Mammoth Post Suspected From November 10, 2008

I've become a bit reclusive recently, which is kind of weird and runs counter to the whole plan of learning about Indian culture while I'm here. It's kind of more IIT culture though that I'm exposed to, which this german guy (Johannes) I juggle with pointed out. I get a pretty good feel for certain aspects of the culture here, but perhaps it's a stereotyped version especially since the people I deal with are mostly students. I talk with other people on trains or buses when I'm out touristing about. I've met many old people and middle-aged guys and aspiring business people, but they are generally fairly well educated, as they speak english. The real India is allegedly in villages, which makes sense as some statistic that I won't cite claimed that 80% of the population lives there. That's a pretty sizeable chunk of the people, and from what I understand they are very poorly educated as well as poor. A friend of mine agreed to take me to his village later in the semester, and I'm going to the town of another friend of mine during Diwali (the biggest festival here), where I will get a glimpse into the lives there. I am very curious, but it still strikes me that my viewpoint here is pretty narrow. It also occurs to me that my viewpoint at home is pretty narrow as well. I've been brought up in a WASP area amongst middle class people, and I live at UMass most of the time surrounded by the educated middle class. So when I say that America is this or that, it just means that my slice of America is like this or that. Basically I haven't talked with really poor people or rich people. I've got an incomplete view of almost everything it seems. I wonder what portion of stuff would be good to see in order to have an understanding of what a place is actually like. My little brother did an internship in a museum where he did all sorts of odd-jobs with the relatively exploited workers there. They were definitely from a much poorer less educated class of people. I'm not sure what portion of the population they make up, but it occurs to me that perhaps it would be good to gather experiences across these economic boundaries as well. With that in mind, I think maybe I will interview the workers in the Mess (cafeteria) here, with the help of my friend Amit (the guy who I am visiting for Diwali), in case they don't speak enough english. They are generally treated as servants by the students who don't feel to bad about giving them orders or the like. This makes me a bit uncomfortable but I have grown used to it.

I went to buy some curtains at the Sarojini Nagar (SN) market recently because I wanted to remove the black paper that the previous students had pasted to my window for privacy and to keep out the sun, but I did not want to give up the option of privacy. I went with another friend of mine and he helped me bargain for the curtains. We went under the assumption that they would try to rip me off, and that he would get a lower price suggested. To test our hypothesis he went without me to ask how much a curtain was and then afterwards I would come and ask about the same curtain. We got the same offer, I think it was 125 rupees. (So about 3 dollars.) So perhaps the overcharging of foreigners is somewhat of a myth. Or conversely the idea that Indian's get fairer offers is not true. Generally the foreigners get ripped off trying to rent autorickshaws. They are like motorized tricycles with a roof and a windshield. This is the standard form of transportation, and I hate them. The drivers always force you to argue down the price, which is annoying, especially if you don't actually know the price. Essentially what I do is I argue with three or four different drivers to test their lower limits, and generally they all fall around some number. The lowest offer I get I assume to be fair and I try to get that price from the next auto driver. It's incredibly annoying, and the better the driver speaks english the worse, because it means they are very good at ripping off tourists. Typically the most heinous are middleaged with mustaches and good english. In any case, I've argued drivers to take me to Connaught Place (CP) for around 70 rupees (~$1.75). This is a fair price actually and when this Sikh friend of mine (Parminder) was taking me to a temple near CP he also got it to 70 rupees. Of course he didn't have to argue for a long time, but the bottom line is that if you have a good idea of the price you can generally get the item at that cost. I've also been with some Indians and Indian Seeming individuals who have gotten ripped off despite the fact that they looked local. So basically everyone needs to be careful and bargain their brains out, but the real price seems to be available to everyone. Exceptions to this rule are some tourist places, although if you make it a big enough hassle, apparently you can get discounts. The theory was put to me that westerners get ripped off because they don't complain. So if people trying to sell stuff see that it will be annoying to get some white individual to comply with their demands they will eventually become more reasonable. Still Lal Quila for instance charges 250 rupees for tickets for foreign people and 10 rupees from locals. Taj Mahal wants 750 rupees. It's pretty annoying to see the clear double standard.

When Parminder took me to the Sikh temple in Delhi, I couldn't help but compare it to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Both temples had an outer wall with the actual holy temple building in the center of this lake. That was pretty cool. Also there was no insane mass of tourists and people looking for tourists there. It was really nice, like going to some random church back home. There was no hassle and people were chilling in the island temple listening to this dude singing with an accompaniment of outlandish (or in prolly more correctly for finding them here inlandish) instruments. There were also a collection of religious men reading the holy book of the Sikhs for people. You can buy a reading for yourself so these guys just keep rereading the book over and over. It was like a real place where people practiced Sikhism not a showcase of the religion as the Golden temple had been. Much like St Peters at the Vatican is this ridiculous church, the Golden Temple is a caricature of a real temple. I think in the future if I am looking for real things I will try to go to places that aren't known for them.

As I have become extremely lazy due to the amount of nothing that often goes on here, I've decided to motivate myself, myself. So in order to do that I've come up with a schedule which assigns like an hour a day to do things for me so that I at least progress in some senses. Most importantly I've decided to start searching for a future topic for grad school type things in the future.

Some of my classes I really don't care about here, and so I've had tremendous difficulty working for them since I just don't care. Basically I have plans and the classes interrupt me and waste my time and energy. If I can integrate my classes with my plans, probably I will be in much better shape. Particularly a certain sociology paper is annoying as it really gives me nothing in return for the time I waste trying to write it.

The weekend before last I and an Austrian fellow named Lukas went to this place called Jodhpur in the "deserts" of Rajasthan, the westernmost state of India at the latitude of Delhi. The deserts turned out to be pretty barren shrublands. The train ride over was in the sleeper class which is a pretty chill class because it's extremely cheap, and as my one friend pointed out, you talk with everyone. On the way to Jodhpur this turned out to be not so good of a thing because we encountered a blowhard from one of the medical schools in Delhi. He was so full of bs that I was surprised he didn't explode and cover the compartment in it. He seemed content in liberally dispensing it orally, though, throughout the night, which I couldn't avoid without being extremely rude. I finally escaped by going to my bed to write some diary entry before going to sleep.

The third reason the sleeper class is awesome is because it facilitates a plan that Lukas and I have schemed into existence. If a tourist is able to get a good night's sleep on a train, then he or she can avoid hotels entirely and spend one day in each location and wake up in a new spot the next day. This is theoretically cheaper, allows us to cover more ground in a shorter period of time, and what's best is that this way none of your days are wasted by traveling. The downsides are that hygiene is pretty bad without showers and cities need to spaced at a reasonable distance apart to make it worthwhile. Otherwise if a city is too close we don't get enough sleep or arrive at a ludicrous hour. I like this because it is counterintuitive to me that a city might be too close of a destination.

Jodhpur upon arrival was extremely hot. I sweated a lot there, but the humidity was extremely low, which actually made it more pleasant than Delhi. When I returned to IIT I felt very sticky and unpleasant because of this. The reason people go to Rajasthan is for the forts. Jodhpur had a huge fort named Mehrangarh which did not disappoint. It was enormous. It reminded me of the castle Carcassonne, which is a monstrous citadel in the south of France. The audio guide was pretty funny, and we saw many beautiful things there.

On the way out there was this dude who was overcharging people for a camel ride. I had two things on my list of to dos when in India, and they were to ride a camel and to ride an elephant. So I overpaid the guy. It was pretty cool. The scariest part being when the camel gets up or gets down. It is very unsmooth. A camel is also an immense animal. Much like the first time I saw a horse I was surprised at how big this thing was. This camel's hump was at least at a height of 8 or 9 feet. The head was higher as it was on this huge long neck. The camel did not walk very smoothly so I would sway from side to side on this thing. I was basically guided by the very unfriendly looking camel owner down a street and then back up for what was allegedly half a kilometer. All along the way people, most likely Indian tourists come to see the fort waved and smiled. I'm not sure what was more of an oddity to them, the camel or me. It was like I was a star of some kind. It was interesting.

Many Indians seem fascinated or taken surprised to see tourists. I'm not sure why, but even in very touristy areas many people who don't seem to be out to screw me are very curious about me and where I come from etc. I think it may really be lack of exposure. It has happened two or three times to me that I have been doing something or going somewhere, and I see this white guy here. On the Metro this happened once and here in IIT it happened also. I sort of turned and looked (hopefully not stared) at him and wondered to myself, "How did he get here? What is he doing here?" and stuff like that. White people are pretty rare in the non explicitly tourist places that even I am shocked and curious to see one.

After the first day in Jodhpur we set the night train plan into action and went to the nearby town of Jaisalmer. Unfortunately we hit upon a a problem. All the trains were booked or only offered standing room, neither of which we desired, all the local buses had already left, which made our only option to travel by tour bus, which sucks because you have to reserve them and that they are no better than the local buses in my humble opinion. We managed to organize one forty minutes before the bus departed and then got to the departure point by auto-rickshaw. We had reserved a sleeper class bus. The kind bus official gave us the worst bunk on the bus. The mattress had been torn up and the cover that was also in shreds was moldy. Yay! We prolly should have made a fuss about it, but we were too happy that we had gotten a place on the bus to complain to the driver. Instead, Lukas and I spent a long time complaining to each other in German before deciding that there was nothing to do except sleep. Unfortunately just as we had reached this conclusion and after the bus had reached an uncomfortable level of fullness, some dude got up onto our bunk. I don't particularly like confrontations so I didn't brutally throw him out of the bunk. When I timidly started to complain he claimed that he was at a nearby village and wouldn't be there for long, so I tolerated it. After a while I made the mistake of talking to him which would make the inevitable ejection of him from my bed more difficult. He was an english teacher, in a village. I did end up asking him to leave pretty late. Around 11 or midnight. I can't remember, but either way I was moronically tired when I was woken upon arrival to Jaisalmer around 4 or 4:30.

People were telling me welcome to Jaisalmer. There were three or four of them everyone holding a brochure with the picture of their hotel on it. Each of them wanted us to agree to come to their hotel. Lukas and I decided to leave the bus and they followed us. Outside there were maybe 15 of these hotel guys all trying to get us to come to theirs. No one waited for us to say anything, they would just talk to us all at the same time and interrupt us whenever we tried to say anything to someone else. People grabbed us and flashed fliers into our faces for a while. Eventually we told them to leave us alone and started to walk off. As we halted a bit further to regroup the mob quickly overtook us and assaulted us again. Someone offered us tea on the roof of their hotel with no strings attached. (A common strategy here is to give something for free or be kind and then expect guilt to ensnare the hapless victim into buying something.) All of a sudden everyone offered this. Now as we didn't need a hotel, we didn't want a room anyway, but partly in order to avoid the crowd, and partly to see the sunrise from an advantageous spot we agreed to follow this one guy.

By the way, the sunrise and sunset are the only tourist attractions in Jaisalmer. They have a huge fort, but so does every place in Rajasthan. Given the two attractions, you can imagine how exciting Jaisalmer is. As the sunrise and sunset look surprisingly similar to the others I have seen on those rare occasions that I am conscious at the appropriate times, I wouldn't particularly recommend going there. The guy took us to the top of his hotel and when we reached the roof he viciously shook two serving boys awake who were sleeping on the roof. (The roof was built as a large deck.) We got the impression that he might as well be waking some animals from his manner. He then had them make us tea, and stayed with us to have a conversation that would hopefully lead to our renting a room from him. Apparently he got the funds for his hotel from his rich cousin and was toying with the idea of building another hotel next to the first. It was like he was playing business man with his rich cousins money. That and the way he woke the servants up made me not very sympathetic. We left after he went to go scavenge some tourists off the train that arrived at 5 and watched the sunrise from the fort walls. (It was a much better location for seeing it than the hotel roof.) Lukas had some misgivings about just accepting his hospitality (including the toilet) and then leaving. I figure though, if he made the offer of giving us tea et cetera without asking for payment, then we shouldn't feel obligated since if we were then it wasn't a gift.

It seems that Jaisalmer has no industries or other reason besides tourism to really stay alive. And everyone seems to try to make a living doing the same thing. As Lukas and I later walked through the fort, we realized that we were just wondering past one shop that sold useless junk after the other with restaurants here and there. It was very depressing to me that so many of these people based their lives around us. Two reasons make this pretty uncool in my opinion. First of all their welfare is hugely out of their control. They build something to please me and if I arbitrarily decide I don't want it, there's nothing they can do. It's as if the quality their work in their eyes is unimportant. They can't work for the satisfaction of what they are doing. Without me, their work is more or less pointless. Secondly the constant pandering to tourists places foreigners on a pedestal. The world is clearly cut into two groups now: humble workers who can only hope that the noble foreigners come and deign to dispense their life-giving money on the dying town. It was pretty chilling to me. But someone pointed out that perhaps working for money anywhere is like this. I think there is generally a mix of personal satisfaction and goals in the job and ensuring whoever is buying your product is happy, and this seems to be an extreme case of ensuring your customer is happy. Maybe I would feel like I would have less dignity if I were one of these guys, in any case, I'm not sure what the difference is, but I think there is one.

So the one thing besides the motions of nearby stars that Jaisalmer is famous for is taking camel safaris. I had already ridden a camel in Jodhpur but I figured a longer experience would be better, and as an added bonus, we could see the sun going down in the desert! Riding the camels again was fun, although I had developed some sort of a stomach ache and that tainted my perception a lot. We were guided by there two small children who spoke only very poor english. I wonder what they thought about us. The "safari" was a shortened version of a several day trip. Basically we rode the camels for maybe 2 or 3 hours. During the trip we stopped at a bunch of tombs and then also at a "gypsy village". The tombs were interesting. I bought a rock off a child there for no particular reason. The "gypsy village" was a collection of makeshift huts which stick in my mind for having tarp or trashbag roofs. Basically we stopped and a group of women who had dressed up and painted designs on their faces came up and sang a song for us while two of them danced. I felt particularly rotten watching this. I feel like these people are being exploited by me and by the people from the Camel touring society etc. Particularly when I looked at their really cheap houses I feel like I'm taking advantage of their poverty into making them humiliate themselves by dancing for me.

We ended the safari on this set of dunes which rose out of nowhere from the shrublands. It was fun playing on the dunes, although my stomach did not let up torturing me. That night in accordance with the night train plan we boarded a bus again, but there was only one place to go which was Jodhpur, so we went back. (This wasn't really a cheaper or good way of setting our plan into action, but we made due with what we had.) The return trip was miserable, because I was a mess.

We did end up getting a hotel because I was feeling very sick and we weren't returning to IIT till that evening. I slept while Lukas went to some monument place. Around noon I got up and Lukas and I went for a pseudo random walk through the back streets of Jodhpur. We ended up in this Muslim area and it was particularly cool because no one accosted us trying to sell anything. Many people said hi, and everyone was friendly. We saw a passing parade dedicated to Ganesh, a peculiar dude with an elephant's head. People had spray painted their bodies and were on carts making a lot of noise. Many beckoned us to join them on the wagons, but Lukas and I declined. Earlier in the morning we had met a pair of French girls with the most abominable english that I've heard in a long time (makes me glad that I learned French, as it seems the French are the only people who can't speak English) and a young reprobate who tried to sell me a monstrous basket (which I almost mailed home). The basket was maybe 4 or 5 feet in diameter and was strong enough to support the weight of at least an Indian woman. We ended up getting on the train platform just before it left. I met a friend of mine from IIT who happened to have been there while we were there. It's too bad I didn't know, since it would have been awesome to visit him, but I had fun anyway.

I talked with a lot of people on the train who were delighted to help me read out of this book designed to learn Hindi. It was funny, people would read a word out loud while I was struggling to decipher, it as if to prove that they too could read Hindi. I talked with people about arranged marriages and how they had gotten married and the like too. It was very interesting. People seem to be happy with what they ended up with partially because there is no alternative.

The internet connection here is really, really slow. I used to think that this was due somehow to the low level of development of the Indian infrastructure, but apparently, as Lukas clarified for me, the connection used to be much faster. The connection is so slow because the University has set it to that level! In order to limit our abilities to waste our time or something the administrators have decided to remove our options. It's like we aren't trusted by the University to make decisions on our own. They remove our access to the common room which has a tv and some games from certain time, they don't allow the students to change their major more than once, they separate genders as much as possible, and they block easy access to the internet. It's like they try to force their students to study by removing everything else that people like doing. The general response seems to be apathy and watching a lot of movies. Also the students are very involved in interhostel competitions, but aren't very focused on their studies. It is frustrating that we aren't treated as adults. Many students seem a bit more dependent on their families than the students here, but they are still adults and should be allowed to make their own decisions I think. But then that may be my upbringing talking.

The movies they watch are of course impossible to steal off the crippled internet connection, but the students, being some of the brightest people in India managed to set up a LAN which allows the students to share files on an internal network. The percentage of porn on the LAN is pretty large, although I would have expected that it would be extremely taboo here. Most of the students are very open about watching porn and sharing it.

The weekend after the Jodhpur trip there was this huge festival here called Rendezvous where there were a lot of other colleges invited here to take part in a variety of events. Almost all events were competitions, as usual. There were a large portion of group dancing events and some music shows too. I attended a group dance and one of the music shows, both of which were pretty good. The music was a sort of Indian rock. It wasn't bad. There was another event which took place called Podium where a bunch of DJs set up shop in front of the library and played music while tons of students, mostly guys danced. (This started at noon and went till 5.) There was another dance called RDX where you could only enter or leave if you were accompanied by someone of the opposite gender. I tried my luck in the chess competition in which mostly pretty bad players were playing. Unfortunately I was undone in the second round by a pretty nasty trap which I should prolly have been familiar with. Fortunately there was no one there I particularly wanted to impress, so it didn't bother me too much. I got the rest of the tournament off, which was pretty chill.

I met these two crazy people at this quizzing competition I was part of, the day before. One was from Kashmere and the other from Haryana. They asked me where I was from and then we talked a little bit after the competition, nothing of substance was said, though. The guy from Haryana in particular was very possessive. He managed to decide from our brief encounter that he and I were good friends. I ran into him the next day after my gruesome demise in the chess competition. He then made plans for me coming to Haryana to visit him and asked me a ton of things about me. I, out of courtesy, didn't make the conversation particularly awkward. Later he searched me out in my room just before he was about to leave. It was the incredibly draining and weird to me. The idea of immediate friendship seems pretty irrational and in many ways unhealthy to me. I have encountered 3 or 4 people like this here so far. It's unnerving. I don't know what to tell these people, especially as I don't want to be slave to random people's whims in order to not hurt their feelings.

Since then not much has happened. Camille and Julien, two french students had a housewarming party, so I got to see their apartment. The French, Swiss, and American (me) students went as well as Amit, an Indian friend of mine and Camille's all went. The French and Swiss spoke French amongst themselves, and since I was not feeling in the mood to be social I did not try to either follow along in French or get them to speak English. So I basically hung out with Camille, Amit and Julien off to one side while the Francophone students did their thing. The apartment was pretty cool. And we had crêpes along with various condiments we brought along. I bought honey which is expensive, but incredibly good. (It's also awesome on rotis (Indian bread type stuff) from the mess. Incidentally, bees are apparently still having some sort of housing issues and are leaving their hives en mass for no apparent reason. Somebody ought to get on to that.

My roomape also moved out and got an apartment with his girlfriend. This leaves me with almost a single. (Occasionally he still shows up for stuff.) It's pretty chill, since he would usually go to bed about an hour or two before me and would often take naps during the day. Now I don't have to worry about waking him. Although my sleeping habits may be in danger of drifting more towards later hours at night and sleeping a bit during the day.

Alright before I end this absurdly long communication, I figure people might be interested in knowing the following, US passports will warp like crazy if they are left in a moist environment, so I'd recommend a plastic bag. (Mine straightened out after I kept it tied flat in a plastic bag.) German passports mold if kept in a moist environment. I'd also recommend a plastic bag. Sandals made of cow leather seem to chafe my feet in a moist environment. Plastic bags might work for this one too, but instead I have resorted to generally wearing sneakers and my rubber shower flip-flops instead. Mosquitos like to bite ankles, so I'd recommend wearing socks at night.

That's all for the moment. Tonight I leave for Mussoorie, partially because I want to go some place farther away from the bomb blasts which seem to becoming vogue in Delhi, and partially because I'm tagging along with a group of cool people. Hope everyone is having a smashing semester.