University of Madras – Andy Jackson

form and content in India

No particular reason for this including this photo – it just says Chennai to me. It’s my local train station. 10 rupees gets me into the University and back. There was a little panic in the news in Melbourne a while ago that some of the doors on our metropolitan trains could be forced open. Here, the doors are always open, passengers leaning out of them as we hurtle through the city…

Anyway, back to poetry and medicine. I just finished reading a fascinating book on “modern Ayurveda” by Jean Langford, called “Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance”. The title is good enough, but the exploration is brilliant. To truncate its broad scope, basically she looks at how Ayurvedic training, knowledge and practice have responded to the modern world. She concludes, among other things, that Ayurvedic practitioners have been torn between imitating the “scientific” and standardised approach of biomedicine and establishing Ayurveda as a valid and separate alternative. The former seems to have predominated, but it is still haunted by the indefinability and mystery of the body as Ayurveda imagines it – this especially comes out in the (now fading) practice of pulse reading. Anyway, a quick quote –

The modern state in its various brances cannot it seems enframe and enclose the social ethos. Similarly, many practitioners seem to feel that modern Ayurvedic institutions cannot enframe and enclose the practices by which Ayurvedic knowledge is actually transmitted… In modern Ayurvedic institutions, the illusion of an alignment between form and content seems to be less fiercely sustained than it would be for instance in the U.S…. Could the difference be partly that in modern India the dualism of form and content is more a syntagma to perform than an episteme to protect?…

Now, when I read this, apart from having to go and look “syntagma” up (it’s a linguistic arrangement), I really felt like Langford touched on something really crucial about the contemporary Indian mindset and way of being. I’m still thinking what that exactly might be and mean, so any of your thoughts (or examples) will be welcomed with open arms.

So, while my project does revolve around medical tourism, there is also a lot of interest in Ayurveda from foreign travellers (certainly in the massage, a little less in the blood-letting and purging…). That angle is fascinating to me – the sense that Indian people are giving Westerners what they believe we want – there’s some kind of “feedback loop” going on here I’m interested in unravelling. I’ve just arrived in Mamallapuram, which has a little tourist enclave, so I’ll see what I can find out.

Last week I also gave a poetry reading at the English Department of the University of Madras. After being generously and capably introduced by Professor Armstrong, and by Assistant Professor Ms Supala Pandiarajan, I read a series of poems from “Among the regulars”, interspersed with a few words about my background, the themes I’m drawn to, publishing in Australia, as well as pre-emptively translating some Australianisms.

I have to say, something about this event made me feel at home. I’m very glad to have been able to read poetry to a group of intensely thoughtful (and thoughtfully intense!) young students/writers/academics. What was particularly interesting to me is that there was a lot of questions about the creative process and about how a poem is worked on, shaped, finished, and how it can be assessed. These are perennial questions, yes, but I suspect this is related to the University system also, how institutions baulk at marking creative work, leaving students to pursue those avenues externally (or not at all).

One more tiny thing I want to mention is my “Steripen Adventurer” – a little battery-powered UV wand that kills bacteria in water. I’ve been using it for about a month now, which is a lot of plastic water bottles I haven’t been responsible for leaving behind. I totally recommend it. It comes with a solar charger, which I haven’t used, as my room hasn’t had sunlight coming in (probably a good thing that), but you can still charge it (slowly) from the wall. The only real down side is that in some places and times, you can make the tap water safe to drink, but it still tastes awful. After so many years of being separated, welcome back into my life – “Tang”!

the queue (if you could call it that)

Two weeks in, and I have yet to step foot inside a hospital. Well, ok, I did walk into the Apollo, but more on that later. For now, let’s just say the mood is ambivalent. I’ve been writing poems, and I think some interesting things are coming out, but they’ve mainly been about the initial frisson of arrival, the spectacular differences and the struggle of bridging cultures. Nothing yet about “medical tourism”. All the contacts I have either don’t get back to me, or are in meetings, or want me to send them emails… But, as India teaches you, you have to keep pushing – with a soft fluidity as well as a vigour.

The staff at the University of Madras have all been gracious and welcoming. I have a room set aside for me on the rooftop of the main building, which overlooks Marina Beach and fills up with the sea breeze. They’ve also continued to reassure me that the extent of my involvement at the University is up to me; that my poetry-writing is the priority. We’ve organised a few things though, all at the University’s English Department –

Poetry Reading – Thursday 3rd November, 1pm
Creative Writing Workshop on Embodiment – Monday 5th December, 10am.
Lecture/discussion on Recent Australian Poetry – Tuesday 3rd January.

Apart from the Uni, all my contacts with people have been accidental. I met a lovely guy from Hyderabad who was staying at my hotel, who shouted me lunch (“it’s our duty”) and asked me what I hate about India the most, and what I love. For the record, I said its poverty and its strength. Which made me wonder about the relationship between the two… While I was at my room at the Uni, Syam Sudhakar waltzed in to meet me. He was actually at the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2009 (I was there in 2008 and 2010!) – he’s a fine poet, too – while we were chatting, he got mail, a copy of a journal with two poems of his in it. Oh, and I was also (gently) harrassed for money by a group of hijras, laughing as one of them took my hat and wore it…

Anyway, so, as I was saying, I did walk into the Apollo Hospital the other day. I took a long, tiring walk to Thousand Lights (a few suburbs away from my hotel) to get a sense of what this renowned hospital is like – who goes there, what surrounds it, etc. At a distance, I thought I saw it, but it was actually a luxury hotel – oops, Andy, don’t get carried away. Apollo is of course a large medical complex, and it clearly has some money behind it, but it looks more like a standard country hospital. The main difference being the huge crowds. Hundreds of bikes and motorbikes are out the front. Autorickshaws cruise the exit for customers. Families wait in groups outside. In the waiting room, it’s hard to move – dozens and dozens of people sit, stand, lie, pace, all without much apparent distress or frustration. I can’t imagine everyone would be seen on the day they come. But it seems accepted that this is just how it is. In the corner is a sign that directs “international patients” to a separate cubicle. Which reminds me of the time I went to a doctor in Kalimpong, West Bengal, three years ago – I was rushed to the front of the (albeit small) queue, and felt acutely relieved and ashamed.

The other thing I’ve noticed is the number of gyms here (which I didn’t notice in the north or centre of the country). Wondering what that implies…

Oh, and where I’m staying – Sangeetha Residency in Mylapore – is pretty good. It’s got all the basics you need and the buffet breakfast is part of the deal (mmm, idli…). The choice you have to make is between a room with a window onto the inner car-park, which makes it feel like a cell, and a room that overlooks the road, which is almost always a cacophony of vehicles honking (and now that it’s Diwali, so many crackers and fireworks exploding through the night, which makes the air look like a thick fog and sounds like a small war!). I prefer the latter. You may prefer neither.

And below, some important places for Deepawali – temple, and a shop for fireworks…!

“medical tourism” from the inside…

In October this year, I’m travelling to India to find out what “medical tourism” is all about. You may now have visions of me in surgical robes, nervously waiting to be anaesthetised, but no, this isn’t a kind of “method acting” in poetry.

Asialink (along with the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia-India Council) have been generous enough to grant me a 3-month literature residency, based at the University of Madras. This is an opportunity to draw together into poetry two themes that have long fascinated me – the human body and how we experience it, and India – the interplay of ancient tradition and globalised entrepreneurialism, as well as its vigorous energy and sheer complexity.

My plan is to write portrait poems of people who are in some way involved in what is commonly called “medical tourism” – the travel of patients outside their home country to access medical treatment. This treatment ranges from cardiac surgery to dental work, orthopedic surgery to reproductive technology, gender reassignment surgery. They travel for many reasons – personal, legal, technological and/or financial (to obtain treatment that is too expensive at home). There’s a huge and growing amount of literature on the broad social impact of this very complex phenomenon, but very little in terms of personal stories.

I’m interested in talking with doctors, nurses, cleaners, and other ancillary staff, but also with patients and their families – both Indian and non-Indian. I’m also interested in talking with people who may have had experiences with the medical systems of other countries – Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, for example. How do two cultures interact around one human body? What are the emotions, contingencies, complications, victories, insights and relationships that are brought up?

If you or someone you know is planning to travel to India any time between October 2011 and January 2012, please contact me through this blog. Any comments on my project, suggestions for reading or other contacts are also very welcome.