Week 0 in Mysore — Public Health Research Institute of India
Hi everyone! Thank you so much for taking some time out of your hectic schedules to read a little bit about my summer.
If you know me, you know how important this internship and this work that I am about to entail is to me personally. I am extremely grateful to have been able to get a GPP Fellowship to conduct my practice experience at PHRII in Mysore, India.
The Journey
When I usually arrive to Karnataka, it involves a bleary-eyed trip from BLR to our home in JP Nagar where both my Doddas (grandmothers) await me with a warm cup of filter coffee and a comfortable bed. The following months would revolve around traveling through Bengaluru, meeting relatives who never forget to tell me how much I’ve changed or grown, and visiting various temples. As I would fight through jet lag and culture shock surrounding the varying insects on walls, long stares by people on the streets, and the restrictions on what I was able to do alone, I would fall into a comfortable lull in Bengaluru where most of my needs were well taken care off. Even when I had problems with sexist and patriarchal values that affected my own stay and actions, I would brush it off as a small price to pay to reunite with my relatives.
This time felt different. Since my last visit to India, a global pandemic had ravaged through the country and drastically impacted not just the lives of people but the infrastructure the community relied on. India seemed to have grown vastly since the last I had visited it, and greater reliance on contactless payments and shopping had become the norm with even the small street vendor utilizing Google Pay or PayTM. The other aspect that felt different was the intentions of my visit. I was actually going to be working on my own project this summer, and I felt like my trip was more infused with independence and purpose.
For the first time, most of my India itinerary was my own. I would be able to cultivate my own schedule and experience while here, so I knew I had to make the most of it. I would be spending most of the summer in Mysuru, a 3 hour drive from Bengaluru, working at the Public Health Research Institute of India. I would be living alone in a city that I barely knew, which should have felt fairly easy considering what college initially feels like and the fact that I knew what Kannada immensely helps. Yet, I didn’t feel comfortable, I struggled with the idea of being in India without a relative near me as I knew nothing different. Even though I would be in Mysore, I knew how close extended family was and that it wasn’t like I was in a completely foreign place, but the whole idea of living in India like this was foreign.
However, I knew how important this would be for my own self-discovery alongside my personal interest in this work. So on Sunday, I packed my things, said goodbye to all my relatives and embarked with my uncle and grandma on the journey to Mysore. As we went our drive, my uncle mentioned the new Mysore Expressway that was under construction that would cut off an hour of the journey between Bangalore and Mysore for a toll. I was awestruck by the construction that was elevated above the current highway road. My grandma mentioned that the expressway would have limited exit areas and the negative impact it would have on the small businesses on the sides of the highway which included many snack and water stands. These stands operated on the belief that cars would stop along their long journey to purchase a few items, and thus the expansion of the expressway could lead to disheartening decline of business for many stands not near any main exit. The whole situation reminded me of the Pixar movie Cars, but this expressway was contributing to small business collapse that had already been growing due to the pandemic. Once I made it to PHRII, I got to meet Nikhita and Ika who I would be sharing a room with that on the top floor of the building. It was a really spacious room, and I was grateful to meet people who also were undergraduate students from the US, working at PHRII for the summer. The room was also quite convenient, as it was right above the clinic which made it a lot easier to “get to work”.
Stay tuned for my Week 1 Update!
