Sick Days

It’s tempting to avoid writing negative entries onto this blog, about difficulties with my academic work, or homesickness, or the inevitable “Delhi belly,” which we’ve renamed the “rainforest runs.”  It took a lot for Matt and I to get here.  For me, it took a year of stressed-out academic rigor and work, months of planning and purchasing plane tickets, and saying goodbye to family and friends.  For Matt it was some of the same, and also a leap into the unknown in the name of love, and putting off his own academic goals.  So to look at the leap a few months in and not know if it was worth it is a tough thing. 

Let me backtrack.  Up until about two weeks ago, we were committed.  Life wasn’t perfect here on this farm in India, but we were going to make it through to the other side.  We would come home in May, with a Masters degree for me to look forward to, and likely enrollment in a Masters in Biology program for Matt.  But then the Indian government started squabbling, and soon enough our plan began to crumble.  Add to that a lingering stomach sickness I haven’t been able to shake, and turbulence in my family at home, and it seems like we’re struggling to keep up our resolve to stay.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities.  I don’t quit on things easily, especially not something I’ve committed a lot of energy and money into already, like school.  But after a point, when it seems like so many things are pulling at you to do exactly what you’re not doing, when do you switch gears and move forward?

It started with a U.S. Consolate General warning that ended up in the inbox of our visitors, Michael and Taylor.  “Oh no, is this going to affect us?” they worried.  Due to last year’s 26-11 attack in Mumbai, which involved at least one terrorist with a United States passport traveling back and forth from Chicago to India, the government here is cracking down.  Every foreigner not on a business visa or student visa (I’m on a tourist visa because I’m not connected with an Indian university) has to leave after 180 days in-country for at least two months now.  “Shit,” the doctor I visited yesterday said when I told him I was about to be ejected from the country. 

That’s the first strike against staying:  we legally can’t.

As I mentioned, I visited a doctor yesterday.  I met Dr. Devraj just over a week ago, after Matt and I spent an hour looking for Madikeri’s private hospital.  ‘It’s at Thimmiah Circle,’ one woman told us, so we jumped in a rickshaw and headed that way.  When we got there, another man told us it was near the bus stand, back down the hill.  We started walking, weary and weak from the stomach sickness.  It didn’t help that we kept running into a raucous political parade, with music and dancing and a packed pickup truck full of whoever had just been elected.  “We won!” one dancing man with his arms in the air shouted to us as he passed, beckoning us to join in.  

We kept walking, and eventually found it, this clean, disorganized hospital tucked away behind the seedy theatres of Madikeri.  The first time around, Dr. Devraj prescribed me an anti-parasitic and told me to change hotels.  Not possible, I retorted, though Matt and I committed to preparing all of our own food from now on.  One week later, my stomach still in runny knots, he prescribed more antibiotics, and potentially a colonoscopy, at which I silently thought to myself, and later shouted to Matt, “not in F-ing India!” 

That’s strike two:  I’ve got to get healthy.  We’ll see in a few days if this new round of pills can turn that one around.

The third and fourth strikes, I’d rather not share too much about.  One is that my parents are (quite happily, it sounds) getting a divorce.  It would be nice to not be on the other side of the world when my family structure is shifting so suddenly and so wholly.  The other is that my work is not nearly as fulfilling as I had hoped it would be.  The NGO I came here to work with seems to be quietly withering away, and we’ve lost a few competent Indian interns who could have helped out quite a bit.  If this last challenge had occurred when my visa wasn’t about to expire, and my health wasn’t so precarious, I would have soldiered on.  It’s not the first time I’ve joined the scene of a NGO that has nothing going on except for its registered status, but it’s a different context here, and now my time is limited.

It could be, also, a case of the homesick holidays.  Christmas came and went with a lot of effort to bring some hominess to the other side of the world.  We had presents, a tree (well, a branch that resembled a Northeastern pine), and special food like homemade pierogies, German pancakes, and pumpkin pie.  But we also had some tears, and a lot of missing family accompanied by nearly half a dozen skype dates, with Matt’s extended family on both sides, and now my own split-up family. 

Now that we’re on the other side of Christmas, we’ve been thinking about the New Year, and how we can make the most of our situation.  Since we’ll have to leave by the end of February (after 180 days), it may make more sense to return in January and enroll in classes to make up the lost time.  Or maybe it’s better to push on through, to find some closure with our work here, and finish out at least six months of this intended yearlong endeavor.  Personally, I’m hoping for some clarity before the year turns, so we can look forward to a fresh month, and practically a fresh decade, with some future plans that feel good through and through. 

Photos:  The rallying flag of Madikeri's political procession, given to me as a Christmas gift from Matt; stockings hung up on Christmas morning, thanks to Santa (aka our awesome other intern, Lauren)

A Visit with Old Friends

We had our first States-side visitors come through about a week ago, and all of us – Michael, Taylor, Matthew and I – had a chance to see some new parts of India and catch up on the past three months. Old friends from Philly, Michael and Taylor arrived in Mumbai and headed south to Turtle Bay, a quaint little beach resort on the eastern coast. After a few days of sleeping off their jet lag, playing cricket with villagers, and eating their first tastes of Indian food, they headed our way. When Matt and I picked them up in Madikeri, they had just come from a local bar, where Taylor drew some stares, I’m sure, over her glass of Kingfisher. This was very Philadelphia of them, and it warmed my heart. I still haven’t worked up the gumption to sit and drink in one of those Madikeri dives.

After excited hugs and a true feeling of displacement (Michael and Taylor in INDIA?!!), we jumped in our friend Charlie’s auto, four-to-a-rickshaw, and climbed up the hill to the Retreat. Up in the rainforest we spent a few quiet days hiking, dining around campfires, and catching up. We even put them to work a bit:  Michael helped Matt out with the new Rainforest Retreat website, and Taylor enthusiastically helped harvest the latest crop of green tea.

Soon enough, we decided to split from Mojo Plantation, and head to Mysore. After checking in at the brand new Hotel Ritz, we set about exploring. First there was the Mysore Palace, home of generations of Mysore maharajas, and embodying the inclusive spirit of India: Islamic spires coupled with Hindu temple architecture and topped off with a Catholic-inspired dome. Belgian and British floor tiles cozied up against solid silver doors, and dozens of optical illusion maharaja portraits rubbed shoulders with hand-carved stone elephants complete with moving parts. When I asked how the Palace was built, in other words, who paid for such opulence, our guide replied that they found a gold mine not far from Mysore that paid for the entire thing.

Next we set out for St. Philomena’s church, where I bought a few unexpected Christmas ornaments from the adjoining liturgical store. After that, we were off and walking through the streets of Mysore, for essential oil extracts and sandalwood, musical instruments and saris.

Our greatest find of the trip was undoubtedly the bright and bustling Dasara Fair that we happened upon later that evening. Now, Dasara is the biggest annual festival in south India. Schools close down, temples go nuts creating outlandish electric floats depicting religious stories, and Indians of all faiths pour out of their homes in the dead of night to dance in the streets on this Hindu holiday. But Dasara happened nearly three months ago, in the very first month of our culture shock. So it seemed a little odd that the Dasara Fair would still be in full operation as we approached the end of the year. Undaunted by this calendrical fact, Mysoreans of all ages and occupations flocked to the belated festival on this balmy Friday night, like any American schoolboy to the county fair. And like a county fair it was. Dozens of shops lined the entranceway to the store, and we immediately stocked up on gifts for Christmas and beyond. We were the only foreigners in the fairgrounds, and happily gobbled up the Indian prices on pashmina scarves and elephant print bed sheets before the vendors could figure out that we expected them to quote a much higher price. After that we explored the food court, with its giant pooris and unknown curry dishes. There was even a temporary Cafe Coffee Day set up inside, the Indian equivalent of Starbucks, stocked with microwaveable chicken rolls and thick slices of death-by-chocolate cake. We couldn’t resist.

We moved on to the agricultural exhibits and educational booths, which included odd collections of taxidermy and tourism. At one, we witnessed the month-by-month progression of bovine fetal development through square portals of preservatives and glass. At the same booth, we also got to see the objects most commonly found inside an Indian city cow’s stomach (loads of unidentified metal objects, to say the least), and we had the opportunity to purchase a live emu egg for just 1500 rupees (about $30). We considered bringing it home as a gift for the farm, but instead carried on through the truly gigantic fairgrounds.

For some time we had been eyeing a gigantic tiger head built up at the back of the fairgrounds. Now we walked toward it, until we stood under its gaping mouth. After paying a 25 rupee entrance fee (the fair itself cost us just 10 rupees, so that’s saying something), we walked through the tiger’s mouth and found a mountain to scale. But first, we had to deposit our shoes, which meant something holy was coming.

Here is what we found along the mountain:

First, we waded through a Himalayan river. I assume this was a cleansing ritual before our ascent up the sacred peak.

This is how I knew we were supposed to be in the Himalayas. We must be somewhere in or near Kashmir for turbaned Indian army officials to be planted at strategic points to guard pilgrims.

One of several small shrines along the way. This one, Matt felt particularly drawn to.

After the final ascent, we walked through another holy river, and then on through a dark cave.

I had known this was coming ever since we had deposited our shoes a whole plastic mountain ago. But Taylor didn’t, and she entered the shrine laughing. We were all caught a little off guard after the hilarity of the climb. Perhaps even more exciting than the 25 rupee “ride” we had just completed was the view we got on the other side.

Although we did much more in Mysore that night and the next day, the Dasara Fair wowed us with its peculiar mix of the agricultural, the scientific, and the religious, with both its joy and solemnity. We wandered wide-eyed in this serious and silly microcosm of India for several hours, through the “Scery House” and past the Om Shakti bouncy slide. When we finally left the fairgrounds, we had been over-stimulated and impressed, and we found ourselves exhausted by the fun and the reflections it provoked.

The next day we continued to explore, rising early to beat the crowds at Chamundi Hill, and spending the early afternoon seeing tigers, elephants, and apes at the Mysore Zoo. While we found some interesting things during our explorations of the city, it was the company that made it really special. After spending three quiet months very far away from old friends and family, Michael and Taylor rejuvenated me, reminding me that life goes on at home, and when we return States-side, our old community will be there waiting for us.

After one final lavish lunch, the four of us jumped into a rickshaw and directed the driver to the Mysore bus stand. Matt and I pushed our way through the madness of the city bus stand and delivered Michael and Taylor to a deluxe Volvo bus headed straight to Bangalore. From there they would head on to Nepal to visit some other old friends, where I was sure they would work some similar magic refreshing and rejuvenating in a far off land. Amidst hugs and hurried goodbyes, we promised to see them in six months back in Philly. “I can’t wait to see you there!” I shouted, and they were gone.

Character (and Cultural) Sketch: the labor problem, and one energetic Indian

Farm life isn’t always easy, and it’s certainly not lazy. As Americans, we feel the long workdays and the lack of regular weekends acutely. The Indians around us almost always work longer, harder days than we interns do, and we rarely hear them complain. So it came as a surprise to me when Kumar, our closest neighbor and the most happy-go-lucky of all the Indians I know, announced to me that he was leaving the farm for good, today. “Erin acha,” he hollered to me between our open doors. “I’m going to Mysore!” I came out of our room and peered into his, where he stood packing the last of his possessions into one stuffed duffel bag. “When will you come back?” I asked. Not coming back, he told me with a grin, and continued to fold and stow his remaining t-shirts. I was taken aback, not quite believing Kumar but having no reason not to. The last time he went to Mysore, to help his family hang a door on their new house, his 4-day trip turned into a whole month away. The farm struggled while he was gone, shuffling day laborers from the farm to the guesthouse to fill his shoes. When he returned, we were all happy to see him, not just because of the extra set of hands, but because of his energy and positive attitude.

Kumar is a man who runs. He is not a tall man, but he has strength and stamina. One of his tasks on the farm is to ferry the food cooked in the kitchen in big white bags holding big silver tiffins down the hill to the guesthouse dining area. When you’re sitting at the dining area, or walking down the path toward it, you know it’s Kumar coming because you can hear his steps falling fast on the earth before you see him. When you finally do see him, his face is painted with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, his happy eyes framed by a stylish mop of shiny black hair.

He was smiling even as he told me he was quitting his job. “Too much work,” he said. “Too much problem.” He doesn’t speak flawless English, but I understood enough to make out that he had been cleaning the floor of one of the cottages when his supervisor scolded him for not doing some other job quick enough. As a recourse, he had packed up his bags and intended to march up the hill to the main house and quit. He would catch the evening bus to Mysore, back to his family and the big city. “Talk about giving notice,” I said to Lauren as he started up the stairs.

Kumar is from Mysore, but he’s been working the guesthouse circuit for a few years now. He came to Rainforest Retreat from Turtle Bay, a low-key resort on India’s west coast. I went to Turtle Bay about a month ago, and could picture him jogging lassis out to visitors lounging on the beach. Now, he was dressed in his best city clothes – black jeans and a black t-shirt – and I could tell he was looking forward to a return to the city of his youth. He, the only single man working at the farm, lives a relatively solitary life here at the Retreat. While the other two or three extended families live in a connected house down the path from our place, Kumar lives in a single room adjoining our double intern cottage. He dines in the kitchen after the food goes down for the guests, and otherwise hangs out with the farm staff. He has friends here, certainly, but his family is elsewhere, and word on the farm is he is soon to be married.

Twenty minutes later, Kumar came hopping down the stairs carrying two solar lanterns meant for the guests staying far out in the farm at Plantation Cottage. “Still working?” I said to him. His face, still smiling, belied defeat and satisfaction at the same time. He had been convinced to stay.

Labor is a problem out in rural India. Farmers’ kids are getting good educations, and running off to the city to work in IT or architecture or any number of industries. Their families proudly see them off, and rightly so. But then the farm blanches, and the farming community falls to its knees. There is cardamom left unpicked out in the fields, and tea plantations whose tender green shoots are becoming overgrown, and the tea bitter, for lack of manpower to pick them quick enough. So I can imagine how Kumar’s statement that he would leave the farm evoked dialogue among his employers, and compromise. The new deal, he told me, would give him two or three hours of off time every afternoon. If he didn’t get it, he said, he would go to Mysore, and be gone.

We feel it too, this desire for time off, for personal time and space. But on a farm in India even that feels excessive. As I thought about Kumar’s predicament, I realized how circular the problem is. As more and more farm laborers leave for the cities, the few that remain must carry a growing burden of intensely demanding farm work. This in turn burns people out, stimulating a second exodus away from the farm. We were seeing it on a personal level, but it exists all over India and the developing world, I’m sure.

When Kumar came down the hill, I was sitting on our front porch pulling cardamom off the cut panicles that make up the very last of this year’s harvest. I was doing this because we don’t have enough labor on the farm. Five or six burlap sacks full of these panicles, severed a dozen each from the base of every cardamom plant on the farm -and there are hundreds- sat waiting for someone to sort through them and pull off their fruits. Two women who work on the farm, and one guesthouse volunteer, had been sitting for two days pinching the fruits from their stems. I sat down to get a little more done before the sun went down. Kumar came and sat with me, grabbing a bundle of panicles himself, and then Muttu joined in. The three of us sat for an hour, chatting and pinching the shiny green fruits into a wooden basket. Kumar and Muttu went back and forth in Kannada, gossiping about farm work, and the need for rest (I caught that much), and the pros and cons of working here (I guessed). I interjected now and then, but mostly just marveled in the moment. And in that dialogue I let go of my desire for more time to myself, solid weekends to revel in, and free time to read, write, and relax. I’m in India after all, and with such a labor problem, it’s just as important to keep busy as it is to relax.

Celebrations of Thanks and Harvest

Matt and I celebrated our anniversary about a month ago, and because we couldn’t remember the exact date that we met, and because we had to work on what we thought was the actual special day, we decided instead to celebrate Anniversa-week.  This took the pressure off a bit, a good thing when you’re living in India.  Holidays are tough; they require creativity and dedication, or else they’ll likely float by half a world away and a day behind.

So when Thanksgiving rolled around, the holiday surprised me by stretching itself into a week of harvest celebrations.  It began with our own small American way of celebrating, with pumpkin pie and stuffing, and then six days later took on the form of Huthari, a local holiday in praise of the coming rice harvest.

We three Americans had a hard time explaining our coming holiday.  “It began back when the European colonists had just arrived on the shores of America.  They were starving, and the Native Americans took pity on them and shared their food with them.  They had a big feast, and Thanksgiving was born.”  One of us interjects – “And then the next day, the colonists forgot all about it and started killing the Native Americans.”

But it’s about family, we would say, and relaxing, cooking together, and sharing food.  We called it a harvest festival, and that got across, because India is a country of harvests and festivals, and soon enough the local Coorgs would be celebrating their own version of the same thing.

We were a bit wary of what our beloved holiday would look like in India.  We already knew there would be no turkey, even though our farm is home to two very ornery turkeys.  We would have to be creative to make pie happen, and without a random assortment of family, what use is Thanksgiving anyway?  Despite all of this, I couldn’t let the last Thursday in November pass without at least spending some time in the kitchen.

In an attempt to discourage a twinge of homesickness, I spent the day in the field.  I wasn’t doing just any kind of farm work, but focused on digging sweet potatoes out of the ground.  It’s not quite sweet potato season around here, and because the sweet potatoes were an afterthought last year, allowed to grow between a thick planting of mango ginger, they were long and skinny, and buried between a bountiful crop of ginger.  We got three baskets of mango ginger out that day, and about 20 scrawny sweet potatoes.  But the satisfaction of harvesting our own Thanksgiving meal overcame the quantity.

Later on, Matt helped pluck a plump pumpkin off an overhanging vine, and I used my mom’s recipe, with a bit of improvisation, to make a pie.  In the absence of evaporated milk, I stirred a thick chunk of jaggery (unrefined sugarcane juice) into a saucepan of warm milk.  The pie went into the toaster oven, and I prayed that the electric current wouldn’t switch off, which it did.  Still, after two hours of attempted baking, out emerged a beautiful representation of home.  Lauren whipped up some tasty sweet potatoes and stuffing, and we brought our version of Thanksgiving down to the dining area to share.  Along with Anurag, Sujata, and Maya, we ate with a mother-daughter pair from Holland, and a pair of Indian guests.  Matt toasted to Thanksgiving, and we all tucked in, ending our holiday around a roaring bonfire.

A few days later, Sujata started telling us about Huthari.  Linked to the lunar calendar, Huthari marks the beginning of the rice harvest in Coorg, and like most festivals in India, it involves all kinds of firecrackers and fireworks.  Because we don’t grow rice paddy here at Mojo, Sujata arranged for us to visit some friends of theirs who do.  Lauren, Matt, Maya, and I set off after dinner, walking the kilometer to Vimmaiah and Meenakshi’s in the startling moonlight.  When we arrived, two little girls greeted us with a show of sparklers, and we settled into a spread of snacks and sweets – milk halwa, pakora, and banana chips.

After some time, we were ushered into the family’s shrine room for a puja, and given our first-ever bindis – that little dot between the eyes.  As it often happens in a foreign country, we were swept into the ritual without knowing what exactly was going on.  Vimmaiah’s family left the shrine room in a small procession, and we followed along, all the way across the farm’s drying yard, over a small stream, and into the edge of the rice paddy.  With limited flashlights, random fireworks, and the full moon sending off light overhead, we picked our way to the paddy and into a kind of magic.  The Indians ahead of us started hollering, shouting boisterous “Polydeva”s to the gods of rice and harvest, and waving thin machetes over their heads.  By the light of a small oil flame, Vimmaiah then reached into the paddy, grasped a large handful of the dried-out rice crop, and cut it at its base.  After gathering an armload of the holy stuff, we all turned and walked back to the house.  The young men of the family continued to set of fireworks, and small explosions of light and sound burst around us and the cut rice.  The short ritual was over, the offering of rice was divided up, and we went home with ten stalks of rice wrapped in mango leaves to hang on all the doorways of our homes.  Though quite different from our own feast of thanks, Huthari closed our week of thanks-giving with a bang, and with a nice memento to hang over our door.