Until We Meet Again.

My last day in India was the perfect synopsis of my time here – yoga to the dawn over Mumbai, a visit to the Nilanda Institute who educate Indian students with learning disabilities, an almost equal amount of time spent battling traffic to try and buy a few last minute gifts, and a walk around India at the park nearby.

The park is India – thousands of Muslims, Hindis, Parsis, Christians, all walking and playing and chatting in perfect harmony. I circle the 2 km walking path with the Indians and my emotions swirl and swim along with me…laughing with the boys trying to play a cricket match over crowded benches, envy for the two close friends walking together and missing mine, reverent to the frail woman walking with her care-taker, amazed at the number of joggers who are wearing saris, nostalgic for the proud Indian father who walks by with a “Michigan Dad” t-shirt, hopeful for the children who swarm me when I give away the last of my pencils, tearful for the small girl carrying a baby more than ½ her own size, anger at the boy who pushes the weaker brother, but mostly love for this country and everything it has shared with me.

On to Vietnam…

IIT's Bid to Improve Indian Education

We entered the gates and left behind India’s street noise, and actually, India. I could have been at Stanford.

“There are over 300 deer here, every professor and student lives on campus, it’s about creating an environment for learning,” Hari told me, the Vice President of Development for Congruent, one company who is helping us build the Curriki platform.

We were on our way to meet with Dr. Mangala Sunder Krishnan, the IIT Professor who has spear-headed the IIT open source movement. IIT is the exclusive engineering school where .74% (just under 3,000) of the 350,000 applicants are accepted each year. The rest of the applicants go to second tier engineering schools throughout the country, sometimes schools where the faculty has no direct experience and have been hired on the spot to meet the huge demand for computer degrees.

Mangala said there were two driving forces that brought open source IIT to his attention. The first (and the concern I have heard over and over) was the incredible challenge being faced by today’s famous Indian technology firms, the 300,000 engineering graduates they tried to hire each year were simply not qualified – only 10% were directly employable (see past blog on trust your teachers). They were taught the concepts through rote learning but could not apply nor create with their education. All companies have to invest 6 – 12 months of re-training for these graduates before they get any value out of them. And the challenge appears to be the faculty at the non-IIT universities; they just don’t know how to teach conceptual understanding and application (in addition the Board Exam that gets these students into the university only tests rote learning). So why not take IIT’s famous curriculum and give it to the thousands of engineering universities and faculty to at least give them a jump start in changing the way they teach?

The second driving force was watching the success of his colleagues at MIT – OCW is perhaps the most advanced open source curriculum offering available today. He could leverage the learnings of his MIT colleagues in motivating the hyper-competitive 7 IIT’s throughout India to collaborate and develop their shared curriculum for open source. After 3 years, he has 120 courses in engineering and 600 more planned for math and science over the next year.
Most of my conversations have included major concerns over the future of India due to the “dismal” universities and government education system for primary and higher ed. If you’re interested, perhaps the best read on this is from the Financial Times, the author forecasts a halt to the 7-8% Indian growth and an impending demographic disaster due to the poor infrastructure, healthcare and education system. Perhaps Mangala’s work at IIT will help soften this recession if the seers are correct.

To the Principal's Office.

“Who are you and what do you want,” was my greeting for my first Principal appointment with three of the top schools in Chennai, in fact, in India.

“Ummm..” I stammered, having flashbacks to my own time in the Principal’s office, “Bala set up our meeting, to discuss the Curriki opportunity at PSBB.” Our goal was to try and get these leading schools to load their curriculum so other schools could benefit from their IP.

“Ah yes, so sorry, it is mid year exams and as you can see we are very busy here.”

Which was an understatement. I felt like we were at an Indian market, after 22 people came through her office interrupting our conversation for her signature or her direction on a discipline problem, I stopped counting. I have never seen anything like it, ordered chaos. The Principal managed to give me some clear direction on her opinion of Curriki between her loudspeaker announcement over the microphone to her right and calls with parents on the telephone to her left. Her comments were echoed in my additional meetings that day. First, focus on 8th standard and down, this is where schools have the most flexibility as they don’t have to prepare students for the Board Exam (which decides the rest of the students life, and is the root cause for the criticism of Indian education not promoting application and creativity). All teachers in primary school develop their own activities and worksheets and this is what we should consider putting on Curriki. There must be a certificate of completion for all teachers (this whole certificate, diploma thing is big in India). There should be a contest where Scott McNealy comes and gives an award to the best curriculum developed by a school.

And all of this sounded very positive until I met with a contact of mine that evening who knows all of these principals.

“The Principal of PSBB? She doesn’t make any decisions, it’s the Dean who makes all of the decisions there. You know that computer next to her desk? She doesn’t even know how to turn it on. But I am sure she told you to follow up in a week, in India, we never say no. We just keep giving excuses as “no” is impolite.”

I reflected on my thousands of no’s to shop owners, rickshaw drivers, dinner offers, etc. over the last two months, I must be a very impolite American.

1,084 Documents

“Does that computer hold one thousand eighty-four documents?” asked the restaurant manager at my hotel, pointing at the laptop in front of me.
“Sir?”
“Does that computer hold one thousand eighty-four documents?” he repeated.
“Yes sir, this computer holds one thousand eighty-four documents, and I am sure hundreds of thousands more,” I tried to reply courteously.
“Oh! No, really? That computer holds one hundred thousand eighty four documents?!?”
“Yes sir, computers today can hold all of the documents you have ever created. But I do not understand, why is eighty-four so important?”
“Eighty-four is all of the business documents in the world!”
I spent a few moments trying to grasp if this was some Hindi Vedic astrology number, I finally realized what he was trying to say…

“Yes sir, this computer will hold all of your A4 documents, the standard paper size you use for managing your restaurant.”

“Can anyone steal your documents? Can you see the Internet? Ah, computers are an amazing thing. The happiest day of my life was a few years ago when I was at a small village near here and I saw Bill Gates, or some very important man who works for Bill Gates, give a computer to a poor village girl who won a computer contest. Computers will change India, open us up to the world. What do you think of India? We are having our first boom, we owe everything to computers. Can I sit down with you?”

I did a quick inventory of my desire for some alone time, his friendly face, his questionable sanity, our amusing conversation and figured, what the heck? And so we chatted about India, villages, new opportunities and the country’s future.

“India is very strong now, new opportunities all of the time. All of my children are educated. Do you think China will take us over? No? Yes, you are right, China will not take over India. India will take over China. We will win. If we can fix our villages we will win. You see, in America, people do not understand that life is still very, very bad in the Indian villages. So, in America, in small villages, people should get together for a village meeting and discuss India. They should say, oh, let’s help an Indian village. Let’s supply water and electricity and money for proper housing and education and teachers and schools and uniforms and telephones….please go back and tell America to do this for us. And can you send us computers to use? Computers are the answer.”

Ahem, check?

Exhale.

If you get a chance to come to India, try and make it to Kerala. Although fraught with tourists, thousands of ayurvedic centers, yoga shalas on every corner and street peddlers in between, it makes up for it with beautiful backwaters, delicious food, fresh air and incredible beaches. And it’s a communist state - making its population overall better educated and better off as a result.

I am staying near Lighthouse Beach which is all of the above condensed into a 200 meter beach. But, I’m on the other side of the lighthouse in a $15 room perched above the pounding surf (so loud I have to wear earplugs at night) with access to a secluded beach just out my door. I have a very difficult life right now – waking each morning to walk the labyrinth of walkways to find my yoga teacher - Lino Miele (a hilarious Italian ashtanga yoga teacher here giving a two month yoga retreat), a long brunch (usually at two different restaurants as I want to sample all the food), some writing and reading, lying on the beach, an afternoon massage, a sunset walk, fresh fish for dinner and back again to start it all over. Life is good, except for the lizard droppings left for me on my pillow last night by the lizard fairy…

Never Say Die.

If you’ve ever read Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat, you know there is one consistent rule in this very inconsistent place – desire. Every morning when I showed up 30 minutes early to prep for the NGO teachers, all of them were already present. Each evening when I said it was time to shut down and go home, I had to repeat myself four times – their favorite response to my urges to end the day was “Never Say Die.”

After days of teaching Curriki, Kid Pix, LeapFrog, blogging, Google documents and Teaching with the Internet – the teachers asked me for more. And it wasn’t just me, they asked each other for more – more resources, more learnings from their own teaching at NGOs, more focus if people were talking out of turn, more of themselves to share. They loved Curriki because the could access endless learning for their students, and more importantly, now it was their turn to share their own resources with the world – my favorite quote: “I spend hours finding worksheets and activities online and re-purposing them for my students, now I can showcase my own work.”

Most of these teachers are the first to be educated in their family, earn a higher-income than their peers, and are empowered by their NGOs to make change (which is much more common in an NGO than at a government school). And, as a result, they are making different choices. They want to move out of their parents house so they will stop bugging them about marriage, some bought their own car, others are putting themselves through University. All of them know that every piece of knowledge is a stepping stone to a better future.

Generosity Fuels the Momentum

The concept of hanging out in India for a few months and testing if a concept like Curriki can take hold seemed pretty implausible, especially given the diversity of the Indian education system (private schools, government schools, private government schools, NGO schools, International schools and the list goes on...I could stay here until I am 100 and continue learning about the nuances of this system). Fortunately, its not as far-fetched as it seems.

The generosity of our contacts makes this endeavor entirely possible. We meet with our contacts (business associates, friends of friends, founder’s contacts, Board of Director contacts, etc.), they provide us excellent feedback, sometimes consider piloting Curriki, but always gave three or four names to follow up with. And not just after the fact. They pick up their cell phone in the middle of our conversation and ask their own contacts when they could meet with us. My favorite example was meeting with a good friends father who was an Indian Ambassador. Over lunch in Mumbai discussing the Curriki concept, he scheduled a post-lunch meeting for me with a superb contact and tried to confirm a morning meeting for my Executive Director in Delhi. Why don’t Indian trains work this way?

In a way, our experience mirrors the approach of Open Source Curriculum. We introduce the concept to our own community, they take ownership and reach out to their communities, during our conversations their communities adapt and localize the concept to their own needs – be it NGO, private wealthy school, etc. – and the momentum begins.

The Elephant in the Room.

I read today in Hindustan Times a summary of a recent report by the UN – “The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth…the bottom 50% of the world’s adult population owns barely 1% of the wealth. North America, Europe and the high income Asia-Pacific countries hold 90% of the total world wealth. In the US, average wealth (total assets – liabilities) is $144,000 per adult while in India it is $1,400 per adult.” Yes, that’s 1% of the US wealth.

Each morning in Delhi I throw on my jeans, tennis shoes and winter coat and battle traffic for 20km (12 miles) to arrive at the Hope School two hours later. My driver won’t take me all of the way there because he thinks “the people are too dirty and smelly and too many mosquitoes,” the truth is that they are predominantly Muslim and he is Nepalese. I finish my day with the Room to Read teachers, find my driver and battle evening traffic through Delhi, past the foreign embassies to the Taj Palace where I throw on some lip gloss and meet my colleagues and potential partners in the Club Room on the 7th floor to compare notes on our meetings with Indian officials and teaching in the slums.

My flip-flops from the 1% of the population to the 1% of the wealth are totally exhausting me. My brain can rationalize the statistics – however irrational they are. My heart can feel the love and laughter and beauty in both sides and everything in between. My mind can understand how we got here – how everyone who has more fights for more either through addiction to the game or fear of losing, or simply through the law of those who have more, get more. But every single part of me repulses at how completely, totally fucked up it is.

My Independence.

A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a group of businessmen in Bangalore. Everyone at the table had lived in the states and were now back in India and the question came around to what we all miss most about America. The responses varied from more time on their hands, open space, less obvious air and noise pollution and then the question came to me. Only one thing (besides my boyfriend, family and friends), my independence.

With the exception of the yoga area in Mysore and the cosmopolitan areas in Bangalore and Mumbai, I won’t walk out the door without my arms and legs covered – and in Delhi I won’t leave the door unless I have a male companion, especially after dark. I could, but that only increases the presence of the Indian men and their camera ready cell phones and incessant badgering (many people ask if I feel unsafe in India and the answer is absolutely not, I just feel harassed). In my fancy hotel in Bangalore, I was greeted with a hand-written note from the manager welcoming me as a “single, female traveler” stating that they would screen my phone calls and offer me a personal escort (not the kind men hire!) if I desired. I usually walk as most Indian women do - my head lowered, never meeting anyone’s eyes, sweating under my wrap. It’s actually not a big deal.

Nothing compared to the lives of most Indian women (of course the elite women are exceptions) – married by fourteen, lucky to get four years of primary education, repressed or murdered by their husbands and in-laws (I just read there are 70 women set afire in Bangalore each month), the list goes on…and I can’t write more as it depresses me too much.

I love my country. Despite my embarrassment at the colossal mistakes my country has made (I usually claim to be Californian as opposed to American – hoping that this softens the perception), especially in the last six years, I am eternally grateful to be born American. I can dream and am empowered to fulfill my dreams, there is no greater gift. Thanks again to those American women before me who demanded more.

Some Hope from Hope School.

Last year I took a vacation to train twenty Room to Read affiliated teachers in Delhi – all incredible teachers with a passion for education and helping out those most in need, as they once were. These teachers work for various NGO’s in the Delhi slums (where 1/3 of the population lives) and Room to Read supplies them with libraries, computer labs, professional development, etc. It’s an excellent model - the NGOs have the relationships in the community while Room to Read, headquartered in San Francisco, has built relationships with various local publishers and lots of rich people back in the states (their Executive Director, John Wood, is a brilliant fund-raiser and his recently published book is a good read – Leaving Microsoft to Change the World).

We all know that volunteering can be hit or miss for both parties – do our skills map to the organizations needs? Are we giving anything of value? Is the value we provide sustainable? Surprisingly, after just 3 days of training these teachers and 3 more days of visiting their various NGOs, my answer was a resounding yes. And its not because of me, its because of these teachers and their exponential multiplier effect. Their hunger for knowledge, desire to make an impact on their thousands of students, lack of resources (which motivates them to squeeze every last drop of value out of their teaching tools) and “just make it happen” focus creates change.

This year we held our training at the Hope School. Hope School was founded 27 years ago to provide education to those girls who were not permitted to go to school for various reasons – (1) they needed to beg, (2) they needed to work, (3) they needed to raise their siblings, or (4) their parents didn’t believe girls should be educated. So Hope School provides a unique curriculum around their working hours, a day care for their younger siblings, and social workers who regularly (at least once a month according to the Executive Director) visit parents to educate them on the value of education and make sure their children stay in school.

I was greeted during my first day of training this year with a presentation from last year’s teachers on how their skills impacted students throughout the year. One of my favorite stories was from a primary teacher, Nishent, at the Hope School who used Kid Pix with street children who were not allowed to enroll at Hope (their parents, if they had any, would still not allow them to attend school). She introduced computers to the children by using Kid Pix software, apparently the students returned day after day to play for hours with Kid Pix. One year later, eight of the street children are now enrolled full-time at Hope School – after the parents saw their work on the computers they enrolled them hoping this was a chance for better opportunity.

Each morning on the way to training, the Hope School story gives me my own hope as I walk with my entourage of uneducated street children. My free pens and rupees can’t change their lives, but the teachers I work with can and do.

My Guardians

Every time I arrive at a new location, I “date” various drivers. We chat about India, education, their families, America, shopping, pollution, etc. and after a day or two I commit to one driver – usually based on their response to my word “no thank you” (if they push after 3 no thank yous, it’s a deal breaker), the connection we have in our conversations, and their ability to keep me alive in the dangerous pursuit of driving in India.

These guardians claim to be my body-guards, my tour guides, my drivers, my bag carriers and ultimately, they become my friends. They are passionate about their rickshaws, often personally painted and adorned with photos or posters on their beliefs. They complain about India’s crowding, pollution and the disparity between the haves and themselves. They prize India’s newfound opportunities and give most of their income to their children’s education – hoping they will be the first generation to complete school. And they always wait for me – through hours of meetings or dinners or shopping, every time I walk out the door, they are there.

My favorite driver was Apu in Msyore. Apu has 2 little boys, a beautiful wife and a huge heart. His vitality and curiosity rivals most five year olds - just being around him makes you feel a little lighter. Above is a photo of him reaching across to play with a little girl next to us – despite the green light ahead and hundreds of horns honking behind.

Trust Your Teachers.

I was itching to get back to India, and reminded of this when I arrived for my flight at Suvarnabhumi and discovered complications – something about Air India not properly booking my flight on Thai Airways. My 30 minutes with Thai Airways left me with the answer – “Good luck, I can’t help you...” repeated eleven times to my various questions. I arrived at Air India desperate as I had a 9 am meeting in Bangalore the next day. After 5 minutes with the manager at Air India I had the flight I needed as well as some avuncular advice – “When there is a roadblock, we learn to go around, fly above or dig under. In India and in life, there should be no roadblocks.” I walked away with my ticket and yet another affirmation that I love this country.

I returned to full days in Bangalore pitching Curriki to various corporate leaders, foundations and schools with the Curriki Executive Director, Bobbi Kurshan, and another volunteer, Barbara Bauer (an executive for Sun who recently has taken a career break as well). I’ve been fortunate to work with some brilliant people in my career, and these women were no exception. Both are passionate, creative, innovative and the list goes on – but more than anything they have perfected the art of balancing “heart” with “bottom-line.” And the caliber of our meetings proved this as they were all set up based on their relationships – the Azim Premji Foundation (unfortunately Azim Premji was out of town on business and couldn’t meet with us), MindTree, Microsoft Education, etc.

Perhaps the most memorable afternoon was at MindTree, a company that specializes in technology innovation 3 years ahead of where the market is – if you are using Blue Tooth technology you are using their innovation. Encouraging creativity is the essence of their culture. They have adopted a school for spastic children and held a contest among the children to develop their logo. As you walk through the halls, the children’s art is blown up as murals (see above). They have set up their offices to mirror Indian villages – teams sit in pods of seven (the average size of an Indian household with grandparents, etc.), families make up neighborhoods and eventually a floor is a village with its very own replicated tree at the center where they hold village meetings. Everyone we met with had lived in the US at one point and all of them chose to return to be part of this culture, and, I assume, part of the IPO which is schedule for Q1 07.

MindTree is run by Ashok Soota who sets a high-standard for his 4,000 employees where learning is a vital part of their competitive advantage to innovate. Mr. Soota’s major challenge is hiring talented employees – intelligence isn’t the problem (Indians out-test most in education). The challenge is developing creativity and application skills, something that isn’t embraced in the Indian education system. Often corporations are forced to send new employees to “finishing” schools to learn these skills.

We heard this sentiment echoed during our meetings with executives at Wipro – who sponsored a ground-breaking study on this challenge just a week ago. The study is unique in that it focuses on the “top” private schools and discovers the same challenge often associated with only the government schools – teaching emphasizes rote learning as opposed to true understanding and application.

No one disagreed with this challenge in Indian education. But we did find two disparate parties on Curriki as an approach to solving this challenge. Curriki, by its very essence, embraces three philosophies (1) trust your teachers, (2) believe they are capable of modifying and improving the curriculum and (3) the more open the platform, the more valuable it will become.

The first camp, usually the technology leaders, live these philosophies with their own employees and were enthused about Curriki’s potential – empower teachers to create and you will foster creativity and application skills in the students. And usually these people had first hand experience with the power of collaboration, communities, wikipedia, etc. and their success.

The second party just couldn’t get past the vision of Indian teachers modifying curriculum – less than ½ of India’s teachers have a university education, how can they be trusted to change curriculum. I wanted to ask a larger question – how can you trust them to teach your future if you don’t invest in their creativity? Especially when your country embodies the philosophy of "go around, fly above or dig under."

Anything your Heart Desires.

Stepping into Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok is like walking into the future – even if you arrive from America. The chocolate I was seeking was at my fingertips imported from anywhere in the world – I could buy most food, clothing or entertainment item within a five minute walk from my gate. The decadence didn’t end after I left the airport – Thais are famous for their hospitality and the sentiment “anything your heart desires…” was met in most places I went. This seemed to hold true for all Westerners, in particular the Western men. Unfortunately.

You don’t even have to look to find older western men with young Thai women. And some aren’t “patrons,” they are here to stay – farangs are everywhere you look. We were diving with a 24 year-old British girl who was spending a month with her 65 year-old “fat, walrus face father” (her words) who had married a 32 year old Thai woman and finally, after 3 marriages and 3 daughters now has a son. There seemed to be a strong motivation by both parties in this arrangement – old, fat, white men got to purchase land in paradise (you can’t buy land in Thailand as a Westerner), a beautiful, young, obedient bride and another chance at love (well, maybe love). Thai women could stop working 3 jobs to make ends meet, live in a beautiful home and receive nice gifts. Whatever works I guess? With one major caveat – both parties are choosing, and that’s not always the case here.

I Can't Breathe.

This is my typical garb cruising around in the rickshaws. I broke up my India travels to head to Thailand for a long Thanksgiving week to meet my boyfriend, learn how to dive and get a “western” fix of some good chocolate – more on this in the next entry. My route was car to Bangalore, flew to Mumbai and then on to Bangkok - I couldn’t help but feel the speed of my travel was literally leaving the Indians in my smog.

I am terrified for our future. I can’t breath in these places, and it was the same in Delhi and Hong Kong – and apparently much worse in China and Vietnam. And its not like people aren’t trying to make change – Bangalore mandated that all new rickshaws must use only natural gas (I discovered last night that most rickshaw drivers mix petrol (56 rupees) with kerosene (18 rupees) to fuel their engines – no wonder I can’t breathe) which is priced at 22 rupees so there is economic incentive and much less pollution. The Indian teachers I taught last year in Delhi chose to do projects on energy conservation and natural disasters when I asked them to apply their new technology skills to a presentation – and these are to students in the slums. It is top of mind for everyone. But how do we accelerate change as individuals?

Environmentalism needs a better marketer – or at least educator. The 5 minute blurb at the end of an Inconvenient Truth gave me some insight on what I can do, but I need some clear action. What refrigerator should I buy? If I buy another car should it be electric or run on hydrofuel – should I get an electric moped instead? How do I use alternative energy to heat my home built in 1890? How do I shop in America and not buy packaged foods? How do I make noise to mandate China, India, America, etc. start to enforce stricter environmental policies? How can we get the rickshaw manufacturers to build solar-powered rickshaws ? Can someone please make a cell-phone powered oxygen mask until we can breath – as everyone has a cell phone?

It’s no doomsday joke. This is scary stuff. And its real and its now – apparently there were 358,000 early deaths in China caused by pollution. I can see my next trip to India – I pay $100 for an oxygen tank at the airport to use when I walk outside in “unfiltered” air. All of my business meetings will be held in “filtered” air offices and I will pay a premium for my “filtered” air hotel. And the 3 billion people in the world who do not have access to clean water are now dying earlier because they will not have access to clean air. And I live in the country that creates 30% of the pollution with only 5% of the population.

I Dig The Red Book

Last night Rishal was telling me about a good friend of his back in Delhi. The mate had met a Texan woman during university, fell madly in love, married her and brought her back to Delhi. Simple enough.

“Except the woman is a … I always forget this word, episco- no...you know – when you are really focused on Jesus, lots of god bless stuff, savior comments..”

“Evangelical?”

“Yes! You should hear her, she has gotten him to convert, now she is working on the family and his dad is going to lose it! I mean, why must it be just one way…Hinduism is about collecting many gods, many ways, why couldn’t she just be evangelical and he just is Hindi?”

I was speechless to the image of an evangelical Texan living in Delhi trying to convert her Hindi in-laws. There’s gotta be a Bollywood movie made, perfect recipe for a kitschy romance, comedy, drama.

After a few weeks in India, even the most staunch atheist will question if there might be a little more out there. Every corner you turn you see/hear/smell statues, paintings, chalk drawings (see above for the chalk they buy to draw on the sidewalk), temples, whispered prayers, puja bells ringing, incense burning…you get the idea…all in the name of “religion.” And similar to most western women I know, the whole religion thing leaves me a bit unsettled. The religion I was raised in doesn’t allow women to lead, the country I live in abuses religion as a political tactic, the city I live in treats religion as a thing you do in the privacy of your own home – and please don’t bring it up at a dinner party.

And so I practice Karma by not cutting people off in traffic, do some yoga, read some Rumi and Pema Chodron and David Whyte now and again, keep a Buddha and a Virgin Mary statue on my window, say a Hail Mary every time a plane takes off, attend Christmas mass with my family, listen to my atheist Jewish boyfriend lead the table in Hebrew prayer during Roshashana – and practice tonglen to give some compassion. A little confusing, but it kinda works.

And then a friend gave me The Red Book right before I left. It’s not a self-help book. It’s not a book on spirituality. It’s not about religious rules and regulations. It is about being true to your intuition. It’s about questioning your beliefs. Unpeeling layers. And it’s a ton of fun to read. The author, Sera Beak, practices what she preaches and has some great lessons – both academic, as a Harvard-trained scholar of mysticism and comparative religion, and practical, like a cool older sister who shows you a few tools she has learned here and there…

Anyway, I dig it. And when the conversation with Rishal last night turned to the eclectic nature of Americans and our love for just taking what we like from all religions, instead of reminding him that Hinduism adapts in a similar fashion - I agreed and exclaimed how great “choice” is! As Sera mentioned in her book, I don’t get up everyday and “just” choose to eat candy. I choose to have some broccoli and chocolate and green beans and red wine too. Except in India, I would pay a lot for a bar of Lindt chocolate right now…
,

Rena is Ratna

India and I are not friends today.

I cracked my big toenail in half during yoga this morning. With bandaged toe, I walked to the Internet café to take a conference call back in the states and discovered no electricity (usual) because a man at a hotel down the street died trying to unplug something (unusual). India telling me to get over the toenail.

I arrived home to find out, for the second day in a row, that Rena is not her name. Yesterday Meena told me it was Retna (with a T), I think she found some of our lessons in the trash. Today Ashish told me it was Ratna. And so we begin our ritual again. At 10, Meena leaves for slimming class (I don’t even want to know what that is) and puja and I spend time with Ratna working on writing her name or numbers or simple words. Then we put together a worksheet that she hides during the day and works on when no one is around ("Clean, clean, clean..." she says when I ask why its not ok to show it to others).

Today we wrote her name “Ratna.” Yesterday, after five minutes of sign language and analogies we got to what a “last name” is and she says hers is Sumalata. Who knows if I am spelling it right?

A friend took me out to some neighboring villages in the afternoon, visiting temples and looking for schools and teachers; despite a stat I read that India’s rural population had primary schools within one kilometer, there were none. Hundreds of Ratnas spent the day running after me – these not so “lucky” to have a job in a middleclass home – asking for rupees and pens and country coins. Exhausted, I decided it was time to go home.

And home brought some hope. Meena says Ratna needs to speak English better. I asked Meena how does Ratna know the alphabet and how to hold a pen and write letters and numbers? She grins widely and tells me that Ashish teaches Ratna, “I am so proud my boy has such a big heart.” Fortunately Ashish has yet to inherit his parents belief in maintaining caste, the cycle is breaking.

Just pinch, pinch, pinch...

I love Indian food. And learning to cook South Indian is almost as enjoyable – colorful spices, tasty ghee, no documented recipes, no real measuring, Indians just “feel the food” and did what their mother’s mothers did.

My two teachers have been Meena and Tina. Tina is an institution with Ashtanga Yoga students…she is a brilliant cook with a huge heart and a sassy attitude (originally from Calcutta, I have learned “moxy” is not a South Indian female trait). Apparently the brothers from Dosa (hip Indian on Valencia Street in San Francisco) learned to cook some of their their dosas from “Tina in Mysore…” This is what Tina hears anyway, I’ll have to confirm when I get back...

For those of us who don’t know much about Indian cooking, the only basic understanding we need is “masala.”

Every recipe demands your masala dabba which contains the fundamental Indian spices only in the form that does not exude smell:
Powder Form:
Salt
Chili (you choose the spice level)
Turmeric – gives color (mix with salt to keep away the ants, drink with milk as an antibiotic, put it in oil and heal a burn, notice it on Thursdays on women’s faces to remove unwanted hair, also on the third eye as yellow is good for intellect)
Seeds:
Fenugreek (seed form – not leaves)
Black Mustard Seeds (not white or yellow as those are for chutney and pickling)
Coriander (Cilantro – Tina says don’t buy coriander powder in America as it is usually just “rusk” and won’t give you the flavor)
Cumin
Then you have the garam masala which are kept whole and separate from masala daba.
Cloves
Cardamom (Black, green – must crack it open to get the seed)
Peppercorns
Cinnamon

And a few more tips…

Buy your curry leaves fresh if you can. If not, dried/crushed use at the end of the cooking process to retain flavor.

To retain your optimism, don’t try to learn it all in one day. Get a knack for sambhar, move on to chutney, then a masala and finish with dosas and idlis over a few weeks.

Oil should ideally be ghee (but if not – use white butter, saffron, sesame, or coconut oil but NO olive oil).

And a random tip - drink water stored in copper pitchers to lower cholesterol and improve the health of heart-attack patients…

And for those who want more, drop me an e-mail or comment below and I’ll send you the ten or so recipes I have tried to document after cooking with Meena and Tina. Yum.

An Education on Indian Education

A few nights ago I was eating dinner and chatting with Rajesh, the restaurant owner, about what is “right and wrong” with Indian government education. I was peppering him with questions about his sister’s life (who could not go to school as she took care of the children), his level of engagement in school, the quality of his teachers, etc. The man next to us asked where I was from and held up the book he was reading “Indian Education Philosophy.” This country works in amazing ways.

Rishal joined in our conversation and I quickly learned his family had opened two schools in Delhi. He is a recently graduated intellectual property lawyer from Delhi who received an excellent boarding school education at the Doon School as well as a squash scholarship to Brown University. He wants to affect change in the Indian education system by developing a curriculum that mirrors his experience at Brown – “teaching to think, not teaching to follow like the Indian education system does.” We quickly exchanged numbers and planned a breakfast meeting.

My visits to the two local schools and conversations with other Indians left me very confused on the challenges with government funded education – teacher training and support, literacy levels, the impact of the 8th five year plan, the average ratio of 46 students to one teacher, the mystery of this “ghost children” – all of this seemed strangely fine with the teachers and the Indians I spoke with… I spent an hour prior to my visit with Rishal doing some research.

Rishal quickly informed me that my research was crap. Perhaps in Kerala – a communist state (“Communism is clean in India, democracy is dirty,” Rishal said) - but none of the other numbers were true; in a country with 33 official languages and 1,652 “mother tongues” how can anyone do a proper census on the reality of education? Here in Karnataka, most of the village children will speak a local dialect, they will then learn Kannada to do trade or interact with other city people, they will learn Hindi if they are being educated (or come from a Hindi family) and finally they will learn some English at school and only fluently if their parents speak it at home with them as well. This helped me understand why Rena couldn’t write her name, and also why Ashish was first in his class and intends to be a doctor at age 12 – parental involvement.

According to Rishal, teacher training and professional development doesn’t exist – Indians think any young girl knows how to take care of kids and therefore will be fine as a teacher. Curriculum used in schools is based on memorization and not creative thinking. Creativity and developing your own approach is also not supported in the home, most Indian parents think there are three jobs – accountant, doctor and lawyer.

“Indians feel most comfortable following a road that another man built and taking less money as a result. If India is to succeed it must start learning to build its own roads (literally, you realize if you’ve ever been to India) and the only place that’s happening today is in the private sector. Change in India happens in the private sector, the government sector is too corrupt with baksheesh and NGO’s are not well respected at the top level to make change – unless they are funded by rich men,” Rishal informed me.

Thus, his sister decided to build a private school. About 15 years ago, Gurgaon, an area just outside of Delhi, was a “no-where-land.” No city person would even consider moving there. KP Singh, soon to be the richest man in India after he takes DLF public, started buying up land in Gurgaon as he realized the exponential population growth in Delhi would motivate middle class and up Indians to find a cleaner, roomier place to live. He built 30 shopping malls, high-tech centers, sound roads and infrastructure and today land in Gurgaon is some of the most expensive in Delhi. Ten years ago Rishal’s family bought some of this land and his sister, frustrated as well with the Indian approach to education, decided to build two primary schools with highly-educated, well paid teachers and constructivist approach to teaching. Rishal hopes to learn from his sisters approach and after a few years of law focus full time on private education and institute a “robin hood” approach – the rich pay more, the poor go for free or with government tax rebates.

I pushed again – so there is no way in your opinion to affect change in the public sector? He laughed, “There is no partnership like there is in America. The government is controlled by very smart, highly corrupt and usually uneducated men – like Bal Thackeray…” I told him he didn’t need to go any further. During my last visit to Delhi I read Maximum City and had to finish it at home as it was coloring my Indian experience too much, I was terrified to even set foot in Mumbai.

Rishal went on to tell me about Lalu Prasad Yadav, apparently he makes George Bush look like Einstein. Because of coalition politics Lalu runs the richest natural resource state, Bihar, and is now, get this, the Indian railway minister in his strive to become a minister. I quickly decided to eliminate train transportation this trip.

“No,” Rishal concluded, “change will not happen in the public sector. The way change is now happening is in the private sector and many NRIs (Non-resident Indians) are returning to India to make they change they have seen in their time abroad. They understand that we must educate the masses, that a rising middle class should be a right and a dream for all Indians and private education is the only way to make this happen.”

“What is the Indian opinion on over-population and the magnitude of a rising middle class, who dreams of an “American-style” life with cars and refrigerators and consumption and the affect on not just the air you breathe here but the world environment?” I asked.

Rishal laughed, “No Indian politician has mentioned the word “over-population” since Indira Gandhi convinced her son on the castration rampage over 30 years ago. And similar to your leaders, no politician is going to talk about oil and the environment until its cool too. India will advance and rise anyway it can, that’s the Indian way.”

Feed the cow, not the Monkey. And other Indian Culture traditions.

This morning I heard a racket in our driveway and went out to find Rena screaming at a monkey. “The monkey ate the cow’s breakfast,” she exclaimed to me, rolling her eyes. Of course.

Sure enough, five minutes later the cow walked into the driveway with the “cow owner” and we had to make a new plate of food. The “cow owner” walks her cow around every morning to various homes for a free breakfast. In addition to the religious benefits that accompany this act, the obviously poor cow owner gets money for the milk the cow produces. Not a bad social welfare system.

On my way back from yoga in the morning, I often see my neighbors down on their hands and knees drawing kolam. I try to picture folks back home giving up their Starbucks for drawing chalk figures before work?

I usually am offered a fresh banana from Meena’s puja in the morning as ingesting bananas that were prayed over as offerings to the gods means you are ingesting some holiness. It seems to be working, miraculously, I have yet to be run over on one of Mysore’s rickshaws.

Ashish let me know to put a kumkum on your 3rd eye and throat right before any highly-competitive table tennis match (his father was college champion) as it is supposed to improve your ability.

Placing fool (the beautiful string of flowers) on the god’s photo brings good luck, or wearing it in your hair protects against evil (and more important foul smells I later learned).

Feeding first God, then husband, then guests seems to be a good way to lose weight for Indian women.

No fried food one year after a death is keeping other heart-attack victims in the Gupta household healthy.

No “al dente” food – only fully cooked or raw, stops stomach confusion (and the former keeps my stomach at ease).

I’m sure I’ll be adding a few more to this…

I earn.

Meena is a generous, effusive, open-hearted Indian woman. If she lived in Amercia, she would be strutting around in too-expensive jeans, yelling “girrrrlfriend” as she checked out my boyfriend, and kicking some major booty in her sales job.

But Meena is an Indian wife. When she was 19 she married Mahesh in an arranged marriage. She admits she couldn’t tell if she liked Mahesh in their first meeting, but her father was happy and that was enough (apparently her father was concerned she would not find a proper husband because she is short).

Meena moved from her home in Chennai to Mahesh’s (and Mahesh’s mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, sister and 3 nephews) home in Mysore. She quickly learned to make the favorite foods, maintain the house and keep her persnickety mother-in-law happy. She said she was like Rena but with no income. Two children and seven years later, Meena was going through some tough times. Her last son was a difficult birth and didn’t listen or obey (he still doesn’t - a few times I wanted to let Meena know that in America people call it “Attention Deficit Disorder”). Her co-sister (sister-in-law) was focused on learning computers so all of the care for the household fell on Meena’s shoulders. And her own mother was going through some sad times – not eating, not getting out of bed. Unfortunately, Meena let me know that Indian tradition no longer lets her spend time with her mother. Once she got married, all of her attention must go to her mother-in-law and if she spent too much time talking or visiting her sick mother in Chennai, people would chat. After an hour of hearing about her mother’s illness, I wanted to let her know that in America, people call this “depression.” And people would call the ‘ole Indian mother-in-law rule “outrageous.”

But “after much praying” things started to change. Mahesh moved the family into a new home, Meena persuaded him to let a room to a yoga student. A few yoga students later, a Nigerian woman convinced Meena to start selling silver jewelry. And one year later, Meena has a thriving business selling silver to the 100 or so yoga students who are in Mysore at any given time. This lady can sell. “No, no, no,” she denies, blushing, “the gods are just very, very good to me.”

“I never thought I could be so lucky. Here I am, just a normal Indian housewife, and now look at me. I earn. I know people from all over the world,” she tells me proudly as we page through her guest book.

Meena let me know that the entire “competition” complex she had with her co-sister is now gone. Her mother-in-law’s nagging is just a mumble in the background. And even Mahesh is proud (and a little jealous she whispers) of her earning. She says she is so happy because it is no more just cooking and housework and children and mother-in-laws and silence around Mahesh’s friends. It is also now earning and that, says Meena, is “all mine.”