From less than 20,000 feet--we're in a small prop plane. Early morning departure. I am a bit perplexed at how my suitcase continues to gain weight, even though I think I'm offloading more than I'm onloading. I haven' t given out all the gifts I brought. That won't happen until Kolkata (2 more stops!) and I didn't buy much in Hyderabad: a few garments as gift, 2 small kitchen utensils. Those hardly weigh anything. And I left 75% of the books and other materials we were given during our stay in Hyderabad. If the hotel staff has any interest religious pluralism through the lens of our Muslim friends in Hyderabad, they'll find a treasure trove of reading in each of our rooms. Even so, my suitcase was tough to close AND overweight at the airport. Sanjeev to the rescue: he saved me from a 500 rupee overage charge by pointing out that our group as a whole was far below weight. Smart thinking, buddy. Earning his tip!
I took out the laptop to comment on the unexpected colors of the landscape below. We've flown from Andhra Pradesh to the southernmost state of Tamil Nadu along the southeast coast of the Indian peninsula. The greens are dark, almost brown and the earth is much redder than I'd've thought. However, in the time it took me to type the paragraph above we switched from rural to urban (we think we're flying over Coimbatore, looks too small to be Bangalore) and the gray brown river threading the city is swollen...you can tell by the uneven coastline...not all the land at water's edge looks like it's meant to be right next to the river. It's hard to tell--we're too far up. The cultivated plots are irregularly shaped, taupe with shades of pink, far less rich in brown and orange hues than the land we saw just 15 minutes ago. What might account for the difference? And now another 10 minutes later, the variety of demarcated patches of land extend as far as the eye can see, the color of bruised earth, brown and pink. My Texas friend Wendy says it looks really dry to her, and since I'm from CT, I defer to her judgment on matters of parched earth. Again, we're too far up to tell much. And coming up on our right are ridges of "dragon's back" low mountains that recall the ones we saw flying from Amritsar to Mumbai...or was it Mumbai to Hyderabad? I wonder if these are the outer tendrils of the Eastern Ghats. Again, seeing them in person is irreplaceable--I will be able to answer students' questions with conviction. Not that the teacher need always know "the right answer" to each question--that could lead to pretty narrow classrooms intellectually. But I remember a student asking offhand about what the ghats were, what they looked like, and I think I said, "that's a good question," but we never got back around to answering it. And now I know.
Incidentally, Wendy's just finished a letter on behalf of our group. Our dinner conversation last night brought up the fact that ours is the last Fulbright-Hays summer seminar for India. Apparently the funding has been cut. We all applied for this seminar in 2011 but the funding was delayed, so we didn't find out about our acceptances until summer 2012. We understood the protracted delay, of course, as the country was slowly wrenching itself out of economic peril. But the slashing of this program, relative to other government spending, and in consideration of shifting global power dynamics, appears short-sighted. I can hardly think of more inexpensive diplomacy than the Fulbright-Hays seminars. This is especially true when I consider the breadth of behind-the-scenes coordination that helped facilitate the program, including the whole mechanism of American and Indian NGOs, private groups, schools, and scholars who have worked together to facility our learning here that we might a) learn from multiple perspectives, and b) improve our instruction back at home, and c) share our experiences over the course of our lives with formal and informal groups in our home communities. The ripple effect of these dollars spent is tremendous. Over the long term, programs like this are essential for building sustained and mutually agreeable economic and political relationships. I mean, seriously. If India is a strategic partner today and presumably tomorrow, rather than taking this relationship for granted, I would think it expeditious to nurture young Americans' curiosity and knowledge about this incredible country.
One more word on the topography of this part of Tamil Nadu. From overhead you can see evidence of past flooding (either that, or very powerful windstorms that shifted sand and soil formations to look like patterns of a monstrous river). However, I didn't see a river nearby...was that all from the monsoon? We saw floodwalls, barriers that must've been 10-15 feet, but they looked pretty modest from the air. We heard on the way in that the river running through Madurai is called the Maigai (sp?), pronounced like "my guy". Also we learned that the monsoon didn't come last year at all. It failed this spring too (May/June). They're hoping it comes for the "second half" in September/October. I makes me realize how insulated we are in the States from all but the most extreme weather events. Or, perhaps depending on where you live in the US, your life is similarly impacted by floods, fires, hurricanes, tornados, etc. But our economy is not dependent as a whole on weather patterns. Or...would the farmers in Texas have a different story to tell, considering the droughts of the past few years. I guess I don't know as much about weather's impact on people's lives in a macro- sense. Sometimes you think more about these things when you view them from a different angle or in a different locale, where things look different at first, but aren't so different after all.
We've seen that there are some surface changes here: many men wear lunghis here, the rectangular cloth that encircles the waist and hangs loose. We've seen them worn long and short, a nod to the heat. It's in the mid-90s here and sunny (finally!) The Tamil script is roundish, but "swoopier" than Telugu, with the wide loops that Arabic has for some letters. They also have dots (of different sizes I think) that go above some letters. I will be interested to discover how Tamil sounds to the ear. I have yet to learn the basics of this southern state, but am excited to press forward. Lunch was the tastiest we've had so far, in my view. The executive chef came into the cafe as we were eating (all our hotel meals are served buffet style with 12-15 offerings) and I told him specifically how good everything was. He wanted to know if we'd found the food too spicy, as Tamil Nadu is known for heat. No problem, but we'll see how things are in an hour or two. Then the food and beverage manager asked if we'd give them a positive review on TripAdvisor. That's a pretty big deal here, I'm learning, as businesses compete to get their names out to tourist communities. Again, no problem. Happy to do so, positive karma!
Time for our orientation--3 hours, what can it hold?
Wow--our program looks amazing. It's being coordinated not by USIEF, but by the CM Institute (Chella Meenakashi, a reference to the famous Hindu temple nearby). It combines a wide range of opportunites, tailored to the interests and talents we articulated early on in our profiles. Variety of classical, folk dances; museum visits; school visits, NGO visits, etc. We'll also have the chance to go trekking, to visit artists' centers, to interact with students and teachers...several of our number will be conducting workshops too. Sounds like the richest pedagogic experience thusfar.
Dr. Vidya: program coordinator for study abroad in Varanasi for UnivWisconsin
Kaati, Chitra & Pitchaimani from CM Center (which Dr. Vidya founded)
Some in salwaar kameez, some in saris.
Notes from Dr. Vidya's intro:
- South more progressive in terms of gender relations, other elements. I've heard this before.
- India is many countries, with 16 languages spoken/written, 24 vernacular languages, then dialects.
- Still, we "share and cherish" what we have in common as Indians. For us to discover, what makes India?
- "All Indians are foodies." We spend the bulk of our time cooking, we believe in cooking 3 meals a day, fresh, served hot.
- Madurai: city that never sleeps. More spiritual, business activities, not like Paris, for example. Very active. She encourages us to go out with a local (folks they know) to see the night life, it's more spiritually oriented. She suggests a 2 a.m. cup of tea. Wonder if I can stay up for that??
- Indian music schools, keeping tradition is really important, including methods. We will get to interact with music instructors--that will be cool. One performance will be of the mridhangam, accompanying instrument to be performed as solo to show us how it sounds and how he teaches. We'll also see/hear (?) the bharathanatyam...remember, Bharat is the Hindi word for India.
- Three main religions of India: Hinduism, Islam, and Jainism. ... not Sikhism too?
- Mentioned that Madurai is a particularly progressive city in many ways, very proud of its achievements in learning, esp. English language (long tradition of missionary schools here, mostly American from turn of century. Before that were European). But she warns us that social conventions regarding gender roles and sexual orientation are far more conservative than in some parts of the US. We may be questioned about our marital status on the assumption that we are all straight...and married. Though there are transgender and gay/lesbian communities here, and male transvestites are accorded a special status in the community, homosexuality itself (esp. lesbianism) is a taboo topic socially. Dr. Vidya has been doing work in the lesbian communities in Chennai and Bangalore, compiling interviews to be edited and published in the CM Center's scholarly journal. But she cautioned us about the sensitivity of these topics with people we meet. Not sure those situations will arise, but better to be forewarned.
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