“So, how was India?”, by Carolyn Florey

This question is impossible to answer. Having lived abroad before, I’ve received it a number of times (insert relevant country/city). There are long and short answers to these friendly queries, helping me to really figure out what I did for the past ten months, why I originally came to India, and why India will always be a part of my life, a port of call, a home.

Because I will return to living in Washington, DC, a city notorious for unabashed networking young professionals, I expect meetings with new and old acquaintances will eventually uncover that I lived in India for the past year. Sometimes attention spans are short and intentions disingenuous in our nation’s capital. The long answers are reserved for those special people who probably wouldn’t inquire about my job as their first or second question anyway. But I digress. I imagine conversations to unfold as follows…

New friend: Wow. India. How was that?
(short answer) Me: It was great. Thanks.
(long answer) Me: India is a country of fascinating juxtapositions and extremes, confluence, confusion, chaos, culture, spirituality, wealth and beauty. I lived in India for only ten months and expect that after living there for ten years I would still not be privy to the inner workings of the Indian mind and culture.


New friend: So what did you do in India?
(short answer) Me: I worked at a women’s rights NGO in Delhi.
(long answer) Me: I was an American India Foundation Service Corps Fellow (for eight months) and a Clinton Fellow (for two months). I worked with a human rights organization called Breakthrough, whose India office focuses on women’s rights, specifically gender and sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, using “edutainment” (media education) as a platform for social awareness campaigns. I was mainly responsible for communications collateral and producing training materials.

In my spare time, I traveled extensively throughout the country, took approximately 2,948,7592,875 pictures, practiced kickboxing, attended one yoga session and found breathing out one nostril at a time silly and booger-inducing, discovered the wonders of tailored clothing, took Hindi lessons yet am still unable to read Devanagari, read a lot of books, drank a lot of chai, learned to live without air conditioning (and thus hopefully never take it for granted again), got engaged, met some truly quality individuals, and as our Program Manager instructed us at orientation, learned to embrace the boredom.


New friend: Why did you go to India?
(short answer) Me: I love chicken tikka.
(long answer) Me: I had worked at what in common parlance is known as "The Bank" for about two and a half years at a small grants program called the Development Marketplace (DM). A large part of my work at the DM was monitoring small-scale, innovative projects; I interfaced with inspiring social entrepreneurs from around the world. Feeling as though there was a disconnect between my work at the Bank and on-the-ground implementation, I applied for this fellowship to bridge that gap in my experience.


New friend: And how did that work out for you?
(short answer) Me: It was a good learning experience.
(long answer) Me: It did and didn’t. My work at the DM was far more substantive and although I was working in a headquarters in Washington, DC, I felt like I was having more of a “development impact” in my job there. I was told by my colleagues in India multiple times that I was being underutilized, an appreciated comment and recognition, but disheartening nonetheless.

So I reached out to other organizations in India in my spare time - wrote grant proposals for a sustainable energy NGO based in Hyderabad and did some research for an education technology company in Delhi to supplement the work I am doing at Breakthrough. Tried to make it work. Tim Gunn would be proud.

But living in India and working in an Indian NGO were invaluable experiences. I was the only foreigner in my office of thirteen people, ten of whom are women (the two accountants and the office assistant are the only men). I worked with empowered, independent women who have a true passion to advance human rights throughout India and hope to tackle issues such as religion, caste, and peace and conflict in the future.


New friend: Do you think you will go back?
(short answer) Me: Of course.
(long answer) Me: Hopefully, I will be able to go back to India, not only to visit, but also perhaps to live and work. India is a country that grabs hold of the imagination, the senses and the intellect in a way that I have not experienced in any other country. It is a frightfully frustrating place; the highs and lows are extreme and can happen within two minutes of each other, but the entrepreneurial spirit and hopes for the future are undaunted by the vast and deep inequalities that continue to handicap a large percentage of the population. I am forever tied to this vivid country; I will be back.