Following are a series of anecdotes I've written during my time in India:

India Anecdote #1

The suburbs here are villages. Ever walk through a suburb in America alone late at night? It can be somewhat terrifying. Unlike the city, by 11PM there's no one outside, no street lights, no one to hear you yell should someone jump out from behind a pruned bush on someone's lawn and assault you. Biking through a village alone late at night? Truly terrifying.

To start, there are no street lights where they are most needed. You will have to navigate that pit-hole and rock-infested patch of dirt 'road' with sheer luck alone. There will probably be some sleeping cows to avoid, as well, and maybe some goats. You'll pass an occasional dude on a motorcycle, and try to make your bangles stop clanging so loudly, annoucing that you're a female, alone, on a bike, late at night. You remember one of your field assistants telling you how bandits sometimes hide in the brush, waiting for single girls to come along to snatch them off their bikes. True or not, by now you have successfully freaked yourself out.

When you've made it through the unlit portion, you'll come upon some small shops just about to close for the evening. Their flourescent street lights are on, thankfully. However, you spot a mean-looking street dog on the corner, right in your path. Will it ignore you, like most of them do? No, not tonight. Mean-looking street dog starts barking in your direction, then decides to chase you for the hell of it. You pedal faster and make loud noises to scare it off. Tactic fails. Street dog follows you for about a block before getting bored and turning around.

Finally, you reach your house, with its high stone wall and reassuringly spikey metal gate. You get to the gate, and reach to open it... and the downstairs mother has locked it. It's 11PM, you're locked out, and there are two more street dogs immediately to your left who look like they're about to start fighting with each other. You quietly shout "Hello? Hello?" which usually works, but not tonight. You try again, this time with a pitiful "Hello? Akka? Hello?" No luck.

Azara is upstairs, so you call her and she comes down. You both look wearily at the lock on the gate. Finally, in desperation you decide to scale the wall. Leaving your bike outside to the mercy of any potential thieves or vandals, you climb on a rock, grab a spike on the gate, and hoist yourself over. Success! Also, disturbingly easy, considering that the Large Stone Wall and Spikey Metal Gate are there for a reason. Azara is trying out some of the house keys and finds that you can, in fact, unlock the gate. Happy at this discovery (and at being able to bring the bike inside the compound) you lock everything up.

Of course, in the Land of No Privacy, you notice that a random male neighbor across the way has been standing in the shadows, watching the whole ridiculous situation unfold - a presumably 'scandalous' foreign girl climbing over walls in a cotton nightie at an hour when most men aren't even outside. Feeling cheeky, you wave to him (the gesture is not returned), and go upstairs to sleep. November 2007.

India Anecdote #2

For my 'tutorial' portion of the program here, I am assistant teaching a basic computer class at Sudar, a women's NGO in Madurai. There are about 12 girls in the class, whose ages range from 18-24, and whose families are generally lower to lower-middle class. It took about two months for the girls to grow accustomed to me and to accept me not just as a foreign curiousity, but also as their instructor. It also took the same amount of time for my Tamil to come easily enough for me to actually conduct lessons, instead of just sitting and correcting them as they practiced. So the past month has been a welcome synthesis of friendship, communication, and my increased contribution to the class.

The teacher, Jennifer Fatima, has also warmed up to me. Barely older than most of the students she teaches, in the beginning she was as shy as the rest of them, timid when talking to me in English although in Tamil she's loud and outgoing. She's Muslim, but in the all-female environment inside the classroom, she usually wears only her dupatta over her hair, which often falls down carelessly on her shoulders. Since I had never seen her outside the context of the class, I assumed that because I never saw her in even a black headscarf that she was from a more liberal Muslim family, and didn't observe strict purdah.

This past Saturday, I was invited to join the girls on an excursion to a Christmas function being held at Shalom, a Christian school for mentally handicapped children. I showed up at 10:30, and was told by a few girls that Fatima was on her way, and was going to be wearing a sari today! She showed up at 11, and I was very surprised to see her wearing the long black robe and thick headscarf that some of the more conservative Muslim women here wear. Her purple sari peaked out underneath, but she didn't remove her robe. Even more surprising was when right before we walked over to the school, she tied on a chadri piece that covered her whole face, minus her eyes. She was wearing a full-on burqa.

This was the first time I'd ever seen a woman face-to-face in a burqa, not to mention a friend, a person I'd already contextualized in a completely different way. Most women don't usually wear the chadri here, and I wondered why she did. We were probably an odd sight walking through the neighborhood to get to Shalom - a group of mostly young Hindu women, in their new Deepavali chutidars with vibhutis and bindis on their foreheads, accompanied by a Muslim woman in a burqa and a white woman, walking side by side.

At the program there was a similar strange mix of people - a few more Muslim women in robes [chadri pieces now removed] were there, as part of a predominantly Hindu audience, and everyone was watching a Christian Nativity performance, complete with a Christmas Tata [Santa Claus] and 'We Three Kings' in Tamil. They served lemon cake and badam milk, and the Christmas Tata distributed presents to some Hindu school children in the audience. A Muslim girl won a 'special,' large gift from the Christmas Tata.

Yesterday at a devotional picture shop near the Meenakshi temple, I found a print that included an image of the Kaaba at Mecca, an image of Ganesh, and an image of Jesus. It was 50 rupees, and I couldn't pass up buying it. After the experience of the previous day, it was an appropriate purchase. December 2007.

India Anecdote #3: The Loneliest Funeral Procession

Last week I was taking a rickshaw to the Aripaliyum bus stand in Madurai, to catch a ride to Thiruppur. The rick went the usual route, down PTR Road towards the Vaigai River, and then parallel to the river for a ways before crossing the bridge to the bus stand. The road alongside the river is typically a bustling place:
This day it was particularly busy, and the rickshaw driver was perilously weaving through the jumble of cars-animals-people-motorcycles-bikes. I was drowsy from the midday heat, and was only half paying attention to the crowd outside. As we neared the bridge, however, I saw something that startled me: in the midst of this bustling mass of people and traffic and life was a dead woman.

Not a dead woman lying in the street, no, but a dead woman on a cart, being pushed through the intersection by three men. The cart was painted a bright, garish blue with some decorative embellishments done in yellow and red. The woman herself was lying prone, with her upper half propped up to make it look like she was half-sitting. Her body was wrapped, actually completely covered, by flower garlands - marigolds and other bright pink and white flowers. I got only a fleeting glimpse of her profile, but it was wrinkled enough to indicate that she'd lived a long life.

What struck me was not so much the unusualness of seeing a dead person being paraded in public - I'd certainly seen it here before - but the stark contrast between life and death, literally standing right in front of me. Here was this huge pulsating mass of people and vehicles and horns and dust and heat, and the middle of it all was this tiny, shriveled body of a woman, being unceremoniously pushed on a cart - similar to how I'd seen men pushing carts of vegetables, or garbage.

I watched the cart for no more than ten seconds before my rickshaw turned onto the bridge and drove away. Likely most of the other people passing paid it even less attention than I did. Even in the midst of that massive crowd, it was the loneliest funeral procession I'd ever seen. August 2009.