Week 2 in Delhi

Now that I officially have professors and colleagues reading this from all directions, I guess I will take extra precautions. Perhaps I shall attempt to kick the quality up a notch, but maybe not right now. So here are a few things I have learned during my first week in Delhi. First and foremost, the six day school week, brutal. My proverbial hat is off to everyone that can actually maintain that. Second, a random roadside brick is a poor substitute for a hammer when a rikshaw driver needs to fix his pedals. Third, despite my best efforts to look like an unfriendly slob, I still tend to draw more beggars to me than my Western counterparts. An addendum to that, shoe shiners will also repeatedly attempt to shine my shoes. Even if I am wearing flip-flops. Another addendum, I am also a target for garbage disposed of by said beggars. Fourth, dinner from a broken-down food service truck swarming with flies? Much better than you would think. And finally, 30 degrees celsius can, indeed, feel amazingly refreshing. That's it for now. Keep tuning in and I will do my best to keep you entertained.

Productivity at last

I am not going to mince words here. Today was awesome. I started at Bal Bharti Public School in Pitampura at 10:30 this morning. It is a school of 5000 students from elementary grades all the way through high school. A student was assigned to escort me from the entrance (I wasn't too difficult to pick out). I then finally met Sarabjit (who I have been emailing and calling regularly lately), who is coordinating my research with me. I was introduced to the principal, head mistress, librarians, and every other faculty we could find. We then went to the English faculty office so I could meet the legion of instructors. They were super welcoming and entertaining banter immediately commenced. Throughout the course of the day I visited four classes. For the first one, I was just invited to talk about anything that I wanted. It sounds nice, but some direction would have helped. The second class I observed was with Sarabjit and the students there spent much of the period reading aloud and discussing a story. I then went with Rashika to a level 9 class where we discussed gender rights and equality. This is a relatively new idea in India, and it was really exciting to see the students get into it. It felt like what I would imagine the U.S. felt like during the 70's. There is so much change and energy here. It is terrific. I then went with another teacher to observe a class that discussed a much more difficult text that will definitely help me with my research. In between all of that, we had lunch. I did not bring anything (because I didn't get there until 10:30), so Sarabjit ordered everyone in the office to contribute some of their lunch to me. I had a heaping plate full by the end.

I expected to come home, relax, and maybe nap. However, word had gotten out that there is an English teacher in the bungalow. Our cook, Rahesh, was very interested in learning English. He had to quit school and begin working at a young age when his parents died. He proudly showed me the small notebook that he has been working with. He had practiced writing the same recipe for Chicken Bhiryani in Hindi, over and over again. He was immensely proud. We set about the task of writing the upper and lower case English alphabet and learning some common household objects. We have scheduled one hour lessons everyday for the rest of my stay. He is also helping me work no my Hindi as he really speaks no English whatsoever.

So tomorrow I will head back to the school on the bicycle rikshaw after arguing with the driver about the price. Hopefully I will start taking the school bus though so I can save the 60 rupees per day. It should be awesome.

What a difference a day makes

There I was, sweating in the mass of what appeared to be refugees while waiting for the illustrious August Kranthi Rajdhani express to Delhi from Mumbai Central Station. All would be fine after my two hour wait when I was to board the train for a 17 hour journey to Delhi. I had a confirmed seat in the a/c sleeper car. It had the makings for a very relaxing trip. I thought there would be a bit of privacy, some comfortable beds, and good food. I was mostly right, except for the privacy. The beds weren't bad. They supplied us with clean linens which is something I haven't had once during my trip. And the a/c worked so well that we actually needed to use the blankets! They served us multiple courses of food which was at least above par. As my luck would have it, when it came time for everyone to sleep, I came to the disturbing conclusion that all of the snorers on the train were located within 5 feet of my bed. Fortunately, the slow rocking of the train eventually lulled me to sleep. It turned out to be much more refreshing than I expected. I even met a gentleman who works in the Prime Minister's office that gave me his mobile number and told me to call him if I had ANY problems. I assured him that I would, but hopefully I wouldn't have to.

I was retrieved at the station by my uncle Ron's friend Anu. He was amazingly accommodating and took me immediately to find some housing in his nicely air conditioned Chevrolet. The journey was nice, but we did have to stop for directions multiple times. Delhi is a big city. Nobody really knows all of it. We settled on a place in Pitampura (about 3km from the school I will be at). I actually get my own room and bathroom! It is amazing to have privacy at last. There is no shower, so I have to do that Indian style with a couple of buckets. However, there is a Western toilet. I'll take that trade off any day. Tonight, I did realize that I do have several unofficial roommates. Those two inch long cockroaches just moved right in. I managed to take care of them with a few swift swipes of my shoe. I do also have a flat mate from Texas. It is great to have some company from America. He is here working on graduate research concerning micro-loans. Very interesting stuff. I may accompany him out to some of the slums where he is working just to see how it all operates. I also will start at the Bal Bharati Public School tomorrow. I will have to endure a course of interviews which should be pretty intense. Then I will be busy observing, questioning, and writing. Overall, it has been a crazy eventful day or so. I am looking forward to the next 4 weeks. There is a tentative plan to head down to Goa for some R&R during the end of my trip. It would be a great conclusion.

Just kind of hanging out

Okay, let's see what has changed since last time. My research opportunity in Mumbai has fallen through (but I wasn't counting on it anyway, so no big loss). I have moved to a new place further towards the outskirts of town. It is safe. The biggest dangers are the cheetahs and panthers that are about 15km away. There are also cows...everywhere! When the monsoon started, they were all huddled in the foyer of a building under construction, it was hilarious and really seemed to point to the contradictions that you find here. So I have been spending my days walking around (I went on a 20km jaunt the other day, in the monsoon!) and reading. I am about 600 pages through a 900 page book I bought on Sunday (Shantaram, I highly recommend it, but I don't know if it is out in the states yet). Everyone is very friendly and interested in me because I am an American. However, they all feel bad about how nobody has jobs and we are all starving. Seriously, that is what they think. I have to reassure them that we are all okay. I have been doing my best to stretch my rupee, just to see how cheaply I can live. I found a nice neighborhood place where I can get a plate of veg thali for rs 40 (about 48 rupees to the dollar). And apparently you can share an autorikshaw with 4 other people (5 with the driver) and it is really cheap. You just have to be willing to hang outside a bit. They are only designed for 3 passengers. Other than that there hasn't been too much going on. I visited all of the sights downtown where there were attacks last November and my reporter friend recounted how he was reporting and people were throwing grenades at him from the Taj. Pretty crazy stuff. I would love to post more, but I have spent way to long at this computer and am getting tire of it. Look for more regular updates in the future though, now that I know where the internet cafe is.

Mumbai week one and change

So it has been a long week and everyone is chompin' at the bit for information and stories. First things first, I am in Mumbai, not Delhi. The Delhi housing situation was sounding sketchy, so after much frantic last-minute planning, I changed my flight to land in Mumbai. I made some friends last time I was here and was able to arrange some very cost effective housing. My friend Vicky (he is a financial reporter for the Times of India tv station) arranged for me to stay with his cousin Guru, and his two roommates Prajwal and Varun in a tiny 1 bedroom flat in the Mumbai suburb of Thane. It is small, but not too bad. There is a living room with a fuzzy tv with cable, a kitchen that we never use, a shower, a toilet (a squatee to be precise), and the bedroom where we all sleep.

Before I get too far, I thought I would talk about why I am here for those of you who don't know (which is like everyone). I am researching how to teach Indian literature for my master's thesis. Basically, I will be hanging out in a high school classroom here in Mumbai and observing how Indian literature is taught and talking to teachers and students about it. I won't bore you all with the details. I meet with the vice-principal of a school tomorrow to hopefully get moving on this.

So what have I been doing so far? I guess the best description is "being a mallrat." Indians apparently love malls and they have sprung up everywhere. The food there is generally safe (as compared to street food), so I have been going there for lunch and dinner. The closest mall is Eternity Mall. It is a few hundred yards away. The a/c leaks continuously and there are buckets everywhere, but it isn't bad. Their movie theaters are also awesome. There are three different types of seats. I chose to go with the gold level when I saw Star Trek. It cost 160 rupees (48 rupees= $1.00). I thought at first I would have trouble locating the different seats, but then I just looked to the top of the theater and saw two rows of plush lazy boy recliners. They were terrific. They had electric reclining and everything. About halfway through the movie, I had to use the bathroom (for clarification, see earlier blog posts). When I returned, the movie was no longer playing. Nobody seemed concerned, which was amazing in this country of complainers. I went to the concession guy and tried to explain how the movie was no longer playing. He simply showed me back to my seat. After a few seconds, I realized it was just intermission. They just stop the movie halfway. It is crazy. Also, there are no previews. There is just a presentation of the national anthem that you have to stand for.

On my first day at the Eternity Mall, I ran into a group of college kids that kept laughing at me. I just brushed it off. The next day, I saw them again, and they were even more gleeful at this run-in. Later that day, I saw them in the food court and decided to sit down and ascertain what exactly was going on. They didn't speak much English, and I don't speak much Hindi, so it was a little tricky. Basically, they said they weren't laughing at me, which was a lie. Otherwise they were nice.

Eventually I made it to the next further mall. It is about 1 km away and called the R Mall. It is nicer and has department stores. There is also a Pizza Hut and Subway. The Subway had no beef for obvious reasons, but they did have a chicken tikka sub. And footlongs were not even an option. I went to an arcade there, but the workers all followed me around like I was an idiot and pushed all the start buttons for me. It was kind of awkward.

The next day I decided to push the limits a bit and head to an even bigger mall called Nirmal Lifestyles. This required hiring transportation though. I tried to be the savvy traveler, but failed miserably. I was told it should cost about 20 rupees by autorikshaw (more by taxi). One taxi driver offered to take me for 250. I said that is crazy and walked away. Another said 180, and then another said 150. It seemed like I had bargained well, so I went with that. I took an autorikshaw back, and it did only cost 20, but oh well. It was a 3 dollar lesson. Anyway, this mall was pretty impressive. It was all outdoors and there where big barricades being built everywhere for the monsoons. They had a McDonalds, which I had to check out. The have something called a Maharaja Mac, and they only serve Coke with no ice. There is also a Ruby Tuesday at this mall which I find entertaining considering they are known for their salad bars.

On Saturday I went with Vicky to the largest waterpark in the area, Water Kingdom. It was very refreshing. It is filled with seawater from far outside of Mumbai (so it is clean). There was a wavepool, waterslides, and even a dance club that sprayed water everywhere and played techno Bollywood remixes.

I know what you are thinking, "That doesn't sound like an Indian experience!" Well, guess what? This place is a-changing in a hurry. It is becoming Western before my eyes and it doesn't show any sign of slowing. I will certainly try to get the "traditional"Indian experience, but I fear that is going the way of the City Slickers style cattle drive. It just isn't what it used to be here, unless you go to the countryside I guess.

Anyway, that is it for now. I will update again soon.

Does anyone still read this thing?

I heard that people have been checking the blog for updates that have never seemed to materialize. Partially this has been brought to my attention by the influx of email regarding said topic. Well the simple answer to all the inquiries is that I am doing well, but nothing exciting has happened. I have also been insanely busy. Time to write about seemingly nothing has been difficult to come by. I haven't been to the doctor since my last follow up, which is nice. I am all healed up (i.e. no more entrances/exits into/out of my body that weren't there when I was born). School has been demanding much of my attentions of late. I am finishing up teaching 7th graders at a local middle school. I also got a job teaching Math and Grammar to some 5th graders (very part-time). Grant research has been occupying a disproportionate amount of my energy lately as I am planning on researching in Delhi next summer (finally!). I have been working furiously in whatever spare time I have to create a group of essays regarding the ordeals of the summer. I have a naive pipe dream of publishing them some day. Since everyone seemed to enjoy the blog, I figured why not? Once I get a decent chunk done (right now I have about 35 pages), I will put a link on here to them so that everyone can devote more of their time to my favorite subject, me.

So here I am. Everything is good and done. I feel like I should offer some perspective on everything that happened and how life has changed. If you are hoping for that, sorry to disappoint. I have no perspective to offer. I am still working on that. Perhaps by page 200 of the collection of needlessly descriptive and self-centered essays I will get there. It seems counter-productive sometimes to dwell in the past, but there is always something that we can gain from major, life-altering events. I am just not 100% on what that is yet. Just stay tuned for more revelations as we get closer to the conclusion of all of this business which will hopefully arrive someday. Maybe I will hit on some universal, earth-shattering truth. That could be fun.

Has anyone seen that Gas-X commercial?

I know, I know. I said that I would update everyday, and now it has been a few days. Well, sometimes stuff comes up. So lets go over everything that you missed out on. Friday ended on a high note. I felt great and was very optimistic. I did forget though another one of the laws of recuperation, one good day, one bad day. Saturday was not too enjoyable to put it lightly. The gas pains from the previous night returned, and this time they decided to stay. As if the constant pain of air jockeying for position with my organs was not enough, the residents decided to pay me a visit in order to examine and hopefully remedy my hematoma. While I was fortunate that one of them at least had some bedside manner, it would be of little comfort. The best course of action was determined to be to remove two of the six staples holding my incision together, and then to encourage my hematoma to drain on its own. This doesn't sound so bad, and even the staples (the sight of which make me shudder while thinking of a horrible office equipment malfunction) weren't too bad to take out. The "encouraging" of the hematoma to drain however consisted of one of the residents essentially putting all of her weight on my incision in an effort to push some of the clotted blood out and jump start the draining process. Did I also mention that the area around my incision is also basically a 4x6 bruise? Needless to say, this was the only time that I can recollect yelling in pain during a medical procedure. Fortunately for me, the "procedure" was a "success," and the residents packed my wound and went on there way. Wait! Did I explain the whole "packing" process yet? No? Well you are in for a treat. After my incision was so carefully opened, I was left with an opening in my abdomen that roughly shares its width and depth with the Grand Canyon. But we can't just suture this thing up. In order for it to properly drain, it has to heal from the inside out. So how does that happen? Well three times a day, it has to be repacked. The repacking consists of taking the old dressing out, and then shoving as much gauze as will fit into the opening in my body into my body. Very soothing. I have yet to complete my first one of these procedures unassisted, but the night is young.

Aside from learning the ins and outs of this new-found hobby, I also spent much of Saturday fighting off nausea (a battle which I lost at least once and resulted in what I believe Montezuma's Revenge feels like), going to the bathroom about every hour and a half (I can look forward to going 15-20 times a day for the first couple of weeks), and gritting my teeth through gas pains. All of the nurses commented on how I was some superstar for not taking any pain meds. The only problem with that is that I would have been happy to take them, had any been available that would combat the pain that I was having. Oh well, I'll take what I can get. After all of this excitement, I was happy to spend the remainder of the day watching episodes of Lost and trying to rest.

Sunday I awoke in much better condition and spirits. The gas pains were still there, but a bit lessened. I just tried to avert my eyes during the repackings. And I was finally back on some full liquids. Not much happened this day. I continued my regular trips to the bathroom. I watched more of Lost. My nausea built throughout the day until I could not eat. And I was presented with the theory (their word, not mine) of how my hematoma came to be. Apparently, it can also be caused by a blood vessel that has not been tied off or cauterized during surgery. That's right, they tie them off. Pretty horrific. This was the agreed upon theory by my surgical team. It was also explained to me that at least one member of the team wanted to bring me back into the OR to fix this blood vessel. Nothing beats two surgeries in as many days. Luckily, this hapless fellow was over-ruled.

So now it is Monday night. Things are going much better, and I hope to be released tomorrow. I have finally eaten some solid foods without wanting to throw-up. I am still spending a lot of time in the bathroom, but what else is new? I just have to get a little more comfortable with the repacking, and I will be good to go. The I will have to come back in a week or so for a follow-up and for staple removal. Seriously, they are pretty gross. I promise to update everyone on my progress, but it probably won't be everyday.