Goddesses Are for Worshipping. Men Are for Making Chai.

Today is one of the last days of Navratra. There is a Navratra in the Fall and in the Spring. It is a nine-day-long festival celebrating the nine forms of the mother goddess in Hinduism. Durga (the mother goddess) is a huge deal up in the mountains. I was in Dehradun for the Fall Navratra, but you wouldn’t have known that anything special was happening there. Up here in the hills, women go all out.

Firstly, almost everyone goes to the Durga Temple at least once during Navratra. They also hold kirtans, which are large, ladies-only singing and praying sessions. I passed one on the way to Sarita’s house outside of the Kali Temple by my house. Kali is one of the incarnations of Durga. There were about six women in a circle. One of them was playing a drum and the others were clapping along. They invited me to sit down with them and play the drum, although they didn’t care for my rock-inspired technique. It is a hand drum that is played in a very monotonous, hypnotic way. After that we talked about many things, including when I’ll get married and that I should marry an Indian man. I usually tell people that I’m married, but recently I’ve stopped because I’m tired of people asking me about babies and implicitly the actions that lead to babies.

I went to the Durga Temple myself earlier this week. There was a fair turn out there. The thing to do is to stop at every shrine in the temple and leave an offering. People leave money, incense, fruits, and other foods. I saw some people leaving oil, although that seems a bit impractical to me. When I was there I met two young girls who were very excited to meet me. They were very fluent in English, because they had attended the Christian school in Joshimath until they were about twelve. Christian schools are often the best English medium schools in rural India. They asked me a lot of questions about America, which was cute, except that they clearly were disappointed when I told them that I just studied all the time when I was their age.

Today is Abishek aka Lucky’s birthday. I started off in a bad mood, because yesterday I did some of the most intense hiking that I’ve done yet for my survey. So I was tired and frustrated today. Then at 7:30 AM, Monika started knocking on my door and bringing most of her family’s living room into my room in order to make space for the celebrations today. She said that it was because it was both Lucky’s birthday and also Navratra. Me being the feisty little spitfire that I am got upset that Monika didn’t have such special attention on her birthday. But I still made a cake for Lucky with Monika, because I am a good person.

Turns out, Monika was just being nice. The celebrations had nothing to do with Lucky’s birthday. In fact, they had nothing to do with men. Women sat inside in a large group on the floor and sang Gahrwali songs about the goddess, clapping and playing a drum. Aunty, by the way, has very good rhythm. Abishek had to stand outside awkwardly with his male cousin and occasionally do something to be useful. I think they ended up making and pouring out all the chai for the ladies.

One of the girls who I previously met at the Durga Temple was also there. She wanted to seem very cool and kept saying how horrible and boring the Durga kirtan must be for me. I said that I was enjoying it and then she pretended to also enjoy it. She said something about how she doesn’t like when women cry during these things. I guess it is very much like how kids don’t like to go to church. I wonder if these girls might actually like church because it is so different from a Durga puja.

I didn’t understand the songs that were being sung, because they were all in Garhwali. But I did understand much of one because it was singing about all the important rivers and mountains in Garhwal. Garhwali culture is vaguely animist in this way. While it is certainly Hindu, important geographical features are associated with goddesses. Other Hindus might acknowledge that the Ganges is a goddess, but in Garhwal they really go with this theme. Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India and also a very important local goddess. The rivers here aren’t just the beginning of the Ganges, they’re also alive to a certain extent. I cannot impress upon you how much people love their rivers and mountains. Monika proudly showed me a water bottle filled with the water from seven rivers in Garhwal that is used for puja. When Sarita and I go hiking and go high enough to see Nanda Devi, she usually does a quick bow and pray to the mountain.

Today I largely lay in bed and waited to get called into different religious celebrations or to help with some preparations. India is tiring. I can’t explain it. I have run much harder than I hiked yesterday, but I felt like I would never move again when I got back home. Maybe it’s that the sun is so bright at this high an elevation. Maybe it’s because I never feel completely relaxed here at all, so exercise isn’t as much of a release as it normally is for me. I’m not complaining. I love going for hikes to complete my research. Nevertheless, I feel worn out. I’m going to try to pace myself these next few weeks. I think my new interpreter wants to push through these high altitude villages, but I’m more than happy to drag things out.

Baking a Cake without an Oven (IN INDIA!)

          So, this is my first adventure into food blogging. I write this mostly because I figured out how to make baked goods without an oven and I need to tell all my Indian and Fulbrighter friends about it. This is also a great trick if you’re poor and live in an apartment without an oven OR if we experience another heat wave on the East Coast like last summer and you need to bake without using an oven. I took lots of pictures to explain what I did, but my Internet is too slow to upload them now. I’ll try again later.

            I spent much of last night and this morning surfing my crappy Internet for non-oven baked goods recipes. Even though this took hours, it was still a fun distraction. The inspiration was boredom, but then I realized that Monika and Lucky (my landlords’ kids) had their last day of finals today, creating a perfect excuse for baking. I came across several options for non-oven baking:

·      Dutch oven—this in India translates to putting a pot inside another pot on a stove.

·      Water bath—this in India is an Indian Dutch oven with water in the first pot.

·      Pressure cooker—I actually found this on a bunch of Indian cooking web sites. It seems like a cool idea, but my pressure cooker here isn’t big enough. I have a larger one in Dehradun and might try it there.

I selected the water bath, because it does not require the lid of the vessel to be kept warm, unlike a Dutch oven. The idea is that the boiling water heats the bottom, while the steam heats the top. Therefore, you get an evenly cooked and moist product. This is a good option for cakes or custards, but not for cookies or other things that you want crispy.

I could not find the type of cake that I wanted to make specifically mentioned in a water bath recipe, so I combined a couple different recipes. I decided that an apple cinnamon cake would be best for Joshimath, because cinnamon and apples are easily available here. Your ingredients might change based on where you are in India. IF you are in the South, I recommend trying a pineapple upside down cake. That can be made in a thick skillet on a stovetop.

Here is the recipe that I came up with. I did not have measuring cups, so I used chai cups instead.

·      Two apples, peeled and diced

·      Cinnamon (to taste)

·      Nutmeg (less than cinnamon)

·      1.5 chai cups of granulated sugar and then some to mix with apples

·      2 chai cups of regular flour

·      1 tablespoon baking powder

·      1 pinch salt

·      ¼ of a block of Amul butter, melted

·      Milk (added until desired consistency was reached)

·      Eggs (optional-I did not use eggs, but you can use one egg and add less milk)

·      2 pots, one small enough to fit inside the other.

1.  Mix diced apples with cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. Then sprinkle liberally with sugar, mix, and put aside.

2.  Mix all dry ingredients (including more cinnamon and nutmeg) together. Go easy on the nutmeg, too much can taste bitter.

3.  Take melted butter and mix it with about 1 chai cup milk. Add into dry ingredients and lightly stir, then decide how much more milk you need. If this seems vague, it’s because I cobbled this recipe together. You want a consistency that slowly pours out of a spoon. It should be thick like molasses, but not as thick as cookie dough.

4.  Take one big pot and a smaller pot that can easily fit inside it. Put about 2-3 inches of water inside the big pot.

5. Now coat the inside of the smaller pot with butter and then sprinkle with flour. Put half of the apples on the bottom and then pour in a little less than half the batter. Put the rest of the apples on top of this layer and then follow with the rest of the batter. OR you can mix the apples into the batter and pour it all in together.

6. Bring the water in the larger pot to a boil; then reduce heat to a medium-low flame. Place the smaller pot inside the larger one and cover with a large plate or lid (if you’re fancy and have lids.)

7.  It took about an hour to cook my cake. It might have taken less time if I didn’t check on it every ten minutes and let steam out. I’d suggest being cautious and checking a lot. The cake was very moist even with lifting the “lid” and Indian stoves are notoriously hard to control. As usual, I just tested the consistency with a knife or toothpick.

8.  Let cool for about 30 minutes and then use a knife to separate the edges from the bowl. After that it should come out easily when turned upside down.

            My cake turned out very well. If you have cake flour, it will probably be even better. You can get granulated sugar at most stores even if they don’t have it displayed. If I could change one thing about my recipe, it would be the amount of nutmeg that I put in the batter. I got very excited about having nutmeg and went a little overboard. This resulted in a stronger taste than I would’ve liked. I also think that raisins would’ve been a nice addition.

            I hope that this helps my friends without an oven do some baking. The weather in the mountains is very fall-like now and it was wonderful to have a cake that reminded me of autumn back home.

On the Lighter Side of Things

Here is a conversation (translated into English) that transpired between my home stay family in Mandal Valley and myself.

Mother: You should stay in India.

Father: You should marry in India. There are many Christians in India.

Me: I know, but I'm not Christian. I am a Buddhist.

Father: Oh, they are very much the same thing.

Me: No, Buddhism is closer to Hinduism. We do puja and meditate.

Father: But your father is a Christian priest. (This is the best way to describe Unitarian Minister in India.)

Me: Yes, but my mother and I are Buddhist.

Father: Are there Buddhists in India?

Me: Yes.

Father: Good.

I Always Knew There'd Be Interviews Like This

The title of this post might lead you to believe that I’ve been having no luck with interviews. The opposite is true. I’ve moved field sites due to the poor conditions in the higher elevations. I’m currently in Mandal Valley—a beautiful, bucolic valley near the district capital of Gopeshwar. When I was at my conference in Kerala, there was another researcher from Nepal who was performing research very similar to mine. She said that there’s a Nepali phrase stating: “Under a candle is a shadow.” She found this to be true of the district that she was working in, which is close to Kathmandu but overshadowed by the needs of the city. Rather than gaining from being close to Kathmandu, this district suffered. The same can be said of Mandal Valley.

There’s no way of getting around the fact that Mandal is poor. So much so that my assistant, who is also my roommate, doesn’t even know who is scheduled caste and who is general caste. She knows that her family are not scheduled caste i.e. dalits or “untouchables.” But we were interviewing people and she had no idea that they were. Everyone is poor; there isn’t much distinction. It’s strange to me that such a beautiful, natural resource-rich area is so poor. Joshimath and Gopeshwar and worse off in terms of location, but they are undeniably wealthier. I think religious and adventure tourism has a lot to do with Joshimath’s relative success. It is home to one of the great “Maths” (pronounced with a hard t.) This is of considerable religious significance and gets tourists from Delhites and Mumbaites to Europeans and Americans looking for enlightenment and dressing very silly in the meantime. Joshimath is also a starting point for many amazing treks.

Mandal, however, does not have my to recommend it other than the fact that it is a nice place to sit and look at mountains. But even these mountains pale in comparison to what you can see about two hours away in Joshimath. The family that I’m staying with is clearly poorer than the family that I’m staying with in Joshimath. The schools here are clearly worse. People have trouble using the hospital, because a doctor is never there. If they go to the hospital, then the doctors and nurses often verbally abuse them. The closest real town is Gopeshwar and its hospital hasn’t gotten rave reviews from my interviewees. In spite of coming from a different background than my Joshimath friends, my field assistant is very charming and intelligent. I do get frustrated that she hasn’t had more education opportunities, but she does seem to be getting along very well with what she’s been given. Although she speaks in English, she can understand my broken Hindi very well.  Therefore, we’ve been going through interviews at an astonishingly fast pace.

The interviews, although plentiful, are disturbing. I met a woman who gave birth to her child prematurely and he was born on the road to the hospital. The child is six years old and cannot talk or walk. They parents have never been able to bring him to the hospital. Today I spoke with a few fifty and forty-something women. Three of them had lost children, sometimes multiple children. I don’t know how to process this. On the one hand, they’re stories do not demonstrate how the health system is working right now. But the point is that they suffered multiple, great losses. It’s terrifying and saddening. I wanted to connect with them, but how can I do that when I don’t speak or understand Garhwali? What am I even doing trying to talk to someone about these issues?

I did like the women who I talked to today. One was very sassy. She joked around with her old mother and smokes beedis (village cigarettes) to relieve tension. I wish that I could’ve talked to her more, but she has no formal education. Her Hindi was pretty muddled and my Hindi is too bad for her to understand. She is also a dai i.e. traditional midwife. Dais are interesting, because they only use massage for delivery. It’s so different from the hospitalized medicine that I’m used to seeing in the United States.

Pity is also an interesting emotion. I can feel pity for the women who I meet; but they also feel pity for me. They clearly look sad when I say that I’m in India and my parents are in America. They look sad when I say that I have no brothers and sisters—especially the brothers part. Pity is useless, because it doesn’t actually change anything. I am sad when a woman tells me about her child dying. I am deeply upset when I meet a child that is six years old and acts like he is six months old. He had a grown up upper-half, and very small, underdeveloped legs. How do I confront that pain without feeling pity? What do I do with the feelings of anger, frustration, and dismay that I undergo during these interviews?

Maybe it helps me to know that I’m the only one who is out here and talking to these women. I haven’t heard anyone say that they’ve been asked about these health problems before. How are some places over saturated with NGO’s and Garhwal has no one working on public health? I know that it’s a new state, but it’s more like a forgotten state. I’ve been told that people here are too poor to start NGO’s. I don’t believe that. There are NGO’s here, but they work in environment. I’m all for ecology, but human need help as well.

My Foray into the South

            So I’m sorry for not writing for a while. It’s been a lot of wonderful traveling. I’d love to write about Goa and Mumbai, but a lot of that was just Peter and I lying around on the beach. Suffice to say that we had an amazing time; but there wasn’t much site seeing. We did walk around the southern side of Mumbai for a bit. That was the part that the British largely inhabited and there are a lot of colonial era buildings. I always have very mixed feelings about being in areas where the British had a strong presence. On the one hand, the buildings remind me of my home. On the other hand, it is a reminder of colonization. I really enjoyed Goa and Mumbai. They were much easier than the areas in which I’m currently living and working.

            Goa is a perfect beach area, with the exception of the huge amount of aging European tourists there. The sands are completely white and fine. The Arabian Sea is probably the warmest ocean in which I’ve ever swum. Peter really enjoyed it and I think it was a good vacation for both of us. Similarly, Mumbai was busy but much easier than Delhi or other large cities. I saw women walking around at night, way past the time that I see women walking around Delhi. There was a lot of traffic in Mumbai as well, but people were generally less aggressive than in Northern Indian cities.

            I spent only four days in Dehradun before going to Kerala for the Fulbright Conference. Kerala is completely different from any other part of India that I’ve been in. It is green and humid, but very well organized and people move much more slowly than in anywhere else. Kerala is also a communist state and does very well in literacy and other human development markers. I was surprised at how many people spoke English.

            The conference was amazing. It was so wonderful to hear about everyone’s research and commiserate over difficulties that we’re all have with our studies. My research was well received and I feel ready to go back and collect some more data for my project. Mostly, it was such a relief to be able to communicate with other native English speakers. More and more I feel that there is a distance between myself and the fluent English speakers that I meet in India. It’s amazing how much culture affects one’s ability to communicate. I also feel like I have to keep back a lot of the emotions that I feel, because I don’t want to come off like I don’t like or respect India. Therefore, it was great to get the chance to express myself openly among so many other young people living and working in India.

            The conference was held in a five star hotel. It was pretty nice, although it was very shocking for me to go from my work in Uttarakhand to this amazing hotel in Kochi, Kerala. After the conference a large group of the student researchers used a houseboat to travel around the Kerala backwaters. The backwaters were bigger than I expected. I know that there are smaller canals, but houseboats can’t get through them. The larger backwaters were very green and although they were hot, it felt much less hot than the plains area that I’ve experience in north India.

            The houseboat was nicer than most hotels that I’ve stayed in on my own in India. But we saw other houseboats that were decorated as if all the furniture and interior decorations came from Pottery Barn. It was a relief to be able to interact with people outside of the conference and just talk about our experiences and perceptions of our work and the world around us. We were also joined by two girls who are doing their Fulbrights in Tajikistan (the conference was for all of South and Central Asia.) Hearing about Tajikistan emphasized just how similar India is to America in many ways. Tajikistan is not a democracy, 50% of its GDP comes from the drug trade, and if you’re a white woman people either assume that you’re a missionary or a Russian prostitute. I immensely respected their work and perseverance, but it also made me very happy to be working in India.

            A smaller group of us branched off after the houseboat and decided to go to Munnar, which is a hilly region of Kerala. We took a ferry to the town that we thought had the closest direct bus to Munnar. Turns out we could have gotten one from where our houseboat was. Regardless, I really enjoyed the ferry. In terms of comfort, it was not as nice as the houseboat. But I saw much more of Keralan life and wildlife. There were a large number of egrets, ducks, cormorants and some other birds that I had never seen before. The ferry went by a huge number of bright green rice fields and people’s houses, which were nestled right at the edge of the canal.

            After a day of traveling, we got to Munnar. I can’t say much for the town of Munnar itself, but the tea plantations around it were beautiful as were the hills. We were unable to go to a wildlife sanctuary nearby, because it is the dry season and most animals have left that area. I loved seeing a different culture in South India. There are a lot of Christians in South India and many of the churches and shrines look very similar to Hindu temples and shrines. I saw many figures of Jesus that were positioned like Krishna.

            Hiking around Munnar was a nice rest from the intense heat of the backwaters and it was interesting to see a different type of hilly terrain. Instead of pine trees and devdars, these hills were covered with palm trees and other verdant, big leaved plants. There are a huge number of palm trees in Kerala. It is no wonder that “toddy”—the local moonshine is made from palm tree sap. I tried toddy and I have to say that fermented sap is about as delicious as it sounds.

            We spent about a day-and-half in Munnar and then traveled back to Kochi. Our hotel was in the Fort Kochi area, which is right by the water and a lot of old things, so of course it was also very touristy. I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many white people who are not affiliated with Fulbright since I came to India. I have to say, that I really did like Kochi. It is very laid back and people are generally very nice. The only problem is that it is nearly impossible to get a drink. Everything closes by 10 or 10:30. One night we ended up taking our Tuborg bottles of beer to the beach, which was much nicer than sitting in a bar anyway.

            Holi is the festival of colors in India, when people throw colored powders on each other as well as water. It was March 8^th and we thought that we had missed it. But it turned out that people celebrated a second Holi on Sunday, because it was the weekend. Our Munnar group met up with a group who had stayed around Kochi and we headed over to a temple where we had been told that Holi would take place. The “Holi play” mostly consisted of children and their parents, so it was a very safe environment. Us being white, where a natural target for little children to throw colors on. So we ended up considerably more saturated in color than most of the other participants. It was a much better experience than I anticipated it to be. Some of my friends had warned me that Holi can be an excuse for drunken men to try to rub color on you. But it was only families as this small celebration. This was probably due to the fact that Holi is not really celebrated in Kerala.

            The nice thing about being in Kochi was that it exposed me to South India. South India is generally better developed and slower paced than North India. Now I can understand why all of my South Indian friends at the Wildlife Institute talk about missing their homes so much. Many things that I would not have done in North India, I did in Kerala without any problem. This included going to the beach at night, playing Holi, and walking around at night with three other women. Some of my friends even wore tank tops and shorts and they were not harassed once. Of course, people do stare. But that is largely to be expected. It seemed to be heaven for my friend Hillary who is based in Tajikistan.

            Well, now I’m back in Dehradun and I had about two days to adjust before going back to the field. I’m very excited to start my fieldwork again. Seeing Peter and going to the conference really rejuvenated me. I feel more confident about my work, although my Hindi has vastly deteriorated after spending so much time around other Americans. I will be going to a lower altitude area about two hours away from Joshimath. I’ve been told that the wildflowers will be blooming now, so I’m excited for that. Dr. Uniyal also earnestly warned me that I need to be in the house by dusk, because the area that I’m going has a “leopard problem.” For the first time since coming to India, I don’t want to argue, “American women stay out after dark.”

Pictures from Kerala

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5719650422527241777

I'm currently writing the accompanying post for this.