Peace,
Bonnie Norman

Greetings from Oregon.

We’re still on the mental the journey back into our local time zone, slowly winning the battle over jet lag. Hope to be back to “normal” by the end of the coming weekend. The brain is still feeling fuzzy, but memories of our India trip remain sharp.

So, here is your final — and much too long, I fear — installment of Postcards from India 2007-08.

— Indian technology is a strange mix. One foot is still planted in the 19th century while the other is firmly in the 21st. That explains the sight we see from our auto rickshaw one day: Men and women laborers are swinging pickaxes, doggedly digging a trench — for fiber optic cables.

— In Maharashtra, we see the worst slums I’ve seen anywhere. Vast, low-lying, jumbled expanses of cheek-to-jowl huts are assembled from burlap, blue plastic sheeting, old clothes and scraps of cloth and paper, laid over stick frames. In places, a lucky few have roofs of used corrugated metal, held down by old tires or rocks. From the highway passing one such slum, I can see no space between or among the huts — just a sea of rubbish. How do these people survive, especially during monsoons?

— One way some of them manage is through menial labor for pennies a day. Friends of ours in middle-class housing not far from one such slum, themselves scrambling to make ends meet, hire one such resident to sweep their floors and clean their toilets. Old and ragged, crab-walking on her haunches, the servant wields a grass broom, sweeping the floor of the kitchen where I’m eating a late lunch alone. I don’t know what to do, and there’s no English-speaker to ask. Am I supposed to move out of her way, even though I’m still seated at the table, eating? Is she supposed to work around me? Perplexed, I watch her work her way under the table — and then sweep the tops of my bare feet with her broom. I look down at her, half expecting a playful twinkle in her eye. But, no. She looks up at me, her face a dull, unreadable mask.

— In a land of more than a billion people, caste and status separate groups by wide chasms. Nevertheless, it seems the “Six Degrees of Separation” principle still holds.
The inscrutable sweeper described above, a denizen of one of the poorest slums and probably what used to be called an “untouchable,” works for our friend who teaches yoga.
The same day I’ve been swept at lunch, our friend takes us to meet one of his yoga students, a nationally prominent and wealthy local businessman who might have some useful contacts for us.
During our conversation, the businessman hands me his cell phone so I can copy a phone number I need. I hit a wrong button and — oops! Up pops his entire contact list — which begins with the name and private phone number of one APJ Abdul Kalam. I gulp, startled.
Only three steps separate the lowliest sweeper from one of India’s most important people — the nation’s newly retired president.

— There’s nothing unusual about being startled in India. Looking out a 6th floor hotel window, I’m seeking the source of some compellingly rhythmic music and drumming. My eyes search up and down the street as the music stops in mid-phrase, then starts up again, pausing and continuing at random intervals. It sounds live, but no one on the street, in the direction the music is coming from, is doing anything unusual. Then I raise my sights higher. There! A half-block away, I’ve found the source. A folk dance team is practicing — on the flat roof of a 5-story building — with their musicians, repeating sections of the piece until they get all their moves right.

— Emerging from our hotel room one morning, I spot a fellow guest in the hallway, and I’m startled yet again. The middle-aged Indian man is getting his daily exercise, trotting up and down the hall, head held high, hands pumping — wearing nothing but jockey shorts.

— On a city street, we pass a man carrying a large bag, Santa Claus style. Both man and bag are ragged and dirty, and I realize he’s one who scratches out a living by combing through garbage for recyclables. Suddenly, he’s surrounded by yapping, leaping, thin brown dogs. Hungry as the man probably is, he’s taken the time and effort to collect food scraps from the garbage — and feed them to his fuzzy friends on the street.

— Language is an adventure in India. For one thing, I’ve discovered I need to pay closer attention to my Malayalam teacher. When I’ve meant to compliment the cook by pointing to the food and saying “Good!” in Malayalam, a friend has alerted me, I’ve really been saying, “Kill!” (No wonder they look at me oddly.) But, hey, this is the same friend who wanted to know if I was having fun on our hike and asked instead, “Are you enjoyable?” (I do hope so.)

— Indians love acronyms, and the newspapers are full of them. If you don’t know what AIIMS or ISRO or CAT stand for, you’re out of luck because the newspaper isn’t likely to spell it out. Sometimes, acronyms become words themselves, like those bank machines in North India that are labeled with Hindi lettering that spells out Ay-Tee-Em.

— In the south, where the English alphabet has a few odd grace notes attached, we see ads for businesses acronymically named “Cee Yech A Industries” and “Yespeyen Stores.” And a dear friend with impeccable English but a South Indian accent leaves me puzzled for an instant when he talks about his recent travels to the Yoo-Yay-Yee. (Ah, yes! He went to Dubai.)

— But who am I to talk? My western U.S. accent is equally puzzling and amusing to them! Fortunately, I’ve learned to switch most of my accent off as soon as the plane lands on the tarmac in India. I slow down a bit. Enunciate more clearly. I round my vowels and shorten them. I add half-syllables when needed, telling taxi drivers to turn “Right-uh” and “Left-uh” to be understood in Kerala. I’ve even learned to say “Kerala” correctly, using the proper “flat R” sound. And I start introducing myself as Sah-ra.
Apparently, I do these things almost unconsciously. In our last days in Trivandrum, we meet the leader of a Rotary Group Study Exchange team from Utah (or Ootah as they say here), wrapping up their tour of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. When the leader stands up to speak from the stage, his strange, thick, twangy, flat, rolling accent amazes me — until I realize he sounds just like we do back home.

— Attitude is everything. Visiting a small town where I’ve been miserable in past years, and have dreaded returning to because of the rude, bad apples I’ve usually encountered there, I have a change of heart. This year, I actually like the place. Instead of feeling harassed by leering young men on the street, I go with Rob to a party with three young adult male friends, all of them sweet, gentlemanly and adorable. My philosopher-husband points out to me afterward that it’s worth putting up with a few obnoxious creeps in this little town to get a chance to be with nice, polite, innocent guys like our friends. Or, as he sums it up: “You wouldn’t avoid eating plums just because they have pits.”

— And it always pays to look more closely, to see the good that’s in front of you in life and, especially, in India, where traveling and adapting can be grueling and tiresome. Case in point:
We’re embarking on a train journey at 5:30 a.m., a short jaunt of four hours from Ratlam to Indore. It’s not yet dawn. A friend helps us find our seats without waking the two other passengers in our compartment.
After he departs, I notice my berth is — yecch! — strewn with dead flies, or maybe small moths. Hard to tell in the dark. But I’m really tired and want to lie down and resume sleeping, so I brush most of them off onto the floor.
Upon waking just before Indore, in broad daylight now, I am amazed. Those weren’t dead bugs after all. Part of my berth, and the floor where I brushed the debris, is covered with red rose petals. In India, I was offered a bed of roses and didn’t even recognize it.

May you go forth with eyes open to the roses that surround you, eat the plums despite the pits, and be joyously startled by life.

And be prepared for more reading — there most likely will be Postcards from India next winter, too.

Sara

Greetings from Thiruvananthapuram, our last stop as our Indian trip nears its end. Tuesday night we leave for Singapore on a red-eye flight, to spend 6 days relaxing in luxury. We’ll head home on the 18th.

When we were in Bhopal, our friend Amit observed that our travels in India must be a “rich experience,” given that we’ve spent so much time here in the last 10 years, living among Indians, learning their ways and observing their culture. He is so right. Most of what we do and where we go, few if any foreigners get to see. We try to avoid the usual foreign tourist haunts. If we wanted to hang around with “foreigners” like us, we’d have stayed home! Usually, we’re the only white people wherever we are — and sometimes the only ones the children have ever seen.

Our rich experience has been a great gift in itself, but we’ve also been showered with presents by our friends here, especially clothing and jewelry. We’ve hardly had time to do much shopping, but we’ll still likely be coming home with overweight bags! .We have given far less than we’ve gotten — in goods, in blessings, in friendships born or nurtured, in life lessons and other intangibles.

For example:

— On two occasions, very old, old ladies — one with thighs the girth of my wrist — another who had just walked barefoot through my car-sick vomit without noticing — approached me, begging for rupees. When I gave them some money, each blessed me with a bow and the grateful, loving, compassionate eyes of saints.

— Christmas morning, I awakened on the train to the greeting of a young Sikh girl in the berth next to mine: “Good morning, Aunty. Merry Christmas!” We were closeted with her family in a compartment for 40 hours or so, and became new friends.

— Visiting “our” slum library, we are offered some cake from a nearby food stall. It’s tasty but dry. Rob quietly mutters to me about needing something to drink with it. One of the older boys overhears, slips out and buys us 2 cold 7-Ups — expensive here — with some of his precious few rupees.

— At a friend’s house in Bhopal, where four Muslim brothers live in connected houses with their four wives and 8 children, we are invited to dinner. As sunset approaches and food is just about ready to serve, the electricity goes out and the house goes dark. No problem. A coffee table is whisked out to the courtyard for us, and chairs and dishes and food come from all 4 directions, carried by running children. Suddenly, it’s a picnic for a king and queen — us. The families stand nearby or sit on the ground around us, sharing laughs and jokes with us — even though only a couple of the 16 family members speak any English at all.

— Another friend takes me shopping in a small Madhya Pradesh city,driving a hard bargain with the merchants. Her skill at dickering results in my purchase of fabric for 7 different Indian outfits for the price I could have paid for 2 or 3. The outing itself is an experience. The shop, about the size of a one-car garage, is carpeted wall to wall with thick, sheet-covered mattresses. We leave shoes outside, settle down on the “floor,” are served cups and cups of hot tea, and watch as the clerks unfurl so many breathtaking textiles that I am overwhelmed and confused. Which may explain why I ended up buying 7 sets to take to the tailor.

— At a beautiful, new, marble Hindu temple complex, glowing white in the night against a black sky, we enjoy the peace with our friends. Soon our 2 Parsee hosts and we two Christians are sitting on the ground, chanting Om — joined shortly by a clutch of teen-age boys who add their voices to ours.

— On a brief stopover to visit a joint Muslim family in a very small Madhya Pradesh town, the electricity is out and it’s late in the evening. We’re about to leave by taxi for the city for the night, and really need a bathroom before departing. By the light of the host’s candle and carrying our own small flashlights, we inch our way down a black hallway, barefoot across a metal grating, to the closet that holds a squat toilet and offers relief. Enroute, we trail an entourage of children and women, enjoying the novelty of foreign visitors and offering warm friendship in return.

— In Malappuram, the friend who is hosting us for several days introduces us to the local bureau chief of a regional daily newspaper. We end up being interviewed for a laudatory article in the paper, telling about some of our current and past Rotary projects and about our style of meet-the-people travel. At least, the reactions of those who’ve read it indicate it’s laudatory, as does an invitation (declined) the next day to be guest speakers at a University of Calicut assembly.. So, it must have been good. We wouldn’t know. All we can read is our photo. The story is in inscrutable Malayalam. Meanwhile,the reporter has become one of our new friends.

— But, lest we get too impressed with ourselves, India has a way of bringing us down to earth. Consider: In a darkening byway one evening, we’re making our way to a restaurant we can’t seem to locate, dodging the occasional speeding vehicle. Suddenly,startlingly, we are drenched by a car rushing through a deep, cold mud puddle. I let fly a major expletive, spit repeatedlty (some of the water had hit my mouth) and mop myself dry with my shawl. Nevertheless, we can laugh about it later — the restaurant turns out to be a good one, and well worth the trouble of finding it.

All in all, as the postcard cliche goes, “Having a great time. Wish you were here.” We’d love to share our “rich experiences” with like-minded friends — especially those whose spirits don’t get dampened by a little mud in the face.

Sara

Greetings from Oregon, U.S.A. We are home, safe and sound. But I’m writing two last (and, I fear, too long) issues of Postcards to wrap up the 2007-08 edition before my brain completes the transition from India to home. Here goes:

— Much of our travel on this trip has been by train. It’s safe, easy, fast and cheap, compared with the alternatives. And it’s the most enjoyable way to go, for us anyway. On overnight trips, we’re lulled to sleep by the motion and the sounds — a complex racket of rhythmic rumbles and rattles, low bangs and booms, slaps and clacks and thrums, the beat of a giant mechanical heart. And there’s music, too. The train horn is a soothing, low, brass drone. When we pass over a waterway, the rails break into quiet song.

— By day, out the train window, we see rural India rolling by. In Kerala, the population is so dense we’re almost never out of sight of houses in even the most remote areas along the railway. Most houses are small, their roofs peaked in the center with slopes of red tile. Other roofs are flat, topping big square concrete houses, their walls white but smeared gray-green by the mildew painted on by the monsoon. In northern Kerala, an occasional few break the pattern. They’re searingly bright, in brutal, glaring, lurid shades of yellow-orange or red-orange, strangely bringing to mind the tomato soup and Velveeta of my childhood.

— Also colorful are the clotheslines decorated with family laundry — bright lines of multi-hued pennants contrasting with the green, green, green landscape. Saris are huge flags of many colors, like double-length bed spreads. Shirts flap, neatly joined at the sleeves like a row of paper dolls.

— Roads also give glimpses of the rural area seldom seen by ordinary tourists. Sometimes, it’s the road itself that’s interesting. On our way to visit a friend in a farming area surrounded by jungle, our taxi stops. The one-lane, rocky, rutted road, brutalized by an over-abundant monsoon this year, is quickly worsening. The driver gets out and surveys the rust-red track like a golfer reading a green before a high-stakes putt. Then we proceed. And enter the hillside itself, squeezing through red earth corridors, like hallways with no ceiling but the sky.

— Despite the taxi driver’s hesitations, the destination proves worth the trip. We relax on our host’s front porch, listening as the coconut trees rustle and clatter in the breeze. A cow is lowing. Hens cackle and a rooster crows. Unlike almost everywhere we’ve been, there are absolutely no sounds of traffic. We enjoy the peace and the view of the luminous green rice paddy just beyond his garden, edged with darker greens — banana leaves, coconut fronds, jackfruit trees and a tapioca field. The host’s garden is full of vegetables and spice plants, as well as medicinal herbs. A tiny but deep stream twinkles in the sunshine at paddy’s edge. A mosque in the distance sings out a faintly heard call to prayer.

— For the reluctant taxi driver, there’s a reward as well. While we visit with our host, the driver takes a net to the stream and produces a large, meaty fish. While displaying it proudly, he drops it on the road. It writhes in the dirt and walks, on its fins, like a bizarre evolutionary link, before being recaptured. The taxi bears a faint fishy odor all the way back to town, the driver’s supper steaming in the trunk.

— But all is not paradise, even here. As we’re walking with our host, we all stop abruptly. A scorpion the size of a giant craw-dad is stalking across the path in front of us, its curling, menacing tail arched high over its back. Our host dispatches it with a large rock, crushing the body, but it takes him three sharp blows to still the twitching stinger.

— We had met our host two years ago, quite unexpectedly, on a trip to take photos of a small temple in the jungle for an elderly friend. Our host had been the only English-speaker in the area and had come to our rescue linguistically. Serendipity, it seems, plays a leading role in our India travels. We are constantly stumbling into coincidences, happening upon accidentally-bumped-intos, so often that it stops being as amazing as it should. Serendipity happens only because we make room for it — we get up, get out, go places and meet real people. Or, as my philosopher husband says, “Serendipity doesn’t make appointments. It takes walk-ins only.”

We’re not making any appointments, either, for the next few days or so. First we need to work our way through some serious jet lag and the usual trip-end fatigue.
And finish the next, and last, issue of Postcards from India, which will be coming soon to an Inbox near you. Stay tuned.

Sara