Christmas party, India style!

My Christmas party was a fairly tame affair - no one drank beer but me and we ended at 8:30. Still, it was a good time and I enjoyed getting a chance to make some American food for my friends.

My attempt to make mustard.
Here they use mustard seed,
mustard oil, mustard greens...
but no mustard!  Funny, but it's
nearly the opposite for us in the US.

One of the most rockin suits I may have seen, EVER

To be fair, I had heels on

Village surveys

A man and his child and the family's
unfinished home, due to lack of money

This is hysterical. Apparently this is a well that no
longer works. The villagers tied a bunch of
thorny branches to the top of the well
because kids were throwing stones down it.

The driver I hired to take me to the villages
invited me to his home and fed me some
tasty saag and mahki (corn) roti,
a winter tradition in Punjab.

Surveys in Ludhiana's informal housing settlements, aka slums

You might think that spending time in a slum would be a depressing experience.  In part, you'd be right, simply because it's hard not to feel glum when you see people, and especially children. living in often squalid conditions. But the condition of the homes in different slums varies quite a bit. And while some kids seem despondent and a little sickly, others look healthy, clean and happy. I ask a family's income in my surveys, and you can see how it clearly corresponds to the condition of the community, with one exception. I interviewed a father in a slum not pictured here. He was earning a "decent" salary and his son was attending school - as far as I could tell he was one of the few children, if the only one attending school. I would guess his child will move out of that slum when he was old enough. Through casual, and therefore very unscientific, observation I have also noticed how as income rises, so does the rambuctuousness of the children. I see this in the villages and the cities. The two could be totally unrelated, but just wanted to throw that out there in case anyone else has noticed this.

The inside of a home

Slightly better off slum than above pics

How to deal with poverty 101

This course will teach students how to handle emotions that arise when viewing extreme poverty on a day to day basis.  Students will learn practical methods for handling difficult situations. Examples of situations discussed in this course include little children toiling daily in restaurants; children with missing limbs (especially when it's clear the limb was torn from the child's body) entering trains to sweep the floors for small donations; children with painted faces and decorations dangling from their heads "entertaining" you as they approach your car to ask for money; children with brittle hair who haven't been bathed in weeks picking up garbage for meager returns. Students will come away with the skills to choke back tears when all of this is too much to handle and when things seem desperate and hopeless.

I've cracked the code

About two weeks before I left for Rajasthan, I noticed that the cool (sans water heater) showers that I had relished to relieve my skin of the sticky heat of September and October were becoming less and less refreshing. I surveyed a few Indians to ask their opinion. I could buy a type of rod, several said. This rod plugs into the wall and then you stick it in a bucket of water to warm the water. Well, seems quite counterintuitive to stick a metal rod with voltage running through it into a bucket of water. No offense to the ISI, but I don't feel entirely secure in their monitoring abilities to ensure I won't get zapped to an early urn. The other option was to buy a geiser. Not the kind you find in an old folks' home; it's actually a hot water heater. So I did just that, and had it installed shortly after I returned from Rajasthan.  


Oh, what a difference it makes! But still, I was feeling a bit cool in between dumps of the warm water from my little cup, as I'm now taking bucket showers because the water was redirected to dispense from the wall faucet. The air being only in the 50's in the morning, I would shiver through the whole process. Of course, of course! Mrs. Pogemiller from 5th grade science class would not be pleased that I had forgotten the basics of evaporation. First, wash your hair. During this time your body stays dry, and therefore, a bit warmer. You can even remain nearly entirely clothed during this process. After the whole hair thing, only then do you pour the warm water over your body. This way, you are only wet for a few minutes and can quickly finish the job before drying off. 


A rather trivial discovery, but I enjoy uncovering these little tricks that help me adapt to a new place.   

So hungry!

What is it about Indian breakfasts? Now that I've returned to Ludhiana from Jaipur (Rajasthan), I've also returned to some of my old eating habits. Instead of the parantha (fried bread), a hard boiled egg, and curd (full fat, of course) for breakfast, I'm again eating oatmeal sprinkled with nuts and a little maple syrup. Sometimes I throw in a banana. I guess it should be obvious why I'm hungry a few hours after this breakfast and why the Indian nasta satiates me well into the afternoon. Is this how most Indians stay thin - less snacking and more full on, full fat meals?  Do I sense an Indian Women Don't Get Fat in the making?

Am I cheating?

Sitting here nibbling on some cave-aged Gruyere and sauscisson sec between sips of duty-free Rioja, I feel a little tug on my conscience - am I cheating on India?  Am I doing my whole-hearted, hand on heart best to understand Indian culture by sitting in my apartment with my gourmet foods lovingly flown thousands of miles to me from New York by my sister (This after the cheese was flown from Switzerland and the wine from Spain; at least the sausage only traveled from St. Louis. How many trees must I plant to atone for such a carbon footprint?!). True, I was eating these delicacies on my bed, the way many Punjabis take lunch in the heat of the summer, their bedroom often being the only room in the house with an air conditioner. But somehow I don't think this qualifies in the UN-y sense of mutual understanding. 


I posed my question to a friend who responded by assuring me that because I had become accustomed to eating these foods, I could not be expected to deprive myself for such a long period of time (Nine months with Indian paneer as the only cheese to speak of! Paneer, loved more for its texture and ability to absorb heavy Punjabi gravies than for its flavor, of which it has little.).  I like this answer. And when you put it that way, well, as a card-carrying New Yorker who lived for ten years in a city saturated with psycho-therapists, CSWs, LCSWs, psycho-analysts, psychologists, psychiatrists and numerous other shingles adorning Park Avenue apartment buildings, really, I can say that it is not my fault - my cravings are simply a matter of habit, one might say they are my part of my nature; if not my nature, then at the very least, my nurture! 


To me, comfort food - anything that reminds me of home or my life in New York - has become a necessary part of living in a foreign country.  Amid the honking horns, the motorbikes that seem intent on running me over, the young boys calling out, "How are you?!" as I pass by, the lack of freedom in how I dress...my nerves need some soothing. And right now, when my friends and family are sleeping in the U.S. and everyone else seems to be busy, cheese is my way to unwind. True, I have only been in India for just over three months, so all of this might seem a bit dramatic. And, frankly, a little indulgent, given I'm in one of the poorest countries in the world and studying the topic of food security. 


So after this cathartic writing exercise, I seem to be back where I started - confused, torn and feeling a little guilty. I suppose I will move past this for the time being, and I'll continue to snack, drink wine, and request items from the next sister (on that list: olives, blue cheese and more peanut butter, creamy and salted).  But these issues inevitably nag on me.  And I think that's ok. Because I think that's part of the point of what the Fulbright calls 'mutual understanding.'

Research in Jaipur

At this agriculture research station, they're trying to get
farmers to use greenhouses to grow flowers for export.

My interpreter on the left and his cousin on the right.

Interpreter's cousin invited me for dinner

Rajasthani dinner. On the left are baati; essentially wheat flour, ghee and
salt formed into a ball and then baked. It's wonderfully doughy on the inside.

I bought some sweets at this sweet shop and soon had a huge crowd
of employees surrounding me handing me samples

One of the women we surveyed

My second interpreter

A rarity in India

Hailing a bus because there is no real bus stand; you
just have to know where to go to catch the bus.

The man running the canteen brought
me flowers for my birthday!

Birthday cake

Highlights from the Pushkar Camel Fair

My trip to Pushkar was filled with colorful sites and sounds. Disappointingly, however, I did not hear any infamous camel farts. 

Random Ganesh statue 

Austrian I met showing the video we took to the locals

Holy lake of Pushkar