adventures

Happy Father’s Day! It’s 11pm Sunday, so it’s almost over here, but I waited all day until it would be an appropriate time in the US to call my dad. He and Hadley are going to Toy Story 3 today…I don’t think I could be more jealous.

Thursday evening, Abhijeet took us to Kashi Vishwanath temple near the river. There was a lot of security; we weren’t allowed to go through the gate Abhijeet usually uses because I was with them. Foreigner…sorry guys. At one point, there were two uniformed military men inspecting my driver’s license (I wasn’t carrying my passport). They made me sign something with my name, nationality, license number (I was asking myself, what is the point of getting my Washington state driver’s license information?), and place of residence in Varanasi. Very thorough. The temple itself was amazing. Ornate, carved gold and silver decorations tipped some of the architecture. Much of the stone was carved in great detail as well. Seeing all of these carvings, literally thousands of years old, I’m awestruck thinking about how men slaved over these buildings, carving by hand. I’ve also grown an awareness of how many people have worshipped in this same place. That’s how I feel being at the Ganga, and it's how I felt at Sarnath today, too. While the temple itself was incredible, 90% of the pundits there are only there to take your money. It really takes away from the spiritual experience, and I felt bad because it bothered Avi. We were all talking about it, and I just think it’s a shame…exploiting people’s faith to make money. Professor Kumar told us to think about religion in Benares as an industry, which makes sense, but is still unfortunate.

Yesterday at 11am we (the interns and teachers) met with Irfana to discuss plans to prepare the school for classes to begin 1 July. A lot of things have been packed up for the summer, so we’re all helping clean, unpack, and organize. Harshita and I were assigned to the teachers’ resource room, which is upstairs from the guesthouse. Per Irfana’s directions, we worked on organizing shelves and materials. At one point, we were moving one of these metal shelves and I dropped it on my foot, causing a nice bloody slice across my toes. Cool. I’ve been accident prone here, which is both unusual for me and slightly embarrassing. Oh well. Avi came up and hung out with us for a bit. The three of us chatted. I’d brought my speakers up so we listened to the XX while we worked. I had a moment where I made a mental note of what I was doing. Barefoot, cleaning a dusty room in a school in India, listening to a band I saw at Coachella…such a strange moment, but I enjoyed the realization/awareness. Very much like when we ate lunch at the army mess on Thursday…not an experience I ever thought I’d have. At one point when we were sitting there listening to the uniformed men gruffly interrogating everyone, Avi and I made eye contact and laughed. Crazy experience. Once we were done working, Harshita left, and our family ate lunch together. We spent the afternoon hanging out in the guesthouse, as has become our custom, and then at 4, Professor Kumar came to give us an academic lecture on the city of Benares. It was a classic Nita Kumar lecture, much like the ones we got for FHS.

Afterwards, Nita Ma’am, Irfana, Nandani, Dost, Sonia, Avi, and I went to the mall to do a bit of shopping (I bought my first Indian clothes!), get dinner at the food court, and go to a Hindi movie. When we got to the mall, I was immediately overwhelmed. It just felt weird. I was pretty hungry, which contributed to my disposition, but being somewhere that resembled an American mall (to a certain extent) but smelled like India and was filled with women in saris and men staring at me was almost too much for me to handle. The culture shock there felt worse than the culture shock I've experienced riding down the street and seeing cows. I ate a pizza which was actually really tasty, and then we stopped by a boutique kind of shop, where I bought a red and orange dressy kurti with matching beige legging pants. It was strange to be shopping with a professor, but we had fun. We went to another store, which was like H&M except playing Indian remixes of songs like My Humps (it was ridiculous) and full of Indian clothes. I bought two more kurtis and then we went to the movie. The movie was RIDICULOUS. Even though it was in Hindi, I was able to follow along pretty well, though it felt like the longest movie I’d ever seen. It was about politics, and basically everyone dies. Family members killing each other, corruption, bribery…it was exhausting to watch. When we got back, our family stayed up talking and hanging out until past midnight. Staying up hanging out with each other has also become habitual, especially now that I’ve completely adjusted to the time change.

This morning, the five of us left the campus at 9:30. We visited a temple at BHU and then had breakfast at a hole in the wall type restaurant near that. Four of us had potato paratha (mine was delicious…dipping it into a spicy, garlic-filled sauce) and Dost had chow mein. After that, Abhijeet, Sonia, and I had tea from another stand nearby. When Abhijeet brought me mine, I paused, and asked if it was safe for me to drink, since the food they were cooking was swarming with flies. He said yes, and it turned out to be the most delicious cup of tea I’ve had since being here. It was especially strong, and Sonia mentioned cardamom. Tasty.

From there, we headed to Sarnath. The car ride was about an hour, but we looked out the windows and chatted the whole time, so it went by quickly. When we arrived, we were immediately swarmed by men asking to be hired as guides. We paid one of them 20 rupees to show us around. First we went to the Chinese temple, then the Japanese temple. Then he took us to a silk shop where he would have gotten commission, but we didn’t buy anything. Sonia, who knows a lot about pricing, is a great shopper. Kind of unscrupulous, but in the best way, especially since we want to avoid getting cheated. Then he took us to another shop, where we ended up spending an hour and a half, and 2,250 rupees collectively. Mom, don’t ask me about what I bought, because we’re bad at keeping secrets and I want it to be a surprise. K? K. Because we took so long, the guide wanted more money. Screw that. We told him to go away. After that, we went to the archeological museum. I hid while Dost bought tickets so we only got charged the Indian price. 5 rupees versus 100. Price discrimination, thanks CMC. The museum was, most notably, air conditioned. Most of the exhibited items were carvings, such as lintels and sculptures. We also saw some iron tools from the 3rd century BC or something like that. Abhijeet, who is now an avid blog follower (he encouraged me to write this post right now), commented “See! These are more things that are older than your religion!” The sculptures were very cool…more awareness of how many thousands of people had looked at what I was looking at, and the different contexts in which people had seen these items. I’m thinking about picking up history as a dual major…I love this stuff. After the museum, we went to the Tibetan monastery. The temple was gorgeous. When we got there, I didn’t know it was the Tibetan temple, but I could tell just by the decorations. After that, we went to another temple near the stupa, took a couple of photos, and left. Then we went to the stupa area. Once again, I hid, so we could pay the Indian price for tickets. When we went inside, we walked straight for the stupa. We passed the sites of an old stupa (now gone, except for the foundation) and the ruins of an old temple. By this time, we were pretty tired and the others were hungry, but I kind of insisted that we go. We walked around the stupa and sat at its base for several minutes. Indian kids tried to sell us their mini Buddha sculptures, and one kid was particularly friendly. His friends told us he couldn’t talk (despite what you think, it really was true, he couldn’t) and ended up hanging out with us for a bit. He took a picture with us (adorable!) so I bought his sculpture. I paid too much for it (but only about 25 cents American) but I thought it made for a good story. After that, we sat for a few moments longer and then left. One our way back, we got lost, which was cool. We also got stopped for a train. We passed by the mall and went in because I wanted to exchange one of the kurtis I bought yesterday. I ended up buying a bunch more clothing, and am now the proud owner of 6 tops and 2 pairs of pants. Shopping with Avi and Sonia, but Sonia especially, is very fun. Sonia has a nice way of saying something is pretty: “that’s very pri-tee” …she says it like that. I’ve also noticed that several of the Indian women I’ve met have a habit of saying “that’s nice” and “that’s good” in a particular way. I like the sound of it. Once we were done shopping, we came back to Nirman. It was a solid 9 hour day of adventuring, and since getting back we’ve just been hanging out. Dost and Abhijeet went to the market and got us Lassi and mangos. The mangos have been chilling in the freezer for about an hour, so they’ll be a nice treat in the next few minutes. Work starts again tomorrow, but today was a really nice adventure. We took a lot of touristy photos, and I wore Indian clothes, which are SO comfortable. Even though it’s blazingly hot and we’re sweating a ton, they don’t get heavy, which is really nice. I feel less self conscious, too.