Week 3

Right now it is Sunday afternoon.  I am sitting in the same place that I have been for the last two and a half hours, faced with the same predicament with which I have been faced for the last two and a half hours, and I am forced to admit that the internet not working for a seemingly unapparent reason for the last two days is the most frustrating occurrence that I have encountered in my time here.  It’s not just that the internet won’t work and no one knows why, it’s that, dammit, I have shit to do.  Not important shit, but shit that requires the internet.

That’s not even entirely true.  It’s nothing that I need to do.  And it’s kind of a sad realization that my mild state of panic results simply from the inability to message the various people whom I care to message or who care to message me, or to write pithy Facebook comments that no one will think are quite as funny as I think they are, or to look at cat pictures and read poop stories on Reddit (we all do, so shut up).  This post will not be entirely on the technology-dependent society we all know and love, but it really is a sobering sense of isolation and entitlement that I’m feeling.  Seriously, I’m in India, bitching about the internet… I’ll go on a walk or something when it cools down from the 40 degrees it currently is. For those of you not Celsius-savvy, that’s fucking hot.

Anyway, I feel like I have so much that I want to share with you, with everyone.  If I knew that no one would ever read this, I could write forever about how I feel (and not just because I’m a girl and have an endless supply of emotion that needs to be talked about).  But honestly, a blog is an edited diary to appeal to an audience, and I assume that to my audience, to you, the reader, the cool new India stuff is the most exciting (which it is), so let’s have a weekly update!

A Weekly Update…

I spent this week with the Sadhu Vaswani mission’s mobile health van, which is a van that travels to various über-rural villages in the area (like, villages that you have to take a one-lane dirt road half an hour out to get to), offering completely free consultations and medicine.  It’s a really cool initiative through a pretty big hospital based in Pune, and based on the amount and difficulty of travel to these villages as well as the condition of the villagers’ health, probably the only medical attention available to these areas.

I’ve noticed that the more rural I travel, the more I stick out and people stare.  I was surely a spectacle and my mangled Marathi didn’t help.  Just when I got the hang of some choice Hindi, I get into the backwoods of India and a whole other language.  Luckily, “student,” “English,” and “toilet” are all pretty understandable.  Swear words are also readily understood and respected (just kidding?).

I visited eight villages in five days and distinctly remember what I thought about each of them and what stuck out to me.

Katkerwadi:  A woman named Asha showed me around her village and insisted I take pictures with all the children, who, like me, were all excited to do so. And, oh my god, it’s hot.

Katkerwadi

Takerwadi:  As a group of guys sat aloofly against the wall of the schoolhouse, smoking cigarettes and throwing me “the look,” I remember thinking that early-twenty-something men are the same no matter where you are in the world.  And, oh my god, it’s hot.

Takerwadi

Saltar:  This was a village high in the incredibly scenic mountains, which reminded me of the setting in that movie that I never actually watched all the way through, like alien Pocahontas… Avatar.  And, oh my god, it’s hot.

This thing goes to the middle of nowhere - a bunch of middles of nowheres.
It's pretty cool

Majgaon:  This one is actually pretty sad, but there was a stray kitten that I saw wandering around.  It eventually made its way to me and I noticed how underfed and weak it was.  The animal cruelty here, both intentional and unintentional, is one of the hardest things to see every day.  There is a ridiculous amount of stray animals that are neglected and left to fend for themselves and inevitably reproduce.  To realize that this kitten would definitely die and there was nothing I could do about it was a helpless and defeating moment.

Have some more scenery pictures

Ahrosh: I was invited into a home of a woman and her three children to play with their youngest, Doksh, who taught me the names of various body parts in Marathi and gave me a glass of Sprite.  And, oh my god, it’s hot.

This family was way too kind to this illiterate American student...

Atkergaol:  I finally got to pet a goddamn cow. And, oh my got, it’s hot.  I didn’t know I could sweat there…

Cows like to eat trash...
:)

Ambegaol:  At the Himgiri ashram, I ate cross-legged on the floor of an open hall, next to thirty other people, with my hands.  Actual Indian food is quite a bit spicier than the food prepared specifically for the group of us students.  It’s now as hot in my mouth as it is outside.

Good thing I have lots of practice sitting on a hard floor, eating rice with my hands.
#college

Mangal: I’ve now seen fungus in someone’s ear canal, and it was awesome.  You get the point about it being hot by now, I’m sure.

I am pretty much a giant here. A big, sweaty, American giant.
Who can take the fuck out of your blood pressure.

These folks at Sadhu Vaswani made it a really incredible week for me.
There were five cameras taking this picture at this point,
hence the distraught look on my face...
I've never had so many close-up, in-your-face pictures taken of me

And here are some pictures of other cool stuff I saw over the week!!

This is Lions Point, which looks over a valley near Lonavla.
It was just starting to rain, which made for an interesting view.

Looking over the ledge.  During the rainy season,
the valleys are full of rivers and waterfalls.

And here's just a monkey, chilling in the wild

And a camel!!

Pataleshwar Cave Temple - a Hindu temple carved as a cave in the 700s CE.
It got pretty dark further in, but the cave is huge and all very intricately carved.
It's a temple still, people come to worship Shiva.

This is Shaliwar Wada, a fort built in the 1700s for protection against the British