It is amazing how the simplest of things like placing a food order over the phone, asking for directions, taking a shower, or crossing a street can completely unnerve and dishevel ones' graspe of adapting to a new place.
India in so many ways will be the most 'unknown' destination of our trip around the world. I hear from so many students their desire for the familiar of space, moments, feelings, tastes, sounds, or surroundings. It is quite difficult to find any of the familiar here in India. To some extent it is refreshing to know the west has not completely penetrated and annhilated all of India's pride for India. How do we move and exist in this space which is not our turf? How can we soak in the completely 'other' and 'unknown' and embrace it for what it is?
Our time here is so short that it seems insensitive to desire familiar sensations of home - and yet even with all the traveling I've done I understand that desire (dare I say the need) to have a bit of familiar to catch one's footing in order to embrace all the other unknowns.
The simplest of things can unnerve...and yet the simplest of things can recapture steadiness...like google chatting with friends, having skype dates, have a coffee at a lovely cafe, or finding common ground with the unknowns which surround us...there are more than we think.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Prabeen
Prabeen is my host 'mom' in Delhi.
She turns 60 tomorrow.
She was the first feminist in India.
She is defies anything Indian one could imagine.
She speaks her mind.
She is proper and vulgar and completely authentic and genuine at the same time.
Prabeen is one of the most wonderful people I've ever met.
Two days ago Prabeen's nephew died. He was 24. He collapsed while exercising. His father committed suicide in 1997. Still through this grief Prabeen has found time to laugh, joke with me about being American, and drink a few spirits with her girlfriends.
As I said, Prabeen is wonderful.
She turns 60 tomorrow.
She was the first feminist in India.
She is defies anything Indian one could imagine.
She speaks her mind.
She is proper and vulgar and completely authentic and genuine at the same time.
Prabeen is one of the most wonderful people I've ever met.
Two days ago Prabeen's nephew died. He was 24. He collapsed while exercising. His father committed suicide in 1997. Still through this grief Prabeen has found time to laugh, joke with me about being American, and drink a few spirits with her girlfriends.
As I said, Prabeen is wonderful.
Detroit to Delhi
Moving from an abandoned and shrinking city of about one million to an overcrowed city of over 13 million is bound to present a bit of culture shock. India is truly like no other place on earth. I have always said that one most redefine poverty when traveling beyond the borders of the western world. India redefines not only poverty but transportation, class, caste, race, sexuality, gender, urbanization, water usage, usage of space, and spicy tastebuds!
It truly is a vibrant place.
Traffic is comparable to an intense game of Tetris - weaving ones way through spaces (on or off roads)...absolutely insane. Walking in the Old City consists of sweaty pits, dirty feet, cows meandering about, dogs and people laying in the street median, men groping, shop keepers yelling and using any and every persuasive tactic to lure buyers, spitting, traffic, basically a clusterf$%^ of craziness!
Peace and quiet is a state which is hard to come by here...there are just so many people.
What is an interesting thought I've had is that I am not fully emersed here...my focus (my job) is caring for the wellbeing of 33 college students. Daily doctor visits, coffee dates, and attending lectures have been more the norm than breathing in the complexity and depth of Delhi. Though poverty prevails all around me I feel disconnected from it. What scares me about this is that this is precisely what stratification of caste intends to do...it lures the higher class to discredit and function independently from the lower class. Of course this is impossible. It is impossible everywhere in the world. The lure is an absolute lie. We have situated societies in that from top to bottom and bottom to top there's a reliance and a strategic balance to keep top top and bottom bottom - it's complex.
Wrestling with this complexity is merely a backdrop to my presence in India. If I were here on my own accord I believe conversations and interactions with people would be different...at least I think it could be different.
It truly is a vibrant place.
Traffic is comparable to an intense game of Tetris - weaving ones way through spaces (on or off roads)...absolutely insane. Walking in the Old City consists of sweaty pits, dirty feet, cows meandering about, dogs and people laying in the street median, men groping, shop keepers yelling and using any and every persuasive tactic to lure buyers, spitting, traffic, basically a clusterf$%^ of craziness!
Peace and quiet is a state which is hard to come by here...there are just so many people.
What is an interesting thought I've had is that I am not fully emersed here...my focus (my job) is caring for the wellbeing of 33 college students. Daily doctor visits, coffee dates, and attending lectures have been more the norm than breathing in the complexity and depth of Delhi. Though poverty prevails all around me I feel disconnected from it. What scares me about this is that this is precisely what stratification of caste intends to do...it lures the higher class to discredit and function independently from the lower class. Of course this is impossible. It is impossible everywhere in the world. The lure is an absolute lie. We have situated societies in that from top to bottom and bottom to top there's a reliance and a strategic balance to keep top top and bottom bottom - it's complex.
Wrestling with this complexity is merely a backdrop to my presence in India. If I were here on my own accord I believe conversations and interactions with people would be different...at least I think it could be different.
Detroit
If you close your eyes and picture a city what would you see?
Movement and diversity - of people, cars, trucks, trains, and buses
Dichotomy of affluence and privilege against abject poverty
Flashing lights of billboards and traffic signals
Skyscrapers? Businesses? Restaurant rows
More people
Dichotomy of affluence and privilege against abject poverty
Flashing lights of billboards and traffic signals
Skyscrapers? Businesses? Restaurant rows
More people
What would you hear?
Voices on top of voices
A myriad of languages and dialects
The quick steps of busy people
Engines revving? Honking horns
More voices
A myriad of languages and dialects
The quick steps of busy people
Engines revving? Honking horns
More voices
Cities around the world are filled with all of these sights and sounds and so much more. After all, it is the movement, mobility, construction, and masses which define cities…or is it? Webster defines a city as ‘an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village’.
Where does such a definition leave the city of Detroit - a city which has been deemed dying, abandoned, shrinking, lost, segregated, and hopeless? Detroit certainly matches Webster’s definition in regards to size as the land area spans 6,657 square miles. Jerry Herron, a key note speaker for IHP Cities in the 21st Century Program, said of this complex city “Detroit's the city everybody likes to look at as a place that's dangerous, abandoned and economically no longer viable. It's the most famous failed city in the United States.”
Detroit is a city which exploded its population by 170% in just a 20 year span (1910-1930). By the mid 1950’s auto production surged through the city’s pulse. Business was booming and Ford’s $5 a day guaranteed salary had secured thousands of jobs. Soon after this peak in the late 50’s foreign and domestic competition grew and auto companies began merging with one another or closing completely. By 1958 nearly a forth of the entire city's work force was unemployed. The wrecking ball strike to the auto industry caused Detroit’s population to decrease at an astronomical rate and over one million people abandoned the city. Meanwhile the suburbs surrounding Detroit continued to increase at a steady pace.
Needless to say, a city which once had the highest rate of home ownership in the United Stated and now leads the nation in its highest foreclosure rates makes for an ideal city to kick off IHP’s Fall 2009 Cities in the 21st Century Program!
Students have entered Detroit not arrogantly presuming solutions and quick fixes but rather humbly and inquisitively absorbing the myriad of the city’s issues from various vantage points. Transportation, taxing, poverty, foreclosure, welfare, racism, abandonment, crime, and willowing pride and hope for Detroit are in part issues which students have been introduced to. Observing city life students have been astonished by the amount of unused space, empty streets, and segregation between suburbia and the downtown area.
In the midst of great complexity there are people who remain steadfast and committed to the wellbeing of Detroit. Students interacted with key people from Ford Motor Company, local housing, transportation, and urban planning organizations. The city was explored by bus, bike, feet, and even public transport (which most locals claim is nonexistent). Hundreds of people are moving to the city in order to connect with local organizations in efforts to restore economic, educational, and political justice and hope. Alas there is hope, despite vehement opposition and cynicism, in redeeming this dynamic city – a city that in actuality possesses more brazenly the reality which exists in much of America.
“Americans don't like poverty. Americans don't like things old. Americans don't like urban violence. We have all the problems everyone else has that people like to pretend exist only in Detroit.” Jerry Herron
So we go forward from Detroit taking new understanding of what makes a city a city, how issues stem deeper than what may appear on the surface, and the complexity of solutions and stakeholders wanting change for the good of individual, institution, city and/or society. We move forward gaining greater insight into our home cities. We move forward from this shrinking city of under a million to Delhi, India. We move forward as a group of learners, explorers, students, and teachers. We move forward.
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