Preparing for Ganpati

It has been a while since I last blogged because I have been waiting for the right mix of inspiration and motivation, but I've given up and am forcing myself to write something before I go to bed tonight.  Very little of interest has happened in the past week that would be of interest to readers back home as I continue to expand my geographical knowledge of Pune.  Most importantly I have a few updates about the near future and about upcoming trips.  

As I have already mentioned, the Ganpati festival is just around the corner and preparation has begun.  It is obvious that this celebration is a big deal, because every neighborhood currently has an enormous shrine under construction that looks like a big stage and will house the Ganesh idols for the 10 days of the festival.  Judging from the size of the shrines, these statues are enormous and I am in for a surprise.  I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures!

The festival starts on the 19th, and my family and I will be celebrating with my host uncle's family in Kolhapur which is about 60 miles south of here.  We leave the morning of the 19th and return the evening of the 21st.  I am really excited to see the celebration, meet new extended family, reconnect with my host grandparents again, and to get out of town for a few days.  Don't get me wrong, I love Pune, but I need to not be surrounded by three million other people every once in a while.  

I mentioned I am playing dhol in the festival and will also walk in the parade with the other exchange students, but I learned at the Rotary orientation (last night, when we have all been here a month) that several exchange students from a neighboring district will be there as well.  Because the festival is so big in Pune, these students are visiting my awesome town to take it all in and will be staying with our host families.  It has been confirmed that it is only the five of us in Pune this year, so I really look forward to meeting these other exchange students and having one stay with me for a few days.  Later in the year they will return the favor and we will stay with them for another Rotary event.  

Well, it's gotten pretty late and I have run out of things to say, but I will try to blog again soon.  I will cover my short trip to Kolhapur and the beginning of Ganpati, and hopefully I will have some good pictures to share as well.  

A Taste of Home

I just had a great last two days.  Yesterday I woke up and went to school as usual, and found one or two classes canceled (also quite common).  When it came time for lunch, all the exchange students decided we wanted a change of pace.  Trent lives near the Hotel Marriot, one of the best-known hotels in Pune with, coincidentally, five stars.   He occasionally walks to Symbiosis, so we agreed to follow him with promises of milkshakes and cupcakes.  We were not disappointed.  The hotel was extravagant and so was the service.  We were waited on almost excessively, but it was not unwelcomed.  A taste of American dessert did us all good.  While Colby went for some red velvet, I craved a good old-fashioned strawberry malt and Axel went for a baguette (or two).  It was fantastic.  While I truly enjoy my new Indian diet, food is one of the things I miss most from home and as it turned out, it was my lucky day (but more on that later).  After an hour at a nearby mall, we split up and agreed to meet for dinner. 

Axel, living on the outskirts of the town, came back to my apartment to hang out for a few hours before we met up with the other exchange students.  When we arrived, I found a package waiting for me.  It was a collection of some of my favorite foods from the US (including skittles which sadly have yet to make the import list here) from the best family ever!  Love you all!  Words cannot express how excited I was to open my box and find an amazing feast of delicious American food.  After a few hours of light, giddy snacking it was time to meet up with Aishwarya and the other exchange students for dinner.

We went out for “sizzlers”, a term describing foods that make a sizzling sound when served much like fajitas at Mexican restaurants in the US.  And the best part (brace yourselves for this): BEEF!  Sizzlers are one of few dishes in Pune that serve beef and steak, and nothing has tasted so good ever in my life.  It has been six weeks since cow has been a part of my diet, and I had no idea how much I would miss it.  For those of you who, like me, love the show How I Met Your Mother, the feeling at eating my first steak in six weeks can be summed up by Marshal’s speech in “The Best Burger in New York”. For everyone else, let’s just say that it was absolutely amazing.  The sizzler I ordered was pretty much a pile of various meats with steamed vegetables and French fries.  The ideal meal to end the ideal food day. 

Afterwards, I had another (less enjoyable) “first” experience during my time here.  Axel, Colby, and I shared a rickshaw back to SP College near my apartment and we unfortunately chose the wrong driver.  Word of wisdom for anyone traveling to India: do not trust rickshaw drivers.  Not only do they take too much fare from Indian travelers to Pune, they really enjoy messing with foreigners and WILL take advantage of them.  It cost us Rs 60 to get to the restaurant, and the rickshaw driver asked for 170.  I’m proud that were not stupid enough to accept this outrageous initial price, but we didn’t do much better when we accidentally settled on 120.  Now, don’t ask me why all rickshaw drivers don’t just use the toll counter deal that tells you how much to pay, because I honestly have no idea.  All rickshaws have them, but it seems the drivers enjoy taking advantage of the occasional foreigner. 

As mad as we were at the driver for cheating us, our ride was not even close to over.  After about half an hour of driving, it became apparent that the driver had no idea where he was going and we seemed to make a ridiculous number of U-turns as we meandered through shady-looking neighborhoods.  We were more than a little freaked out, a story of another conniving driver we had heard at a Rotary orientation meeting came to mind.  Fortunately, with the help of a friendly roadside store owner our driver eventually found his way to the college.  After begrudgingly paying the driver the Rs 120 agreed upon, we were appalled that he asked for even more.  A few choice phrases came to mind, but we settled on a firm “absolutely not, get the heck out of here”.  I talked to my host family about the experience afterward, and they gave me some helpful advice for next time.  I suppose it is good that I experienced this early on, and with two friends along.  We are certainly now better equipped for dealing with drivers in this city and will not make the same mistake again.

Today was uneventful and relaxing, as I began the day with yoga and then spent a few hours with Colby while he shared a few good tv shows to fill some of my free time.  The rest of my day has consisted of watching quality American tv while doing some snacking from my box from home.  It was perfect.

The Almighty Dhol

This will be a long one, so sit back, relax, and try to take in all the information I am about to throw at you.  I woke up at 6:45 this morning in order to be ready for yoga at 7:30, and it was by far the most difficult thing I did today.  My sleeping habits here have been to go to bed around midnight and wake up around 9 for school at 11 or 11:30, so this sudden shift really threw me off.  Once I was awake enough to function adequately, I went over to Colby’s house and walked with him and his host mom over to yoga.  I had a lot of preconceived notions about yoga, but this was quite different from anything I expected.  The “yoga studio” I anticipated was a small room located on the top floor of what appeared to be a small apartment building, and as we entered we each grabbed a mat which was more like a large rug.  The yoga itself I expected to consist almost entirely of holding different stretches with names like ‘downward-facing dog’ for minutes at a time.  I was surprised, then, when I was asked to hold each position for only a few seconds before moving on to the next.  There was also a portion dedicated to more of an aerobic activity as well as a few minutes of meditation (yes we did chant om).  This I found quite relaxing and it was really nice to just take a few minutes to breathe deeply and calm my mind.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience I am sure yoga will become a highlight of my week as I continue my time here. 

On to dhol and the Ganpati festival.  I’ll start with the mythology and history of the festival.  Ganpati is a celebration of the Hindu god Ganesh (the one with the elephant head).  There are many different beliefs about Ganesh’s origin, but the most widely accepted is that he is the son of Parvati and Shiva.  One version of the story holds that Shiva came home after an extended time away and demanded to enter his house.  Ganesh did not allow his father in because he was a stranger to him.  Furious, Shiva cut off Ganesh’s head.  Upon realizing his grievous error, Shiva went out into the woods to find his son a new head and cut off the head of the first animal he saw – an elephant.  Ganesh is considered one of the most important gods in all of Hinduism.

The Ganpati festival began as a secret meeting for Indian revolutionaries under British rule, but continues still today because people liked it and Indians really enjoy a good festival.  This celebration is also called Ganesh Chaturthi, and is most popular in Maharashtra.  The festival lasts 10 days and centers on idols of Ganesh.  Families bring in small statues of the god, and many idols much larger take up residence around the city.  Some are even 20 feet tall!  The celebration concludes with a bang and several days of parades through the streets as the idols are carried through town and accompanied by large bands of drums.  Millions of people fill the streets to watch and the atmosphere is supposed to be absolute madness.  I cannot wait!  At the end of the 10 days, the idols are sent off in the nearest body of water.  I’m sure I will have a lot more to say about this festival once I have experienced it.

I am extremely excited to not only watch the celebration, but to participate in one of the bands.  These bands consist of two kinds of drums in addition to the chime: dhol and tasha.  The tasha is a small drum much like a snare, and the dhol is the Indian equivalent of a bass drum.  The rhythms played in this festival are simple and repetitive, but groups play for hours at a time and it is physically taxing.  Picture a large, metal trash with a drum head on each side, tying this around your waist with rope, and beating it with all your energy for several hours.  This is what I have been practicing for a month and what I will experience fully later this month.  The dhol is played using your left hand to beat one head like you would to play an African drum, and holding a wooden mallet called a tipru in your right hand to beat the right head.  The dhol creates a truly powerful sound, and the effect of almost 50 people playing together is a bass vibration that you can feel through your whole body (it surpasses even the sub woofer on a pair of Beats headphones!).  My group is called Swaraj and they meet every day for three hours.  I have not attended every practice because the rhythms came easily to me, and I am an exchange student so I cannot commit myself completely to one activity in order to experience as much culture as possible.  However, with the festival coming up quickly, I should probably play as often as possible.  I am unbelievably excited to participate in this festival and to see such an important celebration.  This is my first huge festival in India and I cannot wait to see India in full celebration mode.  Sorry this post has gone really long, but there is a lot to say.  I will make sure to take a lot of pictures so you can see just how awesome it all is!  Until next time.

Reading and Yoga

Well it’s been almost a week since I last blogged and there is some cool stuff I need to share. I had several days of nice downtime which I will discuss in a minute, but I’m going to start with Saturday because it was full of new and fun experiences. I began the day with every intention of attending my classes (the majority at least). However, on the rickshaw to Symbiosis, Colby mentioned that he had plans to go with some friends to a traditional dance. Because I am on a cultural exchange and not a stay-in-school-and-miss-exciting-adventures exchange, I deemed this was a worthwhile substitute and left school. As it turned out, getting there would be another first: riding the bus. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this trip, but I will say two things. First, it is ridiculously cheap. Like 5-10 rupees (9-18 cents). However, for some reason nobody asked for my money so I’m pretty sure I rode the bus for free. Really glad I saved all that money! Second, I now truly appreciate the standard to which the United States holds all public transport.

When we finally arrived at MIT (no idea what it stands for, but it certainly does not involve Massachusetts and likely is not quite as selective) I was pleasantly surprised. From what I have seen of colleges here, they are nothing like the beautiful, sprawling campuses we picture for higher education. For those of you who have not considered this, India’s population is over four times that of the United States, but all those people live in less than one third the space. The density is overwhelming, and more so in an urban city as large as Pune. Let’s just say space is a scarce resource here. That tangent considered, it is understandable that most colleges consolidate and use as few buildings as possible. After so much cramping, it was refreshing to find myself on a campus as large as MIT’s where we actually needed directions to find the recital hall.

The recital was a collection of kids about my age all doing different classical Indian dances decked out in full Indian garb. It was really cool to watch and definitely worth missing class. I stayed from 11 to 3 which gave me plenty of time to take in all the culture. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but opted for the familiar rickshaw ride home during which I saw two more camels. I don’t know if I will ever get used to that.

Sunday turned out to be the first meeting for all of the exchange students so it was good to see a bunch of familiar faces and talk outside of school. We also received our monthly allowance! I get Rs 2000 per month from rotary (about $36), which may not seem like much in comparison to the $80 Northfield inbounds receive, but everything here is much cheaper as I have mentioned before. I got my allowance for September, August, and the few days I was here in July earned me half a month’s allowance. All this money is burning a hole in my wallet and I’m really tempted to go crazy and buy a bunch of stuff right now. However, I will make the responsible choice and save it for a rainy day (which means pretty much any day here during the monsoon season). Back on topic, I found out there will likely be seven exchange students in Pune once we all arrive. I do not remember who I have talked about already, but here is a list of all the exchange students with Rotary already here: Colby and I–Minnesota, Trent–New York, Axel–Sweden, and Ana–Brazil. Everyone is really nice and we all get along well since we all attend Symbiosis and spend a lot of time together. We are waiting on a girl from Canada and one from Mexico, both of whom were having trouble with visas. Hopefully this all gets figured out soon and they can join the rest of us and begin their year!

In the quieter portion of my time since my last blog post, I have done a lot of reading. Since Tuesday, I finished Kite Runner and The Lost Symbol, as well as reading A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes) and starting Dracula (one of my favorites) on my iPod touch. This is more reading in one week than I have probably ever done voluntarily and I have enjoyed it a lot. It is good for me to do something useful with my down time and I may need to use some of my monthly allowance to fuel my newfound literary needs. I also begin yoga tomorrow! This promises to be quite enjoyable and valuable both as a good source of exercise and as insight into the importance of yoga in Indian culture, regardless of the fact that it is taught exclusively in Marathi.  We'll see how it goes!  Colby and I attend a class Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings bright and early – great way to start my day!

I guess I lied about this blog post when I said it would talk about my dhol playing and the Ganpati festival, but I promise I will get to it.  Also, today marks my brother’s 17th birthday and last day of summer before starting his junior year. Happy birthday Nathan! Sorry for jumping around here, but I am guessing that blogging will become less daily and more of a weekly activity as I exhaust the daily cultural differences. I have to get up early in the morning, so I’ll wrap this up and come up with another post soon.