A more responsible me would be packing right now. But I feel like I've left so much unsaid about India on this blog. Its definitely not for a lack of insights and excitement (my blogging absence has been the product of intermittent internet access, project business, and illness). There are a hundred little themes about India I could blog about right now: the food, the noise, the colors, the head-bob, the dogs, the trash, the "What is your country?"s... Anyone who has traveled to India knows each of these Indian tidbits well. But there's another aspect of Indian culture that I've noticed that I haven't heard mentioned much. Combined with my reading of a recent article from the Economist and viewing of the excellent new Pixar film WallE, I'd like to talk about that lost form of human communication: touch.
In India, people are just as fluent in "touch" as they are in the spoken word. Beggars in the street flock to me and any other white people in my company, touching our arms and gently tugging on our sleeves. We watch same-sex friends drape themselves over each other shoulders and interlock fingers and hands in the process. New acquaintances we meet smother our hand shakes in double-fisted hand pumps and warmly throw an arm around our shoulder like they're picking up their son from a tee-ball game.
So what are they all saying? Touch has a wide vocabulary but all of these people are generally saying the same thing: "I want to connect with you."
Touch is a way of building relationships. Harry Harlow's famous study of monkeys separated from their mothers showed that this is indeed one of the primary ways that a baby monkey builds a relationship with its mother (babies separated from their mothers and any other soft touch showed extremely high levels of stress whereas babies whose mothers were replaced by terry cloth towels bonded with the soft touch of the towel just as they would to the soft touch of a mother). The same is true of humans.
Yet the shift to internet communication, the cult of personal space, and homophobia in the US has greatly reduced our fluency in "touch" in America. Sure we still shake hands with new acquaintances and hug old friends but we often seem to do so out of tradition, rather than a genuine desire to embrace. And a touch for the sake of tradition doesn't communicate much. It can also be easy to think that emails, video chat, and text messages can communicate just as much as anything we do or say in person, but the fact is we're still biological creatures with evolved needs.
Fortunately, as any student of a foreign language who has returned to their former study abroad location after years at home, though languages fade fast without practice, they revive themselves in our minds almost as quickly with practice.
So try something this week. Next time you really want to show some gratitude, say it with touch.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
In India, Shake of the Head Worth 1,000 Words
The colors, the people, the smells, the food, the attitudes around here are just incredibly....Alive. The only way to broadly conceptualize this place is as an incredibly dynamic organic mass that is intermittently woven between strands of chaos (the noise of auto-rickshaws, buses, motorcycles, etc.) and threads of great peace and stillness (the beautiful flowers being sold on the street, the Hindu aesthetics who implore you in broken English to match your academic education with a spiritual one of equal dedication, the generous smiles from complete strangers on the street). The soul of this place is not one which wishes to engage in "cultural exchange" or any sharing of differing lifestyles but instead something completely different - India seems willing to engulf you, in a sense which is both intimidating and liberating, into this all-encompassing mass of life. It is more than ready to look beyond surface diversity and assimilate individuals, even foreigners like myself, into a web of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians living amongst one another.
There is a great little idiosyncracy here that I have come to love and enjoy which illustrates this - the headbob. When in conversation, an Indian will often allow his head to bob from side to side (imagine a bobble-head doll on a plane stretching from shoulder to shoulder) that makes them seem as if some joint in their neck is loose. It is both goofy and disarming at the same time, and the best part is the beautiful ambiguity of its meaning. I've asked four or five people since I've been here exactly what the head-bob means, and I've gotten equally creative and divergent responses every time. To the best of my knowledge, it is simply a catch-all behavior to illustrate a very primal connection between two people - not agreement nor disagreement but unadulterated recognition. My best rationalization of the head-bob is a comparison to the African Zulu philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a word whose English translation roughly equates to "I am because you are" or "a person is a person through other persons". As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has posited the concept:
"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
At least for myself, this philosophy rings true in a sense which is both very personal and very haunting. Having literally sludged through the muddy poverty at the slum of S.M. Krishna Nagar and talked for hours with its gracious inhabitants, I am both emboldened by their pride (which far exceeds their humble circumstances) and at the same time made weak when witnessing hopes for their children which may outlive their own time here on earth. How can a child become a doctor to heal others if he or she cannot even escape the dangers of contaminated water themselves. How can a child become a teacher if they do not even live long enough to finish their own schooling. I have seen too many portraits of lost sons and daughters on the walls of these small shanties to feel anything but "diminished" myself. S.M. Krishna Nagar is an area that can greatly benefit from small steps towards healthier habits and cleaner water, and in this abstract sense of mutual recognition the least we can do is work our hardest to provide these things. At the very least, we must present the opportunity to attain them. Only then will the promises implicit in the statement "I am because you are" begin to deliver themselves to the community of S.M. Krishna Nagar.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
"India Time", Infrastructure, and Democracy
"India Time"
Hinglish (Hindi + English) can be a difficult language to pick up. In addition to accents, one must also deal with more nuanced matters.
Hinglish: Your food will be ready in 10 minutes, sir.
English: Hope you're not that hungry. It'll be about an hour.
Hinglish: Don't worry, the meeting will only take 20 minutes.
English: Cancel your dinner plans. You're not leaving for 2 hours.
Hinglish: Ok. We'll have the budget to you Friday night.
English: Is Wednesday morning ok?
Things just happen a bit slower in India. We have dubbed this phenomenon "India Time" and adjusted accordingly.
But why does it occur? Is it simply a part of Indian culture? Are Indians just procrastinators? It's the easy answer but easy answers are historically (a) racist and (b) wrong.
As a student of physics, I've always been encouraged to never be satisfied with an "it is what it is" answer and to always think one level deeper. So where does "India time" really come from?
Infrastructure
Try cooking Channa Masala for your hungry restaurant patrons when the entire city's water supply has been cut. Try making it to a meeting on time when the dirt roads wash out after the lightest rain and lines of cows grazing on the median create bovine road blocks. Or try writing up a budget in the dark because your power went out as soon as you arrived at the office.
Infrastructure makes up many of the little things that make life run smoothly. It makes sure your lights turn on in the evening, water comes out of your faucet when you want to wash your hands, and your bus arrives on time to take you to work. Its the magic that delivers resources right to your doorstep for cheaper than your ancestors could ever have imagined. It makes life comfortable, predictable, and easy to deal with.
But when its gone, so is the predictability. Its simply impossible to make accurate judgments on how much time something will take you if you can't be sure of what tools will be available.
Poor infrastructure gives rise to "India Time".
But what gives rise to poor infrastructure?
Democracy
*Note: I'm confident of the connection between between "India Time" and poor infrastructure, but this next one is a bit more of a stretch. Feedback welcome.
Thirty years ago, no one considered China and India to be modern nations. Today, that can still be said of India, but two Americans dropped in the middle of Manhattan and Shanghai would have trouble figuring out who'd been deported.
Two poor nations with billion-plus populations. Why such a big difference 30 years later?
Centralized planning.
While India and the rest of the western world were busy praising the freedoms of democracy, China's centralized government was redirecting rivers, building highways, and carefully planning its expanding cities. When you don't have to ask the country for money every time you want to do something, running a nation gets a little easier.
Don't get me wrong. Electing politicians and voting on everything is wonderful, but its extremely difficult to run a democracy in a poor nation. Democracies rely on educated voters and honest, concerned officials. But when voters are too busy working to make money to survive, they prioritize jobs over schooling, and, similarly, when politicians are barely paid a living wage, they prioritize their own families over the rest of their states and graft and corruption ensue.
This entire line of argument, however, reeks of first-world privilege, as in "We here in America are ready for democracy but you simply can't handle it" so let me make an important clarification.
Democracy in its current form doesn't work in poorer nations. The Western world (read: Britain and the US) continually promote Western forms of democracy in not-so-Western countries, but what developing nations really need is developing-nation-democracy.
Now what exactly constitutes developing-nation-democracy, I'm not quite sure. It's not an issue I've taken a great amount of time to consider, and I won't devalue the issue by offering something I made up on the spot.
But the issue is surely an important one, and I'm sure many people have studied it a great deal deeper than I.
What features should developing-nation-democracy have? How should it be set up? Or is there a form of government entirely different from democracy that would be better suited to the task?
Hinglish (Hindi + English) can be a difficult language to pick up. In addition to accents, one must also deal with more nuanced matters.
Hinglish: Your food will be ready in 10 minutes, sir.
English: Hope you're not that hungry. It'll be about an hour.
Hinglish: Don't worry, the meeting will only take 20 minutes.
English: Cancel your dinner plans. You're not leaving for 2 hours.
Hinglish: Ok. We'll have the budget to you Friday night.
English: Is Wednesday morning ok?
Things just happen a bit slower in India. We have dubbed this phenomenon "India Time" and adjusted accordingly.
But why does it occur? Is it simply a part of Indian culture? Are Indians just procrastinators? It's the easy answer but easy answers are historically (a) racist and (b) wrong.
As a student of physics, I've always been encouraged to never be satisfied with an "it is what it is" answer and to always think one level deeper. So where does "India time" really come from?
Infrastructure
Try cooking Channa Masala for your hungry restaurant patrons when the entire city's water supply has been cut. Try making it to a meeting on time when the dirt roads wash out after the lightest rain and lines of cows grazing on the median create bovine road blocks. Or try writing up a budget in the dark because your power went out as soon as you arrived at the office.
Infrastructure makes up many of the little things that make life run smoothly. It makes sure your lights turn on in the evening, water comes out of your faucet when you want to wash your hands, and your bus arrives on time to take you to work. Its the magic that delivers resources right to your doorstep for cheaper than your ancestors could ever have imagined. It makes life comfortable, predictable, and easy to deal with.
But when its gone, so is the predictability. Its simply impossible to make accurate judgments on how much time something will take you if you can't be sure of what tools will be available.
Poor infrastructure gives rise to "India Time".
But what gives rise to poor infrastructure?
Democracy
*Note: I'm confident of the connection between between "India Time" and poor infrastructure, but this next one is a bit more of a stretch. Feedback welcome.
Thirty years ago, no one considered China and India to be modern nations. Today, that can still be said of India, but two Americans dropped in the middle of Manhattan and Shanghai would have trouble figuring out who'd been deported.
Two poor nations with billion-plus populations. Why such a big difference 30 years later?
Centralized planning.
While India and the rest of the western world were busy praising the freedoms of democracy, China's centralized government was redirecting rivers, building highways, and carefully planning its expanding cities. When you don't have to ask the country for money every time you want to do something, running a nation gets a little easier.
Don't get me wrong. Electing politicians and voting on everything is wonderful, but its extremely difficult to run a democracy in a poor nation. Democracies rely on educated voters and honest, concerned officials. But when voters are too busy working to make money to survive, they prioritize jobs over schooling, and, similarly, when politicians are barely paid a living wage, they prioritize their own families over the rest of their states and graft and corruption ensue.
This entire line of argument, however, reeks of first-world privilege, as in "We here in America are ready for democracy but you simply can't handle it" so let me make an important clarification.
Democracy in its current form doesn't work in poorer nations. The Western world (read: Britain and the US) continually promote Western forms of democracy in not-so-Western countries, but what developing nations really need is developing-nation-democracy.
Now what exactly constitutes developing-nation-democracy, I'm not quite sure. It's not an issue I've taken a great amount of time to consider, and I won't devalue the issue by offering something I made up on the spot.
But the issue is surely an important one, and I'm sure many people have studied it a great deal deeper than I.
What features should developing-nation-democracy have? How should it be set up? Or is there a form of government entirely different from democracy that would be better suited to the task?
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Welcome to India...
After one week in India, I feel thoroughly immersed and engaged within a culture that I could have planned for, but could never have been fully prepared for. Hubli is a town which, as my team member Nanda keenly expressed on our second day in India, seems to encompass small parts of the entirety of the country. It is neither completely urban nor completely rural, and I would argue that a great part of its character is drawn from this metropolitan ambiguity. The outskirts -where the college that we are stationed at is located - are still marked by the incessant heartbeat of rickshaw and bus horns that denote the audible identity of the city, but these horns are less frequent and can't overpower the lush vegetation or the smells of streetside "hotels" (restaurants) and their daily edibles. As one travels deeper into the heart of Hubli, that which was green and still and organic surrenders to pavement, dirt, and an overwhelming storm of constant human motion. Downtown Hubli is another creature indeed, and the density of people often forces one to wander into the street and brave the ballet of three-wheeled rickshaws as they dive precariously between the occasional car or bus. I've loved the opportunity to slip between these two worlds and am beginning to understand the inability of a word such as "developing" to describe a nation such as India. In one place the country may be changing and building at a blinding pace and yet in others the the people and community remain remarkably stagnant and unhurried. To be honest, I have not yet decided which of these is preferable (if there is such a preferance to be had). As a fascinating 70-year-old man on the plane from Mumbai to Hubli told me, "Development is a false God of the West...Before India started 'developing', all the answers its people needed were found in the villages, in the temples, and in one's own family." It was a blunt but resonant challenge to many of the preconceived notions that I had been fostering regarding my purpose on this trip, and perhaps one which I am unfit to either refute or cede to anytime soon. The best I can do is to take his words as an impromtu hypothesis to be tested with vigor and dedication, and hope that our work here with public health awareness and advanced water filtration can provide some legitimate bridges between both the new and the old.
Nanda's arrival, health surveys and water testing...
Hello Everyone,
David and I arrived in Hubli airport after a grueling 23 hour flight journey where we were welcomed by a man carrying a placard of Deshpande Foundation. We squeezed in all the baggage in a small hatchback car and after asking around for the BVB Engineering hostel to a few autorickshaw drivers and watchmen at the BVB College of Engineering, we finally reached an apartment block which is currently under construction. We were so happy to meet up with the rest of the team. After a brief unpacking session, we headed off to the famous Ambesh hotel for our dinner to discuss the project details and future goals. I ended up spending the first 15 mins to half hour giving a detailed explanation of all the varied and exotic Indian dishes that were offered by Ambesh. The questions ranged from, “what is the difference between Dal Fry, Dal Palak and Dal Tadka?” to “What makes masala chai so tasty?” and “Can you ask the waiter to put less oil in my Veg. Kadai?”.... the questions were infinite and I was glad that I could answer most of them. I guess this trip so far has also been a learning experience for me as far as the Indian culture is concerned.
My notion of Hubli was a hot and arid place but it was just the opposite, it was nice and cool with light showers in the evening and so far mosquitoes have been a minimum compared to Honduras. The very next day we (David and I ) were on a mission (in fact every day has been one so far) to visit the Rajiv Gandhi Primary School at S. M. Krishna Nagar with Kim to get a feel of how to do the surveys. The majority of the people at Krishna Nagar are Muslims so they can speak fluent Urdu than Kannada, which made it easy for me to interact well with them. We were introduced to Mr. Mulla, the President of the Rajiv Gandhi School Trust and Mrs. Nirmala, Principal of the Primary School, they were very warm and welcoming. After this, we were taken by Irfan, a sixth grade student who is very active and chirpy with endless questions about America and about our project. I had fun talking to him in Urdu and he took us to another student's house where we did an extensive health survey to address the health and water issues they were facing. The two main problems that I was able to deduce from the surveys were:
The availability of water was scarce because only two out of the six bore wells were in working condition and the water comes to the houses once in every 5 to 6 days. Apart from this, the water that is sent by HDMC (Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation) through the water trucks comes in every 8 or 9 days.
Due to the lack of water, the families in this area tend to store buckets of water over a period of time in their living room which was not more than 5ft by 3ft in area. The storage of stagnant water in these buckets and the lack of hygeine in their houses was a clear indication that bacterial contamination was present in their so called “potable water source”.
In the little time that we were there at their house, the family was very hospitable and offered us with coffee in small stainless steel cups. The coffee was delicious and milky. After our survey, I wanted to test the water quality by sending samples of water to the testing facility in Dharwad. The next day Kim and I headed to Dharwad with Mr. Jabashetti from Water Literacy Foundation to the laboratory to collect sterilized glass bottles and 2 litre plastic bottles for bacteriological test and testing of 14 parameters ( some of which include water's alkalinity, hardness, chloride, nitrate, phosphate levels etc) respectively. The bus ride from Hubli to Dharwad costs Rs. 8 and takes roughly 45 minutes. If you are lucky you might get a seat to sit otherwise its a bumpy ride with shoulders rubbing with six other people and head constantly hitting the roof of the bus as the Indian buses are not designed for people over the height of 6ft 2 inches. We traveled to Krishna Nagar and collected three samples of water:
Water that is supplied from the bore well to the school's roof top water tank.
Water that was stored in buckets in a nearby family's household where the water was initially collected from the Corporation's water truck.
Water from a very dirty and murky stream which runs around the side of Krishna Nagar.
The stream which is referred to as a “naala” by the locals is black in color with a pungent rotten smell of decaying organic matter. The stream is used by the local people at Krishna Nagar to wash their buffaloes and we found children playing nearby this “toxic” water. In order to collect the water, I forced myself to carefully walk my way through piles of garbage, human and dog feces which stunk so bad that my sense of olfaction was a little numb by the time I reached the banks of the black stream. I then closed my eyes and immersed my bare hands into the toxic water to collect samples for testing. As I got back, Kim had kept a tonne of hand sanitizer ready for me. We then rushed back to Dharwad and returned the samples of glass and plastic bottles to the lab. The tests would take three to four days to be ready and we had asked them to expedite the process so that we can collect results on the following Monday.
Yesterday, I went to Dharwad to collect the results and the following conclusions were drawn from the results:
School water contained 6 counts of bacteriological contamination whereas the maximum count that is permissible is 10. However, since we only did one sample to test, it is likely that this number could vary from time to time. Therefore, it is important to incorporate water filtration techniques to the school water to remove this contamination.
House water was shockingly at 58 counts of bacteriological contamination which clearly indicated that the particular household is consuming unhealthy water. This result does not help us to conclude that the water provided by the Corporation trucks are contaminated because it could be that the containers which the family used to store the water might have been the source of contamination. Nevertheless, the families are drinking unhealthy water which is highly prone to water borne diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms.
Stream or “naala” water was obviously super toxic with over 1800 counts of bacteria....suggesting that even touching that water might cause mutation...I hope that I don't see some mutated growth on my right hand !
We discussed with Mr. Mulla and Mr. Sudhir (the Vice President of the School) about the results and they suggested to do one more test of the water that directly comes out of the water truck. We plan to do this on Monday...
I have lots more to tell but I have to leave to get some surveys tabulated in Excel...and organize a meeting with the Commissioner of HDMC, and plan out a Cleaning Camp event with the corporation, school and locals at Krishna Nagar...and of course get some dinner. It's been super busy here and that's exactly how I like it...
Thank you for reading my first post...I will upload some photos and I want to tell you all about our inauguration function at the School....till then good bye...
Cheers, Nanda
David and I arrived in Hubli airport after a grueling 23 hour flight journey where we were welcomed by a man carrying a placard of Deshpande Foundation. We squeezed in all the baggage in a small hatchback car and after asking around for the BVB Engineering hostel to a few autorickshaw drivers and watchmen at the BVB College of Engineering, we finally reached an apartment block which is currently under construction. We were so happy to meet up with the rest of the team. After a brief unpacking session, we headed off to the famous Ambesh hotel for our dinner to discuss the project details and future goals. I ended up spending the first 15 mins to half hour giving a detailed explanation of all the varied and exotic Indian dishes that were offered by Ambesh. The questions ranged from, “what is the difference between Dal Fry, Dal Palak and Dal Tadka?” to “What makes masala chai so tasty?” and “Can you ask the waiter to put less oil in my Veg. Kadai?”.... the questions were infinite and I was glad that I could answer most of them. I guess this trip so far has also been a learning experience for me as far as the Indian culture is concerned.
My notion of Hubli was a hot and arid place but it was just the opposite, it was nice and cool with light showers in the evening and so far mosquitoes have been a minimum compared to Honduras. The very next day we (David and I ) were on a mission (in fact every day has been one so far) to visit the Rajiv Gandhi Primary School at S. M. Krishna Nagar with Kim to get a feel of how to do the surveys. The majority of the people at Krishna Nagar are Muslims so they can speak fluent Urdu than Kannada, which made it easy for me to interact well with them. We were introduced to Mr. Mulla, the President of the Rajiv Gandhi School Trust and Mrs. Nirmala, Principal of the Primary School, they were very warm and welcoming. After this, we were taken by Irfan, a sixth grade student who is very active and chirpy with endless questions about America and about our project. I had fun talking to him in Urdu and he took us to another student's house where we did an extensive health survey to address the health and water issues they were facing. The two main problems that I was able to deduce from the surveys were:
The availability of water was scarce because only two out of the six bore wells were in working condition and the water comes to the houses once in every 5 to 6 days. Apart from this, the water that is sent by HDMC (Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation) through the water trucks comes in every 8 or 9 days.
Due to the lack of water, the families in this area tend to store buckets of water over a period of time in their living room which was not more than 5ft by 3ft in area. The storage of stagnant water in these buckets and the lack of hygeine in their houses was a clear indication that bacterial contamination was present in their so called “potable water source”.
In the little time that we were there at their house, the family was very hospitable and offered us with coffee in small stainless steel cups. The coffee was delicious and milky. After our survey, I wanted to test the water quality by sending samples of water to the testing facility in Dharwad. The next day Kim and I headed to Dharwad with Mr. Jabashetti from Water Literacy Foundation to the laboratory to collect sterilized glass bottles and 2 litre plastic bottles for bacteriological test and testing of 14 parameters ( some of which include water's alkalinity, hardness, chloride, nitrate, phosphate levels etc) respectively. The bus ride from Hubli to Dharwad costs Rs. 8 and takes roughly 45 minutes. If you are lucky you might get a seat to sit otherwise its a bumpy ride with shoulders rubbing with six other people and head constantly hitting the roof of the bus as the Indian buses are not designed for people over the height of 6ft 2 inches. We traveled to Krishna Nagar and collected three samples of water:
Water that is supplied from the bore well to the school's roof top water tank.
Water that was stored in buckets in a nearby family's household where the water was initially collected from the Corporation's water truck.
Water from a very dirty and murky stream which runs around the side of Krishna Nagar.
The stream which is referred to as a “naala” by the locals is black in color with a pungent rotten smell of decaying organic matter. The stream is used by the local people at Krishna Nagar to wash their buffaloes and we found children playing nearby this “toxic” water. In order to collect the water, I forced myself to carefully walk my way through piles of garbage, human and dog feces which stunk so bad that my sense of olfaction was a little numb by the time I reached the banks of the black stream. I then closed my eyes and immersed my bare hands into the toxic water to collect samples for testing. As I got back, Kim had kept a tonne of hand sanitizer ready for me. We then rushed back to Dharwad and returned the samples of glass and plastic bottles to the lab. The tests would take three to four days to be ready and we had asked them to expedite the process so that we can collect results on the following Monday.
Yesterday, I went to Dharwad to collect the results and the following conclusions were drawn from the results:
School water contained 6 counts of bacteriological contamination whereas the maximum count that is permissible is 10. However, since we only did one sample to test, it is likely that this number could vary from time to time. Therefore, it is important to incorporate water filtration techniques to the school water to remove this contamination.
House water was shockingly at 58 counts of bacteriological contamination which clearly indicated that the particular household is consuming unhealthy water. This result does not help us to conclude that the water provided by the Corporation trucks are contaminated because it could be that the containers which the family used to store the water might have been the source of contamination. Nevertheless, the families are drinking unhealthy water which is highly prone to water borne diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms.
Stream or “naala” water was obviously super toxic with over 1800 counts of bacteria....suggesting that even touching that water might cause mutation...I hope that I don't see some mutated growth on my right hand !
We discussed with Mr. Mulla and Mr. Sudhir (the Vice President of the School) about the results and they suggested to do one more test of the water that directly comes out of the water truck. We plan to do this on Monday...
I have lots more to tell but I have to leave to get some surveys tabulated in Excel...and organize a meeting with the Commissioner of HDMC, and plan out a Cleaning Camp event with the corporation, school and locals at Krishna Nagar...and of course get some dinner. It's been super busy here and that's exactly how I like it...
Thank you for reading my first post...I will upload some photos and I want to tell you all about our inauguration function at the School....till then good bye...
Cheers, Nanda
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