Let’s Go(a)

Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll refrain from using any more puns for the rest of this post (but I can’t guarantee that they won’t return later in the blog). Anyways, last Saturday, my 5 Belgian housemates and I went on a trip to Goa, which has a reputation for being the Cancun of India. It’s the smallest state in the country, and an hour’s flight away from Bangalore. The biggest city in Goa is called Vasco da Gama, which is a reflection of Portuguese influence stemming from their conquest of the area in the 16^th century.

We stayed in Goa for five days, after which I returned to Bangalore, and my housemates continued on their journey up to the northern states of India.

I’d only been working in Bangalore for two months so I didn’t feel like deserved this break per say, but something from that silly movie Eat Pray Love resonated with me. The main character is in an Italian barbershop, when a man getting a haircut declares:

Americans. You work too hard, you get burned out. You come home and spend the whole weekend in your pajamas in front of the T.V. But you don’t know pleasure. You have to be told you’ve earned it. You see a commercial that says: “It’s Miller Time!” And you say, “That’s right, now I’m going to buy a six pack.” And then drink the whole thing and wake up the next morning and feel terrible. But an Italian doesn’t need to be told. He walks by a sign that says: “You deserve a break today.” And he says, “Yes, I know.”

So Goa was my “Yes, I know.”

Once we arrived, the six of us got one of those big, boxy Mahindra cars which took us and our luggage to Agonda in southern Goa. Southern Goa is quiet, peaceful, and boasts an abundance of beautiful beaches. Driving there, it was strange seeing Portuguese town names on highway signs along with Catholic churches around every corner. But Goa has a rich history dating back to 20,000-30,000 BCE, and even appears in the Mahabharata, an epic poem from Ancient India written in Sanskrit, whose length is about ten times the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. That’s some crazy shit.

We stayed in sea-front huts for our three nights in Agonda. We sunbathed, swam, explored the community on scooters, and were able to celebrate the Holi Festival there. Holi happens on the last full moon day of the lunar month of Phalguna (Feb/March). It’s a celebration of the arrival of spring and a new year, and because of this, it’s also a time to mend broken relationships. It’s also just super fun and joyful.

On Tuesday, we journeyed two-and-a-half hours in the Mahindra to Vagator in northern Goa. Northern Goa is synonymous with party Goa, but we came at the end of the season, so things were pretty much winding down. The lifestyle in northern Goa is distinctly hippie compared to southern Goa. I always wonder though, what is it about beaches and hippie culture? I encountered something similar in a place called Punta del Diablo in Uruguay, an end-of-the-line kind of beach town. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something escapist about all of it.

In northern Goa, the conversation naturally tended towards drugs, even when I did nothing to direct its course in that particular direction. The two Canadian girls I met at the hostel had dropped acid that day, the 18-year-old from Pune was always “still stoned, man” (he continuously lit huge joints in the front patio of the hostel while the security guard just chilled), the two Nigerian men who showed us the way to Curlie’s were dealers, and a third-year medical student who had driven to Goa all the way from Kerala by himself told me that he had arrived with only his “best friend, Marijuana.”

Dude, I didn’t even ask.

We also made it to the Wednesday Flea Market in Anjuna, which was a maze of stalls, whose wares began to repeat after a while. Jewelry, pashmina shawls, “Ali Baba” pants, printed bags, hammocks, chai, jewelry, pashmina shawls, “Ali Baba” pants…

The vendors had an interesting notion on how to best draw in customers. They were constantly hawking: “Come, madam, look at my shop!” “Madam, why you in a hurry?” “Hallo madam, where are you going?” As if trying to make people for guilty for not looking into their stalls was the way to go.

By Thursday, I was pretty content with heading back to Bangalore. I love the seaside, but I was feeling antsy to get back to the city and do things again. Other than a military exercise, which delayed my flight for an hour, I was back safe and sound in my apartment by that evening.

On Why I’m Here

Traveling to a foreign country can take considerable effort, planning, and money. Last December, before coming to Bangalore, I had to take a trip from Providence to New York to apply for my employment visa (well, technically I could have mailed in my application and passport, but I’d heard too many horror stories), requiring me to find a place to crash in the city, spend three hours in a rather sketchy building with a hand-crank elevator, draft and collect ten letters from my organization, compile even more documentation, spend a fair bit of money, and sit tight with a lot of patience. I also had to inform my credit card company that I’d be leaving the country, book flights, get vaccinations, and call my insurance provider at least twelve times for them to figure out how to release the 8-month supply of medicine I’d need for my stay here. I also stressed out whether this was the right decision, battled a bunch of anxiety, and mentally prepared my mind and my stomach for the culture shock So, at least for me, it wasn’t really a casual thing, this whole Bangalore trip. And when things take time and effort, people begin to ask why you decided to do it. And why, specifically, India?

Honestly, its something I don’t have quite a good answer for, yet. Maybe after eight months, I can look back and try to elaborate with a more eloquent answer as to why I came here.

I was talking to another volunteer at Parikrma the other day, and he told me that he has different answers to this question depending on who’s asking. And I think that I can relate to that as well. In a lot of situations, we craft our answers depending on the situation, the person who’s asking the question, and our relationship to them. And, I think there might be reasons that we can’t articulate or express yet, things that maybe we realize after the trip is over.

And people ask the question in different ways, which makes you answer them differently. What are you doing here? How long are you here for? And even, what are you running away from?

So, I think for now, it’s an easier (and more embarrassing) story to explain how I got here.

I’d lived in the northeastern US since 2002, and it was time for me to get out. I was going to finish my undergraduate degree in December, and I was thinking I’d like to work for a non-profit and live in the Bay Area. I’d come to love spending time outside, and Boston winters, which last for far too long, aren’t exactly conducive to that. Fall of 2013, I was trying to connect with people on the West Coast and find job opportunities. I was also going to some career fairs as well. And I kept finding myself spotting this one guy, who I thought was fairly cute. My friend had introduced us once when we were shopping a class on philanthropy, and I remembered his name. He also seemed to come up in networking conversations, because we had similar career interests.

A couple of weeks later, I sent him a Facebook message with the pretense that I was interested in talking about potential career opportunities over a cup of coffee. Really, I just thought he was kinda cute.

He was the one who introduced me to Parikrma, an educational non-profit that runs four schools for children from slum communities, where he had volunteered several years ago during a gap year. He urged me to talk to the CEO, with whom he had maintained a good relationship. Somehow, a couple of weeks later, I was on Skype with Shukla Bose, CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation, and after a 45-minute call, she basically said – come to India. Mm, like it wasn’t a casual 13,071 kilometers from where I lived.

But the rest, really, is history. I had no previous plans of going to India, but the job content that she described to me was a more exciting prospect than anything I had been offered or had found so far. Sometimes, I wonder whether I took the offer because I didn’t like the anxiety of waiting for some other prospect to show up. In any case, twelve days later, I was sending her an e-mail confirming my decision to spend the next eight months in Bangalore.

I think I’m the only girl who sets out to get coffee with a cute guy and ends up in India.

Coincidentally, one of the first people I’d networked with in the Bay Area told me that his job opportunities had often happened spontaneously, and in life, you need to know what you want so when the moment comes, you can make quick, precise decisions. This wasn’t where my head was at, honestly, when Shukla offered me the job. I didn’t have any particular convictions about going to India, which is why I’m surprised that I made it through the lengthy and stressful process of preparing to come to this country. At times, I wondered what was driving me to be patient and measured as I waited in lines and on insurance phone calls for hours. I think a part of myself wanted a challenge – that I’ve always grown and learned things about myself through travel. Henry Miller gets it: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” And when else could I do it? I had just finished my undergraduate degree and luckily, I didn’t have much tying me down.

When you travel, I think there’s the draw and the pullback, which plays out kind of like a tug-of-war. India has always captured some small but important part of my imaginary. I remember being enraptured by The Toss of a Lemon, a generational story starting with a young girl who is widowed after the birth of her two children at the age of 18. My imagination flooded with colors and smells and foods and scenery that I had never experienced before. I imagined warmth – of the people, the climate, the spices. A place so different from the chilly Northeast. For me, this was the draw.

The pullback is what keeps you in the place you are. Friends, family, lovers, jobs, obligations, debt, fear. Sometimes, I think that more than the draw towards India, I felt the lack of a pull back. Although, a lot of the past two years has been defined by transience and change, and part of me is skeptical to plunge headfirst into more of that. I’m the kind of person who appreciates routine in some ways, but I dread monotony. But I figure, or at least I hope, that I have enough of the rest of my life to settle and maybe build something that lasts.

On Traffic

I remember one of the first things I read about Bangalore before arriving here was about the amount of traffic. Every Bangalore native I talked to would inevitably mention the awful traffic congestion and the resulting pollution when describing their city… Pedestrians, cars, motorbikes, trucks, auto-rickshaws, buses, bicycles, cows, stray dogs, vendors selling produce on carts. All of them vie for space on the road. When the traffic comes to a standstill at a red light, bikes and autos squeeze into the open spaces between buses and cars, as if they’re waiting at the starting line of some kind of vehicular marathon. As the countdown on the traffic signal winds down, engines begin to rev in anticipation. With the amount of traffic on the road, traffic laws become more like traffic suggestions, especially if there are no cops around. There seems to be no real wrong side of the road – I’ve been in autos and bikes that regularly cross the centerline in order to move ahead of the gridlock. Basically, it’s more important to use your wit. And your horn (a lot). Horns aren’t necessarily used to express imminent danger or the fact that you’re pissed off at another driver, but rather to notify your presence to others on the road. Approaching an intersection? Honk. Passing a truck? Honk. Squeezing between two cars? Definitely honk. It seems that the infrastructure for public transportation is significantly lacking in Bangalore. Buses are overcrowded, and sometimes they don’t really stop to let you on (or off, for that matter), and I haven’t met a single person in the last five weeks who regularly uses the metro. In the last 13 years, the population of Bangalore almost doubled, from 5.1 million in 2001 to over 10 million in 2014, which poses some serious problems for traffic congestion. This is the first city in which I haven’t used any major modes of public transit; the preferred method for those who don’t have their own ride are autos.

Traffic to the front.

Traffic to the back.

The concept of traffic safety is completely different here. I see toddlers wiggling around in the front seat, workers atop mountains of sand on dump trucks, whole families on the flatbed of pick-ups. And although the law mandates helmets, it’s only for the person who’s driving the bike. In the surrounding suburbs of Bangalore, riders might not wear helmets for a short ride if they know they won’t run into the authorities. My friend Akash tells me half-jokingly that it’s an insult to the driver if the passenger wears a helmet. And it’s not as if accidents don’t happen. In heavy traffic, you’ll definitely get bumped at some point. I was in an auto once when a small van started backing up and the driver had to bang on the door in order for the van to avoid crashing straight into us. In casual conversation, I’ve heard stories of people who have died in traffic accidents – friends, children, parents. Akash, who’s been riding his bike for almost ten years, was in an accident two years ago, which left him in a coma for two days, a hospital for two months, and basically bedridden for another four. But his comment on Bangalore traffic? At least it’s never boring.

Coolest kid in town.

Bikes are ubiquitous in the city. Pulsars, Activas, CBZs, Unicorns, Scootys, Royal Enfields. I associate the typical family vehicle with a minivan, but here, an economical option for a family of four, with two small children, might be a bike. I see kids sitting on top of gas tanks, holding onto the handlebars (or standing in front of the driver’s seat if it’s a scooter), cradled between their father’s arms, with mothers riding sidesaddle with a baby in their arms. In India, many of the bikes have a saree guard, which kind of looks like a cooling rack attached to the side of the bike, preventing the flowing material from getting tangled in the back wheel. I see all kinds of people riding bikes. Parents taking their children to school, men on their way to work, women in sarees and chadors with their scarves flowing behind them (woo badass), young men with their girlfriend’s arms wrapped around their waist (cheeks sweetly resting on shoulders), three grown men sitting cozily on two-seaters. You see pillion riders sitting with their arms crossed, or checking text messages, or even studying for school. There are also some pretty impressive packages I’ve seen being transported by passengers on bikes: a full-length mirror, a TV, a suitcase, a ladder, and my favorite thus far- four plastic chairs, stacked one atop another, balanced expertly atop a man’s head. Commuting to work in Jayanagar with Akash has instilled in me an appreciation for bikes. Especially Royal Enfields. I’ve never really had a thing for bikes, but I’d say if rock-and-roll had a motorcycle incarnation, it would be a Royal Enfield. Around Boston, it’s impractical to own a bike.  There’s a semi-permanent layer of snow covering the ground between December and March, and if not, the temperature is probably in the negatives. Potholes everywhere. Riding a bike is considered a serious risk. I remember my uncle used to own a red bike, and secretly took my cousin, who was 13 at the time, around the block. Let me tell you, he would have been murdered if my aunt had found out. But here? I’m waiting for Akash to pick me up, sitting on a small block of cement that juts out from the apartment across the street from mine. A mother comes out holding her son, who’s maybe 3 or 4, and sets him atop the gas tank of her husband’s bike. He begins to cry and looks pleadingly toward towards his mother, but after several moments, father and son take off down the street. The mother crosses her arms and her eyes follow them. A minute or two later, the pair appear once again the motorcycle, while the son is still crying and his mother picks him up, his father gently shaking his head. Then he sets off to work. The next week, when I casually glance out my balcony before heading to work, I see the family on the street below. Father and son once again make the two-minute journey with the mother staring after them, but this time, there are no tears upon their return. The boy and his mother blow the father a kiss, and he rides away. Learning to ride a bike here is a small rite of passage, it seems. People might complain about their commute to work, but riding with Akash to Jayanagar on his bike was one of the first things that made me smile here in Bangalore. When the bike reached a certain speed, I could feel my lips inadvertently widen into a grin. And although I began as a white-knuckled, nervous passenger, I gradually let one hand go, and as the days passed, I let the other go. Like almost every other experience I’ve had since coming here, things always end up being different from what I expected. No amount of research, reading, or guidance could have prepared me for the wonderful, raucous chaos of this place. And even something seemingly mundane like commuting to work (which looks like this) is filled with new sights and leaves me daily with new questions.

…

On the way home, right before I get off the flyover going from Jayanagar to Sahakaranagar, there’s this view on the right with a small skyline, and on the left, in the darkness, two brightly lit buildings connected by a bridge. I’ve seen this view from autos and cars, but it’s just not the same. Riding on a bike, you can feel city around you, and even the whipping wind and the dust can’t blur your vision.