Everything Else Remembered

Alright, here it goes.  I'm going to rehash all of the interesting cultural things I've done in India so far.  However, I'm not going to go into a whole lot of depth about each of these activities because I realized that the name of my blog has something to do with becoming a "globally engaged social entrepreneur," and I realized I've written very little about my experiences with SE, although they have been numerous, and at times nuanced.  It is really fun to talk about all the little escapades that happen to me on the street (like the time a cow pooped in the road, and I was unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone), but one of the reasons I took the GSE course is for my own self exploration, and to try to figure out how SE relates to my goals and passions in life, and I've seldom spoken about that in this forum, so hopefully this week, I can begin that part.  Actually, I'm going to again be a bit lazy and just give you the link to a blog post I wrote for the official class blog.  I wrote about my experiences attending CSIM sessions every Thursday, and if you're wondering what the heck CSIM is, then you'd better read my article here.

Alright, so I've had the great privilege of having a four day break midway through my internship.  I actually discovered that I was really in need of a mental break from work.  We have had so much to think about at PV that my brain felt as if it was leaking out of my ears, and taking my ability to function as a competent intellectual human being with it.  So anyway, on Friday morning about two weeks ago, I had to get up at 5:30am to get ready for the driver who would pick me up and take me to Mysore at 6am.  However, because of a miscommunication we were actually picked up at 7am.  No biggie, these things happen (especially in India).  We ate breakfast at a kamat (roadside cafe), where breakfast was served on banana leaves, and everything was delicious!  There were also a lot of monkeys running around outside the kamat pavilion, which was cool, and they were so cute!  However,  I'll write more about those monkeys later, because I had some pretty interesting interactions with those little creatures.

We were visiting several SVYM organizations in the rural Mysore area.  Just to remind you all, the organization I'm working for, PremaVidya (PV), is another project underneath the very broad SVYM movement.  We visited the Brahmagiri tribal school, which was an absolute delight.  For the elementary school, they had open classrooms, which looked a lot like the gazebos you would put in your garden or in a park.  All the little gazebos are connected by little sidewalks and when you walk by you can see what each classroom is doing.  We got to talk to some of the 4th standard children, and they were so excited and adorable!  They were in an English lesson, and some of the young boys read to me from their book.  Again, I cannot express how adorable and eager to learn these children were.  It is so refreshing to see this passion for learning that often dwindles in the United States.

As you can see, we were able to walk around the outsides of the building, and still see everything that was going on in the classroom.  If I remember correctly, both of these classes were 1st standard, since they did not have desks, just mats.  The children get to sit at big kid desks when they graduate to 4th standard I believe. 

2nd Standard Getting ready for Lunch

At this school, they have a mix of children from several different formerly forest dwelling tribes.  Based on the SVYM website (I didn't have the foresight to write all these down at the time), the tribes are called Jenukuruba, Kadukuruba, Yerava, Paniya and Bunde Soliga.  One of them (I can't remember which, but it's either the Jenukuruba or the Kadukuruba) are traditionally honey collectors.  Children come either for just the school day, or are boarders at the school.  The school has two hostels (girls and boys) at either end of the campus.  The hostels are very summer-camp-esque with rows of bunk beds for the children to sleep in and lockers to keep their things.  After visiting the younger children, we got a tour of the high school.  It was pretty cool.  All the hallways are open-air so you essentially walk on a covered boardwalk to get to other classes.  I was also very impressed with the science and computer facilities this school had.  We were able to see the biology lab, with shelves upon shelves of jars, which were filled with all sorts of animals and organs (some supposedly from humans) floating in formaldehyde.  How appetizing.  It was a very interesting experience, and the school was nice enough to give us lunch!

Snakes and frogs!!

Navee checking out the microscope

I've been getting quite good at eating with my hands here.  As one Indian person commented, "Americans have a stiff fork, Indians have a flexi-fork!"  And he wiggled around his fingers.  Yes sir, you do indeed, and how easy the dish washing must be afterwards without all those 
utensils!  They have a pretty good thing going on over here.  Eating with you hands: awesome; eating with a fork: awkward, and you know what?  Not once have I spilled food on myself since I've started eating with my hands.  This is a regular occurrence when I eat with utensils.  I'm just saying...

After leaving the school, we visited the Saragur and Kenchanahalli hospitals.  The Kenchanahalli hospital is a very small (10 beds or so) hospital that focuses on Ayurveda medicine.  Ayurveda medicine is traditional Indian medicine that focuses holistically on the health of the mind, body, and spirit.  It tries not to treat symptoms, but rather causes of disease (or imbalances in the body).  It was very cool.  The Saragur hospital is a much bigger hospital (about 90 beds), and uses mostly Western style of medicine, but does have a small Ayurveda practice.  Both hospitals serve mostly tribal people, who can receive this medical treatment for free or at dramatically reduced cost.

Continuing on...the next day, after staying in another SVYM hostel, we toured the city of Mysore in the morning.  Mysore is a city to the south of Bangalore, and is famous for their silks, and sweets.  Mysore is also home to one of the most beautiful palaces I have ever seen.  Apparently it was so beautiful that the king who commissioned it cut of the hands of the men who made it so no other person would be able to replicate it.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside of the palace, so I only have a few pictures of the outside.  One of the cool things about public museums/landmarks/tourist spots in India is that you often must take your shoes off to enter.  It was the same with the Mysore palace.  India does not seem to have a "no shoes no service" practice like the United States.  I could waltz down the road, barefoot, walk into a temple (after washing them off of course) or a palace, heck I could even stop into a cafe, and nobody would say anything.

St. Philomena's Catholic Church

Mysore Palace

Gate to Mysore Palace

So, as you can see here in the picture on the left, there is a very tall man in a blue shirt walking up to the palace gates.  This is my friend Matt, and he simply towers above everyone here, which has its advantages, let me tell you.  I wanted to share a funny little story, because it's a story that I've heard of, but had never actually experienced until I was in Mysore.  When we were in the garden of the palace, a group of people asked if we could take a picture.  It was a large family, and we assumed they wanted one of us to take a picture of them.  In actuality however, they wanted us in the picture as well.  Since then, I've been approached by others asking if I could pose for a picture, and sometimes I catch random people (mostly men, surprise surprise) snapping pictures of my friends and I fairly blatantly from their camera phones.  I finally feel like I know what celebrities must feel like with all of those paparazzi sitting around and taking pictures of them all day long.  However, I will never in my life fully understand why anyone on earth would every want a picture of me....

Ok, I'm going to completely change the subject here and talk about public restrooms.  That's right, you heard correctly.  Public restrooms.  Now, in India, like in Europe, you are expected to pay a small fee (3 rupees or so) to use the public restrooms.  In India, public restrooms consist of several stall of squatty potties (or squat toilets).  I'm actually a big fan of the squatty potty, but I won't go into the reasons now.  If you feel strongly that you need me to explain my opinion in more detail, then you are more than welcome to ask me at another time.  Also, there may be a sink, but it may or may not work, and it probably won't have soap.  So, I bet you're wondering why I'm bothering to even write about this.  Well the truth is, public toilet usage in India is controversial because it promotes gender discrimination.  That's right, it promotes gender discrimination because men can just pee outside almost anywhere they want, and that this definitely not an option for women.  Basically, men can pee for free, and women have to pay money.  There are also more public toilets in general for men than their are for women.  Therefore, a group of women and NGOs in Mumbai have started a "Free the Pee" campaign, which you can learn more about here.  So my personal little story related to this actually skips ahead a couple days when we were returning to Bangalore from Ooty.  We had arrived at the Mysore bus station, and were given literally only 5 minutes to jump off the bus, use the facilities, and get back on before the bus roars away.  So my traveling companions and I run off the bus, do our business, and as we're exiting the bathroom a man (hopefully the bathroom attendant) comes running up to us, demanding money.  Now, we don't really want to pay because this bathroom was icky, and we notice our bus starting to pull away, so Kasie just yells, "run," and we literally, all four of us run away from the guy, leap on our bus and pull the curtain on the window shut so he can't see us.  Now, I didn't know about the "Free to Pee" movement until later that night, so I was feeling a bit guilty about running from the potty patrol, but now I feel a bit like I was doing my part to protest gender discrimination.


Ooty, Tamil Nadu:
After Mysore, four of us, Kasie, Maddy, Navee, and I took a bus to Ooty, which is a little city in the mountains of the state of Tamil Nadu.  Now, in India, the languages people speak change with the state (imagine if the US were like that!), so we were leaving Karnataka, where the main language is Kannada, and going to Tamil Nadu, where the main language is Tamil.  Fortunately, Navee speaks Tamil, so we were really excited about that.  Anyway, we get on our nice, AC Volvo bus (friendly tip:  if you're going to travel across India, GET A TRAVEL AGENT, cause they know what's up), and start on our way.  We're about 45 minutes out when the bus pulls over, and the lady who collects the tickets gets down and inspects the bus.  Everything seems fine, so she gets on and we rumble away.  Five minutes later we come to a screeching halt and the bus turns around and heads in the other direction.  We drive down the road a few minutes when the bus screeches to stop again, turns around, and goes back up the road.  We continue this pattern a few more times, and we finally find out that the ticket-collector-lady had dropped her cell phone outside, and we were looking for it.  Long story short, phone gets found, and we head to a rest stop, where the bus won't restart, so we wait for over an hour.  Fun times.  We get back on the bus (yay!) drive for 15 minutes, turn around again, and come back to the same rest stop where we find the bus is in fact, quite broken, but fortunately, there's another bus waiting for us to take us to Ooty.

At this time, we were about two hours behind schedule, and we still had to drive through a thickly forested mountain.  We actually drove through a tiger reserve on our way to Ooty as well, which was awesome!  We didn't see an tigers, because it was day time, but we did see peacocks, white-spotted deer, and elephants!!!  Also, we figured that about half the people on the bus must have been from the same extended family because they were all singing and talking quite loudly with each other and walking up and down the bus for the entire bus ride.  After driving over a mountain, which if you get motion sickness, would have been EXTREMELY uncomfortable, we finally arrive in Ooty.  Yay!

Overlooking a tea plantation and surrounding countryside

 First off, Ooty is incredibly beautiful, as you can see from these pictures.  It was also much chillier than I would have imagined.  I was alright in a light fleece, having grown up in chilly ol' Vermont, but lots of people there were all bundled up in thick wool sweaters and ski masks (no joke).  Unfortunately, because it was so cool, there was a lot of fog, so it was hard to see some of the sights, but I did buy 1500 grams of tea.  Booyah.  I'm so excited about that purchase, because it'll be like taking a little piece of India back home with me!

Tea Plantation

Monkeys!! And a goat.

Ok, let's talk about monkeys.  I spent a great while cooing over them because they are just so super cute, especially the babies.  However, I also realized that they are evil, like Satan reincarnate.  They'll steal your things if you are not careful.  We had bought masala corn (which is bomb!  America, get on that), and we were walking to the car when Kasie screams, and when I turn around I see a little monkey running away with her corn.  I also see another monkey edging up to me, eying my corn, so I try to scare him away.  He's not having it though and charges back at me, his eyes burning with crazy rage and probably desire for my corn.  Since I wasn't really interested in throwing down with a monkey (who, let's face it, would probably win), I just scooted my little butt back into the car, where I (and my masala corn) would be safe from their tiny clutches.





Temples:

Navee at the Big Bull temple

Navee, Kasie, and Maddy at a Palace in Bangalore

One of the activities I do in my spare time in Bangalore, is to tour the various temples located all over the city.  I spent an entire Saturday a few weeks ago just visiting temples.  They are all very cool.  I got to see the Iskon temple (where they worship Krishna), which was amazing.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed pictures, so that's a bummer.  I also went to the Shiva temple, which was an experience, a Ganesha temple, which was closed :( and a variety of other more general temples.  I even got to participate in some of the worship rituals.  I also got three different bhindis for attending the temples.  

Shiva in da house!

This is Shiva.  He's pretty cool.  He's one of the three main Hindu deities (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva).  He's the destroyer, which sounds really scary, but isn't because Shiva is a wise sage, and yogi who sees everything that's going on in the world.  He can destroy your fears, lusts, and all the bad stuff for you.  That's as much detail as I feel I want to go into because Hinduism is extremely complex.  It would take me way too long to explain all about Shiva.  So I won't.  I'll let you do your own reading about it.

 Alright, I think I'm done for now.  I'm pretty sure I caught everyone up (albeit vaguely) on all of my "extra-curricular" activities I do in my down time.  Actually, usually in my down time I sleep, but that's not fun to write about.  So, now that I've finished with all those little activities, I want to focus my blog more on SE, and my exploration of SE, and what it means to be a globally engaged social entrepreneur.  I mean, that's the whole point of why I'm in India in the first place.  I hope to make the blog posts just as interesting as the cultural ones have been (at least, I hope they're interesting), and don't worry, enough crazy fun stuff happens during my work day that I'm sure you'll continue to be entertained, or at least interested enough to continue reading.  Also, don't forget to check out the GSE class blog!  You'll find a lot of really awesome musings about SE written by my classmates!