"American? Obama!"

Everyday I have to answer numerous questions, including "Where from?", "What is your father?", and "What are you doing?" But these days most people don't get beyond the first question because they respond with some version this entry's title. It gives me a huge thrill, every time. So please excuse me while I rejoice for a little bit:

WE DID IT!

The morning after election day in the states, I biked through a deserted Madurai at five in the morning to join others at our program house in order to get the results as they came in. Getting up so early was actually great - it was odd to experience a 'peaceful' Madurai, with no traffic and no noises but the Muslim call to prayer. Anyway, I admit to getting rather emotional during Obama's acceptance speech. Although I'd been optimistic for the last six months, I was rather anxious during the week before. I did wish that I was in America, celebrating with like-minded people. Though Indians are very pro-Obama, most seem bewildered by how passionate we students are about our politics. Such emotional involvement with politics is usually reserved for young men, who get carried away and go wild in the streets! But although I wish that I could have been in America at the time, I do feel privileged to be in another country. For the first time, I'm feeling proud of being American. My first extended travel abroad, the war had just begun, and we put Canadian stickers on our backpacks. My second time, France-US relations were not ideal, and I had to fervently explain to everyone I met that I, too, thought Freedom Fries were ridiculous, and surely the war would end soon. I hope now dialogues like these will be less apologetic, and express instead my hope and determination to work for change.

We also celebrated Halloween here! SITA had a big Halloween party for all of our host families - sadly, mine couldn't come. We spent the whole day designing a haunted house in our classroom - we ransacked a local kid's store for all the scary and costume-y things they had! At first the host families were pretty hesitant about the haunted house, but after a few families broke the ice and went through, they got into it. Most people tried to laugh it off or identify us, which I like to think shows they were really scared! (It was a pretty great haunted house, in my humble opinion.) I was seated as one among many dummies, and then suddenly came to life and grabbed people. Then later, for the costume part of the party, I was an Indian Elephant. I took a kid's elephant costume, cut it in half (it was too small - yes, I may be short, but I'm not that short!), and fashioned a half-sari with it. We all had a lot of fun although none of the host families really dressed up!

Recently a group of us went to visit an organization known as Reaching the Unreached. It was started by a Belgian monk some years ago, and today it is a flourishing NGO. I highly recommend you look them up (www.rtuindia.org or www.rtu.org.uk), and if anyone is looking for a worthy place to make a donation, this is a great choice. So many NGOs in India are corrupt, ineffective, or have a religious agenda. Although the founders were Catholic, they are fiercely proud of their inclusivity and identity as a secular organization. They run numerous programs. They have started several Children's Villages, which pair groups of orphaned children with abandoned or widowed/divorced women, fashioning new family units. All the children are provided with meals and clothing, and an education and financial support until they are independent - this means the organization supports them all the way through college or specialized training. ("Self-reliance," part of RTU's motto, is often neglected by NGOs.) They also distribute HIV medicine and spread AIDS awareness, offer training for skills like tailoring or masonry, run a program that sells village handicrafts, and more. They affect thousands of lives in Tamil Nadu, and above all they're giving effective and meaningful aid to those people and sectors of society that need it most. Our visit there was a very powerful experience!

Anyway, onto brighter things - literally. A few weeks ago we celebrated Diwali! For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend The Office's Diwali episode. It's very funny, and it also includes a definition: it's a celebration of the return of the god-king Rama to his native city of Ayodhya after defeating the evil demon Ravana. Of course, this is shot down by Steve Carrell's character as ridiculously absurd! But it is in fact true. Diwali is the Festival of Lights because of the way the people of Ayodhya put lights in all of their windows, welcoming Rama home.

Ah yes, those were the days, candles in windows! Not so in contemporary South India. I was told this holiday would include a lot of fireworks, firecrackers, and so on. One day a few weeks ago, I returned home to find the main room filled (I mean FILLED) with hundreds of boxes of fireworks. Apparently my ammaa has some connections at a large fireworks factory in Tamil Nadu, so she buys them all very cheap, and then sells them to friends in Madurai at a discount. Thankfully, most of the boxes disappeared over the following week, although until they did I was really worried the whole house would blow up.

Now, it's important for me to establish that by "fireworks and firecrackers" I thought people would be lighting off sparklers, things that go bang, things that fizzle about seven feet high, things that shoot up sparks, you know, that kind of thing. And yes, all those exist. But by "fireworks," they mean fireworks. The real kind, that go really high up in the sky and then explode in all sort of pretty colors. You can buy those! In a canister! In a store! And light it! On your roof!

Me being boggled by all this stuff - not to mention a reticence to light the darn things - both stupefied and amused my family. And of course they really got a kick out of urging me to light off the big ones. I lit off a couple - they exploded up high, looked really nice, made a lot of noise, etc. But then they gave me this other one to light, so I did, and then I ran back to our designated safe space (you know, ten feet or so away - it'd been fine before). Suddenly I was literally blown backwards - I've never felt anything like that - and instantly my ears were ringing and I was pretty much deaf. Kind of like how I've heard it feels to be next to a small bomb as it goes off.

Not to mention... throughout Diwali, I felt like I was in a warzone. All day long, from every direction, were the staccato bursts of noisemakers, the blasts of the big fireworks, the vooms of rockets (yes, rockets, one nearly took off my head!), the crashes and sirens of some of the smaller fireworks... I was twitching all day! One of the great things about Diwali is the tradition to wear new clothing on the day itself. About a week beforehand, my youngest sister Babloo and I had this conversation:

Babloo: Leah, what colors do you like?
Me: Well, I like blue, and purple, and maroon…
Babloo: ORANGE? Do you like ORANGE?
Me: …um, yes… I like orange fine!

Sure enough, an hour later my ammaa presented me with a bright orange sari, embroidered with lurid brown roses. I oohed and aahad. Everyone was very pleased.

I have also been taking South Indian violin lessons (Carnatic violin). The Carnatic violin is propped with the scroll on your foot while sitting cross-legged. It's a completely different musical system which doesn't involve reading any music, but rather a "do-re-mi" equivalent and a lot of singing and memorizing. Also a ton of moving around on the strings and wavering notes that makes it all sound very Indian. My first teacher was actually just an advanced student himself, and he diligently led me through teaching as it is typically done in the Carnatic style. That is, there is a certain pace, you stick to it, and your teacher knows best, always. Just to contrast: when I was studying Western violin, and I would come in one day and say to my teacher, "I went ahead and practiced these four etudes because I was so excited and motivated," and then I played them well for her, she'd be like "Great! Let's move on to the next ones." Here, you wouldn't even have those etudes because your teacher wouldn't have given them to you, and even if you had gone ahead and learned something else, you'd be brought right back to the lesson you're supposed be studying three months and two weeks into learning the instrument. This wasn't helpful for me at all, because I already am competent on the violin, I have one month left in the country, and playing the same scale fifteen times even though I knew I had done it fine the third time was boring me to tears.

This is always a slightly tricky cross-cultural situation. I should be deferring to the Indian method of teaching, right? I'm in India, I'm here to learn Indian music. But what about when that method doesn't make allowances for special cases, especially special cases with limited time on their hands? Luckily I was able to find a new teacher who really understands what I need. She's pushing me very hard so that I'll learn the most that I can in the time that I have, and she's very willing to work from the skill level that I'm at. On the whole it is very challenging but enjoyable. She really wants me to give a concert at the end of the program - we'll see!

Right before Diwali we returned from a short tour in Karnataka, a state to the north of Tamil Nadu. We visited several beautiful temples (both Hindu and Jain) in the area of Mysore, and in Mysore itself took a tour of the incredible Mysore Palace. I went back with a few people to see it lit up that night - it was a really astonishing sight, especially given the light rain that made everything dazzle.

We also visited Hampi - perhaps the high and lowlight of the trip, for me. Hampi is a bizarre place, geologically - it's rolling terrain, covered with these crazy rock formations that look like a giant stirred up a bunch of giant gravel, and then left it. Hampi is known for the ruins of the Vijayanagar empire. The ruins are very intact, and they are EVERYWHERE! Only about 50 of 500 ruin sites are set aside in museum fashion - with fences, entry-fees, etc. Take a short walk in any direction and you'll come upon the remains of a temple, a building, a religious statue - you name it. We took a short boat ride, and I really felt like I was in Middle Earth - columned buildings emerging from what looks like a jumble of rocks or a sheer cliff face, a tiny stone bull looking out over the water, crooked stone steps leading up out of the water to nowhere that still exists. We visited the Hanuman temple on a mountaintop - Hanuman is a monkey god and yes, the place was crawling with pesky, meddlesome monkeys - and the views were simply incredible.

The downside of Hampi: the tourists! They were primarily German and Israeli. Israelis often come to India and other places in South Asia after they finish their military service, and they usually stay for a long time, between three months and a year. In general, the Germans and Israelis in Hampi were young, carefree, and looking to relax, do drugs, and have a good time. Their lack of respect for or awareness of where they were - India - and all that comes with that - modesty rules, gender codes, demonstrations of respect, and so on, was remarkable. I was standing in a clothing stall being helped by a male shopkeeper, when two German girls came in - already wearing short skirts and tanktops - and proceeded to, in full view of the road and the male shopkeeper, strip off all their clothes in order to try a few things on! We were flabbergasted by their behavior. The shopkeeper was at first nonchalant (and peering), but then he became embarrassed and looked the other way. Many of the girls in my group took to wearing our traditional clothing, although we tend to relax our dress code a bit when we travel. In the end it paid off - several people in Hampi approached us and thanked us for wearing Indian dress, and some knew a little Tamil. So although the Hampi ruins were incredible, and it was admittedly nice to get to eat a few very missed Western foods, Hampi also provided us with a look at another kind of Indian-foreigner relationship that made most of us feel very uncomfortable and disturbed!

Sorry to get even more disturbing, but this I just had to share. For reasons that I think involve India being unhappy with Britain at the same time Britain was fighting Germany (India gained independence in 1947), Hitler is actually a pretty great guy here in South India. I think this also has to do with his ideas of racial purity and the "Aryans." Anyway, almost no one here knows about the Holocaust! Babloo's tenth grade textbook does not mention it at all, and she had never really heard much about Jews at all, let alone that Hitler was involved in a genocide. From her textbook, he comes off as a pretty alright guy, and a lot of people look up to him and will tell you that he's their hero, and they really want to visit Germany. It's very easy to find Mein Kampf in bookstores, as illustrated. (I admit we moved the Gandhi book a little bit to get the photo, but it was really only about 12 inches!). A few people who actually do know the details of World War II still think he was a great man, a great politician, and a great nationalist. I've had a few very disturbing conversations with people about this, and it's made me quite upset several times. The dangers of ignorance are great, and I can only hope that at some time in the future, someone will decide to revise the textbooks, and a new generation will grow up with a more thorough understanding. I should say that I feel the same way about other genocides, particularly African ones, that are frequently left out of American textbooks. These are not events that humanity can afford to forget.

So to end on a funny note, check out the "Female Species." I'm pretty sure my ammaa made this, and it hangs above my bed. I crack up over it about daily.

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