First Month in Bangladesh

After Bangalore I headed back to Hyderabad for another week. Much of it played out as before in Hyderabad, and it never got old. Visiting with old friends, eating at favorite venues, meeting new people…loving on Hyderabad in general. After my last train ride in India—lasting 26 hours—I was in Calcutta. I took a bus to another part of town where I had stayed last year while volunteering through an NGO called CRAWL. Isn’t it a funny feeling sensing where you are or things around you, but not knowing where you are? The bus dropped me off in Sealdah, and I had simply a sense of where to go, although no explicit explanation for it. Perhaps this is the subconscious saying “I used to walk these streets, and so I’ll let you feel something about it, but since you are not actually conscious of me, I can’t actually tell you about it.” This has happened a good deal when revisiting these old places. When it happens, it’s one of the most refreshing and triumphant feelings. Literally you can have no recollection of where you are, and then think, there is a sweet shop around this corner, and then there it is. At any rate, as I recalled more and more, eventually I knew exactly where I was. Soon I was passing shops and people that I used to visit pretty frequently. As I stepped into my old guest house unannounced, all my old staff friends where right in their places, just as I remembered. We all recognized each other immediately and sounded excited shouts.

The visit was short-lived, as the next afternoon was my flight to Dhaka. In the morning I visited a sweet shop (the owner of which was born in Dhaka, but relocated to Calcutta during the independence movement because of difficulties he encountered being Hindu), a sweet lime fruit juice stall, a lassi sweet yogurt drink stand, and random streets jam-packed with anything from sound system speakers to colorful bed sheets to flashy apparel to keys and locks to hanging racks of lamb with accompanying gutted entrails in a pile underneath. I also went to the same spot at the train station where the NGO and I used to visit, distributing food and hygiene supplies to the homeless as well as coloring with kids. As I was about to leave, some homeless guy started trying to say something to me. From his smiley face and energetic demeanor, I figured he was mostly messing with me. Soon enough, a woman I recognized emerged with her child, as well as several others. The woman I immediately recognized and in my broken Hindi and Bangla I greeted her and gave her an update on what I was up to. She was happy to see me, but mostly she would be yelling at her friend who was trying to get me to say illicit words in Bangla. Always a laugh when a foreigner unknowingly curses. Fun crowd, and at least it wasn’t more of the same old begging.

The flight to Dhaka went smoothly (as short as I expected, maybe half an hour in total—but interestingly about 16 hours by bus due to so many rivers). I was the only foreigner on the plane; but here’s how you could tell the mentality on the plane was also predominantly South Asian: As soon as we landed, people started unbuckling despite the stewardess’ requests, and as soon as we stopped taxiing….WHOOSH as if rehearsed, the entire cabin arose and started pushing to get their bags. I have no problem letting go of personal space, but vying for train/bus seats, wanting to be the first to get off, and never honoring queues (sometimes despite the shouts of policemen) easily piss me off. Perhaps I project self-centeredness onto the individuals acting this way and place a strong negative value judgment on that. In reality it’s probably more like…everyone does this and it’s part of the culture, so I’m a part of it too.

‘Chalking’ things up to cultural difference is always a tough one. The culture is different, things operate differently in a new culture, and so in some way you need to let certain things go that you would rather change, lest you try to confront an entire engrained system in the minds of these people. At the same time, is someone groping me (in most cases only if were female) or overcharging me 10x the usual price ‘part of the culture’ so I shouldn’t worry about it? Obviously not. What if an auto driver is circling around and around, trying to run over a barking dog. Is that part of the culture? If so does that mean I shouldn’t do anything about it? Does my possession of the care for the dog mean that I should do something? Does the fact that I can’t change ALL the irritated auto driver’s distaste for barking dogs mean that it doesn’t matter even if I try now? Where do we draw the line? When do we stop caring about something and disengage our passion for it simply on the ground that we are unfamiliar with the context, when we are in a new culture? When do we apply our values? When do we say, this is not my taste? When do we say, this doesn’t look appealing, but I’ll try it anyway because I don’t even know whether or not I like it? When am I being mistreated? When am I not being tolerant enough?

How about another example. Teachers that have been brought up in South Asia and then participate in a teacher exchange program to the US are baffled at how the students treat the classroom space. Falling asleep, slouching, having feet on the desk, tipping the chair while sitting, leaving the classroom, wearing baggy or informal clothing, calling the teacher by the first name…maybe even not standing when the teacher enters the room…are all different ways of conduct that you might see. Whenever I ask these exchange teachers what their impressions were of this, they claim that they were utterly astonished that the teacher tolerated it, to the point that they were speechless. So they were shocked. And yet, they explain that they simply saw it as a cultural difference. Now come, come. Is that really the case? Did you really walk into the classroom, have your jaw drop, and not think that these students are undisciplined? So which part is lack of discipline and which part is cultural difference? If I claim something to be a cultural difference, an implicit naturalization of the behavior emerges. It is natural to the culture. Therefore, we can’t apply the same judgment values that we grow accustomed to in our own method of going about things. We don’t stand when a teacher enters, maybe that’s a cultural difference (I don’t think I’m lazy when I don’t stand because no one else does). Acting out in class or something (come up with your own story) is an entirely different situation. Do I say then that it’s just a cultural difference? No, whether or not it’s cultural difference it’s a demonstration of lack of discipline. These incredibly difficult questions allude to so many of the difficulties of traveling, and undoubtedly will arise in explicit ways as I begin teaching in an unfamiliar classroom setting.

Back to the plane. I knew we weren’t getting off for some time, even though the plane stopped moving. So I sat. One of the only ones. Indeed, we didn’t disembark for another 15 minutes. A minute after we had stopped though, a man a row or two back had leaned up to right beside me, as if trying to push ahead. Right or wrong, I had the feeling that I should be off the plane before him because he was sitting behind me. I started to get annoyed. He pushed further, leaning into me harder as he tried to get forward. In South Asia we joke about how there’s no personal space, right? Just got to get used to it because as Americans we put personal space way to high on our priority lists, right? He reached his arm to support himself on the headrest of the seat in front of me. His elbow was in front of my nose. It’s just a different culture right? Right…but yeah, not happening. Fuming, I gathered my bag and pushed my way up to stand, forcefully pushing him behind me as I rose. I don’t really remember how he reacted, and didn’t look at him anyway. Overreaction? Justified? Who knows. The intricacies of dealing with a new culture take a lifetime to know. But in a moment, what mattered most was being sufficiently violated. That level of sufficiency changes as we grow accustomed to new things. Its dynamic nature to me means that there seems to be no inherent sufficiency to the threshold of any behavior. It’s a relative phenomenon, just as a value judgment that prompts a behavior is subjective in nature, and hence relative to any given individual. Similarly, how do we think about right and wrong? Are these relative? Which right and wrongs are absolute? What about human rights? Are they universal?

Although I had no happy sign reading my name waiting for me as I exited the main airport area, after some time I located the VIP parking lot and found the embassy driver waiting to take me to my residence. The nicer areas of Dhaka include Gulshan, Banani, and Baridhara, and they are closer to the airport (in the north) than the rest of the city. My flat is a 3 person apartment in a multistory building in Baridhara, an enclave that, having police at every access point and hosting most of the international embassies, is arguably the safest area in the whole city. Several of the building’s flats are owned by BLI, the Bangla Language Institute, which operates through IUB, Independent University of Bangladesh. 7 Fulbrighters are living in 3 apartment suites, our classrooms are located in another flat in the same building, so the commute is all of less than 2 seconds. Entering my suite was a jaw-dropping experience: spacious living area, 3 separate rooms each w/ private bathroom, every room w/ a/c and fans, television, computer, dvd player, tables, windows with great views, kitchen, and even a small room just outside the kitchen for the ‘servant’. Such a term doesn’t carry the heavy connotations here that I’m used to back home. Cooks, maids, drivers…they are everywhere, especially in a place like this. We have a cook, his name is Suranjan, he also cleans. He makes food and buys groceries during the day, then leaves to go home in the evening. Suranjan is…a wonder. Indescribable food, simply knee-buckling. So far we’ve had rice, kichri, okra, mixed veg bhaji, eggplant, chicken curry, veg curry cucumber/tomato/onion salad, chapatti, spinach…I must be forgetting something but anyway, words don’t do it justice. I NEED to know how he does this; unfortunately I’m usually busy when he’s preparing lunch, and since he goes home in the evening, dinner is reheated leftovers. He is paid by the program (everything I’ve mentioned, including the apartment, free internet, and laundry service, is $1,000 USD for the duration of the 3 month program), but the food items he uses we pay for. I’ve spent so much of the blog talking about food; the task of describing Suranjan’s cooking is too tall an order, I don’t have the energy anymore. Just come. He’s my cook for 3 months, come visit and you’ll see.

The evening I arrived it was already pretty late, so I ate dinner with our housekeeper at a nearby pizzeria/deli. I met up with Olinda, living two floors up, the next morning at breakfast. Olinda Hassan is another ETA Fulbrighter (all of us are the same age) and was actually born in Dhaka. After living in Bangladesh for 4 years, she and her family moved to Japan for 5 years. She spent the rest of her time in the US and now lives in Arizona, but has graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Olinda’s fluency in Bangla, as well as acquaintance with Bangla culture, constantly prove to be an asset for us other non-Bangla-speaking ETAs. After breakfast our first day, Olinda and I set out with Suranjan (cook) to the marketplace to buy vegetables for lunch. The marketplace is not a frequent stop for foreigners, who rarely would be preparing their own food. Suranjan would be scurrying about the stalls for the best prices (more hectic than usual for him, as with foreigners, all the vendors were skyrocketing their prices), and Olinda and I would try to stand to the side and watch it take place, observing which places he was going to and how he judged a good product. I was totally unknowing of the heap of conversations happening all around us by the locals, but from time to time Olinda would whisper to me, “they’re making fun of us.” Or, “all those people over there keep talking about us.” Or, “they’re wondering why I’m with you, they probably think I’m a slut.” Most of the time she’d laugh it off, but she told me stories (and it must have happened more than once) where Bangladeshis would be talking about her, assuming she was totally Western without an ear for Bangla, in a demeaning way. If prompted sufficiently, she would read them a riot act in her fluency, completely shocking them. It was difficult for her to specifically translate what they were saying about us, but at times it was things she was insulted about. At the same time, we were a fascinating sight to see and she assured me we weren’t unwelcome. Olinda’s Bangladeshi-American identity puts her in an interesting position. Fluency in both English and Bangla is obviously an assent. At the same time, in one day she was approached in a condescending way by a Westerner for translation help, as well as regaled by a rickshaw driver for not paying more. Her assumed Bangladeshi identity meant that a foreigner could approach her in a way as if to say “you should be thankful that me, a westerner, has come to approach you for help.” Her assumed western identity meant that a rickshaw driver could treat her inappropriately just the same, demanding inflated and unjust prices.

Laule’a was the next to arrive, deeply relieved to finally see my familiar face after days of tiring travel and an entirely unfamiliar environment. Laule’a, the other female ETA, lives in Portland, Oregon and studied Political Science and International Studies at Kenyon. She’s also worked through an NGO in Ethiopia and studied abroad in Kolkata. She certainly brings a familiar taste of America with her, and is always the one to be found joking, laughing, and talking at the dinner table.

The first few days I also spent time with the research Fulbrighters, Christy and John. Christy is older and has traveled extensively, especially through West Africa, as well as taught classes there. She even leads groups of high schoolers through African villages and has worked through USAID in Washington. Later on she hopes to be working with women’s cooperatives and other organizations at the local community level. From rural Iowa, she can’t wait to complete language training in Dhaka and relocate to a village.

John, the oldest, is married and has children, he has been in the military for some time and is also a registered nurse. He hopes to do research related to nursing here. During dinner conversations, John will sometimes reference his past in the military and the soldiers that he had been responsible for. Our questions afterward will end up in full-fledged stories of the military system as well as his personal accounts. He’s mentioned once or twice about his experience related to the war in the Middle East; his battalion was one of the first to be mobilized after 9/11.

The night before the ETAs were to meet with the embassy for the first time, our fourth member, Keith, had not yet arrived. Keith lives in San Antonio and graduated in International Politics from Pepperdine in LA. He’s traveled extensively and always seems to have stories to share, as well as a great deal of international perspective. He has also been awarded a Pickering Fellowship which will fund his graduate studies after Fulbright at Columbia University in International Affairs with concentrations in Human Rights and South Asia. The fellowship also places him for 3 years in Foreign Service with the US Department of State after his master’s. To my surprise, Olinda told me that she had heard he was driving here from India by auto rickshaw. I wondered how he’d be able to navigate the roads of South Asia, let alone find our apartment amongst the thick city. At about 1 am, right before I was going to head to bed, I heard Keith’s voice in the common room and excitedly ran out to greet him and hear of his adventure. He had purchased an auto (I think it was about 800 Euros) in Chennai and drove it all the way to Kolkata, almost 2,000 km away. This is the same distance as between India’s furthest westernmost and easternmost points. The journey took him 10 days, and involved so many tales. First he spent a day or so learning how to drive and switch gears. He said that with a little practice, the motions become second-nature. At some point it must become automatic, as the concentration of any auto driver must mostly be on avoiding the potholes, people, and other vehicles. He said potholes were a huge problem, especially in the state of Orissa; he even referred to the road as having a ‘mars-like’ terrain. One time his front wheel axle even broke, but fortunately he was able to pull off to a roadside repair shop and get it fixed for less than 5 dollars. In the evenings he would find a village to stop at and spend the night. Without fail locals would be ecstatic to take him in for the evening, showering him with village tours, meals, and even meetings with the village leader. Locals would be shocked to see a westerner driving an auto; such a job is only held by low-class Indians. He would sometimes pick up wandering locals alongside the road, offering to drive them to their destination if it was in his direction for no fee. One couple he even drove 80 km. What a surprise it must have been for them to be spared such a journey by foot for no fee, and by a foreigner nonetheless. Even though Keith only had a squeeze-horn on the side of the auto (one that you might find on a trike), he was able to alert massive trucks—and have them move out of the way—as he sped past (needing to cover 200 km a day, there was no time to wait around). He referred to driving the auto as a ‘zen’ experience because you become so hyper-aware of your surroundings. The motions of gear-changing and response to the changing environment around you become fluid, and your awareness of changing stimuli rests atop a flood of subconscious and schematic motions responding to everything. Talk about concentration. After 10 eventful days, he drove into Kolkata to stay overnight with a friend. The next day at the border to Bangladesh—disappointingly—his prized vehicle was denied access into Bangladesh because he didn’t have the proper paperwork (despite the embassy’s advice that it wouldn’t be a problem). He hired a driver to take it back to Cal where it will wait until he can file the papers and retrieve it; so he hopes it will be in Dhaka in about 2 months. After a long bus ride from the border into Dhaka, he took a CNG auto from the bus stand to our flat with only the address to refer to, and bam, made it just in time for our appointment the next morning.

The next 3 days we would travel with the Embassy’s Public Affairs Officer, Shaheen Khan, to the schools we’d be teaching at. All schools are high schools, and whether private or public, are extremely competitive and rated amongst the best in the country. Sometimes parents will apply for their kid’s admissions against competitive odds of at least 50 people applying for one spot. Olinda will be teaching at a coed school in the north of the city, Laule’a at an all-girls school in the thick of the city, and both Keith and I will be at an all-boys school called St. Joseph’s in a similar location. During the school visits, we met with the administrative boards and the English departments, having discussions over snacks and tea; we would also visit classrooms to see the student arrangement and to get a taste of how classes were taught. With many ceiling fans, concrete walls, and many (although silent) students, it would usually be really hard to hear the teacher. I’m not sure how the students did it. I’ll have to remember to keep my voice up. There was a microphone through in the classrooms at Laule’a’s school. Class sizes averaged 40 to 50 students. They would be extremely excited to meet us, bottling in their energy while we were there and then letting it all out in excited chatter right as we would have exited the room. The eyes of entire classrooms would divert and peer through the windows as we’d walk past. Laule’a’s school even offered each of us bouquets of freshly picked flowers. After introducing ourselves to a class, we’d always ask if there were any questions they’d have for us. In the class at St. Joseph’s that we visited, a boy in the back excitedly raised his hand. Astonished at such a quick response, I asked him to offer his question. Standing up (as students always do when asking a question or offering an answer), and looking at me he asked, “Do you play basketball??” We all started laughing. It seemed to be a question that was on more minds than just his. My height was baffling to them. Lots of questions came up about sports; about which ones we played, about which teams we liked…even if we watched wrestling. One student remembered that I had said my major in school was Music, and he asked me to sing a song. Without anything else coming immediately to mind, and knowing that I wouldn’t easily be able to come up with anything memorized that was more contemporary, I went with one of the first that came up as I thought back to college choir…. “Oh come, all ye faithful. Joyful and triumphant, O come, ye, o co-me ye to Be-eh-thle-hem.” They seemed to like it. I mean the school is called St. Joseph’s, founded by a Catholic brotherhood called Holy Cross. We are the first Fulbrighters to teach at these schools, but the program seems well organized, and we’ve even been appointed Bangladeshi English teachers—who had previously been awarded Fulbright grants to teach English in the US—to aid us in our transition to the Bangladeshi classroom, as well as offer advice.

The next day we had an orientation at the American Club (a club for people involved in the embassy, consisting of a gym, pool, tennis courts, and restaurant) for the ETAs. A Fulbright English Language Fellow (having received a grant to teach at BRAC University) who had just arrived in the country had prepared a captivating presentation on his past teaching experience in China and Vietnam, as well as teaching English as a foreign language in general. The day after that, we had an orientation with the rest of the Fulbright crew (about 6 researchers) where we had general introductions to everyone associated with the Bangladesh Fulbright program as well as presentations on Bangladesh’s political history, security awareness, the services of the embassy, and living in Bangladesh. Research projects of the other Fulbright members include the construction of the Bengali home, Bengali poetry, local response to environment conservations efforts, garment workers, and women’s cooperatives.

The day off from the week here is Friday. Since we had lots of time our first Friday with no orientation meetings, Laule’a and I decided to go exploring through our northern part of the city and find a concert that has happening in a stadium a few kilometers away. Baridhara, where we live, is separated from the other area of Gulshan by a lake, which itself is separated from Banani by another lake. To get into Gulshan, there is a scenic footpath that leads you along the side of the lake all the way to the nearest bridge over it. As Laule’a and I started out, we decided to take this path and enjoy the views of the water, as well as have a break from the cars on the roads. As we were walking, I sensed someone coming up from behind me and for whatever reason, felt that I needed to casually look and see who it was. As he came into view from the side, my attention shifted entirely to him, as I realized he was smiling and looking intently at me. My jaw dropped and eyes widened. It was Jan from Germany; we had gone through the same SIP program to study at the University of Hyderabad 2 years earlier. I was dumbfounded, how had it come to be that a German student and an American student, after having studied abroad in the same program in South India, randomly converge on the street at the same time in Dhaka, Bangladesh 2 years later? We excitedly chatted the whole 45 minute walk into Banani and the three of us had lunch at an acclaimed restaurant that I had been meaning to visit. After returning to Germany at the end of 2008, Jan had traveled through Pakistan for a month through an Urdu class during his next semester as well. After another year of schooling, he decided to take a break and apply for foreign embassy service. With his background in South Asia, he was placed in Dhaka and will be here for 3 months, the same 3 months that I’ll be taking my language classes and living in BLI housing, only 2 doors down from Jan’s rented flat. Running into old faces has been a theme during my past 2 months in India, but I guess you neither need to plan for it nor even be in the same country to have that pleasure come to fruition.

After a long walk, Laule’a and I stumbled upon the stadium having the concert. There must have been about 10,000 people there, nearly all male, and nearly all seemingly in the age range of 18-26. The stadium was only about 15 rows of concrete seating high, but circled around an entire field, so that the capacity maxed out at 15,000 I think. There was a stage at one end and a big screen at the other showing shots of the crowd and close-ups of the bands. Massive speakers blasted the music through the stadium. The genre was heavy rock/metal, a favorite amongst the upcoming Bangladeshi generation. Being two of very few foreigners there, Laule’a and I did attract the stare of many eyes, as well as an excited software company customer service employee who intensely wanted to practice his English. Having spent much of the day walking and catching up with Jan, it started to get dark only about an hour after we had arrived at the stadium. That’s ok, it was enough; certainly not as excited about the songs as the cheering Bangladeshis, especially those up by the front of the stage involved in what looked like a small mosh-pit. After leaving the stadium and as we rounded a corner off the main road, a funny familiar feeling caught my attention. The massive waist-high steel lever, guard house, steel doors, and barbed wire atop a high concrete wall looked familiar. Not a jail, but the American Center, the Public Affairs branch of the US Embassy that we had gotten driven to every day this week to pick up Shaheen Khan before heading to our respective schools. See? You never get a solid sense of where you are by being driven around. Satisfied that we had explored enough, and not keen on walking the rest of the way in the dark, we took a rickshaw back to Baridhara.

The next day my number one priority was observing our cook, Suranjan, prepare lunch. I had realized by now not only how heavenly the food he cooks is, but also that I would only be free to watch on Saturdays with the daily morning Bangla class schedule. After a breakfast of omelets, honey, toast, bananas, peanut butter, and tea, I accompanied Suranjan to the nearby market to buy lunch’s produce. Baridhara is a high-end residential area, but just a few streets north of us is a steel-plated entryway that separates Baridhara from a more similar Dhaka scene: the hubbub of busy local streets, shops, and an open market. Although I couldn’t make out the Bangla that Suranjan would be exchanging with the street vendors, it was useful to see where he went, what he bought, and to get more of an idea of how much things cost. One of his friends also guided me to a nearby tailor where I was measured for pants and a button down shirt. The $20 dollar price was worth being able to hand-select the fabric you wanted, as well as having the articles custom-made for your size (as premade clothes in South Asia and my lurpy body don’t mix well). I had asked Suranjan to prepare my favorites from the past week: daal, okra, and Bengali vegetable bhaji. He threw in a vegetable salad and fried rice as well. Although exact ingredient measurements succumb to the effectiveness of experience and tasting-as-we-go in home cooking, I wrote what I could collect from Suranjan’s rapid-fire multitasking, somehow preparing everything in under 2 hours. Right now I can only help by cutting a few vegetables, but hopefully soon I will have observed enough to actually contribute more (although Suranjan only gave in to me helping after I demanded several times to lighten his load), or at least have the experience to cook this kind of food later on.

A US embassy Cultural Affairs officer, Garrett, had invited all the Fulbright crew and related embassy personnel to his apartment for a reception on Saturday evening. The girls taking the time to dress up in their finest salwar kamizes was not a moment of overdressing; Garrett’s embassy-owned apartment was nothing short of the most luxurious I’ve seen in Bangladesh. Comfortable seating areas, fancy artwork on the walls, an entirely marble kitchen, and a cloth-and-votive candle-dressed table under an arrangement of miniature sandwiches, a hummus platter, brownies, sugar cookies, champagne glasses, wine, and beer were sights that I doubt I’ll come across very often in the next year. However, the stories of our past travel experiences and aspirations for our futures that we all exchanged are substances that I’m sure will grow in number and sentiment as this next year marches on.

Classes have been going very well so far. We have four different classes (emphasizing topics like conversation, listening, writing, grammar, and the like) shared between two different teachers. Since our class size is only Keith, me, Laule’a, and Elizabeth (Biz is another Fulbrighter, having just graduated from Tuff’s in Boston), the individual attention prompts participation. All coursework is done at 1 pm for the day, so lunch follows (something I need to make a conscious effort to keep my mind off of during our last class). Our lunches have been lasting well into the afternoon, accompanied by conversation that sometimes lasts for hours.

Keith and I have also been hosting some couchsurfers, who always seem to be the most fascinating people to fold into a discussion. Couchsurfing is a facebook-like web network that puts travelers in touch with locals who offer anything from an afternoon to show someone around an area to a place to stay as lodging. Despite the hesitation many might feel in participating in the uncertainty of an internet-based network, Couchsurfing is a tool that I hear about more and more, and only with fantastic outcomes. Keith for instance has stayed with many people during his travels through Europe, and frequently references the conversations he had had with his hosts, especially the Swedish feminist and the French neuro-physicist. Our first couchsurfer, Hiro from Japan, had couchsurfed while traveling by bus all the way from South America to Canada and from the UK to the Middle East. Christoph from Germany is staying with us now; he’s a psychology student who is taking a break from the university to pursue an internship with a Bangladesh-based Swiss NGO that deals with arsenic contamination in Bangladeshi water wells. Bringing such perspectives into the mix of our already entertaining discussions, it’s easy to imagine how lunch conversations seamlessly evolve into dinner conversations, and then easily dovetail with late-night conversations. For such reasons, an aspiration to check email one day may fall on the back-burner until the next, although that’s catalyzed by the power going out. Although our building has a diesel generator that kicks in to power lights and fans during our sporadic hour-or-so-long power outages, at times the internet goes with the power as frequently as every other hour. Occupational hazard I suppose; of course, internet is an entertainment interest that quickly subsides in the wake of so many other activities. In addition to however long our discussions go, we also fill our afternoons with visits to the market, meeting up with friends in cafes, napping, exploring, reading, and working into the mix a bit of Bangla study. And being cooked for. Yes it’s a hard life.

For a few weeks my throat hadn’t felt quite right. I figured it was some form of cold, but when swallowing became more difficult, I investigated the situation further. Peering back to my tonsils in the mirror, I was awestruck by alien-looking white matter veining about my red tonsils. Obviously something was wrong, although it didn’t feel too painful. I decided to visit United Hospital, a private hospital located only about a 10 minute walk away. ‘Hospital’ nominally, Resort aesthetically. The massive building with beautiful glass paneling and warm lighting is a sight that sweethearts love to admire as they sit across the lake, enjoying the twilight hours together. The reflection of the hospital on the lake is by far the brightest and most beautiful thing in this area of the city at night. Walking into the hospital was just was majestic, with high ceilings, intricate dangling light fixtures, and marble covered floors and walls. The call to prayer that echoed throughout the halls was incredible too, my favorite that I’ve heard so far; its mysterious drifting vocal lines were so captivating, I found myself standing under a loudspeaker for its duration. When it had ended, I realized I had work to do. First, there was a short registration process (200 bdt, 3 usd), then I went to the front desk to pay for my visit to an ENT (600 bdt, 8.50 usd). No appointment, no problem; I traveled to the 6th floor and waited a few minutes in the waiting room for the doctor to arrive. After being taken into a private room, I described the history of my sore and now strange-looking throat. With one glance at my tonsils, a concerned look fell upon the doctor’s face. “Your throat is TOO MUCH infected. It’s HUGELY infected.” He prescribed antibiotics (300 bdt, 4.25 usd), an antihistamine (practically free), gargling with a hydrogen peroxide solution, a throat swab to culture the bacteria (400 bdt, 5.75 usd) and blood tests (800 bdt, 11.50 usd) to make sure the infection hadn’t spread to the blood stream. I revisited the hospital a few days later (free of charge) to check the tests, which turned out favorably. Additionally, within 6 days the infection was gone. Grand total? $33 USD. At a luxurious hospital, easily accessible, and without more than about an hour of cumulative waiting time. So, are there really people in the US who still think that our healthcare system isn’t broken? When a visit to…umm….BANGLADESH makes you think…*wow, that healthcare experience was much easier and cost effective than I’m used to* …well, point made.

One day last week we visited a taco restaurant in Gulshan-1. Keith, from south Texas, found the restaurant to be a hint of home, or at least an allusion to it. The restaurant was in a location with a few eateries that I had visited a year ago, but I hadn’t remembered that until I actually went there. That place had come into my memory a few times since I’ve been here, always wondering if I’d be back there again. Then, unexpectedly, there we were. To Keith and everyone else it was a nice place to eat; for me, it was a walk down memory lane. On our way there, several street kids jumped onto our rickshaws and we chatting away with us. They joined us in the restaurant, and we happily had lunch with them, amongst practicing Bangla and making funny faces. To my surprise, the kid that I was next to kept feeding me by the spoonful. When I insisted that he have some to, he would only take bites in alteration with my own. This same method of feeding went for not only spoonfuls of food, but straw-sips of Sprite.

Later that afternoon, I went to Wonderland, a theme park very near to where we are located. The whole 3-block-or-so area is enclosed by a yellow and purple brick wall; I’ve always wondered what was inside Wonderland. Keith and them went for Biz’s birthday. Keith also went another day and played his harmonium in a central area of the park. The spectacle attracted such a massive crowd, the manager had to come by and ask him to leave, as the attention he was getting had become a “business threat”. Just a funny thing. Anyway, upon returning, everyone told me that I HAD to go on this one ride there called Adventureworld. And also that they had to be present with me when I went on it the first time. And also that it would blow my mind, and shatter my ideas of reality. And also that they couldn’t tell me about it so as not to ruin any surprises. I approached the ride skeptically…how was this ride really that great? This visit, we saved it for last. The park consisted of a water ride, bumper cars, some other small things, an aquarium, stuff like that. We also went on a roller coaster simulator. The screen showed us on the rails of a coaster, then suddenly we were flying around in a forest in the twilight, then BAM back to the roller coaster. Adventureworld began with a railed-car train (fitting about 20) entering into darkness. Flashing lights emerged, and faint images of the cavernous space inside Adventureworld. We circled around, then in about 10 seconds, were outside where we started. “Well, that was dumb,” I thought. Nope, we went in again. This time the space was fully lit, and a museum-like model scene of paper-mache hunters hunting tigers in a forest was visible all around us. Suddenly, the train stopped and everyone started piling out. Surprised, I followed the crowd. We entered an entirely concrete room next to the train. The room had a door at the other side. I started to step forward toward it. Out of nowhere, a mouse mascot with a disproportionately large head stepped out of the door. Dance music turned on, along with flashing red and green lights. People giggled and danced; I was motionless with a gaping mouth, completely dumbfounded. We piled back into the train. With a crooked look on my face, the train continued toward the exit. Suddenly I realized that the forest scene on the wall had given way to a war scene, with a medieval-looking city under siege. Just as I realized how out of place the war mural was, we were outside and the ride was over. I was so confused it was hard to stand. I’d like to open a ride like this in the suburbs of Wexford. I imagine it will become the new hang out location for the bored-crazy teenage generation.

Last weekend was Durga Puja, a Hindu festival, and Kristen came to visit. Kristen is a girl that I know from high school; we were in the same organic chemistry class. She lives about a 4 minute drive away from my house. We hadn’t interacted throughout our college years, but when something about my being in Bangladesh showed up on her facebook news-feed, she was sure to get in touch with me because, by coincidence, we would be in Bangladesh at the same time. She is working through a program called WorldTeach, which she had also done in Chile. She and about another 10 girls from the US are all teaching at a university in Chittagong, a city 5 hours southeast of Dhaka. I happily offered Kristen a tour of Dhaka and a place to stay along with a few of her friends. It was a wild experience to become reacquainted with an old friend in Dhaka of all places. Kristen and I traveled around to many locations of Dhaka during Durga Puja. The first evening we visited a nearby Hindu area and became the subject of attention at a temple with several hundred people in it. Volunteers running the dance performance there invited us into their home to meet their family and enjoy snacks and sweets. The next day we ventured through an old Hindu part of Dhaka and visited many temples, most of which would offer us candies or spiced rice dishes. The narrow streets were, you guessed it, jam-packed with a thick crowd of people. The streets were covered with ‘Christmas’ lights above, illuminating everything below in a warm light. Incense wafted about. Music played from massive speakers on street corners. While we were on a side street, Keith noticed what looked like a rat and avoided stepping on it. Giving it a second glance, he realized it was a desolate kitten. After a brief pause, he picked it up, unable to walk and covered in sludge that likely was comprised of both sewage and mud. With so many people walking about in a street that was about as wide as a doorway, I wondered how the kitten had survived as long as it did. Keith knew anywhere he left it, it would be in a position that was just as bad as when we found it. Ducking into a nearby temple, we washed it off with water and someone gave us a rag to hold it in. Keith named it Durga, appropriate for the festival time. For the rest of the evening, it was mostly unconscious and looked to be near death, that evening we bought an eye-dropper and fed it some milk. The next day it was livelier, taking a few steps and meowing. Things really looked up until the seizures started that evening and continued through the night. A house-call vet came the next day and determined that intestinal/lung worms was depriving her of nutrition, and a low glucose level was causing brain imbalances. After a day of anti-worm medicine and more milk, Durga has been purring practically non-stop and spends most of her time wrapped up in a cloth in a bundle on Keith’s lap, occasionally learning how to control her limbs by stumbling about the apartment, and of course, entertaining the other Fulbrighters and language teachers with an adorableness that will make anyone smile.

It’s difficult for me to not problematize the record of my experience here. For one, I’ve reacted so strongly against photography. One side of this coin is judgment. With a camera in hand, I find myself constantly steeped in a perspective of judgment as to whether or not a spectacle is worthy of snapping a picture or rolling a video. Then, inevitably, you come across something later that is even cooler than before. Soon enough, you’re snapping pictures of everything and living your experience through that judgment and not through the experience itself. Another side of the coin is spectaclization; photographing something makes me feel removed from it, it’s a moment of here’s *I* and here’s *you*, we are separate. Also, my judgment of what’s around me as a spectacle is problematic. The other day the street flooded due to rain. As I walked to the market in knee-high water, I thought about getting my camera for a picture. But…why? First of all, this is not a representative picture of my experience here, this flooding has only happened one day out of the 25 I’ve been here. Second, what does this mean to someone I show this to? I likely overestimate that this person will interrogate their own notions of comfort upon seeing people respond to the flood as if it’s no big deal. More than likely, this person will simply re-edify their notions of Bangladesh as being among other things, an uncomfortable place to be. This is due to the spectacle of Bangladesh, and a spectacle that is shaped in a certain way and which tells a certain story. Yet, by all means, this is not the experience of Bangladesh, and that, I argue, is more important. Many sorts of perceptual undertones riddle spectaclization as well…what do people think when I take pictures of them, or of things in their country that they may or may not want me to see? To what degree is my privilege as a Western traveler being flaunted to the public when I photograph? By extension, to what degree does this privilege reify the notions of Western wealth that is harbored in areas like this? Disproportionate idealizations of the West are constructs that I’m constantly bumping up against here. With the beggar: “Why don’t you give me money…I KNOW you have it!” With the high school student: “I can’t wait until I get an education in the US so I can get a job that makes so much MONEY.” With the businessman on the street: “Why have you come to Bangladesh, the West is so much more comfortable. And why are you learning Banlga? Use your English, that’s obviously the most useful and economically competitive language.” To which my friends and I reply… “No, the job market is incredibly competitive in the US, that is one reason why we are HERE and not back at home.” “No, I don’t have as much money as you think.” “No, many people struggle to be financially comfortable in the US.” “No, there is more to life than just living comfortably.” “No, there is so much to learn by engaging a new culture and language.” Back to photography. Privilege. Economic comfort…I don’t have to participate in the trials of the busy street, I can simply stand on the side, photograph it, and show it to my friends. This alludes to another side of the coin: nominal value. Frequently we do things based on their value by name, or as a narrative. We know these instances, when it will “make a great story.” Why is this so valued though? The other day I was at a temple and, to my surprise, the prime minister was scheduled to come in half an hour. We left before she came, and I found myself disappointed. But why? Was I going to learn something from Sheikh Hasina? Was I going to speak with her and have some sort of engagement? No, probably just a glimpse. And what does that mean? More likely than not, it’s a good story. “Wow, Matt, YOU got to see Sheikh Hasina?? You’re so LUCKY!” And that is a stroke of the ego. So, I react against rationale for behavior that is based on nominal value, there doesn’t seem to be anything to gain other than praise motivated by self-interest. There is so much more to what experience is than just what it’s called, and even the story of it all does not capture it. If I do things for the story, the experience behind it has been nullified. The last side of the coin: consumerism. What is travel? In so many ways, we live travel (and our daily lives) through consumption….clothes, food, culture. What is it that we want from traveling? Consuming psychologically feels as if it’s a way of owning. Both are pillars of a Western-constructed paradigm of what should be valued and how we should go about our lives. Both are projections onto the world that have consequences like depression due to comparison, obesity, and—when going about consumption though economic self-interest—the subjugation of the third world, among many others. The negative judgments of value that I place on materialism, consumerism, and needless ownership are so great that I even read things like photography in this problematic light. Although what travel means and where travel gets you is an inquiry that I constantly am learning more about, one thing is for sure, the beauty of travel has a lot to do with keeping your wallet closed. In an oblique way, photography is a mechanism, much like money, of ownership. In reality, it’s not just photography that I’m talking about, but the objectification of experience. How do I understand what my experience is? If it’s something that I can tell, hold onto an own, or something based on a motivation of nominal value, well, see above. I am striving to live things in a more subjective light, where I’m not as concerned about the story I can generate to stroke my ego, or the picture I can capture to prove to someone what I saw, where I’m not judging everything around me as a spectacle of worthiness or unworthiness, where I break away from the desire to own and consume. The stuff of an experience is a non-objective substance. Yet, we don’t live in ourselves. Our social selves seem to be seeking an objective grasp on things, to compare to the experience of others, to portray ourselves, to elicit the opinions of others. The sharing of ideas and engagement in dialogue is a fantastic opportunity for growth and learning, but it is not propelled by petty objectifications. It is not propelled by showing my friends the cool shirt I found at this one store that an NGO owns. It is not propelled by spectaclizing a culture. Bringing something to the table in a good discussion comes from the essence of personal experience. And the qualia of such experience is NOT sharable directly. We need to get over this. We do not live in an objective world. We live in our relative subjectivity. We do not project the same perceptions of the world outward. We are shaped differently. I do not know you. I do not know Bangladesh. I do not know the culture here. I know my experience of these things. And as life always seems to go, we never have the whole story of it all.

Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore

The train arrived in Mumbai very early, at its scheduled time of 5:40 am. Fortunately I was wide awake, still accustomed to waking up at 6 during the Buddhist meditation retreat. From Lonely Planet’s suggestions, the most likely place to find a cheap place to stay is also ironically the more posh place in town (shopping, eating, even the Taj Palace Hotel), called Colaba, located in the southern part of the peninsula on which much of Mumbai sits. Being so early in the morning with much fewer people crowding the area than during the day, it took little time to navigate my way to a local train running south. From there I used the Lonely Planet map to navigate my way on foot into Colaba, and stopped at the Gateway to India (large arch on the coast) and the Taj Palace Hotel across the street. It was quite experience to see the hotel in person, after having seen so much of it on the news 2 years ago during the terrorist attacks. A chai man at the Gateway to India told me that on that day, he and many others thought that the fighting was a local matter between angered neighbors. It was only after the police came in and told them the nature of the situation that they ran for cover to their homes.

The least expensive place to stay in the Lonely Planet wasn’t located far away. On my way there, an Indian approached me about the guest house that he worked for, having a dormitory fee of only rs. 200per night. Since this was the cheapest price I’d found so far, I decided to take him up on the offer. This was the first time that I had stayed in a dormitory-style setting. There was bunk-bed space for probably 25 people, although only about half of it was filled. I had a locker under the bed that I could fit all my stuff, and even a fan above the bed. No top sheet, but not to worry, I keep one in my backpack for just such an occasion, as well as for the sleeper-class train rides.

After putting my stuff down, I went to a nearby internet café to square away some emails and speak with the parents over skype. Two of my friends, Anu and Ankush, from the University of Hyderabad were in the area, so we planned to convene at Anu’s place (she is living with her older sister while looking for work) that evening, located halfway between me in the south and Ankush in the north. Before getting back on the train though, I stopped for lunch at a suggested restaurant in Colaba on my way to the station. I got several dishes, and they were all really tasty. I was alarmed, however, I find that my feeling in response to the food had a tinge of illness attached to it. I could easily tell that the food was objectively great, but in some way the reminder of having gotten sick from a few weeks ago, attributed to similar-tasting food, lingered in my subjective experience of it. I hadn’t really had much Indian food since the week of my sickness, at Dharamsala I was having spiced-down food, western-esque peanut butter and rolls, or Tibetan-Chinese. By the end of the meal, I became deeply concerned that my affection for Indian food would become permanently altered. Would I be able to enjoy Indian food as much as I had before getting sick, ever? Troubled, I continued to the station.

My face filled itself with a smile upon seeing Anu again. Last summer I had met with Ankush in Calcutta, but I hadn’t seen Anu for almost two years. Being with her again reminded me of being back in Hyderabad, and in a way had me realize how things have changed since then, as well as everything that has happened (a year and a half of college etc) in my life since Hyderabad. At her sister’s apartment over tea we chatted for a good while until Ankush arrived, having finished his studies for the day at his college where he was taking a brief course before starting a job. When he came we decided to have dinner there, as Anu’s older sister offered to cook. I of course watched intently over her shoulder, hoping to glean more experience at preparing Indian food, an art which I someday hope to engage myself without being tethered to every step in a cook book. Our meal consisted of rice, daal, aloo gobi (potato-cauliflower fry), curd, spicy pickle relish, and fried onions that the grandmother of anu’s brother-in-law had prepared. I was absolutely perfect. Perhaps my taste in Indian food wasn’t lessened permanently after; perhaps just more seasoned. This was food that I would deem quintessential. Not food that one would seek out at an acclaimed eatery in the center of a city, but food that is enjoyed just about every day by just about everyone in just about every home: Indian food—food that Indians eat. Or so my experience and conceptualizations go; what do I know really, I don’t live here. In any case, my two platefuls were an absolute treat and left a clean and satisfying aftertaste. Continuing to talk amongst ourselves for hours, I didn’t reach my bed in Colaba until about 2 am. Because it was so late, I didn’t bother finding the ticket booth to get a ticket, figuring there probably wouldn’t be someone checking anyway. Wrong. As I was leaving the platform, I was asked for the ticket. A rs. 250 fine isn’t hefty, but is disappointing, as it turned out to be one of those the-one-time-you-don’t-do-it-you-get-screwed events.

The next day panned out in a similar pattern. After waking up and visiting the internet café, I showered and got ready for the day. My first stop was to meet Anu at Mumbai Central station where we would walk to a restaurant nearby that sold famously-regarded “snack food.” It’s hard to call snack food as it’s certainly leaps and bounds above a potato chip. We got minted flat rice pancakes, a Fasri (Irani) rice dish, dahi sev puri (small fried breads underneath a bed of crunchies, liquidy yogurt, and spices), and many others. Again, some remote tastes during a bite conjured up a slight sickly feeling, but all was delicious. How conflicting.

Anu and I hopped back on the train; she was headed home for a puja ceremony, and I was heading up north to Andheri where Ankush was staying. Above Anu’s location is an entirely different section of Mumbai, and Andheri was in the thick of it. The southern portion, especially Colaba, was relatively spacious, only harbored taxis (no noisy and lower-class autos), and had sporadic British colonial architectures that would remind you of a cathedral or Big Ben. The northern portion smacked me in the face as I stepped of the train at Andheri. I’ve seen some pretty chaotic and crowded places, and this was certainly up on the list. It was a sensory-overload stimulation of a whir of autos, closely weaving people, street food and shops, and a full range of wafting delicious and not-so-delicious smells. Dizzying indeed. I knew Ankush was taking a nap after his classes anyway, so I decided to find a seat on a box where I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way and simply close my eyes. A bit of internalization and sorting things out was just what I needed, as well as time to process everything going on. After a few minutes, I was recharged to tackle Andheri once again all the way to the college, with a cleared mind along the way.

The college, much like the University of Hyderabad, was contrastingly spacious and green. His dorm was also new and very nice with tile flooring. After an hour or so of meeting roommates and resting, Ankush and I headed off to a spot where I knew I would like to eat. Out at the main road, autos were everywhere. But not a drop to spare. EVERY one was occupied, and every once in a while when one would come by empty, the driver wouldn’t want to go where we were asking. It took a good 20 or 30 minutes to finally get one, but the time in the choking pollution and honking herd of tightly-weaving autos was worth it. We went to another college, where on the street sat one after the other a line of food venders where the students would frequent. The smell was enough to convince me, as well as the display. The man assembling dosas (think Indian quesadilla) that I watched for a good half hour was obviously experienced, his hands flying fast, spreading out rice batter, tossing around chopped vegetables, sauces, and powdered spices amongst three different dosas at one time. Dosa is a typical south Indian food, usually filled with potato and spices. These were made with the fusion of the culinary traditions of both the north and the south in mind. The form was a dosa, the content much different. The two that Ankush and I got had the tastes of saucy, robust, mouth-watering north Indian masala. And melted cheese. I reminded me of an Indian cross between a quesadilla and pizza, although that of course is a gross oversimplification. Ankush was full after one, but I was so smitten, I had no choice but to order up another one. Worth it, worth it, worth it on all accounts. I have a pretty strict policy against giving out 10s and perfects. My favorite restaurant in Hyderabad earned one though. And this is the second that comes to mind, and the only street food I’ve had that justifies just a high prize. I knew I could count in Ankush I take me to a place that would hit the spot.

Ankush went back to study, and on my way back to Andheri station I stopped at a sweet shop and sampled about a dozen different ones. I have become increasingly wrapped up in the fig flavor, and got several of those. After topping it all off with a stick of kulfi, or Indian ice cream (think ice cream with a strong sweetened-condensed milk taste), I made my way to the station. The local train I got on was one of the ‘fast’ ones, only stopping at the select larger stations. Fast indeed. We booked down the track as if we were rocketing out from the underworld, the train jostling sideways back and forth as if we were in the middle of an earthquake. Getting back to the dorm at midnight, it wasn’t difficult to fall asleep immediately, despite the audible television in the lobby and a snoring dorm-mate.

The next day, again, internet and shower in the morning. I also checked out and put my bags for the day in a locker at a different hotel. I had heard great things about the local Chowpatti beach, and decided to head there. The beach was a short walk after a short train ride away. Before heading to the beach though, I was sure to pick up a refreshing cup of rose milk at the train station. Just about every time that I was getting off or going onto a train in Mumbai I would have a glass of this. It’s easily recognizable at a vendor’s stand, as it’s bright (practically neon) opaque pink. The milk has a satisfying sweet initial taste, and then a refreshing floral rose aftertaste that lingers. They also add these gel-like fruit seeds in it, giving it a sporadic bubble texture.

The beach was probably three-quarters of a mile long and had lots of chaat (snack) and kulfi (ice cream) vendors at one end. The coast was pretty crowded with people, although no beach accessories like umbrellas and towels to get in the way. Most everyone enjoyed the area fully clothed, including the few people in the water; I was astonished to see people in tight jean swimming and then spreading out on the sandy beach after. My perceptions of uncomfortable sensations evidently didn’t apply here. After spending a good deal of time simply sitting on the beach and soaking up the atmosphere, I walked to the other end and eventually found a famous kulfi shop, selling dozens of flavors of the Indian ice cream. I got into a discussion with some similar-aged Germans who were traveling around the world for a year before school started. We shared flavors of fig, banana, mango, chocolate, and pistachio. In the mood for more tasty treats, I made my way over to all the chaat vendors on the beach. First I got this rose-flavored milk slushy (still smitten with the rose flavored milk I’d pick up at the train stations). After that, I found a place that sold kulfi falooda, the sweet ice cream but with flavored noodles spread out on top. Curious, I ordered up a fig kulfi falooda and was completely amazed by it. What a fascinating texture the sloshy noodles and the cooling ice cream made! And lots of flavors involved; half the noodles had rose flavoring and half were flavored with something orange. Filled with my share of sweets, next I got some actual food, a dish that I had been intending on getting for some time called pav bhavi. I hadn’t been really exposed to this in the South, perhaps it was more of a North thing. The plate had a red, blended, masala-laden veg curry on one half, and came with two halved garlic bread-like buns as well as the essential condiments on the side: a heap of chopped onions and lime/lemon slices. Yummmm. Stuffed and actually not feeling too great after so much sugar, I sat at the vendor’s eating area and watched people go past for a good hour: families playing with children, people eating, imagining what the heated conversation was about over there, seeing potential customers be scared away by half a dozen competing and shouting vendors. Heading back at about sunset, my day consisted mostly of relaxing on the beach and eating ice cream.

Back in Colaba, the man who showed me to the dorm I stayed at was eager to show me around after I mentioned I wanted to go to the nearby market bazaar. I didn’t realize it, but there was also a massive celebration going on. Today was a festival to Krishna, and the whole day massive truckloads of celebrating men wearing colored shirts could be heard here and there honking and shouting and cheering and clanging their drums like a marching band percussion section. That wasn’t the end of it though. Originating from one of Krishna’s stories, the custom was for these excited groups to form human pyramids in the middle of the street in order to reach a lofty clay jar strung between two buildings. The man at the top would shatter it and colored liquid dye would shower everyone. Walking around the market place, every once in a while you’d see a smaller group assemble and try to get to one. Once the point man got to the top of the 3-or-so story pyramid, I was surprised to see him smash his head into the pot, sending bright pink color everywhere. Jumping back, I still was splattered with a few spots. In other areas, massive crowds of cheering people would fill large intersections in front of a bright colored stage blasting music from massive speakers, shaking the whole area. A large team would assemble under a pot strung from a crane or from what must have been the fifth stories of buildings. One layer after the other, the pyramid would be constructed, and if the whole mass of people didn’t collapse before reaching the top, smashing the pot would send everyone back into a frenzy of cheering.

Back at the hotel I gathered my bags and chatted with an Israeli traveler until it was time for me to head to the train station. After a goodbye and a thank you to the hotel man who I had spent the evening with wandering around the celebration to Krishna, I loaded into the taxi to take me to CST terminal and reached with time to spare observing the thick scurrying crowd that filled the 14 platforms. CST is probably Mumbai’s most famous train station, adorned with a picturesque massive colonial building face and shoveling in and out record numbers of thousands of people every day.

The ride to Hyderabad was an exciting one, not because it was eventful but because I couldn’t wait to get back to the city as I reminisced of my favorite restaurants and other nostalgic sights, smells, and friends that I associated with the area. Unloading at about 12:30 in the afternoon with my bags and all, I hopped right back onto a local train and headed immediately to my top priority for my visit to Hyderabad: a massive lunch at Paradise Restaurant. I had been waiting for this for almost 2 years. Still remembering the way from the train station and recognizing some buildings on the way, I basked in the aromatic waftings of the restaurant after I reached and contemplated what I would order. I knew I wanted chicken biryani (flavorful rice dish cooked with ghee and layered with spices), of which the restaurant and Hyderabad as a whole is famous. I also knew I wanted the malai kofta. I decided to order a new dish as well to see how I liked it, a pepper curry. And boy did I chow down. Helping after helping, I chowed down enough food for about three people. Remember my hesitancy to dish out 10/10? The malai kofta at Paradise is the second 10 that I have no problem admitting. Too hard to describe. Just go and get it, then you’ll see. Like a pig rolling around in a mud pit, I must have had a wide smile spread across my face the whole time, as I was finally back to my favorite and long-awaited-for restaurant.

Taking care not to crush my bulging stomach with my backpack in my front, I went back to the train station and headed toward the other end of the city to the University of Hyderabad where I intended to stay at the new international guest house. The old guest house that I had spent a good deal of time in 2 years ago had been converted into a Ladies Hostel (as well as the International Student Hostel where I used to live), and starting the semester after I left, the SIP house and international hostel were combined into a massive dorm located at the other end of campus. I was excited to see the new place, however its great distance from the front part of campus meant that I’d need to take a rickshaw from the main gate there. Despite even the speed of a bicycle, a 15 minute ride is required if you want to get from the entrance of campus to the new international hostel. The Muhlenberg students that went there after me complained a bit about how far away it was from the rest of campus, including the academic buildings, and I don’t blame them. Of course it is so much nicer and more spacious than the old guest house. We used to have to squeeze through thin halls that could barely fit two passing people, but now the halls were so spacious you could drive a car through them. Voices would echo down the concrete halls but never reach the other end, dissolving into the spacious area as the halls extended past dozens and dozens of rooms. One could barely recognize another from one end of the living room to the other. Our old living room crammed in about 15 chairs, usually filled, as that was the only area to get internet access. Now all the rooms have their own Ethernet jacks. Suffice it to say, I was quite wide-eyed at the changes. Since I’ve been on campus, not only has the new international hostel been finished, but also several other dorms that hold 400 each on that end of campus, as well as many other buildings including a new shopping center. With thousands of acres, the university sure had the space for expansion.

It was a treat to see Mr. Das, the house coordinator, again. The familiar face brought back a great deal of memories, especially about the lazy afternoons I would spend by his desk writing or checking emails on my laptop, as well as all the advice that he would share about traveling and the city, whether leisurely over a cafeteria meal or in one of many, many prompted conversations. He has always brought an air of relaxation and calm to the sometimes irritated guest house (especially in the close quarters we used to be in). After chatting and catching up for some time, I unpacked all my things into my room (with two large windows, a/c, desk, stone floors and all) and took a much-needed shower. That evening I spent meeting many students, exchanging stories, playing sitar and tabla again, and chatting well into the night.

The next morning was an early one. At 5:15 my alarm woke me up mid-dream and I got dressed for yoga. Almost a dozen international students in the certification program do this every day except Sunday. I used to roll out of bed 5 minutes before and be there more-or-less on time; now with a lengthy bike ride ahead of us to north campus, the wakeup call was much earlier. Fortunately one of my new acquaintances let me borrow his bike. The yoga class went same as always, and it was refreshing to get re-familiarized with the routine that I had grown accustomed to 2 years ago but since have mostly forgotten. Both yoga teachers recognized me, well at least by the end. The older teacher that would correct our postures (who the international students would affectionately call ‘grandpa’) stepped into my vision at a few points in time with a confused look and a furrowed brow. By the end, he not only remembered me but also my family, as I had shown him pictures on my laptop 2 years ago.

After class, two students, Jeff and Amanda, were interested in seeing a part of the north campus that I had used to go running in. They hadn’t seen past the yoga studio, but the life sciences/biochemistry and chemistry buildings were further down the road, as well as several others I didn’t know and another massive one that I was surprised to see under construction. We continued to ride farther and farther all the way to a precarious rock formation that I was glad to see still standing in its mind-bending balanced position. Exploring farther into unchartered territory for all of us, we continued down a dirt road to a ‘town’ of skeletal concrete buildings, consisting only of their frames as if the entire town was simultaneously under construction…or devastated by an atomic bomb. The town spread out for at least a kilometer or two; we reasoned that perhaps these were to be workers buildings or a new housing complex for professors. Riding farther still we climbed to the top of a rocky hill that rose up above the area to see if we could manage a vantage point to see if it were possible to continue down a road or pounded cow path back to the international hostel rather than circle back. From the top, we could see the chemistry building by the yoga studio, as well as the spread of campus back all the way to the south end, including the international hostel probably 2 km ahead in the distance. Although we felt like it would be a possibility to reach by continuing forward, we were deterred by realizing that from the top of our massive hill, things must seem closer in the distance than they actually were. Additionally, what looked like thick brush surrounded the international hostel and seemed like it would be hard to get through. The view was worth the hike, and a massive man-made gorge sank into the earth on one side of our view and stretched probably half way to the hostel. Our jaws dropped upon first spotting it. Perhaps it was a quarry for stone that the university needed for all of its new construction projects. From our view, it was easy to see how massive the campus is. That’s not the lot of it though, there are several lakes I’ve heard about that I haven’t seen too.

Reasoning that it was too much of a risk to continue onwards, we headed back the LONG journey back to the hostel, hoping to arrive before our much-deserved breakfast ended. With flattening tires, it was a chore for me to pedal and I spent most of the way pedaling standing. Sweaty, muddy, and exhausted (and only just before 9 am), the guest house breakfast of French toast, granola with milk, eggs, and bananas was just what I needed. We decided to take a quick nap afterwards.

At 11, I joined my friends along with several others to visit an organization that schooled women as well as sold cloth, clothing, sheets, and other merchandise that they made. We even got a tour of the multiple sari looms, mesmerizing sights when in operation that can entertain for hours. Everyone was heading off to visit Hyderabad’s famous tombs afterward. Having already seen them, I hopped back on a bus heading into the thick of the city to visit my favorite chaat (snackfood) location. My favorite dish consists of a pie crust-like pastry filled with spices and potato crushed and underneath a heap of sweet liquid curd, tangy tamarind sauce, crunchies, spices, coriander leaves, etc etc for a treat jam-packed with multiple flavors, all intermingling and jumping around in the palate as if it were a party. Having, again, eaten enough for 3 people, I strolled around the crowded shopping area and picked up a fig-almond milkshake, a cup of sweet lime juice, and a mouthful of freshly made sweet paan (leaf rolled with spices, sweets, nuts, berries, and coconut bunched up into a cheek-stretching roll). By the time I made it on the bus, it was the busy time of the city. Suffice it to say, the trip back to campus (for most of which I was standing) took 2 full hours. Worth it.

When I got back to campus (well, the south campus hostel area after a lengthy bike ride), I visited with a few Indian students that I had briefly met 2 years ago and who Ankush and Anu put me in touch with. Their new dorms, although scaled down a tad (no a/c, no internet yet) from the international hostel, were even more massive and seemed to house as many people as a high-rise apartment building. For dinner I joined them in their mess hall, enjoying for only rs. 20 a plate of mixed veg curry and limitless rice and daal. They brought a homemade pickle (not dill, a chutney-like picked mixture of pepper, fruit, and spices) to enjoy with the meal. When I asked to taste some, one of them turned and looked at me with unwavering intention. With conviction he said slowly *Matt. This is so. Spicy.* I was like “That’s no problem, I can handle spice!” *Matt, you don’t understand, this is made from the hottest peppers in the world. They come from the Northeast and are rated by the Guinness book of records as spicier than any other pepper in existence.* Excited, I took a tiny, tiny amount to taste. Mixing in a small portion of that into a few bites was quite a punch of spice! Certainly nothing that I couldn’t handle, just making sure that I didn’t get in any bite more than a square half centimeter of pepper. Not only spicy but flavorful, it made the already delicious food twice as tasty.

That evening I headed off with Elliot, a student from the US, to Lingampally, a town nearby. I used to visit the area quite a bit 2 years ago, as it was relatively close to campus. There we found good haleem (a plate of paste consisting of pounded meat, flour, and spices), a dish eaten after sunset during the Islam holy fasting month of Ramadan. After a cup of chai and some chatting with others seated around the stone haleem vat, I bought Elliot some sweet paan and giggled as he would exclaim a loud “WHOA” every time another one of paan’s multiple intense flavors emerged. We strolled around and got some sweets and juice before heading back to campus, followed by a movie on my laptop with about a dozen other students crowded in someone’s room, followed by collapsing into bed and sleeping until 11 the next morning.
That afternoon I headed down into the thick of the old city. I had always remembered the area as a fascinating place: the place to go for authentic food, the Charminar four-pillared monument in the middle of the center intersection, the massive mosque nearby, women in burkas, sparkley bangles, captivating perfumes, and a packed dusty crowd to fill in the gaps. I don’t think I had gone during Ramadan though. From the train station, the auto driver dropped the passenger load off near the main road, as there was no possible way to get closer to the Charminar area. I’ve seen a lot of crowded places in India. This experience took the cake. From the moment I stepped out of the auto, I realized that my personal space barrier needed to shrink to literally only the space my body was occupying. In the whole road, there was not a space that was not filled with a person or occasional irritating motorcycle trying without avail to navigate the crowd. Dazed, I was following as closely as possible someone I had met in the auto. He was half Swedish and half Syrian, and we had struck up a conversation in the auto from the start, realizing that we were both foreigners. He had been working in the Hyderabad area on and off with an NGO for some time, and we were surprised to find that we had both been in Hyderabad at the same time two years ago. A few times he had been on the campus during that semester, and we must have crossed paths at least once because he was able to list all of the friends I had had living in the international student hostel. So anyway, I had followed him to his NGO and then decided to set off (this time not on the main road) to find a famous biriyani place. Eventually stumbling upon it amongst the thick crowd, I ordered up a bowl of their chicken biriyani and a suggested vegetable curry. Good thing I arrived early, the dinner crowd was so huge the wait must have been an hour or so. The meal was delicious, although not surpassing my favorites at Paradise restaurant. Picking up a sweet milky rosy creamy…noodle…dessert and paan just outside the restaurant, I headed back to the train station area, but not without sampling some of my favorite (lotus, sandal, other flowers) perfumes along the way. Disappointed to see that the train had already left, and unexcited about the hour and a half wait for the next train, I took an auto back to Lingampally, which was more costly than I thought, and with traffic, turned out to take much longer as well.

In the shared auto from Lingampally back to campus, a few of the others in the auto started asking me if I had been taking classes on the campus before. They nodded and smiled when I had said I was studying through the SIP program 2 years ago, as they had been students then too and had seen me perform in the cultural performance at the end of the semester (sitar, tabla, kathak, etc). Evidently it had made an impression if two years later they recognized my face in the inside of a dark auto. Despite the long time since being back on campus, it was obvious that a pool of people still existed that knew me. In addition to the coincidental meeting in the old city of all places, as well as the run-in inside the auto back to campus, the day before I was walking out of my friends’ dorm when Sarves (anthropology classmate from 2 years ago) rounded the hall corner on his motorcycle. I hadn’t seen his face, but he yelled MATT, immediately recognizing me. In the same way, 2 days later another classmate from anthropology, Nagaraju, shouted for me as we passed by each other simply walking on the road to and from the hostel area.

Back on campus, I decided to head to Gops, the student canteen where I always used to spend time, to get paneer masala for dinner. This dish was another I had waited for for 2 years. Although I suppose you could call it fast food, the taste of the dish was so distinct and upon my first bite, my memory filled itself with late night dinners with Ankush, Bikram, Sumedha, Anu, Vipin, Rakesh, etc etc., how all their personalities would converge in our conversations, hanging out after dinner at the rock nearby or watching House on someone’s laptop in a dorm room…all that stuff we used to do came flooding back to me. I also could compare how I used to perceive the area with my perceptions now in a way. It’s difficult to articulate, but much of the impact of my second visit to Hyderabad has been attributed to triggered memories emerging not just for nostalgia’s sake, but to readily demonstrate how things used to be for me, in comparison to what they are now. For instance, I had been so starry-eyed upon first being in India that everything had this glitter about it. Of course that didn’t last forever, and this doesn’t mean that I’ve become less interested in India or what my time is like in the country, but just that what is around me doesn’t mean the same anymore. Just as we grow desensitized to patterns and normalities around us, eventually not everything catches my eye in the same way it did before; in addition, you start to realize and notice other things. Such ‘other things’ I still have yet to really explicitly grasp, but it certainly has something to do with being less interested in the consumer nature of travel. I don’t feel like I have to soak up everything to the extent I used to, and so much so that I realize now in a way I lost sight of my own self and perspective/world view. It’s not about losing oneself anymore in an exotic fantasyland. It feels more like bringing oneself to the table to have a conversation with an eccentric friend who in a way is an old acquaintance, but in another way always has something unexpected to say, emerging from depths that extend limitlessly into the unfamiliar.

Although there was no one at Gops that I knew (reaffirming how times have changed), I was about to have another coincidental run-in. Amidst my reminiscing thoughts, a girl about my age approached me from the across table. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I figured she was a crony of my circle of new-fashioned and open-minded friends. *Hi. You don’t know me but I know you.* A smile came across my face. “How?” *Umm, mostly through facebook pictures; the year after you left, I became friends with Sumedha and Anu and Ankush and all them.* Her nickname is Sid, she’s a second year Biochemistry master’s student. After some conversation, we joined Arpan, Pavel, and others in a classroom in the humanities building where I met another of this second generation of the same circle of friends.

The next morning I woke up for yoga, had the delicious guest house breakfast afterwards, took a nap, and did laundry. Since it had been quite a while since washing my clothes at Tushita, I needed to wash just about every article I owned. Washing clothes in a bucket is no problem, but drying them always is. I was disappointed to smell that the odor from my washed clothes was much worse when they had dried the next day than before I had washed them. For this reason I do not like to wash clothes. The smell of clothes that haven’t dried quickly enough (at least I think that’s the reason) puts the strongest frown on my face. I’m baffled. How do people wash clothes here? There are no machines on campus. Why doesn’t everyone smell awful? We all have to dry them in the same air. It’s extremely confusing.

That afternoon/evening Elliot (SIP student from Utah) and I ventured back into Lingampally for biriyani. Actually, we had many things. In fact, if there were any culinary endeavor one were interested in experiencing in Hyderabad, I think we hit it up. First, we stopped at a sweet shop and ordered about a dozen different treats to sample; after assembling a box of our favorites to take back to the university, we moved onto a few dishes of chaat. Elliot hadn’t experienced chaat before, so I was sure to include all my favorites. After a glass of fresh squeezed grape juice and relatively full but still not on to the main course, we hopped into the well-known Lingampally biryani place and shared a plate of beef biryani. And got a plate of beef haleem on the side. After finishing, we made our way to a nearby place that we had already visited a few days ago; we knew that they had delicious sweet paan. While chewing on our juicy, sweet, betel medleys, we watched some men pounding haleem in a vat. With massive 7 foot wooden hammers, two men would alternatively forcefully slide their hammerheads into the vat back and forth, as synchronous as rowing a boat, and obviously requiring at least as much energy. The mixture of meat, flour, and spices needs to be pounded in this way for hours during the day time before it is ready for breaking the daily fast in the evening.

Back on campus, we shared our box of sweets with about 6 others who congregated in my room to watch another movie on my laptop called “What the Bleep Do We Know?” The movie details neuroscientific, psychological, and quantum physical realities that question the foundations of how we know what we think we do about the world around us. I highly recommend it.

The next morning I woke up to late to make it to the yoga session, but ran to the studio to say goodbye to the teachers. The morning and afternoon was jam-packed with saying goodbye to friends, organizing and packing things up, and enjoying one last meal at the guest house. The guest house lunches were always my favorite. For an entire week 2 years ago, I remember only eating lunches every day, having so much that there was no need to eat until 1 pm the next day. This last day, lunch contained my two all-time favorites, eggplant and the sweet gulab jamun (balls of milky dough fried and soaked in rose-flavored sugar syrup). I don’t know whether someone had overheard me talking about my hopes of feasting on these again or whether the will of God that day was merciful, but somehow I this lunch came together as the perfect last meal, having the remaining dishes that I could have hoped to taste again while in Hyderabad. Feasting down several helpings of eggplant and gulping down nearly a dozen gulab jamun, my culinary expectations of returning to Hyderabad were fulfilled.

Although this was only my fifth day in Hyderabad, it was difficult to say goodbye to my new SIP friends. I felt like I knew them in the same way I knew my old exchange friends from two years ago. I felt as though we were going to spend a lot more time together exploring the city and such like we used to do. All good things must come to an end though, and after saying farewell to Mr. Das (who five days ago was really the only person that I explicitly knew on campus), I made my way to the station, meeting a friendly local named Siddharth who I talked with while waiting for the train to take me to Bangalore.

The area near the train station in Bangalore was littered with relatively budget guest houses, but one after the other was filled. It took scouting out about a dozen places before I found one that had a vacancy. That evening I met up with Sumedha (undertaking PhD in economics) and Meenakshi (working at an NGO focused on revitalizing indigenous healthcare practices) at a bar/restaurant in an upscale mall to celebrate Sumedha’s 23rd birthday. I hadn’t seen either of them for 2 years, but once seated at our table, it was just as if we were back at Gops. Sam was also there, a friend of Sumedha’s and Meenakshi’s. After a pitcher of beer, food, and chocolate cake under conversations of the US economy and Indian nationalism alongside jokes about our past at Hyderabad, we walked to Sam’s close-by apartment to spend the night. We fell asleep to a Robin Williams standup comedy show and the ‘Soup Nazi’ Seinfeld episode on Sam’s laptop.

The next evening I met Annapurna for dinner at her home. Annapurna was our CIEE tour guide on the two trips that our group took while staying at Hyderabad. During those trips Annapurna and I spent a good deal of time conversing about India and our lives. I was glad to still have her number, as visiting her again was just what I needed. After meeting her newly-adopted 4 year old daughter and a delicious meal of guacamole, mint chutney, kichiri rice, and veg pulao, we chatted for hours about pasts as well as Buddhist ideas of being and knowing, and how this relates to intelligence vs. feeling. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the relationship of intelligence and feeling, and whether conceptualization, analysis, rationalization, and objectivity (what might be called intelligence) are inherently separate from the subjective feelings, experiences, and emotions that we have. Perhaps my recent investigation into the Buddhist dharma dealing with the investigation of subjective experience has prompted this in a way. The seemingly vast rift separating these areas I think is a construction based on the value judgment that is placed on emotion being rash but substantiating life, and on logical rationalization having long-term objective applicability and defining life based on principles and codes. I’m sure many of us relate to being caught up in deciding between the two. Also, consistently serving one over the other can understandably lead to problems like mid-life crises, an insecure lifestyle, and a mind-body disconnect. But I wonder if such a divide is inherent, as if in any decision we need to choose between emotion and intellect, or whether such a lens of looking at ourselves in the world is a construction in order to understand things better, in which case the boundaries of our conceptualizations of rationalization and personal experience become much more fluid and blurry, suggesting our role in forcing the two apart. Just another facet of how we understand ourselves in the world around us. And as such the queries of a curious mind, prompted by this stimulating environment, proceed.

The following day began one step at a time, first with a lazy wake up, then with some stretching, then with laundry, then with a shower. Most of the clothes I was washing I was rewashing in the hopes of having them smell normal. I craftily strung my computer chord and cell phone charger wires diagonally across my room to hang dry them under the ceiling fan. With the fan on high and all the windows open, it was my hope that drying would proceed as fast as possible.

That afternoon I went by bus to the M.G. Road area, a very posh and trendy part of Bangalore, no doubt a section of town to which Bangalore owes its reputation for being one of the most developed cities in India. Walking around my jaw was practically perpetually dropped. KFCs, McDonalds, designer clothing, several multi-level shopping malls, frozen yogurt to rival LA and New York’s Pinkberry, and fancy adolescent groups of friends all about, as well as families with children who always seemed to be dissatisfied and screaming. My only indulgence (this isn’t my kind of area to actually consume) was a smoothie from a Jamba Juice-esque place. I was sucked in to the mango madness flavor along with the appeal of health-boosting antioxidant, brain power, metabolism, wheat grass, protein, and spirulina smoothie accessories. After people watching and exploring, I stopped into a restaurant Annapurna suggested to me in the area and ordered a delicious meal of Keralan chicken curry, palak, and rice. While waiting for the food I browsed through some new books that I had bought from street-side stores (selling copied books for fractions of the fixed prices you see in the States). One is a book on the 2012 prophesies, another a book about reality suggested by a friend in Hyderabad, and another that Annapurna suggested: an account of spiritual mindfulness drawing its material from the ancient cultures of Tibet and the far east and dovetailing nicely with the dharma of Mahayana Buddhism.

That evening back at the guest house I was happy to smell that the clothes were relatively normal and to feel that most were sufficiently dry. And I went to bed happy.

The next day I met Annapurna and her daughter for lunch at a south-Karnatakan (of the southern state Bangalore is in) village home-like restaurant that served a meal like I wouldn’t believe. Laid out on the table was a wide banana leaf for each of us, and as the meal progressed, men would stop by with pales of food and give you a spoonful. One after another after another, soon the banana leaf was filled with an assortment of tasty servings. Then they kept coming with different ones, and more and more. Initially the taste was so delicious I was sure that I would need second and third helpings of every dish, but by the time we rolled around to what must have been the 25th dish, I realized that I’d only be able to fit one serving of each. For the first time in my remembered history, it was necessary to be creative with how you ate this meal. With one or two dishes, it’s really no issue; you can combine, eat separate, whatever. With a dozen in front of you, things change. You want to get the best taste out of it, and that doesn’t mean eating one thing at a time nor eating random ones right after the other or combined. Becoming familiar with the taste of each, you realize what tastes good combined with what, what after what, what before what, etc etc. As they kept coming with more and more, at times I would practically short-circuit, unable to figure out how to proceed. The process became an art, creating the taste in your palate with the painting-board of culinary colors and varieties in front of you. One shock after another, my mouth filled itself with a brand new taste I had never before conceived of over and over. It was like swimming for the first time or riding a bike for the first time or something, simply astonishing, and totally new. And as we concluded, I realized that the meal had been the tastiest that I can remember having in India.

We headed back to Annapurna’s home and the three of us painted a small Ganesh statue (it was Ganesha’s birthday, as well as the Muslim holiday of Eid). After a quick nap and more conversation over afternoon tea, I headed back out into the trendy M.G. Road area to meet Sumedha and Meenashki again. We’d peruse through the streets; when they’d step into a purse or shoe shop I would sit on the front steps and watch people pass. Then we had a banana split. And more exploring and chatting over coffee. Soon enough, it was time to say our goodbyes. In the same way as I loved being back in Hyderabad, it had been a very therapeutic experience to meet with these people again. To realize that they still existed, that time continued here too, but these people still were here just as I remembered them. Not floating away in some far-off fantasyland, as India had felt to me before, but other people on planet Earth that didn’t feel as far away as they used to be.

Today I took one last adventure through the bus system to a nearby area for lunch. The bus system in Bangalore is the main means of public transportation. It is arguably the most extensive and intricate of any city in the country, and the city bus stand by where I’m staying has dozens of platforms. For me, it was too difficult to figure out. Asking people/drivers/bus conductors where buses were going and where to find the buses I needed was a must. Basically, amidst hundreds of buses, a complicated numbering system, and thousands of destinations, the process became relatively simplified by just asking around. So, after about 5 attempts, I found someone who knew where I wanted to go, and he led me to the correct bus. Annapurna had suggested this place, a dhaba (eatery) right next to a sikh temple, for its delicious Punjabi food. Punjabi, and north Indian food in general, is what we from the US usually think of when Indian food comes to mind. Food from the southern regions is largely neglected in the US, but is a wonder to enjoy. I had debated on whether or not to revisit the Karnataka restaurant that Annapurna and I had visited yesterday, but after much deliberation, settled on this Punjabi place. I was interested mainly trying something new and also seeing whether or not it upheld its championed seat as one of the most famous and delicious Indian food types. The dhaba was surely maintained a small, homely feel. With only about 10 tables inside a concrete and steel-roofed hut, the wait to enter was about an hour. Guess that means it’s well liked by the locals. I had ordered an eggplant dish, a paneer dish, and a dal dish, along with rice and paratha bread. The other three at my table ordered the same dal dish and paratha for each. They understandably left much before I had finished. Guess that means I finished 9x the amount of food that any of the other 3 at my table had. I served up everything onto my plate, and tasted the dal before the bread arrived. The look on my face must have been one of astonishment; my eyes widened and my eyebrows raised, and a smile creeped up one side of my mouth. This was one of the best dals I had ever tasted. It was hard to describe, but we’ll leave it at very good. I had to finish my helpings even before I introduced bread and rice into the mix. The other two were equally shockingly delicious, as well as horrifyingly heavy. The food swam under a thin layer of oil, and was drizzled on top with a heap of ghee (clarified butter). Similarly, the paratha had a dollop of ghee on top. Filled to the brim, and stomach tight and heavy, I waddled outside and visited the temple for some time. I bet when I sweat I’ll start to smell like spoiled milk and cheese. The meal was very filling and delicious, but in comparison to the Karnataka meal I had yesterday, not as satisfying nor refreshing. All Indian food types have their pluses and minuses, but one thing is for sure, over the past cumulative 7 months I’ve been in India, I’ve surely warmed up to the south Indian taste of things quite a bit.