Merry Christmas from Kadod

Dear dedicated reader,

I don't usually put store by the adage that a photo is worth a thousand words, but after trying to describe the Christmas celebrations of the English Medium School here in Kadod to which I was invited yesterday, I find that words really cannot communicate the atmosphere as well as the following:






Surrounded by pint size Santa-clad garden gnomes was honestly almost, but not quite, as good as being at home. I am missing all of you dedicated readers very much.

Merry Christmas!

Best,
Cat

The Joy of Giving, Part II

Dear dedicated reader,

I can now understand why Ganesha, the “remover of obstacles” enjoys such popularity as a recipient of worship.

After the principal assured me that Sandipbhai would take my packages to Bardoli to send them by courier, I alerted Melissa who also had Christmas gifts to send so she could jump on the efficiency train and mail her package at the same time in the same trip.

Sandipbhai recovered from his mysterious illness within two days and on very morning that he showed up at school to teach his waiting class of third standard students, Vikrambhai came to the house and told me to take the packages to the principal’s office around 3 o’clock so that he wouldn’t forget to call Sandipbhai to take the packages. I obligingly did so and the minute they left my hands and were sitting on the floor of the principal’s cluttered office, I felt as though a burden had been lifted from my aching shoulders.

Note to the uninitiated: never celebrate your success too early here in India or your hubris will be punished by the vengeful, bureaucratic gods. We were dispensing books on our porch to awaiting 9th standard students after our post-school Spoken English class when the principal’s wife came to tell us that we had a call. We shut down the library and went to the principal’s house, where the principal’s son informed us that he was on the phone with Sandipbhai, who was currently at the courier service with our packages.

“He says,” Jaydeepbhai explained, “that to send all the packages to the same address will be this much money,” he wrote the figure down on a piece of paper for us to be clear, “and if you send to two different addresses, it will be THIS much.” Underneath the first figure, he wrote another figure that was almost twice as much and way more than we had been quoted previously.

“Just to send the packages to different addresses? Why does that make any difference whatsoever?” I muttered, then checked myself. Requests for logic hold no weight around here. Aloud, I said, “So, what should we do? Will it be less to send it by post?”

The principal’s family discussed this query in Gujarati for a few moments before confirming that yes, it would be best to send it by post from Kadod.

I sighed and resigned myself to the possibility that I might never send these Christmas gifts.

The next day, the packages were returned to me from Sandipbhai and at the beginning of the lunch break, the principal approached me to tell me that Pradipbhai, one of the other peons who had thus far not been involved in this arduous and lengthy process, would accompany me to the post office to send the packages myself.

He showed up outside the door of the house on a motorcycle that he had borrowed from one of the other male teachers. He placed one of the packages in front of him on the bike, then indicated that I should sit on the back. I shook my head in a vigorous ‘no’. Despite having achieved unprecedented comfort levels in performing such complicated actions as walking up and down stairs, negotiating sitting on chairs, standing on tables and other such feats in a sari, my list of accomplishments did not include riding side saddle on the back of a motorcycle while carrying three large packages and today was not going to be my day to start.

He gave me an exasperated look and indicated the back of the bike again.

“We can’t just walk?” I pleaded. The post office was only a seven minute walk. He revved the bike’s motor in response and looked at me impatiently.

With numerous students having been attracted by the commotion in the schoolyard and the entire male teaching staff looking on from the upstairs balcony, I carefully hiked up the bottom of my sari and settled myself on the back of the bike, I tried to rest the packages in my lap, but I couldn’t manage this and still cling desperately to the back of the bike, so I settled for them falling over the side of the bike an unbalanced way. Pradipbhai revved the bike and started uneasily off.

It only took going a few feet to realize that this unequivocally wasn’t going to work. The bike was completely off-balance and after a jerky start, nearly toppled over to the great amusement of all the onlookers. I tried to laugh but was inwardly mortified as my students and co-workers saw me in this undignified position.

“You can’t ride side saddle?” Pradipbhai asked me in Hindi accusingly as he dismounted the bike in disbelief.

“I’m American,” I said, and shrugged. “And anyway, I warned you…” We started off towards the post office by foot in a frosty silence, Pradipbhai feeling cheated of his ride on the bike.

The Kadod Post Office itself looks as if it has been lifted from a Dickensian novel: Painted a dusty, dung color, the stacks of yellowing papers piled high around the obscured, unused computer underneath the face of clock eternally frozen at 7:20, the wrinkled clerks look over their glasses in a pinched way at long, faded tables written by some post-master from better days, a cup of fresh steaming chai sitting by their side which they sip in a distracted manner. As Pradipbhai and I entered, it took several minutes standing at the counter before the man sitting there looked up and acknowledged that, in fact, someone actually wanted to send something somewhere.

After his cursory acknowledgement, Pradipbhai launched into a long explanation of my packages and where they were going and then passed them over the top of the counter for, apparently, inspection by the entirety of the postal staff. Each person took the packages in their long fingers and turned them over carefully, perusing each side of the package with care.

After a few minutes of this perusal, some dusty papers were removed from an old rusted scale onto which the parcels were placed one at a time. I watched as the post-master shook his head in disbelief at each one. What did it mean?

He turned back to Pradipbhai after ten minutes or so and pronounced that not all of the packages could be sent. Only two could be sent and the other two would have to go to Bardoli.

I listened in disbelief. “Why?” I said carefully, trying to control the modulation of my voice.

“They are big and there isn’t enough postage to send all four of the packages,” Pradipbhai explained to me as if this were obvious.

“The POST OFFICE doesn’t have enough postage?” I said incredulously.

“Exactly, they can’t send them all at the same time. But, if you go to Bardoli, you can send two of them from there.”

I explained with as much patience as I could muster that as I worked at the school, didn’t it seem a little impossible that I would be able to take them half an hour away to the Bardoli post office when the hours of said post-office coincided with those of the school, especially when I had no car? Pradipbhai admitted that yes, this could potentially be a problem and relayed it as such to the post-master.

The post-master looked at me dubiously. “I suppose,” he explained in a Gujarati that was then translated to Hindi for my benefit by Pradipbhai, “that if you come back on Saturday that you can send them at that time. We’ll have enough postage by then. In the meantime, you may send two packages.”

The post-master then proceeded to order a cup of chai, sit behind the counter and do nothing for half an hour under the guise of selecting which of my packages would be prepared for their US departure. I sat on a ripped, dirty couch for reserved, I supposed, for the ranks of over-ambitious post office visitors such as myself. After half an hour’s time of doing nothing, the post master handed me four forms which I was to fill out in triplicate for each package.

I have to admit that I have cultivated a bad habit since coming to live here: because I know that most people in town barely speak English at all and almost no one can understand when I speak with an American accent, I have a tendency to mutter when I get frustrated. I spent the next two minutes doing exactly this while filling out these forms under the watchful eyes. “I’m so glad,” I said, more to myself than anyone, “that you gave me these forms now instead of half an hour ago when I was sitting doing nothing on that couch. It is so much more enjoyable to fill them out while you and everyone else stand around and watch me. This, in fact, is the high point of my day!” Pradipbhai and the post-master merely looked on as if I’d said nothing.

By the time I left, over an hour had passed in which time no other customers had come into the post-office and I was still carrying two of the four packages back to the house in defeat with the assurance that, perhaps, if I was lucky, the postage to send the remaining ones would arrive on Saturday.

I looked forward to my return visit with all the joy that I usually reserve for visits to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Best,
Cat

The Joy of Giving

Dear dedicated reader,

Of course, even the simplest things become huge undertakings when done in Kadod.

“Our festival” Christmas, as we’ve taken to calling it here, is approaching and in preparation for said festival, we have been decorating away in attempt to make our house in Kadod feel slightly less tropical and preparing packages of Indian gifts to send to our families in our absence.

Of course, the true joy of giving these packages would not be complete without a few truly Indian obstacles to ensuring their successful transfer to their recipients.

My journey to send these packages began with determination. Having located two appropriately sized boxes in the bazaar, I began the process of bubble-wrapping, newspapering and labeling everything in the box so that my grandparents on the other side would be able to distribute my gifts appropriately. Having secured everything inside and taped the box shut, I felt confident that these packages were ready to brave Indian overseas mail processing and possibly beyond.

The logical next step in my American mind was to figure out from where to send them. Could they go by regular post? I caught Vikrambhai, one of the schools’ peons, in the hallway and showed him my package with the same large smile that a child has when showing their mother a picture their drawing. “Where can I take this to send it?” I asked him in Hindi.

He eyed the package dubiously. “You can’t send it like that,” he said definitely.

“What?” I was confused. “What do you mean?” It had an address. It was in a box. What more could it need?

“You have to get some cloth,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“But, why?” I asked him. He merely repeated what he’d said, believing that I hadn’t understood him the first time. I shook my head. I didn’t understand.

He gave an exasperated sigh and that is how I found myself sitting in the principal’s office.

“You can’t send the packages like that,” the principal told me authoritatively. “You need some cloth.”

“But, what is the cloth for?”

“To cover the packages,” the principal said, eyeing me curiously. “Of course.”

“Ah,” I said, pretending to understand. “You must cover the package in cloth?”

“Yes, otherwise they won’t send it,” he said matter of factly. “You can get some in the bazaar.”

“Will paper do?” I asked, thinking I had no idea how I would cover the parcel in cloth and remembering that thick post paper people often use in the US.

“It won’t keep out the rain,” the principal warned. I said I understood but would it do? He nodded and I was off to the bazaar again. I brought the box with me to the stationary shop to show them exactly what I was up against.

They looked at me with the same confused face I had recently given to Vikrambhai. “I want to send this to the US,” I repeated in Hindi. “I need some paper or cloth or something?”

The shop assistant looked at me for a moment, and then went to the back, returning with brightly colored wrapping papers. I eyed them with irritation. “No, you have like plain paper? Or something?”

“You don’t want this?” He asked. I gave an emphatic no and he returned to the back. After rummaging around noisily he returned with some electric blue, but plain, thick paper. “That will do,” I said with a resigned sigh. I wrapped it up in the shop, rewrote the address, and took it back to triumphantly present to Vikrambhai.

On seeing the package, Vikrambhai simply laughed and shook his head. “It won’t do,” he said plainly. “You need cloth.”

Sigh. “Where do I go?”

He started off towards the gate and I followed him out into the bazaar. We walked past the stationary shop, past the General Store, and down an alley towards where Melissa and I go to the beauty parlor. To my surprise, we stopped outside the beauty parlor, whose downstairs doubles as a tailor’s workshop. Pravinaben, the woman who we go to have our eyebrows plucked, was sitting on the step.

“What’s going on?” She asked amiably, eyeing the packages in our hands. Vikrambhai explained that I needed cloth to cover the packaging. She told me to leave her some money and come back in a few hours. Thank god for Indian multi-businesses.

Around 5 pm, I picked up the packages which had now been sewn into nice looking pillow covers on which I was to write the address. The next morning, I waylaid Vikrambhai yet again and presented him with my beautiful cloth covered packages. “They’re ready now, right?” I asked.

He nodded, laughing at how happy I was. After loading the packages into some oversized plastic bags for easy carrying and giving him some money for the postage, I felt a burden lift from my heart knowing that they had been successfully sent.

However, if I’ve learned anything here, it’s don’t count your chickens before they are sent to the US, or so the saying goes. An hour or so later, there was a knock on the door.

“Sister?” I heard Vikrambhai’s voice call out from our porch.

“Coming,” I replied. When I reached the door, I was ready to put out my hand for the change from the postage. Instead, my two packages were loaded into my surprised arms.

“What happened?” I asked frantically.

“One of the packages is too big and heavy,” Vikrambhai said knowingly. “You have to make it in to two.”

“What?” The postal service was refusing to send my package because it was too big? It barely weighed five pounds!

With a sigh, I was off to the bazaar yet again to find two smaller boxes in which I could split the larger of the two packages, since, having appraised all of the boxes in my house, Vikrambhai had pronounced all of them unsuitable. Perhaps seeing the utter defeat written across my face, the stationary shop did not charge me for the new boxes and the 16 year old shop assistant even gave me a sort of “buck up” encouraging smile as I left.

Having repackaged them, I lamented that I would have to go yet again to have them sewn. “Not so,” Vikram contended, “they’ll send these small ones without cloth.” The logic of why exactly that would be escaped me but I trusted his judgement. More money in hand, he was off to the post to send the packages.

To my dismay, not even half an hour had gone by before I heard another plaintive knock on the door.

“Sister?” I heard the concerned call. I dragged my feet to the door. The two uncovered packages were in his hand. “They need to be sewn.” With a longer, more defeated sigh, I threw up my hands in the air and we trudged out into the bazaar once more to have the packages sewn by Pravinaben.

The next day, I awoke with a new feeling of success. “Today the packages will go,” I thought confidently. I collected them from Pravinaben’s early in the morning and as soon as I saw Vikrambhai, I handed them off. We exchanged assured smiles. Today would be the day.

Knock, knock. I skipped the door in anticipation of good news. “Sister,” Vikram started hesitantly.

“Oh no,” I shook my head. “What happened?”

“You see,” he began, “to send them from the post will be this certain amount of money, which is very expensive. If you send them by courier service from Bardoli, then it will be cheaper. Do you want to send them from here by post or by courier?”

The difference in cost was astounding and the post wouldn’t even guarantee their arrival. Which is how I found myself sitting once again the principal’s office, comparing my options. “So, if I want to send them more cheaply with a fully assured guarantee, I should send them from Bardoli?” I repeated, just to make sure I had it right.

“Yes, but they can be sent as you wish,” the principal replied with a smile.

“So, I have to go to Bardoli,” I said slowly. Bardoli is a half hour’s bus ride away, and I would have to wait till the weekend to go.

“No,” the principal said, “we can give the packages to one of the teachers who live in Bardoli and he can take them to the courier service for you. I will tell him as the principal and he will do it.”

Normally, I’d be embarrassed to take advantage of his authority as principal for such a personal errand, but the thought of waiting another week to send the packages was too appalling. “That would be great,” I cried enthusiastically. Thanking him profusely as I exited his office, I found myself following Vikram to the classroom where this teacher teaches the primary school. I could feel my excitement building as we walked across the schoolyard. Finally, the packages would go!

The teacher in the 3rd standard class, however, simply looked confused. “Oh, Sandipbhai is not here today,” she informed us. “He is ill – but perhaps he will come tomorrow or the next day?”

“Eh, Bhagwan,” was all I could say.

Best,
Cat

Don't Cry Over Spilled Yogurt

Dear dedicated reader,

The principal gave the familiar motion with his hand from his porch the other night as I came back from the bazaar that indicated that he wanted to talk with me. There was a man standing on his porch who looked similarly familiar but whom I could not place.

“You have been to that Hanuman temple?” The principal asked me slowly. “The one where there is a holy man living?”

“Ah yes,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. We’d never told him about our visit to Swami-ji. “Some friends of ours in town took us to see him.”

He nodded, satisfied with my answer. “I also go to see him regularly,” he said, a smile breaking over his face and filling me with relief. Since the conversation started, I’d had a baseless suspicion that we were about to be reprimanded for another breach in school rules that I was unaware of. This was apparently not to be the case.

“Yes, he is very wise. And he knows some 17 or 18 languages,” the principal went on. “He has even toured in America, to help the peoples.” I nodded, encouragingly. “He is interested in helping all the peoples of the world,” the principal finished thoughtfully.

I said that yes, he had had been very helpful to Melissa and I when we visited and lent us his book free of charge. But where was this conversation going, I couldn’t help but wonder…

The man on the porch piped in now in Gujarati which I couldn’t follow. He was talking excitedly and suddenly I remembered that we had met him the same night that we went to visit Swami-ji. He lived at the temple and took care of the shrines there. He was a youngish man with an honest, grinning face and he now turned and beamed his smile in my direction.

“He wants me to tell you that Swami-ji has asked for you and Melissa to come to the temple tomorrow night. There will be some teachings and –“ the principal hesitated, searching for the right word, “and – a feast?” I nodded, indicating that I understood. “It will be simple food, but so so many people will come – I think, nine thousand people will come…”

“Nine thousand?” I said disbelievingly. “Really?”

“Yes, or one to two thousand,” the principal said without missing a beat. The temple to which he was referring was rather small and I could hardly imagine it accommodating such a huge number, be it nine hundred or nine thousand.

“So I should tell him that you will go?” The principal looked to me for confirmation.

I looked at the eager face of the man waiting for an answer and at the friendly smile of the principal’s and replied that yes, of course, we would go. We had been intending to visit Swami-ji again to return his book and this would be the perfect opportunity.

However, the next night, after a day of teaching and lesson planning, I was hardly in the mood to do anything except collapse on the beds in our living room and stare blankly at the wall. I hoped desperately that the principal would forget about our promise to go. The Hanuman temple was all the way across Kadod, and now that it was dark I was even less excited to make the trek.

As 7 o’clock rolled around and night had descended on Kadod, I felt sure that the principal had forgotten all about our conversation the other night. We receive about twenty requests in a week from various sources to visit this house or that family or come to watch this ceremony. Maybe one is actually followed up on.

As it happened, this was to be our one. At 7:05, we heard the loud rap on the door that I’ve come to associate with the principal’s family (that is, when they don’t walk directly into the house without knocking). We opened the door to reveal the principal’s expectant face.

“I have just come from that temple,” he began, “and Swami-ji is expecting you for dinner.”

In this way, I found myself grumbling as I walked along beside a more cheerful Melissa holding a large flashlight which we borrowed from the watchman and making our way through the dark back alleys of Kadod to the Hanuman temple. I was in a foul temper when we reached the outer walls of the temple, black thoughts in my mind as I removed my shoes and my stubborn irritation persisted while we made our way into the inner temple complex.

All of this melted away, however, on seeing a surprisingly familiar face: the father of Jayeshbhai the tailor (who had originally taken us to visit Swami-ji and introduced as “those who seek knowledge”) was standing by Swami-ji, along with the principal of the primary school, the physics teacher and a number of other friendly Kadodians. It seems the Hanuman temple was the place to be on this fine full moon night.

On seeing us, we were welcomed by all five men with smiles and “Kem Chos”. They led us to a space on the floor where a number of other people were eating. In front of us they placed a large platter made of dried leaves and onto this was plopped a large unappetizing blob of kitcheri and next to it was dribbled an Indian sweet of small balls of sugar called “booni” along with long dried sticks called “gattiya” (forgive my spelling). A tall steel cup was placed down as well and a whitish liquid that I could only assume was a yogurt based drink was slopped in, spilling down the sides as the teenage boys in charge of the food distribution hurriedly moved on to the next empty container.

I eyed the food. The men had gathered around us and looked down intently as I slowly put out my fingers and pushed them into the sticky kitcheri. I gathered up a delicate handful and brought it to my mouth. Despite its rather unwholesome look, it tasted delicious. Slowly, I helped myself to more.

The primary school principal sat down next to us and was immediately served as well. Others who I didn’t know also sat on the cloth put on the floor and ate with vigor. The primary school principal pointed to the large cup of whitish liquid, instructing me to pour it onto my food to imitate the saucy mess that he was swishing about with his fingers on his plate. I took up the metal cylinder in my hand, ready like a good cultural explorer to follow his example. I made, however, one fatal mistake: I leaned my nose down towards the glass and took a sniff.

My nostrils were filled with a sour milk smell that overpowered me and I quickly put the tumbler back on the granite floor of the temple, trying to get as much distance between me and it as possible without attracting attention. Whatever it was, I wanted no part of it. Surreptitiously I gave a sideways glance to see if my repulsion was apparent to others, but the primary school principal was busy shoveling another handful of kitcheri into his mouth. I slowly continued to eat the kitcheri and sweets plain, but as usual the boys had given me way more than I could ever possibly consume in one sitting and as I got full, I made as if to get up.

The scolding began as quickly as I began to move. “NO!” said the smiling man from the night before who lived in the temple. “You cannot get up,” he told me firmly in Hindi, “until your entire plate is finished. This is prasad, an offering to the Gods… you cannot waste it.” I had been unaware that this meal was prasad or I certainly would not have tried to get up, and so I nodded understandingly and with an apologetic look tried to make my fingers move towards the dish.

I had almost succeeded in making my uncooperative fingers move towards my plate when I smelled Swami-ji towering over me, his shadow ominously cast over my plate. As I looked up, I saw him backlit by the moon, his top-knot piled on top of his head and his white beard dangling down, rustled gently by the night breeze. I shivered involuntarily.

“You are enjoying?” He asked with a well-intentioned smile.

“Oh yes,” I exclaimed, perhaps a little over-enthusiastically. I forced my hand towards the kitcheri. “It’s very delicious.” While I mastered my fingered and made myself eat a few more bites, Swami-ji lectured to Melissa and I on the importance of the day – a lecture I sadly missed in my concentration on pleasing the assembled crowd with my appetite.

“But,” he said chidingly, “you have not taken any of your drink. It’s very good for your health!” He said emphatically.

“Ah, yes, well –“ I began. “You see, I’m allergic.”

The surprised look on their faces was nothing compared to my inner surprise. Where had that lie come from?

“Uh, yes,” I continued. “I can’t eat any dairy like this. It’s very bad for my health. I will become very sick.”

Swami-ji nodded slowly, as if deciding whether to believe me or not.

Melissa chimed in. “Yes, she has a very serious allergy,” she repeated sincerely. I have never appreciated Melissa’s friendship more than at that moment. “She can’t eat anything like this.” I didn’t look over at her for fear of bursting out in nervous laughter.

“Ah well,” Swami-ji finally said thoughtfully, “Perhaps you can have hers then, after you finish yours?”

I could almost hear Melissa’s silent hesitation. She had already drank one fourth of her cup and pronounced the stuff entirely undrinkable. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she picked up her tumbler slowly and took a deep breath. In a moment, she was downing the entire contents of the glass in one big swallow while the onlookers watched approvingly.

“Very good for your health,” Swami-ji said again as he wandered away to talk to other visitors. I finally had the self-composure to be able to look over at Melissa apologetically. She looked a little sick.

Jayeshbhai’s father, sensing perhaps, what was really going on, waited until Swami-ji’s back was turned, and threw the contents of my glass over the wall of the temple.

Thank God.

Best,
Cat

Marriage Troubles

Dear dedicated reader,

As I mentioned previously, wedding season means weddings in the air and Tabussum and Parulben, my and Melissa’s co-teachers respectively, have been feeling the breeze.

Tabussum and Parulben both live in Mandvi, a town about 15 km away from Kadod and so, after many invitations, this weekend was the first time that it worked out for Melissa and I to actually go to Mandvi to call on their families. Afraid that if we took the bus we would never find her house (which would have been the case since it was a good many twists and turns from the bus stand), Tabussum arranged for her brother to come and pick us up in Kadod.

As we got into the car, she apologized. “We took out our seat covers for washing,” she said anxiously. I assured her that since plush flower print seat covers are primarily an Indian phenomenon, I barely noticed.

Tabussum was visibly excited that we were finally going to be meeting her family. When we arrived at her house, deep in the Muslim section of Mandvi, she jumped out of the car to tell her family that we had come. Her mother, her sister-in-law, and her other brother came to the door to create a sort of receiving line into the house. On taking our seats inside, we opened with our usual “awkward visiting American” line, commenting on how beautiful the house is.

“We don’t have any pictures on the walls,” she explained hurriedly, “because in our community, it’s against our religion to have a picture of any living thing.” Whenever Tabussum discusses the fact that she is Muslim, she always simply says “in our community”. As the only Muslim teacher at the school besides Daybal, I often think it must be difficult for her.

Her sister had been staying with her for the past two weeks because she just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and so she and her mother sat down with us to show us her wedding photos.

“We are searching for a boy for Tabussum,” her mother informed us as we ooh-ed and aah-ed over the photos.

“Really?” I asked her. “And have you found anyone?”

“One person has offered, but we said no,” she said thoughtfully.

Tabussum explained. “My brother is also of marrying age, so we are expanding our house, then we will find him a husband, then me. But, in our community,” she paused, “it’s difficult to find a husband who is educated. I have my M.A. and I want my husband to be educated also and for this we have to look very far outside of Mandvi.”

We nodded sympathetically at her mother. She just smiled peacefully.

This was in stark contrast to the state of frenzy in which we found Parulben’s mother when we made our way over to her house later that afternoon.

We were welcomed into the house with a sad smile from a lovely elderly Gujarati woman wearing a striking yellow sari. Parulben was smiling behind her.

“What am I going to do?” Parul’s mother moaned to us as we sat down in her parlor. “We are looking for a boy for Parul and we have found NO ONE, just NO ONE… she MUST get married this year. She is 24! What will we do?”

Melissa and I looked at each other. We had just entered the house.

“I have been feeling so much tension,” she explained, rubbing her shoulders anxiously. “So much tension in my body because of this problem.” The pain on her face made it clear that this was true. She wrang her hands in emphasis.

I expressed my sympathies.“And it’s not just me!” She continued woefully. “Parul’s father has been feeling it too… even now, he is consulting with a specialist about the problem.”

“For his body?” I asked her with a sympathetic look.

“No,” she replied, “For Parul’s marriage!” It was explained that this specialist would be able to present some eligible families for them to contact who also had children of marrying age. In fact, he was due back to report any time in the next hour.

“I was going to many events this year,” Parulben explained to us with a sympathetic smile for her mother. “To meet other young people like me, for marriage. But,” she shot a glance at her mother, “so far there is no one.”

“And it is being so difficult in our Rajput community!” The mother wailed. “The groom’s family, they demand so many things. And we have three other daughters! Three daughters! And if we give Parul anything which we did not give to the others, we must present they and their husbands with it later because otherwise they will say, ‘look, you have given Parul these things and not to us!’. It is so difficult for us, you see…we are just middle class type people.”

Melissa and I nodded our sympathies again. “It’s not like this in our community,” Tabussum added, “but for them it is so difficult.”

“Yes, so difficult,” Parul’s mother echoed.

“In our community,” Tabussum added, “the bride’s family just gives as they wish, as a present to the couple, but in their community, so many things must be demanded, like the family can ask for a house, or a car or anything.”

“Yes, yes,” Parul’s mother said. “It is very expensive to have daughters. And we must find someone for Parul soon because soon she will be so old and it will only become more difficult.”

“How soon would you like her to marry?” I asked, curious.

“If we find someone, as soon as possible! According to when is a good time, of course,” her mother said definitively. “By May, at the latest.” She made a determined gesture with her hand.

Parul nodded as she listened to her mother. I wondered at her ability to soothe her mother’s anxiety and also to know that within the year she was most likely (if the process did not kill her mother first) be married.

On leaving Parulben’s house as we made our way back to Kadod, I found myself lost in the comparison between these two families. Despite that these girls were the same age, with the same qualifications and the fact that Tabussum had told us previously that in her community, her qualifications made marriage prospects exceedingly difficult, Tabussum’s mother had seemed so relaxed, as if Tabussum’s marriage was an afterthought, while for Parulben’s mother, it seemed that she could talk of nothing else (and indeed, we didn’t talk of anything else the entire time we visited at their house).

The experience definitely arranged food for thought…

Best,
Cat

Wedding Season

Dear dedicated reader,

Wedding season is upon us in Kadod. Since it is now only 75-80 degrees here during the day, the students are wearing sweaters to school while their parents are planning the marriages of their older siblings. Late November through early January seem to be good times for weddings as they can be outside without inspiring sun stroke or heat poisoning (both of which can put a damper on the generally festive air) and it tends to be good time for NRIs (non-resident Indians) to come and visit their families.

All of this is a long way of saying that Sejalben’s cousin was getting married this week and an invitation was proffered to Melissa and myself to tag along and watch. Despite three days of body ravaging sickness brought on by suspect pani puri (a street food that spreads delight and joy when made with uncontaminated water), we were well enough by Thursday to make the trip to Bardoli. Though not, of course, without the requisite cultural faux-pas.

American Teacher Mistake #1: Melissa and I thought that perhaps simply by wearing our nicest teaching saris and putting on some make up, we might fit in.

We were greeted at the entrance to hall by Sejalben, who though pretty on normal days, looked positively glamorous on this occasion. Her hair had been professionally put back and the ends curled into tiny ringlets which fell about her ears playfully. A glittered headdress of sparkly flowers completed the ensemble, as well as matching eye shadow and bangles which set off a beautifully bordered Gujarati sari. Eyeing the fancy work, I couldn’t help but ask, “Is that heavy to wear?” She assured me that, while it was, it was manageable.

Every other female at the wedding was similarly attired, hair let down or put up in fanciful fashions otherwise unseen. Everywhere in the room the light caught the gleam and glitter of ladies’ outfits and in some cases, powder which they had put in their hair specifically for added sparkle. The overall effect was like walking into a medieval court of old with jewels and gold as far as the eye could see.

At least, this was the case on the women’s side. As I turned my head to survey the men’s side of the room (which of course was seated separately from the women), I was surprised to see most of the young men in jeans and fashion t-shirts or simple button downs. The older men were mostly wearing khakis and shirts of the style that every Indian bureaucrat wears to work. A few men related to the actual bride were in suits, but other than that, any of these men could have been watching a cricket match in their living rooms. “Why don’t the men dress up?” I asked someone.

“Probably because the women feel that maybe someone will see them and think, “I will marry that girl because she is so beautiful…”. Men don’t have to worry about that kind of thing,” She replied. I nodded thoughtfully and turned my attention forward towards the stage.

The ceremony that we were to watch was an afternoon offering to the gods done by the bride and her family. As I understand it, the bride and the groom have separate ceremonies the day of the wedding with their own families and then late in the night, the groom arrives at the place of the brides on a horse and the actual wedding ceremony takes place. For this particular ceremony, the bride and her parents were seated on a bench at the front of the room with their closer family members seated on the floor all around them. A large fire burned in an urn in the front of the stage, letting off smoke into the hall that scorched our squinted eyes and made them water. Just to the side of the fire were all the wedding gifts, which had been carried in procession style from the hall by the male family members. None were wrapped, so that everyone could admire exactly what had been given.

American Teacher Mistake #2: I tried to watch the proceedings carefully despite the talking around me since it was the first wedding I’d seen. After watching for a while, I asked Sejalben what it meant when the priest gave instructions to spoon water out over this coconut, or hold hands with her mother, or move this powder here or there. Sejalben only shrugged. “No one knows what these things, not even the priest, I think,” she said, laughing. “We just do it as a kind of a custom. The smoke of the fire will take these offerings up to the gods.”

After she said this, I looked around me and I suddenly understood why in the background of Sejalben’s wedding video, there was this festive music dubbed over all the real noise of the wedding: the conversational buzz in the room as everyone talked to their neighbor completely drowned out the ceremony going on at the front.

As soon as it started, the ceremony was over and I watched as some of the guests literally almost bolted out of the room. “Where are they going?” I asked, confused.

“Dinner is being served in the downstairs hall,” Sejalben explained.

American Teacher Mistake #3: Coming from my waspy upbringing, I grew up with wedding dinners served in three courses by tuxedoed waiters. While seating cards ensured that guests would hopefully have interesting conversation with the other people at their table while waiting for the food to arrive, there is no guarantee and no salvation if you are stuck at the boring, geeky table. I felt the Indian approach to the wedding dinner had a lot to offer that we WASPs could learn from.

First of all, unlike many other places in Indian life, efficiency at a big feast such as this is prized above all else. Because not everyone can eat at the same time due to space considerations and the large size of the wedding, quick table turnover is of importance. To this end, the tables are set up to effect this turnover in the most efficient way possible. Instead of ungainly round tables like the kind we are accustomed to at large social gatherings in the US, the Indian wedding dinner makes use of long, thin banquet style tables, almost like a sitting at the bar of a restaurant. Two tables are placed facing each other with a space in the middle so that the “waiters” (gangly adolescent boys in t-shirts and jeans) can move down the line as quickly as possible. This creates a kind of conveyor belt phenonmenon where plastic plates, utensils and eventually food can be dispensed quickly. Boys carrying giant serving tureens straight off the cooking fire move down the line plopping portions on plastic thalis (large round dishes). Once they’ve served everyone in this manner, they continue to move up and down the lines between the tables, calling out what they have to offer (‘pooris, pooris, pooris, pooris’). If you need more, you simply hail them and they’ll replenish your plate with verve.

Second of all, there is little to no conversation while eating. Eating is purely business and there will be plenty of time after dinner before the groom’s family actually arrives (at 2 am, most likely) and the wedding will start. Refueling for this long stretch of evening which is ahead of you is essential as you may not get home until five, six, or even seven in the morning. Having not bolted out of the room and thus getting in on the second dinner shift, Melissa and I tried to make polite conversation with our neighbors, but found ourselves rebuffed as they focused on ingestion.

After dinner, we found ourselves in the strange bridal limbo of waiting for the groom and his dancing family to arrive. The groom’s family dines separately and then dances while he rides a horse all the way from the dinner location to the bride’s marriage hall. The groom was scheduled to arrive around 9 pm: it was currently 6:30 pm. We amused ourselves by trying to speak Gujarati and Hindi with the people around us, but eventually that wore thin.

American Teacher Mistake #4: Not bringing any money to the wedding. Sejalben suggested that we ditch the wedding for awhile in favor of taking advantage of the shopping which Bardoli has to offer and then returning to the wedding later. We found ourselves piling into a car with Sejalben, and her mother-in-law, both dressed to the nines, and making our way to one of the fanciest sari shops in town. Sejalben, after looking discerningly at several fancy saris, selected one and purchased it on the spot. Melissa and I contented ourselves with just looking.

On returning to the wedding, Sejalben instructed us to go upstairs with her where we entered a backroom filled with women who were… changing?

American Teacher Mistake #5: Not bringing any other clothes to change into for Wedding: Act II. All the women around me opened whole suitcases that they had brought with numerous outfits and, having gotten the opinion of everyone else in this backroom cum wedding staging area, proceeded to take off whatever beautiful sari she had on and replace it with another perfectly lovely one.

Sejalben looked at us: “Do you want a sari to wear?” She asked me.

I gestured to the one that I already had on.

“No,” she said shortly. “I meant a fancy one, with handwork.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Uh, sorry?”
It was then that we received by messenger the news that the groom was “stuck in traffic” and would not arrive until midnight. This was the point at which we American teachers, not properly attired and feeling fatigued, decided that we would take the principal up on his offer to drive us home early.

We were sad not to see the couple happily married at 3 am, but we wished them well all the same.

Best,
Cat

SCOPE of the Problem

Dear dedicated reader,

The entrenched hold which cheating has on this country’s educational system is much deeper than I ever would have suspected. Needless to say, this most recent item completely shocked me:

Some background first: The Government of Gujarat has undertaken to sponsor a specific English curriculum which they hope will enhance the English skills of the students and teachers who study with it. It is called SCOPE for short, though at the moment I cannot for the life of me remember what it stands for. It’s originally a Cambridge based curriculum and it shows in all the cultural relevancy that its materials have for students in rural India. The English teachers at Kadod High School take turns teaching it in the mornings at the same time as my Integrated English-Technology class and more than once have they shyly knocked on the computer lab door in need of some help with an exercise that is beyond their cultural comprehension.

For example: Match the following people with their dates of death: a) Charlie Chaplin b) Queen Elizabeth c) Pablo Picasso d) Beowulf. The respective dates of death follow.

I know my students immediately see the relevancy of this exercise to learning English in their own lives.

Irregardless, the principal was very anxious to start the program at Kadod High School and our Foundation is helping to sponsor part of the students’ tuition in taking the program. Many students who could afford to pay the other half of the tuition were anxious to do so and many teachers were taking studying for the exam very seriously. Why, do you ask?

The benefit of participating in the government scheme as opposed to private English classes is that, of course, it helps future prospects. If I understand the system correctly, teachers in government schools are not hired on the merit of their teaching, their interview responses, or any other standard measure which we use in the US. Rather, because government school teaching positions are government jobs, they are governed by the same crazy system that governs the hiring of any other government employee. Therefore, schools look at your marks from your B.A. and B.Ed, your masters if applicable, and all of these are translated into certain numbers of points. These points determine if you are first, second, third etc for your pick of teaching jobs at different schools.

Now, extra points can be earned in a number of seemingly random ways: 1) participation in the National Cadet Corps (a band of students akin to the Boy Scouts who march in procession for Independence Day, Diwali and a number of other functions throughout the year) during your high school years. 2) Taking a government sponsored exam, such as that given in the SCOPE curriculum to prove your proficiency in English.

With this in mind, many of the temporary teachers (teachers hired to fill vacant permanent positions on a yearly basis) were anxious to take the school sponsored opportunity to take the exam and the principal called on us to tutor these teachers in preparation. Melissa and I sat in the staff room and tried to encourage these teachers to speak English as much as possible in the hopes that it would allow them to pass the exam, which took place last Sunday.

On coming into the staff room this morning, I was interested to hear how the exam had gone from one teacher we had worked with very often.

“How was the test?” I asked, innocently enough.

“Oh, it was fine,” was the reply. “We all ended up copying off of Sejalben’s paper.”

“Come again?”

If this is the attitude of the teachers, how can we expect any more of the students?

Best,
Cat

Thankfully Undertaken

Dear dedicated reader,

It would have been simple enough, I think, for us to have fallen into away-from-home holiday blues for Thanksgiving. Thankfully, the same indomitable, resourceful spirits which (probably?) inspired us to move here saved the day, bolstered by some non-perishable acquisitions made by Melissa during her most recent trip to the US for the Diwali vacation.

On first setting out to make our holiday dreams into reality, we realized that the principal obstacle was our glaring lack of food preparation facilities. Our comfortable guesthouse, advantageous as its location and all other amenities are, is not blessed by the presence of a working kitchen. Instead, all of our food is brought to us on a twice-daily basis from the hostel kitchen located 100 feet from our house.

Kate (my travel partner of Nepal fame who elected to stay some time with us in Kadod), Melissa and I, after several conferences on the matter, decided that the best thing to do, rather than to try and make use of the hostel facilities for an evening, would be to find a suitable, friendly off-site kitchen owned by an Kadodian family with an adventurous palate and not too many family members (we only had so much pumpkin pie mix, after all). After considering several possibilities, we settled on Daybal’s house.

My phone call informing Daybal of her selection proceeded in the following confused matter:

Me: (hesitantly on hearing lots of noise in the background) Daybal? I have a question for you, but I want you to know before I ask it that you can say no…
Daybal: (shouting over the background noise) WHAT do you people want to ask me?
Me: Well, Thursday is a really important American festival where we make lots of American style food and we wanted to know if we could make dinner for you and your family. But, we’d have to make it in your kitchen.
Daybal: You want to use my kitchen?
Me: (finishing her sentence) To make dinner for your family.
Daybal: YOU WANT TO USE MY KITCHEN?
Me: - To make dinner for your family. Yes.
Daybal: I (long pause) am coming over to your house.
Me: UH, that’s not necessary. We’re about to go out. But… well, listen, let’s talk about this tomorrow when I see you at school?

It was decided that the conference would continue at that appointed time and sure enough, the next day Daybal arrived on my door step.

“What the hell were you trying to say yesterday?” She asked me with confused affection.

“We just want to make some food for your family, but we have no kitchen here, so we need to use someone else’s kitchen. Do you mind?” I asked, hesitatingly.

“YOU people want to use my kitchen,” she said. “It’s fine, of course, but you make me a list and I’ll get whatever you need.”

I politely declined this directive and said we’d bring everything necessary. She started to argue, and I finally just said, “Daybal, seriously, I know that you have to say this because of the rules of hospitality, but please just let us be American this one day and do everything for you and your family because you’ve done so much for us?”

She looked at me for a moment, then laughingly agreed. Thus, our location was set.

All that was left was to acquire the necessary food items. A tentative menu had been agreed upon in our previously mentioned tete-a-tete’s about the upcoming holiday and Wednesday evening Melissa and I ended Spoken English Class early in the hope of purchasing all the necessary vegetables. We were unsuccessful only in our search for corn, but did manage to find potatoes, sweet potatoes, something we mistook for string beans which ended up being akin to a flavorless lima bean, and rolls. The vegetable sellers seemed puzzled about why we would need so much food for just the two of us, but we simply explained by saying we had a religious festival and it was required of us, an explanation which seemed to satisfy even the most pressingly curious.

The next day, our time inbetween having to teach was spent furiously peeling, chopping and generally preparing for the short amount of time that we would have between the end of school and our imposed curfew to cook and pull off this dinner. Everything was sealed, bagged and tinned in preparation for the shift of location to Daybal’s waiting kitchen. We were even able to put a jello pumpkin pie into the fridge, crust in all, using a tin which we normally use to hold papad (a thin Indian cracker served with every meal).

Arriving at Daybal’s, of course, began the process of negotiation over the actual terms of using her kitchen.

“Why have you brought these containers?” She yelled as she watched us unpack various sundry items we had brought with us.

“Well, we didn’t know what you would have…” I began carefully.

“I have containers!” She lovingly chided.

“Well, now I know, and anyway we needed something to carry the leftovers home in…” I explained.

“Leftovers?” She looked at me blankly.

“See…” I began. “This holiday is pretty much about giving thanks and then making more food than you could ever possibly eat to give thanks for. You eat so much that you are stuffed, then you eat a little more. Then, you take the rest home and eat it for the rest of the week.” She looked at me interested.

“And that is the purpose of ‘Thank You Day’?” She asked me.

“That is the purpose of ‘Thank You Day,” I replied, smiling.

The cooking that ensued mostly involved a lot of rescuing spices from Daybal’s hands just before she dumped them into our food. “Don’t you want cumin?” She’d yell just before we rescued it from being poured all over the mashed potatoes.

“Trust me,” Kate, our master chef, kept saying to her, “I have a plan.” Daybal merely responded by looking at Kate dubiously.

As a mediocre chef at best, my job somehow became the meaningful involvement of Daybal’s three children in the cooking process. Her two young daughters took a particular interest in the mashing of the potatoes, a process which they had previously never seen, and soon I was supervising their small arms holding our flat spoon-cum-mashing implement and keeping their fingers out of the pot. Meanwhile, I tried to keep Afifa (at 2 years old, her youngest), from killing himself: first, from falling down the open staircase while running wildly around with a baseball cap positioned over his face, then from sticking his fingers in an active electrical socket while dancing on an unstead table, and finally from poking out his eye with a large meter long stick which he brandished in an uncivilized way while tearing about the two rooms that made up the house. At these antics, Daybal merely laughed and said he was a ‘jungli’ (a kind of tribal person who lives in a jungle, apparently).

Between Kate’s negotiations, Melissa’s stirring and the prevention of Daybal’s meddling, the dinner was finally ready and the tarp upon which I had previously dined for both Eid-Ul-Fitr and during Ramadan was placed on the ground of the common room. Rashidbhai, Daybal’s husband, came and sat with his friend from his work who had been invited to join the proceedings after Daybal screamed at him to turn off the coverage of the Mumbai bombings on the TV and come and sit on the floor with the rest of us.

As we sat in a circle on the stone floor around the food, we three Americans realized that the Indians were waiting for us to show them the proper way to go about eating the food at hand. For Melissa and I, it was a strange but satisfying role reversal.

“So,” I began, “we usually go around and say something that we are thankful for before we begin to eat.”

“Like a prayer?” Daybal asked.

“Well, sort of…” There was a such a mixture of religious beliefs in the room that it didn’t feel fair to call it a prayer, exactly. “Just, something that you are thankful for.”

We were about to begin when Daybal, in her typical way, hit her husband on the arm and asked him what he was going to say. “You have something in mind?” she said to him. He mumbled that he did and explained what it was. Then she did the same thing to his friend and when she was satisfied that they would not be left stumbling for words, she turned back to me and told me I could begin.

“Well,” I said, “predictably I guess I’m thankful for having good enough friends here that they would allow us to take over their kitchen and eat strange food that they might not like and who have welcomed us so much into their lives here in Kadod.” I looked at Melissa.

“I’m thankful for having good friends like you all, too--” began Melissa.

“No man!” Daybal yelled at her. “You can’t say the same thing!”

We all laughed. “You make the rules now?”

“She has to have something different!” She insisted. The circle of thanks proceeded in this ceremonious way, punctuated by interruptions from Daybal’s idea of what it should look and sound like. Once it was finished, after a moment of silence, the eating commenced.

After hours of talking and negotiating, the sound of us all thoughtfully going about eating our food was a nice change, and we Americans were happy to see that our version of Thanksgiving was a hit as the Indians asked for seconds and thirds. The canned cranberry sauce was a particular favorite (probably owing to the typical Gujarati sweet-tooth).

After enjoying the food and the refrigerated pre-packaged pumpkin like dessert (Shout out to Jello for it being surprisingly good), the evening was coming to a close. We hadn’t even touched half of the mashed potatoes that we had made.

“You know,” Daybal announced, “I gave up my diet just for today, just for YOU people and Thank You Day.”

“You know,” I said, “That’s pretty American.”

Best,
Cat

The Bat Cave

Dear dedicated reader,

Sitting alone in the dark of the biggest cave in Nepal, I began to relax. I could hear the voices of the others farther on in the chamber and see their lights flash in a disorganized way around the walls. They were looking for footing in order to climb the steep incline of the cave floor; an ascent I could not make because of my inappropriate footwear. Their voices became more and more distant until they cleared the steep incline and their lights and voices were subsumed by darkness and silence.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I packed only my flip flops for my four week trip. I knew I’d be coming to Nepal; I knew one of the major attractions here for tourists is trekking. I can only assume my thinking just hadn’t gotten that far or I seriously underestimated the terrain I’d be dealing with (only, you know, the highest mountain range in the world…geez, Cat). Either way, this is how I found myself holding on to a stray root stretching out from the side of the path as I gingerly tried to find footing on a slick, narrow trail stretching downwards hundreds of feet at a terrifying angle. I could see farther ahead the guide we’d hired from the tourist information booth in this tiny village of Bandipur (a local science teacher at the Nepali medium school who only had a half day of school, incidentally) looking up at me with a concerned look on his face.

I faked a smile like I do this everyday and his face relaxed, but only slightly. The rest of our group (Kate and a Spanish couple who’d jumped into our hike just as we were taking off) looked equally concerned as they reached the plateau in the path where he was standing. I let go of the root that I was clutching, still smiling, and continued to move downwards, slowly, concentrating my full attention on each step. I could hear the others chatting as they caught their breath down below me, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted: my mind was busy calculating the likelihood that the next rock would be the one I would slip on and would pitch me face first over the mountainside.

With a luck that I can only attribute to God or sheer, embarrassed determination, I was able to make it down to where everyone else was standing. This, however, was only the beginning. Our hike out to our a destination, the largest cave in Nepal according to our trusty and ever present Lonely Planet, was reported by the same to be about an hour and a half. At this juncture, we’d hiked approximately fifteen minutes. I gritted my teeth and slugged some water before following Sandra the Spaniard down the trail under the watchful gaze of the snow peaks rising towards the heavens on the other side of the valley. At that moment, their peaks appeared as hands in prayer, soliciting the sky. Hopefully on my behalf, I thought.

To my own amazement, one and a half hours later we arrived at the narrow opening of the cave, sans broken ankles or any other injury save a little soreness in my knees. Around the opening to the mouth of the cave were a few idle looking Nepali men who demanded payment of 50 rupees and offered up the hire of a large industrial sized flashlight of which the Spaniards promptly took advantage. Kate had brought a practical head lamp which I figured I’d just follow (I mean, really: a girl who can’t be bothered to pack sneakers can hardly be expected to remember fancy gadgets like flashlights!)

Entering the cave, I had a sudden flashback to a five day field trip we’d taken in the 7th grade to West Virginia, during which spelunking was mandatory. It was a rather narrow gorge that we were expected to crawl down on hands and knees, and I chickened out about ten minutes in when we got to the part where we were expected to go underwater and then come up on other side (called ‘the keyhole’ or some such thing). I’d waited outside, cold and wet, until the rest of my group emerged, triumphant, from the mouth of the cave. As we entered, I told myself this cave wasn’t nearly as narrow and anyway that was twelve years ago and I am an adult now, after all.

Navigating without a light was a little like trying to find my way to the outdoor bathroom at our guesthouse at 3 am: I kept having to stop and sort of feel around with my sandaled foot to see if I was all right to continue forward. Kate kindly kept turning around to shed a little light (literally) on the situation and in this way, I managed to make it out of the main entryway and deep into the cave itself. The rock itself was smooth and though navigating it in my flip flops was difficult, I was able to scramble across the rocks with the use of all my limbs as supports.

The obstacle which finally stymied my progress was a rather smooth decline to the next passage in the cave that had been made particularly slick with water dripping down from somewhere in the cave’s ceiling. Kate went first and I made to go after her until she made the intelligent observation that I might not be able to get back up again. The surface was very slick and there didn’t seem to be many natural footholds, at least that we could see. I hesitated, unsure of what my options were. With no flashlight, it was impossible for me to turn around and exit the cave to wait there, but continuing on seemed impossible in light of the terrain. After another moment, I finally said the only thing I could think of: “I’ll just wait here; you guys go ahead and I’ll get you when you come back.”

“Are you sure?” asked Kate. “Do you want the light?”

I hesitated again. I didn’t want to take her flashlight, but the idea of sitting in a cave in complete darkness didn’t really appeal to me either. “Uh, yes,” I admitted. And then, “Sorry…”

She handed me the headlamp, which I put on. They made to move on, and while I could see them, I tracked their progress with my flashlight, hoping to be useful in any way that I could. After they’d moved out of flashlight range, I could still hear their voices but realized that I was pretty much on my own.

At first, I felt very relaxed. “This isn’t so bad,” I thought to myself. “I mean, the Buddha meditated in caves by himself...” I settled myself into a cross legged position on the high perch where I was stuck. I glanced around the cave, flashing my light into different crevices as I did so. As I looked up, I saw my first bat. I wasn’t really frightened, particularly: I’d seen tons of bats hanging from trees in Kadod. A voice from my past, perhaps from the very same seventh grade camping trip, that it wasn’t a good idea to shine lights on bats for too long. I quickly refocused the light on the ground of the cave.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breathing. I could still here the vague echo of the others who by this time had disappeared much farther into the cave. Soon this was gone and it was completely silent. I could see why such an environment would be conducive to deep meditation. I tried switching off the light for a moment, but the cowardly spelunker in me found the blackness of the cave was too overwhelming and I immediately switched it back on again. I straightened my spine and closed my eyes again. Breathe in… Breathe out…

It was at that moment that I heard a distinct swish…

I jerked my head in the direction that it came from and saw, to my horror, two bats unpredictably flapping around only a few feet from where I was sitting. I stifled a scream, knowing on some primordial level that this would only make things worse and it came out as a squeak. My breathing quickened and I could feel my heart pounding as I immediately pulled my legs into my chest and my sleeves down over my arms.

All was silent for a moment and I dared to put my head up, but at that moment the swishing started again and I thought I heard a squeaking close to me. I felt my body involuntarily curl into itself. I ducked my head into my legs. I didn’t know if the light made it worse, or better and in looking up again, I really did scream as a bat dived at my head and came inches from my body.

The scream, of course, served no purpose at all since the others were too far away to hear me. I briefly considered trying to leave the cave myself, but the bats were coming from the direction of the entrance itself. I found myself pressing my face against my knees and simply whispering “Please come back…” over and over to no one in particular. Every time I heard the swishing, I’d press in harder, trying to compact myself so much that I’d disappear.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but in reality was probably only ten minutes or so, the lights of the others flashlights appeared at the far end of the cave. I unwillingly pried my head away from my legs fearfully, but tried to relax my face so they wouldn’t know anything was wrong. I mean, really, I’d already caused enough trouble and after all this was entirely my fault in the first place. I hoped my smile looked like one of contentedness and not of desperate happiness that they had returned.

Making our way out of the cave was much simpler than coming in and soon we were sitting on the thin ledge outside the narrow opening leading inside, discussing which way would be best to return. We decided on the way we came, which meant a longer serious uphill battle, but was much easier for me to navigate in my flip flops than the slippery, steep trail leading down to the road. Really a relief, after having come so far, and all in my flip flops! It was almost something to be strangely proud of. It was with this feeling that I started on the return trip home.

That is, until I remembered the possibility of lurking leeches attaching themselves to my bare feet…

Best,
Cat

P.S. Trip pictures to come on my return to Kadod!

Bus-iness as usual

Dear dedicated reader,

Somewhere between watching a woman repeatedly throw up into a small plastic bag that she carried with her for that purpose and becoming a little too close to the migrating limbs of the narcoleptic man sitting next to me, I realize that there are few joys that delight more than taking the local bus.

Seriously: as we careened haplessly around a hairpin corner on a mountain road with no guard rail with a thousand foot drop on the other side, I happened to quell my terror long enough to spot a comfortable, close windowed, air conditioned tourist bus out of the corner of my eye. The look of utter boredom which was apparent on the faces of the passengers within said bus as they passively took in the countryside was enough to convince me that if I were to die on these mountain roads (a fate which I felt at this point in my observations of Nepalese driving was assured), I would much rather do so while listening to a sixty minute loop of the same Nepalese music with the wind blowing in my face than in some comfortably cushioned video coach.

But really, I should start at the beginning. Bolstered by Obama’s heartening win, Kate and I arrived at the New City Bus Station in high spirits. I can’t attribute these completely to politics: we’d been looking forward to leaving the unchecked chaos of Kathmandu since we arrived. Our destination was the small mountain town of Bandipur which had been recommended by friends and a random Frenchman with whom Kate had struck up an acquaintance before I arrived. We also wanted to break up the seven hour ride to the other major tourist city here in Nepal, Pokhara.

Upon our arrival, we did what any good westerners might do: we set off to ferret out where the tickets for the buses were sold. Immediately, we were set upon by some adolescent boys asking in their accented English, “Where do you want to go?” We’d become used to this routine from our exploration of Kathmandu’s Metro Bus Service (a series of small vans with boys who travel with them and shout out the names of where the van is going to any interested passerby), so we told them. Immediately they grabbed our arms and ushered us frantically to a window which said clearly in Devanagri the name of our destination.

“You pay 220 for one – okay?” The boy/man shouted at us with a frenetic energy I can only attribute to local urgency or cocaine. I looked at Kate.

“I think you should ask at the window,” she said.

I turned back to the window and yelled over the head of the boy/man to the guy sitting behind the grill in Hindi, “Hey bhai, how much to go to Dumre?”

He mumbled back a number that sounded the same, so we handed over a 1000 rupee note in the hopes of getting change. The boy/man immediately took off with us in tow and unceremoniously pushed us onto the bus.

“You sit here,” he said, indicating the seat directly behind the drivers.

I threw down my bag and Kate headed towards the back of the coach, as we had previously agreed on sitting apart during the journey in order to allow each other to fully get in ‘the zone’ (not to mention give a little space).

Boy/man then disappeared and left us wondering what the hell happened to our change…

I settled into the seat “assigned” to me. As the bus started and boy/man got behind the wheel, I learned early on that there are a few distinct advantages to having the seat directly behind the driver’s:

1. Front row seats for the magic show that is keeping a Nepalese bus on the road.
2. Intimate acquaintance with the top part of the bus’s engine as it is located (gasp) directly in front of you, shaking and rattling and overheating your legs which must rest on it out of necessity.
3. There’s no one sitting in front of you to throw up/spit/toss trash out their open window that will subsequently splash on you through your open window.
4. First pick of the various snacks peddled at the national high way bus stops including but not limited to: freshly cut cucumber, Indian cheetos, and small dried fish speared on wooden kabobs replete with eyes, scales and fins.

Actually, my favorite part of my particular vantage point was that I got to observe first hand that the driver of this multi-passenger vehicle and I actually have a lot in common. Just like me, the driver would occasionally get thirsty while driving, fumble with his water bottle and hold the steering wheel lightly with one hand or perhaps his knee; also like me, he’d occasionally get sick of the music playing and I’d watch his eyes leave the road so he could fumble around on the dashboard for a different tape, which he’d then have to insert into the bus sound system and press play. But don’t worry: only once or twice during these minor distractions did we actually face the possibility head on collision with an oncoming vehicle.

Another delight was watching the woman across from me breast feed her baby. Now, I am in all for public breastfeeding: I mean, if the baby needs to be fed, it needs to be fed and really its just a natural relationship between mother and child. However, usually, after the feeding is finished, you can count on the mother to remember to put her breast away. Unfortunately in this situation, mom was so distracted by having to throw up in her plastic bag every so often, she and baby simply fell asleep, both forgetting that her breast was still hanging around, literally. I wasn’t sure if, as one of the only other woman in the vicinity, I should say something? I mean, what would you have done?

With a sudden eventual jolt of the bus stopping at some discrete village location, she awoke and rearranged herself accordingly. Fortunately, this particular jolt also woke the narcoleptic man next to me whose head had migrated to my shoulder and elbow to my stomach, and he similarly rearranged. Not so fortunately, his new consciousness also made him realize that his bus stop was imminent, and on seeing an acquaintance of his out the bus window, he poked me in the eye with a rolled up newspaper while wildly gesturing to “Vikram” and hitting the back of the seat of the bus driver to get him to stop the bus. The bus driver having obliged, he got down and I was free, but by that time, our interminable bus ride became terminal as I saw a sign which indicated we were only five kilometers from Dumre.

I mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want to travel this way?

Best,
Cat

Acute Aesthetic

Dear dedicated reader,

My shifting perspective is perhaps being influenced by my travel mate: Kate, a now itinerant artist, moves through the world with an acute sense of the aesthetic and I believe that this tendency is rubbing off on me as I wonder at the new visual feast around me. India itself possesses an incredibly varied terrain, but I myself have not seen much of it these past few months as I’ve bicycled Madhi Road over and over again. Much of India’s visual symbolism I’ve internalized and can now translate easily into meaning. Being in a new country, despite its many similarities, has brought with it new symbolism for the same meanings and I find myself staring wonderingly at the strange blend of Indian and East Asian architecture I am presented with, not to mention the world that contains them.

First, I am watching the prayer flags above a towering Tibetan stupa flutter and the prayer wheels lining its base spin, their inert prayers tactilely activated by the devoted and the curious and released in a clockwise fashion out over the open Kathmandu valley, rising above the shadowed mountains which line its edges and freed into the snow capped universe.

Then, I am sitting in a quiet courtyard in the village of Patan while Kate works in her sketchbook. I listen and watch as two Nepalese girls quietly and unself-consciously choreograph a dance to a popular Hindi film song. Above them, old crumblingly sturdy brick buildings continue their centuries old march onward with pigeon infested garlic hanging to dry from their eaves. Around their doorsteps, ducks and dogs and goats gather for a kind of quotidian worship of the hand that feeds them and their rooftop rose gardens sway lightly in soft valley breeze.

Wandering on, I stop for a moment outside a courtyard of the same town and watch surreptitiously from behind a pillar as an old Nepalese woman shovels rice in a fierce and determined way. She brings her shovel slowly back, picks up a bundle and then throws it in a flinging motion across the courtyard where it scatters on a pile next to a large spread of rice drying in the sun, waiting for feet to sift lightly through it, a practical prayer in each grainy step.

While Kate makes quick, hurried sketches of figures which she observes in the bustling of Patan’s touristy Durbar Square, I find myself making similar quick sketches in my head but, lacking Kate’s practiced skill, with words. I watch as an Anglo of ambiguous origin (Italy? Britain? South America? We can only guess) himself sketches along with a gaggle of thrilled Nepalese children to whom he’s given the use of a set of colored pencils. They eagerly adore his sketches and show him theirs proudly. His smile invites others to join and to me the resulting tableau looks almost biblical. Occasionally as I watch, he looks up, we make eye contact, and I look away, embarrassed by my casual staring. As soon as I think he’s not looking, I look back, fascinated by the childrens’ fascination with him.

In these moments that I’ve described, I’ve never felt more aware of the kind of voyeurism that is tourism. Observing these small, private interactions feels too intimate, more intimate than even when I see such things in Kadod. I think the difference comes in the egalitarianism of it: in Kadod, my life is as up for scrutiny as anyone else’s, as the frequent intrusions on our American constructed privacy often demonstrate. Here, with my hotel room and my camera and my own ambiguous origin, I am inscrutable beyond my immediate exterior and my wide, constantly gawking eyes.

It just doesn’t seem fair. And yet, I can’t look away.

Best,
Cat

P.S. I'm posting this in the middle of our morning watching of the election coverage. What a luxury to be able to watch full coverage outside your own country (albeit 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead) Go Obama Go!

Re-setting Clocks

Dear dedicated reader,

I had to set my clock 15 minutes forward today.

Apparently in an attempt to differentiate itself from the overpopulated country shadowing it from the left, Nepal has elected to be 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, as opposed to India’s 5 hours and 30 minutes. Or so I discovered today at approximately 7:48 pm, or 8:03 pm, depending how you look at it.

This quirk is itself only one of the small that have punctuated my early experience of Kathmandu. Having arrived here yesterday afternoon armed only with my visa in need of renewing and the standard traveler’s aid otherwise known as the Lonely Planet, I can honestly say I was completely unprepared.

Nestled in the Himalayas beneath sprawling snow-capped peaks, it is easy to imagine that living here bestows upon its inhabitants a sense of cosmic alignment and direction that is lost to those of us who are only passing through as itinerant wanderers. This feeling is reinforced by the muddled way in which those of us not in the know are forced to meander the unnamed streets of this smiling metropolis. Yes, you read right: none of the streets in Kathmandu have names. The result is that most advertisements you see not only include the name of the place and an endorsement of their products, but also a detailed line drawing replete with landmarks illustrating how to get from the location of the advertisement to the store itself.

This reality is particularly terrifying in the tourist haven (or hell) of Thamel where every narrow alley which passes for a thoroughfare looks exactly the same, lined with t-shirt shops, guesthouses, and trekking travel agencies all selling and advertising the exact same services. The effect on the hapless tourist is like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, except any trail of bread crumbs would likely be eaten by stray dogs, cats or errant cows.

Lucky for me, my best friend Kate (and my travel partner for the next 15 days) arrived from the US the day before I did and was able to secure us a spot in a lovely guesthouse just outside of this maze of Daedulus called the Tibet Peace Guest House. It is located next to an English Medium School (I just can’t get away!) from which I heard the familiar sounds of chanting issuing forth this morning as we made our way to find filter coffee. After twenty four hours here, I’ve noticed that everything feels familiar: the signs are written in Devanagari script (same as Hindi), the language shares many of the same words, the people dress in the same fashion (plus nice thick sweaters), the traffic emits the same diesel fumes and the country, like India, is largely Hindu. Even the tourist outlets seem to sell the same hippy styled clothing, the same embroidered t-shirts, the same wooden carved chess sets.

The fifteen minutes of difference seems to come mostly in the attitude in which people approach their interactions with each other. Last night at dinner, I smiled at a waiter and he actually smiled back at me. I was slightly shocked. Having spent the last two weeks traveling in India, I was expecting the grittiness with which most foreigners are man-handled, especially in well worn grooves of the tourist industry. What I’ve found couldn’t be more different: Street hawkers simply smile and walk away if you say “No, I don’t actually want to buy some tiger balm, whatever that is” and taxi drivers greet you by saying “I value the divine in you (the literal meaning of namaste). Do you want a taxi?”

Over the past twenty four hours, I’ve found that this absence of abrasiveness has me re-setting my own clock. My urban shield, built up since leaving Kadod, is still feeling out what defenses are actually needed and which can be abandoned in favor of trustfully and positively interacting with other human beings. What calibration is needed I have yet to figure out exactly, but I suppose I have 14 more days.

Best,
Cat

Trading In

Dear dedicated reader,

This Saturday, I trade in my chalk and duster for a backpack and train tickets. I couldn’t be more excited or more nervous.

Living in India and traveling in India are so different that the latter is like being in another country altogether. Distinguished by my backpack, my camera, my white skin, no matter how long I’ve lived here, no matter what I wear, no matter how well I speak the language, every day becomes my first day in India.

It’s a phenomenon I joke about often and is best illustrated by the following three connected anecdotes from our most recent trip to Mumbai:

Having taken the well beaten path of least resistance (read: Lonely Planet India) in picking our accommodation for our five day sojourn, Melissa and I found ourselves in the known tourist district of Colaba at the southern-most tip of Mumbai. Our hotel had a nice view of the Taj (the nicest hotel in India) from its crumbling location four stories up and one block away. Our welcome to our exulted lodgings was having to politely ask a sleepy eyed construction worker to move just as he was raising his hammer to strike a chisel against the sandbag reinforced wall of the stairwell so we could continue the endless climb to the lobby.

After a refreshing non air-conditioned sleep in our surprisingly bed bug free beds, Melissa and I parted ways in the morning after an indulgent American style breakfast at a local cafe: she, to take her GRE (the whole purpose behind our visit) and me to take in what I could of the sites. I had set my heart on braving the rickety ferries of Mumbai harbor to visit Elephanta Island, home to some temples carved into stone rock faces.

There is a wariness that you must always wear as a traveler here, one that I’ve all but dropped living in the village. The hardened urban shell that I’d perfected while living in Delhi is cracked and in disrepair from living in Kadod, a place where guile is relatively unknown and where its does exist, it is unpracticed and mostly harmless. Walking alone towards the ticket booth for Elephanta Island, however, I felt as one who doesn’t exercise for a long time: nervous I would strain myself or become winded from the interactions I knew were coming.

It was not without reason. As soon as I started walking towards India Gate, one of the most well known landmarks in Mumbai, I was hassled with “Madam, photo?” “Balloon?” “Magic Balls?” “Peanuts?” “Ice Cream?” “PHOTO!”

I kept walking, my eyes looking straight forward. I had a goal and I was going to make it. Arriving at the ticket booth, I stopped, my assured exterior disappearing as I eyed the lines of windows with men sitting behind each. Signs in India have a crowded quality that makes it difficult if you are relying on them to find what you want easily. It is, however, essential that you locate what you want immediately; if not –

“Madam, what are you looking for?” Someone asked me almost immediately.

I decided to just be forthcoming. “I want to go to Elephanta Island,” I said.

“I sell the tickets madam,” this random man told me as he pulled out a bundle from his pocket. “120 rupees, madam”.

The guidebook had said 90 – but my guidebook, leftover from my time in Delhi, is four years old, so I hesitated once again. “Is there a window?” I asked him.

“That window is for tours, ma’am,” the man said.

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just try the window and see what happens,” I said.

He shrugs, uninsulted. “If you wish, madam, but that man and I are in business together.”

The man at the window confirmed this and I bought the ticket from the bundle in the first man’s outstretched hand. He directed me toward the ferry loading dock, saying if I hurried I could catch the next one. I lit up with the brief glow of success when the man at the dock demanded 120 rupees and I produced the ticket for the same amount from my pocket. I had successfully navigated one tourist trap! The joy was short-lived.

I had harbored hopes that I would somehow make friends aboard the ferry with other tourists in the same easy way that I had when I was backpacking in Ireland; however, as I eyed the boat’s other passengers, I realized with some gloom that there was no one in my age range aboard. It was mostly Indian couples – there was one other British looking man, but he looked to be about 60 and not very friendly so I gave him a wide berth and for the next hour watched the approach of the Island from the front of the boat.

As soon as the boat hit dry land and I set foot upon the dock, I felt a hand thrust into mine. I looked into the eyes of its owner, who introduced himself as Krishna. Employing tactics I myself used as a canvasser for Greenpeace that one ill-fated summer, he did not ask me if I wanted a guide (I did) but rather merely acted as if it were an assumption. We agreed on the short 1.5 hour tour of the Island, he outlined our itinerary and I agreed. This temple-touting is a common phenomenon here and while some travelers hate it, the historical sites have such poor signage here that I find that, even if what the touts are telling me isn’t true, it’s still more interesting than just looking at the edifices on my own. I find this especially true at religious sites where I feel an inherent ill-comfort.

The tour itself was a whir: he talked quickly, gave me time to take a picture and then abruptly moved onto the next feature. The tour, while detailed, was so rushed I barely had time to process any of the information he was feeding me. I resolved that I would simply go back to the caves to look them over again once he had finished with me. However, after the end of the hour and a half, I somehow found myself sitting in a café belonging to his brother’s sister, drinking filtered water while I paid for him to drink a rather expensive beer. Trying to keep things polite and following the rules of hospitality that I’ve learned in Kadod, I allowed him to lead me through all of this and once his beer was finished, somehow found myself agreeing to go back to the boat and go back to the mainland. On the way, the other foot fell: He wanted me to pay him 1000 rupees for the tour. And the best part? I did it! I just did not, after being led around by him for the past two hours, have the heart to haggle. He told me he thought I had a very agreeable personality. If someone gave me twenty dollars, I’d probably say that about them too.

On the boat on the way home, I kicked myself in the ambivalent way that only tourism in India inspires. On the one hand, I gave myself a good whack for being so agreeable, for worrying more about relationship management than what I wanted, which was to see the caves in detail. On the other hand, it had been an exceptionally good tour except for the pace and while I didn’t quite think it was worth the full price I paid for it, I suspected the money would go towards good use. He’d told me all about his family and his sons and his wife and how hard he’d studied to learn the six languages he does tours in. I knew at least that part was true, and if the rest of it was, then I knew he needed the money more than me.

However, just at the moment that I was feeling the most foolish, a second staple of tourism in India occurred. A man came and sat next to me. I had observed him earlier in the journey: he was sitting across the boat with his wife and his teenage son and daughter. He smiled a broad smile as he sat, and I, as wary as ever, returned it slightly less enthusiastically.

“My son…” he began. I waited. I could sense a mental struggle for the words. “Salman Khan? (a famous Indian film star)” He finished hopefully.

I smiled and replied in Hindi, “If you want to speak in Hindi, you can. I’ll understand. What do you want to say?”

He looked both surprised and relieved. “My son,” he said, “doesn’t he look like Salman Khan?” He gestured across the boat where I could see his family looking at him strangely for walking all the way across the boat to talk to the lone white girl. He gestured to his kids, who obediently came over. They sat on either side of me and began to ask me questions: where was I from? Why was I in India? How had I come to speak Hindi? The girl, 17 years old, wanted to know how I liked teaching English; the boy, 21, wanted to tell me I was pretty because I was so fair, wanted to know if I drank or smoked and wanted to compliment my Hindi. Talking to them reminded me of talking to the kids in Kadod and I enjoyed our ferry ride-cum-English lesson. They produced pictures that they had had professionally taken at Chowpatty Beach, another Mumbai landmark, the day before. I laughed as I saw the skinny son making muscles in the surf. When we arrived at the dock at India Gate, they made me take a picture with them and promise to come visit if I made it out to Madhya Pradesh. I said I would.

The whole encounter, so typical of Indian tourists I’ve encountered (minus all the conversation in Hindi, which I wasn’t really capable of the last time I lived here), really lifted my spirits as I headed towards the big outdoor market in Colaba to see if I could find some funky jewelry to bring back for some of my friends in Kadod. It was here that I hit Indian tourism staple number three…

Somewhere between the large book stall where I hungrily indulged in too many book purchases (there being no English language bookstores within four hours of where I live) and heading towards a jewelry stand I remembered glancing at the night before, I made the mistake of making eye contact with a man laden down with drums. Eye contact indicates interest and despite my heated protests in both Hindi and English, this man simply refused to believe that I was not interested in his oh-so-useful wooden drums.

“Madam!” he pleaded in broken English as he followed me. “Price usually 600 – but for you… 450 madam, 450…” I kept walking. He followed.

5 minutes later…

“Okay, madam, okay… special price, just for you. For you, only 300…” I kept walking. He followed.

5 minutes later…

“My children will not eat madam, but you will take it for 200. 200 is good price madam.”

It was no use to explain to him that I had absolutely no use for a wooden drum; that I had no one to give it to, no place to put it, no interest in playing it… all of these things were superfluous. He had decided on selling the drum, and sell it he would. I stopped to browse at a bangle shop, hoping that perhaps they stocked my size. When I emerged, dazzled slightly by so many bright colors at once, I thought briefly as I started walking that I had lost him. That is, until he jumped out at me from behind a bush.

“Okay, madam, okay. You take for 100. Last price madam. Absolute last price.”

We had reached a street crossing and I turned and looked at him seriously. I said in Hindi, “Do you know where the 103 bus picks up?” I had heard that this local bus was a good one from which to see the sights of the city and what I really needed was to sit away from con men and just think while watching pretty things go by.

He looked at me with the characteristic surprise that usually comes when I speak Hindi. “It picks up back there,” he replied simply in Hindi. “Come, I’ll show you.”

On the way, he asked me about my Hindi, I explained that I lived here, and he began, with the added vigor of now being able to speak in a language he spoke fluently, to berate me with stories of his starving children, his poor wife, their hunger, their poverty… With the sun beating down and the sweat rolling off my back and my eyes searching desperately for the bus, it was difficult to listen to what he was saying. When we reached the bus stand, I found myself agreeing to buy a drum. As I got out my wallet and handed him the hundred rupees he’d asked for, I found myself thinking I spend more than this on a daily cup of coffee in the US.

Just as I handed the bill and put out my hand to take the drum, he looked up into my eyes and said meaningfully, “Come ma’am… you must give 150 rupees at least.”

Well, I lost it. I was tired and sweaty and India-weary and so, I tried to take the money back from him as I blubbered in Hindi. I grabbed at it but of course he wouldn’t let go, and at just at that moment, the bus arrived and I ended up just grabbing the drum out of his hands and running to jump on the bus. My haphazard throwing of myself down into a seat made the conductor look at me in pity and he didn’t bother collecting my fair. Meanwhile, the drum sat heavy in my lap, branding me with idiocy for all the world to see. I glowered at it, sinking into my seat and hoping I wouldn’t have to move for some time.

The coup de grace, however, dear reader?

I’d gotten on a bus going in the wrong direction. It was a mere ten minutes before the conductor called last stop and I ended up getting off in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, as a tourist, I had an out. I merely hailed a cab and made them take me to my hotel, where I holed up for the rest of the day, vowing never to venture out into India again.

I’m hoping this next month will whip my flabby endurance back into shape. Amritsar, here I come.

Best,
Cat

P.S. I’ll be updating my blog en route as I can, though I can’t promise the usual every 2-4 days.