India with a side order of black boogers

This morning, I woke up with the worst cough ever. I could not stop coughing up flem and blowing my nose. Oh yeah, and my boogers were black. I know this sounds gross, but the reason they were black is because I enhaled so much pollution during my first two days in India. There is a haze over the entire city and even in the rural areas that I visited. We had discussed the pollution problems in Beijing and India, but I didn’t think Beijing was that bad so when I got off the ship Monday afternoon, I was hit with what felt like gallons of smoke pouring straight into my lungs. I felt like I couldn’t escape the smell, either. As our richshaw drove through town, waves of what smelled like sewage and burning rubber wafted in and out of the carriage. In almost all of the Asian cities we have visited, people were wearing masks over their faces to protect them from breathing in pollution, but I did not see a single mask in India…. And I definitely think India’s air is the worst thus far.

Aside from the awful air, there are some pretty cool things in India. And I’m not talking about the Taj Mahal, because I didn’t even visit it since it is so far from the port. Katie, Cheryl, Alex, and I got off the ship together and walked almost a mile to the exit of the port, almost getting run over by huge cranes and trucks. We were met by a mob of students trying to get out of the gate and into the city, but India’s port authority is very different from any other port we’ve gone to. It’s almost like we have to go through 4 checkpoints before actually entering the city. We all had to sign a book and have our passport number recorded down, but they only had one book and one guy that was physically writing down all of our information. All 900 of us. So you can imagine how long it took to actually get out of the port.

THE REST OF INDIA

The second day in India I went temple trekking with my friend, Kenny. We were tracing all the five temples to the elements of Shiva. We caught a 3^rdclass train to Tirupathi which was an experience all on it’s own. The people on the train looked at us in shock as we tried to find a seat. However, the entire train was full and we were left standing by one of the open car doors as the train made its way outside of the city. A man next to me peed right out the door as a child with no legs scooted down the aisle begging for money. The child stopped next to me and just stared at me, and motioned by eating air with his hand. I did not know how to react, but listened to the advice from SAS and did not give the child money but food.

When we pulled into the town, we had to catch a bus to Kalahasti. These buses just roll by, and you have to jump on them as they are moving. Once we found our bus, we realized that there was no way to identify which stop we had to get off at AND they never stopped the bus completely. This meant that we just had to JUMP off the bus! And to figure out which stop we had to get off at, we looked out the window for a big Shiva temple.

Once in Kalahasti, I noticed right away that this was not a tourist site. There was not a single westerner in the area, and none of the signs were in English. Luckily, a Brahmin took us under his wing and actually led us into the inner sanctum of Sri Kalahasti. Another Brahmin poured some type of bitter liquid into my hand, motioned for me to put it to my lips, and then dropped a coin in my hand when I lowered them from my lips. Next, he motioned for me to drop the coin in one of the big pots by him. I’m not really sure why he let us into the inner sanctum, because we were obviously not Hindu, but I am honored that I got the opportunity to experience it.

I also went to the Missionaries of Charity orphanage in Chennai, which was an eye opener for me as well. It is run by 10 nuns, and the doctors come on Thursdays so people cannot visit then. One of the nuns told me that all the children there were “retarded”, and therefore not up for adoption. They have “normal” children in another building that can be adopted, but only people from India can adopt them. Their oldest orphan is 40, and the other older girls have been trained to take care of the rest of the kids.

It was very difficult for me to accept that the nuns did not understand any of the children’s conditions. They group them all under “retarded” although I am sure that one of the children was not autistic, but had cerebral palsy. The child, Kumar, was banging his head against the metal when I sat down with him, and the nuns did nothing to protect his head. All I could do was sit there and put my hand between the bar and his head as he banged it for over an hour. Sister Superior told me that he does it every morning and throughout the night.

My last day was a little more light hearted, as I spent the afternoon with a family to celebrate Navarathi. The family I visited had a grandfather who was the head of the household, his wife, their two daughters and their two husbands, one of the husband’s mothers, and the three children of one of the eldest daughter. Of these children that were blood related, there were two girls that were about sixteen and three, and a boy that was about ten. The boy also had another of his friends over, who was also in the fifth grade.

The older girl, who I will call Asha in order to protect her privacy, entertained us with henna tattooing, a more traditional Indian pastime. Her aunt Noor (name also changed for privacy), or the woman she called an aunt (there was some confusion as to how this other older woman was related to the group and the grandfather said he could not translate it, so he just called her a daughter), also took part in the henna tattooing. The women of the household gathered around myself and the other SAS female student and watched closely as we got tattooed. None of the boys received henna tattoos, which made me think that henna is only for women. An advantage to having some time away from the men also meant that I could ask them a little about their personal lives. I used this time to open up the topic of marriage and dating. I asked Asha if dating was common among teenagers. She told me that guys do take girls on dates, but she does not date nor do any of her other girl friends. I asked her if people showed public affection, such as kissing or hand holding. Asha began to blush at this question, and looked down at my hand which she was tattooing and said that she “would never kiss a boy in public”. This still did not answer my question, so I asked again “Do the people who date show public affection?”. Still concentrating on my hand and avoiding eye contact, she gave me the infamous “head bobble”. I have found that this head motion has meant many different things in India, but at the time I thought she meant “sometimes” or “maybe”. In retrospect, I realize this really could have meant anything, from a “maybe” to “definitely no”. So I did not get an answer from Asha, but during my time spent in Chennai, I rarely saw any people of opposite sex even touching each other. Instead, I saw many women or young girls holding hands and even string of late teenage males holding hands.

This also made me question marriages in India, because our tour guide, Gerrie, said that many people marry by love match these days. In her case, she married outside of her caste which bothered her family for the first few years. However, she said that her parents accept her marriage now. But I thought that if people do not date, such as Asha, how do they find love matches? I thought that maybe the dating that leads up to love matches are just kept very secretive. I wonder if Asha had actually gone out on a date before, but did not trust me enough yet to disclose such information to me, or the presence of her aunt effected how she answered me. I think that love matches are still in the early stages of development and acceptance within the Indian culture.

Sensing that I was walking on thin ice with Asha, I directed the conversation toward Noor. Noor was already married and provided me with much of the facts of marriages in India. I opened up this topic of conversation by asking her what the gold necklace that she and all the other older females were wearing meant. She pulled her necklace out from under her sari and revealed a gold chain that hung about six inches from her neck with little gold charms on it. She said it was meant that a lady was married, called a mangalsutra. I asked her if it was the equivalent of the wedding ring we wear in the United States, but she gave me a blank stare and looked at Asha. Asha answered for her, by saying it was the same idea as the wedding ring. I then asked Noor what her charms meant, because while hers was an elephant, I noticed that her sister’s were a different animal. She said that the charms represented her husband’s family and their caste. She then allowed me to take a picture of the necklace. I asked her what the men wore, and she smiled and said they didn’t wear a necklace. Males do not have to wear anything, and if a female were to take hers off an leave it behind it would symbolize divorce. In previous conversations with an Indian friend back in New York, I was told that to have the right nostril of your nose pierced meant you were married. I asked Noor if this was true, and she told me she had no idea what I was talking about. I was confused because my informant back at home was married and was straight from Chennai, but I did not press the matter further and asked her if there was anything else a married woman wore. She responded by lifting up her dress and showed me her toe rings, another sign of marriage. She had one on each middle toe, and then said “Oh, I need to change them soon.” I thought this was interesting because we do not change our rings in the States, but toe rings were changed frequently in India. I asked her why she changes her toe rings, and she said that they were not shiny anymore. I was still confused by the toe rings, because I saw several younger girls wearing toe rings around Chennai who could not have been more than eighteen, so I asked Asha “Are toe rings only for married women?”. She said that at one time it was just for married women because when a woman walked the rings would clink, but now in her generation wearing toe rings is more of a fashion statement than a marriage symbol. Looking back, I hypothesized the reason for the change in the meaning of the symbol. I thought that since people wear shoes around more often, the rings probably do not “clink” the way they used to when many people walked around the city with no shoes. Asha also added that married women wear a full sari, while unmarried women, such as herself, wore the salwar kameez – a knee length tunic with long pants underneath it.

I asked Noor when she got married, and she told me she was two years younger than her sister. I still had no idea how old that would make her when she got married, so I asked again, “Did you marry right after high school?” I knew that this was not possible because of the legal marrying age the interport students had mentioned before, but I thought that by bringing up the age issue would elicit a more specified answer from Noor. She then said “No, no. Cannot. I was very older. About… twenty six?”. I asked her what her wedding was like, and she let out a heavy breath and said, “Very complicated, not enough time”. I told her I was just curious, and so began to describe the basics of the wedding process, which is very different from weddings in the States.

She told me that marriage ceremonies are five days long, although I was told by my informant in New York that it was a three day event. Each day, the ceremony is held at a different location. One day is at a “marriage hall”, while another important location is the bride’s house – this is the most formal day. I asked her what she wore, and Asha immediately interrupted and pointed at the henna she was doing on my hand. Apparently wedding henna is worn at the cost of about 700 rupees and is very intricate. Noor agreed and also said that she wore a special sari. I asked her what the difference between a normal sari and a wedding sari was, and she said her wedding sari was a little over 7,000 rupees. A normal silk sari, as I discovered in the sari shop, range from 300 rupees to about 2,000 rupees. I told Asha that in America, the wedding is really only one day and there is a party afterward. She said “Oh yes, we have those too”. Noor had a wedding reception that was a little more modern than, say her parents, because alcohol was included among “lots of music and dancing”. She said alcohol is becoming a part of wedding receptions, but more so in the metropolitan families.

I realized that I had only talked to the females about dating, so I politely excused myself from the henna circle, and walked over to the two boys who were dancing in the living room to some Navarathi music. I spent a few minutes building rapport, asking them what they studied in school (they mentioned French, English, Hindi, science, math) and then I asked them if they had classes with girls. Asha’s brother said only some classes. I asked if he had any friends that were girls, and he began to giggle as did his friend. I asked them again, “Do you talk to the girls ever?” and they starting giggling again and Asha’s brother said that the did not, that they “didn’t like the girls”. I wanted a better perspective on dating and marrying from a male, but I was running out of time.

Luckily, the grandfather had just finished his conversation with one of the other SAS students, so I quickly stepped in and tried to get a conversation started. Because we were there for the Navarathi festival, I asked him if all the family was here because of the festival. He said that normally his eldest daughter was around, and her son and Asha spent a lot of time with him, but that many of the other family members were at the house because of the festival and because SAS was visiting their home. I asked him about his eldest daughter’s husband, because I did not see him there, and he said he was at work. He must have had other SAS students ask about arranged marriages, because he also added that her husband was a love match. I thought this was an odd thing to just throw into conversation, but I went with it. “Did your other daughter have a love match?”, I asked. He said that hers was arranged, and when I asked why he told me that if women aren’t married by around twenty five, many parents start to worry because they want their daughters to start their own life by then. “What about males?”, I asked. Guys marry in their late twenties, but he said that if they aren’t married by the time they are thirty that is when he, personally, would feel compelled to become more involved. I mentioned “matrimony.com” because the interport students had mentioned it and I saw that they had a computer, and he said that yes his friends have used it for their sons before.