My sister asked me a long time ago to please post a video...And without further adieu, here is a very exciting video of me and Tamilarasi burning a piece of ciinikaaram (a sort of crystal usually found wrapped in a hair rope and hung in the doorway as a drishti prophylactic) to see if it would explode, or at the very least, snap crackle and pop as it is rumored to do upon the presence of the evil eye. In the end it did neither. But it did melt into a nice black blob on the front steps.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
things I think I'm not going to miss one bit but which i might actually kind of miss come to think about it
It's getting towards the time for me to head back to the US of A after more than a year living here in Madurai and attempting to do some decent fieldwork. There are a couple of things you can count on happening towards the end of a prolonged stay in India. One thing that will most certainly happen is the feeling of going mad mixed with the feeling that it is actually quite sad to be leaving. There are moments of joy when I realize the comforts of (my other) home are within reach, and there are moments of sadness when I comprehend just how much I am going to miss the very people who have been driving me bat **** crazy recently.
The other thing that is bound to happen when you are nearing your departure date is that you are going to be treated as a walking godown; my feelings regarding this are decidedly not mixed. I expect it every time but it never stops feeling bad. People here tend to approach the relationship between friendship and material gain quite differently than we do in the United States, or perhaps it is just that people here are much more explicit about it than we are, which can be disarming for the American. A month before departure you can expect both your closest friends and semi-strangers to begin demanding your possessions, especially the expensive ones. People will begin to circle your home and your person like vultures. Neighbors will send spies in to infiltrate your home when you have stepped out to buy some potatoes, and said spies will inspect your more expensive items and report back to others what they think they are worth. Some neighbors will try to buy your costly items, for dirt cheap, and others will expect items for free including jewelry, clothing, pots and pans, bureaus, mixies, fridge, tables, cot, mattresses, etc. You will have the feeling of wanting to just put everything out in the street and let people battle it out, or better yet to do a Solomon and cut the bureau and fridge right in half to satisfy the two individuals fighting over it.
I am perfectly happy to give away all my possessions here. In fact, that is exactly what I am trying to do. But it is incredibly difficult because everyone feels entitled to the same items and there is no way to satisfy everyone. I don't want my name to go bad, but no matter how good I try to be, some people are still going to be unhappy and talk trash. It's just the way it goes. One thing that I have learned the hard way (but which is still difficult to accept) is that no matter how much you try to satisfy and make people happy, it just isn't going to turn out the way you expect 9 times out of 10. It is in this respect that the Bhagavad Gita really hits the nail on the head; to paraphrase, one should do the right thing without being attached to the fruits of one's actions.
To give you an example, I recently celebrated my birthday here. In India the tradition is quite different than in the US in that the one celebrating the birthday is expected to treat others and give them gifts. So I ended up buying 60 pieces of cake at a big expense to give to all the neighbors who are actually my friends. This actually ended up making very few people happy. In fact, it was a disaster. People wanted me to give it to the entire neighborhood, including people that wouldn't mind if I got ran over by the mini-bus. Some folks complained that it was too dry or too little. And the giving of the cake prompted the neighbors to convene a conference on the front steps to assess my gift-giving over the past year. It was alleged that I had given the woman across the street laddu (a round sweet) on my sister's birthday last year but didn't give any to anyone else, and people were feeling very slighted. First of all, I've never given anyone here any laddu, and I sure as hell didn't give anyone any laddu on my sister's birthday. My sister is in Washington, D.C., for Pete's sake, and it isn't our habit to give strangers gifts on the birthday of a sister they have never even met. But yet these tall tales get woven and there's nothing you can do about it. I've tried my best to do for everyone equally while I've been here, and I've given some nice gifts to lots of folks. But at the end of the day, one shouldn't expect others to show satisfaction in the way that we as Americans are socialized to expect. I think that people here usually are quite happy when getting gifts, but because is considered acceptable to critique them or complain about them in relation to what others have received it doesn't always seem that way. In the US we certainly feel jealous and slighted at times, but it isn't usually considered acceptable to complain that the cake you've just been given sucks. In the States (or at least in the South) we say, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Here they actually have a similar saying, "Don't look a gift cow in the mouth." Well, here the saying should actually be "feel free to look a gift horse up, down, and all around and comment on how ugly it is and how other folks have been given a way prettier horse as a matter of fact."
Things I think I'm not going to miss one iota but which I probably will kind of miss come to think about it:
At least the cake that I bought for our private consumption was quite good.
Even better was my nonsense English words sari,
with words such as "eartl" and "nshine" and "loment" plastered all over it.
This sari was a big hit.
The other thing that is bound to happen when you are nearing your departure date is that you are going to be treated as a walking godown; my feelings regarding this are decidedly not mixed. I expect it every time but it never stops feeling bad. People here tend to approach the relationship between friendship and material gain quite differently than we do in the United States, or perhaps it is just that people here are much more explicit about it than we are, which can be disarming for the American. A month before departure you can expect both your closest friends and semi-strangers to begin demanding your possessions, especially the expensive ones. People will begin to circle your home and your person like vultures. Neighbors will send spies in to infiltrate your home when you have stepped out to buy some potatoes, and said spies will inspect your more expensive items and report back to others what they think they are worth. Some neighbors will try to buy your costly items, for dirt cheap, and others will expect items for free including jewelry, clothing, pots and pans, bureaus, mixies, fridge, tables, cot, mattresses, etc. You will have the feeling of wanting to just put everything out in the street and let people battle it out, or better yet to do a Solomon and cut the bureau and fridge right in half to satisfy the two individuals fighting over it.
I am perfectly happy to give away all my possessions here. In fact, that is exactly what I am trying to do. But it is incredibly difficult because everyone feels entitled to the same items and there is no way to satisfy everyone. I don't want my name to go bad, but no matter how good I try to be, some people are still going to be unhappy and talk trash. It's just the way it goes. One thing that I have learned the hard way (but which is still difficult to accept) is that no matter how much you try to satisfy and make people happy, it just isn't going to turn out the way you expect 9 times out of 10. It is in this respect that the Bhagavad Gita really hits the nail on the head; to paraphrase, one should do the right thing without being attached to the fruits of one's actions.
To give you an example, I recently celebrated my birthday here. In India the tradition is quite different than in the US in that the one celebrating the birthday is expected to treat others and give them gifts. So I ended up buying 60 pieces of cake at a big expense to give to all the neighbors who are actually my friends. This actually ended up making very few people happy. In fact, it was a disaster. People wanted me to give it to the entire neighborhood, including people that wouldn't mind if I got ran over by the mini-bus. Some folks complained that it was too dry or too little. And the giving of the cake prompted the neighbors to convene a conference on the front steps to assess my gift-giving over the past year. It was alleged that I had given the woman across the street laddu (a round sweet) on my sister's birthday last year but didn't give any to anyone else, and people were feeling very slighted. First of all, I've never given anyone here any laddu, and I sure as hell didn't give anyone any laddu on my sister's birthday. My sister is in Washington, D.C., for Pete's sake, and it isn't our habit to give strangers gifts on the birthday of a sister they have never even met. But yet these tall tales get woven and there's nothing you can do about it. I've tried my best to do for everyone equally while I've been here, and I've given some nice gifts to lots of folks. But at the end of the day, one shouldn't expect others to show satisfaction in the way that we as Americans are socialized to expect. I think that people here usually are quite happy when getting gifts, but because is considered acceptable to critique them or complain about them in relation to what others have received it doesn't always seem that way. In the US we certainly feel jealous and slighted at times, but it isn't usually considered acceptable to complain that the cake you've just been given sucks. In the States (or at least in the South) we say, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Here they actually have a similar saying, "Don't look a gift cow in the mouth." Well, here the saying should actually be "feel free to look a gift horse up, down, and all around and comment on how ugly it is and how other folks have been given a way prettier horse as a matter of fact."
Things I think I'm not going to miss one iota but which I probably will kind of miss come to think about it:
- the non-stop attention (but not the incessant objectification)
- kids going wild on sight of me (but not the shouts of "white rat" and "girl-with-no-skin"!)
- the heat (but not the power cuts!)
- figuring out out how to trick the bore well motor (but not the water shortage!)
- the constant surveillance on the part of concerned neighbors (but not their domestic disturbances!)
- having to wear only saris and chudidhar (but not the dupatta!)
- my friends and neighbors (but not their property and financial disputes and knock-down drag-out brawls)
- parotta (but not the inability to make anything besides tomato chutney and plain dosa)
- music (but not the loudspeakers)
- the cows across the street (but not their stinky turds)
- the roving astrologers (but not their cheating parrots!)
- speaking only Tamil (but not the occasional feeling of my brain nearly exploding as I struggle to express subtle psychological states/emotions, convince someone of the existence of viruses [post to come on this one], and correctly produce adjectival participles at the drop of a hat)
- temples (there is no caveat here whatsoever; I'll miss everything about them: the crowds on special days, the smell of camphor and flowers, the earthy black granite deities smeared with ghee. Then again I WON'T miss being rejected from the inner sanctum for being white, but I'll let that one slide for now!)
- any many, many more....
At least the cake that I bought for our private consumption was quite good.Even better was my nonsense English words sari,
with words such as "eartl" and "nshine" and "loment" plastered all over it.
This sari was a big hit.
A highly successful gift-giving experience:
Here's me with the local Mariamman temple priest, who's
wearing the veshti and tundu (towel) I gave him.
He was thrilled and wore it for a special puja last week.
Here's me with the local Mariamman temple priest, who's
wearing the veshti and tundu (towel) I gave him.
He was thrilled and wore it for a special puja last week.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
requesting help for a good cause
I apologize to devoted readers (hope y'all are still out there!) for the posts being so lacking lately. I do have a lot of things I want to share with you, and I promise more updates soon. In the meantime, I want to solicit help for a good cause and I hope you don't mind if I use this forum to do so. Today I found out that a good friend of mine here in Madurai, and mother of three girls, has leukemia. She had been working for me for the past few months and suddenly fell ill recently. She is very poor and needless to say it is going to be very difficult for them to pay for such treatments. It remains to be seen what the outcome will be. In the meantime they need to pay school fees for two of their daughters, aged 14 and 16. School here in India isn't free; you have to pay fees and buy uniforms and books -- all very difficult (and often impossible) if you are poor. They are also trying to get their oldest daughter into a college. I don't think they would feel comfortable accepting donations from foreigners for the medical treatment, but I do think they would be very happy to receive support for their daughters' education, especially the school fees for the younger ones. Any amount would help (keep in mind that 1 US dollar buys about Rs. 42 these days). So if you are interested in supporting such a cause and would trust me with your donation, I wanted to let you know about the opportunity. Thanks!
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