Maneka's Baroda Visit

It was with great pleasure that I welcomed Maneka to Gujarat for her first visit there. I was very anxious to make sure she had a good time and left with a good impression. Consider that mission accomplished.

In retrospect, the job wasn’t too hard. All I had to do was stick to a simple formula: Spend more time shopping. Probably 65% of our waking time here was spent shopping or doing shopping-related activities. And as she was able to get access to things she liked, it made for a fun time.

Maneka and I stayed at my Masi’s place for the weekend. She, like the rest of my family, was super excited to have Maneka over and to meet her and talk to her, etc. And of course the uncle questions and wedding questions were ready to be rolled out. My family means no harm; they are just excited about Maneka and want to make her feel like part of the family. And they want to get to know her better, and these are ways to strike up a conversation. What I didn’t expect was that other distant relatives would come over to meet her too, which I thought was rather awkward and when I got the inevitable wedding question I could feel some anger rising up. But that’s family, what can you say.

Masi went out with us to the shops, the first time she had left the house in a month due to illness. Obviously Maneka’s shopping adventure in Baroda was a big deal to her. But I’m totally glad she came. Watching her in action bargaining is a blast.

The first store we went to was a family favorite… every girl in our family gets hooked up by this guy Deepak at his store Shiv’s dresses. Deepak was a hilarious salesman. He wasn’t particularly pushy, but he was what could only be called FOB metrosexual. While showing dresses, he would say stuff like, “but the most awesome thing about this is the work on the churidaar”, or “this will look absolutely gorgeous on her perfect figure” and “this dress never will go out of style… it was worn during the time of the Mahabharat”. Sure enough, we ended up getting the “Mahabharat dress”.

We rang up quite a bill at Shiv’s but there was one more store that Maneka wanted to go to for saris. Apparently she had liked one that Jigna Mami had worn in one of Hash’s wedding pictures so we wanted to check out that shop since it happened to be in Baroda. That place, Thakoors, was more commercial than Shiv’s and I thought the selection was less impressive, but we ended up getting some good stuff from there. At one point Maneka got so into it that she hopped over to the seller's side of the partition and looked at the saris herself instead of them being shown to her. Bhoti and I had a bunch of laughs after I explained to her what “crap” meant in English, after the 50^th time I had heard a dress salesman prounouce “crepe”, a commonly used sari material, as the other word. She could not stop laughing whenever the salesman would show us the “fine Italian crepe”. Needless to say he nor Maneka nor anyone but Bhoti and I were amused.

Maneka and I debated about a black sari, which I thought could be dropped" but she insisted was awesome and worth getting. At this point our bill for the day was about Rs.60K, which is a lot, but in the end we pulled the trigger on the sari after we calculated that all the shopping was still within reasonable budget, especially since we were getting hooked up with 20%+ discounts thanks to my Masi.

The next day I took Maneka to the ashram to show her around, and we had a special lunch with Kapilbhai and Dhartiben. Kapilbhai said after that he really liked her, which I could tell. We then went to hang out at Kamatiebaug, a famous park in Baroda, where we met up with Arch who had come from Amd for the day to see Maneka off. We talked and walked for a while, then headed back to Masi’s flat so Maneka could try on the clothes which had now been sown for her fit. She looked awesome… some of these outfits will be debuted at Sidd’s wedding, and I expect nothing less than jawdropping reactions. This is some high-quality stuff. Keep your eye out especially for the wine-colored dress.

We got a little boost of goodwill when Deepakbhai called to settle the bill, and Masa got on the phone with him to correct some bad math on the bill. That was enough of a pretense for Masa to ask Deepak for his own discount, on top of the one he had given Masi. Sure enough, he knocked off another few thousand Rupees, and we were happy.

And so she left back to Delhi with one extra stuffed suitcase of Rs.60K worth of high Baroda fashion. Gujarat Zindabad.

Food

I haven’t really described what I’ve been eating here yet, but it’s definitely worth mentioning. At the ashram I get three meals a day. Breakfast consists of black tea (called “ukadu”) with milk and either a couple bakris or some small nastaa. For lunch we have a shaak, bakris, some sort of salad (fruit or vegetable), and a variety of kichrdi. I was surprised to see that there are many different types of kichrdi. For dinner there is more bakri/shaak, along with a freshly-made vegetable soup. Both the shaaks and soups are made from vegetables that come fresh from the organic farm next to the ashram. When I first came here, I was in love with the food. The shaaks and soup are incredibly tasty, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Thinking about it now, the meals would be orgasmic for Greg, who likes few things more than soup and Indian food (imagine when they combine forces, Greg…). Because I’ve been constantly getting three big meals a day, I have barely dug into my stash of Nature Valley bars and Clifbars, because I’ve not been hungry much.

But at this point I’ve realized that there is a big difference about how and what I’m eating here that has taken a toll on me and may have contributed to my recent illness. First, two meals a day of Indian food is very heavy for me. At most, I’ve had one Gujarati meal a day in my life. Eating 6-8 bakris a day is absolutely too much. Second, I realized that my old pattern was eat when hungry; now, I eat according to a schedule, set by the kitchen staff that cooks my meals. This means I eat even when my body tells me that it doesn’t need food. When I’m at home, I usually wait for my body to tell me that it wants food before I begin hunting for it. This means that I go hungry a lot more but I eat only as needed. I like this system better, though I’m not sure which is better for your health. Nevertheless, I’m used to eating in this way and since I’ve come here I’ve been having trouble coping. Added to the problem is that I don’t have the freedom to skip a meal if I want… the kitchen staff prepares the meals especially for me and if I don’t eat it goes to waste. I feel obligated to eat because they are preparing it. Also, it seems like the mentality here is that it’s a good thing to gain weight through eating. The ladies in the kitchen (and Surajbhai) have explicitly said how they have not done a good job unless I get fat. Well, sorry to disappoint people, but I can’t sustain this diet.

Sickness

I’ve just gotten through a bout of sickness, my first real taste of it since I got here. I started off feeling unusually tired yesterday afternoon, and didn’t feel right through lunch. After eating I went to lay down and continued to feel quite weak. Then I started feeling aches throughout my body; head, back, stomach, and legs. Soon I went and vomited. This was not the first time I threw up since I’ve come to India; the first time was before I left for Bhuj when I exercised too hard in my room and lost it. This time it was real sickness.

After throwing up the first time, I felt a little relieved, and was able to sleep with less pain. But in half an hour, I woke up again with a lot of pain throughout my body. On top of that I felt very weak, like the strength had been sucked out of me. I vomited again, and again I felt relief from the pain. Also I was sweating which was good in the face of fever, which I was also starting to experience. The third time in this cycle, I was just throwing up whatever small amount of food I was taking in, and so I started to figure I had some sort of virus in me. I was calm during this time, expecting that the bug would pass through by my throwing up cycle. I was, however, in great discomfort with all the bodyaches and stomach chaos.

During the 4^th time I threw up, I sat in my bed for a long time, battling the pain and the oncoming nausea. I was breathing very deeply and concentrating, and was feeling that I had a chance to control the illness and not have to throw up. It was intense pain and concentration for what seemed like several minutes. In the end my concentration broke and I threw up, and got the temporary relief. At this point Surajbhai came and said that I should go see Bharatbhai, the head doctor. I did not resist and Bharatbhai basically said that I may have a virus, and that I should just lessen my diet for a while and keep an eye on my temperature. Walking to the office, I really noticed how weak I was. It was laborious just to walk, and I noticed that my legs would fatigue from the weight of my body. I also noticed that my limbs would fall asleep if pressure was applied, indicating poor circulation.

Kapilbhai came by later on in the evening and told me that I would be fine. As soon as he came in I started to sweat for the first time, breaking my fever. He joked that he had that effect on a lot of people. It was good seeing him, Dharatiben, and Tapas, and I saw that my energy level increased with them present. After they left I went for a short walk outside before I tried to sleep for the night. I was painfully weak and went halfway around my building. When I came back I reached the rare “hole confusion” level of food/stomach virus: I went to the bathroom feeling like vomiting, but ended up squatting for some diarrhea. I’ve risen to this level only one other time… my freshman year in college when I had food poisoning and spent an entire night crawling between my dorm room and the floor bathroom because it was too painful to straighten my torso and walk normally.

During the night I had a difficult time sleeping, as I felt very hot. This was probably due to waves of high temperature, which was probably in the 101-102 range at the peaks. It was very uncomfortable laying in bed, since I felt too weak to get up and in too much pain to fall asleep. During the night I also had a really bizarre dream where I was helping Kapilbhai organize thousands of documents which we arranged and rearrange and categorized and bundled and recategorized. Really weird and vivid because I thought that the documents were sitting on the bed with me.

Today I felt my strength coming back and feel that I have definitely gotten the illness under control. I rested the whole day which made me restless at the end, so I did some exercises which made me feel a little better. I really miss my gym, and the feeling of sore muscles after a good workout. I also am glad to have gotten over the feeling of weakness, which made me understand better how my mom must have felt during her illness. It’s a really frustrating feeling not being able to move as you normally do, and it made me thankful for the good health that I’ve had in my life thus far.

Bhuj Conference and Sajiv Kheti Manch

Today Kapilbhai and I returned from the workshop on market opportunities for small producers in Bhuj, in a region of Gujarat called Kuchchh. The conference was great exposure for me as I become more familiar with the type of work going on for small agriculturists in India. More importantly it was a look inside the mentality of active social workers on the ground in India today… what do they see as the main problems for rural poor today? Answer: access (to information, infrastructure, capital), lack of organization and thus bargaining power. Who/what do they consider the “enemies”? Answer: Big business, inept and unsympathetic government. What are the currently accepted and necessary tools for empowerment and mobilization? Answer: cooperatives, government policy that looks after the rural population, ICTs and other infrastructures for connecting rural production to lucrative markets. It was helpful in solidifying in my own mind the types of ideas and models that are prevalent in Indian social work today, so that I can attach appropriate weights to the concepts I have up until now only read in books. In that sense I learned something, as opposed to learning about radically new ideas or models, which I was more hoping to come across but was left in disappointment about.

I was also able to meet prominent individuals working in rural India today, including NGO leaders, individual activists, academics (including IIM faculty), etc. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any other technologists there but me. As I had suspected, playing the Stanford card goes a long way here… I am learning that in India just being a foreigner makes you of higher status… when you then drop name brands it makes you a "sir" with no hesitation, and I am suddenly a peer of tenured academics homegrown in India.

Finally I had the distinct honor of attending a Sajiv Kheti Manch; a semi-regular meeting of about 10 core farmers and agriculturalists who began the organic agriculture movement in Gujarat over 20 years ago. The movement can be said to have originated from Kapilbhai, and then was grown to include this group of old friends who all have taken up farming according to the prescriptions of “living agriculture”, Sajiv Kheti. The meeting was held on Manojbhai’s organic farm outside of Bhuj. It was an absolutely delightful locale.

Out in the fresh air, with just farmlands in all directions, the environment having a vibrant green and brown color. On top of that we held the meeting in Manojbhai’s newly built favela, an absolutely unique construction with a straw roof, wooden pillars and stone and sound footpath, with a “green wall” in one corner and a “green garden” in the opposite.


It was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The meeting began and talks went informally. They generally had the feel of a meeting of venerable elders; they spent much time debating the future of the Sajiv Kheti movement, especially the threats and obstacles, of which they concluded were many. Although Kapilbhai seems to be the leader of the group, everyone spoke and was treated with reverence. Here was a group of giants, I thought, and here I am as a lucky outsider as a fly on the wall to catch their reflections. There was not a trace of arrogance to the way they conducted themselves; they were practical all the way. And it was very clear that they were very close to each other, strong friendships built over personal and common struggle over many years.

Manojbhai has a main farmer who seems to be the one who runs things hands-on. One of my regrets after leaving the farm was not taking enough pictures of both the favela and this farmer (though both are pictured to the right), which I didn’t do out of fear of embarrassing him and myself. He was an awesome sight. If you had to paint a Gujarati farmer, you would paint this guy. Turbaned, deep eyes, dark and thick skin, broad shouldered and thinly clothed. He moved smoothly and had a childish smile. He had his own organic mango farm and shared some of his harvest with us… absolutely divine.

Towards the end of the meeting I had the opportunity to present some of my initial work with Kapilbhai on an organic scorecard, which was received very positively. It was nice to have been able to show the work and feel that I had contributed to the meeting. I felt honored throughout.

After the meeting we went to a local restaurant and had a traditional Gujarati thali dinner, featuring organic vegetables. I was in heaven. There was this absolutely fantastic soya shaak, as well as awesome daal, kadhi, and kichrdi. We also had some fresh mango lassi, courtesy of the restaurant owner, who was the son of Manojbhai’s farmer. My dad often uses the term “Jatt Gujarati” to describe himself, but it’s never really been accurate for our family. But this restaurant owner, the farmer’s son, was the personification of Jatt Gujarati. Like his father, he was well-built and muscular. And he was just massive, one of the biggest and sturdiest-looking Gujarati’s I’ve ever seen. And I could see why: if you had a steady diet of soya shaak and kichdi, I see no reason why you couldn’t have that type of bulk. And all with wimpy vegetables!

My Hands-Holding Partner

In India there is a peculiar social habit that people from the States particularly will notice. When you go out and observe men, you may notice that they are especially touchy-feely with each other. When they walk, they walk shoulder-to-shoulder, very close. They put their arms around eachother frequently. When they shake hands or greet, their hands linger in clasp, and sometimes you see men stroking eachother’s hands, wrist, and fingers in a caressing way. All of this sounds pretty gay, especially if you’re from the States. We joke about it frequently at home. The typical “friends”, both male, walking down the crowded street in India, holding hands or clasping at the finger. But it isn’t gay; it’s a cultural thing. My hypothesis has always been that because Indian society suppresses open physical contact between men and women (e.g. kissing scenes in movies draw held breath), men release the pent up physical/sexual tension on each other. I’m not saying I condone it, but I understand (somewhat related to this is a joke I heard recently about how in India you can “piss” in public but not “kiss”, and it’s the opposite everywhere else in the world. Punchline: so India allows you to take off your clothes to defecate, but you can’t peck a person on the cheek)

At the ashram, I’ve gotten to know one of the naturopathy doctors, Suraj, very well. He’s 23, so we are close in age and the only early 20s people here. And more importantly, we share similar thoughts, morals, inclinations, etc., even though we were brought up in drastically different cultures. Suraj is a straight arrow (like myself), who has achieved much and has big dreams. At the same time he is quite humble and committed to service and family. Very mature for his age by all accounts, and we frequently get into spirited and interesting conversations about our lives growing up, college, friends, social traditions, etc. where we can compare and contrast Indian and American experiences. One of our most interesting insights is that on a cost of living basis, a India is as expensive of a place to live as America. It's only when a person takes American earnings and spends in India do you see the relative wealth jump up an order of magnitude. All this means that if you are earning in Indian Rupees, the cost of gas, food, clothes, etc. is not any cheaper despite the fact that arguably quality of life is worse (i.e. living in Palo Alto vs. living in Baroda). So if you're a young Indian like Suraj, you're saving and earning the same amount in real terms for an inferior quality of life. No wonder many want to go abroad

Anyway, Suraj and I have gotten along very well, and hang out quite a bit. We take our meals together at special times in the day as we both prefer to eat lunch and dinner later then the scheduled time for the naturopathy patients. He's helped me a ton with errands and getting settled, taking me around on his bike. I’ve showed him pictures from home; he's shown me pictures of his ex and described his best friends from college and his family which lives nearby. I’m really glad to have met him and expect that we will stay in touch well after this summer.

Recently we’ve been shaking hands as a greeting and when we part, and I have noticed that he’s gotten a little more touch-feely over time. What was once was a handshake has become a shake with a back pat, and then to a back rub with hand squeeze. The last time we parted, I got the distinct image of Suraj someday trying to hold my hand when we go out. Needless to say, I was horrified. So is this the beginning of my first pseudo-homosexual Indian hands-holding relationship? You never know.

The (Not So) Simple Life

Over the last two days, I’ve come face to face with simple work and failed to stand up to the challenge. Yesterday, I found Rameshbhai outside in the farm and quickly went downstairs to see if I could help (The Ashram has an acre of land where it does organic agriculture, and Rameshbhai is the man in charge). I at first played it cool because I didn’t want to seem over-enthusiastic, so I asked him if I could help him move the pile of grass he had created while weeding one of the plots. He said it goes in the compost bin, but declined my request. Then I stood and watched him for a while. He was weeding the plot with a “Dantherdu” (pictured), pulling up grasses and small unwanted plants. His technique was efficient, like a surgeon. Frequently he would pull up earthworms, of which I was surprised to see so many in the soil. When he “unearthed” one, he would use the tool to deftly cover the worm back up to allow it on its way back into the soil.

After watching him for a while, he finally asked if I wanted to help, which I said yes to, trying my best to curb my enthusiasm. He was going to get me another Dantherdu so we could work together, but he got called into his house to meet some guests. I indicated to him that I could carry on, and started to mimic the technique which I had observed him doing. He didn’t really give much feedback, but in the end he said I was doing it right. He then left me and told me to do as much as I was comfortable with. I looked at the side of the plot he had started, and figured I could finish that section (about 8 feet of soil, 3 feet wide). So I started going at it. Within 10 minutes my back started aching, and my knees wouldn’t allow me to squat for too long before I needed to stand straight and take a rest. It was *really* hard work. Later on I realized that I didn’t have the stamina for it because the muscle groups I was using weren’t the ones I use when I go to the gym. Rameshbhai probably couldn’t benchpress as much as me, but he would smoke me in a weeding competition. Anyway, in a half hour I was done. I really was struggling for the last 15 minutes of that time, trying desperately to finish the section I set out to do. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it (To the right are before and after pics of the plot I weeded).

Today I had my second taste of defeat. I set out to hand-wash my clothes. I had a couple underwears, wifebeaters, a kurta shirt, a pair of pants, and a collared shirt. A few days earlier Moneyben, the woman who cleans my guesthouse, had shown me the basic technique of washing underwear. It looked easy enough when she did it, and I figured I could extrapolate the technique for the larger items. So this morning I filled a bucket halfway with soapy water and put the clothes in to soak for a while, as Moneyben had shown. So far I was doing great. After soaking, you take out each garment one at a time, apply some more soap, and scrub with hands and a brush. After that, you rinse and move on to the next. The problem was my technique was really bad. I didn’t know what I was doing with the soap, whether I should scrub with my hands, use the brush, and in what combination.

The clothes seemed to be clean, but I also wasn’t really sure whether I was doing that sufficiently. Rinsing was also a problem. I couldn’t quite get out all of the soap from any of the garments, nor could I squeeze them enough that they were no longer dripping water. For the pants, I couldn’t scrub out several mudstains that had gotten on them from the farming fiasco the day before. Also making it difficult was the fact that I had to sit down on a small stool near ground level so that I could use the ground to squeeze the clothes of water… again my back quickly began to kill me and I couldn’t get comfortable for long. I was at times definitely feeling helpless doing this chore, and all I was doing was washing clothes!

The worst lay ahead. After scrubbing to the best of my ability, I laid out the clothes to dry on the line outside my room. After going downstairs and eating breakfast, I came back up to check on the clothes, and what do I see? The wire lines have put rust stains onto my clothes! There were red lines across my shirt, pant, and kurta. I went back to the buckets and scrubbed as best I could, but the stains remained, however faintly. At this point I felt totally hopeless. Where was Moneyben!?! I was shocked that I could bungle such a seemingly simple act as washing clothes.

My two encounters with simple living were in my estimation a disaster. In both cases I left with aches in my back with only failure to show for it. I realized I have a long way to go to achieve any sort of self-sufficiency in my lifestyle. Will I try again? I’m not looking forward to it, but I must. I’m hoping that the learning curve is steep, but for now the last thing I’m thinking about is scrubbing or weeding. The one positive of my experience is a growing appreciation for manual work, which I’m glad to no longer take for granted.

Rain, Rain...

Today I took a rickshaw to Masi’s house and immediately it started raining. Hard. I was supposed to get back to the ashram the next day but there was too much standing water in the roads to be able to get to Gotri. Instead we sat inside the flat all day. It was a pathetic existence… sit around, talk, eat, sit again, sleep, etc. I felt completely lazy and missed my gym more than ever.

Masa and I went outside to try and go to the train station so I could buy my ticket to Bhuj, but we turned around in the middle because the water was too high in the roads. It was an amazing sight… I wish I had brought my camera. The water was calf deep and people were splashing through the streets on motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles. We got splashed on by one guy going too fast on his scooty. After that I was satisfied to stay inside.

Inside I spent a lot of time with Masi and Bohti, talking about family mostly. Masi looked at my pictures twice, and especially liked Reshita’s sari pictures and the video of Laxmi and Dad’s garba video. No one really laughed at the watermelon video, which I still find hilarious.

Bohti told me about her school situation and how she is very interested on becoming a teacher. To do so she will need to pursue another year of school to get a B.Ed. Right now she is finishing her M.Comm after completing her B.Comm last year. She says she still likes the Business track, but really likes to teach, 7^th standard and below. Ideally she could teach commerce, but that’s pretty low status.

The rain is really intense. The drops are fatter than what I’m used to seeing at home, and it comes down with the intensity of heavy rains at home, whereas it seems normal here. I was surprised by how heavy the drops felt and also by how it isn’t really cold while it rains.