Friday, February 6th was a Cities of Delhi field trip to Tughlakabad Fort (of which there are a bunch of pictures on the flickr site). That was one of the cooler places we've been so far. Lots of ruins to climb around on, the first actual sunset I've seen, some sweet underground rooms and a secret passage underneath the walls of the fort, and a great view from on top of the wall. Gorgeous. It was really interesting to see the whole layout of how the citadel must have looked, and we were virtually the only ones there (aside from the three Indian men who felt the need to skulk around behind us the whole time. Which was fine. Pramod, the office assistant guy, is our bodyguard on these field trips.). The pictures mostly speak for themselves on that one.
Early in the morning on Saturday the 6th we jumped on this weird van/bus thing and drove out to the village of Abheypur in Haryana for a "rural excursion." This was an unusual weekend that didn't quite go as expected. There was more miscommunication, misunderstanding, and difference of opinion than there should have been, but it was still a good experience. As soon as we arrived (maybe around 9 a.m., when it was still foggy and cold), we were fed biscuits and juice boxes, then sent to scramble up the rocks to the top of the hill we were currently at the bottom of. When everyone was back, we squished ourselves into the one classroom at the Abheypur vocational training school run by the Vision of India, the group who also organized our trip. We were then lectured by Captain Sharma, an Indian guy who lived in the U.S. for twenty years (in New York City and Ohio), is a journalist, has gotten a few minutes alone with Bill Gates, is an Air Force captain, and yes, wanted to be called Captain Sharma and wore his air force baseball cap the whole weekend. Oh, and he's a yoga guru? More on that later.
What I learned from Captain Sharma's first lecture: There are ten steps to success, and success is monetary, having nothing to do with love or emotional support or happiness. If you follow his ten steps, you are guaranteed to be successful. Also, you can't be successful unless you have failed, which includes experiencing the death of a loved one. Sitting through his little speech (which he pretended was a discussion but he shot down every idea put forth by one of us and told us we were wrong) was incredibly frustrating and more than a little infuriating to me, but I understood it more once I looked back on it later in the day. I realized later that the purpose of that session was probably to show us what they teach the village boys that go to that school. These are boys who drop out before or during middle school and whose families bluntly tell them that they're worthless. So these "ten steps to success" aren't really that; rather, they're a method of instilling values and hope in these kids who don't really find that support elsewhere and would probably give up on being any sort of successful. Which makes a lot of sense. It was just presented in such a way that it felt like we were being lectured at and put down and told that we were wrong and that there was a very clear-cut way that things should be. That's one of the best examples of what I meant earlier when I said there was too much miscommunication and misunderstanding. We weren't told what the purpose of this exercise was; we were just thrown into it without any context or explanation and then were expected to sit through it obediently. I also think that a lot was lost in translation. Particularly when he was talking about failure because he didn't actually give an example of failure. I think the point was perseverance through hardship and not losing sight of your goals, even when there are obstacles and distractions. So again, valid point and legitimate lessons, but poorly presented and not well explained.
After that, we went to the elementary school in the village (which again, I have pictures of up on flickr). Those kids were so adorable. They sang the Indian national anthem and made us sing the American one (luckily, the Spanish national anthem has no lyrics, so Paula didn't have to sing it), and then we exchanged nursery rhymes/children's songs with them. We taught them the Itsy Bitsy Spider and a few tongue twisters. They were pretty cute.
Following the school visit, we went to the village proper and just kind of looked around. We got fed delicious food, napped in the sun, and learned about village occupations. I got to try weaving cloth on a hand loom (which is REALLY HARD) and we saw a potter and a woman spinning thread and people cutting up food for their cows. It was colorful and dirty and wonderful, and the people were really friendly even though hardly any of them spoke English and my Hindi is nowhere near good enough to carry on a real conversation. Captain Sharma demonstrated to us the kinds of questions that are asked by matchmakers when arranging marriages and determining dowries and such, and my poor roommate Rachel got picked to be married on her 20th birthday in a rural village in India to a stranger. Our friend Mark also was chosen to be married off to a village girl. We didn't think his girlfriend would be very happy, but Captain Sharma assured us that having a girlfriend in addition to a wife was quite alright. So my roommate was caked in makeup and clothed in a wedding sari and completely embarassed, and Mark was also given his costume. They each had sort-of wedding ceremonies, which actually weren't very ceremonious and not legally binding. It was a strange kind of evening.
That night I slept in the home of a local family with three other IES students. We were with a family of 21 split between two houses, and the people on our side probably spoke about 20 words of English between them. We sat outside in our pajamas on our string beds miming and using broken Hindi and English trying to get to know each other, which, despite the awkwardness, was great fun. They insisted on making us chai at 11 p.m., which they didn't drink because they made it specially for us, and the grandma/matriarch-type woman of the family smoked her hookah nonstop. It was crazy. Sleeping outside in the cold air under thick blankets in the moonlight was probably the best experience of the weekend. Waking up at 5:15 a.m. (unnecessarily, as it turns out, because of even more miscommunication, since apparently all of the adults had different itineraries...) was not. We eventually walked out the middle of the wilderness around 7 a.m. to do yoga. Led by Captain Sharma. Who may have been trained in the postures but absolutely does not have the personality to teach yoga. Again with the telling people they're wrong and making fun of people and just generally having a rather harsh personality. And it was really frickin' cold, and instead of mats we had astroturf set on the ground. Still, it was nice to be outside at sunrise in the relative peace and quiet.
We spent almost the whole morning just sitting around doing nothing, then jumped back in our vehicles supposedly to go to the fields, which turned into going the lake, which turned into about a 2-minute stretch break because of all the miscommunication. We never ended up seeing the fields, and simply drove back to Delhi. Promptly upon our arrival, my roommate and I showered and went shopping in market we hadn't been to at before, which turned out to be my favorite place to shop in Delhi. It was quite a weekend. It was fun and interesting and definitely a learning experience, even if that learning differed from the intended effect of the program...
Now it is time for me to go inside away from the sun :( and learn some Hindi. This evening shall bring tales of university, cooking, sleeper class on Indian Railways, and the Pink City. Stay tuned.
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