Tales and Photos From Karnataka

It goes without saying that I am truly horrible blogger. I could try to blame it on any number of things that have been occupying my time (namely my independent study) but nobody likes excuses. Thus, this post (and those to follow) will be in order, just really really late.

First, these are all photos from our second week-long vacation-type trip to Karnataka. It was a blast.

This is paint (tikka) in powder form that you mix with water. I bought a little because it was too beautiful to pass up and has thus lead me to create some paintings (if you can call them that) which have yielded comments mostly along the lines of, "...what is that?" The bag of blue paint may or may not have been thrown in jest and it may or may not have exploded all over our hotel room, thus turning all of the towels a very pretty light blue. Maybe.

These are bangles. Lots and lots of bangles. The most popular bangles are glass but DO NOT BUY GLASS BANGLES as they are made by child labourers (generally). Much like matches, firecrackers, rugs, sweets, the list goes on. If I've learned nothing while being in India, I've learned how absolutely important it is to be a conscious consumer. Read the labels.

The two photos above were taken in the market in Mysore, the "Palace City". We toured the palace itself which was great until our tour guide got a little grabby with six out of the nine girls on our program. I know it's not right to essentialize all Indian men and lump them all into the same "asshole" category, but I've come across my fair share. If I never come across another mustache sporting, bell bottom wearing, two wheeler driving, sexually repressed, leering Indian man who thinks it's ok to harass me just because I'm white and I'm a woman, I will die happy.

This is a temple. I know that is not an appropriate description, but we were here almost a month ago and I have a hard enough retaining temple details as it is. I know it's a UNESCO World Heritage Sight and that the carvings were unbelievably intricate and really great. I may be the only person to ever come to India without a marginal interest in religion. Unfortunate.

Same as above.

A casual cow throw down at some ruins in Hampi.

Crossing the river in Hampi in basket boats. Reminds you of Moses a little bit right?

Hampi is the third largest archaeological site in the world, the first being Macchu Picchu and the second is in Cambodia. It's got this great landscape - sort of the moon meets Utah. Toss in some ancient ruins and you've got Hampi.

More Hampi. It rocks. Lame pun sort of intended.

Friends in Hampi. Right before our intrepid guide took us across the most unassuming of trickling little streams which proved too much for me. I slipped and fell squarely in the mud and then had to try and wash myself off at a very public spigot to the chagrin and amusement of Indian women and post card hawkers alike. Dignity, what was left of it, is gone.

This isn't in Karnataka, it's actually in the driveway of school. Though it may look like this elephant is smacking me in the face, it is in fact blessing me. As a result of this great little surprise visit from the temple elephant, the street in front of school was covered in elephant poop for at lease a week.

Unrelated to Karnataka, my independent study project is in full swing and has been equal parts interesting and troubling. My project is about the role of the government in the rehabilitation process of child-bonded labourers. Rehabilitation entails medical attention, psychological attention, economic assistance, education, etc. The government is supposed to supply a set amount of money (some people say 20,000 rs, some say 50,000, you can never get a straight answer) to freed bonded labourers but they rarely do and if they do it's slowly or begrudgingly. Thus my project seeks to highlight the differences between what the government is doing for returned bonded labourers (alot) and what they're actually doing (very little) and why the government is so unwilling to help those most in need (widespread discrimination against the rural poor).

What's most troubling however are the things that people are describing that happened to them while they were in bonded labour. What's always shocking and disturbing is how long people are literally held captive for, the shortest I've heard is three years and the longest 17. Can you imagine? He went to work when he was 8 and was only brought home when he was 25 because he was so sick that he almost died and his employer didn't want to pay the medical bills. The families ended up paying them, to the tune of 40,000 rs, which as an astronomical amount that they will probably never be able to pay back, thus living and dying in debt, further propagating the system. One guy (mostly boys go to work so all of the people I have interviewed are men who worked as bonded labourers as children) told me that he was drugged (something was put into his food) and when he came to he had been shipped off to work. One guy told about how when he burned himself working over an open flame, his employers would put chili powder in his wounds. Most of the bonded labourers work 20 hours a day and are given two meals a day, generally of old rice or rotten food.

People either escape or are freed by the government (rarely) and NGOs (equally as rae) or they escape. If you're rescued by the government or an NGO you're golden - you have all the proper documentation to prove that you were a bonded labourer and thereby receive the government funding whenever they decide to get around to giving it to you. If you escape you're screwed. Somehow the government has gotten all hung up on this thing called a release certificate (which is not legally required) that your employer (master?) is supposed to give you in order to prove that you were in fact a bonded labourer. Clearly the employers aren't just passing these release certificates out and the government won't help you unless you have it. In a word, the system is totally, and completely fucked.

Madurai, I love You, but You're Bringing Me Down

My mother informs me that I am falling down on my blogging duties and insists that I write something. So here I am. Blogging. What a dumb word.

Things that Have Happened Since I Wrote a Month Ago:

1) We went to an American hill station in the Western Ghats, the second largest mountain range in India (first being the Himalayas) in Tamil Nadu (the state I'm in) called Kodaikanal (Kodai for short). American missionaries set it up when they came to proselytize to the savage natives. The poor missionaries desparately needed a cool place in the mountains to retreat when they needed a break from spreading the word of Jesus and saving the poor ignorant third worlders. So they displaced tribal peoples to build a resort town for themselves. They decided that the jungles of the Western Ghats weren't good enough, so they destroyed them, and planted their own more orderly pine forest. The trees are literally planted in rows. America! Despite its unfortunate origins, I appreciated our weekend in Kodai because a) it's a beautiful place and b) it was COLD. COLD is a relative term. It was probably a damp 50 degrees with a nippy wind. However, when you've been living in 95+ degree heat and waking up every morning drenched in your own sweat, a damp 50 feels COLD and NICE. In Kodai we ate Tibetan noodle soup, drank hot ginger tea, wore sweaters and socks, and slept under blankets for the first time in a long time. Bliss.

2) Visited some really neat religious sites in and around Madurai. Now, religion's not really my thing, but I think wild peacocks, monkeys, rocks the size of malls, animal sacrifices, and gods posessing humans is something we can all get behind. We went to a Hindu cave (I'm a delinquint for not knowing the name or the god that its in honor of) and the cave itself was...a cave. The area surrounding the cave, on the other hand, is home to beautiful wild peacocks (see photos below) and snarky, agressive monkeys (again, see below). We also visited Jain Hill, a GIANT rock that you can climb to the top of and see all of Madurai and the surrounding fields and mountains. More importantly it's an important pilgremmage sight for Jains across South India. Yesterday we went to Pondykoyl, a temple that honors the god Pondy. People go to Pondy to ask for help in really tough situtations (finances, health, family, etc) and in return will make commitments, often times in the form of an animal sacrifice or a shaved head (mostly women who offer their hair). Tuesdays and Fridays are auspicious days so yesterday the temple was packed. There were so many women and small children with their heads shaved and we saw a goat pre-sacrifice and a goat head post-sacrifice. And a twitching chicken who had apparently just been sacrificed. Pondy is also notorious for posessing people. This manifests itself in various ways but yesterday we saw a lot of posessed women jerking and flailing about and uttering gutteral, primal sreams. Thought it may appear scary, its supposed to be a very empowering thing for women. They're allowed to withold sex from their husbands and the husbands aren't even allowed to talk to them. A couple of SITA students and staff have been posessed in the past. You have to do puja (praying to the god at the temple) to become de-posessed and the line for puja looks like the line for Space Mountain at Disney World. On a Saturday. In the summer. In other words: real long.

3) I started working on my independent research projet on bonded labor, specifically what happens to children after they're released. Basically, kids end up in bonded labor one of two ways. First, they come from poor, lower caste, landless agricultural families who are indebted to an upper caste landowner for whatever reason. A middleman/broker will come to the family with a "great" offer to take their children to work in their snack factories in their sweet shops or snack factories in North India. This "great" offer includes a hefty advance payment for the parents and minimum wage, three meals a day, and living accomodations for the children. In reality, these kids are forced to work 20 hour days in abhorant conditions, often with an open flame or scalding oil, given two meals a day of old rice, and sleep on the factory floor. They are abused mentally, physically, and sometimes sexually and are allowed no contact with the outside world. Needless to say they don't go to school. The age of the kids range from 6 to 14 and they often work for two years at a time. The "hefty" advance payment that the parents are offered is generally between $100 and $200. The second way thay children are suckered into bonded labor is when a broker rounds up street kids and offers them a wonderful place to live and then destroys them (think Slumdog Millionaire). What I'm going to look into specifically is how these kids are reintegrated into society and whether they're ever able to fully recover from such extreme abuse at such an early age. My hunch is no.

4) We went to Kerala (the state on the western side of Tamil Nadu) for a week which was stellar. It was nice to take a little vacation after spending day in and day out studying the evils of humanity and how truly fucked up the world is (read: caste, bonded labor, globalization, IMF, strucutral adjustment). In Kerala we went hiking in a tiger reserve which was beautiful (photos below) and saw wild elephants. I also rode an elephant in captivity with my friends Bridget and Scott which is something I would recommend that you never, ever, ever do as long as you live NO MATTER HOW COOL YOU THINK IT WILL BE. DON'T DO IT. These elephants in captivity are an unhealthy shade of grey (wild elephants are brown), they're chained up and beaten, they make pitiful little honking sounds and shudder, and live an average of 40 years less than elephants in the wild. As karmic retribution, while disembarking the poor elephant I promtly slipped and fell in the mud. We went to a spice garden and tea plantation which were beautiful and got covered in leaches. We took an oppulent houseboat to Cochin which was very cool and along the way stopped for palm tree moonshine. Fermented coconut milk (I'm pretty sure) that tasted of popcorn, peanut butter, and apple cider all at the same time. In Cochin we visited the oldest church in India (St. Francis) and went to Jew Town, one of the oldest Jewish settlements inthe world. The day we were there one of the elders, one of the 12 (now 11) remaining direct descendents of the original Jews, passed away. Appropriately, the weather in Cochin was grey and dreary. We ate Italian food and drank more coffee and got ripped off because of the color of our skin. We met an artist who has had shows all over the world and let us poke around his studio/loft and look at his work and we met an Iranian Brit named Camilla who just finished three months of building eco-friendly pit toilets in rural Karnataka. My friend Scott and I spewed up all of the seafood we consumed (according to our rickshaw driver "it was a bad fish day") in front of more people than I would have cared to watch me spew. We took a night train back to Madurai which would have been pleasant had I not shared a compartment with Snoring Man, a man who snores lounder than any other man on the planet I'm sure, and Snack Man, an elderly man who turned on the florescent light at 4:00 am to eat the sandwich I'm sure his wife so dutifully packed for him. Thank you Snoring Man and Snack Man for making my night train experience one I'll always remember.

From the house boat on the backwaters of Kerala

Periyar Tiger Reserve

Again

Mama Monkey

Wild Peacock

I leave you with this final image.
It has nothing to do with anything
I wrote, but aren't these dolls
frightening?

ALSO, I realize everybody has very busy lives and I feel dumb even writing this, but if anybody has a free second to drop me a line, maybe with some twizzlers or a photo or something small in it that would be unbelievably wonderful. Even just a letter would be great. Anything. The address here is:

South India Term Abroad
34-B H.A.K. Road
Chinnachokkikulam
Madurai, Tamil Nadu 625002

If you do send something that might tickle someone's fancy as it comes through customs, don't declare it. One boy received a package the other day from his girlfriend and on the outside where it asks for "detailed description of contents" she wrote a letter, a drawing, and a piece of a rock. It was untouched.

All Foods Are Finger Foods

Poor Elephant, that ear has seen better days.

I can't even imagine how hot it is under that tapestry.

Communist Rickshaw, Meenakshi Temple in background

Canyakumari

Sunrise in Canyakumari - the Southern tip of India

Host Puppy - Bingo

I Passed an Elephant on the Street the Other Day

Okra = Ladyfingers

Envelope = Cover

Tutoring = Tuition

Bike = Cycle

Coffee/Tea = Hot Milk and Sugar

No more please, I'm full = Yes, thank you, I would like a fourth serving

90+ Degrees = Winter

$1 = 50 rupees (1 coconut = 10 rs, 1 coffe = 7 rs, a full meal = 40 rs)

Shower = Bath

Bath = Cold Water in a Bucket

Conditioner = Coconut Oil

Deodorant = Unavailable

Shoes = Optional, if not Prohibited

The Only Good Mosquito is a Dead Mosquito =

Cetta Kocu Mattum Nalla Kocu (in Tamil)

Honking Horn/Dinging Bell = "I am a vehicle that is much

bigger than you and am going to pass you on the right.

Move to the left or I will hit you.)

Man Skirt = Lunghi

Men Wearing Lunghis = Everywhere

Women Wearing Anything That Shows Their Ankles = Nowhere

Yoga Mat = Straw Mat

There is nothing funnier than a white girl on a bike. Unless, of course, there are multiple white girls on bikes. Gets 'em every time.

When I went to Kerala for the weekend with my host family we listened to nothing but Akon, Taylor Swift, and The Bee Gees. The car ride was eight hours long. Each way.

My yoga instructor is not some cute 20-something girl or a house wife with too much time on her hands that reads you some ridiculous quote during samsara and burns incense. He is a drill sergeant who can manipulate his body into positions that are frighteningly unnatural.

I'm volunteering with an NGO that is concerned with Dalit rights. Dalits are the "untouchable" or scheduled caste and they basically get shit on (figuratively, and literally sometimes) because of an arbitrary label that makes them "impure" and "inferior" to just about everyone else. The organization I'm working with seeks out instances of human rights atrocities, specifically against Dalits, and offers counseling and legal representation to the victims. I'm currently reading up on their most recent cases which include instances of murder, assault with pitchforks and various other weapons, stoning, molestation, kidnapping, forced consumption of human shit, upper caste women who are forced to have abortions because they have been impregnated by a Dalit man and "bound labor" ie slave labor. Almost 20% of India's population is Dalit.

"World Famous Big Temple" - Thanjavur

The Most Aggressive Decision I've Ever Made

For those of you who don't already know (if you fall in to this category, be glad you haven't had to hear about it for the past six months), I leave tomorrow for two semesters of back-to-back study abroad. I'll be in Madurai, India for the first semester (until December) and then I'll be in Kampala, Uganda from January - June. Like I said, a pretty aggressive decision.

But now, about the blog. I kept it last summer and didn't really like it for a handful of reasons. I don't really like blogs in general; there's something inherently pretentious about them. It's as if you're saying, "Hey, look how interesting my life is, you should read about it!" But here I am...blogging (at least I'm not tweeting). The only reason I have allowed myself to fall into the dark hole that is blogging, worse yet travel blogging, is because, in theory, I should have a pretty interesting year. No guarantees, but the potential is definitely there.

That being said, I'm going to try my best not to write anything that isn't interesting. Nobody wants to read about how long my train ride was or how bad my stomach hurts or what my host parents do for a living. If you would like to hear about those sorts of inane details, shoot me an e-mail (rreichen11@gmail.com) and I'll try not to bore you too much. This blog will be for the stories. The really great, epic, remember that time when...kind of stories. Those might not come along very often. But when they do, I'll be sure to make them as public and sensational as any good blogger would.

Change Of Plans...

It's been a crazy past couple of days. I flew from Dharamsala to Delhi on Thursday and had planned to sleep at the CCS (my program) flats Thursday and Friday night and check into a hotel for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night. I was just going to spend a couple of days seeing the sights in Delhi, take a day trip to see the Taj on Monday, and fly back to Dallas on Tuesday night. Things have changed.

For the past week everyone in Dharamsala has been asking me why I'm not staying for the July 14th opening of the school I've been working on. As it is generally, the answer was lack of funds. Obviously I was dissapointed with not being able to see the school open, but I had come to terms with my reality. On Friday I was talking to the in-country director of my program and she asked me again why I wasn't staying and I told her again that I just could not afford it. And then she did the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. She offered to pay for me to stay. She and her brother who is the head honcho of the Dharamsala program are going to pay out of pocket for my transportation to and from Dharamsala and for my lodging and meals while I'm there. The only expense to me was the cost of changing my ticket back to the States, a not so staggering $100.

So, where that leaves me now is still in Delhi. I'm going to sleep in my un-air conditioned box of a room for the next four nights, take the rain to see the Taj on Monday, and take an over night bus to Dharamsala Wednesday night and be there by Thursday. Never before have things worked out this well for me before and in the wise words of The Rolling Stones, "Ain't felt this good since I don't know when, I might not feel this good again."

Thus far in my time in Delhi I've sweated, taken many an auto rickshaw, gone to the Ghandi museum, celebrated 4th of July with samosas, veggie burgers, and lychee flavored ice cream, and finalized all of the changes for the next couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll actually see some pretty cool stuff in the next couple of days, it's just taken some time to get into a groove. Being solo is actually really nice and inshallah my good luck won't run out before I'm back in the mountains!