Love Marriage or Arranged? – 11/28/14

                In the U.S. there arranged marriages are definitely looked down upon. I mean, before I could hardly say the words without getting a bad taste in my mouth and conjuring up images of 15-year-old girls getting married off to 60-year-old men. How could you be forced to marry some you might not even like? It always seemed like such a backwards concept that belonged in the medieval times when marriages were just another strategic move you could make in political chess. The other night, however, I had a very thought-provoking conversation with my host sister about marriage and what its goals are, what it means.

                The whole conversation started when I was talking to her about the upcoming weddings that I’ll be attending and then that sliding into me asking more about marriage norms here in Banaras. I was relieved to hear that the average age for people to get married here is normal (basically in your 20s) and was going to continue to ask questions when Madhu (my host sister) asked, “So, do you want a love marriage or an arranged marriage?”. To be honest, I had never even fathomed having an arranged marriage and I had to let out an awkward laugh when I replied, “Well, I don’t think an arranged marriage is even really an option for me. They aren’t very common in America.” I asked her the same question and, much to my surprise, she told me that she wanted an arranged one. I guess I never realized that some people actually might want an arranged marriage. Interested in her viewpoint (which was evidently much different from my own), I asked her why she wanted an arranged marriage rather than a love marriage and she said matter-of-factly that arranged marriages seem to last so much longer.

                Why is that? Why are divorce rates much higher in the U.S. than in India? Is it arranged marriages? Is it just cultural differences and the way people perceive marriage to be? It got me to thinking about what’s at the root of each of these two different types of marriages. For one, love marriages are founded in sincere love for another person (as you could probably tell from the name). Arranged marriages, on the other hand, are founded in a sense of societal duty and inter-family relationships. To expound on this, love marriages can break down when the two people who are married either change the way they love each other or just stop loving each other altogether. Arranged marriages have a stronger bond in the sense that when you marry someone else, you are vowing to provide for and protect your spouse, regardless of whether you love them or not (especially since love or even any familiarity is not a pre-existing condition for this type of marriage). Technically wedding vows in the U.S. hold the same weight as in India. I mean, ‘til death do us part is a pretty intense phrase that many couples say during their wedding ceremonies, but there are enough societal pressures against divorce in India to give real meaning to those words.

                Am I gung-ho for arranged marriages now? That might be a little bit of a stretch. I still think that a love marriage in which two people deeply love each other is stronger than any other bond in the world (maybe excluding that of a mother and her baby), but at least now I can see the reason why arranged marriages exist. As long as your parents make a good choice for your husband (or for your wife), you’re given a real shot at a stable, happy life.

 

Inanity of the Day - 11/22/14

                On the program house whiteboard each day our group tries to write a different “Inanity of the Day”. As you could probably tell from what we call them, most of them are fairly stupid and childish. A couple examples include:
-          You usually have 10 toes, but if you cut one off it would bleed and hurt a lot and then you’d only have 9.
-          There is no i in teamwork, but if you read it backwards you get “Krow Meat”.
-          Life is like writing in pen – you usually can’t do it in space.
-          Barking up the wrong tree: when the nut you want ain’t the nut you get.
-          पूप (the Hindi transliteration of “poop”)
o   This one particularly showed how we are all still 5 years old at heart.
-          What is the meaning of mankind? First we have to break it up into its components – mank and ind. What do those two words mean? No one knows and that’s why mankind is a mystery.

Even though the inanities are pretty, well, inane, they do bring our group much joy. There’s nothing like a particularly stupid joke to start the day off right and sometimes they’re just the perfect pick-me-up when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed (how many clichés can I fit into one sentence?).

Mice - 11/19/14

                I’ve known that there are mice in my house for almost as long as I’ve stayed in it. At first, I couldn’t care less that they were there. Besides, they stayed away from me and my stuff – or so I thought. I mean, sure, I was a little grossed out by the abundance of mice in the kitchen and all of the food being prepared on the floor where the pesky rodents run around, but Deep (my host brother) gave me a pretty rude awaking on Dev Diwali.

                The earlier part of Dev Diwali had been amazing. I got breakfast with Alex and Steven and then explored the city with Alex, leading us to a temple with animatronic idols and the entire Ramayana printed on the white marble walls. Then, we all had a killer lunch at Dolly-ji’s house and went to a Sikh temple to see the festivities for the Sikh holiday that day. To top it all off, we went on a beautiful boat ride down the Ganges to see the ghats lit up by thousands of candles. Needless to say, I was in a fantastic mood before Deep delivered the news – a mouse had been curled up in my sleeping bag earlier that day. Worse, Deep didn’t even bother to move it! He found it hilarious that a mouse had appeared to enjoy my bed so much, but I was not amused. Up until this point I had kept my room fairly clean. The distinct lack of cabinets or drawers means that my clothes had to be folded on the table in my room or my whole room would appear a mess. That being said, once I found out that a mouse had been in my bed, I started taking a ton of precautions. I hung all my food in bags from hooks and made sure nothing was ever on the floor.  Then, the second incident struck.

                Every morning at about 4 or 5 AM I wake up and have to use the bathroom. Most days, I just keep sleeping since I get up at 6 AM anyway, but this particular incident happened on a Sunday, so I decided to get up and go to the bathroom so that I could sleep in. When I turned on the bathroom light, I saw that there was a mouse crouching in the middle of the room (the bathroom is shaped like a long and skinny rectangle). I stomped around and tried to scare it away, but the mouse would not budge. I took the bucket that I use to bathe and tried to tap the mouse out of the way, but it still would not move. At this point I suspected that the mouse must be pretty sick for it not to respond to any stimuli, so I decided I should just jump over it and do my business. I went back to bed hoping that in the morning it would have moved, but, alas, it was not so. Later that morning when I got up for the second time and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, wash my face, etc., I opened the bathroom door only to find a dead mouse keeled over in the middle of the floor.

                I told my host dad and asked him to get rid of the dead mouse and he assured me that a guy would come to clean it up. Again, however, when I returned home that night the dead mouse was still there – worse, it was covered in ants now. I went back downstairs to tell my host brother and he told me to take it and throw it out the window onto the street (aka how most families here in India dispose of trash). Knowing I wouldn’t get any help, I ripped some cardboard from the packages my mom has sent me and I scooped the mouse up. Now, the window have metal grates and the first time I attempted to fling the mouse out the window it didn’t go through and flopped on the floor by my feet. After letting out a particularly feminine squeal and jumping back a foot or two, I gathered my wits and successfully disposed of the deceased mouse. At this point I was exasperated that the mouse hadn’t been clean up earlier, not because I wasn’t willing to dispose of it, but because it would have been less unpleasant earlier in the day when the thing wasn’t crawling with ants and who knows what else.

                This second incident sparked an even more thorough cleaning and I searched everything I owned for traces of mice. I guess before I had been living in ignorant bliss, not wanting to believe that the small, brown things I found everywhere were mice poop. At that point, however, I examined every speck of dust and was appalled by the amount of mice feces in my room/on my stuff. I stayed up far too late that night putting tape around the legs of my bed and table so that the mice couldn’t climb up the sticky surface and devising plans to trap the little buggers. The plus side of this whole ordeal is that my room is always very clean. The downside is that I feel like I have to always be on high alert for possible things that might attract mice.

Modi-ji – 11/9/14

                Modi-ji, the prime minister of India, came to Banaras and our group (Jenny and Stephen not included – they were asleep) got to see him! We woke up super early and walked down to Assi Ghat (where Modi-ji was going to be to bathe in Ganga-ji) and sweet talked the guards into letting us into the press area/private area. We were the only white people there, lol (also, #winning?). Anyway, while we were there about 6 different TV/news stations came and interviewed us in Hinglish and we made it into the newspaper/on TV!!! Unfortunately, much of our Hindi skills escaped us as soon as the camera was pointing at our faces, but it was fun practicing our Hindi on low-ranking Banaras officials in the private area and making conversation in Hindi with random military men (there were probably as many military personnel at Assi Ghat as there were spectators). The closest we could get to Modi-ji was only about 50 ft away and that was while he was getting shooed into his car by the Indian equivalent of the Secret Service. I have tons of pictures and videos from the event that I’ll post, but it was really cool to be able to see him in the flesh.

Beautification – 11/5/14

                I know I briefly mentioned A Fine Balance in one of my earlier posts, but I would like to just take a second and explain the book a little more. My comment that I was reading AFB was sort of off-hand, but really the book has had a fairly large impact on both my group and me. Christy-ji was the first to read it and then I the second, and we both campaigned really hard for everyone else to read it (as of now, only Ben P, Alex, and Caleb still need to read it). The book is incredibly relevant to life in India today, even though it is a piece of fiction about India in the 1970s. It is written very well and I seem to find a connection to the book every single day in something I see, learn, or do. I would highly recommend it to anyone (well, mostly adults. The book can be somewhat graphic at times). One of the topics it covers is the “beautification” of cities in India by the local governments. In other words, programs that are well-intended, but often carried out in such a way that they do more harm than good. I’ll leave it at that so as to not spoil the book for anyone who wants to read it, but today I saw firsthand the effects of a similar “beautification program” going on in Banaras.

                Prime Minister Modi is arriving to Banaras on November 7^th and the whole city is getting ready for his arrival. Part of the pre-arrival plans includes cleaning up the streets. In some ways it is really helpful – giant heaps of rotting trash have been picked up by huge trucks and a few of the many potholes have been filled with asphalt. On the downside, the beautification process also has destroyed the business of the local dobi (one of our newfound friends in Banaras). Now, this issue is a complex one and I’ll try my best to give due credit to both sides.

                Starting from the beginning, there are laws in place in Banaras that forbid people from creating structures on their properties that obstruct the road (a quite reasonable law). This law, however, also goes unheeded for 99% of the time. Tons of businesses from subjiwalas to hotels to the local dobi have “structures that obstruct the road” and the police just turn a blind eye to them. During this beautification process, however, local law enforcers have really cracked down on most of the traffic laws, this one included. The local government sent giant trucks/bulldozers around the Assi Ghat area to enforce the law, taking signs/advertisements off the road and throwing them into a truck and bulldozing anything “illegal.” The catch? Businesses could pay a 5000 rupee bribe to the police so that their illegal structures would go untouched, resulting in only the poor people having their (technically illegal) property destroyed. The dobi previously had a stand outside their house where they ironed clothes that was reduced to rubble one day and the subjiwala stand across the street was torn apart. Meanwhile, the ramp for the nearby hotel was allowed to stay because the hotel owners could pay the bribe.

It’s hard to find blame for these kinds of situations – is it the dobi’s fault for having created the illegal structure in the first place? Is it the police’s fault for not enforcing the law earlier? Is it the corruption’s fault for not treating everyone equally? Talking to local people, most say that what happened to the dobi’s platform and subjiwala’s stand needed to be done, after all, they were illegal. And they admit it is sad for these people to lose their property, but also say that they didn’t have a right to it in the first place. We see injustice, they see law enforcement. No matter which side is “right,” it was heartbreaking to see the usually bubbly dobi family morose after the destruction of their platform, to see the dobi grandmother screaming with all her might at the bulldozer as it tried to collect the broken bricks and bent rebar (she convinced it to move on and the whole family came together to salvage what they could of the mess). The USA has a lot of problems, but when I see things like this happening in India, I am always reminded of how thankful I am to come from a place with less corruption.

Evelyn – 11/5/14

                I love my name. In the United States it’s the perfect balance of unique yet common (yes, I understand that’s an oxymoron, but you all know what I mean). Unique enough that I am one of the only Evelyns that any one person knows, but common enough that people don’t really struggle with my name, spelling or otherwise. If someone does misspell my name, he/she probably wrote “Evelin” instead of “Evelyn” and I can totally see the confusion there. In India, however, the name “Evelyn” seems to be one of the most foreign concepts you could imagine. People here struggle a lot with my name. The first month of the trip it was sort of an inside joke amongst our group that our good friend Hemant-ji would pronounce my name like “Eh-woe-leen,” but my name was just as mispronounced as other peoples’ (Jenny was called Jonny by her host mom in Munsiyari and Ben P was called Dan by his homestay family there, too. Chase’s name oftentimes comes out sounding more like “Chess” than “Chase” and Caleb’s name sounds like “Call-eb”). Since arriving in Banaras, however, I have had the most struggles with people learning my name. This is partly because as a teacher I interact with a lot of people who want to know my name (i.e. all my students and coworkers), but also because people really can’t get a handle on how to say or write my name.
                The first crazy experience I had with my name troubles happened at South Point School. It was first period and one of the men who works in the office came to my class with a slip of paper that announced who would be subbing what classes for the day. I scanned the paper for a good 30 seconds, didn’t see my name, and so gave it back to him assuming that I wouldn’t be subbing any classes that day. About twenty-thirty minutes later, however, Khushboo Ma’am (the in-charge of the middle/high school), walked into my class and asked me why I didn’t sign next to my name saying that I could sub the eighth graders during third period. I apologized and said I must have somehow missed my name, but when I looked at the paper I still couldn’t find where the heck my name was. She prompted me, “Class eight, there” and I saw she had written “Awlis” next to that slot. How are you supposed to politely tell your superior that they managed to spell your name with only one letter in common with how you actually spell your name? At that point I wanted to apologize, but at the same time how was I to know that the name “Awlis” was referring to me? When I obviously looked perplexed, Khushboo Ma’am asked if my name was not spelled correctly and I gently told her that “it was spelled a little differently.” I proceeded to write my name in clear print for future reference (this attempt failed, however, seeing as my name is still misspelled on the master schedule for classes).
                The second most striking experience also revolved around South Point. This time was a phone “conversation” that I had with the front office. The reason I called the school was very simple: Ben and I had said that we would be at the teacher meeting on Saturday, but then later found out it conflicted with our BYP group meeting and had to let the school know we wouldn’t be coming. You think this would be an easy 30 second phone call, right? Not quite. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi, this is Evelyn Ma’am. Just calling to say that Ben Sir and I won’t be coming to the teacher meeting today.
Them: Sorry, who is speaking?
Me: It’s Evelyn. Evelyn Ma’am.
Them: Sorry, who?
Me: Ev-eh-lin. I am an intern here.
Them: So you want to talk to our interns?
Me: No, I am an intern. Ben Sir and I just cannot be at the meeting for teachers today.
Them: So, you want to meet our teachers?
Me: No, it’s Evelyn Ma’am. Me and Ben Sir are from the same program.
Them: Ah, you want a meeting with Ben Sir, then?
Me: No, no. I do not need to meet with anyone. I am a teacher here.
*Current speaker hands phone to someone else*
Them: Who is this?
Me: It’s Evelyn Ma’am. Evelyn.
Them: Sorry, who?
Me: Ev-eh-lin. Evelyn Ma’am. I teach math.
Them: You want to teach math here?
Me: No, I already am a teacher here. Ben and I cannot come to the meeting today.
Them: One second.
*Current speaker hands the phone off to a third person*
Them: Hello? Who is speaking?
Me: Evelyn. Ev-eh-lin. The math teacher. I am an intern here with Ben Sir.
*Conversation continues like this while the phone gets passed to everyone in the office*
Finally…
Them: OH! Ah-woe-leen!! What do you need?
Me: Ben Sir and I won’t be there today.
Them: Okay. Will you be here on Monday?
Me: Yes, we will be there on Monday.
Them: Very good. See you Monday.
*End Conversation*
                No matter how many times I write my name phonetically in Hindi or try to explain how to say my name, no one ever seems to get it. The closest I’ve come to success is that my sixth graders call me “Eleven” which at least has all the right sounds in it. It’s actually kind of comical all the different things that I’ve been called, most of which I can’t even remember because they are so far from what my name is. When Ben and I arrive to school in the morning, it is customary for everyone to say “Good Morning _____ Sir/Ma’am” to each other. Ben always gets his “Good Morning Ben Sir” and then the same person will turn to me and just say “Good Morning Ma’am,” surreptitiously leaving out my name from the common phrase. What’s worse is that at this point it would be hard for me to start asking people to call me by my Hindi name, Indu, because that would just confuse them more. At least now a solid 10 or 12 people (mostly students) know a modestly correct version of my name. In any event, I never thought my name would cause so much strife here in India. 

Halloween – 10/31/14

                One of the main reasons that I wanted to write my last blog was to talk about Halloween here and then I promptly forgot to write at all about it! Anyway, here is a small recount of our holiday shenanigans.
                Now, Halloween isn’t really a thing in India. In fact, I can hardly think of something that alerted me to Halloween’s coming besides the pictures I saw on Facebook of my friends at various parties. The one reminder that we had here in India was Dolly-ji incessantly mentioning the Bollywood dances we would have to perform on Halloween for her birthday present (her birthday was on the 25^th). Thus said, most of our costumes were pretty haphazard for the party, but we all still had a ton of fun.
                The “pre-party” was a discussion on faith, diversity, and unity in both the United States and India which lasted for a couple of hours. Afterwards, real party preparations began. Stephen ran home to grab his costume and I went to my house to grab a charger for the speakers. When I came back, the rest of the group had created a chart for guessing each other’s personality types (using Myers Briggs Personality Types) to play a game where whoever guesses the most number of personalities correctly would get extra chocolate at the party. Then, Stephen walks in wearing the exact same clothes that he had been wearing previously and all of us were like, “Wait, Stephen, we all thought you were changing into your costume?” Stephen then ripped off his shirt and pants to transform into Shyam: Guardian of the Night and resident superhero of India 6.0. The rest of our costumes were as follows:
                                                Evelyn: American tourist
                                                Ben P: Foreign tourist on a spiritual journey
                                                Chase: Lord Shiva himself
                                                Jenny: Maggi minute noodles
                                                Ben T: Salmaan Khan
                                                Alex: Tourist with dreadlocks
                                                Caleb: A girl (which then became a Hijra)
After writing down our predictions for each other’s personalities, we all took the test and then went around announcing what everyone was. Stephen came out on top for the guessing, getting 5 of the 9 people correct (I tied for last with Dolly-ji, only guessing one person correctly). Our personality types are as follows:
                                                Alex: ENTP
                                                Stephen: INFP
                                                Ben P: ENTP
                                                Ben T: INFP
                                                Jenny: ISFP
                                                Chase: ENFP
                                                Evelyn: ESTJ
                                                Caleb-ji: INFP
                                                Dolly-ji: ESFP
Interestingly enough, I am opposite of the majority of people in my group for 2 of the letters and the only person with “judging” rather than “perceiving” for the last letter.
                After the personality tests, we got onto Pottermore and found out our Hogwarts houses if we hadn’t already done so. Unfortunately, this activity was cut short due to the arrival of Dolly-ji’s two kids and Hemant-ji, as well as Dominoes pizza, and more snacks. At this point it was getting kind of late and we wanted to end our party with a dance party. All of us were supposed to have prepared a dance, but really only Jenny and the two Bens did. I am sure those videos will make it up to the internet soon, but I’ll just say that the two Bens had a KILLER performance and no one even came close to their dancing skillz. Even though it didn’t really feel like Halloween, the party was definitely a huge highlight of last week.

Diwali, Work, etc. – 11/2/14

                Last week was Diwali, a festival that celebrates the god of wealth in the Hindu faith. Basically it’s a huge mashup of New Year’s and Christmas – there are tons of fireworks/firecrackers, Christmas lights everywhere, and people by a ton of new stuff. There is actually a day dedicated to buying new metal objects/appliances and it’s considered auspicious to wear new clothes on Diwali. The days leading up to Diwali were crazy. Every night on my way home from Hindi the streets would be packed with people buying stuff and as October 23 (the official day of Diwali) came closer, the number of firecrackers going off through the night drastically increased. We had a shortened week of school at South Point because of the huge festival, but we might as well have not had school at all because so many kids were absent and the kids who were present spent the entire time being excited about Diwali. On the Wednesday before the 4 day weekend, we actually didn’t have any classes. The whole day we spent cleaning and decorating the school with langolis (sand art) and candles. That’s another interesting thing about Diwali – the god of wealth, Lakshmi, is said to enter your house and bless your family only if your house is clean. This means that there was some furious cleaning going on that week in my house and in houses all over the place. On the actual day of Diwali, at night you light candles in front of many different temples and you exchange sweets with friends and family. After doing pooja and sweet exchanges, everyone goes to their roofs to watch/set off fireworks. I let Deep and his cousin do all of the setting off of the firecrackers. I just sat back and enjoyed the view of hundreds of fireworks being set off (there aren’t any rules to buying fireworks like there are in the United States, so anyone can get their hands on any size firework). This holiday is by far Deep’s favorite (as you could probably guess from my previous post about him and firecrackers), and, even though he was sick, he still managed to be exuberantly excited to celebrate the holiday. He had bought so many firecrackers that he just finished setting off the last of them yesterday evening (unfortunately when I was trying to take a nap).

                School has been going much better since the first week. The kids are finally starting to listen to me more and I even had all of the fifth graders doing their work for a solid five minutes on Friday! Every day there is a mix of good and bad at school – if one grade is especially good that day I can bet that one of the other grades will be particularly challenging, but I have learned to take it all in stride. Many times I feel like the day goes by much as an 800 m race would in track. The first three hundred meters go by quickly and easily (these classes include 3^rd grade English, 12^th grade math, and then my one free period). At the three hundred the first inklings of tiredness set in and the next one hundred is a little more difficult (my 7^th grade math class). After the four hundred there is a small spurt of energy as I tell myself that I’m halfway done (lunch), but then the next two hundred meters are the worst of all (my 6^th and 5^th grade math classes). During the last one hundred meters I am exhausted, but the prospect of the coming finish line propels me forward (the time from 2:15-4:00 when school is over, but teachers stay to plan classes and grade papers). Like my track coach says, you just have to take it 100 meters at a time and it all seems easier.

                Here people have a very different view of Hitler than people from the west. First of all, they just know a lot less about World War II in general (which is to be expected since India didn’t play a huge role in that war). Secondly, apparently Hitler sent pro-nazi minions to India to spread his beliefs, a lot of which were already supported here (ie people here are very racist and everyone wants to be as white or “fair” as possible). The Hindu sign for peace is a backwards swastika and is actually called a “swastik”. During the Diwali decorating time at school, all of the kids were drawing them everywhere. I walked into my seventh grade class and found that someone had accidentally drawn 5 of them backwards – a sight very jarring for me considering the deeply ingrained hatred I harbor for all that the Nazi swastika represents. I asked the kids to redraw them in the correct direction and then later Ben P told me an interesting/funny story about what some of his students had said to him earlier in the week. When asked what religion he was, Ben P replied “Jewish,” to which one of the girls in his class said “Oh, wasn’t Hitler Jewish!” Not quite. When Ben said that Hitler wasn’t Jewish, a different girl then said, “Jewish people normally have blue eyes, right?” and again Ben had to correct her. When we recounted this story to the group, Chase told us how some people here actually liked Hitler. Hitler is probably one of the only historical figures that almost everyone dislikes in the West. If you want a non-controversial villain, you pick Hitler and the Nazis. It’s weird being in a place that knows so little about something that we are taught about from the time we are little children and that views someone who is completely demonized in the west as an “okay guy.”