As I walked out of the airport in Delhi, we were greeted with a thick brownish-grey smog in the horizon. Immediately it felt like home - Santiago, the capital of Chile – which is also one of most the highly air polluted cities of the world. Back home when I wake up, I enjoy the clean air because the heavy-duty air filter in my bedroom is constantly on. The only way to ...
Drinking Pesticides: The Effects of Climate Change on Farmers
Do you know where your food comes from? Apart from the supermarket or vendor that you buy your food from, do you know who grows this food? Have you had a conversation with the farmer? Not many people know where their food is grown or by whom, or if these farmers live happy lives with enough money to care for their families or if they barely make ends meet. For thousands of ...
The Unexpected
This is a list that I have been compiling over the last months of my stay in India. Here are a few things that I did not know before coming and some that I wish I had known. 1. You will get used to all of the people. After your first experience of being squished in a train during rush hour you will be desensitized to the amount of people on the street and in public ...
Child Marriage: The Unspoken Reality and Its Impacts
“Little did I dream then that one day I should severely criticize my father for having married me as a child.” This excerpt is taken from Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography; as an adult he recognizes the immorality behind the fact that he was married off at the age of thirteen without being fully conscious or being asked his opinion. This freedom fighter’s story is not ...
Ecotourism: The Essence of Incredible India
Feeling the white pristine sand filter through your toes as you stare at a breathtakingly beautiful shoreline is the dream of millions of people. With the ease of air travel and increased globalization, one of the world’s fastest growing industries is tourism, and its subset, ecotourism. Many people are opposed to the large waves of tourists that invade their area a few times ...
Toilet Troubles
“Every day was agony – waiting for it to get dark so that there was no one around who could see me, forcing me to hold on even though my bladder was bursting,” Sangeeta Mali, 23. The lack of toilets in homes and in public areas throughout India makes this a reoccurring theme. More than 2.3 billion people in the world do not have access to toilets, and more than one-third of ...
The Irula Tribe: Snake Charmers and Lifesavers
A person’s natural instinct when faced with a poisonous animal is to jump back. That is exactly what I did when the Irula tribesman took the first snake out of the clay pot. This near run in with a poisonous snake occurred while we were visiting the Madras Crocodile Bank, a reptile zoo and research center situated in the outskirts of Chennai. They host an astounding 2,000 ...
Uniform Civil Code: Imperative Law to Create Equality for Indian Women of all Religions
While India now prides itself for its democratic ideals, making it the largest democracy in the world, it still struggles with balancing its incredible cultural, language, religious and ethnic diversity by not providing a common framework of laws to allow both men and women equal rights. I have witnessed different religious sites side by side; common occurrence bears testament ...
Tumultuous Train Rides
The creases in her old, weathered skin made her appear wise and her smiling mouth with the two front teeth missing made her appear friendly and trustworthy. I was the first one of my group to spot her sitting on the floor close to the open doors of the ladies rail car on the train. I walked towards her and stood near the open doors of the train. She immediately returned my ...
33 Pictures of Cows
The first day we stepped out of the sanctuary (what I have been calling the campus of Madras Christian College) to see what my new world looked like beyond the sanctuary, we encountered cows chilling casually on the side of the road. Our wanderings took us to the town of Tambaram, and I was amazed at the many differences in my surroundings as compared to the five other ...
