Back in Bangalore

Hello friends,

I am back in Bangalore… and settling in quite quickly. It helped to have the smoothest day of transit so far last Friday. With help from HMI folks and being sent off and greeted on either end of the train by Bollam family members, I decided that I am starting to enjoy some aspects of travel days more and more here. I arrived early on Saturday morning and immediately began reconnecting with my UTC friends, beginning with breakfast in the mess hall. As if that wasn’t enough of a reentry experience (so many greetings, being asked the same questions over and over again, and just the general energy of the place), I also journeyed with a busload of students to a program about an hour outside of the city. I think I’ve mentioned before about the loud and silly singing that happens on the college bus, but it was particularly fun for me to experience again after having been away for awhile.

Sunday was my opportunity to really catch up and have some quality time with Asongla and Moses – as they are the ones I am closest to here. I also attended a youth group gathering and led some songs and a game in the afternoon. It doesn’t take long to be drawn into events here. I had hoped to really get acclimated to CISRS (the place where I am staying and volunteering these two weeks) over the weekend, but besides a few typing tasks and meeting people arriving for the conference, my help was not needed. I took the opportunity to say yes to UTC-related things. I should mention that some of my friends here are well aware of my ice cream addiction, so just in a few days, I have been treated to a good deal of ice cream as a welcome back!

Monday was a little bit chaotic because the city had a bandh (strike) due to water issues between this state and its neighbor. You might remember me telling about a bandh this past fall as well, but if not, it basically means that everything shuts down except emergency services in the city. I think earlier I compared it to our ‘snow days’ when you just stay home all day and nothing moves. Typically, this would be a welcome extra day of rest, but for CISRS, it was very bad timing. It was the first day of their conference and people were supposed to arrive from all over India for the event. With train and flight delays as well as no local traffic allowed, they had to rent an ambulance just to collect the visitors! I, again, was not able to be very helpful in this situation, but was given the task of organizing a bhajan to be sung for the opening of the conference. What a fun job for me! Since there were no classes at UTC, I went over and recruited a bunch of friends for the song and they were extremely flexible and helpful in making the less-than-ideal opening of the conference to be special.

This began my key role for the conference… leading and gathering various groups to open each session with a song. I completely exhausted the Indian songs I know and learned a couple of new ones, so it was a fun thing for me. The conference was filled with academic lectures hour after hour, and although there were some interesting topics, I was not particularly attentive or focused. The work CISRS is doing in educating and empowering community members about social and religious issues are great, so it was unfortunate that the conference could not have reflected those grass-roots efforts in the way it was run, but such is the nature of official events, I guess.

Although my cultural adjustment attitude has been better this week, I did get easily annoyed by the usual things that affect me: stereotypical male-female roles, rude talking or cell phones ringing during sessions, and basic organizational/logistical concerns which I would handle very differently if I were more involved (yes, I know my former co-workers understand well how particular I can be about preparation and details – maybe even being a little bit of a control freak?) It is interesting how each culture, institution and person has their own ideas about which tasks they insist be done a certain way and which things can be more flexible. In this case, the formality of greetings and recognition of accomplishments were very important, but time-keeping was not a top priority. The final celebration (with hundreds of people in attendance) for this 50 year celebration of CISRS was a perfect example. They invited about 30 people up to the stage and gave them each a garland, had about 10 people bring ‘greetings’, and had many other presentations for honored guest, but the event took over 3 hours instead of 2 – meaning that everyone had to sit and listen to these formalities with very hungry tummies for FAR too long. Enjoy the picture of my friend, Nijhar's dad, Nirmal Minz being honored and a tribal dance group.

On a totally different note, I was surprised to see that Valentine’s Day is a big deal here. It was a commercialized event just as it is in the U.S., with advertisements and sales and even a program at UTC on that day. At the same time, I read in the paper about how some people are so opposed to the celebration of this day that they vandalize stores which are promoting Valentine’s Day. As most of you know, I usually don’t particularly care for the day myself, but I ended up enjoying it very much this year! I attended my second Hindi movie and had some good laughs at the UTC party. I also remembered so many of you, and I wish to send you my love (an agape kind of love) even now, a few days after the fact.

Last of all, I have been struggling to understand one other thing this week. At UTC, student leadership is much more important to the life of the community than I’ve seen at schools in the States. Students are in charge of the hostel where they stay, the mess hall, and various other programs and organizations. The students are presently nominating and campaigning various leadership positions here for next year. It seems to be an extremely stressful time that creates divisions within the community. While UTC, for me, was a place where I was impressed by the unity of such a diverse community, I am presently saddened and disappointed to hear about and see issues of language, caste, class, and gender come into the picture. My friends here also do not like the process, but no one seems to know what it will take to change it.

Wishing you peace,

Sara