Getting Around

My 4th day in Bangalore and I'm finding that it's a huge-ass city.

I've no idea how big exactly, since I effectively only travel about 30 miles an hour on the rickshaw. I love these little 3-wheeled pollution-spewing, rickety wagon-with-engines psuedo-cars. I find the bumpy, vibrating floor soothing. Also I totally dig that you can practically stick your entire body out the door and feel that heavy thick traffic smog rush past you. Sure, I'm too aware of my lungs these days, and my skin is decidedly gritty. But occasionally the air clears, and you can say hi to folks in the auto next to you since they are 3 inches from your face. Lovely. Seriously.

Also haggling with auto-wallahs, trying to decide if he's gonna drive you round and round the city to up the meter, which language would be best to use with him--all of it..good times, good times. I'm finding it really hard to tell one street apart from another here. I've my own home and workplace down, but everything else looks like every other street.

For the most part, if I wanna get someplace, the auto-wallahs find it for me and take me there. I still haven't decided if they really don't know where they are going or if they just wanna circle the block one more time. I tend to give 'em the benefit of the doubt since a). I've no other choice, I don't know where anything is. b). And here's the kicker...every other street or so is a one-way, but the direction of the one-way changes every two days or something. So it might take you 10 minutes to get from point A to point B, but going back might take you twice as long. Why do this? It's best not to ponder the whys too much.

Travel is very cheap--for less than a dollar, I can usually get anyplace I want to. And people are overwhelmingly nice. They wanna help you for no apparent reason. And no it's not because I have "foreigner" sketched across my forehead. It might be, but I don't think I look that firangi. I blend. I blend.

Also, I rode on the back of a motorbike two days ago. Helmet-less. Holy shit. I asked the dude I was with to please drive slowly, which he did, probably risking our lives in the process. Did I mention I saw a motorbike accident our last night in Delhi? Well I did. It was completely horrible. The dude's head had smashed open, blood everywhere. I'm over it, but it is
branded into my brain permanently. I was more than a little nervous when I saw our proposed mode of transportation. I kept thinking, "man, that concrete looks oh so hard."

"Can we take an auto?"--Me
"No problem" *head nod*
"I'll pay for it."--Me
"No problem" *head nod*

It turned out to be fun. There's nothing quite like having one of those giant, ugly lorries brush by your knees as your driver squeezes between that maruti and bus. And also driving into oncoming traffic on your tiny little scooter, ahh...it reaffirms life.

My work. I started two days ago--a day ago officially sort of--and so far I've been to a couple of meetings. I'm still learning how things function, and what my role exactly is. I'm grateful that the smaller, staff meetings (that doesn't include community members) are in English, which I hope is not for my benefit alone. But whenever I'm not at a meeting, and I peek in, they are talking Kannada.

I've met some cool people--a lot of mallus, I'm practicing my Malayalam. It's torturous to hear me talk my mallu to some very patient people. In my defense, I think a large reason why I'm having so much trouble stringing sentences together is because I'm not used to talking politics, culture, or human rights in Malayalam. I've no words in my language, only in English. It's interesting. Sometimes I just give up, and switch to Hindi or English. The organization I work for is this small, but vibrant human rights NGO. I will write more about it later.

We have moved into our house. We did it bright and early yesterday morning. I like our home a lot. We have a mango tree, a garden, our own bathrooms and this huge balcony. We live in a busy area of town, which has its pros and cons. Biggest con being there's a lot of "aimless youth" just hanging out outside the shops across the street. I'd prefer they hang elsewhere. But I haven't had any problems so far.

Overall, life is chugging along as it always does. It's been stressful. But I can feel myself settling. Slowly, I'm getting used to my new life. I am already feeling pangs of homesickness, but nothing too terrible. After a particularly stressful day, I wrote this in my little notebook that I carry around with me. It made me laugh when I read it the next morning.

"I hate that I'm a foreigner in India. I feel like screaming, "you don't understand, I was made to belong to you." and India is bitch-slapping me in reply."

She's calmed down since then:)