It was amazing.

On the train ride from Mumbai back to Pune, I made a list of everything I wanted to remember from that journey, beginning with the lunar eclipse that occurred out the western window, which I happened to be pressed up against, and ending with–well, with all of this:

- Before the eclipse,the full moon just hung in the sky above the silhouette of a mountain, and it looked exactly like the most stunning puppet show backdrop: this golden coin suspended above the perfect cut-out mountain, and the sky going that rust color between dusk and night.

- The slums and villages along the railroad tracks: the way the buildings, concrete or tin-roofed or tarp-covered or wooden, just piled up and against and around each other, and how they spilled over toward the tracks, and were built on massive mounds of trash, and the way the people just traipsed through it without notice, and how the kids watched the train go by and laughed and pointed and waved.

- A huge bonfire by the railroad track when we were in full countryside, passing only small villages every so often, and the few young men and women standing around the fire, throwing in more fuel, piece by piece, as the flames crackled and leaped, and how they did not seem scared at all–not of the fire or of the train screaming past.

- The way every building along the way looked ready to crumble to pieces (maybe under the weight of so much multicolored laundry draped over every possible surface and hanging from every possible hook!) but how they all still stood there anyway, and, in Mumbai, were overshadowed by massive, shining, shimmering, sun-reflecting, skyscrapers.

- The thousands of people crammed onto the railway platforms in saris, punjabis, jeans, button downs, burqas, sweaters, scarves, coats, and the shoving and the pushing and the running and the way, as our train slowed down and people glanced up to read the car numbers, they would see my (very white, very Western) face out the window and do a double-take.

- The two young women, as we passed a rural train station, sitting companionably on the tracks a few yards from the station platform, swigging water from a bottle and chatting away, in punjabis with long black braids and quilted backpacks, laughing and talking away from the crowd, so cozy on the rails.

- One lone dog standing by the track as we rushed by and how skinny and scared he looked and how hungry.

- The family who sat opposite us on the train ride home: how the mother removed her niqab when she had settled on the train, and kicked off her bewjewled shoes; and the father’s moustache and the way he thought I spoke Hindi when I asked the baked beans man “kitna?” (“how much?”); and their little boy who was so good and whose bottles were kept warm in crocheted bottle holders and how he babbled in baby talk but it still sounded like Hindi!

- The most amazing red plateaued mountain that our train tunneled through, and how the town seemed to climb up and up and up above us as we descended into the stone, and the goats and the garbage and the people standing on the steep incline toward the tracks and the cell phone advertisements on the shops just before the train rushed into the depths.

- The temple in the middle of verdant farmland, with the orange and pink paint and the beautiful green trees.

- The emptiness in between Pune and Mumbai, and how it looked like jungle some of the time and marshland other times and farmland other times and how it made me want to ride the trains–second sitting, with a proper window and the wind in my hair–across all of India, forever.

On my next days off, I am going to Mumbai with Stephanie to explore a new global metropolis and possibly go to a Jewish synagogue and maybe a gay nightclub.

But. Last night I went to the Fun Fair.

Before the Fun Fair, Ellen and I sent ourselves on our own Pune Challenge, which is this adventure we send guests on by making them visit various landmarks and regions of Pune. We tried to find Tambat Ali, the coppersmiths’ workshops, but succeeded only in finding the shops in which they sell copper products. That was okay, though, because we visited a three-story copper shop and the owner was very friendly and showed us all around and let us take pictures. I bought a little copper Ganesh in the “modern,” “minimalist” style, which means he has very large, smooth ears that I like to stroke.

Instead of moving on to our next official destination, Ellen and I decided to wander the streets. We passed an elevated mosque with an outdoor altar that looked very Hindu, and meandered down a street full of shops selling useful things, like lightbulbs, and stationery, and cell phones. And then we found Christmas.

There was Santa, standing in his sunny, plasticked, smiling form, outside of a shop full of tinsel and ornaments and glittery fake poinsettias. Of course we went inside and frolicked amidst the Christmas, much to the amusement of our fellow shoppers, and purchased some tiny plastic candy canes and very glittery Christmas bells to give Philippa, who began decorating her room for the holidays several weeks ago.

After Ellen folded down the branches on the fake tree outside the shop (“a Christmas tree should look like this!”) we left Christmastime and kept wandering, past stores selling all sorts of tupperware products, rope, paint, buckets, wire, and other hardware supplies. Then we found ourselves on the edge of the Red Light District, which Ellen and I realized at approximately the same time, upon taking in the women’s posture–hips cocked, arms folded, and wow, is that lipstick!?–and the fact that suddenly there were no children on the street. Whoops.

We soldiered on, however, and emerged near Laxmi Road and Phule Market, where we take participants on shopping tours! So we had gone from exploration of new territory to familiarity, which made us feel very knowledgeable and city-smart. But we then took a rickshaw in a new, strange direction to MG Road, and felt very lost until we found the Western Union and shouted, “Bas! Bas!” at our driver, who seemed confused and asked us to take a picture with him. (We said no. As Ellen put it, “I only take pictures of special rickshaws. Like the one with the red roof.”) Then we had a delicious lunch at Ram Krishna with the rest of the programme team, before heading home. I slept for two hours (the other SVs and I had stayed up gossiping until 2 AM the night before!), and then, after dinner at Sangam, we went out to the Fun Fair.

The Fun Fair was next door in the Indiranagar slum; it is being held for a whole week in celebration of Datta’s birthday! It had the typical ferris wheel, bumper cars, and carnival games that rip players off at ten rupees a go, as well as the buoyant atmosphere expected at a Fun Fair, but it was also playing loud Indian music and was replete with people who got very excited whenever our cameras came out and tried to pose for photos they were not in. We proceeded to buy tickets to the spinny ride in which the cars almost-but-not-quite slam into each other, and then decided to go on the ferris wheel.

The ferris wheel was the fastest ferris wheel I have ever ridden on. It soared, it flew, it zipped through the night sky like a rocket. So, unsurprisingly, not long after it picked up full speed, vomit came sailing from the sky above me and onto my lap. And my leg. And my sleeve. And Emily’s leg. And a little in my hair.

But not, mercifully, my camera.

Thanks to my training with Davidson’s Residence Life Office, I reacted mostly by laughing hysterically and taking a photograph, which you can see below. Then I sat and waited to get off the ride. Interestingly, when the ferris wheel next brought us to the bottom platform, the operators let Net and Sayali get off, but even though mine and Emily’s car was next in line, they sent us back around a few more times–maybe to make up for the puke? It was quite fun to watch from above the reactions on the ground as Net and Sayali told our friends I had been vomited on.

Then we got off the ride. We came home. Emily and I went to the laundry. And then we went to bed. This morning, I am off and relaxing, and tonight, we are going to a Bollywood movie entitled “The Dirty Picture.”

Oh, India.

I just thought I should introduce myself properly, as Jessica has been talking about me a lot, and she claims she will miss me when I am gone.

My name is Net, or more accurately Annette, which is actually a French name, which is fun as Jessica is half French. BUT I don’t really like the French because I am English and it is in our blood not to like the French and so I don’t really like my name. I also do not like Ann, or Anne, and I physically hate (as in will hit you if you call me this) Netty. This is of course the name my dad and brother used to call me when I was younger because I hated it so much. Please don’t call me this. Net will do fine.

As I said before, I am from the UK, England to be precise, and I have lived there all my life, until I lived at Sangam. I arrived at Sangam at the end of August, and I have had a fantastic time here and I know Jessica will do too! I’m sure you are all wherever you are feeling very jealous of all her stories here.

Jessica has now found out that I am writing this blog, but I decided I should finish it anyway!

During my time here at Sangam, I have met many people, from all around the world, from all walks of life, of all ages, and all races, and yet none of them have been quite as cat like as our Jessica. As I type this, she is currently curled up on a table listening to people tell stories. She is my favourite Jessica Cat though!

I am 22 years of age, my birthday is 24th July, which in England, is 24/7!! This means it is my birthday every hour of every day!! This pleases me a lot, and I’m very grateful that I am not American, because otherwise this wouldn’t work anywhere near as well there! I am also glad I am English because it means I can spell things properly, like “colour”.

This is now my third attempt to finish this beautiful blog about myself. I am not sure there is really much else to tell you. My degree is from Durham University (which is a better university than Philippa’s) and it is in Geoscience (Geophysics with Geology route) – you’re all very jealous of my degree title right? I also got a 2:1, which I know most of you won’t understand because you are American, but it means I did pretty good, but not as good as Philippa who got a 1st. But as I mentioned before, I went to a better university. There is obviously nothing competitive about the higher education system in the UK at all. I am sure Davidson is a very good college though, and I will not compare Durham to Davidson!

I think I will finish now because I’m not a very interesting person and this was all much funnier when Jessica didn’t know about it! I still think it’s quite funny though

—-

This is Jessica speaking! I am hijacking Net’s hijack to post at the bottom the amazing video she filmed and edited (not to mention choreographed) as Sangam’s contribution to COP17, the WAGGGS climate change conference happening right now in South Africa. They asked for Girl Guides and Scouts to do an “action” on December 1st to demonstrate their support for climate change, and here is ours, designed by Net, who is talented and awesome (and not just because she managed to hijack my blog).

From the start, the participants were open and enthusiastic and engaged in everything they did. In one of our first sessions, they shared the reasons behind their interest in HIV and AIDS, and the stories they told about home were riveting. The participant from Burundi said that it is traditional in her country for a man’s brothers and father to have sex with a man’s new wife (their new sister- and daughter-in-law), which means HIV often spreads quickly throughout a family; our Nigerian participant told about female circumcision performed with the same razor on hundreds of girls, passing the virus easily through blood transmission. But for all the sad stories, there were strong ones, too; each of the participants was chosen by Sangam or by their member organization because of their knowledge, experience and dedication to fighting HIV and AIDS. Though the seminar was about advocacy and not the medical aspects or other details of HIV and AIDS, learning about advocacy through an issue everyone was passionate about helped a lot.

That said, for our original “What is Advocacy” session, we used WAGGGS’ Stop The Violence campaign as an example of advocacy, which worked really well. It helped us teach about advocacy apart from HIV/AIDS, and it was another issue the participants were interested in. And after the participants were familiar with advocacy–influencing others to take decisions to change our lives and the lives of others, by speaking out, educating, and taking action–we brought them to visit 3 different community partners: Deep Griha, Green Tara and Kayakalp. I’ve written about Deep Griha before. Green Tara works as a women’s empowerment group in the slums just up the road from us, and teaches sex education to girls; and Kayakalp is an NGO based in the Red Light District of Pune, where over 4000 women work as prostitutes. Mostly trafficked in from other parts of India and from other Asian countries, these women can go to Kayakalp for healthcare (especially HIV and STD testing), counseling, and to keep their kids at Kayakalp’s creche. The participants were really wowed by the community partners, all of which help those with HIV/AIDS and devote part of their organization’s efforts towards combating the virus and spreading awareness.

And at the end of the seminar, we went to go see advocacy in action in a really exciting way. We joined Deep Griha and their “Wake Up Pune” campaign (which spreads HIV/AIDS awareness around Pune) on the World Aids Day March through the center of the city. We were up and working at 7:30, at breakfast by 8:00, in rickshaws by 8:30 and marching by 8:50 AM. We started at Shaniwar Wada Fort and traveled all the way around a bunch of major roads, chanting the slogans in English that we’d made up (“SPREAD THE MESSAGE, NOT THE VIRUS!” and “STOP AIDS, SAVE LIVES!”) and picking up the Marathi chants surrounding us. The energy was incredible. Everyone had red armbands, red ribbons, giant banners; the guys behind us carried blown-up condom balloons. We had made a bunch of posters. One girl wrote “GETTING TO ZERO” and “WAKE UP PUNE” across her face and arms. When we got back to Sangam, everyone was exhausted but thrilled. It was a feeling like finishing a theater piece, when you walk into the wings after curtain call–your whole body humming with the magnitude of your actions, the gestures you have made, the message you communicated. I played photographer for the whole of the march (except when I asked Net to grab the camera and get some shots of me!) and I tried to take some pictures of the message being spread–men, women, older schoolkids, reading the leaflets Deep Griha passed out as we went along, examining the free condoms, thinking about HIV and AIDS along with the rest of the world on that day, thanks to our efforts, our presence.

This kind of cultural exchange wasn’t limited to the participants.They wanted to share with the staff too! One of the Indian girls, who came from Chennai, kept telling me she wanted to do mehendi for me, but I didn’t realize she really meant it. Finally she grabbed me and sat me down, and she did the most amazing mehendi on my whole right hand and arm. It took her a half hour, tops, and she didn’t make a single mistake. Turns out Pennarasi is a beautician, and when she’s not doing Girl Guide stuff she does mehendi for weddings! She was super sweet and also gave me a beautiful drawing she’d made. And during Indian afternoon, another South Indian girl told me she wanted to do my eyeliner–”to make you look like me!” When she came out with the eyeliner she also had earrings, a necklace and a clip-on nose ring to loan me. She gave me very elaborate, Cleopatra-like eyes; everybody was very surprised!

And one of the best parts of the seminar for me was the opportunity to speak French. The girls from Burundi and Madagascar spoke enough English to get on with the other participants, but for some of the sessions they needed a little help. I did translation for them, especially during the session in which they had to plan out their advocacy projects for back home. And it really helped Armelle, from Burundi, open up and feel less shy. It was also extremely helpful when Olinah’s sari turned out to have a massive hole in the fabric and she needed to go back to the sari shop and pick out new material; I went with her, and we chatted in French all the way–thirty minutes of rickshaw there and back!–about Guiding in Madagascar, our boyfriends, her upcoming wedding, traveling, and lots more. It was such a cool opportunity to use my French, which got rusty from four years in North Carolina and is fading again from disuse here in India, and to get to know two of the participants on a more intimate level than I usually do. Something about that unusual-language thing really bonds people together.

I think this has been my favorite event so far. I have relished the chance to meet people from so many places, enjoyed doing sessions on things that are real and important, been impressed by the big dreams our participants had and the gumption and imagination they have to carry them out, and have had so much fun. The youth and energy and enthusiasm and dedication I have seen over the last week have blown me away. And the mixing and matching–a Ukrainian girl doing amazing mehendi on her own hand, the girl from Chennai who asked me, “Are the rickshaws like this in your country?”, the Canadian participants sharing some sex education with the girls from Bangladesh and Uttar Pradesh, the mash-up of languages as people tried on t-shirts in the shop–it was fabulous.

Today also happens to be my day off. Originally I had a big day planned. I was going to lug my laptop to the “Apple-approved service provider” to see if they could explain (and, even better, fix!) the fact that my Macbook no longer turns on. I was planning to accompany Claire to the post office and to head to Deep Griha to try and score some free condoms to use during our HIV/AIDS Seminar and to go out to lunch, preferably to a McDonald’s where a large French fry could console me after the Apple people informed me my Macbook is well and truly dead and my photos all lost.

However. I am instead trapped inside Sangam. With nothing to do. Everyone here at Sangam stresses that you must not work on your days off. Our job often results in 10, 12, 14-hour days, and because we live amongst our event participants, we must always be “on”–smiling, helpful, patient, kind. I love my job, but I have learned how important it is to relax and rest and do stuff for myself on my off days, which means no organizing sessions, no answering emails, no pitching in when those who are working look stressed! But today I found myself bewildered by my inability to go anywhere and accomplish my plans, and found myself wishing I could help a little; today Philippa and Net are training our two new SVs, Emily and Stephanie (from Upstate New York and Brazil respectively) and greeting the event participants streaming in from around the globe, as well as doing the usual event prep stuff. So I had hard time sitting in my room doing nothing with all that going on downstairs.

It did give me a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving, though. Thanksgiving passed by yesterday to very little notice, since there are currently only five Americans at Sangam right now, three of whom can be considered serial expats, one of whom arrived only three days ago, and one of whom is only half-American anyway. (Can you guess which one is me!?) So despite waking up and thinking, “Oh, right, it’s Thursday, it must be Thanksgiving,” I have not actually meditated on what I am thankful for until today.

For starters, this amazing international opportunity. I have friends from all over the world, now. And they’re more than just people I have met during travel: they are my colleagues and confidantes and compatriots. And I am getting to know and love India (even the stupid bandh!) each and every day. I love the little stripey kittens who live somewhere between Indiranagar and Sangam, and I love how comfortable I feel with rejecting rickshaw drivers when they propose ridiculous prices (in the middle of the day! when they know we aren’t tourists! Do they think we’re idiots!?). I love riding in rickshaws and looking out the sides and noticing things, everything: the hairy pigs, the shortcuts we always take to and from certain places, the babies digging in the dirt, the woman with a Gujarati-style sari to the left, and the women with Maharashtran-style saris over there, and the kids in their school uniforms, and the heaps of bananas on a cart.

I am also grateful for the chance to use my brain and my energy and my feminism in so many new ways. I feel like every day contains a challenge, but a surmountable one, and I feel so proud of myself at night when I am falling asleep and thinking about what I did right, whether it was making a double-sided photocopy or giving a rickshaw driver directions or doing well in Aruna’s scary, intense game that involves counting to ten but alternating between English and Hindi numbers. (Ek, two, teen, four, paanch…) I am thrilled to be working for an organization with a huge Stop The Violence wall, where fighting for girls’ and women’s rights is an everyday matter. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this opportunity, and for this take-it-for-grantedness that is feminism and women’s empowerment at Sangam. Thank you.

I am thankful for my super supportive family and boyfriend and friends, who send me emails and keep me updated on things at home and send me stories to read and critique and Skype with me and are so wonderful even though I’ve abandoned them all for a whole new country for six whole months. They stay up late to talk to me on my time zone, and send me pictures of my cat, and read my blog, and don’t chastise me for not emailing often enough.

Then, the little things: I am thankful for my own room. It is really nice to have some space to call my own here at Sangam. Also, I am thankful for chocolate. And Indian sweets. And pretty much all the new sugary stuff I have come to love here. Also, the dependency of having my cornflakes every morning. It reminds me of how I ate Special K for breakfast for about seven years through middle and high school–only now I add milk to my cereal! A small step for mankind, but a huge step forward for Jessica C. Malordy!

First and foremost, particularly as I learn more about education here in India, and educational opportunities (or lack thereof, really) for so many Indian kids, especially girls, I am thankful for my education. Every day I am reminded of how lucky I was to go to a school like Davidson and learn the things I learned the way I learned them–surrounded by a wonderful community, challenged and encouraged by brilliant professors, in a rigorous but supportive environment.

And, they kind of go hand in hand, but it bears specifying: I am thankful for books. Reading is as good as it has been since I was 6 (and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 and…!). I feel so incredibly blessed to be literate and to love reading and to love writing and for my ability to be engrossed by a gossipy article on David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides and Mary Karr in the same way people are engrossed by People magazine. I am also grateful for my ability to be engrossed by People, too. Variety is the spice of life. And writing? Writing makes me feel sane. Thanks to everyone who reads this blog.

A rambly post, but it’s about time for another list since my post on eleven random things about India that I love. So, I am thankful. Very thankful. And without the bandh, I might not ever have sat down to write this post and think on what I am grateful for, so I am even, in a small, grumpy way, thankful for the bandh, too. (Sort of. Meh. Haha.)

Probably not. I didn’t, either, until I visited the Deep Griha Society on Monday and attended HIV Bootcamp, run by Wake Up Pune, a branch of Deep Griha that works to raise HIV/AIDS awareness here in Pune. (DISHA, Deep Griha’s Integrated Service for HIV/AIDS, is another branch; it provides support for those in the slums living with HIV/AIDS.)

Bootcamp was fun (guess who got to demonstrate how to put a condom on a rubber penis? As Net put it, “Jessica’s the one with a serious boyfriend!”) and informative, and also useful. In two days, the HIV/AIDS Advocacy Seminar starts here at Sangam. We will be focusing on the issue of HIV and AIDS–which, as the statistics above prove, is a huge issue here in India, as well as the rest of the world–in order to learn about advocacy. Ever since a bunch of Boy Scouts’ sisters demanded the right to attend a Boy Scout Rally and learn Scouting, advocacy has been a major part of WAGGGS. The official definition of “advocacy” is:

Influencing people to take decisions to improve our lives and the lives of others

and advocacy must always include:

Speaking Out, Doing and Educating

WAGGGS has a number of specific advocacy campaigns. Many of them are related to the MDGs, or Millenium Development Goals, which were established in 2000 by the United Nations and are meant to be achieved by 2015.

Whenever I watch that video, I wonder how these goals would be doing if September 11th hadn’t happened. Would the countries who signed the Millennium Development Goals have been less preoccupied and really worked on them? Or do governments always sign these things and then disregard them? In any case, WAGGGS released an MDG+10 report, detailing the numerous, amazing ways Girl Guides and Girl Scouts all over the world have worked toward achieving the MDGs, even if the nations themselves have not really been on top of things.

And, here at Sangam, we are preparing to do some more of that work. This seminar will focus specifically on MDG 6:

WAGGGS’ specific HIV/AIDS campaign declares:

WAGGGS calls on the international community and national governments to actively increase their efforts to mitigate the prevalence and impact of HIV and AIDS among young people by:

• Ensuring young people have access to comprehensive, objective, non-judgemental, gender and youth-specific information on HIV and AIDS and sexual and reproductive health, including client-initiated voluntary counselling and testing.
• Increasing access for young people to effective methods for protection (such as condoms, female condoms, and a full range of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services) by integrating SRH and HIV services, and supporting organizations involved in promoting HIV and AIDS education for girls and young women.
• Scaling up access to prevention technologies that benefit women, such as the female condom, post-exposure prophylaxis, and microbicides research.
• Helping empower girls and young women with increased efforts to eliminate gender inequality and all forms of violence against women and girls as one of the necessary starting point towards a secure environment for young women to take responsible decisions on their sexual and reproductive health.
• Involving young people, especially young women and men living with HIV and/or belonging to key populations at higher risk, in the response to HIV and AIDS as key partners and including them in the planning, delivering and evaluation of HIV and AIDS policy and programme initiatives
• Enabling all girls and young women to have access to treatment programmes and therapies, including antiretroviral medication, treatment for opportunistic infections and sexually transmitted infections, and prevention of mother to child transmission programmes.
• Securing the human rights of girls and young women, including girls and young women living with HIV and AIDS, or orphaned, widowed or otherwise made vulnerable by AIDS, through laws, policy and international protocols which protect land and property ownership, inheritance rights, and equal opportunities in the workplace for women and men.
• Ensuring that country monitoring and evaluation processes disaggregate data by age and sex, and include effective markers of gender equality.

WAGGGS’ HIV/AIDS campaign also lists suggestions for how to accomplish those goals, and three of those suggestions include:

• Implement the WAGGGS Global Action Theme into the national non-formal educational programme and use resources on MDG 6 are available to enable members to speak out and take action to mitigate the negative impact of HIV and AIDS.
• Advocate for non-discriminatory access to HIV and AIDS education, prevention technologies, treatment and care, and for clear, objective, non-biased, gender and youth-specific information about HIV and AIDS and sexual and reproductive health in formal and non-formal education.
• Lobby for the empowerment and self-determination of young women, and emphasize the important role of non-formal education in girls’ empowerment.

Our HIV/AIDS seminar at Sangam will be working on some or all of those above suggestions. It will also bring together 23 young women from Australia, Burundi, Nigeria, Ukraine, Madagascar, Costa Rica, Canada, South Africa, Bangladesh, and India, as well as all of the nations represented by the staff: England, the United States, Sweden, Malaysia and so on. Together, we will learn about advocacy, how NGOs here in Pune are working to assist those living with HIV/AIDS and to combat the spread of HIV, and how we can go home and advocate for the HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and assistance  in our own countries and our own way.

I am excited.

The music was mostly late ’80s and ’90s songs with random remixes thrown in. The food was great. We talked about work, and about ourselves, and about national differences. (For instance, Ellen speaks amazing English, and we asked her how she was taught English at school, because the native English speakers–me, Net, and Philippa–do not speak the languages we learned at school half as well as Ellen speaks English!) But mostly we were silly and goofy and friendly and having fun, and it just affirmed for me how much I love Sangam, and I love my job, and I love the people I work with. Everybody here at Sangam cares about Girl Guiding, and changing the world, and devotes 110% to the work that we do here. Everybody is interested in travel, in opening their eyes to cultural differences and similarities; everybody embraces change, is flexible, is good-humored in the face of the unexpected. And everybody is so damn nice! Friendly, caring, easy to talk to, easy to get to know. I suppose that those who seek Guiding/Scouting on a higher level–traveling internationally to work in a Guiding center is a pretty profound commitment to Guiding/Scouting–would have similar personalities, and would get along. Or maybe it’s just coincidence that we mesh so well. Either way, it’s fantastic.

That night out, and the way I could not stop grinning, has reaffirmed my decision to come to Sangam after graduation, rather than plunging into graduate school or working in publishing or even staying in the United States. This was the right step for me. I already feel like my perspective on myself and my goals is shifting; I still want the same, or at least similar, things, but the way in which I approach that next job, the M.F.A., maybe even the P.h.D., will be different than the way I would have without this experience. I can’t properly explain what the difference will be; it’s not a tangible, concrete feeling yet. It’s just the sensation of having slipped on a new pair of glasses, or moved to a different window on the world. I am still looking out into the future, but my vision has changed. This is what Sophie was going on about in her last weeks here, which were my first, and I didn’t grasp it, then; I hadn’t felt the change bubbling up inside of me: a renewed sense of potential and a new source of energy. But now it’s starting, like a little tiny campfire in my chest, sparking, and I can’t even imagine what sort of blaze will be there by the time I go (and who will be sitting around it, and what kind of S’mores they’ll be making! Haha!).

Except for me. I don’t know my place here. I am not a Hindu. I have seen dozens of temple turtles by now, but am still afraid to ask one to hold onto my worries and anxieties for me; touching the turtle is already an anxiety. So I walk past, and into the temple. Inside, the movement travels clockwise around the stone building at the center; though this complex as a whole is the Alandi Temple, capital T, there are in fact a multitude of temples within, devoted to different holy trees, housing a variety of gods and goddesses, scattered along the route that circles the main temple at the center: each god and goddess has their own tiny site for visitors to stop by and pray at, their own little space for individual offerings. And the center itself is a stone building enclosing Sant Dnyaneshwar’s samadhi, his mausoleum, a black stone bathed in oils and flowers and washed in water and smoothened by thousands of hands, kept deep in the heart of the stone structure in the tiniest of chambers. Some supplicants even lie prostrate in front of the samadhi, toes and knees and stomachs and foreheads flat aginst the floor, their white garments getting dirty in the holy dust.

But first, they and I must reach the center, and this means waiting in line, filing through metal barriers set up exactly like those at any theme park during the long wait for a roller coaster, in and out, back and forth, before entering the temple itself, and then walking still further through a series of passageways and rooms, pressed up against the man in front of me, the woman beside him, their small daughter wandering haphazardly through the muddle of legs, everybody’s sweat and the smell of incense mingling in the air, and, somewhere, the sound of bells pealing, not like cathedral bells but smaller, more a delicate ping than an resonant bong, echoing over and over against the stone. When I reach the chamber at the center, some visitors sit cross-legged around the samadhi, unwilling to move at all, while others pass through quickly, placing fingers on the black stone and then swiftly touching their chests, accepting the blessing and carrying on with their days. I look but don’t linger long, not wanting to stare, to interrupt others’ prayers, only wanting to take it in so I can try to understand it, to grasp the meaning behind the intensity crackling in the air around me–something devoted to the holy, yes, but somehow more amazing because of the sheer humanity of it all, the bodies and the breathing and the rustling of saris and damp hands brushing along rough stone walls for support–but then I walk on, and out, into the sunlight, blinking.

Around the stone structure, on the other side, up some stairs past walls painted a brilliant blue and carved with reliefs of the gods, are men and women bent over prayer books written in Marathi, those precious words composed by Sant Dnyaneshwar crossing a horizontal page rather than a vertical one. I file through again, past the women sitting cross-legged; this line is long and moves slowly. As I gaze down at the women one of them looks up at me and meets my eyes; I nod my head, and she smiles, one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen and like so many others that come my way here in India–natural, accepting, welcoming, paired with a little twinkle in the woman’s dark eyes that acknowledges the humor in my white-skinned, short-haired self dressed in a purple punjabi, wading through a sea of Hinduism like a North Atlantic fish dragged by a strange current into the Caribbean. I smile back. I always do. Here in India, words often fail me, even when I’m speaking English, and I find myself smiling to try to convey my gratitude, my happiness. It works, this time; she understands me, and her smile broadens, showing white teeth and chapped lips, and I like to think that I have communicated my thanks, my admiration of this holy place, my sincere and humble curiosity, and most of all my sense of being blessed–not exactly because I have visited Dnyaneshwar’s samadhi, but because I have had the opportunity to see these people, this place, to be here in this country at this moment on this beautiful day.

Through a metal gate just to the left of these ladies, past a smaller space packed with men in white also reading the prayer books but less inclined to look up at strange visitors, is a room with musicians and bearded men. That is where the bells are coming from, and the sitar, and the chanting. I only look, I don’t enter. I pass by another holy tree surrounded by stones and a little temple with an orange monkey–the monkey god Hanuman–and then I am waiting in another line to exit the temple, and then I am out on the street again, slipping on my shoes. (There is something so intensely vulnerable about being barefooted in the outdoors, on stone. I feel it all the time here in India, and this feeling is intensified in a temple setting. It’s like the gods soak in through the soles of your feet, stop you, make you really acknowledge every sensation, every rock and tree root and groove in the pavement. You are standing here, they say. Make the most of it.)

A man outside grabs my earlobe, slashes on orange powder, and then stamps my forehead with charcoal and more orange stuff, before demanding two rupees. I hand it over. A small price to pay, really, and I like to pretend it was friendly of him to offer me the markings, that he is acknowledging me like the woman inside, who has the time to sit and pray and smile at me while this man peddles aarti outside the temple like an ice cream vendor. Then we head down to the river, where there is an immense arch, and a series of smaller breezeways, and all these stone steps leading down to the riverbank, and women washing clothes and men bathing and children splashing and temple-goers washing up before presenting themselves to the gods, and it is beautiful.

The front door of the Alandi Temple. (The dog is sniffing the turtle.)

Alandi ghat, the river entrance to the town, which leads to a path that leads to the temple entrance above.

Down by the river, flowers for sale.

Gift shop in Alandi.

When I was fourteen my grandmother and my mother took me to Italy, and we went to Florence and Siena and Umbria and even spent a little time in Rome. We went to Assisi, too, but I have not thought of that town and that church until my day in Alandi this week, and suddenly it flooded back, so clearly it almost hurt: the hilltop with the white cathedral, the long lines of visitors waiting to descend into the stone chamber with St. Francis of Assisi’s remains, the long uphill roads towards the cathedral packed to the brim with souvenir shops selling every Catholic and St. Francis item you could imagine–devotional pictures and prayer books and keychains and postcards.

Assisi Cathedral

Gift shop in Assisi.

Two different cultures, so different that a British participant at Alandi remarked that Hindus are obviously much more devout than Christians, even though I think, and I told her, that it’s only the unfamiliarity that provokes in us outsiders the impression of greater intensity, more serious devotion–after all, who’s to say that 10 minutes spent prostrate before a god is any more devout than two hours spent on a pew listening to Mass? And these differences melt away when I think to compare Assisi and Alandi: two sites devoted to two saints, crowded with followers, enclosed by stone walls, each the home of great pilgrimages (pilgrims walk 150 kilometers between Alandi and Pradharpur every summer), each surrounded by towns that revolve almost exclusively around the existence of the temple or cathedral. Even the tiny stone chambers, dimly lit and full of people pressed together, holding the remains of Sant Dnyaneshwar and St. Francis, are too similar to describe in words (and too holy to allow photography within them, so I can’t show you how alike they are with photographic evidence!).

No, these religious sites did not smell the same or sound the same; one is on a river, the other on a mountaintop; and the languages spoken there, the religious beliefs celebrated there, are very different. But if these two cultures can resonate with one another (and I don’t think I’m alone in believing so; I’m sure my thoughts were helped along by reading Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence, which compares the Medicis to the Mughals) than surely all cultures can, and do? Surely, somewhere, when you get down to the root of it, it’s all the same?

Maybe it’s easier for me, without any clear-cut religion to hold on to, to say it’s all the same. I was raised to make comparisons–Chanukah is to Christmas as latkes are to…gingerbread men?–and so maybe, because it’s second nature for me, I see similarities in everything. Maybe, because I hover somewhere on the outside of religion, I can only grasp the broad outlines, and I miss the important details, so I can’t understand the complexity of the differences, the vast gulfs between these two places and two religions that, to me, seem so alike in these moments. But maybe because I am always trying to unravel things, content not to take part in them, happy to relinquish any attempt to figure out things like God and Faith and Truth, I can visit Assisi and Alandi and recognize that they are the same thing, they are answering the same questions–”this is making sense of the universe in the same way,” across continents, over oceans, miles apart.

Pilgrims at Assisi.

Pilgrimage between Alandi and Pandharpur

Here at Sangam, we are affiliated with over 20 community partners. These organizations work in and around the city of Pune, bettering the lives of men, women and children who may need medical assistance, an educational boost, childcare, or a helping hand on the road to self-sufficiency and empowerment. Twice a year, for twelve-week spans, our community programme volunteers at Sangam (called “tare” after the Hindi word for “stars”) work full-time at one of these organizations, chipping in with their own experience, hard work and desire to help. Even event guests get the chance to take part: some of the events that we run here at Sangam (called “community action” events) focus exclusively on our community partners, and the participants do some service for one of the organizations that is in turn doing service for the Indian community here in Pune; they may paint a dormitory, or lead games and songs in a creche, or help teach a class at a women’s empowerment group.

And even when an event is not focused on these community action projects, such as the last three events, which have all been “cultural” in theme, guests are given the opportunity to visit and learn about our community partners, and get a glimpse of what people here in Pune are doing to alleviate poverty, gender inequality, hunger, and sickness (among other issues!). In the last two weeks, along with our participants, I have visited four community partners: Maher, Deep Griha, the Muslim Girls Orphanage, and Ishwari. I have also taken part in Community Partner Fun Day, when we invited over 60 children (selected from the classes that the current tare work with every day at Deep Griha and Mobile Creche) to come to Sangam for a day of fun and games.

Rather than being vague, I am going to explain a bit about what each of these community partners that I visited does on a daily basis…and also supply some pictures, so you can see for yourselves what goes on there!

Maher

Maher began in 1994, by a nun named Sister Lucy. She tells the story very vividly both in person and on Maher’s website.

It was in the year 1991, when one evening while Sr. Lucy was working at HOPE, that a pregnant woman came to her asking for shelter. The woman believed that her husband, a chronic alcoholic, wanted to kill her to bring another woman into his house. At that moment Sr. Lucy was unable to help her, but promised to do something for her the next day.

In the words of Sr. Lucy: “Brought up in a secure family environment in Kerala, I was unaware that one night could make such a difference to the life of a woman. That very night, her husband, in a drunken rage, set her afire. I actually saw the blazing woman and heard her shrieks of agony. We put the fire out and took her to a hospital, but she died of 90% burns. With her died her seven month old foetus. I was devastated. I wanted to run away from the world, its cruelty and wickedness. My friends dissuaded me from becoming a recluse. Fr. Francis D’sa was a great source of strength and support and suggested doing something about it instead of running away.”

It was then that Sr. Lucy decided that she had to create a home for abused and traumatized women who could feel secure, cared for and wanted, irrespective of Religion, Caste or Social Status. This was the need of the hour.

It took some time to convince people but finally Maher was born in the year 1997.

The first house was built in Vadhu-Badruk, a village on the outskirts of Pune, to serve as a refuge for women in distress. Women who are ill-treated and thrown out of the house by their spouses and in-laws, widows shunned by both parents and in-laws and mothers with infants and young children with nowhere to go.

Maher, which means “Mother’s Home” in Marathi (the language spoken here in Maharashtra), has been expanding ever since, to create more homes for children, more educational and vocational opportunities for women, more safe spaces for mentally ill or traumatized women found on the streets–more everything. When we took participants to Maher just a few days ago, a baby girl had been brought in moments before; she was rushed immediately to the hospital in critical condition. Her parents had tried to kill her by feeding her kerosene, tobacco, and compost; she was their fifth daughter and they wanted a son. Instances like that make clear just how important Maher is…..and opens your eyes to the astonishing fact that those who work at Maher do so with such unending, unbelievable compassion. Their website says “always room for one more,” and Maher backs up those words with action.

Children singing and greeting us at Maher.

Isn’t he adorable?

Candy distribution!

Lunchtime for baby.

Women at Maher, also eating lunch!

Deep Griha

Deep Griha started off as a medical clinic for a Pune slum, and has now grown into an educational center as well, serving many different slums around the city. The various Deep Griha sites offer medical assistance, educational and vocational training, awareness-building of important issues such as HIV/AIDS, youth and women’s empowerment programs, and even childcare for babies of various ages. Sangam has two tare working at Deep Griha at the moment; both are nurses, so they were recently able to help with health checks of hundreds of slum children who rarely get medical attention. One of the tare, Claire, discovered a young girl’s heart murmur–the girl said she could barely walk upstairs, and never run–and another girl’s severe kidney infection; both children were told to see Deep Griha’s doctor for help with these problems that might not have otherwise received notice.

When we visited Deep Griha, the women in the English and coaching classes took us on tour of the Tadiwala Road slum, where they live. Visitors are instructed never to enter the slum without these women as guides, or else risk harassment and haranguing; with the women, however, we walked right through without any trouble. They received huge amounts of respect for the work they do at Deep Griha, which is in turn highly respected in the neighborhood.

Courtyard in the Tadiwala Road slum, full of cricket-playing boys.

A woman feeding her goat in the Tadiwala Road slum.

Little boys in the Tadiwala Road slum who begged for a picture!

Posters at Deep Griha’s main office on Tadiwala Road.

Waving goodbye (and blowing kisses) at the Ramtekadi creche.

Muslim Girls Orphanage

I visited the Muslim Girls Orphanage before these last two events, with other staff members rather than participants. The MGO takes in Muslim girls who are either orphaned or whose families cannot afford to keep them; the girls are educated, given a religious upbringing, and trained in a trade so that they can provide for themselves as adults. That said, the girls also remain in the orphanage until they are married; though this doesn’t happen until they are at least 18, it does mean that every girl there is destined for life as a wife, and is not given the opportunity for higher education or independent living.

We really wrestled with that fact when we visited the site, since the care and keeping of these girls is so important to the community, but we as Girl Scouts and Girl Guides really don’t understand or agree with the marriage-is-the-only-option mentality that pervades the Muslim Girls Orphanage’s principles. The women who run the orphanage assured us that the girls have choice in their husbands, and–if their husbands permit them to–can continue to use their trade to support their families, but it was still a far less inspiring visit than those I took later on to Deep Griha, Maher and Ishwari. That said, we came to the conclusion that it is important for Sangam to remain affiliated with organizations that may not be “up to speed” with what we consider obvious contemporary moral standards, such as a woman’s right to choose and define her destiny–that way, Sangam can hopefully help the Muslim Girls Orphanage, and other organizations like it, open their eyes and minds to more empowering options for women, like those encouraged by others of our community partners.

The front of the Muslim Girls Orphanage.

A whiteboard at the MGO with a pretty interesting mantra.

An older girls’ dormitory at the MGO.

Ishwari

Ishwari is a women’s cooperative located in the countryside outside of Pune. It is also interreligious, and is currently run by a nun named Sr. Rosalia, and its purpose is to train women in trades such as baking or sewing so they can support themselves and their families, as well as achieve a sense of purpose and a sense of their own potential. The women there make and sell amazing ginger cookies and delicious jellies and jams. Ishwari works hard to recruit girls from the local, rural area, so even those women not living in the hustle and bustle of the city have a chance to explore the possibilities of their talents and selves. The women at Ishwari were so welcoming when we paid them a visit, stuffing us with ginger cookies and guava cheese (not cheese at all, but a sort of hardened guava jelly in a block-of-cheese shape!) and coffee. There was also an adorable kitten named Silly who loved attacking my feet!

Pictures to come later, when I’ve pulled them off my camera!

Community Partner Fun Day

The rest of our six tare work at Tara Mobile Creche, which provides daycare and schooling on construction sites, for children of the workers who would otherwise be underfoot and in danger, as well as out of school; and Anand Gram, which began as a home for leprosy patients but now also houses children who are not ill with leprosy. Community Partner Fun Day was conceived as a way to give back to the sites that have hosted our tare for twelve weeks, and to give the children there the opportunity to visit Sangam and see where their “didis” (an affectionate term for a sister, or any woman a child is sweet on!) work and live. More than 60 kids from the Mobile Creche and Deep Griha sites came out to Sangam for an amazing day of games, crafts, songs, and merriment. The participants organized the different stations–parachute games, bubble blowing, arts and crafts, cricket, hopscotch–and the tare each took a group of kids around from station to station. There was dancing in the afternoon, lunch in the hall, and even some naptime! Overall, it was a really incredible and inspiring day–but I’ll let the pictures fill you in.

All hands in! Participants, tare and staff are ready for the day.

Deep Griha group arrives.

All the kids wave hello.

The Mobile Creche kids head into Sangam.

First, juice and cookies. Very important.

Everyone is so happy to be here!

Even the boys love the camera.

Mina, our Community Relations Manager, chatting with these sisters in Marathi.

Everyone into a circle, for a song and dance.

Mina and Jill lead the dance!

Height is a bit of an issue here…

After the dance, everyone gets separated into groups, and sent off to a station.

And the games begin!

Parachute games work in every language.

Running under the parachute before it collapses!

Claire helps this tiny girl run under the parachute!

Mad rush in the middle!

Hopscotch!

Anoush wrestles with the bubble gun.

Bubble blowing was really popular.

This little girl has the most amazing smile.

Enormous bubble!

Throwing conkers made of beads, pipe cleaners and streamers in the air–feet off the ground!

There were two arts and crafts stations.

Making Humpty Dumptys out of paper and glitter and glue!

Loving the arts and crafts.

I got to watch cricket in action for the first time; some the boys were really good!

Tough guys, striking a pose.

A much-needed water break.

Lunch in the dining hall, consisting of rice, dal and purri, eaten with hands out of a tin plate. 

Naptime! Except for Claire.

Then, afternoon and time to go home…

But not before a group photo!

On the bus ride home…

After CP Fun Day, the participants had a chance to share and reflect on the day. What had they decided? “Kids are the same the world over,” said one guest, “especially when it comes to glitter!” Everybody laughed, but it really was an fantastic to see in action how true it is that kids, and people, are alike all across the world. It was also really inspiring to see how thrilled the kids were to have the opportunity to run, play, create and imagine freely without the worries of home. At the end of the reflection, Jen, our Programme Manager, shared a story of a rickshaw driver who, when some staff asked if he knew the way to Sangam, said of course he did–he had come for a Community Fun Day as a boy, and, some twenty-odd years later, still hadn’t forgotten Sangam and what an incredible impact his time there had had on him. We may never see those kids again, but knowing that we did our best to make the day magical for them feels important, and special, and meaningful.

Despite the similarities of these events, the two groups of participants have been very different. The first group was mostly teenage girls between the ages of 16 and 19, with five adult leaders as their chaperones; the second group is mainly in the 40s-70s age range, and consists of current and former leaders. However, both groups are English, although from different corners of that country, so all of our participants in the last two weeks have had British accents, drank a lot of tea, and called bathing suits “swimming costumes” and Jell-O “jelly” and sneakers “trainers.”

I love working at an international center where I get to meet so many people from so many parts of the world. We talk at Sangam about translating from English to English, which is true not only when Philippa and Net add a “u” to my spelling of the word “color,” but also when we converse with our Indian staff members, our Australian staff members, our Malaysian and Mexican and Swedish staff members, as well as our guests from these countries and others–Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Japan. In the hall, we display flags from all of these countries, and in the dining room hang four clocks keeping time for all of the world centres, in Mexico, England, Switzerland and here, India. We are surrounded by and swimming in a sea of multiculturalism, even as we attempt to distill the culture of India for our participants; guests here are exposed to so much more than just India, and more specifically, southern India, India-in-Pune, India on Alandi Road across from Phule Nagar, down the road from Vishrantwadi, India.

The curious thing about working in this environment, however, is that I am forced to identify as an American in a way I never have before. During “Intro to the Family,” when all the staff introduces themselves to guests, I find myself saying, “Hi, I’m Jessica, and I’m from the U.S.,” after Ellen has said “I’m from Sweden,” and Net and Philippa have said, “I’m from England.” When we debate over words like jelly and Jell-O, and try to explain things to each other like cricket–which Philippa could not believe I had never played before–I find myself saying, “Yes, but in the U.S.–” even though, as the words come out of my mouth, I can’t believe I am attempting to speak for the whole United States, that I am claiming the United States as my own, when I am so often disdainful of my country, frustrated with my country, feel apart from my country.

After all, ordinarily I say, “Hi, I’m Jessica, and I’m from New York.” I consider myself to be a New Yorker, which I also consider to be something different than “an American.” I can’t conceive of some united front, these United States, when my national experience has been primarily a local one, a New York-centric one. My argument usually goes something like this: most Americans don’t have a Chinatown and a Little Italy and a Crown Heights and every other ethnic neighborhood you can think of all in one city; most Americans are not familiar with hearing a mix of languages on their streets and seeing people from all over the world during their morning commutes. Most Americans don’t live in cities. And most Americans don’t live in cities with so many museums and arthouse cinemas and restaurants serving ethnic food that might actually taste like the food back in the country it came from. Most Americans could not drive in New York traffic. So, I have never before wanted or even thought to claim “America” as my own, from coast to coast, shore to shore, state to state, all the bits and pieces in the middle there that I have never even visited, and the edges I have never seen, and the accents I’ve never heard. Not to mention that I have also always identified as a dual citizen, a bilingual person, a child of more than one cultural understanding and more than one country. How can I be an American when I have two passports?

But all of a sudden, I am in a place where that much detail is too much detail, where the scope of the landscape is broader and thus painted with a wider brush, where we identify by country rather than by state, and where accents dictate first impressions more so than at home. This is not a bad thing, but it is, for me, a very new thing, and I find myself occupying a box that doesn’t always seem to fit. This has less to do with politics, which is not a topic often broached here at Sangam, and more to do with culture; I suddenly feel saddled with McDonald’s and Hollywood and Mickey Mouse, even if nobody explicitly mentions those things to me, and I suddenly, in an odd sense, feel like I have to apologize, make up for, all of the American missteps littering the last sixty-odd years of global history (and, let’s be honest, probably longer than that). I feel like I need to embrace all aspects of American culture, the parts nobody knows about, the parts I myself am only familiar with via hearsay–”Minnesota Public Radio is awesome!”–in order to somehow prove America’s worth alongside the heavy-hitter that is England. “American literature really is great,” I say, even though I took way more British literature classes than American. “Hemingway, gosh,” I say, having read precisely one novel by Hemingway. This is not helped by one of our recent independent guests, who embodied much of the typical, at times offensive, mindset of an American abroad–expecting everyone to understand her cultural lingo (“twelfth grade” and “Brownies”) and cater to her needs. She did not understand, or seem to want to understand, the new culture of India that she had–voluntarily!–stepped into. I found myself actually saying out loud to fellow staff members, “I promise, I promise, not all Americans are this culturally unaware. Not all Americans are so close-minded. Some of us are out there doing really awesome things around the globe. I swear.”

I am not sure all this apologizing is necessary, nor can I adequately explain why I feel so obligated to do it. And I don’t know that these feelings would have come up if all of our participants lately hadn’t been English. There’s a certain edge to the English/American divide, one cemented by the English traces left in India (that damn letter U so unnecessarily included in all those words!). It prompts me to pipe up, “Yes, but we threw off British rule, didn’t we?” in a cheeky way when we’re discussing the Commonwealth in the programme room, and makes me feel sort of funny when I describe Tilak, the Maharashtrian rebel who fought back against British rule, to British guests. I have never been aware of this divide before, not even when I studied in Cambridge! It makes me think, randomly, of Hugh Grant’s speech in “Love Actually,” where he says the U.S. has become a bully, not a friend, and reels off the list of awesome British things, like Harry Potter and the Beatles and David Beckham’s right foot. I think of how my (American) friends and I have watched this movie a million times, and have always rooted for his character, and I realize now that we have always been implicitly rooting against ourselves. There’s a subtle competition I didn’t even know existed until I was outnumbered, and then was surprised to notice that I cared, since, after all, I’m a New Yorker, not an American, and I’ve also always been an Anglophile. I have spent more time in the U.K. than any other country besides both of my own.

I am learning, though, and I think this is a good experience for me. Because I am–surprise, surprise!–an American, and I need to be comfortable with that fact if I am going to keep traveling. I have grown up in a state that is part of the United States of America. I speak English with an American accent. I belong to Girl Scouts USA, not Girl Guiding UK or the Swedish Sea Scouts or Girl Guides Australia. And I do want to lay claim to other parts of America besides New York; I want to include North Carolina in me, and certainly I can’t stick my nose in the air and say, “But I’m a New Yorker” if I’m also listening to bluegrass and insisting that nobody does biscuits like the South and that, rumor has it you’re meant to read Shakespeare in a Southern accent, since it’s apparently the best-preserved version of the English accent when Shakespeare was writing. (Ahem. Not competitive at all here.)

Back to Sangam.

The next event will not be a cultural one; it will be a seminar, which is a very different thing here at Sangam. Each seminar focuses on a distinct issue; this one will be HIV/AIDS. The focus is advocacy: how to make a difference, affect change, impact your community and your country in the arena of this particular issue. We offer scholarships to these seminars, in the hopes of enabling a wider range of international participants, and we are expecting guests from every continent and a wide range of countries, some of which are not English-language nations, for the HIV/AIDS seminar. I am looking forward to seeing how my American-ness feels during the seminar, when it’s not so much a two-way divide, but instead a big mix. I wonder if I will feel better or worse, but mostly I hope I will learn not to feel anything at all…that I will come to terms with and feel at peace with whatever cultural identity my face, my voice, my accent, my name (Jessica, that ubiquitous, obnoxious, teen-queen-bee name of the ’80s and ’90s!) and my personality project….and that I will find the chance to say what I am projecting from the inside: Hi, I’m Jessica, I’m an American from New York but I am also French and really miss speaking French here at Sangam, and I went to school in North Carolina which is where my boyfriend’s from but he’s also Filipino and my friends are living now in Louisiana and California and Hawaii and New Zealand and all over and I say “drawer” like “draw” but not “dog” like “dawg” and I am half Jewish and half Catholic but think Hinduism is really beautiful and love that it has its own festival of lights, and I miss the subway, and scrambled eggs with cheese from Commons, and my middle name’s Céline, with an accent over that first E.

Yes, this is my genuine face of surprise.

Ellen and Heidi singing to me!

My beautiful birthday tray, and very gnome-looking happy face and bedhead hair!

This is me trying to read Ellen's Swedish cinnamon bun recipe, which was, oddly enough, in Swedish.

It was an amazing way to wake up on my birthday morning, and it was followed by a super fun lunchtime celebration that involved all the staff waving tambourines in my face and singing “Happy Birthday,” followed by Aruna feeding me a piece of cake, which is an Indian birthday tradition. Not knowing this tradition, however, when I was told to cut my piece of cake, I, seeing this beautiful cake and wanting lots of it, carved out an enormous hunk. Everybody laughed, and Aruna made me chop off a smaller bit to feed me with!

The night of my birthday was also the Welcome Ceremony for our special Essence of India event, which meant I got to wear my pink and black Sangam sari for the first time, although Christa, our Deputy World Centre Manager and the second awesome South Dakotan in my life, took me entirely apart when she saw the state of my pallu. (The pallu is the part that drapes over the back of your shoulder looking pleated and beautiful. Pleating is the hardest part of wearing a sari, especially when you’re short like me and have a lot of excess fabric to pleat up, but I have recently come to terms with the fact that I must make my pleats tiny, the length of my finger-span so as to better hold these pleats together, rather than rush and try to stretch my pleats out and then come out all rumpled and uneven with an ugly sari skirt and pallu. You will be pleased to know that later in the event, using my own sari, I did little baby pleats actually the length of my fingers, and my sari looked very nice without any intervention!)

As exciting as my birthday was, it was tough to do anything special outside of Sangam because a five-day long event began the evening of the 30th. Luckily for us, however, this was a short event, which meant that by the time November 5th rolled around, we could celebrate Ellen’s 24th birthday by going out on the actual day. We chose the Shisha Cafe as our dinner spot, and then made plans to go dancing at the Westin Hotel afterwards. When we made it to the Westin, however, we learned that drinks were ludicrously expensive (1000 rupees for a Long Island Iced Tea, 400 for a Corona–that’s $20 and $8 respectively, which is ridiculous for those of us living on a stipend). So we took to the dance floor for some sober kicking up of our heels, which, interestingly enough, was suddenly clear of the few people who had been dancing, leaving us in our very own center-stage performance. Which we enjoyed.

Dancing all alone on the dance floor at the Westin!

Wooooooo! That's Ellen on the far right, whose birthday it was! Happy Birthday, Ellen!

After about a half hour of burning up the dance floor at the Westin, we departed for the mall at Jewel Square, to another club located on the third floor, accessible through the elevator in the garage. (Sort of hilarious to troop down a garage ramp, especially with Heidi in heels, to then go back up the elevator. Anyway.) This club was full of people dancing to basically every song ever played at a Davidson court party in the four years I attended school there, as well as some techno remixes of current radio tunes, and some choice songs from Bollywood films:

Beverages were more reasonably priced at this place, so I had what turned out to be a glass of orange juice, though I ordered what was ostensibly a screwdriver, and we all shared a giant goblet of something called the Ultimate 77 Sunset Strip. Not sure why it was ultimate. Perhaps they meant the goblet.

The Ultimate 77 Sunset Strip. And multicolored straws.

It was so amazingly fun. I danced and danced and danced until my feet hurt and my head throbbed and my bangs were stuck to my forehead, but it was the best feeling ever.

When we came home, we stargazed by the pool for a little while, and then went to bed by about 2 AM, exactly 22 years and 1 week old.

The funny thing about turning 22 here in India, though, is how unimportant it feels. When I turned 21 last year, it felt like a central moment in my life, a major event. We threw an enormous party in Hart 103; my mother ordered me cupcakes from a Charlotte bakery; I ended up in a Halloween costume dancing on a table at Sig Ep to the same songs I danced to last night (only maybe slightly less remix-y) for hours. My birthday seemed like such a big deal last year, and so I made it into a big celebration.

This year, yes, I am 22, but so many other huge and important things are happening to me, overshadowing my birthday by a lot. Even going out to celebrate last night was more noteworthy because of what I did–went dancing in India for the first time, without feeling shy or scared, just pumped-up like I would be at home; an awesome mixture of both worlds, basically–than because it was in honor of turning 22 (and Ellen turning 24). And in general, every day I am living and learning in a new environment surrounded by new people, becoming more knowledgeable about myself and India and the world and WAGGGS. Every day something happens that feels a whole lot more significant to the process of being and becoming me than reaching a day on the calendar. Even the fact that my birthday lasted a day and a half thanks to warped time zone issues was more exciting than the actual fact of Turning Twenty Two. Or maybe–maybe it’s just that when you turn 22, you start to realize just how insignificant your age is. It’s not the numbers that count, it’s what you’re doing with the years that are beginning to add up.

I felt the same way yesterday afternoon when Philippa and I went down to Laxmi Road to practice the tour route before I lead the tour during this event and she leads it next time. We clambered out of the rickshaw, and I knew where Phule Market was, and Bangle Alley; I knew to turn right for the bindi shops, and which alley to go down to reach Tulsibaug, and as we fought the tide of the Line Bazaar, crammed with hundreds of people, I was actually able to say to Philippa, “Wow, this is not so crowded, today.” And as we wound our way through the streets with all the sari and punjabi and fabric shops, I knew I could find my way.

We have three independent guests staying with us at the moment, using Sangam as a homebase while they adjust to India before heading on a tour of the Golden Triangle. They’re older women, British, and sometimes their comments seem just the littlest bit off-color–the bewilderment contains a hint of judgement, the fustration is just a tad disdainful. They’re all very nice and friendly women, and I imagine that plenty of people I know and love would come to India and make similar comments; India would be less of an adventure for them and more of an inconvenience, full of seemingly archaic and backwards and ultimately irritating things (crazy rickshaws, and weird food, and a new and difficult language without Roman characters) that I think many Westerners would feel were “getting in the way” of the Indian experience they wanted, something gorgeous and exotic but un-difficult, un-frustrating. When the ladies said for the fourth time “that place, Pavarotti Hill, we know it’s not called that, but, you know what we mean–” and we corrected them for the fourth time, “Yes, Parvati Hill,” it made me realize how far I’ve come to feeling comfortable and settled here. I have reached the point of being fed up with the rice and dal, and then gone past it; I have learned to change my accent slightly when giving directions to rickshaw drivers, so they can better understand my mispronunciation of their city’s landmarks; I am used to being stared at, now, and almost don’t notice anymore.

It’s becoming normal now. And it’s only been a month. I can’t even imagine what I will feel after five more.

Diwali is the Festival of Light! No Maccabees involved in this one. The story here belongs to Ram and Sita, incarnations of the god and goddess Vishnu and Lakshmi, and the evil devil Ravana. Exiled to the forest, because Ram’s throne has been usurped, Ram and Sita and Ram’s brother Lakshmana are living in harmony when Sita is kidnapped by Ravana, who wants her for his own. Ram enlists the help of Hanuman, the monkey god, and sets off with Hanuman and Lakshmana to rescue his wife. Ram defeats Ravana in battle, and wins Sita back. Unfortunately, because Sita has been imprisoned by Ravana for a year, Ram doubts Sita’s faithfulness. Sita decides to defend her purity through a trial by fire; she walks into a bonfire, and emerges from the flames unscathed, proving her loyalty to her husband. Together, the couple returns happily to the kingdom from which they were first exiled, their journey home guided by lamps lit by the people, eager for the return of their true king. Hence, the celebration of Diwali with beautiful lamps and candles and firecrackers.

Did I mention firecrackers? Because let me repeat that. Firecrackers. FIRECRACKERS.

All of Sangam’s staff was invited first to the home of Kirti, our yoga teacher and Sangam’s good friend, and then, the next night, to the home of Minakshi, the Community Relations Manager who works every day here at Sangam with us. The first night, walking to Kirti’s, there were some firecrackers, some sparklers, but nothing major. There were undoubtedly more people out on the streets, buying chocolates and wrapping paper and all sorts of gifts, like a busy Christmas Eve, but the busyness was not particularly chaotic. (Well, not more chaotic than Pune usually is.)

The next day, however, was something else. Firecrackers started going off in the neighborhoods and slums surrounding Sangam at 5 AM, and boomed and banged all day beyond Sangam’s walls. We set out for Mina’s at 7:30 PM, and once outside the gates we could see sparks and light and fireworks blooming in the night sky in every direction. The sound was deafening, because the ratio of fireworks to firecrackers was about 1 to 20; little Indian boys showed a definite fondness for crackers that produced zero pyrotechnics and 100% noise resembling the explosion of a giant bomb. In fact, the din definitely resembled that of a war zone: huge explosions that reverberated off the concrete buildings like bombs, smaller crackling bangs like sniper fire, and then flashes of light that appeared unpredictably on every street corner. I cannot exaggerate the noise, or how constant it was–so many explosions that it became an unending stream of sound, the way popcorn pops continuously, and louder and louder (only this was so loud it was like having the microwave blow up every so often). The whole city was literally shaking. Philippa nearly dropped her camera. The largest booms made all eight of us jump.

The walk to Mina’s is not very far, but we stopped for a long while at the home of one of our Volunteer-in-Training, Aarti’s. She’s seventeen, and her mother, Sunita, also works at Sangam. They welcomed us into their house, which had bright blue walls and a tin roof, and stuffed us with sweets. We met all of Aarti’s siblings, her father and her grandmother, and admired the rangoli and drank chai and were shuffled along to see neighbors’ rangoli and drink neighbors’ chai and receive aarti from all of them. (In true Indian fashion, Aarti’s name is also a noun–a blessing. So we visited Aarti, and received aarti!) Everybody was so welcoming, so friendly, so excited to see us. The noise was unbelievable, since all of the little boys (and the big boys, and men) were tossing firecrackers into the tiny spaces between the houses, and out on the street. Spinning, flaming Catherine Wheels zipped in circles on the ground, spitting flame in all directions, and the kids kicked at these lit firecrackers with their sneakered feet and prodded those that wouldn’t burst into flames properly with bare fingers, while their parents looked on, smiling with Diwali happiness. After we left Aarti’s we began expressing general concern that somebody’s child would have their fingers blown off–or worse. But even as we walked through Wadi, past dozens of kids and adults doing the same, spraying fire and noise and mayhem, running around with sparklers, using the sparklers as matches, picking up burning firecrackers and lobbing them farther into the road, we saw only one little boy burn his fingers, ever-so-slightly, and blow on them anxiously. He was four or so, and obviously hadn’t yet learned the self-preservation skills that everyone else had–a lesson I suppose applies to a lot of Indian life, like how to deal with Indian traffic, for instance. You figure it out, or else.

After a nasty experience where we actually walked right over some little boys’ fireworks and Heidi thought she might’ve gotten burned, Mina’s lovely apartment, with accent walls and sofas and a beautiful balcony, was a sanctuary from the pandemonium on the streets. We met her husband, her son and daughter, and laughed as Mina expressed general dislike of the firecrackers while her husband gleefully took the kids down to the courtyard of the apartment complex to blow up really intense firecracker sets and packages. One set of crackers continuously exploded for ten minutes straight, skidding across the courtyard in a straight line, lighting other firecrackers that had been set up for afterwards as it traveled. The sound was awesome, in the dictionary sense of the word; the light was glaring; the general experience overwhelming and intense and also awesome, in my everyday, twentysomething sense of the word!

But inside Mina’s apartment, everything was peaceful. We were all wearing fancy saris, and sat barefooted and elegant in Mina’s living room. We ate sweets and met the stream of family and neighbors coming round to say “Happy Diwali.”  On the walk over, one Indian woman had actually stopped Ellen to ask her who had done up her sari for her, and Ellen was able to proudly respond that she had done it herself, and later on proudly inform Mina that her sari-tying lessons were so good we’d received compliments! It was really a lovely evening, and seeing the streets full of life and then the apartment building so neighborly and welcoming was a great picture of what kind of a holiday Diwali is. As I said to Net, “kind of like the 4th of July on crack,” and kind of like the festivity of New Year’s Eve, and kind of like the family celebrations of Christmas, and then candles like Chanukah–and then a special brand of Indian celebration that was just marvelous.

1. Mango Slice. This is obviously the best thing ever invented. A mango-flavored fruit juice (no fizz, no carbonation!) sold everywhere that the usual sodas and beverages are sold. An actually decent reply to the ubiquitous “And what would you like to drink with that?” question which always means “Which kind of soda, or will you settle for water?” I love juice. And I love, love, love mangoes. And here is this mango drink available everywhere! Slice is possibly my favorite thing in all of India.
2. Glow Golf. Last night, almost all the SVs; all the tare; and Heidi and Hayley, who are the Community Relations Intern and Guest Services Manager respectively; went to play Glow Golf in Pune. Yes, this is as weird as it sounds: indoor mini-golf under a blacklight with everything aglow in neon colors. We all wore white; it was kind of like Sig Ep’s Highlighter Party only surrounded by an Indian business conference. We almost weren’t allowed in because some corporation had booked a conference at the arcade for the same time; in the end, though, they made us promise to be quiet glow golfers. Which we were not, but since all the Indian conference-goers wanted pictures of us, it was sort of a fair trade.
3. Malls. Malls are the same in the whole world. We got dinner at the mall after Glow Golf, and seriously. The same layout, the same food court setup, the same McDonald’s Golden Arches, the same booths with candy in bins that you scoop into plastic bags and fork over 130 Rupees for. (Okay, maybe the currency is different, but candy by the pound is always outrageously expensive.) I had pasta with tomato and cream sauce for dinner and it was so good. I really like the food here, but there’s about a million times more rice than pasta, and I really miss pasta. We also had nachos (sold at the pasta stand, go figure) which were only okay. And speaking of nachos—
4. Condiments. Every staff member is given 200 Rupees to buy a favorite condiment for all the staff to use. We have garlic mayonnaise and honey mustard and balsamic vinegar and barbeque sauce and honey and salsa and lots of other random things, all of which are purchased at Dhurabji’s, the Western imports grocery store. (They sell Lucky Charms! But I did not buy any). Well, as you know if you know me, condiments are not my favorite thing. I don’t like mustard or mayo and only started eating ketchup in the last year. I was really worried about what to purchase with my 200 Rupees. Then I reached the condiments shelf and saw—queso dip! Well, technically, bright orange “Jalapeno Cheese Dip” in a tiny glass jar. And friends, as you know, the decision was made for me.
5. Hall Sleepover. Sophie and Aleia had their official Closing Ceremony earlier this week, which involved them giving very moving and funny presentations on their time here at Sangam. Also, Jen officially stripped from mine and Philippa’s uniforms the “new volunteer” badges that we’ve worn since we got here. After the presentations, which took place in the hall, came dinner; the menu was entirely dictated by Sophie and Aleia, and they presided over the meal with “KING” and “QUEEN” crowns (Sophie had me draw a moustache and goatee on her face for authenticity’s sake). Afterwards we played games in the hall, and then about ten of us dragged all the mattresses in from the dorm Philippa and I are still living in, made popcorn, busted out the cheese dip and salsa and chips (or crisps, if you’re Philippa and Sophie and Net) and watched The Jungle Book on the big projector screen before going to sleep with all the mattresses lined up like a giant bed. We were woken up at 7 AM by the arrival of Kirti, the yoga instructor; because of the bed obstruction, we took the mats outside and did yoga as the birds awoke and chirped and the sun rose over the courtyard. Amazing.
6. Time. Time in India is not the same as time everywhere else. “India time” means being a few hours late for everything, and grocery stores opening at 10:30 in the morning. (Philippa and I stood outside the supermarket in Wadi for fifteen minutes waiting for the doors to open.) India time is a term that can now be applied to my watch, which worked perfectly when I arrived in Pune, but mysteriously broke two days ago. My watch has (had!) only two numbers on it—the 12 and 6 on opposite ends of the face. Those numbers have decided to detach themselves from the face of the watch and now float happily around inside the little glass covering, obstructing the hands from doing their time-telling job. I did not bump or jar or otherwise harm my watch; Philippa and I theorize that the humidity somehow melted the glue that held them in place. No worries, though, right? Because it’s India time!
7. The Pool. The pool is an awesome part of Sangam, but it requires a lot of maintenance what with the weather, the bugs, and the many swimmers. The pool often turns an interesting shade of opaque green, and then little red flags are tied around the ladder railings and we cannot swim. The maintenance men throw chemicals from a bucket into the pool for a few days and it magically turns blue and clear again. I went swimming today, and ran with Heidi across the patio and did a flying leap into the deep end. Very fun.
8. Rupees. Indian money is confusing to me, though I am slowly learning. It took a while for my brain to adjust to everything being in the hundreds and sometimes the thousands. After that adjustment period, though, is learning how much things are worth. I mentioned in the last post how cheap my antibiotics were—four different kinds for 200 Rupees!—compared to my shampoo and conditioner for twice that. Prices here are very different than prices at home, and things I am used to paying a lot for at home might not cost a lot here, and vice versa. Of course, none of it is a lot in terms of the dollars I am spending—one dollar is almost 50 rupees—but since I will be paid in rupees, I need to learn what things are worth here in India and not spend too much! For instance, 130 Rupees on candy is a little ridiculous, given that an evening of Glow Golf cost 190. Then again—candy? Who can resist gummy crocodiles and chocolate eggs? Totally worth it.
9. The Shisha Cafe. On our day off last week, Philippa and Ellen and I went out to dinner at ABC Farms, a very posh restaurant area in Pune near Koreagon Park, which is the expatriate corner of the city. Sophie and Christa both recommended Shisha Café, an Iranian restaurant, and Sophie especially emphasized that we needed to sit on the second floor. So we took a rickshaw over to ABC Farms, which is marked by a giant sign with a cow’s head, and meandered down the tree-covered walkway until we turned down the lane for the Shisha Café. Sophie was right. Upstairs, candles lit everything, and the whole effect was like being in a treehouse, only with hookahs and Persian carpets on the floor and ceilings. There were some tables with chairs, but mostly the dining took place on big, carpeted benches, while reclining. I ordered kebabs and randomly chose to have “seekh” flavored ones, which turned out to be very spicy; Philippa and Ellen both ordered the lamb. Everything was delicious, and the meal finished with tea for Philippa and Ellen and a lassi for me. Yum!
10. Diwali. Diwali starts this week, and I am getting very excited. My first view of India from the plane involved looking down on a city aglow with strings of lights for the festival going on that week. Diwali is of course the festival of lights, so all the lights are back up, and there are advertisements everywhere about Diwali shopping, as well as other ones that simply say things like “Apartments available this Diwali.” Diwali is omnipresent. We had a Diwali teatime two days ago, with Indian sweets of all kinds. I love all the sweet candy, but haven’t learned yet to appreciate the savory and sometimes spicy sweets. Why are they called sweets if they’re savory? I would like to know.
11. Fairy Tales. Today at chai, after reading the horoscopes in the Pune Mirror as we do everyday, I picked up the entertainment magazine that comes with the newspaper, and discovered a whole article on exactly what I studied at Davidson. Only, the Indian version. It’s about the Ramayana, and the importance of reinterpretation and reinvention of shared stories and myths, and depictions of strong female characters in the Ramayana (specifically, Sita), and metafiction, and oh, it is awesome. It’s really invigorated me to do some fairy tale work here. I have attached the article in the photos below for everyone to read!

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First, I developed strep throat and a nasty cold. I went to the doctor just three doors down from Sangam and waited with the other patients in the tiny space that served as a waiting room; when the doctor was ready, I took off my shoes and slipped behind the white sheet that created a “door” and some element of privacy. Once I’d described my symptoms, the doctor, who spoke very good English and was very nice, prescribed me four different medications and sent me across the street to the pharmacy to get them; all the pills together cost me less than my bottle of shampoo bought earlier in the week! Crazy.

When I returned to Sangam, I promptly brought my new medicines to Ellen, our Swedish SV who studies pharmacology at home. She looked up all the funny pharmaceutical names in her Swedish drug database (JSTOR for pharmacology students!) and discovered that the one given to “help my cough” was actually a drug for severe asthmatics taken to prevent asthma attacks, and that the drug meant to help my nausea was usually used with schizophrenics and cancer patients undergoing radiation. This was all communicated through massive giggling since Ellen had to translate the Indian drug names into their Swedish versions and then communicate what the database said in Swedish into English; she literally burst into laughter when she reached the schizophrenic part. Needless to say, I didn’t take those; the antibiotics prescribed for my throat, however, did the job, and I got well pretty quickly, though my nose is still runny and gross.

This was two days before The Big Shebang, the day we’d all been waiting for: October 16th, Sangam’s 45th Birthday Party Extravaganza. All the event participants who had been at Sangam for ten days of activities, plus other guests come specially from Pune and Mumbai, arrived at Sangam for the party held in honor of Sangam’s forty-five years welcoming Girl Scouts and Girl Guides from around the world and providing international, eye-opening experiences to everyone who crosses the threshold. This was the Big Day, and the biggest part of the Big Day was rather big—it was an elephant.

Her name was Lakshmi, although this information was not revealed until the end of the day, since there was a guessing game on not only her name but also how much she weighed and how much sugar cane she consumed per day. She arrived the evening before the party, and as the sun rose all of the Sangam staff headed down to the campsite to watch her eat breakfast and bathe. (Lots of bananas disappeared from the kitchen that morning!) Lakshmi was accompanied by a surprise guest—a camel!—who was also fed and prepared for the party’s activities. There were elephant and camel rides offered throughout the day.

Though the elephant eclipsed almost everything else in sheer novelty and excitement, there was still a lot for us Sangam Volunteers to do that day. The afternoon before the birthday, all six of us and an extremely helpful visiting guest from Sweden had sat outside the Programme Room grinding hunks of clay into a fine powder so it could be used in our birthday activity, “Creating 45 Memories.” We were all dusty and gray after six hours of pounding and banging and crunching, but had turned a whole sack of rocks into a huge bucket of powder using our hands and some masala rolling pins, which made us all feel very accomplished. Even better was the fun of watching all the birthday guests add water to the powder to make gluey, messy clay, and then turn that clay into a neat, rectangular tile on which they carved an image or a “memory”; these tiles will be used to pave a section of Sangam’s courtyard, and stand forever as a testament to this birthday celebration and all of Sangam’s birthdays.

In the afternoon, when the party was in full swing, Sangam offered a variety of Indian cultural activities: a tabla man who brought an extra set of drums for party guests to practice on; a traveling puppet show that set itself up in the hall; a potter, who let the guests try their hand at the spinny pottery wheel; a Tarot card reader who charged 200 rupees for a three-card reading; and Laughter Yoga, taught by an effervescent instructor who had all the guests doing breathing and laughing exercises in the Jubilee Gardens, which resulted in all of Sangam echoing with the sounds of “HA! HA! HA! HO! HO! HO!” There was also a raffle and a silent auction and the elephant guessing booth, and that night came dinner and Marathi, Bollywood and Dandiya (aka, stick) dancing. At sundown was the cake-cutting and official induction of the Armaity Dastur Volunteer In Training program, which lets two Indian Girl Guides in their teens work with the Programme Team at Sangam; our VITs this season are named Sayali and Aarti.

Finally, there was a panel and small group discussion with eight of our community partners represented. What are community partners, you ask? Well. Sangam is affiliated with about twenty organizations throughout Pune that we call our “community partners”—we send groups of participants to visit their sites, which are schools, orphanages, medical clinics, shelters for women, environmental action groups, and many other organizations doing amazing community work; they provide us with items to sell in our shop, often designed or made by the individuals the organizations assist; and we serve as a link and support to the wider world for these partners, and send groups to do service at their sites, whether that means repainting buildings or fixing up a dorm or putting together a class and games for their students, or whatever is appropriate at their organizations. These are the organizations that the tare, or Community Programme volunteers, go work at every day. I’ve heard a lot about these groups over dinner and in passing, but it was very cool to actually see them represented by spokespeople and organization heads at the panel, and learn more about each group. Next week Philippa and I are visiting the Muslim Girls Orphanage, and when the next event begins I will go with Ellen and participants to Green Tara, a women’s empowerment foundation. (Green Tara is run by Dr. Manda Mune, who just recently won a huge award as one of the 100 Unseen Most Powerful Women in the World. The whole world! So amazing.)

The night wound down after the panel and the announcements of the auction winners, and there was a lot of clean-up. The following day, the event guests who had been here for all ten days leading up to the birthday began to depart, and there was a closing ceremony for them. And since then, there’s been some time to decompress before gearing up for the next event. Jen, the Programme Manager, took all of the SVs and some tare on a hill climb on the other side of Pune; there was a beautiful forest and flowers and animals and it was fabulous to be awake and out in nature at 7 AM experiencing the morning personality of Pune. We also went out to breakfast, which was exciting, and that night the SVs and some other staff all went out to dinner and to a Bollywood film. The movie, called “Muhsje Fraaandship Karoge,” was kind of a cross between High School Musical and Grease, but with the whole plot revolving around Facebook and people impersonating each other on their friends’ Facebook accounts, and it was wholly in Hindi with no subtitles. Lots of English got mashed in—luckily at some pivotal plot moments—but otherwise we sat there without understanding a word besides the English clichés the characters threw in to Hindi conversation—“What’s up?” “Got that?” “Food for thought!” And you know what? I followed the whole thing. It was a typical romantic comedy with lots of singing and dancing and it was adorable and fun and I was so rooting for the characters to get together at the end and they did and I was so happy.

So when the Internet crashed for four days it was kind of okay. It is exciting to feel more and more like I live in India and am not just vacationing here. I went shopping on MG Road for condiments and a new skirt and felt like a resident running errands and not like a tourist looking for trinkets; I saw a movie and watched Indian previews and coming attractions and gobbled popcorn and laughed and smiled; I have bartered with rickshaw drivers and begun to understood where things are in relation to each other in the city. I live here. It’s a new me with a new neighborhood. And it’s really cool.

The other day, we took our guests down to Laxmi Road to visit the market and town center. We went sari shopping and I picked out beautiful green fabric with a gold design, and was measured the following afternoon for my pallu, which is the blouse part. It will be delivered this afternoon and I will get to wear a sari for the first time! I am super excited.

To give you a taste of my daily life, these are the sessions that my fellow SVs and I have executed (and, in the other girls’ cases, planned beforehand):

1. A movie viewing in the swimming pool, with tons of pool chairs to sit and float around in; a hand-made movie screen set up right at the pool’s edge, with amazing viewing and sound quality despite being made of a stitched sheet; popcorn and drinks passed out via little floating trays; and chairs along the pool’s edge for those who didn’t want to sit in the pool for the whole movie.

2. A kid’s birthday party planned and run by the guests and held for the children living in the slum across the street. Snacks, decorations and song and games all put together by the guests, with some help and supervision from the SVs.

3. An overnight visit from local Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. Tents down in the campsite, dosa for dinner (think an ENORMOUS crepe with vegetables like potato folded into the middle), and lots of games played out on the campsite. Then the rain came, and the campfire was moved into the hall with a fake fire and lots of little tealights flickering around the unlit sticks and logs, and there were songs and activities until bedtime, which, again, was in the hall rather than the tents.

4. A 1960s-themed dinner party: decorations put together by yours truly, 1960s music playing throughout the evening, fondue for dessert. Followed by a 1960s wide game–five different stations, five different teams of guests, scorecards, and hilarity. One station involved making up a 30-second dance to “Somebody to Love” and points were given for “upside-down-ness” and “use of the environment”; another station was soccer dribbling through cones, but the most points were earned by holding a champion aloft in the same way the 1966 World Cup champions did; another station was Twister, with a homemade mat. And so on.

5. History Journey sessions, which Net put together–different days spent talking about and playing games around sections of WAGGGS and Sangam history. Informative but also fun. One day asked everyone to make a giant timeline of events, all of which were between 1909 (the Crystal Palace Rally, when a bunch of Boy Scouts’ sisters demanded admittance, spurring the creation of Girl Guides) and 1966 (Sangam’s founding). Except that the guests had to figure out what the proper date was for each event or occurrence! Another session involved guessing which Girl Guide uniforms were from which era, and the most recent session (WAGGGS in the Present) was about the Millenium Development Goals set by the UN and what Girl Guides and Scouts have done and still can do to work towards achieving these goals, which include eradicating world hunger, securing education for all children, improving maternal health, and so on.

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These are just the big ones. There are dozens of little things, like tea-and-spice shopping in the neighborhood with Aruna, our house and property manager, or yoga every morning at 7 AM (which I absolutely adore; I am becoming a yoga fan for the first time), or flag ceremony before breakfast every day. It is absolutely exhausting, but also really rewarding. The guests seem to be having a great time, and so do the people we bring in, like the Scouts and Guides, or the kids we threw the party for. There’s still four more days to go, but today Philippa and I have off, so we’ve run some errands. We had a typical Indian purchase at the stationery store; we were in search of planners with calendars and dates inside, and we found one in a little tiny stationery store in Wadi. We asked for two, and they got us two from the back, shiny and new and plastic-wrapped. We bought them, headed out, unwrapped the plastic, and discovered that though they looked exactly like the planner on the outside, on the inside they were just notebooks. Sigh. Welcome to India!

After two days of relaxation and acclimation, Philippa and I were put to work officially on Thursday the 6th. Most of that day was training—Sophie taught us the ins and outs of the Sangam family, which is made up of local staff who do the domestic and maintenance work; professional staff from all over the world who live and work here consistently; the Sangam Volunteers who stay here for differently-lengthed terms and assist with programming and events; and the Tare, who work with our community partners around Pune. Then Ellen introduced us to the technology available to us and the different computer drives where all the manuals and schedules and templates are stored; Net went through the dining system: who sits where, the chart for checking off whether you’ll be in or out for meals, that sort of thing. There was also an event briefing for Sangam’s 45th Birthday Celebration, which is the event we’re currently holding.

My favorite part of my training days was celebrating the festival of Dusserah. First, we blessed all the machines and tools around Sangam. The blessings are called “puja”; they involve cracking a coconut and sprinkling powders by each object receiving the blessing, and are meant to coax things like the generator and copy machine and water tower into working well for the next year. Dusserah is a cleansing sort of festival leading up to Diwali. I also went to the local temple and got to offer up a little flower to the goddess; I learned never to smell a flower before you offer it to a deity, because it’s disrespectful to steal their scent. While at the temple we learned there would be dancing that night, and decided we would go.

When we arrived at the temple at quarter to ten the sky was dark and the temple was like Times Square—lights everywhere, and so much noise and movement. Everyone, even the littlest girls, were decked out in the brightest saris I had ever seen, and their hair and faces were done up glamorously. All the people were dancing, from the littlest babies to the oldest adults. There were two circles, the inner ring facing the outer ring, moving in opposite directions, so that the partners were always changing. And everybody held sticks in their hands, roughly drumstick-length, and hit their sticks against their partner’s sticks in time to the music, all while twirling and twisting and stepping back and forth. The music was loud and rhythmic and seemed to speed up as it went on.

Ellen and I got thrown into the circle. There was no instruction, so I had no idea what to do, but the little kids were the best—very patient, all smiles, making direct eye contact as I tried to figure out what the beats were and where my sticks were meant to be. Some of the older girls seemed really understanding, too, and laughed with me as I laughed at myself and my mistakes. In some ways it was really scary, because I had no idea what I was doing and felt sort of stupid just jumping in and also like a nuisance, slowing everybody down in the middle of their festival, but after a while I caught on, and I would love to go again and get better. Although maybe next time I’ll bring my camera and get some pictures instead! There are tons of festivals all the time, and there was something so cool about the way this raucous, joyous celebration was held in a holy place; I could never imagine such a scene in a church or temple. And it was amazing to see how everybody knew the dance so well , that it was something everyone learned from when they were small. There isn’t anything like that in the States anymore, unless you count the Electric Slide or something—which I don’t. I suppose you see it at Jewish celebrations, though—the hora, and all that. But this was really special.

The next day, we returned to event preparation. The current SVs have made great use of Philippa and me: I’ve helped hang banners, put Sangam memorabilia on display, cut out and laminated nametags for napkin bags and signs for the gift shop, found 1960s decorations for the ‘60s-themed dinner (Sangam was founded in 1966, so we’re being nostalgic during this birthday shebang), put together an outdoor movie screen, and lots of other miscellaneous tasks to ready Sangam for the 28 guests attending the 10-day birthday party! (We’re expecting an elephant on the actual day. I am so excited!) Philippa and I were also issued our Sangam uniforms: purple-and-pink punjabis that alternate every other day with a purple blouse, blue pants and a purple Sangam necker during events, and two WAGGGS t-shirts to wear with our blue pants during non-event time.

Our guests trickled in over from the UK and Australia and New Zealand, and two from the US. Coincidentally, they are a grown-up mother and daughter from Virginia and Charlotte, NC! And Meg, the daughter, is part of Hornets’ Nest Council, just like me, and is the Gold Award person for Mecklenburg County. I was so excited to discover someone from “home” was coming, even though we had never met. Most excitingly, we’ve also got a group of Sri Lankan Girl Guides, between the ages of 12 and 15, who are really fun to have around. They have all-white uniforms and yesterday morning were splashing and playing and shrieking in the pool, which was really adorable.

Two nights ago was the official welcome ceremony, and it was beautiful. Philippa and I wore our uniforms from our national Guiding/Scouting organizations, rather than our Sangam ones, and filed into the hall, which is decorated with lots of flags. Those representing the countries attending the event or currently working at Sangam are at the front. There was a ceremonial lamp, and Aruna, who is our House and Property Manager and incredibly nice, performed aarti on the lamp before she and Priyanka, our Event Administrator, did the same to us. Aarti is a blessing involved turmeric and kumkum powder dabbed just between your eyebrows, rice sprinkled in your hair, and a betel nut and the ceremonial bowl circled a few times in front of your face. Priyanka did mine, and when she was finished I folded my hands and said, “Namaste.” Then Christa laid a garland around my neck and said, “Welcome to Sangam.” Finally, I was invited to light a wick on the ceremonial lamp, and when it was all finished the whole lamp was aglow with firelight. It was absolutely beautiful, and felt very special. We concluded by singing the World Song and then took lots of pictures.

I’ve put some of those pictures up, as well as some from our Neighborhood Walk, which we take guests on to show them the surrounding area. There’s a lovely middle-class neighborhood across the street called Phule Nagar, a fairly stable government-approved slum next door, and an unofficial, still-growing slum also across the street. We visited parts of the first two, including the home of a woman named Tarabai, who worked for Sangam for 30 years, dating back to 1966 when we opened, and now lets us use her house as part of the tour. Her daughter-in-law is employed here now, so Sangam is kind of a family tradition, and she and her grandson happily posed for pictures and showed us their home.

Also, I climbed the water tower yesterday morning, and it was awesome. I also photographed the baby birds living in the nest just besides the water tower. I love them!

We were told to spend the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday relaxing, since our first day (today, Thursday) would be full of training, and there’s an event starting this weekend so much busyness is in store. Great advice, but my jetlag caught up with me with a vengeance the past two nights, and I literally did not sleep at all on Tuesday and only a couple hours last night. Bedtime here is still early afternoon in New York, and apparently my body is in a rebellious mood. I stared at the ceiling for hours, and on Wednesday night ended up taking a strange cocktail of sleeping pills and nighttime cold medicine that resulted in sickness rather than sleep. Whoops.

Much better than the jetlag has been getting to know the other SVs (Sangam Volunteers), the Tare (the community volunteers who work at local schools and nurseries and other “community partners,” as they’re called) and the staff. Yesterday one of the SVs, Net (short for Annette, before y’all ask), was nice enough to take me and Philippa into downtown Pune even though it was her day off. First we went across the street to visit the local neighborhood which I will soon lead guests through on “neighborhood walks”–a more advanced version of my Davidson tour guiding career! It’s a very nice middle-class neighborhood, but is bordered on one side by an illegal slum–not government-approved–and is across the street from a legal slum, which receives government rations and so on. (They’re our next-door neighbors.) It was nice to walk around and get a glimpse of what exists beyond the purple Sangam gates, and then we got into a rickshaw and headed into Pune, and saw lots of stores and places to eat.

We returned to Sangam in time for eleven o’clock tea; we have tea everyday at eleven and four–there is chai and cookies and it’s a very nice break which I imagine I’ll appreciate even more when I’m really working. It’s nice to sit and be companionable with the staff and everybody just lets themselves not be busy for a little bit, which is a big change from my last work environment; my breaks at the Met involved squishing past a couple thousand people to broil on the museum steps and eat some candy really quickly to get myself through the rest of the day. Not that I didn’t appreciate my breaks–I did–but there’s something really lovely about everyone taking the chance to sit and breathe and be together.

After tea, Net took us back out, this time down the road to the closer neighborhood, Wadi, where we can get all our necessities like shampoo and snacks. It was good to explore some more, but it was also nice to get back to Sangam and have a proper tour around where I actually live, and learn the names of the buildings and stuff. Then Philippa and I followed the “Discover Sangam” scavenger hunt that is put up for guests to learn their way around, and saw some more nooks and crannies. I took pictures along the way, too! So take a look at my new home. I’d upload more, but it takes ages.

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My driver made it to Pune but evidently had never been to Sangam; he asked me for the address, and we drove in circles for a while, and eventually I was the one who spotted the purple sign. The gatekeeper let us in; it was 2:30 AM here, and everything was dark and sort of eerie. A current Sangam Volunteer, Sophie, came downstairs to get me and sign me in and show me to the group dorm where I’ll be living for 4 weeks during training, before I move into the main house and my own room. I have a bed with a stripey blanket. I didn’t fall asleep until close to 4 AM; I was so jetlagged and out of it, I just stared at the ceiling and walls for a long time.

I woke up and had breakfast with all the staff–the full-time staff; the Sangam Volunteers; and the tare, who work in the community more so than here at the centre. Everyone was very friendly but also very busy, as there’s a big event this weekend–Sangam’s 45th Birthday Celebration. I will be working on that, so I’m meant to relax today. Later this afternoon the other newbie, Philippa, will arrive. In the meantime, I’ve tried to hook up my Macbook to the WiFi, but haven’t been successful. If anyone knows anything about proxy servers and Macs, please let me know! I’m using a desktop here for now.

I am feeling very overwhelmed, and sort of like I want to turn around and go home, to be honest; the exhaustion and confusion is a little off-putting, and part of me would really like to be spared all the First Day Of School/Work feelings and just go back to my regular life. I know, though, that I will settle in soon enough. Until then, chin up and all that.

I think my plan for the day is to take a nap, eat some of the Sour Patch watermelons I did not consume on the plane, and take pictures with my new camera. Apparently when the tare get back from their community jobs, they go for a swim, so I suppose I’ll do that too–and then tonight some of the folks are watching Glee, starting with season one, since some people haven’t seen it. I’ve never seen season 1, so that should be fun, and also sort of home-like; I used to watch Glee sometimes up in Hart 303 when I wasn’t thesis-ing last year.

Photos to come. I miss everybody!

I am, as you can imagine after this long list, exhausted already at the prospect of my journey. I have tried not to let that preemptive exhaustion sour my trip, but, to be honest, I have been very grumpy about leaving for India all week. Packing up my whole life and transferring it to a country I’ve never visited before felt like the worst idea ever as I put my suitcase together, got my iPod and laptop in order, arranged things with the bank and insurance companies, and ran what felt like a million errands to gather everything I need (got the Nalgene? got the razors? got the pens? got the bug spray and the Excedrin PM and the cookies from Mrs. Fields to give to the Indian family hosting me for dinner? got the uniform and got my navy pants hemmed and got the one-piece bathing suit? check, check, check, check, check; the mall had good business this week!).

But today, suddenly, I am excited. Really genuinely excited for perhaps the first time all summer. It is starting to sink in that I am really leaving, that I am about to embark on what can only be called an adventure, and that it will be mind-boggling but also amazing. And fun. I am anticipating lots and lots of fun.

It will be hard to leave my family behind, and it will be very hard to leave my boyfriend behind (though he is sending Jupiter in his stead), and it is hard to leave behind all my Davidson friends who have relocated to New York. They are settling into their real grown-up jobs, paying rent on their real grown-up apartments, going to happy hour at real grown-up bars (and then going home early to wake up for their real grown-up jobs). I am not sure what I’m about to do qualifies as adulthood in the same bill-paying way as them. But I am, today, finally, starting to feel that my post-Davidson plan is the right one, even if it’s not the same one. (And, haha, terrible pun alert: maybe the write one? I’ll let you know how things go on the fictional front soon).

My next update will be from India. (Well–let’s not kid–probably from Switzerland; I am an Internet addict.) But soon I will be writing you from India, and with any luck things will get more interesting. I don’t anticipate the same consistent Internet access that I enjoy at home, and am not sure how frequently I will be updating, but I’ll let you know soon enough.

OK. Off I go, for real this time.

Oh well. Lesson learned for next time, and nothing I can do now.

SWAPs (yet another acronym–this time it stands for Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere, or, much easier to spell and remember, Shared With A Pal) are small items made by Girl Scouts and Girl Guides to exchange with other Girl Scouts and Girl Guides when they meet for the first time, whether at a local council meet-up or halfway around the world at one of the world centres. Everybody makes ‘em and trades ‘em, and they can be anything from little cutesy themed items such as those featured on this intimidating website to bookmarks, badges, pins, etc. SWAPs are generally homemade, which sends a small chill down my spine, because I am not the most neat-fingered, Popsicle-stick-wielding, Elmer’s-glue-daubing individual. I am great at big banners, posters, giant wall decorations, bulletin boards and other large canvases with some room for error, but–my seventh-grade dollhouse aside–miniature is not my forte, and SWAPs, which need to be transportable and, well, swappable, are generally small.

After lots of brainstorming, trying to figure out how best to not attach my fingers together permanently with SuperGlue, I finally decided to make balloon SWAPs. I bought 100 balloons from the Hornets Nest Council of Mecklenburg County, printed with “Carolina Girl Scouts” on the front, and set forth to decorate them. The gallery below will show you what I mean…. (After the pictures, check out the addendum below….)

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It is worth noting that when I tried to blow the balloons back up to make sure the stamp had worked properly and the Sharpie had dried, the ink from the stamp had totally failed and gotten all faded with the stretching and shrinking and whatnot, but the Sharpie had held up just fine. The result? I will be handwriting the rest of my 100 balloons. It’s gonna be a long week-and-six-days….