India #3: Pre-Tour

Buongiorno!

I know that this greeting is hardly related to my current location, but I suppose I'm just stickin it to Colby's Italian Department for denying me access to Italian II my freshman spring year.

Eat that Italians (yep, that's a war declaration Sarah).

Wow, that could be easily misconstrued if you put emphasis on "eat" instead of "that"...

Moving on...

So I decided to change my internet scenery: here I am sitting in the upstairs of my host family's house using their internet (I tried to say no, but because the internet cafes are so far away and I don't have to be near the SITA center until 6:45 when I leave for our first "educational tour", I consented...). In about 5 hours (when most of you will wake up and realize that holy shit, it's saturday, and god damn it what the fuck is that white stuff still doing out there... except my family in NC... *wanh wanh*), I'm going to be leaving with the group for our first educational tour. We're going to Mysore, Bangalore, and Hampi, the first two of which are huge huge cities, and the third of which is a very beautiful landscape filled with religious ruins/sacred groves. I'm so excited to not be working (see way below for ongoing rant) for a week, and this trip is gonna be baller-- stay tuned for picturess! (yes, I did just say baller. SHoot me). As such, I'm gonna take this time to be off facebook and other internet activities until I come back-- I'm sure I'll have a lot to tell/post about!

I realized a little late that I left out some details from my first two posts, namely women and restrictions, the ups and downs of Indian eating, and the environment. If you're tired of details and want me to stop being an anthropologist, please skip the first four paragraphs. It's just so hard to ignore these aspects of the society around me, because Indian culture literally hits you in the face every time you walk around (perhaps because of cultural difference), and so a good deal of my experience deals with the onslaught of Indian culture that I face on a day to day basis...

To be a girl here is a struggle. I know that during my first few posts I was all about how the clothes on girls looked so pretty (and that I secretly wanted to wear one...) and how women's roles here were quite different, but recently I've been struck by how mysoginistic (to our standards anyway) and restrictive the Tamil culture is toward girls in general. I could make the tentative argument (hopefully this next sentence will not start an everlong digest argument that ultimately ends up going nowhere with most people involved frustrated that they even got involved, because I mean no harm by implying "some people are more privilaged than others", it's just TRUE... if anyone does that, I will personally shoot you with a nerf gun... twice) that a guy here is much more visibly privilaged than girls. I can pretty do whatever I want (save wear a sari, despite my inner lusts): I can cycle home without fear of harassment, say hi to anyone on the road who desperately wants to hear me speak english coherently (which, for those who know me, is a personal struggle of mine...), or talk to anyone (wearing a salwar kamiz would be a funny occurence, and many people, if they don't have reason enough with my red sox "ramirez" jersey, will stare uncontrollably and then strike up a conversation with a nearby Indian saying "look at that idiot"... except in tamil). While talking to the girls onthe program and overhearing many conversations, I've begun to realize how engendered this place truly is. Girls here face an inordinate amount of harassment, marginalization, and restrictions that makes them uncomfortable. The initial euphoria of wearing a beautiful cotton salwar kemiz with a duputa (a scarf-like thing) has long past, and many of the girls on my program are starting to get irritated at the amount of issues they have to deal with being a girl on a day to day basis put on them. Let me list just a few of them: 1. when an indian guy who is older than 20 approaches an Indian girl in Tamil culture, it is very very weird. However, I hear stories on a day to day basis of older guys asking penetratingly personal questions that makes them uncomfortable or staring at them. Staring here is common, but for most of the girls on our program, if they are not in a group, they are at loss for what to do when this occurs: is he actually interested in me as a foreigner or does he want to get into my salwar? 2. the expectations for girls here are equally as ridiculous. I hear stories of how host families have continually berated girls on our program about being too "manly", both in clothing or in activity. Clothingwise, the Tamil culture views clothing as "restraining a woman from her inherent uncontrollable lusts"; thus, women must always wear their hair up, cover their ankles, and wear a top with sleeves. Anything worn other than this is considered whorish... and are a lot more likely to be harrassed or groped (one girl on our program was publically harassed just beacuse she was wearing capris and a t-shirt... yeah, it's serious). It is equally weird for Tamilians to understand that girls actually like to do more "manly" things like sports. Last weekend when we played cricket, one of the girls that was playing with us told me of the scene that occurred before she left the house: essentially her host mom was under the impression that she wasn't going to go play cricket, but sit and watch and take pictures... when the girl said that she was going to play cricket, the whole family looked at her wide eyed and asked her 2-3 times if she was actually going to play cricket. When the girl eventually got to the cricket pitch, the Indian guys we were playing with asked her if she needed someone to run for her. The list goes on, and on, but I feel like you get the point. every day it is rare to never hear one of the girls on my program frustrated at their more restricted place... and they often make comments at the four guys on the program about how we are so lucky. And to be honest, we are. This may seem to be just another male realizing his higher place in the patriarchal world we live in (I can't seem to word it right, and they way I have it down right now just sounds weird... by I hope you know what I mean)-- the girl as the victim and the male as less than affected... yet the intense visibility of these gender specific restrictions generally has made me think about how privilaged I am as a male on this program...

As I walk down the Madurai streets (and I remember this to be true of Benaras as well), it is weird if I do not see a single piece of trash. If any of you have looked at the pictures I posted on Picasa, there are a couple of pictures of just trash. They aren't of garbage in near or around garbage cans. They're of garbage in river basins, beside houses, lining the roads during cycle rides, and more. And when I say trash, I mean trash- like piles and piles and bags and loads of tiny specks as I ride past on my cycle. I also took one picture of a fire by the side of the road. This wasn't a random fire that college students would jump over after UNC beat Duke in an epic game going into four overtimes for the NCAA championship- it was a fire that was burning excess trash by the side of the road. Trash is omnipresent here, and it is not strange to see a person break open a banana, toss it, and watch as a cow slurps it up and calls it a meal. This doesn't work too well with plastic or material trash in general, which is the majority of the trash that I see. As such, most of the Indian ground is infused with plastics or someone's lunch container from a nearby restaurant. It's weird to see trash so close to you at all times of the day. (I know that around COlby campus I pick up trash whenever I see some and place it in a trash bin... although how elitist is it to do such a thing, when the trash will only end up in someone else's backyard while I enjoy the bermuda grass and greenery (or whitery, depending on the season) of Colby campus. So it goes.) While the Indian government has a trash collecting system, it is much like the jaywalking law: it will probably not be enforced or followed... On top of this, the trash on the side of the road often provides jobs for poorer people (people of the lowest caste), so is it really that bad? THere are a lot of aspects to this "public trash" of public property, and so many questions attached to it as well... What is interesting about this is that you rarely find trash in private places or places covered by a roof... whereas most of the trash from the inside gets deposited right outside the house. I'm actually starting to get used to it. I threw my first piece of trash onto the ground the otherday: a small plastic bag filled with excess banana leafs and newspaper that used to be my lunch. It was hard to do the throwing motion with a plastic bag in hand, knowing I would just be submitting to the Indian man. I admit-- I almost kept it in my pocket and waited till I got back to the SITA center, but then I realized that it would end up somewhere anyhow, so why would such a small piece of trash make a load of difference if it were in front of my house or in some poor person's backyard? (Cue Emma and every other environmental friendly person at Colby's gaping mouth... oh and Dan Band and Eric Maltbie's)

I don't believe I elaborated enough on eating. For one, you eat with your hands (your right hand actually, because your left hand is your ass wiping hand. in general, the right hand is more "auspicious", and if you offer a left hand to greet someone, they might spit in your face... if you're really feeling dirty, you can step on their feet with your left foot and then greet them with your left hand... I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm thinking that you might end up with cow dung as a moustache), except for soup and things like this. Indians actually say that it is MORE sanitary to eat with your hands (after washing them of course), and that it feels much more natural to eat from the hand than from a pronged metal device, and they have a point. Who knows what really is on a spoon before you pick it up in Foss dining hall... and feeling the food before shoving it in your mouth really makes you appreciate it a whole lot more in general.

I think I'm done with the details. NOw on to what I've been up to lately:

Despite the fact that I've only been in Madurai for 19 days, I have become really close with my host family, so close that the other day I said "parawa-yilla" (aka: enh, it's ok) to my amma asking me whether the food was good or not (in Tamil society, if you say that, you generally get a backhand to the face because it is equal to saying "your cooking isn't actually all that great"- and I did, in fact, receive a firm backhand to the back when I said this-- although she knew I was joking; oddly related, my ammaa can throw a frisbee backhand very very far). Me and my ammaa are quite a sarcastic pair, and we definitely have a playful sort of mother-son thing going on (cue maternal mother jealousy). I'm getting on really great with my host siblings. My sister and brother are both warming up to me, and we regularly play small games such as hopscotch or scrabble. I've also taught both of them how to throw a frisbee, and we regularly play in the lot in front of my house after I get home from SITA each day (I have not, however, taught them the denial defence fucking in tents cheer yet, so I can't say that they are real frisbee players yet... that is next on my agenda). Me and my appaa are continuing our more "intellectual" conversations, and I ask him a lot about the current state of politics in Tamil Nadu (the state of India we are in) or what he thinks about a news instance. We both watched the Obama inauguration together, and smiled throughout (we were both quite irritated about the announcers saying this was a huge inauguration just cause it was the FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN president... and what about him changing politics? I dunno, it was a very racist moment). I love my situation at home right now, and I always am very willing for my privacy to be disturbed by any of them :-).

The other day we went to a religious cave on the outskirts of Madurai. It had been constructed in the 8th century AD by South Indian Hindus in the area (Jain Hill was a very holy place for Jainists). When we originally arrived to the space, I almost thought we were visiting a petting zoo. Surrounding the cave were hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of free-range monkeys. I've never seen something so incredible in my life. For the first 30 minutes of our visit, we were playing with monkeys (in a very distant manner) and watching monkeys play and make use of the human trash in the surrounding area. I have a picture of one of the girls giving a monkey water from her water bottle. Another girl took a video of a monkey chewing gum, and in the middle of him chewing, he grasped the gum and stretched it outside of our mouth, like a 8 year old kid who had just realized that gum was flexible. I had never been so close to a wild animal in my life (well, besides the cows that accompany me to lunch occasionally), and seeing how human these monkeys were was simply amazing. I felt like a chief photographer for National Geographic studying the humanization of animals. It is indescribable in words-- Hopefully I'll get these pictures up soon.

Some other things I have done:

I went downtown to get a USB cord alone and got HOPELESSLY lost. No, I didn't lose my ability to read maps, no I didn't lose my ability to follow directions, Madurai's just freaking confusing (picture downtown boston on steroids. Fucking scary) and the traffic pattern on top of trying to find your way is always really scary. I'm definitely making a facebook album of this experience, so stay tuned-- the pictures will tell what I won't right now!

Last night my ammaa taught me how to drive a motorbike (no mother, I didn't go into the road-- SITA prohibits me from doing so anyway), and I spent close to 30 minutes transporting my thampi (little brother) around the compound. It was really fun, but I can totally understand why I'm being barred from getting a bike: I would get hurt. It's bad enough that I played chicken with an autorickshaw the other day (actually it was more like: I was driving on the LEFT side of the road like any other driver, and this auto rickshaw was coming directly at me from the opposite direction. We then charged at each other until the auto rikshaw got scared and swerved out of the way. I'm thinking about trying it with a bus...), and when you're on a motorbike, you can just lose control in all the divets and swerves you have to do as a small vehicle in a transportation hierarchy based on LARGENESS.

If some of you saw my facebook status the other day, you'll know that i can now officially make dosai- a delicious South Indian pancake. Next to come is sambar, chippati, and hopefully vadai. Yes, I am planning on cooking for you (and yes I will be cooking NON SPICY things as well, despite the fact that everything here can burn your mouth of in t-minus .01 seconds). Yay for cooking!

I suppose that is all, I'm a little perturbed at the amount of work that my classes are giving me-- I mean, I understand I'm in college right now technically, but why give me 80 pages a night to read? Really SITA? Really? Anyway, I"m past it and ready to hit the trains (we're taking an overnight train to Mysore-- so exciting! yes mom, I will wear my money belt and lock all my belongings...) for our tour. I'm also going to be able to buy a beer for the first time (save Canada) as a minor-- it is ok to drink in Bangalore/Mysore-- actually people do it quite regularly. So much for being dry while I'm here.

If you haven't already, check out my photos! I'm not done with them by any means (I have a whole other memory card to add onto it), but hopefully they wil be up after tour!

Love and miss you all, and keep being beautiful.

Poo yete Vaaren.

Hasan