The first day I met Shankar Karki he took me around his one acre property, pointing out the fruit trees and the big tree that marked the edge of his field. We sat with his neighbors in a concrete public shelter with an aluminum roof, and he named the landscape for me in Nepali: tree, rock, stream, road. Little children run up to him with pinches of tobacco leaves, which he grudgingly accepts. "Bad habit," he says with a wry smile. He points to his chest and adds, "Hard drinker, also." He tells me a story, which I could only partly follow, about a time when he got drunk and crashed a motorcycle. "Do not tell Prakash," he adds, chuckling.
The second day I showed him the articles I had to read on Hinduism. He slowly read the titles aloud, and then quickly launched into a description of his religious philosophy. Because there is only one Supreme God, he explained, he worshiped all gods equally, and all of the various personages that God had been when born as a human here on earth: the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Sai Baba the living god, a picture of whom hangs over our front door. His reasoning behind this seemed to include an elaborate conspiracy theory about man's first landing on the moon. When Neil Armstrong stepped down the steps, apparently saw and felt red clothed hands push him down towards to the lunar surface. He never told anyone until coming to India.
The third day he greeted my return home with sharp Nepali commands shouted out the family dogs. "Bite! Attack!" he barked, laughing and smiling warmly. The dogs ignored him.
The fourth day I asked him if he did Hindu astrology. He giggled and shook his finger at me. "Who told you? Who told you?" I admit that it was one of my language teachers, and he chuckles all the harder. He promises to give me a reading later that week.
The fifth day when I wake up I see him walking down towards the stream. "Namaste!" I call after him, but he doesn't seem to notice. Later that night I catch my host sister reading lips. Sharkar Karki is nearly deaf.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Graffiti
English graffiti in and around Kalimpong:
"Cast your vote at the symbol of the drum."
"CPLM" (Next to stylized hammer and sickle.)
"Vote for GNLF" (Gorkha National Liberation Front)
"From east to west, GNLF is best!"
"Election is a election
Decisive it is
Big
Selection"
"We want Gorkhaland."
"I love you."
"Cast your vote at the symbol of the drum."
"CPLM" (Next to stylized hammer and sickle.)
"Vote for GNLF" (Gorkha National Liberation Front)
"From east to west, GNLF is best!"
"Election is a election
Decisive it is
Big
Selection"
"We want Gorkhaland."
"I love you."
Friday, August 24, 2007
Jackfruit
America suffers from a tragedy of flavors. Lemonlime, strawberry-kiwi, dragonfruit, acai berry, guava, jackfruit. Go into any supermarket and you can find sodas and fruit drinks of every flavor imaginable, made with 2% juice from every fruit on the planet. But how many of those fruits have we eaten? How many of those flavors would we recognize in anything but soft drink form?
The other day I ate a jackfruit. It's strange to say the least, a lumpy oblong thing the size of a watermelon. Its thick but supple peel is covered in tiny round spikes, like the skin of some alien. Inside is a thick cylindrical core surrounded by oddly shaped sections about the size of an egg. My aamaa scoops these out with a large metal ladle and plops them down onto a clean plate--off white and sticky looking.
I go to put one in my mouth, but my host sister Uma squeals for me to wait. I spit it back out onto the spoon, and the whole family laughs. Giggling, Uma squeezes one of the sections open. Each one contains a hard, smooth pit the size of a ping-pong ball. Putting the fruit back in my mouth, I work the pit out with my tongue and teeth and spit it onto the plate. Uma claps her approval.
This edible part is sweet and smooth. My pallet isn't used to its subtle taste, but when I closed my eyes and concentrated I thought (or imagined) that I could detect some of the same flavor from the jackfruit Vitamin Water I used to drink back in New York. Eating the actual fruit, however, is a completely different experience. The texture is strange, gelatinous and stringy. As I slide it around my mouth thoughtfully, I wonder about what other "flavors" are like in their original form. What does a dragonfruit look like? What's an acai?
I enjoy the sorts of sweet, flavorful beverages that we have every day in the states, and, based on the popularity of coca-cola and fanta, I'm pretty sure most Nepalis do too. What concerns me is that these drinks claim association with a fruit they bare little or no resemblance to. Like parks of concrete or astro-turf, our tragedy of flavors makes believe that we are close to nature, that we've experienced the "real thing." I feel unnerved and slightly betrayed at how different a real life jackfruit is to the soda-inspired one of my imagination. But this is the true mixed blessing of travel, and perhaps the most compelling reason to do it. It shatters our illusions and assumptions, and gives us a more accurate, more complete, and, in the end, more meaningful view of the world. I can't pretend that it isn't hard or disappointing sometimes; the India of real life could never be quite as magical as the India of my imagination. Still, eggs and omelets, right? More and more I'm finding my imagination racing further and faster than it has in years, not crushed but fueled by this double edged knowledge.
My adoptive host brother Ganess brought home another jackfruit yesterday. I've been eying it in anticipation as it sits quietly in the corner of the kitchen. My aamaa promises that we'll eat it tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I can wait. The desire to taste it again, to further enrich my understanding of that one tiny aspect of the world, is a difficult one to deny. Knowledge, once tasted, is transformative. It grows in you a second stomach, one that digests experiences for the nutrients of tolerance and better judgment they contain. I feel it rumbling now. I'm hungry.
The other day I ate a jackfruit. It's strange to say the least, a lumpy oblong thing the size of a watermelon. Its thick but supple peel is covered in tiny round spikes, like the skin of some alien. Inside is a thick cylindrical core surrounded by oddly shaped sections about the size of an egg. My aamaa scoops these out with a large metal ladle and plops them down onto a clean plate--off white and sticky looking.
I go to put one in my mouth, but my host sister Uma squeals for me to wait. I spit it back out onto the spoon, and the whole family laughs. Giggling, Uma squeezes one of the sections open. Each one contains a hard, smooth pit the size of a ping-pong ball. Putting the fruit back in my mouth, I work the pit out with my tongue and teeth and spit it onto the plate. Uma claps her approval.
This edible part is sweet and smooth. My pallet isn't used to its subtle taste, but when I closed my eyes and concentrated I thought (or imagined) that I could detect some of the same flavor from the jackfruit Vitamin Water I used to drink back in New York. Eating the actual fruit, however, is a completely different experience. The texture is strange, gelatinous and stringy. As I slide it around my mouth thoughtfully, I wonder about what other "flavors" are like in their original form. What does a dragonfruit look like? What's an acai?
I enjoy the sorts of sweet, flavorful beverages that we have every day in the states, and, based on the popularity of coca-cola and fanta, I'm pretty sure most Nepalis do too. What concerns me is that these drinks claim association with a fruit they bare little or no resemblance to. Like parks of concrete or astro-turf, our tragedy of flavors makes believe that we are close to nature, that we've experienced the "real thing." I feel unnerved and slightly betrayed at how different a real life jackfruit is to the soda-inspired one of my imagination. But this is the true mixed blessing of travel, and perhaps the most compelling reason to do it. It shatters our illusions and assumptions, and gives us a more accurate, more complete, and, in the end, more meaningful view of the world. I can't pretend that it isn't hard or disappointing sometimes; the India of real life could never be quite as magical as the India of my imagination. Still, eggs and omelets, right? More and more I'm finding my imagination racing further and faster than it has in years, not crushed but fueled by this double edged knowledge.
My adoptive host brother Ganess brought home another jackfruit yesterday. I've been eying it in anticipation as it sits quietly in the corner of the kitchen. My aamaa promises that we'll eat it tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I can wait. The desire to taste it again, to further enrich my understanding of that one tiny aspect of the world, is a difficult one to deny. Knowledge, once tasted, is transformative. It grows in you a second stomach, one that digests experiences for the nutrients of tolerance and better judgment they contain. I feel it rumbling now. I'm hungry.
Onomatopoeia
Waakwaak: "About to throw up."
Rangibirangi: "Made of many colors."
Chijbij: "Stuff."
Oocus moocus: "So full I can't breath."
Gilli milli: "Many colorful lights."
Garunggurung: "Thunder."
Rangibirangi: "Made of many colors."
Chijbij: "Stuff."
Oocus moocus: "So full I can't breath."
Gilli milli: "Many colorful lights."
Garunggurung: "Thunder."
Dreamsicle
The white and orange kitten jumps into my lap. At breakfast I slip it bits of roti and a piece of onion from my omelet. Dreamsicle never purrs, but always seems to be smiling. Smiling with banana-yellow eyes.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
V.I.P. Tailors
In Kalimpong even nice stores are holes in the wall. The upper and lower cart roads leading into town are dotted with tiny general shops and stands that people lucky enough to have a house directly on the main path have set up in lieu of a front room. Most of these sport bright signs advertising ISD, PCO, STD, Aircel and other kinds of local and international pay phones. Like the street vendors I'm so used to seeing in New York, these places all seem to sell the same things: soda and potato chips, cookies and biscuits, some local unpackaged products that aren't safe for westerners, and individually wrapped mints, soaps, and medicines that hang from the low ceiling in long dangling strands of colored plastic.
Once you get off Dikshit Road and into Kalimpong proper, however, things diversify a bit. The general shops have been replaced with pharmacies that vary in size and sketchiness (the Tibetan store is supposed to be the best) and are spaced out between restaurants, dirty looking hotels, barber shops, and dark, occult looking places filled with grimacing masks and twisted, grinning Kali figurines. But the tiniest places of all, crammed into every remaining meter of storefront space, are the tailors.
The prospect of getting cheaply tailored clothing excited me since deciding to go to India. Check the tags on any given dress shirt, and there is a fair chance it was made in India. In the States, getting a shit tailored could run you at least a hundred bucks, but here in All India, where man hours are the most abundant resource, they'll do it for two. Since the program had told us to pack light, shopping for clothes and other essentials was high on our lists of priorities. Last week we finally went, with Tanya and Bishu taking the girls off to pick out punjabis and Lalit and B.B. leading Josh, Ansel, and myself through the crowded, haphazard sidewalks to buy cloth. The store was one of the larger establishments on the main road and, like fabric stores anywhere, was filled with color. After much browsing and subsequent haggling, we got our cloth and went across the street, walking quickly to avoid the mobs of rowdy teenagers chanting their football victory at the Mela Grounds.
V.I.P. Tailors is the smallest of the tiny tailors. Every available square foot is dedicated to hanging finished clothes or tiny push-peddle sewing machines. Outside rusty square table is used by a bookie to take bets on sports unknown, the nearby wall pinned with sheets of lottery tickets and paper prayers from the last holiday. Now and then the inconspicuous bookie will reach through a hole in the store's Plexiglas window and pull a mysterious and unreadable strip of paper from a small ticker machine. Inside its dark and hot. The irregular beats of the half dozen sewing machines are punctuated by the constant thumping of a small, vicious ceiling fan hanging just a few inches above my head.
The attendant tailor measures us and asks vague questions about pockets and pleats, all the while scribbling in some arcane combination of sewing script and devanagari. His notes form strange half circles around quick, crude sketches that somehow indicate style and preferences. He cut two tiny squares out of each of our fabrics, stapling one half into his heavy, leather-bound spellbook, and other to our indecipherable yellow recite. Assuring us that our clothes would be done by the 19th, he waved us out without a smile.
I went back on the 19th. A different man glanced at my recite and shook his head. The 21st, he said. They'd be ready on the 21st.
They were ready on the 21st. I went in and a third young man took my yellow slip in a sloth-like daze. He pawed aimlessly through the racks of hanging clothes until, finally, I pointed at a thinly lined white shirt I had ordered and said, "Tyo." I this-ed and that-ed four more items which the man pulled down, along with a few others I was sure weren't mine, to compare to the little squares of material snipped off the week before. Thanking and paying, I took my stuff and left. Tailoring for three shirts and two pairs of slacks had come to a total of US$10.50.
Once you get off Dikshit Road and into Kalimpong proper, however, things diversify a bit. The general shops have been replaced with pharmacies that vary in size and sketchiness (the Tibetan store is supposed to be the best) and are spaced out between restaurants, dirty looking hotels, barber shops, and dark, occult looking places filled with grimacing masks and twisted, grinning Kali figurines. But the tiniest places of all, crammed into every remaining meter of storefront space, are the tailors.
The prospect of getting cheaply tailored clothing excited me since deciding to go to India. Check the tags on any given dress shirt, and there is a fair chance it was made in India. In the States, getting a shit tailored could run you at least a hundred bucks, but here in All India, where man hours are the most abundant resource, they'll do it for two. Since the program had told us to pack light, shopping for clothes and other essentials was high on our lists of priorities. Last week we finally went, with Tanya and Bishu taking the girls off to pick out punjabis and Lalit and B.B. leading Josh, Ansel, and myself through the crowded, haphazard sidewalks to buy cloth. The store was one of the larger establishments on the main road and, like fabric stores anywhere, was filled with color. After much browsing and subsequent haggling, we got our cloth and went across the street, walking quickly to avoid the mobs of rowdy teenagers chanting their football victory at the Mela Grounds.
V.I.P. Tailors is the smallest of the tiny tailors. Every available square foot is dedicated to hanging finished clothes or tiny push-peddle sewing machines. Outside rusty square table is used by a bookie to take bets on sports unknown, the nearby wall pinned with sheets of lottery tickets and paper prayers from the last holiday. Now and then the inconspicuous bookie will reach through a hole in the store's Plexiglas window and pull a mysterious and unreadable strip of paper from a small ticker machine. Inside its dark and hot. The irregular beats of the half dozen sewing machines are punctuated by the constant thumping of a small, vicious ceiling fan hanging just a few inches above my head.
The attendant tailor measures us and asks vague questions about pockets and pleats, all the while scribbling in some arcane combination of sewing script and devanagari. His notes form strange half circles around quick, crude sketches that somehow indicate style and preferences. He cut two tiny squares out of each of our fabrics, stapling one half into his heavy, leather-bound spellbook, and other to our indecipherable yellow recite. Assuring us that our clothes would be done by the 19th, he waved us out without a smile.
I went back on the 19th. A different man glanced at my recite and shook his head. The 21st, he said. They'd be ready on the 21st.
They were ready on the 21st. I went in and a third young man took my yellow slip in a sloth-like daze. He pawed aimlessly through the racks of hanging clothes until, finally, I pointed at a thinly lined white shirt I had ordered and said, "Tyo." I this-ed and that-ed four more items which the man pulled down, along with a few others I was sure weren't mine, to compare to the little squares of material snipped off the week before. Thanking and paying, I took my stuff and left. Tailoring for three shirts and two pairs of slacks had come to a total of US$10.50.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Ants
This cold war just got hot. The ants finally attacked.
We've been at a standoff for days now, a grim agreement not to pursue further aggressions. They would poke around our defenses in the ceiling, and we would make forays into their territory to grab a book from the library. No formal attack had been made. Yesterday morning, however, I felt one bite me on the toe. It was a big motherfucker, the size of a lima bean. I smashed it with my notebook three times, but it just shrugged it off like it was nothing. When we got back to the room, we found them swarming out of a new hole in the ceiling, this one inside our first ring of protection. These weren't the small, tame ants from before; these were giant mutant evil ants. They crawled down towards floor, occasionally hurling themselves from the wall or ceiling onto the floor and beds with a sickeningly audible "plink." Soon they were all over everything, some carrying squirming white packages in their mouths--larva to hide in our pockets and poison our toothpaste.
I ran to Bim and got more magic chalk, but it was no use. These ants had adapted, like the Borg. When faced with a thick line of the yellow chemical dust, they just steeled themselves and rushed across. The borrowed vacuum had been returned to its owner elsewhere in the village: this time we had to Great Machine. We spent a few minutes vengefully stamping them into the carpet with our flip flops, but they were too many. Defeated, we beat a hasty retreat.
We spent the next few hours discussing various plans of action. There were spiders around that we could collect and turn loose in our room, but that seemed like it would create worse problems than it would solve. Finally, we decided that more reconnaissance was needed, poked our heads nervously into the room. They were gone. Other than a few mysterious and perfectly intact ant corpses scattered around the room--not our handiwork, I'm sure--there was no trace of their presence. I can only assume that they got what they came for.
The others cleared out the dead and laughed it off, but I'm still nervous. To leave after such a total victory doesn't seem to be in the ants' M-O. Tonight is my last night sleeping here at the program house, but I can't help but wonder what else they have in store for us or, more worryingly, what strange faction chased them away while we were gone.
Nature here isn't pretty and safe like in the states. It's loud and dangerous and in your face. It is clear to me now that humans are only here by the grace of being mostly neutral in whatever great secret war dominates the insect world. What would happen if we lost the protection of such neutrality or, worse, one side won? I don't want to think about it. For now the tides of battle seem to have shifted in our favor, and it seems wise not to push our luck.
We've been at a standoff for days now, a grim agreement not to pursue further aggressions. They would poke around our defenses in the ceiling, and we would make forays into their territory to grab a book from the library. No formal attack had been made. Yesterday morning, however, I felt one bite me on the toe. It was a big motherfucker, the size of a lima bean. I smashed it with my notebook three times, but it just shrugged it off like it was nothing. When we got back to the room, we found them swarming out of a new hole in the ceiling, this one inside our first ring of protection. These weren't the small, tame ants from before; these were giant mutant evil ants. They crawled down towards floor, occasionally hurling themselves from the wall or ceiling onto the floor and beds with a sickeningly audible "plink." Soon they were all over everything, some carrying squirming white packages in their mouths--larva to hide in our pockets and poison our toothpaste.
I ran to Bim and got more magic chalk, but it was no use. These ants had adapted, like the Borg. When faced with a thick line of the yellow chemical dust, they just steeled themselves and rushed across. The borrowed vacuum had been returned to its owner elsewhere in the village: this time we had to Great Machine. We spent a few minutes vengefully stamping them into the carpet with our flip flops, but they were too many. Defeated, we beat a hasty retreat.
We spent the next few hours discussing various plans of action. There were spiders around that we could collect and turn loose in our room, but that seemed like it would create worse problems than it would solve. Finally, we decided that more reconnaissance was needed, poked our heads nervously into the room. They were gone. Other than a few mysterious and perfectly intact ant corpses scattered around the room--not our handiwork, I'm sure--there was no trace of their presence. I can only assume that they got what they came for.
The others cleared out the dead and laughed it off, but I'm still nervous. To leave after such a total victory doesn't seem to be in the ants' M-O. Tonight is my last night sleeping here at the program house, but I can't help but wonder what else they have in store for us or, more worryingly, what strange faction chased them away while we were gone.
Nature here isn't pretty and safe like in the states. It's loud and dangerous and in your face. It is clear to me now that humans are only here by the grace of being mostly neutral in whatever great secret war dominates the insect world. What would happen if we lost the protection of such neutrality or, worse, one side won? I don't want to think about it. For now the tides of battle seem to have shifted in our favor, and it seems wise not to push our luck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)