Boo

(this happened in 2015 I think but I can't remember if I ever shared it here)

Life in random snippets:

"I was walking in downtown Chicago to the train station with a friend when a (drunk and belligerent seeming) man yelled at me: 'Are you Asian or Indian?' (Umm seriously?)

He then went on to yell: teach your people to fucking tip better, you fucking Indians blah blah. (But but but I never took responsibility for all billion people - but racial slurs don't work that way I suppose? So I'll start offering lessons then?)

Even as we walked away, this kind of went on with him yelling. There wasn't any point engaging with him, even though it would have been nice to have an honest conversation (I can't even imagine the frustration of being a min wage worker, dependent on tips, but even so...)

I was pretty calm then but felt kind of shaken on the ride home. This is perhaps the only such experience I have had in Chicago and isn't reflective at all of my time here. But it sort of reminded me of the difference between a slur and stereotype and also why every once in a while, I feel uncomfortable in my own (brown Indian) skin."

A Borrowed Imagination

I was going through some old writing and blogs and I found a bunch of things that reminded me of who I was and where I was and how far I've come in some ways (and not in others).

Spark Joy!

 “A good half of the art of living is resilience.”

― Alain de Botton

(his pithy lines are my version of the holy book or whatever)

I'm always trying to find the right balance of being out and doing things and living and simply being at home and just living. I've started to notice a pattern: I'll have a weekend or two with an intense burst of activity and then I will hibernate, to recover.

Rainy days, summer days

Via Edwardmonkton.com

I've moved into YET another space. It is actually rather nice, has a window in the room with great natural light. The house has a back porch and more importantly a functional washer-dryer. Laundry is important for the soul. It is furnished and I have only had to buy minimal stuff such as linen and an incense-holder and lots and lots of chocolate-flavored cereal. The rain has been almost constant these last few days. The more I move, the faster I have learned to feel settled in. The frills fall away and I am slowly stripping to the bare essentials of what I need although there is a still long way to go in that process.

Snapshots

It is dusty, so dusty outside, that no matter how many times I wash my hands, I can see (or imagine) a layer of dust coating them. I decide today is the day I venture out, the list of small tasks has grown and in a way, I am now itching for action.

Dilli 2014

Let the shenanigans begin (quietly).

Tales from Bemidji

The lake booms, the ice cracking as we walk on it. It sounds like a gong, sometimes far, sometimes not too distant. It is breathtaking, it is quiet, almost surreal. It is peaceful, there is a restoring calm to the moments I spent on the lake. The winters, the snow, has grown on me. This was a break well-spent. I had reservations about leaving. The semester has been rough, and it felt wrong to leave. There are always too many things to do, even as I am teaching myself the art of saying no to the things I like, to avoid playing the busy game.

International Collaborative Research Forum

On Friday, I was able to attend a conference on campus and I am very glad I did! It isn't very often that I walk out of a conference thinking that all of it was useful for me but I definitely had that feeling after this one. It was called International Collaborative Research Forum and was held the renovated and fabulous and majestic looking Northrop Auditorium. After the opening session, there were parallel sessions for everything and I attended the ones on grant writing, ethics in international collaboration and internationalization in graduate education. I enjoyed all of these, especially the last one, where in addition to the Dean of Graduate Education at U of M, there were people from Council of Graduate Schools and the National Science Foundation.

Happy Diwali

The thing with never leaving is that you never get to realize how the absence of everything you took for granted feels. I was laughing with a friend about how we both missed our first Fall seasons here. The intensity of moving and settling in took up so much brain space, that I completely missed the fact that the trees changed, that the color of the leaves had become absolutely dazzling, that the sky was in fact no longer a monotone, but an evolving palette of greens, reds, yellows and blues. I don't remember any of it. I don't remember the trees lining the sidewalks, on campus, on my way to school, in the park across my old house, it is a blank slate. I recall moving through the days heavily, almost as if underwater. I remember the effort it took to just function, simply be. I remember feeling alone, and most of all I remember feeling wrong. I felt I had done something wrong, I had become wrong. So much of this came out at moments I thought I had under control. I would call home, to chat, only to sob intensely and I remember the ache, both in me and across the screen. But the distant sparkle of lights can be seen underwater.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping is a common affliction. I think it is fair to say most of us stereotype and most of us are at the receiving end of stereotypes. The further you leave what I would call a 'home base' (and this may vary from colony, to city, to state, to country), the greater are chances of your being at the receiving end of a stereotype (and of your trying to understand the world by using stereotypes to simplify life). As an international student, I always knew this was something that was going to happen and that I was going to react to it, but I am still surprised by the variation and intensity of both the stereotyping and my reaction to it (as much as I am grateful for all the thoughtful and intelligent and kind people I meet).

Notes from the Judd Fellowship Ceremony

This is my favorite picture :-).
A friend pointed out I have only one
 'funny pose'. Jazz hands.

The impetus to start this blog came when I was awarded the Judd Fellowship - it was one of the suggestions in an email sent out, and I am glad I followed through on the impulse. I am also glad for being able to keep the blog alive (mostly in spurts) after completing my summer field experience. My relative silence implies lots is going on: classes, assignments, tests, some confusing and annoying project selection processes, attending fitness classes at the gym and more.Yesterday was the Judd Fellowship ceremony, where university staff, winners, donors and friends of the fellowship came together at the McNamara Alumni Center (you know when an event is at McNamara, it is a little bit fancy!)

Glimpses from here and there

My favorite picture this week: napping in front of my school.

 

Look carefully. This is the shoe tree. When folks graduate, they throw
 their shoes up here. It creeps me out loads.

My two bits on the Delhi Metro

Source:
http://respectwomen.co.in/life-of-a-woman-in-delhi-metro/

I vividly remember my first encounter with the Delhi Metro. It had been recently set up and made functional (especially the blue line which I was using) and I decided to use it to visit a book fair at Pragati Maidan. On the way there or back, I can’t remember clearly now, I recall sitting in a busy coach. A man was uncomfortably close to me and coming closer. I was younger then, and perhaps rash, so I gave him a few swift kicks to remind him that this was not okay. In retrospect my behavior is not very commendable either, but I forgive myself because I have let things slide in such cases more than I wish I had. This man started yelling brazenly ‘this lady is hitting me’ and it did not seem like if things escalated, anyone would help me out (notice the word rescue purposely not being used).

After that I stopped using the metro during rush hours and then pretty much all. I was hardly alone in feeling that unwarranted touching and ‘accidental’ brushing was going on during busy hours and otherwise. Soon the Delhi Metro launched a ladies compartment and I think it changed the face of the metro. I don’t think of transport as necessarily gender neutral. Especially not in India, where gender issues are a big problem. Traveling in crowded spaces for women means dealing with not just the regular annoyances of being cramped or pushed or having to board and deboard moving vehicles risking your life but also dealing regularly with the gropers and molesters. You have to pick your battles especially if travel is part of your daily routine. I don’t think you can spend all your traveling time fighting and possibly screaming and shouting. Especially when you know help is not always forthcoming.

Reflections

I accept all the affection everyone is giving me at home with caution. Somehow, there is so much care and thoughtfulness, I am only a few minutes away from tears most of the time. I laugh to my family about my ability to cry-on-demand but it runs a little deeper than that. But I know that when I leave this bubble of familial love and foibles and hopes and hurts carried together for years, I will be back to my reality. Friends ask me to articulate my reluctance to give into my new life, to embrace it for what it is, and I am not able to do that well. I do enjoy it, it has made my world much richer and full of more hope and repair than it ever was. But I don't know if this is my eventual life. I am only just realizing that I am actually traveling through life. I used to wake up in Vietnam and realize with a surge of excitement, always tinged with incredulous wonder that this is my life, the one in which I get to explore.

***

Adulthood has meant making peace with occasionally cutting corners. There was a time when everything had to be just so (for me, for folks at home, in general in life). It was all full of discontent, irritation and the opposite of calm days. Now picking one’s battles feels like the right philosophy for life. Some things are more charming when worn out. I tell myself the smaller disasters, like the things I left behind or lost, are better than the bigger ones. Who is to know what is true.

***

Emails have in them so much power to affect  us. Just like letters did I suppose but I have never received an important message in my life via letters. I remind myself that even as I feel old (and remember dial-up modems with nostalgia tinged with relief at not having to use them any more), I am relatively young. I am happy to be in the 21^st century. Some people have other eras, decades they would like to go back to. None of that for me. In which world could I have traveled and built the life that I have now.

***

On some days, it feels incredibly hard to be away from home. I am not one for rose-tinting my view when looking at life or people. I have had strange conversations about how much I love my country where I have had to explain: I cannot be absolute in my affections, but to my mind that does not make them any less valid. But I remind myself of the moment I made the decision to leave, a beautiful light-filled Diwali evening, where I sat waiting and realizing that this could not be the life I will live any longer. Who is to say I chose rightly or not, only time will tell.

Field visit in pictures

We took a lot of pictures in Nam Giang. Our most fun and entertaining memories though aren't captured in any of these. Like the mini-hike through the forest. The joy (and relief) at finding a place to eat that we all liked. Our awe and shock at the baby whose only joy was in beating us all up. The rains, the mist, the mountains. But these should give you an idea.

We look at a rattan seedling
at a now defunct nursery

Mr. Ruoc, third from left, who was a
gracious host. Later we were told
 how he enjoyed the visit and sometimes
gets lonely and that made
me inexplicably sad.

50-50

Karaoke is big here!

We could call today a bust or a win. I am going with win. We got to Nam Giang around 10:30. I woke up naturally at 6 am to go get Internet (and coffee) at a local shop. The Internet at our hotel had died last night (and I must say I exhibited pretty intense withdrawal symptoms). After our last field visit, we were definitely wary of what to expect - not all of us, but at least some. Well, it was needless worrying on our part. The hotel where we are staying is great, the rooms clean, the Internet works. What about work you ask? Well, it seems like there were what I am going to ambiguously call 'miscues'. Nobody who should have been expecting us was expecting us and so no meeting that we had planned happened. By tomorrow morning we will know if we are even meant to stay here for the week. Instead most of us gave into the temptation that is a siesta (I only got 15 minutes sadly). We woke up to learn  nothing was likely to happen today.

Beautiful furniture at the coffee shop

We then went to get coffee, some folks went for an informal chat over coffee about rattan. I got some work done, wrote some of a paper I need to write (and by wrote I mean jotted down bullet points in no particular order and felt very happy with myself). It rained heavily in the afternoon and the combination of the winds and mist over the lush mountains was rather pretty (and I am pretty hardened against such sentiments by now). I decided to take a walk around the hotel and met many babies and toddlers being taken out for the evening and fed their meals. It is cool and breezy and I remembered why hill stations can be so charming. Hue is great but extremely hot and I have forgotten what it feels like to live anyplace where the weather works with you. In general things are great. In terms of one of our projects, confusion abounds.

The one full of exciting bus rides and dragons

Auto awesome in Google did this!

We decided to actually visit Da Nang this weekend (as opposed to the many weekends that we planned to but didn't manage to leave). I am very glad that we did because this was one of the most enjoyable and fun weekends so far. Many, many exciting things happened to us: bus rides full of chairs in the aisle and sassy old ladies, walks across the Dragon Bridge, lazing by the beach, so many naps, great views of Da Nang from where we stayed and a sky restaurant.

More from Vietnam

Go check out Meagan's blog for more on Vietnam and great pictures!

http://meaganrianne.tumblr.com/

Putting the field back in the field experience

We started with our field work in Nam Dong, about two hours from Hue city. Needless to say, it has been an exciting and adventurous few days. We left on Monday early in the morning - it takes anywhere between 1 - 2 hours to get there. Some highlights from our trip included: 

1. The motorbike rides to reach different communities - the landscape was mountainous, green and lovely.

2. By standing at the local post office and looking mournful and not understanding the language and pretending to not understand that they did not give prints to people, Megan and I managed to get prints of our updated surveys. The staff person then showed us out and shut the door. Politely but firmly. But it worked!

3. A LOT was lost in translation and a lot of our information is still in Vietnamese. Our poor translators, they were so helpful and their work is still not done.

4. Meagan from the bathroom: "There is a feather here" (in addition to lizard poop and other live and dead creatures). Me: "Be glad it is not attached to something." (okay so this may not be a highlight but it makes me laugh)

5. Our activity charts fell a lot (we need better quality tape next time and a better plan!)

6. Nam Dong seems to get a lot of sudden and intense downpours. Also lightning. It was really cool in the evenings and really nice!

7. Everybody knows I am Indian (by my eyes apparently :)) and at one community there was definitely some good-natured teasing and flirting.

If you have the patience and inclination for more (and pictures!), here's a quick summary of each of our days.

Preparing for our field work next week

Working breakfast during our meeting 
to finalize the survey

Most of this week and today has been spent preparing for our field visits next week. As of now the idea is to meet with officials from three departments that work in the area of forestry and meet with 12 groups in different villages. How much of this will convert into reality will only be known next week. The planning for this trip has been fairly fluid, in terms of dates, people going with us, the groups we are meeting etc etc. We have prepared our questionnaires and surveys and have gone through three rounds of reviews.