Blurb Book

I finally got around to putting my photos together as a Christmas present for my parents and grandparents.

Here it is! http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1104634

The quality of the book is pretty good although some of the photos are a little dark. I organized the book into five sections: monuments, landscapes, people, street scenes and flora and fauna. While it made me nostalgic for India, giving it as a present and sharing the stories with my family was therapeutic and also a bit of a reality check that my time in India has come to a real and finite end (for now anyways).

Getting reacquainted with amuurrrrica

Hello America,
Here are some things I am still getting accustomed to being back on your free shores...

~ I do not have to give my shopping bags to the security attendant at the store. Because a) there is no security attendant and b) you probably have security cameras and c) you want me to have to lug my huge bags all over your store like a bull in a china shop. One point for India.

~ It is apparently not appropriate or couth to walk around the city with a sweat rag, wiping all the driblets of sweat off my brow. Here you apparently call them handkerchiefs and I've only seen one person using them in this humidity. And he was South Asian. Since being back in your country I have ignored two people I know on the street (a sly turning around or looking at cracks in the sidewalk) because I was mid-wipe and melting in the heat. That's just not how you want to greet someone you haven't seen for a year.

~ Everything is in one place. And it's called Rite Aid. And it's ah-may-zing.

~ I can understand (almost) all the conversations around me. Including the obnoxious elliptical man at the gym yelling at the staff. Including the asinine teenage conversation on the Metro. Bah! Make it stop! I am no longer alone with my thoughts while walking down the street.

~ I have road rage. But so does everyone else here. So when I make inappropriate hand signals and yell in traffic, the recipient of my rage also does the same and it is not just a shoulder shrug apology or a hand twisty motion symbolizing anger (does anyone know what I am talking about?). Instead, I get, "I hope you don't have children with a mouth like that." Ooopsy.

~ Yogurt has become popular in this country. And Ice Berry apparently only hires Ko-reans. Which is fine, except that they charge me $6 for this fruity yogurty deliciousness.

~ I can look around when I walk because there is not the same feeling of fear and trepidation walking down the street. I am not constantly on the lookout for unknown puddles of water or feces. I am actually surprised and disgusted when I see spittle on the ground.

Le sigh.... I miss India.

Book Roundup

yay! i met my goal of reading 40 books in India!!! here's the list!

1. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
2. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
4. Travelling Mercies by Anne Lamott
5. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
6. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
7. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
8. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
9. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
10. Being Indian by Pavan Varma
11. The Interpreter by Leila Aboulela
12. Falling Man by Don DeLillo
13. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
14. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsen Hamid
15. The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier
16. Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun
17. Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham
18. Home by Marilynne Robinson
19. Delhi is not far by Ruskin Bond
20. Q&A (Slumdog Millionaire) by Vikas Swarup
21. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
22. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
23. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
24. The Three Mistakes of My Life by Chetan Bhagat
25. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
26. Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
27. Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
28. Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
29. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple
30. Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
31. In Defense of America by Bronwen Maddox
32. Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
33. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
34. Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
35. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
36. A Far Country by Daniel Mason
37. To the Wedding by John Berger
38. Pitching my Tent by Anita Diamant
39. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
40. Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden

Happiness above all else...

About a month ago, colleagues from our New York office came to Delhi for a series of strategic planning exercises. Below is the conversation between a driver and a male NYC colleague....

Driver: Sir, I think that woman is very strong (speaking about the facilitator). Is she married?
Colleague: Yes, she is married. Her partner is a woman.
Driver: (pause...) To a woman, sir?
Colleague: Yes, to a woman, they live together and love each other. Just like I have a partner who is a man.
Driver: (glances into the rearview mirror with a look of confusion and consideration).

(Two minutes later, after some pensive silence and consideration.)

Driver: And are you happy, sir?
Colleague: Yes, very happy.
Driver: Ok then.

“So, how was India?”**

This question is impossible to answer. Having lived abroad before, I’ve received it a number of times (insert relevant country/city). There are long and short answers to these friendly queries, helping me to really figure out what I did for the past ten months, why I originally came to India, and why India will always be a part of my life, a port of call, a home.

Because I will return to living in Washington, DC, a city notorious for unabashed networking young professionals, I expect meetings with new and old acquaintances will eventually uncover that I lived in India for the past year. Sometimes attention spans are short and intentions disingenuous in our nation’s capital. The long answers are reserved for those special people who probably wouldn’t inquire about my job as their first or second question anyway. But I digress. I imagine conversations to unfold as follows…

New friend: Wow. India. How was that?
(short answer) Me: It was great. Thanks.
(long answer) Me: India is a country of fascinating juxtapositions and extremes, confluence, confusion, chaos, culture, spirituality, wealth and beauty. I lived in India for only ten months and expect that after living there for ten years I would still not be privy to the inner workings of the Indian mind and culture.


New friend: So what did you do in India?
(short answer) Me: I worked at a women’s rights NGO in Delhi.
(long answer) Me: I was an American India Foundation Service Corps Fellow (for eight months) and a Clinton Fellow (for two months). I worked with a human rights organization called Breakthrough, whose India office focuses on women’s rights, specifically gender and sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, using “edutainment” (media education) as a platform for social awareness campaigns. I was mainly responsible for communications collateral and producing training materials.

In my spare time, I traveled extensively throughout the country, took approximately 2,948,7592,875 pictures, practiced kickboxing, attended one yoga session and found breathing out one nostril at a time silly and booger-inducing, discovered the wonders of tailored clothing, took Hindi lessons yet am still unable to read Devanagari, read a lot of books, drank a lot of chai, learned to live without air conditioning (and thus hopefully never take it for granted again), got engaged, met some truly quality individuals, and as our Program Manager instructed us at orientation, learned to embrace the boredom.


New friend: Why did you go to India?
(short answer) Me: I love chicken tikka.
(long answer) Me: I had worked at what in common parlance is known as "The Bank" for about two and a half years at a small grants program called the Development Marketplace (DM). A large part of my work at the DM was monitoring small-scale, innovative projects; I interfaced with inspiring social entrepreneurs from around the world. Feeling as though there was a disconnect between my work at the Bank and on-the-ground implementation, I applied for this fellowship to bridge that gap in my experience.


New friend: And how did that work out for you?
(short answer) Me: It was a good learning experience.
(long answer) Me: It did and didn’t. My work at the DM was far more substantive and although I was working in a headquarters in Washington, DC, I felt like I was having more of a “development impact” in my job there. I was told by my colleagues in India multiple times that I was being underutilized, an appreciated comment and recognition, but disheartening nonetheless.

So I reached out to other organizations in India in my spare time - wrote grant proposals for a sustainable energy NGO based in Hyderabad and did some research for an education technology company in Delhi to supplement the work I am doing at Breakthrough. Tried to make it work. Tim Gunn would be proud.

But living in India and working in an Indian NGO were invaluable experiences. I was the only foreigner in my office of thirteen people, ten of whom are women (the two accountants and the office assistant are the only men). I worked with empowered, independent women who have a true passion to advance human rights throughout India and hope to tackle issues such as religion, caste, and peace and conflict in the future.


New friend: Do you think you will go back?
(short answer) Me: Of course.
(long answer) Me: Hopefully, I will be able to go back to India, not only to visit, but also perhaps to live and work. India is a country that grabs hold of the imagination, the senses and the intellect in a way that I have not experienced in any other country. It is a frightfully frustrating place; the highs and lows are extreme and can happen within two minutes of each other, but the entrepreneurial spirit and hopes for the future are undaunted by the vast and deep inequalities that continue to handicap a large percentage of the population. I am forever tied to this vivid country; I will be back.





** this is my blog post for the official AIF Clinton Fellow blog. I neglected to mention that when I do come back to India... if it's to work, it will be armed with the following: more education so that I can actually "do" more and contribute in a more tangible, productive manner, air conditioning, a driver, and an international staff salary. But thought maybe that would not be appropriate to mention in the official blog... erg.....

The Proposal

Perhaps all the signs were there that John was going to propose on this trip. Some friends thought it would happen in London in February, others at the Taj Mahal when John first arrived in India. Being so far from home, I was unaware of the wagers being placed back in DC.

Our tour of the south of India began last Saturday; after flying to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, we drove down the coast to the southernmost tip of the Indian peninsula, to a town called Kanyakumari, where the waters of the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea meet. An important pilgrimage site as well, we maneuvered through the crowds on the beach waiting for the sun to set. All eyes were set on the horizon, and we watched the sun disappear over the waters where Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were immersed.

The next morning we awoke late, unable to motivate to see the sunrise, and headed for Varkala. We stopped along the way at Kovalam Beach before making it to the red sand cliff beaches of Varkala. Little did I know that John had intended to propose in Kanyakumari with the sunrise; the symbolism-laden time and place would surely have made a lovely proposal story, but the cloudy sunrise and my unwillingness to wake up and less-than-sunny morning demeanor negated that option.

From Varkala we traveled to Alleppey to board our houseboat that would take us through the famous backwaters of Kerala, which is aptly known as “god’s own country.” The day was perfectly relaxing and scenic – the backwaters, although they have recently become increasingly populated as the tourist scene is growing in the south, function as canals divided by thin strips of land. Since it is the low season, the waterways weren’t clogged with too many other houseboats.


We sailed calmly down the canals, helping the captain to steer the boat, eating deliciously-prepared tiger prawns and fresh veggies, bird watching and relishing our vacation time together. After the sun set, we ate more scrumptious food. After dinner, I turned away from John to put something in my camera bag, and when I turned around John was staring at me. Odd, I thought. Perhaps too much Kingfisher for John? I remember hearing the words “perfect for each other” and then the rest was jumbled until the “will you marry me?” came out of his mouth. Somewhere between those two phrases I think I realized what was happening. I think I said something like “are you serious?” (some of you know John’s proclivity for “fake” proposing by getting down on one knee… “Carolyn, will you… pass the salt?” I know - warped sense of humor). After realizing that he was in fact serious this time, he surprised me even further by producing a ring from his pocket. Although we had discussed not spending money on an engagement ring, I now cherish the new blingity bling on my left hand!



The details of the proposal from John’s side are quite endearing – the fake search for coffee early that morning so he could call my parents, buying the ring in India, writing drafts of the proposal on his desktop in a folder labeled as a work document so I wouldn’t open it…

Like I said at the beginning, I guess all the signs should have been there. On this trip, I was re-reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera in an attempt to find a quote to read at the marriage of a close friend this fall. I finished the book on board the houseboat and asked John if I could read the ending to him. The end of the book finds the protagonists traveling along the waterways, content in their newfound love, meandering down the river at an unhurried pace, savoring each other’s company.

The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.
“And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?” he asked.
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights.
“Forever,” he said.

John’s proposal is now written in the front of the book. Although I have had my answer ready for far less time than the fifty-three years of Florentino's wait, it was always, unquestionably, without a doubt, a “yes.”




** Click below for more photos from my Picasa Album:

South India Tour with John (June 2009)

John in India

Finally! John is here. I realized during Phil and Danielle's visits the impact of having outsiders take a brief look into my life here in India. Sometimes I cringe at their reactions and sometimes rejoice that good, it's not just me, this is a transformative, chaotic, vivid and wonderful place to live.

I was nervous about John's impending visit for a number of reasons, but realized that my number one concern was: What if John doesn't like India? What if he doesn't get why I chose to come here? I felt like there would then be this huge gap in understanding of the past year (almost) of my life.

But after jumping into our taxi from the international airport back to my quaint little flat in Arjun Nagar, I realized I had nothing to worry about. John has handled touts in Agra, precarious cycle rickshaw rides through the alleys near Jama Masjid, corrupt police hassling market vendors in Sarojini Nagar, and has successfully ventured out on his own to Connaught Place to the Cisco office. Amazingly enough, he has also survived this horrid Delhi heat, windstorms, and we even hand-washed our laundry together this morning. squish.

Those of you who know John probably had no doubt his adjustment would be fast. But it was confirmed when he sent me an email this morning, with no body, just the subject line: "can we get me a tiffen set?"

Welcome to India darlin.