Book Club

This past Saturday I finally was able to go to a meeting for the book club I signed up for. It went really well, actually. We met at Costa Coffee in Connaught Place. I suppose as a little background, Connaught Place was designed as the centerpiece of New Delhi when the British rebuilt it after they, uh, ahem, leveled the previous city to punish India for the 1857 rebellion. Basically it is a business/shopping district thing. Anyhow, on the back end of L block, we met in a coffee shop to discuss books. Four people besides myself came. I was hoping for a few more people, but still, it was really one of the best research moments I have had thus far directly concerning my project.

I was actually kind of surprised who came. I was expecting the club to be some former liberal arts majors, maybe some sort of professor, or house wives or something like that. The four people who came were all unmarried men in their twenty and thirties. One was an IT professional. There was a business man, someone who worked for some sort of contractor, and an engineer. I was not expecting them to be the ones expressing interest in books. Also, the kinds of books they are interested in was somewhat surprising.

I think I have mentioned it before, but my findings so far have been that Indians generally speaking do not read. If they do almost universally they read quick easy reads like Chetan Bhagat, spiritual material, and self-help books. I have kind of been discouraged by the seemingly complete hegemony of these three things. I keep hoping I will randomly run into someone who reads something else or mentions a preference for classics or literary fiction or something other than, well, to be blunt, trashy novels and flavorless inspirational literature.

The people I met with actually expressed different ideas. One of them specifically noted that they really only like books written by Indians set in India. They mentioned that they liked the Catcher in the Rye, one of the first western novels they ever read, but after that never really found anything else they liked.

It seemed like there was a general preference for Indian novels with a mix of history and what they called "fantasy." From what I gathered, I think what they mean by fantasy is what we in the West would more commonly call magical realism. They kept talking about the fantasy elements of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and there are not really very many elves or dragons in that. The other thing that they seemed to like were again the self-help books, although their taste in them was much more refined. They differentiated them into two types: those that focus on doing and those that focus on just giving inspirational messages. One of them called these those that work and those that do not.

It was so awesome to talk to people about books like this. It was so great just to talk to people in general on a level like this. It was not perfect. I consciously restricted how much I expressed my opinion. It was a titanic effort, but I had to keep reminding myself that I was not here to argue about truth or correct their misconceptions. There were so many times when I knew they were completely off base or at least had an extremely limited perspective that may have been accurate, but did not factor in so many different perspectives and ideas. They specifically panned Japanese authors for being ridiculous, which is sad, because I am passionately in love with Japanese literature.

The issue of translation also came up. They made some good points, but concluded that translation was always a bad idea. Again, so much I wanted to say, but I just let it lie. I learned a lot though. If I could just have a few more meetings like that with people my project would be amazingly rounded out. I wish I had the ability to talk to people like that on a regular basis. Every day would be freaking amazing and it would only require an hour or two each day. I would have more material than I know what to do with.

Also, they discussed and shared the best ways to get around India's bit torrent firewalls to download e-books illegally. I was so torn. On the one hand, it is piracy and it definitely negatively affects the publishing world and the future availability of books, but on the other hand, it is so important for people to read and for these ideas to get out there. Books here are prohibitively expensive. I have actually been surprised. Until prices drop or incomes rise, books are definitely a luxury good here in India. Which has tremendous implications and opens up a huge discussion on reading and literature and ideas and stuff. I just found it all quite funny and kept my mouth shut.

Not to get into it too much now, but it may be that in India books, like internet and telephones, will skip the hard phase and go straight to the mobile, wireless route through e-books. That makes me so sad to some degree, but it makes sense. The developing world may actually play a bigger role in the demise of the physical book in favor of the e-book than the book addicted west when a mind-blowingly enormous reader market opens up as China, India, and other places as they develop enough to where they have the disposable income and the free time to make reading as a pastime feasible.

I think that is one of the most frustrating things about this project. It has been an amazing experience, but the biggest things I am learning are how to set up a project better in the future. Not just in project structure. I am actually fairly happy with my project as I outlined it. Rather I am learning so much about how to properly plan a project for actual implementation. I know so much more about the necessity of contacts and what kind of contacts to have, timing, location. Actually I am just going to make this another post. Screw academic professionalism. I am an English major. I declare this stream of consciousness writing. It is now legitimate and cannot be criticized.

Blah, okay, I am here

I finally got settled. After a month.  A little longer than I was anticipating, but it all worked out in the end. So now I should update at least somewhat regularly. At least weekly. I am hoping to do more than that, time and ideas permitting. I need to get a book to write down thoughts. I am always bursting with ideas when I am walking about or riding the bus or an auto or something and then I get back to wherever I am staying or the internet cafe and sit down to write a blog entry and...I can't think of anything I feel like writing. I think the problem is I talk throughout these awesome ideas and entries and stuff and it takes a long time and then when I have computer access I can just remember thinking awesome thoughts about something like "comparative food presentation in Indian families in the village and the city" and I just get exhausted thinking about going over it all again and putting it into writing. I am just too lazy, probably.

Anyhow, I have "wifi" here. I mean it works, but it seems like everyone who has a computer here, if they have internet access, they are downloading movies and music from bit torrent. It kind of crowds the network a lot. Indian Roomies, not that I have told any of you about this blog yet, but if you ever read this, I love you and your constant downloads.

I also took a Vodafone internet thingy, so I have back up internet, which is actually faster than any wifi I have used yet in India, which is kind depressing because it is not even 3G. Or maybe it is "3G." The terms get confused here. Remind me to update about buying an internet dongle in India sometime.

So what have I been up to...in a small nutshell...it is kind of difficult to process through all of it. I guess shortly, I got to India about a month ago at 12:30 am with no one expecting me, which actually was not as bad as I was afraid it would be. I chatted with a nice Indian couple from Punjab for an hour or two and then read until the metro opened. I took that to the New Delhi Railway station metro station and got lost and then shafted by an auto driver. That is okay, I knew I was getting shafted and I did not have the energy to fight for a decent price.

This is where I made my mistake. I listened to the dag blasted guide book. I am never using a guide book again. They lie horribly. Okay, I will use a guidebook if I happen to be a millionaire and can afford to stay at all the expensive places. But on a budget? Heck no. They don't even recommend good places. All the places they recommended were these overpriced tourist trap things. Anyhow, because of the stupid guide book (yes I am blaming it, because it is the stupid guidebooks fault) I found a hotel in Pahar Ganj (travel tip: if you ever go to India, never, never stay in Pahar Ganj. I would sleep on the streets first. It is safe, but if you want the worst part of the Indian tourist experience, go there. Everyone is trying to get your attention and your money and it is full of the worst kind of foreign tourist. They all have their dreadlocks and their hippie clothes and think they understand India and are having this "adventure" or this "spiritual" experience. Idiots all. Anyhow, Pahar Ganj is grasping, fake, and incredibly stressful. The real India is so much better than Pahar Ganj.) (Remind me to post an entry just on Pahar Ganj.)

Anyhow, hotel in Pahar Ganj. There are two hotels in Pahar Ganj with very similar names. One is very expensive, the other is very cheap. The guidebook, despite being updated, supposedly, only a few months ago rates everything by this code from LL to G. (Because that makes sense) Because of a quirk in how they laid out the maps in this book I thought I was at the cheap one, but I ended up at the expensive hotel. I just went with it because I was still kind of stressed out about being alone and having all my stupid luggage (two bags: worst idea ever. It is the first time in my life I even entertained the desire for an e-reader. It was short lived, but that is how stressful being in India on your own with two freaking bags, a limited budget, and no where planned to stay.) (For clarification, I have two bags because I have one for my books, essentially, and one for everything else. (yes, I have that many books to read (English major, duh))) I was really tired and stressed and was not really thinking straight and so I completely misconverted the nightly rate in my mind because I still thought I was at the cheaper hotel (that makes it sound like I was crazy delirious or something, what I mean is I was tired and had a minor brain slip) and so I ended up staying at a hotel that was forty dollars a night, instead of five or ten like I had planned. Also, because I checked in at like seven or eight, when I left at eleven the next day, an hour before the noon check out time posted at the desk, they charged me an extra half day at twenty dollars. So yeah, sixty dollars for the first night. In India. It sucked. But oh well, live and learn, book your hotel, or at least have a game plan next time. The next hotel I stayed in was only like eight dollars a night, so I repented.

I spent the first week in hotels while I was trying to find housing, which while you are in the field is actually way more difficult than I was expecting. Basically I could not find anything. Even among the members of the church, I came up empty for a place to stay permanently. Anyhow, after a week and having spent a significant portion of my budget and having waking nightmares of running out of money in a month and a half if I got stuck in hotels the whole time looking for housing, I decided to just go all in. I checked out of my hotel (which charged me a whole ton of extra fees they neglected to mention at the outset and tried to charge me three times the going rate for a taxi) and went to the Vasant Vihar church. That afternoon a friend of my begged me to go visit his family and village in Himachal Pradesh...so I went.

If you have a problem with that, office, I love you, but you can suck it. I was breaking my back, stressed out of my mind looking for housing and someone offered me a week of free housing and meals and the most awesome, immerse-yourself cultural experience available in India, so I took it. If you have any suggestions for housing, I'm all ears.

Anyhow, so Himachal Pradesh was amazing. I stayed in his village for four or five days. I slept with at least one other person in my bed at all times. Clean was a relative term. I showered outside with cold water in my underwear. Sometimes while chatting with whomever happened to be nearby. I hung out with the local youth/young adults in the village centers like they seem to do. I will just have to post a series of entries about the whole experience. It was awesome. I got by with hinglish, essentially. My friend essentially speaks English as long as we talk about basic things and I know a little Hindi, so with that I got by for the week. At the end we went up to visit Shimla. (which is cold. I was so surprised. It was actually really cold. In summer. While Delhi was over a hundred degrees. It was bizarre) Shimla is incredible. If you ever happen to be in India, it is one of the most relaxing places I have been in India.

I came back to Delhi, tried to find housing for an afternoon. I had something that I set up while I was in Himachal Pradesh, but that fell through so I went to Hyderabad for the YSA conference. That was great and covered another week or so of housing, although more than half of that was on a train.

When I got back to Delhi again I used the Vasant Vihar church as a base of operations while I searched for a paying guest accommodation, essentially what students/single working people in India use. After three or four days I found one that was generally honest and met my basic requirements, so I took it and here I am. I have two room mates and there are two other people on the floor, although I think another three will be moving in. I have no A/C, but that is not really an issue. I do not mind the heat all that much and it will be monsoon before long. A/C was an extra sixty or so dollars a month. Not worth it.

Anyhow, I will update specifically about my accommodations. Oh, and my project. I should probably talk about my project, since it is kind of the whole reason I am even here and the reason for having this blog. But I tire of this exercise. Also I am tired. Also also, I should find a scale. I definitely have lost weight. I should figure out how much to see if it is kosher or if I should take steps.

Language

Recently I have kind of been gearing up my efforts at really learning Hindi. I don't think I will accomplish all that much while I am here as I do not really have anyone to talk with. I hope this summer I will be able to practice speaking a lot. Anyhow, today in class, actually after class one of my classmates who is actually from India asked me to look over one of his assignments for a writing class. He actually writes very well. He is an extremely intelligent person. His vocabulary and accent are excellent. You can kind of hear it, but it is more an afterthought than anything else. Lately in class we have been working on translating stories from a children's Mahabharat. (As an aside, I do not know why in English they call these books the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In my Hindi class and most Indian sources I have worked with, they are referred to as the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. For comparison in pronunciation it is like rah-mah-yah-nah and mah-hah-bu-rah-tah versus ruh-mai-yan and ma-ha-bar-ut, well, that was actually kind of butchered, but I think I get my point across? For clarification that is how I refer to them in my head.) We are translating these which has been a very interesting experience. However when I was looking over my friends assignment, I realized the most of the problems were just translating his Indian English into American English. This is where the experience gets difficult for me to describe. It wasn't that he was writing things like "We to the store are going. You are coming with?" or something terribly broken like that. It was just a different way of writing, dare I say a different way of viewing things? He used a lot of big vocabulary, he phrased things in a very round about way, he used a lot of references to idioms and foreign phrases. From what I have seen in India, this is a fairly common way of writing in English. But the thing that blows my mind is that it was so different, but not necessarily wrong or weird. There was no problem with spelling or grammar, it was just in the diction, I guess. This idea has set my mind on fire tonight. How can there be this thing that is so similar, but so very different? Any American who ran into his writing without any context would be left scratching their head. They might even struggle to understand what he is trying to say. I do not have a name for this translation that is not really translation. It amazes me that people can speak the same language and yet a completely different language, even using the same vocabulary. This different mindset has me fascinated. I want to learn as much as I can at this different way of conceptualizing ideas and expressing knowledge. To me it represents more than a difference in colloquialisms. British English writing does not have the same foreign feel that Indian English sometimes does. I think it gets down to a different way of conceptualizing people and the world. I don't know if this relates back into m-time or p-time or not. Maybe this is just another sign of this idea. Most of the literature I have read does not write in this very Indian way. I am going to keep my eyes open for more examples of this before I head to India so I can start formulating some theories on it. I also now have a new mini project to work on in country: become more fluent in this kind of English so that I can better situate myself as a useful intermediary between my culture and that of India.