The Trials of Fame

Just recently I got the news that my cousin Erica was in a car accident. Luckily, she’s ok, if a little worse for wear. If anyone can bounce back full throttle it’ll be her and I’m glad to hear she’s on the mend. Since she was in my thoughts this week, I took a little consideration to our methods of transportation. When we first arrived in India we took lots of day trips, they hired vans to take us about since they were longer drives. In the vans we noticed the strange traffic, but it was outside us, hardly threatening. Since getting into our more normal schedules now we do all our own travelling either (a) by foot or (b) by autorickshaw. Traveling by foot is a dangerous affair only because we are a large group and not everyone is so well educated as I in the manner of jaywalking. My education came to me in high school when after describing a particularly hazardous road crossing experience I was given the best advice possible. The eminently wise Pamela Klein, a former resident of New York: City of Jaywalking, informed Jacob and I, that when you are jaywalking you “you move, don’t mosey.” Unfortunately with a group of seven people there is always a bit of lollygagging and we look like a really advanced level of Frogger as we stream awkwardly across the street amidst honking and stares. Some day we will all move quickly and together, what a glorious day it will be.

The second method, an autorickshaw, is basically a pedicab with a go-kart engine. Some of them are nice: they only struggle a little going up hills, they have plush seats, play music, have cool lights, and high bars preventing a tall American from tumbling out into the road. But most shaws (as I call them, the natives call them autos, but that hardly seems fitting as they could be Flinstone-mobiles and have the same effect) are not nice. Some have to be pushed to be started, some they turn off going down hills as sometimes would happen when my bug decided to stall on a hill and I rolled my way to the bottom, some are tiny and we end up with arms and legs sticking out of every opening with the vague suspicion our rickshaw driver is laughing at us when he stops to pick up more people to take in addition to us.

A shaw, here seen with one of our translators.

Autorickshaws would not be so bad if there were clear traffic laws. The streets are divided into two lanes, sometimes by a cement divider sometimes only by our American sensibilities. Indians drive on the other side of the road from us, but you would never know it. Most of the time I don’t even notice. Why is that? Oh, because no one here keeps to their side of the road. U-Turns in the middle of busy roads, buses barreling down the middle, cyclists and scooters going in every direction possible, even with cement dividers you find people heading both directions on both sides, the roads are more an imitation of that traffic game where you try to retrieve the red car than any semblance of order. The only constant is the honking, Indians honk to alert people to their presence since they could be anywhere on the road. They honk turning corners, they honk as they pass you, they honk if they want to pass you, buses honk because I’m pretty sure bus drivers think white people are stupid and can’t see buses, but everyone is always honking. For the most part, you just have to trust your shaw driver to know his way around, but occasionally you’re battling insane traffic, being followed by two or three scooters of guys staring at you, and having to duck your head to see out because you’re too tall, all while trying to figure out where you are, how you’re going to get where you want to go, and how you’re going to communicate that to the driver. Indians don’t like to say no, so you do end up in at least two or three shaws a week where the driver had no idea what you were saying when you hired him and is just driving around aimlessly until you make him stop or he can ask another Indian what in the world we’re talking about. Not to mention the haggling we have to do every time we want to go some place. Being white means their first price is outrageously high and suggesting a more reasonable price has them putting on an injured expression as if you were suggesting they take buttons for payment. Ah the sweet joys of travel.

My cousins, the Jermaseks (well, Erica, Alex and pseudo-Jermaseks Charlie, Aya, and Ashley) live in L.A. Generally that’s as close as my brushes with fame get. And I’m content with that, I mean not everyone gets to say they were on the phone with their cousin when he saw Hurley from Lost. My degrees to Kevin Bacon decrease every day thanks to them and some day I may even be able to pass along a compliment on his dancing skills and fine last name when my degree is just one or two. But otherwise, I would not consider myself well acquainted with celebrity. I mentioned in my last post that in India we’re kind of a big deal. Well, that trip landed us in the newspaper and at last I’ve got my fame on.

Don't ask me what it says. I've got no clue.

As well, we all got our sarees finished. (You buy the long fabric then have a ‘blouse’ and ‘petticoat’ still to make.) Sarees are lovely. They flatter the body, they are fancy, you can sit crosslegged in them without giving everyone a bit more than what they asked for, and they make me look less like a thin plank of a person.. which I suppose was point one, but hey that’s big for me. Unfortunately, sarees are extremely complicated to put on, a bit hot to wear, and bring us as much attention as a supporting actor might get. (I won’t say a lead, because we’re not close to Brangelina status, but we attract a fair bit of a crowd and more than a small bit of staring.)

Ignore my hair, wet and in need of cutting.

Last Sunday, we all decided to wear our sarees. That night we went out for dinner at the five-star restaurant known as Pizza Hut. (Pizza Hut is actually a sit down restaurant here and nothing tastes better after three weeks in India than cheesy garlic bread.) They planted us in a booth next to the window. Alright, cool, we are a large group, seems natural. The waitress asked if it was a special occasion, because of our sarees and despite our response to the negative they still whipped up balloon flowers for our celebration. The longer we sat in the booth, the more we started to recognize people.. people outside the window. Groups of young men leaned against the railing and stared in, taking ‘snaps’ with their phones, families passed by once, twice, three times, staring in at us, and suddenly we realized we had become some part of a strange zoo. After dinner, we headed down to get some Baskin Robbins. As we stood eating our ice cream we accumulated a greater and greater crowd.

Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut! (Actually the mall has both of those.)

Eventually a group of young men worked up the courage to talk to Taylor. They won’t approach us if we’ve got a guy with us and after a while of talking to him (asking the usual questions: Which country? Why are you here? How do you like Visag?) asked if he would introduce us. Alright, we’ll shake some hands. Then one man came up with a rather extended explanation of why he wanted a picture of us. Which was actually rather nice, he said that while most Indians were trying to adopt Western culture here we were preserving Indian culture. With such a nice explanation how could we say no? But alas, one picture means we’re posed and suddenly everyone’s got their phone out. There are guys standing next to us with big grins urging their friends to take the snap quick, fathers handing us their kids, women giggling as their husbands snatch a picture of us standing next to them. By far this was the biggest crowd we’d ever attracted.

So if you’ve been in need of an ego boost lately, felt invisible, or unattractive, my suggestion is to come to India! Not only do they like to have your picture, they’re full of compliments! Or if you’ve ever wanted to understand the rough life of a celebrity, stop on by!

Jokes aside, we may not travel with all six girls in sarees ever again, but we love it here. The people are friendly, quick to laugh or smile, everyone is always dressed to the nines, and you can always find someone willing to help you out no matter where you are.

Just watch out for these guys. They'll rob you blind.

Day to Day

On Thursday, we went to a festival in the Jalari Pet, which is a fishing village not far from us where Professor Nuckolls studies. It was a festival for a Goddess. Tradition holds that when a plague arrived it was usually because a Goddess had arrived. This particular goddess came back in the thirties with a smallpox epidemic. There are Godesses of cholera and other smallpox goddesses as well. The Jalaris take the image of the goddess out of the temple down on the beach and walk it through the village all day then return it at night. They shoot off fireworks, 'whip' themselves (they whip their legs and if done right it doesn't hurt), and try to call down possession from the goddess through dancing and singing. It was really interesting to see and we met Professor Nuckolls 'brother' in the village. He is a part of a family there and we were introduced to many of his relatives, whenever we were invited into a house they gave us sodas to drink. We felt bad for taking them but as it's part of the hospitality ritual we drank them anyhow. We will probably spend much more time in the Jalari Pet as some people's studies are there and mine might be as well.

Friday was a relatively lazy day, a few of us walked down to the beach through Jalari Pet. The beach we walked along was more of a public beach and therefore fairly dirty. But it was still pretty. Ocean's not too shocking to me I guess, it looks like an ocean. We also went over to the Krishna temple in our neighborhood. The colors in the temples (and everywhere to be honest) are really amazing. They love bright colors. The clothes the women are almost always in bright colors and so beautiful. The men wear western style dress for the most part.  We also got ice cream during our walk. The ice cream here is closer to the consistency of mousse, but it tastes alright. I must say none of the desserts here have really tickled my fancy. A lot of them have a ton of clarified butter in them, which isn’t particularly tasty.

We had a BYU professor visiting us. Dr. Ralph Brown is a sociology professor and runs development internship programs in Thailand, Jordan, and Vietnam. On Saturday we went to his lecture on rural women’s autonomy in South East Asia. He talked about how we define development and freedom. His research in particular was in how owning a motorcycle provides better advantages to a South East Asian woman in helping her to become involved in Primary Economic Activities (bringing in money versus Secondary Economic Activities which save money). The motorcycle provided mobility, development and autonomy for women over having no transportation and even having access to public transportation.

That evening we went shopping at this Exhibition, which was sort of like a fair. They had people doing Henna and selling all sorts of things. There were some booths showing of juicers, dicers, and such, which reminded me of the Del Mar Fair. I also talked with Dr. Nuckolls and Krishnayya-garu about my project; I might move my focus to the newly developed soap operas. I’m going to actually just talk directly with the translators and then with the household staff since they’re more middle class and fit the criteria for my project. We’ll see how it goes.

On Sunday we went to church which was mostly in Telugu. That evening we headed up the coast to see some ancient Buddhist ruins that Dr. Nuckolls wanted to show Dr. Brown. Not much is known about them. They date possibly back to the 14^th century and returning South East Asian Buddhists probably started them. There aren’t many Buddhists left in India even though the movement started here, especially not in Viskhapatnam. We also went to a Dutch Colonial graveyard. As usual for my trips to graveyards I tried to find the ones that said how they died. One guy fell into the hold of a ship, one died of heat apoplexy, and one of constriction (constipation). 

After that we walked along the waterfront where there were some colorful statutes of Buddha’s head, sea goddesses, Krishna, and Gandhi. There were street vendors selling corn cooked over coals, coconuts, and ice cream and there were lots and lots of cows. As Dr. Nuckolls says it is particularly auspicious to touch the hump of the cow or the neck cowl. It is even more suspicious to touch the urine and feces but none of us have needed that much luck yet. The ocean was really beautiful, although none of the beaches are particularly clean. 

After that we went to a restaurant in the city where we ate curry and rice off of a traditional banana leaf. We had pon for dessert, which is a leaf wrapped around cloves and honey and some other things. It was about how I’d imagine a leaf wrapped around potpourri would taste.

On Monday we actually had a language class because Krishanayya-garu wanted to get us started. This is the fourth alphabet I’ll have learned (English, Russian/Cyrillic, Arabic, Telugu). This reminds me of Arabic though they don’t read from right to left and the letters are more complicated than Arabic.  We also learned some kinship words and some religious stuff.

There are three main gods: Vishnu, Siva, and the goddess Devi. Almost all of the other gods are reincarnations or avatars of those gods. On Monday we went to the temple of Varaaha Nara Simha on Simhachalam. Varaaha means bull, Nara means man, and Simha means lion. There are ten reincarnations of Vishnu and one is a bull and one is a lion. The temple we went to worshiped the bull, lion and man reincarnations. Simhachalam means lion-hill. In his lion reincarnation Vishnu killed a demon that was able to live forever inside and outside, in the sky and on the ground, and during night and day. Vishnu used his lion-strength to disembowel the demon on the threshold of a house, on his knee, and as the sun was setting which was in between all of the requirements meaning the demon could be killed. The temple itself was on this hill.

We got to go into the inner sanctum of the temple. This is only usually allowed to certain special individuals or to those who pay a lot of money. But because Dr. Nuckolls is  friends with the King of the ancient kingdom of Vijayanagaram he called ahead and got us in for free. The inner sanctum has a statue of Varaaha Nara Simha but it is wrapped in plaster except for like 12 hours of the year in May. We were accompanied by the King’s court astrologer and doctor, Dr. Raama linga Swami. The temple was really beautiful. Outside, they were filming a Tollywood movie. There was a fight scene and they had flower petals that they threw in front a fan. There was a huge crowd and the cooks who’d come with us were excited to see the movie stars. Unfortunately the stars left before we did and we became the center of attention.

 

The cooks looking down at the movie shoot.

Everywhere we go people like to have pictures with us. They’ll take pictures of us with their cell phones and many will actually come up and ask to take a picture and then pose with us. Pretty much everywhere we go people stare openly and ask for pictures. On Tuesday we went to another temple of Vishnu, in all ten of his incarnations and this family was there with us. They had the little girl video taping and the dad would come stand next to us as we were talking in a group while she filmed. They must’ve got a good twenty minutes recording of us talking about our music preferences while the father lurked nearby. Fun! We joke about pulling weird faces or telling them we’re celebrities. So far it isn’t too annoying except when they keep wanting more pictures.

Arrival

I am arrived! Woohoo!

So, how did it go? Overall: Good.

So my trip took about three days total. I flew from L.A. to London, London to Delhi, and Delhi to Vizag.

The flight to London was good, I flew Virgin Atlantic which means I got my own tv, an sleeping eye mask (whatever those are called), toothbrush/paste, sleeping socks and a pen. Which is nice. They fed us dinner and breakfast. There were a lot of French folk on the plane, headed home I suppose.

In London I had a six hour layover, so I chilled in the London Heathrow Airport, which is very large and filled with very expensive things. For the most part I read on my kindle. I did buy a sandwich that was good and expensive. No wifi or outlets though, which is something I think about but the rest of you will find to be a boring extraneous detail. After five hours we were given a gate so I went and checked into the gate and called my father with an international calling card. I met up with four others from my group there, they had flown from D.C. to London and had a 12 hour layover so they walked around London.

Then a 7 hour flight to Delhi. This was on Virgin Atlantic as well. The flight had barely anyone on it so I got two seats next to a window all to myself. At this point everything started being announced in Hindi and English. Once we hit Delhi we had to go through customs which wasn't bad at all. Then came our first attempt at getting somewhere in India. We had reserved rooms in a hotel inside the airport to sleep in because hour layover was over twelve hours and overnight. We headed out into the airport, then walked the length of it looking for an elevator to the fifth floor. We found one that took us to the second and headed up. There we asked around for the hotel, but got conflicting directions. Following someone's advice we headed outside and then saw a sign inside that said hotel. We tried to get in but the guard at the door wouldn't let us because our tickets were for the next day.

No problem! We have reservations at the hotel! Logically this should get us in!

Or just two of us.

Me and Andie got in but not the other three. Very logical. So we went to try and contact the hotel. We headed to the Information Desk and the woman told us to call the hotel and pointed us in the direction of some payphones. Now by payphones I don't mean a payphone, I mean like five phones with a guy you pay in rupees. Having no rupees I headed off to exchange. At the exchange desk the guy told me that a twenty was too big to exchange. Right. So I ran off to the next desk and found Taylor instead. Somehow he'd talked his way in and found someone helpful.

This helpful person told the Info Desk woman to call the hotel, which she did. For free. Finally someone from the hotel came down and got us and got our last two through the security check. We checked our luggage and got escorted through another like four or five check points. The security was all India army carrying handguns and rifles. Which was a little intimidating for us Americans. The hotel ended up being really nice and helpful.

In the morning we flew off to Vizag. This was the only flight that had any issue as when we got to Vizag it wasn't clear enough to land right away. The pilot told us we would circle and hope it cleared up. He said we only had about an extra 30 minutes worth of fuel and that we might have to go refuel elsewhere and come back. Luckily it cleared up and we landed safely with no issue.

As I've been telling everyone Vizag feels like a really green Tijuana. Buildings crammed everywhere, shanty towns interspersed with normal buildings, being by the ocean, the streets and lack of sidewalks. Everyone drives here without regard to just about anything. You basically just drive as aggressively as possible and ignore the lines.. and honk a lot.

We arrived to the houses and put our stuff away, there's two houses that the program owns. I'm living in this one with Colleen and Taylor upstairs and then our head cook Durga and her husband on the top floor with their baby.

I snatched this pic from the facebook page, I'll be uploading pictures from my camera probably this weekend.

Our first day we went out and bought some clothes, we crammed 11 people in one autorickshaw which was.. exciting? You can take an autorickshaw just about anywhere for pretty cheap. The are we'll be doing our projects in is within walking distance along with a post office and a bunch of kids schools. The neighborhood is really nice where we leave, Professor Nuckolls was saying that it's a really expensive and desired area of Vizag so that's cool.

Things that are different about India:

-my bed is a mattress on the floor
-the toilets are mostly squat
-no toilet paper
-bucket showers
-we eat our food with our hands

Not too bad, well, I'll miss TP, but I'm functioning. Yes. Lots of sanitizer is going on.

Things that I miss already:
-tacos
-breakfast

All the meals here are fairly similar, they're delicious, but breakfast was a pasta sort of dish and toast. So. There's that. There's no oven here so it's all cooked over burners and takes a lot of prep. I'll be following the cooks around at some point trying to figure out how they do things.

And that's about it! It's 11am here so I'm going to head out. Normally we'll have classes at 9 but those don't start for a bit. Right now they're just letting us recover.

Ciao!