January 19, 2024
Staring at Strangers
This morning, I started my day with a run. While I can say I like to run for the exercise, the main reason I am semi-consistently going for morning runs in India is because it’s the only time I have to myself. Running through streets surrounded by people, I allow myself to feel alone. I…
January 18, 2024
What is your purpose here?
“What is your purpose here?” asked the apparently drunk man who rather aggressively confronted our group as we were leaving a slum community on the outskirts of Northwest Bengaluru, where we had spent the previous ten or so minutes speaking with community members. After some back-and-forth arguing in Kannada, the man turns back to our…
Fortune of the Commons
Today may have been the first day in India where I experienced a whole hour of complete silence (well almost, I may not have been able to help myself from making a stupid comment here and there). For context, we began the day working with The Ugly Indian, an organization that focuses on the beautification…
January 17, 2024
Home and Labels
We have only been here for less than 3 weeks, but my room is already starting to become more of an extension of myself and less like the foreign hostel I felt I was intruding upon. Akin to my home in Seattle, I find that the consistency of this space provides a similar relief from…
Community Power
Merriam-Webster defines a community as “a unified body of individuals;” yet in the United States, a deeply individualistic country, the concept of having and supporting a community is often misunderstood. Many people talk about supporting communities without truly understanding what it entails or how to go about it. In India, a distinctive culture of communal…
January 16, 2024
The Last Ones Standing
For most of our program, the first “solo” weekend trip in Mysore ended with a lot less pool time and sightseeing than planned. Felled by an unknown cause, perhaps the sticks of jaggery molded and cooled in the suspiciously old gray paint bucket filled with rural river water, only 6 “healthy” GCILers remained on Sunday…
Keep Going
“Keep going”, I mutter under my breath as I trudge to the bus at 6:50 in the morning. Less than half of us are left I notice as we take our seats. While the extra legroom is nice I feel bad for the majority of class experiencing various stages of a stomach virus picked up…
January 15, 2024
Dumb Tourists in a Small World
Today is my birthday. Birthdays have always felt really big to me. I never could have imagined spending my 22nd birthday on the side of the road on the outskirts of Bangalore, India throwing up from food poisoning. When I left two weeks ago for India, I blew out candles on a mini cake with…
January 13, 2024
To Fully Understand
To be honest, I think I was half asleep the whole day. However, the few moments that I was truly awake for was at the small-scale jaggery factory where a humble group of workers crafted some of the tastiest sugary treats I’ve ever had. Jaggery, a concentrated product of cane juice, represented the source-to-product processing…
Straight From The Source
Over the past few days, we’ve been fortunate enough to explore the heart of Srirangapatna, delving into the intricate production processes that give life to some of India’s everyday staples. Today we headed to a small jaggery factory, on a humble family farm. For those like myself who didn’t know what Jaggery was before today,…