107F and Sunny

It's so hot that my metal bicycle kickstand melts into the blistering, black asphalt driveway every day, leaving it pockmarked with nickel-sized holes. My cycle's black seat also suffers under the sun, forcing me to bear the two mile trek to class alternating between standing and burning, unable to decide which is better: to speed through campus and fly over unnaturally tall speed breakers in hopes of catching a breeze or to slowly pedal over, conserving my energy and maximizing time in the occasional shady stretch of road.

It's so hot that I've more than doubled my daily water intake and drink at least one rehydration packet per week. And still, I'm continually thirsty and dry-skinned and chap-lipped. It's a never ending race between dehydration and water consumption, and water seems to escape from me through direct evaporation rather than sweat.

It's so hot that I've altered my daily schedule to include an early afternoon nap that celebrates the air conditioning units of Tagore House, while leaving me awake and functional later at night when it's cool enough to breathe and enjoy stargazing from the rooftop.

It's so hot that students laugh when you mention tea time, professors postpone class to avoid daytime power outages, and the campus dogs have become nocturnal, burying themselves beneath boulders during the heat of the day. American's have begun using Celsius so as to measure temperature in smaller numbers, Indians all wear headscarves or caps as a protective barrier against the heat, and ice cream is impossible.

107 Monday, 107 Tuesday, 103 Wednesday, 105 Tomorrow

Chavadi Welfare Society

Every Tuesday, I spend a couple of hours at an ashram for boys between the ages of 8 and 15, playing Uno and telling stories. The Chavadi Welfare Society was founded about a decade ago to provide boys of orphaned or single-parent families with a quality, private education. Much of the funding comes from individuals who sponsor specific children by equipping them with school fees, materials, and uniforms. The 35 students live at this ashram and visit their hometowns around the state of Andhra Pradesh on holidays, partaking in a very modest lifestyle.

On our first Tuesday, I brought a deck of Barbie Uno cards that I had found in the dorm lounge to help break the ice. Soon, an amoebic circle of a dozen or so boys had formed around me, sitting cross-legged on the outdoor concrete ashram entrance beneath a weathered sapling. As I explained the rules in English, several boys teamed together to translate them into Hindi and Telugu. As the game began and the sun set, I oversaw confused and beautiful Uno game. Whenever one boy was lacking a card of the right color or number, his neighbor would shiftily pass one to him. And likewise, with cards to dictate a new color, each boy would ask the others what they would prefer, even if it was a color he himself did not possess. Rather than the cutthroat American must-win approach, these boys celebrated each others' wins and shared each others' losses. It was easily the most endearing, polite, and friendly Uno game I've ever witnessed.

In a later visit, I was asked of my "future ambition". I managed to turn the question back to them. Of the six nine to eleven-year-old boys present, four replied engineer (software, chemical, and two generic engineers), one police, and one Chief Minister of India. No astronauts, firemen, or doctors. But, for children of such underpriviledged backgrounds, such ambitions should be commended and supported. And I also wonder about the promotion of engineering as a career in the Indian school system.

A Rickshaw in Pondicherry

Scenes from an Indian Train Ride

The scraggly rolling hills, tinged yellow from grasses. The roaming bulls with sagging necks and ironic rolls of fat in contrast to their visible ribs, with horns painted ruby and turquoise and marigold. Children wearing only short shirts running barefoot across a dirt road, relieving themselves atop a mound of assorted garbage, sitting in the shade. Mounds and mounds of burning, smoky, rancid garbage. Fields of cotton and corns vaguely evocative of the Carolinas, but followed by fields of mangoes and bananas. Men wrapped in white fabric tied around the waist and hanging to the knees and scarves tied around their heads for protection from the sun, and women wearing magenta saris carrying baskets of whatever grains are grown or fresh cotton or clothes to be washed. Colorful towns with full clotheslines hanging like colorful Christmas lights from atop the buildings, between the trees, in the yards while saris and t-shirts sway in the breeze. And men, walking through the train's corridors carrying rolls of plastic cups and a swinging cannister of freshly brewed and spiced chai while screaming, screeching in a high-pitched urgent tone "CHAI!" Followed by women carrying baskets of guava and potato chips and pretzles and boys with multilingual newspapers and samosas and bottled water. At each stop, a new batch of salesmen and women boards and the present departs. And passengers walking past the berths stare, unabashadly, at the bizarre white travelers, pausing for a good view. And the lull of the constant tic-tic of the train atop the tracks, bending with every curve and rolling over hills and through valleys and gently easing into each station.

Train rides are considered a quintessential element of Southern India, which now seems obvious to me. Due to the vast network that criss-crosses the country, like a spider web of tracks, I'm expecting several other equally memorable rides.