Since 2007, the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania has supported nearly 200 students! Welcome to the home base for CASI students and alumni to share their thoughts, reflections, and ongoing learnings about their internships, research projects, and travels in India and beyond.
If you search up the definition of bad traveler’s luck on Urban Dictionary, the first result will be my name. Okay, not actually, but it should be. After getting emergency butt surgery, sitting at the Koramangala police station for two frustratingly long hours explaining how my bag was stolen, then getting pickpocketed in Mumbai, and […]
Growing up, I used to resent India because it was the country that took me away from my dad for 2 years when my mom and I lived in Bangalore. India was the country that took me away from my friends during summer break. My mom generally had to beg me to come with her. […]
Seeing that I am now eight thousand, five hundred and seventy-two miles (that’s thirteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two kilometers) away from stifling Sarjapur traffic jams, trendy Koramangala shops and eateries, meaningless H&M codes of conduct, hazy Indiranagar afterparties, lazy Cubbon park picnics, seemingly oblivious cows on the road, startlingly sweet (but oh-so-satisfying) Richmond Road […]
It’s now been three weeks since I came back from India, and there are little things that still haven’t left me, like an inclination to drive on the left sided of the road (thankfully I haven’t acted on that impulse!) Coming back to a hometown that was largely composed of white senior citizens was a […]
The first wrong assumption I had about India was that almost everyone, at least everyone in big, metropolitan cities, spoke English. Boy was I wrong when my co-intern Steph and I were trying to catch our bus from Delhi to Agra on our first day in India and our Uber driver, not understanding us saying […]
Now that my internship at Aravind Eye Hospital and the Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology (LAICO) has come to an end, I continue to reflect on the experiences I had this summer and the many wonderful lessons I learned. I undoubtedly shed a few tears on our last day as we picked up our […]
As we finish up breakfast, my three co-interns and I desperately try to secure an Uber that will take us the entire 7 km (a little over 4 miles) from our apartment in Ejipura to our office in Bellandur. The reason we’re trying so hard? No one wants to drive 7 km in Bangalore morning rush hour traffic.
