Two photos

Want to see my face? Here's your chance!

This is me with two of my friends/colleagues: Hiral (URC coordinator and trusty driver), and Shashi (Research/Documentation Manager and trusty sandwichee). That's me on the right, in case you forgot what I look like. In this photo we're heading back to the office after a meeting at one of the Urban Resource Centers (aka "in the field"):

And below is me in the Old City's Sunday market. The old city - it's people, architecture, and general feel - makes my heart bleed. The guy in the middle fixes old shiny watches. I, for obvious reasons, was immediately drawn to him. As we started to chat, his buddies joined the conversation. The photo was taken by my friend and colleague Gauri. She's an architect, and probably the best person in the world to have on hand when walking through the old city. Gauri has done a lot for me since my arrival in Ahmedabad, including, but not limitted to, lending me a bicycle for riding to yoga class, lending me her amazing mother-in-law as a yoga instructor, and endowing me with Vietnamese coffee and an adorable, shiny, single-shot, Italian espresso maker:

Thanksgiving Feast for the Virus in My Belly

One thing I know I'm thankful for in this world is access to safe drinking water. What I'm not thankful for is the stomach infection I acquired in Pune, after 5 days of visiting some friends down there and discovering on the last morning that the tea they served me each day was made from tap water that was boiled for a whopping 30 second. No thanks to that. What I'm also not thankful for is my ego, which allowed me to pass off sharp stomach pains (and other symptoms I'd rather not gross you out with) as 'gas' for a good week and a half, until I woke up one morning knowing it was time to see the doc. So, instead of being in Bangalore with loads of food and other AIFers who adore the day of turkey, I spent thanksgiving in a room that sure didn't look like a doctor's office, but from which I exited with prescribed medicines. Really, though, I'm very thankful for safe drinking water. And I hope you are too.

The seasons, they are changing

Photo: Zoroastrian Cookie Shop, Pune, India

A few years ago I wrote my parents a letter from San Francisco, explaining how odd it felt to be sitting by a sunny window in the middle of December, looking down at shoppers in their summerish clothing. It was my first “winter” in California, and my heart was aching for New England as my life there had revolved around the seasons: The fall was full of rich colors, host to my birthday, the soccer season, and thanksgiving (my favorite). The transition to winter meant cozier times with more holidays and stepping into dark cold nights after sweaty and exhilarating basketball practices. The end of winter meant the Iranian new-year, jumping over fires, and hopes of an early spring arrival. By the time spring actually showed her face I’d already be depressed with cabin fever, but with each warming day my heart (and smile) would expand until it found itself paralyzed by the heat of summer. And the summers, oh, lovely New England summers: going backpacking with the fam, sport camps and swimming holes, pool parties and fort-building in the backyard, homemade and store-bought popsicles, mowing the lawn and jumping in the pool with my clothes on right after, lounging on the deck with stacks of pleasure reading, and warm nights with iced coffee around town. During college my summer days were spent interning and the nights were spent aimlessly exploring whichever new city I was working in. By the end of each summer I’d be ready for school and structure again, promising myself that this year I’d study more, play harder, win championships, spend quality time with the friends I saw less of over the past couple months. The fall would come, adding a new number to my age, and life would start all over again.

I remember that as I wrote that letter from California I was feeling a bit lost in my own mind because everything felt unfamiliar: no poignantly colorful seasons, no winter breaks, no teams. It had hit me that I was writing a letter as an adult, in an office, at work, in a state thousands of miles away from what I knew to be real life. In a way it was transition to true adulthood, let alone California, and when I recognized it as such, I stopped feeling “homesick”. And of course, as the months went on San Francisco started to feel like my own home, so much so that by August of 2007 I wondered why I was leaving for India when everything I could ever want at the great age of 24 was there at my fingertips.

And here I am now, once again thousands of miles from what I had built to be my life in the Bay Area, which was built off my life in New England, but, oddly, nothing feels unfamiliar. My life in Ahmedabad, for the most part, is strikingly similar to my life in the states. Sure, the quality is not as high, but my day to day life it’s quite similar: I get up and exercise, I go to work, get a bit unproductive after lunch, go home around 6, and then I either do something productive (cook, read, write, study) or go meet up with some new acquaintances. The details of course are different: my morning exercise consists of a yoga class and a short jog. Work is definitely really different, but what’s not different is that I’m enjoying it and learning from it. And in terms of the guys I hang out with, instead of their names being Sam or Andy or Evan or Ian or Eeren or Russ, their names are Tajendra, Yazad, Anish, Ankush, Chirag and Bridge.

Outside of my own bubble there are buildings going up everywhere, which was the case in both Amherst and San Francisco before I left; and I have to ignore people begging for money on a daily basis, which I did in Boston, New York, DC, Oakland and San Francisco every day of living in those cities. Now, please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all trying to say that Ahmedabad as a city is just like the US cities I’ve lived in; BUT, what I can say is that I think there are certain similarities in the dynamic between urban poor and urban rich no matter where you are, and at the moment some of those similarities, and some of the major differences too, have me thinking hard about the ways I (and we) perceive social issues, especially when we think of development and “extreme poverty” (for example, what’s the productive use of calling the reality of India’s poor “more severe” than that of the US’s urban poor? I understand there’s a difference between the two, but does that difference matter? Why, when I told people I was coming to India, did people gasp at the poverty I'd see, when all they have to do is walk down the street to see something that, in my opinion, is just as severe?). I’ve been trying my best to write more coherently about such thoughts, but so far I’ve just been writing in circles.

And now that I mention it, the fact that I’m even thinking about these things in a productive way, scribbling my thoughts down in my little blue journal, and then attempting to type them up, is perhaps one of -- if not the -- major differences in my own life here. All these social issues that I previously considered and thought about as if they were a side of coleslaw on my plate of life – whether it was one of the many moments I’d step over a urine-soaked man in the Tenderloin district of SF or a short moment of reflection while sitting on my parents’ porch before thanksgiving dinner -- are suddenly in my face; they’re the main course, all the side dishes, the sugary, ghee-loaded dessert, and the filtered water I wash it all down with as well. Maybe it’s because of the projects I’m working on, or maybe it’s just because of my present location on the globe (obviously both), either way I feel more alive than ever for it, because prior to my arrival (or departure) I’d been aching to engage. I was done reading about the development scene from my desk on Sutter Street for the time being, and was instead ready to step out into the hectic, polluted, sometimes harmonious but mostly cacophonous traffic of the world to test out my own brainpower. So far I’ve held the hand of luck and looked both ways, but I’ve got a far ways to go before crossing the street. As for the seasons, apparently they’re changing here in Ahmedabad, but by mid-day it still just feels hot – perhaps a bit less oppressive – and dry to me.

On What I'm Doing

Wow. It's been a bit since I last posted and the weeks are flying by. After a month of living with a family in a tiny apartment and searching for a place I've finally moved into a new apartment with my flat-mate, which is quite a relief. What's especially nice is that, just as in San Francisco, I am able to walk to work from my apartment. Although it's only an 8-minute walk it's highly entertaining as I'm just one of the many parts of traffic here in Ahmedabad: Waterbuffalow, bicycles, Ox, Motorcyles, buses, cows, cars, scooters, pedestrians, rickshaws, stray dogs (so many stray dogs), kids in school uniforms, veggie and fruit wallahs, and the occasional camel all share the road with meon my way to work. And just so you know, my neighborhood is considered a slower residential area.

On top of finally moving my projects at work have taken form and are already keeping me busy. I’ve been ridiculously impressed with my NGO and my colleagues, and am happy to report that the organization I’m with is not one that suffers from inefficiency. My office is a really pleasant place to be: lots of natural light, lots of busy people coming in and out of meetings with community members, tea is served twice a day, lunch is like a big potluck (everyone shares their food, which I love!), and all in all I generally feel like I’m surrounded by productive and interesting people who enjoy their work. I felt the same way about my work in San Francisco, and have decided that as long as I work in an office, it is a pattern I plan to replicate.

So about the NGO itself and my projects: The short of it is that Saath has been working in Ahmedabad’s informal sector since the late 80s. As the country, state, and city has changed around them, so too have their programs/initiatives. All their programs are aimed at improving the standard of living and quality of life of slum residents through health, education, and livelihood schemes, and they’ve also done lots of infrastructure work in partnership with the gov’t. They’ve had a lot of success and what I’ve been most impressed by is their philosophy in using the market as a tool for development (many NGOs are resistant to this concept). The best example of this is a program they initiated 2 years ago, and I’ll try to describe it without going into too many details:

Gujarat (the state I live in) and Ahmedabad (the city I live in) are among the fastest growing areas in India (both in terms of private investment in the area and population). While Ahmedabad has always had a large industrial sector it now has a large and growing service sector. In response to this Saath did a market scan to understand what the changing employment sector and the necessary skills for employment look like. From that they've set up a number of specific job-skill training programs for 18-30 yr. old slum residents, and all the programs (which are split up depending on the sector of employment) include a life-skill module and computer literacy training. They go through this 3-month program and are fed into a corporation/company/etc., and their progress is monitored. Saath has set up centers all around the city, and through the program they’ve already trained and employed close to 2,000 youth, all of whom are from the slums and had dropped out of school. What’s interesting is that the program is not free of charge to the youth (they pay about 500 Rupees for the training – a bit over 10 US dollars), so they are paying for the service that they receive, which gives them a sense of ownership over and commitment to their own success. The idea is that otherwise it’s seen as a charity being given to them, which, it’s been argued, can be dis-empowering.

The project is called “Umeed” (which means Hope), and is only one of the many initiatives that Saath employs. I’m currently working on a grant proposal for this project as one of my smaller short-term projects, so it’s been really great to get an understanding of all the little details that went into starting and creating the program. In the back of my mind I’m constantly wondering whether and how successful projects I come across could be implemented in different contexts (e.g. Bay Area, Iran), or what it is about a given context that allows it to be successful. One thing for sure about this project is that it is a response to the growing economy (so the economic growth and changing labor force are assumed). It’s refreshing to be learning about a project that has successfully used economic growth to reach the bottom of the barrel, and NOT as a trickle down effect but as a proactive initiative that focuses specifically on involving the urban poor in the city’s growth and involves partners at the corporate (employers), state (the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has already agreed to scale up the project), and civil society level (NGO partners are helping to implement the program). I feel strongly that NGO work should never excuse or completely alleviate the government of it’s social obligations, so when an NGO comes up with something innovative (which involves the private sector to boot) and the government is able to then scale it up (in this case by adding centers all around the city), that’s pretty much an ideal cooperative approach in my mind.

On top of this short-term project I have something I’m working on in the long-term and medium-term as well. My long term project is with one of Saath’s newer initiatives, called the Urban Resource Centers, where I’m working on a report about how the creation of the URCs exemplifies a rights-based-approach to development. In it’s most basic form the purpose of the Urban Resource Centers is to serve as a facilitator between service users and service providers, but it’s a lot more intricate than that (especially in a rights-based context) and will require a post of its own at a later time. What’s great is that the URC team is made up of really interesting people (an urban planner, and an architect who focuses on housing for the poor, to name two), so I’m learning a ton from them along the way.

The medium-term project that I’m working on, which is technically “on the side”, is helping the Community Video Unit (CVU) with their process documentation. The CVU is an arm of Saath that produces films by and for the slum communities about different issues that effect them. They call these videos “Video Magazines”, and they’re screened in strategic locations within the slums (in the local language) so that people are aware of services and civic life around them (the most recent film they’re working on, for example, is a film about the upcoming elections in December, to tell the residents about the candidates and their positions on different issues that will effect them, and information on how to get an election card and who from Saath to speak to about this). The producers are all members of the slum communities, and are part of Saath’s paid staff.

So that’s the lengthier short version of what I’m doing. I feel lucky to be placed with this organization and it’s also nice to have been put to work right away considering that one of my largest fears was that I’d show up and have nothing to offer. I’ll do my best to write more often so that my posts don’t end up being so long, but if you’ve made it this far congrats!

First Generation Born, Second Generation Immigrant, or Just Plain American?

(Photo: Logan Int'l Airport, Pre-departure)

I know that I owe a post about the NGO I’m working for, and the work that I’m doing/will be doing, but I don’t think I’ll pump that one out for another few days or so. Instead, I want to write about something totally unrelated that I’ve been thinking quite a bit about: what it means to be the child of people who moved to the United States from another country. Many of the individuals that I’ve met through the AIF program are individuals who, like me, were born in the United States but raised in a non-American household and culture. Just as I have never been to Iran without my mother, many of them had never been to India without their parents before their arrival this past September. During orientation I found myself quite jealous as they discussed their excitement and curiosity about this new adventure, that is, about having their “own” experience in their parents’ homeland. To put it in one fellow’s own words, one of her goals during this year was to be able to “manage herself” in India. As I bobbled my head in agreement, I pictured myself in Iran, without my mother, and wondered whether I could “manage myself” there without her. I’d like to say yes, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but in reality I’ve never been presented with that challenge, and at the very least I can comfortably say that it would be difficult from both an emotional and practical standpoint.

At one point I asked one of my Indian-American friends whether she could picture herself staying in India after the fellowship. Her answer fascinated me, and in its essence went something like this: “I couldn’t imagine my mother’s reaction… after she sacrificed so much for me to grow up in the United States, only to find that I’ve moved back to square one.” My immediate internal reaction went like this: “well yea, you’d move back here with all the tools that your education equipped you with.” And then I wondered whether my reaction was an imperialistic way of thinking about moving back to your parents’ homeland, that is, the idea that you have something to offer their former Society, simply because you were brought up and educated in the West. But I also wonder whether a second generation return would in fact be the perfect ending to the immigrant’s tale: not the “American dream” of making it big in the west (where your grandchildren will hardly learn your language, and have a watered down understanding of your story and sacrifices), but the tale of leaving the country you love, sacrificing all that you know for the prospects of a “better” opportunity abroad, to raise your children in an open society with greater opportunities for them, and then -- and here's where the stories diverge -- as they grow older and educated they decide out of their own volition that they want to go back to your homeland and reconnect with the society whose culture they so strongly feel attached to. I know that was a run-on sentence, but is this not an ideal picture for immigrants? Is this not the reverse of a brain drain? And of course, I realize that it assumes a certain level of opportunity in the original homeland that didn’t necessarily exist when the parents left (which seems to be true for a country like India, what with her expanding economy).

There are of course many different kinds of issues for first generation borns (indeed too many to discuss in one blog). Sure, we feel connected to the non-American half of our cultural upbringing, but that doesn’t necessarily translate well across borders -- when I go to Iran the simple reality is that I stand out, for a number of reasons. Many of the surface issues that account for this are easily mitigated with a make-over and a few months of language immersion, but dig a little deeper and it gets even more complicated: being American, among other things, in your parents’ homeland. I’m watching my Indian-American roommate deal with a number of such issues relevant to being a Non-Resident Indian (NRI), and some other people in my program have discussed it in their own blogs (see Curly In India discuss her thoughts on being an NRI).

Another issue that I think lots about is how, having grown up in the States, it will take first generation borns twice the effort to pass down the non-American part of ourselves to the next generation. It’s difficult for me to picture having children who don’t understand Farsi, or who don’t appreciate the amazing and noble nature of their grandparents’ and great-aunts/uncles’ stories and decisions. And I suppose this is part of why so many families – especially first generation families - urge their children to marry people of the same ethnicity, same culture, etc. But if you bring your child up outside of your culture’s society, how many and which of the cultural norms are you allowed to expect them to follow? I ask this question less about my own experience -- which in many ways is an exception to the rule -- and more in the context of conversations I’ve had with some Indian-Americans, many of whom – on top of educational pressures to become doctors, lawyers or engineers - are still explicitly expected to marry within their caste, state (Indian, not American) and religion. As for me and my siblings, the only time my parents mentioned marriage during our upbringing was to tell us to prioritize our education and careers over it – all the while instilling strong values about love and family, and a strong appreciation for our culture (which adds its own implicit pressures). And regardless of whether, given the choice, my parents would do any part of it over again, I must say that my upbringing is perhaps the thing I’m most proud of and thankful for in this life. And yes, I realize how lucky I am to be able to say that.

On Train Rides and Extremes

Above Photo: Jeena Shah, AIF Fellow

Over a south-Indian meal of uttapam and coconut chutney, one of the wonderful individuals I met in New Delhi, a consultant to the American India Foundation named Payal, appropriately stated that even a walk down the street in India can be an intellectual experience. It’s now the end of my 4th week in India, and everything I have experienced so far has confirmed her opinion (I must add that it's equally easy to intellectualize a walk through any part of San Francisco, but that's besides the point!). So I thought I'd describe a small part of my overnight train ride from New Delhi to Ahmedabad to highlight this truth.

Leaving New Delhi in the first place was a bittersweet moment: I was excited to head toward Ahmedabad – the city in which I currently sit to type this post, and will continue to reside until the end of June – but sad to leave the individuals that I had so much enjoyed getting to know. With me for the ride, thankfully, was my new roommate (another AIF fellow placed in Ahmedabad), Jeena Shah. We arrived on platform 6 of the train station a good hour early, but were told that we couldn't board the train until 15 minutes before departure. So we stood around awkwardly, shifting weight from one leg to the next, swatting at flies, moving our western bags out of peoples way every few moments, simply staring at the train which would soon carry us across a good part of India’s northern region to a city we would attempt to call home. After finally being admitted onto the train and shoving our luggage under and above our seats, we anxiously awaited the arrival of our cabin mates. Moments later in strolled a family of 4 (mother, father, uncle, child), followed by a young man traveling alone with shiny black hair, shiny black shoes, and a shiny silver ipod-shuffle clipped to his belt.

Relieved that we would most likely be avoiding the horror stories of aggressive or unfriendly cabin mates, I cozied up against the window with my headphones and a book. As we pulled out of the train station it soon became clear that the title of my book, “Plant of Slums”, would teach me less than the observations right outside my window. So I watched. I watched mothers and their children dig through trash mounds, I watched squatter settlement (under bridges, between buildings) after squatter settlement pass by, I watched young boys chasing each-other barefoot by the tracks, stray dogs barking at each other, children and old men alike bathing with buckets of water and a bar of blue soap, cows eating grass, cows eating trash; the city felt like it just kept going, and the reality of urban life thinned and thinned until the scene out my window shifted from urban, to semi-urban to rural. When my mind finally caught up to my eyes I turned away from the window, and right there inside my comfortable AC cabin was the young child of our cabin-mates being force fed by his parents and uncle: bright orange cheese puffs, followed by rotti (think flatbread) and a potato stew painted yellow with turmeric, then biscuits, more cheese puffs, some more rotti with yellow potatoes, and finally they helped him wash it all down with bright orange soda. I watched him chug the sugary substance and wondered how soon he’d be spewing it all back up, but just as he put the bottle down out came a new bag of chips, harder to open this time because of all the grease on his hands. In a matter of seconds I had gone from watching severe poverty and malnourished adults and children in New Delhi’s urban sprawl, to watching an upper/middle-class family force-feed their child into what will soon be type II diabetes (not to mention the child later peed on my backpack, so I was unimpressed all around). I thought of a NYTimes article I had read last year about malnourished youth in India, raised my eyebrows in uncomfortable disbelief, and asked Jeena if she had any fiction I could borrow – my brain could take no more.

A few hours later I picked myself up out of R.K. Narayan’s The Guide, and noticed Jeena’s report on caste discrimination peeking out of her bag (a report she recently wrote in law school for Human Rights Watch), so I asked her to tell me a bit about the focus of her research. Ten minutes into our conversation about one of India’s darkest and ugliest realities – caste discrimination and the fate of manual scavengers – we were caught off guard as we witnessed the extreme opposite: the beauty of India's plurality. Right before us in the cabin, in the small space between the benches and bags, the young man (the one with shiny hair, shoes and ipod) laid out a small green and white carpet and began his evening prayers. I had noticed moments earlier that he had gotten up to go to the restroom, but had no idea that it was to wash his hands and feet. As he stood and fell to his knees repeatedly before an Agnostic (me), a Jain (Jeena), and a family of Hindus, all the while murmuring his prayers, I found myself overwhelmed with euphoria, so much so that my mind went blank and all I could wonder was whether he was praying in Mecca's actual direction*. As I turned to face Jeena I could sense she was experiencing the same emotions; we exchange a smile of appreciation, tacitly ended our conversation, and gazed back out the window. The setting sun had turned the sky an awesomely rich and peachy blue, and at that very moment I knew I had made the right choice in coming to India.


*We would see the young man pray twice more before reaching Ahmedabad the next day and each time he prayed in the same direction, so I'm pretty sure that there was no way to know where Mecca was in relation to the moving train, but who really knows.

Chak De India!

Above Phote: Front Page, Times of India, Sept. 25, 2007

So it’s been pretty darn fun to be in India during the World 20/20 Cricket World Cup. To top off the general excitement of watching cricket in a cricket-obsessed country, India faced Pakistan last night in the championship game – and it was as close as a match can get, ending in a win by India. Most people left work a good half hour early to make it home in time to plop themselves before their TVs and watch the showdown. Looking out the window from my apartment the streets of this hectic city were practically empty, but every few blocks you’d see a huddle of rickshaw drivers who parked their yellow and green vehicles -- giving up their evening’s income -- to watch the game on a tiny screen with terrible reception at a chai-stand with 20 other guys. My guess is that the chai-stand owner gave up his own income as well and dolled out free cups of warm chai to each of his guests. Even for someone like myself, who has just learned the rules over the past few weeks (thank you Brian), last night was full of tension and excitement. But Americans can relate, because everyone knows that you don’t necessarily have to be a Red Sox or Yankees fan yourself to enjoy turning on the tube when the two face off in baseball’s postseason action. The city where I reside, here in the state of Gujarat, had to take extra safety precautions for the game as this was the site of the 2002 Hindu-Muslim communal riots (India is home to the worlds largest Muslim population outside of Indonesia; Hindu fundamentalists -- and the key word of course is fundamentalists -- believe that with partition the Muslims in India should have been forced to move to Pakistan.. and that's a simplified version of the politics). A glimpse at this morning’s paper makes me think that no major violence broke out post match, and I'm sure it didn't hurt that two of India's strongest players last night - one of whom won "man of the match" - were a pair of Muslim brothers. Sports, afterall, do tend to unite more than divide a country and its people.

In other sporting news, I saw the Bollywood film “Chak De India” a couple nights ago on the big screen, and it may very well be my new favorite sport movie (okay okay at least it ties with Bend-it like Bekham and Pistol Pete). It’s a fictional tale about India’s national women’s field hockey team – and while it follows the team-sport movie formula to a T, it was still really amazing overall (it was better than Bend-it like Bekham in that the actresses were all really great athletes!)! The movie perfectly and humorously highlighted how diverse India is, as the team was made up of girls who had very little in common in terms of language, color, and culture, but they all called India their home and country. Admittedly there were no subtitles, but Bollywood throws in a sprinkle of the English language here and there, and on top of that many of the words in Hindi and Urdu come from Farsi (Bollywood movies use an amalgamation of Hindi and Urdu – which has come to be called Hindustani), so between English and Farsi I followed as much as I needed to enjoy the film. All in all it's been a fun few days of feeling India's national pride through sports!

Reflections on Orientation

Above Photo: Jama Masjid, New Delhi

Greetings Greetings: Welcome to my first post (I know, I said I wouldn’t do, it but here I am). I arrived in India on September 1st, and on the morning of September 2nd a 2-week orientation period in New Delhi began. I’ll admit that the concept of Orientation did not necessarily settle well with me, as the word brought back memories of awkward firsts, silly name games, and other usually painful “icebreakers” (I’m sweating with anxiety just thinking about partaking in icebreakers). Such word-associations aside, I can comfortably say that I was blown away by the programming, and more importantly, it truly felt like the perfect and most appropriate stepping stone into these next 10 months in India.

Over the two week orientation period we were lectured by Indian historians, anthropologists, journalists, bankers, publishers/writers, government officials, NGO leaders, and artists (and a private tour of the National Gallery of Art in New Delhi to boot), each of whom had something unique and eye-opening to share with us about this extremely complex society and country; we had three dance classes from a famed (so I’m told) Bollywood choreographer, which culminated in a group performance; we visited New Delhi’s major sites; we spend two days in rural (breathtaking!) Rajasthan visiting school children and their teachers in pre-6th grade schools (classrooms) set up by a local NGO, and later met with women from Ibtada’s self-help groups; and to end the orientation period we had a meeting with the US ambassador to India. Each lecture and site visit deserves a posting of its own, but the purpose of this blog is more to share observations and reflections rather than indulge in too many details. To comment on the visit with the Ambassador, however, I can say that I left the meeting feeling as though our Ambassador is in India more to promote US Business than US Policies. I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed, as the two have become one and the same in many respects, but there’s something unsettling about a political appointee from the banking/finance sector serving in the Foreign Service. You can imagine how a group of young idealists took his arguments that the cure to India’s agricultural sector is a “Wal-Mart-like model”, and how Monsanto’s legal rights have not been rightfully recognized (Monsanto is a seed manufacturing multi-national corporation; in India close to 70% of the people are dependent on the agricultural sector and most seeds are farmer-produced, so when a MNC comes in to patent seeds, taking away farmer rights to save and sell their seeds… you get the picture). Yikes.

To sum it up in a sentence (or more) I would say that orientation was an intensive learning period - learning not only from the programming put together by the American India Foundation, but as well from my peers, the entire group of fellows, many of whom I can imagine I will stay friends with for the rest of my life. I’d go as far as to say that the group itself impressed me more than our speakers. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, venture capitalists, social workers, public health specialists – the list goes on and on - all with an international and social focus. During breakfast, tea breaks (of which there were many – and wow do they like their tea sweet here!), lunch, dinner, and even at day’s end when we would all be exhausted from the programming we somehow had the energy to engage and argue (the healthy kind, of course) about all that we had been exposed to on that day (and on a few occasions we had enough energy to experience New Delhi’s night life – more on those observations some other time, perhaps). It was amazing to hear people reflect on the issues at hand from their various professional and personal backgrounds, be it health, human rights, finance, education -- and be they Buddhist, Ismaili, Jain, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, from Texas, Wisconsin, Jersey, New York, Cali, Mass, etc etc etc! Needless to say I feel lucky and humbled to be among them. By the time I was able to crawl into bed each night I literally felt like new information was oozing from my ears. As it turned out the only thing irritating my ears during orientation were the crickets that had infested our rooms (my roommate and I had it the easiest, I must admit).

You can probably gather that I’m feeling enthusiastic about this upcoming year. While I’ve only been here three weeks the one thing I know for sure is that I cannot begin any sentence with “India is…”, because this place is so diverse and so complex that there is no one way to speak about the entire country and all it’s people/cultures/religions/languages at once. My enthusiasm and optimism in part stems from this reality: one can imagine the precedent that will be set if India’s development sector can create models to enable the millions living in abject poverty to move forward in a sustainable, healthy, and equitable manner with the rest of India’s economy – all in the face of such religious and cultural diversity and perhaps the most complex social structure (I’m referring here to the caste system, which is still a strong force). And all this at a time when the most prevalent model in our world is one of fearing thy neighbor, let alone the “other,” and isolating oneself from people of different cultures and religions (even different sects within the same religion!). I know that 10 months in a country will not do a thing to change this world, but I’m excited to be here learning about and engaging with the multitude of issues going on in this country from the ground level. And so these are my thoughts as the rest of the fellows and I break off to our separate NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). I’m sure my enthusiasm will wax and wane as the months carry on, but you’ll have to check back in to see for yourself!