On Dhal: Taste, Memory and Place

A couple of friends and I were in Little India -- now known as Gerrard India Bazaar, apparently -- for dinner last night and also stopped in at an Indian grocery store. And all three of us decided to make my version of dhal today.... since I've now promised that recipe to half a dozen of you, I thought I'd just post it here. We bought bags of that little yellow dhal that is traditionally used in South India to make savoury pongal so that's what we're using but really, you could use pretty much any kind of dhal (and in a pinch, even a can of lentils) to make this. So, the core recipe for Archana's lazy-day dhal follows and then there are some variations and comments. Every woman -- and quite a few men too! -- will have their own version so this isn't authoritative in any way:

1 cup of dhal
salt
1 tomato, chopped (nice but not absolutely necessary)

1 tbsp oil (corn or canola or peanut oil -- don't use anything highly flavoured like olive)
2 chillies (dried red ones or fresh green ones; substitute 1/2 tsp chillie flakes if you have neither)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
small handful of curry leaves (fresh is wonderful; but it's not easily available in small batches so I tend to buy a large bag, use it fresh for a week and then strip the remaining leaves off the stalks and stick them in the freezer -- and they're fine in this)
small handful of coriander leaves
1/2 tsp of dhania-jeera powder (if you want to make this yourself, toast 2 tbsps of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns and grind them in a coffee mill: smells great as it toasts)
juice from 1/2 a lime (or a lemon or 1 tbsp concentrate from a bottle)
1 tsp butter

optional stuff

1 small onion, chopped or sliced
1 cup chopped vegetables (carrots, taters, sweet potatoes, kholrabi, long white radishes, little round eggplants or the long green ones; some people use okra or green beans but I'm not a fan)
OR
1 cup of chopped spinach (a small package of the frozen chopped spinach will also do just fine)

Wash the dhal thoroughly -- it's often coloured artificially and you should wash it in running hot water until the water runs clear. If I'm making dhal, I'll probably make rice too so I tend to do them both at the same time: run hot water into one, swish it around and let it sit till I've done the other, then go back to it. An old-wives tale says that if you can't wash dhal and rice without loosing a lot of grains down the drain, you'll have to look for a rich man to marry!
Anyway, start cooking the dhal in 3 cups of hot water. Add some salt -- but go easy on this: it's easier to add more at the end than to take it out! If you're going to add root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, get the dhal boiling and then chop and toss them in. My dhal today has a mix of carrots and potatoes.
You might need to add more hot water to the dhal as it cooks -- check on it every 5 to 10 mins; it should take about 20 mins. I like my dhal all mushed together and the veggies in it should be melting -- you won't see any of the sharp edges they started off with in my version! If you're using tomatoes, toss them in once the dhal has started to loose shape. I had half a leftover roma so in that went. That's the best thing about dhal -- you can pretty much make it what you want. It's a bit like tomato sauce in Italian cooking: there's a basic recipe and everyone modifies it according to taste or need.
I'd stick the rice on when you toss the tomatoes, if indeed you are using them.
When the dhal and the rice are both done, heat the oil in a small frying pan. As soon as the oil is really hot, add the chilles, mustard seeds, cumin and garlic. If the oil is truly hot, the seeds will go "pop" and splutter all over; that's when you add the onion, if using. Stir for a minute or so: as soon as the onion and garlic start to brown at the edges, add the curry leaves and the dhania-jeera powder. The smell is incredible. Stir through, add the coriander leaves and turn off the burner. My grandmother would sometimes do this -- especially when she wasn't using onions -- in a steel ladle but I think we're all safer sticking with our smallest frying pans!
Add the seasoning mix to to the hot dhal, stir in the butter and lime juice. If you're using chopped or frozen spinach, stir it in -- it will wilt or melt into the dhal in a few minutes.

If you can't be bothered with a pot and a pan, you can cook it all in one pot: start by heating the oil and following the above till you get to the dhania-jeera powder. At this point, add the uncooked dhal and the 3 cups of water plus or minus the veggies and let it all cook till done. Add the butter and the lime juice and some extra coriander (the earlier addition won't be green any longer.) If you're using that can of lentils, add that instead of the dry dhal. Stir in 1 cup of hot water and pulse through it with a hand blender.

Et voila! Ladle over rice and eat with mango pickle. Leftovers are great spooned over rice mixed with yoghurt. But I'm no purist when it comes to food: today, my lunch was rice and this dhal with a little bit of leftover fish in black bean sauce from a chinese resto down the street. When I was a kid, I'd eat rice and yellow dhal with mango pickle and BBQ flavoured potato chips! I remember my dad bribing me to finish the rice and dhal on my plate with a large wodge of mango pickle: I'd eat up the rice with the spicy pickled stuffs adhering to the chunk of sour green mango and then spend the afternoon sucking on it for its sour-saltiness. Beyond those memories, I'm told that as a toddler, I was fed on a mush of rice, plain boiled dhal, salt and ghee, as many children are. These days, it's winter comfort food of the first order! And my friends have been known to get a bowlful as soup.... but who knows if the dhal that I've come to make is anything like the stuff my mother or grandmother made. Food like this is all about trying to recapture memories and to visit times and places that are past.

Dhal is probably the most Indian of Indian foods and the one of the easiest things to make, if you've a few ingredients on hand and some time. A potful of dhal can be stretched out with water and some extra seasonings to feed a dozen people; it's eaten with rice and rotis across the country and it probably tastes different in every household. It can be fancied up with shredded coconut, tamarind, jaggery, ground up peanuts, herbs like dill and is even made into a casserole of sorts with leftover rotis or chapattis. My mother makes a mean and lean rasam, which is mostly tangy tomatoes and just a handful of the lentils with most of the same flavourings I use. My dad has spent decades railing against that for being "empty" -- no proteins or carbs but for my brother and me, that's probably the epitome of home-cooking; and no matter what, mine just doesn't taste like my mother's. The meanest resto in India, whether it caters to travelers and tourists or rickshaw drivers will have a version of dhal-chawal or dhal-roti on offer: I have a lasting memory of a little guest house (in Varanasi, I think) that proudly advertised "Dal Flied" on its menu. Dhal is also the metaphor for food across India -- the universally understood version of "our daily bread" in India is "dhal-roti ka bath hai" (it's a matter of dhal and roti understood as the basics of food. Another fave is "dhal, kapada aur makhan" (food, clothes and shelter); I have a vague memory of either a bollywood film or a song with that title. It's a powerful metaphor that reaches across so many years and so many experiences to so many people.

Not in Kansas Anymore

I know I promised y'all a post about funeral customs next but I'm going to write about everyday life in Mysore instead because I've had a couple of emails from people asking me about it. Besides, I thought it'd be a nice change for all concerned if I didn't write about death and my feelings of fragility -- so instead I'm going to switch back into cultural analyst mode.

Today, the big excitement is that we finally -- I hope -- have a maid again! I know how strange this will sound in Canada but it's impossible to manage in a place like this without someone to come in and do the chores for you. At least, it's impossible for me. And it's impossible for pretty much everyone I know -- of course, there's a class component to this: labour, especially women's labour is incredibly cheap here but it's also the everything-takes-more-effort setup of daily life here. Unbelievable amounts of dust come pouring into the house so it has to be swept at least once, but ideally twice, a day and the floors need to be swabbed to lay the dirt for a while. I haven't seen a dishwasher here, and there's no running hot water so imagine the quantity of dishes that pile up in a family household, with 4 or 6 or 8 people eating three meals a day and drinking numerous rounds of coffee and serving drinks and munchies to all the people who drop by. Also, there are generally no microwaves or ovens or even ranges so everything is cooked on two gas rings that run off calor gas cylinders. My family has the most antiquated washing machine you ever saw, that can only handle being run once a day (if that) because of how much power and water it sucks up -- water is "let out" by the city corporation between midnight and 3 or 4am and gets filled into a tank on top of the house. If your tank runs out during the day, oh well, too bad. I know lots of women who stay up till midnight to fill up additional buckets with water because their water tanks are too small or they're expecting guests who'll need extra water. Add things like bucket baths using hot water that's heated in an (electrified) copper water boiler, power outages at least twice a day, garbage that gets picked up only when the garbagemen feel like it, milk that needs to boiled and cooled before it can be used, and in our case, a family car that's older than ! am.... and is slowly falling apart (I kid you not -- yesterday, the rim on the inside of one door fell off!) and you get the idea of how ramshackle (my) life here is. Everything seems to be held together with string and cello-tape and I can't help worrying that the wheels are about the fall off altogether.

This isn't -- of course -- what everyone experiences in India or even in Mysore. It's possible to live here and at least inside your home or hotel room, not realize that you're not in Kansas anymore. Since the early 90s, a class that I'm going to call the New India has grown up around globalization and the tech and service industries in particular. This is a class that has access to the kinds of disposable income that my grandmother could never have imagined. They are for the most part young and English speaking and have grown into adulthood already entrenched in consumer culture. Apple's IPhone just launched in India, for instance, and it's certainly catering to this demographic. They have expensive (if usually bad) taste, drive new motorbikes or cars, eat out a lot and tend to live in the "Metros." A slightly older class of people who've benefited from globalization are those who've seen their property values go up -- increasingly, globalization has meant industrialization and the further movement of rural populations to urban centres and this new population needs accommodation. At the same time, the New India is reluctant to remain in joint-family living arrangements so there's more demand for smaller, single family living spaces. So apartment buildings -- unusual outside cities such an Bombay even as late as 15 years ago -- are going up everywhere, municipal facilities are failing to keep up with skyrocketing demand and property values in most urban locations have gone up exponentially.

Rest in Peace

So the end is here: my grandmother Kama died a few days ago. She was in a lot of pain and half unconscious for the last few days – and when she could speak, she’d said that she wanted to go – so there are no regrets from her perspective. It’s those of us who are left behind now who have to figure out ways of going on living. I’ve been lucky so far in that I’ve not had to deal with someone this close to me dying… but now I don’t know how to cope. Every morning when I wake up and remember that Kama is dead, that that’s the reason why I’m here in India – well, it hits me all over again. Right now, I can’t see how to reach “normal” (whatever that was) again. How does one cope with death anyway? Is there a route back from here?

It hasn’t helped that it has been chaotic here since, well, it was pretty chaotic when she was in the hospital, too. But death brings with it a frenzy of activity that momentarily takes your mind off the actual fact of having lost someone forever… and that’s what the last few days have been like. There’s the sheer physicality of having to deal with a body – suddenly transformed from a living breathing person with a personality into merely a thing – the minimum shastras (religious rites) that have to be performed, pictures selected for obits and a ceremonial lunch organized for next week to mark her passing.

I’m a heap of relief (that she is not in pain and that we don’t have to see her so), guilt (were we right to wish for a quick end for her?), sadness (because she’s not here anymore) and anger (I can’t explain this one… I just know that I’m angry with the world). You can imagine what it’s like living in close proximity with five other people who are as upset as I am: and the thing about India is that you get no space to yourself – everyone is with you all the time, they’re leaning on you and hanging onto you and touching you when all you want is to be left alone. This is bad enough when you’re on holiday but it’s a million times worse when you’re dealing to deal with emotions. I suppose people derive comfort from each other at times like this but it’s not my way to share my grief with people I don’t know intimately (and just because they happen to be relatives or have known my family for eons does not make them my intimates) – and I don’t know how to tell all the relatives and family friends who insist on visiting and calling and crying and hugging that all I want is some peace and quiet, preferably in a nice dark room somewhere far away from everyone here!

I can't bring myself to write about it yet but my next post will be on the funeral rites – I’ve never been to an Indian funeral before so I found it all fascinating. Maybe I’m truly an academic at heart but thinking about it in terms of how and why the customs are what they are was one way of distancing myself from what was going on.... I’m still not ready to deal with the fact that my grandmother doesn’t exist in any knowable form anymore.

Tragedy and Comedy on Independence Day

Yesterday was Independence Day and was it ever celebrated all over the place! I've got lots to say about nationalism in the New India but that'll have to keep till I can find the videos I want to link to on youtube!

It’s been a week since we arrived in India and it feels like its been forever. Today’s the first day I’ve actually been home and had time to think since we arrived here: I’ve been home (cleaning up the disaster zone this place has become but still home alone and those of you who’ve followed my adventures in India last year know how rare that is!) all day and have realized that this is what purgatory must feel like. Waiting for someone you love to die is horrible but the tragedy of it all is undercut by the low comedy of “life must go on.” When a crisis lasts a day or two, you get by on adrenaline alone – and who cares if you’ve not changed. But this has been over a month and so there’s food to be procured or produced for six, not to mention clean underwear and beds for different people at different times.

We’ve only been here for a week but its been a critical week – I can’t believe how fast the cancer is eating away at her. I know she’d made a special effort to hold on till we got here and for a couple of days after that she didn’t seem to be in too much pain. She talked to us, haltingly perhaps, and certainly responded to us talking to her. In the last few days, though, she’s begun to sink markedly…. She seemed to spend longer and longer periods asleep, which we thought was a good sign but now the sleep is more like a stupor and I’m not sure she’s even aware of us. She’s certainly not responding to conversation or to touch – it’s heartbreaking to see her lying there more or less blankly, though this is, I suppose, better than seeing her restless from pain and in real distress. There were a couple of bad days in between when she was in pain and moaning out loud, which nearly drove me around the bend as I sat there holding her hand murmuring that it would alright when I bloody well knew that it wouldn’t ever be alright for her again.

Of course, it hasn’t all been tragedy though – I’ve been taken for a “real” doctor by one of the real doctors attending to her. Hospitals in India are quite informally run – and given that my mom’s medical standing in Mysore, we’re consulted as to my grandmother’s care to an unbelievable degree. So yesterday was when I became a “real” doctor: I was alone at the hospital and but had been left with instructions as to what to ask the consultant physician who was supposed to be doing his “rounds” that morning. Gramma is in a teaching hospital so consultants arrive for their rounds with a gaggle of respectful medical students and junior doctors in various stages of their careers. So in walks the great man. Nods all around. Then:

Great Man: “How has she been?”
Me: “She’s now asleep, sir, but she’s been in pain all morning and we’re wondering if she should be on medication for it?”
GM: “Yes, yes, what does your mother think?”
Moi: “Well, we talked about giving her Pethidine….” [
GM, nod, nod. “Yes, yes, terminal cancer patient. No point worrying about addiction. Pethdine, huh? Why not morphine?”
Me: “She’s allergic.”
GM: “Hmmm, I see, I see.”
Me: “Perhaps a 50mg dose, but only to be given when she’s actually awake and in pain?” [parroting my mother again].
GM: “Yes, yes, I’ll write it up for the nurses.”
Me: “Thank you, sir, we just want to make sure she doesn’t suffer.”
GM: “Quite right, terminal case but no need for distress. OK, doctor.”
I thought perhaps I’d misheard or that he’d just not realized what he’d said. Until… an hour later, he popped his head into the room (followed by heads of a few of the entourage) to say: “One more thing, doctor, make sure the dose is signed out from the Chief when he’s here – he handles all narcotics personally – so you can administer at night if you need to.”
Me: “Er, sir….”
GM: “That’s it, that’s all I came to say. OK doctor.”
And GM and entourage all back out while I stand there trying not to laugh.

Arrival

I know it’s only been 5 days since we left Toronto but I’m feeling as though several lifetimes have passed. For one thing, arriving in India always hits me like a physical shock – you travel for hours, you’re exhausted from the plane and the airports you’ve passed through, you’re finally there and India hits you in a combination of humidity and smell (exhaust fumes, perspiration, and dust). Not in a bad way, just in a very distinctive way. BUT this time, as we arrived in the brand new Bangalore International Airport, neither the mugginess nor the smell hit us! South India is in the mild throes of the winter monsoon and when we emerged out of the airport at 1:30am, it was into a beautifully cool evening. Even before that though, the airport is one of… the airports of the world: all glass and light, gleaming shiny floors and aircon, plants in tall pots, and for someone who’s been arriving at the old HAL airport in Bangalore for ages, it’s a real shock to the system!

Because this is India, which is only really held together by spiderwebs of friends and relatives, we were met by a family friend and my cousin. We emerged blinking to find my cousin waving his cellphone at us, since he was just on the phone to the hospital, where our arrival was being as carefully monitored as though it were a situation room! Since my darling grandma was awake and waiting, we drove straight there from the airport – this will possibly remain in my memory as one of the best rides I’ve had in India: speeding through the empty streets late late at night creates a certain drama of its own that sustains you through the exhaustion of the past few hours. And anyone who’s been anywhere in India will recognize the rarity of empty streets. Though there were signs even on that drive of the heightened state of tension that the South is in following the bombings in Bangalore a few days ago: our taxi was stopped by sweatered and scarved police officers (it’s 20 degrees – practically freezing, dontcha know?!) who wanted to know who we were and where we were going. The check was rudimentary, involving as it did the noting of the cab’s number and the driver’s name but still… the fact that it happened at all (a first for me) is a reminder of the New India. By the way, the luxury taxi cab – hired for the night, basically and including the return trip from Bangalore to Mysore – cost us a whacking $110. Plus a gratefully received $5 tip for the driver.

So we got to the hospital at 4:30 in the morning – I know, I know – very soap opera but it wasn’t really like that – hospitals in India are still evolving so the fact that my mom and her brother and sister were all with their mother in the hospital at 4:30 am is not that surprising. So we went in, after being warned of what to expect, and visited with my grandma for a while. I can’t begin to articulate how awful it is to see her like this – hooked up to oxygen tubes and what not, her hands and feet swollen, her face folded in and her eyes set in deep dark hollows of misery and exhaustion. There is no drama here – only sadness. I’ve now spent hours sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, trying to figure out what she’s saying when she can mouth a few words, trying to distract her from the pain and discomfort… all of this is just excruciating for her and miserable for us who wait with her. The hospital she’s in here is one of the best in the city but it’s an Indian hospital, which means that she’s in a “Deluxe Private” Room – these rooms have a bed for the patient and an extra bed for an “attendant” as someone is expected to stay with the patient all the time. We’re also expected to provide her food (and ours!) and to monitor the IVs and medicines and just call the nurse when there’s something to be done – like changing the IV. To be fair, my grandmother is getting royal treatment here because my mother used to be a well known doctor in Mysore (20 years ago and that, m’dears, still means something here!) and she knows all the doctors here and so on. In fact, we’ve been given the unheard of privilege of having another “Deluxe Private” room which is currently not needed set aside for our family to use – we take it in turns to nap there, eat takeout food in it and so on. I can’t imagine a setup like this anywhere in Canada! Not the “attendant” allowed – no, required – to stay with the patient nor anything else.

But nonetheless, I hate it. I hate the sense of bareness about this best of the options hospitals (I’ve discovered that I have a lot of faith in the technologies so easily available in hospitals in the West – there’s no such thing as a crash cart here; there are no intercoms or call buttons; the nurses have to call down for the one oxygen meter when they are asked to check oxygen saturation levels (and trust me, this is not a complicated or expensive machine!)… everything feels pared down to the basics, which in general is a good thing because I think medicine in the West is too mechanized and too dependent on technology as opposed to trained diagnosis etc but this… this is a little bit too much bare-foot-doctor for my tastes). More on this theme later, I’m sure, because it’s something I find interesting – after all, I wrote about this in my thesis!

More than anything, though, I hate her helplessness, I hate ours and this sense of just sitting there waiting for death to come and relieve her. It’s so cruel that after all these years of enduring life, she has to go through this. That there is no hope of recovery makes it all the harder to bear for everyone – it’s impossible to not resent this phase when there is no chance that she will get better. “Better” at this point is counted in a good hour here or there.

My “break” at home is over so I’m off to the hospital again. I’ll write more soon. In the meantime, please keep the good vibes (and emails!) coming – they’re my only link to my normal (whatever that is) life in Toronto!

I leave today; I'm packing light, a suitcase and some toiletries....

It's true: I do leave today and I am packing light. I didn't think I'd be returning to India this fall and certainly not to Mysore or with the shadow of my grandmother's illness hanging over me. But some things are beyond prediction or anticipation: we can only respond to things as they happen. I returned last week from New York to find that my imperious, indomitable (and I truly mean that: she was the one who ruled her family -- seven younger sisters and a brother to start with!) grandma is terminally ill; since then, I've been desperate to get on a plane and go to her. There were complications, of course, with visas and tickets but we're all set now. The Brother comes with me and we fly out in a few hours. I'm going back to the blog because it's going to be the easiest way of keeping in touch with y'all over the next few months and because I'm hoping (selfishly) that writing through my experiences in Mysore will help me to deal with them.

In the meantime, I want you to meet my grandmother, Kasturi Sivaswamy. That's her up there. She means the world to me: until I was seven, I (we) lived with her while my mom and dad bounced around the world practicing medicine and doing other doctorly things.

I know it's going to be a hard trip back and nothing like the last one but I'm telling myself that it's only during the hard times that we actually learn to deal with life as it happens and not as we shape it. I've already learnt that it's pretty easy to pack up a life: I'm on leave from SSHRCC, my place is sorted out and I have nothing else to keep me in Toronto. This is both terrifying and manifestly, a good thing right now. Also, I now know how little one actually needs to take on long journeys: "a suitcase and some toiletries," as the song goes.

Send me strength and patience, won't you all? I have a feeling that I'm going to be needing a lot of those two over the next little while.

'Bye, Toronto. At least for now.

Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

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Yesterday was madness here. Everywhere we went, there was pink and red. Streamers, clothing, advertisements -- the Times of India (a serious newspaper, that) -- took it upon itself to have kitschy Valentine-related articles and pictures all of last week; at a grocery store, I came across a display of Valentine cards (I think the pick of the bunch was "A Valentine's Day Wish for My Boss and Bestfriend"); all of the local news channels ran Valentine's "specials." We stopped by an eletrical appliances "fair" -- only to be ambushed by an offer to buy two electric rice cookers -- "One for you and one for your Valentine Mother." Schools and colleges and other places where the yout gather have all been done over in pink and red for the big day. But clearly, St. Valentine's Day isn't just about the sickly-sweet sentiment that love is assumed to be by the vast masses of Indian yout for whom sweaty hand-clasps have to be the extent of the expression of love. Oh no, it's become a family and friend and people you don't know extravaganza driven by corporate marketing, disposable incomes in the hands of the young techie demographic and mass media. And it's not just the women; I counted 17 men in pink and red shirts yesterday and we were only out and about for an hour or so. It's nuts. NUTS, I tell you.

Especially because this is still a deeply traditional culture. And I do mean deeply. The norm is still for marriages to be arranged. Gender roles are pretty much still the traditional ones; female foeticide is still a subject of serious concern to the nation -- there are entire states where the ratio of women to men is in the 800:1000 range. So this embrace of Valentine's day is bizarre, on so many levels. But I also suspect that it appeals to the new-age Indian consumer of globalization precisely because of the syrupy sentimentality attached to its global marketing. St. Valentine's day -- or at least its mass-market variation -- is all sickly sweet chemically tasting chocolate, fluffy bunnies and expensive hot house roses with no perfume. It's not about any real change in the deep patriarchies of Indian social life. A Valentine's day date might involve the girl being invited out to the latest movie or the nearest Coffee Day but I'd wager that few of them get invitations to come and meet Mom and Dad (and Grandad and Grandma). The superficial acceptance of love and sentiment hasn't changed the conservative traditions upon which social life is built any.

But you wouldn't think that on the face of public display of Valentine fever yesterday, and because this is India and there is never any kind of a ridiculous embracing of this type of pop culture without an equal and opposite heart-rending somewhere else, there were protests organized by right-wing Hindu groups over "unIndian" Valentine's day celebrations. The irony will no doubt be lost on them, but I think it's worth mentioning -- given the depth of right-wing Hinduism's contempt for Islam -- that in Saudi Arabia, the religious authorities have reportedly ordered a crackdown on the "decadent" practice of St. Valentine's day to the extent that there is now a "black market" for roses and women have been instructed not to dress in red on that day.

Yes, I know. My mind boggles too. Boggle, boggle, boggle. b.o.g.g.l.e....

Aftermath

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LibraryGirl wants to know if I really spent my time at Canadian weddings boozing and flirting with boys. I suppose the truth is that I didn't, really. But I've consumed my share of celebratory glasses of champagne and been checked out by my share of inebriated men who are trapped at weddings. This seems to be the time honoured way of passing time at a wedding in Canada; in India, this is not a possibility. At least, not any wedding (or wedding-related function) I've ever attended here. Instead, you go around being introduced to people you've no interest in meeting and who've no interest in you except the purely genealogical: witness this one, where I must have been introduced to at least four dozen relatives with the words "this is my granddaughter, you know, my daughter Paru's child. She's thirty, and not married yet, but she has a PhD." Trust me, that gets old fast. Note that while I might be exaggerating here, it's not by much!

The reception itself was... nice. Everyone was all dressed up and they were fun to deconstruct. I got to play at being a glamourous Indian woman one last time, complete with sari (red and black silk with beads) and jewellery (gold) and heels (wobbly). The food was good, though that's already palled for me. I mean, I've been eating wonderful Indian food for 4-5 months now, so what's another such meal anyway. Aunt and I were to spend the night at a hotel in Bangalore and then spend the next day shopping before returning to Mysore. And so we returned back to the hotel and debriefed. And then, at midnight, we were awakened by the wedding party!: they'd decided to come hang with their out-of-town guests after seeing off the stragglers at the reception. That was the best -- we actually got to talk to the bride a bit though I do think she found the 12 or so of us gathered at the hotel all a bit much.

The next day Aunt and I spent wandering around the used and new bookstores of Bangalore. Oh joy! I'm now stocked with enough books to get me through to the end of my trip here (at least, I think so) and I've confirmed that (new and used) books are probably one of the few things that cost as much in India as they do in Canada. The stuff you can buy here though is crazy: I picked up a 70s edition of Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, for instance, for just over $2! It's the kind of book that no one reads nowadays (with good reason) but since it's one of the earlier fictive attempts to deal with questions of academic freedom and political repression in the university, I've always thought I should read it sometime. Well, sometime was yesterday, when we had no power for 12 hours and I therefore had very little to do. So, the book is dated and depressing but interesting in an odd way. And I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd have read it in Toronto so this was all to the good!

The lack of power yesterday was the last straw. I've been sick, on and off, for the past 2 weeks -- nothing major but just sick enough that I'm always conscious of it. And if you add traveling and meeting relatives reluctantly to that and then garnish it with the irritation of being ill and not being able to turn on a fan, you'll have an accurate picture of my state of mind (and body). So I've invested in an inverter, or UPS, or whatever it's called. It's a little black box that will apparently store enough power to keep us going with a light and a fan for a few hours when the power fails again (as it surely will). It wasn't cheap by Indian standards (about $400).... and it reminds me that quality of life in India is a matter of wealth in a way that it isn't in the West.

It's been awhile....

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and I'm sorry I caused a few of you to wonder what's been going on that's so exciting that I haven't been updating this blogue. The short answer is that I've been trying to get on with w.o.r.k -- that thing that I'm really in India to do: I've been setting up formal interviews and informally talking to people and it's taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to organize what they've had to say in reasonably accurate and easily retrievable passages.

Other than that, I've had a short foray into the world of public health care in India (for my aunt, not for myself). I've lots to say about it but I'm still processing it so that's a post for another day.

And perhaps more interestingly, one of me cousins has gone and gotten hisself engaged and married! All in the space of two weeks, too. The Fam has been abuzz with curiosity and more curiosity about it all, especially since the wedding was held with a week's notice in Bombay. Which meant that no one apart from said cousin's Ma and sister attended. No, it's not what you're thinking -- this is still India: there's very little pre-marital sex and pregnancy here. At least among the so-respectable middle-classes. But there's to be a fancy-schmancy reception at a private members' club in Bangalore tomorrow night and ofcourse, we're all gonna be there. It's not often we get a chance these days to experience any kind of Monsoon Wedding off the big screen; there aren't very many unmarrieds left, even given my extremely large and extremely trying Fam. And never mind that I don't approve of private members' clubs; this might be my last chance to get all dressed up in a fancy sari while I'm in India. It also means that I don't have to go visiting all the distant rellies to say hello and goodbye; they'll all be at the reception so I can see 'em all in one go. One night of plastering a smile on my face as people I haven't seen in a couple of decades take it upon themselves to tell me how much I've grown since then and how I should be married with sprogs by now. I'm planning to bare my teeth and bring up all the gossip about erring children and straying spouses that I've been assiduously gathering since I arrived for precisely this purpose. All in all, it should make for a fun night -- bad bollywood music, greasy Indian food, hundreds of Indian relatives and a few hours in a swish costume with no alcohol and no one to flirt with -- ah, what would a trip to India be without an Indian wedding to attend!

I shall report back. Till then, enjoy the tiddlywinks games that are going on all around the US: I gather it's South Carolina and Florida next.

By the way, for those of you who care, my entirely unscientific survey of y'all has Obama in the lead, with Edwards second. Only a couple of youse folks plumped for Hilary. Interesting. For what it's worth, I'd take an Obama-Edwards ticket just fine. Though one can only imagine what the Reps would do with that come election time. Feeding time for the sharks, most likely.

I'm gone.

Travels and Travails

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Well, boys and girls, Kerala was fun. We didn’t plan to do very much when we were there, but Infosys Grrl and I didn’t have a moment to spare: looking back at it, we did manage to do a fair bit. In Calicut, we went to a “resort” – just to see what it would be like. I have to say that though “Kadavu” (the resort) was in a breathtaking location overlooking a coconut-tree lined riverbank and a couple of small islands in the river, the experience itself didn’t wow us. We spent a lot of money on a meh lunch, and then were shooed away from the path down to the river because we didn’t have a “boating permit” – in other words, because we clearly didn’t look like wealthy foreign tourists, who were the only people we saw actually staying at Kadavu. I’ve always thought it’s sad to see Indian staff internalize the racism and classism of their colonial masters and these so-called resorts seem to be a prime example of contemporary iterations of such internalized racism and classism. And all of this even though we arrived in state at Kadavu with a car and driver lent to us by another of Infosys Grrl’s many Keralite relatives. I can only imagine what kind of a reaction we’d have received had we arrived – as we’d originally planned to – in an auto!

Anyway, it gives me great pleasure to report that there is a little walkway past the bridge that leads to Kadavu from Calicut where everyone is welcome to walk down to the river and paddle about to their hearts’ content!

There were other great things about Calicut – since Infosys Grrl knows it really well, she took me shopping for block-printed material that I could have made up into dresses. And we bought so much of it – mostly to give away – that the sales guy offered to have salwar kameezes made up for us in an hour if we wanted them! I had to try it – and honest to goodness, this lovely woman who spoke nothing but Malayalam took my measurements and figured out what I wanted and produced it for me in 90 mins. And darlings, with an “urgent” surcharge, the making up of the salwar suit cost me Rs. 125 (that’s at an exchange rate of about Rs. 40 to 1$ Cdn). There’s nothing I can say about the price of labour in India without sounding hypocritical so I shall just leave y’all to imagine living on these kinds of wages for yourselves… especially when globalization has meant that it is perfectly possible to order U.S Pizza (that’s the chain’s name) even in Calicut. A medium cheese pizza costs Rs. 350.

We made it back to Cochin the next day, went on another boat ride and then made out way back to Bangalore, where it was my turn to expose Infosys Grrl to crazy rellies. We visited two of my cousins and their families and all engaged in a round-robin game of buying each other gifts. So I acquired two pairs of pants and a kurta top (all from Fab India, which I still love – see my first post on this blog!) and bought two kurta tops and a kid’s costume for other people. I don’t know who won the game, though my “cousin brother” bought Infosys Grrl and me tix back to Mysore and prepaid the autorickshaw that brought us to the railway station… Life Indian style!

Life Indian style is continuing. We got back to Mysore in time for my Aunt’s 60^th birthday, celebrated it with a visit to the local temple (whoo-hoo!) and a family lunch for 40. That was yesterday – and after a crazy night of laundering and ironing and packing, we’re all off (moi, Ma Mere and the 60-yr old Aunt) to Jaipur. I’m on the train now. And… and… if all of this wasn’t chaotic enough, a friend of mine from Toronto – shall we call her Canadian-in-India? – arrived in Bangalore at about the same time as I was frantically washing my grubby smalls. She was met at the airport by another of my many cousins who is bringing her to join our train in an hour or so – the train from Mysore to Jaipur goes via Bangalore. The cousin from Bangalore – she’s going to be Call Centre Grrl, since she used to work for the AOL call centre in B’lore – is also coming with on this family and friends excursion to Jaipur and Agra and Delhi so we shall be the Party of Five (women). I’m only hoping that my poor Canadian-in-India will be able to deal with the zany women of my family! In any case, she claims she wants to see India and experience it and I can’t imagine a more “authentic” way to do that than to be cooped up with all of us for a 3 day train ride! And then to spend the next 10 days traipsing through what’s called the “golden triangle” of Indian tourism with us all…. Actually, after the trip to the north, we’re both planning to take off alone so poor Canadian-in-India will have a chance to recover from her experiences with my family at some point in the near future. For now, though, it’s onto Bangalore and our meeting up with Call Centre Grrl and Canadian-in-India.

More soon, I expect!

All My Relations, Part the First

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I've been trying to write this post for 3 days but there's been one interruption after another; for one thing, I don't think I've been alone since way before I left Mysore. Honestly, I don't even get to sleep alone: this 8 bedroom house is so brimming over with rellies that we're sleeping three to a room. In the last three hours alone, there have been two babies (very cute babies but still...) screaming in my ear. Also, an uncle wanted to check his email on my little laptop. Then, one of screaming toddlers' moms (my cousin by marriage, I suppose) came to hide out in our room for 10 mins -- looking for a little escape from her son's damp and screechy embrace, no doubt. Another aunt appeared with my "nightcap" of lime juice....The children were finally dispatched (not permanantly), the uncle and cousin were dealt with, and the lime juice has been downed. So this is Diwali in the bosom of a large, noisy, and I daresay, conservative Indian family.

Let's see -- I left off on board the train, didn't I? Well, we arrived and were met at the station by another of my assorted cousins. At last count, I had 18 cousins on this side of the family -- about 12 of them had gathered for this Diwali, plus a few spouses and a few babies. The cousins haven't started to breed wholesale so there are only a handful of babies -- well, 9. And they're all pretty young -- under 5, I think. So there are always a couple of anklebiters underfoot in the house. I'm having lots of fun teaching them to call Ma Mere "Ajji" (grandma) while she prefers that they learn to call her "Aunty." My hope is that when she's faced with the reality of being called Grandma by a variety of rugrats she'll realize that she doesn't really want to marry me off and become a grandmother for real.

Speaking of becoming a grandmother for real, I should note that the Famme would take great offence to me phrasing it that way. The way this particular family works is very... linear, I guess is the best way of describing it. They believe that nominally, at least, all of the children belong to the house and all of the adults are their mothers and fathers. Well, almost. The catch is that it's very much a patrilineal household: all of my dad's brothers are my "fathers" and all of their wives are my "mothers" -- even their designated names bear this out: "Big Dad" (everyone calls the oldest brother this). So, Ma Mere is a "mother" to about 13 of the 18 cousins -- she's a "Mami" or aunt) to the others, not any kind of a mother -- and the funniest bit of this is that she's a mother-in-law to Big Dad's sons' wives. Which makes her a Grandma to their kids.

As confusing as all of that was, it determines a hell of a lot; for instance, you can't ever marry any of your "brothers" or "sisters" (i.e, first cousins who are the children of the sons of a family can't marry each other) but it's still quite acceptable to marry off first cousins who are the children of a brother and sister. Again: blame patriarchy -- the argument here is that once a sister is married off, she (and any kids she has) aren't from your family so there's no familial bar against marrying them. I don't know what Mendel would have had to say about this but it seems to me a thoroughly bad idea from a genetic standpoint. Other, less mind boggling things that are determined by this system is that you get lots of gifts bought for you by random family members - but there are rules about how and when you can accept them. At any time, you get to accept and don't have to reciprocate with gifts when they come from the any of your father's brothers (and their wives) 'cos after all, you're their kid too. But if you're given a gift by your father's sister... then you (well, your parents really) have to buy her (or her family) something in return because they're not part of your family, after all.

Still with me? I could tell you about the various varieties of aunts and what not but I'll spare you. I'll just say that inspite of what must seem like real chaos, the family is fairly well sketched out and everyone seems to know what to call everyone and how to treat them. And after all that is figured out, there's the fun of doing everything is huge mobs: bursting firecrackers, going to Bollywood movies, eating out, eating in, dressing up and attending wedding-ey events, buying saris... everything is more chaotic and (generally) more fun when you're doing it in a pack of 12. Note that I've done all of the above and I've only been here for 3 full days! Details on all of the above (and more!) in Part the Second of All My Relations!

Overnight to Gulbarga!

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Darlings! It's 4:26am and I'm writing to you from an Upper Berth in an AC 2-tier carriage on the Udyan Express, a superfast train that plies between Bangalore and Bombay! Mind you, I dunno that my "mobile" internet connection is quite this mobile..... but we'll know if I manage to get this posted tonight. Anyway, the Dad hails from Gulbarga, which is unremarkable except for being almost exactly halfway between Bangalore and Bombay (always and forever Bombay in my mind, partly because I fear that "Mumbai" is a bit of a right-wing Hindu nationalist creation). You can follow the journey on this map here. To my mind, that's lovely because it means we left Bangalore tonight at 8pm and we get in at around 8am, giving us the night on the train. Have I mentioned yet how much I love train travel in India? Well, if possible, I love overnight train travel in India even more than day journeys! There's something so wonderfully soothing about the regular swaying of trains -- the Ma claims that I was a perfect train travel baby 'cos I'd fall sound asleep as soon as it began to move! I can still do that -- the only reason I'm awake at 4am is 'cos the Ma is not a sound sleeper (or trains or not). Incidentally, she was taken aback when I told her that Indian Railways has a "Senior Ladies Quota" which meant that she, being a "Senior Lady," automatically got assigned a Lower Berth.

The Ma is currently reading there and I'm up here: it's a pretty cool perch -- all around me, people are asleep, the bluey-green nightlights are on down the centre corridor of the carriage and I'm as snug as a bug in the blankets and sheets supplied by the train staff. Tonight marks the start of Diwali (often called Deepavali in the South) and so we watched fireworks exploding overhead as the train pulled out of Bangalore Station. On a night like this, it's hard to remember how filthy the city is -- all I can think of right now is sitting in a darkened train window, watching houses lit up with lamps and strung up with coloured lights blur by, as children ran along the streets with sparklers in their hands and the dark sky exploded with an unchoreographed but nevertheless beautiful display of starbursts and rockets. I think that Diwali is meant to mark the end of Ram, Lakshman and Sita's exile but don't quote me on that; I also think, logically, that it's another form of a harvest festival. Dasara, which I've written about earlier, is less of a religious thing and more of a local celebration; I suspect Diwali is more of a wider celebration of similar sentiments. For me, though, it's always been the festival of fireworks and family visits -- when I was a teenager, we lived in India for a couple of years and I remember this overnight train ride to Gulbarga from those days. Diwali has always been a big deal for the Dad's side of the Fam and so we would make this trip, meet up with what seemed like a million cousins and spend a week playing around with firecrackers (pataki! even the name is evocative, isnt' it?). The Ma's side of the family weren't into pataki, apparently because it was common knowledge that a lot of them were produced using child labour in places like Sivakashi in Tamil Nadu, but the Dad's side of the family were less... responsible. And had a horde of kids. I'm assured that things are a lot better now; that the international attention drawn to the "firework children" has meant that the pataki factories have been cleaned up a lot. I'm still not sure that I'd go out and buy any but.... I'm also not going to regret those memories.

That's one of the things I realize anew every time I come to India. Child labour is a terrible, terrible thing but it isn't enough to condemn it. It's part of a vicious cycle of exploitative capitalism production that is deeply entrenched in the normative life of everyday Indians. Be it fireworks, or matchsticks or carpets or embroidery, there is a huge consuming class that simply can't (and of course, sometimes won't) pay double or triple the sum for adult-produced products when they have the choice of buying cheap stuff produced by slave kids. I would, but then again, I'm not trying to live off an Indian wage, and nor am I unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. And of course, there will always be folks like the Ma's family, who've not bought commercially produced fireworks since 1963, but that's never going to be the entire consuming class. And the other side of the problem is that there are children who are sold into such practices. Until that stops, the problem will remain. And I'm cynical enough to believe that as long as there are such "surplus" children in India, they will be moved from industry to industry and exploited and murdered in the hundreds of thousands so it's not a question of targeting the industries so much as reducing this population and providing their families with alternative means. Against this context, the right wing Western anti-abortion agenda -- which translates into a refusal to fund critical NGO work -- is nothing short of criminal. I also happen to think that's it's not driven only by religious politics; in a place like India, clearly more "unwanted" children mean more exploitable labour.

Whew! I dunno how we ended up here but I suspect that that rant has been coming for while.

((Goodness! I think I'm actually going to be able to post this from on the train!!! It's now about an hour later and my best guess is that I'm somewhere between Raichur and Wadi -- on this train map. Have I mentioned that the Internet is amazing?!!1))

Arrivals and Departures

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So my mother arrives for a month-long visit tomorrow and I must admit that I'm relieved. As much as I love "all my relations," they are a bit too Indian for me at times. Even the arrival tomorrow is fraught: my mom's plane arrives at 1:30 am at Bangalore airport. Given that my mom flies half way around the world once every couple of months, I figure it would be enough if one member of our family were to show up at the airport and escort her to the hotel I've made a reservation (because I'm told that it would not be safe to drive back to Mysore in the middle of the night). All right, I accept that. We'll stay the night in B'lore; in fact, my mom's keen to spend a couple of days there and visit some family and friends there. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Pick her up at the airport, let her recover for a day, get some duty visits out of the way and then head back to Mysore. I could even cope with my aunt and I both going to Bangalore to meet my mother's plane.... but now we're at the point of including my uncle in this trip because my grandmother -- she's been demoted from Ancient and Wise one to Cranky and Unreasonable one now -- is convinced that it's not safe for two or even three women to travel to the airport and back "alone" so late at night. My uncle, incidentally, can't stay beyond a day so he's going to make the 6-8 round trip merely to escort us to and from the airport. I want to SCREAM.

This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy: I've survived -- alone -- on 3 continents, in countries where I speak none of the languages, where, because of my race, or gender, or accent, or whatever, I stick out like a sore thumb and here I am, being told that I'm not capable of hopping in a cab, booked from the eminently respectable hotel at which I'm booked in to stay with my mother, going to a tiny little airport with one arrivals gate and safely returning with said mother in tow. In the city where I was born, in a place where I speak all of the three languages going, in a space where my class access privileges me to a horrifying extent. ARRRRRGGGGH! This is exactly the kind of thing about India that drives me nuts. Our departure from Mysore will be a three-ring circus; our arrival at the hotel in Bangalore, where we will now need another room, will be the same. And I'm sure that our family excursion to the B'lore airport and back will be another unforgettable experience in family bonding.

Give me strength.