Fish

Class trip to the fishing harbor. You knew it was going to be amazing. Instructor M. says she goes there all the time, she just loves it. I don’t buy it, especially when she starts gagging in the auto. Frankly, I like the smell of fish. Even stanky fish harbor fish. Reminds me of Viet Nam. As usual, there was no plan. We just approached a group of women scaling fish next to the dock. The fish were about six inches long, slim and silvery. In the middle of the circle of women was a huge pile of these things, packed in ice shavings. An all too familiar scenario played out. We approached them, interrupted their work, surrounding people noticed the white folks trying to speak Telugu and that’s how a scene at the harbor gets started. I don’t know why - maybe it’s my inner anthropologist - but I felt compelled to walk away from the group to a couple women sitting on the other side of the circle. Away from the growing knot of people. Luckily Instructor L. followed me for the photo op and stayed to translate. It wasn’t the deepest conversation, and I couldn’t have held up my end without Instructor L. But it was a real conversation. She told me about her family, and her livelihood. Anthro nerd stuff. It was exhilarating.

Haleem on a Train!

We’ll write off Saturday. It was a bad day. Sunday went much better. We found our way to the Charminar and the bangles market. A. had been asked to buy several sleeves, so we all set off to seek her bangle fortune. We wound through narrow alleyways festooned from top to bottom with colorful glass bangles. Even the alleyways were covered in beautiful shards of colored glass. Bangle fortune seeking makes one hungry, so we stopped for a cool drink and a hot dosa. What a dosa! I watched it made, spread paper thin on the hot griddle, spread with chili paste and filled with a spoonful of potato masala. Ice cold Pepsi provided a nice complement. As did a chocolate ice cream cone from down the street.

We left the Charminar to catch our train back to Vizag. On our way to the station we stopped at a highly recommended haleem shop to take parcel. Now, haleem is a special Ramadan food, but for whatever reason they start making it early in Hyderabad. And I’m very glad. Mutton roasted all day, mashed into a stew with wheat gluten, spices, and more. I can’t say that it looks good, because it doesn’t. It just tastes good. We rode home in our posh 3-tier A/C compartment, creating a small scene, devouring haleem and the best mutton biryani I’ve ever tasted. Sunday was a good day.

Puri

A Vignette

7:45am. Me, sitting alone at a formal dining room table eating uttappam. The chairs have high straight backs, made of dark wood. There’s a large vase of fake roses in the middle of the table. The uttappam is warm and slightly greasy. It goes nicely with pickle. Out on the verandah P. is reading the “Lifestyles” section of Saakshi newspaper. From the master bedroom come the sounds of a cricket match. I can only assume that R. is in there, eating his uttapam and watching highlights. Everyone is very alone.

Water

I forgot to tell P. when I’d be home, which is how I came to find myself sitting on the stoop at 3pm, trying to read and fighting off mosquitoes. Sita told me that P. and R. had gone out, and they should be home soon. She proceeded to weed one of the many flowerbeds around the house. I leaned up against the locked door, trying not to be frustrated.

There are many public works projects afoot in my neighborhood, which means there are plenty of day laborers passing through. During my banishment to the stoop one stopped by. I was curious to see what Sita would do - she has a strong “mother hen” streak. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and I probably couldn’t have understood it anyway. But soon Sita was leading the woman down the drive to the spigot in the back where she filled her large water jug. They chatted. I smiled to myself and pretended I didn’t see anything.

A half hour later P. and R. showed up.

Green

To Market

Everyone, the proverbial everyone, is saying these days that India’s biggest agricultural problem is distribution. There seems to be no good way to move food around the country. If I know anything about what “everyone says these days” it’s this:

1) The problem is always more complicated than “everyone” would have you believe. I’m just beginning to root around in that which is India’s agricultural distribution system, but I’m inclined to believe this premise holds true yet again.

2) There’s always some truth to what “everyone” is saying.

And while I’m not ready to go about labeling things as problems, I’m constantly in awe of the myriad of creative ways in which people here manage to get things to market. There are trucks, buses, bullock carts. My favorite is the ubiquitous auto. I see them on my way to school. We’ll be stopped at one intersection or another and an auto will pull up next to us. Instead of being stuffed with people, however, it’s brimming with agricultural produce. Bananas are common these days. My personal favorite though, is fish. Baskets of small, shiny, slippery fish. The baskets and the auto are stuffed so full I’m amazed they don’t leave a trail through Vizag. Yet some how they all stay in. I don’t know where they’re going, and I’m certainly not sure that an auto is the all-things-being-equal-(which they’re not)-best way to get there. It’s a stunning feat, nonetheless.

Color in Calcutta

Off To School

Every morning I sit on the verandah, look over my Telugu lessons, and wait for A. to come pick me up in Ram Babu’s auto. If I get to the verandah early enough, I get to watch Sita seeing her children off to school. They look so smart in their blue uniforms, hair neatly combed and braided. Sita walks with them out through the gate. As they stride down the road she follows a few steps and looks on worriedly. She watches until they are out of sight.

Yogini Temple

Just outside the main temple complex at Khajaraho is a Yogini temple. The Yogini tradition is associated with female deities, Shiva, and various taboos such as meat and sex - among many other things that I am not qualified to speak on. They are located outside towns or complexes, and are often ill looked-after because of their sordid nature. After seeing the grand edifices of Khajaraho, so well preserved, the Yogini temple was striking, and some how more real. It was refreshing to see something that had been allowed to decay; it spoke of a different history. Despite its appearance this temple was not abandoned. There were pots, coconuts, flowers, red fabric - someone still worshipped here.

Out of Place

You know you’ve been somewhere for a while when it starts to feel like home. You have a daily routine, and nothing about it strikes you as odd. You feel, comfortable. Despite how boring Vizag is, and how unhappy I’ve been here, I’ve started to feel at home. My auto ride to school, the endless “what are we going to do now?” and P.’s call to dinner all blend in to the fabric of my daily life here. Varun Beach Inox, Café Coffee Day, Tycoon Hotel, A.’s house, the Institute - all have become a part of my landscape.

Last night S. and I went out for dinner. The place was just across the street from my house and unremarkable, despite high praise from local auto drivers. We redeemed ourselves by hopping next door for some ice cream. The attendant was a skinny young man with glasses. He looked like any student working a service job. This afternoon as I was walking home, turning onto my street, I saw him - the ice cream guy. I tried to make eye contact, to say hi, but he never looked my way. I was still thrilled. There was someone, completely out of context, that I recognized. This was MY street corner, and I knew who belonged there and who didn’t. I even knew where the misfits belonged. And to put icing on my cake, the neighbor boy said “Hello!”

Thorn

Khajaraho

Headless

Market

Jhansi, 2 AM

S. turned to me and asked, “How does it feel to be the only woman in a room full of fifty Indian men?” I laughed - I had just noticed that this was indeed the case. “I’m really enjoying it. For the first time, I’m surrounded by Indian men and none of them are looking at me.” They weren’t. Their eyes were glued to the television, just like mine.

A three-hour layover in Jhansi, Madhya Pradesh, from 11:30pm to 2:30am, is not something one looks forward to. When that layover corresponds exactly to the World Cup Final, one gets even more despondent. The irony! The one night we are actually up and out at such an hour, we are up and out in a train station.

But sometimes the universe throws her arms open wide and laughs. We discovered there were televisions in the waiting rooms in Jhansi, but the only one that worked wasn’t tuned to the World Cup and we weren’t about to start telling people what they should be watching. So I settled down to reading in the Ladies Waiting Room. Soon S. (who had been thrown out of the Ladies Waiting Room because he was, in fact, not a lady) was knocking on the glass door, gesturing frantically for me to come.

Men came and went from the crowded Upperclass Waiting Room, watching the match up until the moment their trains pulled out of station. S. and I reveled in our late night serendipity and for three hours the Jhansi train station was a magical place.

Smell

Long story short, I went three weeks in India without my luggage. My bag got held up in customs in Mumbai. Last weekend I flew to Hyderabad (and there’s another long story) to - at last! - retrieve my bag. When I got back to Vizag I dumped the contents of the bag, a big read hiking pack, on my bed. The first thing I noticed was the smell. My smell. Things are things, and I never wanted for clothes or books or soap. But when I smelled my stuff, I realized what I had been missing. Some part of my sense of self is bound up in these things, and to wash my face with my soap, and to put my lotion on my hands was to wrap my self in the familiar. Smelling those things brought back to me little pieces of who I was, which is a great comfort being so far away from so many of the places, people and things which make me who I am.

Whenever I smell fish, fresh fish, I remember Viet Nam and the parts of me that were made there. I wonder what bits of me are being made here, and what smells will help to carry them with me.

Bacteria

While mold is easily one of my favorite things, bacteria don’t lag far behind. Tiny little creatures that do amazing things, like make soil, digest your food, kill creatures orders of magnitude larger. I feel compelled to respect something so powerful yet unassuming. Which is why I want to introduce my friend Annie. Aside from being one of the sweetest and most creative people I know, she also shares my passion for bacteria. Well, at least when they’re making yogurt.

Cue the shameless plug! Annie, in all her ingenious, bike-lovin’ glory has designed a bicycle cart for the sole purpose of travelling the Midwest sharing the glories of bacteria. Well, yogurt really. You can find out more about her project, the Yogurt Pedaler, here: http://yogurtpedaler.com/. And if you’re in the Midwest be on the look out for a beautiful woman on a bike sharing the small but mind-blowing wonder of homemade yogurt.

Humor is Good, Subtext is Better

A continual point of contention, both in our home-stays and at the Institute, is how much independence female students should have. I can step back and look at this as an anthropologist and come to some kind of understanding of how and why women are treated as they are here. On my good days I can even summon some respect for it. But I do not agree with it. I do however, have to live it, in albeit limited fashion, every day. And that wears on me. It brings a deeper understanding of what it means to be a woman here, and a greater appreciation for how hard the struggle was, and still is, for generations of women in the U.S. It's also exhausting. So on a bad day I made a play for greater independence. Disputes were had. Concessions made. And in proper Indian fashion, sweets were brought to "smooth over" our differences. This particular sweet is called "caja."

Sita

“Sita is my right hand,” says P. This is no exaggeration. One day as we were getting ready to go out, P. called me to the terrace. Then she called Sita over and instructed her to wipe her brow. I tried not to let the horror show on my face. “You do not have servants to do things like this in America,” says R. “No, no we don’t,” I say, my disgust thinly veiled at best. But it’s not disgust. It’s embarrassment. Sita is being used as a display of wealth and privilege that is meant to impress me. I am not impressed. I am embarrassed that anything like this should be for my benefit. I can only hope Sita knows this.

Sita is beautiful in hot pink. I saw her one day in her nicest sari - beautiful hot pink with gold. Most days she just wears dirty old saris, as she moves about the house at P.’s beck and call. “SiTAAAA!”

More beautiful than Sita in hot pink is simply Sita herself. She sings as she goes about her work, quietly, as she walks away from P. She smiles and laughs both at and with me. “Chai, chai!” she scolds if I absentmindedly forget to drink the cup of steaming tea on my desk. Lovely peals of laughter follow when she asks me something I simply don’t understand and I confusedly move about trying to figure out what exactly she meant. Something about clothes. . .

Sita lives in a small house in the back yard with her husband and two children. Her husband works somewhere, and moonlights as P.’s driver. I wish they were happy. But Sita says her husband has another wife somewhere in the city. He doesn’t come home some nights. When Sita, beautiful Sita, confronts him, he threatens to beat or kill her. P. tells me this is a problem with the servant class. P. scolds them both, like children. Sita’s husband should do better, and leave his “other wife.” Sita shouldn’t scold him. She threatened to throw him out. If I were her I would.

But I’m not. I certainly identify more with her than P. I wish I could talk to her, know what she was thinking. I want to be her friend. Our secret smiles and the warmth with which we treat each other are the most welcoming gestures I’ve encountered here. Far more friendly than all the sweets and cheek pinches P. could offer.

My goal is to communicate with Sita. Not in commands, but as one human to another. All I can do now is ask, “Baganara?” She is always, “Bagananu.”

Autos

A. and I stay with very wealthy, high class families. This has its perks - A/C, hot water, beautiful homes, etc. There are more downsides though. With status comes fear. An instance of staying out late (when we had stated in advance that this was what we would be doing) resulted in near hysterical lectures on how dangerous the city was. Any number of things could have happened to us. Many strictures followed (most of which have since been lifted, the hysteria passing) - of these, the most important was this: Don’t ride in strange autos.

Auto rickshaws, or autos, are the major means of transportation here. People take them everywhere, unless you are wealthy enough to own a car. Needless to say, A.’s and my families do not ride in autos. Autos bring you face to face with the city. Right up next to the screeching brakes of buses and the bodies dashing across the street. The sides of autos are open. The windows of cars are always rolled up.

It is impossible not to ride in strange autos. We’ve been here for one week. We know only one auto - the man who takes us to school. To move through the city, to get to know the city, to get to know the autos, we must ride in them. Ride with unknown drivers through strange streets. With windows rolled up, in cars trusted to known drivers, one need not know the city, no matter how long one lives here.

Yesterday A. and I got in a strange auto. It wasn’t in the best of shape - could hardly accelerate. The man brought his wife along too. The sketchiness of the auto brought to mind the unheeded warnings. They soon floated away, as we struck up a conversation with the man and his wife. He was from Burma, she from Vizag. She was pleased that we were studying Telugu, and offered her own instruction. It was lovely. I finally saw a little glimpse of the city.

So don’t ride with strange autos. You might end up a little closer to the city.

Smash!

The great thing about travel is that you get to see everything for the first time. It is all new. No wonder babies cry so much.

In the U.S. I have to look closely for the small things. Everything is painted in such large brush strokes. You have to look behind, between, around them to see the details. The traffic moves so quickly that it is only when it comes to a halt that you can see the woman in the car next to you singing her heart out. The mountains are so big that it is only when you look at your feet that you see the wildflowers.

In India, things are not so large. There are just more of them. Small things, all jumbled together, one on top of the other. Like kaleidoscopes smooshed together. Women in saris of every color imaginable, autos zigging and zagging among shiny new Maruti Suzuki’s and motorbikes, horns blaring, dogs skirting along the non-existent sidewalks. Shops and food stalls and parked bikes. Trash and rubble and people in various piles. Layers upon layers of little things. And within them, something beautiful. I just don’t know how to look for it.

Homesickness

I arrived in India safe - in the city of Visakhapatnam. I also arrived homesick. I’ve never been homesick before. I think it is because I left behind so much love and happiness. I have to remember that those things are still with me.

Begin

There are ways of looking at the world. I look for its intrinsic beauty. It resides in large, grand places. Mountains, temples, ballets. It also resides in small places. Laughter, berries, fleeting circumstances which bring people together. It’s the small places I find most compelling.

More to come

Much more.