Features
Where in the World is Anderson Tuggle?
By Anderson Tuggle '14
September 27, 2012
Namaste from Jaipur, India! For the fall semester, I chose to study abroad in northwestern India with SIT’s Sustainable Development and Social Change program. Currently, I am one month into my three month adventure.
Why this strange country and this particular program, you ask? Well, I admit, my lack of foreign language skills helped push me to a country where I could get by with English (though I am still learning Hindi, since the vast majority of the population knows minimal English). Beyond that superficial issue, as a history major who knows mostly Western history, I wanted to experience a society that houses religious and cultural traditions I know little about, not to mention a stunning diversity of ethnicity, environment and wealth amongst its 1.2 billion inhabitants—four times the population of America with one-third the land! Moreover, though, India is going through a rapid process of modernization and economic expansion; the paramount global-political questions of the future, such as sustainable energy use and urban growth, depend far more on what happens in India than on what happens in the United States.
Anyways, per what I’m actually doing day-to-day in Jaipur, I will start by saying that I am still a student here and not just a tourist. I take classes in both Hindi and development studies five days a week, go on excursions like meeting with village government officials and am preparing for a month-long independent research project I will conduct over the month of November on school lunch programs in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Unlike Hamilton, however, I am living with a homestay family in Jaipur: The Singhs. And even more unlike Hamilton, I live with a dual-family of sorts. On the one hand, I have an elderly host father and mother, along with their 13-year old grandson who lives in Jaipur for education purposes. On the other hand, there is the servant family who lives with us, which has a mother and father, plus three boys ranging from 12 to 20. These two families have been living together for generations but they live somewhat unequally, mostly due to caste reasons. There is enough detail I could go into on this topic to last a 10 page paper, but, suffice it to say, I see everyone who I live with at home as one family and it is a wonderfully joyful place to return to every night after each day of exploration.
Besides living with an Indian homestay family, much else over my last month has taken some adjustment. Most noticeably, India—and particularly Jaipur—has a more conservative and male-centric culture; it is rare to see Indian males and females hanging out as equal friends. Although I sometimes benefit from this culture to the chagrin of my female student peers—I have more freedom with what I wear and can go out at night without accompaniment—I find these ‘male advantages’ more creepy than comforting. The other most striking things that I miss about America are the oft-unappreciated facets of a well-maintained public infrastructure: consistent waste management, sidewalks on the streets, traffic lights and stop-signs, etc.
On the whole, though, the pluses of India far outweigh any difficulties I have encountered. For every street hawker that’s nagged me without end, there have been 10 strangers willing to overlook my feeble attempts at Hindi and help me out. Thus, I plan to savor every last moment of the next two months, as opportunities like this semester will be few and far between during my (rapidly-approaching!) adult life.