2013 Scouts in the Field

Weekend road trip to Zanzri!

I’ve noticed more and more during my time here what an advantage it has been in my life that I was raised in a multicultural environment, where I was exposed to people from all sorts of backgrounds. In my time here, I feel like I’ve really been able to draw a lot from my personal experiences as an Asian-American as well as those from having close Indian-American friends. I guess it’s only natural that people here would compare me to other foreigners (particularly Americans) that they’ve met, and apparently I’m relatively more Indian compared to them! From being used to a completely different set of pronunciations, to understanding the respect given to elders, to my willingness to try new foods (so long as they destroy my lactose-intolerant bowels), I’m feeling strangely at ease.

One of my favorite forms of cultural immersion and exchange comes in the form of food. My most recent exciting food experience has been eating a true Gujurati thali. 

A thali means a “plate” in general, and the way they do it in Gujarat is to put out a spread of several different dishes on everyone’s plate and continuously serve you until you wanna roll over and just lie down on the restaurant’s floor from a combination of satisfaction and exhaustion. I like to think I eat pretty quickly, but it’s at a whole new level here. The joke is that Indians will “snatch” your food if you’re slow, and I occasionally find myself snatched from. At the thali restaurant, the food came at such an incredible pace that I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the rate at which I had to shovel food into my mouth and try to fend off the servers who didn’t seem to want to take “no” for an answer. 

Now an exchange isn’t complete without a transfer of value from both sides, so I tried to do what I could to introduce my office to a little bit of Korean flavor at a potluck this week. Freshly stocked with my mom’s care package, which included boatloads of ramen, I made my version of rabokki, but without any dduk (which I guess it makes it just ramen in ddukbokki sauce…). I had my fingers crossed that I didn’t botch the experience for everyone, but it was pretty well received!

I realize I talk very little about actual work, so here’s a little something about one of the companies we work with. Aakar Innovations is a social enterprise that works to find grassroots innovations and use them to create an improved, sustainable lifestyle for people in rural India. While that official description allows them much room for growth later on, for now, their flagship product is a pack of cheap, sanitary pads for women. It is created with biodegradable material and sells at a price point far below that of leading brands. The government produces a cheaper option that is made of materials with much lower quality. Aakar has positioned itself as an affordable, comfortable option for pads in rural communities where healthcare information is not always as well understood and distributed. It’s just one of many examples of some cool work going on here that I’m glad to be a part of, even if I’m not directly involved. 

It’s crazy to think that I’m already closing in on having been here for a month now…and I still haven’t seen all that much of Ahmedabad. This must be rectified at once, but the past week or so has been a bit of a start. I had three main episodes of exploring different parts of the city that were all exciting in their own ways.

Farm House Party – A couple coworkers and I were invited to attend a party at a farm house a little bit away from the city. Riding a car for the first time in weeks (I was kind of getting used to the auto rickshaws!), we drove away from the city to find this farm house. In India, since almost everyone lives in a city, some of the more wealthier families will also have a “farm house” where they can go and spend the weekend to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. It’s difficult to have a large house downtown given the sheer numbers of people in each city, so it makes a lot of sense to me that you would have a separate little getaway that’s close enough to get to pretty easily. I met a lot of interesting people at the party, a good number of whom were foreigners like myself. I found that I was expecting that everyone would be there for a short term gig like myself, but a good number of the people I met were there for real work. Probably shouldn’t have really blown my mind, but it did! I just wasn’t used to the idea of people following jobs to a different country, even though that’s exactly what countless immigrants do in the US. Much respect to immigrants! Of course there are some other exciting details from that night that will go unmentioned here (there may or may not have been a run in with the law…) that you can ask me about later haha

The Statue Slum –

While exploring the city a bit more over the weekend, we ended up driving through a particular slum where the streets were LINED with makeshift stalls, packed with statues of Ganesh, one of the Hindu gods that is in the form of an elephant. Next week is Ganesh Chaturthi, a festival where these statues will be thrown into bodies of water and will dissolve, symbolizing his return from the earth after removing the obstacles and unhappiness of his devotees. It was kind of amazing to see these huge statues that I would normally associate with being wealthy being mass produced by generational craftsmen in a rundown part of the city. It’s hard for me to capture the full effect with just this picture, but try to imagine blocks and blocks of dingy, narrow streets where there are nothing but huge Ganesh statues on either side of you.

Manek Chowk –

Manek chowk is huge outdoor late night street food spot located in old city (every major city in India has an “old city” and a “new city” built around it) that essentially is a conglomerate of various vendors working together to provide people with the full compliment of unhealthy, yet delicious food options. It was quite bustling last night, and I could understand why! The food was pretty amazing and is exactly what you would want in your late night food options. We ended up ordering a couple pav bhaji (which seems like Indian chilli served with spiced garlic bread); a crazy looking pizza; a dosa; and double decker sandwiches made of buttered bread filled with chocolate, cheese, and pineapple (pictured below). Dude….dude. Yeah, I’m totally going back.

So it’s been over a week since my last written post, and I’m attributing that mainly to several medical maladies that sprung up over the last week. First, it was a nasty abscess right at the intersection of my hip and butt, followed by getting sick in a more traditional sense, and ending with my current heat rashed state. None of these are all that harmful to me, but the first two things took me to the hospital to make sure they didn’t become issues than they were. Luckily my blood test came out negative for malaria (celebration!) and was determined to be another instance of what they just simply call “viral.” Yeah, I don’t think anyone knows what “viral” really means. My current state is that the parts of my body that are exposed the most — my arms and face — are turning pink/red with this slightly prickly rash. Sigh, one of these days I’ll be able to have a normal, healthy day again.

The word “firangi” means “foreigner,” and my coworkers taught it to me so that I would know if someone on the street was calling me that. The closest comparison in terms of connotation appears to be “gringo” as used in Latin America. As a firangi myself, I tend to pick out others of my kind whenever I walk around. Sometimes in the back of mind I exclaim “white people!” in a gleeful manner because just having some racial diversity around makes me feel more at home. There aren’t a ton of East Asians around, but there are actually some very Asian-looking Indian populations, mostly located on the eastern part of the country. Because of this, my coworkers said I could probably get confused for being just another Indian if I don’t show that I’m out of place. I decided to test this out at a cafe where we were meeting some new folk. One guy began asking everyone their names and where they were from, so when it got around to me, I introduced myself as Joony from Pune. Without flinching, he just moved on until my coworkers did a double take to see if they had heard me correctly. They knew I was from the US, but I had completely fooled the new guy. Success!

Sometimes it gets lonely as a firangi, so I met up with the Ahmedabad expat group this past weekend, and we all exchanged stories of adjusting to life in India. It was an eclectic mix of people from different parts of the world from different walks of life, but there was something about the solidarity from our firangi-ness that was refreshing for me and helped put my experience thus far into better focus. It was a fun time and I’ll be looking forward to our next hangout.

I’m going to go take care of my heat rash now, so until next time!