just your average Sunday afternoon

Sorry I haven't posted in some days. There wasn't very much in the way of excitement this past week, until yesterday that is! But before I get into that, let me report that I found out that karikkoddai is actually charcoal. Americans are slow like charcoal, which requires vast amounts of petrol, time, and attention to sufficiently catch on fire. But like I always say, better charcoal than the banana tree log which doesn't burn at all.

Yesterday morning some "rowdies" from the area showed up and started arguing with the neighbors in front of my house because the wife's younger brother had bought a plot of land abutting theirs (which they are anyways illegally occupying) and had built a wall on it which apparently was occupying some of their land (again, not their land in the first place). There was a lot of yelling but eventually they left and things were calm for several hours. Then around 5pm a fracas ensued, when they came back with more people ready to fight. I of course couldn't understand a single word of any of this. There are two kinds of speech I have a hard time understanding here: 1) shy children talking and 2) people fighting. The former mostly because I am half deaf and the latter because I don't know many bad words and cannot understand Tamil when people are screaming.

Actually I did understand a few words when the husband was lunging down the stairs of his house trying to beat the tar out of one of the rowdies, which was basically "BRING IT!" By the time the rowdies had left he was huffing and puffing on the front porch, yelling something about "RESPECT!!!" At the height of the conflict his son had run into the house and got a club (and thankfully not an arivaal -- machete) and came storming out, ready to do some damage.
The husband had rolled up his veshti and was ready as well, but the women were in the middle holding the men back. Turns out they were fighting with the guy who is my regular rickshaw driver, but I couldn't see him as I was peering out the window trying to get a glimpse of the melee. I simply couldn't imagine him fighting, as he is totally calm and quiet at all times, but according to sources he is like a cobra which goes along calmly one minute and strikes the next.

Today I learned that it all started when these rowdies, whom everyone is afraid of, came over here in the morning and started harassing the wife when her husband was not home. This got him pretty outraged, that and when they came back and went up to his door and ordered, "HEY, EJACULATE!!! GET OUT HERE." Turns out calling a man "ejaculate" isn't a very nice thing and is a good way to start a fight. Of course I didn't know this word and got Tamilarasi to tell me all the bad words that were exchanged yesterday, but they were so bad she couldn't bring herself to speak them and wrote them down instead. She was also nearly dying of embarassment and laughing hysterically, but I was of course pretty excited to learn some bad words as these are things one certainly won't get in the classroom. Apparently they were also screaming things like "I am going to rape your mother, sister, grandmother, etc." These things weren't so funny of course.

Once the police showed up, the rowdies got on their motorcycles and went home. Not sure what the next phase is going to be. The neighbors put a police complaint against them which was pretty brave considering most people here avoid the police at all costs, and certainly don't put complaints against confirmed rowdies. After the rowdies dispersed, I considered it safe to leave and I went to a big kan kadchi (literally "show for the eyes" or "exhibition") at Tamukkam. Turns out it was a good thing I left when I did, because there was a huge brawl directly BEHIND my house last night while I was away. Basically I won't get into the details in this forum, but someone was demanding to be able to pitch a tent on my roof so his family could live there. This person has clearly lost his mind.

Some of the highlights of this past week included getting my fridge repaired and getting darshan of Nasser, a big Tamil movie star! They were doing a cinema shooting at the Gandhi museum. Unfortunately I had missed the shooting the day before when Nasser had acted out a heart attack scene with some comedians, including Vivek!

Unfortunately all my Nasser pics turned out blurry, but here he is with a group of schoolkids.

Tamilarasi channeling a distinctly Rajasthani way of wearing a sari.

dumber than a banana tree log

Today I learned that there are four types of intelligence:

1) Phosphorus: This material apparently lights on fire very easily; if the wind blows and there is a fire nearby, then phosphorus will easily go up in flames. Thus a “phosphorus” type person is very sharp.

2) Camphor: This substance will light on fire easily, but only if you put a match right up to it. This person is smart, given the right spark, but not as quick as phosphorus.

3) Karikkoddai (translation to follow): This item is very difficult to burn, and requires a lot of fanning and a lot of effort to get a good flame. This type is person is obviously considered dumb and slow.

4) Banana tree log: This type of wood simply will not burn. A banana tree log person is considered to be an idiot and a fool.

I was prompted to inquire about this intelligence scale after reading an article in the weekly magazine put out by the Dinamalar Tamil daily. The article was about a young Tamil software engineer, Rahul, and his experiences working in the United States. When he went home to India, his family and friends had a lot of questions about life in the states. Here's an excerpt:

“What is this, Rahul? Computer software engineers from our country are going to the United States by the boatloads. Americans aren't as smart as us, are they?” asks Rahul’s uncle.

“That’s true, uncle. If you grill one of our people four times about a particular issue, it’s enough. He’s like camphor. But if you tell an American this same thing even forty times it won’t penetrate their brain. Therefore, even if a boy from our country who is just an average student goes to America, he’ll be making sense of things in no time," replied Rahul.

I found this story pretty funny and consulted Tamilarasi to get to the bottom of it. She detailed the four types of intelligence for me, and you might be happy to hear that Americans don’t fall under the category of banana tree logs, but we are considered in the category of karikkoddai which is either a piece of shishkabob meat, the bark/seed from the curry leaf bush, or the firewood used when roasting meat, depending on the translation! I need to check with Tamilarasi to figure out what exactly she meant. So Americans aren’t absolute idiots, but we are dumb and slow. I’ll get back to you tomorrow with our final verdict. It's not looking good, though, because from the looks of my notes I’m pretty sure we are going to end up being a piece of damp firewood.

What do U think?

Which one R U?

a minor irritation

The light in my bedroom no longer works between the hours of 5pm and 10pm which, interestingly, is just the time that one might want to turn on a light in one's room! I've been advised that every tube light in every home is like this, once it reaches a certain vintage. Apparently mine has already reached its life expectancy of one year and I should no longer expect to have light during these hours owing to low voltage. There is a solution, which is to turn on the tubelight religiously before 5pm and let it burn all night. This is not only inconvenient, but wasteful. I've been doing it, however, because I need light WHEN IT IS DARK OUTSIDE. However, tonight I made the mistake of accidentally turning it off when I left the room! FOOL! It's a habit to turn the light off when I leave the room, what can I say? So now I can forget reading in here tonight, etc. The tube lights in the rest of the house are still functional, but sitting in my "office" during the night hours means getting mauled by mosquitoes as there isn't a window but a hole in the wall. Furthermore it isn't exactly a posh room, containing nothing more than a plastic lawn chair and a small table. I think it might be time to invest in a new tube light perhaps.

kedda neeram

My eyeball was twitching pretty much non-stop for about two weeks, and only now does it seem to have calmed down significantly. I am either cured because Chellapandi waved chilies, dal, salt, mustard seeds, and dirt from a three-point intersection around my head and then burned it in a blazing inferno on the main road, or because she's been feeding me a different variety of spinach every morning. I like to think of it as a combination of both.

Though my eyeball twitching problem seems to be, thankfully, on the way out, these days are really seeming like a kedda neeram (bad time) for me. Firstly, my fridge (my prized possession) quit working the first day I got back to Madurai. It's been in the shop for a week, and I pretty much concluded today that I am never getting it back. The tricycle driver showed up and carried it off into the sunset, and I really have no idea where it is now. Furthermore, every time I call they keep saying it will be ready "tomorrow" (translation: never?). The phone is also broken, for the third time, which added to my anxiety today. Whenever the repair guy shows up to fix it, it miraculously starts working again, which leads them to the conclusion that I am crazy. Of course it makes me even crazier when this happens. I should also mention that the Western toilet in the house is oozing black sludge and threatens to die any moment. Once that goes, my life as I know it will truly be over.

What really clinched it for me today was when I went to grab my tape recorder, thinking I would at least try to boost my spirits by getting some interviews, and it turned out to be BROKEN as well! This was TOTALLY out of left field. The rest of the day went waste as I was led on a wild goose chase through the city, trying to find yet another "service center" where another of my prized electronics will most likely live (die?) in perpetuity. When the tape recorder went bust, so did all my patience. People here really and truly have the patience of Job, and it is moments like these that the impatience of Americans really comes to the surface. More than impatience it is naivete; I keep believing when people say "tomorrow". In general I try to be very patient here, but when so many aggravating factors come together in one particular moment, it becomes crystal clear that the entire tank of patience has run completely and utterly bone dry. I was so frustrated that I literally felt like I was running on fumes and I had to sit down. Tamilarasi unfortunately had to be witness to my hopelessness. She cheered me up, though, and so did Chellapandi when she got here. Their father-in-law is coming back from the village on Monday, and I have every confidence that he will blast the Videocon disservice center sky high as soon as he gets the chance. I look forward to this moment. In the meantime, the very nice neighbors have decided to turn on their fridge (it is kept merely for show and rarely, if ever, turned on), and are letting us store some of our perishables there.

My alarm clock is about the only thing around here that isn't broken.
In fact, it's been working a little TOO WELL these past couple of days.

When you first got your period did a marching band show up at the front door?

Two nights ago the big function was held for the girl next door who 11 days ago reached her "age attendment." I have to say it was probably one of the coolest functions I've seen, and fun was had by all. Hopefully fun was also had by the girl, for whom this function was ostensibly being held. I say ostensibly only because for 95% of the function she was holed up in the room where she has been the past 11 days, and all the merriment was really going on outside.

First off, a marching band showed up and started to play: two drums, cymbals, trumpet and clarinet. They were pretty awesome. Shortly after that, the mother's brothers (maamaa) started to filter in. They are the ones whom the girl's father and everyone else must receive with pomp, circumstance, and respect. They are the ones who bear the expenses of this function for their niece, and indeed all important functions for their sister's daughter save marriage. When the mother's oldest brother showed up, everyone stood up, including the 85-year-old grandma which was a signal to me that this guy was a high roller of some kind. Turns out he is "just" the maamaa. But as Tamilarasi put it, even if the taay maamaa (mother's brother) is ten years old "we have to show him respect." Standing at attention for a ten-year-old boy would be a bit too heavy on the patriarchy for my tastes, but fortunately this particular taay maamaa was 40, not 10, and I of course stood up like everyone else.

The most important parts of the function seemed to center around the presentation of lavish gifts including vessels, fruits, silk sarees, eggs, sugar, jaggery, and huge quantities of cash money to the girl's parents. The material gifts are carried from the mother's father's house on the heads of the women, wives of the mother's brothers and other female relations. This is known as ciiru. They follow the marching band in a line, and in front of them men set off the obligatory atom bombs and other firecrackers to sufficiently deafen all those in attendance. When the women arrive at the girl's home, they are received by the girl's father and their gifts and cash money are catalogued in a ledger. This practice if known as moy. Even those who don't do the ciiru give huge sums of money for the moy, often to the point of going into incredible debt to do so. This is a matter of respect. The person to whom you give at a function will consult their ledger before they attend your next function, and will most like give double. I saw people who I know to be quite poor give the equivalent of half their monthly income. Often individuals will take out loans at extortinate interest rates to save face at the moy. In Madurai, unsavory moneylenders often compound the interest for such loans by the minute, thereby enslaving people for their whole lives.

After all the gifts have been received and duly noted in the ledger, it's time to bring the girl out of the room and out back for the ritual bath/tidal wave. All the wives of the material uncles, and other close relatives and female friends, take turns dumping water over the girl's head. As soon as the first drop was poured, some of the ladies starting doing that ululation thing which was pretty neat. As Tamilarasi put it, this is a "very auspicious sound." The female relatives also smeared lots of turmeric and other herbal concoctions on her as well. This lasted for quite some time. After the bathing, the girl is dressed in a super fancy silk saree given by the taay maamaa and ornamented in tons of gold. It's then time for the photo op, in which the girl prostrates to all the taay maamaa and their wives and receives their blessings. They then garland her.

After the photo time, we all made our way over to the mandapam where dinner was being served. No one will eat in the girl's house as it is tiiddu or impure. The girl must remain in her house for three more days as she is vulnerable to being grabbed by ghosts and demons if she leaves the house. For thirty days she must carry a piece of iron to ward off the evil spirits. Oh, and I forgot to mention that for the 15 days she is impure, she must drink raw eggs first thing in the morning. I asked Tamilarasi, isn't that gross? And she said, "Oh no! The first time you drink it you will vomit, but then after that it is fine."

Wonder if any of y'all ladies had a marching band show up to your house when you reached your "age attendment" way back when?

The grandma from next door is my Madurai style icon. She and I are actually the only people in Meenambalpuram who wear sunglasses. Except hers are way cooler than mine.

Photo-op in front of the kolam

As the bombs go off, the band plays on.

Ciiru (directly in front of my house)

Girl's father receives his wife's brothers

Mother's brothers seated around all the goodies.

moy: taay maamaa takes account of all the goodies and cash

One of the uncles garlands the girl.

Touching the feet of the mother's eldest brother.

Major bling.

Me with some of the neighbors.

Approximately 200 camera-crazy people demanded that I take their pictures. I took so many pictures that I went through two sets of batteries. When the digital camera comes out, a circus ensues. Curiously enough I managed to get at least one picture of myself.

a rather simple case of mistaken identity.

Today Tamilarasi and I made our way downtown for various purchases such as cloth for her son's school uniform and bangles to wear to a nearby function tomorrow morning. Seeing as how my stomach operates according to a very strict schedule, by the time 1:30 PM rolled around I was about to die of hunger. I reluctantly decided that we would eat in a very busy meals place right beside the Meenakshi Temple. I was reluctant because places by the temple, pretty much any temple, aren't exactly renowned for cleanliness and hygenic food. And sure enough, I've been insanely nauseous for the past several hours.

But it turns out that there was something quite a bit more amiss than the sambhar in Manorama restaurant. As Tamilarasi and I were busy eating, suddenly there was this man trying to bum rush our table. There was a big confusion and hubbub, and when I looked up there were several restaurant employees holding back a man with crazy in his eyes. He was looking at me and gesturing wildly, going on about how I looked like a "cinema actress" and indeed he thought I was Trisha! He kept trying to rush up to me and they were holding him back and trying to throw him out of the place. Meanwhile a man was very calmly pouring sambhar on my banana leaf which added to my confusion. Was this a serious matter and should I run away? The sambhar man told Tamilarasi that he was simply a "loose" man and there was nothing to worry.

Last Thursday, the evening I arrived to Madurai, the 13-year-old girl next door reached her "age attendment". She has to stay in this room for 11 days and cannot go to school, but she can watch TV from the room. And when I visited there last Sunday she didn't seem to be acting like someone who felt like they were under house arrest. Indeed she seemed pretty happy. I'm thinking she might be glad to be out of school for 1 1/2 weeks. In the villages it is usually the case that the girl is kept separate for something to the tune of 15 days, and sometimes in a thatched hut which the mother's brother (maamaa) builds. No men should see the girl or else they will break out in a rash all over. At the end of the 15 days, she comes out of the hut and the maamaa burns it and water is poured over her head in a sort of ritual bath. Then she is free to move around normally. But here in the "city" the girl hangs out in a bedroom and watches Tamil movies and serials. Nevertheless, it is still a big deal in the city as well. And tomorrow there is going to be a huge function and I am really looking forward to seeing it in person, as I have only seen such things in the movies. I think it's going to be pretty awesome, and it's my first function in the neighborhood.

"But that American girl doesn't look a thing like me!"

"seeing my name, are you trembling with excitement?"

That's what my new cell-phone stalker from Kanchipuram asked me yesterday! I made the mistake of dialing a wrong number. All I said was "sorry, wrong number", but this was enough to titillate the man at the other end -- especially because he gathered that I was a foreigner. As a result, he called me constantly all day (I never once answered, until he tricked me by calling from a different phone) and texted me at least a dozen times with all sorts of ridiculousness. One was a picture message of a baby with its finger in its mouth saying in Tamil "Naan thaan" which basically just means, "It's me." Not sure where he was going with that. I never responded, which only upped the ante.

I had dialed the wrong number around noon. By evening, he had given me the name "Sandhya" and was trying to taunt me with all sorts of nonsense, such as "Time's up, Sandhya! Race me to the phone and call. I bet I will win!" The best is of course the gem that I put in the subject line. Cell phone stalkers are a dime a dozen in these parts. Cell phones are this sort of electronic appendage that affords men a chance to "interact" with women and maintain a sort of invisibility, without which they would never act. My non response was interpreted as an actual response, in that I was seemingly so shy and titillated by this man that I couldn't bring myself to call or write him back. This only ratcheted up the fantasy of said individual to the point that he invented a name for me and started calling me by all sorts of super informal vocatives. It's certainly the exact same thing in the U.S. with the internet: men take the anonymity of it as a kind of license to harass women in all sorts of ways. Here it is MUCH more benign, but nevertheless annoying. A few years back I had to make a complaint at the cell phone company because this guy got my number somehow and wouldn't stop calling me. Recently I had to stop going to a certain dry cleaners because the man there took it upon himself to get my number off the receipt and start texting me and calling me out of nowhere.

Chellapandi took care of the Kanchipuram stalker, however, and relished every minute of it. She waited for him to call and then answered the phone demanding, "WHO ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU CALLING THIS NUMBER?" He was shocked, as he had expected me. I cannot really translate what she was saying to him, because Tamil affords all sorts of informal verb conjugations and vocatives that really give the sense of disrespect that we don't have in English. But basically she really gave him a dressing down to the point where he actually called BACK making up lies to defend himself and demanding to know why she was talking to him like he is a "rogue" and "scavenger" when he is actually a respectable businessman!

That's about it from here. I've been back in Madurai for one week. I've still got a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to clear, but so far, so good. People in my neighborhood were happy to have me back, which made me feel good. It was good to see them as well. I still want to write an entry called "Americans are anal." I will save that for tomorrow. I would like to share some revelations I made during my recent stint back in the U.S.