Epicenter of India's Swine Flu Epidemic: Pune

Just in the past week the city has gone mad with swine flu. And most of them don't have it. I mean, only 300 (out of 4 million) people have been diagnosed, under 10 people have died, but the response has been completely out of proportion.



Yesterday, the government closed down all schools for one week and multiplexes and malls for three days while encouraging people to "avoid public places." Obviously, this has decimated our attempts to schedule the final workshops for our cycling awareness program. :(


About 50% of the people you see on the streets or in shops are wearing facemasks (these ones were in a handicraft store we visited). The worst part is that we are being harassed for not wearing them! I was walking down the street the other day and a man started yelling at me, very excited, ran into his shop and came back with a facemask for me, held out at arm's length. The papers have been reporting that the swine flu is coming from the US, so everyone thinks foreigners are carriers (even though we haven't been there in 2 months!). Shopkeepers put on masks when we go in, and people cover their noses with their scarves when we pass by on the street. It's completely ridiculous. Yesterday, I gave up and wore a facemask on the bike ride home so I would stop being stared at or harassed by mask salesmen. I know that the media is blowing this out of proportion and that scientifically swine flu is not dangerous, but it's making me scared that everyone (including our program directors and Devaki!) is acting as if it is. Whatever happened to rational thinking?? I'm pretty sure more people are dying of AIDS in this city per day than swine flu!

Frustrating, and at the same time a little scary...

In other news:

Sari-licious! :)

Weekend in New Delhi

I realize I owe everyone details about the swine flu situation/complete panic in Pune, but I wanted to post about my Delhi trip first! It was really great to be able to get out of Pune after finishing those two intense papers. Carolyn, Coleen, and Jessie also came to Delhi that weekend, but they spent most of the weekend traveling to, seeing, and returning from Agra and the Taj. I feel like a bunch of people are going to be angry at me for not seeing the Taj Mahal while I was in India, but I felt like by staying in the city I also got to see some impressive sights and have fun with friends!

I arrived in Delhi on Friday night and met up with my friend Aman from my Comp Lit class at Princeton. We went out to dinner in Defense Colony with about 7 of his other friends, who were all very nice! We ordered South Indian seafood, which was awesome, and then got paan off the street. Indians have it after dinner as kind of a mouth freshener (it may contain tobacco?), but it was sweet and pretty good. Aman's friends were all impressed that I did not get sick. Afterwards, we went back to Aman's house and watched part of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! before my other Princeton friend Neha came over. After the first part of the movie (yea VCDs!), we had to go home because it was 2am! Neha and I still want to acquire the second half of that movie and finish it.

Oh yes. There are a lot of dogs all over India. In Pune, we have befriended the ones around our hostel. Even the ones that we don't pet, name and feed are pretty non-confronational-- they wait for cars to pass before crossing the road and usually waltz by without noticing you. NOT TRUE in Hauz Kaus! We were nearing our house in Aman's car and we stopped to check if our neighborhood gate was open, and these street dogs started forming a circle around the car. We didn't think anything of it until, all at once, they charged at us, barking and snapping! The windows were open, so I screamed! We drove off past them rather quickly, but it was completely bizarre! Why are there roaming gangs of attack dogs in Delhi?? It reminded me of my friend Kaitlin's story about monkey gangs in Africa, who apparently wait along roadsides with their spears...

Neha has several relatives in Delhi, and this weekend we stayed upstairs from her great-aunt and uncle (I believe) in Hauz Kaus. Their place was v. nice-- this was our living room! The beds were more than an inch thick, the air conditioning worked (v. important in Delhi, the climate is much like Virginia's in the summer), it was basically paradise.

We planned out an ambitious itinerary for Saturday afternoon sightseeing, made possible by the fact that Neha has a driver to take us wherever we want in the city. He's helped her practice her Hindi, and I was so impressed by how much she's improved in only three months! She could speak nearly fluently with Niraj, the driver, while I could only catch a couple words here and there (he also spoke really fast!). Slightly embarassing... but it's harder to get people to practice Hindi (esp in Pune) than you would think. I have such a low baseline that people often get frustrated within a couple minutes because I can only say so much! I'm hoping my friend Devaki will Skype me from her job in France to practice during the year...

Anyway, first stop on our trip was the Qutb Minar!

The stone slab blurb on the tower. Basically, it is a very old (12th century) minar built by a Mughal king as part of a larger mosque/tomb/madrasa complex. But reading about it is only so impressive...

You really have to see it to believe it! The structure is as tall as a skyscraper-- much taller than you'd expect from something built so long ago. You have to crane your head to see the top... try to compare the size of the people in the picture and you start to get an idea.

But even cooler than the size of the minar was the detailed artwork on the side, all the way up. Each little tier has intricate carved designs, and below they have carved designs and arabic writing. It's so beautiful. The shape of the minar is also beautiful-- note the alternating round and square portions. I have lots of pictures of the minar up close and from far away because I thought it was so cool... but too many to post here!

Like I said, the minar is the focal point of a larger complex, but this part is not as complete as the minar itself.

The most complete part is the Alai-Darwaza and accompanying mosque structure. The decoration here is also remarkably detailed and certainly beautiful-- almost no surface is completely smooth and without design. It's hard to imagine that these buildings are over 800 years old.

You can see what I mean about detailing when you look at the walls-- fish/ivy everywhere! Neha had been to Qutb Minar before and has learned about Islamic architecture at Princeton, so she was able to explain a lot of significant things about the architecture to me. For example, it's notable that there are so many lotuses among the decorations at Qutb Minar. In Islam, the lotus has no religious significance, but it is a very important symbol for Hindus. The kings who comissioned the buildings were Muslim, but the workers themselves were Hindu. Because they were familiar with carving decorative lotus flowers, they appear everywhere... kind of suggesting that the two religions can coexist. In fact, if you could get an aerial view of the minar itself, you would see that the top is decorated with a giant lotus.

Another cool fact to know is that the minar and other buildings are constructed from "recycled" temple parts-- the stone from the Hindu temples the Muslim rulers destroyed became part of the new mosques they built. You can see this reflected in the various colors that make up the arches and columns. Personally, I think that the changing colors make the buildings even more like artwork, like a standing mosaic.

You can also see remnants of the old temples in the individual stones that now make up the Islamic structures. Some of them still have images of Hindu gods, like Lord Ganesh, still visible on the blocks. These images were covered by plaster when the mosque was in use, but since then the plaster has worn away and you can see the original carvings.

AND then we got bored of taking formal pictures, so we played in the columns!!

After Qutb Minar, we went into the central district, Connaught Place, to see the government buildings. Here's we're standing in front of the Rashtrputi Bhavan... the President's House. :)

Better picture through the fence.

There are other government offices, like the Defense building, surrouding the President's house that have similar architecture-- all very beautiful. Can you imagine working in a place like that? Actually, since it was a Saturday, this area wasn't crowded at all. The sidewalks were wide and clear, everything was relatively clean and green. It's clear where the upkeep crews spend most of their time...

Aha. Neha told me to take a picture of this and label it as viciously ironic.

Indian flag on top of the nearby Parliament House.

The Parliament House, which is round in shape. There is a lawn, fountain, and traffic barrier in front, so we couldn't see much more than this. The lawn actually continues all the way along the sides of the main street these buildings are on, kind of Washington DC mall-style. On one end, you can see the silhouette of the President's House, and if you turn in the other direction you can see that the lawn and road lead straight to Delhi's Gateway of India structure (that looks just like the one in Mumbai). Very nicely laid out. Neha was quick to point out the complications though-- the people relaxing on the lawns were very poor, but they were lucky because most poor people in the city can't even get to this place at all. A lot of money goes into making this part of the city attractive and orderly (traffic stayed in LANES!), but more could be spent on even marginally improving conditions in the general city and the slums. Interesting to think about...

After Connaught Place, we visited a marketplace called Dilli Haat. It was a more formalized place than the Tulsibaag bazaar in Pune (there were wall and an entry fee) and it sold wildly different stuff. Pune mostly sells jewelry and clothes, but here there were beautiful wooden handicrafts like trays, statues, pottery, and other home decorations. I told Neha I could probably make a Martha Stuart house using only decor from this marketplace... and that I would but these stalls on my wedding registry. It was a funny thought-- I can imagine the shopkeepers nearly dying of anticipation as my entirely foreign wedding party waltzed in to buy presents!

More pottery-- in my opinion these designs seemed like hybrid India and Africa. :P

And the result of KC being in a place with cool trinkets for good prices... so much shopping. But they were mostly gifts, I swear!

We went back to East of Kailash, the house where Neha stayed for most of the time during her summer internship. East of Kailash is considered a pretty good neighborhood, but her driver lives right across the street in a slum area. He called us out to show us when the government water tanker came to deliver water to the neighborhood, which happens once each day. It was quite a bit of commotion. About a hundred people flowed out from the slum to fill their buckets from the tanker's hoses. Always eye-opening to see how close poverty resides to the privledged lifestyle in India.

We went out Saturday night to meet other Neha in Vasant Vihar and on the way we got to see Delhi's preparations for the celebration of Janmashtami, Krishna's birthday, on August 14th. These lighted gates were put up over the main highways, and they're really cool to see at night!

Woohoo! We met Neha at a lounge called RPM and had fun hanging out in the air-condioning with the music.

We bar-hopped to a couple of other places too, including this one called Turquoise Cottage. They played lots of retro US music, including my all-time favorite, We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel. I'm proud of my nerd taste in music. :) And, for those observant people, yes I am wearing the same shirt Neha was wearing during the day. It's actually mine, and I let her borrow it for the day so she didn't have to wear her leopard print tank top while we were sightseeing!

Getting home after this was the real adventure... and probably one of the most scary experiences I've ever had. I'll suffice to say that we had to stand around with a bunch of sketchy men late at night until we finally got a ride, and then had a real panic once we reached the neighborhood because we realized a car with two men inside was following us. Neha saw the parked car waiting for us with the lights off, so we were able to quickly jump back in our car before they got out. They drove alongside us and started talking to the driver and asking us to come with them, so we shut the window and asked the driver to step on it. There was about a 30 min. chase where we spun around corners trying to lose these guys, ducked under the seats so they couldn't see us, Neha and Neha shouted in Hindi at the driver (who was also rather freaked out), and we finally were able to hide in a gated community until they were gone. Neha (Kumar) told Neha (Goel) and I later that she was really glad we hadn't gotten shot, which is what happened to a different girl she knew. AHH!

Okay, so we DID live to see another day and learned the valuable lesson of never staying out in Delhi past about 11pm, or probably 8pm to be safe. >.< The next morning we got up to go see my last sight of the trip, since my flight was at 4:15pm.

This was Akshardham, a temple built by a specific sect of Hindus that build similar temples all around the world (including Toronto??). The building is stunning to see from afar, and once again the detailing was incredible to see up close. The temple itself was closed for maintenance, but we were able to walk around the area and see the greenery and carvings. There's a walkway along the base of the temple with 3 foot fall elephants carved into the walls-- scenes of elephants playing, interacting with humans, worshipping gods, etc. Everything looked so realistic! One elephant was carved to be wearing a cloth drape, which actually appeared to have waves and texture. There were also depictions of people pouring water or elephants wading in water that looked strikingly lifelike. To believe that the temple only paid for materials-- all the artwork and construction was done for free!

The downside about Akshardham was that, to prevent terrorist attacks, we had to be strip-searched before going in. This meant no purses, cameras, cell phones, backpacks, water bottles or tridents (as depicted on the sign outside) allowed in. They even opened Neha's mascara and change purse to check it! The only other picture we were able to get was this corny one out in the parking lot... Namaste!

Though some parts of Delhi didn't impress me (the weather, sketchy men, attack dogs), I was very happy to see some cool historical sights. We didn't even get to go to the more famous places like the Red Fort (closed) and the Bahai Lotus Temple (also closed), and I still was impressed with the cool architecture and stories behind the buildings. It would have been difficult to live there, I think, but I feel good that I at least got to visit. I mean, it is a capital city, and I am a WWS tool. :)

Only a week left in India, but I'm not ready to leave! Maybe if I get swine flu, I won't have to... just kidding Mom, really!

Labors of Love

Aside from this past weekend, I'd spent most of the last two weeks finishing two papers for the end of my program. The first one was a 15-page Political Economy paper about how my NGO's Cycling Awareness program relates to larger political, economic, and development issues surrounding Pune. I found some interesting articles about specific events in Pune that gave me a new perspective on how national "development" attitudes are affecting local politics.

The second paper ended up being about 40 pages, 1.5 spaced, and is I think the largest single thing I've ever written in my life. It was a report about my internship with a bit of a research element-- I described and evaluated my internship experience within the larger context of investigating the ability environmental NGOs to tackle India's development challenges. I worked on writing this paper for a good 5 days, but the last night I actually stayed up the entire night making finishing touches. For some reason, I couldn't get myself to just BS the ending... it was cathartic (?) to evaluate my experience and see if I really accomplished what I'd set out to do. Ever since I started writing, I had this vision of what I wanted the report to turn out like, and I couldn't bear working so hard to get something that I knew could be better. I also wanted the report to turn out well so I could give it to PEI and let them know what I did with their funding this summer. :)

Anyway, I didn't sleep at all last Thursday night while I wrote the report, but since I had a flight and a different presentation to make on Friday morning I couldn't crash-- I just showered and went to school like normal. I ate lunch, got on my flight, napped for an hour, met Aman and Neha in Delhi, watched a movie, and was up until about 2am on Friday night. And I was perfectly fine! It's like the whole "not sleeping" thing never happened! Since I NEVER pull all-nighters, even at Princeton, I was shocked. I think the secret must be Emergen-C... I thought I was dehydrated, so I'd been drinking about six packs of those vitamins per day for the last several days. I remember drinking some more on Thursday night because I knew that it wasn't healthy to stay up so late, and it must have been what kept my energy up through the whole day. It's like caffeine without the crash! I'm so happy I discovered this... not that I don't love sleep, but maybe now I'll actually have the energy to finish my school papers on schedule...

In case anyone was more interested about the details of my internship, I've added links to both my Political Economy term paper and my massive Internship Report (note that the internship report is missing the appendices, which I had to print separately). A couple pages of the two are similar (ie. background on Pune's traffic situation), but since the two papers have different aims they are pretty different reads. The Internship Report was my masterpiece, but in all honesty I think the other paper is more interesting in terms of finding out how my organization is trying to change the way Pune is developing and reduce traffic congestion. Please feel free to scan!

Five hours of Shopping!

Only have some/no time to update, but me and my roommate Shraddha went shopping yesterday and had a lot of fun! I had to buy some gifts for people, but the best part was when we went to the tailor and got to pick out the designs for my salwar kameez sets. You look at a book of styles, kind of like you would if you were getting a haircut, and we picked out the neckline, sleeves and back. It was really helpful to have Shraddha along... there were a couple of cuts I saw and I was like, "This looks cool!" and she said the equivalent of, "No. Actually, that looks really tacky in real life. What about this?" Can't imagine what I would have come up with without her.

I'll be able to pick up my finished clothes next Tuesday... and I couldn't believe how much it cost. The tailors take my fabric and my measurements and hand-make two kurtas and pants for me, and I only pay them Rs. 330. That's not even $8. I can't even imagine how much I would have to pay for tailored clothes in the US!

Schoolwork is just about killing me... I have 11 pages to write between now and Friday morning. It's a writeup about my internship with some external research involved, and even though it's the worst thing ever right now I have a feeling I'll be proud when I finish.

Got to go!

Back from the dead...

I'm exaggerating. Though being sick here tends to do that to me more readily than being sick in the States.

On Sunday I came down with an awful sort of virus that made me sick to my stomach with an on-and-off 101 degree fever. :) I had to travel home to Pune on the 3 hour train that day, and was sick all day Monday and Tuesday as well. Luckily, I'm on medicine now and not feeling quite as dizzy and dehydrated as I was, so I'm back in school, at work, and (as a consequence) on the Internet!

I've decided that it would take too much time/effort to go back and post all the pictures I was meaning to, so you'll have to take me at my word when I say that me and my friends have been very busy. We have been working, cycling, (not) paying attention in class, and going out to some cool places at night. We had a lot of fun two weeks ago at a club called Scream in Le Meredian Hotel. It was actually just like an American club-- disco lights, dance floor... except the music was decidedly more Hindi+techno. I really liked it though, mostly because I love dancing! However, our host mom and the program directors got really angry at us for coming home late, especially when they found out we were "out," and so now we have a firm curfew of 10pm. Which sucks. Which is why last weekend, we decided to TRAVEL....
The train ride from Pune to Mumbai is, as I've said before, a must-see experience. The mountains are lusciously green and there are waterfalls literally falling off the mountainsides-- like this one!

Seeing the villages and farms in the mountains and in the foothills is also really cool. This was my favorite little town that we saw-- perched right on the side of a cliff! The "horizon" near the top of the picture is actually where the side of the mountain drops off, which I thought would a kind of dangerous location for houses... but whatever. The homes were all brightly painted and quite cute.

The train compartment we (my friends from the Alliance and I) traveled in this time was MUCH nicer than when I went to Mumbai before. We were able to book tickets well ahead of our travel date, so we sat in an AC car with normal chairs and space, like you would expect on an American train. The windows were strangely tinted though, so we escaped into the connecting area between the cars to hang out the sides and take pictures. We must have taken a million-- don't worry, I didn't post them all. Here's Anoop (Jessie's friend who's actually not in the program, he just hangs with us) taking a picture of Carolyn OUTSIDE THE TRAIN as it's moving along.

But she wasn't the ONLY one doing it!

I have been meaning to take a picture of these for a long time-- Indian toilet. It was probably the thing that shocked me the most upon arriving here! Not all of the toilets we have to use are like this (thank God), but in most restaurants and non-tourist places we use some variation. And you bring your own toilet paper.

This picture is jumping ahead a little bit. We arrived in Mumbai Friday night, and Victoria (my friend from Princeton) met me at Dadar station to drive back to their hotel in Andheri. Victoria and Sachi (another Princeton girl she is working with) were traveling to do interviews as part of their summer work for their company based in Hyderabad. Unfortunately, Sachi was very sick when they came to pick me up, and by Saturday morning Victoria was sick too! We had planned to go downtown to sightsee with my Alliance friends (who were staying down there), so I went by myself down to meet them. We met up at this Lebanese restaurant on Colaba Causeway-- a shopping street in the downtown area. From left to right are Carolyn, me, Hyun, Jessie, and Anoop.

We shopped for a good two hours on Colaba Causeway among the different market stalls.

I can't believe Anoop survived so much shopping with girls.

While we were shopping, a man with a pet monkey came along and tried to offer us a "free" (meaning pay after you see it) monkey show. We felt really bad for the monkey and declined the show, not wanted to fund animal abuse. But I snapped this picture while he wasn't looking.

OMG we found a plastic toy RICKSHAW. To think that people regard the banes of our existance as childish playthings.... :P

Here's a better shot of how the Causeway looks to a shopper.

We stopped at this great dessert place in Colaba as well-- very good chocolate.

Hyun approved of the coffee. :)

I think one of my favorite parts of actually sightseeing in Mumbai was getting to see this old, intricate buildings from the time the British were in India. We were only able to drive by them in various cabs, but the High Court, Police Headquarters, and a train station were all built in this beautiful (gothic?) style that took me by surprise! There is a whole green lined with these kind of buildings. When I come back to Mumbai, I'd really like to walk along there and get a better view.

My OTHER favorite part of Mumbai was Marine Drive. It was a long road lining the shore, which gave a great view of the Mumbai skyline. This part of the city is a big horseshoe curve, and the walkway goes all the way around it. Hyun and our other friend Cam walked almost the whole thing, but Jessie, Carolyn, Coleen, Sasha, Anoop and I took it at a slower pace.

Wide-angle of Marine Drive. I was experimenting with the photo-stitch tool on my camera, and I really like the results! The picture is too wide to show up well here, but I'd like to take more panoramas like this in the future. Click on the picture to get the full effect.

Walk along...

Walk along the wall...

Get blown OFF the wall... haha, not really. Winds were pretty strong though-- we had to hold our kurtas down to prevent the wind from catching in the side slits and blowing our shirts into awkward positions.

If Marine Drive goes around a horseshoe curve, than at the peak of the curve is this place, Chowpatty Beach. There were hundreds of people hanging out eating, talking and playing, so Jessie and I decided to take a break here. We only put our feet in the water, though some people were swimming... considering how that water looked, I think those people had death wishes.

My attempt at a scenic photo-- note the anklets (there are two) I bought in Colaba. Indian women tend to wear a set of anklets rather than just one on one foot.

Jessie's sand art

We hung out on the beach until it started to get dark, then walked back towards my friends' hotel to eat. On the way back, we saw the streetlights turn on-- the lights alone Marine Drive are what form the "Queen's Necklace" at night. :)

The Queen's Necklace-- with Jessie and Ben. Ben was a random British guy we met while hanging out on the beach. He'd been in Mumbai for only a day, but he'd been traveling around India (by himself!) since May! He had some cool stories to share with us, especially about his experiences in Banaras (dead bodies floating, 14 hour train ride, heavy drugs)... kind of reaffirms my decision not to go there.

My Alliance friend and Ben stayed downtown for Saturday night, but Andheri is a way aways north, so I went home early to see how Sachi and Victoria were doing. They were feeling a bit better, so Victoria helped me learn how to wrap the sari I bought in Colaba. I'm not much of a sari person (I'm saving up for a sweet salwar kameez set instead), but I figured I'd be in trouble from someone if I didn't bring at least one home. Still have to get one of those half-blouses made to go with it, but at least I know how to put it on!

Sunday morning Sachi, Victoria and I took the local train down again to the downtown (Churchgate) area to see more sights. The local trains are an awesome way to get around Mumbai. They're open-car trains that work like the Metro-- running up and down the city. My first ride on Saturday from Andheri to Churchgate, Anoop and Carolyn bought me a ticket, but on the way back and on Sunday... I didn't really want to figure it out. So I didn't. And luckily, Mumbai trains are effectively free too. :)

The Gateway to India! Weather was kind of drizzly and miserable, but at least we saw it. Behind the gate and along the sides, waves were crashing over the barriers-- something about the highest tide in 100 years? Who knew...

Turn around, and its the Taj Hotel-- much bigger than we expected.

The lobby was also very impressive. Apparently some of Sachi and Victoria's American friends got to stay here, and I was a little jealous. Amazingly, just as Victoria, Sachi and I walked in to the lobby, all the Alliance kids had just finished eating lunch there! It was a good thing we were able to meet up so easily.

By this point, I was feeling like I'd been hit by a train-- I'd thrown up on the way to Churchgate from Andheri and was so tired I could barely walk. Sachi and Victoria decided to continue sightseeing a bit, and I stayed with Carolyn, Jessie, and Anoop to go back on the train.

But not before we got a Princeton picture!! Tiger love!!

Much love to everyone at home too. I realize I'll be home in a couple of weeks, which is an odd thing to think about. I'm going to miss Pune in a way, especially my job and the great friends I've made here. Three weeks is a long time though-- there's still 30 pages of term paper (ick) and a trip to Delhi in the works. I'll keep you posted. :)