A Family Affair

I spent the last two days visiting many different villages, towns, and cities in Gujarat to see family and to check out the places where my family (parents and grandparents) grew up. All Gujaratis know what "gham" they are from, the village of your paternal ancestry, often going back 10 generations or more. So I was really excited to see Tharapur, my village, where Panudada and Virendradada were born. This video is a series of short clips from Tharapur and Nadiad (my mom's mom, Ramaba, town). We hit the road early in the morning and drove through the Gujarati countryside and farmland. We stopped first at Nadiad which was crowded and much poorer then the big city, but had a big central temple where over a hundred young kids were peacefully meditating in a courtyard (there were a handful that were not paying attention at all, picking their noses, or harassing other kids). We went by the house my mom lived in, now fully renovated, and the neighbors ( my mom's aunts and uncles) promptly invited us in for Chai and nasto. In India, you don't call in advanced to visit, you just show up and mention your surname. We then went on to Tharapur, which was a sobering experience. The "old town" had all narrow dirt roads, was pretty dirty and very overcrowded. We winded through through the alleys until mom saw the gate to the area where the Amin house was (somehow it remained unchanged and she remembered it even though she had not been there since she first got married thirty years ago. As we approached the house, mom asked some women if they knew Panubai (my grandfather), and turns out one of his cousins still lived next door. She showed us around the old house, told us some stories about what had been going on in the village recently, and introduced us to a Baa that had lived there all her life and supposedly knew everyone (she especially remembered Kaushik Kaka, my uncle). As we picked up some fresh coconut water on our way out the village, I felt pretty overwhelmed. I thought about what my grandfather's generation had to go through to get out of this place and wondered how they did it. Next time I see Virendradada, I have lots of questions, which I'm sure he will be happy to sit down and discuss for hours on end.

We made our way to the college town areas of Vajnigar and Anand to stay at Prakash Masa and Jayshree Masi's bungalow (they come and stay 9-10 weeks out of the year). It was paradise- big bungalow with an exotic garden and a swimming pool. We had a relaxing evening and caught an early train to Baroda in the morning. It was my first time on an Indian train, and we rode second class, which was crowded and rich in "interesting" smells. In Baroda we visited all of my mom's family that was still there, including Mota Dada (my mom's oldest living uncle), who asked if Anish Could sit palate yet. They all asked how Anish was doing, reminisced of the fun the had when he came on his trip, and wondered if he was getting married anytime soon (I told them to keep an eye out, haha). The baby is my second cousin Aditi's new baby who is 6 months old and wears clothes for 12-18 months old kids. The visit with them was short, but I will be back to stay with them.

Sorry this entry was almost all "business" but I have to go pack for my ten day trip down south, and I'm about to watch Obama get sworn in!!! India is all about some Obama, its awesome. Today's paper had a cartoon with Obama dressed as Gandhi with the headline saying "Good luck Obama!", haha. All of you in South Carolina, enjoy the snow for the 3 hours it will last!

15 Tulip Bungalow & The City of Dust

A lot of my time in India will be spent in Ahmedebad, Gujarat, also known as the City of Dust, and for good reason. I'm staying at a family friend's house currently that some of you know. Rajiv Kaka and Mona Auntie are doing fine and are as caring and generous as always. The kids have grown up a lot and are in our equivalent of high school. Staying at their beautiful bungalow reminds me of how different everyday life in India is, the close family and efficient household; only what is needed is used, fresh organic food is bought, cooked, and eaten daily, 15 year old solar panels help heat your morning shower, and the lawn man cuts the grass with an old school manual mower.

There is, of course, the other side, overpopulation, littered streets, those less fortunate, and the smog. I experienced all this riding on the back of Ayush's scooter through the city. It has been 8 or 9 years since I have been here, and I hardly recognized the city with its main highways, huge shopping malls, and condos being built left and right. I was surprised to find all the newest style clothes in the mall, and shocked to find T-shirts that read "Textually Active ;)" and "F.B.I.- Female Body Inspector", if you have seen these shirts in America, or don't think its funny, say them aloud in an Indian accent. With all the changes though, there was still the infamous dust, the occasional camel trotting down the main highway, and the feeling that a car, rickshaw, scooter, or bike was going to slam into you every time you headed around a roundabout. In the words of Mona Auntie "if you can drive here, you can drive anywhere."

The first day I arrived was the day after Uttarayan, a huge kite festival ushering in spring where literally every rooftop teems with people, from children to grandparents, flying kites and tryin to maneuver them to cut other peoples' kite strings. 3 hours after I came home from the airport, I went with Ayush's friends to celebrate the festival in an area where a lot of the buildings reminded me of the outside of the Towers (my freshmen dorms): discolored, stained concrete. The inside, however, was a fully contemporary condo with all the modern amenities. His friend's condo was in the middle of hundreds of full rooftops of kite flyers (the picture at the bottom is before the rooftops were full and my camera battery died). It was real wild. Music blaring from all directions, people dancing, and every so often the happy scream of "Lupetttttt!!!" when someone cut someone else's kite down. At first I thought I was just jet lagged and hearing things, but no, there was the faint sound of Maroon 5 coming from one rooftop and Ne-yo from another, and, rest assured Katie Bauld, the backstreet boys are still very popular among 15-18 year old boys here, even on religious holidays. I couldn't imagine what the day before (the actually date of the festival) must have been like. It was my first real Indian festival, not some knock-off in a high school gym or an intramural field. I now know what kids from India mean when they are in America and say "you have no idea." Not bad for the first few hours in India.

Hello from the Motherland!

HALLO!! I am finally in India and decided a good way to keep in touch with everyone and document my trip would be to start a blog (thanks Alkesh Kaka for the idea). I don't know when and where I will have internet access but I'm going to try my best to keep things updated. I will be in India until April 30th, visiting family and friends, volunteering with Indicorps (www.Indicorps.org), and traveling all over. My mom will be with me for the first three weeks. Then from April 30th to June 9th I will be in Europe with family and to travel. Make sure you holler if you are going to be in Europe at the same time. I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time, but will miss everyone back home greatly. Hopefully this blog will help me keep connected back home and will make my trip better!

So first things first, I have to talk a little bit about my interesting flight over here. I flew from London to Mumbai to Ahmedabad via Air India. Air India is exactly what it sounds like India...on a plane. I'm pretty used to the Indian way, but it was down right hilarious on a plane (the following is in no way complaining). As soon as I walked on, there was one auntie screaming to one of her friends that she had saved perfect seats (the air hostess kept trying to explain to her that there were assigned seats on everyone's ticket) and the smell of nasto was already everywhere. By true Indian Standard Time (IST) we left two hours late because the power kept turning on and off in the plane, to which yells of how to fix it were heard from many passengers. There were about 5 brave white people total on the plane whose faces throughout the flight were priceless. We each had our own individual T.V. screens for movies and such, and they were probably some of the first touch screens ever made. So the Kaka (older indian man) behind me was jamming his screen, AKA my seat, with his thumb for about 30 minutes trying to get some 1960's Amitab Bachan movie to play while his wife poked me through the crack of the seats, telling me to put my seat up so he could watch the movie. Between jerking back and forth while he tried to figure out the touch screen and mom's face of disgust, I could not stop hysterically laughing. As soon as the plane's tires hit the runway, people started getting up and getting bags from the overhead compartment while the air hostess' yells to remain seated with seatbelts fastened were met with blank stares. I was just waiting for a bag to come flying out and hit someone in the face...oh and it did, and it was wonderful. Once we landed in Mumbai, we didn't get off the plane, but kind of put our feet up on the seat while the cleaning crew came in and got the plane ready to fly to Ahmedebad. The flickering power costed us another hour, but finally at 4 a.m. 14 hours after boarding the plane in London, we were standing in the customs line.

The zig zagged or 'jig-jagged' line turned into, of course, a mass of people pushing and shoving their way to the front. Finally someone figured out you could unhook the belts that made the lanes for the lines, and before I knew it the line turned into a mob that just pushed its way to the 6 customs officials. The cops came, yelling at everyone, saying we were uncivilized, to which the crowd yelled back that there was "no system", and that if the security people had had a system this would not have happened (I thought the system was the line). I sat in the mob, half delirious, unable to move, sandwiched between the ladies in full burqas from the Air Iran flight and some Guju kakas behind me who kept on giving me advice on the best way to get in front of everyone else. Then I saw the poor 20 something white kid yelling, "I need some water!!!" When we got to the customs desk, the guy said that the picture in my passport was not me, because I looked older in the picture then I did in real life (I guess the guy in the picture ate all my food). I got all our bags from the zoo that was the baggage claim and me and mom hurried outside to meet our family friend who was picking us up. I stepped outside the airport, took a deep breath of dusty, kinda funky Indian air, and could not have been happier. I had finally arrived in India.