The coolest researcher I have ever "met"

Notes:
Singapore has the world’s lowest mortality rate!

Many of the MSS girls sleep on a rug on the floor and sit on the floor in their home. And yes, you can tell the increments in income from their toilets, houses and beds.

Economic growth, education and good governance are the best means of achieving development, but the goal of development is human rights and culture.

An aside:

There's a Singlish word to describe this man:

COCK  (Contributed by MC)
Despite seemingly obscene connotations, the use of "cock is actually fairly benign. It has become the de facto Singlish way to describe something as being nonsensical or sub-standard; the local equivalent of "rubbish" or "junk". Sometimes used as the short form of "cockanaden".
1. "Don't listen to him, he's only talking cock."
2. "Wah lau, you go and buy this cock thing for what?"
3. "Why you so cock, go and invest in that dot-com?" 
See also: Cockanaden  Kotek  

Source: http://www.talkingcock.com/html/lexec.php?op=LexView&lexicon=lexicon&alpha=C&page=1

Soooo cock!

Worlds Apart

What is it about Old City that I enjoyed? It was a world away from the world I was familiar with, and I miss it.

Old City is the area that Marwar, the original city of Jodhpur, originally occupied before the population grew and the city expanded outward. Five gates guard the city: Jalori, Sojati, Nagori, Sivanchi, and Mertia. My mission for the summer was to enter the city from all five gates. I only got to enter it through Jalori and Sojati gate, but I became very familiar with that area.

Ghantaghar, near Sojati gate.

The outer parts of Old City bustle with activity; street food vendors, handicraft sellers, and market stalls owners all vie for one’s attention. I love looking at markets, particularly when there is food involved. I would speak with the shopkeepers about the food they laid out, find out what the different spices, rice and beans were for, and occasionally try a piece of whatever they offered me.

Selling different types of rice.

Inside, away from the busy market, the streets narrow. Cows amble along the alleys, pooping wherever they please, stopping whenever they want. Ancient designs adorn windows and doors, and inhabitants of these houses peep out from windows carved out of stone. Early in the morning, rickshaws full of tiny schoolchildren hurtle past hole-in-the-wall shops selling kacchoris, chai and milk, their horns blaring.

STD is an acronym that has something to do with a telephone, not the disease!

The streets were dirty, the architecture old, the people different. And this starkly different culture absorbed me. In this world, so different and yet familiar, I found myself re-examining beliefs and behaviour. I felt myself wandering and lost, yet enjoying myself. Maybe eventually I would have found a place in this world, a point midway between my heritage and my immediate surroundings. But when the nine weeks were up, I felt like I had plucked myself out of this place and flung myself back into a world of clean lines, efficiency and convenience.

I was glad I did that; it was a relief at that time to be back in the US, to gain some perspective and stability. Yet now my mind keeps wandering back to India and filling itself with nostalgia. As much as I’m thankful for the stability I feel here, there are many things about the US that I feel uncomfortable about because I think they can be reduced and simplified. Right now, given what I’m feeling, if I were given a choice I would consider living in a simpler place. Yet I know living in a less wealthy country would be much harder than my nostalgic mind currently paints it to be.

China is a tantalising prospect, but not in the near future. Back in the US, responsibilities reassert themselves and I can’t just live in the present as I did in India. Still, this idea that I could do anything and go anywhere in the future is liberating and exciting to me.

Eyes open, hands tied

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing much good at all here. There are many of us Westerners who want to help Afghan women, but our efforts don’t always help them in the ways that we hope they will. There are so many ties that bind these women and hold them back, and many of these ties aren’t even visible to the Western eye. It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women’s lives differ from the complexities of ours. Sometimes we can’t help, even when we understand these complexities. The culture is changing so much more slowly than their dreams are.”

- Debbie Rodriguez, Kabul Beauty School

We never know for certain whether we do any good in development. Yet we have to believe some of it is making a difference, because that’s how we go on. We have to hope that our altruistic motives count for something. This is when I have to believe in God’s grace.

Balancing different pieces of me, and vanity

The modest kurta (long shirt) and salwars (trousers) that Indian girls wear in Jodhpur are meant to keep men’s prying eyes away from their figures. I don’t know if that actually works, because men definitely stared and called out to me when I was walking down the street. The fact that I looked foreign definitely contributed to this sort of behaviour, so I don’t know if local girls encountered similar situations (since there were so few of them around). In any case, even if that baggy and billowy attire didn’t make men pay less attention to me, it definitely made me less conscious of my figure.

Still, I knew I had to return to the US, and so I was constantly balancing the demands of two cultures in India. As a Westernised Singaporean, I was concerned about the amount of oil and food I ate because I didn’t like feeling unfit. I don’t like feeling “creaky” when my muscles haven’t been used in a long time; I hated the oppressive heat that left me dripping in sweat and panting after a simple barre workout. I also feared that people back in the US would notice I had gained weight once I returned. That was the first thing my grandmother in Singapore noticed when I returned home after freshman year, though Americans are usually more tactful about things like that.

At the same time, I had to conform to the implicit and explicit Indian societal demands. Since Indian women do not wear revealing clothes, they pay great attention instead to the colour and style of their clothes and jewellery. It is important to be suitably “bling’d-out” for an occasion, something I did not learn until my host mother told me I was “not looking good” before we went to a party. No one had ever told me that to my face before, and that traumatised me enough to make me pay more attention to my clothes. From then on, each morning I checked whether the colours of my kurta and pants matched my dupatta (scarf), and when special occasions arose, I borrowed a sari. Although I hate calling attention to myself by wearing something as elaborate as a special-occasion sari, I learned that it was better to be overdressed in India than underdressed.

Back in the US, there is a tiny piece of India that remains with me, but most of it is subsumed by the “original” internalised Western standards I carry with me. It was strange to wear short shorts again, not be stared at (overtly) by men, and not have to wear a scarf all the time (although sometimes I still do). Ironically, while this half of the world is less concerned with my gender and body, I have become more conscious of it. I am painfully aware of whether my figure is proportionate, of the fact that my bottom half is a different dress size from my top half. Part of the reason is because the clothes we wear in the US are more revealing. Also, as I identify more with this culture, I feel greater pressure to conform to societal standards.

I catch myself looking at my reflection in the mirror, trying to determine if my body meets a standard (mine? Society’s?). And I remind myself that I don’t have to base my worth in these things. It’s so easy to find pride in these superficial things and let that distract me from what is really necessary (ie loving others). Also, I remember that these things didn’t matter so much to me a month ago, and two continents away no one cares.

Giving and receiving

As part of my best practices research, I visited Audrey Ann and Christian’s host organisation, Sambal Sansthan, one afternoon. That afternoon, the students decided to hold a party that Friday and all three of us agreed to come. As I had been identified as "the dance teacher", I was asked to teach a dance class. I felt obligated to contribute in some way to this party, so I agreed.

First off, I don’t actually teach dance. As explained previously, I provide the music, try to create a comfortable atmosphere, and encourage the students to enjoy themselves improvising. So I was hesitant to be labelled as the dance teacher. Audrey Ann encouraged me, however, saying that the students would appreciate anything I did. The MSS students seemed to enjoy my “dance classes”, so I agreed to “teach” a “dance class” on at Sambal Sansthan on Friday.

That Friday, I lugged my laptop to the centre and, after a very filling lunch, hooked it up to speakers (on loan from MSS). The women and girls had arranged all the chairs so that there was a dance floor in the middle of the room. They were all sitting in the chairs. Two students (who were also my translators and soon became my friends), Aimand and Khadijah, selected a song.

It was fairly evident that they expected a demonstration from me. I had mixed feelings about this. I’m not a classically or traditionally trained Indian dancer, and I am assuming that is the only type of dance they were exposed to and were thus expecting. There was no option of me dancing in another style; that seemed completely inappropriate in this context. I did not feel adequate in this situation at all, and I hate disappointing people with substandard work.

I didn’t have much of a choice; I pretended I was at MSS and began fooling around to the music. I used some of the movements I picked up from the MSS girls, but these movements obviously looked different on me. Audrey Ann joined me—she has no qualms about making a fool of herself—and together we danced in our pseudo-Indian way to Hindi lyrics that we did not understand. Only a few girls joined in; most of the participants were content watching and laughing on the sidelines. We kept going for an hour, people moving on and off the dance floor, Aimand and Khadijah refusing to stop the music.

I would have definitely been more comfortable if everyone were dancing. Although I love dancing, for the longest time I was painfully self-conscious when I danced, and I only began shedding my self-consciousness last year when I began improvising in a non-judgemental environment at Emory. The girls and women seemed to be laughing and having fun; were they laughing at me? Did they think my actions were weird because they were different? I had to pause and step off the dance floor a couple of times to clear my head. But the music and the movement always drew me back in.

Who knows what these women and girls thought after that party? Did they think I was crazy? Did they appreciate my efforts? Did they scoff at my “unsuccessful” attempts to dance? Throughout my time in India, I wanted to know if people appreciated what I did for them, if I was as valuable to them as they were to me. I was never able to find out because of all the barriers that prevented me from “reading” them accurately—language, culture, shyness, suspicion. I kept on giving, hoping that somehow I would earn their love. Yet I will still never fully know what they think.

But love that is not reciprocated is still love.

Assimilation

I've been back in Atlanta for nearly two weeks and I still think about India a lot. Nine weeks still seems like an incredibly short time for me, but I need to acknowledge that it was a long enough period for me to get a relatively good sense of how people in Jodhpur live.

Little ways in which my life was changed from this trip:

--

When I moved into Clairmont, I turned off the A/C and opened the windows in my living room and bedroom. I didn't want to be so separate from the outside. In Singapore and in Jodhpur the houses I live in are built with large windows so air can flow in. I like knowing what the weather is like outside, hearing the faint sounds of nature, even dealing with the heat and humidity.

And then my Area Director told us we had to make sure all the thermostats were on and set to 72F to prevent "moisture issues". So after a week's delay I turned on the A/C but kept it at 78F.

--

Whenever I get the chance, I eat with my right hand only. But I apologise to the people around me in case it bothers them.

--

I feel compelled to say "thiiiik hai" instead of "okaaaay" but I can't since no one will understand me.

--

I don't feel comfortable wearing short shorts around (this will probably change). It also amazes me to see girls in two-piece bathing suits (even though I wear one as well).

--

I'd like to take a road trip to explore different parts of the US, or at least the South, or at least Georgia. I wish I could walk and walk for hours along the Atlanta streets but I don't think that would be as interesting or as colourful as it is in Jodhpur because Atlanta is more spread out than Jodhpur. I know that Atlanta has a lot of interesting events and I'd like to continue to discover them. Maybe that could be my fall break activity...

Dance class

Nithu seems happy to smile for the camera while the rest of the girls are choosing a song.

Dance class usually works this way: I lug my laptop to the centre (because I still don't have an iPod :P), turn it on, and start dancing with the girls.

The girls sometimes have song requests, so I let them look through my list of traditional Rajasthani songs (all copied from Vijay's computer).

There's always a bunch of girls who are ready to go, namely Chandrakanta (in greenish yellow) and Santosh (right at the back in the colourful traditional Marwari dress). But some of the others take a while to warm up.

Rajini (in pink and blue) is always really shy and here I'm coaxing her to dance with me. Sometimes she does, other times she doesn't. By the way, usually I wear more culturally appropriate attire, such as the salwar kameezes the girls are wearing. I think my kurtas (long shirts) were being pressed that day, so I had to wear a Western t-shirt.

Another volunteer, Sarah, dancing with the girls.

Santosh

I really love it when people enjoy themselves dancing!

Filtering ideas from a foreign culture

The idea of coming in as an outsider and changing local people's perspectives never sat easily with me. The legacy of colonialism always haunts me and I am fully aware that development is often tagged as neocolonialism. However, I'm also careful not to be completely culturally relativistic; all aspects of a local culture are not always good for the people, especially in modern, globalised times. Culture changes as one's environment changes, and even in conservative Jodhpur, things are changing.

When "outsiders" attempt to change local people's belief systems, the ideas they introduce are not indigenous to the target culture, and so a process of assimilation needs to occur in order for the new concept to be beneficial to society. This process of assimilation needs to be driven by the local peoples themselves, but I believe it is filtered through different sections of society until they finally reach the "local" people.

In the case of women's empowerment:

"Local" people are usually poorer Indians who either reside in villages or have recently migrated from the rural areas into the city. Their beliefs are that sons are more valuable than women; women will eventually be given away to another household (their husband's). Thus all resources should be diverted away from the women and to the son, who will produce a greater return on investment. Women are just trained to be good wives; the man is responsible for providing for the household.

Others--Westerners, people from a higher caste or different part of the city--see that women are more than that.

Indians from a higher caste say that they believe women and men should be treated equally. However, women from a higher caste still adhere to traditional women's roles: they stay in the house, take care of the children, busy themselves with household chores and with their job, if they have one. My host mother cooks all the food from scratch every day when she gets home from work; she leaves the house at 6:30am and returns at 4pm.

Westerners see that women and men are just as valuable. Women should be given the same opportunities--which includes freedoms--as men. However, if this were suddenly the case--if the dowry system, which I think is the root cause of son preference, were abolished--and all women really insisted they studied and not cook, marry later, and choose their husbands, I think Indian society would be dismantled very quickly. Such quick disintegration is usually destructive.

The middle class Indians, I think, will get it eventually. Since they come into close contact with the lower class Indians and are more similar to them culturally than Westerners, it will be their influence that ultimately catalyses change in the lower, more conservative sectors of society. I think I initially viewed the middle class's actions with impatience; women say they are empowered but they still voluntarily submit to the prevailing culture. Now I'm beginning to see that this is necessary for the society to evolve and progress.

"No mind"

Usha during English class.

Field notes; Wednesday 21 July.

(Disclaimer: since I know very little Hindi, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of many of my statements. I was mostly reading body language and asking the women and girls to explain things to me whenever possible. In addition, I was viewing these situations through very Western eyes. Shama, the sewing teacher, is a traditional Indian teacher: strict when necessary but also generous towards diligent students. I don't agree with her teaching methods but I recognise that this is how most of India operates.)

Shama arrived at 3:35pm; the students were already waiting for her. Chandrakanta was happy today; she wrote on the board that she likes Anju-didi. “She’s the best!” Shama translated for me.

Usha was working on her kurta at the sewing machine while Chenna (a former student who now teaches at a nearby village and visits the centre occasionally) was teaching some women and girls to sew a kurta outside. Two girls, Nithu and Rajini, had been consistently idle for the past few days and I wanted to find out why.

I took Anju-ji aside and asked her why Nithu and Rajini were not doing anything. She made to announce this question to someone but I stopped her and made her ask Santosh instead. They both responded, “because they have no mind.”

What? I asked them to clarify just to make sure. “No interest? Scared of teacher?” I asked.

“No, no mind,” they replied. It seemed that they were saying that the girls had no capacity to learn.

I told them that’s not possible; everyone has a mind that they can use. It seems, however, that these women and girls believe that some people are born with intelligence at certain things while others are not, and those who are not skilled at something are quickly discouraged from pursuing that skill.

For example, when I asked another girl, Usha, why she wasn’t repeating 8th standard since she failed it. She responded that she had no mind. I wasn’t sure what she said initially and asked Anju-ji and Shama to translate. "She says she has no mind," they told me.

I was shocked to hear that Usha would say that about herself. How can you believe that you have no capacity to do something? Usha in particular is an incredibly dedicated student who I believe will do well in school; Shama had singled her out as the most diligent student in class.

“Do you want to go to school?” I asked Usha.

“Yes,” she replied.

That willingness to learn, in my opinion, should be the only prerequisite for attending school. It is true that some people have more natural ability for a particular task than others, but that doesn't mean one should give up trying. What's even more discouraging is that these women don’t seem believe that each one of them has the capacity to do something they put their mind to. How can they encourage and support each other in that case then?

A friend pointed out that the women's liberation movement in the West began because women themselves began realising that they were just as capable as men. It's going to take a while before that happens here in Jodhpur. People still accept the prevailing belief that women are bound traditionally to the household. While many middle-class girls are well-educated, lower caste/class girls are treated as temporary members of the household, trained to be wives in their husband's households.

MSS focuses on empowering women and girls economically, but I'm pushing for Vijay to adopt more encouraging, empowering teaching methods so that this belief of having "no mind" can be dismantled.

Cast of characters

These are some of the women and girls I got to know at the centre. Anju-ji, Bhagwati, Santosh Mundela, Santosh Baroti and Leela-ji are women (ie they are married); Nithu, Rajini, Ravina, Kiran, Chandrakanta, Nisha and Usha are girls. I'm sure I spelled some of their names incorrectly but that's how they're spelled in my head.

"Ji" is respectful term that is used at the end of one's name. I initially tried to use "ji" when addressing every woman, but for some reason that didn't work out. Bhagwati, for example, I can't bring myself to call "ji" because she's the same age as me. Santosh Baroti I don't call "ji" because she's so headstrong and modern that using such a traditional term doesn't befit her. The girls don't call all the women "ji" either; sometimes they use the more informal term "didi", which means sister.

Celebrating stitching teacher Shama's birthday at the centre. Shama is in pink on the extreme right.

Women (married) students from right: Santosh Mundela, Bhagwati, Anju-ji

Santosh Baroti with her daughter. Santosh is the unofficial spokesperson of the women and girls from the Meghwal Basti community.

Leela-ji and me at her home. Leela-ji is Santosh's husband's brother's wife.

Nithu

Rajini

Left: Ravinia; right: Kiran

Left: Chandrakanta; right: Nisha.

Usha

Waking up

I'm back in Atlanta...

It's strange to be back, strange that I'll be starting a new year soon and my thoughts will be diverted from India, from the girls and women I gave so much to and received so much from for the past two months. I'll be posting a few more entries to wrap up this adventure and give it a sense of closure.