India Travel Summer 2017

I woke up from an evening of time to rest by myself, having set an intention to go check out a yoga studio and then a museum. I took my time with breakfast, lazing around with Zorro - my new best friend // 13-year old Dachshund - so didn't really start moving until far after the ideal time to scoot. Scrolling through dozens of events for the evening to find one suitable, getting irritated with the internet, then listening to an amalgamation of inspirational songs to get up out of the house, I made for the Lotus Temple around noon, with plans for a detour at Nehru Place to get a phone charger. Lotus Temple Determined footsteps took me near to the destination, but my wandering soul took some side steps through a neighborhood on the way. I thought about gates and parks (of which there was arguably a disproportionate amount given the population density and context), and about a Malcolm Gladwell podcast I'd recently listened outlaying the demons of golf. Essentially a marker ...

On the recommendation of a women's studies professor at the University of Mysore, I've been watching the Netflix series "Stories of Rabindranath Tagore" and there was recently one episode where a married man has an affair with the lead of a play. He is a wealthy landlord who constantly acts and speaks with ownership and entitlement. It got me thinking about power dynamics in relationships, efficacy and agency. A shot from "Stories of Rabindranath Tagore" I had my first day at the internship today and visited one of the centers to record the girls working in the apparel design class. They had just completed the assignment of designing and manufacturing a burka - looking at the current trends, sketching, buying material and sewing. Before we went, Gayatri (the head of this particular program) was briefing me on the program's mission, and this batch of young women. She reiterated the impact of the course as providing healing for them, as the creat...

The final concert was about 3 hours long. In typical SVYM fashion, there was tea and snacks 30 minutes before the event started. The vocalists, having learned they were going first, ended up waiting in the room after a few minutes of nervous mingling, followed shortly by everyone else in our group gathing there, chatting and giggling. The students from Cornell and Iowa University joined us for the whole event, so the relatively tiny classroom was packed. Everyone waited patiently for the gurus to roll in, and the SVYM greetings and welcoming began the event. Everyone had about 15 minutes to perform, save Anu's dance piece at the end. It was incredible to see the work that everyone had put in over the 4 weeks. It had the energy of a beginner's piano recital, but the kind where everyone is an adult and this is like their second or third instrument so they're nervous but also do a great job. The show started with the vocalists, and we sang in unison all but one so...

Today felt a little rocky. Not in the torrential sort of way, but more in the way that spring feels when it's almost summer and the flowers have bloomed but it keeps growing warmer. In the way that it feels to recognize time folding in on itself. I haven't really mentioned schedules, and that's in part because I don't want to, nor can I speak for everyone - a lot of us have different flows. But there are crews, unofficial "posses" that have formed around the slots for lessons, and desires to travel around town. This morning we had our last Monday of yoga, and the first day back from the weekend full of rest and reflection, as well as adventure and life's playful upsets. Friday felt like a load lifted from our routine, and most of us went out to eat at the Royal Inn down the street. There were high aspirations to keep the ball rolling and have another involved henna party, but that lasted less than an hour and everyone was in bed by 10:30. Saturday s...

I wanted to wait until we had seen the all of the scheduled renditions to write a post about the Ramayana performances. First of all, by the time we arrived to India, all of us were encouraged to have familiarized ourselves with the story. To ensure this knowledge was set, the beginning of the second week we had a pre-dinner "Ramayana Party," with a plethora of deliciously appetite-spoiling snacks, in which we all squeezed in to one of the single rooms and attempted to collectively recount the tale from beginning to end. Turns out that is difficult to do in one hour! With everyone having read or taken in different translations, it was really cool to put all the wide pieces together. I read a beautiful copy by Ranchor Prime, the Wikipedia summary and a couple of us had watched a children's animated movie. Anu had heard the story since she was little, so she had a lot of different parts to add, and there was also a graphic novel, feminist interpretation called "Sita...

This weekend we went to Kerala - a beach town a 2-6 hour drive, depending on unexplained variables. The ocean, browner and fiercer than any I'd seen before - splashed just a short walk from our rooms. The 9 of us has a couple of days to be together, make choices en mass, enjoy sand in our toes and beds, and take in lots of roadside views. Friday night we settled in and had a delicious dinner and hung out at the beach, but I crashed pretty hard. Saturday we visited a temple for Puja at 7:30 am with what Steve refers to as a "monster priest." It was pretty incredible, two men dressed in headgear and body paint blessing hoards of people - potentially many tourists, we saw loads of signs for "tourist homes" and most folks were dressed very nicely It was right on th e water, which was incorporated into the ritual. We stayed to see people weighed on scale to determine how much food they would give as a gift to the people for prasad , an...