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August 28, 2008

“What cast are you from?”

This happened in Murshidabad and the voice behind the question was the guide’s, who emphasized that he was a Muslim and insisted I photograph or become aware of any signs in Farsi (he never translated them though). My answer was an attempt to explain that in the U.S. we don’t have a ‘cast’ but a ‘class system’ based on earnings or wealth. That unlike the cast, there is social mobility in a class system – regardless of how limited - so that perhaps you are born into a poor/working class family but become rich (e.g. JLo) and thus move up in class or down if you go bankrupt. I failed at this explanation because he then assigned me a ‘pseudo-cast’ identity based on my paternal/male heritage or profession.

"In the name of the father”

Once I said my father was an anesthesiologist living in Spain who had been a professor at the University of Havana and that my mother was a nurse, the guide obviously looked like he’d given me a ‘cast’ equivalent - this has happened to Becky too. Never mind that I tried to explain that my grandfathers had been food store/soda companies administrators pre-1959 and one of them had never studied past the sixth grade, thus demonstrating to a minimum class mobility – all the guide needed was to hear about my dad.

The need for patrilineal/male legitimacy I also experienced when purchasing my mobile and trying to enroll in Bengali class at the Ramakrishna Mission. In the first instance, I had to provide all of the information for my father and two grandfathers plus give a copy of my passport and passport picture. The same thing almost happened at the mission except because I was staying in the country less than six months they would not accept my application. Same applies to renting a house and other transactions.

"Is it arranged?”

When speaking to an Indian collaborator and mentioning my brother and his wife, she asked me if their marriage was arranged. Arranged marriages are still common in India; it is one of the reasons why early and forced marriage as a form of slavery (see post about Nureinghina's story) continue to be practiced. A visitor at the Victoria Memorial from the Brahmin (highest) cast who randomly started talking to me upon learning I was from the U.S. mentioned that they constituted about 80 percent of all Indian marriages… but I wouldn’t vow for such statistics though I do not disbelief them. Note that not all of these marriages are unhappy and result in slavery. The aforementioned collaborator's parents had an arranged marriage and apparently they were very happy until the husband died a few years ago.

"Welcoming baby"

Sonograms are illegal in India because if the family/parents learn they are having a girl they abort them. Smarita Sengupta told me about a recent public case in which a girl from a well-to-do family became pregnant two times. Upon learning that she was having two girls in the two separate instances, she was forced to abort them. After the second time the girl was too weak and died. Although it is illegal, families such as this pay corrupt hospital personnel and physicians to perform the sonograms and abortions.

The attached picture about sonograms is from a clinic within two blocks of the apartment I lived in.

"The Cow God”

The day before I left, I was walking back to the apartment and an improvised natural procession of their majesties the cows took place a few meters ahead of me. First there were the dogs running ahead, followed by two cows crossing the street and stopping in front of my building, followed by more dogs.

The cow is considered a god in the Hindu tradition. Some individuals wait until they pee and actually splash themselves with cow-pee. It is the reason why you find them all over Kolkata, walking and eating in the midst of modern-day cars, rickshaws, alleys or crowded streets. This I learnt from a Discovery channel program while I was in India. To that point I had thought people just had them around as a source of food. An Indian friend confirmed the Discovery’s information, and everything cow-related made sense from then on.

"Obey Traffic Rules"

I suspect these signs by the local authorities, and found all over Kolkata, are targeted at reassuring foreigners that they are safe because there is no way locals believe a word of it. For starters, there are no street lanes – unless they are aerial, no pictures can convey the chaos of traffic in the city – so anyone that can fit in the street is in the street. Rules are just not followed, with the exception of lights.

Example: When we came back from the village where I met Nureighina, the missionary realized we had missed one of the exits to go to a chicken fast food place (that was not spicy!) on the outskirts of the city. In the West, the driver would have gone to the next street where by law he was allowed to make a U-turn. Not the case in Kolkata. The driver just made the three points turn in that lane, drove across it against traffic, and incorporated himself into the intended lane. Uncommon? No. In front of us there was an ambulance doing exactly the same thing (not the one shown in the picture) and Becky mentioned afterwards that a taxi driver in one of her trips across the city got tired of the traffic jam over a bridge, so he went against traffic by driving through the opposite lane of the bridge quickly into the other side.

Stamps

I asked a fellow volunteer from another organization what was the most important legacy of the British in and she didn’t say any of what I expected such as love for soccer or cricket or geo-political divisions. Her answer was ‘stamps’ – which ties into bureaucracy. You need stamps at the post office (this was one of Becky’s nemesis; no space for it here), and at the airport any hand luggage you take with you must have an additional label that must be stamped after you go through security. The stamp on the label is so important to them than as I was about to board the airplane to Kolkata on my first day in India I was taken back to security by the employees to re-pass my items through the machine and get the stamp, which I didn’t know I had to get in the first place. Then, I was allowed to board.

Stamps are so important and predominant in that there is a MacDonalds commercial with post-office employees stamping envelopes. Love that commercial and found it in You Tube (search: mc donalds lucky singh). It is really funny (to me).

Eating

Perhaps the one thing I missed the most about the West was eating. While in India I could only eat before or after I returned to the apartment and cooked my own meals. There were rare instances in which food places would have non-spicy food (e.g. the chicken sandwich at Cookie Jar at South City Mall), which I cannot eat for medical reasons. Most incredibly, Indians don’t understand how you can cook without spices – it is like telling them to instead of water to drink petroleum; they get a puzzled look in their faces when you try to explain. Furthermore, asking them whether something is not spicy before you buy it will get you no-where. Don’t believe them or at least know there is a likely chance you wasted your money and will remain hungry. Taking the pepper or chili out of a meal does not mean it is not spicy. They still leave in ingredients such as ginger that will make it burn in your mouth, esophagus and stomach and numb it as if you had gone to the dentist for a molar extraction.

At the movies... but not with Roeper and Ebert (I loved doing this)

- They stand up and sing the Indian national anthem as the video comes on screen before the film. Despite the ethnic and religious diversity (and conflicts) in India, the population is generally proud of their heritage as a nation

- They show copyright copies of the theater’s license to show the movie.

- There is a fifteen minute intermezzo in case people want to go to the bathroom. They time it so perfectly it doesn’t affect your movie-going experience, it enhances it (e.g. two screenings of the The Dark Knight and one of The Mummy III).

- There is Bollywood which I only saw one film in video. Reminiscent of the naïve and romantic films of 1950s, before the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution. They have no sexually explicit scenes; they only show one or two kisses throughout. This is all in an odd contrast to their social reality and the existence of prostitution and human trafficking (to a myriad of industries not just sexual exploitation).

Lightouts

Not since living in Cuba sixteen years ago had I experienced these, and I hate them. They happened all throughout the city either in the morning or the afternoon, almost every day. You could be showering, cooking, sleeping or else and the result would always be the same: temporary blindness and buckets of sweat because the ceiling fans would stop working. You were lucky if you were in the street (see pictures); some businesses had their own generators.

The swastika

For thousands of years has been a sign of welfare, good health or welcoming across various religions such as Hinduism, unlike in the West were the Nazis appropriated and perverted the meaning of the symbol.

The ones in the pictures attached are from the Birla Temple and Dakshineswar (a temple to the goddess Kali by the Ganges.

August 28, 2008 | Permalink

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Comments

It speaks volumes about my level of maturity that what I will remember most from this post is the Anal Memorial Service.

Posted by: Una | Aug 30, 2008 4:17:04 PM

That's funny Una, and DITTO. I took the picture precisely because of the wording in it.

Posted by: | Aug 30, 2008 7:16:18 PM

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