mikeShriver

Posts tagged ‘Travel Journal’ come from travel journals written on the road. The present series is from my recent trip to India. Posts have been backdated to reflect the day they were written.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

We got to spend a nominal day in Mumbai which ended up being a lunch at an over-the-top luxury hotel and an aggravating car ride around the city with the two most insufferably fervent Christians in India. We were up early and out the door in Nagpur to a couple pairs of heartbreaking eyes. I had a hard time saying goodbye to little Jeremy and Sharon, They were broken up that we had to leave.

The flight to Mumbai was short, and we got a hotel room for the daylight hours, as out flights left for the states in the evening. We had lunch at the hotel buffet, Saji seems to love these. He had invited a few of his contacts in Mumbai to join us. A business man in the software business, and a couple (who knows what they did, but the seemed to be well off in money, and testimony).

Every story of struggle of one of out lunch companions was met with a flurry of bible verses and stories about their own personal struggles. Imagine my elation to find out that they were my ride home (side note: in the nicest Honda I have ever seen) and that they needed to make an extended detour for their own business. This trip has been marked by car rides of high emotion. This ride was easily the most aggravating.

The stories they told were preposterous, and the enthusiasm with which they told them was so vibrant I have a hard time believing it wasn’t contrived.  At one point the talk turned to politics and Paki-Indian relations. a comment was made that Obama’s support of Islamic nations was a “The beginning of the end.” I spent a good deal of energy being angry at that and shut down emotionally for the rest of the ride.

When we got back to the hotel, the sun was setting and I took my camera and walked out into the neighborhood to cool down. As a 6′3″ westerner with a beard and long hair, I feel a little like a spectacle to these people. I wondered into an alley and found a small following of wide-eyed children. I will probably always wish I had asked someone to show me how cricket was played, but this will give me something to return for. 

I sat at a park and watched a few sets being played and made stunted conversation to a few kids and took their photo. This will be a fond memory.

When I returned to the hotel after a shower and a cooling off time, I asked my dad about the Israel comment. We had a very good talk which I recorded, I think I will try to do that more often because I enjoyed it, and it’s effect was therapeutic — calming. It even made ma a little more amicable towards Saji.

We parted ways with Nathan, the Alabaman who was at the campus doing some survey work for construction projects. This man gave off a good vibe. Very conservative, politically, but he gave off the impression that he wanted to be exactly where he was, he truly enjoyed is work.

My last taxi ride was rushed, as Saji was late for his flight. for the first time I made extended eye-contact with a beggar girl, even as I denied her income. It struck me how beautiful most of these street girls are, and sparked an interest in researching the situation further. This girl was unbelievable lovely. I will always smile to think of her, even as I know she is not in a happy way. I cannot remove the image of here smiling face from my mind.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

The raw wonder that Saji exhibits derives, I think, from his inability to comprehend subtlety. His comprehension of the Sun sizes it at about 2-3 times the size of the Earth, and still it blows his mind. I have a perverse desire to see his reaction to the Hubble UDF image.

I have had exactly one moment of epiphany in my life, and it came the first time I saw that image, and had it described to me. When I confronted the absolute incomprehensibility of that image, my brain shut down. I remember lying on my floor for a few hours after first seeing that.

The weight of that experience came back as I thought about it today at dinner. I had to excuse myself and walk home with the explanation of an upset stomach. I still have a hard time knowing how the world can keep functioning under the weight of its inconsequence.

Visited the Mercy Home again, today. This time with Saji and Dad. The little girls there positively swoon over me. I’m probably a little to fixated on this fact, but the attention is nice. It is a little to jarring a contrast to the sense of insignificance I get looking into space, though. How does one reconcile these two extremes?

The whole day we moved around in the same oppressive heat we have had since our arrival. but today the sun was cut into by a sudden downpour of torrential rain. Tarps materialized from nowhere to cover vendors carts, it was quite a sight. We gathered in a tea shop as the sky darkened over a sort of noiseless, spectacular lightning storm.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

These conference days go impossibly long. My dad has finished speaking for this event so I am done hearing him for this trip. Right now I am listening to a speech in Hindi. I am impossibly timid and these people stretch their inter-meal times hours longer than they should. It’s been 7 hours since lunch and I am starving. It will probably be a couple more hours till I eat. I wandered around the campus a little today and in my walk I passed the Mercy Home. All the little girls there seem to know my name and the called me from across a field. I am like a rock God!

Came across a book in my cataloging today called “.Christ, The Gospel Beautifully Designed for the Internet Age” a printing of the gospel of Matthew using cheesy faux-computer graphics and web layouts. It astounds me that someone can create an entire production “for the internet age” without apparently having ever seen a computer. Also, I think the point of the internet is that it isn’t print.

Bansal the Librarian was slightly less awkward, and I was actually left alone to get some work done today, which was kind of nice. The power goes out often, though, and failure today left an hour of awkward sitting around waiting for it to come back on. 

I heard a couple of good stories from the Mercy Home and hospital thing Mission India was able to help with – medical bills and such. It raised a question in my mind, rhetorical. If there was no God, no afterlife, would these people, these Christians still have a motivation to do these good works in the world, just for humanity’s sake [The utilitarian in me asks if the answer to this question even matters?]

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

Sitting in a session at the leadership conference my dad is speaking at. His topic tonight is ‘the need for education.’ I think the intent was for an exhortation for education as a social services, as a way of lifting people and cultures out of their poverty. Of course, they picked the wrong man for that topic.

My biggest problem with the evangelical church, with my Dad’s church is their relentless focus on spreading Paul’s agenda. The intent completely overshadows any and all social programs and services the church might otherwise, offer. 

Meals for the poor require attendance at a sermon. Leaders of the church delegate the actual service of the meal to youth groups and focus on condemning the people who need emotional sustenance as much as they need physical nourishment. [Ed, May 16th 2009: Upon further consideration of this comment, I am not sure what I found so distasteful in the delegation of this task. Even as I wrote it, I don't think I believed it. It was just an expression of my frustration with the situation as a whole. In fact, delegation is an important function of any leader and must be undertaken for any organization to survive. Indeed, the times I spent serving meals to the poor of Salt Lake's streets incubated a compassion I would have otherwise not have known, and I owe a great deal of my present outlook to the fact that these tasks were entrusted to me. The teenage and preteen years are an important time to foster empathy in a person, and placing our entitled young teenagers in a place where they have to confront the discomfort and realities of social injustice, we give them a wider perspective that is necessary for raising compassionate adults.]

Even now, in his speech, dad ignores culture education and the socially uplifting aspects that a secular education will provide, and focuses on ‘Spiritual’ education, confirming the idea that there is only one thing of importance: telling biblical truth. Biblical truth will not raise a culture out of oppression. it will not transform the world, not without a worldly enlightenment. It has not, so far, and it will not in the future.

Indians seem to have no sense of cell phone etiquette. Every time we are in a church service or grad ceremony, the speaker’s cell phone invariably rings. Today, the pastor (mid-sermon) answered it– right there at the pulpit. My American sensibilities and I were floored.

I really need to work on my handwriting.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

This final stay in Nagpur will be the longest one in India, almost a week. Dad is speaking at a leadership conference at the MIBC campus. My services have been offered at the library to help catalogue books. This was one of the more awkward experiences of my trip so far.

I felt myself more a burden than a help as the people who worked there had to stand and supervise me the whole time. Certainly more could have gotten done without me. Also, the ‘main’ librarian, had some unsettling habits. He kept smiling awkwardly and caressing my hair. I’m just gonna rack that up to cultural differences.

I gave in  today and took an antacid after unwisely ravaging he mango pickle jar for its sauce.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.

Saji took us to another hotel for their buffet. I think his primary goal was to show us how much better the other place was, though. He gave us a complete tour of the grounds, which were larger, but not necessarily better.

10:00 PM:

I think I figured out why I don’t like Saji. The man is all talk, no listen. The world revolves around his schedule. I revolve around his schedule, now. I can’t imagine having to spend another week with this man, especially the two day train ride back to Nagpur.

He treats the women like shit, too. It’s probably a ‘cultural’ thing, but the man cannot clean up after himself. I saw him leave a door open, and instead of taking two steps backward to close it, he made his 5 year old niece come across the room to do it for him.

Sonny claimed it was cultural: “the women cook and clean, and the men do the work.” Fine in theory, but I have yet to see a man do any work here, yet. Even manual labor: everywhere we went, women were pouring concrete and sweeping the streets.

More evangelical talk, all day, too. It surprises me, but Saji didn’t seem to know that the moon was smaller than the earth, yet here he is trying to explain the creation of the universe to a random stranger in the park.

Tags: India, Travel Journal.