made me worry, perhaps excessively, that I was on the fast track to acquiring Malaria, Dengue, Japanese Encephalitis, “Chick”, or one of the other gifts the local mosquitoes have to offer.

The people here have been more than accommodating – kind and concerned – and though it sounds worse than it is, for the last two nights I’ve slept in the conference of the NGO (it’s right next door to the founders' house – nearly attached). Tonight I’ll be moving into said house. I’m flexible, for what it’s worth.

On another note, I now have a phone. Here’s the number: +91 990 860 9590. If you use Skype, it's something like 15c per minute to call my mobile. Would love to hear from you.

I’ll post the story about actually getting that number next time…

Not Yet South

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:40:00 +0000

The air in Delhi is heavy, hard and thick. Breathing is a chore. Sweat pours from the forehead, forming salty-clean streams through a layer of tire grime and road sludge. I took to wearing a bandana on my right wrist to wipe the shit from my face. Unfortunately, something resembling a boil has emerged on my forehead – I’m not sure why, but if I had to guess – it’s from inadvertently drying my face with Delhi-dirt. I’ve been told the air is not nearly as bad as it was three years ago, before the dirty city busses were replaced with a cleaner alternative.

* * *

I spend a lot of time wondering about normality and adjustment. How long can a new place instill awe? You might see a mother and her malnourished children slumming in dirt and trash beneath a bridge; a dozen times in a ten minute rickshaw ride. Does this eventually blend into the background, like familiar architecture?

* * *

In the back of a rickshaw with two other Fellows, I’m soaked with sweat, breathing fumes, waiting for the light to change. Two filthy-ragged children, too thin, approach my side. A boy and a girl. The girl wears a makeshift drum, string-slung across her chest. It looks like she’s done this many times before. Her eyes convey mechanical resignation. Her hands daintily tap each side of the drum. I see it but I hear nothing. She looks directly into my eye and does not blink. The boy now has sat down on the hot asphalt and has pressed his knees to his chest. In his hand is a small metal hoop, a foot in diameter at the most. I watch as he squeezes it over his shoulders, around his arms, and down past his hips. He does it again. Again. Again. If there was a right response or appropriate action to be taken there, I could not, did not, think of it.

* * *

There are 16 Fellows with me in India. Six of us will work in southern India. The rest will be placed in various cities throughout the north. Last week, we were supposed to split along these lines, the southerners traveling to Hyderbad for Telegu lessons (the language of Andhra Pradesh), the northerners returning to the mountains for coursework in Hindi. The eve of our departure, two bombs exploded simultaneously in the Hyderbad. 40 were killed in two separate parts of town. We were scheduled to board a train for this city in less than 24 hours.

The television images were far more graphic than what we see it home. What I saw was sickening, and naturally, I couldn’t help but think what could have been, had we left a day earlier. Later in the week, six of us crammed into a one-bedroom apartment, we learned that 19 additional bombs had been found; had failed to detonate. I’m under no illusions that I’m totally safe in India, but the threat of terrorism hadn’t crossed my mind.

We never went south, staying instead for four days in the small apartment, in a situation that could aptly be called the Real World Partners Fellowship. See what happens when people stop being polite…

So the five girls and I rejoined the rest of the group up north at an idyllic language school. We’re learning Hindi, which will serve no purpose in the south, but will surely pay off as India continues its rise to prominence in the coming years.

* * *

First Post

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Quick correction - turns out we're nine and a half hours ahead. Oops.

In a world of spoilers, from The Sopranos to Harry Potter, there’s a general feeling that knowing what’s to come somehow takes away from the experience itself. I hadn’t thought to draw the parallel before I came to India, even though everyone who had been here would heap upon me descriptions of what it would smell, taste, feel, and look like to be here. Not only that, but all advice was premised or suffixed with the comment, “but you can’t even know till you get there.” Save for that last piece of advice, I had every reason to believe that the feeling of newness upon arriving would be, well, spoiled.

Not true. Not even close. India swallows your pen. Shows up on the scene and boisterously steals your lunch money. Nods her head knowingly and suggests, amateur writer, that you crawl before you walk; speak images before impressions, observations before conclusions, conclusions never.

The airport smells of gasoline and sweat. Green Parrots circle above and disappear into the crevices of a large stonewall. I watch, exhausted, from the backseat of our parked taxi as our driver steps onto the hood of the car and walks up the windshield to hoist our luggage to the roof, the soles of his shoes expanding on the glass like silly rubber faces. When finished, he walks back down and hops in the car. The five Americans in the car exchange looks, but the driver never so much as acknowledges us. What was remarkable about this and much else that day was how the maneuver seemed wholeheartedly un-self-conscious. It seems as though there are too many people, 1.1 billion in space 2/3 the size of the USA, for anyone to care or judge. There’s a problem? Luggage needs hoisting? Driver climbs the windshield. Why not? No sweat.

Driving, as I’ve witnessed it thus far, looks like a lawless and utterly absurd fire drill. That traffic actually moves means there must be some underlying order which I am not able to understand. A handsome bull stands along the road. Well-dressed men with brief cases dart through throbs of highway traffic. Bulging trunks are snugly suspendered by bungee chords. Busses look like overstuffed charters from a prison work yard. They’re full, mostly of men. Pedestrians use the sides of the highway as if it were a sidewalk. It’s all a massive game of chicken between people, rickshaws, cattle, cars, busses, monkeys, and toddlers. I saw a young child carrying a naked infant through moving traffic. I had to do a double take when I thought I saw a smile on the older boy’s face.

It begins

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:05:00 +0000

6am. First thought? Duct tape. Family. Passport Photos. Family. More sleep. Short Sleep. 8am. Wal-Mart. Eckerd. Wegmans. Family. Bed Bath & Beyond. Wegmans again. How do I still have errands to do? Why am I feeling emotional about Wal-Mart? Why did they slim down the NYTimes? I will. I promise. I love you. Check weather. Check mail. Check in. I've never been happier just to sit at home and be with my family.

So it begins, tomorrow being the two year anniversary of my return from Costa Rica. 5pm flight out of State College. 9pm flight out of Philly. I'll have good company. London to Delhi sometime thereafter. When do I brush my teeth? I'll be in Delhi Monday morning 6am local time. Eight and a half hours ahead of the east coast.

We're heading north to Mussoorie for orientation, and I may not have access to email for 10 days, but you'll hear from me soon after. I'll miss you all.

I'm ready.