Lately

The consistent blogging thing is not something I excel at and I'm starting to have panics about all the details I'm forgetting to write about and how 80-year-old Pia will be sad that she doesn't have sufficient documentation of her young and wild days as hooligan in foreign lands. So I'm going to cheat and make a little list of things that have happened lately so I don't have to try and recall all the beautiful sensory details that would enable each tid bit to become full fledged, stand alone stories.

-My projects and work here are rolling on through. Coming in as a high school graduate and professional dork, I was really worried about being able to contribute anything of value whatsoever to the programs and projects here. I've actually been pleasantly surprised. The Soukhya Project, which is a domestic violence intervention program in Bangalore that focuses on educating and empowering primary health care providers to accurately and sensitively screen women for domestic violence and then provide victims with references to support services, asked me to redesign their project posters. After the training of the primary health care providers, the Soukhya team does field visits to the health centers and drops off job aids and puts up posters. However, the current posters were borrowed from another project, and didn't have enough focus on the Soukhya projects goals. So I've had the opportunity to design three new posters for the project, two with the target audience of victims of violence, and one targeted at doctors and nurses, reminding them to screen and treat and care. I did concept design, and mapped out the scripts and took photos and made draft after draft, having feedback meetings and emails with the team in between each round, and then I made changes based on their input. I presented a set of drafts to some champion nurses in the program and got their feedback and after all that, I have a final set. A final set in English...and now they need to be in Kannada. So that's my current battle. But it is amazing to know that my work and my photos will go up in every health center in Bangalore one day soon.
       The other project that brought me a lot of joy is one that I had a very small part in. The Soukhya project has teamed up with a tech company called Dimagi to develop a job aid application that will aid the nurses in screening women. This is just the pilot for what we hope could be a city wide project. The idea is that 10 champion nurses within the programs will receive phones that have this app on it. The app has audio, images and text that help the nurse go through the screening protocol and record the woman's details straight into the projects database. Before the phones, the nurses would have to use a paper calendar type job aid while screening to help them remember and follow protocol, and then record the woman's information in a paper register that was then collected by the Soukhya team every so often. If this project works, it could mean instant collection of data into the project data base, with different cases stored within the phone confidentially using the patients Thai or OPD card number, so that if the woman makes a second visit, the nurse can simply look her up. The app also records which program the nurse recommended through the referral network so the team can keep track of whether woman are getting the right help and if the support programs are receiving woman and helping them. It could streamline and modernize a very challenging project. And I helped design the images in the app. It's a tiny part of the whole process but there was something amazingly rewarding about sitting in a public health center and watching a nurse get trained to use a revolutionary job aid. Watching her click through the app and get to a question that is paired with a visual cue, a visual cue that I created. I'm sure this will change when I'm a professional in some sort of career, but right just being a tiny part of a project like this means the world to me.
    I could write all day about the other things I've been doing, but I just wanted to share these two because I feel as if they have been the most rewarding. Which is hard to say because sometimes I just feel like having the opportunity to be here and work with who I do is the greatest reward. Just being here.

A draft...
(Anita is the star of this poster set! And don't worry, she was never injured)

- I attended a super cute Birthday party. Vishy, who is the head of the Soukhya project, has a one year old daughter named Stuthi and Emily and I were invited to her first birthday. Until that sweet under the sea themed party, I had no idea how big a deal one is here. It does make sense though, life expectancy after the age of one improves dramatically. If a child can make it through a year, they are much more likely to make it through many. So for little Stuthi, a whole hall was decorated in under the sea themed paraphernalia and in one corner there were 30 glass bowls, each with two little fish in them. Talk about cool party favors. I was convinced that I could keep a fish in my Annexe room and tell Sister Bertha it was a symbolic representation of the loaves and the fishes or the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus or Noah or something biblical but Emily talked me out of it. Too bad though, woulda named them Jeeves and Wooster. The party was very sweet though, about a hundred people probably came, with all the family from near and far and Stuthi was passed about and pinched and kissed and she never cried. I never really had the big family experiencing growing up as a first gen to immigrant parents, but it doesn't take much to make me see it's value. The mermaid barbie cake was a nice gesture, but cake or not, it was obvious that this little girl was so incredibly loved.

-Elections mean something very different here. The state of Karnataka has been gearing up for elections and in the weeks leading up to election day people have given me all sorts of warnings. There was bomb that went off in front of one of the party offices in Bangalore and this past Sunday was the election day and every store and restaurant was closed from Friday onwards. Two weeks before the election every business that sold alcohol had 'election hours' and closed early. Four days before the election there was an alcohol moratorium, and no businesses across the whole state were serving anything remotely alcoholic. I was confused as to why elections, of all things, would prompt such a premature and extreme change in society, why was I  being told to stay indoors and avoid busy places? Elections to me mean casting a vote, hoping for the best, letting your voice be heard, consoling one another if they go wrong and celebrating if they go right. But it's a little different here. India is the world's largest democracy but it doesn't mean they have it all sorted out. State elections can be a very dangerous time. People take their beliefs and build them into bombs, they use politics and their frustration as a chance to get hammered and cause accidents and violence. Alcohol sales coming to halt is the governments effort to curb the violence. So that if there are riots they are ruled by opinion and not booze. So how real is all this? I thought they were being cautious because something could, potentially happen. But I was wrong. Things do actually happen. One of my colleagues was leaving the St. Johns campus on his motorcycle in the days leading up to the election and was hit by a drunk rickshaw driver.  It was 3 pm and he fractured his leg. A friend who has been staying in family friends house while the family is on vacation heard a knock at the door one day. It was the representatives of one of the politicians in the area. They told him they wanted the property empty so they could sell it to support the campaign. He closed the door. The next day at work he told the stories to his co-workers, and when they heard the politicians name, they told him to get out. The politician is widely known to be extremely corrupt and to 'eliminate' the things that come in between him and what he wants. My friend went home and packed his stuff and moved to a cousins house. Later that day he got a call from the politician who addressed him in sickly sweet tones as Mr. and asked if the house had been vacated, my friend said yes and then lied, saying he was out of town. The politician then said he was glad there was no "conflict of interest between them" and then hung up. This shit is real. I usually feel very safe walking around Koramangala, but when I went out to get groceries on election weekend I was greeted by deserted streets. The people who were out and about looked like they didn't want to be there or be seen. And I was one of the only women on the streets. I got my yogurt and then took cover. Democracy takes strange shapes.

-It's hot. Like forreal. I wake up each morning before my alarm goes off and even before I have to pee. I wake up because as the sun comes up, my feeble ceiling fan becomes insufficient at keeping me from sweating myself awake. I live in a little box with a bathroom, and my lonely window faces the rising sun and takes in sun for most of the day. My room heats up like an oven, clothes that I wash don't even bother to ring out dry overnight. Sometimes I'm sweating even before I finish my cold water bucket shower. I have to move around slowly after I get dressed in the morning otherwise I sweat into my clean clothes. When I first arrived, I was annoyed and confused as to why everyone walked so slowly, but I've learned that if I try and move at my preferred pace it'll be like swimming in my own sweat rather than walking. Bangalore isn't humid, just a dusty, dry, and polluted hot. At the end of the day the whites of my eyes are yellow from the sun and the particulate matter that is constantly being blown into them. It rains occasionally, but only at night because the days are so hot and dry that there isn't a great enough change in pressure for the rain to fall. When it does rain, I put on shorts and a tank top and sneak my scantily clad self up to the roof of the Annexe to stand in the rain and encourage the core temperature of my body to come down. I usually shower afterwards though because there is a high chance of it being rather acidic. It is hot. And here's the kicker, monsoon season, yeah, that starts right after I leave. I'm a whiner but believe it or not, Bangalore is one of the coolest cities in India. If I lived in Delhi, I wouldn't even wake up, someone would just come into my room in the morning and find a large, overcooked baguette in there because I would just bake like dough in the oven.


-Emily's mom is here and we went to Mysore together and I love it and her and it was so great it's unreal. Emily has been my saving grace here, my guide, my mentor at work, and most of all, my really good friend. We have an 11 year age difference which might prompt some people to say that we are unusual friends, but nothing feels unusual about it at all. Emily is incredibly lovely, and to no one's surprise, her mom Sue is equally as lovely. They are spending time traveling together, but before the travel could happen, Emily had to work over the weekend to make up for the work she would miss. So I gladly offered to 'mom-sit' though it wasn't like mom sitting at all, it was like hanging out with a cool lady. We hired Suneeta's most trusted driver, Golpalan, and took a day trip to Mysore together. Mysore was beautiful  and green and is the second cleanest city in India, and I loved it so. I didn't realize how much I missed moms until Sue arrived. Just the presence of a mom and having that kind of energy around. It was a truly lovely day, and a lovely few days in the company of the beautiful relationship that Emily and Sue have. The only downside was that it made me wish more than anything that my own mom could be here, in India, exploring with me. One day.

Pictures of Mysore:

 Sue! 

 The Mysore Palace

True Friends

With a month left in a gap year that has honestly gone so differently and so much better than expected, I would like to take the time to acknowledge the true friends who have stuck with me throughout this journey. I've made friends on farms, in bars, in the office, on the street and at the supermarket this year, and I've had to leave many of them. But every time I leave a place, there are a few faithful friends that come with me. There are always the little buddies who have stood by my side and been my constant companions (cue "Lean On Me"). In no particular order, I present to you 'Pia's True Travel Homies'
(Disclaimer: Inappropriate and personal details have been included, not to mention that this post serves no real purpose in the universe ever)

Baby wipes. It's like a tissue but moist. And it smells like a baby. Genius. 

Toilet paper. Because you just never know...

Scissors and tape. Tape and scissors. You know how every time you travel you're like "Golly, I wish I had some scissors. Or some tape. Or both". No? You don't know? Well I do and now I bring them everywhere. 

An excessive amount of birth control. Trying to keep this blog PG but ladies lets be honest, a period in 108 degree weather? Please, I don't have time for that nonsense. Also, I bet it's super hard to fit a baby in a back pack with all your other stuff....just saying

The sentimental Leatherman. I love it just as a multi-tool but I love it more because it was given to me as a graduation gift by my ex-boyfriend's dad. Thanks Dann! Also, it's good to be the girl with the bottle opener when you're trying to make friends. 

Hanky! Won't go anywhere without you. Wipe off the sweat, dry my hands, pick up something hot, tie it around my head to look cool while hiking, mop up some blood, anything! Just make sure you wash it...

Feces! They are everywhere but not on your Purell fresh hands

Chapstick. Chapstick. Chapstick. Tweezers. End of story. 

"A real lady always carries a pen"
(cite Celia Greene) 

Mama took it around the world and I'm just trying to live up to the legacy. Bertha the front zip Lowe Alpine is the tetanus shot to my rusty nail. Also, I promise I was wearing clothes in this picture

Rainbows. Had em for five years and I don't intend to give em up...ever. The picture on the left is the color they used to be. I'm not bothered. 

Last but not least, the pocket photo album. The farther I go the more I feel that home is about who and not where. So I like to carry who with me. I have 15 pictures of my cats, my family and my friends that I leave next to my bed, rotating the open pages every few days so I get to see everyone over the course of my trip. It's a little extra space in my bag but it's worth it every time. 

A Visitor to India

            Let’s be honest, I’ve been really bad at keeping up with this blog lately. And it’s my fault but I’m going to try and explain why as well. I think one of the reasons that it’s been so difficult to write and write well and document all the incredible moments that I will one day beg my mind to remember is because of the intensity of being here. India is a place so alive and vibrant that it requires a huge amount of energy to live in it each day. And sometimes it’s positive energy and light and color and lots of food and friendly faces, and inspiration and admiration for the things that are being done and the people doing them. But it can also be an assault on the senses, and a forced acknowledgement of the dark and miserable things, of the hopeless and broken, and it can imbed in you a profound fear for the future. And the contrast between these two visions is constant, one day can be gold and the next can be soaked in oil and burning. Living in an environment that is constantly in flux does teach me a lot, but it’s also so exhausting. It’s also funny the things that get to me. I’m working with domestic violence interventions, making visits to health centers and hearing stories and learning about the insurmountable issues regarding funding and manpower and advocacy. But my job rarely bothers me or gets under my skin, because I’m the youngest and most unqualified member of an incredibly dedicated team whom I look up to, and watching them work is rewarding, even if what they are working against is hard to face sometimes. No, it’s the funny little things that probably have some symbolic meaning or represent a calling of my subconscious or are a reflection of my own shortcomings or some nonsense like that. All I know is that there are little things that sometimes mess with me and find a way into my head.

            I think about trash a lot. I know mentioned this in connection with Coorg, but it’s still a thing. Municipal waste management is an issue in India, but it’s also a global issue that isn’t slowing down or really being sorted out. The piles of trash and burning waste and cows and dogs sitting in and eating the trash and walking through the trash is something I see everyday but I’ve also refused to let my soul be buried in trash and the stress of seeing it. But the mentality regarding waste does find a way to weasel it’s way into me. How can this be something that we are ok with? How come everyone isn’t freaking out about this? Rivers are burning and nothing is biodegradable and it’s all just piling up and it has no where to go and we will end up buried in it. And though I keep my visual panic to a minimum, it’s still very real for me. And I think it’s important. America generates a huge amount of waste, and I think we’re just better at hiding it than India, even if we’re not actually better at dealing with it. Seeing the waste here and moving through it each day is like a wakeup call, saying this is what the world is like, it’s just that here you have to walk through it. Whereas at home someone comes and takes it away and hides it away and maybe recycles. Just imagine if you had to personally deal with all the waste your household produced. You could compost the food waste, but then what about the plastic and foam and rubber and oils and batteries and appliances. A lot of homes and restaurants here do manage their own waste because no one comes to get it. They dump the trash round the back or even out front, and the dogs and cows eat the things that are close to edible and then every few days the whole thing just gets lit up. It’s easy to place blame and say things like ‘carcinogens’ and ‘air pollution’ and ‘recycle’ but I honestly don’t know what I would do if one day someone stopped coming to get it. If the government stopped taking responsibility for my trash. If I had to deal with everything I threw out, if it just sat in front of my home. Would I burn it? Would I take it and dump it on the empty lot down the block? I might.

            I also have a problem with surrendering independence. Which is a hard thing to explain without sounding snotty but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. When you’re at home, you constantly wish someone would do the menial tasks that feel like a waste of your time. But beware, those will be the random little things you miss the most. I had a weird day last week and I was struggling to explain to a friend why I was in a gray mood and the best I could up with was just that I was tired of having to pay a man to get anything I needed. I have two buckets in my bathroom, one that I fill up with water and use to shower with and one that I use to wash my laundry. Delicates and workout clothes and some kurtas can be easily washed in a bucket and I do roughly two loads a week and then hang up all my stuff on my shower curtain and towel rack. But some of my nicer kurtas and patialas just can’t be done in a bucket and the stuff I wear to work has to be clean and ironed. So once a week I take a few items to a Laundromat round the corner. This is the second one I’ve tried, because I took a white shirt to the first one, and got it back smelling clean but stained with blood or beetle nut or something. So I moved on. But the man at the new one is grumpy and I just feel so silly taking my clothes in and paying someone to wash my stuff. But the Annexe doesn’t have the resources for washing and doesn’t allow irons and bucket only takes it so far. So, I can wash my workout stuff in my bucket but then where do I get to use it? At the gym, because I can’t run on the street for fear of falling in a sewer and for fear of simply being a woman. And to get my phone and internet stick to work I have to go see a man, and then wait while he serves the men in the shop first, and then wait more while this man calls another man and no one can tell me why I’m waiting and ten minutes turns into half an hour. And at night it’s not safe for me to travel without a man, and definitely not without company of some kind. And I can’t walk or bike, I still have to pay a man to drive me. And half the time I’m paying, someone if trying to rip me off and I don’t like fighting but I end up doing it. And even really lovely male friends and colleagues that I’ve met sometimes drive me crazy with the assumption that I can’t or shouldn’t be or do or go. And I know it sounds ridiculous and I’m complaining about this and most people mean well, and I’m sorry, but some days but not all days, it just drives me crazy.

            However, with every complaint there is the other side of the coin. Every man that I have to pay and all the services that I have to seek out that seem so ridiculous and that I wish I could do myself are jobs. Jobs that people need. Almost every restaurant, from the fancy bars to the little corner joint, have waiters and servers, so one person brings your food and the other person actually spoons out the food onto your plate. And at first it made me really uncomfortable and then Emily pointed out that both those people now have jobs. India is a big place full of people. And I always feel like there are too many people working at the stores I go to, and while I’m shopping an attendant will actively follow me to show me deals and things she/he thinks I might like. But it’s their job and it’s a part of Indian hospitality. I’m often overwhelmed but I really try to remember that hospitality is the name of the game. During field visits to health centers for work, even if the center is teeming with patients, someone who works there will take the time to make and serve our team tea or coffee. Every time I come into the project space in the morning, before they even say hello, my colleagues ask me if I have had breakfast. The friends I’ve made here and families I’ve met and stayed with are always trying to give me everything I need and offer everything they have. So yes, I’m often overwhelmed, and sometimes frustrated, but I’m certainly never bored. Because it seems to me that there are two ways to live here; you can battle your way through each day, fighting to get what you want, to get the price you want and in the time you want, and you can lose a lot. Or you can just live in it, and accept that things will take three days instead of one, and that you live so close and in connection with so many people and forces that it won’t be what you want, it will be what India makes happen. And sometimes I feel like India knows what I want more than I do. 

Falling and Losing

            Yesterday, two completely unrelated things happened, they would both be considered ‘bad news’ but one is hilarious and classic and one is annoying and classic.

            My diet here consists almost exclusively of carbs. And that’s not because I’m following some radical new diet or making an effort to gain the freshman 15 ahead of time. It’s simply because that is what there is to is to offer. Each meal is a dosa, or paratha, or chapati, or a kati roll, or rice, or appams, or porees, or idli. Potatoes are always involved as well, so many time I’m eating carbs on carbs…on carbs. And don’t get me wrong, it’s too awesome and so delicious. But I also might die diabetes, clogged arteries, or simply sudden onset extreme obesity. So in a effort to counter the carb culture that I couldn’t run from if I tried (everything is cooked, and if it’s not, you won’t leave the toilet for dayzzzzz), I joined a gym not far from the campus and make an effort to be there at least every other day. It’s air conditioned and they have real showers instead of buckets (love buckets, but it gets old when you have as much hair as I do) and they have nice treadmills and equipment. So I go to the gym and run, forcing myself to keep moving by imagining the chapati and potato in my stomach being in cahoots to skip digestion together and just turning straight into cellulite. The air conditioned room is a big motivator too. So, Thursday was just an average morning at the gym until Olympus got involved.

            I was running on the treadmill, listening to a sweet playlist, sweating like I just went swimming and someone got onto the treadmill next to me. The morning crowd is usually me and then some men over 50 who follow a strict minimal shower policy (or so it smells). So when out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone start to run, I didn’t even look over at first. But then, somehow, in between my ragged I’m-out-of-shape running breaths, I managed to inhale deeply and I realized that the person running next to me smelled better than clean laundry in a bed of roses after the rain. I turned nose to face man, and that’s when I saw him. He was an exact genetic cross between Santoro Rodriguez (google it, you won’t regret a thing) and a God. My first thought was “would it be inappropriate to touch his biceps?” but I exercised self-control and kept my hands forward and my head only slightly tilted towards him. And then it happened, I fell for him. And I don’t mean love at first sight, I don’t believe in that nonsense. I mean, I literally was so enchanted by the demi-god that I just kinda fell off the treadmill. Right knee went down and I threw my hands out desperately in an effort to stop my body flying off the end and to potentially catch my dignity. I grabbed the bar and managed to pull my self back up to standing just as both knees were being dragged towards the end. It wasn’t one of those damsel in distress moments really, it was just a sweaty dweeb nearly rolling off the end of the treadmill due to the fact that Gods had finally reached earth and also appreciated fitness. I got up, left my dignity for dead and just kept running. It was like I was trying to run away but actually I was just on a treadmill so…

            The other thing that happened was related to safety and intelligence and those two things not meaning anything in the situation. The background to this story is that about two weeks ago, my friend and her wallet were parted from one another. She had it when she got to the office, she went out for coffee, and then when she got her stuff to go to lunch with us, it was gone. It had everything in it. Her debit and credit cards, multiple forms of ID and all her cash that she had withdrawn for the rest of the month. Gone. Losing your wallet in the US stinks, but in India it’s kind of a tragedy. You can’t just call your bank and cancel your cards and get new ones within 3-5 business days. They have to ship them, there are security checks, reauthorization and time differences. Luckily, she goes home in a few days and our friends helped her out in the mean time. But the disappearance of the wallet inspired me to up my security with my own things. I’m careful but so is she, and I’d been carrying around both my debit and credit card, and because there is a fee for using a foreign ATM, I’d been withdrawing in 10,000 rupee increments, which is roughly $200. So on Friday, April 12^th, I took out my cards and 5,000 of the 10,000 I’d just withdrawn, and tucked them into my American passport, clipped that to my British passport, put that package in the bottom of a drawer after wrapping it in a piece of paper. Then I put a ziplock baggey full of medicines on top of that, and then moved the bag of cotton balls, friendship bracelet sting, leatherman, first aid kit, spare notebook, empty water bottle and all the other junk in the drawer around so that my valuable were literally buried. I also live in the last hallway of the third floor of a hostel that within the closed campus of St. Johns. My hall is full of friends who are studying medicine or doing public health research and internships The Annexe has a front desk where Sister Bertha (the head nun who runs the place) or one of her cronies sits most of time. On that desk is a little plastic box and above that box is a sign on the wall that says “MUST LEAVE KEYS WHEN YOU ARE LEAVING CAMPUS” so each morning when I come down the stairs I drop my key in the box and then pick it up again when I come home. And it should only be me picking up my key.

            Yesterday, I checked my wallet and thought I better re-stock on rupees before we went out for dinner. It had been almost a week since I withdrew money and hid half, and I try and spend no more than 5,000 a week, which is about $100. So I went in my drawer and dug out all my stuff and pulled out my passports and unclipped them, took out my cards and took out…no money. I stood there for a second, had I really put 5,000 in there or just thought about it? No. I did. Because I had withdrawn 10,000 (an online banking check confirmed that) and I had been to a wedding all weekend, hadn’t spent a cent there because all the food and lodging was provided. We cooked on Tuesday night, and I spent only 350 on dinner and drinks on Wednesday. And there I was on Thursday, going to get out the 5,000 rupees that I had hidden and it wasn’t there. I left my key in the box over the weekend and I had my room cleaned on Tuesday. I checked and double-checked and wrote out all my purchases again and refreshed my bank page and then just realized it was gone. And $100 bucks isn’t nothing for a student like me, but I was equally uncomfortable with the fact that someone had come into my space, rooted through my drawer, handled my passports and cards and taken that much money from me. 

            Emily and Pooja came with me for support as I walked down three flights of stairs to find Sister Bertha and another young receptionist sitting behind the desk. In a small voice I told her what had happened. And that I had been gone and that the maid had been and that my key had been in the box. And I didn’t expect her do anything and I certainly didn’t expect to get any part of 5,000 rupees back, but I could have used an “I’m sorry” or “we’ll look into it”. Instead, Sister Bertha turned it right back around on me. She told me I should have hidden it, that I have to leave a note and give my key to her personally when I go away and that that is a rule that everyone knows, and that I should have had a safe in my room. And then I got mad. And I said I did hide it, so well that it disturbs me how much time someone had to root through my stuff. And that I’ve been leaving for a trip before and dropped my key in the box with every one else’s and she’s personally waved and said “have a nice trip!” without ever asking me to leave a note and taking my key out to put it away. I told her how when I got to the Annexe someone had asked for my name, handed me a key and told me no rules and policy what so ever. I told her that safe or no safe, hidden or not, I shouldn’t have to worry about 5,000 rupees being stolen from me and even if it was, it was not my fault. She responded by repeating to me all the reasons I was still to blame and then I just said I thought she should know and that I wasn’t leaving my key anymore, it would be with me always.

             But I still feel weird. There’s no use crying over spilled milk and $100 dollars in the grand scheme is a bummer but not a tragedy. The thing that stays with me is how thoroughly someone searched through my things. My key was out all weekend, and there’s often no one looking after them. The maid came on Tuesday, but I tip her every time and she seems sweet. But also, St. Johns is not an easy place to get into as a stranger, there are walls and gates and security guards, and the Annexe has it’s own security guard out front. So it just makes me think….it had to have been someone on the inside. And I don’t like that thought at all. 

Observations on Long Distance Relationships from an Unbiased Third Party

First, lets be clear, I don't want to claim any false credentials on this subject; frankly, I've never been in a long distance relationship, and contrary to what the (catchy) title suggests, I'm obviously biased in some way because I'm motivated to write an opinion piece on the matter. So, with those disclaimers out of the way, this is what I have say which is about what I think which is in no way fact, correct, reputable or even possibly relevant. But I'm going to say it anyway.

Seeing as all of my friends here are between the ages of 22 and 32 (22 and 32 being the outliers), they are all at very different places in their lives with someone else's life than I am. Most of them are in long distance relationships. A few are engaged, and a few more already married. The ones who aren't are thinking about it, and I'm just incredibly intrigued and quiet on the matter because it's not something I'm really going to be *thinking* about for at least another 10 years. But even though I'm not thinking about marriage, I do think about their relationships a lot, and their marriages and troubles and successes and frankly, their bravery. Without even directly being involved in a long distance relationship, I've some how managed to still have a change of heart on the matter.

If I'm honest, I really didn't believe in long distance until recently. In fact, I was the girl who actively said no to long distance whenever it was offered up, mostly from a rational standpoint, but also a little from a stubborn mentality. I just never felt like it was a good idea, that people should be together to be together. In a pretentious way I judged people who were in long distance relationships, telling myself I had the common sense that they lacked and that I knew something they didn't. And it was all from a naive and self-affirming standpoint, because I didn't actually have any experience or even really evidence with which to make such harsh judgments. And so, as I'm here and the evidence in favor of long distance is playing out before me like a colorful parade, I'm forced to exhale my prejudice and surrender to an entirely different sentiment on the whole matter. I think couples that have the individual independence and motivation to embark on separate and often very distant journeys are incredibly brave. I think there's something so incredible about being supportive of someone so thoroughly that you can recognize and encourage them to pursue passions that happen to be very far away from where you are, for 6 months or even 6 years. To never undermine or try to contain what makes them an individual and the adventures and opportunities they feel they have to take in order to build self and help them feel as individual as possible. To say I love you not just because of who are you right now, but because of where you need to go and what you still need to become. And it's not easy. Most of my friends are this brave, but it's a battle. And even though the fights involve two people, it seems to me that most of the time the people involved are fighting against themselves more than they are fighting their partner.

Something that I've noticed is how dangerous and difficult it is for couples when all the information can't be there. Most of the time, when two people who are together are also physically together, they are pretty caught up on each other. They don't have to debrief thoroughly on how a day has gone or what their weekend was exactly like or where they are and with whom because chances are their partner is there, or is around enough and involved enough to kind of know. But when they are separated by thousands of miles, the little things get lost. And the way we measure big events and big deals is in comparison to little deals and smaller events. A big fight is only a big fight because it feels bigger and more serious than the little tussles and disagreements that preceded it. But when two people who usually know the sleeping sounds of one another are far apart, communication just simply can't be as frequent or as transparent. If you only have one hour each week to talk to someone you're used to breathing in time with, then when you do talk, it automatically becomes a big deal. Because the perspective is lost, any fight is a big one and any happy moment is the happiest. One of my friends here was talking about her boyfriend at home and she said that she just constantly feels like they might break up or they might get married, with nothing in between. And I think that's because the in between would be morning coffee, or a walk home, or dinner with friends, or reading in the same room, or naps, or groceries, or a goodnight kiss. But when you're apart, you can't spend what limited time you have on the Skype call or the international phone call or the email in between work telling your partner about each detail of your day. You tell them about the important things, you discuss the big decisions, the big losses or the big wins. So suddenly little deals are lost to the winning briefcase on Deal or no Deal, so it's all a big deal.

The other thing that has intrigued me is how far is far enough to call it out, and say, "yes, we're long distance". A friend from high school is taking a year abroad in London from the university in LA. Her partner goes to school in New York and is taking a year abroad in Spain. Miraculously, on their international trips abroad, they are actually closer together than they are when they are at home. So study abroad experience which usually causes a make or break for couples on the long distance front has brought them closer. And they are making visits and making the most of the fact they are long but not as long distance. One of my colleagues here excitedly showed me a picture of her fiancé and told me the wedding date was set another two years from now. She's 22 and they have been engaged for six years. I asked her if they lived together or saw each other often. She said yes, they saw each other quite often. He came over once a week on Friday for a chaperoned dinner with her mother. And that's what made her happy and what is normal for her. And I thought about the cultural difference there; for some American (and other nationalities I'm sure), a chaperoned dinner once a week would be like a long distance relationship. I know people who live 45 minutes apart who are long distance, and I know people who live 4,500 miles apart and are separated by language, culture, and family obligations and expectations who are long distance. I also know married couples living under the same roof that are long distance.

But it doesn't always work. I thought I had figured out the rough criteria that allows the long distance go the distance. It went something like this: Two people, regardless of how far apart they are, can make it work as long as they

·      Are apart for less than a decade

·      Have some form of semi-frequent communication

·      Have established boundaries and trust

·      Get the opportunity to visit one another (even just ever so briefly)

·      Are flexible; things happen, to both parties, and things change

·      (most importantly) Have decided and agreed upon the time when they will be together. Where and how and, most importantly, when. So that the long distance isn’t just a dream being pulled out too far, so that two people will actually get the chance to be in the same place off a screen. So that there is an end goal.

However, equations and maps and formulas never work where people are concerned. Because people are messy and unpredictable and fiercely emotional. And that’s why we love them. Because even though I thought I had mapped out what it took, I’ve met beautiful people who did those things and better, and then when they got home or got to the when, and saw their partner and got to remember all the little details about them that get fuzzy because of bad pixilation on Skype or simply just time, it was blissful and it was everything they thought they’d been waiting for. But after two weeks or two months or however long, it all fell apart. Because even though they’d talked and tried to be together as much as they could while being apart, they’d also grown, and that led to growing apart. And/or sometimes it’s just that there was so much anticipation and longing to be with them that that became a more powerful emotion than actually being with them. I’ve had friends tell me that all of a sudden they realized that they loved their partner better from afar. The thought of waiting all that time and staying in touch and working it out only to have it fall apart in your hands as they finally come together seems devastating, and to me, like a bloody waste of good time. But real people with real experience who lived it instead of writing about it usually tell me that yeah, it does suck, but yeah, it was also worth it. Because that person had to be a part of your world even if it turns out they can’t be a part of your life.

So, I guess there’s no secret. It’s not a code that can be cracked. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it. You just have to go about it. And I don’t know how and I know that one-day I’ll probably have to try for longer than a month (which is the only experience I have) and that terrifies me. So for now I’m just going to observe and try and learn or at least listen. Because in a funny way, having friends who are like minded, who share morals, and are involved in work and lifestyles that you someday hope to emulate, is kind of like watching how your life might play out. At 19 I can walk with who I might be at 22, eat with who I might be at 26, laugh with who I might be at 28, confide in who I might be at 30, and travel with who I might be at 32. It would be an honor to grow to be like any of them, and a gift to learn to be like all of them.

Burn

(Friday, April 5^th-Sunday, April 7^th)           

           

            In the spirit of adventure, just one week after our Mumbai/Bombay trip ( I still don’t know) and surviving turbulence, Emily, Anita and I set off for Coorg. To my dismay, there are no corgies in Coorg, though there were plenty of other canines, but we’ll get to that later. What Coorg did have was a lot of rainforest and mountains and fresh air and large insects. So for the weekend I choose Malaria risk and trekking over busy city streets, blaring horns, the acrid smoke of burning trash and the constant fear of being run over. To be honest, I didn’t realize how much I needed a nature escape until I actually had one.

            Coorg weekend also meant my first overnight bus trip in India. I’ve dabbled in the overnight bus lifestyle in Thailand, but in the month I’ve been in India my mother has requested I stay off the buses because during one of her late night iphone news reading sprees she stumbled upon an article about a horrific crash. So naturally she sent me an email with the link and a plea to take the train and naturally when Anita suggested we take the bus, I didn’t hesitate to buy my ticket. We boarded at 11pm and arrived in Coorg at 5:30am. But in between is where is it gets interesting.

            Monsoon season doesn’t start till end of May, and even June in the south. However, the locals will tell you that in mid spring there will be one week of storms, and then it will get so hot you want to be naked all the time/die. Turns out it’s not just something they say. It actually happened. And it happened last week. So we get on the bus and settle down in the reclining seats and stuffy air conditioning. Emily gets motion sickness and swears by Dramamine, which also has the beneficial property of helping you PTFO like there’s no tomorrow/enormous storm happening. I really enjoy PTFO-ing so I partook in the Dramamine dosage and soon found myself sleepy and not in the least bit queasy. Emily went out like a light but for some reason I felt the warm and fuzzy drugged sleepiness, but could not actually achieve the highly sought after PTFO. So I sat awake in my seat as our bus headed steadily towards and increasing violence thunder and lightening storm. It was kinda like seeing it in slow motion. Like panic wrapped in cling film. We arrived in the middle of the storm. Lightening was going off so fast it felt kinda like the whole world was raving. I recall having fuzzy thoughts regarding the metal bus having rubber tires and hoping that would prevent us from being fried. I witnessed for the first time lightening actually making contact with the ground, about 50 yards from the bus. I felt like the bus was gunning down the road, and sometimes it seemed like we weren’t even in contact with solid ground. This could have been my exhausted and drugged state or us hydroplaning across the empty roads. Probably both. Thoughts couldn’t flash across my mind but they kind of have floated and dreamed there way through. I was reviewing in my head a story that Emily and Anita had told me earlier in the day. We were on a government bus, which were supposedly safer than the private companies. A real life example of this discrepancy was the fate of one Swedish medical student who had been studying at St. Johns just like us. She and her friend were taking a private overnight bus to Goa, it was a full sleeper bus, with bunks. She slept on the top and her friend on the bottom. In the middle of the night, the bus slammed into a truck. The suspicion is that the bus driver dozed off behind the wheel. The friend on the bottom bunk was shaken but pretty much unharmed. The Swedish medical student on her way to the beach, who was sleeping on the top bunk of a private bus, was thrown from the bunk in the impact. She broke her back. In hospital in India they told her she’d never walk again, and when she began to cry the doctor asked her why on earth she was crying. She was taken back to Sweden for treatment. She’s walking now and doing physical therapy. And that whole accident happened two weeks before Emily arrived.

            So in the middle of the storm, in a Dramamine haze, I considered how if I broke my back, I would want to air lifted back to the UK and how it wouldn’t be so bad because pretty much all my friends here are doctors or future doctors or just really smart. So we went running through the storm, my panic dragging along after, subdued but real. And then we were airborne, and the bus landed with a huge jolt and I’m pretty sure I yelled “holy shiiiiiiit’ and then smashed my wrist against the window in an attempt to brace myself. The whole bus had a similar reaction, but then it was over and we were still driving and it was still storming and everyone went back to sleep. So I rolled my wrist around and went to bed too. No broken backs here. In the morning I realized just how crazy the storm had been and how glad I was that I was drugged.

            After the first bus, we waited around in the dark, then took a second bus, and then took a jeep up to Honey Valley, our beautiful and secluded guesthouse for the weekend. It wasn’t until arriving in that forest oasis, with birds singing audible and buses nowhere in sight, that I realized how much the trash in the city had started weigh on my soul. I think India is beautiful, a country rich in color and tradition and even just straight history; it’s older than most. But it’s not necessarily rich in organization. The bureaucracy is pretty out of control, and many foreign students and professionals agree that it’s an incredible place to visit but a very difficult place to try and come in and work. So I’m here doing public health and working specifically on projects involving women’s sexual and reproductive rights and domestic violence, but I find myself distracted by the municipal waste problem. And I think when I come back, maybe as a Fulbright or some other type of intern or scholar or fellow, I would really like to work on the environmental health and sustainability here. Because there is trash everywhere. And at home I put my trash in one bin and I compost my food scraps and I recycle glass and plastic and paper, I dispose of batteries properly and the city organizes pick up days for my large household electronic waste and Christmas trees and used car donations. Here it goes into one bin, or it simply gets tossed out the window. And the streets are lined with trash and there are piles of it on the pavement and cows and dogs come through to pick out the edibles. When the piles get too high someone makes a stack of trash against a wall, or a fence or even a tree, and sets it on fire. Open trash fire burn daily, fueled by everything from newspapers to plastic crates to wig hair to fecal matter. And the dark, acrid smoke fills the sky and the lung of pedestrians. And these fires are set in Bangalore, and in Mumbai and in the villages and more rural areas, because there aren’t or aren’t enough landfills and so trash piles up and no one has organized against it and so people are simply doing what they think they should for it. My colleague, a really sweet woman who works as a counselor and champion against violence against women in Bangalore, offered to take a plastic yogurt container from me in the car. I thought she knew where the bin was so I handed it over. And she rolled down the window and threw it out into the street as we were driving. She’s not a socially irresponsible being, she’s invested in public health, its’ her life’s work. But plastic and waste lining the streets is what she knows and no one has ever told her to think differently. The canals that run through Bangalore are black and thick and run slowly due to their consistency and the piles of plastic and styrofoam and other debris that line the banks and move with the water. And I love being here and I love so many things about Bangalore, but sometimes when I’m walking and trying to avoid stepping in animal and human fecal matter, skipping steps so as to not fall into the open sewers that run two meters beneath the cracked the paving blocks, or having to cross the street so I don’t have to walk through a trash pile, sometimes when I have to do these things, it gets to me. And then I have a selfish thought that millions of people have each day that continues to cause the deplorable state of our environment. I think this: “at least it’s not like this in Albany”. And I can’t think that and just put up with burning plastic smoke that makes my eyes burn. Because the black and putrid canals, that burn when they come in contact with fire, all eventually get to the sea. And that sea isn’t just India’s. It’s an ocean, and Atlantic or Pacific or Arctic or whatever else, it’s all the same water in the end, contained on one planet. And my next thought is, if possible, even less helpful. I think sometimes that it’s too late. I worry about whether my children will even have green spaces. But even if it is too late, it’s not too late to try. So something has to be done, because water shouldn’t reach a state so far from water that its surface burns, and trash shouldn’t burn in the streets and people’s lungs and eyes shouldn’t burn from the stink and the stench and even just the rain. Someone has to start, actually a lot of people have to start, not just picking up the mess, but changing the education and information so the mess stays off the street. And hopefully I can join them.

            So Coorg is a green space, one of the few left and still it’s shrinking. And though something needs to be done about the waste, it was really nice to run from it for a weekend, with two good friends and a bottle of red wine. When you go to Coorg, go you to trek. We had a lengthy discussion about the difference between trekking and hiking and concluded that trekking simply sounds cooler and that when you do some nature type walking in a foreign country you’d much rather tell your family you went trekking instead of hiking. So we went trekking, up through Honey Valley’s vast property and coffee plantations and beyond. We made it to the top of the small mountain and looked out across the green space, still covered in trees and rolling hills and haze not so thick that we could still see the mountains that stood at attention across the valley. After trekking Saturday morning we came down the mountain, sweaty and rosy cheeked from fresh air and sun, and had a home cooked meal. I’m a firm believer in the Like Water for Chocolate phenomenon that you can taste the emotions that have gone into food. So when you eat at a restaurant, the food simply tastes like food, it might even taste a little bitter on the account of poor pay, low tips, and dishonest labor that goes on in industrial kitchens. You could also very likely be tasting food poisoning….However, at Honey Valley, which is run by a lovely family and has been for the past 35 years, the food tastes like the love of the land and the grace of the people who live there. So we ate food in which the love had a taste, and come Saturday night brought out our bottle of wine which had made through a storm and into the mountains with us, and full of home cooking and fresh air, sat in a wood paneled dining room, playing cards and drinking wine and being present.

            Sunday saw another trek which involved some off the map exploring and could have resulted in us being stranded in the wild, 127 style, except our combined brilliance ( and perhaps the very evident layout of the land…) let us find our way to the top of world, and then back to our guest house. We skipped the second bus ride this time and simply hired the jeep to take us all the way to our bus stop in the bigger town. It was a thrilling ride down the hill to say the least, I thought I would die about half as many times than on the thunder storm bus, but this time without the soft hand of Dramamine clouding my panic. Aside from Anita having so sit next to a very large and very smelly man and Emily and I nearly being left behind while peeing, our journey went smoothly. I returned to Bangalore late at night, having not been gone long enough to miss it, but with a break sufficient enough to keep me satisfied with being there. I dreamt that night, in my own bed that I returned to Bangalore in 2017 and the metro was running and I came and conquered the municipal waste problem. Who knows what could happen.

Back from Bomb!

            I’m writing about Bombay weeks after it happened and I regret that and the fact that it means that so much of the wonder and experience has gotten lost. Hopefully one day I’ll come back to it and really rack my brains for the sensory details and be able to express properly how truly felt, not just what it looked like. One part of the trip that I can still really feel is our journey home. And that’s because it scared the crap out of me.

            Due to our separate bookings, none of us were sitting together on the flight home. I prayed ahead of time that I would not be seated next to someone unusually large, smelly, invasive or creepy, and that prayer paid off quite well. I was seated in between two small women, one older and one probably around my age. As soon as the wheels had the left the run way the younger woman in the window seat took out her ipod and turned her face to the wall. At first I though her shaking was due to the almost constant and slight turbulence, but after discrete and thorough observation I realized she was simply and quietly sobbing. I started collecting clues. She had beautiful henna on her hands and was really well dressed with one of close hand bags that you look at in windows but never buy or even breathe on because they cost a college tuition. She was wearing a huge rock on her left ring finger. She was listening to a playlist on her iphone 5 and just crying. Not in an attention seeking way, not in an angry way, just quietly and steadily. And as I tried to just let her cry I realized that her crying made me feel sad in a certain way, like the floor falling out from underneath you. Sad in an inevitable way, like it’s no ones fault and it doesn’t need to be fixed, it just is. Sad like I felt on the plane to Hawaii. She was heartbroken. I’m almost positive. And she cried quietly and I sat fighting the urge to just kinda sitting down hug her. And the plane started to shake. At first it was turbulence like I’m used to, a little shake and shift and then it’s done. But it didn’t stop. The plane started to rock, and take falls down in the air, like sudden drops so that if you weren’t buckled in you might fly up out of your seat and hit your head. The main lights went off and the dim lights were on. In my head I imagined a tiny toy plane being shook back and forth by a giant hand. The woman next to me stopped crying and just stared ahead, knuckles white as she grasped the seat arms. I’ve never been near to catholic but I crossed myself just for good measure. The plane shook and the woman in front of me started saying her prayers. It wasn’t a little passenger number either, it was full sized jet, being thrown around like a toy. I was close to the back and I watched the heads in front me being snapped forward and backward in the shaking. The sky outside was grey and cloudy and you couldn’t see the end of wing. I put on some music I thought might be most appropriate to die to and thought about how much I loved my family and how I hoped they knew that. My crying companion had dry eyes, but just had a steely look on her face and didn’t show a trace of panic. I was panicking and listening to Wagon Wheel and just trying not to shit myself.  After the longest ten minutes ever and multiple prayers from an agnostic to all religions ever and the potential loss of five years to my life from stress, the plane gave a final shudder and stopped thrashing about. We landed shortly after and I booked it up the arrivals tunnel to find Anita and Emily standing at the top looking as shaken as I was. We walked out of the airport and found that the entire airport was drowning in a localized thunder storm, with lightening flashing every few seconds, water pouring down from places it shouldn’t and thunder that you can feel in your toes. I instantly forgave the pilot. We waded our way to a taxi and found that, only a few miles out, the ground was completely dry and dust blew like it always did. And it just wasn’t even unusual. Because if you’re going to know one thing before you come to India, know that anything and everything is liable to happen whenever. And you can be prepared for some things but you always have to be prepared to just deal with the rest. We almost died in a localized thunder storm and just a few days before Emily went out to get some food, got up to wash her hands and the entire roof, including lights, pipes and a man, fell in behind her, a piece of concrete hitting her hip and had she been a foot back from the sink, her entire body would have been buried. Mitch, the med student from Manchester, was walking and looked up for a second and found himself waste deep in the sewer due to a missing slat in the pavement. Every time I cross the street, the auto drivers speed up to try and run me over. My second day in Bangalore, I was stuck in traffic with Suneeta for three hours because a water tanker had pulled a spontaneous U-turn and crashed headlong into a bus. Things like that. All the time. You can’t be ready for it, but you can just learn to deal with it and to not live in fear. Because it wouldn’t be worth your time, the danger is always there but the fear is what uses energy and whether you’re afraid or not, it will still happen. So you gotta just live and hope that each day provides you with the opportunity to keep on living.