in ways you never imagined...

introducing chas and ana

2007-05-26T11:53:00.000+05:30

Admittedly, i've been pretty bad about keeping up with posting lately. Fortunately, i've had two Australian roommates, Chas and Ana, who do a much better job writing on their blog. Since our lives have been wrapped up in each other for the past month or two, i figured I'd cheat a bit and just post links to one of their recent posts in which I'm prominently featured.

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Tamil-Nadu/Madurai/blog-158674.html

here's a picture of the entire Fisher family. they've taken such great care of me on two trips up to Kodaikanal (Chas' parents run the Kodai Int'l School) -- providing a very comfortable place to chill out, organizing hikes, watering me with gin and tonic and homemade wine, and stuffing me full of so much meat and potatoes (and sweets, like eclairs) that i always return to madurai with a stomach ache -- that I might as well immortalize them with a portrait (top row: Geoff, Leigh; middle: Chas, Ana, Elle; bottom: Daisy the Retriever).

Mr. Ramachandran

2007-04-21T14:06:00.000+05:30

mr. ramachandran sits next to me at work. he is in his 70's, fathered 10 children by two or three wives, and has some pretty tragic tales to tell. he is also the most lovable and colorful, a total nutter, prone to saying the funniest shit. such as:

21 April, 2007

“Jordan sir, I am suffering from scabs on my buttocks. I am taking tablets for this problem. I will go take rest. OK?”

in his own words

2007-04-20T12:15:00.000+05:30

Walter Dawaram was the the former Deputy General of Police for Tamil Nadu who led the Special Task Force (STF) to capture Veerappan from 1993-95. Although he claimed to have reduced the size of the forest bandit's gang from 150 to 5 during those years, he also became a flash point for claims of gross human rights violations perpetrated against villagers living in the mountains and forests where Veerappan roamed.

Here are a few choice responses that he gave in an interview with The Week Magazine back in March 2001.

Q. A tribal woman has leveled rape charges against you.
It is absolutely preposterous. Vested interest have set the poor tribals by telling them they will get hefty compensations. Anyway, these tribals are filthy and I never used to go anywhere near them during inquiries.

Q. Don't these allegations [of gross human rights violations] bother you?
I had 12 cases against me in the Supreme Court in the Naxalite operations [another police mission, several years prior]. It will be the same here, too. Sexual molestation is the easiest allegation to make and the most difficult to prove.

Q. But there are no allegations against the present STF.
I don't know how serious the present STF is about capturing Veerappan. We had about 50 encounters with Veerappan's gang . He shouldn't be let free. He has murdered 119 perons including 32 police officers and 10 forest officials. Our police are capable. I am willing to lead the STF into the forests again.

RIP, Kilgore Trout

2007-04-12T12:25:00.000+05:30

“Requiem”

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

-Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 – 2007.

Erwadi - Rameshwaram

2007-03-30T13:26:00.000+05:30

AIF Fellow Kevin Cremin came to Madurai with his wife, Michele. They're both lawyers (she graduated from NYU in 2000) and he works for mental health advocacy NGO in Pune, which is near Mumbai.

Anyway, there’s this small town called Erwadi with a famous Muslim shrine in about 3.5 hrs from Madurai and for a long time, people have brought their mentally ill family members their for healing--the shrine is supposed to facilitate miraculous cures for people of all castes, classes and religious persuasions.

And i guess a cottage industry of homes had sprung up around the shrine, or "dargha." Then back in 2001 there was a fire, and a lot of people were chained to beds, posts, etc, and about 25 people died. Subsequently the gov't forced all the homes to close, and said that nobody should leave people at the shrine anymore.

So Kevin wanted to go check it out, and see whether people are still being brought there, etc. I went with them as their local guide, and also because I thought it would be an interesting field trip. It was.

The travel was fun- I could hardly find Erwadi a map, and figured I’d just have to wing it with my rudimentary Tamil and general knowledge of the local bus systems in the state.

Also, we had no idea what we’d find when we got there. We’d canvassed some of the folks at People’s Watch and got mixed responses. Despite the fact that PW had worked on a case stemming from the fire, no one could really tell us with reliable certainty what was going on there at present, nor did they have any contacts we could be put in touch with at the dargha. Mostly though, we heard that the private homes had been closed and nobody brings their family members there anymore. But still we went, because well, how else were we going to find out?

Anyway, people definitly still go there. Many seemed to have just been left by their families. They we’re sitting around the sandbox courtyard on plastic tarps and sheets under the shade trees. Some talking amicably, others staring blankly, and a few conversing with or even yelling at nobody in particular. Several people were tied loosely, almost carelessly, to gates or trees. One image that particularly struck me was seeing a few women (or was it one woman who changed spots over the course of the day while my back was turned) clad head-to-toe in black burquas lying prone, perfectly still, face down in the sand. I couldn’t tell whether they were passed-out or merely engaging in some form of penitence ritual, but something about them seemed very 'not right'. It was easy to understand how the local language of possession and faith healing considered these people possessed by ‘demons’ or ‘satan.’

We arrived on a hot Thursday afternoon and there were maybe 200 people at the shrine. Although it was sometimes hard to distinguish the genuinely disturbed from the those who might had just come to worship and pass the afternoon, it seemed as if about least 30-40% of the people were ‘patients.’ Of course families could have come with, or else just to pray for, their physically or mentally disabled relatives. It was also at times difficult to distinguish the ill from the mere beggar. All of which underscores the sometimes fuzzy relationship and exterior similarity, between mental illness, religious experience, and extreme poverty.

The dargha administration ppl take care of them a little bit. private individuals come and bring food, sometimes they make donations to the dargha, which then provides meals.

In the evening we got to speak to the head of the dargha exec committee. it was sort of amazing how open he was. basically, he said, yeah, the govt says we cant house ppl here, but we do. we don't want to chain them up, but sometimes we have to cause they can be violent to themselves or others. The guy showed us a register and claimed that there were about 100 mentally ill, most of them from poor families, people staying permanently on the dargha grounds. Individuals from wealthier backgrounds, usually accompanied by their families, stayed at lodges in the surrounding area. The dargha executive estimated that about 1000 people resided outside of the dargha, but came regularly to benefit from its healing powers.

During the same meeting, the Secretary of the dargha committee – who also owned the largest hotel in town – told us that two weeks prior to the 2001 fire they had received warnings that it would happen. Yet when they took the information to the Chief Inspector of the local police station he did nothing.

Shortly after our arrival earlier in the afternoon, two men attached themselves to us and served as our guides around the shrine and surrounding area for the rest of the day. One man was originally from Sri Lanka, and spoke very little English. Although he explained to me in Tamil that he did house painting and other odd-jobs around Erwadi, I suspected that he might also have been a high-functioning dargha patient. Our second guide was from Palakhad in Kerala. Well-educated, and with great English skills, he told us he had suffered from ‘demons’ several years prior and had come to the dargha and been cured. Now he had returned just for a brief visit.

Our guides arranged for a auto-rick and took us on tour around the area. We stopped at a nearby shrine and participated in what was essentially an Islamic-inspired faith-healing ceremony for one of Kevin’s relatives. This involved several circumambulations around the coffin of a deceased imam/saint and then placing a blessed, rectangular piece of fabric over the coffin. Finally, Kevin received some oil and sandalwood paste for his relative to rub into her hair and scalp. Also, and quite conveniently, Erwadi was only about 2km from the sea. so we went to the beach, got our feet wet in the waves, and visited the spot where the Baba who founded the Dargha made landfall on the sub-continent after his journey from Arabia.

Leaving Erwadi at about 8pm on Thursday night, we traveled two hours to the island of Rameshwaram, a famous pilgrimage site in South India. On Friday morning we visited the Ramanathaswamy Temple, and then took an auto 20km down a lonely road on a long spit of beach land. The road dead ends into deep sand, a thatched fishing community being the last outpost. The low level of development was sort of amazing. I only saw one structure made of concrete, and the inside of the huts all had sandy floors.

This is basically the end of India – 4km of beach extends past the fishing village, and then ‘Rama’s Bridge’, the stepping-stone islands which go for 18 km, and then sri lanka. It is the place where the Bay of Bengal (Palk’s Straight) meets the Indian ocean (the Gulf of Mannar), sandwiched between sri lanka and the subcontinent.

A truck filled with friendly, while-lungi clad, Tamil men, tourists from Chennai, suddenly appeared, and rode in the back down the final last stretch of sand. and then went swimming in some of the nicest, aquamarine water i've ever seen.

it was awesome, and completely unplanned.

just one of those trips where you go with no sense of what's going to happen, and things work out better than you could have ever imagined.

click here for more photos.

subhra and archana get married

2007-02-24T10:28:00.000+05:30

photos from my coworkers' big, fat assamese wedding. the reception went all morning, afternoon and evening on saturday. ceremony began at 9:30 pm and ended sometime after 2:30 am. poor archana had to sit at attention throughout the entire affair. as for me, i was overloaded for days by the obscene quantities of food they expected my to put down.

click here.

northeastern india

2007-02-24T10:10:00.000+05:30

i went to kolkata and assam at the beginning of february. my excuse was attending subhra and archana's wedding, but seeing rhinos and riding elephants at kaziranga np in assam was a definite bonus.

this photo set has shots from chennai, kolkata, and sibsagar and kaziranga in assam.

click here.

patience is not a virtue that i possess

2007-02-22T12:24:00.000+05:30

aaaaah.

heh.

when hinduism gets cool

2007-02-10T13:04:00.000+05:30

that for which i am currently most proud of myself

2007-02-10T12:48:00.000+05:30

The form is not perfect (legs too far apart and i should be looking more forward), but getting there. And this pose used to scare the hell out of me.

what i do for work

2007-01-23T12:07:00.000+05:30

A lot of it is drafting text in English. The bar is not so high, since anything i produce will invariably be better than what my coworkers could do -- for many Indians, even those operating at high professional levels, English writing skills are not so up to snuff. Still, i try to push myself to improve. Currently I'm working on creating more evocative sentences by eliminating adjectives and spicing up verbs.

Here's an example from this morning:

"One inspector and eight constables forced the victim, Siva, into a sitting position on the floor and pried his legs apart until they were flush against the wall behind him. Two officers ground their full weight onto Siva’s thighs, twisting their boots into his flesh. The ligaments strained, and clusters of veins protruded from below his hips."

It suddenly occurs to me, though, that I'm not entirely sure about the anatomical accuracy of this piece. Would veins really protrude in 'clusters'? Perhaps it was muscle fiber. And am i sure that the ligaments 'strained'? Maybe they actually 'tore' or 'ripped.' Do we have a medical report to verify our claims? I'll give myself a break, though - it is an acceptable by-product of trying to craft a clear picture from descriptions provided by native Tamil speakers.

the secret to being happy. or trite nonsense. maybe both.

2007-01-18T19:11:00.000+05:30

two people set down in india, chatting.

12 January, 2007

Chat with B

J:
…

there was something else that I wanted to say. It's about patience, actually, which I've decided is a totally misunderstood concept

I used to think of patience as just waiting around for the thing i wanted to happen.

now i'm starting to realize that patience is actually about doing the work you need to do, then forgetting about it. pushing the desired outcome to the back of your mind,

pretending it doesn't even matter. just start occupying yourself with something else, with whatever is interesting and comes along next. so that actually you do sort of forget about the thing you wanted originally. and then, finally, once you don't care about your original outcome, it comes to you, without being asked. It happens this way pretty regularly, i've found. and the upside of doing things this way is that instead of sitting around fretting about what's not happening, you can just entertain yourself with what is, in the relative certainty that when you need a thing to happen, it will.

plus, usually the thing you thought you wanted to happen isn't really what you want -- not once you've gained some more perspective. The trick is to understand everything that comes as the perfect thing at the perfect moment.

all of this is much easier said than done, of course. though i've found it to be pretty reliable, generally. Work has been the most difficult field in which to implement it, probably because it's the most difficult place for me to let go of my desired results.

B: haha - you've been reading shantaram, haven't you?

J: just finished it last night. but i'd been thinking about this way before.

It hit me pretty hard in delhi, at the ISF, actually.

shantaram just added more perspective -- someone else's ideas on the concept

it’s taoism 101, really.

B: which is not to minimize anything you're saying, which i think is pretty profound, but some of the phrasing is similar

abt the collision of fatalism and free will, in particular

but yes, i think i get what you mean

it's like the diff btwn being at peace vs. being in a coma

J: have you seen it work this way in your life here at all?

very different states of being, those

B: i feel more comatose than peaceful

J: i spent time over xmas/nye with some friends from the states who were struggling to like this place, and in the end didn't care so much whether they did or didn't. when i first got here, i didn't, and that was really frustrating because i felt that i should like it- that i should love it-- and also, i was going to be here for a very long time to not enjoy it. then a learned to enjoy it and for a couple of months it was great. now i've come back down some.

the point though is this: things here aren't going to change in the way, or at the speed, that we want them to. so there's really just the choice to change our selves. and it's a super hard thing to do, especially with certain things, things that are really important to us and deeply felt.

so we can either accept what happens here as beautiful and good, and perhaps blackly ironic, and be at peace. or else just reject it, and, since we'll be here for so long, just succumb to the coma - go through the motions. and it feels like numbness, but it's not. it's actually an important, much cherished part of us that we're shutting away. and that wounds us, deeply. so it's not a coma, i don't think. I think it's actually something much worse.

anyway-- sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to get all preachy. i'm sort of just writing this out for myself

and I actually have to go to the FRO office now to hopefully pick up my registration (finally?)

B: it's ok, it feels good to hear someone else express their feelings on the topic.

Wow - good luck.

india for the holidays

2007-01-09T16:25:00.000+05:30

i spent xmas eve in bangalore with sonia's crew. we ate keralan beef, dahl, white bread and chocolate cake; drank bacardi (a whopping rs/ 500 per litre) mixed with thumbs-up; smoked something green and very schwaggy. later we hung out on the roof, watching the street below -- boys set off crackers and a women painted the largest and most intricate designs I have yet seen put on a road. then we had a sleepover.

then met up with anya and adam in hampi to tour the massive boulder fields and thousand year old ruins. though in all honesty, we mostly just ate, hung out, and watched the afternoons slip by at this great lunch spot above the river.

finally, hightailed it to goa. long beaches, calm water, fresh fish, excellent yoga, sunsets, sunrises. ending the old, beginning the new. and some music and dancing.

click here for photos.

what i'm (still) reading now...

2006-12-22T11:01:00.000+05:30

"I don't know what scares me more," Karla declared, "the madness that smashes people down, or their ability to endure it."

Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, p. 262

AIF Midpoint Conference - photos

2006-12-21T12:39:00.000+05:30

AIF Fellows met for our group conference at Anandwan, an ashram for lepers, blind, deaf, mute and otherwise disabled folk a few hours outside of Nagpur, Maharashtra. On its surface (at least), Anandwan seemed a paradise for outcasts, a rare and wonderful place.

click here.

what i'm reading now

2006-12-19T17:53:00.000+05:30

“I suddenly realized that if I wanted to stay there, in Bombay, the city I’d already fallen in love with, I had to change. I had to get involved. The city wouldn’t let me be a watcher, aloof and apart. If I wanted to stay, I had to expect that she would drag me into the river of her rapture, and her rage. Sooner or later, I knew, I would have to step off the pavement and into the bloody crowd, and put my body on the line.”

--Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, p. 73

swimming!

2006-12-06T17:37:00.000+05:30

This past Sunday morning, some of the guys from work took me swimming in an irrigation canal just outside of Madurai. Good fun was had by all.

Except, perhaps, the goat.

my new friends

2006-11-20T18:45:00.000+05:30

This is what remains of my first experiment with houseplants in India:

And these are the next contestants:

There’s a funny story here. I was riding my bike home in the mist and darkness at about 1 a.m. on Saturday morning and came upon an all-night roadside plant stand. For several kilometers the street had been empty, save for the packs of errant dogs that roam the city at night, and then, all of a sudden, here it was, a giant plant stand. An SUV was parked at a crooked angle in the middle of the road. One passenger was on the side of road talking to the vendor, the other examined the vehicle’s dashboard.

Unable to think of a clearer sign from the cosmos that I should restart my home gardening enterprise, I pulled over. The business-transacting SUV passenger was stone drunk. He was also a doctor at Apollo Hospital, the most expensive hospital in town, he declared, proudly displaying his I.D. card. When I explained that I hadn’t a clue about what plants to buy in order to diminish my chances of causing more plant death, the good (inebriated) doctor gladly assisted me with my purchases. He recommended the rose bush and palm-type thing as outdoor plants, and the green/red vertical plant for indoors.

His friend kept fiddling inside the car, and all of a sudden the radiator exploded. Steam billowed from underneath the SUV’s hood, and water sprayed all over the ground. This was getting really bizarre.

…

The next afternoon I returned the plant stand to pick up my new friends. I paid 70 rupees for the three plants, and another 25 to have an auto-rickshaw deliver them to my apartment. All told, three plants for just over US $2.00.

BUT!!! Here’s the thing: I’d love to keep these guys alive. So, if you have any suggestions regarding plant care, please send them along. My constraints are these: I don’t get much direct light inside my apartment, only reflected light. And I have an east-facing balcony which gets sun for the entire morning when it’s not raining. So my plants can either get lots of sun, or no sun. Also, I can get a bit spacey with the whole daily-watering thing. What do I do?

Introducing the "Best of India" photo set

2006-11-16T18:40:00.000+05:30

Not sure what to do with your favorite photos of India? Throw them all into a "best of" folder. The title is super corny, i know. But i haven't the time or inclination to think up something more witty right now. If it comes to me I'll change it.

Most of these are portraits -- so far human faces are what i've been most drawn to, i suppose. Also, it's easier to get close to faces, and my camera seems to shoot close-ups best.

I'll keep adding to this folder as time goes on.

click here.

India Social Forum, New Delhi

2006-11-16T18:25:00.000+05:30

A photo set from the India Social Forum in Delhi last weekend. There are a few at the end from a stroll I took around Old Delhi. Like this one, of fresh baked tandoori roti.

I stood in the open window and watched these guys make rotis and nans for about twenty minutes. And they just kept feeding me fresh bread as it came out of the clay oven. Nicest folks you could hope for. And some damn good eatin'.

Tea with the Ambassador

2006-11-15T14:47:00.000+05:30

These were taken back in September, during my first week in India. The American India Foundation (AIF) fellows were invited to tea with Ambassador Mulford at the US Embassy in Delhi (see an earlier post about this hilarious excursion).

A few of us got picked for a photo-op with His Ambassador-ness. Funny how the white guy got stuck front-center.

In this bottom photo, from L to R, we have Ambassador, Bhavana, Ann, Jordan, Vikas and Julia.

i passed the bar exam

2006-11-15T14:44:00.000+05:30

phew.

(Surely, much more can be said on this occasion. Like, "OK, that's great. So what now?" But initially, relief is the most salient emotion)

checking out some temples around madurai

2006-11-06T17:46:00.000+05:30

Photos from Deepawali weekend, with my tamil instructor, Dr. Rajeswari, as tour guide.

letter from madurai - 3 nov 2006

2006-11-06T17:15:00.000+05:30

Letter to S:

"India is an interesting place. I've gathered from responses to my blog that i may have left the impression that i'm having a hard time, or something. Hmm. Well, there have definitely been some difficult moments, and as far as a place to just up and move to, it could be the most challenging i've seen. It's just so darn complicated, and the culture, especially in the conservative southern city in which i live, is very different. I think it could be a much easier thing to immerse oneself in the intl backpacker culture and just float along the surface, seeing sights and smoking dope, though i know that even those folks have their share of peculiar difficulties.

At present, i seem to have settled in some. The basic things no longer feel like great challenges (or else i have started to learn when to be patient and when to be pushy). And i'm not getting sick as often (i probably shouldn't write those words, or they'll come back to haunt me). The next challenge I think may be to learn how to find pleasure here. On the one hand, it's difficult because I sit in front of a computer working a desk job in an office all day -- and i think I had some notion that I could escape that sort of life by moving to india. joke was on me there, i suppose. On the other hand, Madurai is kind of a boring place (at least in a certain respect), and also doesn't have many public spaces to just sit in peace and watch the world go by.

I've been trying to travel and see sights and get out of town as much as possible. Recently I've gone to a lot of local temples, a forested hill station, a former french protectorate on the bay of bengal (pondicherry), the beach, and to visit an international utopian community (slash cult to "the mother") where they have a gigantic gold-plated, golf-ball shaped temple (think epcot center). Also, there are a handful of american students in madurai, many of whom have a lot more experience here than I. So I hang out with them some, to eat and chat and pass the time, and attempt to glean the secret of enjoying life this strange place.

I do imagine that I am learning a ton by being here, though I don't have the perspective to say what that is yet. And often i feel frustrated, especially by work (a whole other topic of conversation), and wonder what the hell i'm doing here, why i'm here, whether i'm just wasting my time, and why i can't choose easier and more idyllic spots to sort out my life and my neuroses. (My wonderful friend, who spent the harvest season picking apples in VT, just told me that she's moving to a Caribbean island for the winter).

I suppose these mental gymnastics aren't what you were looking to hear about India, though. Foreigners (myself included before i came, and probably still) think of bright colors and dirt and overwhelming spirituality and opulent weath, poverty, too many people, disease, etc. That stuff is all here I guess. But maybe i've seen it all before in other places, or maybe it's too much so i block it out, or, i dont know. What strikes me most are the little things:

-sitting on a little plastic chair beside the rutted dirt lane outside my apartment building in the early morning, while the ancient, diminutive and always-smiling iron-walla lady irons my clothes. sari-clad women fill bright plastic water jugs from a shared spigot; men in plaid dhoties stroll to the little shops for small purchases; young children laugh and play in the street and go to buy candies from the same little shops. The older children set off on their way to school. bicycles and motorbikes and the occasional car or auto-rickshaw glides past. The pace is still mellow. The early morning is a special time here--before the heat and the bustle kicks in--and this is one of my favorite moments.

-a new bakery opens today in my neighborhood. It is neon-lit, large and open, and will sell all sorts of too-sweet cakes and sweets. Personally, I hope they also sell good bread and some sort of salty sandwiches - why bother opening a new sweet shop if you don't increase the variety of things to be purchased-- there are already several on the same stretch of road. I imagine there will be a great crowd there this evening. It is the most new/modern/developed looking establishment for blocks. It has been under construction and shuttered since i arrived here, and so i forgot about it. But then last night i rode by on my bicycle, and saw the lights on and the construction almost complete. And my heart leapt a little bit to see it.

Maybe i have become more jaded by seeing some of the things one sees here, but it also seems that a few layers of cynicism and seen-it-all exterior have been stripped away. I seem to have become a lot more sentimental. And so an early morning and a new bakery and breakfast with Oprah (this last is actually my current most embarrassing secret -- I find myself repeatedly moved by Oprah's over-the-top morality and doo-gooderness -- fixing families and relationships and making dreams come true) -- these things stand out, illuminated.

I'd like to say that there's something wrong with me. Or that it's just that this town is really dull. Both of these things are probably true. But the process is quite interesting, and i think it's something more. It hadn't occurred to me that I would be subjecting myself to a guinea-pig experience by coming here -- and i really don't want to glorify culturally challenging situations. I would much rather have things be easy and comfortable that difficult and miserable.

Something about life before made me restless, though, and i had a notion that i could find my way out by coming here. Or that if i came here, my desired future would find me. Re-reading the beginning of Life of Pi last weekend I came across this observation: "a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature." So perhaps my presence here makes sense.

I actually wrote a long post about my reasons for coming here last week -- i'd spent an afternoon and an evening with food poisoning and came out the other end with a need to figure out and write down exactly why i was putting up with all this crap. I saved it on my laptop and the next day my C: drive died. Utterly and completely. As in, my old hard drive is now a paperweight on my desk. So i lost what i'd written about why i'm here, which i took as some cosmic sign -- as i do most ironic and difficult things here -- because there doesn't seem to be any other sensible way of taking it.

I'll be here at least until next summer, btw. Possibly longer. My NGO placement ends early june, then i have a fellowship event to attend, followed by travel/trekking in the north. I have a return ticket at the end of july, but no specific plans to return.

Anyway, again, thanks for the email, and the prodding to write you back. As you may have gathered if you've read this far, i've used this letter as an opportunity to put down a bunch of stuff that needed to get out. So apologies if i've run on and on, or if the thoughts here seem only half-formed. The short end of it is that things here are good and bad, difficult and sublime, lonely and crowded and terribly un-peaceful, but almost always fascinating. Over all, i'd say i'm doing quite well, even if my writing focuses disproportionately on some of the more challenging particulars."

photos from the STF area

2006-10-18T18:46:00.000+05:30

here.

more on the STF area trip

2006-10-12T22:02:00.000+05:30

just found this article, which explains a lot. i may have met many of
the people described here (impossible to keep names straight). I
definitely met Thangamma (above), mentioned towards the end (repeatedly raped
by senior police officer for 3.5 yrs). We spent a lot of time smiling
at each other and holding hands.

and here's the BBC's obit for Veerappan.

more pics coming soon...

Veerappan, the Joint Special Task Force, and the everyday folks caught in the middle.

2006-10-12T21:18:00.000+05:30

11 October 2006

Letter to K:

“just got back from a crazy trip to the tn/karanataka border. it's weird
to meet torture vistims and be surrounded by their stories of
brutality, yet not understand what they're saying (since they're
speaking in tamil and/or kannada) and so space out the window thinking of far off places while they converse boisterously, and then after fifteen minutes someone who speaks a little broken english nudges you to explain how the old peasant sitting behind you had nails driven into his feet and under his fingernails and toenails, and the other guy in car was hooked up to electric wires. completely disassociating, and my lack of understanding only makes me feel further away from a phenomenon i dont understand at all. really, in some ways, they just seemed like poor, semi-literate peasants - alternately jovial and stonefaced, and timid around me, but then happy to shake my hand and touch me and have me take their pictures with my digital camera. and then talk loudly about me to each other despite the fact that they know next to nothing about me, and we cant understand each other. And they have this incomprehensible backstory.”

Chat with P:

P: what's going on with you? things getting any smoother?

me: yah, getting better.

hopefully i'll stay healthy for a while, but i got really sick last week.

stomach, dehydration, 103 fever. was on drip in hospital for two days

but i did some good traveling for work last two days.

went up to this area near the tamil nadu / karnataka border where there had been this very famous bandit elephant poacher and sandalwood smuggler named Veerappan.

and the state govts set up a joint police special task force to catch him

it took them eleven years, and in the process they arrested, killed, tortured and imprisoned a lot of innocent people.

so i went up to the area and got to meet a lot of those people.

P: holy shit! the sickness fuckign sucks, but you gotta figure it can't last forever. that's a crazy story about the poacher and all the innocent people getting tortured. Not super surprising in India, but shocking none the less. Check out the movie "bandit Queen' if you get a chance classic Bollywood movie about, you guessed it, a female bandit, who cruises around doing shit.

don't remember what happens anymore, unfortunately

me: she got elected to parliament, i think

P: that could be right. probably is

me: this bandit was sort of her cultural heir

he kidnapped a lot of VIP types

kidnapped a very famous movie star at one point,

and

tried to get amnesty and join politics

but ended up with a bullet in his head

P: damn. did they play rage against the machine at the funeral?

me: anyway, my ngo is doing the legal work for these victims, submitting their
compensation petitions to the courts and national human rights commission, is therefore seen as responsible for the outcome

but things are dragging on.

i think i'm going to be working on that while i'm here

not sure about the funeral.

cops tried to burn the body and destroy the evidence, but thefamily objected

P: what's the dragging? slow litigation? no one wants to pay up? evil cops?

me: so he's buried in some village somewhere, not his home village.

foot-draggin I think.

a special commission was formed in 1999, but the previous TN and karna govts didn't even want to admit anything bad had happened.

and then they stopped complying with the process.

finally, someone, the commission i think awarded compensation to 12 people -- whereas about 110 had submitted petitions.

we just went up to have meetings and talk about that with the villagers, b/c thw award has divided the communities a bit, started a lot of rumors that no one else will get paid, and created some ill-will against my org which, by virtue of being the only org that is helping to fight the legal case, is

most of these people are illiterate peasants and tribals. people dont really understand anything, except that they were in a tight spot and terrorize for a long time from both sides. I think. I dont really know.

P: does that mean more people are trying to petition now, since some got recompense.

me: a few new people did come out of the woodwork and present stories to us while i was up there.

This was explained to me as people becoming less afraid

and learning more about the victims' movement that we're trying to generate

i don't really know much about their motivations, personally.

i only understood about 25% of what was going on around me, since i had to get it all through infrequent translation.

and i hadn't read up on the background of all this stuff before i went.

that homework i did this morning when i got to work. things made a whole lot more sense once i'd read about it.

when it was happening, i just felt disassociated cause i didn't know what people were saying, and then i'd get a bit of translation about so-and-so being raped, or given electric shock or having nails pounded under their fingernails.

it was really weird to not be able to feel or understand the things i was being told about, because these people were so different from me and i could begin to understand them.

P: damn. i hear you on the not-being-able-to-understand front. i never got through that wall of 'your lives are really different from mine' in india, but then again i was just traveling around, pretty insulated except for people who wanted money, which made me kind of suspicious of everyone. its mind-boggling, though have radically different ones life experiences can be, especially compared to folks in india, or perhaps more specifically rural india.

pics. this time my own.

2006-10-06T14:48:00.000+05:30

Finally got around to dealing with photos. These are from last weekend, in Kodaikkanal, a hill station a few hours from Madurai. It was great to get out of town for the weekend, and I spent a good couple of days hiking, lounging, dancing with indian students (kids these days are just crazy, i tell you), and hanging out with some western travellers.

Hope to post older pics ones soon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeypod/sets/72157594315047404/

28 sept 2006 - Letter from Madurai

2006-09-29T19:13:00.000+05:30

"things here continue to progress. Despite a persistent stomach ache, I've gone to yoga twice this week. I dont think i will stay with this teacher, but just getting up and doing yoga on her roof while the sun is rising has been good. I had lunch yesterday with seven students from the U of wisconsin study abroad program. the food they are served in their program house is the tastiest and most varied that i've eaten in Madurai. one girl has a puppy, and playing with it made my entire day.

I experimented with potassium permangangate fruit wash last night, on vague instructions from rajeev [AIF fellowship coordinator, based in Delhi], but without knowing exactly what to do. I moved slowly. I soaked some grapes in the deep purple solution for several minutes. I ate a single grape and waited. Several minutes later my tongue went numb and i started feeling funny. I tried to rationalize the situation, telling myself that even if i had screwed something up, such a small amount wouldn't kill me. I continued eating my dinner, but stopped to write a note describing exactly what i had consumed ("one grape") and how i had prepared the fruit wash mixture ("small amount of crystals diluted with h2o"), just in case i should become poisoned and people came upon the body when i didn't show up to the office or answer my phone for a couple of days.

A woman finally came to clean my apt yesterday morning. She swept and mopped all the floors and cleaned the counters and shelves. the place looks fantastic. Last night i cleaned the dirty, dusty toaster with an old toothbrush. this morning i ate toast with butter and half a canteloupe. Then I watched Oprah (cable TV has become my best friend). She was doing a program on "a day on the inside of american prisons." She sent three 'regular' housewives into a max security women's penitentiary for a day to experience life as inmates. The housewives befriended the inmates and through them the female inmates' stories were told. For some reason, I found the stories unbearably touching. I broke down several times in the space of twenty minutes. watching Oprah. yeah...."

..........

"i don't mean to sound alarmist, btw - i think the whole fruit episode is kind of funny, and i record it for posterity and its comic relief. ditto breakdowns while watching oprah - more a sign of stress and tension relief than anything else. I never breakdown like that, only when in the throws of severe existential trauma.

but that's not bad. rather, i find it interesting. like, i'm having to completely reinvent my conception of my life, and how to do basic things for myself that i'd rather just have someone or a machine or a take out joint do- like how to nourish myself and clean my clothes and apartment out of a single bucket, and i really am doing it by myself with little help from others, hence the trial and error of the fruit wash.

on a certain level this is truly fascinating experience. and i'm probably allowing a lot of room to be melodramatic.

suffice to say, i'll be using boiled water to wash my veggies, now that i have the capacity.

and i bought a house plant. I've never kept plants but always wanted to. but i dont really know how and i've always been afraid i'd kill them. fortunately, theyre cheap here and i can buy them on the roadside. So i'm going to trial and error my way into a big collection, if I can."

22-23 Sept 2006 - Letters from Madurai

2006-09-29T19:02:00.000+05:30

23 Sept 2006

"Yah, there's not much doing in Madurai, either, though i imagine it would feel like a big city compared to *****. There's no nightlife here, per se, though there is a great temple and a number of restaurants, which, in addition to just wandering the streets, has been my main form of entertainment. Also, i've been working a ton -- I showed up a week before the deadline on a huge project -- so i've been at the office into the evenings and haven't had much time or energy to go out. My apt is slowly coming together - i finally got a fridge, and the gas/stove was supposedly delivered today. The place is a total mess, though, and largely unfurnished. I'm hoping that a cleaning woman will come on monday.

I am also fortunate that, although i've been working way too much, the work is of high quality, and they know how to make use of me here.

What else is doing with me? I'm trying to find somewhere to do yoga that will fit into my schedule. I have a bike, which i've been using to get around and get a bit of exercise, though the roads still kind of scare me. I've had two tamil lessons, which have made my head spin. Tamil is difficult, though pretty essential here, so hopefully i can learn to speak and read enough to get around and understand what people are talking about. Last night i left the office at 9pm and went to town for north indian food-- i'm not so into s. india, but fortunately there's enough north indian here. After dinner i wandered down the street to a big mosque. It was super trippy-- all these people sleeping in the courtyard, and a bunch of masoleums for dead saint-types, and i was approached by some different people, shown around, interrogated (always tell them, in a circumspect manner, that you don't like G.W. Bush -- they inevitably get around to asking, also in a circumspect manner). I met the Baabaji, and some other guys who offered to give me a Koran in English. Somehow, the experience felt very intense--i was in a place that i wasn't sure i was supposed to be, and i wasn't sure how people would react to my presence. Once it was friendly, i wasn't sure whether it would still be suspicious, or just curious, or else begging for money. They spoke very little english--they would talk among themselvels in Tamil and at last one person would come out with a half-question in english. Major sensory overload.

So that's pretty much what's been going on. I've seen a few other western/white folks running around town, though i haven't really spoken to them yet. The time to make more friends is probably approaching."

22 Sept 2006

"I've had lots of office-related house guests lately. They come to the apt for a couple of hours, smoke a lot of cigarettes, make some noise, and leave their cig butts and empty water bottles strewn all over the place. I don't think people here ever learn to clean up after themselves, since that's what their mothers and wives are for. The other day a group of them ate all my crackers, chocolate and fruit, leaving wrappers and crumbs on the counter and the floor. And, my roach problem is a bit more severe--the other night when i was packing, i spent twenty minutes trying to catch one that was running aroung the crevices of my suitcase. eew. on the positive side, i finally have a working refrigerator. And i've pretty much stopped stressing over the apt thing. There are lots of annoyances, but
whatever.

this morning i went to meet a yoga teacher at 7am. She had a poster on the wall of her meditation room with prayers such as: 'you ask for strength and you receive challenges to overcome' etc. it was kind of nice."

what i'm supposed to be doing here

2006-09-29T18:47:00.000+05:30

K asked me what i'm working on in Madurai. Seems a fair question, though a full answer is difficult. So, in the spirit of continued posting to this space, i'm pasting excerpts from our gmail chat.

25 Sept 2006 - J and K, chatting:

16 minutes

1:53 AM K:btw, i read your blog and quite enjoyed it.

i think i would enjoy it even more if you talked more about your work, if that's possible

1:58 AM me: yeah, my work is evolving, so difficult to write about

1:59 AM or rather, like india, it's such a big topic, that it's hard to know where to start

K: the evolution would be interesting to watch

me: basically, i'm working for a very big human rights - they do dalit rights and anti-torture work

2:00 AM K: i have no idea what you are doing

me: so, my main job is to work on this project called "National Project on Preventing of Torture in India"

three year project, 3mil euros

funded by the eu

2:01 AM K: ic

me: combines human rights monitoring and intervention (ie. factfinding and brinign court cases) in ten states throughout the country

K: is there torture going on?

me: everywhere

the core of our work focuses on custodial torture

K: i'm sure a lot of indians wouldnt mind getting tortured for 3mil euros

me: ie. police stations and jails

yah, for sure :)

2:02 AM K: i guess it's you that is getting tortured judging by your blog ;)

me: ya, for sure :

but that's my problem, not the indians'

K: actually, i do know of several human rights abuse cases

mostly involving people getting bullied into voting for the right candidate

bullied hardcore

2:03 AM like getting their eyes gorged out if the dont "behave" and vote nicely

me: the other part of the project is to conduct trainings in the ten states, targeting lawyers, judges, doctors, psychiatrists, police officers and civil society

just to tell them, you know, that torture is bad and all and its against the law

but it's kind of a way of life here

K: ic

okay, sounds like damn good work

2:04 AM me: lots of good laws, but the reality on the ground is very far away from that.

the work is fine. in some ways it's just work, really.

sometimes i wish i just did for-profit business type work

2:05 AM then at least i could actually achieve the goals of the work i was doing

K: yes, indians are good at talking...

me: with this type of work, you'll never really solve anything

K: :)

too bad 9 out of 10 business fail!

me: the real draw is that i get to work with some amazing people

2:06 AM the director of my org is pretty stellar.

K: being an engineer is better. only something like 50% of projects "fail"

me: yah, guess you can

cant win, whatever you do.

might as well hang out in the desert with pretty girls and take lots of drugs

K: really, lots and lots and lots of people would prefer doing your work

2:07 AM me: i know. i'm very lucky to be doing it.

K: well, i think i prefer the latter

me: so the work isn't the hard part

it's just dealing with the fact that i choose to send myself across the world, alone, to god-forsaken corners.

2:08 AM just for sport, really.

and, as you read in my blog, transitions can be a bitch.

Photos!!!

2006-09-29T18:38:00.000+05:30

so, i didn't take these--my friend yael did. a bit lame, i know, to link to someone else's flickr collection. Still, she took way more photos of orientation than i did, and she's a much better photograher.

she's posted a bunch of pics from the American India Foundation (AIF) orientation that we had in Delhi during the first two weeks of September.

there are a couple good shots of me playing in the rain somewhere in the middle of the set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smellslikeshells/sets/72157594303203434/

i'm working on my own flickr acct. i swear.

more old email... foreigner registration, and the details of everyday life

2006-09-21T19:05:00.001+05:30

15 sep 06

"An Excellent Day:
first, my visit to the local police station to register went smashingly--all smiles and no fines despite being over my time limit. Moral of the story: be exceedingly courteous to the wannabe important man behind the desk, and he might be nice to you back.

more importantly: i finally got a sim card. my brand-spanking new mobile number is XXXXX-XXXXX. The national roaming plan will hopefully be set up by tomorrow."

"oh, yeah- re: time for permit processing, i wasn't so clear on all that. from what i understood, someone from the central police station may come out to peoples watch to investigate me, and then the processing will continue. possibily wont get my permit for a month. also, i couldnt get a receipt to prove i'd submitted my paperwork. sounds sketch, but i trust the person that went to the station with me, so i'm letting it flow.

in other news, i just acquired a bicycle. it's a forest green one-speed with rainbow-colored, fuzzy toilet brushes squeezed between the spokes. cool. "

back on the scene (crispy and clean)

2006-09-21T12:39:00.000+05:30

just returned from two days in Kerala. Henri turned to me out of the blue on monday morning and asked, "can you travel with me this evening?" I said, "uh, sure."

and so it went, overnight suv ride through the foggy western ghats (mtns which separate tamil nadu from kerala) and the rain, and a 6am arrival in Alleppey, center of Keralan backwaters. then, from the car to a small boat, and a ten-minute ride to a small island. Kerala is surely God's country, at least the small corner of it that I got to see -- (though, one of the Keralans from the EU project team assured us that the Devil owns some real estate there, too). The trip was to catch the last two days of a communication training for the EU project teams, so I got to meet representatives from four states (Kerala, Karnataka and Rajasthan, in addition to Tamil Nadu). No time to travel off site, but the view from our backwater island hotel was stellar, and the air soft and sweet.

And the food in Kerala was fantastic! I ate well for the first time in a week, and probably the best food i've had in India so far. Beef stew (Beef!), curry fish, fried masala fish, and big fat keralan red rice. Physically, i'm feeling about as well as i've felt since i arrived, and my stomach/intestines seem (i hope) to have finally adjusted and assumed some level of normalcy. Now, if only i can get a yoga program up and running.

Anyway all this is just to say that things are mellower after two days in the countryside. In my mind, at least. My housing situation is no closer to being solved, but i will hopefully stop stressing about it so much. And I have a better sense of what work will look like, and the flexibility i have to take the off if i need to.

that said, i think i'm very lucky to be in this place. these are lenthy stories for another time, but the short of it is that People's Watch - Tamil Nadu is a pretty amazing org (at least at first glance), and I get a ringside seat to it's inner workings in the form of special attention from and access to Henri, the director, and his wife, Cynthia. This will of course come with its own set of difficulties, but in the end, wow, can't wait. Already, i have no possible way to express my gratitude.

Sometimes, it's a struggle.

2006-09-18T20:03:00.000+05:30

Yes, i know, hard to believe, but this traveling business ain't all monkeys, mountains and rockstars. In fact, sometimes it can be downright frustrating.

Objectively, I find this fighting-with-myself rather amusing.

17 Sep 06 - Letter from Madurai 2: Bitch some more...

yah, i haven't been writing much. this is probably a combination of being very busy, and also freaking out a bit--i don't like to share my freak-outs all that much.

things here are pretty good, all things considered. it's 9:30pm on sunday and i'm in the office, which bodes poorly for my free time in india. fortunately, at least i had the whole day free-- upon leaving the house, i got on my forest-green one speed bicycle and turned left on the big road. i hadn't been left yet. i followed the road down for several kms, and watched the city fade away into nothing. all of a sudden i was in the country, surrounded by rice paddies and green fields, small schoolhouses and dirt roads, and in the distance, the western ghats, a striking mountain range that rises from the planes and divides southern india in two, like a spine. that was pretty cool. and i discovered a big vegetable market just down the road from my flat, on the otherside of the ice cream store.

you see, i haven't had much chance to get out in madurai. and i'm living alone in an empty apartment that still lacks a fridge and a stove and needs to be cleaned real bad. i asked the go-to guy here at people's watch if i could furnish it (out of my own pocket) and he acted like i was putting him out--why do you need furniture, he asked, and "you should thank me that you're getting a fridge." fuck that. so home life has been a bit isolating, and im still learning to do things for myself, like eat and sleep and use the toilet and travel around town. this world feels totally alien to me and i don't have anyone to show me how to do it. so it's all been trial and error.

And i had to kill a humungous fucking cockroach the other night. and spent my first night getting devoured by mosquitos--they don't use nets here--there's a product you buy which plugs into the wall and emits a repellent vapor, but of course i didn't have anyone to tell me about that, so i just had to figure it out. And most people don't speak more than very basic english (and when they do speak english they talk your frickin head off), and 95% of the signs are only in tamil.

This is all shit i can and will deal with, and it will get better once i become more accustomed and learn to do things, and learn some tamil. for the moment, however, it's just a pain in the ass. I wish i could say that i got off the plane in india, or got off the train in madurai and just loved, loved, loved it. but the fact is it's just so foreign and disconcerting. maybe i'm just getting old and inflexible. maybe i got to used to western culture and comfort in new york. or maybe i'm just got plunged down on mars with no one to hold my hand. i went to the touristy part of town today and ate lunch with a french backpacker. he was the first white person i'd interacted with in almost week. at least people in madurai, unlike delhi, are friendly and curious. but it's an awkward sort of friendliness, that's a lot overbearing in some ways. the whole--oh you're white, i want to be your friend, lets be friends right now, just like we've known each other our whole lives, and then we can write emails and talk on the phone and it will be just great! what country are you from? what religion are you? do you like india? i like india! let's be friends, ok???? ---And then there were the malicious fucking school kids in delhi who swarmed us by the side of the road. they ripped my pants and pushed us in traffic (crossing the road here is the most dangerous fucking affair ive ever seen). little bastards. and the one boy in delhi who i gave my address to, and he showed up at my hotel door at 7am one morning. we'd been out till 4am, but my roommate let him in and then all of a sudden i open my eyes and here's this 12 year old kid above my bed, staring at me expectantly, as if i was just going to jump right up out of bed and go play ball with him. and then maybe i'd take him back with me to america so he could see the statue of liberty and meet michael jackson.

I mean sheesh, what the fuck! cant a guy get a moment to himself here? but it's good and bad--like the old man who offered me some of his ladoo (a sweet ball of butter/sugar) on the temple steps this evening. that was a very nice gesture. i mean most things are well intentioned, it's just their ways that get to me. like the way southerners eat with their entire fucking hands and play with their food before shoving it into their mouths. it's just fucking gross, alright. i know i will get over it--i have to get over it. i want to learn to do it. but frankly, it's just fucking gross. and i can't stand most south indian food. north indian food is heavy but fine (i'm learning where to get it here in madurai), but i just dont dig most south indian food i've had so far. i felt really bad about this until yesterday when my north indian coworkers told be they don't like south indian food either.

also, i've had almost constant stomach trouble since i've been here (to greater or lesser degrees), and the beds are really hard. ok, this email has been a major fucking bitch fest. this is why i'm not writing emails--because every time i write to someone, it just turns into a bitch fest. I don't know whether i've ever had culture shock like this. it's kind of funny to step outside myself and watch, actually. just frustrating to live it.

feeling drained

2006-09-18T19:11:00.000+05:30

16 Sep 06 - Letter from Madurai 1

wow, i'm pooped. it's 5:30 on saturday and i'm in the office. i have no idea when i'll get to leave. I have no specific assignments yet as such, but people keep telling me i have to be here and there, without giving me much notice. this office hardly stops. it must work three times as hard as any other office in india. so, good professionally, pitiful for my personal life.

fortunately (or unfortunately), there doesn't seem to be much to do in this town. I went out to the rooftop restaurant of the fancy hotel last night. I spent rs140 on a full meal that was way too spicy for no reason at all and then spent the night in the bathroom. the place felt vacant at 10pm on friday night. bodes poorly. but perhaps i just need to search out madurai's underground music scene ;)

some big important sikh guy (i just love sikhs, btw! they always just look so darn cool) from the national human rights commission in delhi just arrived at the office. Everytime these "important people" show up, the entire office go downstairs and assemble while they are presented. (it happened for me, too, although my arrival coincided with the arrival of an important donor).

of course, while im not exaggerating per se, i am bitching. apologies, ive been feeling rather bitchy today. Is amusing how, when things start to get annoying, everything becomes annoying. like how they delivered my 2nd hand refrigerator yesterday, but it didn't work. then this kid spend an hour fiddling with it and it still didn't work. finally the power in my flat cut out and the kid split (i have my suspicions that the kid did something to kill the power). later another repair person came but the power was still out so he couldnt do anything. neither could i, so i just went back to work. oh, and i was cohabitating with a gigantic cockroach and a whole mess of ants. But then i killed the cockroach late last night when i found him in my bathroom (he failed to respect my personal space). I need to go buy some ant spray this evening.

ok, what's the bright side? they delivered my refrigerator on the back of a bicycle. if only i'd had a camera. madurai actually seems pretty cool in its own way--it really is a temple town--the market area is built around this crazy temple complex, which i think is pretty neat--of course i cant say for sure, since i haven't had a chance to visit it yet. hopefully tomorrow.

what else? i have a bicylcle, which rocks--i love bicycles, and hopefully it will help me gt some excercise. as long as i don't end up as roadkill.

------
just had to run off b/c the important sikh just spoke to everybody to say "hi" and "bye" and "i have other more important places to be but i just wanted to say keep up the good work, we all really care a lot about good governance a lot, we do, it's true" and then dodged three questions. my wo co-workers are going off right now about how full of shit he was.

Trying to get this thing up and running...

2006-09-18T18:57:00.000+05:30

I haven't been so good about writing thus far. Too much going on, and not much time to laze around writing blog posts to no one in particular. So, for the time being, i suppose i'll paste from individual letters i've written...

5 sep 06-- AIF Orientation, New Delhi

I've been running around a lot, attending all sorts of lectures, seeingsights, getting fete-ed, etc. had to do this awful dinner last night with board members as some posh hotel. should have been fine, exceptit was outside, 85 degres and super humid at night, AND they failed toget us loaded, so making small talk with the corporate types was a greatchallenge. fortunately, the restaurant doubled as a nighttime hangoutfor wealth delhi-ite metrosexuals, so we hung out there late, listing to a dj play mediocre house music, sipping expensive bad beer, and dangling our feet in the pool. surprisingly pleasurable, actually.

Today we went to the american embassy for a security talk--how to avoidterrorists and theives (poor slum dwellers) in india. Then we had teawith the ambassador. I got tapped to be the token white guy in a small group photo with his highness, for publication in the indian media. my favorite part, aside from the great lemon-mint iced tea, was the two bright-eyed, young-republican types (one black, one mormon) doing publicrelations work for the embassy and trying to sell the fellows on takingthe foreign service exam. ridiculous, and glad to get out alive. Later i heard that the ambass and his handler said some pretty outlandish and offensive things to my friends--something about why, if women can have all-female colleges, rich white guys can't get together in exclusive private clubs, and also about how gujaratis run all the motels around the US. Silly Bush appointee. also, my british colonial hat was a hit.

2006-08-29T09:36:00.000+05:30

my first post

2006-08-29T09:24:00.000+05:30

two days to go.
and i really have to pee...