don't go away, and come again another day

I am still reading the essay that I am going to write a synopsis for, it is more like a novel than an essay, and add to the fact that it is a philosophical essay, means that each sentence needs to be dissected and thought about before I can move on, hence, it is not going to be done for some time at the least and this is especially so because I am back on an anime binge right now, just started watching bleach after having finished Basilisk, which I would recommend to you if are into this sort of a thing.

I am in Herndon, VA right now, at my uncle's place, and there's a thunder storm brewing here, just the perfect weather for a night out watching some good anime on a nice comfy bed under a warm duvet. But the unfortunate part is that unlike in India when such weather usually means loud thunder and the pitter patter of the rain on the roof and the whirring of the fan and the sweet sweet smell of moist soil, here it usually means a slight smell of gasoline, muffled thunder and maybe the quiet wheezing of the air conditioning. Because most American houses are so well insulated and the windows are usually so thick, you cant hear anything :(

Indian houses on the other hand are usually very well ventilated, we never keep our windows closed except in the summer when we use the AC, and the roofs are usually flat and we invariably have terraces (where we as kids often play cricket), and this is unlike here where the roofs are mostly sloping in order to accommodate the snow and rain. So, in India, such weather usually means a respite from the heat in the form of a cool, and crisp but fiery draft of wind that smells like a piece of heaven, and the noise of street dogs howling in the distance, add to this the smell of wood burning in make shift fires and you have your very own dream.

And you could attribute this view of mine to bias, but ask anybody and many will call me a self hating Indian because I criticize my country so much, but this is one aspect where I have to admit that living in India is clearly more romantic than living in the US

Here is a shot from my terrace in India:

My Terrace:

Heavy rain on a cold September morning.

And my favorite; rain clouds gather over my house.

pastime nay! timepass

Now, during the last US presidential debate, McCain walked off stage in the wrong direction, after which he proceeded to vent his surprise over this faux pas, in the most delicate, controlled, and dignified manner that only a possible future leader of a country can:



Funny eh ?
anyway, it seems that now, this is turning into some sort of meme. With people taking advantage of the plethora of options that such an awesome snap throws up, especially the creative ones. So what are you waiting for ? start that illegal copy of PS CS3 that you have, and go crazy.

Here is one that is just downright hilarious [I am not sure what license this has, nor who made it, but it is awesome all the same. So, apologies to the creator.]:

Trip 2, The Mids...

This post of mine is put up here purely for academic purposes and for the sake of completeness, it is a break from my normal informal style and content, I shall get back to my old deviant ways after this post. Until then, here is a report of the place that I visited, and as expected, it is boring, sort of like a text book article, you can skip it if you like.

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So I was in Dumka, there was a TV in the hotel! Excited, I watched TV till 4 am which I don't otherwise do, and slept a dreamless sleep.

Awoke the next day when they came to pick me up for my first field visit. We had the same Omni and the same freaking driver again.

what the hell !?

Luckily, the brightness of day presented a different 'driver' Per Se in the sense that he wasn't drunk, and he now knew which side was left and which was right.

And so it began, I in the front seat with about 4 giggling women in the back, yapping away to glory in their strange and exotic sounding Santhali language. The roads soon disintegrated from being barely pliable pot hole-fields to dust trails that just happened to be there. We finally reached the village where the local SHG (self help group) would invariably welcome us with a Santhali song and garlands made from locally available flowers. I visited 6 such villages, and I have a video of one such welcoming song, but my connection doesn't allow me to upload it.

I was not expecting such an elaborate reception and felt out of place when they tried to seek my blessings by touching my feet, I asked one of my translators to tell them not to do so. From an academic standpoint, this(touching of the feet) is mostly a Hindu form of seeking an elders blessings which is strange because the santhali people are predominantly Christian. I suspected that they might practise a form of Christianity that was hybridized with Hinduism, a fact confirmed by their many Hindu customs such as the fact that the women wear the bindi on their forehead and put vermilion on the partition of their hair, and the presence of the Tulsi plant(Sage) in a sacred pot in the center of their mud dwellings. The interior of their huts is shown below, note the floor; which is made by mixing mud and cow dung. Also, they all, and I mean ALL, paint their doors the same color of blue, I forgot to ask why.



The poverty is quite dire, I feel like a criminal for wasting money on cigarettes and other trivial, non-essential activities, and there is nothing I can say that will truly explain their situation to you, hence I rely on this snap to do it for me.


Santhali woman at her home, with her Produce.

But all was not bad, this was her backyard.


They live with nature

These people have such little exposure to the rest of the world that they have to be taught the merits of cooperation, team work and group activities. So basically we explain to them the benefits of forming Self Help Groups (SHGs) and then we teach them how to manage the groups. After they learn this, they are taught modern methods of Farming, Animal Husbandry, vermi composting, and they are also taught how to improve their own traditional handcrafts such as this traditional criss cross mat that they make:


Traditional Mat

After they are taught these basics, we teach them to read and write Hindi, so that they can sign their names instead of using their thumbprints as they did earlier. We then introduce the SHG to the local State Bank, which evaluates the SHG as a while and gives them a grading, they usually get the second grading which allows them a loan of upto RS.25000 or about $540. An advantage of this is that they have gotten over their dependence on local money lenders called Mahajans, who make the (Libor + X) interest, that some institutions charge, seem like a steal.

Also, there is a scheme called the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme or NAREGA, which is a scheme developed by the government that utilizes locally available manpower to work in the labor intensive development projects such as the building of canals for irrigation, dams, lift irrigation schemes, roads, etc. they get paid Rs.86 per day of work or approximately $2. They need our assistance in getting the job cards that enable the bearer to work in NAREGA because being extremely poor, they are either overlooked or denied the card due to their inability to pay the bribe amount to the officials.

There are a lot of other areas such as; para-legal training, training on the working of the political system something Indians like myself will remember as the subject 'Civics' from high school, Self-confidence building measures, etc. which we coach them in.

In short, their lives are hard, and comparatively, I have it easy.

With all these interruptions in their lives and the hardship they face, they still seem to be content, I could feel and see carefree serenity in their behavior and the way they seemed to approach life. Here is a woman with her grandchild, maybe you can see what I mean.

Woman with grandchild

This my folks; is Rural India, in 2008.

Trip 2, day 1

So I am back at last, it feels nice to be home.
My trip was great, I learned a lot, and I saw parts of the country I would otherwise never have seen.

Here is a short description of my trip in brief, short owing to my laziness.

Started off on the 15 morning flight to Kolkata, and straightaway disaster struck when I forgot to carry my cell along with me. I personally would like to put the blame squarely on the alignment of the stars in the heavens at that fateful moment when I left for the airport, although I am sure no one will buy that. pffttt!!!!!

I was impressed by the new airport, well... impressed enough to do that gay looking head tilt thing which is often accompanied by the pulling down of your lips and a lifting of the eyebrows. aarghh! you know what I am talking about.

Kolkata airport on the other hand looks like a bus terminal, like how the old Bombay airport used to look. giving you a first hand experience of what a person suffering from claustrophobia might feel like; enclosed in a box. I took a pre-paid taxi to Howrah junction, and the taxi driver coolly dumped me at the edge of the Ganges (they call it 'hoogly' there) and ordered me to take a ferry to the other side.

"You! take the ferry, I can't come till Howrah" he seemed to say.


Not pictured: a safe and stable means of transportation.

Howrah Jn. is right across the ferry 'stop' and is a huge station with absolutely no one to tell you where your train will arrive. There are 20+ platforms and a road runs right through it. The electronic display then showed that my train would arrive on platform 11, it finally arrived on platform 10.

I reached Jasidih at 11 in the night, and there were almost 2000 devotees of some temple at the station waiting to go home, they had taken over the station filling every inch of available space with their bodies and bags and filling every cubic inch of air with the sweet, sweet smell of pure, grade 1 hash, alas, I had no time to ask one of them for a drag.


Note the absence of our hash smokers.

Then we had a 4 hour ride to Dumka where I was to stay. Dumka is about 65 kilometers away from jasidih, but the road is awful, hence the absurd traveling time. I was greeted by the Trust members and we sat in a Maruti omni for the trip to Dumka.

I was scared out of my wits:
The driver was drunk, and unaware of the speed limit.
The driver was under the impressin that he was in the US and hence insisted on driving on the right the whole way to Dumka.
The omni is notoriously unstable.
There were no street lights at all.
There were no Policemen about.
And not to mention the naxals.
The people might not even have know what a hospital was.
The trust members looked like they were the 'molesting' types.

The only saving grace was my white belt karate training and the fact that it was a full moon night.

Somewhere along the way it started, dark heavy clouds, the kind of I have never seen before, started moving in from the direction we were traveling in. Relative velocity meant that the clouds looked like they were using rockets to get to us, quicker. What surprised me about the clouds however, was their thickness. They completely blocked out the moon. Nothing shined through. And, they covered the whole sky; plunging us into darkness, and then of course; it started raining as if it were the end of the world.

Scary as hell.

After 4 excruciating hours of sheer panic and the muttering of fervent prayers promising a cessation of smoking on my behalf, we reached Dumka and in a single piece, that too.

The relief; Thank you Jesus!

So here I was in the middle of nowhere, just earlier in the day I was at home, in Hyderabad, familiar ground, my territory. Life is inscrutable isn't it ?


The street that greeted me that night.
Note: This is the main street in Dumka.

That was day 1.

Nihil Sum.

Let's you and I go on a ride.
On our magic carpet we fly,
We float to a beach somewhere.
Just in time for dusk,
as the sun seems to go; "bye".

The dance of the heady blues
and the composed oranges,
it makes us happy.
But...
What what would it be ?
if it were not for us who feel,
and appreciate and discuss it.

The silhouettes barely hide;
their secrets, their motives.
Our friend; the sun, he winks,
we sail together he says,
But...
What would all this be ?
If it were not for us; who see.

It makes you wonder.
Is this all for real ?
or is it much ado about nothing.
--------------
Thanks to Today Is A Good Day from Flickr for the snap of dusk.

Androgyn-geist

Allow me to introduce to you, Chauncey, who is technically speaking the personification of the dichotomy of Good and Evil. He was kicked out of both Heaven and Hell because they didn't know what the fuck he was. So now he is stuck with us, here in this meta-physical manifestation of existence, you might ask what is his 'entstehen', I think that he is the logical outcome of the law of causality being followed through(as it often does), if we were to think of 'Good' and 'Evil' as being the two sides of a coin, then he is the 'coin'

If those terms are a bit too obtuse for you, congrats you are NOT a nerd, sadly the same can not be said of me :(

So in laymen terms, he is just a nice guy who is omni-present, alas no one takes him seriously due to his 'being everywhere doing nothing' quality.



I know that I am somewhat breaking the fourth wall here, but my 'Artistic skills' are plainly seen in my drawing above, please feel free to send me money and\or gifts in appreciation of my superior ability, oh and I also accept cheques :)

Good times.

Beautiful sky.
This Country.
In the midst of a metamorphosis.
Our very own Industrial revolution ?

Pictured: The Novotel being built at Hyderabad's new Intl. Airport.
A construction worker wearing real protective head gear, and smiling happily as he speaks into his mobile handset, (maybe) of even better times, who knows ?

Snap Courtesy this place