learning .... slowly

So I spent the beginning of the week in Chennai. The first day I was visiting our condom activities like I normally do. I always try to dress modestly when I visit these activities because I'm walking around slums and all of the activities are for men. So I have my long kurta on that goes below my knees. I notice that these men seem to be staring at my feet. But I figure that I'm wearing sequined flip-flops and they're sparkly so it makes sense that they are staring.

Finally at the end of the activity, the men come up to me and say, through a translator, that I need to wear two anklets. I had one on my left ankle and they kept insisting that I needed another. Apparently in the south you get two anklets from your grandmother when you're little so she can hear the pitter-patter of little feet. And then you get new ones when you hit puberty so you can learn to walk without making a sound. And then you get new ones when you're married. But always two! I was told this once before, by the kitchen lady in our Delhi office who the first time I was in Delhi came running up speaking very excited hindi to tell me that only having one on insinuates I'm a woman of loose morals. I thought that maybe since I was a foreigner I could get away with it but apparently not. The picture is of a guy who won "Mr. Chennai" award for buying a condom.

Then, on my third night in Chennai, I got food poisoning. I skipped all my morning activities but decided that I really wanted to go to a going away event for the State Communication Manager who has been promoted to State Director of a different state. So I got there and the front row was cleared for me, they are big on heirarchy! Then a guy who looked like he may of been a minister of something gave a speech in Tamil for about 40 minutes. I couldn't read the program and couldn't understand a word, so I sat there trying to look attentive. Suddenly someone leaned over and said, they've asked you to come on stage. I then handed out awards of some sort (I did the diploma shake with one hand, pass with the other). Then I was told I had been asked to give a speech! So I have no context, no idea what people are talking about, and I'm just trying not to throw up! Let's just say, I'm sure I've given better speeches!

Diversity in India

So I’m writing this from Chennai after two solid weeks of no travel. It was nice while it lasted. Last week I had a chance to go to a few out of the ordinary events. The first was Fete de Music, world music day for the French (and former colonies). I don’t know why it’s celebrated here, other than there being some motivated French folks. This year they had an outdoor music festival with African and Indian bands. When I arrived there was this band from Congo, who was so much fun. I ended up in the African section where everyone was dancing. It reminded me of Jazz in July for any Amherst folk out there. Except fewer dogs and Frisbees. Oh, and fewer vendors selling hot dogsJ Anyway, it was nice, particularly because if there’s anything rarer here than white people, it’s Africans. Not counting the African American guy that plays ultimate I think I’ve seen Africans 4 times in the last 7 months. So it’s nice to see another culture once in a while.

It’s funny – I remember when I first came to India I was struck by how lacking India was in diversity. I would look around and just see Indians. Now I look around and am shocked by the diversity. Not because there are more non-Indians here now versus 2003 (which is also true) but because I can now recognize the diversity within Indians. It’s almost as if Europe was one country with Sweden and Austria just being states, for instance. Each state has its own identity, food, language, politics, terrain, movie industry etc.

To finish my story, the second event this week was a dance recital that my friend was in. They had 25 classes all performing some moment in history (my friend’s was the gold rush). The great part was there were several classes of kids and some of them were so goodJ I wish I knew their names, cuz they’ll probably be bollywood stars someday!

The picture has nothing to do with the post. It's a guy trying to sell a fake mustache and beard to me! His looks pretty good, right?

Osho Ashram

It's amazing how quickly time goes when you're travelling! I went to Chennai to interview some communications candidates two weeks ago. Always interesting to interview in another culture. When I got back to Delhi the pre-monsoon rains had started, which meant it got a lot cooler.

Then I went to Pune for a three day training. The training was fine - a bit of a bizarre sign greeted us at lunch the first day.... the picture is below. Mankind is a pharma company but you can see the confusion.

The training ended Friday at lunch and since the next flight back to Delhi wasn't until evening, I took the opportunity to spend the afternoon with my former boss, Carol, who was the trainer. She had decided to spend the weekend at Osho Meditation Resort, a famous ashram in Pune. Named after guru Osho, who spent a great deal of his life in the US and is famous/contraversial for his teachings around sex and the fact that he set a guiness record for most Rolls Royces owned?!?

It was really bizarre. And huge- 40 acres. The activities seemed very interesting; meditation, yoga, thai chi, bollywood dancing, etc. But then there's the cult-ish feeling. Everyone must wear maroon robes (you can buy them there) during the day and white robes for the evening meditation (the brochure specified that any dupatta (scarf) worn must be white with no cream) and you'll be asked to leave if you cough. So there are all these strange westerners (and a few indians) walking around silently in matching robes..... weird.

Then there's the fact that they require an on-the-spot AIDS test before you can register. It's annoying for two reasons. 1) what is the message that they're trying to send? I read the brochure and thought of a nice quiet weekend, am I supposed to be having sex? I presume the message is you can participate in free love because everyone here is clean. Which brings me to my real problem with this. 2) they offer no counselling for negative people (testing is a prevention method if you provide counselling to negative people), they ignore the window period which means that anyone who was recently infected won't be picked up. And when you're recently infected is when you are most "contagious". And finally, what about all the other reasons to wear a condom; syphillis, incurable herpes, pregnancy? It's irresponsible.

Anyways, it's a bizarre place- a tiny backpacker's corner in an otherwise normal city.

On another topic I got some amusing feedback at work the other day. I was told that some state teams I work with appreciated that I didn't tell them what to do but couched my feedback in a constructive way. I responded that I was surprised because I think of myself as too critical particularly when compared to my colleague. My boss' response was, "yeah, but they can't actually understand what you're saying and you're body language is upbeat". Ah, language barriers. So much for my helpful advice that no one is understanding!

Oh, an upon returning to Delhi it went back up to 120F. I totally forgot we were only in June.