A Sandy Christmas and a Shaadi New Year

I just returned from an incredible journey through Western India. For Christmas and New Year's Eve, I traveled to Rajasthan and Gujarat to see the desert, a wedding and as many different beautiful cities as I could fit in. Here are some of the highlights!

Rajasthani Temples

Rajasthan is a wild place. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations for foreigners since it is a very flamboyant place with lots of colors, traditions that are centuries old and so much ornate and old architecture to see. Within a few hours of leaving the modern city of Delhi, you find yourself in the middle of a village surrounded by desert that is reminiscent of Arabia three hundred years ago. For all these reasons, along with ubiquitous bright-colored turbans and camels, a lot of people find themselves enchanted by Rajasthan. On the other side of the picture, it is also a state with high amount of poverty and intense developmental issues, including very poor infrastructure and an extremely high infant and maternal mortality rate.

Jagdish Temple, Udaipur

City of Lakes - Udaipur

Udaipur was our first stop, a beautiful introduction to Rajasthan. We arrived on Christmas Day and toured around what is often referred to as the "City of Lakes" to witness stunning architecture of temples and the Udaipur Palace all pressed together within a sprawling maze of winding alleys and bridges. The history reminds you of the long legacy of wealth disparity in this region as you come across remnants of the royal family and stories of poor peasants that do not seem to far from today's reality for most of India. The trip also gave me a chance to spend Christmas day with another AIF Clinton Fellow Megan. The weather was much colder here than in Mumbai, which means we actually had to wear sweaters! This gave us more of the Christmas spirit than we felt back home in Mumbai. For the celebration, we had a huge dinner that included hot toddy masalas and a makeshift "masala chai pumpkin pie" from a pressure cooker with people from all over the world.

Auto Ride through the City in Udaipur

Christmas Party!

One of the highlights was camping out in the desert near the Pakistani border.

Jaisalmer

Camel Ride to the Dunes!

After a looong 16 hour bus trip on one of the worst roads in India, we arrived in the Golden City of Jaisalmer where we almost immediately jumped aboard a car ride that took us all the way out to the middle of nowhere to find some camels to mount for the next two days. It was epic. The actual camel ride was less interesting since it really hurt my ass and there was not much authenticity (since no one really rides camels anymore long distances through deserts), but it was still fun to imagine myself in some Rajasthani caravan on a desert journey. The really amazing part though was the environment and the people. The land was so dry. As beautiful as it seemed, I could see how the peaceful open spaces could easily transform to desolate and scary isolation. Seeing the conditions of the villages and their landscape opened up my eyes to the realities of living in a deserted land with little hope for adequate water and food production. My crappy Hindi was really taking off around that time for some reason and somehow I managed to talk a lot with some of the guys that were taking us around. At first they gave me the impression that they were going to ask for money, which made me put my guard up. As the conversation went on though, I realized that they really just wanted to know more about the rest of India, and what they really wanted was to know how to make more opportunities for themselves. Their biggest desire was building a school for their kids.

It is hard to go so many places and hear so many needs of people - so many people that are continually ignored and geographically or socially disadvantaged. I recognize my own privilege of mobility, but it almost feels like a curse since you are exposed to so many problems with little to offer. The least I could do is listen, and hope that things work out. What I really wanted was to stay and build them a school, but all of my work with NGOs and in development have made me realize how hard this actually was.  We made a fire and hung out in the rolling sand dunes, watching the sunset turn the sand a luminous ochre color until the light disappeared and gazillions of stars crept out from the black sky. We slept under the stars in the sand, covered in blankets as the desert cold crept in. The next day we visited a few villages, the homes of our guys and met some extremely jovial and exuberant kids that made me miss being a kid. Then we left. I don't know if I will, but I hope to go back.

We raced around Jaisalmer when we got back before catching a bus onward. Jaisalmer sits in a huge pile of sand, with most buildings made from golden sandstone, giving it a real interesting look and feel. It was so cold compared to Mumbai, but the city's charm enchanted us to stay out through the night. We rented motorcycles and even sampled local "Bhang" until we had to bid farwell to the Golden City as we headed onwards to Jodhpur, the Blue City.

Motorcycle rides through the fort!

Temple Roofs inside the Fort

A Glimpse of the Real City Outside the Fort

Jaisalmer Fort by Night

This place is one of the coolest cities I have been to in India just because of its random beauty. It was colorful, random and beautiful in a very crazy, polluted sort of way. So many things to check out! From gorgeous houses, forts and clocktowers, to crazy festivals with elephants and marigolds being dropped overhead from a helicopter! No joke! Rajasthani food was the best here and I need to get back since it was some of the spiciest I have had so far!

Rooftop Breakfast in Jodhpur

Jaswant Thada Mausoleum

Bangles

Marigolds being dropped overhead by a helicopter

Jodhpur - The Blue City

Opulence is how we ended the trip. After seeing some of the poorest people living on the edge of India near the Desert National Park, after some of the worst roads, after so many houses haphazardly stacked on top of one another -- we wound up in Gujarat where the roads are smooth and the housing societies are nicely planned and spaced for front yards. We headed to Baroda for a friend's wedding and it was an outrageous experience. From village parades, to drinking with 20 uncle Patels, to massive flower composed statues of peacocks and boats, it was full sensory experience. It was also one of the most beautiful and colorful things to witness, with a firework show better than most I have seen back home for the 4th of July. The pictures will have to do most of the talking for this $1 million wedding (check out my last blog post "Holidays in India" in addition to this one for more photos and stories on the experience).

Me - never blending in - at the Wedding outside of Baroda

The Procession for the Groom in the Village

Dancing the Night Away

Entrance to the Wedding, Final Day of Celebration

Amazed!

Chalo, now back to work! Happy Friday the 13th!

Pawar Got Slapped - Office Space Turned Squalor

So, a few weeks ago around 4 pm, I was sitting in my office doing work. Like any other day around that time, I was sitting on a computer doing research up against a wall across the office, a little bored and getting tired of air conditioning. While dreaming of carne asada and Mexican guacamole, all of a sudden a commotion cracked in the office. I look behind me to see the normally calm cubicle space break out into conversations and fast movements as people ran back and fourth. Must be another rave over yet another version of Kolaveri Di, I thought. Suddenly though, everyone around me started to get up and congregate close to the epicenter of chaos, coming back in a sort of unusual simultaneously humorous and frazzled manner. Everyone is laughing and begins packing up their bags. Within a few minutes, lights begin to turn off and people are leaving, shouting "I'm going home!" in hindi and english. I am thinking, "WTF now??"

My office is sort of funny like that. Not much happens from day to day, like any other big cubicle filled office. Aside from talking about new news and when the next chai or food break is, people are usually just sprawled around at desks and tables working or chatting. Sometimes though, random and crazy chaos breaks out. The other day for example, out of nowhere a field worker brings a scale over right next to my desk. Almost instantly, the area transformed from a quiet workspace to a hectic mass of loud voices as the whole office crowded over to be weighed. I could not get any explanation for the random weigh-a-thon. Another experience was when the office turned into a game of "Clue" when someone stole a large amount of money from the safe. Everyone was sitting working, when within 10 minutes we were in lock down mode and sitting all together (all 100 of us) discussing who the possible bandit could have been, and whether they used a candlestick or revolver. My favorite though was the birthday celebration - when meetings and work actions got interrupted and suddenly replaced by a massive party that took over the rest of the day! The HR department decided to celebrate three months of birthdays on the spot.

1 Party, 3 months of Birthdays Celebration - Magic Bus

Today was different though. It was not what happened in the office that stopped work. Actually, it wasn't even in Mumbai. A politician named Sharad Pawar got slapped by a young activist in Delhi. Everyone freaked out. "Pawar got slapped! Pawar got slapped! Everyone go home! Shops are closing!" Being the ignorant foreigner in the office as usualy - I had a million questions. First of all, who the hell is Pawar??

Sharad Pawar is a politician with many hats. Currently, he is the President of the National Congress Party and has served as Minister of Defence and the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. His "tight slap" that he received was mostly for his current role as the the Union Agriculture Minister of India and the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (how one man can be in charge of so many things -- and such big jobs at that -- for a country of 1 billion+ people is beyond me). On November 24, a young guy named Harvinder Singh got past a barricade of reporters and slapped Pawar across the face as he was leaving the New Delhi Municipal Council building. After, he attempted to punch Pawar. The justification: food inflation. India has been experiencing massive food inflation for the past few years, escalating this past year. Pawar has been accused of multiple cases of corruption and  upward Rs. 600 billion/- scams.

So what does that have to do with Magic Bus in Mumbai?? Back to my story - I am sitting there, confused, listening to everyone run around in circles are they panic that this guy in Delhi got slapped. Within 15 minutes the office was empty. Since my yoga class was right by my office at 6:30, I decided to hang out with my mentor and do more work. She filled me in that they were scared of riots. "When these things happen, people go to the street and usually riot. Things close up. It can get crazy."

Damn! Can you imagine? Just strolling up to Secretary of the US Treasury and bitch slapping him for the fiscal crisis! (Later added: Or going up to Obama and slapping him upside the head for thinking about signing the National Defense Authorization Act?) India continually surprises me like this. People seem to not care at times about politics and feel detached, others blame a generation of apathy on hopeless corruption; the middle class continues to argue over the role and importance of Anna Hazare, while millions of people are not even aware of their basic rights that are continually abused. I can not even question my boss at times because of strong cultural ties to respect. And then Harvinder Singh rolls up and slaps Pawar for costly food prices! It is not exactly aligned with Gandhi's practices of nonviolence, but how else to wake up politicians directly. Of course afterwards, even a slap did not phase much as Pawar explained that he thought nothing of it, and of course everyone now blames that Singh is mentally ill. It sounds a lot like the police's justification for attacking UC protesters and delegitimizing their words (get those facts here). Although distinct, Singh's actions remind me of the protests back home and around the world right now. Occupy, Egypt, Russia, Pakistan. One thing is for sure, the youth are getting pissed.

Everyday at work is interesting. Watching youtube at work: OK! Being late on deadlines: No problem! Leaving work early because of slapped politicians: Of course! Just another day at work though. Who knows what will happen tomorrow! One thing this Pawar experience reminded me of, and one theme that I constantly think of in my life (even more so in India for some reason) is that so many actions tie us all together. A slap in Delhi can in fact stop the Mumbai local trains, just as much as anything else can. Our lives are intertwined and that is undeniable.

Speaking of rowdy disapproval, here are some photos of a Anna Hazare protest against corruption that I ran into today in Mumbai:

Anna Hazare Panamoneum

"I am Anna Hazare" - slogan at 12/11 protests

Anna Hazare Protests

New AIF blog post!

Check out my new post for work @ the Clinton Fellowship blog: "They're not just poor, They're kids."

To know a little more about the fellowship I am on, the William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service through the American India Foundation (AIF), check out the websites.

To see what other fellows and myself are up to, check out the blog here!

My New Life in Mumbai!

Haji Ali

The Gateway

Be the Change?

Laxmi's Footprint. . . Diwali

The last weeks of October and beginning of November were sort of reenergizing experiences that gave me a lot of positivity on my time here in India. After a week of Diwali, I spent a week in Panchgani, a hill-station five hours away from the hustle and bustle that is Mumbai for work with Magic Bus on a peer leadership camp, and then found myself at an awesome conference in a tropical paradise. . .

Diwali with friends and family

After Laxmi Pooja, Diwali

Magic Bus Peer Leader Camp

Diwali was a special time to see a really fun holiday in Mumbai. It was nuts! Fireworks going off left and right, outside your bedroom window at 4am and under your rickshaw; bonding time with new friends and their families; everyone being so happy and eating tons of sweets. I felt so excited to be here. Then, I spent 5 days with 40 teenagers from slums across Mumbai for a weeklong peer leadership retreat that I helped develop and facilitate. The week was inspiring to say the least; it fueled my motivations to sit with 40 of these smart and enthusiastic kids that were from some of the least privileged urban neighborhoods across the world. We opened up about our lives, discussed overcoming ones family and community restraints, and discussed how to make change. Then, I found myself with the opposite: intellectuals, politicians and some of the most privileged and elite of India mixed with the middle class to talk about bigger issues to change a bigger community: our world. Huge topics from the environment, cancer, poverty, democratizing media, the Palestine-Israel and Kashmiri conflict to corruption and Bollywood were discussed, including innovations from nanotechnologies to a flying car. 

Peer Leader at Organic Farm in Panchgani

Bollywood THINKing: 
Kiran Rao, Imran Khan and Abhay Deol

Sain Zahoor, amazing Sufi Singer
This is a private VIP event I snuck into . . . 

Where was this? After the peer leadership camp, I headed to Goa for THINKFest. Goa is a weird and special place in itself. Although it is gorgeous and a very special place naturally, and also one of the friendliest as Goans usually offer a laid and kind attitude, the amount of foreigners dominating the land gives it a sort of strange, artificial feeling compared to most other parts of India. There are so many white people, that it almost felt like a new European colony (here's one Indian's point of view). For these reasons, I was always skeptical on going, but I am really glad I chose to. Aside from an amazing conference, renting a scooter and cruising to various tropical beaches and through palm jungles all around the area made me feel so revitalized after an initial two months in busy and polluted cities like Mumbai. I guess you aren't in India unless you get a situation with extremes!

Magic Bus Peer Leader Camp

These weeks inspired me to think about a lot, but also just confused the hell out of me. There I was, talking to some kids about their lives living in slum neighborhoods like Dharavi, BPT, and Jogeshwari, hearing about what its like to live off of Rs.10/day ($ 0.20), have one outfit, fear of their parents wanting them to get married when their 15, drug abuse, the country forgetting about their existence in these huge slums in a crazy city like Mumbai as they live their lives in shanty scrap metal houses, and then I am sipping champagne and listening to Frank Gehry talk about creative architecture and the "modern world" that we live in (here) and some American guy talking about a flying car he built (no joke).  I sat in a circle on a porch of a farmhouse in Panchgani with kids sharing our experiences of being trouble youth (I used to be one) and then just two days later I am sitting in the Grand Hyatt hearing Imran Khan talk about making movies that matter without the interference of corporations (here).

Dayamani Barla, Jharkhand activist, speaks on Just Development

A little taste of Goan Beauty:

Goan shacks

Aram Bol, Goa

The world is crazy, but especially India is mind-blowing as always for me right now. People tend to not trust what I have to say about the world, so I thought I would dedicate the rest of this blog to sharing a few reasons with backup why India is special for those who want to know more about this place, and for those who think they know enough. Here is India in a few facts and numbers:

• India is predicted to be the fastest growing economy by 2013 (source).
• India is the ninth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the fourth largest by purchasing power parity (source). India should overtake Japan in 2013 to become the third-largest economy in the world at purchasing power parity (source). 
• There are 1.17 billion people here (source), almost one sixth of the worlds total population living on 2.4% of the world's land (source). Nearly half of which, or 456 million (42% of population), live in extreme poverty on less than $1.25/day (source). 100's of millions more live just above this line.
• Today, India accounts for the greatest burden of newborn deaths in the world. According to 2009 estimates, 908,000 newborns die each year (almost 2400 per day) in India alone – accounting for 28% of the total global burden of neonatal deaths and and a staggering 55% of under-5 deaths in India (source).
• India is full of rich people and tons of money (two of most expensive weddings were Indian: source, the most expensive home in history of 27-stories was build in Mumbai: Antilia, and two of the richest people in the world are Indian: source), as well as tons of food (one of the leading economies of agriculture in the world source and for example, produces 1/4 of the world's eggplants source), however still nearly half of India’s small children are malnourished: one of the highest rates of underweight children in the world, higher than most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. More than one-third of the world’s 150 million (68 million: larger than the population of most Western European countries and almost double of California) malnourished under-fives live in India (source).
• Indian is the third least consumer of meat in the world, only eating 11.5 lbs. annually. Compare that to Americans at 275.1 lbs. annually (a funny source). 30% of Indians are pure vegetarian (no animal product whatsoever) while an estimated 42% are vegetarian but do not consume eggs. Even the "nonveg" population do not eat meat frequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly (the reasons are partially economical, partially cultural; wiki veg by country).
• 80% of children, 70% of pregnant women and 24% of adult men are deemed in some form anemic in India (source).
• They say that Indians save more than Americans and are in less debt: it is estimated that Indians save up to 62% of their income, while the average American saves only -5% (this percentage is actually debt) to 10% (source).
• India is extremely fragmented in terms of development, with the national life expectancy being 63.7, but the life expectancy of Mumbai being as low as 56.8 (source).
• India is said to be the largest democracy in the world based on it being the democratic government with the largest population, 700 million of which are eligible voters (thats almost 2x the entire size of the US, source).
• Corruption runs so deep in politics, that even Parliament has it's fair share of criminal politicians (about 162 of about 802 members of Parliament have some sort of criminal case against them: source). It is estimated that 40-50% of GDP, in the neighborhood of $600 billion, is from the informal market (source). In fact, India has lost more than $460bn since Independence because of companies and the rich illegally funnelling their wealth overseas (source). Although they are doing somethings though?
• Over the past three years, an average of 700 NGOs open daily in India, and the country is now home to 3.3 million NGOs (source source).
  
• Child marriage is big issues here. In some parts of India, it is estimated that 80% of girls married are under the age of 15 (source). This is no stranger to big cities like Mumbai either; most of our kids in our program face this problem in their communities.
• Mumbai: In Mumbai the population density is about 45,662 persons per square kilometer (source) - almost double compared to all of NYC (the densest city in the USA) which is about 26,000 (wiki). Half of Mumbai lives in poverty (source), half the city lives in slums--which only comprises of 6% of the total land area (source), 1.2 million live on less than Rs.20/day ($ 0.40) (source) and there are about 100,000 people sleeping on the streets (source).
• The other Mumbai: there are plans to complete several, very expensive residential skyscraper projects that include the "World One Tower," a proposed second tallest residential tower in India on land taken from a mill that used to employ 7,000 people and will require 14 million man hours and $400 million to complete; the Indian Tower will be the tallest building in India at 126 stories, double size of the current Imperial Tower, which cleared thousands of slum homes for its construction. All this is somehow part of the plan to make Mumbai "slum free" by 2015, yet these buildings (and others alike: Palais Royale and the Lokhandwala Minerva) will hardly be for the people that had to leave the land for their completion, as they will cost upward millions of dollars.
• And then there is Antilia: supposedly the most expensive and largest home in world: estimated at $1 billion to build, 27 stories high, 600 staff to run it, and situated on the most expensive block of the tenth most expensive road in the world, Altamount Rd (cost of upward $10 million/square meter). All for 5 people. And as of last month, they won't move in because they're unhappy with the design.

This country is big, fast, contradictory and special in so many ways compared to the rest of the world. My appreciation for India expands everyday. There are so many problems stacked right next to many virtues that world can learn from it (like having a pretty great appreciation for family values and marriage and possibly being happier than most Western countries). For example, having so many problems is intense to think about, but thinking that no one is doing anything is just wrong. The efforts and creative thought that happen here inspire me, even though it is hard to see at first.

The ending note of the THINKfest conference is in order to make change happen in our world, no matter what you do, you have to be creative. Thinkers are needed everywhere to challenge the barriers that surround most professional fields and personal lives. It seems like no secret, yet most people don't really question things or think beyond their limits. And it is not just India, the world has even greater problems than India has to offer, and my own country of the good ol' USA could use a whole entry itself to point out it's own blasphemy. In any context though, it is hard to be the change you want to be though when people are maintaing broken system systems, or even the most developed countries that are supposed to be the example are not upholding democratic values that they preach (source and Colbert Report). It is so difficult to help empower these kids at this camp when it seems so impossible for many of them to be the changes they want to make. Still, there is always a horizon. I guess we all need to think bigger, overcome our differences and unite in our struggle, a cliche still not yet lived (like here).