bed bugs.

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August 20, 2008

City in Strike!

Today the city of Kolkata is on strike. Everything is closed and everything is quiet. I can only hear my ceiling fan (spinning out of control), the enormous crows outside my window, and the neighbors working in their courtyard. No honking and no engine noise! It is amazing.

This peace has been especially nice today given the whirlwind of the past four days. This past Saturda the 12 of us went on our first field trip with our professor, Arnab. We took a night train from Howrath station in Kolkata to Puri, a coastal city in the state or Orisa, a few hours south of West Bengal. We were all really excited about this sleeping train situation—it was going to be like Harry Potter! And we’d eat chocolate frogs and drink tea and sleep in the luxury of wizardom, right? Ok, not really. It was kind of like that—there was tea and company and sleeping places, but it was also very crowded. We arrived in Puri nonetheless, and then were shuttled to Konarok where we would stay for the next few days.

Konarok is host to a historic Sun Temple, a beautiful Bay of Bengal beach, eccentric vendors and townspeople, and lots of little shops. the first day there, exhausted from our trip, but not willing to nap, we ventured around the little shopping area, took pictures of the abundant cows, and were hassled by shopkeepers and other men trying to sell us elaborate drawings of Kama Sutra poses. Alright. It was so beautiful there—the bay made the area humid (nothing we weren’t used to) but also breezy. It was quiet too, with crazy drivers but little auto traffic. The area is a vacation destination for a lot of Indians so for once we weren’t the only tourists in an area.

The beach was amazing. The hour or so hike out to the ocean was beautiful itself—it reminded me of walking down a straight and forever road in northern Michigan, trying to get to the lake or a cottage. This trip was just significantly sweatier and there were cows everywhere. While walking down the endless road, young people on motorbikes and bicycles would yell “HALLO. USA?”, or whatever country they thought we were from (Canada, Germany, Australia?), and wave at us. The Bay of Bengal was not swimable with its violent undercurrent and crazy waves. Some locals were brave enough to get it, but we had instructions not to. The tide also comes up higher at this beach than any other place I’d seen. It was a hugely powerful sight to see—the kind where all you want is quiet and solitude to stare. both quiet and solitude are things hard to come by in the areas of India we have visited, not only because places are just crowded and daily life is executed without the same concept of ‘personal space’ that exists in the US, but because we all had white skin. We draw a lot of crowds. It might be better if we didn't travel in packs, but the pack of 12 familiar friends makes the hoards of strangers standing around you and staring seem less intimidating.

Never before have I felt so watched. People in Kolkata stare at us, but our presence in our neighborhoods is getting to be more comfortable. I can walk to the coffee shop or internet café or school or work, and start to ignore deliberate stares. And, in the city, people are moving around constantly. In Konarok though, a tourist town, the shop owners and street vendors are already hopped up on the idea of vacationers dropping too much cash on trinkets, and the sight of blonde hair guarantees a good sale for them.
That has been one of the hardest things about getting used to life in India: sticking out and being objectified as instant and easy profit. After a whole three days of it I start to reach one of my personal edges. Most of the annoying activity towards white tourists or students is the constant yelling of “HALLO”, insistant requests for “snaps” of us, or even uninvited snaps—one woman, while we were listening to our tour guide discuss some sculptural aspect of the Sun Temple, a woman in a sari came and unappoligetically stood in the dead center for her husband to take a picture. Also people would call out to us, and when we turned or made eye contact they would giggle and laugh. Never before had I ever caused so much of a stir from just walking down a road and minding my own business.

What I have to remind myself though is that concepts of ettiquate and politeness vary with other cultural norms too. Our spectators’ actions shouldn’t be taken personally or offensively, most of the time, but they are definitely hugely shocking and tiring. And it is hard to figure out. At one point, one of my classmates, Natalie, who is a petit blonde haired, hazel eyed, art major from Maryland, was shoved into a photograph with somebody’s kid. What was this kid going to do with that photograph, him and some random blondie, in ten years? Will the world change enough that blondness isn’t so unseen in rural India? At times it feels like our roles are reversed, and we aren’t being the obnoxious tourists with cameras, exploiting a culture and race because the same is already being done to us.

It has also been challenging to just be an American. I’ve taken to give an alternate country of residence when asked. America generates various kinds of press, good or bad, but there is a lot of it either way you go. Also, especially having the K student mentality of being always culturally sensitive and aware of the facts of our usually unflattering political representation, we tend to let ourselves be walked upon when abroad. I find myself being defenseless sometimes and altering the points of US culture that show up in my personality. At the hotel we got a very back handed compliment from some French people. Our group had been eating in the hotel restaurant at the same time these French friends were eating and after our meals they approached a few of us on the patio. They asked where we were from and we said the US. They said that all thorugh dinner they were trying to guess where we were from—it couldn’t be America because we were too polite and quiet to be Americans. No one really knew what to say, “thank you? my American parents taught me some code of manners, surprisingly.”.

This is the kind of identity I think we are all supposed to figure out while on study abroad. While there are a lot of issues with my homeland, and really everyone’s homeland, the vastness that is every nation is often not considered. In learning about India here and through some of my classes at K, it is important to remember that the definitions and boundaries of “nation” are blurred and inconsistent. Different factors of history, geography, climate, colonization, and rebellion have created a uniqueness to each area of India. The same is true for the US, but we are all labeled, not just by these French tourists, through our leaders and our biased news. I am trying to find that balance in identity that is local and nurturing and supportive of my roots and my heritage, but that also doesn’t hold the burden or impossible responsibility of things I didn’t personally control. This isn’t to say that justifications should be made for the ill acts of ‘the man’ of the US, but that we should cultivate a way to live as a responsible individual and be recognized as such. Most likely, in my adventures here I won’t be able to make an impression on all of India and its European tourists that I am a polite American because nationality is one of the first loaded questions in an introductory conversation, but sorting this out within my own head is a good first step.

Anyway, aside from the confusions of culture and nationality, the trip was a blast. The Sun Temple was this epic site of ancient religion, every inch of every wall carved with scees from life: daily chores to erotic procreation. On our way home we saw a beautiful Buddhis temple and some ancient Jain caves. I even left the trip with my entire left side covered in bed-bug bites from my hotel cot.

I always write these entries and then stop for a few hours to do something else and lose my train of thought... sorry about that, my attention span has been shortening. hm..... more later.

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