like a fish needs a bicycle...

a few of my favorites

anachronism at its best: paddle boats in the moat of the old fort

a lotus petal at dusk

spontaneous street party outside the office...
and an aunty breaking it down to the live music

sunset behind the temple

things i will...

things i will…

~ things i will miss about delhi ~

1. the lotus temple.

2. getting a really good indian meal for $2.

3. saying my daily hello to the sweet old aunty around the corner who sells me my yogurt.

4. seeing hundreds of heterosexual men unabashedly hold hands while walking down the street and incur absolutely no cultural or social stigma for it.

5. the beautiful visual array of indian women's clothes -- everywhere you go, women are wearing gorgeous fabrics, patterns, and colors. it's easy on the eyes.

6. being in a city with history. it's so nice to be surrounded by things that have been standing for 1,000 years -- it's a refreshing change when you grew up in shoddily constructed suburban sprawl.

7. walking at night and realizing that the moonlight is actually illuminating my surroundings.

~ things i will not miss about delhi ~

1. power cuts. they happen anywhere from 2 to 10 times a day (but never less than 2). sometimes they're 5 minutes long. sometimes they're over an hour long. and when the A/C and the fans go off, it's 103 degrees outside, and it feels like 118 with the humidity factored in, every minute seems like a suffocating eternity. ...although, i suppose it was kind of nice that one night that i went over to anna and nellie's and we lit candles and sat in the palpable heat of their living room, shamelessly engaged in girl talk. then, the power came back on and "dirty dancing" magically appeared on the TV screen in front of us. now, i've never seen that movie (shocking, i know), but i saw the most climactic 10 minutes apparently, since i got to see patrick swayzie and jennifer grey do their big dance in front of everyone at the end. soooo cheesy. (“nobody puts baby in a corner” – fabulous writing, stellar acting). and then, right as they were about to kiss, the power went out again -- i suppose the censorship gods intervened to prevent the scandal. so then we sat in the dark and in the heat for another 15 minutes until the power came on again. and then, as i walked home, dripping in sweat, i could see the whole neighborhood hanging out on their balconies, in their shops, and in the streets, chatting in the candlelight. i've never felt such a sense of community during a blackout. it was nice... but still, i hate the power cuts. :)

2. brushing my teeth with bottled water, closing my mouth as tight as i can in the shower, shuddering at the thought of tap water touching my lips.

3. soaking my clothes with sweat every day.

4. being a spectacle absolutely everywhere i go and feeling like every other person i walk past on the street is trying to swindle me.

5. the fact that no pharmacy sells, or has even heard of, pepto bismol or anything remotely like it (in india!).

6. breathing exhaust fumes everywhere i go.

7. the incessant, ubiquitous, needless honking – worse than anything i’ve ever heard in new york.

~ things i will... well, miss is a strong word -- things i grew accustomed to in delhi and whose absence i will have to grow re-accustomed to ~

1. waking up in the morning to the sound of the guys on bikes selling stuff on the street below. they yell out the name of whatever they're selling (e.g, "dahi," which is yogurt). no matter what they're selling, they all yell the syllables in the same musical interval, which i've determined is a minor 3rd.

2. being called "madam" everywhere i go.

3. seeing everyone in the neighborhood sitting or lying down on cots in their porches every evening and saying hi to passers by.

4. bargaining for every piece of clothing or accessory i wanna buy.

5. maneuvering around cows in the street.

*** also, since we're talking about india, maya has asked me to raise some awareness about recent web censorship by the indian government. you can read more about it on maya's live journal ****

water

my first week in india, i had dreams about being back in the states and brushing my teeth with tap water, opening my mouth in the shower, drinking from the kitchen sink. my second week in india, i had nightmares about being in my flat in india and brushing my teeth with tap water, opening my mouth in the shower, drinking from the kitchen sink.

truly, i think the water in india has been one of the hardest things for me to adjust to. growing up in the states, it's hard to realize just what a commodity clean water is. it's so strange to grow up in a place where you're taught that water is a purifying agent, it's the solution to all kinds of uncleanliness, and it is always good for you... and then to come to a place where the water is dangerous, it will make you sick, and it must be used carefully. water is supposed to be life. in india, water can be toxic -- when even the locals get sick from drinking the water, you know you have problems.

of course, people like me come to india and live off bottled water. actually, lots of people who grow up in india live off bottled water too. but i'm guessing the majority of the population drinks from the tap -- whether it's the sink in their house or the faucet on the side of the road. and i'm sure lots of them get all kinds of ailments from the water. i'm also sure that the water situation is a deterrent to lots of foreigners who would otherwise be visiting or living in india for appreciable periods of time.

people often talk about problems in india -- corruption in the government, pollution, overpopulation etc. i've decided that one of the biggest problems in india is disgusting water. if the water were made clean, safe, and drinkable, i'm convinced it would do fabulous things for india. the population would get sick less and be healthier and happier overall, there would be even more tourism, and i'm thinking foreign investment would increase on many dimensions, since ex-pats from the western world would be much more comfortable living and working here.

to me, the water situation provides a vivid example of what a post-colonial country looks like. development is so uneven. there are roads – but no driving rules. there are power lines – but the power goes out several times every single day. and, there is plumbing and running water – but the water is not safe to drink. i think that as india's manufacturing boom takes off and it's economy becomes the next big thing (after china), the water will become filtered, clean, and fabulous. for now, it's crazy to think about how something that most americans take for granted is so hard to come by in so many parts of the world. one more way in which traveling opens my eyes, i guess. my mom always says she's traveled all over the world and she hasn't yet found a country she wants to live in besides the united states. more and more, i understand why.

now i can say i did

(for your FYI, that's me at the taj mahal)

relativity

i’m generally an analytical person -- overanalytical, sometimes (ok, often). everything that happens to me, everything i do and say, everything others do and say to me is usually subjected to some type of analysis. what does it mean? what are its implications for me, my life, the lives of those around me? what does it say about my world, or *the* world, generally? how should i change my perceptions based on this, how should i adjust my behavior accordingly?

so, naturally, being on the other side of the world and being sick non-stop for over a month have got me thinking. sure, everyone gets sick in india. last week, the interns were dropping like flies -- 3 other people in the office got delhi belly the same day i did, and a handful of others have had colds for the past week. india can be hard on everyone's immune system (it would be hard on mine if i had one, but we all know i have no immune system). ;-) really though, illness is a routine part of traveling to many parts of the world, india definitely being one of them. and i was expecting the routine illness, but i was not expecting this. i think if i had just gotten sick for a few days and gotten better, as most people do here, i wouldn't be wrapped in the constant analysis that i find myself wrapped in these days.

having been sick and miserable for quite some time now, i've had ample opportunity to try and figure out what's going on in my body, in my head, in my environment. i'm not sure i have the answer on any of those dimensions yet. i certainly don't know what's wrong with my body, since it's been over 2 weeks since my last dose of lariam and i still feel ill. that doesn't help what's going on in my head, since i frequently wonder if there's something seriously wrong with me, but i'm just trying to stay calm and rational and take as good care of my health as possible -- there's not much else i can do right now. but i still find myself sitting down and crying out of sheer frustration at least a few times a week. i can't travel the way i was planning to, i can't get as much done at work as i would like to, i just can't have the indian experience that i was planning on. and at this point, i don't really know why that is, since i don't really know why i'm still sick -- and that can be truly maddening. so i cry in frustration.

and then, i look around me. i'm surrounded by people whose daily, normal lives are much harder than mine is in its current aberrational state. yes, there are plenty of people in india who are rich and live very well. but the majority of the 1 billion people here have next to nothing -- many of them, even the ones with jobs, live in the street. they sleep on their vegetable carts or in their auto-rickshaws. they have no opportunity to truly rest, to ever be hygienic, or to enjoy pure food and water -- they drink the amoeba-ridden water from street taps, they eat the contaminated food on the street. yes, they're used to this lifestyle, but they still probably get sick all the time, have all kinds of ailments that they can't afford to attend to. and they just keep on surviving. that is their life as they know it, and they continue to live it.

and yet, here i am bemoaning by plight. why? because i've never been sick for this long before, i've never been sick when i'm away from my family before, i've never been to india before, and i've certainly never done all 3 at the same time. i like to think i'm a fairly resourceful, adaptable person. maybe i am, maybe i'm not. but even if i am, this might be a bit much to handle. i've been miserable and frustrated because, to me, this is bad. but, i live in an air-conditioned flat, i can afford to buy (relatively) clean food and water, and i can talk to my mom and my fiance in the US on the phone everyday. so even my present state of illness, to the vast majority of people around me, is not bad at all -- my life is actually pretty wonderful. relative to what i'm used to, i've been fairly miserable since i got to india. relative to what many of the people around me are used to, i've been living well since i got to india.

in fact, relative to these people, i've been living very well my whole life. i didn't grow up rich, and these days i'm a poor student who lives off loans. but i firmly believe that the poorest people in america are much better off than huge percentages of the world's population -- even those who are not considered poor where they live. that's the nature of the country i grew up in. america is a mixed bag; there are lots of good and lots of bad things about it. but i'm very grateful for having grown up there -- more and more so as i continue to travel to new places. my middle class existence in the suburbs meant that things that were standard to me -- potable water and temperature-controlled plumbing, a variety of clean food, an air-conditioned house, a comfortable non-infested bed to sleep in, television -- are unimaginable luxuries to plenty of people around the world. i don’t think i’m spoiled, by any means, but relatively speaking, my life has been and still is fabulous. i'm only miserable relative to what i've known thus far. which makes me realize, far more than i have before, how relative perceptions and emotions truly are.

on the plane from chicago to india, i wrote in my journal (a cherished practice that i refuse to give up, even after my conversion to blogging). i wrote about a lot of things, but mostly about gratitude. i have so much in my life to be thankful for. *so* *much* -- i'm blessed in so many ways that attempting a list of my blessings would be futile and silly. even now, i'm grateful.

so (in my usual spirit of analysis), i find myself wondering why this whole experience has been so mentally and emotionally difficult for me. truly, i have so much to be grateful for, and this really isn't all that bad, especially relative to how bad it could be. so why is this so hard for me? i know that at least part of it has to do with my expectations -- i wasn't expecting my experience to be this trying, so lack of preparation meant i didn't react as well as i could've (at least initially -- i'm sure i've improved as the weeks have gone by). i also know that part of it is that i'm a control freak -- not when it comes to other people and things, but definitely in terms of my own life and my own behavior and decisions. so, naturally, most of my tests have to do with learning to be detached and patient about things that i can't control. over the years, i have learned how to do that in various situations, but i'm always presented with new ones that i haven't mastered yet -- this is apparently one of them.

i've been praying a lot these days, maybe more than i ever have for any one period of time in my life. and i know there are plenty of other people praying very hard for me as well. and yet, i'm not well. who knows... maybe i would be a lot worse right now were it not for all the prayers. and... my mom once told me that God always answers prayers -- it's just that, sometimes, the answer is no. she also said that prayers always work -- but they work in the way they're supposed to work, not necessarily in the way we think they should work or expect them to work. so maybe i'm asking for healing or normalcy, and God is just saying no. the prayers are working, but for whatever reason, i need to be having this experience right now. of course it's good for me to be tested -- i'm learning, i'm growing, there's a wisdom and a blessing in this, just like there is in everything. there are a myriad ways -- both very concrete and abstract -- in which this illness and my consequent frustration benefit me. again, attempting a list would be futile.

for now, at least, i keep seeing my life relative to those of others and wondering what it is that i'm taking away from this experience. for instance, after a full month of feeling like hell, i started wondering what it's like to have a chronic illness. people who have cancer or AIDS are constantly trying to maintain their health -- taking meds, undergoing treatments, fighting low energy and trying to get lots of rest, generally not doing things others are able to do or that they would like to do. that's life for them. and i wonder if the harshness of that reality is mitigated at all by the fact that they know exactly what's wrong with them and they have to accept the long-term trajectory of their illness and their lives at the outset. would i be dealing with my illness better if i knew what it was, what it would entail, and how long it would last? probably. i know i'm frustrated, at least partly, because i feel like i'm supposed to be young and healthy, and there's nothing seriously wrong with me that i know of. so peace of mind helps, i think. but even now, even with my cognitive frustration, my several-week sickness is still not much relative to a true, serious chronic illness.

…i’ve also started wondering what this means for my future and my career. even assuming that it's the lariam that made me sick, i still have a very sensitive stomach and i generally get sick easily. so, taken together, does that mean i can't take malaria prophylaxis and i'm always gonna have an upset stomach? and would that mean that i just can't handle developing countries? i want to practice international law, i want to advocate on behalf of oppressed populations, and i want to see what it is that these populations are dealing with. but these populations often live in oppressive environments -- delhi is a fairly modern city, and it's nothing compared to the difficulty of a lot of places i could be working in this field. conditions could be a lot worse if i were in a more trying location, and my situation could be a lot worse, too.

so will i be stuck in industrialized countries for the rest of my life for health reasons? that's a frightening prospect. i don't want to be insulated from the problems of the world or the injustices that need to be remedied (which is one of the reasons i fear and loathe suburbia). i want to be able to go places and live places and see what's really happening in those places. to me, that's a good way to find inspiration and gain practical knowledge so that i can be a better agent of change. but what if i'm stuck doing research and writing reports in a sterile, air-conditioned office for the rest of my life?

yes, research and report-writing and policy-work are very important. but i don't want to be the pansy that has to do them from the safe confines of a medically equipped large city in a developed country because i can't handle the reality that most of the world deals with everyday. if that's what i'm relegated to, then so be it – i guess we can’t change our own biology. and i know plenty of people choose to work in palatial offices and get paid tons of money. i also know that even if i work in a large western city, i will probably never be anywhere palatial and i don't think i'll ever get paid much. so relative to those people's lifestyles, my lifestyle will not seem excessive or ridiculous to me. but relative to the lifestyles of the people that i would like to be helping, my lifestyle will seem isolated from their problems and perhaps too easy -- at least to me. i suppose i can't yet know how my future career plans will work out. but these past several weeks have given me cause for concern.

...i don't really have a neat little piece of wisdom to tie in a bow around all these musings. i'm not sure if i had planned on coherence or if i even had any idea how i expected to end this entry. apparently, i'm not going to be able to wrap it up, bring it together, and end it poetically. and i'm definitely not going to use some cliche like "its all relative" that fails to encapsulate what i've been thinking and feeling. not all pieces of writing resolve themselves, i guess – sometimes they just stop somewhere. i think i just wanted to say a lot of things that have been occurring to me for a while now, so i did, and now i will stop.

and the saga continues

this past week was another difficult one. residual larium effects, a bout of delhi belly that lasted a few days (i suppose it had to happen sooner or later), and to top it all off, it was that special time of the month for me. fun times all around. i can't believe i've been sick for more than a month now. re-freaking-diculous.

i stayed home a couple of days last week because i was sick. i tried to watch TV and relax, but BBC world disappeared again... the channels here are so fickle. so, i was relegated to the same 5 random channels in hindi, plus the disney channel in hindi, which replaced BBC world. i suspect "that's so raven" would be intolerable in english, but i'm fairly sure it's worse in hindi. so any TV-watching i indulged in was limited to CNBC, which is the only channel i get in english now -- really, though, i can only watch the NASDAQ for so long. i was thinking maybe if i tried watching for a little while, i would start understanding something about finance. no such luck. apparently, i learn nothing and get really bored. so i gave up on TV and went back to reading books -- all of which seem to be depressing these days. can't someone write an uplifting novel for once?

meanwhile, i did, manage to see krrish (right before i got slammed with the delhi belly). very interesting. not near as cheesy as other hindi films, fairly well made, and pretty entertaining. impressive for india's first attempt at creating its own superhero.

and, this weekend, i mustered the energy to meet up with pete to see the qutb minar complex, and also to attend the 4th of july party at the embassy. now that was quite the party. i walked in and i felt just like i was back home. it was like a barbecue in a very rich person's very large and very well decorated backyard. it was on a baseball field (yes, the embassy has an enclosed baseball field as part of its compound), so there was lush grass. sooo nice to delhi-tortured feet. and there were vendors selling all kinds of american food -- papa john's, KFC, hamburgers, you name it. they even had corn dogs. they also had plenty of alcohol, booths selling indian handicrafts and clothes, speakers playing american music ranging from madonna to bruce springsteen, and a couple of moon bounces for the kids (if it hadn't been for my upset stomach, i totally would've taken my turn jumping). and they had a very nice fireworks display. actually, the corn dogs and fireworks combination definitely reminded of me going to the texas state fair as a kid, which was, of course, one of my favorite annual rituals. so that was a happy reminscence.

the crowd was somewhat mixed... some american military, some people like me and the fellow interns -- americans who just happen to be here for a couple of months -- and some ex-pats working here. there was a very nice vibe... everyone was very congenial and welcoming, and it was all quite relaxed and chill. and of course, the world being as small as it was, i randomly met a girl from tennessee who's working in india for 6 months, and she and i happen to know 5 people in common. crazy, huh? in fact, the lady who checked me in at the entrance was an aggie. if we had been in texas, our longhorn-aggie rivalry probably would've come out in a playful way, but way out here, we were both just happy to see another texan. very heartwarming. really, it was an altogether fun evening. i wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much -- but i guess i was just glad to get a taste of home.