Tirupati Pics

iPhoto is being dumb, so I had to post my pictures from Tirupati late.

Here they are!

This is from the first day we arrived to Tirupati. Unfortunately, my picture-taking skills were limited, because this pic is taken from the back of Madhu Uncle's motorcycle! (I missed Madhu Uncle though...)

Below, you see Madhu Uncle with his son, Pushkar, a really cute kid who took a little while to warm up to us, but once he did was loads of fun! Also, you see Madhu Uncle's wife, Bhagya Aunty. The picture is taken at Madhu Uncle's house.

Here is Pushkar with a toy he made out of newspaper. It's essentially 10 or 15 cone-shaped papers that are hard enough to throw. Sort of reflects the fact that kids in India enjoy the simpler things in life. In America, kids would get bored of a toy like that.

Here is a picture at Sai Aunty's house (Madhu Uncle's older sister). The kids on the left are Pushkar being held by Anudeep (Sai Aunty's son). The grandma is my grandfather's younger sister, who I had never met before (I don't think...). It was a great first night!

This is the start of the ~3600 steps from Tirupati (downstairs) to Tirumala (upstairs), where the God actually is. You can see it says "Way to Footpath" in English.









The way up! It was mostly stairs, but parts of the walk were on the road. We did the walk without shoes because it is supposed to be more holy that way. Also you might be able to tell that there were a ton of people climbing on the weekend!

The climb up is essentially through a thick forest, so TTD (Tirupati-Tirumala Devastanams; the group that organizes everything in the two cities for the temple) decided to make the climb a national forest and you can walk up to a bunch of animals. We saw people feeding small deer, but this was the coolest animal we saw. We were actually wondering - do reindeer exist? If not, I think this thing is what they were modeled after!

I guess the views were okay too...

So, when I got to the top, I got all my hair shaved off. It's a very religious thing to do (and it would cool me down in India's thick heat!) This priest came to our room and did it. This is the before picture.

This is the during the event picture.

And... I'm bald. As I write, though, it's been about a week and my hair is already growing back. I couldn't take my camera with me to the actual temple, so there aren't any pics of that. I guess you'll just have to go and see for yourself!

The day we came back from Tirupati happened to be Srinivasan uncle's birthday, so, naturally, we had... MEAT! it was great, and we all sat in a circle and ate together, which was cool.

A cool picture of my name on a mat. In India, at restaurants, and even when you're a guest in a home, you get served on a banana leaf. I engraved my name in this one.

Till next time (should be soon), see ya

Tirupati

The past few days have been great! I'm actually up on the Terrace at 10 pm writing this blog. The wind has picked up a bit and I'm actually sitting in a light drizzle, but it's not nearly as hot as it has been in the past few weeks. I also woke up this morning, just knowing it was going to be a great day and it has! But my story today begins a few days ago and will culminate in today.

On Friday morning, Rad and I left to go to Tirupati, which is a very sacred place about 3 hours away from Chennai. Tirupati is home to a temple dedicated to Sri Venkateshwara Swamy, a Hindu God. Well, actually, Tirupati is 3000 feet below the temple. The actual deity is in Tirumala, which is located 7 hills above Tirupati in a set of mountains. Lord Venkateshwara is a form of the Hindu God, Vishnu. One thing that people often don't know about Hinduism is that it is actually monotheistic, but has many reincarnations of the one God. I actually discovered that Tirupati is the most visited cultural pilgrimage sites in the world. On a weekend, like the one we visited, there are over 100,000 people there! Amazing!

The bus we took to Tirupati was relatively empty in the middle of the day. Other than losing my contacts on the trip, it was a smooth ride. My uncle, Madhu Uncle, met us at the bus stop. He is my grandfather's sister's son and was extremely hospitable the entire trip!

When we arrived, we met his family. His son, Pushkar, was awesome and very funny. He was only 5 years old, but he was already very smart and quite nice! We also met my grandfather's sister - Bharti Amama (means grandmother in Telugu) and I had never met her before. It was unfortunate that I couldn't understand her (so essentially I just smiled politely), but I could tell she was thrilled to see me. She was talking very fast and showing me a lot of old pictures. She was extremely nice and reminded me a lot of my grandfather (who we call Thatha).

The next morning, we climbed to Tirumala. Tirumala, remember, is at the top of the 7 hills and climbing to the top (as opposed to taking the bus) is supposed to be very spiritual (and difficult). It is over 3500 steps to the top and it takes some people more than six hours to complete, if they finish. It was amazing and felt really great to climb. I expected the rumors about its difficulty to be false, made up by old Indian folks who haven't really done any exercise... I was wrong. The first 1000 steps, in particular, are extremely challenging. After two breaks, I was still sweating up a storm!

On the way up, there are spots where animals will come up to you (you're essentially walking through a forest) and where you can stop to get food or water. We didn't try to go too fast and enjoyed all the people and camaraderie. We ended up getting up in 3 hours exactly, surprisingly fast, and then waiting for my uncle to come meet us at the top. I don't think he was expecting us to finish so fast!

Another thing that is very spiritual in Tirupati is giving up your hair and shaving your head. I decided I would do it because my dad did it when he was younger and because I figured it would be very spiritual thing to do, something I really liked about it. We got in this line to get your hair cut, but the line was way too long (apparently the wait was over five hours!).

Luckily, Madhu Uncle knew how to get a priest to come to you and I was able to get my hair cut that way. It was very nice, but rather scary. The priest does a little prayer and then puts a single blade into a cutter. Terrifying. Then he sprinkles some water on your head and goes at it. Surprisingly, it felt very relaxing.

So, yes, for now, I am bald and it feels great. Honestly, there are only two big changes. One is all the stares. I forget that I'm bald so when people stare, I keep wondering why. The second change is more odd. Normally, I just throw on my shirt, but now, the shirt rubs against my prickly short hair and hurts and won't go on. So, I have to gather the shirt, slip it carefully over my head, then let the rest go. It's not going to kill me, it's just odd.

After shaving my head, we napped for a bit, then got dinner and saw the temple at night, which was very pretty. We also saw the free Darshan (prayer) line... apparently, it's a more than 24 hour wait on the weekends. People essentially wait in small steal cages for that long. "Darshan" means going in front of the God and seeing the idol itself. People wait 24 hours or more for that.

The next morning, my uncle arranged for a VIP Darshan. We only had to wait two hours and then we saw the God, which was very powerful and very pleasant and relaxing all at the same time. No pictures were allowed unfortunately. They frisk you like six or seven times before you get to see the God. It was unbelievable how tight security was.

We came back to Chennai by 2pm in the afternoon and just relaxed for the rest of the day.

Today, as I was saying, was a great day. We got into work at 10:30 and worked until around 1, when people started eating lunch. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most people eat in a circle in the office space, and today was Srinivasan Uncle's birthday! He brought in chicken pieces and asked us all to join. We had a great feast of a lunch and it was awesome to feel like one of the locals. Afterwards, there was the power cut, so we talked to Selva about going to another village. He was so efficient! He set it up so that we're actually leaving tmrw!! Unbelievably fast!

He also took a few of us out to ice cream and then I came back and played a few games of chess with a young nice guy named Laxmi. He kept calling us "Sir" or "Madam," which made us uncomfortable. It was interesting that even when we told him to stop, he had a difficult time stopping, because he was so used to it. The first two games were over in literally no more than 5 minutes. He was killing me and it was embarrassing. The last game was the only good one and it lasted a good 45 minutes. I ended up winning!

Great few days!

The Prestige

Part two of the two part saga. The Prestige. What made last week such a great week? One word - kids.

To remind my millions of viewers, my project has two goals - to teach English to kids in villages and to educate these same kids on health issues in India. It appears, however, that more and more, our project is veering towards acknowledging the former and ignoring the latter.


So, we left early in the morning to Kalpakkam and arrived at around 11:30. Once we arrived, a teacher at the school help us get settled into our hotel. We grabbed a bite to eat and eagerly went over to the Eureka School. Look at me - I don't even care about lunch...

The school was literally amazing. We were teaching 3rd, 4th, and 5th Standards (read: 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades).

The first day, we just sat in a circle and went around each classroom and said, "My name is ______. What is your name?"  We also had the teacher control most of this class just so we could objectively gauge what the students' levels were.


We made a few quick observations.

First of all, 3rd standard was a little slower than 4th and 5th standards, but nothing we didn't think we could deal with. We had created week-long curriculum's to match what we though would be their level. We found out 3rd standard created problems for us all week.

Also, we realized that there was huge variations within each grade between the smartest and least proficient students. Oftentimes, some students would understand things in just one explanation, whereas others would take the entire class.

Some pictures from Day 1:

The School from afar. 

 Close up.





3rd Standard - That's Ashwinth on the left, Vignesh in the middle, and I think, Mouli on the right.

4th Standard girls (3 of 4 of the girls). From left to right, it's Priya (she was pretty bossy), Aarthi, and Saranya (probably my favorite girl in all the Standards).

5th Standard doing a Science experiment. Ravi on the left, teacher, and Nishanth.

Karthik - one of the most helpful kids at our school. He also has an extremely magnetic smile which just made everyone happy! One of my favorite 4th Standard kids.

Nishanth, again. Also, Nishanth is Ashwinth's (from Standard 3) older brother. Once we found out, we literally couldn't tell the difference between either of them.









Day 2:

Today, we decided to move forward with animals for all the standards.


Taught who, what, when, where, and why to 5th Standard.

Again, amazing. We found that 3rd standard struggled, and was mostly memorizing, instead of actually learning.

Day 3, 4: All great. Taught new stuff, like directions (left versus right) and colors, and reinforced old stuff (like animals).

Day 5: Tried to play Jeopardy, but they didn't understand it. So we switched to a team game (two teams). Then they got bored, so we switched to a fun game of duck, duck, goose. it was really funny cause they called it "dock, dock, poosh." haha, again, a great day though - prolly the best day.


Pictures!

Vinod was one of the best 5th Standard kids and one of the best behaved kids. He wanted to be an IPS police officer, which is a really high, well respected position for people in India. He was extremely intelligent and really competitive.

 Above is Jeeva, the smartest person in Standard 5, along with Vinod. She was also similarly competitive and very nice. She would get visibly upset when her team was down. She also hated when she lost a board race to Vinod on Day 5.

This is Standard 5, just enjoying the day. In the foreground, you see Nishanth jumpin up. 










Below is one of my favorite pictures of our kids. From left to right, their names are Vignesh, Hemathkumar, Surya, and Karthik. They were all fourth standard and so much fun! Vignesh was probably the best behaved kid in the school, but still enjoyed playing around. Hemathkumar was a lot of fun as well, and would always joke with me that I understood Tamil and he understood English. Surya was a little mischievous guy. He always wanted to take pictures with the camera and probably had the smallest attention span of anyone in the class. Karthik, as you can see, has such a magnetic smile that he instantly became one of our favorites. He was extremely helpful if we ever needed chalk or a duster or anything really.

This is all of the 4th standard boys. This is where they eat lunch. It's a circular concrete block with a metal umbrella above. You'll see Vignesh, Shakti, Kishore, Hemath, Karthik, and surya from left to right.












Below is another great picture of some of the 4th standard boys. It's Vignesh, Shakti and Surya.

Here, you'll see Danashree (I think I'm misspelling her name!).  She was the Surya of 5th standard, in the sense that she was extremely mischievous. She would randomly leave the classroom and when asked about it, she would say "bathroom, miss." Also, all the students would politely ask before coming back into the classroom, and she would walk in as if she owned the place. It was hilarious, especially, because she had no idea how funny she was!




Below if my favorite girl, Saranya. She is in 4th Standard and is literally awesome. The smartest girl in the class, and probably one of the smartest people we taught, she was very funny and very cute! Many of the girls wouldn't get too close with me (me being a guy), but she wasn't too shy and we became really good friends!

Hope you enjoyed!! Sorry this is so late!

The Pledge and The Turn

This past week and a half has been the best week ever. There's a LOT that has happened, so I'm going to get right to it.

Starting last Sunday, Alex, Rad, Athidi and I indulged in a much-too-fancy lunch at the Hilton hotel. It cost US $30, which is much too expensive for a meal anywhere in India (though probably still much cheaper than if we were actually state-side). Here's a picture of us at lunch.

After lunch, we went to the rooftop and just hung out for a bit. You can see Alex is enjoying himself (and relaxed) for sure!

The next day we rode the bus home again. I ended up taking a bunch of pictures, but here's one I took once we got off the bus. I like it because it not only has the cow, but also the shadows of all three of us.

Later that night, the McGill interns invited us out to dinner on the town. It was Malavika's birthday (back left - across from me). We went to this pretty hip restaurant at Zara's. I forgot to mention, but both places (Hilton and Zara's) had an abundance of white people. Here's a pic of our group!

The next day was supposed to be just another day at the office, but turned out to be quite an immersive experience. It started out relatively normal, with us finishing up our answer guides for standard 7. I got bored at around noon, though, and went outside to hang out with a guy named Raju. He was cleaning his bike and we just sort of chatted. I get the feeling that most of them (especially the young guys, like him) silently make fun of us (in jest) because they will randomly look at us, say something in Tamil, and burst out in laughter. And they never tell us why when we ask. But they're all very nice to us. I ended up being invited to join in their lunch circle, which felt great! Unfortunately, Athidi is pretty poor at taking pictures (seriously, Athidi?), but that's me hidden on the right side of the picture, drinking a bottle of water in white shorts.

After the impromptu lunch (the only food I had was offered to me by others in the circle!), Athidi, Radhika, Sandeep (who is a 16 year old Tamilian soon-to-be senior in hs from Arizona) went to this super-cool restaurant called Sanjeevanam. The reason it was so cool is that it only serves Ayurvedic food!! It was a great experience. It was a ton of food, though, but most of it was pretty good. Here's a few pics!

The last picture is the menu. 

 

One of the last portions of our meal was honey. They poured it on your hand and you licked it off - see above.






Unfortunately, the forced us to use our hands. I'm not all that skilled in that technique yet. 




After we got back to the office, there were more surprises in waiting. We were about to leave for the day, when Srinivasan Uncle stopped me and showed me all these hats he could make with just one newspaper. It was amazing! And it felt great because I was being included in something that the locals were doing. Here's a few pics.

After our bus ride home, we decided to grab some coconut water, which tasted great as always. Rad doesn't love it, though so only Athidi and I got one. Unfortunately, there was no scraps inside of our coconut, only water. It tasted great though!





















In a magician's act, there are always three parts. The Pledge and the Turn are the lead-up to the best part of the show, the reason you go to the show. These three or four days described above are simply the lead up to what I will describe next, The Prestige. You shouldn't have started clapping yet - I've only made the pigeon disappear. Soon, I will bring it back and then you will clap. The Prestige is soon to come.

Another great day

The last 24 hours have been great.

We had a great talk last night to clear up some of our differences. I think I was on the wrong page on some things and so were the girls so I think it was really important and really helpful. Something I guess I had (conveniently) failed to mention was the rising tension in our group (especially between Athidi and I, with Rad claiming Switzerland most of the time). Today was a great day, marked by fantastic camaraderie and good joyful fun!

Rad went to bed early yesterday so Athidi and I played a game of chess. I had already played Rad a few times. She's still getting used to the game, so it wasn't very difficult yet. I'm sure she will get better (actually, not sarcasm). Playing Athidi was a different story. Apparently, she competed in grade school and middle school, so it was definitely tougher. I could tell from the beginning I was in trouble. However, with just my king left (she still her had queen, rooks, bishops, and one knight i think), I managed to pull out of the game with a Stalemate (which I more than welcomed)!!

We spent most of today doing work, but at around 5, I had tea with Alex and the guy from Punjab (I can never remember his name). We started talking about Chennai and how it wasn't much of a city, but more of an urban village. It was interesting.

I'm not sure what it is (it may be Tamilian pride?), but Tamilians don't know any of the other languages (and theirs' is pretty difficult). This wouldn't be such a problem, except for the fact that India is so diverse that in order to function, you almost NEED to know Hindi at least. The reason this is problematic for Chennai is that people who grow up here and study here are forced, simply by the language barrier, to work here. And there aren't enough jobs for everyone in Tamil Nadu to work here (especially when people from other parts of India come here). This forces Tamil Nadu into an economic situation where there is a small upper class (10-15% of society), little to no middle class, and huge lower class, resulting in a LOT of poverty and slums.

Aftewards, Alex showed us some of his boss, Girish's music, which was very good. We also met his girlfriend, Becky, (via Skype) who seemed quite nice as well. I actually thought they looked rather alike. I may get the chance to meet her because Alex and her planned this great trip all around northern India.

At 6, Rad, Athidi, and I went to go shopping for the first time. We went to two places and got some great stuff. Cheerios (essentially), bread, PB&J, and other things. Both places were healthy, but one place was no A/C and very congested, while the other had wide aisles and was comfortably cool.

These first two pictures come from the no A/C grocery store.

As you can see, the second grocery store, called Nuts n Spices, was much more modern and a little fancier.

After shopping, we, along with Alex, went to dinner at a very nice (read: fancy) restaurant called "Thalappakatti" only a five min walk from our house.

The food was great and the prices surprisingly weren't too bad. We got two starters, two types of biryani and three deserts for under 1000 rupees (or under $20). The dessert Alex and I split was called a falooda, which is popular only in south Asia apparently. It was a combination of a variety of things - fruit, mango juice, jello, nuts, ice cream, etc. -- and it tasted amazing!

I was about to finish this post, when I started talking to my new roommate, Sreeram, who is relatively soft spoken, but a really nice guy. We started talking almost an hour and a half ago and just finished. He's 26 and has just finished his MBA. He is working for a consulting firm here in Chennai. He did his undergrad in Engineering, but he's really passionate about journalism and the media, but his parents wouldn't let him do what he wanted when he had to make the decision. We had a great talk about the differences of India and America and a a bunch of other things. It was fantastic.

 
Oh by the way, mangoes might be the best fruit ever. Quite underrated... it was so good.

Thanks for reading!
Neil

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

The last two days, starting two nights ago was the best and the worst times of mine in India. Let’s start out with the bad.

Two days ago, we went to a mall. It was great. Pics to come. I don’t want to say anything else until you see the pictures. On our way back, we got an auto to take us. The first picture shows you what an auto looks like and the next shows us in one!

Trust me, by the end, we weren’t that happy. By the way, that’s my signature hat. It’s fantastic. It keeps the sun off my face. The Duke headband keeps sweat out of my eyes. Me and my hat and headband are like peas and carrots (note Forrest Gump reference).

The auto driver was speaking Hindi (so I couldn’t understand) but ended up ripping us off by 50 rupees. The entire trip only cost about 3 dollars (in Chi-town, this long of a trip would’ve been at least $15) and 50 rupees is only about one extra US dollar, so not that much, but it’s about the principle. What got me so upset though is that he kept saying that I, yes me, was supporting him in his endeavor to get him more money… I was quite ticked off that no one had told me what was going on and that I was the reason we paid extra.

It only worsened when we found out that our AC was not working. I didn’t get to bed until like 2 am.

The next night we worked from home (which meant some work, some play). We played some chess and just chilled a bit, which was nice. That evening we went to my Aunt’s house, which was nearby.

It was great seeing a few familiar faces! We got a home-cooked meal and Teagendra Uncle (who works closely with the family) gave us a LOT of great information, which helped today.

Today started off kind of slow and not so great (we were fighting amongst ourselves about something or another), but then as we were about to leave work at 4, things turned around for the better!

I was able to play a game called Carrom’s with some of our co-workers. It was AMAZING to play with locals and feel included in one of their basic games. Essentially, it’s similar to Pool (billiards), except you flick your finger at a white disc (similar to the cue ball) which then hits the other discs! It was great, even though I was terrible. I hit one in (out of like 10).

Afterwards, we decided to take the bus home, which was a whole different ordeal, but it was SOOO great. We had to wait a little while because we came too early, but when we got on, it was awesome. Again, I forgot to take a picture, but think of a really old raggedy bus (no windows, just bars; no doors; and people run to get on it…) and I was standing right on the bottom stair so that I was half-in, half-out of the bus… Ahh, so exhilarating! I asked some of the locals for help with directions and they were all extremely helpful!

After we got off the bus, we had to explore for a bit before we were able to find our house, but on the way, we stopped to get some fruit and we found a place where we were able to get a coconut and drink the water inside (which is delicious) and eat the pieces the seller scraped off for us, which even though they looked odd, tasted great.

Now, after having taken a shower, I’m just chilling in my room on this Friday night. I might play chess with one of the other residents. Test my brain against a locals’!

Reflections:

I’ve realized that this two-month span is much too short. It’s already been two weeks and we’re realizing how fast it’s going. I think if we were here longer (and didn’t have a budget that was too high), we’d take more risks and try more of the local traditions. I still feel like an outsider simply viewing their ways, instead of feeling like a local who is simply going about his day.

I am fortunate for my AC room and expensive, tasty 300 rupee lunch (the problem is, because of our short time here and large budget, we are having a tough time getting over the fact that such a great lunch is only $6…) but I also came here, largely, to experience what the “other side” is like, and not just view it through an outsider’s lens (like we do so often in the US). I worry that I’m missing out on (a few) opportunities to see that, but I am very excited to go to the villages (less than one week!) and live there for a bit.

I do love it here though. The heat is abominable (though getting better) and some of the people (auto drivers, in particular) can just be simply hellish. In general, though, everyone here is extremely helpful, relatively carefree, and, honestly, much nicer than I was expecting.

Oh, also the language barrier is probably the single most annoying thing when it comes to living in a new place. I’ve learned some of the basics, but I want so badly to communicate with the locals as if I was one of them.