Outline

There have been a bunch of different things going on lately that I've wanted to write about. For (relative) brevity I'm just going to put it all in note form:

1.) Feeling what it's like to have people stare at me just because I'm white; the implicit understanding among people I meet that I'm obviously not from here; how little kids run up and ask me what country I'm from and "will I give them five rupees?"; wondering what I represent to them as "white".

2.) The pseudo-utopian community of Auroville; its amazing architecture and peacefulness; how it's the only place I've been in the past month without a constant din of honking car horns in the background; conversations about consciousness and spirituality that I only partially understood; the giant gold dome that looked like a spaceship.

3.) Administrators from NGOs show up at the guest house and talk excitedly about bringing the Aravind's eye care system to remote villages in Africa or elsewhere; the way such people are always describing nightmare flights between tiny airports in countries I know nothing about (Cameroon? Ghana?); how they have this rough, tanned, Paul Bowles romanticism and are relentlessly upbeat about making a positive impact in the world; how I fake my way through conversations with such people.

4.) Driving to Dr. Venkatesh's farm in a small village outside of Pondicherry; coconuts, and how people climb very tall trees to get them; briefly considering what it might be like if I moved somewhere rural and tried to grow things; picturing myself as some sort of gentleman farmer; thinking that I should start by gardening, or at least properly taking care of my houseplants.

5.) Two religious ceremonies to open a new hospital building and to honor the hospital's founder, Dr. V; flaming pyres stoked with butter, hypnotic chanting, and everybody tossing flower petals at framed photographs; how the basic rituals and practices are not so different in concept from Jewish ones (though of course different in execution); how I am distracted by the thought that inhaling thick clouds of incense in poorly ventilated rooms could probably cause lung cancer.


6.) Overnight train rides in compartments packed with snoring people; how those don't bother me so much.