Epilogue

At one point during this adventure, I felt like I had always been here.  I'm not saying that I'm Indian, or that I fully understand the issues of the Indian people.  I meant that as I spent more time here I remembered less and less about America.  I find it harder to visualize a place where cows don't have the right of way; where I don't feel like you're breathing more dust than air; where I can't pick coconuts and bananas right from the trees; and where anything that has a neutral color is an oddity.  I can't imagine days without teatime at 11 and 3, without having to fear for my mortal soul as I try to navigate the roads, without bats flying overhead in the twilight and dogs howling in one long symphony at the midnight hour.  It is hard to believe that there is a place where people drink cold water with ice cubes; instead of the people in Wayanad who drink their water scalding and dye the water pink with a special root, so that you know it is boiled.

Tomorrow though, I am going back to that place.  In 12 hours I will board a plane that will take back to Iowa City, where I will go back to my life of hanging out with my friends, going to school, eating hamburgers, enjoying hot showers, surfing the internet anytime I want, enjoying electricity that never goes out, going to Best Buy, and playing "Space Marine" on my Xbox.  And all of these things are fine.  People should do what they think is best.  People should try and be happy.  But are we happy?  Obviously it is better to have clean water, constant electricity, good healthcare, hygienic food, and sane traffic regulations.  But I keep thinking of my visits to the slums and the mall.  I keep thinking about the eyes of people in the mall.  They all seemed like hollow people, with eyes that stared at nothing.  And then I think of the people in the slums and I think that those people, even though impoverished, had life.  They had humanity.  I have no doubt that in a second the people in the slums would switch roles with the people in the mall, but I would be curious to see what effect the change would have on them, whether they would also lose their souls.

I have to classify most American tourists into two categories.  The first category I call the "Grateful Americans."  These are the people who, after two weeks in a country, have learned that it is a very fine thing to be an American, and that they should remain wealthy at all costs.  I fall under this category.  The second group I call the "Britta's" of the world.  These people spend two weeks abroad and feeling that they should appear righteously indignant at the injustice of the world, announce that they would love nothing more than to abandon America and move into some small tribal hut living among the natives.  These people are hysterical because of the them are either A.) liars or B.) fools.  People who truly wish to live in another country typically don't announce their plans so that everyone and their grandmother can hear.  They just do it.  At Visthar, the resident artist was an artist named Francoise.  Francoise makes dolls and exhibits them to raise awareness about social issues.  Her exhibits go on display all around the world.  She has lived in India for 40 years.  She just came to India and never left.

http://francoisebosteels.blogspot.com/p/about.html

I think that most Americans who travel are blind people.  I feel that when they travel they look but they do not see.  They do not understand what is being shown to them.  I do not write this because I can see.  I write this because I am also blind.  I write because I know that I will always travel in a state of ignorance.  To pretend otherwise is insanity.  No matter how often to you travel, how long you spend in a foreign country, you cannot truly comprehend it.  In order to understand every culture in the world you would have to live a many lives, with many faces, but always you.

I suppose this inability to understand everything has caused me to question why I travel, why I go to places like India, and why I still want to see the three contents I haven't yet visited.  There are two reasons.  The first reason is that I love stories.  I love listening to them.  Talking with the Adivasi taught me that everyone has a story, that people want to tell their stories, and that if you are lucky enough for someone to be willing to tell their story, you should treasure it.  The second reason is that we live in an age when adventures are becoming a limited resource.  There are no more worlds to explore.  People do not seem interested anymore in leaving the comfort of their world, unless it is to go on a bar crawl in Europe.  I keep feeling that we are becoming a nation of hobbits, but not in a good way.  

I have learned a lot about myself.  Perhaps that's why people should travel.  Perhaps by going to someplace else, you're able to see things back home differently.  You're able to have to have some perspective on your own problems, about what you value and don't value.  In the end all it is is what you make of it.       

     

There and Back Again journey into Wayanad and Mysore

Janurary 14, 2012

This will be my longest post.  The last few days have been filled by journey through jungles, riding on crowded trains, climbing up mountains, touring through ancient cities, and encounters with wild elephants.  I know one blog post will not be enough to summarize the past week and a half, but I will try my best to give an account of my adventures.

We woke up at 5 on Thursday in order to get to the train station.  around 7 the train arrived.  Let me just explain that every conception you have trains in India is accurate.  The entire goal of transportation in India is to cram as many as possible into one vehicle.  I wish I had two rupees for every time that I have seen people packed into a vehicle like sardines and seven more people hanging on to the outside.  The trains were not any different.  Ten people sit in a compartment meant for six people and eight more people will be sitting on the sleeper beds above.  Vendors will come up and down the aisles selling idly and tea.  It is a cramped, hot, noisy, terrible train ride and the bathrooms are the most horrifying places in the world.  I loved every second of it.

We arrived in Mysore and took a bus to Wayanad.  We traveled through farm country.  Farmers had placed hay on the road in order to dry them out.  We continued into the mountains.  Warning sings told us to beware of elephants, but we saw none.  As we journey into the jungle we seemed to be journeying into another world.  We arrived at the place we were staying.  Many of my classmates were distressed to find out that we had now access to the internet and that we had to take bucket showers.  On the first full day in Wayanad we didn't have electricity for the whole day.  Since we had no internet we had no choice but to find other ways to entertain ourselves.  I decided to spend my time listening to my audiobook copy of "Heart of Darkness."

Over the next three days we went on our field visits.  On the first we talked to local farmers and the issues they faced.  It was remarkable to find that a lot of the farmers we met were organic farmers who had worked on the land for years.  Yet because of the economics of crop pricing many farmers do not see a future in farming.  Because of this farmers are telling their children to pursue other careers.

The first day was a nice opening where we do not step too far from the bounds of civilization.  It was on Saturday that we journeyed into the jungle.  One of my classmates compared it to a scene from Jurassic Park.  I compared it to traveling back to the back to the earliest beginning of the world when there was nothing but trees and vegetation.  In Bangalore I had found many of the roads unsound, but here there were hardly any roads at all.  Yet as we came to the Adivasi settlement in the jungle we found that the modern world had come into this place.  The Adivasi we interviewed could speak English and had some schooling at the Indian public schools.  Yet they were still victims of extreme poverty.  Most Adivasi only get two meals a day, and some only get one.  The forest that was their was annexed from them, and they were forced to go to the markets in order to eat.  In interviews many Adivasi told how they were being plagued new diseases they had never heard of before.  Their bodies were rejecting the new food they were forced to eat.  All for the great work of modernization.  It was a dark subject to report.  But I enjoyed the work.  I enjoyed walking through the jungle.  I enjoyed talking with the Adivasi, hearing their story.  It was unreal listening to them describe how their creates fear was an attack by wild elephants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh05VAX5c2E

On the last day we visited an Adivasi community which is located at the top of a mountain.  We interviewed two sisters who were the head of the tribe.  They told us that many of the Adivasi tradition were being lost and that it was due to alcoholism.  Where they lived was absolutely breathtaking.  Climbing up the mountain reminded me of early trips I used to take with my dad, when we would go hiking in Canada.  It also reminded me of hiking in Wyoming.  It was bizarre, but at points during our visit it felt like I was in Wyoming.  I know that Southern India and Northern Wyoming are completely different in every way possible, but I had the strangest sense of deja vu.  Driving past farms reminded me of driving past the ranches of Wyoming.  I can't explain it  but it was just a feeling I had.

After our trip up the mountain, we returned to our hostel, packed, and loaded into the bus so we could return to Wayanad.  We made a stop to drink fresh coconut and continued all the way to Mysore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAxfYuwqKLM

Comparing Bangalore to Mysore is like comparing night to day.  Bangalore is a congested city.  Streets are half finished and there is always construction.  There is no sense of a past in Bangalore.  In Mysore I felt the age of the city.  Along the roads there were ancient temples, old palaces.  I felt like Mysore gave me a sense of the history of India.  We arrived in the evening, and reunited with the law students who had been studying at the National Law School in Bangalore.  We were agitated to hear that while we had been forced to take bucked showers and exist without internet, the law students had enjoyed laundry service, hot water, and HBO.  To quickly introduce the National Law School, it is considered to be the best law school in Asia.  Founded in 1987 it has produced 16 Rhodes Scholars in it's 25 year history.  To be accepted students only have to take one exam.  The top 80 scores are accepted to the school.  However, those 80 are selected out of 30,000 applicants. so the odds of being accepted are .003%.

In Mysore we stayed at a hostel run by the Swami Vivekanada Youth Movement.  There is no need to describe our first day in Mysore.  The SVYM took us on a tour of one of their hospitals and schools.  It felt very controlled and artificial and it didn't benefit me in any way.

Our second day in Mysore we took a tour of the the city.  We first visited the Mysore Palace.  Today it is the home of the Wodeyard family who ruled Mysore for hundreds of years.  Now it was a tourist attraction.  While beautiful the architecture of the building was very European.  It was an incredible sight and I was greatly impressed, but I had visited the Hearst Castle in California, so I was not overwhelmed with wonder.      What was amusing was the aggressiveness of street vendors next to the palace.  Two pieces of advice.  Do not touch any items offered by vendors, otherwise they will charge with damage and try and make you pay for the item.

Second piece of advice.  If you are a young, white, American woman visiting Mysore Palace, never tell an Indian adolescent male that will take a picture with him.  One of my classmates agreed to this, and in 1.5 seconds 50 sweaty, pubescent Indian teenagers wearing polo shirt with popped collars swarmed the poor young woman, all trying to get a picture with her, that they would later put as their profile pictures.  My classmate spent 10 minutes taking pictures with all these Indibros.  It was a disturbing and hilarious sight to witness.

After Mysore Palace we visited St Philomena's Cathedral where we went down into a catacomb.  It was very dark.  Afterwards we went to Chamundi Hills where at the behest of my mother I got a picture of me Tebowing in in front of a statue of a bull.  We returned to our hostel and loaded into a bus which took us back to Bangalore.

Wednesday and Thursday all of us worked on our media projects.  For me this was the most stressful part of the trip.  It pushed to me to my limits of sanity to try and edit a short documentary with subtitles in 48 hours using iMovie.  What made matters worse was that every time I made an edit on the timeline, my computer would have to spend a couple of minutes rendering the edit.  Most of my time was spent staring at the rainbow ball of death while iMovie tried to comprehend that I wanted to have all my subtitles in Cambrina.  I can hardly remember a time when I was driven closer to the edge of madness, nor any other time when I wanted to smash my computer with a cricket bat.  But I finally managed to finish the project, and on Friday we presented it to our group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2TulilrGGo

Following that we had tea, and had an informal valedictory ceremony.  Afterwards we watched a live performance of KuchiPudi by Mr. Madhavapeddi Murthy.  I actually had met Mr. Murthy last spring in a theatre class.  He did not remember me.

We returned to our hostel.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAxfYuwqKLM

January 4, 2012: Wayanad Project: Pre-production

January 4, 2012

This may be my last blog for a while, so I'm going to give an overview of what I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks.  Tomorrow I am taking a 7:00 am train to Mysore which is in the southwest state of Karnataka.  It's about 91 miles southwest of Bangalore.

Mysore Palace is home of the Wodeyars, who were the former rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore.

From Mysore we are taking a bus into the the area of Wayanad.  Wayanad is a northeast district in Kerala.  It is home to some of the most furtive land on the planet.

.
I am journeying to this Eden in order to make a film.  I was asked to help make a documentary about the struggles of the people in Wayanad.  It is hard to imagine that between 1997 and 2005, 11,516 farmers committed suicide in Wayanad.  Since Wayanad is such fertile place there has been a trend to move away from self-sustaining agriculture to mono-culture.  Cash crops such as coffee, tea, and ginger have swiftly become the only agriculture in Wayanad.  Since 1991, with the liberalization of India's economy, farmers in Wayanad were the beneficiaries of an economic boom.  That was until the spice price crash in the mid-90's.  The price crash was terrible for Wayanad farmers.  At the time of the crash farmers in Wayanad had switched to the "green revolution" and had taken out loans from the bank to pay for fertilizers.  Without any money, many farmers committed suicide.

The topic of the film, though, is no the plight of the farmers in Wayanad, but the issues faced by the Adivasi.  The Adivasi are the indigenous people of the Wayanad district.  For thousands of years, the Adivasi lived in the forests of Wayanad, and were able to sustain themselves.  In the 1960's the Central Government forced the Adiviasi to live outside the forests.  The government than began to deforest the area.  Worse they began to replant non-native trees for wood and forest.  Basically the Adivasi lifestyle is being erased from the area.  Adivasi now live on the edge of the forest.  They suffer from malnutrition, and many Adivasi journey to the city to work, in order to provide for their families.

The past two days have been busy.  A lot of work has gone into the pre production.  My group partner Ashley and I have been working on our thesis, and working on the question we wish to ask the Adivasi when we get there.  For such a serious topic, I have enjoyed planning this project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lwCzmwcrW6o
We've discussed the shots we need, the voice over narration, question we want to ask the Adivasi and the farmers.  Today we got a solid outline down and I'm hopeful for tomorrow, and the next couple of weeks.  It has been a little stressful, researching the topic, but I am thoroughly enjoying myself.  Since I'm not sure if I'll have internet I'm going to tentatively say this is my last post for a while.

Bryan McIntyre
  

January 3, 2012: Coconut Tree Climbing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw5WT_tzrKw

New Years in Bangalore

December 31, 2011

We awoke i in the morning and headed into the city.  The purpose of our you was to give us an alternative look at Bangalore.  We rode a public bus into the hear of the city and then divided into two groups.  My group plunged deep into the heart of the slums of Bangalore.  We were asked to not photograph the slums, as many wealthy tourist have a habit of photographing slums, just to prove they were there.

As we walked through the streets, we were told to watch our step, as every few feet the road was smeared with shit.  It was shocking to see the contrast between middle class home in the wealthy parts of Bangalore, compared to the houses we saw in the slums.  Whole families were crammed into single room houses.  Many of the houses did not have running water, and women filled water jars at a communal spigot.  It seemed there was an intense need to cram as many shops as possible into one building.  As we walked, children followed us calling us "Auntie" and "Uncle".  They would greet us, showing off their English, and wish us a "Happy Christmas." Bangalore has large Christian population, and as we walked we would see various nativity scenes, as well as the Virgin Mary wearing a sari.

As we continued on our odyssey we met a man dressed in plain black clothes.  We learned that he was planning to journey to Sabarimala, a pilgrim center in Kerala.  As part of the pilgrimage he could not eat meet, drink alcohol, have sex, or shave for 40 days.  While he was in the midst of this pilgrimage, everyone called him "Sami" which means "god," even though he was a Dalit

By the end of the "tour," I felt a little overwhelmed by what I saw.  My senses had been bombarded by this mural of depravity.  However, I could not help but notice that many of the families still owned a television.  In India, more people own televisions than toilets.

We left the slums and continued into downtown Bangalore.  It seemed that we had entered into a different plain of reality.  The streets were lined with high end retail stores, selling Sony, Canon, Nikon, American Polo, Nike, etc.  We were dropped off at a mall, and spent our time  looking through the shops.  Many of the stores carried items we could find in the US.  I did enjoy browsing through the Bollywood DVD's.  We also came across a special movie theatre, that had movies in 4D.  In these theaters people are given scratch and sniff cards, to smell at key points in the movie.

The purpose of our visit was to illustrate that in order for shopping malls to exist, other people must pay the price.  Many people who come to the slums are people who have been displaced by multinational corporations.  These people have had their land taken from them, so that it could be harvested for the natural resources needed to make an iPod.  With little alternative, these people flock to the city in order make a living.

After going to the mall, we returned back to Visthar and had a New Year's Eve party.  In the distance we could hear the sound of fireworks going off all around the city.

January 1, 2012

Today was a free day, so we decided to all go into Bangalore.  In two days I have come to the conclusion that if you can drive in Bangalore, you can drive everywhere.  The first thing that struck me was the extremely liberal use of the air horn.  At the heart of the city it forms a continuous background noise.  It is true that in other parts of the world besides the United States, everyone is an aggressive driver.  The worst are motorbikes.  It is very amusing to see a family of five all try to fit onto a single motorbike.  Pedestrians do not obey the laws and cross the street at whim.  I realize that the blatant disregard for traffic in Iowa City does not hold a candle to insanity of pedestrians in Bangalore.  In order to navigate the streets, it is necessary to attaché oneself to a large group and just go.  The most recognizable part of the traffic in Bangalore is the the auto rickshaws.  Like motorbikes, people are compelled to cram as many people as possible into an auto rickshaw.

We were dropped off at Gandhi road, which is one of the main thoroughfares in Bangalore.  We first visited the store called Caudvery, which is a large artisan emporium designed to trap tourists.  I visited several other stores nearby and in each store I was the "first customer" of the New Year.  After torturing the salespeople in these stores I walked down towards Commercial street which had shops for everything.  I purchased a Kurta for cheap.  I then visited an antique store that was a room stuffed from floor to ceiling with artisan crafts, with only a little pathway in between.  I purchased a mask for may dad after bargaining a little bit and continued on my way.  I passed a couple of mosques on my way, and then purchased  a coconut which I drank, and then ate the meat inside.

Around 5 we headed back to the campus.  As a note, in Bangalore, as probably in most cities, there a scammers who will try to have you buy knock-offs.  One of my fellow travelers, Anthony, purchased several knock off watches.  He was then swarmed by a multitude of merchants, trying to have him purchase a watch.  Unfortunately for Anthony these watches are much cheaper than he anticipated.  This is obvious in the brand name.  One watch was made by Galvin Klein, who must be Calvin's less successful cousin, and another watch was made by Poma, which can only be some sort of deformed Puma, left to die in the wilderness.

December 30, 2011: An introduction to Castes

December 30, 2011

As I continued my introduction to India, I recalled a conversation I had years ago.  A friend of mine who had visited India told me that he could not define India as a single nation.  To describe India as a singularity would be gross simplification of the idea of India.  There is too many aspects and dimensions to India, that people who have lived here for  their whole lives cannot define it.

We started our coursework by learning about the caste system in India.  We paid particular attention to the Dalit caste, which was formally known as the "untouchables."  Dalits are technically not a part of the caste.  They are traditionally the lowest part of Indian society.  Yet there must be distinction made between caste and class systems in India.  While there is a significant correlation between caste and economic status, there is not a fixed relationship between the two.  India has had prime minister who was a Dalit.  The caste system in India is not a dogmatic reflection of wealth.  Rather it is more a perception of purity.

In the afternoon, our instruction dived into the subject of displacement.  Across various parts many people  called "Adivasi" are being removed from their land by large multinationals who wish to harvest natural resources from Adivasi land.  This scenario draws a disturbing parallel to the Northern Cheyenne in Montana, who must struggle to protect their microscopic partitions of land from energy developers.

In the evening we had dinner in Bangalore at an Indian Chinese fusion restaurant called Tamarind.  All of the food was spicy and delicious.  We returned to the campus and drifted off into sleep.

December 29, 2011: Bangalore: First Impressions

December 29, 2011

Arrived in Bangalore at 6 in the morning.  It was cool and clear when I first stepped out of the airport.  The first rays of the sun were creeping over the horizon.  What struck me first was the construction.  Around me there seemed to be numerous structures that were being built.  Billboards boasted of an expansion of the Bangalore airport.

As we drove from the airport, the roadside seemed to be chaos incarnate.  Half finished buildings lined the streets.  Pedestrians walked alongside the highway, not heeding the oncoming traffic.  Dogs and cows roamed through the streets.  Everywhere there were little stalls selling some obscure and needless goods.  There was garbage everywhere.  Every 30 seconds we were berated by a volley of horn blasts from rival trucks, and sometimes our own driver would blast his horn at an errant pedestrian.  Overall I had the first impression that India, more than any other country I visited, was a nation in a state of perpetual adolescence .  On one hand there were sign of exponential growth and development, but on the other hand there were visible signs of the effects of this new industrialization.

We arrived at our home for the next three weeks, a small campus called Visthar.  Visthar is called an Academy for Justice and Peace Studies.  Its primary function is the education of 70 Bandhavi.  Bandhavi are daughters of women who are victims of the Devudasi.  The Devudasi translates "God slave."  It is a system where women become property of the temple.  In the crudest of terms, these women are "temple prostitutes."  Visthar saves girls from the system of Devudasi.

We received a very gracious welcome from our hosts and took a tour of the facilities.

Throughout Visthar there are various dried wells

Afterwards we were formally greeted and witnessed a performance prepared by the girls.

After dinner, most of the group having traveled for two day, finally surrounded to the blackness of sleep.