Sirens and Lights

Life has been crazy lately, as you’ve probably guessed from my lack of posting…. I spent the last week or so visiting various relatives, some of whom I’ve met before and some of whom I met for the very first time, and hanging out with friends all over the place: Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Gandhinagar, Baroda, Bharuch, Mumbai… I don’t know where to begin describing everything except to say that i’m feeling so refreshed and ready to go again…especially now that one of my friends has agreed to take some of luggage home for me so i don’t have to lug it to NZ! Just wanted to publicly say thanks! Thanks, Jason! I’m leaving tomorrow morning for Thailand en route to New Zealand. These three months really flew by…

I’ll write more another time. My brain is a jumble of hostel/visa/apartment/flight/packing plans…can’t think straight. Whew! Talk to you next time from Thailand….

Taj Mahal

Agra with Taj in background..

Jaipur….

Happy New Year, everyone!!! I, oddly enough, celebrated this New Year pretty similarly to how I celebrated the Indian one: with sparklers and fireworks. The only difference was that instead of being in the Mahastran “countryside” I was in the Goan one. Life has been fabulous this past week…definitely over my homesickness. While you guys were ringing in the American New Year, I was swimming in the fabulous Arabian Sea (the beach is just over the dune from my friend’s house).

Ok….all for now. I’ll post something better when I get back to Bombay…

Christmas…

Sunset over the Arabian Sea

Ok, so I knew going into this that 12 months is a long time, but I don’t think I truly realized that I might actually get homesick this year. I’ve been away from home for extended periods before and have never had a problem, even though I am incredibly close with my family….but the other day I found myself sort of following around this Gujarati family while touring this palace in Mysore because the sound of Gujarati (that’s the language my parents speak to me, for those of you who don’t know) reminded me so much of home. Then, that night, I kept dreaming about eating fresh green salads (they recommend against not eating uncooked veggies in India….). yeesh. It’s been 5 months and I’m having a blast out here, but there are just moments when I miss just kicking back in a fully unpacked apartment with a few people that I know really well that understand me when I speak at my full speed….ok, we can even take out that last part since, now that I think about it, there are a lot of anglophone people who wouldn’t understand me if i spoke at my full speed, but you know what I mean… I consciously decided to approach my time in India differently than in Geneva by traveling a lot more instead of setting up a life in one city…I just don’t think I realized how much of a toll living out of a suitcase and not being able to make really good friends has on me. I love the adventure and being able to just live without caring what anyone thinks since I’ll probably never see them again, and I have made a few really good friends out here. Basically, I’m happy, but I can’t say that I’m comfortable, and I just miss being totally relaxed somewhere. Fortunately for me, I’m going to be seeing a lot of friends from both Bryn Mawr and Geneva in the next month and a half. Aleisha in Goa, Priti in Delhi and then Jenny from Delhi through Rajasthan and then in Bangkok, and then Mom (:)) in NZ. Wow. It’ll be a nice break from all of the alone time for the last 2 months…I’m almost 2/3 through the journal I bought less than a month ago! This is what happens when I’m left without friends to talk to… It does help that I’m seeing some really cool stuff out here, though, too…

Despite the homesicknesses, I’ve still been having a great time for the past few weeks… I’ve kind of been hopping around Karnataka and Kerala in what I freely admit to not being the most logical way in the world, but there’s a lot I wanted to see and a decent number of people I wanted to meet with for my project… The highlights: Backwaters in Kerala, watching a Kathkali performance in Kerala, The Maharaja’s Palace in Mysore, this really cool Jain monument in Sravanabelgola (yes, Mom, I finally went! ;)) and then just some fantastic convos with people on those loooong train rides and at the hospitals. I’ll post pics and stuff when I finally get around to putting them on my computer. Tomorrow I’m going to visit a non-profit that’s dedicated to setting up an EMS system in Bangalore. Then off to Goa on the 23rd to chill on the beaches with Aleisha! Hopefully that’ll cure my homesickness…. Try not to pity me too much out there ;).

As far as social issues go, CMC has been quite a lesson on the importance of addressing these needs…..but now I’m back on the road again. I spent the weekend in Ooty just for vacation. While the tea plantations are beautiful (I got to visit one this weekend….pictures later) and the views are incredible, I kept thinking about what it must of been like here when the Brits were colonizing the area. It probably didn’t help that I was reading The Poisonwood Bible last weekend (it’s about a minister who moves with his family to the Congo as part of a Christian mission)…I just keep hitting this idea of whether or not development is really a good idea. I know it’s been discussed to death before, but this is the issue that I think I really wanted to address this year…whether or not we should be trying to encourage development as blindly as we do. I’ve been reading a slew of books lately that kind of discuss the negative impacts of this process… It’s not that how we do things in the West isn’t good…the vast majority of people have their basic needs met in our societies. There are so many health problems, just as a start, that we just would never see here that are rampant elsewhere in the world. The issue more is that I’m not sure how necessary certain parts of the “progress” are in other countries.

(1) In The Poisonwood Bible, one of the characters refers to the process of development in the Congo as trying to attach wheels to a horse…there are lots of aspects of our development that just wouldn’t work in other countries. All those efforts do is further harm these countries, and, in the more corrupt cases, put them in debt to organizations like the World Bank and to countries such as the U.S. , who loan billions of dollars for efforts such as rail lines or dams that will never be able to succeed for lack of the basic resources needed to sustain their development.

(2) The other thing is that our moral approach to life sometimes doesn’t even make sense in other countries. For example, India is an overpopulated place…no one can argue with that. half of the problems here are probably a direct or indirect result of that fact. In any case, one byproduct of the sheer number of people here combined with the poverty of a lot of these people is that the value of life here is different. In the hospital, for example, people would often consider issues such as whether or not a daughter would be able to get married following a certain injury or whatever before deciding to pay for healthcare for her. In short, unlike in the U.S., the idea exists that there are some lives simply not worth saving. I have such a hard time making myself write down the words, “There are some lives not worth saving,” but I can’t say that I disagree… In The Poisonwood Bible, a few of the characters comment on this similar issue in Africa…

“The loss of life: unwelcome. Immoral? I don’t know. Depends perhaps on where you are and what sort of death… in the world, the carrying capacity for humans is limited. History holds all things in the balance, inclduoing large hopes and short lives. When Albert Scweitzer walked into the jungle, bless his heart, he carried anti-bacterials and a potent, altogether raw conviction that no one should die young. He meant to save every child, thinking Africa would then learn how to have fewer children. But when families have spent a million years making nine in the hopes of saving one, they cannot stop making nine. Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past. When the straps go, what flies forward will not be family planning, it will be the small, hard head of a child…”

“Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature’s jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck”

There are certainly many family planning efforts going on in India, but it will take time before education catches up with population growth… When it comes down to it, I think I believe in the little bits of development…but these large scale efforts overwhelm me, just as I think they overwhelm many developing countries, especially as far as influence from outside governments is concerned. It still baffles me how hard it is for governments or anyone else to give help that isn’t in large part tainted by pure, unbridled selfishness… (go read Arundhati Roy’s The Algebra of Infinite Justice….).

ok, the end of a long and jumbled post….i’m in bangalore, enjoying the modernness of this city and the graciousness of my current hosts (tonight, i’m staying with the sister of a friend of my mother’s…kind of random connection, but it’s been great so far. yummy food and a fun family ;)! )… off to kerala for a few days tomorrow before coming back to bangalore to finish my observations….

Haven’t posted in a while, huh? I don’t even know where to begin….the last few weeks have been full of all kinds of ups and downs. I spent the beginning of last week observing at RUHSA and in the Low Cost Effective Care Unit at CMC. The time at RUHSA was pretty packed: Iwatched a video on the program nd got a chance to speak to the director of the program about the work they do, and then headed out into the field. First, I went along with a mobile clinic out to the rural areas they serve. Like CHAD, the program relies upon cooperation between the CMC staff and PCHWs, trained community members who are responsible for identifying individuals who could utilize the clinic services. Then, I went with one of the program members to visit a little rural community of people living in little thatched huts. There are several of these communities in which RUHSA runs Self Helf Groups that teaches the people of the communities how to manage money. Basically, RUHSA assists the groups is securing loans from banks, teaches them how to save money every week (each member of the group has to contribute dues to the group each week), how to invest this money and guides them in spending the money on their community, neighbors or investment ventures. The really exciting thing about this program is that it is self-sustainable and profitable for the groups: one group saved enough money to secure a loan to buy an ambulance that they leased out to nearby towns. As a result of their ventures, they made enough money to not only pay the driver and for the ambulance, but also had profit left over. It’s pretty incredible. The idea of these programs is that health care can only be improved if we can raise standards of living in these areas. In the end, the major difference between these and many other welfare type programs is that these programs are closely monitored to increase the likelihood of their efficacy. The people are free to do what they want with the money (three people out of the group have access to the money- any two of them have to sign a withdrawal slip from the bank in order to access the money. the idea is that spending the money is a group venture), but they are given guidance (not instruction) on investments. They are shown the benefits of investing the money in themselves rather than just spending it on, say, drink or food which are gone in a day without making any profit for the future. The other interesting thing is that these programs are run by women because the idea is that women see the needs of the community more clearly and because empowered women generally lead to men raising their standards of success. One of the med students I met while at RUHSA is studying to see the opinion of the men in these communities of this empowerment. I’d be very curious to see if (a) they actually feel threatened/left out and (b) the effect is making them step up and earn back respect or if they just condemn the program.

Spent the rest of the time visiting the vocational schools developed for the rural boys and the textiles programs developed for the women…and then touring the wards, where along with regular health services, they perform tubal ligations for women (the government has a program by which women are given financial incentives to have these done…and after having two children, can have them done without the consent of their husbands). Lastly, saw more of the community education efforts: pictures of street plays on HIV transmission, etc.

Overall, very impressed by a very round approach to healthcare…

Sari shopping in Kanchipuram

(Payal, your sari is the pear-colored one in the front…)

Bus stand in Chengapattu

Beaches of Mahabalipuram just before one of the many monsoon storms that we got ourselves caught in (yesterday, we managed to get soaked while trying to visit the Shore Temple…and had to climb over a fence to get around this huge pile of manure that was blocking half of the road and “flavoring” the small lake covering the other half of the road….not sure how I kept all of the silk stuff I had bought dry, but managed somehow! phew. unfortunately ruined a copy of a picture of my siblings that I love :(. Suj, can you send me another copy of that pic from your birthday? This is the second copy of it I’ve ruined :(.)

Chilling at Ravi’s with Kelli and Alex… (p.s. Payal, that’s your tapestry that he’s working on!).

“Do yourself a favor. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.”

“Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge- she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving,or expectation of any kind. It was easier to turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one that had no claim whatsoever.”

-Jhumpa Lahiri, Namesake

“I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it starts, they are terrified and want the cars to stop.
What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn’t they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to aovid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?
….The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it’s mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it.
…If I had fallen asleep and suddenly woken up on a roller coaster, what would I feel?
Well, I would feel trapped and sick, terrified of every bend, wanting to get off. However, if I believe that the track is my destiny…then the nightmare becomes something thrilling. It becomes exactly what it is, a roller coaster, a safe, reliable toy, which will eventually stop, but, while the journey lasts, I must look at the surrounding landscape and whoop with excitement.”

-Paulo Coehlo, Eleven Minutes

So, there was no cranberry sauce or stuffing, but Thanksgiving went pretty well regardless. I still find it amusing that I only ever seem to celebrate this holiday when I’m in foreign countries (my family has, for one reason or another, never really gotten into celebrating Thanksgiving…). Last time I met up with Watson fellow, Heather, I got to show her a little of my life in Geneva. This time, I was the one being shown the lifestyle of another fellow, Alex, in Mahabalipuram, a small beach town along the Bay of Bengal (Southeastern India). I met up with Kelli and Alex on Thursday for the beginning of an extremely relaxing four day weekend filled with walks on the beach, chilling in cafes, sipping chai, feasting on yummy Indian food and just talking and sight-seeing. Alex introduced us to the friends she’s made over the past three weeks in Mahabalipuram, including Ravi, a tailor who I had custom-make a tapestry for my sister and who is incredibly hospitable…we would sit in shop drinking tea as he worked on projects, and he even invited us over for dinner at his house on Saturday. yum! Despite having a wonderful time in Vellore with my friends here, I have to admit I was a bit jealous of Alex’s laid back attitude and lifestyle. I think that sometimes I just forget that this is probably one of the last times in my life that I’ll get this much time to just focus on myself and my happiness….so, I went out and bought some books I’ve been dying to read and decided to put away all of my planning material for a little. I’ve taken lots of weekend trips, but haven’t really given myself a real break from planning and researching since I started back in July. This weekend, I’m going to Ooty for a few days with some CMC people…then it’s off to pursue the project in Bangalore. I’m giving myself a nice 4 day escape in Varkala in Kerala from there… :).

If you happen to have some time, you should go get Jhumpa Lahiri’s
Namesake. Fabulous book…. also, Paulo Coehlo’s Eleven Minutes.

I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to Thanksgiving so much, and I’m going to be spending it with complete strangers (two other Watson fellows) in a foreign country. A good dose of not feeling like the only one in the crazy throes of Watson will do wonders for my sanity, I’m certain. Out of school for the first time in 18 years, I sleep more than I ever have in the days preceding Thanksgiving, and yet somehow I still have that all too familiar feeling of needing to give my brain a break….these past few days have been a lot of planning and reworking of schedules and trying to get my life together. I’m starting to remember what it felt like back in late July when I had a million arrangements to make before I flew off for Switzerland, and it seemed like it was all going to be impossible to coordinate. Blah. I know I’m being melodramatic, but my to-do list is just getting so long these days…and I keep having these guilty feelings about what exactly I’m trying to accomplish out here in India. I’ve been hitting brick walls on finding my way into hospitals in any of the cities I’m landing in after Vellore (except for Madras), and I can’t handle the idea of just traveling around India for two months without getting anywhere on my project (stupid, I know, but I really am interested in this stuff….). I still can’t find a way to get a visa to Brazil short of sending my passport back to the States (doesn’t that seem like a fantastic idea?) or staying in LA overnight on my layover between NZ and Brazil and going for a visa then (hmmm…not an all together terrible idea. i’ve never been to Cali before….though I’d prefer to stay away from the U.S. this year, even though we allowed to go back for layovers). Keep your fingers crossed that the consulate in Bangkok will let me get a visa there even though I’m not a permanent resident of Thailand…. and, lastly, the IRB at Hopkins seems to want to put me through their version of hell as I’m STILL working on that….gah.

Ok, venting done. I know all is right with the universe overall, though, cause my WHO girl, Priti, just got hired to work for Lawyers Collective in Delhi… awesome opportunity for her and for me as it means I’ll get to see her in Delhi when I swing through there in January. I love all of my friends who are spontaneously ending up in India (Priti sent me an e-mail last week telling me that she was sick of Geneva and “had made an overnight decision to move to Delhi.”). Craziness. You all rock!

Ok, back to errands before the travel agency closes and the tailor shuts down for the night….

Yesterday, I went to Pondicherry with a few friends from CMC. It was a lovely day…we had dhosas and fresh lime juice at a little cafe overlooking the Bay of Bengal, and then shopped at the paper factory (yay, bought a new journal..perfect since i just ran out of pages in my last one, and i’m sort of obsessive about the quality of the paper in my journals…it’s beautiful…white with gold embroidery, and textured white pages). As Pondicherry used to be French enclave in India and has spent recent years restoring the French touches to their city, we were able to enjoy lunch at a lovely cafe that served amazing French onion soup and warm baguettes where the restaurant staff spoke French. The city itself was very clean, with broad, wide lanes and very little litter near the water….a small shock after weeks in Vellore and the rest of India, which is very polluted! We spent the afternoon in Auroville, a town founded on the inspiration of The Mother, who was the spiritual head of an ashram in Pondy for a while. The town is supposed to be a place that is under the ownership of no particular country where people of any nationality can come together to reach a higher conciousness. It’s quite beautiful with large gardens and paths, and a huge gold globe that resembles Epcot center a bit (though the panels are disks). You can’t take photos, or I would have…and I guess I should say that while I’m not sure if beautiful is the word for the outer part of the structure, it is certainly appropriate for the meditation room inside that is open to visitors from 3:30-4:30 pm. It’s a spherical room all lined in white marble, supported by three marble pillars. In the center of the room is a clear sphere that is lit by beams of sunlight (either natural or from solar lamps)….it’s quite striking, but during the tour, they kind of herd you past the room so you only get to see it for about a split second. You feel like you’re walking down a run way and then have to turn around on a dime….bizarre, but worth it.

Anyway, all was fine until our taxi driver was driving us back and hit a bicycle, knocking the man riding it off of the bike and into the road. We can’t say we know what happened after that because he subsequently sped off at super rapid pace, veering into a ditch on the side of a road in an attempt to avoid running into the truck in front of us. As we shouted at him to slow down (not that he spoke English, but that’s another story….), he finally calmed down a bit and continued on our path… If you’ve seen Indian traffic, you know things like this happen, but this was my second car accident in as many days…the bus I was on Friday slammed into something (I couldn’t see what as I was in the second to last row of the bus). I don’t think anyone was hurt that time as we actually stopped and I didn’t see anyone get carried away, but…scariness. Here I thought I was developing nerves of steel against the traffic, but this weekend was a nice reality check, in combination with the too many ER road traffic accident injuries I’ve seen…. Some days I love the chaos, and other days it’s just a public health nightmare….not to mention killer for my stress level.

Back on the positive side, Jenny’s (an old lacrosse teammate from Bryn Mawr) coming to India and we’re going to travel together! WOOHOO!!!!

The above photos are at the Immunization Clinic run by the Community Health and Development (CHAD) department at Christian Medical College. Most of these women are from the rural areas and come with their infants to Vellore, where they register at the table in the second picture and then wait their turn to be seen. The blonde girl in the pictures is my friend, Susanna, in case you’re wondering…

Signs at CMC Hospital….

Photos courtesy of Martin….

I was told that if a patient tells you their family has no history of asthma, it doesn’t mean anything because families will often lie about medical conditions because having a family history of a serious medical problem can prevent a daughter of the family from ever getting married (remember that arranged marriages are still very popular here).

Along the same lines, a patient came in that had decided to commit suicide by taking rat poison and alcohol…after he was seizing for a while and none of the drugs were working, his relatives finally decided to tell us that they knew he had taken rat poison and that was why they had brought him in…. this issue of pride is pretty powerful.

Went to see a Tamil movie the other day (no, I don’t understand Tamil….but I managed to follow with a help of a friend’s Tamil friend)….wow. They are really violent, and even if they don’t show kissing and all, pretty explicit. Interesting….don’t think I’ll be going to see another Tamil movie, but the music was kind of fun. might buy the soundtrack.

Finally got an electrical outlet in my room to work, so I’ll be able to post pics soon….

Ok. That’s all for a pretty dull entry. Had a relaxing weekend just chilling here…and visiting the Vellore fort and temple (the other main attraction in Vellore besides the hospital). It’s actually really pretty and fun to just sit by, munching on roasted peanuts that the vendors there sell. Life is good, even if this entry is boring.

If there is one thing that I have realized these last few months, it’s how much I’ve been relying on “the kindness of strangers.” From the first day that I landed in Geneva to be greeted by Carley, the Bryn Mawr alum who offered me free housing and yummy food, to the medical student who walked me out to the main road in Vellore to find me an autorickshaw and negotiate a fair price in Tamil for me when I missed the last bus home to Bagayam, the successes of my adventures have been in large part because there are so many people out there who just want to help. It’s kind of reassuring to realize that even if you’re all alone, it’s not that you can’t still ask for help and actually receive it! So, when my roommate last night said that she wanted to pick up her friend at the airport at 4 am in Chennai, but that she didn’t want to go in the taxi alone there at night, I decided that it was my turn to help out a friend and went with her…whew. long night sleeping in a TATA Sumo (a little SUV) as the driver blared Tamil and Hindi filmi music, fighting the fiesty women at the airport to get into the bathroom (a hole in the ground behind a curtain…and we had to pay for it, too!!), munching on KitKats and little Indian wafers to stay awake…and finally surprising her friend. It was craziness, but you have to love the adventure…

I moved house the other day and am now staying at the Hospital Annexe on the main CMC campus…on a floor with a bunch of other international medical students. Also got a new cell phone number: +91 98 944 72097. Life is pretty good. I rush downstairs every morning for breakfast (idlis…yum!) at the YWCA canteen next door to my hostel, and then get to the Casualty Department for my shift from 7:30-3:30. We have the requisite coffee breaks at 10:30, when I get yummy South Indian chai with the ED social worker who is like a surrogate mom here. Generally, the ED stays picks up from 11 on ’til 1, when I usually head for lunch out with the med students (fresh juice and dhosas), and then again around 2:30, half an hour after I get back from lunch. I usually leave after things die down around 3:30 or 4, and head out to do run errands and shop on the main streets in Vellore, Ghandi Road and Ida Scudder Road. Dinner with the med students at one of the three good restaurants in town or in the canteen and then just wandering (”time pass”) until about 10 or 11 when we all head home to crash. It’s a lot of down time, but it’s good for me to regroup and get things together for my study. It’s amazing how much I’ve been learning out here, both in terms of the interface of the hospital and society here, and in terms of medicine (though one of consultants told me yesterday to not focus too much on the clinical stuff because when I have to study basic sciences in the first two years, I’ll be bored because they won’t contain any “masala” the way clinical medicine does…. I thought it was a funny way to say that, though I still think knowing the clinical important will help me remember why I’m chugging through the sciences).

Actually, next week i start a new rotation at CMC. I’ll be spending time at the Community Health and Development program, which attempts to do more public health type work. I’m really excited to see their efforts, which I’ve heard are amazing, and to spend more time with community members outside of the hospital. I still don’t speak Tamil or Hindi, though I’m working on learning a little bit of both. Hopefully, though, I’ll be able to get a lot out of the experience anyway. The week after, I’m spending a few days at the Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs , a community outreach program, and at the Low Cost Effective Care Unit, where they attempt to provide no frills services to patients so that they can afford the treatments they need. Should be good for community perspectives.

In other news…made plans to celebrate Thanksgiving with a few other Watson fellows in Mamallapuram. Very exciting. Had a fantastic time last Watson meeting, so I’m hoping this will be even half as awesome! It’s funny that I only seem to celebrate Thanksgiving when I’m abroad (my family doesn’t really celebrate it at home). My only “real” Thanksgiving was in Paris two years ago.

Silly note: it’s funny to me how young the doctors are here, because you can get your M.B.B.S (=M.D.) right after college (it’s 4 years of school and a 5th year of internship). This is how it works in most countries (you don’t have to do an undergraduate degree first), but it’s still amusing to me that I’m older than some of these doctors and I’m by no means a non-traditional student in the U.S. when it comes to age. Apparently, two Indian students went to Sweden for 6 months to study there, thus taking time off from their studies here. When they presented their work here at CMC last week, one of the doctors stood up and said that he wishes more Indian students would take time off and not be so afraid to “lose time” as these months or years are truly an investment. I know this sense of “losing time” is true because my decision to take this year off was definitely greeted by surprise from many Indian people. One of the interns told me that the idea here is that you need to start working early so that you can make enough money to support you and your parents (in Indian culture…and a lot of other cultures for that matter….the idea is that your parents support you until you finish your studies and settle down, and then you support them). Just thought it was interesting that they are moving towards taking more time off…. Personally, I’m a big fan.

Hey, all! Had a fabulous day in the ED today, so I’m on a high…saw some cool cases, actually got to work with patients instead of just observing, and made some new friends.

Things I have learned this weekend:

It takes a looong time to get used to doing everything on the left side of the road. I kept banging into people while weaving the hospital corridors.

It rains a lot and very suddenly here…eek. Must remember to carry umbrella at all times.

Sari shopping is tons of fun! I went with Susanna to Kanchipurum yesterday. We visited a few of the beautiful temples there (and did some ritual that’s supposed to bless my life…the woman leading me in it told me that it would lead to long lives for my family and my eventual marriage to a doctor…:P gotta love Indian values…).

Then, we hit the silk sari shops that Kanchipurum is famous for (well, besides the temples)….I only bought one thing, don’t worry, but it was fun getting to choose from an amazing array of colors and borders. Every few seconds, the shopkeeper would flick his wrist and unfurl yet another expanse of silk to reveal the pullo, the most heavily decorated part of the sari. Forty minutes of saris and bargaining later (by the time I was done, I was practically sitting in a sea of saris), I had chosen a gorgeous 100% silk sari….cream and purple and gold. So pretty!

Bus rides in India aren’t as bad as everyone says, though we did get randomly stopped for 20 minutes in a village along the way as the townspeople stopped the bus by literally standing in front of it. Ah, well….for rs. 40 (that’s less than a dollar, folks), it was worth it. The views along the way were stunning…rice paddies, palm trees, a man herding geese, roadside temples.

Chinatown does indeed have great Indian food. Well, at least in Vellore.

Unless you are a connoisseur of military architecture, or have succumbed to a tropical disease, you’re unlikely to find much inspiration in VELLORE, 150km west of Chennai.

-The Rough Guide, South India

Ah, my new home ;). Apparently, they failed to realize how much inspiration a foreign soon-to-be medical student researching systems of EM might garner from being in Vellore!

In all seriousness, Vellore is a relatively small city by India standards, located between Chennai and Bangalore in the state of Tamil Nadu. It’s really a startling place in that the center of a city is this busy, crowded, traffic congested area, all located around the rather pretty Christian Medical College campus, which includes housing, canteen, all of the hospital and college administration, as well as the hospital itself. Walking around the campus, you can always hear the traffic coming from the surrounding area, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that it’s all there until you catch a glimpse of the big, colorful signs and blur of yellow and black autorickshaws beyond the campus gates. The campus itself is always flooded with people ranging from medical students and faculty to the throngs of relatives of patients waiting underneath the trees and along the pathways. Despite being crowded, though, it’s quite a contrast from the dusty streets surrounding it…there are beautiful little gardens and plants, and if you walk along one part of the campus and look up, you’ll see a small green and brown mountain pictorequely standing against the sky. The other surprising thing is how much calmer the areas a bit distanced from the college are. I’m currently staying at Bagayam, a hospital housing complex located 8km from the medical center…you’d think you were in an entirely different place. It’s green, with lots of trees and vividly colored flowers amongst which are set several large bungalows that house faculty, students and CMC guests. The only noises I normally hear are of birds and bugs, the whirring fans and the dogs and monkeys that roam around the campus. When it rains (which it often does, as it is monsoon season in the South right now), I can actually smell the rain, instead of the usual cloud of exhaust fumes/cows from the city center! It’s kind of nice being able to experience two contrasting environments so close to one another. And, as one of the physicians in the Casualty Department said to me yesterday, the fantastic part of being at CMC in this department is that I really am seeing a microcosm of the town/region itself because people from all over come here when they need treatment. As most of these people are rural people, I’ve gotten to see quite a range of cases that I’d never see in the U.S., as well as some serious road traffic accidents (those are still Indian-style, like someone getting hit while jumping off of a moving train…not an all-together uncommon phenomenon on the overly crowded trains). The Casualty Department here really is quite busy…yesterday alone, there was a woman who 9 months pregnant that got hit by a van, another serious RTA, 2 serious heart attack patients, a little boy with TB, a guy who was getting transported to CMC for a liver transplant, a man having an acute psychosis episode, a woman who was run over by a bus, a man who was bitten by a viper….among a slew of other less dramatic cases. Like I said, quite a range….

Ok, back to exploring the city. There’s apparently a great restaurant near the hospital that I’m supposed to check out for some good South Indian food….oddly enough, it’s called Chinatown. :-P.

Big Bungalow
Thorapodi (P.O.)
C.M.C.
Bagayam
Vellore 632 002
Tamil Nadu
INDIA

phone number:

dial either:

+91 41622603 OR +91 4162222102
and then extension 4313.

Yes, I’m really staying in a place called, “Big Bungalow.” As for the phone numbers, apparently only one of them works, but I have yet to find anyone who can tell me which one it is….so you’ll have to take your chances if you want to talk.

Ok. Travel plan for India (including last 3 weeks…i’ve already been here for 3 weeks. wow.).

Oct. 15-24th Mumbai
Oct. 24th-27th Devlali/Nashik
Oct. 27th-31st Mumbai
Oct. 31st-Nov. 3rd Pune
Nov. 3rd-Dec. 7th Vellore (travel for this listed below)
Nov. 8th Madras
Nov. 9th Kanchipurum
Dec. 7th-Dec. 23rd Bangalore
Dec. 23rd- Jan. 5th Goa
Jan. 5th-Jan. 10th Mumbai
Jan. 10th-Jan. 15 Ghandinagar/Ahmedabad
Jan. 15-Jan. 20th Mumbai

I still want to go to Kerala and need to find a time to get there….plus want to go to this other town outside of Madras, but I can’t remember how to spell its name. Also want to go to Pondicherry, but again need to figure out when I want to go…

If you know anyone in India who might want to travel with me places, let me know!

Ok, that’s all….talk to ya later.

I finally arrived in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, last night after spending four days in Pune, Mahastra, for a conference on EM in India. The conference was held at this beautiful five star hotel in Pune…the same hotel housing the NZ and OZ national cricket teams (I made friends with the NZ team…fun fun! I’ll hopefully get to see a game when I’m in NZ since I missed the one in Pune even though the NZ coach got me free passes because my flight was at the same time…).

Yesterday, I took a plane from Pune to Chennai (genius me forgot to take my Swiss Army knife out of my suitcase and ended up stopped at security forever as a result…the guard told me i was lucky because apparently a U.S. national was put in jail a few days ago for a similar offense. Must be more careful in the future…though I felt a little better after another woman at the airport told me she had actually done the exact same thing a few weeks earlier in Mumbai) and then a 3 hour cab ride to the city of Vellore, about 140 km from Chennai (does that give you an idea of how slow traffic moves around here :P?). I spent the night settling into my new home in the women’s student hostel (dorm). I have a room for two people currently to myself, with a bathroom and all of the rest. It costs about Rs. 100/night (that’s about $2). It’s actually a pretty decent-sized room, though I’m definitely going to have to get over my fear of bugs sometime soon. It’s not like there are a ton of insects, but enough that I really should work on conquering that fear. Apparently, a bigger worry is the cobras and scorpians that are sometimes on the footpaths when it rains. It actually turns out that my neighbor across the hall, Susanna, grew up just over the border in France near Geneva and that her dad worked for the WHO. For the millionth time, small world.

I’ve decided I want to get involved in some of the efforts to empower women in India (surprise surprise after four years at Bryn Mawr….)…i’ll write more on that later, but in the last few weeks, I’ve seen a few billboards in Mumbai on quitting dowry use in weddings, and at the hospital this morning, was surprised to see signs all over the medical center saying that this hospital does not participate in prenatal gender determination….the reason for that being that there has been a startling drop in the female to male ratio of kids between the age of 0-6 over the last 20 years (from 962: 1000 to 927:1000 according the Arundhati Roy’s article in a women’s empowerment magazine I was reading this morning), and many people believe it’s the selective abortion of female fetuses that has led to this.
Ok, lunch time…talk to you all later!

Hi, everyone! Happy New Year! Just spent a refreshing 4 days in Devlali in Mahastra with my aunt, uncle and cousin and a few of their neighbors. We stayed at one of their bungalows and celebrated the new year with fireworks and temple visits and just relaxing. For those of you who have ever spent time with me in a city, you know how much i love weekend escapes like this one, so despite staying up way too late at night talking to my cousin and everyone else, I am feeling much more refreshed and ready to go off and start the research part of this trip to India (these past 2 weeks have mostly been planning the next two months and just getting used to being in India by spending tons of time with family). I’m starting to get used to being part of a family again instead of just doing things completely independently, so it’ll be a little sad to leave that, but I’m definitely ready to explore my own again. I’ve been missing that feeling of living only for yourself, you know? I don’t have a lot of time, as usual, so I’m just going to leave the updates at that.

I’ve been thinking religion a lot lately….especially since i’ve been going to tons of Jain temples and stuff… i went to go to this temple on Sunday that’s supposed to be one that every jain should go to….and i wasn’t allowed in because i wasn’t wearing pants or a sari (i was wearing a v. conservative knee length khaki skirt)…it’s stuff like this that really makes me realize that as much as I love religion and am completely convinced that having faith in something greater that us gives us the power to accomplish things we would otherwise have a hard time doing, organized relgion frustrates me because they involve broad rules that just make it impossible for someone to think about the more essential part of “being religious”– being as good a person as you can be and upholding the major values of the religion rather than the rather inane rules of someone else telling me what respect and reverence are. I’m reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth right now, and the main character keeps referring to this quote, “When the heart is pure, all is pure” (it’s in french, so that’s my rough translation)….that is much more what religion should be.

Miss you all!!!!! Keep emailing! I put up a few new pictures under “Au Revoir” though none are post-haircut. I’ll put those up later. Talk to you all later…

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but then again I’ve barely been on-line, so that explains that. I don’t even know where to being explaining the last week. Being back in India is a little bizarre still, but cool. It’s Diwali (the new year) right now, so there’s a lot of fun stuff going on for that. Having been at college for the last few years means that I haven’t really celebrated Diwali with family in a while, so this is good stuff. We’ve been “bursting crackers” (fireworks) on Marine Drive near the sea and making rangolis outside of the apartment (designs made with different colored powders)..

I also bought some great new clothes and jewelry.

I think the only hard thing right now is is that I don’t think I considered how difficult it would be for me to separate/mesh my Indian background with observing the culture here and learning about it. It’s almost a little too personal, you know? I mean, in Geneva I always knew that I was a foreigner there and could kind of observe and try things without guilt or anything. Here, I keep feeling as if I should already know a lot of this stuff. It’s bizarre being somewhere where I’m on the fence of being a cultural outsider and insider…like, i feel so american here and from a daily life and culture perspective, i suppose I really am…servants and all of the poverty next to towers of affluence (the new high rises) still amaze me. From that respect, it’s as if I were in the middle of any other country because I’ve never really seen a lot of this before ever. But then my background is obviously Indian, though…values, religion, etc. It’s really a weird position to be making observations from, you know? Like it’s odd feeling so detached from a culture I keep thinking I should be more connected to. I don’t know what I was expecting in terms of feeling like i’m finding my roots or something…it’s just a little weird. I’m leaving Bombay in about a week, though,and I won’t be seeing family for another 2 months after that (I’ll only see them when I come back through Bombay on my way out of the country). I suppose it’ll get a little less personal (read: easier) then….and I am here to learn, after all!