Its about Time.

 Foreword

I've always remembered a moment during my adolescence where, stood on my bed in the loft, elbows perched on the sill of the open velux window above, I gazed out over the view of beloved Hemel Hempstead below and was quite struck by a realisation. A realisation that even led me to repeat the words out loud: "things change" (and no I wasn't on drugs or smoking weed). I can't remember what it was that exactly brought on this realisation, but I vaguely remember it was the recognition (and likely the slight devastation) at how my feelings, probably for someone or something close to me, had so dramatically changed. I know it may sound daft and perhaps naive, but this was the moment I really perceived the significance of time. Time and its tremendous power to alter.

Compared to the ten year old me, I am now a stable individual when I think about the death of my coolest ever pet mouse (R.I.P Phantom). In the same way that I now like cumin, red onion, raw ginger and even spicy food, it is sometimes remarkable how our bodies + minds (which combined = behaviour I guess) change. It's only natural I suppose, that we evolve, over time. Although our external environment is in constant evolution we too adapt. Hence, things change.

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Why for this preamble?

Well... I want you to bear in mind that the post that follows below is a reflection of my experience and feelings upon arrival to my new home on deployment, in the city of Bhubaneswar ("Booba-nesh-wah" - Mother, that one's for you) in the state of Orissa, in the North East of India. 

I want you to remember that it is a reactive description of my first weeks in a place I thought I'd never ever be so condemned to experience, let alone be prescribed to live in.

This is also an apology for the huge delay getting around to this blog. It is a post that has taken me far too long to write, mainly because:

1. I don't feel particularly motivated to write when I am unhappy.
2. I fear judgements of exaggeration, self-pity and petty-mindedness of my writing when I am unhappy.
3. I seem to be writing a blog all about me, rather than about my actual work here. I have been conscious and a little guilty that this would be yet another entry which is virtually void of the subject.
4. There are so many things I need to include in this post I haven't been able to unravel where how or what to start it. As a result, it is mainly an entry all about location.
5. Increasingly so (and lets face its THANK GODINGLY so), time has changed things.

In summary, my situation here has naturally evolved both externally and internally. Time has passed since since I wrote the notes in the back of a scrappy pad to which I now turn to for reference. Time has passed since I jotted down dark and desperate diary thoughts, some of which are threaded throughout this post some of which are directly quoted.

Please remember I am no longer a miserable, trapped and 'decaying' ball of nothingness, as may come across below. I also hope that this post does not come across as sympathy-seeking. My intention is not to drizzle on your Christmas due to my being honest about my late November feelings, but to write honestly nonetheless.

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Dystopia   

November 2011

There were very few places that I cycled through in South India last year that made me think "shit me, I'd hate to live in this shitty shitbag of a shithole". I came across one or two, and pedalled as fast as I could to leave them behind me. It is therefore most unfortunate when you come across a city as such, just to discover that not only is spending a day there borderline unbearable, but that you actually have no choice but to spend the next four months of your life. living. here. 

Welcome to Bhubaneswar everyone: my little dystopia of rubble, litter, motorways, greyness, construction, dust, traffic, pollution, impenetrable haze, traffic, dust, motorways, litter and pollution. 

Never have I been in a place in which I feel as oppressed, as unhealthy and as trapped as this. This is the kind of city where you leave the house for five minutes and you feel the need to shower upon return to remove the dust and pollution that clings to your skin, that dirties your clothes. The kind of place where the nights that I spend blowing out greyblack snot and sneezing my head off makes London's nasal affects seem like child's play in comparison. Where noone smiles or replies to my 'hello'. Where swarms of motorists frantically negotiate motorways that are left half built, where piercing iron rods are left exposed and bottomless excavations lay gaping and raw, cut deep into the earth. Where I wipe the dust from my desk every other day and the cloth comes up black. Where cows root through thick mounds of rubbish piled up in front of every house, scattered on every road, overflowing every gutter. Where every dog I see is suffering. 

 

Oh the dogs. The six month old dogs with sagging teats and swollen nipples, some inflamed and oozing puss. The bitch that occupies the end of my road, flicking her head around every five steps to lick at her infected vulva; insides hanging outside. The dogs the dogs the dogs. The puppies bloated with worms trying to feed from their rake-thin mums; a new one lying dead in the road each day...so many road kills. The way the big naked dog with mange sits outside the chicken butcher's stall, and looks up vacantly through its red eyelids, gazing not at you but at nothing. Its coarse and grey wrinkled skin gives it the resemblance of a dying hyena -tufts of fur only remaining on the top of its freckly head. These suffering dogs. As they gnaw away at their raw skin conditions they gnaw away at me inside.

It hurts.

This city.

 

 No smiles, no sun, no air, no sights, no pavements, no landmarks, no quirky little side roads or hidden backstreets, no character. Not rich, not poor -just well and truly horrible. I was prepared for shabby, for unpleasant, for rough around the edges, but never ever did I expect to end up somewhere like this.

The haze that is in permanent descent over the whole city is the worst thing of all. Even the sun can't fight its way through, and the colour of the sky here? It's a mystery to me. The air is so thick with dust and pollution that headlights project the silhouettes of people meters ahead of them...dancing images suspended in the air.

To get around you need to walk alongside - no, walk on - the motorways. The eye can only stretch for a kilometre or so before the horde of motorcyclists, auto drivers, cars, lorries and buses become lost in the thickness of the haze. The scene creates a blurred picture of dull grey -where the road, horizon and sky are inseparable, interrupted only by the lanes the din of metallic chaos which penetrate the middle. To me, that image is choking. It just spells depression.

I have been trying to capture an iconic Bhubaneswar photo, but none seem to do it justice. It's not just about the look of the place, but the way it feels, smells, sounds and way that awful air just hangs that creates this dystopian reality. It reminds me of Battlefield 3 or Fallout, or that film and book The Road...the dark translucent greyness and bleakness of it all.  

I've never been so frustrated by lack of road etiquette, and by lack of road-pavement distinction. As I walk down the streets I am forever cursing the motorbikes that almost run me down, coming from every direction, incessantly beeping and dodging their way through - merciless to the most inferior class of all: people who are beepless and walking. How I miss pavements. The young guys driving their scooters stare at me, causing their oncoming bikes to drift straight into my path, blinding me with headlights and making me scowl in a way I'd not even mastered at 14. If only looks could kill, the population of motorists in this city would have halved by now.

November 29th: Everyday I live out the hours, hating the inhibitions I feel from so many angles that prevent me from living life to its fullest potential. I hate the wastedness; I hate the oppressiveness of this city, the unhealth and lack of physical freedom it bestows on me. I watch these hours, and  I feel so lifeless. It's always dark outside and traffic is blazing all around -headlights cutting the dusty air and blinding my eyes. Just another normal day like the one before, leaving me unsatisfied...and deeply unhappy. 

So if walking is so unpleasant, why not try cycling?

It sounds extreme, but I risk my life each time I try to go out on my bicycle and it accentuates the feeling that there is no escape from this dismal place. Aside from the obvious dangers incurred by my fellow road users (want to go down the motorway the wrong direction? join the club! pull out without looking? no worries! cut up other motorists as much as you beep? go for it! stop/accelerate/turn/pull over without warning? that's the name of the game!), the getting stuck in five 'lanes' (replace with 'throng') of traffic, avoiding potholes and breathing in the foul air has found me trying my very very hardest to fight back stinging tears of hate and helplessness on more than one occasion. It only serves to refuel my hatred for this city.

It really is an example of man and nature in crisis.

The once green trees here are covered in a thick red-brown dust, leaves suffocating. I too, struggle to breathe. The small efforts of having to shower and change each time I return to my house/office has become an inflated chore. Too often it acts as an invisible shackle, tying me to my office. Also my bedroom. 

As I wrote to a friend on 6th December: On Sundays (my day off) I sit around in my room unmotivated and frustrated, and then I do my handwashing to feel productive. This Sunday I finally tried to go cycling again, but it is such such a horrible experience. The city is made up of half-finished motorways, rubble, suffering dogs and little else. I cycled for an hour to try to get out of here, but the surrounds are just an extension of Bhubaneswar and this dystopia seems infinite. Every time I come home I return hating the city a little more than when I left the house. And I come back filthy, covered in pollution and dust. It makes me feel so trapped inside. I'm sitting for 16hrs a day. It's destroying me.   

Oh dear. Poor me.

Unfortunately the large part of the work I'm doing here has not been conducive to happiness either. I spent the first week in total confusion, with no induction and no support from my 'coach' who as it turns out, resides in Delhi. Thrown head first into an understaffed, disorganised, multi-sector flood response, covering multiple districts and being implemented by three partners and funded by multiple donors with multiple budgets...all of which were in a total mess. What was worse was the desk-bound, excel spreadsheet nature of the job. Combine this with sleeping in a room is converted to office space during the day, means a total lack of privacy and absolutely no 'out of working hours' boundaries. I'd entirely understand if this was a first phase Haiti response, but it's not. These 'just five minutes to discuss...' moments manifest into 1.5+hr meetings in my room at 9pm -which even in content are pointless and seem to achieve nothing.

November 17th: The Orissa floods dried up over two months ago, almost all the beneficiaries have found their own coping mechanisms and just a handful of houses remain to be repaired. This is not to say we need not be responding, but it is now more a recovery programme than an emergency response, and the inefficiency and drawn-out methods of working around here are really frustrating. I don't know when to clock-off so I don't, but none of us seem to be doing anything productive for all these hours we are sat in front of our laptops. This first week has felt disappointingly meaningless.

 I sit for so long every day that it makes my bum and thighs not just ache, but hurt. Noone else seems to have this problem. Why not? Our bodies aren't designed for this - all this sitting. Sometimes I sit in the office and look around me and I am scared of turning into everyone I see here...pot-bellied, double chinned and hairy-lipped. Oh god. Get me out of here.

I wish I had a human-sized hamster wheel to vent my frustrations and exercise cravings from the relative unpollutedness of the office/house. But then I realise that that's just the equivalent of a treadmill (yuck), and I don't have one of those either. I'm not even joking when I say that my cold bucket shower causes my heart to beat fastest it has all day. It feels nice to feel the blood circulating around my body.

  

November 18th: I'm so unhappy I feel myself ageing. My frown cementing. My skin texturising. My muscles disappearing. My creativity disintegrating. My lust for life crumbling.

 

Clearly November 18th was not a good day!

If I leave the office to buy some fruit, I fear what I tread in. Of course this is India, open defecation is its middle name*, but why did all the open defecators choose to reside in Bhubaneswar? The pissing too. All the time! On my 10 minute daily walk to buy lunch I tally up an average sighting of eight men relieving themselves in the street. Yesterday I saw a cow drinking its own piss, really. Only in Bhubaneswar do cows drink their own piss. Hot and fresh straight from the source - yummy.

December 8th: I did not undertake this traineeship expecting to work from an office with mountain views of outstanding natural beauty. Nor did I undertake this traineeship to experience weekends away gallivanting on palm-fringed beaches. I did not, however, ever expect to end up in a city that is as much as a dump as Bhubaneswar, living a sedentary lifestyle that I hate as much as this, and feeling as unhappy as I have since I arrived.

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Epilogue

So, above is a heartfelt offload of the 'back then'. And it is the worst of it, I promise.

It is from my new-found (and far happier) vantage point of the 'here and now' from which I round-off this blog post. From the vantage point where I can pleasingly confirm that "things change". A silver lining really does exist (next post!). So with an imaginary clink of mulled wine glasses, I propose a festive "cheers" to the knowledge that things can only get better...because, thank godingly so, they do.

* this is not me being sweepingly derogatory: according to UNICEF's 2008 report, as many as 638million Indians (54% of India's population) drop their internal goods in the outdoors, and statistics are as high as 69% in rural India. In fact, the country accounts for 58% of those who practice open defecation ACROSS THE WORLD, not so closely followed by Indonesia and China who come in at just 5%.