Call to Prayer

Dear dedicated reader,

Kadod is a bigger, more diverse village than I had previously suspected.

There is an English medium primary school which is new this year and is operated by Kadod High School (which itself is a 1 – 12 school, despite carrying the name of “high school”). The principal has asked us to take an interest in the school and so far we have visited twice, once for the opening ceremony when the school was blessed through prayer and the other to hand out chocolates to all of the adorable first and second graders. English medium means that all of the classes are in English, and therefore the teachers must speak passable English in order to run class.

There is a teacher named Daybal who befriended us on our first trip whose English was surprisingly impeccable. Her accent was hard to place at first (not Indian at all) until she explained that her relatives from the UK would visit twice a year while she was growing up in Surat. She kindly invited us to her house, but we were unable to go until two nights ago. She wrote the address down on a slip of paper, gave us her mobile number and told us to call if we had any problems.

“If you come to the street, make sure to ask for Master Rashid, as there are four Rashid’s on our street,” she carefully instructed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come pick you up here? Indian courtesy tells me I must do this!”

We assured her that we would be able to find her house fine.

The day of the visit arrived and we went to the guard to ask for directions to the house. He shrugged and said in Gujarati, “I can’t read English…” Without another word, he took the piece of paper from Vanisha and set off for the principal’s porch. We tried to stop him, saying it would be no problem, but he was determined. The principal, his wife and younger son were sitting on their porch swing where the air was a little cooler and you could catch the breeze. The guard ceremoniously handed them the piece of paper.

I could see them reading silently. “Daybal?” They asked.

“A teacher, at the English medium school,” we explained.

They nodded, satisfied, and returned to the piece of paper. “They are Muslim,” they said. This I had surmised when I had seen her the day before and she had given us the invitation. She had been wearing the burkah and I had been surprised, though I should have realized from her Persian sounding name that this was the case. It was a fact that would not have escaped any Indian.

Some chit chat happened quickly between Vanisha and the principal in Gujarati. “He says that because it is in the Muslim part of town we won’t find it so they will take us.” We tried to protest but it was settled and the younger son Jaydeep was already heading to the car.

Piling in, we set off down the winding, narrow lanes of the village, narrowly avoiding the wandering chickens and dogs populating the dirt byways. As the car drove deeper and deeper into a previously unexplored part of the village, I observed goats tethered outside of houses, being fattened, and passed by covered faces on porches. Here, I saw many of my students who chose to wear the salwar kamiz version of the school uniform: evidence of their religion, as Hindu girls wore the blue dress. A few times, we stopped for directions and, arriving at the house (which we would have never found save this car ride, I am sure!), Jaydeep went to inquire if this was, in fact, Master Rashidbhai’s house or if it was one of the other many Rashids.

All of a sudden, a smiling Daybal appeared. “My friends!” She cried excitedly. “You have come!” We were invited inside the house as the principal’s son drove away. There was nothing on the ground level except storage. We left our shoes at the bottom of the open staircase and carefully climbed to the second level. Ushered to a swing seat in a large, open room away from the cooking stove in the kitchen, we were seated and found ourselves amidst a crowd of smiling relatives and small children.

“They come to me for tuition in English,” Daybal explained. Tuition is a peculiar phenomenon. It is like extended school but you pay to take extra classes with an unofficial teacher who goes over the material being learned in class again. I imagine that because the classes are so large, this is necessary to ensure everyone’s individual understanding. Unfortunately, many of the poorer students are unable to pay fees for extra tuition and thus cannot keep up.

The tuition students, who could not have been more than four or five years old at most, stared at me, wide eyed. Meanwhile, Daybal’s relatives were excitedly introducing themselves. Her husband we had met previously as he had come to our house, but now we met the brother in law, sister in law, children, father in law. All wore kurtas or salwar kamiz and no one kept their head covered in our presence.

One interesting phenomenon that I have observed in visiting Indian houses is that if you a neighbor and guests come to the house, it is acceptable to invite yourself in as well to keep company with the guests. In this way, a few of our ninth grade girls came also to Daybal’s house, once they saw we were there, and stayed for as long as we did.

No sooner were the introductions finished, then plates of steaming hot pakoras were placed in front of us, along with ‘cold drinks’ i.e. sodas. Pakoras are one of my most favorite Indian snacks: battered onion pieces fried together to create delicious, doughy balls of oily onion goodness. We used to eat these almost daily when I lived in the Himalayas, but since coming to India this time around, I had not until now had the pleasure of enjoying them. Good manners made us refuse them when they were first put in front of us, but soon we were crunching away and washing them down with Thums Up: a brand of Indian soda that tastes exactly like Pepsi but has masala, or spices, added to it to give it a kick, particularly pepper, salt, cumin and some other various things. I love this flavoring, so between this and the pakoras, I was truly in heaven.

As we chatted, I did not even notice the time flying by until all of a sudden, it was dusk and the familiar call for prayer which issues from the mosque in the center of the village came floating through the window. The reaction was immediate: all of the women covered their heads with their dupattas (scarves) and for a moment the room was quiet. Then, with heads covered and the call for prayer still coming, conversation resumed as it had been, and the smiling and laughing continued. I know very little about Islam, to be sure, but I had wondered how the call for prayer was observed here in Kadod, and for a moment I had my answer.

The conversation touched on many topics: religion (mine was asked, of course), language, movies, school. This is Daybal’s first year teaching and she explained that traditionally it is required that Indian teacher wear the sari and she had asked for a special exemption for this. “I am telling them that I do not want to wear the sari and they are saying I must and then saying that they will make an exception,” she explained. “And then I am seeing you people and you are also wearing the salwar kamiz and I felt so much better.”

I laughed and explained my ever present fear that were I to wear the sari that it would fall off in the middle of class with all the students. She said she had the same fear!

She is so easy to talk to, I really do hope our friendship will continue. She seems anxious that it does and said as much as she walked us home through the dark and the narrow galliya (hindi for ‘small street’) of the village. “I have never ever been outside without wearing burkah in these streets,” she said to me. “But this I am doing for you, my friends.” Why this was necessary, I didn’t understand, and tried to explain that it wasn’t. I did, however, appreciate the gesture and its significance.

“Come and visit me again,” she said, with a smile as we thanked her as she dropped us off.

“Of course,” we replied. I really do hope so.

Best,
Cat