Miss Conventionality

Ummmmm…… Awkward. That kind of sums up the day.

The graduating seniors at KLB are leaving soon, so some of the underclassmen throw them a small party. I had heard about it last week, but I didn’t know what to expect. When I got to work, the canteen cook had produced and was still producing a plethora of what is now one of my favorite foods in India: bhatura. It’s risen dough, which automatically makes it delicious and unique compared to most Indian breads, which are flat. Small balls of it are pinched off, rolled, flattened then fried for only about 10 seconds before they are GBD: golden, brown and delicious. They reminded me of Hungarian langos, another one of my favorites. It was really amazing watching Bubba and his friend work. The two of them were like a fine-tuned machine, turning out one delicious pastry after another.

During this whole process, there was very loud music coming from inside another building. I went to investigate and found that one of the larger auditorium-style classrooms had been turned into a party room. The seniors were all dressed in some very fancy saris, as well as some of the teachers who motioned me to sit down next to them. The next hour or so was quite unusual.

First, the seniors had organized a guessing game to Indian music. Jitender explained to me that they were playing a song, and then the underclass students had to guess which teacher was best represented by that particular song. Each teacher came up to receive a gift when their song played. To me, it was nails on a blackboard. Indian music is just not appealing to Westerners, especially when it is turned up to ear-shattering decibels and accompanied by 50 Indian girls screaming their teachers’ names. To get an idea of the experience, go to an active construction yard populated by an additional 50 people fighting with rusty swords and bring ten screaming cats. Then bang your head against a piece of metal. Finished? Ok, now you have an idea.

After the game was dancing to the same music played louder and in shorter piece. I tried. It wasn’t pretty. I won’t go into detail.

To conclude the day’s ceremonies, a beauty pageant was held. I’m going on record saying that I don’t like beauty contests in the first place because they objectify both women and the men who judge them. Go see Little Miss Sunshine if you want to get really creeped out. Then to have one here, where sex appeal is frowned upon and girls are not supposed to show their ankle lest they want to be stoned (I’m exaggerating), just tops the limits of awkward turtle. None of the girls was really into it, and every time the photographer (yes, there was a photographer) took their picture, they stopped smiling. I don’t know why.

Don’t get me wrong, all of the girls were very beautiful and glamorous, and it was very tasteful, it’s just that this society and beauty pageants don’t seem to get along. I’m very confused about how they feel about body image here. On the one hand, all the women are very conservative in their dress and I haven’t seen cleavage since I got here. Men and women are not even allowed to touch each other in public. On the other hand, Bollywood actresses flaunt their perfect bodies in minimal clothing in advertisements and newspapers and they are idolized by the masses. Salmaan Kaan and Katrina Kaif are loved for their beauty and body, but you’ll never see anybody kiss in an Indian film. Now I find out that beauty contests are a much-beloved event in society. WTF, mate?

I still have a long way to go before I can figure out how this culture works. Until then, I’ll be staying away from dance clubs and pageants.

Clean Sweep

Early last semester, I was studying cultural and economic characteristics in various historic and modern modes of production. It’s a mouthful, but basically it means I was studying how people lived and worked through history. I was fascinated to discover that pre-modern and historic hunter-gatherer societies spent only about 20-30 hours per week doing the work that was necessary to meet their basic needs of food, shelter and the like. The rest of the time during the day was for leisure. This held true for both men and women, surprisingly enough. Groups that became more “civilized,” industrialized and more advanced found less and less time for themselves and had to work more to meet their needs.

We hear about this all the time. The Dalai Lama said that this is the age of more convenience and less time. If you move to New York, you’ll have to work nonstop to pay rent and still have a bit left over to go to the movies on weekends, where you’ll likely catch up on sleep. Then whenever something outside of your daily routine comes up to throw it off, you find it such a hassle to make the time to get things done. My sister and her husband wanted to redo their kitchen, and they’re both teachers, so they had to start it and get most of the work done during the Christmas holiday. I had to go renew my license last semester and needed to squeeze it in between two classes, and even then I was cutting it close. Even when we’re not working, we have to spend an hour at the gym, take the kids to and from school, shop for groceries, spend a half hour commuting, and somewhere in there find time to throw something in the microwave for dinner.

How did people get anything done hundreds of years ago, you might ask. No microwave, no car, no running water, making three meals a day from scratch… Well, I can tell you that it can be done, and you will find yourself with so much more free time once you purge your life of the unnecessary things you think you need. I work 6 days a week for 6-8 hours per day. I have to walk a half hour each way. I post something on this blog at least 5 days a week. I have to do all my laundry by hand every week. I help cook at least two meals a day from raw ingredients and usually clean afterwards (if the water is working). I even find time to work out about an hour every day (not including the uphill trek home) There’s no dishwasher, no microwave, no hot water, and sometimes no water or electricity at all. Yet I find myself with more free time than I have ever had in my life. Why? Well, there’s no TV, no movies, no internet at the mud hut(no Facebook?!? Gasp!), no car that needs to be fixed or fueled, no unnecessary extracurricular activities, no student government meetings, no dishwasher, no microwave, no hot water, and sometimes no water or electricity at all. Pay attention to Tyler Durden, people; the things you own end up owning you.

I won’t lie, I do get help. This job isn’t paid, and I took care of the next several months’ expenses before I came, so I don’t have to worry about bills. Somebody comes in every day to help me cook (Shammi used to do all the cooking, but now I insist on at least participating so I can learn). I also don’t have to raise kids, of which I am very thankful right now (children = world’s best birth control). Still, I can now very much conceive of a pre-historic guy spending a few hours each week hunting saber-tooth tigers and then just chilling the rest of the time.

Do I get bored? Well, sorta, but not really. Yesterday, Sunday, I had no plans whatsoever, so after breakfast, I thought I’d clean the whole house. I was done in 90 minutes. I’m talking about an entire two-level house with two bathrooms and a kitchen that’s made out of mud. There’s just not so much to do here to keep things clean. You don’t have to spend so much time making the surfaces spotless when the whole house is made out of dirt anyway. So I finished The Life of Pi, which was a great book, exercised, did laundry, made pancakes for lunch, helped make dinner, wrote, made a call or two… all of which I would consider leisure, because none of those things had to get done, and it’s Sunday anyway. They get done when they get done, and that’s that.

I don’t miss TV or movies at all. I’m discovering that the internet is not nearly as important as I thought it was. I really enjoy the walk to and from work, because the view each way is amazing. I don’t love doing laundry, but I don’t hate it either. I love that every one of my meals is cooked fresh from scratch. I love working out on my balcony with the Himalayas in view. And did I mention that I get about 9 hours of sleep every night?

So if you’re feeling stressed, tired or just fed up with the rat race, try selling your TV. Unplug from the internet for a week. Walk to work, if you can. Stop driving a half hour to the gym’s treadmill when you can just run around your neighborhood. Take stock of the things and stuff in your life and see if you can live without some of it. Trust me, it can be done. And if all else fails, you can always join me in India.

Desperately Seeking Shikha

I mentioned before that it is common to read some English-language newspapers in the morning with Principal Ramdev. Picking up this morning’s copy of the Tribune, I noticed that it felt a little thicker than normal. Normal stories were found within: China hates the Dalai Lama, Australians hate Indians, the country loves cricket… business as usual. Then I turned the page to a section not normally found in the paper, the classifieds. Yet these were not normal classifieds. These were ads for marriages.

I wasn’t completely ignorant about Indian marriage practices before coming here, and I knew that many marriages were arrange. Most even turned out wonderfully. I’m not against arranged marriages at all. I was just so surprised to find that hundreds of men or their families posted in the news that they were looking for a bride. The front and back of three newspaper-sized pages was entirely devoted to men seeking women for marriage. It was something for which I was completely unprepared, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

The personals were arranged by caste, with some sections for special cases, like divorcees, foreign nationals, widowers and amputees. All of them listed the height and profession of the prospective groom. The funniest part was how oddly specific some of the ads became while at the same time being vague and mysterious. Here are some of the more amusing ones, taken verbatim from the paper. Only the contact information has been omitted (if any girls reading this really want it, however, I’d be happy to oblige). I couldn’t make these up if I wanted to:

MBA, 07-11-75, 9:55 P.M., Delhi MNC, 8 LPA, businessman family. Girl height should be 5’3”, Himachali girl, Delhi living only.
(Why 5’3”? What’s wrong with 5’4” and 5’2” that you find so utterly repulsive?)

Garg smart, handsome BE (Comp Sc.), employed MNC Malaysia. Handsome package. Business family. Seeks equally qualified bride.
(Good lucking finding a bride that’s equally qualified with another handsome package.)

Match for smart Garg boy 06.09.1981, 5’10”, B.Tech, working as Inspector, Central Excise and Custom, girl should be beautiful and permanent government employee.
(Sorry, our daughter is only gorgeous and a permanent government employee.)

Well-to-do parents seek exceptionally beautiful, smart, 5’5” plus, educated, homely match for USA citizen, Graduate, turbaned, teetotaler, non-trimmer, never married, handsome, well-settled, running own business. Girl’s merits main consideration.
(Am I the only one creeped out by this guy’s mom knowing that he doesn’t trim?)

Compatible Bride for unmarried Khari Advocate Chandigarh based, sound status, modern faculties.
(What kind of “faculties” are we talking about here?)

And the list goes on. There are hundreds, most with amusing little tidbits and cultural oddities which are prime material for my cross-cultural experience. I know that some of the things that weird me out by these ads are completely normal here. For example, “handsome package” refers to a good salary; government jobs here are highly desirable and very well-paying; and the non-trimmer is a Sikh, whose religion stipulates that one should never cut any hair off their body. Ignorance is the downfall of any world traveler.

Yet every once in awhile, it’s fun to step back into your comfort zone and have a short laugh about cultural differences. If you can’t laugh, then you’re taking things way too seriously.

Shivratri and Columbus Day

Ah, to be a student in India. To be in a place where the main religion, Hindu, has so many gods and celebrations. And to be in a country with so many religions. You get so many days off of school! No class on Christmas, breaks for Ramadan, and an excuse to play hooky 12 times out of the year for Hindu holidays? Indian students have it made.

Today is Shivratri, or “Shiva’s Night,” which celebrates the greatness of Lord Shiva the Destroyer. Government buildings and schools are closed, but shops are still open. So, it’s kinda like Columbus Day in that everything is closed and canceled, but not much is done to celebrate. Actually, I’ve been told that in temples to Shiva, many people will drink a special concoction made from milk, juice, spices and marijuana. Nothing like a minor religious holiday for an excuse to get crunk.

I digress. India is a land of many religious, and I’m starting to learn that they are a very tolerant people. There are 12 holidays in Hinduism where schools and buildings are canceled, and 3 or 4 each for Christianity and Islam. It’s amazing that so many different religions here can coexist. In this area, it’s not so apparent, since most people are Hindu, but I’m sure if my internship were in Delhi, I would be overwhelmed by the religious kaleidoscope.

Not much else is going on today. I went to KLB even though there were no classes for a shortened time to get some writing and email done. Some staff members were there, as well as some more minor construction continuing on the new building. I just thought I’d update on the interesting situation of polytheism here.

A Barrel of Monkeys Isn’t So Fun Anymore

Learning Hindi is hard. I know it always seems that way when you start a new language, but this one really is hard. So far, there don’t appear to be any new sounds that don’t exist in English. That was a problem when I learned Hungarian, because Hungarians do use an extra consonant that doesn’t appear at all in English, making its pronunciation very difficult for a non-native speaker. It was like trying to play a guitar that has a missing string. Also, every Hindi verb conjugates the same way for each tense. This contrasts with Spanish, where you have -ar, -er, and -ir verbs that all conjugate differently.

The real problem is the distinction they make in between sounds. First point of confusion with me is the difference between hard and soft consonants. For example, one conjugation of the verb “to eat” is khata, pronounced with a hard /k/. The word for citrus is kata with a soft /k/. They sound exactly the same to me. Secondly, some words are pronounced nasally, which is very hard for me to get. The word hai is the third-person singular conjugation of “to be,” and hain is the first- and third-person plural conjugation, said exactly the same way except the silent /n/ at the end signifies a nasal pronunciation. Simply put, Indians talk through their nose some of the time.

Funny story today. I was talking to Professor Ramdev when a girl who was trying to enter the hostel, Rashmi, motioned me to come and look at something. I went over and there were three monkeys perched over the entrance to the hostel. Normally that is nothing to worry about, but Rashmi was carrying snacks that she bought in the market. If she walked under the monkeys, they would attacker her, not to hurt her, but to steal her food.

It might be just the little kid in me speaking out, but that’s cool. How often do you have to hide your groceries when you walk into your house so that monkeys don’t steal them? Welcome to India; watch out for klepto wildlife.

Indian Food, Inc.

In the mornings at KLB, Principal Ramdev and I like to take a look at a few Indian newspapers, and today something especially interesting caught my eye. On the front page were two stories that seemed to contradict each other. The first story was about the upcoming merger of several commercial food brands in India by a Mr. Biyani, who had previously revolutionized retail in India (at least according to the article, I don’t know much at all about his story). This merger is expected to push India’s commercial food market from about $200 billion in 2006-7 to $300 billion by 2015, making it competitive with worldwide industries like Kraft and Nestle. The second story was about a recent decision by the Indian government to suspend the introduction of a certain strain of genetically modified crops into farming. According to the minister of environment, the decision was made with the intention of waiting until independent scientific studies could confirm its safety to both the environment and human well-being.

Fascinating, if you ask me. What I saw was two huge developments in Indian agribusiness that seemed to contradict each other. On the one hand, India is starting to merge agriculture with business on a level that is really only seen in the U.S. Only in the states and in American corporations operating globally do you see this much of an oligopoly in agriculture and food production. In America, huge companies like Monsanto, Cargill and Tyson control the production of almost everything we eat, and Monsanto is even spreading their influence and control over international borders. On the other hand, food production on the scale that is being practiced in America and India hardly ever comes without scientific intervention. Since the Green Revolution in India, government and farm owners have been scrambling to get their hands on any technology or advancement that could potentially increase food production. These advancements are generally patented processes that are tightly connected to one of the aforementioned food industry giants. After all, there are over a billion people and counting in India, and while supply has barely kept ahead of demand thus far, it has only done so though the advancements brought about by industrial and scientific development.

So when I saw that the Indian government actually said no to a potentially major advancement in crop yields, while at the same time a huge development in agribusiness was brought about, I was confused. This kind of thing hasn’t happened yet in the entire world, at least on this scale. In America, genetically modified (GM) crops and Green Revolution technologies have created the largest agricultural sector in the world, but only because those advancements were monitored and controlled by big business and corporations. In Europe, agribusiness doesn’t even come close to the same scale of production as in the states, but that is probably because the European community has stayed away from much of the interaction between science in nature, preferring organic and natural crops to GM foods. Because of their aversion to biotechnology, big business simply hasn’t had a fighting chance to grow as much as it has in the U.S. Of course there is some science mixed with farming in the EU, and Nestle reigns king in Europe, but still, it doesn’t quite compare to the level of production seen in American agriculture.

One of the reasons why the Green Revolution was embraced in India 50 years ago was because feeding their rapidly expanding population was their biggest concern, and it still is. I discussed these stories with Mr. Sood, a math teacher here, and he was very upset that his government had declined to explore this new wave of biotechnology. He stated that so many people in India go hungry, and he is used to his government expressing the most pressing desires of its people very well in the past. If the people say they want something, the Indian government usually complies with their wishes. Denying GM developments, according to Mr. Sood, was a big mistake, and he believed that India would need all the help it could get if it was to keep up with the growing demand for food.

I found this relevant because it gives hope for the American food industry. The organic and free trade movements that have gotten so much popularity in recent years express the innermost wishes of the people to return to a way of eating that is more in tune with their environment. There are so many sides to the issue, and I recommend reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, or watching the recently released movie Food, Inc. if you would like to get an introduction to the issue. Don’t think, however, that simply by reading these books you will know all there is to know about the problems facing food production and how they can be solved. They’re really just one side of the issue. In short, agribusiness is, according to some people, ruining the environment, our health and our way of life. Agribusiness personalities would respond by saying that there is simply no way to provide enough food to feed the nearly 7 billion people on the planet without agricultural conglomeration, biotechnology, GM crops and merging small farms and farm owners. Both sides have merit, and until now, there seems to have been very few places in which these opposing interests can find common ground.

That is why the Indian government’s decision is so significant. Maybe it’s just a shot in the dark, and maybe they will eventually be forced to give in to the demands of its hungry people. But for now, Indians have shown the world that small-scale, organic farming can coexist at least on some level with high demand, high production and the advancement of business.

Tuesdays with Madam Utra

What do you do at work when classes are canceled, there’s no power and not much to do? Learn Hindi, of course. So far I have found it very difficult to pick up any Hindi at all, because I have never seen it written down and I am trying to do all my learning by ear. As a result, I’m learning very slowly, and it’s a bit embarrassing. The girls will try to teach me a phrase or two, and it all sounds the same to me. On the few occasions where I am able to pronounce it correctly, I promptly forget it because I don’t have it written down to practice. I started to think that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Then Madam Utra, the warden at the hostel, graciously offered to teach me a little bit of Hindi every day. I immediately pulled out my notebook so I wouldn’t forget whatever she taught. Would you like to guess the subject of my very first lesson? The verb kata, which means “to eat.” Go figure.

Today I was able to pronounce and remember all of the pronouns and the present tense forms of the verb “to be,” which also happens to be an integral part of every conjugation. I actually learned quite a lot in the short time, and I don’t remember it all, but at least I wrote it down. There’s hope for me yet.