Shiva

Kawariyas are the approximately 6-7 million followers of Shiva that walk annually to Haridwar, a city in Northern India, gather water from the Ganga river and bring it back to Lord Shiva in their hometowns. Shiva is the destroyer god in Hinduism as well as one of the three heavyweights amongst the many thousands.

My first sightings of these missionaries dressed in orange was when I was in Varanasi. I assumed that this event was specific to the holy city and was quite surprised to see thousands of men (and a couple of women) walking through Delhi and Gurgaon for almost a month.

I've walked two marathons and understand that it's not easy to walk 26.2 miles and this is given weeks of training as well as high tech shoes and fancy apparel. These people just get up one day and walk hundreds of miles without training and certainly without Nike's. Some men were even barefoot! And so I was completely impressed with the endeavor from a athletic perspective. I also liked the flashy orange uniform and highly decorated water carrying devices.

Carrying the marathon theme a bit further the support system for this event was phenomenal. Hundreds of miles of Indians supported the kawariyas with food and places to rest and bandage sore feet. And for a country that does not seem to believe in road safety, a protective sidewalk suddenly appeared in Gurgaon. All in all, a very impressive display.

Tax Time

India is a rampantly sexist country...which is fine, I can deal with it...but this blew my mind.

There is a verification on my Indian income tax filing that includes my father's name. Essentially the words read, "I, Heather, the daughter of SSR, solemnly declare that to the best of my knowledge.....mind you I also have a unique tax ID number as well.

What does my father have to do with my income tax return?

Home

First trip home....was a work trip. Barely saw my family but managed to see a ton of friends over the 4th of July, went to a few doctor's appointments and checked in on my house (LOVE the new hot tub). Also got a sail in on the Bay.

But each time I get onto the plane to leave home, it's hard to stop the tears.

Time Differences

Reason #713 why I love my BlackBerry:

Even though the Swiss are obsessed with time, they do not have clocks everywhere and especially not at the beach. And when my phone clock is stuck on Indian Standard Time, I can still use Google Search and query the “current time in Switzerland” and it gives perfect time. Quite convoluted solution, but this translates to fewer annoying questions to strangers. Do you know what time it is?

Power of Language

In the last week I’ve done some serious traveling*. I’ve loved every minute of it but one of the things that really made an impression on me is the power of language (especially from my position of knowing a little bit of a lot of different languages). Though many of my interactions are completely superficial – Hello, Good Day, Thank You, How Much? – these simple phrases are still important in order to function in any town and I feel that, as a visitor, I should be able to converse in the native language.

My co-workers in India give me a really hard time because I’ve stopped going to Hindi lessons and therefore my Hindi vocabulary is limited to common daily phrases, numbers and some clutch shopping directives. Based on this limited capability, what amazed me the most was when I was forced to quickly order breakfast in French (I have studied French for the longest time starting Freshman year of high school) it was Hindi that came to mind first (though maybe it was actually Hinglish). “deux café creame” wanted to come out as “do coffee.” Luckily, as I have spent more time listening to the French speaking Swiss and Parisians, my French came back to me and the Hindi (what little that was there has quickly departed).

Yesterday, while shopping, I met the most adorable chocolatier in Lausanne. (He made chocolate from the heart which gave him the authority to call his chocolate the best in the world!) He asked me where I was from and upon learning that I was from California, he wanted to speak Spanish. Now this should have been a cinch; Spanish has been around me my entire life. Unfortunately Spanish was gone. Totally gone. Couldn’t even muster “my name is Heather” in Spanish. But what did come to mind were some random Italian words (mi amo??)….weird.

Then today, I went on a quick trip up to Zurich which is the German speaking part of Switzerland. For context, my German is about on par with my Hindi – limited to very limited. Again, what came to mind first was Hindi! Totally weird.

So what does all this mean? All I can come up with is that I’ve been in India for long enough for it to really stick to me. And after all this language talk, the most interesting new language I’ve heard is Ebo (native to Nigeria) at the Lausanne Train Station and French remains my favorite.

*These are the cities/languages I’ve been exposed to in the last 10 days - Mumbai/Hindi, Delhi/Hindi, Hyderabad/Urdu, Lausanne/French, Paris/French, Zurich/German.