So, I'm really going...

I finally bought my ticket for Ulanbataar. I leave Delhi at 00:30 on January 15th-- really, 14th night for all practical purposes. I have a 15 hour stop-over in Moscow the next day; then, I reach Mongolia on 16th Jan at 7 in the morning. Of course, all of this is provided everything goes smoothly and my flights don't get grounded because of the snow either in Moscow or Ulanbataar. I am scheduled to fly back in exactly 6 months, on July 15th, hopefully after having caught the Nadaam festival (often described in guidebooks as "nomad Olympics"), which is the main reasn I extended my stay from 5 months to 6.

I also got a transit visa for Russia. I dont want to spend 15 hours in the airport, so if I can bear the cold, I will head out for a day in Moscow City. That should be exciting... I have read so much about Moscow in history books that I would love to pass a few hours sipping coffee by the Red Square, or something like that. And I better be able to bear the cold... I will be living through at least 3 months of bitter Mongolian winter, never to soon to start preparing.

Wow, so I am going? So far, this has been so "out-there" that it's been surreal; now, 2 weeks away, as I think about what i am going to pack (I am only allowed one 20 kg bag-- how many woolens can i fit into that?), as I start planning my lessons for my class there, it hits me. I am really going. I am going to live through an unforgiving winter in a foreign country, where i dont speak the language or know anything about the culture, for six whole months. I am going to attempt to teach English conversation to a bunch of high school students who have never talked English to a Native Speaker before, whose level of English competency is completely unknown to me, and who study at a school I have only seen one photograph of. I have no clue what I am doing! And that's as exhilarating as it is frightening.

I don't know if I am prepared, but I do know that I am as prepared as I will ever be. Soka, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Zoatecpan prepared me to jump into completely unfamiliar situations and create strong, even indestructible, bonds there. I learned to play trust-fall with life: believing that I would be caught when I was falling, even if i didn't know what or who would do the catching in any particular case. That's going to have to suffice as preparation.

Two more weeks, and then this blog is SURE to get more interesting! :)

My life in Delhi (follow-up)

What I didn't realize I'd miss:

Hot showers
The shower, period.
Websites with correct information
Living by my own rhythm
Drivers who don't honk.
The nearness of the donut shop
A large desk/ workspace
Large breakfasts and small dinners


What I'm glad to be back to:

New Delhi's street food
Autorickshaws
Steaming hot chai with fresh ginger
My little dog's insistence on sitting in my lap
High school friendships
Calling everyone "uncle," "aunty," "bhaiya," or "didi"
Rotis
Colorful streets
Indian pickles
Reading a newspaper instead of online news
Speaking Hinglish
The Gulmohar tree outside my balcony

Christmas in India

Yesterday, the newspaper carried a story of Christmas mass in one of the Hindu temples in Delhi-- for some reason, it wasn't possible to hold the mass on the Church premises, so the nearby Hindu temple offered its facilities so that the Christians in the area could carry out their traditional services. Some of the interviewed still wished they could go to church in church but most agreed it was a great gesture on behalf of the temple... this is the secularsim that defines India at its best.

Today, the newspaper carried the story of churches in Orissa being attacked and burnt down during Christmas. One person was killed and 25 injured. An extremist Hindu group, the VHP (closely even if not always explicitly linked to Narendra Modi's party-- see last blog entry), appears to have been responsible. This is the communalism that defines India at its worst.

This is my country; which path will we choose over the next few years?

fear

Narendra Modi won the Gujarat elections. With a two-thirds majority. Again.

Only a few months ago, Tehelka confirmed what was long known but not often admitted this candidly: Modi and his government were behind the mass carnage that took place in Gujarat in 2002 (for those who aren't sure what this is about, check out this link: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main35.asp?filename=Ne031107gujrat_sec.asp). Modi's own men are on camera saying that he helped them carry out those grotesque murders and rapes, pointing out how many times he changed judges so as to get them out on bail, telling the camera of how he gave them three days to "do whatever they wanted," boasting of his blessings as they burnt hundreds of people alive. No clearer connection is possible between this now third-time chief minister of Gujarat and the horrors of 2002.

2 months have passed; no clear action has been taken. And now, Modi is back in power.

Many articles claim that he won this election based on "development" rather than Hindutva. That scares me more than it comforts me. "Development"-- of what, and for whom? Economic growth, they mean. Well, even so, for whom? The state's poor are often also the minorities-- Muslims-- and a political party that orchestrated mass murder and rape of this minority is hardly likely to care about economic growth for them. But more fundamentally, how does economic growth weigh in the balance against a tyrannical government who has recently been exposed as actually murderous? Pretty well, it turns out: so what if they kill and torture, it's still good for business.

What do you do when democracy becomes totalitarian? Hitler, too, rose to power democratically. Hitler, too, had a cult-like mass following. Being elected does not necessarily mean being just. This is not an argument against democracy but simply an expression of fear and helplessness: Where is this country going? What will it take to dismantle Hindutva if even Tehelka's expose couldn't do it? Why isn't murder making more people squirm?

Womanhood in India...

Yesterday, I read the newspaper in India after a while. I had been following the Indian newspapers from abroad, but I hadnt read the "supplements" that come with them-- "articles of note" that aren't exactly news. Yesterday's supplement contained two supposedly "progressive" articles about gender issues that made me squirm...

One was about a woman from small-town India who had been raped and abused by her boss in New Delhi and about how she had finally decided to seek counselling and taken legal action. So far, okay: I know that abuse of women is rampant in this city. But read closer: after a long silence, putting up with her abuse for years, she decided to so what the newspaper lauded as "courageous" and used to declare her a "strong woman": she asked the man to marry her. He did, and she claims she could live with pride once more, until she found out that he already had a wife and kids in the village. Only then did she seek counselling and legal aid.

The second article was about being gay in india. Written by an anonymous, purportedly gay fashion designer in India, it talks about his decision to marry... his best woman friend. The woman in question isn't lesbian-- she is agreeing to marry her gay best friend (and he claims she knows he is gay) simply to soothe his relatives' anxiety about his wedding. He writes several times about how he would never let his parents find out about his being gay because they worked so hard to provide for him in his childhood; how can he let them down now? Towards the end of his article, he writes that he hopes-- knows-- that he and his friend "will live happily ever after"; that although it isn't a perfect marriage, which marriage is?

Both these stories are, to me, upsetting in themselves. But the real reason I found myself squirming was in the way they were written about: these were the "progressive" stories coming out of the land I have re-chosen as my home. In the first case, the woman's agressor was not condemned for repeatedly beating and raping her but for having a wife at home... and her attempt to hush it up through marriage is lauded as the hallmark of strong womanhood (she didnt stay quiet about her abuse but challenged him to marry her). In the second case, the article is set up as open-minded and liberal... he is honest with his best friend about being gay, and she is marrying him nevertheless. If this is progressive and embracing of gender equality, where do I belong?

Oh, and just to top it off, the same supplement had a quiz on "are you too possessive?" In the response for "yes," it read "if you are a man, you are the provider of the family, and it is therefore understandable that you are possessive and want to know about your wife's private life. just don't take over your woman's life completely." OMG, that statement is messed up on so many levels-- unqualified assumption that he is the provider of the family, that he can therefore be possessive of her but no similar clarfiication for how she 'can' feel, and the "your" woman.

I am sure some of my indian friends reading this blog will not understadn why i am making such a big deal out of this... these are just random snippets from one day's newspaper supplement, and at least the last one was certainly not intended to be "taken seriously"-- it is jsut one of those silly quizzes. BUT that is precisely the point. In just one day's newspaper supplement, I found all of these outrageous assumptions about manhood and womanhood, stated so casually that you know the author believes them to be unarguable. That is what freaked me out.

Wow. I have grown up in this country, and after 5 years of globe-trotting am returning to call this place home. I left as a schoolgirl; I am returning as a young woman. I am not who I was when I left, and re-adapting might prove harder than I had realized. I do think I am up to the challenge, though. I better be.

My life in California

WHAT I'LL MISS:

The neighborhood cup
Walking to town center
dark chocolate
being mistaken for mexican
running hot water 24/ 7
brewed coffee
being able to eat sushi and pancakes in the same meal
California sunrises and sunsets
Midnight conversations
Signboards in Spanish
constant, muffled sound of daimoku in the hallways
feeling safe walking alone at night
Being able to laugh at my professors
Peace Lake
moments of cultural-outsiderness
hugs
strawberries
all the people who come to the writing center for a "candy fix"
watching people get high on too much work
clean public restrooms

WHAT I WON'T MISS

Freeways
SUV's
Strip Malls
Manicured lawns
OC highschoolers in town center
tasteless melons
long lines for food
humongous parking lots
sleep-deprivation
constant dependence on people who drive
Receving 30-50 emails a day

Coffee

As I waited at the airport gate in LAX, I saw a small stand selling coffee and water. I didn't really want coffee-- actually, I really didn't want coffee because i wanted to sleep on the plane-- but then i remembered that I am returning to the land of bad instant coffee for who-knows-how-long. "Real" coffee has been so much a part of my life over the past 4 years: late nights at SUA, the only social gathering place in Aliso Viejo, the heart of Buenos Aires, and the single constant in every meal at Zoatecpan. So, I decided to end this phase of my life with one last cup before I left for home... I bought myself a cup of Java coffee, feeling all grand and ceremonious. I got out the creamer, wanting to make sure this cup was just right... and then, just as it was ready, i knocked the cup right over and spilled every last drop!

:(

The lady was really nice and offered me another cup, but that was the end of my ceremony. Is that symbolic of something?

I'm technically still on the hill, but the next 4 days are simply a transition...

Yesterday, at 4:14 PM, I turned in my FINAL final paper at Soka. It's funny: I had always wondered with what emotions I would send in that last email to a professor, but i ended up sending it in without any emotion at all. The only thing on my mind was: I'm done; I can sleep now. Relief.

Will I look back at that moment years from now and feel a surge of emotion? Possibly. Probably. But yesterday, it was simply: I'm done.

The going-away party at James and Wendy's felt too final, though. Michael was my first big goodbye-- a close friend whom I probably won't see for many years now. That was when it started sinking in: I'm really going away. Wow.

I'm ready, though. Ready and excited to move on. Nostalgic, of course. A little sad, of course. But above all, appreciative. Appreciative of everything I have experienced in the last 4 1/2 years (in California, in Buenos Aires, in Mexico-- all of that has been a part of my Soka life); appreciative of Ikeda Sensei for founding SUA and for working so hard to open so many doors for me; appreciatve of all the friends and professors who have in one way or another made SUA worth it. I know I'll always carry this place in my heart and that it will always be a part of what I call "home."

"You were born to a whole, and this is just a particular"-- Emerson. Yes, SUA has been a wonderful particular, but at the end of the day, that's all it is: I need to now move on to the rest that awaits me. World, here I come.