Jaipur Vaapas!

Back in Jaipur now. Its so nice to get out and away from Chittor into an environment that is less harsh, although the men in Jaipur don't seem to be as nice as they used to be. I have had some pretty bad episodes while I have been here, and a few times I have gone off the rail and outright yelled at the perpetrators. Who do they think they are, anyway! I can't tell whether they get a high out of harassing women or if they think that yelling crude comments from across the street will actually make me want to sleep with them. HELLO!?! In some way its kind of like the guys prominent in WI/MN who have huge monster trucks or fancy expensive cars that they soup up and they gun the engine at you as you drive by in the hopes that you might find them manly. Once again: HELLO!?!

I had a crazy day yesterday! Mrs. Singh has family visiting from London, so she can't keep me at her house now, which is fine. But she also wanted me to pack up the things I have left there as well, which meant I needed to go emergency suitcase shopping. So, off I went into Raja Park to search for a suitcase. I knew I needed a fairly substantial one, because I still had a bunch of stuff left at her house. I ended up buying one that was big enough to fit several small children inside and headed back to the house to pack it up. Imagine my surprise when I find that it is filling up extremely fast AND it is extremely heavy. This tells me that 1)I cannot go shopping ANYMORE (which is fine because my list was pretty much done anyway) and 2) I desperately need to get rid of some of my stuff before I leave. I was already planning to get rid of nearly all the clothes I came here with because they have been trashed after all this time in India, but this has now become a necessity. I just hope when it comes down to it that my bags aren't too heavy.

I spent today in the MSID office here doing some last minute work for the seminar we will be having soon-all that procrastination is finally catching up with me. But in my defense it is nearly impossible to get any work done in Chittor with Kush and Shubhi attacking me at any moment. Christine will not come to Jaipur until tomorrow morning so at the moment it is just Tim and I. We had a good old time in the office today, and then we went out to lunch.

Being back in Jaipur, especially now that the weather is turning back to the heat it was in before, it is hard not to reminiscence at the way things were here 7 months ago. I still feel like everything is the same, but its not. I have been watching and seeing the development of this city for a few months now, and I have noticed a few changes. For one thing I have noticed that some of the homeless people were gone. There was a string of sideway along the area where Raj Mandir and a coffee shop, Barista, are that was full of people for nearly 6 months and now on returning to Jaipur I can see these people are gone. I am only assuming that the police have moved in an evicted them, and that they now need a new section of sidewalk to live in. The hopeful reason for them to be gone is that they may be migrating for work, but I don't think that is why they are missing.

Its more than just that change, though. The city feels different somehow. It might be because I feel different about it. I am beginning to remember the things I was scared of when I first got here, which was pretty much everything. I remember looking out the window from the bus when we were in Delhi and wondering how I ever would be able to cope with it all! And now, though every day is hard for various reasons for the most part I can handle everything and am fairly self-sufficient. The things that used to shock me don't anymore. I no longer think about how all I see is men all the time. The first time I walked into the train station in Jaipur to buy train tickets and saw the long lines of brown men I practically jumped out of my skin in fear. Now, I don't even think about it and I often go to the train station by myself to purchase tickets for one reason or another. Traffic in India is very loud, full of beeping horns and all types of vehicles trying to get ahead on sometimes limited space. I have forgotten what quiet traffic sounds like. Or what America smells like. The air here, even in clean cities, is often very polluted. And if it isn't the smell of exhaust then its the trash, or cows. What will it be like to breathe clean air? Or not see cows everywhere? I am also very used to traveling on the left side of the road. What will happen when I try to drive for the first time? (Can you tell I miss home?)

My time here has definitely changed me. For so long after I left for college I still felt like a child. It is one of those mysteries-just because you become a legal adult doesn't mean that you feel like one. I always wondered when I would cross the threshold and feel like an adult-and I can definitely say this is how I feel now. In some ways I can't believe that I am ONLY 22. Some days I look in the mirror and I have to remind myself that I am not much, much older than that. Looking at coming home now, I am so excited to be young again! It feels like a rebirth, where I can go home and be silly and do silly things and it will be ok because I am IN FACT just 22 years old.

One of the things my mom and I used to argue over before I left for India was whether Indian women were oppressed or not. I would take the stance that they weren't, and from alot of my reading at the U I felt confident that that was true. But I certainly don't feel that anymore. If I can't come to a country to learn and visit and see what life is like without feeling oppressed myself, I can't imagine what it is like for the women here. I have an escape, this isn't my real life. I can fly home to the clean United State with my suitcases full of souvenirs and march off to Minnesota to graduate from college and look to my future where I can do what I want to do with my life. I have choices, decisions. And my parents, family, and friends believe that I have the ability to make good decisions for my future, even if I am a girl. The women here seem bound to their lives. I am sure most of them find joy in the lives they lead, in their children and families. And while many women in India experience nothing but violence in their lives, many are also very happy.

So, it begs the question. Are Indian women oppressed or are they just oppressed by American standards? Do I feel oppressed here simply because I have more options and choices at home and that is the root of my oppression? Or do I feel this way because it is, in fact, the truth that women are oppressed here?

And what does "oppression" mean anyway? I have never once heard Rima, Anjali or Pallavi use that word to describe women here. These are women who live fairly unconventional lives and they never speak of the situation for women that exists here as "oppression". It is a title the West has used to describe what they see?

There are so many problems here, and it is so sad simply because the solutions should be so easy. People need a place to live, food to eat, safe drinking water, a bathroom. They need jobs and education. But providing these needs proves harder than you may think.

I read an article in the Asia edition of TIME this week that said 8 million people in the world die every year because they can't afford to stay alive. A few pages later, there was an article on the new FORBES top 100 billionaires list, including several Indians-one of whom threw a $55 million wedding for his daughter last year. There are more than 100 billionaires in the world today and yet 8 million people die because they can't afford to eat. What is going on?