Bangalore: Sari-shopping and Clubbing on No Sleep

Our flight was set to leave from Bangalore, a major city in the middle of southern India, so we decided to ride a ‘sleeper’ bus there. The seats on this bus leaned fairly far back, and they were reserved so none of the crampingness was going on. The bus stopped once for dinner at a fast-Indian-food restaurant, and afterwards I pretended like I was going to be able to sleep on the swerving bus. In my half-asleep state I felt sure whenever I was jerked that the bus driver had fallen asleep and we were now driving along full speed in a ditch (about to go off the cliff). I wasn’t awake enough to prevent this thought from recurring through the entire trip… I don’t think I’m going to ride on an overnight bus ever again. When we arrived in Bangalore I was tired and had a headache, and feeling really willing to deal with the fact that you’re supposed to book hotels in Bangalore a week ahead of time. Through sheer persistence we found an awful hotel, and Jessie took a shower while I tried to take a nap.

Then we went shopping. Bangalore is a huge city and Main Road looks a lot like an American shopping complex. Jessie wanted to buy a sari for her sister to use as decoration, so of course I ended up seeing one that I just had to have… it’s a lot of really pretty silk for just $17. It is darker and bluer than sea green with a gold sheen, and the blouse and border are tan and gold. I thought maybe I’d be able to wear it to my Nepali sister’s wedding, which I had heard news of by calling from Kozhikode. I was surprised to hear of the wedding, as my sister hadn’t sounded that fond of the guy when she had met him, but they said that she had changed her mind and that the wedding would be within the month. It turned out that I couldn’t get the blouse sewn in time, but I had my other light purple sari to wear, so it turned out ok.

Jessie had heard that Bangalore has good clubs, so we went out again that night for dinner and to see what the clubs were like. They had a cover charge, the drinks were too expensive to buy really, and they played too much techno. Other than that it was a pretty normal scene. Dealing with the airport the next morning, after two nights of not enough sleep, was another frustrating experience with system inefficiency, but we did manage to make it back to Kathmandu.

Photo: Varkala Beach, with local boat. Note the smallness and swimability of the wave there. No chance for surfing here! (Note: I hope this statement is perceived lightheartedly - this is the western coast of India, and we would not have gone on vacation in an area that had just been devasted by the tsunami.)

Photo: Varkala Beach. You can't see it, but underneath all of those palm trees are many many little tourist shops.

Photo: View from restaurant in Varkala Beach. Not bad!

Varkala Beach (we got there eventually): Ocean, Dolphins, and Heckling

The Beach was stunningly beautiful, and in the water was the only place the temperature became bearable. Due to a sand bar, the waves and undertow were gentle. Being there in itself was enjoyable, and I was also quite excited by that fact that I would be able to come back and brag to all of you that: I have not only swam and watched the sun set on the ARABIAN SEA, but I have seen WILD DOLPHINS SWIMMING IN THE ARABIAN SEA. (Apologies for exotifying exotic-sounding place and exotically intelligent animals). Wooohooo. The sand was soft and there were little shells in it, and the ocean didn’t have hardly any seaweed or dangerous-looking creatures. Or stinkiness. We spent most of our vacation-time there. Sorry I don't really have any pictures of the dolphins. I do, but they just look like dark spots. In real life you could see them surfacing and stuff.

To counteract this pleasure was a whole line of tourist shops with professional hecklers out front. They were so obnoxious that I began to feel sorry for them because of their horrible lack of understanding of marketing and customer service. If it were a village, this would not seem like a problem, but these stores were built around the presence of tourists, and everything being sold is made for tourists. So what I really wanted to do was just explain to these people that their business would probably make a lot more profit if they didn’t insist on heckling people – in my case they were just chasing me away. But I knew if I tried to explain this they really would be hoping that I would buy something in the end, so that they could make some money that day, and I wasn’t going to buy anything because I can find any and all of the tourist things here in Nepal, so I couldn’t release this business ethnocentricity until writing this down. I had to just manage by ignoring and glaring, and once shaking my finger at a restaurant heckler and explaining (to the air) as we walked in that we didn’t choose that restaurant because he heckled at us, but because we liked the way the tables looked. Jessie berated me for this as well, which left me confused – I’m not allowed to be polite to hecklers, but I can’t chastise them either?

Well, anyways, the food was amazing at this beach. My favorite was coconut rice with a vegetable curry made with pineapple and cashews, along with a paratha of course. They also had amazing pineapple lassis (yoghurt fruit mixture that you drink) and cold coffee. Chocolate banana crepes weren’t bad either. It was great to just wake up and have breakfast, then go to the beach and lay in the sun and go swimming all day. I had to put on sunscreen like I was getting paid for it, but I got burned anyways. Did I mention how HOT it is in southern India?

Photo: Dutch cemetary in Fort Kochi, consecrated in 1724, has hundreds of European graves.

Photo: Coconut juice anyone?

Photo: Me bargaining. He's saying "My grandfather painted this, it's such good quality and you should give me lots and lots of money for it." I'm saying "Well gee, it looks exactly like the rest of the paintings that are mass-produced for tourists. How about I give you way way less than what you are asking. No? Ok then I don't need this really. Oh, you will take that much? Just because I'm your 'sister'? Alright, alright." Now I have a cool painting on a leaf, a portrait of an Indian woman. I probably still got ripped off, but oh well.

Photo: Santa Cruz Basilica. There are many different churches of both Catholic and Protestant origin, and other representations of Christianity in South India. There were also a great number of mosques, which I mainly saw while passing by on the bus, and of which I don't have a photo. You don't find this sort of well-established Christian or Muslim structure in Nepal really. Conversion was not (is not?) allowed by the government.

Photo: Inside the Pardesi Synagogue in Mattancherry's "Jewtown," near Fort Kochi. There is an interesting and surprising history of Judaism in Kerala, and still a small number of Jewish people live there. The synagogue was originally built in 1568, then destroyed by cannon fire in a Portuguese raid and then rebuilt in the 1660s.

Photo: Traditional Kerala dance at Fulbright Conference. by Jessie Wallner.

Photo: Street in South India, autorickshaws.

Photo: Yours truly in Fort Kochi. Tourist alert!

Fort Kochi and Ernakulum: Bus Issues, and Introduction to Special Tea

From Kozhikode we (Jessie and another student Dan, and I) took a bus to a port city that had some good reviews in the India guidebooks. We hoped to meet up with another student and her husband there, but we never managed to cross paths. We took a general bus there… the windows were open, and it was HOT. In all that time in the conference, we hadn’t really had any interaction with Keralan culture. I mostly looked out the window at the scenery, which consisted of, of course, palm trees, and various shops along the way. The road was windy and the bus had to make many short stops to let people on and off. I was beginning to wonder whether the bus would ever make a bathroom break, when apparently my prayers were answered – the bus got a flat tire. Everyone piled out onto the road, and me and Jessie and Dan tried to guess what was actually going on (we didn’t know it was a flat tire at that point). Fortunately for me the tea shop in front of which we were stopped let me use their bathroom (this means the owner let me go use his house’s chaarpi, which was in the back). This provided a certain amount of relief, but we still weren’t sure how to get to our destination. Another bus pulled up, and we followed the herd on.

At that point, Jessie was carrying an extremely heavy suitcase full of donations of medicine for the tsunami victims. She had tried to arrange for it to be sent over to eastern south India, but the lady who had said she would facilitate this didn’t come through. So the suitcase had to come with us. We arrived in Ernakulum and finally to a hotel… The next day Jessie and I went shopping in the city, which was fun and a change of pace, and allowed me to buy some t-shirts and long skirts that were more weather appropriate than the clothes I had brought. Not that any clothing is appropriate in that heat. Anyone who ever questioned the dhoti (wrap that men wear), I am telling you now: it is the only logical piece of clothing to wear there. I don’t understand how women wear saris, either, but they do.

From Ernakulum we went to Fort Kochi, a historical port town and also tourist hot spot. In the morning we had gone to the nearest government hospital to drop off the medicines: Even though Kerala was not really ‘hit’ by the tsunami, we didn’t really have any options for what to do with the suitcase. In Fort Kochi, the vendors and rickshaw drivers heckled as though you didn’t have a choice whether you were going to pay or not. Hello, Madam? (Survey: Do I look like a Madam to any of you?) This was a new experience for me, as I had been somewhat heckled here in Nepal, but never this sort of full-out attack. Jessie berated me for politely explaining that I didn’t need a ride or want anything.

We toured Fort Kochi by foot and saw the huge old Chinese fishing nets in the ocean, beautiful old churches, a fairly ancient graveyard, and a synagogue (see photos). The entire area reminded me a little of New Orleans, and I’m not quite sure why. They serve fresh coconuts, off of which they chop the top and hand the rest to you with a straw. Jessie and I stayed in a tiny room, which had cute Jesus pictures above the door and beds. These did not offer much protection from the mosquitos, however. I hadn’t noticed the mosquitos very much until we reached Fort Kochi, but the number of bites on each leg quickly topped twenty. Jessie was a fan of the mosquito coil, but I figure most of my bites happened when I was outside.

After a day in Kochi we decided to go somewhere where we could swim in the ocean; we read that Varkala Beach was a good option, so went back over to the Ernakulum bus station and had a horrific time getting on a bus. The bus-finding process took approximately 2 hours, though technically our bus was arriving every 20 minutes. The bus station ‘office’ people couldn’t understand how we were missing our bus every time – perhaps its because the name of the place we are going is written in Malayalam (the local language), it pulls up for approximately 30 seconds while people push and shove their way to not even get a seat, the bus guy whose job it is to announce bus arrivals on the intercom (in Malayalam) has yet to point to our bus when it arrives like he assured us three times that he would, and we have no clue how to interpret the system they seem to find so simple. It made me miss Nepal a lot, since people will in general go out of their way to help someone (foreign or Nepali) find their way if they are lost.

Reading over this, I’m sure you are all thinking, “Why is she calling this a vacation? It sounds horrible.” It sounds horrible because I really am using this as a place to register my complaints, since heaven knows India did not have a box for that. Also, we were extreme budget travelers, and this means volunteering to be subjected to various levels of inefficiency and frustration. There was a lot of nice scenery and good food, like perotta (paratha) which is sort of like naan, made in a tandoori oven like naan, but even better. I am actually addicted to paratha because of this trip. At any rate I just want to point out that the reason I was so frustrated was because I didn’t understand how the system works and thus hoped it would by default revolve around us. If they would just take my advice and become efficient, everything would have been easy (riiiight).

Anyways, about half-way to Varkala beach, our bus tire went flat (YES, time number 2) and as it was getting dark we had no other recourse but to find the nearest hotel. Which was charming in its own way, as our hotel staff guy brought our food to our room, and when I asked for salt he went and got some and rather than handing it to me, sprinkled it on my food for me. Jessie called him our ‘brother.’ He didn’t know any different (better) than to just open our door and walk in to ask if we needed something or to take the plates away. It’s not really a knocking culture, just like Nepal, and I doubt they ever get tourist guests. I kind of felt like telling the guy that for foreigners it’s really important to knock, but I knew he’d think we were offended (we weren’t, we just locked our door after dinner).

This seems like as good a time as any to explain “special tea.” Kerala is a dry state, meaning that they aren’t allowed by the government to serve alcohol (unless they have a really expensive liquor license?). So in order for Jessie to order a beer (if you know me, you know that in my world –wonderland? oompa loompa land?- beer not only all tastes the same, but also is gross) she had to ask for “special tea,” which depending on the location means they will bring you a liter of beer in a bottle, OR they will bring it in a teapot complete with matching teapot. I’m not sure how they get away with this system, but maybe they just want a nominally dry Kerala to satisfy the religious voters.

Photo: Traditional Kerala dance at Fulbright conference. by Jessie Wallner. This type of dance is called "Kathakali" in the language of Malayalam. It takes the performers hours to dress and apply the face paints. This dance in particular is a representation of a story from the Hindu epic Mahabharatha, the Vanaparna. It involves Arjuna worshipping Lord Shiva at the foot of Mount Kailasa, the sacred river Ganga. Shiva appears to Arjuna as a wild hunter, they quarrel, Parvathi ends the fight and upon awakening Arjuna finds out that the hunter was in fact his Lord Shiva, and worships.

Conference in Kerala: Not Summer Camp but a Learning Experience

It will be difficult to describe the Mid-Year Conference… my very first conference ever. First, basic information. Kerala is a state on the southwest coast of India, south of Goa. The tourist headline is “God’s Own Country,” and apparently Kerala has a 100% literacy rate. All of the South Asian Fulbright programs came to this conference, though since it was post-tsunami the Fulbrighters in Sri Lanka did not attend. It was quite moving to hear the delegates from Pakistan describe how this was their first visit to India. It was held in a newly built (renovated?) management college campus, which was very nice and gave excellent views of the palm tree hills spreading out in all directions.

I’d say on the whole I had a positive experience, but that they worked us all a bit to hard with the inflexible scheduling. 7am to 7pm almost non-stop, on a hill campus 40 minutes away from the hotels (no reasonable escape route), made for some exhaustion. I would have preferred a more summer camp motif, but they seemed pretty set on fitting a week schedule into four days. On this front, I actually had an advantage over most of the people there – being a recent graduate from college rather than a professor or grad student, I am not quite acquainted with the idea of being free to do whatever I want, and don’t mind being herded around like a sheep. Or, maybe it’s a personality thing, who knows. Baaa. We were given these conference program manuals at the beginning, showing what to do at what time. It also has a photo and info about everyone attending (again getting me hoping for more of a summer camp), though they didn’t receive all of my information so I looked like a loser with two lines of info. And I am, comparatively, really inexperienced academically, anyways. I’m hyper-aware of this and purposefully did not sign up to do a presentation of my research there, because I imagined that everyone else there would be an expert on my topic. Why would anyone sign up to present their own first try at field research in front of a room full of experts? This turned out to be an exaggeration of my imagination, however. (the word for imagination in nepali is ‘kalpana,’ isn’t that pretty?) There were a couple hundred people at the conference, but there was a wide range of disciplines represented. It turns out I was the only one studying my research topic (duh!!). So I came away from it feeling good in that I know I wouldn’t be as afraid to do a presentation of my research if the opportunity arose again, because I would be able to tell people about a topic I find very interesting. (Note; as afraid. I would still be fairly mortified to have to make any sort of formal speech in front of people I don’t know at all. Or people I do know.)

There were many, many presentations, each ten minutes long. They were mostly powerpoint, of which, I decided during the conference, I’m not a fan. I enjoyed almost all of the research topics, and found a few of them very inspiring, but sitting in the dark for two hours at a time can make anyone get sleepy. My favorite part about the conference was getting a chance to talk to some people doing research in some way related to mine. The number-one best person was/is Katie, who is doing public health research on breastfeeding in Bangladesh. Go to her blog, http://imkt.blogspot.com , it is awesome and she is who inspired me to make mine. She has already written and turned in her Master’s thesis, and is married and has a son. Way ahead of me in Life. I gave her some references about breastfeeding and also about birth in Bangladesh, and she is sending me part of a book. Excellent! (yes, this may be a slight wayne's world reference, sorry.)

Something that also struck me while I was at the conference was that not all Fulbrighters are doing fieldwork in their country. They may have not ever been to their country before, and during their grant period are going through their first culture shock and beginning to learn the language. Depending on their research topic, some students may not even need to interact with traditional culture at all, being located at a university in a city. Fulbright is funding a really wide range of proposals. Some examples since you all are wondering: Old Age Homes in India, Mammalian Dispersal Behavior, Transportation Investment, Impact of Modernity on Bengali Artisan Caste, Women Textile Workers in Bombay and Lancashire, Folktales from the Himalayas, Muslim College Women’s Perspectives on Muslim Personal Law, Indian Classical Songs, Spiritual Tourism in India, IT Call Centers in India, Political Ecology of Groundwater, Interventions to Reduce Trafficking in Girls and Women… the list goes on.

On the Way to India: Well-meaning but Now Dead Bacteria.

(Caution. Do not read the following if you are eating or have just eaten.)
I had been dreaming about Pizza Hut for about the entire time I’d been in Nepal, though my mom’s arrival with cheese helped this a lot, and in my desperation for said cheese I looked it up on the internet. Are there Pizza Huts in India? As it turns out, there were about five of them in New Delhi alone, so I knew I was all set. I knew that whatever else might happen, I was going to have a real pizza (not a flat Nepali one) the night of our layover in Delhi. Our flight was delayed for five or six hours, so our group of eight Fulbright people (the “Nepal Delegation!!!”) got to ‘relax’ in the Kathmandu airport. For the wait, the airline gave us a disgusting packed lunch in the waiting room.

Moving forward to the stinky hotel in Delhi (what was that smell, and where was it coming from?), I had soon convinced my roommate and travel buddy Jessie that she also wanted Pizza Hut, and called for delivery. Being on the road in Delhi was a culture shock – it was an eerie silent drive of no honking and people staying in lanes. Having a pizza delivered fit right in to this sort of dream world. The pizza was good, though obviously not healthy. The bacteria hiding in my stomach must have heard me thinking to myself “oh this isn’t good for me at all,” and in the middle of the night decided to come to my rescue and eject all of that pizza from my digestive system for me before I had a chance to digest the cheese. Though I’m sure their intentions were good (the bacteria), their timing was awful. The group had to leave early in the morning to go catch our flight down to southern India, so I didn’t have any chance to buy antibiotics. So I boarded the flight knowing that I was going to suffer. I did pretty well until the food cart had me trapped in. Oh, bacteria.

I diligently suffered through the pain all the way until the hotel in Kozhikode, Kerala. I would have been really impressed by the scenery of forests made entirely of palm trees if I weren’t attempting to have the mindset of an ascetic (accepting the pain). Once safe in the hotel room, I watched TV and suffered more. I was hoping it would just kind of go away, but once I decided that the pain was about as bad as any pain I’d ever experienced, I had to become proactive. Fulbright isn’t like a college program where there’s someone in charge taking care of you… I was on my own. The program had decided to split us all up with new roommates, so Jessie was in another hotel and my new roommate hadn’t arrived yet. So I eventually called down to the lobby and found out where the nearest doctor was (two buildings away), and took an autorickshaw there. Autorickshaws are like mini-versions of the tempos (tuktuks) I’ve described in my emails about Nepal.

Anyways, the doctor tried to tell me that I just had gas and said I should take an antacid. He diagnosed this after listening to my stomach with a stethoscope. And having a nurse check my blood pressure. I was appalled: The only reason I had paid to have a doctor visit was to be given some nice magic antibiotic pills. I did my best to reason with the guy – I told him I had already taken antacid pills (these are great for anyone stuck in any public place while sick: smell-reduction), and that gas doesn’t make people throw up that many times. He just smiled in that disgusting I’m-a-doctor-so-I’m-smarter-than-you way, and said “Oh, just take this and then if you have a temperature later you can come back and I’ll give you antibiotics.” Seeing as I had no other recourse, I turned to the old trusty standby, crying. I made it a brave, angry sort of weeping though, not anything tragic. I said, through my only-slightly-pathetic, indignant tears, “Can you at least take my temperature now?!” Thus, I won the battle with my own 102° F temperature. I took the gigantic gram of ciprofloxacin (in Nepal they only come in 500mg) and slept for the entire evening, and woke up almost completely cured and just slightly weak. Goodbye bacteria. (Don’t worry, you people who know about antibiotics and resistance, I completed the course of antibacs, another 4 pills over the next 4 days. For those of you who don’t know, always finish your course of antibiotics or all the bacteria will become resistant and take over the world, even before the ozone layer disappears and we run out of oil.)