All posts by Jessica Sarno

A Family Affair

For many students, going away to college is the first time they are away from their families for a significant duration; for me it was traveling to India. As an Ada Comstock scholar, a wife, a mother of three, and a transfer student, I thought I would not have the opportunity for international study; I was wrong. Smith College not only provided the opportunity but challenged me to take the risk and go for it. The Tibetan Studies in India program over J-term was the perfect fit for me.

Attending Smith has been something my whole family has undertaken. We all live on campus; we do homework together. They see me stressed out over a paper and suffer through endless nights of ramen dinners. So, when I learned that I had been accepted into the Tibetan Studies in India program, it was all of us who were accepted. Immediately my acceptance became a family event, as they watched me make the lists of supplies, get the vaccinations, do the readings. I felt a great responsibility to my family to make the most out of the opportunity. In an effort to include them in my travels, I wanted to capture momentary glimpses of my intercultural experience in photos not only of the extraordinary but also of the everyday interactions that I would encounter.

Sarno - A Family Affair photo 2

The Central University of Tibetan Studies is in a small town named Sarnath, in the Uttar Pradesh region of India. Varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the world, quickly became my favorite place to go. It took approximately 20 minutes via auto rickshaw to travel from Sarnath to Varanasi, and the ride to and from was definitely part of the adventure! Horns sounded in a completely different manner, the beep more of a heads up while passing than a warning accompanied by a hand gesture. Passing included pedestrians, other rickshaws (sometimes head on), and any animals in the street. In a city where thousands of people are coming and going daily the beeping was almost continuous, but not a sign of aggression as it often is in a New York City context.

A predisposition for the hustle and bustle of city life helped to prepare me for the overwhelming stimuli of Varanasi, but my first time there I found myself fighting panic. The noise level was intense with the sounds of the rickshaws, shoppers, storekeepers, the moo of cows, and music all filling the air. Add to that my conditioned response to horns that New York had generated, and my inexperience of being in such close proximity to large cows, and I found myself poised on the curb, trying to find the perfect time to cross the street, long enough to be shooed away by a frustrated shopkeeper more times than I can count. By my last day in Varanasi I came to realize that there’s never a perfect time to cross the street, or alternatively, it is always the perfect time to cross.

Shopping was a stimulating and socially bonding experience in Varanasi; it did not center solely on the exchange of money. Shop owners offered tea and sweets and a conversation would begin, which then would often lead to many different products being brought out and finally a negotiation of price. At first the art of price negotiation was uncomfortable for me for a complexity of reasons, but on my last night in Varanasi, in the twists of the alleys, I realized how far I had come. Having found a great little shop and entered into the negotiation process, I was surprised to feel relaxed and smiling easily while still remaining true to the process. At the end the young man behind the counter smiled and asked “are you happy?” to which I replied “very.” He responded “good, I’m glad” and he slid a bracelet, that at one point I had considered adding to my purchase, onto my wrist. It is by far my favorite keepsake from India. But I brought home more than trinkets and souvenirs. Just recently, I quite unexpectedly found myself offering an alternative price to a shopkeeper in Northampton.

The photos I took while in India were an effort to capture a piece of these experiences so that I could share them with the rest of my family. The risk I took in first applying to the program and then by participating in it has prompted me to take even greater risks. I am graduating in May, and as part of my accelerated graduate program in public policy, I have applied to several international internship positions and plan to pursue a career in international policy. Perhaps the next time I travel to India, my family will have the opportunity to take photos of their own.

Photos © Jessica Sarno. All rights reserved.

Jessica Sarno headshotJessica Sarno is currently enrolled in an accelerated graduate program in public policy at UMASS. Her academic interests and career goals center on the intersection of religion with public policy and how this intersections effects the lives of women. She is particularly interested in transnational comparative policy.

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