Thanks to everyone for reading this blog during my year in India. Here’s to keeping the conversation going, and here’s to one day living in lovely, frustrating, exciting India again.

Hyderabad waterfront

1. Sitting for hours at Hyderabad’s Western-ish waterfront food court talking, taking silly photos, and eating “American” masala corn.

2. Getting hysterical with C in the midst of his workshop presentation. “Digital Equalizer is AIF’s initiative that allows for projects like, um, Respiration through Power Point!” Ha.

3. Driving, driving, driving through Hyderabad’s hot, crowded streets. An hour from the airport to the hotel. An hour from the hotel to a museum that was, in the end, closed. An hour back to the hotel. An hour + (in circles) to dinner. Etc, etc.

4. Mutual bliss over returning to our city of heart.

“In one experiment, researchers found that information about the scope of a crisis may dilute the emotional impact of an image of a single victim. Subjects in the experiment were shown a photograph of Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali who was facing starvation.

A second group was shown the same image along with information about the scale of poverty in Africa. The image of Rokia, without the accompanying statistics, won the charity more money.

“It really puts fund raisers in a fix,” said George Loewenstein, an economics and psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of three researchers who conducted the study. “They want to appeal to the mind and the heart. But if they do, there’s a real risk of undermining the heart.”

In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.”

-”New Research Sheds Light on What Works in Charitable Appeals,” by Caroline Preston, The Chronicle Of Philanthropy

These studies show just how powerful individual stories can be, a concept I often think about when writing, filming, and sharing anecdotes about my time in India.

A few examples to back up my claim:

1. My dad’s uncle lived and worked in rural Bihar on a farm with no running water or electricity. Every time he heard a piece of information – whether news, gossip, fact, or story – he confirmed its validity by checking in with four or five others. He shaped his version of the truth around strength in numbers.

2. Indians rarely find their way around a city using maps or written directions. The common practice is to leave home with a vague idea of destination (street numbers mean little in India; landmarks, instead, guide us). Along the way, Indians will ask strangers – oftentimes auto rickshaw drivers who know the city well – how to get where they’re going.

3. India is a country of languages. It has 18 official languages divided across regions. Hundreds of other local languages and dialects are also spoken. Communication, then, is often based on knowing several languages. Latha, the woman who cleans my apartment and is teaching me how to cook, does not know how to read or write, yet she speaks seven different languages. For her, speaking so many languages is more practical than literacy.

Coming from a culture largely dependent on the written word, it has been at times refreshing and at times frustrating to learn how to live in a country where word of mouth dominates communication.

India’s left-of-center Congress Party won a solid election victory this past weekend. The news is exciting – and surprising – for a few reasons.

1. Indian elections have a history of anti-incumbency, meaning that with each election, a new party is voted into power. This year, for the first time in over 40 years, Congress was re-elected. What changed? India’s economy remained resilient despite today’s global climate. (The growth rate hovers around 6%.) India’s voters realized that even in a time of crisis, the current government was doing something right. For example, agriculture yields were high this year. Those working in agriculture comprise the bulk of India’s voters, so their satisfaction with the status-quo government helped Congress.

2. Congress is a secular, non caste-based party. Its opposition, the Bharatiya Jananta Party, pushed its Hindu nationalist agenda forcefully during election campaigning. Voter preference for Congress’s less extremist messages is hopeful for a more stable Indian society, particularly during a time when issues as delicate as Pakistan and Sri Lanka are at the forefront.

3. The re-election of Manmohan Singh as India’s prime minister marks a shift in the nature of politics in India. A startling number of Indian politicians are uneducated, have criminal records, and landed their government positions through corrupt means. Manmohan Singh, on the other hand, is educated with a strong background in economics. Before serving as India’s finance minister and subsequently prime minister, he worked at the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. His pro-business, pro-reform mindset indicates a progressive perspective, one that can direct India from its “old” politics towards redevelopment, globalization, and a new face for Indian government.

(For context, desi means “of the homeland,” i.e., a pure Indian. The song is from a recent Bollywood movie, Dostana.)

Below, an Adobe Youth Voices film, Freedom, that students from Barlane Government High School recently finished. The video is about the way female children are treated differently than their male peers.

An interesting side note: Freedom was spearheaded by 17-year-old Mubeen, whom I’ve previously written about here (and who is the film’s leading lady). Toward the end of the video, you’ll notice an older woman being interviewed about why she loves her son more than her daughter. Keep in mind that the interviewer in that interaction is Mubeen; the interviewee, her mother.