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Published: January 29th 2007
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I am here! I am (mostly) settled. And at long last I am taking a deep breath and a plunge into the world of blogs and online diaries. I must admit that I like this one, as it makes me feel a part of some great fraternity (or sorority) of travelers.
In a letter from a friend, not long after my arrival in Chennai: "I hope the transition is smooth....although not much except poop is smooth in india!" (Max, someday you'll be famous for one of these crazy things you say). Although I consider Max one of my wiser friends who tends to be right about grand life issues, I can thankfully report that my transition here has been as smooth as...well, as smooth as I could hope.
The research (more details on that below) is progressing as well as one could expect in an environment laden with bureaucratic and logistical obstacles. One senior researcher here at the Tuberculosis Research Center (a partner in the study I am working on) told me that I should expect any manner of complications or "road blocks," as she called them, at every step of the way. As an example she
Night traffic
I couldn't keep my hand still enough as my rickshaw bumped along, but I was trying to show a sense of how dense the city traffic is at rush hour. The man in the left foreground is sitting behind the driver of the motorcycle; wedged between them is a large suitcase, demonstrating the economy of space that is employed on many modes of trasnport. told me about a time that she was due to give a presentation at a conference in Nepal; last minute, she was rushing to print up her transparencies and slide notes before her flight north. The first two computers she tried would not read her files, so she went in search of another computer on another floor of the building. Just as the elevator was descending between floors the electricity in the building went out (not an entirely rare phenomenon); it was after six and everyone in the building had gone home, so she and her colleague were left in the elevator, with their files in hand, for half an hour until the electricity returned and the elevator came back to life. These, she said, are the things I should be prepared to deal with as a researcher in India.
Despite much anxiety and resistence at the outset, I am now comfortably situated in the Working Women's Hostel of the YWCA, Chennai. For $100 a month I have a single room with a bed, a desk, two closets, a fan, an air conditioning, consistent electricity, a daily cleaning service, and my own bathroom with a hot water shower and
Traffic, girl in salwaar
In Chennai it is not so unusual to see women (like this girl in a salwaar suit) driving their own scooters or motorbikes. I even once saw a girl in her twenties with her boyfriend riding on the back of her scooter. Yesterday, a woman in a full black burka wove through traffic on her motorscooter with her son on the back. a western toilet. Included in the arrangement are three meals plus tea daily at the hostel canteen, each meal normally consisting of some variation of rice and sambar. Because the hostel system was designed to provide women with a safe home-away-from-home, I have a warden (Dulsi Madamme) who calls me "darling," always asks if I have had my dinner, and checks to make sure that I have signed in every night by 10 PM, as per hostel-wide rules. Although the arrangement is unnecessarily strict (the Terms and Conditions state that girls are not to speak to the male staff of the canteen and that a resident may be asked to leave immediately if her water tap is found left on during the day), it is much too convenient and close to work to give any more thought to.
I am a "research assistant" or a "research scholar" (depending on whom you ask), whisked in for a brief two and a half months to mostly sit in an air conditioned office, give instructions in English, and wait around for documents to be translated so that I can code and analyse them. Once a week I leave Chennai with my research
Morning coffee
Our weekly 7:15 AM journey to Vellore is tempered by the coffee that is sold on the train for five rupees (around ten cents); it is just like chai in the north, made with boiled milk and so much sugar it hurts your teeth. assistant counterpart from the TRC and our one-woman interview team; we take a two hour train to Vellore, a smaller city which we are using as the actual field site for our qualitative sutdy, and meet up with our two interviewers who are based there to conduct our in-depth interviews. I am employed by the woman who was my senior thesis advisor and who is the Co-Principal Investigator of a research project investigating Tuberculosis treatment programs. The results of my time here will be used to build the research question and hypothesis of their larger study proposal--a two year research project that will allow them to determine the optimal drug treatment set up for rural Indians with tuberculosis (a significant public health issue considering the recent data shows that India's current TB treatment model--using the WHO formula--may not be working as well as they had hoped).
Aside from work, I spend much of my time trying to navigate daily life by speaking Madrasi English, which involves an excess of "-ing" verbs and a pronunciation that I have not yet mastered (I have abandoned the idea of learning Tamil, as everyone hear speaks functional English and I think that setting
Rajama on train
Our one-woman interview team, Rajama. She is the youngest of three sisters from Andhra Pradesh. Her oldest sister was married at the age of eight and the middle one at the age of twelve; because she was the youngest, she was able to get a college education and take a job in Chennai before getting married. out to learn such a difficult language may take more time than its worth). My linguistic deficiencies are one of many appropriate reminders that this visit to India will be very different from my last. This is not entirely unexpected; it is only that I am just starting to sort out the distinctions between what it means to be a student in a foreign land and what it means to be a foreign researcher in that same country.
These two experiences are also differentiated by the stark contrast of Banaras (where I lived before in North India) and Chennai. For my first few days here I was set on the task of figuring out the differences--between conservative and modern, overgrown village and city, Banaras and Chennai, north and south. The very first thing I noticed (on my way from the airport to my hotel at three in the morning) was that in the south, people are much more ammenable to going everywhere barefoot. Even at that strange hour I saw a man driving his motorcycle barefoot and I have since seen a fair share of people who seem similarly disinclined to wear shoes. My second observation was that there
Three sisters
Again the problems of taking a picture on a moving vehicle, but these three old sisters were so sweet and dignified that I just kept trying to take a picture of them. is more yellow and orange in the south, a conclusion that I reached through one of my favorite people watching activities: scoping women's wardrobes, particularly the bold saris with gold borders that abound down here. Among other differences, there is more rice, more public displays of affection, less animals (namely cows, dogs and monkeys) on the street, and less street food in Chennai than in Banaras.
My favorite distinction--and a wonderful one to discover and look forward to--has to do with the southern personality. Everyone here smiles. I remember, after some time in Banaras, realizing that I hardly ever smiled on the street--there was always a sense that I was on the defensive, mostly trying to avoid eye contact or pyhsical touch with any number of unknown and potentially creepy men on the street. Here, the fact that I am a foreign woman doesn't seem to make much of a difference to most people--I am free to smile at people (even men) as I pass on the street and receive smiles in return (and, as a side note, I have not once had my butt grabbed by a random man on the street, something that cannot be said for
Samosas
Samosas for sale in the second class chair car of the train. my time in Banaras).
I'm sure there are many more interesting and thoughtful ways to define the south--a region so distinct from the north that some say they should be two different countries--but this is the most important for me. In the end, as cheesey at it sounds, these smiles (and, I will admit, probably air conditioning) are what I know will get me through these next two months. So here's to barefoot men on motorcycles and women flashing gold jewelry and big smiles; heaps of rice and journeys into the Tamil Nadu countryside; exciting research and the equally challenging job of learning to live somewhere new.
Love to all.
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Emily P.
non-member comment
Beautiful
Libby! Thanks for sharing your adventures with us. You are such an eloquent writer!! And I love the photographs-- especially the one of the woman rolling cigarettes and smiling from the side. She's intriguing. I'm excited for the next installment and wish you the best of the best! Em