This is the first time I've been at a computer since my last post. I've been writing in a journal a good amount. Overall its been pretty boring here. After a few days in Dehli, we went to Bangalore at night. Bangalore is a nice town, very tropical in nature. My bua has a flat just outside of town and one of my uncle's lives in a flat above her. I was finally in the territory of my dad's family. So, it was the first time I met this uncle and over the next week, I would meet a lot of people for the first time. After a day in Bangalore we got on a train to Chennai (Madras). Madras was renamed Chennai in the 80s, I think. The Indian govt. got tired of the British names (Bombay, Madras, a few others I can't remember) and changed the names back to the traditional.
Chennai was hot and dirty. I guess thats typical of beach towns anywhere. What sucked was that right off the train I stepped into a literal bag of shit. A driver picked us up and took us to Sriharikota. I fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a village. We were almost there. Turns out, my uncle works for the Indian NASA, ISRO, and Sriharikota is an island where ISRO's base is. The only things that are in Sriharikota are as follows: one village, one large ISRO base including launch pads, a beach leading to the Bay of Bengal, a large Bird sanctuary on the other side of the island, some indiginous people, my uncle, and my grandmother.
Overall, the stay in Sriharikota was hot, but pleasant. my grandmother doesn't think of the same way the rest of the family seems to. But she finds me really similar to my dad. It seemed to have made her pretty happy, but I know she was also pretty sad. She cried everytime she talked about my dad, but she kept thanking my mom for bringing me to see her. It was the first time I had seen her in 18 years. My cousins are really nice and it was good seeing them finally. After this trip, I only have five more cousins on my dad's side to see. Three of them are way older and the other two are about my age; one older, one younger. One more thing to say about Sriharikota is that, its basically just like Jurassic Park. I went up to the top of one of the launch pads and took a look around. I wish I could have taken a picture, but for security reasons I couldn't.
There was a lot more to say when I started typing, but all I can think to tell you now is that so far, India hasn't been all that great. I've missed home a shit ton and I've tried not to. In the south, meeting my dad's family was rough. Its like this long lost son returns and all they can do is poke and prod me like a zoo animal, or rather, like a fat, tattooed, lazy, liberal American. I've constantly had to prove to them that I've grown up as both an Indian and an American and that it doesn't fucking matter what I am as long as I can stand up for myself and say "Hi, I'm Varun Bhandari." There's so much that I've said to them about subjects including, world politics, global viewpoints, extremism in the world and in the U.S., racism, and Indian traditionalism. And even though my perspective and ideals might not be the same or even close to theirs, they just can't seem to get it. I'd really like to say more, but its kind of tough right now. Its taken me an hour to write this much because this keyboard is terrible. I don't think I'll be near a computer again until I get home, so I'll give my final update then.