Dear dedicated reader,
I thought that perhaps it would be prudent to do a small follow up on my previous “would you rather” question to say that one problem in our house, at least for the moment, has been solved.
“The mouse” as Auntie-ji has taken to calling him (though I suspect that he is one soul in several bodies), is at last dead. Though his corporal form may have expired, his story will live on, however, in the form of this blog.
Every night, around 8:30 or 9 pm, my host family and I eat dinner in front of their favorite Hindi serials, a past-time that I enjoy as nowadays I understand enough to follow their dramatic and often implausible plot-lines. Their favorite, Pavitra Rishta, has recently revolved around some drama regarding the young wife’s ability to speak English to her husbands’ business partners. While ensconced within this enthralling story, I saw out of the corner of my eye a small, brown form dart out from underneath the shelf which holds their television and dash towards the sofa on which Auntie and Pappa-ji were seated.
“Ah, Auntie-ji,” I hesitated and she looked up from her roti. “I don’t mean to alarm you but the mouse is underneath your seat…”
The reaction was immediate – Auntie-ji leapt up spryly and called for Mamta to come and dispense with the mouse, running to close the doors that led to the hall, the kitchen, the bedrooms, and the children’s room.
A moment later, Mamta arrived, ready for action with a long toilet brush in hand. Toilet brushes in India are really a collection of a sort of reed all bound together, something like a broom, and therefore, apparently, ideal for mice-killing (?).
Mamta crouched down near the sofa and stuck the toilet brush underneath, tapping it and her feet in a mouse-killing rhythm. The mouse must have been terrified, because it darted out from the sofa, and for a moment all was complete confusion as we all jumped, Mamta towards the mouse and Auntie-ji away from it. I, for my part, pulled my feet up on the sofa on which I was seated.
The process of tapping and poking/prodding began again underneath the TV shelf, and finally, the mouse ran out and scampered around the room, frantically looking for a way to avoid Mamta’s toilet brush of death. Mamta, however, was too quick and with a merciless blow she stunned the mouse into inactivity. Another blow was enough to render it completely helpless, and after a few more quick blows in succession, she pronounced it dead.
With a deft scoop, she picked it up with toilet brush and began to carry it outside, as per Auntie-ji’s command. Auntie-ji, for her part, had her hands over her ears and was hiding behind the couch on the other side of the room. Once Mamta had disappeared outside, Auntie-ji came out as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, took her place on the sofa, and resumed eating her roti-sabzi.
I followed suit, silently wondering why on earth I ever thought traps would have been easier.
Best,
Cat
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Independent once again
Dear dedicated reader,
I have now celebrated my fourth 4th of July here in India. On reflecting, I think that while the others that I have celebrated here may have been more involved (you may remember reports of fireworks and fire hazards over the Himalayas, an awkward but ultimately entertaining party with the Principal and his family or bottle rockets set off over the Bajipura Highway that came this close to causing an accident), this one I believe will be no less memorable.
My fourth of July consisted of only one American simplicity this year: making an apple pie from scratch for my host family. I told them a few days ahead of time that I’d like to make something for them to celebrate my Independence Day. With some trepidation, my host mother told me that that would of course be fine.
“I’m not a great cook,” I warned, “but I know how to make a few things.” No reason to get expectations too high.
In the days leading up to D-day, my host sister, Ayusha told me with delight of things that past students who had stayed with her family had made. “Didi [big sister]," she told me, "I have had cookies,” she recounted, “and cake, and pancakes, and … I don’t know, so many things.”
Great, I thought to myself, I can see that the bar had been set very low.
I racked my brain to think of something that I could make that everyone in the family could eat. At first, I thought perhaps that I would make cake – however, on inquiring, I found out that Pappa-ji, my host patriarch, does not eat eggs and I did not want him to feel left out.
Luckily, I had past holidays in India to draw upon and the day before the 4th, I remembered a Thanksgiving many years ago celebrated here in India where everyone in our apartment contributed something that their family traditionally eats. Mine was apple pie.
I also remembered, with some satisfaction, that this dessert was completely vegetarian in the Indian sense.
The afternoon of the 4th, I set out to collect the ingredients that I would need to make my pie: flour (simple), butter (simple), baking sugar (easily located in the grocery store), apples (out of season but still locatable), and cinnamon, called dalchini here in India. Since dalchini is usually used whole within dishes here, like in tea or with vegetables, I wandered from store to store, looking for what I found out was called “dalchini powder”. No place had it, and after much sweat, rain and frustration, I found myself returning home without it.
Of course, I should have realized that the reason that there is no dalchini powder available is because everyone in the middle class has someone who can grind their dalchini into powder for them. This week, our grammar review is on the causative verb form, a unique form in Hindi that connotes one not performing an action itself, but causing an action to be performed. "The servant verb," Swami-ji laughingly told us, "though you won't find that name in any grammar book. As if to demonstrate this principle, on hearing of my difficulty, my host mother immediately called our maid, Mamta (who, in general, regards me with a wary amusement), to grind some of their stock of whole dalchini into powder for me.
As I set to making the pie, my host brother Arjun and my host sister Ayusha gathered around eagerly, sitting on the counter and watching as I cut the butter into the flour, added ice water and massaged the ingredients into a loose dough. Mamta helped me cut the apples into tukare (small pieces, as I learned!) and inquired curiously into what I could possibly be making.
“It’s a pastry,” I tried to explain, “I’ll roll it out like roti and then put these apple pieces inside it.” I held up the thali (round metallic dish with high sides used for eating dinner) and indicated that I’d put everything in there.
She looked at me dubiously, but continued to cut and peel apples.
“You know how to cook?” She asked, slowly turning an apple in her hand and digging into with the peeler.
If only it were that simple, I thought, like riding a bicycle. You either know or you don’t. How could I explain that I was somewhere in between?
“Sometimes,” I answered, truthfully. “I know how to make this.”
She gave an non-committal headshake as if to say, “We’ll see” and continued to peel.
The apples having been arranged carefully in to the rolled out dough, I gave some to Ayusha and Arjun to munch on while I worked with Mamta on rolling out the top lattice pieces. Once it had been assembled, it was time to cook it in the large, somewhat glorified toaster oven that my family had, an item not often found in an Indian house. As I got ready to put the pie into the oven, Auntie-ji came into the room and looked pleased. I asked her how she had come to have an oven, such an unusual thing in India.
She laughed for a long time, then she said, “Two years ago, I thought, you know, that I would be making all these things, like pizza, pies, cakes, pastries. And Pappa-ji, he said to me, why have you taken this thing? But now, you see, the only people who have used this oven are all you people [students]!”
I laughed. “Well, then it was worth it!”
After 40 minutes, the pie was ready to eat. My host-family waited excitedly for me to cut it and add a dollop of vanilla ice cream that I had brought from the market. As I served it to Pappa-ji, he looked at me and said, “Ah, yes, Happy Independence Day!” and held out his hand for a handshake.
“Happy Independence Day to you too!” I replied, very self-satisfied.
Best,
Cat
I have now celebrated my fourth 4th of July here in India. On reflecting, I think that while the others that I have celebrated here may have been more involved (you may remember reports of fireworks and fire hazards over the Himalayas, an awkward but ultimately entertaining party with the Principal and his family or bottle rockets set off over the Bajipura Highway that came this close to causing an accident), this one I believe will be no less memorable.
My fourth of July consisted of only one American simplicity this year: making an apple pie from scratch for my host family. I told them a few days ahead of time that I’d like to make something for them to celebrate my Independence Day. With some trepidation, my host mother told me that that would of course be fine.
“I’m not a great cook,” I warned, “but I know how to make a few things.” No reason to get expectations too high.
In the days leading up to D-day, my host sister, Ayusha told me with delight of things that past students who had stayed with her family had made. “Didi [big sister]," she told me, "I have had cookies,” she recounted, “and cake, and pancakes, and … I don’t know, so many things.”
Great, I thought to myself, I can see that the bar had been set very low.
I racked my brain to think of something that I could make that everyone in the family could eat. At first, I thought perhaps that I would make cake – however, on inquiring, I found out that Pappa-ji, my host patriarch, does not eat eggs and I did not want him to feel left out.
Luckily, I had past holidays in India to draw upon and the day before the 4th, I remembered a Thanksgiving many years ago celebrated here in India where everyone in our apartment contributed something that their family traditionally eats. Mine was apple pie.
I also remembered, with some satisfaction, that this dessert was completely vegetarian in the Indian sense.
The afternoon of the 4th, I set out to collect the ingredients that I would need to make my pie: flour (simple), butter (simple), baking sugar (easily located in the grocery store), apples (out of season but still locatable), and cinnamon, called dalchini here in India. Since dalchini is usually used whole within dishes here, like in tea or with vegetables, I wandered from store to store, looking for what I found out was called “dalchini powder”. No place had it, and after much sweat, rain and frustration, I found myself returning home without it.
Of course, I should have realized that the reason that there is no dalchini powder available is because everyone in the middle class has someone who can grind their dalchini into powder for them. This week, our grammar review is on the causative verb form, a unique form in Hindi that connotes one not performing an action itself, but causing an action to be performed. "The servant verb," Swami-ji laughingly told us, "though you won't find that name in any grammar book. As if to demonstrate this principle, on hearing of my difficulty, my host mother immediately called our maid, Mamta (who, in general, regards me with a wary amusement), to grind some of their stock of whole dalchini into powder for me.
As I set to making the pie, my host brother Arjun and my host sister Ayusha gathered around eagerly, sitting on the counter and watching as I cut the butter into the flour, added ice water and massaged the ingredients into a loose dough. Mamta helped me cut the apples into tukare (small pieces, as I learned!) and inquired curiously into what I could possibly be making.
“It’s a pastry,” I tried to explain, “I’ll roll it out like roti and then put these apple pieces inside it.” I held up the thali (round metallic dish with high sides used for eating dinner) and indicated that I’d put everything in there.
She looked at me dubiously, but continued to cut and peel apples.
“You know how to cook?” She asked, slowly turning an apple in her hand and digging into with the peeler.
If only it were that simple, I thought, like riding a bicycle. You either know or you don’t. How could I explain that I was somewhere in between?
“Sometimes,” I answered, truthfully. “I know how to make this.”
She gave an non-committal headshake as if to say, “We’ll see” and continued to peel.
The apples having been arranged carefully in to the rolled out dough, I gave some to Ayusha and Arjun to munch on while I worked with Mamta on rolling out the top lattice pieces. Once it had been assembled, it was time to cook it in the large, somewhat glorified toaster oven that my family had, an item not often found in an Indian house. As I got ready to put the pie into the oven, Auntie-ji came into the room and looked pleased. I asked her how she had come to have an oven, such an unusual thing in India.
She laughed for a long time, then she said, “Two years ago, I thought, you know, that I would be making all these things, like pizza, pies, cakes, pastries. And Pappa-ji, he said to me, why have you taken this thing? But now, you see, the only people who have used this oven are all you people [students]!”
I laughed. “Well, then it was worth it!”
After 40 minutes, the pie was ready to eat. My host-family waited excitedly for me to cut it and add a dollop of vanilla ice cream that I had brought from the market. As I served it to Pappa-ji, he looked at me and said, “Ah, yes, Happy Independence Day!” and held out his hand for a handshake.
“Happy Independence Day to you too!” I replied, very self-satisfied.
Best,
Cat
Monday, July 4, 2011
Video Follow Up
Dear dedicated reader,
I know some of you were anxious to see what I've been writing about, so here is a short video of the recent visitor that we had at the institute so you too can experience the rollercoaster of emotions having a cobra in the room with you brings.
Best,
Cat
I know some of you were anxious to see what I've been writing about, so here is a short video of the recent visitor that we had at the institute so you too can experience the rollercoaster of emotions having a cobra in the room with you brings.
Best,
Cat
Friday, July 1, 2011
Full of Charm
Dear dedicated reader,
The staff of AIIS, the institute at which I’m studying, work exceedingly hard to keep us on our toes. While we routinely leave at 3 or 4, they stay until 7 at night, diligently preparing for the next day. Yesterday for my weekly “lecture” I talked about Margaret Atwood, my favorite author, and was struggling for the word for fiction. This morning, the teacher who was presiding over that class came and found me as I drank my morning chai and told me the correct word.
“It was bothering me all night,” she told me in Hindi.
When I say they keep us on our toes, I also mean literally. Every other week, we have a “monolingual” guest who comes to be interviewed by our class. Our first week, it was an autorickshaw-wala who recounted to us the irritations of taking around foreigners who aren’t able to speak in Hindi and who gave us advice on the best places to catch a rick in Jaipur.
This week, our guest was a snake charmer, in Hindi a “sapera”, who politely answered our questions about the perils and intricacies of snake-keeping. His story was an interesting one: He was raised in the snake-charming tradition and lives in an area of Jaipur where many folk artists stay – not only snake-charmers (though he says there are many others) but also folk dancers and artisans.
Most interestingly, according to his guru, snake charmers from his tradition only keep the snakes for a month because he believes it will bring bad luck to keep them for longer. This is one of the reasons that they don’t defang the snakes – they are going to release them into the wild again so they need to keep their teeth.
He discussed the way in which the venom is extracted from the snake’s fangs by means of a balloon attached to a small vial. The snake, biting the balloon, releases venom into the vial since it believes itself to be biting a small animal. He told us that from then on, they can only feed the snake cooked or raw meat – to feed it a live animal will cause it to release venom again.
Despite these precautions, we asked him if he’d ever been bitten when the snake was poisonous and he said that he had been taught to make a special medicine for when that happened. They apply a tourniquet to wherever the bite has occurred, most likely the hand or the foot, and then he takes this medicine which, in his description, sounded a lot like an ipecac made of herbs and tobacco. It causes him to throw up repeatedly, and in this way, they are able to avoid being killed by snake poison.
He talked a little bit about working the “tourist line” as he called it here in Jaipur. Snake charmers, we came to understand, used to exist primarily in the villages, going from house to house to collect donations from villagers who, in their devotion to Lord Shiva (whose animal is the snake), would support the craft of the saperas. These days, however, it’s not like that anymore and most snake charmers have shifted to the cities to work in tourist areas.
While summer is not the tourist season (due, as you may have guessed, to the extreme heat), he said that in winter he’ll see anywhere between 500 and 1500 tourists in a day. This, of course, is not limited to foreign tourists though obviously there are many – people come from all over India to see the City Palace which is where he usually sits. I asked him if he needed a license to secure a place, but he said no: overtime, if you go to the same place enough, other people will simply move away from you, and since he’d been going for the last 15 years, that was what had happened. Furthermore, he said, there is no license; however, occasionally a policeman would come and he’d have to pay them a bribe to continue to sit there without being harassed.
Finally, we asked him if he was teaching anyone else his craft. He said without much emotion that no, he wasn’t. He’d taught people to handle snakes but teaching them to catch them was tricky because they had to be very fast. One girl in our class asked if his children would become saperas like he had but he said that nowadays fewer people are becoming snake charmers, maybe only 10% of those who were before, and that his children were reading and studying for other professions.
When his interview was finished, he slowly took a basket from his plastic bag and placed it on the floor. We all leaned forward at our desks to see as he uncovered the basket and two large cobras emerged, hissing and striking at him, showing what seemed to me to be their extreme displeasure at being forced to lie on top of one another in this tiny basket.
He brought out his peculiar looking instrument made of a hollowed out gourd and began to play, swaying the end in time to his music. The snakes stood at attention, following the ends of the instrument with their eyes and enormous hooded heads and every so often striking out at it with a loud “hissssssssss”.
A crowd gathered as students from other classes came in to watch the tamasha (spectacle) before us. Everyone was possessed with a wary kind of excitement, bubbling up from their nervousness at the idea of two live cobras in the room!
When he had finished, he allowed a few students to come and touch the cobras. As one of our group put it “When else will be I be able to touch a cobra and live?”
Best,
Cat
The staff of AIIS, the institute at which I’m studying, work exceedingly hard to keep us on our toes. While we routinely leave at 3 or 4, they stay until 7 at night, diligently preparing for the next day. Yesterday for my weekly “lecture” I talked about Margaret Atwood, my favorite author, and was struggling for the word for fiction. This morning, the teacher who was presiding over that class came and found me as I drank my morning chai and told me the correct word.
“It was bothering me all night,” she told me in Hindi.
When I say they keep us on our toes, I also mean literally. Every other week, we have a “monolingual” guest who comes to be interviewed by our class. Our first week, it was an autorickshaw-wala who recounted to us the irritations of taking around foreigners who aren’t able to speak in Hindi and who gave us advice on the best places to catch a rick in Jaipur.
This week, our guest was a snake charmer, in Hindi a “sapera”, who politely answered our questions about the perils and intricacies of snake-keeping. His story was an interesting one: He was raised in the snake-charming tradition and lives in an area of Jaipur where many folk artists stay – not only snake-charmers (though he says there are many others) but also folk dancers and artisans.
Most interestingly, according to his guru, snake charmers from his tradition only keep the snakes for a month because he believes it will bring bad luck to keep them for longer. This is one of the reasons that they don’t defang the snakes – they are going to release them into the wild again so they need to keep their teeth.
He discussed the way in which the venom is extracted from the snake’s fangs by means of a balloon attached to a small vial. The snake, biting the balloon, releases venom into the vial since it believes itself to be biting a small animal. He told us that from then on, they can only feed the snake cooked or raw meat – to feed it a live animal will cause it to release venom again.
Despite these precautions, we asked him if he’d ever been bitten when the snake was poisonous and he said that he had been taught to make a special medicine for when that happened. They apply a tourniquet to wherever the bite has occurred, most likely the hand or the foot, and then he takes this medicine which, in his description, sounded a lot like an ipecac made of herbs and tobacco. It causes him to throw up repeatedly, and in this way, they are able to avoid being killed by snake poison.
He talked a little bit about working the “tourist line” as he called it here in Jaipur. Snake charmers, we came to understand, used to exist primarily in the villages, going from house to house to collect donations from villagers who, in their devotion to Lord Shiva (whose animal is the snake), would support the craft of the saperas. These days, however, it’s not like that anymore and most snake charmers have shifted to the cities to work in tourist areas.
While summer is not the tourist season (due, as you may have guessed, to the extreme heat), he said that in winter he’ll see anywhere between 500 and 1500 tourists in a day. This, of course, is not limited to foreign tourists though obviously there are many – people come from all over India to see the City Palace which is where he usually sits. I asked him if he needed a license to secure a place, but he said no: overtime, if you go to the same place enough, other people will simply move away from you, and since he’d been going for the last 15 years, that was what had happened. Furthermore, he said, there is no license; however, occasionally a policeman would come and he’d have to pay them a bribe to continue to sit there without being harassed.
Finally, we asked him if he was teaching anyone else his craft. He said without much emotion that no, he wasn’t. He’d taught people to handle snakes but teaching them to catch them was tricky because they had to be very fast. One girl in our class asked if his children would become saperas like he had but he said that nowadays fewer people are becoming snake charmers, maybe only 10% of those who were before, and that his children were reading and studying for other professions.
When his interview was finished, he slowly took a basket from his plastic bag and placed it on the floor. We all leaned forward at our desks to see as he uncovered the basket and two large cobras emerged, hissing and striking at him, showing what seemed to me to be their extreme displeasure at being forced to lie on top of one another in this tiny basket.
He brought out his peculiar looking instrument made of a hollowed out gourd and began to play, swaying the end in time to his music. The snakes stood at attention, following the ends of the instrument with their eyes and enormous hooded heads and every so often striking out at it with a loud “hissssssssss”.
A crowd gathered as students from other classes came in to watch the tamasha (spectacle) before us. Everyone was possessed with a wary kind of excitement, bubbling up from their nervousness at the idea of two live cobras in the room!
When he had finished, he allowed a few students to come and touch the cobras. As one of our group put it “When else will be I be able to touch a cobra and live?”
Best,
Cat
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Would you rather...
Dear dedicated reader,
Sometimes, in college, when we were bored on long car rides going to and from debate tournaments, we would play this game “Would you rather…?” The chooser is presented with two options and has to choose between them. A favorite was “Would you rather have a ketchup dispensing bellybutton or a pencil sharpening nose?”
In that vein, dear reader, I would like to tell you a little bit about my homestay. I live with a lovely joint family not far from the institute and am carefully looked after by the mother of that family, Auntie-ji, who sees to all of our needs here in house. She is soft-spoken and sweet, speaks English exceptionally well (I actually wish she did not speak it quite so well) and has two adorable children, Ayusha, age 8 and Arjun, age 6. Her husband has a position in the Indian military and is stationed in another city in Rajasthan, though he has been home for the past week, on leave from his job. The house is rounded out by Pappa-ji, the 84 year old grandfather who was a lawyer for the Rajasthan High Court and still practices law out of his office at the back of the house.
Because they have two extra rooms with their own bathrooms, they have often taken study-abroad or AIIS students into their care over the past few years. When Rachel and I arrived on our first afternoon in Jaipur to make their introduction, they greeted us with a detached politeness that was welcoming while at the same time belying their previous experience with foreigners coming and going in their home.
The day we arrived to move in, we quickly chose our rooms, Rachel taking the one at the back with its own entrance, I taking the one through which Rachel must pass to get to the rest of the house. Our induction to the house, however, came when Rachel discovered a dead rat in her closet, which the family quickly called the servant to come remove. This, we were to learn, was merely foreshadowing.
A few nights back, I was awoken by a hysterical Rachel who had crept into my room and perched herself on my bed, recounting to me that she had awoken with a similar uninvited intruder: a small brown mouse had taken it upon itself to crawl into the crook of her arm and nestle itself in her armpit. When she woke up to find her new friend, she screamed and flung her arm out, causing the mouse to fly through the air and then run, terrified, into the bathroom. Rachel, herself terrified, had then run into my room and spent the rest of the night in my bed (which is quite large). The next morning, when we repeated this story to our Auntie-ji, she assured us that she would administer some “medicine” strategically to the various mouse holes in the house.
“There is only one mouse,” she said, “and we have been trying to catch it for several weeks.”
I explained that, having had much success with traps back in the states, I wondered if those were commonly used here in India.
“They are,” she said dubiously, “but this mouse is very clever.”
The medicine having been administered, we believed that we could sleep easily. We were wrong.
Two nights ago, I awoke with an itch on my stomach, which I groggily moved my hand towards, searching for some relief. Putting my hand to my stomach, however, my whole body tensed as I heard the familiar crunching sound that accompanies a large bug being mashed to death. Paralyzed, my hand clutched whatever it was that I had unwittingly captured through my shirt, unwilling to let go, unsure in the dark whether the thing which I held was fully dead or not. After a moment of thought, I got out of bed and turned on the light, shook out my shirt and watched in horror as a the body of a large, dead cockroach fell down and landed on my bare foot. Shaking my foot with a full body shudder, I jumped back and hopped from one leg to the other for a bit for my involuntary shaking subsided.
Knowing I had to sleep, and that there was little I could do to prevent this happening again, after a few moments of thought I determinedly tucked my t-shirt into my pajama pants and got back into bed. All night, I could feel phantom cockroaches crawling up and down my legs.
So, dear reader, I present you with the question: Would you rather the mouse or the cockroach? It is a subject which has sparked some lively debate amongst my peers here and I would love to know your opinion.
Best,
Cat
Sometimes, in college, when we were bored on long car rides going to and from debate tournaments, we would play this game “Would you rather…?” The chooser is presented with two options and has to choose between them. A favorite was “Would you rather have a ketchup dispensing bellybutton or a pencil sharpening nose?”
In that vein, dear reader, I would like to tell you a little bit about my homestay. I live with a lovely joint family not far from the institute and am carefully looked after by the mother of that family, Auntie-ji, who sees to all of our needs here in house. She is soft-spoken and sweet, speaks English exceptionally well (I actually wish she did not speak it quite so well) and has two adorable children, Ayusha, age 8 and Arjun, age 6. Her husband has a position in the Indian military and is stationed in another city in Rajasthan, though he has been home for the past week, on leave from his job. The house is rounded out by Pappa-ji, the 84 year old grandfather who was a lawyer for the Rajasthan High Court and still practices law out of his office at the back of the house.
Because they have two extra rooms with their own bathrooms, they have often taken study-abroad or AIIS students into their care over the past few years. When Rachel and I arrived on our first afternoon in Jaipur to make their introduction, they greeted us with a detached politeness that was welcoming while at the same time belying their previous experience with foreigners coming and going in their home.
The day we arrived to move in, we quickly chose our rooms, Rachel taking the one at the back with its own entrance, I taking the one through which Rachel must pass to get to the rest of the house. Our induction to the house, however, came when Rachel discovered a dead rat in her closet, which the family quickly called the servant to come remove. This, we were to learn, was merely foreshadowing.
A few nights back, I was awoken by a hysterical Rachel who had crept into my room and perched herself on my bed, recounting to me that she had awoken with a similar uninvited intruder: a small brown mouse had taken it upon itself to crawl into the crook of her arm and nestle itself in her armpit. When she woke up to find her new friend, she screamed and flung her arm out, causing the mouse to fly through the air and then run, terrified, into the bathroom. Rachel, herself terrified, had then run into my room and spent the rest of the night in my bed (which is quite large). The next morning, when we repeated this story to our Auntie-ji, she assured us that she would administer some “medicine” strategically to the various mouse holes in the house.
“There is only one mouse,” she said, “and we have been trying to catch it for several weeks.”
I explained that, having had much success with traps back in the states, I wondered if those were commonly used here in India.
“They are,” she said dubiously, “but this mouse is very clever.”
The medicine having been administered, we believed that we could sleep easily. We were wrong.
Two nights ago, I awoke with an itch on my stomach, which I groggily moved my hand towards, searching for some relief. Putting my hand to my stomach, however, my whole body tensed as I heard the familiar crunching sound that accompanies a large bug being mashed to death. Paralyzed, my hand clutched whatever it was that I had unwittingly captured through my shirt, unwilling to let go, unsure in the dark whether the thing which I held was fully dead or not. After a moment of thought, I got out of bed and turned on the light, shook out my shirt and watched in horror as a the body of a large, dead cockroach fell down and landed on my bare foot. Shaking my foot with a full body shudder, I jumped back and hopped from one leg to the other for a bit for my involuntary shaking subsided.
Knowing I had to sleep, and that there was little I could do to prevent this happening again, after a few moments of thought I determinedly tucked my t-shirt into my pajama pants and got back into bed. All night, I could feel phantom cockroaches crawling up and down my legs.
So, dear reader, I present you with the question: Would you rather the mouse or the cockroach? It is a subject which has sparked some lively debate amongst my peers here and I would love to know your opinion.
Best,
Cat
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Hindi Class Begins
Dear dedicated reader,
Our Hindi classes have begun in earnest and each day, I wait with Rachel, my housemate, outside of our gate for the appointed autorickshaw carpool to arrive and take us to school. Waiting with my satchel given to me by the program and my little water bottle dangling from my hand, I feel l like a small Indian school girl. The reality, of course, is that I am a big, clumsy, sweaty American girl who is often tongue-tied as I reach for the correct Hindi works to express my complicated English thoughts.
Since last Friday, these classes have kept us exceptionally busy – the first day, we were told that each week, we would prepare to complete the following:
5 pages of Hindi journal writing
2 page film review
2 hours conversation with our Hindi language partner
1 20 minute oral presentation
2 hours of listening comprehension
1 magazine article
1 piece of literature
This, of course, is in addition to 20 hours of instruction a week and countless vocabulary lists that support all of these different activities. By the end of the first day, Friday, I had already learned close to 150 new words. The pace has not lessened and I find myself studiously emulating my former students and their grueling schedule: waking early to go over my flashcards, spending my afternoons reading and diligently looking up words that I don’t know, and spending my nights reviewing and writing in my journal. I liken the approach of AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) to an attack on my language skills from all sides. Any weakness is eradicated as my skills are strengthened in a plethora of different ways.
One of the best parts about being in the Advanced class is that the expectation is never that we simply translate or read aloud together. We are expected to arrive at class, ready to have conversations about whatever it was that was assigned to us, be it a movie or literature or a magazine article. In this way, I’m beginning to understand the foundations of having an academic Hindi vocabulary – the difference between speaking properly and speaking in the street. Additionally, my street Hindi is benefiting as I begin to iron out what I know and what I need to know.
It can be frustrating to want to comment on the complicated themes of a Hindi film and to want to use my academic vocabulary to express my ideas concisely, only to find that my tongue and mind will not cooperate, that it is as if a thick blanket is constantly hanging over my head through which I must make myself understood. However, I have never been pushed or challenged in this way and am enjoying it immensely. There are no slackers here – everyone is in this game to reach that elusive goal: fluency.
Best,
Cat
Our Hindi classes have begun in earnest and each day, I wait with Rachel, my housemate, outside of our gate for the appointed autorickshaw carpool to arrive and take us to school. Waiting with my satchel given to me by the program and my little water bottle dangling from my hand, I feel l like a small Indian school girl. The reality, of course, is that I am a big, clumsy, sweaty American girl who is often tongue-tied as I reach for the correct Hindi works to express my complicated English thoughts.
Since last Friday, these classes have kept us exceptionally busy – the first day, we were told that each week, we would prepare to complete the following:
5 pages of Hindi journal writing
2 page film review
2 hours conversation with our Hindi language partner
1 20 minute oral presentation
2 hours of listening comprehension
1 magazine article
1 piece of literature
This, of course, is in addition to 20 hours of instruction a week and countless vocabulary lists that support all of these different activities. By the end of the first day, Friday, I had already learned close to 150 new words. The pace has not lessened and I find myself studiously emulating my former students and their grueling schedule: waking early to go over my flashcards, spending my afternoons reading and diligently looking up words that I don’t know, and spending my nights reviewing and writing in my journal. I liken the approach of AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) to an attack on my language skills from all sides. Any weakness is eradicated as my skills are strengthened in a plethora of different ways.
One of the best parts about being in the Advanced class is that the expectation is never that we simply translate or read aloud together. We are expected to arrive at class, ready to have conversations about whatever it was that was assigned to us, be it a movie or literature or a magazine article. In this way, I’m beginning to understand the foundations of having an academic Hindi vocabulary – the difference between speaking properly and speaking in the street. Additionally, my street Hindi is benefiting as I begin to iron out what I know and what I need to know.
It can be frustrating to want to comment on the complicated themes of a Hindi film and to want to use my academic vocabulary to express my ideas concisely, only to find that my tongue and mind will not cooperate, that it is as if a thick blanket is constantly hanging over my head through which I must make myself understood. However, I have never been pushed or challenged in this way and am enjoying it immensely. There are no slackers here – everyone is in this game to reach that elusive goal: fluency.
Best,
Cat
Friday, June 17, 2011
Kingdom of Dreams
Dear dedicated reader,
Apologies for the radio silence – A week has passed and I’ve often opened my laptop with the intention of writing to assure you that I am safe, that I have arrived and that all is well; however, each time that I found myself in this situation, something found a way to intervene and prevent my completing this letter to you.
We’ve been kept exceptionally busy since we arrived – from stepping off the plane, we were whisked into the waiting, competent arms of the American Institute of India Studies (AIIS) program staff. For a few days, we moved about hurriedly and awkwardly, a monster with 60 heads, as the Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi programs were all oriented together before being bussed, flown and driven to our various destinations. We were oriented and re-oriented – the mad lib of Indian orientations was repeated once again, the blanks filled in the same way – and generally led about by the nose to various tourist destinations.
This included but was not limited to a much built up visit to the “Kingdom of Dreams”. I had seen a sign at the airport for this mysterious place: it was a picture of a large Indian-esque palace with a life size picture of Shah Rukh Khan, arms outstretched, in front of it. In truth, the place is something of an Indian Disneyland – food from every part of the country is represented in stalls like a kind of Indian Epcot center. Overpriced souvenirs culled from each part of India abounded, as well as suitably thematic decoration, finishing with a large sandbox meant to replicate a beach from Goa.
The arrival of our large tourist bus was greeted with a welcoming committee of men with drums standing in front of a huge life-size ornate golden elephant. Upon entry, a demure woman with a tray of red paint greeted us and placed a graceful finger-full on our faces, pressing rice into the wet red mixture with care. The sweat which slicked the surface of my forehead immediately caused this gentle welcoming gesture to become a full on uncontained run of red down the bridge of my nose.
It was clear that our program organizers were very excited about taking us here so I did my best to remain optimistic as we paraded past men and woman in ornate, elaborate costumes meant to replicate dress from many different parts of India. We were given a credit card with 650 rupees that could only be spent at this location and told to find dinner. A few of us wandered until we found a Mumbai chaat stand and availed ourselves of its menu to eat some delicious papri chaat (fried crackers with potatos, lentils, tamarind sauce, yogurt and green chutney).
The strangest part of the experience was that this outrageous tourist attraction, this false recreation of a reality that only exists in travelogues written by colonialists, was filled not with foreign tourists, but with Indians from every corner of the country.
Truly, the experience is best communicated by video:
Now, we are in Jaipur and I’ve moved in with my host family, the Mehrishis. I’ll save their introduction for my next letter, dear reader.
Best,
Cat
Apologies for the radio silence – A week has passed and I’ve often opened my laptop with the intention of writing to assure you that I am safe, that I have arrived and that all is well; however, each time that I found myself in this situation, something found a way to intervene and prevent my completing this letter to you.
We’ve been kept exceptionally busy since we arrived – from stepping off the plane, we were whisked into the waiting, competent arms of the American Institute of India Studies (AIIS) program staff. For a few days, we moved about hurriedly and awkwardly, a monster with 60 heads, as the Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi programs were all oriented together before being bussed, flown and driven to our various destinations. We were oriented and re-oriented – the mad lib of Indian orientations was repeated once again, the blanks filled in the same way – and generally led about by the nose to various tourist destinations.
This included but was not limited to a much built up visit to the “Kingdom of Dreams”. I had seen a sign at the airport for this mysterious place: it was a picture of a large Indian-esque palace with a life size picture of Shah Rukh Khan, arms outstretched, in front of it. In truth, the place is something of an Indian Disneyland – food from every part of the country is represented in stalls like a kind of Indian Epcot center. Overpriced souvenirs culled from each part of India abounded, as well as suitably thematic decoration, finishing with a large sandbox meant to replicate a beach from Goa.
The arrival of our large tourist bus was greeted with a welcoming committee of men with drums standing in front of a huge life-size ornate golden elephant. Upon entry, a demure woman with a tray of red paint greeted us and placed a graceful finger-full on our faces, pressing rice into the wet red mixture with care. The sweat which slicked the surface of my forehead immediately caused this gentle welcoming gesture to become a full on uncontained run of red down the bridge of my nose.
It was clear that our program organizers were very excited about taking us here so I did my best to remain optimistic as we paraded past men and woman in ornate, elaborate costumes meant to replicate dress from many different parts of India. We were given a credit card with 650 rupees that could only be spent at this location and told to find dinner. A few of us wandered until we found a Mumbai chaat stand and availed ourselves of its menu to eat some delicious papri chaat (fried crackers with potatos, lentils, tamarind sauce, yogurt and green chutney).
The strangest part of the experience was that this outrageous tourist attraction, this false recreation of a reality that only exists in travelogues written by colonialists, was filled not with foreign tourists, but with Indians from every corner of the country.
Truly, the experience is best communicated by video:
Now, we are in Jaipur and I’ve moved in with my host family, the Mehrishis. I’ll save their introduction for my next letter, dear reader.
Best,
Cat
Friday, June 10, 2011
Filling in the Blanks
Dear dedicated reader,
“Think of your worst trait and magnify it by ten – that is what you will turn into on your worst day in India.” The woman speaking to us paused to let this sink in. I looked around the hotel conference room, full of prospective Critical Language Scholarship recipients heading to India, and I wondered if everyone else was thinking the same thing as me: what *is* my worst trait?
While conducting this reflection, I realized that, at this point in my life, I have attended no less than four orientations preparing me for life in India – one with Brown, Princeton in Asia, Nanubhai, and now the State Department. Therefore, I have decided that the best way to communicate what the common denominator experience of being oriented for India is like is to provide you with an “India Orientation” Madlib!
“Congratulations ________ (name of group of hopefuls) on your decision to go to India. I’d like to provide you with _______ (amount) of advice about living in India based on my _____ (number) of years of experience. First of all, let’s talk about safety. You should never go out at ______ (time of day) because of _________ (weather/wild dogs/monkeys/rapists) or, if you do, make sure that you have travel in packs or have a male friend with you. Also, please let us know where you are because we are afraid of ______ (threats to your personal safety/litigation).
Now, it is likely that you will fall ill during _____ (some/part/all day everyday) of your visit and therefore you should be prepared with _____ (immodium/doxycycline/advil/lopamine/larium/probiotics/Tylenol pm/Sudafed/cipro/airborne/tums), but, make sure not to self-medicate: go the _______ (qualified medical professional)! One thing that usually makes participants sick is the _____ (food/smells/heat/change in climate/bacteria). Therefore, you should watch what you eat and make sure you never eat _______ (fruit/uncooked vegetables/street food/unfiltered water/anything tasty looking). This will most likely make you feel like ______ (nasty horrible thing). Also, I checked the high in _______ (city of arrival) and it is _____ (three digit number) degrees, so make sure to drink plenty of ____(a liquid).
Getting around in India will also present some challenges. The roads in India are like _______ (something crazy). The most common transportation (unspoken assumption: for foreigners) is the ________ (three wheeled device with an engine taken from a lawnmower). You can take these, but not after ______ (time of day).
You may know that the culture of India is very different from ours, and you may experience some culture shock on your arrival. Men, don’t wear ________ (typically informal American piece of clothing) and women, we suggest that if you don’t want your _______ (Part of the body) stared at or touched that you wear ________ (typically traditional piece of clothing).
Lastly, we’ve purchased travel insurance on your behalf and I’d like to go over it. It provides benefits fo most things, but not ________ (a contact sport), ________ (a pre-existing condition), or _______ (an act of terrorism). So, please keep those restrictions in mind.
We hope you have a great time in India this ______ (summer/year/semester)!
Safe travels!”
Here’s hoping you all now feel fully oriented. We head out to the airport in just a few hours for our flight! The next time that I write to you, dear reader, I will be staying at the Taj Ambassador in Delhi.
Best,
Cat
“Think of your worst trait and magnify it by ten – that is what you will turn into on your worst day in India.” The woman speaking to us paused to let this sink in. I looked around the hotel conference room, full of prospective Critical Language Scholarship recipients heading to India, and I wondered if everyone else was thinking the same thing as me: what *is* my worst trait?
While conducting this reflection, I realized that, at this point in my life, I have attended no less than four orientations preparing me for life in India – one with Brown, Princeton in Asia, Nanubhai, and now the State Department. Therefore, I have decided that the best way to communicate what the common denominator experience of being oriented for India is like is to provide you with an “India Orientation” Madlib!
“Congratulations ________ (name of group of hopefuls) on your decision to go to India. I’d like to provide you with _______ (amount) of advice about living in India based on my _____ (number) of years of experience. First of all, let’s talk about safety. You should never go out at ______ (time of day) because of _________ (weather/wild dogs/monkeys/rapists) or, if you do, make sure that you have travel in packs or have a male friend with you. Also, please let us know where you are because we are afraid of ______ (threats to your personal safety/litigation).
Now, it is likely that you will fall ill during _____ (some/part/all day everyday) of your visit and therefore you should be prepared with _____ (immodium/doxycycline/advil/lopamine/larium/probiotics/Tylenol pm/Sudafed/cipro/airborne/tums), but, make sure not to self-medicate: go the _______ (qualified medical professional)! One thing that usually makes participants sick is the _____ (food/smells/heat/change in climate/bacteria). Therefore, you should watch what you eat and make sure you never eat _______ (fruit/uncooked vegetables/street food/unfiltered water/anything tasty looking). This will most likely make you feel like ______ (nasty horrible thing). Also, I checked the high in _______ (city of arrival) and it is _____ (three digit number) degrees, so make sure to drink plenty of ____(a liquid).
Getting around in India will also present some challenges. The roads in India are like _______ (something crazy). The most common transportation (unspoken assumption: for foreigners) is the ________ (three wheeled device with an engine taken from a lawnmower). You can take these, but not after ______ (time of day).
You may know that the culture of India is very different from ours, and you may experience some culture shock on your arrival. Men, don’t wear ________ (typically informal American piece of clothing) and women, we suggest that if you don’t want your _______ (Part of the body) stared at or touched that you wear ________ (typically traditional piece of clothing).
Lastly, we’ve purchased travel insurance on your behalf and I’d like to go over it. It provides benefits fo most things, but not ________ (a contact sport), ________ (a pre-existing condition), or _______ (an act of terrorism). So, please keep those restrictions in mind.
We hope you have a great time in India this ______ (summer/year/semester)!
Safe travels!”
Here’s hoping you all now feel fully oriented. We head out to the airport in just a few hours for our flight! The next time that I write to you, dear reader, I will be staying at the Taj Ambassador in Delhi.
Best,
Cat
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Back again
Dear dedicated readers (or those of you who still remain),
I’ve long since left Nanubhai and Kadod behind but I am thinking of reviving this blog as I enter into yet another Indian adventure, this time under the purview of the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program (www.clscholarship.org). I’ll be moving to Jaipur for ten weeks this summer and after a year of doctoral study I’m very much looking forward to seeing my old friend India again, this time, with different eyes.
I remember the very first time that I made the transition across the ocean as a sophomore in college, venturing to this place that I had studied but never seen – the alternating waves of elation and terror were so overwhelming that I considered, on disembarking for my connecting flight in London, simply turning around and going home. When I think back to that first experience, my memory catches on the surface level things – the smells, colors – those things that India is known for. I remember outrageous arguments with autorickshaw drivers and dust and heat and occasionally an elated rain. I remember thinking, “There is no reading about this place. There is only being here.” I still feel that way, even after three years of Indian residency.
The things I read in graduate school about India seem flat – two dimensional. Regardless of the quality of their empirics – their method, their contribution to the literature – it feels far away and somehow lacking. As I’m only a beginning scholar, I struggle sometimes for the proper words to intimate the why behind my feelings of distaste for these studies. Maybe it is that when I think of India, I think of my students, my close friends, the place I lovingly refer to as my village. My mind seems unable to comprehend India in aggregate.
In many ways, my understanding of India is like my Hindi. At first, formally schooled, I studied Hindi and India at a distance, from afar. I immersed myself in its study and believe myself knowledgeable. I was wrong. I couldn’t keep up in a conversation and while I could argue fine, I was miles away from true knowledge of the language. In Kadod, I achieved a sort of unschooled comfort with language and with India – I had to relearn many things that I thought I knew, be always ready for the cognitive dissonance of living in an unfamiliar place. My tongue became accustomed to producing the sounds on command and my mind found a way to reconcile itself to a new palette of experiences by inventing explanations for what I saw that gelled with my American way of understanding the world.
This combination of schooled and unschooled experiences are what I bring to my journey this summer. My relatively fluid Hindi needs grammatical supports – structure – to improve and my mind needs the combination of reflecting on my experiences in reference to theory in order to move forward in my scholarship.
I am hoping to document my attempt to do both of these things. While I cannot promise the array of characters that you came to know and love in my previous blog, I will do my best to communicate my experience with thoughtfulness, honesty, and with some luck, humor.
Best,
Cat
I’ve long since left Nanubhai and Kadod behind but I am thinking of reviving this blog as I enter into yet another Indian adventure, this time under the purview of the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program (www.clscholarship.org). I’ll be moving to Jaipur for ten weeks this summer and after a year of doctoral study I’m very much looking forward to seeing my old friend India again, this time, with different eyes.
I remember the very first time that I made the transition across the ocean as a sophomore in college, venturing to this place that I had studied but never seen – the alternating waves of elation and terror were so overwhelming that I considered, on disembarking for my connecting flight in London, simply turning around and going home. When I think back to that first experience, my memory catches on the surface level things – the smells, colors – those things that India is known for. I remember outrageous arguments with autorickshaw drivers and dust and heat and occasionally an elated rain. I remember thinking, “There is no reading about this place. There is only being here.” I still feel that way, even after three years of Indian residency.
The things I read in graduate school about India seem flat – two dimensional. Regardless of the quality of their empirics – their method, their contribution to the literature – it feels far away and somehow lacking. As I’m only a beginning scholar, I struggle sometimes for the proper words to intimate the why behind my feelings of distaste for these studies. Maybe it is that when I think of India, I think of my students, my close friends, the place I lovingly refer to as my village. My mind seems unable to comprehend India in aggregate.
In many ways, my understanding of India is like my Hindi. At first, formally schooled, I studied Hindi and India at a distance, from afar. I immersed myself in its study and believe myself knowledgeable. I was wrong. I couldn’t keep up in a conversation and while I could argue fine, I was miles away from true knowledge of the language. In Kadod, I achieved a sort of unschooled comfort with language and with India – I had to relearn many things that I thought I knew, be always ready for the cognitive dissonance of living in an unfamiliar place. My tongue became accustomed to producing the sounds on command and my mind found a way to reconcile itself to a new palette of experiences by inventing explanations for what I saw that gelled with my American way of understanding the world.
This combination of schooled and unschooled experiences are what I bring to my journey this summer. My relatively fluid Hindi needs grammatical supports – structure – to improve and my mind needs the combination of reflecting on my experiences in reference to theory in order to move forward in my scholarship.
I am hoping to document my attempt to do both of these things. While I cannot promise the array of characters that you came to know and love in my previous blog, I will do my best to communicate my experience with thoughtfulness, honesty, and with some luck, humor.
Best,
Cat
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