Small Story: Subway Sandwiches

Yesterday, I went to Mahagan Mall with my friend Mahesh. We bought subway sandwiches, books, a dress for his baby niece, which we will be returning today or tomorrow to get another one. Other than beef, the Subway has most of the kinds of sandwiches you can get in America plus some local varieties. One of things that caught my eye was the chicken ham. I was trying to figure out if they mixed chicken and pork to make it.

I got a turkey sub and later a chicken ham sub, and Mahesh had a local style chicken sub. Though they say 6-inch and footlong, the important part is the centimeter conversion below (I have a lot of fun trying to convert measurements I use to describe things into metric). Though the Subway's soda fountain was out, I was able to get drinks in the food dealer next to it. Of course, the regular size was what an American would call small, so I got myself their large.

During the meal, Mahesh was kind of disappointed that he could not completely taste the chicken because of all the vegetables. When I was half way done with my 6-inch sub, I could hold it in one hand while I have my soda in another. Mahesh did not have this skill and held his sub badly, using two hands just to keep things from falling out. I taught him to hold it at an angle so that the closed side of the sub bread is facing down. This allowed him to sit up straight without leaning in to close the distance between his sub and his mouth.

Everyday, my body yearns for food like Subway sandwiches, but when I get home, I look forward to sharing some Indian food and how to eat it.

June is for Weddings: Unexpected Part 2

As you might know, I live in a building connected to a temple. Every once in awhile, a wedding occurs where I live. This time I got invited to the wedding by one of the guests while going to my room a few floors above where people were getting ready for the party in the backyard.

I got to eat all kinds of Indian food, most that I tried before but this was much better. One thing that still bothers me is how comfortable people are with just throwing their little tinfoil plates on the grass even though there are some trash cans, albeit inadequate for the amount of garbage. Afterwards there was a giant mess.

I got to meet a lot of the family and friends of the person who invited me, and eventually I started dancing. I showed off my American moves (people started calling me Charlie Chaplin). Later, I started learning Indian dancing. I got really tired and sweaty. I must have looked really pathetic in the end.

New Perspectives: Chandra Vikash, part 1

Chandra Vikash is the president of Healthy Vaishali Happy Vaishali. He is forty years old, married, and has two children. His two-month-old organization has a few trustees and has garner some attention, including a possible documentary by people who work or have worked for National Geographic.

Vikash has a strong personality, often overpowering to the uninitiated. Vikash struggles against the Zeitgeist, which is a world moving towards its own consumer-driven demise. Due to his new life and his recent, Vikash and his family need to find a way to handle a larger burden of stress.

Here is a list of key ideas that define many of Chandra Vikash's conversations:

1. Nonduality- As the first assumption of Vikash, the view that the mind is a reflection of the cosmos. Dualism here does not just mean soul and body division but more specifically subjective and objective. I personally find this view as undermining any empirical epistemology, which I have yet to find someone who holds nondualistic position that does not use it. Vikash argues that empirical epistemology, despite a few major weaknesses, just confirms the 'intuitive knowledge' that one realizes when they overcome the illusion of dualism through mediation.
2. Cyclical History- The idea is that the present reflects what the future is and the past has been. Though it reminded me of the key assumption of geology 'The present is the key to the past', this is actually a statement of cycles of events. The present is like the future and past because history is like the tides under this understanding.
3. Tantra- Sanskrit for technology but referring to specifically the use of power through the human body. By absorbing elemental energies, the human can fly and use super strength. Through societies move away from the Vedas, humanity has declined, and this why humanity has lost its strength. An example of this decline is that people will not go out in the sun, depending on the comfort of air conditioning, and this prevents people from continuing the tradition of farming. The reason why there is no evidence of this technology other than in the Indian literature is that it does not leave an impact like modern technology.
4. Randomness- Whenever something reflects events not going as planned, Vikash says something about this being an example of randomness. This view that the world is random comes from Vikash's personal experience of how flustered he would become when he tried to control the course of events. While not being able control events could reflect a random world, it could just be evidence that people just does not cause everything responsible for what they plan, so if some cause is not going your way, then your plans fall apart. This out of order cause could be a person or the weather or a bunch of things.

Culture Shock: Drinking

While not the typical storage of water here, this is one of the large water
containers that I have had the opportunity to get my drinking water from.

More than anything, more than the trash, more than the Vedic Creationism, drinking practices have really cultured shocked me the most. The eating with the hands actually came fairly easily. The only thing when it comes to eating that I am not going to do is put my hand in my mouth (this is to prevent spilling, I guess).

So how do we drink in America: We primarily drink during meals. Other times would be for exercise and morning coffee. The key thing is though that we drink during meals. This helps clear our throats. What for? To talk, of course. At restaurants especially, where they will refill your glass over and over. Meal times are social times. It is an opportunity for families and couples to talk about their days, complain about things, talk politics, and plan for after the meal.

So how do they drink in India: They, the Indians, drink primarily between meals. Many see it as bad form to drink during a meal. This lack of a drink during the meal means that talking is considered bad form. The food will get cold if you talk, and it is dangerous because you might choke.

This was so difficult for me because I have the strong desire to clear my throat with a drink and talk during meals. Since meals are so central to our lives, this became such a big deal despite the fact that we do not think about it so much.

June is for Weddings!

During my first month in India, I had the chance to see many weddings. One of these weddings actually happened at the building I live in (Shri Krishna Bhawan). The temple and large back space makes it ideal for a medium sized wedding. It has wall-to-wall catering, a DJ, a dance floor, a fully carpeted entrance, and lots of guests.

The interns borrowed my ipad to take these pictures, probably because they could not sleep
and were interested in the girls.

I saw a large wedding as well. There was a horse-drawn chariot, lots of, for lack of a better term, Christmas lights, a live bagpipe ensemble, wall-to-wall catering, a ton of cooks preparing food on site, and, of course, fireworks. You have to have fireworks at your wedding here in India. 

Culture Shock: Urban Animals

Imagine waking up and looking out your city apartment window to see some boars going through your blocks trash pile or a family of monkeys drinking from your bird feeder. Well, this is not an uncommon experience in India. Here are some pictures of animals I see on a regular basis.

Wild boars (I should really crop these pictures.)

A family goat

The cows just wander unimpeded in the cities, generally grazing on the trash.

How many monkeys do you see? There were more but they were hard to put in
 one picture. I had to be careful for they may attack if one provokes them.

Sunday Meetings June 3rd and 10th

Every Sunday, our organization meets in the park or somewhere, and people, almost exclusively men, give prepared speeches. The subjects range from family values to global warming. At both meetings, the interns and I were asked to talk a bit. In the first meeting, I introduced myself and told a little story about a gardener with whom many there were familiar. The interns also had to speak about what they would be doing, which they had no idea because Vikash had not told them yet. The day after, everyone's picture appeared in the newspaper with short descriptions in Hindi.

Picture that was on the front page of the local paper
(From Left-to-right) Vikash, Raghu, Raju, Jacob, Mahesh, Eric (me), Kapil, and  someone else, I forget right now.

The second the interns prepared far more. They even thought of soft drinks for all the people. This time Vikash completely surprises me by making me talk about the Boy Scouts of America. I had to do it on the spot, so it lacked the structure the other speeches had. Afterwards, I thought of many things I could have done to make it better, but what are you going to do. The interns told me that people struggled to understand what I said because of my thick American accent.

June 2-8: Shri Krishna Bhawan

Shri Krishna Bhawan front gate entrance during a special event

Four interns and I stay at the Shri Krishna Bhawan in minimal dorm-like comforts like fans and toilets. During this period, a local vendor would bring us our three daily meals. It is important to note that Indians eat much later in the day than Americans: about 8:30am-10:00am for breakfast, 1:30pm-3:00pm for lunch, and 9:00pm to 11:00pm for dinner. We have on large common water jug to drink from during the day. At each meal, we would eat in Raghu and my room on the floor near the entrance to the bathroom; all this area we walk around in our bare feet most of the time. The eventual sickness of eating like this aside, I learned from the interns how to eat like an Indian with my right hand.

The four interns are friends, all from southern India. Jacob takes it upon himself to learn my accent in order to improve communication between the interns and me. He was the first to really enjoy Infinity Blade on my Ipad. Raghu and Mahesh were a bit harder to communicate with and mostly kept to themselves. Raghu's downloaded movies supplied much of the extra entertainment to keep the interns sane during our little break before the real work begins. There is one more intern, but he had left and quit without really telling anyone.

The Temple for Shri Krishna Bhawan

Like the name of our place of stay suggest, it has a temple connected to it. Throughout the day, you can hear a bell ringing at the temple. That is pilgrims coming to wake up a god who sleeps all day. I joked with the locals that this was my kind of god, but the only thing is that if I were that god, instead of giving blessings to those who woke me up, I would be angry. I am tired after all and it is rude to not to let a sleeping god lie. 

June 2nd: The Flight and Arrival

The flight was nice...fourteen hours, but nice. The in-flight food was vegetarian and approximately Indian food. I made many friends on the flight and asked them questions. On my flight to Newark, a middle-aged family man who works for a bank company in Mexico. He tells me that India is fifty years behind the United States in terms of equal treatment of women, and he thinks women are too free in the United States. He looks at the divorce rates as Americans not looking at the consequences of their actions on the children and society. He believes that India cares more about money than education. He says that poverty is the excuse for the country not to invest in education. For this family man, India still thinks too much in the box. However, he wants his daughter to study what she wants.

While I had more conversations, they were small talk. After arriving at the Delhi Airport, I exchange my pocket money my father gave me for Indian currency. I will need more money later, but what I have is fine. The first thing that startles me is that the security have AK-47s. As you might guess, I am not a violence person, and people having big guns scare me.

I then look for Chandra Vikash or whoever he had sent to pick me up among the people with name cards. After awhile of not seeing anyone, I get desperate and start trying to find a phone I can use. My phone does not have a local sim, there are no payphones, and the locals either cannot understand me or are looking for customers, so I take the only choice left to me--the racist one. I find an equally lost and confused American looking for their person and ask for his phone. The one I find does not have a local phone either but soon we find his person who was to pick him up, and his guide has a phone he is willing to share.

After contacting Vikash and meeting the intern whose job is to pick me, I take the metro to Vaishali. I have to go through a series of bag checks, probably to restrict weapon transport in the city and trains. The black train tokens have a tower that reminds me of Pisa. There first train from the airport is not all that compact.

On the way to the second train, the intern and I meet up with the three other interns who will be accompanying me on this misadventure with Vikash this Summer. In the not so fresh air of Delhi, I see all sorts of poverty and scrambling on the streets. Trash rots on the sides of streets, and icky dark water taints our sandals. The second train is far more crowded. It is not Tokyo crowded but you will have to suck in your gut and get friendly.

My next encounter with the gross was a man's hand. While on the second train, a middle-aged man violently cleans his ear with his index finger. Then he pushes with the same my shoulder aside to talk to his companion. Next he cleans is nose with the same finger. THEN he push my shoulder with the same hand to talk to his companion again.

A picture of the metro station from our balcony as Shir Krishna Bhawan

I tolerated it. At Vaishali, we walk to our near-bye place of stay called Shir Krishna Bhawan. It has temple, hence the name. After walking through the sewage to the building and climbing to the third floor (ground floor is 0), I unpack my stuff. Because the power is out and it is so hot, I sit on the balcony to cool off. Chandra VIkash comes by to say hello and then I go to bed.