Summer in South Asia

This past week, I was fortunate to accompany the program director at FPAI-Hyderabad to his bi-weekly trips to local slums and villages where outreach clinics have been set up. During both of my trips to Jinnaram and Rasoolpura, I began to gain a better understanding of the difference and similarities of an urban versus rural setting. My first trip was to Jinnaram, a village area located on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The car ride to Jinnaram, passing through acres of…

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I thought everything would feel strange and different in the US when I returned after three months in India. Yet it all felt the same. My initial impression on entering the airport in Chicago: “I didn’t miss the TSA and it smells like saturated fat.” Nothing about the US feels strange being back, rather it just occurs to me how things are different here. Restaurant menus are filled with beef. I can now wear shorts. The traffic is well ordered…

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Many of my friends warned me that reverse culture shock (confusion resulting from going back to your own culture) would be worse than culture shock itself. One friend said “when you go to a new culture, you have an open mind, ready to take in the new culture. You don’t expect it to make sense to you.” However, when you go home, you expect to feel a certain way, to fit in. You expect it to make sense. So, if…

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Today is my last full day in India. I finished my volunteering in Mumbai and have spent the last week and a half traveling with two of my sisters. It was so special to share a piece of my time here with them. Now, I’m sitting in a little café in Rishikesh, solo again, overlooking the Ganges and Himalayan foothills searching for words to summarize my experience fully. I’ve tried a few different beginnings to this post and they’ve ranged from existential…

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It took me many tries to write this final blog post. Every time I had started writing, it just dawned on me how it would mark the end to this wonderful experience here. I kept pushing it back, trying to squeeze in as much time as I could. I guess there is a limit to how far back I can push this, as here I am, sitting at the airport, writing my last blog post in India. I have also…

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As I prepare to leave this country that has been my home for the past three months, I feel my memories have a stronger holder on me than they usually do. All through my travels in India, I’ve been haunted by the question: Do we live for the moment or live for the future? Does our sense of self reside in the unpinnable moment, or in our act of remembering times past? There are some things that are amazing to…

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Amritsar is hardly the only holy city in India and any attempt to create a list of all the holy places in India would be undoubtedly long and forgetting a number of places. The city however occupies a special place amongst all the sacred places of India as the holiest site in all of Sikhism. Founded by Guru Ram Das, the fourth in the lineage of ten gurus, with the excavation of a sacred pool. The next Guru went on…

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30/7/17 ——- As their summers come to an end, you can see the other interns growing more and more anxious as their next school term approaches. They work extra in their last week to make sure to wrap up their projects properly in the day, but during the night we stay up and talk about how much we will miss Bangalore and the whole research paradigm here at NCBS. Working here has truly been a blessing. We were exposed to…

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