Please find below all of my columns published by the Cooperstown Crier from beginning to end.

Why India?  Let me Explain  ~  July 12, 2012

http://coopercrier.com/localnews/x825333684/A-VOICE-FROM-AROUND-THE-GLOBE-Why-India-Let-me-explain

We’re not in Kansas anymore  ~ September 20, 2012

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x403272141/Were-not-in-Kansas-anymore

America in the East  ~  October 18, 2012

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x1133187578/America-in-the-East

The Road to Rajasthan  ~  November 2, 2012

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x257826542/Voices-from-Around-the-Globe-The-road-to-Rajasthan

An Evening walk through Dark and Light  ~  December 20, 2012

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x254329603/Local-Voices-from-Around-the-Globe-An-evening-walk-through-dark-and-light

My Indian Christmas  ~  January 10, 2013

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x730425885/Local-Voices-From-Around-the-Globe-Exchange-has-been-filled-with-crazy-moments

The Side Effects of String Beans  ~  February 21, 2013

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x730445813/Local-Voice-From-Around-the-Globe-The-side-effects-of-string-beans

Experiencing India at every new turn  ~ April 18, 2013

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x1520506511/Local-Voices-From-Around-the-Globe-Experiencing-India-at-every-new-turn

Arriving at the Last Bend in the River  ~  May 30, 2013

http://coopercrier.com/columns/x857485192/Local-Voices-From-Around-the-Globe-Arriving-at-the-last-bend-in-the-River

Dear India (Bharat),

You’ve been a dear, dear friend, and the most eccentric one that I have ever known.  You have brought me happiness such as I have never before experienced, and showed me things that caused me to recoil in shock and disgust.  Between these two extremes, I had no choice but to learn from them, accept them, and to allow them to make me a better person.

You give a home to every imaginable form of life: the nouveau riche and the very old poor, the animal’s that don’t think above their instincts and the guru’s that think of life without any form at all.  You gave me three different homes in which I was met with love, though it was, at times, not as easy to perceive as a warm greeting and a smile.  

In your old cities, I wandered through narrow lanes and glimpsed scenes of a world that has known little change in decades.  In meditation, I wandered through untold expanses of the mind, and glimpsed the pathways leading to the paradoxical world of samadhi.  

You laid before me new languages with which to express myself, though not even my native tongue can succeed in the task I am attempting to accomplish by writing this.  

Your variety of horns honking without end, your childrens’ plaintive cries, your expressive bargaining in colorful bazars, your cows’ exclamations,  your vegetable-wala’s calling in the street at 9 a.m., your chai-wala’s calling in the train at 5:00 a.m. – the sounds of Bharatiya life ring in my ears; the sights of them flash by in my memory.

In all of this, you brought me the two most valuable things I could ever wish to possess: knowledge and understanding.  So, consider this as a letter of gratitude and thanks, though I know thanking people is not something you regularly do.

चालो भारत, हम ज़रुर वापस मिलेंगे।  Goodbye India; we’ll certainly meet again.

प्यार, श्याम

Love, Sam

The word is भाषा, bhasha, or ज़बान, zubaan.  The former coming from Sanskrit, and the latter from Urdu, both mean ‘language’ in Hindi, a thing I have discovered quite the passion for in these past nine months.

When I first arrived here, I knew too little of either Hindi or Gujarati (the state language), and certainly not enough to get around.  In these circumstances, aided by the fact that I was ignorant to many other things besides just the language, it was quite difficult to slip in among the people as best any foreigner can.  But nine months have since passed, and with them the mists of uncertainty.

—-

I cannot speak for other countries, as it were, but I think the Indian people are unique in their deep appreciation of outsiders taking an interest in their language and culture.  The way their faces light up with awe when I tell them, in their own language, that my sole purpose for coming here was to learn about their country and culture is heartwarming.  Especially when it comes to the language, the general reaction is one of प्रसन्नता, prasantaa, elation, a thing I find even more interesting than the unique sounds of Hindi’s 48-letter alphabet, the beautiful intricacies of the written form, and the staggering differences between it and English.  Rarely am I ever met with suspicious questions, and certainly never with those “What were you thinking?” looks.  Just appreciation.

I recall one particular occasion, some months ago, when I experienced this exact reaction.  I had spent most of the day indoors, and was feeling frustrated with myself and my shortcomings in studying Hindi.  In the evening, on the way to the Hare Krishna temple I frequent, I stopped by a vegetable vendor, selling his goods by the light of a lamp from a cart alongside the road.  Our eyes met, and we both smiled sheepishly.  After he had finished with a customer, I pointed to a head of cauliflower, and asked in Hindi, “Ye kya hai?”  What is this?  “Phulkobi” was his reply.  He had given me the Gujarati name.

Then I pointed to the eggplants and okra, the pea pods and parsley; “Ye kya hai?”  Slowly but surely, the pen and paper I had brought began to fill with the names of vegetables common in Indian kitchens.  Shifting my questions between Hindi and Gujarati, the delight sparkling in the man’s eyes blossomed like a lotus bud.  Having exhausted each item on the cart, I thanked him, “Dhanyavaad!”, and walked on, a few words and a new friend wealthier than I had been ten minutes before.

As can be clearly seen from that instance of mine, perhaps the greatest advantage of speaking the language, if even just a little, is that it allows one to communicate with the common man, to show them that you care, and to step out of the ivory tower of Rotary, as a past exchange student so correctly put it.  That stereotype of a wealthy, disinterested foreigner is shaken at its base, and the bridge to that unreachable identity is built, step by step, stone by stone.  Having a conversation with a foreigner is simply not a reality for the majority of people, whether they speak English or not.  That being the case, how can we expect to enter into their ranks, become one with the people if we lack the most basic skill separating man and animal, that of communication?  With the power to speak – for it is a power indeed – the questions can be answered, the object of curiosity understood, and that being who was previously anomalous becomes, to a certain extent, normal.  Being normal has never felt better, I must say.

But, of course, a foreigner speaking in Hindi is the furthest thing from normal.  It easily attracts more attention than if I had not been able to communicate in the first place.  For this reason, there are circumstances in which I purposely speak in English, pretending I understand nothing else.  Strange, you may say, but people who can ask which subject you study in school can also ask perverse questions about the women of one’s country, or worse.  Advantageous, though it is, a degree of awareness is still extremely necessary.

Communication is, to me, one of the most fascinating things in the world.  I experience the power of it every single day.  In India, where a foreigner’s presence so blatantly stands out in the homogeneous fabric of the existing society, the gratitude that follows  my position and purpose as an exchange student is enormous, a thing I wonder exists the same way in other countries as it does here.  And in realizing this truth, I have also found that one need not speak like a native, because, when it comes to knowing a language like Hindi, a little goes a long way, and a lot goes to अनन्तता, anantataa, infinity.

From the top, the languages are Hindi, English, Punjabi and Urdu.

Here, you can see Gujarati, Hindi, and English (from top to bottom) written on this sign in Ahmedabad.

We left Kanyakumari at an early hour.  Our driver had put our bags on the top of the van so that we could get a little bit of room.  Naturally, then, on our way out of Tamil Nadu, we encountered a rain storm that forced us to put them back inside.

I mustn’t forget to shed some light on my earlier allusion to our driver and what befell us as a result of him.  Apparently, he had a network of friends throughout the South – restaurant, spice garden, and hotel owners – and was regularly bringing them business in the form of us.  It came to our attention, sooner rather than later, that he was profiting off of our having had lunch at a certain restaurant, and bought spices from a certain farm, etc.  So frequent were these occurrences, that I recall having left at least two restaurants in search of another where we knew he would not be served for free in exchange for having brought us.  It was in Kanyakumari that we really became aware of this, filling the remainder of our journey with suspicion and tension when it came to our driver.

Tamil Nadu made for excellent site-seeing on our way to Kerala.  Where the highway was built, sparsely vegetated mountains abruptly shot out of the ground and climbed to a sufficient height before shooting back down again, leaving what looked like room enough for one man to stand on the top.  Between these mountains and us were windmills as far as the eye could see.  The rainstorm we encountered put the landscape under the shadow of clouds, the like of which we had not seen since the end of monsoon season in September.

Kerala

Our second destination in Kerala was Thekkady.  Thekkady, read as “Tay-kdee”, is a small Hill-Station located amongst, you guessed it, hills.  The hills were actually mountains, and made for the most exhilarating/nerve-wracking bus ride I have ever been on because of the way the road wound up and over the them.  Red-faced monkeys jumped around on both sides.  The road would be going on a steady incline, then dip and and turn 110 degrees another way, and so on.  We came very close to colliding with other vehicles when we passed them on any one of these turns.  On our return to Cochin, we did manage to knock off the side-view mirror of a passing jeep, but otherwise, we were very fortunate.

Before arriving at our hotel in Thekkady, we stopped at an elephant park.  There, we rode on elephants for about half and hour through the mist and rain upon a path through the woods.  It was very cold, and the precipitation didn’t help.  My elephant was named Mada, aged 34, and whose trainer was named Sanga, some years younger.  Mada was a wonderfully large mammal, with tough grey skin populated with hairs as tough as wires, and a back so wide, it was almost uncomfortable to sit upon.  Mada must have been a scholar in Malayalam, for there wasn’t a single command of Sanga’s that was lost upon his oversized ears.  What sounded like gobbledygook to me resulted in a raised trunk for a photo-op.

The early morning light of the next day found us sitting in Jeeps, careening up and down thin roads through tea plantations on the way to the Periyar Tiger Reserve.  We had left our hotel at 5:39 in the morning.  I woke up at 5:30.

The Periyar Tiger Reserve was something like 24 km away from the main roads.  The interior road was well paved, filled with curves, and wide enough for nearly two vehicles. At times, the vegetation was thick, forming somewhat of a green tunnel.  Other times, the land around the road was bare, exposing the beautiful mountains of Thekkady.

We stopped every now and again to view large squirrels, monkeys, flowers, and to enjoy mountain vistas.  No tigers or elephants.  Once we stopped to look at tribals that had come to collect water from the brook.  It was one mother, and two naked children.  I will never forget being shown these people as if they were part of the safari, part of the exotic wildlife.  It was disconcerting, and we all felt unsettled afterwards.

We ate breakfast at the lodge, then took an hour-long trek over the mountains and through the woods.  No tigers or elephants, but a shitload of leaches.  We were wearing gaiters, yet many still managed to get through.  After lunch, we went on a boat across a man-made lake to a waterfall that was spectacularly picturesque.  

After leaving the “Tiger” Reserve, we stopped at a small shop selling tea.  The shop was located on the very plantation the tea had come from, making it both fresh and cheap.

Later the same evening, we watched a performance of Kathakali.  “Katha” meaning story, and “kali” meaning dance, is a traditional dance form native to Kerala.  The dancers, though originally all women, were both male.  They study in a special school for seven years before being able to perform.  The facial makeup they wear takes six hours to apply, and is made out of all natural and local ingredients.  The eyes are dyed red with some special seed.  

The Kathakali dancers are masters of facial control; much of the dance expression takes place in their various facial contortions.  Though we were not shown it, the dancers have the ability to cry with one side of their face, and laugh with the other.  Hand and feet motions are also included.  The dance we watched depicted a scene  from the Bhagvad-Gita, a Prince who was constantly harassed by a women who wanted to marry him.  Throughout the performance, the ‘Prince’ dancer gradually changed motions and facial expressions to indicate heightened anger and frustration until the point where he drew his sword and slew his suitor (say that five times fast, from ‘drew…’).  It was a wild finale.

We left beautiful Thekkady in the morning, driving upon a beautiful road, bound for beautiful Munnar.  At one point, the road reached an incredible height before ducking between the mountains into the adjacent valley.  On that spot, there was a sign that read, “As Close to Heaven as it Gets.”  Well put.

In Munnar, our hotel was located some 25 km away from the town itself.  That, as well as the area being nothing more than sloping tea plantations, made for the quietest two days I have ever experienced in India.  

Our first night in Munnar was the second night of Hanukkah.  The other yehudi (Hindi for ‘jew’) in our group, Emily, vowed to celebrate it with candles and latkes at any cost.  I left the hotel, walked for two minutes down the road, and presently found a little shop that sold, among many other things: butter, salt, potatoes, onions, and candles.  No dreidels.  The ‘cost’ was nothing more than seventy rupees. 

It was a labor of love, believe me, for making latkes with nothing more than dull knives, a pineapple cutter, microwave, and some small bowls was not an easy task.  We ‘fried’ the microwave in one room (forcing us to go to the next) while ‘frying’ our potato latkes.  As for success, I believe that a chef is successful only when he does not get to glimpse his hard work before it is consumed.  Such was the case with our potato latkes.  

Some other exchange students accompanied us to the balcony, in spite of the cold, to watch our little ceremony.  I lit the candles – which we stuck on a dinner plate – and Emily recited the prayers.  It really was a beautiful example of culture sharing. 

Although we left Munnar at a very early hour, we were very worried that we would miss our train.  By this time, our driver, ol’ Roy Thomas, had also had enough of us, and was taking little care to ensure our timely arrival.  At the station in Cochin, everything was heat, humans, and stares as we frantically ran to our platform, schlepping our luggage behind.  We were there for about ten minutes before the train arrived.  We were supposed to have enough time to see some of Cochin, but we were lucky enough just to have made our train.

Twenty-seven hours later, I was back in Baroda, wishing the natural beauty, tasty food, and thrill of traveling had prevailed.  It hadn’t, but my fond memories of the South of India most certainly had.

Let me begin to recount my tour of the South of India.  I daresay this will be nearly as much of a journey as the tour itself was.

I left Vadodara at 9:00 AM, traveling by train to Mumbai, picking up fellow exchange students all along the way.  So excited were we in our reunion that I believe we blocked the narrow train corridor we stood in all the way to Mumbai.

We arrived in Mumbai at the same train station where the shooting in 2008 had occurred, Victoria Station.  Oddly enough, the only surviving member of the shooting had been executed just days beforehand.  The weather was overcast and a warm late-afternoon breeze was blowing swiftly through the streets as we were taken in taxis to our next terminal.

For me, Mumbai was love at first sight.  The architecture, the cobblestone streets, taxis, and the sheer abundance of life reminded me poignantly of New York City.  Take the poverty, the filth, the color, the Ambassador taxis and the staring young men of India, and add it to the development, the crowds, the speed, and beauty of some buildings of New York.  You’ve got Mumbai, or at least the section I found myself in.

In the five hours we had before our next train was scheduled to leave, we ate at McDonald’s (if only they made McSpicy Paneer in American McDonald’s) then walked off in search of the Gateway of India.  It turned out to be a lengthy walk, but so filled with interesting sights – not to mention innumerable foreigners – that we enjoyed every minute of it, and would have walked back had it not been for our nearing departure time.

The Gateway of India was such an impressive sight to behold at night, amplified by the Taj Hotel across the way and the line of streetlights on the famous Marine Drive.  The Taj Hotel was another location in the 2008 attack.  A portion of it was burned while the terrorists held guests hostage before killing many of them.  It was bizarre, I admit, seeing these locations that had so recently been the sites of such conflict.  For the first time, it had not been on the ‘International News’ page of the NY Times, but right in front of my face.  Mumbai has so much history.  It was enchanting.

I vowed, then and there, that if I were to ever come back and reside in India, I would live in Mumbai, though I realize that what I had seen was some of the very best Mumbai has to offer, and that my parents would not appreciate the distance I would put between myself and them. We took an overnight train to Goa, leaving at 11:00 p.m. and arriving at 10:40 a.m. the next morning.

Goa

Before I go further, I feel that it is important to note that Goa is quite anomalous when held in comparison to the rest of India.  The Portuguese, on their way to China, had stopped in Goa, and had liked it so much that they stuck around until the 1960s.  Therefore, most of the architecture was stylistically Portuguese, and much of the elderly population can speak Portuguese.  What is more, 35% of the inhabitants are Christian, having been forcefully converted by their colonists.  Now, Goa is very much a hippie and expatriate community of foreigners.  For these reasons, I would tell those trying to experience India to let Goa be no more than a vacation stop.

Our hotel, besides being altogether spectacular on its own, was located just five minutes away from Varca Beach, a white sand, mostly vacant, and, in my opinion, the best beach among the others that we visited.  That turned out to be convenient, for we spent more than enough time there to get sunburned twice or thrice.  Of the other beach goers, there were hardly any Indians.  As a matter of fact, of all the foreigners that visit Goa, 60% are Russian.  After learning that, it became less surprising to see restaurants and shops advertising in Cyrillic.

We were in Goa for four nights.  When we were not at Varca Beach, we were traveling in and around the main city, Panaji.  We visited a church that was built by Portuguese missionaries in the early sixteenth century – if I’m not mistaken – and houses the body of a founding missionary, now a saint.  I forget whether it was Xavier or Francis.  In either case, the body rested in a coffin, which itself was encased in a glass and iron sarcophagus, atop a large monument of marble.  Though the man died in 1512, his body had not decomposed, ‘by the grace of God,’ as it was explained to us.

We visited a cashew factory that turned out to be the closest thing to a sweatshop I had ever seen.  The women (no male workers) worked for piece rates: Rs. 12 for every Kg. produced.  We were told that they were lucky to make as much as 10 kilograms in day.  The women were working so hard that few stopped even to look up at us as we passed through.  I thought back to my lunch of veg. noodles that cost me Rs. 80…  At the very end, we came upon a young women of 24, working like the rest.  As she kept her eyes fixed on her work sorting cashew nuts, she told us that she had started working at age sixteen.

We left Goa at 11:00 p.m., on a train bound for Cochin.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu

We first met our driver, Roy Thomas, outside the train station in Cochin, but little did we know what our future with him would hold.  And in case you are wondering, yes, he was Indian.

He brought us to Kumarakom, our first stop in Kerala.  Kerala is called “God’s Own Country” for its extreme beauty, and is also the only state in India with 100% literacy.  The language of Kerala is Malayalam, and sounds as complex as its very name.  Really, it was funny to listen to.  Absolute gibberish.

From Kumarakom, we rode in the bus for six hours, entering Tamil Nadu on our way to Kanyakumari, the city at the southernmost tip of India, if you can call it a city at all.  Before entering Tamil Nadu, we made a stop in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala and quite a mouthful besides.  We were there just long enough to enjoy a foreigners-only beach and one of the best lunches I have ever had in India.  The capital city was especially clean, and I wished we had had more time to see it all.

Arriving in Tamil Nadu, the language and alphabet changed yet again, remaining just as intelligible as Malayalam.

In Kanyakumari, we spent two nights in a hotel of exceedingly shitty qualities.  To the surprise of all, we were served beef on our first night there.  I did not, of course, partake of any, and thought whether I would ever again.  The next morning, for breakfast, we found the sugar bowl populated with ants.  Thankfully, the hotel we stayed in was not what colored our experience in Kanyakumari; our sunset and sunrise excursions to Vivekananda Rock were equally beautiful as they were memorable.

I will never forget standing there, on that crowded rock in the ocean, warding off strangers photographing us, and trying to descry the confluence of the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea which occurs at the very spot.  It was difficult to make out.

With our one hour of free time to roam about Kanyakumari, myself and a few others visited the shrine built for Mahatma Gandhi ji.  It was empty, but for some Russians perusing the photos on the wall.  Either a very peaceful feeling pervaded the space, or I just imagined one did.  Walking around inside felt similar to walking between shelves in an old library, despite the fact that the space was anything but cluttered.  Silence prevailed, both inside and outside.

To be continued~