Monday, July 7, 2008

I live!

Here you go mom...another post!

I am nearing 3 weeks to go...and in the last two weeks I have seen some amazing things in Delhi.

1) Delhi Comes Out of the Closet: I attended New Delhi's first gay pride parade. It was absolutely amazing. This was the first Pride parade in a country where homosexuality is technically illegal. They were expecting only a few hundred people to turn out, and instead they had over a thousand supporters. The parade was part protest, part moving dance party and part candle light vigil. Everyone was incredibly respectful. I was incredibly moved.

2) Red Head takes on Old Delhi: Old Delhi is pretty much indescribable. It is a complete sensory overload. Mallory (my fellow blonde intern) and I took on the Delhi Bazaar by storm. I bought some incredible spices...and yes, I intend on making my own masala with them tomorrow. This is very exciting.

3) Visit to Gandhi's House: Mal and I also took a trip to Gandhi's last residence and the location of where he was shot. It was an incredibly moving place. Again, words fail to really describe a place like that. I will get pictures up on the blog asap/asaigtfm (as soon as i get them from mal)

4) Field work in Nagafgharh: I went with some of the staff to do interviews in another Apne Aap field program in a very poor community on the edge of Delhi. When we arrived in the village, the kids (ages 2-7) were all waiting for us. (I will post pictures). Again, I was absolutely floored by how amazingly cute these kids were. I interviewed 4 women. 3 of the women were commercial prostitutes. All three had been arrested for soliciting sex. Soliciting, in India, is illegal. However buying sex is legal. Clearly there are a lot of issues that arise due to this discrepency....

...in other news, the research is going alright. It is a lot to handle doing research and writing up information and interviews on an incredibly heavy subject. There have been little hiccups in the otherwise fairly smooth research process. For instance: I had taped my interviews in Bihar in hopes of getting a better translation when I got back to Delhi. It turned out they were talking in a special dialect that no one could translate. CK helped me track down a graduate student at JNU who helped me out....

oh! I started taking yoga! Yes...I'm in the birth place so I decided to give it a try. Thus far it has been great. It is such a cultural thing here...almost religious? Absolutely fascenating.

Much love! And thank you everyone for the emails!
more soon
-c


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