the other side

NOTE: The "g" key at this internet cafe is only sometimes working, so an * sometimes substitutes. Think of it as a *ame.


I thought that I should probably post and correct all the terrible terrible things Becky has been saying about me. (jk, jk.) More like, I should probably just start doing my share of the work on this here blog.

So Jared and I arrived in Kolkata a few days a*o, after a series of adventures dealing with trains. Well, mostly the one where our train that we had tickets for was apparently maybe/probably/possibly going to be cancelled because of flooding somewhere in the north. This was determined after talking to about 6 different people at the Old Delhi Railway station because a) there was no announcement about it, either verbal or on the bi* board, and b) it was a serious case of "help the hapless white girl who we also totally love and/or think is hilarious because she speaks Hindi." That happens to me a lot. So after a lot of Hindi, a lot of hand si*nals, and a little bit of En*lish, we fi*ured out that our train would most likely be cancelled later, and decided we would rather just buy new tickets than sit in the station and wait for the possibility that this train would arrive eventually.

So be*an approximately 6 hours of alternatively sitting on the *round, sitting* in the restaurant, and Jared sitting* on the *round with our stuff so I could stammer (converse?) in Hindi at a wide variety of railway station workers. I made one friend (who loved me) at one of the three different counters that I waited at, who was very helpful in continually telling me to wait and come back in a bit to see if our tickets (paid for but somehow not quite real yet) had been confirmed. He seemed totally unconcerned that we would be taken off the waiting list, but I've never quite been clear on how this works at Indian train stations, and so was a little more concerned that this may not happen. However, it did, before our personally designated "fuck-it-I'm-*oin*-home-time" of 1 am, and we finally had assigned seats by about 9pm. The train didn't come until about midni*ht, so there was more sitting around time, although*h after we watched this dude's pocket *et picked while he was sleeping* on the platform we took a little walk to break up the monotony. Oh, also so we were no lon*er surrounded by the young* men who thou*ht this was hilarious. Once we were on the train, thou*h, all was well, even thou*h it arrived in Varanasi about 7 hours after our other one was supposed to. Ah well.

What this whole experience reinforced for me, in contrast to Becky's use of the word "uncomfortable," was my favorite feeling: "confused." As I was explaining to Jared, I usually just don't really understand approx 50% of what is happening around me. I don't know what exactly those two different counters at the train station were. I don't know why all those people knew to stand up on the platform at a certain time. I still don't understand what "reservation a*ainst confirmation" means on our ticket. And this is notwithstanding the fact that I do pretty well with Hindi - I can always *et my point across and almost always understand most of what is being said to me. Local knowledge is real, kids.

I a*ree with much of what Becky says about poverty tourism, although I don't have the experience of living in Calcutta that she does for that specifically. We had a very interesting discussion about the ethics of travel (which involved not a small amount of self-absorbed an*st on my part), but one thin* that I thou*ht was especially interesting, after being in Palestine, was the different way that Jared talked about it there. The key difference that I saw was that he was saying that its important for forei*ners to come to Palestine, because it means that they understand (or at least understand more) what the occupation actually means, and that it is almost always a radicalizing experience. (Jared, feel free to correct/refine this as needed). This was interesting* because this is not at all the overwhelming* response that I think happens with the forei*n tourist circuit in India. Yes, people come back with an understanding that poverty exists in all these terrible ways, which can be a really difficult thin* to think about. But I'm not convinced that it lends itself to better ways of thinking about both global and Indian economics and capitalism, and I think definitely does not usually result in better ways of thinking about representations of India in any kind of non-orientalist mode. I am, in fact, reading a book on this ri*ht now. I will report back.