Wed. June 27, 2012 “A month into my vacation”

It’s been a month now into my vacation and I am beginning to really enjoy and appreciate the time here in India. The transition back to my roommates in Pashan is a lot more than I have bargained for and I am very happy how things have actually turned out. Living with Rahul and Sunil give me a lot of insights into the Indian mindset. There’s a lot of things that I have learned, accepted, and grateful for this second time around in India.

view of the sunset on the balcony of the apartment. There's a nice breeze at night that cools everything and makes it so nice and pleasant...because of living all the way on the top of the apartment complex, it doesn't feel anything like India.

Rahul is a really good friend. I like talking to him a lot. He spent a year working in Canada and so has a really good idea of what western culture is like.

the alley-street that i walk everyday to get to an auto-rickshaw. There's always plenty of mangoes and lots of other vegetables...rarely any meat unlike the seafood market in Vietnam.

the Sunday food market where farmers take up the entire street...however they do sell most of the same thing. It's too bad that I don't speak Marathi and they don't speak English. I bet they have a lot of interesting things to talk about.

Some of the things that any travelers must accept when living in India. (1) the concept of time is very different from the west. The majority of Pune residents eat dinner anywhere from 9-11pm, 9 is considered somewhat early...that makes breakfast at 7:30 wishful thinking. (2) things do not get done immediately so it requires a lot of patience and frustration so much so that I have given up on expecting things to get done around here in India. Things will get done on its own time.

But there’s a lot of things that I am grateful for. My roommates have helped me activate my cellphone which is an extremely pain in the ass experience. It’s very hard to get anything here in India...so you definitely need to rely on other’s people help. And now after a week of waiting, my wireless internet is connected and I can connect wireless-ly with my laptop which is VERY useful here in India if you want to be able to find something you want or at least to be able to pin-point out to others what you want.

I can’t emphasize enough how privileged I feel just to be able to come to India and to study with my sanskrit teacher Vinaya Dev. And also I’ve been coming back to Bhandarkar Institute which is again one of the premier Sanskrit research institute in India. There are scholars here who probably put American-Sanskrit scholars to shame with their extreme erudition. I was also fortunate enough to have met Madhav Deshpande who is from Pune but has been teaching at the University of Michigan for the past 30 years. He gave a lecture about some grammarians from Varanasi which I did not comprehend but really appreciate the fact that he seems to be a really down to earth scholar. I actually used his book when I was learning Sanskrit since he presented the grammar in a very easy and understandable manner...unlike the book that I was forced to study from when I was learning Sanskrit at Berkeley.

Madhav M. Deshpande.

the great Dr. M.G. Dhadphale...his erudition is shall I say unfathomable!

Today was the first time I saw someone who was badly injured on the road. I did not see the accident or how it happened but there was a crowd of people and I saw them carrying a big woman whose skin was torn off from her lower-left leg. It was disgusting and it always makes me wonder just how horrible the traffic in Pune really is and everyday it really feels like I’m putting my life in jeopardy walking on the streets of Pune. I’m sure that traffic is not so bad elsewhere in smaller cities but here in Pune it’s just plain horrible. I mean heck, the driver who picked up me from Mumbai after my Vietnam trip was going around 90-100 mph on the Mumbai expressway in the rain! Shit I sometimes wonder whether I will get back home in one piece.

Aside from the dirt, noise, and pollution, there are so many beautiful things here in India. The clothing is one of a kind, and the Bollywood music that I wake up to every morning is also really entertaining. The mangoes are really delicious and every single one of them is so much better than any of the mangoes that I have ever eaten in the US. The home-cooked food, however, leaves a lot to be desired but my roommates are totally fine with its plainness. I think they are actually fond of it because it is considered to be more healthy than the food purchased in a restaurant. They are afraid that it contains too much oil or that the oil used is not of good quality. From my perception at least, I eat a lot more than my roommates and I think that it has something to do with metabolism. I think that Indian people have grown so accustom to the weather and the lifestyle that they have very low metabolism and so they don’t need to eat as much or they do have many snacks throughout the day and so it's okay for them not to eat dinner until very late.

Wed. June 20th 2012 “Settling down in Pune”

I left Vietnam on Sunday the 17th at 5 pm and my relatives, two cousins, an uncle and my aunt accompanied me to the airport. I felt sad leaving them but I also felt relieved that I was going back to India to study Sanskrit. I haven’t studied Sanskrit for close to three weeks now and I am somewhat dying to devote a lot of my time to it. I think that it is also a good thing that my friendship with Neel came to an end because that leaves me a lot of freedom. I don’t have to confine myself to Neel’s schedule and I don’t have to travel with him down to south India, that would have taken way too much time out of Sanskrit and it would have been another diversion. So in many ways, I am thankful that I have cleared my priorities.

last day and pic w/ mom

the statue of Thich Quang Duc whose self-immolation in 1963 in the intersection of Saigon brought world-wide attention to the persecution of Buddhists during the Diem's regime.

one of my uncle. I think he is the third brother.

 This second time around in India, I’m having a lot of mixed feelings about the country. Clearly the honey-moon phase that I was in a year ago is over. There are things about it that I absolutely hate, and it is only my love for Sanskrit that stops me from buying an early flight home. The first three weeks of my vacation was emotionally draining. Neel was really the only reason why I wanted to come back to Pune. He, however, has proven to be unreliable and in Vietnam, I learned a lot about myself that was also hard to take in. But I definitely want to come back next year to Vietnam to see my relatives, hang out with my mom, and enjoy the incredible food in my hometown. I would say that the food alone is a good enough reason to go to the country. 

Personally, I did not want to live in Pune because of my experience last year. Pune is a pretty over-crowded city of five million plus people and like all cities in India, it is dirty, overcrowded, and noisy. I wanted more peace and quiet and I had Bodhgaya in mind. But the problem with Bodhgaya is that the heat would surely kill me; the average temperature is about 35C. Yesterday when I was in an auto-rickshaw to go to Vinaya’s house I felt really sad having to live with so much noise. Really anyone who ever thinks about wanting to travel in India, you need an IPOD, there’s no question about it.

I share a flat with 4 guys: all of them work in the IT industry with the exception of our cook who lives with us and is from Bihar, a really poor and corrupted state in India (although my roommates tell me that it’s getting a lot better in the last five years because of the current state prime minister). All of my roommates
have to commute one hour just to get to there office. A bus actually picks them up and drops them at the office but personally I don’t care much for the commute that they have to take everyday. All of them work at pretty strange hours too. Abhik and Rahul don’t need to leave until noon, and Abhik gets back after 11 pm. Sunil is the only one who works and comes back at a reasonable hour--around 7 or 8. Even Kranti Toradmal, Jyoti’s daughter, don’t go to work until 2 pm and don’t get back until 1 am.

our 18 year old cook from Bihar. Like all low-caste he works like hell. Here he just got up from his afternoon nap. HAHA

The apartment is slowly becoming a little more livable. When I came in on Monday morning, it was filthy beyond belief--it’s actually always like that when Vikas lived here so you can see how happy I was to find out that he was in London for work. The next time I come to India, most of these guys will be married and I will definitely have to move on. Jyoti insisted that I take an apartment somewhere close to her family, but I declined because I wanted to live with my roommates. But what that means is that my commute is really a bitch. I live 10 km from Vinaya and from her house to Jyoti is another 5 km. From Jyoti’s place to my place is 12 km. So what that means is that I will be spending about $300/month on autorickshaw alone, which is fine. The family was shocked to know how much my commute is but really there is no way around it. Personally, I think it’s fine, it’s not like I am spending a ton of money traveling. Despite my commute, I still think that I am in my budget of about $2000 for the entire two months that I have left in India.

I feel much better now that I have figured out my schedule and what I want to do when I’m here. There are friends here and Jyoti’s family that I can rely on. Vinaya has proven to be an incredible instructor and I still need to help her get a computer and get her skype so that I can have classes with her when I come back to the US. Things are beginning to look better. I’m having so much fun studying Meghadoot with my teacher and knowing that I am paying a fraction of the cost to receive an education that any American-Sanskrit scholars would envy.

I usually get up at about 6:30, review the Sanskrit materials from yesterday at about 7:30 which takes about an hour and a half, watch Bollywood music for two hours while I follow up on the news and then prepare to go to Vinaya at about 11. Since dehydration is always an issue here in India, I really try to keep myself cool by wetting my head scarf and making sure that I drink at least one coconut a day. All of this goes a long way in keeping me healthy, but even then the heat, noise, over-crowdedness, pollution can really get to me. When class with Vinaya is over at 1, I now have the option of either going to Jyoti’s for lunch or buying lunch at a restaurant...lately however I have been going there because I really like her family’s company. This Saturday her daughters are planning to show me around Pune...definitely looking forward to that. I usually want another class with Vinaya in the evening around 5:30-6 pm. So that means I have about 2 hours to study Sanskrit at Tilak Maharashtra University. I think I come home about 7:30, have dinner, relax, and then go to bed about 11 only to repeat the schedule again. Even though I am not really going anywhere and seeing anything new, the freedom that I have here right now is priceless. The freedom to study and enjoy life! 

I drink a coconut from this man everyday before I go to Vinaya.

mangoes are one of the redeeming qualities of India. I'm going to try and eat at least 4 a day before the season is over. I bought all these mangoes for $2.50. They are very tasty and much better than any of the mangoes in America.

Fri. June 15, 2012 “Languishing at home with mom”

This is my first blog in a while because the last several nights I slept horribly. The room that I was sleeping in didn’t have any ventilation, and last night I finally gave up. I moved upstairs where thank god it was a little cooler and I had the windows opened with mosquito spray to ward off any mosses. This house is like that, it traps heat during the day, and at night the house is completely stuffy and unbearable. 

Today is the last day that I will be with mom before I head back with my aunt and cousin to Saigon for my flight on Sunday back to Mumbai. It was an interesting stay although we definitely had our awkward moments. Mom still treats me, bless her heart, like I am still her five year old son who left her twenty-two years ago for America. Ever since I arrived, mom has been pampering and attending on me as if she were my servant. I realized how much she missed me all these years and that she did in fact lost a son, while I was still way too young to have any lasting memories of her. As hard as it was, I told her that I was not five years old anymore and that I can perfectly take care of myself. It must have been extremely hard for her to hear that, but I hope that she accepts that reality. I kind of wanted to ask her to let me go...don’t hold on to me otherwise she would make me sad too. It’s just been an emotional roller-coaster for me and maybe that’s why I also had a hard time sleeping at night. I was sad..but I am also kinda relief now that I can go back to India to focus on Sanskrit.   

Her life has been an incredible struggle with poverty that I don’t know where to begin. I think she understands  that at least I have turned out to be a good person even though growing up with my uncle and his family was hardly what I called a happy childhood. She’s relieved that there were many ways I could have gone wrong but I hadn't. I don’t drink, smoke, or did any crazy things. She knows that I like Sanskrit and that I want to do some translations in the future. Her advice for me is that if I do marry, I should marry someone who loves me more than I love her (I find that strange), and to marry at least someone who will not bring us both into a state of destitution. She said that her life of poverty made her very wary and that she doesn’t want the same for me.

porridge w/ clams for breakfast.

this lunch dish took mom forever to prepare

this was by far the nicest house i have seen. pricetag? only $100,000

don't know what these little shellfish are called but they were delicious...also not sure whether this gave me stomach problem later that evening or whether it was that iced sugar-cane juice. my guess that it was the latter. 

all the foods of vietnam are delicious...even the fruits..this one is called the mangosteen. But my favorite fruit the one that i've been dying to eat was not in season "the star apple" i.e. (Vietnamese called it the "breast-milk" fruit)

I called Prakash, Jyoti’s husband, to arrange me a car to pick me up at Mumbai’s airport on Sunday at midnight. I think he understands and there shouldn’t be any problem. If there’s any, I’m sure I can call him when I get there. From there, I think I will head to Pashan where I stayed last year with the guys. I found out that Vikas will be leaving for London, I think for a year. I think it’s going to be nice just being back at the flat. It’s pretty far from where Vinaya lives but it’s okay. I still want to hang out with Jyoti and her family and see where this goes. I really can’t wait to just focus on Sanskrit and have nothing else on my mind.

Sat. June 9, 2012 “Fixing the house”

I feel completely useless while my cousin, Duy Nguyen, had been busy fixing up the house since yesterday. He changed all the light bulbs and did all the electrical wirings while I tried to help him as much as I could but the weather here in Vietnam has been pretty brutal. It’s not hot as it is in India, but the humidity is pretty bad. So I feel a little lethargic even though I am not doing any physical labor. This time of year is supposed to be the best time, the monsoon is supposed to cool things down and I bet it does but it’s just not cool enough for me who is so spoiled by San Francisco’s weather. So I have confined myself in front my computer, either studying Sanskrit or blogging.

Mom, however, is a little too overprotective of me. She thinks that I’m taking too many showers and that I might catch a cold and I have to really dry myself well and not keep the fan blowing so high. But I have to reassure her many times that I am not used to this hot and humid climate and that the best way for me to take care of myself is to keep myself nice and cool. Otherwise there’s a risk of me getting heat exhaustion. Right now I feel somewhat exhausted even though I haven’t done anything other than studying or blogging. So while I’m blogging, I feel like I can’t even think straight.

Probably once my cousin and a few other helpers have fixed up this house, we will be going to the South China Sea since the town is very close to the coast (thanks to google map otherwise I think I would have a lot of problem identifying a lot of the geography).

This afternoon there’s been a bit of a respite in the rain and my cousin hired a few guys to help us fix the crack on the roof that causes numerous headaches for my mom when it rains because this house leaks in ten different places but the crack on the roof is the worse. Not sure how much it’s going to costs us but I think I can cover it.

we had to take a ferry across a pretty shallow inlet to get to a place where i could cash my traveler's cheques.

breakfast for saturday...wish the portions were a little bigger.

I didn't know that Vietnamese people worship their ancestors...my mother thinks that it brings good karma for me if she serves her mother until the end of her life. This was for my grandfather.

lunch on Saturday. 

this crack and the one on the roof have been a constant headache. I was afraid that this part of the building my collapse..but mom reassured me that the frame is very strong...not going to happen.

 just hoping that it will not leak anymore.

Fri. June 8, 2012 “Hanging out and reconnecting with mom”

I came to Bac Lieu which is probably around 280km south of Saigon on Monday late in the afternoon about 4:30 pm. My mom greeted me and she told me later that she was afraid that she had lost a son ever since she gave me away to my uncle 23 years ago. But when she saw me putting my arms around her and now that we have been with each other for the past four days, she is not worried anymore about whether I care for her or not because she knows that I do...and it’s true. In the last several days, my mom has filled in a lot of the memories of my childhood before I immigrated to America with my uncle.

I don’t remember any of these memories but most of it is too sorrowful that it grieves me to hear it. I feel like my mom has suffered for 56 years with poverty and now with the burden of taking care of her mother. But now she is also relieved that I have finally found a good path as a school-teacher. I promised her that her days of poverty will be over now that I am finally all grown up and not depending on anyone. I promised her that I will take care of her from now on and only her. I’m just crossing my fingers that nothing will ever happen to me and that fate will allow me to be a dutiful son and let me take care of my mom in her old age. That is the plan even if I have to find another job when I come back to America in order to send her $200/month, I will be more than happy to do that.

Reconnecting with mom surprisingly is not a problem for both of us. I think we both understand each other very well and she has really spoiled me these last several days by calling me her “sweetheart” and other endearing terms that made me want to blush and cry. But I feel so grateful to finally have a mom who loves me--I think that’s what been missing all these 23 years.

We were supposed to go out for breakfast, but was caught out in the rain, so mom bought bread and steamed-pork. She fried an egg and made ice coffee. Simple but delicious.

I love this vegetable--it's kinda slimy but tasty.

this was for breakfast on thursday, i think. hahaha....it's hard to keep track...everyday breakfast and lunch is so good, dinner is whatever that is leftover from lunch.

lunch on thursday.

Other than hanging out with mom, going to the market in the morning to buy produce, and then having her prepare lunch, and having lunch, I haven’t done anything else. Thank god that we have pretty fast DSL here in this house, otherwise I think I would have gone crazy. The first day when I couldn’t get the DSL to work, I was thinking of going to an internet-cafe shop and do some surfing there, but mom doesn’t want me to go out because she is worried about the relatives who might want to solicit me. Anyways, now that internet works here, I really don’t mind whatsoever about staying inside and not going anywhere else. A lot of people asked my mom how come I don't come outside, and she told them that I was busy studying Sanskrit (which is true). I’ve been studying Sanskrit and reading the news and calling some folks back in the US. Too bad Vietnam doesn’t allow Facebook...(damn!) so I have to resort to the slow 3G speed on my iphone.

My studies of Sanskrit has been slow because I have to talk with Vinay over her really bad cellphone so the clarity is not so great. We had two classes and my level of satisfaction right now is about 50%. However when I’m with her one-on-one, I know for a fact that I’m getting a world-class Sanskrit education from one of the best minds. I just need to think of some kind of solution later on when I go back to the US because it seems right now that I will completely end my friendship with Neel. There is nothing for me there that is worthwhile anymore than frustration, and frustration is never a good thing when I am on a vacation. So the best thing to do is to completely end the friendship and depend on Vinay to help me find another Sanskrit if she can teach me when I’m back in the US. It also looks like I will be moving back to my Pune flat with my roommates. We’ll just have to see. What’s comforting is that I know I have money with me in a dirt poor country, so I don’t have to worry about being on the damn streets. To hell with NEEL, that bastard!

The plan is when I come back to India from Vietnam, I will be focused only on Sanskrit and I would like to meet up with Vinaya once in the morning and once in the evening to really study Sanskrit with her. That’s the plan that I have right now and I will have very limited time to do that because I am flying back to the US on Aug. 20th. That gives me about 2 months to really do all the studying that I want to do. I’m also planning to fly to Chennai for several days to visit a friend and also I would like to see Gita’s place. That probably would be like four days and that’s the only trip that I have planned so far. That’s really all the traveling that I think I’m going to do this time in India. Really, the focus is on Sanskrit and nothing else.

Wed. June 6, 2012 “Learning about my past - The House” Part II

I think I now understand why my uncle’s wife despised him so much for spending so much money constructing this huge house for his family and boy is it a freaking huge house. The ceiling is very high and it is very big one but I think it is poorly designed. There’s a lot of space with 4 big rooms but only 2 bathrooms. There’s a lot of maintenance that needs to be done and a lot of work if it were to look its best but to be quite frank, I’m not planning to use any of my money to maintain this house or anything that is related to this house. My uncle doesn’t have any money whatsoever to do any more maintenance and so if later on he wants to fix the house, he probably needs to ask contribution from all of the children. As far as I am concern, the only duty that I have is with my mom and I have been sending her one hundred dollars every month. Later on when I have more money saved up, I would like to send her two hundred dollars which would be a really good amount to live on.

house is pretty big...the depth runs probably close to 30 yards from front to the backyard. but it is a curse, no life whatsoever!

 I told my mom that there is no life in this house whatsoever. It’s huge but lifeless which is in perfect contrast to big houses in India. In India, you have two to three generations living under the same roof but here, it’s only my mom and her mom (my grandmother). She works as a maid taking care of her mother and taking care of the house. I think my uncle regularly sends $200 dollars out of his poverty to his mother. This house is really depressing to be in because it is so big and no one to live in it. They build this huge fence and enclosure to guard against theft...but is it really necessary? My mom even admits that there is nothing valuable in it to steal. I told my mom that once her mother passes away and that when she has finished her duty, I want her to be able to travel around Vietnam and enjoy her old age. I will support her financially because right now she is so obligated to taking care of her mother that she hardly takes care of herself. She’s interested in going to the temple too so I would like to be able to help her as much as I can. I do feel really good about my current financial situation that once I have reached my comfort levels of savings, I clearly want to support my mom so that she doesn’t have to be so unhappy about her health. Since I have been sending money back to my mom, I think she’s doing okay other than her health. I think she has enough to eat which is number one on my priority, the second is health, and then the third is I want her to enjoy the rest of her life doing whatever she enjoys doing.

About this house, I’m really not concerned about it..and I only wish that my mom is freed from its burden because it’s really nothing but a burden for her. She works tirelessly to maintain its upkeep and she has to take care of her mom 24/7. When it rains, the house leaks in ten different places and so she has to place buckets to catch the water. Her mom needs to pee every hour or so even at night, and so I doubt that she ever gets enough sleep. The money that my uncle sends home is never enough for them to find a maid or care-giver. You know this house has all the semblance of a well-off family but it is far from it...and so I am only interested not in its upkeep but only for the well-being of my mom. I can’t believe I am feeling this emotional but I am, I thought I was never going to be moved by my mother’s sacrifice but I am, and now that I am making some money as a school-teacher, the only thing that needs to be done now is to ensure the welfare and happiness of my mom, and that I think can and will be done. I am not financially bind by family or children, I only have myself to support, and ever since I paid off my credit card debts four years ago, I have become very frugal with my money. You can say that I know the value of money really well and I only spend wisely, so to ensure the financial well-being of my mom is not a hard burden for me at all. I still need to figure some things out of course when I come back to the States.

I went with my mom to the morning market today and we had some really good breakfast--noodles soup that has a broth made of some really pungent fish sauce, not sure whether my Americans can stand the smell and taste, but it is extremely delicious to my palate. I think every morning mom goes out to the local market and she buys fresh fish and seafood there. Everything is so good and everything is so fresh. I was wearing my Indian attire and everyone was curious where I was from. Right now I’m just spending some quality time with mom while she cooks and cleans the house. I’m not planning to do much, no need for travels...just stay in one place talking with mom, enjoying her company, blogging, and perhaps study some Sanskrit. Too bad the internet is not working until my cousin comes in two days. Right now mom is preparing lunch..the so-called sweet and sour catfish soup and clay-pot catfish which is one of my favorite dish. But instead of using catfish, I think she’s using a really good quality kind of fish as a substitute. I’m beginning to like all Vietnamese cuisine...every dish is my favorite.

the local fish-market very close to where we live.

my mom told me that these vegetable and fish stand only lasts for about 2 hours before they pack up and go some where else.

this was for breakfast--Hu Tieu Mam...I think that's how you spell the dish...literally impossible to find in Vietnamese restaurant in America.

mom preparing lunch.

mom prepared one of my favorite dish--sweet and sour catfish soup, but she used a better kind of fish, not sure what it's called.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 “Learning about my past” Part I

This side-trip to Vietnam was to learn more about my past. I landed in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday evening at 8 pm and my aunt and her son from my “father side” (he’s my uncle who adopted me when his family immigrated to America) picked me up at the airport. There I met a few relatives and they brought me in to their extremely small studio in Saigon (i.e. Ho Chi Minh City, I’m just going to refer it as Saigon from now on) where I spent the night. We also had a long, complicated, and difficult conversation that I was man enough to have and that my uncle relatives needed to understand. There’s been a long drawn out feud between the two families: my uncle’s side of the family and his wife side’s over the house that my uncle built for his mom. This house is more of a curse than anything; there’s no happiness there and only my real mom (sister of my uncle) works there as a house-maid to take care of the house and her mom who is in her late 80s, I think around 87. It turns out that my grandmother has six children--four sons and two daughters, my mom being the second of the last children. They had four sons first and then two daughters. My mom is the fifth child and the first daughter, and my uncle (the one who took me to America) is the eldest son.

To the right is one of my uncle. I think he's the youngest. To his left is his daughter in law and his grand-daughter. This is in Saigon where he and my aunt and cousin picked me up at the airport.  

My cousin, Duy Nguyen. We're both about the same age, his mom is also very close to my mom. He cared for my mom when she was undergoing surgery. 

Duy's mom, the youngest of the six children and who accompanied me to our hometown. Believe it or not, this was what we have for breakfast at 7:30 in the morning--looks like lunch doesn't it? I'm definitely going to put on a few pounds after this trip to Vietnam. hahaha...

coconut is put into the frig and the rinds are cut so that it's clean, unlike in India. But I bet it's a time consuming process. 

Pho for lunch. Really good meat too!

One of the confusion that the relatives from my uncle side of the family has is that his wife has a lot of money and that she sends money back home to her mom and her side of the family and neglecting them. This I debunked immediately, because I believe that they don’t understand how frugally she lives in America. She is one of the most frugal person that I have ever met in my life and growing up with her for 15 years, I know how careful she is with money because she herself doesn’t make anything. She never buys anything new for herself and she would have the same clothing for many many years without complaining a single bit. The money that she makes is hardly anything and what she gives, she gives out of her poverty and nothing else. This they needed to understand before they think badly of her.


Both my adopted parents (i.e., uncle and his wife) have sacrificed their lives in America to make sure all of their children have a better future that they never had. Even though growing up with them was a living nightmare that I do not want to go through again, I am still very grateful for them and what they have done for all their children. They have five children and including me means six mouths to feed. So you can imagine how hard it must have been having six kids to feed in America--I don’t think I would have been able to do a better job than what my uncle and his wife did for their children. And so you can see that I was not going to allow any relatives in Vietnam disparage either one of them. What they needed to understand was that there was no happiness in our family in America. We were extremely poor and were very unhappy. My cousin, Duy Nguyen, did not understand that, but I tried to make him understand with my broken Vietnamese. He said that there are many poor Vietnamese families and yet they are happy, so why is it our family was unhappy. And I tried to tell him that the cause was due to financial stress having to feed six kids and sent whatever money they were able to save back home to Vietnam. But they stuck it out for 15 years until all the children have finished their education and able to support themselves.

Growing up with my uncle, I remember the constant crazy argument that they would have every day  about the big house that my uncle built for his family while neglecting his own children. There were many other bitter arguments that all of the children had to endure so much so that they don’t care anymore about the relatives in Vietnam...and it’s true. My brother and two of my other sister have never been back to visit our relatives. This is my first trip even though I refused to go with my uncle when he visited the country about 7 years ago. And the purpose of my trip was not to really reconnect with anyone but to visit my mom more than anything else. However, it’s been really refreshing to see my cousin Duy who is about my age and his mother, and our grandmothers--both from my uncle’s side and his wife’s side. They reminded me of many memories before I left Vietnam. Memories of me waiting for my mom sitting on a rock waiting for her to come home from work. Memories of how my grandmother comforted me when I was about to leave for America saying that I would someday have a better life and then be able to support my mom. All of this grieved me very much seeing how much my mom had to endure all these years. 

Sat. June 2, 2012 "A horrible ending to the first nine days in India...BLAH!"

My friendship with Neel is coming closed to an end. I find that he is too unreliable, arrogant, and uncompromising for me to have any further dealings with him. Unlike the last time I was in Pune where I lived with five other guys, I can rely on most of them to help me navigate this really daunting country. But Neel has not been reliable in any degree, as a matter of fact, I find him unhelpful in my dealings with him. It’s hard to get around the country if you don’t speak the language. Last year, my roommates help me with booking trains, bus, flight tickets when I needed it. While sometimes they were not prompt, in the end they were at least reliable. Not only is he unreliable, he is extremely arrogant in dealing with other people. At first I thought that it was only me who had this feeling and then when I begin to talk to other people, others also share the same feelings that I had. He made Vinaya Dev look bad several times (my Sanskrit teacher) and on a few occasions she had to wait for him for hours. I found out later that many of his yoga students left him because he was very dogmatic and critical in dealing with them.

I told him in the evening when I was about to head to Mumbai for my flight to Vietnam at 7 o’clock in the morning that the biggest joke for me about this trip was that I was really looking forward to hanging out with “guruji” but now I have completely lost faith and trust in him...and maybe even India in general. God, I can’t believe I’m feeling like this at the moment. He made my trip completely miserable and stressful by his uncompromising attitude in the last nine days. I gave him $1200 for my room and yoga fees of which he agrees to refund half if I want to find my own place. This will be the last time I will ever pay someone upfront. I'm still debating whether I want to stay or go back to the old Pune flat that I lived in last year. To me money is not a problem as much as the friendship that could be completely lost if he is arrogant and uncompromising. 

I’m one of Neel’s biggest financial contributor and I have done more than my share to help him with his finances by buying Sanskrit books so that he can give it to the Sanskrit school-teachers.I bought stuff for him from the US and brought it to India for him and I even give him my electronic equipments. We were also both planning to travel together to Mysore and other parts of India and I was willing to contribute more to this part of the trip. Furthermore, I was willing to accommodate him if he plans to come to the US...all of this right now is going down the toilet. And I think Neel is slowly realizing that he’s being really a stubborn idiot. Even Chinmay thinks he is acting weird in the last few days. I think he is probably torn between some crazy principle that he has and whether our friendship is worth overlooking those principles. I’m sure our friendship means a lot to him too since we get along really well the last nine months and I always looked up to him. He knows that too and I am sure that when I told him that I have completely lost all faith in him, it really must have stung him pretty hard. I really regret the fact that there is a lot about him that I could learn from...his past mistakes which he shared with me when he picked me up at the airport (living in a foreign country, not knowing the ways of other people, not willing to compromise and finally depending on the goodness of others and how that experience helped made him more humbled were all relevant information and had a lot to teach me). But unfortunately his dealings with me is neither humbled nor friendly but arrogant and domineering. This will for sure destroy our friendship because I'm just not the kind of person who will take any BS from anyone. And it's not like I come from a culture where you are suppose to put up with domineering and arrogant people.

I was so stressed out today when I could not find anyone who could help me book a cab to the Mumbai airport. Let me tell you that helpless feeling of not being able to find someone or turn to a friend whom one can rely on is a CRAZY and DESPERATE feeling especially when you are in a foreign country.  Neel was completely useless, he wrote me several options that I could take and pretty much let me decide on which course of action that I should take which involved traveling to places that I don’t even know. Nancy was not any help either. Chinmay was there, but she is so inexperienced with traveling in her own country that she doesn’t even know how to help me. Anyways, I was pretty stressed out by now and I had this really worried look about me. There was no denying about it that I would for sure have a hard time reaching Mumbai airport.

I went to my cook Jyoti with this heavy spirit in order to grab my breakfast since it was already 8:45 am and I was 15 minutes late. When I came, her daughter was sitting at the table with Prakash, her husband. She asked me why I came late for breakfast because usually I am always on time. I told her that I was worried and stressed out because of my situation of not being able to find a taxi. And with just a phone call, Prakash immediately solved my problem. I tried renting a cab through KK Travels earlier in the morning but everything was booked, however, Prakash made a phone call and miraculously a taxi will come at 10:30 pm to pick me up and drop me at Mumbai airport. They also confirmed my opinion of Neel’s arrogant attitude and really did their best to cheer me up. My spirit in the last couple of days has been completely in shambles by this loss of faith in Neel. But because of this, I have met a number of people this past week that I am beginning to have a bond for. For example my Sanskrit teacher, Vinaya Dev whom I really admire for her knowledge of Sanskrit but also her friendliness. And today I have been dependent on Jyoti and her family to help me with my situation and I have exchanged facebook contacts with her daughter, Kranti so that now I know that they are trustworthy whenever I needed help.

Prakash reading the newspaper and his daughter, Kraanti.

the maids for the apartment complex.

there's one maid I like in particular at the apartment complex, Rekha. She's goofy and silly...but like all domestic servants works hella hard. She sweeps around the complex very early in the morning, 6 days a week.

Personally, I think she looks beautiful, fit and athletic..which is very unlike most Indian women who are very plump!

Kranti and her sister Vaishnavi. Can you guess which one of them is older? The answer is below.

Having finally settled my taxi, I told them how grateful and relieved I was. Then I went to the university afterwards because this was the last day where all the students will earn their certificate and then go back to their towns and villages. It was an emotional day for everyone and it was hard seeing all these teachers go back to their home. I went home and had lunch at Jyoti’s place and then at 2:30 went for my sanskrit class with Vinaya. Came back at 6:00 to hang out with kaaku (“auntie” in Marathi) and her daughters, had dinner with Chinmay who is attending a wedding in Nagpur where the temperature goes up to 47-50C, and then went back to Auntie’s place for the final wait for my taxi.

a few students gave speeches...not sure what they were saying.

Vinay listening intently as her students praise her.

the librarians at the university.

 The taxi came exactly at 10:30 and we left Auntie’s place at about 11 pm...reached Mumbai way too freaking early at 1:30 am and I had to wait outside the airport for two hours before they let us in. It’s now 6 am and I am in Mumbai airport. My flight is in about an hour and a half, and I can’t wait to fly to Vietnam and see my relatives whom I haven’t seen in 22 years. The food is gonna be hella magnificent and the fruits...ahhh what can i say about the fruits! To be quite honest, I also want to give India a little bit of a breather. It’s been rough the last several days and it’s been taking its toll on me. I still love Sanskrit more than ever and now that I am studying with some of the greatest Sanskrit scholars in the world, my love for this language is EVEN STRONGER! Hopefully I can have classes with Vinaya when I am in Vietnam....but I know one thing is clear when I come back from Vietnam. I will not forget why I want to travel to India in the first place and that is to study a beautiful language that I truly love and there is nothing that will stand in my way, not Neel and certainly not by the silly ways how things are done here in India. My resolution is firm--I want to master this language. (Vaishnavi is 18 and Kranti is 24)

PS: Blog was posted at Bangkok airport which is hella big. The people are so friendly for a change unlike the nasty Indian attitude that you often get at the airport...where it's an endless bureaucratic mess. Ah...and Thai women...well, they're just breathtaking...hahaha!