Following the Equator

2010-04-09T06:45:00.003-05:00

Today I had a coffee with a friend of mine from Yemen. I really like her. I like the way she talks with these spots of a British, even Cockney accent. Unlike me, she seems to pause before she talks, not an accented pause, but just a space of thought.

We sat at Coffee Day. The power was out, so we sat dripping in sweat, drinking Lattes (maybe in protest?), while some workers drilled and hammered a door-frame into place.

Amidst the din, my friend told me about her family, showed me pictures of her kids, and their outings around Hyderabad. As a little back story, the two of us had been running into each other all week. She told me she heard about my lunch with a Palestinian family we both know. And in mock offense, asked why I went to their house and not hers. And then she said something that had stuck in my head all week, had prompted me to ask her for coffee. "Ashley," she said, "I want you to come to my house and see me there, how I live. There I dress just like you, I look and act as you do." Of course, I knew this. But, on a sub-conscience level, I also noticed a distinction between she and I. So I asked her, "What color is your hair?" and the conversation started.

I had recently had lunch with a Palestinian family. I had sat with them for hours, lounging on pillows eating watermelon and watching their kids try on some newly-purchased outfits. And when I got up to leave, standing just outside of the threshold, I turned to say goodbye to the woman of the family (I don’t want to call her a wife or mother, because I think firstly she is just a woman), only to find her head surrounded in a black veil. This is the first time while that I have been so taken aback by the veil. Though I see it everywhere, groups of girls at bus stops with backpacks and water-bottles, sometimes at dusk they look like swarms of fireflies with their Hijab buttons and jeweled designs reflecting the headlights, I don’t really think of them as a single person, but as a group of Muslim girls. But this woman was just that, a woman who only a few moments ago had shown me her beautiful saree. Honestly, it was hard for me to look at her.

So back to the coffee shop. With this story in mind, I posed a question to my friend. Not “why do Muslim women wear a veil” type question, but more, "Who do you wear a veil for? you or your society?" She said she had been thinking about that a lot recently. That she had had a hard time returning to her country after living in England. That she had felt the restrictions on her freedom.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t think I am forced to wear this. I think I believe in it. I believe that it protects me and keeps me safe.”

I understood her. And yet, it was hard for me to wrap my head around. Was I less safe in jeans and a t-shirt? How had I been able to travel the world in such clothes and feel mostly ok, and she hadn’t?

When I lived in Russia (this is a jump, but I promise it makes sense), another American friend and I decided one Thursday to checkout the bath house on her block. I was barely 20 at the time, and like most Americans, not too accustomed to being naked around people I didn’t know. The locker room at the Jewish Community Center in my hometown had always made me rather nervous and disgusted. My friend was much more progressive, i.e. she had taken some 'gender theory classes' and was now 2nd hand schooling me. Even so, entering the bath house we were both a little squeamish about the sheer nakedness of the women. I mean, there are many degrees of naked, and these women were 100 percent naked. Also, since it was the middle of the day and a quiet snowy block outside the city center, the only women bathing that day were grandmothers. Big, blotchy skinned grandmothers, with breasts that rested heavily on the tops of their bellies. We were forty years younger and a good 60 pounds lighter. Nervously, we took off our clothes, both stopping and deciding in a look to keep on our underwear. As we walked to the showers and from the showers to the hot room, the women largely ignored us. When they did look at us, there was this laughter in their faces, this sort of mocking smile. “What, do you think is so special about yourself, that we don’t have?” their eyes and smiles questioned. After twenty minutes, our underwear was wet with sweat, the elastic bands basting our skin with salt water, and we decided: Off with the underwear!

On entering my literature classes, I am met by the same feeling, only from the opposite angle. There is a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, who wears a thing grey scarf around her head and over her shoulders. She is the only head-scarfed woman in the class. I look at her and without an ounce of cynicism, and to be honest, a touch of frustration, I wonder, “What is so special about you, that I don’t have?’

I asked my friend from Yemen, and she said that all this is a personal choice. Maybe, that is the best answer.

2010-04-02T21:45:00.004-05:00

The last few months have been crammed with festivals. I have been trying to keep track and participate in as many as I can. And then, when two major festivals fall on the same day, that I start to realize how interconnected calendars in this part of the world are.

The 15th of March was both Ugadi, the Telugu and Kannada New Year and Charshambet Soori, "the last Wednesday of the year in the Persian calendar". Both these festivals fall near the Vernal Equinox, that completely symmetrical day in Spring, that I have never noticed, maybe because it is perfectly black and white?

In the morning, I drank "Pachhadi" (pictured above) with my Telugu friends, a drink that helps one predict how the following year will be. Every one in the group predicted: 'tangy'. We sat around talking as the IPL played in the background. The thing that felt most like New Years, was actually playing with my friend's sister's new baby (yet to be named). It seemed kind of exciting for this new kid to be born at the start of Spring. Maybe he has something ahead of all of us September-October babies.

Then, in the evening, I went to a friend's house to make a fire in the abandoned lot out behind their apartment. Anarchic, no? Though political scientist claim Russians were the some of the first anarchists, maybe it was actually Zoroastrians. Chaharshanba Soori is an ancient Zoroastrian festival which is debated, among my friends, to be anywhere from 3,000 to 15,000 years old. Wikipedia claims 3,000, but only cites BusinessWeek and the UN. My friends cite their pride.

Anyway, on Chaharshanba Soori every one is supposed to jump over a fire, giving the fire the paleness and weakness acquired over the last year and soaking up some of the fire's health. We did small fire hopping at home, and then went to EFLU where a host of Iranis, Tajiks, Afghans, Uzbeks, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Kurds danced and skirted around a much more official fire.

So with the coming of Spring inscribed in my head, I wonder, why doesn't the US celebrate the coming of Spring? Why don't we notice the day when both halves, night and day, are just that halves? I don't have an answer. Neither does Google, just some sites about horse-racing (go figure) and picture of barbecues and block parties. I was hoping for something more incendiary.

The abacus is alive

2010-02-17T10:18:00.002-06:00

Who knew the abacus would have a come back?

A few months ago, I went to visit an abacus training academy in a central district of Hyderabad. I saw the advertisement pasted to a cement wall and followed the flyers to a small green stucco building with a rusted gate and no front door. I went upstairs and met Mr. Raganath, the PR and marketing manager of the academy. We spoke for a while about the abacus and its origins, and he showed me the basics:

The middle row of beads is called "our brother's house" and is where all calculations must start. To the left the beads represent whole numbers - going as high as the abacus is long, and to the right decimals.

Raganath continued: the abacus has the power to train the mind, not just for calculations, but for higher concentration and the exponential improvement of memory. The children are taught from the beginning to hold the abacus with their right hands and to tick the beads up and down with the index and thumb of the left. Index and thumb. This he said was an ancient technique, inexplainable, but used by rishis, buddhist monks, catholics chanting their rosaries. These fingers, he said, were the trick.

For proof, he told me to come back on Saturday around 2 for class.

On Saturday, the building looked even more deserted. But when I got to the second floor I heard the eruption of young voices and click click of the abacus:

The professor stood at the board, writing numbers in an endless string.... 87, 65, 104... and the kids would add, subtract, divide or multiply as they were told. I sat towards the back as they checked their workbooks. The kids ranged in age from 5 to 12 (I had repeatedly been told by Raganath that after thirteen the tactics and training 'just doesn't have much effect'. I instantly felt like somewhat of a failure.) The ones in the back had only begun the course two weekends prior. They seemed a little nervous, but they did the problems hungrily, trying to catch up with their classmates.

The star of the class was a boy named Deepti. He had won several international abacus competitions. He could not have been more than nine. He is the boy in the clip saying 'Amma-ma-ma-ma'. in Telugu this means 'mother' but in little kid speak, more like 'aw jeez..'.

While the beginningers clicked the beads, Deepti had his left hand in the air and with each number he would kind of vibrate his fingers, like he was counting imaginary beads, twirling an imaginary abacus.

Here is a compiling of the sounds of the day. I didn't cut the section when the instructor is reading out the problems simply so that you could set your watches to see how fast these kids calculate in their heads. (Excuse the jumps and auditory glitches, I am working on Audacity and there are some shortcomings on both sides).

These kids are amazing, and I have no doubt that the abacus is triggering something in their minds. But the question remains: what do the thumb and index finger have to do with concentration and memory?

I have asked a few neuroscientists in Hyderabad. Though they tell me there is an answer, they say they don't readily know what it is and that it would take too much rifling though notes and textbooks to find.

This only feeds my curiosity...

A joke

2010-02-13T01:09:00.008-06:00

When I was in the Himalayas long train rides and circuitous bus routes led to lots of singing and joke telling. Here Priyanka, a spitfire little girl from Bangalore, tells a joke about India.

An Afternoon Funeral

2010-02-02T14:19:00.009-06:00

Finally, the other day I took a walk through the cemetery. Finally, because I had been looking at it for months, and each time I thought of going, usually after sunset or late at night, it’s corroded iron-gate was locked. Not that I respect locks, but it seems too almost unnecessary to break into a graveyard in India after hours.

Starting in the late morning, I heard drums somewhere around the corner. I have problems detecting sounds in India. Maybe because of the openness, there is no ricochet to orient my ear. I don’t think it completely registered in my head that these were funeral drums. I walked to the cemetery with my camera thinking, if people weren’t there I would take some pictures of the graves, the Telugu inscriptions. You see, the reason the graveyard had interested me originally was:

1. I thought it was an ironclad rule that Hindus only burned their dead. So, in finding a cemetery in India, I thought I had uncovered an anthropological anomaly.
2. The cemetery itself is beautiful. The graves are all shades of pastels and someone has even started a planned garden off to the side. Plus the fact that it is behind a wall made the place seem like a paradise (I have been schooled by my Iranian friends that paradise is actually an old Avestan word meaning ‘walled garden’ – so let’s play with it in that context and cut the biblical umbilical chord.)

Walking in I was met with the usual stares from people I decided were either grave-diggers or afternoon degenerates. They sat along a central path, about 50 men, picking at their bare feet, drumming their legs against the low stone walls. On the right I noticed a bath house and a bunch of spickets... this will come in handy later.

I don’t know why but I was nervous to take out my camera. I felt this distinct Catholic sense, the same surge or uneasiness that is expressed as faux piety that I feel upon entering a church. I think, cemeteries are places where people breakdown, where the most private of emotions are communicated with the incommunicable, and that bond between death and longing should be respected.

The moment I pulled out my camera to take a photo, this man appeared at my side:

Mr. Romulu

He spoke to me in Telugu. I tried to say I understand a little Telugu, but speak really poorly. Like almost all situations here, somehow we communicated. He led me to the nether-regions of the graveyard, and people walked alongside us, asking Mr. Romulu who I was, where I was from etc. The cemetery expanded into graves and paths and small trees, not necessarily rolling hills (don’t get an Anglicized picture) but I couldn’t see the end of it. People sat alongside on rocks and piled up railroad ties. It didn’t really seem like they were mourning anything, just sort of passing the time. Near a far wall three women crouched around a grave lighting incense and doling out food to the dead. Women and men had formed groups and were chatting, which was supplanted by stares as I approached. Romulu introduced me, being an expert on my biography and opinions by now. I started to take pictures and the group smiled more, more women came and sat down, not posing exactly, just positioning. Then my guide ushered me over to his wife’s grave. He sat down, pulling out incense and putting his cigarette to the side and insisted that I sit on the neighboring grave, his mother’s. Once again the ghost of Catholic cemeteries restrained me, and I couldn’t make myself sit.

Men and women gathered round, perched close to be in my camera’s focus and ask Romulu questions about me. A man in flannel approach. He looked tired from the sun and squinted at me as he held up his left hand, 4 stubs of fingers. He motioned for me to take his picture. His friend told me they had cut his fingers off last night because he had insulted someone’s wife.

Then two girls and their father came up. The man spoke to me in Telugu and the girls shyly translated. They asked the questions that every one asked. Where I lived? Was I alone? Did I like India? And then the father motioned for them to bring me down to the lower part of the cemetery. It was their grandfather's procession I had heard, and they wanted me to come and take pictures. We walked down the slope, stepping from grave to grave, which I at first tried to avoid. And along the way groups of women called me over to take pictures of them, of ceremonies as they repeated the last-rites with circles of incense.

I was brought into a group of men, young and old, waiting for the body to come. The two girls warmed up to me and started to explain what a Hindu funeral was like. This was not their first funeral, they explained, 'people die all the time' the seven year old told me matter-of-factly. I stood next to the grave and an old man poured salt crystals into my hand and made a throwing motion. Looking down, I saw the grave was almost two-thirds full with large diamonds of salt.

The drumming grew louder. I asked the girls how they felt about their grandfather's death."There are so many people here," I said,"He must have been a really great man." It was something I have heard said at funerals, but it sounded strange and fake coming from me. And they said something that I cannot imagine saying at 7 or even 24.

"You know, he did some good things and he did some bad things, like every one."

They said their grandfather had died the last night, and that tradition said they should bury him the next day. Every one would stay, they said, for a few hours to sing mantras and lament. Then they would wash off in the showers and go home.

Then they excused themselves and went to join the female mourners and bring the body into the cemetery. I hung around with the men. They made some jokes ("What does an Indian have in common with a frog?"), and more introduced themselves to me and asked for pictures. My camera was dying though, and I was sick of documenting.

And then the women came. Hundreds of women in brightly detailed sarees surrounding four men who were carrying the dead body on a bamboo stretcher. The grandfather was covered in an orange sheet, and as he approached, the women broke off until only, what I am assuming were his sisters and daughters remained. His youngest sister fell on the grave crying. But her cries weren't the out-of-pitch strains I have heard before. There was a rhythm and measure to her words, like maybe she was singing. The men pushed me into the crowd. "Take pictures..." "You in the grey, move so she can take pictures." And I took a few, as they laid the body on the ground and removed the grass and dirt that had been stuffed in his mouth, replacing it with strands of gold.

I turned to go. It was no longer an expedition or a lessons in Indian funeral rites. I had come up to the boundary of voyeurism and 'making strange'* and I should make a quiet exit.

As I left, I met the sister who had been crying. Her eyes were red and the lines around her mouth and nose twitched with emotion. She stared at me. Not welcoming. Not even really noticing me. It was a face of pure grief.

*** In Russian "ostraneniya" is the process of making something that is quite everyday and normal appear strange.

Biography of a Forgotten Film Star

2010-01-31T06:40:00.006-06:00

After months of watching current Bollywood and Tollywood movies, I have gone backwards, thanks to an Indian film class, to films of the 1950s. Most of the films focus on the challenges and possibilities inherent in the newly independent country. Socialist propaganda is woven throughout the dialogue and many of the films, though they may deal with complex and still controversial topics like adultery and paternalism, usually end with an "I love India' slogan or song.

For me, the films are comfortable to watch. The women walk with the assurance of Katherine Hepburn (some even wear the high-waisted pants) and the dialogue is clever and noted with sexual innuendo. So far, I have watched 2 hit movies from the '50s, each with almost identical casts, and both times my attention was drawn away from the main character to the side and background of the film, the domain of the supporting role. In fact, the same actress was in both films, first playing the best friend of a woman unjustly accused of infidelity and then as a prostitute dancing in a gutter bar. In both movies her main role is as a dancer and singer (though a playback singer actually sings all the roles, so she just moves her mouth in time). Her dancing is kathak-style and often overly emphasizes the Eastern aspects of Indian dance, the punjabi pants, dark eyeliner and snakelike-head and body movements.

It is in Awara, the second film we watched in class, that she plays a prostitute, who dances and nearly-charms the hero with her dance and song. This time she is dressed like Mary Margaret from 'Bye Bye Birdie', a tight crop-top and slit skirt, but her attitude is sexual and dangerous and much more interesting than the white-sareed heroine. She is the center of the movie for only 3 minutes and 25 seconds.

I looked up the movie to make sure it really was the same actress and found her listed only as "Cuckoo". Perplexed, I continued to search, but everything I found related to her was just as enigmatic. In the 40s and 50s she was apparently very well known and loved, always acting in the supporting role, often as the seductress. Her performances and songs were so popular that directors would put her in a movie for only one song, as with Awara, and the song would completely eclipse the movie. She followed in a line of kathak dancers and trained her usurper, an actress named Helen.

And that's all I found. One scant online biography reads:

Cuckoo died a slow lingering death, penniless and unattended.

It seems ridiculous that a star of over 40 Hindi films can be so unnoticed historically. Of course, the film world is at once alluring and damning for young women, especially during the 40s and 50s. 'Daughters' and 'mothers' weren't allowed to get near a filmset, lest their morals and modesty fled down a dark alley. So, maybe, her name wasn't given for fear of what it would reflect on her family? And the allure is more the less we know, but it seems strange that now when Bollywood had moved well past the back-room dances scenes, that someone would release her name, that someone would seek her name.

Paying in Kind

2010-01-07T06:30:00.004-06:00

To be honest, sometimes I forget I'm in India. No, I don't forget that it is December and 28 degrees C or that I can now buy papaya year round... the rub is in the small things, as they say.

Generally when I go out on the street I first form a battle plan. No brilliant battleship-sinking maneuvers usually just A --> B then rickshaw to C where I might be able to find that, but I can definitely find it at D and just in case I should buy a paper since Mr. X will probably not be at E until an hour past ____. Without some sort of map, I get lost and turned and before I know it I am yelling at young boys that staring is rude and I come home defeated, drinking badam and frantically drafting a more clever plan for the following day.

So, a few days back, my plan was this. 1. Return the juicer I randomly bought on the sage advice from a friend that 'what was I going to do with a 40 lb juicer in five months". 2. buy pens and pencils and, if fortune smiled on me, some 4 by 6 notecards 3. get a newspaper ... after this the list grew vague. From experience I know that getting beyond 3 in a single day is not possible and so I resolved to keep 4 open in case I needed a tall glass of badam.

First I bought the paper, out of order, but it went smoothly. Then I went to return the juicer. The juicer that had never been opened. The juicer that had only been purchased 7 days back. The juicer that was identical to the one sitting in the window of the fancy kitchenware store...

The manager was sitting at a desk and spoke to me with a effervescent smiled, "Sorry madam, no returns. But you can exchange it for something else." His smile was so large that I took it as a joke, so I returned with, 'No, sir I don't need anything in the store, just my money back." The exchange continued for a little while as he swept his arms indicating the saber-toothed knives and Narcissus-inticing pots and pans. "You see, sir," I said, "I don't live here permanently and I stupidly thought a juicer was a good idea. It was a mistake and I am trying to remedy it." With that I opened myself up to the attack that still has teeth enough to work on me. "Madam, this is not like where you may be from. In India, you cannot return things. Never. Nowhere." And I wanted to explain that this was not a snobby view of a girl from a Western world, but a logical and and judicious and profitable for all economic policy. I started to explain, but he kept smiling. So, I did what I have seen my Indian friends do when something makes no sense: I sat and I looked down as if I was pulling the intelligence and understanding inside me up to the surface. "Well, what to do..."

In the end, I returned the juicer. No one was harmed. And the man still had a smile on his face when I left, though this time it seemed strangely genuine. ***

Feeling slightly invigorated from having completed task 2, I went straight for number 3. Pencils and pens are located on the third floor of a shopping megamall near my apartment. Now, sometimes in India I run into similar patterns from Russia. Magemalls are one, and I think simply a bi-product of quick and volcanic commercialization. Another is the creative way both countries have implemented of moving their citizens around. Buses and subways are not enough, Russia prefers small densely- packed used minivans, while India as adapted the auto-rickshaw into a sort of metropolitan school bus. So, as the man at the counter was ringing up my school supplies, I noticed that the coin trays were filled not with rupees and paisa but chocolate candies. Hundreds of golden-wrapped 'Chocolate Eclair' candies. I thought of fighting or frantically rooting through my purse for the exact correct change. In Russia, I had fought and even attempted to pay for things in chocolate candies or mints, and I will admit that I felt a certain satisfaction at having mastered a new game. But this time, I decided not to fight, and happy that my battle plan hadn't been thoroughly washed out, walked home, my wallet puffed with Chocolate Eclairs.

*** I have since looked up "return policies in India" and the internet is strangely silent on the issue. The only thing I could find was a Dell page that ok'ed returns, even on the subcontinent.

Rumbles and Fasts in Telangana

2009-12-17T01:45:00.006-06:00

It all started a few months back. Initially I thought it was funny, entertaining. I would be sitting in class, usually the third section or fourth out of five, when a shallow rumble of voices and feet would come from one of the side corridors. Initially we ignored it, meaning me and the professor and my Iranian colleague, but the noise approached and escalated and suddenly a mass of students where in the class shouting "Jai Telangana" and shoving a paper with Telugu slogans and exclamation marks under our pens. I refused to sign, since I think it is a like heady and ridiculous for me to trumpet for the independence of a state I have lived in for only a few months.

Also, the whole protest, the slogans and the convenient timing of strikes on classes around exams just seemed so childish. In a way I understood. Getting caught up in a protest is exciting. It feels like history is shifting and in a way its because of something you are doing. Many of the students are from small villages and towns outside of Hyderabad and have been excited into a political helter skelter by politicians who need mass and volume to get there message heard.

So, I laughed about it and my classmates waved it off as something that has happened and will always be. The cry for "Telangana independence" has gone from a whisper to a shriek on a constant cycle since Indian achieved independence in '47 and the country was divided along linguistic lines in the early 50's. Furthermore, linguistically Telangana, Andhra (the coastal region) and Rayalaseema (the rocky southern district) are similar. The local language is Telugu and though there are differences in certain nouns and pronunciation (maybe a little more pronounced than the conflict between y'all and youse guys) the language is still mutually intelligible and the cultural and festivals are all similar.

Anyway, the semester ended and I went on a trip only to return to a shuttered Hyderabad. The buses weren't running, gas stations were closed, and as I shared an overpriced auto with a Hyderabadi back to my apartment I learned that student-protesters had taken over Osmania campus for the past few days, destroying buses and shops and forcing the police to enforce a city-wide curfew. Then, a few days later, spurned by the 11 day 'fast' (more about this fasting epidemic later) by a politically decrepit local politician, the federal government declared that they would give Telangana independence.

I was shocked. How did those motley hallway-crusaders manage to do this? How had a poorly printed pamphlet turned into a pan-Indian movement for mini-state independence? The local ripple has now caused a tsunami of statehood independence battles throughout India, with small groups demanding to be recognized and state bifurcation. Daily the paper is filled with stories of how this battle has been copied and pasted all over India, and it seems farcical but maybe, as with Telangana there a backdrop of serious political turmoil that I am missing.

Euphonious

2009-10-21T02:41:00.004-05:00

Tonight was the last night of Diwali – the festival of lights and the celebration of Krishna vanquishing the rakshasi from the earth. For one or two days, families string their homes in light and places oil lamps around the periphery to make the god feel welcome, like he can come home any time. And, most importantly, in celebration and maybe to scare off any lingering evil spirits the streets or land-mind with fireworks. And these are not Fourth of July government regulated or lakeside fireworks that pop and whiz but can be slept through, these are the sounds of war, explosions that hammer the stucco walls and blasts that go off inches from passerbies and flowing sarees. As can be imagined, all the noise is not tolerated too well by the non-Hindus and the foreigners. Lack of sleep and the fear of flying sparklers and bottle rockets turns nerves a little raw. But it all made me think of India in terms of sound; I mean a country of 1.6 billion people makes a lot of noise.

So, in my observation, sound can be classified into a few categories:

1. Sound that exists alone, personal sounds, mainly morning noises. I live in a Muslim neighborhood, so the call to prayer to all believers, if one is awake to hear it, is a pretty powerful sound, a kind of rich baritone hum that sits like a cloud over my apartment building for the first few minutes of every morning. Then there are the chants, the groups of men and women on rooftops and in gardens doing their morning sun salutations, recitating of mantras. This comes right after the call to prayer around 5 or so, as if Muslims and Hindus broke the times of day up evenly so as not to overlap. And then there is my favorite sound: the sound of a whole apartment building or even just one man on the balcony below, doing a early morning cleansing of the system. I won’t describe too much, but let your mind wander to all the sounds and throat and nose can make after 8 hours of sleep. This took a long time to get used to.

2. Then there are the street sounds, the communal sounds. The locomotive-chugging of generators when the power goes out. The sounds of samosa sellers who talk and hawk so quickly that their sentences attack each other like puppies rough housing in an indecipherable ball. And there are the horns. In India, and especially in Hyderabad, honking is not a rude brush-off or reprimand, but better translated as “Hi, hello… hello, hi” like a nervous interviewer trying to get his subjects attention. Blinkers are completely out of fashion and the white lines divided lanes have no sovereignty, so when veering from left to right, trucks and rickshaws chirp out a long-winded trail of sound, more like the beginning of a song. In addition, there is the sound cars make in reverse. My friends small hatchback blurts out a medley of Christmas carols, and then there is a man who leaves my apartment building everyday at 7 am who is followed in reverse by ‘You are my sunshine’.

3. And then there are the international sounds, the sounds that make me feel like I am at home, back in Birmingham on a Sunday morning. There are the children playing hide-n-seek and ring-n-run, games of which I and my Iranian roommate as foreigners are the main target. And on the trains there is the soft-whisper of friends, of husband to wife, figuring out which bunk is whose, whether to order tea or coffee… And there is music. Everywhere. Western music, Hindi music, Telugu music. There is the vina and violin and drums. There is always drumming. Sometimes it is used politically for the campaign of a local BJP candidate and sometimes, like in a New Orleans Second-Line, when someone dies the drumming and singing of their friends and loved ones follows them to the grave.

Pooja on a full stomach

2009-09-29T15:22:00.007-05:00

I don't know if right now can be called 'festival season'. Frankly speaking, I don't think a week has gone by when there hasn't been some sort of celebration of some god, or more often goddess, which required some sort of pooja [Hindu prayer] and, of course, the cancellation of classes. But the past few weeks have just seemed to be more spectacle and spiritually filled than normal.

Last week marked the end of Rammadan, culminating with the feast of Eid, which ends the month long fast. Because of Hyderabad's history [being under the moghul rule and having close ties with Persian kings and traders] and because I live in a more Muslim part of town, the past month was especially loud and meat-filled. What does that mean? Well, loud comes from the call to prayer which is blasted from the loud speakers of a mosque nearby at around 4:30 every morning. There was also a man with a piercing voice and Stomp-quality stick who walked around my apartment to wake those especially deep-sleeping devotees. But mostly, I learned, that Rammadan in Hyderabad is the festival of Haleem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabadi_haleem

The Wikipedia entry above has the details, but as a casual eater, Haleem is basically lamb that has been boiled and combined with beans, onions, garlic and chilli powder and mashed into a paste, which is eaten with roti. It has the consistency of babyfood but is incredibly fatty and a wonderful somnolent. And it is everywhere and eaten by every one. Containers and take-away orders are filled outside every grocery store, not to mention almost every Muslim restaurant has a giant sign out front 'HALEEM!! Best in town!". They have even developed a vegetarian version so as not to leave the higher-caste Hindus out of the magic.

This past week, the Hindus retaliated with a 9/10 day festival of Dasara (or Navaratri) which celebrates the 9 day battle of Ram version the 9-head demon Ravana, depicted in the epic Ramayana. I traveled south to Bangalore to visit with friends. I stayed with a Rotarian and his family and celebrated the middle-to-final days of the 9 day saga. The festival is divided into threes. The first third concerns prayers to Durga - the female goddess/power that cleanses believers or their impurities. Day 4...5...6 are spent in prayers to Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. And the final days are taken up in prayers to Saraswathi, goddess of success and wisdom. On the final three days children bring all their books and pads and pencils to be blessed and offices and computers are blessed with a auspicious yellow dot and turned off to rest for a day. Narayan and Chitra (the Rotarians I stayed with) hosted celebrations in the form of a dinner or lunch almost every day. Each day a new segment of their friends or family would come over to pray and receive prasada. Technically, prasada is a sweet - anything from a banana to a coconut to the much cherished laddoo - that is given after an important pooja or after the end of a pilgrimage. It is meant to show the exchange between god and pilgrim, the sugary manifestation of generosity.

But something that I have noticed - and this will need its own entry all together - is the Indian penchant for singing. While hiking in the Himalayas, whenever there was a dull moment, a down moment or even a slightly long-lasting silence, someone would start singing. And the sometimes off-key explosion was not merely relegated to girls or kids, but was even more likely among men, and serious, normally silent men at that. So, once eating and praying were through and the party guest sat around in plastic chairs with their small bags of take-home prasada, what should happen but for someone to suggest a song. It started with some Carnatic music sung by a classically trained girl. After a few serious songs, it became obvious that all the guest wanted to take part... and so a game of Antakshari began. The game literally means ant - 'end' and akshar - letter of the alphabet. So the room was cut in two and whatever the left side sang, the right side had to counter with another song that began with the first letter of the last word of the former song. It started out slowly and divided down the middle. And it seemed easy enough for each team to counter. Flipping back and forth from Malayalam to Kannada to Telugu to Hindi to Tamil it seemed like they would never run out of songs... and it continued for 2 hours. For the first hour and half the seriousness escalated. One team calling out the other for re-singing different parts of a previously sung song. But the last half hour was simply a chorus, right and left singing each other's songs and every one laughing at nearly forgotten or strangely archaic rhymes.

I don't think anyone knew who won.

In attempts at sharing, here is a snippet of some Himalayan campfire singing.

Up next on the festival circuit: Diwali.

- A

You Gotta Fight For Your Right To.....?

2009-09-17T14:09:00.007-05:00

For the past two days my classes at Osmania have been cut short by student protests/celebrations. The concept of protest is nothing startling or new - the clash of young v. old, good handwriting v. texting - but it is the form of protest here that I find, well, completely bizarre.

As a visual aid, here is my classroom.

2nd floor, back corner, Arts College, Osmania University, Mr. Medio Azadi (L)

On Wednesday, during the middle of a lecture on transformational grammar, the sound of chanting and crowds of laughing boys and girls filled the hallway. My professor continued to lecture but started to shuffle papers and seemed to kind of brace herself for some sort of confrontation. All the students in the class (which doesn't ever exceed 9) began to whisper and discuss something in Telugu. Suddenly 9 guys entered the classes and in loud, authoritative Telugu said something to the tune of "you are liberated..." or maybe just "Freedom!". Noticing that me and my Iranian compatriot appeared quite blank faced, they rattled of some broken English about class being over....

I sought an explanation from my clasmate Srikant who rolled his eyes and said it was 'a bunt' and that there would be no more class today. When I asked 'Why?', he just told me that it happened often, it's normal, no need for a reason. Every one left the class, the professor being the first out the door, and the gang of 'activist-liberators' marched onward to the Sanskrit department nextdoor.

Not satisfied with Srikant's explanation, I went to the department head, who had yet to be informed that there would be no more class today, to ask again, 'Why?' Again, I was met with a certain nonchalance, 'Oh, that again' look. They also did not know why the students were protesting, nor did they care. When I asked why they didn't stand up to the students, why there was no debate, and how the students had the power to stop all the classes in the whole college, they all smiled. As far as I have been able to ascertain, strikes (in Indian English 'bunts') are triggered by any student dissatisfaction, from a professor showing favoritism to a conflict with the administration, to the lack of acknowledgment of a certain holy day or holiday of X Y or Z religious group. Apparently also, the student union is backed and much-more-than tacitly supported by local political parties in Hyderabad / AP, so the professors and administration are wary of getting involved because of repercussions. Often, the professors told me, the only way to get classes started again is to call the police, which would end in some sort of violent conflict. 'No one wants that...' they said.

Today (Thursday) was a much cheerier demonstration. The strikers entered the class smiling, declaring today September 17th, Telagana Independence Day i.e. the day that Hyderabad, formerly under the control of the Nizam, became a part of of independent India, more than a full year after Indian independence.

newspaper article here:
http://blog.taragana.com/n/telangana-celebrates-liberation-day-171140/

There was a flag-hoisting ceremony that only a handful of students attended.

So, I hesitate to weigh in on this matter without solid facts, but I can't help but think the situation a little peculiar, even ridiculous. I fully support the use of free speech and protest. When the Columbia graduate students refused to hold recitations and classes until the administration listened to their demands, I empathized fully with the students-cum-moms and dads who couldn't find a decent preschool for blocks around Morningside Heights. In this case, I don't see any demands, or at least the people I have talked are unaware of any. It sounds and looks like bullying to me, ochlocracy in brand named jeans and flip-flops.

Now this is not to say that I did not take advantage of the sunshine and 3 extra hours to take a walk into Tarnaka, eat the best MLA Dosa (the steroided cousin of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosa) and take a few minutes to watch a man sharpen knives by riding a bicycle, which was attached to a sharpener, which lived in the house that Jack built....

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

In the meantime, pre-sarees:
Let's see what happens tomorrow...

- A

The Allure of Tollywood

2009-09-13T03:25:00.004-05:00

So, because of my negligence, I feel the nostalgic call to backtrack a little.

Before coming to India, I designed kind of a crash-course in everything I could think of India. I went to almost every library branch in Jefferson County getting books on Devanagari script, Hinduism, and most importantly Hindi movies. The JCLC has a surprisingly large collection, though I am afraid I forgot to return the few I borrowed…

The first movie I watched was “Sawaariya”. It’s a joint production between Bollywood and Sony and was supposed to launch a new era of Bollywood-Hollywood. That idea flopped… but the movie is great in terms of color and the ever-present dance scene. Also, it is ‘loosely’ (emphasis should be made) based on Dostoevsky’s White Nights, so as a Russian literature nerd I had to check it out.

Of course, since it was my first movie, I had no way to gauge or analyze the merits of a Bollywood movie. I have since learned what most movie are judged on:

1. how cute the hero / how beautiful the heroine
2. male dance numbers
3. and most important the heroines fashion sense

During down time and tent-lounging around time in the Himalayas, most of the girls’ conversations revolved around movies and the stars in them. Over and over again was mentioned “how X dressed in such movie”. It’s not that acting and talent don’t matter, but in a three-hour movie in which 1/3 is singing and dancing, bad acting is not as noticeable.

But watching a Bollywood movie at a couch in Birmingham does not compare to going to the screening of a Tollywood movie (Telugu-language) movie in Hyderabad.

Last weekend, I was invited to go see the new Telugu movie “Magadheera”. I have heard about this movie for weeks. It is so big that it is being shown illegally in the southern Karnataka, where there is a rule about how much time has to elapse before a movie from another state can be screened.

I went with my friend Soujanya, her mother, cousin and aunt, all of whom had seen the movie one time before. “It’s that good”…they told me. Movies show one toe two times a day – first showing and second showing. This movie had been showing for 6 weeks already, but still the theatre was sold out and the crowd out front, leaving the first showing, was impenetrable. Once inside we found our seats and Soujanya sat next to me to translate if I had any questions.

The movie started immediately, no previews, no warning for the all-encompassing massively loud surround sound. And the yells and the cheers started immediately too. I have a feeling this was the second time round for the whole audience, aside from myself,– they cheered before the hero appeared, they boo’d the coming villain.

The first dance sequence in the movie is here:

Though the movie was in Telugu, I didn’t really need subtitles. The story was basic: 400 years back a hero and a princess, very much in love, are tested by an evil villain. The princess dies and falls off a mountain, and the prince in a wild-eyed show of love jumps after here. Now, jump forward to 2009, Hyderabad. The hero and princess have been reborn, but their past lives stay with them. One day, the hero drives by a bus stand and accidentally touches the hand of a girl standing there. Suddenly he has a flashback of his past life. Now begins the quest in which he searches for the girl with the flashback-inducing hand, the princess. Of course, she leads him on, tricking him before ultimately falling in love with him. And then, obviously they must return to their past and change the ending to happily ever after.

Stretch that paragraph in three hours and you have a Telugu movie.
In the middle, during the intermission, every one goes to the lobby and gets corn with masala, tea and chips. The intermission came right when the characters were about to journey back into their past, and while drinking tea, Soujanya assured me that the next half was the best…

After the movie, every one asked me what I thought… did I like it? did I understand what was going on? Honestly, it’s hard to say what I thought. How do you rate a movie that is based on songs and dances in which the characters travel to ‘foreign countries’ (very well-made sets at Ramoji Film Studio) and sing about finding their one true love? In which the plot moves and jumps in time with little explanation and no demand for one? I refuse to judge a Telugu movie based on some A.O. Scott critic of plot and how the characters mirror the less palatable parts of the world around us. That is not the point. The point of Magadheera, and most blockbuster Indian movies as far as I can see, is entertainment, escapism. The US makes movies like this too – Spiderman, Batman - we just have yet to master the art of the 15 minute dance scene, and we are more concerned with heroes and villains than we are with reincarnation and love….

According to Soujanya and her cousin the movie ranked high in terms of the heroine’s clothes, the dances and songs. However, they complained, ‘the hero was nothing special to look at'. Allof this, I completely agreed with.... and, honestly, I think I am being won over by 'Tollywood'...

More movies and photos soon -

- A

First Adventures

2009-08-15T04:44:00.006-05:00

[That date up there is a complete lie. It is, in fact, September 10th]

A few days ago I returned from a 20 day expedition through the Northeast Himalayas.

When the possibility of hiking in the Himalayas was first suggested by my host father it sounded like an offhand comment. And I readily said yes, in that American, or maybe more accurately Southern way, in which since I don't believe something is going to happen, I agree to it. But that sort of agreement does not translate here. The following weekend, I joined him and 6 other people for sprints and push ups and crab-walking in a park by Hussein Sagar.

The weekend after that at five o'clock in the morning we met 40 km outside of the city in a village called Bhongir to hike around an old fortress.

We spent the whole day climbing up and down stairs. Literaly. You see, as I came to learn, I had joined with a serious hiking club. Not only are they hikers, they practice martial arts, do hyatha yoga, scuba dive, and explore wildlife sanctuaries all over India. They are serious. They are fit. And the idea was that we would be too.

I started to have doubts. For one, I had only been in India 2 weeks. Two, I have never been hiking in the US, so why should I start now. Three, I am terrified of heights.

I can't really say what it was that made me say 'Yes' definitively, buy a train ticket and start searching for gloves and wool socks. But I think it happened somewhere in Bhongir. Somewhere between seeing my first monkey in the wild and crawling down to see a lone lotus flower floating in the recesses of a pond.

But even after packing, even on the train to Dehli, I didn''t really understand what was happening or really, what was going to happen. In truth, I had very little information about the particulars. Because I don't speak Hindi or Telugu, I have to rely on translation for any and all information. Sometimes there is a translator and sometimes there isn't. Plus, translation is often a notorious paraphrase, and sometimes pertinent information like 'bring two pairs of gloves' or 'book your train ticket well in advance so your bunk gets confirmed' was left out.

To be honest, it was only at the end of the trip that I realized what we had just done.

The train from Dehli was the beginning, and the first time I had been on an Indian train. They are strikingly similar to the Russian platz-kart; a long narrow corridor with bunks along the windows and thin walls separate each compartment of 8 beds. The group was big - around 40 or 50 people - all from Bangalore. The organization we went through - Adventure Sports Association of India - is based there, so along with the 15 or so members there were 25 high school to college aged girls that had heard about the trip through their schools and friends.

I am unable to tell the age of Indian men and women. I have no scale. So I was constantly assuming that sixteen year-olds were really my age and that 20 year olds were 15.

The train ride was long 26 hours, straight up the center of the country. In Dehli we changed to a local train and went north to Chendigarh. Then there was an exchange to a bus that drove us by night into the mountains so that we reached Kuulu and Manali, small resort towns at the base of the Himalayas by the next morning.

The farther North we traveled the more clothing and snacks and items we shed, and the more the group began to feel like an adult summer camp. Groups of friends started to form and songs were sung on the bus, not only by the teenagers but led by the men. As the altitude rose and the air thinned, every one started laughing and talking about glaciers and how we would stay warm and what we would be doing.

In Manali, we stopped at an ashram to take the last shower we would have for 17 days and whittle down our belonging to one pack of 8 kilos. And then we drove up along the official state highway. Because of the remoteness and the grade of the terrain, the road is impossible to maintain. There are constant avalanches and rock slides and from Oct to May the entire road and area is closed because of snowfall. So along a serpentine, one-way road we went.

And then down into a rocky, grey valley without trees or towns or people. At night, in the rain we reached Batal, which was to be our first camp.

The next 15 days kind of merge into one long sequence in my head and this post is already long winded and windy. It took a few days to get acclimatized to the altitude and cold. Batal was at around 14,000 feet, which was not so noticeable in a bus. However, the next morning (and about the next 7 mornings), I couldn't see clearly when I woke up and when I tried to stand and walk my legs swerved and snaked. I had headaches and couldn't breathe fully. And the strangest thing of all, with only 40% of the regular oxygen, I couldn't recall the basic names of people or things. When I was asked to sing an English song, I couldn't think of the lyrics to "Hard Days Night".

Some days we stayed in camp and played cards and snuck off to a dhaba (a small, roadside, or in this case cliffside, hut for food and tea) to drink tea and eat the coveted roti. You see, we had to carry everything we needed, so food was boiled down to dal' and rice and later only dehydrated upma and rice pilaf. So, at the sight of a shepherds tea or dhaba, we (meaning the less-disciplined youth and all the older men) began to calculate how many bars of chocolate and packs of cookies we needed till the next stop.

And some days we walked. Sometimes up hill for 16 km, sometimes we scaled up to 15,500 ft (Humpta Pass) and they descended into a valley of marshlands and lost trails. And sometimes it was downhill and it was raining and we fell in mud and skidded down rock faces.

Was I happy to get a bath after seventeen days? Most definitely. And I was happy to eat something green, to change my socks, to feel hot water. But the moment we walked into Manali, I felt this surge of anger. As shops and businesses started to multiple and divide into a street, then two, then 7, then a whole city, I started to feel this compression of pollution and noise and advertisements and stares. And a bigger part of me, a part that had been incubating for 17 days and had only now just woken up to what happened and where I was wanted to turn around and walk backwards.

***

I know I haven't mentioned the people or much of the actual events of the hike. This is for a few reasons. One, the hike was a serious of small events that are hard to describe in words. Luckily, there are photos. As for the people, I interviews and recorded the songs and jokes and stories of many of the people on the trip, and I will be posting snippets and edits soon. Also, I have a feeling that these people, or at least a select few, will be part of continuing adventures in the future and writing about them now feels like I am laying to rest something in its nascent form.

For all photos, look here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ashley.cleek/HiHimalayas?feat=directlink.

For now its back to Hyderabad, a city I feel I know way too little about, and classes and this apartment that is starting, ever so slowly, to look and feel like a home.

A Late Beginning

2009-07-30T09:10:00.002-05:00

As a warning this journal will be full of piecemeal information like the above. I don’t seem to get all the proper facts, either from not knowing just what questions to ask or because of some ‘untranslatable’. I have faith that at a certain point all these things that don’t make full sense will mature into actual reasons or ideas…and you, dear reader, will simply have to be patient with me.

India as facts:

It has been over a week since I have been here and I haven’t been able to write because I have been without a charger / converter for my computer.

Presently, I am in the city of Hyderabad which is in the state of Andhra Pradesh in the Deccan Plateau of India, basically the center (or some would say South-Central) India. It is farming country, mostly rice and maize, and apparently, Hyderabad used to be a small ‘village’ (people say) but you would never know it now. The city is technically 6.5 million but like most metropolitan areas that doesn’t count commuters. Also, I learned from a Indian man on the flight over: most Indians over 30 do not have birth certificates or an id number that is traceable by the state. So, there is little way to know for sure how many people live anywhere. There are driver’s licenses but many don’t have them. So when people move from state to state there is little to no way to track them. Also, interesting (though somewhat tangential) for the first nine days of a babies life it is traditional not to name it – so many people have records that just say “Girl” or “Boy” baby.

Anyway, there are a lot of ‘Girl’ and ‘Boy’ babies here, but I don’t feel this surge of population as people said I would. Or, I feel it sparingly, like on the bus at rush hour [which is going to be an entry all of its own, once I manage a good picture].

Mostly, I feel foreign, which bring with itself both the good and the bad. The bad things about sticking out - the constant stares and pointing and the occasional being pegged with fruit from a homeless woman fruit and most of all the being ripped off - are all things that are straining on the surface. Of course, they have the ability to destroy a day and make one angry and tired and feel like yelling. And sometimes I do. And, I am sure there will be entries in the future full of frustration and bitter words written after a long day. I will try to spare you, but here's the fare warning. BUT, mostly, I find that being a foreigner, particularly being an American in India elicits nothing but questions, handshakes, invitations to dinner. On a small note, today I went to get my ID card from the University Press Office. I passed 2 rupees through the barred window for a blank card and handed the woman one of the 30 passport photos I carry with me. She looked at the photo, then up at me.... "You are from?" "US," I said, "America." She smiled and asked "Do you like my country?" "Very much", I said, "I'm new here and every one is very kind." "I like your country too," she answered, "But I love my India."