The End of a Chapter

Well, my adventures in India have been over for more than a week now.  After India, I spent a very fun week in Cambodia visiting my friend Kate, and now I'm back in California and have been enjoying transitioning back to my normal routine for the last few days.

 

Fun in Cambs: This picture is deceivingly nice.  Kate and my finger puppets had just finished battling, but luckily they made up.

On my last night in India, my cousin Mona asked me how this experience has changed me.  Sure I now enjoy watching cheesy Bollywood movies and can sort of do the indiscernible Indian head bobble (indiscernible because it can mean yes OR no!), but there was much more to this question that I hadn't given much thought to.  I rambled off a few general statements at the time, but now I've had a chance to give it more thought...

The work I did opened up my eyes to how easy it is for ANYONE to make a difference.  It doesn't take a genius or the dedication of a Mother Teresa to help people.  All it takes is a desire to help people and the willingness to spend a little bit of time to do it.  While being able to spend 3 months in India was nice, it will be easy enough to continue supporting the project I worked on by dedicating a little time to it every now and then, and I plan on doing just that to help see this project to completion over the next year or two.  And if the opportunity arises or if I feel called to do so again, I'll jump at the opportunity to go out and spend more time out there.

 

With the work we did, villagers like these will be able to afford their own units instead of renting expensive government owned units like this one.

But perhaps the greater influence on me was outside volunteering, and it involved seeing both the good and bad in people.  Anytime I stood in a line, I felt like Indians had no concept of common courtesy since they would cut as if I didn't exist.  Often times, if someone had the smallest of inconveniences, they would get bent out of shape.  And when I went to popular religious sites, I found out that the people I had to be most weary of were the priests, for many of them are just out to make a buck!  I previously had a more idealistic view of India, and seeing these things from an "outsiders" perspective really opened my eyes to flaws in human nature that are not unique to any people, for we have inconsiderate, short-tempered, and corrupt people here in America too (don't look too hard, you're probably one of them!  ;)  ).  Seeing the imperfect side of people made me more aware of things that I may do to offend people or that get me bent out of shape (I have serious road rage!), and I plan on working to improve on these things.  

   

Watch out for this guy.  He may be trying to give you a tour of different ways to put money in his pocket.

On a more positive note, I was pleasantly surprised by the hoards of people willing to go out of their way to help me out during my time in India.  Whether it was the scientist who gave many hours of his time to help with my work, the stranger who I met on an auto-rickshaw who paid for my ride and made sure my "connecting" rickshaw driver didn't rip me off, or the villagers who all insisted that I stay with them instead of a hotel, everywhere I went, I met many more of these types of people than the unpleasant ones.  At times, it was completely appalling how far people were willing to go out of their way since I wouldn't have even thought to give so much to a stranger as I received during my time in India (unless I'm vying for a date of course!).  And yet so many people did this without a second thought.  This is among the most admirable qualities I have ever witnessed, and I hope that some of it has rubbed off on me.  

 

This villager, Premchandra Verma, spent many hours over 2 days talking with me about how he extracts oil from plants. 

Trying to dedicate more time on a regular basis to help those less fortunate and being more aware of my affect on others aren't profound changes, and that's ok, I didn't expect anything profound to happen when I came out here.  However, if the world we want to live in includes these ideals, we have to dare to be part of that change ourselves.  But as I told Mona, my fear is that after a few months, all of this will wear off, sort of like being inspired by a good movie and then minutes later, forgetting it all.  After all, I've been to India before and have returned telling myself things like I will never throw away food again.  Then after a few days, I am back to my old self.  Allowing this experience to change me in the long run will take work, and all I can do now is take it day by day, and every once in a while, reflect on this experience as a reminder of what I learned.  

Having said that, I can say that I "became Indian" since I now jam to Bollywood music and can bargain with rickshaw drivers in Hindi (an oh so useful skill in America...).  But I would rather say that I am on the path to becoming closer to the person that I want to be.  The person who doesn't let small things upset him and who will help out a stranger without a selfish motive. The person who can help others that are less fortunate than him or herself.  And you find these types of people all over the world.  Now that hard part begins, and that's becoming that person.

 

Now I'm even wearing Indian clothes in America.  I'm totally Indian!

Meeting My Heroes

Throughout my life, I have met a handful of people I consider my personal heroes.  Among them are my parents, my brother-in-law (haha, just kidding, he's from Oklahoma), and now, the people of the Ekal Vidhalaya program and the villagers of India.  Ekal Vidhalaya runs schools (grades K-3) for children in rural areas all across India ranging in age from 6-14. Generally, these children live too far away from the government schools, or need the better part of the day to help out their families. So the Ekal Vidhalaya program trains rural teachers to educate the children of the village either early in the morning (6-9am) or in the evening (6-9pm).  The cost of a single school you might wonder?  A mere dollar a day.

The children of the Ekal Vidhalaya program in the village of Rehi

When I first heard about this program, I thought that I was overpaid at least a dollar a day, and decided to donate.  The last few days, I went to visit a school that I sponsor, and it very well may have changed the way I view the world.

As soon as we arrived at the village, the village elders greeted me with malas (flower necklaces) and had a look of extreme gratitude in their eyes that is completely indescribable.  I immediately started to get choked up and felt very unworthy.  Then, the village teacher gave the students a lesson so that I could see what a typical class session was like.  It was a nice interactive session where the students would go up to a blackboard and solve math problems or write their ABC's.  I might have expected the children to be able to add and subtract, but I was pleasantly impressed that they could also multiply, divide, and write the English alphabet!  I started to think how when I was that age, many kids in my school couldn't do some of this stuff.  This is especially impressive when you consider that most of their parents can't read or write.

This kid is all over these math problems

After the class was over (which included play time!!), the people running the Ekal Vidhalaya program told the villagers how none of this would be possible without my donation, and then the children all ran over to me and touched my feet (a gesture of respect in Indian culture).  Talk about feeling SUPER undeserving.  To them, I was a hero since this school would not be here without my donation.  I then told them (as best I could, and mostly using hand gestures since they speak Bhojpuri, a local dialect of Hindi) that what I do is very small, and what they do is huge.  The people of the Ekal Vidhalaya program have devoted their lives to creating these schools in the villages and making sure they are meeting the high standards set by the program. Despite my best efforts, I think they still thought I was the hero.

Some of the heroes of the Ekal Vidhalaya program.  The teacher Arti (girl standing in back) along with the Ekal Vidhalaya staff members.

The next day, I went back to the village where I gave a lesson on space, which was really, really fun.  Due to a miscommunication, I was introduced as someone who frequently travels to the moon, which I thought it best to go ahead and let them believe. Then the lesson. Explaining space stuff is hard enough when I'm in front of children in American schools (usually with the awesome Sara Hatch and Joey Brown!), but nothing could have prepared me to explain planets and the solar system to villagers in India.  I wasn't sure what they knew, so I started off with us living in India and India being a part of a bigger thing we call Planet Earth.  Oh, and by the way, the Earth is round.  I think the translator and I were successful in getting the idea of the solar system across, but failed when I was trying to explain that the solar system is just a small piece of a galaxy, which is a small piece of the universe.

"Hooray for space and NASA!"...is what these kids would say if they knew English

That night, I stayed in the village where one of the Ekal Vidhalaya members resides, which in itself was very fun!  Instead of occasional electricity outages like in many parts in India, they seemed to occasionally get electricity.  But of course, they don't have the benefit of having a backup generator like every other place I've visited.  I was then shown the bathroom (that field over there!) and slept on a wooden table where they put their best blankets out for me.  The next day, the highlight of my day was when it was time to shower.  Since there are no bathrooms in villages, the villagers take a bath at the local (government installed) water pump.  You just take off your clothes (keeping under garments on), and take a bath.  For convenience (or maximum embarrassment?), the water pump is placed in the middle of the village.  Everyone knew that I was new to this, so they all enjoyed watching me struggle with operating the hand pump and bathing while squatting.  As if I didn't feel weird enough, I noticed a group of girls watching me and giggling. Oy...

I eventually got the hang of this water pump thing!

While living like a villager for a few days was "fun" for me, it's definitely a simpler life that involves a lot more work for everyday things.  Here, there are no beggars, for they have no one to beg to.  But even if they did, it was easy to tell that they were too full of pride and wouldn't dare ask anyone for anything.  I kept getting treated like royalty (they kept reminding me of the Hindu saying, the guest is God), and they made sure I was as comfortable as possible.  I felt bad since I didn't want any special treatment, but there was no way around it.  Because of all of this, they are my heroes too.

Thanks to Ekal Vidhalaya, there is no shortage of smiling faces in the village of Rehi

Hopefully, with the help of those devoting their time to Ekal Vidhalaya, villagers all across India can overcome poverty through education.  In a day where I saw an impatient driver run over a dog that wouldn't move out from the middle of the road, and a train captain accept a bribe to allow someone without a ticket on the train, I had a renewed sense of hope for India. With everyday heroes like those in the Ekal Vidhalaya program and the villagers of India, anything is possible.

For more information about Ekal Vidhalaya or to make a donation (!!), please visit http://www.ekalindia.org/ekal_new/index.php

A Lesson in Humility

An Aunt of mine from New Delhi told me a very touching story a while back that I wanted to share...


Her and my Uncle were travelling on a local train between Allahabad and Ayodhya.  In general, this is a small train that doesn’t see a tremendous amount of traffic, and for a good while, my Aunt and Uncle were the only ones on the train.  They were eating their lunch on the train, and when they were full, they threw away a fair amount of food.  A short while later, people finally started boarding the train.  The lady that was sitting by my Aunt and Uncle had 3 children, and a few pieces of roti (Indian bread) and a single red pepper to feed them all with.  The kids were crying that they were hungry, and the mom was completely helpless.  Instantly, my Aunt and Uncle felt horrible about the food they had just thrown away.  As they later started talking with the woman, they found out that she was travelling to her father’s funeral, and that she had to somehow provide food for the entire village the very next day.  This, my Aunt and Uncle thought, would be an impossible feat considering she didn’t have enough to feed herself or her kids.  When they asked her what she planned to do, she said that God will take care of them, just like He always has.


When they got off the train, my Aunt offered the woman some money to feed her kids, and additional money to help feed the village.  My Aunt actually felt bad that she didn’t have more to offer this woman.  To their astonishment, the woman refused.  She didn’t want any charity, and had too much pride to come off as a beggar.  After my Aunt was overly insistent, the woman finally accepted the money.  Soon after, my Aunt later saw a beggar come up to that woman, and the woman gave him a part of the money she had just received, even though she still didn’t have enough to feed the village the next day.


What’s interesting to note here is that many people outside of India think of India as extremely poor.  While there are definitely parts of India that are extremely poor, if you stay in the city, you really won’t see anything other than ordinary beggars, which I see in LA all the time too.  It isn’t until you go to these more remote areas that you see true poverty: the children who walk barefoot for miles on an empty stomach to go to school, and then return hungry still because a corrupt official wants to keep the school lunch program money for himself; the mother going through a harvested rice field to find leftover grains of rice to feed her children; the woman who is too proud to beg for charity even though she is against the largest of odds to feed herself, let alone a village, and still finds it in her heart to help others. 


To me, this is true humility: People who have nothing, and will not let it stop them from becoming something.  We all have much to learn from these people who climb insurmountable odds everyday just to get through life, and many of them do it without complaining.  The next few days, I'm visiting a village in the midst of such poverty, and I hope to learn a lot from everyone there about living life in such a selfless, courageous manner.

Mission (Partly) Accomplished!

After I had decided that I wanted to come to India to do some social work, the big question was how long I was going to spend here.  I kept going back and forth between 1 month and 3 months.  I thought that 1 month was a short enough time that if I wasn’t liking it or if it wasn’t what I had hoped, then the end was already around the corner.  But after talking with people who had done similar things, it sounded like 3 months was a bare minimum to get anything worthwhile done.  It turns out, they were right, and I’m glad I listened.

The 11 weeks I spent volunteering has been the perfect amount of time.  Any less time, and I wouldn’t have been able to finish things up like I wanted to.  I could have volunteered more, but the high efficiency that I was working with is starting to flatten out as the initial research is all done.  Plus, I’m about ready to go back home and see my friends and family.

The people that for some reason or other, I miss and want to see!

This is my last week of work, and I’ve been wrapping things up.  We ended up identifying more than 10 ways to improve the oil extraction unit and process; making the process safer, more environmentally friendly, easier to use, and more efficient at extracting oil.  These changes range from adding a pressure relief valve so that the oil extracting tank doesn’t blow up (which will save a few lives every year), to designing a bike-powered crop cutting system so that they can cut the material more easily than a hand powered cutting system and cheaper than the diesel powered cutting system.

 

Old Crop Cutting System vs New Crop Cutting System!

If all the changes are implemented, then the villagers can earn somewhere between 2-10 times as much as they are now, which would mean a better life for them and their families.  Their children won’t have to work in the fields and can instead go to school.  They can all have enough food to eat and enough money to buy shoes (a luxury many village children I’ve seen don’t seem to have).  What’s most exciting is that the generations to follow can come out of the poverty trap that their families have been in for a very long time.

A few of the people who will benefit

However, there is still a lot of work left to go before this can happen, including testing all of the changes that we have proposed and then implementing them, and this is where I hand off the torch to IDEI.  In a lot of ways, the implementation is the hard part.  IDEI will have to convince the villagers that these changes are good for them. Often times, people are set on the ways that they’ve been doing things, especially if it was the way their father’s father also did it.  However, this is where IDEI really shines, as they have been convincing hundreds of thousands of villagers  for over a decade that their low cost treadle pump is a worthy investment.  So while my part is mostly over (except for answering any questions they have and finishing up a few loose ends back in America), I am confident that IDEI will do a fantastic job of finishing the job and creating a better life for possibly thousands of village families in India.

On a sappy note, I’ve realized through my time with IDEI that anyone can make a difference.  I originally thought that I had very little to offer in terms of being able to help people halfway around the world, but all it really takes is a little bit of will, and the right people around you to nudge you the right direction.  It’s through these experiences that I realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by such good hearted people everywhere I go, and I feel like everyone has been placed in my life for a reason.  And for all of that, I am very thankful!

Population Control

The top is not meant to be stood on.  India’s structural engineers must design with a factor of safety of infinity.

India is crowded.  1.2 billion, increasing at a rate of 0.6 children born every second if you want to put a number to it.  Everywhere you go, you can’t help but see a ton of other people.  I see hoards of people at temples, on the road, on top of buildings, and even in my sleep.

About every 5 minutes, this many people are born in India.  Not all of them are as mad as the guy looking at the camera.

Yet, somehow, I’ve always been a little perplexed by the colossal population.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.  My first impression when I was riding in a car in India was that with the ridiculous driving habits, how are people not getting run over all the time?  And for those not getting run over, how are people who are riding on top of trains, hanging outside autorickshaws to squeeze 15 people along for the ride, or somehow fitting 7 on a motorcycle, not falling off and getting run over by the car driving on the wrong side of the road?  Ok, so this is starting to sound a little sadistic, but I would think some sort of Darwinism would take effect at some point.

Not bad, just 5 people.  Now imagine fitting 7.  Think Tetris style.

But apparently not.  These people might just actually know what they’re doing (and more remarkably what the other people are doing), and it’s quite amazing.  While I still clench my teeth every time I’m in a vehicle and pray anytime I have to cross the street, when it’s all said and done, it’s often one of the highlights of my day.

Step in.  And get ready for the ride of your life.

Crossing the Language Barrier

Before coming to India, I expected to run across several issues with my limited Hindi speaking abilities.  I figured this would be my biggest impediment to “becoming Indian,” and I definitely have had my share of trouble communicating.  At the beginning when I tried to speak in Hindi, several people politely said, “Can you please speak in English?”  Ouch!  That was quite the blow to my ego!  Part of me even wanted to quit speaking in Hindi altogether since it sometimes hurt trying to constantly think of the right words to use! 

At first, I had a better chance communicating with these.

Daunted, I persisted nonetheless to continue speaking Hindi.  I found that even though the engineers and scientists I work with understand English, there were many ideas that we were trying to convey to each other that did not get across.  What was even worse was when we thought we understood each other, we were sometimes talking about different things.  So I spent a lot of time being confused about what they are saying, and was often completely frustrated that what I was trying to say wasn’t getting across.

Enduring still, I was noticing that in villages, I started being able to converse directly with the village people.  I often needed the help of a co-worker to translate the local dialect and the many words I didn’t know, but I could tell I was getting better at this thing!

This villager was actually telling me what he thought about George W. Bush!

Then take yesterday.  Yesterday was Republic Day, the day that India celebrates its constitution being official (about 3 years after Independence Day, when the British handed over control of India in 1947).  I spent the day with a co-worker from IDE who knows the least English.  In fact, his English is just about limited to “America,” and as of a few weeks ago, “NASA”.  We had a great time going to the Republic Day parade where we witnessed some mild police brutality (ironically on a day of independence!).  Then he and some kids taught me how to fly a kite and play cricket.  And all of this happened without any language barrier whatsoever!  That’s when it hit me.  I know Hindi!!

Umm...so how do you play this game again?

So the persistence has finally paid off.  And while I can now check off the box that says I can fly a kite and play cricket, I am most excited that I can check off the box which says I know conversational Hindi, which means I am totally 3 steps closer to becoming Indian.  And just in time too, since I leave in a few weeks.  Considering I now drink chai several times a day, and my friends back home tell me I already drive like a maniac, I think that only leaves ‘eat spicy food...and like it.’ on the checklist!

A Sequel in the Making

Imagine: A NASA engineer goes to India for a few months, helps people in a village with his extraordinary engineering skills, ends up falling in love, coming back to America empty handed because the girl doesn’t want to leave the village’s needy people, finishes his project at NASA, resigns, and returns to India to continue helping villages with the help of his true love.  I know what you’re thinking, “Wow, this sounds a lot like Ravi”.  And you’d be right, except, of course, I would be able to convince the girl to come back to America with me.

A scene from Swades.  Yes, NASA is always this dramatic.

This story is the basic plot of this Indian movie called Swades.  Believe it or not, it was even inspired by a real person named Ravi.  I am actually convinced they went forward in time, read my blog, and then went back in time and made this movie (so maybe it was one of you that wrote it).  In this movie, the NASA engineer single-handedly saves the village by his design for a hydro-electric power plant.

Ravi Kuchimanchi - The similarity is uncanny

Before I started at IDE, I was told that I would be working with a small team of two additional people, and I got the impression (and actually sort of hoped) that this would be my project and I could run with it in whatever direction I wanted.  Wish granted.  On the first day, I found out that the two additional people were actually senior people in the company who would make sure that as I ran into problems or had any questions, that those problems/questions would get resolved quickly. 

As I’ve been working on this project alone, I’ve run into several problems, and for the most part, have had to find solutions for them myself.  I’ve had to dust off the cobwebs in my head and remember what I learned in my college engineering classes.  When I was debriefing my colleagues on my work, we agreed that we needed to determine the smallest profitable distillation unit.  I then asked if someone in their business department can do the economic analysis to determine how much oil needs to be produced to be profitable. They laughed at me and said there is no business department, and that I needed to figure it out!

Taking a break from working in a village.  It was a Bollywood moment.

While it’s been fun to be a one man team and design this distillation unit, I have gained a larger appreciation for working on a team of people like I do at JPL (and there I have the added benefit of working with people who are all smarter than me!).  I also better understand that any good design is never any single person’s idea, but a collection of several people’s co-inspired thoughts.  Luckily, a friend of mine at JPL, Joey Brown, is enthusiastic about helping me while I am in India, and I have been bouncing ideas off of him while I’m here, as I often do back home.  Something even as small as a few comments on a design has helped immensely.  And lately, I’ve been getting a lot of help from various nearby research centers that have expertise in steam distillation.

The type of geniuses I have helping me out

So it seems like I’m not going to be the hero that saves a village all by myself, and I’m completely ok with that.  I am very grateful for all the help I’m getting, from people at various centers in India as well as help back home.  It actually gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that there is no shortage of people ready to help out other people, and that I lucky enough to be surrounded by them everywhere I go.  And if we end up saving a village or two together, maybe they'll end up making a sequel  ;)