A long post, covering emotions, culture and missionaries

I am back in Joshimath after spending Diwali in Dehradun and Mussoorie respectively. It was a welcomed break from fieldwork, but was pretty draining itself. I am however, very happy that I made the switch. Based upon the amount of sweets that the family here has given me AFTER Diwali, I think I would have died from diabetes if I had actually been here for the real deal.

Tomorrow is Halloween and Monica—the fifteen-year-old girl whose family I am staying with—is turning sixteen. The whole sixteen-years-old thing is not a thing here at all. But I am hoping that I can try to share some Halloween with her for her birthday. I was hoping to find a green coconut or a kaddu to carve for Halloween, but my prospects are looking bleak, as Joshimath is not as well stocked as Dehradun. I will probably get a hard coconut and try to use nails or something to make the semblance of a face.

Now that I am getting ready to come back home, I am strangely feeling more homesick than I was before. Why does knowing that I’m going to see people soon make me miss them more? It also makes the thought of coming back for five or six more months very daunting. But I have to remember that the medical school process will be more-or-less completed at that point, so I should feel a lot less anxious, which will be nice.

It’s weird what I miss and what I do not miss while I am in India. Obviously, I miss people. That is a given. And that doesn’t really change over time. Right now, I am living in a three-room apartment, which experiences frequent power cuts and only gets water about twice a day. Strangely, I do not miss reliable electricity or water. I do miss easy hot water though, especially now that it’s getting colder. Fortunately, I pay for the gas, so I don’t feel guilty for boiling a lot of water for bathing. I do not miss going out at night, but I do miss good Internet. The Internet is my only way of constantly being connected with people. It also is a means of escapism. As much as I do love India, it is nice to read about what stupid thing Michelle Bachmann said or to read about the Occupy Wallstreet Protests. Knowing about what is happening in America makes me feel less disconnected from the people back home.

It is also funny what incidents annoy me and which I couldn’t care less about—I hate it when people lie to me, but I don’t mind paying more money than Indians. Essentially, these are the same things. If someone lies to me about why they were late for a meeting, it is no different than if someone lies to me about the price of a piece of fruit. The difference that I see is that the person who is selling me food, expects me to pay more. They charge all foreigners more. I know this and they know this, therefore it doesn’t seem like a lie. I can choose to argue or to walk away or to just pay and save myself the energy. But if someone tells me that my internet will be fixed tomorrow, when they know that is not true. Or if someone tells me that they will call me back in ten minutes, and then never call; I get really irate. I don’t know if Indians experiences this or not. But I don’t think I’d care either way. I just don’t like being lied to.

I explain to my Indian friends that Americans are very direct. They say, “Oh yes, in India as well.” No. You’re wrong. I don’t like to tell people when they’re wrong about their own culture; but even the Director of the United States India Education Fund agrees that Indians tend to be more passive in their conversation. This is something that is hard for me to navigate. It also means that what I perceive to be a flat out lie might be someone else’s way of being polite. It would be very rude to say that one cannot talk or does not want to talk. It is better to say that you will call back. It would be rude to not invite someone over to your house, but you might not actually want that person to come over at all.

Therefore, I miss direct conversation. I miss feeling like I know how to control a situation. I have, however noted that Garhwali women yell a lot. So, I fee comfortable yelling for the time being. At least when my internet is not working.

As for Diwali…that can be best summed up with this conversation.

PhD student: Are you going to celebrate Diwali at the Wildlife Institute?

Me: No, I am going to Mussoorie.

PhD student: Are you and your friends going to set off crackers?

Me: Yes, but I think only small ones. You know, selling these fireworks to just anyone would be illegal in America.

PhD student: (looks aghast) If you took away our crackers, there would be riots in the street.

Indeed there would be. There are fireworks for the three days up to and the three days after Diwali. Diwali itself is a complete madhouse, albeit, a wonderful madhouse. Very small children light very large fireworks though, which I am not a fan of. In Mussoorie, we got some smaller firecracker and some sparklers. If you ever want to light an Indian firework, you should know that they are actually very difficult to light. That is actually appealing to me normally, but it is not appealing when there are three people huddled around a cracker trying to light it. It probably took Nick and Andy about thirty minutes to light even a sparkler. There was one point when Nick and I were trying to make a human shield around matches that kept on going out no matter how quickly Andy lit them and put them to the supposed fuse. Meanwhile, Kerala kept yelling “stand back.” I think we went through all of Victoria’s matches, and a lot of her candles to try to lit the fuses. Eventually we had some firecrackers. But our neighbors outdid us and there were actual, very large fireworks right about us. Fortunately, we were not underneath the ashes as they fell.

The thing that none of us could understand were the “bombs.”  These are firecrackers that make no light, but only a very loud noise. At one point we were certain that people were sneaking into the apartment and lighting them inside, because there was no way that anything that loud could come from the street. But it was possible, and it was possible up to about 3:00 AM.

Diwali is a funny holiday. In Mussoorie there were fires, crackers, fireworks, bombs, and drunken people in the street. But when I returned to Dehradun, I saw that the professors who I work with and the PhD students had a very different Diwali. Theirs’ was more like Christmas than New Year’s Eve: lots of lights, lots of ghee lamps, and lots of decorations. Also, they ate a lot of sweets. Similarly, up in Joshimath things seem pretty tame. Some people light fireworks and crackers even now. But the family decorated the house and made a lot of food. It is both a very public and private holiday. Christmas can be like that as well, but something about Diwali especially evokes the dichotomy of chaos and order unlike anything that I have previously seen in the United States.

I’m not judging the drunkenness. We had a couple of drinks up in Mussoorie. If anyone out there wants a marketing Fulbright, I recommend studying liquor marketing in India. There is a vodka named “White Mischief;” but believe me, the white people were not the ones causing mischief on Diwali. There is also a Whiskey called Antiquarium. The bottles are designed to look like Grey Goose or Hennessey, but fail miserably. For some reason a bottle of vodka had a frosted exterior, like Grey Goose, but instead of the goose it had a guitar on it. On the opposite side of the bottle, viewed through the guitar was a man swimming. Something was very, very wrong with his shoulder. Nick asked me to diagnose his illness, and we mutually decided that is what happens if you swim while drinking vodka. Indian vodka companies don’t write out the risks of their products, they show you them. Very responsible.

Overall, it was a very good Diwali. As much as it would have been nice to have a sweet-overloaded, cozy Diwali with the family in Joshimath, I am very glad that I had some fun with some friends. Also, Diwali is completing insane, and it’s good to reflect on that with other outsiders.

After that rollicking discussion, I’m going to sum up this long blog post with a more serious topic. Over the past week back in Dehradun, I met one woman who openly told Alison and I that she is a missionary and two people who clearly are missionaries, although they had a very weak lie to explain their presence in India. Forcing or encouraging religious conversion is illegal in India. You can convert to any religion you would like to here. You can also go to a Christian Church with services in any language. But one cannot try to actively convert someone to a religion. I knew that missionaries were still coming to India, but I never expected someone to directly tell me that she is a missionary. This woman has been in India for eleven years and I told her that being a missionary, in the traditional sense, is illegal. She said, “No it’s not.” She then proceeded to explain medical missionaries. She knew that I am studying medicine, so I’m surprised that she thought that I’d fall for the medical missionary defense. Medical missionaries provide medical care, often funded through church groups. This woman was not a medical missionary.

The two women who I met with a thin lie were more aware of their position in India. But their lie was bad and their knowledge of India flimsy. They said that they were exporting spices. Nick, Alison and I compared our conversations with them later and found that we all knew more about spices than they did. It is worth noting that Alison is studying Tibetan history in India, so these girls should have not have been schooled by her. I also am from Jersey City, I can take the PATH to Journal Square aka Curry Square. We are not in dire need of more spices being imported to the United States. As Nick aptly put it: “We don’t need Marco Polo.”

I have serious issues with the woman who was honest about her missionary work, but lied about its legality. She’s flaunting her illegal work and lying about laws that she well knows. I am concerned about the two women with the weak lie. It’s not a good time to be pushing people’s buttons, and if you want to go out and spread Christianity, you’d better know a bit more about India.

 I probably shouldn’t be writing about them on my blog, but I don’t have a ton of sympathy for people who go to do missionary work in a country that does not welcome them. Go somewhere else, where the government wants you. You’re being disrespectful to the country in which you’re living. More importantly, you’re naïve to think that this isn’t illegal for a good reason. Sometimes Christians are killed for perceived conversions. I think that’s terrible. As I said before, India is a democracy and technically people should be able to become Christians if they want to convert. But I do believe that outright conversions should be prevented in India. There’s too much religious tension here, it’s just unsafe for everyone involved. More importantly, if people are going to preach Christianity to Indians, they should themselves be Indian. The Gospel is too complex to be explained through translators and poor Hindi. I think if people choose Christianity, they should understand the religion fully. It takes a complete linguistic and cultural understanding to do this.

I don’t know why I’m okay with convincing people to get microloans, but not with them being convinced to convert. Nick, Alison and I talked about it for awhile, but never could decide why we dislike missionaries so much. To me religion is personal. I don’t like it when people try to challenge my Buddhist faith, and I’ve only been a Buddhist for four years. I imagine that I would be very offended if people questioned a faith that was a part of my familial and cultural identity. I have a lot of Christian friends, some of whom have converted. But they converted out of their own choice and for personal reasons. With the gap between Indian and foreigner, it is difficult for me to imagine that these foreign missionary conversions can be personal.

I myself have had to struggle with the fact that some people respect me here because I am white and because I have more money than they do. If I were to preach Buddhism, I would be exploiting how people perceive me to spread my faith. Missionaries also have more money and are a different race than those to whom they are preaching. It is an abuse of residual colonial feelings about ethnicity to use your race to persuade people to convert. Whether or not missionaries realize that they are doing this here, it is what they are doing.